#i did my best to explain everything but a lot of it is vague handwaving so.

[bigskydreaming]

Hi! I was reading a fanfic and it brought up Roy and Dick's fight, which I see a lot of in fics but never what they fought about and consequently why they don't talk. I thought it was a vague excuse/reason why Roy was Jason's friend not Dick's anymore but this fic brought up when Dick was batman so I was wondering if there was actually a fight between them? Btw I really enjoy your metas! They're v thought out and well articulated. Also it's v easy to separate what's your opinion and what's fact which is. Very helpful for me

Yeah this is one hundred percent a fanon thing that's kept deliberately vague to justify why Roy in his friendship with Jason seems to have no positive thoughts or concerns about Dick whatsoever. Now granted, Dick and Roy are not nearly as close in the New 52 as they were pre-Reboot. The lack of their friendship there is definitely one of the things I disliked most about the Reboot - and I actually don't care if Jason and Roy are friends tbh, its the total erasure of his history with Dick as if he can't be friends with both, that like, bugs most.

But so like, yeah, Roy and Dick aren't super close when they interact on the Titans in the New 52, but there's literally nothing in any of their interactions that explains the complete absence of him from Roy's life or a reason that Roy would like, hate him the way he tends to in a lot of Jason-centric fics.

When you factor in pre-Reboot stuff though, it starts to get a LOT more.....uh wyd? And this is why I have trouble buying that people just write Roy and Jason the way they do because its the only thing they know from recent comics. Like one, most fans talk about how they don't even read the source comics, so there's no reason their knowledge of the characters or events would be limited to just recent comics if they're going off wiki summaries and scans anyway. And second, most fans AREN'T limited in their knowledge to just recent comics.

Like, the second people start writing Roy and Jason and Kori but with their pre-52 characterizations and references to events from THAT timeline, it all gets very messy, the way they're like, completely antagonistic towards Dick a lot of the time. Because Roy and Dick were always solid. Yes, they fought. A lot. But they always, ALWAYS made up afterwards. They had conflict about Roy's drug addiction - it didn't stop Dick from being there to support him through rehab, or Dick being the first person Roy called to help him get Lian after he learned of her existence. Dick literally held Lian before Roy ever did? He's the one who first put her in Roy's arms for the first time.

(Which is the prime grudge I and most Dick Grayson fans have about Roy and Jason fics which make Jason like, the absolute apple of Lian's eye. If you want to expand Lian's circle of loved and trusted ones to include Jason as Roy's friend and thus her uncle, like go for it! But there's zero reason that should require invalidating and erasing the fact that Dick was this little girl's adored godfather and uncle for pretty much her entire life. And the way Dick is just shoved offstage from Lian's life entirely, to slot Jason into his place as though they're completely interchangeable, its like....THAT'S the kind of thing that gets people irey about how Jason 'steals' Dick's dynamics and character relationships.

Because there's nothing saying they both can't be major players in Roy and Lian's lives! But just that they're not interchangeable! You need to develop the specific role Jason plays there WITHOUT just overwriting everything Dick actually did in relation to the two of them pre-Flashpoint, which is what you're drawing from the second you write Lian, unless you're specifically going with the few appearances we've had of her within literally just the last year.

But I mean, when people just search and replace Dick Grayson in all Roy and Lian's pre-Reboot stories and act like Jason was the one doing all of that instead.....why wouldn't fans of the source material be annoyed by a character getting credit for interactions and things done for Lian and Roy that Jason literally NEVER DID, while at the EXACT SAME TIME, conjuring some mysterious, unnamed 'Falling Out' that Roy and Dick had, that was clearly all Dick's fault, and resulted from him being basically excised entirely from Roy and Lian's lives?

Same with Kori, for the record, and like despite being Dick's ex, she and Dick have NEVER been like, estranged? She and Dick have often been close even after their breakup. None of it makes any sense, and the fact that a lot of fans don't even try to make it make sense or justify it, and expect other fans to just be fine with settling for an inexplicable reversal of Dick's every actual dynamic with these characters while setting up Jason to occupy the exact same role Dick played in these other characters' lives, like.....lol. Its fun.)

Anyway, back to your question, like, there are fights you can go with pre-Reboot as the source of various conflicts between Dick and Roy - but again, I maintain its just as crucial that they're always written as getting past them. They have a very tempestuous relationship because they are the two people MOST likely to call each other on their shit, two of the two people WITH the most shit in common due to the parallels in their childhoods and the roles they've occupied in the Titans and the superhero community in general, and the two people most resistant to being called out on their shit by each other, lol. Mostly in that case because like, they do recognize that they have a lot in common and understand each other very well, so the second the other is calling them out for something, they're usually like "ugh, if HE'S saying this, its probably true and I am just not prepared yet to be wrong about this. I need more time being unjustifiably rawr about things." Its like that thing where they both look at each other doing something that feels familiar or calls back to their own reasons for doing something and they're like ugh I'm in this picture and I don't like it.

So they clash. A lot. But always with the implicit bedrock of like, there's nothing either of them can do or say to the other that will push the other away for good.

They fought over Roy replacing Dick as leader of the Titans when Dick's wedding fell apart, even though Roy actually didn't want to do it and was kinda pushed into it by the government, but again, Dick like, got over it and realized it was for the best and forgave Roy for it that very same issue. And on and on. It always went like that. So there's plenty of stuff that can be used or pointed at as a source of conflict between the two, but the part I'll always call unbelievable is the idea that they never make up after one of these fights. Why now? What fight, specifically, is so bad between them that despite everything else they've gone through AND gotten past, they can't get past this one? Y'know?

So yeah, that's my take on this. There is no definitive falling out between Dick and Roy as many fics like to point to in order to shove him offscreen and make room for Jason in Roy and Lian's lives, and personally, I just don't find it necessary and I actually think it makes Roy look REALLY bad. Because when you're not specifically detailing all the things that Dick has actually DONE for Roy, the lengths to which he's been there for his friend, and like, specifically invalidating each and every one of them as something that never happened in a particular fic, then literally anyone who reads that fic and has their own awareness of Dick and Roy's friendship is kiiiiiinda likely to be reading that and thinking wow what an ungrateful asshole, when Roy's just written as bitching about Dick with Jason and sandbagging him without any real explanation as to WHY, beyond just 'oh they had a fight years ago.'

(And coming up with some random awful thing that Dick did to justify Roy hating him now isn't like, a superior alternative, lmao, because again, its still just trashing one character for the sake of getting him out of the way of two other characters' friendship and people are going to think what they think about that).

Anyway, my now standard stock disclaimer that like, there doesn't actually need to be a canon fight obviously, for people to just write things this way and handwave that Dick and Roy had an epic falling out years ago and now they just hate one another or whatever, or just Roy hates him or vice versa. Obviously people are free to do what they want. They don't need a reason other than "I want to write it this way so Jason and Roy are friends and Jason doesn't have to 'share' him with Dick or have his friendship be overshadowed by their greater history together." That just happens to be a reason that no Dick Grayson fan is ever really going to be happy about, lol, for what should be perfectly obvious reasons, so it honestly shouldn't be surprising to people that fans of the source material often gripe about it.

Because yeah fanfic is a tremendous opportunity to transform the source material into something better, but if what's better for some fans actively takes away what was working perfectly well for other fans the original way, they're going to say that. Especially in a fandom where so many new fans take their view of the characters and their dynamics from fics rather than the source material - when fandom has that much of an influence on what new fans perceive to be 'canon,' fans are perfectly within their right to emphasize what is ACTUALLY canon and what isn't, so that new fans at least have the opportunity to determine for themselves what take they want to go with, instead of just accepting at face value that the nature of say, Dick and Roy's relationship is just that Roy hates Dick because of some mumble mumble ancient history vague mumble details not found mumble mumble fight.

[woogyu]

A World Tinted Gold | Mingyu; Chapter Two

Kalon; beauty that is more than skin-deep

streamer!y/n x werewolf!mingyu

notes; werewolf au

word count; 1749

previous | next | masterlist

summary; The only werewolves you encountered were the ones living inside your video games. They were nothing more to you than mythical creatures you often had to kill in order to complete objectives. You had a good thing going with your online gaming setup. Your supporters were kind and usually tipped well during streams. Sure it meant you had to deal with the occasional creep sliding into your DMs, but it was worth it. Playing games online was putting you through college. Little did you know your quiet life was about to be turned upside down at the hands of someone you didn’t think existed outside of the virtual world.

»»————-　♡　————-««

“Are you seriously watching that steamer again? Why don’t you just play the games yourself?” Seungcheol questioned as he stepped into Mingyu’s room, chuckling as the younger wolf quickly turned around and blushed.

“It’s not the same… I’m not really interested in the games, I’m interested in her” Mingyu admitted sheepishly, reaching up to scratch the back of his neck. He didn’t know what it was about you that made him so transfixed, but he had a hard time tearing his eyes from the screen. Hell, just the other day when you read his comment aloud, he was over the moon.

“It’s rare for you to show interest in a girl at all” Seungcheol remarked, eyebrow pulled up in question. Until a wolf found its mate there was little reason to get involved with or show interest in others romantically. There were of course some wolves that preferred being unmated; it allowed them to be explorative with their romantic partners. Not all wolves longed to find their mate, and not all wolves would end up finding their mates. He knew destiny had a hand to play in it all, but the thought of never finding who he was supposed to be with made the wolf in him whine. Mingyu wasn’t an unmated wolf that enjoyed exploring his options, he was desperately waiting for the day he met his mate. Right now, Mingyu wasn’t sure if he was simply lonely or if there was something more going on.

“There is just something about her…” Mingyu started, pausing for a second to find the right words, “I just have a hard time tearing my eyes away from the screen. There is something about her that just draws me in” Mingyu explained. He wasn’t doing a very good job at explaining the feelings that bubbled up inside him when he saw you on screen. When he tried to explain it he could never quite describe the feeling that settled over his chest and body, it was a warmth almost like a subtle glow within him.

Seungcheol didn’t comment on it any further as he moved into the room and crossed his arms over his chest. Mingyu knew better than to ignore the alpha, closing his laptop he turned to face Seungcheol fully. Their pack had a different dynamic than most. Normally a thirteen-member pack would be impossible because of the strain it put on the head alpha. It worked for them because while Seungcheol was their main alpha, they had two secondary alphas, Jihoon and Soonyoung. The three of them shared the work of looking after the group and it worked perfectly for them. He liked that the alphas didn’t abuse their power, there was a lot of lenience in the pack and it made for less confrontations.

“Joshua has to head into town tonight and won’t be able to run the perimeter. Would you be alright with doing it?” Seungcheol asked, pursing his lips as he looked down at the younger wolf. Mingyu normally enjoyed running the perimeter, it meant he got to shift and stretch his body, but this time he was a little bit more hesitant with his answer. Mingyu knew that later on tonight you would have a new video posted and he would have to wait even longer to watch it. It seemed like a silly reason, but his heart ached at the thought of not being able to ‘see’ you on screen until early tomorrow morning.

