#Obituary Provider

[travsd]

R.I.P. Eugene Lee

I’ve seldom ventured to write appreciations of set designers on this blog, it falling outside my purview and expertise. Among the few have been Tony Walton, and Erté, But the death today of Eugene Lee (1939-2023) merits comment here for many reasons. Though he had several more famous credits, I first knew Lee’s name as the resident set designer at Trinity Rep in Providence, which I attended and…

[epiphanytear]

Yesterday while I was looking at counseling referrals I noticed that about half of them had inaccurate or missing contact information. . .

Anyway, I let my Dr. know. Hopefully they’ll make an updated list. The ones I could look up, however, didn’t match what I’m looking for but thankfully my housemate recommended a place to me.

[iz1331]

When you think about it, Betelgeuse has probably been providing or helping Lydia with ghost hauntings for Ghost House and making sure Lydia won't be lacking of "clients" and content for her show.

Beej supporting his wifey even from the Afterlife. The Juice even "hired" a whole department of shrinkers (shrink heads?) to manage all the newlydeads wanting Betelgeuse's professional haunting expertise!

From someone who just stays in his grave, sitting on his ratty couch, in his robe, and searching for potential clients from reading the obituary, probably taking up jobs whenever he feels like it because his profession as a bio-exorcist is uniquely his own and definitely not into the whole bureaucracy crap he did when he was Juno's assistant all those centuries ago, a real loose cannon...

To someone who has his own employees, a huge ass office, and mainstreaming his services where the newlydeads and other ghosts were now demanding his work 24/7!

All those centuries of his bio-exorcist schtick before meeting the Deetz-Maitlands, Lydia especially, and he changed his whole work ethic maybe around the same time he found out about Lydia's new career as a ghost haunting show host and exorcist (maybe not exorcist, but she talks to them and makes the arrangements for both living and dead to coexist).

I won't be surprised if in one of Lydia's visits to the haunted houses, Betelgeuse is there and just watches her work. Maybe make himself appear for a split-second to scare or just "say" hello to Lydia, lol. Betelgeuse is such a sucker for her, so obsessed loyal to Lydia that he didn't even try to make another alive person marry him. If he ever gets married (a second time), it's only gotta be with Edgar Allan Poe's daughter (I'm referring to Lydia, btw).

Anyways, basically they're work spouses. Even though one of them doesn't know it, and the other has been pining for the last 30 or so years.

[genderkoolaid]

Hello, I have a question. I have been feeling down recently and I know you've posted about a few trans people in history who were loved and accepted in their communities or by their friends and family. Do you have a list of people like that? It is very encouraging for me to read about trans people in history being loved for who they are

A few I know of off the top of my head:

Alan L. Hart: His grandparents supported his gender expression despite his parent's transphobia. His grandfather would make him boy's toys, and both their obituaries listed him as their grandson. He went on to be a pioneer of tuberculosis medicine by using X-rays to catch the disease early.

Lucy Hicks Anderson: Expressed her female identity at a young age. Her parents were advised by a doctor to raise her as a girl, and they did. She became a skilled chef, a madame, and a bootlegger during Prohibition. She was publicly outed as part of a trial in which her and the sex workers she employed were required to have a medical exam. During the trial, she told the court: "I defy any doctor in the world to prove that I am not a woman. I have lived, dressed, acted just what I am, a woman." I imagine that part of her defiance comes from having had the support of her parents and doctor from such a young age.

Berel-Beyle: Born in a Ukrainian shtetl and known to be GNC, when he was 21 he found a doctor who provided him transition care. When he returned, his community welcomed him back in his new male role. He took part in men's-only prayers and married to his girlfriend. The man who told his story wrote that "In our shtetl, Berel-Beyle always had a good name as a fine, upstanding Jew."

Trygonion: Described in an epitaph, she was a priest/ess of Rhea in the same tradition as the galli, the eunuch priest/esses of Cybele. The English translation starts "Here lies the tender body of a tender being." Philodemus describes them as darling, devout, and compares her to the famously beautiful sex worker Lais. The ending is also beautiful: "Give birth, you holy soil, round the grave-stone of the maenad not to brambles but to the soft petals of white violets."

[copperbadge]

OoooOOOOOHHH one of my colleagues just got an email that looks sketchy as hell. It was awkwardly worded, vague on detail, and wanted our wire transfer information and tax ID so that he could make a donation in honor of a deceased family member. Colleague passed it on to one of my gift officers who passed it on to me like “Can you confirm this improbably named dead person existed?” and I could not confirm the existence of either the deceased or the supposed family member who contacted us. 

You can’t actually do much scamming with a wire transfer number and tax ID (the latter is publicly posted on our website) so I sent him my research with a note that I thought this was a “refund scam”: the scammer acts as a legit donor but immediately after making a wire transfer, he contacts the nonprofit to say he entered the wrong amount and asks to be refunded the overage -- crucially, to a different bank account. After sending the refund, the nonprofit discovers that the wire transfer was drawn on an empty bank account -- basically a bounced check -- but by then the scammer has also cleaned out the “refund” and bailed. (This is also pulled on individuals; never send the refund until the check has cleared, kids.) 

I suggested we ignore him, but if we want to test him we could ask for something a scammer couldn’t or wouldn’t want to provide, like a legit working phone number. My gift officer replied, “Sounds good. Do you want to take point?”

I messaged back, “By take point do you mean talk to this guy as a fundraiser?”

"You could be his gift officer!” he responded, and it’s at this point that I need you guys to understand I really like my gift officer but he is also the driest human I’ve ever met and it’s hard to tell when he’s joking. He knows that I have good customer service chops but I’m also quite shy and nervous about dealing with donors directly, so I thought he might be messing with me a little. 

But no! He continued, “If he’s a fraud you’ll catch it. If he’s legit, you know enough not to ruin a new donor relationship.”

I said, “Well, your faith in me is admirable,” and he’s not entirely wrong, so I accepted the challenge.  

And now I get to write the potential scammer an email about how we’re thrilled with the offer of a donation, we just need a few small pieces of information first, like a phone number and if possible a link to the obituary. If he plays along the next step is to inform him that we place a two-week hold on wire transfer donations and see if he still bites.

[kaitaiga]

Craig Alan Jones - Black Ops OC

GENERAL

Age: 46 (1981)

Birthday: 23 July, 1935 in Adelaide, South Australia

Occupation: SASR Trooper, ASIS Officer

Affiliation: Special Air Service Regiment (SASR)(Formerly), Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS)

Rank: Lieutenant (Formerly)

Face Claim: Mel Gibson

Height: 186cm (6'1)

Hair Colour: Dark Brown

Eye Colour: Blue

Identifying Marks: Scarring on legs, mole on left cheek

Languages: English, Indonesian, Vietnamese (minimal), Russian (minimal)

Song Associated: Sharp Dressed Man - ZZ TOP

AFFILIATES

CIA

Russell Adler

Frank Woods

Alex Mason

Lawrence Sims

Lazar Azoulay

"Bell"

Aleksandra Clarke R. (@alypink)

MI6

Helen Park

New Zealand Army

Koa “Hunter” Nikau ( @islandtarochips )

Other

Abby Mason (@revnah1406)

PERSONALITY AND TRAITS

Myers-Briggs Type: ENTP-A

Generally, Craig is a relaxed but confident, goal-oriented individual.

He isn’t afraid to speak his mind when he has opposing views on a matter. He prides himself on his own experiences that have built said opinions, which may come off as arrogant at times.

Craig has a habit of working alone without noticing, working autonomously to get a job done. He is self-motivated and does what he thinks is best for an outcome.

As a trooper, he learnt to be adaptable and resourceful to any given situation.

SKILLS/SPECIALISATIONS

As an SASR trooper, Craig has to work in a smaller force element, therefore has undergone training in many different areas, including:

Parachuting (HALO/HAHO)

Combat Survival

CQB/CQC

Demolitions

Signaller

SF Weapons Handling (mounted heavy-weapons, sniper, etc)

Urban Combat

BACKSTORY

Craig was born on the 23rd of July, 1935 in Adelaide. Raised just outside of the main city, his father was part of the city council in Bradbury and lived well beyond his means. Craig attended prestigious primary and secondary schools but was always rebellious, preferring to skip going to school to commit petty crimes, tarnishing the family name as he knew that due to his father's status, he could bypass getting in trouble.

Due to this and in addition to not wanting to follow his father’s path of going to university and becoming part of the city council, this lead to many arguments between the two and at 16, he was thrown out of the house and had to fend for himself on the streets. Craig’s father, not wanting to have any association with him anymore, placed a fake obituary in the newspaper to officially cut ties with him.

For two years, Craig changed his identity and worked at a plant nursery before undergoing mandatory national service within the Australian Army at 18. He enjoyed his occupation and the perks that came along with it that he fully enlisted into the Army after his mandatory service finished and later into the Special Air Service Regiment (SASR) in 196X. He spent his first brief deployment in Borneo during the Indonesia-Malaysia conflict before shipping out to Nui Dat, Vietnam in 1966 as part of Sabre 1 squadron.

Unbeknownst to his unit whilst in Vietnam, Craig was ordered by ASIS to keep an eye out and investigate any intel that could hint towards any Soviet activity, passing anything he finds onto a CIA contact. This contact was revealed to be Russell Adler. The two become acquainted and would go onto Operation Fracture Jaw alongside Lawrence Sims.

For the remainder of the Vietnam War, Craig and the SASR continued to work closely with MACV-SOG, providing intel and support until 1971 where he returned to Australia. He truely florished in his time spent in the military, from a petty thief to an extraordinary soldier who lead his unit through countless battles, a great leader and mentor.

COLD WAR

Fast forward to 1981, Craig now works under ASIS as an intelligence officer. Due to his knowledge and intel of Perseus from Vietnam, plus his connections to Adler, he joins the crew at the CIA safehouse to help track him down once and for all.

Missions:

Fracture Jaw

Brick in the Wall

Echos of a Cold War

End of the Line

The Final Countdown

Two years later in 1983, Craig married his unnamed wife and thus his son Lachlan Jones was born.

TRIVIA

Craig prefers to wear his R.M Williams boots in the style, 'The Craftsman' in dark tan.

His main choice of attire includes: two button down shirts layered and unbuttoned (inner white and outer dark blue) with a brown leather bomber jacket on top, boot-cut blue jeans and a brown leather belt along with his boots.

Smokes occasionally, likes the brand 'Lucky Strike'.

Drives a red Mitsubishi Starion.

Favourite weapons include: HK MP5, Sterling Submachine Gun, Colt M16A1 and L9A1 Browining Hi-Power.

Frequently visits casinos and likes to gamble.

He prefers his coffee made black with lots of sugar.

[mayariviolet]

𝐖𝐢𝐟𝐞.

Episode Three of First Love / Late Spring

summary: “I cannot bear you a son; I have tried… So let me go towards the morning star. With hope, it won't disappear.” //

-

invitations to an event you don’t want to attend.

══════════════════

cw: descriptions of blood and graphic violence, angst, allusions to grief, mentions of death.

a/n: Would the audience believe me if I said this was my favourite chapter to write? :p also on Ao3

wc: ~800

🏷️: @jeanboyjean @tacobellfreshavocado @r0ckst4rjk

══════════════════

… In Loving Memory

Hosted By Satoru Gojo

To a dedicated mother, wife, and friend.

Please join us for an Otsuya to honour the life of …

December 25th, 2017 | 6-8 pm

Venue | Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical College

RSVP | …

══════════════════

Obituary

… Age 27 passed away from complications from fighting dutifully on December 24th, 2017, on the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons. She was born… to… She eloped and married her longtime love and dear friend, Satoru Gojo, on December 8th, 2011, at their summer home in Okinawa.

She loved with all her heart and enjoyed writing various letters to loved ones, as noted by her children, Megumi and…

Often, her hands were stained with either ink or preoccupied with doting on those close to her. Her years spent working diligently at Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical College provided a great asset to many past and future Jujutsu Sorcerers.

She remained a dedicated public servant, aiming to create a world safe future for both curse and non-curse users.

She enjoyed long walks, usually around forested areas and could usually be seen sitting under a weathered tree, reading to her children. Her garden was always meticulously maintained, especially her flowerbeds adorned with yellow roses and trees of lavender wisteria.

However, her favouritism really shone through her vast and lush lotus flowers. She would always ensure that it would be their best when they finally bloomed.

“Things will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, then it’s not the end.” She would always chime.

Although her time on this earth was short, her cheery spirit and love radiate beyond the afterlife. She taught with compassion and selflessness, as noted by her colleagues and previous students.

“Her exuberant personality and smile are things that words or photos cannot capture.” Satoru Gojo remarks, “I mourn anyone who couldn’t fully know her, especially in her youth. She was an intelligent, articulate, kind, selfless and witty person.”

She is survived by her children and husband, Satoru Gojo.

