#good morning i just got out of russian history and now i need to draft four essays for the midterm on thursday

[sappymix1]

soviet movies slap so hard like the blatant propaganda combined with the most banger soundtrack you’ve ever heard and the unintentionally comedic fight scenes really brings it all together

[folliesandfolderols]

Writing prompts days 51-55

From this prompt list. If you’ve read this far, I’m not sure you need any explanation, but the short version is I hadn’t written any fiction since 2019, I set a goal to write at least 150 words/day in 2024, and this list was my way to restart. Also I abruptly decided on day 2 I would write an entire Tim/Damian story connecting all the prompts, because I am Good at Judging My Limits. /sarcasm Anyway, I finished the rough draft a while ago and am now unlocking the old entries as I edit.

Read from the beginning here, or on ao3 here

Days 49-50 here

***

16. You drive me so insane, you don’t even know.”

39. "Tell me how you like/want/need it.”

46. “Wanna feel you against me.” (slightly modified for characterization purposes)

48. “Clothes on or clothes off?”

93. “Gonna make sure you don’t forget about tonight.”

110. "Do whatever you want with me."

118. “S-Stop leaving marks on my neck. I have a presentation first thing in the morning.” “Then I get to leave marks anywhere below the neck?”

***

Tim was busy over the next couple of days, because the surveillance he’d planted at Waters’s house proved to be a gold mine of information. He and Galloway were high up on the food chain with their respective creditors’ organizations. Waters had ties to the Irish mob, and Galloway was in deep with the Russians. Both had a history of leaving bills unpaid, so it was no surprise that some of the debts they’d incurred would leave them owing more than money. What was more surprising, in a way that didn’t leave Tim with much shock at all, was the fact that they didn’t seem to mind being at the beck and call of criminals as long as they got the benefits of the trafficking as well. And they did reap plenty of benefits: building permits issued with almost no wait, real estate deals that made no sense on paper, weapons collections that would have made a warlord proud, and of course a never-ending supply of humans to exploit and use as capital.

Tim watched the video footage of Waters fucking a model-beautiful woman on his desk in his study, and all he could see was the deadness in Luz’s eyes.

Damian texted him while he was on patrol three days after the Closet Incident (it had earned a title and upper-case letters, after being looped in Tim’s brain on repeat like a favorite movie). Tim, in the middle of watching over an underpass that had seen a few houseless people murdered during the past month, pulled out the phone and nearly dropped it onto the road below when he read the sender’s name.

Do you have anything new to report?

Tim snorted, imagining what Damian would do if he replied with his first impulse, which was “yes, your dick is now living rent-free in my thoughts at all times.” Instead: have u been watching the surveillance footage?? good stuff, disgusting stuff lots of info

I have not. Is there a reason why you refuse to use upper-case letters? I've wondered.

Tim grinned. Maybe it was a League-trained thing. 

convenience 

I suppose, but at some point you've done more to keep things lowercase than you would have if you'd just let autocorrect do what it likes.

jason's told me the same thing more than once

Be that as it may your point stands. We should consider next steps if you feel we have actionable intel.

do u and jason want to come over to my place again? it might be the best use of our time right now to coordinate our plans in person rather than via video call

Perhaps. My WE schedule is demanding at the moment. I'll see if we can align times.

ok lmk 

Tim put away his phone and concentrated on proving to himself through measured breathing that he was completely unaffected by the prospect of having Damian in his space again. It didn't matter. He'd had random hookups before with weird choices. The fact that he couldn't get Damian's voice, low and intimate, saying let me feel it, out of his head meant nothing. Neither did the forever pain in his chest and stomach. That was just how he lived now.

Well, at least Jason would be there. That would keep him from doing anything stupid. Probably.

Given the fact that they'd fully gotten each other off with Jason on the other end of a precariously deactivated comm, maybe not. Fuck. He was already starting to get hard just thinking about it.

An Audi parked a few hundred feet away from the encampment beneath the bridge and five men got out, voices loud and abrasive in a way that screamed "drunk frat boys" even if he couldn't have seen the Greek symbols on the bumper sticker. They ran toward an old man huddled in a cardboard box against the slanted concrete, and Tim leaped down to join them, grateful for the distraction.

*** 

Damian texted Tim and Jason together the next day while Tim was at work: I will be available this afternoon after 5:30. Will your schedules permit a meeting at 6?

Yeah, I can make that, Jason replied.

Tim swallowed and typed, i'll meet u both at my place then

Capitalization, Damian replied, at the same time Jason's message came through: Punctuation, dammit!

i am free as the wind and so is my text style u plebes just dont understand my aesthetique

Both of them left the conversation simultaneously, and Tim smiled in triumph. He wasn't sure what was so fun about making those two mad, but whatever it was definitely sparked joy.

Tim had contracted for R&D at WE for a couple of years now, ever since he'd finally gotten his degree, but it was mainly a front for funneling the research and products with the greatest potential for Bat-exploitation to the right places. He typically spent at least half his time on the clock doing casework, and the other half doing the same work that took most of the other people in his department twice as long. He almost never saw Damian, who tended to stay firmly in the finance department. Out of idle curiosity, he checked Damian's calendar on WEdrive. His entire day was packed with meetings from the moment he got in until he left, for the rest of the week. He didn't even have a lunch break today. Bruce was such a fucking slacker. Of course, Damian had probably demanded extra responsibilities as the "blood heir" or whatever. 

Tim opened his meal delivery app and put in an order for dinner. He didn't feel like cooking, i.e. pouring cereal, tonight.

Once he got home, he changed out of his suit into sweats and sat on the couch to wait, flipping through the video feeds in Waters' house. The devices he'd planted in the escorts' bags hadn't been much help as neither woman had done anything but take their purses back to where they lived. Luz’s conversations at home were boring mundanities, and Katerina’s device had been mysteriously deactivated, but at least he had their addresses now. And possibly those of clients if they attended anything else that required a fancy clutch.

Damian showed up first, this time, still in his work clothes. Tim immediately suffered an overpowering urge to unbutton his custom Italian suit and lick his neck, which was horrifying enough to kick his best acting instincts into gear. He decided to aim for nothing of note has happened between us, ever, and gave Damian a friendly smile as he closed the door. "Hey. How's it going?"

Damian rolled his eyes and kicked off his shoes. "Spare me the useless civilities, Drake. 'It' was a grinding bore today, filled with incompetent idiots who insisted on projecting their own lack of efficacy onto me, and then had the gall to be shocked when I proved to be far out of their league in both intellect and influence."

"So, everyday WE business meetings, then. Somebody's hangry."

Damian scowled, but before he could reply the door speaker buzzed. Tim glanced at the camera and saw the delivery guy holding up the restaurant bag. He pressed the speaker button. "Leave it at the door, thanks."

He ran downstairs while Damian was still grumbling about him daring to order food for himself, and by the time he returned Jason had come in by some entrance that Tim was going to have to eliminate in the near future.

He started putting containers on the table. "I got enough food for all of us if you guys are hungry. Plates are in the cabinet on the right of the fridge and forks are in the island drawer."

"Fuck yeah I'm hungry, I just got up." Jason ambled to the kitchen and got the plates and utensils while Damian looked down his nose at the containers.

"I suppose all the dishes contain meat." He couldn't entirely hide his interest as Tim popped lids open, leaning over to inspect contents.

"I mean, a couple do, but a lot are vegetarian." Tim pointed as he listed them. "Potato pakoras, haleem, fruit chaat, samosas, aaloo gobi, aaloo qeema, paneer tikka masala, vegetable biryani, and of course the raita."

Damian flushed the faintest bit. Jason set the plates down on the table. "Where'd you get this? I didn't know there was a Pakistani restaurant in town."

"Al Noor," Damian and Tim said simultaneously. Damian flushed a darker red and continued, avoiding Tim's eyes, "It is actually one of my favorites. It reminds me of home, a little."

Jason picked up one of the chapli kebabs and bit into it without waiting to put anything else on his plate. "Oh hell yes," he moaned around the mouthful. "Timmers, you got enough to feed the whole fam and the pets too, what's up with that?"

"I got enough to feed two normal appetites plus you," Tim retorted, putting a little bannu pulao on his plate. He wasn’t really hungry yet—on night job days he usually didn’t eat for the first time until noon, and his last meal was after his patrol.

"Fuck you, I've got muscle mass you can only dream of." Jason got some of everything and sat down at the table. “By the way, who gave you that bite on your neck? Conner doesn't usually leave marks so I'm guessing someone new. C’mon, your secret's safe with me and Damian.”

Tim reached for the bruise before he could stop himself. “None of your business.”

"Todd, your table manners are as abominable as your self-restraint," Damian interpolated, sneering at Jason's perfectly respectable use of knife and fork. After a long pause in which he visibly almost said about five different things and changed his mind each time, he added, "Thank you, Drake, for getting the food," still not looking directly at Tim.

Tim spun around to hide his burning face. His first thought was a nonsensical oh shit, Damian knows, to which he could only ask his brain, knows what, dumbass? He hustled to open the fridge and grab three bottles of water, as if he always turned that fast so he could run retrieve fluids. "No problem," he called from behind the door.

When he set the bottles on the table, Jason was looking from him to Damian and back again. Tim didn't like the assessing expression on his face, and he especially didn't like that Jason was allowing him to see it. This was the worst part of being surrounded by people who'd been trained by Bruce "The World Only Makes Sense If You Force It To" Wayne. You couldn't have a private emotion, ever, without someone feeling the overpowering need to track it down to its source.

Damian spoke before Tim could spill a container on Jason's lap and distract him. "Have you heard from Arsenal lately?"

That diversion successfully embarked Jason on a tangent for about fifteen minutes. Tim knew better than to glance at Damian to share a relieved look while Jason ranted about Roy's selfless tendencies and how they endangered his life. Still, a glow flared to life in his chest when he watched, out of the corner of his eye, Damian sitting next to him and eating food Tim had bought for him. Some of the constant pain receded in its warmth.

Once they were done eating, they each brought out their laptops and compared notes on the footage. Damian hadn't had a chance to view most of it, so Jason and Tim gave him the highlights. He had managed to dig further into the Galloway's and Waters's financials, so he gave them a list of the probable beneficiaries of the inconsistencies between income and expenditure.

Jason sighed as he scrolled through the names and companies. "Looks like I'm heading to Tulsa and Corpus Christi. Love it when I get to have fun with not one, but two mafias."

"I can go instead," Tim offered, looking through the same document as he twisted the top off his bottle.

"Nah, it's okay. I can't be in Gotham too many weeks in a row or I'll kill Bruce, and you know how he feels about murder. Fucker'll haunt my ass just so he can lecture me every time I pull a gun on some piece of shit dealer."

Tim, mid-drink, had a sudden vision of ectoplasmic Bruce floating from Jason's butt like an asshole-obsessed Casper and nearly choked when he started laughing involuntarily.

Jason stared, aghast, as he sprayed water all over their computers. "Holy shit, Tim, it wasn't that funny!"

Damian, ever helpful, smacked Tim's back a few times hard enough to leave bruises, expression bored. "Clearly he pictured Father literally selecting your buttocks as his postmortem residence, Todd. His brain's operations are incomprehensibly juvenile, but if you choose the most ridiculous option you can often divine what he was thinking."

"Sorry," Tim gasped, jumping up to get a seldom-used kitchen towel off its hanger. Some days his mind really had it out for him. He couldn't help it that when he was stressed it decided to interpret every idiom as a visual. "Sorry!"

Jason narrowed his eyes as he watched Tim carefully dab at their keyboards. WE laptops were all water resistant, but there was no sense in being foolhardy. "You've been off all evening. Something going on I need to know about?"

Tim ran through various possible responses in the time it took him to hand some paper towels to Damian to dry the floor. He decided to play it casual. "No, nothing. I just have my attention split in too many directions right now between this, work, and patrol. But this case is my real priority at the moment so don't worry. I wanna put all these guys away for life."

Jason nodded, but Tim had a feeling he wasn't satisfied with the explanation.

They made a few more plans for the immediate future of the investigation, and then Jason packed up to leave. Tim walked him to the door.

"How'd you get in, by the way?"

Jason smirked. "Bet you'd love to know."

Tim gave him an unimpressed look. "I'd love to know why you're such a pain in my ass, too, but I guess I'm not getting any of the answers I want tonight."

Jason leaned in close enough that Damian wouldn't be able to read his lips. Tim stiffened, wary. Jason said, sotto voce, "Timmers, I'm starting to think that's not the kind of pain in your ass you want. Don't think I missed the fact that the baby bat is hanging back until I've left you two alone again. Used to be, he couldn't wait to get away from you."

Tim stared, eyes wide with dismay, and couldn't say a thing.

Jason straightened, wicked grin firmly in place, and caroled, "Byeeeeee!" before slamming the door in Tim's face.

"What did he say?" Damian wanted to know, because of course it would've been too much to ask of the universe for him not to have noticed.

Tim was too discombobulated to say anything other than the truth. "He knows something's going on with us. I don't think he knows what, yet."

"Well, that makes two," Damian said.

Tim leaned his back against the door and looked at him, sitting cross-legged on the couch as if he couldn't be more at ease. "I don't know, either, so it's three."

Damian smiled, perfunctory and cutting. "Did you think I meant myself? I don't waste time speculating about inconsequentialities."

Tim surveyed him for another second in silence, then snorted with genuine amusement. "Oh, you are so completely full of shit right now. You think I'm going to believe that after what happened in Waters's closet?"

Damian shrugged and checked his phone with conspicuous boredom. "I barely remember 'what happened', personally. Perhaps I had too much to drink at the after party. If you've got a clearer recollection it must be because it mattered to you in a way it didn't to me."

A sudden blaze of fury burned away Tim's lightheartedness. He stalked to the couch, ripped the phone out of Damian's hand, and threw it to the loveseat opposite.

Damian didn't balk, but he did snap, "What the hell do you think you're—" His words cut off with a sharp inhale as Tim straddled him and yanked his head back by his hair.

"It's either kiss you or punch you at the moment, and frankly this hurts my knuckles a lot less," Tim hissed. “Maybe if you try really hard you can make it matter enough for both of us to remember this time.” He kissed him with a vicious edge of teeth.

Damian went stiff and unresponsive beneath him. For one awful moment, Tim thought he had read the situation entirely wrong, and horror slid down his spine like an ice floe. He jerked away, ready to babble apologies and then die in a corner of shame somewhere.

Before he could go anywhere, Damian's hands shot out and grabbed his upper arms. "Don't you dare." He pulled Tim back into his lap.

Rage faded in the relief of not having hurt him. Tim sat again, unresisting, hands braced against his chest. "Do you want—"

"Do whatever you want with me." Damian wrapped his arms around Tim and drew him close against his own shoulder, in the process conveniently hiding his expression from Tim's view.

Tim decided to let him get away with it and pressed his face to Damian's jaw. His fingers found their tentative way to play with the ends of his hair. He was still shaken, enough so that he felt the need to be explicit. "Tell me how you want it. Please. Clothes on or clothes off?"

Damian tugged on his t-shirt. "I want to feel you against me."

Tim let him pull the shirt over his head. He started working on the knot in Damian's tie while Damian untied the drawstrings of his pants. "You're wearing too many things." He couldn't seem to catch his breath.

Damian pulled Tim’s sweats down to his thighs. "Unfortunately, I can't dress for work with the sole priority of being instantly accessible to your touch."

Tim’s brain turned to white noise for a second, blindsided by the wave of sheer possessive yes that crashed through him at the notion. He freed the tie from Damian's collar with unsteady hands and stood up to kick off his pants entirely, along with his underwear. Damian sprawled below him, looking like a perfume ad with his disheveled hair, rumpled unbuttoned shirt, and clear bulge in his tailored pants. Not to mention the sulky mouth.

"Christ. You drive me so insane, you don’t even know." He gripped the top of Damian's shirt and used it to throw Damian down on his back on the couch, a maneuver that wouldn't have worked if Damian hadn't cooperated. Straddling his hips again, he hurriedly ripped the buttons out of their holes, exposing Damian's chest to his perusal. “Gonna make sure you don’t forget about tonight.”

Damian grabbed his hips and ground Tim's ass down, against his own erection. "What a promise. How do you intend to deliver?"

Tim ducked to suck on his neck with enough force to bruise. "I've got a few ideas and zero champagne, so we're already halfway there." Something about having Damian's skin between his teeth was unbearably satisfying.

Damian moved restlessly beneath him, hands clutching and releasing over and over again. “S-Stop leaving marks on my neck. I have a presentation first thing in the morning.”

Tim smiled into his collarbone. “Then I get to leave marks anywhere below the neck?”

Damian pulled his own head back so their gazes could meet. "Yes."

day 56 here

[lesbianrobin]

oh.... yes..... as an adhd steve-lover (and person who has a history of unknowingly crushing on adhd characters) i beg to hear ur reasoning......... please...

alright so a lot of this is gonna be like projection ddnkjcn and it turned into more of a general character analysis than an adhd analysis and i’m sure that some things i describe will differ from your personal experience so feel free to critique me but here goes:

Why Steve Harrington Has ADHD

Steve struggles in school, yeah, but that’s not really… crucial to my reasoning? I personally did pretty well in school despite having difficulties with getting work done on time and understanding certain things. The fact that he clearly tried to do well and just couldn’t is what’s important. That’s a classic ADHD thing, feeling like there’s some kind of invisible block making it impossible to think the way you’re supposed to be thinking and do the things you’re supposed to be doing. We see him studying a few different times with Nancy (though he’s reluctant to focus on the task in s1), it’s implied he’s written multiple drafts of the essay that he shows Nancy in the beginning of s2, meaning that he wants to do well. After Nancy critiques his essay, he basically decides to give up because he’ll never be able to make it good enough, and he probably shouldn’t even bother applying to college, and he’ll just end up working for his dad anyway. It’s a bit of an extreme jump from the relatively mild criticism he receives, but it seems to me like the kind of mindset that I (and others with ADHD) fall into constantly. First of all, rewriting something you’ve already written when you have ADHD can be… torturous. It’s impossible to focus because you’ve done it already, it feels pointless and boring, and your brain is just done with the topic. To Steve, there’s no point in even trying because he’s never gonna get it right, and he’d rather not even try than apply to college and have to suffer rejection. ADHD isn’t laziness or apathy. People with ADHD actually tend to care a lot about their performance in various aspects of life, and they care so much that it can often either propel them to excellence or drive them to depression over failure (whether that failure is true or perceived). Spoiler alert: we’re about to get into rejection sensitive dysphoria, folks!

