#adjunct stories

[your-local-granny]

I would like to thank myself from a week ago for asking that my travel expenses be covered because my god it it took two emails and now I can afford food for the week

[suboficialflores]

Once upon a time I was a Spanish lecturer at a university. They trusted me with 100-300 level classes (lol wild)

Then I was pulled into a Title IX investigation that really had nothing to do with me, and like an idiot I did what I thought was the right thing

If a professor rapes a student and another professor asks you to testify on behalf of the student, you may get fired as retaliation (even though that’s illegal)

Last I knew, the accused professor is still tenured

[deikshen]

The idea of Shang Qinghua as a fallen God was hitting me HARD-

I mean, he was some kind of civil God in the heavens, even then recognized for his prose, for the epic tales that would later become a reality, giving him the title of prophet, "The God who sees Beyond Time", "The God Who Inks the Pages of Destiny."

He rose from the lowest ranks as an adjunct god to an important position, becoming one of the most recognized and venerated civil gods of the heavens -he always responded to all the offerings, the one who appeared most in dreams, the one who solved the most situations with his own hands. The civil god with the most temples, the one to whom incense and prayers were given before the imperial exams, the one to whom even those learning to write gave small offerings in search of his erudition to learn faster.

So, something happened. Did he betray the heavens? It was discovered that he had risen to his position through corrupt means? Did he get into a debate with some vengeful martial god? The stories could be many, but the result is always the same: the civil god fell. Where he once had hundreds of temples, now they didn't even offer him incense. And Shang Qinghua, there, bored, was simply... tired. People remembered him for his stories, so he could never know the sweet embrace of death. Turned into a folk tale, his own stories, written in his own hand, being repeated and reproduced in theaters for centuries. When would this martyrdom end?

Never, apparently. And Shang Qinghua writes. He writes stories that are replicated across civilizations. He sees entire demonic races born and die. He writes about an emperor of the three realms, a heavenly demon, with a harem of beauties, a destiny, a prophecy surrounding a sword, and that only pure love could save martyred hearts blackened by fear and misunderstanding.

And after a few centuries, finally finds an artifact that will make him forgotten. He's tired. Fed up. It's been a long millennium of loneliness. Shang Qinghua collects every story he ever wrote, hides them in a deep cave, keeps them away from mortals. He burns his abandoned temples. He burns his stories, making everyone forget that there ever was a God who inks the pages of destiny.

And he dies. Finally.

Half a millennium later, Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe are on a hike. Some silly honeymoon thing, traveling the world and finding rare beasts and beautiful non-lethal plants. It's an area that was never originally described in PIDW, but Shen Qingqiu is curious; the world is vast, exquisite, stretching out with magnificent magic. And he wants to know everything.

Then he accidentally gets trapped in a silly array and opens a cave. Luo Binghe follows him, desperate, but both of them... well, even if they wanted to leave without investigating, they never could!! It seems to have been closed for a long, long time.

That's how they find a scholar's hiding place. Or so they think. Stacks and stacks of scrolls. Paintings, theater robes, masks. In the middle of the investigation, Shen Qingqiu's breath catches in his throat when, in the characters from a scroll, he reads Xin Mo.

It is difficult to understand the characters ruined by time, but the story is clear. There are prophetic legends about Xin Mo, about Luo Binghe himself (without mentioning his name other than "a baby who emerged from the Luo River with a frozen heart"), and so many, so many things... Shen Qingqiu is perplexed. What the hell is up with all this? Why was it hidden? Who wrote it? Damn, Airplane owes him some VERY good answers.

In his study in the northern palace, Shang Qinghua begins to have a very strong headache. He should go to sleep, he probably strained his eyes too much with all the paperwork, but, uh, for some reason, he really, really want to write something. An idea is starting to form in his head, like when he wrote PIDW in his other life! Maybe it'll be his next bestseller!! He has to seize the opportunity and inspiration when it hits him!!

[pfatter-university]

The Professor’s Big Breakthrough

Arturo had not expected to get a teaching job so quickly. Shortly after publishing his dissertation on the rapid expansion of molecules, he was contacted by the head of the science department at Pfatter University. While he knew nothing of the school’s reputation, he knew adjunct positions were hard to come by these days, and his future boss Dr. Xavier Pande assured him there would be room for growth into a tenured track. He accepted the role immediately …

The full-length story of Arturo’s fattening induction into the Pfatter U faculty, as well as an extra-long video of his transformation, is now available to all members of the Senior Class tier!

[crescenthistory]

May I request C6 with Regulus? I’m in some desperate need of Reggie comforting reader 😭😭😭

there are sosososo many different ways to interpret this prompt, and somehow i chose? perhaps the darkest one? so sorry, you are really going to need that comforting now... thanks for requesting lmao xx

Prompt: C.6 "I don't know, it just happened"

Words: 5.5k

Warnings: not proofread, fem!reader, blood racism, internalised blood racism, hate crime/minor assault, emotional breakdown, mutual self-hatred, regulus has not left the black family, alluded black brothers drama, undecided side regulus, perhaps a bit cliche/romanticising, established relationship, your dad is dead (long ago, mentioned), heavy hurt/comfort, happy ending

Notes: lol i am not okay

It was a rare occurrence that Regulus Black felt light these days, in any meaning of the word. 

His feet felt shackled as he trekked through the Hogwarts halls he felt were increasingly unwelcoming to him. His consciousness weighed him down like a thousand bricks as he knew he had to either take a stance against his parents or become complacent in a hope of survival. He knew he had to do the former; he had no idea how to stop himself from the latter. Trapped, cornered, cowardly – heavy.

Yet, when walking the final few metres to your dormitory that he knew housed your soft self now that you were done with tutoring first years, he felt undeservingly light. A sensation only you could inspire in him these days.

While conversations were growing tenser and tenser between you the more Regulus struggled with freeing himself from his family, your love for him had yet to falter. He knew he was only biding his time, but until then he could not help revelling in it, albeit guilt ridden. 

He does not knock before entering, just carefully pushes the ajar door further open. You had told him off for knocking so primly every time – “you’re always welcome here, Reggie” – and he wanted nothing more than to please you.

“Amour?” he called out as he closed the door softly behind him, looking around the dorm for a trace of you, or at least one of your dorm mates.

None to be found.

He dropped his bookbag by the end of your bed, reaching up to scratch the back of his head as he looked around. Some of that heaviness began returning to his limbs at your absence, his hope of slipping away from the world with you for the next few hours dissolving.

Then, he heard the water running from the adjunct bathroom. A sigh of relief escaped him, though his body remained tense, and he made his way over. He could hear the water splashing from the sink and he carefully knocked on the door with one knuckle.

“Amour?” he tried again.

This time he technically got a response of sorts, though nowhere near the one he had been hoping for. All movement behind the door stilled. The water was still running in a steady stream, but whatever you had been doing with it, you had stopped. Regulus could almost picture you standing like a deer in headlights – his brows furrowed unhappily at the thought.

“Are you alright, love?” 

Finally, your voice answered, but the fragility of it rattled him. “Oh, um, hi Reggie, I– I’m alright, be with you in a minute, yeah?”

You seemed distressed. Regulus did not care for it at all.

“Could I come in, amour?” He spoke to the door as if it was not there, as if he was looking you in the eyes, willing you to let him in.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” you murmured, but he just barely caught it through the wood.

Regulus seemed to have met a divulge where he had to make a choice – a relatively minor one, but it felt important nonetheless.

A large, painful part of his mind was screaming at him to leave you alone. She doesn’t want you, she’s finally seen you for what you are. Scum staining the story of her life. It is this voice that rules most of his actions, the voice keeping him and Sirius apart, the voice tying him to something he does not feel comfortable with. 

Then there is another, burning hot part that aches to reach for you. The part that knows you better than the first thinks he deserves, the part that can tell by the tone of your voice, by a jerk of your finger, exactly how you are feeling and, hopefully, what you need. This part is one Regulus takes a great deal of pride in, this part feels good. Though it scares him and the first part tries to quell it, he holds it near his heart.

And it is this part that opens his mouth and says, “Could I come in anyway?”

A minute. A hesitation. A sigh.

“Yes,” you whispered.

His hand is tentative as it grips the doorhandle to the bathroom, as if it has become a part of your body from him talking to it, deserving of that same care he attempts to show you. He twists it and pushes it open.

The bathroom is swept in darkness – a conscious choice on your part, seeing as you would have to magically blow out the candles that lined the walls. He could still see you, leaning against the counter with the sink, face turned slightly away from him.

“Hi, my love,” you greeted, trying to seem casual as if he had just walked into your dorm under usual circumstances. With your hand awkwardly angled so that he only saw the inside of your palm, you adjusted the faucet. “How was practise?”

Regulus ignored your small-talk, walking up to stand beside you, body angled fully towards you as you began scrubbing at your hands once more. With the light trickling in through the open door, he swore the water looked pinkish. His breath hitched, eyes flickering all over you and the room to make sense of whatever was happening.

“Amour, what’s wrong?” His voice was rawer than he was comfortable with.

“Oh, it’s nothing, really.” You were getting a hang of the bright and airy tone of voice you were going for, but it was too late for that. “Just a long day, you know? Do you want to go get the bed ready so we can relax?”

The voices were warring in Regulus’ head at the rejection of his presence, but once more the part he could only describe as lovesick took a step closer to you, so your bodies were just barely touching. “Y/N,” was all he said.

Your ministrations grew more desperate, scrubbing water up and down your hands and forearms, breath laboured. He lifted a hand to brush against your face – when you flinched, his heart broke. 

She’s scared of you.

No, she’s just scared.

