#Lockdown Extention

[giomagnetism]

Huevembers #3 and #6

when characters are a matched set. you agree. reblog

[shiloh belongs to @shadowsplice]

[linoguy]

lee know should’ve been a neet. maybe in his next life

[tamaharu]

why is talking to parents about mental health stuff so nerve wracking like im just informing them that im planning to get an adhd assessment so they could help with insurance and im like oh man i should be shot for this

[clouds]

im genuinely so bad at responding to people and initiating interactions these days it’s so weird to think back before college when i was constantly in touch w people

[navramanan]

I need to remind myself the reason life's been so bleak lately is bc i havent had anything to keep me busy dont have anything to do no uni nothing it is not bc no one loves me and i'm cursed and also it's winter it's been grey and gloomy and getting dark early and i'll be okay if i just find an activity to do regularly that requires me to go outside and see people i'll be okay i'll be okay i'll be okay

[error-404-fuck-not-found]

Hey so remember how grocery prices suddenly jackknifed during lockdown and never went back down?

Well turns out the companies would have done that shit either way and had been steadily price-fixing for the last decade!

Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson just announced more than $40 million in court-ordained Fuck You money from massive swaths of food production companies are to be paid out to households earning at or below 175% of the federal poverty level ($25.5k for 1 person, $34.5k for 2 people households) before Dec 31st of this year. Happy Holidays.

"The bottom line here is that my legal team took on two large corporate price-fixing conspiracies that increased the cost for groceries for Washington families. We've prevailed, and as a result, we are sending checks to over 400,000 Washington households."

Cannot stress enough the extent of the conspiracies he's talking about here. 15 out of the total 19 chicken producers got nailed in this lawsuit. Not the total number of conspirators, mind, just the ones who left enough evidence for the AG to kick their ass in so expedient a manner. Make no mistake, all 19 were in on it. The court case against the rest of them has been delayed until October of next year, though. None of them are making it out unscathed.

Tuna didn't escape antitrust horseshit either, because the CEOs of Starkist, Chicken of the Sea, and Bumblebee Tuna had a fucking group chat where they complained that the price of tuna was "too low" and they agreed to artificially inflate the price.

“What’s so maddening about the conduct of these companies is the reason that they engaged in this price-fixing conspiracy was greed. They wanted to make money."

So anyway the AG who nailed their asses to the wall and continues to do so is running for governor. If you live in Washington, could be worth your vote when primary season rolls around.

[bitterdancer-everturning]

perhaps it is unfair to moralize masking and make judgements against individuals when the state has failed us. sure.

but i have a lot of empathy, tons, for the disabled and immunocompromised people begging the communities around them to step up to protect them where the state has failed. it is okay to divest from the state and ask for community care instead. it is okay for disabled people to be angry that people with the means and ability to mask consistently refuse to, sometimes because they have given up bc of the failure of the govt and some because they genuinely do not care about the lives they may be endangering. someone who might die going to the grocery store has every right to be angry at someone who has the money for good masks and no pressure from the workplace to take it off and chooses to not wear one anyway. if your disabled comrades cannot ask this small sacrifice of you, how can we trust you to defend us when your lives are on the line?

“work on complete lockdown instead of telling people to wear masks” do you think it will be easier to grind the machine to a halt than to fundraise for kn95s and educate people on wearing them. do you think it will be easier to convince politicians that restaurants are unnecessary or your friends and comrades to do what they can to protect their communities. the state has failed. that is not reason to give up, it is reason to do everything we can.

christ.

[reasonsforhope]

"The New York City Council voted to ban most uses of solitary confinement in city jails Wednesday [December 20, 2023], passing the measure with enough votes to override a veto from Mayor Eric Adams.

The measure would ban the use of solitary confinement beyond four hours and during certain emergencies. That four hour period would be for "de-escalation" in situations where a detainee has caused someone else physical harm or risks doing so. The resolution would also require the city's jails to allow every person detained to spend at least 14 hours outside of their cells each day.

The bill, which had 38 co-sponsors, was passed 39 to 7. It will now go to the mayor, who can sign the bill or veto it within 30 days. If Mayor Adams vetoes the bill, it will get sent back to the council, which can override the veto with a vote from two-thirds of the members. The 39 votes for the bill today make up 76% of the 51-member council. At a press conference ahead of the vote today [December 20, 2023], Council speaker Adrienne Adams indicated the council would seek [a veto] override if necessary.