══════════════════

AUTOPSY FORM

Autopsy Form Completed By: Shoko Ieiri

Pronouncer’s Name: Satoru Gojo

Date Deceased Expired: December 24th, 2017

Deceased Name: Suguru Geto

Deceased D.O.B: February 3, 1990

SEX: M

Physician: Shoko Ieiri, Jujutsu Coroner

Was the deceased’s death expected?

[__] Yes / [X] No

Diagnosis(es): Blunt force trauma (avulsion, multiple fractures, abraded contusion on the back), Multiple abraded lacerations on the forehead, (continued in the back)

══════════════════

Was ACLS Performed?

[__] Yes / [X] No

Was family available at the time of death?

[__] Yes / [X] No

Was the autopsy discussed with the family?

[__] Yes / [X] No

If the autopsy was discussed, was the autopsy authorized? If YES, please note the date:

[__] Yes/ [X] No

Date | n/a

If autopsy is NOT discussed or NOT authorized, why not?

No autopsy was discussed or authorized as the deceased has no family to claim them.

Was This Death Discussed With Higher Ups?

[X] Yes/ [__] No

Faculty Name: [INFORMATION REDACTED]

Faculty Signature: [INFORMATION REDACTED]

══════════════════

***NOTE: Please return this form to the appropriate administrator upon completion. For Curse Users, please ensure that their bodies are disposed of PROPERLY.***

***** FAILURE TO DO SO WILL RESULT IN STRONG REPERCUSSIONS AT THE DISCRETION OF HIGHER-UPS. WHICH INCLUDES BUT IS NOT LIMITED TO A FAIR HEARING, EXILE FROM JUJUTSU SOCIETY OR, IN SOME CASES, EXECUTION. *****

══════════════════

AUTOPSY REPORT

(See attached form for summarized patient details and overseers).

CIRCUMSTANTIAL SUMMARY

Suguru Geto was a 27-year-old male who engaged in an altercation involving his arsenal of cursed spirits with Yuta Okkotsu (15) at approximately 5:00 pm on December 24th, 2017. Suguru Geto proceeded to harm Okkotsu with the intent to kill him and several other students.

Okkotsu then fully manifests the Special Grade Curse Rika for the second time. He proceeded to severely injure Suguru Geto to the point of complete incapacitation causing multiple life threatening injuries.

Suguru Geto and his followers attempted to commit mass genocide against both curse and non-curse users in Shinjuku and Kyoto.

He was found and promptly executed by Satoru Gojo at approximately 5:55 pm.

DOCUMENTS AND EVIDENCE EXAMINED

Completed in person by Shoko Ieiri along with Masamichi Yaga (Principal at Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical College).

CLOTHING AND VALUABLES

The deceased is received wearing a priest's robe. Accompanying the body is a cursed spirit containing a multitude of weapons.*The pockets of the priest's robes were heavy and contained [REDACTED].

*Ensure that this curse has been PROPERLY exterminated*

(Report continues on the other side).

a/n: When I finished the first draft of this chapter I was with my friend and I told them the premise for this chapter and ‘A House in Okinawa’ she said, “What the hell? That’s so sad?!” Also, please excuse any technical errors. I tried my best to research what autopsy forms looked like but its too difficult to look at in relation to where I am in my life right now. Anyways… I'm editing the last chapters now. The next one is a conclusion and the rest are kind of bonus chapters?

══════════════════

© Please do not copy or replicate my work. Inspiration is appreciated, but credit properly! ♡

[ourladyofoldgotham]

i'd be your mistress (just to keep you around)

jonathan crane x gender neutral reader

NSFW 18+, minors dni

infidelity, angst, smut

summary

On a summer night, Dr. Jonathan Crane sneaks away from his life for a few hours to be with you.

It’s a warm August evening in Gotham, in the dusky hours before night falls and after the sun goes down. You hear his car before you see it - with practice, you can recognize it even in the milieu of the evening rush on the highway below your balcony, like a voice in a crowd. Your lover always calls late. 

He lets himself in. You’ve never been particularly bothered by that. After all, he has a right to it. The money he pays you every month covers over half your rent, plus a solid chunk of your grocery bill- there’s no way you could get a place like this on your own acting.

 Sometimes you wonder exactly why he does it - out of affection? A need to know you’re safe and cared for when he’s not there? Out of his own self-preservation? A way to make sure his tires stay unslashed and his reputation tidy when he comes to visit? Or out of guilt?

You try not to wonder. It’s easier to leave things unquestioned, with him. He makes it easy, honestly. You think about it more than you should when you’re alone- about whether it’s right to need him and have him in his respites from his beautiful life - but under his sharp, lonely gaze, it feels like it melts away. It’s just you and him. The rest doesn’t matter. Not right then. 

He seems distracted when he unlocks the door. He is more often than not, these days. A perfect life can drive a man mad. There’s always something on his mind. Sometimes he’ll tell you about it absentmindedly, sitting back on the couch with a vodka martini while he undresses you with his eyes. It’s usually work things - a fascinating case, or a particularly troubled patient. He asks you your thoughts on it, and there’s something you find charming about it. As though he sees you as someone far more intelligent than you seem, as more than the sum of your parts. Sometimes, he refuses to - avoiding the question and your gaze as his hands slip under your shirt while you fix him a drink. That’s when you know it’s about his other life. His children, maybe. Issues with school or an argument with his wife. The things he really comes to you to forget. You wonder sometimes if they know - if they ever put something together from all of the evenings spent away. 

He used to be more than just an evening caller. A couple years ago, he’d even spent the whole weekend with you. It had been the only thing you’d asked for for your birthday that year, and he had been willing to provide it. Between the wild sex, you’d done normal things together. He took you out to the fair and won you a prize. You went to dinner. You felt like a normal couple, like something to be shown off on his arm and not hidden away. Maybe that was the problem.

He was gone early Monday morning - you didn’t wake up to see him go, but you could have sworn you heard your door shut before the sun came up. After that, it was radio silence. Brief periods of quiet on his end are typical, he’s a busy man, but it had never been anything like this. There was always a little something to tide you over - a text, a little treat showing up on your doorstep, a call when he’s driving home from work. This was something else, something more worrying. At first you scanned the obituaries, the news, any accident reports that you could get your hands on going about your day. Maybe something had happened. Nothing showed up. You texted, of course. You called. No reply. He read them, sometimes, though. They delivered. You read into that. Maybe more than you should have. On the 12th of the month his money still showed up in your account. No note. 

It did that four more times before you saw him again. He called you out of the blue one cold night in early December and asked if you were home. The exhaustion in his voice made your heart melt in seconds. You were out of practice making the martini, but when you cut your hand making the twist and ran out of vodka he kissed you on the cheek and said that anything you made would have been fine. The two of you ended up with hot spiked cider instead, curled up on the couch together. He was sweet, but he didn’t seem all there that night. He didn’t seem to want much from you but your company. He mentioned something offhandedly about the new baby, and he left you there alone just a couple hours after he came. His drink was still on the coffee table untouched. 

To his credit, he was better about the silence after. He texted, sometimes, but so much less than before. Maybe a couple of times a month, one or two a week if you got lucky. It was the first time you ever really realized the vastness of his life outside of your apartment, and it served as a wakeup call. You stopped looking for auditions and started looking for jobs. The next time he came over your table was covered in applications and classified ads. 

He asked about it. He looked confused, almost nervous. You spilled your heart out to him, of course. You never could keep a secret from him, and when you finished, there was a softness in his eyes that made you want to break down crying. He told you that you didn’t need that - that you never would. That he couldn’t always be there when you wanted him, or when he wanted you, but that he would always be there when you needed him. He told you that he loved you. It was the first time he said it. You tried your best to believe him.

You’ve been his thing on the side for four years now. You’ve gotten good at it. A distraction, a comfort for a couple hours in the night when he needs you in exchange for his money and as little of his time as you can manage. He has a life outside of you. He calls you on his terms. You make yourself as easily compartmentalized as possible. 

When he comes in tonight, you have his drink in your hand and you’re already dressed up for him. He isn’t really looking at you. You’ve learned to be okay with that. You take his hand and lead him to the couch, setting his glasses aside on the coffee table.

You push him back and there’s no resistance. Your hand brushes against his cheek as you stand over him and he smiles, leaning into the soft touch. You lean in for a kiss and he melts underneath you. When you deepen it, he reaches up to hold you, one hand on the small of your back and the other undoing your shirt. 

You pull back and look at him and he looks wrecked already, his icy blue irises barely a ring around his widened pupils. When he sighs and drops his head into the crook of your neck you know he needed this as much as you did. Maybe more. 

You sink to the floor and kneel in front of him. He’s still in his suit, but it’s disheveled now, his shirt crumpled from where you grabbed onto him with his sleeves haphazardly rolled up. His face is flushed, and when you touch him over his slacks he throws his head back and whines. You don’t tease him for too long, though, just mouthing at him over his boxers for a minute. His hand is covering his mouth as he lets out a shaky moan when you pull out his cock, already rock-hard and dripping with precum. 

You‘ve had your fair share of practice, and you know exactly what he likes. You sink your head down to his base almost immediately, and his hips buck up into your mouth. He apologizes for it through shaky breaths, but there’s something that drives you crazy about knowing he needs you badly enough for the infamous Jonathan Crane to lose control. His hand tugs at your hair, guiding you as you lick a stripe up the underside of his cock and swirl your tongue around the head of his cock. He arches his back and shivers, pulling you off. 

“I…don’t want to finish this here. Go to the bedroom. Get ready for me.”

You get up, legs just a little shaky, and leave him on the couch with a kiss on his neck. You open yourself up for him, but he takes a longer time than you thought he would coming in. When he does, you feel that distance between the two of you again. His hand caresses your cheek softly, and you stand up to undress him properly. You’re tender with him, almost. You kiss his neck. You bring him back down to earth. He groans a little and sits down on the bed, pulling you close to him. Something in his eyes makes you feel like this is the first time he’s seen you in a long time. 

“You look wonderful tonight, darling. Can’t think of what I could have done for all this to be for me.”

He smiles and grazes a kiss across your knuckles, raising your hand to his lips.

You hold his face in your hands and kiss him as you sink down onto his cock. It takes him by surprise, almost, his breath shaky. You opened yourself up while you were waiting, but you’re still hot and tight around him. Your legs are spread, your thighs on either side of his lap, and he clings onto them as you start to move - slowly, then switching to a breakneck pace when you find the spot inside that makes you see stars. For a minute, you falter, and then his hands are on you again, on your hips bouncing you on his cock, and then one reaching between your bodies to touch you. He is a terribly skilled man with his hands, and before you know it, you’re cumming on his chest. He guides you through it, soft and gentle, moving your hips through a slow roll, toying with the line where the pleasure becomes overstimulation. 

He’s stronger than he looks, and he lays you down gently on the bed in the haze afterwards. He kneels between your legs above you, pulling your hips up to meet his. It’s only a few thrusts before you hear his breath start to quicken, his movements erratic. He’s over you now, cheeks hot and flushed, his blue eyes fluttering shut. You press one hand against his chest and the other on the back of his head to pull him in for a desperate kiss, but before you can, he’s pulling back, hand on the bed to steady himself as he pulls out and cums onto you. 

He falls onto the bed next to you, and your hand intertwines with his, as easy as breathing. You can feel his heartbeat slowing as your head rests on his shoulder. He kisses you on the forehead and pulls you just a little closer, and for a moment the world seems perfectly atop its axis. 

He catches his breath for a couple of minutes before he rolls out of bed. You hear the faucet running for a couple of minutes and watch the golden light slip out from under the door around his lean shadow. When he comes back, he's presentable again, and he hands you a warm washcloth. He gets dressed in silence as you clean yourself up. 

With his shirt still unbuttoned, he leaves the room and steps out onto the balcony. You watch him for a minute, through the open bedroom door. The glow of the cherry on his cigarette lights up his face against the dim blue sky. He looks older than you remember him looking. More tired. More distant. You catch a glimpse of your own reflection in the glass. You do too. 

You slip out of the glass door behind him, dressed in your pajamas - his old shirt and boxers. It's chilly, and he wraps an arm around your shoulders. You stay there for a while, his warmth against your side, while he finishes his cigarette. Neither of you speak. Gotham looks softer in the dying light. It's him that breaks the silence first. 

"I love you. You have to know that."

"More than you love your life now? That I don't."

He looks away. 

"I don't blame you for it. I wish I could sometimes. But I can't."

As you speak, you take a cigarette from the box in his hand. You lean in and he lights it for you from the embers of his. 

"There are things about me that you don't know. Some for your own good. Some for mine. Maybe you should blame me."

His jaw is tense, and there’s a sadness in his eyes. 

"You think I'm a far better man than you should. I wish you could understand."

"Maybe I could."

"I'm not giving you up on a maybe."

Your cigarette is finished and the night is cold, a silence falling over the two of you. It's half-past-midnight when he tells you he has to go.

