#in the first episode he covered the cost of someone else’s paper just to avoid confrontation

[feelingtheaster99]

I am so proud of lil Conrad for continuing to stick up for himself and for the Big Guy

[ordinaryschmuck]

Why Samurai Jack is a Fan-Frickin’-Tastic Character

Salutations, random people on the internet who certainly won’t read this! I am an Ordinary Schmuck. I write stories and reviews and draw comics and cartoons.

And today, I’d like to introduce you to somebody:

This is Samurai Jack, from the popular Cartoon Network series Samurai Jack. Jack is a rare case. Where most shows would have a cast of main, secondary, and recurring characters of varying sizes, Samurai Jack is a series that mostly follows its titular character on his own. Sure, occasionally, you'll see the Scottsman or Aku making an appearance once in a while. But for ninety-five percent of the series, it's entirely focused on Jack and whatever oddball bounty hunter he's forced to deal with for the next twenty-two minutes. This type of decision can be risky because without quality writing, strictly following the same character week after week could get boring real quick. Thankfully, Samurai Jack is a series that's packed to the brim with incredible writing and direction, making Jack himself a fan-frickin'-tastic character.

How is that possible? Well, let me count the ways.

1. He’s the right type of overpowered

Jack knows almost every fighting style in the world and uses that knowledge to survive every bounty hunter, demon, and/or robot he faces every episode. On paper, this type of character could seem unbelievable given that he's just a mortal man, and even monotonous to know he always wins. But that's the thing: Even though Jack manages to almost always win every fight he's in, it's quickly explained why in the very first episode. Through a montage, we see Jack learning every fighting style from several teachers, each of them helping him prepare for the ultimate battle against Aku, an unspeakable evil. Through the simple act of showing us a few scenes of Jack learning a new skill, it's easy to understand why he's a difficult opponent to beat and easy to believe when he introduces another fighting style we haven't seen him use yet. Plus, while Jack's fighting is formidable, that doesn't make him--

WRONG SHOW! But it's true.

Despite winning every episode, it is never an easy feat. Nearly every battle results in Jack getting beat up and torn apart (Or, his clothes do, anyway). When this happens, it makes the victory feel earned rather than easily given. Take his fight against the beetles in episode three, for example. All of his traps go off without a hitch, and he makes it out while standing upon a pile of his vanquished foes. However, during the fight, his armor got stripped away entirely, and he's now scratched up and covered in robot oil:

That image alone proves that even though he’s winning, it doesn’t come easy for him. That remains a staple throughout most of the series, throwing in a few instances when he temporarily loses only to make his eventual victory all the sweeter. He may be overpowered, but at least it's still entertaining to watch regardless.

2. He adapts quickly

A bit of background information to those who haven't the show (probably should have done this in the beginning, but live and learn, I guess): Jack is an ancient samurai that gets magically teleported to a future where his mortal nemesis rules the world. Now, Jack is forced into an environment vastly different from his own, and in turn, he's forced to deal with a lot of stuff he doesn't know. Most writers would take advantage of this type of predicament to make a ton of fish-out-of-water jokes as a way to poke fun at the idea of a samurai being in a futuristic "utopia" (Or, at least, in Aku's eyes, it's a utopia). Thankfully, the writers avoid that cliche. In fact, if my memory serves me right, there's only one fish-out-of-water joke in the entire series. Which I'm more than grateful for because having a character getting thrown off and confused by the world around him would have gotten old fast. But it's not just being in a future world that Jack quickly gets used to. It's also being in situations he's unfamiliar with. Whether it's learning to fit in with dance-crazed zombies or being turned into a chicken (yes, that happens), it doesn't take too long for Jack to figure out a way to get through his current crisis. It proves that even though Jack is a strong warrior in battle, he's also a strategic one who can't be so easily outsmarted.

3. He plays off of everyone he encounters

Jack, in almost every sense of the word, is a straight man. Most of his humor comes from interacting with the bombastic temperaments of others due to his own behavior being so stoic and calm. The series accomplishes this feat by having the future world filled with colorful personalities, making almost every character the best comedic partner for Jack. Primarily through Aku and the Scottsman, who, as I mentioned before, are the only characters that make regular appearances. These are characters with personalities that clash with Jack's, what with Aku being bombastic and chaotic and the Scottsman being loud and crash. Every time Jack interacts with either of them, comedy almost always follows. A good thing too because while Jack can have his own humorous moments, it's better to pair a straight man with someone insane if you want the laughs to come frequently.

4. He’s still a ton of fun himself!

That being said, Jack is still a riot when he gets to be. By and large, I'd say he has a dry sense of humor, often shining through when he interacts with someone carrying the chaos for the both of them. But, occasionally, there are moments when Jack lets his goofy side out, and it's always funny. They're rare, but that in itself is why they work. Because since Jack always acts so serious in this series, seeing him suddenly break that character results in a laugh because it's something we wouldn't expect from him. If he always acted like this, it wouldn't hit as hard as it would only just be his usual sense of humor. So seeing him smile like an idiot as he's waiting "for the magic to begin" causes me to bust a gut laughing each time.

5. He lives despite tragedy

But not everything is all fun and games for our protagonist.

Jack has one goal in this series: Get back to the past and stop the future of Aku from happening. Several episodes make it clear how strenuous a task this could be, showing Jack briefly losing hope that he'll even complete it. Hell, a good chunk of the final season is him practically given up. He still fights to stop Aku's minions from wreaking havoc, but you can see that the light has left his eyes, and he is more than willing for it to end. But, despite how hard things get and how tragic his life can be, there is always a spark of hope that reminds him what he's fighting for and gives him a second wind to finish it. Even when he's at his lowest point, when everything is seemingly hopeless, Jack will always get back up to defeat Aku, no matter what timeline they're in. It is truly noble and shows just how much of a hero Jack is. In fact--

6. He’s the definition of what a hero should be

At least, to me, he is.

What do I mean? Well, I always believe that a hero is a person who would do everything they can to do the right thing, refusing to let innocent people suffer no matter what the cost. Jack proves it in every episode, frequently the ones where he's inevitably screwed over by his own selflessness. He could easily finish his quest and finally get back to the past, but because it could mean that someone innocent would be badly affected by it, Jack always doubles back to save them. The best example is in the second episode of season two. Jack gets ahold of a fairy that he heard can grant him any wish that he wants, but it's trapped in this ball of energy and will never get out. Jack can just wish to go back to the past and stop Aku once and for all. He only needs to make one simple wish. And what does he wish for? The fairy's freedom.

Because that's who Jack is. He's not the guy who would bargain for the life of another, even if his quest is more important. You can argue all you want that if saving something as inconsequential as the fairy's life is pointless due to tragedies like it being preventable if Jack successfully goes back in time. But that doesn't matter to him. A life is a life, and Jack is not the person to trade it. He's a hero and a damn good one at that.

There are many reasons why Samurai Jack is a fantastic character, but the one above, and the others I've just listed, prove how he is a fan-frickin'-tastic character.

(Sidenote: Does it bother anyone else that, despite five full seasons, we've never known what his real name is? No? Just me? Ok.)

[astonishinglegends]

Ep 199: The Disappearance of Frederick Valentich Part 1

“It is hovering and it’s not an aircraft.” 

– The last known words of pilot Frederich Valentich at 7:12 p.m., somewhere over the Bass Strait in Australia, October 21, 1978

Description:

On Saturday, October 21, 1978, at 6:19 p.m., 20-year-old Frederick Valentich took off from Moorabbin Airport just south of Melbourne, Australia, for what was supposed to be a routine training and pleasure flight over Bass Strait to King Island. A serious student aviator, Valentich had been flying for two years and had accumulated over 150 hours of solo flying time in his goal to one day become a commercial airline pilot. Although rated for night flying by instrument, the sun was still up, and with clear visibility and good weather, there was no reason Valentich shouldn’t have easily completed this trip, which he’d taken several times before. However, just over halfway through the flight at 7:06 p.m., Valentich contacted Melbourne Flight Service Unit and reported seeing an unidentified craft above him, traveling at high speed and shining four bright lights. Valentich would radio back a few minutes later that it didn’t appear to be any known aircraft, and now it had even more unusual characteristics: it was long, shiny metallic, and a green light was emanating from it. Even more unsettling, this craft he described was deliberately toying with him as it orbited above while his plane’s engine was sputtering. At 7:11 p.m., the last statement anyone would hear from Valentich would be that the object was still hovering and that it was not an aircraft. Valentich and his plane had vanished at that moment, but whether it was an elaborate hoax, a deliberate crash, or merely a misidentification combined with a mechanical failure, no investigation has been able to determine. What is not in doubt is that the case of Frederick Valentich remains one of Australia’s biggest aviation mysteries, if not in all of UFO lore.

Location:

Moorabbin Airport, where Frederick Valentich took off from on October 21, 1978, headed for King Island across Bass Strait.

Reference Links:

The Frederick Valentich case on the original Unsolved Mysteries, Season 5, Episode 2 on Amazon Prime

“Disappearance of Frederick Valentich” on Wikipedia

Cessna 182 “Skylane”

Valentich’s missing aircraft report online, from the National Archives of Australia

Download of Valentich’s missing aircraft report as a PDF

Bass Strait

Moorabbin Airport

“'Truth' was out there after all –An accidental discovery sheds new light on the mysterious disappearance of a pilot in 1978, writes Miles Kemp” from The Advertiser

Australian UFO researcher, Keith Basterfield

Melbourne, Australia

Tasmania

King Island, Tasmania

Visit King’s Island

“Biography of Bette Nesmith Graham, Inventor of Liquid Paper” on ThoughtCo.com

Bette Nesmith Graham on Wikipedia

Australian crayfish

The TCAS or Traffic collision avoidance system

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Credits:

Episode 199: The Disappearance of Frederick Valentich Part 1. Produced by Scott Philbrook & Forrest Burgess; Audio Editing by Sarah Vorhees Wendel. Sound Design by Ryan McCullough; Tess Pfeifle, Producer, and Lead Researcher; Research Support from the astonishing League of Astonishing Researchers, a.k.a. The Astonishing Research Corps, or "A.R.C." for short. Copyright 2021 Astonishing Legends Productions, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

[wolffyluna]

TMA Liveblog: Up to Ep 44

To every season turn, turn, turn, there is a reason turn, turn~

I keep trying to do these liveblogs three episodes at a time-- and keep failing at that, and doing 4 or 5. Woops. (I think the issue is that because I tend to listen to them while walking to and from a place that’s about 20 minutes away, I end up listening to them in multiples of two. ...unless I get cliffhangered and then listen to an extra one to get to 5 episodes.)

So, it’s a new season, and I have people looking gleefully forward to my reactions to it (and my reactions to Jon’s mental state in particular) so I’m looking forward to it with an appropriate amount of dread!

And oh boy, is Jon being ridiculously paranoid right now. Which is... almost reasonable. I say ‘almost’ because-- look, the amount of paranoia he has is A Lot, and Probably Too Much, but he also plausibly has someone who might want to murder him? It’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you, as they say. And better to be way too paranoid and alive than not paranoid enough and dead.

Even if Jon’s paranoia is patently ridiculous. “Oh, Martin’s being nice to me, it must be a cover up!” And I’m like, Jon, no, use Occam’s Razor, my dude. He could be out to get you-- or he could a coworker that respects you, feels survivor’s guilt about accidentally leaving you and Tim behind and you both getting wormed, and possibly is also concerned that you have returned to work with relatively fresh wounds?*

Also, if Martin was in on it-- why would he tell you he found Gertrude? You didn’t know how Gertrude had died before this, let alone whether she was actually for realsies dead! It’d be in the interests for anyone in on it for you to not know that she was shot/was definitely dead/was in the tunnels with a bunch of tapes. (Though, putting my really paranoid hat on, if Martin did already know about Gertrude’s death, and got separated from Jon in the tunnels, he might say he found Gertrude just in case Jon+Tim had already stumbled on her, to not break his cover. ...but this is hellaciously paranoid, and unlikely to be the case.)

...and of course the tunnels lead to the tunnels under a panopticon. Because where else would they lead? (Also, on an irl note: Jeremy Bentham, whyyyyyy. I know that at the time, on paper, a panopticon would look more humane than the other kinds of punishment available, but Bentham whhyyyyyyyyy. I want to like you!) I do not like panopticons, Sam I Am. Especially considering Jon feeling like he’s being watched all the time. Especially not in a place of power/full of spooky stuff (because I’m pretty sure these tunnels connect to the Old Passages.)

