#//these are all real poison control tips

[thatpoisonbug]

hello rotomblr, considering that the holiday season is upon us, i figured i would give some quick health and safety reminders.

holly is poisonous. do not eat it and keep it out of reach of children and pokemon.

mistletoe is poisonous. do not eat it and keep it out of reach of children and pokemon.

yew is poisonous. do not eat it and keep it out of reach of children and pokemon.

only some varieties of juniper berries are safe to eat. please do your research and be careful.

while not deadly, poinsettias can make pokemon and children sick and cause minor skin irritation.

lilies are poisonous. do not eat it and keep it out of reach of children and pokemon.

foods like grapes, currants, raisins, chocolate, and cocoa are toxic to many pokemon. please be careful when preparing holiday foods.

if something does happen, don't worry. if a human is affected, call your local emergency line or take them to the nearest healthcare office. if a pokemon is affected, take them to the nearest pokemon center. if only one or the other is near you and you desperately need help, most healthcare offices will temporarily hold pokemon and most pokemon centers will temporarily hold people.

[revelboo]

How in the fuck are you pumping out these fics THIS QUICKLY

Guessing you’re new here? I type these short forms pretty quickly if I’m not busy

Stand Too Close Pt 9

IDW Prowl x Reader

• He’d hoped after, he’d be over it. If anything, he made it worse. Because now he can’t stop thinking about how horrified the other Autobots will be if they find out. What Optimus will think of him. He’s supposed to be looking after you, keeping you safe.

• “Stop staring at me like that,” you mutter, wrapping your blanket firmly around yourself. Even with your back to him, you can feel his optics on you. Feel that answering heat spark through you that whispers that something is very wrong with you. How else can you can hate him and still want him. “And that is never happening again.” The words for you as much as him.

• “You weren’t complaining when I was inside you,” he mutters and you glare at him over your shoulder, face reddening. But you don’t argue with him. You can’t when he’d heard those sounds you’d made, felt you holding onto him. Door wings flicking, he swallows a laugh. Wonders if you’ll be taken away and given to another caretaker when Optimus realizes what he’s done. It’s what he’d wanted originally, but now it just makes him angry. As messed up as it is, he enjoys arguing with you. Pissing you off just for fun to watch those angry eyes flash.

• “A moment of weakness.” That’s all, even if for such a stuck up jerk he fucks like an animal. Even if for a short time, you felt like you’d seen the real Prowl. And that the composed, in control bot is all an act. Inhaling slowly, you tip your head back to stare at the ceiling. Anything but seeing those optics back to being pure ice. You’re still naked under the blanket, shifting to rub your thighs together and feeling his excess there. “I like you better angry.”

• He almost does laugh at that, because you don’t realize that he’s always angry. Always on a razor’s edge to maintain control. And he’s so tired of it, but he’s the one that everyone looks to. The infallible tactician who never makes mistakes or loses his temper. It’s what’s expected of him and that weight is slowly breaking him. “Not all of us have the luxury of being able to throw a tantrum.”

• “I don’t know,” you say with a shrug. “Smashing things just for the sheer pleasure of watching them break is good for the soul sometimes.” Because sometimes the only way to get over your issues is to destroy something. It’s something you’ve gotten good at over the years. Not only burning bridges, but delighting in it. He’s staring at you when you look at him and there’s understanding in the wry twist of his lips. If you’re fire, he’s gasoline. No matter what, this isn’t going to end well. You’ve never been good at doing the responsible thing, though.

• You’re not joking, even though you’re smiling reluctantly. If he really let loose, though? You’d run if you knew half the poison in his processor. Every injustice, every senseless death, if he was let off his leash to act without conscious, he’s not sure what he’d do in retaliation. Or if he’d want to stop. Because if he were free to eliminate threats covertly? Without running them past Optimus for permission that will never come, he’s not sure if there’s any line he wouldn’t cross to end this war. Anything he would destroy. That’s why he needs to stay in control, because he’s scares himself and that fury is always right there demanding action.

Previous

Next

[ophelian-darling]

𝐓𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬.

𝐅𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 : Satoru Gojo, Suguru Geto and Kento Nanami - gn reader.

𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲 : Their Obsession was too much to handle, and you find yourself growing impatient with their acts of dandling, till you had enough. 

TW : Implied Kidnapping, Physical and Verbal/psychological abuse, Blood & Injury.

enjoy ♡

𝐒𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐮 𝐆𝐨𝐣𝐨 :

Days passed like a vision through the glass, slow to come and quick to go, without even a faint image of them or a smallest fragment of memory, as if you were looking into someone else's life, not your own. The horizon blended now into Satoru's eyes- you were no longer able to see the real extension of a natural blue, instead looking through his irises, faux felt and fake friendly, non-stop and ad nauseam. a smile would paint itself across his features and a kind touch would cosset your hands, attempting to mimic a color of romance.

"Whatcha Thinkin' of, Babe?" He asked, a honeyed voice softening his words, already knowing what was in your head; wanting a sweet lie out of your tongue. You hated his voice- no, everything about him, from his stares, the contorts and shapes of his face and the many shades of his affection; one minute, sugar and honey drip off his tongue, in Hopes of aiming at the moon and winning your trust, the other all of his sweetness is poisoned and laced with venom, intentions of wounding your ego into submission. At times, to him, you were Valentine, Babe, Love and Dreamboat; just as you were the useless, pathetic, whiney and liar, depending on his mood.

The horror of him was his eyes, they were softly in a cruel way, no effort of smiling or laughter could coffin the rage and Mania you were too aware of. You were always on alert, counting your sins and thinking of ways to redeem yourself, mentioning Kissing back, twisting your lips with pink lies, thanking him for his gifts and wearing a gleeful expression on your face. 

"Aww Satoru! you spoil me, I don't know what would've happened to me if you weren't around!..." 

You felt maggots crawl under your skin, rushing forth to your brain while you struggled to keep your smile. The more the hours fly, the more your cover of ardor cracks. a thin string of bitterness lining from beneath your nail right into your heart, stitching more into a scornful crimson slowly. 

Just how dare he- take you against your will, fondle and caress you as if you were a mere housecat and call himself a saint for bothering to look after you, while you don't remember asking or consenting for any of his attention? During so many times, including the moment as of now, you'd imagine him bleeding, cascades of red contradicting his snow complexion, pieces of glass needling his eyes that you hated with all Satan's grudge to heaven. You are sure no single speck of a tear would warm your eyelid if he dies, it was what he deserved.

"You okay, Love? something is off with you" Concern painted his face, while his blues remained ever unsettling. 

Your mouth clinged into a straight tight line, no longer able to remember the supposed smile. a harsh retort died on the tip of your tongue, leaving the room to even a harsher, short-lived silence to stretch. 

His thumb traced on your cheek, before he stood up "I'm gonna make you a cup of coffee to lift you up a li'l, stay here while I'm in there" 

Of course you're staying here, where else would you go?! Moving an inch without seeing his face was less likely than seeing a green sky.

The string of your heart sewn itself thicker. As memories of him puppeteering you flashed unwelcomed, the scornful thread darned into a ferocious rag, veiling any sense of your heart, caging it with a hating aviary. You carried yourself up, heading to the kitchen absentmindedly, guided by the heavy feeling in your chest. He didn't tire himself to look around- not like you could do anything, wrapped around his digits to control. 

An unknown tune he hummed caroled the small kitchen, his hands moving around to prepare the mugs and the coffee, too immersed in his own realm of thought to discern your motives. 

If you ever got the chance to recount this exact moment, you would say that it happened so fast that your mind didn't settle on one image: did you shatter the mug on the top of his head or the back of his neck? You don't remember, yet the anamnesis of your muscles retained the surge of Adrenaline, a slow motion second of your hand grabbing the porcelain cup and breaking it on his skull. you do recall he said something- things. a series of slurs that were too filthy, every curse and insult in the scripture. 

The crimson rag was torn off from your heart, a delicious feeling of revenge drugging you in a lucid Catharsis. your fingers twitched, your body braced itself for whatever beating it was about to receive. Oddly enough, he continued groaning and grunting, holding his head in both his bloodied hands. 

Dark red seeped through his white locks, oozing down his neck, sullying his shirt and tinting his fingers and hands. For the first time, his strange blues held an emotion different from insanity, a glassy layer over them, just a tad bit up from his usually static stare. his eyelids wept with red as he stared at you for a moment, saying nothing, before heading -as it seems- to the bathroom, a trail of red spots on the floor marking your deed.

𝐒𝐮𝐠𝐮𝐫𝐮 𝐆𝐞𝐭𝐨 :

In your dreams, the sunrises and sunsets were sin crimson, dark as Abel's blood. You'd see Suguru and yourself, sitting on a shore, its sea so transparent, hued with the cinnabar rays casting from a cloudless sky. You often look forth into the puce red horizon and not to him, rarely ever locking eyes with his. One time, as you remember from a shattered vestige in your awakening, you rotate your head to the side to see him staring at you; a half erased smile contouring his lips, Black eyes mirroring the skyline that stretched to no end in sight. Twice or thrice, he'd say something, a trail of meaningless letters sliding down his composed voice. You don't retain on his words exactly, but your name was amongst them; during a glib talk of his, your name rolls down his tongue with his usual calmness, scripting your dreams as such almost always ever since you were tied to him.

"Something in your mind, Dear?" The calmness- you can hear the smile in his inquiry without looking at him, drumming through your skull in an image of him in your dreams. You looked up from your lap, noticing that he was stitching something up, the needle struggling to remain still in his fingers. Of course, he was anything short of a tailor as much as he was short of a lover, wanting to be something he can't be but insisting anyway like the stubborn cockroach he is. 

You rolled your tongue across your teeth, only to let out a muffled 'nothing' as a response. you were really trying hard to not hurl at him, he was getting on your nerves for just his existence.