He let his hand ever so slowly land on the cheek furthest away from him, cradling your jaw with the kind of light touch reserved for baby birds and broken children. He found the skin there soft and wet, and he swore he could cut himself on the shards of his broken heart.

He guided your head to turn towards him, his grip loose so that you could stop him if you wanted. Once your face was opposite his, Regulus fought every instinct in his body that told him to study you, search your face for the spawn of your pain. Instead, he closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against yours. Giving you space, privacy even, giving you the moment you clearly needed – but sparing you from doing it alone

Your hands slowed down in their scrubbing, and with his free hand reaching out blindly, he turned off the faucet. Your breath stuttered where it spilled over his lips.

“Do you reckon you want to sit down? Talk about it?” Regulus whispered, eyes still closed.

He felt you nod against his skin, grabbing a hand towel as you walked backwards the few steps needed before you could sit down on the toilet lid. Regulus followed you, eyes opening and attempting to adjust to this darker corner of the bathroom. He sat down on his knees between your legs, painful tiles be damned, and looked up at you intently. 

In front of him sat the light of his life, visibly sullied. Your face was red and he could make out the tear tracks and smudged mascara underneath your eyes. You clutched the towel, hands buried within it and out of sight.

“Amour,” he whispered dumbly, unsure of what else to say, as he carefully brought his hands up to wipe at your tears. 

You mumbled his name and it almost sounded like a sob. 

Your hands were writhing in your lap around the towel, and he reached down to take it and help you dry yourself when you jerked your hands closer to you, towel still in grasp. “No,” you whispered.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” you lied through your teeth. “I’ve just had a bad day and– and felt anxious. Couldn't help but cry over it. I don’t know, it just happened.” 

Regulus gave you a sad smile, squeezing the still-wet skin on your forearms. “Uh-huh. And you felt like taking it out on your hands?”

A sob finally tore through your body properly and you brought your hands up – still in the towel – to cover your face. You leaned forward and cried into it, and Regulus immediately opened his arms to hold your shaking frame. Your towel and face were smushed into the crook of his neck and he drew big circles on your back with one hand, the other securely holding the back of your head. 

He was broken, at a loss for words, trying to recall any and every memory he could find of witnessing others comforting, not trusting his own instincts. Through them all, out flashed a memory of Sirius humming to him when he had nightmares as a child, how the vibrations soothed through him until he could finally fall asleep again, in his big brother’s bed this time. Without any distinct melody or song in mind, Regulus began to hum as he swayed you just ever so slightly back and forth, hoping to bring you some semblance of safety.

Your gasps lessened until the bathroom was near-quiet again, but he did not stop his movements with you or the humming. Your heart blossomed from his efforts and broke at what you knew was to come.

You lowered your hands from your face, letting them fall into your lap with their towel. Your face was now in direct contact with the soft skin of his neck and you took the opportunity to press a soft kiss there.

“Can I please do something to help you?” he whispered into your hair.

“You are.”

He breathed in slowly. He is. “With your hands, I mean. Are you hurt?”

Tears slipped quietly down the expanse of Regulus’ neck, trailing down underneath his shirt. You tried to nuzzle deeper into him.

“I–” you stop, seemingly changing your mind. “I’m alright, I just need to… to remove magical ink from them and I can’t get it off.”

Regulus fought back the that’s all? that was creeping up his throat. He knows at least two spells that work for most permanent inks and can brew a potion for it within the hour if those don't work. 

Your head squeezed against his shoulder as he nodded his head, still stroking your back. “No problem, beautiful, I can fix that.”

“No,” you whispered once more, seeming to shrink in his grasp. “I have to.”

He helped ease you out from his neck so that you were face to face once more, his hands coming up to brush over the sides of your arms. The look in your eyes was one he struggled to decipher, apart from the shine of anxiety. 

“Why do you have to? Let me help you, amour.”

You took another shuddering breath, brazing yourself for impact. “You can’t see,” you whispered finally, fighting the quiver of your lips.

“I… I don’t understand.”

“You can’t see them, Reg, I’m sorry.”

“Did someone do something to you?” It was the only explanation he could conjure up for why any permanent ink would make you this distraught – and why you would hide from him like this.

You searched his face carefully, faintly nodding in a way that made him think it was a response to your own thoughts and not his question. Like you decided on something. 

“Someone wrote something. I just want it gone.”

Regulus’ stomach churned. He regretted the harsh tone of his voice as he demanded, “Who?”

“It’s not important.” 

“It is to me. Please. Who?”

You pulled your bottom lip in between your teeth, gnawing at it as you realised he would find out. Someone would tell him, even if you refused to show him. He would know. You tasted blood in your mouth.

With his eyes adjusted to the dark, Regulus saw the faint red on your lips as well and immediately reached out to gently pull your lip free from its torment. His fingertips lingered on your lips until he replaced them with his own with a short, tentative kiss. If you were to have blood in your mouth, he would too.

Lips still against yours he whispered again, more pleadingly this time, “Who?”

You let your walls crumble. This sweet, caring boy was in your grasp for now and you could not help but let him care while he still wanted to. “Mulciber,” you whispered back.

Regulus pulled back enough to meet your gaze, confusion filling his. “Why Mulciber? What would he have to write on you?” 

Up until now he had half-thought that some of your first year tutees had pranked you in some ungraceful manner. He was certain he had never seen you and Mulciber even talk before, let alone have an altercation that could involve magical ink. He was one of the more brutal Slytherins, but he had never had any reason to talk to you, and he knew that you were someone Regulus cared for. What he had hoped would let him in on your pain only confused him further away from any answer.

“Regulus, please,” you begged, ignorant to his confusion. Tears were once more filling your eyes and he wished for nothing but to stop them.

“Okay, okay,” he whispered, hoping to convince your tears to stay where they are. “You– you don’t have to explain it, love. I can just remove it for you.”

“Could you teach me instead?” Your lip was back between your teeth, lightening in colour underneath the force it was exerted to.

“I’m afraid you wouldn’t be able to remove something from your hands yourself, you need them for the spell.” Regulus hoped his gaze seemed sympathetic.

You squeezed your eyes shut, moving your head slightly to your side. Regulus recognised your breathing pattern to follow a technique you had taught him to calm down the first time he had a panic attack around you. Afterwards, you didn't mention it, only giving him space to talk about what he was comfortable with, comfort at the ready.

His own breath was bated as he watched you make your decision. A definite tear slid down the cheek closest to him, in a hauntingly cinematic manner. At last, your eyes slowly fluttered open and you looked back into his eyes with the most devastating expression. Slipping a hand slowly out from your towel – out of Regulus’ line of sight – you brought it up to his cheek to bring his face closer to yours.

The kiss was searing, filled with a love and devotion he was not prepared for in a situation like this. He was enveloped by the smell of you, and though you still tasted of copper, your lips were painfully soft and he let himself fall deeper into you. When you pulled away, you pressed a lingering kiss to the side of his mouth.

“I love you,” you whispered. Regulus hated how it sounded like you were saying goodbye. 

His brows were furrowed as he looked at you, and he hoped it looked like confusion and nothing more sinister. “I love you too, amour. You know.”

“I’ll let you remove it, if you want.”

“Please.”

Your gaze fell to your lap and remained there as you let both hands out of the towel, placing them palm-down on your thighs. Regulus had begun reaching for his wand in a holster on his belt, ready to rid you of the source of your discontent, but he was frozen still when his own eyes finally took in your hands and the two bold, dark words written on each one.

MUD on the left. BLOOD on the right.

Mudblood. 

Regulus’ blood had run cold in his veins and he found himself having to adopt your breathing technique. His vision blurred as the two words seemed to grow larger, which seemed impossible considering they were written to take up as much space as possible. The handwriting was shaky, as if there had been a struggle when they were written. There were some light bruises already forming around your wrists and upper arms that further proved his fear. Mudblood. With red streaks over both works, likely from how hard you had been trying to wash them, all but scraping them off. Mudblood. The word was choking him. His hand that had remained still midair by his belt began to tremble.

He was knocked out of his trance as he saw a single tear splatter across the lettering on your right hand. 

Regulus moved his gaze back up to yours to find it was still trained on your hands, eyes glossy and unseeing.

“I–” he tried, but his voice broke off. “I don't understand. Y/N, I don’t understand.”

You seemed to flinch a little at the sound of your name, but other than that you made no sign that you heard him.

“Amour,” he rectified. “Why would… what is this?”

You moved your right hand over your left, starting to scratch at the word scribbled there, nails digging deep. Regulus’ hands flew up to stop your ministrations at the sight of the worsening redness, but your whole body physically flinched away from him in a way he was sure must hurt.

Regulus was lost.

“I don’t understand. Why would Mulciber write that? You’re not a–” He cut himself off, scared of what word would slip off his tongue. “You’re not muggleborn.”

Finally, you looked up and met his eyes. Your fearful, heartbroken expression seemed to soften at the sight of him and you gave him the saddest smile that did not reach your eyes. “I’m sorry,” was all you could whisper.

Realisation dawned on him. 

“Your father…?” 

His half-blood best friend turned lover, who he already had not dared tell his parents about, living with her muggle mother after her wizard father passed away. It was a convenient story in times of tension and division. Death is an easy excuse, hard to verify.

Although, clearly, someone had now, and the truth had come out.

“I’m so sorry,” you whispered once more through a sob. Your shoulders were hunched and knees drawn close to your body. You looked like you wanted to disappear. 

It took him a greater amount of strength than he was proud of to push the shock and confusion from the forefront of his mind and pull back up the memories of how to comfort. To focus on those and not the million of questions running through his head.