And there’s the Lost Jon’s Cave Thing in the tunnels too. Jon expresses confusion about why there was an arrow leading down if he was told to leave, in no uncertain terms, after going down. I have a theory on that: the Lost Jon’s Cave Thing and whatever drew the arrow aren’t the same thing. I mean, separate paranormal things have been antagonistic towards each other before: see Michael and The Spiders** vs The Worms. This might just be another example of that

Alfred Grifter sounds alarmingly like the guy who took over Ivy Meadows Care Home-- but they seem to have super different MOs. Harmful sensation and rampant disease and rot don’t seem like super natural bedfellows (if you’ll pardon the pun.)

Also, HELLO BASIRA! She’s also an interesting case of how the Masquerade is... I don’t want to say ‘unnagressively’ or ‘unofficially’ enforced, because neither are quite right when talking about the government or the police? But another form of Masquerade enforcement other than ‘fiddling with the books’ and ‘just shoot it’.  The concept of the Section 31 form, and most people’s drive to avoid it all costs, is an interesting form of Masquerade enforcement. Also, heeeey Lightless Flame! I wonder which Leitner made you/you are associated with. (And in the dumbest case of nerdsnipery ever: I got distracted trying to work out whether, if you were creative enough, you could fill a bath with boilling water via a kettle. It took me a minute for the rest of my brain to kick in and realise, no, this was actually just a dumb cover up and you don’t need to work out if it was possible.)

And Hello Gertrude! I, like Jon, am confused why she is recording things. I originally had the thought ‘maybe she’s checking the veracity via the records on tape vs digital’...then I remember this recording was made in the 90s. I don’t think digital audio was super a thing back then. Apparently the tapes are my organised than the archive, and I think I have a theory about that: let’s say you were pretty sure someone was Out To Get You. You have some information you need, but you can’t let the people out to get you know you have it. First, you put that information in a format (tape) and a place (in secret underground tunnels) that’s hard to get. Any attacker would have to find the bloody things first, and audio is much harder to ‘skim’ to find out what someone knows. Secondly, you throw all the easily accessible information into disarray as possible. Sure, it’ll make things harder for your successor to sort through-- but your successor May Be Out To Get You. Making it harder for your successor is an advantage. This of course assumes Gertrude was also paranoid, but that doesn’t seem like a super unreasonable assumption.

It also looks like the Circus of The Other may be this seasons Big Thing, like the worms and Prentiss were last season. Not only is it mentioned in the first Gertrude statement, but also the first Basira statement as well (”...but unless they can point to the ghost or the spooky clown doll...”) ...I have mixed feelings about this. Because the Circus of the Other definitely contains some things I find super spooky (eg the unfinished tiger was super effective horror, in my opinion), circuses and clowns themselves I’m... not that scared by. I’m almost unscared by them, because ‘threatening clown’ is almost a contradiction to me. (Oh no, the really goofy thing is threatening me! I’m so scared!) I’m pretty sure I will end up appropriately spooked by this season, but after the hole that was made for me that was season 1... it’s an eensy bit of a letdown. But that’s okay. Now it’s the turn of people who are scared of clowns to be spooked :)

(Also, Jon’s gonna get captured by evil clowns, isn’t he. I think I heard something about a circus capturing him, which I may have mis-remembered wildly because I was trying not to remember it. But he’s going to get captured by spooky clowns. *sigh*)

*Sidenote about horror: I had a discussion with some other TMA friends about  how different episodes hit different horror notes, and what episodes people find freaky varies a lot. So I should probably note that my visceral nopes are injury and injury related things, with a sidenote of the fact that sometimes people perceive you when you don’t want them to. This is almost certainly affecting my analysis. And also my tendency to be ‘is Jon on enough antibiotics? And gah, why is he treating his wounds opening up in such a blasé manner?’

**...would be a good name for a band

[leaves-of-three]

Day Two || Blood on Your Lips

Connor Murphy x Reader

Word Count: 2240

Summary: The reader is confronted by her former friends. Both Connor and Evan are characters who appear in this. [This is part of an in progress series. You can follow along here.]

Author Ramblings: Sometimes when I write I often miss certain words in a sentence. Like my brain is working faster than my hands can type or something. Even when I reread I still sometimes miss things because I already know what I’ve meant to write and the old brain skips right over the mistakes. So I do apologize if you’re reading and you stumble over a sentence because my dumb self missed some key words like “the, not, at, etc”. It gets worse when I write late at night which is when I like to write to best...so that doesn’t help much. Anyway, I hope you still enjoy! ~Xo Katie

“You’re welcome.”

The scrap of paper fluttered to your feet as you opened your locker the next morning. The message sat face up, chicken scratch writing staring back at you, as you bent down to pick it up. You bit your bottom lip to stop from smiling too wide. Before you could stand up, someone shoved you from behind. The force caused you to lurch forward into your open locker. Your top teeth sunk into soft flesh of your lower lip. The metallic taste of blood filled your mouth. A snicker of malicious laughs rang behind you. You didn’t have to turn around to know exactly who it was. Alyssa and your former posse. 

Alyssa Gordon. Your best friend since middle school. It was her senior year and she was prepared to run this school as queen bee. She had been preparing for this since the moment you met. Total popularity was all you two had strove for. She seemed to have achieved it. You, on the hand, had not. 

“Reading love notes?” Her voice pierced through your ears like a knife. You tried your best to subtly swallow the blood coating your mouth as you turned around. Connor’s note crumbled in your hand as you balled your fists at your side. This meeting was bound to happen eventually. You managed to avoid her yesterday by hiding and skipping classes. Today was going to have to be different. It was the first time you had properly faced her since the night everything changed. 

“Alyssa.” Your voice was low but you held your own. You weren’t going to show her fear. You knew how she operated. Any hint of fear and she’d pounce on it like a lioness to her prey. 

“I almost didn’t recognize you with all your clothes on.” The two girls posed behind her snickered. Madison and Valerie. They were always following Alyssa and you around like a bunch of groupies. Obviously they sided with her after the party. It only helped to fuel Alyssa’s need for attention. She wasn’t always awful. You used to see something special behind her harsh exterior. She was confident, spontaneous, and always knew what she wanted. You had loved that about her. She knew what she wanted and she went to get it. Too bad you were now cast as the villain in her story. 

“Look...I know you hate me...but-” 

You weren’t allowed to finish your thought because she had shoved you back against the row of lockers. Her face hovered inches from your own. Up close, you could see the layers of foundation caked over her skin. She had probably spent a full hour this morning attempting to perfect her makeup. The wings of her eyeliner were just as sharp as the words she hissed out of her pink stained lips. “Hate you? I despise you. You fucked my boyfriend.” She backed away, looking around to the all the student’s mulling in the halls. “That’s right, ladies and gentlemen! Y/N Y/L/N is nothing but a little, sleazy whore! Keep your men close because this bitch won’t hesitate to get on her fucking knees!” 

A hushed silence fell across the hallway as people turned to stare. You felt your face drain of color. You were mortified. You could feel every pair of prying eyes piercing into your soul. A teacher stuck his head out of his classroom at the noise. He surveyed the scene and shouted, “Get to class! Move along!” His tone broke the silence and the loud chatter began again as students started to clear out. Alyssa looked back at your stunned expression and gave you a smug smile. “See you later, Y/N.” She winked, leaving her words to fill you with dread for whatever she had planned for later.

The halls slowly began to clear out but you stayed staring blankly at the wall ahead of you. The noise in your head was too loud to focus on anything in particular. Your stomach churned with anxiety, making you feel as if you might vomit. You tried to fight off the heavy lump in your throat. How were you supposed to sit through pre-calc like everything was fine after that episode? 

The last bell rang. Anyone left in the halls without a pass could now officially be given a detention if caught. 

You turned back to your open locker. Your fingers released the note still crumpled tightly against your palm. Any joy you had from finding it this morning was officially shattered. You shoved the note into your pocket, put your calculus book into your bag, and slammed the locker shut. When you turned to head to your class you saw him standing there. 

He was wearing the same black hoodie he wore yesterday. His hair still hung in his pale face. He was staring at you. The same, knowing stare he gave you in the library. When he didn’t make a move to say anything, you looked down at the ground in disappointment, and walked by him. A hand reached out to grab your arm when you passed. Your head whipped around to stare back at him. 

“You have blood on your lips,” he spoke softly as if he was unsure if he wanted to speak at all. 

His words took a second to process. Blood. Right. You had bit your lip when you were shoved. His hand was still lingering on your arm when you lifted your sleeve to your mouth. He quickly released his grip when you moved. Both your eyes stayed locked onto each other as you wiped away the drying blood. 

“Gone,” he said. 

You nodded once. Your voice was lost under the lump against your throat. If you dared to open your mouth to speak, the tears would flow instead. You stepped away from him and walked towards your class in a daze. He had left without warning yesterday, you could do the same today. 

“You’re late, Ms. Y/L/N.” Your teacher gave you a disapproving look when you entered. You kept your head down as you headed to an open seat in the back of the class. You could feel all the eyes on you while you walked to your desk. Ignore them. Go to your happy place. Pretend you’re somewhere else. 

When the bell rang for lunch, you were already prepared to make a beeline directly to the library. If you could make it there before Alyssa found you, you’d be safe from her wrath. You needed to avoid any repeats of the earlier incident at all costs. You needed to become invisible. You had managed to survive your three morning classes. All you had left was lunch then your three afternoon classes. She wasn’t in any of them. You could do this. 

You were so focused on getting through the library doors that you didn’t even see the person standing in front of you until you had smacked directly into them. They stumbled forward and fell onto their knees, papers scattering across the floor. A blank, white cast caught your eye as the boy reached to collect the papers. You had trampled a crippled kid. Way to go. 

“Oh my god. I am so sorry! I didn’t see you,” you bent down to help him collect his things but your eyes kept scanning through the glass doors. You couldn’t help but keep a look out for Alyssa passing in the halls on her way to lunch. 

“Not many people do...” he mumbled to himself in reply. “It’s okay. Really.” 

“I- shit.” There she was. Madison and Valerie trailing behind her. “Sorry.” You quickly got to your feet, tossing him the papers you had collected, and scurrying to back of the library before they could see you. 

Your safe spot was empty as you took a seat on the ground. A breath of relief washed over you. They hadn’t seen you. You began to relax now that rows of books covered you from view. If you thought yesterday had been shit, today was worse. You could only imagine what tomorrow or the next might bring. How long was this going to last? The whole year? Shit. You didn’t think you’d be able to make it that long. You should just drop out now and join the circus. That was still a thing people could do, right? An ominous laugh echoed in your head. Lion tamer was always a fall back plan. 

Ten minutes after the lunch bell and Connor had yet to make an appearance. You weren’t sure what you were expecting. He wasn’t your friend. You had to keep reminding yourself that. He was nice to you one time. He didn’t owe you anything. You felt a little disappointed. You didn’t want to be alone. You hated alone. Alone was lonely. 

The library had perfectly good tables. You could eat there instead of on the floor. Everyone was already in the cafeteria by now. It would be safe to come out. You collected you bag and stood up. As you walked towards the tables, your eyes scanned the near empty room for the long haired boy. Nowhere. The cast kid was still here though. He sat alone at a corner table and was staring out the window in front of him. You started to feel a bit guilty for how you had brushed him off after knocking him down. You quietly approached him. “Hey. See any cool birds out there?” 

He jumped at the sound of your voice and looked over his shoulder at you. His eyes were wide as he stared at you. “Not today. Uhm, one t-time I saw a juvenile red-tailed hawk t-though...oh...you were probably joking, right? Never mind. Sorry. Uhm, sorry.” 

Your heart began to break for him when he spoke. He seemed terrified. “Can I sit?” You didn’t wait for him to answer before you sat down across from him. “Hawks are pretty cool. They’re bad-ass. Have you ever heard of falconry? It’s this sport where people hunt using birds of prey. I saw a special about it once on tv.” As you talked, you pulled your brown paper lunch bag out and retrieved your peanut butter and nutella sandwich. You didn’t have any problems making conversation with new people if it meant you didn’t have to be alone. 

Cast Boy just watched you carefully though. Like he was trying to judge if you were making fun of him or not. You weren’t. He was the least un-intimating person you had ever seen. It was kind of cute. He seemed like the exact opposite of your lunch buddy yesterday. Remembering Connor, you scanned the library once more, just in case. Still nothing. When Cast Boy refused to reply, you filled the silence like a pro. “I’m Y/N.” You smiled warmly at him. 

