#(it's not great at interacting and wants a nonviolent way to get attention)

[cherubchoirs]

V1 crawling all over gabriel like weevils………..effervescent

i just think v1 would always want to be in his face and this is the only way it knows how. like to imagine that at first gabe's really annoyed by it but soon it's a zero communication thing. v1 just starts vaulting up his body and he seamlessly helps it up no matter what angle it comes at him from

[fractualized]

Hey

Don't really consume original batman comics, can't have acess to this things but I started to read and watch batjokes stuff. I'll say that I consume from the dark and reflecting to the wholesome peak, and one of that keeps heartwarming me is Telltale batjokes. Love how John can go from scary smiling creature to a precious sweetheart. Also like to see different versions of Joker interactions with the batfam in the various fancomics and fanfics. What makes think how I don't see many fics about John Doe with the batfam. Of course I see that is because the Telltale universe doesn't have the Bruce's kids, what is really sad because I think that "collision" could give us some truly great things.

What scenarios do you think it could be treated on these stories that you haven't saw being made yet?

Also, I saw once a post a person made talking how they'd like about John exploring more his sexuality. Like, that would focus more in the John's experiences out of Arkham BEFORE meeting Bruce again. Trying new clothes, talking with new people, discovering makeup (that I think he wouldn't get acess in Arkham). Do you have any thoughts about that too?

Recently I watched some videos that talk about John's possible disorders. How looks like he keeps switching from 'John' to 'Joker' and how he was way more "Joker" in Arkham, maybe having a kind of personality disorder. Sure, must be in that way because they wanted a different John from the one that we have in season one, but we can dream about this a little bit, can we?

That was long. Sorry for the errors, english it's not my language. Like your fics btw. The more I read some things, more I like the whole fan creation stuff and understand better too.

Thank you for the message, and for enjoying my fic! No worries about the length. I'll take your questions one by one:

John Doe and the Batfam

I think one of the reasons not a lot of people (including me) have incorporated the batfam into Telltale fic is that a big selling point for writing it is that the Telltale-verse is its own thing. There's much, much less history to complicate matters if you want to write a canon-compliant story, which includes there being no children to distract Bruce from his relationship with John, which a lot of fic focuses on. The batjokes is certainly what I enjoy! I don't have anything against the batfam (and I'm actually trying to read a little more about at least some of them), but since that interest has never been super high, my fic ideas never went in that direction.

If I do think about bringing in batfam, well, I get a little stuck.

While John is a lighter flavor of Joker, he's still a Joker, and Joker is not a parental person. In the comics he has had some interesting nonviolent interactions with kids, indulging or even protecting them, but that's not the same as being responsible for them. And one of the stronger Joker characteristics John has is his obsession with Bruce and wanting his attention. I don't think John would go all "Death of the Family" on a kid brought into the manor, but he would be wildly jealous. Like, my first plot bunny is John getting a visit from Bruce, who tells him about witnessing this tragic accident at the circus that left a poor child acrobat orphaned, and wanting to help him. Then over more visits, we get a story of little Dick Grayson insisting on investigating his parents murder, so intently that he becomes Bruce's vigilante partner. And John, who's been gnawing on his jealousy over Bruce spending all this time with some kid, loses his shit that an 8-year-old is a better vigilante than he ever was. Just spiraling about how Bruce is forgetting about him. He breaks out, insisting he can help, but just gets thrown back in again. A tragedy!

Okay, let's try one with John out of Arkham, and let's go non-chronological this time and say Bruce meets Jason Todd first. Jason's trying to steal the batmobile's tires, of course, but he's also a witness to a murder or something, so Bruce brings him home. This time John directly witnesses Bruce bonding with a troubled kid, and the jealousy is worse because John recognizes all the ways Bruce calms him down. John and Jason don't get along at all because John is constantly trying to get Bruce to shuttle this kid off to a nice foster home, but similar to the scenario above, Jason's moxy earns him a Robin spot. Then a twist! Jason has leaned into Bruce's mentoring because he wants to find his mother, who he's sure is alive! And John is like, well dang, I'll help you find her if it gets you out of my house. And in some eerie parallels to Jason's comic death, they end up overseas and find Sheila Haywood, who it turns out is defrauding the aid organization she works for. On being discovered, the men she's working with attack Jason, and John has this terrible opportunity to take his jealousy past the brink and let whatever happens to Jason happen-- but he doesn't. He saves Jason instead, not just because he knows Bruce would be wrecked but because he sees parts of himself reflected in Jason. There, that's sort of nicer! I still don't think John would be parental after that, but it would be nicer??

John's Self-Exploration

See, the thing with John having new experiences after getting out of Arkham is that they have to be limited, because that's key to what happens with his character in the game. He's really struggling with finding who he is, because he keeps trying to emulate other people rather than figure out what he personally wants to do with this life. (Which would be understandable even if he was the average person. It's easier to model yourself after somebody else than to put yourself out there again and again to figure out what works for you.) Before Bruce reappears, John is focused on being who he thinks Harley wants him to be and having a place with the gang. It ties into his hatred for Riddler, who just outright disdained of him instead of simply tolerating him like, say, Freeze.

He still naturally does some exploration, of course. He has to dress himself outside of Arkham, and he's a talkative guy so he managed to find, uh, acquaintances outside of the Pact at the Stacked Deck. It probably would have helped him a lot if he'd done more of that, but as much as he seems to act independently in the game, all too often it's in service of impressing Harley or then Bruce. If I were to write about John's exploration, it would probably be about restraint. He would be full of curiosity about the ways other people express themselves, and he'd stifle it because he's not sure if that's what Harley would want. Makeup would be a big curiosity for sure, but I can see John not indulging either because he doesn't see a lot of other guys wear it or because he asked Harley if he could try her kit and she decided to psych him out about it because she could.

Is it too drastic to say that a John who had even trepidatious confidence for self-exploration might have found more balance and avoided his fate in the game? Maybe, but I have to wonder.

John In Arkham Versus Outside Arkham

Personally I tread lightly when it comes to assigning specific disorders to John. It's one thing if someone recognizes their own diagnosis in him and uses that to inform a fic. When it comes to the writing in the game, as far as I can tell, it was just working off characteristics common to the Joker: impulsive, manipulative, self-important, and infatuated with violence, with a poor sense of boundaries and an inappropriate sense of humor. Those traits may be consistent with certain disorders, but there aren't that many fic scenarios where I would feel the need to specify what applies to John, and in those cases I would be extremely careful. When it comes to pure speculation? I'm just not qualified. Heck, I have a fic where I gave John a heart diagnosis and I'm still hoping I wasn't super off-base.

As for the shift from "Joker" to "John," I ascribe to the fish-out-of-water explanation (which, yeah, papers over how Telltale simply needed to change his character for the story). John learned a more aggressive way to navigate life when he was incarcerated in a corrupt asylum, and when the rules he lived by there did not apply outside of it, he had to re-map. Not only did he have to learn different ways to behave, but he had to do it while feeling more off-kilter than usual, exposed and vulnerable. Make a mistake when living in Arkham, you just get put in a deeper hole in Arkham. Make a mistake outside of Arkham, you lose all your newfound freedom and get thrown back behind bars. I don't see a "switch" in John, just him reverting to more aggressive behavior at times, especially when he's under stress.

Well, I hope my thoughts were… interesting? I feel like I pushed back on most of your starting points and that's probably annoying. Sorry!

[mikeshanlon]

do you like astrology and if you do what signs do you think the losers are

Okay so shoutout @denbrough (mo) for helping me with this, also @stenbranlons (claudia) for nodding alongin our gc, I’m sorry we talked about this for like a week RGLKNRG. To preface,we are in no way astrology experts lmao, we pulled from several differentsources and picked which ones we felt fit best. Which, that being said, we didnot consider any of the canon birthdays for this, just vibes. Ik some peopleare very particular about astrology headcanons LGRNG so these are just our ownopinions, any differing ones are not less valid or whatever. Also, charts arevery complex and have many different factors, like Mercury for communicationand Venus for love, etc, we just decided to do the main three placements. Incase some of y’all don’t know, someone’s Sun sign is essentially their basicidentity and personality, it’s how we act in the world, and our conscious mind.Our moon sign is our emotional self, our unconscious, how we react tothings, our deepest needs. Some astrologists say this is more like our “trueself”. One’s rising or ascendant sign is our social personality, it is howpeople perceive us, and often how we perceive the world and new experiences—it representsthe “outward”. Some refer to it as the mask we wear around others, though thatdoes not mean our rising/ascendant is fake, but rather how we act and thinkwhen interacting with our environment. Anyways because this is me, theseexplanations became super fucking long so I’m sorry about that! This was superfun though, thank you for asking!

Bill:

Leo Sun: Leos are leaders, theyare very charming and pull people in with their loyalty, humor, and confidence.All of the losers love Bill and are very enraptured by him, Leos tend to be inthe spotlight and adored, so I think this is very fitting. They always want tohelp people but sometimes they can also get fixated and arrogant and end up neglectingwhat others need—for instance Bill being so fixated on finding Georgie that hedoesn’t totally realize the other losers are really scared and getting hurt. Still,Leos are very inspiring and fearless and want their people to be happy. Leosare also quite romantic and generous, which I think are traits that can beattributed to Bill.

Cancer Moon: Okay so I have alwayssaid Bill has Big Cancer Energy, but I think it makes most sense as hisemotional self. Cancers are caretaker types; they want the best for theirfriends and do whatever they can to help them. They are persuasive—sometimes tothe point of manipulation. Many Cancers are afraid of rejection/abandonment(hello Bill’s shitty parents and him holding onto the idea of his brother foras long as possible!) Because they are so caring and sensitive towards theirfriends, they can be quite moody—both anger and sadness. (Bill be Crying andpunching his friends sometimes doe!) Cancers like art and are very imaginative(Bill’s art and writing). When I think of Cancers, I think of tender h*rniness.They fall in love very easily and crave a deep love and can be v thirsty attimes lmao, to me that really encapsulates Bill. Cancer Moons are also verydomestic and love comfort, and while I think Bill likes to go on adventures, Ithink he is someone who enjoys a sort of domestic routine with the people heloves from time to time. Cancer also rules the moon so he’s Extra EmotionalLNRGRG.

Aries Rising: Those with Ariesrising are often leaders, lively, generous, warm, and have a reputation ofbeing a troublemaker. They are rash and jump into situations (HELLO BILL KINGOF DUMB IMPULSE DECISIONS). But, they are very engaging and can be greatmotivational speakers (Neibolt speech teas). They want to help friends to thepoint that if they refuse, an Aries rising individual will refuse to acceptthat rejection. Furthermore, sometimes they can come off a bit like arrogantassholes, but they really do care about their friends and just want to helperklgneg. Aries rising people are very emotional and their impulsiveness cansometimes translate into rushing serious relationships.

Mike:

Libra Sun: Libras are very diplomatic;they bring harmony and balance and can see multiple sides. I think this fitsMike very well, for instance during the scene where the losers are by the PaulBunyan statue, Mike understands why Stan is looking at this logically but healso understands Bill’s emotional reaction. He also understands why Bill andBeverly think they should stay together and help, but he also understands whyRichie/Ben/Stan don’t want to keep going. He tries to get everyone to calm thefuck down and cooperate. Libras hate conflict, aside from Mike’s nonviolence(not wanting to kill the sheep and hesitating to hurt Henry until he knew itwas life or death), he also avoided telling all the losers about why he askedthem to return, showing sometimes his aversion to conflict can be a negative. Librasoften get fixated on one thing—the crazy conspiracist Mike of it all… Iunderstand why people think he could be a Taurus because of his commitment tothe losers and staying in Derry for 27 years, but I think that is super tied tothe idea of bringing justice for those who P*nnywise killed and will try to kill,Libras are super into fighting against injustice. Also, Libras are ruled byVenus and love love and are very charming, I think Mike has a certain pull andmagnetism about him.