“Sure! I don’t mind” Mingyu answered with a half-smile, Seungcheol never asked him for much so he figured he could help him out with this. Seungcheol breathed a sigh of relief as he leaned back against the wall.

“Thank you, I didn’t really want to be the one stuck doing it again” Seungcheol admitted, the alpha had been on perimeter duty for the past 3 nights and must have been eager for a good night’s sleep. Mingyu smiled and nodded his head a few times, his own wants would just have to be paused for a little while.

Before leaving the room Seungcheol patted him on the shoulder, yawning a little bit as he headed toward what Mingyu assumed was his own room. Mingyu was thankful that Seungcheol’s parents had left him their families pack house. Coming from a family of alpha’s certainly had its perks, and it meant they all got their own rooms.

Once Seungcheol was gone he checked the time, he had roughly 4 hours before he would have to head out.

»»————-　♡　————-««

“I just don’t understand what this trend is supposed to be” you complained to Ciri for probably the 20th time over your video call. Apparently, there was a trend going around among streamers to recreate video games in real life. You hadn’t thought much of it when it first gained popularity, but now Ciri thought it would be a good idea for the two of you to join in on it. Her big plan was a two-part video where the two of you recreated iconic aspects of the Witcher 3 video game. You should have known she would want to do it, she already owned a Cirilla cosplay.

“It’s going to be fun” Ciri reminded you, drawing out the last syllable as she drew a fake scar along her face, effectively transforming herself into the iconic video game character.

“Come on, I even sent you the Yennefer cosplay and everything!” she exclaimed, using her make up brush to point at the camera accusingly. You rolled your eyes as you reached up to adjust the dark black wig that you now wore. To her credit, Ciri had sent you everything you would need to transform yourself into Yennefer of Vengerberg. How she somehow guessed your sizing right you would have no idea. Probably the Witcher powers.

“I wish we lived in the same city” you sighed, leaning your head back and looking up at the ceiling. Things would be so much easier if you and Ciri, and the other girls, didn’t live so far away from one another. But that was the price you paid for finding your friends online.

“Me too” Ciri said with a gentle sigh, setting her make up tools down and picking up her phone, her face coming into full view.

“I sent you the script, I won’t be able to stay on the call with you while we are filming because data rates are crazy, but I know you’ll do amazing” Ciri said with a reassuring smile. You would have to film all of this on your own, which was just a little bit intimidating. Ciri’s script mostly just directed you to do a lot of handwaving and she would add in the ‘magic’ elements later.

“Just find a good spot in the woods and it’ll be perfect” Ciri finished with a nod of her head. You sighed, straightening yourself up and looking down at your phone.

“I’ll call you later on when I’m finished to send you the video” you mumbled, pouting a little bit as you stood and picked up your phone.

“Good luck!” Ciri told you, waving a little bit before ending the call. Great, now you actually had to go do it…

»»————-　♡　————-««

You were lucky there was quite a bit of woods around where you lived, the problem was going to be trying to get to the woods without anyone seeing the ridiculous clothes you were wearing. You threw on a huge coat, effectively covering up most of the costume. After grabbing the bag with your equipment, you ventured outside, keeping your head down as you walked to avoid drawing attention.

Twenty minutes later you were standing in the middle of a beautiful calm forest. Now that you were here you questioned why you didn’t come out here more often. You couldn’t hear the loud noises that came with living in a bustling city and the air felt fresh on your face. Once you reached a small clearing by a river you laid your things down and took a deep breath, basking in the coolness of the air. Maybe this trend wouldn’t be so bad.

After setting up your camera in a place you were at least half sure wouldn’t result in it falling over, you walked into frame and took a deep breath. You briefly checked your phone to see what Ciri’s notes asked of you, before you began doing your best to follow directions. Your portion of the video wouldn’t be long, but you did re-film it 4 times to try and get your motions to be less stiff.

After forty-five minutes of waving your arms around, you walked back to your camera, picking it up before taking a seat on a nearby log. Reviewing the footage, you winced at how awkward it looked, you seriously hoped that Ciri could work some magic on this because you didn’t have it in you to film it again.

The forest around you was darkening as the day began to draw to a close, but you couldn’t bring yourself to head back right away. The forest was too peaceful and serene. Reaching up you pulled your wig off, stuffing it in your bag as you sighed with relief. You closed your eyes and took a deep breath, focusing in on the sounds of nature around you. Maybe coming to the woods would become a weekly thing for you, like therapy.

A low deep growl broke you out of your trance, your eyes flying open and flickering around to find the source. Your heart hammered against your chest, and your whole body stiffened in fear. A few moments later a dark black wolf emerged from the trees, larger than any wolf you had seen on tv. You could vaguely see blood dripping from its muzzle, and its dark red eyes were focused right on you.

It paused at the edge of the clearing, its lips pulling back to reveal sharp blood-stained teeth. Your breath came quick as you leaned back, unsure if you should run or try and hide behind the log. Both seemed unhelpful in this current situation, but you were really low on options.

The wolf’s body tensed before springing toward you. Your hands instinctively grabbed whatever was nearest to you, which happened to be your very expensive camera, and threw it toward the wolf. This did nothing to deter the predator from its prey, and within seconds the beast was on you.

[hillbillyoracle]

Shadow Work Skills to Develop

Shadow work can feel very…vague to talk about. There’s a bad habit of just kind of handwaving things and hoping people figure it out on their own. Part of that is that it’s so intensely personal. It’s so hard to come up with things that will work for everyone. The other part is that I want people to experiment and add to what we know about shadow work so I don’t want to be too prescriptive in how I teach others to do it.

So, for this post I wanted to dig into some of the most basic skills I use in shadow work in the hopes it’ll help people no matter which methods or paths they take.

Describing Events Neutrally

I put this one first because I think it’s the most important and the more difficult. Our emotions cloud how describe events to ourselves and others. For us to look critically at actions or words, we really need to be able to describe them without intent or emotion. Now, I’m not saying to leave that out entirely, I’ll get to that next. But you have to be able to get a clear view of what was done. This is so important when working with anything that might be triggering. We are too used to describing events with the goal of justifying thoughts, feelings, and actions and in shadow work it helps to break that instinct where you can.

When you can describe events neutrally to start with, it’s easier to see whether the feelings where in line or out of line with what happened. Were you way over reactive? Maybe under reactive? It’s easier to judge that when you have a neutral account to work with.

To practice, try listing out some events as they happen neutrally. An example might be after a tense interaction with someone, listing out what was said and done. If you can, get someone who was there to look at it and someone who wasn’t there to look at it and see what they say as far as how factual and neutral the account is.

Naming Feelings

Many many people cannot tell you what they’re feeling. There’s a myriad of reasons for this but no matter where it comes from it hurts shadow work. Your mood is like an internal weather system, you need to be able to do shadow work that’s appropriate for the weather. How you dig into things if gonna be different if your reaction to feeling trapped is to give up and binge movies or to lash out in anger. Gotta know what you’re working with.

It’s absolutely vital that you practice naming your emotions in day to day life. I did a week where I had an alarm go off five times a day and I wrote down what I was feeling in a note on my phone. A lot of my entries were “I’m not sure”. The practice showed me how often I have no connection to my feelings at all and prompted me to get to know them better.

Try using a feelings wheel or a feelings chart at least once a day to get used to checking in with yourself and putting a name on it.

Defining What You Want

We live in a society that has a very complicated relationship with wants. People often say we live in a consumerist society but we don’t often talk about what that’s done to us psychologically, to be so consumptive. There’s a lot of morality around them too that we internalize. We identify strongly with what we want. We define ourselves through our ambitions and our goals. But it means what we really want gets lost in the pursuit of shaping our desires to be acceptable or admirable. We ignore our desires that don’t fit with our narratives which is such a block to shadow work. How can you work on what you won’t let yourself be conscious of?

You have to understand that you and your desires are not one in the same. Just because you really want to enact violence on someone for what they’ve done doesn’t make you a bad person or a mean person or what have you. It’s a natural human desire. That doesn’t mean that’s it’s justified just that you are not bad for having those thought or desires. This extends to other things people don’t like admitting they want – finding other people more appealing than their partner, wanting someone who’s wronged them to suffer, wanting more for yourself even if it means someone else goes without – they’re all desires we have from time to time.

Practice writing what you want out on paper. Remind yourself you don’t have to act on it and that it’s better to be aware of it so doesn’t sneak into the driver’s seat. It’s important to break the idea that we’re owed what we want or that we have to act on what we want. Desires, much like feelings, come and go. But they’re important to be aware of while they’re here.

Taking Responsibility

I still am unsure of how to describe how to do this. It’s really distress tolerance at it’s core; learning to be okay with not being okay. Because where I see people going wrong with responsibility in shadow work is that they either explain everything away with context or they go it’s all my fault and it’s so terrible I can’t do anything about it.

Part of taking responsibility is being able to answer the question “What do I owe in this situation?” If your answer is always nothing, you’re wrong. We are social creatures, we’re only here because we evolved the intelligence to work closely and creatively with other members of our species. We do owe each other things in any interaction. It’s important to practice thinking about what those things are. Equally important is thinking through what you don’t owe as well.

Practice sitting with your mistakes when they happen and trying to think what’s owed in this situation. Shadow work depends on our ability to take responsibility for the roles we play in what keeps us stuck.

Pattern Recognition

I don’t know that I have much explicit advice for this category other than it’s incredibly helpful. Seeing your patterns is really key to zeroing in on automatic behaviors or thoughts. Pattern recognition is kind of like playing Minesweeper. It gets you a little closer to what you’re trying to uncover without having to step right in it and maintain yourself to be reflective.

Journaling can be really great for this. If you see yourself writing about the same actions or feelings or thoughts again and again and again. Going back through old conversations where you’re venting might give you some clues.

Whenever you find yourself frustrated you keep doing something, take note. When are you doing these things? What does it offer you? What does it protect you from?

We don’t do things repeatedly if they don’t serve us in some way which can be hard for us to admit.

Compassionate Problem Solving

So you’ve dug up these unpleasant truths about yourself, what’s a shadow worker to do? The only way forward is compassionate problem solving. Which is best summed of for me as working with yourself, not against yourself. I’m reminded of permaculture – the problem is the solution.

An example of this in my own life was ADHD. Once I finally realized what I was dealing with was ADHD, I spent several months ignoring it completely and being shocked when I couldn’t will myself to be “normal”. I felt a lot of shame. It was only when I started accepting where I was at and then going okay what can I do that things started to shift. “Okay, if I know I’m gonna forget my keys what can I do?” I put spare house keys and car keys in my car so when I inevitably forgot them somewhere I could call AAA and I’d be able to drive home. “Okay if I’m gonna forget my papers what can I do?” I made digital backup galore so I could access them and print them off at the last minute on campus. My life got so much better with the approach.