You ask him to stay. You rarely do these days. When you do, it’s somewhere between a weakness and an indulgence and a hope. 

He says no. He always does. 

There’s something in the dark outside at night these days that unsettles you. Some sinking fear in the pit of your chest. You tackle it tonight to stand on the balcony after he says goodbye at the door. You watch his car crawl back out of the city through the evening traffic until you lose it in the crowd. By the time his car turns into a dark alley downtown, you are in a fitful sleep. He does not think of either of the lives waiting for him among the bright lights. 

The next morning, reports will rise of a new villain on Gotham’s roster. “The Scarecrow”, they’re calling him. Panic about fear toxins and phobia will drip from the edges of the morning paper, but you won’t spare them a second glance. All you can do is trust. All you can do is wait for him to come back and pray that maybe this time he’ll stay. 

thanks for reading

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Twinkfrump Linkdump

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in CHICAGO (Apr 17), Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

Welcome to the seventeenth Pluralistic linkdump, a collection of all the miscellany that didn't make it into the week's newsletter, cunningly wrought together in a single edition that ranges from the first ISP to AI nonsense to labor organizing victories to the obituary of a brilliant scientist you should know a lot more about! Here's the other 16 dumps:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

If you're reading this (and you are!), it was delivered to you by an internet service provider. Today, the ISP industry is calcified, controlled by a handful of telcos and cable companies. But the idea of an "ISP" didn't come out of a giant telecommunications firm – it was created, in living memory, by excellent nerds who are still around.

Depending on how you reckon, The Little Garden was either the first or the second ISP in America. It was named after a Palo Alto Chinese restaurant frequented by its founders. To get a sense of that founding, read these excellent recollections by Tom Jennings, whose contributions include the seminal zine Homocore, the seminal networking protocol Fidonet, and the seminal third-party PC ROM, whence came Dell, Gateway, Compaq, and every other "PC clone" company.

The first installment describes how an informal co-op to network a few friends turned into a business almost by accident, with thousands of dollars flowing in and out of Jennings' bank account:

https://www.sensitiveresearch.com/Archive/TLG/TLG.html

And it describes how that ISP set a standard for neutrality, boldly declaring that "TLGnet exercises no control whatsoever over the content of the information." They introduced an idea of radical transparency, documenting their router configurations and other technical details and making them available to the public. They hired unskilled punk and queer kids from their communities and trained them to operate the network equipment they'd invented, customized or improvised.

In part two, Jennings talks about the evolution of TLG's radical business-plan: to offer unrestricted service, encouraging their customers to resell that service to people in their communities, having no lock-in, unbundling extra services including installation charges – the whole anti-enshittification enchilada:

https://www.sensitiveresearch.com/Archive/TLG/

I love Jennings and his work. I even gave him a little cameo in Picks and Shovels, the third Martin Hench novel, which will be out next winter. He's as lyrical a writer about technology as you could ask for, and he's also a brilliant engineer and thinker.

The Little Garden's founders and early power-users have all fleshed out Jennings' account of the birth of ISPs. Writing on his blog, David "DSHR" Rosenthal rounds up other histories from the likes of EFF co-founder John Gilmore and Tim Pozar:

https://blog.dshr.org/2024/04/the-little-garden.html

Rosenthal describes some of the more exotic shenanigans TLG got up to in order to do end-runs around the Bell system's onerous policies, hacking in the purest sense of the word, for example, by daisy-chaining together modems in regions with free local calling and then making "permanent local calls," with the modems staying online 24/7.

Enshittification came to the ISP business early and hit it hard. The cartel that controls your access to the internet today is a billion light-years away from the principled technologists who invented the industry with an ethos of care, access and fairness. Today's ISPs are bitterly opposed to Net Neutrality, the straightforward proposition that if you request some data, your ISP should send it to you as quickly and reliably as it can.

Instead, ISPs want to offer "slow-lanes" where they will relegate the whole internet, except for those companies that bribe the ISP to be delivered at normal speed. ISPs have a laughably transparent way of describing this: they say that they're allowing services to pay for "fast lanes" with priority access. This is the same as the giant grocery store that charges you extra unless you surrender your privacy with a "loyalty card" – and then says that they're offering a "discount" for loyal customers, rather than charging a premium to customers who don't want to be spied on.

The American business lobby loves this arrangement, and hates Net Neutrality. Having monopolized every sector of our economy, they are extremely fond of "winner take all" dynamics, and that's what a non-neutral ISP delivers: the biggest services with the deepest pockets get the most reliable delivery, which means that smaller services don't just have to be better than the big guys, they also have to be able to outbid them for "priority carriage."

If everything you get from your ISP is slow and janky, except for the dominant services, then the dominant services can skimp on quality and pocket the difference. That's the goal of every monopolist – not just to be too big to fail, but also too big to care.

Under the Trump administration, FCC chair Ajit Pai dismantled the Net Neutrality rule, colluding with American big business to rig the process. They accepted millions of obviously fake anti-Net Neutrality comments (one million identical comments from @pornhub.com addresses, comments from dead people, comments from sitting US Senators who support Net Neutrality) and declared open season on American internet users:

https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-issues-report-detailing-millions-fake-comments-revealing

Now, Biden's FCC is set to reinstate Net Neutrality – but with a "compromise" that will make mobile internet (which nearly all of use sometimes, and the poorest of us are reliant on) a swamp of anticompetitive practices:

https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2024/04/harmful-5g-fast-lanes-are-coming-fcc-needs-stop-them

Under the proposed rule, mobile carriers will be able to put traffic to and from apps in the slow lane, and then extort bribes from preferred apps for normal speed and delivery. They'll rely on parts of the 5G standard to pull off this trick.

The ISP cartel and the FCC insist that this is fine because web traffic won't be degraded, but of course, every service is hellbent on pushing you into using apps instead of the web. That's because the web is an open platform, which means you can install ad- and privacy-blockers. More than half of web users have installed a blocker, making it the largest boycott in human history:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

But reverse-engineering and modding an app is a legal minefield. Just removing the encryption from an app can trigger criminal penalties under Section 1201 of the DMCA, carrying a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine. An app is just a web-page skinned in enough IP that it's a felony to mod it.

Apps are enshittification's vanguard, and the fact that the FCC has found a way to make them even worse is perversely impressive. They're voting on this on April 25, and they have until April 24 to fix this. They should. They really should:

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-401676A1.pdf

In a just world, cheating ripoff ISPs would the top tech policy story. The operational practices of ISPs effect every single one us. We literally can't talk about tech policy without ISPs in the middle. But Net Neutrality is an also-ran in tech policy discourse, while AI – ugh ugh ugh – is the thing none of us can shut up about.

This, despite the fact that the most consequential AI applications sum up to serving as a kind of moral crumple-zone for shitty business practices. The point of AI isn't to replace customer service and other low-paid workers who have taken to demanding higher wages and better conditions – it's to fire those workers and replace them with chatbots that can't do their jobs. An AI salesdroid can't sell your boss a bot that can replace you, but they don't need to. They only have to convince your boss that the bot can do your job, even if it can't.

SF writer Karl Schroeder is one of the rare sf practitioners who grapples seriously with the future, a "strategic foresight" guy who somehow skirts the bullshit that is the field's hallmark:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/07/the-gernsback-continuum/#wheres-my-jetpack

Writing on his blog, Schroeder describes the AI debates roiling the Association of Professional Futurists, and how it's sucking him into being an unwilling participant in the AI hype cycle:

https://kschroeder.substack.com/p/dragged-into-the-ai-hype-cycle

Schroeder's piece is a thoughtful meditation on the relationship of SF's thought-experiments and parables about AI to the promises of AI hucksters, who promise that a) "general artificial intelligence" is just around the corner and that b) it will be worth trillions of dollars.

Schroeder – like other sf writers including Ted Chiang and Charlie Stross (and me) – comes to the conclusion that AI panic isn't about AI, it's about power. The artificial life-form devouring the planet and murdering our species is the limited liability corporation, and its substrate isn't silicon, it's us, human bodies:

What’s lying underneath all our anxieties about AGI is an anxiety that has nothing to do with Artificial Intelligence. Instead, it’s a manifestation of our growing awareness that our world is being stolen from under us. Last year’s estimate put the amount of wealth currently being transferred from the people who made it to an idle billionaire class at $5.2 trillion. Artificial General Intelligence whose environment is the server farms and sweatshops of this class is frightening only because of its capacity to accelerate this greatest of all heists.

After all, the business-case for AI is so very thin that the industry can only survive on a torrent of hype and nonsense – like claims that Amazon's "Grab and Go" stores used "AI" to monitor shoppers and automatically bill them for their purchases. In reality, the stores used thousands of low-paid Indian workers to monitor cameras and manually charge your card. This happens so often that Indian technologists joke that "AI" stands for "absent Indians":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain

Isn't it funny how all the really promising AI applications are in domains that most of us aren't qualified to assess? Like the claim that Google's AI was producing millions of novel materials that will shortly revolutionize all forms of production, from construction to electronics to medical implants:

https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/millions-of-new-materials-discovered-with-deep-learning/

That's what Google's press-release claimed, anyway. But when two groups of experts actually pulled a representative sample of these "new materials" from the Deep Mind database, they found that none of these materials qualified as "credible, useful and novel":

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chemmater.4c00643

Writing about the researchers' findings for 404 Media, Jason Koebler cites Berkeley researchers who concluded that "no new materials have been discovered":

https://www.404media.co/google-says-it-discovered-millions-of-new-materials-with-ai-human-researchers/

The researchers say that AI data-mining for new materials is promising, but falls well short of Google's claim to be so transformative that it constitutes the "equivalent to nearly 800 years’ worth of knowledge" and "an order-of-magnitude expansion in stable materials known to humanity."

AI hype keeps the bubble inflating, and for so long as it keeps blowing up, all those investors who've sunk their money into AI can tell themselves that they're rich. This is the essence of "a bezzle": "The magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

Among the best debezzlers of AI are the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy's Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, who edit the "AI Snake Oil" blog. Now, they've sold a book with the same title:

https://www.aisnakeoil.com/p/ai-snake-oil-is-now-available-to

Obviously, books move a lot more slowly than blogs, and so Narayanan and Kapoor say their book will focus on the timeless elements of identifying and understanding AI snake oil:

In the book, we explain the crucial differences between types of AI, why people, companies, and governments are falling for AI snake oil, why AI can’t fix social media, and why we should be far more worried about what people will do with AI than about anything AI will do on its own. While generative AI is what drives press, predictive AI used in criminal justice, finance, healthcare, and other domains remains far more consequential in people’s lives. We discuss in depth how predictive AI can go wrong. We also warn of the dangers of a world where AI continues to be controlled by largely unaccountable big tech companies.

The book's out in September and it's up for pre-order now:

https://bookshop.org/p/books/ai-snake-oil-what-artificial-intelligence-can-do-what-it-can-t-and-how-to-tell-the-difference-arvind-narayanan/21324674

One of the weirder and worst side-effects of the AI hype bubble is that it has revived the belief that it's somehow possible for giant platforms to monitor all their users' speech and remove "harmful" speech. We've tried this for years, and when humans do it, it always ends with disfavored groups being censored, while dedicated trolls, harassers and monsters evade punishment:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/07/como-is-infosec/

AI hype has led policy-makers to believe that we can deputize online services to spy on all their customers and block the bad ones without falling into this trap. Canada is on the verge of adopting Bill C-63, a "harmful content" regulation modeled on examples from the UK and Australia.

Writing on his blog, Canadian lawyer/activist/journalist Dimitri Lascaris describes the dire speech implications for C-63:

https://dimitrilascaris.org/2024/04/08/trudeaus-online-harms-bill-threatens-free-speech/

It's an excellent legal breakdown of the bill's provisions, but also a excellent analysis of how those provisions are likely to play out in the lives of Canadians, especially those advocating against genocide and taking other positions the that oppose the agenda of the government of the day.

Even if you like the Trudeau government and its policies, these powers will accrue to every Canadian government, including the presumptive (and inevitably, totally unhinged) near-future Conservative majority government of Pierre Poilievre.

It's been ten years since Martin Gilens and Benjamin I Page published their paper that concluded that governments make policies that are popular among elites, no matter how unpopular they are among the public:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B

Now, this is obviously depressing, but when you see it in action, it's kind of wild. The Biden administration has declared war on junk fees, from "resort fees" charged by hotels to the dozens of line-items added to your plane ticket, rental car, or even your rent check. In response, Republican politicians are climbing to their rear haunches and, using their actual human mouths, defending junk fees:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-04-12-republicans-objectively-pro-junk-fee/

Congressional Republicans are hell-bent on destroying the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau's $8 cap on credit-card late-fees. Trump's presumptive running-mate Tim Scott is making this a campaign plank: "Vote for me and I will protect your credit-card company's right to screw you on fees!" He boasts about the lobbyists who asked him to take this position: champions of the public interest from the Consumer Bankers Association to the US Chamber of Commerce.