I think this describes Steve perfectly. He wants to be the best at everything (Prom King, anyone?) and he cares a lot about what people think of him (to the degree that he spent three of his four years in high school behaving specifically to avoid the possibility of Tommy H and others making fun of him). Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, or RSD, is a condition which impacts almost all people with ADHD. This means that they are far more sensitive than most people to what others think about them. Think about Steve’s entire character arc: he essentially spends season one chasing the approval of Tommy, Carol, and Nancy. When Tommy and Carol’s desired behavior differs from Nancy’s, causing conflict, he’s forced to take a look at himself and decide what’s more important to him: pleasing his friends, or doing what’s right. Since Steve is a certified angel, he goes with what’s right, and from there goes on to apologize to Jonathan and help him and Nancy fight the Demogorgon. (Sidenote: the fistfight with Jonathan could definitely be considered as further evidence of ADHD! RSD can cause extreme emotional reactions when the person in question feels that they have been hurt or rejected, such as Steve believing that Nancy cheated on him with Jonathan. The fact that Steve resorted to cruel insults that he clearly doesn’t believe shows that he was acting out of his own hurt and anger, not out of true hatred for Jonathan.) 

Anyway, s1 Steve’s entire life is built around seeking approval from his peers. He realizes that his desire for approval has turned him into somebody that he doesn’t like, so he makes a change, and by s2 we see that he’s shifted somewhat: Now, he wants to please Nancy. He’s able to handle being mocked by Billy and Tommy H because he no longer puts any stock in their brand of approval, but being told by Nancy that she doesn’t love him elicits another (somewhat) extreme emotional response: he immediately leaves her at the party with Jonathan and doesn’t pick her up for school the next morning. He’s upset with her. Later on, he goes to her house with flowers intending to apologize, though he doesn’t actually know what he’s apologizing for. All he wants is for Nancy to be with him and like him again, because he can’t handle feeling unloved and rejected. S2 is also where we see Steve’s academic insecurity, and he hints at issues with feeling like a failure in the eyes of his father. By the end of the season, he’s able to handle not being loved by Nancy because he’s found a new source of self-esteem and approval: Dustin and the rest of the kids. Through acting as their “babysitter,” Steve’s found something to take pride in that nobody can take away from him. Billy may have overshadowed his basketball stardom and broken his keg stand record, but Steve no longer needs these shallow achievements to feel a sense of self-worth. 

S3 shows that, although he’s moved on from seeking approval from specific peers, Steve is still stuck searching for validation. He flirts indiscriminately hoping for anybody to respond positively, and he gets a job to appease his father. Here, I’m gonna jump ahead a little bit (because that’s just the way my brain is saying it’s gotta be lmao) and talk about a few of Steve’s other canon traits, then circle back around to how we see his ongoing struggle with RSD manifest in s3.

Now for the trait that people more commonly associate with ADHD, especially in men and young boys: hyperactivity. This one is a little more self-explanatory so I’m not gonna spend as much time on it. Steve excels in situations with clearly defined rules and expectations where it’s easier to stay on-track, as well as in high-pressure, fast-paced environments. This is why he succeeds in basketball and why he’s such a big damn hero every season. He thinks on his feet and steps up in intense situations without hesitation. Steve is the one who wedged something under the elevator door so that everyone could escape, he’s the one who took out a Russian soldier before he was able to alert anybody else, and when he saw Billy about to ram into Team Griswold Family, he crashed into Billy’s car. Part of this is the fact that it’s a sci-fi action horror show, and there are going to be dramatic action-packed situations, but it’s telling that if Steve is around, he’s almost always the one leaping into danger and adapting to the situation to deal with it quickly. Speaking of s3: The conversation Steve and Robin had on the floor in the Russian torture chamber!

This feeds into an even more elaborate Steve meta theory of mine about how he basically lives his life as if it’s a play and there’s a script and a set of rules that he’s gotta follow to please the audience, so I’m not gonna go into ALL of it, but this conversation is also important to the idea of Steve having ADHD and struggling with RSD. Steve says, “It just baffles me. Everything that people tell you is important, everything that people say you should care about, it’s all just… bullshit.” When Robin says that she feels like her life has been “one big error,” he agrees. So far, Steve has lived his whole life according to one set of rules. If you flirt with girls and go to parties and play basketball, you’ll be cool and popular. Now that he’s graduated, he’s floundering. The structure of high school is gone and everything he worked for doesn’t actually matter in real life. People with ADHD often struggle more than others with the transition from high school to either college or the working world. Loss of familiar frameworks, routines, and actions can hit the ADHD mind hard, and this is pretty clearly happening to Steve in s3. In the beginning of the season, he can’t even manage to have a decent conversation with a girl without bringing up school and his own perceived failures. Sidenote: Robin also mentions that Steve was late to class every single day, which is both extremely relatable to me and the most ADHD thing I’ve ever heard. I knew exactly how long it took me to get from my house to the school, and I woke up with plenty of time to get ready every single morning, yet I somehow managed to be late so many mornings that I got multiple detentions and ended up having to skip a couple of classes entirely because another tardy would have fucked up my disciplinary record.

Later on in the bathroom scene, when he’s talking about why he didn’t talk to Robin back in school, Steve says, “…maybe ‘cause Tommy H would’ve made fun of me or I wouldn’t be Prom King. It’s stupid…” and it’s somewhat of a continuation of the earlier conversation. Steve is expressing the same sentiment. Now that he’s out of high school, everything that he once used to measure his success and self-worth is just stupid. This is another classic RSD thing! People with ADHD/RSD often set impossibly high standards for themselves and then struggle with self-hatred and doubt when they cannot live up to these expectations. Robin kind of inspires and encourages him to set new, more attainable standards for himself. Spending time with Robin makes Steve happy in a way that he’s never really been before, and he realizes that all of the benchmarks of normalcy and success that he’s been striving for don’t guarantee happiness like they’re supposed to. Instead of finding happiness in academic, romantic, or athletic success, he finds happiness in an unlikely friendship. His whole arc for three seasons has essentially been a big struggle with RSD and impulsivity where he learned how to handle social rejection and place the needs and feelings of others before his own.

There’s also a ton of little things in Joe Keery’s acting choices that support ADHD Steve, like his near-perpetual motion and the way that he’s gotta pace and eat a damn banana (both the traditional way and the no-homo breaking it into pieces way, might I add) so he can listen to Dustin talk about the Russian code. I personally relate to a lot of things he does, like mixing up basic names and facts (like Nazis/Germans in s2 and Gumby/gumbo in s3), and needing to explain a whole situation out loud before he really gets it (like when he runs down the entire monster situation in the mall in s3). I don’t know if those are ADHD things but they make me feel Seen. 

Anyways. That’s about it!! Thanks for asking lmao

[girlbookwrm]

i DO recommend these fics, but this ISN’T actually a rec list

a while ago i did a meta about Bucky Barnes and the Winter Soldier and Hydra and the headcanons I put in The Terror of Knowing, and I mentioned that I wanted to compile a long-ass list of fics that inspired The Hundred Year Playlist and ppl (hi @conlatio and @marveluc) asked about it SO HERE, AT LONG FUCKING LAST, IT IS.

Fanfiction, like every other art form that has ever existed in the history of ever, is all about synthesis: combining pre-existing elements to make something new. It’s the making something new thing that’s exciting. (If you’re not making something new with your found material, that’s called plaigiarism and it’s distinctly uncool.)

When I was in college and grad school, if we used material from other scholars to make a new idea, we made sure to include a bibliography. 

Now this is fic, so like. Everyone knows that we’re using found material. We put the fandom in the tags and everything. But there’s a lot of unseen inspiration, because it’s harder to tag all the fics and metas you read that gave you ideas and inspiration along the way.

I’m... making an attempt.

These are some, SOME of the fics that inspired the headcanons and characterizations and whatnot that then got incorporated into THYP. I’ve been reading MCU fic since 2014 (possibly earlier) and I didn’t even start thinking about THYP until 2017, so there’s probably a lot of stuff that went into my subconscious that I’ve forgotten about. I’m @ing the authors and sources when I know them, but if any of yall want me to like, un-@you (is that a thing??) or if any of you know of authors who have tumblrs that I DIDN’T @ but should have, pls let me knoooowwww

A (Probably Incomplete, but at least Attempted) Fanfic Bibliography for The Hundred Year Playlist

by Seriously I Don’t Have More Important Things To Do? Astonishing.

PLEASE HEED THE WARNINGS IN THE FICS THEMSELVES. THYP may be rated T for Teen (and even that I debate about tbh, given all the swears and violence) but most of these fics are very emphatically not.  some of them will probably squick you out, some of them might be triggering, so take care of yourselves.

I’ve divided the list into sections by the story they inspired, but all of these stories inspired all the parts of THYP, this is a very very very rough categorization. Think of it as my fanfic n headcanon spice rack. some stories are going to have more or less of one spice or another.

Dreamers With Empty Hands

All the Angels and the Saints by @cesperanza

"You're a brutal person, you know that? You're always rummaging through my guts with your bare hands!" and then Bucky turned away, his long, muscled back curving as he sat on the edge of the bed, hunched and struggling for breath. Steve wanted to draw him, and he also wanted to blot the image from his memory: this picture of Bucky in despair.

Speranza’s Socialist Steve is deeply flawed in a way that people don’t usually write him and i love it so much??? He’s angry, and egotistical, and righteous in a way that’s hard on the people around him and I was like YESGOOD MORE PLS. It’s also a masterful example of how to write a story that’s ostensibly Steve-POV but still manages to make Bucky not only a main player, but a driving force. It’s about Steve, on the surface, sure. But it’s also about Bucky, because Steve is about Bucky and I just *clenches fist* love it.

cascades. 

This fic. THIS FIC. Hngh. Okay so this fic is good on so many levels, but for THYP, the takeaway was me very gently lifting the Bucky-Steve-Barnes Family dynamic and then adding more swears to get to my take on the Bucky-Steve-Barnes Family Dynamic. Namely: 

“Steve was a bit of a Barnes, too, wasn’t he,” she says.

“He was ours,” says Rebecca, shrugging. “We were his.”

i crie???

More Man Than You

“You’re very pretty,” she said, and Steve tensed up.

“I’m not a fairy.”

“No, you’re not, are you?”

this fic has a study guide. and that’s literally all I feel I need to say about it. It’s an exploration of queer culture and masculinity in the 30s and 40s, thinly veiled as stucky fanfiction. (It’s also pretty brutal so I’ll reiterate that you need to heed the goddamn warnings)

Also, lest yall think I came up with Billy Thompson in a vacuum, I didn’t. In this fic, there’s a violent mob runner called Duke, and Steve comes up with a plan to take him down, and Bucky makes sure that there’s a Different plan that Steve doesn’t know about.  It’s all executed a little differently in this fic, but the idea lodged in my brain and got reused in THYP, and kind of became a central theme.

Good Morning Heartache, What’s New?

The Night War by @praximeter

IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THIS WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR LIFE. This is... honestly, just one of the finest pieces of fiction i just 

HNNNNGH

I don’t know that I can point to any specific part of this fic and say “this gave me that idea” it was more the... the feel of it. The way the Normandy invasion is written and the way the trauma is handled and the way Steve is just slightly to the left of being a real soldier and especially this:

He asked me with a smile on his face what goes through my mind when I line up my shot—God and country? Pearl Harbor? Uncle Sam? —and I stared at him struck dumb from the question so long that I think he thought I was just plain stupid. The fact is that it is none of those things—not even close. It is sick, numb fear and careful, barely breathing so that I don’t miss. I must never miss. And then when I shoot, an awful thought curls up from my trigger finger to my heart “how many mothers must be praying I will miss?”

The Thirteen Letters

oh you didn’t really think that Not Easily Conquered wasn’t going to be on this list, didja? OF COURSE IT’S ON THE LIST. But possibly not for the reason you might think. That fic is legen-fucking-dary of course, and the scene where Steve gets stabbed was obviously very inspirational for that bit in GMHWN where Steve gets shot in the thigh, but the scene that really got teeth into my brain and Would Not Let Go was the one where the Howlies meet the Winged Victory of Samothrace and 

Bucky knows the truth now. It is a deep and insurmountable truth. She has no face. Like the operative whose head he beat in, like the boy who he killed one month into active duty, even like Bucky himself, Nike is faceless. Bucky feels unprepared, or like he should have brought an offering.

Beside him Steve quakes before the oldest and the only god.

look my fixation with statues didn’t come from nowhere is what i’m saying ok

Sincerely, Your Pal

This fic haunts me because i hate the ending. not because it’s not good (It IS good) or because it’s not the right ending for the story (it IS the right ending for the story) but just because i  h a t e  i t. I just like happy endings is all, and resolutions, and this fic is why THYP will have a happy ending.

But also, I really liked the way this fic dealt with Bucky in Basic and lines like this really caught in my brain:

And of course I want to kill some Nazis I guess but not because they’re people. Not because I actually want people to die because I don’t.

And that sentiment definitely fed into how I write Bucky especially.

The Terror of Knowing

there must have been a moment by @redstarwhitestar (magdaliny’s marvel sideblog)

Listen, I’ve been trying to make sure that there’s a good spread of writers on this list but magdaliny is the exception. Magdaliny is the exception for a lot of things and there must have been a moment when we could have said no is always the first fic I think of when I think of a fic about Bucky’s time as the Soldier. Which is ironic, because it’s very much about his time after that, but that first chapter made uhhhhhhhhhhh an impression.

The fractured nature of the narrative, the way that the reader can piece together a coherent timeline but the main character can’t... that was very influential on TTOK. example:

“Kill him,” the officer says.

The subject says: “Why?”

☙

“Kill him,” the officer says.

The subject makes a mess.

☙

“Kill him cleanly,” the officer says. “Good! Good lad.”

I’ll build a house inside of you

Another magdaliny G I F T, an AU where Nat is much younger and Bucky is her dad, and if you think that didn’t affect the way I write Bucky and Nat’s relationship in THYP, then you are dreaming. 

Past the praises of the handlers, above the hot wet smell of cordite and blood, Natalia can hear crashing and shouting down the hall.

“—goddamn animals, they're little girls, they're just kids, you fucking—”

Her father screams in English, in Mandarin, in Russian, and then he just screams.

I know that’s a super sad excerpt but listen and hear me when I say this fic is actually really good and wholesome and it’s got A+++ OCs and All The Widows and it’s just really good ok

Memory

Bucky is hard AF to write and very few people write him half so well as magdaliny but one of those people is emilyenrose and this fic is M A S T E R F U L. Bittersweet and achingly perfect. It contains this beautiful moment that really stuck with me, where Steve is comparing the post WS “James” to the Pre War “Bucky” and realizes... 

He truly hadn't known James all that well. James hadn't let him. Hadn't wanted him to. Hadn't wanted anyone near him, ever—

—the way Bucky went, when he was miserable, when he was angry...

and that, to me, was kind of key when I went on to write the Soldier, because the Soldier IS Bucky, even when he isn’t.

Fool For Sacrifice

Dona Nobis Pacem

THIS GODDAMN FIC came to me outta FUCKING NOWHERE, I’d already written the first draft for FFS, I’d already started posting it, for crying out loud. And then all of a sudden I stumble upon THIS and i just

It’s already fading, just hours after the skirmish.  And the wounds Sam stitched will heal without a mark.  And the welts on Steve’s chest will disappear.  Like all of it never happened. 

Fuck the serum. He keeps thinking it, saying it.  Maybe if there were some goddamn scars, it’d be easier to process the damage.

This fic is heavy af, it’s like the 65k word version of That Chapter in FFS Where Steve Hits Rock Bottom. This was the fic I read when I was ramping myself up to tackle That Moment

three white horses

This is the other fic I read to ramp up for That Scene, and I think that probably shows in the way I wrote it. It is also is a Strong Contender for the title of Heavyweight Fic That Convinced Me Buck Is Jewish. Honestly I cannot praise this fic enough.

I think the thing that stuck hardest about the Steve in three white horses is the way he feels ghostly himself, like he’s only drifting through the present, and somehow most of his living happens in the past. It’s very beautifully done, and very subtly done, and it’s my go to fic if I am in Dire Need of a Good Clean Crie.

It’s getting an extra long excerpt because This Is My List And Neither God Nor Man Can Stop Me.

Steve's fingers touch metal when he reaches into the second-to-last box, and he feels the blood drain out of his face even before he's looked down. He knows the feel of it too well. He'd know it blind, a hundred years from now. It's Bucky's not-a-medal.

It'd been Bucky's grandfather's, or maybe his great-grandfather's, made of the kind of sterling silver that tarnishes if you look at it funny, so Bucky had always been polishing it; he'd traded cigarettes to the mess staff for baking soda and vinegar, during the war, but the thing was still soot-black half the time, like it is now. It'd been a fool's errand, wearing a thing like that in Axis territory, but Bucky'd worn it on his chain like the rest of the guys wore their Christophers and Michaels, and HYDRA'd ignored it. It was a subtle thing, though: nothing like wearing a Magen David, or the implacable H on Bucky's tags, just a thin slice of metal with a stylized branch and an oblique squiggle Steve only knows is the Hebrew word for life because Bucky told him so.

Bucky'd had a curious mix of reverence and irreverence about it, the same mixture that seemed to colour the whole of his religious life. He'd teased Steve sometimes, saying, “No, wait, you gotta kiss it before you enter the building, you schmuck, what are you, some kinda heathen?” with his legs around Steve's waist. Bucky hadn't complained when Steve had carried on with an inch of silver between his teeth, but Steve had offhandedly called it Bucky's good luck charm once, and Bucky'd blown up; it's not a superstition, he said, it's not a fucking amulet. He'd apologized later, and he'd explained, and said it was a touchy subject, just ingrained. Jews weren't supposed to believe in luck. Bucky'd thought maybe it was the opposite: maybe luck didn't believe in Jews.

Sparked Up Like a Book of Matches

AH YES, THE FIC THAT TAUGHT ME ABOUT LIL AUDREY JOKES. SIPPY CUPS OF SUPERBOOZE! A ROBOT CALLED SHITCAN!! WHAT MORE COULD YOU NEED IN A FIC??? I really like the way it addresses Steve being in the future is all

This one could probably also fall into the list of fics that inspired DWEH, in part because of This, which stuck with me Hard and heavily influenced the opening:

“...You ever have scarlet fever?"

Sam shakes his head.

