#i understand his underlying numbers now look fucking weird!! but he was effective!!

[airyairyaucontraire]

there's such a weird, dumb reset-button vibe to a lot of what's been going on in The Mandalorian

like such a lot of time and effort has gone into effectively just restoring Bo-Katan to the position she was in the last time we saw her in Rebels, with little reason, honestly, to think she's capable of doing better this time (a, I am not convinced she understands what she did wrong or has a plan for what she'll do differently, b, maybe just maybe she could grasp the idea that she can do good work for Mandalorians without being the leader? because leadership is actually not her strong point!)

her life has just been presented to us in cycles of "gets a great opportunity, loses everything, gets a great opportunity, loses everything"

(we still don't even know how she lost the Darksaber in between Rebels and The Mandalorian, who took it off her)

so this reset doesn't feel like progress, it just feels like another round of the loop she's stuck in

and what about Din? Back when he was taking over episodes of Boba's show, we saw a big change in his attitude to droids. He spoke to them politely. He addressed them as "friend," thanked them when they were helpful, and seemed to get comfortable working together with Peli's workshop droids (especially the cute little one that looks like a cross between a chicken and a View-Master). In episode 1 of the current season he's keen to revive IG-11 (although that idea got dropped irritatingly quickly) and when he works with R4-forgothisnumberalready, although he's slightly rude telling him not to be a baby about going into the mine, his attitude doesn't seem contemptuous or hateful

but in "Guns For Hire" he's straight back to being droids' number one hater

now there are two main ways you could explain this that would make sense

one: they're doing an investigation and Din is intentionally doing a good cop-bad cop routine. Bo-Katan doesn't seem to know that's what he's doing, although if you take this reading it means he's trying to set her up to succeed by looking like the reasonable one who it's relatively safe to talk to

my gosh, just a brief conversation in an elevator along the lines of "So good cop-bad cop?" "Okay, you're bad cop," "Wizard" would have set the scene and showed that they understood each other and Din's weirdly aggressive behaviour and Bo-Katan's exasperation with him were a deliberate act to get what they wanted. And it would have been funny. And it's cute when Din says "wizard."

And the "Din is trying to set Bo-Katan up to succeed" theme would be reinforced by the final scene where... he just gives her the Darksaber on a technicality which would still be boring and unsatisfying, but at least we'd understand that's a Thematic Thing for him, and that he'll willingly look bad (or like a loser) to make her look good (because the person he most fervently trusts and respects believes in her so by gum he'll believe in her)

two: Din is no longer biased against all droids because of his childhood trauma involving them, because he's had enough positive experiences with them lately to reconsider, but he hasn't moved as far as "I will treat any droid decently and won't assume it's an enemy," he's simply reorganised his way of thinking into "okay droids" (helpful, not a threat, even potentially friends) and battle droids (fuck 'em, still hate 'em). This attitude bleeds over to droids he'd normally consider okay as soon as he does perceive them as a threat because there's still a lot of deep-down underlying fear, explaining how aggressively he threatens the droid bartender.

But we would never know because people in this show aren't allowed to have conversations about how they feel or what they're thinking.

[brockachu]

sorry cleaning my archives has turned me into an old dude (gender neutral) screamingsobbing about even older dudes 👉🏽👈🏽 do y’all still respect me?

[justanotherwannabeclassic]

Make This Place Your Home

Gideon Gold and Juliet Jones discuss the ethics of using "blood money" and the impact of having fathers who are murderers. (Finding Neverland-verse)

Author’s Note: Over the course of writing Finding Neverland, I've received a number of requests to write more about Gideon and Juliet's relationship. I've hit a bit of a roadblock with FN, so I'm writing this (and others) in hopes of getting the muse back from the story that started it all.Timeline-wise, this is set about five years before the events of Finding Neverland, and two years before Gideon and Juliet get together.

Read Finding Neverland and related works!

Rating: T (lots o’cursing)

Dedicated to @distant-rose and @phiralovesloki.

“Wow. This place is fantastic.”

Gideon watches as Juliet walks around the space, the natural light filtering through the windows creating a golden halo effect out of her blonde hair. She’s barefoot at her own insistence -- “I am not risking my boots scuffing your new floor!” -- and he notes how her toes are painted a shocking pink, a contrast to her black nails. She walks over to one of the windows, and lets out a low whistle of appreciation.

“Really, this place is amazing. This is seriously yours?”  

“Seriously.” He crosses his arms over his chest, his frown deepening as he leans his back against the kitchen island. Juliet’s praise isn’t unwarranted. The condo is exceptional -- open floorplan, two bedrooms, hardwood floors, and plenty of natural light. It’s a dream, and certainly better than anything he could imagine owning in New York. “Well, technically my parents own it, but my father was already discussing changing it over to my name.”

“Lucky.” There’s no sarcasm in her tone like he’d expect, but there’s some underlying humor there. She crosses what is supposed to be the living area and walks into the kitchen, her right index finger trailing over the granite countertop. “You think If I get into med school, my parents would buy me a condo?”

“I’m pretty sure if you decided you wanted to go to med school, your parents would be convinced that you were cursed.”

“And they would be right.” Gideon turns to see her opening the fridge, and she pulls out two bottles of the beer she had brought him. ( “You told me your parents bought you a place, so I brought a housewarming gift.” ) He bites his tongue to keep from giving the lecture he wants to make. She’s not yet twenty-one, and she’s bound to get caught with that fake ID of hers eventually. But, he feels overwhelmed and he desperately needs a drink, so he takes the beer without chiding.

“God, this is seriously getting to you, isn’t it?” she asks, because of course Juliet expects him to give her a lecture. That’s their thing, this weird sort of dynamic they formed since she they bumped into each other months ago in a coffee shop downtown -- his weird sort of not-entirely-brotherly protectiveness clashing with her desire to really let loose.

“It wouldn’t get to you?”

“Have you seen the price of rent?” Juliet answers with a snort. She lifts herself on the island, her long legs dangling over the counter. She takes a long pull before asking, “What’s Rachel think?”

“Rachel doesn’t know.” He doesn’t meet her eyes when he answers, instead focusing on the bottle in his hand as guilt churns in his stomach.

“Bad form, Gid.”

“Yeah, I know.” He takes another drink, still not meeting what he’s sure is Juliet’s disappointing stare. Gideon knows he’s somewhat in the wrong, that there’s some unspoken rule that says he ought to have told his girlfriend of almost two years about his recent windfall before the girl he didn’t even consider a friend a year ago. But the situation is complicated, and there are things in his life that Rachel is unable understand that only someone from Storybrooke could. “What could I even say?”

“Well you could begin with ‘So my father bought me a fucking condo in Washington Heights,’. That’s what you texted me.”

“And then what? Tell her I’m very much considering telling them I don’t want it because it was bought with blood money.” He glances over to Juliet. Her expression is worse than disappointed, it’s just sad. “You know I can’t.”

“You could.”

“It’s not that easy, and you know it.” He catches her turn her right wrist away from him Even if he can’t see it, he knows she has a tattoo of the cardinal points drawn on her list in black ink. He remembers how he’d talked her out of getting it one drunken evening, and how two days later she’d sent him a picture of the drawing inked on her skin. “What’d you tell Adam about that?”

She glowers at the mention of her boyfriend. “That compasses are a thing for my family -- which is the truth.”

“Bet you didn’t mention the beanstalk. Or the piracy.”

“No, I didn’t.” She rolls her eyes. “But it’s different with us. Adam and I just got together. You two have been dating for awhile.”

“Yeah, well, it’s complicated.” He knows he should at least examine the reasons for why he doesn’t particularly want to reveal to his girlfriend his fairy tale history. They’re probably similar to the reasons why he and Rachel haven’t discussed their plans post-graduation, when he’ll still be in New York and she’ll be be jetting off to Mozambique for the Peace Corps, the words ‘ expiration date ’ weighing heavy in the back of his mind. “Can we please stop discussing my love life?”

“And start analyzing your brooding? Sure.”

“It’s more than just brooding.”

“And yet, here you are, in your fancy condo that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, sitting here with a drink in your hand, acting all gloomy and ‘woe is me’.” She raises a brow, acting as if her point has just been proven as fact. “Sounds like brooding to me.”

“I didn’t invite you over here to mock me.”

“And why did you invite me over, Gideon Gold?” She quirks her head, her blonde hair falling over her shoulder. We she anyone else, he might have thought she was flirting with him, but he’s gotten to know her well enough to realize this is Juliet in her natural form -- at ease and charismatic. Normally it’s endearing. Now, with the mood he’s in, it’s frustrating.

“I invited you over because I needed someone to talk to, and Robin’s busy.”

“Ouch,” she says with a small laugh, but he can see the hurt in her eyes, and he feels instantly bad. While it’s true that he’d usually call Robin whenever he needs to vent about Storybrooke-related drama, he actually hadn’t been sure what she was doing after he and his parents had parted ways, leaving him to his own devices in the condo his family now apparently owns. Juliet had, in fact, been the first person he’d contacted -- something else he doesn’t have the mental capacity to dwell upon at the moment.

“Look, I needed a friend, okay? And you’re a friend who understands.”

“I’m your friend?”

“You’re fishing.”

