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hasegawasosise · 4 years

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In Numbers We Trust

Summary:

Prompt master: @outoftheframework

I like the concept of each of the kids having a number or having a thing where they count off. Not in a demeaning or dehumanizing way at all, just more so to use in dangerous situations. For example, a bomb goes off on patrol, and to quickly see if everyone is okay, the kids (including Steph and Babs) automatically start counting one at a time. Bruce can breathe again once the count reaches eight. This tradition begins to carry over to civilian life when the kids yell numbers across a crowded gala after the power goes out.

Beta Agenthandler

Bruce never planned on starting a family. He made a vow to live for justice. He would be the force Gotham needed. He would be the forever bachelor. Justice was his Lady Love.

But 90% of life’s plan was just that—a plan. Bruce would never have guessed he'd end up taking in a boy who called himself Dick Grayson. Technically his ward, but Bruce suffered a mid-life crisis every day from thereon, wondering whether it was the right choice for him to adopt a kid—or why anyone sane would let Bruce Wayne adopt any kid in the first place. It was a testament to Dick’s own awesomeness that he grew up to be a mostly functional adult—Bruce definitely wasn’t.

After Dick, he recruited an amazing girl named Barbara Gordon as another sidekick. She was not officially his adopted daughter, but by day two of working together Bruce registered her in his little hind brain as “my kid.”

Then another. Jason Todd not only stole the Batmobile’s tires but also Batman’s heart. The little boy taught Bruce more about street-smarts and how to be a better person right until his death. His realized depth of parental love made him wonder why he ever adopted anyone in the first place—and ended up losing them that way.

After what he thought was the last, another one came into his life without invitation. Timothy Drake was a genius detective. Out of his first four—yes, Bruce could still count—Tim was the most similar to Bruce. They had the same kind of upbringing amidst the Gotham Elite, they were both highly focused and detail oriented individuals. Tim was even smarter than Bruce, and he was the sole reason Bruce could continue functioning after Jason’s death. Tim was also the only one to believe he was still alive and brought Bruce back from when he was lost in time.

After Time was Stephanie Brown. A cheerful ray of sunshine that had her own worries, but could function the best out of all his children. She had the kind of light sarcastic humor to brighten up Bruce’s darker days. He gained a third daughter, Cassandra Cain, the most accomplished amongst his children in terms of stealth and combat, also his one darling princess.

Then Bruce was introduced to his—one and only—blood son, a little baby assassin who had the unfortunate tendency to stab first ask later. By this time, Bruce had a better handle on raising children highly susceptible to raising hell and violence (read: still an incompetent parent, but he knew how to tune out their nagging) and had no choice but to assign Dick with Damian’s education on humanities and socialization.

He also had Helena, Terry, Matt, Duke, and Harper.

Bruce lost count.

It was the ultimate testament to Bruce’s parenting skill. He sometimes couldn’t remember how many kids he had. He could lose them in a Walmart and forget he was missing one. But thankfully, he had a secret weapon.

Since Jason, he assigned them all numbers. Dick was one, Barbara was two, Jason three, Timothy four, Stephanie five, Cass six, Damian seven—although he always said he was the first—Duke was eight, Harper nine, Terry ten, Matt eleven, and little Helena was twelve.

Imagine that. Bruce had twelve kids. What was his vow again? Lady Love Justice? Don’t know her.

It became sort of a tradition. When the kids entered the Wayne manor, each of them wrote their number on the info board down in the changing room. They were also listed on a desktop note of the BatComputer. It became a ritual in which the last child would add their newest sibling into the list, so they knew who the next number was supposed to be, and that next child would be who they were responsible for. Well, except Dick who accepted all of them as his baby chicks. The number also became a little part of their identity—each of them would put their numbers on everything they owned from their doors to their batarangs to the containers in the fridge.

Bruce, most importantly, used the numbering system to check in on them. It started when Penguin detonated a bank and his robins were scattered fighting all the hundred thugs Penguin hired to keep Batman busy. The blast stopped the fight and Bruce’s heart dropped when he realized his coms were damaged and he immediately couldn’t keep sight of them. He immediately tried to think what he could do, and when he did, he shouted at the top of his lungs.

“KID COUNT!”

“One!” Nightwing shouted from the top of the next building. Apparently he flew off the bank’s roof when he realised it was going to burst.

Oracle was two but he knew she was safe in the clock tower.

“Three,” Red Hood drawled. Bruce wondered why he joined in, but was thankful nonetheless.

“Four,” Red Robin shouted from the opposite direction, because he was the sensible one who directed the civilians and police to safety.

“Five!” Spoiler laughed and flew to his side. “That was a doozy!”

“Six,” Black Bat said as she appeared beside Spoiler where they shared a hi-five.

“Seven,” Robin pulled out his swords from a thug’s leg. “Father, I need to clean my sword immediately.”

“No stabbing, please.” “Too late.” Bruce groaned.

“...Eight?” Signal. He was still new to the numbering system.

Batman let go a deep relieved sigh.

The police and civilians who were fortunate to witness the scene, collectively said ‘Oh’. It became a trending twitter before Tim deleted the topic as much as he could.

********

The counting continued though. Citizens who have lots of children (such as parents, teachers, sometimes even the Police teams), realised it was a quick method to ensure update of their progeny/students/teams condition. So they The counting became sort of a Gotham Trend and eventually enlisted into Gotham’s Emergency SOP. Imagine that, having too many kids to count gave birth to a crucial disaster first-aid first responder procedure.

In all actually, maybe that was one of the top major contributions Batman has given to his city.

********

The kids themselves slowly embraced the importance and fun of the numbers. It created a sort of camaraderie-- even when the numbers didn’t correlate with their height. It used to be a nice isoquant curve when they stood side by side. But after Jason’s growth spurt and Tim naught growth spurt, Steph finding high heels and Cass love for Anti-flood Boots, the nice isoquant curve just became a jagged line not unlike a heartbeat rate.

That aside, the numbering also slowly bled into their civilian lives:

All of them counted before they entered the GothMart -- Alfred was there too, and suddenly Bruce became number 0. He was there to help Alfred because herding the kids was a massive job.

Dick was back for the weekend to spend time with his “babies” and refused to stay at home, because he wanted to sneak in his grocery list (gummy bears and cereals) into Bruce’s list so he could bring it back to Bludhaven and not spend a dime on it.

Jason was there because Alfred asked him for help--he was the only one out of the brood with cooking talent and generally all responsible in the kitchen, i.e. Alfred could trust Jason to use his kitchen without blowing it up (shoutout to Tim and Duke who blew the kitchen for the fifth time this year).

Barbara stayed at home, watching over their base, but she was ready with her surveillance just in case they lost one of the broods.

Tim was half dragged, because he had spent the last 30 hours awake doing Bruce-knew-what, and only agreed to be dragged with the promise of sweet, abominable GothMart coffee with pink glitter (a cheap imitation of Starbucks, really) because Tim was fabulous especially after thirty hours of no sleep. And the surprisingly awesome coffee was a dollar--what kind of frugal millionaire didn’t appreciate a dollar of drinkable coffee?

Steph was the one who dragged Tim, with the help of Cass who just returned from Hong Kong for the weekend. Steph wanted to buy some new bras for Cass, something cool and sexy she could enjoy immensely. Bruce was not privy in this knowledge.

Damian was there to ensure his embarrassment of siblings didn’t kill themselves or humiliate the family. Wayne was his legacy afterall, and all of them reflected on his legacy, whether he liked it or not. Duke, the only one whom he could tolerate outside Cassandra (Grayson was mother) just poked his cheek and grinned. Duke might be tolerable, but it didn’t mean Damian didn’t want to stab him sometimes (Drake, on the other hand, looked like a nice pincushion to stab his sword into).

They counted 0 to 8 before they entered, orchestrated by Alfred.

When they were ready for the checkout, 4, 5, and 6 were missing. Bruce finally found them at the children section, where Tim was busy defending his virginity from a Superboy Plushie, while Steph convulsed with laughter on the floor and Cass video-ed the entire thing.

Bruce refused to buy the cereals (Dick) / sexy lingerie (nope, nope, nope) / kitchen knife collection in black (Damian, as they didn’t need another stabby collection). But Bruce ended up buying the superboy plushie because it had been tainted (the store manager glared at him the whole check out time). At least Tim looked ashamed enough when he was handed the superboy plushie.

The gala was in full swing, full of important people and not-so important moochies. Bruce was entertaining a group of usual donors (important and fun people!) while he saw Tim seriously discussing the stock exchange trends with several old, serious men. Dick was charming the usual group of ladies and young men, while Cass seemed to be hiding behind the potted plan.

Then, just like usual in Gotham, the lights went off. The room suddenly became dark and people started to scream.

“KID COUNT!” Bruce shouted. “Zero,” he added because of habit.

“One!” “Three!” “Four!” “Five and Six!” “Seven.” “Eight” “Nine.”

Wait, did he bring Harper with him? Harper was allergic to this kind of gala--and that was why he never fully adopted her into his Wayne name.

Oh well. The more number he got, the better.

Justice Lady love who?

#bat family #batman #bruce being a good dad #bruce is a bad dad #bruce is a bat dad #bruce wayne #dick grayson #jason todd #timothy drake #damian wayne #cass Wayne #harper #barbara gordon #prompt by @outoftheframework #prompt fill #numbering system #Alfred is the leader #bruce is one of the kids too

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hikingmysteries · 4 years

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The (”Mostly Harmless”) Nameless Hiker

Arguably the biggest hiking story of 2020, the tale actually starts a few years ago. Though we love researching and writing our own pieces for Hiking Mysteries, it is tough to top Nicholas Thompson’s article from Wired magazine. So, here it is, along with images.

A Nameless Hiker and the Case the Internet Can’t Crack

The man on the trail went by “Mostly Harmless." He was friendly and said he worked in tech. After he died in his tent, no one could figure out who he was.

IN APRIL 2017, a man started hiking in a state park just north of New York City. He wanted to get away, maybe from something and maybe from everything. He didn’t bring a phone; he didn’t bring a credit card. He didn’t even really bring a name. Or at least he didn’t tell anyone he met what it was.

He did bring a giant backpack, which his fellow hikers considered far too heavy for his journey. And he brought a notebook, in which he would scribble notes about Screeps, an online programming game. The Appalachian Trail runs through the area, and he started walking south, moving slowly but steadily down through Pennsylvania and Maryland. He told people he met along the way that he had worked in the tech industry and he wanted to detox from digital life. Hikers sometimes acquire trail names, pseudonyms they use while deep in the woods. He was “Denim” at first, because he had started his trek in jeans. Later, it became “Mostly Harmless,” which is how he described himself one night at a campfire. Maybe, too, it was a reference to Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Early in the series, a character discovers that Earth is defined by a single word in the guide: harmless. Another character puts in 15 years of research and then adds the adverb. Earth is now “mostly harmless.”

By summer, the hiker was in Virginia, where he walked about a hundred miles with a 66-year-old woman who went by the trail name Obsidian. She taught him how to make a fire, and he told her he was eager to see a bear. On December 1, Mostly Harmless had made it to northern Georgia, where he stopped in a store called Mountain Crossings. A veteran hiker named Matt Mason was working that day, and the two men started talking. Mostly Harmless said that he wanted to figure out a path down to the Florida Keys. Mason told him about a route and a map he could download to his phone. “I don’t have a phone,” Mostly Harmless replied. Describing the moment, Mason remembers thinking, “Oh, this guy’s awesome.” Everyone who goes into the woods is trying to get away from something. But few people have the commitment to cut their digital lifelines as they put on their boots.

Mason printed the 60 pages of the map and sold it to Mostly Harmless for $5 cash, which the hiker pulled from a wad of bills that Mason remembers being an inch thick. Mason loves hikers who are a little bit different, a little bit strange. He asked Mostly Harmless if he could take a picture. Mostly Harmless hesitated but then agreed. He then left the shop and went on his way. Two weeks later, Mason heard from a friend in Alabama who had seen Mostly Harmless hiking through a snowstorm. “He was out there with a smile on his face, walking south,” Mason recalls.

By the last week of January, he was in northern Florida, walking on the side of Highway 90, when a woman named Kelly Fairbanks pulled over to say hello. Fairbanks is what is known as a “trail angel,” someone who helps out through-hikers who pass near her, giving them food and access to a shower if they want. She was out looking for a different hiker when she saw Mostly Harmless. She pulled over, and they started to chat. He said that he had started in New York and was heading down to Key West. She asked if he was using the Florida Trail App, and he responded that he didn’t have a phone.

Fairbanks took notice of his gear—which was a mix of high-end and generic, including his black-and-copper trekking poles. And she was struck by his rugged, lonely look. “He had very kind eyes. I saw the huge beard first and thought, ‘It’s an older guy.’ But his eyes were so young, and he didn’t have crow's feet. I realized he was a lot younger.” She was concerned though, the way she used to be concerned about her two younger brothers. The trail could be confusing, and it wouldn’t be long before everything started getting intolerably hot and muggy. “I remembered him because I was worried,” she added.

Six months later and 600 miles south, on July 23, 2018, two hikers headed out into the Big Cypress National Preserve. The humidity was oppressive, but they trudged forward, crossing swamps, tending aching feet, and dodging the alligators and snakes. About 10 miles into their journey, they stopped to rest their feet at a place called Nobles Camp. There they saw a yellow tent and a pair of boots outside. Something smelled bad, and something seemed off. They called out, then peered through the tent’s windscreen. An emaciated, lifeless body was looking up at them. They called 911.

“Uh, we just found a dead body.”

IT’S USUALLY EASY to put a name to a corpse. There’s an ID or a credit card. There’s been a missing persons report in the area. There’s a DNA match. But the investigators in Collier County couldn’t find a thing. Mostly Harmless’ fingerprints didn’t show up in any law enforcement database. He hadn’t served in the military, and his fingerprints didn’t match those of anyone else on file. His DNA didn’t match any in the Department of Justice’s missing person database or in CODIS, the national DNA database run by the FBI. A picture of his face didn’t turn up anything in a facial recognition database. The body had no distinguishing tattoos.

Nor could investigators understand how or why he died. There were no indications of foul play, and he had more than $3,500 cash in the tent. He had food nearby, but he was hollowed out, weighing just 83 pounds on a 5'8" frame. Investigators put his age in the vague range between 35 and 50, and they couldn’t point to any abnormalities. The only substances he tested positive for were ibuprofen and an antihistamine. His cause of death, according to the autopsy report, was “undetermined.” He had, in some sense, just wasted away. But why hadn’t he tried to find help? Almost immediately, people compared Mostly Harmless to Chris McCandless, whose story was the subject of Into the Wild. McCandless, though, had been stranded in the Alaska bush, trapped by a raging river as he ran out of food. He died on a school bus, starving, desperate for help, 22 miles of wilderness separating him from a road. Mostly Harmless was just 5 miles from a major highway. He left no note, and there was no evidence that he had spent his last days calling out for help.

The investigators were stumped. To find out what had happened, they needed to learn who he was. So the Florida Department of Law Enforcement drew up an image of Mostly Harmless, and the Collier County investigators shared it with the public. In the sketch, his mouth is open wide, and his eyes too. He has a gray and black beard, with a bare patch of skin right below the mouth. His teeth, as noted in the autopsy, are perfect, suggesting he had good dental care as a child. He looks startled but also oddly pleased, as if he’s just seen a clown jump out from behind a curtain. The image started to circulate online along with other pictures from his campsite, including his tent and his hiking poles.

Kelly Fairbanks works at the Army and Air Force exchange store on a Florida military base. She normally monitors the CCTV cameras for shoplifters, but if there’s no one in the store she might sneak a look at Facebook. It was a quiet moment, and suddenly the picture popped into her feed. There he was: eyes wide open and looking up. She recognized the eyes and the beard. “I started freaking out,” she says. It was the kind man she’d seen on Highway 90. The sheriff’s office had also posted a photo of the hiker’s poles, and Fairbanks knew she had an image of the same man holding the same gear.

She clicked right over to the Collier County Sheriff’s Facebook page and sent in two photographs she had taken of Mostly Harmless. She got a message back immediately asking for her phone number. Soon a detective was on the line asking, “What can you tell me?”

She told him everything she knew. And she shared the original post, and her photo, all over Facebook. Soon there were dozens of people jumping in. They had seen the hiker too. They had journeyed with him for a few hours or a few days. They had sat at a campfire with him. There was a GoPro video in which he appeared. People remembered him talking about a sister in either Sarasota or Saratoga. They thought he had said he was from near Baton Rouge. One person remembered that he ate a lot of sticky buns; another said that he loved ketchup. But no one knew his name. When the body of Chris McCandless was found in the wilds of Alaska in the summer of 1992 without any identification, it took authorities only two weeks to figure out his identity. A friend in South Dakota, who’d known McCandless as “Alex,” heard a discussion of the story on AM radio and called the authorities. Clues followed quickly, and McCandless’ family was soon found.

