#i listen to that on repeat a lot specifically for rod's voice

[lock-my-feelings-in-a-jar]

[gayenerd]

Another old article saved in a Word document, which I can only find behind a paywall now (but I linked it in case someone does have access to a subscription)

Green Day Rising Metal Mike Saunders, Bam, 28 January 1994 Popcore Ascending? Or Is That Just The First Phase Of 'The Greatest Band In America'?

'We were down in Irvine and Mike was having a pillow fight outside with his girlfriend. He was running away from her, and at the top of his stride he turned around, right into a horizontal beam five feet off the ground – Vhoom...Out cold. So that suggested the concept of ...misery.'– Billie Joe

WHERE IT all it the brick wall for me personally was 11th grade carpool. Four high school boys jammed into a VW bug, or worse, with the AM radio on for about 20 minutes en route to Hall High, Little Rock.

It was the season of the great Bubblegum Wars, that pint in time where the underground FM vs. plastic AM trench wars had reached the point of no return. Kids vs. pigs, rednecks vs. longhairs. Combat was the order of the day, even in music.

In the fall of 1968, the musical lightning rod was 'Chewy Chewy' by the Ohio Express: 'Turn it off' and 'Turn it down' were the majority opinions. I was for sure the only one going 'Turn it up!' The same routine was repeated just a few weeks later with the Archies and the 1910 Fruitgum Co. (the later with the classic top-five hit 'Indian Giver'), and it seems like ever since that point in time 'pop' has been a derogatory term. Something less than…what? 'Rock'?

What does this have to do with Green Day? Well, it’s like this: There’s this real lame tag – 'popcore' (say it once and erase it forever, pul LEEZE) that was kicking around for a while last year and was affixed to the East Bay trio’s style of music. Aw, hell, they’re just a great rock band.

If Santa came and went recently and there’s still no Green Day in your house, here’s a shopping list: 39 Smooth (Lookout!), Kerplunk (Lookout!), and Dookie (Warner Bros./Reprise). Forty-eight killer tracks by this country’s greatest band and, considering that only in the preceding 12 months did its members start to hit drinking age, possibly just the beginning of what could turn out to be an amazing career.

Proof is no farther away than the band’s new album, Dookie, its first for a major label, but proceeded by two LPs and three 7-inch EPs on Berkeley’s Lookout! Records.

Anyone who’s seen the threesome knows they can play like gangbusters; the difference between a tiny indie-label budget (try about $3000 for all 34 Lookout! Tracks combined) and a major-league endeavor is that for the first time you get proof 10 times over on tape. So you get raging guitar sounds and cracking snare rimshots that explode like the early who. Even the band’s chronic shortcoming – weedy studio vocals – has been corrected to an encouraging degree.

"Yeah," volunteers 21-year-old lead singer/guitarist Billie Joe, "for my vocals we used a Beyer microphone, which was used on some of the early Elvis Costello stuff. I’m really happy with the way it came out."

The entire album is a veritable role model for any guitar-heavy rock band. Says producer Rob Cavallo: "In the case of a raw, live-sounding record like this one, what I try to do is capture on the listener’s speakers the whole left-to-right stereo spread – what we heard in preproduction, listening to the band blast away in their practice room. The key to this, in Green Day’s case, is that they have such a focused idea as to what they sound like, and they’re great players in that style."

Specific elements of Dookie’s production style include a live rhythm guitar on every song, singletracked lead vocals only, and all vocal harmonies done by the second-stage voice, 20-year-old bassist Mike Dirnt.

Warner Bros.’ hands-off role, a characteristic of the company in the wake of its Mudhoney "creative control"-type underground signings, was crucial in shaping such a record. "Warner Bros. stayed out of the way and let us do exactly what we wanted to," says 21-year-old drummer Tre Cool. "All I can say is if you can get on Warners, you are one lucky son of a gun!"

The inclination to make a guitar-heavy record was present from the get-go. "I definitely wanted to get a bigger sound," recalls Billie Joe, "something with more meat to it." Which is achieved, in parts thanks to a borrowed vintage 1972 Marshall head hooked up to the same blue Stratocaster Billie Joe’s been battering since he was 11.

The wall of guitar sound was achieved with a live track and just one more rhythm guitar dropped in. "We had experimented a bit on previous records, stacking guitar tracks to try to get a thicker sound," recalls Billie Joe. "But this time with just the two rhythm guitars; we got a better distorted sound."

Like any other trademark-sound band, it’s the deviations on the record that are most interesting. We’ve got three here: 'Pulling Teeth,' 'When I Come Around,' and the album’s first single, 'Longview,' 'Pulling Teeth' leaps out of the album like a K-Tel cut buried in a techno set; it’s the tune Dave Edmunds never had to break his career Stateside. Tight harmony vocals frame a straight guitar-heavy country-rock melody with a conciseness worthy of the masters. Not one wasted word or second.

"We were down in Irvine," recalls Billie Joe of the song’s lyrical genesis, "and Mike was having a pillow fight outside with his girlfriend. He was running away from her, and at the top of this stride he turned ground – vhoom…Out cold. So that suggested the concept of…misery."

'Longview' hits a whole opposite style. It’s something you might imagine as a late’70s FM track, with a loping dumbo beat ("a rumble," suggests Dirnt) not too far off Tom Petty’s 'Breakdown', Lyrics about nothing, really-killing time, punching the cable remote, getting high. A two-chord riff to nowhere, then a basic garden-variety three-chord chorus. The trick is that the whole darn song is a hook. Simultaneously the dumbest and catchiest Van Halen guitar licks panning across the speakers.

"In a way, that song was cheap self-therapy for watching too much TV," recalls Billie Joe. "It was another case of writing about whatever mood I’m in."

Especially near to my heart (I’m from the South, y’all ) is 'When I Come Around,' an unintentional dead-on-evocation of Lynyrd Skynyrd at its top-40 hookiest. With a lazy turnaround beat like 'Sweet Home Alabama', it’s just about five degrees westward of the slightly ‘70s ballads 'Christie Road' and 'No One Knows' from the earlier Kerplunk album.

"On that one, we weren’t thinking country rock, but rather something that had a groove to it, almost like you could imagine having a martini and listening to it at the same time," explains Dirnt.

See, 80 percent of Dookie is in the trademark Green Day raging pop-punk. It’s this deviant 20 percent that makes one suspect they can pull off almost anything they want out of the trash-dump of earlier under appreciated rock styles. A mainstream audience could forge a very, very interesting alliance with this group.

Of the trademark pop-punk onslaught, averaging an airtight two minutes, 30 seconds apiece, 'Basket Case' and 'Sassafras Roots' are two of the strongest numbers. 'Basket Case' was about a friend who’s pretty loopy,' explains Billie Joe, 'but a bit about myself as well – like seeing your own trails in other people where it’s been taken to a total extreme. There are a lot more songs on this record that are about other people’s experiences, even though I might still be singing in the first person.'

The recording of Dookie went fairly fast by industry standards, the music and vocals finished last summer in three and a half weeks (at Berkeley’s Fantasy Studios), followed by an initial mix. The band then headed out on 40-date fall tour with the veteran LA punk band Bad Religion, which enabled them to come back to the project with a clean set of ears. The entire album was remixed with engineering whiz Jerry, Finn who paid special attention to the record’s amazing bottom end. At that point, the band’s 'creative input' reached its most extreme.

"We all three sat there for 10 days straight, 15 hours a day, and listened to every minute of the remixing sessions," recalls Tre Cool. Which is just short of four working-Joe (like me) work weeks without a day off.

Dookie is one of the rawest melodically oriented rock records to show up on a major label in the last zillion years. Usually when bands go from an indie to a major label, the result is a slicker product.

"When I listen to bad rock music occasionally, I just wind up going, ‘What the hell were these guys thinking of?" agrees Billie Joe.

I speculate that there have now been entire generations’ worth of bad drum sounds committed to record. "Huge room sounds on the drum with shitloads of reverb," responds Dirnit. "Flanged drum rolls," adds Billie Joe.

My favorite, rolls across the chromatic-tuned rototoms, comes in a close second.

While most bands with almost 50 tracks into their recording career hit the point of labored songwriting (that old saw about a band’s first album being its best), that hasn’t been the case with Green Day. "Actually, I think I was more comfortable with my songwriting on this record than I ever was before," insists Billie Joe. "I had a real good handle on what kind of melodies and hooks I wanted to come up with. Didn’t rush myself, just let them come out naturally. It was the previous time out, on the songs on Kerplunk, that I was consciously trying to outdo my previous songs."

The variation from Green Day’s uptempo style, now comprising a good one-quarter of the band’s most recent two albums, will continue. "We definitely are going to continue to expand the scope of our material; we don’t want to get into a rut where we rewrite Kerplunk or Dockie over again," explains Billie Joe. "There’s a lot of musical tastes that run through this band."

I did my homework on the band’s "song-about-girls" label (a tag, Dirnt complains, 'we got caught up in') going back to January 1992’s Kerplunk and assigning topics to each song. The tally was girls, four; mortality/meaning of life, three; neurosis/insanity, one; one novelty song; and alienation, motivation, and coming of age, one apiece. Dookie is more of the same, with topics ranging all over the map, the median perhaps being the pissed-off frame of mind of 'Chump' and 'F.O.D.' The girl-songs ratio is down around 30 percent.

The "girl-songs" tag must have sprung from what was the band’s classic 1990 debut, 39 Smooth, written and sung by Billie Joe and Dirnt at the ripe old ages of 17 and 16. A good 70 percent of the album’s songs related to the opposite sex, with the lead off track, 'At the Library', ranking as perhaps the best song ever written by a high-schooler.

One facet of a Green Day performance that’s impossible to capture on paper is the continuous bantering and riposting between the band and the crowd, much of it hysterical.

"It’s all part of making our audience feel like they’re at home, communicating on an eye-label basis," offers Billie Joe.

"See, before a show we’re usually making fun of each other – making a mess by playing baseball with apples or whatever, meeting new people who are funny and have jokes we haven’t heard – so we’re totally stoked by the time we get onstage," elaborates Tre.

It’s safe to say that after two trips to Europe, half a dozen ('at least') full American tours, and over four years of nonstop gigging, performance anxiety does not figure into this band’s equation. "We never have a list, we just make it up as we go," explains Tre.

I offer my theory that no matter how many fans a band has, there are five times as many people who think they stink, and 10 times as many who don’t care.

"I would see it as three different sections: the people who really like you, the people who really hate you, and the vast majority who are totally oblivious," muses Billie Joe.

The vast size of the record industry contributes to making yesterday’s barely gold act today’s 'Who?' (think Britny Fox, Vixen, and a half-dozen gold Loverboy albums). Indeed, if everyone who ever made fun of Motley Crue videos were assembled in one place, we would surely fill the Oakland Coliseum.

Speaking of videos, the world doesn’t faze our subjects – not yet anyway. "We’ve never done a video. They’ve got us scheduled to do one, so for now we think videos are cool," laughs Tre.

"We’re probably shooting the video in our house," adds Billie Joe, the "house" being what appears to be a subterranean Berkeley abode, complete with a tiny band-practice room; it’s not squalid, it’s absolutely slacker). "So…we figure our video concept will be kind of ‘Looks That Kill’ meets ‘Hot for Teachers’ meets 'Rock You Like a Hurricane'," quips Dirnt.

Given the absolutely superb quality of the band’s Warner Bros. debut, the only mystery is that a major label bidding war on Green Day took so long to materialize.

"Warner Bros. was the label initially considering the band," recounts band co-manager Jeff Saltzman. "But it was when Geffen and Sony/CBS jumped in with serious interest that Warners got serious about picking up the band."

Green Day never would have gotten so much done so fast, however, without the astute ears of Lookout! Records’ president and perpetual talent scout, Larry Livermore, who sent the band into the studio two months after first seeing the trio to record an EP called 1000 Hours, which was followed by the 39 Smooth album, which was recorded at the end of 1989 for less than $500.

