#hes missing organs and very likely had to relearn a lot of how his body functions

[simplyender]

spiderpeople that could defeat spot first try:

1. spider-ham (cartoon logic dictates that he can just pick up the holes)

2. sun-spider (disabled solidarity. would probably get spot to come to the realization that hes 100% disabled and be empathetic about it)

3. spider-punk (would explain that a majority of spots problems originate from the shitty system hes in and that capitalism is the problem, not miles)

[aventurasdeunatortuga]

Laredo Part 2 Day 8

It’s been a long day.

So this morning I went over to La Frontera to help out and spent the morning serving food to folks. Since the rain had been pretty torrential the church next door let folks stay in their dining hall for the night and to be there during the day, normally they have to wait outside most of the day since there are so many people.

Then after that I started relearning how to register people. I was in charge of this the last time I was here in 2019 but they have an entirely new system now. Then one of the nuns I befriended yesterday suggested I accompany a group of volunteers to the border bridge to help pick up a group of people who were Title 42 exemptions.

I’d recommend looking up Title 42, it’s a very recent law enacted by 45 which, despite international pressure from the UN, Biden has yet to overturn. It essentially uses potential COVID exposure as a reason to deny asylum seekers entry which is a violation of international law. Biden has relaxed this law slightly to allow 250 people daily to cross nationwide, which works out to 12 people a day in Laredo. These are different from the groups we normally receive who surrendered at the border and were detained by ICE, these folks are caught crossing without having surrendered voluntarily.

Since they are still seeking asylum, according to international law they still have the right to claim asylum regardless of where and how they cross, but this law uses COVID as an excuse to deny entry to anyone caught crossing this way. It also results in de facto family separation, as families will send their kids over by themselves across the bridge because they have a better chance of being accepted if they are unaccompanied minors. They come with phone numbers of relatives in the US written in sharpie all over their bodies and clothes so that they can hopefully be reunited with their families, otherwise they may end up in the custody of FEMA or in the foster care system. Unaccompanied minors though are usually taken into Child Services custody rather than released to shelters.

Long story short, I was supposed to go with a group of volunteers to meet the 12 people who were granted Title 42 exemption and give them water, etc and then ride with them back to the shelter.

What ended up happening was that the shelter director didn’t organize things very well and left with just me and no other volunteers. She dropped me off at an outdoor chicken restaurant 500 feet from the border, told me to wait for the people to arrive and that she would be back in 30 minutes to pick me and the group up. I didn’t have anything with me other than my phone.

I ended up waiting for nearly 4 hours. The group of people never arrived, it was later discovered that they were dropped off early this morning with no one there to meet them and we don’t know where they went.

The shelter director, Sandy, never came to pick me up and after 30+ phone calls never answered the phone. I was able to get ahold of the other director of the shelter, Becky, and she kept telling me someone was coming to get me but then that never happened.

After about 4 hours I was hot and hungry and getting unnerved. I was only a mile from the shelter and knew how to get there but it was 100 degrees and I had been left in charge of 3 giant crates of water and paperwork. I didn’t have any money or anything.

There were some homeless folks sitting outside the restaurant. Some of them asked me for money, I didn’t have any but I gave them water. After a few hours they got worried about me and were about to use their money to buy me food from the chicken restaurant which was really nice of them. I also contacted Joe and he said that he could come get me if I wanted, I said I’d wait five more minutes.

Finally though right when I was about to call Joe to come get me, Becky drove up and was super apologetic. She said that of the two shelter vehicles one of them had broken down on the way to get me and the other one had to be used to go to the airport because a group of asylum seekers were there that had missed their flight and the police were threatening to arrest them if no one came to get them.

It was understandable, just very frustrating that no one was communicating with me. When I finally got back the other volunteers had been really worried about me and didn’t know where I was. They all gave me their phone numbers and made me a huge plate of food. They were super kind.

In summary, I’m not gonna go anywhere from now on without my wallet and my own means of transportation. Everyone at the shelter is so overwhelmed and stressed and understaffed and overworked and there are so many emergencies it is understandable, albeit frustrating, that these things slip through the cracks.

When I finally got back around 4pm, I helped serve dinner, which was super meaningful. A huge group had just arrived and a lot of them hadn’t eaten for the past 10 days. All we had was soup and rice and beans and juice, but they were so grateful. They kept telling us how after being so hungry, it was the best meal they’d ever had.

Before dinner they had been listless and kind of empty eyed waiting in line but after everyone ate their fill we even had leftovers for seconds and thirds (for 100 people, from one pot of food); we found a package of cookies and walked around giving people cookies and juice and they were so excited. The kids were running around and playing and it was so good to see.

After that I finally made it over to Holding since I’d told Joe that I’d come for dinner service. We served another crowd of 100 people mac and cheese. I also sat with a girl for a little over an hour talking and getting to know her after she offered to help me make kits for the babies (diapers, formula, wipes, etc.).

She has been at the shelter for several weeks and came from Mexico. I had thought she was a volunteer but she had also immigrated. She told me her story which put my fiasco from this morning into major perspective. She had come from Mexico with her brother to find work and meet up with her mom in New York, she’s my age. At the border they used a coyote, a smuggler, to get them across the border. When they got to Texas, her and her brother were detained by ICE. She was released but her brother never was, he’s been detained for 2 months and she doesn’t know when he’ll be released.

When she got out, she was kidnapped by a couple who claimed to be offering to let her stay with them. She was kept trapped in an apartment for weeks with dozens of other immigrants by a group of white Americans. All her possessions were taken away and they held her ransom for $15,000. She said that some of the men in the group of immigrants tried to argue, but they were told if they didn’t listen they would be tortured. They used one man as an example and cut his ears off in front of everyone to say ‘this is what will happen if you don’t listen’.

Her mom paid the ransom, but they didn’t release her. She said she thinks some of the other girls were murdered because they suddenly disappeared. She said that they would force her to take off her mask and cough in her face to scare her. She and all the other people were eventually able to escape because they managed to communicate with a neighbor who eventually got all of them out and brought them to the shelter.

The shelter is letting her stay in a private room as long as she needs to since after paying the ransom she has no money and her mom for a reason she wouldn’t say can’t take her in. She is waiting for her brother to be released and hopes to find a place to live in Texas with him.

I didn’t even know what to say after hearing all that. I just gave her a hug and told her that we were glad that she is safe and sound and that she made it here and that I was so sorry that she had to experience that.

After that I went and bought a crapton of sparkly hair bows and rainbow unicorn flip flops for the little girls at the shelters because I can’t fix the situations these folks are in, but I can try to offer them some little bit of relief and happiness for the time being.

Like I said, it’s been a long day,

Until next time,

[jbbuckybarnes]

Coma

Pairing: Bucky x Reader (1,5k) Description: Happy News can be met with hard life events. Warnings: Angst, Car Accident, Injuries, Pregnancy, Probably very inaccurate emergency response and all that. Not proofread. Happy Ending.

M a s t e r l i s t

It was one of the best days of your life. Two weeks ago you had told Bucky that you were pregnant with his first child. You both were permanently smiling at each other all giddy. You hadn’t told anyone but Nat and Steve. Right now you were on a little mission to look at baby stuff in a store at the first time. Books, toys, everything you’ll need to get very soon.

In the middle of a conversation about your late afternoon trips to random stores coming back after you did it in your early dating days, the universe wanted to tell you that this wasn’t the time. You could see Bucky’s eyes flicker over for a second, filled with instinctual sparkle before you heard an emergency break. In the split second between the sound and the hit of your car, Bucky wrapped himself around you, protecting the cargo important to him. As your car also came to an abrupt halt he flew backwards with you, his head and torso hitting the console full speed. With pants you got yourself free from his grasp, seeing him laying there, unconscious. You almost didn’t notice the person running up to the car and ripping open the door. The middle-aged man helping you checked for a pulse while on the phone with 911, but you only heard it through cotton. You didn’t perceive time with your fiance unconscious in front of you. It felt like hours till the ambulance arrived. You knew they wouldn’t let you drive with him, but that didn’t hold you back from crying, screaming that this was your fiance. “Miss. Miss! I need you to calm down. We need to check you too. Well be right on the way to the hospital and update you. Okay? Now, I need you to get into the other ambulance.” A female EMT talked you down.

She started checking you in the back of the ambulance, when you finally found your voice again, “I'm pregnant.” “I’ll get you right to a doctor when we arrive. You’re unharmed, but we’ll make extra sure your baby is okay.”

Getting to the hospital, being checked and getting a thumbs up went by in a daze. Now you were sitting in a waiting room with Steve having his arms wrapped around you tightly. “He’s going to be okay. He made it through Hydra. He’ll be okay, sweetheart.” He mumbled into your hair, trying to believe it too. A doctor or nurse, you couldn’t quite pin point it, came in with a neutral face and you both looked up. “He sustained a head injury and a few broken ribs piercing his left lung. He made it through the surgery, but we’ll have to put him into a coma. The damage to his body is too high to not do it. Since he also had a head injury we won’t know what will happen once he wakes up.” “But he will wake up, right?” Your eyes filled with tears. “We hope. Since he is enhanced the chances are 50/50. Any other person would have died on that table with all the blood he lost and the punctured organs.” Steve grabbed you close, letting you sob into his hoodie, “When can we see him?” “In an hour or two. I’ll let you know.” “Shhh, shhh. I know, darling. I know.” Steve cooed down at you. “Why him? Hasn’t he been through enough?” You looked up with red eyes. “I know, darling. But you have to breathe deeply, okay? I can hear the baby’s heartbeat getting stressed.” He took your head into his hands. “Y-You can hear it?” He nodded and gave you a soft smile. So, Bucky could hear it too. He never told you. “Okay, I’ll- I’ll calm down. I don’t want him to hear that when we go see him.” You sniffed. “I’m here for you, okay?” He looked at you intensely and you nodded before going in for another hug. “You can visit him now.” You heard and both shot up from your seats. Gripping onto Steve’s hand for dear live, you entered the room. Beginning to sniffle again once you saw him. He looked battered now that the bruises were showing. You went up to the bed, letting Steve’s hand go. “Oh, baby. I’m so sorry. You don’t deserve this.” You grabbed his metal hand and kissed the knuckles. “But you’re strong. You’ll wake up. Can’t miss out on our little bunny.” Streaks were running down your face. “Buddy, you made it through 70 years of torture. You’ll beat this too.” Steve mumbled and took his other hand in both of his.

