#hope ted looks traumatized enough <3

[ask-teen-dorks-au]

@ask-all-the-kindergarteners

enjoy - 🌟

[altschmerzes]

It’s my birthday so… 🌹?

and a happy happy birthday to you!! i hope it's been a good one <3 this is a scene i've posted a piece of before, but it's a much longer clip of the context leading up to it. it's much later in the fic than we are now, after the au version of 2x08. this is right after ted and roy - and beard and rebecca, who went with them - got back from manchester where they went to retrieve jamie's things from his dad's place. they left jamie at the higgins house while they went to do this, because while he's obviously old enough to stay home alone, he's hurt pretty significantly and he's had an extremely traumatic like. week or so. so they don't want to leave him on his own. this is when they go to pick him up.

When they arrive at the Higgins house, it’s dark. Evening is wearing on, and the sight of the cosy home with the light shining through the curtains makes something in Roy’s chest give an almighty yank. This is a day that has lasted a lifetime and he feels so tired he could lie down on the pavement and sleep for an age at the same time that he feels alive with nervous energy that won’t quiet until he gets eyes on Jamie. Even lifting his hand to knock on the front door it shakes. Roy can feel the same sort of anxious buzz radiating from the person behind him on the porch and, far from the first time, he is extremely fucking glad that Ted is here with him. Maybe it’s a bad sort of thing to think, but Roy is beyond grateful that he isn’t feeling everything that he’s feeling - about what they did today, about the whole situation, about Jamie - alone.

Higgins answers the door with a smile and waves them inside. He doesn’t ask why they didn’t stay in Manchester for the night, or how things went, or what the man they’d gone to see had been like, and Roy could kiss him for it. The only thing he says, huddled with Roy and Ted in the front entry, is, “Alright?”

Roy gives one stiff nod and Ted mumbles something unintelligible. Higgins nods back, and steps into the living room, both of them following behind him.

“Jamie,” he calls softly as he crosses the threshold. “Jamie, Ted and Roy are back. They’re here to get you.”

Jamie is laying on the couch. He’s curled on his side, a throw blanket tucked around him - a sight that kicks that lurching yank in Roy’s ribcage back to life again. It hurts to look at him there with the blanket so carefully tucked in at the edges. For a moment, Roy can’t hardly breathe. Then he notices that Jamie isn’t wearing the sling he’s supposed to be wearing so that his shoulder heals right. He sees it off to the side, set on an end table, and then he’s walking before he remembers deciding to do it. As he goes, he sees Jamie sitting up, a trajectory slowed and made awkward by sleep and pain.

“Roy?” the kid asks, voice clumsy with the same.

“Yeah,” Roy says. He picks up the sling and turns with it, sitting down on the couch next to Jamie. The fabric is rough and he’s not quite sure how to get the straps open, but he figures it out after not too much fumbling.

Holding out the sling, now opened as far as it will go, Roy gestures towards Jamie with it. Jamie looks at him and doesn’t move at first. When he does, it’s a slow shift, a hesitant raise of his bad arm that stops when it’s held out between them. He doesn’t put it into the sling. He just sits there with it held out between them, already trembling slightly from the pain of holding his wrenched shoulder at that angle.

It’s an offer. A silent gesture of hesitant trust and Roy almost can’t do it. He almost can’t bring himself to accept what he’s being given for fear that he’ll break it, that he’ll take this chance Jamie has given him and ruin it. Hurt him. Roy has to take the chance, though, because if he doesn’t, if he rejects the offer, he knows Jamie will be hurt. Something between them will fracture. So he reaches out a faintly shaking hand and gently takes ahold of Jamie’s wrist. Jamie jolts at the touch - not much, just a twitch really, but Roy stops. He sits still and holds Jamie’s wrist, waiting for… Waiting for something. What, he doesn’t know exactly. An indication that he hasn’t made things worse? Someone else to speak, or move, or breathe? Something, anything that will tell Roy that things are steady, that the ground under their feet isn’t ice about to crack.

The room feels like it’s holding its breath. Roy doesn’t know if Ted came in or is still in the doorway, if Higgins is here or if he’s disappeared somewhere into the rest of the house. He can’t pay attention to either of them. All his attention is focused on Jamie as he slowly, carefully starts helping the kid maneuver his arm into the sling. Mostly, it goes just fine. His arm fits into it easily with only a single moment where Roy twists the fabric to get it settled and Jamie lets out a hiss. Roy pulls the offending part of the sling out of the way and swipes his thumb over the bone of Jamie’s wrist in apology.

“Feel okay?” Roy asks, once it’s all settled, with all of its fiddly straps and velcro bits arranged in the way Sarah had showed him before they left the hospital.

Jamie doesn’t answer. He just keeps his head ducked down the way it has been while Roy’s fussed at his arm, watching the process with detached fascination. There’s an odd expression on his face and his eyes flick away from his arm, up to Roy every so briefly, then back down again. It takes Roy a moment to notice, but he’s chewing on the inside of his cheek.

“The sling, I mean,” Roy corrects, chastising himself internally for being an idiot with how he worded the question. Of course Jamie doesn’t fucking feel okay. What kind of a stupid, nonsense, ridiculous… “Does it feel alright, do you need me to…”

Whatever he’d been about to say is cut off by Jamie. The boy moves in an unexpected, sudden moment, wrapping his good arm around Roy’s waist and ducking his face into the side of his neck. The grip at Roy’s waist is tight in a way that’s almost desperate and Jamie is pressed as close as he can get despite the bulk of the sling getting in the way. There’s a tremor running through his body that Roy hadn’t been able to see but can sure feel now, and he’s breathing in heavy, laboured pushes of his chest like he’s about to cry.

It’s wrong, knowing that. It’s wrong that Roy knows so acutely and so surely what it feels like when Jamie is on the verge of tears in his arms, and he realizes with a lurch of his gut that he hasn’t actually reacted at all. Jamie is clinging onto him like he’s the last steady thing in the world but Roy’s arms aren’t around him. It’s been several long seconds now and he hasn’t responded, and he knows Jamie, knows that means Jamie’s probably already convinced he’s done something wrong. He’s got to be going ten rounds with himself inside his head but he still hasn’t let go, which means the only thing worse to Jamie right now than clinging to something he’s afraid doesn’t want him is not having anything to cling to at all.

Slowly, hesitantly, still so haunted by the inescapable knowledge of just where the worst of the boy’s injuries are mapped onto his body that a large part of Roy is terrified to touch him, he responds. Roy’s hands lift and hover behind him, trying to decide where to put them, eventually settling with one palm pressed to the nape of Jamie’s neck, the other gently eased around the part of his upper arm swaddled in the sling. If he can keep the pressure off Jamie’s shoulder, if he can avoid pressing on his injured back, then maybe Roy can justify staying here like this with him for a little longer. Maybe Roy can justify leaning his cheek on the top of Jamie’s head and feeling him breathe, which is proof that he’s alive. Proof that he’s not okay yet but he is safe, which means that okay is in reach, even if it’ll take a while to get there.

They stay there like that for a long time.

[dr-spencer-reids-queen]

Extreme Aggressor: Part Two

Pairing: Eventual Spencer Reid x Reader

Word Count: 2.1k

Warnings: canon violence, canon language, canon talk of death, methods of kill, and angst

Summary: Jason Gideon is called back from a six-month leave from the Behavioral Analysis Unit to profile a killer. Meanwhile, the team flies across the country to Seattle when another young woman goes missing at the hands of "The Seattle Strangler," another serial killer.

Author’s Note: Here is it finally! After hard work, it is finally ready for your viewing pleasure! Please, feedback is always appreciated so let me know what you like about it and what you didn’t!

I do not own anything from Criminal Minds. All credit goes to their respective owners. If there is any warnings that exceed the normal death/kills from the show, I will list them. If you’ve seen the show, then it’s the same level of angst unless otherwise stated.

So without further ado, please enjoy!

After arriving at the police headquarters, you followed Gideon and the rest of the team inside the building. It still felt awkward between you and the rest of the team which is why you stuck to Gideon’s side the whole time. He walked fast throughout the building, and you did your best to keep up.

“He never stands with his back to a window. When I was between him and a doorway, he asked me to move,” Derek gossiped about your friend.

“That's hypervigilance. It's not uncommon in post-traumatic stress disorder.”

“Just how much disorder are we talking about?”

“Morgan, it's been six months. Everything's okay,” Hotchner calmed him down.

“And he brings along a woman we don’t even know? How do we know we can trust her? I’m sorry, but she doesn’t mean anything to me yet,” Derek asked just as you passed them.

Looking at them over your shoulder, you caught Spencer’s eyes before moving on.

“Give her time. You gave me time,” he said, catching up to you. “Sorry about that.”

“Don’t be. He’s right. I’m a stranger to you guys.”

“Hopefully by the end of this, you won’t be,” he smiled, walking into the main room with you that was crowded with uniforms.

“This is special agent Gideon, special agent Morgan, our expert on obsessional crimes, special agent Reid—”

“Dr. Reid,” Gideon interrupted.

“Dr. Reid, our expert on well, everything, and the newest member of our team, Y/N Y/L/N. And after two years busting my ass in this office, I hope you all remember me,” Hotchner smiled with the laughter that ensured throughout the room.

“He's willing to travel with the body,” Gideon speaks, looking at the map.

“Then he drives a vehicle capable of concealing one,” Hotchner added.

“1 in 7.4 drivers in Seattle owns an SUV,” Spencer spat out.

“But how do we know it's his car? Ted Bundy drove a VW Bug. What about a Jeep Cherokee? Jeeps are more masculine,” Derek voiced his thoughts.

“We all know how an unsub feels about asserting his masculinity,” Gideon chuckled.

“When did the bureau become involved in the case?” Hotchner asked the lead police officer.

“After the fourth body. He dumped that one out of state.”

While everyone was conversing and talking, you walked up the board with the recent pictures of the latest kidnapped victim, Heather. She went missing about a day ago which means she has about 24 hours left until she is dead—and the clock is ticking. Her image and the photos of the abduction site certainly does something for you, but it’s not enough. Reaching up to touch the image of her, you closed your eyes to see if you can get anything from a picture.

A flash of an orange car here, her heart rate increasing while inside the car, but other than that, you got nothing. It would be better if you were touching some of her things since the human body leaves traces wherever they go, whatever they touch. Since she wasn’t murdered, there isn’t a dump site that would give you even more clues and answers.

“What are you doing?” Spencer asked when he saw you.

Opening your eyes, you lowered your hand before looking at him.

“I am trying to connect myself with her through a photograph. It’s not that common to get anything, but it does happen. I see an orange car and her fearful expressions, but that’s about it.”

“What do you need in order to get a clearer picture?”

“Her belongings. Every human leaves a spiritual trace wherever they go. It’s stronger with personal items.”

“Agent Gideon, where would you like to start?” one of the policemen asked.

“Let's start at the site of the last murder. Y/N, you coming?”

“I think I’ll get a better read on Heather and whether she’s alive or not if I’m with her things. I’ll go to her house.”

“Reid and I will go with you,” Hotchner announced.

Knowing you wouldn’t go alone, you bit your own tongue and followed the two men out the door. The fact that the Bureau provided government standard SUVs were pretty cool. It didn’t take long to go to Heather’s house, and when you arrived, you met her brother and the dog she owned.

“Sandy, no, no, no. I'm so sorry,” Heather’s brother, David, apologized when the big dog started barking and trying to playfully attack you three. However, when it came to you, the dog just stared at you silently.

“No, it's okay. It's what we call the Reid effect,” Hotchner stated, causing the young doctor to be confused. “I'm agent Hotchner. This is special agent Dr. Reid and Dr. Y/N Y/L/N.”

“Y/N is fine,” you quickly added.

“You two look too young to have gone to medical school,” the man observed.

“They're PhD's. 3 of them. She has two.”

“Spencer,” you whispered softly to get him to shut up about it.

It’s not like you don’t want people to know you have 2 PhDs, but you just didn’t want the attention. Plus, if your dad knew you went to school to be a profiler in the FBI, he’d have your head.

“Are you a genius or something?”

“I don't believe that intelligence can be accurately quantified, but I do have an IQ of 187 and an eidetic memory and can read 20,000 words per minute,” he gushed. The man stared at him like he was crazy, so the young doctor just agreed. “Yes, I'm a genius.”

“Sandy, you get a lot of attention, don't you?” Hotchner asked the dog who just panted.

Instead of being with them, you took a look around the room to see if you can get a feel to the place. Heather’s spirit was here through certain items, but because there are more than one, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly where it’s coming from. The conversation went on about her dog until it got back on track.

“David, does your sister drive a Datsun Z?” Spencer asked when he picked up a magazine.

“No, but she's in the market for one. How'd you know?” he asked, and Spencer held it up. David just shook his head and took his dog outside since she was getting antsy.

“There's an immediate relationship established between a buyer and a seller, a certain level of trust. If I want to coax a young woman into my car, I’d offer her a test drive,” you said, causing the two men to stare at you.

Their bodies were emitting tension, and you knew they didn’t trust you at all. You needed to do something to prove to them that you were worthy enough to be on this team.

“Let me show you what I can do, okay?”

“Alright,” Hotch said.

Taking the magazine from Spencer’s hands, you closed your eyes in concentration. A multitude of pictures flashed through your mind due to the residue that Heather left behind, until those pictures turned into film. Heather was seated on the couch right behind Hotch and Spencer, flipping through the magazine happily. When she got to the page she wanted, she grabbed the red marker on the table next to her and circled the orange car a bunch of times. She then grabbed her money and began counting it to see if she had enough money to buy it.

“Heather is sitting on that couch, super excited to buy the orange car I keep seeing. She circles the one she wants with a red marker, and she starts to count her money,” you open your eyes, and began to flip through the magazine until you found the page you were looking for. “If I’m right, it’s this page she was on. She found someone with this exact car, and whoever took her did it because they got her to test drive it.”

The page you landed on was the same exact page with the red marker.

“Nice job,” Hotch complimented.

“That’s amazing,” Spencer muttered.

“Thank you. I just want to help, Agent Hotchner.”

“Please, call me Hotch.”

“Okay, then how about the fact that on one hand, we have paranoid psychosis, but the autopsy protocol says what?” Derek asked.

Back at the office, everyone was talking about the case and how the MO of this unsub didn’t make any sense. Derek was the one who was freaking out about everything since apparently not having a profile ready didn't bode well for him.

“Adhesive residue shows he put layer after layer of duct tape over his victims' eyes,” Spencer answered.

“He knows he wants to kill them, but he still covers their eyes. He doesn't want 'em looking at him, apparently. Okay, but then he takes the body and dumps it right out in the open, murder weapon nearby.”

“Not the MO of a paranoid convinced he's being watched or surveilled,” Spencer added.

Gideon stares at the drawing board while the rest talked about the case. Just by the look of his face, he was drowning out whatever they were saying. Even though you can get a read on his spiritual energy, that didn’t mean you could understand what he is thinking.

“Jason? What’s wrong?” you asked quietly, making sure only he could hear you.

However, he didn’t answer you directly.

“Alright, enough,” he interrupted the chatter in the room. “Let's tell them we're ready.”

“We're ready?” Derek gasped as Gideon left the room. The young genius started to write something down on his notepad, but the older agent wasn’t finished. “Reid, you're good with this? We've got a woman who's only got a few hours left to live, an incomplete profile, and a unit chief on the verge of a nervous breakdown.”

“They don't call them nervous breakdowns anymore,” you noted.

“It's called a major depressive episode.”

“I know, Reid,” Derek sighed.

Walking away from the board, you looked at Spencer quickly right before you left the room. Gideon gathered everyone in a conference room to deliver the profile and stood in the middle of the room with the tables blocking him in on three sides like a square. The rest of his team stood off to the side, and while Hotch, Spencer, and Derek were listening, you were watching the reactions of everyone in this room. If your abilities told you anything, it’s how untrustworthy even the most highly respected person could be.

“The unidentified subject is white and in his late 20's. He's someone you wouldn't notice at first. He's someone who'd blend into any crowd. The violent nature of the crime suggests a previous criminal record--petty crimes, maybe auto theft,” Gideon began. Running your eyes over every person in this room, you tapped into their energies to see what the normal eye couldn’t.