"I knew Al Sobrante (Green Day’s drummer through mid-1990) from Isocracy, so I knew about his new band, Sweet Children [renamed Green Day six months later]," recalls Livermore. "My band, the Lookouts, were playing a house party up in Mendocino County, February 1989, so I invited Al’s band up to play also. I was so impressed with the band and their attitude, playing just in front of 15 people, that I hooked up with them immediately to record for Lookout! I never had any doubt about their potential, musically. I thought they were great the first time I saw them."

© Metal Mike Saunders, 1994

[dotthings]

While usually I’d post my ep-watching notes, I’m skipping that this time because 15.03 is such a deep dive emotionally on multiple character points. Also I’d normally rewatch before going into more depth on any one point but the Dean and Cas part in particular is a raw wound I need to get my thoughts out before I lose what’s left of my mind because of this show. That was a LOT.

Disclaimer because fandom is how it is: I will block anybody who brings character hate onto this post. You will, especially, not reblog me just to screech I have no right to consider Dean’s pov seriously and treat him as a human being and that Dean has no right to feelings how dare u. Disagreement is fine, if you see the characters and story from a slightly different angle, so long as the discussion’s in good faith, we’re good.

I’ve talked here a few times about why Dean feels the way he does about recent events, why he has a right to anger, hurt, pain, and this is a little similar, as I’m definitely not going to stop treating Dean like the layered, sympathetic, complicated character that he is any time soon, and he has every right to the anger and the hurt and the pain, but in this specific scene, his words are in the wrong. It’s in the same zip code as “you’re dead to me” and Dean delivering ultimatums to Cas, both of which are things I’ve criticized. This doesn’t mean Dean doesn’t have a right to his feelings or I’m going to ignore why he might act the way he does instead of knee jerk simplifying, which does the character, the story, his relationship with Cas, and the entire show a disservice. He has a right to that anger, fear, pain, hurt. However there’s a distinction between things Cas actually did where I can see why Dean might still be upset with him—shutting Dean out, not trusting Dean enough, not trusting in THEM enough--and then there’s Dean saying things are are untrue and unfair.

In the final scene of 15.03 Dean pins every screw up onto Cas, he uses the word “always” and it is a shockingly unfair statement, and you could make a history reel of Team Free Will demonstrating how off-canon that statement is. Let’s not repeat that cyclical thing, because it’s a trap like a hamster wheel and maybe some infernal device of Chuck’s to get fandom to fight, but anyone with an ounce of sense, who pays attention to canon, can see that Sam, Dean, and Cas have set things in motion that make big messes, repeatedly.

What Dean says plays into all of Cas’s deepest insecurities and fears, and the intention of the episode is very very clear that even Dean doesn’t believe what he’s saying. He says it anyway, which is a whole mess right there and I’ll get into that, but the things Dean says to Cas aren’t Dean’s truth. Jensen’s incredible, beautiful acting makes it obvious immediately not only that Dean doesn’t truly believe what he’s saying, but that Dean deeply regrets it the second they come out of his mouth. Most people have at one time or another said stupid things in anger they don’t really believe, or give into the impulse to lash out. Dean’s tendency to do this isn’t constructive or positive behavior, it’s a character flaw, but he is also a sympathetically portrayed character, not an asshole or an abuser, and we are always shown the sources of the hurt and the pain that brings him to that point. That doesn’t mean he can do that to Cas and it’s perfectly okay. But it’s a deeply ugly, bad hot take to treat Dean as monstrous or abusive.

Understanding where the pain comes from that gets Dean to the point he’d lash out like this doesn’t mean that what comes out of his mouth on the other end is right.

There is no part of Dean that really thinks Cas ruined everything and is always what makes things go wrong. It’s actually laughable to suggest this—I will for reals laugh at anyone who tries to earnestly argue that as a reliable take on canon. That’s pretty much someone who has divorced the canon and isn’t paying attention to years and years of material. This line isn’t in fact actually about Cas ruining Team Free Will save the world plans. It’s something much deeper, about Dean’s fears and Cas’s. Which I’ll get to a sec.

Dean also is incredibly unfair in blaming Cas for Rowena’s death, and if Cas had just let Bel devour all those souls and become a Lucifer-level problem, TFW would again be completely screwed. And he is also uncharacteristically cold to Cas about sending him on the mission to Hell with Bel. These are all red flags and build-up to the final scene. 

Fandom loves to yell about OOCness. This isn’t OOC, these things, this hurt, they are a part of Dean, but they aren’t how he really feels about things, they are purposefully crafted as red flags to show the audience something is wrong. Not that Dean isn’t himself, or possessed. It’s like a figurative, emotional possession. His deep sense of despair is eating him alive and his relationship with Cas is taking a hit from it.

It’s also interesting Dean voices what AU Michael said, which was AU Michael using Dean’s greatest fears about how Cas might perceive how Dean feels about him. This isn’t proof that AU Michael was speaking the truth about how Dean feels after all. It’s that Dean remembers witnessing AU Michael saying that to Cas, taunting Cas with it, and it’s still among Dean’s big fears—that Cas thinks he ruined Dean’s life, that Dean doesn’t love him back and blames him for all the troubles. Then there’s Dean’s fears that Cas doesn’t love him back, that Dean ruined an angel, Cas’s falling was his fault and so every bad thing that happens to Cas, deep down, Dean self-loathes himself for. 

Dean has done a lot of growing but the vestiges of the Dean in S9 who said “I’m poison” are still there. That kind of thing doesn’t just magically go away never to return.

And here’s this huge chasm that has opened under Dean’s feet. Dean is doubting the meaning of his entire life right now, because of the revelation about Chuck. Because of Dean wondering if anything he’s gone through is “real” — if any of his actions and feelings and pain and struggling and losses and wins had any real meaning at all or was it all puppeted. It was good in this ep seeing Dean not giving up, determined to fend off or seal away the ghosts, and up yours, Chuck, but he isn’t over his sense of despair.

One of Dean’s fears here is that what’s between him and Cas isn’t real, that the things Cas did, for him, their closeness, none of that was authentic. Remember that their relationship started as *movie announcer voice* it was only supposed to be a mission...it became something more. Cas’s introduction into Dean’s life was Cas as a chess piece, sent as part of Heaven’s bigger clockwork plan.  

Dean’s entire world is caving in, and he’s not ready to see that everything Cas feels for him, Cas's deep and genuine love for him, is in fact very, scarily, in your face real.

He’s shutting himself off, he’s shutting Cas out. The feelings he has for Cas aren’t gone, but Dean’s a mess.

Interesting how this ep shows a demon ripping Ketch’s heart out of his chest, because Dean figuratively rips his own heart out of his chest in the last scene with him and Cas. He hurts someone he really REALLY doesn’t want to hurt, who he loves so so much--you can insert here a sizzle reel of 11 seasons of Dean listening to Cas, defending Cas, offering Cas shelter and protection, saving Cas’s life, caring about Cas, being there for Cas, grieving for Cas, feeling insecure about Cas, showing fondness for Cas, in one way or the other. There is so much. That doesn’t mean the relationship doesn’t have problems or their own issues and poor coping mechanisms and circumstance and familial dynamics haven’t made things difficult at times. Dean hurts Cas on the most raw, biggest fear Cas has and interestingly, the biggest fear or criticism Cas fans have about the show.

And there’s Bel—demon of marital strife—playing on Cas’s fears all throughout the ep, taking little digs about how expendable Cas is, how unimportant he is to his friends. He’s like the angel in S11 who tells Cas he’s expendable and Sam and Dean “are the real heroes.” Maybe it was part of Bel’s plan all along to have Dean and Cas divided, along with his bigger take over Hell agenda.

I’ve been saying this and saying this--while it’s valid that Dean is still hurt over what happened with Cas, Jack, and Mary, and is still, remember, rawly grieving Mary’s death which was mere DAYS AGO—it’s also not actually what it’s about, and it’s not even entirely about Dean’s Chuck-induced despair, although that ground falling away is what’s pushing things to this point. What it’s actually about underneath is Dean and Cas and their relationship. Years of unresolved Dean and Cas issues. I sure called that one. Dean’s fears. Cas’s fears. Dean’s abandonment issues, Cas’s leaving, Dean’s fears of losing Cas, Cas’s fears of not being loved, Dean’s fears of Cas not loving him the way he loves Cas. 

One thing that is so so tragic about Dean’s despair is that just last season, Dean reached a point of self-like. Liking who he is, who he’s becoming, the family he’s chosen. Being good with his life.

And then boo the crushing reveal that Chuck was manipulating their circumstances all this time. Which doesn’t mean Chuck was controlling them or their decisions or feelings. But Dean doesn’t feel that way.

Which, emotional horror that this is, also just serves to show just how much Cas actually means to him, how important Cas is. This big Destiel drama and hurt and pain rises from Dean and Cas loving each other and being in love and being complete and utter dumbasses. It hurts. It’s supposed to hurt. Their friendship has been mostly functional. Their love story is a car wreck. If Cas wasn’t so important, all this emotional horror wouldn’t be taking place. Dean and Cas’s relationship right now is a lightning rod for the fallout on pretty much everything.

And it’s really strong, and it’s going to endure this, but not without taking some hits to the bow.

On Cas’s part, Cas isn’t in a great headspace but he’s in a less self-destructive and harmful and despairing headspace than Dean. He has grown a lot and I think a few seasons ago, Cas would have endured, looked grim and said nothing, and stayed. He would stay doubting himself, or stay thinking Dean is really unfair, but he’d stoically take it. But not this time, and Cas did the only thing he could now. He had to leave. There’s only so much hurt he can take and Dean is shutting him out and not listening to him. 

Here’s the twist about Cas. He both does and doesn’t believe Dean is speaking his truth. Cas’s gutted, shocked face at what Dean says brings Dean up short, it’s so raw. Dean’s realization of OH F*CK WHAT DID I JUST DO comes instantly, both from his own words ringing in his ears and from Cas’s reaction. The thing about Cas’s reaction, is that it has a bit of “oh you did not JUST” to it, where I think maybe Cas knows this is total BS and Dean is full of it but Cas also believes it. Cas feels like a failure. He feels like he has failed everyone. And now here’s Dean, his favorite person in the actual literal universe, telling him he is. Blaming him, when Cas knows intellectually that it isn’t actually all Cas’s fault, but nobody blames Cas for things more than Cas himself does.

This jacks right back into all of Cas’s deepest fears about not belonging. About being lonely. About being expendable and the afterthought in Team Free Will. One thing I’ve pointed out over and over is part of Cas’s drive to protect Jack is needing to be needed. Dean and Cas is not a parallel relationship to Sam and Dean, it wasn’t formed the same way, it doesn’t function the same way. They are very very close, but there also is no Sam to Cas’s Dean, until Jack. This is not about seeking or needing a codependent relationship. Putting it more baldly, while there’s a brothers-in-arms aspect to Dean and Cas, they are not sibling bonds/like-sibling bonds/parent-child like bonds, Dean and Cas are lovers, spouses, chosen not-actually-platonic life-mates, they are coded as a couple or as spousal over and over. Strip that layer out and trying to meta this becomes a lot of “but why??” 

The answers are simple. Don’t strip out the subtext, and the by now textually-level implied nature of Dean and Cas’s relationship. Which doesn’t mean I am saying it’s been consummated, but it also is what it is.

I’ve also pointed out how Cas’s immortality offers him the emotional horror of being the survivor, of Sam and Dean dying and Cas losing them and living forever onward without them. Ironically, becoming so attached to Sam and Dean fed his loneliness, because now he has that fear of losing them and living on forever without them.

Cas too has done a lot of growing, and like Dean, just last season showed how far he’d come. In Cas’s case, when he voiced that he knew Sam and Dean were there for him, and that Cas realized that he was enough. But as with Dean, those deepest shadows and insecurities don’t just magically go away and Cas still fears that he doesn’t mean to Sam and Dean what they mean to him and Cas, right now, feels like a failure to everyone he loves. Shoulder tap from another Dean and Cas parallel—“you fight and you fight for this family, but they don’t need you, not like you need them” which the YED used to taunt Dean way back when.