"It starts in your throat, like an itch, and as your fever starts to climb, your tongue swells up and turns white and that's when they know, really, even before the rash, that it's scarlet fever. You can't swallow, it hurts so much. You're freezing and your joints ache and your fever keeps spiking and you start to hallucinate. I, uh, I thought things were crawling on me and there were voices that I didn't recognize whispering things that didn't make any sense. My mom had to fight me just to get me to drink broth, but I threw it up most of the time, anyway. Then I got pneumonia from being so worn down from the scarlet fever and I was so lucky, Sam. Nobody seems to understand how I lucky I was to make it through. Talking to people today, to make them understand I'd have to tell them I survived bird flu only to fall sick with Ebola."

listen. For reasons I can’t fully explain, I really wanted to read that happening so i wrote it, and this is what being a writer is All About.

Actually, on a second thought, I might be able to explain it: it’s because an experience like that is Capital F Formative, and I really wanted to explore how there’s a tiny sick kid rattling around inside Captain Beefcake’s souped up bod.

(And an additional shoutout to Steve Rogers’ American Captain, a webcomic that now exists only in the Wayback Machine, but which was L O V E L Y and I sincerely hope that the artist knows that)

No Hope for the Weary

Strays

This fic? is so fluffy?? Like literally so fluffy. But this fic (and, obviously, Infinite Coffee) were very much behind the inclusion of the God Damn Starbucks, and also the source of a lot of my headcanons about Barnes & Rogers: Secret Millennials. For Example: Bucky’s Notes on How To Be A Millennial:

- Lots of coffee. Travel mugs or paper cups from Starbucks place. Often looks guilty for drinking, obv derive pleasure from doing so. Unknown as to why. Investigate further? Why is there one every two blocks if no one wants it there? 

Infinite Coffee and Protection Detail

This is another fandom classic that needs very little introduction. A+ characterization, A+ OCs, Utterly Charming from start to finish, and the originator of a very distinct way of talking that got very strongly coded in my brain as Winter Soldier Bucky.

He passes within 4 m of Barnes on his way back to his building. The mission imperative achieves a Doppler effect.

contactContactCONTACTContactcontact

Aw.

If They Haven’t Learned Your Name by @silentwalrus1

If I had to point to one (1) fic and say “Blame This Fic for THYP” it would be this one: the Fic that my roommate and The Gal Pal know as “The One With the USS Motherfucker.” This might seem like an odd statement, because if you’ve read them both, I don’t think you’d necessarily put them in the same class. silentwalrus is a genius of hilarity and THYP is a big pile of The Sads. ITHLYN is delightfully unassuming and I’m sometimes embarrassed by how pretentious THYP ended up being. 

I would technically put this under the list of fics that heavily influenced NHFTW on account of the way it portrays Bucky going by gradual degrees from murderbot to mostly human person, but listen I could never write Cryptid!Bucky the way Silentwalrus has. It’s magnificent. And TBH the level of Intensity in ITHLYN’s Steve has is something I aspire to, and the Sam Characterization is On Point, and both those things influenced FFS, 112%. Nat’s Chaotic Slav Energy in this fic is OFF THE GODDAMN CHARTS and I LOVE IT. Every single side character, down to the spaceship is given the kind of care, attention, and characterization that just... it cannot be beat, my dudes.

16/10 highest recommendation. I could not possibly pick a single paragraph from this behemoth but uhhhhh

Two minutes in there’s a grunt and a slippery, gritty noise somewhere to her left, and then the Soldier barrels past at breakneck speed, vanishing down another tunnel. A second later Steve careens around the corner, bounces off the opposite wall and crashes away after him, so fast he’s nearly a blur. Natasha’s brain, entirely of its own accord, provides her with the utterly unhelpful accompaniment of a Yakety Sax soundtrack.

that’s it. that’s the fic.

Also, this fic is Stoutly To Blame for the playlist aspect of the hundred year playlist? Silentwalrus really got me good with Grounds for Divorce by Elbow, one of my all time favorite songs, which was then paired with one of my all time favorite chapters. By the time Caravan Palace’s Lone Digger made an appearance, I was sunk. This fic introduced me to Lyube, and gave me a new appreciation(?) for dubstep. So many of the songs ITHLYN used ended up in my Very Long Stucky Playlist, though I think the only one that then went on to become part of the Hundred Year Playlist: Upside Down and Inside Out by OK GO.

And Finally, the Coup De What The Fuck Ever:

Ain’t No Grave by @spitandvinegar

yet another fandom classic... I wasn’t sure where to put this fic, but I couldn’t NOT include it in the list. Spitandvinegar’s Steve is charming and so? Sweet? and the ANG Bucky is a delightful foulmouthed mess of a person, and the Sam/Claire pairing is something I DIDN’T KNOW I NEEDED, BUT I VERY MUCH NEEDED IT and I don’t know that I can point to a single thing and be like: Ah Yes, This Bit, but this is definitely one of my faves:

Imagine you live in this country, right? And there's a brutal war, and you witness and maybe participate in a horrific amount of violence, and you lose absolutely everyone you care about. Then you end up in this other country, where the culture and ways of doing things are completely foreign to you, and random assholes make fun of you for how you dress and act and talk while you're still coming to grips with the fact that everyone you love is gone and you can never go home again. Meanwhile, everyone around you is like "smile, motherfucker, you're in the Land of Plenty now, where there's a Starbucks on every corner and 500 channels on TV. You should be grateful! Why aren't you acting more grateful?" So you have to pretend to be grateful while you're dying inside. Sound like an traumatized, orphaned refugee? Also sounds like Steve fucking Rogers, Captain Goddamn America. Except that most refugees were part of a community of other people who were going through the same thing. Steve is all alone, the last damn unicorn, if the last unicorn had horrible screaming nightmares about the time when it helped to liberate Buchenwald.

Usually this explanation yields a "huh." People don't want Sad Refugee Steve: they want Captain America, Indestructible Defender of Freedom. But that doesn't mean that Sam isn't right, because he is right, goddamnit. So yeah, Sam's a little protective of Steve. And if the last unicorn finds out that its best damn unicorn friend in the whole world is actually alive, then damn straight, Sam's heading out with a tranq gun and bringing that damn unicorn in and starting a goddamn unicorn wildlife refuge in his backyard. Or something like that: at a certain point the metaphor kind of gets away from him.

Til The End of the Timeline

I’ve recced this so many times you’ve probably all gotten sick of hearing about it, but it’s an invaluable goddamn resource and you should all check it out. 

A Shit Ton of Metas and Blogs, some of which are tagged with THYP Research but especially @steve-rogers-new-york and @hansbekhart‘s How To Brooklyn and @historicallyaccuratesteve

and last but certainly not least

LITERALLY EVERYTHING @quietnighty READS HOLY SHIT

If you’re looking for a common thread through all the above recs, it’s that almost all of them have podfics, and the vast majority of those podfics are by Quietnight. I am, and always have been, an audio learner. I read my writing aloud when I’m editing, I listen to audiobooks when I’m commuting, and when I’m cleaning, and when I’m playing computer games, because I like stories, and I especially like listening to stories. Quietnight’s podfics are Of The Highest Quality, and her taste in fic is Impeccable.

hooooly shit this post is long wow okay. I can’t promise I won’t add more to this later, but I’m leaving it for now because goddamn. it’s as complete as I can make it at this time. I’ve added a “THYP Fanfic Bibliography” tag in my bookmarks, and incidentally I really need to make sure I’ve gone through and kudosed all of these because goddamn.

[frangipanidownunder]

#20 from the angst prompts?

Paradox: fic

20: “Notwith the person from the past in tow.” 

Sorry it took a while to get to this. It’s a bit angsty, a little tiny bit NSFW but not too much and a little bit fluffy? Tagging @today-in-fic

It’s a paradox. That she’s more in love with him now thanshe has ever been. Than she should be. There’s a thesis there somewhere, shethinks, as she’s driving to the restaurant. Something about time dilation andvelocity. How he has propelled her forward and held her back. How he has beenboth a burden and a blessed relief.

She parks and wonders if this is the right move. Or if it’sjust an ill-considered attempt to recapture something from the past, like theX-Files. It’s not the same. It was never going to be the same. It should neverbe the same. Life’s journeys should look and feel different, even if they aretaken on the same path. You’re supposed to learn. Learn something.

It’s a paradox. She knows so much about him, but he’s alwaysa surprise. He’s holding a book in his hands, Stephen Hawking’s A Brief Historyof Time. It’s got a gaudy yellow bow tied around it. And under the ribbon istucked a slip of paper.

“You are now a paid-up member of the Book League ofBethesda. Two years, no less.”

“You bought me a membership to a club I don’t want to belongto.” His arrogance is not even arrogance, it’s just the way he is. His is aspecial brand that has no apt descriptor. Though she does imagine the Germanswould have a word for it.

He holds the door open as though his generosity counters hisego. It’s a paradox.

“You sound like Groucho Marx.” He is grinning. It softensher edges. Every damned time.

She slips past him and the Maitre’D leads the way. The book doesn’tfit on the beautifully-dressed table. She puts it on her lap.

“Their next reading book is Go Set a Watchman.” He is still grinning.She is still softening.

“Mulder, what sort of reading club leaps from an explorationof the structure of the universe to a novel of dubious provenance that isprobably just an early draft of the magnum opus of the author?”

“I don’t know, Scully, but I bought you a copy of A BriefHistory of Time because the one you left at our house got ripped to piecesduring the altercation with those Russians. It’s not on the Book League ofBethesda’s reading list.” He sips water. “Well, not for the next six months.See,” he says, stabbing the paper, “there are the coming titles.”

Our house. Ours. She orders sweet and sour salmon. Hechooses grass-fed beef. As they wait, she watches the orange flame of theelegant crimson candle on the table, wave and snap. Wave and snap. Slow, fast.Slow, fast.

“Something plain, Scully. Sometimes life is so complicatedthat food should just be simple.” He’s back to grinning.

The wine leaves a purple film around the glass. It slidesdown the curved sides and she watches, fascinated by the pattern.

“Wine legs,” he says.

“I’ve only had one glass, Mulder.”

“Or wine fingers, or curtains or even church windows. It’sbecause the alcohol has a lower surface tension than water. Capillary actionmakes the liquid climb the sides of the glass and both the alcohol and thewater evaporate.”

“But the alcohol evaporates faster,” she says. “I know,Mulder. But it’s still a wonder, isn’t it?”

He’s not grinning anymore. He’s serious and her stomachcoils. “Do you ever think about twins, Scully?”

Her mind flashes back to the St Rachel Motel. She fuckedMulder. At the time, it felt so good and it just a bit a wrong. It felt soself-loving and just a bit selfish. Then the bizarre events of Mulder punchingthe daylights out of his other self and her giving her own doppelganger a peptalk about psychic manifestations and latent hostilities. The whole case hadleft her flying on a high and weighted down by guilt.

               “I can’tsay I do,” she tells him, swallowing the flame of shiraz and her lie. She wasfire under his touch that night. That morning.

               His footis tapping the floor. “If twins are separated at birth what makes them seek outlives that are so similar, marry people with the same names, feel the pain of injuriesof the other?”

              “Sometimesthey don’t, Mulder. There have been studies that show…”

              His facesets. His foot stills. She stops talking. An image of him under her, face openfor the reading, lips reddened by hers, hips bucking up so she was filled withhim. She dips her chin to her chest and tries to suck in air without it seemingdesperate.

              “Arethose two people themselves or are they individuals?”

              “Andhere I was thinking you’d asked me out to wine and dine me.” She can stilltaste the salt-tang of his and her own arousal, coating her lips and her throatas she took him in her mouth. Joining.

              “What ifwe have two selves and each grows at a different rate?”

              “Twoselves?” She sips more wine and snaps back to the now. “Is this a pop psychologyquiz?”

              “What ifthe person I was before is not the person I am now but I am still just one?Where does the other self go?”

              “Isn’tthat just experiential learning, Mulder? We all change as we go through life.You can’t separate what you’ve lived from where you are heading.”

              “Andwhat if your future is joined with another?” His hand slides across the tableto take hers. His fingers are always softer than she expects. It’s a paradox,that for all his suffering and pain, Mulder’s touch is so gentle. “What if youwant to shuck off your old self completely so that this other person can seethe new version of you. The one that is better, more fully rendered; the onewho is ready.”

              His eyesclose a moment, flicker shut like he’s waiting, defensive, for the blow. Thearrogant self has disappeared, she thinks. He’s a paradox, this Mulder, thisman she loves too much and not enough. How would she ask him to ever not be hisconfusing, bewildering, multi-faceted self.

              “Then Iwould say that the future looks bright,” she says, drawing herself closer tohim. Wax, transparent from heat, tipples down the side of the candle and theflame flickers. The wax settles at the base like petals. “For this otherperson. And your freshly-shucked self.”

              “Ithink,” he says, “that you are ready, Scully. I know I’m ready. I think it’stime. Come back.”

              She leansback, letting his words sink in. The bow catches her eye and she glances at thebook, solid on the floor. “There’s a section in A Brief History of Time thatdiscusses Feynman’s theory of sum over histories. Where each particle has many histories.”Come back. Come back. To go forward means to go back. It’s a paradox. She feelsa sting of tears and shivers. “If we have many histories, does it not go thatwe have many futures too, Mulder?

              He’salmost back to grinning. Framing the narrative of their relationship in thesafe haven of supposition and theory. “And that we need to start down one pathto see where it goes. But that any number of forces or influences or chanceoccurrences can disrupt that journey?”

              Shenods. “We’ve had a similar conversation before,” she says and thinks againabout bodies joining, about curves and contours and planes and angles. “Aboutfate, about destiny.” He remembers. She can see it in the slight dip of hisforehead, the way his eyes darken a shade in the glow of the candlelight. “Hawkingposits that there are arrows of time. The first is thermodynamic, where theoverall disorderliness in the world increases over time, so despite our bestefforts to create order, the energy used has created more disorder.”

              “Soundslike my life, Scully,” he says, chuckling.

              “But thesecond arrow is psychological, where our sense of time flows in one directiononly – that’s why we only remember the past.”

              “So, that’syour complicated way of saying that we can only go forward if we learn from thepast?”

              “It is,Mulder. Life in the past is complex, but the future is simple. Because we can’tsee it yet.”

              “We cango forward but not with the person from the past in tow?”

              “I trulybelieve that we can go forward safe in the knowledge that wherever that personis, that other self, from the past, they stay behind us. They follow, but they’llnever overtake us.”

              He isgrinning again. Full on wide smile, teeth on show, dimples striped across hischeeks. “I like the thought of you always being on my tail, Scully. Whip inhand, ready to get me up to speed.”

              Shelaughs then. “What would Freud make of us, Mulder?”

              “I’m notsure I’m that ready, Scully.”

She walks up the stairs and checks out the covers of thebooks wedged against the banister. It’s only when she gets to the fourth stepthat she sees they are all the same – different covers, but the same novel. MobyDick. The story of two men: one obsessed with the hunt, the other desperate tounderstand what to make of the prey and the predator.

              “Youknow, Mulder. There are some theories that Moby Dick is much like physics. Ahab’snarrative is linear, his velocity is on a straight, immoveable line and Ishmaelis a force of digression, a disturbance.”

              “And yetit’s a book of everything that makes us human,” he says.

              “It’s aparadox,” she whispers.

              Hesnakes his arm around her waist and kisses her head. “Welcome home, Scully.”

[jrsechelon]

What Happens In Vegas

An intriguing start to the season has been met with rumblings and calls for one of the general manager’s jobs in the Elite Fantasy League. Black Hole Son has been met with several injuries in several key positions. Quarterback Dak Prescott continues to have lat soreness which he is rehabbing throughout the week. Before the official kickoff last week Black Hole Son’s front office got cold feet and dealt, Dak Prescott. Over the course of the last two and a half weeks, Black Hole Son has made seven trades! This is a new record. In a year where many felt there wasn’t going to be many trades there has been more than we could remember in recent memory. Not only has the front office in Vegas been rolling the dice more than the craps table, but they’ve been playing roulette with their draft picks like they are being forced to play Russian roulette. Buds Bums holds The Busy Killers 4th Rounder that was sent to Black Hole Son for Dak Prescott and Wayne Gallup after Black Hole Son and Buds Bums made a trade. The Busy Killers holds PURPLEHAZE’s 6th Rounder and Black Hole Son’s 7th Rounder, VanillaGorilla’s holds Black Hole Son’s 5th Rounder, and PURPLEHAZE holds Black Hole Son’s 2022 1st Round, 4th Round, and 11th Round.

Wheelin' & Dealin'

Black Hole Son in 2022 has two 5th Rounders (Buds Bums/PURPLEHAZE’s). PURPLEHAZE’s 10th Round, two 12th Rounders (PURPLEHAZE/The Busy Killers), and VanillaGorilla’s 15th Round pick. Just because you reside in Las Vegas, Sin City, a city of bright lights and a million casinos doesn’t mean you have to gamble your present and future away. What happens in Vegas surely doesn’t stay in Vegas when it comes to Black Hole Son. Although fans have complained about wanting their general manager canned, that happening is very unlikely. Before these Vegas fans and Oakland fans who will make the trip to Sin City in week 3 for the season opener, their beloved Black Hole Son’s will be traveling to Green Bay, Wisconsin to face off against LilShupeScoresBIGPoints. Both teams sitting at 0-1 after two heartbreaking defeats, going 0-2 is something neither team wants to face. Derek Carr played lights out last week against the defending Super Bowl Champions and almost pulled out the upset. Josh Allen didn’t have the type of game many expected against Evolution. The game wasn’t the home opener LilShupeScoresBIGPoints was hoping for, but now it’s time to reset and focus on week 2. LilShupeScoresBIGPoints will be looking for big points from Josh Allen and this potent offense, as well as expecting a boost from the foot of Graham Gano who is one of the better kickers in the league. Black Hole Son will continue to ignore the media frenzy and calls for the head of the general manager in hopes for a better outing from Ezekial Elliot and freshly acquired Devin Singletary which can take the pressure off Derek Carr who if he doesn’t have to be the magic man will have the opportunity to lead a balanced offense against LilShupeScoresBIGPoints. Being only their fourth meeting in the regular season all-time neither team has a specific edge over one another, although Black Hole Son leads the all-time record 2-1.