Banks stand to lose $10b/year from this rule (which means Americans stand to gain $10b/year from this rule). What's more, Scott's attempt to kill the rule is doomed to fail – there's just no procedural way it will fly. As David Dayen writes, "Not only does this vote put Republicans on the spot over junk fees, it’s a doomed vote, completely initiated by their own possible VP nominee."

This is an hilarious own-goal, one that only brings attention to a largely ignored – but extremely good – aspect of the Biden administration. As Adam Green of Bold Progressives told Dayen, "What’s been missing is opponents smoking themselves out and raising the volume of this fight so the public knows who is on their side."

The CFPB is a major bright spot in the Biden administration's record. They're doing all kind of innovative things, like making it easy for you to figure out which bank will give you the best deal and then letting you transfer your account and all its associated data, records and payments with a single click:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/21/let-my-dollars-go/#personal-financial-data-rights

And now, CFPB chair Rohit Chopra has given a speech laying out the agency's plan to outlaw data-brokers:

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/prepared-remarks-of-cfpb-director-rohit-chopra-at-the-white-house-on-data-protection-and-national-security/

Yes, this is some good news! There is, in fact, good news in the world, bright spots amidst all the misery and terror. One of those bright spots? Labor.

Unions are back, baby. Not only do the vast majority of Americans favor unions, not only are new shops being unionized at rates not seen in generations, but also the largest unions are undergoing revolutions, with control being wrestled away from corrupt union bosses and given to the rank-and-file.

Many of us have heard about the high-profile victories to take back the UAW and Teamsters, but I hadn't heard about the internal struggles at the United Food and Commercial Workers, not until I read Hamilton Nolan's gripping account for In These Times:

https://inthesetimes.com/article/revolt-aisle-5-ufcw-grocery-workers-union

Nolan profiles Faye Guenther, president of UFCW Local 3000 and her successful and effective fight to bring a militant spirit back to the union, which represents a million grocery workers. Nolan describes the fight as "every bit as dramatic as any episode of Game of Thrones," and he's not wrong. This is an inspiring tale of working people taking power away from scumbag monopoly bosses and sellout fatcat leaders – and, in so doing, creating a institution that gets better wages, better working conditions, and a better economy, by helping to block giant grocery mergers like Kroger/Albertsons.

I like to end these linkdumps on an up note, so it feels weird to be closing out with an obituary, but I'd argue that any celebration of the long life and many accomplishments of my friend and mentor Anne Innis Dagg is an "up note."

I last wrote about Anne in 2020, on the release of a documentary about her work, "The Woman Who Loved Giraffes":

https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/19/pluralist-19-feb-2020/#annedagg

As you might have guessed from the title of that doc, Anne was a biologist. She was the first woman scientist to do field-work on giraffes, and that work was so brilliant and fascinating that it kicked off the modern field of giraffology, which remains a woman-dominated specialty thanks to her tireless mentoring and support for the scientists that followed her.

Anne was also the world's most fearsome slayer of junk-science "evolutionary psychology," in which "scientists" invent unfalsifiable just-so stories that prove that some odious human characteristic is actually "natural" because it can be found somewhere in the animal kingdom (i.e., "Darling, please, it's not my fault that I'm fucking my grad students, it's the bonobos!").

Anne wrote a classic – and sadly out of print – book about this that I absolutely adore, not least for having one of the best titles I've ever encountered: "Love of Shopping" Is Not a Gene:

https://memex.craphound.com/2009/11/04/love-of-shopping-is-not-a-gene-exposing-junk-science-and-ideology-in-darwinian-psychology/

Anne was my advisor at the University of Waterloo, an institution that denied her tenure for fifty years, despite a brilliant academic career that rivaled that of her storied father, Harold Innis ("the thinking person's Marshall McLuhan"). The fact that Waterloo never recognized Anne is doubly shameful when you consider that she was awarded the Order of Canada:

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/queen-of-giraffes-among-new-order-of-canada-recipients-with-global-influence

Anne lived a brilliant live, struggling through adversity, never compromising on her principles, inspiring a vast number of students and colleagues. She lived to ninety one, and died earlier this month. Her ashes will be spread "on the breeding grounds of her beloved giraffes" in South Africa this summer:

https://obituaries.therecord.com/obituary/anne-innis-dagg-1089534658

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/13/goulash/#material-misstatement

Image: Valeva1010 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hungarian_Goulash_Recipe.png

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[going-to-ikea-for-the-fries]

Home. - Fluffy Ending (not canon) || cbf!Simon "Ghost" Riley

Rating: M Words: 2.8K Pairing: cbf!Simonxafab!reader / teen!Simonxteen!Reader Summary: Teen Simon and his best friend often spend their nights away from their respective houses because they found a home in each other… CW: none. Tags: you/your pronouns, reconnecting with family, wedding guests, second chance romance, time skip. a/n: not proofread. I didn't like the way I wrote this ending but I figured I should share it either way. It's too fluffy/forced for my taste. The actual alt ending will be better. ALSO: Was listening to Chemical by Post Malone on repeat while writing this. Idk if you wanna do that too while reading...

[MASTERLIST]

You're twenty-eight, he's twenty-nine.

You swore to yourself you wouldn’t step a foot back in Manc, not even if cows flew!

You swore to yourself you wouldn’t keep in contact with anyone, not even if someone died!

(Which your father did. Thank fuck.)

You broke those promises so many times.

You were unable to keep away, though you tried…

It’s your own fault, really.

You stalk your old friends and family on Facebook sometimes.

Other times you check the local news.

Others you check the obituary and marriage sections on the news.

You beat yourself over it every time. Even though seeing the lack of changes through your cyberstalking and the news made you feel immense relief, you still ended up closing the pages on your browser with more aggression than you should and sulking in your bed.

And yet, you still go and do it again a few weeks later.

And then another few weeks later.

It’s pathetic, really, but maybe it provides you some comfort. Maybe helps you sleep at night.

You should’ve figured out that someone would have made you eventually. 

I mean, naming your blank Facebook profile after the one mean neighbor you had, who called the police on you and your mates once for being too loud while hanging out in the street, and died years ago? Yeah, they’d make you eventually.

Luckily for you, it was Olly who did.

All things considered, it could’ve gone much worse.

Maybe… Maybe you should follow his advice.

It’s been a decade.

Your mum deserves at least a letter to let her know you’re still alive, that you’re healthy, happy, and safe. She’s owed that much…

-

It was very strange to be inside your childhood home after almost eleven years.

Four days ago, your mum had openly sobbed as she threw her arms around you, and you had found yourself sobbed with her, both of you falling to your knees at the front door.

She held your face so gingerly and kissed your forehead so many times, her face severely more aged than the last time you had seen her.

The letter you had sent her 8 months before was 23 pages long, a bulk so large you sent them unfolded and stapled together inside a manila envelope rather than folded neatly into a standard one, and had detailed everything you figured she should learn about your life. 

Where you went.

What you did.

Who you did it with.

How you felt.

What you learned.

How you changed.

You apologized for running away, for worrying her.

You assured her you loved her and missed her.

You asked, tentatively, if she could find a way to let you be a bit more present.

You reiterated you wanted to remain living where you were in Scotland… but that you could allow yourself to be her daughter again if she so wanted it.

You know she cried reading it. Hell, you cried writing it…

You didn’t expect anything, you didn’t want to cause her any more grief by coming barrelling back into her life. She’s your mother, you didn’t want to manipulate her. You weren’t surprised when she didn’t answer for a few weeks…

But then her letter came. A simple half-a-page response that said, in no uncertain terms, that she missed you, that you were always welcome in her home and her heart, and she wanted to have her little girl back.

It all culminated in today.

Adjusting your red gown with one hand, you walk up the aisle, the other holding your 10-month-old daughter who’s clad in a pale yellow tulle dress. She’s kept flush to your chest, her chubby legs wrapped around your hip.

You and your mum find a spot near the middle and sit down, though you scoot yourself as far on the pew as you can, making sure that you can step off to the side just in case Evelyn starts fussing. Though you doubt she will. 

The ceremony is being held in the middle of the afternoon and she has been calm and sleepy this whole time, softly dozing off in your arms, her little face nuzzling to your neck, since it’s close to her nap time.

You sit Evie down on your lap and place a hand on the back of her head while you and your mum speak softly, still waiting for the wedding ceremony to start.

You still can’t believe that you’re here…

Wythenshawe still looks as crappy as ever, you still know the streets like the back of your hand, though a lot of it has changed, shops went out and into business, and people moved away.

You met up with your old mates at your local just a couple of nights ago, and after a lot of tears and some drinking, you gossiped all night about your lives and everyone else’s.

In a way, it feels like you never left…

You were so afraid that they would hold a grudge at you for leaving, for not staying in touch… But they never did. You were welcomed with open arms…

It’s… nice.

The ceremony doesn’t take long to start. 

You nearly cry at the sight of Emily in her wedding dress, having deemed her a close friend for the better time of your formative years. And Olly, as emotionally detached as he tries to pretend himself to be, cries at the sight of his bride.

The ceremony is long and a bit tedious, as most weddings tend to be, but you’re still happy to be there… Happy to be back.

It’s nearly 45 minutes into the ceremony when Evie starts fussing a bit. You’re quick to take the nappy bag onto your shoulder and rush out of the church while shooting some apologetic looks to the guests around.

Once outside, you find shade under a tree and begin to bounce Evie a bit, knowing she isn’t fussing because of her diaper or hunger, but rather from the fact she’s teething.

One hand balances the infant, the other sets down the nappy bag on a low wall and you begin rummaging for the teething ring toy amidst the pockets. When you find it, you give it to her, which she gladly takes, though it doesn’t do much for her pain, only quieting her down a bit by allowing her to bite all over it.

“Shhh… it’s alright, pet…” You whisper to her as you kiss her smooth forehead and nuzzle your nose against the crown of her head.

You keep softly swaying and bouncing with her in your hip, moving about, side to side, while she drools all over the toy, her hands, and your dress as she softly headbutts your chest while chewing.

You’re lucky your dress is a dark enough shade of red and made from a fabric as forgiving as chiffon, so that the wetness will dry quickly and discreetly.

It’s in the midst of your pacing and bouncing the infant on your hip that you spot him.

His pale jawline peppered with a well-trimmed stubble, his blonde hair cut short and hidden under the beige beret, his strong build wrapped in full military dress…

You almost didn’t recognize him…

You leave your bag right where it is and beeline for him before you can stop yourself. 

And he makes no motion to move from his resting spot, leaning against a wall, smoking a cigarette, and looking right at you like you’re sure he has been doing for the past 15 minutes or so (you wouldn’t put it past him).

“Fuckin’ hell…” You hear yourself saying as you come to stand in front of Simon.

He tosses his cigarette down on the floor and puts it out with his brown boot, blowing the smoke away from your daughter on your hip.

“That how you greet people now?” He retorts while looking down at you through his fluttering eyelashes. 

His voice is so much deeper, rough and strong than it used to be… You don’t know how to respond at first, your mouth has gone dry and your brain has blue-screened.

You’ve had dreams about this before… Nightmares too.

You’ve imagined that one day you’d cross paths with him on the street and you’d stumble all over yourself. That he’d ask you how you’ve been or what you’ve done with your life and you’d have nothing to show for it…

You thought you’ve healed from your past, but here comes Simon Riley to indirectly tell you “HA! Think again, dumbass!”.

“You surprised me is all.” You end up saying, your voice carrying a maturity and a strength you didn’t know it could. “Didn’t think you’d come.”

“Didn’t think I would either. Got lucky this coincided with my leave.” He remarks. “Could say the same to you, though.” He adds.

You can’t tell if he meant to offend with that comment. Olly had told you through Facebook that he told Simon about you vanishing off the face of the Earth and that Simon didn’t take it well. You knew he, rightfully so, expected you to stay gone.

“Got back in touch with Olly and the rest of my family.” You remark simply and shrug.

He keeps looking at you with those brown eyes of his, with a certain coldness behind you that forcefully reminds you that this is not the same person you used to know. The boy he was and the man he is are forcefully different people.

“Cute kid.” He adds after a beat of silence as his eyes flit to your daughter who’s still very much in her own world with her teething toy.

“Thanks.” You reply.

This feels awkward. You’re finally standing face to face (more like face-to-chest, goddamn is the man tall) after a whole ten years. Are you even friends? No. But are you acquaintances? Also no. And you have too much of a history to be strangers. 

So what are you?

“What’s her name?” He asks as he looks back at you.

“Evie.” You answer. “Evelyn.” You correct yourself before adding. “Evie for short.”

“Hm.” He remarks unemotionally. His eyes flit over you up and down, taking in… everything about you.