For his part, Mayor Adams has signaled he is indeed considering vetoing the bill...

The United Nations has said solitary confinement can amount to torture, and multiple studies suggest its use can have serious consequences on a person's physical and mental health, including an increased risk of PTSD, dying by suicide, and having high blood pressure.

One 2019 study found people who had spent time in solitary confinement in prison were more likely to die in the first year after their release than people who had not spent time in solitary confinement. They were especially likely to die from suicide, homicide and opioid overdose.

Black and Hispanic men have been found to be overrepresented among those placed in solitary confinement – as have gay, lesbian and bisexual people.

The resolution in New York comes amid scrutiny over deaths in the jail complex on Rikers Island. Last month, the federal government joined efforts to wrest control of the facility from the mayor, and give it to an outside authority.

In August 2021, 25-year-old Brandon Rodriguez died while in solitary confinement at Rikers. He had been in pre-trial detention at the jail for less than a week. His mother, Tamara Carter, says his death was ruled a suicide and that he was in a mental health crisis at the time of his confinement.

"I know for Brandon, he should have been put in the infirmary. He should have been seeing a psychiatrist. He should have been being watched," she said.

She says the passage of the bill feels like a form of justice for her.

"Brandon wasn't nothing. He was my son. He was an uncle. A brother. A grandson. And he's very, very missed," she told NPR. "I couldn't save my son. But if I joined this fight, maybe I could save somebody else's son." ...

New York City is not the first U.S. city to limit the use of solitary confinement in its jails, though it is the largest. In 2021, voters in Pennsylvania's Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, passed a measure to restrict solitary confinement except in cases of lockdowns and emergencies. The sheriff in Illinois' Cook County, which includes Chicago, has said the Cook County jail – one of the country's largest – has also stopped using solitary confinement...

Naila Awan, the interim co-director of policy at the New York Civil Liberties Union, says that New York making this change could have larger influence across the country.

"As folks look at what New York has done, other larger jails that are not quite the size of Rikers will be able to say, 'If New York City is able to do this, then we too can implement similar programs here, that it's within our capacity and capabilities," Awan says. "And to the extent that we are able to get this implemented and folks see the success, I think we could see a real shift in the way that individuals are treated behind bars.""

-via NPR, December 20, 2023

[drtanner]

I'm angry today so you're getting a Rant™.

There's not a single day that's gone by in the last four years where I haven't been viscerally, incandescently furious that so much of the awful bullshit we're suffering through today and will continue to suffer through for the foreseeable future could have been prevented. We could have had cheaply and widely available vaccines for COVID that were distributed rapidly to everyone all over the world, but we didn't get those because a handful of rich cunts didn't want to waive their patents for those vaccines. We could have had a proper lockdown that kept everyone safe for long enough that those vaccines could become effective and the virus could die out, but we didn't get that because it would have made the line of rich people feelings go down too much for a little bit. We could have knocked this on the head in less than six months, we had the opportunity to do that, but that opportunity was stolen from us because the rich couldn't stomach losing even a tiny shred of their profits.

During the one meaningful lockdown we did have, the smog cleared up from a few places but global emissions didn't change at all, because global emissions are almost entirely generated by industry and industry didn't stop during that lockdown. We discovered that remote work was incredibly beneficial to thousands of people and that productivity even improved in many cases while people were working remotely, but now our governments are badgering people to get back to the office because they don't want their corporate rent portfolios to lose value or for Pret a Manger to go under, except in the case of disabled people who are too sick to work, for whom remote work suddenly does exist and means they're lazy and workshy if they don't "do their part". Speaking of which, there are now thousands more disabled people than there used to be, because this virus that we're now pretending doesn't matter anymore is turning out to have devastating long term health consequences like brain fog caused by leaky blood vessels and permanently reduced physical condition similar to that caused by Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. We've had waves of strikes in the last couple of years, which tracks with workers' rights movements in the wake of other, previous pandemics like the Spanish Flu and the Black Death, which were able to take off because so many workers had died or become too disabled to work that those who remained were able to bargain more persuasively for better pay and conditions, but that's the extent of actual change that's happened in the wake of this ongoing global disaster.

We could have knocked all of this on the head back at the start, but this shitty Pandora's Box is now irreversibly opened and we are never going to be able to close it again. We're continuing to be ravaged daily by a disease that is still killing and permanently disabling people but our governments really want us to pretend it's all gone now, while the world around us is actively on fucking fire.