What does this mean? Why didn't you tell him? Have you been hiding from everyone, or just him? How have you been carrying something so scary and he was none the wiser? Is there an award for shittest boyfriend at Hogwarts that he can be looking forward to?

Regulus reached out for you and pulled you slowly into another hug, arms circling securely around your back. Your body stilled in his grasp, apart from the small heaves for air in between your sobs.

“What are you doing?” Your whisper was muffled into his shirt. Your frail voice and tense limbs cut him deeper than any spell could.

“I'm comforting you, sweet girl,” he mumbled into your hair. “Or at least trying to.”

“Why?” you asked miserably. 

Regulus pulled back just far enough to see your face, making sure his arms were still holding you with love, drawing patterns across your back.

"Because I love you," he whispered intently. His eyes tried his hardest to lock on yours, but you still would not meet his gaze. "Because there is nothing to be sorry for."

Your expression grew incredulous, bordering on angry – if it was with him, yourself or the world he was uncertain. "I've lied to you. I've deceived you into a relationship you wouldn’t have agreed to had you known, I– I’ve put you in an impossible position–” You had to cut yourself off as another sob tore through your body. “I’m so sorry.”

Regulus shuffled impossibly closer to you and brought his hands up to cup your cheeks, thumbs stroking slowly across your cheekbones. He felt his own eyes fill with tears at the sight in front of him, anxiety rising at his chest as he struggled to find the words he knew the situation called for.

This was all unknown territory for Regulus. The two of you had had as few conversations about blood status as possible, both weary about the growing tension at school and in the wider wizarding society. You had held him the one time he dared cry in front of you over a particularly harsh letter from his mother. You had whispered sweet nothings about you're not them and I will always love you, but he thought they were just that – nothings. In turn, you had mentioned your parents and cried over your father a handful of times, but never divulged too much. He had weaved his way through comments from other pureblood students at school regarding his relationship with a half-blood, but most pureblood families have lapses with a half-blood here or there that he could usually throw back in their faces to silence them. No one dared push it further than that. When Andromeda left the family for Ted, he almost had to confront it all, confront what he now knew to be lies that had been spewed to him all his life, but even then, he managed to avoid it as he instead received the beating of his life for not alerting the family about the signs he must have seen at school. He let himself simmer with that pain instead of looking inwards, instead of seeking help. He figured he didn’t have to, not just yet.

That time had evidently passed, as he now held a sobbing and defiled sun in his hands.

No, this was uncharted territory for him entirely – but he could not afford to let it stay like that.

“My love, Y/N,” he said with a surprisingly steady voice, never letting his gaze stray from you. “Please, please listen to me. Please hear me. You are everything; it is you, you are everything. You could be muggleborn, muggle, werewolf, siren or fae. It would not change anything.”

Your eyes met his, red rimmed and glossy, confused and bewildered. This time it was your turn to whisper, “I don’t understand.”

“It is difficult–” Regulus’ voice broke as the first few tears slipped down his face. “It is all so difficult right now, I feel lost and… scared and I don’t know what to do.” The words almost clogged in his throat, like barbed wire to admit, but he knew he had to. “I should have told you all of that already, I should have shared with you so you could feel safe to share with me. I haven’t known what to do, how to do it. The one thing I do know is that I love you and I need you to be safe and I need you to be here with me. I have not been deceived, for I would always choose you.”

Your eyes were wide, but you were not crying at the moment, gaze flitting all across his face, as if to ensure he wasn’t lying, hanging onto his every word. It was the motivation he needed to continue.

“You are not allowed to be sorry, amour, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” A small sob escaped him and his heart flipped when your right hand came forth to just barely touch his shoulder. “I should have been here for you, you shouldn’t have to hide. You should never have had to question my love for you, my loyalty. It will always lay with you, I swear it. Gods–” a heaved breath “– I’m terrible at this, you know I’m terrible, but I’ve been trying so hard for you and I will continue to. Just please let me. Let me and I will try.”

“Regulus…” you whispered, hand creeping from the brush against his shoulder to settle on the side of his neck. 

He looked at you, ready to take any reaction you would give him, to tell him off for his horrible apology, for making things about him, for not being enough. Your mouth opened and closed as if you couldn’t settle on the words. Instead you let out a small breath and pulled him back into you in a tight embrace.

It took him not even a second to hold you in return with passion, hands appraising as they swept up into your hair and around your waist. 

“Do you mean it?” you whimpered into him and he let his forehead fall to your shoulder as he cried.

“Of course, I mean it. Of course, of course.” He kept muttering it into you as he held you tighter and tighter.

His body was filled with an entirely new set of fear. A warm one that spread through his blood at the thought of what you had to face. Mulciber already knew and had taken action on that knowledge seemingly without hesitation. Regulus had heard what was being said amongst the Sacred 28, he knew to what degrees the hatred was building. His entire body was built on fear as he held what he now realised could be disturbingly fragile.

That is, until you whimpered another question into his hold and his body ached with a love so deep he had never thought it possible.

“Do you still love me?”

He had already said so, but he would happily say it again, over and over, damning himself for allowing you to wonder. “Yes, amour, always. Always.” 

Regulus took your face in one of his hands again, cradling you as he brought his forehead back to yours. Angling his face forward, he pressed what he hoped was a sweet kiss to your lips. It was wet, metallic and everything he needed. 

“I’m sorry for lying,” you whispered. He shook his head against yours.

“No, I’m sorry for stalling.”

A beat of silence. “Stalling what?” He thought you knew, but he tried to have no qualms about being explicit about it.

“Leaving.” He said it simply, hoping it would will it to be.

This time it was your turn to shake your head. “Can you leave, though? Safely? They’re becoming more and more fanatical, Reg, what if they hurt you? I’ve seen the letters.”

The fact that you have experienced what can only be classified as a hate crime, yet you have the goodness in your heart to worry about him in this way only makes him more certain of his choice.

“I have to, my love. I have to. It’s time.” He took a deep breath. “I will… I will ask Sirius for help.” 

You looked into his eyes, vision blurry from your proximity. “I’m scared for you, but I’m so proud of you at the same time.”

“The feeling is entirely mutual.” Regulus tried to huff out a small laugh, but it just came out teary. “Will you please come with me?”

“To Sirius?”

“Yes.”

“Of course.”

His hand on your squeeze pressed further into you, reverent. “We can ask for help for us both. They practically wanted Ted dead when they disowned Andromeda, and she was not even the sole heir. I’m so sorry for putting you in that situation, I–”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” you assured, voice more stable and beautifully soft. “You are everything to me too, you know.”

“I’m scared,” Regulus whimpered. It’s the first time he can remember saying that out loud to someone since he was 6.

“I’m scared, too. But less so, now that I know I still have you. I couldn’t handle losing you, Reg.” Your eyes teared up again and he leaned up to kiss the corners of your eyes sweetly, collecting the tears before they had a chance to spill.

“You have me, you have me,” he whispered almost feverishly against your skin. “And I’ve got you.”

You sighed, the closest to contently you think you can get at this moment. “Will you please help me?” you whispered as you looked down at your hands.

Regulus shook himself out of his mini spiral, shook off that first voice in his head that reared its head once more and over and over, shook off anything that was not you. He mumbled an of course against your cheek before he kissed it, taking your hands in one of his. 

Unsheathing his wand he never managed to retrieve the first time around, he took one last look at the ugly markings on your hands – the hate was precisely that, ugly, and it had no place on your skin. Starting with the left – MUD – he tried the first spell he knew, and it did nothing. The bile rose in his throat as he went to try the next, fearing the worst, but by the grace of a nonexistent god, the letters finally melted away. He repeated the process on the other one.

You tried to pull your hands out of his grasp at that, but his hold tightened. He healed the viscous red streaks and peeling skin from where you had scratched at them, a cold sensation soothing over your skin as he moved his wand. Tears pricked at the corners of your eyes at the gentleness, but you found yourself beginning to become completely dehydrated.

Regulus brought your hands up to his lips while he put his wand away to grasp at them with both hands. He kissed the spots he had just cleared up. Long, lingering kisses in the middle of your hand, followed by soft butterfly kisses all over it. His fingers intertwined with yours, squeezing tightly, giving the flesh new sensations to remember instead.

“You’re so good to me,” you whispered, almost like a revelation. You had loved him and you had trusted him, you had just not trusted that it would be forever, that it would be more than any loyalty to his family. You were ashamed at the thought now, as you looked at the boy on his knees in front of you, crying from loving you, kissing away your pain. It filled you with something you had not believed this day would hold for you – hope.

“I’m not,” he whispered, letting your hands settle together in your lap. “But I hope to be. I want to be. I will be.”

You smiled wetly at him and leaned forward to kiss him once more. Originally intended as a peck, the kiss grew deeper, a slow passion as you held his lips between yours, feeling the love seep through the thin skin. He continued pressing kisses all over your face, much like your hands. Any teary or red skin had his lips faintly brushing over it, taking his time to dote on you. You let your breath calm down in the meantime, panic and tension slipping away from you to be replaced by a deep exhaustion as you leaned into him.

He noticed – he had to notice, swore he always would from now on.

“Are you ready to lay down in bed, amour. Face the light?” He smiled sheepishly at the poor attempt at a joke. You seemed surprised as you looked around, almost like you had forgotten you were in a shadowy dorm bathroom.

“Only if you will lay with me.” Your tone was nearing teasing, though not quite there. He was determined to achieve it within the hour.

“I promise,” he whispered, kissing you one last time before helping you up.

And he would go on to help you to bed and hold you tight for as long as you would let him. He would listen to you cry and laugh and worry without a second thought. He would take you with him to ask Sirius for help on escaping and keeping you safe and he would devote himself to being better. He would do anything for you – because you were, after all, everything.