“I know. I’m, uhm, I’m Evan? We actually did a project together once last year. In history. We had to p-present it to the class.” 

What? You had no memory of this. Why didn’t you remember this? Why didn’t you remember him? You thought you knew everyone in your grade...

He kept on speaking, his words coming out fast and erratic. “You were absent that day. I had to present it myself. We didn’t get a very good grade. That was probably my fault. I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean- well, you were absent. I did it myself...I had to do it myself...” His voice trailed off like he was remembering that day. You started to feel guilty for forgetting him. 

You tried to give him a sympathetic smile. You looked down at the other half of your sandwich sitting in the zip lock bag. You slid the food over to Evan. “Here. It’s a pity sandwich. It’s the best kind of meal.” 

“Pity?” He looked confused. 

You just smiled at him. “Pity food. It’s how we make friends in the library. Trust me.” 

He stared at the sandwich with a wary expression like it might explode if he touched it. Instead of taking the food, he looked up at you with panic in his eyes. “Friends?” 

You shrugged. “Yeah, why not? Friends.” 

He carefully picked up the sandwich and took a small bite. You smiled, happy that he accepted. Out of the corner of your eye, you saw the library door open, and a flash of dark clothes caught your attention. You quickly turned around to face it. Pathetic hope rested on your face when you saw Connor staring at you from the doorway. Your breath caught in your throat and your heart started to beat faster. You felt a little confused by this reaction to seeing him. Why were you suddenly so eager to be in his presence? 

Connor’s eyes traveled from your face to Evan sitting next to you. It was obvious you two were sharing a lunch. They flashed with envy. Before you could even raise a hand to motion for him to join you, he had turned around and stormed down the hall. Evan turned towards the noise and glanced at you with confusion. He seemed to be able to sense the sorrow which had fallen over you. With the hand not clad in a cast, he reached into his bag to pull out a bag of plain potato chips. He slid them over to you. “Pity chips.” 

You locked eyes with him and gave him a sad smile, “Thanks.” 

[antiques-for-geeks]

Review Special : Talking to Stuart Benny of Benny Games

It’s all the rage these days, tracking down the authors of games you used to play to find out more about them, their game and what happened to them. As you’d expect, some are more difficult to track down than others and even when you do, not all of them are willing to speak with you about the past.

Surprisingly, Stuart Benny was quite easy to find - a quick search on LinkedIn turned up a profile and a quick exchange of messages later, he agreed to do a short interview over Skype as like the rest of us, he’s isolating while the latest Pandemic plays out.

We caught up with Stuart from his home in the Midlands to find out more about Benny Games, how he came to write the seminal On The Busses, the aftermath and were intrigued to hear that he is back on the development trail.

The familiar, minimalist logo of Benny Games as it adorned software shop shelves for those fleeting few years in the 1980s. 

AfG : Hi Stuart, how the devil are you?

Stuart Benny : Not bad thanks. I’ve managed to avoid this Corona thing that’s going around up to now thankfully. Seeing all the news stories, it’s quite scary.

Yeah, it’s quite something isn’t it? We’re all working from home which seemed a bit inconvenient, but at least we no longer have to put up with Meat reading Twitter out loud at us all day and telling us every five minutes that we need to buy more bog-roll.

Fortunately I work from home these days, so not a problem for me. I don’t miss sharing an office.

So what do you do today?

At the moment I work with development teams out in India building commerce software. These days I don’t write the code, I just prepare a specification for the off-shore coders and talk to the clients here in the UK. IT is not as much fun as it used to be. Back in the day I worked in a team of coders that wrote the software the team in India now extend. Seems to be the way of the world.

Your early work led to a career?

Yeah. To be fair Benny Games ending was a good thing as it meant I was able to do things like go to University. I think I would have missed a valuable experience, but it would have been brilliant to have been up there with Peter Molyneux or David Braben.

Tell us about it. Pop, Meat and I tried our hand at a lot of programming but didn’t get very far.

It’s not an easy business.

How did you get involved in it?

I had gotten hold of a Spectrum in 1984, it was one of the rubber key ones that we got from my cousin who changed his for a Spectrum+. I’d played games round my friend’s houses but really wanted to create my own so I spent my lunch break learning how to write BASIC on the school computers. Getting the Spectrum was the final piece in the puzzle because now I wasn’t limited to an hour a day on a computer and had a proper manual that showed you how to write programs.

So I studied the manual and experimented. I created a basic Space Invaders clone called, imaginatively, Invaders from Space and sent it to budget labels, but they weren’t interested. That’s when Benny Games were born, I thought the game would be able to sell so I took some money I’d earned from my paper round, bought a pack of ten computer cassettes from Boots and my brother duplicated the game on his tape-to-tape. My friend Martin [Freeman, no relation to the actor] drew a cover, which I got photocopied on the machine down the library. Once they were all ready, I put a classified ad in the local paper and waited for the orders to come in.

And was it a success?

I managed to sell the ten tapes eventually.

I guess that not having the advertising push didn’t help.

At the time I was really disappointed, but I think that it was definitely a learning experience. It didn’t occur to send a review copy to a magazine, but to be honest, it was probably for the best.

But it still sold, so that must have been a small encouragement.

Maybe, but it underlined that I couldn’t do it all by myself. So I asked Martin if he wanted to help me on the next game. He had a Spectrum too and things like a joystick interface.

And that game would be Star Crash?

Star Crash, Yes. Martin had got a copy of the film on VHS from his Uncle and we used to watch it. We wanted to make a game that closely followed the plot, but we didn’t really know how to make it work, so we focussed on the space battle at the end of the game and made a shoot ‘em up. I did the code for the game itself as well as the sound effects and Martin designed the in-game graphics and box art.

It was a nice little game, influenced a lot by Galaxian, but subconsciously. There was one of those machines at the youth centre and Martin played it a few times. The big difference technically was that we did it in machine code, which sped the game up.

Again, we sold it direct for £4.99, but this time we put our money together and bought an ad in one of the Spectrum magazines and got more orders than the first time.

Looking back, at the time it didn’t occur to us to think about licensing for Star Crash. We were working in such a niche and at such a small scale, we got away with it I guess.

I must confess I struggled to find Star Crash. It’s not on sites like World of Spectrum.

No, I think it’s been largely forgotten. I think that Martin sent a review copy to Crash, but we never heard back from them. Must have got lost in the post.

I recorded over the original tape I saved the game on in the 1990s with a Menswe@r album.

So when would this be?

Probably 1995.

No, I mean when was Star Crash released?

That would have been 1985.

You’ve released two games now, so how did you go from that to writing On the Busses?

Well, Martin and I decided to leave school at 16 and set up for ourselves. We got a small loan with my Dad from the Local Government Enterprise scheme and set up in our garage.

Our plan was to release our own games, but a couple of our mates wanted us to release their efforts. That’s how Fletch (Andrew Fletcher, musician for On the Busses) got involved. He had written a text adventure version of a Doctor Who story called The State of Decay on the Commodore 16 and gave it to us. We changed the names of the characters and the planet and put it out as The Vampires of Proximus 3. It had this in-game music that really added atmosphere. It sold pretty well.

We also were sent a rough and ready version of Track and Field for the Spectrum by a local man who had bought one of the copies of Invaders from Space and wondered if we’d be interested in releasing his game. That was an ego boost. It had this weird bit in it where if you medalled, you had to negotiate with the doping control about why your wee smells funny. No-one else was doing it, so we left it in.

We tried to tie it into the buzz about the 1986 Commonwealth Games. It was called Edinburgh Games ‘86. That was less successful because we rushed it out.

Again, we struggled to find any trace of them online.

Yeah, I’m not sure where they ended up in the end. When Fletch sold his Commodore 16 in the 1990s, he sold his development tapes too. Probably someone out there still has it.

Point is, we were a bit fed up having to compromise bits of our games because we didn’t have access to the IP so decided to set our aim much higher. We were all better at coding, we had better hardware. It just seemed the right thing to do.

A scan of the cover is the only trace of The Vampires of Proximus 3 that we could find. Anywhere.

While Vampires is not licenced, On the Busses is. How did you come by that licence?

It really annoyed Fletch that we changed his game because we didn’t have a licence. My Dad, who was basically acting as manager for our company, said it was too risky to release it without the consent of the BBC as it was.

So, with the monies from Vampires we decided to see what we could do.

Initially we were going for a licence for OutRun. I was writing a game based on the arcade already - the busty woman sprite in On the Busses was originally for that game - and had a version of the first level done. It wasn’t very complete as I had to do it from memory, but it proved the point. At this stage it had no music.

We had no idea that US Gold had that relationship with Sega all sewn up, so after a very polite exchange of letters with Sega to see if they would do a licence with us, it looked like the project was going nowhere.

However, my mind cast back. My Grandma used to love watching On The Buses on a Saturday evening. When I was little we used to go round to hers for our tea and it would be on. I loved the antics that Stan and Jack got up to. So the thing held good memories for me.

I called the film and television company and they weren’t interested in doing a licence. After searching in the library, I eventually found a defunct publisher who had got the rights to produce new fiction books based on the series, but had never used it so I approached them.

The liquidator was only too happy to sell on the licence as they thought it was worthless.

Did it cost a lot?

I think it cost us £500 at the time. The liquidator was just pleased to get something for it.

What inspired the game?

Well, OutRun played a massive role obviously, but also games like Maniac Mansion with it’s dialogue and Infocom games like Hitch-hiker’s Guide with their in-box feelies that we copied in a unique way [the game infamously came with, amongst other things, a “used” condom in the box].

We wanted the game to be as close to the series, in spirit at least, as it could be. We wanted it to be like a new episode. Martin was doing a course in the evenings at the local college where they were digitising video, which is how we got the pictures of Stan and Blakey in and Fletch spent ages learning how to code for the AY chip in the [ZX Spectrum] +2 to get the music right. It took up so much memory though, we didn’t have anything left for the in-game music we’d planned. He was always a lot happier coding for the Commodore 16.

And the droop meter to monitor Stan’s ardour?

Yeah, we got that from Martin’s Mum. She said that she had no idea why young women in their twenties would be attracted to middle aged men with a gut who probably had the droop when there were plenty of virile young men about. Martin’s Dad shuffled awkwardly when she said it.

We put it in there because it was funny. If I did the game again today I’d probably leave it out because you can get Viagra now so there’s no need to worry about that kind of thing.

Yeah, I think that there might be other reasons.

How do you mean?

I mean, it’s a bit inappropriate isn’t it?

Loads of men have a wives half their age. You see them all the time in the celebrity pages of the papers. I think that Stan and Jack were proved right in the end.

Erm, the attention to detail in the game, like the digitised cut-scenes, were a bit of a breakthrough for the time and lauded in the reviews. How long was development in the end?

It was something we were all proud of, the lengths we went to to recreate the experience. It meant development took ages though, like nine months in the end. To get the dialogue for the arguments between Stan and Blakey, I spent ages watching tapes of the original series and writing it down. Things like that ate in the schedule and we were lucky to get it out for April 1988.

Why is the name spelt wrong though?

This again. I’ve had to explain this so much over the years. It was spelt wrong on the licence document we had so we followed that on my Dad’s friend’s advice; he was a solicitor.

So when the big moment came, the launch, were you happy?

I was thrilled. We rented a room at the local pub and invited the gaming press as well as the local paper and some people from an On the Buses fan group.

We had a bloke turn up from Video and Computer Games and he went very quiet when he saw the game. He took it away and after some negotiation with my Dad, we managed to get a full page advert opposite the review. We scored 91% from them which we were all ecstatic about.

The local paper did a nice article on us - you know, local boys done good - and said some nice things about the game. The On the Buses fan mob put us in their quarterly magazine for Summer 1988 complete with a glowing review.

Which was absolutely useless as we were out of business by then.

Out of business?

Well, yes. After we put out the game, it became clear that we’d not followed the rules of the licence. It was for original content only. As we’d used the digitised grabs and also the dialogue from the episodes, it didn’t count.

Ah, I can see why that might be a problem…

Always read the small print. After a couple of days on sale, we had to pull the entire thing for risk of getting sued.

So what happened then?

We ended up with a load of tapes duplicated that we could not sell, promotions we couldn’t run that still had to be paid for and so on. We were not able to absorb the cost of all of it and with no money coming in to fix it or release new games and try to keep going, we had no choice but to pull the plug.

Everything we had relating to the retail version of On the Busses ended up being thrown away, it had no value.

Closing the company must have been tough.