For the two teams that handed the L’s to Black Hole Son and LilShupeScoresBIGPoints, they will continue to look to build on the week 1 success. The defending Super Bowl Champions, Yuba City Sultans remain at home after holding onto the narrow victory against Black Hole Son in the home-opener and annual Thursday Night Football season kick-off game. Yuba City Sultans welcomes into their home the only 0-1 team within their division. Buds Bums, Lamar Jackson, and company enter Newark, New Jersey to welcome the defending champs in the Midwest-Atlantic Division. With the shift in the division when BroncosTillDeath sold their team and the Nashville Crocs became an official franchise, the Sultans are going to have to become familiar with three teams who have been in the same division against each other for many years now. 4-1 all-time against Buds Bums, Yuba City Sultans are most likely not shaking in their cleats.

Sultans Riding High

Through the years, Buds Bums have only had one winning season (2018); while Yuba City Sultans had four winning seasons, including last year when they ran all the way on the back of Derek Henry to the Super Bowl Title. Buds Bums has been in the league one season more than Yuba City Sultans but looking at their overall win/loss/tie record you can see completely different stories. Buds Bums holds a 32-65-2 overall, with this coming Sunday being their 100th game in franchise history. Yuba City Sultans on the other hand holds a 46-39-0 overall franchise record. Two teams who came into the EFL almost simultaneously but have had two completely different journeys. For Buds Bums to change the course of their journey, it starts with this game against the defending Super Bowl Champions. Evolution on the other hand surprised LilShupeScoresBIGPoints posting the second-most points in week 1. Evolution now travels across the country to face Hyrule Empire who had a difficult defeat in week 1. Evolution now travels across the country to face Hyrule Empire who had a difficult defeat in week 1. Traveling across the country will be tough to adjust to the time difference, not just that but Evolution is going to have to maintain the same high level of play they showed in week 1 in week 2 if they want a chance to defeat Hyrule Empire. Joe Burrow looked poised last week against VanillaGorilla’s but the early injury Mostert sustained hindered Hyrule Empire to get their running game established. For Hyrule Empire to find success in week 2, they will need to continue to rely heavily on Burrow to stay consistent and get a running game established early.

Burrow Poised To Succeed

Burrow is still young but has a lot of poise that screams veteran quarterback! Trevor Lawrence for Evolution looked more like a rookie than even Burrow did in his rookie campaign. It should be a fun game between two young and hungry quarterbacks. Overall this game may come down to which quarterback doesn’t turn the ball over more. That is why establishing the running game early is so important. Joe Mixon stands atop the leading rushers after week 1 but Hyrule Empire has a very shifty running game and two speedsters. Yes, losing Mostert is a big blow to this team that has Super Bowl aspirations; but the next-man-up approach always has to be something considered in football. Eli Mitchell will be ready to go. Hyrule Empire has a group of speed and shifty players in all positions including defense. Jalen Ramsey, Aaron Donald, and the rest of the defense will be licking their lips at the chance to get after rookie quarterback Trevor Lawrence. Evolution and Hyrule Empire haven’t met each other much over the course of the Elite Fantasy League, much like LilShupeScoresBIGPoints and Black Hole Son - but neither team will come on that field unsure of what the task is. Both coaches will have their teams ready, but for Evolution, it isn’t just battling Hyrule Empire, it’s battling the pacific timezone.

Another South-East team that has to travel to the Pacific timezone is the 0-1 Crocs. The Crocs along with Evolution will both be playing games in California in South-East division versus Pacific division match-ups. The Crocs will be flying out of Nashville late Friday night and land early morning in California. The Crocs got a taste of what the Elite Fantasy League is all about is a game that came down to the wire. The Crocs fell in 0-1 against division rival The Canadian Cripplers but showed many that they have what it takes to hang against these seasoned EFL teams. Now a week into the season and sitting at 0-1, the Crocs have a chance to push their record to an even .500 when they go against Black Mambas. Black Mambas was able to shut Aaron Rodgers down and do a ton of damage through the air with veteran quarterback Matthew Stafford. In another difficult game, Black Mambas defense will have to shut down Kyler Murray who is looking like a contender for league MVP. This being their first game against one another, the only tape footage that Black Mambas can use is what happened last week on the field against The Canadian Cripplers. The Cripplers couldn’t shut down Murray who at times looked unstoppable out there. He has all the tangibles to be one of the very best quarterbacks but as we mentioned on the opposite side of the field is exactly that; one of the very best quarterbacks. Matthew Stafford showed us that he is rejuvenated being in a new location and has all the focus and drive to push Black Mambas back to the postseason. Get ready, because this game between Stafford and Murray will be one that we don’t forget.

Patrick Mahomes, David Montgomery, and rookie receiver Ja’Marr Chase all had some huge games last week. Do you know who else did? Tyreek Hill, George Kittle, and Rob Gronkowski. At 1-1 in the all-time match-up between these two teams - I think this could very well be the highest scoring affair in week two. Balls Deep traveling to Cincinnati in week two gets a chance to pull their record to 1-1 and take the rubber match against Straight Edge Society. It’s been a while since we have seen Straight Edge Society as a dominant team in the EFL, but something tells me those days are going to be a distant memory this season. Balls Deep lost a tough one last week late, but they have no reason to hang their heads. In fact, Balls Deep should be inspired by the defeat and motivated to find a way to close out early.

Lance Or Jimmy G?

TJ Watt should continue to be motivated after the big payday prior to the season starting and tasting the bitter feelings of defeat, he’ll want to lead his defense over Patrick Mahomes the man who was voted number one in the Top 100 Players of 2020. Jimmy Garoppolo looked good last weekend but the decision to run Trey Lance out there makes one wonder if these are special gadget plays specifically for Lance or if Balls Deep is trying to get the rookie quarterback reps, no matter how little they may be. You can’t tell me Jimmy G couldn’t have dumped a short 5-yard end route to his receiver into the endzone as Trey Lance did. For Balls Deep to be successful this week against Straight Edge Society and their high powered offense, they will have to allow Jimmy Garoppolo to remain in that huddle. Any form of gadget plays that bring Lance in will only hurt Jimmy G’s ability to continue the chemistry building between him and his receivers. Trey Lance is a special talent and I understand why Balls Deep wants to bring him on the field, but you exposed yourself in week one. Straight Edge Society now knows what packages you have highlighted for Trey Lance. This affair between these two teams should be a fun one. A game that may come down to who has the ball last and which defense can sustain the opposing offense.

Ultimate Savages and The Canadian Cripplers are both playing back-to-back divisional games. Both teams went 1-0 against their week 1 divisional opponents, now playing another divisional game they have a chance to get an early lead within their divisions. The Canadian Cripplers are on back-to-back road division games early. This is a tough test but for a team that is based in Canada, it can be an even bigger pain. Lucky for them though, if they go 2-0 now they will be hosting these two teams later in the season when the weather in Canada becomes a bit more frigid. For The Canadian Cripplers, they travel to Dallas, Texas to face off against their biggest rival, The Busy Killers. The Busy Killers took a remarkable late week 1 lead against Balls Deep and was able to hang on. For The Busy Killers, this is a game that brings flashbacks to the minds of the players and coaches. Week 14 last year The Cripplers hammered the final nail in the coffin of The Busy Killers ending their postseason hopes. Week 2 is a chance for revenge. This game against two rivals will again most likely be decided on the foot of their kickers. Evenly matched in many areas on the offensive and defensive side of the ball, once again the game will be on the foot of their kickers. Bank on it to happen. The team that has the ball last will heavily have to rely on their kicker to seal the game. Last week The Busy Killers sealed their game with the foot of their kicker, The Canadian Cripplers on the other hand was able to seal their game with a late turnover.

Rodgers Versus McCaffery

Crosby didn’t have many chances due to a defense that was rushing all day, but The Busy Killers are more familiar with The Canadian Cripplers antics than the Crocs so Crosby will have to be ready at a moments notice. Ultimate Savages and Rainelo Hawks renew their rivalry also. This just like The Busy Killers is a chance for revenge for Rainelo Hawks. The Rainelo Hawks needed a win last year in week 14 to capture their division. Instead, they failed to win and fell 0-2 against Ultimate Savages. Both teams reside in Seattle, the travel time isn’t bad at all but being the “Away” team in your own stadium has got to feel different. For Ultimate Savages, they will get to experience that. Unphased last season with this Ultimate Savages will look to continue the punishment and take the city of Seattle from Rainelo Hawks who has long been established there. Rainelo Hawks and Aaron Rodgers got to get things figured out because several media analysts believe Rodgers may not be “all in” when it comes to football. We know one thing though, usually when Rodgers has a terrible game, the next game he ends up putting up around 3-5 touchdowns and over 400 yards. Should we go back to R-E-L-A-X; cause I believe Rainelo Hawks and Rodgers will be just fine.

Last week we got a treat when Rainelo Hawks and Black Mambas renewed their old rivalry back from the days they were in the same division. Week 2 we get another chance to enjoy an old division rivalry being renewed. PURPLEHAZE travels to Chicago to take on VanillaGorilla’s. These two teams go back a long time. This isn’t only an old division rivalry being renewed for the sixteenth time, but it is a Super Bowl III rematch where VanillaGorilla’s defeated PURPLEHAZE. VanillaGorilla’s was able to pull out a huge victory over Hyrule Empire last week, even on the heels of star wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. being ruled out right before kickoff. VanillaGorilla’s was the number 1 seed last year in the postseason and they looked just as well last week. The defending Mountain-West Division Champions, PURPLEHAZE didn’t have an answer for Ultimate Savages last week. Much like Black Hole Son, PURPLEHAZE has been surprisingly active within the trade market. For PURPLEHAZE though, they have acquired quite a bit of extra early-round draft picks while giving little away. PURPLEHAZE looks like a team that is focused on trying to win now but is also building for the future. Nothing is certain and nothing

Rivalry Renewed

suggests that PURPLEHAZE is giving up on the 2021 season; instead, they are just securing what they can for the next several years while hoping for a successful 15th season. VanillaGorilla’s holds the overall win/loss/tie record over ex-rival PURPLEHAZE at 9-6-0. Last week we saw Russell Wilson cook and boy did he look refreshed to be in a new city. Throwing for 254 yards, 4 touchdowns, and 0 interceptions, we talk about Kyler Murray being a favorite for league MVP, but Wilson will and should be in that conversation too. Losing Josh Jacobs for this game will be a tough go for PURPLEHAZE. Acquiring rookie Kenneth Gainwell and Brandin Cooks from Black Hole Son for Devin Singletary should help but having to rely on rookie running backs might be too much to ask for.PURPLEHAZE and VanillaGorilla’s aren’t unfamiliar with each other though and that gives PURPLEHAZE a better chance against this dominant Chicago franchise. If you think for one moment that PURPLEHAZE will lay down for VanillaGorilla’s you’ve got another thing coming. Yes, VanillaGorilla’s are favored. Yes, they have the better team but any given Sunday, anything can happen. PURPLEHAZE and VanillaGorilla’s met last season in week 2 where VanillaGorilla’s put a shellacking to PURPLEHAZE - Though many feel PURPLEHAZE may be the worst team this year if I was a betting man I may just put some money on these purple people to pull out a massive upset over VanillaGorilla’s who last lost to PURPLEHAZE week 3 of 2019.

[courtikate26blog]

Alaska 2021

Jon and I went to a place on our bucket list this summer. Alaska. Now... Alaska is so insanely massive we barely made a scratch, but I’ll share some about it!

We flew from Minneapolis to Anchorage, which was a much longer flight than I would have thought. I’ve always pictured Alaska right next to Washington, and while some of it is... the majority of it is not! It is FAR away. I have the iPhone find my friends app and told my friend to check my location. (So past version of me, for the record, it is not right next to Washington.)

The plane ride was pretty normal until it wasn’t. It was beautiful! Mountains and glaciers galore!

A couple from the plane:

We landed after close to a six hour flight. The airport had the northern lights which I thought was pretty cool.

We rented a car as our plan was to city hop around the southern part of Alaska. Their car rentals were really expensive, so we just got the cheapest “compact”. It took us quite a while to find our car as it was sandwiched between two other normal sized cars, and ours was... stunted. Couldn’t even fit our bags in the trunk. 😂

We puttered into Anchorage and stopped at a salmon stream, realizing beauty was everywhere. We hadn’t even been on the ground for an hour.

The hotel we stayed at was right next to the railroad. I love trains, and love hearing them in the middle of the night, but these whistled every hour through the night right next to us - definitely loud!

The “Land of the Midnight Sun” was that indeed. I took this picture from our hotel room at 12:58 AM. Sunset was after 11pm, and it would stay sunset until about 4am when it was bright and sunny again. Never really got darker than this.

We left Anchorage in the morning and drove to Palmer, about 45 minutes north. Jon’s grandpa lived there for a short while when Palmer was being developed. The house he lived in is still there and is now a museum to learn about Palmer’s history, which is actually really interesting. In a nutshell, Franklin D. Roosevelt started relocating about 200 families to Palmer from northern Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan after the Great Depression (starting in about 1935). They had a long journey, taking trains to California before boarding a transfer ship to Alaska. They were only allowed a certain amount of goods/items to bring with them. In Palmer, they received a designated house (although they lived in tents until the houses were built), 40 acres of land, and tools/equipment to begin farming the land, developing the city, and increasing the population of Alaska. Jon’s grandfather was there for less than a year in 1940 before being drafted into World War II. Here’s a few of his house (which he shared with another family):

We continued on to go horseback riding. There were TONS of mosquitoes, but the scenery was amazing! 

https://youtu.be/NrIlJZIIJsI Horseback Riding

After horseback riding we walked across from our accommodations to eat. They had a large outdoor area with live music, great food, and beer. And the best part - the scenery!

We stopped on the way to Seward to hike up a mountain where an old abandoned gold mine was. We never made it all the way to the gold mine, but the mountain walk was really cool. We were high up so it was cold, and it was lined with snow, a river, and clouds - that were close being that we were so high up.

We continued the drive and stopped for a couple views along the way.

We took a detour to go to Whittier. The only way in and out (by car) is via a train tunnel. It’s narrow, carved out of a cliff, and has waterfalls going down through the inside along the rock. It’s not wide enough for cars to go both directions at once, so you need to line up on either side and wait for your turn - they let cars go into the city once an hour and out of the city once an hour. 

https://youtu.be/x_k23VdKjX0  Whittier tunnel

In Seward, we went kayaking through Glacier Bay. It was a 45-min boat ride out and was really rough!  We did see an otter though which is always fun. Once in the bay, we suited up in our wetsuits and went out!

https://youtu.be/q68Xn_IEMTg Boat Ride Out

Then back into Seward.

We went to the Alaska Sealife Center and got really close to some puffins! (And no, I’m not pregnant, I was just wearing a double layer of clothes that all gathered at my stomach).

The next day one of our tours was cancelled, so we went hiking in the Exit Glacier area - and I’m glad we did! Saw some moose, and the glacier was incredible to see up close!

The next day we went on a whale watching tour. Saw orcas, bald eagles, sea otters, and sea lions! Stopped for lunch on the way and had some reindeer dogs.

https://youtu.be/XcGr037-ozI Orcas

On our way to Homer we stopped to gold pan. Actually ended up with some gold and a garnet! Then continued on to Homer, and went King Salmon Fishing!

https://youtu.be/eDCbRDCLhrw Gold panning

I caught two King Salmon - a 45lb and a 40lb. They were too big to keep, so he released them at the side of the boat (so no picture of us holding up a huge catch). 

https://youtu.be/IrikORLEfJY Salmon Fishing

We stayed on the Homer spit, which really felt like the tip of the world. We went to the Salty Dawg which is a famous little hole in the wall. People leave dollar bills all over the walls and ceiling. They don’t even have beer on tap - just bottles, cans, and hard liquor.

Homer had a little fishing hole that was pretty popular. When tides were high the Salmon would swim in, and when the tide dropped they would be stuck in this little area. 

Jon went Halibut fishing and caught a bunch! Could only keep two, but they were big and we ended up bringing home a lot of fish! They fileted it on the boat, vacuum packaged it, and boxed it up with ice. We brought it on the plane as a oversized checked bag and have been eating fish every other night since we got back. ;)

Another day we went to Seldovia, which is an old fishing village that isn’t accessible by car. The only way to get there is by plane or boat. In the late 1700′s there was a Russian fur trade post there as well as a bustling marina which made Seldovia a popular stop for anyone coming to Alaska. However, once cars became a thing, Seldovia became obsolete as there were other cities more easily accessible. Homer became the new big “thing”. Seldovia’s population in the 2000′s is only about 250. The houses are all built on stilts as the tides rise and fall 25 feet throughout the day.

The next morning we headed back to Anchorage. Stopped for a couple scenic views along the way.

All in all it was a pretty amazing trip. I’ve heard one of two things mainly when mentioning Alaska. Either, “Wow that’s on my bucket list!”, or, “Alaska? Why would you want to go there??” It’s a pretty awesome trip with some pretty awesome history.  I highly recommend it!

[fatbadjah]

To those whom I’ve disappointed and to those to whom I am disappointing...

On Monday I demonstrated that common sense, good judgment, and I are not always the best friends.  I learned about a social event that I was not involved in, and I felt hurt, left out, emotionally neglected and replied out of pain.

I hurt others in a moment of weakness, and for that, I apologize and ask forgiveness.

For me, one of the most iconic images of the 90s was a clip from Blind Melon’s “No Rain” video. In it, a little girl in a bee costume is ridiculed after a dance performance, and spends the song wandering the street…again facing derision and ridicule from strangers. Then, at one point in the song, she sees a gated field. In it, she sees others in bee costumes, dancing around. She pushes through the gate and joyously cavorts—having found “her” people.

I’ve come to define these moments of social connection “bee girl” moments. Most of us have them—especially in the furry fandom.

Like most, I was interested in anthropomorphic animals since I was a child. After reading The Wind in the Willows in third grade, I wanted to join that created family of Rat, Mole, Toad, and Badger. In the mid 80s, I saw Animalympics on HBO until I knew the songs by heart. Likewise, seeing Rock and Rule on the Movie Channel in early 1986 not only furthered my interest in anthropomorphics, but expanded my musical palate out a bit. I started collecting comic books in 1987, as quarter bins were bursting with remnants of the Black-And-White boom—many of which were anthropomorphic attempts to become the next TMNT. When I played role playing games or video games, I gravitated towards any animal-themed races, classes, or characters.

Frankly, I thought I was weird and the only one.

In December 1993, I saw a clip of an event called Confurence on the then-new Sci-Fi Channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iodRjbBKB0k). For the first time, I knew that there were others out there like me…that I wasn’t alone.

