#this is rendering me incoherent. its too real

[gaoau]

Thursday 27th – The Road to Nationals

The Girl Upstairs warnings — none. word count — 874

prev. — next.

The train whistled to a stop, jerking forwards only a few millimeters, but enough to make its passengers sway in their seats. Bokuto's lively chatter didn't bother ceasing, seemingly spouting words even out of his elbows. Holding in her laughter, [Name] turned away from the endearing ace — a word she became really fond of — who had been fascinated by her owl facts and babbled question after question. Her eyes settled on Akaashi quietly sitting on her other side. Although he wasn't scowling and his face was free of creases, his narrowed lids as he glared at Bokuto spoke for themselves.

[Name] snorted when he sighed with an amount of exasperation she didn't know existed. "Bokuto-san." Akaashi's monotone voice flowed out of his mouth enveloped in politeness and good manners, yet the look in his eyes betrayed him and gave him away. Had they been alone, a crime would have been committed. Bokuto clamped his mouth shut at the call of his name. "This is your stop, Bokuto-san."

"You're right!" Bokuto sprang up from his seat, a gasp of realization slipping from his lips. He turned towards his underclassman with a blinding grin. "Get her home safe, yeah, Akaashi? I'm trusting you. You too, [Name], get him home safe, will you?" He didn't await any replies, promptly swiveling on his heels to squeeze out of the train's closing doors. "I'll see you next practice! Bye!" Through the square windows, [Name] reciprocated Bokuto's enthusiastic wave with a smile and a small wave of her own.

"Glad to see he's cheered up." As the train left the station, and Bokuto disappeared among the sea of people returning home, [Name]'s attention went back to Akaashi. She tried to stifle her chuckles as best as she could, but she had never seen a high-schooler's face convey such exhaustion. "Does that emo mode thing happen often?"

Akaashi sighed again, grumbling incoherently under his breath. "Don't even get me started. He's too unpredictable."

"I feel like our roles have switched." [Name] laughed to herself. Akaashi cocked a tired brow at her words. "You wanna talk about this over a cup of tea? You look like you're ready to shatter your skull on a light switch."

"Oddly specific, but I just might."

"Please, don't. It's not that bad anyway, right? I don't feel he'd do that at really important events."

"Bold confidence for someone that's wrong." [Name] was rendered speechless, only being able to produce perplexed giggles. "There's no difference between a practice match or nationals. He can and will go emo."

"Oh, nationals! Shirofuku-san sent me a video of the qualifiers. Against Kuroo-san's team, I think, the red team?"

Akaashi visibly cringed. "Nekoma High School, yeah."

"Ah, Nekoma's the name? That's cute."

"So? What did you think?" He knew full well how that match had gone down. The memory alone urged him to knock himself out until graduation.

"What's with that face? You're awfully expressive today."

"Bokuto-san's—"

"—a handful, yeah. So I've heard. But you have fun anyway, don't you? It looked like it, at least."

"Of course I do. It's actually very satisfying to see the team work like it does."

"Right? I didn't get much what was going on, but it was amazing. I had no idea our school was a powerhouse. We even have cheerleaders."

"Though at this point they're there to keep Bokuto-san pumped up."

[Name] laughed and slapped his arm playfully. "Poor soul, give him a break. You're real stingy, aren't you?" She received a piercing glower through narrowed eyes. Her hands raised in mock innocence. "But hey! Maybe next time I'll be on the stands to sing that stupidly catchy cheer." She bit her tongue as soon as the words left her mouth. It was hard to tell if she was only imagining the taste of blood. Quietly, she chanted her school's name and clapped her hands.

Akaashi's expression softened as he allowed a light chuckle to escape him. "I'll save you a seat during nationals."

[Name] felt her body being set aflame. An unexpected hyper-awareness of Akaashi's warmth slapped her across the face. Her smile wavered, getting coated with uncertainty and hesitation. She forced a cough out of her throat. "Hey, I said maybe. Don't take my word for it."

"Your maybe's sound more like a yes at this point."

"Maybe."

Akaashi's laughter resonated in her head, seeming distant and out of reach even when he sat right beside her. [Name] struggled to keep the smile nailed to her lips. She regretted lying to his face; he deserved better than that. Her maybe's didn't sound like a yes at all — they were empty promises she would never fulfill.

It was the first time a maybe she knew wasn't bound to come stung her deeply. A maybe pronounced with her voice was nothing more than a lie. But Akaashi could never understand that and [Name] could never explain it. She would have to apologize later.

[arofili]

after a nightmare with russingon OR in a moment of anger with russingon >:]

Fey you simply picked the best prompts??? therefore I must deliver you some WHUMP. under the cut for violence!! (but dw there's comfort after the hurt)

16. after a nightmare

~

Fingon bit back a scream as Maedhros suddenly lunged at him with madness in his eyes, grabbing him roughly by the throat and shoving him up against the wall behind their bed. His heart beat impossibly fast, but unlike the last time Russo had manhandled him or cut off his air, Fingon was truly terrified. This was no game in the midst of intimacy—this was violence.

He knew that Maedhros did not mean to harm him. He knew that Russandol would never hurt him, not intentionally. He knew that his husband would feel horribly, agonizingly guilty when he came to his senses—but none of that stopped his utter terror as he felt Maedhros, his dear, beloved Russandol, choking the life out of him.

Desperate, Fingon scrabbled at the massive hand on his neck, trying to pry Maedhros’ fingers loose. It was futile: had not Fingon himself trained with Maedhros tirelessly to regian his strength, to wield a sword better with his left hand than any other elf with their right? Ai, Valar, he was going to die, at the hands—hand of the one he loved most—and oh, that would kill Russo too, destroy him utterly, send him spiraling into the Void—

Instinctively, Fingon flung open their marriage bond. Usually they kept their minds separate while asleep, to prevent nightmares from seeping from one to the other and rendering them both incoherent, but now Fingon needed to see—to know—to reach into his very soul and tell his husband to stop—

He sees a darkness, not a battlefield, perhaps a tomb? He sees his Enemy, at his mercy, eyes bulging, hacking out curses. He sees his hand, pale and sickly, so thin the bones look as if they are about to burst out of his skin; but no, that is not his hand—it was he who severed that hand from its wrist, who carried his husband away from this torment, his own hands are dark and smooth and—

The fury overwhelms him again, and Þauron shudders, going limp in his grasp. Dark pleasure roils in his belly, and he begins to laugh, and then—

No, no! This is not—this isn’t—

The face changes, warping into beloved features that cannot, cannot be here—a mockery of the one he loves—

Russo, it’s me, it’s me, please—

No, no! It is a lie, a trick, if he lets Þauron go he will lose what little leverage he has won, he cannot—

Russandol, vennonya, it’s Finno, it’s your Finno, you’re in Himring and you’re—

The pain that crosses his face is so real that he forgets to breathe. Doubt flickers across his mind...

—you’re killing me, Russo, please, I know this isn’t you, I know you wouldn’t—

But has not his captor played this trick a thousand times...?

And yet: in the back of his mind he knows. He remembers in flashes: the Eagle, a coronation, a cold hill, a golden laugh...

And then the force of Fingon’s love and desperation breaks through entirely, shattering the illusion, and Maedhros cries out in horror as the cell around him dissipates

and Fingon fell down onto the ground, gasping for air, weeping openly as he curled into a ball of fear and betrayal and relief.

He heard Maedhros collapse heavily onto the bed, panting roughly. Fingon couldn’t bring himself to look at him, couldn’t find the strength to do anything but tremble. He knew, he knew that Russo didn’t mean it—he had seen Sauron in his husband’s mind, he had felt the rage and horror of his captivity. But he hurt, so terribly that he could not comfort Maedhros as he ought.

For a long time there was silence in their room save for the awful sounds of their haggard breathing. Fingon’s lungs ached even as they filled again with air; Maedhros’ pants had morphed into horrible, rasping sobs.

At length Fingon heard the mattress creak, felt heavy footsteps reverberating through the floor. Maedhros knelt down beside him, still trembling, and Fingon felt his soul bleeding with pain and horror and guilt, even though Maedhros held back the worst of his inner torment.

“F-Finno,” Maedhros croaked. He reached out his hand—and Fingon, damn him, flinched back. Maedhros recoiled as if he had been struck, and Fingon sobbed quietly, hating to do this to his husband. He knew exactly what it felt like to be denied the opportunity to comfort; how many times had Russandol flinched away from him?

“Finno, I—I’m so sorry...” Maedhros’ voice cracked. “I—I’ll leave. I’ll go, you can...stay here, love, please, I’ll leave, you won’t have to see me again, I—”

“No,” Fingon wept, and even though it had been his husband’s hand that hurt him he needed now nothing more than Russo’s touch. He crawled into Maedhros’ lap, still crying, clinging to him, and felt Russandol stiffen—then carefully wrap an arm around him, cradling him like a precious gift.

“I...Finno, I can’t...” Maedhros began to shake again. “Finno, I could have killed you. I’m not safe—it’s not safe for you to be here with me—what if I hurt you again? Ai, Finno, you should have killed me on the mountainside—”

“No,” Fingon repeated, though he had not the strength to speak anything else. Slowly, slowly, his heart was calming, settling into a steadier rhythm. He reached out along their bond, their saving grace, sharing not words but feelings: Hold. Love. Warm. Need. Safe. You. Love. Hold.

He knew not how long they sat their, curled up together on the cold floor, taking comfort in the very hands that hurt them. The Sun had begun to rise when Fingon stirred, readjusting himself in Maedhros’ lap. Maedhros tried to lean back, get away, but Fingon refused to let him. He grabbed his husband’s arm, looking into his eyes as he very gently and deliberately kissed the stump his blade had left.

“Has that been happening a lot recently?” he whispered.

Maedhros looked away. “No.”

“Russo. Don’t lie to me.”

Maedhros looked back, his silver eyes pained. “Truly, it has not. I—I know not why it came upon me again, when recently I have been...so much better...”

“Has Maglor been Singing to you as the healers instructed?”

Maedhros bit his lip. “...No. He has his own command in the Gap—”

“Russo,” Fingon said, exasperated. He took a deep breath, summoning the strength within himself, and began to hum. The melody wound through their bond, relaxing the tension and guilt in Maedhros’ mind, soothing his pain, burning away the darkness with golden light. Fingon was no Singer like Maglor, but his song had saved Maedhros before. He would do anything to save his beloved again.

Tears fell from Maedhros’ eyes as Fingon’s gentle hum subsided. “Thank you,” he whispered. I—I do not deserve you. You are so good, and I am...Finno, I could have—

“But you did not.” Fingon pressed a soft kiss to his husband’s lips. You did not. I reached into our bond and changed your dream, and you stopped before you could truly hurt me.

“Finno, you have bruises,” Maedhros said in dismay, lifting his fingers to touch lightly at his throat. “I gave you those, I...”

Fingon forced a laugh. “You often bruise my neck, though usually with more intention,” he said wryly. Why would anyone assume otherwise? I brought high-collared robes for such an occasion, after all...

Maedhros shook his head vigorously. “This isn’t like that,” he whispered. “That’s—we mean to do that, we take pleasure in it, this... This was violence, on my part. If—if your father could see us—”

“He cannot,” Fingon said firmly. “Russandol, I love you. I love all of you. I know you did not mean to harm me; even as you choked me, I knew it wasn’t really you. I know the enemy you face, hiding in your own mind, I know who you are. You are dangerous, yes, but I choose to love you anyway. And I did not let myself die by your hands. I changed this, and you listened, because you love me even when the darkness takes you.”

“You should not be comforting me,” Maedhros croaked. “It is I who hurt you—”

“We are both hurting,” Fingon said softly. “Meldanya, I choose you every day, pain and all. I will bear it, for your sake. And this? This is nothing compared to the love I hold for you.” He swallowed. “I cannot bear to drive you away. If you truly need space, I will give it to you, but—please.” He pressed his forehead against his husband’s, staring deep into those silver eyes he loved. Do not leave on my account. I want you here, with me.

Hesitantly, Maedhros lifted his hand to Fingon’s cheek, his thumb brushing against one of the bruises. Fingon did not wince, though it was an effort. Instead he leaned into the touch, letting Maedhros guide them into a kiss, and the bond between them hummed with love, tinged with pain, but love nonetheless.

“I will stay with you,” Maedhros murmured. “For as long as you want me by your side, I will be there. For you. My Findekáno.”

Then be with me always, as we vowed upon our wedding night, Fingon sighed, kissing him once again. For there shall never come a day I do not want you, my dearest love, no matter the darkness we face together.

[thatoneao3writer]

Hello! How have you been lately? :)

I was wondering if we could get some Skephalo hcs? It'd be nice to know how they interact on the field n some post-confession (them in a relationship) stuff. How would they get together too?

Hi! I’m kinda getting stressed with school, but this is always a fun way to de-stress, thank you for asking! :D

Skephalo hcs coming right up! (If you haven’t done so already, just scroll through my skephalo tags to get more of them! :3)

Skeppy would make huge diamond statues in front of the Titans’ tower in hope to catch BBH’s eyes. He claims that the huge blobs of expensive rocks were statues of BBH, but we don’t talk about that-

Diamonds mean nothing to Skeppy, but when he learned that diamonds are one of the most expensive rocks in the world, when he and BBH fight, he would make sure to slip some diamonds in BBH’s cloak.

The diamonds mean nothing to BBH too, simply because he’s a demon and doesn’t really know their real worth. He likes the sparkle tho!

Their fight would always go like this:

“Oohh, what are those? Handcuffs? Kinky~” “Wha- language!” “Why did you even bring that with you? You’re a demon? You can control shadows??” “Well- I don’t wanna talk about it...” Awww, you saw it in the movies didn’t you?” “*incoherent mumbling* Shut up...” “Pffffttt, that’s so adorable!” “Shut Skeppy!” OR

“Dream get your hands off him!” “What? We’re on the same team!” “I don’t fucking care you bitch! Hands off!” “ Skeppy I’m on your side-!” OR

“Give me that money back Skeppy!” “If I throw it at you will you strip?” “W- language! And NO!”

(It’s basically just Skeppy being possessive and inappropriate the whole time XD) (Hey, I didn’t say his flirting game is appropriate. I just said flirting with BBH is like flirting like a brick wall lmao)

After a day of fighting, Skeppy would always gush about BBH to anyone who would listen... or not lmao. No one is safe from his hopeless rambles.

Skeppy and Bad get along pretty good when they’re not in a fight. 

Well, as good trolling each other could get. They have an endless prank wars going on. (I don’t really watch their trolling each other vids, so I’ll let your imaginations go wild for this one)

I think... they would get together when BBH has another one of his ‘fits’. Skeppy would be heavily wounded and BBH would go wild. 

He’ll go too far as to hurt even his own friends as more and more of his humanity gets overtaken by his demonic traits. When everyone is rendered helpless against the angry and sad BBH, Skeppy would wake up and try to talk him down.

Mini fic under the cut!

Skeppy winced, clutching at his bleeding side. He looked around to see Badboyhalo throw Sam across the street. “Bad, stop it!” He called out as loud as he can without straining his wounds.

BBH swiftly turned around to face him, all four of his eyes, pure white and angry, his wings stretched wide in all its glory. He was in his true form. “They hurt you!” He screeched in a voice that too loud and sounded like ten thousand people talking all at once. Skeppy suppressed a flinch.

“Schlatt and his goons did, not our friends... please stop?” He tried to reason with a shaky smile. He didn’t want Bad’s wrath directed at him at the moment.

Bad’s eyes narrowed, his lips drawn to a snarl. “NO!” He said before summoning a shadow and slamming it at a person Skeppy couldn’t recognize with how far they were.

It was Skeppy’s turn to narrow his eyes. He pushed himself to stand up and walk towards BBH, as slow as he could be. “Look around you Bad! You’re hurting everyone! This isn’t you-” 

“How do you know this isn’t me?! This is the real me!” Bad cut him off, throwing a piece of debri towards him.

Skeppy used the last ounce of his power to manifest the huge wall of diamonds in front of him, effectively blocking the attack. “IT’S NOT! I know you Bad, you’re sweet and caring and lovely and the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. My Bad would never hurt his friends...” He said, voice softening at the end of his sentence.

BBH retreated when Skeppy started getting closer. He held his hands against his chest, guilt and anger dancing across his face. “What if your Bad was never real in the first place?” He snarled, but his tone was sad. 

Skeppy smiled weakly and continued to walk forward. Slowly. Oh so painfully slowly. “Then why is he still here? Talking to me? Regretting his actions? Retreating at the first sign of confrontation? Why isn’t he running? Like he’s always done? Why is he transforming back to himself and going back down to earth? Why isn’t he moving? Why is he crying? Why can I place my hand on his cheek? Why can I place my forehead against his? Why... am I still in love?”

Bad sniffled, then a hiccup came out, followed by uncontrollable sobbing. “W-why do you love me? I-I’m a monster! I hurt my friends, I look terrifying, I used to k-”

Skeppy cut him of with a soft kiss of the forehead.”It doesn’t matter what you did Bad, it doesn’t matter what you look like either. What matters is that you’re not a monster, you are not evil, and you’re not your dad. You are your own person Bad, and that’s who I love. My sweet, lovely, muffinhead Badboyhalo...” He hummed, placing another kiss on BBH’s forehead and wiping his tears away ever so gently.

He stared at Bad’s face. Blood, sweat, tears, and ash dirtying his face but it still doesn’t make him any less loveable. Bad’s white eyes looked up to meet his blue ones, making his breath hitch. His vision was swimming, dark spots appeared everywhere. Was he going to- 

“I love you too...”

“Wha-?” He blacked out before he could even finish sentence.

(I dunno, this is my first time writing these two, hope you guys like it!)

[cicada-bones]

The Warrior and the Embers

Chapter 6: The Queen of the Fae

Masterlist / Ao3 / Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

The princess froze, her body seizing up even more violently than when Rowan had surprised her in the alley. Maeve just stared her down, a snake at a mouse.

The girl stepped back, instinct taking over as she attempted to flee. But instead of stepping back through the threshold, she hit Rowan’s hard, unyielding body. He sent a gust of wind behind them, shutting the door with a soft, violent click.

Neither female broke their stare, and Rowan knew that his queen was measuring the girl, weighing and calculating. Tasting her scent and feeling the power writhing in her limbs. Just as he had.

The girl’s fear leaked out of her like smoke, spilling from her form and filling the room with its noxious scent. Her hands were shaking violently, her body trembling against his.

Rowan could feel her shoulder blades digging in the muscles of his chest, the sharp points of her elbows in his sides. Before the girl even thought of moving towards his queen, or of stretching her fingers towards the lethal daggers strapped to her hips, Rowan would know. And would act, cutting the girl down before she could blink.

Her heart fluttered like hummingbird’s wings, and her breaths were shallow and ragged. She was too incapacitated to react in any way – either with violence or with deference.

With barely a sentence, his queen had utterly decimated the girl, rendering her incoherent. The bravado she had so easily carried in her stance and spat out with her every word now withered and died as she was reduced to a husk of herself. Rowan had seen it time and time again; people shrank, were condensed to their very essence when forced into the place between fight and flight, when they were given no options.

No matter how familiar the princess was with fear, no matter how she had trained or worked these past years, she had not been prepared to face his queen. Not been prepared for the sheer force of her presence and her power.

Rowan almost laughed at himself. The girl couldn’t pose a threat to his queen, never could. She had no ace up her sleeve, was hiding nothing that they couldn’t detect. Powerless, and a complete waste of his time.

By contrast, Maeve was fearsome and eternal, radiating an ancient grace. Her pale skin glowed in the faint moonlight, and her dark eyes glittered like pools of the night sky. Even in this dingy room, his queen radiated, magnificent.

Rowan waited for her to speak, for the orders to come that he had longed to hear ever since first laying eyes on the girl in Varese.

But Maeve remained silent, her pale fingers folded in the lap of her gown, the ever-present barn owl once again perched on the back of her chair.

The princess breathed in and out slowly, steadying herself. The potency of her fear diminished slightly, the copper tang fading from the air of the small office, and uncovering her true scent.

As it had in the alley, her scent tugged at him. A fading brightness masked by sweat and muck and horses. It bit at him, brushing the ice in his limbs with weak sparks and waning embers. He ignored it, discomforted.

Then the princess spoke, in a small, but hard voice. “Aelin Galathynius is dead.” A new emotion emanated from her, disgust and hatred and…grief.

Rowan tilted his head ever so slightly. Hmm.

Maeve just smiled. A promise of violence. A promise of victory. She knew the Heir of Fire was powerless, and hers to do with what she would.

“Let us not bother with lies.”

The girl’s nostrils flared at his queen’s words. A stubborn rebuttal. She didn’t believe it was a lie – to her, Aelin Galathynius was dead. As Rowan had known, the princess had truly turned her back on herself and her birthright when she became the assassin. Aelin was not hiding, she was gone. Celaena Sardothien stood before them.

Maeve watched the girl, reading her every emotion like words off the page. The Fae queen was rapt, focused and intense. She had not once glanced Rowan’s way, her eyes utterly fixed on the assassin. Rowan couldn’t remember the last time his queen was so engrossed.

She wanted this child desperately. Craved her. Coveted her. And for what, Rowan did not know.

The girl was still pressed hard against Rowan’s form, as if his body was a wall. Rowan saw Maeve’s eyes flick between them, noting the connection. Though her gaze was empty of anything he could decipher, Rowan pulled away from the girl and leaned against the doorway, under the guise of preventing any escape.

Maeve’s eyes gleamed, some hidden knowledge flashing there.