Fletch took it hardest; he had nearly finished a Commodore 16 game called Road Racer that was an unofficial port of OutRun. It was seriously good considering how weedy the system was. Our plan was to release it to the duplicators when the first payments for On the Busses came in. We’d have cleaned up with that one. It had started as a port of On the Busses, but we quickly realised it would be better to make it it’s own distinct game.

After we collapsed, he took it to a couple of other labels but could not find a market for it; everyone said it was two years too late. No doubt he felt like he’d wasted a year of his life, I know I did.

And you all left the industry at that point?

As I said earlier, I decided to quit while I was still not too far behind and get myself to University while Fletch and Martin decided to carry on with another company of their own. Sadly theirs didn’t see out the transition to 16-bit, but they had some success with a couple of budget games on the Commodore 64. Not sure what they are up to now.

Benny Games was a name that seemed to disappear without much explanation and there is precious little on the internet about them.

Now you know!

Are you involved in the retro scene these days?

Not really, I’m aware of people streaming games and things like that, but I’ve not sought the limelight.

I have been doing some coding though to keep my skills sharp. I’ve wanted to go back to OutRun for some time and do it like I wanted to back in 1987. Now there’s stuff like MAME I can see the reference material without shovelling 20p coins into a machine and get your mate to make notes.

Sounds interesting. We can’t wait to see what happens next. Thanks for your time Stuart!

Thanks; it’s been nice. It’s not often I get to talk about Benny Games these days outside of a job interview.

[theseriesofunsentletters]

Dear Sleepless Nights,

Often when I tell people I can’t sleep at night, they ask why. It’s hard for me to tell most people because of the fear of judgement that’s been instilled in me all of my life. If that wasn’t a factor and didn’t exist this might be what I would say:

The silence to actually feel, hear, and acknowledge my own heart. 

My grandma. Her memory that’s fading and being able to understand the impact of that on me and the people that I love the most. 

The reality of the harsh, cruel, failing world I love in with humans that are much worse off than I. 

Being terrified to love someone that’s the same gender as me because my own family won’t agree with it. The added fear that someone from my family might read that. 

Wondering why me when I think of that time I said no and my mouth was covered and he continued and I felt like a coward because I’m better and stronger than that and I just couldn’t move. Feeling guilty about thinking about it because so many women have had it so much worse. Hating that they have.

Nightmares I’d like to avoid.

Good dreams that always end far too soon. 

My big fucking heart that doesn’t understand when it’s at full capacity. 

Work I have to do and wondering if I could be better and what happened to the fire then remembering the burn out I vowed to myself that I would avoid at all costs. 

Bad news

Occasionally how and when I’ll die and worse, wondering when the people I love will. 

The realization that not all best friends are what’s really best for you. Proceeded by how you could fix it and then realizing that too may not be best and most likely can’t happen anyway. Not knowing what the worst part of that is.

The month of March, more specifically the 1st. The month of July, more specifically the 15th. Happy birthday and 16 is too fucking young for someone with so much potential to die. 16 years old was too young for me to deal with that kind of grief. 

Remembering the first time I felt empathy so immensely that my heart broke for someone else’s pain. 

That one time my dad told me he hated me in the garage of our old house, still being able to hear it vividly years later, and the burn I put on my skin because of it. Just happy the scar faded.

A song that can take me back to a very specific time and place that I hope I never forget or one I would do anything to erase from my memory.

The girl with the best smile and a big heart that’s been making my days better and how scared I am of how much I care about her in such a short amount of time. 

The list of goals I want to put on paper. 

Being afraid of the list of goals I want to put on paper in case they don’t end up with a check mark of accomplishment. 

Wondering how I can be so exhausted at 7pm but when 2am rolls around I’m ready to take on the entire world by storm. 

Moving across the country. 

When love with last.

Why dogs don’t live longer, especially because I would prefer that they could last a lifetime. 

Poetry that makes it hard to swallow as tears well up.

Anxiety I was diagnosed with but down play because my mom told me to. 

Thinking about making sure that this version of me is always better than past me and loving myself even though sometimes I don’t necessarily like myself. 

That episode of Oprah I watched over 12 years ago that exposed me to what self harm was which in turn opened me up to addiction even before I could understand what addiction was. 

How I need to be and always can improve, not settling. Focusing on constant progression. 

How many sunsets I’ve seen. How many sunrises I’ve seen. How many of each I’ve spent crying during wondering what the fuck I was doing. Or how happy I was. 

The west coast, and how it’s always felt where I belong, for as long as I can remember.

My old apartment, the place that felt the most like home outside of my childhood home, with so many great memories and so much heartache. 

Why my family is so opposed to talking about emotions and why it’s so stigmatized to have negative ones and why they have such a fear of judgement (that unfortunately was passed on to me) yet they’re the first to judge someone they don’t agree with.

How I miss the city at night and how silent, beautiful, and terrifying it could be all at the same time. Longboarding through 3am vacant streets with no fear.

All the places I’ve been, and all the places I want to go.

Knowing that this could continue through several more pages if my arm didn’t simply hurt from writing. 

Sincerely, 

An insomnia induced sleepyhead that sleeps too long the next day

[justsomebucky]

The Only Exception (Part 6)

Summary: AU. Reader is given the task of running a popular love advice internet show when her coworker is fired. Her cynical attitude toward love makes her offer some harsh advice, and more than a few hearts are caught in the aftermath. Will hers be one of them?

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x reader

Word Count: 2,725

Warnings: language, angst, self-reflection, discomfort, melodrama, mentions of trauma, fire, rescue (of secondary character), sad thoughts. I don’t know. I'm no Shonda Rimes, but, tread lightly.

A/N under the cut.

Part - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10

A/N: Thanks for providing feedback on this story. I love that my writing invokes strong feelings. I haven’t taken anything lightly.

Two weeks later…

“I’m sorry, Miss Y/L/N, but I don’t think you have the right experience for this position. Best of luck to you in your job search.”

You thanked the hiring manager at the second – no, wait, the third – place you’d applied to, and ended the call with a big sigh.

That was your third rejection in a row, and these people hadn’t even waited until you were on the L train home to shoot you down. You shoved your phone in your pocket, glancing around the skyscrapers of Manhattan, ones that used to calm you down.

Now they just reminded you of rejection and failure.

You knew it was because of your meltdown; there was no way that this was going to die down anytime soon. It was still haunting you, from having to avoid googling your own name, to relatives emailing you memes of yourself, with the subject line ‘This one is really funny!’

The one meme of your face photoshopped on Grumpy Cat’s body was especially ridiculous, though it made you want to adopt a cat. Cats wouldn’t laugh or judge you.

Cats were too self-involved to care.

Your heels clicked on the pavement as you hurried to the subway entrance. There was no point on sticking around downtown for rush hour. You were grateful when the train arrived quickly, and you stepped on to find a seat, flopping down beside a man who was reading a newspaper.

Your thoughts drifted back to your YouTube debacle.

The memes weren’t even the worst of it.

The worst bit was that you didn’t have anyone to talk to about it. Your former-assistant-slash-best-friend Natasha and your former cameraman Scott weren’t legally allowed to talk to you about anything work-related until the investigation into the creepy emails finished. To be safe, you’d told them both to just wait until you heard from the company lawyer. No need to get them into a mess, too.

Natasha had made her feelings on the matter pretty clear, anyways, the night you quit your job, before the gag order.

“I know this job was beneath you, Y/N, but you had a chance to impact people’s lives, and you were so…so reckless about it.”

“Here we go. Here comes Saint Natasha, never does anything wrong, won’t even let me talk to her without trying to make me to blame. Don’t take May’s side and Bucky’s side just because you like Steve, Nat, I-“

“I’m not!” She moved to sit down on your couch beside you, her eyes large and pleading. “I promise, this isn’t about me, or Steve, or May, or Bucky. This isn’t about assigning blame. No one won this week...not one of us is squeaky clean here. I’m talking about you, now, Y/N. You’re a trained psychologist. You’re a wonderful, compassionate person. You know the signs of when to get help. You know the impact of words, especially when casually thrown at someone who is knee- or chest-deep in heartache.”

You weren’t ready to hear that yet; the thought made you want to crawl out of your own skin. “They shouldn’t have put me on the show. I shouldn’t be forced to do something I don’t want to do.”

“Everyone goes through that at work, Y/N. It doesn’t make it right, but it’s the way of the world since the markets crashed. There are steps employees can take, though. You could have gone over May’s head, or quit sooner. Instead, you accepted the role, and you hurt people, including yourself.”

You were silent for a moment, feeling the familiar sting of unshed tears in your eyes as you glanced away from her.

“I know it’s scary to quit, or to stand up for yourself, but think about how scary it is to ask for help from a stranger,” she said softly, reaching out to grab your hand. “Think of how those people had to have no one else to ask but you, and then think about what you told them.”

That did it. The tears poured down your cheeks as the stress of the last few weeks finally caught up to you. You were exhausted, physically and emotionally. “What am I going to do now, Nat? No one’s gonna hire me after this.”

“Someone will.” She smiled at you, brushing your hair back gently. “Someone will see your worth, and they will give you a second chance, and everything will be ok.”

As much as you appreciated the sentiment, you were starting to lose hope again. Three rejections in a row – this wasn’t something you were used to. Sure, it had been difficult getting a job in your field as an entry-level person, but now the markets were opening up. You had a good degree, a good bit of training, some…experience…and most of all, you still genuinely wanted to help people.

You sighed as you watched the buildings go by in the train windows.

“Something got you down, Miss?”

The man next to you put his paper down on his lap as you looked over at him. He was really handsome, and right now his eyes were full of concern.

“I, um…” Okay, so maybe Nat had a point about talking to a stranger. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t seem fine.” He nodded his head at you. “I’m Sam.”

“Y/N,” you replied, offering your hand to him, which he shook firmly.

His face scrunched up. “I think I recognize you.”

No no no no no…

“I just have one of those faces.” You looked back to the windows, feeling your face grow warm.

“No, I definitely recognize you. You’re that love doctor from YouTube, aren’t you?”

“Love Therapist,” you mumbled. “And I don’t do that anymore.”

He bit back a grin. “Yeah, no wonder. I saw your last episode. It was pretty friggin’ crazy!”

“What made you want to watch it?” You couldn’t look at him yet, not until you heard his answer.

“Honestly? Curiosity. It was all over the place: Love Guru hates love, has meltdown live!”

You groaned again, covering your face. “I don’t hate love!”

“What was that?”

“I said, I don’t hate love,” you repeated, dropping your hands to your lap. “I just hated that job.”

“Coulda fooled me.”

It sounded like it should be an insult, but his tone was too gentle, and it made you look up at him again in question. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, it sounds to me like you were taking your personal feelings out on others. You were hurting, too. But, we all have those days. Most of us just don’t have to show it to so many people.”

You were silent as you contemplated this.

“Anyways, Y/N, where are you working now?” Sam shifted in the tight space so he was facing you a little more.

“I’m not,” you admitted. “I just came from my third job interview, and they rejected me five minutes after I left, via phone. They couldn’t even tell me to my face.”

He hummed. “That’s not right.”

“It’s what I’m facing now that I was the infamous Love Therapist.”

“You don’t have to let that shit own you, Y/N.”

“I’m trying not to, Sam.”

“You’re taking these rejections sitting down with a whimper. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Bad things happen to good people all the time, and they carry on. It’s time to carry on.”

Again, you didn’t have a reply for him, suddenly feeling a little childish.

“Listen,” he began, reaching into his pocket for his wallet. He pulled out a business card, gesturing for you to take it. “I’m actually the head of the Red Wing Foundation, based here in Brooklyn. Have you heard of it?”

You shook your head no, accepting the business card with interest. Sam Wilson, Founder and Executive Director.

“The idea for a foundation formed after my last stint in the Army. I wanted to help veterans, reservists, first responders, even those currently active…anyone who went through some major traumatic events that needed help. It’s based in a community center down on Union Avenue, and it’s got career help, continuing education courses, support groups, even on-site therapy sessions.”

“It sounds wonderful,” you told him, feeling your chest tighten a little. If any city in America needed a center like that, it was New York.

Note to self: keep things in perspective.

“It really is. I’m in meetings all afternoon, but I think you should come by tomorrow, have a look around.” The train slowed to a stop, and Sam stood up. ”If you call my assistant, she’ll schedule a time for you to stop by.”

“Sounds good, Sam. Thank you so much!” You gave him a big smile, grateful for the offer, especially from someone who’d seen your show and still thought you were worthwhile.