Taurus Moon: Individuals withtheir moon in Taurus are very warm, affectionate, and sentimental. They like togather all the facts but can be somewhat impressionable, again I think thismakes sense with how he decides that he believes pennywise exists and hisresearch as he stays in Derry. Speaking of, this line from Mo’s book killed me:“when you’re confronted with a problem you look for the most effective way todeal with it, and even if it’s personally painful for you, you get it handled”.Like. Oh my god. They also like creature comforts—often Taurus is linked withluxury but I think in this sense his ‘luxury’ is his kitschy clutter of thingsthat hold sentimental value—supernatural items, knick knacks from his childhood,his favorite books, etc. He holds these dear and this is probably why his homeis a big ol mess but he likes it and finds it cozy. Speaking of, they are veryromantic and want a life of domesticity, which feels very Mike to me! Theyinvest a lot in their friendships, I think this is true of Mike as well seeingas you know.. he sacrifices years of his life so they can be happy.

Capricorn Rising: Those withCapricorn rising can be quite shy with strangers, but once they get to knowpeople, they are very friendly and warm. They are very dedicated to theirgoals, these goals are often to strive for a better life (Mike wanting to savethe people of Derry, Mike wanting to travel, etc). But sometimes this strivingcan make Cap risings feel unfulfilled and they continue to search for somethingmissing. Capricorn rising individuals are smart and concentrated, they are ableto parse through information and plan ahead, though sometimes they go overevery detail too much—Mike is very into research and understanding things andsearches every possibility. They love deeply and are very loyal and protectiveof those they love. They can worry a lot. Mo also added that cap risings are dependent,reliable, and stable. which can be attributed to mike staying in derry allthose years and keeping that promise to call them. Overall he’s very groundedand down to earth with his rising/moon!

Stan:

Virgo Sun: Virgos are veryanalytical and pay attention to the little details. Often times, this leads tothem being very critical of themselves and others, and they are prone toworrying. I think Stan is someone who tries to navigate through life logically,but he can get caught up in the anxieties of everything going wrong and getoverwhelmed. They often like animals and nature (not to be like Stan likesbirds and plants and shit but he does GLKNRG), and value cleanliness, sometimesthis leads to germaphobia or hypochondria especially because Virgos tend toworry (and we know Stan is a germophobe and deals with OCD, he has to clean thebloody bathroom in a certain way, the painting needs to be perfectly straight,etc.). In friendships, Virgos usually play a role of an advisor—they are veryloyal and want to solve problems but sometimes that means they find problems ineverything (I think Stan tries to advise the group but also Bill is like okaylet’s do it like this

Pisces Moon: Some people view Stanas very emotionless or even angry, but I think he’s quite emotional, he justtries to operate with logic first. Pisces moons are often described as ‘dreamy’and want to escape reality (Stan being like it’s summer let’s just forget what’sgoing on and… other stuff lmao). They are very emotional, but those emotionscan be hard for others to read because they are very mysterious, and even hardfor the individual to express. They have a strange sense of humor (kookiekookie lend me your bonessssss). Those with Pisces moon are very sweet andsensitive to others suffering and are drawn to those in crisis often (like.Literally all of the losers LKGNRKRG) and can be overly trusting (I swear Bill!!!).They are also very afraid of the past coming back to haunt them… :(. Mo the ultimate Stan stan also had this to say: ever since claudia tagged one ofmy posts about stan being one of the most emotional losers but no one evertalking about it, i'm constantly thinking about how stan reacts to things. myinitial reaction was scorpio moon, but scorpio moons are really good at hidingtheir emotions. think about stan's reactions to big events in his life: gettingleft alone in the sewers, his bar mitzvah getting mike's call. he has distinctemotional reactions. pisces is also the sign of sorrow and self-undoing, sothinking back to some canon events it just makes a lot of sense to me. piscesmoons are also really selfless when it comes to their friends, but very strictand disciplined when it comes to themselves.

Aquarius Rising: There’s thissection in Mo’s astrology book that just like. So completely encapsulates Stanand how he interacts with the losers imo: “You are often intolerant of otherpeople’s shortcomings and can be wickedly sarcastic and very funny at the sametime. Your razor-sharp powers of observation help you uncover flaws that youcan poke fun at. You are a system of paradoxes. You enjoy being with people butare perfectly content to be alone. You like to travel but love relaxing athome. You are friendly and outgoing but, at other times, moody and reserved.” Like!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Also, those with their rising in Aquarius are very idealistic and want theworld to be happy and harmonious (Stan being like its summer can we chill andnot wanting to be part of any conflict). They can also feel impatient towardsthose who don’t share the same vision.

Beverly: (imma be honest Bev was the hardest toplace so don’t judge lerngerg)

AquariusSun: To me, Aquarians are the epitome of like… chill/friendly stonerthat likes to talk about conspiracy theories and injustices of the world whiley’all are seshing but they are also kinda mysterious bc you never really knowwhats going on in their head …. which is v Bev to me RLGKNNKRG. Aquarians lovehanging out with friends and are really good listeners, which I think is trueof Beverly—they also have odd senses of humor. They are humanitarians that liketo fight for justice, I think Bev is someone who wants to fight for those whoare being hurt bc it’s something she has experienced and wants to provide thehelp that she didn’t get. For instance, she’s the one who’s like we need to gosave Mike, and she also wants to help save Derry and agrees with Bill that theyshould keep fighting Pennywise during the big fight after Neibolt. Aquarians canbe quite paradoxical—at times they are shy, other times loud and eccentric, Ithink this makes sense for Bev, another quality is that those with their sun inAquarius like to have some time alone, both of these things make me think ofthe moments she enjoys on her own and the other times she seeks out fun withthe losers and does crazy shit like jump off a cliff LKGNKNRG. They can bekinda bad at emotional expression and are very guarded with their emotions,sometimes coming of cold/bitchy until they know they can trust someone (Bev toBen at first on the stairs elrkgnerg).

Aquarius Moon: okay Mo wrote this explanation and I thot it was perfect so: Moon in Aquarius brings upthe qualities of sensitivity and perception. Since aqua is the sign of rationalthinking and humanitarianism, moon in Aquarius gives a person a clear mindsetand kinder outlook on life. Moon in Aqauarius are rational, intuitive, andimaginative, which i think can speak for a lot of beverly's character traitsand actions like her monologue in it 2017 where she tries to rationally explainwhy pennywise is going after them and how they have to defeat it, whereaseveryone else is struck by fear and emotional, or at the end of it 2019 whereshe tells richie that eddie is dead, and being intuitive enough to know thatshe has to tell him and tell him in a specific way, the imagination quality isa clear call to her artistic vision as a designer. aqua moons have greatvitality, they're witty conversationalists, and all around great friends. ithink that the friendliness and sociability of her aqua moon can be offset byher sag rising so there's more balance and nuance to her characteristics there.they're interested in the unusual, specifically in people, which could link herto vibing so well with the losers club. they can't stand possessive or jealouslovers, but they unconsciously choose people who aren't available to them (herfirst husband). they need a fine line between commitment and independence,which i think speaks to her behavior as a kid. she needs the stability and thespace to grow she didn't have from her dad. they deeply value platonic love. overall,aqua moons are independent, they have stimulating minds, persuasive charms, anda side of their personality that will always gear towards the unusual

SagittariusRising: Sagittarians love hanging out with their friends, but they alsohave the desire to be free and have adventures (I want to run towardssomething, not away! Queen). They are wise but optimistic, again I think thisties with things like her understanding that they all have to stick together tobeat pennywise, but also believing that they have the ability to kill It aswell. They are humorous and can be quite outgoing and confident, there aretimes when Bev is v confident and wild (teasing Ben, jumping off the cliff,initiating the rock war, etc). Sag risings are also v brave—like every single timeshe fights It or the Bowers or her dad or her husband. They’re good at tellingstories. They are also people who fight for the oppressed and want to createideas that help the world.

Ben:

Pisces Sun: Pisces are super friendlyand will do anything to help others even if they don’t get anything back(Ben!!!!!!!! Ben!!!!!!). They are very compassionate and gentle with others, I thinkthis is very true for Ben as he is p much always super sweet and understanding withthe losers. Their compassion can sometimes lead to being way too trusting—this canbe a problem bc they could fall in with bad company and hate being criticizedand sometimes views themselves as a victim. I don’t think Ben ever tries to like…capitalize on being a victim or anything but I think he does feel that waysometimes especially in regards to Bill/Bev, but he understands that’s her owndecision, again being very compassionate and not expecting anything out of hisactions. Sometimes their strong emotions can manifest in negative ways, likebeing scared, sad, and feeling misunderstood—they also can cry p easily (Ben criesquite a bit for his friends like in the sewers and his own romantic feelingsand stuff). They are super romantic and love unconditionally. They are also quiteintuitive, I think this makes sense (in tandem with the romanticism) withthings like kissing Bev to save her, understanding where to look into stuff inregard to the pennywise bullshit, etc.

Taurus Moon: We’ve talked aboutthis a bit with Mike, but I think Ben is also a Taurus Moon! LunarTaureans are very sentimental and have deep, strong emotions. They are vromantic and hang on to their relationships, both platonic and romantic, (thepostcard…….) they want a devoted and committed relationship that providessecurity. Those with their moon in Taurus really invest a lot in their friendships,I think friendship is one of if not the most important thing to Ben so thismakes a lot of sense to me. There’s a line in one of the sites I looked at thatfeels SO Ben to me: “Taurus moon sign energy has two speeds: relaxed andcontented […] or hyped-up and ready to charge”. That totally reminds me of howBen is usually p chill and easy going but when the people he loves arethreatened he goes crazy to protect them (the rock war scream and him going crazyduring that LGKNNRG and fighting pennywise, etc). While Mike’s affinity for luxuryis more like…. Kitschy clutter trash GLNRG, I think Ben’s interest in architecturefeels v luxurious and the importance of a home base makes sense for him. TaurusMoons also like to gather all the facts first—this makes sense in how heapproaches his friendships/relationships but also other things like investigatingDerry.

Libra Rising: Let’s go diplomatic romanticslet’s goooooooooo!!! Libras want harmony and are therefore good mediators, theywant everyone to have a good time and are good at teamwork. I think this makessense for Ben and can especially be seen in scenes like the reunion dinnerwhere he tries to calm everyone down and let Mike be heard. They are persuasivebut often do so with a ‘nice guy’ approach rather than like Charm andConfidence like Leo/Aries. Again, Libra Risings are SUPER romantic and havegood intuition, they usually know when they have a chance with someone and willcreate an ideal vibe for their relationships to bloom. They like to plan aheadfor the future with their loved ones (hello argument scene where he’s like imgonna be 30 and far away from here). They also feel like they need anotherhalf, which i think is true for romance but also just like. He needs hisfriends and really loves/cares about them. Those with their rising in Libraalso really care about home aesthetics and having a balanced space, again I thinkaiding in his architecture career.

Eddie

Sagittarius Sun: Tbh, I was v tornbetween sag and scorpio for Eddie’s sun, but I think Sagittarius best describeshis sun and Scorpio for his emotional self. Sagittarians are curious and fullof energy, and they value freedom (hello let Eddie be free!!!!!!). They can besuper impatient and tactless with some of the things they say, which is a veryEddie thing to me lernrgge. Furthermore, they can get angry pretty quickly aswell, and often talk quickly too (Eddie speaks so fucking fast and snaps easilyat everyone erglknegr). They also have good senses of humor; they like to teaseothers. Those with sun in Sagittarius are dedicated to their friends and arewilling to do anything… like defy their awful mother and crawl through a sewerwith a broken arm to fight a murderous clown. Sometimes they have blind faithin others, which I think could be translated to his relationship with Bill andto a more intense and negative respect, his mother. Sags want to find knowledgeand understand other people’s beliefs, and they are very vocal about their own,even to the point of exaggeration (like every single rant Eddie goes on LMAO).They also like sports which like LET EDDIE RUNNNN. Also, not to be a reddie butin looking at compatibility with the signs Gemini/Sag fit so much better forthem and made a lot of sense to me.