Wherever you’re at there are things you can do to make it better going forward and it’s important to get creative and stay reasonable. Getting triggered frequently? Make sure you have a cool down list of some kind on your phone. Too scared to grab groceries by yourself? Grab a buddy or order them and pick them up. Spending too much time in bed because you’re depressed as shit? Set a 5 minute timer and do one thing to make your life better. Literally all of these are personal examples.

There’s always something you can do. Small wins are still wins. Count them. There’s no need to be cruel to yourself while doing shadow work. Practice coming up with at least three different ways to respond to issues that you face. Even if you know a solution isn’t the one you’re gonna take, get used to putting out more than one “right” answer. In shadow work, there’s always more than one path.

Conclusion

I hope this is helpful. A bit rambling, but I think I could have used a post like this when I was starting out. Shadow work gets very individualized, very quickly, but I’ve yet to talk to anyone who wasn’t using at least a few of these in their personal shadow work journey. Hope these skills and how to practice them help!

If you liked this post, consider tipping me here.

[gammija]

The Hollow review/summary/rant/explanation of why i hate the ending I wasn’t sure whether I should post this, but I did enjoy reading others experiences watching this show, so here’s mine under the cut. Edited from a convo with a friend.

(Obviously, spoilers!)

Me: Okay so to properly express my disappointment i gotta take you through the major beats

The show starts with three teens waking up in an almost empty room, finding out they all have amnesia. They quickly solve a puzzle to escape the room, and just as quickly Adam and Mira realize they have superpowers (superstrength/agility and some weird 'speak to animals/know all languages' hybrid, respectively. also she can breathe underwater and swim really fast. its kind of vague)

Kai is already clearly a comic relief, discount Ron (from HP, the movies, no idea about the books) so me and sister correctly predict he'll get jealous of adam and miras relationship (even if there is none), gets pissy and jealous that he has no powers, but then finds out he has powers anyway he does, hes a fire bender. cant say im not bitter about that cause id put my money on invulnerability but eh its alright he has red hair after all hes still fun

Friend: Of course he is

I just feel bad is all aldjs

Me: adam gets a throwaway line of 'maybe were dead' and kai never lets it go

this food might be poisoned but im starving and hey were dead anyway! right, adam

Friend: I love him??

Me: i loved him as soon as he spoke his first dumb words also he puns but basically hes the only interesting char; adam and mira are just cookie cutter 'male lead 1' and 'female lead 1' i mean, he’s cookie cutter ‘jealous 3rd wheel’ but that has more going on than the first two still servicable though

anyway so the jokes are sometimes fun, and superpowers are always my jam. but the REAL reason to keep watching is just, whats going on? ARE they dead? or in some kind of weird gvnmt experiment? some weird magical vampire guide (dont ask) hints they wanted this themselves ooh, intrigue. and the world is very very quirky they start in a gravity falls-y woods and then get teleported to a desert with minotaurs and witches, then get invited for tea by the Grim Reaper and the rest of the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse

tbh Grim is the best part of the show but thats neither here nor there

anyway they have a magic map that updates once theyve been somewhere, and it shows them that the hot dry desert and the swampy wood bunker are like right next to each other

so you start thinking, how are they gonna explain that? this is too weird to be handwaved away. theyve gotta be going somewhere

they visit some other exotic locals, like what appears to be the set of Alien (complete with alien) and an abandoned old fair and a floating island with japanese inspired evildoers on it

the weird magic guide keeps showing up and being vague, dropping hints that there are other kids there etc

at some point Mira says "This is no time for games!" Weirdy: "Thats where youd be wrong~" me and sister: Aha! videogame! that connects all the dots, and also makes the tropes clear: small world with all kinds of different areas, quests, fights, superpowers, an updating map, fast travel Adam, a few eps later: guis i think we might be in a videogame me and sister: [high five]

Anyway in the meantime also the second predictable Kai (discount Ron) plot happens: they meet three other kids (boy boy girl) and they act shady but the girl takes an immediate and obvious interest in Kai so obviously theyre gonna manipulate him and have him betray his friends but in the end he'll see through their facade and kick their ass that more or less happens. The other teens also confirm that this is a game, and theyre trying to win. winning is done by bringing the MacGuffin to a tree fights over macguffin ensue situations are dire but our characters persevere

(also Mira kisses Adam and he acts very weird about it, almost as if hes gay and the only reason they didnt make it canon is censors) (no lingering gaze, just him going 'hehe yeah no thanks, its not you, its me', but in a very... he doesnt seem to be saying it with shall we say burning desire in his soul. hes literally just like 'eh youre a good friend.' Cool move, cartoon that made the two main boys have arguments over nothing cause of course the two main guys have constant dick measuring matches)

this all is not the offensive part btw it was all fun and games, its just a flash cartoon i wasnt expecting Shakespeare

anyway so theyre in a videogame, and apparently thats the answer to all the weirdness. A bit of a cop-out, cause thats a very easy answer, but eh, it works. it wasnt immediately obvious.

also something i hadnt mentioned yet: thisd be ideal for making (self-insert) OCs. Unique powers for each person, there are clearly more characters than shown, the world is your playground

and maybe the video game thing could be interesting on its own in the last few eps the game seems to be glitching out a lot they say its breaking apart so they really gotta hurry now maybe they were beta testers for a vr game gone wrong maybe this is part of it but its like a huge experience that you tell all your friends about anyway there are ways it could be cool, could be expanded to a season 2 despite having solved the mystery

but. last episode. our heroes get the MacGuffin, go to a final stage, and fight the Boss Battle (its a dragon). they enter the Castle....

...and the screen zooms out, into a sudden live action stage, where we see the cartoon (literally what you were just watching) on screen. there are 6 chairs, 3 with our heroes, 3 with the other teens, presumably. theres a host and hes dressed exactly like the weird guy (and that was already kind of a clashy outfit in the cartoon). it was all just a game show. but. the worst part is the live action

you. dont. go. from. animated. to. live. action.

other way around? fine, can work. But now? WHY itd still be dumb and dissapointing but if itd been animated too itd at least have been.... nice to look at but the acting.. oh god they didnt even say anything and it was all wrong clearly theyd just picked the first random teens that vaguely looked like the chars and put them in there cause they had no lines so who needs acting?!

the enemy teams girl had, in the cartoon, pink hair. Purple with pink highlights instead of stylizing that into something more realistic or painting the actual hair, they gave some 30-year old woman a wig and called it a day

keep in mind i binged this show in one go

purposely stayed up late to watch the last ep with my sis even tho we shouldve gone to bed and were disobeying our dad cause we Had to Know

and theres more i said they had no lines but i was lying. Kai did have a line. well, his voice actor did they dubbed him also the line was about him having to pee which is already not the most hilarious in animated version but a live action kid whose supposed to be this character you spent 3 hours with but looks nothing like him saying that in a voice that doesnt belong to his throat, as he stands bashfully in front of a live audience, the only words spoken by your main characters in the last moments...

*its actual hell*

oh oh one more thing at the end the six kids stand in a line and kai is next to other girl they glance at each other and as the eyes of this teen and 30 year old in wig cross, her eye glitches for a moment

dun dun duuun

bUT i dont care anymore, The Hollow. You overestimated your own premise. this wont be forgiven. your most interesting part was the mystery, and the answer  to that was "just a normal game show" (which also doesnt make sense on another level smh) soo if you think that im interested in what these two-dimensional (ha) characters will do now about the glitch in the eye of a bitch then i have news for u

i dont

...if they get a second season ill probably check it out though as long as its animated

Friend: Gammi I'm getting the real sinking suspicious feeling that what you saw isn't the real end but bad on purpose because there's more to it

Me: the show didnt seem good enough to be bad on purpose

and yet im still not done, if youll still hear me out

i mean, im an animation fan so ill still watch but if theyd wanted to be bad on purpose they really shouldve done a better job fleshing out the characters thats what people come back for that was a bit of a sidetrack BUT so i said why the live action itself was just terrible in overal quality

but the resolution that 'oh it was all in a game show' doesnt work on multiple levels

first of all, they show a short flashback of "About 5 hours earlier". The kids stand on the stage and are instructed to take their seats in the vr-chairs, and pick their superpower

2 things i dislike about that

1) there goes all the self-insert/oc potential. they werent teens in over their heads, they werent gvnmt experiments, or just some kids who wanted to play a game -they were in it to win it, from the start. thats very specific and not the most appealing to all kinds of characters (goodbye, all the 'im just an average girl whod never step into the spotlight like that' characters).

Also, all the expansion on lore is gone. maybe there were other games simultaneously? eh, maybe, but theyd be all gameshows. Maybe someone ended uo trapped there for way longer? nah its just a gameshow theyre not gonna let anything actually bad happen. Maybe there are other worlds, other areas, other weird creatures? unlikely, they finished the map and familiarity seemed to be a thing for the audience. Now every new idea has to be put not through a 'whats interesting for a player' but a 'whats interesting for a viewer' lens, and whats a selfinsert if not a player in another universe

2) HOW IS THIS A SUCCESSFUL GAME SHOW

who the hell watches a game show for 5 consecutive hours, some of which mustve been just them walking. also, we zoom out of the screen were watching, so implication is that everything up until then has been what the audience has seen. but... we only followed the one team. there were two? why didnt the audience want to see what they were up to? ~reality tv usually thrives on showinf the worst assholes so realistically they wouldve been the focus~

There are also way too many times *both* teams couldve failed, from early on till late in the game. Not a single game i can think of thats played for an audience is set up like that, and especially not a televised one (okay tbf idk if this was televised, i dont remember if i saw cameras, but. it mustve. monetary reasons.)

What r u gonna do if they all 'died' from the monsters in the first ep? Call it a day? boring for the audience. let them restart from scratch? boring for the audience. the existence of an audience messes with everything

AND THEN ANOTHER THING what do you mean, "5 hours ago?" you never get a time stamp to show how long theyve been in there but there are some cuts, when they travel and such. The actual show is a lil over 3 hours runtime. You mean to tell me you sat through 2 hours of the characters just walking?

okay last thing. so. they were clearly second season teasing with the glitching eye thing. i already said this but. theres nowhere to go from here that isnt worse that the first season. your mystery is dead. you clearly know your live action teens cant act so youd have to go back into the game - but why would they do that? how would that be in any way interesting? you explored all there was to explore.

The other, more out there option, is that as you said the 'real world' was a fake-out and theyre still in a game. but. how would- how would you even make that remotely convincing? if youd just left the 'real world' gameshow as animated too this wouldnt have been a problem. but there is absolutely no conceivable reason to justify, in universe, why another meta-level up is 2D animation again unless they were in a game, in a game, in a game. and thats just dumb. yall aint inception

Friend: HONESTLY if they just kept the whole deal animated it'd probably be okay. Not good, but better,

Me: ye me and my sister came to the same conclusion

i couldve lived with that. at least, i couldve just acknowledged the finales existence but chose to ignore it. now however im full phantom planet levels of denial. in fact i dont even know how the show ended anymore, suddenly

Friend: what finale? what show?