With a final nod, Sam left the train, disappearing into the rush of people.

You felt more hopeful than you had in weeks.

True to his word, Sam’s assistant Sharon scheduled a time for you to meet with him the next day. The center was about seven blocks from your apartment, but that was nothing compared to hauling it to Manhattan every day.

Sharon informed you that therapy sessions were held three times a day, in the morning, afternoon, and evening, so that people on shift work could still make it to one if they wanted. The sessions were donation only, meaning that anything you could afford to pay, you were welcome to donate, but if you couldn’t you didn’t have to. The Foundation covered the remaining costs.

It seemed a little too good to be true, and you were a little nervous. You’d never dealt with trauma, PTSD, or anything like that before, but you were willing to learn for those who needed help.

Once again, you didn’t have anyone to talk to about this opportunity. Despite the ups and downs of the last few weeks, you really missed Natasha.

With a big sigh, you took the takeout food you’d ordered over to the couch and turned the TV on. The local news was on, and your favorite weatherman was mentioning how gorgeous and sunny it was going to be tomorrow. That was good news, at least.

The TV kind of became background noise as you concentrated on your dinner.

You looked back up, though, when you heard the reporter mention a fire.

“I’m here on the scene of a two-alarm fire at Japanese restaurant in the heart of Brooklyn, where multiple units have been dispatched to try to contain the blaze. We don’t yet know if anyone is trapped inside. Unofficial sources have told us that it started as a grease fire in the restaurant you’re seeing here.”

The camera zoomed, and you saw the awning of the restaurant that Bucky had taken you to on your date. You sat up, food forgotten, and watched in horror as his surrogate family’s restaurant burned to the ground.

The camera focused back on the reporter, and she held a hand to her earpiece, then nodded. “I’m getting new word in now, that one person – a woman, approximately in her sixties – was rescued from the apartment above the restaurant.”

The anchor at the desk gave a very serious nod. “Do you have any word about her condition, Sheila?”

Sheila shook her head. “Not at this time. I will keep everyone updated as Action News continues to be on the scene. Back to you, Tom.”

Your hands were shaking as you tried to google for any more details about the fire. No matter what had occurred between you and Bucky, you still hated to see that poor woman’s whole life go up in flames.

It was about twenty minutes later that Sheila came back on to report that the fire was contained with minor damage to surrounding buildings, but the restaurant was a total loss.

What you saw next completely shocked you.

Sheila was standing next to a soot-and-sweat-covered Bucky Barnes, in full fireman gear, and looking totally upset and uncomfortable.

“I’m told that you’re the fireman who rescued the woman from the apartment, is that accurate?”

“Yes,” he replied gruffly. “But I’m not going to comment about her identity or current condition.”

“Fair enough. Can you confirm that this fire is contained?”

“It’s about eighty-five percent contained at the moment, with three units assisting.” Bucky wiped the sweat from his brow, then glanced over his shoulder. “Excuse me, ma’am, but I have work to do.”

He turned and left Sheila standing there, a little flustered about his sudden departure.

Despite everything, you had the strongest urge to text him and ask how she was doing. You wanted to make sure he was okay, remembering how he lost his little sister in a fire. You couldn’t imagine what was going through his mind just then.

You didn’t text him that night, knowing that the rift between you was still there.

That didn’t stop your heart from hurting for him, though.

After a restless night’s sleep, you meandered around your apartment, slowly getting ready for your meeting with Sam. There was no saving the puffiness around your eyes, but the rest of you looked pretty good.

Your walk to the community center took you past the charred remains of the Japanese restaurant, now blocked by yellow caution tape. Your heart sank as you wondered what the poor woman would do, now that everything she’d worked for and built with her late husband was gone.

Maybe the foundation could help.

Maybe you’d see about helping them expand to any trauma victim.

That was getting way ahead of yourself, though, since you weren’t even technically offered anything more than a tour of the facilities.

Sam greeted you warmly when you arrived, and you were in awe of the sheer magnitude of what he had designed here. There was so much for someone to partake in for such a little building. Everything was handicap-accessible and user friendly. You could tell Sam really poured his heart into this project.

“So what do you think so far?”

You looked at Sam in awe. “I’m stunned that I didn’t know this was here sooner. I guess I didn’t do my research well enough.”

“It’s a growing project. We aren’t endorsed by a celebrity or anything, though quite a few are generous benefactors. In other words, the work ain’t sexy, but it helps a lot of people.”

“I’m sure.” You took a few steps forward to peer into the window of one of the therapy rooms. It was a closed-door session, but you were still impressed with what you could see. The session was small enough to allow for everyone to get a chance to talk, but big enough to not feel the pressure of talking if you didn’t want to. “Do they have breakout sessions, one-on-one?”

“Some do,” Sam nodded, walking over to you. “Sometimes the heavier cases require a more specific training for recovery.”

You nodded, stepping back from the window. “And what are the stats? Do you have more veterans, or first responders, or…?”

He shrugged. “A mix, I’d say. Not everyone’s a regular. Sometimes they just come back when their problems flare up. But that’s the kind of thing we’re prepared to handle here.”

“Got it.” You looked back at him nervously. “So I guess that concludes the tour?”

“Not exactly.” The corner of his mouth lifted ever-so-slightly. “If the foundation offered you the training to obtain your trauma therapy certifications, would you be willing to come help us out?”

What? Was that even a question? “Of course I would! This is exactly how I always envisioned myself helping others. And you don’t mind…”

He raised an eyebrow at you. “Don’t mind what?”

“You don’t mind my past job experience?”

Sam chuckled, putting a hand on your shoulder. “Y/N, I’m not about to hold your past mistakes against you if you’re sincere about your work here. You aren’t just that show; you had a great column, too. I’ll take a chance on you. I don’t know if you noticed or not, but I’m a big believer in second, third, fourth, however many chances someone needs, as long as they’re trying to be better.”

You could be better.

You could make a positive impact on people here, and you were grateful for the opportunity.

“When do I start?”

Part - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10

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[eternalwritingstudent]

An old short story

If found this in my writing files. It’s not clean up or polished, but I thought I’d share it. It’s different from either of my wips and one of the few short stories I’ve written. I tend to ramble too much for shorts. Anyway, here you go, I suppose this would go under horror. Trigger warning for abuse, drugged, and non-consensual situations.

@aschenink @ava-burton-writing I thought you all might be interested.

His pen scratched over the pad as he talked to the young woman in front of him. She was quite pretty as she was, but she wanted more. She had no insurance and couldn't afford other means to get her nose and breasts done. Elijah was glad to help. Helping her achieve her dreams helped get him out of his worthless feeling funk that he had been in. It'd been weeks since he'd had a patient. It cost money to silence the rumors when things went bad, but when they went good it was amazing. He wanted this one to go very good. “Wouldn't she be a beautiful kitten?” 

The voice made Elijah look up sharply as the young blonde was speaking. She smiled at him a little oddly. 

“Did I say something wrong?” 

He shook his head at her and smiled. “No, no. Not at all. Just so pleased to hear you've thought this through so well.” The young woman smiled and continued to point at her nose and he went back to his notes. 

“Fur implants would take several sessions, but we could do it. We'd just need the donors and the right anesthesia.”  The doctor shook his head. No. He wasn't listening. This wasn't going to happen. This young woman had a life. A family. She had dreams.  “Wouldn't she be even more desired in Hollywood as the world's first real anthro feline?” Elijah stared at the pad as the voice argued with him. He was supposed to be taking notes on what she wanted, but when he looked at the paper, it was a sketch of her face except with feline features and ears sticking up out of her blonde wavy hair. He rapidly flipped the page and smiled at the girl. “Be here Wednesday at 6am sharp and we'll get started. You're sure about everything you told me?” The young woman smiled and nodded, passing him the money she had. Her life savings of five thousand dollars.

Elijah thanked her and guided her to his office door. It wasn't ideal, but since he wasn't licensed to practice anymore, it was all he could get. The office connected to a meat processing plant in the warehouse district. He'd gotten many bones and parts from the plant for free. Thankfully, they didn't know what he did with them. It wasn't as if he was proud of it. He was ashamed of what he'd done to some of these people. The voices were just so hard to ignore sometimes. No one else in his family had episodes like this. It didn't make sense. These things were normally hereditary. The doctors couldn't explain it at all. He seemed normal except for these episodes. Even the CAT scans came back with no mental deficiencies. The dark haired doctor leaned against the door with a sigh, looking at the ceiling. 

“You have a lot of supplies together in very few days.” 

“No. I am not ruining her life.” 

The voice in his mind just laughed and faded away. Even as he argued, he knew it would happen. It always happened when he heard the voices. He lost himself and that part of him took over. He couldn't stop it. He couldn't control it. God how he tried. It had ruined his whole life. Of course, he tried.  *** *** His patient showed up bright and early, excited for her procedure. He left her with a dressing gown in the small changing room he had rigged up. The surgical area was as sterile as he could make it. A noise came from far in the back of the building. 

“Do you have a cat doctor?” 

The young woman asked as he came out, finishing the ties on the gown. Elijah just smiled at her. “It's a stray that runs around the area. Sometimes I let it in the back and feed it. I'm a softie for a cute animal.” 

The girl aww'd at him and followed him into the surgery room. He got her up on the table and began to prep her. It didn't take long for him to have the IV and the long lasting anesthesia feeding into her vein. 

“Count backwards from 100 for me please...” When she stopped counting his masterpiece could begin. It was the biggest project he'd taken on. She'd be so pleased when it was done. She'd be more than she ever dreamed.  It didn't take long for the numbers to stop and Elijah pulled her gown off. Taking a deep breath, he went to scrub up. When he came back, he was calm and steady. Picking up a scalpel, he began to slowly cut away parts of her nose and split her top lip. He'd found a plastic cat nose form on a high-end special effects website. It was meant to be hypoallergenic so you could wear it under professional special effect make up for hours. Very carefully, he slipped the piece under her skin and muscles, wiping away the blood as he needed to see. He measured and then began to cut away cartilage and bone in her nose cavity until he could use the upper part of her nose to cover the piece. He attached the piece to her skull with surgical screws and began to close her nose up over it. He moved onto her lip giving the top one that split curved look of a cats. Shame he didn't know dentistry, he'd do her teeth too, but she'd have to find a dentist for that. It took some time to realign the muscles so that they would move over the new part of her face correctly, but he was pleased with the effect.  The other half of the cat form was put on the lower half of her face, making the two parts mesh more fully. Carefully, he opened a cooler sitting on the table next to him. Inside it was a cat nose that he had obtained from one of the dozen cats in the back of the office. He began to attach the small bumpy piece of flesh to the young woman’s face and stepped back when he was done.

“Once your fur has grown in, it'll be perfect.” The voices in his head were soft whispers encouraging him on and on. He even inserted special light reactive lenses into her eyes to give her the right look in her eyes. Elijah was a stickler for details.  He did her chest like she asked, giving her two full C cup breasts. Once her front was done, he bandaged her face and chest completely. He was still debating on her hands and feet. He'd do her tail first. It took a lot of effort, but he got her rolled over in a manner that wouldn't harm her stitches and opened an incision along the lower part of her back. Part of being a plastic surgeon was knowing about nerves and how to connect them. Very carefully, he pulled another chilled part from the cooler. The hair had been shaved off, but once the blood was flowing it would grow back. Carefully, he attached the tail to her spine and veins, watching for the new appendage to get that soft pink color that said success. He had to redo a vein, but in short order he had the color he wanted. He bandaged and padded the area heavily so he could roll her back over temporarily. Once she was on her back, he picked up her hands and a bone cutter. He folded her fingers down trying to decide how sort to make her paws. After a bit of debate with the voices in his head, he began to cut them down, leaving one knuckle on each finger and two on the thumb. He used the unneeded flesh from her fingers to make the familiar cat pads on her hands. Once he was done, he closed up the wounds and wrapped them quickly to avoid infection. He decided to leave her feet alone so that she could wear her normal shoes. Women were weird about shoes. He didn't want to upset her that she couldn't wear the dozens she probably had at home. He wasn't a monster after all.  He moved her into a recovery area, but he didn't wake her. Instead, he changed her over to a medicine that would leave her deep asleep without the danger of the anesthesia. He'd let her heal for a few days before he started on her ears and did the hair transplant. Both of those would be intensive. *** *** It had been a week since the blonde had walked into his office for her surgery. Now Kitten was almost done. Elijah had just finished shaving her head. All those beautiful blonde locks gone, but they'd grow back. Carefully, he slicked her scalp open and removed both her human ears. Taking special tubing, he connected it to her inner ear and ran it up the incision in her scalp until the tube was towards the top of her head. Opening another cooler, he removed two large black panther ears. He didn't ask his supplier where he got his parts because  he didn't want to know. He always requested parts off of animals that were dying. He couldn't stand needless death. He was a doctor after all.  Carefully, he took the black ear out of the ice and made sure the veins still looked healthy and began to connect them to her head. He'd had to shave some of the fur back, but that was alright. She'd regrow it. Especially with the hair transplant and the hormone therapy. The goat boy's hair had taken off like gang busters. He'd had to trim him twice before he was healed enough to leave, but...sadly he'd attacked Elijah and he'd had to put him down. Poor boy had gone crazy. Didn't even appreciate all the detail Elijah had put in.  The doctor sighed as he made the last few stitches on the ears. Someday someone would appreciate what he was doing for people. One day someone would recognize his genius. 

