#but a lot of people in the middle seem to be tilting at windmills too?

[ironclawallosaur]

I'm not even sure my word on this is worth two cents but:

I feel the big issue with "AI art" isn't the stolen artwork per se—yes, it's annoying, but there's functionally no difference between this

and this

This, too, is stolen art, used by the internet for humor. (the original appears to be by artist Joaes Kleine) It took the original artist 15 hours of work, and the memester probably about 15 second.

And, y'know. If we banned Object Labeling memes, the internet would be a poorer place. Deepfaking US presidents riding a giant rollercoaster, using AI to generate sexy victorian catgirls, and making relatable memes (who hasn't gotten up in the middle of the night Big Thirsty?) is all fun and games.

(what I wish is that we had a way to credit the artist easily without wrecking the joke that people could also notice, I'd use it all the time)

(maybe put the link in the alt-text?)

The problem is that I'm seeing more and more signs of "AI art" being the next autotranslate.

where it gets out into the professional world and turns everything to shit.

This is a social ill, yes—instead of a skilled translator getting paid to translate what I presume to be a hair salon, no one has gotten paid except maybe a few cents spread around in click revenue. But... I feel that's not the heart of the matter. Sometimes jobs—like lamplighters or buggy drivers—dry up, but translation is nowhere near replacement

There's something fundamentally wrong about using a blind, stupid machine to crunch all the work for you and then not even bother to go double-check it. Anyone who's explored a foreign language website with these services knows how stupid and frustrating autotranslations can be. It's fine for a private citizen (who will notice most of the blatant errors), or for people showing the translation of foreign-language memes, but companies use them because they're cheap or free, and don't even bother to slide them to a friend who speaks a little English to say "hey, does this say something about hair".

It's something that degrades everyone's experience, it makes the world stupider. And it's just... lazy, and cheap. You can blame capitalism but the same sorts of cheap shortcuts turn up in socialism (see: Chernobyl) so I don't think the attitude is strictly linked to economic system. I don't know what to do to solve it—and I know people have disapproved of me trying to do things the good and thorough way instead of the quick, cheap, and lazy way.

So, use AI art for funneh memes, as a jumping-off point for art, or to make something pretty. Try to source the material ethically if you can. Professionally, maybe early-stages concept art? Concept artists do important work, but it beats a crude cocktail-napkin doodle for commissions and whatnot. But the idea of people using AI art for making video backgrounds in paid products makes me sick, and it will have consequences.

Anyway, I'll leave off with a meme that's basically both:

[mollymauk-teafleak]

The Bianca Nureyev Detective Agency

This was an anniversary present for my wonderful girlfriend @spiky-lesbian who is just the most wonderful girlfriend ever and I love her a lot!

Juno tries to entertain his and Nureyev’s daughter on a slow day in space...

------------

Being a space pirate did sound good on paper. It sounded like a life full of narrowly dodged laser bullets, sprawling on beds of golden creds, witty one liners delivered to fallen foes in the smoking ruins of their empires that you’d just toppled and large, audacious hats.

And it was like that, about twenty percent of the time. But what they didn’t tell you was that the other eighty percent was a hell of a lot of waiting. It was a lot of snail crawling through deep space, killing days upon days worth of time in cramped metal hallways, eating stasis food and absorbing simulated sunlight. Planning your next big twenty percent could only take up so much time.

And it only got harder when you also had a three year old space pirate to entertain.

“Mamaaaaaaa,” Bee Bee poked her head up over the edge of the sofa, looking like some burrowing animal resurfacing, “I’m bored.”

Juno lowered the case file he’d been reviewing, eyeing his daughter with the tired amusement only a parent could muster, “Oh?”

Bee Bee scrambled up onto the family room’s busted old soda, sinking down beside her mama. She peered at him for a moment, taking note of the way he was sat, one ankle folded over the other and tried to copy him as best she could with her chubby little legs.

“Space is boring,” she declared, “There’s nothing to do.”

Juno set the files aside, silently accepting that he wouldn’t be getting back to them anytime soon, “Nothing? Nothing at all?”

“Nope,” his daughter gave a forlorn sigh, “Nothing at all.”

“Well then,” Juno shrugged, sinking down into the sofa so they were level even if it would be murder on his back later, “We’ll just have to think of something to do, won’t we, kiddo?”

Bee Bee giggled, “Yes. What was mama doing?”

“Oh,” Juno looked to the files he’d piled on the arm of the sofa, “Nothing interesting. Just looking into cases where other people have tried to do the same job we’re going to do.”

“And what happened to them?”

Juno winced. It wasn’t as if their daughter was unaware of the dangers they faced in their line of work. Pirates weren’t exactly famous for operating within the confines of the law, even in her storystreams. And since she’d been born, she’d seen her daddy at work, often getting a birds eye view of it all from a wrap slung across his chest.

“Well. Jail mostly,” he admitted, knowing he didn’t have to hide the truth from her even if it didn’t feel good to.

“Huh,” Bee Bee hardly blinked, swinging her legs, “Well, Auntie Buddy’s way way smarter than all of them. And Auntie Vespa is faster and Auntie Rita is better and Uncle Jet is cooler and my daddy is the best at stealing ever ever in the whole galaxy. And my mama’s the best detective. So we’ll do just fine.”

Juno grinned, reaching over and stroking back her curls, “Yeah. We’ll do just fine.”

“So can I help Mama? With being a detective?” her eyes sparked excitedly.

He knew that look, once her mind was fixed on something she’d follow it to the far side of the universe. She was like her daddy in that. But she wouldn’t exactly find much interest in going through old case files that somehow managed to make jewel heists sound boring. Though the tactics these failed thieves had used didn’t have an awful lot of pizzaz to them. Probably why they’d flopped, or at least that’s what Buddy would say.

“You know what?” Juno snapped his fingers like he’d just had a fantastic idea, “You’re just the kid I need for this very important case!”

“I am!” Bianca beamed, not a question. She had perfect confidence in her own abilities.

“It’s a classic head scratcher, kiddo,” Juno announced grandly, mostly to stall for time while he decided just what this case was going to be, “I’ve been at it for years and I’ve never been able to crack it but with your pluckiness and my brains we might just solve the case of...uh...the case of daddy’s missing glasses!”

Bee Bee gasped appreciatively, “Daddy’s always losing his glasses!”

“He is,” Juno snorted, “And we’ve got to go help him, right?”

“Right!” she jumped onto her feet, bouncing up onto the couch cushions and promptly tumbling, Juno just about managing to catch her. It didn’t seem to diminish her enthusiasm, as her legs windmilled wildly, “Let’s go!”

“Okay,” Juno grinned, “Well, first thing is to examine the scene of the crime and…”

“No, mama!” Bee Bee frowned, looking at him like he was profoundly stupid, “First thing is to dress up.”

“Of course. My mistake.”

Apparently no detective work could be done until Bianca was wearing her mama’s old coat, the one he’d hung onto for sentimental reasons even after he’’d been unable to really call himself a detective. And long after the leather had worn on the elbows and there were none of the original buttons left on it.

It needed to be rolled up quite a few times to even get the tips of her fingers poking out of the sleeves and the bottom of it looked like a mad kind of wedding train but Bee Bee grinned in delight and it was pretty good to see the old thing getting some use again.

“Now we go to the scene of the crime,” she declared, waving her arms, “Daddy and mama’s room!”

“Come on then, co-detective,” Juno laughed, “Lead the way.”

If Nureyev was surprised to see them burst through the door, it didn’t show on his face. He didn’t scare easily. He only smiled and tilted his head, quickly shoving the book on pregnancy he’d been reading far under Juno’s pillow. They weren’t quite ready to broach that subject with Bianca yet.

“Hello, my loves,” he hummed, “What adventures are we on today?”

“We’re playing detective!” Bee Bee toddled up, clambering on the bed to give him a quick hug before anything else, “Going to find your glasses.”

“Oh could you!” Nureyev smiles pleasantly, “It does seem I’ve misplaced them again, reading is something of a chore without them.”

Juno arched an eyebrow at his husband, “You wouldn’t possibly be deliberately reading that book without your glasses so you could claim you have while not retaining any information or looking at any of the diagrams?”

“An outlandish notion,” Nureyev flicked his fingers at him airily, turning his attention to Bianca who was now crawling around the bed, bent over so she could scrutinise every inch of the sheets like a bloodhound with a scent, “Please, dear little detective, will you take my case?”

“We on the case, daddy!” Bee Bee assured him, hurrying over to give him a hug, now just because she wanted to, “We’ll find the glasses.”

“You gotta question the witness,” Juno advised, “Build a timeline.”

Bee Bee nodded, looking up at Nureyev with a sudden fierce seriousness, “What is your timeline, daddy?”

He couldn’t help but smile down at her as he pretended to think, “Let’s see...well, I went to the kitchen for breakfast...then I had to collect some floorplans from Buddy’s office, I read them over in the family room with my wife...then I had an appointment with the physician. Then I came here to have a nap and do my assigned reading.”

Juno rolled his eyes at that last one.

“We’ll track 'em down!” Bee Bee declared, barrelling off the bed onto the ground. Again, her mama only just managed to catch her, “Come on, Detective Mama! Before the trail goes cold!”

Juno chuckled, pausing briefly to lean down and kiss Nureyev, before he followed his daughter, not needing to hurry too much, one of his strides matching about five of hers.

Their trail through the ship took them most of the rest of the afternoon, clattering through the winding corridors, the two of them making up wild twists and turns whenever suited them, inventing new characters, dastardly schemes that had happened off screen, speculating wildly on new threats. Buddy of course joined in enthusiastically, she was a regular and beloved playmate of Bianca’s. Just searching her room turned into a frantic search to disarm a bomb left by this mysterious glasses thief, a bomb that turned out to be in Buddy’s chest which could only be fixed by a hug from a plucky little detective.

Vespa was less willing, they caught her in the middle of disinfecting all of her scalpels. But even she wasn’t immune to Bee Bee’s charms, eventually playing her role with grudging grace. And Juno was able to get a quick whispered update on Nureyev’s check up, feeling a little better that it wasn’t just him and his husband who knew, that he had someone to offload all his anxiety on, the same anxiety he was trying to shield said husband from.

Even better, they ran into Rita in the kitchen and the game then swerved happily into the wildest corners of two vast imaginations, going off on a tangent that somehow involved werewolves, a falling moon and a galaxy wide ring of prolific glasses thieves (it turned out Rita had lost her pair too, though they did turn out to be perched on top of her head).

It was when Bee Bee was rolling happily around on the floor that she suddenly froze and squealed in triumph. She bounded up to the side table next to the old, sagging sofa, less than an inch from where Juno had been sitting earlier.

“Here! Here’s the glasses!”

Sure enough, there was a pair of cat eye spectacles on a silver chain resting there. Even Juno couldn’t raise much of a grump when he realised they’d been inches from their goal at the very start of the job. Some cases just worked out that way.

“We’ll have to take them back to your daddy, huh?” he panted, collapsing next to his daughter on the sofa. Somewhere along the way he’d picked up glitter on his black turtleneck, a rubber glove from the infirmary stretched over his head like a mad hat and one of Buddy’s scarves wound around his neck.

“Yes! And then get paid,” Bee Bee nodded, making Juno slightly nervous about what sort of payment she was going to demand. She’d asked to be paid in ice cream last time they’d played this game.

She plopped down next to her mama, leaning against his arm, adding more glitter to his favourite jumper, “Mama? I don’t think daddy is very happy right now. I think something’s up.”

Juno froze, “Uh...what makes you say that, kiddo?”

“Well…” Bee Bee wrinkled her nose, “He just seems...floppy. Always flopping on you and he looks pale and he doesn’t sleep good, mama. I think he’s sick.”

Juno tried to keep his face carefully neutral, “Your daddy’s fine, honey, I promise.”

“Hmm,” she replied, in that way she had that let him know she didn’t believe him in the slightest, “But it’s okay. Because we found his glasses and that’s gonna make him happy. And then we’ll help him more and we’ll do detective and find his happy.”

Juno relaxed, wrapping his arm around her, “Oh yeah?”

Bee Bee beamed and nodded, “Cos I’m the best detective ever! And mama helps!”

Juno sat back, laughing mostly to himself.

“You know what, kiddo? I thought I was pretty good but I think you really might be the best ever.”

[mae-gi-writes]

Coming Home | Jacob Bae (The Boyz Imagine)

"This was real. Jacob was here, and he was here to stay. We made it.” 

Genre: a lil angst, fluff, long-distance relationship au, airport au 

words: like 800ish? 

-------

Flight from Canada: Arrived. 17:08.

My eyes didn’t stray from the Arrivals board, neck strained from tilting my head up and holding it there for so long. My hands were tight fists shoved in my pockets in order to restrain the whirl of emotions that seemed to be taking over with each passing second. There was excitement, definitely. And adrenaline pumping through my veins. 

And fear, a trickle of fear down my spine like icy fingers whispering of the slight apprehension every time we were separated for so long. 

It was a weird concept to be in a relationship where most of the time spent together was separated by computer screens, but that was what we had signed up for. It had been rough for both of us, but throughout those four long years, Jacob and I had made sure that we talked every day even if that meant losing an hour of sleep. The sacrifice proved itself worthy, when it was the only measure of love that would hold us together.

The pain came at intervals, especially when my mind was free to roam. Those were the moments I missed him the most, when I realized that I had left a piece of my heart with the said boy who had boarded the plane. Jacob came back to visit every summer for a month or so, but when internship applications started rolling, we had no other choice but be pulled apart by ambition and careers, while wishing each other the best.

Sometimes, the emptiness would consume me whole, a hole so big that I couldn’t help but fall into it until it was too late. It echoed with the aftermath of the pain, a reminder that the person I loved wasn’t physically present. And when I needed Jacob’s arms around me the most, when I needed the warmth of his body against mine and his comforting scent that reminded me that I could love myself because he loved me for who I was, that was the hardest part. Because all I could do was pick up my broken pieces and act like everything was fine even when I was slowly falling apart inside.

It felt like my heart was being pulled, heartstring by heartstring, until there was nothing left of me.

Even the happy memories made were tinged with a bitterness, finding myself wishing that he was here by my side whenever we were laughing together. My eyes would always find their way around the table and my mind would race to find his familiar eyes looking back at me as though we shared our own series of private jokes. But he wasn’t, he never was. And retelling him hurt a little too much that sometimes I found myself breaking down in my most vulnerable moments. 

But all this, all this pain and the hurt and the sadness and the endless longing. All of these obstacles were for this to pull through. It all came down to this particular moment. 

And as soon as I caught sight of that familiar tuft of dark hair and that dark navy bomber that I knew all too well, I knew that everything we had done was worth it.

“Jacob!” I waved my arms in a windmill fashion. It took a few tries, but when he noticed me, his eyes lit up and the most beautiful smile I had ever been witness to blossomed over his face. 

I met him halfway as he pushed his luggage forward and didn’t even wait for his arms to be free before I launched myself at his chest, him laughing when he caught me just in time as his cart kept on rolling. 

But at that moment, I didn’t care about anything. Burying my nose in Jacob’s chest and taking a whiff of that natural scent that felt like home, I squeezed my eyes shut. 

And then I broke down crying.

“Hey,” I heard Jacob’s soft alto, so vivid and real, coarse and rough and with the slightest hint of honey that I could hardly hear through headphones, “it’s okay, I’m here now.” 

I tried regaining my breath, but every shaky inhale was broken by another wave of emotion that rocked through my heart. Jacob’s hands were around me, soothing circles across my back and soft coarse voice coaxing me to calm down. 

“You’re alright,” he murmured in my ear, grip tightening as my hands found their way around his middle, “I got you.” 

“I missed you,” I couldn’t help but let out a little laugh, “I can’t believe you’re finally home.” 

“Yeah, I’m home,” he echoed with eyes boring into mine with such tenderness that I felt like I could break underneath his gaze. 

His hands cupped my cheeks then, softly brushing aside the tears and taking in all my features as though he was etching them into memory, reminding himself that I was indeed, here and in the flesh. 

Then, he leaned over to press his lips against my forehead. Warmth blossomed over my heart, “I’m here,” he murmured, moving to press another kiss upon each eyelid, “I’m here now. It’s over.”

And then, just as softly as he did with the others, his mouth pressed upon mine in the sweetest, most delicate of touches. I couldn’t help the small whimper, and impulsively buried myself closer if that was even possible, wanting be as physically close to him as I could.

Nevermind that we were in the middle of the airport, strung together like long-lost lovers who had almost lost each other at sea. Nevermind that people were stopping and staring like we were one of the tourist attractions to welcome them. Nevermind if others thought that we were being too dramatic for our own good. 

This was real. Jacob was here, and he was here to stay. We made it.  

“I love you,” the words slipped out of my mouth when our foreheads touched, his breath washing over my face and causing my heart to skip a beat. “I love you too,” He whispered back hoarsely, a crack at the end of his alto. Our noses brushed each other’s, “a lot, a lot.” -------

I just felt inspired to write a Jacob AU. For all of in doing long distance relationships, don’t give up. You got this. I know how it feels and it’s no happy rainbow. But remember that if LDR’s work, they’re the most beautiful, pure kind of love that can ever exist, and that you’ll never take your partner for granted <3 

Thanks for reading! xx

[leejihoonownsmyheart]

Playground

Summary:

When you went out exploring all on your own, you never expected to see a boy about your age walking around on the railroad track. He looked like a kid whose parents had let him run around in a playground all on his own. He was barely keeping himself upright on the rails, and his clothes were too big for him.

You watched him silently, and when he saw you he didn’t even smile.

But you couldn’t look away from him.

Why couldn’t you look away from him?

 There was a lot about the world you didn’t quite understand.

There was a lot about it you would never understand.

You had come to terms with this a long time ago... Well- you said a long time ago, but a year wasn’t really all that long in the grand scope of things... Was it?

It all started the summer before your freshman year of high school. Your grandparents house wasn’t the most exciting place to be for the summer as you didn’t know of any kids your age anywhere within a twenty mile radius of you, but one aspect of being there that wasn’t too boring was the forest behind your grandparents yard.

Being in the middle of nowhere had its perks when you could just disappear into an unknown wilderness, unbeknownst to the world.

You were mad too. Mad at your family for being so controlling... For bringing you out here, for moving you this school year away from all of your friends, to a whole new place where you would have to start all over.

You didn’t want to start all over.

You hated new things.

So, you decided to run away.

When your mom said to be back by dinner when you left that early, early morning, it was worth noting that as you tied your shoes and grabbed a bag of lunch, you didn’t plan on returning.

You planned to leave your home, just like Buck in Call of the Wild, and make the world you had never explored before, of forestry, and shrubbery, and creeks all your own.

That is, that was your plan until you saw him.

Him, being the stranger, of course.

You weren’t deep into the woods. Not really, you had only just found the railroad, and had decided to follow it for some way, when you heard someone else’s feet crunching the leaves on the forest floor.

You were surprised anyone else was out here.

You expected to see older people. Maybe teenagers trying to stir trouble, or adults on their way to work, but instead you saw a boy.

He was all on his own, wearing oversized colorful clothes and dragging his feet. He had on worn tennis shoes and a complacent look on his face.

You could sort of hear him humming something, but you didn’t recognize the tune.

He jumped up onto the railroad track, his feet slowly taking step after step. His shoes clicked silently against the tracks. It was clear he had a clear path in mind. He had been on these tracks many times and he had likely gone this way a lot.

You tilted your head slightly as you watched him. He took a large over exaggerated step, his arms swinging through the air like a windmill. He planted his feet together in the wrong direction and then hopped to the other side of the rails.

You realized with a start that whatever he was doing, he was doing it to the beat of what he was humming.

Was he... Playing?

Just then he did a spin on the tracks and his eyes landed on you. He stopped his movements, just as fluidly as he had started them. His eyes bore into yours, rendering any thought of movement completely useless.

Suddenly, the world wasn’t yours to own. The world around you was this boy's playground, and you were just another toy on it for him to play with if he thought you were worth his time.

The boy raised a hand into the air, your breath hitching as you waited to see what he would do.

Would he shoo you away? Call you over?

He waved, and a short smile graced his lips.

“Hello.”

You smiled and waved back.

“Hi.”

He gestured to the railroad.

“This leads to a lake. Do you want to come?” He asked. Your eyebrows furrowed.

“Isn’t it dangerous?” You asked softly. “What if a train comes?”

“Trust me, when you’re with me, a train is the least of your worries,” he assured.

You weren’t sure what that was supposed to mean but you knew that he knew best. You weren’t familiar with this deck of the woods, but he was. This was his domain, not yours.

Besides, you didn’t really have anything better to do.

“Okay.”

You didn’t move at all as you stared at him, not sure exactly what he expected you to do. He seemed to notice that and gestured to the other side of the tracks.

“You have to walk on the railroad tracks.”

You furrowed your eyebrows.

“Why?”

He rolled his eyes.

“You just have to, it’s the rules.”

You bit the bottom of your lip unsurely but walked over to the other rail anyways. You looked at him before you stepped up, but he didn’t offer any other solutions, so you stepped up onto it. You teetered for a moment on the metal, but it didn’t take you long to catch your balance.

You had good balance.

“There are rules?” You asked suddenly. “Isn’t the point of being out here that there aren’t any rules?”

“You have to have rules anywhere you go. If there weren’t any rules, we wouldn’t be safe,” he replied.

You scrunched your nose, but you figured his words made sense. You sighed and he started to walk again, still doing that strange walk, like he couldn’t really keep his balance.

You just walked normally, giving him a weird look as you walked.

“If there are rules what are they?” You asked. “Who came up with them?”

“I came up with them,” the boy responded.

He met your eyes.

“There are ten rules,” he continued. “I won’t tell them you all of them right now though.” “Why not?” You asked him stubbornly. He rolled his eyes.

“Because I haven’t figured them all out yet. I’ll tell you when I know them for sure,” he replied as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“You can’t make rules up as you go,” you mumbled back. He rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, well you can’t make up the rules at all so what do you know?” He asked you. You pouted at him and stopped walking on the tracks.

“Why am I even going anywhere with you?” You asked suddenly. “All you are is mean.”

“Because of Rule Number Two of course,” the boy responded. “Once we are together, we aren’t allowed to leave one another.”

