#which solidifies to Bruce that everyone is dead. their friends their family. everyone

[cherrirui-official]

"You know... You didn't have to take that with you."

"But I promised him I'd take him out to see the ocean one day."

[clusterthoughts]

My take on Avengers: Endgame **SPOILERS AHEAD**

To get the ball rolling, I’m gonna start with the bits I didn’t like just because overall I fucking loved Endgame and I’d like to end on a positive note. But just because I loved it does not mean I am not well accustomed to Marvel giving me holes to pick at. STEVE’S ENDING When I first watched it; it rubbed me up the wrong way. Now I’m actually mad about it. Don’t get me wrong - I knew they had to find a way to write out Steve Rogers but literally anything else wouldn’t have shit on years of character development. Fans: clearly Steve and Bucky would be the only natural romantic partners for each other Marvel: romantic love is not the be-all-and-end-all. Friendship is just as important Fans: okay well can you give Steve and Bucky solid screen time as friends? Marvel: sTEVE NEEDS TO BE WITH PEGGY THE LOVE OF HIS LIFE AND TO ABANDON ALL HIS FRIENDS FOR IT Fans: ...k I recognise that Steve’s trauma was that he felt like his life had happened without him and he had left behind the love of his life and honestly: fair. I’m Stucky trash all day long but I know the fucking company I’m dealing with here. I’d have accepted The Power Of Friendship with open arms. But a major part of both Steve and Peggy’s on-screen storyline was accepting that they needed to make the most of the life they had now and move on. Significant portions of their screen time was dedicated to that healing process. Steve created a life for himself in the future. He had a found-family (despite Marvel continuously found-family baiting us but I’m being considerate to their established shitehawkery here) he had friends and a purpose. But the main thing of note here is that Steve and Bucky’s friendship was constantly painted as the single most important thing to them. It was enough to pull Bucky out of seven decades of mind control. It was enough to make Steve drop everything (including Tony) to go and find him. They are with each other ‘till the end of the line. Steve Rogers is a man out of time but so is Bucky Barnes. Except Bucky spent the whole time being tortured and used as a murder machine. I refuse to believe that Steve would just leave him alone in the future. And he is alone because there has been zero suggestion that Bucky has a relationship with anyone except maybe Shuri and the Sam and Bucky being friends thing is just here now and we must like it or else (I love it but give me context damnit) And I know that Bucky knew what Steve was going to do because he told Steve he would miss him even though as far as they were concerned he was only going to be gone for five seconds but they, at the very very least, could have shown them having that conversation. The other parts of this that completely fly in the face of Steve’s character development: everyone lost someone. Everyone. Why does Steve get a do-over? Tony doesn’t get a future and Nat doesn’t get a future. Why does Steve get a new one? In what world would Steve comfortably accept either of those things? Peggy moved on and got married and by Steve re-writing how the timeline occurred he denied a women he respects and admires her autonomy. Finally, Marvel really expects me to believe that Steve ‘If I see a situation pointed south, I can't ignore it’ Rogers goes back to the 40’s and knows Bucky is alive and being actively tortured, knows HYDRA is in SHEILD, knows the Starks are going to be assassinated, knows Nat is in the Red Room and just... does nothing. The Russo Brothers wanted a Steve and Peggy ending from the start, and even when it became obvious that it wasn’t what the fans wanted, they refused to let go. Steve’s ending would have been very sweet if he was any other type of person but he wasn’t. It makes no sense at all to his character development and everyone involved deserved better. Speaking of deserved better... NATASHA’S ENDING This wouldn’t have left such a bitter taste in my mouth had Nat ever, even once, been treated with respect in this franchise. In terms of storyline I’ll admit it made sense. Someone had to die for the soul stone. It had to involve two people who loved each other. And I most certainly didn’t see it coming and the audible sobbing from the audience would back that up. It would have been heartbreaking had Nat been a well loved, well respected character. But she wasn’t. Nat was used as an eye-candy prop for Tony. She was the first person who really tried to be there for a struggling Steve. She was shoehorned into the role of Bruce’s love interest. She gave Clint his atonement. The five years where she worked through her grief were done offscreen despite them being recorded. Her skill set was not shown in this movie in lieu of giving her emotional depth. Yet she was left alone for years to believe that she was some type of monster who didn’t deserve nice things. That she had to dedicate her life, and then give her life, to redemption she no longer needed by any merit applied to the men of the franchise. If you consider the movie as a stand-alone it was a necessary evil but realistically Marvel never did right  by her right until the very end. As much as I hate Marvel’s dedication to romantic love being the only