Scorpio Moon: Those with theirmoon in Scorpio are very emotionally intense and can be quite dramatic. Thiscan allow them to be quite perceptive of the emotions of others. However, theyare very good at hiding their own emotions because they often disprove of themand deny that they are motivated by their strong emotions. (hello repressedEddie). This helps Scorpio moons feel in control, but it can be detrimental. Ireally love this line from Mo’s book: “you must learn to let go emotionally andfeel your pain, and through the experience expand your phenomenalability to love”. Yup lover!!!! Scorpio moons are also very determined andpersistent…. fighter eddie!! Lover and fighter eddie!!! This made me kinda sad,but it says that there’s usually sorrow/trouble in the lives of Moon-Scorpiosand those are often tied to family and health… :/ and that they think ofescapist fantasies to cope with that. Scorpio moons are sensual but thestereotype of ~super sexy scorpio~ is kind of misleading. They have huge trustissues and don’t want to be controlled (oop… also they usually get married multipletimes lmao), it takes a lot for them to be trusting in love but when they do it’sa very deep love.

Virgo Rising: Those with theirrising in Virgo are BIG worriers and are super analytical, they often noticetiny details. (Maybe a dumb thing but Eddie is always the first to notice whenone of their friends is gone in the sewers, also in more funny and little wayslike him sniffing Ben’s perfume—that also ties in with his Sag curiosity imo).However, even though they notice details and can be intuitive, they miss out onemotional nuances. Sometimes they can be a little too forward and matter offact with people—I think Eddie speaks before he thinks a lot LKRG and can saysome rude shit sometimes without realizing it. (Ik this is kinda like my own stuffbleeding through but in general I think Eddie can be oblivious to other’semotions LRNGKNLG). They are very critical—often towards themselves, they areinsecure and beat themselves up over just about every little thing they do (SUCHan Eddie thing to me). Furthermore, they are guarded with their emotions untilthey have analyzed the situation and feel comfortable (again. Very Eddie tome). This often means they come off as timid and at times cold/stand-offish,which I think in new situations or times when Eddie’s unsure (aka has not analyzedeverything and feels unsafe whether physically or with his emotions), he tendsto draw in on himself and stay quiet. (But, then, his fire Sag side comes burstingout when he just can’t take it anymore and goes bonkers LKGRNG). Virgo risingsare organized and care about hygiene and cleanliness and are very in tune withtheir body (of course, Eddie’s obsession with cleanliness and hygiene/healthhas a lot to do with his mother’s abuse, but I also think there are some parts withinhim inherently who care about those things, it just got exacerbated in anextremely negative way bc of his mother). Interestingly, Virgo risings are veryenergetic, often with nervous energy, and have a hard time staying still—this feelsvery Eddie to me, his pacing and emphatic hand gestures, etc.

Richie:

Gemini Sun: Geminis are superwitty and funny and love to have a grand ol’ chaotic time with their friends,but then can turn serious suddenly. Oftentimes they feel restless and feel likethey are missing their other half so to speak (the yearning… the emo moments…).They’re very sociable and hate being alone, they love to entertain others, theyare strong communicators. Their love for communication often means they feelthe need to talk A LOT, even to strangers. (Trashmouth Tozier always talking!—Mopointed out that Richie’s talking is so bad that they had to create a separate phase,beep beep, just to be like We Seriously Want You To Shut Up, which I thinkmakes sense for all his placements bc they’re all like. One’s where the person talksso fucking much GRLNRG my annoying king

Gemini Moon: Yup double geminilove this obnoxious legend!!! (jk I like geminis but. It’s true. I am also sayingthis as a gemini moon). A lot of the stuff about his sun can be applicable herebut I’ll add on bc I am incapable of shutting up (the gemini moon of it all…) Thisis from Mo’s book again, I’ll just add some commentary/examples as to why Ithink it fits with Richie: Gemini moons are mutable and erratic. they have anactive mind, and imaginative and creative personality, and are inclined to intellectualpursuits. they have extraordinary quick sensory impressions of the outsideworld and they rapidly sift through info in their minds to make judgements.fast learners, high iqs probably , good critics and have the ability to bothanalyze and verbalize (despite some fanon interpretations, Richie is actually reallysmart, he’s good at math/science, I believe he’s also into politics later in college?).they have great charm. conversations with gemini moons tend to go off onunexpected tangents and take sudden turns and reverse (This feels SO Richie tome lekrnglenr). at heart, a lunar gemini is essentially restless and needsconstant stim (Makes sense for Richie for me, also with his ADHD, he needs tobe playing video games or reading a comic or doing this and that, he hatedhaving to be look out and do nothing for like an hour ergklnerg). lunargemini's are always mentally assessing their feelings. they tend to dissecttheir feelings and emotions to analyze why they think or behave in a certainway. they're quick witted and vibrant and can change their minds often. inemotional relationships they display a free spirit, going on the whims of theother person's emotions. at times their talent can be isolated because theylose interest in this quickly and drop their projects. they perform well whenin a relationship with someone practical and hardheaded (inch resting……..)

Pisces Rising: Taking some morestuff from Mo’s book, these lines I think really resonate with Richie’s outwardself and how he deals with the world: “You want life to be perfect and since itisn’t, you choose not to see what you don’t want to see”. That is SUCH a Richiething to me. “At parties Rising-Pisceans are vivacious and verbal (sometimesyou talk too much); you enjoy performing in front of a group. A talent formimicry makes many Pisces Ascendants turn to theater”. Literally Richie… the Voices,the talking too much and wanting to entertain the losers…. Those with Piscesrising are also very romantic and want to live a fantasy life, but they can bevery sad and moody especially because they feel like they are destined to bealone. (Richie yearning gay….) They are also quite disorganized but work wellin groups (let’s go loserssss clubbbbbb!!!).

[fruit-teeth]

Fem!merc OCs: a character list

LONG POST UP AHEAD

People were interested in my fem!merc OCS, sooooo here you go! Just some background: these characters will be in my fanfic Black Sky (which can be found here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18373481/chapters/43506845) but since they haven’t really been introduced there I’ll introduce them here. 

These characters work for a company called Sterling Enterprises, run by another OC of mine named Sterling. He hires these mercenaries, and in Black Sky, they wind up joining forces with Mann Co.

Anyway, here they are. I got a little carried away at points but I hope that’s not a problem! 

Molly (Fem!Scout)

Molly is a twenty-three-year-old woman from Brooklyn hired by Sterling Enterprises as a mercenary. She’s Scout’s female counterpart and she’s just as fast as him, as well as just as dangerous when provoked. However, she’s very friendly and sweet to the people she likes, and she’s outgoing and loves parties.

Despite this, she tends to get angry easily, and she’s had multiple arrests for picking fights with people, namely with other women. She survived a bad childhood with her mother’s cousin and after one particularly bad incident, she was bounced from various foster homes before eventually ending up back with her mother as a teenager. Much later, she and her mother were both hired by Sterling Enterprises as mercenaries, where they’ve been ever since.

Veronica (Fem!Sniper)

At 30 years old and possibly originating from somewhere in Ireland (although this has never been confirmed), Veronica is an incredibly skilled archer and won several scholarships during her youth as a result of her amazing ability. She uses guns too, but she’s always felt more comfortable holding a bow than a gun. Veronica’s life changed forever when she shot and killed her abusive husband, which led to her arrest, and when the court didn’t believe her story about self-defense it seemed like she was facing a great deal of prison time. So, Veronica was rather surprised when Sterling appeared and offered her a deal: if he bailed her out of prison, she would serve as a mercenary for his company. Having no other options at the time, she agreed and left prison to work with him, where she has remained ever since.

Veronica is very soft-spoken and gentle, but when provoked she can become an absolute nightmare. She’s a vicious fighter with a near perfect aim, although she knows when to be kind to good people and when to calm down. She doesn’t have many friends but she’s very loyal to the friends she does have.

Mimi (Fem!Demo)

Upon leaving her home in Italy and moving to the US during her childhood, Mimi took out her frustration by spending whatever money she had and using it to buy small explosives. She would then light the explosives in desolate areas like fields, just for the fun of watching them explode. When she became an adult and managed to hold a job as a factory worker, Mimi’s obsession with explosives spiraled out of control when she bought a crate of dynamite and lit it inside of a church at night, which she did in response to the church keeping her from adopting a child. Obviously, she was arrested but was only put through therapy after she was deemed ‘incompetent’ to stand trial. Shortly after this, Sterling discovered her at a shopping mall and offered her a job, which she accepted right away.

Mimi is very excitable but doesn’t always know how to interact with others positively. She loves making friends but prefers spending time around children or animals, which has tied into her desire to be a mother. She taught herself how to create explosives from various materials she found in either the junkyard or from any other bizarre place, and she’s also learned how to be very resourceful. Mimi doesn’t like authority figures and is very strong-willed, although she’s gotten more agreeable over the years.

Judith (Fem!Spy)

Judith’s origins are virtually unknown, but all she’s ever divulged about her backstory is this: she started out as a special effect artist in Hollywood, and it was very clear that she had amazing talent in that area right from the beginning. However, that all changed when she used her skills to disguise herself as her boss in order to get into a high-end VIP club, which obviously led to her getting fired. After this incident, Judith moved on and took up a series of strange, shady jobs with many different companies. At some point during this period of her life, Judith gave birth to her daughter Molly but was unable to care for her at the time, so she gave Molly to her cousin to care for. Several years later, Judith nearly died from a failed mission but managed to survive, and it was in the hospital where she learned of Molly’s issues and decided to take her back.

Sterling learned of Judith through a colleague and was impressed with her skill, so he hired her as a spy, but Judith refused to go alone and asked if her daughter could work with her. Sterling agreed to this, as he needed extra help.

Judith is highly intelligent and well-trained in many areas, and she can even be manipulative in her ways of getting what she wants. While being dangerous, cold, and collected, she’s also very loyal to the right people in her life and she can be an excellent friend to have. She has a soft spot for her daughter, but obviously, she keeps this a secret as to not appear vulnerable.

Nell (fem!Soldier)

Nell was raised by a single father in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming, where she saw virtually no one besides her father daily. Her father, a war veteran, had gone deaf from his experiences on the battlefield and as a result, Nell had to constantly yell to get his attention. Now she’s used to speaking loudly and shouts most of the time, even in normal conversation. Nell’s father also trained her how to fight, and this led to her developing an intense infatuation with fighting and with battles in general, and over time she became a vicious killing machine.

After her father died unexpectedly, the house where the two had lived was about to be foreclosed on and when Nell refused to leave the house, the police had to come to remove her. Nell, however, refused to comply and ended up brutally killing a police officer after he pulled her hair.

Nell faced the death penalty for this offense, but before that was supposed to happen, she mysteriously disappeared, and no one went looking for her. This was because Sterling privately bailed out Nell and even bribed whoever he could to get her into his mercenary team, which Nell happily agreed to join. She doesn’t get action very often, but when she does, Nell is incredibly strong and deadly. Despite her strong and wild nature, Nell is a very loving friend to have and she’s rather childlike in her demeanor. She also has a bad habit of chewing on things which are not meant to be chewed on, like her sleeves or the straps of her helmet.

Scarlett (fem!Medic)

Once a nurse for a mental health ward in Wales, Scarlett had the credentials to be a full-fledged doctor herself but stayed a nurse anyway. She was well-respected at her job until one day, she walked in on a doctor abusing a female patient and lost it. Scarlett attacked the doctor, stabbing him repeatedly and then making the scene look like a suicide. The patient never turned Scarlett in, and charges were never pressed against her. However, Scarlett still quit the job out of guilt and moved to Sweden, where she met her soon to be wife Agnes. The two lived in Sweden for ten years before moving to the US, where they took up jobs as mercenaries for Sterling.