No matter how much Cas might understand about what Dean really feels, or about his own actual culpability, I don’t see how Cas could do anything now but walk out. Cas has never left Dean because he needed to leave Dean, because staying with Dean hurt too much. Cas has had to leave Dean, or left Dean, at various points for various reasons and it was never because he personally needed to leave because of his Dean feelings. Cas has had to leave because of world-saving stakes angel business missions, or because he was captured, or brainwashed, or murdered, or because his own headstrong decisions resulted in events that separated them, or he was protecting their son Jack. It wasn’t because Cas wanted to leave. Cas doesn’t want to leave now but he also needs to, personally. 

The fact that Cas so candidly stated those fears here startled me. I was hopeful for more emotional candidness, but this is even farther than I’d hoped. This is going to the root. And yes it is incredibly exciting.  As emotionally horrifying as this storyline is, the purpose is to move things forward to an even better place. This arc isn’t here for destruction. Things are being shaken out big time and it’s only going to make the bonds stronger once things are worked out. There’s already been a string of big moments in the show’s history showing just how deeply Cas is loved, and how much Dean loves him. If you were waiting for even more verification, just wait for it.

What’s also leaving me SHOOK is how very very very SPECIFIC this is. There’s a reason my Dean individual meta and my Cas individual meta is all mashed together here in a post that veers into talk about how Destiel is real. It’s things like this that show me recent SPN is serious as a heart attack about Destiel. Even if they can’t make it overt. I think a distinction needs to be made between overt/not-overt vs canon/not-canon. Destiel being non-overt doesn’t make its intention and its presence in the story not-canon. But my main point, this final scene isn’t about Team Free Will or a collective “how Cas feels about humanity.” This is unambiguously about Dean, and about Cas, and about Dean & Cas and their long relationship, and SPN is really f*cking serious about how important this is to both of them and how important it is to the show’s story.

[halfbloodglader]

Him, The Annoying One (Minho)

Minho x reader - 1,074 words

_______________________________________________________________________

Y/N was for once enjoying the feeling of her heart not exploding in her chest, lungs on fire and legs that felt like iron rods. The crackle of the fire here at the Right Arm camp reminded her of home, of the Glade. As of right now, they were far, far away from home.

The silence didn’t last long. A body slumped beside her and nudged her shoulder. “You know hermana, I have seen many people hopelessly in love, especially in the scorch. But I don’t think I have ever seen someone as oblivious as you.”

“What are you talking about?” She tried to laugh it off, shifting her position uncomfortably. 

“You see your friend over there?” He pointed to a few of the boys across the fire. “He’s so in love with you it makes me sick. You hear me? Sick. That should tell you lots because I’ve lived in a dump my whole life.”

Y/N scoffed, eyes shifting between the group of boys and Jorge. “Newt? No way.”

Jorge hit her arm out of frustration and began to blabber. “Do you have eyes? Minho! The annoying one!”

Minho got up the moment Jorge’s hand landed on Y/N. He was on guard the moment he’d sat down next to Y/N and him hitting her was enough for Minho to want to intervene. 

Unalike Minho, Y/N was so lost and her mind felt scrambled she wasn’t paying attention to her surroundings. Jorge’s snickers were just enough to drag her back to reality.

“You see?!” He pointed a finger right at Minho. “Look at him, he’s—“

“Why’d you hit her?” Minho asked, his brows furrowed and voice low. Not often did Minho’s demeanour take such a sudden switch to a dark seriousness. When it involved Y/N though, his defensive side came out easily.

Y/N forced an awkward laugh, looking between Minho and Jorge with frantic eyes. “It doesn’t matter. He was making a stupid joke.”

Minho raised his brow and looked to Y/N, completely unconvinced. There had been a reason Jorge did what he did and Y/N was trying to cover it up. “It kinda does. I need to know if he deserves to be hit back.”

“Hit me if you want, it won’t do much.” Jorge grumbled as he got up to walk away. Minho watched him leave with a scowl. Once he was out of the way and across the fire, sitting with Brenda, Minho found his place beside Y/N.

“What’d the shank say?” Minho pressed for answers. He wanted to know what had gone down and if Jorge really did deserve a hit back or not. 

Y/N, knowing Minho better than he knew himself, was well aware he’d never give up. So, she knew telling the truth was her best option. “He said you were hopelessly in love.”

Minho grumbled. “Well, yeah. I have been for a long time.”

“What?” Y/N’s face fell. 

“Huh?” He realized his potentially life altering error.

“You just said you’ve been in love for a long time.” Y/N repeated his words back to him.

“I didn’t say with who!” He shrilled, legs twitching due to his natural instinct to just run away as fast as he could.

“HER!” Jorge screamed. “YOU’RE IN LOVE WITH HER YOU BABBLING IDIOT!” Brenda tried to restrain the madman by putting her hands over his mouth but it completely failed. If Jorge had something to say, there was no stopping him.

“SHUT UP!” Minho fired back.

“Is that true?” Y/N asked softly, her expression seemingly teetering between hope and defeat. Minho, for a split second, wondered if she felt the same way he did. Was it worth it for him to lie? This could be his chance to tell her the truth and be fully reciprocated. Or, this could lead him to simply embarrassing himself.

He was so close to lying. But, something inside of him gnawed at his mind and stopped him from doing so. After surviving the maze and their traverse through the scorch, Minho didn’t know what lie ahead for them. He could have the rest of his life to live or he could only have hours. It wasn’t worth harbouring this secret any longer. He’d done so for far too long now and he wanted that to change.

Swallowing hard and grimacing like he’d eaten something rotten, Minho braced himself for the worst. “Yeah. It’s true.”

Y/N grabbed Minho’s face, something familiar the pair had always done as joke when trying to get the others attention. Now, it meant something a little different. “How long have you been keeping it a secret?”

Minho’s face warmed under her touch. But, he wasn’t so coy that he looked away. His eyes remained glued on Y/N’s. “Since you became my running partner.”

Y/N’s brows lifted in surprise. Minho felt even more embarrassment run though him. She now knew how long he’d been helplessly pining after her. “Wow, that’s almost as long as me.”

Confused, Minho closed his eyes and shook his head, trying to wake himself incase he were locked in a dream. For better or worse, this certainly wasn’t a dream. “You like me too?”

“Yeah…” Y/N pondered for a moment. “I sorta realized back in the WICKED compound.”

“That night!” Minho shouted and then immediately retracted into himself, realizing others were listening. “That night when we stayed up playing those stupid games they’d given us. That was when you realized, didn’t you?”

“Oddly specific, but yeah.” Y/N laughed lightly. “How’d you know?”

“Because I’m a genius!” He said proudly. Then, he realized how serious this was and retraced his steps. “No, that was when I realized I didn’t just like you. I got scared because I knew then that I loved you.” He rattled on. “So I didn’t say anything, incase I died saving Thomas’ butt or whatever.”

“What does this mean?” Y/N once again laughed, both out of relief and a little nervousness. Minho smiled, just as confused yet swallowed up by euphoria. 

“I dunno,” He lost his train of thought and took his chance to move forward and kiss her. It was better than he could have ever imagined. He knew they both were smiling, surprised to have found something decent as the world continued to fall apart. “But I’ve waited a long time to do that.”

[stranger-who-writes-fiction]

Leviathan Rising (But like, not THAT Leviathan Rising)

Fandom: Supergirl Rating: K+/T Summary: Someone’s after Supergirl! ...Oh, no, wait. They’re after...Kara Danvers? And Kara decides to play along. A/N: I have blatantly ripped off the plot of Bendis’ recent Leviathan Rising Superman Special to write a lil’ season five ‘what if’ fic. So uh. Spoilers, kinda? For the comic, and some season four stuff.

...

Kara was several blocks away from her apartment when she noticed that something was...off.

She paused, and made a show of fumbling for her phone, all the while listening intently to the group of...five? six? armed people currently gathered in her apartment.

“Maintain positions. Intel says she should be back within the hour.”

She frowned and took a deep breath, trying not to betray the sudden panic rising in her chest. Thoughts of Lex Luthor—specifically, his knowledge of her secret identity—flashed through her mind. She continued to stare at her lock screen while she focused her hearing on Alex's apartment, J'onn's office, L-Corp...

Nothing nefarious. Alex and Kelly were helping J'onn reorganize his bookshelves, and Lena was working late (again) but otherwise...no heavy boot falls. No hushed whispering of orders to 'maintain positions.'

She breathed a small sigh of relief, and listened back in on her own apartment, to see if she could learn anything more.

They weren't making much noise, and no one else in the building seemed to know they were there. So...professionals, probably. She glanced up from her phone and squinted in the direction of her building—to anyone else on the street, it would look like she was merely staring off into empty space.

X-ray and telescopic vision revealed light body armor—

She blinked. ...Light body armor?

She squinted again. They had weapons, but...they all looked fairly...standard. No power-dampening rods. No kryptonite...nothing that could subdue a Kryptonian.

And then it dawned on her.

She hastily returned her focus to her phone, and actually dialed this time, bringing the device up to her ear.

Alex answered on the second ring.

“Yeah?” Her sister's greeting was short, and it sounded as though Kara had caught her mid-laugh. She could hear J'onn and Kelly chuckling in the background as well.

“Hey. Uh...got a sec?” Kara asked, but she didn't wait to hear Alex's answer as she resumed walking down the street. “I think...I'm about to be kidnapped.”

Alex's laughter tapered off right quick.

“...What?”

“Or, abducted, I guess?” She came to a stop at the intersection, and waited patiently for the 'Walk' signal.  “There's like...six guys in my apartment right now. And I don't think they're there to steal my Ikea furniture.”

“Well...well do you need backup? Should I have J'onn—” Alex started to ask.

“No! No—I don't think...” Kara dropped her voice. “I don't think they know I'm Supergirl.”

There was a beat of silence.

“Oh.” Alex said, sounding a little...underwhelmed? “That's...different.”

“Right?”

“So...they're after...Kara Danvers?”

“I think so—they don't really seem...equipped, to handle a Kryptonian.” Kara couldn't keep the amusement from her voice as she said it—it was something of an understatement, really.

“So you're saying it's going to be a short fight.”

Kara hummed as she approached the entrance of her building.

“I dunno...I'm thinking I might go along with it?” She could hear her sister start to protest. “Think about it, Alex! If I just...knock them out, then we never learn why they were after me in the first place!” She had a few ideas; her “Aliens of National City” series had garnered quite a bit of praise, and even a few awards, but it had also earned her more than a few enemies. There were still plenty of Children of Liberty sympathizers out there, not at all deterred by the fact that the entire movement had been orchestrated by a genocidal psychopath.

“That's why we interrogate them, Kara.”

“I don't think NCPD is going to let us do that, Alex,” Kara reminded her. Alex huffed on the other end of the line.

“So I get the DEO to intervene.”

“And make Haley suspicious all over again? Alex, no.” Kara said it perhaps a bit more firmly than was strictly necessary, but Alex's sigh was understanding, as opposed to annoyed; neither of them wanted wanted to tempt fate, and risk a repeat of the memory wipe. Haley was much more agreeable now, certainly, and they would both just as soon keep it that way. “This is actually...much safer, if you think about it.”

“I am thinking about it, and it's a bad idea, Kara.”

“How is it a bad idea?” Kara demanded, “it's not like they can hurt me! And—look. I'll even put in my comm. They won't be looking for it—that way, we can keep in touch, and! Worst case scenario, you can track me. But there won't even be a worst case scenario,” she argued, already reaching into her coat pocket for the small, DEO-issued earpiece. “Okay, see? Comm is on. And in my ear.”

Alex grunted.

“I don't like this.”

“It will be fine.”

“...Whatever. You hail me on the comm the minute things go south, alright?”

“Things won't go south.”

“Kara.”

“Okay! Okay,” Kara agreed. “I gotta go. I don't see any bugs, but I'd rather play it safe. See! I'm being careful.”

“Honestly? I'm not worried about you not being careful. It's your terrible acting that has me concerned—”

Kara scoffed.

“My acting is great. Just ask Franklin.”

“Ten bucks says they see through it in under a minute.”

“I'm hanging up now.”