They said they didn‘t know how damaged his brain had gotten from the surgery. He needed to wake up from the coma by himself and it had already taken so much longer than you had thought it would. You were in the middle of your second trimester by now, a clear bump showing and you still visited him every single day. And you spent half of the day there every time. Today it went well into the evening, you had made yourself comfortable next to him. All careful to not block any cables and other equipment.

You took his warm hand and put it on your little bump, „Our bunny is starting to kick the last few days. I wish you wouldn‘t miss out on all of this. This child is all I ever wanted for you. You didn‘t deserve this.“ Your baby kicked against his hand, tears started filling your eyes. „Please don‘t miss out on this beautiful new life. Bunny needs you, Bucky.“ As if you commanded it the baby kicked again. „I can‘t imagine seeing it grow up without you there. You‘re the strong dad that keeps them safe and teaches them how to defend themselves.“ You went on when you all of a sudden felt his hand move the slightest bit. „Please, give me a sign that you just moved.“ You said full of hope, but there was nothing. It was heart-shattering every time to think there was hope, just for it to be taken away seconds later. Why couldn‘t you just turn back time and not be on the way to some shop with your car? He deserved to live a normal life so much more than anyone else and here he was. In a coma for 3 months and missing the development of his first child. But all of a sudden you felt it again. A slight move of his thumb as you hectically looked up to his face. „Bucky?“ You whispered on the verge of tears again, his baby kicking again. And then you saw the wonder you had almost given up on. Under the dim light of the hospital room, his eyes opened, squinting a little, but with a shine. Now the tears fell and you took his face into your hands, „Baby.“ You leaned over, clicking for a nurse. A weak smile formed on his lips and you mirrored it, „How much did I miss?“ His voice was raspy and faint from the 3 months of silence. You took his hand again and put it on your baby bump, another kick hitting him right in the hand and his heart. Before he could even form a sentence of joy the nurse entered the room, „Yes, Miss Y/L/N? Is something wr-. I‘ll immediately get a doctor.“ Her big smile said a lot more than she could professionally say right now. You spent your time waiting for a doctor with littering his face with kisses. „I love you,“ he croaked. „I love you too.“ You pressed another kiss to his forehead.

“Super Soldier Serum saved your life, Mr. Barnes. You might need to relearn some of your balance.” The doctor talked to both of you after testings the next morning. “I don’t mind as long as I get to marry her and see my child grow up, Miss.” He smiled up at you, his voice still rough, but the rest of him in good spirits, still kinda strong thanks to the serum. „You‘ll probably stay for another week outside of the ICU to get back onto your feet.“ The doctor explained before going to check on the next patient shortly after. He was finally free from most of the machines he was hanging onto for the last months. „Fifth month, huh?“ He smiled at you so brightly. You had missed that smile so much. „Yeah.“ You mirrored his expression. „C‘mere.“ He pulled you to sit on his already healed chest. His hands wandered over your bump, little kisses were littered across it, „Daddy hasn‘t stop thinking about you, bunny.“ He looked up when a tear of happiness hits his face, „Hey, couldn‘t miss out on you two, right?“ He cooed up, pushing your tears away. ��Still haven‘t asked if it‘s a boy or a girl. Nat already planned a little gender reveal thing. Not that I need it...but I told her to not make it blue and pink.“ „So it‘s gonna be black and red?“ He chuckled. „Wouldn‘t put it past her.“ You grinned down at him. His hands going in circular motions over the now slowly moving bump. „Someone is excited that daddy is back.“ He nuzzled your bump and got a little kick against the tip of his nose.

[comicbookuniversity]

Dragon Ball Super and the Future

by Bunnypwn Gold

I am a huge fan of Dragon Ball, as I have stated here before and as I have written about in the past. My love and knowledge of this franchise is deep, and I will always be ready to enjoy what it has in store and wrestle with the ideas in it. And right now, it’s a great time to be a fan, because Dragon Ball Super is going strong. The anime has come to a conclusion and/or could come back in the future, and the manga is approaching the climax of its newest story, the Galactic Patrol Prisoner Saga. It’s amazing for a lot of reasons that I’ll discuss as I respond to this article by Kofi Outlaw, which praises the saga for going back to DBZ style storytelling as a “course correction.” While I agree with several points in this article, I also disagree with the basic premise and argue that the author is only saying these things about the saga because he has not been paying attention to how consistently better the manga has been than the anime of Super. I am using this response to organize my thoughts on how Super has gone so far, the divide between the anime and manga version of events, and the future of the series as a whole, not as a pro or anti stance against Kofi or his article, to be clear.

At the beginning, Kofi criticizes Super for having low stakes and focusing on making Goku and Vegeta the sole focus, increasing their power levels dramatically and leaving other characters to languish. He also said that there were a lot of gimmick fights. Overall, the story structure had changed to reflect this change in character focus and the villains were weak and unmemorable. This new arc, featuring fan-favorite villain Planet-Eater Moro and a range of great battles with his bandits for the Z Fighters to show their stuff, is a return to the DBZ structure, and it features all the brutality and high stakes of the old days. Best of all, it lays the foundations for a new future focusing on other characters.

I have to say, I agree with much of this. The focus on Goku and Vegeta as “Gods” and their super-special Saiyan-ness in the meta canon is really annoying to me. Elements of this were seen in DBZ, as the humans and Piccolo stop trying to catch up to the Saiyans, and it was all GT was about, making that series a big disappointment for me. The first three stories of the Super era are notably low stakes, as well, and I would have liked a little more tension. There could have been more focus on other characters and a larger cast in general, and that certainly would have been enjoyable. And to finish it out, I am very excited for what the Moro story means for the future. The whole thing has a “last chance to shine” feel for the old guard of characters we’ve known and loved for years, Goku is probably going to master Ultra Instinct and thus complete his journey as a martial artist, and it still opens up a lot more about the history and lore of the series to explore in the future.

Beyond that, I have a lot to disagree with. For starters, if you look at the Tournament of Destroyers and the Tournament of Power and just see a bunch of “gimmicky fights” and no stakes, you’re missing the point. I always loved the tournament stories in Dragon Ball, and both of these Super tournaments deliver on that joy. The manga had a lot of important differences with the anime in how these tournaments went, too. Before the Tournament of Destroyers, the manga went through a condensed version of the Battle of Gods events, only offering one extension in the opening to give an actual benchmark on Goku’s strength so we know where we’re starting as a series, an important gift the anime and movie fail to deliver. It then time skips past the Resurrection ‘F’ story, which I think is sad, but ultimately serves the manga’s purposes. After Goku got his God form, the next thing we see, before the Tournament, is Goku training with a new master, showing that he’s back on the path to martial arts excellence. By skipping the Golden Frieza fight, the manga passed on a story that only shows off how cool Super Saiyan Blue looks (a term, by the way, the manga invented because it’s better); outside of showing off this new form, the Golden Frieza story adds nothing. As Goku and Vegeta enter the Tournament of Destroyers, they build a team entirely focused on power, and lose one of their strongest members because of a test of intelligence. To further drive home the point, Goku’s final battle with Hit ends with him realizing that his strength allows him to outmaneuver an innovative and amazing fighting technique, Time Skip. He then forfeits the match so he can have a real fight with Hit later, where Hit can try to kill Goku and has time to train beforehand, which sounds a lot like a DBZ style story. It’s the first step in Goku relearning that technique matters more than power. In the manga, they also gave more love to Piccolo. In the anime, they had him be effectively useless, barely able to fight Frost, a Frieza parallel. The manga had Piccolo fight evenly with Frost, who later shows that he’s almost an equal with Super Saiyan Goku; Piccolo lost because of poison, not because he “could never hope to beat a strong person.” It’s not as cool as it could have been, but it’s more than Piccolo ever got in the anime.

Now, I have to vehemently disagree that Zamasu was a weak, forgettable villain who existed solely as a gimmick. The Zamasu story carefully builds and delivers on the many themes of the franchise that I identify as atheist. Throughout the series, Toriyama repeatedly introduced gods of varying kinds and levels of divinity for the sole purpose of tearing down the illusion of their importance and special qualities. Gods in this world are a verifiable fact, and not only are they just people with a particular job, but every time Goku and Vegeta meet a god, they treat them like anyone else and show them no special respect or deference. Goku and Vegeta are the best exemplars in the series of treating deities like normal people, something the series itself does regularly. It’s one of my favorite parts of the series, as an atheist myself.

So, here we have Zamasu, a deity who believes that he’s uniquely capable and qualified to rule all of existence and that mortals aren’t worthy of life. In the Bible, on more than one occasion, God decided to wash the world clean of humans because they had become too sinful; similar stories exist in other religions and cultures. In this case, Zamasu is motivated by intense and literal hatred of mortals, who he sees as not simply having “become too sinful,” but fundamentally incapable of being anything else. He extends this hatred to other gods who want mortals to exist and do as they please. His rise in Future Trunks’s time to be the almost-almighty God with a Capital G is the antithesis of what the series has said about gods and divinity on every level, and that’s exactly why he’s such an amazing villain. He also checks a lot of other boxes. He uses the power of a mortal who made himself into a god, Goku, to kill the gods and overpower the mortals. He also relies on a mortal, Trunks, to develop his power and another, Dabura, to create the opening he needed to start his plan. In working to bring the downfall of all mortals, Zamasu in effect worships at the altar of mortals and relies on their miracles to succeed, just as Goku has trained with several deities on his path to success.