Scarlett has very strong opinions on what’s right and wrong, although her ideas on how society ‘should’ be in her eyes are a bit extreme to many. She wrote and attempted to publish a book about government conspiracy theories, but when no one would publish the book she painstakingly printed out several copies herself and gave them to her teammates, free of charge.

She can be very caring and gentle with her wife and her other teammates, but if angered she will fly into a violent, almost uncontrollable rage. This makes her the perfect doctor for the team, but also the perfect protector.

Agnes (fem!Heavy)

Agnes has not disclosed much about her origins in Sweden, but what is known is that she grew up on a farm with her family and spent most of her days handling cattle. This practice gave her incredible strength, which she still uses to her advantage today. She worked on a railroad during her teen years after dropping out of school, and when she turned 21 her parents began pressuring her to find a husband. Instead, she met Scarlett, and surprised her parents when they got married a year later.

Agnes doesn’t seem the fighting type, as despite her incredible strength she’s very kind and usually quite peaceful. However, she seems to become a different person when she or someone close to her is threatened, and her fighting skills are not something to be underestimated. Handling weapons is nothing new for her, as she has lots of experience working with machines and considers them easier to wrangle than a cow.

Ellen (fem!Engineer)

Under a normal circumstance, Sterling never would have noticed Ellen as she looked to be any other Louisiana factory worker, but she surprised everyone when she used her skills to build a robot that would sense when people got too close to machines in order to prevent accidents. Ellen tried to get the factory to put her device to use, but they rejected her ideas since they were considered ‘too costly’ to use. Instead, Sterling offered Ellen a job as a mercenary, and she accepted.

Ellen is rather nonviolent in nature and instead tries to work out situations diplomatically, but this doesn’t always work, and she ends up using weapons anyway. She didn’t like this at first, but when she discovered she could build any weapon she wanted she found a whole new love for her job. Sometimes she gets carried away, though, and creates weapons that are almost impossible to use since they’re so complex. Ellen is very motherly, especially to any teammates younger than her, and she loves team-building exercises and takes any excuse to socialize with her coworkers.

Amber (fem!Pyro)

All that’s known about Amber is that Ellen rescued her from an abusive situation, and Amber’s ability to work with fire combined with her resilient nature was enough to get her hired. Amber is nonverbally autistic, speaking mostly in sign although she resorts to writing notes as many of her teammates don’t know sign. She loves to set fires, and she has a fascination with watching things melt and burn.

Amber doesn’t always like to be touched, so she’s not very physically affectionate but she loves to give gifts to her teammates.

[moonflowershop]

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Face coverings are required to be worn whenever a person is in an enclosed space other than a private residence DNR spokeswoman Megan Sheridan spoke with McClatchy news and said that employees wearing masks about videoconferencing what with external partners sets a good example during the pandemic there is no fucking pandemic asked the problem by wearing a mask while videoconferencing with the general public we visually remind folks that masking is an important part of navigating the business of natural resources during this tumultuous time Sheridan said but maybe when a mask is just a way of tricking people into believing that were still under band was still in a pandemic where we never were to begin with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not advise wearing a face mask while social distancing in your home except under certain conditions Sheridan also said there was another reason employees were asked to Don masks while on remote videoconferences we ask staff to wear masks went on external. Net At the top of a small log is on the back in the shuffle for the active people so they Apple and if I did feel in the elemental effects at K Natalie is the make no I know this Garner made not just cactus anything flashing only in Connecticut are poorand nearly empty that me to the book me that if I can laugh at half ice over fast onionand fit in the most I can add that was in a boozeand lets them all down right to circulate barsand the don’t evolve our vessel before going to cut out at the kiosk at Adonijah the at the Kennedys increased please we we know provinces are going to be in territoriesand the important part just as different provinces choose different regimes around telling alcohol different places my choose different approachesand outward to work withand that’s why we’ve been talking about it taxand since the election are we giving people a yearand had heads up with this task force that went around the country that we are giving for the legislation at this time provinces have well over a year now close to 15 months to put in place their system that seems that the province chooses not to there will still be a way through the the federally regulated system for people in every corner this country to to that purchase marijuana get is one of the things that time that I’ve heard a lot from from leveling it now I think you’re right you with teenagers know how to get their hands on joints now that the teachers don’t don’t think he plans thereof as often as they shut there’s a lot of places people people the highest per capita users in the world in Canada legal marijuanaand getting someone in the dispensary the issue with with getting it from a friend about from a friend organized crime is as we thought we follow the interaction most law abiding Canadians have with criminalsand many law abiding Canadians have criminals isand purchasing three 3380 incorporate long termand medical marijuana the vision possible when you’re candlesticks seem to be right to the company acted two things in the great question first when you mention medical marijuana right now the medical marijuana system which I we’ve heard you all sorts of people how certain certain aspects of marijuana is really good for certain conditions on the medical marijuana system that exists in Canada will stay in for the coming years right now however the medical marijuana is the only system is the only illegal system also for recreational useand a lot of people are getting recreational marijuana through medical marijuana system so once we’ve created opportunities for adults to purchase marijuana recreational use legally on that take a lot of pressure off of the medical marijuana systemand will be able to make better determination to to support medical marijuana usersand producersand the research that needs to continue going onand so Ray had those two things is going to radically transform your the the environment in which medical marijuana currently works only in regards to license producers in itand it’s really good that you’re highlighting what were looking at is licensing the production of marijuana provinces will determine whether there so it sold to dispensaries or whether it sold to you liquor board serve the full board like have Ontario that the various approaches will be done by the promises but were going to regulate producers I’m sure there will be in there already have indications that there are going to be big corporate style players but at the same time we are very very much focused on taking shut there’s a market is going to need needsand interests of Canadians that I know I Canadians like you regardless of the big corporate beers people like the microbrews we we know that people that I want to choose organic or low pesticides or a particular this particular that Amir is going to be an opportunity for small producers to get regulatedand to to act itself as a part time meetingand the line are disproportionately peaceful nonviolent keeper Jody I think people should understand that you are coming at this from a different perspective on you’re coming at it from lifestyle in a business choice I’m coming at it from a public policyand safetyand health choice health approach we have a system working on it hurting Canadians it’s hurting minoritiesand turning young people the current system doesn’t work to protect our communities to protect our kids will need to change that we will change that we will change the law or taking the time necessary to get it right as we seen in places where it hasn’t exactly gone right on the we can learn fromand out we will move forward in a thoughtful way on on fixing past wrongs that happen because of this is that this erroneous law that I didn’t put in placeand I’m working hard to fix the site review legal justice away from the little dog away from his whole life to helping people is at least in you ever wanted to pay I would be so sure if healthcare reached out to the company that already exists like this you want to do is to write what is highly love to discern the same work for to us where the future now or will already a problem for one of the things in in the title Candyland you’re highlighting it there’s a lot of concerns about access by kids to ediblesand there’s a lot of concerns about about learning from Coloradoand elsewhere on the challengesand that so we haven’t had any she said the future that I agree but we don’t yet have full confidence that we know what regulated framework around edibles will look like on what it look like five years know what to look for like 10 years from now we have to get it right is a huge amount of pressure on this out were taking a big step towards actual legalization of cannabisand it’s in sat oil formsand dried forms were to be working on it within new at the new frameworkand it’s in the future but again were focusing on getting it right so people concerned about the marijuana harm reduction risk of the best known as a member of rat that is a personal connection marijuana is a my wife had breast cancerand sheand she had a vasectomyand then okay chemo than vasectomyand thenand then radiationand I in night in a community that cc using cannabis for further pain inand actually off of all opiatesand only using cannabis for nerve is brilliant but she so in the community going to chemo a lot of a lot of people use use this this cannabis for for a lot of different medical reasons to help them with with all kinds of things now with LPs the these license producers getting caught with with different pesticides different mill duesand things like that are extremely harmful for these people that have other at their their most vulnerable communityand I’m just wondering how can the government be be back make sure that they are to take care of the health of of people I absolutely appreciate what you’re saying I’ve heard stories like that all across the country that have built that’s why the current medical marijuana regime will stay in place exactly so how your wife is accessing her medical marijuana right now will continue beyond the legalization framework that were beingand for recreational we are not going to be moving reducing or limiting in any way the medical marijuana field we just know that right now medical marijuana on top of being used by people for radical prescription purposes are on is also test for someone who would just as happily by legally for recreational uses or or minor uses were legal so we know that were accidentally removing a lot of pressure from the medical marijuana system which will allow it to better serve a more look like the did the responsibility of the LPsand that the guidelines for them to make sure that it’s safe for for for people is her leg is there any way to ensure that these people were to be using cannabis that could potentially at their most vulnerable right like there there there at their most vulnerable in their community night is what makes you that’s can be safe again at the medical use of marijuana is going to continue in the way around license producers health Canada is going to regulate all license producers the way we regulate at any any broad range of consumer product I were going to make sure that they’re being properly madeand their concerns are of mold or mildewand I got there will be immediate consequencesand people will as an indigenous person going on knowing about a grassy Narrows knowing about you suicide knowing about like water problems I just I want to know how I can make trust these promises of of health for these people I understand the concernsand that’s one of the reasons why working to make sure that were listening to indigenous peoplesand giving opportunities for indigenous communities to access the license producer regime we know that we have to make sure their license producers right across the country at different communities have access to itand I noticed in definite workaround ensuring that indigenous producers are going to have an opportunity to be part of the at the legal that legalize fishing that’s that’s one of the things that were definitely looking within a legalized framework were going to be able to do the kind of research that hasn’t been properly undertook to to determine exactly what what can we anecdotally an awful lot of people in the medical marijuana community I believe very strongly I think it’s a great opportunity to actually advance medical science by understanding the medical system community has a very powerful drugs up for acute short term pain don’t have a lot of great drugs for chronic low grade but very young laying out long term pain marijuana is often prescribed exactly for that having better knowledge better understanding of that is entirely what were going to be able to do on the flipside it would we talked briefly about revenueand revenue is not part of it continues at a similar example there is no wait time for anyone searching for gambling addiction treatment on anyone who has a gambling addiction can get treatment very reasonably straightforward way because part of the profits from legal gambling is put into addiction addiction treatment programs similarly some of the revenue from from legalizingand taxing marijuana I will certainly go into research go into treatment go into support for a for people struggling with challenges welland this latest user guide is a trial based harm reduction worker that I have a question can’t turn again to action supporting people the past we crisis last time frame around 30 people working ranch can’t hear you are 14 peopleand four people every day to be but every day hereand tear a lot country keeper Jack dressed people’s belief in a contributing to your current plans are to we Christians units to Prime Minister you are to first of all thank you for the amazing work youand sat across the country doing youand I sat down on couple times now with front line workersand experts in in the lower East side Vancouver to talk directly about thisand the number the recommendation they asked for we brought in we made a number of changes easier to bring in prescription heroin into this country so that it can access that the people people who need it will have access to the that responsible at presenters like Eric you are definitely things that we can do is more that we can do however we made a commitmentand we got a mandate to legalize marijuana kept our kids to protect Canadians to make sure that were removing the criminal elements from from that were moving ahead on that I will moving in different ways on on on other grounds whether it’s for safe consumption sites letters better access to prescription opioidsand an even heroin there are things we can do that are helping but I agree it’s a crisisand we need to do bulk transfer flash resource is the only box the country prescriptions are not that resources the best preventionand people you are doingand her job people keep completely traumatized resources do I wear to you Mr Prime Minister you selected a minor in parts of the drive we pray you can’t get people did you hear about the product or delivering on healthcare we spending millions of dollars we we are spending tens of millions of dollars but I know there is more to do we will be doing more to support including supporting the front line workers who left spoke into whether it’s paramedics or or I or at front line support workersand reduction site who are going to PTSD because there are so many people dying on the we absolutely need to do more to support you more to support respond to this crisisand we are doing well your way to war were continuing to make sure that the safety of Canadians paramountand that we make decisions like unlike previous government were moving far out why we had reversed at previous decisions to to ban prescription heroin from coming to the country that we are listed we took took on locks they off the prescription sweep done significant things to move in the right direction will continue to work with front line front line activistsand advocates who are seeing this terrible crisis are things we can do internationally as well work with China to help stem the tide of fentanyl a car for an hour coordinating with youand I were doing a number of things but I agree it’s not getting that’s why working so closely with the provincesand municipalities of which there are moreand more to make sure that we get tag at this this public health emergency control well I’m not there yet or exhale the we all respect was respectedand people are working on the frontline I also worked on the front a different capacity but the evidence is is not strong that that simply making these drugs legally available is the answerand interspersed there’s a one simple solutionand that’s why our government does is looking at the best advice of experts in the evidence looking at certainly supply addictions important were doing work with our international partners demand reduction treatment research prevention rehabilitation contact is my calling my former colleagues in cities across the country they tell me that there’s virtually no rehabilitation bets no detox beds available to them as one of the reasonsand I’m so proud that our government made a commitment we recognize that there’s revenue opportunities in the our plan to legalizeand regulate cannabisand we made commitments to make investments in in Internet research which is so important in treatment in rehabilitationand treatmentand endand services on the front line that will save lots this are our intent is to do this by July 1 unnecessarily on July 1 there were a number of people nicely concerned about the impact of of doing this on the day in which we celebrate the birth of the country but didn’t change your intent of the government’s intent was always to get this work done I July 1 that’s our target without a great deal of work to do but it is a reasonable targetand we we can afford to drag our feet there is too much risk to our kids too much risk to our communities we made a commitmentand an tell you there’s a consensus across the country that we must do better we can do betterand that’s our commitmentand when we believe that if we all work hard together we get it done by July 1 how here in Birminghamand I were on the Jack Daniels that Michael than I am marijuana legal or as you said earlier he’s the most boring guy in the country on this I got beatand Iand I know that inand friendly I have no intention of using this drug personally but I will celebrate if were successful in doing a better job protecting her kids in her community that we were suffering I was arguing with the present of Uruguay at his farm as elementary to US legalize marijuana interior lighting getting ready for legalizeand regulate weed across the country from seed to smoke so we can figure out how to pull this off igneous lover’s paradise for only regulated cash crop the government in December 2013 Uruguay’s Congress passed a law that regulated the cultivation saleand consumption of marijuana was a watershed moment in history more potential new legitimate economy is an entirely legal from December until April of this year the government meetingand writing the specifics of the regulation which will likely be sentenced down in late Apriland take affect small turns out the devil is in the detailsand a lot of it is more questions than answers about individual liberty the prospect of a commercial we boomand more of the great Uruguayan experiment brought forward by the country’s progressive president has stirred up a heated debate from both sides of the anti prohibition I’ll at least make Hestiaand Danielle the dart are long time we advocatesand academics lease it was just released from prison where she spent three months locked up on marijuana charges she was one of the last people to be put away for pot we visit them in their home just outside the country’s capital is so awesome regarding the above looking for is from a is an online so you think the government will be terribleand growing weed is going to the is surveyand how many you don’t want to register because you want the government to know what you’re doing okay okay fascinating Fridayand so the get a clinician who said that the Chinook attendedand will change your little letter that I will you just being paranoid years of forced criminality soured her on the very first law or is your latest need to give it a tryand go from there the big question is how does the concept of individual liberty against the government’s desire to regulate the rollout of full legalization we went to the office of Julio comes outand he’s the Secretary General of the national commission of drugs a guy who’s actually writing the regulations away goes alongand glad itand pay claims on your victory month there were now in a manner condo your socialite is a mighty wind they cannot donated by Katie as a secondary frame looking at Emily dataand Is inadequate formation is anyway SMEand Susan secretary Calvin’s office has crafted the rules if you’re over 18 only three ways you really want to grow yourselfand if you do you’ll be with six plans to buy pharmacy can only die 40 g a monthand the price will be fixed in a dollar a gramand three you a couple friends can form a club developed a 99 plans for your own personal use medical researchand development will be spearheaded by the government but the question remains will actually grow all the weeds sold in pharmaciesand most importantly how will the black market we’d actually be stamped out whatever you choose you will have to write your name down in a central registry that will forever mark you as a good for nothing next ownerand the law only applies to citizens of Uruguay tourists cannot buy weed weed smoking is nothing new in Uruguay where was all that we coming fromand how did Uruguay function in the broader South American illicit drug economy Seattle garage as a journalist has written a book about drugsand Uruguay we paid a visit to talk about what kind of lead Uruguayans are actually smoking I shadow eye candy Odyssey I see a lawyer life is how as we I got this by by Dawn Soto to wipe out a little okay Iand a Uruguay has been tacitly supporting the black markets into legalize using the 70s but in raw numbers a black market is not a problem Uruguay is a tiny country the population of about 34 million people in only 8 of Uruguayand admit to smoking weed for legalization activistsand growers like one vase bringing black market growing out into the open holds great promise that wanted to take us to the underground indoor grow out here in Montevideo which is still tightly legal by represent a growing culture of been here in the city so this right here is Paraguayand should bring weed like really only 70 can find on the street so one of the reasons why legalization is so hot right now is people want to get better weand what better way of doing thatand growing your own well very dailyand in all the way toand you is inand what is the freedom of legalizationand the restrictions of regulation are some ways you sides of the same coin we Montevideoand headed out to Carnaval beach town to see what young people think about registering with the governmentand in the legal were going ape shit See Other related products: My Skin Color Is Not A Crime Mugshot Unisex Sweatshirt from AmazinkShirt.com