Now it’s 2020, and we have the internet. Facebook knows you’re pregnant almost before you do. Amazon knows your light bulb is going to go out right before it does. Put details on Twitter about a stolen laptop and people will track down the thief in a Manhattan bar. The internet can decode family mysteries, identify long-forgotten songs, solve murders, and, as this magazine showed a decade ago, track down almost anyone who tries to shed their digital skin. This case seemed easy.

An avid Facebook group committed to figuring out his identity soon formed. Reddit threads popped up to analyze the notes he had taken for Screeps. Amateur detectives tracked down leads and tried to match photographs in missing persons databases. A massive timeline was constructed on Websleuths.com. Was it possible, one Dr. Oz viewer asked, that Mostly Harmless was a boy featured on the show who went missing in 1982? Was it possible that Mostly Harmless was a suspect in Arkansas who had murdered his girlfriend in 2017? None of the photos matched.

The story pulled people in. Everyone, at some point, has wanted to put their phone in a garbage can and head off with a fake name and a wad of cash. Here was someone who had done it and who seemed to have so much going for him: He was kind, charming, educated. He knew how to code. And yet he had died alone in a yellow tent. Maybe he had been chased by demons and had sought an ending like this. Or maybe he had just been outmatched by the wilderness and the Florida heat.

It just wasn’t a normal story in any way. And, as Fairbanks said, “he was a good-looking dude,” which, she notes, might explain why so many of the searchers are women. In mid-October, one woman in the Facebook group posted a slideshow comparing his photos to those of Brad Pitt. “Actually I think MH looks better. 😉,” one commenter wrote.

The dude, though, seemed to have followed, to near perfection, the hiker credo of “Leave no trace.” None of the clues panned out. Nothing actually got people close to solving the mystery. An industrious writer named Jason Nark spent more than a year obsessively tracking down leads and then wrote an elegy to the hiker that began, “Sometimes I imagine him falling through space, drifting like dust from dead stars in the vast nowhere above us.”

Natasha Teasley manages a canoe and kayak company in North Carolina. As business slowed when the coronavirus hit, she started to spend more time online, and she started to fill the gap in her life with the hunt for Mostly Harmless. She sent flyers to the Chambers of Commerce in every city where people thought he might have come from, including Sarasota, Florida, and Saratoga Springs, New York. She tracked down details about every car that was towed out of Harriman State Park, where he likely started his journey. She scoured missing persons databases. I asked her what motivated her to spend so much time looking for a man she’d never met. She responded achingly, “He’s got to be missed. Someone must miss this guy.”

WHEN WE THINK of DNA tests, we normally think of their miraculous ability to give us a yes or a no. The unique thread of base pairs that make us who we are exists in every cell. So we take the genetic information found at a crime scene, or in the saliva on a coffee cup, or on the hand of a deceased hiker. Then we look closely at roughly 20 chunks, or what geneticists call markers, and we search in a database of collected samples to see whether the markers match. Imagine if a book, 1 million pages long but without a cover, washed up on the shore. And then imagine you could scan one page and search all the books in a giant database to see if that exact page appeared. That’s conventional DNA testing.

But DNA also can tell the story of human history. By running a different kind of test, you get beyond yes or no and into a million variations of maybe. The genetic markers in your body are closer to those of your first cousin than your third. And they’re closer to those of your third cousin than your sixth. There’s a little bit of each generation in each of us, from our parents to our great grandparents to the early apes of the forests of Africa. So now imagine that book, and imagine that instead of comparing one page, you could compare everything in the book with everything in all other books, to find similar words, syntax, and themes. You would need complicated math and pattern tracing, but, eventually, you might figure out the author. And so, early in the summer of 2020, the organizers of the Facebook group searching for Mostly Harmless’ identity sent news about the case to a Houston company called Othram. It had been started two years earlier and pitches itself as a one-stop shop for solving cold cases.

Othram’s founder, David Mittelman, is a geneticist who had worked on the original human genome project, and he was drawn to this odd case. The company asks the public for suggestions for mysteries to solve, and that’s one of the best parts of the job. “I like doing the cases from the tip line,” Mittelman told me. “Lab work for the sake of lab work is kind of boring.” If he could crack the hiker’s identity, he’d get attention for his technology. But there was something else, too, drawing him in, a riddle he wanted to answer. The hiker seemed to have found an internet family but had no connection to his real one.

Othram called up the Collier County Sheriff’s Office and offered to help. DNA analysis is expensive, though, and the company estimated that the whole project—from evidence to answers—would cost $5,000. The sheriff's office couldn't spend that much money on a case that involved no crime. But it would love Othram’s help if there were another way to pay for the work. And so three of the great trends of modern technology—crowdfunding, amateur sleuthing, and cutting-edge genomics—combined. Within eight days, the Facebook group had raised the money to run the analysis. Soon a small piece of bone from the hiker was on its way west from Collier County to the Othram labs.

The first step for Othram’s team was to extract DNA from the bone fragment and to then analyze it to make sure they had enough to proceed. They did, and so they soon put small samples of DNA onto glass slides, which they inserted into a sequencer, a machine that costs roughly a million dollars and looks like a giant washing machine made by Apple.

Unfortunately, it’s a washing machine that has a long run cycle. And it doesn’t always work. Sometimes the pages of the book you find are ripped or blurry. Sometimes the process is iterative and you have to tape fragments back together. So, as the sequencer spun, the Facebook hunters fretted that, once again, nothing would come of a promising lead. But by mid-August, Othram had a clean read on the DNA: They knew exactly what combination of As, Cs, Gs, and Ts had combined to create the mysterious hiker. A company spokesperson appeared live on the Facebook group’s page to detail the progress; posters responded with gratitude and euphoria.

Science sometimes gets harder with every step, though, and having the sequence was just the beginning. In order to identify Mostly Harmless, the team at Othram would have to compare his genetic information with other people’s. And they would start with a service called GEDMatch, a database of DNA samples that people have submitted, voluntarily, to answer their own hopes and questions—they want to find a lost half-sister or a clue about their grandpa. That collection of DNA has become a cornucopia for law enforcement. Each new sample submitted provides one more book for the library that can be searched and scoured. It was through this technique that investigators in Contra Costa County, California, found the Golden State Killer in the spring of 2018, connecting a DNA sample of the killer to GEDMatch samples of relatives. Just this past week, Othram helped law enforcement identify the murderer of a 5-year-old in Missoula, Montana, a case that had gone unsolved for 46 years.

It’s been over a month since Othram started looking through the GEDmatch database. It won’t say anything about what it has found, and the Collier County Sheriff’s Office is keeping quiet as well. But one source outside of the company who is familiar with its progress says that, while Othram doesn’t know Mostly Harmless’ name, it has found enough matching patterns to identify the region of the country from which his ancestors hail.

That isn’t sufficient though. Knowing for sure, for example, that his relatives came from Baton Rouge doesn’t mean Mostly Harmless came from Baton Rouge. His parents could have been born there and moved to Montreal. He could have been born in Louisiana and dropped on a doorstep in Maine. But, right now, the data scientists at Othram are combing through all the DNA samples in GEDMatch, looking for patterns and trying to circle closer to his identity. They’re most likely building out a family tree. Let’s say they found someone in GEDMatch whose DNA seems like a fourth cousin of Mostly Harmless, and then perhaps someone who seems like a third cousin. How do those two people connect? Through this sort of slow, painstaking analysis, they can get closer to an answer. Soon they might find his extended family, and then perhaps his parents’ names. And then law enforcement will be able to solve a case that has stumped them for more than two years.

They might get there, and they might not. A source familiar with the work suggests that the earliest we’ll get an answer is December. Unless between now and then, perhaps, someone reading this article or browsing a Facebook group recognizes his face. Or puts together clues that have eluded everyone else. Finally, he won’t be “Mostly Harmless”; he’ll have a real name.

And then, with that mystery solved, a new one will open up. Why did Mostly Harmless walk into the woods? And why, when things started to go wrong, didn’t he walk out?

#mostly harmless #hikingmysteries #mystery #lost #hiking #hikers #trekker

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mulanxiaojie · 5 years

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The high-profile remake, with an all-Asian cast, a PG-13 rating and a politically-charged star, was always going to pose major risks. Then the coronavirus upended its entire release plan.

Liu Yifei, star of Disney's live-action remake of Mulan, lives in Beijing, but she is originally from Wuhan, epicenter of the coronavirus. In January, the 32-year-old actress left China for Los Angeles to begin press for the film, weeks before the virus' outbreak, which has now infected more than 77,000 people, killed more than 2,500 and wreaked havoc in her home country. She says she doesn't have any family or close friends personally affected by the disease — she left Wuhan when she was 10 — but the epidemic has added an impossible-to-foresee variable to her film's March 27 worldwide release.

Liu pauses when asked about the outbreak. "It's really heavy for me to even think about it," she says. "People are doing the right thing. They are being careful for themselves and others. I'm so touched actually to see how they haven't been out for weeks. I'm really hoping for a miracle and that this will just be over soon."

In China, Liu is a household name, nicknamed "Fairy Sister" for her elegance and beauty. Modeling since age 8, she broke out in the 2003 Chinese TV series Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, a commercial hit in China and the highest-rated Chinese drama in Taiwan at the time, and hasn't stopped working in film and TV since, earning fashion partnerships with Adidas, Shiseido and Armani along the way.

Disney and director Niki Caro selected Liu from more than 1,000 aspirants from around the world to star as Hua Mulan, the Chinese heroine who disguises herself as a man to fight in the Imperial Army in a film carefully designed to appeal to Western and Chinese audiences alike. But now there's a question of when Mulan will be released in China. With the coronavirus shutting down all 70,000 of the country's theaters since Jan. 24, it's unclear — and more unlikely every day — that multiplexes will reopen in time for its planned release. (Several high-profile U.S. films, including Universal's Dolittle and 1917 and Searchlight's Jojo Rabbit, saw their February releases scrapped.) "It certainly has worldwide and global appeal, but there's no denying that this is a very important film for the Chinese market," says Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian. "It's a huge blow for Disney if it doesn't release in China." Disney president of production Sean Bailey says he's "looking at it day by day."

Of course, this puts added pressure on the $200 million budgeted film — the priciest of Disney's recent live-action remakes — to perform in the U.S. and the rest of the world. Liu, who is enveloped in her own storm of controversy based on a political social media post about the Hong Kong protests, says she is trying hard not to think about all that. "It would really be a loss for me if I let the pressure overtake my possibilities," says the actress, who learned English when she lived in New York as a child for four years with her mother, a dancer, after her parents' divorce.

Even before the outbreak of the virus, Mulan — the first Disney-branded film with an all-Asian cast and the first to be rated PG-13 (for battle scenes) — would have marked one of the studio's riskiest live-action films to date. While the original 1998 Mulan was a critical and commercial hit, garnering a Golden Globe and Oscar nomination and grossing more than $300 million worldwide ($475 million today), it faltered at the Chinese box office. Part of the reason is that the Chinese government stalled its premiere for nearly a year because of lingering anger over Disney's 1997 release of Kundun, Martin Scorsese's Dalai Lama movie that dealt with China's occupation of Tibet. By the time Mulan reached theaters in late February 1999, most children had returned to school after the Chinese New Year holiday and pirated copies were widely available. For the new film, the plan was to counter piracy by releasing the movie in China the same day as the rest of the world, a strategy that's no longer possible.

The film also has tested the ability and tolerance of Disney — which aims to be ideologically neutral — in managing global political fallout. In August, Liu stirred up a major controversy when she reposted a pro-police comment on Chinese platform Weibo (where she has more than 66 million followers) at the height of the violence in Hong Kong. Her action was seen by critics of the Chinese government as supporting police brutality; soon after, the hashtag #BoycottMulan started trending on Twitter. Liu, who has American co-citizenship from her time in the U.S., was harshly criticized around the world for supporting oppression.

"I think it's obviously a very complicated situation and I'm not an expert," she says now, cautious in the extreme. "I just really hope this gets resolved soon." When pressed, Liu, whose answer seemed rehearsed, declines to say much more, simply repeating, "I think it's just a very sensitive situation." (Bailey also deflects when asked: "Yifei's politics are her own, and we are just focused on the movie and her performance.")

"Most Chinese celebrities choose to avoid posting such political statements because of the risks to their careers internationally," says Dorothy Lau, a professor at the Academy of Film, Hong Kong Baptist University. But though Liu's post drew criticism globally, some experts believe the political drama could actually result in more support for the film in China. "At the time, the government came out in various publications supporting the film very strongly," says USC professor Stanley Rosen, who specializes in Chinese politics and society. "There's a real impetus on the part of the Chinese government to make this work. I'm sure the government is going to try to show that the boycott has had no effect." And while her comment might still anger filmgoers in Hong Kong, where the recent live-action Aladdin took in $8 million, that market is tiny compared to the mainland (total 2019 Hong Kong box office was $245 million compared with China's $9.2 billion). "Most people outside Hong Kong have likely forgotten about this controversy," says Rosen. "But the Chinese government does not forget these things."

The fact that this version of Mulan is a large-scale war epic inspired more by the ancient Chinese ballad than the original animated film may also help win fans in Beijing, but the choice carries its own significant risks: The film needs to satisfy Chinese audiences raised on the legend while not disappointing a generation of fans in Asia (and elsewhere) for whom the animated film is foundational. "People would come in to audition and would say, 'Sorry, I know this is really unprofessional, but before I start, I just want you to know, the animated movie was the first time I saw someone that looked like me speak English in a movie theater,' " says producer Jason Reed. "The stakes couldn't be higher."

Mulan also represents a leap of faith in the film's director, Caro, whose previous two films boasted budgets of about 10 percent of Mulan's (The Zookeeper's Wife and Disney's 2015 sports drama McFarland USA were each in the $20 million to $25 million range). Caro, 53, was not Disney's first choice. Before hiring the New Zealand filmmaker, the studio targeted directors of Asian descent, including Taiwanese Oscar winner Ang Lee (he was busy promoting Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk) and Chinese helmer Jiang Wen. Still, Caro showcased a knack for representing cultures outside of her own with her 2002 debut Whale Rider, which follows a young Maori girl who wants to become chief, a role traditionally reserved for men.

The feminist story of Mulan resonated deeply with Caro. "When I first started wanting to be a filmmaker, there was so little precedent for women doing this [big studio] work," she says. She has now directed the most expensive live-action film by a woman, joining only a handful (Kathryn Bigelow, Ava DuVernay and Patty Jenkins) who have helmed films costing more than $100 million. "Patty changed the game with Wonder Woman. It was like a shot of adrenaline for me as a filmmaker," says Caro, who assembled a mostly female-led crew, including cinematographer Mandy Walker, costume designer Bina Daigeler, makeup designer Denise Kum and first assistant director Liz Tan.

To those still upset that an Asian filmmaker didn't get the job, Caro responds: "Although it's a critically important Chinese story and it's set in Chinese culture and history, there is another culture at play here, which is the culture of Disney, and that the director, whoever they were, needed to be able to handle both — and here I am."

Soon after Caro's hiring, rumors about the movie began to swirl online. Years of studios centering Asian movies around white protagonists (from Scarlett Johansson's Ghost in the Shell to Matt Damon's The Great Wall) meant the threat of whitewashing loomed large. An early report online claimed that the first draft, penned by Elizabeth Martin and Lauren Hynek, featured a white male protagonist.

"This is the first time I've been on a big touchstone movie with the internet what it is today. And I had a Google alert set, so I'd see these things, 'Oh, there was originally a white male lead, or they're casting Jennifer Lawrence,' and they were all just made up," says Reed, who adds that there may have been two non-Chinese characters in the initial script, but both were secondary roles.

The rumors may have been unfounded, but the fallout was real: The Lawrence-as-Mulan story sparked a 2016 petition, "Tell Disney You Don't Want a Whitewashed Mulan!" drawing more than 110,000 signatures.

Ironically, as that rumor swirled, Caro struggled to find an actress to play Mulan. The global hunt began in October 2016, when Caro sent a team of casting directors to each continent and virtually every small village in China. They were looking for an actress who could play Mulan across three phases, from a young woman unsure of her place to a soldier masquerading as a man and, finally, as an empowered warrior. She had to be fluent in English, handle the physical demands of martial arts and deliver the more emotional moments with Mulan's family. "She's a needle in a haystack, but we were going to find her," says Caro. "It's impossible to make this movie without this person."

Though the studio cast a wide multinational net, Bill Kong — a veteran Chinese producer known for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Monster Hunt who was brought on as a producer on Mulan — advised Caro that in order for this film to play well in China, not just anyone of Asian descent would work. "The first thing I told her was, 'Hire a Chinese girl. You can't hire a Japanese girl to do this,' " he says.

Actresses who made it past that initial audition were brought to Los Angeles, but, after vetting several promising candidates for months, Caro decided to start over. (The search dragged on for so long that Disney delayed the original November 2018 release date.) Eventually, Liu, who had been unavailable during the first pass because of a TV show in China, was able to audition.