Florida State University, like many universities in the early 90s, restricted their student Internet access to engineering and computer science students. If you weren’t in one of those disciplines, the assumption was that you didn’t need to access the Internet. Of course, once I’d seen the Internet, that didn’t stop me. I’d learned a little UNIX trick that allowed me to access a raw Telnet in 1992, but I didn’t know what USENET was until January of 1994, when FSU began selling Garnet accounts to students—a basic Internet account with Telnet, email, a few other early 90s goodies, and USENET access. One Friday night, as I was diving through the sea of alt and soc groups, I found one called alt.fan.furry. The group was buzzing about an event called “Confurence” which was happening that weekend in Orange County, California.

I had my “bee girl” moment. I soaked up every zine I could find. Alt.fan.furry was my new hangout. I had an account on Furrymuck and explored more.

I felt like I belonged somewhere. I made a trip in January 1995 to Confurence Six and soon connected with virtual friends.

I wanted to get more involved. I wanted to give back. I didn’t want to just be a passive fandom participant. I put my art out there—though I knew I would be mocked and ridiculed for my lack of skill (I was). I started the first openly gay furry zine, Ten Furcent, in 1995.I published a comic book, Milikardo Knights, in 1997. In 1999, when Ed Zolna’s Mailbox Books folded, I was one of several who tried to open a zine distribution business to fill the void—mine having been Bronzebear Media. And in 2001, I founded Florida’s first furry con, Furry Spring Break, which folded after an internal coup in late 2001 and became an event you may be familiar with today.

Yet while most (sane and rational) people would have denounced the fandom and moved on, if not taken up ranks with folks like the Burned Furs (whose ranks were pretty much filled with fandom failures who could not adapt to the growing and changing nature of the fandom and began pre-Trump cries of “take back our fandom!”) and becoming toxic and bitter fandom saboteurs, I stayed in to help how I could. I involved myself with the staff of events like Mephit Furmeet, Furry Weekend Atlanta, and Midwest Furfest.

In 2011, I took a break. I finally realized after a social breakdown that I was grinding metal and stepped away. I’d moved to North Carolina in the wake of the Great Recession, and I decided to focus on my career. Thus, for years, I was the guy at the Triangle Area Furries meets who stood off to the sides and only chatted with one or two trusted friends, as I licked my metaphorical wounds from the 90s and 00s.

But I never quit, I never left, I never got bitter, and I never tried to sabotage the fandom. For me, furry fandom was my family. You don’t abandon family because of a few toxic relatives. Like the odd cousin at the family gathering, I just stepped away a bit because the obnoxious aunts and uncles had finally taken their toll.

In 2015, I finally got some forward motion on my career and returned to fandom activities, with MFF 15 being my first con back since 2010. In the summer of 2016, I thought about the fact that there were no cons or large “destination” events in or around Raleigh, in spite of the large community. I talked to an old friend, and in early July 2016, Tarpaw Furmeet was born. We staged a “practice” event in November 2016, which then gave way to events that grew in May and October of 2017. As they grew, we eventually had a staff, with whom I started to bond.  People were friendly to me at the Triangle Area Furries events and actually started to talk to me.

I actually thought that I was “in,” but got blindsided by my social eagerness, as several of you now know.

To really get this, you need to understand a little of my history and romp through some trauma baggage. I was in a family with two emotionally abusive parents. I not only heard the constant barrage of how I was “not good enough” from both, but during their divorce, each specialized their skills by projecting their spousal loathing onto my brother and I.

My mother played the diehard Christian card, completely modernizing the “spare the rod, spoil the child” concept by making my brother and I draft up “contracts” that opened with “PAIN + FEAR = RESPECT” then laid out multiple violation clauses. Usually, the clauses in these contracts varied by my mother’s mood and often had a bad habit of doing so when she’d had a bad day at work.

My father, meanwhile, decided to simply deploy a forever-scarring tactical nuke on a school morning in early 1981. As my mother was helping my brother and I dress, my father came downstairs, looked at us all and said simply “bye guys, have a nice life” before walking out the door. We knew our parents  were divorcing, so my brother and I spent five minutes trying to persuade him to stay—and by “persuade” I meant that my mother held one sibling while the other sibling laid behind the tires of Dad’s Corvette, then swapped places when she would pull the other one from behind the tires. A few hours later, when I had a hysterical breakdown in my third grade classroom, neither my teacher nor principal believed me. I was sent to the office, and the principal called my father’s office to follow up on the “lie.” Upon calling my father’s office, I was told that he’d flown to Acapulco to holiday with the women he was (then) leaving my mother for. My mother at least intervened to back up the “have a nice life” story, because I had to go home since I was a basket case. Dad came back tanned and whored, and acted like nothing had happened—not even an apology.

Since then, I’ve had a nagging fear of abandonment and all purpose fear of letting people get control over me. I’ve tried to address it by simply not letting people connect to me emotionally and living a life of fierce self-sufficiency. I’ve heard “aloof” pushed on to me so many times in my life, I’d have assumed it was my name if I didn’t know better. After all, I figure, everyone leaves me eventually…so why attach to them? Likewise, my other coping mechanism is to just quit when things turned bad—a trend in my early relationships. Imagine that Kermit/Dark Kermit meme: “Things going bad in the relationship… Bail on them before they get to bail on you!”  I tried to not quit a spiraling situation once. I made the mistake of entrenching on Furry Spring Break when the coup’s instigator began to get out of control in mid-2001 and fought suicidal urges for most of 2002 once I’d been ousted.

I’ve been used to being left out of things. It was the hallmark of my adolescence. When it wasn’t a point-blank, mean girls style rejection (no seriously, I got “you cant sit here” in the school lunchroom), the reasons were a bit softer on the blow. “Sorry, we just didn’t think you were interested” or “Sorry but there just wasn’t enough room for you” were the popular go-tos.

Once, when I was fourteen, I let my guards down. My father went to the “country club” church in Flint Michigan, First Pres—the one where the shi shi white people went to escape the lower classes. One afternoon, I got a call from one of the students in “the Pipe,” their Wednesday night youth group. “Hey, can you come to the meeting tonight? We’d love to have you there!”

I was beyond elated. Someone called me to come out. They wanted me out there.Me, worthless, stupid me. When my father got home from work, I told him in no uncertain terms that I had to go to church that night, for the Pipe. When I got there, people were friendly towards me. Then the meeting started. Eventually, one of the leaders came out playing “Sasha Cashachek,” a taunting (yet Christian) Russian femme fatale (it was 1986. Russians and Iranians were stock bad guys then) who was gloating that the Pipe wouldn’t make their ski trip. Eventually, we stopped for snacks, and a few people came up to me during the break.

“So we know you like to ski, and we’ve got a big weekend ski trip scheduled to (some shi shi place I can’t remember) in a month, but we need a few more people to help pay for it! Want to come?”

I told them that I’d already booked with my high school ski club on a trip to Killington, Vermont, and my dad was tapped.

“Oh.” No one talked to me as soon as I’d announced that. Not even a “goodbye” when I left.

Remember that scene in “A Christmas Story” when Ralphie learns that Little Orphan Annie’s important “secret message” was nothing more than an Ovaltine ad? I got the 80s church group version of it.

When I said no to the ski trip, I went back to either being invisible in that church group every Sunday (I never went to another Wednesday night meeting), or I existed only when I wore or did something worthy of social mockery. I never got an invite back to the Pipe.… After that, I shut down. I stopped trying.

Given that I’d taken to emotional avoidance since late childhood, I was used to it. I took jobs in college that kept me working Friday and Saturday nights, so I didn’t have to worry about feeling slighted from collegiate social events, and I always had an excuse when people felt crazy enough to ask me to do something. And as an adult, I became a hermit who spent most weekends alone, playing video games or working. I never kept friends because I didn’t think friends wanted to keep me around. I feel emotionally uncomfortable when people press me into social conversation…unless I’ve been drinking or that weird cluster of neurons has fired that say “we can trust this person Lighten up, badger.”

But I thought that things were going differently in the Triangle. I felt my guards dropping. I didn’t feel that “fuck! Fly now! Flee, fatass! Get small or invisible!” reflex when I talked to people.

So on January 1, 2018, I became aware of a New Years party via Twitter. I saw friends names. I saw friends pictures. And I didn’t even know about it. In a split second, I was caught off guard.

And I felt stupid. I felt like I’d been left out. Knowing that people there were talking about con plans, I had fears of another Furry Spring Break style coup. But most importantly I felt worthless, like I did in childhood and adolescence because I wasn’t good enough to get invited. I felt like I’d made inroads, that people liked me and wanted me around, and I felt foolish for letting my guards down. It was like finding out that the people at the Pipe only wanted me there to make a ski trip happen, and threw me aside as soon as I couldn’t help them do it.

So I made a nudging reply that my invitation must have been lost. I later vented because I felt like all I was good for was making the con happen. Then the messages started piling in…

“No one owes you anything!”

And they were right.

And that was my mistake. I own that. No one has to be my friend, and no one owes me a damned thing. I had thought that because we had bonded as a staff, because we had broken meals together at staff meetings, that I was more important than I was in the collective zeitgeist —namely, that I’d finally gone from beyond being the “creepy” guy to someone that people actually wanted to know and interact with. Again, my mistake.

As our event has grown, I’ve been mulling over the #FurryOver30 hashtag from Twitter—the reaction to an ageist movement that suggested that anyone over 30 should leave furry fandom. As of 2017, I’d been a formal part of the fandom for almost 24 years, and at 45 years old, I’d more than outlived my socially-decreed “time” by the claimants standards. Likewise, as I was pulling locals together to build this event, I remembered a friend telling me recently that I’d been described to him as “creepy” by at least one local furry in the early ‘10’s, before I stepped forward to begin building things. Despite groups in fandom who told me I didn’t belong, I actually felt like I did here—like I wasn’t just “buying” my way in by making a convention happen in the area.

I had gotten a little comfortable and let my guards down. I had thought that I’d had my “Bee Girl” moment and found my community, and that being excluded from the party was a harsh reality check. So I got angry on Twitter. I apologize for any assumptions made, and I assure folks that I’ll maintain my social distance as I keep looking for my “bee girl” moment elsewhere in the fandom.

For four days now, the people I've hurt told me how I disappointed them.  That happens a lot, believe me.  Just ask my parents for the last fourty-five years, so it's nothing new.  If this is your first time, I'm sorry I hurt you.  I'm not always going to be able to be the unflappable badger, or an unmoveable rock.  I'm broken.  I've been broken most of my life, and for the first time in a long time, I feel like I'm on my way to being whole.  Only to be reminded of just how very far I have to go.  I'm not convinced I'll ever be whole?  But I'm going to keep trying.  And I'm hoping to keep trying with the those around me.

Once again, I apologize.

[jessejackreyes]

Twilight of an Empire Prologue

I managed to write something despite everything. Its not related to any of my major projects, but its different in a way that I like. Its interesting and a challenge to write so I enjoyed it. Its a prologue detailing the background of the au which I am tentatively calling Tyrannical Jack AU. The prologue is from an in universe text written by Gabrielle Adawe. There will be R76, a weird take on McHanzo, a weird take on Genyatta, a fun take on Pharmercy and probably more. Im thinking about Symbra.

Also on ao3

Twilight of an Empire

Prologue:

Excerpt from Life Under Overwatch

by Gabrielle Adawe

 Foreword

…

Let it be known that under my orders and supervision Gabriel Reyes created the strike team that would come to be known as Overwatch. His hand picked squad consisted originally of fellow super soldier Jack Morrison, ace sniper from the Egyptian army Ana Amari, genius mechanical engineer Torbjorn Lindholm, ex crusader Reinhardt Wilhelm and himself. It grew slightly as time went on, but all of the key players in the events that followed were from that original group or would join much later.

 From personal experience the five of them got off to a really rough start. They had different ideas of what to do, different styles of engagement and occasionally different beliefs about the righteousness of their cause. People have said, and I agree, that if it weren't for Gabriel Reyes leading Overwatch we would not have made it through the crisis. But something many who weren't there don't know is that if it wasn't for Jack Morrison, his second in command, keeping the peace between its members and helping them come together as comrades and friends Overwatch would have fallen apart before it even got going.

 Reyes was a brilliant tactician and a great field commander. He weighed his options carefully, listened to other people's opinions, but made decisions quickly when it mattered and took responsibility for them. So many of us came to have great respect for the man, but it was Morrison who talked to delegates from the various nations. He sorted out treaty details, convinced reluctant generals to listen to Reyes’ plans and convinced the UN of the need to grant Overwatch more and more authority.

 It was Morrison that convinced the Russian armed forces to share their experimental energy projection technology and the German’s their crusader shield units. He masterminded the think tanks that would help fight the Omnics during wartime and continued to make strides for Overwatch after its end. He convinced the world of the necessity of taking out the Omnium in Yugoslavia even knowing the sheer amount of civilian lives that would be lost. His words were greater weapons than the rifle he wielded.

 Jack Morrison did some of these things at the behest of commander Reyes, but we have learned after the fact that many of these were done on his own prerogative. He wanted these things done and was in a position to do something about it, so he did. At the time we did not question what he was doing, we trusted him. 

It is difficult to overstate just how important Morrison was to the original strike team and its success. We owe our victory to him almost as much as to Gabriel Reyes. It is important to understand who Morrison was in order to understand why certain mistakes were made. By the end of the war most of the delegates working for the United Nations had never interacted directly with commander Reyes. They had always acted through Morrison. The stated reason was that Reyes was not only frequently busy, but not a very good politician. Again from personal experience I can attest to the truth of the claim. Reyes was blunt and quickly irritated by, what he considered, pointless trivialities. He was happy to leave dealing with that to his second in command. The actual reason would come out much later, far after the war had ended and it was too late to change the course of things.

 As Overwatch’s successes grew more numerous Morrison was able to convince more countries to relinquish more resources, more forces and more control to commander Reyes. By the end of the war commander Reyes was de facto in command of most armed forces on the face of the planet. We believed at the time, and I still believe to this day, that, even after everything that came afterwards, most of it was necessary.

 We could not have our people fighting each other during the crisis and commander Reyes proved time and time again that he could show us victory if we let him. Morrison never let us forget every victory they pulled from the jaws of defeat, every life they saved. He made sure we understood what was at stake and we relented. It was only afterwards that we realized that Morrison had authored the Overwatch initiative himself. He knew every word of it, every authority we were granting Reyes as strike commander.

 In the heat of the greatest threat to humanity we signed so much away without a fight. Without understanding the ramifications, all because we listened to Jack Morrison and trusted commander Reyes. To this day I do not regret the faith I had in commander Reyes, but we all regret believing in Jack Morrison. At the conclusion of the crisis the Overwatch initiative that the UN had ratified called for the creation of a peacekeeping force under the Overwatch banner. It was supposed to protect us and help us rebuild after so much death, but it is where it all went wrong.

 People have asked why we instated Jack Morrison as strike commander instead of Gabriel Reyes after the transition to a peacekeeping organization. The answer to that lies in our history with the men. Few members of the UN had ever met commander Reyes and were told repeatedly that he was there to win a war and not to play politics. So politics were played with Morrison instead and he was damned good at it. I know now that he had planned to be named strike commander from the moment he drafted the Overwatch initiative, perhaps even further back, and we played right into his hands.

 He argued, and many others agreed with him, that commander Reyes made a perfect wartime commander, but he was a field commander. The new strike commander position was, in many ways, a glorified desk job. The kind of job we had always heard that Reyes hated yet Morrison excelled at. We all knew how close the two commanders were, there were rumors of them being romantically involved. It was so easy to trust that Morrison spoke for commander Reyes even then. We never even considered discussing things with the man himself, most of us had never even spoken a word to him. Everything was set up so perfectly as to make Morrison the only reasonable choice we had.

 There is a last bit to why he was chosen, his last carefully played piece in the game most people weren't aware that he was playing. The public adored him. Younger people may not remember how popular he was with the crowds, with the media. He gave inspirational speeches and was photographed saving children and puppies from Omnics. The public trusted the man more than the UN ever did. He let so many people down. We did not understand how ineffective the director of Overwatch’s office would be, how Morrison would ignore Petras whenever he pleased and would even have the legal right to do it.

 With Jack Morrison officially made the strike commander of Overwatch things changed dramatically. He managed to sweet talk funding from everywhere for his humanitarian efforts, his scientific efforts and through those for his peacekeeping efforts. The size of their armed forces grew, but everyone was too busy congratulating them for saving lives and advancing medicine and technology to notice.

 Morrison recruited the brightest minds, the best fighters, the most loyal soldiers and through them he enforced his will on the people. It took almost five years for people to start listening to the voices that were decrying Overwatch, calling it the tyrannical beast that it was. A series of operations in Europe and Northern Africa that led to tens of thousands of deaths were the final straw, the Horus massacres.

 Public outcry was swift and deafening. They had looked passed so many transgressions because they believed in Morrison’s message of peace and prosperity. But these massacres pulled public favor away from him. Director Petras, with the backing of the UN, condemned Morrison's actions publicly and demanded answers.

 The strike commander was brought before a council convened by director Petras to discuss what was going to be done. There were threats of shutting down Overwatch or at least removing Morrison as the strike commander. When they asked him what he had to say for himself he laughed at them. They were commanded by him to declare their condolences for the lives lost, but their unilateral support of Overwatch the next morning. He left without answering a single question.

 None of them did what they were told, they had not understood the threat he was levying against them. Petras went so far as to go out and condemn Morrison publicly that morning instead. He was found dead in his hotel room that night along, the rest of the council a few hours later. Everyone knew what had happened, the message was sent loud and clear. Crossing the strike commander would lead to death and no position would protect you from him.

 The presidents of Russia, the United States, France, Japan, Israel, Mexico, Brazil, as well as the prime minister of England all registered their outrage publicly within hours of the deaths becoming known. From research I have done after the fact I learned that everyone of them received a private call from commander Morrison that day requesting that they reconsider their hasty words. They refused, confident that their positions would protect them. Eight world leaders were dead within 24 hours of condemning Overwatch and its strike commander. It was the beginning of the true reign of strike commander Morrison.

 Some call me a coward for being one of the many who did not resist, who did not speak out against the tyranny that Morrison was creating. I can not truly deny this allegation. What had happened was unthinkable and we were scared. On some level I believe that dying a martyr's death would not have truly helped. We could do much more good for others if we were alive in our positions. But, I know that as much as that was true, I was truly afraid of what Morrison would do.

 To this day it is difficult to tell the difference between rumor and fact when it comes to the actions that Overwatch took in the shadows. Assassination, torture, blackmail, instigating wars, funding criminal organizations, human experimentation. The list goes on and on. The first group to die were a message that he wanted the whole world to see, others had their families threatened, were forced to watch horrible things happen, some were actually tortured. We were afraid, but our fears were not unfounded.