Me: also at least now we know why its called The Hollow

it leaves you feeling empty inside

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

My thoughts on Infinity War and Spider-Man’s role within it.

Yeah obviously SPOILERS

tl:dr version: It’s great but there are some problems, mostly in regards to it as an adaptation but there are some problems even taken on it’s own. Spider-Man’s better than he was in Homecoming but there are still fundamentally broken aspects to his character

Longer version:

Brolin and Saldana’s performances were utterly stellar. Like everyone did a great job but they were on another level. The Thanos/Gamora relationship was just perfect, closely followed by Wanda and Vision’s romance (WHY won’t Marvel just let them be together again in the comics!).

 The action was also just great with my personal favourite being Captain America and his team’s first appearance.

 I don’t think the action scenes were up there with the best stuff from Avengers Assemble or Civil War, but there was nothing wrong with it...well....except maybe one thing but I’ll get there in a minute.

 The Russo’s also, much like in Civil War and as Whedon did with both prior Avengers films, performed a master class in balancing out a truly MASSIVE amount of characters.

 Yes some characters got a lot more play and focus than others (Iron Man edged out Captain America, small wonder since this movie was kind of celebrating the 10th anniversary of his movie) but the amount of play each character got felt appropriate to the story being told. Like T’Challa wasn’t as focussed upon and didn’t really have a big moment in comparison to Iron Man but then again Iron Man was the guy who literally had PTSD due to the Battle of New York and that was Thanos’ fault. Also it’s appropriate given how Thanos was originally an Iron Man villain.

 There was also plenty of laugh out loud moments, especially when it came to the Guardians. In fact credit to the Russo’s they did a wonderful job of keeping the Guardians consistent with Gunn’s portrayals of them.

 Now...that cannot be said of every character. Tony Stark I felt was consistent with their take on him from Civil War but along with that movie’s rendition of him leant more towards the serious side of things than Whedon’s portrayals of him or his characterization in his solo trilogy.

But I also do not regard that as a bad thing. One of my frustrations with the MCU, especially in Phase 3 has been that they don’t take things seriously enough and undermine the characters and drama with too much humour at times.

 This is the root of my profoundly mixed feelings on Thor: Ragnarok. It IS hilarious. It’s funny and fun. But also extremely inconsistent with the other Thor films and to be blunt a downright insulting portrayal of the rich almost Lord of the Rings level high fantasy world of the Asgardians. Thor is far from devoid of humour of course but primarily he’s a high fantasy noble warrior and that’s tonally played straight. So when you have him bumbling around or facing off against Jeff Goldblum playing a character practically designed to be an internet meme it’s really going against the spirit of the character.

 As far as I am concerned MCU Thor, whilst likable enough in his own right, has yet to really nail the character. However Infinity War at least course corrected this somewhat following Ragnarok. Infinity War’s Thor is still comedic but he is also somewhat tortured and a real bad ass at various moments. However the price of this was essentially entirely undermining Ragnarok’s ending. It reads as though the Russo’s were blowing a raspberry at Waititi, much as Rian Johnson’s Last Jedi did to Abrams’ Force Awakens movie. I’m less upset about it though because all the Asgardians I gave a damn about were casually killed off in Ragnarok anyway and that movie screwed over Thor’s mythos anyway.

 I’m hoping this clean slate approach could maybe lead to a second attempt at getting Thor right but I dunno if that’s likely.

 Another character who was treated with more respect and was just over all more on point than in their solo movie was Doctor Strange.

 THIS was the Doctor Strange we were promised in his 2016 movie. The MASTER of the Mystic Arts and the dude in CHARGE of the magical stuff on Earth. Along with his absolute lack of slapstick bullshit this more competent portrayal of Doctor Strange was an infinitely better reflection of the classic Ditko character than his own movie.

 Finally as I touched on above Thanos himself needs to be lauded. He is easily one of the three best MCu villains ever. Loki, Killmonger and him compete for the top spot. His motivation is interesting unto itself and in a perverse way even sympathetic. His character has actual layers (not to the level of other great comic book villains admittedly but they exist) and in a very real sense this is HIS movie moreso than anyone else.

 Okay that’s all the good stuff that comes to mind...what about the stuff I didn’t like.

 Well whilst the humour was more finely balanced with everything else in this movie in comparison to say Ragnarok (which was a comedic action movie, not an action movie with comedic moments in it) or the slapstick bullshit that was Homecoming and Doctor Strange, there was still a little too much in there at least for me.

 I laughed for sure but it still felt a bit too ‘this is a Marvel movie so we need to have humour moments because that’s part of our brand don’t ya know!’. In particular Wong and Doctor Strange mentioning talking about ice cream in the middle of the discussion about Thanos’ impending invasion of Earth was way too far. Even if it wasn’t specifically Doctor Strange in that scene it was just stupid that we needed to cram a joke like that in a scene that realistically shouldn’t be there.

 Another of the admittedly few problems with the movie was that the Infinity Stones’ abilities were rather vaguely defined. Like...what exactly DOES the power stone do? What are the limits of the Time Stone? Because in Doctor Strange it seemed to be able to turn back all of time but in this movie Wanda kills Vision by destroying his Infinity Stone and then Thanos beats her up. He proceeds to reverse time so HE can get Vision’s stone but Wanda remains beaten. So...can he localize the effects of the Time Stone...apparently.

 This becomes kind of a plot hole considering a major point of the movie was his need to kill Gamora in order to attain the Soul Stone. But if he can reverse Time...why couldn’t he just go back in time and save her?

 Things get even more screwy because the Reality Stone enables him to apparently WARP reality. At first it seems like he can just cast convincing illusions. But no...he literally turns Drax into stone and makes Star-Lord’s gun shoot bubbles.

 He can warp reality.

 But if he can do that...why does he need the other Stones at all? Why is Gamora’s death a big deal because he could just warp reality in order to bring her back couldn’t he? Hell why did he struggle at all in ANY of his battles with the Avengers/Guardians?

 I’m not saying there is no way to explain this stuff (e.g. that he needs a certain degree of concentration to maintain his alterations to reality) but the movie needs to GIVE them to us.

 My final bone of contention would be the changes to Thanos’ character. I’m no Thanos expert but even I know the character’s drive is his romantic feelings for Death. If you didn’t know in the Marvel Universe Death is literally a sentient Cosmic entity that can adopt various forms, most commonly that of a woman.

That is how Thanos sees her and he is literally in love with her. He kills people to please her. THAT is the reason he is known as Thanos the MAD Titan.

In this movie though his motivation is to kill half of the universe’s population because the universe only has a finite amount of resources thus less people, the more people can live happily off those resources.

Like I said it’s an interesting and in a warped way sympathetic motivation.

He doesn’t hate anyone, he isn’t evil he has looked at the problem and come up with a coldly pragmatic solution...Kinda...

I guess you could just handwave this on him being so deranged as to honestly commit to murdering half of everyone alive but when you think about it his plan doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

I mean for starters killing half of everyone is a temporary solution at best. Once upon a time there were less people alive then there are today so those numbers will go BACK up given time?

Was his plan to just keep the numbers down whenever they get too big?

Secondly if his argument is that resources are finite so there needs to be less people in order to consume those resources well...that doesn’t really fix the problem. Because those finite resources are still going to be consumed, it will just take twice as long.

And what about places for whom those resources are already mostly depleted so the half who have survived can’t make that much use of them anyway?

How about those planets that are actually SO over populated that their resources are still not enough to support even half the population?

Then you have the fact that if Thanos can warp reality to the point where clicking his fingers kills half of everyone in the universe couldn’t he just snap his fingers and DOUBLE the resources for everyone?

Couldn’t he just create like more planets with more resources and more space for everyone?

See the ‘half of everyone alive are gone’ thing IS directly from the original Infinity Gauntlet storyline but in that story it didn’t raise these questions because the entire reason he killed half of everyone was because he was trying to impress Death.

I know, I know. The movie’s motivation is an easier concept to grasp and easier to sell to a mass audience than ‘Death literally looks like a woman to him and he wants to make sweet love with her’.

At the same time...it’s SUCH a bold and strong idea that it’s honestly far more original and striking than the motive this movie gave him.

More importantly though in removing that motive they kind of...eviscerated the foundation of Thanos.

Like if you are doing an adaptation of Thanos the ONE thing you need to do is have him be in love with Death.

That is literally the thing his whole character revolves around.

To not do that is to essentially just do an uber powerful purple alien who can take down whole hordes of super heroes and has the trappings of Thanos.

Like I said I like the move and I liked Thanos in it but at the same time it was a really bad portrayal of him.

Speaking of which...

Let’s talk Spider-Man

...Sigh...god dammit...

Look not much new to say.

Spider-Man in this movie much like his other MCU appearances is defined by his youth and his relationship to Stark.

The character can be summed up as ‘the young inexperienced kid hero who’s a pseudo son to Tony Stark’.

THAT is who MCU Peter Parker is.

That is also fundamentally NOTHING like who Peter Parker is!

How badly did they lean on this take on him though?

They leaned on this take on him so badly that Doctor Strange LITERALLY asked if he was Tony Stark’s ward. The film makers LITERALLY referenced how they’ve turned Spider-Man into a pseudo Robin to Iron Man’s Batman.

They also had Spidey cry and wimper at the prospect of dying.

This is something I’m conflicted over.

On the one hand if Spider-Man is the everyman, the hero who could be you, his ability to feel fear, especially over his own demise, should make such an portrayal of him permissible right?

Well...yes and no.

First of all the overwhelming majority of the time whenever Spider-Man truly believes himself to be facing what seems to be inevitable death he’s NOT acted that way. In ASM #40 he was at the mercy of the Goblin and even stated he wasn’t afraid to die. YES he was older than MCu Spider-Man but he was 19 vs 15. It’s not that big of a difference frankly.

But okay even if we ignore that we have Ultimate Peter Parker, whom MCU Spidey is clearly more based upon than the 616 version, definitely NOT acting that way during the Death of Spider-man story arc.

But honestly I think my problem with the scene (apart from him dying in Stark’s arms to further beat you over the head with the fact that he is Tony’s ‘son’) was kind of my problem with Superman murdering Zod in Man of Steel.

It’s not that you can’t have that happen but it’s when you are having it happen.

In Man of Steel it was an origin movie and the first movie to establish that version of Superman.

What this means is that we needed to see Clark become Superman but also have Superman be as definitively Superman and do the usual Superman stuff as much as possible. This is also why the Dawn of Justice version of Batman didn’t work. You can say it’s Batman at the end of his rope all you want but that doesn’t mean anything if we haven’t seen what Batman is NORMALLY like.

You need to establish the default setting for the characters, what their typical personalities are like and then you can push the envelope with stuff like that.

With Spider-Man because they’ve leant so hard on the ‘HE’S YOUNG’ thing and had him cry and whimper in Homecoming’s climax as well as this movie’s climax (which are 2 of his 3 appearances so far) it’s served to push that this is part of the ‘default’ setting for MCU Spider-Man.