“We've classified him as an organized killer—psychopathic as opposed to psychotic. He follows the news, has good hygiene, and he's smart. 'Cause he's smart, the only physical evidence you'll find is what he wants you to find,” Gideon continued. The person right in front of you wanted to pay attention, but all of his focus was centered on his phone. He’s got some private issues at home that you rather not delve into right now.

“He's mobile, and his car in good condition. Our guess is a Jeep Cherokee with tinted windows. The murders have all involved rapes, but rape without penetration is a form of piquerism, and that tells us he's sexually inadequate.”

The person to your right is paying very close attention to what Gideon is saying, but she is focused on his lips and the way he talks which says that she’s attracted to him right now. That made you want to laugh because you knew for a fact that Gideon was seeing someone on the down low.

“What is it?” Spencer whispered when he saw the hint of your smile.

“That woman over there wants to bone Gideon,” you whispered back.

“How do you know?”

“I’m psychic, Spencer. I know more about a person than you think. Want me to do you?”

“No, thank you,” he whispered and got back to what Gideon was saying.

“Psychiatric evaluations will show a history of paranoia stemming from a childhood trauma—death of a parent or family member, and now he feels persecuted and watched. Murder gives him a sense of power. Organized killers have a fascination with law enforcement. They will inject themselves into the investigation. They will even come forward as witnesses to see just how much the police really know. That makes them feel powerful, in control. Which is why I also think in fact, I know you have already interviewed him,” Gideon finished, causing the entire room to feel shocked at the news.

wanna be tagged? add yourself to this document! if your tag doesn’t work, find out why!

@averyhotchner​

[minuteminx]

Why Preston’s Story is Important

Trigger warnings for mentions of depression and suicidality. Please take care of yourselves <3

I don’t know if Bethesda intended to give us one of the single most accurate representations of passing depression I’ve seen in a video game or if that was just an accident, but holy molerat on a stick the more I think about it the more excited I get for one Mr. Preston Garvey and his backstory.

I know I’ve talked about this in other fandoms, but I’m new here so I’ll begin by saying that I’m psychology doctoral candidate about to start my last year of my training (whoop!), and inevitably I tend to focus a lot on how mental health and mental illness are treated in the media I consume. I am usually unimpressed at best, disappointed at worst. A lot of people just don’t know how to talk about these things, stigmas end up being amplified, and so I’m always pleasantly surprised when someone gets something *right*.

Now, don’t get me wrong: there are a lot of factual inaccuracies in the brain science of FO4 (you know like how they just loaded Kellogg’s hippocampus onto nick’s brain and all of Kellogg’s memories were there. Brains don’t work that way, but it’s science fiction so I’m not going to fuss. Lol). However, I think they’ve really done a wonderful job of illustrating what having depression and what being suicidal can look like in their more subtle forms.

I think a lot of the time when media seeks to establish a character as depressed, they really show the angst and despair, the tears, the complete hopelessness and withdrawal. And those are absolutely things that people with depression experience, but that’s not everyone. In fact, it’s not even most people!

A lot of the depression I see in my work (and a lot of what I’ve experienced myself) is apathy, disinterest, numbness. It’s feeling empty and hopeless, tired, but still waking up everyday, painting on a brave face and tackling the world that usually seems like entirely too much to handle. It’s living life even when it’s painful to live.

Which brings me to my next point: depiction of suicidality. There’s of course no blanket description of what it looks like or how people experience it, but all of the literature I’ve read, all of the lead experts in suicide prevention agree that suicidality can be most accurately defined by ambivalence toward life. Most people who experience these things don’t necessarily want to die. There are just things (we call them drivers) that make living unbearable. This can be anything from bullying to unemployment to untreated mental illness, to a traumatic event. I could go into a bunch of psych mumbo jumbo about the dimensions of suicidality but I’ll contain myself. A lot of media gets this wrong, a lot of them portray suicidality as inexplicable and people who experience it as almost beyond help. It’s inaccurate and it’s stigmatizing.

Anyway, back to Preston. My personal, educated opinion is that he is such a positive example of someone who experiences depression, who experiences suicidality, and who we see get better. Preston lost a lot. He watched people he cared about and people he was responsible for be killed by other people who he trusted. His every attempt to save the Quincy settlers was thwarted as they were attacked time and again, until they wound up trapped at Concord. Of course he felt helpless and hopeless, of course he wondered if it might have been better to just give up. The way he describes wanting to find a way to “end” it is something I’ve seen a lot, particularly in young men. Men who end up engaging in reckless behavior, doing drugs, crime, joining the military, just hoping that something will take the pain away.

What is even cooler about Preston is that we get to see him fighting it. We see him putting on a “happy face” (essentially masking), and doing his job. And when he develops a close relationship with the sole survivor, when he is inspired by them enough to talk about his struggles, he even says that all it took was meeting someone to help him, to give him hope again. It didn’t take a miracle, it wasn’t some impossible thing. He just needed support and to not feel so alone. That’s, in fact, what a lot of people with depression need. It’s what people just generally need, and it’s just really great to see portrayed in a video game.

Thank you for coming to my unsolicited Ted Talk, you’ve been wonderful. I’m going to go hide in my hyperfixation hole now.

[multiyandereimagines]

Spencer Reid x Male! Yandere! Reader

so this has been requested by someone in my direct messages, (idk if you want to be anonymous but i will do that anyways lol)

request: beginning, y/n joins the BAU and falls for Spencer, blah blah blah the normal thing (lol I’m weird) but when girls flirt with him he gets pissed and kills them. Crosses their arms after as a sign of remorse. And while the BAU is looking for him, he points them in the wrong direction

After another kill, Spencer see’s him killing someone and then he starts to cry cus he feels super bad

and Spencer decides to point them in the wrong direction or sumthin and they have to stop investigating

hope you all enjoy this! ❤️

tw: murder, gore

you and spencer are in some pretty deep shit right now.

i mean you did this all for him, the least he could do would be happy that someone could love him so much to the point of murder.

well before we get ahead of ourselves let’s go back to where this all started.

it was your first day in the bau, you felt excited yet nervous, you thought everyone would hate you. especially with your sexual orientation you worry that you probably wouldn’t fit in.

when you entered the round table everyone looked up at you, you smiled at each and everyone one of them and they smiled back. “welcome agent l/n, this is the team.” hotch started introducing everyone and finally you got to learn their names, one stuck out to you though.

spencer reid.

you felt like you could just die right there looking into his eyes, his messy hair and cute button nose, what’s not to like about him?

you shook his hand, wanting to feel him, “oh i don’t do hand shakes.” god even his voice is sexy.

“oh.. my bad.” you looked down shyly as you sat next to rossi.

“alrighty, so three women have been brutally murdered at this bar, they looked like they had been endlessly tortured, no signs of sexual assault and no one saw anything.” the woman with a colorful dress said, you think her name is penelope.

“clearly he’s a sadist but he doesn’t assault his victims.” morgan said swiping through the mutilated bodies on an ipad.

“someone must have wronged him to make him do these kinds of things to women, it’s clear he hates women.” you said inspecting one of the corpse.

“maybe a sister or a past lover.” spencer then went on to rant about how ted bundy killed his victims and how some of the methods of these killings were similar, he then went on to rant about something else, you were intrigued but hotch stopped him, he blushed and looked up at you, you gave him a smile as he smiled back.

he smiled at you...

your heart felt like it was going to explode, you felt like jumping up and down and yelling at the top of your lungs “he smiled at me, he smiled at me!”

you couldn’t stop smiling for the rest of the conversation, until it was time to go the jet.

~~~

you and spencer went to the bar where the murders went down, you asked the female bartender if she saw anything that may have been suspicious or felt sorta weird, she just shook her head, spencer ran up to you, “hey y/n i don’t think he killed them in this bar.. it may have been an alleyway.”

“how would you know?”

“there’s blood..”

your eyes slightly widened, “well hello there, handsome.” the female bartender looked at spencer up and down, he just blushed and looked down shyly, something in you just... snapped. you felt your whole world go down when you saw spencer smiling a little, you looked at the bartender, completely ignoring your presence and just smiled at spencer.

you grabbed his hand and walked away quickly, “okay spence show me to the alleyway.” you quickly said, not wanting to look at that bitch’s face. spencer was confused but he didn’t question it, he looked back at the bartender who was waving at him.

“oh gosh your right, there is a shit ton of blood.” you started to smell something a little funky, you walked to where the smell came from and there was another body that was coated with blood, it looked like something out of a horror movie, you tried to keep your cool, not wanting to seem weak, “spence! another body!” he ran up to you and his jaw dropped slightly at the scene.

“i’ll call hotch.”

~~~

once the day was over you sat on the comfy bed of your hotel room, your mind couldn’t stop thinking about how that bitch flirted with YOUR spencer right in front of you. your mind traveled to complete darkness, and before you knew it you walked out of your hotel room with a silver fork in your hand, you let your legs take control and you knew where you were headed.

you barged into the doors of the bar, you quickly searched for the woman and there she was, serving drinks and smiling all innocently, you scoffed, no way in hell is she innocent.

you approached her and she looked at you surprisingly, “oh hey! aren’t you that fbi dude from earlier?” you nodded, keeping a straight face, “where’s your friend?” she smirked, that’s it.

“i need your help with something, about the killer.” she beamed, “yeah anything!” you motioned for her to follow you and she told someone to cover for her, you led her to the alleyway where the same unsub kills his victims, you turned around and she looked scared, “uh, i-is that blood?” she pointed to the ground, “well yes, it might be.”

you pulled out your fork, you don’t know how you’re going to be able to kill her like this but it’s worth a try.

~~~

there she was... dead.

your fork was all crimson red and your hands were shaking, you felt like crying, how could you do something like this?

what would spencer think?

“fuck... what did i do?” you whisper yelled, your shaky hands traveled her arms, you slowly crossed her arms, guilt washed over you completely.

you slowly stood up and looked at her one last time before taking an anxiety written journey to the hotel.

~~~

“there’s been another murder at the same exact alleyway.” hotch announced, you were sweating bullets but kept your cool. “it’s a whole different m.o. it was just multiple stab wounds with a fork, our unsub does things more brutal than that.” rossi inspected the crime scene, “wait y/n that’s the bartender we talked to yesterday..” spencer looked at you in complete shock, your heart beat quickened, you felt like you were going to throw up. “t-that’s crazy...”

spencer nodded in agreement, you took a deep breath, everything is gonna be okay, you told yourself.

you and spencer told the devastating news to the bartenders sister, as you’d expect she was sobbing, “i’m very sorry for your loss.” you told her, you wanted to cry too, you really wanted to. spencer rubbed her shoulder and like that she started to calm down, “thank you, dr. reid.” she smiled at him, “no no, it’s no problem.” he looked at you and you just gave a sad smile, “i-i may need more help to uh... recover. mind if i ask you for your number, doctor?”

wait what.

you and spencer looked at each other, both of you completely taken aback.

“uh i-“

“i know some really good people that can help you out, i will give you their number instead.” you butted in, she just looked at you annoyingly, “uh.. no thanks.” she stood up and walked out. “that was uh... weird.” spencer blushed a little, you nodded, hiding your anger.

oh god.

the anger is coming back.

shit shit shit.

why now, why with a grieving family member?

i mean she did ask for your spencer’s number.

it’s a good enough reason to get rid of her.

you went to a private location and called up garcia, “what’s up, sugar?”

“hey garcia, i need you to send me an address from someone.”

“oh alright, who?”

“well you know the recent victim’s sister, she asked me for help with something and i don’t want to let her down.”

garcia gasped, “wait... does little y/n have a crush...” you almost choked on your spit, “whoa there, no way, not in a million years would i like a victims family member.”

“whatever you say lover boy, i sent you the address!”

“thanks garcia, your the best.”

~~~

here you go again, this time with a knife, you knocked on the door and the sister opened it, “oh hey, is there a problem?” why did she seem totally normal? shouldn’t she be bawling her eyes out? “uh well i wanted to talk about the numbers i told you about.” she looked bored, “oh... come in, i guess.”

you went inside, you turned around and she noticed the knife you were holding, “uh..”

and just like that you stabbed her, you wanted to stop but your mind traveled to where she asked for your lovers number, and all that anger came rushing in again.

you didn’t notice the door opening and spencer would be the one to look at the horror in front of him, “y/n?? stop! stop it!” he pulled you off of her, you turned your head to see a traumatized spencer reid, “what the- spencer? what are you doing here?” “what am i doing here?? what are YOU doing here?”

you both stood there quietly, then soft sobs came out of your lovers mouth, you looked up and saw spencer crying.

oh god, this was not what you wanted at all...

“fuck... spencer..”

you slowly approached him and hugged him, surprisingly he hugged you back, “w-what did you do...” he sobbed out.

“i’m sorry...”

“the others are gonna find out...”

“are you gonna tell them?”

“...no.”

you pulled back and looked right into his eyes, “you sure?”

“yeah i’m sure.” he sniffed, “i’ll make sure of it.”

there was silence again.

until reid spoke up.

“why did you do all this?” he wiped his tears off of his cheeks.

“i... i love you... like a lot and i don’t know if you’d like me back since i’m a guy and... i don’t know.” you buried your face in your hands, you wanted to cry, scream, destroy everything.

“y/n... this is not the way to get someone to like you-“

“I KNOW THAT! i know that.. fuck!” you cursed, a few tears threatening to spill.

“if- if it makes you feel any better... i’m bisexual...”

“fuck this isn’t the right time to come out.”

you couldn’t help but giggle, “it’s alright.”

~~~

the team tried to catch the guy who commited the two murders but no such luck, they arrested the one responsible for the 3 murders though.

you and spencer looked at each other, he smiled at you as you smiled at him back, secretly holding hands.

[ocular-intercourse]

@mangosandchili and number 3, teddy

🌲 What is the kindest thing your OC has ever done for someone? What is the kindest thing someone has ever done for them? On the flip side, what is the worst thing your OC has done to another person?

This question is hard to answer for Teddy for exactly the opposite reason that I had for Ace. Cause his base mode is being kind, oozing kindness all over the place to people deserving and undeserving, so it’s hard to pick something that stands out. The kindest thing he has done is probably allowing his brother to profit from his life experiences, writing books ‘about’ him, without getting anything from it. The kindest thing someone has done for him was his father’s wife accepting him into their family, raising him, though he was not her child. He is still very much in awe by her doing that. The worst thing he has done to people probably depends on who you ask or what you consider bad. Maybe it’s making his family worry that one time he tried to run away while they were on vacation. He has a homophobic grandmother he cut out of his life, she most definitely thinks he did something cruel to her, both by being gay, non-christian and avoiding her, telling her she is the bad one?? He himself would probably answer that killing someone, even in self-defense, was the worst thing he ever did. You can’t convince him otherwise.

🌳 What does your OC do when they see others upset or in pain? An upset friend? A stranger?

He is another one of those who will always help as best he can. With him that even extends to people he actively dislikes. He can’t help it. Ted is the emotional sponge of his friend group, the go-to for non-official therapy, he overextends himself and let’s people step over his boundaries more often than he should. To him seeing somebody else suffer feels very much like he’s suffering himself, he’s hyper empathic in some ways, so helping them feels like helping himself, cause he wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it till it’s solved anyways.

🌿 What is something true about your OC that they refuse to admit about themselves? Is there any reason to this besides embarrassment?

It’s probably a form of refusing to admit it, more like refusing to see it, not actively I might add. If you’d ask people around him to put down some words to describe him and ask teddy to do the same, there’s one word that would appear a bunch of times on their list but never on his, it would be bossy. In his mind he’s this gentle submissive guy that more often than not gets walked over by others and pushed around.. it’s not really true though. Not always at least. It’s probably him trying to steer against not being taken seriously. He has no problem speaking out, putting his opinion out there, letting people know what he needs.. He would absolutely be embarrassed about being considered bossy, cause it fits into his self-image so little.

🍃 Describe a regular day for your OC. What is their schedule (if they have one).          

He’s not a schedule kind of guy, more of a head-in-the-clouds let’s see what happens today kind of person. The only strict routine he has is about eating, as a tool of keeping tabs on his eating disorder. He’ll also try and spend as much time as he gets in nature or at least surrounded by plants, alternatively animals. There’s a massive greenhouse on the academy grounds and him and his siblings take care of the plants, if you ever try to find him it’s probably there. Before the attack you might have gone looking for him in the woods, but he’s been avoiding them ever since.