“What's—oh, J'onn says thirty seconds, and Kelly—”

“You guys are hilarious. Bye!” Kara hit the 'end call' button before any further snide comments could be made about her acting ability. She silently debated whether she should put her phone in her pocket, or her purse. She didn't really want these guys going through her coat, but then, they'd probably check it regardless.

She climbed the stairs to her apartment, all the while going over the specifics of her entrance. How fast was too fast, in terms of turning the key in the lock? Should she put her purse on the side table before, or after turning on the light? Should she turn the light on at all? Oh, maybe they'd cut the power...that's how it usually went. ...In movies, anyway.

Once she reached her floor, she cast a quick glance at her apartment. Her earlier estimate of six was correct—two huddled in the kitchen, two in the living room, and two in the bedroom. All more or less hiding...well, she was sure they'd all consider it really effective hiding. And it probably was, if they'd been dealing with someone who didn't have x-ray vision.

She dug through her purse for her keys, and dropped them for good measure. They clattered loudly against the concrete flooring in the hall—she complained equally loudly about dropping them.

“Gosh darn it!” she said.

“Get ready,” she heard the nearest abductor command. She smiled to herself, before replacing it with an annoyed frown as she jiggled the keys in the lock.

“Gosh darn keys, gosh darn door,” she muttered, making sure it was under her breath and directed at herself. She couldn't let on that she knew anyone was actually in the apartment.

The door swung open; a rectangle of orange light spilled into the darkened dining area. She set her purse aside, and went to turn on the lights.

The switch clicked on, but the apartment remained dark.

Knew it, she thought, somewhat smugly.

She flicked the switch a few times, and sighed in exasperation.

“I just replaced these bulbs,” she could hear them behind her. She shook her head, and started to turn. “That's what I get for buying off brand—oh, God!” She yelled, loud, but not too loud—she didn't want to endanger any of her neighbors by drawing them with necessary, over-dramatic screams.

Her abductors seemed to have the same idea. The one closest to her surged forward, and clamped a gloved hand on her mouth. A taser dug into her side. It was...uncomfortable, but very clearly calibrated for a human.

“It's not working!”

“What??”

Kara mentally cringed. She'd been so caught up in putting on a convincing performance, she'd forgotten to let the taser ‘knock her out.’

“Well, increase the voltage then!”

“No, no! Not that high, you idiot, we want her ali—”

The second round was definitely stronger. She yelped, and made a show of slumping to her knees, before pitching forward on the floor. A slight buzzing sounded in her right ear.

...Odd... she thought. She was fine, so why—

“Check her pockets. And her pulse,” one of them ordered. She bit back an annoyed huff as one of them pawed at her coat (and her neck, in that order)—just as unpleasant as she'd imagined.

The buzzing was really starting to concern her. What was that?

“Alright, get the zip ties and hood, and let's move out.” Her hands were roughly wrenched behind her, and a coarse, dark hood was thrown over her face. Her glasses were knocked askew, but remained on her nose, if somewhat precariously. That was good.

What was less good, was the realization as to what that buzzing sound was.

The comm.

The taser had been dialed up, and had fried the electronics.

As the mysterious abductors dragged her from her apartment (“Aw, geez, she's...she's really heavy? What is she, all muscle or something?”) all she could think about...was how pissed Alex was going to be.

Pretending to be dead weight was much harder than Kara anticipated.

“Would you quit—you're gonna drop her—!”

“I told you, she's really—”

“Just let me do it—oh. Uh. She is...wow, she is like. Solid.”

“That's what I said!”

“Where does a nationally-recognized journalist find the time to get jacked—”

“Enough. Set her down on the chair already!”

Kara had to fight against the reflexive urge to tense as they maneuvered her into an upright position on a flimsy, but most definitely uncomfortable folding chair. As she slumped forward, straining against the zip ties, she listened for any other clues as to her location.

...Lots of...rushing water? In pipes, it sounds like. That wasn't a problem, necessarily, but the constant sound of water would make it hard to pick up other sounds, if she wasn't actively searching for them.

Still. Not a big deal.

Someone roughly yanked the hood off her head. She was bent forward, so she hoped no one would see as she scrunched her nose, in an attempt to keep her glasses in place. Then again, if anyone noticed, or commented, she could pretend to be coming around. The place certainly smelled like it was somewhere wet—the damp, dank scent of mildew permeated her sinuses. Her reaction was, in a way, almost genuine.

“Should we wake her up?”

“Nah, let the boss handle that.”

Kara listened as the sound of their footsteps over wet concrete gradually faded. She remained bent forward, 'unconscious', and wondered how long she'd have to hold her position. Her muscles wouldn't fatigue and strain, the way a human's might—but it would potentially seem strange to her captors, if this went on for too long. She'd have to...maybe slump in the other direction, or...?

Fortunately, she didn't have to internally deliberate on that topic any further, as a new pair of footsteps drew closer. And closer still, until the new stranger was standing directly in front of her.

Another set of footsteps followed, but whoever that was hung back a bit. Something snapped...like a clasp on a...case?

“Alright, give that to me. We're going to wake her up.”

Or like a clasp on a holster, Kara thought, and started to fidget. She didn't want to have to explain why the gun shattered when they tried to pistol whip her.

“Uh...wha...huh?” she blinked and shook her head. There was that snap sound again—they'd holstered the gun. “Wha...where...?” She looked around and sat up. Slowly, of course. “Oh. Oh God—”

“Now now, Miss Danvers, there's no need to panic.” Kara stared at the woman she had to assume was 'the boss.' Tall, tan, and...was that...was that an eye patch? “You're safe. For now.”

No. Upon closer inspection—Kara threw in some exaggerated wincing and squinting—it looked more like a kind of...metal plate, fitted close to the woman's skin.

“Where am I?” Kara asked. That was...that was a good first question, for this kind of situation, right?

“Still in America,” the woman answered. “I'm afraid I can't be any more specific.”

“How...how do I know...you aren't lying?” Kara countered, adding a slight tremor to her words.

“You don't,” the woman said with a shrug. “But I will say this: I'm not really interested in you, Miss Danvers. So I don't see the point in lying. Much less effort to simply be a bit...vague.”

“They just arrived with the package, Miss Bordeaux,” the woman's associate spoke up. Kara looked over at him for the first time, and was shocked to see just who it was.

“Floyd Lawton?” Kara exclaimed, with genuine surprise.

“Ah. I see you're...familiar, with my friend, here.” The woman—or, Bordeaux, as Floyd had called her—didn't seem too concerned. But Floyd certainly didn't look happy. He scowled at Kara.

“It’s Deadshot,” he snarled.

Kara was going to press for more information, starting with how Floyd—Deadshot—escaped from prison, seemingly unnoticed,  but at that point, a trio of...guards, maybe? arrived with a large metal case.

“I'm going to apologize in advance, Kara. May I call you Kara?”

No. “I don't—”

“You weren't exactly our first choice of hostage. In fact, you weren't even on the list,” Bordeaux explained as she nodded to the guards. One of them lifted the metal case, while the other moved to open it. Kara eyed it with her x-ray vision, and was dismayed to discover that it was lined with lead. That was never a good sign. “Lena Luthor. James Olsen. Your sister. They were on the list. You? You were. A last minute suggestion. Provided by a mutual acquaintance, actually. Snapper Carr.”

Kara, who, up until this very point, had been making sure to appear out of sorts, suddenly found herself sitting bolt upright, her heart hammering in her chest.

“What?”

Bordeaux ignored her question. “You've seen the headlines lately, right? Of course you have; you’re a reporter. ‘Mysterious 'Leviathan' Strikes Again’.”

Kara was still stuck on Snapper. Snapper? What...had they kidnapped Snapper too? Or...or...oh Rao. Was Snapper...working for them?

Whoever this 'them' was?

“I...I've...yes,” Kara said, though in all honesty, it wasn't exactly something on her radar. Neither hers, nor Supergirl's. All the reports seemed to indicate that 'Leviathan' was just...a criminal organization. Like Intergang, minus the stolen alien tech.

Leviathan was on her to-do list, sure.

...But it was. Low on her to-do list.

“I want Leviathan,” Bordeaux said as a guard pulled the lid from the case. Kara nearly groaned out loud as a green glow shined from within. “And Leviathan wants Supergirl. You see where I'm going with this, right?”

Not really. “So, you...?” Kara could feel her stomach start to churn, and that terrible, terrible burn. “You...you want...”

“Snapper said you know the Girl of Steel. That you have some way of contacting her, to get interviews.” The guard withdrew what looked like a fairly standard flak jacket. But situated in the center was a large chunk of—what else!—kryptonite. “But even if you didn't, I'm willing to be she'd bet the first person your network of associates would call in the event of your capture.”

“She...she won't come. She'll...know it's a trap,” Kara argued feebly. She no longer had to pretend to be weak and worried. She was now both.

“...How unfortunate for you,” Bordeaux shrugged as she nodded to the guards. They cut the zip ties from her wrists, and wrangled her into the flak jacket, before cuffing her again.

Kara was frantically going over her options, even as a cold sweat broke out on her forehead. She'd fought through kryptonite poisoning before. She...she could get out of this, but she'd have to wait. Wait until they left her alone.

But...wait. Why... why had she said...’unfortunate?’

The sound of rushing water grew louder.

Kara's shoulders drooped. Oh.

That was why.

“We'll make sure to drain the room once Supergirl arrives,” Bordeaux assured her as water began to bubble up from the grates in the floor. “It was nice meeting you, Kara. Oh! And if you could do me a small favor...”

Kara swallowed audibly as Bordeaux leaned close, and smiled.

“Tell Supergirl...Checkmate.”

With that, Bordeaux and her men left the room, slamming the door shut with a resounding THUD. Kara could both hear and see the metal locks sliding into place.

Not a problem. Not a problem.

She repeated that to herself, over and over, as the water level continued to rise, and as the kryptonite sat heavy and hot on her chest. She'd broken out of chains. Taken a bullet to the shoulder! All while exposed to kryptonite. This...this was nothing!

She experimentally tugged at her restraints. Standard metal cuffs. Okay. Okay! She...she could do this.

She gritted her teeth as she felt the water pool around her ankles. Focus. Focus.

She grunted and pulled her arms apart, as far as her strength would allow.

...Nothing.

She huffed angrily, blowing a stray bit of hair out of her face. The kryptonite continued to make her entire body throb in pain. Rao damn it, she hated this stuff.

Again, she told herself, mustering strength and yanking at the cuffs.

Nothing.

Again!

Nothing.

Again!

*Clink*

Kara grinned. The water was up to her knees, but she felt the metal start to give. She took a deep breath. One more time.

She pulled against the cuffs. The metal piece holding them together snapped. She nearly laughed in relief. She was free!

...Kind of.

She fumbled with the straps on the vest, her movements clumsy and slow, but she eventually managed to tug it off.

She looked around, trying to find a place to throw it. Or...maybe put it back in the lead lined case? Yeah, that would probably be best place for it...

She looked around the small room, which was still rapidly filling with water. It was now above her waist. The guards...they had left the case, right?

She took a deep breath and plunged under the cold water, and forced her eyes open. The water was murky, and the room wasn't exactly well lit...but a quick, cursory glance revealed that...the case was nowhere to be found.

Kara surfaced, and sputtered.

“Great,” she hissed. “Just. Perfect.”

She threw the vest as far away from her as she could manage. It wasn't a large room; it did not go far. She could still feel the rock's effects.

Ignore it. Push it down. Fight through it. She told herself. She needed to find a way out of this room. The door, obviously, seemed like the obvious choice.

But she could hear guards. She squinted at the door. Maybe, if she could time it right, when the hallway was clear...

Her x-ray vision flickered. She saw...maybe two or three guards before that particular power gave out completely.

Okay, so. That option was probably a no. She didn't feel like explaining how Kara Danvers managed to escape from handcuffs and knock down a solid metal door.

She shook her head. If only there was a convenient window to jump out of.

...Or. Maybe. Out wasn't the operative word, but rather, up.

She eyed the ceiling. That...would be messy. But these guys were counting on Supergirl to show up, right? So...a little hole in the ceiling would be easy to explain away. Expected, even.

It would take a lot of her reserves of strength, though. It would kinda be...a 'one shot' situation.