MCU Spider-Man cries and whimpers as a child would. Which is not something that’s wrong  to do with Spider-Man’s character especially in context of these movies...but it IS wrong to do them at such significant moments so early in his existence to the point where it is essentially the default setting.

Spider-Man does not TYPICALLY act that way but MCU Spider-Man now DOES. It also undermines Homecoming’s climax as wasn’t that moment supposed to show Peter growing beyond that?

Hell as the trailer revealed he becomes an Avenger in this movie the very thing he REJECTED as part of his character arc at the end of Homecoming. WTF?

One some positive notes though he was not AS bad as he was in Homecoming, he had a clever plan at one point, was a FAR more competent fighter than in his own movie and the Iron Spider Suit’s inclusion surprisingly didn’t undermine the ending of Homecoming. I and everyone else suspected he would go against his decision at the end of Homecoming and accept the new suit Stark made for him in light of Thanos’ threat. But what actually happened was that Stark essentially forced him into the suit to save his life. And whilst that again undermines Spidey by making him Tony’s child, it at least avoids invalidating his rejection of the suit in Homecoming.

Over all I give the movie a solid A as a movie and like a solid B as an adaptation...except for the Spider-Man parts. Fuck those they get a D.

P.S. I feel my inner nerd needs to point out that this movie as an adaptation is actually a fusion (to varying degrees) of mostly FOUR different stories.

It takes the name from the Infinity War storyline but (much like Age of Ultron) the name is the only thing it really takes.

As most people know the movie is based upon the 1990s crossover event (back when those were less common and usually less atrociously awful) Infinity Gauntlet.

However since a significant chunk of the movie is spent upon Thanos’ acquisition of the infinity stones the movie is actually also a (very, very loose) adaptation of the Thanos Quest storyline which was the lead in story to Infinity Gauntlet.

It also took a not insignificant amount of inspiration from Jonathan Hickman’s Infinity storyline, which was Marvel’s annual event story for 2013.

At the time it’s likely that story was done to merely capitalize upon Thanos’ tease from the post-credits scene in Avengers Assemble the previous year.

Now though I’m wondering if it might have been used to generate prototype concepts for the Infinity War movie to play with.

Thanos invading Wakanda is straight out of Infinity as are (unless I am mistaken) ALL of Thanos’ henchmen. Proxima Midnight, Black Maw, Supergiant, Korvus Glaive, his foot soldiers. They’re all specifically from that story. Also fun fact I essentially had to skim that entire event for my first day and my new job in 2016.

Obviously there are other little aspects taken from other Marvel stories too, like the new Spider suit is inspired by the Iron Spider suit that originally had nothing to do with any given Thanos story.

[firecoloredwater]

Where would Tarma fit in in a HP/Valdemar crossover?

Oh wow I have no idea.  So uh… I’ll ramble through my logic until I have an idea, I guess?

(This got... longer than planned.  So, under the cut.)

I’m assuming this is a Valdemar characters in the Harry Potter setting crossover, which I’m honestly not that great for because I stopped reading Harry Potter after about the fifth book.  I do however know that everything JK Rowling said about magic outside of Europe is best ignored, and I should not be making up headcanons about Native American magic any more than JK Rowling should, so… I guess we’ll assume that Tarma is in England for whatever reason because that’s the best I can do.

If we’re paralleling her Valdemar backstory, I guess Tarma was the only survivor of a massacre by the Death Eaters?  She and her family (at minimum; extended family?  Tribe?  I really don’t know what would be the best equivalent of Shin’a’in clans, especially when including the ‘literally everyone was traveling together’ part in necessary, but certainly everyone Tarma knows well) were visiting Britain, Death Eaters found them, massacre happens.  I’m not sure how she survived exactly, but it probably was not because the Death Eaters wanted her to.

To fit into the Harry Potter verse, I’d say she’s 9 or 10 when this happens, and… I have no idea what magical Britain does with orphaned magical kids with no known family.  She… probably isn’t sent to a muggle orphanage?  If nothing else she can’t be, because then she’d probably be sent back to the US and also the wizards would have to explain why she’s in Britain to begin with to the muggles, so I guess I’m going to assume there’s a magical orphanage that she goes to.

(Probably she should go back to the US and… I don’t know any more specifically than that.  But there’s at least five different levels on which I don’t know what would happen and definitely should not try to guess.  So for whatever probably bad reason, she stays in Britain.)

And… well, the thing is, she doesn’t go to Hogwarts.  I’ve seen stuff about a Quill and a Book and I think the point of that post was actually about wands somehow but the relevant bit that I remember is: you have to have a certain amount of magical power to go to Hogwarts, but you also have to be born in Britain.  The decision about whether a kid goes to Hogwarts is made when that kid is born, and only kids in Britain are considered.  Tarma was not born in Britain, so while she may well have the power for it, she’s not going to Hogwarts.

The other thing is, Tarma in the Harry Potter verse doesn’t have quite as obvious a path and goal as she did in Valdemar verse.  If there’s an equivalent to Swordsworn (again: things I don’t have the knowledge to guess at), she’s physically separated from it.  (The same applies for whatever would be equivalent to reviving Clan Tale’sedrin, if there is one.)  Her target for revenge would be Voldemort and the Death Eaters, but before Tarma can grow up enough to do anything about them Harry Potter happens, Voldemort is presumed dead, some Death Eaters are sent to Azkaban and the rest vanish quietly back into society.  No target.

So Tarma has a whole lot of rage and nowhere to really direct it, is what I’m saying.

I think she eventually settles on being an auror, largely for lack of a better option.  And she doesn’t get a Hogwarts education, but, well, the impression I get of Tarma is that she has never precisely been the sort to let reality tell her no.  She takes whatever education witches who don’t go to Hogwarts get (another school?  Tutoring?  Doesn’t matter), learns everything she can, and is a bit… intense.  She has at least a few casual friends, I’m sure.  But her studies are the priority and honestly she probably freaks people out a bit, especially when it comes to dueling.

Tarma is absolutely the witch who will A: punch you in the face in a wizard’s duel if that’s the most efficient way to win, and B: always know if that’s the most efficient way to win.  The other kids are… not interested in dueling Tarma, as a general rule.

Does this wizarding orphanage have access to martial arts training?  I suspect not, which is a shame.  If it does, Tarma is definitely studying that too.

“Tarma and Hermione would get along great” is not what I planned to say, but it’s apparently what I am saying, so if or when they meet there’s that.

Anyway, Tarma grows up and graduates and… well, once again I’m limited to Tarma in magical Britain, so we’re going to handwave the whole citizenship thing.  Maybe magical Britain is much more willing to give citizenship to kids who grew up there, or maybe Tarma had multiple citizenships to begin with, or maybe wizards don’t even bother with legal citizenship and passports to begin with.  Handwave, handwave.

Point is: Tarma grows up and goes into the auror training program.  This is probably not easy if you did not attend Hogwarts, but that is not going to stop Tarma.  Moody loves her.  She’s probably not as cautious as he’d like, though.  If she did not have access to martial arts training growing up, she starts seeking it out now.

It’s also somewhere around this time that Harry Potter enters his first year at Hogwarts.

And, well, Tarma doesn’t really have a connection to Hogwarts.  She probably doesn’t hear about the Quirrel thing, unless it’s through vague third-hand rumors.  She probably does hear a bit about the Chamber of Secrets, but that’s still second hand rumors.

She pays attention when Sirius Black escapes Azkaban.  She probably tries to hunt him down, although of course she doesn’t succeed.

She’s furious about the Death Eaters at the quidditch world cup, but probably wasn’t present on account of she would’ve killed a Death Eater and that might’ve derailed some things.  She is one of the people who believes Harry Potter when he claims that Voldemort is back after the Triwizard Tournament, although it’s about 50% based on evidence and 50% because she really wants to kill some Death Eaters.

All that undirected rage is… uh.  Well.  She’s better at handling it now.  She’s not constantly angry or anything.  If a Death Eater chooses to put himself in front of Tarma’s wand and/or fist, though, there is not going to be a lot left, I think.  Letting vengeance stew for a decade or so and then giving it a righteous target that’s threatening children will do that.

I have a fuzzier idea of exactly what happened in the next few books, but: Voldemort becomes more active.  The Ministry tries to deny and/or hide this, while also becoming… well, we all know about Umbridge.  Tarma’s not happy with any of this.  She was always a dedicated-by-which-we-mean-obsessive worker anyway, Tarma tracking everything the aurors do and looking for patterns and things being hidden isn’t new.

I’m not sure at what point exactly she starts sabotaging the Ministry, but that’s a thing.  It’s not a thing that lasts long, because Tarma was never going to be on the Voldemort Ministry’s list of favorite people.  But there is some sabotage for a short time.

There is also a witch named Kethry who might be an Unspeakable, and also a rather explosive escape from the Ministry.  Explosions… probably count as sabotage.  Tarma and Kethry certainly disrupt some things on the way out.

And then there’s a war to fight, and then the war ends.  Tarma and Hermione meet at some point, after the war if not during.

And from there, who knows.  Tarma’s I think in her late 20s now; she probably goes back to being an auror.  She’s good at it, and aurors are needed, and even if protecting people wouldn’t have been her life dream in another life it’s important to her in this one.  She stays friends with Kethry.  Eventually she starts teaching auror trainees; one of these is eventually Kerowyn, although in this world Tarma probably helped raise Kerowyn and taught her self defense as a toddler.

(Kerowyn will also punch you in the face in a wizard’s duel.  To be honest by the time Kero gets there it probably counts as a family tradition.  There’s no way Tarma didn’t at least try to teach Kethry to punch.)

I’m not sure what happens exactly.  Maybe Tarma has her own family, since there’s no Swordsworn magical ace celibacy thing going on in this verse, but if so her family and Kethry’s family are basically the same extended family anyway, because you can’t pry my implied badass women with polyamorous relationships out of my cold dead hands.  Possibly Tarma goes back to the orphanage she grew up in and adopts kids.  Possibly both.  Possibly she takes over the orphanage.  Possibly she talks eventual Minister of Magic Hermione Granger into reexamining and improving the laws surrounding magical orphans (assuming of course that Harry didn’t do that first… or Hermione didn’t decide on her own to fix those laws on Harry’s behalf first, which is probably the most likely of the three).

And, well, I don’t know how it happens, but life goes on, and it’s not perfect but it’s still pretty good, whatever it turns out to be.