“You skipped rule number one,” you replied bluntly. He made a face at you as he lifted his foot into a giant wobbly step.

“No, you just don’t listen,” he stated. “Rule number one is to walk on the railroad when going to the lake. Rule number two is to not leave one another once we are together.”

He seemed to think over that rule for a moment.

“Well, at least not until our adventure is over.”

“These rules are dumb,” you replied. He ignored you and kept walking.

“You’re dumb,” he countered.

You sighed, but walked on forward anyways, afraid that you would lose the boy if you let him get too far ahead of you.

You two walked in silence for quite some time. You weren’t sure exactly how long it had been, but it was long enough that you were able to see the thick lines of trees thin out, showing you some rolling hills covered in green. It was only a little after you were able to feel the suns warm rays exclusively on you that finally the boy stopped and looked across the tracks at you. He looked surprised to see that you were still following behind him.

“What’s your name?” He asked you. He didn’t stop walking. He was just filling the air around you two. You told him without really thinking better of it. Proudly pronouncing your full name for him.

He rolled it around in his mouth but didn’t say anything past that. You decided to continue the conversation.

“What’s your name?” You asked him. He stared at you, as if he was unsure if he should tell you or not.

“It’s…” He trailed off. “Not important.”

Your mouth dropped open.

“What? That’s not fair,” you grumbled. He shrugged.

“My dad always says life isn’t fair.”

You rolled your eyes.

“That’s just a stupid thing adults tell you when they don’t want to let you do something fun,” you spat back. He looked at you, seemingly to somewhat consider your words.

“You know a lot about that huh?”

Now it was your turn to fall silent.

You hadn’t come into the wilderness to talk about your parents. If you had wanted to do that you wouldn’t have ever run away. You would have stayed at home, and you would have gone to school and told your actual friends about it. Not some stranger you had just met.

You knew however that this guy wouldn’t take a no for an answer. He seemed particular like that.

So instead of doing that, you looked away from him.

“Nah, my family is fine,” you stated. You felt like you had just swallowed a rock.

“Rule number three,” He replied. “No lying.”

You rolled your eyes.

“I wasn’t lying,” you mumbled defiantly. The boy stopped wobbling on the railroad in order to glare at you. You stopped walking too and initially just ignored him but after a long moment decided you couldn’t handle the scrutiny anymore. “Fine, I don’t get along with my parents. They’re too controlling.”

The boy seemed satisfied by that and turned away from you, finally going back to walking down the train tracks. You stared after him for a while, keeping yourself still on the tracks, before taking a deep sigh and following him once again.

The tracks were a little difficult to keep your balance on. You wanted to say that you understood why Jihoon had been stumbling around earlier, but seeing him now, walking on the tracks effortlessly you knew that the way he had been wobbling around earlier had just been a sort of show for himself.

You huffed and tried to catch up to him but found yourself still frustratingly enough behind. The boy didn’t seem to mind either way. He stayed quiet and simply walked along the tracks. You thought he was an odd person for doing this- Inviting someone to go on a walk with him only to not talk to you at all.

You didn’t comment on that of course, you just held your silence trusting that saying something to him wouldn’t really help you in anyway.

As you two walked, you noted with a sigh that you were coming up on a large bridge that spread across a large chasm. You were nervous suddenly, thinking about being on those tracks.

You weren’t really scared of heights- well not any more than the average person. But looking at the tracks knowing that if you took any wrong step, you would fall made your heart begin to beat nervously in your chest.

The boy you were with was clearly unbothered by the whole situation. He was quick to step onto the part of the tracks that began over the river. You noted that the boy wasn’t scared at all, no hesitation in his steps whatsoever.

Despite his confidence, when you stepped on that part of the bridge you bite down on your lip.

“Are you sure this is the only way to go?” You asked him, trying not to be so nervous.

“Rule number one,” was all he called back.

You sucked in a breath and nodded once.

Right. The rules.

You tried to push down your fear and got back onto the tracks. After all, if this boy didn’t think that there was any reason to be afraid, you figured there wasn’t. You decided to just, keep your eyes on the boy, and keep your arms spread out straight to make sure that you kept your balance.

After you guys had made it a good part of the way across the bridge you could feel the tracks beneath your feet beginning to rumble and fear clenched your heart. You glanced back over your shoulder and noticed in the distance a pile of smoke billowing just above the tree line.

You didn’t need to hear the tooting of the horn in the distance, to know what that meant.

You pressed your lips together, and opened your mouth to say something, worried about the fact that you were stuck in the middle of a bridge with a train coming, but instead you just froze.

The boy you were with didn’t seem to notice your fear. Instead, he just continued to peacefully wobble on the tracks, making his pace just a tad bit quicker.

“There’s a train coming,” he mumbled without even looking up from the rails. You didn’t respond. You didn’t move, you just stayed frozen. If he wasn’t worried you knew you shouldn’t be either, but you suddenly had an impending sense of doom overcoming you that you just couldn’t shake.

You hadn’t really realized it when you left but this adventure you were out on now was a bit dangerous for someone your age.

The boy turned around when you didn’t answer, and his eyebrows raised at you.

“Hey, come on. What’s wrong?” He asked. He stopped on the tracks and stared at you from afar. He called your name, but you didn’t answer. Instead you raised your eyes up to him, letting your fear shine in them. He pressed his lips together. “If you don’t move, you’ll die.”

That didn’t make your racing heart calm at all. It only sped up at the sudden confirmation. You felt yourself begin to breath more heavily, your hand raising to your chest so that your fingers could clutch tightly at your shirt.

“My name is Jihoon,” he said suddenly. You didn’t understand what that had to do with anything, but you didn’t even have a chance to voice your confusion before Jihoon was speaking again. “Rule number four: If you’re scared, say my name. I’ll protect you.”

He wasn’t moving towards you, but you could tell that he wanted to. He had been so calm up until now, but the moment that your life was on the line, he was suddenly a little bit more antsy, his hands had a tad tremble to them.

“Jihoon.”

Jihoon was quick to retrace his steps to you, holding his hand out to you as soon as he was directly beside you.

“It’s going to be okay,” he murmured. “Just walk with me.”

You were still nervous but feeling his warm hand against yours- despite the fact that both of your palms were sweaty and hot already- made your racing heart a little less unstable. You felt your fingers tighten around his hand, especially as he quickened his walking pace.

The rumbling of the train was only getting louder and louder, and you knew that just meant that you needed to pick up your pace more. Still you were glued to Jihoon, reminding yourself to walk fast and everything would be okay.

Lucky for you with Jihoon’s urging, it only took a short moment before you two were back on solid ground, and he had dragged you off the tracks. You watched as the train rumbled past you two on the tracks. The train roared loudly on the tracks as you two watched it fly past. You didn’t even realize how close it had been in the end until you were looking at it now.

You had been moments from death- Even scarier Jihoon had risked his life and his safety just for you- a person that he had just met.

You looked over at the boy, a newfound respect suddenly coming over you.

“Jihoon,” you mumbled. He turned to look at you, an eyebrow raising just so.

“Hm?” He hummed.

“Thank you.”

He wrinkled his nose slightly and then turned over his shoulder to look back at the river.

“Once the train passes, we can start walking again.”

-

The last thing you expected to see while out with Jihoon was another group of children in the woods.

Running into Jihoon had been surprising enough to you, but as you two walked on the tracks and the sound of other children’s laughter filled the air you became even more surprised than before.

Your eyebrow raised uncertainly, and you looked across the train rail at Jihoon, unsure of if you should be worried or not.

As per usual he was a few paces in front of you- not nearly as far ahead as he could be, instead just enough that he was still clearly the leader of this whole escapade.

He didn’t seem phased by the sound of other children laughing, and when you looked forward you realized that may have just been a front he was putting on as the children in question were on the railroad not far in front of you two.

You swallowed hard and clasped your hands behind your back, noting that these children- whoever they may be- looked to be quite a bit older than you and Jihoon. Maybe even high school kids.

You wanted to voice your concern to Jihoon, but his air of confidence was so unwavering that it made you feel small in comparison rather pathetic. So, you held your silence, ignoring the fourth rule of the pact.

The children’s chattering stopped when they grew closer to you, and the head of the pack of other kids (there were four of them in total) gave Jihoon a long look. His eyes ran from his toes, to the top of his head, seeming to try and assess whether or not he was a threat.

Jihoon’s response to such a look was to tilt his chin up just so and slid his hands into his pockets.

“Hey,” was all he said. “I’m Jihoon.”

The boy snickered at Jihoon’s nonchalance, his nose scrunching slightly as he did so. You couldn’t help but notice that he didn’t look like the sort of person anyone would want to be caught hanging around. He was tall, and lanky, with a sharp chin, and bushy eyebrows. But his gaze was hard, as if he wasn’t afraid to hurt anyone who dared to get into his way.

You swallowed thickly, assessing with some discern that none of the boys in the pack looked to be all that friendly.

“I’m Yeongdo,” he replied back. He quirked his head back at a boy standing further behind him, who had a rounder face then Yeongdo did and was more your height. “This is Nautilus.”

He quirked his head to the other side and gestured towards a boy standing there with a green jacket on and curly brown hair. He looked nicer than Yeongdo did but not by much. “That’s Inho.”

The last boy was more the height of Yeongdo, and looked just as mischievous as him as well. He had paler skin then the rest of them and had clearly dyed white hair with dark eyes. He didn’t look very interested in the conversation at hand and was instead looking off into the forest. “That’s Sihoo.”

Yeongdo turned his eyes back to Jihoon, and they flickered briefly back to you. You jumped slightly at the sudden attention and quickly dropped your eyes to the tracks to pretend like you hadn’t been frightened at all.

“Who’s your dog?”

Jihoon glanced back at you, his eyebrows quirked slightly- almost as if he had entirely forgotten that you were with him. He looked back at Yeongdo and shrugged.

“Just someone tagging along. Met not far back.”

Yeongdo’s eyes turned back to you, and this time as he did so, so did pretty much all the other boys in the area. You had hardly ever had this much attention on you and quite frankly, you didn’t like it that much. Again, however you didn’t want to seem afraid, so you just met Yeongdo’s gaze and gave him a smile.

“Hello.”

You opened your mouth to tell them your name- Just like Jihoon had, but before you had the chance to do so, Jihoon pointed past Yeongdo on the tracks.

“Well, we’ll be on our way then,” he stated pointedly. You thought it was odd that he stopped you from saying your name, as you knew that he could tell that’s what you were about to do. You noticed that Yeongdo seemed to have noticed it as well, because his eyes flitted suspiciously between you and Jihoon.

“So soon?” He questioned. “And here I was excited to get to know you and... Your friend over there.”

Jihoon laughed.

“Well we might be young, but the day won’t be forever,” he stated pleasantly. He suddenly let himself step off of the metal rail that he had been balancing himself on up until this point and wandered over to you.

He took your hand firmly in his, without even really looking at you.

“We have a lot of travelling to do, and not much time to do it. Maybe we’ll run into you again.”

Jihoon then pulled you forward, dragging you into the center of the group. He pushed past Yeongdo, their shoulders bumping as he walked past them, and you almost ran into Yeongdo’s body at the small space that the bump allowed, but somehow managed to emerge from the wall of boys without having bumped any of them.

Jihoon was dragging you, faster than before, but not fast enough that it would seem as though he were doing so and his grip on you... It was tighter than you thought it should be.

“Rule number five,” Jihoon murmured as soon as you were far enough from the group of boys for them not to hear. “Trust me and only me.”

You weren’t sure what he meant by that exactly, or why he hadn’t wanted that other group of boys to know who you were. What you did know however, was that you felt like that rule, was going to be one of the most important ones that you would ever follow.

-

“So, tell me,” Jihoon stated after a long moment of silence. “Why are you running away from home?”

You looked over at him, wanting to say you were surprised by the question- the fact that he knew you were running away, but you couldn’t really say so. After all, Jihoon knew you all too well. There didn’t really seem to be any hiding anything from him at all.

Still you decided to play dumb and looked away from him.

“I’m not running away from home,” you stated stubbornly. He rolled his eyes at the statement and reached across the track grabbing your wrist.

“Rule number three,” he reminded you. You sighed.

“I’m running away because I’m tired of my parents, why else?” You asked him. Satisfied with the truth, Jihoon let go of your wrist. You missed it but didn’t say that you did.

“You shouldn’t run away,” Jihoon reprimanded. “After all your parents only mean the best.”

You rolled your eyes at the action, your mouth dropping in an exasperated expression as you began to copy his mouth movements with your hand. He looked back over at you over his shoulder, raising an eyebrow at the childish behavior. You gave him a somewhat embarrassed expression, your hands dropping back to your side.

“Sorry, I just-” You sighed, and your eyes dropped to the ground. “I’m frustrated.”

“We all get that way sometimes.”

“Angry,” you snapped back. He shrugged.

“People feel emotions,” he murmured. “We can’t let the decisions we make when we’re angry make who we are as people.”

You wanted to be mad at his words but... You couldn’t help but think that they made sense. The way he spoke. Gave you advice... He was like a character from a Disney Channel movie. Seemed to be so wise for his age.

“What about your parents?”

He looked back at you, his eyebrows scrunching just so.

“My parents?”

You nodded, taking a confident step towards him.

“Yeah, what happened to your parents? Why are you out here instead of with them?”

Jihoon stared at you. His expression hard as he peered at you, trying to figure out what to say next. He seemed to be at a loss for words by your question, and sort of just stood there motionless for a moment.

Such a reaction from him was honestly a little jarring.

“Jihoon?”

His eyebrows rose suddenly, a calmer expression spreading over his face.

“My parents are a little absent,” he mumbled. “They aren’t around the house often; I sort of take care of myself.”

“That must be....” You trailed off, and started to walk again, not stopping until you were side by side with Jihoon. He looked at you, for once seeming to be smaller than you. For once actually looking scared over what could be happening. “So lonely.”

You pressed your lips together.

“Honestly?” He murmured. “Yeah, it is.”

He looked down at his fingers and shrugged.

“But that’s why I come out here. Being out here in the nature... Getting the chance to meet someone like you? That makes it worth it.”

You were surprised that he said it like that.

To meet someone like you.

It made you wonder who exactly he thought you were. The kind of person he believed you to be after only knowing you for such a short time. Today all you had done was follow him and learn his rules. It wasn’t the sort of thing that you were used to doing. You weren’t much of a follower.

And yet, following him? It seemed natural.

“I won’t run away again,” you decided. “I mean, I won’t run away from you.”

Jihoon smiled, his lips curling up in the corner. It was at that smile that you noticed that he had a small dimple on his cheek. You felt your heart skip a beat when you saw the dip in his cheek, and it made your eyes drop down to the ground.

“So how far exactly? Until we get to the lake?” You asked him, desperate for a conversation change. You weren’t sure why but suddenly your heart was racing in your chest. Your whole entire body just felt so warm, like your skin was literally on fire.

You hoped that the water in the lake would be cool. That it would make you feel more like the normal you. And less like the shaky feverish mess that you felt like right in that moment.

“Oh, we’re close.” He replied. “Actually, we can leave the tracks now.”

He didn’t warn you before taking your hand this time, and the action made you jolt just a little bit. It was such a surprise to have his hands on you. He immediately withdrew his hand.

“I’m-”

Before he could apologize you reached forward, grabbing onto Jihoon’s hand again. Once again, the touch made you feel a little shaky. You weren’t really sure how to look Jihoon in the eyes when you were holding onto his hands like this.

“No, no, I was just a little surprised is all,” you assured softly. “Lead me to the lake. You don’t have to worry about a little jump.”

-

The lake was probably one of the most beautiful places that you had ever been in your entire life. Honestly it may have been one of the most beautiful places that you would ever visit in your entire life.

You had imagined that if there were a lake of this magnitude near your grandparents' house you would have heard of it before, but you hadn’t and this lake... It was probably the biggest one that you had ever seen. You could barely see the shoreline across the water, only able to see the tips of the of pine trees in the distance.

The view was breathtaking, and you found yourself stumbling to a stop as you looked at the shimmering lake surface.

The beach that Jihoon had brought you to had soft white sand, that you honestly couldn’t wait to bury your feet into, and the air that drifted off of the water in the cool breeze was so refreshing that you really couldn’t help but close your eyes and take a deep breath.

When you opened your eyes again you tried to find Jihoon, wondering if he was as amazed by the shoreline as you were. Instead you found him staring at you, a strange look in his eyes. One you didn’t think you had really seen him give you yet so far.

You wondered if you should say something to him. Maybe ask him what he wanted to do next or something of the sort, but instead he just turned away from you and went running down to the shore, past the white sand and over to where the tree limbs were dipping into the water.

You weren’t sure what he expected to do in response to such an action. So, you just did what felt natural.

You dropped your bag on the ground and followed him over to the tree.

“Do you think kids our age can fall in love?” Jihoon asked you softly. You looked over at him and watched as he kicked a pebble into the lake water. You thought over the question for a moment and then, shook your head.

“No,” you stated. “Not the way our parents do at least.”

Jihoon hummed back, and you watched yet another pebble fall into the lake.

“What about you?” You asked him. He kicked another pebble into the water.

“I don’t think so,” he agreed. “Maybe we can feel the beginnings of what love is, but I think love is a little bit too complex for us. Dating at our age is like... Mirroring what we think love should be.”

“And what do you think love should be?” You followed up. He sat down on his feet, and patted the ground next to him, for you to sit down as well.

You sat down next to him and watched as he scooped up a handful of pebbles.

“Love is needing someone in your life. Even if you can’t have them, or if they don’t feel the same way. Love is a memory that you remember every detail of, but others think is completely insignificant. Love lasts forever and hits you when you least expect it.”

“You sure seem to know a lot about it,” you murmured back. Jihoon looked over at you, his cheeks a little red as his eyes fell on you.

“Well, at first they were just words that sounded a little right to me,” he stated. “But... I’m starting to think that maybe I’m starting to feel it.”

“Love?” You asked, feeling a little confused by the statement. Jihoon laughed and shook his head.

“The start of it,” he corrected. “You know what my favorite thing to do here is?”

Your eyebrow raised and he let out a short laugh, pulling his shirt off of his body and throwing it onto the shore. He grabbed you by your hand and pulled you up to your feet.

“Swimming!”

And just like that, Jihoon’s hand slipped from yours and he raced into the water, diving into the deep as soon as he could. You were mesmerized as you watched him splash around in the water, already seeming to be stuck in his own world. It was adorable how easily he could lose himself into such a meaningless thing as going swimming.

He dove under the water, and emerged a few meters away from you, shaking the water out of his hair like a dog with a mischievous grin on his face.

“Well? What are you waiting for?” He asked you.

In all the times that you had ever gone swimming in the past, it certainly hadn’t ever been like this.

You had always been with a large group of friends, parents watching, and (most importantly) swimsuit on.

It wasn’t that you were scared of swimming in the lake. You were a fairly strong swimmer, and you were sure Jihoon would save you if you started to drown for any reason. But for some reason, you were still nervous.

“I don’t want to get my clothes wet,” you mumbled back. He shrugged, letting his feet float upwards as he pushed himself deeper into the lake.

“You can just wear my shirt afterwards,” he offered. “Come on what’s the point in coming to the lake if you don’t go swimming?” You supposed he had a point. Shyly you toed out of your shoes, leaving them on the sandy beach, your toes burying into the grains. You looked down at the sand as it seeped between your toes, feeling the sand burn the pads of your feet.

You then nervously shimmied yourself out of your pants, allowing your previously tucked in shirt to fall to your knees. You considered taking off your shirt too, knowing that it wasn’t a huge deal if you were left just in your undergarments- after all it was the same as wearing a swimsuit- but you decided quickly that you would rather just leave your shirt on and get it wet.

You began to slowly wade into the water, but apparently your whole routine just frustrated Jihoon. He got back to his feet, wandering over to you and before you could protest, he smiled, grabbed your hand and dragged you into the freezing water.

You let out a surprised laugh as you fell back into the water, which only made Jihoon smile brighter.

“Took you long enough,” he teased. “You scared of water or something?”

Jihoon’s fingers let go of yours once you were completely down in the water. You rolled your eyes and ducked your head under the surface to get your hair wet, wading away from him. You splashed him playfully.

“More like scared of who is in it.”

Jihoon laughed in surprise at your words and splashed you back.

“And I suppose there is good reason for that.”

All of a sudden Jihoon lunged forward, his fingers brushing against your shoulder. You shrieked in surprised, the biggest smile spreading over your face despite your scream.

“Tag you’re it.”

He quickly began to swim as far away from you as he could possibly get. At first you were frozen in place, too busy processing everything to go after him, but after he had submerged under the water and re-emerged a couple of feet over from you, you smiled.

If a game was what he wanted, a game was what he was going to get.

Tag turned into marco polo, which turned into a splash war, until the sun burned brightly in the sky above you two and you and Jihoon were floating quietly beside one another in the water, your fingers brushing his.

“You know what I like most about being out here?” He asked softly. You hummed but didn’t look at him. “It’s so... Different than being at school or with other people. These moments, in the sun, in the nature, disconnected it feels like a whole other time. Like the time I spend here with you is completely different than any other moment I’ll ever experience.”

You looked over at him, watching the way that his short strands of hair floated around his head in the water. You hummed.

“It’s like this moment is just for us,” you whispered.

Jihoon smiled and rose his fingers up towards the sun.

“Rule Number Six,” he mumbled, but you noted that it was mostly to himself. “The promises we make here must be held forever.”

You snickered at his words.

“We haven’t really made any promises out here Jihoon,” you reminded him. He hummed back at you.

“Not yet,” he agreed. “But we will and one day we’ll be older, and we won’t really need the rules anymore.”

You sat up in the water, feeling it drip from your hair over your shoulders. You wanted to say something, but instead you just let Jihoon muse over what he believed your future with him looked like.

“The rules don’t really apply outside of the woods. Once we’re back in school and stuff, I can’t be there for you,” he continued. He didn’t look at you. No, his eyes stayed stubbornly on his hand that was raised to the sun. “But if at least one rule does I want it to be that. If you promise me something, don’t ever break it, and I’ll do the same with you.”

A lot could be said about Jihoon and his rules. It seemed to you honestly like he was in the middle of some sort of power trip. Obsessed with being able to hold things over your head, and get you to blindly follow him without a word, but you knew that it was the small moments like these when Jihoon was so clearly human that you remembered why you trusted him so much.