🍁 What is your OC’s most traumatic experience? (If they don’t have just one traumatic experience either pick one or describe them all!)

There’s some that come to mind. I have talked about the academy attack before, and how he had to fight and unwillingly kill. It’s definitely something he’s struggling with, especially since there’s not really a way to deal with it, in the real world, and not really a support system of sorts at the academy. The students are more or less left to deal with the aftermath alone, some guidance maybe from the teachers, but they are not equipped to handle something like that.

Another one is when it was revealed to him that he is a demi-god and his mother is not his biological mother. His whole world view turned upside down, he felt like a stranger in his family and like a constant source of pain for his mother. That’s when he tried to run away, since he was not one of them anyways, why not spare them the trouble of having him around. That’s part of what lead to him developing the eating disorder. He felt like he had no control over anything, but he could at least control very strictly what he ate and when he ate and that mostly made him forbid himself from eating entirely, for as long as he could get himself to, then binging, purging, repeating. His parents picked up on that quite fast and got him help though, but it’s still something that resurfaces a bit when he feels like things are out of control.

Something else that happened when he was absolutely too young for it, maybe 15, being the gay kid in school and bullied for it, getting the attention from one of his friend’s older brothers, starting to hang around with his friend group, going to parties, doing drugs, all under the cover of being accepted there and wanting to belong and seem cool, waking up drugged in positions he did not want to be in, touched by people he did not know, all somewhat orchestrated or at least permitted, tolerated, by said older brother. He got the fuck out of there before anything too bad could happen (as far as he remembers) and is very very thankful for having been lucky, conscious and responsive enough to be able to pull the breaks and protect himself. But it definitely put a spin on his ability to trust people for a long time, and made it hard for a while to come to terms with his identity cause if the only other interaction you had with gay people was /that/ it does not exactly make you want to belong to the community.

🍄 How would your OC react to the death of a friend/family member/loved one? Is there anyone they can confide in?

He would definitely be devastated. But he also has a very good support system, a lot of people around to catch him and lead him through his grief. It’s not out of the ordinary, something that happens to people in life, that is painful, but part of it. He tries to see it kinda holistically, it’s just part of the universe, neither good nor bad, and tries to focus on the joy of having known a person rather than the pain of losing them. He also holds on to the hope of seeing them again.

🌾 What would your OC be like if they were evil. Or if they’re already evil what would they be like as the good guy?

Evil Teddy is cliché eco-terrorist. If people have to die so the planet can survive then it’s justified to let them die, or even our mission to kill them ourselves. Picture James Bond villain Teddy. Bad guy with flair and ideals and a bigger picture plan.

💐 How would your OC react to somebody telling them that they love them? (+ bonus give another characters/OC name!)

Teddy is in love with love, romantically, platonically, he does not care, he loves people and he lets them know, constantly, which mostly inspires people to respond often. So it’s not irregular for him to hear his friends and family telling him that they love him. With Zeke that a whole other thing. Hearing it would make him extremely happy, cause he wants to be loves by Zeke. But since he tends to not show it in actions I think Teddy would, in the worst phases of this behavior, just react bitterly to being told ‘I love you’. Cause he just wouldn’t believe it. It would make it angry, even. If you love me than show it goddamit, what the fuck am I supposed to do with some hollow words..

🌷 What does your OC hate about themself? What lies about themself do they believe? On the flip side, What does your OC love about themself?

Teddy has been on a long journey of self-acceptance ever since he was litte. From learning to deal with his ancestry, to being bullied practically everywhere, to this very shitty introduction to dating, if you want to call it that, hating himself for being different. But he has always had his family and friends who helped him see what was right and what were wrong assumptions, he always had help working through his issues. He went to therapy early, since he developed his eating disorder. He just always had a really really good safety net, that made it possible for him to look at his problems and deal with them head-on. He loves himself; he loves that he is kind and gentle and loving and, well, good. There is honestly not a lot about himself that he would straight up hate. Maybe some things he’d like to change, but he always tries to see the positives even in them. What he definitely does hate though, is that his experience with Zeke is kinda starting to make him doubt again, to have to hide parts of himself that he fought very hard to be proud for. He hates that he let himself get caught in this regressive mindset, straight back to his insecure teens, all because he can’t stop himself from feeling these things for this boy who is not ready for them at all. He’s not entirely sure if he should be mad at himself, at Zeke or at the universe for this unfortunate timing. But that’s all part of the one thing he’d like to change about himself the most, being able to face injustices, especially those directed at himself, a little better. They often just make him hopeless and unable to act cause he does not know what to do, so he just does nothing instead.

🥀 What is something your OC blames themselves for and is it really their fault? Does it keep them up at night and is there any lingering trauma?

Mhmmm, again I think Teddy is not really the person to dwell on these negative things, at least not in regards to him. Like, yeah, he can’t quite deal with having killed a guy, he wished it would not have happened, but he can also see that in that situation there was not a lot of other things he could have done, it was a reaction, he did not mean to do it, but that was a bad guy that very much wanted to kill him and others, so he can see that is was justified somehow. So he suffers, for having done that, but he does not blame himself all that much, personally, cause it was out of his control. Maybe you will find him thinking about what could have gone differently here and there, but those moments are rare, cause he can’t do anything about it anyways. Things he feels guilty about are mostly related to his family, feeling like he burdened them with things one way or another. He can’t quite 100 % believe his mother really accepts him as hers, no hard feelings for his dad’s affair or one-night-stand or whatever, he feels bad about being a reminder of that, he feels undeserving of her love. He feels guilty about worrying others.

🌺 In what situation would your OC be pushed to commit an act of violence? Would they go as far to kill someone if they had to? How would this affect them and their relationships with others?

The answer is usually never. If you would put him in that same situation again, where he’s surrounded by bad guys and he just tries to keep them from being able to hurt anyone and one of them happens to die during that.. that’s not really something he chose to do. If he had known that it would happen he might have not intervened in the same way. He is a pacifist first, always. The attack made him reevaluate some things though, like the necessity of learning how to fight, if only to be able to act more controlled the next time, truly keeping everybody on both sides from dying unnecessarily. He’s the kind of person that wants to believe that everything can be solved by conversations, so he’d never see killing people as a solution. He would kill only if forced to, not by somebody holding a gun to his head and making him do it, but in a situation where the result of the other person not dying would be something he couldn’t live with.

Having killed somebody definitely made Teddy retreat a bit, he hardened a little, did not want people to see him go through that, be a different him. Eventually he did allow himself to share about it more, the easiest with his ex-nemesis who had been there when it happened and who went through the same shit.

Oh, actually, he is a bit more loose about physical violence that won’t leave permanent damage. He’d surprise people with it but he’d absolutely deck a guy in the face if he was being harmful to others.

🌸 What would your OC do if they were given god-like powers or the ability to change anything about the world for a whole day?

Teddy would try and figure out the best way to help as many people in the long run as possible. He would probably come to the conclusion that it would help if you made people understand other people’s struggles and experiences. Maybe a bit of a just dessert kind of solution. He’d put powerful assholes in the shoes of the people they suppress, hoping to make them understand even after that day and maybe change their stances, be nicer.

🌼 Describe one of your OC’s worst nightmares.

Losing hope in the world, in the inherent goodness that he believes in. He’s seen many people, even optimistic ones, become cynical and hopeless considering the state of things. And he understands their reactions, they are probably justified. But he himself just does not want to lose hope, he always wants to believe that people are good and the world is good, and things will end well. But understanding why others become pessimists is just one step too close to following in their footsteps. He refuses to let that happen, he wants to at least, but he is a little scared of failing to keep it up indefinitely, of being proven wrong.

🌻 What advice would your OC give to their younger self? What advice does your OC need now?

Be yourself always. If you feel bad about something it’s probably the right feeling to have. Trust your instincts. Only you can know what’s right for you, the opinions of others might sound nice but that does not make them true. Right now he could probably be reminded that there is strength in kindness and that the cost of it is worth it, always. Also somebody tell him to dump Zeke.

[mcdynamite]

[Spoilers] I think GoT 8.05 made perfect sense, and here’s why:

 Hello people of Tumblr! I’ve seen a lot of people bashing the most recent episode of Game of Thrones for a number of reasons and I want to step up to the plate and go to bat for the show. To clarify, I dislike D&D as much as pretty much everyone else who watches the show. I think the writing has been lazy, the dialogue has been lacking, and the lead in to some of the things that have happened this season could definitely be better. But everything that happened in 8.05 makes sense, and I actually liked the episode. This is why.

Cersei’s Demise is kinda perfect.

I know a lot of us, myself included, were looking forward to a brutal, sadistic death for a brutal, sadistic woman. But here’s the thing... in its own way, it was a totally brutal way for her to go out. Think about it, Cersei has spent pretty much her entire life talking her way out of things, manipulating people, and in general feeling more powerful than everyone else around her, including her family. She died finally realizing that she was completely helpless and all hope was lost. She died knowing that her arrogance and often unnecessary brutality was what had cost herself, her children, the man she loves, and even her own father their lives. 

She couldn’t sass the collapsing rock to death. She couldn’t stall and wait for The Mountain to come to her aid. She couldn’t do anything but break down and cry and tell Jaime she wanted their baby to live, trapped in the same underground passages where she vowed to destroy all three of Dany’s dragons. Cersei wasn’t publicly executed in front of thousands of onlookers. She died UNDERGROUND, unthought of and uncared for by anyone else in the world but Jaime. She died the same death as all of the innocent citizens who died that day in part because of her own arrogance. It wasn’t special. It was lonely, hidden, and desperate - a fitting end for a woman who’s lived her whole life believing in her own importance.

And speaking of Cersei, even Jaime’s apparent regression makes some sense.

Ah, Jaime Lannister, one of the most emotionally complicated men in all of Westeros. I’m not gonna lie, this disappointed me because I had hoped for better for Jaime, but not because it didn’t make sense. We were ALL rooting for Jaime to ditch Cersei, become the noblest man in the whole world and just be with Brienne, who clearly loves him. But if you take a minute to think about it, while Jaime’s character development has been significant, it never really veered away from loving Cersei. 

He’s always been doing what’s best for her, and yes, that includes when he left her to head North. Jaime did that because humanity was in danger, and as such, Cersei was in danger. Barely over a season ago in 7.03, Jaime tells Olenna Tyrell that his love for Cersei has grown beyond his control. He openly admits it and tells Olenna that he doesn’t believe people will care how Cersei took the throne once they’re living in the world she built. He clearly still loves Cersei here, and while he’s tempering some of her most heinous ideas, like flaying Olenna alive, he’s still carrying out her orders. “For Cersei,” as he always says.

Jaime’s love for Cersei went far beyond his control. It was almost more like an addition than true love. His love for Brienne was pure and kind, but even the purest love can’t sway the grasp of an addition. Cersei was all Jaime had ever known, so even if he loved Brienne, even if he knew Cersei was hateful, even if he knew she was doing unspeakable things to the people of Westeros, it STILL makes sense that he went back. It’s legitimately not at all different from some abusive relationship in real life. One partner may realize that the other is abusive and hateful, but they can’t bring themselves to walk away, and when they do, they may go back. That doesn’t make them bad people, and it certainly doesn’t “undo” all of Jaime’s character development over the course of the series. 

Jaime Lannister is an immensely complicated character, and this is GAME OF THRONES we’re talking about. It’s a very human show. So frankly, if he has genuinely left Cersei without a second glance, that would have been immensely disappointing. It’s just not how people work, not after admitting how deep in the relationship he was literally just 9 episodes prior and only leaving to protect mankind from being destroyed.

And finally, let’s talk about the psychotic break of Daenerys Targaryen.

First, just a quick reminder at how utterly human this show is. We’ve got all sorts of realistic depictions of human nature in Game of Thrones. We have very real depictions of PTSD (looking at you, Theon and Sansa), realistic depictions of the horrors of slavery, realistic depictions of racism and ableism, the list goes on for miles. It’s made abundantly clear throughout the series that the Targaryens have a strong family history of mental illness, so here we go people. Let’s talk about mental illness.

Obviously, there are no therapists in Westeros to diagnose Dany with any particular illness, but it’s reasonable to hypothesize that Dany is experiencing psychosis, also known as a “psychotic break”. Something important to not about psychosis: it’s sort of like a break from reality, so the way someone behaves during a psychotic break is not at all who they normally are as a person. And here’s another thing about psychosis: YOU DO NOT SHOW SIGNS OF IT YOUR ENTIRE LIFE, especially not major ones. Not every person who commits a heinous act of violence grew up murdering small animals and saying sadistic things to family members and friends as a child. I’ve seen a lot of anti-Mad Queen Dany arguments online, and I’d like to debunk a few of them with regards to how mental illness often actually works.

1. Dany was an abused child, why would she hurt children?

Yikes, you guys. This is a really weak argument. Many studies have shown that childhood trauma is associated with greater disposition towards psychosis later in life. Obviously not everyone who has gone through a childhood trauma will experience psychosis, but it can actually be a direct contributing factor to a psychotic break.

2. Dany has always showed compassion to innocent people like the slaves across the sea, so why doesn’t she now?

Again, psychosis is not a direct reflection of who someone is as a person because it represents a break from reality. You don’t have to be an intrinsically horrible person to do something bad when you’re not in control.

3. The warning signs were there, but they were too weak to justify what happened to King’s Landing.

When a person experiences psychosis, the EARLY warning signs (let’s just say for the purposes of this argument are things that happened prior to the start of season 8) are often subtle or even unnoticeable until you’re looking back retrospectively. These can include things like spending more time alone than usual (check), suspiciousness or uneasiness with others (check), and having no feelings at all (check, remember when she ended things with Daario and the show made a big deal out of how she didn’t really feeling anything about it?).

The slightly later warning signs (so, this season) include strong and inappropriate emotions (check, she wants to have sex with her nephew not too long after she accused him of trying to steal her throne), social withdrawal (check), odd beliefs (check, her belief that she was sent by god to change the world), and suspiciousness (check). The warning signs were there and frankly exactly what one would expect to see in someone in the prodome (or very early stages) of psychosis.

4. It just happened so suddenly, the build up wasn’t enough.

Actually, it SUPER was enough. Recently, Dany has lost two dragons, her most trusted advisor, her best friend (who she watched be beheaded) and has arrived in a country where nobody likes or trusts her. All of these are pretty freaking traumatic, and a traumatic event can trigger psychosis. Boom. Bang. It makes sense.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand why people are upset about this. We were all rooting for Dany, our hero who walked out of the flames all those years ago with three baby dragons clinging to her. What happened in 8.05 was devastating to watch, but it wasn’t unrealistic. It was actually very well done from a standpoint of how things actually work in the real world. You can be frustrated with how things turned out, you can be devastated by the destruction of King’s Landing and Dany’s break, and you can be pissed about the lazy writing of this season, but you shouldn’t be angry with the show runners for Dany’s descent into madness. It was actually remarkably well done.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Valar morguhlis.

EDIT: Obviously not everyone who goes through a period of psychosis is violent. It is an INCREDIBLY small percentage who actually inflict harm on others during a psychotic break. With that being said, rare as it may be, it does happen, it is a real thing that happens in real life, and cases in which a violent outburst happens are pretty spot-on similar to the way it happened to Dany. As someone who has experienced psychosis myself, I of all people know that not everyone becomes violent. But the portrayal of Dany throughout the whole show does align with the prodome of an exceedingly rare, but real, type of psychosis. I’m sincerely sorry for not clarifying this in my original post 💙

[loudlytransparenttrash]

Goodbye 2019: A review of the lies that shaped the year

January

One Twitter user posted this thread, describing how there were “50-70 white men” wearing MAGA apparel who “surrounded us” and “sought to intimidate, mock and scare us” by “chanting ‘build the wall’ and “other trumpisms.” “The group was clearly looking for ANY opportunity to get violent,” they were “bumping into us and daring us to get physical.” Video was then clipped and shared on social media, the mainstream media spread the edited footage and within hours the story about “racist white MAGA hat wearing teens cornered an innocent Native elder while chanting build the wall” consumed the country.