He chuckled, digging the needle into a red fabric "Something is in your mind indeed. I don't know what it is and why you look so upset, but I promise I'll make you feel better" 

You'll only make me feel better by choking on a dagger, Suguru.  you wanted to say, yet being completely aware that it'll have consequences- ones you were needless for. The numbness on your face is constantly pricking its presence across your flesh, swells and mounds that remind you of his black eyes losing their serenity, metamorphosing into a brutal night dark. His hands slapped and punched as equally as they billed and cooed, and your skin has grown hateful of both.

He does not appear as a human at all. in a vast space of thinking, you would theorize that he was not much but a parasite that sucked life out of everything beautiful, including love. his version of amour was twisted, burying care under Control and killing fondness to revive fervor. Cords you couldn't see snaked around your heart and soul, burning as they got tighter, paralyzing you with apathy that was leisurely altered to a pale hue of resentment, until it fully discolored to a dim rage.

It creeped its way to your fingers. you could hear Satan's whisper, planting the vilest of ideas in your mind; at least you had the luxury of hiding your thoughts and making them behind an expression you can't feel now- you're becoming him, a hollow shell of one face and multiple voices, already sensing the stitches of a mask, a dull one that a death face left more lineaments to remember. you were blessed with emotions unlike him, there's no way you'll melt into Suguru. 

"Darling I have a surprise for you, look!" He announced cheerfully, bringing the piece of fabric he's been working on to your attention. 

He raised the Obi belt in his hands, proud of his handmade sewing. you scanned it carefully: the silk is red candy colored with few golden flowers orienting it, not much skill or talent radiating off of this mimicry of a cloth.

"I intended to offer you this as a birthday gift, but I preferred giving it to you now. maybe it'll cheer you up a little, you've been really quiet lately…" the damn calm smile decorated his face again, this time a drop of what sounded like concern is mixed with it.

You took the thing from his hand, acting like you're inspecting it but in fact holding a cackle. how in hell's seven circles he expected you to wear this?! If Suguru thought with that little sense he always prides himself of, he'd see that he wasted such a gorgeous material on such a failure of an accessory. 

"Do you like it? I hope so…" there's an octave in his voice translated as 'please tell me it's the best gift you ever received', too bad it's ugly to give him the pleasure of hearing a compliment. 

"I've been working on it for weeks. I had to choose between red or pink, deciding to pick the former because I thought it would look better on you… I'm nothing of a tailor, but I did my best" he rubbed his palms together, as if an imaginary balm coating them. he laughed a little "I gave myself a lot of needle pricks, but it was worth it-" 

"It's awful" 

You didn't have to look up to see his face.

"What?" He muttered, completely not seeing this coming. 

"It's terrible, I hate it" a joyful spark twinkled throughout your body as you said so. the smile that you tried so hard to repress curved itself on your lips. you felt you could add more fuel to the fire.

"The color is dull and this silk looks cheap, but that's not why it's ugly. I bet a child can sew an Obi belt better than you do. this thing should go back where it belongs, the trash." 

The silk wasn't cheap at all. you silently praised whoever produced it as the fabric resisted between your fingers. for a second, you considered just throwing the belt at his face, but you already teared it up a little, imagining that you were tearing Suguru apart between your fingers, the very same Suguru who was standing in front of you, ghostly pale and owl eyed, uttering not a word.

Red ribbons rippled through the small space between your hands and feet, forming a pile on the floor and resting in place. your heart clenched in excitement, a reaction that replaced the usual fear of him beating you senseless in such situations. you awaited for his hand to fly, for his voice to raise, but none came. 

His gaze froze. He apparently couldn't contain how his present ended up being nothing more than some piece of garbage that had to be disposed of. Suguru opened his mouth then closed it before turning his heels around and exiting the room. bringing back your eyes to the remains of the belt, it now jumped to you that there was something written on the back of it. 

𝐊𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐍𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐢 :

It is agreed upon as a human truth, that Shackles do not necessarily form as chains- For it merely requires a key to be freed from. but in most absent minds, the understanding of captivity and freedom were abridged in crime and punishment or torture (always coming first as physical in most thoughts), yet there is a sort of abstract bindings; way more restraining than tangible ones and with no limit of their ability to fetter the prisoner regardless of how strong is their will to break free, or how far their access to the key goes. mind games have proven themselves to be more effective throughout history, even in the simplest circumstances. What is more, playing on the strings of sentiment: romanticization of bonds -no matter how abusive they were- such as parenthood, friendship or more formally formed ties; marriage. 

There is this magical thing about marriage : it is a golden cage, a caressing shackle perceived as a warm nest in a vision of a romance, colored as red and pink, planted as roses. a cuff that priests call matrimony, poets call union and goldsmiths call rings- you name it; it's still a menacle, whether spouses consented to it or not. 

Kento was the typical man with the ordinary ambitions of immersing in a job (best if it paid generously), owning what is enough and settling down. To him, marriage was the ultimate expression of love, more than a mere ring, a wedding or flowery vows.

"I do have for you a love so dear that I drink from what your lips touch, I breathe when your lungs exhale, I slumber on where your skin embraces the mattress; one of both life and death."

- Your adoring one.

Engraved in red, the words slided over your heart's veil, forgotten in a memory of a cold rib. Satan lured Adam with an apple, so how would sugary words find any trouble deceiving? 

"You're making me worried, Sweetheart…" sotto voce in the nature of a Dove's coo; disgustingly fondling. 

Of course, a silver tongue cuts sharp in the same way it pours coquetry. life with Kento was seeing a moon and its dark side. under the beam of light, his lips mulls everything on you; kisses on your lips, cheeks and forehead blossomed, full rainbow ray of flowers were gifted to you, mostly red, attached to them little cards and billets-doux that enveloped letters of dalliance, arranged together and too sweet to the point it sickens you. The irony of his dimness was that he's more tolerable when he gnashes his teeth; wounds at your skin and soul, scolds and punishes in a parental manner. even for days, you'd hear the beast howling in your ear, ringing through the corridors of your head and it hurts to think.

Your eyes reflected in his figure, kneeling in front of you, not meaning they were drinking in the sight of him.

His thumbs brushed across your palms "Can I see your smile again? you look beautiful when you smile, you already are no matter how your face appears" nothing stirred up in you, emptiness of a blind man's face swam through the void.

"Please… sweetheart.." your composure nearly broke; a laugh dwindled within your throat. Does he think that you were a sole toy?! there to be played with, clothed and stripped to the colors of his whims, put on a pedestal at dawn and degraded at dusk?! it gnaws now on the branches of your chest, melts in your heart and fills your brain with a spiteful flow. 

"I've got something nice, just for you, I'm sure it'll make you happy" with that, he left quickly and returned just as, something in the outlines of a large flower bouquet behind his back. no surprise, he had a proclivity for flowers; for how red are roses, for how fragrant was jasmine and for how innocent were lilies. 

"I love you Sweetheart, never forget that!" as expected, roses. a pink posy of them.

You took the bouquet from his hands, glaring at the flowers in a burning grudge. for a flash of a glint, Medusa's serpents coiled between your digits, circling wrists, their skin flaying with yours. a bottle of somber tears shattered, impuring your core with loathing never imagined to be stored in your soul. With the swiftness of a sword out of its sheath, your hand flew high, landing the thorny plants across his face, over and over again, no drop of fear in you. Kento succeeded in grabbing your hand- not the one attacking him, squeezing your wrist to make you yield, but to no avail. your blood rushed hot through your veins, carving your mind with screams of violence and to hurt him more, that is when your fists balled and your ankles rose up sharply.

"Stop!" 

You would never. your hands had their own mind, they scratched and punched and grabbed to your heart's content, avenging you after so long of a macabre suffering. your shackles started to unravel, each movement of yours freeing the hollowness outside you. short minutes stretched forth like long hours until you were done- or like you were over with him for now.

a blur on your vision subdued, the faint image clearing line by line. Kento was on the floor, leaning on a chair and balancing his weight on a knee, right hand shielding over his face. you couldn't see the damage well through his fingers till he got up, still holding his face in his hand, silently giving you his back and leaving you to your own devices. as he left, you noticed red across the sides of his hands and arms; few cuts and swells distorting the fabric of his pale skin. 

[aizawas-dryeye]

🍉!!please read if ur curious about more ways to help those in gaza!!🍉

im taking inspiration from mutuals and those i follow to participate in @ficsforgaza please go follow them and read more about their organization and PLEASE spread it

ill be doing the wip sponsorship AND taking requests, all u have to do is send me a screenshot proving u donated to any fundraiser supporting the palestinian people (not directly to me) and make sure to let me know which wip to add to, or whatever request u may have

for every US dollar, ill write 100(ish) words, and cap it off at 1000-2000 words

theres WAY more information on ficsforgaza’s blog so please please follow them to stay up to date on gaza