Because it was in the moments like these that your heart knew that you wanted to be with someone who made you feel like this forever.

And just like that the illusion was broken- and not because of what you two had going on but because of a laugh not far from the two of you. Jihoon was up in a flash, a disapproving look crossing his eyes.

“Crap, crap,” he mumbled. His fingers wrapped around your wrist and he tugged you close very quickly. “You need to hide.”

Concern etched over your face.

“What?”

“Rule Number Five, I don’t have time for you to question me, I just need you to hide,” Jihoon urged. He pushed you urgently out of the water, and you scrambled so fast to a nearby tree that you didn’t really have time to grab your shoes.

You felt your fingers dig into the wood bark of the tree and after a moment of uncertainty, you gathered your senses and began to climb up into the branches.

You wanted to ask why you were hiding and what you were doing, and why Jihoon was suddenly so intent on hiding you, but after a few moments you didn’t have to ask why.

Emerging from the brush were the guys from earlier, at the lead was Yeongdo. Jihoon was quick to let his chill expression from before cross back over his face. His shoulders relaxed, his fingers fell at his sides as he knelt down in the sand, pretending as if he had just been messing with it all along. He looked up when Yeongdo approached a surprised expression on his face.

“Oh, hello,” he murmured, giving them a look. “Didn’t think I would run into you again.”

Yeongdo’s expression only darkened at that.

“Where’s your dog?” He asked. Jihoon shrugged and rose back to his feet, his fingers sliding into the pockets of his wet pants.

“Left.”

“Huh. Seemed like you had a pretty tight leash,” Yeongdo responded.

“Didn’t,” Jihoon replied back.

For some reason, the tension between the two boys only grew at the interaction. You could tell that mentally they were both in the middle of an intense argument. It was a little bit intimidating. You swallowed hard, and shifted in the trees, trying your best not to shake the branches too much.

“Alright.”

Yeongdo cleared his throat and squared his shoulders. For a moment you were terrified that he was going to look up into the tree, and spot you up there. Your whole body tensed, and you weren’t completely sure why, but something about him looking up freaked you out.

Maybe you were just overreacting. After all, thus far Yeongdo hadn’t really done anything yet that should be scary.

So then why was Jihoon so hell bent on keeping you two apart?”

“Me and my boys were going to walk up the riverbank and set off some firecrackers we found lying around,” Yeongdo said, his eyes slowly lowering back to Jihoon. Jihoon’s expression didn’t falter, his stance practically rock solid. “Want to come?”

Jihoon didn’t miss a beat.

“Why would I want to go anywhere with you Yeongdo?”

Yeongdo didn’t like that response, and his gang didn’t seem to understand the growing tension between the two boys (which came to a relief to you as you had no idea why they were at one another’s throats). He stared at Jihoon, daring the boy to take back his response.

Jihoon didn’t.

“Lee Jihoon, you better watch your damn-”

“Choi Yeongdo, you better tred lightly,” Jihoon snapped back.

This time there was no silence, no shift in attitude. Instead, he pointed up into the trees, right to where you were.

“Get the dog.”

Yeongdo’s group all looked up at you and you looked down at them complete and utter shock spread over your face.

How had he- “Run!”

Jihoon pushed forward, knocking his shoulder roughly into Yeongdo’s knocking him to the side. You jumped down from the tree, hissing out in pain when your feet hit the dirt, but before you could complain Jihoon was pushing you up to your feet.

“Move, move, move,” he insisted. You didn’t question him. You stumbled to an upright position, feeling yourself get yanked forward as Jihoon latched onto your wrist.

“Why are we running?” You blurted out. At first Jihoon didn’t respond. He just continued to pull you through the woods, worming you both in and out of the area. You could hear the cracking of branches behind you- proof that Yeongdo and his gang were chasing after you.

“Rule Number Seven: Do whatever I say.”

You were starting to get a teensy bit annoyed at Jihoon and his rules.

“That isn’t an answer!” You snapped back.

Jihoon didn’t say anything back, instead he continued to run which just made you even more annoyed.

“Jihoon!”

“Do you ever shut up?”

The outburst was uncalled for and was more shocking then you expected it to be. You started to slow your pace, and the change made Jihoon’s hand slip from your wrist.

Maybe it was your childish attitude, or maybe it was because you deep down desperately seeked Jihoon’s approval, but you couldn’t help it. You let your running pace slow, the actual pain of running barefoot actually getting to you.

The minute that your wrist slipped from Jihoon’s hand, he turned to look back at you, his expression still ice cold. You let yourself stop running completely, and you dropped down to your knees, sniffling as tears began to senselessly run down your cheeks.

Jihoon stumbled a little over himself.

“Wh-What are you doing?” He asked you. You didn’t respond instead you let your eyes drop away from his and rubbed the tears from your eyes with balled fists. You could hear Yeongdo and his others chasing after you and Jihoon, but you didn’t care.  You couldn’t really run when you were crying anyways.

Jihoon walked up to you and reached out to touch you, but when his fingers got too close to you, you flinched away.

“I don’t want to go on an adventure with you anymore,” you snapped stubbornly. You stumbled away from him, your fingers burying themselves in the dirt as you crawled clumsily. Jihoon’s eyebrows furrowed at the action, as if he had never expected you to just go against something that he had said, but even so, you continued to move away from him.

He took a step towards you, his expression hardening again.

“Don’t be stupid, if you keep wasting time like this Yeongdo will get you,” he stated.

“I’m not stupid,” you argued. “And who cares if Yeongdo gets me, he’s just a kid.”

“So?!” Jihoon retorted. “I’m just a kid and I could do anything to you. In fact, I don’t have to listen to you at all.”

You were confused by the statement, but not for long. After only a few moments Jihoon walked purposefully towards you and grabbed your wrist. You tried to say something to him, your eyebrows furrowing in frustration, but he just tightened his grip.

“You shouldn’t just trust people,” he snapped. “You shouldn’t have just followed me so deep into the woods, and you shouldn’t be so nonchalant about Yeongdo getting you.”

He sharply tugged you forward, back into a run. You wouldn’t have let Jihoon pull you again, but you knew that you were just being stubborn. In the end, Jihoon was right, and whether you understood the whole thing with Yeongdo, you vaguely understood Jihoon’s point.

He didn’t stop running until he had pulled you off into a thicket of deeper tree branches, far from the train tracks that you originally came from. He pulled you into a tucked away hole, paved by weeds until you two emerged into a small clearing, that was barely big enough for you to stand in.

“Alright, we should be good if we hang out here for just a little while,” Jihoon assured. You didn’t respond to him. You just sat down and stared at your hands where Jihoon had been holding onto you. Jihoon turned around to face you, but you didn’t look at him.

“Are you okay?” He asked you softly. “You didn’t hurt yourself, did you?”

Again, you didn’t respond to him, which clearly made him even more suspicious of your sudden behavior. He crawled towards you, his hand outstretched, so you made a disgruntled noise and shifted further away from him.

He sighed and pulled his fingers away from you. He withdrew completely and settled back on the ground.

“I...” He trailed off unsurely, so you just kept your eyes on the ground. Your fingers trailed through the dirt as you waited to hear what Jihoon had to say. Instead of actually speaking he didn’t say a word. He just sighed out in frustration.

You didn’t know Jihoon very well, you supposed that became more and more clear the more that you actually got to know him this trip. It was obvious to you that he was close to Yeongdo. Why they had introduced themselves to one another in the woods was a mystery, and you supposed it would remain so until Jihoon decided to explain it to you- which he probably wouldn’t but in the end you thought it was probably because this was all a huge game to everyone.

After all, these woods to Jihoon weren’t what they were to you. He knew them. He knew every tree like it were a slide, each branch like it was rubber mulch. The railroad was just a path that wove from one end to the other, and the river was some sort of fountain. These woods to Jihoon were a playground, and in the end, you were all just kids playing on it.

Jihoon was just playing the game that he was taking just as seriously as he would take anything else in his life right now.

Sure, he had gotten mad at you, sure he had grabbed you, but you weren’t playing the game as seriously as you should have been.

“I won’t do it again,” Jihoon mumbled.

And you knew that was true. You knew that he had learned, just from that one time, just from you crying. You knew that Jihoon had learned his lesson. You don’t grab people and you don’t yell at them. He had tried two different techniques with you to get you to run in these woods, and only one of them was effective.

“You can make the next rule if you want,” Jihoon stated softly. “I... I feel like that’s only fair.”

You didn’t think Jihoon needed to be nearly as apologetic as he was over what had happened. You two were just kids it was only reasonable to overreact at certain things. But the idea of making your own rule... It was much too appealing to pass up.

You smiled.

“Okay, uh, let me think about it.”

You two walked for just a moment in silence. Your mind was racing over what rule you could possibly make but it was hard to listen to it all when Jihoon was just...

“Jihoon...?” You mumbled. “Are you planning on stopping staring at me anytime soon?”

“It was just... I was really mean earlier, and you just... Forgave me,” Jihoon mumbled. “I didn’t deserve that.”

Maybe Jihoon was right, maybe Jihoon was too mean. Maybe you shouldn’t ever forgive him for grabbing you the way he had earlier, for yelling at you and for making you cry.

But in the end, outside of the outburst, you knew that before everything, Jihoon was a gentle person. Someone who wasn’t quick to anger, and somebody who only meant the best for you.

“Okay, okay, I figured it out,” you mumbled. “Rule number nine, if I ask you to hold my hand, you have to let me.”

Jihoon’s worried expression dissolved and his face actually turned a little flushed. You just smiled at the expression and held out your hand towards him. He looked away from you, but took your hand, mumbling a very soft: “Rule number nine” which made you chuckle.

With your free hand you raised your hand up to your face, once again brushing the remaining tears from your eyes.

“Sorry I’m a baby,” you mumbled softly. The apology clearly made Jihoon uncomfortable. His fingers clenched around yours and he tugged lightly on your hand.

“You’re not I was just...” He trailed off, again hesitant to say something. You looked over at him, your eyes squinting just slightly. “Yeongdo and I go to school together.”

Your eyebrows shot up in surprise at the confession, but you didn’t say anything in response in fear that he would stop talking entirely.

“We’re always fighting. He hates me and everyone knows it. Whenever we fight it ends with Yeongdo fine, and me with a black eye and ten new bruises.”

Jihoon shifted uncomfortably.

“I didn’t want to drag you into it. If he thought we were friends... Well, he wouldn’t hesitate to hit a girl,” Jihoon explained. “I just really didn’t want you to get hurt.”

Your lips fell into a grimace.

“You should’ve just told me,” you stated. “I would’ve listened better if you had just told me.”

Jihoon chuckled, a reaction that made your eyebrows furrow.

“I have a feeling you don’t listen very well,” he stated pleasantly. You snorted and let your hand slip from his, brushing your hands off on your pants. Jihoon smiled at at that and tilted his head down to look at the dirt.

“We shouldn’t have to stay here for very long,” Jihoon stated pleasantly. You nodded and stared at Jihoon from behind. You didn’t mean for him to catch you staring, but after a few minutes he turned around his eyes catching yours.

“What?” He asked.

Color crept up your cheeks, but you didn’t explain it. Instead you just let your eyes flit to the side.

“Nothing, nothing.”

-

Once you and Jihoon had been in the thicket for a while, he led you out back to the railroad. You didn’t question Jihoon as you two got back on the railroad, following him excitedly over it as you moved, trying your best not to be obtrusive as you two ventured.

It was a lot cooler out now. The sun was dipping lower in the horizon, and the sun was painting the sky a pretty pink blue color. You were so distracted staring up at it and the clouds and the sun that you almost didn’t notice the scenery and how it was getting more and more familiar until you noticed that Jihoon had stopped on the tracks.

You gave him a curious look, but he just gave you a smile.

“This is where I met you.”

Your eyebrows shot up in surprise and you looked away from Jihoon to the surrounding shrubbery only to realize that he was right. You could even clearly see the pathway that lead back to your grandparent's house, tucked away back towards civilization.

“But-”

“You can’t run away from your life,” Jihoon said with a sigh, pushing his hands into his back pockets. “You have to stay. You have to wait until you get older. You have to wait it out.”

“But I don’t want to wait it out,” you argued stubbornly. “Why can’t I just stay here? Spend the summer with you.”

Jihoon gave you a look that you knew meant that you should keep your mouth shut, but you didn’t mind it too much. Instead you sighed and raised your eyebrows towards him.

“Well? You get to spend this whole summer out here in the woods and I don’t? It’s not fair. You’re running.”

“And that’s how I know it’s bad to run,” Jihoon argued back. He shook his head slowly, a scoff leaving his mouth. “But if you’re going to be stubborn- and you are being stubborn. Fine.”

“Fine?” You asked.

“Be here tomorrow,” Jihoon replied. He shrugged off-handedly. “There’s a couple of pretty neat places off the tracks that we could go.”

Your eyes shone with excitement and you rushed over to Jihoon, wrapping your arms around him in an excited hug. Jihoon didn’t seem to like it too much, but it didn’t last long either way. You pulled away from him and bounced on the balls of your feet.

“Do you mean it?” You asked him.

“Would I lie?” He replied back. You just beamed at him at the response, thinking about all the fun things that you would be able to do tomorrow. You figured you could bring extra snacks and maybe extra clothes this time. You wondered if you would run into Yeongdo again-

“Hey.”

Jihoon’s soft voice jolted you back into reality. You looked back at him, noting the seriousness in his eyes.

“Go home okay? I’ll see you tomorrow.”

You nodded, and watched as Jihoon gave you a half smile, wandering away from you.

“Wait!”

You weren’t sure why you called after him. There was no reason to do so, there was no reason for you to feel so upset either. He had said it himself. He would be waiting for you at the railroad, excited to lead you on another adventure tomorrow.

But for some reason, this felt so final. The way he looked at you made you wonder if you would ever see him again.

“You never told me what the tenth rule is,” you stated. He hummed, his head falling to the side.

“I suppose you’re right. It’s the easiest rule actually.”

He walked up to you, taking your hand without asking you anything about it. He wrinkled his nose as he looked at you. He tilted his head left. Then he tilted his head to the right.

He leaned in close to you and pressed his lips to yours. He pulled away after a very strange moment where neither of you really knew what to do. Then he sighed.

“Rule number ten is to never forget me.”

And like that, he let go of your hands and walked out of your life.

When that summer ended, you had a lot of confusing feelings that you couldn’t find it in you to explain. Even as you got older, you weren’t sure exactly who Jihoon was, or what that summer had truly meant for you.

All you knew was that no matter how old you got. No matter how much you changed. One thing stayed the same.

You always made sure to keep Rule Number Ten.

 Rules of the Playground

Rule Number One: Walk on the railroad when going to the lake.

Rule Number Two: To not leave one another once we are together.

Rule Number Three: No lying.

Rule Number Four: If you’re scared, say my name.

Rule Number Five: Trust me and only me.

Rule Number Six: The promises we make here must be held forever.

Rule Number Seven: Do whatever I say.

Rule Number Eight: I can never scare you like that ever again

Rule Number Nine: If I ask you to hold my hand. You have to let me.

Rule Number Ten: Never forget me.

[idonthaveanyurlideas]

beaujes real bby im sobbing and so of course I WROTE FANFIC FOR IT LETS GO BOOOYYYYY

As always you can find it on AO3 HERE or you can read it below 

“But what is it about her?”

“…”

“She’s fun. She makes me laugh.”

----------

Beau laid down on her back, feeling the warmth of the sun on her face. They’d finally stopped for a break after a long day on the road heading towards the Labenda Swamp, and she intended to make the most of the brief respite from sitting in a bumpy carriage all day or riding on a horse.

She closed her eyes, only for a distant giggle to catch her eyes, and she cracked them open, looking around for the source.

Jester, Nott, and Molly were all gathered beneath a very large tree close to where they’d parked the cart, grinning at each other and pointing to the top of the tree. Curious, Beau got to her feet and walked over them.

“What’s goin on?” She asked, looking up to see if there was anything interesting in the branches.

“We were just debating who would be able to reach the top of this tree the quickest,” Molly said smoothly, flashing a grin at Nott. “Obviously, it would be the person with the longest legs.”

“In your dreams.” Nott scoffed. “I could get all the way to the top before you even get up the first branch.”

“This a challenge?” Beau asked, grinning.

“It’s a race,” Jester said, looking at them all with a devilish smirk. “Okay, three two one GO!”

With no other warning, she jumped up to grab onto the first branch, kicking her feet to find purchase. The rest of them startled before quickly recovering, shouting out in protest before racing for the tree themselves. Nott and Molly ended up going for the same branch, immediately getting tangled up in one another and trying to pull the other off the branch with little concern for safety.

Beau, meanwhile, jumped for the same branch Jester was clambering onto, running up the trunk to gather momentum before landing on top of the branch, winking at Jester before she moved up to the next one.

“Noooo, Beau!” Jester called out, but Beau was already moving, nimbly climbing up from branch to branch.

When she was about halfway up she looked over her shoulder, seeing Nott had managed to break away from Molly, the both of them now making their way up the tree on their own. Jester was making good progress despite being no natural tree climber, a determined look on her face as she kept going.

Beau reached the top about half a minute before Nott did, sticking her tongue out at the goblin, who insisted she would’ve won if ‘Molly hadn’t cheated’, a declaration that earned Nott two middle fingers and almost got both her and Beau the pleasure of seeing Molly fall out of the tree on account of both of his hands letting go of the branches he was holding onto.

“C’mon Jester, you can do it!” Beau called down.

“Oh, no encouragement for me?” Molly shouted up, apparently giving up on climbing to the very top of the tree and satisfying himself with finding a branch he could lie down on.

“Nah, you can fall, I don’t care,” Beau said, smirking as Molly rolled his eyes dramatically.

“I’m coming, I’m coming!” Jester shouted, huffing a little from the exertion.

Having won the race already, Beau climbed down a few branches until she was slightly below Jester, watching her exhale heavily.

“Climbing trees is hard.” She whined, sitting down on the branch was currently on, leaning against the trunk.

“Oh yeah, it takes years of training.” Beau drawled, settling down on a branch as well and enjoying the view. “You still got pretty high, though.”

“I did, didn’t I.” Jester puffed out her chest a bit, looking down and waving at their temporary camp “Hello! Fjord! Yasha! Caleb! Look at us!”

The three who had decided not to risk their limbs by climbing up a tree all looked up, ranging from amused to mostly indifferent. They all waved back at least, if only a little bit.

Beau felt the corner of her mouth curl up, something that happened more and more often while Jester was around. She was just so exuberant, so bright, it was hard not to let her happiness rub off on you at least a little. But Beau had been around plenty of happy, exuberant people and just been annoyed at them. Jester was different.

There was a rustling of branches and a swooshing sound, and then suddenly Jester was hanging upside down, her face only a few inches away from Beau, grinning wildly.

“Surprise!” Jester shouted, her arms dangling.“I’ve always wanted to do this!”

Beau’s eyes widened and she nearly fell backward, surprised at the sudden tiefling in her face. Jester began to giggle while Beau’s arms windmilled behind her, grabbing onto other branches to stop from falling.

“Sorry, Beau!” Jester said between giggles, seemingly hardly able to control herself while all her blood probably rushed to her head. “Did- did I scare you?”

Beau recovered herself, first smiling wryly before she saw the goofy look on Jester’s face, only amplified by the fact that she was upside down. She tried to stifle her laughter by covering her mouth, but this only made Jester laugh more.

“I did! I got you!” Jester exclaimed, swinging back and forth a little bit but making no move to get right-side up.

“You did not scare me, you startled me. There’s a difference.” Beau said, still smiling, before pausing. “Are you stuck?”

“Definitely not,” Jester said firmly, reaching up for the branch with her arms only to fall back down again.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m fine!” Jester insisted, trying again. Beau raised an eyebrow, feeling laughter threatening to bubble up again when she finally huffed in defeat.

“Okay, I’m stuck.”

--------

“I like her ridiculous plans.”

---------

“Uh, where are you going with those?” Beau leaned out of the door to the Xhorhaus, where she had just seen Jester walk through with a cloth-covered basket in hand, Nugget nipping at her heels. “Follow-up question, what’s in the basket?”

“I’m teaching Nugget a new trick!” Jester announced proudly, and now Beau was curious, jogging out to catch up with her as they walked to the backyard.

“What are you teaching him?”

Jester smiled widely at her, before launching into a quick explanation. “Okay, okay, so while I was out getting some pastries I saw this guy in the street and he had this like, big lizard and he would play a song on this flute and the lizard would get up on like, it’s back legs and then do this cool little dance-” She did a little shimmy on the spot to represent the dance, before launching back into the explanation. “- and it looked so cool so I was like, ‘how did you teach him to do that?’ And the guy said he trained him with treats so I bought a bunch of extra treats!”

Beau blinked before nodding. “Okay, what treats exactly?”

“Muffins,” Jester said smugly, removing a part of the cloth to show off the basket filled with different flavours of muffins.

“Can dogs eat those?” Beau asked, one eye raised.

Jester stopped, the two of them having reached the approximate centre of the backyard. “I mean, I’ve fed him a lot of pastries and he seems okay soooo~”

“Of course, of course,” Beau said, already interested to see how this would go. “Want some help?”

Jester’s face lit up, and she passed the basket to Beau, selecting a muffin and holding it up. “Okay! Nugget!”

Nugget, who had been eagerly following until now for the promise of food, stood to attention, nose sniffing the air and tongue lolling out of his. Jester waved the muffin in the air and he followed it, his tail thumping repetitively on the ground.

“Dance!” Jester called out, shaking her hips a bit and holding the muffin up high. Nugget watched for a moment, head tilted slightly, before he jumped into the air, snatching the muffin out of Jester’s hands and almost taking a couple of her fingers with it.

Jester yelped and jumped back, only to plant her hands on her hips and scowl once she recovered from the shock. “Nugget! No!”

Nugget was too busy chomping on a muffin to notice the admonishment, and Beau snorted. “Jes, maybe you need to build up to it.”

Jester looked at her, folding her arms and looking thoughtful for a moment. “Maybe he needs music. The lizard had music.”

“I don’t know if music is the problem,” Beau said, though when Jester ran back inside the house and came back with a tiny piccolo, she shrugged her shoulders. Music it was, then.