Slate wrote an article comparing the student’s “cruelty” to Jim Crow mobs and neo-Nazis. BuzzFeed’s Anne Petersen tweeted how the students and Brett Kavanaugh are the epitome of “white patriarchy.” Kathy Griffin called for doxing the kids and Stormy Daniels in a now-deleted tweet fantasized about putting these children behind electrocuted walls. New York Times author Kurt Eichenwald wished that these kids should be doxed and denied work for the rest of their lives. Headlines included, “White students in MAGA hats taunt Native American elders,” “Covington Catholic High Student's White Privilege Didn't Win,” “White America, come get your children,” “White victimology, white privilege and the Covington Catholic rules of race,” “Boys Will Be Boys. Covington's Showed Yet Again Why Only White Boys Can Smirk Through That.”

The students and their families were doxed, harassed and threatened for weeks after. Covington Catholic High School was forced to close over security concerns. Then the original video was released that provided context: A group of Covington Catholic High School students went to the March for Life during a field trip to Washington, DC. While there, the students were confronted by the radical black supremacy group, Black Hebrew Israelites, where they were verbally harassed and racially abused, calling them crackers, fa*gots and told them to go find a school to shoot up. A black student was berated as a race-traitor and told his white classmates were going to harvest his organs. A Native activist later approached the kids and started continually banging a drum inches from their face. One student, Nick Sandmann, stood calmly in typical teenage bemusement. That’s it. That’s the story. Once it was realized not a single accusation made by the original poster or the media who spread it was true, everyone went silent, and despite many retractions, no apologies.

February

Empire actor Jussie Smollett was approached by two white men wearing Trump’s Make America Great Again caps and yelled racist and homophobic slurs at him before attacking him, dousing him with bleach and tying a noose around his neck, all while chanting, “This MAGA country!” Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Al Sharpton were among those calling it a modern-day lynching and evidence of the fear and hate black people live with. Harris and Booker even wrote an “anti-lynching bill.” Everybody gobbled this story up and quickly used it to push their idea that it said something more important about the state of race in the United States. Essentially they argued that Trump and his supporters are agitating for this kind of violence and, well, here it is.

Afterwards, Smollett proudly bragged how he had fought off his attackers to the loud cheers of a crowd, a true badass. He then appeared in an ABC interview where his eyes welled with tears as he recounted his traumatic experience and how defiant and inspirational he’s gotta be now. When asked why he thinks he was targeted, Smollett blamed Trump and his evil supporters.

But then some red flags started. 1. He held onto his sandwich during the attack and waited 45 minutes to call police. 2. When police arrived to take a report, Smollett asked that the officers turn off their body cameras. 3. He was still wearing the noose around his neck and wore it “like a tie” throughout their entire 40-minute interview. 4. He said he was on the phone with his manager when the attack happened but he refused to show his phone log to police. 5. He supposedly received a threatening letter a week prior to the “attack” which had child-like writing and drawings on it of his name and the word MAGA, and cliche magazine cutouts of letters pieced together to spell out “black fag.” In summary, we were supposed to believe white Trump supporters wearing MAGA hats were roaming around Chicago, carrying a noose, they saw Smollett, knew who he was, knew his show, his sexuality and singled him out for a lynching. 

As the police connected the dots, they found the whole thing was a giant hoax plotted by Smollett himself. When the “black fag” serial killer letter stunt failed to receive national attention, Smollett orchestrated the attack by paying two Nigerian brothers he worked with $3,500 to stage the attack on him while getting Subway. Chicago police spent days and worked overtime poring over security footage and devoting resources that could have been put toward real victims. On February 20, Smollett was charged with a class 4 felony for filing a false police report and was later indicted on 16 felony counts of false reporting. Smollett joined a long list of hate crime hoaxes since Trump took office. I can only assume because reality isn’t at all matching their delusion of the gloomy Nazi “MAGA country” they keep going on about, they’re forced to create these endless hate crime hoaxes to validate the delusion.  

March

After spending two years perpetuating allegations that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election from Hillary and wet dreams of Trump being removed from office and even imprisoned, the entire left, every Democrat and the mainstream media were visibly shaken by Mueller’s investigation ending with zilch. When the news broke that there would be no indictments against Trump nor anyone associated with his campaign, and Attorney General William Barr had exonerated him, those who were so certain of victory and so locked into their conspiracy, were once again forced into utter meltdown mode. Mueller spent tens of millions of dollars, employed 19 prosecutors, more than three dozen FBI agents and an analyst and issued 2,800 subpoenas, 500 search warrants, 280 demands for phone and email records and interviewed 500 witnesses throughout the course of the investigation. No evidence was found.

There was however a major abuse of the rule of law by Obama administration officials and Department of Justice and FBI employees, a shameful politicization of the Russia investigation by Democrats and an end of journalistic integrity by many members of the media who all did their best to delegitimize and undermine the election. The DOJ and FBI used unverified research to obtain a court order to surveil the Trump campaign, and thereby obtain access to past campaign communications. In applying for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) order, the DOJ and FBI did not disclose to the secret surveillance court that the debunked Christopher Steele dossier (Trump/pissing prostitutes) was funded by the DNC and Clinton, the whole basis for the probe. The FISA application also did not inform the court of Steele’s bias and his desperation to keep Trump out of the White House. It was all a setup.

Since Election Day 2016, the Trump-hating political and media establishment have been in a cute relationship to achieve their desired end of destroying Trump. Their shared hatred of the man is indisputable. But the idea of them colluding in this information operation to maximum political and legal effect is altogether more disturbing. Russiagate put Trump’s presidency under a cloud of suspicion for more than half of his days in office, delaying his agenda through forcing the administration to expend valuable time and resources defending itself from the constant hounding. The Five F’s seems to be the Democrat’s only tactic, all they can do is deceive, degrade, deny, disrupt and hope that it all will eventually wear Trump down enough to ultimately destroy him.

April

On Easter Day, churches across Sri Lanka were targeted by radical Islamist suicide bombers. The Muslim terrorists walked into several crowded churches and murdered masses of people. They also targeted international hotels popular with Western travelers. The bombings marked the country’s deadliest violence in a decade, leaving 290 dead and over 500 injured. After the quick condemnation of white supremacy and Islamophobia after the Christchurch shootings a few weeks prior, the media and Democrats avoided at all costs condemning Islamic terrorism and recognizing the victims as Christians. A host of politicians such as Obama, Hillary Clinton and Julian Castro all refused to condemn Islamic terrorism and none called the victims Christians, while others such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Portland mayor Ted Wheeler stayed silent altogether. Christians being killed at the hands of Islamists goes against the entire left-wing doctrine, despite it happening all over the world. 

It’s not the only time we’ve seen the media and politicians cover for Islamic extremism. Under Obama, officials were so afraid of the phrase “Islamic terrorism” that they redacted the very mention of Islam and even Islamic State from the Orlando gay nightclub massacre transcripts, despite 49 people being killed and 50 others injured by a Muslim terrorist who had pledged allegiance to ISIS. In the UK, police and child protection workers were so afraid of the phrase “Islamophobia” that they ignored and refused to investigate Muslim human trafficking and child rape rings, allowing 1,400 young British girls to be raped with knives, bottles and their tongues nailed to tables. In Sweden, the police and media were so scared of “anti-immigration sentiment,” they covered up dozens of sexual assaults against teenage girls. Not wanting to make their new waves of Muslim refugees look bad, German media and the government also covered up mass sexual abuse across the country where 1,200 women were sexually assaulted and raped in just one night. Who exactly are we protecting by refusing to tell the truth and call something what it is?

May

Alyssa Milano, an actress who has been a valiant fighter for progressive causes, demanded for American women to undertake a “sex strike.” The idea is that women should not risk pregnancy until they have an insurance policy. Uh, so like exactly what Christian conservatives already believe in. There’s something funny about Milano embracing the banner of Christian conservatives in order to own Christian conservatives. Just like when Janelle Monáe advocated for women to go on a sex strike, saying that “people need to start respecting the vagina.” Once again, that’s what conservatives have already been screaming, respecting your vagina, respecting yourself, respecting sex and the good and bad product of sex. 

In championing this “revolutionary” concept of women withholding sex in order to attain bodily autonomy, Milano and her blue-check buddies unwittingly preached the same message you often hear during Sunday sermons, especially in youth groups. The Christian perspective posits that the way for women to attain bodily autonomy is to have self-control over your body and choices, to not give away your body so carelessly and to be aware of the consequences of sexual activity outside of committed relationships. Most Christians embrace Milano’s message, not just because the only women who’d participate and use sex as a political bargaining chip in the first place are those who probably need to reevaluate their sex lives anyway, but it also places greater meaning on sex and the power and responsibility of it, which again is another Christian view.

Milano, like many others, also referred to abortion as “reproductive rights,” which is a pretty new term that replaces abortion and is also much catchier on picket signs when used alongside “human rights.” The problem is the term isn’t even close to being accurate. Abortion has nothing to do with reproductive rights. By the time abortion is even a possibility, post-fertilization has already created a tiny human and the mother has discovered that she is pregnant. In other words, reproduction is already complete. That “right” to reproduction was already exercised when you gave it up, literally and figuratively.  

June

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tried her best to compare Trump to Hitler by comparing illegal migrant detention centers to actual concentration camps: “This administration has established concentration camps on the southern border of the United States for immigrants, where they are being brutalized with dehumanizing conditions and dying,” she tweeted. Ocasio-Cortez continued this claim during an Instagram Live video, where she said, “The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border. That is what they are. The fact that concentration camps are now an institutionalized practice in the home of the free is extraordinarily disturbing.” 

Of course, the claim that conditions at U.S. border facilities are anything like Nazi concentration camps or Japanese American internment camps is absurd. Detainees are not subjected to forced labor, malnutrition or executions. They also chose to enter these facilities by willingly coming to the United States and either illegally crossing or turning themselves in to U.S. Border Patrol, while obviously concentration camp inmates were forced to be there. Let’s not forget the little detail that any of the migrants may opt for voluntary departure at any time. I don’t remember concentration camps ever having that policy. Concentration camps detained and persecuted their own citizens because of who they were, not temporarily detained people who chose to illegally break into a different country. I don’t think there were many Jewish people trying to sneak into Nazi Germany. Even the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum released a statement rejecting such ridiculous comparisons.

But it’s not just AOC driving this rhetoric. MSNBC anchor Joe Scarborough showed photos of border officers escorting kids to showers and compared it to Nazi officers marching Jews into gas chambers. Former CIA chief Michael Hayden posted photos of the Auschwitz death camp, also comparing it to the temporary housing policy at the border. The New York Times published an article that called for U.S. Border Patrol agents to be doxed so they can be “publicly shamed" and “held accountable.” Almost the entire Democrat Party and mainstream media have made similar comparisons. Yet the CBP detention centers are not operating any differently today than they were during the Obama administration. The famous photos of caged kids are from Obama’s time in office. Even when the most anti-Trump news network CNN went to investigate, the kids had full bellies, they were watching soccer, playing video games on big flat-screen TVs, sleeping in comfy beds and participating in tai chi classes, rather than ya know, being caged, gassed and worked to death.

July

The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal held a hearing on complaints from Jessica Yaniv, a man formerly called Jonathan who now identifies as a woman, after multiple small business beauticians refused to wax Yaniv’s penis and testicles. The defendant in the case was a young mother who operates in her family home, but there were also 12 other female beauticians Yaniv filed human rights complaints against which put some of them out of business while others paid settlements to save further legal action. Up until July 17, Yaniv’s name was fiercely protected by the Canadian government, as well as technology platforms like Twitter, which banned numerous women and some men who’d tried to warn others about his predations. But once the ban was lifted, it was revealed Yaniv had used “connections” to a band to help solicit advice from both women and teenagers on how to approach young girls and talk to them about tampons and menstruation in female washrooms. You can read the whole thing here.

Yaniv also recently tweeted shock to be turned away from a gynecologist. “So a gynaecologist office that I got referred to literally told me today that ‘we don’t serve transgender patients. And me, being me, I’m shocked... and confused… and hurt. Are they allowed to do that, legally?" I’m sure Yaniv will be taking gynecologists to human rights courts next for refusing to inspect anuses. We have to be careful to not misgender Yaniv as several journalists have been banned from Twitter for this crime against Yaniv. Any concerns about women being forced to touch male genitalia or biological men being allowed into women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, rape crisis shelters and prisons, you’re done for. This whole story resembles a new trend forming, such as the Christian cake shop owner who was sued for not wanting to bake a cake for a same-sex marriage: An individual from a politically designated victim class seeks out a service, intentionally from a small business owner who they know they can exploit, and the moment the businessperson declines - voila! A movement is born with a slew of lawsuits, powerful interest groups and media backing. 

August

Dave Chappelle’s newest Netflix special was only uploaded for a few hours before the PC grievance mob went to work trying to sink it. Buzzfeed lectured Chappelle for his “truly vile” jokes and instructed him “to be more thoughtful.”  Salon spoke out against “the cruelty” and Slate compared him to that "uncle who doesn’t know, or doesn’t care, how much he’s disappointing you.” While “Uncle Dave” was once cool, they say, his jokes in 2019 make you “wince.” Vice went a step further and gave a total trigger warning to its audience, writing "you can definitely skip” it altogether. As of today, “Sticks & Stones” shows a 38 percent score from media critics on Rotten Tomatoes, while 39,881 of viewers have given it a 99 percent audience score, reflecting the massive disconnect between the media and the general public and proving the only ones who are “out of touch” are themselves. This same pattern can be seen with “woke” movies too. Media critics sing their praises and hail their progressive activist messaging and pandering, yet in reality, these movies completely bomb.

Hollywood wants to water down comedy as not to hurt anyone’s feelings, but in doing so quickly turns into telling people what’s funny and what’s not and who can laugh and who can’t. Even the most devoted left-wing activist surely can see the problem. But a comedian like Dave Chappelle makes fun of everyone and doesn’t believe in a protected class during a stand up routine, as it should be. He also made fun of things that the right cares about, yet they still applauded the special as a celebration of comedy. But no, because Chappelle didn’t obey by their rules, because he didn’t stand on stage and call Trump a Cheeto (the pinnacle of left-wing comedy), he too must be one of those Nazis we keep hearing about. Chappelle isn’t running for public office. He’s a comic, and we’re not meant to seek the ultimate answers from him. It’s his job to talk about and then joke about current events, trends, what’s going on in the world, his only sin was talking about them a little too honestly. 

September

Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the United Nations through teary eyes and gritted teeth, claiming that the world is about to end and how unfair it is that she has to save it. Throughout the melodramatic speech warning of “mass extinction” and attacking capitalism, Thunberg repeatedly declared “how dare you!” and “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood!” Sadly, she’s right. How dare a child from one of the most healthiest, progressive, wealthiest, safest and most peaceful countries known to man be indoctrinated to believe adults have failed her and the weight of the world is on her shoulders to save mankind from apocalypse. It’s not her fault.

It’s the fault of the schools who pile on the panic-stricken talk of environmental disaster starting from kindergarten. It’s the fault of the ideologues who obsess over every weather event as if it were Armageddon, whether it’s hot or cold, rain, sun or snow, it’s all evidence of the end looming. And it’s the fault of the politicians, too cowardly and desperate for votes to tell people that utopian visions of a world run on windmills is a pipe dream. And why the hell isn’t China being lectured by the Swedish teenager? Their emissions from aviation and maritime trade alone are twice that of the United States, and more than the entire emissions of most nations in the world, but we’re the ones being told to ban straws, stop eating meat, roller skate to work and stop having kids? Really? Then again, it’s easier to go after countries which roll out the red carpet, gives her a platform and awards her with prizes in return for her criticisms. The real pollution culprits aren’t nearly as accommodating.

Climate activists could learn something from Thunberg’s honesty, though. She argues that “money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth” have to come to an end. Thunberg’s dream for the future means technocratic regimes will have to displace capitalistic societies. We can see this future in the radical environmentalist plans of AOC’s Green New Deal, one supported by leading Democratic Party candidates. It’s authoritarianism. There is no other way to describe a regulatory regime that dictates exactly what Americans can consume, sell, drive, eat and do in their personal lives. As Hawaii Democrat senator and climate change enthusiast encouraged fellow activists to think of climate change as a religion rather than a science, we can only hope that most Americans will continue to reject these regressive ideas. One reason we should is so that Greta Thunberg’s generation, including her army of schoolchildren, can continue not having to suffer needlessly.