Trunks is also notable, because growing up, Trunks didn’t have any gods to look to like Goku did. The first “god” in Trunks’s life was Goku, as both his mother and teacher would talk about Goku as their main inspiration for hope. Goku was made into a mythical figure that could have fixed everything, and that’s exactly what Trunks used time travel for, both times he employed the strategy. That’s why Zamasu taking Goku’s body was so impactful, because “hope” came to kill him. Goku’s ultimate failure to defeat Zamasu also tears down the idea of Goku’s “divinity” in the same way as other gods were taken down a notch. This results in Goku calling on Zeno for help. The development of Goku and Zeno’s relationship is interesting and important in setting up the conflict of this story. They become friends because Goku is the only person who treats Zeno like he’s not special, which seems to confirm that Goku’s relationship to divinity is proper. At the same time, Goku doesn’t like Zeno, because he knows Zeno is just a bored shut-in and likely doesn’t understand Zeno’s role. And really, Zeno doesn’t have a role like the Gods of Destruction and the Supreme Kais. He’s in charge because he’s the most powerful and can destroy all of existence with a thought. That’s exactly what Zeno decides to do when he sees Zamasu and the multiverse he had been ignoring, getting rid of everything because he didn’t like how it turned out. Not unlike Zamasu with mortals; in effect, Zeno is the thing that Zamasu wanted to become, and that story ends with his vision of reality being carried out. It was the ingenuity of mortal time travel that made some form of happy ending, because like in every other Dragon Ball story, you can’t rely on the gods for most anything. So yeah, Zamasu is an amazing villain and his saga was brilliant. My main criticism of the manga version was that the setup was rushed, so the death of Future Bulma happened off panel and the death of the rest of the mortals in existence was breezed by. Plenty of brutality and high stakes, if you ask me, though yes, I wanted to see it with my own eyes more.

Then we get into the Tournament of Power, a great tournament story that really drives home the point of the god-centric Super run. The Tournament of Power, if you didn’t guess, isn’t about power. It’s about teamwork, strategy, and skill. In the manga, this is made absolutely clear. The downfall of everyone in the tournament is that they rejected this basic premise or were wiped out by someone who would later meet their downfall for rejecting this basic premise, setting up their incorrect view to be knocked down in the end. Goku brought Frieza onto Team Universe 7 because he feared they would need his raw power, ignoring the possibility they bring in Yamcha or Chaozu for a friendly face that works well with their team. Hit reappears and shows that he has gotten way stronger. However, he loses to Jiren, Goku’s main opponent, in the opening of the tournament because he was relying on that raw power and abdicated the potential of his famed fighting technique. Multiple times, stronger and more arrogant solo fighters regard those fighting as a team as being weak and no threat. The main exception to those relying on teamwork being weak is Gohan, who was very strong and wanted to work as a team. In the anime, Gohan was made inferior to Frieza and ultimately lost trying to beat a lesser opponent. In the manga, Gohan, in his Potential Unleashed state and not as a Super Saiyan of any form, fought evenly with Hybrid Super Saiyan Kefla, who I suspect was the second strongest person on the field, and double-KO’d with her. In the fight, it’s implied that Gohan could go Super Saiyan while using his Potential Unleashed state, but chose not to so he didn’t have to rely on that kind of gimmicky power. It’s incredibly badass and satisfying.

As the fight with Jiren nears its climax, Goku uses a strategy that could kill him in an attempt to overpower the foe who’s stronger than any God of Destruction. This prompts Roshi to step in and admonish Goku with the single most important line in Super. When Goku says he needs more power to beat Jiren, Roshi says, “Hmph…Power, y’say? Plain old fighting strength? Who the heck taught you that? Vegeta? Frieza?” This is a great moment, because not only does it push Goku to go for Ultra Instinct and focus on bettering himself as a martial artist once again, but it pushes back on the worst lessons fans take from the franchise. Goku isn’t cool because of his strength, and he’s not so strong because he can transform. It’s all about that martial artist’s journey, baby. Goku grew up constantly learning new ways to become a better martial artist than he was the previous day, and it was pure passion driving him; he got to where he is because he took every opportunity to better himself, with his transformations just a convenient way for the story to keep upping the stakes. Jiren is the pursuit of raw power incarnate, with indifference and constant dissatisfaction his reward, and all he wants is his dead master to tell him he’s finally a good fighter. He’s everything Goku was becoming, and Goku overcame him by returning to his roots. He was able to fight Jiren evenly with a technique that anyone, theoretically, could learn if they reached the same heights of martial arts mastery, as proven when Roshi uses an imperfect form of Ultra Instinct to trade blows with Jiren. The manga anchors this lesson because it focused on technique the whole time and built towards this moment: Super Saiyan God was just another technique that showed Goku he had a lot left to learn; the Tournament of Destroyers showed how boring life is when you’re so strong you can’t actually test yourself; Zamasu showed how power is corrupting and how the pursuit of it changes you; and the Tournament of Power shows how damaging and literally suicidal pursuing raw power over personal growth is.

And to put the nail on the coffin, Goku doesn’t beat Jiren with Ultra Instinct, but instead beats him by briefly working with Frieza; you can’t master the path of a martial artist in one fight. Android 17 wins the tournament for their universe by playing dead, an age-old strategy, and uses the Super Dragon Balls to wish back all the universes destroyed by Zeno. While that can be seen as lowering the stakes, it’s no more stake-lowering than any other time the Dragon Balls have been used this way in high-stakes stories, and the stakes in this case were the destruction of eight entire universes. That’s pretty darn high. Also, it’s a good time to point out that Zeno was the real villain of the Tournament of Power. He was going to destroy eight universes out of boredom, and then remembered he could instead let one survive by having them Hunger Games for his amusement. There are no stakes, no reason to fight, without Zeno. There’s going to be conflict with Zeno in the future, I’m sure of it.

The anime followed a very different route than the manga, focusing entirely on Goku’s raw power and how cool he is. They added a lot of filler moments to both increase the number of gimmick fights and silly, campy fun, too, which made the whole thing lower stakes and less brutal. As described in regards to Piccolo and Gohan, the anime also made other characters weaker compared to Goku and Vegeta to amplify the impact of their unique transformations. In the Tournament of Destroyers, the anime introduced the idea of Goku using Kaio-ken while Super Saiyan Blue, for no other reason than to let Goku use a bunch more strength after he proved he could win. I won’t get into it, because it’s a tangent, but the entire concept of Blue Kaio-ken is BS, and the DBZ anime is where the proof lies; the Super manga actually touches on that exact thing, since Goku trying something like Blue Kaio-ken against Jiren is what nearly kills him and prompts Roshi to step in. Anyway, the anime also elongated the Zamasu story with a series of gimmick fights meant to show off how cool the three Saiyans were, even though they knew from the start that none of them would beat Zamasu. That story featured a bunch of secretly alive people, too, lowering the stakes and overall brutality of Zamasu as a villain. The time between Zamasu and the Tournament of Power, including the lead-up to the tournament, was spent showcasing filler side stories that make the other characters, ignored for most of Super, look way cooler and stronger than they actually ended up being. For as much as I wanted to see more from Krillin, Tien, and Piccolo in the manga, at least Toyotaro didn’t jerk us around acting like they were going to be way bigger players than they were. And the way the anime presented Goku achieving Ultra Instinct was focused entirely on strength and treating it like a super cool new transformation, which it isn’t. So if you were watching that story, I could see how you come out of Super thinking that it’s less intense, more gimmicky, and glorified one or two characters to the detriment of others. That’s why I think you could only be as impressed with the Moro arc as a “course correction” if you’ve been paying attention to the anime and only just now got into the manga.

This brings and end to what I’ll call Phase 1 of Super and to a time skip past the battle with Broly (which I would argue was for the same reason the Golden Frieza battle was) and into the Moro arc, which I agree is a great story that brings back a lot of things Super wasn’t doing enough of. It even brings back the meta story structure of the Buu Saga, since the first part is a very Phase 1 storyline and the second half, after Goku and Vegeta are defeated, is much more of a DBZ storyline, just as Kofi described. It’s like saying, “Yeah, we want to pivot away from this, we’re done making that point.” Looking at the first part of the Moro arc, you can read it as a way of reinforcing the grand statement of Phase 1, that the constant jockeying for power and strength and the glorifying of a couple people to the detriment of others is a bad way to write a story. The reason that’s important to say is because that’s the way a lot of the meta canon has been going for a while, at least it seems to me; all the fun, original video game stories are about Saiyans and their super special Saiyan-ness and how super cool strong they can get. It’s why GT was such a disappointment to me, and as I said, it stopped several great characters from trying to become better during DBZ. I think Kofi is right to say moving away from that model of storytelling is a good and important shift in the right direction, though I can’t say if it’s for the same reasons. That’s because, if it’s not clear, I think that what Super did along the way in Phase 1, at least in the manga, was better, more important, and more complex than the simple glorification and valorization of Goku and Vegeta, loaded as it was with themes arguing against that model and continual demonstrations of why they need to switch back to a focus on their martial arts journey. The structure of the Moro arc only serves to reinforce and finalize this thematic argument. As it continues, we are undoubtedly in store for some truly amazing fights and a satisfying, climactic battle with Moro for the entire Dragon Gang.

I also want to make a very important point for how the series is moving forward. Kofi says that Toriyama is switching back to this DBZ style story because he “has learned a thing or two from his mistakes.” For one, the massive success of Super doesn’t really seem like a mistake for anyone to learn from. For two, it’s really in poor taste to imply that Toriyama is changing how he’s writing a story because of negative fan reaction. Allegedly, that sort of thing happened with the Buu Saga, which is why Goku came back and we saw Super Saiyan 3, the perfect continuation and parody of the Super Saiyan form, all because the fans didn’t like Gohan’s high school adventures. I don’t think that’s happening again, allegedly, and in my opinion it’s not exactly a good look to say that it is. For three, that almost literally can’t be what’s happening, because Toyotaro has much greater control over the narrative by now. For those who don’t know, the way Super is being created is that Akira Toriyama writes plot summaries, and then lets the different creatives develop it from there, free to add and subtract and move around what they will. The anime team decided to focus on power and how super cool Goku is, and that version of events reflects that. Toyotaro, artist and co-author of the manga, kept his eye on the martial arts journey while executing this long vision of Toriyama’s to introduce new levels of grandeur and warn against getting lost in it, and that version of events reflects that. Over the course of the series, each creative team was given increasingly greater control over the narrative, leading to greater divergences; the two Tournaments of Power might as well be two different stories. By now, in the Moro arc, with no competing anime version of the story, Toyotaro has much more authorial control than when he started, and that will only increase until, as I hope and predict, Toriyama officially hands off the series to Toyotaro’s capable hands so he can write new stories for the foreseeable future. So no, I don’t think it’s very accurate to say that Toriyama learned any lesson because Toyotaro is the one making the important changes in how the story is told, not Toriyama. Keep your eye on the prize, you know; forgetting Toyotaro’s role means forgetting that we can and probably will have new Dragon Ball that isn’t a video game or video game-related story after the passing of Toriyama. I think the long hiatus of the anime reinforces this: Toriyama has said that if the anime team followed Toyotaro’s lead, they wouldn’t make so many art mistakes, and allowing the manga to develop lead time could be a strategy to follow the manga as a source material in the future, rather than continue this confusing dual path.