[bluedelliquanti]

Before I go on vacation, I present my list of my top books for 2024.

COMICS:

Roaming by Jillian Tamaki & Mariko Tamaki

Bunt! by Ngozi Ukazu & Mad Rupert

Ukazu and Rupert are a powerhouse team, and as an art school adjunct, this already funny GN is even funnier (albeit in a way that necessitates a skull emoji in the educator groupchat)

Tiffany’s Griffon by Magnolia Porter Siddell & Maddi Gonzalez

Phobos and Deimos by J Dalton

Delicious in Dungeon by Ryoko Kui

It's a tough task to reach a satisfying conclusion to a series that was as strong as Dungeon, but I think Kui accomplished it!

Fool Night by Kasumi Yasuda

King in Limbo by Ai Tanaka

Over the last year I've been drawn towards comic series that work with a retro, fixed-width inking style, and King especially informed some recent experiments of mine.

PROSE:

Twins by Bari Wood & Jack Geasland

When I learned Wood was responsible for the book that became Dead Ringers, I knew I had to try it. This is the one that wins my "Oh, shit! Wow!! Okay!!!" award for the year (distinctions previously awarded to Cyteen and Manhunt).

The Bezzle by Cory Doctorow

DS9: A Stitch in Time by Andrew J. Robinson

Those of you who read my journal comic from last August might recall that I met Robinson at a Trek convention! I'd learned from reading these books that Stitch was considered a white whale among collectors, and now I absolutely understand why. If you're a DS9 fan and you want to try any book from the original run of novels, try this one. By which I mean, try the far easier-to-find audiobook version.

Translation State by Ann Leckie

A Woman of the Iron People by Eleanor Arnason

Fellow SBCF participant Erin Roseberry had shared this title as an inspiration for their comic, The Maker of Grave-Goods, and I was especially interested in trying a book by a Twin Cities author. What a serendipitous find!

Arboreality by Rebecca Campbell

For the third year in a row, a book nominated for the Le Guin Prize makes the list.

Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin

This is another book I always told myself I'd try someday, and was it ever worth it! I spent some time talking about my experience with this story (and its accompanying materials that fill out the world) in my talk with Evan Dahm on his show.

See you in the new year! I've packed some thick books for a long flight, so I'm starting my 2025 reading pile right away!

Reruns of my previous two lists, 2023, and 2022, below the cut.

2023

COMICS:

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou by Hitoshi Ashinano

Out of Style by Devi Putri Megwati

Skip and Loafer by Misaki Takamatsu

The Harrowing of Hell by Evan Dahm

The Infinity Particle by Wendy Xu

Esteban by Matthieu Bonhomme

I covered my ShortBox reccs back in October, but since then I also picked up Pearl Hunting by Hana Chatani when it came to itch.io and adored it.

PROSE: 

So yes, maybe I'm cheating by including Moby Dick since I'm not all the way finished, but Whale Weekly really did end up being a great tool for getting me to crack open my gorgeous Evan Dahm-illustrated copy I've had for a while.

My favorite book of the year is Roadside Picnic by Arkady & Boris Strugatsky. I genuinely did read it the first week of January, but after having it recommended to me for years, I'm thrilled it didn't disappoint. Maybe I am someone who likes Russian novels after all???

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

Such Nice People by Sandra Scoppettone

Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh (I jokingly placed these three in the "READ 👏 FEMALE 👏 AUTHORS 👏" category because they don't have anything in common other than describing some of the most upsetting/bizarre scenarios I've read this year. Cyteen especially! Wowee!!!)

Brother Alive by Zain Khalid

Glory by Vladimir Nabokov

A Different Trek by David K. Seitz, which I mentioned as my vacation book for the Star Trek convention, but it's given me some great suggestions for more books, both fiction and otherwise. Also, I read... 11 more DS9 books this year. 

2022

COMICS:

Fullmetal Alchemist by Hiromu Arakawa

Vattu by Evan Dahm

The Well by Choo and Jake Wyatt

Wash Day Diaries by Robyn Smith and Jamila Rowser

Some ShortBox Comics Fair entries that are graphic novella length and are really good include Food School by Jade Armstrong and The God of Arepo by Reimena Yee et al.

PROSE:

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

The Murders of Molly Southbourne by Tade Thompson

How to Blow Up a Pipeline by Andreas Malm

Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin

Dead Collections by Isaac Fellman

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

The Past is Red by Catherynne M. Valente

edit: oh my god I can't believe I forgot Perfume by Patrick Süskind

Honorable mentions from the pile of DS9 novelizations include Revenant by Alex White (for successfully pulling off a Sara Paretsky-style mystery in space) and Dominion War: Call to Arms by Diane Carey (for absolutely unhinged adjective choices).

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Seth Mandel

In the summer of 2000, Israeli forces pulled out of South Lebanon, where they had maintained a security buffer between Hezbollah and the Israeli civilians in northern Israel. A few months later, Israel was rewarded for this gesture when Hezbollah ambushed three soldiers on the Israeli side of the border and took them captive.

The Iran-backed terrorists disguised themselves as employees of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and attached UN markings to the trucks used in the attack. The next day, UN workers tried to tow away the trucks but were stopped by Hezbollah operatives. The UN workers turned the vehicles over to Hezbollah.

But there was a twist. The UN had videotaped the scene, which was filled with evidence of the previous day’s kidnapping.

What the UN did with that tape is crucial to understanding the UN’s role in Lebanon and in shaping the conflict up to the present. With that tape, the UN did… nothing.

The news this weekend was saturated with coverage of UNIFIL blaming Israel for putting its cardboard peacekeepers in danger while the IDF responds to Hezbollah’s continued attacks. Israel, in turn, exposed the fact that the UN has allowed Hezbollah to construct tunnels and weapons depots under its nose, protecting the terrorists from IDF counterstrikes.

But all of this begins back in 2000, with that videotape.

Israel’s Labor government pleaded with the UN to turn over the recording, which could help Israel in its search for the captives. Time was, as always, of the essence: Every minute that went by put the kidnapped Israelis’ lives in more danger.

Instead of turning over the tape, the UN lied repeatedly by claiming there was no tape. Eventually, scenes from the tape leaked, revealing what everyone knew the entire time: Of course the tape existed. At that point, the UN publicly admitted they’d had the tape all along.

By then, the soldiers were dead. In 2004, Israel would trade hundreds of terrorists in Israeli jails in return for the bodies of the three soldiers.

There was some irony here: The Hezbollah terrorists dressed as UNIFIL and then UNIFIL aided and abetted their getaway and helped ensure the murder of the soldiers. What had started with terrorists impersonating UN members ended with the UN impersonating Hezbollah. The two were on the same team, cooperating in acts of profound evil. It was manifestly unclear where the UN ended and Hezbollah began.

Sound familiar? It should: It’s also the story of UNRWA, the Gaza-based UN agency that has become an adjunct of Hamas. Its members participated in the Oct. 7 attacks last year and even helped hold Israeli hostages. The head of the UNRWA teachers union turned out to be a high-level Hamasnik with ties to Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of Oct. 7. We even have video of an UNRWA worker dragging away the body of a murdered Israeli alongside a Hamas terrorist. Where does one end and the other begin?

And by the way, the exact date of that Hezbollah kidnapping 24 years ago after which the UN hid the videotape and obstructed Israel’s attempts to get its soldiers back? Oct. 7, 2000.

This pattern would repeat itself throughout UNIFIL’s tenure in South Lebanon. Israel says the time has come for that tenure to end. Over the weekend, Israeli officials guided journalists along the border so they could see for themselves that Hezbollah is stronger with UNIFIL’s presence than without it.

One of those journalists, the Telegraph’s Jotam Confino, posted pictures and video of a UN compound with a lookout tower 100 yards away from a Hezbollah tunnel entrance. To state the obvious: It’s not a hole in the ground. It’s a tunnel, and constructing such a tunnel requires extremely noisy and conspicuous machinery as well as the regular presence of Hezbollah operatives. These tunnels and weapons caches along the border area were built, and are maintained, with the full knowledge of the United Nations—in fact, in full view of the United Nations.

If you approach a UN compound on South Lebanon you are probably standing above a Hezbollah tunnel or bunker. Where does one end and the other begin?

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Linkrot

For the rest of May, my bestselling solarpunk utopian novel THE LOST CAUSE (2023) is available as a $2.99, DRM-free ebook!

Here's an underrated cognitive virtue: "object permanence" – that is, remembering how you perceived something previously. As Riley Quinn often reminds us, the left is the ideology of object permanence – to be a leftist is to hate and mistrust the CIA even when they're tormenting Trump for a brief instant, or to remember that it was once possible for a working person to support their family with their wages:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/27/six-sells/#youre-holding-it-wrong

The thing is, object permanence is hard. Life comes at you quickly. It's very hard to remember facts, and the order in which those facts arrived – it's even harder to remember how you felt about those facts in the moment.

This is where blogging comes in – for me, at least. Back in 1997, Scott Edelman – editor of Science Fiction Age – asked me to take over the back page of the magazine by writing up ten links of interest for the nascent web. I wrote that column until the spring of 2000, then, in early 2001, Mark Frauenfelder asked me to guest-edit Boing Boing, whereupon the tempo of my web-logging went daily. I kept that up on Boing Boing for more than 19 years, writing about 54,000 posts. In February, 2020, I started Pluralistic.net, my solo project, a kind of blog/newsletter, and in the four-plus years since, I've written about 1,200 editions containing between one and twelve posts each.