“And you’re brooding.” She stares at him pointedly. “Look, I know things between you and your dad are sort of complicated --”

“--to put it lightly--”

“--but maybe you should give him a break. He’s trying to do a nice thing.”

“A nice thing that I didn’t ask for,” he reminds her.He’d already told his parents that he didn’t want them to contribute to his medical school tuition. His father, being the man that he is, instead found a loophole in that declaration. “I don’t want his money.”

“Because it’s blood money.”

“So you do listen.”

She rolls her eyes, but this time it’s accompanied by a smile. “Yeah, idiot, it’s what friends do.”

“I’m your friend?” he parrots.

“Who’s fishing now?” Her eyebrows dance, and he stifles a smile. She then schools her expression into something more serious, and sits down her beer. “Gid, you’ve got to stop beating yourself up over things you have no control over, and start focusing on the things you can.”

“What is that even supposed to mean?”

“It means you’ve got to stop hating yourself for being related to the Dark One. Or Peter Pan. Or the Black Fairy.” She ticks off her fingers as she speaks, her tone growing more pointed with each name. “Yeah, it fucking sucks that all your dad’s money came from a dozen or so curses. But there’s nothing you can do about it except, I dunno, some good.”

“I think you’re completely missing the point.”

“I think you wear a cuff around your wrist to suppress your magic because you’re insanely afraid of going psycho like the rest of your family. I think you want to be doctor not just because you want to do good, but because it would prove you’re not some monster. I think you don’t want this place, not just because you want to strike out on your own, but because you’re scared that if you do, you’re no better than them.” She looks at him expectantly. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

It strikes him, not for the first time, that Juliet Jones is more than just the pretty party girl he’d compartmentalized her as for so long. In the past few months that he’d developed an odd sort of friendship with Juliet Jones -- one that could actually be considered friendship and not the awkward barely acknowledging one another dynamic they’d had for years back in Storybrooke -- he was still learning the ways in which she subverted whatever persona he had believed her to be.

He takes another swig of his beer. “You sure you’re not a psych student? Archie could probably use an intern.”

“Okay, first of all, you’re mixing me up with Robin. You couldn’t pay me enough to intern with Archie. Second of all, it would have been fewer words to say ‘you’re right, Juliet’. Significantly fewer.”

“Pithiness isn’t my forte, I’m afraid.”

“Oh fuck you,” she says, but she’s teasing him. “Tell me I’m right or I won’t help you anymore.”

“You’re helping me? And here I thought you were just calling me broody.”

“Oh my god, say I’m right or I’ll walk out with the rest of your beer.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.” To prove her point, she dismounts herself from the island and makes a show of walking to the refrigerator. She casually leans against the appliance, and crosses her arms. Raising a brow, she says, “Your move.”

He rolls his eyes. “You aren’t totally incorrect.”

She pauses for a moment, considering. Finally, she pushes herself off the fridge. “Close enough.”

Juliet walks over to him, resuming her position by his side. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder, he can feel the warmth of her body against his, and he’s surprised at how comforting it feels. “The way I see it, is that you’ve been given a gift. You might not want it, but it’s a gift nonetheless. You and I both know how much rent costs here, and we both know how much debt med school is going to drown you in. This means less debt.”

“So you’re telling me to stop whining because I’ve been gifted the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars?” Gideon shakes his head. “Do you know how privileged that makes me sound. How many of my fellow students are drowning in money issues because they don’t have a father who can just buy them an apartment.”

“Well, yeah, I’m one of them. Minus the med school part,” she reminds him, and he winces. Gideon knows she’s received a decent financial aid package from Columbia -- it turns out, the Storybrooke police department doesn’t pay that well -- but she’s complained enough about student debt to know that it doesn’t cover everything. “But that’s the point. So many of your future classmates are probably losing their shit over trying to figure out housing options. And here you are with a perfectly nice second bedroom that you can rent out for practically free. You’d be a housing fairy. Which, to be fair, is far more than anything Blue has done for either of us.”

“If I rented it out for free, they’d think I was a serial killer.”

“That’s why I said practically.”

What she’s saying makes sense. At the very least, it’s something that he hadn’t considered before. Not that he necessarily wants to admit that. “You’re just saying that because you want a cheap place to live.”

She laughs, legitimately laughs. “Please, there’s no way I want to live with you. I don’t want to know what sex noises you make. Assuming you have sex.”

“I have sex!”

“That sounds like something someone who doesn’t have sex would say.” She nudges his shoulder playfully. “But seriously, Gid, take the place. If you ask your dad to sell it, he would, but then some rich asshole would live in this gorgeous place instead of two med students doing the best the can to make the world a better place. Really, you’d be doing the neighborhood a favor.”

Gideon is shocked at how convincing she can be, even with the subtle jabs at his pride. She seems to know it too, because she’s staring up at him with an expression that can only be described as “I told you so,” and he both loves and hates it. “I know what you’re saying, and it doesn’t change the fact that my family got our money through incredibly dubious ways, and that makes me feel weird.”

“You’re acting like I have no idea how you feel.”

“Because you don’t know--”

“Do you how many people my dad has murdered? ‘Cause I sure as fuck don’t,” she asks him, effectively cutting him off. Her voice feels like a punch to the gut. “I know he’s killed like my great grandpa and fucking Merlin and who knows who else. And my childhood home? My mom got that via threatening the first owner because she was the Dark One.”

“Juliet--”

“I know all of this. And I can’t beat myself up over it, because I’ll go crazy. Because at the end of the day, my dad is still a murderer, but he’s also the guy who read me bedtime stories each night and taught me how to sail and cut the crusts off my sandwiches. And my mom is my mom and…” Her voice breaks. He’s not sure what compels him to do it, but Gideon pulls her tight into a hug. He’s not sure if she’s crying or not, but he holds her tight and runs his fingers through her hair. It’s what his mother always did for him when he was sad. It’s what makes him feel better. “I know, okay? Maybe not exactly, but I know.”

“Okay, you know. I was wrong.” He continues to run his fingers through her hair, and she doesn’t stop him, so he continues to go through the motions.

Juliet pulls away from him, but only slightly. Their arms are still wrapped around one another and his hand is in her hair. If Rachel were to walk in -- she wouldn’t -- it would be easy for her to interpret the situation as something untoward, even if it isn’t. “Look, I can’t tell you what to do. But the way I see it is that you have the opportunity to do good. It can’t change what your dad did, but maybe you can change someone’s life. And if you change one person’s life, isn’t it worth it? And, yeah, you’ll be drowning in debt still, but there’ll be less of it, so maybe you can volunteer your time at a free clinic or go to some far off country after you finish your residency and save some babies. I don’t know. I just believe you should think about instead of writing it off completely, okay?”

Juliet stares up at him with such an earnest expression, her blue eyes shining, that Gideon wants to look away from the intensity of it all. He doesn’t. Instead he finds himself saying, “I’ll think about it.”

“Good.” Juliet disentangles herself away from him. Feeling suddenly self-conscious, he stuffs his hands into his pockets as she runs her fingers through her hair. “Are you going to be okay?”

He lets out a feeble laugh. “It’s not the end of the world. I’ll be fine. Just need some time to think.”

“Okay, good.” She smiles another one of her beautiful smiles before glancing at the clock on the oven. “Hey, I’m sorry, but I told Adam that I’d meet him for dinner soon.”

She looks apologetic, and he feels a bit disappointed. He decides not to dwell on why. “Don’t apologize. You didn’t know all of this would happen.”

“No, I didn’t, but I’m glad you called me.” She surprises him with another hug. It’s over before he even realizes it happened. “I could reschedule if you need me to.”

“Seriously, don’t worry about it. Enjoy dinner. Seriously.”

He watches as she slides on her shoes, balancing on one foot, then the other. Before leaving, he turns to him and says, “It really is a nice place.”

“I know,” he replies. Then she is gone, and he is one again alone in a home that may be his. And because of Juliet Jones, he might actually be coming around to that idea.

[hey-kids-want-some-avengers]

Love Us Too (Symbrock)

Pairing: Eddie Brock/Venom

Warnings: Mild internalized homophobia

Description:  Eddie's just trying to find Dan and Anne a Christmas present. He really doesn't need Venom analyzing his thoughts. His very gay thoughts.

Word Count: 1711

It's snowing. Big, fluffy flakes of snow are spiraling from the sky and building up on the streets and sidewalks with surprising speed. The sky is bright for how late in the day it is, the clouds covering the sky in a thick sheet are brighter than rain clouds ever are. Even despite the weather, the streets are filled with the usual amount of people, everyone pushing and rushing to get shopping done after work before Christmas. Eddie is fairly indifferent about weather, it doesn’t bother him if it’s raining buckets or sunny as hell itself. He’s usually working in an office most days anyways. Still, Eddie won’t deny it’s freezing out.

The sun is quickly lowering in the sky, and even though it was masked by clouds all day anyways, the darker and later it is, the colder. Eddie could also probably blame the fact that he can’t feel his feet, or nose, or fingers, on either his poor outfit choice, because jeans and a hoodie only insulate so well, or he could blame it on the fact he waited so long to do his Christmas shopping. All of those play key rolls in why he’s walking the street, teeth chattering like crazy.

He wouldn’t have to be out at all, especially Christmas shopping, but somehow (maybe because Eddie can’t say no to Anne) got roped into Christmas at her place. It doesn’t sound all that bad, really. It’s better than spending Christmas in bed, he supposes, but he’s not a huge fan of gift giving, or sitting around his ex and her new fancy boyfriend- so yeah, Merry Christmas.