[shineyma]

1st, I am beyond excited and grateful that you took the time to write all this!! I asked for a rant, Amy, you delivered. 2nd, /I/ should apologize because my reply's probs gonna be long. (Half an ask already. Ugh, I'm hopeless, and you extremely polite.) I'd seen Fitz said Deke's the worst to be their grandson, but not that he persisted! GO, FITZ!! Didn't Iain use to say back in S1 that he didn't want FS to happen? I loved him for it, esp when Liz can't seem to do anything other than wax (1/9)

the rest go under the cut because it’s a lot of asks XD

poetic about FS. (Whyyy, Liz?? Seriously, does she talk about anything other than FS?) LBR though, Fitz is #relatable here. I’ve watched 3 S5 eps and seen many spoilers, and Deke’s 95% a dick, right?? I think TPTB might’ve been going for that particular FS brand of determined, unapologetic, do-what’s-necessary but their compassion and drive to protect were always evident even in their “harsher/colder” actions/attitudes/treatments. (I’m missing the right words but you know, right??) /But/ (2/9)

they missed the mark by 100 miles. Anyway. Frankly, Amy, Jemma fighting viciously Fitz’s pessimism and fatalism, esp by putting forth a positive twist on fatalism (for lack of a better word) has rubbed me so wrong for so long. It’s not necessarily ooc?? But it’s also not Jemma in a right mental and emotional state?? (You’re getting a terrible description of what I mean but I’m no good for anything else right now.) Like she’s broken, resigned, fighting for some thing that just happened, (3/9)

that she didn’t consciously choose, it was forced on her through guilt of her own and of others’ making, and through others pushing for it, and she’s sort of accepted it, it’s just part of her life now, vaguely, automatically placed under the “good stuff” category, and everything around her is in chaos, so she just fights for /it/? I don’t know. There’s a difference between “the universe says we’re gonna be together, look at the signs!!” and “we want to be together and we’ll work for it”. (4/9)

About the logic fail, Jemma probs grabbed onto that “my mom told me the ‘right direction’ thing which her mom had told her”, ergo she raised her some, and coupled with the need to make Fitz feel better and the talk with yet another always unhelpful team member (😒), she just went for that stupid line. Does that make it not ooc? Well, /no/. *makes a paper plane out of your last 3 bullet points and shoots it @ TPTB, yelling “TAKE NOTES!”* Amy, in the AOS house we don’t perform surgery to the (5/9)

tune of melodies that calm and steady and help us concentrate. In the AOS house, we perform surgery while conversing on things that test our ability to hold back tears and shouts and shaking and violence, because we’re hardcore. So, the dog thing. @ Hydra WTF??!!?! Yeah, I’m glad I missed that. And OK, can someone finally confirm if Ward shot Buddy??!! It’s getting ridiculous. I say probs nah, because John used to prod him too often for not being cruel enough, but… I don’t know. Also, (6/9)

I’m so glad Ward didn’t attend Hydra’s School for Young Octopi!! I mean, everything does point to that!! :D Teen!Ward busted out at 17 and dumped in the woods, switching to Brett!Ward still in the woods, John alluding to Ward shooting Buddy and finally leaving the woods as the end of his training and immediate beginning of his SHIELD career… If he attended any Academy, that was SHIELD Ops. It’s canon! New Ward backstory! I LOVE IT!! OK, because Hydra has that elitist vibe, I’m imagining (7/9)

more of a posh-secret-club-inside-the-academy kind of thing?? You know, like the actual Piggate scandal with the UK PM, and there’s many a movie too that show secret societies inside colleges etc, whose members are wealthy kids of old families, and their fathers were members before them, and their grandfathers, and they have weird, twisted rituals. You know the kind. Malick, his daughter and the council of people they had brought to meet Hive, they remind me of that. Anyway, I’m still not (8/9)

forgiving Ruby for what she did to Elena, but the dog thing and the Hydra-engineered super-baby thing are something…?? I’d have to watch S5 to pass judgement and LOL NO, I ain’t about to do that. I thiiink I’m done. Man, I hope that was some damn good strawberry shortcake. I’m gonna need all the favor I can get. 😇 ❤❤❤❤ Also, what’s a strawberry shortcake and why are people discriminating against its physique??? Ah, and why do you use that squiggly line (~) at the end of some words??? (9/9)

Okay! Here we go! XD

First off, I…..go back and forth on Liz’s support of fs. On the one hand, it’s silly to hold it against her; it’s not like attacking her own storyline would be a smart move, either with fans (who for some reason overwhelmingly support it) or with Jed&Mo (who, after all, have made clear that they based fs’ relationship off their own). Sure, Iain got away with it, but look at the way the show treats Fitz vs. Jemma……he’s clearly the favorite. *side eyes aos* Plus, fs being together gets her more scenes with more people (gotta have everyone reminding her how destined~ she and Fitz are after all!!), so it’s understandable she’d like it.

That said….HOW CAN SHE NOT SEE HOW TERRIBLE IT IS? I DON’T UNDERSTAND.

And we could talk about that all day so…moving on!

Deke started out as the harsh/cold/doing what’s necessary to survive in a terrible environment character (he SOLD DAISY TO KASIUS because he was afraid her search for Jemma would endanger the rest of them), but the show kind of….dropped that? And tried to switch him to the lovable moron instead? It’s weird.

As for Jemma’s optimism……I guess I can’t totally blame her. Like, she does love Fitz, that’s clear enough. I personally don’t think she’d have gotten there if she hadn’t been constantly pushed towards him, or if he hadn’t made a big deal of “I can’t be just friends,” therefore forcing her to choose between a romantic relationship with her best friend or NOTHING AT ALL of him, but. Whatever.

My point was, she loves him. And he is CONSTANTLY going on about how they’re cursed and they’re never gonna work out and how ‘doesn’t sound great for the girlfriend’ and ‘I don’t deserve you’ and blah blah negativity. And it is just super not fair to her that she has to forever fight this attitude of his and try to keep him positive about THEIR RELATIONSHIP, something he should be excited and positive about ON HIS OWN. Ugh.

So from that perspective, I guess I can see why she’d cling to this, as evidence~ they’re not doomed and they’re gonna be okay. Good point, nonnie!

And another good point: I’d forgotten about the daughter saying that her mom had said the steps in the right direction stuff! to her That makes Jemma’s logic fail a little less egregious, I feel better now.

Oh, right, silly me. Of course aos is way too hardcore to want to focus on the situation at hand when surgery is underway!

I think the show kinda confirmed that it was Grant who shot Buddy? In 2x21 when Bobbi was trying to talk Kara out of the whole….torture thing that was about to happen, she tried to convince her that Grant was grooming her and that he probably started small and probably was started small himself, and Kara was like “yeah, Garrett made him shoot his dog.” So that probably counts as confirmation.

(But I am all about #denial so I choose to ignore it. Alternate explanation: Garrett was the one who did it but Grant wanted to use the story to connect to Kara, so he was creative with the truth. See? It still works!)

And yep! Garrett said, when he finally got Grant from the woods, that he’d gotten him into the ops academy! Which admittedly was four whole seasons before this mess and probably they didn’t know yet they were gonna give Hydra its own Academy, but why would Garrett make Grant do the dog test in the woods if he was about to go to Hydra and have to do it all over again? Doesn’t make sense! So yes, definitely Grant went to SHIELD Academy.

As for the “posh” sense you get of Hydra, nonnie, you are SO NOT WRONG. Hydra’s Academy was seriously SO prep school vibes, I can’t even fully describe it. They had UNIFORMS, nonnie! Suit and tie uniforms with HYDRA LOGOS on the breast pocket!!!! It was…….ridiculous. Ri. di. cu. lous.

And right? TOTALLY NOT COOL that Ruby cut off Elena’s arms, but I have some sympathy for her now. Some.

And thank you for asking, the strawberry shortcake was DELICIOUS! And it’s not discrimination (XD; I literally lol’d, nonnie, thanks for that)—strawberry shortcake is a dessert with sliced, sugared strawberries, whipped cream, and a kind of cake that’s called “shortcake” because of its crumbly, sometimes crispy texture. It is THE BEST and I’m so sad it doesn’t exist in your life. I’m sorry, nonnie.

ETA: sometimes people use spongecake instead of shortcake when making strawberry shortcake. these people are wrong and should not be trusted.

As for the squiggly line, it’s hard to explain! 

Sometimes, I use it to add a note of sarcasm or mocking. Since tone is hard to convey online, it helps me get my meaning across (and feels necessarily mean, in such statements as “Jemma and Fitz are destined~”)!

Other times, it’s more…..hm…..like a gesture, maybe? Like in my rant I wrote “the glory of Hive~” and the sguiggly was meant to convey a kind of handwave, like “the glory of Hive and all that stuff the Hive-worshiping parts of Hydra would concern themselves with.” Does that make sense?

I don’t know, it’s kind of like the tumblr habit of randomly capitalizing words in the middle of a sentence, you know? Sometimes it’s for emphasis, sometimes it’s for sarcasm, sometimes it’s just because it feels right. I hope that makes at least a little sense. XD

Thanks very much for the conversation, nonnie! Sorry it was such a struggle getting your thoughts to me!

[flauntpage]

That Time Michael Jordan Allegedly Ran Up a Million-Dollar Golf Debt

It took less than three minutes of airtime for NBC to move from a montage of triumphant Michael Jordan moments set to John Williams' score from Jurassic Park to footage of Jordan, in sunglasses and a foul mood, refusing to apologize. This was June 9, 1993, and Jordan's Chicago Bulls were in Phoenix for the first game of the NBA Finals. The first bit, the editorial pomp and plaintive wind instruments, was about that—about Jordan at his basketball apex, driving the Bulls' pursuit of a historic third-straight league title.

The second part, the testy be-shaded interview with Ahmad Rashad that was teased in the pre-game introduction and aired at length at halftime, was about everything else.

Jordan was explaining, but pointedly not apologizing, for a visit to Atlantic City the night before Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals that either ended fairly late or very late, depending on whether you took the word of the best basketball player in the world or New York's tabloid sources. At halftime of a game in which he would lead all scorers, viewers saw Jordan expand upon this theme without quite changing his tune. Jordan was responding to a self-published book titled Michael & Me: Our Gambling Addiction...My Cry For Help! that had been released that week, and which had been excerpted in newspapers for weeks before.

"I felt I was betrayed by this individual," Jordan said of the book's author, a 38-year-old San Diego sports executive named Richard Esquinas. "I don't consider him a friend, because friends don't do this to other friends."

Over the previous two years, the things that Jordan did with his friends had become public in a new and decidedly unflattering way. Esquinas, a self-described "street kid" from Columbus, Ohio who had become the general manager of the San Diego Sports Arena, was merely the most recent and most ambitious of Jordan's friends to come to the attention of both the NBA and basketball fans. The story that Esquinas sold about his peripatetic life of golf and gambling with Jordan, which allegedly involved Jordan running up a $1.2 million debt over a ten-day golf binge in San Diego—a debt Jordan supposedly played down to $908,000, negotiated down to $300,000, and ultimately paid $200,000 of—was bigger than the ones that had come before. But it wasn't new.

When basketball fans were introduced Esquinas, they had already met James "Slim" Bouler, a golf hustler who was either a drug dealer or drug dealer-adjacent. In December of 1991, the feds seized a $57,000 check from Jordan to Bouler which the two first spun as a loan; later, as a witness in the federal case that would eventually earn Bouler a nine-year sentence, Jordan admitted that the check was repaying a gambling debt.