I would like it if people rioted about this.

[vidavalor]

Something that intrigues me about the letter in Good Omens: Lockdown is both what is and what isn't written on the envelope and what that could maybe suggest about its contents. What this looks like to me is a letter that probably has still not yet left Aziraphale's desk and so might actually be possibly important in the story right around where we are at now after S2. I think that's an 'if something ever happens to me' letter.

If the intent was to send Crowley a letter through the postal system, then some of his address should be visible to us because Aziraphale would have finished writing it before calling him and before heating up the sealing wax. The name is centered in most of the middle of the envelope, which also suggests no address is meant to follow. If it is not a letter intended to go through the postal system, then that's an awfully formal addressing of a love note lol and while that is pretty cute and everything, idk. It just seems it'd be either full name and address or a more informal name... but if that letter is sealed with wax and just has Crowley's formal name written on the envelope, it strikes me as a letter that's maybe meant to be left behind in Aziraphale's desk, just in case.

Aziraphale knows what thinking he was dead did to Crowley in S1. The fifty-seven fire extinguishers and a factory's worth of battery-operated candles in S2 show that Aziraphale is sensitive to that. Maybe he decided to make sure there was something for Crowley to have in case he was left alone. It's a will, in the sense that everything that was his is then just Crowley's, obviously including the bookshop, but it's also a love letter of sorts.

Aziraphale also trying to deal with the trauma of them losing each other in some way and then immediately needing to call Crowley to hear his voice is also what happens when he goes to the cemetery in Edinburgh in S2 and is shown staring at the spot where Crowley was taken in 1827 before magically procuring the nearest phone to immediately call Crowley, so maybe that's what was also happening to an extent in Lockdown?

But yeah... Crowley getting that letter after S2...

[pretzel-box]

OU OU OU OHHHH Can you PLEASEEE do a mini fic of Sebastian meeting an expendable who has crazy body mods to make them look more alien?? Like tattooed eyes split tongues teeth with extensions n stuff?? I wonder how he’d feel about someone making themselves look like that when he was forced to look the way he is?? Idk if that makes sense but I had a eureka moment and I LOVEEEE your fics 😩plsplsplsplslpslsl 🙏🏻🙏🏻

words: 1,2k

tags: gn!reader, clear mentions of body mods

Sebastian was rarely scared of anything. At this point, the man had faced horrors beyond human understanding, staring down death itself with nothing more than a resting bitch face. He’d shrugged off wall dwellers that plummeted into his shop from the dark ceilings above, and barely blinked when Pandemonium rushed by, a force of chaos that would unnerve anyone else.

So, imagine his face when he first met you—standing face to face with a human who looked so… inhuman.

When you first entered his shop, he assumed you were another twisted experiment, something that had escaped the grasp of Hadal Blackside’s prison when the lockdown started. The split tongue, the intricate tattoos inked right into the whites of your eyes, the piercings that glittered along the edges of your lips and brows—it all spoke of something otherworldly, something that didn’t belong to the realm of normal human experience.

But then, he noticed the neat little uniform clinging to your body, its fabric still crisp, untouched by the filth and blood that coated most of the facility. The sight of it made a light flicker on in his head. You were human—if the term could still apply—sent down from above, likely a new expandable among this mess, just like countless others before you.

His face scrunched up in irritation and a bit of disgust, his lip curling as he scanned you from head to toe. It wasn’t fear—no, Sebastian was far beyond that—it was the jarring discomfort of trying to process something so out of the ordinary, something that made even him pause for a second.

“What the hell…” he muttered, his voice low, almost as if he was talking to himself. His eyes narrowed, scrutinizing the sharp lines of your tattoos, the way the ink made your gaze unsettlingly intense. He could feel the irritation creeping up the back of his neck, the way it always did when something disrupted the order of things in his world. Sebastian spend the last few years hating Urbanshade and himself, cruising his newfound appearance and coming slowly yet painfully to terms with it that he can't be human anymore. So it was even more a hit in the face to see someone who was perfectly human turn themself into what— an alien?

You, with your inked eyes and split tongue, were an affront to the normalcy he clung to in this otherwise chaotic place. Even in the madness of the Blackside, where monsters roamed freely and reality was different, your appearance was a challenge to his sense of what should and shouldn’t be.