motivator; traumatised women needing to sacrifice themselves to be worth anything at all is worse. Natasha’s story never belonged to her and that’s what makes her ending bitter as opposed to just sad. NOW ONTO THE THINGS I LOVED Tony and Nebula’s interactions were so sweet. It really just solidifies how much of a good guy Tony is and it’s nice to see someone treat Nebula like a decent person who just needs some love for once. I have seen a lot of people complain about Thor’s storyline but I actually agreed with the decision made. I am not necessarily thrilled with the execution - the ball was dropped because the Russo’s aren’t Taika Waitti so the humour was clearly a copycat attempt and the fat jokes were overdone. Also handing New Asgard over to Valkyrie I liked but it was really throwaway. The reasons I’m not including it in my Things I Didn’t Like List is: Firstly, Hemsworth specifically looked for Thor to become comedic relief because he didn’t agree with how stiff Thor had been presented in the beginning. Thor’s mother died. His father died. His brother died. His best friend died. His home was destroyed. Half his people died. AND THEN the snap happened. Thor felt personally responsible for everything. During the fight in infinity war, for everybody else is was prevention, but for Thor is was already revenge. Only for them to lose which, as far as Thor is concerned and for all that he’ll believe, is because he should have gone for the head. And people just??? Expected him??? To be fine??? Accurate depressive episode is accurate. And I’m so glad he got to speak to Frigga. Firstly because I love her and secondly because she was dead right. You’ll always fail at being the person you are supposed to be. Thor has to make peace with the person he wants to be. (On a side note: Frigga and my therapist would be friends) Also when he killed Thanos the first time I heard someone in the cinema say “they do know this is a 3 hour movie right?” And I was inclined to agree. Gotta give this movie props for never having me feel like I could guess what was gonna happen next despite me being able to guess what was gonna happen next. Brilliant writing. I love Scott Lang. I don’t have much to say about that. He is a great dad, super funny, blends well with the others, when he got super big I whooped. His reunion with Hope was actually perfectly sweet without taking away from the mission. This is a We Love Scott Lang Zone only. The scene where the push time through him was hilarious. I did not see the Banner/Hulk thing coming and equally did not realise how much I needed it. Super funny and good for him for embracing both. Tony! Stark! As! A! Dad! Jesus wept it was so much more wholesome than I ever could have hoped for. I can’t even pick out one part it was all perfection. I love you 3000, Tony Stark. Hawkeye. My baby boy. I love him to death and I am purposely ignoring his time as a big ol murderer. It was very very extra wrong but leave me alone. I was glad he was given more screen time in this movie. I recognise that Rocket isn’t strictly speaking a “real” “person” but I enjoyed him so immensely in this movie. Him and Nebula holding hands just knocks me every time. KORG!!! I would give this movie 10/10 exclusively because Korg was in it. I truly loved the scene where Tony figures out time travel and I’m also very glad that instead of Pepper putting the foot down because he had a family now and he promised so many times he’d give it all up she knows that he’ll never rest and he needs to do this whatever the cost (sob) Rhodey’s A1 time travel humour ~chefs kiss~ I! FUCKING! LOVED! EVERYTHING! ABOUT! THEM! GOING! BACK! TO! NEW! YORK! AAAHHH! Hulk and the stairs!!! I genuinely yelped when Steve said “hail hydra” that was genius spec!!! “You’ve got to be shitting me” STEVEN GRANT ROGERS!!! “I can do this all day” “yeah, yeah, I know” was fucking hilarious!!! “Bucky... is... alive” further yelping on my part!!! “That is America’s ass” and all Steve/Tony/Scott interactions about America’s ass were just great!!! Thor using the hammer to restart Tony’s heart!!! Loki where u gone!!! “Do you trust me?” “I do”!!! 1970’s WOO TIME-TRAVEL ROAD TRIP Hey, Stan Lee I just love Tony/Steve scenes (Civil War? Never heard of him?) they bring me true, unadulterated joy Everything about Howard and Tony’s interaction was so wholesome I think I need to take a shower in dirt to counteract it Peggy Carter you are an agent and you mean to tell me that 220lbs of Prime American Beef can just stand in front of you and you don’t even see it out the corner of your eye? LOOK UP, DAMNIT (If you have your reunion now the dickhead might not go ba- sorry, sorry. Where was I?) JARVIS!!! Can someone please for fucks sake give  Nebula a break? Mediocre Natasha mourning is mediocre (sorry x2) YES BRUCE YOU BEAUTIFUL SONOVABITCH aaaaaand Yikes! (Poor Rocket did not sign up for this shit at all) (Gamora is too good for these fuckos) When I asked for someone to give Nebula a break I didn’t meAN FOR FUCKING NEBULA TO DO IT Everything about the Steve/Tony/Thor v Thanos fight scene was so ~deep inhale~ aesthetic but... *WHEN STEVE USED MJØLNIR I WAS READY TO GODDAMN RIOT. HOLY FUCK. WHAT A SCENE. WHAT A MAN. IVE HAD SEX THAT DIDNT GIVE ME AS MUCH SATISFACTION. I WOULD HAVE THAT MOMENT TATTOOED INSIDE MY EYELIDS IF I COULD. EVERY TIME I REMEMBER IT MY BRAIN MAKES THIS NOISE: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ~ahem~

