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mahamid110 · 1 year ago

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nadzhosny2 · 1 year ago

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We need to wake the hell up

I have seen more horrific and devastating images coming from Gaza in the past week than ever before but the images I saw two days ago have got to be the worst I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

The settler colony of Israel bombed Al Ahli hospital in Gaza killing at least 810 people while hundreds more are buried beneath the wreckage. Instagram was full of nightmare footage; videos and images of the aftermath of the blast; bodies strewn everywhere, blood on the floor, fires ranging, people covered in soot and dust running for cover. There was a video of a man carrying the remains of his son in plastic bags. The REMAINS of his son because his body had been blasted apart, like so many others. There were body parts laying everywhere that it is going to be next to impossible to accurately determine how many people have died. That hospital had displaced people seeking refuge, doctors, nurses and aid workers trying to heal the already massive amount of wounded from the previous bombings. All wiped out, massacred in minutes. As all of this was happening, Hananya Naftali, who creates digital content for Israel’s Prime Minister posted a now-deleted tweet saying that the Israeli Air Force struck a Hamas terrorist base inside the hospital but as soon as footage came out of the civilian deaths, they deleted the evidence, instead claiming that it was a failed rocket launched by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad that was the cause of the bombing, which the group issued a statement on denying the claims.

Nobody is reporting about this, nobody is reporting that they admitted it and then retracted it. Nobody is mentioning that they do this all the time. Nobody is mentioning how this would not be the first hospital the zionist settler colony of Israel has bombed. They have destroyed hospitals, clinics, targeted ambulances, killed medics, murdered civilians while they slept in the merciless bombardment of homes. Entire families wiped out from the civil registry. Many had fled from the north of Gaza after the call by the settler colony for them to move to the South in 24 hours for their ‘safety’. Then they slaughtered them on the road while they travelled. Two days ago, the settler colony of Israel bombed a UN humanitarian aid warehouse containing wheat flour, powdered milk and other basic necessities for survival. 95% of the water in Gaza is contaminated and will lead to severe sickness and disease. Many more will die from starvation and infections from poor treatment of injuries. What diabolical, deranged mind intentionally butchers innocent civilians? What is happening in Palestine can no longer be described as genocide or even ethnic cleansing. It is beyond mass extermination- it is total erasure and we are watching it happen. The human race is capable of the most depraved and heinous actions. We are no strangers to mass killings, to dehumanising other people. It is splattered all over our history books and we STILL DO NOT LEARN. History is constantly repeating itself; the slave trade, the Holocaust, Apartheid, the Rwandan genocide, the Srebrenica genocide and so much more violence and bloodshed all over the world. We need to WAKE THE FUCK UP! When does it end?

Are we not all human beings? Are we not made up of the same flesh and blood? The same exact body parts, capable of the same emotions? Do we not all do the same things; eat, sleep, work, shit, go out? Do we not all have the same exact right to live? Is the world not big enough for all of us to exist in peace? Why are we letting trivial differences divide us? Why do we constantly let them drive us to kill, humiliate and dehumanise? WHAT’S THE FUCKING POINT? What are we proving? Why do we have to impose rule upon other people? Why do we have to subjugate others? Why is the world filled with so much hate for fellow human beings?

We should all be asking ourselves all of these questions because truly, we have become an utter disgrace. The human race is a deplorable and despicable thing, capable of the most evil and dangerous actions imaginable.

75 years. That’s how long the Palestinians have been suffering. Being pushed out of their rightful homes by the zionist settler colony. Being denied basic human rights, being treated worse than animals, all for having the audacity to exist. What have they done to deserve all this malice, hatred and cruelty? Children in Gaza are growing up traumatised beyond belief, they will NEVER be the same. The settler colony of Israel has scarred entire GENERATIONS with their violence and the worst part is that they are still receiving support!

The Western powers that be are standing behind them as they annihilate the Palestinians in Gaza, spouting anti-Palestinian rhetoric and encouraging hateful language. The US and the West were quick to jump on the racist fabrications of baby beheadings, mass rapes and a global day of Jihad by Hamas that the settler colony was touting. Biden himself said he had seen pictures of the alleged beheadings when there were none and the White House had to quickly retract his statement. Everyone is quick to believe the most horrific actions by the Palestinians but when the settler colony bombs civilians on the road or a HOSPITAL, they are ‘defending’ themselves. The mainstream media houses are on the side of the oppressors and publishing news stories that are incorrect and using language that instills anti-Palestinian sentiment. Everyone is so ready to accept the image of the angry Arab, the evil muslim, the heinous savagery innate to our identity that they don’t even stop to question whether this is factual information or not. All this islamophobia and racism is a result of the West and their control over the media, pushing hate and discrimination down people’s throats.

This antagonism has led to bigoted attacks on innocent muslims in other countries. In Chicago, 6-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume and his mother Hanaan Shahin, 32, were attacked by their landlord on Saturday. The boy was stabbed 26 times while his mother suffered multiple wounds. expected The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a civil rights group, has reported cases of harassment, intimidation, vandalism or bigoted internet posting from people with responsible positions in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, San Diego, St. Louis and Cleveland, plus Austin, Texas, and Dearborn, Michigan. The assailant attempted to choke the mother and said “You Muslims must die,” CAIR said, citing text messages that Shahin sent to the boy’s father from the hospital. In Milan, a man assaulted UNICEF fundraisers raising money for Gaza. He was caught on video yelling at the workers while saying that he would ‘’kill’ them if they said the word ‘Palestine’ one more time. Here is the result of all the racism that is being pushed out into the world.

We have to get the truth from social media of all places. From people in Gaza themselves who are sharing their horror stories. The settler colony has cut off basic needs for the people in Gaza to survive; food, water, electricity-threatening to bomb aid trucks if they try to enter the city. All because the Palestinians had enough and tried to take back their land by any means necessary. These people have been pushed to the brink. They don’t care if they live or die as long as they defend themselves after years of being helpless. If what Hamas did was dropping a stone in the ocean, the settlers responded with a tsunami.

Today, the fear of what comes next is looming larger for Palestinians than the cruelty of the world’s apparent indifference to their suffering.

Don’t just push for a ceasefire or peace, push for their liberation. A ceasefire is temporary, even the so called ‘peace’ that everyone is touting is temporary. A halt to the violence will not free the Palestinians. When the settler colony of Israel stops bombing Gaza it will mean peace for the settlers but not the Palestinians, because peace for the settlers means the Palestinians remain living under military occupation, living under apartheid, living under the rule of a settler colony. They will still be trapped in an open air prison, they will still not be in their rightful homes, they will still have to endure checkpoints and searches in their OWN COUNTRY. The 500+ Israeli military checkpoints set up all throughout Palestinian land in the West Bank to restrict Palestinian movement will still exist; a checkpoint system only for Palestinians, not the zionist settlers. They have the freedom to go wherever and do whatever they want. A checkpoint system that is innately violent, where thousands of Palestinians line up every single day for their IDs to be checked, for their bags to be searched, their bodies to be searched, for their cars to be scanned by metal detectors. Lined up at a checkpoint with Israeli guards who are pointing guns directly at the Palestinians while they’re being searched. They have to wait for hours to pass through, in silence.

Now in this image, is there peace? Yes. But is there freedom? No. Is there equality? Fuck no. So peace for the zionist settlers means silence from the Palestinians. Settlers can only uphold their peace and freedom as long as the Palestinians are quiet and not resisting. And how does the West portray Palestinians as soon as they start resisting? Terrorists. The settler colony’s Minister of Defence called them ‘human animals’.

If you open Apple, Google or any other digital map and type Palestine, you will not find it. You will only find Israel. If you’re lucky, you may be directed to a small patchwork of what is called ‘Palestinian Territories’ firmly imbedded inside Israel lest anyone mistakenly think it is an independent nation. And of course, you will find nowhere on any map the key word that comes before Palestinian Territories to lay bare the ugly, but necessary and harrowing truth: Occupied.

In an ideal future, yes peace would be nice. It would be great actually. But we cannot accept and push this narrative when the system itself that the Israeli colony is built on, at its core, is not peaceful. The system itself is violent. The way that it was established was not peaceful. The way it’s maintained is not peaceful. And that’s why so many Palestinians say, ‘we don’t want peace, we want freedom’. Peace is not going to solve the occupation, the military blockade. And here’s the thing, the occupation in Palestine is tied to the West. First because the Israeli colony is supported and literally funded by the West. Second, the US and settler colony of Israel were built the same way. The US is just a lot older, just much further down in the timeline than the settler colony of Israel which is only 75 years old. There is an incredible amount of parallels between these two and that’s why they stick together.

For instance, at this very moment, peace for the US means silence for the blacks. When black people stand up and attempt to resist a system that was built on the backs of black slaves, whether through peaceful or non peaceful forms of resistance, white America will always view these movements as violent, as a disruption to peace. When in reality, it’s disruption to peace for white people. That’s why when Black Lives Matter started to gain traction, white America lost it’s shit. Because Black people were attempting to resist and reject a system that is built on their silence and if they even think to open their mouth, they’re violent. They don’t want peace. Accept the system, accept the status quo or you don’t want peace. That’s what the narrative they want us to believe.

The same thing happened in South Africa. The natives were forced to accept colonisation, accept theft of their land or that means they don’t want peace. They want violence. That’s just the nature of colonisation, that’s how it works. It’s freedom for settlers built on the backs of the indigenous people.

So when we talk, post and share on social media about Palestine, we cannot accept the narrative of peace and insinuate that that’s the solution. When peace equals freedom of the Palestinians, that’s when it’s acceptable. On social media, the hashtag isn’t #peaceforpalestine, it’s #FREEPALESTINE. The objective is liberation of Palestine, calling for peace only is helping the zionist’s cause because that means we think the Palestinians are violent and that we support violence. But that worry and that fear is literally proof of peace being used as a tool to suppress rejection of their status quo.

We need to start viewing this conflict the way it actually is, not the way mainstream media, the West and the zionists want us to see it. We need to define what Israel and Palestine clearly are. Israel is NOT a country but a SETTLER COLONY occupying the COUNTRY of PALESTINE. This is coloniser vs colonised. Same way white Europeans landed in North America and decided to claim the land as their own despite the native population, white Europeans landed in Palestine and decided to claim it as their own despite the indigenous Palestinian population.

The simple truth is that the word Palestine is deeply damaging to the settler colony of Israel’s image on the international stage. The word Palestine carries with it so much universally recognised victimhood and so many stories of oppression, subjugation and genocide that when it is included in the conversation, the settler colony simply cannot dispute, however desperately it tries to, it’s crimes. The moral weight of Palestine is so heavy that every time the word is uttered, you can hear the deflating hiss from the settler’s public relations bubble. No amount of beach resorts, tech and agricultural wizards can wipe the permanent stain of Palestinian blood off the settler’s hands. Which is why the settler colony believes that the only way to get rid of this heavy moral burden of Palestine is to quite literally GET RID of Palestine altogether and that includes completely erasing it from the map. And yet, it is the settler colony of Israel that is recognised by the UN, is a member of the UN and stands in front of the General Assembly, year after year, pleading to be protected from the ‘barbarian’ nations that supposedly wish to erase it from the map. The irony and the hypocrisy is real.

I urge each and every one of you reading this right now, if you have any form of social media; whether you have a huge following or even single digit followers, SPEAK UP! Use the power that you have to speak for the voiceless. Share posts about the siege in Gaza, educate yourself, your family and friends. Do not keep quiet. We can use social media as it is intended, to do good, to cast light on the horrific and barbaric attacks on innocent civilians. There are protests all over the world, condemnations from the few countries with right on their side and we can push it along.

Our posts matter, our stories on social media matter, we can make a difference for once. Let us not let history remember that we stood by and watched an entire group of people being utterly erased from existence by another. Let us not turn a blind eye to another catastrophe. Let us be better. Future generations will ask us where we were when all of this happened. Let us give the Palestinians the easiest thing we can give them; an eyewitness account to their pain, their suffering, the denial of their freedom.

#palestine #free palestine #freedom #speak up

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malakasaroobie · 2 years ago

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Capture Life In 4K_ A Comprehensive Guide To Action Cameras

Why don't we learn about actioncamera.

Capture Life In 4K: A Comprehensive Guide To Action Cameras

Action Cameras have become an indispensable tool for capturing life's precious moments. From the highest peak to the lowest valley, these versatile and rugged cameras are designed to go where you go and capture it all. An Action Camera is a lightweight, compact digital video camera that can be used to capture stunning footage of all types of activities. They are typically waterproof and shockproof, making them well suited for activities like surfing, snowboarding, mountain biking, and other extreme sports. They are also great for capturing everyday moments like family reunions, vacations, or simply just playing around with your kids. The biggest advantage of using an Action Camera is that it can capture images and video in 4K resolution. This ultra-high definition resolution allows for incredibly sharp images and video that look amazing when viewed on a large screen. It also offers better low-light performance than traditional cameras, making it great for capturing footage in low-light conditions. Action Cameras are also very user-friendly. Most models come with a wide range of features, including image stabilization, time-lapse mode, and various shooting modes. They also come with various mounting options, allowing you to attach them to your helmet, bike, or other gear for hands-free operation. When shopping for an Action Camera, it's important to consider the size, weight, and battery life of the unit you're considering. The larger and heavier models tend to offer better image stabilization, while the lighter and more compact models are better suited for more portable activities. Battery life is also an important factor, as some models offer up to four hours of recording time. Action Cameras also come in a variety of price points. Basic models can be found for less than $100, while high-end models can reach several hundred dollars. The more expensive models typically offer higher resolution and more features, so it's important to find the right balance between quality and cost. Action Cameras are an amazing way to capture life's moments in stunning 4K resolution. Whether you're looking to capture extreme sports or everyday moments, there's an Action Camera that's perfect for you. With a wide range of features, mounting options, and price points, you're sure to find the perfect Action Camera for your needs.

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bbyboybrock--archived · 4 years ago

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Happy New Year (Colby Brock Imagine)

Summary: *REQUEST* Can you do one where they are strangers and meet each other during a new years eve party and then end up kissing each other when the ball drops and make it super romantic (not in covid times) pretty please

Written: 2021

Word Count: 2,040

Warnings: Swearing, mention of being roofied, breakup

Masterlist

I sit in the uber, waiting for everyone to get out. Maybe they’ll be too excited about the party to realize that I went home. Maybe I should escape out the other door and disappear into the night. I didn’t even want to come out tonight in the first place. After the year I’ve had, going to an influencer party is the last place I want to attend. Unluckily for me, my best friends were tired of me staying in my apartment all day, every day, and refused to let me ring in the new year alone. Sadly, this meant that I had to go with them to a party because my apartment gave off “depression vibes” and that “wasn’t the move” for 2021. That’s the only thing that I agreed with them on, the vibe thing, not going to a party.

After nearly a year of quarantine and processing a breakup, my place is a bit of a disaster. If it wasn’t for Janie ambushing me every day last week to help/force me to clean up, my apartment would still look like that cave where the grinch lives— minus Max. There were various alcohol bottles collecting dust on the counter. Not in a “she’s spiraling very rapidly” sort of way, but in a way that you could tell that I had a rough few weeks and the occasional wine night with the gals. There were boxes, mostly from March and April, that I still had yet to throw out after impose buying a bunch of stuff. My closet had turned into my bed because that was the only safe space that wasn’t cluttered with food packaging or tainted by memories that no longer bring me joy. I hadn’t properly seen my floor in months until we pulled back the layer of filth. I forgot that I had carpet. Still, after all that, I managed to make videos every week without fail.