[mootmuse]

So, I was suddenly overcome with book!Jaskier feels and wanted to ramble about him. Here it is!

First of all he’s horrible to women, in a really blatant way that from my particular corner of my particular culture (the US) comes off actually feeling old fashioned. (I bet y’all were expecting me to start out with something positive, weren’t you. XD Welp.) It isn’t that men who treat women the way he does no longer exist in the corner of society I live in, but most of them - especially fictional characters you’re supposed to like - are aware that they have to try to get away with it. Not saying that’s better, just that it’s different, and makes Dandelion’s behavior come off as all the more blatant and shocking for it. Dandelion doesn’t try to ‘get away’ with the way he acts toward women because he has no need to hide it; both he/many of the characters and the narrative seems to see blatantly shitty (often at least a little disturbing) treatment of women as unremarkable and expected.

Gathering up enough examples of this to thoroughly prove that the narrative itself feels in on it is more than I’m up to, but have one brief example from Last Wish:

Dandelion chuckled loudly and rested his head against the bookshelf, on the leather-bound volumes.

“Millet and mosquitoes! That reminds me of our first expedition together to the edge of the world,” he said. “Do you remember? We met at the fete in Gulet and you persuaded me--”

“You persuaded me! You had to flee from Gulet as fast as your horse could carry you because the girl you’d knocked up under the musicians’ podium had four sturdy brothers. They were looking for you all over town, threatening to geld you and cover you in pitch and sawdust. That’s why you hung on to me then.”

and then they carry on with their reminiscing without commenting on Dandelion getting a woman pregnant and leaving her. That’s how they met. That’s an absolutely horrible thing to do to a person and it’s treated like a funny little memory.

I do love Dandelion. Jaskier. Whoever he is. Believe it or not, I do. I’m getting to it.

I’ve seen a gifset where Joey Batey says they decided, in Netflix!Witcher, to reinterpret that misogynistic quality as Jaskier falling in love with everyone he meets, genuinely falling in love with them and genuinely liking them, because characters who do what Dandelion does (Dandelion=book!Jaskier, Jaskier=show!Jaskier, for clarity) are tired, character-wise, and uninteresting to watch. This is the only reasoning for changing that character trait that I could have actively approved of (and for the record, I approve of it quite a lot). I don’t like Dandelion’s lack of respect for women, but I’m not going to pretend it isn’t there just because I like him. In fact, that’s why I didn’t want to like him. I have a memory of realizing mid-scene, with some dismay, that he was my favorite character; he has flaws that step a bit too far into what reads to me as real life problems for me to have expected myself to gravitate to him.

The scene, I think, where I fell in love with the character was set just outside Brokilon forest, a piece of land its dryad inhabitants defended so violently that even the toughest of the humans who lived nearby were terrified to go close to it. But Dandelion knew his friend had been injured very badly; he knew Geralt was in that forest being treated by those dryads, and he had a plan. He was led to the no-man’s land that no human dared approach and was left alone to cross it, and as he walked he got more and more frightened. He knew the dryads were there - he walked past bodies of other humans who’d been as dumb as he was being right then and he was genuinely convinced that he was going to die. And he kept going. He sang a song that he’d translated into an ancient language himself just for the dryads, still mostly convinced that it wasn’t going to work and that he was absolutely going to die, and he kept doing it and he saw it through, just because he was worried about his friend and wanted to be there for him.

This isn’t an isolated incident; earlier, in the first book, Dandelion is the one we see visit Geralt while he’s recovering from a different injury, having had to actively work out where Geralt would go and track him down to do it. He is the only person (at least in the earlier books that I paid more attention to) who we see make the attempt - much more difficult with the slow, unreliable long distance communication and dangerous, snail-slow travel inherent in the setting -  to locate and travel to a recovering Geralt in this way.

And later on in the series, when things get grim and Geralt gets very grim himself, and insists things are so dangerous and dark that he has to go on solo and is willing to drive his friends away to do it, Dandelion refuses to leave him. He isn’t the only one who refuses to leave Geralt alone, but he is the only one who insists on it with absolutely no way to physically defend himself. Dandelion, whenever he travels with Geralt and Geralt’s Friends, is surrounded by people who can kill as easily as they breathe, and he never picks up a weapon himself. He’s so unused to battle that he’s glanced by an arrow and loses his shit, freaks out - and still stays. He’s seen the ugly realities of war and he’s seen slaughter, he knows the horror of violence, and he not only continues to put himself near a man who makes his living through violence because that man needs his support, but he never becomes numb to it. Let’s see an example of that in Baptism of Fire (warning for brief mention of gore and some vomit):

Next to him, Dandelion hauled himself up, throwing off the corpse with a mutilated throat which was weighing down on him. The poet’s face was the color of quicklime.

Milva came closer, pulling an arrow from a dead man as she approached.

“Thank you,” the Witcher said. “Dandelion, say thank you. This is Maria Barring, or Milva. It’s thanks to her we’re alive.”

Milva yanked an arrow from another of the dead bodies and examined the bloody arrowhead. Dandelion mumbled incoherently, bent over in a courtly - but somewhat quavering - bow, then dropped to his knees and vomited.

“Who’s that?” the archer asked, wiping the arrowhead on some wet leaves and replacing it in her quiver. “A comrade of yours, Witcher?”

“Yes. His name’s Dandelion. He’s a poet.”

“A poet,” Milva watched the troubadour wracked by attacks of dry retching and then looked up. “That I can understand. But I don’t quite understand why he’s puking here, instead of writing rhymes in a quiet spot somewhere.”

This part of Dandelion matters a lot to me. The part of him that can be exposed to that level of violence sort of repeatedly, can be near it as a matter of course, because in that kind of world traveling with that kind of person is going to get you up close and personal with some really horrific shit even if the war doesn’t, and yet he never changes himself into someone who will respond to violence with violence, he never becomes okay with being face to face with it.

That’s one of the big differences I’ve noticed between Dandelion and Jaskier, at least when it comes to how fandom interacts with Jaskier because honestly I haven’t watched the show, I'm pretty much just here for fandom shit. Netflix!Witcher fandom is pretty great. Anyway, the difference: there are a lot of fics where Jaskier learns a bit about fighting. Which makes sense, it’s the practical thing to do when you’re traveling with a man who often gets into very violent situations. But that being a tendency in fic about netflix!Witcher does indicate to me that the show likely doesn’t put as much emphasis as the books do on the idea of Jaskier as a man who is so different from the fighty-badass types who are usually the focus in stories like this - the idea of The Most Badass Witcher’s companion being a man who’s not just untrained in combat, but averse to it right down to his soul.