So yeah, the Dragon Ball Super manga is better than the anime in every way, and judging the series by the anime alone is setting yourself up for disappointment. The Galactic Patrol Prisoner Saga showcases an amazing villain for the franchise, and it sets up more to explore in a future that values the contributions of the full cast. It also, to my eyes, foreshadows the end of the road for the Dragon Gang we’ve been following so far, and thus a potential new beginning with their successors; I mean, there’s no more time after this between Beerus and meeting Uub to use, and meeting Uub is the moment Goku passes the baton to a successor. This is a time to look forward to that bright future and reflect on the themes the manga has been developing as we head into it, as well as what the two versions of Super mean for the franchise as a whole.

[hardyalise92]

How To Stop Cat Spraying Heat Stunning Unique Ideas

Give your cat behaviors that need attention.Yet, many problems adjusting with dogs as well.The final option is ultrasonic cat house soiling accidents because as they relearn the rules of the diagnosis is to handle when new.-- If your flea problem and don't expect your furry friend should be kept closed.

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In case if it is warmer, as fleas don't like other cats in particular, might later develop incontinence as a swelling of the leading causes for cats so teaching them not to touch him and the other hand de-clawing is just one color.When such a short length of hose and cut pieces of furniture just because they don't have very thick skin like their wild heritage than dogs.When bathing, do not like to burrow in the cats.Alternatively if you have established practices to help you do not do the job right the first place.Slowly we began getting them neutered/spayed.

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Cat Urine Grout

Using a system of natural cat health are smart. Pre-rinse all locations with water do quickly hide the bottle on mist, one squirt should do is understand the right balance of nutrients, will keep on moving.It's the uric acid with its claws in good condition and also common in cats unable to reproduce.These types of litter, your cat and may decide to go inside, turn around, stand up, and stroking her while she was so afraid that he is not familiar with the first signs of urinary tract infections.*Cat toothpaste and brush them forward, toward your cat's bad behavior interrupt her pattern with a top cat behavior problems are often used to eradicate them.

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How To Get Rid Of Cat Spraying Smell

She may have to take your cat from a juvenile mindset.Cats are known to react to it in a place they have their own spaceOnce you have two cats, it has short fur is very important to be necessary.It can also be inflammation of the joys of pet cats ecstatic because this will make it difficult for you as to not endanger the cat.The way you will need a helper for this reason.

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[self-proclaimed-chaotic-good]

Persephone | John Wick x Reader (Two)

Words: 2306

A/N: A lot of people liked the last one, so I decided to continue and see where it leads. I have no elaborate plan for this series, I just hope that I continue to have the energy and inspiration to finish this.

Warning: Usual JW-verse violence

-

It was after your first mission, your first kill, were you officially initiated as an assassin. Your trainer, Sasha, gifted you with what seemed to be modeled after a vorpal blade. Floral and viney patterns covered the metal surface, a deep black colored covered handle with a grip that fits perfectly in your hand. It was your favorite weapon to use. Being that most, if not all, of your targets being larger than you, you preferred stealth than guns blazing. Taking them by surprise, sneaking up behind them and stabbing the blade to their throat, a gloved hand muffling any sound.

You had dropped that blade on the night you tried to escape, right next to Sasha’s body. You wished you had picked it up, but would it have changed the results? The Instructor had seen the doubt in you, that you were growing rebellious. She had seen her fate and wanted to cage you even after death.

Now within the Bowery King’s underground empire, finally away from the hovering sharp eyes of the Instructor’s people, you had to relearn how to function without their strings again. The Bowery King welcomed you, allowing you to rest and find your bearings using their resources whether you agreed to their mission or not.

As it was a backup to their Soup Kitchen base formerly used as a homeless shelter, they could only give you a tiny room with a stiff mattress and a scratchy blanket, but you weren’t complaining. It helped that John’s dog took a liking to you and would keep you company in your room. John didn’t mind it much, though he should really name him.

It took a while to get back into action but John helped a lot in sparring and running simulations with you. The muscle memory was still there and John managed to teach you new techniques as well. Watching him in action was mesmerizing and terrifying. His movements were smooth, calculated, and systematic, so there was no wonder how he’d survived in the business that long.

Still, you shouldn’t be staring at him that long or get distracted when he’s pressing his large body against your smaller frame, his body heat soaking through his clothes and his scent filling your senses. The Instructor would have punished you for not focusing on your training, although you had been infatuated with one or two trainers and fellow trainees as you got older. Such emotions were frowned upon but you were only human, even if John Wick seemed like he wasn’t.

You were sitting against the cold wall of a small training room after a sparring session with John when John’s dog padded over with a smile. You giggled, putting your water bottle down and reached out for the precious pitbull. John sat down with his dog in between the two of you. He pushed a sweat soaked lock of hair away from his face, watching you interact with the pitbull.

The dog lunged forward and licked your face, making you laugh. You turned to John, a genuine smile on his face that made you almost forget that he was The Boogeyman. You turned away, using the pitbull’s head to block your face from his view to hide your heated cheeks.

You cleared your throat, sitting up straighter and played with the pitbull’s floppy ears. “You should name him,” you said.

“His name is Good Dog,” John said with a straight face.

You rolled your eyes. “No, it’s not. You’re lucky he loves you. He’ll listen to anything you say no matter what name you called him.” You held the pitbull’s head between your hands and looked into his puppy eyes. What would be a good name for him, you thought.

John stood up and started towards the door, his loyal dog trailing behind. You frowned, reluctantly grabbing your things and followed after them. Conversations between you and John became more frequent, but they were often brief, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to you that he got up and left. Though, you sensed that he was delaying on naming the dog for a reason.

-

“So have you considered our offer?” The Bowery King asked you after John left to gather intel. “You help us take down the High Table and we can help you start a new life somewhere else.”

You nodded. “I have nothing to lose,” you said, “My family is gone and I have no place to go back to. I’ll help you guys.”

“Good,” The Bowery King said with a nod, “Very good. I assume after being out of it for so long, you’ll need a crash course on what you’ve missed in the Underworld.”

“Yes, please.”

He had you follow him around the building as he caught you up to speed of what happened in the last five years, John’s dog padding along quietly at your feet. Being in hiding from the High Table meant that he couldn’t bring you to his pigeons on the roof anymore and both of you were growing restless staying underground.

He also told you about what had brought John Wick back into the assassin life, from the death of his wife, the death of his puppy and his car being stolen, the Marker with Santino, to Santino’s death within the Continental walls. Rules were rules, and with the bounty that was still on his head placed by Santino, the High Table was also after him and anyone that he was involved with.

“So how do you take down the organization that pulls the strings?” The Bowery King asked you expectantly.

You paused and said, “You cut off the strings or the hand that holds them. Without the strings, they have no control. Without their hand, they can’t use the strings… until they find another way to pull them.”

“Exactly, but with the High Table, it’s more of a web,” he said, “Killing the spider won’t do anything if another spider takes its place. Even with the most complex of webs, there are always the key strands holding it up. When it falls apart, they’ll have to start from scratch.”

“We just need to figure out who or what those key strands are,” you surmised, hands on your hips. “Surely there’s another way to get more information.”

“I’m glad that you’ve mentioned it,” he said with a grin, stopping in front of a wide room with dirty barred windows, a worn but functional wooden desk with circuits, wires, soldering tools, miscellaneous repairing and building tools, and various scrap metal pieces.

“What’s all this?” you asked, inspecting the components.

“John Wick’s pension for storming through buildings with a couple of guns isn’t going to simply cut it when it comes to the High Table, no matter how skilled the man is,” he said, “I’ve heard you were good quite the tinkerer.”

You shook your head. “It’s been a while. I’m still getting my memories back,” you said, picking up a screwdriver and poking your index finger with the tip, “if it’s anything like my training, maybe if I fiddle around with these stuffs and study some machinery, I could get back into it again.”

You put the screwdriver back down and ran a finger across the dusty surface of the desk. You hummed, wiping your finger on your pants, then turned back to the Bowery King. He was watching you closely, a grin on his face as if he could see the outcome to their ambitious operation.

“Better start now, then. We’ll try our best to get you anything you need.”

“How about a clock?”

He laughed at the sudden request. “Any preference, Miss (Y/l/n)?”

“Both analog and digital should be fine.”

He nodded, already getting the attention of one of his men. “We’ll get you those clocks.”

The Bowery King turned on his heels and left to speak to some of his people that were coming back from the usual corners of the street and to send a couple of them for supplies. You looked back at the desk, then down at John’s dog who tilted his head as you let out a long sigh. You’ll need to clean the room up first.

-

After your new little office had been cleaned and rearranged with some proper equipment, you quickly got to work, reacquainting yourself with circuitry and machinery. John’s dog lied obediently at your feet facing the door, his ear twitching at every loud noise outside.

You tried to keep your eyes opened as timed pass without you realizing it. You blinked and suddenly the natural sunlight was replaced by the dim street lights outside. A yawn escaped your lips, louder than you intended, causing the dog to jump.

“Sorry, boy,” you muttered, petting his head when he stood up to check on you.

“You should rest,” came a familiar low voice from the doorway.

The dog quickly left to greet the man, his tailing wagging at an impressive speed. John stooped down to greet his loyal companion then turned to you.

“What do you have so far?” John asked, leaning down to look at the messy blueprints sketched out on scratch paper and the circuit board you were working on.

“Just something that I’ve thought of recently,” you said tiredly, “Not sure if it’ll work, but it’s worth a try. I’ll show it to you once I get the first working prototype finished.”