FUCK OFF AWAY FROM THE SHEILD THANOS The scene where Thano’s army is charging in from the dark clouds and you can see Steve standing in front of the sun is so beautiful I’d marry it. I don’t have the right vocabulary for how beautiful that was but fuck me Sam: on your left Me: ~pterodactyl screech~ Honest to fuck it was a moment of sheer magic seeing everyone come back (I made grabby hands during everyone’s return) Next, I’ll quote a girl I met in the toilets after the movie - “If I marry the man of my dreams, have beautiful children, and die in my sleep at the age of 99 I still won’t be as happy as when Steve said ‘Avengers Assemble’” Girl, same. Fucking same. It was erotic and I’m genuinely fearful Marvel will never produce as magnificent a line again. TONY AND PETER I shed a tear at how sweet that was. I need back into the dirt shower. Their hug!!! Peter’s babbling!!! Tony’s whole face!!! CAPTAIN MARVEL. I’ve got to give this credit. I love Captain Marvel. I think Brie Larson is a god amongst men but I really didn’t want the movie to be about her and how she saves the day. That would really take away from all the years of hard work done by the original six and it really wasn’t her fight the way it was to everyone else. The amount she was involved and the way she was involved was truly perfect in my opinion. It was the edge they needed but no one was overlooked in the process. I was really very happy about this. The girl power scene was probably pandering but I don’t give a fuck I was well and truly pandered The team work for that fight scene was magnificent, the pacing was magnificent, the visuals were magnificent. BE-YOU-TEA-FULL When Thanos got the stones like honestly Russo Bothers you had me there. I fully panicked Doctor Strange’s lil finger. Remarkable. I’m gonna take this moment to say: the call backs they did to old scenes and old lines in the franchise were really tasteful and well done. This always felt like the accumulation of years of work and I’ve got to applaud it. TONY MOTHERFUCKING STARK, FRIENDS!!! You funky little maniac. I AM IRON MAN!!!!!! AAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!! But oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck I knew this was going to happen but that did not make it hurt any less. There was open crying at this point in the cinema. It was the perfect death for him, to be honest. If it had to happen I’m so glad it was like this. Full circle. Honourable. Surrounded by those who loved him. Part of the journey is the end and I LOVE YOU 3000 I am going to miss Tony beyond belief. His funeral was stunning. I am so glad literally everyone was there (HEY HARLEY). Great symbolism for it being a funeral for the Avengers as we know it, too. Also Happy’s interaction with Morgan was so soft I have melted. I am no longer here. And finally, Sam Wilson Is Captain America AS! IT! SHOULD! BE! I would like to thank the academy, Jesus, and whoever took over Steve Rogers considering the Steve we know would never have gone ba- SORRY X3

[juspeczyk]

Do you have anything else to say about your "Harley+Jason" Arkham Knight AU? I thought it was pretty interesting and I wouldn't mind knowing a bit more about it.