“We appreciate you Doctor. You're amazing." 

He smiled, looking up at a mirror. "That's really nice of you to say. Thank you.” 

When he finished he stepped back from his work, admiring what he'd done. There was no trace of her human face left except for her jaw. She was a masterpiece. Now, just to add the fur. *** *** The young woman blinked her eyes open feeling horribly groggy. When she opened her eyes, she had a hard time focusing. Her drugged mind put it off on the medicine. Elijah was bent over her looking down. “I'm sorry. You had some reactions to the anesthesia so I kept you a few days.” 

The young woman just nodded that she understood yawning. Her mouth felt odd. As if her lips didn't open like they should. The doctor was taking off the bandages. She must have been here a while. Surely, her family was worried. What about her work? She'd only taken a week off! Surely, he'd contacted her emergency numbers. The young woman tried to calm herself. She could see the shape of her new chest through the sheets and was already pleased.  Taking a deep breath, she made an odd sound in her throat. She blinked a few times startled.

Elijah just smiled at her. “Just relax, kitten.” 

Ignoring the affectionate name she closed her eyes while he undid the bandages. His hand brushed along her neck and it felt funny, like there was something on her neck. It felt good though. It took some time, but he had her face unwrapped. Smiling brightly he held up a mirror for her. When she saw the cat staring back at her she screamed. It didn't come out a scream though; it was the loud yowl of a house cat. The young woman wanted to cry but she couldn't. Elijah had been very thorough with his work. She reached up to touch her face and found she had paws. She began to swing at him and he grabbed both of her black fur covered wrists. 

“Shhh, you'll hurt yourself kitten. You're going to be a hit in Hollywood!” “She can't leave, someone will mistreat her. You have to keep her here. She'll be happy being your pet.” 

“Hmm, you're right. It's not safe for our kitten to leave. I'll take good care of you. Don't you worry, little one.” He scratched under her chin and tied her down to the bed. He was glad he hadn't given her claws. She might have hurt him in her excitement.

Smiling, he walked off to his computer to order a large pet carrier and rent an SUV. She could have her own room and cat toys. He'd have to make sure she didn't accidentally get out. Ah, it'd be nice to have company again. His voices got a little boring to talk too sometimes.

[jeroldlockettus]

The Stupidest Thing You Can Do With Your Money (Rebroadcast)

A study found that only the top 2 to 3 percent of active-fund managers had enough skill to cover their cost. (Photo: Visual Hunt)

Our latest Freakonomics Radio episode is a rebroadcast of an episode from last year called “The Stupidest Thing You Can Do With Your Money.” (You can subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts or elsewhere, get the RSS feed, or listen via the media player above.)

It’s hard enough to save for a house, tuition, or retirement. So why are we willing to pay big fees for subpar investment returns? Enter the low-cost index fund. The revolution will not be monetized.

Below is a transcript of the episode, modified for your reading pleasure. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post.

*      *      *

What would you say if I told you that everyday investors, people like you and me, are just throwing away billions and billions of dollars?

Kenneth FRENCH: It’s not something that just started today. It’s been going on for the last 20 or 30 years.

Is it some kind of a tax?

Barry RITHOLTZ: It’s a tax on smart people who don’t realize their propensity for doing stupid things.

Just how stupid is this stupid thing?

Eugene FAMA: Basically, we were saying, “You’re charging people for stuff you can’t deliver.”

But in recent years, there has been a backlash. Some would even say it’s become a revolution.

John BOGLE: It’s definitely a revolution.

RITHOLTZ: We are in the middle of the Copernican Revolution about the proper way to invest or at least the rational way to invest.

Today on Freakonomics Radio: the revolution in low-cost index investing — also known as Wall Street’s worst nightmare.

RITHOLTZ: There’s too much B.S. on Wall Street.

*      *      *

It’s hard to think of any other realm where empiricism — or at least what’s dressed up to look like empiricism — clashes so directly with delusion. I’m talking about investing; the stock markets, primarily. The alleged empiricism comes in the form of sales-pitch data:

FRENCH: It’s easy to think — by seeing the ads and reading newspaper articles and stuff — that if you’re just clever enough, you’re going to win.

The delusion comes in the form of how the stock markets actually work.

FRENCH: We don’t understand the negative-sum nature of active investing. Whatever you win, I lose. Whatever I win, you lose, and we both paid to play that game.

That’s Ken French.

FRENCH: I am the Roth family distinguished professor of finance at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

So the negative-sum nature of investing is one problem that’s often overlooked.

FRENCH: And then the second problem we have [is] most people suffer from overconfidence, particularly in noisy environments where the feedback is weak. That describes the stock market. It’s incredibly noisy and it’s really easy to misinterpret what the return on your portfolio means.

But wait a minute — we know how to interpret our portfolio returns, don’t we? Those big money-management firms and mutual fund firms and investment advisors, they’re so helpful in telling us how much our hard-earned money is growing. Right? Okay, it can be kinda hard to keep track of all the fees they’re deducting. But still — isn’t it amazing that the firm you chose — no matter which one you chose — just happens to be better than everybody else at picking the best stocks and funds?

RITHOLTZ: There’s too much B.S. on Wall Street and being able to say, “Here’s what the data show” is really a useful skill.

That’s Barry Ritholtz.

RITHOLTZ: I run an asset-management firm called Ritholtz Wealth Management.

DUBNER: All right. Explain how you, Barry Ritholtz, actually make money. Who is paying you to do what?

RITHOLTZ: We get paid a percentage of assets. I haven’t looked at it this quarter but it’s somewhere under 1 percent, about .88 or .89. Somewhere in that range. The more assets we gather and the better those assets perform, the more revenue the firm sees.

That’s a pretty typical setup. Many investors pay firms to manage their money — sometimes a percentage of assets, sometimes a flat fee. In return, you may get a variety of services — including advice about insurance or taxes. And, of course, investment advice: how best to save for a house, or your kids’ tuition, or retirement, whatever. Why pay someone for that advice? Because, let’s face it, investing can be confusing, and intimidating. All that terminology; all those options. So you hire someone to navigate that for you — and they, in turn, use their expertise to pick the very best investments for your needs. This is called active management. They actively select, let’s say, the best mutual funds for your needs. And you pay them for their expertise. You also pay those mutual funds, by the way — sometimes there’s what called a sales load when you buy it; and an expense ratio, a recurring fee the fund deducts from your account. So, between the mutual fund fees and the investment fees, that’s usually at least a couple percent off the top — and that’s whether your funds go up or down, by the way. So hopefully they go up. Hopefully the active management you’re paying for is at least covering the costs?

FRENCH: What we actually found was the top 2 to 3 percent had enough skill to cover their costs. And the other 97 or 98 percent didn’t even have that.

In 2010, Ken French and Eugene Fama published a study in The Journal of Finance called “Luck Versus Skill in the Cross-Section of Mutual Fund Returns.”

FRENCH: So what Fama and I were doing in that paper is trying to figure out when a fund does really well, should we attribute that to a manager that is incredibly talented and really beating the market? Or are we just looking at the result of luck?

That is, did their funds rise in value because of their stock-picking skill — or, perhaps, simply because the market was rising? And, again, the Fama-French finding:

FRENCH: So the top 2 to 3 percent [have] enough skill to cover their costs. Everybody else: down below that.

Ouch. It’s enough to make you think that maybe it’s not worth paying those investment experts for their expertise. If only there were some simple, cheap way to avoid all that active investing that often doesn’t pay off and just passively own, say, a small piece of the entire stock market. Well, as you may know, there is. They’re called index funds and E.T.F.s, for exchange-traded funds. They can be bought very cheap. And in recent years, a lot of people have been buying them.

RITHOLTZ: When we look at the fund flows over the past few years, there is a massive outflow from active fund management.

BOGLE: The number comes out to around a trillion and a half flowing into index funds and a half a trillion flowing out of active funds, which is a $2 trillion shift in investor preferences. It is definitely a revolution.

That is John Bogle …

BOGLE: … often called Jack, and I’m the founder of Vanguard and the founder of the world’s first index fund.

How big a deal is Jack Bogle? Here’s what Barry Ritholtz thinks:

RITHOLTZ: Jack Bogle is one of the unsung heroes of the American middle class. He has allowed people to invest over the long haul very inexpensively with excellent results in a way that they probably wouldn’t have been able to do without him and without Vanguard.

Warren Buffett, the most famous investor in the world, had this to say recently: “If a statue is ever erected to honor the person who has done the most for American investors, the hands-down choice should be Jack Bogle.”

RITHOLTZ: Vanguard is clearly the leaders in low-cost indexing. They’re now $4 trillion, right? That’s an astonishing number.

How astonishing? Four trillion dollars could buy you every major sports league in America; and Apple — the company, all of it; and put 8 million kids through college. And you’d still have a trillion left over. That’s how much money we have collectively given to Vanguard. Why? Because they were the first to offer an alternative to the old-school, expert-driven, high-fee investing model. Let’s get back to Jack Bogle.

DUBNER: You said recently, “What’s clear is we’re in the middle of a revolution caused by indexing. It’s reshaping Wall Street, it’s reshaping the mutual fund industry.” Now, for the man who really can claim way more credit than anyone else for starting the revolution, does it seem like a revolution or more of an evolution? In other words, it’s been a long time coming.

BOGLE: It is a revolution, still going on. It started in the last few years. It’s actually accelerated and I don’t think that acceleration can continue. But I do think the dominance of the index fund will continue simply because we’re in an industry where cost is everything and no one wants to compete on cost. Managers don’t want to compete on cost. They want to make money for themselves. It didn’t bother me that it took a long time. It takes time for people to understand, keep up. I did my best to help.

One way Bogle helped was by setting up Vanguard as a cooperative. It’s owned by the fund’s shareholders; rather than distributing profits, it lowers its fees.

DUBNER: As the founder of Vanguard, as the father of index-fund investing — how have you turned out financially? Are you worth billions and billions and billions?

BOGLE: No, I’m not even worth a billion. They laugh at me. I’m not even worth $100 million. But I was never in this business to make a lot of money for myself. I’ve been nicely paid, particularly in the days when I was running the company, and I am not a spender. I buy a new sweater every once in awhile or a new shirt from L.L. Bean. My wife is the same way. We’re just not interested in things, toys. We’re very happy with our standard of living. We have a nice small house that we love. We have a wonderful family. At 88 years old, I might be the most blessed man in the United States of America.

Bogle created Vanguard in 1975, when things weren’t going so well for him.

BOGLE: It was a way for me to get back in the business, to get back at my old company, which I’d been fired from.

The old company was Wellington Management, where Bogle had spent more than two decades. In 1970, had become CEO; in 1974, he was fired, for making what he admits was an “extremely unwise” merger decision. When he started Vanguard, it was just another traditional, actively-managed money firm — and that part of the business still exists — but Bogle had long questioned the wisdom of picking stocks.

BOGLE: In Princeton University in 1951, when I was choosing a topic for my senior thesis, I chose the mutual fund industry. “The Economic Role of the Investment Company” was the title of my thesis. I examined the records of some funds — we didn’t have what we have today in records — but I looked at half a dozen funds anecdotally. I said in my thesis, this is a virtually a direct quote: “Mutual funds can make no claim to superiority over the market averages.” That’s the harbinger of the index fund.

A harbinger, maybe, but Bogle spent his first couple decades in the business dancing the same dance as everyone else. Then, in 1974, the same year Bogle was fired from Wellington, The Journal of Portfolio Management published a paper by the economist Paul Samuelson called “Challenge to Judgment.”

BOGLE: I was inspired by his article.