Bouler was easy to confuse with Eddie Dow, but he was different. Both were from North Carolina and both were golf hustlers and gamblers, but Dow was a bail bondsman from Gastonia; Dow had three checks from Jordan totaling $108,000 in his possession when he was murdered in a home invasion robbery in February of 1992. This was all old enough news that when the NBA turned to investigating the allegations that Esquinas made in his book, the league simply brought back Frederick Lacey, the former federal judge who had investigated Jordan's gambling in 1992.

When the putt lips out. Photo by Jeremy Brevard-USA TODAY Sports

In March of 1992, Jordan had appeared before Lacey and NBA executives. He swore to be a little more discerning about the company he kept; for its part, the league decided against sanctioning its defining superstar, who said "I hope I've learned my lesson."

In 1993, the circumstances were different. The league was satisfied that Jordan had not bet on NBA games, and got to work rationalizing the fact that he'd bet on virtually everything else. But Lacey's investigation did reveal that, while Jordan had not violated any league rule—"nor has he violated any rule we plan to enact," NBA commissioner David Stern would add—he was also pretty plainly balling out of control off the court. Jordan was big enough that his problem was also the league's problem, which explains why Stern's rationalization by proxy echoed the usual addict's handwaving. "Gambling is actually encouraged by virtually all state governments," Stern told the Chicago Tribune in June of 1993. "Gambling is good, they say, it supports higher education, lower education, senior citizens, you name it."

"I gambled and played golf with Michael for six summers," Bouler told the Washington Post in August of 1993, months after he began a nine-year federal sentence on gun and money laundering charges. "The NBA hasn't even called me. What kind of investigation is that?" Robert Costello, Esquinas' lawyer and a former U.S. Attorney, further criticized the league for not talking to Jordan as part of its investigation.

"The league is stuck between a rock and a hard place," an anonymous NBA GM told the Post. "I sense that Michael has gotten preferential treatment because the league needs Michael to participate in many activities that promote the NBA. So they can't afford to get him angry. I wonder if another player had this problem if there wouldn't be a more ardent pursuit of the facts."

It's hard to say what discipline would even look like in a case like this, had the NBA been moved to act. It's forbidden for league players to gamble on games, but despite Esquinas telling Lacey that he seemed to hear Jordan placing a bet on a college game, there were never serious allegations that Jordan bet on the NBA. Beyond that, the standard for discipline is a vague and subjective standard that hinges on the commissioner's assessment of whether a player has brought disrepute upon the league. There are no formal rules against gambling, and while betting on golf is technically a misdemeanor in South Carolina, where Jordan did a lot of his gambling on the courses of Hilton Head, that law is not enforced.

NBA deputy commissioner Russ Granik made clear that the league was primarily concerned with the creepy company that Jordan kept, and the effect that all that ambient sketchiness might have on the league. If anything about Esquinas' assertion that Jordan might have placed a bet on a college game would have rankled the league, it was the timing. Esquinas said the bet was placed on March 29, 1992, two days before Jordan met with league officials and said that he'd stop hanging around sketchy gambler types like Bouler, Dow, and Richard Esquinas.

By the time Lacey announced in 1993 that he once again found no reason for disciplinary action, Jordan had retired.

Not pictured: an amazingly huge pair of jeans. Photo by John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports

"The only people who are saying Michael Jordan is having a gambling problem are the people who don't know Michael," Bouler told the Post. "Some people love to eat. Some people love to fish. Some people like to hunt. Some people like to drink beer. And some people love to gamble. Michael Jordan loves to gamble."

In the interview with Rashad that aired at halftime of Game 1 of the 1993 NBA Finals, Jordan echoed that assessment with barely concealed exasperation. "Gambling is legal," he said, smiling mirthlessly, "betting is legal."

"My wife, if I had a problem, would have left me," Jordan said. Rashad laughed lightly. Jordan picked up the pace: if he had a problem, he said, his family would have told him, his wife would have told him. "If I had a problem, I'd be starving, I'd be hocking this watch, my championship rings, I would sell my house," Jordan said. "My wife would have left me, my kids would be starving. I do not have a problem. I enjoy gambling."

"I would be sick if I lost $1.2 million," Jordan added. "And he would be sick if he reduced it to $300,000." Jordan didn't deny owing Esquinas $300,000, or paying him $200,000, but dismissed the $1.2 million figure as "preposterous" and overinflated. "He exaggerated to a point, and I came up with my own conclusion to why he exaggerated …"

To sell books? Rashad offered.

"It sells books," Jordan said.

Esquinas self-published Michael & Me through a company called Athletic Guidance Center Publishing, and brought in longtime Los Angeles Times editor Dave Distel as a co-writer. It is not what I would call a good book, although its combination of cornball macho grandiosity ("I've always contended that I psychologically beat Jordan") and crocodile-tear smarm—Esquinas said he wrote the book because "it was right for my recovery from my addiction to gambling and the right way to reach out to a friend I perceived had the same problem"—it probably qualifies as ahead of its time. It reads, as it perhaps inevitably would, as a fraught and chaste romance.

It was in August of 1991, as Esquinas tells it, that things got baroque; Jordan was in Southern California for a charity basketball game and some photo shoots. The two played golf wherever and whenever they could during that time, trading wins and losses and debts in the five figures. "We certainly did not have to settle for muni tracks," Esquinas writes in Michael & Me. "We went first class." Esquinas flew into Chicago that month, and then to North Carolina on Jordan's jet, "playing cards all the way," for the rounds of golf that would set in motion every sad and sordid thing that followed.

Esquinas lost big during these games, which took place "from Chapel Hill to Raleigh to Durham to heaven knows where." The two covered the ground between tee times in a Datsun 300ZX Bi-Turbo at 90 miles an hour or above, trailed by Jordan's entourage, "wearing those expensive designer shades." As Esquinas tells it, the two were in a fugue state, bingeing not just on the action—Esquinas said he was up $20,000 on Jordan at the time—but the bulletproof invincibility of the moment. Jordan was a NBA champion and a North Carolina icon; he could drive 120 and get out of a speeding ticket with a smile or an autograph. "We never got stopped," Esquinas writes. "You gamble hard and fast, then you drive hard and fast."

The whole of Esquinas' story with Jordan, until the debts get too big and things get weird, plays out like this. It's a fling, a thing between these two men that exists beyond other distractions. Esquinas talks about bailing early on a party that a member of Jordan's entourage threw before the NBA All-Star Game in 1991, despite the attention of "girls hitting on us strong." Jordan, he writes, quickly followed him back to the suite. "We had to tee off at 8 o'clock the next morning so we had to leave the hotel at 6:30," Esquinas writes. "Once again, we had our priorities."

This wary and disinterested chastity is a recurring theme in Michael & Me, and for all the questions about the narrator's reliability, it all more or less scans. This is the thing about addiction, which is somehow both secret and obvious—a fun vice that other people enjoy in moderation somehow overcomes and overwhelms and overtakes everything else, and the world warps accordingly. Jordan, who could do anything he wanted to do, chooses to bet big on card games and golf games and whatever else can be bet upon with a crew of clammy randos and hangers-on and pro gamblers and anyone else who will take the action. "Any Joe Blow can get in if he throws down the challenge," a veteran of Jordan's "Mike's Week" getaways in Hilton Head told Newsweek in 1993. "Michael was shark meat."

When you're shark meat. Photo by John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports

Jordan's father James was cruel to and crossways with his son for much of his life, but he agreed with Michael that he did not have a gambling problem. Instead, James said he had a "competition problem," an addiction to winning. What drove Jordan to become a legendary basketball player tends to look pretty pathological in any other context, and it was an approach that Jordan brought to every other context. In (VICE Sports contributor) Roland Lazenby's 2014 book on Jordan, Michael Jordan: The Life, he writes about Jordan making bets with teammates, during West Coast swings, about which actresses he'd hook up with in Los Angeles. "He was rumored to have collected on at least one such bet."

Those big checks and un-denied debts aside, the story of Michael Jordan, Competition Addict is mostly comprised of rumor and legend; in our more wary modern moment, every golf buddy would have been compelled to sign a non-disclosure agreement, and those rumors would be all we'd have. There is no proof that Jordan did anything illegal, or ever made a bet he couldn't cover. "Was I gambling with goons who had bad reputations? Yeah, I was," Jordan told the writer Bob Greene after making his pledge to the league in 1992. There is no law against that, and there is not even an NBA rule against it. But it is the sort of thing that people tend to judge.

"We do not have bad people on this basketball team," Bulls general manager Jerry Krause told the New York Times when Esquinas' allegations first surfaced. "We have class people, we have people with character. We're extremely proud of the way they react to situations. Michael Jordan's personal habits have been outstanding." Krause later allowed that he had no way of knowing if the allegations were true, but it hardly mattered. Esquinas' book, coming as it did after the disclosures of Jordan's debts to sketchy characters like Bouler and Dow, contributed alongside the far superior The Jordan Rules to what looks in retrospect like a breaking point in Jordan's career.

All this dodginess and desperation and headlong joyless competitive thrashing bled in from the edges of the simple, aspirational Jordan fable that had been so successfully sold; the picture darkened, and started to look a little more like what it was. Esquinas' alleged altruistic motivations were impossible to credit, and his integrity was easy to doubt. But the story that he told was, for all that, hard to deny. Jordan would win a lot more before he was finished, but the willful Be Like Mike innocence was lost. There was no denying his greatness, before or after, yet a full and true accounting of the man could never be complete when it only involved effortlessness and will. Eventually, it became clear that Jordan's greatness came at a great personal cost; that's the only way it works. We all pay a price for everything. Still, it was startling to see it itemized in print, one sad and helpless debt at a time.

That Time Michael Jordan Allegedly Ran Up a Million-Dollar Golf Debt published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[flauntpage]

That Time Michael Jordan Allegedly Ran Up a Million-Dollar Golf Debt

It took less than three minutes of airtime for NBC to move from a montage of triumphant Michael Jordan moments set to John Williams' score from Jurassic Park to footage of Jordan, in sunglasses and a foul mood, refusing to apologize. This was June 9, 1993, and Jordan's Chicago Bulls were in Phoenix for the first game of the NBA Finals. The first bit, the editorial pomp and plaintive wind instruments, was about that—about Jordan at his basketball apex, driving the Bulls' pursuit of a historic third-straight league title.

The second part, the testy be-shaded interview with Ahmad Rashad that was teased in the pre-game introduction and aired at length at halftime, was about everything else.

Jordan was explaining, but pointedly not apologizing, for a visit to Atlantic City the night before Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals that either ended fairly late or very late, depending on whether you took the word of the best basketball player in the world or New York's tabloid sources. At halftime of a game in which he would lead all scorers, viewers saw Jordan expand upon this theme without quite changing his tune. Jordan was responding to a self-published book titled Michael & Me: Our Gambling Addiction...My Cry For Help! that had been released that week, and which had been excerpted in newspapers for weeks before.