She balled her fists, and made up her mind.

Here we go.

She jumped, rather than flew, hoping to retain just enough strength to remain mostly invulnerable as she tore through the concrete above.

She braced for the hit, but whatever she'd been expecting—Rebar, metal pipes, electrical wires—it was not what slammed into her at full, icy force, sending her tumbling back down in a watery spiral.

As she floundered and winced and struggled to surface, she realized that the 'rushing water' sound had not been coming from pipes.

The facility itself...was completely submerged.

ELSEWHERE, EARLIER

Alex wasn't worried.

Alex wasn't worried, because these past several months had taught her something: she could trust that her loved ones could take care of themselves. She didn't have to...have to constantly concern herself with their safety.

So she wasn't worried.

...Definitely, totally not worried.

“You're worried,” Kelly said, in an accusing tone.

“...Only a little,” Alex countered, and took a sip of wine. J'onn chuckled.

“That's progress,” he said, admiring his newly reorganized bookshelves. “I'm sure Kara's fine, Alex.”

“I know,” Alex said, and when Kelly raised an incredulous eyebrow, she insisted, “I do! I know she's probably fine! Logically. Emotionally, I'm still. Not quite. ...There yet. But I will. Get there. Promise.” Both J'onn and Kelly shared a knowing look, but didn't question Alex's assurance. “...I shouldn't check her comm, right? No. Of course not. Because she’s fine.”

“Check her comm, Alex. If only so you see how ridiculous you're being,” J'onn said as he sat down at his desk. Alex rolled her eyes, and grabbed her phone.

She was in the process of pulling up her secured DEO connection when the screen lit up with an incoming call.

LENA LUTHOR

Alex frowned. Lena?

She hit the green 'answer' button and greeted her friend. “Hi...Lena? What—”

“Someone's using kryptonite,” came the flat, quick reply. Alex blinked, caught entirely off guard.

“What are you—kryptonite? What—”

“Given the nature of...some of my research...I thought it best to install something similar to the DEO's K-radiation detection system—a far more advanced, precise detection system, obviously. And that system picked up trace amounts of K-radiation, within a hundred miles of the coast. So I thought...I should let you know.”

“Oh, that's...okay. Thanks, I...” it took Alex a moment to process the information, especially considering she hadn't really be expecting a call like this. But she found herself less interested in the revelation of k-radiation usage...and far more concerned with Lena's...almost apathetic? tone. “I'll...I'll have the DEO look into it. But, Lena...are you...alright? You sound...weird...”

“I'm fine,” Lena said sharply, “...I have to go.”

The call ended before Alex could say goodbye.

“...That...was definitely weird,” Alex muttered. J'onn leaned forward.

“What are you going to have the DEO look into, Alex?” he asked. Alex shook her head.

“K-radiation. Somewhere off the coast. I...oh, great, I didn't think to ask—” Alex didn't finish her thought; a text message with coordinates popped up on her phone. “...Never mind.”

“K-radiation? Should you warn Kara?” Both Kelly and J'onn were standing.

“...Yeah. Yes. Yes,” Alex told herself she could deal with Lena’s weird behavior later, and focused instead on the current problem. “Here, I'll pull up her comm, and—”

The secured DEO connection was up and running, displaying a list of active communication devices.

Kara's wasn't on it.

“...Oh, you've got to be kidding me,” Alex grumbled. J'onn, who was by now looking over her shoulder at her phone screen, and shook his head.

“Well. I guess you were right to worry.”

SOMEWHERE UNDER WATER, NOW

So. That had gone...badly.

Water was now coming up from below, and spilling in from above.

And there was kryptonite floating around...somewhere. It was too dark to see, and Kara was too busy treading water to look for it. Treading water, and trying to decide the best course of action.

She could just...risk her secret identity, and break down the door...but that wouldn't change the fact that the facility would continue to flood, due to the, ah...leak that she’d caused, AND she'd have to deal with guards. Many, many guards.

The other option was...attempt to swim up and out. Deceptively simple. No guards, no risk of exposing her secret identity...

But it would be swimming. Which meant holding her breath, and working against the crushing force of the incoming water AND the increased pressure that came with being this far below sea level.

She was already at half strength. And while she might have retained some of her invulnerability...Kryptonians still had to breathe, for all of their other impressive, super-human abilities.

So. Door, or swim?

Precious seconds were ticking by. She was already basically out of time, with just inches of space left above water.

Well, the more distance I put between me and the kryptonite, the greater chance I have of...not dying...Kara reasoned, taking one last gulp of air before she was really out of time.

The cold water closed in, and now she could see, at least a bit more clearly, the menacing glow of the kryptonite below.

Which cinched it.

She pushed up against the crushing pressure, kicking as hard as her remaining strength would allow.

This is fine, this is fine...just a quick swim, she told herself, even as she felt the acute crush against her rib cage. And that intense press on her lungs drew her entire focus—she couldn't think about how far underwater she was, or where in the world the facility was located. 'Still in America,' if Bordeaux was to be believed. So. Not international waters.

Doesn't matter...if you can't make it...to the surface...Kara thought desperately. Her muscles ached, and her body was telling her, hey...oxygen would be great.

Could Kryptonians get the bends? No, no—Clark kept a spare Fortress in the Bermuda Triangle...but then. He probably never traveled there during a bout of kryptonite poisoning.

Her vision was starting to go grey at the edges. She kept kicking, kept pushing against water. Her body's polite request for oxygen had become an insistent  demand. Oxygen. NOW.

She paddled, and kicked. The water seemed endless. The grey at the edge of her vision was now pulsing black spots, and there was a troubling pounding behind her eyes.

She didn't know what was more distressing; the threat of imminent, inevitable death, or the fact that Alex had been right about how this plan was going to go—which was to say, south.

She was barely kicking now, and her arms felt heavy—she wasn't moving forward so much as floating. She struggled, willing her body to keep going, just a bit farther...

One final kick. One desperate flail upwards.

Her hand broke the surface.

Adrenaline gave her a spurt of energy to surge upwards. She broke the surface and at last, at last, took a deep, grateful breath of air. And Rao, it felt good.

But.

She didn't have enough strength to keep treading water. She felt herself slipping back under. She clamped her mouth shut, but not before swallowing enough water to make her throat seize.

No, no! Don't...don't open your mouth! She struggled not to gag, and to get back up to the surface. She was so close!

In something of a panic, she reached out, almost like...if she could just get her hand above water, she could...she could grab onto something...!

Which was crazy. 

But, to her complete and utter shock, that was exactly what happened.

“Oh my God, Kara.”

“Hrk—cough—nnnrg. I know.”

“Oh my God, Kara!”

“I know,” Kara repeated, lying flat on her back on land. Glorious land. “Li—cough,cough—sten. Listen. It's not—not like I  could've known they ha—cough. Krypto—cough—nite cough.” She was still in the process of trying to expel salt water from her lungs. “They didn’t--they didn’t even know--that kryptonite would affect me! It was a trap for Supergirl! Cough.”

“This...this is not helping. With the anxiety,” Alex tilted her head back and sighed. Loudly. “It's doing the opposite, Kara. The exact opposite.”

“I can't sense anyone down there,” J'onn interrupted, walking up the beach. He was still in his Martian form, having rescued the floundering Kryptonian about a mile or two out from the shore. “My guess is that they evacuated the facility after you punched a hole in it.”

“So, what. Supergirl was supposed to use the front door?” Kara joked weakly. Alex shot her an unimpressed look. “Alex, come on. This...this was a fluke.”

“A pretty dangerous fluke,” Alex argued.

“Admittedly, yeah,” Kara sat up with an audible groan. “But. I...did learn something. I think,” she said. “Something about that Leviathan group.”

Alex and J'onn looked at her in surprise. “You got information on Leviathan?”

“Not much,” Kara shrugged. “But. I know they're making some pretty powerful enemies...and they're definitely not fans of Supergirl. So I think...this just took top priority, on my to-do list.” She punctuated her point by standing—or, trying to. She needed Alex's assistance.

“You owe me ten bucks,” Alex said, slipping an arm around Kara’s shoulders.

“Uh, no I don't,” Kara said.

“Uh, yeah you do. I said it'd go south. It went south.”

“You said they'd see through my acting.”

“Same thing.”

“No! J'onn, tell her it's not the same thing.”

“I'm not getting involved,” J'onn said, though he did move to Kara's other side as they continued up the beach, helping her walk on the uneven terrain.

“My acting was great.”

“You had kryptonite poisoning.”

“It's called method acting.”

“Are you two...going to bicker the entire way back?” J'onn asked. Alex and Kara glanced at each other, and, in near perfect unison, answered.

“Yes.”

FIN

Notes:

Leviathan and Checkmate are both secret organizations within the DC comics universe. Currently, a new Leviathan is running around in the Super books, potentially unrelated to Talia al Ghul’s Leviathan.

Clark’s new Fortress in the comics is located in the Bermuda Triangle. And! In the New 52, Kara had an underwater Fortress of sorts.

Snapper Carr and Deadshot were, in fact, both members of Checkmate.

I was originally going to use Valentina Vostok as 'the boss' but apparently she's already appeared on Legends of Tomorrow. So we get Sasha Bordeaux instead. (Amanda Waller is technically the 'Queen' of Checkmate, but again. Didn't want to use a character that had appeared elsewhere in the Arrowverse.)

I am aware of the similarities to some stuff that happens in the season 2 episode “Alex” but this fic was more inspired by the kryptonite drowning scene from Superman (the movie).

This fic operates under the assumption that Kelly knows Kara's secret.

All grammar/spelling mistakes are mine.

This makes the second longer-fic in a row where I’ve put poor Kara through the wringer. I will be kinder in the next one. ...Maybe.

[dakotasjournal]

The Shadow

Like I said, this one deals with a really heavy topic, but I felt it needed to be written. Hope you like it -Dakota

   I wake up as an alarm sounds. I reach out and try to shut it off, but my hand falls all the way to the floor. I try again with the same outcome. This time I look as I swing for the clock. My heart stops as my hand goes through the clock. I reach it in front of my eyes and I see my hand, it’s there. But it won’t touch anything. I jump as the clock suddenly stops with a small bang. I look over and see another hand, attached to a different body, in my bed. The person gets up and opens the curtain. I hiss away from the light.

   As I open my eyes again, I notice that all color has faded from my being, blacks and greys replacing what used to be blue and brown. The person leaves the room and as I look around, it is definitely NOT my room. Before I can try to remember anything, I get tugged out of the room. I try to stop myself, but I keep following the girl. I look at her and stop dead still. I still get dragged, only ever being 5 feet from her at most. I look at her and notice that she doesn’t have a shadow. I try to talk to her, I call out to her.

   “Hey, what am I doing here?” no reply, “Hey, can you hear me?” still no reply. I’m pulled behind her into the bathroom. Lucky for me, the space I’m allowed lets me wait outside of the curtain as she showers. Me still being the man I am, I turn as she gets out and dressed. Only when she was done did I see who I’m attached too. Riina Mitchell, the girl from my Spanish class. I never really talked to her before, and now I’m her shadow for who knows how long.

   We walk down to I think her kitchen. She quietly gets a bowl of cereal as I silently observe her. She almost gets to eat it when I see her jump and spill a little on the floor. She starts to cry and frantically tries to clean it up before the footsteps that she jumped at get closer. She gets it done and stands rim rod straight as a man enters the kitchen.

   “Good morning daddy,” she whispers.

   “Did I speak to you?” her father speaks.

   “No sir, I’m sorry,” she whimpers. Her father raises his hand and brings it down right across her face. I jump towards her, wanting to pull her back, stop him as he swings again. But I can’t. She stands and takes his hits, tears streaming down her face.

He finally stops and leaves. She still doesn’t move at all but her shoulders as she cries. She wipes her cheeks as she turns and grabs her bag before we head to the bus.

Sitting in the very back seat, she applies makeup to her reddened cheeks, sitting in silence as we ride to school.

We step off the bus and run into the school, but as we reach the door, we hit the ground. Two girls are blocking the entrance. We stand up and face them, Riina looking at the floor.