“Okay, Beau, I’ll play music and you can hold the muffin and dance so he knows what to do!” Jester said, bouncing on her heels.

“Wait, dance?” Beau asked. “You want me to dance?”

“Yeah! Or you could play the music and I dance.” Jester said, her eyes widening. “Can you play music?”

“I can, but I only know like, one song,” Beau said, not wanting to admit that the last time she’d played music had been… years ago. Jester pushed the piccolo at her anyway, taking the basket. She looked so eager, and it was better than dancing (though to be honest, if Jester had really asked her to do that, she probably would’ve said yes), so she fondly rolled her eyes before beginning to play.

It was far from perfect, and her old music teacher would have a fit, but Jester didn’t seem to mind, calling out to Nugget while holding another muffin up and doing another odd shimmy dance, which Beau could only assume was an approximation of the dance she’d seen the lizard do.

Beau could hardly keep the song going from how many times she had to stop to stifle her laughter, Jester giggling as her ‘dancing’ became more ridiculous as time wore on. A few of the others walked by or opened their windows to see what was going on, only to raise their eyebrows or stare before going back inside, chuckling or mumbling about no sunlight making them all lose their minds.

Nugget never really got the hang of dancing, but he did get to eat lots and lots of muffins, and Jester refused to call her plan a complete failure.

“It was really fun, at least.” She said, still beaming as she passed Beau one of the few muffins left in the basket.

“It was.” Beau accepted the muffin. “I should play music more often.”

“You should, it was really good.”

Beau snorted. “It was not, like every note was off-key.”

Jester giggled, covering her mouth to stop muffing from spraying out, swallowing before continuing. “That’s what made it fun!”

----------

“I think she’s complicated and layered.”

----------

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Beau had said that. She’d really fucking said that. And she’d meant it.

She sucked in a deep breath, walking back down to her cabin, still feeling the warmth of Jester’s arms around her despite the chill of the night air. She said she’d loved Jester, and Jester had said it back.

Platonically, of course, but still. There were precious few people that Beau had ever said ‘I love you.’ to, and even fewer that had said it back and meant it. Now Jester was one of those people.

There was a tingling in her gut that refused to settle down even as she went to bed, listening to the lapping of the waves and feeling the rocking of the boat on the ocean.

It all just felt surreal. Even just a year ago she never would have imagined doing anything like this. Meeting anyone like the Mighty Nein. Like Jester.

She looked over to the hammock that Jester had claimed as her own, on the opposite side of the cabin that all the women of the Mighty Nein shared. It was empty, and minutes passed but Jester didn’t come down to fill it.

Beau just hoped that her talk had done something helpful. Jester was always so optimistic, so energetic, but there were cracks in that persona, and Beau could see it. She cheered up everyone else so much, almost at the expense of herself.

As someone who tended to bring the mood of those around her down, Beau couldn’t understand why she would do that to herself. But she could understand that it was hurting her.

Jester seemed to feel a little better by the end of it, at least, and that was what Beau had set out to do. To make her feel better, and maybe let her know that negative emotions weren’t all bad. Dairon had given her a lecture once on how anything, anger, sadness, fear, determination, all of it could be useful if given the right direction and not simply released wildly or hidden away to fester and rot.

Of course, they’d been talking about punching someone, but that lesson could probably be applied elsewhere, right?

There was a lot that Jester seemed to hide, despite all that she was happy to share. Perhaps that was why all of them, herself included, hadn’t noticed anything amiss for so long. Jester was happy to tell them all about her past, her mother, her god, her powers, her hopes, and her dreams. All the soft and pleasant things.

There was so much more to Jester, and Beau found herself drawn to it. She didn’t want to see Jester hurting, wished she could tell her that there was probably very little Jester could do or say that would change her opinion of her. She loved her, platonically (or maybe not entirely) and Beau was pretty sure she’d do just about anything for her.

Beau stared up at the ceiling of the cabin, and when Jester finally came down and went to bed, she waited until she could hear her breathing evenly before taking a look, seeing a calm, peaceful expression on her face and finally relaxing.

---------

“I dunno.”

---------

Alcohol buzzed in her brain, dulling the panic and butterflies that were swirling in her stomach. Everyone was getting ready for bed, piling up on either one of the two beds already in the room or curling up on their bedrolls on the floor. Nott and Caleb had one of the beds, and Caduceus had the other.

Jester had automatically dragged her bedroll next to Beau’s.

Beau glanced over at Nott, who was giving what she probably assumed to be extremely subtle thumbs-ups and suggestive winks, while Beau just glared back in response, mouthing for her to not say a fucking word.

She shouldn’t have told Nott. Everything could be kept simple and orderly and neat as long as she didn’t tell anybody but she had. Nott had promised not to tell anyone but honestly, Beau sincerely doubted her ability to keep a secret like this away from Jester very long. All it would take is one little slip-up and Jester would probably catch it (she was so observant sometimes) and needle her about it until Nott broke down and confessed because how could she lie to Jester for too long?

If that happened, Beau probably wouldn’t even be too mad at Nott. Jester just had that effect on people.

Pointedly ignoring Nott’s gaze, Beau went about the normal routine of going to bed, lying poorly about how many drinks she’d had and insisting she wasn’t going to throw up anytime soon.

“I still have enough magic for a lesser restoration if you want,” Jester said quietly, but Beau just shook her head.

“Don’t use your magic for that.” She mumbled. “Not worth it.”

“If you’re sure.” Jester had been subdued the whole day, especially since her encounter with the Gentleman, and not even the pep talks that she and some of the others had given her had done much to get her out of it. “G’night, Beau.”

“Night, Jes.” Beau made to reach a hand over to rest it on Jester’s shoulder, or squeeze her hand, or something, but she hesitated.

Instead, she burrowed into her own bedroll, thinking far too hard about the distance between them and everything she’d said to Nott echoing in her head.

She shouldn’t have said anything. Speaking it out loud made it real, admitting it made it almost an actual tangible thing, and that was so much harder than when it was just emotions and fantasies crowding her brain. It made everything feel more… consequential.

She could never say anything, could never risk it. Jester was too good in a hundred different ways, and her friendship with her was too important to risk messing with.

It would be alright, in the end. She wouldn’t do anything, she wouldn’t say anything else, she’d make sure Nott kept her mouth shut, Jester would never find out and they’d remain best friends where everything still made sense and everything was great. The ‘what if’s’ wouldn’t matter. The possibilities wouldn’t matter.

She rolled over so that she was facing away from Jester, even though she was painfully aware of her presence less than a foot away, and she fell asleep dreaming of a world where the possibilities were real and there was nothing in her way.

[canadian-riddler]

The Girlfriend Part Six.

Synopsis: Claptrap knows this relationship is worth it.  Now he’s just gotta convince her of that.

AO3 || fanfiction.net || Wattpad

They had some really good sex after that.

He wasn’t sure what had changed, exactly, but if someone had made him guess he would’ve said she had actually started getting into it.  She kinda hadn’t, before, as though it was some sort of thing she needed to do but didn’t really like doing.  She seemed cool with it now, though.  It was so good, in fact, that the last time he’d actually had to stop her because he’d thought he was gonna pass out.  Both of those things were kinda embarrassing, but he’d had to make a snap decision there and he had really not wanted to crash in front of his girlfriend for a reason like that.

He’d expected her to get mad about it, or annoyed at least, but she was neither!  She just asked what was going on, and when he told her she laughed for about three straight minutes.

“You’re uh… taking this surprisingly well,” said Claptrap, and she tilted her core in a really adorable way and said,

“Aw.  Was I too much for you?”

in such a way that it instantly became the sexiest thing he had ever heard.  He didn’t even realise he’d zoned out there until she said his name a little louder than she usually talked.

“Huh?” he asked, unable to remember what he’d been doing.

“You stopped responding for a minute.”

“Oh,” he answered.  “Yeah, I uh… gotta admit, you’ve gotten pretty intense.”

“Have I?” she asked, sounding amused.  

“Ohhh have you ever,” said Claptrap.  “You went from the bare minimum to the whole nine yards.  I’m not complainin’, but you are a lot… um… more than me.”

“I thought that was part of why you liked me so much.”

“It is!” he said insistently, even though she didn’t sound bothered in the slightest.  “C’mon, babe, we’re comparing a windmill to a nuclear power plant here.”

“Your power isn’t generated by a windmill,” she said, laughing.

“And yours isn’t generated by a nuclear power plant!  It was an – “

“Actually, it is,” interrupted GLaDOS.  “It is generated by a nuclear power plant.”

He stared up at her, dumbfounded.  “… well this place has got just about everything, hasn’t it.”

“Just about,” said GLaDOS, as though she’d taken the question very seriously.

“But no mirrors,” Claptrap said.  “I have not seen myself in weeks.”

“Why would you want to?” GLaDOS asked.  “You look the same as you did when you first came here.”

He shrugged.  “’cause I like looking at myself?  Don’t you?”

“The thought has never crossed my mind.”

“To… to look at yourself?”

“Yes,” said GLaDOS, nodding. “I have no idea what I look like.”

Claptrap wasn’t even sure how to process this news.  How did someone live their whole life without knowing that?  “Really?”

She shook her core.  “There isn’t really a means for me to do so.  I also have no idea where my blueprints are.”

“Well… if you want, we could… I could show you.  I’ve got uh… pictures.”  She probably already knew about that, but he’d heard stories about guys who did that kinda thing without their girl’s permission, so he hadn’t exactly been motivated to just bring it up.  She considered him for a long moment, then shook her head again.  

“No.  I’d rather not.”

“But why?”  Ohhhh.  Ohhhh, wait. “You’re not worried that you’re gonna hate what you see, are you?  ‘Cause it’s pretty great, I promise.  I tell you you’re hot all the time ‘cause you really are, not just ‘cause I want you to have sex with me.”

“Oh, no,” GLaDOS said. “I mean, think about it.  I’m the best at everything, so logically I must also be the best-looking, too.  No, it’s because no matter what I do end up seeing, it will never match whatever it is you see.”

That sounded all smart and deep and stuff.  Must’ve been why he didn’t get it.  “Huh?”

She looked off to the side, to give herself a minute to think maybe.  “I like having you tell me, without having anything to compare it to. You said I was the most beautiful girl in the universe.”

“You are!”  She didn’t think he’d been lying, did she? But she just nodded once.

“Exactly.  That’s all I need to know.  Seeing what I look like will just ruin it.  I’m happy being told what you think without actually knowing what you’re talking about.”

“Aw, honey-RAM,” Claptrap said.  “That’s –“

“Also, I don’t care,” interrupted GLaDOS with finality, and then she told him it was time for one of his shows and if he wanted to watch it he had better shut up and pay attention.  He did want to do that, but he also really wanted to know how you could just not care what you looked like.  He wanted to know so bad that he just could not pay attention and asked, “GLaDOS, why don’t you care?”

“Hm?”

“About what you look like? How can you not care?”

“Oh,” she answered.  “It’s not important.  That’s why I don’t care.”

“How is it not important if your chassis is the thing that made me want to come here in the first place?” Claptrap asked.

“You are the one who placed value on my appearance,” GLaDOS told him.  “Not me.”

… oh.  That did make sense.

“Neither my knowing nor my caring would have changed what you did,” she continued.  

His next question he wasn’t sure if he wanted an answer to, but he said anyway, “Do you… think I’m handsome?”

“Yes,” she said without pause, which helped a lot, “but since I can’t see you most of the time anyway I’m not sure why that matters.”

“It just… makes me feel better about myself,” he mumbled to the floor, rubbing the hand he had on her core in a wobbly circle.  “But you don’t get it ‘cause you don’t care.”

“A fact you should be very glad of,” GLaDOS declared, “because I wouldn’t be half so attractive to you if I had your non-existent self-esteem.”

“So… I don’t get it.  I’m stupid, I hate myself, and you only know where I am half the time by the sound of my voice, which we both know isn’t the most soothing thing in the world.  What exactly do you see in me?”

She didn’t answer for a long time.  Then she turned to look at him and said,

“There are two things in particular: you’re extremely patient and you’re quite a lot of fun.  When spoken out loud, they don’t seem like much, but in practise… they’re very important traits for you to have.”

“Fun’s one thing,” said Claptrap, “even if no one’s ever used that word to describe me before. But patient?  Isn’t that kinda… boring?”

“I’m sure you’ve noticed by now,” GLaDOS told him, “that I am very stubborn and reluctant to change.”

“I noticed that like… the first week,” Claptrap said.

“Exactly.  Most people would have given up.  You didn’t.  You were willing to wait.  And before you tell me you did that because you don’t exactly have a lot of options, that doesn’t matter.  All that matters is that you did make that decision.”

He wasn’t sure what to do with that.  Him? Patient?  He’d chalked a lot of this up to ‘desperation’, himself, but… she’d literally just said that she didn’t care about his perception of himself. She didn’t even care about his perception of her.  She just… made all her decisions without caring about any of that.  The only things that mattered were what made sense to her.

That was… kinda a cool way to live.  He couldn’t even imagine the kind of balls it had to take to not give a damn about what anybody else thought.  About anything.  It almost seemed like… a superpower.  But at the same time, wasn’t it… a good thing to care what people thought of you? Just a little bit?  Because if you didn’t, then weren’t you… super biased? He had no problem with GLaDOS being a big fan of herself, but if she cared even a little bit what he thought, then… wouldn’t that make her even better?  Him caring what she thought had definitely made him a little better, because it made him want to – wait a minute.  If she didn’t care at all, why had she even brought up that he’d said she was the most beautiful – aha!  She totally cared.  She just didn’t want him to know that.  Because… because she was ‘very stubborn and reluctant to change’, and if he knew he had gotten her to change her mind the tiniest bit, she thought he’d try to make her do it more often.  

Maybe it even really did matter that he was handsome, and she just didn’t want to admit it. Because that would mean she did care, which she wanted to pretend she didn’t do!  Yeah.  Yeah, that sounded right.

Man, them together were really like… the two extreme opposites of the same person.  How long would they have to hang around each other before they kinda… met in that middle she’d talked about way back when?  Would he even last that long?  Maybe they’d be kinda in sync one day but right now… right now they were still pretty far apart.

Well… he’d been pretty patient so far.  He could stick it out for… however long he had to.

“Do you want me to turn this off?” GLaDOS was asking, and he jumped back around so he was facing the monitor and put his hand back where it belonged on the side of her core.

“Nope!  I’m watching!”

He had a few shows to catch up on and she usually didn’t let him watch them all at once, but when the first one ended she put the next one on without saying anything at all.  That was certainly weird, but he decided to just roll with it and not say anything either.  

“Claptrap,” GLaDOS said very casually after about ten minutes, “suppose I did love you.  Just a little bit.”

Oh damn.

He really wanted to start telling her how great that was and how much he loved her, but he made himself think about what she’d said when he’d said it: she didn’t want it to be a big deal.  The way he wanted to react to her saying it was the total opposite of what she wanted him to do.  So he wasn’t gonna do it.  He was just going to… to do what she would have done if she hadn’t freaked out.  She would’ve been calm and reasonable and chill about it.  So he was gonna be calm and reasonable and chill about it.

“That’d be cool, I guess,” Claptrap said, shrugging.

She nodded to herself in what seemed to be satisfaction, and he felt super relieved, as though he’d passed some sort of test.  A test he kind of… felt like he didn’t want to have passed.  Claptrap had a girlfriend that loved him.  And instead of being super happy and excited about it like he really, really wanted to be, he had to just… pretend he didn’t care.

Well… she had said ‘just a little bit’, so… so maybe he’d be able to be happy about it later. When she really meant it.  By the time she was ready, she’d be cooler with him making a big deal out of stuff.  He just had to keep on being patient.  He could do that.  He knew he could do that.

Trying to keep all those thoughts to himself came back to bite him later, though, because they were just chilling and playing video games when it really got to him just what a great life he was having and how awesome it all was and how he’d never thought he’d have anything like this.  One second he was just next to her, trying his darnedest to beat her in the race onscreen even as she taunted him with the fact she could effortlessly hold the perfect line every time, and the next he was crying.  Oh, s***.  He tried to stop before she noticed, which was pretty gosh darn impossible because as soon as he started she paused the game and just looked at him.  

“I’m okay,” he said, even though he knew that wasn’t gonna fly with her.

“You’re… crying.”

“Yeah.”  He put down the controller and did his best to clean out his eye.  “I dunno why this happens.  It just does, sometimes.  It’ll go away in a minute.”  He hoped.

“That’s a strange feature.”

“Sure is,” he said, hoping she would shut up about it because even thinking about crying made it worse.

“Are you sad?”

“No!” he protested, finally looking at her.  She didn’t think this was her fault, did she?  Well, it was.  But in the best way ever.  “No, babe, I’m crying because I’m happy.”

“Why would you cry if you were happy?” she asked, sounding confused, and he really didn’t know how to answer that because he didn’t get it either.  He shrugged and wiped at his eye again, mostly to give his hands something to do.

“I dunno.  I’ve never been this happy before.”

“Oh,” GLaDOS said, very softly.  “Would you… do you want a hug?”

“Really?” he said, hardly able to believe his luck when she nodded, and man it felt so good. But the flip side was that he started crying again, and he didn’t wanna cry on her so he was gonna let go, really he was, but then she pressed herself into his chassis really hard and that just made it worse.  Now he had to hug her as hard as he could because she was just trying to hard to be nice even though she probably hated this, like, a whole lot, and gosh he just loved her so much and she made him so happy…

He really hoped she would just let him hug her for a while until he’d got a handle on all that stuff.  Because it was a lot.  Kinda scary, actually, like if he let go of her it would just kinda overwhelm him something awful.  He wasn’t sure what that would do, but it probably wouldn’t be good.

“This won’t last forever, you know,” GLaDOS murmured.  

“What?” Claptrap asked, horrified even though he knew they really couldn’t hug forever.  

“I’ve been doing some reading,” GLaDOS said.  “Relationships start like this.  Where everything is perfect and new.  But it doesn’t last.  Things turn sour.  Quirks become intolerable.  What once was neutral ground becomes a warzone.  Even your favourite things about the other person begin to feel insufficient.  All honeymoons draw to a close.”

What… no.  No no no.  It sounded like she wanted to break up, but… she couldn’t!  What was she even talking about!?  This was never going to end!  She was perfect and he was… well… that wasn’t important.  He pushed away from her in a panic.  “What’re you trying to say?” he demanded.

“I’m saying,” GLaDOS answered, “that the next stage of this relationship will be hard. Perhaps too hard.”

“For… who?” he asked, utterly confused.  “You just told me how patient I was!  Babe, I’ve done harder stuff than this!  I mean, this has been super hard, but only ‘cause I’ve got so much to lose!  I can totally stick it out if you work with me! We’re supposed to be a team, right? Isn’t that how this kinda thing goes?”

“Yes,” answered GLaDOS, “but sometimes the victory is worth less than what was lost in the battle.”

… what?

“What battle?” he said in a panic.  “We’re not fighting, are we?  We never fight.”

“Not yet.”

“Not…”  He drew his hands closer, the abject terror coursing through his system making it hard to work out what all her innuendo was supposed to mean this time.  Why was she saying things were gonna be hard and they were gonna fight and it wasn’t gonna be worth it?  Where was this even coming from?  What had he done wrong?

Maybe… maybe he hadn’t done anything.  Maybe it was that thing about them being opposites.  He was happy to love her and to be loved by her, but… she wasn’t. It bothered her.  Maybe… maybe it scared her, even.  Because she couldn’t control it.  It was just a thing that was happening, and she couldn’t turn it off or make it go away or turn it into something else.

That was when he got it. She wasn’t trying to break up, not really.  She was preparing for it.  She was asking him to bail now, when it was good, instead of waiting until it got bad and deciding he wanted out then.  If it had to end, she wanted it to end now.  When it was good, and when it had always been good, and to keep that from ever, ever changing.

Maybe she was right.  Maybe he should go, and leave it all like this, and they would both be sad but it would always be perfect, just like it was now.  Where he still thought her insults were funny and she still liked the fact that he didn’t shut up.  The quirks, as she’d put them.  They could preserve this forever.  Like a treasure.  Close it away and keep it safe.  It would be over, but it would never be ruined.  They would never have the chance to ruin it.

“No,” Claptrap said.

“No what?”

“I want you to yell at me,” Claptrap said, even though he absolutely didn’t.  She was scary when she did that.  “I want you to get mad at me, and… and tell me bad stuff about myself, and ignore me just to be a dick, and kick me out of the room ‘cause I won’t shut up. I want you to do all those things.”

“Why in the world would you want that?” GLaDOS asked incredulously.  “Claptrap, that’s – “

“Because I love you,” Claptrap cut her off, “and that means all of you.”

“But you haven’t seen all of me yet.”

“I know it’s hard to tell, but I’ve been on my best behaviour,” said Claptrap.  “So… samesies.”

“But what if it turns out not to be worth it?”

Well, of course it was worth it.  Even if she dumped him tomorrow – literally dumped him into the incinerator – it had totally been worth it.  He couldn’t think of a single thing he’d ever done any other time in his life that was more worth it.  He shrugged. “I don’t really do what-ifs.  I just kinda… do.”

“And then have regrets after the fact.”

That gave him such a bad feeling.  “Why would you say that?  Do you regret me?”

“Yes,” said GLaDOS.  “Yes, I do.”

Damn it.

“But I also don’t, at the exact same time,” she continued, which went a long ways to making him feel maybe all wasn’t lost.  “And I hate it.   I hate it a lot.”

He folded up his arms and tried to think.  The answer was in there, somewhere.  His powers of deduction were… flighty at best, but when he managed to wrangle them he usually got it right.  Hm.

She did and didn’t regret him.  She did and didn’t know what he was.

She did and didn’t want life to take him back.

He had it!

Her problem was not knowing! Not knowing if it was worth it, or how she felt, or what they were!  She didn’t know and she hated that!  As a logic machine who needed to know everything, that would be tough for her. But he didn’t need to know anything!  It would all just… balance out!  Like a… like a thing that balanced!  For once he’d figured this out before she had!

“Don’t worry about it!” he told her in earnest.  “Babe, we are totally different people and I know that.  But I also know we make a great team!  We’re gonna get to know each other better and yeah, it’s gonna be messy.  But c’mon! Even if it gets super bad real soon, we’ll already know we’re capable of being super good!  We’ll just have to stick that s*** out together! That’s what love’s all about!”