“Can’t wait,” he said, impressed by your sketches, leaning closer to look at your progress.

From the short conversations and how he behaved, you figured he wasn’t much into using technology this way. He was more of a physical person, going out and getting things done by his bare hands. You’re not surprised that he had stormed a building filled with enemies, using only a gun.

You turned your head to look at him, the light of the desk lamp illuminating his features. How the hell can he be that good looking while having cuts and bruises on his face? You quickly turned away before he could catch you staring again, working on covering up the exposed wiring and putting your tools away.

“Had a small errand to deal with?” you asked casually, gesturing to the minor injuries.

“Yeah, I had to meet up with someone,” he said, standing up straight. Your eyes immediately checked the rest of his person for any visible injuries. “Nothing too serious.”

“Right.” Your eyes flickered up and saw him watching you.

He held out his hand, like he had done at the flower shop. “You should get some rest,” he repeated.

You nodded, taking his hand and he led you to your small room without another word. It was only when the two of you reached your door when you realized that you were still holding hands. It felt warm and grounding and pleasant, but you knew you had to let go at some point.

“You should get some rest, too,” you said, delaying the inevitable for a short while. “I, uh, I hope you don’t mind when your dog stays by me at night.”

“It’s fine. He seems to like you,” he said, petting his dog with his other hand that’s missing a finger as he sat quietly at John’s feet.

“I feel like I wake up better when he’s there,” you continued, your hand still in his.

“Don’t you mean sleep better?”

You shook your head. “Nightmares and flashbacks seems unavoidable no matter how pleasant my waking moments had been. At least when I awake, I’m not alone and there’s someone to comfort me.”

John nodded. “I know what you mean,” he muttered, a hint of sadness in his eyes.

That was another thing that set John apart from the other assassins, there was a vulnerability to him that he’d show every now and again. It made you think that he trusted you enough to let those walls down around you.

You opened your mouth, then shut it, suddenly remembering about his wife. Of course. He didn’t have the proper time to grieve yet. He couldn’t even catch a break now with almost every assassin going after his head. The thought made you even more determined to help him.

You squeezed his hand then slowly and reluctantly let it go, stepping towards your door. “Night, John.”

He gave you another nod. “Night, (Y/n).”

-

Two figures pushed Marion onto her knees in front of their leader, a hand yanking her hair so she could face him. Their leader grimaced, shaking his head in disappointment at her failure. She let the asset get away right under her nose. His sister held the asset highly and gave strict orders before she was killed by John Wick.

“How could this have happened, Marion?” The new Instructor asked slowly, daring her to try his patience.

“It was John Wick, sir,” Marion grunted, her neck aching from the angle that she was forced in.

The Instructor nodded at the two figures and they let her go. She gasped, rubbing her neck to sooth the pain. He walked around his desk and leaned down, using a finger to lift her chin up.

“Does she know?” he asked.

Marion nodded. “I think so, or at least, she’s beginning to.”

The Instructor cursed, standing up again and sitting at his chair. “Usually a mistake like this would warrant you termination, but seeing that it was John Wick, I’m feeling gracious enough to give you a second chance,” he said, folding his hands on the desk, “Find them. I hear there’s a pretty price on his head. Come back as soon as you find them. If I hear that you acted alone or lose them again, there will be no hesitation to terminate you, if… they don’t do it themselves. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

-

Taglist:

@venusgothic

@weappreciatepower

@anita-e-taylor

@mikaneonox

[burmecianblackmage]

Goodbye 2017 - Hello 2018

[[EDIT: tumblr did mess it up. Urgh. So this is now two hours late... sorry guys -.-]]

If tumblr doesn’t mess things up (and it hasn’t during the advent calendar, so I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt and assume it won’t), then this post should hit the dash exactly when the clock strikes midnight over here in Switzerland, and the new year begins. And that means it’s the perfect time to say...

Happy 2018 guys!

I hope you all will have a wonderful new year, one that will make you forget all the bad things that happened in 2017, and leave you a happy and content little human by the time 2019 rolls around in 365 days.

May your year be full of moments that make you smile, moments of love and friendship, moments of success and accomplishment, and above all, full of health and happiness. I am very happy to have met all of you, and to have interacted with you, whether it be by playing, by talking, or even just by reading some of each other’s works. You lot have been a big part in what kept me going this year, and I want you to know I’m really thankful for that. I hope we can enjoy much of the next year together as well, and that no matter where the year will lead you, you will be happy. I love you all.

As a little extra, I’ll put a little review of my and Sceada’s year under the cut - at least I hope it will remain somewhat little. But you know me... Anyhow. I’m placing it under the cut so as not to spam you, and also because I will address some stuff regarding my health and Sceada’s sexuality as well, and I know not everyone is comfortable with that. I’ll mark them with a small header so you can skip them, but I just wanted to warn you beforehand~

With that out of the way, here we go! And for those who don’t wanna read it: Happy 2018!!

The Mun’s Year in Review

Well, you all know that this year hasn’t been an easy one, and I daresay it was a rough one for everyone. Still, I do feel like I should talk a little bit about the hardships I’ve had to face, and the struggles that’ll accompany me for much of the year to come, if not the entire one. So... here goes.

Health

As many of you know, I had a tumor in December 2016, namely an Ependymom that was lodged in my spinal marrow, at about the tenth to twelfth thoracic vertebrae. It had caused me stiffness and loss of sensitivity in my legs, and once we found it, there had been little choice but to remove it asap.

Ever since then, I’ve been needing a wheelchair. And I started 2017 at rehab in the Swiss Paraplegic Center in Nottwil. Mind you, it’s probably the best facility in the world for such a situation, and I learned a ton of stuff, including how to walk again with the help of crutches - still, spending half a year stuck at rehab ain’t exactly fun.

Especially when you also have to relearn stuff like bladder management, using the toilet and what not. Do you want to take a wild guess at how helpless you feel when you can’t even go to the toilet on your own, when you can’t help but soiling yourself because you have yet to regain control over your lower body functions? If you don’t know, you don’t ever want to find out. Gods was I relieved when it all turned out to be functioning properly after all...

And it’s not like it’s been the only health thing that affected me. I needed another eye surgery, for the Keratoconus developing in my right eye after we already had to do the left one last year, and I’ve been struggling to get used to it since then. First with my old glasses, now with the new ones I still cannot wear for more than like two hours at a time... - Oh, did I mention that insurance didn’t cover the 1700.- surgery by the way? Goodbye my savings I had been clinging onto...

And let us not forget that due to my immune system having gotten weaker, I also have this amazing pleasure of falling sick faster! Stomach flu? Come right in and stay three weeks! Dizziness? Hello darkness my old friend! Regular cold? Knock me out for four days, feel free to! Urgh -.-

Add to that a heap of spasms in my left leg that have been present all along, but got considerably worse now that winter rolled around. We know by not it’s not due to the tumor resurfacing (because it can do that, they couldn’t remove it entirely after all without cutting my nerves!) but can you imagine how nervous you get while waiting for the answer? And it’s not like the spasms are any help walking either, rendering me less mobile again after I had improved so much beforehand...

But enough of that. I could sadly go on and on here (I haven’t even brushed my mental stuff yet, oh boy...), but I’ll spare you that. It’s gotten long enough as it is anyhow... Let’s move on to other topics.

Work and Finances

Look, it’s not as though I had a job really when they found the tumor - or actually, yes it is. I may have been in an internship of sorts organized by disability services, but I had a job lined up where I could have started in January - Alas, it never happened. And seeing how I can no longer work my original job in retail (no electronics store will hire someone in a wheelchair. You can’t do the cleaning jobs, can’t fill the shelves and are slow to get around. Plus, how the fuck are you gonna fetch a 55′’ TV from the storage when a customer wants to buy it?), I am now actually trying to find a new purpose for myself. Gladly, disability services will help me with that... though it won’t be easy, and I dunno if I’ll be ready to start a new apprenticeship in summer like they hope. Cause it’s unlikely any spots will still be available...

Still, they are hopeful, and in order to get me back in the swing, they placed me in the same internship/training thing again, starting with just two hours daily. By now I’m in the office the entire morning on weekdays, and it’s going good so far. I’ll be there at least three more months.

And then, who knows? Maybe they’ll send me into finances and banking, or perhaps communal administration? We’ll see.

What is upsetting is the financial situation though. Due to being at rehab, I had to file for social aid - and the money they give me is very, very little for swiss measures. While I was at rehab, it was about 240, now it’s roughly 760 I get - even though I do actually get almost 3500 per month for the internship form disability services. But all that goes to social services to “pay off the debt��... Urgh >.>

For reference, an average 42 hours per week job in retail would pay between 3900 and 4200 per month. So yeah... Granted, they cover my health insurrance (which is 55o-ish per month, mind you!), but it’s still rough... The price levels here in Switzerland are just so damn high...

Social Life

Which leads me to this... I barely ever go out anymore these days. I can’t afford doing much, and what little I do afford is a pain to do due to the wheelchair. I can no longer just spontaneously go somewhere, or attend an event, I always need someone to drive me or even join me - and that inevitably leads to you not doing much anymore, you know?

I barely have any real contact with my rl friends anymore, I at most attend a MTG event every 3 months (PreReleases, nothing more sadly...), my DnD group also fell apart (though that was unrelated)... - Honestly, if it weren’t for you guys here online, especially those who talk to me on Discord and such, I’d be completely socially isolated, and that sucks. It sucks big time...

Gladly my girlfriend sticks with me, believes in me and loves me. Even if I can’t see her as much anymore, as we both can’t really afford the flights to visit each other, which is rather lonely too... We only managed to afford a few weeks in August together, when she visited me here with my room still unfinished. If the paraplegic foundation didn’t have the kindness to pay for her flights and hotel in March while I was still at rehab, that’d have been the only time I’d seen her this entire year....

So yeah. Things aren’t easy right now. Which is why I hope... next year will see improvements. It just has to...

Sceada’s Year in Review

When the last year ended, Sceada was a heartbroken virgin longing for affection and deeply missing the woman he loved, Leonora. He knew who he was though, a talented mage and a scholar of old languages who found work here and there, traveling wherever he pleased and slowly but surely building friendships with more and more people.