"I was determined that whoever played Mulan was not going to be fragile and feminine," says Caro. "She had to pass as a man in a man's army." So the director and a trainer put Liu through a 90-minute physical assessment, with extreme cardio and weight exercises. Other actresses fared less well. "Boy, did they flame out," says Caro with a laugh. But Liu "never complained once, never said, 'I can't.' She went to her limits."

With Liu, Disney also found an actress who could speak English, was familiar with martial arts from her TV work in China and, most importantly, was known to the Chinese market.

While Liu spent three months training for the role in New Zealand, Caro finished up her own extensive research. She took multiple trips to China and spoke to dozens of experts — including the world's foremost specialist on Tang dynasty military strategy. She also studied the 360-word Chinese poem The Ballad of Mulan, which first told the young heroine's story. The legend, which originated in the fifth or sixth century CE, is a tale as familiar in China as the story of Joan of Arc or Paul Bunyan in the West, and it's been adapted many times into plays, operas and films.

"I certainly wasn't aware of how deeply important it is to Mainland Chinese — all children are taught it," says Caro. "She is so meaningful that many places I went, people would say, 'Well, she comes from my village.' It was wonderful to feel that profound connection — but also terrifying."

As soon as the first trailers rolled out, so did the grumblings about factual inaccuracy, like the choice to situate Mulan's family in a tulou, a traditional round structure that housed several clans. These homes were mostly present in southern China, in what is now Fujian province (Mulan is said to be from the north), and would not have existed at the time she lived.

"I told [Caro] to not be too concerned about the historical accuracy," says Kong. "Mulan, though very famous, is fictional. She's not a historical person."

Disney tested the film thoroughly with Chinese audiences, including its own local executives. In an early version, Mulan kissed love interest Chen Honghui (Yoson An) on a bridge when they were about to part. "It was very beautiful, but the China office went, 'No, you can't, that doesn't feel right to the Chinese people,' " says Caro. "So we took it out."

Caro and the writers, Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa (the husband-and-wife team behind Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Jurassic World who rewrote the original script), also had to consider the passionate fans of the 1998 film. Most Disney remakes, like Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King, have remained loyal to the tone and structure of the animated source material while adding a new song or character. Departing from that formula wasn't a swift decision. "We had a lot of conversations about it," says Reed. Ultimately they wanted "to tell this story in a way that is more real, more relatable, where we don't have the benefit of the joke to hide behind things that might be uncomfortable and we don't break into song to tell us the subtext."

They swapped the musical numbers and funny animal sidekicks for a large-scale war epic in which Mulan takes her father's place in the Imperial Army. "It's a woman's story that has been told for centuries but never by women, and we felt like it was really time to tell that story," says Silver. The question is whether Generation Z and millennials, who fell in love with these animated tales as kids and helped boost Aladdin to its $1 billion global haul, will embrace the direction. "To be honest, we really go by our gut and what creatively excites the team here," says Bailey. "I think it shows that there can be different approaches to these [movies] that have validity."

When word leaked that Mushu, the silly dragon sidekick (originally voiced by Eddie Murphy), would not be included, some fans expressed disappointment on social media. But the character's disappearance makes sense in the Chinese context. "Mushu was very popular in the U.S., but the Chinese hated it," says Rosen. "This kind of miniature dragon trivialized their culture."

Unlike its Marvel-branded films, Disney live-action movies must appeal to significantly younger audiences. Yet Caro wanted to make a real war movie. "You have to deliver on the war of it," she says, "and how do you do that under the Disney brand where you can't show any violence, gratuitous or otherwise?" She took advantage of the film's stunning locations, like setting a battle sequence in a geothermal valley, where steam could mask the fighting. "Those sequences, I'm proud of them. They're really beautiful and epic — but you can still take kids. No blood is shed. It's not Game of Thrones."

Disney's past live-action performance in China is a mixed bag. Both The Lion King ($120.5 million there) and Jungle Book ($148 million) enjoyed strong showings. Aladdin earned only $53 million, while 2017's Beauty and the Beast took in just $84 million (though it earned $1.3 billion worldwide).

Of course, the expectations for Mulan in China are much higher. "They will eventually release it in China," Dergarabedian notes. "It's just a matter of when and what effect that might have." Some analysts forecast that the film could match the success of the Kung Fu Panda series. The third movie, released in 2016, earned north of $144.2 million and became the country's biggest animated film ever. It was praised for being a Hollywood film that understood and showed respect toward the Chinese culture. Panda, however, had the advantage of being a Chinese co-production, which guarantees a larger share of the market — an advantage Mulan doesn't have.

Caro thinks about the film's fate there in more than simply financial terms. "Of course it's vitally important that it succeeds in China," she says, "because it belongs to China."

#mulan #live action mulan #disney #chinese #article #interview #china #liu yifei

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popolitiko · 4 years

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Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz Tells the Story of the Teen He's Been Raising Whom He Calls His 'Son'The two-term Republican congressman surprised many with his Thursday announcement that he’s a parent, though he hasn’t adopted 19-year-old Nestor: “Our family’s defined by love”By Adam Carlson June 18, 2020

Six years ago, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz says, he met the young boy he now calls his son.

Nestor Galban was 12 and had just arrived from Cuba, where he’d grown up and where his mother had recently died of breast cancer, Gaetz says. Then a state legislator, Gaetz was dating Nestor’s older sister.

And so Nestor moved in with them — “a modern family,” Gaetz says now.

He says that, except for an interruption during Nestor’s junior year after Gaetz and Nestor’s sister broke up, Nestor has basically lived with him since moving from Cuba.

“He is a part of my family story,” Gaetz, 38, tells PEOPLE, adding: “My work with Nestor, our family, no element of my public service could compare to the joy that our family has brought me.”

Geatz did not formally adopt Nestor (and he declines to discuss Nestor’s relationship with his biological family now). He re-frames the matter, saying, “Our relationship as a family is defined by our love for each other, not by any paperwork.”

Nestor, he says, “is my son in every conceivable way, and I can’t imagine loving him any more if he was my own flesh and blood.” Recalling those early days with Nestor — including a scene he paints of the two playing catch not long after the boy arrived to the U.S. — Gaetz warns that he might start to choke up.

“I just think that it’s been the greatest thing in my life that this young man has been a part of my family,” he says, “and going forward I look forward to being his biggest cheerleader.”

Perhaps the strangest thing about this story is that this is the first time any of it has been shared publicly.

On Thursday, Gaetz tweeted a photo of himself and Nestor, announcing that he’d been parenting the 19-year-old for years.

"I am so proud of him and raising him has been the best, most rewarding thing I’ve done in my life," he wrote before biting back at a Democratic congressman he had argued with at a hearing the day before over policing and raising kids of color.

“As you can imagine, I was triggered when (to make an absurd debate point) a fellow congressman diminished the contributions of Republicans because we don’t raise non-white kids,” he wrote. “Well, I have."

The second-term Republican congressman from Florida's Panhandle had not publicly identified himself as a father before this week and his office has said that he did not have kids.

His announcement drew widespread surprise and, in many left-leaning circles, much criticism. (It was alsorapidly meme'd.)

Detractors said Gaetz had turned the teenager into a prop; others called it a dismissive slight-of-hand — like shrugging off accusations of prejudice by pointing to personal friendships with people of color. Many pointed to his views on immigration more broadly. In a characteristic slam, one user tweeted: “Matt Gaetz using Nestor to score political points or to show he is not racist is disgusting.”

In other corners of social media, conspiratorial theories began tangling together about Nestor’s biography and his biological relatives.

None of that fazes Gaetz. “I haven’t responded to it there and feel no need to respond to it now,” he says of the social media discussion about Nestor. “My son and I owe no explanation about our family to the blue-checkmark brigade.”

“I don’t really live in the minds of others,” says the lawmaker who earlier this year made headlines for wearing a gas mask on the floor of the House of Representatives, in the early days of the novel coronavirus pandemic. “I live for the values and principles that matter to my constituents and that I’ve been raised with.”

He says he was motivated to speak out about Nestor because, in his view, he was being unfairly maligned after his viral argument with Democratic Rep. Cedric Richmond at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday.

Richmond had been discussing the need for police reform and the "imminent threat" of police to black men. “People are dying as we talk. I am not interested in moving at a snail's pace. I’m not interested in a watered-down bill that mandates nothing,” he said.

Afterward, Gaetz said that he "appreciate[d] your passion" but then asked Richmond if he was saying none of the other representatives had non-white kids. (Richmond had referred to his own son.)

Richmond snapped back that he wouldn't be "sidetracked about the color of our children .... It is about black males, black people in the streets that are getting killed. And if one of them happens to be your kid, I'm concerned about him, too. And clearly I'm more concerned about him than you are."

"Excuse me, you're claiming you're more concerned for my family than I do?" Gaetz replied, voice rising to a yell. "Who in the hell do you think you are?"

Richmond later shot back: "Was that a nerve?"

The exchange, Gaetz says now, “made me want to get up and rip his head off.”

For years, Gaetz says he maintained Nestor’s privacy. But that, he insists, “is very different than suggesting I was hiding him.”

“Just imagine: You’re 12 years old, your mom has just died, you’re learning English as you’re trying to get your footing in school. It just wasn’t the right time in middle school and high school to subject him to politics,” Gaetz says now.

Of the incredulous responses he’s received from users who point back to a March 2016 photo in which Gaetz refers to Nestor as a “local student” or a 2017 Facebook video Gaetz recorded for constituents with Nestor sitting in the background in which he calls Nestor his “helper” (seeming almost to catch himself on an S-sounding word first), Gaetz says:

“I felt like coming to the country, dealing with the death of a mother, learning English and enduring the normal trials and tribulations of high school and middle school were enough on the young man’s plate.”

Now, however, Gaetz says that Nestor is ready: “He’s very eager to be identified as my son as publicly as people will accept it.”

Gaetz says his bond with Nestor has been known in his Florida community and among his social circle, including on Capitol Hill: “My friends know I have a son. The people who go to church with me know I have a son, my fellow soccer parents know I have a son.” (He says Nestor was his “best door-knocker” during his 2016 congressional campaign: “Nestor was very persuasive at getting people to accept Matt Gaetz yard signs.”)

On Twitter, former California Rep. Katie Hill, a Democrat, spoke out in defense of Gaetz’s revelation that he’s been secretly parenting a teenager.

"Many of you know @mattgaetz & I have an unlikely friendship. I can’t stand a lot of his beliefs but he’s been there for me when others haven’t," she wrote. "He talks about Nestor more than anything, has done so much for his son & is truly a proud dad."

Detailing the timeline, Gaetz tells PEOPLE Nestor lived with him for around four years after first arriving in Cuba before going to Miami for his junior year and living with his biological father: “Then he turned 18 [and] it was easier for him to just move back with me.” (Gaetz declines to specify when exactly he and Nestor's older sister broke up.)

Elsewhere in the interview, he describes the sequence of events this way: “There was a time period at the beginning of my service in Congress where, based on his age and other circumstances, it was not tenable for him to live with me."

With his own Twitter account, Nestor has been wading into the reaction online. He tweeted back at another user on Thursday: "I wanted as a secret before because I wanted to have a normal life without any of y’all getting in it. But now I’m 19 and I old enough to handle it."

Briefly speaking with PEOPLE while on the phone with Gaetz, Nestor says: “Matt is not my biological father, but he raised me as his own son when I came from Cuba after my mother’s death.”

“He’s always been a role model in my life,” Nestor says, rattling off a quick list of lessons learned: baseball, cooking, English. (“I taught him some Spanish, too.”)

Nestor, Gaetz says, has taught him patience — the kind any parent learns.

"Of course," he also says, "my views on race are informed by the fact that I have been raising a non-white child."

"I’ve had ‘the talk’ with Nestor about how to interact with law enforcement," he says. "It’s probably a different talk than I would have had if I had a white son."

In the fall, Nestor will start at Troy University in Alabama, where he plans to study nursing. The distance, Gaetz says, is “far enough away and still close enough.”

Their first parent-student visit to the campus is in three weeks, Gaetz says.

“I want to study nursing because I like helping people and I think every day being able to save people’s lives and being able to heal people and take care of them makes me happy,” Nestor says. Also: He really likes science.

“We’ve talked about the fact that college is the time in your life when you have the most free time but you can have some of the most daring consequences if you don’t manage it well,” Gaetz says.

He describes Nestor as a “star soccer player,” a jokester and a charmer — a “ham” — with a love of sports and, in his telling, a kind of amiable wryness. A teenager, in other words.

“And as I’ve talked to him throughout the day,” Gaetz says, “he’s very taken by the fact that he has a lot more followers on social media now.”

https://people.com/politics/matt-gaetz-tells-story-boy-he-raised-as-a-son/

#Matt Gaetz

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anneapocalypse · 5 years

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Matt Hullum made the announcement in a journal entry today that Rooster Teeth is laying off 13% of its staff.

Variety has an article up about the downsizing, mostly the same info that's in Matt's journal, with a few other facts—notably to me, a mention of the fact that WarnerMedia (RT's parent company, all under the AT&T umbrella) also swallowed up and effectively killed the Machinima brand. In fact, it turns out a few Machinima properties were shuffled under the Rooster Teeth umbrella when that happened.

I was unfamiliar with Machinima the YouTube Channel and Machinima.com (as opposed to machinima, the medium) until Quinton Reviews did a Fallen Titans episode on it recently, and I'll admit I was kind of hoping he'd have more to say about Red vs. Blue as it's... really the only machinima work I care about, but his video was mainly about the Machinima brand. Still, it is informative if you, like me, know nothing about Machinima!

Anyway, from the second Variety article above, there's also this:

Warner Bros. acquired full control of Machinima in November 2016, and put Machinima under its Warner Bros. Digital Networks group. AT&T closed its $85 billion deal for Time Warner in June 2018 and since then has consolidated or killed off several digital businesses. Under AT&T’s ownership, WarnerMedia shut down FilmStruck, from Turner and Warner Bros. Digital Networks, and WBDN’s DramaFever. In addition, Turner shuttered its Super Deluxe studio.

Mm....hm.

Yeah, so AT&T seems to have an unsurprising pattern of acquiring and quietly destroying small web-based companies, particular those centering around streaming content for a somewhat niche audience.

I don't want to be a doomsayer, and it's not like I think Rooster Teeth is going to be shut down tomorrow. I do feel like this doesn't exactly bode well for the AT&T conglomerate's investment in this relatively small studio.

There are certainly other factors to be considered. Only a couple months ago Matt was responding to criticisms of Rooster Teeth related to crunch and their animation pipeline, and announcing that Gray Haddock would be stepping down as head of animation. Of course, downsizing the studio by more than 10% seems... not a strong step toward reducing crunch, unless they're drastically reducing or delaying content in kind.

In terms of content itself... this is purely speculation, but I do have some concern that gen:LOCK was not the hot property Rooster Teeth hoped it would be. I like gen:LOCK. I like it a lot, and hope we see many more seasons. But I don't exactly think it's taken off as the kind of viral hit RWBY has been for the company. gen:LOCK is a subscribers-only show. If you don't have a FIRST membership, you can't watch past the first episode... and that just might not be enough to get people hooked enough to subscribe.

Going back a little further, one of my personal favorite RT shows is the live-action apocalyptic drama Day 5. It's got high production value and some really excellent acting talent, both from Rooster Teeth regulars and outside names. It has a compelling story and great characters. And it barely has a fandom. The last post on /r/dayfive is two years old. The tumblr tags are barren. And good luck even finding a twitter hashtag. Day 5 has seven works on AO3. The show debuted three years ago.

Production was put on hold after season 2, while the show was syndicated on the El Rey network, and the episodes were temporarily removed from the Rooster Teeth site while it aired on El Rey (they're back now). But even while the show was airing, as a fan I found it was tough to find other people actively watching the show and talking about it, even among fellow Rooster Teeth fans. I didn't see gifsets pouring down my tumblr dash; I didn't see meta, or episode reaction posts.

I suppose I should've seen the writing on the wall, even then. Day 5 has not been cancelled as of now and I really hope we get a season 3, because I love the show. But I'll admit I am nervous for its future.

I bring up these examples because I think the subscribers-only content model is demonstrably not working for Rooster Teeth. And to be clear, this is not me saying that people shouldn't have to pay for things. I've had a Rooster Teeth subscription since it was called a "sponsorship" and being a sponsor meant getting episodes of Red vs. Blue a thrilling two hours ahead of the general public! And I've been lucky, because for all these years Rooster Teeth has had a policy of letting longtime subscribers be grandfathered in at their original price, which means I've been paying about a third of what an annual subscription now costs. Recently it was also announced that the grandfather policy would be coming to an end. I'm in no way surprised or angry; I figured this would happen eventually, and I sure enjoyed this gravy train while it lasted! What I will probably do, once my current pay period runs out, is subscribe month-to-month only when there's something airing that I really care about. I'm not even sure if that's going to be RvB when season 18 rolls around. (But if they announce season 3 of Day 5 I will be there with bells on.)