Samuelson was a Nobel winner and an extremely influential thinker.

BOGLE: I’m trying to think whether to say he was a thousand times smarter than I was or a hundred times, but it was something like that.

Samuelson’s paper challenged the performance of active managers and suggested that, “at the least, some large foundation should set up an in-house portfolio that tracks the S&P 500 Index — if only for the purpose of setting up a naive model against which their in-house gunslingers can measure their prowess.” Bogle, who was in the midst of launching Vanguard, took it to heart. Others had been thinking through the idea, but Bogle, and Vanguard, were the first real players to take the plunge. The notion was brutally simple: most stock pickers think they are better than the market — and they aren’t; therefore, investors should just buy the whole market. And, since you’re not paying the big salaries, and all the other costs that go along with those stock pickers — the fund would be much cheaper to buy.

DUBNER: When you founded it, it was treated as heresy, even laughable, by most people on Wall Street. Talk about what it was like to experience that reception.

BOGLE: Well, I don’t cave in very easily. You may have sensed that. In a certain way, the more dissent I got the more confident I was that I was right. I’m that kind of contrarian person. People laughed. There was this great poster that said “Stamp Out Index Funds.” There’s Uncle Sam with a cancellation stamp all over it, all over the poster. “Index Funds are un-American.”

DUBNER: They were considered “un-American”— that argument was what?

BOGLE: The argument is, “In America, we don’t settle for average. We’re all above average.” But, of course, we’re not all above average. But basically, the poster was put out by a brokerage firm. The thing about the index fund — no sales loads, no portfolio turnover. You don’t buy and sell every day like these active managers do. It’s Wall Street’s nightmare and it still is! That kind of reception didn’t bother me. The fund was known as “Bogle’s Folly.” The original underwriting was supposed to be $150 million. This is the original underwriting of the index fund. The underwriters sheepishly, on the day the underwriting was completed, came in with $11 million instead of $150 million.

DUBNER: Did you lose a little confidence then or no?

BOGLE: No! They said, “Why don’t we just drop the whole thing?” It was probably the worst underwriting in the history of Wall Street. I said, “No, we’re not going to drop it. We have the world’s first index fund. That’s good enough for me.” We went ahead and started to run it. It took a long time for people to get the idea.

But, increasingly, people are getting the idea. That rather than spending, let’s say, $10,000 to buy five different mutual funds, each made up of a basket of hand-selected stocks, you spend all $10,000 on one fund that simply tracks an entire stock index — the S&P 500, maybe. It’s going to be a lot cheaper than buying those separate, actively-managed funds — and, as the data have shown again and again — it will likely perform better as well. Over the past decade, according to The Wall Street Journal, “between 71 and 93 percent of U.S. stock mutual funds either closed or failed to beat their closest index funds.”

BOGLE: If we go back to 1970, we find that there were approximately 400 funds in business and basically 330 or 340 have gone out of business. It turns out, in that period, there were two mutual funds who beat the market by more than 2 percent per year. Two! That’s half of 1 percent of all the funds that started in the business. Those are your odds.

Those may be the odds, but the perception is different. Warren Buffett, a stock picker who does beat the market, is a national hero. In schools all across America, when kids are introduced to the concept of investing, they’re often encouraged to become little Buffetts — playing stock-market games where they pick individual stocks. Rather than being taught the sensible route of dollar-cost-averaging their way into low-fee index funds. It’s a bit like learning to drive on a Formula One circuit.

FRENCH: The notion that we can all get rich by trading actively just doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.

BOGLE: You have to understand one important thing about the market and that is for every buyer, there is a seller. And every seller, there is a buyer.

FRENCH: Every time somebody wins, somebody loses even more.

BOGLE: So when transactions take place, the only winner net is the man in the middle. The croupier in the gambling casino.

FRENCH: You have to believe you really are superior to the other folks that you’re trading against.

RITHOLTZ: I draw the parallel between being an outstanding market-beating manager, trader, whatever, with being an all-star in any professional sports league. It’s such a tiny percentage!

FRENCH: If you don’t think that you’re really one of the best people out there doing this, you probably shouldn’t even start.

RITHOLTZ: But every kid who ever picked up a baseball bat, a basketball, a football, dreams of winning the championship, hitting the bottom-of-the-ninth home run. The problem is if you invest based on those fantasies, the odds are strong that you’re going to be disappointed.

BOGLE: This is actually simple wisdom.

Simple, perhaps, but elusive. In part because the alternative — the gamble of picking stocks — is so seductive. Which may explain why it took so long for index funds to really catch on. The index fund is more predictable, and boring — which, as Jack Bogle sees things, is its virtue.

BOGLE: It diversifies away the risk of individual investments. It diversifies away the risk of picking a hot manager and diversifies away the idea that you can pick market sectors like health care, technology, or wherever it might be.

And then there’s the cost comparison. We’ll start with the typical mutual fund:

BOGLE: They charge a lot for this service. We estimate the average expense ratio is almost 1 percent for an actively managed fund. Then these active funds, all of them have sales loads. The index funds do not. The active funds further turn over their portfolios at a very high rate and that’s costly. You add that all up and the cost of owning a mutual fund on average is 2 percent.

And how does that compare to an index fund?

BOGLE: You can buy an index fund of, an S&P 500 Index Fund, let’s say, for as little as 4 basis points, four one-hundredths of 1 percent. In a 7 percent market, you’re going to get 6.96 percent.

That difference — 2 percent versus four one-hundredths of 1 percent — may not sound like a lot. But over time, those numbers are compounded by what Bogle calls the “relentless rules of arithmetic.”

BOGLE: If the market return is 7 percent and the active manager gives you 5 after that 2 percent cost, and the index fund gives you 6.96 after that four basis point cost — you don’t appreciate it much in a year — but over 50 years, believe it or not, a dollar invested at 7 percent grows to around $32 and a dollar invested at five percent grows to about $10. Think what an investor thinks about when he looks at that number. He says, “Wait a minute! I put up 100 percent of the capital. I took 100 percent of the risk and I got 33 percent of the return.” Well, anybody that thinks that’s a good deal, I’ve got a bridge I want to sell them. Here’s the reality: this is the business, the mutual fund, actively-managed business, where you not only don’t get what you pay for, you get precisely what you do not pay for. Therefore, if you pay nothing, you get everything.

Jack Bogle is plainly a cheerleader for the revolution he helped start. There are, to be sure, plenty of critiques of indexing, or at least shortcomings — we’ll get into those later. But the fact is that the revolution does seem to be happening. The question is …

BOGLE: Why did it take so long? That’s what the question really ought to be.

  *      *      *

On October 14 of 2013, the University of Chicago finance professor Eugene Fama began his day just like any other.

FAMA: I was doing my exercises and preparing my class for that day — when they called.

“They” being the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences committee that awards the Nobel prize in economics.

FAMA. Ten minutes later, there were reporters at the door. It was amazing.

DUBNER: Wow. How did you like that?

FAMA: I said, “Look, I have a class to go to. I can’t deal with you.” So I went and taught my class. They wanted to come into the class and I said, “These kids pay a fortune for these classes! Stay out there.”

DUBNER: So you’re sometimes called “the father of finance” which—

FAMA: I think it’s the grandfather at this point.

DUBNER: Well, here’s the thing that seems strange to me: to a lot of people, given that it’s the 21st century and you’re not 500 years old, hasn’t finance been around for centuries?

FAMA: Not as an academic discipline. If you go back to the late 50’s, there really was nothing called “academic finance.” Well, there was something being taught in business schools as finance, but it really had no strong research underpinnings. If you look back at that time, the people in finance weren’t economists. I don’t know how you’d characterize them.

DUBNER: Accountants?

FAMA: Yeah, they were professional people. Some of them had come over from accounting, but they weren’t strong in economics, so they didn’t think of questions in those terms. For example, if you took an investments course at that time, it was a course on picking stocks, basically. How do you analyze companies to pick stocks? Of course, they had no model of what determines prices, so there was really no way to answer that question in any rigorous way. But at that point we were developing lots of research that said, “This is basically very difficult to do, if not impossible, and it’s kind of pointless. We don’t really know anybody who can teach people how to pick stocks because we don’t know anybody who can pick stocks.”

DUBNER: You’re famous for developing what we now know as the efficient market hypothesis. Explain it to a layperson.

FAMA: It’s easy to explain. It’s a simple proposition. The proposition is that prices reflect all available information, which in simple terms means since prices reflect all available information, there’s no way to beat the market. Now, that’s an extreme statement of the hypothesis, and the difficult part is actually developing tests of it because you have to say something about what the market is trying to do in setting prices.

Because it’s so hard to test, the efficient market hypothesis is not universally accepted. Some behavioral economists argue that the standard human cognitive errors create imperfect pricing that a shrewd investor can exploit. What’s Jack Bogle’s take?

BOGLE: The markets are highly efficient — although, importantly, not perfectly efficient. Sometimes they’re very efficient and sometimes they’re not. It’s hard for we poor souls on Earth to know which is which

RITHOLTZ: The basic concept of, “Can you beat the market?” — it’s more subtle than some people want to argue.

Barry Ritholtz again:

RITHOLTZ: It’s not black and white. It’s not that you can’t beat the market. You can and some people have and have for long periods of time. Look no further than Warren Buffett. The challenge is being able to select who’s going to be able to beat the market, for them to beat the market consistently year in year out, and then to do it in excess of costs, fees, taxes, commissions. That’s the brilliance of Eugene Fama, identifying that before anybody else saw it.

Fama developed the idea in the late 1960’s.

FAMA: The academic world grasped this stuff basically immediately. There was no resistance to it to it at all. It took a much longer time for it to penetrate into the applied community.

DUBNER: And why was that?

FAMA: That’s the $24 question. Well, an even higher price than that would be given the relevance of how long it’s taken for people to really wake up to the data and what it says about active investing.

DUBNER: In retrospect, was the objection simply protectionist thinking by the financial services industry or was it something more than that?

FAMA: The financial services industry had a lot to lose from this line of research because basically we were saying to them, “You’re charging people for stuff you can’t deliver.” So I was not a popular kid.

DUBNER: Well, obviously the idea caught on. It’s often said that right now we’re in the midst of a “passive investment revolution.” Do you agree with that characterization? Is revolution too strong a word or no?

FAMA: Well, when my co-author Ken French was president of the American Finance Association, in his presidential talk, he said that, “It basically took 50 years to go from zero percent passive to 20 percent passive. Then, in the next 10 years it’s gone up to like 30.” We’re still nowhere near taking over the world.

DUBNER: When is active management a good thing? Or maybe put it another way, when is it worth it for me to pay my 1 or even 2 points for an active manager?

FAMA: I would say I don’t know anybody for whom it’s worth it because I don’t think — I’ve analyzed more data than almost anybody, given that I’m so old. But the problem that people don’t understand is that active managers, almost by definition, have to be poorly diversified. Otherwise, they’re not really active. They have to make bets. What that means is there’s a huge dispersion of outcomes that are totally consistent with just chance. There’s no skill involved it. It’s just good luck or bad luck. You can’t tell the difference between the two based on returns alone. This is looking at the world before costs. When you look at the world after costs — which is what people eat; they have to pay the cost of the people charging them — well, then, the whole industry looks pretty bad.

DUBNER: If you want to give yourself a bad chance versus the market and pay extra for it, that’s when you should get an active manager, basically?

FAMA: Right. Be my guest.

DUBNER: It sounds like college endowments. No offense. I don’t know how the University of Chicago runs its endowment. But the Ivy Leagues certainly …

FAMA: Badly. I’m chuckling, [but] it’s not a laughable matter. But in the old days they used to invite me annually to go talk to the person who ran the endowment. It was clear he was totally not interested. Finally, I gave up and they gave up.

RITHOLTZ: The joke is that Harvard is a $38 billion hedge fund with a small college attached to it.

Barry Ritholtz manages money but he’s got a couple side gigs too.

RITHOLTZ: I also am a columnist for Bloomberg View, and I host a weekly podcast called Masters in Business.

In one column, he wrote, “If ever there was an argument for endowments to turn to passive indexing, Harvard is it.” This was shortly before the Harvard endowment shook up its management team after years of poor returns. I asked Ritholtz about it.