October 

Media outlets responded to Trump’s announcement of the U.S. military’s successful mission against ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was not met with much praise and excitement that the world’s most wanted terrorist leader had been stopped, but with anger and snark. Many media outlets, the Washington Post for one example, worked hard to spin the killing of Baghdadi into, somehow, a negative story for Trump, beginning with a look at Baghdadi as not as a brutal terrorist and murderer, but as an “austere religious scholar.” 

The Washington Post followed it up with a chain of negative stories: “Three ways the Baghdadi raid undermines Trump’s chaotic policy,” “Despite the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, some analysts question U.S. ability to prevent ISIS resurgence,” “The U.S. kills an ISIS leader. But Trump is giving the group a new lease on life.” They even complained how long Trump talked for and how using words such as “dog” and “coward” weren’t as presidential as Obama. Oh, and a Washington Post and CNN journalist tweeted how wrong it was for Trump to call al-Baghdadi a coward because it takes guts to blow yourself up rather than allow yourself to be captured...

If only it ended there. The Washington Post joined other media outlets including the New York Times in debunking the “doctored” and “faked” photo Trump tweeted of himself giving a Medal of Honor to the dog that chased down al-Baghdadi. White House reporter Steve Herman also debunked the meme by breaking news on Twitter, "I've requested details on this photo! There was no such a canine event on today's schedule!" He later confirmed in a tweet after speaking to a White House official that the meme was indeed Photoshopped. Jim Acosta of CNN also made sure everyone was aware, "The dog is not at the White House." The Huffington Post wrote, “A photo tweeted by Donald Trump is getting dogged by accusations that the pic is the very definition of fake news. The photo didn’t really happen,” then proceeded to show side-by-side photos to prove it was photoshopped. Everywhere the meme was called “fake news.”

Once the media confirmed that the very clearly photoshopped dog was not at the White House after all, and the meme was just a meme, they moved onto asserting the meme was insulting and disrespectful to the original recipient of the Medal of Honor, James McCloughan, which the photo was taken from. Yet when the meme was shown to McCloughan, he laughed and said he wasn’t offended and he liked it. Now that another outrage had fizzled out, the only thing that was left for them to complain about was... Trump hates dogs because he used the term negatively to describe the ISIS leader. Yep. 

November

Nine American Mexican family members were slaughtered in broad daylight in an ambush by a drug cartel in Northern Mexico, less than a hundred miles from the Arizona border. The family were traveling to visit family when they were attacked by the cartel which left three women and six children dead, including a pair of infant twins. As Trump voiced outrage over the attacks, condemning the violence and offering the Mexican government help to come down harder on the cartels, not a single one of the seventeen Democrats in the race issued a statement on the attacks. 

That’s probably because they’ve already established it’s racist and bigoted to point out that some Mexicans can do bad things and there’s gonna be some bad eggs illegally crossing the southern border, despite leading Democrats including Clinton and Obama holding the same view just a few years ago. Let’s forget those behind most illegal border crossings are actually rapists or in just one city, over just a few weeks, seven illegal immigrants were convicted of rape. For the record, Trump never called all Mexicans rapists. He said there are rapists among those being sent over, along with drugs and MS-13 members, all true. He also said in the very next breath that there’s also good people crossing. Now, it’s also racist to call MS-13 gang members “animals” despite them being known for beheadings, dismemberments and cutting out hearts. And now we know we’re not even allowed to talk about the epidemic of terrorism and violence along the border, even when nine American women and children are massacred as it runs counter to the new, insane Democrat narrative mocking the need for stronger border security or the need for borders at all. 

This is the latest incident that has shined a spotlight on Mexico’s growing crime problem as drug cartels have launched an insurgency in the failing country.  A month earlier, hundreds of gunmen stormed the city of Culiacan after Mexican National Guards arrested one of the sons drug kingpin “El Chapo.” In a stunning display, the Mexican president told his National Guards to surrender to the cartel and release El Chapo’s son. The day after the family massacre, more murders and bus burnings were unleashed on the city of Juarez. The mayor of Juarez said the chaos was the cartel’s response to police arresting suspects involved in an ongoing drug turf war. We’ll have to wait and see if the new Mexican president’s policy of “hugs not bullets” will end the endless territory being controlled by different armed groups, similar to the Middle East and Africa. Maybe love and giving into cartel demands will bring law and order back.

December

Democrats finally did what they’ve been promising to do since Trump won the election, they impeached their mortal enemy. The obsession with impeachment has little to do with anything Trump did, and everything to do with who he is. Democrats never expected to lose the 2016 election, especially not to Donald Trump, which humiliated them even more. And ever since, they have been trying every trick in the book to prove what a horrible mistake voters have made. Democrats have floated the idea of impeachment over fake Russian collusion conspiracy theories, drivel about porn stars and even the president’s criticism of his critics. All of them bombed. With time running out before the 2020 presidential race gets into full swing, they seized on the only thing they had left: bogus “concerns” with a phone call to the newly elected Ukrainian president.

The evidence Democrats have rallied on makes for the weakest impeachment ever launched in American history, highlighting gross abuse of congressional power and serving as a national embarrassment. The impeachment inquiry was kicked off by an unknown person during a phone call between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. An unredacted transcript of the phone call was quickly released to the public, putting the conversation between the two leaders in plain sight for all to see in an unprecedented move. There was nothing to hide. Democrats and media outlets took slices from the transcript and came up with a story about Trump pressuring Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden’s family in exchange for nearly $400 million in military aid. Yet when Trump mentioned “do us a favor,” in the very next sentence, he referred to Ukraine looking into the 2016 election meddling after Mueller did such a poor job, it had nothing to do with Biden. Zelensky himself said there was no pressure and he didn’t even know about the military aid being delayed. 

But House Democrats still held four weeks of impeachment hearings and not a single piece of incriminating evidence to impeach the president of any kind of crime was found, whether it be a “quid pro quo,” “bribery,” or “extortion. In fact, to the contrary, witnesses called by Democrats actually exonerated the president of any wrongdoing. Ousted former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovich blatantly admitted that Trump committed no crime. “Do you have any information regarding any criminal activity that the president of the United States has been involved with at all?” “No,” Yovanovitch said. Former State Department Special Envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker was asked, “In no way, shape or form did you receive any indication whatsoever, or anything that resembled a quid pro quo, is that correct?” “That’s correct,” Volker said.

Despite clearly having no case against the president, Democrats still voted to deliver their promise, it was now or never. Unlike other impeachment cases, it wasn’t at all bipartisan, the House’s impeachment inquiry passed without a single Republican vote. In fact two Democrats joined GOP lawmakers in voting against the resolution, ironically making opposition to impeachment the more bipartisan vote. One Democrat even switched parties after he was pressured by his Democrat colleagues to vote against his will. Now, Pelosi is refusing to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate for trial. She knows Trump will be swiftly exonerated and claim another monumental victory, so let’s savor in the impeachment juices that nobody cares about for as long as we can. At least until the next “existential threat” or “constitutional crisis” they can whip up. 

[crabby-gothgirl]

Netflix, stop bringing down black women.

Netflix, just fucking stop already.

The 2 most popular shows on Netflix, as of this moment, have renewed seasons that both use black women protagonists to depict them in unhealthy relationships with serial rapist white men-filling out the caricaturized film roles of black women being seen as “the white master’s wench”. 

This triggers me deeply, as they are trying to promote and ingraine into young black female viewers who may watch these shows, with a systemic sense of colonialism and degradation. As if black women can’t have appropriate healthy relationships if they choose to date interracially, and are only meant to serve as “therapists” or “caretakers” by catering to clinically insane white men who go out and hurt other women.

The shows guilty of being problematic asf doing this, are Thirteen Reasons Why and End of the Fucking World. The last show fervently disappoints me, as I used to be a fan of it.

-----

Let’s start off with the infamous Thirteen Reasons Why. A show that’s already culprit for romanticizing mental illness for teenagers (suicide ideation and escaping your problems through use of suicide).

 From Season One, it’s served off of pure controversy and...

*ahem* the fact that the suicide rate in teens went up as soon as it aired *ahem*

https://www.npr.org/2019/04/30/718529255/teen-suicide-spiked-after-debut-of-netflixs-13-reasons-why-report-says

But hey, as it’s executives will try and say in its defense:

 “Correlation isn’t causation.” 

(yeah, sure it isn’t)

In their recent season, they have a British black girl named Ani who has a romantic affair with the show’s notorious antagonist, Bryce.

Keep this in mind:

Bryce is an upper class privileged American white male with a toxic upbringing of entitlement due to his white privilege and socioeconomic status. Not to mention he’s a quarterback for their school football team and is popular among the school body. Being raised with this parents that don’t care enough to regulate his actions, he rapes several girls at the high school, including the show’s former character Hannah Baker.

A white privileged male athlete that gets away with raping girls with little to no repercussions for his actions?

 Isn’t this dynamic sounding familiar to anyone?