Anyway the upshot of all of this is:

A Rooster Teeth FIRST membership ain't as cheap as it once was.

One free episode tends not to be enough to get people hooked on a new property unless it's kickflip bananas amazing.

With fewer people watching a new property as it airs, and short seasonal runs (Day 5 had six episodes per season; gen:LOCK premiered with eight), there just isn't enough buzz to create a hit on the level of RWBY.

Without that buzz, you don't get the kind of FOMO atmosphere that the FIRST delay creates. When RT first went to the one week gap between subscribers and the public, fans were largely upset, on the grounds that this would divide the fandom and make it difficult for non-subscribers to interact with the fandom on the same level, cutting them off from discussions and general hype around each new episode. And they were right—that was the point. That's why it worked.

Day 5 and gen:LOCK are good shows. There are valid criticisms of both, of course, and both are niche genres that won't be for everyone, but they're by no means bad products. RWBY's first volume, by contrast, was messy, poorly-paced, and looked unfinished. It had charm, absolutely, but it was objectively a bad product and the show still managed to draw a huge audience in its first three volumes—because anyone could watch it. But if you subscribed, you could watch it first, and you could be one of the first to comment on it, make gifsets, theorize and speculate. You wouldn't miss out.

I mean I fully understand why Rooster Teeth didn't want to make an expensive live-action show and give it away for free. I do get that. Same with an expensive polished animated series featuring big-name voice actors. And I'm as sad as anyone to see that those shows haven't grabbed the kind of audience RWBY has.

But something's not working here, and I think the modest reception of their two most-hyped subscribers-only shows plus this layoff makes that clear. I don't know what the answer is. I wish there were an easy answer. There probably isn't.

I really do hope Rooster Teeth survives as a studio and is able to keep making cool, creative stuff. I've had plenty of criticisms of RT and their properties over the years, but at the end of the day I'm still a fan who's pulling for them. The pattern of global media conglomerates swallowing up and disappearing small, independent, web-based content makers doesn't exactly bode well, and that's... well, that's late capitalism for you. Still, I do hope they hold out for a while.

At least long enough to get us a third season of Day 5.

#rooster teeth #sad news and some thoughts on it #i am pulling for them while trying to be realistic #it's a tough mood

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loquaciousquark · 6 years

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Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E45 (Dec. 18, 2018)

Evening, all! @eponymous-rose is off tonight with such silly things like family and events and real life obligations, so I’m here to make bad jokes and have opinions instead.

For those who hadn’t heard, Brian & Ashley are engaged as of this week! Brian is taking both her last and first name to be ultra-progressive. Tonight’s guests: Sam Riegel & Matt Mercer. Matt is here willingly. Sam is not. We’re discussing Episode 45: The Stowaway, sponsored by LootCrate. Brian asks Sam for an impromptu song ad; he rhymes moot and loot and jigs and everyone is a little closer to death than they were a few moments prior.

Tonight’s announcements: Pub Draw & Name Drop are two new shows on the Critical Role channel--check out critrole.com for more details.

This Thursday’s episode is the last of 2018; Critical Role then returns on January 10.

Liam’s oneshot, The Night Before Critmas, airs at 7pm Pacific this Friday night. He’s been planning it for two years, and the VOD will be available December 23.

Talks Machina is also breaking for the holidays and will return on January 8, where they’ll have a cast-wide discussion on the state of the campaign so far. The questions open on Reddit, Twitter, and email on January 4th.

CR Stats: Nott has the most kills of the group with 37. The 45th HDYWTDT occurred in episode 45 as well. Twiggy’s dragon kill was the fifth guest kill of the campaign, and the 2nd guest HDYWTDT. In campaign one, guests got 22 kills and four HDYWTDTs. This was the longest episode of campaign two and the fourth longest of the series.

Matt and Deborah had met extensively to discuss backstory and mechanics, but hadn’t discussed much personality. The only person who wanted to check voice/accent was Khary (with Shakaste).

Deborah was one of the first guests they reached out to when they started streaming all that time ago, but she initially said no because D&D was such a personal thing for her and she didn’t want to share it with the internet. Everyone agrees she was worth the wait.

Everyone’s furious about Daredevil’s cancellation. :(

Sam thought it was fun to play alongside another Arcane Trickster because... “she was very good at it, all that great stuff that I forget to do.” Nott was jealous that many of the things that made her unique were present in Twiggy. However, the jealousy was later reversed because of how excellent Twiggy was in the fight.

The Happy Fun Ball was a narrative device Matt had been planning for a long time--he liked the idea of a pocket dungeon with lore attached. When they realized Deborah’s schedule would put her on a boat in the middle of nowhere, he found a perfect opportunity to bring it in.

Sam asks if Matt intended the device to be a one-use single episode thing, or something recurring, something for the party to further explore at their will. Matt explains very circuitously (and hilariously) that certain DMs may have in the planning of the introduction of the Happy Fun Ball originally intended for such Happy Fun Balls to leave with the guest, and were very surprised when said Happy Fun Ball (and all its hundreds of extraplanar rooms to explore) was left behind with the party instead. He then basically dares Sam to press a button and see what happens.

Nott doesn’t resent Fjord for touching the window or setting a time limit on the library exploration. While it was cool in the library, there were too many things attacking them.

Matt doesn’t necessarily intend his traps for Travis, but he likes having good buttons and bad buttons. “I just want shit to happen. Surprise me!” He admires the player that occasionally gets bold, rather than the one who always sends their minions out to touch all the tiles and trigger all the traps before they ever set foot in the dungeon. He also enjoys the meticulousness of Liam being at the same table as Travis’s impulsiveness.

Sam does not want the fans to send him larger flasks. His current flask holds 128 oz, which is exactly a gallon.

GIF of the Week: @criticalschluck with a hilarious movie-trailer-style GIF of Travis explaining he’s got an intelligence of 6 (Grog), then an intelligence of 14 (Fjord), then pushing buttons and experiencing... consequences.

Nott approves of Caleb’s choice to abandon the books to go back to the party. While she wants as much knowledge in his head as possible, it’s because “a smarter Caleb is a more powerful Caleb, and hopefully a Caleb that can stay alive a little longer.” Matt likes watching characters be put in situations where they have to choose between long-reaching character goals and the people they have chosen as their family. He was fascinated to see the struggle as he was ticking down the time on his sheet. He’s very excited to see what’s going to happen this Thursday.

Brian and Matt both fanboy over Sam’s 1hp decision.

Sam reflects on Jester’s being left behind--”not in a malicious way, you know, but sometimes in a big family someone gets left behind at a mall!”

Matt circuitously explains that the stained-glass window could be used to access other places. This man’s being slipperier than soap suds on wet tile tonight.

Nott was aware that the hit she took for Jester could have been a killing blow, but she was ready--”it was what goes through her head around Caleb a lot: ‘I’ve got to protect my friends.’” She’s very protective and very maternal, and Sam would have been okay if that had been the last of Nott.

Both Sam and Liam (and others) have begun to experience the in- and out-of-game changes that come with finally beginning to really know these characters. They certainly wouldn’t have died for each other at the beginning of the game, even knowing how hard their friends worked on these characters. It was originally a “system shock” (as Matt puts it) which required check-ins after certain blow-ups at the beginning of the campaign to make sure they (the players) were all okay. Now, though, they’re closer and closer to being willing to die for each other for both in-game and meta reasons.

Sam reflects on how both Caleb and Nott hate themselves, but manifest that very differently in how they treat other people. Caleb withdraws and puts up thick walls; Nott is quick to trust and care about everyone.

Nott is least close to Yasha at the moment. She’s still a li’l scared of her.

Matt had a few battle options planned out regarding which parts of which chamber were futzed with. The black tapestry was the one curtain they didn’t mess with that would have led to a “very rough encounter.” Matt had six maps built off-stage, just in case.

Sam’s backup character is a handsome actor named Sam Seagull.

Brian is annoyed that every encounter starts with the chat screaming “TPK.” Matt: “I hope not. That’d be my fault if that happened.”

While the dragon was very powerful, Matt had expectations that the party would understand very quickly that the fight didn’t necessarily have to end with the dragon’s death--he wanted them to understand the challenge was the exit, not the dragon. However, they came in in a different order than he’d anticipated, including party staggering, and that was when he started to get nervous.

Whatever magic had first triggered the first crystal would have been the same magic required to open the second door. It was proximity-based.

Fanart of the Week: @tehsasquatch, with this super-cool portrait of Nott.

On whether Nott feels as if she’s earned her comma: sometimes, especially in encounters like these, Nott feels just for a moment that she can be brave, she can be useful, she can be heroic--and then the moment it’s over the world comes crashing back down. When she’s out of those moments, she feels that she’s still just a goblin.

Is Sam ready for Nott to get the spotlight Fjord’s currently in?

Sam: No. Matt: [very intense face]. There’s a lot of backstory elements that he and Matt know that no one else is aware of, and he’s nervous about those coming to light.

The Traveler’s appearance was complete improv. Matt was reading the situation and the emotions and looking for ways to facilitate a heroic story, and when the dice worked in her favor, he felt it would be a wonderful, dramatic story beat to suddenly include--especially since the Traveler hadn’t responded much recently. Matt: “Yeah, that was really cool.”

The Traveler/Jester relationship has evolved in ways Matt both did and did not expect. He wasn’t sure how seriously Jester was going to take it. It’s the difference between believing in something and allowing that thing to define you as a person. He loves it. Sam: “The Traveler...is Taryon, right?”

Nott doesn’t see Caleb as abandoning her at all. “He’s a weak, puny man who needs to get himself out of danger.” It would have actually been harder if Caleb had been there, because if Nott had had to make a choice as to who to protect, Jester would be dead.

After Beau’s emergence from the orb, she probably for a few minutes would have thought that they were all dead behind her. It wasn’t that hours or days had passed--just a few minutes. Matt found Beau’s and Caduceus’s conversation at the end very fascinating and compelling, especially as a way to end the episode.

Nott agrees that Jester is not as happy and fine as she appears to be, especially after their talk about boys, but doesn’t feel it’s as severe as Caleb’s issues. “Jester’s a functional person.” However, Sam’s excited they’re getting past the “flitty person from the first half of the campaign” to the “core of sadness” as the story progresses.

Matt’s sure Yasha was not happy at all that her friends all disappeared without warning. “She spent six days thinking her friends were never going to come back. She doesn’t cry in a corner; she’s familiar with grief and loss. She hardens herself and moves on.” He’s hoping they’ll get to see some of that this week.

Critmas Spotlight: The Blind Weaver, a really, really cool 3D painting by a lady named Elaine Ryan, which has layers upon layers of polyurethane stained to make an amazing effect. See @elaineryanart on twitter and tumblr for more!

Talks Machina: After Dog

They decide where guests sit at the time of the episode. Matt likes to avoid the edges so they don’t feel like the outlier. Sam requests no attractive guests be placed immediately adjacent to him so that it does not detract from his glory. “That’s why I sit next to doggo Laura Bailey.” Brave man. Brave, foolish man.

Sam likes oatmeal raisin cookies. I am DELIGHTED, WHAT AN OLD MAN WHO SHARES MY TASTE. He also likes Werther’s, which is bringing back so many memories of my grandmother’s house. Matt likes ginger snaps, which are my favorite Christmas cookies also. I would kill for ginger snaps right now. Matt and Sam both are excited about pumpkin pie.

Essential D&D gifts, per Matt: dice, PHB, HeroForge custom minis if you really want to get them excited. He finds that getting in there and making a character can really help hook someone on the visual aspect & get invested in their character. Everything else is fluff. Sam suggests a music playlist for the first game; when he ran his first game with his kids, he liked having gridded paper to draw the maps on.

Matt does not feel that the crew of the ship has been mistreated, but they have been “neglected and dragged through places they didn’t expect.” He does think they’ll talk about everything they’ve done to all their friends and family when they get home in a very “you won’t believe this!” kind of way.

Sam always wears the same tie when he’s voice directing and on the first day of a new show. He’s wearing it tonight and can’t discuss the new show.

Favorite holiday movies! Brian: “Love, Actually” and “Die Hard,” as well as “Miracle on 34th Street.” Matt loves “A Christmas Story” (my favorite also, bless this man). Sam likes “Prancer” and “Scrooged,” but realizes mid-sentence that this is Brian’s first Talks as an engaged man.

Brian on proposing: ”It’s...the best.” They’d been together for over six years & met during the first Last of Us game. Brian describes himself as a former “piece of shit” and a very different person back then. Ashley had no expectations that he was going to propose & was totally surprised. Gah, this is too romantic.

Brian: “I always imagined for years what that moment would be like, and this topped all of my expectations... What more can you really hope for in this life than to feel that feeling with another person? It’s to me the pinnacle of our human experiences to be able to say ‘I’ve been through hell and yet found someone that I can definitely say I want to spend all the days of my life on this earth with,’ and the fact that it happened is fucking cool. It’s like heroin with none of the bad side effects.”

It was extremely stressful--but only the logistics. Apparently Matt’s proposal was extremely logistically intensive; Brian sympathizes.

And on that lovely, quiet note, we’re done for the night. Happy holidays, everyone. <3

#talks machina #talks machina spoilers #long post for ts #critical role #critical role spoilers

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quietdaysco · 5 years

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Primrose Path - Devlog #006

Hey, it’s us again—two indie devs with fresh dirt on our visual novel progress. Ready?

Behind the Scenes

Playtesting Feedback

Last month we closed the pre-alpha Ink build of Primrose Path’s common route outline. It met its purpose of proving the basic concepts of our game were viable and that it interested players in our target demographic. In fact, playtesters gave us overwhelmingly positive feedback in our post-test form about the characters and story. Here are a few quotes from their responses:

“The number of elements of the MC's [main character’s] life added in to the story in increments helped me not only relate to the MC but also stay interested.”

“There's a good variety of calmer moments and more outlandish/exciting/otherwise more high tension moment [sic], no issues for me.”

“[T]he clients are a rainbow of people with a few that [sic] very much stand out [to me]”

“By the end, I was definitely considering who I was going to chose as my client and was sad the pre-alpha ended even though I knew it was going to.”

“I 100% would dance [in a mini-game similar to] DDR [Dance Dance Revolution]”

As you can see, the beginnings of Primrose Path went over well and players definitely had a lot of interesting things to say about our mischievous clients! We can’t spoil them here, but you may be able to see for yourself when alpha testing comes to our server in the future!

Now, for all the good we received, it’s not to say the pre-alpha went without its criticisms:

“This might be silly, but I wish there were an option that weren't a dress for her outfit to the party.”

It’s not silly at all, playtester! It had us thinking about the different ways our protagonist, Lynn Austen, could express herself. This concern lead to one outfit redesign and introduced a number of new ones!

“The beginning was a little slow, but I love Priya, so all of her scenes brought my attention back instantly.”

We love co-worker and bestie, Priya, too, but she can’t be an exception for pacing. We’ve since reevaluated and tweaked Part 1: Work Day. Plenty of visual changes and cutting scenes entirely were discussed in order to tighten up the overall pacing.

“Harper seems harsh but has pressure on her to make her harsh, but then you see her and shes [sic] just straight up scary.”

While all playtesters understood Harper’s role as Lynn’s no-slack boss, a few found her consequentially unapproachable. We have a lot in store for her in later routes, but acknowledge she was sparse during the common route. We’ve since taken this concern and made her more available in new scenes, adjusted her tone in some of the older ones, and had other characters—who have a very different relationship with her than Lynn does—reflect more openly on her. We think this humanizes Harper much more.

“Unfortunately [Bellarmino] feels like a snobbier, more irritating Matt. [...] I personally don't find him very likable but I'm looking forward to being proven wrong.”

In our feedback form, we asked about character impressions. We also polled if players didn’t have to play all routes at least once, which clients they’d pick. While character impression responses expressed a willingness to give our model and fashion designer, Bellarmino LaFauci, a chance, he was our least popular choice in the poll. We figured it may have been that his personality wasn’t differentiated enough against the company with whom Lynn encounters him, so we’ve made adjustments to contrast him more against his judgmental cabal.

So as we went through and addressed feedback, we had some ideas of our own to implement, which leads us to...

Updated Revised Outline

Double the wordcount! Yep, we’re just shy of 32,000 words for the revised common route outline. How could this be? Look: don’t mistake Primrose Path for a linear narrative. Your choices affect the world from day one.

Beyond changes from playtester feedback, other new content includes:

New Characters! We work to make sure our side characters leave an impression. We’ve added a few more with the means to salvage or devastate Lynn’s career. Until you yourself can meet them, look out for future Lore snippets on our Twitter!

New Events! Lynn has more opportunities than before, and under different states of mind, to navigate and impact the world around her. Depending on what Lynn did, where, and when can completely change an encounter within that same space and time.

New Key Items! There are a couple of items Lynn can collect if she meets the right people and takes certain actions. These items can reveal some important information in client routes later on—and some hints for others, too!

New Areas! A few more places have been added to the common route, including whole new scenes. What could possibly lie behind these doors?