You are a confident person, you’d say. You feel good in your own skin. You like your reflection when you see yourself in the mirror. And you feel like a million bucks in this dress, which wraps around your body beautifully, the fabric making you look delicate and soft.

But under his scrutinizing gaze, you feel anything but confident.

So, you take a breath and return the same scrutinizing gaze, up and down, taking in every inch of him, your eyes just as strong and confident as his own. He notices, because of course he does, and he puffs out his chest and raises his chin, to allow you to keep looking at him, showing himself off a bit proudly.

He’s wearing a khaki formal uniform, or full dress as you remember it being called, and although it's been ten years, you still remember some things about all the stuff you investigated about the British Army, so you could keep up with him, impress him with your knowledge.

A brown waist belt with a sash across the right soldier means he’s an Officer… The buttons are gold and shaped like winged parachutes, and he wears a beret instead of a cap. A beige beret to be exact, which means he’s no longer in the Parachute Regiments, who wear maroon ones. There’s a cap badge on the beret and the Excalibur on it tells you one thing: he’s special forces. You don’t remember which one… but you know he’s something big, bad, and important.

“Special Forces.” You muse out loud, showing off what you noticed.

His eyebrows raise, impressed by you, and then he nods. “Somethin’ like that.” He adds.

“Done well for yourself, then.” You add and he nods again and blinks while smirking, as if trying to humbly pat himself on the back for it.

“She have a dad?” Simon asks while shooting Evelyn a look. The words escape his mouth quicker than he wanted and sound a lot more judgemental than he meant for them to.

The way your eyebrows raised at him, the same way they used to when he’d say something bloody stupid as a teen, told him you weren’t pleased and that he had put his foot in his mouth.

“Sorry.” He says though it’s clear he doesn’t mean it. “Came out wrong.” He tells you.

You might have gone ten years apart but you knew Simon like the back of your hand at one point… And you knew sometimes he’d say things aloud when he meant to keep them as thoughts. It’s clearly that’s a habit he still has.

“I know what you meant.” You reply bluntly as you fix your grip on the infant, swiveling her a bit to sit on your other side.

“What’s the answer then? She got a dad?” He probes as he dips his head a bit to the side, his arms hanging by his side as he looks you up and down.

“Aye.” You end up replying, the Scottish word slipping past your lips then you meant for it to. You still speak English with a Manc accent, just like him, but there are little quirks like this one that you’ve adopted after living in Dundee for ten years.

Simon’s eyebrows cock up as well at the sound of Scottish word, and you can tell he finds it odd, but he doesn’t comment. “Where’s he, then?” He retorts. “No ring on your finger.” He adds.

Your eyes drift down to your left hand which is wrapped around your daughter now, the splayed fingers showing a distinct lack of a wedding ring. He sounds just as judgemental. But you don’t let it ruffle your feathers.

“Separated.” You reply maturely. “No ring on yours.” You say and nod toward his own left hand which also lacks a ring.

“Married to the job.” He replies and you can’t help but let out a snort of a chuckle, which makes him chuckle dryly too.

“‘f course you are.” You add in reply.

“Could’ve been married to you.” He retorts with the same casualty of someone saying ‘Nice weather today’.

You scoff and shake your head. “Really?” You add.

“Ye.” He adds. “Had a ring and everythin’.” He quips. “Then Olly told me you ran off into the night.”

You scoff again, mostly out of disbelief, and look away from him, your eyes flittering over the courtyard in front of the church.

The ceremony should be finishing soon enough.

“Dodged a bullet then.” You remark dryly, smiling a bit in amusement.

“You or me?” He retorts and you find your eyes drifting upwards to him again.

For a moment you just both stare at each other in silence… 

Your eyes are locked in the same way they used to whenever the two of you were about to throw themselves at one another as teens… 

Then, he breaks into a grin, and so do you, the both of you looking away for a moment. His tongue presses against the inside of his cheek. You’re both amused at the cheekiness of your comment.

“How long are you stayin'?” He asks you once you both glance at each other again.

“Goin’ home on the 26th.” You tell him. “How long’ve you got leave for?” 

“‘Till the 27th.” He replies and dips his head to the side a bit.

This is definitely crazy.

You secretly wonder if you’ve gone mad.

A decade has gone by… But there’s no mistaking the electricity in the air.

That light buzzing of goosebumps that prickle at your skin, making the hair in the back of your neck stand… Like lightning is about to strike…

“Take me out to dinner.” You demand abruptly and narrow your eyes at him.

He presses his tongue to the inside of his cheek again in amusement. “Are you askin’ me on a date?” He retorts.

“No. I’m tellin’ you.” You add, watching how his brown eyes swiftly light ablaze with a certain fire you never expected to see after so many years apart.

“Tomorrow?” He suggests.

“Tomorrow.” You add.

“I’ll pick you up at 9.” He adds.

You know damn well that 9 P.M. is too damn late for dinner… But you also know that in reality, your ‘dinner’ will be grabbing Nando’s and cheap beer, and eating in the backseat of his car in that one side road you always used to go to… talking into the night… and probably definitely fucking each other’s brains out.

“Like the good ol’ days.” You remark.

“Mhm.” He adds.

Then, the church doors open and the guests come pouring out, forcing the two of you to separate.

But you can still see the smirk on his lips from afar as you walk off to grab your nappy bag, find your mum, and get ready for the rice toss.

[MASTERLIST]

taglist: @iite-cool , @spicyspicyliving

[pwlanier]

The largest Scottish river pearl found in living history, the Abernethy Pearl is a remarkably perfect example, found in 1967 by Scotland’s last pearl fisherman, William (Bill) Abernethy.

There has always been an allure which has drawn mankind to natural pearls, be they saltwater or freshwater, and since antiquity, civilisations have valued them for their physical, and often mystical properties. The Ancient Greeks believed they would ensure marital bliss when worn by a bride on her wedding day, while the Romans believed they could provide a long and healthy life.

Our frenzy for these natural treasures reached a true crescendo in the early 20th century, when they became the ultimate signifier of wealth and status. Such was the case in the US when, in 1917, keen to acquire the natural pearl necklace his wife had seen at Cartier, the New York financier Morton Plant exchanged the jewel for his 5th Avenue townhouse. The prestigious central Manhattan location remains Cartier’s flagship American Maison to this day.

In Scotland, the pearl has had an illustrious history, and if natural saltwater pearls are a rarity, the natural Scottish river pearl is something else indeed. It is believed that only one in every five thousand mussels found in Scottish rivers contains a pearl, and generally they are smaller than their saltwater cousins. Today the mussels (Margaritifera margaritifera) in which Scottish pearls grow are dangerously close to extinction and are rightly a protected species.

Historians have postulated that the desire for Scottish pearls was one of Julius Caesar’s incentives for his invasion of Britain in 55BC; he was known as an avid pearl collector. Indeed, the popularity of these rare specimens continued into the Victorian era, fuelled by Queen Victoria’s passion for all things Scottish. The largest Scottish river pearl ever found, the famous Kellie Pearl, is set on the Crown of Scotland which dates to the 1540s. It remains housed and on view to visitors at Edinburgh Castle today.

William (Bill) Abernethy

William (Bill) Abernethy, famously known as Scotland’s last pearl fisherman, seems to have understood the danger of the demand for these rare specimens intuitively. In 1967 he found the now famous Abernethy Pearl, second only in fame to the aforementioned Kellie Pearl, and though he never disclosed where exactly he found it (likely to discourage fortune hunters trying their own luck), it was purportedly wrapped in a dock leaf to keep it from scratching, before he took it to jewellers Cairncross of Perth, where it remained until recently.

As the largest Scottish river pearl found in living history, weighing 43.6 grains, the Abernethy Pearl is a remarkably perfect example. Bill had been trained how to fish for pearls by his father, and had a rare understanding of the mussels and the rivers in which they could be found. During the 1970s, wildlife cameraman Doug Allen worked with Bill as a pearl diver, and in Bill’s 2021 obituary he noted how he was able to discern from the size and shape of the mussel as to the likelihood of it containing a pearl; enabling him to pick carefully and leave undisturbed many of the other mussels, better maintaining their numbers and health.

It is believed the Abernethy Pearl (affectionately known as ‘Little Willie) could have been quietly growing in its mussel for over 80 years before it had been found by Bill. It is interesting to think that 80 years prior to Bill plucking it from the water, was the Golden Jubilee year of 1887, evoking images of Queen Victoria tramping the heather with her pony Fyvie and servant John Brown while the pearl was quietly growing.

Lyon and Turnbull

[tumbleweed-writes]

Death and the Lady: Chibs Telford X Reader: Chapter Three

Chapter Two found HERE

Chapter Three: Roses

She was almost amazed she’d managed to keep her cool after the horrible deed she’d just completed for SAMCRO. Y/N was astonished she’d been so calm and cool throughout both the task and the aftermath.

She’d been able to maintain the appearance of a competent, professional, and caring funeral director as she’d worked helping show possible options for caskets, discussed burial plots, cost of embalming, an obituary, flower arrangements, and viewings. 

One of Charming California’s most prominent restaurateurs, Jonathan Meyer, had not noticed anything amiss as he’d spoken with Y/N about funeral arrangements for his late grandmother. 

No one would be none the wiser about the fact that three members of SAMCRO had just recently been in her place of business and retrieved a corpse from Y/N. She cringed knowing that there would be a buried empty casket by this time next week and the dead man’s family would never know. No one would ever know aside from SAMCRO and her. The secret would be literally six feet under in Charming’s local cemetery. 

The thought sent a chill down her spine but based on her outside appearance and behavior no one would ever guess. 

Y/N had always been gifted at compartmentalizing her emotions and thoughts. It was a necessary skill set in her line of work. One couldn’t allow negative emotions of grief or any other feelings to cloud the ability to get the job done when it came both to embalming the deceased and conducting a successful funeral service.

 She was worryingly a professional when it came to being able to shove the horrid mixture of guilt, shame, and fear back into some little drawer in her brain and keep the appearance of a professional whose only care in the world was serving the bereaved. 

Now that she was truly all alone in her office downstairs, Y/N found her brain taunting her with possibilities of just why SAMCRO even wanted two corpses from her to begin with. It was a disturbing request and one that she’d honored.

To be honest she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to know just what the MC wanted with the dead bodies she’d provided. She had a feeling knowing just what they’d wanted with them would only trouble her further. 

It was getting late and so far she’d not heard a word from SAMCRO. She wasn’t sure if she was relieved or troubled by the silence.

Though she knew that she should go upstairs and try to wind down from the day, she found herself parked at her desk trapped in a pit of selfpity and anguish. 

Her brain taunted her with the distinct possibility of SAMCRO being caught doing whatever the hell it was they were doing, and this all leading right back to her doorstep. She knew if any of this led back to her then the fallout would be ruinous. 

It was more than just the fear of a fine or fear of possibly being arrested. It was the fear of everything she’d lose if the discovery of this horrible deed led back to her front steps. 

She knew if any of this led back to her then she’d lose literally everything she held dear and had fought to achieve. She would not only lose the respect of the community, her entire livelihood, and possibly even the home and business she’d wanted so badly to preserve. 

The years of schooling, a hard earned apprenticeship, time spent studying and testing for licensure both in New York and California would be meaningless. 

She’d lose her license and this would mean losing the family legacy she’d tried so hard to upkeep.

It wasn’t just the guilt of what she’d done and the fear of being caught that troubled her. It was the realization that Jackson freaking Teller had somehow wormed his way back into her life bringing SAMCRO right along with him.

She cringed, hating the sense that she felt as though was right back where she’d started almost a decade before. She was back to once again being entangled in SAMCRO’s world. It was a world she’d thought she’d moved on from.

She had foolishly thought the MC was a thing of her past. She wasn’t partying alongside them anymore, but she was working with them. She wasn’t sure which scenario felt worse.

She glared up at an old black and white photograph hanging on the wall in her office, the photo featuring some great grandfather of hers way back when standing by an ancient looking hearse. She felt the words slide from her lips, filled with bitterness. “I bet you never had to deal with this kind of crap when this place and gig was yours.”

She slumped back in her desk chair, her stomach and heart twisting when she spotted a small photo she kept framed on her desk. The photo of her father and she sat almost taunting her. It had been taken soon after she’d graduated from mortuary school. Her father had been so proud of her; proud she’d taken up the family legacy on her own terms and so proud she’d outgrown her wild streak running around with Jax Teller and SAMCRO.

She felt her eyes water she quick to reach up and wipe any tears that threatened to spill. A sense of shame washed over her as her mind taunted her wondering what her father would think of her now.

Her father and she may have butted heads when she’d been a rebellious teen, but she’d loved him dearly.

She missed him dearly. It had only been four months since he’d passed and to be honest she’d thrown herself into taking up the family business. Throwing herself into the family business and all the debt and dealing with her brother was far easier than facing her feelings of loss and pain. 

She’d always admired her father. It wasn’t just his dedication to the profession that she’d loved. It was everything about her dad.