Spending Christmas alone would be easier, at least.

Not alone.

Eddie sighs, shaking his head. "Yeah, yeah. I know, V."

Why are we here, then? It's cold.

"Because, I have to get Anne and Dan a Christmas present," Eddie muttered, not that any of the people rushing by him would've noticed him talking to himself. He can practically feel the rumble of a displeased sigh rattle through him and Eddie hardly refrains from rolling his eyes. "It won't take long."

Why do you have to get them a gift, Eddie?

Eddie hears equal parts curiosity and annoyance in Venom's voice but humors him anyways in answering. "I don't know, it's tradition?" Eddie shrugged, checking his phone briefly for the time. 7:12. He had plenty of time still.

They are not important.

"What? yes they are- what does that have to do with anything?"

Why buy them presents if they are not important? We are cold.

Eddie sighed, walking into a store he'd followed Anne to a number of times. Luckily, it was packed with people, so he didn't have to dodge women trying to sell him expensive perfume. "Because, V, it's what you do on Christmas. It's what you do when you care about someone, I guess."

Because you care about Anne? Venom prompted, though he didn't sound terribly surprised.

"Yeah, yeah, I do," Eddie shrugged.

You love her.

Eddie grumbled, dodging a woman restocking a shelf so he could wander down an empty isle. he was hardly even paying attention to shopping anymore. "No, I don't."

Eddie could feel the way Venom vibrated, which was becoming less terrifying the more it happened and more annoying and kind of weird. he could feel it in the back of his head, through his body like a not quite physical feeling. Why do you lie to us? We're one. I know what you think, what you feel.

"Okay, alright, I got it, V, thanks," Eddie muttered, pretending to study a rack of fuzzy socks.

Love us too. Venom says, and it rolls around in the back of Eddie's head like a long purr.

Eddie admittedly feels himself flush as he quickly moves to look at something else. Funny you can't escape a conversation in your head. "what the hell does that mean, huh?" Eddie asks, pulling a box of fairly nice looking earrings from one of the displays to look over. They would look nice on Anne. she isn't huge on jewelry, but she does like earrings and the occasional necklace. It would be a nice present for her, without seeming too.. boyfriend-ish.

We are bonded, Eddie. You were bonded to Anne too.

"I- no, Anne and I were engaged. We were in a relationship."

He feels Venom press at the back of his brain, almost like he's making himself more known.

There is no difference in your feelings towards us and Anne. Venom says simply, like he's genuinely confused- he probably is, but Christ, how long as Venom been thinking that they were, what? Engaged? Eddie would probably rather die than admit that it doesn't sound as wrong and weird as it should. Eddie guesses he doesn't really have much of a basis for normal or weird anymore, though, since he literally has an alien living in his body.

"Yeah, well, it's complicated," Eddie mumbles, deciding the earrings will work fine. he still has to get Dan a gift too and he doesn't have any idea where to start.

How is it complicated, Eddie?

Eddie ignores the question until after he's done purchasing the gift and having the nice woman even wrap it for him. By then, after he's stepped back out into the cold and can feel the annoyance practically rolling off of Venom at this point.

Eddie.

"Yeah, yeah, I hear ya big guy." Eddie sighs. "I don't know- nothing about this or us or whatever is easy."

We take care of each other, Eddie. Venom says smoothly and Eddie nods as he heads back down the street.

"Yeah, I know, but there's a difference between those two things."

Venom grumbles and Eddie can feel him materialize slowly, snug under his hoodie, just a vague presence resting against his back and neck, hidden from by passers but Eddie can still see him if he turns his head to the side. You are mine.

"We've been over this," Eddie sighs but Venom doesn't really let him finish.

You love us too. we are like Anne, but we are better.

"Dude, chill out, not cool," Eddie says, rubbing his eyes tiredly. Maybe he'll head home. If he actually gets up before noon he can find time to get Dan a present before he has to be there for Christmas Eve dinner.

You are lonely. Venom presses and Eddie groans. He doesn't want to be having this conversation or acknowledging this. At all. We will make sure you are never lonely. You will always have us, Eddie.

Eddie's resolve slips enough he lets a small smile slip. Venom already fixes the lonely factor, mostly. Venom, oddly enough, has been a nice presence. Venom is comforting. Annoying, but comforting. Eddie doesn't mind the nagging for food or sleep, Venom is a good reminder to take care of himself. Venom is actually a fair conversationalist too, even if half the time they're arguing and half of the time it's over why Venom can't eat the desk lady's cat- but still. Eddie just has a connection, like a bond that he can't begin to understand or explain, but it's there and it isn't going away. Apparently, Eddie isn't the only one that noticed it, either.

You are lacking the attention you crave. Physical attention, Eddie?

Eddie nearly chokes on air, walking back to his apartment with the gift bag in his hand. He can't feel his entire torso by now, he's fucking cold. He really isn't sure he likes where the conversation seems to be going, though. This is really not something he wants to discuss in detail with the symbiote curled up his shoulder and around his neck. "What does that mean, exactly?" Eddie croaks.

You enjoy touch? Venom says, like he's unsure. His tendrils expand fluidly under his hoodie until he's wrapped around Eddie like a second shirt. It effectively stops the teeth chattering, with better insulation and Eddie's grateful for the gesture.

"I mean, sure," Eddie says awkwardly. "Sex is... nice."

Not sex.

Eddie stops walking. he's less than a block away from his house by now anyways. "what?"

You like when we hold you. when we touch.

Venom sounds so confident in his words. Eddie doesn't sense any underlying mockery in his voice either and it takes him a long moment to realize that Venom isn't entirely wrong, either. he does like the way Venom so easily wraps around his body, from around his wrist or all of him- it feels like a constant comfort. he feels protected around Venom all the time, but there's something about the physical contact that's a much needed reminder. He does like having Venom there, he'd like to have Venom closer- in a sense. It's just a very odd feeling, considering Venom's literally taking up residency in his body for life.

"I mean, yeah." Eddie nods and Venom's head pokes out beside the neck of Eddie's hoodie.

Venom grins, eyes narrowing happily. it reminds Eddie of a cat, oddly.

We make you happy.

Eddie snorts out a laugh and shrugs. "Yeah, guess so."

Venom vibrates happily, the sound resonating along Eddie's bones, like both a physical and mental feeling. It's almost like purring, Eddie thinks. Maybe it is.

Eddie makes Venom happy.

"Yeah? You a big softy now?" Eddie teases and the symbiote glares, though it comes across more like a pout. "We make each other pretty happy though, huh?" Eddie reasons, more with himself than with Venom. His life is crazy enough as it is, what's adding a relationship with an alien, at this point? Venom makes another pleased purring sound, the little head over his shoulder giving a small nod in response.

It's dark out by now and the street is only lit under pools of light from street lamps lining the sidewalk. The snow is still piling up too, coming down heavier. It's sticking to Eddie's hair and clothes, though it beads instantly on Venom, somehow. Eddie doesn't think before he acts, he rarely ever has honestly, and he does what feels natural and presses a kiss to Venom's head, gentle and quick. Venom grins, a shiny mouth full of teeth glimmering at him and Eddie chuckles. "Let's get home, love."

[ser-yolomere-of-swagalore]