“I don’t know if I love you that much,” GLaDOS said.

Claptrap’s chassis sank, and he looked down at the floor and pressed his hands together very hard, forcing himself not to say anything.  He’d had his turn to talk and now he had to respect what she wanted.  Even if he didn’t want it.  It was already killing him a little inside to think that he’d have to leave and he would never see her or talk to her or hold her ever again, but if he loved her – if he really, honestly loved her the way he kept telling her he did – then he would have to do it.  He would have to go and not come back.

“That’s okay,” he said, even though it wasn’t.  “Look, GLaDOS, I… I don’t want to go.  But if you… if you really need me to, I will.  I’ll just… I’ll go home and you’ll never hear from me again.  I won’t be that creepy ex who just can’t accept that it’s over.  I’ll just go back to Pandora and… and that’ll be it.  I swear.”

“If you did that,” said GLaDOS, and he had to turn his optic off in order to keep holding himself together. “… then… I’d never know.”

… huh?

“I don’t know what it is you’re feeling, or if I even have the capacity to get there,” she continued, “but I think…”

He looked up at her, just a little bit.

“… I think I’d like to take the chance to find out.”

“Really?” he said, before he could stop himself.  “You’re not dumping me?”

“I’m not dumping you,” she said.

“We’re staying together?”

“Yes,” she said.  “We’re staying together.”

He threw his arms around her and held onto her as hard as he could, and this time he didn’t even cry. She was still and quiet, but he could hear her thinking and it scared him a little.  If she changed her mind…

… then he would suck it up.

She was rubbing her optic assembly against the side of his chassis just a little bit, but even though it was barely happening it still felt really nice.  She’d never done that before, so… so she must’ve realised how scared he was.  And he really was.  He was still terrified that telling her he loved her had been some kinda tipping point and it was all downhill from there.  But she seemed to want him to feel better, so… so he didn’t have anything to worry about.  It was all okay.  They were okay.

“I lied,” GLaDOS said suddenly.  

Oh God.  Oh God did he ever want her to shut up.  Even if her voice was so sexy it almost had the ability to solve his stupid glitch all on its own.

“I love you more than a little bit,” she went on, “but I wish I didn’t.  I wish I’d never done this at all.”

It was time for him to shine.  And by ‘shine’, it meant he had to think of that perfect, offhand thing to say that would both reassure her and cheer her up.  He furiously ran through all the stuff that’d gone on today, and after a minute he came up with it.

“Time for you to learn a little somethin’ from me, babe,” he said, letting go of her and lifting his chassis so he could kiss her as high as he could.  “No what-ifs and no regrets.  Let’s just do this thing!”

“If I regularly followed that kind of logic, we’d be living inside of a radioactive crater,” said GLaDOS, “but I suppose it can’t hurt this once.  What the hell.  Let’s do it.”

“That’s my girl,” Claptrap said, and he was so happy about the fact that he did have a girl, not just for now but possibly forever, that he didn’t even care when GLaDOS sniped the hell out of him for an hour and a half in the next game she put on just because she thought it was funny.

[welllpthisishappening]

The Pocket Square Incident

Ok, so originally I posted this as an ask from @wholockgal which read: “The pocket square antics 100% scream Will to me... mortifying Belle when she realizes. Probably halfway through the night.”

But apparently now Tumblr doesn’t include “read more” in asks, and I was really worried about how long it was. So. We’ve moved here. Anyway, if the Rangers trade Jimmy Vesey I’ll riot. 

Also, here are some words set, approximately, a week after they win the second Cup. Which has led to some kind of epic celebration because, lest we not forget, Killian totally screwed up, told everyone he and Emma were going to have a kid and also because the Blues celebration has caused @optomisticgirl​ and I to plot things. Basically the Rangers have not been sober in quite some time at this point. Emma is passably amused. And now they’ve got to go to the NHL awards.

So here’s this. Which is based on this. In which Will Scarlet has to improvise. Here we go:

-----

“Are none of us going to talk about Scarlet’s pocket square?”

Killian hummed, nosing further at the side of Emma’s neck and he couldn’t remember how he’d gotten that close to her. He wasn’t really sitting on his chair anymore, was more perched on the edge with his hands moving absent-mindedly, like he was trying to take stock of her or find something to ground him and everything was still a little hazy around the edges.

“You’re a mess, Cap,” she laughed, and he was fairly certain her eyes were, in fact, getting greener. Emma nodded, letting her forehead rest against his and--“Yeah, you totally said that out loud too. A mess.”

“But,” Killian argued, hand shifting to her stomach and he could just make out her eye roll. It made him a little dizzy. “A mess you’re definitely into.”

“Something like that.”

Phillip groaned, slumping further into his chair and that was only going to end with him wrinkling his jacket. “You guys are ignoring me.”

“This is great practice for your kid,” Will quipped. Except the words weren’t entirely even. They were far more slurred, his gaze not quite straight and a distinct curl to his lips because, it seemed, two-time Stanley Cup winners who refused to drink much water were also very good at mocking everything around them.

Robin snickered. Into his arm. His head was resting on his arms.

“You know,” Regina drawled. “Maybe you’re all just a collective mess.”

Emma hummed. “Yeah, that’s definitely true. Killian, if you don’t stop, you’re going to rip my dress and then I’m going to have to kill you.”

“Check him,” Robin suggested. He didn’t lift his head.

“We are at a very fancy event.”

“So you should probably stop with the threats of murder, huh, love?” Killian asked, tilting his head up and he was going to be very smug about whatever sound she made as soon as his mouth dragged across the side of her jaw. For, like, the rest of the night.

If not the rest of their lives.

They should really start planning a wedding.

He really wanted to marry her.

“Said that out loud too,” Emma muttered, but there was a distinct color to her cheeks that hadn’t been there a few moments before. “That was nice, though.”

“Was the other one not nice?”

“He is drunk, Emma,” Will said. He was starting to wobble. In his chair. It would be a miracle if any of them got to the stage. “He’s got no idea what he’s saying right now. He’s just trying to impress you.”

She stuck her tongue out at him –– and she couldn’t blame being drunk, but she’d also been watching all of them be drunk and maybe in addition to planning a wedding, Killian would apologize for that.

“Unnecessary,” Emma said, tapping the tip of her finger against a jaw that was, suddenly, hanging open. “And I’m very impressed. Swooning, really.”

She pointed at herself, one side of her mouth tugging up and, really, there was nothing to do but pull his head up, catch her mouth and kiss her. In public. With cameras nearby. Emma laughed into his mouth, smile obvious even when Killian’s tongue darted forward, but the sound quickly morphed into something closer to a sigh and that, actually, might have been him.

Her fingers were in his hair.

“Oh my God, seriously, someone talk to me about Scarlet’s pocket square,” Phillip shouted. “He’s taking this way too seriously!”

“He’s nominated for the Norris,” Emma reasoned. She didn’t move away from Killian. He nipped at her lip.

“Yeah, I get that, but this is just---honestly, look at him. He’s like some kind of preening--”

“--Oh my God,” Belle breathed, and Killian wasn’t sure if he’d ever seen her eyes get that wide. She jumped up, barely keeping her balance when she started swatting at Will’s shoulder. And his elbow. And his back.

“Babe, babe, c’mon, that’s--” Will started, but the swatting did not stop and every single one of her teeth was obvious when she glared at him. “You’re making it worse, really.”

“What made you decide to do this?”

“What is happening right now?” Robin asked, and that, at least, got him to lift his head. There were bags under his eyes.

Killian scoffed. “You’re too old for this, old man.”

“Oh shut up, talk to me when you start teething.”

“Me, personally?”

“Shut up, Cap.”

Belle’s arms were still masquerading as windmills. “What the hell happened, here,” she sneered. “How did you even fold it like that?”

"Ok, ok, this is mostly Cap’s fault.”

“How is that possible?”

“He was frustratingly sober before we flew out here and we were late and--”

“--Because I care about my liver. And you were still very uneven on your feet when you came downstairs, Scarlet,” Killian pointed out, earning himself a less-than-professional gesture. Robin put his head back down. “Where are you going with this?”

Will ran a hand over his face, a sharp inhale and far too much color in both of Belle’s cheeks. And, like, her forehead. That probably would have been impressive if she didn’t look far more serious about the murder threat than Emma had been.

“I forgot a pocket square,” Will explained.

Killian tilted his head. Phillip blinked no less than twelve times. “Wait, then...what is...”

“It’s mine,” Belle hissed, and Regina actually gasped. Before laughing. Uproariously. And drawing the attention of several other rows, curious glances and Emma’s hand flew to her mouth when she, presumably, figured it out.

“I don’t get it,” Killian admitted.

“Yeah, well, you’re drunk. And preoccupied with Emma. Which is probably for the best because--”

“--What did you make into a pocket square?” Phillip asked, a note of alcohol-fueled stubbornness in his voice. People kept giving them champagne. Back-to-back was very impressive.

Belle looked like she wanted to melt. If her face stayed that red, she might have. Only there was someone else talking –– someone official and Killian could hear other names being called and then Will’s name was being called, for a second time, because he’d won the goddamn Norris Trophy and the whole lot of them exploded into shouts and cheers and slightly shaky movements.

Emma’s arms wrapped around Killian’s middle when he stood up.

And for as difficult as it had been to see recently, Killian was certain he saw it all perfectly in that moment, Will taking measured steps towards the stage with a black pocket square sticking out of his jacket and--

“Is that lace on the edge?’

“Oh my God,” Belle sighed, head falling forward even as she continued to clap.

It only took him a few seconds into Scarlet’s acceptance speech to understand. “Holy shit,” Killian breathed, bringing Emma with him when he turned towards Belle.

“Do not.”

“But.”

“I swear to God, I will find a stick and check you in front of your pregnant fiancée. I won’t even hesitate.”

“I’m still very confused,” Phillip admitted, shuffling through the aisle when Killian waved him over. It was actually kind of difficult to say out loud. Particularly when Phillip almost fell over. “Shit, that’s--”

“--You too, Rook,” Belle said. “I will check you.”

Phillip saluted. “Message received.”

And there was no more mention of the pocket square – or what it was made of – for the rest of the night, all of them too busy posing with trophies and posing with each other, but then they were in a different room and Killian’s mouth was moving again and he was having a difficult time thinking when Emma kept arching her back like that.

“You know,” he said, dragging his lips against the inside of her thigh and hooking his thumb around fabric, “it was pretty ingenious.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“i’m just saying.”

“Yeah, yeah, he’s a paragon of creativity. How about we talk Scarlet’s inventions and the use of his girlfriend’s underwear after you get mine off, deal?’

Killian nipped at her leg. That got her to gasp. And arch her back again. He hadn’t had anymore to drink that night. “Absolutely, Swan.”

They looked at wedding stuff on the plane ride home. 

[professortennant]

Sam/Jack Rec List, Pt. 1

This is mostly for me in case my bookmarks are lost but yeah! I’ve gone through like 90% of AO3, a good chunk of ff.net, and I just dived into LJ. But since I have 103 fics already bookmarked, I’m just gonna put this list up first and then add to it later. 

Plz read the tags of each fic to avoid stuff you don’t wanna read. If you read something and love it, GO TELL THE AUTHOR SO THEY WRITE MORE.

Absolute Fucking Favorites (aka I have read these more times than I feel comfortable admitting)

We Made It Series: A series of connected episode tags beginning with Forever in a Day. Sam shows up on Jack's doorstep with a six pack of beer, a bottle of cheap wine and a package of chicken breasts. Jack's confused. They cook dinner.

Taking Christmas Off: How Sam and Jack end up spending Christmas alone together every single year, accidentally at first, and then very much on purpose. A fluffy/shippy Christmas fic in eight parts, with spoilers through season 8.

The Dreams We Left Behind: The day Sam Carter marries Pete Shanahan is not the worst day of Jack’s life; he’s already lived that day. But that doesn't make it easy.

Like Kissing a Stranger: There is not one day he spends on this planet, or any other, that his mouth doesn't get him into trouble.(An episode tag for Point Of View.)

Retrospective: Sam doesn’t give it a name, this feeling. She doesn’t even think about it much, preferring to glimpse it obliquely from the corner of her eye. It’s a secret delight that she shares with no one, scarcely even herself.One story in eight parts charting Sam and Jack’s relationship from the start of S1 to the end of S8.

The Short Straw: She hadn't set out to cheat, certainly, but had thought that she'd at least be able to interpret her own work in a way that would lead to victory. (Tag for Shades of Grey)

Post-Eps/Episode Tags (except for Threads, which is its own category)

The Price of Edora: Sam suffers the consequences of pushing herself too hard in order to bring Jack back from Edora. 

For Just One Taste of This: After that, though, things got tricky and dangerous because they pushed a little more and went a little (a lot) further off that deep end, and soon it was the two of them alone in the empty barracks and this wasn’t wrong, was it, just sitting side by side in the darkness? (Post Divide and Conquer)

Let Your Demons Run: (here can't be that many eyes in the building that haven't noticed her. Post-ep for Entity.

Midnight at the Oasis: What if Abydos wasn't destroyed, and Jack and Sam really did go to Skaara's wedding? A short AU based on the wonderful (!) exchange among the three at the beginning of Full Circle.

Thyself, Unknown: And then they were strangers again and their world was brand new with signs of aging. Beneath the Surface 

Unlearn your Stars: Thera turned her eyes toward the ceiling, as if she could see through the miles of earth and snow to the sky beyond. Something about her seemed to yearn, and for reasons he could not fathom Jonah felt like Thera belonged there. Among the stars. (Beneath the Surface)

Transcendental: Alternate Sam and Jack who got stranded in the alternate timeline in Moebius. 

The Fundamental Theorem of Samantha Carter: Samantha Carter knew precisely what she wanted. And then she didn’t. S.8 Full Alert through Threads with references to Gemini.

The Rainy Season: Tag for The Light. Their arguing was beginning to grate on her nerves.

Icarus Ascending: What if Jack and Sam didn't keep it in the room after all? A/U tag to Divide and Conquer. 

The Space Between: There's a little space between them on the bed. Small enough to be close, but enough space to remind them where the line should be. (tag for Death Knell.)

Mimesis: Jack tries to help Carter deal with her time spent with Fifth and the Replicators.

A Rush of Blood to the Head: "You volunteering to come with me, Carter?" Sam and Jack deal (or don't) with the creation of mini!Jack.

The Breaking Point: Daniel’s ‘death’ in Meridian forces Sam Carter to reevaluate her life and what really matters to her.

Window on a Room: The first time around, Sam had found that face the Colonel was making to be endearing, in the increasingly problematic way she found pretty much everything he did to be endearing. The second time, she had found it alarming - not the Colonel specifically, of course, just the fact that she’d already experienced that exact moment not ten hours earlier. She went from being alarmed on the second loop to being frustrated, baffled and discouraged in subsequent loops as their attempts to stop the looping had all failed. And now that they had settled into this routine, with Sam and Teal’c, loop after loop, learning to translate the altar text themselves, well now she was just tired. Not even the Colonel’s problematically endearing face was helping.Another loop, she thought to herself. Here we go again.

black holes and revelations: It’s late and dark and as far as she’s concerned, the world has stopped for them (they’d done the Earth a few favors, it's time one was returned).

Lifelines: Everyone expects her to be so resilient--but beneath her calm exterior seethe emotions beyond her control and understanding. Months post "Beneath the Surface", Sam finally has to face it all, and find a way to accept the way things have to be.

Reflections on a Broken Surface: Episode tag to Beneath the Surface. How Sam and Jack became a couple in the ep. 

Tilting at Windmills: Jack's struggling to deal with the events of Euronda and Alar's people. Angry, depressed, and alone, he needs Sam's help to find his way home, literally, and figuratively.

untitled: Sam/Jack, word prompt- 'never' Episode tag to Death Knell

the art of reincarnation: Detoxing in a Goa’uld palace, Jack struggles with something he can't let go, and Sam struggles with everything.

Cracks in the Glass: Doctor Carter has stepped through the mirror-seeking refuge from her ravaged world. Her presence forces Sam and Jack to question their own decisions. Sam and Jack focused episode enhancement to "Point of View".

Before the Invitation: A chance meeting in the commissary leads to some unintended revelations. (Set just prior to 'Nemesis')

Threads

Full Disclosure: She looks at him with that complex expression that’s punctuated their relationship ever since Pete barged onto the scene. The one that looks like a question, or a plea – the one he’s never really understood and has never dared pursue.

Down to the Bone: She knows now, what’s essential.

Sooner: Some bonus scenes for "Threads," because a lot went on in and around that episode that we just didn't get to see.

an angel came down: The first Christmas after her father dies is rough. The second Christmas after her father dies is better.

Breathe In: It wasn’t an immediate thing, despite what people thought. They didn’t jump each other the second SG1 was on vacation, with her emotionally vulnerable after her father’s death and no longer engaged, or him now free of SG Command and DC-bound.

Sam or Jack are Tortured/Abused (but it ends happily)

Primary Emotion: After seventeen weeks of torture in a Goa'uld prison, Samantha Carter is rescued by SG-1. In the time that follows she must relearn how to relate to her team, reassess her relationships with both herself and others, and decide whether or not she'll continue to step through the Stargate. Luckily she's got the benefit of a good psychologist and the love of a great man.

Character: SG1 is kidnapped by an alien king who needs Sam to perpetuate his bloodline & will do anything to possess her. The team must find a way to escape before she pays the ultimate price for her defiance. 

Compos Mentis: After Colonel O'Neill is stranded on a seemingly friendly planet, it's up to his team to rescue him. Who they find, though, isn't the man they left behind.

Crawl from the Chasm: After Jack's experiences in Ba'al's Abyss, he struggles to find peace. Angsty Jack/Sam Ship.

After All: They’d been trapped for a month. He’d been tortured within an inch of her life. And then their roles had been reversed.

All We Need of Hell: Jack is captured and tortured and when he returns, he just doesn’t see the point in following the regs anymore--Sam is essential. And he convinces her to forget the regs, too. (Dark fic). (chap 2)

Aliens Made Them Do It

Auctions and Consequences: Slavery has been abolished for good reason, but apparently not everyone got the memo… landing Sam and Jack in hot water.

Auction and Reaction (sequel to the above): Jack manages to get himself captured and Sam is sent to negotiate for his freedom. Unfortunately, the matriarch in charge of the male slaves is unconvinced of her claim and threatens to keep Jack as her personal slave.

Relief: How they'd managed to gate to a planet right in the middle of their annual fertility festival was beyond him.

in doorways and dreams i run to you: They had stepped through the gate together. They were looking for something.Light.There had been a blinding light and then nothing. Nothing but the heat and the taste of his skin on her lips. And now he was on his knees and she wasn't stopping him from sliding a hand underneath her.

Beautiful Far Away: While on a routine exploratory mission, Colonel Jack O'Neill and Captain Samantha Carter get caught up in a children's game that turns out to be the beginning of Rorilian marriage rites. When seismic activity starts to rock the village, the local leaders demand the ritual be seen through to its natural conclusion to avoid further angering their gods. Sam's equipment suggests the tremors are caused by an unidentifiable metal, but her science seems to be a point of contention amongst the leaders. She's convinced she needs just a little more time to figure out what is happening on the planet. Unfortunately, that means she's jumping into a ritual marriage with her new commanding officer. What could possibly go wrong?

Xanadu: The team travels offworld to take care of some mining negotiations, only to meet with an unanticipated challenge on P3X-427.

5 Times Fic

Five Times Jack Sees Sam Out of Uniform

The Nature We Leave Behind Us: 5 Times Daniel (and Teal’c) find out or suspect about Sam and Jack

Five Times Jack Came Close to Breaking the Frat Regs with Sam

Desperation: 5 times Jack kisses Sam

Ambient: 3 morning-afters that they miss and 1 they don’t.

5 missing ship scenes from s9/s10

5 times jack asked sam out and 1 time he didn’t have to

Stranded/Retired/Moved Off-World

My Scars Healed (aka the Cottage AU): Abandoned off-world, living is about more than just survival.

In Media Res: When Sam and Jack are taken captive and put to work in a mining camp, that turns out to be the least of their troubles. Forced by circumstance to live in close proximity, their time as captives has consequences neither one foresees.

Compliance: The end comes fast. One moment it’s a normal day with paperwork and bad coffee and the next it’s a scramble for the event horizon as the Mountain comes down around them. The base empties out with surprising efficiency, and by the time Jack hangs up the red phone on the last conversation he’ll ever have with the President, only Carter and Daniel and a couple techs are still in the gate room, the last of the supplies being sent through to their fall back site.

I Love It When a Plan Comes Together: Dear Airline, I was marooned on an alien planet…

And then I dreamt of yes: The universe has really bad timing, but neither Sam or Jack is ready to give it the last word. 

The Final Straw: Sam's injured and trapped off-world. 

Twilight: General O'Neill gets ansty to do some Gate travel, but a natural phenomenon on another world causes problems and changes things

Bird Stealing Bread: Jack had actually imagined being stranded off-world quite a few times. But he really, really, really hadn't counted on being stranded off-world with Sam. And Pete.

Under the Sun: ABANDONED FIC BUT IT’S SO GOOD. When lightning strikes the DHD and strands Sam and Jack alone on a planet, they must rely on one another to get through until help can arrive. Soon, though, they discover they're not alone on the planet and things change. Suddenly they're thrust into local politics and Sam is drafted to help save the locals' lives. Perhaps, if they play their cards right, all of it can help them get home.

Total AU

String Theory: Dr. Samantha Carter joins the SGC and discovers a life she never expected.

Imprimatura: Even in a completely different reality, where a strictly enforced color-based caste system stands between them, some things remain the same.

How to Start a Fire: She denies it's physical attraction. He denies it's anything but. Sam/Jack. Changeling Universe.

Convergence Series: Jack O’Neill is a man waiting to die, and she’s the only one brave enough not to look away.

Right as rain: Jack never went on the Abydos mission. Charlie never died. But when Jack accidentally activates a device that Kawalsky brings by the Academy, he catches the interest of a certain Major Carter. Soon he finds himself in for one hell of a ride, and if aliens and space travel and weird DNA weren't crazy enough, he might actually be falling in love with a theoretical astrophysicist...