*cough* Brock Turner *cough*

 As the experience is so traumatic for Hannah, she suffers from PTSD and, by the end of season one, decides to take her own life and is shown doing so.

~~~~~

Now, after doing something as abhorrently inhumane as that, violating someone and then having that person become so depressed, that they decide to take their own life, one would have hoped the executives could have been like:

Executives: “Wow, this Bryce guy sure is a disgusting fellow. Let’s keep him as an antagonist to show how negatively his actions can impact others and use this as a moral message to amplify the seriousness behind the issue of date rape for young girls.”

Instead, their logic is:

Executives: “Wow, Bryce raped all of these girls in his HS, one having to commit suicide for it. For Season 3, let’s make this guy seem like a precious cinnamon roll for our preteen audience and make it seem like he did no wrong!”

Me:

Now here we bring, Ani.

A new face to the cast. An African-British girl. Something that admittedly that had me curious for a hot second.

My mind: Black female representation in a character? It’s not often we see a show where a full colored black woman is the main character. (Ignoring the context of the god awful show said character is a part of).

But then, the curiosity kills the cat as soon as we see what Ani’s character is meant to serve.

Ani’s mother is an immigrant from Kenya. They live in the UK but then decide to move to the US to find work. That work ends up having her mother work as a nurse for Bryce’s wealthy white family. Being immigrants, they live in their plantation house. 

While working under this white family, Ani develops a sexual “relationship” with Bryce where they become friends with benefits.

Is it just me...or is anyone else getting slave-master x mammy vibes from this shitty ass relationship dynamic? 

Thirteen Reasons Why writers be like:

“This is a picture of a healthy interracial relationship.”

...

Disgusting motherfuckers.

Thirteen Reasons Why has always been complete shit, but they seem to be growing into more of a shit show, as Netflix keeps sucking their dick and renewing their contract to make more and more unnecesesary seasons of their show.

Problematic triggering themes are their only motivation. They’ll do things like show a girl committing suicide in the most gruesome way possible on-screen, then have the nerve to claim mental health “wokeness”.

I have always despised these people, and this just adds to the fuel of hatred I already had for them.

~~

Now onto the next show, End of the Fucking World.

Out of the shows mentioned on this list, I have to say that I’m personally affected the most by this one.

The first season admittedly had me going. I was actually looking forward to watching the second season. Until...it turned into a huge slap to the face for black women :/

SPOILERS FOR ANYONE WHO WATCHES THE SHOW:

Remember the creepy professor dude that tries to rape Alyssa in the first season?

Remember this crusty motherfucker?

The character Clive Koch, who is a serial rapist murderer who kills his own students. Is probably the most appalling character to do some of the most unspeakable things in the EOTFW universe.... 

(A straight up Ted Bundy in a nutshell).

Guess who found it was a good idea to start off the second season with introducing a backstory for a new character, a black female, who is somehow made to be his....romantic interest??

Yes.

They actually did this.

Netflix you need to get your shit together. 

Writers of these shows, get your shit together.

These shows are straight up damaging, you are hurting your young black female audiences by marketing these shows and depicting us in such damaging portrayals as mammies and coons to toxic mentally ill white men- in the 21ST FUCKING CENTURY, ARE YOU KIDDING ME Y’ALL?!

And don’t hide behind the excuse of “it’s not about the color” when it is DAMN WELL ABOUT THE FUCKING COLOR. You could have easily chose a white woman or any other POC woman for such a role to nurse a criminally insane white man with sexual favors but BOTH times you made it a damn black woman- your self-insert mammy to feed off your sick twisted desires!!!

Black women deserve to have HEALTHY relationsips portrayed for them, we are the most marginalized group in terms of dating, we don’t need to endanger our women by portraying them, telling them that they can only be loved by mentally ill SICK white men! We deserve HEALTHY romantic love! Shows and movies about us having HEALTHY relationships, with men of any race! Stop using us as mere race bait to push for marketing your shitty teenage drama shows that already have enough problematic themes as is! 

It’s time to STOP!

[smolfangirl]

All Too Well

This is what happens when I am not in the mood for my WIP, stumble over an old, old idea that works so much better now and just really need to deal with my own emotions. The title is taken from the very same song that played over and over while writing this, Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well”.

Just a warning, it’s 5.4k words long... Sorry not sorry.

It was the fault of these two idiots. These biggest idiots on earth.

Matteo knows blaming someone changes nothing. Blaming them won’t rewind the present to a better past. He knows it.

Yet he can’t help it, just like he can’t help seeing these pictures in his head. They play over and over again, up to a point where he wants to scream, wants to punch something, wants to fall unconscious just so it finally stops.

The pictures play another time.

“Luna! Oh my god!” Those are the first words coming out of his mouth. Then, “Are you okay? Does your head hurt? Can you stand?” He hurries over to her, thinking that he shouldn’t confuse her with this waterfall of questions, so he shuts his mouth and carefully supports her.

He gets a slight nod in return, and the slightest curve forms on her mouth. She holds onto his neck as she slowly lifts herself up.

“Let me see if you’re bleeding”, he says and takes her helmet off. His grip remains firm on her waist.

In the background, Tino is blaming Cato, for whatever reason – Matteo pays no attention to their stupid discussion. The only important thing right now is Luna.

His fingers gently run over her head, checking for small injuries invisible underneath her curls. Luna hisses when he reaches a spot behind her ears, on the side she fell on. “I’m sorry”, he mutters.

“Hey, don’t be, it’s not your fault this time. You can let go, I can stand on my own”, she replies, finally with a bit more color on her cheeks, “You don’t need to worry, I’m go – “

She faints.

In everything that happens afterwards, the voice inside blaming him grows louder, like sirens in the night and sometimes, he can’t curse on Tino and Cato and the car accident anymore.

He can only curse himself.

“You did nothing wrong”, Monica tells him. Matteo shakes his head. He did nothing right too.

Blood-tainted sidewalks haunt his dreams.

Every time, he shrieks up covered in sweat. He desperately tries to breathe regularly, to cling to some form of existing that doesn’t hurt.

Neither his dreams nor reality grant him this kind of mercy.

The diagnosis knocks them all of their feet: traumatic brain injury with retrograde amnesia.

Matteo isn’t allowed to see her. Her parents call him the day the doctors finish all their tests, they’re crying, and soon he is too. “She doesn’t remember anything about Buenos Aires”, they tell him. Not the rink, not her friends. Not Matteo.

Nothing.

Simón gets to see her. The only thing Matteo gets is a flyer with a list of therapists, a nurse hands it to him the one time he goes to the hospital, wondering if they let him steal at least a glimpse at her. (They don’t.)

Two days after the doctor allow Luna to go home, he knocks on the door, in his hands the biggest bouquet of flowers he could buy without a pre-order.

Her dad opens. “Anything new?”, Matteo wants to know. Does she remember me yet?

Miguel shakes his head as he lets him in.

The familiar knot in his throat appears. By now, Matteo is used to this, to it all. The tears, the never-ending feeling of guilt, no matter how many times someone else tells him he did nothing wrong, he helped, he did everything he could. (But if he did, why was Luna’s memory a blank space?) The hot and cold sweating during a panic attack, and the numbness that fills him after another sleepless night.

The only thing he still stumbles over is this stupid hope her memories might come back, after one more story told, one more day, one more week.

Luna sits by the kitchen table. One of Simón’s beanies covers half her hair, it’s ridiculously big for her, yet seeing her takes his breath away like no panic attack before managed.

She’s still utterly beautiful.

“Luna, darling, there’s someone who’d like to see you”, her dad catches her attention while he searches for a vase big enough to hold the bouquet. Matteo decides to bring a smaller one next time.

Her eyes jump over to him, immediately roaming his face. By the frown on her forehead, she’s trying to connect the dots but fails, and it makes her groan from frustration.

Finally, she sighs. “I guess you’re the boyfriend my parents told me about?” Her accent comes on stronger than he remembered.

“Yeah”, he chuckles and rubs his neck. Although he knows better, the anxiety gets the best of him and he blurts out, “Can’t believe you got so lucky, huh?”

Luna frowns. “I don’t remember you.”

Hearing it out of her mouth stings worse than a stab in the back. “I know.”

“At all”, she goes on, as if she wants to make sure the dagger reaches his heart, “It’s like I’m seeing you for the first time.” Matteo glances at Miguel, who sends him a warm smile. How come her parents know more about him now than she does? It’s not fair. “Yeah, that must be – “

She interrupts him. “I don’t want to be in a relationship with someone I don’t know.”

Matteo swallows, but the knot gets bigger with every word she says, soon he won’t be able to breathe properly, and he will have to repeat the exercise his doctor showed him for those cases. “I, I understand.” He gets no further than that.

“Sorry.” She shrugs. For a moment, they’re silent. He wonders if coming here perhaps wasn’t his best idea, and if she’s done breaking his heart yet.

(Inhale, 5, 6, 7, 8 – stop, 1, 2 ,3 – exhale, 5, 6, 7, 8. Inhale, stop, exhale. Inhale, stop –)

Turns out, she’s not. “I don’t need a boyfriend at all. I need my family and my best friend.”

“Okay.” His voice breaks. Another half-smile from Miguel, but Matteo is sick of all this pity. He doesn’t want it, he wants his girlfriend back. Luna.

The girl in front of him solely resembles her from the outside. When she speaks, her hair whips just the same, and she makes short pauses in between thoughts. Her nails are painted in the familiar shades of yellow and pink, her necklace still dangles from her neck.

Besides that, Matteo recognizes nothing from his solare in her. Coldness surrounds this girl, the temperature in the room drops with a single glance out of her eyes, and even more when Luna turns away from him.  

“Dad, I want to go to my room.” She stares at the wall next to Matteo when she adds, “You are not invited.”

Before they leave, Miguel’s lips form what reads like “Mood swings”. Not that he needed to give Matteo an explanation – in the past weeks, he read everything about her diagnosis that he could find.

None of this reading prepared him for this pain now, though.

If life was an ocean, Matteo currently drowned more than he stayed afloat.

Wave after wave hits him, pushes him away from the surface. His lungs fill with salty water until they burn from it. It takes all his strength to swim up, and when he breaks through the surface, he finds himself lost. No shore in sight, only an unforgiving sea.

Sometimes, the ocean calms down for a while, not long enough to recover and find a safe haven, but long enough to think of something other than merely staying alive. Right now, Matteo finds some room in his thoughts for university. His application forms for Oxford aren’t completed yet, and if he wants to start classes in October, he has to organize an early graduation now.

University scares him, if he’s honest. The change, the next fresh start in a new country, it’s more than he originally planned, more than he still wants. But then, what choice does he have? He suffocates in this city.

Matteo shushes the thoughts away. Crying won’t turn back time, so he might as well stop bawling his heart out and focus on university. On his future.

He reaches into his upper drawer, expecting the copy of his references there. What he finds instead is a little green bracelet.

Luna’s bracelet.

Closing his eyes, the tears already fall down while he remembers that moment. She gave it to him as a lucky charm before an audition at a local music label. Her small fingers placed it in his palm and closed his hand around it before she pressed a kiss on his skin. “Keep it, then you always have something that reminds you of me.”

The audition didn’t go well enough, but he always kept this bracelet close.

He falls back into the ocean, drowning, always drowning. Before the accident, Matteo lived in the present. Looking back was never worth the trouble, and after meeting Luna he only cared about the present and the promises of a beautiful future. These days, he’s a slave of these few months with her, of the craving to travel back in time so much that his bones rattle from knowing it can never be.

His tears taste of salt and emptiness. The bracelet gives in under the pressure of his fist. It will never be his lucky charm again.

It will always be his curse and the moon will always control the ocean.

Later, when the school approves of his plan to leave earlier, he tells Gastón. “But you won’t be happy there”, his best friend comments, shaking his head.

“Do you think I’ll be happy here? Where I will see those memories wherever I go, while she will never remember me? It doesn’t even matter if they’ll go back to Cancún or not, because in my heart, she will always be here.” Matteo sighs. Every moment with her flashes through his mind, all day, keeping him sane while killing him from the inside and he still needs to find out how that works.

“I just have to leave.”  

Speechless, Gastón pulls him into a hug. It’s nothing like the ones Luna used to give him.

Grieving and heartache, Matteo thinks, do not come in stages. He saw TED talks about it once, nodding during the presentation because a deep running truth seemed to shimmer through those words. At the end he decided it made sense.

It doesn’t anymore.

Instead, those two things come in cycles, a never-ending chain of pain that allows him a short look at the sun here, another glimpse there, but mercilessly pulls him back into the darkness. Maybe he feels okay for a day. Maybe he can sit in classes, concentrate on the teacher. Maybe he can pay a visit to the rink, where he puts on his skates and speaks about trainings, competitions, and Opens without wandering on the edge of tears. Maybe the guards that protect his friends from his overwhelming grief stay in place for three days in a row.

Maybe.

But it will never last.

Because then he goes home (or the place his parents named home), and there is no one jumping on his bed asking for a hug and two kisses with puppy eyes. Because then he takes a shower, and there is no one using the shampoo next to his and he sniffs at it while his eyes end up wet, but he’s surrounded by water drops so it doesn’t matter.

It will never last because at night, the moon is the only thing on his mind.

A day after his last final, Matteo is back at the mansion. The box in his hands weighs nothing compared to the heaviness crushing his heart down. When Luna opens the door, he smiles, knowing it must look forced. It certainly feels forced.

No word leaves her mouth, yet a thought bubble floats above her head, clearly for him to read. Ugh, him again.

(He read about the symptoms that come along with her injury. Thinking your boyfriend is an annoying asshole wasn’t one of them. Then again, mood swings were.)

She leans against the doorframe, arms crossed, frowning.

“Long time no see.” She doesn’t sound too fond of him back here.

“Um, I brought the stuff you still had at my place. Thought there’d be no reason to keep it.”

Technically, he’s telling the truth – he excluded the word all on purpose. A few things of her remain scattered in his room, probably always will. A hairbrush. A hoodie that gives off last hints of her perfume if he buries his face in it. A bottle of shampoo in his bathroom and a copy of her favorite book on his nightstand. And a little green bracelet.

Matteo postponed this moment for months. Told himself she’d change her mind eventually, that she’d come to the conclusion he deserved something. A call, an “I’m sorry I was so harsh”-text. In his wildest dreams, an honest attempt at friendship. Anything would have done, really.

But it always remained a simple idea, nothing but a daydream he colored in too vividly and now looked like a vomited rainbow next to a sad black and white movie.

“Cool”, Luna replies while she stares him down.

As it becomes obvious she won’t let him in, he places the box on the ground. His hand rubs over his arm, while he shifts from one foot to the other, trying to find better things to do than to get lost in the ice-cold sea of her eyes. Not always did he feel so unsure around her. So fragile.  

Matteo clears his throat. “I, eh, know it’s awkward for you, but can I hug you before I go?”

“Fine.” Her voice contradicts her answer, her body language does too. However, for once Matteo is willing to ignore it.

His hands are shaking when they reach out and softly land on her shoulder blades. One last time. He has this single shot and he plans on savoring the tiniest detail of it.

Closed eyes, the impressions flood his other senses. She’s warm in his arms, soft, a pillow to sink into. Her perfume lingers in his nose, the same meadow planted with the sweetest flowers as always. Her curls tickle his hand. He lets his finger wander through them just for a second before he rests them on her shoulder again. (The back feels too much like pushing his luck.)

Never was the difference between them as striking – her memory is an empty canvas, while his is a crumbled-up piece of paper with every sentence crossed out. He isn’t ready for the thought, fights back tears when his chest uses the opportunity to betray him. An earthquake erupts from his lungs, everything held together by his ribcage crashes down in notorious sobs until Luna notices too.

She steps away, and he knows, after all, that he lost her for good.

“I’m sorry.” The last syllable leaves his mouth in barely a whisper.

“No, I am. I don’t even know what past me saw in you, but I hope you’ll get over whatever this ever was.”

He knows he won’t.

After dinner, when Luna finishes the last exercises her new private tutor gave her, Simón comes over. She’s infinitely grateful for the distraction. School bores her, and when it doesn’t, it gives her a headache because focusing for a long time is still hard. The tutor helps, though, and thanks to Miss Benson the costs are fully covered. She said it’s the least she can do since the two guys responsible for this whole accident were her employees.

Or that’s what the police report said.

(It itches her that Matteo of all things is listed there too, as the one who was there, who helped and called the ambulance. This weird guy who everyone claims was her boyfriend. That guy!)

“How are you doing, Luna?”, Simón greets her while he pulls her into a hug.

She sighs, thinking about what to say. There’s school and the upcoming finals. All these people calling themselves her friends offered help already, and they’re nice, really. However, they tip-toe around her too much, avoid certain topics too obviously. A part of her continues to search for the missing memories that could kill the awkwardness in these interactions. She never finds it, which is overly frustrating, to say the least.

There’s mom and dad too. They worry. A lot. It gets better now that she returned to the Blake, and Luna hopes they can look at her soon without a nervous spark in their eyes.

Simón knows all this, though. They’d been over this more than once, the topics annoy even her.

“He was here again; can you believe it?”, she finally says. For a moment, her best friend glares at her in silence. “Who? Oh, Matteo?”

Luna nods, letting herself fall on her bed next to him.

“Really? Why, what did he want?”

Her gaze settles on the ceiling until little figures step out from the spots. Weird-headed animals, a mermaid without arms, and, in the right corner of her vision, a crumbled heart. She blinks.

“He said he wanted to bring back all the things I still had at his place. I don’t understand why he bothered, it’s not like I would know if something was missing.”

Simón musters her, it’s evident even before she moves her head to return his stare. Matteo is the only sore spot between them. Luna fails to grasp why her best friend picks his side every time his name drops, when just that name alone is a blank space to her.

His reaction (silent, but judging) comes as no surprise, though. It’s the price she decided to pay for venting about this guy. Ever since he hugged her on the doorsteps, she felt the urge to talk to someone about it, and Simón is the only option she trusts.

“Anyway, I think he finally understood I am not interested, so I’m pretty sure I will never see him again unless he runs into me at school. And that’s only a possibility for two more months. You said he’ll graduate this year, right?”

Simón shakes his head. He already picked sides, and he wouldn’t jump teams, Luna knows that. Right now, though, she’s close to cursing at him. Where was his support as her best friend?

“What?”, she demands as she nudges her arms against the spot over his waist that tickles the most.

“Did you say that to him? That you have no interest?”

His mouth forms a straight line where usually a smile rests. Luna frowns, trying to figure out what exactly bothers him so much. Something about her words stole his smile, the easiness in his voice, and it digs a cliff between them although he lays right next to her.

She can see the ground already.

“Not like that, no”, she shrugs. “I said I don’t know what past me saw in him, but he received that message loud and clear, I think.”