Yet, even as he bristled with discomfort, there was a begrudging respect beneath it all. It took guts to modify yourself to that extent, to carry the weight of those changes with such confidence. It was the kind of defiance that reminded him, in some strange way, of himself. A refusal to be anything but exactly what you were, no matter how unsettling it might be to others.

After a moment of tense silence, he let out a breath, forcing his expression to soften, if only slightly. “Alright, you got my attention,” he grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest. “What do you need?”

You didn’t flinch under his gaze, didn’t hesitate as you stepped closer, as if daring him to say something more. Your eyes, those unsettling orbs of black and white, met his with a calmness that caught him off guard.

“I need supplies,” you said, your voice smooth, unbothered by his scrutiny. To be fair, you were already used to people behaving like that, treating you weirdly for your special behavior. Your split tongue flickered as you spoke, and for a brief second, his mind flashed with curiosity—how it must feel to talk like that, to move in a body so distinctly altered.

“Supplies, huh?” he echoed, almost as if testing the word in his mouth, seeing if it tasted any different when spoken to someone like you. He tilted his head, the initial discomfort giving way to a strange sort of intrigue. “You got anything to trade?”

You nodded, reaching into your bag, and pulling out a handful of items— usb scraps, files, a few salvaged goods that had seen better days but were still usable. He eyed the offerings, the gears in his mind beginning to turn. A potential customer, no matter how off-putting, was still a customer.

“Fine,” he said, the last traces of his initial irritation melting away as he slithered forward to inspect your trade. “But don’t think I’m giving you any special treatment just ‘cause you look like you crawled out of someone’s worst nightmare.”

You smirked, the corners of your lips pulling up to reveal the silver glint of piercings on your tongue. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” you replied, and there was a spark of mutual understanding in your tone as you sassed back—an acknowledgment of the strangeness of this place, and of each other.

As he began to rummage through his wares, the discomfort that had initially gripped him faded, replaced by a begrudging respect. You were different, sure, but in this hellhole, maybe different was exactly what was needed.

Sebastian was in the middle of inspecting the tech scraps you had offered, his sharp eyes scanning each piece with practiced efficiency. You stood across from him, arms crossed, waiting for his judgment, your split tongue occasionally flicking out as you shifted your weight.

Just as Sebastian was about to name his price, the vent to the shop creaked open, and another customer cautiously stepped inside. The newcomer was a wiry, nervous-looking man, his eyes darting around the room as if expecting something to jump out at him at any moment. He spotted Sebastian first, relief briefly washing over his features.

But then, his gaze shifted to you.

The moment his eyes locked onto your inked ones, his face paled. His jaw went slack as he took in the tattoos, the piercings, and finally, the slow flicker of your split tongue.

Sebastian noticed the man’s reaction and rolled his eyes, barely suppressing a smirk. “You need something?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at the customer who looked like he’d seen a ghost.

The man opened his mouth, but no words came out. Instead, his eyes widened even further, and without warning, he bolted toward the nearest vent in the wall.

“Hey, wait!” Sebastian called after him, but it was too late. The man had already pried open the vent cover and was scrambling inside like a terrified rat fleeing a sinking ship.

You watched, bemused, as the man’s legs disappeared into the vent, the cover clattering shut behind him. A few moments of silence passed before you turned back to Sebastian, an amused smirk playing on your lips.

“Well, that was rude,” you said, your tone dripping with sarcasm.

Sebastian finally let out the laugh he’d been holding back, shaking his head in disbelief. “Can’t say I blame him,” he chuckled, glancing at you with a twinkle of amusement in his eye. “You do have a habit of making strong first impressions.”

You shrugged, unbothered by the man’s reaction. “Guess he couldn’t handle a little personality,” you replied, your smirk widening.

Sebastian grinned back, clearly enjoying the moment. “His loss,” he said, returning to your trade with a newfound lightness. “Now, where were we?”

[puppetmaster13u]

Have a sneak peek for part of the next chapter for Down in the Deep

[This Series/Story if Ur Interested lol] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sebastian had no clue what to do. 

   There was a child- a literal child- curled up against his chest, tiny claws gripping onto his shirt as they slept. It’d be adorable if not for the fact that, well, they were a kid. A kid in a place like this, going through things like he had… 

   He shuddered, swallowing back memories that caused phantom scars to ache. Getting cut open and put back together wrong had been hard enough for him, and he had been an adult, had known what was going on to an extent. 