This gigantic corpus of everything I ever considered to be noteworthy is immensely valuable to me. The act of taking notes in public is a powerful discipline: rather than jotting cryptic notes to myself in a commonplace book, I publish those notes for strangers. This imposes a rigor on the note-taking that makes those notes far more useful to me in years to come.

Better still: public note-taking is powerfully mnemonic. The things I've taken notes on form a kind of supersaturated solution of story ideas, essay ideas, speech ideas, and more, and periodically two or more of these fragments will glom together, nucleate, and a fully-formed work will crystallize out of the solution.

Then, the fact that all these fragments are also database entries – contained in the back-end of a WordPress installation that I can run complex queries on – comes into play, letting me swiftly and reliably confirm my memories of these long-gone phenomena. Inevitably, these queries turn up material that I've totally forgotten, and these make the result even richer, like adding homemade stock to a stew to bring out a rich and complicated flavor. Better still, many of these posts have been annotated by readers with supplemental materials or vigorous objections.

I call this all "The Memex Method" and it lets me write a lot (I wrote nine books during lockdown, as I used work to distract me from anxiety – something I stumbled into through a lifetime of chronic pain management):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

Back in 2013, I started a new daily Boing Boing feature: "This Day In Blogging History," wherein I would look at the archive of posts for that day one, five and ten years previously:

https://boingboing.net/2013/06/24/this-day-in-blogging-history.html

With Pluralistic, I turned this into a daily newsletter feature, now stretching back to twenty, fifteen, ten, five and one year ago. Here's today's:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/21/noway-back-machine/#retro

This is a tremendous adjunct to the Memex Method. It's a structured way to review everything I've ever thought about, in five-year increments, every single day. I liken this to working dough, where there's stuff at the edges getting dried out and crumbly, and so your fold it all back into the middle. All these old fragments naturally slip out of your thoughts and understanding, but you can revive their centrality by briefly paying attention to them for a few minutes every day.

This structured daily review is a wonderful way to maintain object permanence, reviewing your attitudes and beliefs over time. It's also a way to understand the long-forgotten origins of issues that are central to you today. Yesterday, I was reminded that I started thinking about automotive Right to Repair 15 years ago:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/05/right-repair-law-pro

Given that we're still fighting over this, that's some important perspective, a reminder of the likely timescales involved in more recent issues where I feel like little progress is being made.

Remember when we all got pissed off because the mustache-twirling evil CEO of Warners, David Zaslav, was shredding highly anticipated TV shows and movies prior to their release to get a tax-credit? Turns out that we started getting angry about this stuff twenty years ago, when Michael Eisner did it to Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 911":

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/05/us/disney-is-blocking-distribution-of-film-that-criticizes-bush.html

It's not just object permanence: this daily spelunk through my old records is also a way to continuously and methodically sound the web for linkrot: when old links go bad. Over the past five years, I've noticed a very sharp increase in linkrot, and even worse, in the odious practice of spammers taking over my dead friends' former blogs and turning them into AI spam-farms:

https://www.wired.com/story/confessions-of-an-ai-clickbait-kingpin/

The good people at the Pew Research Center have just released a careful, quantitative study of linkrot that confirms – and exceeds – my worst suspicions about the decay of the web:

https://www.pewresearch.org/data-labs/2024/05/17/when-online-content-disappears/

The headline finding from "When Online Content Disappears" is that 38% of the web of 2013 is gone today. Wikipedia references are especially hard-hit, with 23% of news links missing and 21% of government websites gone. The majority of Wikipedia entries have at least one broken link in their reference sections. Twitter is another industrial-scale oubliette: a fifth of English tweets disappear within a matter of months; for Turkish and Arabic tweets, it's 40%.

Thankfully, someone has plugged the web's memory-hole. Since 2001, the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine has allowed web users to see captures of web-pages, tracking their changes over time. I was at the Wayback Machine's launch party, and right away, I could see its value. Today, I make extensive use of Wayback Machine captures for my "This Day In History" posts, and when I find dead links on the web.

The Wayback Machine went public in 2001, but Archive founder Brewster Kahle started scraping the web in 1996. Today's post graphic – a modified Yahoo homepage from October 17, 1996 – is the oldest Yahoo capture on the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/19960501000000*/yahoo.com

Remember that the next time someone tells you that we must stamp out web-scraping for one reason or another. There are plenty of ugly ways to use scraping (looking at you, Clearview AI) that we should ban, but scraping itself is very good:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/17/how-to-think-about-scraping/

And so is the Internet Archive, which makes the legal threats it faces today all the more frightening. Lawsuits brought by the Big Five publishers and Big Three labels will, if successful, snuff out the Internet Archive altogether, and with it, the Wayback Machine – the only record we have of our ephemeral internet:

https://blog.archive.org/2024/04/19/internet-archive-stands-firm-on-library-digital-rights-in-final-brief-of-hachette-v-internet-archive-lawsuit/

Libraries burn. The Internet Archive may seem like a sturdy and eternal repository for our collective object permanence about the internet, but it is very fragile, and could disappear like that.

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/2024/05/21/noway-back-machine/#pew-pew-pew

[olivieblake]

the one where the cannibal sorority tries to decide who to eat for dinner

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS:

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six, Girl Dinner is a darkly-fun novel about power, lust, and eating your fill, as wealthy moms and sorority girls practice a sinister new wellness trend . . . Good girls deserve a treat.

Every member of The House, the most exclusive sorority on campus, and all its alumni, are beautiful, high-achieving, and universally respected.

After a freshman year she would rather forget, sophomore Nina Kaur knows being one of the chosen few accepted into The House is the first step in her path to the brightest possible future. Once she's taken into their fold, the House will surely ease her fears of failure and protect her from those who see a young woman on her own as easy prey. 

Meanwhile, adjunct professor Dr. Sloane Hartley is struggling to return to work after accepting a demotion to support her partner's new position at the cutthroat University. After 18 months at home with her newborn daughter, Sloane's clothes don’t fit right, her girl-dad husband isn’t as present as he thinks he is, and even the few hours a day she's apart from her child fill her psyche with paralyzing ennui. When invited to be The House’s academic liaison, Sloane enviously drinks in the way the alumnae seem to have it all, achieving a level of collective perfection that Sloane so desperately craves.

As Nina and Sloane each get drawn deeper into the arcane rituals of the sisterhood, they learn that living well comes with bloody costs. And when they are finally invited to the table, they will have to decide just how much they can stomach in the name of solidarity and power.

SOME PRAISE (to whet your appetite):

"A book that whets your appetite before devouring you whole. Girl Dinner is cunning, charged, and just as you’re comfortable—a profound shock. Perfect for the era we live in." —Chloe Gong, New York Times bestselling author of Immortal Longings

“A brilliant head trip of a book, Olivie Blake constantly comes at timely topics from new and interesting angles. I can't wait to see what she does next!"—Katee Robert, New York Times bestselling author of Neon Gods

"Whip sharp, nuanced, and highly propulsive. I will be thinking about Girl Dinner for a long time."—Hildur Knútsdóttir, author of The Night Guest

“Girl Dinner is a crackling, tense journey between the ravenous teeth of feminine rage and sorority power struggles. Overflowing with creeping dread. I devoured it and loved every second.”—Chuck Tingle, USA Today bestselling author of Bury Your Gays

"A female-fueled tumbleweed of bloodthirsty seduction. A decadent dive into the dark depths of ambition and toxic relationships. Deliciously addictive."—A. R. Torre, New York Times bestselling author of The Good Lie

“As always, Blake eats! Girl Dinner is truly brilliant—a precise and ruthless novel about the impossibility of being a woman and a mother, it also answers the question of what it takes to win when you start from a losing position. I savored every morsel of this wickedly fun and deeply satisfying interrogation of sisterhood, sorority life, and the true cost of success.”—Ling Ling Huang, author of Natural Beauty and Immaculate Conception

“An exploration of the many hungers of the female heart and the pain behind the drive to be everything to everyone, Girl Dinner shaves pearls into teeth and bites deep. As a woman, as a mother, as a wife, as an artist—I felt this story in my bones.”—Delilah S. Dawson, New York Times bestselling author of The Violence

preorder link, available oct. 21

[elminx]

Elminx's Banishing Potion (Non-alcoholic and Boozy Versions)

This Banishing Potion uses the magical properties of Banishment and Protection that are often attributed to Black Pepper. It is best used as an adjunct to more intensive banishing spells that include black pepper as an ingredient- call it a way to apply your magic inside your body where it can do the fastest work. It can be used to banish the influence of a person on your life or to banish a particular habit that you wish to be rid of. The proof is in the magic, so to speak. Please add your own intent as is appropriate to your path where appropriate.

Black pepper (Piper nigrum) has a long history of being used as a protective and banishing herb that, if the stories are to be believed, has been used for this purpose since the Middle Ages. Although I have not found concrete evidence as to WHY black pepper is associated with these properties, I assume it's due to its fiery Martian nature.

You can increase the Martian aspects of this spell by performing this on a Tuesday or during the Hour of Mars.

The spell begins by crafting a Black Pepper infused simple syrup.

Black Pepper Syrup

1-2 tbs. Crushed Black Pepper or Whole Peppercorns 1/2 Cup Sugar 1/2 Cup of Water Mortar and Pestle (optional)

Because the main component of this spell is Black Pepper, I highly suggest that you grind your own peppercorns in a mortar and pestle if you are able. This is a great time to add some intention to this working - focus on what you are looking to banish from your life and really think about crushing it like you are crushing the peppercorns. Make that thing smaller and smaller as the peppercorns get smaller and smaller. Once crushed, you can turn your crushed black pepper into simple syrup by combining it with the sugar and water on the stove on medium-low heat until the sugar is dissolved into the water. You can attempt to strain out the pepper bits if you wish, but I personally keep them in the syrup.