The Dating Game: Catherine Langford had been instrumental in getting AU Sam/Jack together in There But For The Grace of God

Defining Family: Set after "Ripple Effect". What happens to Janet and the rest of the alternate SG-1 team after the episode? How does it affect our reality?

Worlds Apart: An Ancient device sends Jack and Sam to a world where everything is just a little bit... wrong. Why? Can they cope with the differences? And, most importantly, can they find their way back?

I don’t know what to categorize these as but they’re amazing

Deep City Lights: He picks her up in a blue convertible. (Road trip fic where they say ‘fuck the regs’ and then remember the regs)

we build then we break (and build up again): Sam’s last mission on SG-1, and the life that follows.

the slow revelation of self: In the beginning there was sex. And it was good.

untitled: on a mission, sam and jack are painting their mark on a wall.

things not dreamed: Daniel doesn't understand their need to fly. 

Cultural Drift: Six days before the shit hit the fan and nothing was ever the same again, Daniel fell over a tablet on P3X-324. That was two years ago.

Concentric Unto Thee: Her attempts at normality have never worked before, and Jack won't stand for any attempts to apply the logic of command to their relationship.

the lesson: Jack and Sam haven’t wasted the three years they’ve been cut off from Earth…and though the price is high, they manage to teach that lesson to another couple who badly needed to learn it. 

Escape Pod: "I just need," shift, "to move," shift, "a little." (Accidental Stimulation fic) Tonight: It's been too many years of it, the death, the resurrection, the sheer and aching loneliness, the hurt that comes from walking away.

Rocket Fuel: Sam and Jack get together after Heroes but also AU + Christmas.

Home Economics:  He would never have imagined that the biggest problem Sam Carter would have with his house would be his toaster.

Atlantis/Continuum

Gravity Always Wins in the End: After Sam is held hostage, Jack takes an impromptu trip to Atlantis.

Backlit:  Carter turns 43 years old on day 6 of a 14-day run to P98-007 aboard the General Hammond. The only events that mark the occasion are the little note Daniel must have stuffed into her pack before she left, a cheerful "Happy Birthday, Ma'am" from her second over a morning cup of coffee, and a long stare at herself in the mirror after she washes her face before bed. It's not like she expected more.

Yesterday’s Life: She feels frayed and faded, like a scrap of fabric accidentally discarded and forced to weather the elements. S/J, spoilers for Stargate: Continuum.

Distance: Sam contemplates the difficulties of a long distance relationship with Jack on Valentine's Day...

Post-Series

Look Again Into Your Heart: It's not that cold, not by the standard of some of the places she's been in the last decade or so of her life, but then again, she's not used to braving the weather in heels and an evening dress.

Follow the Star of the North: When Jack talked about losing himself in Minnesota, Sam never really understood the appeal.

Radio Silence: “It’s Mitchell.”He grabbed the phone out of her hand, smiling at the horrified expression on her face when he flicked it open and held it to his ear.“This is General O’Neill. Is the world ending?”

Rainy Days: Sam and Jack spend a rainy day at the cabin

The Lies You Feed Yourself: They simply aren’t part of each other’s worlds anymore. They haven’t been for years. Jack and Sam three years after they leave the SGC.

Bygones: He's a man of few words. Sam, however, wants to hear a couple of specific ones - at least once. It takes another woman to help her understand just how her husband communicates. 

Twelve Years Two Weeks: She had finally 'switched off'. It had taken her a few days to rid herself of the itch that she was neglecting a to-do list the size of her arm.

DC Series: SG-1 is moving on, but Sam is standing still.

Interlude: Jack turns up unexpectedly, and he and Sam make an important decision.

fly me to the moon: Jack is baffled. What do you do for a woman's 40th birthday when she routinely explores alien planets, has blown up a sun, and raced in the Loop of Kon Garat? Give her the moon of course. 

Folding a Map: Distance makes Jack an unhappy camper.

Taur’i Whispers: "He likes her throaty laugh. He likes that her voice has dropped and softened in the years he's known her." - Sam/Jack, romance and a bit of angst and hurt/comfort

Blue Dark: The sun’s barely peeking above the horizon and already she’s up, perched on a stool at the breakfast bar in his kitchen, her index finger circling the rim of her coffee cup.“And we have to go to this?” she asks, taking a sip of the hot beverage.

Un-fish: “Caught any un-fish?” she asked softly.Their lives would never be normal because of little things like fish that were or were not there and sometimes he wondered who had done what exactly to his pond to drive the fish away. He knew better than to ask, unwilling to listen to her explain to him the various possibilities of… whatever.

Real Life: This was what she'd been waiting for, held out for all those years. Someone -- him -- to come home with every night, to sink into after saving the world or spending three days dug in on an alien planet with fifty-odd Jaffa between her team and the 'gate, someone who knew just how she liked to be touched... She rolled onto her back, offering sleepy kisses when his lips crossed hers, sighing when his wandering hands brushed across her belly... 

[intersectionedge-blog]

objectification and silence

Due to the acts of objectification I’ve resigned from many of my dreams. Ok, maybe not resigned, but I’ve hidden them, silenced which is a „step out” in the eyes of „social”,  and even not - stepping out in this case is nonperceptible, it’s just something which existed before (which existence becomes veiled, not-remembered) and now isn’t there. Many of these acts have never seemed gender-based, only the mechanism was confusingly similar. So, since I’ve discovered that I used to embrace sometimes the others’ objectification, reification of my own passions and interests, I’ve subsequently noticed that it was not the lack of my dedication or an internal „error” of what I’ve considered as such, but the act of object-making of some very intense and complex spheres of my life which were leading me to silence them and hide. Once I’ve taken the objectified perception of these from the others, a perception which is demeaning, they started to seem unattainable, cause that abstract notion of what I think and what I do had nothing to do with its complexity I’ve had felt so far. Anyway, the act of silencing in the face of objectification is one of the most spread aspects of gender inequality (or inequity), well studied within the feminist theory (but maybe not well analyzed). Right now I’m starting to think that if we really need to embrace elements of patriarchal common-sense, we should more trace not within this which is easily caught upon the gender-based structures of disapproval, depreciation, demeaningness and - inequality (or inequity). It wouldn’t be a real hegemony indeed if its particular focal points are so easy to notice. So, as many women along history have silenced their voices (as an act of presupposed agency in the face of depreciating social surrounding) or their voices have been silenced in the full variety of ways (just think about an example, or even an exemplum of suicider in Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s „Can subaltern speak?” essay). I've done the same many times, still underlining the mistake of such action and trying not to get hypnotized by the poetics of the agency of silence or martyrology of being silenced. Penelope, weaving and weaving, and weaving until her husband Odysseus won’t come back - her life being transformed into constant passive present after his departure, the life which can’t come into an active being, cannot reach the past, so also the future, which are the basic formats of having a sense of one’s own identity. Her life can „cling to life” only in the presence of the man who has made her his. Or, for example, the act of hiding one’s nominal and possible to situate identity in the aim of reaching  and expressing one’s identity in the sphere where accompanied by this proper nominal one it was impossible to enter - I am thinking here about many women writers and painters who were publishing under the masculine name. Many, many more examples well exposed today, but let’s come back to fragments of my own story. When we broke up with my boyfriend, my life came upon the passivity and I felt the lack of some part of myself which I used to believe I have had before we’ve met. And it’s anything I’ve decided, what’s more - even I didn’t want it since the very beginning of our relationship - I’ve been visualizing ourselves as two individuals making something together, and panicky opposed any supposed act of his bad treatment of me. Even though, the social rule was making its job above us. And I knew that he won’t experience the same sense of lack I did, which was making me even more depressed and understating my yet low sense of self-esteem. What my brain was suggesting me to do - and still is - was to cease my possible physical presence within spatial spheres in our city and among our friends which have both became common, and I know it will be a hard struggle not to do so. Cause it’s a mistake. But there were a few people, amongst which - my mum, who had advised me to „step out” „for my own own peace of mind” and self-realization without obstacles. And for the same very reasons, I won’t do this.   The small things I am trying to unveil and analyze through my own experiences lately, start to work for my image as „tilting at windmills” and this is another process of silencing ongoing. But I’m not scared of it, it’s just not worthy of a thrill. Because, once I talk about it to some other people, sometimes I hear „I’ve had a sensation like you’ve been writing about me” or „thank you, have nothing more to add”. These are not the only responses I get - I talk about my experiences to men, too, since many of them are my close friends. We even don’t imagine how many „obvious” experiences have been isolated thanks to support-based common-experiences-exchange within many women’s (family, friends) and also feminist circles. So many of them don’t even acknowledge possible man’s presence within. And yet there are so many men who really want to hear and share their opinion even if they’re not feminists. They are simply people who „want to understand”, „want to know more”. Until we won’t start speaking without a filtrating view, men will think that these experiences are only exceptions linked to particular-kind-of-men and doing so, they will never consider themselves as possible bearers of this heritage. And we are, we all are. We talk a lot about a sexist hate-speech, I’d suppose that we are not of the same grade familiar with discussing the approval-like sexist speech. And we make a mistake by our temptations to ban some kind of expressions. This language set is rooted within deeper mental structures. Focusing on the outer layer is undoubtedly important, but each time we notice that we should shift on what’s below. And some sadly experienced women, won’t gain anything by hating man, by finding a mental shelter saying that men are just oppressive, that men think with balls etc. - that way we only enact the same discursive patriarchal structure inside which it is placed a notion that women are just more quiet, and think with their hearts. It’s awful. As a woman, I bear the capacity of feeling well by creating in silence, by closing my thoughts in exclusive circles, by feeling even great working „from below” or „close-enough-to” without the aim to be in the center. Please do notice that I’m not saying about „doing so”, but about „feeling good within”, the same as I’m not assuming that this feeling isn’t also a part of some men’s lives.  And since I am a performer and I feel more comfortable by performing in the center these two feelings were always fighting with each other in some focal points in my past life until today, and for sure they will. So, turning back to what I have marked out in the title of this reflection, my dedication to dance world (in many different forms) has been strongly objectified by reducing the whole dense complexity of my feelings for dancing to simply „an ambition” which made me get hooked. By reducing it into an ambition I was gaining sometimes a subliminal message - „chill girl, don’t be so ambitious, so zealous, it’s   o n l y   your passion, or maybe even - a hobby”, a domesticated activity. „Only” is an illusive and an excellent tool of the objectification act. What has happened - I made myself quit dancing, but dancing didn’t quit me. I started to dance in darkness, in empty spaces, when there was nobody or everybody was asleep, like I didn’t want to get caught on this denuding act, which appeared almost like a tightlipped romance. And what’s more, I even found a beauty of incredible poetics which seemed to flourish from within that conspiration-like silence, strange but not an exceptional mixture of grief and pride! But I did get caught once, on my own wish. We were at my friend's house, having rest during the middle of winter. My two close friends were lying down on the couch. I turned on some music, and, accidentally, started to dance. After all, when I was lying down on the pavement still stunned of what has just happened when the last pulsations of a past event were resonating through my body, a friend of mine looked at me and said: „like... I don’t understand. Really.” and this „not-understanding” referred to the hung above question why this isn’t a part of my today’s living. It is, indeed, but a hidden part. I am still trying to trace why is it so easy sometimes to lose control while the objectification act is ongoing. Losing control means - to embrace it, even partially, but a partial embrace of passiveness always tends to totalization. This way, you leave the part of yourself behind and maybe this is what Sartre meant - „... it is not that I perceive myself losing my freedom in order to become a thing, but my nature is - over there, outside my lived freedom - as a given attribute of this being which I am for the Other”, while writing on voyeur’s shame. Only by living within lived freedom we are able to put our pieces together. It is never possible in its totality. But by acknowledging the impact of the shameful objectification, we are able to keep a compensation, which is never not fully embraced by the other’s notion what-like we are. Your space of experiencing, once objectified, becomes limited, call it a box (like today’s coaching „priests”), the square (like Beatniks), or whatever else you like. But an objectification’s goal is to close you inside an object, on the outside of which - there is only silence.

[crazymothertrucker2-blog]

"We gotta roll"

Well we finally did it! It was going to be just Audrey on a two - three week vacation but Christain REALLY wanted to go too so off we went. We took off Sat, July 7th, early afternoon. I balked about leaving because Steph and Henry were still there until Wednesday. Keith kept reminding me of just HOW FAR Chicago was and that we HAD to get going!! I knew he was right but hard to pull myself away. 

The kids were beyond excited and ready to get spoiled. The first stop of course was to get our "Eat n drink on". So chips and soda in hand, we were off! 

We drove 438 miles the first day. Audrey challenged me again to a Hubba Hubba bubble blowing contest, so we made sure to get some gum at our first stop. 

Our stop for the night was Lime Oregon, population 5. The man that bought Keiths property a few years ago lets us stay at the house when we come through. He only uses it for an office. He leased some property above and is putting windmills up there. Pretty smart guy selling energy!! 

When we got there, Keith had already told the story of the old school house that's still standing a few hundred feet away. "Years ago this old school house was only open for one year. It's told that the principal went crazy and killed himself and everyone in the school one morning. Nobody ever knew why"!! Of course, I hate scaring kids in any way other than coming around the corner and spooking them but wouldn't ya know pappa Keith thrives on the spooky story stuff!! It might have been fun to go along with but I just couldn't do that to my babies. So before we even entered the house, we had to go in and see the "haunted" school house. Audrey and I kept our safe distance not wanting any of what Christian was SURE to get. They opened doors very slowly, neitherone knowing what to expect. Poor Christain didn't have a chance when pappa Keith shouted "watch out!" in his booming voice. Audrey is so brave, she wanted in on opening the doors to see. I mostly wanted out because of knowing their MUST be snakes!!! It was fun and the kids were laughing until on the way into the house, pappa told them this was where the principal lived! They stayed close to grandma as we looked the house over..;)

I reminded them AGAIN that none of it was true. It was about 9pm, we found some baked beans in the pantry and bread in the freezer and ate like the cowboys did on the cattle drives. We played a game of Trouble. Audrey kicked our butts and was over joyed.We talked of another game but I knew how early "The Driver" would be rounding us up to hit the road, so I sent them off to shower and we bedded down for our first night. 

We left about 6:30am Sunday morning. The kids were awake and happy to be on to the next adventure. When we past Farewell Bend, I googled the history which is something Keith and I do a lot. It's fun to learn what life must have been like people hundreds of years ago... I hoped that on this trip the kids would learn an appreciation for our history and our ancestors who never let fear keep them from experiencing life and going forward to make their dreams come true. We talked a bit about how the pioneers were sad to say goodbye to the Snake River that they had followed for so long, thankful for all it had to offer in keeping them alive. I'm sure they all were fearful of what lay ahead by leaving the security of that river.

We passed the Van Orum historical marker, I Googled it and we learned "The Utter-Van Ornum party left Wisconsin in May 1860, most heading for Oregon’s Willamette Valley. The wagon train—which consisted of eighteen men, five women, twenty-one children, twelve wagons, and one hundred head of livestock—arrived at the abandoned Fort Hall on August 21, 1860, encountering no major difficulties along the way. A company of U.S. Army dragoons had been stationed near the fort earlier that year to escort wagon trains through the Snake River country, but they escorted the Utter-Van Ornum party for only six days, purportedly because the commanding officer was upset with members of the train. About ten days after parting from the dragoon escort, the Utter-Van Ornum train was attacked by approximately one hundred Indians, probably a mixed group of Shoshone and Bannock, perhaps accompanied by several white men." The attack and its aftermath are described in detail in the accompanying newspaper article. Eleven emigrants were killed during the first two days, after which the survivors abandoned their wagons and fled, splitting into several groups. The Van Ornums and three other emigrants were later killed in mid-October near present-day Huntington, (which is only 5 miles from where we stayed our first night) Another group stayed along the Owyhee River. They were finally rescued by the U.S. Army forty-five days after the initial attack. Of the original forty-four members of the Utter-Van Ornum party, only sixteen survived, including one of the Van Ornum children who was rescued from the Shoshone two years later. 

We stopped a few miles down the road to grab Arbyes breakfast. The kids watched Clifford then read a bit. They also spent hours playing with little man too. I'm glad we have such a great dog for my grandkids. 

The time seemed to go fast on our drive through Idaho. When in Utah, we watched maybe a hundred rafters lazily floating down a river. We stopped to take pictures at the Devils Slide, a really unusual rock formation that always amazes me every time we pass it. It consist of two parallel limestone strata that tilt and come hundreds of feet down the Mountain. The rock formation protrudes 40 feet out from the mountain, erosion happened more quickly in the middle so about 25 feet across all the way down, there is hardly any rock. The kids thought that was very cool. Audrey thought it would be fun to slide down. She's definitely the adventurous one!! 

We got down the road and just knew it was ice cream time, so the Flying J was a welcome site for weary travelers....

We hit Wyoming and things started winding down, not much to look at so we put a western on to watch. Well, not really a western, "Centennial" is more about pioneer history. Before the cowboys and civilization in the west when trappers were trading with theIndians. Can't say at first they were thrilled, but you put two kids in a truck, take away the "Game Devices" and they find a whole new appreciation for the simpler things in life. 

We passed historical markers and would talk about some of them. Pappa Keith went off the beaten path so we could see one of the original, "Overland Stations" where people rode a stagecoach for days in unbearable heat, bouncing around on wood seats, covered in dirt by the time they arrived. After a meal and fresh horses, they would get back on the trail for hours, sometimes days, enduring until the next station. 

The kids explored some of the ruins asking questions. We walked around it looking in the windows. Audrey decided it would be more fun to climb in and see how it looked from "the inside out". I wasn't to excited, it looked creepy with the dirt floor and who knows what crawling around!!! But if my girl is brave enough and i don't really see danger, I gotta let her experience life...:) We walked up the hill a ways to where there were the graves of six nameless travelers that were killed by outlaws, One was supposedly the infamous. "Jack Slade"!! Amazing how far we've come, I think it's good to remember those that endured hardships to pave the way. I guess the "knowing" makes us appreciate what we have!

That second day we drove a long one, 778miles. When finally stopped at around 11:30 I knew this night was not really going to be all about sleep, really more about survival. I tried to imagine all day HOW we (dog included) were all going to "sleep" in this truck!! I knew I would have the coveted spot ("The Bed") for the night but knowing how much I toss and turn I just couldn't see a child fitting into the picture. By the time we stopped, I really didn't care I just wanted a bed. Pappa Keith pulled to theback of a Flying J where it seemed perfect. Dark, no trucks (yet) and quiet. Once we pulled in, got the towels over the windows, (don't laugh, you do what you have to do as a trucker) Audrey announced that she had to poo poo! Soooo, we took the towels down and drove over to the station so Audrey could go.  

We settled in for our long night in Laramie, Wy. thankful to have a truck to call "Home". I crawled in the back and we put Little Man outside on the tank (for the first time in his life). I wasn't really sure how that would go!? First we put Audrey with me but that just didn't seem like it would work. We decided that she was just the right size to stretch out across the middle console in between the seats, her pillow on the closed computer. Her feet stretched into the back onto my belly. It all seemedperfect. How this little girl would not wake up in total pain was beyond my imagination. It could only be attributed to her young, healthy body. Although, I think even that would have its limits sleeping on that hard surface. Christian, seemed excited about sleeping in the passenger seat tilted back. He might have had second thoughts when he realized his seat was not going to lean back as far as pappa Keith's! Not only wouldn't, it couldn't because Grandma's head needed some room! I really do "Trucker Up " as much as I can, but with Keith's seat practically laying on my feet, and me mentally having to remind myself "This is not a sardine can", I cringed at the thought of Christian coming back one more inch.

They stretched one sleeping bag over all three of them with no worries, it's Wyoming in the summer. We laughed at how we looked, towels stretched across the windows, dog outside on a blanket, us all sprawled "Every Which Way, But Loose". And the night wasofficially started! I woke up about 10 times. I'm not really sure if any of the four hours counted as "a night's sleep". I wanted to keep checking to make sure the kids were covered up and not to cockeyed so as to have a neck ache in the morning. The first time I looked, Audrey was turned kind of in a backwards "L" shape and was using pappa Keith's belly for a pillow. NICE!! I knew then she was set for the rest of the night with sweet dreams. I found Christian a few times with his head on the middle console where Audrey might have been if she hadn't found a softer landing. In the middle of the night, Little Man decided to come sleep with me. I woke up feeling something tugging on the sheet. His whole bottom half, slid down between the passenger seat and my mattress. I pulled him up and he never even woke up. I think he was extra tired from playing with the kids. We all survived it and chalked it up for "A Memory"! I keep telling the kids, "It's fun to experience new things". 

We woke up the next morning and there were some low lying clouds making everything look spooky. The sun wasn't up yet and it was a little chilly. Christian said, "Grandma LOOK, that motel looks like a ghost house!". It really did too. The fog wrapped itself around the Marriott Motel, coming up half way. It stood there looking like a mystic castle against the empty background of Wyoming. So our day began and we stopped for breakfast. When pappa Keith pulled into Micky Ds, I knew I wouldn't be the ONLY one cringing. Audrey had already explained back in Walla Walla how they "used the whole chicken for the nuggets" not only that "but all the sick ones too"! Needless to say, hunger and pappa Keith at our heels made for a speedy "Pit Stop" without complaining. We did what needed done at the time but I knew when we got to our destination, I WOULD get to a Walmart for some healthier food!! Sorry, Mom and Dad, we gotta "Trucker Up" at times.

We had another "Pit Stop" in Gothenburg, Nebraska. Keith and I stop here all the time. It has a Museum with an old Sod house in the back. It happened to be opened that day which was neat other than we were still in a BIG hurry. I took the kids back to see the inside of the house. They excitedly rushed around saying, "Grandma, look at this!". We read the little sign that told about how the pioners had to build their houses out of whatever was available on the land. For the lack of timber or other building supplies like daddy uses, they used mud and straw, white washing the inside with several layers to keep the insects out. It was all one room with a dirt floor, bed to one side and wood stove and eating table on the other. Very primitive. Life had to have been so hard for them but don't ya just wonder if they may have been happier than a lot of people today? We went into the museum and the lady told us that back in the 1860s the government was giving away 160 acres to whoever got there first. One of the things that had to be done right away was to build a structure of some kind. The government still owned it for five years of "proofing " before they could legally call it their own. Fun stuff we were learning out here!