DUBNER: Harvard’s annualized net returns for the past 10 years were less than 6 percent. In fact, when you look at the top-performing Ivy endowments, they were all around 8 percent for those 10 years. Again, sophisticated, expensive management with access to all kinds of information and investments. Just out of curiosity I went and looked at my boring own kids’ college savings fund, which is stashed in a pretty dull and very cheap 529 plan. There’s just a handful of choices, index funds. There’s one growth fund, one value fund, a couple of bond funds, and it costs pretty much nothing. And lo and behold, my ten-year annualized net return beat every single Ivy endowment. Those are the best and the brightest. Why on earth would anyone want to pay those fees for active management, whether you’re an individual investor like me or a huge endowment like Harvard?

RITHOLTZ: Look, just because you’re at an endowment running billions of dollars associated with some of the most sophisticated investors, there’s no reason to think you’re not going to succumb to the same cognitive errors and psychological failings that every other human being does. There’s groupthink, there’s a refusal to admit that you were wrong. There is an even bigger embarrassment of saying, “I don’t know.” One of my favorite things to do is anytime I’m on TV and someone asks me a question, “Hey, where’s the Dow going to be a year from now?” I love to just say, “I don’t know.” They don’t know how to respond to it. When you’re in a room full of peers, when you’re in a room full of consultants, and everybody is pretending to be knowledgeable and sophisticated, there are all sorts of group dynamics that lead to — the technical term is “suboptimal decision making.”

DUBNER: The financial services industry is obviously gigantic. A lot of people have a lot of relatively high-paying jobs for which they’re supposed to create value for people who are investing money. But the data show — forget about whether it’s Ivy League endowment data or across-the-board investment data — the data show that a lot of money that investors spend to get better returns is essentially wasted. First of all, would you agree with that statement?

RITHOLTZ: Most of the money they spend is essentially wasted; not a lot. I would say the vast majority.

DUBNER: All right. The argument would be that they’d be better off buying a few index funds for essentially pennies on the dollar compared to what they’re paying their investment professionals and that the financial services industry is kind of a tax on stupid people who think they’re being really smart. Do you see it that way?

RITHOLTZ: It’s worse than that! It’s not a tax on stupid people who think they’re smart. It’s a tax on smart people who don’t realize their propensity for doing stupid things. Look at all the endowments. Look at look at how far behind the eight ball most of the state pension funds are. These aren’t dumb people. These are really smart, accomplished people. They, unfortunately, don’t want to admit they don’t know something, [and] are very put off by counter-intuitive information. It’s the Lake Wobegon syndrome: everybody wants to believe that they’re above average. “Sure it’s hard to beat the market, but I can.” What’s amazing is there are actually S&P 500 index funds that have a giant fee attached to it. I can’t explain how that works.

DUBNER: And that’s a tax on stupid, no?

RITHOLTZ: That is a tax on stupid, for sure.

DUBNER: You’re literally paying whatever — double, triple, five times for exactly the same product?

RITHOLTZ: That’s right. Triple. I want to tell you the Vanguard S&P 500 index fund is about 5 or 6 basis points. Schwab recently cut 1 to 2 or 3 basis points. There are S&P 500 funds with 50 and 75 and 100 basis points. It’s an insane — that is a tax on dumb.

The Dartmouth finance professor Ken French has been closely watching the growing appetite for index funds.

FRENCH: It’s not something that just started today. It’s been going on for the last 20 or 30 years. It does seem to have picked up speed.

That said, French doesn’t quite see the passive-investing revolution as a revolution.

FRENCH: I believe we are seeing a shift from active toward passive. That’s pretty clear, but I don’t think it’s quite as pronounced as most people argue.

That’s because so much new money has been flowing into E.T.F.s.

FRENCH: An E.T.F. is an exchange traded fund.

Which may look a lot like a passive index fund …

FRENCH: But what’s unique about E.T.F.s is you can trade them all day.

And the volume of trading in E.T.F.s, French says, suggests that many traders are not truly passive.

FRENCH: I think of passive as essentially a buy and hold. They buy it today and they hold it for years and years. We’re not seeing that in the E.T.F. marketplace. Some of the people are certainly doing that, but it appears a large fraction of them aren’t.

That said, there’s plainly been an acceleration away from traditional active management. Why?

FRENCH: I interpret that as one of the consequences of the financial crisis. Before the crisis, people had this view that Wall Street was our friend. After the crisis, there are a lot more cynical about fees that are being charged and services that are being provided by Wall Street.

RITHOLTZ: At a certain point, the investing public turns around and says, “This is rigged. This is a tough gig. Why am I wasting my time picking stocks, paying commissions, paying high mutual fund costs? I could just index.”

There are, of course, plenty of alternative views — especially from those who profit from old-school active investing. Still, you can imagine that if every investor in the world held pretty much the same investments — well, what would that lead to? A research note from the investing firm Sanford C. Bernstein argued that passive investing is, “worse than Marxism,” in that it threatens the legitimate give-and-take that is central to any market. Ken French again:

FRENCH: One of the beautiful things that happens out there in the market is price discovery, and I would never argue all prices are right, but prices are pretty darn good. We learn an awful lot about how resources should be allocated from what the prices are in the financial markets. If nobody is doing price discovery, we lose a really valuable service. What I always say is, “If it’s somebody I don’t like, I’m more than happy to have them go out there and spend their money investing actively because as a group, they’re making the world better off.”

For what it’s worth, Ken French, for all his skepticism about how modern investing works — he himself does some work with the huge investment firm Dimensional Fund Advisors. So does Eugene Fama. For all the noise about the passive revolution, it’s worth remembering that only about 30 percent of all mutual and exchange-traded funds are being passively managed. But it’s enough to concern plenty of people who worry about homogenization — especially when the federal government gets involved.

SCARAMUCCI: My name’s Anthony Scaramucci. I’m the founder of SkyBridge Capital.

When we spoke with Scaramucci, last year, he’d just sold SkyBridge Capital in anticipation of getting a job with the Trump administration. He eventually got that job as White House Communications Director, only to be fired after less than a week. When we spoke, I asked Scaramucci about the yet-to-be-instated fiduciary rule. That’s an Obama-era regulation that was pitched as ensuring that financial advisors act in their clients’ best interests.

DUBNER: You called the fiduciary rule, “a case study in government overreach, a clear example of how faulty regulation can have severe unintended consequences.” You also promised to help President Trump repeal it. What are some of those unintended consequences of a rule to try to change the behavior of the people who are paid to manage other people’s retirement money?

SCARAMUCCI: It’s really not changing their behavior. What it���s doing is it’s actually limiting the choices for the end user or the end investor. Because if you read the entire rule, which I’ve read, it’s a governmental decision to allocate capital into index funds and E.T.F. funds that the government is deeming those things as being more efficient. They’re more effective in terms of their lower cost analysis and, for the time being, the government is actually right. If you look at the last 5 or 10 years, those funds have performed better and charge less fees than, let’s say, a hedge fund or a private equity firm.

But the problem with that analysis is that you’re not taking a 120-year, modern, economic historical analysis of business cycles and stock market trends. You’re really only looking at the last 10 years. The buffet table of investment opportunities for the average user — let’s say, my mom and dad, which I’m super concerned about — gets curtailed. I’m just going to sell you the things that the government wants me to sell you. What will end up happening is everybody will be overloaded in E.T.F.s, they’ll be overloaded in indexes. And when the market crashes — because they will have eliminated many of the financial advisers. You’ll lose 60 to 70,000 financial services jobs as a direct result of that rule. It’s a jobs killer.

But what it also does is it fails to recognize the full economic value of a financial adviser. The economic value of a financial adviser is not just the return and the net return, net of the fees, but it’s also the psychological effect and the coaching that that financial adviser provides that family. The rule is bogus, Stephen, and the rule needs to be repealed. The people that really understand the rule know that. By the way, I love my clients, as most financial advisers do. I’m not trying to rip off my clients. I’m not trying to do something that’s dishonest. I’m just trying to increase, continually, their options in terms of what they can invest in.

Think what you will of Scaramucci’s take on the overconcentration of investments in index funds. If the trend does continue, it’s hard to dispute, as he says, that a lot of financial-services jobs will be lost. I asked Barry Ritholtz about how his industry planned to protect — or reform — itself.

DUBNER: As we’ve seen throughout history with any industry or institution that’s got leverage, that’s got money, that’s got a history itself, reform never comes from within. Nobody is going to say, “You know what? Our industry is really not providing value. We’re getting paid billions, trillions of dollars to manage this money and we’re actually doing a pretty crappy job. A monkey with a dart board would literally do better for just the price of monkey chow. So you know what? Let’s break up. Let’s send everybody home, say we’ve had a nice run. We’ve had these nice 100, 200, 300, 400 thousand dollar jobs just for shuffling other people’s money around poorly.” If the revolution really does come to pass and the world says, “You know what? The financial services industry as it’s currently configured — we only need about 5 percent of it.” What happens?

RITHOLTZ: First, no self-respecting person in finance would work for those absurdly low figures you quoted. Let’s put that aside. Second, the financial markets go through this regular creative destruction every few years. Back in the early 70’s, commission prices were fixed. You couldn’t discount a commission if you wanted to. It was actually a legal regulation. Once that changed suddenly everybody predicted the end of the world of finance. “Oh my God, what’s going to happen? They’re going to start cutting prices!” That is what happened. You cut prices. More people were able to access the capital markets. It worked out really well.

Every few years we go through one of these major innovations. Not too long ago, E.T.F.’s didn’t exist. We take for granted that for five bucks I could go out and buy an E.T.F. of every major index I want. That’s a shocking change that has also had significant impact. As we go through this process of these convulsions, the financial-services industry became too large. It became too outsized, it became too over-compensated. It was the tail that was wagging the dog. It used to be financial services companies operated in service to big corporations and small investors and everything in between, but eventually they started being a reason for their own existence.

That’s now going through a change. Probably, before we lose 90 percent of people in finance or 95 percent, there’ll be something else that happens. It seems that every time there’s any major trends, whether it’s towards global investing or passive investing or day trading, it’ll last for a couple of years and then something new and shiny comes along and enough people are interested in it that a substantial portion of the previous trend participants will chase that. However, I will say that the evolution towards low-cost, towards indexing, and towards being aware of how your own behavior impacts your investing, is something that’s going to be here for the foreseeable future.

All right, so we learned today that low-cost indexing seems to make a lot of sense, at least for a lot of people in a lot of situations. But what about all the other things you have to do to be a fiscally sane, and responsible, adult? Glad you asked! That’s what we’ll talk about on the next Freakonomics Radio. Because a lot of people — including a lot of otherwise really smart people — are totally clueless when it comes to their personal finances.

Harold POLLACK: How do I save for retirement? How do I deal with all these questions about budgeting and when to buy a house and all that kind of stuff? Oh, I just have to look at these nine rules on this card.

Everything you ever wanted to know about personal finance — and it fits on one index card. That’s next time, on Freakonomics Radio.

Freakonomics Radio is produced by WNYC Studios and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Greg Rosalsky. Our staff also includes Alison Hockenberry, Stephanie Tam, Merritt Jacob, Harry Huggins and Brian Gutierrez; we also had help this week from Sam Bair. The music you hear throughout the episode was composed by Luis Guerra. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find us on Twitter, Facebook, or via e-mail at radio@freakonomics.com.

Here’s where you can learn more about the people and ideas in this episode:

SOURCES

John Bogle, founder of The Vanguard Group.

Eugene Fama, professor of finance at the University of Chicago.

Kenneth French, professor of finance at Dartmouth College.

Barry Ritholtz, co-founder and C.I.O. of Ritholtz Wealth Management.

Anthony Scaramucci, White House Communications Director.

RESOURCES

“The Arithmetic of Active Management,” William Sharpe (January/February, 1991).

“Challenge to Judgment,” Paul Samuelson (Fall, 1974).

“Historical Timeline of Fiduciary Duty for Financial Advice,” Mark Schoeff Jr., Investment News (April 5, 2016).

“Luck Versus Skill in the Cross-Section of Mutual Fund Returns,” Eugene Fama and Kenneth French (October, 2010).

“Bernstein: Passive Investing is Worse for Society Than Marxism,” Luke Kawa, Bloomberg (August 23, 2016).

“The Passivists,” The Wall Street Journal (October, 2016).

“Whither Efficient Markets? Efficient Market Theory and Behavioral Finance,” Laurie Kaplan Singh (May 19, 2010).

EXTRA

“How Much is a Trillion Dollars? What a Trillion Can Buy,” FOX Business (April 30, 2015).

The post The Stupidest Thing You Can Do With Your Money (Rebroadcast) appeared first on Freakonomics.

from Dental Care Tips http://freakonomics.com/podcast/stupidest-thing-can-money-rebroadcast/