   The kid was, well he wasn’t sure, but they had to be like, eight or nine at most. Probably younger. 

   Okay. Alright. This is fine. 

   It wasn’t fine, it was a horrible, nasty thing, and he could only feel relieved he’d been the one to find the kid instead of an angler or a wall dweller. (The thought of stumbling across the kid’s corpse instead of the tiny thing halfway into the hall made him sick to his stomach-) 

   Deep breaths. In and out and… calm. He had to be calm, couldn’t have a breakdown when the kid was practically curled up right over his heart and lungs. Shit. 

   Having a kid down here was not a good idea, though it wasn’t like it was his fault! 

   Well, the lockdown technically was, but fuck he didn’t know they’d be so vile as to- Deep breaths again. In and out and repeat. It wasn’t his fault, it wasn’t. Another breath in, hold, and out. 

   He let out a deep breath through his nose, looking down at the… guppy? Sure, why not. At the guppy smushing their face against his chest, whiskers and esca flickering as they slept. Fuck he hoped they didn’t end up having some sort of nightmare, who knows what was done- 

   Another breath. Focus. Focus on the now, on what he could do, not on what was and what had happened. 

[an--artistic--autistic]

sometimes i start to slide back into the mindset of "what if I'm not really disabled and I'm just faking it" or "what if everything could be cured by just doing x, y, z" etc.

and then i remember that during lockdown in 2020 i spent 6 months — like every single minute of that six months — focused on taking care of my health and doing everything right

i slept 8+ hours, i drank lots of water, i got a decent amount of (non-straining) exercise, i went for walks and got fresh air, i ate balanced meals, etc. etc.

and my health got worse.

i did everything right, continuously, for months, and was still disabled. there is literally nothing i could have done to "fix it". i'm not faking it, i was alone (mostly) and trying to convince myself that everything was fine, and i was still in debilitating pain.

everything has been so much better with disability aids. having my cane has been life-changing. using sensory aids, life-changing! a non-disabled person wouldn't benefit this much from disability aids!!!

i think this is coming up again for me because I've become a relatively well-known person on campus for disability (and queer!) issues, and despite having all of my lived experience and the drive to deal with things, i still feel underqualified.

there are other people who are "more disabled", or have "been disabled" longer than me (since things were really only dealt with during lockdown after my experiment, it's only been like 3-4 years with a diagnosis). sometimes i feel like i'm taking away an opportunity from someone that would be more qualified to do things.

logically though, i'm not. most of these things i have either started myself, or other people have convinced me to get involved with because i seem "qualified" to talk about it. I've had four meetings this week about campus accessibility, people actively seek me out to ask questions, i do regularly deal with ableism and inaccessibility even if it's to a lesser extent than some other people — but the stuff i'm doing is to help everyone, not for personal gain. i'm not pretending to be disabled for selfish reasons. there are clear access barriers that directly affect me as well and i am doing everything in my power to take them down.

anyways you can't really fake being disabled, especially not to yourself. ;)

[valyrfia]

did you see that max followed a charles fan account on twitter??? do you think he knows about lestappen 😍🤭

Anon, I'm sure you didn't mean any harm with this ask but the day that I have confirmation that Max, Charles, or anyone who knows them personally might have an inkling about the full extent of Lestappen as a popular ship, I am putting this blog on absolute lockdown and quite possibly deleting it.

To answer your question fully, I'm sure their social media managers know they're popular as a pairing in general, so by extension I would be shocked if Charles and Max didn't know that their interactions get engagement, for some reason. Charles, at least, is chronically on twitter, and I'm starting to suspect Max is somewhat similar no matter what he says (he can quote too many memes off the top of his head). But let's take Max following a stan account (probably by accident) as a warning. If you are on a social media platform that a driver is on, do NOT talk about Lestappen in any sort of serious capacity, and for the love of god don't even mention RPF or ao3. The drivers lurk, they see all, so don't post anything you wouldn't be comfortable with them possibly seeing. There's a reason why tumblr is historically the safest space to talk about and interact with RPF. Please let's keep it here, trust me when I say that all of this is really NOT enjoyable if the people you're talking and writing silly little stories about know of your existence.

[voluntarysubmission]

What's happening at the Oldest House during Alan Wake 2?

(Spoilers for ALL of Control, ALL of Alan Wake 2, including Final Draft.)

LET'S SPECULATE.

From Control, we know:

The Oldest House is on lockdown until the Hiss is completely cleansed, so it can't get out.

Jesse was witness to (a version of) Alan's conversation with Zane at the Oceanview Hotel/Motel.

Alan's writing definitely affected the way things went down at the Investigations Department - but to what extent he directly caused it to happen vs just influenced things already under way is debatable.

The Investigations Department control room for monitoring stations got an alert from the Bright Falls/Cauldron Lake station, dated "from the future", aka. 2023, when AW2 is set.

We don't explicitly know how long the events of Control are in terms of Jesse's perception of time. At least a few weeks, based on the hair growth we see in Dylan after the events in the Foundation. So from the lockdown starting in 2019, they think it's been a few weeks.

This is a SUPER tenous connection, but: after completing Foundation and meeting some hidden criteria, you get a bonus scene when interacting with Dylan, and one of the images that flashes up (the frames are shown clearly at the end of the youtube video) might be a picture looking up from inside the Huotari Well.

There have been FBC agents in Bright Falls for a while, and they were aware of the events of Alan Wake 1. Agent Estevez was acknowledged as being an agent from Investigations sending reports from the site, including complaining that the researchers at the Lake House won't share findings with her.

From Alan Wake 2, we know:

The Oldest House is still "dark". The Taken sometimes say "The Oldest House has gone dark", and in the Sheriff's Station Attacked manuscript, an FBC Agent called Young praises Estevez thinking "Estevez had held it together even after the Oldest House had gone dark".

The FBC is still operating outside the Oldest House. Despite it being a few years since the start of the lockdown, they have agents in the field currently working.

There have been researchers in Bright Falls since the first AWE there. The Research crew is at a facility called the Lake House near Cauldron Lake. This facility is manned when Saga first arrives (you can press on the call box there and ask an agent to send backup, they just say "The station heads are not currently available" - given it's plural, I think they're referring to Dr Marmont and Dr Marmont, the married FBC scientists.)

The Lake House was attacked by Taken, and is considered lost by Estevez, so that happened during the events of AW2.

A project of one Dr Campbell is specifically ongoing - the children's rhymes around the place. Dr Campbell himself is present up until just before the Dark Ocean Summoning events - if you complete the rhymes, you hear things go badly for him.

Estevez says that there is no further backup - they ARE the backup, when Saga asks if more help is available.

Dr Darling, who went missing just before the Hiss invaded in 2019, as spent 665 days minimum in the Dark Place. That's about a year and 9 months, though we don't know when during his stay that the recording happened.

So what can we conclude from all this stuff?

First, the Oldest House is still in lockdown, and has been for years, from the perspective of outside the house. There are several theories about what is happening inside the house, but it seems certain that from the outside world, HQ locked up and went quiet.

My main theory about what is happening on the inside of the house, is that as soon as the house went into lockdown, the passage of time there changed relative to... uh, the normal Earth dimension. Time in the Oldest House is going very slowly.

The two points of evidence for this are the AWE alert in Investigations for Cauldron Lake - Langston says it's coming from the future, but I think it's actually coming from the present - the inside of the House just isn't aware they've been lost for years. The second point of evidence is the conversation Jesse "eavesdrops" on between Zane and Alan - the version we see in Control ihas very similar dialogue to what we see in AW2, which may imply a certain "syncing". But this is more tenuous because of course, Alan has been going through loops so who knows how many times he's had this conversation with Zane. His hair is longer in this conversation in Control than in AW1, but not as long as it is in AW2, so, meh. I still think it's evidence though. You do "see" Jesse calling out "Hello?" in the AW2 version of the scene... I swear she calls out in Control but I can't find it.

The other option is that the house is still on lockdown because it's truly taken them YEARS stuck on the inside to clear out the Hiss, which would set up Control 2 for an interesting starting point. The nature of the Oldest House is such that it's existence, and to a lesser effect by association the FBC, are imperceptible by people who aren't otherwise aware of them. It's not unfeasible that this had the effect of making field agents unlikely to try and find out what happened, even if they knew about the House. But then, while they don't directly address it in Control, the people in the House DO have limited supplies of food and drinkable water inside. People trapped in the lost department (processes and protocols office) in the Foundation were concern about supplies and went looking for food, though ultimately died due to the Astral Spike (Gibbs survived long enough to become a Hiss though? So maybe she survived... or stopped needing to eat. IDK it's the house, it's weird).