So how’s that sound? If you said “Damn, that’s hella rad,” well you just took the words right out of our mouths. But we’re not done yet; we take feedback seriously. When we can’t decide on what our audience may want, we leave no room for speculation. There’s really only one way to settle that.

VN Protagonist Sprite Survey

We run a survey! We wanted to know how visual novel fans preferred to see a customizable MC represented as a sprite, if at all. It’s tough for us because as much as we want to make Lynn as visually present as her sense of self, we also acknowledge that “immersion” for many players also means different levels of “intrusion” from MC’s sprite—down to none at all, for folks wanting to self-insert despite taking on another character’s existing backstory. While we think we’ve come to a happy medium that serves our purposes and would appeal to a good number of players, we’ll be sharing with you all in a separate post our findings.

Two things are for certain:

Visual novel players are an incredibly dedicated base, having turned out over 100 responses to our form! Thank you so much for helping us see your side on the matter!

The communities we frequent overwhelmingly take issue with one specific manner of MC representation—one that seems to plague the industry. If you’re not an avid consumer of visual novels, this begrudged answer may surprise you!

But hey, we haven’t closed it yet: you can contribute your opinion too until August 5th, 11:59 PM EDT. Stay tuned for our detailed write-up on the results, next time. We’ve got another survey in the works too (sounds like we’ve got a few hard decisions, huh?) so keep tabs on our Twitter when we release that form.

Greyson’s Twitter

Greyson’s been taking a break from Twitter for a minute. Working Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday overheated him, and in that vulnerable time, he caught a virus! So now he’s on sick leave and we’ve promised him an easier schedule of one day a week when he gets better. His posting schedule will be announced soon. You can still send him some love on his Twitter account. He’ll be sure to respond when he’s feeling up to it. He’s always there for you. Will you return the favor?

Main Game Progress

Common Route:

Rough Outline: 100% ✔

Revised Outline: 100% ✔

Draft Script: --%

The Artist: Matthias Barousse

Rough Outline: 100% ✔

Revised Outline: --%

Progress on the main game has primarily been on the common route outline. Some interesting things to note are that last time we reported our revision to be at 90%. After implementing feedback, our clean outline doubled in word count and we’ve reviewed it entirely since then. So now we’re thoroughly at 100%!

The breakdown of that is:

We finished up the common route’s Part 3: The Interviews, in which Lynn meets all her clients whom she may or may not have stumbled upon at a legendary bash.

We elaborated on Part 2: The Party encounters and added more variations which subsequently trickle over into alternate interactions in The Interviews.

We added an interactive, portent dream sequence the night of The Interviews, right when Lynn hits the bed after evaluating all potential clients at work.

... and a few other additions. Also among other things, we’ve actually started work on the draft script already, but we’ve not had time to properly calculate the percentage. It’ll be updated accordingly in our next log.

What’s Next For Us

We’re going to finish up our script draft and start focusing our efforts into creating a playable, visual alpha build of Primrose Path. Yes, we want to play our game as much as you do and that’s motivation enough!

We’re focusing on monthly devlogs for our Tumblr, but we have to ask:

Are there other kinds of content and updates you folks would like to see here? We want to know! Shoot us a message in our Ask the Devs inbox here on Tumblr, or hit us up on Twitter, Discord, and Lemma Soft!

Thanks for reading! Keep up and remember to enjoy your Quiet Days. ♥

Socials

- Micro-updates on Twitter!

♦ Factoids with Greyson!

- Live art development on Twitch!

- Art logging on Instagram!

- Ask us anything here!

- Continue the discussion on Discord!

- Master thread on Lemma Soft!

#devlog #primrosepath #visual novel #otome #english otome #indiedev #gamedev #otomedev

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suzie81blog · 5 years

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banshee-cheekbones · 6 years

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heyaaa, i sent the fake dating ask and i loved it you’re such a good writer!! and i wanted to ask you if you could maybe write standrew based on the song sidekick by walk the moon? it’s just such a standrew song and you are a great writer please ✨

I had never heard that song before, but it is utterly delightful.

anyways! here’s 9.6k (seriously) of fluff, first dates, first kisses, Ryan attempting to give good advice, and Andrew freaking out, as tends to happen when the person you’ve been in love with for years asks you on a date out of the blue.

rated G, on ao3 here. biggest of thanks to @devilstrip for betaing!

the one that I need (could be right here by my side)

“Are you doing anything tomorrow night?”

Steven is perched on the edge of Andrew’s desk when he asks (or, more accurately, when he blurts it out). When Andrew glances up from what he plans to be his last email of the day, Steven is fiddling with his phone in his lap, staring down at it intensely in a manner that feels deliberate, like he’s trying to avoid looking somewhere else. There’s a dark flush creeping up his cheeks, and Andrew swivels in his chair so that his knee is brushing against Steven’s dangling legs.

“Don’t think so,” he answers, mentally combing through his calendar for the next day. They’re in between Worth It episodes at the moment, and as far as he can remember, he hasn’t volunteered to help with any projects tomorrow that might keep him late. “Why?”

“Um.” Steven keeps fiddling with his phone, bouncing it against his thigh hard enough that Andrew is afraid it’s going to slip right out of his fingers. He hasn’t seen Steven this nervous in a long time, not since there were some complications on their last trip to Japan that required them to basically throw out all their planning and shoot an episode on the fly, and he drops one hand to Steven’s knee and squeezes gently for reassurance. Normally, Steven thrives off touch, but when Andrew pulls his hand away, his face has only grown redder, and his phone is bouncing faster.

By the time Steven finally talks again, Andrew is actually starting to get concerned.

“Do you want to go see a movie after work?” Immediately after the words leave his mouth, he exhales loudly, like every one of his nerves is expressing relief at once.

Andrew frowns. He can’t see why that question would have Steven so on edge; they’ve gone to the movies together plenty of times, albeit usually with some of the other Tasty crew or with the Unsolved gang.

“Sure,” he answers. “Is Adam coming too?”

Steven laughs, shaky and high-pitched. His phone keeps bouncing.

“I didn’t ask him. Or anyone else. I kinda… wanted it to be the two of us. Like a…” He lets out another deep breath before he presses forward, the words stumbling over each other. “Like a date.”

Andrew’s mind sputters to a stop, and a full-body flush rushes over him like a flash flood.

The thing is, even though filming Worth It kind of feels like being on a date sometimes (albeit some kind of polyamorous date, what with the presence of Adam and Annie and sometimes Rie and Matt), he’s wanted to ask Steven out on a proper date for an embarrassingly long time. On days where he’s a little too tired to properly reign his thoughts in, or nights where they all go out for drinks and he gets too melancholy for his own good, he’s envisioned a thousand possible scenarios, a thousand possible ways that he could broach the topic.

The problem, of course, is that in more than a few of those scenarios, his imagination had turned towards the all too real possibility that Steven would say no (never in a rude or angry way, but in a definitive way). From there, it was only a short jump to imagining how awkward Worth It would be, how hard it would be to keep their on-screen dynamic believable, how much of an inconvenience it would be to Adam and the crew.

So he’d never asked.

And he’d never imagined, not in any serious way, that maybe Steven was going through the same kind of mental turmoil.

“A date?” He clears his throat so that it’s not completely obvious that his brain is a mess of static, like a broken radio. Steven nods.

“Yeah. Unless you don’t, I mean, I can ask Adam if he wants to come if you don’t… we can pretend this never happened, if you want to.”

“I don’t want to,” Andrew responds. “Pretend, I mean. A date sounds great, Steven.”

It’s possibly not the most eloquent adjective he could have used, but it makes a smile, tentative at first and then nothing less than beaming, stretch across Steven’s mouth, so Andrew can’t be too mad at himself about it.

“Okay,” Steven says, letting out a sigh that almost sounds giddy. Andrew knows that he could be reading too much into the sound, could be imagining some significance that isn’t there, but it makes his own flush grow in intensity, until even the back of his neck is burning. “I’ll text you sometime later?”

“Sounds good.” It takes a few seconds for him to steel himself for his next move, which is ridiculous; mere minutes ago, dropping his hand to Steven’s knee was the easiest thing in the world, but now, it feels like it could be a step too far, like he could be putting too much pressure on this before it even has a chance to get started. While he does get up the nerve to do it, he doesn’t have the nerve to let it linger, and he settles for squeezing Steven’s knee lightly before he slides his hand away. “Night, Steven.”

“Night.” Steven slides off Andrew’s desk and nearly takes a sheaf of papers with him. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” As he walks off, his fingers brush against Andrew’s shoulder, and even that gentle touch makes Andrew bite back a shudder. He turns to watch Steven head out of the pod, waving goodnight to a few people who are still hanging around. Once he’s turned a corner and disappeared from sight, Andrew twists back to face his laptop, sighs out what feels like all the air in his body, crosses his arms on top of his desk and drops his head on top.

He’s in full-blown crisis mode. The thought of the potential consequences of this, of what it might mean for them in the long run, regardless of whether things go good or bad, weighs a ton. It feels like he could easily suffocate under the weight of it.

He forces himself to finish up his email, after which he slaps his laptop closed and gathers together all of his stuff on muscle memory, since his mind is too occupied flitting from one possibility to the next.

What if things go perfectly? What if, at the end of the night, he actually gets to kiss Steven? What if he gets to feel Steven’s hands threading up into his hair and the weight of Steven’s arms around his neck?

But what if the date is a disaster? What is he says the wrong thing or makes the wrong move, pushes things too fast?

Frankly, that’s a lot easier to imagine.

If he doesn’t tell someone about this unexpected turn of events, he’s fairly certain that he’s going to ruminate on it until the early hours of the morning, until his thoughts drift into toxic territory. However, telling someone feels like it could be a form of self-sabotage, if he’s not careful; word travels fast around the office, and he doesn’t exactly want everyone to know about their date before it even happens. Normally, he would immediately go to Adam and Annie, but while he has no doubt that they’d be supportive, in case things do go wrong, he doesn’t want them to feel even more awkward than they probably already will.

Feet automatically carrying him towards the exit, he’s honestly debating the merits of calling his mom and using her as a sounding board when something bright yellow catches his eye.

Ryan is resting on one of the couches near the stairs, wearing a hideous Lakers jersey, working on his laptop with his headphones resting around his neck. He’s not the person Andrew would typically go to for advice, seeing as Ryan is only barely functional as an adult on the best of days, but any port in a storm and all that.

“Hey,” he says, walking over and dropping down on the couch. Ryan glances up at him with a wary look.

“Look, if this is about what we said to Steven earlier, that was all Shane’s idea. I’m just his patsy.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Andrew’s sure it has something to do with the ridiculous Twitter feud the three of them revive every so often, and he’s also sure that Ryan was an active participant, not just a patsy, but for the time being, that’s not important. He takes a moment to think about how to bring up the topic before he decides that the direct approach is probably the easiest. “Steven just asked me on a date.”

“About damn time,” Ryan immediately replies with not a hint of surprise on his face. “Shane owes me fifty bucks.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah, he thought you’d eventually summon the courage to say something. I figured you’d die first. But I assume you said yes.” Andrew nods.

“Yeah. But I don’t…” The words are on the tip of his tongue, but actually spilling them out into the air, confessing his insecurities for someone else to hear, suddenly feels like an insurmountable task. Turning the conversation away from himself, bringing the same issues up in an indirect way, is easier, so he starts, “With you and Shane-”

“Look, just because I’m dating Shane doesn’t mean I know how it happened.”

“Not what I was going to ask. Weren’t you afraid of what might happen if you fucked things up? What would happen to Unsolved, I mean.” He expects Ryan to have some kind of quip on his tongue, but instead, he closes his laptop and leans back against the sofa, looking more thoughtful than Andrew has ever seen him.

“I mean, yeah,” he eventually answers. “Of course I was afraid. But it was either take a chance when I was actually thinking clearly or blurt it out one night, which probably would have fucked everything up anyways.”

That’s a point Andrew hadn’t considered. Despite what Ryan may have thought, he’s sure that, given enough time, he would have gotten enough courage to ask Steven out, but chances are that it would have been when he’d had too much to drink, or when they were filming, or some other inopportune time when it simply burst from his chest.

“Look,” Ryan continues, “you look at Steven like he hung the moon. It’s a little pathetic, but you owe it to yourself to see this through. And if it doesn’t work, be adults and figure out how to work together.”

“You should probably work on your delivery a bit.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Ryan laughs. “Quit freaking out. It doesn’t fit with your whole persona.”

“What persona?”

“Mysterious asshole. That persona.”

Andrew rolls his eyes and gets to his feet.

“Thanks, Ryan. I think.”

“Anytime. When you and Steven get married, I want a front row seat. Just as an fyi.”

Andrew doesn’t even bother to grace that with an answer; instead, he flips Ryan off without looking back as he heads for the stairs.

For the first ten minutes of his drive home, he manages to take Ryan’s advice about not freaking out to heart. He’s always had a tendency to overthink things, stew about them until events of minor importance became as towering as a mountain, and he knows that this is yet another example of that. He’s hyping Steven up too much, putting him on a pedestal. Steven may be his friend, one of his best friends, but Andrew has gone on dates with friends before, and that’s all this is. Just another date. Nothing worth panicking about.

It doesn’t matter that he’s been in love with Steven for longer than he cares to think about. It doesn’t matter that, if things go wrong and this ends up being both their first and last date, he won’t be able to go to work without being reminded of that fact every damn day. It doesn’t matter that he’ll have to deal with the whole office looking at him knowingly for days, possibly even weeks afterwards.

None of that matters, and there’s no point in him thinking about it.

It’s just a date.

By the time he pulls into his driveway, he’s freaking out again.

He tries to distract himself by doing a little more work, by putting on a movie and making a needlessly complicated dinner, but none of it is successful. By the time he gives up and simply lays on his bed, he’s resigned himself to the fact he’s probably not going to get a whole lot of sleep.

That resignation only grows when his phone buzzes with a text from Steven, containing a list of movies and times, followed by will any of these work? Truthfully, Andrew had been so distracted by his own racing mind that he kind of forgot that their date wasn’t actually set in stone. He picks a title that sounds vaguely familiar and starts at 6:20. It means they’ll probably have to leave straight from work, but it also means that he won’t have enough time to go home, panic some more, and potentially do something stupid, like back out.

A moment after he sends off his pick, Steven responds with a thumbs-up and says he’ll buy the tickets ahead of time. Before Andrew can respond, another text comes through.

i’m super nervous about this, btw.

Bizarrely enough, that message actually quells some of the chaos roiling through his mind. For a moment, he toys with the idea of calling Steven, but he’s fairly certain he would stutter his way through the conversation or choke on his words, so he settles for a text instead.

me too. but i’m looking forward to it.

When Andrew returns from brushing his teeth, he has a new message. It’s a simple heart; not one of the fancy ones, with the little sparkle or the arrow through it, just a standard, purple heart.

All the blood rushes to his head, and he drops heavily onto the edge of his bed. He’s certain it’s not the first time Steven has sent him a message with that emoji in it (he loves using them possibly more than anyone else Andrew knows, except maybe Rie), but he knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that it’s the first time Steven has ever sent him just that, on its own, not as part of a cluster of other emojis.

After an embarrassing amount of deliberation, he sends a red heart back in return, puts his phone on silent, and spends the next several hours trying to concentrate on a show on his laptop and not on the fact that there are less than twenty-four hours (and counting) until the date.

Eventually, he manages to drift off.

He wakes up fifteen minutes before his alarm and, after blinking away sleep from his heavy eyes, is hit with a startling revelation.

Namely, that the problem with going on a date straight from work is that he has to actually prepare himself for it now. He has to go to work in his date outfit, unless he borrows something from wardrobe, which sounds like more trouble than it’s worth and would probably lead to some awkward questions he’s not ready to answer yet.

Really, it shouldn’t be anything to worry about - Steven has already seen him at his best and at his worst. It’s not like this is a blind date, like he needs to be concerned with first impressions. But still, he finds himself standing in front of his closet, surveying his collection of sweaters and hoping that one will stand out as the right choice.

None of them do.

He’s not sure what makes him decide to lean into his nerves, but before he can lose his courage, he grabs his phone from the nightstand and sends Steven a text.

I don’t know what to wear.

By the time he gets a response, he’s managed to pick out a pair of dark jeans. Steven has sent him a picture, and it takes Andrew a moment to realize that he’s looking at Steven’s unmade bed, in the center of which is a small mountain of sweaters and jackets and pants.

The caption reads me neither!

Suddenly, Andrew’s dilemma seems more like a minor inconvenience than an actual problem. With a fond shake of his head, he sends back a reply.

wear anything but that weird trench coat. it’s horrible.

you just have bad taste. i’m going to wear it.

They end up texting back and forth while Andrew gets ready. In the end, he goes with a simple white t-shirt, partially because it’s the first thing he sees when he opens his dresser and partially because he has a distinct memory of wearing it on one of their flights to Japan, a flight that Steven spent most of with his head canted over onto Andrew’s shoulder, softly snoring.