Her father had been a handsome man, though a bear of a man if there ever was one. He was tall and broad shouldered. He was strong, incredibly so not just physically but mentally. 

She knew she’d gotten her smaller build from her late mother. 

Her father and her brother though both were practical lumberjacks. 

Seeing younger photos of her father made her easily understand just why her mother must have fallen for him.

Her father was handsome, strong, dependable, loyal, and proud of a profession that he viewed as being more of a service and duty to his community. 

She’d always found it a little funny. Her father, as huge and intimidating as he appeared, was so mild-mannered and calm.

He’d been a gentle parent even when she’d been going through her rebellious phase and probably needed a bit of a tougher hand. Her father had been so patient of her even offering her an escape when it had all become too much. 

Her father had taught her everything he knew about the family business. He’d started her young, being frank with her about just what the family business consisted of.

She’d still been a kid when he’d brought her downstairs and showed her the tools of the trade. 

It wasn’t until she was an adult that she’d realized that this seemingly charming, at least to her, childhood memory horrified people when she recalled it.

She guessed she got the reaction. People assumed her father had been some kind of sadist trying to torment a child far too young by exposing her both to death and the funeral business. 

She knew though that it had been more of her father’s attempt to bond with her. It was the only way he knew how to bond with his children after his wife’s death.

Most kids' dads taught them to play baseball and change oil in a car. Her dad taught her about embalming and how to change the oil in a hearse.

She knew most people would never understand the comfort she’d found surrounded by death. It was all she’d ever known after all. 

Her core memories consisted of mourners trailing in and out of the home, the fact that caskets were displayed on the first floor of her home, corpses could be found in the basement, and the realization that everyone died. 

Her father had always taught her not to fear death. The biggest lesson she’d learned was that though everyone died; dying was nothing to dread. Death was inevitable and no one could say for sure what laid beyond death. One should never spend their lives fearing the end though. If anything one should be amazed that death gave the opportunity to appreciate how beautiful life truly was. Her father had taught her that although she would die one day that she should be in awe of the fact that anyone even had the opportunity to live at all to begin with. 

During the past few years of his life her father and she had begun to have longer conversations at least once a week. They’d had much needed heart to hearts admitting mistakes they’d both made and regrets they both had.

She’d been able to hear that her father was proud of her. He was proud of the young woman she’d become.

She had been so proud of the woman she had become up until now. 

She’d been so proud that she’d turned over a new leaf and grown into a better person. This entire deal she’d made with the MC proved that she was not at all the better person she proclaimed to be.

She sighed, reaching up to toy with the small golden cross pendant hanging around her neck. 

Although she had been snarky with Jax, she could admit she was no woman scorned.

She knew way back when she was hanging around SAMCRO neither she nor Jax had any preconceived notions about just what she and he were doing. 

She had been looking for a place to rebel and an environment to escape how angry and miserable she felt and he’d been behaving just as the Prince of SAMCRO should.

She wasn’t bitter or angry about their history no matter how brief and messy it had been. 

She just hated the person she’d been back then. The girl she’d been almost ten years ago had hated everything and everyone. Most of all though, she’d hated herself.

She had looked in the mirror and had seen nothing but sadness in her features back then. 

Y/N hated who she was before.

She feared becoming that girl again, hating herself and seeing nothing but sorrow staring back at her in the mirror.

She felt her stomach twist all the further the words sliding from her lips as she tore her eyes from the photo of her father and she, the words soft . “I’m sorry, Daddy.”

She was pulled from her pity party as her cell phone chimed an unfamiliar number flashing across the screen. 

She answered the call trying to keep her voice level and peaceful as though she hadn’t been trapped in a cycle of dread. “Y/N speaking.”

“Y/N, jus the lass I was tryin to reach. Jackie Boy asked me to call ya up.” The voice on the other end of the call sounded out, it taking her brain a moment to both work through the thick Scottish accent and to realize just who was on the other end of the call.

She felt a nervous flutter in her stomach as it hit her just who she was speaking to. She could still remember the previous reaction her body had to the Scottish Son. It was something that both troubled her and excited her and she was trying to convince herself she hated it. 

She furrowed her brow, it hitting her that she didn’t even know the man’s name. No formal introductions had actually been made during the few interactions she’d had with SAMCRO lately. 

She widened her eyes as the voice sounded out again. “Y/N, lass? Are ya there?”

“I am…what can I do for you?” She remarked, snapping out of it almost dreading what response would be. 

She cringed remembering Jax’s comment about possibly needing to borrow her access to the crematorium later on. This was most likely what this call concerned.

She continued to toy with the cross pendant around her neck as the voice spoke up again. “Clay, I’m assumin ya know him…wants ta know if ya can give us access to the crematorium tomorrow nigh?”

She sighed hating that she was right on the money concerning just what this was about. “What time?”

“Late.” Was the only reply she earned.

She scoffed gazing down at the rich mahogany desktop in front of her. “How late?”

“After midnight, prolly close to bout one a.m. Keepin discreet is important.” The voice finally replied.

She glanced down at the time on her laptop, her stomach turning as she realized that it was getting late. She had a long night and a long day tomorrow that would apparently end with another long night. “Okay…I will need to be there to run the machinery…I’m not about to try to pull an innocent explanation out my ass if the damn thing got busted because I let one of you run it. I’m not coming up with a reasonable lie because some idiot screwed up an expensive piece of machinery. That thing costs a fortune and I’m not the only funeral home in the area that uses it. It’s owned by the city, local government owns the cemetery. Most of us don’t own an on site cremator so we all pay to use the thing.”

She was certain she almost heard a chuckle on the other end of the line. “Aye fair nough.”

She took a deep breath working up the nerve to say it. “I’ll expect payment of course, for my time and effort.”

The amusement still seemed to be clear in her conversation partner’s voice as he replied. “Aye o’course. Clay said yer gonna be paid well fer the favor an he appreciates yer willingness to help with future…needs.”

She felt her stomach turn it hitting her that she’d definitely set herself up for this. She had opened the door for future favors, so she shouldn’t be shocked. She needed the money badly enough to keep the door open for future favors. 

She cleared her throat trying to sound calmer than she felt. “Perfect…I’ll see you around one then.”

She paused, unable to stop herself from asking the curiosity too strong to ignore. “Uh…”

She frowned realizing she still didn’t know the Scot’s name. She wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to ask now…it just felt too awkward given the conversation.

He thankfully heard the small sound she’d made. “Aye?”

She spoke knowing it was now or never. “Everything turned out okay…with you know? Uh…the cups of sugar. Nothing went wrong?”

Chibs snickered as it hit him exactly what she was hinting at, recalling her words to Jax as he’d first requested the bodies from her: you aren’t asking me to let you borrow a freaking cup of sugar here.

“Nah, no issues on our end love.” He remarked, deciding to leave out some of the more exciting details about just all that had happened today. What she didn’t know didn’t hurt her.

She felt her heart race at the word love. She pushed back the reaction it gave her. She ignored the slight flush to her cheeks and the voice in the back of her head that claimed she could get accustomed to being called love as she spoke. “Oh, uh…good to hear…I think.”

She frowned, hating how awkward she felt. She hated feeling as though the man on the other end of the call and the men he associated with had the upper hand here. 

“Aye, told ya it’d turn out. I don’t make a habit of lyin to pretty lasses.” Chibs was quick to reply the comment making her cheeks flush all the darker.

She spoke a small huff leaving her not missing the attempt to flirt. “I highly doubt that. I’ll see you gentlemen later, tomorrow night at the agreed time. Don’t be late…again.”

And with that she hung up ignoring the strange cocktail of fear, anxiety, shame, and desire for her caller that washed over her.

She groaned, dropping her cell on her desk. She took a deep breath trying to calm her racing heart and the strange sense of lust perking up in her. This was so not what she needed. She refused to go down that path. She was not the girl who got all hot and bothered just because the intimidating biker was flirting…even if that intimidating biker did have a lovely accent and equally lovely eyes and dimples. 

She stared back up that same photo of her great grandfather that she’d gazed at earlier, a bitter sigh escaping her lips. “You so didn’t have to put up with this bullshit when the gig was yours.”

==================================================

Chibs smirked as he hung up his cell having to feel pleased as can be with himself even as she’d abruptly ended the call and hadn’t exactly responded to his attempts to flirt as eagerly as he’d hoped.

He had the distinct feeling Y/N was going to prove to be a challenge. It was a refreshing realization. The croweaters around the club were not a challenge. They required no effort at all.

He had to like the concept that Y/N was the kind of girl who required an effort. Although he could admit he found it intimidating.

It had been a long time since he had to put in effort when it came to a woman.

He could admit he found himself at a loss as to why he was so eager to put in the effort. 

The easiest answer he could pull together was that he found her fascinating and he was curious. 

He knew of course that curiosity killed the cat, but he’d never been one to shy away from the threat of being killed.

He was unable to resist saving the number to his contacts before he dropped the cell on the bar in front of him. 

He nodded to the croweater behind the bar as she eagerly poured him a glass of Jameson. 

Just a week ago he would have probably been tempted to drag the croweater away for a little bedroom entertainment, but he found himself disinterested in the concept.

He was surprised to find that there was only one woman he wouldn’t mind having some bedroom time with.

He easily found his brain remembering those curves and those legs of hers and how it was a damn shame those legs had been hidden under tights today. He wouldn’t mind having those legs wrapped around him. He also was quite able to vividly recall the incredible cleavage he’d spotted that first meeting in the crematorium. He would be quite happy to bury his face against that cleavage. He was certain he could die happy with his face buried there and the lower part of his anatomy buried in what lay between those glorious legs of hers. 

He shifted in his seat, the thought exciting him. He took a slow sip from his drink doing all he could to not allow his brain to slide down the rabbit hole of lust. 

He could remember Juice’s comment that Y/N was spooky but hot.

Chibs had to admit he found her to be less spooky though she did frighten him a little…or at least the thoughts he had about her frightened him.

Her job was intense to say the least, but Chibs had never been one to shy away from the intense. The morbid nature of her job didn’t trouble him as much as it probably should.

He was too entranced by her to pay too much thought to the fact that she embalmed and buried the dead for a living.

She was morbid but somehow tantalizing. She seemed elegant, confident, and intelligent. Those weren’t qualities he’d found with a woman he’d pursued since Fiona.

The thought was terrifying. 

He cringed at the thought of his estranged wife and the history related to her and he. There was a lot of pain there. It wasn’t a trip down memory lane he wanted to go down, not when he was currently infatuated with an entirely different woman.

He glanced up from his drink as Bobby dropped down beside him giving him a nod. “You get everything settled with her?”

“Aye, she’ll meet us tomorrow. She’ll run tha machinery at her insistence. We jus gotta bring the payment.” Chibs replied a small smirk crossing his features as he remembered her comment about just why she had to run the crematorium. 

He was once again amused that she was ballsy enough to be just a little insulting by essentially implying they were idiots who would break the cremator if she didn’t run it herself. He had a feeling he’d not exactly tolerate the disrespect from a woman who he didn’t fancy.

Bobby raised an eyebrow spotting the hint of a look he’d never seen on Chibs’ face before. He quickly connected the dots that the somewhat lovesick smirk on Chibs’ lips and the SONS new associate at the funeral home were connected.

He spoke, deciding to keep the comment casual. “Interesting having her back in town…Y/N. Thought she’d never show up again after she left.”

“Aye? How’d she leave?” Chibs replied, that spark of curiosity bubbling up in him again.

Bobby shrugged accepting his own drink from the croweater behind the bar. “Nothing too dramatic, not really my place to say. It seemed like she just stopped coming around one day, next thing anyone knows her dad shipped her out east. She was pretty young though. Shit just probably got to be too intense for her.”

Chibs dared to ask though he’d already asked Jax a similar question. He wasn’t entirely satisfied with the reply he’d gotten from Jax. “Aye, she mentioned bein a club hanground.”

He paused, gazing at the croweater uncertain of how to broach the subject. He spoke again, deciding to be a little more tactful even though he didn’t particularly care what the croweater thought about how the Sons viewed her. “Was she one of our Friday nigh lasses?”

Bobby shook his head, a small smirk crossing his lips. “Not exactly. To be honest I think most of the guys around here were intimidated by the fact that her daddy could bury us alive literally…a few nomads weren’t so wise but…like I said she wasn’t what you’re thinking. Shit was complicated.”

He paused the next statement only making Chibs feel more frustrated. “Not my story to tell though. It’s been almost a decade, pretty sure most of us who were around back then have killed a few brain cells since then to fully recall every last detail.”

Chibs resisted the urge to remark that he was sick of hearing that line: It’s not my story to tell.

Chibs shifted in his seat the conversation doing little to sate his curiosity. It only left him feeling more intrigued. He wanted to know just what was so complicated.

Y/N was definitely a puzzle he wanted to solve. He was determined to solve it.