That’s not a negative, not a positive. It’s intended as a neutral observation, just a thing I’ve noticed and been thinking about. I feel both versions of the character, books and adaptation, are true to the heart of him, and I find it fun to look at them both. They have similarities, they have differences. Dandelion is an interesting character because he has qualities that mean a lot to me, that confident nonviolence, that deep loyalty that drives him to be brave in ways the more physically capable people around him might not even recognize as bravery. He believes in beauty and love and the equality of all people, not just humans - and then he turns around and treats the nearest cute girl like an object that exists solely for his entertainment, and so doesn’t get close to living up to some of those lovely beliefs and ideals he’s got. I want to see him grow from that - of course, that’s not a need the book series recognizes, but there’s some potential, at least, for growth there that could make fandom interaction with Dandelion particularly compelling. Fandom activity does tend to gravitate toward the things which we want to fix.

tl;dr dandelion is a character who exists and I love him. Also, AU where Jaskier and Dandelion meet, initially really get on until Jaskier starts to notice the particular difference between the way they treat their lovers/women in general, this is sort of the last straw on top of his already existing jealousy over the easy affection Dandelion gets from book!Geralt-

(not that netflix!Geralt doesn’t act like book!Geralt in any particular but he does seem to act more similar to book!Geralt near the middle/end of the series, after his life had been going to shit for years and he felt horrible and became thoroughly unpleasant - the interesting approaches to book vs show Geralt is a tumblr essay of its own, to be made by someone who remembers more of the books than I do, but even when he was acting like a shithead book!Geralt had already long since established that he cared for Dandelion and appreciated him. If I were Jaskier, I’d sure as hell be jealous of that shit.)

-cue climax of the AU after which Dandelion realizes he should start figuring out how to not be shit to women, show!Geralt learns to treat his friends as if he actually values them, everyone learns from one another the end. I can’t write that AU but I sure as hell would read it.

[wxldchxld]

10 random headcanons

what do they sleep in? pj’s, normal clothes, nothing?

It depends. I’ve pointed out that Beck travels with a minimal amount of clothing. In most verses that is comprised of a few shirts, two pairs of jeans, and a set of shifter’s robes. The robes are the softest of which… but they’re odd. They’re long sleeved but the ends of the sleeves, from the elbow down, are wrapped. It’s one long continual piece of cloth to wind around her forearm down into the crook of her hand, so that only her thumb and fingers are exposed. The pants are the same from the knee down, and there’s a cape that is affixed to one of the shoulders that can be removed but is a pain. As a consequence she only wears them when she’s very cold, usually under a normal shirt, using the cape as a pillow and then ducking under a blanket.

If she’s hot, she just starts taking off layers until she’s comfortable. 

When she’s staying in verses like the one with Ros, she probably just sleeps in her jeans or whatever until Ros undoubtedly finds out and harps on her for not having any actual clothes.

Beck would be super into pajama sets if they were practical. The flannel plaid kind in the winter or just those sets that say something stupid on the shirt and the pants have a matching pattern. Unfortunately looking cute isn’t worth lugging extra clothes around when you travel 24/7. Her most common sleeping outfit is whatever the fuck she was wearing that day.

how many blankets / pillows do they like to have on their bed?

Ummmmm normally that’s a grand total of zero as she doesn’t have a bed. Bunched up clothes are her go-to pillow. She does have a special blanket that has a temperature regulating charm on it. The blanket is rather large but she keeps it because if her dogs so much as stick a paw under it (and they usually cuddle on cold nights anyway), they’ll all be suitably warmed. Likewise in the summer, laying on top of the blanket will lower her temperature if it needs to be lowered. 

Cora wove the blanket and enchanted it herself and if it were to go missing or be damaged in any way she would but VERY distressed. It is made of blues and greys with little orange foxes and grey owls alternating in a pattern around the edge.

Again in domestic situations Beck most likely has a pillow. It probably takes some time to adjust to. She isn’t picky about how many, and for the first few weeks she can probably still be found with her jacket bunched up under her cheek. I feel like if she were in this situation for a long period of time she’d come to want LOTS of pillows to cuddle into because Beck likes to be snug.

do they have social media? do they like it or hate it? obsess over it?

Heeeeell nooooo. Beck doesn’t own a phone, a computer, or anything that she can be tracked by. In fact in more domestic scenarios Beck will actively protest having a phone for a very long time. If she ever breaks and decides to carry one, it will be used to call or text like one or two people, and frequently allowed to die/be left somewhere. Beck sure as fuck doesn’t put her name/face out there. She wouldn’t even be comfortable using a fake name for twitter. No. No to all of it.

what are their phobias? do they have any at all?

Being caged/locked up is one of her big ones. She can handle it for a short period of time, and then as hours and days go on she will become increasingly hostile and eventually violent. At this point she has generally reverted into one of her animal forms and is dangerous to interact with.

Needles is another big one. And it’s a lot less about the needle and more about she doesn’t trust anyone injecting anything into her or even taking anything out. In fact getting Beck to use any sort of traditional medicine at all, even a couple of cold pills, is an incredible pain. She will not give blood for charity or even medical testing. If you want to stick her, you’re gonna have to hold her down tight.

Tryhophobia too. For those of you unaware it is the fear of holes. Pictures of those flowers with the small clusters of holes and shit really gross her out and she’ll get really pissed really fast if she’s forced to look at them. I do not know why, I just know it bugs her.

do they like living alone or with another person / other people?

I think Beck, ideally, would like to live with one other person. She has no desire to live in a large communal family. She would be happy with one person, and having close family members not too far away, but also not up in her business. Unfortunately her insatiable desire to travel often overpowers her desire for company. Many of Beck’s relationships end because Beck just can’t stay in one place for very long. Her lovers/friends have to come to accept that they either go with her (which Beck would love) or they patiently await her return. She doesn’t think this is fair, and has broken up with multiple partners because of this.

The fox in her usually lets her be totally content on her own and she’s spent the majority of her adult years in scarce or fleeting company. Holidays are hard, as well as birthdays, but she doesn’t generally crave attention

where do they see themselves in 2 / 5 / 10 years?

Off in the wild, doing the same thing she’s doing now. Even in verses where she’s in one place, like the one with Ros, Beck doesn’t expect to stay there. I’m not saying that won’t change in time, but that is currently where she is in her life.

are they possessive over their things? or over other people? both?

Yes and no??? Beck has a few things that mean a lot to her. For instance Cora’s blanket and her father’s music box would be defended tooth and nail. She has a few other magical items that she doesn’t give up but that’s basically because she doesn’t want them in the wrong hands, it’s not a possession thing.

When it comes to people Beck is… complicated. Beck doesn’t share lovers. She’s cool with them flirting with other people, because she does, because that’s just how she communicates, she is not cool with anything beyond that. She is much more likely to get her feelings hurt if her significant other is say, constantly hanging out with some other chick. She’s insecure in her relationships because a lot of them have fallen through and over all she just doesn’t have great luck staying with other human beings in lasting relationships (romantic or otherwise). So I don’t think that’s really jealousy.

She is possessive in the way that those are her people though. It takes a long time to get this level of loyalty from Beck, because Beck is NOT a self-sacrificing kinda gal, but she will protect what is hers to the death if it comes down to it. She’s also very emotionally protective of her people. Actually Beck has an almost compulsive need to protect most people emotionally. Beck constantly wants to comfort people, even strangers. She doesn’t like seeing anyone sad or scared or in pain, and she’ll go out of her way to stop this. (That was a major mókus moment, and had nothing to do with the prompt but whatever).

what do they never, ever want to speak of, ever?

Beck doesn’t like to talk about her abuse. Especially the abuse she suffered at the hands of her brother. But she does want to tell someone, she wants someone she can put that trust into, she wants someone in her life that understands. She is way too scared to do so unless her back is against the wall for fear that people won’t understand. Beck doesn’t demonize or even dislike her brother. She loves him deeply and worries for him and wishes every day they could go back to being childhood BFFs getting into shit and driving her Aunt B nuts… but they can’t. She knows that no matter how good things might be for a little while, Fen is a sick man and she has an inescapable wanderlust. Eventually if she went back, things would get bad again. But it hurts her. She doesn’t think anyone else would understand this, so she doesn’t say anything about it.

do they have a short temper? what’s most likely to set it off?

Not at all. You’re much more likely to upset her/make her cry than you are to piss her off. Luckily the former doesn’t happen that often either. I don’t think Beck has ever actually lost her temper on this account. I have one thread where she got pissed because she’d been locked up for days, but I count that more as a response to stress than really just getting pissed at someone.

Beck is nonviolent AF and her response to frustration is generally to just leave when someone is getting on her nerves. Occasionally she’s stuck in a situation where she can’t get away from people that get on her nerves/she doesn’t like. And she fox in her says that is her cue to make their lives absolutely miserable. Harry from our Foxy Ladies verse would fit into this perfectly. And Ros should thank god that Adam isn’t there anymore because Beck would have NO patience for him. But she’s not really... mad. Or losing her temper. She just thinks it is fair. They make her miserable and she can’t get away, so she’s going to annoy the piss out of them. Fair is fair.

do they take baths or showers? do they prefer one over the other?

Beck wants to know if getting rained on constitutes as a shower? She’s pretty sure it does. Because sometimes the weather man calls them showers.

Normally, in most verses, Beck will bathe in creeks or truck stops or those places hikers can stop for supplies and shit. It’s maybe like twice a week, sometimes less in the winter, sometimes more in the summer. 

If given the choice Beck likes baths. She dislikes things spraying in her face, and she doesn’t like the tiny holes that make up shower heads. They gross her out to look at. But she doesn’t like to soak too long. And daily bathing is something she has to readjust to in more domestic verses.

[psyclownsis-a-blog]

Hey, curious since you were talking about Harley's mental illnesses earlier. Are there things someone could do to help her when she's not in a good mental state? What are they?

ooooooooo this is a really good question! it depends a lot on what exactly is causing the problem. the main things that get her in a bad headspace are (1) reality conflicting with her delusions (like in mad love when batman points out all the ways joker has used her, or in the end of the lieberman run on her solo series where she spends like a month having a complete psychotic breakdown because she can’t handle knowing she hurt a child out of greed and ambition [it’s a long story, i’ll talk more about it later]), (2) isolation of any kind (loss, abandonment, being unable to spend time with other people, etc.), and (3) dissociation, which is almost always caused by one or both of the above-mentioned factors.

in the case of reality conflicting with her delusions, how someone else can help her varies greatly according to context. helping her in the literal/“good alignment” sense of trying to administer therapy or otherwise draw attention to the gaps in her delusions will only make her worse, every time, without fail. she sees the world as an elaborate play, with Good Guys and Bad Guys, and everyone else is basically a cardboard cutout in her mind-- she basically sees the world in star trek terms: kirk and the enterprise crew (Good Guys), whatever rogue space-traveling menace kirk and the crew must defeat (Bad Guys), and red shirts (everyone else). why would the writers give a red shirt a multifaceted, well-developed backstory with complex motivations and feelings when they know they’re going to die as soon as they get off the enterprise? they wouldn’t! red shirts are just there to be canon fodder. if they survive, that’s great, but if they don’t, the audience doesn’t really care, because there’s no emotional connection to a character like that. (note: almost all of harley’s info pages in any form of bat-media say that she has a “total disregard for human life”. this is completely untrue. she loves human life. she just doesn’t see everyone as possessing human life due to her delusions.) because of this, she doesn’t really understand that she’s hurting people if she blows up a building, or if she has her goons open fire on a crowd in the hopes they can hit batman. the idea that she’s hurting anyone never occurs to her because she just doesn’t register that there are people to be hurt. so, now that we have established what her delusions are, here’s how reality can conflict with them:

drawing her attention to specific people she has hurt or killed, or drawing her attention to the aftermath of her actions. batman pulls this on her a lot, like in mad love when he says something like “so it’s funny when joker kills people?” and she responds with “it’s just a joke”. it’s like asking her to feel bad for killing a bunch of people in a video game. but, if you can take those people and force her to see that they had lives and loves and that they were actual people instead of just background characters, she is forced to contemplate all the pain and suffering she’s caused, and there is a lot of it. and then she’ll get mad because she’s terrified of finding out her entire understanding of reality is fundamentally flawed, and then she’ll get violent, and she’ll more likely than not become very unstable very quickly.