Abruptly, Simón sits up. In the process, he bumps against her shoulder, not that she really senses it when his expression crumbles faster than a house of cards in a windstorm. “You said what? That is…” His mouth opens. Closes. Opens again. Ultimately, he looks away, speechless, hand running through his hair.

A pout slips on her face while she robs closer to take his hand. Her fingers look small on top of his, always have, always will, but the view provides a comfort she rarely finds these days. “Are you mad at me?”

“I just don’t understand it. I don’t understand why you go out of your way to be… I don’t know. I guess I can’t understand why you won’t give him a chance. He’s really heartbroken about it, and you had no problem talking to your other friends again.”

“I wouldn’t call them friends.”

“But you talk to them. You see them in school, you try. Why not with him? I’m not asking you to make out with him.”

“Good, cause I would never!”, she fires back, she’s mad now even when she doesn’t want to be. “Simón, come on, the first thing that came out of his mouth was ‘Can’t believe you got so lucky, huh?’ What kind of person says that? He’s just weird, okay?”

He made her feel weird too. She doesn’t say that. But she remembers the look in his eyes the second he went in to hug her. Pain, a lot of it. He flinched at her words before, like a wounded animal, but in that moment, he looked like giving up.

Yet, it’s not what causes a shiver on her spine.

What haunts her is the way he looked at her like no one had ever before, like she never imagined someone would. Like he loved her.

Luna shakes her head. Even if they were a couple, he could barely grow to love her in the few months they supposedly dated.

Meanwhile, on her bed, Simón chuckles.

“What’s so funny?”

“He said that, I can’t…”, another huffed laughter, another gasp for air, “He went full fresa on you and you don’t even remember you called him chico fresa all the time.” A grin rests on his lips, the mattress vibrates softly.

“I dated a snob? That’s not funny, that’s sad.”

Now it’s Simón reaching for her ticklish spot. Luna shrieks, but decides not to fight back when he answers, “I’m sure he was super nervous about seeing you again.”

“Don’t defend him”, she replies. Then, she changes her mind and attacks. They spent the next minutes tickling each other and pleading for air and mercy. When the battle is over (she wins), no one brings Matteo up again.

Her old phone lays in the drawer of her nightstand. She stumbles over it when she searches for one of her bracelets from Cancún, but seeing the phone erases every thought, it’s prominent against all the white noise in her head.

It fits perfectly into her hand but doesn’t react at any pressed button. The battery ran out many weeks ago. In the two hours it takes to recharge, her mind jumps back and forth. Should she glimpse at the life she doesn’t remember? Between yes and no, Luna never settles on one decision. Whatever she chooses, she doubts it will bring her peace.

(But she’s so curious.)

She grabs her post-accident phone to text Simón. Surely, he knows her pin code, and if he doesn’t, even better. Then the decision isn’t her burden anymore.

He remembers. A few minutes later, the line of numbers he sent her indeed unlocks the screen – to a picture of her and Matteo.

Luna groans. Hesitates. Stares at the picture. Objectively, it’s nice, even pretty. They’re on some rink, both wearing skates, and the light dances over them. He carries her, bride-style, and they’re lost in each other’s eyes while the most stupid, love-drunk smiles grace their faces.

If this wasn’t her, Luna would have rolled her eyes at so much cheesiness. But it is her, so instead, she feels weird, as if someone punched her in the stomach.

She hesitates even more, her thumb hovering over the Messages icon. If the home screen already evoked such a response from her…

“Luna! Dinner is ready!”, her mom yells from downstairs. With a sigh, she throws the phone on her bed.

Not once can she stop thinking about it.

Chico fresa: Someone just fell in the park, first thought it was you but then I remembered you were still in school :P

Haha you are so funny, oh wait, no you are not

Chico fresa: Aww, is someone unable to take a joke?

Said the one who pouted at me for half a day bc I laughed when Gastón roasted you for the burned pizza

Chico fresa: The pizza wasn’t burned!! Just crusty

Thx for proving my point :D

Chico fresa: …

Chico fresa: As my princesa demanded, the curls are back :D

Chico fresa sent a picture.

I love it C Asked mom btw and she said it’s okay so see you tonight!!

Chico fresa: Can’t wait, don’t forget the popcorn, love you

I won’t, promise! Love you more

Luna can’t stop reading. She’s attached to this phone now, over breakfast, in between classes, at night before her eyes get too heavy to read.

The messages pull her in like her favorite book does, the world around her fades as she dives in deeper into her own story. The Matteo she reads about is funny, he cares about her, although his ego elicits an eyeroll on more than one occasion.

The Matteo she reads sounds different from the one she saw these two times. But in the end, the texts make her relationship with him real. Undeniably real. And although she keeps scrolling and scrolling, the texts never come to an end. Not three weeks before her accident, not half a year before.

When focusing on words becomes too exhausting, she opens the gallery to a collection of selfies. On the same rink from her home screen, in a café, and a lot of other places unknown to her. One folder is named “Matteo” with a heart emoji next to his name. He’s handsome in every single picture. His smile probably breaks all the hearts at the Blake. His smile probably breaks all the hearts, period.

She saw these photographs so many times, that they remain crystal-clear in her memory when she closes her eyes.

They still don’t make any sense to her.

“You said there’s this girl who films everything.”

Simón glimpses at her from half-shut eyes. He lays on his back, head dangling over the top of her mattress. “Huh?” Given the rough tone in his voice, she interrupted him in the middle of a nap.

“I was wondering if there are videos of… well, Matteo and me. Together.”

He sits up, checking her with his head tilt, but then he shrugs and reaches for his phone. “Sure. Wait a sec, I’ll ask Jazmín.”

It’s so much worse than she imagined.

“This was your first competition with him”, Simón declares, and a bit later, Luna watches herself kissing Matteo.

Her cheeks burn so badly, she feels the urge to crawl into the freezer.

As she buries her head in her hands, Simón softly taps her shoulder. “What are you thinking?”

“I… That’s maybe my first kiss, and then it’s with that guy!” Silence. She shakes her head and gestures at the screen, where they’re melting into each other, frozen. “Ugh, and look at me, it’s so obvious I wanted it!”

At that, her best friend flinches.

She watches the other videos on her own.

Most videos show them skating on a rink. Figure skating that means – Luna had no idea she could do that. Everyone told her, and there’d been a few pictures on her phone. Yet she only stops brushing it off now that she’s seeing herself. A few videos of them singing on stage, voices in harmony like two birds from the same feather. A shiver runs over her back and arms before she sighs and presses the Pause button.

Before he left, Simón told her they hadn’t been a couple in all these videos, but honestly? It’s hard to tell the difference. There’s one clip from what looks like a café, he’s stealing her milkshake and she complains but bursts into laughter. The video ends when they notice someone is filming them, they yell “Jazmín!” and the screen turns black.

Luna can’t decide which video gives her the most goosebumps. She could imagine living in Buenos Aires, liking the city, even going to a fancy private school and calling a luxurious mansion her home. But Matteo is the one puzzle piece that doesn’t fit the picture. He feels out of place, like he doesn’t truly belong with her.

All the proof she collected so far makes her wonder if she was too quick to judge.

Warm water falls on her, the scent of her shampoo fills the sticky air and she hums along to the songs playing from her phone. She rinses her hair as the playlist ends, leaving her in silence. Except there’s suddenly a new melody, one she doesn’t recognize but vibrates in her throat nevertheless.

Vienes a quebrar la soledad, te encuentro despierto

Te miro y espero

Dame solo un poco de paz

Like fish out of water, these snippets strand on the beach of her consciousness. They shimmer in the sun, but the colors are new to her, nothing alike to what she knows. Luna can’t tell whether it’s a memory or a song idea, but she never wrote a song, never developed the aspiration.

Maybe the accident turned her into a songwriter. The nurses told her crazier stories, about a man fluent in French when he woke up, although he’d never learned it.

Writing a song isn’t that crazy.

Back in her room, Luna searches for both the lyrics and the man on the internet. Google shows only results for the latter.

Her parents don’t recognize the song either.

It’s Nina who eventually gives her a lead. They sit in the sun during lunch break, and despite her best efforts, the words slip out in half a whisper. Once they begin to play, they repeat like a broken record, she’s sick of it, she wants to hear the rest.

(She tried writing this song. To call it a disaster was an understatement.)

“Is that the song Matteo wrote for you?”, Nina finally asks, face hidden behind a layer of hair.

“What?”

“Oh, my bad”, she mumbles. “I forgot you don’t want to hear about him. I’m sorry, really.”

Well, Nina wasn’t wrong. Luna used to avoid the topic like other people avoided spiders or heights or emotional commitment. She used to hide behind every possible excuse to explain why she rolled her eyes at his name and changed directions as soon as she spotted him in the hallways. He’s weird, he looks like he knows he’s better than everyone else. He’s too handsome to be trusted. I don’t need a boyfriend, I have to focus on getting better.

I have no idea what past me saw in him.

“No, it’s okay, I… I think I want to know. You said he wrote a song for me?”

“Well, that’s what you told me, before the accident? But we never heard him play it, so it was just a guess. Do you remember something?” Her gaze settles on Luna. Anyone else who looked at her like this, asked her questions like this, made her uncomfortable. Even her own parents, even Simón.

With Nina, it’s different.

Nina is careful. Not just with her, but with everyone. And Luna can’t explain why, but it’s all it takes for her to call Nina a friend, to admit a truth to her that she herself barely accepts yet. “I wish I would.”

In class, Luna unlocks her old phone to the chat with Matteo. Somewhere between all the pictures they sent back and forth, she stumbles over an audio from him, four minutes long. Many things could be an audio record this long, she tries to not get ahead of herself, to be realistic, although her chest fills with excitement already.

Getting home takes way too long.

Her hand tight around the phone in her pocket, she takes the first step on the staircase, just when her mom shouts her name from the kitchen.

“What?”, Luna shouts back, unwilling to move if it doesn’t involve getting to her room as soon as possible.

“Don’t forget we have to leave for your doctor’s appointment in an hour!”

Doctor’s appointments, the one thing she hates more than the silence when someone realized they talked about a past lost to her. The doctor asks too many questions, about headaches, about how she feels, about her everyday routine, if she wants to see a therapist.

Her answers always remain the same: rarely, okay, she sticks to it, no.

“Yeah, okay!”, she replies, not meaning it, then hurries up to her room. Her heartbeat echoes in her ears when the audio message opens and a gentle guitar strips every thought away until there’s only the music, a soft voice and an ocean of feelings.

Hi.

Error: invalid phone number. The number you are trying to reach no longer exists.

Hey, it’s Luna here... I found the song Matteo wrote, and Idk he’s not at school anymore so I tried to text him but my phone keeps saying his number doesn’t exist anymore and what I want to ask bc I guess you’re his best friend… do you have his new number?

Sorry for the unnecessary long message

Gastón: Yes

[kenjkats]

That OOC Liam Thing

LOL okay welcome to another one of my long ass TED talks bc I’ve seen responses to this thing and I just wanna say stuff, I’m a rambly person if you haven’t noticed. Also bc I LOVE Liam because of how kind and loyal he is and seeing this as something he would do in CANON even if it’s an alternate universe where you say no (I said yes, obviously), makes me CRINGE, and judge him, because wtf this isn’t my Liam lmao. ANYWAY.

So the situation in question is Liam offering still being together with MC even in a sexual/friends-with-benefits way while they are with their chosen LI during the diamond scene after his proposal. You can see screenshots here.

First of all, I’m not telling you I am 100% right, feel free to tell me something I said here is wrong and why. I’m not raving mad at people who said things and whatever, I’m just still so SHOOK by this character development I need to talk about it lol.  This is me opening a discussion.

The first and most obvious problem with this is that it is jarringly out of character for Liam. The whole time the story made it out as Liam being totally in love with MC, wanting to marry her because not only would she be a good queen, but it’s a rare opportunity for him to marry for his country and for himself. It was greatly emphasized that he loved her, and that this wasn’t common, and (at least for me, correct me if I’m wrong) there were a lot of implications that he and other LIs, would have wanted exclusivity. I say this because there’s dialogue of Liam saying he wants only you, or you being able to tell Drake you don’t care about the King and just him etc.

The whole situation is very off-putting, to say the least. PB set Liam up for maximum pain by only allowing fans to reject him and tell him the truth right when he was down on his knee and proposing. Not even one moment before when they saw the ring, no, they made MC the jerk and watch him get on his knee and ask first. Then they make him the bigger guy by letting him be accepting of you and your LI. The whole setup was bad enough for Liam, but then the way the proposal of this arrangement is set up is also problematic:

Liam is put in a desperate light. As if this man who has his pride and self-respect throws it out the window because he will take any piece of this woman he loves even if it’s just the sex. And it goes against what PB has written him to be like.

He is also put in kind of an asshole light. He proposes a side thing/polyamory without the consent of the third party who is a friend to BOTH of them btw.

And if you’re like me who was under the impression that the King was about exclusivity with you, and so were the other LIs, then this feels dirty. He would ask you to willingly cheat on them with him? After saying he’s happy for you guys and that his friends found love? No. That’s weird.

Some say MC is also painted in a bad light because she has these choices, but since kissing him, having sex with him, and accepting the duchy is all up to the player and not forced default dialogue, this is free and I have no judgement. 

In the end this will be MESSY. Story-wise and development-wise. It’s difficult enough for them to balance out these LIs, they added Maxwell in, and now they’re going to add this branch where you have two? It’s potentially A LOT of drama that would be very different in dialogue compared to a playthrough where you stuck with one. 

You would have Liams getting married to him, still friends with everyone else; or choose Drake/Hana/Maxwell, deal with Bertrand, be happy with them, Liam is still happy for you; and then what? this third one where you’re trying to get everyone to agree to poly, there’s drama because I would find it hard to believe everyone agrees to that just out of nowhere*, you potentially hurt the LI you didn’t consult before sleeping with Liam? Then in book 3 what does this mean? Liam will still flirt with you even when you chose someone else?

*About polyamory. I won’t pretend to know how this works because I’m a monogamy girl, but as someone in the comments pointed out, and this makes sense to me, this kind of relationship can work, but for certain kinds of people, and Liam and Hana AT LEAST, don’t seem like those people. Also because shouldn’t everyone have agreed first before you even have the option to sleep with Liam? Even if this is a step into diversifying relationships in Choices by adding polyamory, it’s still sketchy AF because of how it would be set up.

My thoughts on this shift to the developers BECAUSE it’s so OOC, you can’t help but look at the creators, not the characters.

I believe that this is a diamond grab and this infuriates me. There was no build-up or previous mention that this was a “thing” in Cordonia and the scene was written with Liam just casually, “oh you know, by the way, conveniently enough it’s a thing here so it should be okay.” Like that detail was way too convenient and not set up properly enough for me to accept it as actual world building, and looks to me like a randomly inserted not-so-fun fact to justify them asking for diamonds with a sex scene.

You would sacrifice the integrity of the character you built up over 2 books, that fans adored for his personality, by making him do something OOC when he throws his self-respect out the door and be so desperate for any piece of MC, just so you can slip in this diamond scene, with the hopes that you earn some money from those who would take it. Pretty greedy if you ask me. If you guys wanted a diamond scene offered regardless of player choice then like others suggested in the comments you could have:

1. Let players tell him earlier that morning that you wanted someone else. It was pretty clear he was going to propose, should’ve done it before he took you out and got on his knee. Then go tell the other LI and give them a diamond scene. That way you have all LIs have a diamond scene in the chapter. You still get your money, rejected King or no.

2. Or, should’ve kept the diamond scene friendly when you told him no. I find it hard to believe someone like Liam written to be THAT in love with MC to be accepting of rejection then okay enough emotionally to have sex with her right after. Like him being accepting is in character, but I imagine him being so traumatized by all of this like wtf? As a Liam romancer, it feels soooo iffy knowing he would do this because it raises questions about his love for MC.

Comments I’ve seen and my take:

1. He was fine with the Madeleine arrangement no surprise he’d be okay with this.

These two are completely different things. Even if it was iffy that he was asking you to be his side-chick, the circumstances allowed for it to be not so bad, morally. Liam was forced to pick Madeleine, he was trapped in an arranged marriage. Madeleine proposed the arrangement, thereby giving her consent to it. Liam offers this to you because he loves YOU, and has the hope that his arrangement with Madeleine won’t last. And if you continued dating Liam then MC consented to it. 

Consent is present in all parties involved. The setup occurs because they want to be together and in love despite an arranged marriage in their way, and there was hope for a future where it wasn’t in their way. MC brings up (or is this a dialogue option I don’t remember) in several diamond scenes that if he does end up marrying Madeleine, they would have to talk and most likely end things.

This one with Liam x MC x other LI is messy. The third party has no chance to be consulted before you can sleep with Liam which just sets up this alternate route filled with potential drama that is so different from how peaceful the others are set up to be after this chapter. MC and Liam are not trapped in anything. This would be a choice to cheat on third LI together (if you view this as a monogamy then friends-with benefit offer rather than potential poly.) The whole “having a side piece with the one I love” factor in the first arrangement doesn’t fit here. In this scenario MC loves other LI, not Liam, and having him as a side piece is just MC wanting more sexytimes and frankly SO MEAN after rejecting his love and proposal already ENOUGH MC.

2. I read a post by @littleredroseonthevalley here, talking about how these societies do tend to have these cultures of side chicks and side dudes.

The thing is I would agree and let it go if this was established earlier on. But I had only seen this into play in TRR when Liam says Madeleine proposes this, and it was a situation of marry for duty, be with the one you love in private. Also again, there was the hope that this was TEMPORARY.

Just all the points I’ve brought up so far. It’s OOC for Liam, it’s very messy development-wise, like how is PB going to handle all these LI branches when they get situational too? And how this tidbit was very casually slipped in at a moment where knowledge of it made it okay for you to sleep with him even when you wanted someone else.

[alienvirals]

Alien: Covenant why Ridley Scott’s facehuggers and chestbursters will never die

With their bad robots, evil capitalists, terrifying xenomorphs and exploding humans, the Alien films turned cinema into a primal freakout zone. As the latest lands, heres what made them so irresistible

At various points in 1979, Ridley Scotts Alien was released into cinemas, a nasty-minded B movie with hopes of shifting a certain number of action figures. As you may have noticed, it did better than expected. Out this week, its latest descendant is Alien: Covenant, the second of four intended prequels. In the 80s and 90s, three sequels were added to the original, and these four were then marketed as a quadrilogy, a phrase bursting horribly through the frail chest of the English language.

For the film business, Covenant is a big deal in the battle against a future where actual movies are subcontracted to Marvel and everything else ends up on Netflix. Its important to the rest of us, too, even if the brooding scene-setting of the film before it, Prometheus, was a little dry for some. Covenant, while a very good movie, can also feel like a carefully planned family holiday, designed to let Scott explore his favourite places robotics, evolution, Hows and Whys but with regular visits for the kids to the bloody fairground of facehuggers and xenomorphs.