“Can I pass?” she asks them. They look to each other and one shrugs.

“Sure, but just for today,” and they let us past.

I follow her all day, learning about her. She hides in the back of the classrooms, never says a word. She’s incredibly smart, but never says anything in class. She eats lunch alone in the park across the street, but that doesn’t stop them.

Her phone buzzes all day long, she never replied until lunch, and now I have a good view of what she’s receiving.

“You ever wonder why you’re still here? Cause I do.”

“You may think we don’t see you, but we do every ugly feature.”

“Just fucking leave already!”

Many more texts like that are filling her inbox. She looks and closes her phone, putting it in her bag. I put my hand on her shoulder, she may not feel it, but I needed to do something other than just sit in the back. We run to her next class, hiding in the back once again.

The whole day goes like this, hiding, reading the messages, hiding once again. And I still can’t do anything about it. I want to help, I want her to know that she’s not alone, but all I can do is hide in the back, watching everything they do to her.

When we get back to her house, it doesn’t end. The messages keep coming, but her father is also on his way home. We stay in her room, listening to music quietly and doing her homework, but when her father's truck pulls into the driveway, she puts everything away and we run down the stairs to the kitchen again. She starts to wash dishes, her father stomping in soon after she began.

She flinches as the door slams. Then her father’s voice booms across the house.

“How was school?”

“It was ok sir, I got an A- on a test,” she replies as she keeps washing. Her father waltzing into the room and right behind Riina.

“Why was it so low?” he questions.

“It was in math class, I’m not very good at algebra sir,” she explains. A hand comes in contact with the back of her head.

“That’s what I get for having a kid with a cheerleader, no brains,” he mumbles as he leaves, “Glad I left that idiot.”

“Do not talk about mom that way!” she shouts, abandoning the dishes. Her father turns and faces her, hands finding their way to his hips.

“What did you say?” he snarls.

“Don’t. Talk. about. My. Mother. That. Way,” she repeats, copying his stance. He clenches his fists and strides across the room and hits her across her face again that day. He punches her right on her eye before he finishes.

“Get out of here, I don’t need to be reminded of my mistakes,” he glares. We retreat to her room, shutting the door softly behind us. She grabs her phone and reads more of the messages. Man do I wish I could hug her right now. She walks over to her closet and grabs out a few pages of letters, setting them on her bed before we run to the bathroom and grab some pills from her father’s prescription.

“NO, Riina don’t do this!” I scream at her, I try to stop moving once again. She stomps back to her room, dragging me with her. She locks the door behind us, striding to her bed. She lays all the letters out, puts them in a specific order, then grabs the pills.

“NO Riina, please! Don’t do this!” I scream, praying she’ll hear me. I try getting her to feel me as I touch her hands, then her bruised face, still nothing. I start to cry, but I don’t give up on trying to stop her.

She goes to her window and looks outside, throwing the pills into her mouth and swallowing them down.

“NOOO!” I scream as she falls and everything fades away.

~~~~~~~~~~

I shoot up from my bed, tears soaking my face and pillow. I jump out of bed and run to my truck. I have to get to Riina’s house.

I pull into her driveway and run into her house. Her father tries to block me from entering.

“You can’t come in here boy.”

“You shouldn’t hit your daughter, now let me in!” I scream at him as I push past. I take her steps two at a time, running to her locked bedroom door.

“No, nononono, C'mon, open, openopenopen,” I mumble as I jiggle the door handle. No success so I try to start kicking it in. Lucky for me it was a cheap door and broke after a few hard hits. Running in I stop dead. I fall to my knees and cry. I see a familiar lump on the floor. A pile of the small girl and grey sweatshirt lays by the window, bruised on her face.

Her father reaches the room and sees everything. He walks over to Riina slowly, getting down by her body. He reaches out to touch her, but retracts his hand, tears stinging his dry eyes.

~~~~~~~~~~

I return to school, red-eyed and quiet. Everyone else is acting as nothing happened, all just going about their day. I don’t speak to anyone, ignore my friends and teachers, don’t talk to my counselor either. I can’t believe that people aren’t gonna realize they drove a girl to kill herself, they act like they never knew her, or were her best friends.

I go to sleep that night with an idea. I’ll do all I can to make sure no one else ends up like Riina.

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s been two weeks since I started the Riina Movement, and I actually have a lot of support from students. So far it seems like everyone in the school is being kinder to others. Just what I wanted.

~~~~~~~~~~

I wake up in another unknown room. I know what’s gonna happen now. After I’ve gone through this a few times, I know how it ends. This person was gonna kill themselves, and I can’t stop them.

I return to my own body, tired, sad, depressed. I can’t take this duty that was given to me. It’s too hard for one person. I can’t take seeing person after person take their lives before they get a chance to live them. I can’t take knowing people do this to people, drive them to think this is the final answer. What has humanity come too?

~~~~~~~~~~

I wake up in my room this morning, but not as myself. I’m a passenger today to my own self. Only a viewer. At least until tonight, when that .45 starts to look real friendly. This is what the world has become.

[notadog]

@demisexualhale sorry you had a rough time today. have this au that i saw you talking about after i creeped on your blog. it’s... uh. probably not what anyone involved thought it would be. but i hope you like it? 

anyway. 

sterek. 2k. spy au. warnings: i know nothing about spies, secret criminal organizations, or technology in general. just roll with it.

“I’ll pay you twenty bucks to hum the Mission Impossible theme while I do this,” Stiles muttered, fishing an exacto knife out of his tool belt. He fit it under the very edge of the ID scanner and, with a flick of his wrist, popped it off like a dream.

“You could pay me twenty thousand and I still wouldn’t do it.”

“Spoilsport.” Gently pulling all the wires out into the open was the easy part; it was identifying the right one to snip that was going to be the tricky part. Would it kill all organized crime syndicates to stick to one universal standard?

“Try the yellow wire. Third from the left.”

“Try?” Stiles repeated under his breath. “We’ve been planning this job for weeks and you want me to go in with ‘try’?”

He could practically hear the eye roll on the other end of the earbud. “Cut the wire, agent.”

“Manners,” Stiles snarked, guiding the exacto to the wire in question. It slid through with a gentle snick and the red light on the ID reader went out.

“You’re welcome.”

Stiles gently fit the card reader back into the wall and got to work prying open the door. “I don’t recall saying thank you,” he grunted, heaving the heavy metal back inch by inch.

“I’m sure it was implied.”

“I might be inclined if you—” Another grunt as he wedged his shoulder in the space he’d made, trying to use it to get some leverage against the protesting metal. “—helped me with this door.” Not for the first time Stiles lamented the fact that he was chosen for the field, instead of the literal werewolf. Instead, he was embarrassing himself and his very human muscles while Derek got his nerd on from the comfort of the unmarked van parked a few streets away. Life just wasn’t fair.

Stiles gave one last shove, and the door gave way with an angry screech that he was pretty sure was audible in China.

“Derek?” he hissed.

“Hold on.” Polite as always, his partner.

Stiles waited, every muscle in his body coiled tight and ready to spring. Whether that meant to fight or flee was yet to be determined. At least three times he imagined some noise that would precede his discovery, but he forced down the instinct to panic with a violent mental shove. The government hadn’t spent billions of dollars in training his ass to trust his partner with his life for nothing.

After an excruciating eternity, Derek’s voice filtered in through the earpiece. “You’re clear. Not for lack of effort.”

Stiles couldn’t help grinning. “You say the sweetest things.” False confidence was easy again now that his heart wasn’t jammed halfway up his throat. He rummaged through his toolkit for one of his most versatile gadgets: a retractable rod made of a polymer material developed by Derek himself. It was three hundred times stronger than steel but lighter than any other material of its kind on (or off) the market. It was a beautiful piece of some of the most sophisticated technology to come out of R&D, and it gave Stiles a thrill of childish joy to jam it inelegantly between door and wall to keep his escape route free.

“Speaking of which…” Derek’s voice was that special brand of pained that signaled to Stiles that his trick had hit its mark. “Let’s try to keep to aliases while we’re on the comms, all right?”

Stiles winced. He had called out Derek’s real name in a moment of panic, hadn’t he? “It’s not my fault you rejected my code name suggestions.”

The sound quality was considerably different behind the door than in the hallway. Though he couldn’t see into the space, it swallowed up Stiles’ voice in a way that suggested space… a lot of it. Stiles fumbled for the flashlight at his belt and stepped cautiously inside.

“You’re not calling me Eagle Two.”

“Well I’m not giving you Eagle One, dude. I called dibs.” He clicked on the flashlight and did a slow sweep of the room. Well. Cavern was probably a better word for it. It was big enough to swallow the weak beam of his government-issued flashlight, leaving the ceiling and far walls shrouded in shadows. “Are you seeing this?”

Derek hummed, but gave no further comment.

“Gotta admire their style, though,” Stiles continued conversationally. The whole affair was an ode to vaulted ceilings broken up by stone columns and sloping walls covered in expensive-looking tile. Whoever built it certainly had a flair for the dramatic. To his left was a small bank monitors hooked up to a lowly humming box. Stiles made his way over to it. “I mean, you gotta respect the whole batcave vibe.”

Derek snorted. It was a shock, completely at odds with his usual implacable stiffness. In his entire time working with him, Stiles had never once seen the man so much as crack a smile. And here he was, almost laughing in Stiles’ ear. “It’s an evil lair, agent. Much more Luthor’s speed than Wayne’s.”

Stiles considered the space again. It did bear an uncomfortably close resemblance to Lex Luthor’s underground lair in Superman. Much more so than any adaptation of the Batcave. Point to Derek. “I didn’t know you were a fan of the classics.”

“I’m multifaceted.”  

How someone can sound so unbearably smug with only two words, Stiles would never know. “Nerd.”

“Center console. There should be a panel under the monitors.”Definitely smug.

Stiles fumbled around until he found a hidden switch. A previously unseen panel slid forward, revealing three USB slots. Stiles thumbed open the smallest pocket in his tool belt that housed the USB sticks Derek gave him specifically for this point in the job. Just to be sure, he asked, “This the one?”

“Mhm,” Derek confirmed. “You know which one’s first?”

Stiles rolled his eyes. Even if Derek hadn’t labeled them 1 and 2 in obnoxious silver sharpie, the four consecutive run-throughs Derek had forced him to listen to before letting him out of the van would have been enough to hammer the point home.

“Yes, dad,” he muttered, fishing out the first stick. “Just let me know when I need to switch them out.”

“You’ll know,” Derek replied cryptically, which didn’t inspire a whole lot of confidence, but Stiles would be damned if he admitted that out loud.

Stiles watched in interest as the script contained within the flash drive did its thing. It was another of Derek’s projects, something he’d been developing for months with the rest of his little nerd squad back at headquarters. Derek had explained a little of it back in the van. If pressed by a superior, Stiles could explain that the code was meant to create a channel between this server and one controlled by their agency, one that Derek’s team could use to read through and copy every file stored on this server. Anything else had gone over Stiles’ head.

Stiles’ skills were more hands-on and intuition based. Identifying suspicious characters? Convincing them to divulge all of their deepest secrets to him? Finding the fastest way out of any resulting shootouts or capture attempts? That was where he shined the brightest. Developing extremely complicated code to infiltrate evil corporations’ systems, do… stuff while inside them, then exit without a trace? That was Derek’s thing. Stiles was just the sneaky middleman needed to insert peg A into slot B.

The screens flickered constantly between different windows. Lines of code would appear and disappear again too fast for him to read, but based on Derek’s intermittent hums of approval in his ear, Stiles guessed they were doing their job. As the script worked, he kept an ear out for any sign of discovery.

They passed the time together in silence, both of them tense at the thought of the most important part of their mission falling through at the last second. It left Stiles alone with his senses, feeling wrong-footed for the first time since infiltrating the compound earlier in the evening. After a too-long stretch of time, activity on the screens slowed down, then stopped. All the screens were black except for one, which held a single line of green text and a blinking cursor. Stiles leaned forward to read it. When he did, he made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat.

Insert 2nd USB stick, agent. (It has the number 2 on it.)

“Told you you’ll know,” Derek’s voice was a gentle tease in his ear.