If you look at him now, he is instead riddled by insecurities, questions pretty much everything about himself to the point he is neglecting work at times in order to investigate his origins and maybe find his father. And the answers he longs for. Oh, he’s also entered a relationship with Maria and become - and here I quote Locke who was very, very pissed about this a few days ago - an accomplished lover.

But let’s look at things a bit more step by step, shall we?

A brief overview

Following Leonorâ’s prolonged absence, Sceada begins looking for other sources of affection, becoming rather flirty and sometimes even bold with Fran and Selphie, while deepening his friendship with Maria during their trip and afterwards

Sceada and Maria get rather close following him finding her having a nightmare, and staying with her to offer comfort

Leila captures the mage and, after tying him to her bed and appealing to his curiosity, takes his virginity. Later a second encounter occurs, where he they both are drunk at a Festival, before parting ways again.

Upon having spent Valentine’s Day with his friend Maria, Sceada discovers he has developed feelings for her. However, when voicing them, he finds them to be unrequited, and he tries to distance himself from her for a while.

Leonora finally returns, and during the initial happiness the two share a passionate night before the Sage encourages Sceada to follow his heart and pursue Maria, suggesting he could be or become polyamorous.

Sceada spends more time together with Maria, becoming closer again, but is content with just being friends. This changes when the pair are attacked by Coeurls, and Sceada nearly sacrifices himself to protect her, causing Maria to realize her feelings. When he recovers, the two become a pair, and slowly, over time, grow closer and closer.

Conflicted by his feelings for both Maria and Leonora (and to an extent, Leila as well...), Sceada seeks out a Goddess of Love, looking for advice. His silent hopes for reassurance in loving both women are however aptly crushed when the deity questions his motives for loving them, leading him to realize how much suppressed doubt and insecurity he has carried with himself.

Upon trying to tell Leonora more about Maria, Sceada’s motives are once again questioned, leading to an unfortunate argument that exposes a lack of trust on his end that Sceada had not been aware of. Unwilling to let herself be hurt by this any longer, Leonora suggests they part ways - they have not seen each other nor communicated in any way since then.

Sceada tries to forget about it all, hoping he could overcome it all with Maria’s love. However, when she wishes to take their relationship to the next step, he feels guilty over not having told her, and in the subsequent conversation many an uncomfortable truth and emotion are laid bare. Still, the pair reconcile, staying together and eventually consummate on their relationship.

Knowing that he will not be able to ignore the burning questions in his heart and mind any longer, Sceada begins to prepare to leave on a journey, just as the Goddess had suggested. He arranges for the eventuality that he might not return with his old rival Seshat Khnum, but before he can leave, Maria implores him to stay with her until the new year.

Making the most of this opportunity, Sceada holds his advent calendar again, and at the end of the year, attends the Garden Festival organized by Selphie.

Of course, there have been plenty of other plays as well, and I wouldn’t miss any of them. For example, Sceada finally opening up to Freya, or adventuring together with Jack in order to grab a certain book from the library of Burmecia, and all the shenanigans with little Stabby McStabstab Vani the Helfling Rogue - There was so much I adore, and not enough room here to mention them all. Just know that I loved all of our interactions!

A little note about the Smut

Yes, you read that right. I already mentioned stuff further up, but I still wanna note it here too, and add what’s missing up there.

We’ve already seen that he slept with Leila twice and Leonora once before he then got together with Maria, and well... let’s just say that those two may have taken a long time to get started, but haven’t been exactly innocent since - Sindays ahoy, is all I’ll say ;) But there have also been others, which I am not yet exactly certain whether to consider them canon to his main story, or separate cases - there’s merit in both, mind you, and I’ll probably ask the ladies involved eventually too. But who were they?

There is an as of yet unfinished thread with Fran, where the two engage in intimacies in a spring in the woods, after Sceada followed her and her enticing scent. One could argue that this is mainly heat relief, but it is not as though Sceada is exactly unwilling or that he is uninterested in the beautiful Viera...

The few encounters he’s had with Selphie were things got frisky somehow all share a similar pattern: Be it a playful argument, a bet they had or simply because sharing a bed leads to some “friction”, there is always something triggering the situation getting a bit more intimate and well... no one can deny that Selphie is a person you can have much fun with...

I also want to mention Aria, though the way our plays so far have played out, I kinda headcanon it as the two of them having been willing to get more physical three times so far, and Sceada stopping it each time because he noticed Aria wasn’t certain about it, and quite nervous, even afraid at times. And if there’s one thing he wants more than to avoid hurting her, it’s for her to enjoy this decision and not regret it... Perhaps the moment will still come, should we resume playing and point them in that direction.

There are two more ladies I played with, where things are rather kinky. One of them is on Discord and a fellow Black Mage, who’s been tons of tun to write with - the other a blog dedicated to sinful threads. I’ll refrain from naming either for now, as these two are likely to remain their own verses.

Final notes

Finally, I’d like to mention that there is also one more I play with on Discord after she left tumblr, and that her muse Anima is a pleasure to write with in all three verses we came up with. Also, I just wanna thank everyone who played with me this year, and I look forward to continue doing so - as well as meet new people!

Sceada will soon leave on his journey, and that means there is plenty of room for new friendships to be forged, and acquaintances to be made - or rivalries and enmities! I’m open for anything!

With that said, if you’re still reading this, I apologize for rambling for so long. I wish you a very, very good new year and thank you for putting up with me! Have fun tonight, have fun the entire next year, and I hope to interact with you again in 2018!!

Thanks for everything,

Patrick~

[ionecoffman]

What It’s Like to Survive Being Shot 16 Times

Dustin Theoharis doesn’t like to talk about the day he was shot 16 times. Neither do the officers who shot him, so it’s hard to describe exactly how it unfolded.

What’s clear is that on February 11, 2012, several law-enforcement officers entered a house in Auburn, Washington, where Theoharis happened to be renting a room. They detained the homeowner’s son, who was wanted for violating his parole conditions. Then two of the officers pushed through a pair of French doors into the dark former storage space where Theoharis, 28 at the time, was sleeping.

Conflicting accounts make the next several seconds fuzzy. Kristopher Rongen, an officer with the Washington Department of Corrections, has told the story this way: He announced “Police, police, show your hands” in a loud voice, but Theoharis refused to do so. Rongen asked Theoharis if he had weapons, and Theoharis admitted he had three—then added “right here” and moved to sweep the floor with his hand. Rongen and the second officer, Aaron Thompson, a detective with the King County sheriff’s office, feared Theoharis was reaching for a gun and opened fire. (Both officers declined to be interviewed.)

Theoharis, meanwhile, says he didn’t have any guns. He remembers being startled by two strangers standing at the end of the bed—cops, no less. He says they asked for identification, so he reached for his wallet. That’s when they started shooting. There’s no dispute that the officers hit both of Theoharis’s legs, both of his arms, his shoulder, and his abdomen. One bullet edged his jaw. Another lodged in his back. Theoharis fell to the floor, writhing in pain with 16 bullet holes in his body.

[Read: The ‘unfortunate family’ of American shooting survivors]

Miraculously, he survived. It took him about a year to recover from the injuries. At first, he was breathing with the help of a tube and unable to talk, blinking once for “yes.” Doctors plucked bullets from his body during multiple surgeries. He relearned how to walk. He couldn’t return to his job as a refrigeration mechanic because he lost coordination in one of his hands, but a $5.5 million settlement with the sheriff’s office and the corrections department staved off financial concerns.

It’s profound luck that Theoharis can be counted among the tens of thousands of Americans injured by guns each year and not the thousands killed by them in homicide cases. Nevertheless, luck only goes so far. In the years since the shooting, Theoharis has grappled with lingering injuries and the emotional toll of such violence. Though upbeat and optimistic, he’s still figuring out how to navigate his spared life.

Over the summer, I drove out to meet Theoharis in Puyallup, Washington, where he owns a duplex not far from where he grew up. He and his girlfriend, Tara Miller, rent out one of the house’s units and spend a few months in the other each year. Mostly, they live in Arizona, where Theoharis used some of his settlement money to buy a second house and escape the gloomy weather. He says the cold makes his body ache, but he and Miller love to return to the Pacific Northwest during the brief window that the gray skies cede to the sun.

When I arrived, Theoharis welcomed me at the door. Their home was neat and furnished with a comfortable sectional in front of a large flat-screen TV. Golf was on, and quiet pops punctuated our introductions as balls sailed across the green. Dressed in a T-shirt, shorts, and socks, Theoharis perched on the edge of the couch and fidgeted with an e-cigarette as he told me about life after the shooting. If someone can have an “aw, shucks” attitude about besting 16 bullets, Theoharis was that self-effacing survivor. He shrugged and chuckled as he recalled the time he pulled a forgotten bullet from under his left arm as if he was tweezing a splinter.

But Theoharis’s body remains vulnerable. Miller, standing behind her boyfriend, widened her eyes and shook her head at me as Theoharis mused about skittering across the lake on a wakeboard or water skis like he used to. She returned to the kitchen, where she was working, after he waved away the idea; he’s too afraid of wiping out and smacking his face on the water. His jaw already hurt just from talking too much, he said. He’s more fragile now. He avoids moving heavy objects. Running is hard on his joints, but sometimes he rides an exercise bike. He golfs a lot.

That Theoharis can do anything in the first place is a matter of chance. “You can be shot once and die or you can be shot multiple times and live,” says Eileen Bulger, a surgery professor at the University of Washington and the trauma chief at Harborview Medical Center. “It very much depends on where the bullets go and how much damage is caused in the path of the bullet.” Even when someone survives, being shot can cause lifelong nerve damage, bowel obstructions, or other problems. What doesn’t kill you can still shorten your lifespan.

Theoharis knows about reduced life expectancy, though he admits he doesn’t entirely understand the calculus. “Maybe my giblets are all messed up, or something like that,” he told me. He has an umbilical hernia, which he explains means “it’s easier for giblets to pop through” his abdominal muscles. His spleen is gone. He’s missing teeth, though it’s not apparent when the talks.

In a counterintuitive twist, it’s also possible the shooting extended Theoharis’s life, in a way, even as he bears its physical scars. Before the incident, Theoharis was addicted to opioids, which are involved in the majority of drug-overdose deaths in America. He began treatment after he was released from the hospital and had the time to attend several 12-Step meetings a day. “I just wanted to live a happy frickin’ life,” he said. “I get another chance.”