Simple Syrup keeps in the fridge in an airtight container for 1-2 months.

Black Pepper Banishing Old Fashioned

2 oz. aged liquor* (I used Johnny Walker Red Label) 1/4 oz. Black Pepper Simple Syrup 1-3 dashes of Angustora Bitters (optional to taste) 1-3 berries or cherries** Rocks glass, Muddler Here we are following the traditional method for making an old fashioned. Add your fruit, the syrup, and the bitters into the bottom of a rocks glass and muddle them together - this is the primary place where you are adding your intention into the making of this drink. As mentioned above, I like to think about crushing whatever I am looking to banish from my life at this time. Add in your liquor, ice, and stir to combine. You can also use the stirring to confirm your intention - I like to be very clear here and state out loud EXACTLY what I am looking to remove from my life.

Drink and enjoy. Bonus tip: When you pee later, imagine the thing that you are trying to banish leaving your body and being flushed down the toilet for a bit of extra oomph to this spell.

Banishing Black Pepper Iced Tea

2-4 oz. unflavored black tea, steeped and cooled*** 1/4 oz. Black pepper syrup, or 2 taste 1-3 berries or cherries* Tea glass, cocktail muddler

Here we are following the traditional method for making an old fashioned. Add your fruit, the syrup, and the bitters into the bottom of a rocks glass and muddle them together - this is the primary place where you are adding your intention into the making of this drink. As mentioned above, I like to think about crushing whatever I am looking to banish from my life at this time. Add in your tea, ice, and stir to combine. You can also use the stirring to confirm your intention - I like to be very clear here and state out loud EXACTLY what I am looking to remove from my life.

Drink and enjoy. Bonus tip: When you pee later, imagine the thing that you are trying to banish leaving your body and being flushed down the toilet for a bit of extra oomph to this spell

*Any aged liquor will work for this spell. I've tried it with Aged Rum, Gold tequila, Rye, Bourbon, and Scotch. The smokey notes of the Red Label are a really nice compliment to the spicy of the black pepper but use what you would normally drink. ** Use Blackberry or Raspberry for the extra benefit of their protective properties to this potion, or cocktail cherries as suit your needs ***Any quality black tea will work for this working.

Do you like my work? You can Tip Me over on Kofi.

[stillness-in-green]

why do you think Deku never tried to talk to Shigaraki? doylist reason is obvious but what's the watsonian reason?

Honestly, this one’s pretty tricky to answer.  It’s very hard to get myself into the headspace of Deku (and the people in his own headspace!)—mainly because I get extremely uncharitable, extremely quickly.  Mainly about Horikoshi, yes, but that does extend to Deku, too, as well as the broader world he lives in.

The brain goes immediately to answers like, “His world is so incredibly slanted towards retributive models of justice that the fact that he even thinks about wanting to know Shigaraki’s motivations makes him a candidate for mad sainthood to the people around him.  The fact that he doesn’t follow that impulse through all the way to actually asking is immaterial; while Villains have to be punished for their actions, for Heroes, it’s the thought that counts.”

See how I’m already drifting back towards meta-narrative analysis at the end there?  Deku brings a lot of that out in me, especially from Villain Hunt onwards.  Like the wooden doll he’s named for, he comes off to me as a vessel for the plot to happen through more than he does a consistently written, well-thought-out character.  Trying to think of him through a purely Watsonian lens—no refences made at all, period, to what I think the story was trying to express or what Horikoshi’s intentions towards that story were—I almost immediately jump the tracks into territory that is all but certainly incompatible with what I was “supposed” to take away from MHA as a story.

But, you did ask, so I’ll follow the thought experiment through.  If I were to try and set down to paper an explanation for Deku’s actions from a purely in-universe stance—say, for writing canon compliant post-series fanfic—what would be my explanation?

(Hit the jump.)

Right off the bat, from a cultural perspective, I think Deku is afraid that if he tries to make excuses for Shigaraki, it would be disrespectful to Shigaraki’s victims.  That’s why you get the heroic characters constant harping on about how they can’t forgive the Villains, even though, as adjuncts to the police, “forgiveness” is utterly immaterial to them doing their jobs.  Too much sympathy for criminals, in some peoples’ eyes, becomes indicative of a lack of proper regard for the victims of crime; this is very much a dynamic in play in Japan’s legal system.[1]  Ochaco initially has the same impulse, where she’s terrified that even thinking about Toga Himiko’s human circumstances puts her in danger of forgetting the suffering Toga and the League brought about.

1: That’s a meta consideration, yes, but one that I think the target audience would understand to be implicit in the canon as written, so I’m treating it as a Watsonian detail.

Ochaco and Deku commiserate and ultimately encourage each other to embrace their desire to understand their respective Villains, which leads to Ochaco talking to Toga at some length!  Ochaco must do this because asking Toga these questions if the only way she has to reach that understanding.  Deku does not have to ask, however, because he has a cheatmode to fall back on: the mindscape shared between All For One and One For All.  If Deku thinks too much open communication with Villains risks dishonoring Shigaraki’s victims, well, he doesn’t have to openly communicate.  He doesn’t have to talk to Shigaraki the person at all.  He just has to find that crying little boy in the mindscape again.

I also think it’s notable that Deku very much does stop talking about wanting to save Shigaraki after he talks to Gran Torino.  From that point on, everything he says about Shigaraki becomes about wanting to understand him instead.  Coupled with the idea that he insists upon not forgiving Shigaraki, I get the sense that what Deku wants is not to help Shigaraki at all, but rather to simply bear witness to his truth.  And even that much feels self-serving to me—as if Deku doesn’t care so much that Shigaraki is in pain, but rather that Shigaraki might have a point, that Shigaraki’s pain might be valid.  Shigaraki having a valid point would destabilize everything Deku believes about Heroes and Hero Society, and Deku has, by that point, seen enough that he’s too upright to look away, to “sweep things back under the rug,” so he has to find out Shigaraki’s story to judge it for himself.

The fact that he feels he has the right to judge Shigaraki’s story speaks to the arrogance of Heroes—the same arrogance that leads them to declare their lack of forgiveness as if it’s in some way relevant to doing the job in front of them—as well as a deeply rooted defensiveness: that they must have, and be perceived as having, the moral high ground over those evil Villains.  I think, for example, of the Flamin’ Sidekickers and their cringingly awkward self-justifications to Dabi about their continued association with Todoroki Enji.  Their reasoning has zero bearing on either Dabi’s pain or their own heroic responsibilities to assist in the arrest of a known murderer/terrorist/arsonist, but they feel the need to spell that reasoning out to the child abuse victim/volatile Villain anyway, seemingly for no in-character reason save to rationalize the deep discomfort that Dabi’s video accusations provoked in them.

Heroes must be seen as morally just—this is the whole basis for the authority they’ve been granted to wield their powers against other people.  Best Jeanist talks about this idea explicitly, as does Police Chief Tsuragamae.  Far more damningly, it’s what led to the HPSC using agents like Lady Nagant and Hawks to quietly dispose of anyone that would present a threat to the public image of Heroes and, by extension, the fragile peace that rests on that public image.

Heroes must be pure and righteous, and Deku is just as apt to believe that as any other Hero—maybe even more apt, given that he’s also had All Might leaning on him about the bearer of One For All being the Pillar and the Symbol of Peace.  All this baggage winds up conflicting, however, with the horror and reflexive need to help Deku feels upon seeing the small, crying child within Shigaraki.

Saving small crying children is the absolute, innermost core of Deku’s personal framing of Heroism—seriously, he says this nearly word-for-word in Chapter 1!—and so, like Shouji says of the heteromorph riot, it isn’t something he can ignore and still call himself a Hero.  He’s unprepared for that personal brand of Heroism to conflict with the demands of professional Heroism, because he never expected to face someone who was both Evil Villain and Crying Child at the same time.  This is what he wrestles with over the course of his time away from UA and why, ultimately, he decides to use the mindscape as a way of resolving the conflict.

(Note again that I'm talking about my fanfic explanation here. Deku's reasoning is much murkier in the canon because of the canon's late turn towards locking us hard out of Deku's personal feelings and thoughts when they're about anything more complex than chain OFA combo moves.)

Remember that Deku begins the Villain Hunt Arc with a tentative desire to “understand Villains” so that he can perhaps use that understanding to avert or at least deescalate conflicts with them—and then the very first Villain he falteringly tries to understand is fucking Muscular, who shuts him down cold.  Deku never tries that hard[2] to understand a Villain again—Lady Nagant dumps her backstory on him with very little prompting from him, he has nothing but ultimatums for Overhaul, he doesn’t seem to ask any of AFO’s other minions any personal questions whatsoever, and with Shigaraki, he goes straight to the mindscape instead of even attempting a dialogue.

2: Insomuch as you could call asking three invasive, judgy questions in the middle of combat and then throwing in the towel “trying hard”.

My take is that Muscular scared him off of trying to verbally uncover the backstories of Villains—even though Shigaraki is ready to all but hand the first Hero to ask an illustrated history of his grievances with Hero Society, Deku can’t trust that anything Shigaraki tells him will be the unvarnished truth.  Unlike Shouto, he has no one to corroborate the truth with, but unlike Uraraka, he doesn’t just have to make the best of it, either.  He can instead utilize the mindscape, an approach that sidesteps all of the issues that a spoken dialogue would entail:

Getting Shigaraki’s truth via the mindscape means he can trust the answers he gets, rather than having to filter those answers through Shigaraki’s warped worldview.  This allows him to honestly evaluate Shigaraki’s perspective, gauging whether Shigaraki has a real point that Deku has any responsibility to address, some injustice that needs to be corrected independently of Shigaraki being held accountable for his crimes.    