“Y/N, c’mon, you’re not escaping this time. Let’s go so you can forget that asshole and that backstabbing bitch.” Persephone begs as she pulls me out of the car. Once out of the car, she adjusts her long, dark brown curls and smooths out her dress before reconnecting to her boyfriend’s hip. They both match with their gold and black outfits. All of my friends and their significant others match. Ophelia and her girlfriend are wearing silver and blue while Janie and her boyfriend are wearing maroon and gold. They all look like gods and goddesses and here I am wearing green and sliver on my own. Could I be anymore single?

“I’m not going to do it, I was just thinking about it. Don’t worry. I have to get footage for the vlog anyway. Gotta prove that I did something other than stay home this year. My fans are getting concerned.” I pull out my camera and get a few clips of everyone.

“Might as well get some pictures then so people will believe you.”1 Ophelia winks before grabbing me and leading us to what I’m assuming is the designated photo spot. There’s even a line. This is going to be one of those nights.

****

“Aw, fuck…” I mutter to myself as my drink gets knocked out of my hand. This house isn’t big enough for the number of people that were invited.

“I am so sorry! Here, let me help you.” The guy who bumped into me extends his hand for me to grab. I’m sober enough to know not to take completely random strangers' hands at parties, especially in LA, but I’m also drunk enough to not care. He looks nice enough and I can spot Ophelia and her girlfriend Zoe keeping an eye on me from the corner of the room. I guess everyone is taking turns to make sure I don’t bail.

Against better judgment, I take this beautiful stranger’s hand and let him guide me out of the house to the backyard. It’s less crowded out here, maybe because there are more activities to do inside. Out here, I can actually breathe even though people are smoking and vaping out here. The music is quieter. The music is still loud, but like it would burst your eardrum like the music inside. I get a better look at the guy who brought me out here. He’s not bad looking, and I really hope that’s not the alcohol talking. He has the most relaxing blue eyes I’ve ever seen on a guy. His hair is dark brown with a bit of, I think, purple in the front. He looks as threatening as a pug, but looks can be deceiving.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t get any on you did I?” He asks as he scans my body, not in a creepy way. Which is a nice change of pace.

“My feet but they’re just shoes so I don’t care. I call these my going out shoes, they’re made for moments like this so you’re all good. I’m Y/N by the way.” I stick my hand out for him to shake. He looks at it puzzled for a second before it registers and he grabs my hand and gives it a firm shake.

“Right— I spilled your drink on you and basically kidnapped you from the party and you don’t even know my name. It’s Colby, Colby Brock.” Colby shakes my hand a little too long before quickly pulling it away.

“I’m Y/N, you can get the last name later,” I bite my bottom lip, close my eyes, and mentally slap my head. “That was lame, wasn’t it?”

“It’s fine. It’s a thousand times better than anything I would have come up with. Just blame it on the alcohol.”

We both laugh before Colby singles that he’ll be right back. I watch as Colby disappears a small group of people. I take off my shoes and walk to the pool, dipping my feet in as I sit. The cool night air is soothing me. It’s a nice change from the stale scent of my apartment and the sweaty bodies inside the party. I look up to the night sky. The light pollution makes it impossible to see what stars and constellations are above us. Whatever I’m staring at right now feels peaceful, like they are aligned or not in retrograde. I have no idea what any of that means, but I do know that I’ve been around Ophelia too much.

Colby taps my shoulder when he gets back. He kicks off his shoes and socks before joining me in the pool, not even rolling up his pant legs. He’s going to regret that in a few hours. He hands me an unopened can of Truly. I take it from him and open it myself. At least I know he’s not a creep. He opens a can of White Claw and sips it before breaking the silence.

“I have to be honest, Y/N.” Colby looks forward, taking another sip.

“Oh no, what is it?” I ask nervously.

“The real reason I dropped your drink is because I saw some asshole slip something in your drink.” Colby finally looks at me and I can tell he’s serious.

“Wait…what? Someone tried to… Any you thought the best was to inform me was to spill my drink all over me?” I’m more taken aback by the idea of me almost getting roofied than anything. That would have been the perfect way to end this shit storm of a year.

“In hindsight, I planned to spill your drink. I didn’t mean to get any on you. I’m not a hundred percent sober right now so that was the downside of my plan. Don’t worry about the guy, my friend Corey went after him.”

“Wow— Uh, thank you. I mean it. I don’t think I could have dealt with… that on top of everything else I had to handle this year.” I take a sip of my drink and swing my legs in the water.

“Do you want to talk about it? I’m not big on talking about serious stuff with strangers, so I’ll understand if you don’t want to. However, we’re both getting hammered, if we aren’t already, so the likely hood of us even remembering this conversation tomorrow let alone who we are slim. So if you need to vent, vent.”

I weigh the pros and cons of actually venting everything to this beautiful stranger. Maybe it’s the alcohol talking, but I decided to say fuck it. The year is almost over anyway, might as well get rid of this baggage and start the year fresh.

“Long story short: after months of quarantining together Axl, my boyfriend of 10 years, cheated on me. The entire time we were in quarantine. With my younger sister, who I let quarantine with us so she wouldn’t be alone and not have to fly back home to be with our parents. And to top it all off, I found out about it on my birthday when I walked in on them fucking each other on my bed.” I take a larger sip of my drink before leaning back and staring back at the virtually starless sky.

“Holy fucking shit,” Colby leans back to join me in looking at the sky.

“Yup! We met in preschool and started dating when we were 13. She’s four years younger than us to that’s annoying.”

“Not to be that guy, but I don’t know what you expected when you started dating a guy named Axl.”

“… You’re right, that is a pretty douchey name. I literally ignored the biggest red flag in my entire life.”

Colby and I laugh again until it fades. I don’t think I’ve laughed this much, like actually laughed, in months. It feels good. Inside the house, the crowd starts counting down from 15. Colby must have heard it too because I watch him turn his head from the corner of my eye. I turn my head to face him. He really does have beautiful eyes. Like the ocean.

“This may be a dumb idea and I know we don’t know each other, but do you want to be my new years kiss?”

“I may regret this in the future, but what the hell.” We both sit up and adjust our clothes.

It might be risky to just kiss a random stranger at midnight, but who cares. We’re most likely not going to be in each other’s lives after tonight anyway. But by God, I could do much worse than kissing Colby. Unless I’m very drunk and the drunk goggles are seriously fucking with me. It’s not like I’m going home with him, my friends won’t let that happen. Maybe after this party, we’ll go our separate ways and never see each other again. Maybe we’ll run into each other in a random store in LA or at some creator convention.

The drunken yells of party-goers inch closer and closer to midnight.

“Three,” Colby whispers, moving his hair out of his face.

“Two,” I take one more small sip before finally setting my drink down. Colby does the same. My heart is beating a loud, steady rhythm in my chest like it’s about to burst.

“One,” We whisper at the same time before slowly leaning in.

As our lips touch, it felt like time had stopped. The beating intense beating in my heart only intensifies the longer our lips stay pressed together. One of Colby’s hands finds my face why the other reaches for my thigh, but I can only focus on how soft his lips are. My stomach starts forming knots as he tries to deepen the kiss. I don’t know if it’s everything I drank tonight coursing through my veins or the fact that I haven’t been kissed in months, but I slightly part my lips. The mixture of Colby’s scent and his body heat wash over me like they’re intoxicating my senses. The kiss ends just as suddenly as it started. We both pull away and just stare at each other in awe.

“L/N,” I breathe, fixing my hair.

“What?” Colby takes another sip of his drink.

“My last name is L/N.”

#colby brock #colby brock imagine #colby brock imagines #imagine #imagines #sam and colby imagines #sam and colby imagine #colby #fluff #fluff imagine #fluff imagines #colby brock x reader #sam and colby

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twh-news · 3 years ago

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Despite nearly 600 voice roles in her prolific voiceover career, Loki star Tara Strong still had to audition for her fan-favorite character Miss Minutes. Strong was initially tasked with bringing the Time Variance Authority’s animated mascot to life in its Jurassic Park-inspired orientation video, which brought Loki up to speed on his current predicament. But in episode two, Miss Minutes even took the form of a hologram that briefly interacted with Loki. So despite her vast resume, Strong was more than happy to audition for such an enigmatic character.

“It’s actually quite surprising for many people to learn that most voice actors — even ones who’ve been in the business for 30 or 40 years — often audition for parts they’ve already had,” Strong tells The Hollywood Reporter. “You have to constantly keep proving yourself in auditioning for new studio people and new showrunners even though they may have hours and hours of tape on you for a character you’ve already done. So I’m happy to audition, and thankfully, it worked out.”

While she can’t say much about Miss Minutes’ future, Strong can confirm that we haven’t seen the last of her.

“I can cryptically tease that you’ll see her again,” Strong shares. “There’s much more to be revealed, and it’s fun to watch that unfold. The beautiful thing about this character is you don’t really know who she is, where she’s from, what her origin story is, how sentient she is, if she has a horse in this race at all, and what her intentions are, if any. Like any good, exciting adventure, TV or film, you are left wondering that all the time. So she’s an intriguing character, and that will continue.”

When Loki director Kate Herron revealed to THR that Miss Minutes’ introduction video was inspired by Jurassic Park‘s Mr. DNA cartoon, most viewers assumed that Strong’s Southern accent was paying homage to the Southern accent of Mr. DNA, but that wasn’t the case.

“I didn’t even know that until I saw Kate Herron talking about it in an interview,” Strong reveals. “I didn’t even make that connection initially when I first started seeing some of the footage. But it is a fun comparison because they both have this juxtaposition of very high-end, modern technology with very basic, classic ’60 and ’70s animation.”

In a recent conversation with THR, Strong dives even deeper into the audition process for voice roles, and then she explains why she wants more synergy between live-action and animated comic book properties.

Since you have a few voice roles [nearly 600] under your belt…

(Laughs.) Just a couple.

I have to imagine that you just got a phone call for Loki‘s Miss Minutes.

I had to audition! It’s actually quite surprising for many people to learn that most voice actors — even ones who’ve been in the business for 30 or 40 years — often audition for parts they’ve already had. You have to constantly keep proving yourself in auditioning for new studio people and new showrunners even though they may have hours and hours of tape on you for a character you’ve already done. But this character, since it was new, needed an entire audition process because I think they were in search of what felt best for this character. So I’m happy to audition, and thankfully, it worked out. (Laughs.)

How much did they tell you?

Normally, for an audition, they’ll give you a drawing of the character, a character description, sides and some backstory into their world, but we really got very little information. I called my agent after I received the packet, and I was like, “Um, can you tell me anything else about this character? Is she sentient? Is she A.I.?” And my agent was like, “I don’t really know.” So nobody knew what it was because it was so top secret. In fact, I didn’t know what it was until I booked it, which, of course, was very exciting. So based on the information that I had, I laid down three different versions in my home studio. I always do the preliminary audition in my home studio. Sometimes, it’ll take me 5 minutes, and sometimes, it’ll take me 3 hours to get it exactly right, knowing that there’s hundreds or thousands of people vying for one role. So I’ll think about what’s going to separate me from the other people and how I’m going to give them something special that they’ll glom onto. For this one, there were three different versions: one of them included an accent, one was a little bit more A.I and one had a little more emotion attached to it. Obviously, once I saw what it was, it made sense that they were keeping it on the DL.

Did they inform you at some point that they wanted an homage to Mr. DNA from Jurassic Park?

No, they didn’t! In fact, I didn’t even know that until I saw Kate Herron talking about it in an interview. I didn’t even make that connection initially when I first started seeing some of the footage. But it is a fun comparison because they both have this juxtaposition of very high-end, modern technology with very basic, classic ’60 and ’70s animation. So it’s this beautiful mix of things that just somehow seem to go together to create this visually stunning and exciting world, as well as the voiceover behind it. It just all seems to go together to create this enigma. Who is she? Where is she from? What’s her origin story? Why does she look like she’s from the ’70s but she knows everything from the future. It’s really cool.

When it came time to record in earnest, you must’ve been baffled by what you were reading, but then again, you’re probably used to it.

Yeah, and I’ve done several voices with similar descriptions and similar varying levels of A.I. I was the voice of the singing refrigerator [Bridget] on an episode of Modern Family, and initially, they wanted it very Siri-like. And then we added a little more attitude to it. So I’ve done that sort of thing several times, and I know how to manipulate my voice enough to sound like A.I. It’s that sound where you question whether there’s actual emotion behind it. Miss Minutes is such an interesting character because initially you think she’s just someone who’s giving exposition on what happens to you when you get to the TVA. But by episode two, you realize she’s got a little attitude. So she’s a lot of fun to play with.

Before live-action comic book stories became a global juggernaut, animated comic book movies and shows were a primary frame of reference for a lot of these characters. So I’ve always felt that there could be more synergy or crossover between live action and the animation/voice acting community. Are you hopeful that your role as Miss Minutes can help bridge that gap?

That would be pretty wonderful. It is true that voice actors and legacy voice actors — who’ve been at it for so long and are so brilliant at bringing characters to life just with their voice — get passed over for on-camera celebrities that maybe the casting director wants to meet or because someone thinks they’ll bring big box office. If you were to record two very big animated features, one starring on-camera people and one starring people who’ve been doing voiceover for a while, you would definitely hear the difference in the little idiosyncrasies and other things that we know how to do in order to bring this action to life. Overall, there certainly is plenty of crossover when you look at someone like Robin Williams, Tom Hanks, or my favorite, Mark Hamill, who’s brilliant at doing both on-camera and voiceover. But then you do have the A-list celebrities who will come in for an animated session and freak out when they see what everyone else does. Of course, it’s still acting, but it’s a different form of acting. It’s like asking a tap dancer if they do ballet. It is wonderful that the Internet has given voiceover actors a lot of love that maybe their predecessors never knew existed. Now, people can look up who their favorite voiceover actor is, and when I go to a comic con, I’m treated like a superstar who people know. It’s wonderful to be able to give back to those fans, and give hugs, and hear stories about how shows shaped their childhood or brought their family together or got them through a depressing time. So that kind of stuff has been really nice. I certainly didn’t anticipate Loki being so huge, and the reception to Miss Minutes being so wonderful and so loving right out of the gate. So maybe this will give networks [and studios] pause, so they think, “Hey, let’s give one of the voiceover actors a shot at this role. Maybe it’ll be more fun than so and so from The Office. Just for this time, let’s see how this goes.” (Laughs.) If somebody suits the role and does a great job, they should be granted that role regardless of how many Twitter followers they have or how many episodes of an episodic they’ve done.

Loki director Kate Herron said that Miss Minutes is about to go on an “interesting” journey. So what can you cryptically tease about Miss Minutes moving forward?

Well, I can cryptically tease that you’ll see her again. (Laughs.) There’s much more to be revealed, and it’s fun to watch that unfold. When you see the first episode, you think perhaps that she’s just a recording on a screen, but in episode two, we see that she can become a holographic form and interact with Loki. He even responded to her and asked, “Are you a recording, or are you alive?” And we still don’t know. The beautiful thing about this character is you don’t really know who she is, where she’s from, what her origin story is, how sentient she is, if she has a horse in this race at all, and what her intentions are, if any. Like any good, exciting adventure, TV or film, you are left wondering that all the time. So she’s an intriguing character, and that will continue.

She got her own character poster, so that’s usually a sign of importance.

She did! And she has her own Twitter! She also has the cutest emoji hashtag I’ve ever seen in my life. (Laughs.)

When Morgan Freeman gets hired for voiceover work, he’s hired to do Morgan Freeman. So what percentage of your jobs ask you to invent a voice, versus using something that’s trademark Tara Strong?