Still, if the future physical-health problems of shooting survivors are uncertain, lasting mental-health impacts may be even harder to pin down. Theoharis tries not to think back on what happened, but says that he has “some issues” with post-traumatic stress disorder. Loud noises can spook him. Sometimes he startles more easily. He likes to shoot targets at a range, but being around other people with guns makes him uneasy, he says.

Brad Stolbach, a trauma psychologist who teaches at the University of Chicago, says it’s unlikely that someone would survive a shooting like the one Theoharis endured and not be traumatized in some lasting way. Research by Stolbach and others shows that people who have been shot in any circumstance are “very, very, highly likely” to meet the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder, he says, which can lead to flashbacks and nightmares, along with dissociative thoughts and feelings about what occurred.

These symptoms can be especially pronounced when the traumatic experience involves someone who is supposed to be a protector, like a parent or law enforcement, Stolbach adds. “Any kind of trauma can mess up your trust in the world and in the people around you and in your own safety,” he says. “But when someone in a position of trust and authority is the perpetrator of the harm, then that is absolutely going to affect how you experience people in positions of trust and authority.”

High-profile police shootings in recent years have prompted national conversations about use of force and racial disparities. Among the hundreds of victims of police violence in 2015, people of color were disproportionately affected. A recent study found that police killings of unarmed black men hurts the overall mental health of black Americans. Theoharis, who is white, stands apart from those discussions. I was surprised when he told me he doesn’t begrudge the officers who shot him. Rongen and Thompson made a “huge mistake,” he says, but he notes that John Urquhart, the King County sheriff at the time of the shooting, apologized to him. (A spokesman for the sheriff’s office couldn’t confirm that Urquhart apologized.) The two officers “were doing their job, and I think it’s a job a lot of people wouldn’t want to do,” Theoharis says.

[Read: Americans don’t really understand gun violence]

A few years after the incident, Theoharis heard secondhand or thirdhand that at least one of the officers was struggling with what happened. Rongen and Thompson are still employed by their respective agencies. In declining an interview, a spokesperson for the Washington Department of Corrections said Rongen didn’t want to relive the events of that day “and any trauma.”

Officers in Rongen and Thompson’s situation could be vulnerable to psychological fallout, too. In general, police are an extremely resilient group, says Diana Falkenbach, a clinical psychologist who teaches at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and works with police. But “if you make a horrific mistake that … almost ends someone’s life, you can imagine how difficult it would be to go into a situation again and again.” Cops have one of the highest rates of suicides compared to other groups, Falkenbach notes.

In June 2016, Rongen was shot himself. He was working an operation with a regional crime task force, according to a description of the shooting a friend posted online. He had a warrant for a suspect, a felon with a gang affiliation, but as he tried to arrest the man he was shot twice. The first bullet entered and exited his right shin and calf. The second shattered his knee cap. He was treated at the same hospital as Theoharis.

When I visited Theoharis over the summer, he hadn’t heard about this incident. I explained that I learned about it from a GoFundMe campaign organized by Rongen’s friends and colleagues to help him and his family deal with the financial strain of his injuries. When I told Theoharis about the fundraising effort, he sounded surprised.

“He had a GoFundMe?” Theoharis asked. Then he shook his head. “I should have contributed.”

Article source here:The Atlantic

[nancygduarteus]

What It’s Like to Survive Being Shot 16 Times

Dustin Theoharis doesn’t like to talk about the day he was shot 16 times. Neither do the officers who shot him, so it’s hard to describe exactly how it unfolded.

What’s clear is that on February 11, 2012, several law-enforcement officers entered a house in Auburn, Washington, where Theoharis happened to be renting a room. They detained the homeowner’s son, who was wanted for violating his parole conditions. Then two of the officers pushed through a pair of French doors into the dark former storage space where Theoharis, 28 at the time, was sleeping.

Conflicting accounts make the next several seconds fuzzy. Kristopher Rongen, an officer with the Washington Department of Corrections, has told the story this way: He announced “Police, police, show your hands” in a loud voice, but Theoharis refused to do so. Rongen asked Theoharis if he had weapons, and Theoharis admitted he had three—then added “right here” and moved to sweep the floor with his hand. Rongen and the second officer, Aaron Thompson, a detective with the King County sheriff’s office, feared Theoharis was reaching for a gun and opened fire. (Both officers declined to be interviewed.)

Theoharis, meanwhile, says he didn’t have any guns. He remembers being startled by two strangers standing at the end of the bed—cops, no less. He says they asked for identification, so he reached for his wallet. That’s when they started shooting. There’s no dispute that the officers hit both of Theoharis’s legs, both of his arms, his shoulder, and his abdomen. One bullet edged his jaw. Another lodged in his back. Theoharis fell to the floor, writhing in pain with 16 bullet holes in his body.

[Read: The ‘unfortunate family’ of American shooting survivors]

Miraculously, he survived. It took him about a year to recover from the injuries. At first, he was breathing with the help of a tube and unable to talk, blinking once for “yes.” Doctors plucked bullets from his body during multiple surgeries. He relearned how to walk. He couldn’t return to his job as a refrigeration mechanic because he lost coordination in one of his hands, but a $5.5 million settlement with the sheriff’s office and the corrections department staved off financial concerns.

It’s profound luck that Theoharis can be counted among the tens of thousands of Americans injured by guns each year and not the thousands killed by them in homicide cases. Nevertheless, luck only goes so far. In the years since the shooting, Theoharis has grappled with lingering injuries and the emotional toll of such violence. Though upbeat and optimistic, he’s still figuring out how to navigate his spared life.

Over the summer, I drove out to meet Theoharis in Puyallup, Washington, where he owns a duplex not far from where he grew up. He and his girlfriend, Tara Miller, rent out one of the house’s units and spend a few months in the other each year. Mostly, they live in Arizona, where Theoharis used some of his settlement money to buy a second house and escape the gloomy weather. He says the cold makes his body ache, but he and Miller love to return to the Pacific Northwest during the brief window that the gray skies cede to the sun.

When I arrived, Theoharis welcomed me at the door. Their home was neat and furnished with a comfortable sectional in front of a large flat-screen TV. Golf was on, and quiet pops punctuated our introductions as balls sailed across the green. Dressed in a T-shirt, shorts, and socks, Theoharis perched on the edge of the couch and fidgeted with an e-cigarette as he told me about life after the shooting. If someone can have an “aw, shucks” attitude about besting 16 bullets, Theoharis was that self-effacing survivor. He shrugged and chuckled as he recalled the time he pulled a forgotten bullet from under his left arm as if he was tweezing a splinter.

But Theoharis’s body remains vulnerable. Miller, standing behind her boyfriend, widened her eyes and shook her head at me as Theoharis mused about skittering across the lake on a wakeboard or water skis like he used to. She returned to the kitchen, where she was working, after he waved away the idea; he’s too afraid of wiping out and smacking his face on the water. His jaw already hurt just from talking too much, he said. He’s more fragile now. He avoids moving heavy objects. Running is hard on his joints, but sometimes he rides an exercise bike. He golfs a lot.

That Theoharis can do anything in the first place is a matter of chance. “You can be shot once and die or you can be shot multiple times and live,” says Eileen Bulger, a surgery professor at the University of Washington and the trauma chief at Harborview Medical Center. “It very much depends on where the bullets go and how much damage is caused in the path of the bullet.” Even when someone survives, being shot can cause lifelong nerve damage, bowel obstructions, or other problems. What doesn’t kill you can still shorten your lifespan.

Theoharis knows about reduced life expectancy, though he admits he doesn’t entirely understand the calculus. “Maybe my giblets are all messed up, or something like that,” he told me. He has an umbilical hernia, which he explains means “it’s easier for giblets to pop through” his abdominal muscles. His spleen is gone. He’s missing teeth, though it’s not apparent when the talks.

In a counterintuitive twist, it’s also possible the shooting extended Theoharis’s life, in a way, even as he bears its physical scars. Before the incident, Theoharis was addicted to opioids, which are involved in the majority of drug-overdose deaths in America. He began treatment after he was released from the hospital and had the time to attend several 12-Step meetings a day. “I just wanted to live a happy frickin’ life,” he said. “I get another chance.”

Still, if the future physical-health problems of shooting survivors are uncertain, lasting mental-health impacts may be even harder to pin down. Theoharis tries not to think back on what happened, but says that he has “some issues” with post-traumatic stress disorder. Loud noises can spook him. Sometimes he startles more easily. He likes to shoot targets at a range, but being around other people with guns makes him uneasy, he says.

Brad Stolbach, a trauma psychologist who teaches at the University of Chicago, says it’s unlikely that someone would survive a shooting like the one Theoharis endured and not be traumatized in some lasting way. Research by Stolbach and others shows that people who have been shot in any circumstance are “very, very, highly likely” to meet the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder, he says, which can lead to flashbacks and nightmares, along with dissociative thoughts and feelings about what occurred.

These symptoms can be especially pronounced when the traumatic experience involves someone who is supposed to be a protector, like a parent or law enforcement, Stolbach adds. “Any kind of trauma can mess up your trust in the world and in the people around you and in your own safety,” he says. “But when someone in a position of trust and authority is the perpetrator of the harm, then that is absolutely going to affect how you experience people in positions of trust and authority.”

High-profile police shootings in recent years have prompted national conversations about use of force and racial disparities. Among the hundreds of victims of police violence in 2015, people of color were disproportionately affected. A recent study found that police killings of unarmed black men hurts the overall mental health of black Americans. Theoharis, who is white, stands apart from those discussions. I was surprised when he told me he doesn’t begrudge the officers who shot him. Rongen and Thompson made a “huge mistake,” he says, but he notes that John Urquhart, the King County sheriff at the time of the shooting, apologized to him. (A spokesman for the sheriff’s office couldn’t confirm that Urquhart apologized.) The two officers “were doing their job, and I think it’s a job a lot of people wouldn’t want to do,” Theoharis says.