—----------------------------------------------

Y/N was relieved to pull up to the crematorium late the next night to see that the SONS were actually on time.

It seemed that lateness was only a trait Jax Teller held.

She tried to keep her cool as she shut off her engine of her little black 2003 Acura and exited the car her purse held tight in her grasp.

She busied herself digging through the purse for the keys to access the crematorium as she approached the line of motorcycles and one unremarkable looking white van. She easily realized that a boring white van might be favorable for a more discreet task. After all, a van attracted far less attention than Harleys.

She cringed as another familiar Son approached her; she just as displeased to see him as she’d been to see Jax Teller. “Doll, can’t thank you enough for doing this.”

She gave Tig Trager one small glance before focusing back on the contents of her purse. “Don’t thank me.”

He held his hands up in mock defeat he fast to reply. “Still charming as always.”

“Same could be said for you.” She remarked fast to reply to the observation.

If her mood wasn’t sour enough another person she wasn’t entirely pleased with approached her. Jax speaking. “Thanks for the favor darlin”

“Don’t thank her.” Tig was fast to remark, parroting the words she’d said earlier.

She rolled her eyes not wanting to engage with either man. Though Tig and she didn’t exactly share the same history Jax and she shared, she was still not looking to chat like old times with the Son.

Chatting like old buddies with either man made her feel too much like the angry young woman she’d once been, the one who hated herself and didn’t care what happened to her. 

Chibs stood aside with Juice and Half Sack observing the exchange. He raised an eyebrow sensing Y/N’s sour mood.

He had a feeling it was about to get more bitter once she saw just why they needed access to the crematorium.

He approached Juice and Half Sack following along beside him. The prospect spoke nodding to her car. “You drive an Acura?”

She rolled her eyes as she finally located the necessary keys. “The hearse attracts too much attention…besides the casket I have in the back rattles around the backend when I drive. It’s kind of distracting.”

She felt a small sense of satisfaction when she noticed the young man’s face pale at the latter part of her statement. She’d found, as cruel as it was, that it was far too easy to screw around with people when they asked her stupid questions. 

It wasn’t exactly something she made a habit of. She usually prided herself in being able to make death and the funeral business less terrifying and intimidating to the average public. 

She had to enjoy making the members of SAMCRO feel uneasy though. It was kind of an ego trip seeing the definition of danger get nervous over some bullshit she told them about her job.

Chibs smirked, only allowing Half Sack to fret for a brief moment before he gave him a smack on the back of the head. “She’s fuckin with ya, ya half nutted muppet.”

She furrowed her brow not missing the half nutted comment. She shoved the question dancing around on the end of her tongue about this statement back telling herself she didn’t want to know.

She ignored the little playful smile Chibs tossed her way. She did her best to pretend she wasn’t reminded of the feelings that had washed over her during the phone call they’d shared the day before. 

The Scottish Son was an interesting one. She was finding it hard not to admit this to herself.

She spoke holding the keys up. “I’ll unlock the doors.”

She cringed her stomach dropping as Tig spoke nodding to both Half Sack and Juice. “Get the bodies.”

She took a deep breath trying to calm her nerves. Of course there were bodies. She wasn’t naive enough to think they needed to borrow her access to the cremator without there being bodies to cremate.

She felt bile rise in her throat refusing to question if she was considered some kind of accessory after the fact related to what she was about to help burn.

Wasn’t this considered destroying evidence?

Chibs entered the crematorium eyeing Y/N as she dropped her purse on the cabinet in the corner of the room she busying herself finding those thick black gloves he’d spotted on her hands that first day.

He watched her having to admit that he noticed the curve of her backside in the jeans she wore. He was pleased to see she wore another tight fitting pair of jeans. The black denim hugged her bottom and hips in a way that left Chibs feeling envious of the fabric.

He watched her shrug her soft looking plum hooded jacket off placing it over her purse. He admired the way the black top she wore gave him another view of clevage. He was also amused to spot those pink converse on her feet again.

He watched as she pulled a hair tie off from around her wrist pulling her hair up into a messy looking top knot.

He spoke unable to stop himself, wanting to soothe any anxiety she might have about the circumstances behind the bodies she was about to help cremate. He couldn’t help but to hate the thought of her thinking she was some kind of accessory to murder. “It was an accident…found em in…a property of ours that caught fire.”

She furrowed her brow wanting to ask if it was just an accident then why was it so important to get rid of these bodies?

She told herself it was probably not a great idea to ask too many questions. She had a feeling the Scotsman wouldn’t tell her the entire truth anyhow. 

She cringed not having time to focus on the thought as Half Sack and Juice entered the room carrying two bodies wrapped in old looking blankets.

She took a deep breath as she moved towards the cremator opening and pulling out the drawer nodding down to it. “Put them down here. We should be able to cremate both together…it might take longer but it’s doable.”

The men deposited the bodies stepping back Y/N left to glance down at them. She grimaced at the sight of the two bodies. They were young women from what she could see. They’d been dead for a few days she guessed by the level of decay.

It wasn’t the worst deceased body she’d seen, but the realization that she was about to cremate these two nameless women did send a chill through her.

She yanked her glance from them as Jax stepped forward distracting her. “We have your payment.”

She took the envelope not missing the heft of it. She resisted the urge to open it and count it the thought seeming cruel given what she was doing.

She placed the envelope within her purse unaware that Chibs was studying her he taking notice of the way she’d gazed down at the corpses and the hint of sympathy in her eyes.

He couldn’t help but to be troubled by it. It was a surprising realization; that it bothered him that she was upset doing something that would get the club out of a huge pile of shit.

He pushed the thought from his mind as he watched her work getting everything together.

She moved quickly just wanting to get this over with. The sooner this ended the sooner she could go home and probably have a sleepless night. She had a feeling she’d need a good shower and maybe a drink when she got home.

She pushed in the drawer mentally apologizing to the bodies she was about to cremate. She was certain this wasn’t their end of life plans. She was sure they were far too young to consider such plans.

She ignored thoughts of any family they might have left behind or any dreams they might never achieve.

She knew she had to compartmentalize those feelings and focus on the task at hand. 

The machine was started up Y/N speaking as she worked finding it easy to talk about what she was doing in a technical sense than to actually acknowledge how screwed up this all was. “It will take a moment to get to the right temp. It needs to reach up to at least 1,400 degrees fahrenheit to burn. We’ll probably want to go a little higher given that we’re…burning more. It might take up to three hours…that’s for one body though. I don’t know about more than that…It’s not legal to burn more than one at once honestly.”

She cleared her throat as she spoke again. “I’m going to have to just assume we’re going to be pushing the three hour mark considering that is usually the time it takes to cremate a heavier body.”

She stepped aside surprised that the Sons moved forward lining up in front of the machine. She was uncertain if they just wanted to be sure the job was being done or if they were actually paying their respects in some weird messed up way. 

She stood to the side not certain of what else she should do.

They stood in silence for a long while the entire situation feeling both surreal and daunting. 

Half Sack spoke as they gazed at the bodies within the crematorium. “Should we say a prayer or something?”

Juice snickered his comment earning a grimace from Y/N. “You know any bible passages about lost semen.”

Chibs took notice of the look of disapproval on Y/N’s features. He couldn’t help but to cringe himself it seemed his young brother wasn’t exactly making the best impression. He reached out smacking Juice’s shoulder harshly, the action wiping the smirk from the man’s lips.

Chibs resisted the urge to glance over at Y/N and check and see if she’d noticed his disapproval and was aware he wasn’t being as crude and disrespectful as his young associate. 

He was a bit surprised he cared so much what she thought of him especially in a situation like this. She probably already disapproved of them all.

He couldn’t help but to hate the thought that she might think he was disrespectful enough to not at least understand the gravity of what they were doing. This essentially was the only funeral these women would get. 

Tig spoke thankfully finding something to say that was a bit more respectful, a prayer leaving his lips. “May a ray of sunshine warm your souls amen.”

With that they stepped back enough to allow Y/N to move forward, shutting the door and turning up the heat, she doing her best to turn her mind off and not focus on how awful this all felt.

Time seemed to move far too slowly and no one seemed that concerned that they were clearly going to stand here the entire time it took to completely cremate the remains.

Everyone seemed to have the sense to not speak even Juice and Half Sack.

When it was clear that the bodies were getting closer and closer to being ashes Tig spoke. “We should go.”

Jax nodded his head in agreement. “Yeah.”

He turned to face Y/N fast to speak again. “Thanks for helping us. I know this wasn’t ideal.”

She shook her head a small bitter laugh leaving her not sounding humored at all. “Nope, not ideal.”

Jax spoke, giving her arm a gentle squeeze. “I can’t promise the next favor won’t be less shitty.”

She moved from his grasp crossing her arms over her chest, the act almost seeming as though she was trying to protect herself. Chibs took notice of it, surprised that he wanted to reach out and provide some reassurance.

She moved towards the cabinet she speaking over her shoulder. “I’ve got it from here boys.”

Everyone but Chibs seemed to take the hint, happy to be out of the crematorium and escape this entire situation.

Jax spoke over his shoulder as he moved to leave. “We really are grateful for the help, Y/N. You’re keeping us out of some deep shit.”

She sighed, shaking her head, her voice monotone, not seeming comforted by the thought that she was helping them escape what was most likely the consequences of their own actions. “Yeah, sure.”

She pushed back the judgment knowing deep down she wasn’t much better. She was accepting money for this. She wasn’t an angel.

Chibs didn’t speak until only they remained in the room. He cleared his throat nodding over to the cremator. “What are ya goin to do with tha ashes?”

She raised an eyebrow almost fearing he was testing her to see if she was going to run to the cops. She was tempted to point out the primary chemical elements that were in cremains were just calcium phosphate and sodium. No forensics team could pull any evidence from cremains.

She didn’t have a chance to dwell on fears that he was testing if she was likely to snitch as he spoke again. “I mean…we don’ know wha they woulda wanted. I imagine they were young nough not to think bout it.”

She shrugged her shoulders a bit surprised that he seemed to genuinely care. She’d almost expected him to disappear off into the night like his brothers and leave her to clean up what remained.

She spoke nodding her head towards the entrance of the crematorium. “There’s some old mausoleums out near one of the back corners of the property. They’re old as hell…the city uh they are responsible for maintaining the landscaping…so there’s rose bushes near them. It might be nice to bury the ashes under the roses. It’s at least some final resting place.”

Chibs nodded his head, a small half smile crossing his features, having to find it kind of endearing that she’d put this much thought into it. She really did have a passion for her job. “Aye, tha’ sounds nice…are ya doin it tonigh?”

“Yeah, probably shouldn’t do it during daylight. I think I can manage it tonight. I can figure out how to dig a hole.” She remarked not wanting to admit she wouldn’t be able to rest tonight until she’d done this.

A small part of her almost had to hope that providing a final resting place for the remains would at least make up for some of the horrible things she’d done over the past two days. 

Chibs took her by shock he speaking. “I’ll go with ya.”

She furrowed her brow a tiny paranoid part of her almost fearing that he’d off her once he’d gotten her alone. Maybe she’d been too pushy with the MC asking for payment. Maybe they were just going to get rid of her.

She shook the thought from her mind, reminding herself that she was still useful to SAMCRO. She was right, she was more reliable than Skeeter any day of the week.

Chibs spoke again, spotting the tiny hint of fear in her eyes, hating that she might fear him and believe he might intend to harm her. “Lotta homeless probably hang round this place at nigh. Can’t trust that someone with less morals won’t see ya and ya know.”

She cringed quickly coming up with a few scenarios that the you know seemed to imply.

“Okay, sounds good.” She remarked, turning her attention back to her work.

—----------

The two didn’t speak again until they reached the mausoleums Y/N had described. Chibs gazed up at them there was something eerie about them in the dark. He was relieved Y/N seemed to be smart enough to carry a little flashlight in her purse.

She handed the flashlight to him a small sigh leaving her lips. “Hold this while I dig.”

He was tempted to insist that he could be the one to dig the hole. It seemed to be the gentlemanly thing to do after all. He bit his tongue though having a feeling she wouldn’t allow him to do this.

This seemed a bit more personal to her judging by the look of sympathy he’d spotted in her eyes earlier. 

He stared up at the night sky being sure to keep the flashlight on her task. He spoke searching for anything to talk about. “Stars are at least nice out ere. Not nough street lights to fuck it up.”

She cleared her throat a little surprised by the choice in conversation. It seemed so casual after what had happened just a few hours ago. “Yeah, it’s nice.”

He spoke again searching for more to say. “Don’ have em like this back home.”

“Home?” She asked her curiosity peaking despite the voice that screeched at her not to get involved.

“Aye, in Glasgow…Belfast too…too many fuckin people in the city at least…too many lights. Out in the countryside though, that was some real stars, put these to shame.” He replied a small dreamy tone crossing his voice as he recalled the countryside.