That’s a very good question. Like I said before, they’ll give you a drawing of the character and some backstory into who they are. And then you, as the voice actor, have to try and imagine what production had in mind for this character. With that said, you have to be free to let something organic come to you and take chances. Sometimes, things don’t happen until the very last minute. My favorite example of that would be Teen Titans. When I first read for that, I was already doing five tragic teenage girls: Batgirl for the same network, Ingrid from Fillmore!, Kylie from Extreme Ghostbusters and Shareena Wickett from Detention. I was like, “Gosh, I have to make each character different, but I’m not sure how to make Raven stand apart from the other similar descriptive personalities.” So when I read for Raven, I just put myself in the acting mindset of where she was, and I read the part. And when I walked out of the studio, I passed the booth where the engineer, director and writer were sitting. So I turned to [casting director] Andrea Romano, who I’d been working on Batgirl, and said, “I just had this other idea. Can I try something else?” And she said, “Sure.” So I went back in and that’s when I had this idea that Raven had this weird little roll every time she spoke. So that was not something I planned when I first walked into the studio. You have to be unafraid to try something new and different, and to also be malleable to what production wants. Sometimes, they’ll really love what you did, but then they’ll want her to be older, or missing teeth, or have headgear, or Southern. (Laughs.) So you have to be ready to jump right in and try all kinds of different things until it lands right into the pocket of what works for that voice.

Would you perform your voice roles the same way in live action? Or would you use less inflection?

More than likely, it would be less broad because the cameras are there. On an animated show, if the line is “Whoa!” and your character sees a hot guy or is falling off a cliff, you have to know how to bring that action forth with your voice. When you’re watching something on-camera unfold in front of you, you don’t have to tell the audience so much with your voice. If you’re doing a sitcom, it’s going to be bigger than if you’re doing a single-camera drama. I just worked on a series for 6 months in Toronto, and my character was basically an on-camera Harley but as a drug-dealer mom. It’s a show called Pretty Hard Cases. And it wouldn’t have worked if I played her as broad as animation. With that said, if I got to play actual Harley Quinn as a mom, it would be bigger than that, but probably not as big as an animated thing. It would be somewhere in the middle. Even within animation, you tweak your level of performance based on the world. For instance, I’ve done many iterations of Harley where she’s the high school girl, or in some cases, she’s even darker than Joker. So you have to know the world around you. Some of the best actors that sustain long careers are very highly aware of what environment they’re in at each moment. So the show or the movie really dictates the level of performance.

#loki #loki series #tara strong #interview #miss minutes

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fedtothenight · 3 years ago

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this competition asked to write a short story in the dystopian genre and my entry's below - don't rb!

the sweetest fruit

The boy gasped, straining against the padded frame of the jeep just as the vehicle slowly came to a halt. ‘Look!’ he shouted, pointing at a spot about a hundred feet from the group. ‘Look, Mum! That’s so cool!’

Half-instinctively, his mother had already grabbed a fistful of his tank-top, ready to yank him back. She had spent the entirety of the trip sitting as still as possible, facing forward, eyes stubbornly fixed on the self-cooling top of the car in a pointless effort to fight her motion sickness: her patience was already wearing very thin without her eight-year-old personal safety hazard trying to get himself killed.

‘Ethan, for the love of God,’ she snapped. ‘I already told you to stop leaning over the frame! Do you realise how dangerous that is?’

‘No, Mum, you’ve got to look!’

‘Emma, darling,’ her husband whispered, a gentle hand on her shoulder. ‘You should really look at this. It’s magnificent.’

Whatever it was, even her fifteen-year-old daughter - who had spent the last thirty minutes texting her friends back home without so much as a glance at the scenery - was jaw-slacked, so she slowly got up on her wobbly knees and peered over her shoulders.

In the shadow of a tree, protected from the sweltering heat, two lions were feasting on a zebra. Perhaps belatedly, as it’d taken her a second to drink the sight in, she realised that the poor thing was still alive: writhing as blood, red and hot and pulsing, gushed out from where the bigger lion - the male - had bitten into its back.

The smaller one, the female, soundlessly sank its teeth into the dying animal’s neck, and the latter gave one last weak kick, finally falling limp. When the lioness stood again, it was almost impossible, from this distance, to see her eyes amidst the bloodied mess on her face.

‘Oh, my God, Matt,’ Emma said. ‘This is beautiful. Nature truly is beautiful.’

‘You don’t really get to see this kind of show anywhere else today,’ their guide said from the driver’s seat. He sounded proud, as if he’d hunted and fed the zebra to the lions himself.

Alberto wasn’t wrong, Emma reasoned. Given that they were parked in the middle of the privately-owned biggest North American savanna, he - or rather, his employer - was the one effectively feeding the lions. Like feeding mice to cats. She glanced at her children, glad they could have a window on a reality that was long gone. To think it would have taken a trip around the world to watch this spectacle - imagine the motion sickness then! If only, she considered wistfully, there could be a way of replicating glaciers just as accurately.

‘Honestly, it seems a bit unfair that they get to eat real meat,’ Ethan said at the dinner table a few hours later. He was picking at his plate, moving the fried grasshoppers they’d been served for dinner around, but not really eating any. ‘While we are stuck with insects and microprotein or whatever.’

Emma pinched the bridge of her nose. She was tired and sunburnt, her sensitive pale skin suffering under the blistering sun of the region, so different from the temperate weather back home North. She had a splitting headache, too. She was, yet again, at the so-called end of her tether. ‘Ethan…’

‘You should be glad you get to eat at all,’ her daughter said at the same time. ‘There’s a reason it’s illegal to eat meat. These animals are here for show, anyway. They were originally from Africa.’

‘Shut up, Becca,’ Ethan mumbled. ‘Everybody knows there are no animals in Africa. There’s nothing there.’

Becca’s cheeks were tinted pink, eyebrows furrowed. ‘Of course there were animals. There were animals everywhere before the Climate Crunch.’

‘Both of you, stop it,’ Matt interjected. ‘Ethan, your sister is right. You should be grateful that we are here in the first place. That said…’ He leant forward, voice down to a whisper: ‘I have a surprise for you. Or, well, Richard has a surprise for us. When he arrives tomorrow, he’ll bring us real meat. Bovine meat.’

‘But it’s illegal,’ said Becca.

‘It’s technically illegal,’ Matt acknowledged. ‘It’s not if you know how to get some and no one from Animal Conservation finds out. Do you think our president only eats insects? Please, Becca. Use that big brain of yours.’

‘Yes,’ Ethan snickered. ‘Use your brain, Becca.’

‘That is too generous,’ Emma said. ‘Inviting us here in the first place was, when even he hasn’t gotten here yet. Now this. I wouldn’t know how to repay him.’

Truly, all she felt was jealousy. Her guts twisted with the sheer force of it. Yes, she had known that Richard was comfortable. The gated, heavily guarded estate spanned for thousands of acres, comprised the 5000sqt villa they were staying at (five bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a cinema, marble floors and solar panels on the rooftop), an indoor swimming pool inspired by vintage photos of Amalfi, two indoor tennis courts, and the savanna they’d explored earlier in the day. ‘The biggest conservation area in North America since they repurposed the Midwest,’ he’d bragged in a video call, two weeks before. ‘You will love it. The holiday you deserve. Make yourselves at home.’

But meat? He could get meat?

Matt’s family had designed DeNuketify, which was basically the only effective way of purifying ocean water from whatever nuclear waste Japan kept spewing so that it could be used and, most importantly, drunk. They had managed to flee the continent with the last handful of greencards about the time her family did, too, taking their precious Queen’s accent with them to found Nova London. She was the governor of Nova London now, for God’s sake. The bloody queen herself was long dead but she was alive, and yet, yet - they had never had meat.

‘We don’t have to, Emma,’ Matt said. ‘We just need to remember how lucky we are to enjoy this meal, this house, this holiday. Look at that,’ and he nodded towards the TV screen again. ‘Actually, Alexa!, volume up!, I think the Italians have finally surrendered.’

The war correspondent’s voice grew louder. She - they, Emma reminded herself: Becca always told her not to assume anyone’s gender - was wearing a dust mask and reading from a bundle of documents. ‘The last military hospital in the island of Palermo was destroyed four days ago by a Canadian airstrike,’ they were saying. ‘The rebels surrendered soon after, followed by the group of extremists in the Nebrodi island. Etna had already surrendered last year.’

‘It’s important to remember that these actions were necessary to finally put a rest on the instability of the region,’ they added. ‘Canada will fund a complete restoration of the Southern archipelago. The remaining civilians will be provided with a shelter and then, when the time comes, a suitable job. Nova Italia will be the sixteenth Canadian state, the fourth offshore. There are also hopes to extract petroleum from the seabed of the sunken city of Gela.’

‘Watch them make it into a holiday hotspot,’ Matt commented. ‘The weather is still nice there.’

‘Ooh, I heard about this.’ Becca picked her phone back up and started furiously typing away. ‘There’s this journal entry soldiers found over there, under the rubble, that’s gone viral. It was translated into English. Wait, I’ll pull it up. Alexa, volume down.’

‘I’m not sure I want to hear it,’ Emma said, uneasy. ‘We’re on holiday. Should we not watch a movie? Something funny?’

Becca waved her away, as if she was an annoying fly. ‘It’ll be good practice for my drama class.’

Matt didn’t help—he simply shrugged, half-apologetic, as if to say: Let her do her thing.

Becca made a show of clearing her throat, too, before she started reading from her phone—her high voice now grave, studied, as if she were speaking to a larger audience: ‘I wonder what peas taste like.’

Right then, the scene on screen changed to footage of what looked like a destroyed village, something out of an apocalyptic movie. Emma found herself unable to look away.

‘Nonna used to say that her own great-grandmother grew them in her garden. Figs, too,’ Becca read. ‘They say they were the sweetest fruit.’

Emma wondered if this journal was actually written by a child or a teenager. It didn’t sound like an adult at all. She couldn’t help but picture a girl, a brunette, not much older than Becca, perhaps a rebel, or a trainee nurse on the sweet cusp of adulthood, holding this journal of hers, or perhaps a gun. It violently reminded her that her own daughter, too, would have to serve her time in the Forces in three years.

On screen, the Canadian soldiers walked among the ruins, zigzagging between torn up clothes and discarded weapons, surely looking for surviving rebels under the rubbles.

‘Isn’t it silly that we can hear the fighters overhead and that all I can do is think about food?’ said Becca. ‘I wish we could also eat figs and be happy.’

On screen, the camera zoomed in on a long-forgotten man's shoe, some crumpled photographs, on a pile of bodies in black bin bags.

‘Grandma - I miss her - left me a poetry book, too, from T.S. Eliot. I hope the book is with me when I die, so I can give it back to her when we meet again, afterwards. So I can tell her that T.S. Eliot was wrong.’

On screen, one of the soldiers approached and showed a little trinket to the camera: a bloody, heart-shaped locket that must’ve once been golden, hiding the miniature pictures of two brunette children that would never have a name.

‘That’s enough,’ Emma said. She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. ‘Stop reading.’

‘The world may have not ended with a bang, but it didn’t end with a whimper, either: the world didn’t end at all. Sometimes,’ Becca finished reading, ‘I wish it had.’

‘What a load of rubbish,’ Matt scoffed. ‘Everyone should feel lucky to be alive. I bet this journal is a fake. Alexa, turn the TV off.’

As the screen faded to black, Ethan finally popped a grasshopper in his mouth. ‘I can’t wait to have meat tomorrow.’

#my writing #honestly dystopia is not a genre i'm interested in #lol #this was lazy and i wrote it in one morning while i was hungover on negroni

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i-am-a-closet-fanfic-fiend · 5 years ago

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Your Hand In Mine ~ Bucky x Reader Oneshot (Request)

A/n: Hi my lovelies! Happy weekend, I hope everyone is doing alright and staying healthy. So I received this request I think like two days after I announced my hiatus and it’s been sitting in my inbox since then. But it’s also been percolating in my brain since then and I’m finally happy with how it turned out. I hope you will enjoy it too.

Thanks for the request @ashhys-lost-in-fanfics-again

Request: Hi! I love your writing! I have a Bucky x Reader idea, iydm. R's a powerful Avenger. She has a RIGHT(important it's her right) metal arm. It's rose gold when it's not covered by her skin graft. Bucky is being teased by team&gets upset. He yells no one understands how hard the burden is and storms off. R goes after him to comfort, he turns on her, asking how she'd know? She gently disables her skin graft&shows her rose gold metal arm. Fluff & Angst please!

Characters/Pairings: Bucky x reader, Sam, Steve, Clint, Nat and Tony are mentioned.

Rating: T

WARNINGS: Trauma, loss of limb, mild language, angst, but there’s a lot of fluff too!

Disclaimer: My medical knowledge is limited to what I could glean from google so if there’s anything that doesn’t make sense I apologize.

Word Count: 4230

Bucky grunted as he attempted to reach the knot that had formed in his shoulder blade but no matter which way he twisted or turned he couldn’t get the right pressure. He gave up on using his flesh arm and went in search of a tennis ball or even better a softball.

After finally locating one in the equipment closet, Bucky found the nearest wall and set to work maneuvering the ball into position. He had just found the right spot when you and Sam entered the gym, chattering happily about the movie you’d seen the night before.

Your animated tone made Bucky smile.

“Morning, Bucky,” you greeted him cheerfully.

“Morning, y/n.”

“Turning into a cat, Barnes?” Sam called when he spotted him shimmying his back against the wall.

“Can it, birdbrain,” Bucky snapped, smile falling.

Grumbling about being interrupted when he’d finally started feeling relief, he pulled off the wall and pocketed the ball before storming out of the gym.

“Sam,” you sighed as you dropped your bag and began stretching.

“Don’t ‘Sam’ me. Last week he disconnected his arm enough that I yanked it off and hit myself in the face when he helped me up. It’s fair game.”

“I suppose.”

Bucky gave as good as he got, and you all knew neither of them meant anything by it. But today you could see he was in pain, but mostly he was frustrated.

“You can’t treat him with kid gloves,” Sam stated firmly.

“I know. And I don’t think we should, but this is more than him being grumpy. He’s in real pain.”

“Maybe you’re right. I��ll lay off until he settles down a bit.”

“Thank you.”

The two of you started stretching.

“You know, if you’re really worried about him being sore, you could always offer to give him a massage,” Sam smirked and waggled his eyebrows.

You rolled your eyes before you actually considered at.

“Actually. That’s not a bad idea.”

His eyes widened as he froze.

“Wait. You’re really going to offer to give Barnes a massage.”

“Not exactly. But I think I have something that could help.”

“What is it?”

“I’ll tell you later. After I kick your ass.”

“Oh you are on.”

After a full morning of sparring with Sam and then a round of weight training with Steve you were more than a little sore. You settled yourself in the living room post shower with your foam roller and your trigger point massager.

“How was your workout?” Bucky asked as he closed his book, watching you roll back and forth to relax your quad.

“It was good. I think Steve is trying to make sure I can bench press him soon.”

“I’d pay money to see that.”

You huffed out a laugh which quickly turned into a groan when you started rolling out your other leg.

“It would be pretty hilarious,” you agreed wincing slightly when your shoulder twinged. “I’m not far off. I’m at 220 now.”

“Pretty impressive considering you started lifting like a month ago.”

“Started lifting again,” you corrected him. “I used to lift when I was in the marines.”

“I didn’t know you served.”

“Marine corporal y/n y/l/n at your service.”

Folding yourself so you sat criss cross, you pulled out the trigger point massager debating which end to use.

“What’s that?” Bucky asked as he watched you.

“It helps me get the knots out of the hard to reach places without putting me in more pain. It was a lifesaver when Nat decided I needed to be able to do a full rings performance.”

“Um. Why?”