Having decided that—for reasons of justice, All Might’s Pillar mentality, and his own peace of mind—he has to know Shigaraki’s truth, Deku comes to feel self-righteously entitled to that truth.  Thus, even though Shigaraki always seemed perfectly willing to share his thoughts in their previous encounters, Deku can’t take the chance that he’ll change his mind and rebuff Deku like Muscular did.  Using the mindscape takes that agency away from Shigaraki, rendering his willingness to share moot.    

No one other than people with access to the shared mindscape can perceive the interactions happening within it.  This means that, no matter what Deku learns or how he reacts to it in the moment, he doesn’t risk being seen as disrespecting Shigaraki’s victims by prioritizing the feelings and perspective of a vicious terrorist.    

Finally, on a tactical note, the encounter Deku has with Shigaraki in the mindscape during the Jakku battle seems to happen nigh instantaneously.  If he can get his answers at the speed of thought, that means he doesn’t have to specifically draw out his battle with Shigaraki until he’s resolved things to his personal satisfaction.  This is ideal, since Shigaraki presents an incredibly dangerous threat to everything and everyone around him, and Deku’s Hero education has repeatedly emphasized the importance of ending battles quickly.

There's just one problem with all this: Deku is assuming access to Shigaraki’s mind.  And why wouldn’t he?  He got in there without even trying last time, after all!  I assume that’s also why he rolls up to the battle with zero plans of any kind: he doesn’t understand how the mechanics of the shared mindscape work and none of the prior bearers can advise him because it’s a brand-new phenomenon for him as the ninth bearer, so they’re just as clueless about it as he is. 

Lacking that knowledge, he opts to simply take it on faith that he’ll be able to access that mental space again, find the crying child in it, and uncover enough about Shigaraki’s history to render his own judgement of it.  He's the Deku who does his best, after all; if it doesn't work, at least he'll know he tried. The good faith attempt, however it turns out, will allow him to satisfy his own sense of justice while not interfering with whatever temporal justice the adult Heroes are planning for Shigaraki—to which Deku fully believes he must be subjected as punishment for his crimes!—be it arrest or an execution broadcast to the entire world.

Unfortunately for Deku, thanks to his being waylaid by Toga, he turns up late to the battle only to find Shigaraki’s psyche sealed up tighter than an All Might-themed wall safe.  Then, since he never had any kind of plan for talking to Shigaraki, and his own ability to plan things is strictly limited to combining quirk abilities on the fly, he has to wing it until Kudou is able to come up with a plan for him.  Naturally, because Kudou is Kudou, and Heroes’ solutions are tailored to Heroes’ strengths, this involves violent psychic assault.  And why not?  It’s not like Deku believes Shigaraki deserves the mercy of a gentler approach.  Just think of all those people he hurt!

Now, is this all heckin’ uncharitable?  Does it paint Deku as well-intended but blindly self-righteous and ethically timid? Oh, for sure.  And I do think there was a point at which Deku wanted to save Shigaraki in a truer sense—indeed, he’s quite plain-spoken about it in the OFA Mental Conference in the aftermath of the first war!  However, it’s absolutely within his established characterization to run into things that make him uneasy and take the first out an authority figure offers him that spares him the work of demolishing and rebuilding his entire world view.  Look no further than the aftermath of the mall scene. You can draw a straight line from Deku taking Tsukauchi's out (that Shigaraki is just a sore loser) to him also taking Gran's (that killing Shigaraki could be a way of saving him).

That’s the mentality I would lean on to explain Deku’s anemic efforts to truly save Shigaraki in the end: an inherent desire to help people that has been hamstrung by a learned dehumanization of Villains, a repeated emphasis on swift, unthinking action as a Heroic virtue, a culture that regards sympathy for those involved in a crime as a zero sum game, and, last but not least, a psychological complex about the basic nature of Heroism rooted in his fraught childhood.

Deku says he’ll “never forget” Shigaraki. If it were me writing the sequel, “never forgetting” would look an awful lot like, “Following a particularly frustrating day of the Pro Hero grind, Midoriya Izuku opens his eyes at 4AM one cold winter night in his early-40s with the horrible, inescapable realization that what he did as a teenager to a deeply victimized young man barely older than he was himself back then was fucked up in ways he can never repair or take back.  And further that now, not only is he going to have to spend the rest of his life trying to make up for that act, it’s going to be much, much harder than it would have been back then, specifically because he did what he did back then and let the world get away with calling it heroism.”

Thanks for the ask, anon! I hope you find the answer interesting and at least somewhat believable, for all that it certainly isn't tonally in-line with the story's portrayal of its much-lauded protagonist.

   

(P.S. On top of convincing both All Might and Deku to not pursue saving Shigaraki in any concrete sense, Gran Torino also takes partial credit for Nana's decision to abandon Kotarou. Torino Sorahiko might actually be the all-time world champion of convincing OFA bearers that preserving One For All is worth abandoning children to their grim fates. Give him a hand, everyone. What a great and admirable Hero who absolutely deserved to survive all the way to the end of the story and who definitely is not a symbol of all the most jaded and cynical priorities of the old order.)

[finitevariety]

omg the fact they found james fitzjames...

Douglas Stenton, adjunct professor of anthropology at the University of Waterloo, said, "The identification of Fitzjames' remains provides new insights about the expedition's sad ending."

Inuit told searchers in the 1850s that they had seen evidence of cannibalism among the crew members, a story that shocked Europeans.

In 1997, it was corroborated by the late bioarchaeologist Anne Keenleyside, who found cut marks on almost one-quarter of the bones discovered at King William Island.

Fitzjames' jawbone is one of those with multiple cut marks, demonstrating that he was cannibalized after death.

"This shows that he predeceased at least some of the other sailors who perished and that neither rank nor status was the governing principle in the final desperate days of the expedition as they strove to save themselves," Stenton said.

[destielaureversebb]

Coming soon for the @destielaureversebb: “Genius Loci” 

Author: @mrbotanyb Artist: @universalcas

Rating: Mature Archive warnings: None Length: 11,000 Tags:  University AU, Dark Academia, Mental Illness, Friends to Lovers Relationships: Dean/Castiel, Castiel/Daphne Allen (previous)

Summary:  Three years ago, Dean walked away from his half-done PhD because his father needed him. Now he's back and hoping to pick up where he left off — that, and see Cas again. Dean missed his friendship with his (older, straight, engaged) professor, which of course means he's never ever going to tell Cas about the crush he's harbored for years.

But there's something very weird going on — his old advisor may be missing, Cas is a shadow of the man he used to be, and there may or may not be ghosts haunting the campus. This is a story about academic arguments, terrible adjunct professor salaries, and the power of stories. And terrible, terrible architecture.

Excerpt: 

Dean had just left Cas's house after a slow, drawn-out dinner that had left him with a mixture of hope and discomfort. They had spent hours talking, and Dean had tried his best to reconnect with the man who had once been his mentor, his friend. But Cas... Cas wasn’t the same. He wasn’t the warm, enthusiastic professor who would dive into conversation about literature or history with fervor. No, this Cas was withdrawn, distant, and seemed... lost, as if his passion had been drained away over the years. Dean had hoped their dinner would rekindle the closeness they once had, but instead, it only highlighted how much had changed.

And it wasn’t just Cas’s apathy that troubled Dean; it was something more personal. As they sat together at the table, Dean had felt the stirrings of an old emotion — something deep and unspoken, something he’d buried for years. He had tried to convince himself that it was just nostalgia, that it was just the ghost of a long-lost friendship he was clinging to, but the truth was undeniable: he still had feelings for Cas. Those feelings hadn’t faded.

Walking through the misty campus now, Dean couldn’t shake the sense that things were slipping out of his control. His heart ached for the man Cas had once been — the curious, passionate person who had inspired him to pursue his own research, to think bigger. He had wanted to believe that they could rebuild their friendship, that things could go back to the way they were, but now it felt more like trying to revive something that had already died. Cas’s detachment had left Dean feeling unsure of what to do. Was it just that Cas was going through a rough patch? Or had the man he used to admire completely faded away?

As Dean turned the corner near the main library, he froze. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something. A strange shadow that seemed to float across the lawn ahead of him. For a brief moment, it appeared to move, as though it were alive, slipping in and out of the mist like a wisp of smoke, then it disappeared, leaving the darkened campus in silence. Dean stood still, his breath caught in his chest. His heart rate spiked. Maybe it was just the fog playing tricks on him, his mind tired and distracted. The shadow could have been nothing.

Posting date:  February 11, 2025

[au-roulette]

Happy June!

To celebrate the fact that we are now officially one month away from the start of AU Roulette, have a post detailing the 36 AUs included in this year's challenge -- or don't, if you'd rather be surprised.

This year's AUs have been curated to be intentionally broad, in the hopes that they will encourage unique takes on each prompt and the creativity of the authors participating. You are welcome to write anything that falls under the umbrella of your assigned AUs, whether it's an original universe, a fusion inspired by another fandom, or something else entirely.

(What's AU Roulette, some of you might be asking? An explanation can be found here, along with the link to sign-up!)

Without further ado -- the AU list, under a cut:

Roleswap - Maybe you want to switch two characters' places, do a class-swap for a D&D fandom, try your hand at an age-swap fic, or you have another idea.

Superhero -- Invent an original universe or do a fusion with one of the many popular big-screen superhero stories. Play it straight and give your favorite characters cool powers, or try a deconstruction of the genre. With great AUs comes great responsibility

Gothic Horror -- Castles. Ghosts. Vampires. Drama. Love that conquers Death. Take your inspiration from classic literature or a newer entry in the genre, like The Locked Tomb books. But be sure to make things spooky.