THIS IS SO SO SO LATE AND I APOLOGIZE..................... i’ve been replaying the arkham games recently though and it has cleared a few things up/helped me solidify some stuff so here we go

jason wasn’t kept on arkham island until shortly before the events of arkham asylum. it’s stupid for him to be kept on arkham island. batman has a fucking cave on arkham island. of course he would find jason there. joker is stupid but he’s not that stupid. so he and harley kept jason somewhere in gotham, or maybe even in metropolis or bludhaven, possibly switching locations every once in a while so batman wouldn’t get wise. they eventually moved jason to arkham island for the titan party intending to pit him and batman against each other, but obviously, bats defeated joker and that never happened.

talia al ghul and the league of assassins found him and picked him up from arkham during the events of arkham asylum. if you go to the morgue during story mode you can find ra’s al ghul’s corpse, but if you go back to the morgue after completing story mode, ra’s corpse is gone; it follows that talia and a couple league ninjas came and got him so they could put him in a lazarus pit, and when talia ran into jason on the way, she picked him up with the intent to nurse him back to health (maybe as a sign of good will/peacemaking towards bruce). talia trained him and helped him build the militia for his activities as the arkham knight. she may not have agreed with him entirely, but she recognized that it was his thing to do, his closure to get, so she didn’t stop him.

harley loved jason. she saw him as a son. that doesn’t excuse the abuse she willingly watched and participated in, nor does it mean he owes her anything. she couldn’t handle the idea of hurting a child in cold blood, but she could handle the idea of giving a child “tough love” with the goal of breaking his ties with batman (which she saw as abusive and endangering) and making him into his own person who could stand up for himself. in her mind, she was helping jason to become a better, stronger version of himself, one who didn’t need batman telling him what to do or using him as a pawn. as such, when jason went missing and was presumed dead, it was a huge blow to harley. she was a complete mess during arkham city and most of it can be explained by shitty writing but it can also be explained by the amount of emotional trauma she had been through/was still going through at the time. to expand on this:

arnold wesker, the only friend she had who was interested in reforming and thus her only non-villain support network, had been released from arkham with a clean bill of health prior to the events of arkham asylum, and it’s almost certain that one of the conditions of his parole was that he couldn’t associate with criminals like harley. without him, she reverted to being a villain for the sake of villainy, leading her to justify extremely horrible actions-- like habitually torturing and brainwashing a child-- and robbing her of the only stable, rational, grounded person she could turn to for help or guidance throughout the entire game.

jonathan crane, who is implied in much of paul dini’s work (dcau + arkham asylum) to be a father figure to harley, is presumed dead after arkham asylum. she has now lost both of her father figures, scarecrow and ventriloquist, and thus has lost any option for unconditional support.

jason todd, her surrogate son, is presumed dead after arkham asylum. she was locked up for a large part of arkham asylum’s plotline. had she been free, maybe she would have found jason and kept him safe. for the entirety of arkham city and its prequel material she is living with the idea that she is responsible for her own son’s death. however subjective and flawed it is, it still eats her up.

during arkham city, every single one of her remaining friends and associates deserts her. just take a second and think about that. every villain that harley has a decent relationship with is in arkham city and not one of them is trying to help her. she is watching her family die, one by one, and she is trying to singlehandedly save the man she loves-- in her mind, the man who functions as the father of her child, jason-- and nobody is helping her. in fact, some people she probably thought she could trust are actively sabotaging her.

poison ivy refuses to get involved with anything.

catwoman has no intention of staying in arkham city longer than it takes to get her own things back from hugo strange.

scarecrow is presumed dead.

riddler is too preoccupied with his own plans (and possibly helping scarecrow make a comeback*).

killer croc is nowhere to be found.

sure, clayface is hanging around, but he’s not really trying to help joker get better. he’s just doing it so he can impersonate joker.

deadshot doesn’t give a rat’s ass what happens to joker.

penguin and mr. freeze both have good reasons to actively work against harley. so does two-face.

batman-- who harley is desperately counting on to save the day, even though his failure to rescue jason has put a massive dent in her faith in him-- lets joker die. yes, it’s joker’s fault for being a dumb-ass, but harley’s never gonna admit that. in her eyes, batman practically murdered joker. batman. the guy who’s supposed to save everyone. that fucked her up, yo.

penguin killed bud and lou? like? she doesn’t even have the simple basic comfort of her beloved pets? what the fuck? it was so unnecessary and i’m still upset

*in arkham city, one of riddler’s trap rooms has fear toxin in it. you can’t physically approach it, but you can zoom in and clearly see the upside-down batsymbol/jack-o’-lantern face painted on the canisters. this leads to two possibilities as far as harley is concerned: first, that nobody told her scarecrow is still alive and she’s been operating this whole time thinking he’s dead and mourning him, or second, that somebody did tell her, and she’s trying to help scarecrow make a comeback as well as save joker, which would make her even more frazzled. i’m leaning towards the first option because it makes more sense within this narrative, and i’ll talk more about that in a bit.

it’s possible that scarecrow and jason somehow met post-asylum and teamed up. in arkhamverse canon, this doesn’t work because jason was already the arkham knight when the events of arkham city happened, but that’s dumb and makes no sense given the timeline, so i’m scrapping it. however, canon did give scarecrow and the arkham knight a weirdly close relationship, one that went beyond simple business. (i’m not saying ~*~*~they were “close”~*~*~, i’m saying that they seemed to have a mutual personal investment in defeating batman that overruled their status as enemies. don’t make this gross. if you try to make it gross, i will come for you, and i will not be happy.) so maybe scarecrow and jason teamed up for survival in arkham city without realizing who exactly they were working with, and then once that revelation hit, they already felt somewhat indebted to each other. it’s also possible that they hadn’t met at all and that jason contacted scarecrow after becoming the arkham knight. idk. it’s a mystery so far.

talia is alive during the events of arkham knight. the league came and got her just like they came and got ra’s. there is literally no reason for her to still be dead given that we have the canon precedence-- three times over-- of ra’s being killed and then brought back. the concept that talia is dead in arkham knight is stupid and misogynistic and serves no purpose whatsoever other than to give bruce More Manpain(TM). it’s bad, and the writers should feel bad, and whoever approved that writing should feel bad, too.

it was scarecrow’s idea to bring harley into their plot. jason was just fine leaving her to die in arkham city or letting her rot in jail, but scarecrow has One Single Redeeming Quality, and that quality is his Good And Wholesome Platonic Love For Harleen Quinzel. he knew that he owed her big time for not being around in arkham city and he also recognized that she deserved to be a part of their plot to take out batman.

harley cried like a baby when she realized the arkham knight was jason. it was ugly. she was ugly. he was kind of uncomfortable and reeling from the sudden return of the person who (intentionally, by the way) caused him to develop stockholm syndrome. but they dealt with it and everybody came out kind of friendly.

the plot of arkham knight would not have happened without harley. she operated as a buffer between jason, who is fundamentally trying to do the Right Thing, and jonathan, who is fundamentally trying to do the Wrong Thing/His Own Thing And Screw Rightness. their infighting would have made the scheme collapse if harley hadn’t been there acting as the glue to hold it all together.

harley also kept the other rogues out of their way as best she could. it was super lowkey and the rogues probably never realized it was her. one would think she’d want revenge against them for deserting her in arkham city, but no-- by this point, she’s tired. she’s tired of fighting over meaningless things like territory and money and reputations. she doesn’t even have much of a will to live past exposing batman as a fraud who doesn’t save everyone and then killing him. so she’ll set up the people she cares about to be safe, even if they don’t necessarily care about her anymore. she arranged for selina to be taken by riddler before the arkham knight or scarecrow could get to her, because she knew selina would figure out a way to escape eventually. she conveniently forgot to mention that scarecrow’s fear toxin wouldn’t affect poison ivy. she also arranged for two-face’s bank robberies and hush’s attempted takeover of wayne enterprises to happen on the same night as the arkham knight takeover so that batman would be extra busy.

(note: she knows bruce wayne is batman. she has known since she and joker unmasked jason and figured out who he was. however, she keeps convincing herself that There’s No Way Bruce Wayne Is Batman, There’s Got To Be Something More To It Than That because knowing who batman is tips the scales in the bad guys’ favor, and that goes against everything she knows. the Good Guys are supposed to win! they’re supposed to save the day! that’s why they’re Good Guys! that’s why Bad Guys show up and do Bad Guy Stuff! that’s How It Works! except now batman has shown his true colors, and she wants everyone to know that he’s not really a Good Guy after all, because he didn’t save jason and he didn’t save joker, and he didn’t save scarecrow, and he didn’t save her. now that she sees him this way, she has no problem taking advantage of the knowledge of his secret identity.)