“They needed me to go in as a gymnastics coach for the men’s team. Had to prove myself.”

“Wow. You’re something else.”

You sighed out your thanks as you hit the knot just the right way to get it to release. Bucky eyed you curiously trying to figure out if it would help him, but also not wanting to ask. You had to bite your tongue to keep from offering it; you knew he was apt to refuse.

“Y/n, can you come help me with dinner?” Sam called.

“Coming, Sammy!”

You started to push yourself to your feet but your arms buckled and you fell back onto your butt with a grunt.

“Need a hand?” Bucky teased, already on his feet.

“No,” you tried again with similar results. “Alright, maybe I could use some help,” you finally sigh.

Chuckling, you grabbed both of Bucky’s hands as he hauled you to your feet.

“Thanks, Buck,” you breathed, caught off guard by the spark the contact gave you.

“Any time, doll,” he promised quietly, earning him a bright smile.

Neither of you had let go yet.

“Shake a leg, y/n!”

You rolled your eyes at Sam’s impatience.

“I’ll see you at dinner, Bucky.”

“See you.”

You squeezed his fingers lightly before releasing him. You tucked the foam roller and massager into the corner next to the couch and slipped out of the room, humming as you went.

“So did he go for it?” Sam asked as he handed you an onion to chop.

“We’ll see.”

Bucky stared at his hands for a moment; he’d felt a spark when he touched you. And he was almost certain you did too. It was the most contact the two of you had had since you joined the team six months prior, and it damn near knocked Bucky on his butt.

Shaking away the distraction he moved to return to his book, but hesitated as he looked at the massager. He supposed it wouldn’t hurt if he tried it. You had always been very generous with things far more valuable and personal than this. Bucky picked up the massager and settling the curve over his shoulder gasped in relief as it hit where he needed it immediately.

This particular pain had been plaguing him for weeks and to feel it recede was nearly euphoric.

When you passed by the common room to call everyone for dinner, you noticed Bucky was no longer there and your massager was precisely where you’d left it. Frowning, you gathered everyone you could and asked FRIDAY to call the rest.

Bucky and Steve were the last to join the table, laughing boisterously as they entered. You could see the lightness in him as he sat next to Natasha, and Sam shot you a knowing smile. And, if you happened to notice a massager of his own arrive in the mail a few days later, you didn’t mention it. If you did everything in your power to have more casual contact with Bucky, then you didn’t mention that either.

The phantom pain was the worst in Bucky’s opinion. All of the other aches and pains he could at least try to alleviate them. But the phantom pain, he simply had to wait it out. Sometimes he would try to work out until his body was exhausted, but still the pain came. So he turned to distraction.

Which is how he found himself sitting in the common room glaring at the television on his third round of channel surfing through nine thousand eight hundred and twelve stations. This was after nearly an hour of searching Netflix for anything to hold his attention.

“Hey, Bucky,” you chirped as you breezed into the room.

He merely grunted out a hello.

“I made tea. Thought you might want some,” you explained as you raised the deep blue mug that he favored.

A smidgen of his gruffness slipped away in the face of your thoughtfulness.

“Thank you.”

“No problem.”

You smiled and handed him the mug before preparing to retreat to your room to give him some peace and quiet.

“Did you – I mean, you’re welcome to sit. I mean stay if you want. I was just going to find something mindless to watch.”

Your bright smile continued to chip away at the pain induced grumpiness.

“I’d love to.”

You grabbed your favorite blanket and wrapped it around you before settling on the couch to his left.

Bucky tensed as you took your seat. His left side was always left open, he felt caged in, waiting for you to remember the horrible atrocities that hand had borne witness to and get as far as way from it as you can.

But instead you plucked the remote from his metal hand, unthinkingly brushing against it without so much as a flinch. Bucky wasn’t sure what to make of that, but it relaxed him.

“So what did you wanna watch?” you asked as you blew on your tea and opened the app menu.

“I dunno. Any suggestions?”

“Well my favorite brainless show is Galavant.”

“What’s that about?”

“It is a comedy musical extravaganza,” you quoted the tag line. “Basically Monthy Python meets Princess Bride meets my high school drama club.”

Bucky chuckled at the explanation.

“You were in the drama club?”

“Yes, I was.”

“Please tell me your performances are on video.”

“Even if they were, they would not see the light of day.”

“Why not? I bet you were adorable.”

The words slipped out without him thinking about it, and you turned quirking an eyebrow and trying to hide a smile at the blush rising on his cheeks.

“I just mean, I’m sure you were a great actress. You’re one of the best spies we have.”

“Believe it or not, that’s a skill not a talent.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.”

“I’d still love to see that footage.”

You snorted and rolled your eyes.

“I bet you would, Barnes. But they are under lock and key.”

“So they do exist!”

“Let’s just watch Galavant?”

Bucky yielded with a triumphant smile.

“Let’s give it a shot. It certainly sounds interesting.”

“Yay.”

Bucky was skeptical throughout the first couple of episodes.

“It gets better,” you promised ardently when you glanced over after the third episode.

“I’m sure it does,” he hummed, sipping on his tea to hide his smile. “This is really good. What kind is it?”

“It’s a mix of chamomile, lavender, a little lemon, and a touch of peppermint. It’s my favorite. Always helps relax me after missions.”

Between the tea and your enthusiastic sing along during the first season, Bucky’s focus was slowly diverted from the lingering ache in his arm.

When you had started yawning, you readjusted your blanket and snuggled into his side unthinkingly. You had fallen asleep shortly after. He left his arm along the back of the couch, and angled his body slightly so your head rested on his chest instead of the hard metal of his shoulder joint. He turned off the TV, content to watch you as you slept. Soon though your deep even breaths soothed him and he fell asleep as well.

The first thing Bucky became aware of as he woke up was a weight on his chest. Your head was pillowed just above his heart and you were sound asleep. The second thing he noticed, but couldn’t quite believe, was that your right hand was interlaced with his left and resting on your stomach.

You were completely at peace and he had no idea what to do, so he stayed still watching you. Your other thumb stroked lightly along his forearm as you cuddled the metal like a teddy bear. Bucky hadn’t experienced this much tenderness since before the war. He hadn’t experienced this much casual affection ever.

He watched as your fingers flexed ever so slightly between his. If he closed his eyes he could feel warmth and the softness of your touch. And for the first time since he fell from the train, he wished a phantom feeling would last forever.

Over the next few weeks you always seemed to manage to brush up against his metal arm in some way – passing food at dinner, or reaching for the elevator button at the same time. Dozens of times. And each time Bucky’s heart would beat just a little bit faster.

But then a mission went wrong. You’d been posing as a married couple vacationing in the Cayman Islands as you tried to get close to the banker for a number of the major criminal syndicates around the world.

Pretending to be in love with Bucky Barnes was easy when you were halfway to actually being in love with him. You were close to the end of the mission when there was a problem and you had to drop Bucky’s hand and distance yourself from him. It brought enough attention that you got made. And soon you were fighting for your life.

It had been a week since the mission and Bucky hadn’t spoken a word to you since debrief. Today was the first time you saw him for more than three minutes as he sat on the floor fiddling with the wiring in his wrist while his arm kit lay open in front of him on the coffee table as you, Steve, Sam, and Clint were playing gin.

Steve was watching you sneak glances at Bucky. You had tried to find him to apologize, but when Bucky Barnes didn’t want to be found. He wasn’t.

“Gin!” You announced happily.

“Again?” Sam groaned.

“Tally up, boys.”

“Seventy-five,” Clint grimaced before tossing his cards on the table and turning his attention to Bucky, concerned by the odd sparks coming from his arm.

“Whatcha up to, terminator?”

“My arm hasn’t been working right since I got shocked on that last mission,” he replied without looking up.

“What do you mean not working?” Sam asked.

“Can’t really control it. My touch is too light or too harsh. I can’t regulate it.”

“That didn’t happen last time you got hit,” Sam observed.

“Yeah, but last time I wasn’t shoved into a lake while being electrocuted.”

The younger man hummed, dipping his head in acknowledgment. You grimaced knowing it was your fault he got pushed in the lake.

“Should we call Shuri?” Steve worried.

“It’s fine. I’m sure I can fix it.”

“It’s been a few days now.”

“Drop it, Steve,” Bucky nearly growled.

“Did you try turning off and back on again?” Clint offered before he and Sam broke out into a fit of laughter.

“Maybe you should stick it in some rice.”

“Enough,” Steve warned as Bucky gathered his things and headed for the door.

“Come on, Barnes, we’re only joking.”

“It’s not a joke! Just leave me alone. None of you know what it’s like living with this… this thing every day,” Bucky shouted as he rushed out of the room.

Steve made to go after him but you stopped him, with a gentle hand to his chest.

“I’ll go.”

“Y/n.”

“Steve, it’s time,” you told him pointedly.

Narrowing his eyes, Steve nodded after a moment of internal debate.

“Your choice.”

Offering him a reassuring smile, you turned towards the elevator.

“Y/n,” Clint murmured, making you pause. “Tell Barnes we’re sorry.”

“We didn’t realize it was an over the line day.”

“I’ll tell him,” you agreed.

You hurried towards the elevator, leaving the apologetic superheroes behind.

“Seventh floor please, FRIDAY.”

“Yes, Agent Y/l/n.”

Stepping out onto Steve and Bucky’s floor, you took a deep breath before knocking on the door.

“Go away!” He shouted from deep within the room.

“Bucky, it’s me. Please can I come in?”

“Just leave me alone, doll,” he insisted but you could tell he was just behind the door this time.

“Bucky, please. I just want to help.”

Silence.

But you weren’t ready to give up yet, so you leaned against his door.

He only lasted a couple of minutes before unlocking the door and allowing you in. His head hung low as you stepped past him and he recoiled when you reached to comfort him so you let your hand drop.

“Can I take a look? I think I can help.”

“I tried all of the normal fixes, and last time I checked you weren’t a biomechanical engineer so I’m not really sure how you can help,” he explained, trying to hustle you out the door.

You tried not to be annoyed by his dismissiveness, but it ruffled you nonetheless. If only he knew.

“I may not be an engineer but I have a lot of experience with prosthetics. I understand-“

“Oh really?” he snapped, frustration getting the better of him. “What the hell do you understand? Do you understand the phantom pain and the way my skin feels like it’s still ripping apart? Do you know how it feels when you have a part of you that you can’t control sometimes? Do you understand how much I wish I didn’t have to be afraid of touching someone with this thing? No? Then just leave me alone,” he growled, though the despair cut through the bite.

“Bucky.”

“Please, doll. Just go.”

His head hung low and his tone was utterly defeated.

“Bucky, I do understand you. I understand all of those things,” you murmured.

“How could you possibly?”

There was an almost hopeful undercurrent to the disbelieving question as his eyes met yours.

“Because they happen to me too,” you sighed softly as you extended your right arm in front of you, tapping your pulse point twice to disable the holograft.

Bucky’s eyes widened as the graft retracted into a thin bracelet of rose gold, which matched your newly revealed arm.

“Wha-, how? When?” he stumbled over the questions as he examined your arm.

“I was stationed at a base hospital. There was an accident with the autoclave they used to sterilize the instruments. The steel door blew off and pinned me to the ground, which I probably would have gotten out of, but the impact sent a ton of heavy equipment piling on top of me. By the time they got me out, the damage was done and they had to amputate.”

“That’s… I had no idea.”

“Most people don’t,” you agreed quietly, averting your eyes and resisting the urge to hide your arm behind your back.

“Who does know?”

“Natasha who recruited me. Tony who built my arm and the holograft. And Steve because it glitched out on a mission and he paid the price. Like you almost did.”

“What?” he asked, his brows furrowing.

You finally looked at him.

“When we were undercover last week and I yanked away, it was because my arm was glitching and I could control my fine motor skills anymore. The last time it happened to Steve I actually managed to fracture a few of his bones. I forgot that you wouldn’t have the same problem.”

“So I didn’t hurt you?”

His body was tense as he waited for your answer.

“Oh no. Of course not.”

You heart sank to the floor as he shoulders slumped in relief.

“Bucky, is that why you’ve been avoiding me?” you asked softly.

He nodded, meeting your gaze through his lashes.

“I thought I hurt you and that’s why you pulled away.”

You were shaking your head before he could finish his sentence.

“No. No. Oh I’m so sorry you felt that way. I didn’t want to hurt you. When it all went to shit, I regretted not telling you so much.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Honestly? Because I didn’t think you’d take me coming up to you and saying ‘hey, I’ve got a metal arm too let’s be friends’ as a good first impression.“

Bucky chuckled at the mental image you conjured eyes crinkling as they found yours.

“It certainly would have been memorable. But I suppose that’s fair.”

You hummed softly as you waited for his next move.

“So all of the things you did for me… the massager, the tea, the weirdass show?”

“All things that worked for me. And Galavant is a treasure,” she added as an afterthought.

Pursing his lips deepened his frown.

“Y/n, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay, Bucky. You didn’t know.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he argued. “I never should have yelled at you or taken my frustrations out on you. Please accept my apology.”

His oceanic eyes implored you.

“Of course. It’s all forgotten.”

“Thank you. I owe the guys an apology for today.”

“They understand,” you assured him. “They said their sorry.”

“Still, I should-“

He turned towards the door but you quickly moved in front of him.

“Will you sit your butt down.”

Bucky was shocked by the authority in your tone and immediately complied without thinking, plopping down on the nearest surface which happened to be the bed.

“Now, can I please look at your arm?” you asked softly.

If he still truly didn’t want your help you would back off.

Bucky nodded his assent, swallowing harshly.

“Where’s your kit?”

“On the desk.”

Grabbing the small screwdriver and a set of tweezers from the worn leather pouch, you sat on the bed next to him and got to work.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” you mumbled as you focused on tracing the currents in his arm.

“Why do you always wear the skin graft?”

You were quiet as you thought about your answer.

“From a tactical standpoint, I’d stick out like a sore thumb. So it’s a necessity on missions.”

“But around the team?”

“I wanted one less thing for them to make assumptions about when I joined I guess.”

Before Bucky could ask what you meant, you continued on.

“After the accident, things were hard. It was a major loss, and I wasn’t quite sure how to cope. I didn’t think my life could ever be normal again. But my rehab team were great and they’ve made such amazing advances in prosthetics that life was different but it was okay. I found a new normal, and I could live my life the way I wanted to for the most part. But other people when they met me couldn’t see that. It was like I was nothing more than my arm and my accident. So when Natasha recruited me and Tony offered me the holograft I took it.”

“A chance at normal.”

“Exactly. Fortunately, I’m not known for my metal arm so no one questioned it.”

You offered him a sympathetic smile, knowing he would likely never have the luxury of anonymity. Baseball caps and sunglasses weren’t as good of a disguise as some super soldiers might think.

“This is true. Do you hate it?” Bucky almost whispered and you froze.

The super soldier’s eyes darted to yours when you didn’t speak and your hands stilled.

“I did. For a long time. I’ve known a lot of friends who’ve lost limbs, lost lives, because of i.e.d.’s and landmines, so honestly I did my two tours expecting to not come home in one piece. The fact that it was a random accident in a low risk assignment, made me feel like I’d swum across an entire ocean just to drown in a wave pool. I hated that it made me feel weak. But over time, it became a part of my life. And after attending too many funerals my life was more than enough to be thankful for. And now, I get to use my arm to help people. So no, I don’t hate it. Not anymore.”

Bucky was quiet as he observed you, trying to sort out all of the new information. You returned your attention to his arm, carefully ferreting out the problem.

“Aha! Gotcha. Little piece of… there.”

You stripped out a bit of exposed wiring and tightened a bolt and eighth of an inch.

“That should do it,” you announced. “How does it feel?”