“You’ve lived in both Scotland and Ireland?” She questioned. She was relieved that the conversation provided some distraction from her dread filled brain. She had to admit she was curious about how the Scotsman came to reside here of all places even if it was just related to his involvement with the Sons. 

She was comforted to have something else to focus on other than the fact that the new leaf she’d turned seemed to be dead. 

He spoke nodding his head. “Aye, born and raised in Glasgow, moved to Belfast when I was sixteen.”

“You’re a long way from there.” She remarked, cringing at the comment knowing the move most likely had something to do with the criminal element surrounding the man she was speaking with. It probably wasn’t wise to bring it up.

Chibs felt his heart twist the same way it often then when he was reminded of what had forced him from Belfast in the end. “Aye…it was an adjustment…The states aint all that bad…even became a citizen a few years back…figured it was easier than maintainin’ a work visa.”

She nodded her head not entirely familiar with immigration laws or how citizenship worked. It wasn’t something she’d really experienced. 

She spoke as he continued to dig. “The furthest I’ve been is New York. I moved there for mortuary school…lived there for a while. Never left the United States though. I have always wanted to, but dead people don’t tend to care about vacation plans and travels not in my budget most of the time.”

She felt her stomach turn at the mention of her budget considering she’d just been paid twice to do some questionable things by the associates of the man she was speaking with so casually.

She spoke again, shrugging her shoulders. “Maybe someday. I wouldn’t mind seeing the stars you’re praising.”

“Aye, ya won’t regret it.” Chibs was fast to reply, a small smile crossing his features relieved the conversation seemed to be flowing so easily.

For someone who had given SAMCRO nothing but sass, there seemed to be something kind of sweet and lovely about this conversation they were having one on one. He wouldn’t mind experiencing more of it.

She spoke again, satisfied with the depth of the hole she’d dug. “This should work. I think I got it wide and deep enough.”

Chibs felt a small sense of disappointment wash over him at the realization that he was about to no longer have an excuse to be near her. 

He hid his disappointment as she placed the plastic baggie containing the cremains down in the hole working quickly to cover it. 

He parted his lips wanting to say more to her, wanting to say anything to keep her here by his side.

He felt the words die on his lips as she stood up wiping the dirt from her jeans. She spoke, taking the flashlight from him. She was thankful it was dark enough that he didn’t notice her cheeks flush as her fingers brushed against his. “Thank you for holding it.”

He took notice of the softness of her hands. He had to wonder just what other parts of her were soft. “Aye, glad ta help.”

She spoke, taking a deep breath, a bit of the weight of shame she’d felt lifting just the slightest. She knew the small act of giving the remains a final resting place wouldn’t make up for the two bodies she’d given SAMCRO, but at least she might be able to feel that she wasn’t entirely a terrible person. “Thank you for…watching over me and keeping me company.”

“Aye, anytime lass.” He replied, causing her to let out a small laugh though this one didn’t sound as humorless as the laugh she’d given Jax earlier.

“No offense, but I hope it isn’t anytime. I don’t mind talking with you, but I’d prefer the next time to not be while I’m burying remains I illegally cremated.”

He smirked both at the comment and the implication she might enjoy talking with him. 

He was fast to bring it up. “Aye, so ya like talkin to me?”

She let out a huff rolling her eyes though she didn’t stop the small smile from crossing her lips her cheeks flushing darker. “Shut up.”

He smirked, satisfied that she didn’t have a more clever comeback.

She spoke again, shaking her head. “I’ll see you around…uh?”

He furrowed his brow, it hitting him; they'd never been entirely properly introduced.

He was surprised by the words that left him not choosing the club nickname he’d long gone by but his legal first name. “Filip.”

She nodded her head. “Goodnight, Filip.”

He spoke as he watched her step forward intending on parting ways. “Aye, goodnigh lass. I’ll see ya around.”

[thechanelmuse]

How genealogy is used to track Black family histories

Our names are important to us. They tell us who we are and often, who we come from. So imagine suddenly discovering the last name you’ve always carried… might not actually be the name you should have. 

Alex Neason began looking into her family’s history after discovering her great grandfather’s name was different from what she believed for her whole life. In her search to discover the story of that last name, she enlisted genealogist Nicka Sewell-Smith.

For Black Americans, genealogy can fill in the blanks left by the legacy of slavery and racism in the U.S. Services like the Freedmen’s Bureau and Slave Voyages provide free access to records and documents to help with that search. We talk about the power of genealogy in fostering knowledge and connection for Black Americans.

Source

If you click on the word “source,” it’ll take you to the article where you’ll see a LISTEN button. It’s a 30-minute audio that discusses the info provided in the article even further. Y’all know I’m big on getting people to trace their lineage. All that “we don’t know where we come from.” Who told you that? Everything in the US is in plain sight. Everything.

Discover your fam. 

I assist others when they reach a roadblock, like getting past the “1870 wall.” But you can’t beat the feeling of you discovering them on your own. Unearthing your history, seeing photos, reading stories that were stored, and saying their names that haven’t been said for centuries. I’ve been tracing mine (scanning, logging) since my family reunion in 2005 through oral family history and obituaries (those are records), and since 2011 through databases of US archived records like ancestry.com (purchased by BlackStone) and familysearch.org (free database owned by the Latter-day Saints Church). There are others, but those are the main two I use for comparative results.  

Archiving Centers, Census Records & Other Records

There are archiving centers in every state and DC that also keep records for those particular states and the federal capital. There’s a footnote on all records that tells you where they are housed. And please...Don’t just do a simple pedigree chart of your family tree. Get to know your great-aunts, great-uncles and cousins. It’s also helpful for seeing who lived around who (fam often lived next door to each other) and puts more of the pieces together of your complete family story. You can see the land and acres they owned or your fam today still owns, as well as if that land was stolen from them.

US census records go back to year 1790. Depending on when or if your ancestors were enslaved or free: you’ll find them attached to slave logs that have been made available online or kept in archiving centers (you go there), or or they’ll be listed on census records as free persons (1790-1710), free colored male/female (1820-1840), Black (1850-1920), Mulatto (1850-1890, 1910-1920) or Negro (1900, 1930-1950). “New” census documents are put on sites, like ancestry.com, every 10 years. As of 2023, you can only trace from 1950 to 1790. The 1960 census will be out in 2030. How to trace from 1950 to today, birth, death and residential records. So again, depending on the census year, you’ll notice your ancestors racial classification change throughout documents for obvious reasons. 

Keep in mind that the the largest slave trade for the United States was the domestic slave trade. In house human trafficking and selling (in addition to property insurance of enslaved people and the selling of enslaved people as the building block of Wall Street’s stock exchange) is how US capitalism was built. So just because you know a lot of your people are from Tennessee, for example, it doesn't mean that’s where that line stayed. I’ve found my ancestors throughout 7 states (so far). Another example, people with Louisiana roots damn near always have ancestors who were trafficked from early Virginia. Going beyond year 1790, records were kept in Christian and Catholic churches and old family history books so most of those documents are scanned online and/or still kept in the churches. I’m talking books books. 

If your ancestors walked the Trail of Tears, or were caught as prisoners of war or trafficked to Indian Nations to be enslaved, you’ll find an Oklahoma Indian Territory and Oklahoma Freedmen Rolls section on ancestry.com. You can discover more info on sites, like the Oklahoma Historical Society. (Every state has its own historical society for archived genealogical records.) 

Here’s the National Archives.

Also for Oklahoma, you may also find your ancestors in Indian Census Rolls (1855-1940) as [insert tribe] Freedmen, depending if they weren’t rejected through the “blood quantum” Dawes Rolls for not being the new light to white status. You’ll see their application and the listed questions & answers with or without a big void stamp. And on the census, you’ll even see the letter I (pronounced like eye) changed to the letter B. This is also for those in Louisiana.

Freedmen’s Bureau & Bank Records 

There were Freedmen’s Bureau records and Freedman’s Savings Bank records in other states. To see if your ancestors had their records in those systems, you can search by their name. The state and age will pop up with people having that name. It’ll give you a wealth of other info, like all of the kids and other fam if they were present or mentioned to the person who logged that info in. With the Freedmen Bank records, you can see how much money your ancestors put in there (that was later stolen from them by way of the United States government), which is still there today. It’s the biggest bank heist in US history (that they try to keep hush hush) with the equivalence of more than $80 million in today’s value stored in there today. Back then, it was valued almost close to $4 million. Stolen wealth met with bootstrap lectures. 

Here’s a short video on that heist:

Today the bank is called the Freedman's Bank Building, located right on Pennsylvania Ave. Plain sight. 

Trace your lineage. 

There’s a lot more that I can list. But this is just the basics. Like I said before, it’s a more rewarding feeling when you discover your ancestors by yourself. You may reach roadblocks. Take a break. Try going the “Card Catalog” route on ancestry.com’s search engine. Don’t skip the small details. 

SN: Slave Voyages isn’t a genealogical site, but rather a database for slave ship logs and the estimates of purchased Africans who became human cargo to be enslaved by country like USA, or by colonizers like Spain, Great Britain, etc.

[lexosaurus]

Ectoberweek 2022

(Art credit to @q-gorgeous/@k-beckerart)

Tragedy struck Amity Park. The last week of the spooky season, seven one-word prompts are to be buried, and their obituaries printed and distributed across the city.

Each grave marks a story, a piece of art, a video, a poem, something that needs to be shown, needs to be told. And we ask you—writers, artists, and creatives alike—to be the ones to tell those stories.

For this year's Ectoberweek, you are provided a list of a one-word prompts and a list of two sentence horror stories. You can choose to base your creation off of one or both of these prompts each day.

All content directly related to the Danny Phantom cartoon is acceptable for this challenge. Ships, non-ships, crossovers, angst, fluff, classic art, digital art—so long as it relates to the show, how you choose to represent these prompts is entirely up to you.

Tag your work with #ectoberweek2022 so @ecto-american and I can see it. We are so excited to see the different art, fics, and other creative endeavors that people will take, and we sincerely hope you all have fun with the prompts this year!

Update: We now have a @ectoberweekofficial blog! Be sure to give it a follow!

Happy Halloween! 👻🎃

(prompts are listed out under the cut)

25. Forest He thinks about the corpse in the woods sometimes. Hard to forget where you are buried

26. Six Feet Maddie had to face the facts: one of her kids was dead, now—a ghost, a monster—and it was her duty to destroy it before it killed the rest of her family. But first, she needed to figure out which one of the kids was dead.

27. Soul Shredder He looked human. But then, most monsters do.

28. Scream “Pssst, you’re dead. Pass it on.”

29. Lobotomy Amorpho really liked her face. So he took it.

30. Shiver She traced her fingers along the forgotten metal table. Despite the revelations that had come to light, she’d do it all again.

31. Folk Tales They say there's no such thing as the monster under the bed, but are you sure? ...Did you check?

---

Be sure to check out the @ectoberhaunt Month Long Calendar if you want more spooky prompts this month!

If you'd like a nifty way to keep track of your completion of both Ectoberhaunt and Ectoberweek, here's a handy dandy spreadsheet made by @ajitated!

[snapthistiger]

exercise 06122024

bike ride to the gym

8 x 10 incline sit ups

3 x 10 pec machine

3 x 10 lat raise

3 x 10 low row

30 minutes on the step mill

3 x 10 cable row

3 x 10 cable press

bike ride to my Mom's, the library, Kroger, then home

the gym workers received Hershey kisses and York mints

no work today. felt good to sleep to 530a instead of waking at 330a

my Mom was sleeping so didn't visit with her. i did talk to my sister for awhile. yesterday evening, i drafted my Mom's obituary so we don't have to worry about all the details when the time comes. my sisters will review and provide edits

picked up 2 more books for my Mom from the library. biography of Paul Newman and an Amish mystery

mowed behind the fence after lunch

top left = e bike outside Kroger

middle and bottom = my Mom's flowers

hope you have a peaceful afternoon and evening..

[thoughtfulchaos773]

I wrote a sydcarmy timeline a while ago- you can read it here.

I wonder if there will be a big kismetmoment for Sydney and Carmy?

This show aims to provide detailed information for the theme of time. Information such as life events through calendars, clocks, obituaries, photos, and resumes. They aim for perfection in counting the years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds.

So my question is this- what was Carmy doing in Febuary 2022-July of 2022 before he met Syd? What's the moment, the deciding factor during this time that made him come back to the Beef? Mikey died and he never made the funeral he didn't come home until the summer.

As for Sydney, in 2021, she worked at Alinea, which was her last job before she started her own catering business. I am curious to know what made her leave Alinea and how she managed her catering business when Carmy was coping with Mikey's death in New York, which occurred between February and July of 2022.

What is the big moment that led Sydney and Carmy to the Beef in July of 2022?

Will we get answers? WIll there be more flashback episodes?

They probably experienced a great loss at the same time...it's giving twin flame energy.