Man, I’m honestly so exhausted with all of this family-related drama. It’s gone well past the point where it was a “look at how fucked up my family is isn’t in wild” point of conversation and has just turned into something genuinely exhausting, and yes, people are most likely sick of me moaning and complaining about it, but I’m honestly just so tired. This whole crap with my sister-- helping look after her kid, putting up with her abuse, seeing the effect it has on my brother and my mam-- has just gotten so out of hand so long and drawn out and ridiculous that I really just don’t want anything to do with it any more. I love Liah, I really do. I’ve helped raise her for over a year and in that time I’ve learned how rewarding it can be to help raise kids, and it’s made me realize that I definitely do want kids one day, but this responsibility and the drama that comes along with it was something I never asked for. I took it up out of sheer necessity. My mother is 51 years old, with a bad back and a heel spur, and she just doesn’t have the energy to look after a growing, five-year-old girl any more, and so I’ve left to do a lot of what a traditional parent does. I get up with her in the mornings my mum doesn’t have to be up already, I get her ready, I bring her to school, I pick her up, I entertain her while mum is working, feed her, dress her, put her to bed, read her bedtime stories, do her homework with her... the list goes on. And like I said, it’s not like these are the parts that I resent; Liah is so loving and such a funny little kid, and I love her so damn much. These are valuable, bonding experiences that I have with her and every time she tells me she loves me or any time she laughs whenever we’re playing our games or we share one of our little jokes is so lovely that it does make it all feel as though it’s all worthwhile. But, the perpetual, constant effort and the time and the energy that doing stuff like this takes on top of knowing that the whole reason I’m even doing this is because my sister just isn’t capable and to a large part unwilling to is making me increasingly bitter and angry. Then we have the periodic battles with Sean over custody and access, the stuff that my sister does all of the time seeking attention or otherwise just doing what she wants to do without regard to the consequences or other people’s feelings, seeing my mam getting so stressed out and anxious as much as I am, seeing the lies and the horrible things that my sister has said affecting my brother, the anxieties that I have over my own future, over Liah’s future, the impacts it has on my mam’s health... it’s just so enraging. To think that my sister can so casually, so effortless relinquish the responsibility of raising the child she gave birth to, but then turn around and claim me and my mam are X, Y, and Z, cause more drama and more worry and more anxiety, just because she misses her and has decided she wants to be a half-decent mother for five minutes.  I remember when I last met with my aunt and uncle from the states (two of my absolute favourite people in the world, and people who I should try and keep in contact with more) and we were in Brother Hubbards in town, and I talked to them a little bit about what was going on with my sister, the pressure I felt like I was under, and they were so wonderful and understanding. They’ve always been incredibly supportive and encouraging (they see potential in me somewhere, I suppose, or perhaps they just feel sorry for me knowing what’s going on-- god that sounds pathetic) and when I gave them all the details they said that my sister was a vortex, and that I was getting slowly dragged into what she was doing to herself. If I didn’t pull myself out of it I’d end up trapped in it indefinitely, but what does pulling myself out of it even mean? Leaving my mam here alone to deal with all of this? Leaving Liah when she’s already so attached to me and end up hurting the both of us, but perhaps her moreso because she’s already lost her dad and her mam? I don’t want to do that. I don’t think I’d be able to happy knowing that I’ve just jumped so much responsibility and left it all with my mam, and knowing that Liah would miss me. And besides, how am I supposed to get out anyway? That kind of idea requires mobility, which requires money, not something I have a whole lot of. Hopefully, when I do get a job (THAT I WAS SUPPOSED TO GET TWO MONTHS AGO HELLO COSTA???) I’ll be able to save up and maybe just get an apartment somewhere? Maybe that would be enough to erect some very much needed distance? Or would I just get dragged into it no matter how far I go? I honestly don’t know at this stage, and don’t know if I’ll even be able to do that if the opportunity does come around.  I mean, I’m sitting at home with Liah, watching Tangled with her, and as much as I’m trying to put on a happy and funny face for her, I’m also waiting for the guards to come because Sean decided that he wasn’t going to pick Liah up like he was supposed to last weekend and moved it to this weekend instead, even though the court order says it’s only every two weeks. He came, I had to argue with him at the door, he said that we breaking a court order for the third time(???) and then went to my aunt Mandy’s, because my sister, on the phone, told him that’s where she often brings her when she’s in work, then he gave Mandy shit when she’s nothing to do with this, said he was bringing the guards to her house too, then my mam got a call off the guards... etc., etc. So right now I don’t know if he’s going to turn up still, with the guards and my loud, unpredicated, batshit insane sister and demand to see her. I’m here, on my own, with Liah, trying to keep her entertained and pay attention to her cute little commentaries on Rapunzel's hair or respond to her silly little faces, but in reality I’m anxious as fuck worrying about what I’m going to do should that happen.  I never asked for any of this. I never did anything in all of this to warrant this. I wasn’t the one who had a child and got with a man who turned out to be a domineering, imperious asshat with the emotional intelligence of a laminated sheet who decided, all of a sudden, that he was Liah’s father. I should be working and saving up for my master’s degree and planning my future rather than rushing home to look after my niece and entertain her. I should be texting friends on my days off and asking if they’re free for a few pints or if they want to head out somewhere and hangout. Instead, I’m sitting here with my niece on my lap, looking out the window like a paranoid schizophrenic every time a car goes by thinking it’s either Sean and the guards and planning about what I’m going to say or do-- I can only imagine what my neighbours think every time I peek my goofy looking head out the window to check if it’s him. I’m incredibly anxious, feeling almost as though I’m on the verge of an anxiety attack (I probably sound like a right Tumblrina atm but that is something I’ve actually started having since all this started), and even when there’s nothing immediately wrong there are still these underlying issues and worries-- how long is this going to go on? Am I even doing a good job doing what I’m doing or am I only making things worse? Is this what my whole life is going to revolve around now? Liah is only 5, how long am I going to have to be an informal parent / steward / guardian for her? Until she’s 18? What impact is that going to have on my future? Despite being unemployed I feel as though I have so little time to myself any more. I can’t really read uninterrupted because I feel guilty about just plopping Liah in front of a television screen for two long and not interacting with her, and the same applies to playing games or even just hanging around on the internet for too long.  And people are probably wondering; well, why not just let Sean look after Liah? He’s clearly quite willing to considering he’s going through so much trouble himself to even just get access. And the truth is that we’re uncomfortable with Sean. Beside me and my mam’s own personal distaste for his character (he’s, as I said, imperious, demanding, condescending, disdainful, etc.) he’s also got a weird personal history that we feel is pretty suspect. I mean, the guy has sort of casually slipped into a number of family’s lives and taken on a very, well, “affectionate” attitude towards these people’s kids. I think he seems himself as a form of surrogate father for these people’s kids, and that makes me... uncomfortable. Why does he feel the need to become so close to these kids? He’s done so against the wishes of at least one family, as people have cut off contact with him for telling them how to raise their kids when he’s not even related to them and their parents are doing a perfectly fine job. Then there’s the duplicity, the willingness to listen to Michelle’s bullshit when he probably knows full well that she’s spouting lies because it provides an excellent starting point for legal invectives in court, the fact that he insists on Liah calling him Daddy when we’ve already expressed we’re uncomfortable with that, the fact that he sent messages to Liah’s father’s biological family implicating that Michelle attacked his mother... it’s just a whole load of bullshit, and we’re not happy with it. But, unfortunately, the courts ruled that he’s entitled to loco parentis because, when Michelle got involved with him, he spent enough time around Liah to be entitled to it. Now, the judge the last time we were in court said that we it up to him and had he been there at the ruling where he had been given it, he wouldn’t have given it at all, but unfortunately due to either a case of the judge’s oversight or simply because it appeared at the time that he was a good man worthy of it, he was awarded it. So that’s what we have to deal with. His constant butting into our lives because he was awarded loco parentis and visitation rights. Plus, Liah does love him. Misguidedly so, but she’s five, you obviously can’t blame her for that. And it’s painful to think about how heartbroken she would be were it a case she wouldn’t see him again-- although we do believe it’d be better in the long run. 

So that’s really it at the moment, anyway. I’m so fed up but I don’t know what to do.

[the-voice-of-hell]

Rent is Theft, part 12

Read from the beginning here, read the previous chapter here.

Note:  My MC is a Filipina trans woman and I am not.  If you have any notes on that or anything else, let me know.

                                                        ***

     Deandre had the extra money to buy a floor waxer at one of the hardware stores on Aurora - of course with the intention of returning it as soon as we were done using it.  We’d done the hard work, the sun had set.  The boys had taken over for me after my place and part of the hall were done, and I was in my apartment.  Everything had been pulled off the floors to make room for the waxing.  I hadn’t bothered putting my apartment back in a reasonable order.  Even the garbage pile from the pill job had just been swept into a bag and left on top of the bar.

     I took a long bath.  My room was still too wrecked to contemplate, so after the bath I lay on a couch in the living room, listening to tunes and playing Tetris on an original gameboy.  The battery in the cartridge was long dead, leaving it unable to store high scores, but I wasn’t into that shit anyways.

     There was a knock at the door and I knew it was Grime.  I moved like a fairly chill tree sloth as I went for the door.  I opened it wide enough for him to see me in my bathrobe.  “Hey, Sailor.  Notice anything different about the place?”

     “Yeah, I heard about what you guys did.  It looks like it’s settled down a lot.  I don’t even know what to make of the whole situation, but fuck it.  How are you, Courtney?”

     Could I love Grime?  I wondered whenever he was being a good boy, making a sensitive expression, smiling gently like that - every part of his face alive.  “Mm, It’s been difficult, but I’m feeling better now.  Have you seen Marcie and Richie?  Sweet Jesus.”

     “No.  Black eyes?”

     “He has two, she has one, and the rest of the bruises are pretty nasty too.”  I was slouching against the wall and it was getting awkward, so I just walked in, leaving the door open behind me.  He followed.

     “Damn, that’s rough.  The price of fighting the good fight, right?”

     “Makes me wonder what the shithead looks like.”  I sat on one end of the couch, he sat on the other.

     He smiled, but with a hint of pain in the expression.  “Ouch.  I know he’s shit as far as we’re concerned, but y’know, clearly he has mental health issues, probably needs therapy that doesn’t involve brutality.”

     I glared.  “Nuh.  Society gave him a pass.  He was getting away with some fucked up shit, just because he’s a brutish overgrown baby, and nobody gives a fuck what people like that do to other poor people.”

     “...Yeah, you’re right.”

     “I know I am.”  I put my nose in the air.  The moment lingered, and I rolled my head to give the neck a stretch.  It was a hard couple of days.  My chin came to rest near my collarbone and I was looking down. With the lights in my living room turned up, my chest was too clear to me.  My sternum was bony, my skin scarred with the ghosts of acne.  I was getting skinnier than usual and I knew the more visible muscles were unfeminine looking.  I pursed my lips and pulled the robe more fully closed.

     When I looked up, I noticed Grime was looking shifty.

     “What’s up, dude?”

     “Oh, sorry.  I shouldn’t be eyeballing my cordial associate.”

     “You were?”

     “I thought you covered up and crossed my arms because you saw my eyes slip, or something?”