 While many detest me for cowardice, others ridicule me for my continued belief in commander Reyes. After all these years I believe that if we had not let Jack Morrison trick us into naming him strike commander, if the position had went to the one who deserved it most, then things would have been different, been better. I have had people tell me that I am crazy for this, but given the way Overwatch fell and what I knew about him it is the only conclusion I could come to.

 On that day in Zurich, four years ago to the day this book is published, Gabriel Reyes entered the Overwatch headquarters in Zurich. He planted explosives throughout the base and in the middle of a violent confrontation with strike commander Morrison the the building erupted in flames and Gabriel Reyes died. But, he took Morrison and Overwatch down with him. People who never knew the man claim he did it for power, that it was merely a coup, but those of us who met him, who saw what kind of man he was know better. We know that he died that day for us. He did what we could not even at the cost of his life, as he always had before.

 I have published this book on this day so that everyone will know what truly happened. Overwatch saved humanity from extinction, but after that, under commander Morrison it controlled us. He used the crisis to amass power for himself.

 Herein this book lies thirty years of Overwatch, its formation, it's victory, and its betrayal. Those who were complicit, those who aided them, worked for them, and those who resisted are all here as best as I could record them. It is my sincerest hope that these words, these events, this knowledge be passed on to those who did not live through it so they know what happened. We must understand so that we may never forget.

[ladystylestores]

Review: Palm Springs is a fresh, slyly self-aware addition to time loop trope

Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti relive the same day over and over in Palm Springs, now streaming on Hulu.

Last year gave us two innovative multiverse twists on the well-worn time-loop trope: the Netflix comedy series Russian Doll, and the horror/comedy Happy Death Day 2 U (a sequel to 2018’s Happy Death Day). One would think there wouldn’t be many new veins to mine in this subgenre, but Palm Springs rises to the challenge, delivering a slyly subversive, charmingly self-aware time loop tale that toys with audience expectations in subtly surprising ways.

(Some spoilers below, but no major reveals.)

Screenwriter Andy Siara (Lodge 49) wrote a draft of the script while still a student at the American Film Institute, although there were no science-fiction-y time loop elements in that version. He has said he was inspired more by Leaving Las Vegas than Groundhog Day. Eventually he reworked the script with the help of Director Max Barbakow (Palm Springs is Barbakow’s directorial debut), and Saturday Night Live alum Andy Samberg (Brooklyn Nine-Nine) signed on to star in the film. The film premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival (pre-coronavirus), and sparked a bidding war for distribution rights. Neon and Hulu ultimately shelled out a purported $17.5 million for those rights—the biggest deal yet in Sundance’s history.

Per the official premise: “When carefree Nyles (Samberg) and reluctant maid of honor Sarah (Cristin Milioti, How I Met Your Mother, Fargo) have a chance encounter at a Palm Springs wedding, things get complicated when they find themselves unable to escape the venue, themselves, or each other.”  It’s Saturday, November 9, of an unspecified year (although that date fell on a Saturday last year). Nyles is attending the wedding of Abe (Tyler Hoechlin, 7th Heaven) and Tala (Camila Mendes, Riverdale) with his younger girlfriend Misty (Meredith Hagner, Search Party), who is one of the bridesmaids.

Meanwhile, Tala’s sister Sarah, as the black sheep of her family, mostly deals with the nuptials by drinking heavily. (“It’s not good wine,” Daisy the barkeep warns her at the reception. “I don’t care,” Sarah responds.)  She also forgot to prepare the traditional maid of honor’s speech. That’s when Nyles steps in, delivering a note-perfect toast to divert attention from the drunken Sarah. Over the course of the evening, that initial spark of attraction strengthens, and when Nyles reveals that Misty is cheating on him with Trevor (Chris Pang, Crazy Rich Asians), Sarah agrees to sneak off with him for a hookup.

That’s when things get weird. Just as Nyles is stripping down, a crazy guy named Roy (J.K. Simmons, Counterpart) shoots him with several arrows. A badly wounded Nyles flees into a nearby cave, urging a horrified Sarah not to follow him. But she does, and finds herself sucked into a glowing orange vortex—before waking up in the same bed as before. It’s Saturday, November 9 again. When she confronts Nyles, he confesses that they are stuck in “one of those infinite time loop situations that you may have heard about,” reminding her that he warned her not to follow him into the cave.

Palm Springs sets itself apart from the outset, because when we first meet Nyles, he has already been “looping” for an indefinite, but clearly long, period of time—long enough that he has become cynically resigned to his fate of reliving the same day (and wedding) over and over and over. It also takes a page from Russian Doll, in that there is more than one person caught in the loop.

Sarah (Cristin Milioti) wakes up on the morning of her sister’s wedding.

YouTube/Hulu/Neon

The groom, Abe (Tyler Hoechlin), and the bride, Tala (Camila Mendes).

YouTube/Hulu/Neon

Peter Gallagher has a cameo as father of the bride Howard, with Jacqueline Obradors as step-mom Pia.

YouTube/Hulu/Neon

Nyles (Andy Samberg) horns in to give a speech at the reception.

YouTube/Hulu/Neon

Sarah is amused and drawn to Nyles.

YouTube/Hulu/Neon

He warned her not to follow him into the orange-glowing cave.

YouTube/Hulu/Neon

Nyles finds he is no longer alone in his time loop situation.

YouTube/Hulu/Neon

Sarah doesn’t take the news well at first.

YouTube/Hulu/Neon

Another wedding guest, Roy (J.K. Simmons), also finds himself stuck in the time loop.

YouTube/Hulu/Neon

Two crazy dudes snorting coke in a bathtub.

YouTube/Hulu/Neon

Sarah and Niles decide to revel in the absurdity of their situation.

YouTube/Hulu/Neon

A little target practice.

YouTube/Hulu/Neon

If you’re going to hijack a small plane, it might help if you know how to fly.

YouTube/Hulu/Neon

Putting on a show at the reception.

YouTube/Hulu/Neon

Sarah throws a party for Nyles at the local drive bar

YouTube/Hulu/Neon

The strength of this approach is that we get to experience the same looping day from different perspectives—and Nyles gets to watch Sarah work through all the various stages of processing her situation that he did, offering his jaded “been there, done that” commentary along the way. Think committing suicide will close the loop? “I’ve done a lot of suicides, so many,” Nyles said, advising that she make it as quick as possible if she’s going to try it. “We can’t die but the pain is very real. There’s nothing worse than dying slowly in the ICU.” When she drives back to her home in Austin, TX, she still wakes up back in Palm Springs. “One time I smoked a bunch of crystal and made it all the way to equatorial Guinea,” Nyles confesses. “It was a huge waste of time.”

Eventually, she comes around to his philosophy that nothing matters and they might as well have some fun to pass the endless days. And as with Groundhog Day, Nyles soon realizes he loves Sarah, the person who made his infinite time loop existence tolerable. But Palm Springs isn’t your typical rom-com morality tale about becoming a better person to win the girl. Both Nyles and Sarah were damaged and unhappy before they got caught in the loop, and the second half of the film takes on a more earnest, bittersweet tenor, as their facade of pretending not to care starts to crumble. This is evident when Nyles chastises Sarah for a particularly cruel act against another character, which she excuses because the day will just reboot anyway. “The pain is real,” he reminds her. And that means “what we do to other people matters.”

When it comes to fictional time loop science, less is always more.

Can you really know somebody if you nothing about their past? What if every day you wake up, you are reminded anew of the pain you caused someone you love? Or, perhaps worse, what if you had a pretty good life, and now will never get to see how it all unfolds? The film explores all of these questions, to varying degrees, and takes us to some unexpected emotional places in the process.

As for what caused the time loop in the first place, it has something to do with an earthquake during the wedding that reveals the mysterious cave with the glowing orange light. Eventually Sarah takes advantage of the infinite loop to learn some physics. She hypothesizes that the cave is home to a so-called “Cauchy horizon”: a theoretical point inside a black hole (beyond the event horizon) where determinism breaks down, and the past no longer determines the future.

It’s not a well-fleshed out (or scientifically accurate) explanation for a time loop, but that’s okay. Milioti told Vulture that in the initial cut of Palm Springs, Sarah gives a three-minute speech explaining the physics behind what she and Nyles are experiencing, but it was cut in the final edit. “It was just so long,” she said. “And while it completely explained everything, they had all these screenings for friends and family and they were all like, ‘The speech is great, you don’t need it.’” When it comes to fictional time loop science, less is always more. (The physics-experiment-gone-awry explanation in Happy Death Day 2 U  was the weakest element in an otherwise entertaining film.) Just set up the rules of the game, and let the cause or origin of the loop remain a mystery.

I’m not a hardcore Samberg fan, but he gives a sweetly acerbic performance as Nyles, and his strong chemistry with Milioti is ultimately what makes Palm Springs work. You’ll be drawn in by the sharp, smartly irreverent humor, but you’ll be won over in the end by the film’s considerable heart.

Palm Springs is currently streaming on Hulu.

  Listing image by YouTube/Hulu

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[thrashermaxey]

Dobber Ramblings: Day Two of the NHL Playoffs; Gusev; Defence Scoring – April 12

  There may be reinforcements on the way for Vegas as Nikita Gusev, the 26-year old Russian who was traded to the Golden Knights by Tampa Bay as part of the package to draft Jason Garrison in the expansion draft, could be in Vegas soon.

You can read Gusev’s Dobber Prospects profile here.

Nothing is a done deal yet. Gusev is under contract in the KHL through the end of the month, which means some negotiating will need to be completed, and the Russian Federation has recalled him ahead of the 2019 World Championships, which is another hurdle. Then he has to actually make his way to Vegas and suit up. All the same, it would be exciting to see him in the playoffs.

*

Just a small thing, but Ilya Samsonov, Washington’s top goalie prospect, was on the ice for morning skate on Thursday. Barring catastrophic injuries, he won’t get into game action, but it’s still pretty cool to see him on NHL ice nonetheless.

*

Just for a bit of fun, there was an article over at The Athletic from Sean McIndoe about the “what ifs” of the draft lottery. These are games involving teams near or around the picks that would end up in the top-3 and how things would be different if small little quirks in those games hadn’t gone the right way. Hockey is about razor-thin margins, even when it comes to draft positioning.

*

The Leafs were flat-out the better team in Game 1 as they skated away with a 4-1 win over Boston. The speed from Toronto, combined with precision passing, led to odd-man opportunity after odd-man opportunity for the team. They even got a short-handed penalty shot when Mitch Marner broke free on a penalty kill (he converted). Frederik Andersen had to make 37 saves, but a lot of those saves weren’t near the quality of shots Tuukka Rask was facing at the other end.

Something to note: Jake Gardiner played 16:32 in this game, fifth-lowest among Leafs blue liners. That’s the second-lowest mark of the season for him, his lowest being 16:30 in the game he was injured on February 25th. The Leafs were nursing a 3-1 lead for much of the game so maybe Mike Babcock was just saving him unless they desperately needed him? Just something to keep an eye on.

*

Andrei Svechnikov scored a pair of third-period goals to make things interesting for Carolina, but Washington’s Lars Eller tallied an empty netter to seal a 4-2 win for the Capitals. At least for the first 20 minutes, this looked like a game between a defending Stanley Cup champion and a (mostly) young team with several players playing their first postseason contest.

Nicklas Backstrom had a pair of goals, including a beautiful curl-and-snap shot that beat Petr Mrazek on the glove side, using the Carolina defenceman as a screen.

John Carlson played over 25 minutes, registering three assists, two blocked shots, and four hits along the way.

*

Update on the late game in the morning.

*

Yesterday in these Ramblings I talked a lot about defence scoring trends. While there is a lot more to dig into, which I will dig into at some point in the offseason, I want to look at actual defence scoring. Let’s go through some of the offensive performances across the NHL this season.

  Erik Gustafsson

There is a whole lot going on here. Coming into the season, Gustafsson was a 26-year old who’d been drafted by the Oilers in 2012, spent a few post-lockout seasons in Sweden, bounced between the AHL and NHL for a couple years, and then exploded for 60 points this year.

Of course, what stands out immediately is that he shot over 10 percent. That’s pretty high for a blue liner. For reference, in 2017-18, Alex Goligoski shot 10.1 percent and followed that up this year with a 2.9 percent season; in 2016-17, John Klingberg shot 10.5 percent and followed that up in 2017-18 with a 3.9 percent season; in the same year, Nick Holden shot an insane 13.1 percent and that crashed to five percent in 2017-18. That isn’t to say every defenceman with a high shooting percentage always craters – Shea Weber has usually done pretty well – but the odds aren’t in Gustafsson’s favour.

That isn’t to say Gustafsson’s season is a fluke. When looking at additional stats like the rate at which he exits his zone or enters the offensive zone with possession and how he can find his teammates for shots via shot assists, we certainly see how good he was. Here’s how his 2018-19 season compares to the 2017-18 season another top-end puck-moving defenceman (from CJ Turtoro’s viz):

  As I wrote about yesterday on Eric Cernak, one season does not make a career, but despite the high shooting percentage, it was a marvelous campaign for Gustafsson.

The question is if he maintains his power-play role; he had more than 100 minutes at five-on-four over the next-closest Blackhawks defenceman. Henri Jokiharju looked great whenever they allowed him to play in the NHL and Adam Boqvist was a top-10 pick last year for the franchise and has been tearing up the OHL playoffs to the tune of nine goals and 12 points in eight games. It seems certain that unless he falls off the map (he won’t), Gustafsson should have the PP role for 2019-20. Beyond that? Less certain.

  Torey Krug

Speaking of Krug, we can only wonder the season he would have had if he had played 80 games. Among defencemen in the league this year, Krug:

Was third in points per minute behind Mark Giordano and Brent Burns

Was first in totals assists per minute

Was eighth in primary points per minute

Was third in primary assists per minute

Was 18th in shots per minute

Krug set a career-high in assists for a single season with 47 and did so in just 64 games.

It was just a marvelous season all around, but the true upside was limited by injury. It’s worth noting that his missed time was out of the norm for him; in his five previous seasons, he had never missed more than six games and averaged 79 games a season. I wouldn’t worry too much about some lingering injury history.

With Krug still in his prime and that Boston team loaded for another run next year regardless of how this year turns out, I would expect more of the same from Krug.

  Vince Dunn

When using the Dobber Tools report generator, we can easily find which defencemen led the league in individual points percentage (IPP) at even strength. IPP is the rate at which a player garners a point when a goal is scored with that player on the ice. You will typically see the elite defencemen; last year, the top-5 included Burns, Krug, Pietrangelo, and Klingberg. The year before it was Burns, Hamilton, Karlsson, Jones, and Shattenkirk. Some guys find their way into the top-10 with some luck – names like Skjei, Severson, and Braun appear – but they’re mostly top-end puck-movers. That’s what makes this list from 2018-19 so interesting:

    The two names that really stick out are Vince Dunn and Brandon Montour. We’ll save Montour for another day.

Dunn has long been thought of as an offensive defenceman. He had 99 points over his final 120 games in the OHL and had 45 points in 72 games as a 20-year old rookie in the AHL back in 2016-17. That we see him among the leaders in a category that helps point us in the direction of puck movers shouldn’t be a huge surprise.

Here’s the thing: there’s not a whole lot to support that Dunn is a top-end puck-mover from the blue line (yet). Without inundating with charts, his zone entry/exit rates and shot-assist rates pale in comparison to someone like Gustafsson. It’s worth noting that these numbers, specifically shot-assists, were a lot better in 2017-18 than in 2018-19, and this season’s tracking data isn’t yet complete. Maybe his numbers improved a lot in the second half as the rest of the team improved with him. I’m more than willing to give some time for more data to be collected before making a final determination.

All I’m saying for now is that I’m leery of predicting some sort of Gustafsson-esque breakout. There is still Alex Pietrangelo’s ice time to contend with and Colton Parayko isn’t someone to just eschew. Of course, Dunn is still just 22 years old, so the fact that we’re even talking about the possibility of him being a good playmaker from the blue line is a very good sign.

  Neal Pionk

When we look at the list of top producers per minute from the blue line at five-on-four, most of the names make sense. We see Krug, Byfuglien, Yandle, Hedman, and Rielly, among others. The defenceman who finished second in points/60 minutes at five-on-four this year (minimum of 100 minutes)? Yeah, I kinda gave it away. It was Pionk. In fact, over the last two years, he leads all defencemen in points/60 minutes on the power play. Yes, all defencemen. Granted, it’s limited ice time (140 minutes or so), but it’s been an unbelievable run.

I think a bit of caution should be used here. Pionk had a poor season defensively, as much of the rest of the team did. Tony DeAngelo had a good season for the team even if David Quinn wouldn’t play him every night. Kevin Shattenkirk is still lurking and I’m sure he’d like to have a rebound season of his own. I’m not entirely sure what the Rangers are going to do on the blue line next year. I’m not entirely sure the Rangers know what the Rangers are going to do on the blue line next year.

All I wanted to point out is that there could be some sneaky value should A) Pionk be a regular next year again and B) no one else is brought in. There are a lot of moving parts that can change in the next 5-6 months.

  Filip Hronek

Just wanted to include what a great season Hronek had. The 21-year old was among the top-10 defencemen in relative shot share at five-on-five. That’s in the league, mind you.

Hronek had 13 points in 22 games after his recall from the AHL in the middle of February, including nearly 22 minutes of ice time per night. By that point, the team was casting off, or getting ready to cast off, tradeable assets like Nick Jensen and Gustav Nyquist. Mike Green’s season was nearly over by that point. All this is to say that Hronek did fairly well down the stretch considering the Red Wings were largely a one-line team with Andreas Athanasiou providing some additional scoring. Pretty good for a rookie defenceman.

from All About Sports https://dobberhockey.com/hockey-rambling/dobber-ramblings-day-2-of-the-nhl-playoffs-gusev-defence-scoring-april-12/

[adambstingus]

The Tipping Point Of The Airline Industry (And How We Win)

United Airlines is really getting hammered right now. It’s not just the story of David Dao, the man who was beaten by security when he challenged their dipshit overbooking policies. Since the public turned Dao into a martyr unafraid to confront evil fascistic corporations that would be right at home in the RoboCop universe, United’s been accused of everything just short of being a literal Nazis.

Ah, I should’ve known better.

It doesn’t help that they’re also being accused of killing a gigantic rabbit that was well on its way to snatching the title of the world’s largest rabbit away from its own father.

The Washington Post/Annette Edwards Look deep into the bunny’s eyes and feel the emotional manipulation of my inclusion of the picture taking hold.

And let’s not forget the controversy the Dao story overshadowed, in which United booted two teenage girls off of a flight because a dumb provision in the membership program they were part of had deemed leggings inappropriate in-flight attire. And now there’s a professional golfer complaining that United broke his clubs. Even Delta Airlines has been getting some residual heat after they removed a guy from a flight because he went to pee when the “Please Don’t Pee Right Now, You’ll Just Make a Mess” sign was on.

A passenger getting his face rocked by sky cops is a big deal. The golf club thing probably shouldn’t even be a story, but it happened to a quasi-famous person at the worst time for United, so we’ll allow it and a dozen other trivial controversies into the hate party, because since the first 1980s standup comedian joked about being cramped in coach while people in first class get caviar foot massages, bitching about airlines is a cherished communal catharsis. United unwittingly turned itself into the outlet we needed to purge our frustrations with their entire shitty industry.

So every time a new headline pops up about an airline doing what they have always gotten away with (losing luggage, killing pets), our first reaction is to roll our eyes and say, “Seriously? This is considered news now?” And I’m saying, “You’re goddamn right it is. Or at least, it’s the only form of non-news I’m totally fine with them printing.”

Airports seem to be poorly run debacles no matter where you go, while airlines themselves have been raising prices for years. If the money’s going to the in-flight entertainment, I don’t think those four episodes of The Big Bang Theory in the headrest were worth the investment. Every decade of air travel brings with it a new set of annoyances and complaints exactly like those. We’re all permanently pissed that we have no alternative but to deal with this suppository in the sky that we can’t escape without accidentally killing hundreds of passengers in the process.

CBS Killing hundreds of fellow passengers seems like a fine alternative.

Whether all of this hate has any merit is irrelevant. Airlines can’t fight back against the shared cultural perception that they see us less like people and more like flying cattle so stir-crazy we’ll pay nine dollars for a ham and cheese engineered so we can also taste the torment we’re seeing, hearing, touching, and smelling all around the cabin.

The video of that guy getting beaten was a rallying point. It let us be mad at an entity which usually irks us, but not enough to call anything they do an injustice, even though our tendency to exaggerate minor inconveniences is begging us to consider the uncomfortable complementary pillow a civil rights violation. Once people have decided they hate someone, every trivial thing they do becomes another reason to hate them. The severity of the offense doesn’t matter; throwing your mom down a flight of stairs and liking peanut butter crunchy instead of smooth are on equal ground. When they sneeze, you want to tell them to eat shit and die instead of bless you, because of course Steve would sneeze. Sneezing is so typical of degenerate pricks like Steve.

We’re dragging out those delicious pent-up negative feelings as long as we can, using any flimsy reason we can, because it feels so good to be so mad, especially when the reason we got mad to begin with was so legitimately appalling. And we can do it forever. Each one of us has a camera in our pocket we will whip out to record anything we consider a sky tragedy with a speed that in another era would make us the fastest gunslinger in the West. From that perspective it all seems so entitled, but it’s not. All of it is an attempt at affecting some kind of change on an industry that’s always seemed like it doesn’t care about any of us, even if there were some objective scientific way we could prove that untrue.

If being obnoxious pricks who drag corporations through the mud online like they dragged a bloodied David Dao is what gets shit done, then so be it. People dogpiling their complaints the way they have is the least they can do. If you’ve got a problem on a flight, you can complain to the crew. When the problem is a larger systemic issue of disrespecting paying customers, no one’s going to pay attention to one person storming the gate …

… but they’ll listen to hundreds of thousands of us tweetstorming the gate. And if news outlets pick up on those viral outbursts and turn them into stories, so be it. This is the first time in history that we’ve been able to punch back against this shitty, shitty industry, and I’m all for it.

Luis is sharping his pitchfork, ready for whatever outrage comes next. In the meantime, you can find him on Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook.

The proliferation of beer pong and craft beer may have you think that we’re living in one of the peak times to get drunk, but humans have been getting famously hammered for millennia. Like a frat house’s lawn after a kegger, history is littered with world-changing events that were secretly powered by booze. The inaugural games of the Roman Coliseum, the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, and the Russian Revolution were all capped off by major parties that most attendees probably regretted in the morning.

Join Jack O’Brien and Cracked staffers Carmen Angelica, Alex Schmidt, and Michael Swaim, plus comedian Blake Wexler, for a retelling of history’s biggest moments you didn’t realize everyone was drunk for.

Get your tickets here:

For more, check out The 6 Most Badass Airline Pilots To Ever Stare Down Death and The 7 Worst Things Airline Pilots Have Done Mid-Flight.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out If Airlines Were Honest, and watch other videos you won’t see on the site!

Also follow us on Facebook, and we’ll follow you anywhere.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/08/30/the-tipping-point-of-the-airline-industry-and-how-we-win/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/164802662582

[samanthasroberts]

The Tipping Point Of The Airline Industry (And How We Win)

United Airlines is really getting hammered right now. It’s not just the story of David Dao, the man who was beaten by security when he challenged their dipshit overbooking policies. Since the public turned Dao into a martyr unafraid to confront evil fascistic corporations that would be right at home in the RoboCop universe, United’s been accused of everything just short of being a literal Nazis.

Ah, I should’ve known better.

It doesn’t help that they’re also being accused of killing a gigantic rabbit that was well on its way to snatching the title of the world’s largest rabbit away from its own father.

The Washington Post/Annette Edwards Look deep into the bunny’s eyes and feel the emotional manipulation of my inclusion of the picture taking hold.

And let’s not forget the controversy the Dao story overshadowed, in which United booted two teenage girls off of a flight because a dumb provision in the membership program they were part of had deemed leggings inappropriate in-flight attire. And now there’s a professional golfer complaining that United broke his clubs. Even Delta Airlines has been getting some residual heat after they removed a guy from a flight because he went to pee when the “Please Don’t Pee Right Now, You’ll Just Make a Mess” sign was on.

A passenger getting his face rocked by sky cops is a big deal. The golf club thing probably shouldn’t even be a story, but it happened to a quasi-famous person at the worst time for United, so we’ll allow it and a dozen other trivial controversies into the hate party, because since the first 1980s standup comedian joked about being cramped in coach while people in first class get caviar foot massages, bitching about airlines is a cherished communal catharsis. United unwittingly turned itself into the outlet we needed to purge our frustrations with their entire shitty industry.

So every time a new headline pops up about an airline doing what they have always gotten away with (losing luggage, killing pets), our first reaction is to roll our eyes and say, “Seriously? This is considered news now?” And I’m saying, “You’re goddamn right it is. Or at least, it’s the only form of non-news I’m totally fine with them printing.”

Airports seem to be poorly run debacles no matter where you go, while airlines themselves have been raising prices for years. If the money’s going to the in-flight entertainment, I don’t think those four episodes of The Big Bang Theory in the headrest were worth the investment. Every decade of air travel brings with it a new set of annoyances and complaints exactly like those. We’re all permanently pissed that we have no alternative but to deal with this suppository in the sky that we can’t escape without accidentally killing hundreds of passengers in the process.

CBS Killing hundreds of fellow passengers seems like a fine alternative.

Whether all of this hate has any merit is irrelevant. Airlines can’t fight back against the shared cultural perception that they see us less like people and more like flying cattle so stir-crazy we’ll pay nine dollars for a ham and cheese engineered so we can also taste the torment we’re seeing, hearing, touching, and smelling all around the cabin.

The video of that guy getting beaten was a rallying point. It let us be mad at an entity which usually irks us, but not enough to call anything they do an injustice, even though our tendency to exaggerate minor inconveniences is begging us to consider the uncomfortable complementary pillow a civil rights violation. Once people have decided they hate someone, every trivial thing they do becomes another reason to hate them. The severity of the offense doesn’t matter; throwing your mom down a flight of stairs and liking peanut butter crunchy instead of smooth are on equal ground. When they sneeze, you want to tell them to eat shit and die instead of bless you, because of course Steve would sneeze. Sneezing is so typical of degenerate pricks like Steve.

We’re dragging out those delicious pent-up negative feelings as long as we can, using any flimsy reason we can, because it feels so good to be so mad, especially when the reason we got mad to begin with was so legitimately appalling. And we can do it forever. Each one of us has a camera in our pocket we will whip out to record anything we consider a sky tragedy with a speed that in another era would make us the fastest gunslinger in the West. From that perspective it all seems so entitled, but it’s not. All of it is an attempt at affecting some kind of change on an industry that’s always seemed like it doesn’t care about any of us, even if there were some objective scientific way we could prove that untrue.

If being obnoxious pricks who drag corporations through the mud online like they dragged a bloodied David Dao is what gets shit done, then so be it. People dogpiling their complaints the way they have is the least they can do. If you’ve got a problem on a flight, you can complain to the crew. When the problem is a larger systemic issue of disrespecting paying customers, no one’s going to pay attention to one person storming the gate …

… but they’ll listen to hundreds of thousands of us tweetstorming the gate. And if news outlets pick up on those viral outbursts and turn them into stories, so be it. This is the first time in history that we’ve been able to punch back against this shitty, shitty industry, and I’m all for it.

Luis is sharping his pitchfork, ready for whatever outrage comes next. In the meantime, you can find him on Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook.

The proliferation of beer pong and craft beer may have you think that we’re living in one of the peak times to get drunk, but humans have been getting famously hammered for millennia. Like a frat house’s lawn after a kegger, history is littered with world-changing events that were secretly powered by booze. The inaugural games of the Roman Coliseum, the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, and the Russian Revolution were all capped off by major parties that most attendees probably regretted in the morning.

Join Jack O’Brien and Cracked staffers Carmen Angelica, Alex Schmidt, and Michael Swaim, plus comedian Blake Wexler, for a retelling of history’s biggest moments you didn’t realize everyone was drunk for.

Get your tickets here:

For more, check out The 6 Most Badass Airline Pilots To Ever Stare Down Death and The 7 Worst Things Airline Pilots Have Done Mid-Flight.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out If Airlines Were Honest, and watch other videos you won’t see on the site!

Also follow us on Facebook, and we’ll follow you anywhere.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/08/30/the-tipping-point-of-the-airline-industry-and-how-we-win/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/08/30/the-tipping-point-of-the-airline-industry-and-how-we-win/

[allofbeercom]

The Tipping Point Of The Airline Industry (And How We Win)

United Airlines is really getting hammered right now. It’s not just the story of David Dao, the man who was beaten by security when he challenged their dipshit overbooking policies. Since the public turned Dao into a martyr unafraid to confront evil fascistic corporations that would be right at home in the RoboCop universe, United’s been accused of everything just short of being a literal Nazis.

Ah, I should’ve known better.

It doesn’t help that they’re also being accused of killing a gigantic rabbit that was well on its way to snatching the title of the world’s largest rabbit away from its own father.

The Washington Post/Annette Edwards Look deep into the bunny’s eyes and feel the emotional manipulation of my inclusion of the picture taking hold.

And let’s not forget the controversy the Dao story overshadowed, in which United booted two teenage girls off of a flight because a dumb provision in the membership program they were part of had deemed leggings inappropriate in-flight attire. And now there’s a professional golfer complaining that United broke his clubs. Even Delta Airlines has been getting some residual heat after they removed a guy from a flight because he went to pee when the “Please Don’t Pee Right Now, You’ll Just Make a Mess” sign was on.

A passenger getting his face rocked by sky cops is a big deal. The golf club thing probably shouldn’t even be a story, but it happened to a quasi-famous person at the worst time for United, so we’ll allow it and a dozen other trivial controversies into the hate party, because since the first 1980s standup comedian joked about being cramped in coach while people in first class get caviar foot massages, bitching about airlines is a cherished communal catharsis. United unwittingly turned itself into the outlet we needed to purge our frustrations with their entire shitty industry.

So every time a new headline pops up about an airline doing what they have always gotten away with (losing luggage, killing pets), our first reaction is to roll our eyes and say, “Seriously? This is considered news now?” And I’m saying, “You’re goddamn right it is. Or at least, it’s the only form of non-news I’m totally fine with them printing.”

Airports seem to be poorly run debacles no matter where you go, while airlines themselves have been raising prices for years. If the money’s going to the in-flight entertainment, I don’t think those four episodes of The Big Bang Theory in the headrest were worth the investment. Every decade of air travel brings with it a new set of annoyances and complaints exactly like those. We’re all permanently pissed that we have no alternative but to deal with this suppository in the sky that we can’t escape without accidentally killing hundreds of passengers in the process.

CBS Killing hundreds of fellow passengers seems like a fine alternative.

Whether all of this hate has any merit is irrelevant. Airlines can’t fight back against the shared cultural perception that they see us less like people and more like flying cattle so stir-crazy we’ll pay nine dollars for a ham and cheese engineered so we can also taste the torment we’re seeing, hearing, touching, and smelling all around the cabin.

The video of that guy getting beaten was a rallying point. It let us be mad at an entity which usually irks us, but not enough to call anything they do an injustice, even though our tendency to exaggerate minor inconveniences is begging us to consider the uncomfortable complementary pillow a civil rights violation. Once people have decided they hate someone, every trivial thing they do becomes another reason to hate them. The severity of the offense doesn’t matter; throwing your mom down a flight of stairs and liking peanut butter crunchy instead of smooth are on equal ground. When they sneeze, you want to tell them to eat shit and die instead of bless you, because of course Steve would sneeze. Sneezing is so typical of degenerate pricks like Steve.

We’re dragging out those delicious pent-up negative feelings as long as we can, using any flimsy reason we can, because it feels so good to be so mad, especially when the reason we got mad to begin with was so legitimately appalling. And we can do it forever. Each one of us has a camera in our pocket we will whip out to record anything we consider a sky tragedy with a speed that in another era would make us the fastest gunslinger in the West. From that perspective it all seems so entitled, but it’s not. All of it is an attempt at affecting some kind of change on an industry that’s always seemed like it doesn’t care about any of us, even if there were some objective scientific way we could prove that untrue.

If being obnoxious pricks who drag corporations through the mud online like they dragged a bloodied David Dao is what gets shit done, then so be it. People dogpiling their complaints the way they have is the least they can do. If you’ve got a problem on a flight, you can complain to the crew. When the problem is a larger systemic issue of disrespecting paying customers, no one’s going to pay attention to one person storming the gate …

… but they’ll listen to hundreds of thousands of us tweetstorming the gate. And if news outlets pick up on those viral outbursts and turn them into stories, so be it. This is the first time in history that we’ve been able to punch back against this shitty, shitty industry, and I’m all for it.

Luis is sharping his pitchfork, ready for whatever outrage comes next. In the meantime, you can find him on Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook.

The proliferation of beer pong and craft beer may have you think that we’re living in one of the peak times to get drunk, but humans have been getting famously hammered for millennia. Like a frat house’s lawn after a kegger, history is littered with world-changing events that were secretly powered by booze. The inaugural games of the Roman Coliseum, the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, and the Russian Revolution were all capped off by major parties that most attendees probably regretted in the morning.

Join Jack O’Brien and Cracked staffers Carmen Angelica, Alex Schmidt, and Michael Swaim, plus comedian Blake Wexler, for a retelling of history’s biggest moments you didn’t realize everyone was drunk for.

Get your tickets here:

For more, check out The 6 Most Badass Airline Pilots To Ever Stare Down Death and The 7 Worst Things Airline Pilots Have Done Mid-Flight.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out If Airlines Were Honest, and watch other videos you won’t see on the site!

Also follow us on Facebook, and we’ll follow you anywhere.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/08/30/the-tipping-point-of-the-airline-industry-and-how-we-win/

[flauntpage]

DGB Grab Bag: The Bettman Sentence, Russia's List, and NBA Off-Season Jealousy

Three stars of comedy

The third star: Taylor Crosby. She's a goaltender at St. Cloud State University. You may have also heard of her big brother, but just in case you hadn't, she was nice enough to drop a mention of him into her official bio.

The second star: Justin Williams. As a diehard Leafs fan, I recognize Maple Leaf Gardens on top of that trophy. No idea what that cup-shaped thing behind it is, though.

The first star: Predators fan Andrew Fudge. OK, admittedly this one is only funny if you're not Andrew Fudge. Are you Andrew Fudge? No? OK, keep reading.

Yes, that's a diehard Predators fan who won tickets to a Stanley Cup Final game—and only realized it two months later. You can read the whole heartbreaking story here.

The Nashville Predators, sliding into your DMs like:

(Where Andrew is the linesman.)

Epilogue: This one has a happy ending.

Be It Resolved

This week, Gary Bettman appeared at a panel with the commissioners of the NFL, MLB, and NBA to discuss a variety of issues. As always seems to be the case whenever he gets near a live microphone, he said some things that annoyed hockey fans.

We've covered this sort of thing before, because it happens every few months. But this time, I'm not here to complain. No, this time, I'm bringing a solution. I've figured out one simple trick that will transform any random Gary Bettman soundbite from something that infuriates you into something that makes you nod and go "Yeah, that's fair."

I'm calling it The Bettman Sentence.

Here's all you need to do. Whenever Bettman says something about the state of the game, just recall that he's been NHL commissioner for 24 years and counting. That's already longer than three of the five men who'd held the previous title of President. He's going to pass Frank Calder within a few years. There's a decent change he'll even do what once seemed unthinkable and outlast Clarence Campbell.

Even that might be underselling it. While Calder and Campbell each led the league through tumultuous periods of major change, things just move faster these days. You could make a good case that 24 years in today's hyper-speed world should count for a lot more than 26 years back before most people had a television.

Everything about today's NHL, both good and bad, traces back to Bettman in one way or another. I know it. You know it. Every player, coach, GM, owner, and media member knows it. And it's a pretty safe assumption that Bettman knows it, too.

So whenever you hear Bettman complaining about state of the modern NHL, all you need to do is mentally append one more sentence: "And since I've been running this league since 1993, I take full responsibility for that."

That's it. Just imagine that sentence, in Bettman's trademark voice, and everything will be OK again.

Here, let's try it out. Take this quote from earlier this week, which probably had you bouncing your forehead off the nearest desk.

Bettman is basically complaining that the league doesn't get enough media coverage. But that's outrageous, because he's the one who bailed on ESPN and he lets the league be so boring and he's always picking fights with reporters and…

Calm down. Breathe deeply. And then, add the magic sentence.

"Historically, we have been underserved by traditional media. And since I've been running this league since 1993, I take full responsibility for that."

That's a perfectly rational thing to say, right? If you heard those words come out of Bettman's mouth, you wouldn't be mad at all. You'd actually think he was being downright perceptive. It's not like we're changing reality around here by making stuff up. Bettman really has been around since 1993. He absolutely knows that he's the most influential person in the modern history of the league, and probably the most influential ever, period. He knows that everything about today's game has his fingerprints all over it.

Would he say that out loud? Probably not. But he's thinking it, or at least he should be. So you should feel free to do him a favor and tack that extra sentence on for him.

Here, let's try another one:

"… and since I've been running this league since 1993, I take full responsibility for that." Boom. Suddenly, a comment that's transparently antagonistic at the worst possible time is transformed into a completely reasonable observation.

So be it resolved: From now on, every Gary Bettman quote where he's complaining about the state of the game gets The Bettman Sentence automatically appended to the end of it. "And since I've been running this league since 1993, I take full responsibility for that." Do that, and everything else starts to make a lot more sense. It will probably be good for your blood pressure, too.

Obscure former player of the week

This week, a Russian magazine unveiled its list of the country's 50 best NHL players of all-time. As always with these sort of projects, the end result made for some fun debate. They had Evgeni Malkin as the best ever, but you could make a case for Alexander Ovechkin, Pavel Bure, Sergei Fedorov, Pavel Datsyuk, Alexander Mogilny… the list goes on and on.

This week's obscure player didn't quite make the cut, but he is the subject of one of my favorite draft day stories, and that's worth something. He's defenseman Sergei Bautin.

Bautin was a big blueliner who played a physical style that earned him the nickname Bam Bam. He made his name with Dynamo Moscow, and won gold as part of the Unified Team at the 1992 Olympics alongside Sergei Zubov, Nikolai Khabibulin, Darius Kasparaitis and the subject of this week's YouTube clip.

By the time the 1992 entry draft rolled around, Bautin was 25 years old, but with the NHL opening up to European players and his international experience drawing attention, he had an outside shot at getting drafted. Hey, you could do worse with a late-round flyer, right?

Then the Winnipeg Jets picked him 17th overall.

To give you an idea of how off-the-board the pick was, consider this: Even Bob McKenzie didn't know who Bautin was, sending him into a live-TV scramble to figure out who the Jets had just used their first round pick on. It was a bizarre choice, but you know, that's what happens when your GM is Mike Smith, am I right, folks?

Bautin came over to North America and had a pretty decent rookie season, playing 71 games for Winnipeg and just narrowly missing out on team rookie-of-the-year honors. But he struggled in Year 2, and was traded at the 1994 deadline as part of the deal that saw the Wings and Jets swap goaltenders, flipping Bob Essensa for Tim Chevaldae. Bautin's stint in Detroit didn't go well; he lasted exactly one game before Scotty Bowman and the Wings sent him to the minors for being out of shape, reportedly after discovering he was a two-pack-a-day smoker.

Bautin would sign with San Jose in 1995, but once again played just a single game before the team moved on. From there, it was back to Europe, where he finished off his career, and presumably a few more packs of smokes.

Outrage of the week

The issue: The NBA off-season has been way more fun than the NHL's.

The outrage: [Folds arms and pouts.] It's not fair. Is it justified: It's been a rough summer for hockey fans, especially if you know anyone who's into basketball. It's like being a kid on Christmas morning, and watching your friend tear open a ton of cool presents. Blockbuster trades! Free agency intrigue! Front-office shenanigans! Crazy rumors! Look, he even got a traded first overall pick and a big-money offer sheet. You didn't even know those still existed.

Meanwhile, you're sitting there sadly unwrapping your discount Kevin Shattenkirk signing and trying to get excited about an Artemi Panarin trade. At some point, you just want to give up and trudge on back to bed.

It hasn't been all bad. We did get expansion, and that was kind of fun. And we might still get a Matt Duchene deal, if Joe Sakic's foot ever gets sore from continually kicking that can down the road. But yeah, let's not sugarcoat it: Compared to the NBA, our off-season sucks.

And it's nobody's fault, and there's really nothing we can do about it. This is just how the NHL has evolved in the salary cap era. Most GMs are too timid to make big trades. Offer sheets are mysteriously off the table. Teams go all out to make sure they sign all of their top players to long-term deals at the first opportunity, so nobody good ever gets to free agency. And then everyone bolts for the cottage midway through July.

Every now and then we'll get an exciting day, but that's the exception. It's not good or bad. It just is. We may as well accept it.

And sure, it's hard not to feel a little jealous of that NBA fan passed out from sheer excitement in a sea of wrapping paper and major headlines. And now he even gets to care about exhibition games? How spoiled can one kid be?

Ah well. If you're a hockey fan, this is your fate. We may as well make our peace with it.

(And then wait until the playoffs, when you're tearing into a big helping of "anything can happen" and basketball kid is stuck with "this is all pointless because everyone knows Golden State is winning again.")

Classic YouTube clip breakdown

Last week, we used this space to break down the unparalleled genius of Alexei Kovalev, as he shrugged off a vengeful Mike Keenan and labored through the greatest shift in NHL history. At times, Kovalev was the absolute best.

But other times, well, it's safe to say that the Alexei Kovalev Experience had its share of ups and downs. So today, let's balance out the scales with a look back at one of the downs.

It's April 13, 2004, and Kovalev and the Canadiens are hosting the Bruins in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference quarterfinals. The Bruins are leading the series 2-1, and just scored in the dying seconds of regulation to tie the game. Now we're midway through the second overtime, and it's safe to say that it feels like a must-win for Montreal.

Luckily, Kovalev has the puck in his own zone. I'm sure this will turn out great for Montreal.

Our hero decides to cut along his own blueline, which is a reasonable move given the Bruins forwards are heading off on a line change. But Travis Green reaches out and lightly taps him in the hands on the way by, and tragically this causes Kovalev to immediately die.

Well, OK, not quite die—but it's close enough. Kovalev bails on the play, selling the tap for all its worth in an attempt to draw a penalty. This being playoff overtime, the ref immediately checks to make sure Kovalev's arm is still attached and then puts his whistle away.

Realizing that there's no penalty coming, Kovalev jumps back in the play and delivers a textbook open ice check on the puck carrier. Unfortunately, that puck carrier is teammate Sheldon Souray, and that springs Glenn Murray on a breakaway. Anyone who has every watched hockey knows exactly what's about to happen.

Sure enough, Murray beats Jose Theodore to end the game, and the Bruins pile onto the ice to celebrate.

My favorite part of this clip is the crowd reaction. You can actually isolate the Kubler-Ross five stages of Montreal Canadiens fans watching this play unfold:

1. Ho hum, nothing is happening

2. Oh was kind of a slash

3. Umm guys…

4. UMM GUYS

5. NOOOOOOOOOOO!

(Stage 6, as always, is rioting.)

The celebration pile includes the usual fun sightings. There's Joe Thornton, in the middle of the pointless playoff run that convinced the Bruins they couldn't win with him. There's former Canadian Olympian Rob Zamuner. There's Michael "Father of William and Also That Other One" Nylander.

And there's the Bruins' rookie head coach, who looks vaguely familiar. Yes, it's good old Mike Sullivan, fresh off an impressive 104-point debut. He'd be fired by the end of the following season, and wouldn't get another shot in the NHL until Pittsburgh hired him a decade later, midway through the 2015-16 campaign. Don't tell me how that turns out, I'm going to binge watch the last few seasons over the weekend.

"This is your goal scor-rah…" I love Boston announcers.

We see the Canadiens leaving the ice, and they don't look happy. And they weren't, with Souray and coach Claude Julien both ripping Kovalev after the game for quitting on the play. They're not wrong, but I mean, Souray doesn't look great on this one either, does he? I know he's caught by surprise, but he's standing flat-footed at center ice while a forward breaks out of the zone, and he basically makes the worst possible play with the puck. Are we really going to pretend this is 100 percent Kovalev's fault?

[Thinks about the comedic implications.]

Yeah, this is all Kovalev. Motion carried.

At this point I have to address an issue I'm sure some of you are wondering about: Are we sure Kovalev was really faking here? I know I called it a tap, but Green really does give him a decent hack. Isn't is possible that he's actually hurt, and we're all pointing and laughing at an innocent (and injured) man?

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I'd like to present Exhibit A, which you may recognize from the case of the murder of the Quebec Nordiques. The prosecution rests.

By the way, that waved-off Sakic goal was so bad that it remains just about the only known instance of the NHL ever coming right out and saying one of its officials screwed up. That play doesn't get anywhere near enough run in the "worst call ever" conversation. Brett Hull and Kerry Fraser and Martin Gelinas were all bad, but none of them ended an entire team.

"Ya gotta suck it up in ovah-time, boys." I really love Boston announcers.

Anyways, the Bruins win to head back home with a 3-1 series lead, the Canadiens are in disarray over Kovalev's boneheaded play, and Boston sportswriters are writing about how this play will live in infamy as the counter to the 1979 too-many-men debacle. Anyone want to guess how the series ends?

Yes, of course, the Canadiens come back to win three straight, and Kovalev had assists on both goals in their 2-0 Game 7 win. As Mike Keenan could tell you, you do not mess with Alexei Kovalev, because he always wins in the end.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com.

DGB Grab Bag: The Bettman Sentence, Russia's List, and NBA Off-Season Jealousy published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[thrashermaxey]

Ramblings: Updates on Monahan, Palmieri, and Pageau; Zucker; Toffoli; Radulov – March 22

  Kyle Palmieri did not play on Thursday night following an injury suffered in Tuesday’s game. It has been an excellent fantasy season for the 27-year old with 27 goals, 50 points, over 200 shots, 40 penalty minutes, and a good chance at reaching both 20 power-play points and 100 hits should he be able to return to the ice in short order. That’s with missing Taylor Hall for over half the season, and the team running half an AHL lineup for the last few weeks.

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Sean Monahan, after missing a pair of games with an injury, was back in the lineup on Thursday night. Breathe easy, Flames fans. Or as easy as you can, I suppose.

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Buffalo had a pretty big shakeup to their lines in practice on Thursday:

  Zach Bogosian not skating today. Here are your #Sabres practice lines:

Sheary-Eichel-Nylander Sobotka-Mittelstadt-Reinhart Skinner-Rodrigues-Pominville Girgensons-Larsson-Okposo

Wilson-Thompson

— Joe Yerdon (@JoeYerdon) March 21, 2019

  We see big shakeups like this all the team when a team is top-heavy so I wonder how long this will last. To me, it always made sense to have Eichel play with Sheary and have Skinner on a separate line (Skinner proved long ago he can be very productive with, let’s say, less-than-skilled line mates). Maybe this is some sort of showcase for next year, particularly for Nylander.

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Jean-Gabriel Pageau was suspended for one game for his boarding play on Wednesday night, and that suspension was served Thursday night in Calgary.

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The 2019 Dobber Hockey Playoff Draft List is available now for pre-order in the Dobber Shop! It will be released on April 5th which gives fantasy owners plenty of time to get ready for their playoff pools.

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Jordan Staal took a hit to the head which resulted in five and a game for Yanni Gourde on Thursday night. It was an awkward play as Staal was falling as Gourde was going to hit him but all the same, it was a clear shot to the head and Gourde was in full control. Given Staal’s concussion history – he’s already missed significant time this year alone – it’s obviously a worry. He got checked out at the first intermission and returned for the start of the second and finished the game (even scoring a goal). Let’s hope nothing comes of this on Staal’s end.

Steven Stamkos had his second three-point game in as many nights in the 6-3 win, marking a goal and an assist in the contest. Nikita Kucherov only had one assist on the six goals, but it does give him 120 points on the season. Just an incredible performance.

Ryan McDonagh had a monster fantasy night with one goal, one assist, a plus-1 rating, four shots, three blocks, and a hit. He now has 40 points on the year to go along with over 120 shots, over 140 blocks, 90 hits, and a huge plus/minus rating. There hasn’t been much PP production given his usage, but it’s been a very good multi-category year.

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Florida’s top line did the damage in a 4-2 win over Arizona, as Aleksander Barkov had two goals, Jonathan Huberdeau had three assists, and Evgenii Dadonov had a pair of helpers. Those points push Huberdeau over 80 points, joining Barkov, with Dadonov pushing past 60. Just a wonderful season for that entire top trio.

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Carey Price saved all 28 shots he faced in a 4-0 blanking of the New York Islanders. That is Price’s fourth shutout of the year, a four-year high for him. He now sits with a .917 save percentage on the season and a .930 save percentage since Christmas.

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More updates in the morning.

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There is a quartet of wingers I want to discuss today, most of whom are enduring what may be considered down years, with one guy sneaking in because of a lower-than-expected total due to injury. One of these guys is a pending UFA, one of these guys is trade bait, and two of them are on teams that have had Cup aspirations for years but are now seeing their respective team’s window slowly close.

The first name is Alexander Radulov.

That Radulov is a disappointment this year is mainly because of injury. He’s nearly at a point-per-game pace with 60 in 61 contests but he’ll fall around the 70-game mark. With the top-end talent that Dallas possesses and a new coach in town, I’m sure a lot of people were hoping for an 80-point season from the 32-year old Russian. That hasn’t quite come to pass.

Radulov hasn’t really had anything spectacular about his season to lead to his near-point-per-game mark: his secondary assist rate is around the 70th-percentile at five-on-five, which is not extreme in the least; his Individual Points Percentage (IPP), or the rate at which he garners a point when a goal is scored with him on the ice at five-on-five, is actually a career-low at 64.8 percent; the team’s shooting percentage with him on the ice is under 10 percent, which is perfectly normal; he’s shooting 11.7 percent personally at five-on-five, which is high, but again not extreme. In other words, at least at five-on-five, Radulov is having a perfectly normal season.

There aren’t any problems on the power play, either. He’s earning about 15 seconds less per game but his production per minute has gone up. The difference was 0.28 PPPs per game last year and 0.26 this year, which works out to 1-2 fewer PPPs compared to a season ago. The difference is negligible.

Including peripherals like shots and blocked shots, it’s been a good year for Radulov. But can we expect this to continue? He’ll be 33 for next season and the forward core of that team is all getting older as well. If this team doesn’t improve offensively, can we expect him to produce around the same numbers in 2019-20? It’s a question I’m sure many fantasy hockey owners will wrestle with over the summer and there’s no good answer right now. 

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Coming off a year with 33 goals and 64 points, there were high hopes for Jason Zucker heading into 2018-18. With 21 goals and 39 points to this point this season, he hasn’t quite lived up to those expectations.

The biggest problem is that he’s shooting 7.2 percent at five-on-five, a career-low. Over the previous three seasons, he shot 10.4 percent on aggregate. With 166 shots on goal at 5v5 so far this year, that dip in shooting percentage means five fewer goals compared to what we’d expect if he was shooting his three-year average. If he were to shoot roughly his average from the last two years alone (12 percent), he’d have an extra eight goals and would be one shy of another 30-goal season. It’s easy to see why there’s been such a dip in goal production.

According to Evolving Hockey, Zucker’s individual expected goals rate at five-on-five is the exact same as it was last year. That would indicate to me that there’s at least a fair amount of bad luck involved here and not something that’s changed drastically in his play. Given that he’s shooting more with more ice time, we’d expect somewhere close to his level of production from last year, which he hasn’t reached because of that shooting percentage dip.

Zucker is still just 27 years old and though the Wild are kind of re-tooling, they should still have a strong core for next season with rising young players. If I had to make a bet today, I would wager that Zucker will be an easy buy when fantasy drafts roll around in six months.

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I know 14 goals and 31 points is a letdown fantasy-wise, but let’s be clear about the Islanders here: they’re one of the worst scoring environments in the NHL. They’re 21st in goals/60 minutes at all strengths in the NHL, worse than the Oilers and just ahead of the Devils. Mathew Barzal leads the team with 58 points, and they have precisely two 20-goal scorers in Anders Lee (27) and Brock Nelson (22). Barry Trotz realized this team needed to tighten defensively and goals have been sacrificed at the altar of defensive hockey, much to the team’s success.

There is a lot more to the story than just his scoring environment, though.

Eberle’s IPP is currently 54.3 percent, which is by far the lowest of his career. Among 255 forwards with 700 minutes at five-on-five this year, Eberle is 234th in IPP. He had never been below 70 percent in any season until this year and that has cost him in point production dearly. If his IPP were an even 70 percent, which would still be the lowest mark of his career, he’d have an extra six points in addition to the 31 he has now. Here’s a hint: his IPP won’t be 54.3 percent next year.

We’ve also seen a drop in shooting percentage at five-on-five, which is also currently a career-low at 8.3 percent (his lowest was 9 percent two years ago). Unlike Zucker, Eberle has seen his expected goals drop quite a bit (0.65) compared to 2017-18 (0.84). It should be mentioned at this point that Eberle has only played about one-quarter of his five-on-five time with Barzal this year. After Barzal’s line, there isn’t much fantasy-wise on this team, even if Nelson is having a decent year.

Eberle is a free agent after the year and this season has definitely hurt his value. Where he lands will play a big factor in his bounce back ability, but I’ll be a buyer, though in points-only leagues. He just doesn’t provide enough in multi-cat leagues.

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On the topic of guys with low shooting percentages, Tyler Toffoli is shooting 5.9 percent this year. He’s the only forward in the NHL with 200 shots on goal shooting under nine percent, let alone under six percent. Had he been shooting his three-year average (11.3 percent) all year, he’d have 23 goals by now.

Toffoli’s expected goals per 60 minutes at five-on-five is 0.94. Last year, when he scored 14 goals at 5v5, his expected goals was 0.99. Back in 2015-16, when he scored 20 goals at 5v5, it was 0.92. In other words, he’s been expected to score about as much as we’re accustomed to from Toffoli, and yet he hasn’t. It’s an abysmally-low scoring environment but Toffoli has still been pretty good.

I won’t dig in too much further here. I’ll have to take a wait-and-see approach. Toffoli’s name has popped up in trade discussions, which makes sense when you see the Kings in need of a rebuild. Maybe he lands somewhere like Montreal, Carolina, or Calgary, and then we’ll have a lot of interest. If he’s back with the Kings next year, well, I’m not so sure he’ll be worth buying. I just can’t see that team improving much, if at all, in 2019-20.  

from All About Sports https://dobberhockey.com/hockey-rambling/ramblings-updates-on-monahan-palmieri-and-pageau-zucker-toffoli-radulov-march-22/