I just think the first option is more likely than the second. I think come Control 2, the lockdown will lift and the FBC will find itself years out of date with the external world, scrambling to catch up with the field agents and researchers, and all the altered items and AWEs that have occurred without them being able to properly contain things.

But this all brings me to my main point, which was the reason I wrote all this down and speculated on it to begin with.

To me, the most astounding thing to realise is the Federal Bureau of Control's payroll system is iron clad. Despite the house being in lockdown, despite no department heads to approve budgets and expenditure, all FBC agents outside the House are STILL WORKING FOR THE FBC!!!! They would NOT be doing that if the paychecks stopped (maybe some of the more obsessive scientists... but generally no). The scientists at the Lake House have up until the night of Dark Ocean Summoning still been doing research - and presumably have project budgets and expenditures. They have technicians to regularly call on to check on the monitoring station and fix it after the Koskelas break it, who also get paid. The system functions!!! Like clockwork!!!

Now idk how USA federal government payroll works. It probably is just as simple as the FBC agents are all paid from the same place that the FBI does, I imagine it's somewhat centralised. And the Oldest House's perception protection probably means the reports get stamped and the pay goes through without being paid attention to. But this is the government we're talking about here, there's fuck ups and salary freezes and system errors and database issues. But these agents have been working on their own for YEARS! They are paying their bills! They are getting their holidays! They are filing their taxes!

Now THAT'S what I call a process to admire. No matter how catastrophic the disaster affecting HQ is, these government workers WILL get their paychecks and continue just doing their jobs and filing their reports. Incredible.

[forevertrueblue]

Been thinking a lot about what @curtmega recently said about people seeing StarKid as a thing from the past but how it very much has a bright future. It's a sentiment I've actually been pondering for awhile, especially with Cinderella's Castle and the fifteenth anniversary.

I've been a fan of StarKid for over 10 years. In that timespan, I don't think there's been a point where everyone involved with the group has been as gung-ho and on board for everything than right now. I assume 2009-2011 might have been somewhat like this as well, because everything was still new and exciting to them and they had a lot of "firsts" as a group in those years. (Also I think there might be a bit more assuredness mixed in nowadays because by this point they know what works and doesn't to an extent.)

This isn't to say there's ever been a time when the overall sentiment was that they didn't want to be there or anything, but from my experiences and what I've heard from other fans and some people involved with the group itself is that for awhile there was some questioning as to how much longer this whole thing would be going on for. There was kind of an assumption that AVPSY was the end from both team and fandom, and from that point on there was this underlying vibe of it sort of being a matter of time until things quietly petered out. The energy from a lot of the team was kind of lower, and there was a lot more uncertainty about the future. I remember a lot of us thought the five year anniversary stuff was gonna function as a sort of finale, then how A Very StarKid Reunion was their last hurrah, etc. (I was also going through a lot at that time, including what I have now had confirmed as depression, and this was when I clung to StarKid as a lifeline of sorts at a time when it wasn't really the best idea to do that. Not that it's ever a great plan to pin all your hopes on an online musical theatre troupe, but the fandom was kind of a ghost town and the future always seemed to be in flux so it wasn't even much of a fun distraction.)

I was thinking the enthusiasm from the team was mainly stemming from the newer members (anyone who joined since the Hatchetfield stuff began) but looking at all the 15 year posts and how all the longtime members get excited about VHS Christmas Carol every year it seems to be an overall rejuvenation. I have a feeling COVID also just made everyone really grateful for theatre because of the uncertainty surrounding that during lockdowns. Regardless, it's just so nice to see everyone so excited. Watching the latest stuff and just seeing the team go above and beyond, whether it be working hard to make the livestreams extra fun (and in some cases, even just actively participating in the livestreams is a major difference from the past), wearing friendship bracelets onstage at StarKid Innit, or just keeping the momentum going by bringing us content and making sure things are running smoothly has been great to see.

I no longer feel worried about StarKid's future, or everyone's passion for the work. Just excitement and anticipation. I get that some fans aren't gonna be into the new stuff for whatever reason, but I hate when they're rude about it or quick to brush it off just BECAUSE it's new; older always seems to = better in people's minds for some reason.