Even despite the fact that Andrew’s shirt had been soaked through with drool by the time they landed, it’s a good memory.

When he gets to the office, the rest of their pod is empty. Andrew drops down at his desk so that he can get his laptop set up before he goes to grab coffee, but before he can do much more than open his emails, he hears footsteps approaching and looks up to see Steven strolling towards him with two takeaway cups of coffee and a paper bag. Thankfully, despite what he insisted, he’s not wearing the horrible trench coat; instead, he’s in his red and blue pullover hoodie, the one that’s artfully tattered, ludicrously soft, and a little too long in the sleeves. Andrew’s seen him in it more times than he count, but something about the sight of it under these circumstances makes his heart do a kind of skip and jump.

“It was too hot for the coat,” Steven says, carefully depositing the coffees and the paper bag on Andrew’s desk before he hops up onto the edge.

“So you went with a hoodie instead. Because that makes perfect sense.” Andrew tries to go for deadpan, but there’s a damn smile playing at the edges of his mouth that he can’t keep away, nervous and stupidly giddy. Steven laughs and gently kicks Andrew’s knee.

“Shut up.” His cheeks are pink, and when he leans out and tugs at the sleeve of Andrew’s shirt, like he’s trying to get his attention, they go a shade darker. “I like this shirt.”

If it was coming from anyone else, Andrew might brush the compliment off. But coming from Steven, who undoubtedly remembers what happened on their trip to Japan-

(It’s one of the many, many things Andrew loves about Steven - he remembers the littlest things, the smallest details, birthdays and places they’ve been in the past and the stories behind the most trivial of objects.)

-the compliment both makes him more nervous, more aware of the potential consequences that tonight might have, and a little bold. It only seems polite to return the favor, so he tugs at the end of Steven’s sleeve, where it’s dangling to his knuckles. He doesn’t mean to skim his fingers over the thin skin on the inside of Steven’s wrist, but the softness of it against his fingertips makes him forget how to speak for a few seconds.

“This is one of my favorites.” Steven’s answering grin is one of the loveliest sights that Andrew has ever had the privilege of looking upon.

“Thanks.” His flush has climbed down his neck, and absently, Andrew wonders if he’d be able to feel it if he pressed his mouth against Steven’s throat. Extracting a croissant from the paper bag, he continues, “I’m gonna be busy most of the day, Jen needs some help with a video. But I’ll meet you downstairs at six?” His smile has faded some, and there’s a new note in his voice, one that Andrew recognizes from all the times he’s heard Steven try to respond to a compliment. It’s more than nerves: it’s outright insecurity.

Andrew’s pretty sure that he has more than enough insecurities for the two of them. The least he can do is try to set Steven at ease, even though he’s nowhere close to feeling that way himself.

“Yeah,” he answers, nudging his knee against Steven’s leg. “If you get free for lunch, let me know?”

Steven’s smile brightens again.

“I will,” he says, sliding off Andrew’s desk. “See you later.” As he strolls off, Adam comes walking through the door, and they have some kind of quick exchange, the words too quiet for Andrew to hear. It’s only when Adam glances over at him that Andrew realizes he’s been staring, and he rapidly swivels back to his laptop and takes a too hot sip of coffee.

Unsurprisingly, Adam doesn’t seem fooled, based on the knowing look on his face when he drops down into the chair beside Andrew.

What is surprising is what comes out of his mouth.

“You excited for your date?”

Andrew immediately stops pretending to work and glances over. There’s the barest hint of a smile on Adam’s mouth, almost hidden by his beard.

“Did Ryan tell the whole office already?” he sighs as he leans back in his chair, already brainstorming ways he can get revenge.

“Ryan knows? How did that happen?”

“I needed some advice. And I wanted to wait to tell you about it, just in case it turns out to be a disaster.”

“It won’t.” Adam says it with nothing less than absolute certainty. “Steven told me right after you said yes. I don’t think he was even out of the building when he texted me.”

“Really?” Objectively, Andrew’s not exactly surprised - Steven’s enthusiasm has a way of easily spilling over, which is yet another thing Andrew loves about him - but the fact that Steven was (and is) that excited feels too good to be true.

Adam nods. “So stop freaking out. It’s only going to be a bad date if you overthink it and psych yourself out.”

“I’m not overthinking anything. I’m fine.” It’s a weak attempt to cover his own ass, and he can tell from the way Adam’s smile comes back that Adam immediately sees through it. Thankfully, he doesn’t say anything; he just shakes his head and puts his headphones on, and Andrew does the same after taking a bite of the croissant Steven brought him.

Before he launches into work, he glances at the clock in the bottom right corner of his screen.

9:10 AM.

He has a feeling that the next nine hours are going to be some of the longest of his life.

Thankfully, the morning goes by surprisingly fast.

He gets dragged into participating in no less than three tests, volunteers to help Alix and Rie pick up food for a video, answers a slew of emails. For most of the day, he’s so concentrated on what he’s doing that the nerves and anxiety dim to an easy to ignore thrum in the back of his mind.

But lunchtime is borderline unbearable.

Steven sends him a text to say that he can’t make it, and that’s enough to make all of those thoughts come racing back in vivid color. Even though it’s a truly beautiful day outside, even though his favorite food truck is at the campus today and he has Adam and Annie for company, all he can think about is what might happen after six o’clock.

He doesn’t realize that he’s thoroughly zoned out until Annie snaps her fingers an inch away from his nose.

“Maybe we should knock you out,” she muses, stealing one of Adam’s fries. “Just for a few hours. So you stop freaking out.”

“I’m not-”

“Steven just texted you and you didn’t even notice,” Adam interrupts. “You’re freaking out.”

Andrew doesn’t have a good response to that.

He picks up his phone to see what Steven sent him. It’s a picture of his own desk, exactly as he left it fifteen minutes ago, with the exception of the stuffed teddy bear sitting in front of his keyboard, head flopped to the side. Andrew immediately recognizes it as the bear Shane used for the Ruining History episode that he and Annie guested on; the dead giveaway is the small hole in the mouth that formerly had a cigarette glued in it.

look what we found in the props closet! he’s yours now, btw. I threw the cigarette out.

Andrew is struck with the sudden urge to drop his head to the table and groan. It already feels like his head is going to explode, and there’s still over five hours until their actual date.

“Why are you blushing?” Adam asks. Wordlessly, Andrew pushes his phone across the table so they can see the picture, and Annie gasps.

“Please say you’re going to keep him on your desk. He needs a good home with someone who won’t glue cigarettes in his mouth.”

“It should have been a lit cigarette, for historical accuracy,” Andrew mutters, taking the phone back. He’s definitely going to keep the bear, although maybe not on his desk - it’s getting cluttered enough as is, with the plushies he keeps picking up as souvenirs on their Worth It adventures - but it would probably fit on his bookshelf at home.

Before he can come up with a response, his phone buzzes with a new message from Annie to the Worth It group chat the four of them have. When he switches over, he’s met with a picture of himself, clearly shot only seconds before. He’s staring down at his phone with a grin plastered to his mouth, looking so damn fond that he’s surprised that his face doesn’t ache.

The caption reads: btw Steven, Andrew likes the present.

Before Andrew can figure out what to say, a text bubble pops up from Steven. The message is only a happy face and another heart emoji, but Andrew’s face starts to burn, until he’s pretty sure that it’s as red as the emoji. He turns his phone back off and goes back to picking at his food, all while trying to ignore the fact that he can feel Adam and Annie staring at him, that he can perfectly envision the twin smiles they’re probably wearing.

Five more hours.

He can do this.

While the morning was so busy that he could barely put a thought together, the afternoon drags.

Adam asks him to help with sound on a video he’s directing, which takes up a few hours, but he still finds himself checking his watch whenever he has a spare moment. Once filming is done for the day, he heads back over to his desk for the first time since before lunch. The stuffed version of Corporal Wojtek is in the same spot, but now there’s a post-it note with a lopsided heart drawn on it stuck to his chest. Andrew thinks about taking a picture and sending it back to Steven, but he’s probably still busy running around with Jen, so he settles for taking a picture for himself before he carefully sets the bear on the floor underneath his desk.

At the very least, even if the night does go head over heels in the worst way possible, at least he’ll have some evidence of the fact that, for a few hours, things were going very, very well.

The desks around him start emptying out around four, and by the time five o’clock comes, he’s the only one still in the pod. On an ordinary day, he would take that as his cue to duck out as well, but he still has an hour until he’s supposed to meet Steven, and if he has to answer another email, he thinks he might actually lose his mind. On the flip side, if he doesn’t find some kind of distraction, the churning in his stomach might actually kill him.

Thankfully, before he can reach that point, Ryan walks into the room.

“Figured you’d still be here.” He drops himself down onto the edge of Andrew’s desk. “You nervous for your date?”

“Get off,” Andrew responds, prodding Ryan in the thigh with a pen. “And no.”

“That’s a lie.” Obligingly, Ryan slides off and steals Adam’s chair instead. “You look like you’re thinking about making a run for it.”

“I’m not going to.” The thought is tempting, but Andrew isn’t going to back out now. He’s not going to be that person. “It’s just… this is a lot.” It’s not exactly the most coherent thing he’s ever said, but it’s the best he can do at the moment. Thankfully, Ryan nods.

“Trust me, I know. I almost puked before Shane and I went on our first date. Like, right in the parking lot outside. But I got through it. And you’re going to get through this too.” With a grin, he adds, “How’s my delivery? Better than yesterday?”

“Keep it up and you might be able to land a side job delivering pep talks.” Andrew glances down at his watch and sighs.

Still forty-five minutes to go.

“Look, before your head pops off, you wanna help me rummage through the props closet? I wanna find some new decorations for the Unsolved set. Shane tripped and broke a bunch today.”

Frankly, while he’d never say it out loud, Andrew’s never been more grateful for Ryan Bergara.

“Yeah,” he says, closing his laptop. “Sounds good.”

It successfully kills the rest of the time; in fact, Andrew gets so drawn into the task, digging through old tote bins and cardboard boxes and tossing stuff at Ryan that might work, that it’s only his phone buzzing with a text from Steven that makes him pause.

all finished! meet you in the lobby?

Andrew immediately tosses Ryan the miniature skeleton figure he found buried underneath a multitude of Halloween decorations and types back a reply as he gets to his feet.

be right there.

“You’ve got this,” Ryan says, adding the skeleton to the ‘maybe’ pile at his side.

“Thanks, Ryan. I mean it.”

“Anytime, man. Just remember, I want that front row seat when you get married. And some free champagne.”

Andrew flips him off as he heads for the door.

He stops at his desk just long enough to pack up his laptop and grab Corporal Wojtek. After a moment of deliberation, he takes the post-it note off the bear’s chest and sticks it to his desk lamp, right where he’ll be able to look at it on Monday morning.

Hopefully, it will serve as a nice way to start the day, and not an unpleasant reminder of how badly he fucked things up.

As he heads towards the staircase leading down into the lobby, every physical sensation that he’s been cycling through over the course of the day hits him at once. Anxiety flutters in his stomach, his throat tightens up, and his head feels disconnected from his neck, like there’s only a tenuous strand connecting the two.

He doesn’t remember the last time he was this terrified.

It’s all too possible that he’s never been this terrified.

Steven is sitting at the bottom of the stairs with his back to Andrew, but Andrew can see that his leg is bouncing rapidly up and down, and he’s clutching his phone between his fingers like a life preserver. He’s staring down between his feet, but when Andrew starts walking down the stairs, his head swivels around, and a smile breaks across his face.

“Hey!” he says, jumping to his feet and stashing his phone in his pocket. Waving a hand at the bear, he asks, “You bringing him home?”

“Yeah. Not enough room at my desk.” Andrew tries his best to keep his voice steady and level, but he doesn’t think that he succeeds. “I was thinking he could live on my bookshelf.”

“Definitely a better home than the props room.” Andrew doesn’t know what Steven was helping Jen with today, but there’s a smudge of gold glitter on his temple, and he barely manages to restrain himself from reaching out and brushing it away. “Maybe you could fix his mouth somehow.”

“Maybe. Or I could put another cigarette in there.”

“If you do that,” Steven says, pushing the lobby door open, “I’ll take him back. And I’ll never give you another present. Not even a single macaron.”

Even though it’s very clearly a joke, Andrew still feels his stomach swoop.

Some of the day’s heat has dissipated, but the sun is reflecting off the buildings around them, turning every pane of glass into a spark of light that is too bright to look at. Andrew lowers his gaze, meaning to turn his eyes towards the pavement so that he doesn’t have to squint, but before he can make it that far, he stops on Steven’s hand. It’s dangling free at his side, so close to Andrew’s that their knuckles are almost brushing. He can feel Steven’s hand moving through the air, swinging back and forth in time with his steps.

The urge to close the already minimal space hits him, and before he can talk himself out of it, he does just that.

He holds his breath for the few seconds it takes him to fit his fingers between Steven’s, expecting all the while that Steven will stop walking or will pull his hand away. But while his footsteps stutter, he doesn’t do either of those things; instead, he curls his own fingers down, so that they’re palm to palm, and squeezes lightly.

Andrew starts breathing again.

Once they get to his car, Steven draws to a stop beside the passenger door. Out here, the glitter clinging to his temple is almost painfully bright, catching the stray rays of sun. His eyes flick down to where their hands are intertwined and then back up, and the softness of his smile makes Andrew’s heart trip over itself.

He’s spent a lot of time over the last few years thinking about kissing Steven, but the urge to lean in and press their lips together has never been more overwhelming than it is right now.

“Ready?” Steven asks, giving Andrew’s hand another squeeze. Andrew momentarily thinks about bringing Steven’s hand to his mouth so he can press his lips to his knuckles, but he thinks better of it. Taking his hand was one risk; it’s too early in the night to take another.

So he settles for nodding and reluctantly sliding his hand free.

“Yeah. I’m ready.”

Even though Andrew can still feel the heat of Steven’s palm burned into his own, the drive to the theater almost feels normal, like they’ve just finished up a Worth It episode and Steven is giving him a lift home. Steven has the radio on, but it’s turned down low enough that it’s little more than a murmur of sound, and he keeps pointing things out as they drive: a new taqueria that’s opened up, a brightly colored mural splashed against a concrete wall, an adorable dog tied up outside of a shop. He does it all without making a single misstep on the road. The only sign that anything is different, that this isn’t just an ordinary night, is that he’s talking a little bit faster than usual.

Well, that and the fact that he keeps smiling at Andrew, soft around the edges, so damn beautiful in the late afternoon sunlight that Andrew almost can’t bear to look at him.

By the time they make it to the theater and get snacks, the previews are already playing. They grab two seats in the back row and settle in, popcorn spilling over the edge of the bag and onto the floor. Steven immediately steals a handful and knocks his knee against Andrew’s. At first, Andrew thinks it’s an accident, a side effect of him trying to get comfortable, but he doesn’t move it away. It stays there, and after a moment, Steven’s shoulder presses into his own too, even though the armrest must be digging into his ribs.

“I don’t really know what this movie is about,” he whispers. Andrew starts turning his head to answer and freezes midway through the process, because Steven is right there. If he keeps turning, they’ll be close enough for their noses to touch. He’ll be close enough to see every dark fleck of Steven’s eyes illuminated by the flicker of the screen, close enough to feel Steven’s breath against his own mouth.

He’s pretty sure if he gets that close, he won’t be able to stop himself from leaning in and closing the space between them, regardless of the fact there’s at least thirty other people in the room with them.

So he simply murmurs, “Me neither,” before he turns back to face the screen, heart racing. He grabs a helping of too-buttery popcorn so that he has something to do with his hands, so that he doesn’t do something stupid like drop one to Steven’s knee or to the swoop of his neck.

But the popcorn only lasts so long. Almost as soon as they finish the bag off, Andrew’s fingers start itching to touch Steven somehow. It’s an itch he’s felt before, but never this strongly, and he can’t help but wonder if it’s because they held hands earlier, if that fully roused something that he’s been able to keep at bay for the last few years.

The movie, which is some kind of spy thriller, seems fairly interesting, but he quickly loses track of the finer details of the plot. All he can focus on are the places where they’re pressed together, on the way Steven occasionally gasps or winces. When he leans over to whisper a comment about a fight scene, his breath tickles against the side of Andrew’s neck.

It’s that particular action that makes Andrew decide to fully throw caution to the wind.

He doesn’t try to be smooth about it, doesn’t try to pull the ol’ yawn-and-stretch move; he just moves a little closer, until the armrest is digging into his side, and drapes his arm around Steven’s shoulders. For a split-second, he waits for the other shoe to drop, but almost immediately, Steven cants his head over to rest on Andrew’s shoulder. It can’t be a very comfortable angle, but that’s where he stays for the rest of the movie. Even when the credits start to roll, he doesn’t move, at least not right away. Andrew doesn’t want to move either; his fingers are curled into the soft, worn fabric of Steven’s hoodie, and all it would take to press a kiss against the top of his head would be for Andrew to duck his head a little.