Rowan’s brow narrowed in response. But of course, nothing more appeared on his queen’s face. Maeve was more than skilled at playing these games – a master of manipulation. She would explain when and if she wanted to, and short of that, Rowan would have to wait. There was no use in speculating.

Silence spread between them like ice. Sharp and cold and inescapable. But his queen just sat and waited for the girl to make the next move, her black, depthless eyes burrowing a hole in the princess.

Rowan could feel Maeve’s dark power flowing around her like an invisible black cape, churning and spiraling like smoke, or liquid obsidian. Nightmare made flesh.

Though the princess’ fire was tightly contained, locked behind iron bars, her embers had stirred to the surface. Her fear had drawn the sparks like bees to honey, or flies to a corpse.

Together, the three of them filled the space with light and dark and cold, the scent of power overwhelming the small room. Three of the most formidable Fae in the world, convened in a half-rotted office in a secluded, run-down fortress in a forgotten corner of the world.

The girl’s breathing was still ragged as she bent at the waist, bowing low. But Rowan doubted she was finding her humility at last. It seemed that she had decided to actually play his queen’s game, apparently not realizing that there was no way to win it.

Maeve was still smiling as the girl rose. “I suppose that with a proper bath, you’ll look a good deal like your mother.”

Another strike at a possible vulnerability – first Aelin’s name, now her family. But now the girl seemed to be more in control of herself, and didn’t react to the verbal blow. Instead, she smiled faintly and said, “Had I known who I would be meeting, I might have begged my escort for time to freshen up.”

A tentative initial volley, deflecting the real taunt and instead drawing Rowan into the battle. He remained silent, anger bubbling in his stomach, while Maeve glanced at him. She seemed to gauge the resentment, the hostility between the two of them. Something lit up behind his queen’s eyes, as understanding fell into place.

Rowan’s lips tightened imperceptibly. Maeve knew something, was planning something, there was something he was missing…

“I’m afraid I must bear the blame for the pressing pace,” Maeve said. “Though I suppose he could have bothered to at least find you a pool to bathe in along the way.” The words were light, teasing. Maeve was enjoying herself.

“Prince Rowan—” He felt the jolt of the girl’s shock as Maeve continued, “—is from my sister Mora’s bloodline. He is my nephew of sorts, and a member of my household. An extremely distant relation of yours; there is some ancient ancestry linking you.”

Another move to put the princess on uneven footing, for the pleasure of making her squirm. Not that they actually shared any blood – Mora and Mab’s lines had become so diluted over the millennia that the princess was probably more closely related to the royal families of Melisande or Eyllwe than the Whitethorn family.

The girl remained calm however, rallying herself. She spooled her arrogance back into her body until it once again draped over her frame and coated her every word, the way one pulls on a comfortable and familiar garment. Then said, contempt dripping from each word, “You don’t say.”

Brat. Rowan tensed at the girl’s derision, but Maeve just casually responded. “You must be wondering why it is I asked Prince Rowan to bring you here.”

The girl bit her tongue. Maeve’s eyes shone.

“I have been waiting a long, long while to meet you. And as I do not leave these lands, I could not see you. Not with my eyes, at least.”

Maeve had the power of foresight – the power to see beyond the use of her eyes, across nations and into the future. His queen had undoubtedly been waiting for this girl since long before her birth, and Rowan couldn’t help wondering just how long in the making this incongruous meeting had been.

To the Fae, years could feel like weeks. To one as eternal as Maeve, time warped into shapes completely separate from mortal understanding. Maeve could have seen the princess of flame coming centuries ago, before her line had been sired, before her family’s name had been established. She had perhaps been waiting for the heir of Brannon to rise since his fall all those millennia past.

The princess’ eyes were cold, calculating and impassive, as Maeve continued.  “They broke my laws, you know. Your parents disobeyed my commands when they eloped. The bloodlines were too volatile to be mixed, but your mother promised to let me see you after you were born.”

Rowan could remember that time for himself – his queen’s cold fury at their disobedience, and then her long, slow anger at their mounting disrespect, the insult of being ignored.

Maeve cocked her head, eyes tightening. “It would seem that in the eight years after your birth, she was always too busy to uphold her vow.”

The girl’s breathing sped slightly, her eyes intent and her body rigid, seemingly saying, Yes, and it was for a damn good reason.

A broken vow – an unfulfilled debt. These were things significant to the Fae, notions that still held weight after decades of time had passed. Within Fae customs, such debts were passed on through bloodlines, until payment was reaped or the debt fulfilled. And one to Maeve, to the Queen of the Fae herself, would incur the very highest cost.

“But now you are here,” Maeve’s face darkened, her lips curling. “And a grown woman. My eyes across the sea have brought me such strange, horrible stories of you. From your scars and steel, I wonder whether they are indeed true.”

For the first time that evening, true interest sparked inside Rowan. What had the spymaster shared with his queen that she had kept from him?

“Like the tale I heard over a year ago, that an assassin with Ashryver eyes was spotted by the horned Lord of the North in a wagon bound for – ”

“Enough.”

The princess interrupted, her teeth clenched and her eyes hard. She glanced back at Rowan, gauging his intent expression, which he quickly rearranged into dull indifference. She shot him a sharp look, obviously saying, Mind your own gods-damned business. Rowan’s eyes narrowed.

“I know my own history.” She turned back to Maeve, who was wickedly amused, her spear having found its mark. “I’m an assassin, yes.”

This time, Rowan couldn’t stop the snort that passed his lips. Assassin she may be, but she hardly lived up to the tales of Celaena Sardothien. Nor was her profession a point of pride as she implied. Killing for money wasn’t even equal to common soldiering – no matter her level of supposed proficiency or renown.

“And your other talents?” Maeve pushed, her nostrils flaring as she pulled in the girl’s scent, confirming what she already knew. “What has become of them?”

“Like everyone else on my continent, I haven’t been able to access them.” A flat, emotionless answer.

“You are not on your continent anymore,” Maeve purred.

Fear once again began to radiate from the princess, her muscles tensing as her body went taut. Her every molecule seemed to be screaming at her to run.

Maeve’s eyes lit up with malicious pleasure. “Show me,” she whispered, her voice filled with longing. She shot a spear of power towards the girl, enveloping her in darkness. Coaxing out the fire.

The girl’s fear mounted to heights previously unknown. The air was coated in copper and ashes, filled with her terror and anxiety. Wildfire simmered below the surface, straining, reaching, stretching –

The darkness in Maeve’s eyes spread, filling the space with gloom and smoke as she poked and prodded and sliced at the girl, peering inside her skull and testing the bars hidden within.

Rowan waited for the girl to start shaking again, for her to submit and grovel at his queen’s feet, for her to break.

But instead, the girl just breathed, deep and even, her eyes hardening into bricks of solid gold and clenching her hands into fists, reaching for the daggers at her hips.

Rowan’s body went taut as the tension mounted, waiting, anticipating –

Maeve interrupted, her low laugh cleanly slicing through the tension in the small room as the darkness swiftly retreated. The pressure of the princess’ wildfire receded as her fear fell back under her control.

“Your mother hid you from me for years,” Maeve said, continuing her other line of attack. “She and your father always had a remarkable talent for knowing when my eyes were searching for you. Such a rare gift—the ability to summon and manipulate flame. So few exist who possess more than an ember of it; fewer still who can master its wildness. And yet your mother wanted you to stifle your power—though she knew that I only wanted you to submit to it.”

The words were delicate, her voice imbued with that perfect combination of playfulness and dominance. The girl’s embers roiled beneath her skin, aching to meet the challenge in his queen’s eyes.

Maeve sliced yet again, eyes burning with malicious pleasure. “Look how well that turned out for them.”

The game was getting very, very dangerous now, very close to an explosive climax. The girl spoke low and intense, from deep within herself. “And where were you ten years ago?”

Maeve pushed the blade in deeper, softly responding. “I do not take kindly to being lied to.”

Shock. Pure, unadulterated shock pulsed from the princess.

Rowan let out a small, wry smile. No, his queen did not, and she knew exactly how to take revenge, to eke out her price. The princess had already paid her debt to Maeve, though she had not known it at the time.

Rowan had wondered why Doranelle had done so little while their brethren in the west had fallen. He needed wonder no more.

“I do not have more time to spare you,” Maeve said brusquely, now that the winning hand had been played. “So let me be brief: my eyes have told me that you have questions. Questions that no mortal has the right to ask—about the keys.”

The girl was slowly recovering from the shock and pain, but still she opened her mouth to speak, desperate.

Maeve held up her hand, silencing her. “I will give you those answers. You may come to me in Doranelle to receive them.”

“Why not - ”

The world came to stop around him as a growl slipped past Rowan’s lips, icy, vicious anger rippling through him. Finally he understood. Finally, he grasped what he had been missing.

Maeve wanted the princess to come to Doranelle, to the center of her realm, under the guise of providing her with whatever this was that she sought. But Maeve did not allow mortals or demi-Fae into her city unless they had proven themselves. Unless they had shown power and control sufficient enough to be permitted.

That was why Rowan had been pulled from the eastern post, why Fenrys had not been called to collect the girl.

Rowan was going to have to train her, to teach her how to control her power until his queen was satisfied with her abilities. Maeve wanted him to hone a weapon for her, to discover how sharp it would be. And who better to teach an heir of fire than a prince of ice?

Maeve plowed on, ignoring Rowan’s sharp retort. “Because they are answers that require time, and answers you have not yet earned.”

“Tell me what I can do to earn them and I will do it.”

Foolish girl. Isn’t it known in the human lands that one does not make such bargains with the Fae? Even now her arrogance astounded him. How could she be so spoiled and selfish to believe that she would be an exception to such a rule? That her aunt would not force her to pay an iron price for such a reward?

Maeve was just amused. “A dangerous thing to offer without hearing the price.”

“You want me to show you my magic? I’ll show it to you. But not here – not – ”

“I have no interest in seeing you drop your magic at my feet like a sack of grain. I want to see what you can do with it, Aelin Galathynius – which currently seems like not very much at all.”

Maeve wielded the girl’s true name as a chef brandishes a knife, skillfully piercing the hide of her prey. “I want to see what you will become under the right circumstances.”

“I don’t – ”

“I do not permit mortals or half-breeds into Doranelle. For a half-breed to enter my realm, she must prove herself both gifted and worthy. Mistward, this fortress, is one of several proving grounds. And a place where those who do not pass the test can spend their days.”

Half-breed. Another barb, another weapon. Not that he had any sympathy for the girl at the moment, still seething from the realization of how he would be forced to spend the next few months. Or, gods, years –

“And what manner of test might I expect before I am deemed worthy?”

Maeve turned to Rowan, meeting his hard eyes with her amused ones. “You shall come to me once Prince Rowan decides that you have mastered your gifts. He shall train you here. And you shall not set foot in Doranelle until he deems your training complete.”

Maeve’s gaze intensified as she beheld Rowan, infusing her tone with command. He held his anger on a very, very short leash, nodding slightly to his queen and master, to confirm his understanding.

He was to remain at this outpost, for years if necessary, assigned as watchdog for Maeve’s new pet princess. Teaching her table manners and her ABC’s while her other blood-sworn did the actual work of protecting his queen and country.

Rowan remained motionless while pure fury roiled beneath his skin.

It was strange. The emotion was not unusual, but its intensity would have unnerved him had he had any room within himself for another sensation. It had been so long since he had felt anything with such strength. But this foreign princess was so insanely maddening, so infuriating, that she burst through all his icy walls like they were glass, or water.

Still, he kept tight control of himself, concealing the storm raging within. But he thought Maeve had sensed it anyway, as she smiled and turned back to the princess, who was saying, “What I need to know isn’t something that can wait – ”

“You want answers regarding the keys, heir of Terrasen? Then they shall be waiting for you in Doranelle. The rest is up to you.”

“Truthfully,” the brat blurted, desperate. “You will truthfully answer my questions about the keys.”

Maeve’s grin widened. “You haven’t forgotten all of our ways, then. I will truthfully answer all your questions about the keys.”

The princess hesitated, then asked, “What manner of training – ”

“Prince Rowan shall explain the specifics. For now, he will escort you to your chamber to rest.” Rowan’s teeth locked together, barely containing a vicious snarl. But he would do as his queen commanded. He had no other choice.

The girl hardened once again, intense and commanding. Forcing her way through the cloud of fear that had begun to surround her. “You swear you’ll tell me what I need to know?”

“I do not break my promises.” Rowan’s lips tightened. No, Maeve never broke her word. She expertly whittled away at it, until it bent and swung in a light breeze. Maeve would tell the girl the truth, but which truth? Who was to say.

“And I have the feeling that you are unlike your mother in that regard, too.”

The girl’s teeth clenched as she bit back a violent retort, the dig at her family doing its work, another blade in her hide. She breathed, little more than a stuck pig, and then made one last attempt, one final play in their game.

“To what end? You want me to train only so I can make a spectacle of my talents?”

But then Maeve smiled wickedly, triumphantly, and played her final card.

“I wish you to become who you were born to be. To become queen.”

And Aelin Galathynius turned on her heel and stepped out of the room, without another word.

···

Masterlist / Ao3 / Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

[grandcollections]

by @bonearenaofmyskull 

Summary: 

While isolated from the rest of humanity as they escape the United States on their own sailing vessel, Will grapples with what he wants out of his renewed relationship with Hannibal.

Comments:

God, what a lovely, perfectly measured, somber post-fall fic. This is one out of maybe three perfectly executed post-fall fics that are my personal canon. This one... oh, THIS one!!!.... A somber sailboat fic composed of quiet moments and introspection, surprisingly short considering the amount of emotion and resolution it packs in its small real estate, it's the perfect fic to read the very night after you finish the last episode of Hannibal for a good, cleansing cry and a full heart before you go to bed.

Will had been afraid those few weightless moments: afraid and at peace, warmed by Hannibal’s body in his arms, and it had been so right. Right that they should die there together, right that they had killed together, right that Hannibal had known what was coming and still given himself over to Will as they stood on the eroding edge together. It was right when Hannibal’s arms tightened— desperately, compulsively— around Will. In those moments, Will had loved him more than he could reckon.

But here was Will, only a few feet away from him, his fingers thoughtlessly caressing the silver circle of wheel with just the pads, gripping, releasing. There he was, the toes on one foot curling and pressing into Cetus’s decking, his bare feet peeking out from new linen pants, slightly too long without shoes on. There—impossibly there, undeniably there, inconceivably there. Close enough to touch, if Hannibal reached for him. Hannibal stored him up in his mind, in a room encompassing all the oceans of the world.

“You are so consistently insistent," Will said. Hannibal smiled. "And you so persistently resistant."

TLDR: The writing is exquisite— the tone belongs to the show, pairs perfectly with it. It’s full of restrained sensuality, has an amazing grasp on nautical terminology, a mastery of setting the scene in the loveliest way possible, and a real grasp on Hannibal-esque dialogue that was so, so satisfying. It treats both Hannibal and Will individually with such respect; Hannibal’s yearning and penchant for manipulation and his constant pushing, Will’s reservations and melancholy and frustration. Both of their fears and their pain. Hannibal is allowed to be vulnerable and afraid (while giving us heaps of pining and possessive Hannibal) and Will is allowed to be strong in a way that rings true to both their characters. It highlights the bitterly circular nature of their relationship, the way pain and tenderness seem to always be intertwined. The fic has so much angst and little resolution (just how I like it—  a bitch likes blue balls). What’s unique about this fic is how it refuses to shy away from any facet of the twisted, tremulous place Hannibal and Will would be post-fall — the immense confusion, the yearning and learning and re-learning, the sea of blood and betrayal between them. This fic is not an ending; it’s a beginning, and that’s its true strength.

(much) more detailed review below the cut!

I'll talk about the writing first! (I'm being shockingly coherent here considering how much I incoherently screamed while reading/ in the fic comments). The TONE! is literal perfection. IMMACULATE. Only a few paragraphs in and I felt like I was watching the show, I FELT the bond between the show and the fic. The aesthetics matched — a feat, as the author manages to do that with such tight, contained writing while the aesthetic of the show is outrageously, extraneously beautiful. At no point does this author resort to flowery writing or extraneous detail— every word is measured, purposeful, bare, yet bursting with feeling.

This translates to one of my favorite aspects of the writing: its restrained sensuality. I say “sensuality” instead of “sexuality” because that’s what it is— gentle, but roiling eroticism, barely communicated in the slightest of details: 

He became slowly conscious of Hannibal’s steady gaze on him as he moved. He halted as he came to his door, hand on the latch. Somewhere in the back of his mind those words echoed again—Is Hannibal in love with me?—and Bedelia’s measured tones as she answered... Will turned his head but did not quite look at him. Hannibal’s attention remained steady, intent, curious. “Will?” he asked. Will went inside. Thereafter the association had him and would not let him go. He became aware of Hannibal’s attention in a manner he had never thought about much before.

... but instead he stayed with Hannibal, watching Hannibal’s face just inches from his own. Hannibal licked his lips and continued to apply pressure, watching Will watch him. They remained in this tableau, waiting for deliverance.

Hannibal peeled the shrimp and removed the veins with deft turns of his wrists, his sleeves rolled up halfway to his elbows. “I can help with that,” Will said.

Will could not resist testing his hand’s movement and felt it brush against the seam on the inside of Hannibal’s thigh. “Try to be still,” Hannibal murmured. He ran his warm palm over the muscles of Will’s shoulder again, much the same as he had smoothed the blanket fifteen minutes before, and as he had once drawn a blanket over Will’s chilled form and caressed him, Will thought idly, mere hours after shoving Abigail’s ear down his throat.

Hannibal’s lips were parted, and Will could feel his warm breath. He knew the look without needing to see it clearly: admiration and ache warring equally over his chiseled features. Consuming, as always. Drinking him in. Taking. He wondered what Hannibal saw in his own face.

What’s glorious about this style of muted sensuality is that the power is all left to the implications — which are infinitely more than a scene in which a finite ~thing~ happens—  to what’s unsaid, not done (but yearned for). Yearning (oh, there is so much yearning) takes a front seat. As a huge fan of Hemingway’s iceberg theory and contained writing in general, I loved this style.

The physical descriptions of the boat and the beauty of the sea were always lovely and anchoring. This author has a ridiculous command of the nautical world, and even if I didn’t understand all of it I deeply appreciated the attention to detail —

Hannibal had been a long time indoors and not a molecule of this natural beauty was lost on him. But mostly he watched Will. Will did not see this world of ultraviolet glare and sunblind desaturation as Hannibal did, but rather with the eye of a mariner and a fisherman. In the previous week, Hannibal had coaxed him into voicing some of his observations, and seeing life through Will's eyes had been in its way as fascinating as viewing death. A loon's laughing cry rose and passed on more than one occasion, and Will commented that it was a good sign for the fishery, that there must be a good number of menhaden, a baitfish, in the Bay that year...

A diffuse glow of sunlight illuminated his face from below, as the sun peeked through the skylights and lit up the woodwork and white upholstery in the saloon. It warmed the recesses of Hannibal’s sculpted face and made his eyes glow, more amber than brown.

There was no word on the weather, of the hot and unnatural stillness that held Hannibal and himself in its unrelenting grip.

The quotes at the beginnings of the chapters were also a really nice touch!

Hannibal's voice, his elite brand of dialogue— cyclical, cutting, seemingly random but never actually so— is captured perfectly; a difficult feat. It was so satisfying to read: 

“Moments are all that we need, Will. Enough moments, strung together, make eternity.”

"To feel intensely is not a symptom of weakness, Will. It's the mark of the truly alive."

This makes the hannigram conversations feel so authentic, so classically them, with Hannibal's philosophical overtures, the religious imagery, the refusing to shy away from previous interactions/conflict between them, and prodding and digging into Will as he loves to do, as he can't resist doing. Combined with Will’s insolence and the way he can surprise Hannibal, can (briefly) render hims speechless, the conversations could be scenes pulled from the show. 

I deeply loved and appreciated the instances of Hannibal pushing, of refusing to let things go (more on that later), of behaving instinctually (especially when Will pulls strong emotion from him). It rings so true to the character—  Hannibal’s worst vice (with Will at least) is his inability to control his black impulses when he's overcome with feeling when it comes to Will, especially if it's negative, burning emotion like betrayal, jealousy, or hurt. (See: Mizumono, Dolce). Then Hannibal becomes a viper, lunging and striking without thinking, poisoning the space between them.

Hannibal’s continuous pushing was a product of the author refusing to ignore the latent issues that would lie between our favorite murder husbands post-fall. A lot of fics jump straight into murder-husbands epilogue or Will-is-immediately-as-bloodthirsty-and-happily-cannibalistic-as-Hannibal (and I'm not gonna lie there's a couple of those that are favorites, writing makes all the difference for me) but this fic doesn't do that. I’ll admit that it’s very much not a focus of the fic, there is absolutely no exploration of how Will feels about killing or cannibalism, if he felt powerful, if he wants to chase that feeling, no exploration of “it’s beautiful”. It’s not a weakness of the fic, just very glaringly not a part of it. This fic is severely focused on Hannigram’s complicated feelings about each other, in a dreamlike isolated place. The fic doesn’t bother itself with morality, doesn’t place judgement, positive or negative, on any of those acts. It also doesn’t dismiss them from the future, and any realistic future would involve such acts. As I said before, this fic is a beginning. 

But, yes, back to my point! The fic touches on issues such as Abigail, Molly and Walter, and even the fall off the cliff by having Hannibal push Will again and again (even literally). I’m hesitant to say “explores” rather than “touches on” because it doesn’t do that, doesn’t provide a full resolution— it acknowledges these issues, establishes that they would be part of a continued conversation, and moves on. (Like I said; a beginning). 

Although Will rarely (or may actually never) bring up any of his own issues— he only engages when forced to by Hannibal— he does display strength in typical Will ways, through resistance and insolence. 

What Hannibal wanted was what Will had shared with Molly and Walter... He did not want to give these things to Hannibal. 

A lot of fics will have Will either shy away from any discussion of Molly and Walter, because they’re ugly and difficult to execute well, and so they are erased as if they never existed— or they will simply have Will completely demote and reject Molly and Walter and the life he lived in Maine. But in this fic, Will is still protective of them, even as a memory, even as something that exists completely in the past, even as he moves forward with Hannibal. It’s a display of strength, of non-compliance, that I love.

Will shows strength in other ways, too. While he doesn’t start many of the difficult conversations as Hannibal does (as only insightful Hannibal can do), once engaged he’s present and sharp, sometimes unyielding and even hurtful. Will doesn’t shy away from the bitterness of the walls placed between them, walls that aren’t made of matter but of space— space Will placed between them, space Hannibal took (and continues to try to take) from him.

The result are many (beautiful) references to their past, to the rivers of blood between them: 

The grief of their years apart flooded after, with the weight of what they had done to each other and what they had suffered at each other’s hands. The shadows of pain and stains of blood surrounded them, filling the boat, threatening to sink it and carry them both to the bottom of the sea.

He had been sure, and he was still sure- they had to deal with each other, to grope their way through their shared maze of long-stored griefs and the dead ends of failed trust.

Hannibal had awoken, and Will’s peace fled.

This last gutting quote takes me to another hallmark of this fic for me— a truly beautiful and mature display of their mutual unhappiness, a living example of “be careful what you wish for”. Both men have wished for this (for different lengths of time and in different degrees, yes, but they wished for it)— to be alone together, which is to not be alone, finally (“we are both alone without each other”). But now that they have it, they learn that they have to actually be together, and that perhaps they don’t know to do that, or at least how best to do that. They learn that there’s so much pain and unresolved emotion to contend with, when faced with the nothing but the other and time. 

And so, after the story ends, they don’t leap into happily-ever-after. Instead, they leap into explorations of their unresolved feelings and their own failings. There’s such a deep understanding of both men’s failings, the unique ways in which their hearts are broken — there’s even a beautiful mirror where both men (separately) reflect on the ways in which they’re not enough for the other. 

As then, Hannibal knew he had little with which to fight this enemy. He had no secrets left to reveal, no curiosity to exploit, no monsters to fight, no daughter to share, no one left to save but Will himself. He had only Hannibal Lecter, and that had never been enough.

Will wondered what equally tender and ravenous urge had brought Hannibal forward to watch over him while he slept... He tried to imagine if there might ever be any way he could give Hannibal enough to sate him. Maybe there was, if Hannibal had succeeded in sawing his way into Will’s head and eaten his brain after all. Will could not see it otherwise. The whole of Will’s entire life and being was not enough. It had never been enough.

This whole thing is both gorgeous and tragic, both of them harboring imagined shortcomings and impossible desires. Will wonders if literal consumption, to be eaten or allowing himself to be possessed in every other way, is the only thing that will sate Hannibal. And this Will is, very definitively, not willing to do that. (I’m not averse to fics where Will is— when done well, it’s supremely good). And Hannibal has always used Something Else to hook Will, to keep Will, and so the tragedy is in the hypothetical— what could have happened had he resisted some of his own worst impulses? Did Hannibal behave this way because of Will’s resistance, or would Will not have resisted him, rejected him, had he not been so manipulative, coercive, demanding, taking? *Sigh.* I also love that Hannibal is allowed to acknowledge his own failings and betrayals in this fic; it doesn’t always exists in post-fall fics  (again, it's usually Will apologizing for his false life with Molly, etc). It makes for some delicious angst.

And my god, is the angst good! Striking, painful, gutting, love that for meee!!!! (I genuinely do!) 

Will did not speak, not even to thank Hannibal. It stung. 

BABEYYYY NOOOO why do the SIMPLEST sentences fucking destROYYYY me?!! 

Does that make you feel better?” Will asked in a low voice. “It’s not enough that you take everything else—you have to take even the symbols of anything I had that wasn’t about you?” 

Reaching out, he gripped the fabric of Hannibal’s shirt in his hand, closing his fist around it slowly. “Maybe that should tell you something.” Hannibal twitched slightly—Will had caught some of his chest hair—but he remained passive. It was Will’s weak arm, his right, and so the gesture was just that: a gesture, made for no better reason than emphasis. But it felt good to have Hannibal under him, looking surprised.... “What should it tell me, Will?” “Some things”—Will breathed deeply through his nose, trying to steady himself—“do not belong to you.” His voice came low and quiet. Hannibal’s hand came up and touched his arm, moving up to the recently injured shoulder, running his palm over Will’s shirt, passing his fingers over the roughness of scars beneath. “I only wish to know you.”

literally SCREAMING INCOHERENTLY!!! I haven’t even used the worst (best) angsty bits — gotta save something for the actual fic! so go go go!!! 

This deep understanding of both Will and Hannibal as separate individuals shines throughout the fic, but I’d like to showcase some really strong character lines. On Hannibal:

Hannibal was pleased with his age and the experiences that fueled it: every moment he lived he had snatched from God’s own sticky fingers. 

He knew that Hannibal could and did partition his mind against such associations, that his affection was every bit as real as his violence... He could only find and explore this newly tender and painful place within him, like a man who cannot keep from tonguing an aching tooth.

... the mercurial author of both his pain and his relief. 

He had probably investigated all of Will's belongings at some point. 

Hannibal could believe, but he could never know. 

(^ one of my favorite parts of the fic; the recurring explanation of Hannibal’s desire to possess Will is a product of his fear of not knowing him. This line is so simple and well done, yet full of anguish.) 

Will had seen Hannibal’s heart break enough times to recognize it in his stillness, in the slight thrust of his jaw beneath closed lips, in the shifts between denial and acceptance in his brown eyes, which could find no safe place to rest in the landscape of Will’s face.

(i’m EMO.) Okayokay, Will’s character lines are just as fantastic:

He would be unable to tend his right arm well with his left hand, and Hannibal would insist, and he would be forced to give in. Will wished it did not matter.

(THIS. LINE. So much communicated about Will's mingled frustration and acceptance, about the power imbalance in this relationship, in just six words.?

He was so tired of it-tired of the vulnerability, of dependency, tired of the torture of needing comfort, of wanting comfort from his tormentor. 

Will had adopted his trademark flat affect by the second of these sessions. He would stare ahead, at the pulse at the base of Hannibal’s throat, following Hannibal’s instructions to the letter, but he might as well have been the walking dead for all the emotion he expressed. He spoke when spoken to and offered nothing. (my chest hurts, oh will)

Will was a dark presence near him, slim and sharp as a cutlass.

And then he smiled, gray eyes lifting to Hannibal’s, bringing Hannibal’s heart into his throat. He smiled that sad smile of his, the smile that could contain oceans of sweetness and bitterness all at once. 

✨  and this line, that encompasses both of them: 

It still hurt, to be so vulnerable. It hurt that Hannibal had turned on him and could have drowned him or let him drown, yet again after so many times down this path. It hurt that Hannibal lived day to day and moment to moment, awaiting Will’s next betrayal.

and oh, oh this fic is rife with lovely hannigram passages: 

Hannibal seemed to sense his weariness. “We’re always braver in the face of our own pain than in the face of the pain of those we love,” he said quietly. He turned his attention back to Will’s arm and let the conversation rest.

Is Hannibal in love with me? he had asked... Will had been enormously afraid of either answer. Hannibal continued to cut the bell pepper in to a twisting spiral of red, his face and body still, only his hands working. “I thought of you,” Will said finally. “Often.” Hannibal’s breath released in a slow sigh. Will watched the words fill him up, set him to rest, with no outward change in his demeanor. He wished it were always so easy. Or had it always been?

His movements were slow and deliberate, less like a doctor at work than a supplicant at prayer. 

(^ okokok i'm NOT going feral i'm NOT! supplication/worship/devotee imagery in tender moments between lovers/from a hopeful lover to the object of his/her devotion is my WEAKNESS)

What would you give me?” Will asked finally. “What would you have of me?” “Would you give me”—Will articulated slowly, deliberately—“Bedelia du Maurier?” Hannibal felt a thrill of surprise in his chest. Will was steady, studying. Hannibal watched the gray-blue of his irises. His pupils were constricted in the harsh daylight. “Do you want her?” Hannibal asked curiously. “No.” “I would deny you nothing.”

But, there is resolution. (Some). There is peace to be found. It comes in the form of Will letting go of the desire to ever kill Hannibal:

... dim memory of the thrill he used to get while imagining killing Hannibal came and went, just a phantom—powerless, soon forgotten. There was something freeing in the knowledge that he could not kill Hannibal even if he tried.... Will held himself over Hannibal for several long seconds. He imagined hurting him, pressing a knee to his throat and crushing his voice box, silencing that voice forever. No thrill accompanied the thought now. No pain, either. Nothing. He would never do it, he knew; he had taken his opportunity at the top of the cliff, and it would never return.

and is completed when he lets go:  All of it was lost to the sea. 

There is such tangible relief in Will’s deciding to let go of any illusions of killing Hannibal, and in releasing his pain to the sea. (And remember, the entire premise of this fic is Will deciding what he wants from Hannibal in this new life they find themselves in... and he decides.) With it comes such hard won, painful freedom. I literally felt a surge of relief and a burden dropped; Will’s. He is freed from having to "seek justice" or do the right thing. It's over. He can just, BE (whatever that looks like). 

ps: I haven’t quoted too much from the last two chapters, as that’s where the most “plot” happens and they’re phenomenal and I can’t just copy and paste the whole chapters here. Please, just go read it! And I will link my comments: chapter 13 | chapter 14 

I just... can’t say enough good things about this fic, but I’ve thoughtfully laid out everything major. It’s tremendous, satisfying, lovely. Go give it a read. 

[sylaesschasewind]

Heartbreak/Headache

The firelight glinted wetly off the edge of her saber.

Her eyes darted up the length of it, back up at Mattanis. The prick. She couldn’t swallow. Her chest was heaving, but nothing came of it but sharp bursts of pain. He’d missed her spine but got her right beneath the jaw. Blood drooled down her chest.

It wasn’t something she’d walk away from. The knowledge was firm and clear. 

“I give you to him. A worthy sacrifice. May he see your treachery!”

His voice bawled in perfectly clear common. 

A very large part of her wanted to spout something witty and cutting off, but again. That damn blade rendered that idea null.

She was dying.

The hot wetness sludged its way down her neck. Now why did you turn your back on him? You knew. This wasn’t a surprise. Do you want to die? A taste of rest...?

He chanted on, trying to invoke the master. Something she’d learned. You didn’t just invoke him; he knew what was going on and deigned to visit as he wished. Chanting became incoherent. It was hazy at best. Hard to focus her eyes, let alone unravel the blurry words of fervor falling over her. Sight faded to shadows. Shadows to shapes, shapes faded to...

Shit, this was really happening. A cold sweat clutched her.

---

She rolled over and--thump--vomited heavily. There wasn’t anything to bring up but acrid bile. A hand on her shoulder. A bin shoved roughly into her hands.

It took her a good while to recover enough to blink back tears from her stinging eyes.

Confusion made her head swim.

Destarion gave her a thin smile, settling above her on the bed. She was on the floor.

“So, you died.” 

“Is this real?” Her voice was hoarse. Like she’d been screaming for hours. Gravel sounded better. And boy, it hurt. Everything lit up at once.

“Unfortunately for you, I think.”

Sylaess let her head back down to the floorboards. It cost too much to look around, so she screwed her eyes shut. She smelled blood. Gore. Sea water. 

“You were brought back by an Anchorite, no less. Fascinating.” The insulting drawl. Soft over hard, ignorant tone. Not intentionally mean, just bored. Like this had happened several times. His deep purple skin was coarse and scaled, those fel-flame eyes burning behind the simple linen wrap he used. Dark violet-black hair rested atop his head in a messy bun framed by those long demonic horns. Destarion was no picture of comfort, surely, but he was better than anything she’d seen in... how long had it been? It didn’t matter, really.

Her stomach churned again, and she heaved weakly into the bucket he’d thrust into her hands. Let her forehead rest on the edge of it. Every single nerve was misfiring it seemed. It felt like withdrawal, and a serious case of whooped-ass. 

“--Where’s.. Hnn.” Oh, gods. Why couldn’t she just stay dead? What a horrifying journey. Disjointed memories. “Sword.”

Their relationship wasn’t really one of caring. It was built on a temporary mutual interest, and in so, she was honestly shocked that he was here at all. 

“I’m not really in the know of how to help you, for clarity’s sake.”

Hands hauled her up by the shoulders. Nothing particularly gentle. Enough that she was sitting upright against the bed, head lolling bonelessly. The worn leather scabbards were pressed into her hands. She clutched them like a lifeline. Heard the demon hunter give a small sigh. “There’s no way I made it through.” Again, the thin gravel-voice.

“Is that more of a wish you hadn’t? I’m more inclined to believe it, if so.” She heard him shift on the bed. Felt him watching her like a strange insect on the floor. Alien. It was a long moment of silence before he spoke again. She could hear the faint sounds of the city outside the walls. “You need to get help. Acherian help. I doubt there’s anything that can be done for you here.”

“...Gods no.” 

The flinch was reflexive and it sent her swords sliding down her lap to thump dully onto the floor. The room spun violently. She hissed a breath between her teeth, hating how even without tone in her voice, her words were almost a whine. Get your shit together, Syl. You’re back, but you’re losing what was done. You’re dying. More like returning to undeath. Between the hunger and the soul deep pain, she wasn’t sure what was real. But she was going to cling to this reality while she could. 

“Another, here.” the voice seemed to come from somewhere over head. “Hmph. The Light will shine in any shadow.” 

She didn’t recognize the language. Not at first. Another puzzle? N’zoth picked the best tormentors, after all. But it wasn’t demon-speech. No. It reminded her of... 

Argonas? No. Avehi? Yes? No! Draenic!

The thought bubbled along haphazardly. Sudden Light burned echoes into her eyes. She’d resigned herself to this fate. Being here in Ny'alotha. She wondered if this was another painful game that they were going to play.

Right until the floor came up to cuff her across the nose. Felt it shatter under her weight. A groan escaped as she pushed herself up onto her forearms. She’d been devout once, and the phrases came to mind, but it felt so wrong. So, so wrong. 

“Hey, elf.” The common was thickly accented. “Time to get moving. You’re one of those undead, right?” Male. Not the first speaker. 

“Just get her on her feet.” Impatient. “No one has time to wait in this foul place. It begins to collapse. We can offer a cleanse as we exit.”

Collapse? Sylaess blinked stupidly. Collapse? She stared straight into the pristine white face with golden eyes. The mane of white hair floating about her horns made her think of some strange halo, but the expression was cold and unforgiving. Syl didn’t blame her.

There was intense pressure on her jaw. She tossed her head but couldn’t get rid of it.

“There you are. Welcome back.”

Destarion’s faux nobility drawl. She blinked a few times, trying to make heads or tails of it. Reality wasn’t what it should be anymore. It was terrifying. He had her by the jaw, holding her head still. Firm, but not cruel. 

“You keep seizing. You. Need. To. Go. Back.”

He let her go, standing up from his crouch. Her chest was tight with fear at the thought of Acherus, but she couldn’t recall why. She watched him pour a short glass of... liquor. Collected herself enough to roll and press off of the floor. Rising with care. Everything was wavering like a candle flame. Found herself gripping her scabbards like they were a safety blanket.

The demon hunter simply frowned at her from across the room. He was here, but she didn’t know why. There was no love between them, and she certainly had lost her usefulness. It wasn’t caring, which was fine. That would have made it awkward. More awkward.

Damn it all, he was right. 

Cold sweat slicked her forehead again. Oh no.

Caught sight of his eye-roll behind his blindfold. Fucking spare me! Drummed up the power to call it. To rip open a death gate. The pressure felt like her veins were going to explode with the force of dragging up enough magic.

It sputtered before her and went out like a limp dick. Frustration reared up in her in a strangled, close-mouthed noise. Her legs jellied and she sat on the bed hard. 

“Shit.” She breathed the word out and let herself fall back on the mattress, swords clattering on her chest. No armor. Huh. Somehow that felt more naked than being without clothes. “I don’t have a plan for this.”

“Evidently.”

“I need... “ Say it. Say it you fucking tool. You could’ve let Argonas give you your stupid absolution, but no. “I need another Knight. To get to Acherus.” Or to finish the fucking slow ass process of undeath.

Not far away from where she was, leaning against the railing as he looked out onto the ocean was Nedemus. Inner conflict wore on him as he watched, one of his long nails grinding gently against the wood as he sighed. 

It honestly took more effort than she was willing to account for to get herself out onto the boardwalk. One step at a time. She stumbled unsteadily out of the rented room and onto the boardwalk. The sea breeze smacked into her face wetly, less of a smell, more of an assault. 

What a fucking mess.

Eyes blurry, she made it to the railing. Hooray. Holding herself upright and looking better than she felt at least. Destarion sighed and watched for a minute before slipping away in the crowd. Shook his head. 

The nearness of other people was abrasive. She gripped the railing like the world had turned upside down.

“--Ned?” It startled her that she knew his name.

He blinked upon hearing his name, the worgen turning his head towards the source. Before him stood… “... Sylaess? It’s been…” He blinked once more, giving her another lookover. She looked… alive? At least as alive as they were in their states. “Are you alright?”

Thoughts tumbled over each other in a fight for freedom from her mouth. She ended up saying nothing for a long moment, trying to compute what weird luck this was. Shook her head a bit.

“No.”

A breath in slowly. Held gently. “Are you?”

He narrowed his eyes a bit in worry, pushing himself off the railing as he stepped towards her. “I’m fine, don’t worry about that… What’s wrong?” He asked her, slow in his approach. 

“I...” How to explain? Made the worst decision in her miserable unlife, twice? Good try. “Need to get to a rune forge. Acherus.” Or somewhere. She steadied herself, holding her ground. It was hard enough to have her gaze hold his what with the world twisting, but it was getting easier. Small battles.

He watched her for a moment, before nodding softly, turning his head away and holding up his hand to the open area beside them, the dark energy forming a gate before him. His hand lowered, gaze turning once more towards her as he offered a hand. “What happened to you?”

“...I’m a magnificent idiot.” She smiled bleakly. With her gravelly, ruined voice it didn’t really stick. Shook her head and nearly tumbled for it. Oh dear. “Need to fix my blades.” She stared at his hand a moment before gripping it. Couldn’t help but feel the dread of returning to Acherus after all this bloody time, but it had to be something. Anything to anchor herself from this freefall. 

“Thank you.” Softly spoken. 

He moved in close, helping to catch her as he noticed her struggling, keeping an arm around her as he escorted her to the gate, moving slow and careful. “Aren’t we all.” He said softly, with a chuckle, before shaking his head. “It’s… No problem. I’ll help you get to the forges… Soon as I Remember where they are.”

He stepped through the gate, traveling the pair through and into the dark halls of Acherus. He glanced around, his ear flicking a bit as he tried to remember...

It didn’t go well. One minute she was grateful for his support, the next, she was a boneless sack of skin being held up through a portal. Good times, good times. 

Wading back into consciousness was very much like being a tiny little rowboat out on the great ocean. Half full of water. She flinched hard, stumbling and throwing an arm up over her face, but her leg went sliding out from under her. What a mess.

It didn’t take long for Ned to grunt a bit, scooping his arms underneath her legs and hoisting her in his arms, bridal style. He walked through the halls, ignoring the glances from the other death knights as he made his way towards the forges. “You still have your blades?”

“Yeah.” She spoke mutedly, trying to figure herself out again. Sure enough, they were in their scabbards, strapped to her back. There wasn’t room for dignity anymore. Not in her condition. Ny’alotha still clung to her mind like an infestation of worms. 

Blades. Right. One was salvageable. Enough to get her by. So she hoped. It had cracked at some point, near the hilt but not all the way through. Trusting the master rune forger could be of use. She shuddered, remembering the second one.

He gave a soft nod as they arrived to the forge, Ned bringing her in close as he helped her to stand - keeping his arm around her for support.

Okay, stand. Honestly. Stand. Drag up what’s left of yourself and get this done. Sylaess ended up leaning on him a fair bit. As if she hadn’t just been carried in like some waif. Ignoring that fact, she gripped his arm a moment. Took a small breath and steadied up. “I can’t thank you for this.”

[wirewitchviolet]

“What can I do to help?”

As I’m writing this, I’m dealing with a rather astounding amount of vicious harassment which is taking a very serious toll on me. Usually when this is happening, I try not to talk about it publicly, because the sort of people who do this love nothing more than seeing evidence that it’s working, but sometimes, exceptions need to be made. And more to the point, as someone who deals with these sort of attacks as a constant presence in my own life, as well as helping others deal with the same in what is arguably a professional capacity, it seems to me the state of things today is at a point where we need a fresh round of public education on how these sorts of attack play out, and what any given person can do to actually help people deal with them in a meaningful way.

Predators and Herds

As a basic fundamental primer here, I’m going to need everyone to start looking at things from the perspective of a herd animal, because not only is it a pretty clear metaphor for a lot of this, I honestly think this is literally the sort of ancestral memory/instinct that drives this sort of thing. Plus there’s an amusing irony in telling people dealing with these sorts of predatory scumbags that they aren’t acting ENOUGH like sheep.

Some animals are predators. In order to survive, they have to stalk/chase/pin down other animals and kill them in order to eat. Invariably, the animals they target are those that are the most vulnerable. It’s the easiest way to go, and the one with the least risk of anything going wrong. If you’re a hungry wolf, you’re not going to mess with the big beefy ram who can headbutt you and break some ribs, or the really fit sheep you’d have to chase for an hour and still might never catch up with. You’re just going to go for the one with the broken leg, or the little defenseless baby lamb. Those ones you can definitely pick off without much effort at all, and they can’t really fight back in any meaningful way.

Some animals deal with predators by just focusing single-mindedly on defending themselves. If you can outrun the predators, and never let them get the drop on you, or you hide well enough they can’t ever find you, or you know how to really fight back and hurt them badly enough they know not to mess with you, then cool, you aren’t going to get eaten. At least until you let your guard down at the wrong time, or you get injured, or age starts taking its toll. Plus with all of these you’re just living your whole life in this constant state of fear, actively aware that death lurks just around the corner, and you can’t really form any real attachments with anyone else or protect them. It’s no way to live your life, and all of these require you to be able to outperform any predator who comes at you.

The other way to survive with predators wanting you dead is to be part of a herd. If everyone the predators want to prey on are in a big group, there’s inherent safety in numbers there. Not, to be clear, simply because having so many potential meals to choose from means the odds of you being chosen drop. Predators have to weigh the risks now of coordinated defenses. That big tough ram they’d rather not tackle for fear of getting hurt is right there next to that shaky-legged little lamb that would otherwise be the easiest meal to snag there is.

Herds cause a whole lot of headaches for predators, so when they’re a factor, the first step is pretty much always going to be to scatter the herd in some fashion, so all the prey that would be a pain to deal with leave, and the easily picked off targets are left behind to move in on. There’s a lot of ways to do this, and I don’t want to get into too much detail because the metaphor would get too strained, but the real key counter-strategy is to keep the herd from scattering.

Wolves are going to show up, they’re going to show up in packs, they’re going to start snarling and howling and all that, and some sheep are always going to run when that happens, and some sheep aren’t going to be able to. The trick is to have as many sheep as possible stand their ground. If there’s only a couple who do, they’re just going to get picked off along with the ones who can’t run or fight back. But if enough sheep stand their ground to keep those intimidating numbers, nobody’s getting eaten.

There’s our big framework for looking at this, don’t ever let it drop.

How Predators Attack

Now, the next thing to keep in mind here is that people who haven’t been really hit hard by the sort of attacks I’m talking about here tend to be totally clueless about what they actually involve, and even those who have been targeted tend to be really bad at recognizing when other people are being put through the same.

What people imagine to be a “really devastating attack” is when, say, 2000 different twitter accounts all coordinate to hurl violent threats and horrible slurs at a single person over a single one-hour period or something. Don’t get me wrong here. That does happen, regularly, and that’s never a fun thing to deal with, if only because it essentially serves as a DDoS attack, rendering you unable to see any messages from people you want to see things from, but at the end of the day, it does no more harm than having your router go down for a few hours, maybe a day or two in the most extreme cases. It’s also not something that ever really gets sustained in the long term. It’s more like the predators are just holding a pep rally and testing how many accounts they can direct at once.

The really devastating attacks are the effort to drive herds away. They’re a hell of a lot less flashy, generally. They’re hard to point out to others. When really well executed, the target doesn’t even necessarily see anything happening. And what’s happening is elaborately orchestrated character assassination.

I can’t really convey the seriousness of this without some very specific examples. I may follow this up with a roundup of every attack I’ve personally had launched against me, but for now, let me present a very old and famous example, along with the one I’m most recently dealing with.

The classic, of course, from way back in 2014- “Zoe Quinn slept with five guys from various publications in exchange for good reviews of a game.” If this were the first time you encountered this statement, odds are good your personal reaction would be along the lines of “who?” or “who cares?” The goal here isn’t to make everyone hate Zoe Quinn though, just people immediately around Zoe Quinn. The premise of trading favors for good press is something anyone involved in the press is going to take quite seriously, with even baseless claims having an extreme chilling effect. For another crowd, promiscuity is considered a crime worthy of stoning someone to death (and it’s rather telling that the most commonly repeated version of this attack shortens it to simply “Zoe Quinn slept with five guys”). Much more to the point though, the premise that anyone reading this hasn’t previously encountered this line. That message was shouted from the rooftops all over the world for five straight years, over every possible channel.

More recently, I’ve been dealing with... this incoherent mess. This is much less coordinated, with just a handful of people in the think tank, testing every attack live on the fly. You can watch, more or less in real time, as this predator tosses out a variety of defamatory attacks, switching to a new one every time one falls flat. I’m friends with Graham, then I’m business partners, then I’m either paying him or maybe sleeping with him in exchange for promoting some website. I’m a professional journalist (which is a rather weird angle to press as an attack). Then suddenly I’m a “pedophile defender.” A new attack every day.

Now, in both these cases, there’s no truth at all behind any of these attacks. None of these are even stories with two sides to consider. Zoe Quinn’s game was a little choose your own adventure story comprised of a few simple HTML pages linking to each other. No one ever reviewed it to begin with, so the whole thing falls apart. Graham Linehan is a disgusting crusader who attacks children’s charities for daring to provide support to trans children, and quite famously has some weird fixation on publicly attacking me, and I’m a trans woman who hasn’t had any real luck finding work of any kind since coming out half a decade ago. I’ve never run any website that wasn’t a simple blog like this one, or this one which I think puts that last claim to bed well enough.

But again, the idea with attacks like this isn’t to be credible, or even plausible. People don’t make these sorts of attacks based on anything the target has done, it’s all about what will do the most harm if even one person actually buys into it. You want to hurt an indie game dev? Get people to believe they have to bribe people with sex to get any positive mention of their output. You want to hurt a trans woman? Get people to believe she’s friends with and/or sold everyone else out to the king of the transphobes. Someone who does real work to shut down child porn sites? Secretly a pedophile. Etc. Etc. And the success rate of attacks like this is never zero. No matter how transparently false the claim is, shout it at enough people and SOMEONE is going to treat it as ironclad fact, spreading it around in turn and coming off more credible because they’re quoting someone.These rumors spread like wildfire since, let’s be honest, social media sites are all just glorified gossip mills at the end of the day, and all those laughable details from the original lie drop away, replaced with lists of all the very credible people who always know what they’re talking about these scathing claims have been filtered through.

In my experience, honestly it’s the all the most pathetic claims that do the most damage. “Slept with five guys” sticks more than “in exchange for reviews” because it’s such a non-crime that people default to “let’s say that’s true - who even cares?” rather than question the veracity. And I swear all the most damaging attacks I’ve ever suffered really just boil down to baseless claims that I really just don’t like some arbitrary collection of mostly women (a mix of strangers and people I generally view in a positive light).

Having established all of that, we can finally get around to the big question found in the title of this post:

What can I do to help?

Really, the most meaningful and impactful thing you can ever do when someone is being attacked like this is just to do whatever you can to get in front of it. If you know someone has some predator out there trying to convince people she eats puppies, broadcast a big announcement about how that’s happening, along with how and why you’re as confident as you are that she doesn’t, and it’s a baseless hit job. If you have media connections, try to get a story printed about the whole mess, or set up an interview where the victim can talk about how surreal the experience is. If you don’t, just shout about it where you can, so people know not to trust it when word eventually reaches them of all the depraved puppy feasts.

Past that, just be an active support. Tell the alleged puppy eater how you have her back. Ask how she’s holding up. Offer to talk for a bit, or watch a movie. More often than not, attacks like this cost people career contacts and close friends, and cause a lot of trauma. Whatever you can do to help beat the encroaching darkness back helps.

Also? Don’t fall into that trap of granting these sort of BS claims are true to argue the point that they’re stupid reasons to attack someone. They’re always going to be a big deal to someone, and your hypothetical just makes it seem more factual.

Do keep in mind though that these sorts of solidarity moves are going to make the predators real mad. They want to drive you away, and failing that, they’re going to want to take you down too for not running off with the rest of the herd. If we can establish these sorts of defenses as a cultural norm, or you’re personally the sort of person it’s too risky to go after, this is a total non-issue, but if you’re also particularly vulnerable, and nobody else is following suit, be aware of the risks you’re taking.

Finally, make sure you don’t fall into the trap of becoming a predator yourself. So many people get this idea in their heads that the best defense is a good offense, and set out to “turn the tables,” but frankly it just doesn’t work. When you go on the offense, you can’t help but take on those predatory instincts. You end up targeting the most vulnerable people you can find and convince yourself are “the enemy.” I mean that’s almost certainly how the batch of predators you’re trying to fight got started in the first place.

So just... try to be kind. Be supportive. Get out in front of life-ruining rumors. And don’t just do it for people you know and trust. Do it for strangers who are plainly being preyed on. Look for people who just live to tear into people, especially when they keep tearing into the super marginalized. Object to that on principle. And remember anyone can fall into doing it, no matter how long you’ve known and trusted them, or what their politics are.

And some more thoughts on this topic.

[kiruuuuu]

Doc/Lion oneshot in which, instead of going for each other’s throat, they reach a little lower (and Lion gets more than he bargained for). (Rating E, explicit, ~3k words) - written for @big-r6s-fan! 💗 I will never tire of thanking you for commissioning me and allowing me to write this because it was super fun :) Find my commission info here!

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“Flament, a word.”

The tone of voice effortlessly conveys the blatant lie in Doc’s statement – what he really means to say is: The only thing keeping me from writing you a novel is lack of time. Lion narrowly avoids rolling his eyes in annoyance and obliges, throws Montagne a meaningful look which implies they’ll finish their rudely interrupted conversation later and trails after his other teammate. If he could’ve gotten away with it, he’d be dragging his feet just because the murderous glare Doc would send him never fails to be hilarious. He’s reasonably certain he knows what this is about and boy, is he not in the mood for this.

And of course Doc marches him into his office instead of just any room which would’ve served the same purpose. With his inflated ego, it’s no surprise he enjoys chewing people out in a place where he’s comfortable; Lion can’t even begin counting the occasions on which he ended up on this side of the mahogany desk, having his person and skills and ethics challenged by a man too naive to be in this line of work and who genuinely thought he could pull off that frankly ridiculous moustache for a few years of his life. Lion is almost sad it’s gone by now, it befitted Doc’s general absurdity.

It doesn’t matter. He’s secretly begun rebelling against the man’s authority in a satisfying way and now he puffs himself up whenever he comes face to face with the very desk which used to make his temper flare purely by existing, but by now has lost its sting. It was customary for him to view the solid piece of furniture as an unsurmountable obstacle rendering any proper communication between them impossible, yet his view has shifted. It’s converted. It’s working for him now.

“I will not stand for you endangering more innocent lives.” Doc’s French is clipped, efficient, yet more than a tool to be used – he has the same intonation and melody to his words as Lion’s parents, as Sophie, as former teachers.

“Then stop endangering your own”, he replies and wants nothing more than to stuff something down Doc’s throat to make him stop talking. His holier-than-thou attitude has always rubbed Lion the wrong way, created sparks of fury, hostility, and something… entirely different on occasion. There’s dust from the debris in Doc’s hair, making it whiter than it already is and Lion wants to bury his fingers in it and then pull sharply.

He needs to stop getting distracted.

“Stop interfering with my work”, Doc snaps and it’s wonderful how easily Lion can get under his skin. At this point, it’s almost a hobby for him to rile up his colleague. And while private hissy fits are a necessary-turned-amusing evil, they serve another purpose as well: providing excellent material for long, gratifying ‘self-care’ sessions in which he fantasises about what would’ve happened if instead of quoting a specific law to shut down Doc’s argument, he’d just crowded him against a wall, rumbled filth into his ear and showed him how unprofessional he really can be.

“Then stop interfering with mine.” He has to suppress a smirk at the frustration on Doc’s face and doesn’t mind in the least that he’s doing the grown-up version of ‘no you’.

“Pray tell, Flament, what exactly does your work entail then? Does it state anywhere you should prevent me from administering first aid to a wounded civilian? Hm?” His tone is cutting, sharp and sweet like a rose’s thorn, and he actually abandons his safe haven behind the desk to come down to Lion’s level – or rather lower. Because he is noticeably shorter and Lion gladly stands up straighter to emphasise this fact.

“Above all, my work entails keeping my colleagues safe, for example preventing an altruistic idiot from rushing head first into a potential ambush.”

Doc’s eyes narrow. Their faces are uncomfortably close together, a result of too many altercations in the past where both of them got scolded for raising their voice, so now they rely on dangerous hissing. His smell is making it hard to breathe because it’s earthy, mesmerising, distinct. Lion wonders how it’d feel to force him to his knees and have this defiant gaze directed up at him while his sharp tongue is used for something other than reprimanding him for - “Is that your way of saying you’re worried about me?”

Lion is halfway through formulating a reply in his head when his thoughts screech to a grinding halt. Nothing has changed, Doc’s posture is just as defensive as before, expression stony, intonation accusing, and yet the atmosphere has… tilted a little. Spilled into uncharted territory. Lion isn’t sure what to make of it. “I worry about all my colleagues”, he eventually responds neutrally.

“That doesn’t absolve you from jerking off at my desk. Repeatedly.”

Oh.

Well fuck.

He blinks owlishly, utterly speechless because how in the world is he ever going to recover. Doc knows. How does he know?

Sensing he’s not going to get a sensible response from Lion any time soon, Doc continues: “If you have a problem with me, I’m sure we can work something out.”

His mouth is faster than his brain because there’s no way he’d in his right mind shoot back: “Yeah, you can work out on my cock.”

Okay. Alright.

This is still salvageable. All he needs to do is to back off immediately, apologise for the inappropriate comment, not mention that Doc needs to stop wearing these blasted form-fitting shirts or else Lion will really end up doing a briefing with a raging hard-on in front of everyone, and then steer clear of Doc for the rest of his entire -

“Real mature, Flament, but I expected no less. I’m afraid you’re mistaken, though, as it would be the other way round.”

Once again, words elude him, this time out of indignation. The audacity. Lion has no doubt he’s the more experienced one, is taller and heavier, certainly more masculine and dominant, and Doc has the gall to imply… Shock slowly morphs into smug disbelief and he finds himself shaking his head at this bold claim. “You haven’t got the balls.”

And Doc grabs him by the collar and smashes their mouths together.

Lion just – he stops functioning for a few seconds until he realises that it’s Doc’s tongue prying his lips open so he parts them willingly with an involuntary moan he regrets the moment he utters it. His brain still refuses to acknowledge the whole situation, making it easy for Doc to overpower him, guide the messy kiss and shove his hands under Lion’s sweater and holy shit, is this really happening? The desk’s edge digs into the backs of his thighs and Doc’s teeth into his lower lip and it’s Lion who’s making these horribly embarrassing noises, isn’t it? Like a mixture of a dying whale and a prisoner of war about to be freed and this is not at all how he pictured this to go.

Despite the suddenness of it all, there’s a particular part of his body which has no trouble keeping up and draws even more attention to itself the moment Doc’s thumbs brush over Lion’s nipples and good heavens, he did not expect Doc to be such a fantastic kisser. Desperate to regain any sort of control, Lion tries to fight the onslaught by grabbing Doc’s hands, wrestling his tongue into submission and spinning them around – with an emphasis on tries. Because Doc chooses that second to push a thigh between Lion’s legs, presses it directly against his achingly hard erection in all the right ways and makes his brain short-circuit yet again. The gesture results in vague flailing on Lion’s part, a particularly vicious swipe of Doc’s merciless tongue which turns his joints into butter and some ungraceful bumbling of which Doc makes use by basically lifting him up and setting him down on his stupid desk.

Well, so much for that.

“If you want me to stop, now’s the time”, Doc murmurs against his mouth and curls his tongue around Lion’s in a way he didn’t think possible. His inner monologue has turned into no more than incoherent screaming because while this general situation is a wet dream come true, he’s conflicted about the details and yet the thought of stopping the other man doesn’t even enter his mind. When calloused fingertips twist his nipples, all he can produce is a throaty groan full of arousal and longing, and when his legs (the traitors) wrap around Doc’s to pull him closer, his opponent breaks the kiss to regard him with a disgustingly smug expression. “That’s what I thought”, he says and starts unbuttoning Lion’s trousers.

Why don’t you start lubing up my cock with your throat so the sliding in becomes easier, the monkey part of Lion’s brain provides helpfully, sends the signal to his mouth and witnesses in stark horror how he instead chokes out something very, very different: “Please, hurry up, I want you.” It seems his entire body has set out to betray him: his upper body gives in at the slightest push and lies flat on the largely empty surface he’s defiled in the past, his hands lie uselessly by his side instead of struggling, and his dick is magnificently hard. Painfully hard. So hard it’s continuously throbbing and will probably ejaculate as soon as Doc looks at it wrong.

“I noticed my hand lotion depleting unusually quickly and asked Meghan for a Black Eye when I couldn’t locate the source”, Doc informs him conversationally while ripping down Lion’s trousers with minimal resistance. And oh, that explains how he knew. And… also means that Doc saw him. Oh God. “Tell me, did you fantasise about me, Olivier?”

His cheeks are crimson. It’s impossible to provide an honest answer, not when Doc pulls his underwear down as if they’d done this a thousand times and throws his uncomfortably hard cock an appraising glance. “I”, Lion starts stupidly and then Doc’s mouth envelops him in wonderful tight heat, prompting him to thrust his hips up at the unexpected stimulation and the next thing he hears is a sharp snap.

Doc just slapped his ass as punishment.

It stings, but even worse is the realisation that Lion isn’t going to top anybody today. “You can’t do that!”, he gasps, appalled, yet the look he receives is unbothered.

“Watch me”, Doc says and does it again. This time, Lion moans at the sensation, can’t help himself, it’s just – he doesn’t even know what’s going on, only that he’s in too deep already, and he’s not only talking about Doc’s mouth and oh God, his tongue really can do what it promised earlier. A mere minute later, Lion is writhing on the cursed desk in agonising bliss, trying desperately not to come down Doc’s throat while producing so much noise it’s a miracle no one has checked on them yet. He’s so resigned to his fate that he at first doesn’t notice the warm hand creeping up his thigh and getting dangerously close to his crotch, up until the pad of a finger strokes over his entrance and absolutely no way.

“Don’t”, Lion pants and nearly knees Doc in the temple, “just – keep sucking, please, but not -”

Doc pulls off his dick with a wet pop and, unperturbed, conjures up a bottle of lube seemingly out of thin air. “Should’ve used this instead of the lotion”, he states. “Then you could’ve fingered yourself in preparation as well.”

“I don’t do that sort of thing”, Lion protests and yelps when Doc hoists his legs up, folds them in half and places Lion’s hands on his own calves. He’s much too overwhelmed to complain and so he simply holds his legs up, spread invitingly, and then there’s a slippery finger inside him.

He opens his mouth to object. The finger crooks in a way just as magical as Doc’s tongue earlier and a fierce wave of pleasure rolls through him. Lion closes his mouth again.

“I don’t believe it for a second”, Doc counters and adds a second one and good Lord, how is he doing this? Lion’s thoughts are running haywire and he’s ashamed to admit that at least half of them are focused on replacing those fingers with something else. “This looks like your natural habitat.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?!” He flinches when the digits withdraw and narrowly stops himself from substituting his own. It really does feel phenomenal.

“It means”, Doc replies while unzipping his own trousers, “that you’re a slut.”

Lion is stupefied. Did Doc just -

And before his brain even processes the insult, it shuts down completely because that’s definitely a dick pushing inside him, giving him the opportunity to adjust and then rubbing over all the right places. In utter disbelief, Lion stares down at himself and can’t fathom how he ended up here when by all means, he should’ve -

“Hold this too.” The hem of his sweater gets shoved between his teeth and he bites down automatically; his reward is warm palms stroking over his chest and fingertips finding his nipples yet again and he’s sizzling, he feels hot and weird and his skin prickles wherever Doc touches, and above all he never wants this to end. Especially when Doc starts thrusting. “Do you like this?”

Lion’s only answer is a muffled moan about an octave higher than he’d like. There’s something like fireworks going on and it almost drowns out Doc’s next words. Almost.

“You, Olivier, are a nasty little slut”, and Doc emphasises this with a particularly deep thrust, “and you deserve to be punished. Do you know why?”

He shakes his head, too preoccupied with the sight before him, the incredible feeling of becoming one with this man, something of which he’s been dreaming for a long, long time.

“But you do. Because it wasn’t just my desk, was it?” Panicked, Lion looks up and is met with a half amused, half heated gaze. Doc seems to be enjoying this at least as much as he is. “My underwear has gone missing a few times. So has my uniform. I know how you look at me.”

Oh shit. Lion’s face starts burning and it’s only partly the hard movements which rock his entire body. He must make for a shameful display: presenting himself, incapacitated of his own volition, whimpering and squirming on Doc’s magnificent cock. And he realises that he doesn’t even care – because it looks like Doc is having the time of his life, and that implies they’ll do this again.

“Look at you, you’re taking it so well.” His voice is mesmerising and Lion notices himself giving in to the thrumming desire, relishing the sharp motions reaching deep and causing small explosions of need, of want, of delight. When a hand closes around his throbbing erection, he throws his head back and arches his back, feels fingernails dig into his ribs and scrape over a sensitive nipple, prompting an elated groan. “You’re sucking me in and gripping me so tightly.”

Lion wants it to last so badly, wants to hear Doc talk some more about all the depraved things he’s done because he hasn’t even mentioned half of it, can’t know the full extent, but as always, the universe is against him and gave Doc not only a gloriously talented tongue as well as a perfectly shaped dick, but also awarded him with skilled fingers who identify Lion’s weakspots in seconds and massage the ridge of his glans, torture him with long, slow strokes just like he would himself and that’s right, Doc knows exactly how he does it because he’s seen it, and this knowledge mercilessly shoves Lion off the edge without so much as a warning.

He comes with a series of moans, abs contracting marvellously and sending shocks of pleasure through him while Doc milks him, keeps jerking him in time with the almost violent spurts of come Lion unloads on his belly. Doc fucks him through it and creates white noise in Lion’s head with his thrusts, the stimulation flirting with discomfort but never really reaching it; and if it wasn’t for Doc’s own orgasm, Lion might’ve passed out cold with how hard the relief hits him. His rhythmic spasming must’ve been too much for Doc, causes him to climax while Lion is still tensing up and riding the last of his high and he looks beautiful. Doc tilts his head back with a satisfied groan, hips stuttering, and comes deep -

He – he’s actually coming inside, dick pulsing, eyes rolling back. And if Lion is honest, it’s one of the hottest things he’s ever seen.

The hem of his sweatshirt snaps back the moment he lets go and he rests his head on the uncomfortable and frankly ostentatious desk with a sigh, lowers his legs but refuses to let Doc go by wrapping them around him once again. The fight has left him, but so has the heat of the moment which has shifted into an odd uncertainty. He’s not sure what to do other than enjoy the gentle afterglow.

As if he’d read his mind, Doc bends down to him for a kiss which lasts much longer than Lion expected it to, and when they separate after a good while, they’re both smiling. “How about we think of an excuse as to why our conversation took this long while we get you cleaned up?”, he murmurs good-naturedly.

The warmth spreading in Lion’s chest easily replaces the insecurity he felt, and so he nods happily.

“Really, though. Don’t touch my stuff again.”

He almost laughs at Doc’s serious tone and decides to take a chance: “And what if I do?”

To this, Doc smirks and Lion didn’t even know he was capable of doing that, is actually glad he didn’t find out earlier because it apparently doubles his heart rate and steals his breath away.

“Then I’ll see you in my office, Flament”, he says and raises a meaningful brow.

[spamzineglasgow]

PART ONE: Glitching the Collective Mind (Dan Power)

Figures 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4

“I am not a nihilist, but a mood of grim, jolly absurdism comes over me often, as it seems to come over many of my young peers. To visit millennial comedy… is to spend time in a dream world where ideas twist and suddenly vanish; where loops of self-referential quips warp and distort with each iteration, tweaked by another user embellishing on someone else’s joke, until nothing coherent is left…”

> This quote comes from ‘Why is millennial humor so weird?’, in which journalist Elizabeth Bruenig (2017) taps into the vein of gleeful absurdity which is emerging in online creative spaces. This insight seems to have struck a chord with creators and consumers of online content, as in response, the article itself has become widely memed. Above there are four examples of this, with each taking a meme that existed independently and reframing it with the ‘millennial humor’ headline. There is a degree of self-awareness to this reframing, as if the content creators have taken the label ‘weird’ as a challenge to rise to. The absurdity of the source material is heightened by recontextualising it as formal journalism. By prefacing this image with a frame that draws attention to the image’s weirdness, these anonymous content creators are wilfully resisting interpretation, revealing their intent to baffle, bemuse, or maybe even unnerve internet users.

> Bruenig observes a tendency in some memes to celebrate meaninglessness with comic sincerity. By responding to the article in the way they did, these content creators have proved Bruenig’s point. The theory is put into practice: a meme has entered circulation where the intention is to be deliberately and playful obscure, and where the individual memes are linked only by their deployment of the same frame. Importantly, for all the incoherence of the memes themselves, there is a coherence to the methods producing them.

> What sparks these acts of coordinated communal nonsense – are the motivations personal, political, or is it a celebration of weirdness for its own sake? By exploring the dark absurdism creeping into post-internet artwork, particularly in video content, this series seeks to examine the latent ideology underpinning the dark surrealism of internet humour, and how its rising popularity changes the ways we think about ourselves and our realities.

-

“...that which was intended to enlighten the world in practice darkens it. The abundance of information and the plurality of worldviews now accessible to us through the internet are not producing a coherent consensus reality... It is on this contradiction that the idea of a new dark age turns: an age in which the value we have placed on knowledge is destroyed by the abundance of that valuable commodity, and in which we look about ourselves in search of new ways to understand the world.”

-

In New Dark Age (2018), his examination of the internet’s infiltration of our daily lives, James Bridle only just stops short of declaring that the internet will be the death of humanity. As well as the environmental cost of constant streaming and downloading, Bridle argues that the internet poses an existential threat in a more epistemological sense, by attempting the impossible task of collating and networking humanity’s collective knowledge, history, and culture.

> This cataloguing is conducted through the use of databases, which media theorist Lev Manovich argues are becoming (if they aren’t already) the new dominant media (2010, p.70). The database is distinguished from a physical collection of items and information by its flexibility, and the user’s ability to manipulate the structure of the content by searching for key words. Here there is a paradox: because it is so meticulously structured, the experience of using a database is one apparently devoid of structure. Manovich notes that the database is “distinct from reading a narrative or watching a film or navigating an architectural site” since these experiences are all linear, and so are experienced by readers or viewers in the same way, with point b always following point a, and so on (p.65). In a database users navigate the information however they choose, in effect creating their own narratives, with no guarantee that any two users’ experience of a database may be the same.

> This same notion is put forward by Henry Jenkins in Convergence Culture (2006), where he says “each of us constructs our own personal mythology from bits and fragments of information extracted from the media flow and transformed into resources through which we make sense of our everyday lives”. The narratives we forge through our online experiences become part of our understanding of the world – and they seem to be creating more confusion than clarity. These narratives are arbitrarily structured, and may contain false information or information devoid of meaning. Also, thanks to the volume and speed of online messaging, language is evolving faster than it ever has before (Press Association, 2015). Information may be conveyed to us in unfamiliar terms, and so be open to misinterpretation.

> Internet users are bombarded with information, little of which has any meaningful or memorable content. Exposing people to a transparent mapped network of humanity’s knowledge, history, and culture has irrevocably warped our perception of ourselves, and our relationship to the world. As Bridle later notes, “the more obsessively we attempt to compute the world, the more unknowably complex it appears”. At best the database makes the sum of all the world’s content feel overwhelming, and at worst having it all laid out makes it feel mundane. Either way, the damage done is to expose internet users to too much information, and this can lead to an existential crisis.

> Spending too long online (or rather, too long outside of the real world) must saturate the mind. This oversaturation of meaning gives way to feelings of melancholic or manic absurdity, or as Bruenig puts it, a “creeping suspicion that the world just doesn’t make sense”. From this suspicion arises a new wave of disillusioned artists, who we will refer to as the post-internet surrealists. Unlike other meme creators (whose work arguably is surrealist in its Dada-like remixing of disparate elements), the post-internet surrealists are surrealists with intent, who respond to one another’s work, and whose videos consistently evoke alienation and absurd bemusement within digitally-rendered worlds. Videos such as BagelBoy’s pront (2017) engage with infinity as a source of existential confusion, and others like surreal entertainment’s What Kanye really showed Trump in the white house (2018) abstract real-life events to the point of absurdity (or make their inherent absurdity more apparent) by transporting them to a digital non-setting.

-

Manovich argues that the database is a distinct cultural form, like a novel or film or building, in that it presents its own distinct model of how the world should be experienced. Unlike narrative, the database is non-linear. Unlike architectural structure, the database is non-spatial. It appears to us as information without structure and without context – in short, information divorced from the reality in which it takes meaning.

> This creates a tension, which grows stronger the more we rely on the online world to conduct business in the real one. It is resolved, or at least eased, by the digital world bleeding into the physical. The world becomes what Bridle calls ‘code/space’, which he defines as “the interweaving of computation with the built environment”. This term isn’t internet-specific, and covers anything which requires users to think computationally in order to interact, such as self-service checkouts, or traffic light buttons. However, its impact is most significantly felt in the prevalence of internet-connected devices such as the mobile phone, which turn the whole world into potential code/space.

> The internet is omnipresent. It is so vast in size that popular indicators of space and size fail to adequately describe it. It’s a hyper-object, to borrow a term from philosopher Timothy Morton, so large and far-reaching that it surpasses the boundaries of location, so and complex that it cannot be entirely comprehended at once.

> Morton is an ecologist, and develops his idea in relation to climate change. In the blog Ecology Without Nature, he describes the hyper-object global warming as being so “massively distributed in time and space” that we can consider it “nonlocal”, not existing wholly in any one place. He writes that when you experience rain you are “in some sense” experiencing climate, but “you are never directly experiencing global warming” (2010). Global warming is too big an object to meaningfully encounter, but to dismiss its existence on these grounds would be ridiculous. We may be unable to comprehend its existence entirely, but still we know it exists through the traces it leaves across the globe.

> Like global warming, the internet is a hyper-object, and the data we glean from it is just a fragment of the whole. When we consider the internet as one hyper-object, rather than a collection of individual data objects, then all internet-connected devices become components in a single global network, one global code/space.

> To meaningfully discuss the surrealism emerging online we will consider the internet not as a collection of individual texts, images and videos, but as one networked whole. Matthew Smith argues that, since digital media work by translating data into “universally exchangeable” bits, “all digital media are therefore identical in structure; like Campbell’s soup cans” (2007). The content of two memes may be worlds apart, but fundamentally they are both the same thing. Furthermore, if they both exist online, they are equally tiny composite parts of a larger total structure. This is not the same as, for example, claiming that all paintings in a gallery are part of the same work because they share a building. With physical objects, there is always the possibility of them leaving the gallery or entering a new one. This does not work digitally; you can’t have objects within the internet because the internet itself is an object of which digital artworks form a part.

-

Briefly, we’ll consider a post-internet artwork which isn’t a meme. Crispin Best’s ‘pleaseliveforever’ is an eight-line poem which regenerates every few seconds under a new, randomly generated title (2017). By making the content arbitrary and fleeting, the poem draws attention to its medium, and flaunts its ability to do things pre-internet poetry never could. Musing on this, SPAM’s own Denise Bonetti asks “what is the poem, then? The structure? The algorithm?” (2019), and indeed, if the content of the poem is continually being remixed then the only constant by which we can define it is its invisible network of underlying code. Because it exists digitally, the poem’s structure and algorithm are indistinguishable – the algorithm is the structure. And it’s not a structure in its own right, but one small part embedded within the hypertext of the internet as a networked whole.

> The internet is a database of databases, one giant non-spatial structure too large to pigeonhole, but within which we can observe trends. It will be useful to conceptualise the internet as one giant work of art, a hyper-artwork with an uncountable number of authors and viewers. This artwork is mutable, and continually evolving. Since the internet is a network of information relating to the real world, it might be considered a reconstruction of reality. The internet then is a constantly changing map of the world, and if we consume its content on a daily basis, and if we never distance ourselves from its code/space, it throws our understanding of the world into a constant state of flux.

> This uncertainty, and the anxiety or absurdity arising from it, is key to understanding the work of the post-internet surrealists. BagelBoy’s icced (2017) might be set in the real world, but there’s no way to be certain. The plot is simply that a man goes to a store, buys a cola, then goes home to drink it, but through means of information saturation and a post-internet aesthetic these events are abstracted beyond relatability and almost beyond recognition. The film’s world is constructed out of PNG images, stock photos and text boxes – spoken words appear as text, characters glide across the screen at will, and at the end the film’s entire diegesis is hijacked by an advert. Either the video is deconstructing real-world events by moving them to a digital setting, or it’s physically depicting a virtual interaction (typing replaces speech online, people navigate between internet sites without physically moving, and adverts can materialise from anywhere at any moment with no prior warning). Like the explicitly surreal memes we’ll encounter in future instalments, icced presents an absurd but coherent depiction of code/space, a version of reality infused with internet logic.

> But before we examine these surreal memes in detail we’ll go briefly to the very beginnings of cinema, a period of experimentation and genre consolidation similar to that occurring in online spaces today. By examining the developments of early cinema and viral video in tandem, we’ll see that giving consumers the power to create and share their own work makes profit a less important factor in filmmaking, and that this fundamentally changes the kind of video content which gets produced and distributed.

-

The prototype digital cinema emerging today may seem worlds apart from the first few years of cinema itself, but in fact the two share many common features. One scholar notes how “Both films of early cinema and online video clips are short films, mostly staying well under ten minutes in length” (Broeren, 2009). These short films were exhibited collectively in cinema’s early days (Gunning, 1990), keeping audiences supplied with a steady stream of novel content. Today they are exhibited side-by-side on databases like YouTube, where viewers can view as many as they desire in a single sitting, and sustain their own engagement by varying the content they consume at whim.

> In the early days of cinema, exhibitionists would often “re-edit” the films they purchased, and personalise their own exhibitions with offscreen supplements. This, too, occurs in online film. The media theorist Limor Shifman (2013) notes how “user-driven imitation and remix” as a mode of content production is integral to internet culture, and with video meme creators often accompanying their edits of other videos with captions, active comment sections, and links to other media, the off-screen supplements of old are today integrated into the on-screen experience.

> These similarities are not just superficial – they arise from the same factors. The birth of cinema saw large masses of people consuming and participating in the products of newly available commercial technologies, and the emergence of a distinct online cinema is, essentially, an accelerated replay of this process. Sharing in the same global code/space makes internet users a bigger potential audience than has ever previously existed, and the quantity and style of content produced by and for internet users is determined by the activity of this networked mass.

> Early cinema was concerned with newly-formed masses of people resulting from twentieth century modernity, not just for audiences but also as subject matter. According to Gunning (2004), the ‘local films’ of Mitchell and Kenyon would document crowds of people moving through public spaces, and when doing so they were tuned in to the growing public discourse around newly-visible congregations of people in developing urban areas. One particular style of film they produced, which we will take as out main focus, is the ‘factory gate’ film. These would document workers streaming out of a factory at the end of the day, almost universally consisting of single (occasionally sped up or spliced short) static long shots (LS) or extreme long shots (XLS). While the single take, duration and static camera are the result of practical limitations, the choice to employ LS or XLS is an artistic one. Greater distance allowed the frame to fill with a greater number of subjects, creating a visual cacophony and increasing the spectacle. The framing was often loose, meaning there were no focal points to direct attention. Viewer’s eyes would rapidly scan over the moving crowd, heightening any sense of the crowd being overwhelmingly large.

> As well as directly engaging with large masses of people, the demands of large audiences to see films made specifically for their local area meant Mitchell and Kenyon had to develop a way of turning out new films efficiently and affordably. In order to exploit the collective spending power of the masses, the form and content of these local pictures are wrapped around the desires of the masses to recognise themselves and their towns on-screen. The masses were not only the subject of the films, but also determined their mode of production, and by extension their formal properties.

-

The factory gate picture is a genre, and films in this genre are produced by following the Mitchell and Kenyon template: set up a camera by a factory gate at closing time, framing the exit in LS to capture as many moving people as possible. Templatability allows for films to effectively be cloned, so it’s necessary in commercial filmmaking, allowing things to be produced and reproduced at more profitable rates. By following templates to easily reproduce a standardised kind of content, the early genre films of Mitchell and Kenyon reproduce similarly to online memes. Sean Rintel (2013) argues that “templatability lies at the heart of online memes”, and explains that “memetic process is a product of the human capability to separate ideas into two levels – content and structure – and then contextually manipulate that relationship”. A meme, fundamentally, is the deployment of a familiar template to reframe and alter our perception of otherwise familiar or unfamiliar content. It is almost mathematical in its generation of novel content, since there are as many potential remixes of movies and songs as there are unique combinations.

Figures 2.1 and 2.2

> Take these memes as an example. Their origin is the YouTube video Gordon Ramsay cannot locate the lamb sauce (2016), a remixed clip of gameshow Hell’s Kitchen (2005-) in which Gordon shouts at contestants who have not made lamb sauce in time. The video cuts out anything other than Gordon’s shouting, and accentuates the moment’s absurdity by elongating and pitch-shifting the word ‘sauce’.Figures 2.1 and 2.2 combine elements of the remix with existing meme formats (figures 2.3 and 2.4) by adding a picture of Gordon and key words ‘lamb sauce’ and ‘located’, either in reference to the video, or to other memes derived from it. These memes were created by reshaping the source material to fit another meme template.

> The prominence of the remix in post-internet art produces huge amounts content which can only be fully understood in relation to other content. Memes function like in-jokes, and in this way they are participatory. The collaboration and participation between an unknowable number of anonymous contributors is part of the enjoyment not just of post-internet surrealism, but of all memes. It’s like shouting into the abyss and waiting to see what echoes back. The communication is rapid and blind, and sublime.

> In commercial cinema templates are used to maximize profits, so it might seem contradictory that they have been embraced by meme makers. But, in online spaces, the use and misuse of templates is what makes the art form participatory. Just as the viewers of local films would attend screenings to see themselves projected, thus participating in the production of the product they consume, so internet users riff off each other’s jokes and meme formats as a way of contributing to the continual evolution of a meme they enjoy.

> It has been argued by film historian Charles Musser (1990) that “modern” cinema begins with the birth of the nickelodeon, the implication of this being that modern cinema is necessarily commercial, whereas pre-cinema films were not. This distinction might be crude, since films were being produced for profit before the nickelodeon came into fashion, but it’s a helpful distinction to make. What makes the form, content, and distribution of pre-cinema and post-internet film resemble each other so closely is the same thing that makes them dissimilar to industrial filmmaking: they’re not driven by profit, but by novelty for its own sake; they are not produced by companies of people, but by small teams or individual auteurs; they experiment with newly-accessible technologies to see what effects can be created; and importantly, since they do not rely upon the systems of capitalism to support their growth and distribution, these films can afford to scrutinise these systems rather than reinforce their ideology.

-          

> Today’s advances in affordable camera technology, internet access, and free video editing software have shifted the power of content creation away from industry and into the hands of consumers. Anyone with a smartphone can be an auteur, and anyone with a wifi password can become a distributor. Creating and sharing content is easier than it’s ever been before, and developments within the medium now occur at a rate too fast to thoroughly document. The continual crossing of templates and content items produces countless proliferations and variations of existing memes each day. These memes are characterised by hyper-intertextuality, each new remix a thread that further thickens the intertextual tapestry.

> In his seminal essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin (1982) observes that as reproduction of artworks becomes more common, artworks are increasingly “designed for reproducibility”. With the emergence of templatability and ease of creating and sharing content in online spaces, this process is now more efficient than ever.

> Any image or video online can be downloaded in seconds, and a number of user-friendly picture and video editing programmes come pre-installed on most commercial computers. Mechanical reproduction allowed for films to be copied with ease and re-shaped at will, spawning a number of variants which today is unknowable, since many will not have been preserved. Online however everything is preserved, and this coupled with more efficient and accessible methods of reproducing and adapting works means that videos can be adapted, and their adaptations adapted, at such great volume and speed that they can quickly bear no resemblance to their origins. Cataloguing all the varieties of meme is an unfeasibly large task, but by examining trends within meme-making we can observe how the nature of an artwork changes, becoming more amorphous and apparently meaningless, in an age of digital reproduction.

~

Tune in later this week when we’ll be looking at ~ v a p o r w a v e ~, and navigating the maze of digital non-places and non-times which is rapidly becoming less distinguishable from the world we live in today.

Full list of works cited plus bonus discography are available here. 

This is part one of a three part series. Part two is available here and part three available here. 

~

Text: Dan Power

Published 5/10/19

[noxsden]

Under Construction

Something I was working on after real life inspiration.  Haven’t posted in a while, been reworking old pieces for submission of publication.  So far nothing has come of it and I’ve been doubting myself so work has been slow.  But I hope this is enjoyed.

A house like any other stood just tucked away from a road that was often driven down recklessly.  A figure stands in the window, peering out at the world beyond with his hand tentatively on it’s latch.  It had become increasingly more difficult to tell whether it needed to be opened or remain shut.  The window never changed what it looked upon, but the puzzled face of the man seemed to always reflect a different scenery.  Perhaps it would be best with the curtains drawn tight.  To stay in the solace of his domain, never alone, even when the others were asleep.  A flood of mixed thoughts, eager to be let out.

How often do we walk out our front door, to the same old lawn that never changes unless you did something.  Second nature to a point where we forget if we locked the door after it shut.  That first wave of fresh air hits you and you are carried away.  A breeze that feels so uplifting when it carries the discarded leaves about in a whimsical manner.  Yet it can sound so sinister when it slithers its way through the cracks to hit you from an unexpected angle.  Even if there is a rational reason behind it, your eyelids squint just a bit in curiosity.  That tendril of frigid air creeps up your spine like a single cold finger trying desperately for your attention.

Persistence in our world is needed for almost everything and yet as I cringe at the sound of the dripping faucet I know that it’s persistence is what turns my skin.  I wonder what I have done to the house to cause it to torture me so, neglect for not being able to see within it’s aching walls.  To see how it hemorrhaged for our safety would take greater skill than what I could muster.  I take too much on myself and the others in the house point that out often but who else could shoulder the burden.  ‘What burden?’ they inevitable reply and I still haven't found the answer.  The question has begun to boil my blood, should I have all the answers?  Regardless I’m sure they will be glad to know that I’m coming close to such revelations.  Whenever I see them again I’ll tell them.

One problem being fixed often leads to another doesn’t it.  Now that the dripping has been silenced, I’m left with a hole in the wall.  Damage is done and not healing can begin.  Though like an open sore now the house wails at night.  I’m the only one that can’t sleep, tossing and turning in my bed before I get up and stare back into that void of space.  A perfect hole that leads beneath the house, what manner of vermin resides there.  ‘Are these not puzzling thoughts?’, I ask my spouse as I shake them awake.  At how we just assume the ground from our lawns continues down beneath the edifice we have chosen to rest our security on, without ever seeing it.

The thoughts continue even after he turns away from the pale light of the illuminated screen, turning in his chair he refuses to douse it until he has looked over the room in its entirety.  A hand reaches for the desk light, his attention brought away from his comfortable spouse to focus on the silhouettes in the room.  Looming figures that stood unmoving, his hand tensed before ultimately falling away seeking to preserve the serenity of the quiet house.  His eyes then moved to the hole in the wall, drifting away in it’s ever increasing darkness.  Weight on his shoulders as a gust of wind howled around him, he stood from the chair with a jolt and walked over to it.  Crouching down he peered into the darkness to try and sate his growing curiosity.  A sound, just barely audible like the ticking of a clock.  Something that lurked in your subconscious without realizing it was going on.  When the sunlight crept in through his window he found himself on the floor in front of that hole.  Quickly he stood up and grabbed the nearby hamper to barricade it off.  Tap, tap, tap.  Moving the hamper away for a moment there was nothing but the void staring back at him.  Grumbling he slammed the hamper back down and walked away.

I should be thankful that now my mind has focus, unraveling, the mystery of what is held by this change in my life.  I, like everyone else have just decided to ignore the inane sounds that seem to emanate from behind my makeshift barrier.  All agree it was necessary though so I’m glad I made the call.  I feel a presence on my shoulders when I write, one that forces me to look back to where the hole was.  I can’t recall a time when it wasn’t there, but do not believe that my attention was so enthralled by the space.  I suddenly recall how like a doorway the black growth was, perhaps it desired to be opened as much as I now desire to see inside.

Such a perfect design that could not just be from the leaking faucet.  No wonder it has called to me, secrets perhaps long buried resting beneath.  The house is, old, you can feel it when you walk in.  Far beyond what would be considered retro.  I notice that the night seems darker than normal, I can still see the long pale glowing  orange  off in the distance.  Spreading it’s tint to the nearby area in a way that makes you want to run away from it.  The more I stare the more it begins to resemble a fire, deepened shine to it like it was narrowing it’s focus.

The man straightens in his chair as the tell tale shifting of movement along the floorboards causes his ear to flick.  The tapping had grown louder though it was easier to explain albeit more devastating to his psyche.  The hamper rocked back and forth, hitting against the wall.  He looked about the room quickly, searching for a cat or curtain to pull away and reveal the origin of its movement.  There was none to be seen.  He turned to sit back down, hands running up over his face and through his hair.  His eyes pulled away from the pale screen and flickering cursor sitting in the middle of his sentence to focus on the ever growing orange light.  Without breaking the staring contest his hand reached do draw the curtain closed.  Sealing away the strange emptiness that had him leaning forward in his seat.

Days passed on and the man seemed to grow increasingly more aloof.  Staring out the windows as if piecing together puzzles unseen.  Eyes darting back and forth frantically and the pile in front of the hole grew.  Yet each item that he placed there only heightened the need for answers.  Ones that would surely be found within.  Even going to a point of shutting the windows on hot days, opening and closing the blinds, and unlocking the windows and doors at random intervals.

Research into this house has brought up nothing of note.  It was built and it is here, though I have noticed it looks nothing like the other buildings in the neighborhood.  It’s tucked away in nature, what bloody battle with the surrounding trees was fought to erect this place.  Surely it had a cause.  I have uncovered that there are two addresses to this location, the same and yet different.  If there was a reason for it to be changed one would assume there would be records.  Instead it was made to be forgotten.  To be rendered inert by our growing technological marvels.  I can hear it, I can see it.  When I look out these windows something is  staring   back at me.

What could loosely be called sleep follows each night, often slumped over in his computer chair having let the blink of the cursor trick him into resting.  Tossing and turning to the sound of imaginary thunder he’d often wake the others in the house with his cries of terror.  Promptly locking the door to the bedroom when consciousness was returned to him.  Standing there with his forehead against the wood his mind raced with thoughts.  The door wasn’t secure, it needed to be heavier or sturdier.  Fingernails scraping slivers of it away all the while muttering incoherently to no one.  His maniacally ranting was capped off by a growing crescendo of repeated words.  “I can see them walking.”

He’d crack the door and peer down the labyrinthine hallway, ignoring the dread that clutched at his throat.  As his eyes adjusted a visage crossed the path, he’d point a shaky finger towards it.  Another would cross and in spite of the pleas of his spouse, the movement was unmarred by the glossy sheen of the glassy window.  Slamming the door shut and letting his back press to it, only he felt the swell of the wood and the scraping of the knob as it tried to turn.

Nowhere is safe, the window is closed tight yet I still feel the stare.  The door is shut and locked and I fear it will be burst from its hinges one night with how heavy the footsteps are.  The house is closing in around me.  There is more.

Standing from the chair and walking to the hole, agape and waiting after the blockade of furniture had been rendered asunder.  Fingers curled at the wall, tearing away until it was suitable for him.  Red stains from his dedication and perseverance strewn across the wall like a child had marked the white surface.  From behind him nothing stirred, the pale light flickered out to bathe him in complete darkness.  Yet he could swear his eyes could still see, and so he pushed forward.  Slipping into the maw and leaving the room behind.  He looked back only once, several pairs of feet and an orange glow emanating like a hearth before he slid through the remainder of the gap.

How long am I expected to be alone with my thoughts.  I’m not falling and yet I’m not anywhere.  I was right.  It was more, there and I have escaped the others.  I’d laugh but it echoes, it twists the sound until it is thrown back at me.  But it isn’t the reverberations of my own voice, but more.  I can feel the presence closing in.  It’s suffocating, how can emptiness be so heavy.  How long has there been light.  There are claws digging at my flesh, I cannot stop them.  Reaching for my thoughts.  I’ll send them away, send them to others, send warnings.  They will know what I know soon.

[naernon]

for the ask meme (TES, obvs): 3,9, 13 (for naemon), 23!

thank you!! i wrote this all last night and i havent checked for coherency or errors so forgive me if it’s a bit scatterbrained at times (although yall should be used to incoherency coming from me ghhgfg.)

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3.) Have you ever unfollowed someone over a fandom opinion?

someone said that they didn’t like serana and i was already sitting on the decision to unfollow them for other reasons and that. that was just the Final Straw.

but i think that’s it…? im so petty + impulsive (deadly combo) at times that maybe i did unfollow over a TES opinion another time but i can’t remember hgufuhfhxdfh

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9.) Most disliked character(s)? Why?

OOF this is a hard one, ill list the ones that come to mind rn;

molag bal. needs no explanation

darren guitar or whatever his name is. im sorry to anyone who likes him but i just.. can’t. he’s so obnoxious. he was toned down in summerset, probably because different people were writing him if i had to guess but in the main and daggerfall covenant questline? awful. his goddamn womanizing jokes at every second of the day was “kim, there’s people that are dying” at its finest.literally one or two “haha ladies amirite fellow man ;)/haha ladies amirite……… lady ;)” jokes can be.. bearable albeit still annoying but there was so much more than that. or they were so obnoxiously written that it seemed to be more frequent than in actuality, either way, darren guitar? 0/10also my view of him hasnt gotten better since someone sent me a rude ask about how darren had more personality than prince naemon in-game due to me joking about how i don’t like him and then subsequently blocked me for being irritated about the rudeness of the ask + the fact that im 99% sure they were the anon that appeared in my fucking inbox defending darren guitar every single time i breathed a single word about him

i completely forgot he existed until you listed him as disliked and now i hate him even more. that fucking. bard from the bannered mare. the one that harassed carlotta until you told him to fuck off. i hate that dude. always have

abnur tharn. mildly obnoxious with some amusing lines until you find out what he did to queen ayrenn like. small dick mannimarco joke is now renounced, little man. Perish.my view on Estre is Complicated because she’s a really neat character and villain and ranks as a favorite in the latter department but from like, a moral standpoint i loathe her.also while it wasn’t like. pelidil levels of shittiness i’m not fond of how she hurt naemon– but then again……. now that i think of it, i really don’t know what’d she COULD do other than keep him in the absolute dark until he inevitably gets caught up in the Shitshow otherwise. i wouldn’t suppose naemon to be 100% willing to join in her efforts or even keep completely quiet about them if she did decide to talk to him about it or let him know; and for all we know, she could’ve planned to do so eventually in some way– but the suddenness of the AD hero’s infiltration of the veiled heritance probably ruined any semblance of a plan she could’ve had. so on second thought, even from a “naemon is a perfect being and i will protect him with my life and loathe all who hurt him” standpoint, i don’t dislike her too much. let’s just reduce estre to like.. honorable mentions on my “disliked characters” list then lmao(also “moral standpoint” as if queen ayrenn is anything close to the pinnacle of absolute morality. estre is objectively worse on that front, though, so i suppose i still stand by that)

speaking of which i really… don’t like pelidil. again, moral standpoint. and “naemon is a perfect being and i will protect him with my life and loathe all who hurt him” standpoint. otherwise, he’s a neat villain and the quest in which you cut him down was one of the more impressive quests in the game IMO, or even in the entire game series. good build-up.

this is getting too long so i’ll cut it there, that’s all the characters that come to mind rn anyways hfhgdhg

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10.) Unpopular opinion about XXX character?

hmmmmmm

i guess if you view it in such a way, liking him is kind of unpopular– while there’s still a lot of those who even if not actively talking about him as a character, have praised his character/took his side/whatever, there’s also a good amount who don’t. not really in considering him a poorly written character, but rather from a (sorry to bring this phrase up so much so far) moral standpoint.

also, considering him in a semi-unironic “he did nothing wrong” way, which i do, is kind of unpopular– and i can understand that, in some ways. i dont think him snapping at the scene of the orrery was under his 100% control nor was anything subsequent, but there’s still the fact that he still is in an “i deserve the throne, fuck off” mindset in coldharbour, which, unless he’s STILL affected by the mantle and/or the orrery, is obviously a negative change in viewpoint compared to the “i’ll swallow my bitterness and remain loyal to my sister and the dominion, she is the rightful queen and i am just her shadow” you saw prior.

granted, i’d argue that even then, you have to consider the influence that pelidil had over him prior (as some have accurately put it before– whispered poison into his ear). especially with the fact that naemon’s quite young for an elf at… 26? around that age-range. i dont think altmer’s minds work in the way that, say, hobbits do, in that they age slower and this includes their mental capability, decision-making, etc.. (they obviously don’t) BUT, compared to an elf with more experience, there’s a bit of an… imbalance there. pelidil WAS the one who served naemon instead of the other way around so you’d figure the opposite if anything, but again, naemon = impressionable and emotionally vulnerable at the time.

anyways, got off-topic; my point was that naemon, when you consider the influence that pelidil and any other secretly heritance people that interacted with him, even when you use the fact that he still seems “corrupted” in coldharbour to frame him as bad… that ain’t it. there’s also the fact that he is being tortured, at that moment. big part of it. he PROBABLY isn’t in the right state of mind, to put it simply. but then again, i mean, one could still argue a whole “cool motive, still murder” take on it, so whatever. i dont know man ghfghduhbdfg

YIKES i rambled, holy shit. sorry. but otherwise, i dont think i have too many? there’s not much in the prince naemon…. sub-fandom, at least not enough to be able to render one opinion as unpopular compared to the next

(and i. Guess that headcanoning him as trans definitely has the potential to be unpopular. but i dont really talk about it or “enforce” it much other than off-hand comments that might imply such, drawing him with top surgery scars, etc.. so it hasn’t exactly been given any room to be considered remotely unpopular. haven’t gotten anon hate, snide comments, etc.. about any of it at all so it’s cool. but i’ve brought it up because… you know how fandoms are; if there was more to the prince naemon “fandom”, theoretically, it would be and therefore kind of IS an unpopular opinion. “does your arm hurt from reaching cassius” ok look, i just felt like i needed to provide one more unpopular opinion about naemon and i couldn’t figure out any other than that. but yes. yes, hurts a little)

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23.) Unpopular character you love?

unpopular as in commonly disliked, or unpopular in… amount of people that like them? with the latter, it’s def naemon. i love him with all my heart gfigufhgdugdfh but then again who didn’t know that

with the former… hm. the thing is a lot of characters disliked in this fandom are disliked with good reason IMO– nevermind. almalexia. not to open any #diskhorse wounds but almalexia’s one of them ghdfhguhg jot that down

and i’ve heard some talk that veya is kind of unpopular, what with the recent summerset developments? yeah, fuck that, veya’s one of my favorites. this fandom (or. any fandom lets be real) has an awful tendency to praise any goddamn male character’s flaws or “negative” depth as redeemable character complexity and something that can be looked past, and yet, you see even REMOTELY the same amount if not more character depth in a female character and they’re hated. pointing this out is nothing new but it’s truly just…. something to behold.

and on that note im just going to renounce my prior statement of “a lot of characters disliked in this fandom are disliked with good reason” that’s the dumbest shit i’ve ever said. or perhaps an addendum stating that it’s only applicable to male characters is more in order? or that it’s the opposite for male characters: liked with bad reason. or… liked with over-exaggerated reason disproportionate to the actual amount of depth, complexity, and/or likeability said character actually has, paired with hatred for female characters with the same amount of complexity. “bruh don’t you obsess over prince naemon–” Yeah And What the Fuck Of It

anyways moving on sorry i got distracted hgdfgyfgh. that’s all the characters that come to mind? disregarding characters that are unpopular in an unappreciated sort of way rather than a disliked way, i really dont have a lot

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salty fandom (elder scrolls) opinions

[sicklylittlesnowflake]

hello! you're blog is so cute i love it!!! tbh you're such a good writer it makes me cry. could you please do a fic describing keith's emotions (or lack thereof) when allura fell in his arms vs his emotions when lance literally just touched his shoulder?

(Hey sweetpea, you’re honestly the kindest person ever?? I hope you don’t mind that I added elements of whump into this prompt because I wanted to stick to my sickfic/whump theme, but I couldn’t turn this prompt down because I loved it!! It’s still more focused on Keith’s thoughts than the actual whump!)

Keith’s idea of love had always been through a screen. Never real, processed and filtered through a Hollywood lens.

He’d had a taste of love when his classmate Lucy gave him a card cut out like a heart for Valentine’s Day in kindergarten, but he didn’t feel anything at all. But Keith couldn’t quite help but feel a little warm and fuzzy when his classmate James let him help him build his sandcastle.

But for the most part, Keith never really understood what it was. Teachers at school always explained it was what mommy and daddy felt for each other, but he didn’t have that. How could he know what he didn’t have? Keith told himself that maybe he just wasn’t wired to have it, that not all boys get to have it, and that was okay. You can’t miss what you never had.

But Keith was curious. He wondered what it would feel like. He wondered what all his classmates were crazy about, why all the girls would squeal over their crushes picking petals off flowers and why all the boys tried and competed to find ways to get the girl. It was something Keith just didn’t get, something that wasn’t on his radar.

He would watch romance films on the TV, watch as a boy and girl fell in love in a whimsical journey. He watched as boys burst into song about how happy they felt, how in love they were in the rain. He’d watch girls sing quietly to themselves about how smitten and complete they would feel, the devotion they felt to another human being. To Keith, it didn’t didn’t feel real at all. He could only shrug and move on. It just wasn’t for him.

Then there was Lance.

Lance came swooping in one day, a complete surprise that he had said he didn’t need and certainly didn’t want, but now, more than anything, needed, and desperately wanted. It was funny how time changed things.

He’d seen him before, he’d simply been in the background of his life. Lance was just there, sitting around with his class at the Garrison. Just fading in to the background in Keith’s eyes. But now Lance was all he could see.

No Hollywood movie could ever explain how Keith felt about Lance.

It had all happened too fast. Keith didn’t even know where the transition from you are the most annoying person I’ve ever met to you’ve given me something to believe in was. There is something about Lance’s very essence that makes him feel at home. Something about Lance that grounds him back to earth when he feels like he is floating away, out of reach for good.

There was nothing like Lance’s smile, subtle, perfect and real.

Now Lance is in front of him and he isn’t smiling, he’s fevered and sick and just not his Lance. Not his sweet, lively Lance who walked around lightly leaving traces of twinkling stardust behind him. He looks vulnerable, weak, sick. Someone like him who burst with sunlight didn’t deserve this.

And Lance is here, fevered and sick because of him. Keith had insisted on going on a dangerous mission, and Lance would not let him go alone. He had brushed it off and said he only went because he thought Keith was incompetent, but as he prepared himself he overheard him gently telling Hunk that he was coming because he believed in him.

Lance hadn’t been feeling well, something that wasn’t to Keith’s knowledge, and yet he went with Keith, fiercely protecting him like the sharpshooter he was, pushing aside everything else for Keith.

Lance had succeeded, Keith finished the mission safe and sound, but ended up worsening his own physical state. On their way back to the Black Lion, Keith was beaming about how well they were worked together, how great Lance was, and Lance was smiling, smiling so bright then he was collapsed on the floor. Needless to say Keith was beyond freaked out.

His whole life Keith told himself that he and love were incompatible. Love was not for him. No one could ever love him, he wasn’t built for it, it was in his very molecules that was chemically unresponsive to it. It was written in his DNA, wired so that he couldn’t.

And then Lance comes barging in and breaking down his closed walls and turns everything around.

Keith frantically cradled Lance in his arms, scooping him off the ground and holding him so close in fear that if he loosened his grip for one second, he’d lose Lance forever. He couldn’t lose anyone else.

Worry flooded him, as panic raced about his body and his heart beat furiously, adrenaline pumping because he couldn’t lose Lance. He incoherently spat out about how stupid Lance was for doing this, that he shouldn’t have come with him if he was sick, how none of this was worth Lance’s health as he drove Black home frantically

Then Lance let out a husky chuckle, looking at Keith with that stupid flirty, slick expression that rendered him so jealous he could barely function when it was used with other aliens.

But what came out of Lance’s mouth was said so differently, so purely and genuinely from how he spoke to those alien girls.

“You don’t get it, do you, Keith? You don’t get that I love you,” Lance said feverishly, but said in a tone so soft and loving that for a few moments Keith’s blood ran cold, all concept of time and space halting as his heart melted, a feeling that was the perfect culmination of flowers blooming and a warm fire starting in the fireplace.

Black suddenly tipped slightly as Keith lost control, of both the lion and his emotions. He let out a small gasp, his hands beginning to tremble lightly as his breath became short and shallow. Lance had just turned the world he once knew upside down.

And Keith has lost control.

Keith doesn’t remember what happens after that, but he knows that he lands back on the Castle and carries Lance’s fevered, sickly body out of the Lion as Coran and Hunk rush towards them in concern and shock, carrying Lance away to medbay.

His concept of time went whack as he tried to collect his thoughts. He disassociated from his own body, detached from his reality and walking aimlessly, like walking in a dream. His reality warped and fading, all he could hear was he loud thumping of his heart, and the word love echoing in his head like a mantra.

He doesn’t remember how he got here but he’s sitting by Lance’s side, watching him breathe in and out steadily, looking drained and exhausted. He looks so peaceful like this, and its one of the only times he’s been able to just look at Lance like this. He’s handsome despite the sickly features. He has clear skin, the cutest upturn to his nose and the lightest of freckles dotting it. So perfectly Lance.

He ponders for what seems to be hours about what Lance had said to him, what this was supposed to make him feel. Keith doesn’t know how to react, how to feel, he’s not good with people, he’s not Lance. He is so confused, out of his element and thrown out of the controlled mindset he had adapted for himself. Keith has effectively lost it. He’s been alone for so long he’s forgotten he’s real.

He tries to rationalize, trying process everything so he his brain can finally shut up and end the endless rollercoaster it’s on. There’s so much going on in his brain that he needs to just take a moment and think way back, try and analyze the situation and understand how he’s feeling. Keith closes his eyes and thinks back to the past, searching for answers.

When Allura falls into his arms he is hit by a sense of deja vu, like he had been here in this situation before. But he hadn’t–Keith feels as if he hasn’t quite lived yet, he’d all watched it on a TV screen in yet another Hollywood romance. He’d seen it all before hundreds of times, it’s lost any sense of magical wonder. He wondered if he’d feel that rush or thrill of holding a girl in his arms like that, but he felt nothing at all.

Keith tries to feel something in that moment, forces himself to feel magical and like he could burst into song in the rain, feel butterflies dancing in his stomach, because the TV screen told him to, but he can’t. He wonders where the moment where he realises he wants to spend his whole life with her went, because it’s not here. All he feels is catching his friend, and he’s happy that he caught her, because he cares about Allura and wouldn’t want her hurt, but he thought he would feel more. Because that’s what he was told to do.

But Lance’s hand on his shoulder is like when the bus finally arrives after waiting so long in the freezing cold, that relief of the heated vehicle and the reassurance that yes, I am finally going home. He feels that wonderful heat rising to his cheeks, that firm whisper that keeps him together when he is sure he is going to fall apart. The way Lance looks at him melts Keith in the insides, and he just does not know what to do in the slightest. The TV screen never told him about this, never prepared him for it. He’s lost in Lance’s soft blue eyes, spotting this kindness and softness that cradles him gently, soothing his weary heart. Keith wonders why the TV screen never showed him this because this beat every single thing it had showed him.

Keith thinks about this as he watches Lance sleep, breathing heavily from a fever and curled up, looking so much softer and vulnerable. It was a new side to him he never knew was there, a side to him that was just as scared as he was, a side that didn’t feel the need to keep up a cheery facade constantly. A side to Lance Keith never would’ve thought would go on a mission with him despite how awful he felt, just to make sure Keith wasn’t alone, and to tell Keith that he believed in him.

It forced Keith to reevaluate everything he ever knew, because Keith was so convinced that he would always be alone, that no one could ever love someone who could not be understood, but here Lance was making a sacrifice for him. Keith didn’t think anyone could do such a thing. But Lance was here. Here Lance was, who didn’t quite understand every single little thing about Keith, but loved every single little thing about Keith and somehow saw past all of his crap and believed in him. It was too hard to believe. That perhaps he wasn’t so unlovable after all. It couldn’t be real. But Lance loved him.

Keith is suddenly hit with an epiphany.

A revelation that leaves his body cold and frozen, then a surge of warmth and he’s breathing heavily as his heart swells and wants to escape his chest and he’s shaking, because he’s in love with Lance. He’s in love with Lance too.

‘I love Lance,’ Keith thinks over and over again, hoping that somehow it can finally sink in and he could suddenly have his eureka moment and know exactly  what to do. He is so confused and scared and excited and filled with a plethora of mixed, conflicting emotions but it feels so good and so right. Keith hates being wrong but right now he was wrong and he is so happy that he is. Keith is not unlovable, and he didn’t realise how much he needed to know that.

Keith wants to cry because he’s so happy, he’s shaking and tears are spilling from his eyes and he can’t help but reach out for Lance’s hand. He flinches just a little as his skin comes into contact with Lance’s, and a feeling of doubt begins to build slowly but he looks back at Lance and the mantra starts again. ‘I love Lance,’ The voice repeats over and over again but never quite loses its magic. He is assured again. He eases into it, intertwining his fingers with Lance’s and he feels so connected, it feels so right.

Lance stirs, and his eyes are fluttering open and they sparkle with delight when they see Keith’s form.

“I love you too,” Keith chokes, smothered with his own happy tears, a shaky smile playing on his lips. Shaky, but still so sure. So certain. He’s so confident in it he could yell it to the world at the top of his lungs or burst into song and dance until the sun rises.

and when Lance smiles at him the magical technicolor romance he saw on screen leaps out and becomes real. Very real, vivid and dancing and twirling and sparkling in all its rich colours as it comes to life and Keith can’t help but join in and bask in it.

[ionlycareabouthhn]

HHN 2017 Review: Hive

Hold on tight, kids. This one is likely going to be an incoherent rant.

There used to be a time when I had resigned myself to the fact that whatever house I chose to do first at HHN wouldn’t be that stellar. Sometimes it’s too light outside, sometimes there are actors missing, or the timing was bad. This has changed in the last few years but a part of me always worried it will be the case again. So whenever I walk into that first house of the year I have a strange mix of excitement, anticipation, and slight dread. Nothing prepared me for my first house of 2017 and my third favorite house overall: Hive.

I don’t even care that this was supposed to be another house. I don’t care that they had to switch gears and change themes. Hell, at this point I’m not even that mad there wasn’t a real façade. (Although my first time seeing the “façade,” we got I couldn’t help but feel sad about the missed opportunity for a great one) Every possible gripe I could have about this house is completely rendered meaningless because of how much I enjoyed it and how scared I got in here. It was so good! It was nothing like what I was expecting! Ahhh!

First though, I want to mention some standout things as far as the sets and costumes and such. For a house that had to be re-“vamped” (ha.), this could have been so much more disappointing when it came to the aesthetics. This was night and day from The Purge a few years ago. With that house it was so jarringly obvious that they threw things together and spray painted some walls at the eleventh hour and called it a house. It was easily one of the worst haunted houses I’ve ever been through. Whereas in Hive, yes I could tell they were originally going for a house from a well known franchise but I could look past it. I stopped thinking about it as “not The Conjuring,” and saw it for its new intention; a rundown house being used as a nest for vampires. In fact, the scene with the hanging vampires was one of my favorite scenes of the year. The only complaints about the set are the fact that the exit area with the eyes was a little lackluster, but more on that in a second! That, and the fact that there reached a point in the house where it didn’t seem like a real “house,” anymore and it was just black boo-holes.

Now for the vampires themselves. I loved the Nosferatu look with the sharp teeth and pointed ears. Holy cow, I loved the glowing eyes too. Doing this house first and my eyes having not adjusted and seeing those glowing in the dark was intensely creepy. These creatures were vicious and scared the hell out of me. I still sometimes think about that audio at the end where one was saying “rip the bones from their flesh.” Out of any sort of vampire that has been featured at HHN in recent years, these are my favorites. Props to the casts.

I could write an entire essay on how scared I was in this house. Most of the time its silly, scary fun, but every so often there comes a house that scares the living daylights out of me every second of the way. This was that house this year. I told myself I wasn’t going to scream much to help keep my voice and the second I walked in…that went out the window as did my fears about the first house not being good. That first vampire lunged out and it was all over. I walked out of there out of breath and said “I am a changed person after that.”

Then I went in the weekend with my cousin…even scarier. At one point towards the end of the house one of them came out of the wall on the right and swiped at me so closely I swore they were about to grab me for real. I jumped so far forward I got separated from my cousin who had thrown herself against the wall and wouldn’t move. Then the one on stilts appeared and we both lost it. This was her first time coming to HHN and she said hands down this was her favorite house. Time after time it delivered. Then there was the last time.

It’s going to be a long time before I willingly set foot into a haunted house with just one other person and no one else around. On that final fateful run it was just my mom in her wheelchair and me. It was still daylight, my eyes weren’t ready and neither was my soul. Terrifying doesn’t even begin to accurately describe what that was like. I must have screamed the entire damn time I was in that house. Real fear is a dark house, alone with no one else, and getting so scared and disoriented you lose your way and try to push a wheelchair through a boo-hole. Even then that didn’t stop the actor from jumping out at us. By the time I reached that last room with the eyes, I was GRATEFUL it was empty. Truth be told, I was a little scared they had thrown an actor in there as one last surprise. To get every scare in a run without anyone to slow you down or take away from the experience…there’s nothing like it. Although my heart may not be able to take that ever again. I had to sit on a bench and have a bottle of water after that one.

This was such a fantastic house. I so wasn’t looking forward to this one. I put it last out of the originals on my anticipation list and it ended up in my top three for the year. How does that always manage to happen?! I would LOVE to see some sort of continuation of this in the future, but I may be too scared to even go in…

[shanedakotamuir]

The 4 main conservative defenses for Trump against impeachment, explained

President Trump attends a “Keep America Great” rally in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on October 10, 2019. | Brendan Smialowski /AFP/Getty Images

Only one of them makes sense.

President Donald Trump withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid from the Ukrainian government, seemingly to push lawmakers to announce an investigation into the son of a potential political opponent and his work with a Ukrainian energy company. That much, at least, is clear. As is the fact that Trump has an 89 percent approval rating with Republican voters.

That’s why most Republican lawmakers aren’t going to change their minds on the impeachment of President Trump. While some in Congress might privately think that Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukrainian officials to “do him a favor” and investigate former Vice President Joe Biden was a bad idea, they won’t say so in public.

Because, quite simply, Trump is the president. He’s giving them what they want politically, the economy appears strong and, most critically, he is far more popular and powerful than they are.

But House Republicans and many Trump-supportive conservative and right-leaning writers and pundits have largely attempted to avoid saying as much.

Rather, together with constantly shifting responses to specific testimony, they appear to have developed three basic defenses for Trump as House impeachment hearings continued: He was “too inept” to have intended to do what he is being accused of doing; what he did was actually good; and his actions were bad, but not impeachable.

But some congressional Republicans and conservatives have begun saying another, perhaps most accurate, defense of Trump out loud: Whatever he did, it doesn’t matter — not to “normal people” and not to the Republican Party.

1) “Impeachment for incompetence would disqualify most of the government”

The first basic defense of Trump regarding Ukraine is the simplest: Trump lacked the intent and the basic competence to get a quid pro quo deal with Ukraine done. And without intent (legally defined as a conscious decision to commit an illegal act), some argue that what Trump did may have been bad and dumb, but not criminal — and thus, not a “high crime or misdemeanor.”

As elucidated by the Wall Street Journal editorial board in October:

... it may turn out that while Mr. Trump wanted a quid-pro-quo policy ultimatum toward Ukraine, he was too inept to execute it. Impeachment for incompetence would disqualify most of the government, and most Presidents at some point or another in office.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham seemingly agreed, telling CBS News earlier this month that the administration appeared “incapable” of forming a quid pro quo, thus rendering the entire impeachment discussion null and void.

"It was incoherent," Sen @LindseyGrahamSC says of Trump's Ukraine policy. "They seem to be *incapable* of forming a quid pro quo." pic.twitter.com/rdZxyIazNj

— Steven Portnoy (@stevenportnoy) November 6, 2019

Conservative pundit Ben Shapiro made similar arguments on his podcast, saying on October 7 that Trump would make a fantastic client for a defense attorney because “Trump doesn’t have requisite intent for anything. The man has the attention span of a gnat ... if you are his defense lawyer, his best defense to ‘he had a plan in Ukraine to go after Joe Biden’ is ‘dude doesn’t have plans.’” And on November 11, Shapiro argued, “I don’t think he’s had the level of intent necessary to eat a hamburger.” I reached out to Shapiro, but he was unable to comment on Wednesday.

And after all, military aid to Ukraine was eventually restored. So according to this argument, the actions for which Trump is facing impeachment (withholding aid for selfish reasons) never actually happened. Per National Review’s Rich Lowry, “The best defense Republicans can muster is that nothing came of it. An ally was discomfited and yanked around for a couple of months before, ultimately, getting its defense funding.”

And his magazine’s editorial board argued earlier this month, “It has to matter that, at the end of the day, the harm of this episode was minimal or nonexistent. The Ukrainians got their defense aid without making any statement committing themselves to the investigations.”

It’s true that intent matters — in criminal proceedings. I spoke with Ken White, a criminal defense attorney and former US attorney, who told me, “Intent is very important in court, and for many of these crimes, from witness intimidation to bribery, prosecutors must prove corrupt intent. If we were in federal court, litigating criminal charges against the president, I think the “Trump is just Trump” defense would be colorable and tricky to overcome.

“With normal humans, when they act like Trump you can infer corrupt intent; the defense is that you can’t make that inference with Trump because he acts that way all the time, reflexively.”

But White added two caveats. “First, that’s a matter of proof. A jury could still reject it and see corrupt intent. Second, this ain’t federal court.” Impeachment, after all, is a political process, not a legal one.

And as to the argument that funding to Ukraine was indeed restored, the Cato Institute’s Gene Healy pointed out in October that an unsuccessful or “incompetent” attempt to commit an impeachable act doesn’t make it less impeachable:

The Nixon crew botched most of the schemes it undertook, from the Watergate caper to the attempt to audit the president’s political enemies. That didn’t save Richard Nixon from being driven from office via the impeachment process.

2) “Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani deserve praise”

Some of Trump’s defenders are taking an entirely different approach and stating that Donald Trump’s actions were not only defensible, but good. In the words of Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) (who criticized Lt. Col. Vindman for having “opinions counter” to the president), “it’s perfectly within the purview of the president’s authority” to base military aid on the assurance of an investigation into corruption (or more accurately, the announcement of an investigation).

They argue that the government of Ukraine was corrupt and Trump was elected to fight corruption — ergo, of course he would resist sending aid to Ukraine. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) put it this way: “Corruption is not just prevalent in Ukraine. It’s the system. Our president said time out, time out, let’s check out this new guy.”

.@RealDonaldTrump and @RudyGiuliani deserve praise for pushing for accountability because these officials seem to have zero concern about Ukraine's collusion w/Obama admin targeting America's election in 2016 -- and the Biden cover-up...

— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) November 20, 2019

As Washington Examiner writer Byron York wrote in a piece entitled “What if Trump was right about Ukraine?”, supporters of this line of logic argue that while perhaps Trump’s actions weren’t the best, he had real and genuine concerns about Ukraine’s government and its alleged efforts to collude with the Clinton campaign and influence the 2016 election.

Those efforts are based on allegations that Ukrainian officials, concerned about former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s work for a pro-Russian political party, attempted to assist the Clinton campaign and harm the Trump campaign. Right-leaning media outlets have focused serious attention on those allegations since 2017.

For example, the Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway argued on Fox News in October of this year, “You have people who have already admitted that people affiliated with the Ukrainian government worked with the Democratic National Committee’s contractors to help Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign,” arguing that Ukraine and the DNC took part in actual collusion, unlike Russia and Trump’s campaign.

York writes that if the allegations were true, Trump’s actions make sense. “If [those concerns] were even mostly legitimate, then Trump defenders could say: “Look, he had a point. Even if one thinks he handled the issue inappropriately, the fact is, what was going on in Ukraine was worrisome enough for a United States president to take notice.” Quoting former US Special Representative to Ukraine Kurt Volker, York concluded, “The president said Ukraine ‘tried to take me down.’ He wasn’t wrong.” (It’s worth noting that other conservatives disagree.)

This was the argument that Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a writer at National Review who published “The Case for Trump” earlier this year, made to me, saying that it made sense for Trump to be suspicious of Ukraine. He asked that I quote him in full.

“Trump is a businessman and he does not want to give much military aid in general, and naturally not to corrupt governments who have in the past, according to Politico, tried to interfere in the 2016 election.”

“Trump naturally takes the past Ukrainian efforts, again according to the 2017 Politico report, to harm his election effort, as a personal affront given they reportedly sought to stop Trump from becoming president and yet wanted him to reverse the Obama policy of no military aid once he was elected (which he did).”

“Once more, we are left with a supposed thought crime of considering delaying aid in exchange for Ukrainian promises of investigating 2016 interference in an American election—which never happened, but was actually reified by earlier suspension of actual Ukrainian investigations in 2016 (and possibly of Hunter Biden) and refusal to arm the Ukrainians.”

But this argument has problems of its own. Fiona Hill and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, both of whom served on Trump’s National Security Council, testified earlier this month that they had seen no evidence that the government of Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election. Hill added in testimony Thursday, “I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a US adversary, and that Ukraine — not Russia — attacked us in 2016.”

The Politico piece to which Dr. Hanson referred during our conversation notes that while some Ukrainian officials supported Clinton, their efforts were “far less concerted or centrally directed than Russia’s alleged hacking and dissemination of Democratic emails,” which was a “top-down” effort. And according to documents obtained by BuzzFeed News via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, one of the main sources for allegations that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election — including allegations that they, not Russia, hacked the DNC — was Manafort himself.

3) “Impeaching a president is the most extreme and anti-democratic remedy”

But other conservatives have argued that Trump’s actions, even if tied to an “understandable and justifiable” desire to investigate allegations of Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election, were improper, inappropriate, or just plain bad.

As Townhall.com and Fox News commentator Guy Benson told me, those involved in the alleged quid pro quo “were up to something that stunk.” “They misused and abused their power,” he said. “It’s serious and it should be taken seriously.

But in his view, impeachment is a step too far. “My case against impeachment and removal is that it rises to a thermonuclear option that has never been detonated before. Doing so based on this, so close to an election, in a president’s first term, would do enormous damage.”

Rather, he favors censure, a “very rare tool” last used against President Andrew Jackson in 1834 that would, as he wrote in October, “represent a severe and formal condemnation from the people’s branch, and would constitute a stain on the president’s term in office.”

Daily Caller founders Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel have also argued that impeachment is too harsh a punishment for Trump. In an op-ed in October where they stipulated that “Donald Trump should not have been on the phone with a foreign head of state encouraging another country to investigate his political opponent,” they then wrote, “Impeaching a president is the most extreme and anti-democratic remedy we have in our system of government.”

And they added:

The facts are out there for the American people to weigh as they make their decision. How about we let them sort all this out? There’s no need to come up with thin excuses for a purely partisan impeachment process when we have an election right around the corner.

I spoke to Patel, who told me, “Nancy Pelosi was right for all those months when she repeatedly said that to undo that election without bipartisan support based on clear criminal behavior would tear the country apart. We are on the eve of a new election where the American people can once again vote on Trump and this time they can weigh for themselves Trump’s behavior in this Ukraine affair. That’s a much better solution.”

Thoughts after day one: Trump’s mention of Biden on his 7/25 call was inappropriate. I’ve said that all along. However, nothing I heard today leads me to change my mind : impeachment goes too far. Let the voters settle this. One party, partisan impeachment is not the answer.

— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) November 13, 2019

4) “No one cares”

But an even simpler defense of the president is one being made by Carlson on his Fox News show and by others within the conservative movement, and it actually doesn’t require defending the president at all.

Instead, Republicans are arguing that the entire process is a “distraction.” Moreover, they’re arguing that it doesn’t matter what Trump did or didn’t do because the Senate won’t vote to impeach the president and the average American doesn’t care.

As Townhall.com writer Kurt Schlichter wrote earlier this week, “We’re too busy working, too focused on our 401(k)s going through the roof and on [Trump] flipping circuit courts like a boss, to care about the latest outrage to end all outrages.” I reached out to Schlichter and will update if and when I hear back.

On the November 15 edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight, Carlson argued, “normal people” — “someone with kids and a job and a marriage you care about” — aren’t thinking about impeachment and would rather “the buffoons on TV would stop yapping about Trump 24/7 and talk about something relevant.”

It’s an argument being made by Republicans both inside and outside of the administration. For example, White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham tweeted that instead of impeachment (which was “boring” and a “waste of time”), “Congress should be working on passing USMCA, funding our govt & military, working on reduced drug pricing & so much more.”

With record low unemployment and record high wage growth, Democrats know they can't beat President Trump in 2020. Democrats need to #StopTheMadness and get back to work for the American people.

— PA GOP (@PAGOP) November 20, 2019

This argument seems somewhat self-refuting — after all, tweeting or writing or saying on national television that no one cares about impeachment would imply that someone, somewhere, decidedly does.

But for the GOP, it is perhaps the most revealing. Not of the sentiment of the average American — 70 percent of whom believe Trump’s actions regarding Ukraine were “wrong” — but of the Republicans. Because they are well aware that within a slimmed-down Republican Party that has largely excised his enemies and detractors through retirements and election losses, Trump is the only available lodestar.

And so for them, it doesn’t actually matter what Trump did with regard to Ukrainian military aid: whether he intended to hurt Joe Biden’s presidential hopes, whether he was genuinely concerned about corruption, or whether he did something that constitutes an impeachable offense. Trump is all they’ve got.

from Vox - All https://ift.tt/338QAa3

[gracieyvonnehunter]

The 4 main conservative defenses for Trump against impeachment, explained

President Trump attends a “Keep America Great” rally in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on October 10, 2019. | Brendan Smialowski /AFP/Getty Images

Only one of them makes sense.

President Donald Trump withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid from the Ukrainian government, seemingly to push lawmakers to announce an investigation into the son of a potential political opponent and his work with a Ukrainian energy company. That much, at least, is clear. As is the fact that Trump has an 89 percent approval rating with Republican voters.

That’s why most Republican lawmakers aren’t going to change their minds on the impeachment of President Trump. While some in Congress might privately think that Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukrainian officials to “do him a favor” and investigate former Vice President Joe Biden was a bad idea, they won’t say so in public.

Because, quite simply, Trump is the president. He’s giving them what they want politically, the economy appears strong and, most critically, he is far more popular and powerful than they are.

But House Republicans and many Trump-supportive conservative and right-leaning writers and pundits have largely attempted to avoid saying as much.

Rather, together with constantly shifting responses to specific testimony, they appear to have developed three basic defenses for Trump as House impeachment hearings continued: He was “too inept” to have intended to do what he is being accused of doing; what he did was actually good; and his actions were bad, but not impeachable.

But some congressional Republicans and conservatives have begun saying another, perhaps most accurate, defense of Trump out loud: Whatever he did, it doesn’t matter — not to “normal people” and not to the Republican Party.

1) “Impeachment for incompetence would disqualify most of the government”

The first basic defense of Trump regarding Ukraine is the simplest: Trump lacked the intent and the basic competence to get a quid pro quo deal with Ukraine done. And without intent (legally defined as a conscious decision to commit an illegal act), some argue that what Trump did may have been bad and dumb, but not criminal — and thus, not a “high crime or misdemeanor.”

As elucidated by the Wall Street Journal editorial board in October:

... it may turn out that while Mr. Trump wanted a quid-pro-quo policy ultimatum toward Ukraine, he was too inept to execute it. Impeachment for incompetence would disqualify most of the government, and most Presidents at some point or another in office.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham seemingly agreed, telling CBS News earlier this month that the administration appeared “incapable” of forming a quid pro quo, thus rendering the entire impeachment discussion null and void.

"It was incoherent," Sen @LindseyGrahamSC says of Trump's Ukraine policy. "They seem to be *incapable* of forming a quid pro quo." pic.twitter.com/rdZxyIazNj

— Steven Portnoy (@stevenportnoy) November 6, 2019

Conservative pundit Ben Shapiro made similar arguments on his podcast, saying on October 7 that Trump would make a fantastic client for a defense attorney because “Trump doesn’t have requisite intent for anything. The man has the attention span of a gnat ... if you are his defense lawyer, his best defense to ‘he had a plan in Ukraine to go after Joe Biden’ is ‘dude doesn’t have plans.’” And on November 11, Shapiro argued, “I don’t think he’s had the level of intent necessary to eat a hamburger.” I reached out to Shapiro, but he was unable to comment on Wednesday.