this may be as simple as giving her details about her unintentional victims (for example, “bob was a single father supporting three kids and now they might all starve and get evicted because you grievously injured him in your last heist”).

her own actions forcing her to acknowledge their negative consequences. this often crops up with callbacks to her mid-twenties, when she lost guy kopski and started working at arkham, or with people she is more personally responsible for harming, like guy or amanda [last name redacted/unknown].

in the case of guy, she has repressed virtually all memories of anything involving him, and when something stirs those memories up, she is forced to recognize the fact that her own failures and shortcomings directly led to her fiance dying right in front of her.

in the case of her tenure at arkham, those memories are a hot mess, because she often didn’t even know what was real at the time, and stirring them up forces her to recognize (a) her own mental instability in a way that’s much harder to disprove than conflicts with her delusions because of numerous blackouts/lost time/eyewitnesses/hard evidence and documentation/etc., (b) the idea that joker doesn’t love her, which is the complete opposite of essentially the basis of reality as she knows it, and (c) that maybe she really isn’t much of a good person at all, because she’s lied to people, and maybe slept with someone to get ahead in her work, and maybe could have prevented countless deaths including the wife of basically the obi-wan to her anakin, and maybe she knew at the time that she was doing all these terrible things but didn’t care and did them anyway because she believed these events would culminate in her becoming head of arkham asylum. (read more about all this here and here.)

in the case of amanda, she met this eleven-year old girl (amanda) with some kind of bank code surgically embedded in her eyeballs, which could be scanned to open vaults and bestow the person doing the scanning with huge amounts of money. however, the scanning operation would leave amanda blind if she did not have an operation to counteract it within a certain amount of time. harley met amanda on the run from some international criminals who intended to scan her and then kill her. harley spent a few tumultuous days trying to figure out how to get amanda to safety and/or make amanda no longer her problem without giving her up and/or getting the money herself without hurting amanda. eventually, she killed the men after amanda and had her scanned, but was unable or unwilling to get amanda the second operation, so the girl was blinded. harley couldn’t live with this knowledge and spent 3 weeks living in a public park, suffering a complete break from reality where she believed she was practicing therapy as dr. jessica seaborn on a man pretending to be the joker. when she ran into amanda at the park and realized what had been going on, she turned herself back in to arkham. she has not repressed these memories but obviously does not ever want to think about it. knowing that she was capable of harming amanda like that makes her wonder whether or not she was truly uninvolved with jason todd’s murder (she wasn’t).

generally, when reality interferes with her delusions, the only way to make sure she doesn’t become completely unstable is to stop reality from interfering altogether and let her go back to her delusions. this may or may not work, depending on the situation, and it may or may not be an option considered by the other party if someone is purposely trying to break through to her. more often than not this situation results in her being arrested and sent back to arkham.

in the case of isolation, she can almost always be put back in a good headspace by simply spending time with people she cares about. the most common cause of isolation for her is being in arkham and having her caretakers restrict her access to other people. she is usually allowed to roam if she’s on good behavior/in the nonviolent ward, because the amount of trouble she causes when left to her own devices is much less than the amount of trouble she causes if she’s pissed off because she can’t play uno in the rec room or something. she may also feel isolated due to loss (like when the anniversary of arnold wesker’s death comes around) or feeling abandoned or unwanted (which may simply happen because she hasn’t had a fun night out in a while). either way, she’ll become depressed, and it can generally be cured by spending a day or two clinging to her friends like a koala.

in the case of dissociation-- which is often a secondary response caused by reality interfering with her delusions or by isolation-- she can usually be helped back into a good headspace by positive touch and observation/grounding games. something jon came up with years and years ago that works pretty well for her is to sit her down, peel an orange or grapefruit or some other citrus-y fruit that’s really fragrant, and have her describe the smell. if it’s spring or summer, having her lay down in a field and describe the smells and feelings and try to count or name the different plants is another grounding game that works well. little interactive touches like playing with her fingers or hair are good too.

some people with lots of experience helping her out of bad places mentally are:

jonathan (is a psychiatrist, has known her since college)

pamela (has seen a lot of the bad states harley’s mental illness can put her in, can easily form observation/grounding games about plants)

harvey (lots of sensory output, has experience with similar mental health problems)

joker

yes, joker

he’s seen a lot of the bad states harley’s mental illness can put her in, and has a lot of experience helping her come out of those states as long as her bad headspace isn’t making her want to kill him

so to recap: more traumatic situations may not be help-able and in that case it’s best to just remove her from the situation as soon as possible, but less traumatic situations can usually be resolved easily by positive touch/spending time with her friends or lovers/observation and grounding games.

[citizentruth-blog]

On Punching Nazis, Serving Sarah Sanders, and Matters of Civility - PEER NEWS

New Post has been published on https://citizentruth.org/on-punching-nazis-serving-sarah-sanders-and-matters-of-civility/

On Punching Nazis, Serving Sarah Sanders, and Matters of Civility

Sarah Sanders getting kicked out of The Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia has prompted conversations about whether people should be kicked out of establishments for their political beliefs and whether “civility” is warranted in these situations. While not all calls for civility have equal merit in light of their source, restraint, mediated by facts and precision of language, is still a worthy aspiration. (Photo Credit: Twitter)

You’ve probably seen T-shirts or memes devoted to instructing others to “PUNCH MORE NAZIS.” This sentiment, which invokes Richard Spencer—who doesn’t call himself a “Nazi” or a “white supremacist,” but an “identitarian,” though that basically means he’s a white nationalist and doesn’t want you to know he’s a white nationalist—getting punched in the face by a protestor on the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration, is one that many of us can probably get behind. After all, who really likes Nazis outside of actual Nazis?

As sympathetic as we may be to the idea of Spencer and his ilk getting decked, however—or, for some of us, wish we could’ve been the ones to do it—just because we can punch more Nazis, does it mean we should? Political theorist Danielle Allen, in an August 2017 column for The Washington Post, emphatically rules for the negative on this question. She writes:

White supremacy, anti-Semitism and racism are false gods, ideologies to be repudiated. They must be countered and fought. We must separate the violence that flows from those ideologies from the ideas that animate them. Different tools are at hand for fighting each.

We need to counter extremism’s violence not with punches but with the tools of law and justice. Where hate crimes and acts of domestic terrorism are perpetrated, our judicial institutions must respond. We as citizens must make sure institutions do their jobs, not plan to take the law into our own hands.

When the legitimacy of legal and judicial institutions has come into question — as has occurred because of police shootings and mass incarceration — we must strenuously advance the project of reforming those institutions to achieve their full legitimacy. But to take the law into one’s own hands is only to further undermine legal and judicial institutions. It provides no foundation for reform.

As Allen sees it, we need to be thinking more Martin Luther King, Jr.’s brand of civil disobedience and nonviolence, and less, you know, Charles Bronson’s brand of vigilantism from Death Wish. In doing so, we must address the failings of major institutions—namely the courts, the criminal justice system, and the legislative branch—enduring the process of advocacy for reform. Punching Nazis, while perhaps providing more immediate satisfaction, doesn’t put us on the same long-term path of reform.

In fact, as Allen stresses, countering violence with more violence only takes us further away from the peaceful society many of us would envision — one devoid of white supremacists and their hate. It does not make our world anymore just than it was before we started throwing haymakers, rocks, and the like. It certainly doesn’t make it any more stable.

In other words — Danielle Allen’s words — “Once political violence activates, shutting it off is exceptionally difficult.” Her closing remarks reinforce this theme, with special attention to the morality of nonviolence as well as the impracticality of its opposite:

Why should anyone believe that people who have been committed to political violence will change their minds and recommit to peaceful forms of litigating conflicts? That kind of distrust erodes the foundations of stable political institutions. The path to justice always lies through justice, including the basic moral idea that immediate self-defense is the only justification for the use of force. We need moral clarity on this point.

Along these lines, violence is not the cure or negotiating tool we might conceive it to be. As the saying goes, it just begets more violence and makes people that much more predisposed to taking sides and fighting, rather than willing to change. When people are made to think of political and social matters in terms of a war, they treat it like one—casualties and all.

The topic of punching Nazis is an extreme example, but one that facilitates a conversation about how we as Americans try to interact with and otherwise react to people with whom we disagree on matters of culture, politics, and morality. Recently, Sarah Sanders was asked to leave a restaurant named The Red Hen in Virginia because of her connection to the Trump White House.

The owner of the restaurant, Stephanie Wilkinson, was home when she got a call from the chef that night, who expressed to Wilkinson the notion that the staff was concerned about Sanders’s presence there. For Wilkinson, Sanders’s defense of Donald Trump’s policies within her role as White House Press Secretary was a deal-breaker. As she (Wilkinson) feels, it’s a matter of moral standards. Compassion. Cooperation. Honesty. These are not the kinds of things that Sanders and her briefings are not known for, and as such, Wilkinson took a stand. What’s more, Wilkinson said she would do it again if given the same opportunity.

News of Sanders’s removal from the restaurant has prompted all sorts of reactions, many of them indicative of a political divide that events such as these only seem to help widen. If The Red Hen’s spike in popularity on Yelp is any indication, the actions taken by its owner have proven very polarizing indeed, with scores of 1-star and 5-star reviews being affixed to the restaurant’s online profile in light of the controversy. While I suppose the treatment of guests should be a factor in reviews of eateries, lest we call these new additions illegitimate, to say nothing of the other elements of the customer experience really seems like a waste of an entry. I mean, what if the trout Grenobloise is truly transcendent? You can say what you want about the owner—but leave her and her restaurant their fish dish, OK?

Beyond reputation assassination via social media from anonymous sources, there are other issues raised by Sarah Sanders getting the boot from The Red Hen and subsequently calling out the restaurant on Twitter. For one, Sanders did so in her official capacity as Press Secretary, and that’s an ethical no-no. According to Walter Shaub, former ethics chief under Barack Obama and Trump, Sanders’s condemnation of a business for personal reasons using her government account can be construed as coercive and a violation of a corollary to the ban on endorsements that someone like Kellyanne Conway has blatantly disregarded in the past. As Shaub reasons, Sanders can “lob attacks on her own time but not using her official position.”

Also, people have drawn a comparison between the way Sanders was refused service for her political positions and the way some businesses have sought to refuse service to homosexuals, claiming “religious freedom.” As far as detractors on the right are concerned, this is just bigotry on the part of the left, but this is a false equivalency; since it has come up frequently enough, it’s worth addressing. Sanders chose her line of work and accepted her current position, and continues to serve as Press Secretary of her own volition. Gays and lesbians, on the other hand, don’t choose to be gay. It’s who they are. The best argument one can try to make is that Sanders, were she to proverbially fall on her sword, would put her career and her livelihood at risk. Still, that’s a stretch when considering the ostracism members of the LGBTQ community have faced over time.

The issue that appears to loom largest here, however, is the matter of whether or not owners of establishments should refuse service to patrons based on their political beliefs or their association with a disinformation machine like the Trump White House. This is where I’m a little unsure that Stephanie Wilkinson’s choice is the right one. Now, it’s one thing if Sanders and her group were actively trying to cause distress to members of the staff or other patrons, or they were trying to espouse discriminatory views. If I were a restaurant owner, I wouldn’t want, say, Ku Klux Klan members waltzing into my place and ordering cheese and crackers. There are limits to freedom of expression, to be sure.