     “Huh.  I should keep one out for you.”

     “Excuse me?”

     “An eye.  What did you think I meant?  A titty?”

     He squeezed his eyes.  “This conversation isn’t very cordial.  I’m gonna just, get out of here.”  He stood up to leave.

     I stood up as well, and put an arm on his shoulder.  “You think you’re bad but I think I’m worse.”

     He froze, then turned to me slowly.  “I don’t think I’m bad, just because sometimes I slip up.  Intent has to matter for something.”

     “Does it?”  I pressed my body against his, let the robe fall open a little.  I rested my head on his shoulder.

     “If we do something here, that isn’t a little slip.  That’s just a fuckup.  The way you’ve been?  It can’t be a good idea for you to get with anyone until you calm down.”  He held my shoulders with both hands.

     I stared right into his eyes.  “Maybe true.  But I had an idea the other day and I’m having it again.”

     His grip loosened and his hands hung lower on my arms.  “What idea was that, Courtney?”

     “I think it’s called cowgirl position?”  I let my robe slide down, exposing my chest to him.

     “Mmmm,” he rolled his eyes in thought, clearly having a hard time thinking.  “I guess you seemed like you were doing OK before the police business yesterday…  Is this chill, Courtney?”  His hands latched onto my robe and held me by tugging on it.

     I rubbed his sides.  “Yeah, get on the couch, Graeme.  I’ll get the stuff.  Move it.”  I slapped his ass and went toward my bathroom, leaving him in the living room.

     As I passed through my room, I saw a candle with the Virgin Mary flush against the baseboard - a kitschy bit of decor left behind in the big sneeze.  I didn’t think anything of it, but in the bathroom looking for condoms and lube, I caught myself in the mirror there.  My makeup was a real shitshow, my violet lipstick smeared, my hair just twisted bedhead from hell.

     Something came to me.  I realized something about myself, and as I realized it, I felt like the knowledge could liberate me.

     I pulled my robe shut as I came into the living room, and found Graeme taking off his shoes.  “Put ‘em back on, man!”

     “What’s up?  Don’t you think that’ll look kinda weird?”

     “Not having sex.  I figured something out, Graeme!  I figured something out!  I finally understand.  You understand?”  I waved my hands.

     “No.  Ya lost me, but that’s fine.  Putting ‘em back on.”  He smiled wearily and started putting himself back together.

     “You’re my whore, Graeme!”

     “Uhh… I what?”

     “I have a Madonna-whore complex!  You’re my whore.”

     “Oh god, what does this even mean?  Do I wanna know?”  He finished putting his shoes on and scooted back to the far end of the couch.

     I came a little closer, then jumped back into my end of the couch.  I was still talking with my hands.  This was important, god damn it.  “Right, have you heard of it?”

     “Yeah, I think I understand what it means, but what do you mean?”

     “I was starting to feel really romantic about someone, and then that first night with you, I was in a position to be sexy, and you were there, and like - I was acting the ho, but I put that on you.  You were an outlet for lust, you were my dirty place to be, so the romantic side could stay pure, holy, right?”

     “Aww, this is just… Well, I guess it’s more of the same.  I’m just gonna give you a cordial good night.”

     “Lemme finish, dude!”  I grabbed his t-shirt.

     He didn’t love that.  “OK.”  He stood up, walked behind the couch, and leaned on the back, looking expectant.

     “So I fucked up my romantic situation because I was putting my lust in the wrong place, but I don’t have to, do I?  It’s like, the end of the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, when the shrinks figure out the main guy’s delusion is, and they say, ‘Now we can cure him.’  I’m curable, right?”

     He nodded, but was telegraphing his frustration.

     I kept on.  “What do you do, to make it so your love and lust line up?”

     “I guess you have to love the person you’re lusting after, or lust for the person you��re loving after.”

     “Yes!”

     “I thought you said you’d messed up that situation.  Also, you said you couldn’t love me.  If this is a lesson to help you fly right in the future, cool.  If you think this can fix where you are now, are you so sure?”

     I was shut down.  He had my number.  I sank into the couch, just looking at my knees making little tents in the bathrobe.  “Uh, yeah… I guess you’re right.  Man, I’m sorry, but… good night.  Go play a video game or something.”

     “You too, Courtney.  Really, I hope you figure your stuff out.”

     “Thanks.”  Fuck off, I thought.

                                                        ***

     The window in my living room almost completely sealed shut again, but a sliver of a crack was all it took to create howling whistles and uncanny drafts.  The wind seemed to pass through anything I jammed in the opening, like everything I owned was as much of a ghost as I was.

     Despite the lack of a door on my bedroom, the wall did slightly muffle the sound in there.  To replace the lost bed, I dragged a couch in that room.  It was a depressing scene of carnage I couldn’t bring myself to repair.  The furniture was mostly toppled, tatters of posters and clothing and more were strewn about the place.  The hours I spent in my bedroom (couchroom?) were of the head-buried-in-pillow and music-blasting nature.

     I didn’t have to think about the neighbors much where noise was concerned because the construction of the building included concrete between every floor and every unit.  Sometimes when you touch a wall, walk across a floor, look around yourself with unfocused eyes, you can sense the underlying structure of a place - the bones of the building.  The Myrmidon Apartments reminded me of a wall of cinderblocks, the way they are shaped like open concrete boxes beams between the compartments.  People’s lives were tucked into each hole in the cinderblock like filed memos, waiting to get bumped to the shredder or the abyss of permanent storage.

     In a building with that solid construction, we should never have felt tremors.  Maybe on a higher floor, where the great length of the building reduced the strength of the materials, where the power of artifice was put to shame by the power of nature, of atmospheric pressures that dwarfed everything.

     We shouldn’t have felt anything down on the twelfth floor, but the building was allergic to us, and the medicine was not completely effective.  Deandre ended up having to keep the floor waxer, we all had to take every opportunity to snake more meds to grind into our floors.

     In all of that, we only tended to the places we lived in or traveled.  Room 1207 was left to fester.  With no one in it, would it have lesser allergies anyway, as I had supposed?  Or would the allergies suppressed through medicine seek an outlet there, warping it more than the rest of the floor combined?  I didn’t have the courage to check it out, no longer going in there to chill.  I spent my time with neighbors or smashing my head in a pillow and listening to music.

     Despite the fact we were still catching little tremor and troubles, we could live in the building without fear of getting tossed in the night.  We’d beaten the allergy thing, and it made us feel a bit more confident.  Confident we could keep this scam going.  There were other aspects of life that kept us down.  Patrick and Grime has issues at work, Patrick had to worry about Perry.

     And I couldn’t stop thinking about Leimomi.  It made me feel like a creep.  But then, I knew something then I hadn’t known before.  I felt like I had Grime-proofed my brains.  I could do right by her, if I could get a chance.  I went over the pitch in my head at least fifty thousand times.

     But I also tried to devote equal time to creep-proofing myself.  What would a creep do?  Don’t do that, Courtney.  A creep would stare at her all sad in the rear view mirror.  OK, too late to not do that.  A creep would keep trying to message her, talk to her, be around her, past the welcome point.  In all my twisting, I did my best to avoid being around her more than an incidental pass in the hall, or at Marcie’s apartment.  Good job.

     I was succeeding at non-creeping, but I was going out of my mind.  I threw myself into focusing on other people’s lives whenever possible.  One day, I was at Deandre’s place, cleaning it up.  He insisted he didn’t need that, and I insisted that I needed something to do.

     After I finished sweeping up the place (soft broom to avoid stripping the medicine wax), I sprawled on one of his couches, across from him.

     He reached across the coffee table to pass me a beer and then leaned back with his own.  “Good job, mom.  You mind if I ask something?”

     “Uh,” I sipped the beer, “Depends on what you’re asking?”

     “Nothing personal.  But why do you do this to yourself?  This place is a flophouse.  It could look like shit, it doesn’t matter.”

     “Aww!  It shouldn’t have to be a flophouse.  Can’t it feel like home, at least a little?”

     “Nuh.  If I let myself think of it like that, you know they’d bust us out like the next fuckin’ day.”

     I sighed.  “True.”

     “So that’s all there is to it?  Trying to feel like you ain’t homeless?”

     I gave him an acid look.  “You know there’s more, but I’m not dumping that on you today.  You made me feel like a loser last time I used you for that.”

     He sighed and put his feet up.  “Yeah, sorry about that.  How ‘bout if I dump for a minute?  Even up.”

     “Dump away, Deandre.”  I drank more beer.

     “You ever wonder about other people’s romantic shit, when you’re stuck in your own?”

     “I guess I don’t.  You think we all have something going on?  Or are you stuck in your own too?”

     “Stuck.  You ever think about if you’re somebody else’s romantic shit?”

     “Oh god, I don’t want to think about that.”

     “Haha, sorry.  It goes around though.  I think that Olivia baby might be hot for me.  I hate it when kids get it for adults.  There are too many of us that are down, and I don’t wanna think about that.”

     “Sorry, man.  You have to set her straight?”

     “Naw, she ain’t sayin’ nothin’.  I could just tell though.”

     “And if you said something first, hell embarrassment.”

     “Right.  Anyhow, that ain’t what I wanna talk about.  I got a dude out there.”  He casually gestured to the window.  A dude in the sky?  No, in the city.