“That was pretty good,” Steven says, burying a yawn against Andrew’s chest as the lights come up. “Did you like it?”

Truthfully, Andrew can barely remember a single detail about the movie, but he nods anyways.

“Yeah,” he answers as he reluctantly slides his arm off Steven’s shoulder and stoops to grab their garbage from the floor. “I liked it.” Technically, while it might not be the whole truth, it also isn’t a lie; regardless of whether the movie was any good, he knows that he liked the experience of it.

As soon as they’re both on their feet, Steven starts leading the way down the narrow aisle between the rows of seats. He doesn’t look back, but his hand reaches backwards towards Andrew, and the slight wiggle of his fingers tells Andrew what he needs to know: namely, that it’s okay for him to slide his fingers back into the gap between Steven’s.

So he does exactly that.

While the concrete and pavement has retained some of the day’s heat, there’s a fine drizzle falling from the sky when they step out into the parking lot that makes Andrew wish he had a coat with him. Steven stops while they’re still underneath the marquee, safely sheltered from the rain. His thumb is absently dragging up and down Andrew’s finger, leaving what feels like a fine trail of fire in its wake.

“I ate too much popcorn,” he groans.

“We did this wrong,” Andrew agrees. “We should have done dinner first. And then a movie.”

“Next time.” He says it like a promise, punctuates it by lightly squeezing Andrew’s hand. “We’ll learn from our mistakes.”

In any other context, Andrew guarantees that the words wouldn’t make his heart skip a beat. As is, between the sound of them slipping from Steven’s mouth, the feeling of his fingers tangled with Steven’s and the way the streetlights are casting his hair light orange, he falls a little further in love.

During the fall, he finds another shred of boldness, a shred that he clings to as he opens his mouth.

“Do you want to go back to my place?” he asks, trying his best to keep the words from leaving his mouth in a jumbled mess. “I don’t want to even look at food right now, but…”

I don’t want this night to end is on the tip of his tongue, but the words remain just out of reach.

Somehow, even though the words don’t leave his mouth, he suspects that Steven hears them anyway, based on the smile he flashes in Andrew’s direction.

“I could go for some tea, if you have some.”

“I have tea and popcorn, just in case you change your mind about wanting more.”

Steven groans and uses their intertwined hands to lightly punch Andrew in the side of the leg.

“Don’t talk to me about popcorn,” he says, using his free hand to pull his hood up before he tugs Andrew towards the parking lot. “You owe me a cup of tea and another movie just for bringing it up.”

Truthfully, there’s no reason for Andrew to flush at the thought. They’ve watched dozens of movies at his apartment together, fallen asleep on the couch in the middle of something after a long day of filming more times than he can count.

But that was before tonight. Now, there’s a new dimension to the thought, possibilities to consider, like whether or not Steven will melt into his side rather than lean against the opposite armrest, whether or not he’ll fall asleep with his head resting on Andrew’s shoulder, wrapped up underneath the throw blanket that Andrew purchased specifically because Steven is cold, all the time.

“Fine,” he answers, shivering when rain runs down the back of his neck. “But I get to pick the movie.”

“Okay.” When they separate to get into the car, Steven’s fingers drag down the length of Andrew’s palm, and Andrew shivers again. “I trust you.”

Considering what they’re talking about, Andrew’s pretty sure that those words shouldn’t mean as much as they do.

By the time they get back to his apartment, his nerves have returned.

He’s made it this far without messing things up, but if things go wrong now, he’s going to be reminded of it every damn day. There will be no escaping it, unless he moves out of the apartment.

But even if he wanted to back out, it’s too late. Steven is kicking his shoes off by the door, Corporal Wojtek tucked underneath one arm, rain drying on his cheeks.

“I’m going to find him a place to live,” he says, waving the bear for emphasis. “Surprise me with the tea.”

While Steven wanders off, Andrew drops his laptop bag off on the kitchen table and digs through the cupboards for two mugs and some tea. Once he’s turned the kettle on, once he no longer has a distraction for his hands, he realizes that his fingers are shaking faintly, like he’s gone too long without eating.

“Stop it,” he mutters to himself, curling his fingers around the edge of the counter, popcorn sitting heavily in his stomach. He finds himself searching through his mind for Ryan’s pep talks, but while they’d helped in the moment, now they just make him more nervous, remind him of how sure everyone else is that the night is going to go well.

That amount of pressure is, frankly, terrifying.

“Are you okay?”

Andrew turns around to find Steven standing in the doorway, mouth creased into a frown.

“Fine,” Andrew says, trying his best to sound breezy or, at the very least, neutral. “Where did you put him?”

“On top of the dresser in your bedroom.” Steven’s frown only grows as he walks across the room to stand in front of Andrew. “You don’t look okay, Andrew. Did I… do you want me to go?”

“No!” Andrew almost chokes on the word in his haste to spit it out. “No, Steven. I don’t want you to go.” He sighs and curls his hands around the counter again, searching for some steadiness. He doesn’t exactly want to dissect his own insecurities, but he doesn’t want Steven to think that he’s not happy here with him, that he’s somehow done something wrong. “It’s just… I feel like I’m going to fuck this up somehow. I’m scared that I’m going to do the wrong thing, and you’re going to realize that you’ve made a mistake.”

Before he can decide whether he wants to shut his mouth or say anything further, Steven crashes into him, hard enough to make Andrew stumble back against the counter, and tosses his arms around Andrew’s neck. Andrew doesn’t think; he ducks his face into Steven’s neck, flings his arms around Steven’s back, and pulls him in close.

It should feel suffocating, being so thoroughly wrapped up in someone, but instead, after being strung as tight as a tripwire for over twenty-four hours, Andrew finally feels some relief.

When Steven eventually moves away, he doesn’t go far; after a moment of hovering in front of Andrew, he braces their foreheads together, arms still wrapped tight around his neck, eyes closed.

“I’m scared too,” he says quietly. “Actually, I’m terrified. But I’ve wanted this for years, Andrew. Even if this doesn’t work out in the long run, I know it’s not a mistake. Not for me.” His eyes slowly open and lock with Andrew’s. “Okay?”

Andrew doesn’t know if he can actually answer that question, not in any verbal way at least; there’s a lump in his throat blocking the way, and there’s so much in Steven’s statement to unpack that his mind can’t sort through it fast enough.

So instead, he closes his eyes, tilts his head back ever so slightly, and kisses Steven.

Steven’s arms tighten even more around his neck, and he sighs quietly against Andrew’s mouth as he parts his lips a little, just enough so that they fit together better. Andrew bunches both of his hands tightly into the back of Steven’s sweater and tries not to simply sag to the kitchen floor and drag Steven down with him.

When Steven pulls away to take a breath, he drags his palms up Andrew’s neck and curves them around his cheeks, splays his fingers wide. His hands feel burning hot, and Andrew suspects he’ll be able to feel them there long after they slide away, lingering like a tattoo.

It’s far too soon to say it, but I love you almost falls from his mouth like an apple from a tree.

“You have no idea how many times I’ve thought about that,” Steven says with a slight laugh, cheeks flushing bright pink.

“I don’t know,” Andrew muses, feeling remarkably breathless despite the briefness of the kiss. “I’ve thought about it a lot.”

“Was it as good as you imagined?” Based on the grin overtaking his mouth, Steven is teasing, but Andrew knows the answer immediately.

“Better. So much better, Steven.”

In the seconds before Steven abruptly dives back in and slides his fingers up into Andrew’s hair, his facial expression softens into something that almost looks like pure and utter adoration.

Andrew almost melts.

They don’t end up making tea. Every time they break apart, they fall right back together again. On a purely theoretical level, Andrew is aware that there’s still a world outside of his kitchen, but it’s hard to keep that in mind. It’s hard to think of anything that isn’t directly related to the feeling of Steven’s teeth tentatively pressing into his bottom lip, to the feeling of his skin against Andrew’s fingertips where he’s slid them up underneath the back of his hoodie. It’s like the world has shrunk to a pinhole that only encompasses the two of them.

Eventually, they break away again to breathe, but before Andrew can lean back in, Steven twists and tries to bury a wide yawn into his own shoulder.

“I should probably go,” he murmurs, but he doesn’t move out of Andrew’s arms.

“You could stay,” Andrew responds, gently rubbing his thumb back and forth against the base of Steven’s spine. A light tremor courses through his body, and while it’s definitely not the time or place to explore that further, Andrew tucks it away for future reference. “You can borrow some of my clothes.”

Steven smiles and bumps his nose against Andrew’s. “Do you want me to stay?”

“Yes.” It comes out a little more eager than he intended, and he presses ahead so that Steven doesn’t get the wrong idea. “I can take the couch, if you want.”

“Why would I want that? I trust you.” Steven presses a quick kiss to the corner of Andrew’s mouth before he steps back and buries another yawn into his arm. “But if we don’t go to bed soon, I’m not going to make it past the couch.”

“Well, we can’t have that,” Andrew says. There’s a strange sense of giddiness flooding through him, and he almost wants to laugh in sheer disbelief that the night has actually come to this. Reaching out and taking Steven’s hand, he continues, “Let’s go.”

He gives Steven free reign of his closet and dresser so that he can find something that will (mostly) fit him, and he changes in the bathroom and brushes his teeth. When he returns to the bedroom, he begins to say, “There’s a toothbrush on the counter for you.”

He makes it no further than the second word. The rest die in his throat.

Steven is stretched out in the middle of the bed, one arm tucked under his head, eyes closed. He’s borrowed a pair of Andrew’s flannel pajama pants, which are a few inches too short, and a plain black t-shirt, which is a little too big. He looks so comfortable, like he’s been in Andrew’s bed a thousand times before, that Andrew hates to disturb him, but he’s pretty sure Steven would regret not brushing his teeth come morning.

“Hey,” he says, settling down on the edge of the mattress and nudging Steven’s hip. “You can’t fall asleep yet.”

“Not my fault,” Steven mumbles, words thick with sleep as he slowly cracks one eye open. “Your bed’s too comfy.”

“It’ll be even comfier once you’ve brushed your teeth.”

“That’s not… I don’t think that’s how that works,” Steven responds, but he sits up anyways and shuffles out of the room with another jaw-cracking yawn. While he waits for him to come back, Andrew plugs both of their phones in and turns off the overhead light, leaving only the small lamp on his nightstand, which is easy enough to reach from the bed, on. He only checks a few of his notifications before Steven returns. There’s a few stray water droplets trailing down his cheeks and along the side of his neck, and Andrew is grateful that his phone is still in his hands; it keeps him from doing something foolish, like reaching out and tracing the trails of those droplets with his thumb, or maybe even his mouth.

“Let’s see if you’re right about the bed being comfier,” Steven mumbles, sliding under the blankets. Andrew turns the lamp out, plunging them into darkness that’s barely broken by the faint glow of a streetlight outside. As soon as he’s under the covers as well, Steven slides over and drops his head to Andrew’s chest.

“Is this okay?” he asks, slinging one long arm over Andrew’s waist. Objectively, Andrew’s pretty sure that this should feel like too much, too soon, that it should be almost overwhelming but, perhaps because he’s wanted it for so long, it feels like a missing part of his life has finally slotted into place.

“This is perfect,” he answers quietly, pressing a kiss to the top of Steven’s head and moving his arm so that he can wrap it around Steven’s shoulders.

He wasn’t feeling especially tired before, but now that he’s in the dark, now that the room is quiet enough for him to hear the steady rhythm of Steven’s breathing, he can feel sleep threatening to pull him under. Part of him wants to surrender to it, because the sooner he falls asleep, the sooner he gets to see if waking up beside Steven is every bit as wonderful as he’s dreamed, but there’s a question he’s curious about. It’s a question that’s been in his mind all day, but he was so busy worrying that he couldn’t concentrate on it. Now that his anxieties have been (mostly) quelled, it’s there, loud and clear, demanding an answer.

He’s not sure what kind of answer he’s going to get, seeing as Steven is on the verge of unconsciousness, but his curiosity is too strong to wait until morning.

“Why now?” he mumbles into Steven’s hair as he whisks his thumb back and forth along the smooth skin underneath Steven’s sleeve. “After all this time?”

When a few seconds tick by without an answer, Andrew assumes that Steven has already fallen asleep, that his curiosity will damn well have to wait. But, just when he’s prepared to drift off himself, Steven shrugs minutely.

“I don’t know,” he answers, words so sleep-muddled that it takes Andrew a moment to understand them. “It just felt like, if I didn’t do it soon, I’d never do it, and I couldn’t take that chance. ‘sides, I figured I could always say it was for a video if you said no.”

Andrew can’t help but laugh.

“Well,” he murmurs, letting his eyes fall closed, “thank you for asking me.”

If Steven says anything further, Andrew is asleep before he can hear it.

When Andrew wakes up, there’s early morning sunlight drifting through the windows, Steven is still fast asleep on his chest, and Andrew’s arm is completely and utterly numb.

If it wasn’t for that last detail, he’s pretty sure that he could stay in bed for hours, simply soaking up the sunlight and the heat from Steven’s body, could let himself be lulled back to sleep by Steven’s breathing. As is, he carefully slides his arm out from underneath Steven and gets out of bed, takes his time so that he doesn’t wake him up.

At the very least, if he’s going to be up, he can make breakfast for them.

He’s putting the finishing touches on some blueberry pancakes when his phone vibrates on the counter with a message from Annie to the group chat.

did Corporal Wojtek find a home?

Before Andrew can answer, Steven sends a blurry picture of the bear sitting on top of Andrew’s dresser. The picture is shot from a strange, tilted angle, and perhaps it’s because of his familiarity with the angle, since it’s what he sees when he wakes up almost every morning, but Andrew thinks that it’s pretty clear that it was shot from his bed, and he has no doubt that Adam and Annie are going to be able to connect the dots.

Moments after the picture, Steven sends another message.

before either of you can ask, the date went great.

Andrew grins as he loads up a tray with two plates, two mugs of coffee and a bottle of syrup and carries it to the bedroom.

Steven is still underneath the blankets, lying on his side, tapping away at his phone, but as soon as Andrew steps inside, Steven tosses it aside.

“C’mere,” he says, voice still thick with sleep, as he starts making grabby hands, the way he does when Andrew has a treat that he’s pretending that he doesn’t want to share.

“But the food’s going to get cold,” Andrew answers, even as he sets the tray on the floor and climbs back onto the bed.

“That’s what microwaves are for.” Steven pulls the blankets back so that Andrew can slide back underneath them, drops his arm back around Andrew’s waist and twists his fingers in the fabric of his shirt. Andrew’s breath hitches when one of Steven’s fingertips brushes against his skin, and he presses his palm to Steven’s cheek.

It still doesn’t feel real, that this is something he actually gets to experience outside of the theater of his mind.

He wonders if it’ll ever feel real.

Steven’s phone vibrates from its hiding place in the sheets with what Andrew is willing to bet is a message to their group chat, and his grin returns in full force.

“So,” he says, shifting closer, “the date went great?”

Steven laughs and turns his head to press a soft kiss to Andrew’s palm. “What do you think?”

If there’s a question Andrew has ever known the answer for, it’s that one.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, leaning in so that he can steal what he hopes will be the first good morning kiss of many. “I think it did.”

#standrew #mine #mine: fic #me writing fluff again?#it's more likely than you'd think #anyways here's this!#long post

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moonwalkertrance · 6 years

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Trump’s Caravan Hysteria Led to This

The president and his supporters insisted that several thousand Honduran migrants were a looming menace—and the Pittsburgh gunman took that seriously.

On Tuesday, October 16, President Donald Trump started tweeting.

“The United States has strongly informed the President of Honduras that if the large Caravan of people heading to the U.S. is not stopped and brought back to Honduras, no more money or aid will be given to Honduras, effective immediately!”

“We have today informed the countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador that if they allow their citizens, or others, to journey through their borders and up to the United States, with the intention of entering our country illegally, all payments made to them will STOP (END)!”

Vice President Mike Pence also tweeted:

“Spoke to President Hernandez of Honduras about the migrant caravan heading to the U.S. Delivered strong message from @POTUS: no more aid if caravan is not stopped. Told him U.S. will not tolerate this blatant disregard for our border & sovereignty.”

The apparent impetus for this outrage was a segment on Fox News that morning that detailed a migrant caravan thousands of miles away in Honduras. The caravan, which began sometime in mid-October, is made up of refugees fleeing violence in their home country. Over the next few weeks, Trump did his best to turn the caravan into a national emergency. Trump falsely told his supporters that there were “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners” in the caravan, a claim that had no basis in fact and that was meant to imply that terrorists were hiding in the caravan—one falsehood placed on another. Defense Secretary James Mattis ordered more troops to the border. A Fox News host took it upon herself to ask Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsenwhether there was “any scenario under which if people force their way across the border they could be shot at,” to which Nielsen responded, “We do not have any intention right now to shoot at people.”