Our next day was a little shorter. Pappa got us a motel with a pool in Avoca, Iowa. We had so much fun!! First we stopped and got some dinner (Mexican) then headed to the Motel 6. The kids chowed down and we headed to the pool. I didn't have a suit so I watched which totally works for me because I really don't care for swimming. Pappa Keith came in and totally shocked us by jumping in fully dressed! There were five teen age kids down at the other end that were as surprised as we were...haha. We all laughed and squealed with surprise cheering him on! 

I was laughing so hard at them playing, Keith was throwing them high up and then they started pretending to be WWF wrestlers. I was snapping pictures not wanting to miss a great shot. Later I thought, "WOW, he just burned a memory onto this page of their lives!! How awesome is that?!" I definitely wont pass up one of "those" moments again! It really was a great time. 

Back at the room, they showered and we watched some "Redneck" TV. Some reality show where this redneck family in the deep south became rich on making duck caller gadgets. It was pretty funny. The CMA awards were on too so we introduced them to some good ol country music! Hate to tell ya, cause I know some reading this might revolt at the idea but they LIKED it, they REALLY LIKED it! When TV was off, Pappa and Christian proceeded to entertain us again with their nightly WWF wrestling competition. Audrey always ends up getting in on it too, silly girl... I know better after 5 years being "wrestled" with. As for kids, someone always seemed to get hurt in the end...guess who that was??!! I keep my distance now.

We got to sleep after some tossing and squirming, but for some reason it never seems like enough sleep. Funny, but theses kids have even been taking naps which I'm sure they hate to take at home. We'd been rolling pretty hard. But it was all worth it. Our fun stop this day was the biggest truck stop in America in Walcott, Iowa. They were AMAZED walking through this huge building that seemed to go on forever. They were allowed to climb up into the big 18 wheeler show trucks displayed, pretending to be truckers. Our plan was to come back through on Thursday, depending on where our loads might take us. They'd be having their annual Trucker Jambererie! That might be one of those events you just GOTTA see to believe...haha.

We grabbed some ice cream and headed East, getting closer to our destination. We hit Illinois. When we went through Chicago, (well the outskirts, we always try to avoid getting too close as the traffic here is a mess most the time) the kids were playing ontheir games so I made it a point to look at the city out in the distance pointing out the tallest building in the USA, The Sears Tower. 

We got to the Horizon yard early afternoon in Wakarusa, Indiana. Keith had to go into the office to hand in our paper work so we went fishing in the pond way in the back lot. I had bought a good amount of food at Walmart, so we fixed some sandwiches quickly and got to what was important...fishing! Audrey ran to the other side first to feed the geese. Christian and I fished. I knew it was not the right time of day but as a line in this new song by Toby Keith goes, "She thinks we're just fishin". In this case "they" meaning, they just think its fishing, but really what it is, is creating a whole lot of great memories! My heart was exploding with all this love and with the great memories thatI'm hoping my babies can have forever. If i could have a wish, I think it would be to somehow be present in "spirit" when they share the stories with their own kids. "The summer vacation of 2012", traveling from the west coast to east then down south having the time of their lives with Grandma and Pappa Keith, living like gypsies (ok "Truckers"). Gypsy just sounds better for some reason. Having fun, not really planning too far ahead for the next Adventure - just being able to say, "Hey, that would be fun! Yeah let's DO THAT"!! Oh how I wish I could be that "little fly on the wall" when the stories are retold. I can only wish. 

[theliterateape]

American Shithole #26 — A Remarkable, Unremarkable Day

by Eric Wilson

Imagine you’re standing in the middle of a busy airport. Passengers crowd past you in every direction. Looking up at the arrivals and departures; all flights delayed.  Suddenly, the entire board changes — rows and columns of numbers and letters flip with the familiar clickety-clack, clickety-clack of the old, analog displays — revealing only destinations on your bucket list, as the throngs of weary travelers part before you like the Red Sea.

That’s how I felt today.

“Oh, this is hopeful!” I had said to myself, hands on hips, staring down at my toes this morning, tapping in approval. The muscles, ligaments and tendons in my lower body that refused to function just weeks ago, quivered, but held.

“Nice job legs,” I whispered, “you too, feet.”

It’s been quite a remarkable, unremarkable day — here’s what happened:

It’s pretty nondescript really; I walked (back and forth between two rooms) in a way I haven’t been able to walk for years.

That’s it. Seems anticlimactic I’m sure, but I was told a very different story about how things were going to go for me and my shitty legs. In fact, my particular medical condition was expected to take a turn for the worse some time ago (it’s a degenerative condition, or so I’ve been told, repeatedly) with looming surgeries, recovery, blah, blah, blah; and yet today — here comes this ray of sunshine — slashing through dark clouds I once believed to be permanent fixtures on the shitty legs horizon.

It’s been so long, I had honestly — no hyperbole here — I’d forgotten what actual, bona fide, body-waves-of-joy, hope felt like.

So when I think back on my frustrating experiences with the privatized (read: for profit) healthcare system in America over the last 50 years, it finally occurs to me how thoroughly my generation has been brainwashed into believing we don’t deserve access to affordable, quality health care; unless it’s an absolute emergency.

“Walk it off, kid.” That was Boomer parenting mantra. We soaked it up. Instead, we should have been furious for decades.

Also, I trusted doctors; something I’ve likely been socialized to do, and that was a mistake. I foolishly thought they could all be held to the same level of excellence and accountability.

Sketchy medicos from Big Pharma funded pain clinics (they’re fucking everywhere now), or even just overworked physicians struggling to provide adequate care within an over-stressed system, are better met with a dose of skepticism, than blind faith — these are not the hometown general practitioners you grew up with that have a vested interest in your community, and have known you since you were in the womb.  

Far too many doctors took bribes from pharmaceutical companies to push OxyContin and other opioids, while others in the medical community looked the other way, or did too little too late. We are buckling under the weight of an addiction crisis that runs roughshod in crippling waves across this nation, and those partially to blame swore an oath to never knowingly, willingly harm patients under their care.

Yet here we are.

I was lucky enough to sidestep an intentional effort on a medical professional’s part to hook me on painkillers (I suggest that a pain doctor instructing me not to see a specialist about my condition, and instead just doubling my prescription strength to be an intentional effort), but it was only one sidestep in what turned out to be a seemingly infinite number of dance maneuvers required to navigate a healthcare system indifferent to the effects of profit on human suffering.

It wasn’t a week or two later I decided to tackle this sans opioids after two months. That was three years ago.

The details since aren’t particularly noteworthy — I will spare you what would most assuredly devolve into a tedious slog through a medical info dump — suffice to say, I no longer believe the American healthcare system provides for a patient’s best interests. I am a bit embarrassed I believed it ever did. It’s a betrayal that cuts deeper than the Trump disaster; a harsh reminder that all humans are slaves to greed.

All I know is that I have to double my efforts. I have to trust my instincts and keep working the physical therapy regimen I’ve developed for myself, and somehow find a way to succeed with my diet (fuck you diet, you sandcastle bully from salad-hell beach).

I need my energy levels up; writing about horrible people is exhausting.

During this past spring I felt fairly well-armed tilting at the windmills of the Trump horde — lobbing flaming paragraphs of cynicism and derision from the parapets of American Shithole, with the Literate Ape banner flapping furiously in the wind — but over the summer I felt I’d emptied the armory, and I’d been scouring the castle for weeks, raiding the larder even; looking for any pots and pans I could throw in desperation at the filthy barbarians still gathering at the gates of democracy.

“Look my liege, here’s a social media post you wrote two years ago, shall I lobeth it at thine enemy?”

“Well, throw it down the murder hole already, knave!”

“It’s just harmlessly bouncing off them, my king.”

“Well trebuchet some memes, do we have any memes?”

“All we’ve got left in the Armory are a few pages of poetry you wrote when you were but a prince…”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake… okay, throw it at ‘em…what’d they do?”

 “They’re mocking your shitty Haiku from freshman English, m’lord.”

My poetry from high school deserves to be mocked, by the way. It was fucking terrible. I’m not being faux self-deprecatory either, I am one of the worst young writers of poetry I have ever read. I’m tempted to track down the one that went into the senior-year program, which — if I remember correctly — lifted heavily if not entirely from Bono. I just don’t want to ever feel like I am phoning it in; and it’s not as if there’s a shortage of topics for this column, it’s just that the people I typically cover are revolting, and telling their stories makes me feel dirty and shitty and soulsick and grumpy — so some weeks I just want to make it easier on myself and not do that; which in turn, makes me feel like I’m copping out.

Then, today happened. I felt so focused; not only on the reemerging possibilities for a better quality of life, but on the awesome, terrifying power our failing health wields over us all — and the relative insignificance of other challenges we face.

Everything else I had been worried about faded into the woodwork this morning when I felt the weight of disability replaced with the possibility of recovery.

I am thankful, humbled, and hopeful.

I don’t know if this is some sort of medical “Indian Summer” I’m experiencing, and frankly, I don’t care — I could wake up hobbling my way to the coffeemaker tomorrow, just like I have for years now, and still be a mostly happy fellow. Either way, I am energized by the experience, and I wanted to share that with you. I don’t care about Kavanaugh, that rapist fuck; I’m glad I didn’t write about him this week. We’re going to get it all back, I can feel it. I walked twenty feet today without looking like an afterschool special. Fuck him. Fuck the lot of ‘em — greedy, old, crusty motherfuckers.

We’re going to get it all back, and then some.

[duaneodavila]

King: The Perils of Prosecuting a President

It is true, I have never investigated and prosecuted the President of the United States. Until recently, a special prosecutor, or formerly, the independent counsel, was usually a once-a-term appointment and far more often focused on those around the President.

No one in Washington D.C. is interested in a former public defender turned prosecutor leading a federal investigation into political elites, especially without the blessing of an Ivy League education. But the Law School of Twitter Punditry, combined with clueless legal punditry, has shamelessly indulged the progressive fantasy that the presidency of Mike Pence will start any day. Let’s take a trip through reality and examine some of the issues.

The major threshold issue is that the President has the power to pardon federal crimes, and this power is unreviewable. No doubt that Mueller and his team has considered this fact in their approach to the investigation. Indeed, some reports suggested that the federal prosecutors would attempt to get state prosecutors on board to circumscribe the scope of the President’s power. And it does appear that he has backstopped his investigation with state investigations. But let’s also be real, no federal law enforcement agent or prosecutor gets out of bed hoping to tee up a state charge.

With Trump’s recent comments about the possibility of pardoning Michael Flynn for his lying to the FBI, this recalls when a number of professors said a number of dumb things about the scope of the President’s pardon power. For all the noise about the inappropriate pardon of Sheriff Joe, the federal judge acknowledged the reality of the President’s power. So, Trump can throw major sand in the gears with his pardon power.

Unlike non-practitioners tilting at windmills, it’s more likely Mueller would accept that Trump can do this and figure that there wouldn’t be pre-emptive pardons, which would potentially remove Fifth Amendment rights of the suspects. Likewise, he’d probably assume if the President pardoned himself, it would likely be seen as a non-justiciable issue, which the Supreme Court would pass on—no matter what the OLC told Nixon. Plus, Mueller has surely considered that some process crimes, like obstruction of justice, might fail against President or possibly President-elect Trump. There’s just no way you can reasonably expect the Supreme Court to be the body to effectively remove a sitting President.

If you stop right here, you can see the chances of getting an indictment against the President is highly unlikely. Consider also that the scope of Mueller’s investigation is mostly confined to “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.” Assuming Mueller is staying true to his grant of authority, this significantly narrows the possibility of a state crime fitting any conduct Trump committed.

As unlikely as it was that Mueller would try to bring a President down on the Logan Act or honest services fraud, analogs are also unlikely to be found in any state’s law. Even if fortune smiled on Mueller and there was a state law that covered the misconduct, that too seems unlikely to bring down the President. Federal prosecutors have argued the Supremacy Clause exempts them from state disciplinary rules; so, it seems likely there would be enough pre-trial litigation to prevent a single state prosecutor from removing a sitting President.

This means, in all likelihood, that the focus of the investigation is those people surrounding Trump during the critical time between the launch of his campaign and his election. These are the folks who might simultaneously commit a federal and state crime, meaning a presidential pardon would only be partially effective. If you develop sufficient cause to believe one of these people had a link or coordinated with the Russian government, then you can lawfully investigate them. If this suspect turns out to have conspired with candidate Trump, then you can use that person to find documents or obtain a confession to use against the President. Again, that is if, hopefully, the President’s conduct was criminal under state law.

You see ‘if’ is doing a lot of work in this theory of the investigation. And the evidence thus far doesn’t suggest that such a strategy, if being deployed, will bear fruit. Two of the four people thus far indicted (at least among the four who have had their indictments unsealed) have only pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about conduct that itself wasn’t criminal. And the other two have pleaded not guilty to conduct charges not involving the Trump campaign.

To other prosecutors, the charges against Flynn and the charges against Manafort suggest that Mueller isn’t finding evidence that Trump illegally used the Russian government to win the election. (When you’re done here, go read those links to pieces by Andrew McCarthy.) First, prosecutors usually prosecute the most serious form of the offense provable from the evidence. This is the standard in the U.S. Attorney Manual, and the NDAA standard is more equivocal but is usually going to lead to the same practical result as the USAM. In any event, we can presume that Mueller, who ran the DOJ criminal division, would largely follow the USAM, which suggests here that there’s smoke but not a lot of fire.

But the Trump haters are undeterred; the tin foil hat is simply too tight and confirmation bias is everywhere. So, let’s consider two more points.

Next, if a prosecutor hammers out a plea deal with the defendant, making the suspect a confessed liar makes him a terrible witness against a future co-defendant. And if you’re the National Security Advisor lying to the FBI and conceivably lying to the President or Vice-President about lying to the FBI, the defense’s cross-examination will be brutal and the jury will likely end up hating the witness and possibly the prosecution for putting the witness on the stand.

Finally, a plea agreement doesn’t mean that a defendant has been granted the legal equivalent of a hall pass. In fact, the USAM states that the selection of charges for a plea are to be based on a similar considerations as when charging in the first instance. If you believe that Flynn committed crimes on the same level as Manafort, it is a grave injustice to allow him to plea to charges that in no way reflect the seriousness of his actual criminal conduct.

Moreover, if you want to use him as a cooperating co-defendant, the fact he’s admitted to his part in the crime and will face sentencing for those crimes is thought to play better with the jury. No one really likes tattletales. On the other hand, an appropriately chastened and humbled co-defendant usually plays alright. Never mind that if at the end of this, Mueller spends millions of dollars and years prosecuting folks who only get house arrest, it will look like a serious failure. See also, Ken Starr (especially before the blue dress).

While the progressive wet dream of quickly dispatching the Trump presidency is seeming about as likely as your middle school friend’s hot Canadian girlfriend, who he met at summer camp, Mueller’s investigation is beginning to see charges of political bias stick. As it turns out, the FBI agent who interviewed Flynn and was involved in the Hillary email server investigation was a vocal anti-Trumper and Hillary supporter. We know this because he used his government phone to text his feelings to his mistress, a DOJ lawyer who had some connection with Mueller’s investigation.

This is compounded with previous reports of the political donations Mueller’s team had made to Hillary and Democrats. Now news has come out that a different DOJ official’s wife was possibly involved in the fake Trump dossier, which may have been used to obtain FISA warrants. In response, the other political team has cried foul about the timing of disclosures and demotion of those under investigation.

By far the most legitimate Monday morning quarterbacking of Mueller so far was his decision to stack the team with prosecutors who might seem like active Democrats. This is not because prosecutors and law enforcement officials are incapable of bringing wrongdoers of the same party to justice. Nor is it because having a political affiliation should automatically disqualify you from investigating or prosecuting someone. By unnecessarily stacking the team with apparent Democrats, it left him with little margin for error when someone inevitably did something dumb. It was unnecessary here because most of Trump’s advisors were political outsiders and there were truckloads of federal prosecutors who likely had no connection to any of the targets.

But the fact that a key investigator did something to burn himself is just stuff that happens. The longer a prosecution goes, the more likely it becomes that something will go wrong for trial. Once Mueller found out, he made the right call to contain the damage and move the agent off the case. But the reality is that it doesn’t retroactively taint everything the prosecution and other investigators have done. Although you may not be able to use the agent as a witness any more, it’s not an automatic fact that the investigator’s investigation was rigged.

And neither should the fact that the Obama DOJ did things that call into question its investigation into Hillary, or the lack of an investigation into the Clintons, impute wrongdoing into the appointment of Mueller or his investigation. The DOJ is inherently a political animal because at the end of the line the President is the chief cop and chief prosecutor. That recognition is why special counsels are appointed. It would be great if the AG had more independence from the President, but the DeLorean trip back to 1787 ain’t happening.

The failure of the Obama DOJ to appoint a special counsel or the failure of the Trump DOJ to do so doesn’t mean it was wrong to appoint Mueller to look into the folks running the Trump campaign. These actions can exist independently.

But ultimately, if all begins to put pressure on the DOJ, which expects to be around after President Trump, all bets are off if its credibility and power are called into question. Under the old independent counsel statute, the DOJ could say “not my problem.” But that’s not the case now. So, Mueller could see the political cover that the DOJ has provided wane over time.

In sum, you’re of course welcome to dwell in the land of fantasy where Mueller indicts President Trump, but I won’t be joining you there. Mueller may finally crack the case and demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that the President conspired with the Russian government to do an illegal act, which can’t be thwarted by a pardon. But you’d do better to bet on impeachment. Yet, the Senate has twice shown no desire to remove the President, who was from a party opposite the majority. So, not a great bet either. Trump will likely be there after Mueller. And remember, if you come to kill the king, you best not miss.

Copyright © 2007-2017 Simple Justice NY, LLC This feed is for personal, non-commercial and Newstex use only. The use of this feed anywhere else violates copyright. If this content is not in your news reader, it means the page you are viewing infringes copyright. (Digital Fingerprint: 51981395c77d7762065ca2c084b63e47) King: The Perils of Prosecuting a President republished via Simple Justice

[clubofinfo]