     “Oh?  But there’s trouble in paradise?”

     “Yeah.  He’s hot, we out there living like two kings.  Just lookin’ cool as shit.  So even those homophobic niggas respect us.  And at the end of the day, we get to fuck too.  Win win, right?”

     “I don’t wanna say it.”

     “Yeah, you know it though.  They think of me as a woman - as his woman.  And maybe he does too.”

     “Oh god that’s toxic.  What are you gonna do, man?”

     “Blow my brains out?  Fuck if I know.”

     “Oh, that hurts.  That hurts.  I care about you, dude.”

     “I’m sorry.  I’m just talkin’ shit.  I ain’t gonna do that.  But it feels bad.”

     “I can only imagine.”

     “Did it help you feel a little better though, thinkin’ about somebody else’s problems?”

     “Yeah.  Yeah, and that’s why I’m cleaning here, isn’t it?  Sorry.  I don’t wanna be greedy.”

     “It’s OK, but now it’s my turn to get a taste of that distraction.  What’s going on with you and that girl?”

     I buried my head in a pillow, but knew he wouldn’t be able to hear me, so I twisted my mouth into view.  “Nothing.  I’m stupid in love and we haven’t done anything since the blow up.”

     “That ain’t all there is to it, is it?”

     I looked at him timidly.  “Yeah.  I’ve been thinkin’ about it all day long, all the time.  I know what I want to say.  I’m done with that whole Grime thing now, for real.  All I want is her.”

     “I seem to remember you had some reservations before, but they’re all gone now?”

     “What?  Reservations?”

     “Like, maybe she’s too inexperienced ’n’ shit?”

     “Oh.”  I hadn’t thought about that in a while.  “I guess all it took for me to get clarity on my feelings is losing her.  How important is it to be all prudent and careful and make sure you do everything right all the time?  Yeah, it’s important for some reasons sometimes, but I let that get in the way of something great.”

     “Did you though?  You gotta lose it to enjoy yourself, but at the end of the day you gotta be real.  You gotta realize all that romantic shit is a dream.  We’re all alone in this life, no matter what we got.”

     I smashed a pillow into my face and cried a moment.

     His voice softened.  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean shit by that.  It’s OK.”

     I wiped my face on the pillow and calmed down.  “Ugh, it’s not you.  No, that was good advice.  Gotta be cool.  This is me being cool.”  I sat up, grabbed the can off the table and finished drinking it.

     “So cool.  You wanna go to lunch, mom?  I got a few bucks.  Hurricane’s got chicken strips.”

     “Yeah, that would be great.  Maybe we can talk about sports instead.”

     He laughed.  “Yeah, fuckin’ sports.”

     On the way through the lobby, we ran into Sharon.  She reminded me my name was Maria last time I talked to her, which had me worried she was going to follow through with the getting to know people game.  But then she got distracted and let slip just how much work the property company was putting on her.  It left us feeling safe.  She was never going to have the time to find us out.

     There we were, a couple of trans nogoodniks, in gay love with heartache-inducing people.  I was in a pride baby doll tee and crappy around-the-house clothes, but did have my makeup and jewelry on.  He was in dapper pinstripe pants, jordans, and a greenish silver collared shirt with the sleeves rolled.  It was overcast but warm, with only a few random drops of rain.  Not worth an umbrella.

     I liked Deandre.  If I was a mom, he was a good son.  Not the son that makes six figures and buys mom a mansion.  He was the son that would probably do prison time, but never for anything truly evil.  At least, not that I’d be able to see through my pride and affection.

     We walked less than ten blocks to the diner.  It wasn’t great, but it was an institution, provided a service at a price that was headed for extinction in the neighborhood.  It was a place to sit down and get served food for less than your whole paycheck, without the glossed over prison cafeteria feel of a fast food place.

     We came in from the daylight and a dispassionate youth saw us to a table.  I put my elbows on the table.  He put an arm over the back of his seat and stretched.  We waited for our drinks in relative quiet. I tore up a napkin, making sure the pieces fell in a neat pile so I could cover it up with my hands when the youth got back.  She arrived and we ordered - Deandre with the chicken strips and fries, me with a BLT.  I knew I couldn’t eat the whole thing but it’s what I felt like tasting.

     When we were alone, I remembered what we were supposed to be talking about.  “Fucking sports.  You dress sporty sometimes.  You into that?”

     He laughed.  “No.  I know enough to hold a conversation, but only ’cause I have to.  How about you?  Any interest in kickin’ balls?”

     “Oh god.  Bad memories.”  I waved my fingers to dispel them.  “No, I don’t know anything about sports.  What else do people talk about?”

     “The weather, but that just turns into that butt-ass joke, ‘don’t like the weather?’”

     “...‘Wait five minutes.’  It is to laugh.”

     “Yeah.”  He glanced to the side, contemplated.

     “Oh, usually when I’m at a place to eat, I’ll get to talking about the place itself, other times I’ve eaten there, how it compares to other spots, that kinda shit.  What do you think?”

     “Oh yeah.  Why not?  This place sucks.  It’s funny though, that makes it like, everyone has stories about coming here when you fucked up or having a shit time.”

     “Haha, funny you should mention that...”

     We spoke on it for a time.

     After he learned about every time I’d crash landed at the Hurricane - and I’d learned about his - we talked about food in general.  Deandre felt like he hadn’t eaten anything truly good in years, like eating out was an quest for an experience that might never be had.  I also revealed that I was rather particular about food, but didn’t have anything so grandiose or amusing to say about it.

     I finished my food and put the remainder in a box to go.  Deandre finished eating all of his food around the same time.  He leaned back and I leaned back.  Time to chill for another hour of bullshitting.  It’s tradition, when the restaurant is not super crowded.  I didn’t know that with just a few little words, things were about to get fucked up.

     “Where’d you get your name from?”

     I still didn’t know, just took it as intended - a casual curiosity.  “Favorite musician when I was younger.”

     “Kourtney Kardashian?  Courteney Cox?  Courtney B. Vance?”

     “What’s their music like?”

     “The KCV Trio?  Pimpin’.  What’s yours sound like?”

     “Courtney Love.  She’s more than just Kurt’s wife.  She’s kinda messed up so I don’t like to follow the news on her, but her music means a lot to me.  I hope she’s doing well.”

     “Oh.  Yeah.  Huh.”  He turned it over in his head.  “The racism makes it hard to like her, doesn’t it?”

     “Oh no.”  I said it casual, but this was the first hint of alarm in the conversation.

     “Yeah, I heard it was pretty bad.  I try to look too close at the people I like either.”

     I felt like my eyes were shrinking, my head swimming.  Why did I feel like that?  “I shouldn’t even ask, should I?”

     “You didn’t ..?  Yeah, you don’t wanna hear about that.  Forget I said anything.”

     “Haha, yeah...”

     I didn’t forget though.  I claimed I felt ill - true - and got myself home in a hurry.  I needed to be alone.

                                                        ***

     Read the next chapter here.

[krystynasierbien]

A Few Notes on the WikiLeaks.

OK, you guys need to keep the Progressive/Commie/Socialist agendas and rhetoric to yourselves or you’re going to go absolutely nowhere very, very fast. Now, now, don’t get your dander up: if I can pass by gross mischaracterisations of the existing world order as “capitalism” or “white supremacy”, you can stay calm and listen a minute…” (Jules Ay, 2007)

To be, or indeed even just to feel righteous, and then act, through the prism of a megalomaniacal temperament you are all too aware of and yet continue to deny publicly — as the ultimate act of resistance perhaps — might well be Julian Assange’s modus operandi as the founding editor of WikiLeaks. The notorious Aussie contrarian is a megalomaniac, he is a sexual miscreant, a misogynist, a sociopath, a slob, a 21st century L.Ron Hubbard, a credulous fucking weirdo. But then he’s also brave and brilliant too, somehow. A paranoid genius who exudes insatiable warmth, wit and charm whenever either circumstance or fancy allows.

In his ‘own words’ in 2011 in an interview with Google’s then CEO Eric Schmitt, Tudor history buff Jared Cohen of Google Ideas [the de-facto foreign policy tech-wing of the S.V. behemoth with notably close ties to the US State Department] and Council on Foreign Relations Vice President Lisa Shields; Assange, upon being asked, proceeds to describe his own temperament as the existential embodiment of humankind’s wider inclination towards the pursuit of justice. That such a pursuit is as fundamental as, let’s say, Plato’s influence on philosophical and political thought — in fact Plato’s work is surely a reflection of this base temperament — and should therefore definitely not be probed for its underlying motivations. In other words: It’s called being human, stupid. Perhaps you should try it sometime? When alive, Plato declared his theory of the forms to be the only antidote to the ‘cave’ of his own creation; the escape from which could be realised only through the ‘right kind’ of education, and with the Plato seal of approval. Assange has in interviews also described the philosopher as “a bit of a fascist.”

In the 2014 documentary Inside The Dark Web Assange appeals first to mathematics, then to market economy fundamentals, “by expressing the desire for privacy, the market will fill the demand” to argue in favour of the wide scale implementation of anonymity software like Tor because mathematically, logistically speaking, Assange says, encryption is ‘easier’ than decryption & therefore on that basis “the universe fundamentally favours privacy.” Today, state and corporate surveillance infrastructures have become expert monetisers of personal information, so the trick is to make online surveillance as ‘difficult’ and as expensive as possible.