Bucky swung his arm in a wide circle and flexed his fingers.

“Much better. What was wrong?”

“The shock fried on of the connections that translates the electrical impulses from your nerves. It made it hypersensitive.”

“Thank you, doll.”

“You’re welcome. I’m glad I could help.”

You returned the tools to his kit, taking your time to precisely arrange them so you could try to think of what to say next.

“How are your tactile sensations?” You asked when you sat down on the bed again.

“They feel okay, but I should probably test it to see. Make sure it works on precious things.”

“Got anything precious nearby?”

“Yeah.”

Bucky cautiously raised his hand toward you.

“May I?”

You nodded, holding your breath.

The silver hand continued its path to your cheek, cradling your face tenderly as you leaned into his touch.

“You are beautiful. And I have to thank you for being there in quiet ways when I wasn’t ready to ask for help.”

“You’re welcome. I hope you know how much we all care about you. I hope you know how much I care about you.”

“I do.”

Slowly pulling away from your cheek, you pouted until Bucky threaded his silver fingers through your rose gold ones as he lifted your right hand. Admiring the delicate craftsmanship and the way it caught the light, he gently turned it so he could press a kiss to your knuckles.

You gasped at the sensation. The holograft, much like a glove, dulled your sense of touch. The feeling of his lips against your hand was overwhelming.

“This feels…” you breathed unable to find the words.

“Right,” Bucky supplied. “It feels right.”

You nodded, swiping at tears.

“Like it’s the way it’s meant to be. Your hand in mine,” you mused quietly.

Bucky’s answering smile was brilliant as he squeezed your fingers.

“That’s because it is.”

~~~~~~~~ The End

A/N: I hope you enjoyed this. And @ashhys-lost-in-fanfics-again I hope that I did your request justice. Thank you again for the request, I loved writing. Will reblog with Tags

#Bucky x Reader #Bucky Barnes #Bucky x Reader Oneshot #Bucky Barnes Oneshot #Request Fic

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im-a-space-gay · 4 years ago

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The Episode of Chaos (bonus fic)

Basically a follow up/bonus fic to On My Way to Florida, which I really wanted to do while editing that fic. So, have the episode that happened the day before Virgil went to Florida!

Before Virgil went to Florida

~~~~~~~

Roman ran outside the house, jumping around while punching the air.

“Hello and welcome to the Gay Gamers channel if you’re new! I’m Prince_Of_Creativity, and I have with me today CoolLogic101-“

“Salutations.”

“-and Mor-Pal-Ity!”

“I wanna cry!”

“Temporarily ignoring that,” Roman said, stopping his running to enter the house and grab some wood from a chest. “Now, frequent viewers of this channel have probably noticed-“

“I want Anxie!” Patton said loudly, and Roman started wondering if he was okay.

“-that we are down one gamer! Unfortunately, Anxie_Tea&Biscuits or Anx isn’t with us today! Something had come up with his family, so he will be gone for an unknown amount of time. Because of this-“

“How horrible that he is gone, and for an unknown amount of time. What if he doesn’t come back, what if—“

“-I’m starting to think that I’ve become the most sane person here.” Roman continued over Logan’s ramble, going back outside to continue his building. “Somehow, without Anx, the other two have descended into madness, and I’m questioning whether it was a good idea to come on our Crazy Craft server and continue recording without the Brit.”

Roman’s recording picked up Logan sprinting across the clearing, but he didn’t notice it as he built.

“Now that that’s out of the way, Patt, mind telling me why you wanna cry?”

The video cut over to Logan’s recording, where he was making a structure out of wood and carrying an inventory worth of random items.

“Well my son-husband-fiancée-bestfriend is gone and Roman I f*cking want him back!”

“Oh my god, oh no Patton cussed that’s how bad this is,” Roman said as Logan continued building, looking up from time to time to make sure Roman didn’t see him as Patton ran over to Logan, giving him TNT and netherrack.

Logan privately messaged him thanks and asking for cows and all of their wheat, which Patton quickly agreed to.

“Okay, Patt, I don’t really know what to tell you besides he’ll be back soon, okay?”

“But soon isn’t now!” Patton near-yelled, the video transitioning over to Patton’s point of view as he shoved all the wheat they owned (two double chests worth) into multiple backpacks, grabbing two cow spawn eggs before sneaking his way to Logan, checking multiple times to make sure Roman wasn’t watching.

“I know buddy, he’ll probably just be gone this one episode!”

The footage went back to Logan as he got all the items from Patton, nodding in thanks before returning to his builiding that was just out of Roman’s sight.

“How strange, isn’t it?” Logan said, rambling as to not make Roman suspicious. “That this is the first and hopefully only time he’s gone?”

“It really is,” Roman said, putting a door as he finished their enchanting tower. “Like, I keep expecting something from him, y’know? A sarcastic comment, saying he’s getting a cup of tea, screaming the moment he’s in danger, like I’m expecting all of that and more right now.”

“Mhmm,” Patton hummed, watching Logan finish up and sitting in a chair he made for the occasion.

After a few moments of Roman rambling about different things, Logan stood facing his crowd of one from atop the structure he made, holding an enchanted Big Bertha sword as the footage switched to Patton’s perspective.

“SINNERS, SAINTS, GAMERS OF OLD AND NEW, LEND ME YOUR EARS!” He said loudly, and the footage switched to Roman’s in the house for a second before going back to Patton.

“What the f*ck?”

“I KNOW WE ARE ALL GRIEVING, AND THE WORLD HAS BECOME MORE BLAND AND DULL SINCE THE LOSS OF ONE OF OUR BRETHREN, OUR DARK ANGEL KNOWN AS ANXIETY!”

“No seriously, what’s happening?” Roman asked as the footage switched over to his as he exited the house and noticed the structure for the first time before switching back over. “What the f*ck?”

“BUT FEAR NOT, MY FRIENDS, FOR WE SHALL RESURRECT OUR FALLEN HERO!”

“He’s not dead?” Roman questioned as he took in the details of the structure; a tall intricate tower made of pink wood, layered with a purple stone with pillars of netherrack that had fires on top of them.

“AND SO, I SHALL BURN THINGS THAT REPRESENT AND MAKE THE HOLY ONE WHO HE IS!”

“‘The Holy One’?”

“A COOKIE, FOR HIS SWEETNESS HE IS SO HESITANT TO DISPLAY,” he said as he threw a cookie into a pit with fire.

“What, is happening?”

“A ROSE, TO SHOW THAT HE MAY BE INNOCENT, BUT HE IS NOT GOING DOWN WITHOUT A FIGHT.”

“I’m very concerned.”

“A CHICKEN PET, SHOWING HIS WILLINGNESS TO RUN INTO DANGER TO PROTECT US.”

“Okay, those aren’t exactly easy to find—“

“A LIVE PEACOCK, BECAUSE GOD DAMN IS ANX ONE OF THE HOTTEST GUYS I’VE SEEN.”

“I can’t argue with that, but- I’m sorry, live?”

“AND FINALLY,” Logan said, pulling a lever to reveal way too many cows in a small containment area. “THE BLOOD OF SIX HUNDRED, SIXTY-SIX COWS, SLAIN WITH OUR LOVE’S ONLY SWORD!”

Logan pulled out the enchanted Big Bertha again before jumping into the pit and killing the cows. Once that was done, he pulled another lever.

“AND NOW, TO BLOW UP THE ALTER!”

“WHAT?!” Roman yelled as Patton cheered, and before they could move, they blew up with the structure.

Roman respawned, running toward where the alter once was only to see a giant hole.

“LOGAN!”

——

Once the video was edited and posted, having many more shenanigans and a distressed Roman, it would receive it’s first comment, an hour before Virgil got on his flight.

Anxie_Tea&Biscuits: “Slain with our love’s only sword”? View 3 replies

#sanders sides #virgil sanders #logan sanders #thomas sanders #roman sanders #patton sanders #sanders sides au #gay gamers #gay gamers au #moxiety #analogical #prinxiety #logicality #logince #royality #lamp #polyam #polyamsanders #kai’s writing

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za3k · 4 years ago

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2020 Videogames

In 2020 I’m newly retired, so I’ve had free time. I think it’s fun to do reviews, so without further ado here’s every video game I played in 2020!

I recommend:

(4/5) Among Us – Very fun. It’s only fun with voice chat with friends, so I’ve only gotten to play once or twice. I’ve been watching it more than playing it. Also free to play for mobile gamers–I’m tired of the “everyone buys a copy” model of group gameplay.

(4/5) Brogue. Brogue is an ascii-art roguelike. It’s great, and it has a nice difficulty ramp. It’s a good “quick break” game. I play it in preference to other roguelikes partly because I haven’t done it to death yet, and partly because I don’t need a numpad?

(4/5) Cook Serve Delicious 3. One of the more fun games I played this year. You get really into it, but I had trouble relaxing and paying attention to the real world when I played too much, haha. I own but haven’t played the first two–I gather this is pretty much just a refinement.

(4/5) Green Hell. Price tag is a bit high for the number of hours I got out of it, but I haven’t finished the story. Great graphics, and the BEST map design I’ve seen in a 3D game in a long time. It feels like a real place, with reasonable geography instead of copy-pasted tiles. I love that as you walk along, you can just spot a cultivated area from the rest of the jungle–it feels more like it’s treating me like an adult than most survival games. Everything still gets highlighted if you can pick it up. I played the survival mode, which was okay but gets old quickly. I started the story mode–I think it would be fine, but it has some LONG unskippable scenes at the start, including a very hand-holdy tutorial, that I think they should have cut. I did start getting into the story and was having fun, but I stopped. I might finish the game some time.

(4/5) Hyperrogue. One of my recent favorites. The dev has made a fair number of highly experimental games, most of which are a total miss with me, but this one is fun. I do wish the early game wasn’t quite as repetitive. Failing another solution, I might actually want this not to be permadeath, or to have a save feature? I bought it on steam to support the dev and get achievements, but it’s also available a version or two behind free, which is how I tried it. Constantly getting updates and new worlds.

(4/5) Minecraft – Compact Claustrophobia modpack. Fun idea, nice variety. After one expansion felt a little samey, and it was hard to start with two people. I’d consider finishing this pack.

(4/5) Overcooked 2. Overcooked 2 is just more levels for Overcooked. The foods in the second game is more fun, and it has better controls and less bugs. If you’re considering playing Overcooked, I recommend just starting with the second game, despite very fun levels in the first. I especially appreciate that the second game didn’t just re-use foods from the first.

(4/5) Please Don’t Press Anything. A unique little game where you try to get all the endings. I had a lot of fun with this one, but it could have used some kind of built-in hints like Reventure. Also, it had a lot of red herrings. Got it for $2, which it was well worth.

(5/5) Reventure. Probably the best game new to me this year. It’s a short game where you try to get each of about 100 endings. The art and writing are cute and funny. The level design is INCREDIBLE. One thing I found interesting is the early prototype–if I had played it, I would NOT have imagined it would someday be any fun at all, let alone as amazing as it is. As a game designer I found that interesting! I did 100% complete this one–there’s a nice in-game hint system, but there were still 1-3 “huh” puzzles, especially in the post-game content, one of which I had to look up. It’s still getting updates so I’m hoping those will be swapped for something else.

(5/5) Rimworld. Dwarf fortress, but with good cute graphics, set in the Firefly universe. Only has 1-10 pawns instead of hundreds of dwarves. Basically Dwarf Fortress but with a good UI. I wish you could do a little more in Rimworld, but it’s a fantastic, relaxing game.

(5/5) Slay the Spire. Probably the game I played most this year. A deckbuilding adventure through a series of RPG fights. A bit luck-based, but relaxing and fun. I like that you can play fast or slow. Very, very well-designed UI–you can really learn how things work. My favorite part is that because it’s singleplayer, it’s really designed to let you build a game-breaking deck. That’s how it should be!

(4/5) Stationeers. I had a lot of fun with this one. It’s similar to Space Engineers but… fun. It has better UI by a mile too, even if it’s not perfect. I lost steam after playing with friends and then going back to being alone, as I often do for base-building games. Looks like you can genuinely make some complicated stuff using simple parts. Mining might not be ideal.

(5/5) Spy Party. One of my favorite games. Very fun, and an incredibly high skill ceiling. There’s finally starting to be enough people to play a game with straners sometimes. Bad support for “hot seat”–I want to play with beginners in person, and it got even harder with the introduction of an ELO equivalent and removing the manual switch to use “beginner” gameplay.

(4/5) Telling Lies. A storytelling game. The core mechanic is that you can use a search engine for any phrase, and it will show the top 5 survellance footage results for that. The game internally has transcripts of every video. I didn’t really finish the game, but I had a lot of fun with it. The game was well-made. I felt the video acting didn’t really add a huge amount, and they could have done a text version, but I understand it wouldn’t have had any popular appeal. The acting was decent. There’s some uncomfortable content, on purpose.

(4/5) Totally Accurate Battle Simulator (TABS). Delightful. Very silly, not what you’d expect from the name. What everyone should have been doing with physics engines since they were invented. Imagine that when a caveman attacks, the club moves on its own and the caveman just gets ragdolled along, glued to it. Also the caveman and club have googley eyes. Don’t try to win or it will stop being fun. Learn how to turn on slo-mo and move the camera.

(4/5) We Were Here Together. Lots of fun. I believe the second game out of three. Still some crashes and UI issues. MUCH better puzzles and the grpahics are gorgeous. They need to fix the crashes or improve the autosave, we ended up replaying a lot of both games from crashes. It’s possible I should be recommending the third game but I haven’t played it yet.

The Rest

(3/5) 5D Chess with Multiverse Time Travel. More fun that it sounds. If you play to mess around and win by accident, it’s pretty good. Definitely play with a second human player, though.

(1.5/5) 7 billion humans. Better than the original, still not fun. Soulless game about a soulless, beige corporation. Just play Zachtronics instead. If you’re on a phone and want to engage your brain, play Euclidea.

(3/5) A Dark Room. Idle game.

(1/5) Amazing Cultivation Simulator. A big disappointment. Bad english voice acting which can’t be turned off, and a long, unskippable tutorial. I didn’t get to actual gameplay. I like Rimworld and cultivation novels so I had high hopes.

(3/5) ADOM (Steam version) – Fun like the original, which I would give 5/5. Developed some major issues on Linux, but I appreciate that there’s a graphical version available, one of my friends will play it now.

(4/5) agar.io – Good, but used to be better. Too difficult to get into games now. Very fun and addictive gameplay.

(3/5) Amorous – Furry dating sim. All of the hot characters are background art you can’t interact with, and the characters you can actually talk to are a bunch of sulky nerds who for some reason came to a nightclub. I think it was free, though.

(0/5) Apis. Alpha game, AFAIK I was the first player. Pretty much no fun right now (to the point of not really being a game yet), but it could potentially become fun if the author puts in work.

(4/5) Autonauts. I played a ton of Autonauts this year, almost finished it, which is rare for me. My main complaint is that it’s fundamentally supposed to be a game about programming robots, but I can’t actually make them do more than about 3 things, even as a professional programmer. Add more programming! It can be optional, that’s fine. They’re adding some kind of tower defense waves instead, which is bullshit. Not recommended because it’s not for everyone.

(3/5) A-Z Inc. Points for having the guts to have a simple game. At first this looked like just the bones of Swarm Simulator, but the more you look at the UI and the ascension system, the worse it actually is. I would regularly reset because I found out an ascension “perk” actually made me worse off.

(5/5) Beat Saber. Great game, and my favorite way to stay in shape early this year. Oculus VR only, if you have VR you already have this game so no need to recommend. Not QUITE worth getting a VR set just to play it at current prices.

(1/5) Big Tall Small. Good idea, but no fun to play. Needed better controls and level design, maybe some art.

(0.5/5) Blush Blush. Boring.

(3/5) Business Shark. I had too much fun with this simple game. All you do is just eat a bunch of office workers.

(3/5) chess.com. Turns out I like chess while I’m high?

(3/5) Circle Empires Rivals. Decent, more fun than the singleplayer original. It shouldn’t really have been a separate game from Circle Empires, and I’m annoyed I couldn’t get it DRM-free like the original.

(3/5) Cross Virus. By Dan-box. Really interesting puzzle mechanics.

(4/5) Cultist Simulator. Really fun to learn how to play–I love games that drop you in with no explanation. Great art and writing, I wish I could have gotten their tarot deck. Probably the best gameplay “ambience” I’ve seen–getting a card that’s labeled “fleeting sense of radiance” that disappears in 5 seconds? Great. Also the core stats are very well thought out for “feel” and real-life accuracy–dread (depression) conquers fascination (mania), etc. It has a few gameplay gotchas, but they’re not too big–layout issues, inability to go back to skipped text, or to put your game in an unwinnable state early on). Unfortunately it’s a “roguelike”, and it’s much too slow-paced and doesn’t have enough replay value, so it becomes a horrible, un-fun grind when you want to actually win. I probably missed the 100% ending but I won’t be going back to get it. I have no idea who would want to play this repeatedly. I’m looking forward to the next game from the same studio though! I recommend playing a friend’s copy instead of buying.

(2/5) Darkest Dungeon. It was fine but I don’t really remember it.

(2/5) Dicey Dungeons. Okay deck-building roguelike gameplay (with an inventory instead of a deck). Really frustrating, unskippably slow difficulty curve at the start. I played it some more this year and liked it better because I had a savegame. I appreciate having several character classes, but they should unlock every difficulty from the start.

(2/5) Diner Bros. Basically just a worse Overcooked. I didn’t like the controls, and it felt too repetitive with only one diner.

(2/5) Don’t Eat My Mind You Stupid Monster. Okay art and idea, the gameplay wasn’t too fun for me.

(2/5) Don’t Starve – I’ve played Don’t Stave maybe 8 different times, and it’s never really gripped me, I always put it back down. It’s slow, a bit grindy, and there’s no bigger goal–all you can do is live.

(3/5) Don’t Starve Together – Confusingly, Don’t Starve Together can be played alone. It’s Don’t Starve, plus a couple of the expansions. This really could be much more clearly explained.

(1/5) Elemental Abyss – A deck-builder, but this time it’s grid-based tactics. Really not all that fun. Just play Into the Abyss instead or something.

(1/5) Else Heart.Break() – I was excited that this might be a version of “Hack N’ Slash” from doublefine that actually delivered and let you goof around with the world. I gave it up in the first ten minutes, because the writing and characters drove me crazy, without getting to hacking the world.

(2/5) Everything is Garbage. Pretty good for a game jam game. Not a bad use of 10 minutes. I do think it’s probably possible to make the game unwinnable, and the ending is just nothing.

(1/5) Evolve. Idle game, not all that fun. I take issue with the mechanic in Sharks, Kittens, and this where buying your 15th fence takes 10^15 wood for some reason.

(4/5) Exapunks. Zachtronics has really been killing it lately, with Exapunks and Opus Magnum. WONDERFUL art and characters during story portions, and much better writing. The gameplay is a little more varied than in TIS-100 or the little I played of ShenZen I/O. My main complaint about Zachtronics games continues to be, that I don’t want to be given a series of resource-limited puzzles (do X, but without using more than 10 programming instructions). Exapunks is the first game where it becomes harder to do something /at all/, rather than with a particular amount of resources, but it’s still not there for me. Like ShenZen, they really go for a variety of hardware, too. Can’t recommend this because it’s really only for programmers.

(1/5) Exception. Programming game written by some money machine mobile games company. Awful.

(4/5) Factorio. Factorio’s great, but for me it doesn’t have that much replay value, even with mods. I do like their recent updates, which included adding blueprints from the start of the game, improving belt sorting, and adding a research queue. We changed movement speed, made things visually always day, and adding a small number of personal construction robots from the start this run. I’m sure if you’d like factorio you’ve played it already.

(3/5) Fall Guys – I got this because it was decently fun to watch. Unfortunately, it’s slightly less fun to play. Overall, there’s WAY too much matchmaking waiting considering the number of players, and the skill ceiling is very low on most of the games, some of which are essentially luck (I’m looking at you, team games).

(3/5) Forager – Decent game. A little too much guesswork in picking upgrades–was probably a bit more fun on my second play because of that. Overall, nice graphics and a cute map, but the gameplay could use a bit of work.

(3/5) Getting Over It – Funny idea, executed well. Pretty sure my friends and I have only gotten through 10% of the game, and all hit about the same wall (the first tunnel)

(3/5) Guild of Dungeoneering – Pretty decent gameplay. I feel like it’s a bit too hard for me, but that’s fine. Overall I think it could use a little more cute/fun art, I never quite felt that motivated.

(1/5) Hardspace: Shipbreakers. Okay, I seriously didn’t get to play this one, but I had GAMEBREAKING issues with my controller, which is a microsoft X-box controller for PC–THE development controller.

(2/5) Helltaker. All right art, meh gameplay. But eh, it’s free!

(3/5) Hot Lava. Decent gameplay. Somehow felt like the place that made this had sucked the souls out of all the devs first–no one cared about the story or characters. It’s a game where the floor is made out of lava, with a saturday morning cartoon open, so that was a really an issue. Admirable lack of bugs, though. I’m a completionist so I played the first world a lot to get all the medals, and didn’t try the later ones.

(3/5) House Flipper – Weird, but I had fun. I wish the gameplay was a little more unified–it felt like a bunch of glued-together minigames.

(2/5) Hydroneer. Utterly uninspiring. I couldn’t care about making progress at all, looked like a terrible grind to no benefit.

(1/5) io. Tiny game, I got it on Steam, also available on phone. Basically a free web flash game, but for money. Not good enough to pay the $1 I paid. Just a bit of a time-killer.

(3/5) Islanders – All you do is place buildings and get points. Not particularly challenging, but relaxing. Overall I liked it.

(3/5) Jackbox – I played this online with a streamer. Jackbox has always felt a little bit soulless money grab to me, but it’s still all right. I like that I can play without having a copy–we need more games using this purchase model.

(3/5) Life is Feudal – Soul-crushingly depressing and grindy, which I knew going in. I thought it was… okay, but I really want an offline play mode (Yes, I know there’s an unsupported single-player game, but it’s buggier and costs money). UI was pretty buggy, and I think hunting might literally be impossible.

(2/5) Minecraft – Antimatter Chemistry. Not particularly fun.

(3/5) Minecraft – ComputerCraft. I played a pack with just ComputerCraft and really nothing else. Was a little slow, would have been more fun with more of an audience. I love the ComputerCraft mod, I just didn’t have a great experience playing my pack I made.

(3/5) Minecraft – Foolcraft 3. Fun, a bit buggy. Honestly I can’t remember it too well.

(1/5) Minecraft – Manufactio. Looked potentially fun, but huge bugs and performance issues, couldn’t play.

(4/5) Minecraft – Tekkit. Tekkit remains one of my favorite Minecraft modpacks.

(3/5) Minecraft – Valhelsia 2. I remember this being fun, but I can’t remember details as much as I’d like. I think it was mostly based around being the latest version of minecraft?

(4/5) Minecraft – Volcano Block. Interesting, designed around some weird mods I hadn’t used. I could have used more storage management or bulk dirt/blocks early in the game–felt quite cramped. Probably got a third of the way through the pack. I got novelty value out of it, but I wouldn’t have enjoyed it if I had ever used the plant mod before–it’s a very fixed, linear progression.

(5/5) Minit. This is a weird, small game. I actually had a lot of fun with it. Then I 100% completed it, which was less fun but I still had a good time overall.

(3/5) Monster Box. By Dan-box. One of two Dan-box games I played a lot of. Just visually appealing, the gameplay isn’t amazing. Also, Dan-box does some great programming–this is a game written in 1990 or so, and it can render hundreds of arrows in the air smoothly in a background tab.

(3/5) Monster Train. A relatively fun deckbuilding card game. It can’t run well on my computer, which is UNACCEPTABLE–this is a card game with 2D graphics. My MICROWAVE should run this shit in 2020. Ignoring that, the gameplay style (summon monsters, MTG style) just isn’t my cup of tea.

(2/5) Moonlighter. Felt like it was missing some inspiration, just didn’t have a sense of “fun”. The art was nice. The credits list is surprisingly long.

(2/5) Muse Dash. All right, a basic rhythm game. Not enough variety to the game play, and everything was based around perfect or near-perfect gameplay, which makes things less fun for me.

(3/5) NES games – various. Dr Mario, Ice Climbers. Basically, I got some Chinese handheld “gameboy” that has all the NES games preloaded on it. Overall it was a great purchase.

(2/5) Noita. “The Powder Game” by Dan-Box, as a procedurally generated platformer with guns. Lets you design your own battle spells. Despite the description, you really still can’t screw around as much as I’d like. I also had major performance issues

(3/5) Observation. I haven’t played this one as much as I’d like, I feel like it may get better. Storytelling, 3D game from the point of view of the AI computer on a space station. I think I might have read a book it’s based on, unfortunately.

(2/5) One Step From Eden. This is a deck-building combat tactics game. I thought it was turn-based, but it’s actually realtime. I think if it was turn-based I would have liked it. The characters were a bit uninspired.

(1/5) Orbt XL. Very dull. I paid $0.50 for it, it was worth that.

(4/5) Opus Magnum. Another great game from Zachtronics, along with Exapunks they’re really ramping up. This is the third execution of the same basic concept. I’d like to see Zachtronics treading new ground more as far as gameplay–that said, it is much improved compared to the first two iterations. The art, writing, and story were stellar on the other hand.

(3/5) Out of Space. Fun idea, you clean a spaceship. It’s never that challenging, and it has mechanics such that it gets easier the more you clean, rather than harder. Good but not enough replay value. Fun with friends the first few times. The controls are a little wonky.

(1/5) Outpost (tower defense game). I hate all tower defense.

(3/5) Overcooked. Overcooked is a ton of fun.

(4/5) Powder Game – Dan-box. I played this in reaction to not liking Noita. It’s fairly old at this point. Just a fun little toy.

(1/5) Prime Mover – Very cool art, the gameplay put me to sleep immediately. A “circuit builder” game but somehow missing any challenge or consistency.

(2/5) Quest for Glory I. Older, from 1989. Didn’t really play this much, I couldn’t get into the writing, and the pseudo-photography art was a little jarring.

(4/5) Raft. I played this in beta for free on itch.io, and had a lot of fun. Not enough changed that it was really worth a replay, but it has improved, and I got to play with a second player. Not a hard game, which I think was a good thing. The late game they’ve expanded, but it doesn’t really add much. The original was fun and so was this.

(3/5) Satisfactory. I honestly don’t know how I like this one–I didn’t get too far into it.

(4/5) Scrap Mechanic. I got this on a recommendation from a player who played in creative. I only tried the survival mode–that mode is not well designed, and their focuses for survival are totally wrong. I like the core game, you can actually build stuff. If I play again, I’ll try the creative mode, I think.

(3.5/5) Shapez.io. A weird, abstracted simplification of Factorio. If I hadn’t played factorio and half a dozen copies, I imagine this would have been fun, but it’s just more of the same. Too much waiting–blueprints are too far into the game, too.

(2.5/5) Simmiland. Okay, but short. Used cards for no reason. For a paid game, I wanted more gameplay out of it?

(0.5/5) Snakeybus. The most disappointing game I remember this year. Someone made “Snake” in 3D. There are a million game modes and worlds to play in. I didn’t find anything I tried much fun.

(1/5) Soda Dungeon. A “mobile” (read: not fun) style idle game. Patterned after money-grab games, although I don’t remember if paid progress was actually an option. I think so.

(4/5) Spelunky. The only procedurally generated platformer I’ve ever seen work. Genuinely very fun.

(4/5) Spelunky 2. Fun, more of an upgrade of new content than a new game. Better multiplayer. My computer can’t run later levels at full speed.

(1/5) Stick Ranger 2. Dan-box. Not much fun.

(3/5) Superliminal. Fun game. A bit short for the pricetag.

(3/5) Tabletop Simulator – Aether’s End: Legacy. Interesting, a “campaign” (series of challenge bosses and pre-written encounters) deckbuilding RPG. I like the whole “campaign RPG boardgame” idea. This would have worked better with paper, there were some rough edges in both the game instructions and the port to Tabletop Simulator.

(4/5) Tabletop Simulator – The Captain is Dead. Very fun. I’d love to play with more than 2 people. Tabletop simulator was so-so for this one.

(2/5) Tabletop Simulator – Tiny Epic Mechs. You give your mech a list of instructions, and it does them in order. Arena fight. Fun, but I think I could whip up something at least as good.

(3/5) The Council. One of the only 3D games I finished. It’s a story game, where you investigate what’s going on and make various choices. It’s set in revolutionary france, at the Secret World Council that determines the fate of the world. It had a weak ending, with less choice elements than the rest of the game so far, which was a weird decision. Also, it has an EXCRUTIATINGLY bad opening scene, which was also weird. The middle 95% of the game I enjoyed, although the ending went on a little long. The level of background knowledge expected of the player swung wildly–they seemed to expect me to know who revolutionary French generals were with no explanation, but not Daedalus and the Minotaur. The acting was generally enjoyable–there’s a lot of lying going on in the game and it’s conveyed well. The pricetag is too high to recommend.

(0/5) The Grandma’s Recipe (Unus Annus). This game is unplayably bad–it’s just a random pixel hunt. Maybe it would be fun if you had watched the video it’s based on.

(3/5) The Room. Pretty fun! I think this is really designed for a touchscreen, but I managed to play it on my PC. Played it stoned, which I think helps with popular puzzle games–it has nice visuals but it’s a little too easy.

(3/5) This Call May Be Recorded. Goofy experimental game.

(4/5) TIS-100. Zachtronics. A programming game. I finally got done with the first set of puzzles and into the second this year. I had fun, definitely not for everyone.

(3/5) Trine. I played this 2-player. I think the difficulty was much better 2-player, but it doesn’t manage 2 players getting separated well. Sadly we skipped the story, which seemed like simple nice low-fantasy. Could have used goofier puzzles, it took itself a little too seriously and the levels were a bit same-y.

(2/5) Unrailed. Co-op railroad building game. It was okay but there wasn’t base-building. Overall not my thing. I’d say I would prefer something like Overcooked if it’s going to be timed? Graphics reminded me of autonauts.

(2/5) Vampire Night Shift. Art game. Gameplay could have used a bit of polish. Short but interesting.

(4/5) Wayward. To date, the best survival crafting system I’ve seen. You can use any pointy object and stick-like object, together with glue or twine, to make an arrow. The UI is not great, and there’s a very counter-intuitive difficulty system. You need to do a little too much tutorial reading, and it could use more goals. Overall very fun. Under constant development, so how it plays a given week is a crapshoot. The steam version finally works for me (last time I played it was worse than the free online alpha, now it’s the same or better). I recomend playing the free online version unless you want to support the author.

(1/5) We Need to Go Deeper. Multiplayer exploration game in a sub, with sidescrolling battle. Somehow incredibly unfun, together with high pricetag. Aesthetics reminded me of Don’t Starve somehow.

(2/5) We Were Here. Okay 2-player puzzle game. Crashed frequently, and there were some “huh” puzzles and UI. Free.