“You were so cryptic about it,” Stiles muttered, complying. “I thought it was gonna be something cool.”

“Computers are cool,” Derek replied, then lapsed back into silence.

The second stick took much less time than the first, or maybe it was just the end in sight that made it seem like it was going faster than it actually was. Whichever was true, it felt like no time until a single green line of text was displaying Installation Complete before all the screens went blank.

Derek’s voice was like silk. “Don’t forget to take the USBs with you.”

Stiles rolled his eyes. “Thanks,” he snarked, tucking the USBs back into their pocket and securing it. “What would I do without you?”

“You would be dead seven times over if it weren’t for me.” 

“Fair,” Stiles conceded. It was gratifying to return the door and find it hadn’t budged an inch since he’d left it. It was rare in Stiles’ line of work that the things he set down stuck around and waited patiently for him to collect them. Granted, at this point in his career most of the “things” Stiles set aside for later were informants and enemies of the government, so a little bit of disobedience was probably to be expected. But whatever. Details.

Easing the door closed was trickier than forcing it open, Stiles soon realized. Not only was he worried about loudly protesting metal, he wasn’t sure how he was going to stop the whole thing from slamming closed the second he pulled out Derek’s rod.

Heh.

As always, Derek chimed in with the solution at Stiles’ precise moment of need.

“Retract it gradually,” Derek commanded, and Stiles complied. “Good. Now fold your jacket in half and stick it in so it doesn’t slam… Good. Now just pull the jacket out.”

Under Derek’s direction, Stiles eased the nightmare door closed. The jacket muffled the metal-on-metal impact, and when he yanked it out, the door settled back into place with hardly a complaint. Stiles made a mental note to make the whole experience sound a lot cooler in his retelling the next day.

“You’re welcome,” Derek whispered in his ear, voice dripping with self-satisfaction.

“I don’t recall saying thank you,” Stiles replied as he popped the card reader out of the wall again, grinning at the echo of their conversation from earlier. There was a prolonged pause as he bit off a length of electrical tape and carefully brought the snipped ends of the yellow wire together.

“It was implied.”

“Whatever you say, big guy.”

Stiles secured both raw edges of the wire with the tape, then confirmed that the ID reader was once again operational. He carefully tucked the bundle of wires back into their space in the wall, then returned the box to its home for the last time, good as new.

“Ready to get me out of here?”

“Always,” was the curt reply, sounding almost fond to Stiles’ delusional ears. “You’re alone on your floor, but there are two guards stationed outside the elevators to the west, same as when you came in. Your best bet is to go south to avoid them, then take the service stair up to ground level.”

“Got it,” Stiles said, already moving towards his exit. “See you soon, dude.”

“You better.”

Stiles made good on his promise, and was rewarded with a nod of acknowledgement from Derek when he threw open the van door. It was the closest Stiles had ever come to getting an honest-to-god smile from the guy, and it made something warm and gentle unfurl in his chest.

He couldn’t stop grinning the entire drive back to headquarters.

[sdegliarchangeli]

Reinforcing and Perpetuating Our (Epi)Genetic Colonial Inheritance

I suddenly found myself once again contemplating something that has crossed my mind ever so often over the past few months: corporal punishment amongst Afro-Caribbean peoples and other peoples of African descent, within the context of post-colonial culture.  I spend quite a bit of my time deliberately trying to stay in tune with, and connected to, my thoughts, feelings and actions.  I am constantly trying to undo so much of the false and traumatic programming with which I have been bombarded since birth.  Needless to say, it is a task that often seems unending. I know someone who loves to hear others say how "obedient" or "good" — among other adjectives — his children are; he enjoys it to the point of practically singing his own praises on the marvellous job he believes he has done with them.  I have met the majority of his children, and I can say that they are definitely obedient and "good", at least in the way that our society ascribes meaning to those words when it comes to children and youth.  He will proudly proclaim that he is a Christian and wholly believes in biblical scripture, which includes Proverbs 13:24: "He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes."  This is the word of the Lord, as is often said after a passage from the holy book is read aloud; but is it, really? When we reflect on the ways in which both Christianity and violence were horrifically used against enslaved Africans, how do we reconcile this reality and the adherence to such words in the rearing of our children, or in a scholastic environment?  How do we, in good conscience, personally administer, or allow the administration of such violence on the bodies of our beloved children by complete strangers?  When did it become perfectly all right to ignore our own historical abuses, but even worse, inflict that same abuse on our children?  Do religion, misguided cultural and social norms and mores, or some absurd and warped nationalist identity, justify such cruelty? A lot of people say, "Well, my mother — or grandmother — used to beat me when I gave trouble, and look at me!  I turned out just fine!"  What I inevitably often wonder is: How do you know that you are just fine?  Do you mean to tell me that all of that violence inflicted upon your person during your formative years, in service to some notion of "obedience" or "goodness", did not traumatise you in any way, or leave psychological scars of which you may not even be aware, or which may have resulted in a lesser version of you? Consider this for a moment: whenever someone has been through a crucible, survived some horrendous abuse or trauma on just one occasion, they are forever changed, sometimes in ways that not even they or their loved ones can fully comprehend.  Now consider how repeated trauma and abuse during a person's formative years and over a period of time could then affect a person.  With each trauma, a piece of the person is eroded or buried.  So, are many of us, who are products of these particular cultures walking around as fragmented versions of ourselves, and not even realising it? Here is another gem, that another friend of mine recently posted as a conversation piece: Deuteronomy 21:18-21: 

"18 If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and [that], when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them:

19 Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place;

20 And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son [is] stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; [he is] a glutton, and a drunkard.

21 And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear."

I believe that one speaks for itself.  However, some will hasten to say that the Old Testament is passeth away, and we are saved by grace and the New Testament is the new and current covenant, etc.  Okay.  Then, if the New Testament is what adherents of Christianity ought to believe and utilise, why do people still quote from the Old Testament in their efforts to justify all sorts of cruel and inhumane practices.  Would a true, modern theocracy in the Caribbean, for example, permit, or even force, persons to allow others to murder their children without impunity?  Would we gladly swallow and enforce such barbarism without so much as a murmur?  Would our potential murmurs be proscribed and treated as "Hate Speech" or "Blasphemy" or "High Treason"?  I don't know.  Or, would such a system of government rely solely on the New Testament for its laws?  Then again, Exodus is from the Old Testament, so would the "Ten Commandments" no longer be applicable?

I'll be the first to say that I am no theologian, but there are so many proven contradictions, mistranslations — both from a linguistic and socio-cultural perspective — that it is, admittedly, rather hard to keep track.

Here's another delightful contradiction, of which I think many people are just blissfully unaware, or which they just deliberately ignore: The people of Israel, of that time, were described in the Bible as basically being dark of skin.  So... how do we reconcile the information provided in the Bible with most contemporary depictions of The Christ?  Moreover, do the descriptions of his great trials and tribulations provide further historical evidence of humanity's profound hatred for Black bodies?  I mean, if they could do Jesus like that, then damn!  What hope could the rest of us have?  Did those who sought to enslave our African ancestors accept that Jesus was, indeed, Black; and so used that narrative to support what they were doing to the Africans?  I will readily admit that Black people at some points in history also did own slaves, as did Jews, and Arabs, and the list goes on into perpetuity.  I will also readily acknowledge that Black people during the Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans, often participated in the capture and trade of their own people, because someone will want to bring up those facts, but they do not negate the rest.  Last, here's a question that might ruffle some feathers: why would God send his son, which was basically himself physically manifested on the Earthly plane, in the form of a Black male, only to be tortured and abused in such a manner?  Why that form in particular, and what might that tell us about God Him/Her/Itself?

Tangent aside, I want to bring the focus back to my original concern, which is the infliction of violence upon our children.  When I taught at a K-6 Preparatory School last year, some of the children who had been labelled problematic, ended up being some of my favourite children.  Why is that?  Perhaps, because I saw it as a welcome challenge to try to reach those that other teachers had already designated as unreachable; or perhaps, because I was once also labelled a "problem child", despite much evidence to the contrary, I could see in them what many were unable, or simply unwilling, to see in me.  This is not to say that there aren't children with real mental health issues, who often require specialised assistance with their specific psychological or behavioural challenges; but this is not the case for all children.

In a matter of weeks, I had managed to earn the trust and respect of those very same "problem children", without having to utilise corporal punishment.  Of course, it was not always an easy road, but in the end it was worth it, because I had managed to reach them without the use of physical or psychological abuse.  I was very proud of what I had accomplished with them in the short time that I was privileged to be their teacher.  The love and support of the students was well worth the effort, and I would like to believe that I managed to leave with them some tools that might help them to participate in the dismantling of certain parts of a system that does not, and should not, work for us.

A most essential component in dealing with those labelled as problematic, in my experience, is to identify the root of the behaviour, particularly within the context of how the young person identifies or views him/herself — do forgive the binary description.  If one can do that, and address the young person with a real willingness to listen, and with empathy and compassion, I have found that one can truly provide the sort of assistance, and where necessary, discipline, that the young person may need.  If we cannot divorce our egos from those situations, we might as well deploy the belt or whatever else is on hand, but use it on ourselves, instead; for we would have failed in our duty to aid a young person in need, and by extension, in the development of a kinder, more empathetic and overall emotionally intelligent human race.

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6 Greatest Commercial Real Estate Prospecting Errors in 2017

This post originally appeared on tBL Marketplace Partner member  The Massimo Group Blog and is republished with permission. Find out how to syndicate your content with theBrokerList.

How many solicitations did you receive in 2017? 100 – 1,000 – 10,000? Today we are bombarded with hundreds of offers each day. From LinkedIn ads, Facebook ads, Twitter, email blasts, television and yes – proposals and telephone calls – we are always given opportunities to say yes, to click, to download.

As the president of the Massimo Group, I (not only) receive daily calls asking for my business, but I also purposefully listen to prospect calls throughout the day. Either I am working on our pitch with our sales team, or I am listening to recordings of our clients prospecting during role playing with our coaches.

Furthermore, every month we hold a “Round Table with Rod”. This is a member only (meaning our coaching clients only) video conference call to role play prospecting; we role play voicemail messages, opening statements, and prospect conversations. As you can see, I hear a lot of prospect calls.

As we move into 2018 I thought I would share with you the 6 greatest prospecting errors I have heard this year. And by the way – they haven’t changed in the (almost) 10 years I have been running the Massimo Group.

As a coaching company, we must establish a benchmark on how our members are prospecting initially, so that we can address and revise in order to significantly increase their conversion rates from calls to meetings. The errors listed are those we most commonly hear when we first start working with our commercial real estate clients. Note: these are universally demonstrated regardless of level of experience or success.

Here are the 6 Greatest Commercial Real Estate Prospecting Errors in 2017:

1. The Selfie – The voicemail, the opening statement, and even the ensuing conversation (if they get that far) is all about the caller, not the receiver. “I am calling about XYZ building, would you like to sell”, “The purpose of my call is to meet with you and show you how we can market/lease/list/manage your property”. Do yourself and your prospects (and us all) a favor – just STOP. Prospects don’t care about what you want, they only care about what they want.

2. The Diatribe – Opening statements should be strong and on point, but they can’t be long-winded speeches without giving your prospect any chance for input. This is a dead giveaway that you are making mass calls and not going to address a specific issue for that particular prospect.

3. The Script – No, no and no! Need I say more?

4. The Vague Voicemail – “Hi this is Joe, please give me a call”. Although I have heard of some limited success, this is no way to prospect – there is no value exchanged.

5. The No Call – Convince yourself you are making calls, even though you are not leaving voicemails. Some even track these as “calls attempted”. These are not attempts. No voice mail message, no credit.

6. The Wimpy Close – The objective of almost every prospect call is to secure a meeting. That means you must ASK for the meeting. So, ask yourself after every call– “did I intentionally and specifically ask for a meeting?”

Here’s to you not making any of these crucial errors in your future prospecting efforts!

I will be presenting a free webinar, TODAY Thursday December 14th at 1:00 pm EST. This webinar, “18 Strategies to Maximizing Commissions in 2018”, will be repeated each Thursday through January 11th – to register click here.