hush has been involved in the arkham plot from the very beginning. harley has a lot of practice patching people up, but she’s no doctor, so she eventually turned to tommy elliot in order to help her with jason’s more severe injuries. tommy was the one who operated on jason after joker shot him in the chest. (joker intended to kill jason, but what was left of the robin costume slowed the bullet enough that it didn’t kill him immediately; he would have bled out and died if harley hadn’t convinced joker to go get hush and save the kid.) he confirmed that bruce wayne is batman and later helped harley, scarecrow, and the arkham knight form a plan that struck at batman from every angle.

the events of batman: hush have taken place prior to the events of arkham asylum, but it makes no sense to me that batman, who goes to arkham all the time and has a batcave on arkham island and is supposed to be the world’s greatest detective, somehow didn’t know that one of his greatest enemies was working at arkham asylum and/or didn’t do anything about it, so i’m scrapping that and keeping the hush subplots from arkham city and arkham knight only.

speaking of hush’s subplot in arkham knight? HE ALREADY KNOWS BRUCE IS BATMAN? THAT WAS LITERALLY THE WHOLE POINT OF BATMAN: HUSH, WHICH HAS ALREADY HAPPENED BY THE TIME ARKHAM ASYLUM TAKES PLACE? IT’S LITERALLY MORE DIFFICULT TO JUSTIFY HIM NOT KNOWING BRUCE IS BATMAN THAN IT IS TO JUSTIFY HIM KNOWING AND USING IT TO HIS ADVANTAGE? hush tried to take over wayne enterprises and was going to hack the batcave and maybe become batman himself in order to run around doing dumb shit and smearing batman’s image or at least send all of bruce’s computer-operated machinery out against the city. none of this “whAT dO YOU MeAN BRUCE WaYNE IS bAtMAN?/1//1/!????!?!?!?!?1///!!!!??/?!?!1?” nonsense. not in my house

harley and what’shername who got infected with joker virus? christina bell? gay

but on a more serious note christina bell was literally harley’s last hope for happiness again and LOST CHRISTINA just like she lost EVERYONE ELSE

@DC/ROCKSTEADY: WHAT DO YOU HAVE AGAINST HARLEY QUINN BEING HAPPY AND LOVED

wayne manor didn’t blow up. that’s angsty. that’s way too angsty. or at least, if it did blow up, nobody was inside and there were already at least 3 different contingency plans for every batkid/bat-associate ensuring that they have nothing to worry about money-wise and that they have a place to live and plenty of school/career options

yes, every batkid. they’re all here except maybe damian. dc/rocksteady can get the fuck outta here with that 3 robins and 1 batgirl BULLSHIT

me? pulling the one good thing chris nolan gave us and sticking it in the arkhamverse, allowing bruce to fake his death and run away to france or italy or wherever with selina or talia and both of them living a quiet, relatively civilian life? more likely than you think!

there may not be a batman anymore but that just means more attention for all the batkids and various bat-associates that have popped up over the years and lemme tell you if you thought gothamite criminals were scared of one batperson running around just imagine how terrified they’d be to find out that there’s like 30 more who’ve just been waiting for a chance to step up their game

scarecrow never gets better. good. serves him right. i have no legitimate reason to believe that becky albright exists in the arkhamverse but you can’t tell me she doesn’t and that she isn’t sleeping like a baby after seeing scarecrow get dosed with his worst ever batch of fear toxin on live tv

idk what happens to harley. maybe she becomes the red hood’s partner in crime (fighting). maybe jason calls her out on her abuse and they never speak again on friendly terms. maybe she also runs off to italy or france or back to brooklyn. maybe christina bell never actually died and they get together as Clown Idiots 2.0. idk! it’s painful to try and imagine her in a post-arkham world! it’s painful to imagine a post-arkham world in general!

so yeah in short nothing is the same after the events of arkham knight but you know what. i’m sick of bat-stories that maim and kill and emotionally brutalize women and children for the sake of making bruce suffer and mask it under narrative progress. he’s suffered enough. they’ve suffered enough. you can make a plot happen without seriously hurting anyone. so how about instead we just let bruce retire and live the happiest life he can and let everyone who’s part of his legacy step up and shine and make him proud and make themselves proud!!!

[newstfionline]

What happens to children who survive school shootings in America?

By John Woodrow Cox and Steven Rich, Washington Post, March 21, 2018

Thirteen at Columbine. Twenty-six at Sandy Hook. Seventeen at Marjory Stoneman Douglas.

Over the past two decades, a handful of massacres that have come to define school shootings in this country are almost always remembered for the students and educators slain. Death tolls are repeated so often that the numbers and places become permanently linked.

What those figures fail to capture, though, is the collateral damage of this uniquely American crisis. Beginning with Columbine in 1999, more than 187,000 students attending at least 193 primary or secondary schools have experienced a shooting on campus during school hours, according to a year-long Washington Post analysis. This means that the number of children who have been shaken by gunfire in the places they go to learn exceeds the population of Eugene, Ore., or Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Many are never the same.

School shootings remain extremely rare, representing a tiny fraction of the gun violence epidemic that, on average, leaves a child bleeding or dead every hour in the United States. While few of those incidents happen on campuses, the ones that do have spread fear across the country, changing the culture of education and how kids grow up.

Every day, threats send classrooms into lockdowns that can frighten students, even when they turn out to be false alarms. Thousands of schools conduct active-shooter drills in which kids as young as 4 hide in darkened closets and bathrooms from imaginary murderers.

“It’s no longer the default that going to school is going to make you feel safe,” said Bruce D. Perry, a psychiatrist and one of the country’s leading experts on childhood trauma. “Even kids who come from middle-class and upper-middle-class communities literally don’t feel safe in schools.”

Samantha Haviland understands the waves of fear created by the attacks as well as anyone.

At 16, she survived the carnage at Columbine High, a seminal moment in the evolution of modern school shootings. Now 35, she is the director of counseling for Denver’s public school system and has spent almost her entire professional life treating traumatized kids. Yet, she’s never fully escaped the effects of what happened to her on that morning in Littleton, Colo. The nightmares, always of being chased, lingered for years. Even now, the images of children walking out of schools with their hands up is too much for her to bear.

On Saturday, some of Haviland’s students, born in the years after Columbine, will participate in the Denver “March For Our Lives” to protest school gun violence. In Washington, students from Parkland, Fla.--still grieving the friends and classmates they lost last month--will lead a rally of as many as 500,000 people in the nation’s capital.

“They were born and raised in a society where mass shootings are a thing,” she said, recalling how much her community and schoolmates blamed themselves for the inexplicable attack by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. “These students are saying, ‘No, no--these things are happening because you all can’t figure it out.’ They’re angry, and I think that anger is appropriate. And I hope they don’t let us get away with it.”

In analyzing school shootings, The Post found an average of 10 school shootings per year since Columbine, with a low of five in 2002 and a high of 15 in 2014. Less than three months into 2018, there have been 11 shootings, already making this year among the worst on record.

At least 129 kids, educators, staff and family members have been killed in assaults during school hours, and another 255 have been injured.

Schools in at least 36 states and the District have experienced a shooting, according to The Post’s count. They happen in big cities and small towns, in affluent suburbs and rural communities. The precise circumstances in each incident differed, but what all of them had in common was the profound damage they left behind.

Javon Davies, a sixth-grader at a Birmingham middle school, came home and told his mom, Mariama, that he and his classmates had spent the day in lockdown.

Javon, who is 12, had heard about Parkland. He and a friend suspected that they, too, might die at their school, so each of the boys wrote a will.

“Mom,” the other sixth-grader wrote in print letters, “I want to give my friend Javon every thing that I own that includes the xbox and games and controllers and all that comes with it.”

In Javon’s instructions, he listed his PlayStation 4, his Xbox 360 and his dirt bike.

“I love you my whole Family you mean the most to me,” he wrote. “You gave me the clothes on my back, you fed me, and you were always by my side.”

On the morning of May 15, 2017, Gage Meche, then 7, walked into his first-grade class and hung up his blue Nike backpack, then turned around. On the floor in front of him was a gun. It had just fallen out of another boy’s bag, and when a girl Gage had known since they were toddlers picked it up, the pistol fired, discharging a .380 round that blew through his stomach, tearing into his intestines and nicking a vena cava vein, which carries blood to the heart.

The boy who’d brought the gun had found it at home, investigators say. His father, Michael Dugas, had given the weapon to his older son, who was 17. The teenager kept it in his room, loaded, unlocked and inside a bag that hung on the wall.

Soon after the shooting, Dugas was charged with two misdemeanors, eventually receiving six months in prison for his negligence.

Gage, meanwhile, endured four surgeries then had to learn to walk and eat again. Now 8, his 40-pound body hurts almost all the time, said his mother, Krista LeBleu.