(3/5) Yes, your grace. Gorgeous pixel art graphics. The story is supposed to be very player-dependent, but I started getting the feeling that it wasn’t. I didn’t quite finish the game but I think I was well past halfway. Hard to resume after a save, you forget things. I got the feeling I wouldn’t replay it, which is a shame because it’s fun to see how things go differently in a second play with something like this.

These are not all new to me, and very few came out in 2020. I removed any games I don’t remember and couldn’t google (a fair number, I play a lot of game jam games) as well as any with pornographic content.

2020 Videogames was originally published on Optimal Prime

#games #review #reviews #videogames #yearly review #cross-posted-from-blog

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turnupbrock · 5 years ago

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Perfectionist -Chapter One - Colby Brock

This was a requested series by @black-colby-pink “ dude you should write a series, I would read it. “ So that’s what I’m doing. I really hope you guys like it because I like writing it so far and I have interesting plans for it in the future.

Tags list: @absolute-randomness-forever @scottybrock @black-colby-pink @softboybrock @now-imagine @azurebrock @sweetxplr

(Let me know if you want to be tagged :) )

As your group of friends sat around Sam’s living room, eyes focused on the TV screen in front of them. Mouths dropped open, the fear radiating off every single one of them, creating a ball of it in the middle of the room. Making the air feel thicker, harder for them to breath but they didn’t notice. The only thing that had their attention was the ‘Public Service Announcement’ that was blaring on Sam’s TV that was hanging from the wall. The only sound in the room was the loud beeping and the women’s loud voice that was spilling through the speakers that Sam had placed on the floor and the flatscreen. You and Colby basically fell through the door, laughing your asses off from a joke that Colby made before swinging the door of Sam’s apartment open. The fearful looks that you got from all of your friends sobered you and Colby up really quick. “You guys are looking at us like someone died, “ You joked trying to enlighten the heavy mood that was set. Your remark only caused your friends eyes to widened impossibly wider, “Someone did die,” Katrina spoke, her voice was trembling as she spoke. Colby’s arm tightened around your waist, pulling you tighter against him. “What are you talking about?” Colby asked from behind you. His voice was one of wonder and nervousness.

The blaring noise beeped again causing all of our attention to snap over to the TV once more, “This is not a test.” A women’s voice came through the speakers, almost sounding animatronic like. “This an emergency announcement sanctioned by The U.S Government. There has a murder that took place tonight outside the club ‘Boarder’s Night Club’ located in North Hollywood. Officers and the F.B.I are working to find who the main suspect could be. The sex, age, and name of the the victim is being foreclosed for their privacy.” The same voice continued to flow throughout the apartment. Your eyes were wide and your breathing began to pick up, your hands shaking violently by your sides. Colby slipped his arm from your waist to your hands, holding them tightly, trying to calm your nerves. “Everyone is being advised to stay away from any Night Clubs or Bars until further notice. We are trying to keep everyone as safe as possible. If anyone has any information on the murder that had taken place this tragic evening, please contact 911 immediately. May you all be safe.” The announcement ended with the same ear splitting static blare.

Your eyes dragged from the television to all of your friends, who you’re sure their faces mirrored your own. Mouths agape, eyes wide, hands shaking, and eyes watering out of fear. “ They wouldn’t announce it if it was like any other murder,” Sam’s voice broke through the silence of the room. You nodded your head, lifting your hand wipe your tears, “ Yeah, if were any other murder it would’ve been on the news, not an emergency announcement,” you agreed. All the voices of your close friends rang through the space, it was a whirlwind of yelling and concern. You’re sure that you head a couple of sniffles from the girls and maybe some of the guys but you couldn’t exactly pinpoint who they belonged to. Your heart was racing, your eyes raking from one friend to the next, mind running one hundred miles an hour as you desperately tried to take in the situation. However, everyone's mouth snapped shut when the door flung open to reveal Aryia and Corey. Their own eyes wide and disbelieving, “ Did you hear?” Ariya asked locking the door behind them. Colby dragged you to Sam’s moveable loveseat, pulling you onto his white jean covered lap. Wrapping a protective arm around your waist he replied, “ Yeah we heard. “ Your eyes searched the boys that had just walked in. Taking in their appearance. You could see that their hands shaking and they looked just as nervous, if not more nervous than you guys. But the thing that stood out the most was how their hair was mussed and clothing rippled in some places.

Other than that nothing about them struck you as odd for all of you were scared, shaking like you were in shock..and maybe you were. Maybe the news of the newly found murder had shocked you all into fear. It was weird, not only because it was a murder but because it was such a bad one. So bad that they broadcasted it as a ‘Public Service Announcement’. It’s nerve-wracking to say the least. There is someone out there that murdered someone and they are still walking around as if they hadn’t just ended someone's life. “It feels like the purge had just begun and it’s making me more creeped out,” Mike spoke from his seat on the couch. His comment broke through the uneasy silence that once filled the room, “It does feel like that, and those movies never turn out well,” you replied shifting in Colby’s lap. Sam sat up, rubbing his chinstrap, “Okay, well let’s think of it realistically. It happened at Boarder’s Night Club, we have no idea the time estimate of the murder. We only know where it happened. If we can somehow get into the files of who was there that night, we might be able to get a suspect.” Reggie sat up as well, chewing on his bottom lip, “That might work. I could get into Boarders security footage and the bouncers list. I just need my computer and I’ll have to be able to pinpoint the exact I.P address.” I nodded my head, “ I can help with the I.P and security footage. I used to do that all the time in highschool.” you said looking around to see if everyone was following. After receiving nods from everyone, you knew that everyone understood what we were talking about. “But how long would that take?” Cassie asked pulling her newly dyed black hair up in a messy bun.

You hummed, chewing on the inside of your cheek while you thought. To be honest, it won’t take that long with you and Reggie both working on it. You both are good with tech and hacking since you took tech/ electronic classes in high school. Plus you practiced it past school as well, “ With both of us working on getting into the Clubs’ security, it won’t take long.” You said looking back at your boyfriend who was just sitting there silently debating in his head. You could tell that he was thinking something through, “Are you okay?” You whispered. Your voice was enough to pull him from his mind, his blue eyes snapping up to meet your own. Colby nodded, “ Yeah, just thinking. I remember that someone I follow on instagram was at that night club tonight.” He said. Your eyes widened and you jumped off of his lap, “ Well check!” you exclaimed. Colby hurriedly pulled his phone from the front pocket of his white jeans. “Wait, what is happening?” Devyn asked. You whirled around to face your worried friends that were spread throughout the apartment, “Someone that Colby follows was at Boarders’ tonight, if we find out who it was then we could talk to them and see if they know anything about what happened tonight.” You explained. Just as Tara was about to say something, Colby revealed who was there tonight, “It was Brennen, he was there tonight with this girl he has been talking to.” “What’s the girls name?�� Corey asked pulling out his phone. “Umm...Ruby,” Colby said looking up from his phone. Everyone was silent for a moment before he held up his phone, “Got it. Her name is Ruby Lopez. She posted on her story thirty minutes ago. It was of her and Brennen dancing in his apartment.” “What about her earlier slides?” you asked walking over to where Corey and Ariya still stood by the door. You glanced over his shoulder to see the screen of his iPhone. “Uh yeah. Two hours ago she was at Boarders’ with Brennen, taking shots at the bar. An hour ago she posted a video of them dancing on each other, still at Boarders’. Then that’s it before her post at his apartment.” Corey said shutting off his phone and sliding it back into his pocket. “Okay so two hours ago was ten o’ clock pm,” Mike said rubbing his tattoo covered arm, “ And since that place is always packed, it wouldn’t take long to find the body. The announcement sounded out twenty minutes ago which means that the murder couldn’t of happened too, too long ago.” You said walking back over to Colby. “You’re right. It would’ve taken place about an hour or two hours ago.” Colby said while pulling you down into his lap once more. A short lived silence filled the room once more, “We know what we need to do,” Kevin said. You nodded your head,

“Hack the program, find the murderer.”

#absolutelynobody #colby imagine #colbybrock #colby brock x reader #colby brock fanfic #colby brock imagine #colbybrockoneshot #colby brock

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hellyeahomeland · 5 years ago

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“In Full Flight”: an HYH recap

The most delightful Homeland episode since “Two Minutes” picks up with Mike, Jenna (in a chambray shirt), and Alan in Kabul station, observing drone footage of Carrie, Yevgeny, and crew. Jenna deduces that they’re probably going to Kohat, and she is correct for the first time all season.

Mike asks about an exfiltration team from Islamabad but they won’t be there until later tonight. Saul interrupts their pow-wow to ask what’s going on:

Saul: What is this about grabbing Carrie Mathison? Mike: Oh, hello, sir. Let’s go into my office. Saul: Fuck your office and fuck you, too. What are y’all talking about? Mike: No problem, sir. A special ops team is planning to grab Carrie. You know, because she’s a defector. Saul: FOR FUCK’S SAKE SHE IS NOT A DEFECTOR. Actually she’d be right here telling you that herself if you hadn’t cornered her like an animal three hours ago without telling me. Mike: Actually actually she was supposed to be back in America like a week ago but then she broke custody and started her adventure with a GRU officer. Now they’re out there doing God knows what. Sir. Saul: I’ll tell you what they’re doing. They’re finding the flight recorder. Mike: What’s a flight recorder? Saul: I can’t believe I’m still having this conversation with you. Do any of y’all have brains or critical thinking skills? Mike: By the way, sir, you’ve been called back to DC. Saul: Fuck my whole life. Fuck all of you too.

Carrie and Yevgeny are very much on their way to Kohat. It’s been just a few hours since Carrie turned her back on Saul and her loaded expression as she stares out the window is very much “questioning all my past life decisions.” That could take a while, Carrie!

Carrie and Yevgeny arrive in Kohat and begin driving under a series of … I have no idea what they are, basically overhangs in the street so you can’t tell where their car is. It’s very “From A to B and Back Again” when Quinn lost Haqqani in the classic baseball stadium game “Which hat is the ball under?” trick. The team in Kabul is annoyed and prepares for a grid search.

Carrie & Co. are checking into a hotel for the night. Yevgeny makes a very obvious performance of leading Carrie to her room and what ensues is the most sexually tense scene on this show… ever. First he offers her some Ambien and Carrie cracks a joke for the first time in eight years and says she could open up a pharmacy of her own.

She apologizes for not telling him about the flight recorder sooner. At first it was all personal, she needed to find Max, she couldn’t focus on anything else. Yevgeny asks what she thinks actually happened to the presidents’ helicopter, since she certainly doesn’t believe Jalal was involved. She thinks it was probably just a freak accident: pilot error, mechanical failures, shitty weather, any or all of the above. Then she reveals that detail from the fifth episode, that the Black Hawk fleet has had a series of mechanical issues. Oh, I should add that this conversation all takes place in the doorway of Carrie’s hotel room and every fifteen seconds or so Carrie and/or Yevgeny glance back toward the bed. You can cut the sexual tension with a knife.

Yevgeny asks if there are any more secrets she’s been keeping from him. She smiles, pauses… it’s the most interesting moment. Then she says very quietly, “I think I’m fresh out of secrets.” They stare at each other for a long time, Yevgeny probably wondering if Carrie is going to invite him in and Carrie probably wondering if Yevgeny can take a fucking hint. Finally, I exhale, and Yevgeny says to just “bang on the wall” if Carrie needs anything, which at least elicits a laugh.

Elsewhere in Pakistan, a Pakistani military officer named Aziz has come to see Bunny to ask just where the fuck Tasneem is. Aziz is pissed because Tasneem was supposed to control the Taliban—first Haissam, then Jalal—and her “incompetence” has led to the Americans threatening to invade. Bunny is the opposite of worried. The Americans are all talk, no bite. They won’t actually invade Pakistan for failing to produce a man they claim they can’t find. I guess he hasn’t met John Zabel. Anyway, he says Tasneem is off to find Jalal somewhere in the mountains.

Instead, she actually meets (Haissam) Haqqani’s right-hand. She is beyond pissed that he just let Jalal control the shura last week. This is all so fucked. He doesn’t have much of a response, beyond, “well, he was the emir’s son, so I guess so?” He offers to take Tasneem to Jalal but only if she puts a hood over her head and lemme tell ya, Tasneem is none too pleased about that either!

It’s the next morning in Kohat and Carrie and Yevgeny really are going shopping, just like the logline said. They’re winding their way through the bazaars on the street but still no luck finding this flight recorder. Enter A Kid. He’s all “pardon me, excuse me,” and Yevgeny puts on his best Dad Hat and tells him to get lost. It’s very touching. Then he says he knows what they’re looking for, which is enough to get their attention.

He takes them to a shop where Mr. Shop Owner #1 is like, “Hi, do you like flight recorders? Because I’ve got lots!” Unfortunately he doesn’t have the one they’re looking for and he also seems pretty skittish because a) what the hell are a Russian and an American doing together? and b) is this official government business or something private or, like… just generally what the hell?

Saul has arrived back to DC and meets Hayes in the Oval Office with our favorite Odd Couple, Linus and Zabel (this should really be the name of a sitcom). Saul passively aggressively says he knows of Zabel “by reputation.” Aside from that jab, the meeting unfortunately goes from meh to ugh to wtf for Saul. He has to play bad cop and tell Hayes that the video of Jalal is unvetted intelligence, completely lacking in context, and probably just a straight-up lie. Hayes has the expression of someone who’s never followed Thought A to Thought B—which is true, obviously—and Zabel has to jump in to say of course POTUS has already done the Thought A to Thought B exercise, he just arrived at a different conclusion. You know, mine! The best part of all THIS is that as Saul grows increasingly incredulous at the conversation, Linus sits there, silently, looking like he’d like to be swallowed up by an alligator. Afterward:

Saul: Wow a bit of warning would have been helpful. Or maybe just an assist there, Linus. Linus: I didn’t even know you were coming back. I’m outside the ~information flow~ Saul: God, we’re so fucked. Linus: I wish I’d get swallowed by an alligator.

Back in Kohat, Carrie has entered another shop, this time sans Yevgeny. This one proves a bit more fruitful. She actually finds Max’s rucksack, which means that flight recorder had to have been here recently. Mr. Shop Owner #2 feigns ignorance, but Carrie is relentless.

Yevgeny enters all of a sudden to let her know that that special ops team from Islamabad is here, so they need to get out of there, pronto. He leaves quickly to lose the tail and instructs her to go back to the hotel and wait. His absence gives her the perfect opportunity to keep grilling Mr. Shop Owner #2, whom I actually love and seems really sweet. Poor guy is just no match for Carrie. He finally reveals the flight recorder was there but he sold it to a broker he works with. Carrie offers him a lot of money to find the broker and get the flight recorder back there for a trade at midnight.

Tasneem gets the black hood off her head in exchange for an audience with Jalal, but homie remains pissed. Jalal is sort of confused at her reaction. A few episodes ago she was plotting to put Jalal in the place he’s currently in. What changed? Well, for starters, now the Americans are threatening to invade Pakistan. She says he’s got to go to ground, but he refuses to run.

Jalal: Who do you think I am? Tasneem: You’re the loser whom I picked up on the side of the road. I bandaged your feet and listened to you crying about your daddy issues for hours. Jalal: You think that you control us. Actually it’s the other way around.

He leads her up to a rooftop where hundreds of Taliban fighters have gathered. He says the last time the ISI got in the way, they killed a thousand of their officers on the street. And now they’re twice as strong, so you do the math. Tasneem has a general “oh fuck” expression on her face and… same.