Pence told Fox News on Friday, “What the president of Honduras told me is that the caravan was organized by leftist organizations, political activists within Honduras, and he said it was being funded by outside groups, and even from Venezuela … So the American people, I think, see through this—they understand this is not a spontaneous caravan of vulnerable people.”

The Department of Homeland Security’s Twitter account “confirmed” that within the caravan are people who are “gang members or have significant criminal histories,” without offering evidence of any such ties. Trump sought to blame the opposition party for the caravan’s existence. “Every time you see a Caravan, or people illegally coming, or attempting to come, into our Country illegally, think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws!” Trump tweeted on October 22. “Remember the Midterms! So unfair to those who come in legally.”

In the right-wing fever swamps, where the president’s every word is worshipped, commenters began amplifying Trump’s exhortations with new details. Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida wondered whether George Soros—the wealthy Jewish philanthropist whom Trump and several members of the U.S. Senate blamed for the protests against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and who was recently targeted with a bomb—was behind the migrant caravan. NRATV, the propaganda organ of the National Rifle Association, linked two Republican obsessions, voter fraud and immigration. Chuck Holton told NRATV’s viewers that Soros was sending the caravan to the United States so the migrants could vote: “It’s telling that a bevy of left-wing groups are partnering with a Hungarian-born billionaire and the Venezuelan government to try to influence the 2018 midterms by sending Honduran migrants north in the thousands.” On CNN, the conservative commentator Matt Schlapp pointedly asked the anchor Alisyn Camerota, “Who’s paying for the caravan? Alisyn, who’s paying for the caravan?,” before later answering his own question: “Because of the liberal judges and other people that intercede, including George Soros, we have too much chaos at our southern border.” On Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show, one guest said, “These individuals are not immigrants—these are people that are invading our country,” as another guest asserted they were seeking “the destruction of American society and culture.”

In the meantime, much of the mainstream press abetted Trump’s effort to make the midterm election a referendum on the caravan. Popular news podcasts devoted entire episodes to the caravan. It remained on the front pages of major media websites. It was an overwhelming topic of conversation on cable news, where Trumpists freely spread disinformation about the threat the migrants posed, while news anchors displayed exasperation over their false claims, only to invite them back on the next day’s newscast to do it all over again.

In reality, the caravan was thousands of miles and weeks away from the U.S. border, shrinking in size, and unlikely to reach the U.S. before the election. If the migrants reach the U.S., they have the right under U.S. law to apply for asylum at a port of entry. If their claims are not accepted, they will be turned away. There is no national emergency; there is no ominous threat. There is only a group of desperate people looking for a better life, who have a right to request asylum in the United States and have no right to stay if their claims are rejected. Trump is reportedly aware that his claims about the caravan are false. An administration official told the Daily Beast simply, “It doesn’t matter if it’s 100 percent accurate … this is the play.” The “play” was to demonize vulnerable people with falsehoods in order to frighten Trump’s base to the polls.

Nevertheless, some took the claims of the president and his allies seriously. On Saturday morning, Shabbat morning, a gunman walked into the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and killed 11 people. The massacre capped off a week of terrorism, in which one man mailed bombs to nearly a dozen Trump critics and another killed two black people in a grocery store after failing to force his way into a black church.

Before committing the Tree of Life massacre, the shooter, who blamed Jews for the caravan of “invaders” and who raged about it on social media, made it clear that he was furious at hias, founded as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, a Jewish group that helps resettle refugees in the United States. He shared posts on Gab, a social-media site popular with the alt-right, expressing alarm at the sight of “massive human caravans of young men from Honduras and El Salvador invading America thru our unsecured southern border.” And then he wrote, “hias likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”

The people killed on Saturday were killed for trying to make the world a better place, as their faith exhorts them to do. The history of the Jewish people is one of displacement, statelessness, and persecution. What groups like hias do in helping refugees, they do with the knowledge that comes from a history of being the targets of demagogues who persecute minorities in pursuit of power.

Ordinarily, a politician cannot be held responsible for the actions of a deranged follower. But ordinarily, politicians don’t praise supporters who have mercilessly beaten a Latino man as “very passionate.” Ordinarily, they don’t offer to pay supporters’ legal bills if they assault protesters on the other side. They don’t praise acts of violence against the media. They don’t defend neo-Nazi rioters as “fine people.” They don’t justify sending bombs to their critics by blaming the media for airing criticism. Ordinarily, there is no historic surgein anti-Semitism, much of it targeted at Jewish critics, coinciding with a politician’s rise. And ordinarily, presidents do not blatantly exploit their authority in an effort to terrify white Americans into voting for their party. For the past few decades, most American politicians, Republican and Democrat alike, have been careful not to urge their supporters to take matters into their own hands. Trump did everything he could to fan the flames, and nothing to restrain those who might take him at his word.

Many of Trump’s defenders argue that his rhetoric is mere shtick—that his attacks, however cruel, aren’t taken 100 percent seriously by his supporters. But to make this argument is to concede that following Trump’s statements to their logical conclusion could lead to violence against his targets, and it is only because most do not take it that way that the political violence committed on Trump’s behalf is as limited as it currently is.

The Tree of Life shooter criticized Trump for not being racist or anti-Semitic enough. But with respect to the caravan, the shooter merely followed the logic of the president and his allies: He was willing to do whatever was necessary to prevent an “invasion” of Latinos planned by perfidious Jews, a treasonous attempt to seek “the destruction of American society and culture.”

The apparent spark for the worst anti-Semitic massacre in American history was a racist hoax inflamed by a U.S. president seeking to help his party win a midterm election. There is no political gesture, no public statement, and no alteration in rhetoric or behavior that will change this fact. The shooter might have found a different reason to act on a different day. But he chose to act on Saturday, and he apparently chose to act in response to a political fiction that the president himself chose to spread and that his followers chose to amplify.

As for those who aided the president in his propaganda campaign, who enabled him to prey on racist fears to fabricate a national emergency, who said to themselves, “This is the play”? Every single one of them bears some responsibility for what followed. Their condemnations of anti-Semitism are meaningless. Their thoughts and prayers are worthless. Their condolences are irrelevant. They can never undo what they have done, and what they have done will never be forgotten.

#ideas #Donald Trump #Robert Bowers #Pittsburgh Shooter #Jews #Immigrants #Refugees #Gun Violence #Hate Crime #Hate Speech #Racism #Politics #MagaBomber #Cesar Sayoc #Trumpism #Alt-Right #GAB

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the-tendo-blog · 7 years

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the curious case of cooper Barnes

HD week day 6: appreciating the shit out of the cast

I want to say this is based on a true story but I honestly have no idea

Anyways cooper here is underrated as hell so here’s this shitty and surprisingly raunchy fic about his anime backstory

"What the fuck, Sean?" Jace asked with confusion.

"No, think about it! Cooper never tells us about his past, so it's totally realistic if he's actually an escaped lab experiment!" Sean replied. "Just look at him!"

Jace looked over at their coworker. We wasn't really doing anything of note, just drinking some soda, and once he finished it he crushed the can with his hand and took a bite out of it, chewing on the metal like gum.

"...okay, I know he's done weird stuff like that, but that doesn't mean he's an escaped lab experiment." The blond said, giving His friend a weird look. Cooper flipped them off and walked away.

"No, listen to me dude, he's done way more than that." Sean said, leaning in close and his voice suddenly a whisper. "Meet me at my house after work. I have something to show you."

Extremely skeptical, jace agreed to do so.

Once he arrived, Sean turned around in his computer room seat like some kind of bad guy in a movie, grinning just like one too.

"Ok, what did you want to show me?" Jace asked, crossing his arms.

Sean tilted his head. "Do you think you're ready?"

"What does that even mean?"

"The things I've found definitely are not for the faint of heart."

"Please, it's cooper barnes. How bad can it be?"

"Worse than you think."

Jace sighed and walked over to the computer. Sean followed him, scooting along on his chair.

the screen had an article titled 'Henry danger: a new nickelodeon gay subtext classic?'

Jace had a confused yet inexplicably surprised look on his face. "Sean, what the hell is this?"

"I know, just look." The young man at the computer said as he scrolled down to a specific line and ran the mouse over it. "Read that."

Jace looked at the small paragraph.

Cooper barnes, shown here, is no stranger to gay things. He starred in a homoerotic film about football players.

"Wait... he starred in WHAT?" Jace shouted in surprise.

"Gay porn, Jace! Cooper did gay porn!" Sean shouted back. Thank god the computer room had thick walls.

"You're joking, right? This article is a joke?"

"Not at all."

"ok, but how do you know that's true? You can't just use one article." Jace replied, clear skepticism in his voice.

"Okay, yeah, but it's not like it's a clickhole article or anything." Sean said, "i do have more evidence, though."

"Oh yeah? What?"

Sean quickly searched up 'cooper barnes gay porn' and got a surprising amount of results, all of them having cooper's name in the title.

"...dude! No way that's real." Jace lied, he believed Sean now, but didn't want to admit it so quickly.

"Do I need to show you pictures, jace?" sean replied, irritated.

"No! No! Absolutely not!" Jace responded. "I don't want to see that shit!"

"Good choice." His friend replied. "I really wish I could unsee that shit."

"Oh god."

"Anyways, cooper also has a lot of other weird suit going on for him." Sean said as he closed the tab and got ready to type something else up.

"And what exactly would that be?"

"When I first found out about the gay porn, I decided to do more research to see if I could find anything else." Sean began. "You'd expect him to have a Wikipedia page like us, right?"

"Yeah..." jace replied, sickened yet curious.

"I looked for it, because surely they'd mention gay porn on his page, right?"

"Yeah..."

"I looked, and he doesn't. Not outside of the Henry danger wiki."

"Bullshit! I know he has one!" Jace suddenly shouted.

"Yeah, in polish!" Sean shouted back.

"Wait, what?"

Sean showed him, And sure enough, there it was.

"This is so weird..."

"And you should go through his IMDB later, it's got a lot of weird shit."

"I believe that."

"Also, i think matthew zhang found out about this first, but cooper also confessed to killing someone in an interview recently." Sean changed the subject a bit.

"Wait, what the hell?" Jace responded, not sure if he should believe him.

"Seriously, let me show you the article he sent me."

Sean pasted a link in the search bar, scrolled for a while, and pointed his mouse at a passage.

"It's the first question of an interview." He replied.

Jace read over the passage which cooper told a suspiciously detailed story of a first date where he took a girl out to make out and do other things in his car before some dude high on meth or something tried to attack them, so cooper tried to fight them and his date ended up killing them, and they dumped the body in a river and left to get food and wash up.

"...oh my god, dude."

"I feel like it actually happened, but he tried to pass it off as a joke." Sean explained. Jace nodded in agreement.

The two boys were about to discuss further, but it was interrupted by Sean's phone ringing.

They looked at the screen. Matthew zhang was calling. Sean picked up the phone and answered, then put it on speaker.

"You're on speaker right now, Matt. Tell us what you found."

"The Pornhub podcast said they're going to have cooper barnes on their show, we need to follow them over and witness him expose himself as an ex-gay porn star." He said through the phone. "I'm headed to your house right now. We're following his car to the place."

Sean hung up and dragged Jace outside, where Matthew pulled up in a surprisingly expensive looking car.

"Hey guys! I had to call an uber!"

"What kind of uber driver has a whip that expensive?" Sean shouted back.

"No time to explain, get in the car both of you!"

Sean and Jace ran in, shut the door and drove off.

"Okay, who's driving us?" Jace responded as they took off.

"Me, asshole." A voice said. Sean looked over at the driver as he followed cooper's car.

Once both hit a red light, the driver turned around to look at them. Jace's jaw dropped.

"POST MALONE?"

"Yeah, stop freaking out. I'm just as invested in this as you are, you know." Post replied, returning to following cooper's car.

"What? Since when do you watch henry danger?"

"I don't. My friend told me about it."

Jace and Sean looked at each other and shrugged.

"By the way, can nobody mention the murder? I don't want whatever KGB shit cooper used to cover his tracks hunting us down because we know too much." Matthew zhang asked them before grabbing the aux cord and turning on some lil toenail music, which resulted in everyone telling him to 'turn that shit off'

After a lot of arguing and conspiracy theories, they finally arrived significantly earlier than cooper did to pornhub studios for the podcast.

"Okay, how do we sneak in? Post is the only one who looks old enough to even be there." Jace asked, still trying to process what was happening.

"I have an idea." Post Malone replied and took two black suits and sunglasses out of the trunk.

"Blond kid and your friend there,"

"Our names are jace and Sean!"

"Jay and sam, get changed in the car, you'll be my secret service agents." Post instructed.

Jace shrugged and crawled back into the car to do so.

"What about me?" Matthew zhang asked.

"You're going to cling to my stomach and we're going to put a shirt over you so I look like some fatass." Post said.

Matt cringed a little, but it was worth the risk to find out the truth about cooper barnes.

Once Jace and Sean were in their disguises, they both climbed out and noticed cooper had arrived.

"Follow that cryptid!" Sean whisper-shouted.

"Dammit, sam." Post Malone replied.

Sean sighed and they followed post inside, a considerable distance behind cooper.

Getting into the building undetected was hard, they had a few close calls as cooper kept looking around warily, in his shitty varsity jacket with the pornhub logo with his last name and the number 69 on the back. None of them could take him seriously wearing that.

But overall, they managed to get in and follow the target undetected.

Once cooper found the podcast room, he entered and shut the door Behind him, allowing the four cryptid hunters to come out from hiding behind the corner.

"You can come out now, matt." Post Malone said, lifting up the second shirt that Matthew zhang fell out of.

"Thank god! It was starting to smell fucking terrible!" Matt cried in relief.

"Hey! It's not my fault they made me use cherry scented lube!" Someone said nearby.

"Nobody was talking to you, asshole." Jace replied.

"Oh..." the person replied and walked off sulking.

After that exchange, everyone put their ear up to the door, trying to hear anything they could, searching for the perfect time to strike.

So far, the podcast was quite strange. Cooper had a lengthy talk about politics with who post Malone insisted was the person running the company's twitter account, and asa Akira, which Jace swore he knew about her only by seeing the pornhub twitter account's shitposts.

Everyone gave him the benefit of the doubt.

"So when do we kick the door down and expose cooper like in a cop movie?" Matt asked everyone.

Jace and Sean simply shrugged. Sean had no idea, and Jace was still not entirely sure if this was happening, if his best friend was actually an ex gay porn star and possible serial killer, or if this was all some weird drug trip or a fever dream.

"Just wait for my countdown." Post replied, listening closer.

"One..." the rapper began. The three child actors got behind him

"Two..."

Jace's heart raced. What if there were bodyguards? What if there were assasins hiding in that room to kill them?

"Three!"

The door was kicked open with a surprising amount of force.

"STOP RIGHT THERE!"

Asa Akira, cooper barnes, and aria, the person behind the pornhub twitter account, all froze and looked at them like deer in headlights.

"you can't hide anymore, cooper! We know everything!" Matt shouted.

"Who are you guys?" Asa Akira said, confused.

"My coworkers... and post Malone...?" Cooper said, tilting his head.

"They look a little young to be in gay porn, did you-"

"Oh, god no! Im not a fucking pedophile, I'm on nickelodeon now!"

"You never said that."

"No seriously! It's called henry danger, I play-"

"We actually don't care, we just wanted to make sure you weren't a child molester or something."

"That's fair."

Cooper turned to look at them, not realizing jace was with the three.

"Okay, first up. Matt, we already knew you were a meme loving fuck so this was probably hilarious to you when you found out about my past." The brunet began.

"Yeah, I'm not going to make fun of you for it though." Matthew zhang replied, awkwardly looking around the room.

"Sean, are you cool with this?" Cooper asked.

Sean nodded. "Yeah, I'm not some asshole who shames people because they did sex work in the past. You do what you have to do, ya know?"

"Thanks bro I almost had to suck dan Schneider's toes for my role as captain man" cooper said once more.

"Wait, what?"

"Nothing."

"Anyways, post Malone, why are you involved with this? Since when did you watch Henry danger?" Cooper asked and tilted his head.

"I don't, Matthew zhang told me and I honestly thought it was hilarious." Post Malone replied. "Also, there's one more person here."

"Whomst?"

"Jace normie."

At least he got my first name right... Jace thought as he ran out to see cooper, feeling extremely mixed emotions.

"Jace! Hi..." cooper started, visibly terrified.

"Cooper seriously, why the fuck didn't you tell me?" Jace suddenly screamed. "I'm having an existential crisis over this!"

"Dude, you were like 14 when I met you, you wouldn't have been able to handle that. I was going to tell you once you turned 18, I'm not tryna fuck tho don't freak out."

"Okay good otherwise I'd be really scared."

The two yelled at each other about morals for a while until jace came to his senses.

"Man fuck this lmao, wanna go get food?"

"Hell Yeah I do"

And so the entire cryptid hunting team, aria, asa akira, And the cryptid himself all went out to get some food, and life was good.

#hdweek #henry danger #there is no effort in this #Jace norman #cooper barnes #sean ryan fox

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