The internet and with that the ‘free flow’ of information it facilitates is to Assange tantamount to “the new platonic realm…our realm;” that its the ‘peak’ collective achievement of contemporary ‘Western’ civilisation, and that in order to protect this realm ‘we’ must work towards building another. To protect the web from people, from systems and from algorithms designated to police, to cocoon and to balkanise the web as we in turn do the same to one other and ourselves, ‘we’ must together embrace and continue to improve upon the kind of encryption technology that’s easy enough to utilise effectively so that not only those with advanced computer science degrees are able to in confidence enjoy a genuinely private conversation from the comfort of their own IRL homes. This is encryption which according to its proponents at least might one day lead to the abolition, or from some perspectives, the inversion of the Panopticon (itself a utopian project, remember) from its current perch above people and society altogether. Encryption as the “ultimate form of non-violent resistance.”

What Assange and his incorporeal troupe have managed to achieve in just a few short years, and from seemingly nothing except access to a few dusty old computers, the (at times arms-length) tacit acknowledgement or outright support of some of the world’s leading academics, a skill-set only those on the ‘autism spectrum’ could ever realistically amass; the indirect financial and infrastructural backing of 1/5 of the world’s largest crisp bread producer dynasty (who’s a Sweden for the Swedes kind of guy unfortunately) and a solid (though inflexible?) and mutual (though coerced?) vision as the organisation nears its 10th anniversary, is undeniably spectacular, and yet eerily inconsequential too, somehow; and in thereabouts equal measure. Isn’t it observably true that public officials routinely conduct themselves with impunity (Petraeus? Hillary?) Whereas most of WikiLeaks’ operational goals seem to hinge upon the cogent application of judicial process off the back of whatever wrongdoing their leaks might bring to light. Which means that The WikiLeaks can lead the horse to water but really no further.

Academia and its torchbearers have seemed to treat WikiLeaks’ with a similar ‘cautionary’ disregard to the organisation’s presumably coincidental namesake, Wikipedia — which up until 2011 owned a number of WikiLeaks mirror URLs, for some reason, according to Wired magazine — in that direct references to WikiLeaks library are notably sparse in a number of online academic resources. In some journals, academics have been discouraged if not prohibited outright from citing WikiLeaks documents in their footnotes directly. Instead, only references via Guardian articles seem to have been permitted; selectivising the focus of recent history; materially stunting WikiLeaks’ ‘real world’ impact; confining the organisation’s reach to the lazy, overworked and sadistic media with which Assange nonetheless indulges an intense and at least sporadically performative hate-hate working relationship.

As per the myriad references to him in the vast online theatre of clicks, Assange has either been described or has self-described as tending to err on the side of ‘radical transparency.’ Less transparency, Assange says, ensures more corruption, and so then as cyclical incentive, also more unaccountability. The more transparency built into an institution or group of institutions as their human agents interact with and lie to one another, the less corruption and so the more effectively, fairly and virtuously a manner the whole can be plausibly encouraged to function in thereafter according to its own in-built and oppositional mechanisms.

WikiLeaks’ self-styled incarnate has been simultaneously dissed, dissected, and deified by Hollywood, by the news media, by his supporters and by his critics alike. Which is endearing in a way. Alex Gibney’s WikiLeaks documentary title, for example, combines the token ‘We Steal Secrets’ — a statement made in the film not by Assange nor by a WikiLeaks staffer but instead by former CIA director Michael Hayden in reference to CIA and NSA activities in a nutshell — with “The Story of WikiLeaks.” The title arrangement here obviously has a misrepresentative literal interpretation. The absence of satisfactory and publicly available evidence maintains that WikiLeaks does not steal secrets however Gibney’s arrangement could quite easily be, in fact arguably it is meant to be interpreted to the contrary. Wow. Assange would for many reasons, few of them noble, maybe, frame himself and WikiLeaks as one and the same as of 2010, and the effect this would have on the organisation looks to have been pivotal. But it also took place four years after the organisation’s much less discussed and even less so critiqued-in-hindsight leaks were first published back in 2005/6. WikiLeaks was faceless then & was referred to unproblematically as such by the media.

Over several months in 2011, Assange’s former ghost writer Andrew O’Hagan grew to revile the WikiLeaks editor, because of what O’Hagan perceived to be Assange’s dangerous preoccupation with perception management over substance, virtue. Not to mention the socially unbearable ways in which he would treat even his closest of allies, who’d become enemies for so much as a raised eyebrow on the particularly bad days. The novelist’s impression of the summer that he shared with an electronically tagged Julian Assange on a farm in rural Norfolk in 2011 would first appear in print in the LRB some three years after the fact. An act of friendship, alongside a legal reality, in its own small way, surely. The article was published neatly after the bulk of the WikiLeaks Party fiasco press had dissipated. When Assange was ready to withstand yet another at least partially deserved media beating. This time, in the form of a 10,000 plus word literary epic within the lines of which O’Hagan describes Assange’s chauvanistic personality in excruciating but humanising detail; sharing anecdotes about the WikiLeaks founder’s weird and triggering sexism, his tendency toward shallow dispositions, and the seeping martyrdom complex he was barely able to contain at the best of times.

O’Hagan’s lack of technical knowledge coupled with Assange’s rhetorical knack perhaps meant the novelist’s understanding of the WikiLeaks founder’s coding talents was really more like that of a child’s after having been regaled with tales about the wonders of the universe by a particularly decent storyteller for the very first time… perhaps not though.

When the influence that Assange observably harnesses amongst the small clique of decision makers he leads at WikiLeaks is objectively acknowledged however there is really very little doubt that his remorselessly debated temperament, whatever it might be, has contributed heavily to WikiLeaks’ successes (real and perceived) as well as its failures (ditto.) “It is for that reason there is such a focus on Assange’s character when discussing WikiLeaks” Nick Davies explains via email.

Most people would become aware of WikiLeaks, but specifically Assange, in 2010 off the back of the many hundreds of thousands of US diplomatic cables and battlefield reports unearthing countless and horrifying atrocities committed by the US and UK armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, channelled to WikiLeaks’ servers by former US intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who after over two years in solitary confinement awaiting trial was in 2012 condemned to 35 years in prison for her bravery. Assange went from spokesperson, to co–founder, to founder, to EIC of WikiLeaks in rapid succession as demand for a representative heightened. When it had become paramount that one version of events was going to have to, for historical narrative’s sake, stick. Even if only for the time being. WikiLeaks’ ill-fated but prolific collaboration with Der Spiegel, the New York Times and UK Guardian on the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs would come to mark the culmination of this process: “All three media organisation{s} interviewed him in order to be able to write a profile of him, explain various things about the material, challenge him on various points. So he was there for that function” Nick Davies told the Columbia Journalism Review in July 2010.

Assange was reluctant about the arrangement to begin with because to him and to others Assange’s role at WikiLeaks was, is and now always will be sacrificial because as figurehead he serves as a buffer between the organisation and the often vitriolic criticism charged against it: “It is my role to be the lightning rod .. to attract the attacks against the organisation for our work, and that is a difficult role. On the other hand, I also get undue credit. That’s my function in this organisation” Assange explained in an interview with CNN in 2010.

While it’s clear that the sex crime allegations levelled against Assange in Sweden in 2010 had no bearing on WikiLeaks operationally –“our work”– rather than distancing WikiLeaks from his court case, Assange would instead insist its official line be even clearer that his was a battle against political persecution, the silencing of free speech, thus falling under WikiLeaks’ remit, thereby legitimising the organisation’s active involvement in Assange’s to-this-day-ongoing court appeal. Former WikiLeaks volunteer James Ball recalls a conversation he once had with gruff on-again-off-again WikiLeaks spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson as news about the rape scandal, orchestrated by Nick Davies in his obtaining of the leaked Swedish police reports, first broke, in an interview with the Daily Beast in 2013: “We agreed on a simple line: Julian was WikiLeaks’ founder and editor, and had its full support — but his court issues were a private matter…that line wasn’t acceptable to Julian… he reversed it. Julian’s fight was WikiLeaks’ fight.”

Here, Ball points to a culture with drawable comparisons to many others existing today of course; one where Assange is able to and so precisely for this reason often does get to circumvent the consensus of even his most senior colleagues. The international man of mystery was nevertheless accused of sexual misconduct in a country where the scourge of sexual violence has a longstanding history of revulsion in both public and political discourse. Also legal practices which reflect this.

***

WikiLeaks is a concept too though — once nameless, now also a monetized brand with a range of merchandise, and commercial ownership over the information, the actual leaks it was designed to channel. The monetization process was inevitable in a sense. Perpetual legal costs, the (albeit small) contingent of salaried staff, their expenses, and the obligatory PR arm doesn’t come cheap and limited donations can only ever go so far. But it’s not the principle of monetization per se, instead some of the methods WikiLeaks that has opted to employ (and with whom along the way) that’s raised the bulk of the questions and reservations about WikiLeaks but particularly Assange amongst critics and supporters alike.

Think of WikiLeaks the concept as the technological mastery of a path already partially trodden: hosting leaks on the web, only with infrastructure, and crucially also software, sophisticated enough to preserve the anonymity of the source. New York architects & CIA stock babies Deborah Natsios and John Young of Cryptome were publishing without the guarantee of anonymity leaks online some ten years prior to WikiLeaks’ first in 2006.