Assuming Wilkinson has the right to ask Sanders and Co. to leave, though, whether or not she should ask them to leave is a subject worthy of debate. It’s like refusing to serve or otherwise accommodate someone wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat. In April, a New York City judge ruled a bar was legally allowed to refuse service to a man wearing a “MAGA” hat, as it wasn’t discriminating based on country of origin, race, religion, sexual orientation, or other demographic characteristic. It also didn’t help the man’s cause that he reportedly was verbally abusive to staff. In Sanders’s case, meanwhile, there is no indication that anything more than her presence was the source of unrest. Even in the court of public opinion, this seems like less of an open-and-shut case.

What especially gives me pause is that few people seem to be on Sarah Sanders’s side on this one, and I’m not sure if this is my failing in my refusal to join in, or just the left looking to stick their tongues out at a Donald Trump supporter like the White House Press Secretary in the midst of the administration’s flagging popularity, and as we plumb the depths of a crisis facing immigrant families which feels less like border security and more like ethnic cleansing.

Other Trump administration officials have met with similar treatment, with DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and senior policy advisor Stephen Miller both being met with protests as they ate at—irony fully noted—Mexican restaurants. It’s not just Cabinet members and racist advisors to the President, either. A video of New York-based attorney Aaron Schlossberg berating and threatening employees of a restaurant with deportation because they spoke Spanish went viral, and condemnation and ridicule were soon to follow. Heck, a GoFundMe page was even erected to pay for a mariachi band to play outside the man’s office. At a moment in time marked by visible tension between groups, especially whites who support the President vs. minority groups and their defenders, everyone seems to be fair game. The racist rants of yesteryear now run the risk of damaging people’s careers.

In all, there doesn’t seem to be much sympathy for Ms. Sanders—and I don’t know that there should be, quite frankly—but despite what someone like Rep. Maxine Waters would aver, maybe these officials shouldn’t be kicked out of restaurants, and definitely, I submit, they shouldn’t be harassed. That is, if one were to convey his or her opinions to them in a civil manner, it’s one thing, but it’s another to shout epithets at them while they try to eat enchiladas.

At the end of the day, we may find the positions of Nielsen and Miller reprehensible, but they’re human beings. Like you or I or the immigrants who live in fear of the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy, they still need to eat and spend time with family. While I suppose Sanders and her group could have just gone, say, to a Chili’s instead, to try to abnegate the humanity of one because of his or her own abnegation of another’s humanity is to make two wrongs without making a right. It might feel good for a spell, but as with punching Nazis, it doesn’t put us on a path to reform.

To boot, for those looking to discredit people on the political left as intolerant in their own right, the decision to ask Sanders to leave The Red Hen has the power to turn her into somewhat of a sympathetic figure, and given that she’s served as the mouthpiece of an administration which doesn’t seem to have the word “sympathy” in its vocabulary, such is a regrettable turn in these cultural conflicts because concern for her feels unearned.

It comes on the heels of criticisms levied on her by Michelle Wolf, for which members of the media were quick to come to her (Sanders’s) defense, a defense not only unearned but undeserved given that Wolf was only pointing out Sanders’s role as an enabler and liar for President Trump. Thus, when Sanders tweets to say that The Red Hen’s owner’s actions say “more about [Wilkinson]” than they say about her and that she tries to deal respectfully with those with whom she disagrees, you tend to hate that she seems even somewhat credible—compromised ethics and all.

I know my position is liable to be upsetting to some people because it screams Democratic centrism to them (Chuck Schumer, among others, has criticized the desire to harass Trump administration officials). Believe me — I don’t wish to be lumped in with moderates when the Democrats’ refusal to move further left is one of my chief frustrations as someone trying to become more engaged with politics. And I certainly don’t wish to appear as if I agree with Donald Trump, who, though he has much more important things to do — facilitate peace on the Korean peninsula, help Puerto Rico, reunite kids with their families, etc. — felt compelled to rant about The Red Hen’s decision on social media. Say what you want about POTUS, but he’s consistent, you know, in that he never misses a chance to point a finger in a petty way.

Or some might just plain disagree. Ryan Cooper, writing for The Week, defends incivility toward Trump administration officials with points such as these:

In the situations recounted above, no one beat up these officials, broke any property, or threatened them in any way.

If anyone is “uncivil,” it’s the con artists, criminals, and/or racists of the Trump administration and people of a like mind such as Rep. Steve King of Iowa.

President Trump is, like, the most uncivil of us all, and he has a platform much bigger than any dissenter on the left.

This is a natural and perhaps unavoidable reaction to a lack of immediate electoral solutions or an absence of meaningful legislative representation.

Fretting about civility on the left internalizes the belief that it is pointless to try to appeal to people on the right, especially the far right, on moral and rational terms. Moreover, it sows division within “the Resistance.”

Cooper also dismisses concerns about incivility from the left being used as political capital for Trump and other officials, and while I agree to a certain extent that one shouldn’t necessarily worry about the feelings and potential votes of others in the course of public discourse, I also think that these definitions of “civility” and “incivility” are somewhat vague and get muddled with moral judgments. Being “civil” doesn’t necessarily relate to the moral rectitude of your behavior or your speech, but merely to formal courtesy and politeness in their expression. By the same token, however, “political civility” isn’t exactly the same thing as civility as per the dictionary definition, so maybe the problem is simply with our specificity of expression and how we delineate the terms, first and foremost. The line is an apparently fine one, and who is using this terminology is as important as what words are being used.

Plus, for those decrying this fussing over civility as just a ploy to stifle free speech, while addressing how to reach people in the face of carelessness or lack of composure is critically important, and while not all calls for civility are equal considering the source—this can’t be stressed enough—this doesn’t strike me as an occasion to participate in relativistic exercises. So Trump’s henchmen and henchwomen are uncouth. Does that mean we should all up and call them “feckless c**ts” in the style of Samantha Bee? Even if I feel Bee, like Michelle Wolf, shouldn’t feel duty-bound to apologize, her use of profane language didn’t make her argument more credible. At least we should be able to agree on this point.

I get it—so many of us are angry at Donald Trump and his enablers, and heartbroken about the plight of immigrant children, and feeling powerless with the midterms months away and 2020 still seeming remote, and tired of the onslaught of bullshit day after day. It’s not easy. Then again, it never was going to be easy, and for all the hemming and hawing about civility, if this is not to be the goal, at least we can aim for precision of language and factual correctness. Even in the face of haphazard tweets and “fake news,” rationality and truth yet have value.

  Is Political Correctness Really Bringing America Down?

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Baby Versus Fur Baby: How To Introduce Your Dog To Your Newborn

Introducing a human baby, when you previously were simply proud parents to fur babies is sometimes a difficult and sensitive transition, and at times you might definitely feel like they are against one another.

My husband and I are proud owners to two pug fur babies (Bella and Lily). My four legged children were adorable baggage of mine when I met my husband and he lovingly claimed them the second they became a part of his life. Thankfully!

I honestly had the conversation in my head early on in our relationship of, Okay, if he doesnt like them, that is it! We are not going to make it! That was not the case, and I am happy to say he is still around and loves the girls very much!

For years, the pugs were my only babies (cue the obnoxious amount of social media photo posts of my girls in costumes and such). Bella is the older one and the obvious diva of the two. She has a tendency to keep to herself, come to you when she needs you (for love or play on her terms), or most importantly-when you need her (she is wonderfully soothing in a time of crisis or sadness). Lily is the baby. She has what you think of as the baby personality. She is extra needy but so sweet. So much so that her neediness (and stinky-ness) does not even matter!

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Courtesy of Cara Young

First comes love, then comes marriage, then come pugs circling the baby carriage! Oh wait, that is not how that goes, is it? Well, in our household, it is! And at first it was not circling the carriage out of loving admiration for the sweet baby that was now a wonderful part of our life, rather, circling the carriage like vultures!

With that said, I am writing this after weeks and weeks of contemplation. You see, now I am happy to say at this point (6 months down the road), that I can really see a shift in the fur baby to baby relationship (and vice versa) and it is for the better. Not only has it improved, and Bella and Lily have both formed their own unique relationship with our human baby, but I have learned some things that I thought would be beneficial to share.

Some of it may seem like common sense to you, but during your mama bear/raging new mommy hormone phase, sometimes things are not completely common sensical (yes I know that is not a word).

Courtesy of Cara Young

1. Precorrect: This is a term I am very familiar with because of my professional background, but simply put, you correct a negative behavior in some way before it happens. Before we brought a little human home, we anticipated a difficult transition and we wanted the fur babies to be somewhat familiar with our little guy before he came home.

With a bit of research, we settled on having a familiar adult ( my parents) come to the house (and stay there with the fur babies) while we were at the hospital. Most importantly, they brought our sons hat home that he wore after he was born so they could develop some familiarity with his scent.

According to my parents, the first night, they were not interested at all. The second night their interest increased. Then because we knew our babys first time in our home would be difficult when we got home, we had a plan for me to give the fur babies a lotof attention so they did not feel left out when we got home (without the baby in my arms). I cannot tell you if these steps made things anybetter, but I will say that we tried to precorrect for the fur babies to feel left out or pushed to the way-side and demonstrated effort in trying to decrease those feelings.

Courtesy of Cara Young

2. Continue to shower the fur babies with love and affection: When you are reading this, you are probably thinking, duh! but this is truly easier said than done when a newborn is involved! When we got home with our newborn, we had that feeling of Okay, how do we do this now?

I hope I am not the only person that feels that way, but it was definitely a crazy time! You are sent home from the hospital that just provided you with care and guidance, and now you are expected to raise a human (a decent one at that) with no manual.

I will be honest and say we were not the best at this #2 item when we got home. We were so absorbed in our little human I feel like our fur babies may have suffered some (I mean in a completely nonviolent, non-threatening, non-harmful sort of way).

Prior to our little ones birth, my husband and I had a plan. He would be extremely attentive to the dogs when I had the baby and vice versa. This was a great plan, in theory, but when both of the parents are trying to maneuver their way through their newly minted parenthood, it does not always work that way.

My advice, try to stick with our original plan. This may ensure that your fur babies do not act out as much as ours did (bring on the accidents in the house that neverhappened before the baby). I can tell you something that I learned, if you are worrying about whether or not you are doing X, Y, or Z correctly and you are actively engaging in methods to try your best to do so, you are probably doing a good job as a parent! Pat yourself on the back! However, be reasonable with yourselfyour human baby really is your prioritywith your fur babies coming up a close secondso just try to have some balance, because this is a sensitive time.

Courtesy of Cara Young

3. Do not push the issue: What I mean by this is do not push the dogs to interact if they are not ready. The fur babies and the baby will naturally form their own relationship, on their terms, when they are ready. What I noticed is this seemed to naturally begin to happen when our little guys personality began to develop. The dogs responded to this favorably.

Also, in this development, the fur babies personalities will begin to manifest certain interactions with your human baby. What I mean by this is one of the pets relationship with the baby may look completely different from the other pets, and that is perfectly okay! Bella has a tendency to be very active and excited to interact with our little guy when he is playing (or spitting up), while Lily prefers to cuddle with him and I when he is calm and/or napping in my arms.

Courtesy of Cara Young

4. Never let your guard down: Alwaysmonitor when your fur babies and your kid(s) are interacting. You do notknow what could happen! It does not matter how sweet your pets and children are, if one manages to irritate the other, someone could get hurt (your child or pet).

You also cannot assume that something will neverhappen just because your pet or child has not ever done anything harmful in the past. There is always the possibility of an accident. I dont even leave our little one alone with the pugs and their Pac Man like mouth makes it almost impossible to do much damage with a bite!

Courtesy of Cara Young

As I said, all of this may very well seem like common sense to you, but if not, I hope it is helpful. Also, if it does, perhaps this will give youre a good reference when your Mommy hormones and instincts are raging! Further, if it simply reassures your feelings because of your experience with a similar interaction, this post was worth the effort!

To close, I would simply like to say that for everyone (human baby, fur baby, and anyone else for that matter), love and affection is an imperative part of life, so try to provide as much as you can!

For more from Cara Young visit her blog, Young at Hearthand don’t forget to sharethese tips with your friends and family on Facebook!

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