The girl who accidentally shot him still struggles with guilt and post-traumatic stress. At a church camp last summer, a water-pistol fight broke out, and when she saw the plastic guns, the girl began to weep.

Gage has changed, too, his mother said. He had been so excited to flip the coin before a local football game a few months ago, but when the team rushed onto the field, someone fired a cannon. The boy’s knees buckled, and he collapsed to the grass, trembling as he curled into a ball. He still has nightmares, but he tells his parents they’re too scary to talk about. Gage is also more aggressive than before, sometimes erupting for no reason. Afterward, he can’t explain what happened.

“I don’t know why I’m so bad,” he says.

What remains for school shooting survivors? Grief, guilt and fear.

One day in 2008, Samantha Haviland sat on the floor of a school library’s back room, the lights off, the door locked. Crouched all around her were teenagers, pretending that someone with a gun was trying to murder them.

No one there knew that Haviland, then a counselor in her mid-20s, had been at Columbine nine years earlier. On that day, April 20, 1999, she had been in the cafeteria, selling chips and soda from a food cart to raise money for the golf team. Haviland, always an overachiever, had taken second place at a tournament the day before and felt so good about it that she’d worn a blue dress and high-heeled clogs to school. As hundreds of kids ate their lunches, she and three friends talked about prom, which they’d gone to the previous weekend.

Then two girls burst into the room. Someone had been shot, they screamed. Someone had a gun.

Haviland froze, but her friends grabbed her, and they fled into the back of an auditorium. Moments later, she heard four or five shots and an explosion. Everyone sprinted out as Haviland briefly paused to take off her shoes. Barefoot, she ran after them and into the hallway, and just as she reached one door, it closed in front of her. A teacher in another part of the building had pulled the fire alarm and, as she would later learn, it saved her life, because down that corridor, Harris and Klebold were slaughtering anyone they could find.

Afterward, as the shock and grief solidified her plan to become a counselor, Haviland didn’t get counseling herself. She didn’t deserve it, she thought, not when classmates had died or been maimed. Many others had suffered far more, Haviland decided. She would be okay.

But now there she was, a decade later, sitting in the darkness, practicing once again to escape what so many of her friends did not. Then she heard footsteps. Then, beneath the door, she saw the shadow of an administrator who was checking the locks. Then her chest began to throb, and her body began to quake and, suddenly, Haviland knew she wouldn’t be okay.

Researchers who study trauma still aren’t certain why people who experience it as children react in such different ways. For some, it doesn’t surface for years, making the effects harder to trace back to their origin. For others, the torment overwhelms them from the start and, in many cases, never lets go.

Karson Robinson was 6 when a teenager opened fire on the playground of his elementary school in Townville, S.C., on Sept. 28, 2016. Three days later, on his seventh birthday, he learned that his beloved friend, Jacob Hall, hadn’t survived the bullet that hit him. That’s when the guilt took hold. Karson had leaped a fence and run at the first sound of the gunfire.

Maybe, Karson thought, he could have saved Jacob, the smallest child in their class, if he hadn’t fled. At home, Karson began to explode in anger, breaking anything he could reach. Other times, he insisted that everyone hated him.

In October, before a doctor finally diagnosed the boy with PTSD, he had a party for his eighth birthday, and at the end, they released balloons into the sky for Jacob. Afterward, he walked off by himself. His mother followed, asking what was wrong.

“I should have waited for Jacob,” he told her.

Haviland thinks a lot about the thousands of children like Karson who, she contends, America has done so little to protect since Columbine. Many of Haviland’s former classmates have found success and happiness, but others have tried to ease their pain with drugs and alcohol. Some have considered killing themselves.

One high school friend sent Haviland a message online a few weeks ago, saying that, since the Las Vegas slaughter this past October, she’d been so stricken with anxiety she could barely leave her house.

A decade ago, after Haviland’s panic attack in the library, she finally got therapy and has come a long way since. She goes to movies and malls and political rallies. She has so often told her story--of hearing the shots, taking off her shoes, sprinting barefoot through the hallways--that telling it again doesn’t wreck her anymore.

She knows, though, that the trauma remains.

Three years ago, someone accidentally pressed a panic button in the school where she was working, signaling to police that a shooter was in the building. Haviland wasn’t there at the time, but she pulled up in her car just as the officers did. Then, in front of her, she saw students streaming outside, their hands in the air.

She began to sob.