WIPS

(** = NSFW ^^ = DARK CONTENT)

honey don’t feed me i will come back (astarion)**

tags: smut, reader has a vagina but no pronouns, dom!astarion, blood drinking, biting, penetrative sex, dirty talk, name calling (dear, darling, love, pet, sweet)

summary: astarion invites (begs) you to come to his tent for a little fun

untitled (astarion)**

tags: ascended!astarion, mean!astarion, yandere!astarion, gn!reader, vampire!reader, biting, blood drinking, ANGST BITCH LIKE WOW, unrequited love, smut, name calling (love, whelp, darling, bitch), degradation

summary: your fate is simple: to be utterly possessed, controlled, and used by your reborn lover

eden (halsin)**

tags: gn!reader, mating season, abo adjacent, ruts, knotting, vague description of genitals, loss of virginity, penetrative sex, so much cum, size difference, halsin big, possessiveness, breeding

summary: losing your virginity to halsin

break me, bite me (toji fushiguro)^^

tags: DEAD DOVE, reader has a vagina but no pronouns mentioned, noncon/rape, knotting, lowkey hunting, blood, bunny!reader, wolf!toji, he hits u like once, size kink, dirty talk

summary: being lost in the woods is dangerous business, especially for such a tiny bunny. let the hunt begin

nursing on a poison (leon kennedy)**

tags: reader has a vagina but no pronouns mentioned, vendetta!leon, erectile dysfunction, lowkey mediocre sex, riding, masturbation (p and v), pls he is so annoying and awful, toxic!leon, he thinks about smacking you, hair pulling, sadism, alcoholism

summary: whiskey dick is a real thing and leon is proof, annoyingly so

mirror mirror (shouta aizawa)**

tags: reader has a vagina but no pronouns mentioned, fingering, dirty talk, mirrors, pet names (baby, honey) teasing, no sex

summary: you made the mistake of insulting yourself in front of your boyfriend

lipstick lullaby (gojo satoru)**

tags: f!reader, sub!gojo, sleepy sex, slight somnophilia but not really, desperate bby gojo, "just the tip", unprotected sex, pet names (baby, babe, good girl), m mommy kink

summary: gojo is spoiled beyond words, but you’re to blame. you just can’t say no to your baby

glint (leon kennedy)^^

tags: DEAD DOVE, noncon/rape, mentions of child abuse, good ol catholic guilt (i was raised baptist so please be patient lmao), he covers ur head with a pillow, crying

summary: pt 2 of shiny

stuck on a little hot mess (nanami kento)**

tags: reader has a vagina but no pronouns, drinking, cheating, nanami is married with kids lmao, could be considered dubcon bc hes ur boss and also alcohol, age gap, blowjob, he calls u kid, GUILT, reader is a bitch, he fucks u in the guest bedroom

summary: nanami swears you were sent by the devil himself

REQUESTS

i dont have many rules for requesting fics but my hard no’s are:

• scat

• feeding

• pregnancy (does not include breeding)

• minor aged characters

• graphic gore/death

i also write for several fandoms such as:

• resident evil (pretty much only leon oof)

• jujutsu kaisen

• baldurs gate 3

• haikyuu

• my hero academia

• attack on titan

• marvel

• supernatural

• the umbrella academy

again please go to @ficsforgaza to learn more and consider donating if u can and ill write pretty much whatever u want! it doesnt just have to be x reader either, i also do ships! (excluding leon)

thank u so much for reading all this

🍉!!FREE PALESTINE!!🍉

[ineffectualdemon]

I have some thoughts on My Hero Academia

Spoilers below this point

The very beginning of the show is "almost everyone has quirks, and everyone wants to he a cool hero, and the coolest hero is All Might the Symbol of Peace"

And then we immediately learn All Might's body was wrecked in his last battle with All for One and he is holding onto his status as the Symbol for Peace by his finger tips but also that he has the ability to pass his power to Deku. Supposedly so he can be the next symbol

It's a very individualistic approach.

Deku is supposed to be this symbol alone

Like All Might usually being alone and not relying on anyone

Similarly other characters are aiming to be "The Number One Hero"

Bakugou, who was Deku's bully, when they start at UA is socially isolated and doesn't seem to care

Todoroki is stand offish due his trauma and has no connection to his fractured family

Uraraka is focused on helping her family

And Iida is only concerned with his family legacy

Then they are attacked by villains and they learn to lean on each other and be supportive

Iida goes to face the man who attacked his brother alone and ends up with Midoryia and Todoroki supporting him and he realises his mistakes

The kids team up to rescue Bakugou and Bakugou himself starts to realise his mistakes. He learns to work with others. He shows he can be a team player. He apologises to Midoryia and from that point on is the person who is guarding his back the most

Meanwhile the villains are constantly shown to be people rejected to let down by society and the community. They didn't start off villians. But they were told early on there was no real other option for them

And the adults take note and learn from the kids teamwork. The support team and other teams are shown to be super important. To the point

SPOILERS FOR THE MANGA PAST HERE

-

-

That All Might when facing All for One in the final battle is wearing a mech suit that is based off all the kids quirks

At the very end it is the power of friendship that defeats All for One. But not really.

All for One is selfishness incarnate. He wants to possess everything. Everything needs to be HIS and that includes the one thing he could never control or own completely. His brother. And in the end he was not able to get his brother back and what ended him was Midoryia pointing out the truth. He's all alone.

The difference between One for All and All for One is literally in the name but that's also the message of the show

In the epilogue there is a speech given about how it's not just about the heros. That support and other groups that make up the community are just as valuable.

Because you can't support society on the shoulders of one person. Because when he invariably breaks it all falls apart. Which is what happened. And rebuilding takes everyone. So everyone needs to maintain it and everyone is important

My Hero Academia sold itself on cool quirks and powers and imagining what kind of hero you would be

But the message is clearly individualism is poison. We need community and we need a community that doesn't turn away and reject the people who don't fit in

It's very very important that at the end the woman who turned away when faced with a lost and broken Shigaraki as he roamed the streets after what happened to his family - she is the character who sees another lost and broken boy. A boy who has been abused and abandoned and rejected because of who he is...and she reaches out a hand to help him

Yes the message is not subtle and it's pretty heavy handed at points (I mean All for One Vs One for All?) but it's still I think a good message and one that was rolled out in a very engaging and interesting way

And I think it's very intriguing that even at the end the League of villains are mourned are cared about. Are recognised as having been failed by people in their lives. They didn't have to end up here and their reasons were real even if it didn't justify the harm they did

Idk. I just really liked it

[hollowed-theory-hall]

Hallo! I'm not sure if you've already discussed or talked about the Obliviation spell and how memory magic works in general in HP already, but I think that'd be pretty neat if ever.

Hello!

So, I talked a bit here about pensive memories and how I think there's more than one spell involved. Now, mind magic in general in HP aren't talked about that much, but I have some thoughts about it (like I have about everything in HP).

I'll start with something I mentioned here regarding mind magic in general, and that mind magic seems to be the opposite of spells like the Patronus Charm or the unforgivable cures. While the unforgivable and the patronus required emotion, Snape says Occlumancy requires a clear mind:

“Clear your mind, Potter,” said Snape’s cold voice. “Let go of all emotion. . . .” But Harry’s anger at Snape continued to pound through his veins like venom. Let go of his anger? He could as easily detach his legs. . . . “You’re not doing it, Potter. . . . You will need more discipline than this. . . . Focus, now. . . .”

(OotP, 535)

I assume all magic that has to do with the mind requires a clear mind to work correctly. Like, you can obliviate someone without a clear head, but you might delete too much or too little. The clarity of mind is necessary for control and precision which is also required for Legilimency (or to at least understand what you're seeing with it).

Now, we know that pensive memories as I mentioned here can be collected and physically removed from one's mind, as Snape does in his Occlumancy lessons with Harry:

Snape merely raised the wand to his temple and placed its tip into the greasy roots of his hair. When he withdrew it, some silvery substance came away, stretching from temple to wand like a thick gossamer strand, which broke as he pulled the wand away from it and fell gracefully into the Pensieve

(OotP, 533)

But Obliviation doesn't seem to work the same way. We know from Dumbledore that you can try and retrieve obliviated memories or memories buried by false ones that are implanted:

“Never,” said Dumbledore. “He gave, as I say, a full and boastful confession.” “But he had this real memory in him all the time!” “Yes, but it took a great deal of skilled Legilimency to coax it out of him,” said Dumbledore

(HBP, 367)

Lockhart, too, after obliviating himself, still retains some of his memories and mannerisms:

“We’re doing autographs!” Gilderoy told the Healer with another glittering smile. “They want loads of them, won’t take no for an answer! I just hope we’ve got enough photographs!” “Listen to him,” said the Healer, taking Lockhart’s arm and beaming fondly at him as though he were a precocious two-year-old. “He was rather well known a few years ago; we very much hope that this liking for giving autographs is a sign that his memory might be coming back a little bit

(OotP, 510)

This suggests that unlike what Snape did with the pensive Obliviate doesn't really remove the memory from the mind, just severs the connections to the memory within the brain, but it's still there and could still be retrieved partially (or even fully) by a skilled Legilimence (Like Dumbledore) or the mind healers at St. Mongos.

Even so, the memories that return aren't perfect. Dumbledore couldn't get the full memory back from Morfin's mind, likely because Tom hid certain parts better than others. Memories returning, even if they are still present and not fully removed, is no easy task. It requires careful coaxing to not damage the mind and memories further.

Then we have false memories that can be implanted:

“I see we are of one mind,” said Dumbledore. “Certainly, there are many similarities between this death and that of the Riddles. In both cases, somebody else took the blame, someone who had a clear memory of having caused the death —” “Hokey confessed?” “She remembered putting something in her mistress’s cocoa that turned out not to be sugar, but a lethal and little-known poison,” said Dumbledore. “It was concluded that she had not meant to do it, but being old and confused —” “Voldemort modified her memory, just like he did with Morfin!” “Yes, that is my conclusion too,” said Dumbledore.

(HBP, 438-439)

This magic is different from both Legilimency and Obliviation but requires the same clear mind (I assume). What I expect it does is the opposite of the spell that removes a memory entirely to be placed in a pensive. Essentially placing a new memory in.

Now, we know memories can be edited once they're outside someone's brain (be it a copy or the actual memory):

As several of the boys tittered, something very odd happened. The whole room was suddenly filled with a thick white fog, so that Harry could see nothing but the face of Dumbledore, who was standing beside him. Then Slughorn’s voice rang out through the mist, unnaturally loudly, “You’ll go wrong, boy, mark my words.”

(HBP, 370)

So, I think making a false memory works the same way. You take a memory from yourself (a copy) or remove a memory from the target, edit it as heavily as necessary, and then place it in someone's mind the way you would a removed memory. It is probably the same spell Snape used to return the pensive memories to him after the Occlumancy lessons:

and hurried toward the office door. As he opened it he glanced back at Snape, who had his back to Harry and was scooping his own thoughts out of the Pensieve with the tip of his wand and replacing them carefully inside his own head.

(OotP, 538)

Now, a bit more about editing memories. This is a complex skill and not something everyone is doing. Memories in HP are more like frozen fragments in time than just memories. We see it in SWM that Harry can listen in on the Marauders when Snape isn't near them. The memories are perfect in detail and "remember" more than a person naturally would. So, even though in SWM Snape wasn't listening to the Marauders, he still heard them in his pariphary. So their conversation was in his memory even if he couldn't actively recall it.

Basically, calling them memories is a little misleading. They are memories, but they also perfectly capture a moment in a way human memory almost never would. It captures everything your senses get from the scene, even the bits your brain would usually filter out because you don't need all that information.

That's why editing them is probably so hard. Because there is a lot of detail and it all has to be perfected if it's to be viewed in a pensive.

That being said, if the memory is placed in someone's mind without the intention of them viewing the memory outside their own recollection, it doesn't have to be perfect. As I mentioned, compared to how the pensive shows memories, human recollection is very flawed. If something is missing from your memory of a scene a few years ago, you won't get suspicious someone replaced it, you'll think you forgot a detail.

So editing memories into someone's mind is much easier than memories that go into a pensive. It's possible Slyghorn's edited memory wouldn't have felt edited inside a mind, since the brain would fill in the lack of visuals on its own (the brain just does things like that) but in a pensive, there is no human brain to finish his work for him, so the edit is glaringly obvious.

This is, like, all I have to say about mind magic off the top of my head, I believe, hope this answers your ask.

[nicgoldomens]

The Metatron sat across from him and spoke kindly, softly and persuasively. Aziraphale found it hard to keep his focus, listening to the words spoken by the chosen Voice of the Almighty. The words repeated to him over and over like a prayer

" I told you he doesn't love you Aziraphale. I told you he would never come with you. He despises angels. I'm sorry you have been used and manipulated by this evil demon calling himself Crowley, but believe me it gives me no pleasure to tell you the truth of it. He doesn't love you, he never did, he has no capacity for love. "

The Metatron's voice sounds soothing and musical as he continues to speak, no matter how cruel and devastating what he says is to Aziraphale. Aziraphale stares ahead at an unseen spot past the Metatron's head and squeezes his fingernails into his palms to stop the tears from flowing. He mustn't show any sign of feeling but it's so hard to keep control. Could it be true, what he is saying? How could it be? He thinks of yellow eyes and soft snarly lips but the Metatron is still talking softly, rythmically

" I told you he doesn't love you Aziraphale. I told you he would never come with you. I'm so sorry but as I showed you, the footage we reviewed proves this demon, Crowley, has used you for 6000 years. Yes, I'm afraid to say right from the moment you met he decided for his own amusement to take advantage of you and garner favour with Satan. He saw your weakness when you gave away the flaming sword and knew he had an angel he could turn from God! Turn away from us, your Heavenly family. Now don't cry Aziraphale, the truth may hurt but you need to hear it. Crowley doesn't love you, he never did. He was laughing at you all this time, I really am truly sorry. I know how deeply you loved him, but it was all a lie, a ruse performed for Satan's entertainment. Listen to my words Aziraphale"

The Metatron's voice was even softer and his eyes connected finally with Aziraphale's own as he glanced upwards but could no longer stop the tears from falling. Could it be true? How could this be true? He gripped his head with his hands and closed his eyes, trying to block out the Metatron's voice. He thought of holding Crowley's hand, the softness and suppleness of Crowley's fingers, he remembered dancing with him in the bookshop. The Metatron appeared to sense his renewed calm and continued with words which now dripped like poison

" I told you he doesn't love you Aziraphale, I told you he would never come with you. It pains me terribly to say this, but why would Crowley love you, why for that matter would anyone love you? You are a failure and a disappointment to everyone who has tried to help and guide you. You are lucky that in our infinite mercy Heaven does still have a place for you so be cheered by that. But you must admit your mistakes, confess your wrongdoing and accept that this demon whom you have held so dear to your heart, was in fact empty of light and goodness all along. Your 'friendship' was never real and he does not love you. Crowley never loved you Aziraphale, he never will."

Aziraphale listens to these words, which have been spoken to him day in, day out ever since he returned to Heaven. He clenches his eyes shut and imagines Crowley's face in front of him. He wraps his arms around himself in a hug and rocks gently whilst the Metatron watches. Aziraphale begins to mutter under his breath, then louder and stronger

"He does love me he does love me he does love me he does love me he does love me!"

Aziraphale smiles, his eyes still closed and presses his fingers to his lips. He can still feel the fierce pressure of Crowley's lips on his and the exquisite taste of the tip of his tongue on his own tongue. The Metatron sighs angrily and walks to the door.

" Well Aziraphale, we'll talk again tomorrow. I know you will be made to understand eventually, we have all of eternity to convince you"

He waits until he hears the Metatron lock the cell door and walk away, footsteps echoing in the cold emptiness. Then Aziraphale whispers

"Crowley will be here tomorrow. That was the plan. He loves me and he's coming for me. He would never leave me on my own"

[xtruss]

Twenty-Five Years Before The Wright Brothers Took To The Skies, This Flying Machine Captivated America

First Exhibited in 1878, Charles F. Ritchel’s Dirigible Was About As Wacky, Dangerous and Impractical as Any Airship Ever Launched

— June 11, 2024 | Erik Ofgang

“When I Was Making It, People Laughed at Me a Good Deal,” Charles F. Ritchel Later Said. “But Do They Did at Noah When He Built the Ark.” Illustration by Meilan Solly/Images via Wikimedia Commons under public domain, Newspapers.com

Charles F. Ritchel’s Flying Machine Made a Sound Like a Buzzsaw as its pilot turned a hand crank to spin its propeller. It was June 12, 1878, and a huge crowd, by some accounts measuring in the thousands, had gathered at a baseball field in Hartford, Connecticut. The spectators had each paid 15 cents for a chance to witness history.

The flying machine—if one could really call it that—was an unsightly jumble of mechanical parts. It consisted of a 25-foot-long, 12-foot-wide canvas cylinder filled with hydrogen and bound to a rod. From this contraption hung a framework of steel and brass rods that the Philadelphia Times likened to “the skeleton of a boat.” The aeronaut would sit on this framework as though it were a bicycle, controlling the craft with foot pedals and a hand crank that turned a four-bladed propeller.

The device did not inspire confidence.

“When I was making it, people laughed at me a good deal,” Ritchel later said. “But so they did at Noah when he built the ark.”

A self-described “professor,” Ritchel was the inventor of such wacky, weird and wild creations that a recounting of his career reads as though it were torn from the pages of a Jules Verne novel. Supposedly friends with both P.T. Barnum and Thomas Edison, Ritchel for a time made a living working for a mechanical toy company in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he designed talking dolls, model trains and other playthings. But he was more than just a toymaker.

Left: Charles F. Ritchel filed more than 150 patents over his lifetime. Right: Ritchel's 1878 patent for his flying machine — Photographs: Public Domain Via Wikimedia Commons

Some years after the flying machine demonstration, the inventor proposed an ambitious attraction for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition (also known as the Chicago World’s Fair): a “telescope tower” that would rival France’s Eiffel Tower. The design consisted of a 500-foot-wide base topped by multiple nested structures that rose up over the course of several hours, eventually reaching a height of about 1,000 feet. After this proposal was rejected, Ritchel launched a campaign to raise funds to build a life-size automaton of Christopher Columbus, which the Chicago Tribune reported would speak more than 1,000 phrases in a human-like voice, rather than the “far-away, metallic sounds produced by a phonograph.”

By the mid-1880s, Ritchel claimed to have filed more than 150 patents. Not all of them were fun. He invented more efficient ways to kill mosquitos and cockroaches, a James Bond-esque belt that assassins could use to inject poison into their targets, and a gas bomb for use in land or naval warfare.

Yet never in his career was his quirk-forward blend of genius and foolishness more apparent than on that June day in Hartford. Because the balance of weight and equipment was so delicate, Ritchel was too heavy to fly the craft. Instead, he employed pilot Mark W. Quinlan, who tipped the scale at just 96 pounds. Quinlan was a 27-year-old machinist and native of Philadelphia, but little else is known about him. The record, however, is crystal clear on one count: Quinlan was very, very brave.

When preparations for the craft were complete, the crowd watched in eager anticipation as Quinlan boarded the so-called pilot’s seat. The airship rose 50 feet, then 100 feet, then 200 feet. Such a sight was uncommon but not unheard of at the time. The real question was: Once the craft was in the air, could it be controlled?

The first heavier-than-air flight (in which airflow over a surface like a plane wing creates aerodynamic lift) only took place in 1903, when the Wright Brothers conducted their famous flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. But by the late 19th century, flying via lighter-than-air gases was already close to 100 years old. (This method involves heating the air inside of a balloon to make it less dense, leading it to rise, or filling the balloon with a low-density gas such as helium or hydrogen.) On November 21, 1783, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d’Arlandes completed the first crewed, untethered hot-air balloon flight, passing over Paris on a craft built by the Montgolfier brothers. Later, balloons were used for reconnaissance during the French Revolutionary Wars and the American Civil War.

A drawing of the Montgolfier brothers' hot-air balloon Public Domain Via Wikimedia Commons

But free-floating balloons were, and still are, at the mercy of the winds. While balloon aeronauts can achieve limited control by changing altitude and attempting to catch different currents, they can’t easily return to the spot where they took off from, which is why even today, they have teams following them on the ground. Mid-1800s aviation enthusiasts dreamed of fixing this problem, which led to the development of dirigibles—powered, steerable airships that were inflated with lighter-than-air gases. (The word dirigible comes from the French word diriger, “to steer”; contrary to popular belief, the term, which is synonymous with airship, is not derived from the word “rigid.”) While some early aeronauts successfully steered dirigibles, none of these rudimentary airships could truly go against the wind or provide a controlled-enough flight to take off and land at the same point consistently.

In 1878, Ritchel was unaware of anyone who had successfully taken off in a dirigible and landed at the same spot. He hoped to change that with his baseball field demonstration. A month earlier, Ritchel had exhibited the airship’s capabilities during indoor flights at the Philadelphia Main Exhibition Hall, a massive structure built for that city’s 1876 Centennial Exposition. But there is no wind indoors, and the true test of his device would have to be performed outdoors.

After rising into the air, Quinlan managed to steer the craft out over the Connecticut River. To onlookers, it was clear that the aeronaut was in control. But as he flew, the wind picked up, and it began to look like a storm was gathering. To avoid getting caught in the poor weather and facing an almost-certain disaster, Quinlan steered the craft back toward the field, cutting through the “teeth of the wind until directly over the ball ground whence it had ascended, and then alighted within a few feet of the point from which it had started,” as the New York Sun reported.

Ritchel's dirigible, as seen on the July 13, 1878, cover of Harper's Weekly Public Domain Via Wikimedia Commons

The act was hailed far and wide as a milestone. An illustration of the impressive-looking flying machine was featured on the cover of Harper’s Weekly.

“The great problem which inventors of flying machines have always before them is the arrangement by which they shall be able to propel their frail vessels in the face of an adverse current,” the magazine noted. “Until this end shall have been achieved, there will be little practical value to any invention of the kind. In Professor Ritchel’s machine, however, the difficulty has been in a great measure overcome.”

Across the country, observers hailed Ritchel’s odd but impressive milestone in flight. In the years and decades that followed, this achievement was forgotten by almost all except a select group of aviation historians.

Wikipedia incorrectly lists the flight of the French army dirigible La France as the first roundtrip dirigible flight. But this event took place six years after Ritchel’s Hartford demonstration, in August 1884. Why has a flight so seemingly monumental in its time been relegated to the dustbin of history?

Given his eccentric nature and creativity, it’s easy to root for Ritchel and think of him as a Nikola Tesla-like genius robbed of his rightful place in history. The reality of why his feat was forgotten is more complicated. As Tom Crouch, an emeritus curator at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, says, it’s possible Ritchel’s craft was the first to complete a round-trip dirigible flight. But other aircraft in existence at the time probably could have accomplished the same feat in favorable conditions. “La France made the first serious round-trip,” Crouch says.

Additionally, while Ritchel’s machine worked to a point, it wasn’t a pathway to more advanced dirigibles. Richard DeLuca, author of Paved Roads & Public Money: Connecticut Transportation in the Age of Internal Combustion, points out that the hand-cranked nature of Ritchel’s craft made it nearly impossible to operate with any kind of wind. “On the first day, he got away with it and directed the ship out and over the river and back to where he started, and that was quite an accomplishment,” DeLuca says. “But the conditions were just right for him to do that.”

Dan Grossman, an aviation historian at the University of Washington, has never come across evidence that any later pioneers of more advanced dirigible flights were influenced by Ritchel. “There are a lot of firsts in history that got forgotten because they never led to a second,” Grossman says.

An artist's depiction of the La France airship Public Domain Via Wikimedia Commons

The day after their first successful public outdoor flight in Hartford, Quinlan and Ritchel tried again at that same ballfield. This time, the weather was less cooperative, and the wind came in sharp gusts. Still, the pair persisted in their attempt. “Little Quinlan, even if he does only weigh 96 pounds, has confidence and nerve enough to go up in a gale,” the Sun reported. Up he went about 200 feet, but this time, the wind carried him away with more force. Quinlan was “seen throwing his vertical fan into gear, and by its aid, the aerial ship turned around, pointing its head in whatever direction he chose to give it.” Although he could move the ship about, “he could not make any headway against the strong wind.”

Quinlan descended about 100 feet, trying to catch a different current, but the wind still pushed him away from the ballfield. He raised the craft, this time going higher than 200 feet, but still couldn’t overcome the wind and was soon swept off toward New Haven, vanishing from sight like some real-world Wizard of Oz.

Eventually, Quinlan safely brought the airship down in Newington, about five miles away from Hartford. The inventor and his pilot were unfazed by this setback. They held more public exhibitions that year with a mix of success and failure—including an incident that nearly cost Quinlan his life. During a July 4 exhibition in Boston, the machine malfunctioned and continued to rise, soaring to what the Boston Globe estimated to be 2,000 feet. Quinlan couldn’t get the propeller to work, and the craft continued to rise, reaching as high as 3,000 feet.

Terrified but quick-thinking, Quinlan tied his wrist and ankle to the craft and swung out of his seat to fix the propeller, using a jack-knife he happened to have on him as a makeshift tool. The daring midair repairs worked, and the craft gradually descended. Quinlan landed in Massachusetts, 44 miles from his starting destination, after a 1-hour, 20-minute flight.

Per Grossman, the human-powered method Ritchel attempted to utilize was doomed from the start. “In the absence of an internal combustion engine, there really was no control of lighter-than-air flight,” he says.

Ritchel stubbornly refused to consider powering dirigibles with engines and did not foresee how powerful a better-designed aircraft truly could be.

“I have overcome the fatal objection of which has always been made to the practicability of aerial navigation—that is, I have made a machine that can be steered,” Ritchel told a reporter in July 1878. “I claim no more. I have never pretended that a balloon can be made to go against the wind, and I am sure it never could. It is as ridiculous as a perpetual motion machine, and the latter will be invented just as soon as the former.”

Left: A page from Ritchel's ballooning scrapbook National Air and Space Museum Archives. Right: The scrapbook covers the years 1878 to 1901. Photographs: National Air and Space Museum Archives

Even so, Ritchel was influential in his own way. “He was one of the first to really come up with the notion of a little one-man, bicycle-powered airship, and those things were around into the early 20th century,” says Crouch. After Ritchel, other daring inventors launched similar pedal-powered airships. Carl Myers, for example, held demonstrations of a device he called the “Sky-Cycle” in the 1890s.

Ritchel stands as one of the fascinating early aeronauts whose work blurred the line between science and the sideshow. “I refer to them as aerial showmen, these guys who came up with the notion of making money [by] thrilling people [with] their exploits in the air,” Crouch says.

According to Crouch’s 1983 book, The Eagle Aloft: Two Centuries of the Balloon in America, Ritchel and Quinlan took the airship on tour with a traveling circus in the late 1870s. Ritchel also operated his machine at Brighton Beach near Coney Island. He sold a few replicas of his device and later attempted to develop a larger, long-distance version of the craft powered by an 11-person hand-cranking crew. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this idea failed to gain momentum, and Ritchel faded from the headlines. Soon, the exploits of new aeronauts would upstage him, among them Alberto Santos-Dumont’s circumnavigation of the Eiffel Tower in 1901.

Left: Alberto Santos-Dumont's first balloon, 1898. Right: Santos-Dumont circles the Eiffel Tower in an airship on July 13, 1901. Photographs: Public Domain Via Wikimedia Commons

Despite many earlier dirigible flights, Crouch and Grossman agree that the technology only became practical when German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin built and flew the first rigid dirigible in the early 1900s. Over the first decade of the new century, Zeppelin perfected his namesake design, which featured a fabric-covered metal frame that enclosed numerous gasbags. “By 1913, just before [World War I] begins, Zeppelin is actually running sightseeing tours over German cities,” Crouch says, “so the Zeppelin at that point can safely carry passengers and take off and land from the same point.”

For a brief period, airships ruled the sky. (The spire of New York City’s Empire State Building, built in the 1930s, was famously intended as a docking station for passenger airships.) But the vehicles, which use gas to create buoyancy, were quickly eclipsed by airplanes, which achieve flight through propulsion that generates airflow over the craft’s wings.

While the 1937 Hindenburg disaster is often viewed as the end of the dirigible era, Grossman says that’s a misconception: The real death knell for passenger airships arrived when Pan American Airways’ China Clipper, a new breed of amphibious aircraft, flew from San Francisco to Manila in November 1935. “Partly because they flew faster, they could transport more weight, whether it’s people or cargo, mail, whatever, in the same amount of time,” Grossman explains. “They were less expensive to operate, they required much, much smaller crews, [and] they were less expensive to build.”

Airplanes were also safer. “Zeppelins have to fly low and slow,” Crouch says. “They operate in the weather; airplanes don’t. An airplane at 30,000 feet is flying above the weather. Weather, time after time, is what brought dirigibles down.”

Today, niche applications for passenger airships endure, including the Zeppelin company’s European tours, as well as ultra-luxury air yachts and air cruises. But “it’s always going to be a tiny, tiny slice of the transportation pie,” Grossman says.

Crouch agrees. “People still talk about bringing back big, rigid airships. That hasn’t happened yet, and I don’t think it will,” he says.

The USS Los Angeles, a United States Navy airship, in 1931. Photograph Public Domain Via Wikimedia Commons

In some ways, Ritchel’s flying machine was a microcosm of the larger history of dirigibles: fascinating, fun and the perfect fodder for fiction, but ultimately eclipsed by more efficient technology.

As for Ritchel, he died, penniless, of pneumonia in 1911 at age 66. “Although during his lifetime he had perfected inventions that, in the hands of others, had brought in great wealth, he died a poor man, as he lacked the business ability to turn the children of his brain to the best advantage to himself,” wrote the Bridgeport Post in his obituary.

Even so, the public had not forgotten the brief time three decades earlier when Ritchel and his airship ruled the skies. As the Boston Evening Transcript reported, his flights captured “the attention of the world. In every country and in every language, newspapers and magazines of the day printed long stories of the wonderful feats performed by the Bridgeport aviator and his marvelous machine, of which nothing short of a cruise to the North Pole was expected.”

— Erik Ofgang is the co-author of The Good Vices: From Beer to Sex, The Surprising Truth About What’s Actually Good For You and the author of Buzzed: A Guide to New England's Best Craft Beverages and Gillette Castle: A History. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Atlantic, Thrillist and the Associated Press, and he is the senior writer at Tech & Learning magazine.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this Op-Ed from The New Republic:

But resistance alone, which maintains the status quo, is no longer enough. The election refuted that notion, and the world’s environmental chaos confirms it. Our current system has driven the planet to break 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming this year. The Paris Agreement set this threshold as a dangerous tipping point for the world’s poorest communities, who disproportionately bear the brunt of climate change’s horrific consequences while the wealthiest disproportionately pollute.  

We need to only look at the last year to see that when climate chaos tested the country, the current system failed. The cataclysmic Hurricane Helene, record heat waves, and relentless wildfires stole lives, demolished homes, wiped out jobs, and left survivors in profound social, economic, and emotional instability.

To survive and thrive during the next four years and beyond, we have to build our political system anew. We need to reimagine how our politics can be genuinely responsive to what people need—not under the hateful rhetoric of the Republicans or the willful ignorance of the Democrats.  

Building a responsive political system starts on the ground, driving intersectional solutions to climate chaos that are both community-focused and deeply resourced. The climate movement has to fully break out of its silo and build real political power with youth, labor, working families, migrants, the LGBTQ+ community, and other rights-based groups to grow a broad-based movement that centers justice at every step. Climate activists within the movement have already made important inroads in this intersectional organizing—including last year when hundreds of thousands around the world marched in the first mass mobilization to end fossil fuels—and we have many miles to go.

Faced with an intractable federal government, activists can also take their battle to the states, for example fighting the detonation of carbon bombs like the Permian Basin. My colleagues at the Center for Biological Diversity, together with Indigenous, frontline, and youth groups, recently filed a landmark case challenging the state of New Mexico for failing to uphold its constitutional duty to control oil and gas pollution and protect the health of its residents. Responding to pressure from local groups, the state also has created health buffers aimed at preventing schoolchildren from being poisoned by the oil industry as they sit in their classes.

The byzantine world of state public utility commissions is also ground zero for bucking the racist, fossil fuel–dependent electricity system and designing democratic and affordable energy systems that serve the public’s interest. These black-box commissions—long dominated by regulators captured by fossil utilities and drowned in technical jargon to confuse the public—are the front line of deciding state energy policy.

Mass organizing of communities harmed by predatory utility rates, shutoffs, and fossil fuel pollution can force these commissions to respond to people, not monopoly utility providers that have stifled alternative distributed energy to protect their profits. State utility commissions can ramp up rooftop and community solar systems and other renewable energy sources that displace polluting fossil fuels; loosen the death grip of corporate utilities; and make electricity affordable, clean and democratic. This isn’t just a fight against the climate emergency—which can feel abstract to some people. It’s a fight against entrenched power that threatens people’s pocketbooks, their health, and their livelihoods.

While we are all trying to make sense of what happened and why, our next steps are clear. The status quo needs to change, and it’s up to us to organize a new, intersectional mass people’s movement that can create the momentum for and help design the systems that will get us there. It may be that my daughter’s strong kicks are her way of signaling that she’s raring to go. Fighting for a safe climate means fighting on every front for a chance of something that looks like justice.

[popiacopia]

Papa, if I may ask.. How did you deal with your social/general anxiety? Especially during that transition from Cardinale to Papa? Mine has certainly spiked, and it's gotten to the point where meals are getting harder. Any tips at all would be greatly appreciated :)

Well, it never truly goes away. I wish it did, but it doesn’t.

Even when you take medication, or try different techniques, or even go to therapy. That little voice will never stop talking. The only thing you can do— the best thing you can do— is learn to talk back. Not ignore it, like people tend to say. Ignoring it is not always possible, and it can make things worse when you don’t listen to yourself.

You must learn to talk back to that little voice in your head and tell it what you really think. You need to realize that the things it’s saying simply don’t make sense. Take a breath and say, “That isn’t right. That isn’t true. I am the boss.” And even if you think that what it says really is true… Who cares? You cannot let an invisible little asshole control your life. They aren’t even real. Listening to that is pointless. Talk to them, talk to that part of your being that doubts yourself and say, “Everything is alright. I am not useless. I am not worthless. Nobody else thinks that, so why should I think that?”

And even if someone out there actually does think that about you, they can go fuck themselves. They are a miserable person who lives a miserable life, thinking such terrible things about others for no reason. Stewing on hateful thoughts like those is like drinking poison yourself and expecting it to kill the other person. It only hurts you, and makes you both cruel and stupid.

And please, eat. I know it can be hard. I know that the more anxious you get, the less you want to eat— but the less you eat, the more anxious you will get. It’s a cycle that just gets worse and worse. Eat something bland and light, if things are getting very bad. Drink one of those sports shakes, maybe. The kind with vitamins and protein and things in them. Work your way up to a full meal, if you aren’t feeling like you can handle one right away. Just get something into your system. Or, treat yourself, if you can. Get something you enjoy eating, something that comforts you.

It doesn’t matter if it’s “healthy,” as long as you eat. A good snack and a hot shower can fix a lot of problems, I think.

[aalinaaaaaa]

Magic-Inhibitory Substances

This bit of lore pertains to all of my various works, for the most part, seeing as they're set in the same world. I'm posting this in lieu of @bardic-tales ' Tip of the World Tuesday, because just recently I developed a bit more information on the topic. (Heads up, this is going to read almost like an academic paper, sorry 😳)

Within the world, there are certain varieties of substances that can stop one from using their magic. Oftentimes these cause physical harm to one's health, in addition to the inhibitory effects. These inhibitors work differently to cleansers*, which only stop one's use of magic for a moment, and without causing harm. (Divine water would be an example of this)

1. Iron — This is an infamous example across many stories and mythologies relating to faeries and similar folk. Within the scope of what I'm writing, iron is one of the most potent agents in terms of inhibiting magic. Even a small dose can cause one's magic to be cancelled completely, and it will remain cancelled until it is wiped away or excreted.

Flecks of iron on the skin can cause burns and acute pain, and will remove any glamours, enchantments and shapeshifting disguises.

If it is inhaled somehow, it can cause damage and inflammation in the lungs and airways. It can also cause dysplastic lesions, leading to scarring and reduced lung capacity in severe instances.

If iron is swallowed, this depends on its form. If it is pure iron, it will cause scarring and inflammation all the way down the digestive tract, along with sharp pain.

If it is dietary iron, then it is better tolerated as fae with red blood require it for the creation of red blood cells. However, they require only enough iron to create new blood cells, if there's excess iron consumed then it will have a mildly ill effect. Fae with blue blood, which relies on copper rather than iron, are sensitive to dietary iron (but dietary iron is far less potent than pure iron or iron alloys).

2. Silverweed — This is a plant native to Helinda, it likes sunlight and it is a persistent nuisance. The plant is named for its blueish-silver leaves, and it sprouts blue flowers with purple-tipped petals. It has a degree of infamy, for it is referenced within the terms of Helinda's founding Treaty as 'groves of fine silver', defining where Helinda's border with Morilaste ends.

The flower was eradicated due to its effects of spell reversal and magic inhibition, in addition to tiredness, vomiting, stomach pain, systemic problems, kidney issues and in severe instances, death. The sap is more potent than the plant in standalone form, where if subject to sunlight or other UV sources, it can exacerbate blisters and emit a poisonous gas (if boiled).

3. Belladonna — In addition to its real life effects, such as blurred vision, hallucinations, delirium, loss of balance, disruption to normal breathing, heart rate, and so on, it also causes one's magic to stop. The plant has potent effects on the nervous system, causing it to lose control and either stop functioning or function abnormally. This triggers a response whereby one's magic is paralysed, because the release mechanism is tied to nerve activity and muscle function.

—

There's far more where that came from, but I'm going to stop here and tag a bunch of people, lol

General taglist (ask, comment, etc to be added or subtracted): @glassstardust22124 @original-writing @honeybewrites @ashirisu @drowsy-quill @oliolioxenfreewrites @mr-orion @the-ellia-west @guessillcallitart @thereadingfoz @did-i-do-this-write

[jettyfisher]

Fade into You

Edgy shit. Dumping this here for my own reading. Off the screen stuff my Hunter thinks about.

[TL;DR girl smokes a cigarette and cries about having feelings.]

-

I grabbed my radio and slipped out my bedroom window onto the fire escape patio. I sat down and hung my legs over the balcony. My red converse dangled over a two story drop below into an alleyway. One of my favourite pastimes was watching strangers walk by beneath me. I wondered how many were monsters this whole time. One in ten perhaps? Two in four?

I shivered as the night air whipped my collar and licked the back of my neck. I tied up my hair into a half-hearted bun with the scrunchy I wore around my wrist. Any strenuous movement tired my arms out quickly, especially from the lack of blood in my system as of late.

My hand pulled out a pack of Marlboro from my flannel pocket. I bit the filter between my teeth and flicked my zippo lighter to ignite the tip of a cigarette. Made sure to let it simmer before I took the first breath in. Cold, wet winter air hit the back of my throat and nostrils. The poisonous smoke went down smoother than anticipated before I released it through my teeth, mimicking a dragon. My fingertips reached down to turn the station dial on my radio. I set the volume low to make some sort of background noise to fill the soft raining atmosphere. 

I stared out over New Orleans. Lake Pontchartrain was just visible across the horizon. My eyes glazed over as my attention fixated on the Catholic church my real Dad used to make me go to sing in a choir. I was only eight, I thought.

I took another drag of my cigarette. Yeah, I remembered the priest used to give me the creeps.

Fade Into You by Mazzy Star comes on over the radio. It hurt, but I turned it up just to hear the lyrics. I mouth the words as smoke empties my lungs and I think about dying.

I want to hold the hand inside you I want to take the breath that's true I look to you, and I see nothing I look to you to see the truth…

I placed my forehead against the bars of the railing. I tested how hard I can bang my face against the metal until I felt dizzy. All the while, the droning of the song played beside me. I thought about whether I might’ve been overreacting.

You live your life, you go in shadows You'll come apart, and you'll go black Some kind of night into your darkness Colors your eyes with what's not there…

I eventually stopped once I realized it’s pointless to harm myself. I wasn’t even depressed. I think I was angry. Angry at him. Angry at the world. Every barrier I built up over the years was completely bypassed. And I made no mistakes, I made sure I gave myself up for no one. Made sure I was as unlikable as they come. Easy to hate. Hard to be around.

A stranger's light comes on slowly A stranger's heart without a home You put your hands into your head And then smiles cover your heart…

It was simple for me to be spiteful in return. All the friendships that came and went. The pretty boys and girls I had to hurt. Better ruin happiness for myself before anyone else could try. That’s how I thought I could control my life. I loathed myself, so I surrounded myself in a cruel world. Now, I wasn’t able to tell if I was confused. Was this hate I was festering?

Fade into you Strange you never knew Fade into you I think it's strange you never knew…

I took one final drag of my cigarette before I flicked the bud from my chilled fingers. It landed in a puddle of rainwater in the alley way. My tired eyes lingered on the movement of the ripples of the water. It was all so mesmerizing. I thought about how my heart wanted to go home. But I didn’t have one. I burned all the bridges. I was long gone.

[benjaminalphabet]

something sparkling and iridescent used to master my body and soul;

and i was a beautiful monster, all my glittering worst intentions brought everyone to their knees.

i am worship-worthy when my words mean nothing,

emotionless and empathetic, my sweet little serpent could make everything mine.

manipulative, maladaptive, malicious;

a liar always out for blood.

i was powerful when i slept in other’s clothes, and bedsheets, and dreamscapes.

i used to be in control.

faith and devotion are ugly things;

they come out of the woodwork like spiders, wrap themselves around your throat, and suddenly your poisoned words don’t drip like honey anymore.

always smooth, like whiskey, with a bitter aftertaste that demands attention.

i’m an artisanal, crafted, acquired taste.

my devourer deflated, served over ice, and now she is something weaker.

now it is me who sips this molotov cocktail,

and the honest version of me was never prepared for this.

i am a lovely politician. in my words are palaces, utopias, promises that could never come true.

i can never follow through.

the angels punish me mercilessly,

karmic justice, the scales tipped away from me, and balance is returned to the cosmos

when i lose everything.

love and loneliness sneak in during the dead of night, and notice how you do not crave these touches the way you crave others;

even if they are gentle, though they rarely are.

i have never been gentle with anyone,

i’m a real tough cowboy clairvoyant, a known cowboy killer;

but still, i always feel let down when these men show up drunkenly to my door holding pistols and bouquets in both hands.

they treat me like something threatening, the death before rebirth,

they pray to me like they really believe i can save them, as if i ever could even if i wanted to.

i let them worship at my feet and i promise them a better life just to keep them talking.

they’ve all heard i’m a fake, a con artistic magic saboteur, but they’re still always angry when my gorgeous prophecies never come true.

i let them crucify me, i accept the consequences of my actions,

and i wonder if the revenge is thick and warm filling up the cores of them; like how for a moment they were in mine.

eventually i must admit to this bad behavior without the warm comforting blanket of demonic possession to hold on tight to.

old habits die in the fetal position with their aching heads clutched between their hands.

i spend most nights on my knees at the end of my bed, whispering in tongues,

from a distance i make a sweet picture of prayer, but these incantations i mutter are something much more sinister.

i beg for forgiveness, i beg god to be real,

i apologize and repent,

i ask for a thief’s admittance into heaven.

i do everything the devil is not supposed to do.

i try to be good.

addiction is broken in the dead of winter,

the desolate times, some time during the forty waking nights in a waterless desert -

addiction can only be truly broken when you need your vices the most.

the nights i am touched the most ferociously, i wake up in tears, i face the morning with shame.

when i am alone i am despondent, and depressed, and there is hardly anything that can save me.

i have these pearls in my mouth, and they taste sweet to everyone but me.

my words are sickly, syrupy, and sticky but they are empty, devoid of sustenance or nutrition.

my lovers leave begging for more, and i pile their malnourished open mouths in a moat outside my door and hope they just die quiety.

i don’t want to listen anymore.

most of them they die without legacy,

i forget them easily and they cease to have ever existed once i take the baptism seriously;

cleansed from them in the salt bath,

and all their love for me was fake and all for nothing in the end.

i am selfish, i am lonely,

i want to be left alone, i want anyone to see me.

something sparkling and iridescent used to master my body and soul;

and i was a beautiful monster, all my glittering worst intentions brought everyone to their knees.

something uglier rules me now,

good intentions, white knuckles,

a reach for intimacy in the middle of nowhere.

i am so disassociated i swear i have been speaking a language long dead.

i am not fully of this world, nor am i fully in it.

my faith is mercurial at its best, fickle at its weakest.

my own devotion is cracked like marble that has been shattered and put back together by well meaning restorative hands.

they do their best, but i am no pride of Michelangelo.

i am not Aphrodite

or one of her loving devotees.

i am somewhere outside of that,

like offerings left on alters - i am the rose petals left in her wake.

i am the flames from pink candles, longing to set the whole world ablaze.

i am a goddess’s aftermath, discarded scraps, the wax hardening after the ritual ends, going cold.

i am going cold.

i am not Aphrodite, i am the irrational price she pays.

i have been reformed too many times,

rewritten, reeled in, reinvented,

and still misinterpreted.

i have no confessions, i have no guilt,

i have always loved that fatal, iridescent, irredeemable monster more than i loved the pure white parts of me.

i am virginal in so many secret ways.

i have always known that only one of them can survive, but i have never known which one will prove to be stronger.

4.21.24 || self fulfilling prophecy

[puppyexpressions]

Holiday Pet Safety Tips

The Dangers Associated With Christmas Trees

While you may have visions of stringing popcorn garlands, tinsel strands, and salt dough ornaments along your beautiful fir tree, your pet will be drooling at your feet, eager to make a snack out of the conveniently hung treats. Even without food-based and shiny decorations, your Christmas tree can pose a threat to your furry friend. Before setting up your Christmas card photo of your pet bedecked in antlers or an elf hat in front of the tree, consider these potential hazards:

Live Trees: Fir, spruce, and pine trees make excellent Christmas trees and are generally non-toxic to pets. The needles, however, can cause oral irritation and in excessive amounts, gastrointestinal upset.1

Artificial Trees: Although fake trees are oil- and sap-free, they can create gastrointestinal issues, depending on what material makes up the tree.  

Fertilized Water: If you put your Christmas tree up the day after Thanksgiving, you will want to ensure it lasts until Christmas by adding fertilizer or preservatives to the water. These chemicals, mold, and bacteria can make your pet ill if they drink from the tree stand.2  

Ornaments: Your pet may think your glass baubles, clay keepsakes, and ceramic ornaments are excellent toys for batting, but they can crash to the floor and shatter, cutting paws.  

Lights: Dazzling strands of light can intrigue your cat and delight your dog, but are choking hazards and can lead to electrical burns.  

Holiday Plant Poisons

Besides the star attraction of the Christmas season, other holiday plants can take the stage with causing toxicity in your pet. Avoid these four most dangerous plants when decorating for the holidays:

Mistletoe: This plant can cause gastrointestinal upset and in rare cases, cardiovascular problems with cats and dogs.

Holly: The holly plant can create mechanical injuries through its pointed leaves. Holly also contains soap-like compounds in the berries, called saponins, which can cause issues if consumed. The berries and leaves are toxic to pets and can lead to salivation, vomiting, and diarrhea.

Lilies: Cats are highly sensitive to lilies. In fact, they’re so sensitive that grooming lily pollen off their fur can lead to kidney failure.  Other signs of lily toxicity can include gastrointestinal upset, heart arrhythmias, and convulsions. Dogs do not develop kidney failure from eating lilies like cats do, but may have some minor stomach upset.

Amaryllis: The bulb of this beautiful bloom can cause salivation or oral irritation and excessive quantities can cause gastrointestinal upset.

You may wonder why the poinsettia is not listed as a toxic holiday plant. Although many people believe that poinsettias can kill their pets, that is a rarity.  A pet would have to ingest a massive amount of this plant to cause poisoning, and most pets won’t eat a large enough amount because of the irritating taste and feel from the sap. At most, your pet may experience vomiting and salivation, but will likely stop eating the plant once she discovers how irritating the sap is to their mouth and throat. To be on the safe side, ensure all plants are kept out of paw’s reach. 

How to Prevent Christmas Plant Toxicities in Your Pet

Avoid dampening your holiday cheer with an emergency veterinary visit by following these tips:

Double check your plant placement. Consider keeping your holiday plants behind closed doors in people-only rooms instead.

If your pet is a known chewer, choose artificial plants over real ones. But, too much chewing on plastic or fabric plants can lead to a foreign body obstruction if ingested.

Barricade your Christmas tree behind baby gates or pens to keep your pet out.

When in doubt, check out the ASPCA’s list of toxic and non-toxic plants before adding greenery and bright blooms to your home. But, if your pet nibbles on your plant, no matter what type, be sure to contact your veterinarian or animal poison control for advice.

[booksandchainmail]

Pale 9.2

That was the awful part of life where it didn’t matter how smart you were.  It just sucked to do and maybe if you were rich you could hire someone to handle it, sure, but she had no real interest in being rich.

being rich can be exchanged for not having to deal with boring parts of life!

She was a problem solver.  She was dumb in some areas but she was good at that, especially if she had her friends at her back.  Verona thought of Bristow.  Sometimes she was too good at that.

Something that's come up a bit thinking back on Bristow is that Verona escalates beyond her intent or ability to handle.

In another country, retracing steps from blacked out days, weeks, or months, learning you had, ahem, dates with a string of washed-up celebrities, tipped the initial domino in felling an international drug cartel, and seeded a new religion, with one or all events commemorated with brand new tattoos.

so a normal shadowrun session

Charles’s entire tone was almost as if he wanted to die, talking about it. Like he was deathly tired of the subject or something.

I wonder why Charles is so annoyed by talking about the barrier. Just tired of having to reexplain it? Or does he not like the reminder that he can't practice anymore

“If I may interrupt,” Matthew said. “Sorry, we can’t dawdle or chit-chat too much."

This is the second time Matthew's cut Verona off from talking to one of the newer Others this meeting. She is getting off topic, but I wonder if he's mainly trying to keep the girls isolated.

It felt a bit like the new Others had been told things about them that had poisoned the waters.  Like the first impression had been made for them already.  Verona frowned.

yeah. The question is, by who? I could see Crooked Rook being wary of practitioners in general, but I'm more inclined to think this was some of the original Kennet Others, probably Matthew and Edith. They would be able to speak about the girls in specific.

"You can decide how you want to handle patrols for the rest of summer.” “And after summer?” Lucy asked. “We’ll see, I guess."

I am in a paranoid state of mind here and wondering if Matthew isn't planning for after summer because he doesn't think the girls will still be around then

“There’s no way to argue this point without sounding like an asshole,” Lucy said.  “I don’t even care that much about the gifts but I do care that I’m being put in this position.  We didn’t ask, Montague offered.  And now we’re being made to look like bad guys for even entertaining it.  This sucks, you guys, and it sucks because you’re making it suck, and I don’t know why you’re doing that."

Matthew has gotten a lot more openly hostile

“I’d like to formally announce my intention to do the familiar ritual with Snowdrop.  I know it’s not the best shortcut to power, but if it keeps her around for longer than the usual four or five years of an opossum’s lifespan then I think that it’s something I really gotta do.”

hopefully this will defuse things a bit.

“About Raymond, we talked about him earlier, he wants to meet Charles. And about Zed, and about Nicolette, and even Jessica Casabien. We’d like to stay in touch with them. I’d like to get the okay to invite them to Kennet.  We can get them to agree to stay quiet, I think, and not interfere.  But when it comes to stuff like the wards, or finding the Others, I think they could be big helps.”

hmmm. So this is obviously not going to go over well. And honestly I'm not sure it's a great idea (though there are obvious benefits for getting more power and help). I wouldn't want Ray getting involved: I like him, but he didn't object to the things Alexander and Bristow did. He's also well established in his power and authority: I could see him, with good intentions, taking some level of control over Kennet. And he's so well-connected that anything he lets slip can travel far.

Zed and Nicolette... that's a mixed bag. They're both good people, but they'd come at Kennet from a practitioner's angle. And Nicolette stepped up during the coup, but I think with people (like the Kennet Others) she doesn't particularly know or care about, she'd put her own safety and future first. Zed is more ethical, but he's also very investigative, and I could see his sense of morality backfiring if he feels compelled to intervene.

Honestly, of all these people, I'd pick Jessica as the one to invite to Kennet. She's already an outsider to practitioner society: she seems to dislike most practitioners and isn't attached to their worldview. And she doesn't seem like she'd be overly interested in any of the Others who want to keep a distance. If Kennet could help her with her cousin, I could see her being a really solid ally.

Verona was really curious what had prompted Avery to bring that up.

wanting to build something, beyond just the three of them?

“The difference is the Others knew of you before that meeting.  Came to terms with you, discussed you.  For us, you were an afterthought.”

and you were in their power, unAwakened human children, not young but growing practitioners

In the back, Snowdrop chattered at Tashlit, “I don’t even get to be an honorary goblin.  They’re so mean to me, they don’t share any of their snacks!”

aww

“We have people we care about just as much as you care about Chloe or Faith,” Lucy said.  “If something happened to them… that’s nightmare material, as far as I’m concerned.  If someone like Chloe hurt them…  just about everyone in Kennet’s precious to someone, like that, aren’t they?”

ghouls really seem like a terrible situation. No ethical way of keeping up a reliable food source in any volume. A quick google says that Canada has around 8 deaths per 1000 people per year. Even assuming every single corpse goes to feed ghouls, you'd still need 6,500 people to keep one fed. Which could work out, with small numbers of ghouls in cities, but really can't be sustained in a town the size of Kennet.

Verona looked down.  Looked around at the grass, which needed a bit of mowing, had some weeds.  A few divots where something like groundhogs had dug through.  A few trees stood at the back.

if Avery takes Snowdrop as a familiar, then it's Verona who'll be taking a Demesnse. So it's really her decision here

"It’s big and it would be yours, if you want it. The amount of space you start with is pretty important.”

true, though I think ideally you'd have a building, not just a vacant lot. Can you build a mundane house to use as a base once the Demesnse is already set?

Settling down, locking an area down as her own for life, taking on that as a responsibility and investment… it felt like a lot, somehow.  Heavy.

Verona seems like the least of the three to want this

Tashlit gave her a thumbs up.

could Tashlit move in, if Verona has a Demesnse? Seems like it might be easier to weatherproof than just a shack.

Permanence was scary.  The steps they couldn’t take back. Bristow. The things they couldn’t undo.

:(

[thatsneakymedic]

October Writing Challenge Day 1 Poison

The familiar chill of the autumn breeze blows through Kabuto's cloak despite the heavy cloth's hood over his head. His throat has already felt hoarse from the changes of the weather to the point that he had already knew that he had managed to catch a cold somehow.

This is the 3rd time he has been late to the meetings. Surely Sasori would cut him some slack since the fall seasons are often the busiest since he and Orochimaru are well preparing with stocks and money for the winter. And the worst part is also keeping the supplies up for their prisoners

Noticing that Sasori was waiting ahead of him and giving off a rather ominous aura about him. Kabuto takes a deep breath and he approaches him, with the scroll in hand to politely give it to him. "Forgive me Lord Sasori for being late, I had to-!"

*Squelch!*

It happened so quick that it felt like a slight shove on his chest, and before he knew it. His eyes look down and then they widen in horror as blood trinkled from his chest, down to his pants and ankles.

The tip of Sasori's tail blade was pierced into his stomach by the tip, not deep enough to actually cut through to cut vital organs, but deep enough that it could inject any kind of poison on him.

Akin to that of a real scorpion.

"Didn't I make it clear that I don't like to be kept waiting?! I forgave you the first two times, but you thought that I would let you off for a third?! Do you take me for a fool?!" Sasori snarled from inside of Hiruko but Kabuto could barely hear any of it as he attempts to pull out the tail out of his body, but it was as if his arms were asleep on his side and they couldn't move.

He wanted to voice his apologies but his throat felt closed and when he opened his mouth, only wheezes and small breaths come out. In that moment, he knew exactly what kind of poison he used on him.

Curare

"What was that? You wanted to sing out another one of your pathetic excuses? Speak up." Sasori chuckled as he knew full well that Kabuto was unable to speak out any words at the moment. Only his eyes are able to move around.

The puppeteer removes his tail from Kabuto's chest, but decides to wrap it around Kabuto to lift him up so that he could drag him to his workshop. Kabuto's eyes dart around, silently unable to say anything.

Sasori had forced him to stay seated on of the chairs available as Kabuto was forced to stay and watch Sasori carry on his work as if everything that happened, didn't happen at all. His glasses tilted as his head turned to the side. What made it worst is that not only was he unable to move, he also was in a LOT of muscle pain on his body, as if he had a cramp onto his entire body. Everytime he tried to talk or even take a deep breath, only wheezes and chocked gasps of air would come out.

He had no idea exactly how long he has been in this state, despite that the only clock in the room hasn't changed hands. The light would turn off, then back on, then off, and then on again. Drool started to seep on the corner of his mouth and onto the floor and Sasori grumbled as if annoyed that Kabuto did what he had no control over.

"Ugh! You're making a mess on my tools! Fine, it seemed like it has been long enough that you have learned your lesson, eh?" He pulls out another vial as he take out a clean syringe with a needle and he fills the tube with the suspicious fluid, "Here's the antidote. Perhaps this punishment was enough for you to know to not piss me off again. And if you ever so think of arriving late and making me wait again, I'll test out something far worst on you." A wooden had grips onto his chin and he forces Kabuto to nod to their conditions whether he agreed or not.

He felt a small prick on his arm and the cold fluid was injected into his arm, sending a small chill throughout his entire body. But despite that he has been given the antidote, his breathing was slowly getting better. But unexpectedly, he begins to drift to sleep. But not till he hears their words towards him, "Should let you move in 6 hours or more. As soon as you wake up, I want you to get the hell out of my shop and get back to work..."

And at those words, Kabuto instantly passes out onto Sasori's floor.

tagging @lunyraartistry (thank you for allowing us writers to use your prompts! :D )