RSS Feed provided by theBrokerList Blog - Are you on theBrokerList for commercial real estate (cre)? and 6 Greatest Commercial Real Estate Prospecting Errors in 2017 was written by Rod Santomassimo.

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Hyperallergic: Why Googling “Miami Inmates” in South Florida Leads to Their Poetry

View-Through Bulletin North Miami, Florida (photo by Gesi Schilling)

MIAMI — This article was written with students from three prisons in Miami-Dade county who are enrolled in writing classes offered by the nonprofit Exchange for Change. The text in italics was written by the students, including Alden Stephenson, Richardson Francois, Scott Hartman, Big Puppy, Allen L. Dorsey, Sr., Luis Aracena, Jeffrey S. Worley, Luis Hernandez, G the Seer, Brenda “Stormy” Dixon, Corey Jermain Still, John Barrett, Thant Lallamont, Paul Harris, The Fenix, Austin “Ice” Patrick, Radge Zap, Edwards A. Thomas, Brian Rudolph, Steve Wonder, Willie Collins, Jason Jewett, Zerrick Dixon, Rod, Ronald Barnett, among others. Individuals usually called “inmates” or “prisoners” are generally referred to in this essay as “residents,” “individuals,” or “students.”

*   *   *

I am determined to get out and do positive things.

I have four kids and a loving wife I adore.

I am a human being!

Thanks to organizations such as the Prison Policy Initiative and the Brennan Center for Justice, the inequities of the United State criminal justice system are widely broadcast. You’ve seen the statistics: we house 5% of the world population but 25% of the world prison population (the numbers are closer to 4.4% and 22% — which you can check with a quick Google search).

People need to know what a waste this prison system is to society.

Yet there is one group whose voice is conspicuously absent from the conversation: the people currently serving prison sentences. Without them, our understanding of the criminal justice system is incomplete.

Not many are asking why it’s important that my voice be heard.

This April, the literary arts organization O, Miami, the prison-writing nonprofit Exchange for Change, and artist Julia Weist are using the internet to amplify the voices of 110 individuals in correctional institutions in Miami, so that when South Florida residents Google the term “Miami inmate,” they can find content produced by the inmates themselves — poetry, for example.

If I am not heard . . . I don’t exist. 

All of the poets are students enrolled in writing courses at Exchange for Change, founded by writer Kathie Klarreich, and supported in part by O, Miami, which hosts a poetry festival each April that aims to bring a poem to every person in Miami — residents of correctional institutions included.

There are education and therapy aspects as well as the chance to say, “I am still human.” I’m still a fat kid inside, and it’s right up there with cake. Been in a lot of programs in these 30-plus years. They have helped me find a deeper meaning to my worth, in and out of these fences.

The project, called View-Through, aims to highlight and subvert the way prison populations are systematically isolated and effectively silenced by various institutional policies. For instance, with the exception of a few law clerks or residents in work release centers, the Florida Department of Corrections denies incarcerated individuals access to the Internet and email, regardless of their status or the length of their sentence.

We are more isolated in this time of universal interconnectedness than we were 20 years ago. People don’t write letters anymore. We prisoners need access to our families by way of media they actually use and are familiar with.

In prisons across the country, communication companies exploit incarcerated people and their families for profit. Almost immediately upon taking office this year, the Republican administration removed the cap on how much telephone companies can charge incarcerated individuals.

Learn of the truths about our judicial system. The injustice of it, the cruelness of it, the draconian element of it.

View-Through is a community operation. Since March, thousands of participants (mostly from South Florida, although searches have been performed from five continents) have been strategically searching the internet for six specific poems written by Exchange for Change students in Miami-Dade County prisons.

This is being taken seriously.

The massive search activity has created search trends, effectively publishing the poems within the autocompletes and suggestions of Google search engines. Each poem begins with a term that is used to refer to prison residents, like “Miami inmate.”

As for me, and most others, the chance of actually having a voice is great. Especially when a voice is something you don’t have.

I hope that I’m heard and felt.

Google search autocomplete (image courtesy Julia Weist)

Finally, by including search engine-optimized content with partner websites, View-Through also ensures that the Google searches lead to links relevant to the project, such as webpages with additional poetry by incarcerated individuals, well-informed articles about the prison crisis, and websites like Ladies Empowerment and Action Program, Emerge Miami, and Community Justice Project.

Communication and reasoning are what separate us from other animals. Best to listen to and read from the entire population.

Publishing the poems this way has several advantages. It has reach: the people searching for “Miami inmate” probably won’t be looking for poetry. It also happens fast: searchers won’t even have to click a link to see the poems pop up in auto-complete and in the suggested searches.

To make everyone a little more humane.

This manipulation also exposes the infrastructure and bias beneath the search platform. Although there’s a sheen of objectivity to a Google search, results are different depending on factors like your past searches, or recent searches in your geographical location. 

I am not just my mistakes. I am also my victories and good deeds.

Suggested searches on Google (image courtesy Julia Weist)

Along with the search result content most readily accessible, the language suggested by search platforms can either encourage or challenge assumptions and bias. When 90% of searchers don’t go past the first page of links, they’re not getting the full story.

Some of us are as bright, witty, and caring as those who are free.

More and more, we see that meaning is made, confirmed, or challenged online. Subtle interventions, like the ones performed by View-Through, show that a few thousand voices are enough to change the narrative.

Pretty liberating to know that my perspective will be made known and shared with others. We aren’t allowed many freedoms here, as I’m sure you know. So to tell my story — more than anything to have it heard — is pretty cool.

These shifts are taking place constantly on the internet, and sometimes we can’t measure them until they’ve passed. “View-through” is the technical term for when an internet user sees, but does not click an ad, but then searches for it later. (If the user clicks the ad, that’s called a “click-through.”) The view-through rate cannot be calculated when the impression is first made on a user, only after the fact, when they act on it.

Being that I’ve never been a part of something like this, it’s like, damn, I need to make this good.

The concept of “view-through” reminds me of Rebecca Solnit’s mushroom metaphor for activism in Hope in the Dark: there’s a network growing underground, and then, as if out of nowhere, the fruiting body pops up. It’s impossible to say when or where or how it originated. It came from everywhere.

I hope this helps people incarcerated.

This is also, subtly, how poetry works. It’s not a call to action. It, in the words of W.H. Auden, “makes nothing happen.” Instead, the repeated act of reading poetry, the practice of critical and creative thought, works slowly on a person. Then one day, perhaps, there’s a shift.

We share a different style and have many important things to say. We contribute a unique perspective.

One of the main goals of View-Through is to facilitate ways for those on the outside to empathize with those on the inside. Instead of arguing for empathy, poetry provides a specific, firsthand expression of what it is like to be imprisoned.

Who I am as a person, my personality.

There is no believing or not believing a poem. It is simply there, a direct line. At a time when facts seem more pliable than ever, poetry, which does not deal in fact, remains constant.

This is different because it gives me an individual voice whereas other projects gave me a group or a collective voice.

Currently, over 6 million Americans are denied the right to vote because of criminal disenfranchisement laws. More than 4.7 million of these citizens have left prison and are in their communities — working, raising families, and paying taxes — and yet cannot vote. People of color bear the brunt: over 1 in 13 black citizens of the United States are disenfranchised.

(image courtesy) (click to enlarge)

After 15 years, I’ll be “free.” I would like to be welcome in freedom. It concerns me very much I won’t be welcome. The thought of having the stigma of imprisonment after imprisonment is terrifying, depressing, hard to bear.

Coupled with gerrymandering, mass incarceration is the single greatest obstruction to democracy. Real democracy will have a chance only when the people with full rights mobilize on behalf of the people who have had theirs taken away.

Other projects, and there aren’t many, don’t engage with the free world. This is the primary difference. Prisoners often ask each other their opinion, but the free world never asks us anything.

When we think of and treat incarcerated or formerly incarcerated people as merely criminals, we limit the infinite positive ways they can exist, or influence our society for the better, the way all human beings can.

Prisoners have a high degree of aptitude and their suffering and pain actually translate to the highest form of poetry.

I am a caring, giving person, one who likes taking care of people. Being a caregiver comes naturally, I took care of my sick mother for eight years before her passing.

I still can do positive things.

The artist collaborating on View-Through, Julia Weist, created a similar project in 2015, in which the obscure word “parbunkells” was printed on a billboard in Queens, and Weist tracked the Google searches for the word. “Parbunkells” became a sort of obsession: no one knew why it was there or what it was. People made memes. They created websites. They made art and sold it online. 

To find an exit for their loneliness.

To get these crazy ideas in ink.

Weist hopes that View-Through can create a similar effect.

There is a lot of talent in here.

The power of any art project is not just in the art itself.

I am part of a movement.

It’s also in the wave that comes after.

  View-Through is part of O, Miami Festival, which continues through April 30. 

The post Why Googling “Miami Inmates” in South Florida Leads to Their Poetry appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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[cleancutpage]

6 Greatest Commercial Real Estate Prospecting Errors in 2017

This post originally appeared on tBL Marketplace Partner member  The Massimo Group Blog and is republished with permission. Find out how to syndicate your content with theBrokerList.

How many solicitations did you receive in 2017? 100 – 1,000 – 10,000? Today we are bombarded with hundreds of offers each day. From LinkedIn ads, Facebook ads, Twitter, email blasts, television and yes – proposals and telephone calls – we are always given opportunities to say yes, to click, to download.

As the president of the Massimo Group, I (not only) receive daily calls asking for my business, but I also purposefully listen to prospect calls throughout the day. Either I am working on our pitch with our sales team, or I am listening to recordings of our clients prospecting during role playing with our coaches.

Furthermore, every month we hold a “Round Table with Rod”. This is a member only (meaning our coaching clients only) video conference call to role play prospecting; we role play voicemail messages, opening statements, and prospect conversations. As you can see, I hear a lot of prospect calls.

As we move into 2018 I thought I would share with you the 6 greatest prospecting errors I have heard this year. And by the way – they haven’t changed in the (almost) 10 years I have been running the Massimo Group.

As a coaching company, we must establish a benchmark on how our members are prospecting initially, so that we can address and revise in order to significantly increase their conversion rates from calls to meetings. The errors listed are those we most commonly hear when we first start working with our commercial real estate clients. Note: these are universally demonstrated regardless of level of experience or success.

Here are the 6 Greatest Commercial Real Estate Prospecting Errors in 2017:

1. The Selfie – The voicemail, the opening statement, and even the ensuing conversation (if they get that far) is all about the caller, not the receiver. “I am calling about XYZ building, would you like to sell”, “The purpose of my call is to meet with you and show you how we can market/lease/list/manage your property”. Do yourself and your prospects (and us all) a favor – just STOP. Prospects don’t care about what you want, they only care about what they want.

2. The Diatribe – Opening statements should be strong and on point, but they can’t be long-winded speeches without giving your prospect any chance for input. This is a dead giveaway that you are making mass calls and not going to address a specific issue for that particular prospect.

3. The Script – No, no and no! Need I say more?

4. The Vague Voicemail – “Hi this is Joe, please give me a call”. Although I have heard of some limited success, this is no way to prospect – there is no value exchanged.

5. The No Call – Convince yourself you are making calls, even though you are not leaving voicemails. Some even track these as “calls attempted”. These are not attempts. No voice mail message, no credit.

6. The Wimpy Close – The objective of almost every prospect call is to secure a meeting. That means you must ASK for the meeting. So, ask yourself after every call– “did I intentionally and specifically ask for a meeting?”

Here’s to you not making any of these crucial errors in your future prospecting efforts!

I will be presenting a free webinar, TODAY Thursday December 14th at 1:00 pm EST. This webinar, “18 Strategies to Maximizing Commissions in 2018”, will be repeated each Thursday through January 11th – to register click here.

RSS Feed provided by theBrokerList Blog - Are you on theBrokerList for commercial real estate (cre)? and 6 Greatest Commercial Real Estate Prospecting Errors in 2017 was written by Rod Santomassimo.

6 Greatest Commercial Real Estate Prospecting Errors in 2017 published first on http://ift.tt/2hkHhkP