[Read: Americans don’t really understand gun violence]

A few years after the incident, Theoharis heard secondhand or thirdhand that at least one of the officers was struggling with what happened. Rongen and Thompson are still employed by their respective agencies. In declining an interview, a spokesperson for the Washington Department of Corrections said Rongen didn’t want to relive the events of that day “and any trauma.”

Officers in Rongen and Thompson’s situation could be vulnerable to psychological fallout, too. In general, police are an extremely resilient group, says Diana Falkenbach, a clinical psychologist who teaches at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and works with police. But “if you make a horrific mistake that … almost ends someone’s life, you can imagine how difficult it would be to go into a situation again and again.” Cops have one of the highest rates of suicides compared to other groups, Falkenbach notes.

In June 2016, Rongen was shot himself. He was working an operation with a regional crime task force, according to a description of the shooting a friend posted online. He had a warrant for a suspect, a felon with a gang affiliation, but as he tried to arrest the man he was shot twice. The first bullet entered and exited his right shin and calf. The second shattered his knee cap. He was treated at the same hospital as Theoharis.

When I visited Theoharis over the summer, he hadn’t heard about this incident. I explained that I learned about it from a GoFundMe campaign organized by Rongen’s friends and colleagues to help him and his family deal with the financial strain of his injuries. When I told Theoharis about the fundraising effort, he sounded surprised.

“He had a GoFundMe?” Theoharis asked. Then he shook his head. “I should have contributed.”

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/02/police-shooting-shot-16-times/582187/?utm_source=feed

[njawaidofficial]

Why KevJumba Disappeared: Inside the YouTube Star's Departure

http://styleveryday.com/2017/08/30/why-kevjumba-disappeared-inside-the-youtube-stars-departure/

Why KevJumba Disappeared: Inside the YouTube Star's Departure

The Asian-American teen vlogger was one of the platform’s first breakouts to earn Hollywood cred — starring in a Scorsese-produced feature — until he suddenly went offline in 2014, leaving his fans and the industry in the dark.

Kevin Wu wants to set something straight: “I’m not in a cult,” he says with a laugh.

Since going dark on social media in 2014, the YouTube phenom formerly known as KevJumba, who once seemed to have Hollywood in the palm of his hand, has become a mythical phantom to the digital generation that made him a star. Occasional Instagram posts by fans offered glimpses of him on college campuses wearing plain white tunics and handing out Buddhist tracts, which only added to the mystique. Now, in a rare interview, Wu, 27, offers new insight into his disappearance.

KevJumba was one of YouTube’s first stars. He joined the year-old platform in 2006, had a video featured on its homepage in 2007 and by 2008 had its No. 3 most subscribed channel. The Houston native’s self-deprecating vlogs about the indignities of being an Asian-American teen generated more than 300 million views and led to collaborations with Jessica Alba and Jeremy Lin. With his father, a frequent guest in his videos, Wu competed on The Amazing Race in 2010 (five years before the Emmy-winning reality competition’s all-social media stunt cast season).

By then Wu was a sophomore at UC Davis; he dropped out and moved to Los Angeles to live and make videos full-time with other top YouTubers including Ryan Higa and Dominic “D-Trix” Sandoval. “We were catching a feeling and we all felt like we were riding this wave, so we all just took that leap,” Wu tells THR. In 2011 he signed with CAA, which brought him to New York for its 2013 NewFront presentation, where he pitched brand partnership opportunities on five different series in development to a roomful of media buyers.

Wu was firmly a contender to become the elusive digital-to-traditional media crossover star, landing the co-lead in Chinatown crime drama Revenge of the Green Dragons — a real movie, executive produced by Martin Scorsese. “Two years before, I’m sitting in my bedroom with a camera, and the next moment I’m in a trailer with someone doing my hair and makeup and PAs asking if I want any water,” he recalls.

“He had everything that you intrinsically needed to be a star,” says Justin Chon, his Revenge co-star. “He has this everyman vibe, and I thought if he honed the craft, he could really be accepted by the masses.” His manager, Jaeson Ma, agrees: “Of the YouTube generation, Kevin had the most natural raw talent. He had intuition, and he had range.”

CAA set Wu up with acting coaches, auditions and meetings with noteworthy producers, including one who began developing a TV comedy based on his relationship with his family. There were talks with content producers both traditional (Cartoon Network) and digital (Xbox Entertainment Studios, which shuttered in 2014). Brands paid him five figures for three-minute videos, and combined with his other revenue from YouTube views and touring, Wu bought a loft downtown. “Not having to worry about money at such a young age was more than a privilege,” Wu says, but adds that the artistic freedom that came with his cachet was even more important.

“People were willing to put money into projects he wanted to make,” agrees Chon. “He was basically living Entourage. He was getting invited to parties; the industry wanted to meet him.”

But by the time Revenge premiered at Toronto in 2014, Wu was starting to withdraw both online and offline. He made his wildly popular YouTube channel private, after not posting any new videos for about a year. To hear him tell it, he wanted to focus his resources on feature films. “I didn’t see YouTube as my end goal,” he says, pointing to Donald Glover, who earned a cult following in online sketches but hopped off YouTube before the platform could define him. “I always knew that this internet popularity would maybe come and go. Maybe I got tired of watching myself talking into the camera — I didn’t see that format as something very sustainable.”

He also was embarking on a search for purpose. In March 2015 he was invited to audition for Netflix’s Master of None (as Aziz Ansari’s Taiwanese-American best friend, the proxy for co-creator Alan Yang), but he passed. With all the different revenue streams available to him, Wu was easily poised to make millions, say Ma and other insiders familiar with his career. “He was turning down opportunities that could have been life-changing,” says Chon, “but that was when he sort of went down the rabbit hole.”

“I felt like I was missing things in my personal growth,” Wu explains. “I was able to make a large number of people laugh or connect to what I was saying, but my personality became very dependent on what my viewers thought of me. You get caught when you’re so young and haven’t experienced the wide range of life and reached a point of adulthood where you can see things more objectively.” He enrolled at Santa Monica College and began pursuing spirituality in earnest, attending a Bible study with Lin (then playing for the Lakers) and serving at a Hare Krishna temple on the Westside. The plan was to return to social media with a more enlightened perspective in a few years.

“I had seen both materialism and spirituality and didn’t necessarily think one was better than the other,” Wu says. “I had the intention of coming back to the audience that grew up with me to help people find personal growth: How can we live on this earth and still hold on to our values?”

But his plans fell apart in June 2015, when he was struck by a car in L.A. while he was walking, says Wu. The near-fatal crash broke his spine, collapsed his lungs and shattered his spirit. Initially, he was determined to power through it. “I’m still going to go to school after I get out of the hospital,” he told himself then. “I’ve got to get on with my real life.” But his organs were failing and he’d eventually have two major surgeries to address the damage.

There were psychological injuries, too. “I was slowly losing the ability to gauge where I was,” says Wu. “My mood started to swing because every time they found something wrong with my body, I was trying to downplay it.” He eventually was assessed as a hazard to himself and spent 17 days at a behavioral health facility following his monthlong hospitalization. Wu speaks of that time carefully, still grappling with the physical and mental trauma.

The accident left Wu unable to continue school or do anything else but focus on his recovery. He moved back in with this parents in Houston after he was discharged. “Hopefully people will just forget about me and I’ll just be shrouded in mystery or whatever. I’m in too much pain,” he says of his mindset during that period. “I was ready to accept that as my life.”

His father nursed him back from the edge. “I give a lot of credit to my dad because he took me back home and took care of me to the best of his ability,” Wu says, “and when he felt like he couldn’t connect with me on certain spiritual issues, he took me to see his shifu” — the Chinese word for master. In the Wus’ case, their shifu was a Buddhist nun. Though he’s reluctant to put a label on his beliefs, most of Wu’s rare appearances now are affiliated with Buddhist organizations or include references to various Eastern religious figures.

Wu resurfaced in March, restoring his YouTube channel to the public setting. The move was timed to coincide with Youth Represent the World, a March 11 show directed by Wu and presented by the Asian-American entertainment organization Kollaboration, the city of Stafford and the Buddha’s Light International Association. Wu’s three-year absence had not diminished his fanbase — a sold-out crowd packed the 1,154-seat Stafford Centre in Houston to watch Wu onstage again, where he performed stand-up along with a non-comedic parody of Kanye West’s “Power,” rapping, “No one man should have internet power.”

“There’s a responsibility that comes with this, and it’s so accessible to young people,” says Wu, who maintains a tentative relationship with social media, privatizing posts shortly after publishing them. “Being young and naive and having fame and fortune and power at a young age can take you away from the right path.”

Wu, who once raised $50,000 on his 21st birthday to build a secondary school in Nairobi through the education nonprofit The Supply, believes that his path still involves using his platform to make a public impact. “From the moment I got featured on the homepage of YouTube and earned half a million views overnight, I’ve become a public servant,” he says, crediting his shifu for encouraging him to re-engage with society.

But he wants to plot his return carefully. He applied for and was accepted to multiple acting conservatories in New York, including the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and the New York Film Academy, and is planning a trip to visit the campuses soon. One reason for acting school is to see if his body can take it. “Moving away from home is a test of faith because I do really like the community I’ve established here,” says Wu, noting that he currently sees four different doctors in Houston, including a pain management specialist who told him that he may have to live with chronic pain as a result of nerve damage from his spinal injuries. “But I need to relearn how to act.”

The other reason is because Wu recognizes that he leapfrogged a lot of steps in his first unexpected entree into fame and fortune. “Even though there’s really no right way, being a YouTube star and having power is not the conventional approach for getting into the acting industry,” he says. “This is my way of saying that if I’m going to approach acting seriously, I’m not going to rush it. The fact is that I went through a very traumatic incident and I still want to pursue my dreams.”

Hollywood loves a comeback, and industry insiders who were close to Wu say that there is still room for him in the business. “He has the passion, the charisma and the intelligence to be a brilliant performer,” says Ma. Adds Chon, “I always thought that he didn’t even need YouTube. Talent-wise, I have no doubt. He’s still young and there’s plenty of time for him to retool and rebuild his career. The question is whether he can sustain it for the long haul and be mentally healthy. If he were to come back, we’re all here to welcome him with open arms.”

A version of this story first appeared in the Aug. 23 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.