And after all, military aid to Ukraine was eventually restored. So according to this argument, the actions for which Trump is facing impeachment (withholding aid for selfish reasons) never actually happened. Per National Review’s Rich Lowry, “The best defense Republicans can muster is that nothing came of it. An ally was discomfited and yanked around for a couple of months before, ultimately, getting its defense funding.”

And his magazine’s editorial board argued earlier this month, “It has to matter that, at the end of the day, the harm of this episode was minimal or nonexistent. The Ukrainians got their defense aid without making any statement committing themselves to the investigations.”

It’s true that intent matters — in criminal proceedings. I spoke with Ken White, a criminal defense attorney and former US attorney, who told me, “Intent is very important in court, and for many of these crimes, from witness intimidation to bribery, prosecutors must prove corrupt intent. If we were in federal court, litigating criminal charges against the president, I think the “Trump is just Trump” defense would be colorable and tricky to overcome.

“With normal humans, when they act like Trump you can infer corrupt intent; the defense is that you can’t make that inference with Trump because he acts that way all the time, reflexively.”

But White added two caveats. “First, that’s a matter of proof. A jury could still reject it and see corrupt intent. Second, this ain’t federal court.” Impeachment, after all, is a political process, not a legal one.

And as to the argument that funding to Ukraine was indeed restored, the Cato Institute’s Gene Healy pointed out in October that an unsuccessful or “incompetent” attempt to commit an impeachable act doesn’t make it less impeachable:

The Nixon crew botched most of the schemes it undertook, from the Watergate caper to the attempt to audit the president’s political enemies. That didn’t save Richard Nixon from being driven from office via the impeachment process.

2) “Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani deserve praise”

Some of Trump’s defenders are taking an entirely different approach and stating that Donald Trump’s actions were not only defensible, but good. In the words of Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) (who criticized Lt. Col. Vindman for having “opinions counter” to the president), “it’s perfectly within the purview of the president’s authority” to base military aid on the assurance of an investigation into corruption (or more accurately, the announcement of an investigation).

They argue that the government of Ukraine was corrupt and Trump was elected to fight corruption — ergo, of course he would resist sending aid to Ukraine. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) put it this way: “Corruption is not just prevalent in Ukraine. It’s the system. Our president said time out, time out, let’s check out this new guy.”

.@RealDonaldTrump and @RudyGiuliani deserve praise for pushing for accountability because these officials seem to have zero concern about Ukraine's collusion w/Obama admin targeting America's election in 2016 -- and the Biden cover-up...

— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) November 20, 2019

As Washington Examiner writer Byron York wrote in a piece entitled “What if Trump was right about Ukraine?”, supporters of this line of logic argue that while perhaps Trump’s actions weren’t the best, he had real and genuine concerns about Ukraine’s government and its alleged efforts to collude with the Clinton campaign and influence the 2016 election.

Those efforts are based on allegations that Ukrainian officials, concerned about former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s work for a pro-Russian political party, attempted to assist the Clinton campaign and harm the Trump campaign. Right-leaning media outlets have focused serious attention on those allegations since 2017.

For example, the Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway argued on Fox News in October of this year, “You have people who have already admitted that people affiliated with the Ukrainian government worked with the Democratic National Committee’s contractors to help Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign,” arguing that Ukraine and the DNC took part in actual collusion, unlike Russia and Trump’s campaign.

York writes that if the allegations were true, Trump’s actions make sense. “If [those concerns] were even mostly legitimate, then Trump defenders could say: “Look, he had a point. Even if one thinks he handled the issue inappropriately, the fact is, what was going on in Ukraine was worrisome enough for a United States president to take notice.” Quoting former US Special Representative to Ukraine Kurt Volker, York concluded, “The president said Ukraine ‘tried to take me down.’ He wasn’t wrong.” (It’s worth noting that other conservatives disagree.)

This was the argument that Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a writer at National Review who published “The Case for Trump” earlier this year, made to me, saying that it made sense for Trump to be suspicious of Ukraine. He asked that I quote him in full.

“Trump is a businessman and he does not want to give much military aid in general, and naturally not to corrupt governments who have in the past, according to Politico, tried to interfere in the 2016 election.”

“Trump naturally takes the past Ukrainian efforts, again according to the 2017 Politico report, to harm his election effort, as a personal affront given they reportedly sought to stop Trump from becoming president and yet wanted him to reverse the Obama policy of no military aid once he was elected (which he did).”

“Once more, we are left with a supposed thought crime of considering delaying aid in exchange for Ukrainian promises of investigating 2016 interference in an American election—which never happened, but was actually reified by earlier suspension of actual Ukrainian investigations in 2016 (and possibly of Hunter Biden) and refusal to arm the Ukrainians.”

But this argument has problems of its own. Fiona Hill and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, both of whom served on Trump’s National Security Council, testified earlier this month that they had seen no evidence that the government of Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election. Hill added in testimony Thursday, “I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a US adversary, and that Ukraine — not Russia — attacked us in 2016.”

The Politico piece to which Dr. Hanson referred during our conversation notes that while some Ukrainian officials supported Clinton, their efforts were “far less concerted or centrally directed than Russia’s alleged hacking and dissemination of Democratic emails,” which was a “top-down” effort. And according to documents obtained by BuzzFeed News via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, one of the main sources for allegations that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election — including allegations that they, not Russia, hacked the DNC — was Manafort himself.

3) “Impeaching a president is the most extreme and anti-democratic remedy”

But other conservatives have argued that Trump’s actions, even if tied to an “understandable and justifiable” desire to investigate allegations of Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election, were improper, inappropriate, or just plain bad.

As Townhall.com and Fox News commentator Guy Benson told me, those involved in the alleged quid pro quo “were up to something that stunk.” “They misused and abused their power,” he said. “It’s serious and it should be taken seriously.

But in his view, impeachment is a step too far. “My case against impeachment and removal is that it rises to a thermonuclear option that has never been detonated before. Doing so based on this, so close to an election, in a president’s first term, would do enormous damage.”

Rather, he favors censure, a “very rare tool” last used against President Andrew Jackson in 1834 that would, as he wrote in October, “represent a severe and formal condemnation from the people’s branch, and would constitute a stain on the president’s term in office.”

Daily Caller founders Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel have also argued that impeachment is too harsh a punishment for Trump. In an op-ed in October where they stipulated that “Donald Trump should not have been on the phone with a foreign head of state encouraging another country to investigate his political opponent,” they then wrote, “Impeaching a president is the most extreme and anti-democratic remedy we have in our system of government.”

And they added:

The facts are out there for the American people to weigh as they make their decision. How about we let them sort all this out? There’s no need to come up with thin excuses for a purely partisan impeachment process when we have an election right around the corner.

I spoke to Patel, who told me, “Nancy Pelosi was right for all those months when she repeatedly said that to undo that election without bipartisan support based on clear criminal behavior would tear the country apart. We are on the eve of a new election where the American people can once again vote on Trump and this time they can weigh for themselves Trump’s behavior in this Ukraine affair. That’s a much better solution.”

Thoughts after day one: Trump’s mention of Biden on his 7/25 call was inappropriate. I’ve said that all along. However, nothing I heard today leads me to change my mind : impeachment goes too far. Let the voters settle this. One party, partisan impeachment is not the answer.

— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) November 13, 2019

4) “No one cares”

But an even simpler defense of the president is one being made by Carlson on his Fox News show and by others within the conservative movement, and it actually doesn’t require defending the president at all.

Instead, Republicans are arguing that the entire process is a “distraction.” Moreover, they’re arguing that it doesn’t matter what Trump did or didn’t do because the Senate won’t vote to impeach the president and the average American doesn’t care.

As Townhall.com writer Kurt Schlichter wrote earlier this week, “We’re too busy working, too focused on our 401(k)s going through the roof and on [Trump] flipping circuit courts like a boss, to care about the latest outrage to end all outrages.” I reached out to Schlichter and will update if and when I hear back.

On the November 15 edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight, Carlson argued, “normal people” — “someone with kids and a job and a marriage you care about” — aren’t thinking about impeachment and would rather “the buffoons on TV would stop yapping about Trump 24/7 and talk about something relevant.”

It’s an argument being made by Republicans both inside and outside of the administration. For example, White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham tweeted that instead of impeachment (which was “boring” and a “waste of time”), “Congress should be working on passing USMCA, funding our govt & military, working on reduced drug pricing & so much more.”

With record low unemployment and record high wage growth, Democrats know they can't beat President Trump in 2020. Democrats need to #StopTheMadness and get back to work for the American people.

— PA GOP (@PAGOP) November 20, 2019

This argument seems somewhat self-refuting — after all, tweeting or writing or saying on national television that no one cares about impeachment would imply that someone, somewhere, decidedly does.

But for the GOP, it is perhaps the most revealing. Not of the sentiment of the average American — 70 percent of whom believe Trump’s actions regarding Ukraine were “wrong” — but of the Republicans. Because they are well aware that within a slimmed-down Republican Party that has largely excised his enemies and detractors through retirements and election losses, Trump is the only available lodestar.

And so for them, it doesn’t actually matter what Trump did with regard to Ukrainian military aid: whether he intended to hurt Joe Biden’s presidential hopes, whether he was genuinely concerned about corruption, or whether he did something that constitutes an impeachable offense. Trump is all they’ve got.

from Vox - All https://ift.tt/338QAa3

[timalexanderdollery]

The 4 main conservative defenses for Trump against impeachment, explained

President Trump attends a “Keep America Great” rally in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on October 10, 2019. | Brendan Smialowski /AFP/Getty Images

Only one of them makes sense.

President Donald Trump withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid from the Ukrainian government, seemingly to push lawmakers to announce an investigation into the son of a potential political opponent and his work with a Ukrainian energy company. That much, at least, is clear. As is the fact that Trump has an 89 percent approval rating with Republican voters.

That’s why most Republican lawmakers aren’t going to change their minds on the impeachment of President Trump. While some in Congress might privately think that Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukrainian officials to “do him a favor” and investigate former Vice President Joe Biden was a bad idea, they won’t say so in public.

Because, quite simply, Trump is the president. He’s giving them what they want politically, the economy appears strong and, most critically, he is far more popular and powerful than they are.

But House Republicans and many Trump-supportive conservative and right-leaning writers and pundits have largely attempted to avoid saying as much.

Rather, together with constantly shifting responses to specific testimony, they appear to have developed three basic defenses for Trump as House impeachment hearings continued: He was “too inept” to have intended to do what he is being accused of doing; what he did was actually good; and his actions were bad, but not impeachable.

But some congressional Republicans and conservatives have begun saying another, perhaps most accurate, defense of Trump out loud: Whatever he did, it doesn’t matter — not to “normal people” and not to the Republican Party.

1) “Impeachment for incompetence would disqualify most of the government”

The first basic defense of Trump regarding Ukraine is the simplest: Trump lacked the intent and the basic competence to get a quid pro quo deal with Ukraine done. And without intent (legally defined as a conscious decision to commit an illegal act), some argue that what Trump did may have been bad and dumb, but not criminal — and thus, not a “high crime or misdemeanor.”

As elucidated by the Wall Street Journal editorial board in October:

... it may turn out that while Mr. Trump wanted a quid-pro-quo policy ultimatum toward Ukraine, he was too inept to execute it. Impeachment for incompetence would disqualify most of the government, and most Presidents at some point or another in office.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham seemingly agreed, telling CBS News earlier this month that the administration appeared “incapable” of forming a quid pro quo, thus rendering the entire impeachment discussion null and void.

"It was incoherent," Sen @LindseyGrahamSC says of Trump's Ukraine policy. "They seem to be *incapable* of forming a quid pro quo." pic.twitter.com/rdZxyIazNj

— Steven Portnoy (@stevenportnoy) November 6, 2019

Conservative pundit Ben Shapiro made similar arguments on his podcast, saying on October 7 that Trump would make a fantastic client for a defense attorney because “Trump doesn’t have requisite intent for anything. The man has the attention span of a gnat ... if you are his defense lawyer, his best defense to ‘he had a plan in Ukraine to go after Joe Biden’ is ‘dude doesn’t have plans.’” And on November 11, Shapiro argued, “I don’t think he’s had the level of intent necessary to eat a hamburger.” I reached out to Shapiro, but he was unable to comment on Wednesday.

And after all, military aid to Ukraine was eventually restored. So according to this argument, the actions for which Trump is facing impeachment (withholding aid for selfish reasons) never actually happened. Per National Review’s Rich Lowry, “The best defense Republicans can muster is that nothing came of it. An ally was discomfited and yanked around for a couple of months before, ultimately, getting its defense funding.”

And his magazine’s editorial board argued earlier this month, “It has to matter that, at the end of the day, the harm of this episode was minimal or nonexistent. The Ukrainians got their defense aid without making any statement committing themselves to the investigations.”

It’s true that intent matters — in criminal proceedings. I spoke with Ken White, a criminal defense attorney and former US attorney, who told me, “Intent is very important in court, and for many of these crimes, from witness intimidation to bribery, prosecutors must prove corrupt intent. If we were in federal court, litigating criminal charges against the president, I think the “Trump is just Trump” defense would be colorable and tricky to overcome.

“With normal humans, when they act like Trump you can infer corrupt intent; the defense is that you can’t make that inference with Trump because he acts that way all the time, reflexively.”

But White added two caveats. “First, that’s a matter of proof. A jury could still reject it and see corrupt intent. Second, this ain’t federal court.” Impeachment, after all, is a political process, not a legal one.

And as to the argument that funding to Ukraine was indeed restored, the Cato Institute’s Gene Healy pointed out in October that an unsuccessful or “incompetent” attempt to commit an impeachable act doesn’t make it less impeachable:

The Nixon crew botched most of the schemes it undertook, from the Watergate caper to the attempt to audit the president’s political enemies. That didn’t save Richard Nixon from being driven from office via the impeachment process.

2) “Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani deserve praise”

Some of Trump’s defenders are taking an entirely different approach and stating that Donald Trump’s actions were not only defensible, but good. In the words of Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) (who criticized Lt. Col. Vindman for having “opinions counter” to the president), “it’s perfectly within the purview of the president’s authority” to base military aid on the assurance of an investigation into corruption (or more accurately, the announcement of an investigation).

They argue that the government of Ukraine was corrupt and Trump was elected to fight corruption — ergo, of course he would resist sending aid to Ukraine. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) put it this way: “Corruption is not just prevalent in Ukraine. It’s the system. Our president said time out, time out, let’s check out this new guy.”

.@RealDonaldTrump and @RudyGiuliani deserve praise for pushing for accountability because these officials seem to have zero concern about Ukraine's collusion w/Obama admin targeting America's election in 2016 -- and the Biden cover-up...

— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) November 20, 2019

As Washington Examiner writer Byron York wrote in a piece entitled “What if Trump was right about Ukraine?”, supporters of this line of logic argue that while perhaps Trump’s actions weren’t the best, he had real and genuine concerns about Ukraine’s government and its alleged efforts to collude with the Clinton campaign and influence the 2016 election.

Those efforts are based on allegations that Ukrainian officials, concerned about former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s work for a pro-Russian political party, attempted to assist the Clinton campaign and harm the Trump campaign. Right-leaning media outlets have focused serious attention on those allegations since 2017.

For example, the Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway argued on Fox News in October of this year, “You have people who have already admitted that people affiliated with the Ukrainian government worked with the Democratic National Committee’s contractors to help Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign,” arguing that Ukraine and the DNC took part in actual collusion, unlike Russia and Trump’s campaign.

York writes that if the allegations were true, Trump’s actions make sense. “If [those concerns] were even mostly legitimate, then Trump defenders could say: “Look, he had a point. Even if one thinks he handled the issue inappropriately, the fact is, what was going on in Ukraine was worrisome enough for a United States president to take notice.” Quoting former US Special Representative to Ukraine Kurt Volker, York concluded, “The president said Ukraine ‘tried to take me down.’ He wasn’t wrong.” (It’s worth noting that other conservatives disagree.)

This was the argument that Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a writer at National Review who published “The Case for Trump” earlier this year, made to me, saying that it made sense for Trump to be suspicious of Ukraine. He asked that I quote him in full.

“Trump is a businessman and he does not want to give much military aid in general, and naturally not to corrupt governments who have in the past, according to Politico, tried to interfere in the 2016 election.”

“Trump naturally takes the past Ukrainian efforts, again according to the 2017 Politico report, to harm his election effort, as a personal affront given they reportedly sought to stop Trump from becoming president and yet wanted him to reverse the Obama policy of no military aid once he was elected (which he did).”

“Once more, we are left with a supposed thought crime of considering delaying aid in exchange for Ukrainian promises of investigating 2016 interference in an American election—which never happened, but was actually reified by earlier suspension of actual Ukrainian investigations in 2016 (and possibly of Hunter Biden) and refusal to arm the Ukrainians.”

But this argument has problems of its own. Fiona Hill and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, both of whom served on Trump’s National Security Council, testified earlier this month that they had seen no evidence that the government of Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election. Hill added in testimony Thursday, “I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a US adversary, and that Ukraine — not Russia — attacked us in 2016.”

The Politico piece to which Dr. Hanson referred during our conversation notes that while some Ukrainian officials supported Clinton, their efforts were “far less concerted or centrally directed than Russia’s alleged hacking and dissemination of Democratic emails,” which was a “top-down” effort. And according to documents obtained by BuzzFeed News via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, one of the main sources for allegations that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election — including allegations that they, not Russia, hacked the DNC — was Manafort himself.

3) “Impeaching a president is the most extreme and anti-democratic remedy”

But other conservatives have argued that Trump’s actions, even if tied to an “understandable and justifiable” desire to investigate allegations of Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election, were improper, inappropriate, or just plain bad.

As Townhall.com and Fox News commentator Guy Benson told me, those involved in the alleged quid pro quo “were up to something that stunk.” “They misused and abused their power,” he said. “It’s serious and it should be taken seriously.

But in his view, impeachment is a step too far. “My case against impeachment and removal is that it rises to a thermonuclear option that has never been detonated before. Doing so based on this, so close to an election, in a president’s first term, would do enormous damage.”

Rather, he favors censure, a “very rare tool” last used against President Andrew Jackson in 1834 that would, as he wrote in October, “represent a severe and formal condemnation from the people’s branch, and would constitute a stain on the president’s term in office.”

Daily Caller founders Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel have also argued that impeachment is too harsh a punishment for Trump. In an op-ed in October where they stipulated that “Donald Trump should not have been on the phone with a foreign head of state encouraging another country to investigate his political opponent,” they then wrote, “Impeaching a president is the most extreme and anti-democratic remedy we have in our system of government.”

And they added:

The facts are out there for the American people to weigh as they make their decision. How about we let them sort all this out? There’s no need to come up with thin excuses for a purely partisan impeachment process when we have an election right around the corner.

I spoke to Patel, who told me, “Nancy Pelosi was right for all those months when she repeatedly said that to undo that election without bipartisan support based on clear criminal behavior would tear the country apart. We are on the eve of a new election where the American people can once again vote on Trump and this time they can weigh for themselves Trump’s behavior in this Ukraine affair. That’s a much better solution.”

Thoughts after day one: Trump’s mention of Biden on his 7/25 call was inappropriate. I’ve said that all along. However, nothing I heard today leads me to change my mind : impeachment goes too far. Let the voters settle this. One party, partisan impeachment is not the answer.

— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) November 13, 2019

4) “No one cares”

But an even simpler defense of the president is one being made by Carlson on his Fox News show and by others within the conservative movement, and it actually doesn’t require defending the president at all.

Instead, Republicans are arguing that the entire process is a “distraction.” Moreover, they’re arguing that it doesn’t matter what Trump did or didn’t do because the Senate won’t vote to impeach the president and the average American doesn’t care.

As Townhall.com writer Kurt Schlichter wrote earlier this week, “We’re too busy working, too focused on our 401(k)s going through the roof and on [Trump] flipping circuit courts like a boss, to care about the latest outrage to end all outrages.” I reached out to Schlichter and will update if and when I hear back.

On the November 15 edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight, Carlson argued, “normal people” — “someone with kids and a job and a marriage you care about” — aren’t thinking about impeachment and would rather “the buffoons on TV would stop yapping about Trump 24/7 and talk about something relevant.”

It’s an argument being made by Republicans both inside and outside of the administration. For example, White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham tweeted that instead of impeachment (which was “boring” and a “waste of time”), “Congress should be working on passing USMCA, funding our govt & military, working on reduced drug pricing & so much more.”

With record low unemployment and record high wage growth, Democrats know they can't beat President Trump in 2020. Democrats need to #StopTheMadness and get back to work for the American people.

— PA GOP (@PAGOP) November 20, 2019

This argument seems somewhat self-refuting — after all, tweeting or writing or saying on national television that no one cares about impeachment would imply that someone, somewhere, decidedly does.

But for the GOP, it is perhaps the most revealing. Not of the sentiment of the average American — 70 percent of whom believe Trump’s actions regarding Ukraine were “wrong” — but of the Republicans. Because they are well aware that within a slimmed-down Republican Party that has largely excised his enemies and detractors through retirements and election losses, Trump is the only available lodestar.

And so for them, it doesn’t actually matter what Trump did with regard to Ukrainian military aid: whether he intended to hurt Joe Biden’s presidential hopes, whether he was genuinely concerned about corruption, or whether he did something that constitutes an impeachable offense. Trump is all they’ve got.

from Vox - All https://ift.tt/338QAa3