Cryptome, a mish-mash of corporate and government documents, of email exchanges and re-posts of articles of interest, also hosts a cache of Wikileaks-related posts that hark back to the project’s shadowy beginnings. Young, Natsios and Assange were virtually acquainted via the Cypherpunks mailing list several years before WikiLeaks was first established; it was apparently John Young as an American citizen who registered the domain name WikiLeaks.org at the behest of Assange in 2005/06. Obvious similarities between the two whistleblower platforms aside, their treatment at the hands of the US security state perhaps underscores a key difference, one that Natsois and Young have both alluded to in the past. Young, who in interviews often whistles a tune to the effect of “by the way, do not under any circumstances trust anything we say, ever,” also maintains that Cryptome was and to this day remains strictly amateur compared to the operation that WikiLeaks was always intended to be.

Cryptome debuted on ‘the World Wide Web’ in 1996: An age of dial up, snail’s pace page-loads, and pay–per–hour. Google’s state-of-the-art algorithms were still a DARPA funded PhD research project at Stanford and its rudimentary predecessor, Yahoo’s Alta Vista directory, tasked employees with mapping and cataloguing the web manually. 1996 was a huge year for the internet. With its full commercialisation, the web was transformed from being a tool used exclusively by governments, military officials and academics, into a global, by which of course I don’t not mean ‘global’ in either sense!!, public domain. In Washington D.C., Bill Clinton signed the landmark Executive Order 13026, transferring encryption from the Munitions List to the Commerce Control List and the Cypherpunks apparently had “significant input (in)to the 1996 National Research Council report on encryption policy, Cryptography’s Role In Securing the Information Society (CRISIS).” Meanwhile, somewhere in Hollywood or Philadelphia or wherever, the first draft of the Matrix script, in which Morpheus mistakenly believes to have found ‘The One’ before — a grand total of five times to be precise — was complete; so too was the formal unification of a community of luxury dachas peppered somewhere along the shoreline of Lake Komsomolskoye on the outskirts of St Petersburg under the monicker ‘Ozero.’ Its tenants: 8 of Russia’s soon-to-be 21st century political and business elite, including future President Vladimir Flobadob Putin.

Rupert Murdoch’s satellite news channel Fox News beamed its first images into American households, under the stewardship of former political strategist and Nixon election campaign adviser Roger Aires, and newly elected Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu with Richard Perle as advisor and Avigdor Lieberman as political ally in 1996 shunted Israeli politics and the Zionist project further still to the right. Perle wrote and published A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm — a report calling for the toppling of Saddam Hussein specifically and for the ‘restructuring’ of the Middle East generally: A blueprint for PNAC, which was formally established the following year. Zbigniew Brzezinski and his team began to research and write The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives: A book; nay, a masterpiece, outlining in broadest terms the US’s ever elusive “national interests” and recommending its foreign policy mandate in Eurasia, and beyond, as the world’s hitherto unmatched superpower prepared to steamroll its way into the 21st Century. In Jerusalem, to thunderous applause at the 3rd ICEJ sponsored International Christian Zionist Congress it was announced that “Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah and has promised to return to Jerusalem, to Israel and to the world!”while in some small corner of Moscow, the former KGB operative responsible for Trotsky’s assassination plot, Pavel Sudoplatov, died from the complications of old age at 89.

The world’s favourite political drunkard, Boris Yeltsin, lurched his way into a shambolic second term in office while back in Washington D.C, Billary Clinton’s administration became embroiled in yet another campaign donor scandal. This time, one involving elements within China’s ruling party, and the country’s mega-rich industrialists. At the beginning of the year, in a sports hall in Philadelphia, Garry Kasparov fought and won his first chess tournament against IBM’s Deep Blue (complete with sizable human entourage) 4–2 despite losing the opening game and finally towards the year’s end, Julian Assange, who was 25 years old at the time with sole guardianship of his son Daniel would reach the end of a court case in Australia on thirty-one counts of computer-related offences dating back to the early 90’s. Pleading guilty to twenty-five offences, he received a fine and good behaviour bond. The remaining six charges were dropped.

***

What about funding WikiLeaks? Non-profits and registered charities, not to mention religions, are able to draw from a range of funding options provided the money is spent, and demonstrably so, on the organisation’s upkeep and the documentable pursuit of its stated operational goals. Income can be generated from donations and grants but it’s also common practice for NPOs and charities to monetize the knowledge-base and expertise of their staff base by charging fees for speaking engagements, report-writing, analysis, interviews, and so forth. Collaboration between NPOs and businesses with similar ‘aims’ or ‘principles’ is fairly common too. So WikiLeaks is hardly “out there” in that sense. What’s crucial about all these funding arrangements however, especially for an organisation claiming to be about the minimisation of corruption and a constructive (rather than absolute) degree of transparency, an organisation with actual real-world power, much like a laminated paper tiger or indeed Henry Kissinger’s stylist, is whether or not it is able to preserve legitimacy under scrutiny. Which of course requires a workable degree of transparency in order to be ascertained. And is it possible to conduct these important checks and balances to a satisfactory extent when it comes to WikiLeaks? The short and correct answer is no. However the long one provides context, apologia. It also considers WikiLeaks’ unique situation and at times even parodic function. Which simply m-m-must be taken into account.

The whistleblower organisation, it could be said, is layered, much like an onion. The central layer contains Assange and the “80% of all the work” and they know it clique. These are the architects and ideas men, women, and memes. The protective, subsidiary layers, there to counteract and on occasion even stir up any “FUD” surrounding the organisation, it’s editor or their sources, follows. The broadcast and multimedia publishing arm at WikiLeaks, which for the purposes of continuity should be visualised as yet another layer of the metaphorical WikiLeaks onion, a Sunshine Press Productions shaped onion layer that is really neither an arm nor a part of an onion but instead as it reads clearly on the WikiLeaks main website’s ‘about’ page: “WikiLeaks is a project of the Sunshine Press.”

SPP is registered at one of the co-director’s property in Iceland. A country with enviable press freedom laws *and* one of the lowest corporation tax rates in the industrialised world. SPP is multifunctional: It’s a conduit for WikiLeaks and Assange’s defence fund donations. It handles fees from interviews and a variety media appearances. It generates modest revenue from the photography and video it produces. More often than not, this means close-ups of The Leader’s increasingly “world-weary” face at press conferences. In publicly accessible legal documentation drafted in 2010 Sunshine Press Production’s purpose is summarised as the “production, editing and distribution of media content, video content, language and print media, web design and hosting industry, retailers and wholesalers, real estate and business lending and related activities.”

The most recent addition to the ‘comedy of layers’ is the project’s commercial arm, WikiLicense, the latest collaborative effort between Assange and Datacell founder and personal friend Olafur Vignir Sigurvinsson. WikiLicense oversees the production of “quality apparel and merchandise” with a pre-approved and meticulously stylized WikiLeaks and Julian Assange aesthetic. Brand ambassador Sigurvinsson, who wouldn’t look out of place on stage at an East 17 reunion concert, introduced WikiLicense and its 46 page strong style guide, in which the phrases “We Attack Corporations”, “We Steal Secrets” and the word ‘anti-secrecy’ have been blacklisted to the world at the Las Vegas Licensing Expo in 2014. Perhaps understandably, there were rumbles of trepidation against this sour tasting but from some perspectives inevitable process of institutionalisation. Assange would assure colleagues and supporters that only working relationships with brands and services whose ‘values’ firmly aligned with WikiLeaks’ own would be fostered therein: “The main brand values are transparency and freedom of speech. The mission is to transform the world by bringing important information to the public” he explained in an interview in 2015.

When Wikileaks’ ethos of transparency, justice, and truth’s set against the back-drop of the organisation’s incarnate willing the violation of these very principles; be it through organisational opacity, through misinformation, through duplicity it’s the organisation’s credibility and by extension Wikileaks’ power to fulfill its credo that becomes the subject/object of sacrifice. To his critics, many of whom have supported him in the past and presently continue to laud WikiLeaks as a vital mechanism for journalists and politicians alike in the 21st century; Assange, within the confines of the Ecuadorian embassy in London to them strikes the figure of a man fatigued beneath the weight of his faith in the knowledge that firstly, he has adequately gauged the motivations of the people and organisations he’s often been forced by circumstance to align himself with and/or make enemies out of in the online labyrinths of geo-politics & 21st century citizen espionage, and secondly that in being righteous he is somehow able to righteously defy the central tenets of his own convictions whenever he deems this appropriate. At liberty to demand of his colleagues their silence by making them sign unnecessarily stringent non-disclosure agreements that ultimately stifles even constructive speech; creating conditions for the very corruption that he wishes to with the help of reliable and accessible technology eradicate in government & big business, surely: “His problem is “noble cause” corruption: behaviour he’d rightly condemn in others, he excuses in himself, because he believes, at his core, he is the good guy.” as James Ball put it.

This way of thinking is only ever self-serving; ripe for corruption; and actually quite a lot like the cyber espionage methods employed by certain online and very much out-of-order security services today. And these are methods that WikiLeaks has emulated (and perhaps even refined with the information they’ve been granted access to) for its own operations since.

Makes U Think.

***