Post-Apocalypse -- Will the world end in fire or in ice? Or maybe economic collapse, war, zombies, or one of many other options? You write what happens next!

Fairy-Tale -- Pick a classic tale from the Grimms, Hans Christian Andersen, Asbjørnsen & Moe, Charles Perrault, or another favorite author to inspire your AU, try out a more modern re-telling, or use fairy-tale elements to craft your own story.

High Seas -- Including but not limited to Pirate AUs and other Age of Sail adventures. Try out something more historical, or throw in as many fantasy elements as you'd like -- or a bit of both.

Time Travel -- For fixing mistakes, making things worse, or time loops. Or maybe you want to write a fusion inspired by a piece of popular time travel media, like Doctor Who.

Western -- Another AU where writers are free to do their history research or to lean into more outlandish genre conventions. Cowboys, cowgirls, and cowpokes all welcome, of course.

Mythology -- Write a story inspired by your favorite myths and legends, from a whole host of different cultures. Or maybe you'd like to try your hand at writing some epic poetry?

Coffee Shop -- A classic everyone knows and has strong feelings about. Play it straight or add a twist, whichever suits your fancy! After all, no one said where the coffee shop has to be...

College/Academia -- Are the characters in your AU students? Professors? Weary adjuncts? Throwing hands at a conference? Some mix of the above?

Theater -- Put those characters on Broadway or cast them in a disaster of a community theater production. Or a school play! All that really matters is the show must go on.

Ghost/Cryptid Hunters -- Maybe you want to write a story starring the next Scooby-Doo crew, or maybe there really is something strange in the neighborhood. Or maybe it'll never be clear what really happened -- it's your choice!

Secret Agent -- Code words, code names, you name it. Write a story about spies, cryptographers, or any other clandestine operators. Take inspiration from history or from James Bond. Just don't spill your secrets too soon.

Detective -- Whether you're writing the world's greatest detective or someone who just can't get a clue, play up the mystery! Use a classic locale like 221B Baker Street or invent your own.

Cyberpunk -- Time to write cyborg identity crises and fight the machine (literally)! Take inspiration from classic media like Neuromancer or Blade Runner or make a totally new cyberpunk universe of your own creation.

High Fantasy -- Elves and dwarves and gnomes, oh my! This AU could encompass everything from Middle Earth to D&D AUs to your favorite high fantasy books you read over and over as a kid. Or maybe you have your own spell to weave.

Band/Musicians -- Whether you decide to make the characters in your AU famous pop stars, part of an orchestra, students at a conservatory, jamming together in their garage, or otherwise musically-inclined, have fun with it!

Reporter/Journalist -- For everything from local anchors and newspaper staff to big-league investigative reporters. Write characters who'll do anything to get a scoop or with a strong sense of justice -- it's your call!

Cosmic Horror -- You don't have to love Lovecraft to get creative with this AU. Make characters comprehend the incomprehensible, send them messages from beyond the stars, and get a little creepy.

Heist -- Will you write a story about master thieves? Vigilantes righting some wrong? What's being stolen and why? Try a Leverage AU or a caper of your own making.

Space Opera -- The genre encompassing works like The Expanse, Imperial Radch, Mass Effect, and Star Wars, brimming with galactic empires, alien species, and chivalric adventures. Write a fusion set in the universe of your favorite work in the genre, or invent a new one!

Sports/Athletics -- Pick a sport, any sport -- whether a team game like hockey, an individual one like archery, a paired one like figure skating, or something a little unconventional, like roller derby or HEMA. Then it's ready, set, write!

Historical Era -- An AU type absolutely bursting with potential, from medieval romances to 1920s Prohibition AUs, to ones inspired by historical fiction like Les Miserables. Whatever era of history strikes your fancy, you can write it.

Road Trip -- Pack your favorite characters in a car and don't forget the snacks. Or maybe the spaceship, or something else if you're feeling adventurous. Where are they headed and why? Only you know the answer!

Space Exploration -- Whether you want to write modern-day astronauts, a futuristic Star Trek AU, or something inspired by the space race, the sky isn't even the limit with this AU.

Urban Fantasy -- For all your modern-with-magic settings. Write an AU inspired by something like Teen Wolf, Artemis Fowl, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or much of Neil Gaiman's oeuvre, or invent your own world where witches and websites coexist.

Museum/Archives -- Have the characters in your AU working in the exhibits or behind the scenes, down in the collections or even as archaeologists or paleontologists. What secrets are waiting to be unearthed there?

Hospital -- A surprisingly flexible AU option -- are the characters working there, or the victims of some unfortunate accident? Or maybe it's a bit of both. Take it wherever you feel like.

Camping/Wilderness Survival -- Could be anything from a fun summer camp or camping trip to a nightmare survival scenario. Write everyone having s'mores around the campfire or something inspired by media like Yellowjackets, where they might be having... something else.

Steampunk -- A fantastic opportunity to get creative with your worldbuilding. Try your hand at some alternate history, or invent a world of airships and other flying machines of your very own.

Shapeshifter -- Can the characters in this AU turn into anything they want? Or maybe they're more limited, like selkies -- even unable to control their shapeshifting at all (can I get an "awoo" from the werewolf fans?)

Classic Literature -- An AU somewhat more dependent on fusion ideas, but still very flexible! Pick a favorite classic book or play and let it inspire your writing!

Dystopian -- Create your own awful society or let a favorite piece of media guide you, like writing a Hunger Games AU. Will the characters break the cycle, or end up trapped in it?

Renaissance Faire -- A recipe for chaos. Write a bunch or faire-goers or have the characters in your AU working at the faire! Adventures await.

Scientist/Mad Science -- Write characters as normal biologists, physicists, and chemists, the next Frankenstein, or as hapless experiments themselves!

[gazelles-gazelles]

Adora and perfection

Perfection has been demanded of women for ages, not just as an adjunct, but as a price we pay for existing. We’re supposed to fill our predetermined roles to the fullest, with no hesitation and no error. It can take many forms across history (e.g. the angle in the house) but they all echo the same idea: a woman’s value must be tied to unattainable ideals. A perpetual feeling of worthlessness. It’s a tool of oppression, a mechanism of power.

before we connect all that with Adora, let’s settle on a specific definition of what perfection is, according to aristotle:

1. which is complete — which contains all the requisite parts.

2. which is so good that nothing of the kind could be better.

3. which has attained its purpose.

Adora embodies every single one of these. (1) She’s been conditioned through childhood to always be complete, competent, flawless, errorless, perfect. (2) And not just that, not just to be good, not to be better, but to be the best, no one should come before her, the first place is the only place where she can reside, losing is simply unimaginable. (3) And finally, she had always been used to attain a purpose, or in the show’s language, a destiny. Whether as a horde soldier or as she-ra, whether by shadow weaver or by light hope.

Adora is perfection incarnate! Or rather, supposed to be, in every facet.

Beauty: to me, the original first-ones-made she-ra form can be used as a metaphor for the impossibly unrealistic beauty standards that had always shackled women. She’s warrior, yes, but she must also be beautiful. (1) She’s in gold, the most precious of metals, and too heavy for armour to ever be made purely out of it, she wears white, the color of pure and clean, even when she’s in battlefield, even when there’s dirt and blood to stain, her hair is free and unbound and desirable, she glows, inhumanly so, like a star, not a person. (2) And even with all that, the worst thing is that she’s so clearly not Adora, not a reflection of Adora’s authentic self, but an exaggerated contortists image of what she must look like, she’s not Adora.

Skill: women have to be great to be good, in every room, and Adora was always expected to be great. Since she’s a soldier, it translates into military settings: she’s supposed to be the strongest in the room, the smartest in the room, the simple undoubtable best. Every attack must be calculated to the point, devoid of error or mistakes, every plan must work, every hit must land, every simulation must be won, every enemy defeated, every power mastered, every lesson, every training, everything she does, must be perfect.

Behaviour: double binds. A woman must be pretty but not too pretty, nice but not too nice (sound familiar?). Adora spent the entire show being squashed by dualities that contradict each other, she must be powerful to defeat her enemies but not powerful enough to usurp her superiors, smart to be successful but not smart enough to realise her abuse, kind to save the world but not kind enough to foster her own relationship, she must be strong but obedient, a leader but also a follower, a weapon and a shield.

Of course this is all horrifying. No one can live like this, Adora tried, but the mental and physical damage she suffered from would’ve destroyed her if it weren’t for her support system.

Adora’s story is cautionary tale about the horrors of perfection. No human is perfect, so the demand of perfection is literally dehumanisation. Adora is dehumanised, objectified, used as a tool(s) to achieve other people’s goals. And for the longest time, she didn’t even realise it, she has been abused and conditioned into truly believing that perfection is the price she must pay to exist, until she doesn’t! Until the unconditional love of catra and glimmer and bow allows her simply just exist.

[kingoftieland]

It wasn’t easy finding this out-of-print book from 2018, but I finally managed to track one down! Red Dead Redemption 2: The Complete Official Guide (Collector's Edition) is a gamer’s indispensable companion to the vast, dangerous, and breathtaking world crafted by Rockstar. With a whopping 384 pages printed on superior-quality art paper, this hardcover puts every event in the game at your fingertips – from the most memorable missions to the rarest chance encounters – so you need never miss a single moment of the story. Throw in a bonus art gallery of all the major characters along with unique biographies and you have an epic tome worthy of any bookshelf! 📕

UPDATE: One of my former students was lucky enough to have Roger Clark – the voice of Arthur Morgan – as their adjunct professor last semester and was able to get this book signed for me! AMAZING!!!