Expert: Every artist, every scientist, must decide now where he stands. He has no alternative. There is no standing above the conflict on Olympian heights. There are no impartial observers. Through the destruction, in certain countries, of the greatest of man’s literary heritage, through the propagation of false ideas of racial and national superiority, the artist, the scientist, the writer is challenged. The struggle invades the formerly cloistered halls of our universities and other seats of learning. The battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear. — Paul Robeson, Here I Stand, p. 52. The struggle for us common folk daily is a battle on many fronts, with the sirocco of plague-coal gritty winds chasing us into poverty, into incarceration, into structural violence and penury with the jaws of the dogs of usury rabidly biting at our young and old. There is no dignity in the grapes of wrath and no heaven inside the gates of religion. When we end up working for the poverty pimps, social services, in the public sector, or those non-profits and NGOs, or for those purveyors of a fake capitalist green environmentalism, or in the same league of neoliberals or even patsy identity politics liberals, our stories end up frayed and sent into the abyss in a culture that kneels at the altar of celebrity-wealth-military might-superficiality. Most of us can’t get the gumption up to face down power, even in this junk society where our collective powerlessness could be vital to standing down this tragedy called Americanism, Consumerism, Militarism, Capitalism. Some of us are tilting at windmills and screaming, I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ — Howard Beale, Network More poignant in Peter Finch’s portrayal of a disenchanted newscaster is his call to our humanity: Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get MAD! I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot — I don’t want you to write to your congressman, because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad. [shouting] You’ve got to say: ‘I’m a human being, god-dammit! My life has value!’ So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell: I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE! It’s an easy life gig, really, showing, being, acting mad as hell, and standing down in that glorious moment of realizing that the powers that be, the fascists in boardrooms, the militant bankers and financial devils, all those militarists and digital demigods, the lot of them, are only in the driver’s seat because the consumer half-citizens we have become in the US of A have not taken the first two steps – being mad as hell and not taking it anymore. I mean really, not some deplorable bullshit under the mantel of the madman Trump, or the faux anger of the liberals and Hillary lovers, none of that is even in the same league as true anger and standing down. Enough of us in the USA are done with this experiment, but not enough of us have the balls or ovaries to stand down and make a bolt away from their prisons, both symbolic ones and those literals ones. Bolt and stop taking it. Engage in real dirt-smeared arguments, debates, and stop letting the purveyors of neutering and spaying control our lives. If it’s one poor sop doing it, then that’s one poor schmuck left to hang and dry. In so many ways, my life has been my soul and my intellect splayed by the legions of small men and small women, Little Eichmanns and Compliancy Bureaucrats, Admin Class, Deanlets, Chair Persons, HR Midgets, Diversity Officers, Punishment Officers, Pay Masters, Incrementalists, and Violators of All Good Things About Creativity. Splayed in the sense that it’s easy to sack people who go against the grain, against the vanguard, against the status quo. Each and every time I have been sacked, it seems like the first time, and my own naïve exasperation is almost overcoming, but in the end, my stands are more than righteous. They are demonstrative, chillingly expressive, and others in my circle can judge and pooh-pooh, and point to my spiraling out of any power or fame or thumbs near or on the levers of power. In the end, you can die on your principles and feel the incredible lightness of being a human being, and feel emancipated even near the gates of endless poverty, waning sanity and extreme disenfranchisement from this capitalist franchise called America. I’ve cataloged here and other places my struggle with/in/because of the “work place” in America – it started with newspapers where I had drag-out fights with editors about my attitude – going too strong against the powers, in several cases, the policing agencies I was reporting on. Sacked. Struggle as a union organizer a decade ago fighting the middle of the road bosses who thought compliancy and lock-step (to the Democratic Party) were necessary formulations for working there. Sacked. Fighting for part-time faculty and for students at several community colleges . . . terminated. Working with homeless and drug-addicted adults as a social worker . . . encouraged to resign. Unbelievable that it may seem, but some of us can be up against the vast majority, and be right most of the time, and the fact that the majority can be wrong almost one hundred percent of the time when it comes to false beliefs in patriotism, loyalty, god-country-hierarchy. So many people I have come across in my 60 years, a good 45 of which involved work and work places, have only been able to go-think-believe-philosophize-contemplate-act so far. Halfway is half-assed, and going nine-tenths of the way is still an incomplete journey, flawed, dangerous and retrograde. Fired for fighting administrators and college-university presidents. Fired for writing too loudly. Hell, I even went up against the ameliorators in so-called progressive alternative radio and newspaper circles for being too radical, too left, too outspoken, too in your face. Perception is not reality, but their reality is not mine. Now this fleeting battle line as I am hitting my Sixties is taking even more bizarre turns with my most recent end of the line work in social services. Sort of takes on an entire multi-layered Orwellian, Kafkaesque, Brave New World ugliness only capitalism can refine to a really disturbing level. Fired because three insignificant trainers and two of their supervisors in a Planned Parenthood two-day class determined after eight hours that my simple and non-disruptive questioning of Planned Parenthood’s policy of believing — one hundred percent — the efficacy of everything Western medicine shoves down our throats and my doubting some of the mumbo-jumbo propaganda of Big Pharma would somehow weigh negatively on my work at a completely unrelated-to-Planned Parenthood non-profit as a non-medical social worker with my foster youth clients. Imagine — in a training, with that progressive blathering of “this is a safe space” and “anything said here stays here” — and my livelihood is ripped from me by three narc trainers who outright lied about me being a disruptive element. Imagine the level of punk in these people, these urbanites, these Seattlites, these people who are working in the shadow of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which is shoving Big Pharma and Big GMO and Big Contraception and Big Sterilization and Big Family Planning and Big Vaccinations and Big Agra down the throats of the so-called developing world. I questioned one vaccine, tied to the human papilloma virus. Planned Parenthood gets tens of millions from Big Pharma and Big Philanthropy. This shit brings tears of absurdity to a grown adult’s eyes. These people, these Little Eichmann’s working for Seattle’s Planned Parenthood, with a flick of their wrists, and a punch of their index fingers on their smart phones sending messages to my boss that I was somehow a disruption to the training. Read here part of my story and my lightly political question about Gardasil-Merck. In their world, they believe they hold the power ingrained in their Hillary Clinton stupidity and Uber Alles Planned Parenthood. These people determined from a really light-hearted and anonymous forum that I would be a chigger in their sides for a second day of training. Really, so, this “ich liebe dich Planned Parenthood uber alles in der Welt … I love you Planned Parenthood above anything else in the world” bullshit went as far as influencing my former employer – a social services non-profit in Portland for more than 45 years – to put me on paid leave and then processed through the ringer of an unfair and incomplete investigation that ended with my termination. Talking to these people in the non-profit sector is like talking to emptied-out moth chrysalises. This mostly female-run and female-staffed organization had the gall to not talk to my two co-workers who were at the training. They had the gall to pointedly show me that I was being investigated and then canned for barely challenging Planned Parenthood’s take on Gardasil, the Bill Gates/Genetically-Engineered/CDC Fast-tracked Approved/Massive PR campaign vaccine for the sexually transmitted virus, HPV. In the echo chamber of these female-run/female-staffed social services agencies, the people do not resist the malfeasance and poor treatment. The people do not speak out as if social justice is the key to assisting people as social workers and mental health practitioners. These people do not want any rocking of the boat. These female-staffed/managed outfits want to embrace the superficiality of LGBTQ-ism and faux multiculturalism, yet, when push comes to shove, they are middling humans, who have reached their own ceilings of compassion/knowledge/ radical social work that pale in comparison to the real work that has to be done. Every step of my administrative leave and then bullshit investigation and then dismissal reeks of unethical and wrongful termination. This non-profit, Lifeworks Northwest, is colluding with Planned Parenthood, because tens of thousands of dollars comes from PP’s coffers, and that grant money is really taxpayers’ money. The power of my simple anonymous comments on unsigned notepaper got my ass hung out to dry, and the bitterness is magnified since I had youth on my caseload in major iterations of crisis, and because I had no opportunity to challenge my accusers, and because I wasn’t able to cut through stupidity and illogical thinking. Simple stuff, a social worker anticipating what my young clients might also ask: “IS the Gardasil HPV vaccine safe since when I go onto the Internet and Google ‘Gardasil Dangers’ or put in ‘Is the HPV virus safe?’ I get all sorts of incriminating information about the dangers herein.” Or, I could have posited at the training something more concrete: “I get all sorts of stories from parents and young women who are outraged by the dangers of the vaccine, and I see many documentaries cataloging the dangers and the chronic pain and deaths attributed to the Merck-made Gardasil, and I can download all these scientific journal articles and browse all these advocacy blogs and web sites that point-blank catalog all the issues tied to the three-shot vaccine”: Here! The highly controversial HPV vaccine “Gardasil,” given to young girls to defend against early onset of the only form of contagious cancer, has been responsible for over thirty deaths (from blood clots in the heart and lungs) and more than 10,000 adverse events (anaphylactic shock, loss of muscle use, and seizures) being reported. Certain forms of HPV are known to cause cervical cancer by fueling the development of precancerous lesions in epithelial tissues of the vagina, vulva, oropharynx, anus and cervix. Most infections however, are benign and cleared rapidly by the human immune system, and never progress to cervical cancer. A valid reason for giving CHILDREN the HPV vaccine has NEVER been established. Plus, the supposed “benefits” of the two known HPV vaccines, Gardasil (made by Merck) and Cervarix (made by GSK-GlaxoSmithKline), wear off after a few years, meaning that even if they do work, the cancer only lasts a few years anyway before a normal immune system beats it, so why bother with the vaccines, which are known to be loaded with neurotoxins, carcinogens, synthetic emulsifyers and genetically modified organisms.  Worst yet, there are at least 120 known human papillomaviruses, so, worse than the flu shot, the HPV vaccine is a complete “shot in the dark.” On top of that, only a third of those viruses are the ones typically transmitted through sexual contact. At least 15 types of HPV are CARCINOGENIC. Just days after given the intramuscular injection Cervarix, Stacey Jones, 17 (at the time), suffered her FIRST EVER SEIZURE and was left brain-damaged from it. The Cervarix inoculation contains recombinant proteins and for those unfamiliar, recombinant means DNA molecules are brought together from multiple sources in a laboratory to create genetic material with DNA sequences that would NOT OTHERWISE EXIST in the genome. That means the culture is chemically altered and then mixed with sodium chloride and “residual” amounts of insect cells. If that itself is not bad enough, according to the Rx list itself, the “tip caps” may contain rubber latex. By the way, sodium chloride when injected raises blood pressure and inhibits muscle contraction and growth. All of this sends the immune system into hyper-panic mode when injected, and explains the seizures and anaphylactic shock these girls are experiencing just hours or days after the HPV jab. In the case of Stacey Jones, her parents said that during the few weeks after her getting the cervical jab, Stacey had MORE fits, causing such severe swelling in the brain and brain injury that Stacey had to go to a rehabilitation unit to relearn simple tasks. GSK called it all a coincidence. Eleven deaths occurred less than one week after receiving the vaccine, seven of which died in less than two days. Three of the deaths were boys. Guess what the most common diagnosis was for the CAUSE of DEATH–BLOOD CLOTTING. Where is the CDC in all of this? One of the girls died within 3 hours of getting the jab. Her echocardiogram revealed a blood clot within the right atrium and the right ventricle. Other reports include girls coming down with the sudden onset of Guillain-Barre syndrome, where the immune system attacks itself. With Rick Perry as a sponsor, Merck’s Gardasil was causing permanent injuries and death all in the name of Rick Perry’s political need for monetary backing. Judicial Watch public interest group investigated this government level corruption and released a report based on FDA documents about adverse reactions to the vaccine and found over 100 DEATHS and spontaneous abortions CAUSED BY GARDASIL. Even JAMA (the Journal of the American Medical Association) went so far as to publish over 12,000 reports of vaccine injury. You see, when I work with youth, and talk about student debt, about drone murders by the USA, or about Trump’s felonious business deals, or talk about the power of media to manufacture consent, or what the real history of the United States is about, or how we bombed the hell out of Korea in the 1950s and Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, or when I talk about what the real Thanksgiving means, the real Israel means, the real NATO means I expect my youth to go on their own Smart (sic) phones and start double checking my facts and theses. So, what are these people thinking, sacking me, because I shaped a question around maybe Planned Parenthood anticipating some resistance from some percentage of our youth on all our caseloads, and resistance from their foster and biological parents, or their siblings and friends about this unproven vaccine? Clenched-teeth trainers, and this room of 40 women and three men, and I was the only one raising what some portion of all of our client loads might ask – is this shot safe? I raised the eyebrows of the Planned Parenthood trainers when I supposed that maybe practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine, naturopathic treatments, shamanism, Native American healing, and other non-Western Medical beliefs should also be included in their amazing rainbow flag of diversity. These people are lock-step, neo-fascists, for sure, of the liberal kind, and I was not prepared for the absolute party-line around Gardasil. It took very little to time to research how Planned Parenthood gets massive funding from Big Pharma and Big Industrial Medicine . . . that Planned Parenthood is part of the big PR push to get as many young women and boys globally vaccinated with this toxic brew. Right now, over 270 million doses have been distributed. Mark that as $30 billion or more for Merk. Yet, these Uber Alles Planned Parenthood punks and then my own former employers – punks with master’s degrees in social work and taught in reduced harm techniques and trauma informed care  – find it impossible for me to continue taking a mandatory class and then I get my ass unfairly and wrongfully sacked? I am in the process of writing Part Three to the series I was asked to work on over at Hormones Matter (and here at DV it’s here and here and here). This entire episode dealing with the cahoots of Planned Parenthood and the drug makers, including the Gardasil manufacturer, Merck, and my own puny job and possibly my future in social services – oh, my next interviews for new jobs will most certainly involve HR folk Googling me and Googling my writings, and, bam, another illicit and unethical determination of my qualities based on my writing – stinks of what’s really rotten to the core in America: the careerism and the death of a real liberal class, and this entitled stupidity and perceived aggrieved neoliberal class. The formula is clear – if you are a scientist or researcher or expert or legitimate journalist questioning your government, your paymaster, your employer, your school, your non-profit, your NGO, your media, your Fortune 1000 companies, your millionaire and billionaire miscreants, you get harassed, de-funded, shunted into a corner, threatened with lawsuits, threatened with termination, sacked, and in some cases, murdered by these economic and patriotic hit men and hit women. Chris Hedges on careerism! The greatest crimes of human history are made possible by the most colorless human beings. They are the careerists. The bureaucrats. The cynics. They do the little chores that make vast, complicated systems of exploitation and death a reality. They collect and read the personal data gathered on tens of millions of us by the security and surveillance state. They keep the accounts of ExxonMobil, BP and Goldman Sachs. They build or pilot aerial drones. They work in corporate advertising and public relations. They issue the forms. They process the papers. They deny food stamps to some and unemployment benefits or medical coverage to others. They enforce the laws and the regulations. And they do not ask questions. These systems managers believe nothing. They have no loyalty. They are rootless. They do not think beyond their tiny, insignificant roles. They are blind and deaf. They are, at least regarding the great ideas and patterns of human civilization and history, utterly illiterate. And we churn them out of universities. Lawyers. Technocrats. Business majors. Financial managers. IT specialists. Consultants. Petroleum engineers. “Positive Psychologists.” Communications majors. Cadets. Sales representatives. Computer programmers. Men and women who know no history, know no ideas. They live and think in an intellectual vacuum, a world of stultifying minutia. They are T.S. Eliot’s “the hollow men,” “the stuffed men.” “Shape without form, shade without colour,” the poet wrote. “Paralysed force, gesture without motion.” Even the HR people at that non-profit wouldn’t get it right about why I was terminated, and the little letter I received from Oregon Employment Department belies the non-profit’s absurdity and confusion: You ARE allowed benefits on this claim . . . . Findings: You were employed by Lifeworks NW until Oct. 26, 2017 when you were fired because you received too many complaints about being unprofessional, confrontational and argumentative. This was not a willful or wantonly negligent disregard of the employer’s interest because there was no policy or rule violation. You deny the accusations of being a disruption to a training that occurred on October 16, 2017. Employer failed to respond to additional attempts to retrieve information. Legal Conclusion: You were fired but not for misconduct connected with work. This short piece can end with those concepts, these people Chris Hedges likens to docile and compliant followers who obey for whatever prestige they can garner. Notice my former employers use words like “unprofessional” and “confrontational” and “argumentative.” This is how these people running social services agencies work the mental muscles in their heads. My entire work with foster youth, connected to the department of human services case managers and foster parents and a plethora of agencies and businesses, was deemed both “professional” and wise and compassionate. I have written testaments to that fact. What does it mean to have this pejorative thrown at me after the fact, stated to the unemployment adjudicator without my ability to answer this lie? This is a case of so called social services providers putting in the dull knife in my already opened torso. Then, this all-female staff and supervisory and management team throw out the term, “confrontational,” in the double-speak of these fake positive psychological beratings. What in the world does this mean, “confrontational”? I did confront abusive parents, abusive bureaucrats, abusive psychologists and employers and teachers, and a few case workers. That was my job to be advocate and mentor for 16-to-21-year-old youth – foster youth. I confronted abuse and lies and mismanagement and maligning and prejudice and pre-judgments and structural violence. I confronted the school to prison pipeline mentality of officials and confronted the lackadaisical attitudes about my youth becoming homeless. Finally, “argumentative”? You know, I got along with everyone, except a couple of officials at public gatherings who made fun of addiction, who made fun of youth caught by cops for pot smoking or carrying booze in the car. I argued with people who laughed at mental challenges, and who somehow thought addiction was just a fad, a choice. I fought prejudice and stupidity, and did it with aplomb and respect. I never was “argumentative” with supervisors or co-workers, yet, these women social workers dare tell a state official – unemployment adjudicator – that the reason for my termination is my “argumentative” disposition? As if I am getting graded as a third grader for my class demeanor, decorum, participation and citizenship? This is the coda of our social services gone amok and awry, and with these fake diversity-chanting female workers and these social workers who fall over themselves to help gay young men and women, while arguing their point that anyone else who is not a pushover or who is defiant, or who disagrees with their spin on the world, well, even a 60-year-old seasoned teacher with training, skills, experiences and education they could only read about or dream about, is deemed “argumentative” and “confrontational.” This syllogistic thinking (non-thinking) then puts an icing on their canards with the terminology, “unprofessional.” We are not in good hands, fellow readers. We have a society that is far removed from the reality of being one emergency room visit from the poor house or one paycheck away from being homeless. This is a society that fines homeless people for loitering, that fines panhandling for a meal or a beer, that fines people camping in alleys or kipping in their perfectly legal and running vans and motor homes. This is the society of people who lets the world know how “powerful” they are – proof is in the gouged-out cultures and ecosystems, perpetual war, the illegalities of every ounce of investment, retirement, consumption schemed up in America, and endorsed by twenty or thirty percent of the population. This is a country that has no history because it forgets and forestalls and fabricates. This is a country of teary-eyed infants, raised on Marvel Comics’ narratives and Disneyland philosophy and computer mush and Hallmark moments, and violence and junk goo for the brain and junk food for the soul. These people, who are tied to the lies of the most powerful collective organization on earth – Big Pharma (twice the lobbying bucks paid to politicians than even the militarists) – and they give shit about the lives of young women and men forcefully vaccinated. These are the crimes of the weak, the so-called do-gooders. And their crimes go unchallenged, unnoticed, and under-discussed. Because this country is one giant criminal project — Continuing Criminal Enterprise. These armies of bureaucrats serve a corporate system that will quite literally kill us. They are as cold and disconnected as Mengele. They carry out minute tasks. They are docile. Compliant. They obey. They find their self-worth in the prestige and power of the corporation, in the status of their positions and in their career promotions. They assure themselves of their own goodness through their private acts as husbands, wives, mothers and fathers. They sit on school boards. They go to Rotary. They attend church. It is moral schizophrenia. They erect walls to create an isolated consciousness. They make the lethal goals of ExxonMobil or Goldman Sachs or Raytheon or insurance companies possible. They destroy the ecosystem, the economy and the body politic and turn workingmen and -women into impoverished serfs. They feel nothing. Metaphysical naiveté always ends in murder. It fragments the world. Little acts of kindness and charity mask the monstrous evil they abet. And the system rolls forward. The polar ice caps melt. The droughts rage over cropland. The drones deliver death from the sky. The state moves inexorably forward to place us in chains. The sick die. The poor starve. The prisons fill. And the careerist, plodding forward, does his or her job. — Chris Hedges http://clubof.info/

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Burst your bubble: conservatives on Trump, opioids and the religious right

Disillusionment on the right continues, as conservatives question Trumps role in the establishment and consider Reagans link to todays drug crisis

Once again this week, we have seen titanic conservative disillusionment with Trumpism, and not just from the usual suspects. Some social issues, such as opioid addiction, have become too pressing even for conservatives to ignore.

American carnage

Publication: First Things

Author: Christopher Caldwell is a senior writer at the neocon flagship the Weekly Standard, and a regular contributor to the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, where he is a contributing editor.

Why you should read it: Progressives may not agree with Caldwells take on Americas opioid epidemic, but it would be hard to deny that he takes it seriously.

Reporters including Chris McGreal at the Guardian have brought the opioid epidemic to broader public attention. Here, Caldwell wonders what is to be done. He acknowledges that it is intertwined with the alienation that comes from social and economic breakdown. He even concedes that Reaganism wound up enlisting the American middle class in the project of its own dispossession. But he denies that treating it as a health problem, as progressives generally recommend, is a solution.

Wherever you stand on big pharma, the war on drugs, or addiction, you need to pay attention to the conservatives who are formulating new responses to Americas plague of addiction. This terrible issue isnt going anywhere fast, and we need to understand how the right is trying to frame it.

Extract: Todays opioid epidemic is, in part, an unintended consequence of the Reagan era. America in the 1980s and 1990s was guided by a coalition of profit-seeking corporations and concerned traditional communities, both of which had felt oppressed by a high-handed government. But whereas Reaganism gave real power to corporations, it gave only rhetorical power to communities. Eventually, when the interests of corporations and communities clashed, the former were in a position to wipe the latter out. The politics of the 1980s wound up enlisting the American middle class in the project of its own dispossession.

When does Trump become the establishment?

Publication: Conservative Review

Author: When he found himself on the wrong side of Breitbarts primary-era civil war, the writer Ben Shapiro flounced. Now he shops his wares all over the #nevertrump parts of the conservative mediasphere. I would never advise that you make a habit of reading Shapiro, but he discloses something interesting here.

Why you should read it: Shapiro may not be the worlds best analyst, but the piece offers a good insight into the reptilian mindset of a certain subset of conservatives as they gleefully watch the Trump presidency derail.

A couple of years back, Jackie Calmes published research for Harvards Kennedy School about the ways in which conservative medias maniacal anti-establishment orientation made it impossible for conservatives to govern. That research suddenly looks more relevant than ever. Trumps presidential campaign was the apotheosis of anti-establishment animus. But ever since his Trumpcare failure, hes looking more and more like he might end up on the wrong end of Republican anti-elitism. If you listen carefully, you can hear them sharpening their knives.

Extract: President Trump is anti-establishment when it comes to persona, of course he thinks that every governmental Gordian knot can be cut, that he can simply bulldoze his opposition, that deals are for sissies and that tough guys finish first. But the deals he wants to cut look a lot more like former President George W Bushs compassionate conservatism than they do like the Tea Party agenda.

The crisis of Trumpism

Publication: Politico

Author: Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review, and regularly bobs up on Fox News and Politico. However many bad calls hes made, or windmills hes tilted at, his office means that people tend to give weight to what he says. This goes double for the occasions upon which he deigns to talk sense.

Why you should read it: For now, its hard to argue with the basic thrust of this piece which is probably why it was trending on Twitter last night. Whatever Trump appeared to promise, and whatever he may yowl into Twitters great maw, he doesnt appear to have anyone around him who is able to translate his instincts into something that may one day resemble a legislative program. In two years, if the administration has righted itself, it may seem as a premature and self-serving article. This week, its compelling.

Extract: Trumpism is in crisis. This isnt a function of poll numbers, or the Russia controversy, or any other melodrama of the past three months, but something more fundamental: no officeholder in Washington seems to understand President Donald Trumps populism or have a cogent theory of how to effect it in practice, including the president himself.

Does the religious rights decline help the alt-right?

Publication: The American Conservative

Author: George Hawley wrote last years best, and most prescient, book on the conservative crack-up that led us to Trump.

Why you should read it: Hawley responds to Peter Beinarts article in the Atlantic, which urged progressives not to dance on the grave of the Christian right, since its decline has empowered the alt-right. Hawley looks at the data and finds that in fact, theres not a straightforward relationship between religious observance and feelings of white identity. For better or worse, if the Christian right is declining, its hard to tell what, if any, effect this is having on the re-emergence of explicit white nationalism in American politics.

Extract: It is probably not a coincidence that explicit rightwing racial politics began to rise as the religious right declined. But it would be a mistake to assume that Christianity is necessarily a boon or a detriment to white identity politics. Although a post-religious right may be more dangerous to liberal values than the religious right ever was, we should not exaggerate the degree to which Christianity serves as an ideological constraint. Christians have felt perfectly comfortable with many kinds of governments promoting many kinds of policies, and that will likely remain the case for the foreseeable future.

House Republicans revoke Obama internet privacy rules

Publication: Breitbart

Author: Sean Moran is a Breitbart drone who previously did a couple of internships in the conservative end of the Washington swamp.

Forget him, youre here for the comment thread.

Why you should read it: On Tuesday, Congress voted to revoke the FCCs internet privacy rules, opening the way for internet service providers to mine, use and monetize data scooped up from their customers. Trump supports them in this. But in doing so hes made some of the angry nerds who supported him angrier still. In the comment threads, watch them try to reconcile themselves with the fact that Trump doesnt give a hoot about them.

Extract: Wow, amazing that some Trump-bots are ok with this, because Republicans signed off on it and you have Trump as POTUS.

If these privacy rules, the EXACT SAME RULES, were to be revoked in a Democrat controlled Congress and a Dem in the White House, the Trump-bots would be screaming bloody murder!

If you are only morally outraged when the other party does something but ok with it when your party does that exact same thing, youre a partisan hypocrite.

Kudos to the Trump supporters who are calling out this BS for what it is.

Read more: http://ift.tt/2nEeKaX

from Burst your bubble: conservatives on Trump, opioids and the religious right