Scott, of course, is a victim of his own success in creating a monster this moreish. The original Alien was planned as an intergalactic spin on Jaws, another terror looming from the dark to upset humanitys delusions of grandeur. But where the shark had us for breakfast, Alien did something still more psychically traumatic it made us the unknowing host of a baby that ripped us open from the inside.

Fuse that primal freakout with HR Gigers famous creature designs and you get images that can never be removed from the mind. But Alien was a strange kind of cultural juggernaut. A decade after the first Apollo moon landing, with the gleam of the space age dulled, the scene onboard the commercial spaceship Nostromo was rarely less than glumly claustrophobic. The film seemed to be saying that, if we as a species ever make it into space en masse, our lives will end up like this: an underpaid, cooped-up grind that left you looking like Harry Dean Stanton.

The bloody fairground of facehuggers Ian Holm and John Hurt in Alien. Photograph: Alamy

In the new films, there has been a sly pleasure to be had in seeing that grimy distant future joined up to a bright-eyed version of life not too far from now: the advance publicity for Prometheus featured a video of a purported TED Talk given by entrepreneur Peter Weyland (played by Guy Pearce) just around the corner in 2023.

Whereas most blockbusters rouse, Alien has always been a tune played in an ominous minor key. The characters you meet in each film are usually dead by the end of it. The alien keeps coming until it gets you. The continuation of the series created a need for what you might in the broadest sense call happy endings, but they were usually tired, ambivalent things. It came as no great surprise to learn Scott had wanted the first Alien to close with the death of Sigourney Weavers Ripley, her escape-pod bound for Earth with a lone, triumphant xenomorph on board.

Not doing that there was panic among studio executives was probably best for the series. Still, the popularity of the first two films can obscure the fact the next two nearly destroyed their directors careers. After James Cameron made the bullishly irresistible Aliens (the first sequel and still his best film), both David Finchers sombre Alien 3 and Jean-Pierre Jeunets deeply 90s Alien: Resurrection were regarded as fiascos.

The master builder Ridley Scott and Katherine Waterston on the set of Alien: Covenant. Photograph: Mark Rogers/Mark Rogers / Fox Film

Interviewing Fincher years later, I told him I thought Alien 3 was underrated. He looked at me as if Id brought up a family bereavement. Jeunet, meanwhile, returned to France to make the sugar-sweet Amelie. That the series returned at all was tribute to the deathless appeal of Gigers monsters, and the feeling that Scott was the one filmmaker who could properly wrangle them, Prometheus marking his return as director.

But the Alien movies, however flawed, never felt irrelevant, always connecting to the realities of Earth. For anyone who sees blockbuster cinema as the place the collective subconscious bubbles to the surface, the films are rich pickings. It was hard to miss the timing with which the original arrived in 1979 opening in Britain four months after the election of Margaret Thatcher, and shortly before Ronald Reagan won the US presidency.

As such, the era of Alien has precisely mirrored the age of modern capitalism. You see it in the story of faceless corporations killing off their staff to chase a profit and in the xenomorph itself, remorseless and voracious. Now, the role of founding father has been assumed by Peter Weyland, a billionaire industrialist, whose expansive plans to help mankind would fit right in with those of Mark Zuckerberg or Larry Page.

The feminism of the films might feel haphazard the first script of the original involved a male hero but still, in an era in which the film business has struggled to put women front and centre, Ripley was routinely the best hope for humanity. In the latest film, Sigourney Weavers place is taken by Katherine Waterston, deadpan and stoic, just like her forerunner. But, more than just being female-led, the Alien films always hummed with ticklish thoughts about motherhood and reproduction; the hero is the ultimate final girl, the last woman left standing, with men seldom saving the day.

Ultimate final girl Sigourney Weaver in David Finchers Alien 3, 1992. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

And then we have the androids. If Ian Holms treacherous Ash in the original gave audiences a whisper of unease about the march of technology, it has since grown deafening. Having built both Prometheus and Covenant around Michael Fassbenders turn as a primly gifted synthetic, Scott is clearly concerned with the point where circuitry acquires a soul. In the era of coming automation, why wouldnt you be? (In recent weeks, as Fassbender and Scott have been promoting their movie, they have shared media attention with the all-powerful Chinese entrepreneur Jack Ma, warning that the world is about to enter decades of pain caused by artificial intelligence.)

The scowl, the voice of gloomy fatalism, is much bigger in the new Alien episodes: films about the rise of robots in which the humans are usually messy, fleshy, venal and feeble. In his heartfelt sci-fi epic Interstellar, Christopher Nolan told a tale of space travel tied up with misty childhood memories and the bonds of family. You suspect Scott would take one look at all that and ask someone from the crew to pass a bin bag.

Scotts Alien films have always put the sheeny efficiency of xenomorphs above the feelings of people. Now planning at least two more lavishly mounted episodes, alongside a slate of other projects, he remains a force of nature himself, a master builder turning 80 this year, using his industry clout to pursue big ideas while throwing the crowd enough red meat to keep us turning up.

And space? In the years between Alien and Covenant, the prospect of commercial space travel has advanced spasmodically at best. Scott for one believes other beings will get to us long before we reach them. Of course, he has said, there is life out there. It is smarter than us and violent. Four decades after that first doomed voyage, his advice is simple: When you see a big thing in the sky, run.

Alien: Covenant is released in Australia on 11 May, UK on 12 May, and US on 19 May.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us

The post Alien: Covenant why Ridley Scott’s facehuggers and chestbursters will never die appeared first on AlienVirals.com - Latest Alien & UFO News.

from AlienVirals.com – Latest Alien & UFO News http://www.alienvirals.com/alien-covenant-why-ridley-scotts-facehuggers-and-chestbursters-will-never-die-2/

[altschmerzes]

Hiiiii !!!!!

First of all, HOW ON EARTH DID YOU WRITE SO MUCH FOR THOSE PAPERS AT ONCE ???? I am in awe ??? And you’re writing fiction at the same time ???? What air are you breathing actually.

I hope they went well !!!!!! I’m sure u killed it :)

Anyways after seeing another anon mention the no mention of Jamie Man City stuff ummmmmm YEAH WTF

Like one part of me is hoping and praying that they’re just going to slam it on us with no buildup bc we do have the away match to look forward (?) to and so it would KIND of make sense but I’m just ???? Convincing myself idk.

I’m also kind of fuming with ted (as much as I can be bc I love him) because he literally repeated what Jamie said to the team WEEKS and WEEKS ago and the only acknowledgment Jamie got was a little bit of eye contact like ?????????????? I need his vindication NEOWWWWWWWWW

Love the show of course but this episode was not it for me. I just savoured every Jamie moment as much as I could lol. Based on the trailers, I feel like he’s gonna be pushed aside less as the show goes on so I still have hope but UHHHFHFJFGN

— O <3

this has literally happened every finals season so far and i cannot understand it sldkfjs i wrote barn raising, my 30k 2x08 tag, during my first finals of my law programme. whatever i'm breathing over here far be it from me to understand it XD. i feel good about how the papers turned out and so far so good on the exams - one down one left to go, in about eight-ish hours!

and YEAH same for real like- i keep oscillating between 'i know i've got my priorities and my particular pet agendas so it's gonna be what it's gonna be and that's chill' and then being like 'no, actually, it's kind of Totally Nuts that it's like the show got hit with a men in black mind wipe beam thing after man city, this is the first time they've played them after a devastatingly traumatic event, and we could've had four seconds for someone to be like 'hey how're you holding up' even if the answer was 'surprisingly well, weirdly enough, leave it alone' or whatever. feels like there ought to have been something there, even if i'm gonna be a broken record about it!

and same - i gotta think they're gonna do something with it at some point. and i do hope they'll do something more with the resolution of what they had going there, with the coaches brushing him off and then the guy later day'ing when they needed him and whatnot, especially when they kinda revived that whole subplot with jamie's rallying speech that zava took over. i would simply love a little vindication sldfsjsld it's like i keep saying, you've heard of: accountability from jamie, i would love to see a little accountability TO jamie.

same, love the show, still having a good time! and i feel like we're getting a bit of a redirect, return-to-form if the vibes i'm getting are accurate, which i hope they are! as always it's lovely to hear from you and we're completely on the same wavelength <3

[episode-escapades]

Being isolated with someone can do that to you. But you’ve only been together for three days so it shouldn’t be that strong.

*spits out drink*

WHAT?!

Okay slow down, Ted Moseby. You just went through a traumatic experience and are in no state of mind to be making any life changing decisions.

LOL look at the difference between these two choices?

And look, maybe I’m just an old fashioned tart who likes a good slow burn, but it’s nigh impossible to fall in love with someone in three days. I don’t mind these two eventually getting married, but they should make that decision after a sufficient amount of dating and getting to know each other so they can truly decide if it’s meant to be.

Or at least wait long enough so you can change out of those shitty rags. You two must stink.

Not with Riley’s mom looking ready to throw hands like that.

And that’s the end of Trapped!

Well this is gonna be a very different Final Score.

FINAL REVIEW

Well to no one’s surprise, this is definitely the best story we’ve read through so far. Even with the bar not very high, this one managed to impress me with how much thought was put into it at times. I kinda wish it had been longer so we could see more island survival, but we didn’t really get much of that at all, which was very disappointing. These stories are mostly eight chapters long, which has led to pacing issues in all of the ones we’ve looked at so far though, so it’s not like this is strictly the author’s fault.

Best Chapter: Chapter 3. Yeah, the #Megley chapter. Because they’re still my true ship. It’s very rare that an Episode game makes me NOT want someone to die. But all throughout this chapter (and especially the flashback) I was super sad because I knew Megan was going to die. So well done for actually getting me to feel a strong emotion other than rage for once.

Worst Chapter: Chapter 3 again because it made me really sad!!!

Okay but serious answer: I think chapter 5? It was the least fun for sure, all the survival stuff could only be done through gem choices, and there was way too much bickering between Riley and Stiller. The highlight was Stiller wearing the cowgirl stripper outfit though, so it wasn’t all bad. I think this was the chapter where I realised that I wasn’t going to get much of any actual fun survival stuff.

Best character: I’m sorry, but I have to put Megan in this spot. She’s earned it after becoming the first character I got emotional over. She deserved to survive with Riley and Stiller and form a polyamorous relationship with both of them. Considering I thought she was going to be a clone of Chloe from Love and War, she’s definitely stolen my heart.

Worst character: We were stuck with Riley and Stiller for most of the story so there aren’t many characters to choose from, but I suppose the only character framed as “bad” was Benjamin. So I’ll put him here. He was very whiny and possessive, but we didn’t really spend enough time with him for me to say that much about him. All in all, the characters in this story were fine. What a miracle.

Final Score: 8/10. I was so surprised at how much fun I had with this one, even if my excitement died down a little in the last half because of all the arguing and lack of actual survival stuff.

I don’t hate any of the main characters, the setting was the most unique out of all the stories so far (read: not a school), the world-building was well done, we once again have a wonderful father character, and I enjoyed the romance when the story didn’t insist on having Riley and Stiller argue all the time. Maybe it helps that I’m sapphic so I can relate to crushing on blue-haired butches, but I like to think that if Stiller was a guy, I’d still buy parts of the relationship.

Speaking of the romance, it was far too rushed at the end. I wouldn’t have minded if it had just ended with them kissing and starting to date, but they jump immediately to love and (almost) marriage, which just doesn’t make any sense. Welp, at least there was no unnecessary pregnancy this time xD

All in all, well done to this author. I can tell that you put a lot of thought and love into this story, and I hope you go on to write even greater things. I wish you the best of luck. ^u^

To improve, all I can say is that the pacing of the romance needs to be more realistic, the desert island setting needed to be taken advantage of more, and for God’s sake, get rid of the beginning where you spoil Riley and Stiller getting together. Thank you. :)

I already have a pretty good idea about what our next story should be, so I’ll see you next time, friends and fellow masochists.

[alienvirals]

Alien: Covenant why Ridley Scott’s facehuggers and chestbursters will never die

With their bad robots, evil capitalists, terrifying xenomorphs and exploding humans, the Alien films turned cinema into a primal freakout zone. As the latest lands, heres what made them so irresistible

At various points in 1979, Ridley Scotts Alien was released into cinemas, a nasty-minded B movie with hopes of shifting a certain number of action figures. As you may have noticed, it did better than expected. Out this week, its latest descendant is Alien: Covenant, the second of four intended prequels. In the 80s and 90s, three sequels were added to the original, and these four were then marketed as a quadrilogy, a phrase bursting horribly through the frail chest of the English language.

For the film business, Covenant is a big deal in the battle against a future where actual movies are subcontracted to Marvel and everything else ends up on Netflix. Its important to the rest of us, too, even if the brooding scene-setting of the film before it, Prometheus, was a little dry for some. Covenant, while a very good movie, can also feel like a carefully planned family holiday, designed to let Scott explore his favourite places robotics, evolution, Hows and Whys but with regular visits for the kids to the bloody fairground of facehuggers and xenomorphs.

Scott, of course, is a victim of his own success in creating a monster this moreish. The original Alien was planned as an intergalactic spin on Jaws, another terror looming from the dark to upset humanitys delusions of grandeur. But where the shark had us for breakfast, Alien did something still more psychically traumatic it made us the unknowing host of a baby that ripped us open from the inside.

Fuse that primal freakout with HR Gigers famous creature designs and you get images that can never be removed from the mind. But Alien was a strange kind of cultural juggernaut. A decade after the first Apollo moon landing, with the gleam of the space age dulled, the scene onboard the commercial spaceship Nostromo was rarely less than glumly claustrophobic. The film seemed to be saying that, if we as a species ever make it into space en masse, our lives will end up like this: an underpaid, cooped-up grind that left you looking like Harry Dean Stanton.

The bloody fairground of facehuggers Ian Holm and John Hurt in Alien. Photograph: Alamy

In the new films, there has been a sly pleasure to be had in seeing that grimy distant future joined up to a bright-eyed version of life not too far from now: the advance publicity for Prometheus featured a video of a purported TED Talk given by entrepreneur Peter Weyland (played by Guy Pearce) just around the corner in 2023.

Whereas most blockbusters rouse, Alien has always been a tune played in an ominous minor key. The characters you meet in each film are usually dead by the end of it. The alien keeps coming until it gets you. The continuation of the series created a need for what you might in the broadest sense call happy endings, but they were usually tired, ambivalent things. It came as no great surprise to learn Scott had wanted the first Alien to close with the death of Sigourney Weavers Ripley, her escape-pod bound for Earth with a lone, triumphant xenomorph on board.

Not doing that there was panic among studio executives was probably best for the series. Still, the popularity of the first two films can obscure the fact the next two nearly destroyed their directors careers. After James Cameron made the bullishly irresistible Aliens (the first sequel and still his best film), both David Finchers sombre Alien 3 and Jean-Pierre Jeunets deeply 90s Alien: Resurrection were regarded as fiascos.

The master builder Ridley Scott and Katherine Waterston on the set of Alien: Covenant. Photograph: Mark Rogers/Mark Rogers / Fox Film

Interviewing Fincher years later, I told him I thought Alien 3 was underrated. He looked at me as if Id brought up a family bereavement. Jeunet, meanwhile, returned to France to make the sugar-sweet Amelie. That the series returned at all was tribute to the deathless appeal of Gigers monsters, and the feeling that Scott was the one filmmaker who could properly wrangle them, Prometheus marking his return as director.

But the Alien movies, however flawed, never felt irrelevant, always connecting to the realities of Earth. For anyone who sees blockbuster cinema as the place the collective subconscious bubbles to the surface, the films are rich pickings. It was hard to miss the timing with which the original arrived in 1979 opening in Britain four months after the election of Margaret Thatcher, and shortly before Ronald Reagan won the US presidency.

As such, the era of Alien has precisely mirrored the age of modern capitalism. You see it in the story of faceless corporations killing off their staff to chase a profit and in the xenomorph itself, remorseless and voracious. Now, the role of founding father has been assumed by Peter Weyland, a billionaire industrialist, whose expansive plans to help mankind would fit right in with those of Mark Zuckerberg or Larry Page.

The feminism of the films might feel haphazard the first script of the original involved a male hero but still, in an era in which the film business has struggled to put women front and centre, Ripley was routinely the best hope for humanity. In the latest film, Sigourney Weavers place is taken by Katherine Waterston, deadpan and stoic, just like her forerunner. But, more than just being female-led, the Alien films always hummed with ticklish thoughts about motherhood and reproduction; the hero is the ultimate final girl, the last woman left standing, with men seldom saving the day.

Ultimate final girl Sigourney Weaver in David Finchers Alien 3, 1992. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

And then we have the androids. If Ian Holms treacherous Ash in the original gave audiences a whisper of unease about the march of technology, it has since grown deafening. Having built both Prometheus and Covenant around Michael Fassbenders turn as a primly gifted synthetic, Scott is clearly concerned with the point where circuitry acquires a soul. In the era of coming automation, why wouldnt you be? (In recent weeks, as Fassbender and Scott have been promoting their movie, they have shared media attention with the all-powerful Chinese entrepreneur Jack Ma, warning that the world is about to enter decades of pain caused by artificial intelligence.)

The scowl, the voice of gloomy fatalism, is much bigger in the new Alien episodes: films about the rise of robots in which the humans are usually messy, fleshy, venal and feeble. In his heartfelt sci-fi epic Interstellar, Christopher Nolan told a tale of space travel tied up with misty childhood memories and the bonds of family. You suspect Scott would take one look at all that and ask someone from the crew to pass a bin bag.

Scotts Alien films have always put the sheeny efficiency of xenomorphs above the feelings of people. Now planning at least two more lavishly mounted episodes, alongside a slate of other projects, he remains a force of nature himself, a master builder turning 80 this year, using his industry clout to pursue big ideas while throwing the crowd enough red meat to keep us turning up.

And space? In the years between Alien and Covenant, the prospect of commercial space travel has advanced spasmodically at best. Scott for one believes other beings will get to us long before we reach them. Of course, he has said, there is life out there. It is smarter than us and violent. Four decades after that first doomed voyage, his advice is simple: When you see a big thing in the sky, run.

Alien: Covenant is released in Australia on 11 May, UK on 12 May, and US on 19 May.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us

The post Alien: Covenant why Ridley Scott’s facehuggers and chestbursters will never die appeared first on AlienVirals.com - Latest Alien & UFO News.

from AlienVirals.com – Latest Alien & UFO News http://www.alienvirals.com/alien-covenant-why-ridley-scotts-facehuggers-and-chestbursters-will-never-die/