In Kohat, Yevgeny finally shows back up in Carrie’s hotel room. He reveals that eight men are hunting her and they need to leave, now. She says they can’t, as they haven’t found the flight recorder yet. Of course we know Carrie has found it—and in hindsight, at this point Yevgeny probably does as well—but she needs to stick around a few more hours to make the trade. For a split second you think maybe Carrie is going to preoccupy Yevgeny for a few hours in her bedroom but instead she calls Jenna.

Carrie: Hey, how’s it going? Jenna: OH MY GOD I STILL HATE YOU. Carrie: Chill for a second. Also I know you’re walking toward Mike and do yourself a favor and pause and just listen to me. Jenna: Ugh, fine, I’m listening. Carrie: I need you to give up the location of the exfil team that’s looking for me. Jenna: Are you high? Carrie: I am not, but you are if you think this will end up any other way than me convincing you. Jenna: You’re putting me in an impossible position. Carrie: You must do this. I compel you. Jenna: If I give up their location, you’ll turn yourself in there? Carrie: “Sure.” Jenna: Ok I’ll call you back.

This entire conversation transpires with Yevgeny sitting on the sofa in Carrie’s hotel room, legs crossed. It’s… I’ll be honest, it’s hot. When Carrie hangs up he applauds her performance and says she was clever and convincing. That’s right, Carrie played Jenna… again. Again! Again again again!

Carrie is kinda down on selling out her own people but Yevgeny says she did it for all the right reasons and in any case, the local police will only hold them for a day (uhhhh yeah right). He starts to compliment her strong instincts. He really respects her for that.

“Why, how do you do it?” Carrie asks.

“Me? I am more of a planner,” Yevgeny answers.

The alarm bells start ringing in her head and Carrie asks him all speaking of which whether he arranged for them to “run into each other” outside G’ulom’s office way back in the season premiere (show time: 10 days???). Before he can answer, Jenna rings back and tells Carrie the safe house location. Carrie says “you did the right thing” and the amount of self-disgust in her expression for this just being too fucking easy is … significant.

A few minutes later, Mike is on the phone with one of the special ops team members in the Kohat safe house. Local police have surrounded the building. Exasperated, Mike tells them to stand down. One by one, they file out and are led into custody. Jenna watches in horror and the amount of self-disgust in her expression for this just being her life is… also significant.

In Rawalpindi, Tasneem is at Bunny’s house and freaking out. Jalal has consolidated power extremely quickly. She’s concerned, but Bunny says they just need to take him out, root and branch. Bunny is offended by the prospect of being ordered around by a smarmy teenager but Tasneem thinks they need to protect him. If Pakistan protects Jalal, they’ll protect themselves too. And they need to respond to the Americans not with concessions but with threats just as strong. Remember when they were three minutes away from a generation-defining peace agreement?

Back in her hotel room, Carrie is growing restless. She decides to get some fresh air and by that I mean she jumps out the window to get the show on the fucking road. On the way she calls Saul, to whom she is apparently still speaking. She asks if their protocols for transferring money over the dark web are still a go and he says yes. She says she’s got a lead on the black box and he promises to arrange the funds ASAP.

Carrie winds up back at Mr. Shop Owner #2’s shop. Mr. Shop Owner #1 is there, too! Plus the broker. They do a little thing, Carrie says she won’t pay any more than $999,999, she is very In Charge and it’s pretty great to see. Not that we needed any more convincing, but the kind of instincts and improvisation Yevgeny admired just a few hours earlier are on full display here. She knows exactly what to say, when to say it, and how to say it. It’s breathtaking.

What’s also breathtaking is Carrie doing something correctly with a computer. Apparently the black box just hooks up to her Macbook with a USB-C cord… whoulda thunk?! After pulling a gun on Mr. Broker and telling him to beat it, she starts listening to the cockpit recording.

Then Yevgeny arrives! She starts to apologize but he stops her—he just wants to listen. They each share an earbud like goddamn Jim and Pam and continue listening. Turns out, Carrie was right. No one shot down that helicopter. A freak mechanical malfunction, “brace for impact,” etc. “Fucking helicopters,” Yevgeny says.

Carrie attempts a segue and says, “So… what now?” She wants to get this to the embassy in Islamabad. He wants to do the opposite of that. Then Carrie starts on him. Maybe he’s not such a bad guy after all. Maybe he’s actually… good.

Carrie: Plus, I’d owe you a favor. Yevgeny: Carrie, if I drop you off at the embassy I’ll literally never see you again. Carrie: Not true. I won’t betray my country, but I’d still move to Scottsdale with you. Yevgeny: I still don’t believe you. Carrie: Why not? You’ve already helped me a ton, and it’s cost you nothing! There has to be a way where we can make a “mutually beneficial arrangement.” Yevgeny: Is that what they’re calling it these days? Carrie: What? Yevgeny: What? Carrie: …anyhow, aren’t you sick of all this bullshit? Shitty bosses, shitty politicians, clearly the current way of business isn’t working for us. We could do better. You and me. We could chart something new here. You and me. God, we’re already halfway there! Yevgeny: Our own private network, huh? That would be nice, but it’s a pipe dream. Also, I like what you’re saying, but you still lied to me. Carrie: Technically, I just withheld the truth. Which is exactly what you did to me. Yevgeny: Heh? Carrie: The asylum, Yevgeny. What actually happened? We just took long walks in the woods and shared our life stories and you just happened to be the there the day I tried to hang myself? Give me a fucking break.

She moves closer and mentions the whole “picking up where we left off” thing. Well, will he or won’t he? Because she’s already decided.

There is a long pause and then they start making out. It’s exactly what you’d expect it would be, by which I mean it’s really hot! The scene is fraught with the unknown. How much are they playing each other? How much are they being genuine? Like Carrie says, they’re living in the grey areas. And who’s the first to blink?

Evidently it’s Carrie. After a few moments she breaks away and says they need to wait until after Islamabad. “Ok,” he says quietly. She tries to kiss him again, but he pulls ever so slightly away.

She hops off the table and begins to pack up the flight recorder. At that moment, he stabs her in the neck from behind with a tranquilizer. “Sorry, baby,” he says as she falls unconscious.

In DC, Saul is waiting anxiously by the phone. It rings. It’s not Carrie, but Linus. Everyone’s in the situation room, there’s some sort of activity in one of Pakistan’s nuclear facilities. Saul’s day goes from bad to worse.

In the situation room, resident hottie Scott Ryan is giving a PowerPoint presentation about said activity. Hayes is trying to understand literally anything that’s happening. Zabel explains that Pakistan only has the nukes in the first place to defend against a possible invasion from India. They’ll never actually use them. Saul growls that that’s because India isn’t fucking stupid enough to invade Pakistan. Hayes is beginning to understand the whole concept of “consequences” but before his mind can dwell on that for too long, he decides to just up the ante. More troops, more preparations for war, more of the same.

Saul’s day is not possibly as bad as Carrie’s has wound up. Yevgeny carries her, still unconscious, back into the hotel room. He places her gingerly on the bed and then kisses her forehead. He shuts off the lights as the camera moves in slowly on her her peacefully sleeping face.

#homeland #homelandedit #an hyh recap #in full flight #*#by: sara #homeland spoilers

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greekedtext · 4 years ago

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if you live in America and are not on Twitter, you probably have a distorted view of what’s going on here right now

The situation is chaotic, so it’s hard to get an accurate picture. I’ve been sifting through... A LOT of different sources, checking who’s saying what, reviewing footage to see if it shows what I’m being told it shows.

Most protesters are peaceful. Most protesters are peaceful.

They turned out last week to protest racist violence and the fact that police engage in violence with impunity. The police are not out there for crowd control, public safety, or even protecting storefronts. They are counterprotesters demonstrating their perceived right to engage in violence with impunity.

Over the past days, I have watched so many videos from across the country showing over and over that the police are using unnecessary, indiscriminate violence to turn peaceful situations tense and tense situations violent. Their actions range from mild (shoving people with riot control shields) to concerning (spraying tear gas, an agent that causes coughing, in the midst of a pandemic that affects the respiratory system) to wanton (accelerating their SUVs into crowds) to gratuitously cruel (yanking down a teen’s face mask in order to pepper spray him right in the eyes even though he was simply standing there with his hands up).

Police have maced and tear gassed children at protests, like the nine year-old girl in Seattle. They’ve done the same to uninvolved bystanders who were just trying to walk home. In Salt Lake City, an old man at a bus stop couldn’t hobble away fast enough, so they knocked him down. In Minneapolis after curfew, troops fired rubber bullets / teargas at people who were on their own porches and balconies, because curfew. In another city, they stopped a civilian car, tased the people of color inside, and dragged them out for arrest on live news camera. Oh, also on live camera in Minneapolis they arrested a CNN correspondent and his crew, and many other journalists have been targeted with rubber bullets.

Rubber bullets sound kind of cute and cartoony, don’t they?

There’s no such thing as a non-lethal weapon, just less-lethal weapons. Rubber bullets are big hunks of metal jacketed in rubber. They’re supposed to be fired at the ground so that most of a bullet’s momentum can be harmlessly absorbed before it ricochets up and hits you in the legs. Used this way, they still bruise. They’re meant to hurt you enough to get you moving in the direction police want you to go. And you’d think that police are only supposed to use them when a crowd is already out of control or refusing to move, but that’s not what’s happening here.

Remember that CNN correspondent? His name is Omar Jimenez, and you can Google this: The police surrounded him and his crew. He very politely and deferentially asked them where they would like his crew to go. They didn’t respond despite Jimenez asking several times. Then they arrested them and led them away; all the while, Jimenez and the crew cooperated and calmly asked why they were being arrested, to which they initially received no answer. The police informed CNN that the arrest was made because Jimenez and his crew “refused to move.”

Surround. Give no directions, or make it impossible to follow directions. Arrest for failure to follow directions.

This is the same tactic that they’re using against crowds. They raise bridges or bring in barriers (”kettling”) to ensure protesters can’t leave. Then they arrest people for refusing to leave. Sometimes they fire teargas and/or rubber bullets at a crowd to drive them into a kettling situation. Sometimes they do it after the crowd is already kettled. The curfews? An excuse to arrest everybody on the street. Pay attention to when they’re announcing a curfew with little or no lead time. My city keeps claiming that essential workers are allowed to go to and from work even when a curfew is on, but would you bet cash money that no workers are getting swept up and arrested?

Journalists then report this as “protests turned violent” or “protesters clash with police.” Local authorities claim that the protesters are all or almost all outside agitators, from out of state, and journalists repeat this without (it seems) even asking themselves if that sounds plausible.

This is why Americans don’t know what’s going on.

(We should be skeptical of claims about outside agitators because it has a racist history. It is used to deny African-Americans of their agency in their own efforts to liberate themselves from white supremacy. On the other hand, to some unknown degree the protests are actually getting infiltrated by a) plainclothes LEOs possibly acting as agents provocateurs, b) white "allies” who mainly want to vandalize shit or start fights and don’t listen to the Black protesters who try to stop that crap, c) looters*, and d) white supremacists and other political opportunists**.)

All of the above is only a spoon-sized sample of what’s going on. You want more instances of police violence, you can find it. And all of these things have been happening for years, decades, generations. It’s not just Trump, though he certainly does bring out the worst in people, and his administration does like to loosen standards to enable the worst in people.

Yesterday morning (June 1, 2020), Trump called Putin. Then he called the governors of the states and basically told them to go to war against the American people. In the afternoon, he made a tough guy speech, calling himself the “law and order president,” promising he could fix it, promising to send the U.S. military into the states to establish order if the governors didn’t do it. While he was talking, you could hear people being teargassed and fired at with rubber bullets in the background. These were peaceful protesters in and near Lafayette Square. There was a water and medical station set up on the porch of St. John’s Episcopal church. The protesters and medics were driven away (again: with teargas, which causes coughing, in the middle of a pandemic) so that Trump could be seen posing in front of the church, holding up a Bible.

That church had no idea Trump was going to do that. Some of their clergy were at the medical station and got teargassed.

Please, please go read historian Heather Cox Richardson’s summary of yesterday, because there was more fuckery than I can summarize here: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-1-2020

Law and order. “One law, one beautiful law.” I alone can fix it. We’ll use the military if the governors refuse to take action, “to protect the rights of law abiding Americans, including your second amendment rights.” Bible-waving. He fucking teargassed people for a photo-op.

In the middle of the night, the police herded hundreds of Washington, D.C. protesters into a residential neighborhood. The residents opened their doors for the protesters to take shelter. The police camped outside for hours, arresting anyone who came out. You may see accusations that protesters invaded people’s homes, but they didn’t -- they were invited. Some people are claiming police invaded people’s homes to get the protesters out, but I’m still looking for more information to substantiate that.

There are reliable reports that in addition to the National Guard and the regular military, ICE and CBP are being mobilized to “help.”

What they’ve done to D.C., they’re going to try to do in every city that has protests. What they’ve done to suspected undocumented immigrants, they’re going to try to do to all “rioters, looters, and antifa” -- which means anyone who opposes them.

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WHAT CAN WE DO?

1. Support #BlackLivesMatter. The bail funds have actually received a lot of money lately, which is great; if you can give, and if you know of a bail fund close to you that needs money for protesters, go ahead and give, but the next thing we need is money for mutual aid organizations, because in the next 5-21 days, a lot of people are going to get sick.

2. Look to experienced organizers for guidance. Follow African-American anti-racist activists, and if you’re white make sure you stay humble, don’t talk over them, listen to their ideas and directions, and do what they fucking say. If you’re white and you go out to protest, your job is to stay calm and be a human shield. Your whiteness can actually reduce police violence [note: it’s a risk -- you might be beaten or otherwise hurt and you could be arrested too]. If you start violence or vandalism, African-Americans are more likely to suffer for it.

3. There’s a lot to do if you can’t go out. Again, there’s a lot of organizing going on. For example, the Indivisibles are still organizing people to contact their elected representatives, and this is good and important work even though it may feel less direct than hitting the streets.

4. Make common cause with organizations that have beliefs different from yours.

This takes a bit of discernment. Maybe you’re ready to swear you’ll never call the police again; maybe you want to end incarceration (we do have the largest imprisoned population in the world and the highest per-capita incarceration rate.) Or maybe you’re concerned about police brutality and racism in our justice system but you can’t imagine a world without policing and prisons. If you’re in the latter group, make sure that the policing reforms you support are in alignment with the general goal of reducing budgets for police departments and shrinking our prison system.

We need a big movement. That means you can’t refuse to work with other organizations just because they aren’t in complete lockstep with you.

3. Reblog posts like these with your own ideas / information / good sources of trustworthy information.

When you’re deciding which suggestions to follow and which posts to reblog, make sure the information is coming from someone who knows what they’re talking about. I’m not a veteran of many protests, so I can’t give you good advice about how to stay safe out there. I could probably (in an abundance of confidence) fake up something that sounds plausible based on what I’ve read. That kind of thing is dangerous. Don’t write shit that doesn’t either come from your experience or that you can’t back up with links to folks who really know.

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* "Looters.” Yeah, remember when Congress promised to help with the economic crisis and then decided all we need is a one-time $1200 check and mmmmaybe some extra unemployment insurance? And remember when the House passed some more bills to help, but Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said they weren’t going to be doing any more of that and the important thing for the Senate to do right now was confirm more of Trump’s nominees for federal judicial appointments? You say “looters,” I say, “desperate angry people.”

** We all need to learn how to recognize Boogaloos, Neo-Nazis, and other far-right extremists on sight, because journalists are not always aware of who they’re talking to.

Boogaloos: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/far-right-hawaiian-print-shirts-why-protesters-boogaloo-racist-a9539776.html

Anti-Defamation League’s Hate Symbols Database: https://www.adl.org/hate-symbols

#us politics #long post #protests

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