"I felt I was betrayed by this individual," Jordan said of the book's author, a 38-year-old San Diego sports executive named Richard Esquinas. "I don't consider him a friend, because friends don't do this to other friends."

Over the previous two years, the things that Jordan did with his friends had become public in a new and decidedly unflattering way. Esquinas, a self-described "street kid" from Columbus, Ohio who had become the general manager of the San Diego Sports Arena, was merely the most recent and most ambitious of Jordan's friends to come to the attention of both the NBA and basketball fans. The story that Esquinas sold about his peripatetic life of golf and gambling with Jordan, which allegedly involved Jordan running up a $1.2 million debt over a ten-day golf binge in San Diego—a debt Jordan supposedly played down to $908,000, negotiated down to $300,000, and ultimately paid $200,000 of—was bigger than the ones that had come before. But it wasn't new.

When basketball fans were introduced Esquinas, they had already met James "Slim" Bouler, a golf hustler who was either a drug dealer or drug dealer-adjacent. In December of 1991, the feds seized a $57,000 check from Jordan to Bouler which the two first spun as a loan; later, as a witness in the federal case that would eventually earn Bouler a nine-year sentence, Jordan admitted that the check was repaying a gambling debt.

Bouler was easy to confuse with Eddie Dow, but he was different. Both were from North Carolina and both were golf hustlers and gamblers, but Dow was a bail bondsman from Gastonia; Dow had three checks from Jordan totaling $108,000 in his possession when he was murdered in a home invasion robbery in February of 1992. This was all old enough news that when the NBA turned to investigating the allegations that Esquinas made in his book, the league simply brought back Frederick Lacey, the former federal judge who had investigated Jordan's gambling in 1992.

When the putt lips out. Photo by Jeremy Brevard-USA TODAY Sports

In March of 1992, Jordan had appeared before Lacey and NBA executives. He swore to be a little more discerning about the company he kept; for its part, the league decided against sanctioning its defining superstar, who said "I hope I've learned my lesson."

In 1993, the circumstances were different. The league was satisfied that Jordan had not bet on NBA games, and got to work rationalizing the fact that he'd bet on virtually everything else. But Lacey's investigation did reveal that, while Jordan had not violated any league rule—"nor has he violated any rule we plan to enact," NBA commissioner David Stern would add—he was also pretty plainly balling out of control off the court. Jordan was big enough that his problem was also the league's problem, which explains why Stern's rationalization by proxy echoed the usual addict's handwaving. "Gambling is actually encouraged by virtually all state governments," Stern told the Chicago Tribune in June of 1993. "Gambling is good, they say, it supports higher education, lower education, senior citizens, you name it."

"I gambled and played golf with Michael for six summers," Bouler told the Washington Post in August of 1993, months after he began a nine-year federal sentence on gun and money laundering charges. "The NBA hasn't even called me. What kind of investigation is that?" Robert Costello, Esquinas' lawyer and a former U.S. Attorney, further criticized the league for not talking to Jordan as part of its investigation.

"The league is stuck between a rock and a hard place," an anonymous NBA GM told the Post. "I sense that Michael has gotten preferential treatment because the league needs Michael to participate in many activities that promote the NBA. So they can't afford to get him angry. I wonder if another player had this problem if there wouldn't be a more ardent pursuit of the facts."

It's hard to say what discipline would even look like in a case like this, had the NBA been moved to act. It's forbidden for league players to gamble on games, but despite Esquinas telling Lacey that he seemed to hear Jordan placing a bet on a college game, there were never serious allegations that Jordan bet on the NBA. Beyond that, the standard for discipline is a vague and subjective standard that hinges on the commissioner's assessment of whether a player has brought disrepute upon the league. There are no formal rules against gambling, and while betting on golf is technically a misdemeanor in South Carolina, where Jordan did a lot of his gambling on the courses of Hilton Head, that law is not enforced.

NBA deputy commissioner Russ Granik made clear that the league was primarily concerned with the creepy company that Jordan kept, and the effect that all that ambient sketchiness might have on the league. If anything about Esquinas' assertion that Jordan might have placed a bet on a college game would have rankled the league, it was the timing. Esquinas said the bet was placed on March 29, 1992, two days before Jordan met with league officials and said that he'd stop hanging around sketchy gambler types like Bouler, Dow, and Richard Esquinas.

By the time Lacey announced in 1993 that he once again found no reason for disciplinary action, Jordan had retired.

Not pictured: an amazingly huge pair of jeans. Photo by John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports

"The only people who are saying Michael Jordan is having a gambling problem are the people who don't know Michael," Bouler told the Post. "Some people love to eat. Some people love to fish. Some people like to hunt. Some people like to drink beer. And some people love to gamble. Michael Jordan loves to gamble."

In the interview with Rashad that aired at halftime of Game 1 of the 1993 NBA Finals, Jordan echoed that assessment with barely concealed exasperation. "Gambling is legal," he said, smiling mirthlessly, "betting is legal."

"My wife, if I had a problem, would have left me," Jordan said. Rashad laughed lightly. Jordan picked up the pace: if he had a problem, he said, his family would have told him, his wife would have told him. "If I had a problem, I'd be starving, I'd be hocking this watch, my championship rings, I would sell my house," Jordan said. "My wife would have left me, my kids would be starving. I do not have a problem. I enjoy gambling."

"I would be sick if I lost $1.2 million," Jordan added. "And he would be sick if he reduced it to $300,000." Jordan didn't deny owing Esquinas $300,000, or paying him $200,000, but dismissed the $1.2 million figure as "preposterous" and overinflated. "He exaggerated to a point, and I came up with my own conclusion to why he exaggerated …"

To sell books? Rashad offered.

"It sells books," Jordan said.

Esquinas self-published Michael & Me through a company called Athletic Guidance Center Publishing, and brought in longtime Los Angeles Times editor Dave Distel as a co-writer. It is not what I would call a good book, although its combination of cornball macho grandiosity ("I've always contended that I psychologically beat Jordan") and crocodile-tear smarm—Esquinas said he wrote the book because "it was right for my recovery from my addiction to gambling and the right way to reach out to a friend I perceived had the same problem"—it probably qualifies as ahead of its time. It reads, as it perhaps inevitably would, as a fraught and chaste romance.

It was in August of 1991, as Esquinas tells it, that things got baroque; Jordan was in Southern California for a charity basketball game and some photo shoots. The two played golf wherever and whenever they could during that time, trading wins and losses and debts in the five figures. "We certainly did not have to settle for muni tracks," Esquinas writes in Michael & Me. "We went first class." Esquinas flew into Chicago that month, and then to North Carolina on Jordan's jet, "playing cards all the way," for the rounds of golf that would set in motion every sad and sordid thing that followed.

Esquinas lost big during these games, which took place "from Chapel Hill to Raleigh to Durham to heaven knows where." The two covered the ground between tee times in a Datsun 300ZX Bi-Turbo at 90 miles an hour or above, trailed by Jordan's entourage, "wearing those expensive designer shades." As Esquinas tells it, the two were in a fugue state, bingeing not just on the action—Esquinas said he was up $20,000 on Jordan at the time—but the bulletproof invincibility of the moment. Jordan was a NBA champion and a North Carolina icon; he could drive 120 and get out of a speeding ticket with a smile or an autograph. "We never got stopped," Esquinas writes. "You gamble hard and fast, then you drive hard and fast."

The whole of Esquinas' story with Jordan, until the debts get too big and things get weird, plays out like this. It's a fling, a thing between these two men that exists beyond other distractions. Esquinas talks about bailing early on a party that a member of Jordan's entourage threw before the NBA All-Star Game in 1991, despite the attention of "girls hitting on us strong." Jordan, he writes, quickly followed him back to the suite. "We had to tee off at 8 o'clock the next morning so we had to leave the hotel at 6:30," Esquinas writes. "Once again, we had our priorities."

This wary and disinterested chastity is a recurring theme in Michael & Me, and for all the questions about the narrator's reliability, it all more or less scans. This is the thing about addiction, which is somehow both secret and obvious—a fun vice that other people enjoy in moderation somehow overcomes and overwhelms and overtakes everything else, and the world warps accordingly. Jordan, who could do anything he wanted to do, chooses to bet big on card games and golf games and whatever else can be bet upon with a crew of clammy randos and hangers-on and pro gamblers and anyone else who will take the action. "Any Joe Blow can get in if he throws down the challenge," a veteran of Jordan's "Mike's Week" getaways in Hilton Head told Newsweek in 1993. "Michael was shark meat."

When you're shark meat. Photo by John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports

Jordan's father James was cruel to and crossways with his son for much of his life, but he agreed with Michael that he did not have a gambling problem. Instead, James said he had a "competition problem," an addiction to winning. What drove Jordan to become a legendary basketball player tends to look pretty pathological in any other context, and it was an approach that Jordan brought to every other context. In (VICE Sports contributor) Roland Lazenby's 2014 book on Jordan, Michael Jordan: The Life, he writes about Jordan making bets with teammates, during West Coast swings, about which actresses he'd hook up with in Los Angeles. "He was rumored to have collected on at least one such bet."

Those big checks and un-denied debts aside, the story of Michael Jordan, Competition Addict is mostly comprised of rumor and legend; in our more wary modern moment, every golf buddy would have been compelled to sign a non-disclosure agreement, and those rumors would be all we'd have. There is no proof that Jordan did anything illegal, or ever made a bet he couldn't cover. "Was I gambling with goons who had bad reputations? Yeah, I was," Jordan told the writer Bob Greene after making his pledge to the league in 1992. There is no law against that, and there is not even an NBA rule against it. But it is the sort of thing that people tend to judge.

"We do not have bad people on this basketball team," Bulls general manager Jerry Krause told the New York Times when Esquinas' allegations first surfaced. "We have class people, we have people with character. We're extremely proud of the way they react to situations. Michael Jordan's personal habits have been outstanding." Krause later allowed that he had no way of knowing if the allegations were true, but it hardly mattered. Esquinas' book, coming as it did after the disclosures of Jordan's debts to sketchy characters like Bouler and Dow, contributed alongside the far superior The Jordan Rules to what looks in retrospect like a breaking point in Jordan's career.

All this dodginess and desperation and headlong joyless competitive thrashing bled in from the edges of the simple, aspirational Jordan fable that had been so successfully sold; the picture darkened, and started to look a little more like what it was. Esquinas' alleged altruistic motivations were impossible to credit, and his integrity was easy to doubt. But the story that he told was, for all that, hard to deny. Jordan would win a lot more before he was finished, but the willful Be Like Mike innocence was lost. There was no denying his greatness, before or after, yet a full and true accounting of the man could never be complete when it only involved effortlessness and will. Eventually, it became clear that Jordan's greatness came at a great personal cost; that's the only way it works. We all pay a price for everything. Still, it was startling to see it itemized in print, one sad and helpless debt at a time.

That Time Michael Jordan Allegedly Ran Up a Million-Dollar Golf Debt published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv