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recurring-polynya · 3 years ago

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Hi Polynya! I’m curious and in the spirit of Ginrei’s birthday, what do you think are his opinions of Rukia and Renji separately and together?

Ha ha, this is such a simple and straightforward question and my answer is going to be so long and so complicated and have almost nothing to do with Rukia and Renji because Ginrei's feelings toward Rukia and Renji have almost nothing to do with Rukia and Renji.

So, I want to start out by saying that Ginrei is a lot like Hisana in the sense that he's a canon character, we get the idea of him and what he's there for, but there's no actual characterization of him, which gives fanfic writers a tremendous amount of leeway to do whatever they want with him. I'm not going to try to justify anything I say here, it's just my ideas and how it goes in my fanfiction. I love it whenever a writer tries to take on the Kuchiki clan and I'm always interested to see what other people's takes are, even when they vary wildly from my own.

I love the fact that "Kuchiki" means "dead tree." We meet Rukia first, and it's sort of a delightfully spoopy name, very appropriate for this salty, overdramatic, grim reaper girl, but it takes on additional meaning when we meet Byakuya, the noble and powerful scion of a dying house.

The thing that makes Ginrei interesting as a character to me is that he is the one who ruled over his house as it fell. I tend to regard filler episodes as semi-canon, so I like the idea of Kouga, even if I don't want to acknowledge the rest of the Zanpakutou Rebellion shenanigans. I think that the main line of the Kuchiki was already running a little thin, Soujun's health was a big concern, and so they marry in this guy who is a scholar and a powerful shinigami. They never say what Kouga's previous social status was, but given that they emphasize what an accomplished dude he is, I think he was chosen for his skills, not his lineage, to strengthen the Kuchiki bloodline, except it backfires. Then Soujun dies, too, a few years later.

Ginrei strikes me as the type of leader who thinks he can control everything. He manages his clan with an iron fist. He is pragmatic, not sentimental. He’s not bad or mean, but he can see that he does not have a lot of room for missteps, and he takes his role very, very seriously. Despite this, he’s lost the generation under him, and all that he has left is Byakuya. There are cousins and branch families, but to the pride of the Kuchiki is its main line, descended from great generals and heroes and the very founders of Soul Society. Byakuya, in a lot of ways, hearkens back to the great Kuchiki of old, and Ginrei sees that he has the potential to reclaim the power and glory of his house. He’s hard on Byakuya and has high expectations for him. Ginrei loved his son and he loves his grandson, but after Soujun’s death, he often wonders if he was too soft on him because of his health, if Soujun would have lived if Ginrei had just expected more of him. Byakuya is the last hope of the Kuchiki and Ginrei knows he can achieve great things, and Ginrei is determined to do everything in his power to make sure Byakuya achieves his full potential.

And some ways, Byakuya is the perfect Kuchiki. He’s strong and he’s hard-working. He’s principled. He’s working on his self-control, and he’s very good at when it comes, to say, sword practice, he’s just not so good at in when it comes to interpersonal relations, but he’s coming along. Then he meets Hisana.

Hisana is absolutely unacceptable to Ginrei. Byakuya needs a marriage with a woman with strong spiritual pressure and a noble lineage so that he can gain some alliances from the marriage and then she can pop out some strapping young heirs while also managing his social life for him, just like Ginrei’s wife did for him. Hisana obviously isn’t going to check any of these boxes.

I headcanon Byakuya as demisexual, in the sense that he doesn’t experience sexual attraction very often, and if he does, it’s only to someone he’s already got strong feelings for. He was sort of okay with the vague idea of marrying someone for the purposes of procreating until he met Hisana and realized how much that would pale in comparison to actually being married to the love of his life.

Up until this point, Byakuya has had some minor rebellions against Ginrei, but they’ve never really gone at it, but this is one time that Byakuya stands firm. Ginrei is super-pissed. He lets Byakuya marry her because he figures she’s going to die soon anyway, but he’s mad about it. He never comes around to Hisana and he’s mean to her and this is really the nadir of Byakuya and Ginrei’s relationship.

Finally, we are getting around to what you asked. Hisana dies and Ginrei softens a little toward Byakuya in his grief. He retires and turns the clan and Squad 6 over to B, hoping it will be a distraction and that Byakuya will finally turn his focus over to what matters. This seems to be going well for about one year and then BAM! Byakuya acquires an orphan.

I am guessing that Ginrei didn’t know about Byakuya’s promise to Hisana to take care of Rukia, but even so, I think if you asked him, he would have regarded Byakuya’s duty to his clan and promise to his parents as more important. It’s not that Ginrei isn’t an honorable man, it’s that his concept of honor doesn’t necessarily extend to a dead peasant in comparison the Noble and Ancient House of Kuchiki. So Byakuya adopts Rukia and Ginrei’s immediate reaction is panic. What is Byakuya doing? Is he going to marry this girl? Is he going to name her his Heir? Has he cracked? And it turns out to be none of those things, he’s just going to keep her around as this sad ghost that haunts his house, but Ginrei’s initial reaction toward Rukia is that of interloper. He thought this Hisana nonsense was overwith, but no, we’re still doing this.

When Ginrei first meets Rukia, she is in her overwhelmed, lonely stage of first becoming a Kuchiki. Ginrei also criticizes her for being small and meek and basically useless. She’s a mediocre shinigami. She’s not beautiful or talented, so Byakuya can’t even marry her off for political gain. The real issue, though is that Rukia is just emblematic of the fact that Byakuya doesn’t intend to move past his grief and remarry. He works his ass off as Captain and Clan Head, but other than that, he’s just gonna be a sad widower and sit in his big house and write letters to his dead wife and the Kuchiki are going to die off. There is really nothing Rukia could do, no way she could be different that Ginrei would approve of, because it was never really about her in the first place.

Fast forward a few years, and now we come to Renji. I also headcanon that in his retirement, Ginrei has moved out to a scenic portion of Rukongai, so he doesn’t interact with Byakuya much on a day-to-day basis, but he hears stuff through other family members that come out to visit him. He’s never actually met Renji, all he knows is that Shirogane retired, and Byakuya hired some tattooed goon from Squad 11 instead of one of the dozens of Kuchiki cousins that are lying around. In my fanfic Call Me Back When the War is Over, Byakuya explains to one of his aunts that the reason he did this was because he didn’t have a relative who was capable of passing the Lieutenant’s Exam. She replies that he just should have pulled some strings so that someone (preferably her own son) could pass, assuming it’s a mere formality. Now this is exactly what Ginrei would have done. This is a problem, though: it involves choosing sides. I’ve got the top seats of Squad 6 set up as follows:

- 3rd Seat Ohno is the Heir to the most powerful Kuchiki branch family. His father is arguably the next in line for Clan Head, based on power terms - 4th Seat Kuchiki Choei is an actual Kuchiki, but he’s a younger son and he’s a clown, meaning that he got bored standing in line for Clan Head and wandered around the corner to vape - 5th Seat Kuchiki Takehiko is the actual closest of Byakuya’s relatives to him, and is arguably the next in line for Clan Head, strictly on family line terms

Pulling strings to help any of these three become the next lieutenant would be a very political move on B’s part, tantamount to anointing his successor. Ginrei assumes that B picked an outsider for the purposes of recusing, of saying “I shall simply refuse to die and remain Clan Head myself, forever’, with the addition fuck you of picking the Actual Worst Person Byakuya Could Find for the job, instead.

This really isn’t the case at all, it is literally that Byakuya feels that you shouldn’t be a lieutenant if you can’t pass the exam. He’s basically a rule-follower, and also it’s a good rule, and also his dad died as a lieutenant and I think he thinks a lot about how that could have been avoided through actions, whereas Ginrei tends to think of it more of a thing that could have been avoided if Soujun was better.

So, that gets us up to the beginning of canon. I am (in theory) working on a fanfic that takes place in the 17-mo timeskip where Ginrei comes to visit and actually gets to know Rukia and Renji and (spoiler alert, but is anyone really surprised) he ends up liking both of them a lot. Part of it is just Ginrei has chilled out somewhat in his retirement and realized that it’s okay to have parts of your life that are not completely devoted to the Good of the Clan. Part of it is that Ginrei loves Competence and Rukia and Renji are so, so competent. Part of it is that Byakuya is obviously doing a lot better than he was, and it’s just really obvious why. Like I said, Ginrei does and always has loved Byakuya, he just wants what’s best for him. It’s just that if there is one thing Kuchiki are terrible at, it’s expressing their love for one another in a positive and healthy way.

As to Ginrei’s feelings about Renruki as a ship, he’s for it, actually. Conniving family members have been trying to marry Rukia for years in hopes of getting an in with Byakuya, and I’m sure they’re setting their sights on Renji, now, too. Ginrei likes them well enough, but he can imagine what a shitshow this could turn out to be, and he finds it very convenient if they were to just marry each other.

I’m rather fond of the idea of Byakuya appointing them as a branch family to the Kuchiki, because I’m not super keen on them going full-Kuchiki if Renji married in, but I think Byakuya would be upset if Rukia married out and he wasn’t able to provide her with the lavish lifestyle he thinks she needs (she does not). It’s a nice compromise that lets them be a part of the family, but out of the limelight. In any case, I think that was Ginrei’s idea, thanks Granddad!

#ginrei kuchiki #renruki #i feel like i have written so much fanfic on this topic #except that i've never posted most of it #¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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orange-plum · 4 years ago

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OK, after yesterday’s episode, watching the SK8 community react, and giving myself some time to get my thoughts together, I think I’ve come to a conclusion in my head about Renga mainly, and SK8 as a whole.

I agree with the community. I think SK8 is a canonically LGBTQ+ show. There are enough scenes to blatantly show this. I know sports anime’s tend to queerbait a lot and make relationships seem more intimate with men than other shows, but still. Even by sports anime standards, SK8 does seem to take it a bit further than just “see what you want”. There are canonically queer characters we follow, and the shots/visuals of some character dynamics are intrinsically queer coded. So with that I can agree.

As for Renga . . . I can somewhat agree/disagree with the community. And while their reunion scene has gay implications, I can’t say I am 100% on board with what I see a lot of the community celebrating. The overall message of what I’ve been seeing is “It’s a confession. You don’t have to explicitly kiss or say I love you to be in love and confess. If this was a man and a woman, you would’ve eaten that up as romantic.”

Yeah, I def agree with that overall as a statement. Langa, at the very least, came out on the show. And the way he describes his heart racing with Reki, that he loved snowboarding because he loved his dad, and he loves skating cuz he loves Reki, he’s at least part of the canon queerness of SK8. But Reki, IMO, from what I’ve seen, hasn’t given me a big inclination that he’s pan/bi/gay or whatever he is. We know he likes girls because he’s expressed it in the show, but I haven’t seen any inclination for boys.

And yeah, I’m a big Renga shipper, but I don’t just want to project onto the show my wishes, or see what I want to see by doing mental gymnastics. I really want to look at it and say to myself “Is this character queer coded?” Him blushing because Langa showered him with praise isn’t the same. Lots of people, especially people with low self-esteem (as Reki had been going through) get embarrassed when thrown compliments. I do see potential for Reki to be a “gay” character, but at the moment, I feel myself flashing back on Killua and Gon from HxH.

Not to get crazy into that but Killua is a canonically gay character in HxH, and it’s heavily done in such a manner that he doesn’t even have to explicitly say it for the audience to know. Togashi did a great job with him. And while I ship Killugon, and Gon has the capacity to be a “gay” character, I was never given any blatant implication that he harbors any romantic feelings for Killua. Gon’s love for Killua is just love. I’m not even sure if Gon can experience romantic love, but that’s a whole other can of worms.

My POINT is that while it isn’t necessary for Langa and Reki to kiss or say the words “I like you” for the audience to feel if they do or not, I don’t want to KEEP settling for this narrative in gay media. In a world where it is soooo hard to find explicitly gay canon confirming stories, I think it is necessary to get more confirmation. At least until gay content is so normalized and accessible. It’s super important IMO at the beginning to start pushing for the explicit proof. No wiggle room for people to take away LGBTQ+ voices for their stories, for people to dismiss “gay” characters, to downplay our stories and say “they’re just friends, you’re just pushing shipping” to people who consume this stuff. It sucks to even have this debate anymore when a story is clearly ours.

So, while IDK if I’d say SK8 is queerbaiting, I def feel a certain kinda way with being satisfied with stories being told with implied confirmation instead of visual or verbal. I don’t want to settle for crumbs anymore or the bare minimum. It’s 2021, even a lot of children’s animated shows are finding a way to kiss and say I love you or even going so far as to say “I’m gay.” I’m not going to shit on SK8 for that, because it is a good queer coded show with some canonically LGBTQ+ characters/scenes.

But I won’t lie if I say that I just wish they would push it farther if that’s the narrative they want. There are so few anime out there for gay people with explicit confirmation that isn’t fetishized. You can probably count on both hands the amount of anime that does that (GL is different, rn I’m talking about BL). So I’m not completely with the community on this. Until there are a lot more stories for LGBTQ+ where you don’t have to question if this character/relationship is canonically gay or not, I’m not gonna be completely satisfied with saying “I want to skate with you forever” essentially.

IDK that’s just my take on it.

TL;DR: I appreciate that Renga seems at the very least semi-canon, but I’m not happy with series not taking the plunge and showing us explicit canon gay confirmation, when we live in a world where so few things in media (at least with anime) exist. It just seems like a half-celebration in my heart, at least.

#personal #sk8 #sk8 spoilers #dont come for me these are just my thoughts #im also not shitting on sk8 i love that show #so dont twist my words pls #its a bittersweet thing the renga reuinion ngl #but i say this also because ppl will just take anything and roll with it even if its crumbs #like confirming cherry prefers italian food and ppl went with that everywhere #you can see that as gay or as intimate bffs #its not enough imo i just dont want to settle for crumbs anymore i want blatant in your face gay media #that is all oop

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x--daughters-of-darkness--x · 4 years ago

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The Pretty Reckless’ Taylor Momsen Lives for ‘Death by Rock and Roll’

“The 27 Club” is a depressing cultural phenomenon — it’s the age musical luminaries Amy Winehouse, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Mia Zapata of the Gits, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix died.

The Pretty Reckless singer Taylor Momsen is now is 27 but was 25 when she wrote a reckoning in the semi-autobiographical “25.” The song appears on Death By Rock and Roll, the band’s fourth record. The LP is a stunner; a dozen stellar songs that are at once reverential, referential and intensely personal.

In the past four years, Momsen lost two hugely important people in her life. In 2017, Chris Cornell died by suicide, and not long after, her musical mentor and best friend Kato Khandwala died in a motorcycle crash. Understandably, Momsen was devastated. Thanks in no small part to the catharsis of music, the age of 27 seems to be a renewal, as she exorcises her pain in Death By Rock and Roll. The Pretty Reckless’ best album to date, the passion and pain are palpable in both music and lyrics. The plaintive “Got So High” could be an alt-rock chart-topper, in wonderful contrast to the raw rallying cry and aggressive gutter-rock feel of the title track. She moves easily from the quirky cinematic moment of “Broomsticks” into the fiery, feminist coven-call that is “Witches Burn.”

Speaking from her pandemic hideout in Maine, Momsen isn’t on the other side of the grieving process.

“I’d be a liar to say that I’m, you know, over things,” she tells SPIN. “I’m still in the process of healing, but the making of this record really was just a huge step forward. I was in a very, very dark space there for a while, and if it wasn’t for the making of this record, I don’t know if I would be here right now.”

She wallowed, but ultimately her instinct for self-preservation kicked in. As did a worldwide pandemic. Masking up is nothing new for Momsen, who calls herself “a super hypochondriac” who hasn’t left her house since March.

“Even before COVID, I was strict. It probably stems from being a singer and not wanting to get sick on tour, because you never fully recover. So [I always flew wearing] masks,” Momsen says.

Though she’s healthy, and it’s probably not an exaggeration to say that, emotionally, Momsen was saved by rock and roll. “I keep just sticking to the word rebirth,” she says. “I know it sounds cliché, but it really does feel like that for the band.”

While the songs are truthful, sometimes sad, always powerful, they’re never a pity party. “I keep trying to want to put a positive spin on it because I don’t want it to be this representation of this very morbid thing,” Momsen says. The concept behind Death By Rock & Roll is a positive rallying crying, something a band might shout together before going on stage. “It’s an ethic that we live our life by; go out your own way, rock and roll till I die,” she continues. “Don’t let anyone tell me differently.”

The phrase “death by rock and roll” was coined as the band’s de facto motto by Khandwala, which made it an appropriate choice for the album title. The band’s friend, producer and touchstone, Khandwala died in 2018 at the age of 47. He was with The Pretty Reckless from 2010’s Light Me Up to 2014’s Going To Hell and 2016’s Who You Selling For.

Khandwala’s memory bookends the album: A recording of his actual footsteps on a wooden floor begins the record, and the final song is the poignant tribute “Harley Darling,” a stellar ballad that could be a hit on Americana/country radio. If the only way around something is through it, Momsen dove in headfirst, putting all her angst, love, sadness and power into the songs.

“The record delves into a lot of darkness and a lot of sadness. There was no way around that as a writer. And as a person. It just became so a part of who I was that I couldn’t avoid it. But I think by writing it and getting it out, that was a huge part of the healing process.”

Wanting to use music to process and express her emotions, she called Khandwala, who had produced every The Pretty Reckless album, to talk about recording.

But then came the call that Khandwala had died.

“That was the nail in the coffin for me. I threw my hands up in the air and kind of went ‘Yeah, I give up.’ I went down a very dark rabbit hole of depression and substance abuse and everything that comes with that.” she confesses. Momsen was so down that she couldn’t even listen to music. Eventually, listening to her favorite artists helped her. “I started with the Beatles, listening to every detail, the whole Anthology, and just going through what made me fall in love with music when I was young.”

The band – drummer Jamie Perkins, guitarist Ben Phillips and bassist Mark Damon – met Momsen through Khandwala and were all equally devastated, processing losses in their own ways. They were on tour with Soundgarden in 2017, which was a thrill but ended in tragedy when Cornell died.

“As an artist [being asked to open the tour] was the highest compliment that you could possibly get,” she says. “If you know anything about me, I mean Soundgarden is just the epitome [when it comes to rock bands]. I was there that last night in Detroit,” she remembers. “I talked to him at night I gave him a hug and said goodbye. When I wake up to that news the next morning … It just went from the most elating experience to the one of the most devastating. And Kato was at all those shows.”

Cornell’s death shook Momsen and the band profoundly. She says it “took me down to a place where I wasn’t useful in the middle of a record cycle.” The Pretty Reckless were supposed to be on the road for another year, but Momsen wasn’t up to performing as she dealt with her grief. “I couldn’t grieve and continue to get on stage every night and pretend, put on this big rock show like everything was okay. I left the tour,” she says.

With time, she was able to listen to Soundgarden’s music, and eventually, she picked up a guitar. Death by Rock & Roll was a record that was easy in the worst way possible.

“I didn’t have to try to write it. It was more just a necessity that I didn’t even know I needed. It just kind of poured out of me,” Momsen says of the writing process. “There were a lot of tears during the recording. We put everything we had into this album, physically, emotionally. There are good days, bad days, obviously. I think the full spectrum of emotions was spanned on making this, from anger to tears of happiness to tears of sadness.” Some days were too difficult for Momsen even to attempt vocals, too heartbroken from the past few years.

That said, Momsen, in conversation, along with the record itself, aren’t outwardly mournful. Her voice has laughter and life. “I’m ecstatic for people to hear the album and to share it because I’m really proud of it. I know it sounds cliche, but it really does feel like the first album, like we had to start from scratch again, and we didn’t know how that was going to go.”

Still, there are songs where Momsen chooses not to divulge the true inspiration to inquisitive journalists. “I think it’s unfair to the listener to detail song lyrics in a personal manner. It takes away what it means to [the listener].” She offers up an example to clarify: “I’m a huge Pink Floyd fan. (She references “The Great Gig in the Sky” in the song “Rock and Roll Heaven.”) I’ve watched every documentary ever made about Pink Floyd. In one, Roger Waters is talking about ‘Shine on You Crazy Diamond,’ going into depth about what the song was about to him, about Syd Barrett.”

Momsen was shocked to learn the song’s true story. “It was so not how I had taken that song my entire life! I’m glad that I know the story now. But if I had known before I listened to it, I think that it would have changed my perspective of the song. It wouldn’t have had the same impact that it had on me and my personal life. That’s why I don’t like to do that.”

Death by Rock and Roll reaffirms The Pretty Reckless’ love of rock and roll, along with the people who made them who they are, musically and as individuals. “I think because we went through so much trauma, and so much loss, that this record, in one way, feels so much like a gift. We’re given the gift of rebirth; I mean, how many artists can say that? As artists, you struggle to find inspiration always. In this case, inspiration was just thrust upon me.”

With a record that marks such a powerful turning point for The Pretty Reckless, talking about Khandwala and Cornell will be inevitable and ongoing. “This record starts and ends with my love letter to Kato. So there’s no getting around talking about that,” Momsen concedes. “But it’s so much more than that. I think it’s reflecting on the cycle of life. You come into this world with nothing but your soul, and you leave it with nothing but your soul.”

#Taylor Momsen #the pretty reckless #2021 interviews

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ekebolou · 3 years ago

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I haven’t forgotten the wordbuilding stuff. I got distracted by planning the Academy grounds.

It’s funny because I started off with all the ideas about strategic design, and comparison and addition to the previous structures (let’s face it, they copied the Palace tower - it’s copying - actually it’s puerile dick-measuring, but that’s still copying). And then I started thinking about who is actually building it, and how long it would take to build.

Because the foundations of the idea of the Academy are laid out by Keadar-Ainjir himself. And he definitely builds the Academy Tower (diiiiiiiiick-measuring). But he doesn’t live that long. He’s pretty young when he initiates the rebellion (older than Nika and Cole during the war, so less late-twenties and more early thirties, but since paths to advancement would be very different back then, that would be young for the position he takes on), but it takes a long time to come to fruition, and the coup at the Palace is several years after the war starts, and then he’s got to, you know, establish a whole new system of governance. And deal with when they find out the royal family was not eradicated. and then there’s more rebellions (because of course there are). Wulsh starts to get uppity. Adineh starts meddling. It takes a long time to get stable. He dies maybe in his sixties. Maybe it’ll be early seventies, but probably not.

And the Academy is a major engineering project. It’s built out of the same basalt the Palace is (only more, and better, because penises need to be compared). It’s not that easy to mine. A lot of stone will have to come from somewhere else just because you already have city built over where the original mines were. Those are the places (out in the Ards and Namera) the tend to rebel, too, and being looped into a massive engineering project doesn’t help make ‘em NOT ornery.

He focuses on the wall, and the Tower. He’s a smart guy, but he’s not a builder. And he’s distracted. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do with the palace, but he knows it can’t be a seat of new governance, and then it turns out a royal baby lived (Adineh and the nobility both frown on baby-killing, post-coup anyway) and any idea of maybe trying to tear down or convert goes out the window because he can stash the nobility there and not spend any more money on them, and he’s now got a real excuse for a whole new center of power for the military. So he builds the tower and the starts (and mostly finishes the wall.

His lieutenant takes over after him and really has enough to be getting on with making sure nothing gets fucked up once Keadar-Ainjir is dead. It’s really remarkable. He does some sketches, defends the principles of the place as written down by his predecessor, but mostly lets whoever cares most keep developing the Academy. The first classes are tiny - maybe 20-30 kids - and the grounds are fucking huge. Because I’m phenomenally bad at picturing spaces, the rather arbitrary picture I drew is sectioned off to something like 800 acres. Good-ol’ K-A walled off 800 acres (remember - some of this is existent city walls that he added to, so he didn’t build the whole circumference wall) and built a fucking enormous tower in the middle and died.

Originally, I was concerned with what an actual experienced military tactician would decide for how the grounds were planned, and then I realized it’s going to be the work of decades. Plans will be found, lost, discarded. Different visions will intervene. Resource scarcity will have a say. The things that Keadar-Ainjir can gift to the physical presence of the place are limited, but important, and probably would’ve faded without his lieutenant being so adamant about them, if nothing else. That thing, as per the grounds, is not defensibility, but the idea of self-containment. Now, this isn’t like a castle is self-contained, obviously, because the major food supply for the Academy comes from way far from the grounds, as discussed in earlier ramblings. He builds a wall, he builds a tower - he sets a boundary, and gives it a center. Everything needed to go from boundary to center - from periphery to seat of power - is within the walls.

The result being a kind of stupidly designed campus. They plop the first building down right next to the Tower, some 80 years after K-A dies, and it’s kind of all-purpose - dorms, classrooms, storage, library, spaces for combat practice, etc. But this is dumb, and the outgrowth of temporary buildings as class sizes starts to go really points up how dumb this is, because the Tower is supposed to be special, but they can’t move the whole building because labor costs money, so sort of... semi-wall the rest of the space around the tower, then start plopping buildings around the original building, and at one point they wall off what was a nice arch-lined walkway which becomes the famous seldom-used hall of alcoves by the kitchens (because damn me, I did establish some places in previous writings I want to keep).

And they toss up some dorms, but one of the reasons to build on the other hill back in palace-building days (other than the fact that it was slightly taller) is that this hill has an awkward slope, and is actually quite narrow where it levels out, so they either have to level the ground, build off-level or into the hillside, or just put shit where the ground is already level. They generally opt for the latter.

And now I like it. I’ve drawn it out a few different ways, but I like it - because it’s messy. There’s an idea behind where everything is, but it’s a very big idea and anything less wouldn’t get expressed properly. And at this point - the Academy Dayz stories - they’re still behind, because they’ll always be behind, and the class sizes have required the building of extra dorms for the First and Second Year classes that are wattle-and-daub and shitty wood and bricks, pushed all the way up against the walls, and the Southwest gate is stupidly built, because the city started to creep around the Academy walls and they didn’t want that, so the destroyed a bit but couldn’t destroy it all (because people live there), so they just built a new wall and now there’s a double gate - like, two gates, fifty feet apart and it’s super inefficient. And there’s all this shitty detritus up by the Northgate, which is actually brick and nice and an extension of the street outside but it’s awkward because it violates the sacred boundary between City and Academy, so cadets are strictly forbidden from going over there even though it’s right near the Second Year dorms. It’s like Hogsmeade, only instead of magical candy and butterbeer you’ll just catch an asswhooping if you go in there without permission (but who wants to, because ugh, townies, amirite)

I still don’t know where the showers are.

#worldbuilding notes #kostas stuff

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diyunho · 5 years ago

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The Joker x Reader - “ What Death Tastes Like” Part 5

Scarecrow’s daughter might be only 22, yet the terminal lung cancer she was diagnosed with six months ago didn’t discriminate against her age; the young woman didn’t show worrisome symptoms until it was too late. Y/N always had a fascination for the much older King of Gotham and despite the consequences, maybe it’s finally time to do something about it.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

The Joker feels his face covered in soft kisses and although generally speaking he loves being pampered, this particular instance awakens his self-defense mechanism.

“What time is it?” J mutters.

“Let me see,” you stretch for your phone. “12:03 am.”

“I should go,” he lifts his head up from the pillow and you pull him back in your arms, yawning.

“Stay for a little bit longer, ok?”

“Why?”

“I wish to hold on to my birthday present for a few more minutes,” Y/N pleads with the man she senses doesn’t want to be there anymore. “Don’t worry, I’m aware it was a casual affair,” your sad smile prompts a completely out of context answer:

“If you noticed I fell asleep, you should have woken me up!” The King of Gotham complains.

“I fell asleep also,” you snuggle to him and since J is suddenly quiet you whisper. “It was amazing.”

He keeps staring which makes you wonder what the hell is going on in his mind right now.

“At least for me,” you underline after you grasp he won’t comment on the subject; you didn’t have a clue he’ll convert the night you spent together into awkwardness for no reason. “Get out of my tent!” you snap at his behavior, irritated. “Get out!” you shove him and The Clown Prince of Crime doesn’t budge.

“Why are you mad?” he finally addresses the annoyed Y/N.

“Because you’re a jerk!”

“Come again?!” The Joker frowns and Scarecrow’s daughter has a clever response; she doesn’t share his genes for nothing.

“I would but I guess you’re not a big fan of us having sex a second time!!!”

“Wow!” J bitterly scoffs. “You sure can twist a guy’s words, huh? If you really must pry into my personal life, I’ll have you know that I’m not used with small talk afterwards, understand?”

While you wonder if he’s bluffing, you can’t help offer the benefit of doubt served with a side of insolence.

“Well, maybe if you would give it a try with someone that actually cares, you’d have stuff to discuss.”

“Miss Crane, what makes you think Mara doesn’t like me?”

The Joker expects a feisty reply to his audacious remark yet he receives a piece of sturdy logic instead:

“If she was crazy in love, she wouldn’t agree and with this on and off relationship you two have.”

J is obviously displeased at your statement thus Y/N has to unleash her creativity in order to push him comprehend what she’s aiming at.

“The problem is you don’t approach anything important, you only shut down everyone. Even Emma believes she’s not yours.”

The King of Gotham was preparing to lash out but your latest sentence totally catches him off guard.

“What do you mean?!”

“You never talk about her mother granted she keeps asking so Emma presumes you probably stole her from an individual you consider your enemy and raised her as revenge.”

“Huh?!” The Joker gets on his elbow, appalled. “She is my daughter!”

“I say that to her when she panics, unfortunately random people do look similar…,” you twirl a strand of his green hair around your fingers. “Steering clear from issues we’re uncomfortable with doesn’t necessarily result in a positive outcome,” Y/N concludes and her partner is not excited at all.

“Are you psychoanalyzing me?!”

“I’m a Crane,” you peck his lips. “It’s in our blood.”

A lot of thoughts rushing behind those blue eyes and you’re confident his patience is running low; add a short fuse to the combo and according to your flawless instinct J will bite soon.

“Take me for example,” you attempt to cram in the main point of your dialogue before it happens. “I don’t care you’re older, I fancy your company nevertheless: you’re super handsome plus emotionally unattractive…”

“I’m what?!” The Joker interrupts.

“Umm… emotionally unattractive?” you hesitantly repeat while watching him jump off the pillows and start to collect his clothes in the semi darkness.

“Serves me right for sleeping with somebody half my age!” he growls at the young woman realizing she upset him with her rant.

“So you’re 46?” you struggle to joke at his affirmation.

“Listen here, Miss Crane!” J dresses in a hurry, angry at your stunt. “If you imagine you figured me out, you didn’t!! Nobody fucks with me!” he violently kicks the mattress and you can’t avoid it:

“I think I just did. Literally.”

The hate in his demeanor makes you regret opening up; your goal was to imply you like him no matter what yet the aftermath is way off what you intended.

“I apologize, OK?” you sigh and reach your hand for his.

“I hope you perish!” he strikes your fingers with such brutality it stings. “You’re dying anyway but hopefully the Cromyxillium kills you faster!” The Joker unzips the tent and leaves a shocked Y/N breathless at his hurtful tirade.

“That’s all you got? Stupid old man…” you whimper and cuddle under the thin blanket with his cushion.

Grief is not the correct term to describe what you experience for the moment: a perfect birthday turned into exactly the opposite in a blink of an eye simply because The Joker proved once more he has no concept on how to handle dynamite; fire suits him better.

***************

Next morning, 10:14am

“Are you hot or cold?” your father inquires since your intravenous therapy commenced 10 minutes ago.

“No,” you gaze at the IV bag and Jonathan lingers by your bed, reminding his offspring about their plan.

“We’ll do 3 hours on, 3 hours off; I’ll monitor your vitals and if you feel strange alert me immediately, deal?”

You nod a yes and his perseverance in aiding you with your terminal cancer evokes a sincere confession:

“Daddy…Thank you for trying to save me…I’m sorry I’m a burden…”

“A burden?!” Scarecrow mumbles.

There are a million facts you should evoke, yet the predominant one keeps hunting you.

“You buried yourself in the lab because of me…and Evelyn left…”

“Evelyn and I broke up for various motives,” your parent grumbles. “Saying I immersed myself into working because of you hints that I was forced into it against my will which is not true. I did everything out of love… I can’t bear the idea of losing you,” he kisses your temple; you wrap your free arm around his neck, squeezing him tight.

“You’re the best dad; I’m lucky you’re my father. If I die… you think mom is waiting for me?...”

Jonathan Crane has the weird sensation he’s choking; his wife died after you were born due to leukemia, now their daughter is fighting for survival: she’s plainly the last fortress separating him from utter madness.

“I couldn’t save your mother, but I’ll be damned if I let you die kid,” he caresses your cheek. “She can wait; I bet she’s not eager to take you with her,” Scarecrow reassures his daughter. “Rest honey.”

“I will…” you consent and Emma barging in the bedroom with her duffle bag switches your attention.

“I’m here, I’m here!” she exclaims. “Traffic was horrible, bad accident on the freeway!”

**************

11 am

“Are you comfortable?” Emma checks with her friend, not entirely certain how to bring up a very delicate topic clouding her usually bubbly disposition.

“Of course,” you smile and she wiggles in her recliner. “Are you?” you wink at her visible restlessness as you attempt to lighten the atmosphere.

“Y/N…,” she taps the fluffy carpet with her feet. “Mmmm… last night after we returned from the river I dropped by to see how you’re doing and… I came to your tent…,” Emma pauses seeing the stupefied expression on your face. “I…I found my father sleeping in there with you…”

You lick your lips and strain to keep your calm even if your heart is pounding out of your chest.

“Did my dad take advantage of you?” she lowers her voice and you can tell she’s torn apart by the horrible notion.

“He didn’t,” you shake your head.

“Dumb girl…” Emma admonishes without any trace of resentment; what else can she articulate in these circumstances regardless?

“I can’t believe I’m inquiring… Did you use protection?”

“No…It just happened…”

“Oh my God!” the concerned judgement pressures you to continue:

“It didn’t end well so it’s fair to assume we’re not in any danger of me becoming your stepmom,” your tone diminishes and she leans over to scold when The Joker passes by the opened door without bothering to peek inside your bedroom; you didn’t spot him but Emma did.

“I’ll be back!” she hisses and you’re confused at her desire to leave you.

“Hey, where are you going?”

She ignores your question and races after The King of Gotham, catching up with him at the end of the long corridor.

“Dad!” Emma shouts and he turns around.

“Yeah?”

“What are you doing?!” she interrogates the clueless Joker.

“I’m meeting Crane. Is he downstairs?”

“In his lab compounding the next batch of Cromyxillium for Y/N,” she fumes at J’s impertinence. “Didn’t you forget something?”

He seems puzzled and Emma is not tricked by his deceiving performance.

“My best friend is in her quarters, uncertain if she’ll survive the cancer treatment. Are you pretending she doesn’t exist?”

“Meaning?” The Joker sneers.

“I know you slept with her!” the accusation follows instantly. “Don’t deny it! How could you take advantage of her?!”

The Clown Prince of Crime straightens his shoulders, aware he can’t negotiate his innocence out of this complicated riddle.

“I did not take advantage of her! How dare you accuse me of such low move?”

“You didn’t?” Emma closes the gap between them. “You know she has a crush on you and she’s vulnerable; what type of man would prey on that?!”

J is not thrilled with the innuendos and cuts her off:

“She basically begged for some and I obliged out of pity!”

Emma slaps him and The Joker gasps, enraged she had the audacity:

“Do that again and I’ll neglect you’re my daughter!” he growls and the serious threat doesn’t faze her.

“Hurt her more and I’ll forget you’re my father! If you are indeed my father,” she emphasizes while stomping away towards the kitchen.

“I am your father!” J simmers at her impeccable strategy: Emma is retreating to a different corner of the house giving him the opportunity to choose.

Who the heck knows if she’s actually his?

One thing is undeniable though: they share the same despicable temper.

****************

You discern The Joker in the doorway and your body stiffens; you stare at the TV screen wishing he’ll disappear.

“Where’s Crane?” J analyzes Y/N’s IV pole.

You don’t engage so his crankiness emerges.

“I suppose you didn’t flatlined yet!”

“Nope,” you grunt at the provocative declaration that served its goal: you did reply to The Clown’s rubbish.

“Where’s Crane?”

“I heard you the first time and I’m not sure why you focus your energy on a useless interrogation. You know where my father is!”

“Where?” The Joker’s vile attitude can’t compromise for less than instigating his fling.

“Please take your stuff that’s firm now but will get saggy in maximum 20 years and vanish!” the poisonous remark makes him groan.

“What stuff?!”

You check him out glaring at his mid-section before dismissing his presence.

“That’s the rudest fucking criticism ever!” The Joker barks and Y/N crabbily indicates:

“It’s not criticism, it’s reality! Gravity’s a bitch! Mara won’t mind, won’t she? After all, you two share a very special bond: on today, off tomorrow, hookup next week, take a break next month. Such dreamy relationship!”

“Do you have more derogatory references to my private life?!” J grinds his teeth ready to unleash several atrocities your way.

“No, too busy dying…” you show him the needle in your arm. “I don’t feel the pain from the medication burning my veins; I’m used with my sickness, with the ups and downs. What I do feel is the pain of being taken for granted.”

The Joker is not a fan of the insinuated context.

“You said no strings attached!” he stresses the lack of commitment consented the previous evening.

“You’re the one that came to me; I thought it meant you were accepting to be the center of my universe.”

J ogles the ceiling of Y/N’s bedroom and assembles a couple of harsh disclosures in his brain when her entitled smirk halts the project.

“You’re buying it, aren’t you?” you chuckle at his astonishment. “I’m just messing with you Mister Joker; who in their right mind would make you the center of their universe?! You have 10 seconds to leave, otherwise I’ll scream and security will come!” you shelter your head with the quilt so you don’t have to see his mug anymore.

No outpour of vexation from his part which is cool: means he bailed.

The blanket is slowly pulled until your eyes emerge; J hovers your face, pissed at the unwelcomed clash.

“I’m checking if you kicked the bucket; corpses are usually covered thus my dilemma.”

“Go away!” you advise. “Or I’ll scream!”

You inhale preparing to yell: The Joker didn’t predict you’d defy him and he swiftly kisses you in order to stop the sounds.

The door is cracked and Emma witnesses the scene, reckoning bizarre elements:

Her father holds grudges and was mad at Y/N earlier due to whatever happened yesterday; nevertheless he still kissed her.

On the other hand, you were definitely miserable after your escapade, yet you didn’t reject him.

Emma may not be informed about the entire story, but one detail is crystal clear: the future is far from being simple.

Also read: MASTERLIST

#the joker x reader #the joker fanfiction #the joker imagine #the joker jared leto #the joker suicide squad #the joker #joker #joker fanfiction #joker imagines #joker leto #joker suicide squad #mister j #Mistah J #dc #dcu

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edwardsvirginity · 5 years ago

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a short(er) twilight-themed guide to my dissertation on memes

for anyone who wants to know why and how i wrote 8k words of academic theory on memes, but doesn’t actually want to read 8k words of academic theory on memes

so to begin with, a meme is really hard to define. this part is pretty boring if you don’t care about linguistics, so just take my word for it. i ask a lot of questions like “is a meme still a meme if” (no one shares it, no one makes different versions of it, there’s no standard format for it) and the answer is “sometimes! but we can’t tell you when!” and i also ask “how do you know when you’re looking at a meme?” to which the answer is “you just do! except when you don’t. that happens too.”

so basically, memes are like porn, you know them when you see them

then i talk about why it’s hard to study memes. this is fairly obvious if you think about it. imagine trying to find out the source of a random meme. and then every iteration of that meme anyone has ever made. then how popular each iteration got. how one iteration inspired another. how many times each iteration is reposted by someone else without credit. THEN, attempt to do that for every meme in existence. actually, just try and get a definitive count of how many memes exist. then, realizing that’s impossible, attempt to choose a “random” selection of memes to study not influenced by your personal online world. attempt to study memes that you don’t even know exist bc they don’t exist within your highly-customized online world. basically, memes are a rabbit hole and i don’t even pretend to do any sort of formal semi-comprehensive study, because i do not hate myself.

ok, moving on. i’m actually trying to write this post based on what I remember from my dissertation, which i haven’t reread in... a while. but i like to think i have a fairly good grasp of it bc i wrote it.

so basically the most important part about memes is that they function on at least 2 levels. let’s say there’s an active level and a passive level. the active level is the conversation you THINK you’re having when engaging with a meme. the clearly stated point/idea of the meme. the passive level is all the assumptions a meme is making in the background that, if you are not actively challenging, you are endorsing.

let’s see some examples.

this is a meme *i* made, so i’m gonna put myself on blast here

So the active level of this meme is the text/the point i’m trying to make, which is basically that bella is horny. but like, so horny that she’s willing to throw everything else in her life under the bus for some sexual satisfaction. i feel like this is fairly clear and most people interacting with the meme would consider that what the meme is about. we’re having a conversation about bella’s insatiable thirst for sparkling penis when we engage with this meme.

sort of an in-between level that provides us with further information about the point i’m trying to make is context for the meme/meme format. this meme format is about someone choosing between a good thing and a bad thing. they’ve got the good thing, but they’re tempted by/indulging in the bad thing anyway. it’s fairly reasonable to come to the conclusion that i’m judging bella, when you combine the meme context with the actual text. i’m not only interpreting bella’s behavior here (she eschews her loved ones for sexual gratification), i’m also giving it moral value, labeling yeeting herself onto that dick = bad, building/maintaining relationships with friends and family = good. however, if you’re not familiar with this meme and it’s format, the fact that i’m throwing shade at bella is less clear, even if you understand how i’m interpreting her behavior.

now on to the passive level of the meme. this meme makes some ASSUMPTIONS, and in engaging with the meme you’re validating those assumptions as “how this thing is/how the world works”. so here are a FEW of the assumptions this meme makes: 1. this is a man with his girlfriend checking out another girl. 2. the girlfriend is angry/jealous of her boyfriend expressing interest in another woman 3. everyone in this photo is heterosexual 4. men are always checking out other women/otherwise unfaithful, and this is normal/funny 5. this “couple” is monogamous 6. the “boyfriend” is relatable and we understand and condone his actions 7. maintaining a relationship with the “girlfriend” is a good decision and pursuing the girl in red would be a bad one

these assumptions might seem fairly clear, obvious, and straightforward, but they are ultimately, assumptions. we know NOTHING about the people in this photo and are projecting relationships on them. and clearly, we’re projecting some pretty intense gender and relationship roles on to them. and it’s necessary to accept those gender and relationship roles as “truth” long enough to understand the meme, because otherwise the meme wouldn’t make any sense, because the person who made it (me) made it with the understanding that you would be operating with the same set of assumptions about these people and their relationships as I am. understanding of what i’m trying to say with this meme is dependent on understanding and accepting the assumptions i’m handing you with it.

and again, these ARE assumptions. take away the text, and there could be plenty of things going on in this photo. it’s possible none of these people are in romantic relationships, and this is a guy with his friend/family member, and they like to hold hands. this guy could be whistling at a dog he sees on the sidewalk because he wants to pet it, and the girl in blue is mad because they’re in a hurry. the girl in red could be his ACTUAL girlfriend, whose self esteem he’s boosting, and the girl in blue could be some random girl who wants his attention. this could be a couple in an open relationship, but the girlfriend is in the middle of an argument with this guy about something else. the guy could have shoulder checked the girl in red and is looking back to say sorry, and the girl in blue is mad bc shoulder checking this poor girl was a rude af thing to do.

the reason why we don’t think any of those things ^^ upon seeing this meme is bc we live in the patriarchy. however, unfortunately, by sharing this meme uncritically, we’re also reinforcing the passive ideas within it, that men are unfaithful and it’s no big deal, that women are always competing with each other, that heterosexuality and monogamy are standard and correct.

let’s look at another meme.

i didn’t make this one, i found it on a really cringy list of (old) twilight memes

active level of this meme: kristen stewart never smiles

in-between context level: this is the “most interesting man in the world” meme, where, bc he’s so interesting, he rarely has time to do normal things, and when he does them, he does them in a weird way. so according to this meme, kristen rarely smiles, and when she does, she does it in a weird way

passive level: kristen stewart SHOULD smile, and the fact that she doesn’t is weird/bad. WHY she doesn’t smile, and WHY she should, is left to viewer interpretation, but the implication is she’s doing something wrong. this meme wants you to fill in the blanks with the idea that kristen stewart is a bad actress because she doesn’t smile. it also reinforces the idea that women are SUPPOSED to smile and not be serious all the time. you could even go so far as to assume this meme is condemning bella’s character as a whole for being overdramatic and not smiling, playing into the narrative that women are hysterical and get upset about things that aren’t a big deal, and we shouldn’t take them seriously. personally, i think kristen’s acting in twilight was spot-on and super nuanced, and it was true to bella’s character that she didn’t smile often. i also think that kristen as a person smiles a reasonable amount and is only criticized for not smiling bc ppl so heavily associate her with bella. but if i were to share this meme uncritically, i wouldn’t just be reaffirming the (false) idea that kristen stewart doesn’t smile, i would also be reinforcing the idea that women SHOULD smile all the time, kristen is a bad actress, and bella is a bad character. i could go further into the sexism of all that but this is already long.

HOW DID I GET AWAY WITH WRITING ABOUT THIS FOR MY MASTERS DEGREE??

basically, while you think you’re engaging in a conversation on one level with memes, you’re actually engaging in a lot of conversations. when it comes to political memes, often the “passive” levels of the memes come with a lot of ideas about how the world is or should work, which you reinforce when engaging with those memes. these passive assumptions shape the conversations we’re having, and the kind of policies we’re willing to support. memes come encoded with opinions on gender, relationships, race, sexuality, class, etc, and and make declarations about how these things DO or SHOULD work, shaping our own personal understanding of them. a meme that makes donald trump look stupid is advocating for different policies/political decisions than one that makes him look dangerous. and if all of our memes about trump focus on him looking stupid, we put more political effort into addressing that problem than the problem that he’s dangerous. memes can be used to challenge norms/question widely accepted ideas (here’s an example i literally just made):

but they can also be used to help people internalize ideas/messages that they wouldn’t be willing to accept uncritically if those ideas were presented in a different format. sometimes this is good, if you use memes to help people internalize good messages, like self-love. however, unfortunately in recent years this has mostly been used to radicalize lonely men, who internalize increasingly more hateful assumptions in memes and don’t realize that they’re doing it, because those messages are not explicit. just look at how pepe became a hate symbol. if you laugh at enough memes that operate on the assumption that women are sluts, you’re gonna start believing women are sluts, and are gonna be more likely to laugh at memes that imply that women are bad because they’re slutty, then that since they’re bad they don’t deserve rights, etc.

basically, memes shape our understanding of how the world works because they make assumptions about how the world works that we have to agree with in order to understand the meme. when these assumptions involve identities or politics, they affect how we understand those things, and what conversations we have about them.

and that’s basically my dissertation on memes, minus a lot of other discussions about pop culture, humor, and group formation.

any questions??

#sorry this is long #idk why i thought i was gonna be able to compress an 8k dissertation into something THAT short #anyway hmu if u wanna read my dissertation #obviously i think this shit is interesting #there's a lot i didn't cover here but i didn't need to to make my main point #i really tried to keep this short #also looking at old twilight memes was very Uncomfy #like... the misogyny & racism &ableism were Strong #uhh..#twilight #i guess

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eddie-boii · 5 years ago

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Never Let You Go (Part 3/14)

Fic info: Both Eddie and Stan live because I do what I want. Multichapter.

Rating: Teen and up (may change). Strong language.

Pairings: Reddie, Benverly.

Ao3 link: here

Summary: The Losers prepare for a wedding. Here’s a dinner gathering including Stan that we were robbed of.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14

“Time to place bets,” said Richie as the Losers - including Ben who they’d met with on the way back from shopping - stepped foot over the threshold of the restaurant. “How long ‘til we get kicked out of this place?”

“Ten minutes,” said Stanley.

“Harsh.”

“Five if you sit next to Eddie.”

Richie placed a hand over his heart in feigned offence. “You wound me.”

“He’s guh-got a point,” said Bill and Richie thumped his arm.

The waitress who met them at the door led the group to their reserved table in a private corner where they’d be least likely to disrupt other guests. It was so familiar, the Losers Club all taking their seats around a large round table to eat and laugh and catch up on each other’s lives after so long apart. But it was so different, too. They still had their memories, there was no weight of a malevolent entity resting in the air above them, and there were no seats left empty.

Stanley sat between Bill and Beverly, glasses perched on his nose as he scanned the menu. “So everything's on you, right Ben?” he said, looking up at his friend with a playful and slightly mischievous smile.

“You wish,” said Ben, flicking a crumb of complimentary bread at him. “I know for a fact every one of you is well off.”

“I vote Bill pays,” said Richie. “He’s just got that new hit book out. Bestseller. With an actually decent ending.”

“Fuck off,” said Bill, the corner of his mouth tilted up. “Didn’t you just get a contract for a rrr-r-radio show? If anyone’s paying, it's you, jackass.”

“That was supposed to be a big surprise!” Richie protested. “Now the big reveal I planned is ruined!”

“You’ll just have to think of something else,” said Mike. “Congrats anyway, man.”

“Let’s save the toasts ‘til we have drinks,” said Beverly, flagging down a waitress.

“Do you have a gluten-free menu?” Eddie asked once the waitress had arrived.

“No fucking way are you hypoglycaemic too,” Richie snorted.

“No, but there have been studies to suggest gluten increases your risk of intestinal cancer-”

“That’s such bullshit.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, are you a doctor?”

“Three minutes,” said Stanley which shut them both up for the time being.

“Alright, I’ll need you to give the chef a list of my allergies,” Eddie said, returning to speaking with the waitress, the poor girl looking a little terrified under his intense expression. “It’s very important. I could realistically die.”

Richie listened to him ramble off a list of food items about a mile long and marvelled at how he had anything left to eat. He spoke so fast, so passionate about everything, his hands flying all over the place as he spoke, and Richie felt kind of bad for the waitress who was frantically trying to scribble everything down in her notebook, but Ben would no doubt give the girl an enormous tip to make up for everything, so he didn’t dwell on it much, just watched Eddie’s face as it cycled through about a million expressions.

“Richie?”

Richie blinked and looked up to see that another waitress had arrived to ease off some of the workload from the first, and the rest of the Losers were looking at him expectantly.

“Drinks?” Beverly prompted when Richie just stared at them all blankly.

“Shots!” said Richie instantly, clapping his hands together. If he was already getting distracted by Eddie, he sure as hell needed alcohol to get through the rest of dinner.

“No way. You are at least staying semi-sober tonight,” said Beverly. “He’ll have a beer.”

Richie pouted at her but didn’t protest, and the waitresses finally went away. Drinks arrived, then food - a huge sharing platter of sushi - and the Losers slipped easily into comfortable conversation, laughing and joking and reminding each other of embarrassing moments from childhood, then catching up on their lives.

“So, Stan, you and the missus went on a trip with Mike, right?”

“Yeah, it was great until he tried to push me into the grand canyon.”

“That was an accident!”

“It so was not!”

Another round of beers came and went, empty bottles piling up in the centre of the table.

“So the divorce finally went through, Eds?”

“Yep.”

“Did your mom make it difficult?”

“Her name is Myra, and no, it was fine.”

“That easy?”

“We had a prenup. I’m a fucking risk analyst, you think I wouldn’t be prepared?”

The sushi plates emptied and the second-course was served. Richie finally persuaded Beverly to let him order shots and downed three in one go.

“So you two, like, got a dog? What’s its name?”

“She’s called Ember-”

“Is that after that fucking poem?!”

“That’s adorable.”

“I just threw up in my mouth you two are disgusting.”

“Shut up, Trashmouth.”

Once Richie was drunk enough that he lost any trace of verbal filter he may have possessed, the Losers inevitably turned the conversation on him.

“So about this radio show,” said Ben.

Richie was leaning his chair back on two legs precariously, eyes closed and smiling vaguely at the warm, full feeling in his chest, though whether it was being around his friends or just the surplus amounts of alcohol he wasn’t sure. “What about it?” he said, slurring the words a little.

“Come on, man, I know you’re dying to brag about it,” said Mike. “Why the big change?”

Richie tipped his chair back to all four legs and shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you guys. My manager booted me after I bombed my show and fucked off to my childhood home to do shit I couldn’t tell him about, so I ended up with a new guy who thinks I’d be a great radio personality.”

“Are you actually gonna do your own jokes?” said Eddie.

“You know what, Eddie-spaghetti? I am.” He waved his hands in the air vaguely. “Whole fresh start, ya know?”

“That’s great, Rich!” said Bill, leaning across the table to give Richie a friendly bump on the shoulder.

“Wait, wait,” said Stanley, “how come you weren’t writing your own jokes before?”

“Hey, it wasn’t like I didn’t try!” said Richie suddenly feeling a little sick and wishing he had listened to Beverly telling him not to drink so much. “My old manager just didn’t go for it.”

“How come?” said Ben.

Richie waved his hand and grunted. “I dunno, jj-just uh -” Shit he was really drunk. “It was a lot of, like, personal shit, ya know? Dude said no one would relate and it would flop I guess.”

“What kind of personal shit?” said Eddie who suddenly seemed a lot more attentive.

Richie swallowed. “Just- just shit.” He waved a hand again and suddenly became very aware that all the Losers were looking at him. “I- fuck.” He rubbed a hand down his face, dislodging his glasses, then grabbed a glass of water and splashed a little on his face. He was way too drunk to start talking about personal stuff, but here he was. “Guys, I gotta tell you something.”

“What’s up, man?” said Bill, concern clear on his brow. Damn that bastard for being such thoughtful friend.

“I, uh, shit.” Richie pressed his palms to his eyes to avoid looking at his friends, his glasses pushed up over his knuckles. “I’m, uh, I’m… How do I put this eloquently? Super fucking gay.”

The room was silent with just the lull of other customers in the background, and Richie lowered his hands just enough to peek through his fingers at his friends, a part of him expecting awkward silence, disgust, loathing… But they were all grinning.

“That’s great, man,” said Bill.

“Proud of you, Rich,” said Stan.

“Thanks for telling us, honey,” said Bev, squeezing his knee under the table.

Richie blinked at them. “You, uh, don’t seem surprised…” His friends glanced sheepishly at each other. “Don’t you fucking dare tell me you already knew!”

“Of course we didn’t know!” said Stanley. “You never told us, how could we know?”

“We suspected,” said Mike slowly. “A little…”

“You overcompensate a lot, man,” said Ben apologetically.

“Way too many ‘your mom’ jokes,” agreed Eddie.

“Well, that’s just fucking great!” said Richie, throwing up his hands. “This shit’s been eating away at me for fucking years, I had that dumb fucking clown mocking me for it, and you’re telling me I was a fucking coward for nothing!”

“You're not a cuh-c-coward, Rich, you’re the b-bravest of us all,” said Bill, his expression one of utmost honestly.

“No one can blame you after growing up in that crap-town,” said Stanley. “Be proud, Rich. You’re the first of us to openly say anything.”

“The first-” Richie repeated, then stopped, looking around at his friends with wide eyes as they all nervously fiddled with drinks and avoided eye contact. “Are you fucking telling me I don’t even get to be the token gay in the Losers Club?!”

“Oh, honey, this has always been more of a ‘token straight’ club,” said Beverly, nudging her thumb not-so-subtly at Ben.

“I was born this way, I can’t help it,” Ben shrugged.

“Seriously?” said Richie, looking at each of his friends in turn before his eyes finally landed on Eddie. “Et tu, Eduardo?” he said, part of him dreading the answer, whichever it may be.

Eddie glanced up at him, pulling that awkward white boy, no-lipped smile. “Why do you think I got a divorce?”

“Coz you married your fucking mom!” said Richie because this seemed obvious.

“Other reasons, too,” said Eddie, acting way too interested in his glass of water. “We never, uh-” He coughed. “Never managed to… consummate anything.”

Richie gaped open-mouthed at him, then burst out laughing. “Holy fucking shit, Eds!” he exclaimed, tears in his eyes as the other Losers tried to hide their own snickers behind their hands. “Are you still a fucking virgin?”

“No, I’m not a fucking virgin you fucking asshole,” said Eddie, instantly back to his usual defensive self.

“Are you sure about that?”

“If anyone’s a fucking virgin here, it’s you, dickwad!”

“Just coz I managed to fuck your mom and you didn’t.”

“We just established you’re fucking gay and you’re still at it with the ‘your mom’ jokes?!”

“Guys, GUYS!” Beverly interrupted, having to shout just to be heard over their bickering. She held her glass aloft. “I propose another toast before we get kicked out again.”

“To you and Ben,” said Bill, raising his glass too.

“To leaving that shit-hole town behind us,” said Mike.

“To Rich,” said Eddie, glancing at Richie and smiling slightly in a rare moment of softness.

“To not being straight,” said Stan.

“Do I join this one?” Ben whispered to Beverly.

“Sweetheart, you’re marrying me, you have to join whether you like it or not,” Beverly replied.

“To the Losers Club!” yelled Richie, and they all brought their glasses to the centre of the table, the chimes ringing out across the restaurant as they clashed lightly together.

They all downed their drinks and fell back into their seats as one, and Richie leaned back and looked around the table at each of his friends in turn. To Beverly, Ben, Stan, Bill, Mike, and to Eddie. His family, who loved him unconditionally, who accepted him as he was and always would. He smiled softly to himself.

To the Losers.

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#reddie #benverly #the losers club #it chapter 2 #fic #fanfic #writing #fluff #fix it fic #EB writes

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earlyandoftenpodcast · 6 years ago

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In this episode, we continue the story of the Massachusetts politician Thomas Hutchinson, and look at his involvement with two major instances of mob violence in the colony, one against the impressment of sailors by the British navy, and the other against Hutchinson himself.

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Hello, and welcome to Early and Often: The History of Elections in America. Episode 32: Riot!

Last time, we introduced Thomas Hutchinson, the politician/historian who became one of the last governors of colonial Massachusetts as well as the author of one of the most important histories of Massachusetts.

Hutchinson had been born into a quite prominent family of merchants and he followed in his ancestors’ footsteps. Even as a young man, he proved to be very good at business and he began amassing a small fortune. He also entered politics when he was still young, joining the General Court at age just 26.

This was a time when coming from a prominent family was essential to your success. But despite his background, Hutchinson still faced some difficulties. He was respected by the colonists, but he took a hardline stance against paper money, which was unpopular with his constituents. He was voted out of office once in the early 1740s and again at the end of the decade, after he led a successful attempt to return the colony to gold and silver. Afterwards, he was appointed to the upper house of the Court to continue his political rise, and that’s pretty much where we left off.

This episode will continue his story, but from a slightly different angle, with a look at Hutchinson’s involvement in two major riots in Boston, one against attempts by the British navy to kidnap men to serve on their ships, and the other against British attempts to directly tax the colonies -- and against Hutchinson himself.

As we get closer to to the American Revolution, mobs and riots are going to become an increasingly important feature of American political life, so I want to introduce them early.

Anyway, to start this episode we have to go back in time just a few years, back to 1747, when Hutchinson was still in the lower house of the General Court. He was serving as speaker of the house, which made him one of the most important officials in the colony.

One of the big issues at this time was naval impressment. Impressment was basically when agents of the government would kidnap you and force you into joining the British navy. Life in the navy back then sucked big time and joining the navy was very hazardous to your health, to say the least. So there was always a big recruitment shortfall, which had to be made up through impressment. They would send out press gangs to capture unwary men, sometimes through trickery, sometimes at the barrel of a gun.

This happened both in Britain and in the colonies. There were rules about which Americans could be impressed and under what circumstances -- for instance the governor had to sign off on it beforehand -- but the rules were ambiguous and British officers often flouted them anyway.

Naturally, this was super unpopular in the colonies. Nobody likes being kidnapped, and the threat of impressment hurt the economies of local towns, as men would flee the area to avoid capture. And remember the economy of New England was already suffering at this time. And just a few years previously, a press gang had straight up murdered two New Englanders who refused to comply with their illegal impressment.

So across the 1700s there had been periodic resistance to impressment. Some of it was unofficial -- men would riot in order to get their friends freed -- but some of the resistance was official as well. Nobody in New England liked impressment, even elected officials. To some extent they had to live with it, but they did what they could to put checks on the practice. In fact in 1702 the Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts actually ordered cannons to fire on a ship that was impressing men without permission. Thomas Hutchinson too had been active in trying to get impressed men released and in trying to weaken the navy’s power to impress men in the first place.

So that brings us to 1747, the year of the Knowles Riot, the biggest anti-impressment riot in colonial America.

A British naval squadron had just spent two months in Boston Harbor, getting refitted and resupplied for a journey to the Caribbean. While in Boston, a good number of sailors deserted, often joining up with American merchants instead. The ships had to make up for the losses before they departed, and so Commodore Charles Knowles ordered some of his sailors to go out and capture as many men as they could.

Which they did. They captured some carpenters on the way to work. They boarded a civilian vessel and impressed almost all the sailors on it. All in all, they took 46 men.

The New Englanders immediately started to complain that this was a violation of their charter. The governor hadn’t given his permission for the navy to impress anyone, and some of the men who’d been taken were supposed to be exempt anyway. Commodore Knowles ignored the protests completely.

So the next day, a mob assembled in Boston. They began capturing whatever British officers and sailors they could get their hands on, as hostages to get the impressed men freed.

Now, I should talk about what mobs were like in colonial America, because they weren’t just a bunch of drunk rabble breaking windows and beating people up, like you might imagine. Riots were generally a lot more coordinated than that. They can be seen as a purposeful effort by the community at large to defend itself.

Back in England there was a long tradition of what you might call semi-peaceful rioting. That is, rioting which was controlled, and which targeted property rather than people. If your lord put up a fence and tried to claim some common land for himself, you and your fellow villagers might get together in a little mob to tear it down. That sort of thing. Of course, there was always a risk of things spiralling out of control and into a major revolt, but generally speaking these riots were minor affairs. This tradition was carried over to America, where rioting was seen as a somewhat legitimate way for the community to express its grievances, if the authorities weren’t paying enough attention.

Fighting impressment is an obvious example of this. Who wants a bunch of English naval officers coming to your town and kidnapping the menfolk? So the town would get together and stop it from happening.

But there were plenty of other instances as well. During several food shortages in Boston, mobs formed to stop food from being exported. In an early case of NIMBYism, another Boston mob burned down a nearby smallpox hospital which they suspected was responsible for an outbreak within the city. (Don’t worry, the hospital had been evacuated before they burned it down.) Or the mob might go after customs officials collecting an unjust tariff, or judges issuing an unpopular ruling, and try to intimidate them into compliance. Rioting could also enforce public morality, as when they shut down brothels or stopped dissenting religious movements from holding meetings.

You might disagree with some of those actions, but from the perspective of the colonists, they were done in communal self-defense. They may have been illegal, but they supported the purpose of the laws, which was the well-being of the community. Just as much as elections, the threat of violence kept officials in check and made sure that their enforcement of the laws was properly tempered by public opinion. Riots, at least these sorts of riots, supported the social order rather than challenging it.

And because these mobs were communal affairs, rather than just rabble run amok, they tended to stay within reasonable bounds. Leading members of the community were often involved, merchants and lawyers and so on, and they could put a stop to it if things ever got out of hand. In Boston, supposedly the mobs were so well disciplined that they refused to riot on the Sabbath.

Generally, these were more about threats of violence than actual violence. Property might be destroyed and maybe some officials would get roughed up, but that was usually the extent of it. I don’t want to say that there was never real violence, but it was atypical.

One of the reasons things rarely got out of hand is that colonial officials were surprisingly lenient towards these riots, partly because they simply didn’t have the manpower to suppress them. At this time, there was little in the way of professional law enforcement. Nor were there many soldiers in colonial America. At most you had some elected sheriffs. So the law was often enforced by the general populace. Instead of using police officers to get things done, you relied on the citizens. In other words, the same people who might also be forming a mob. So when a mob did form, there was no one you could call on. Your law enforcement officers were the mob.

Another reason officials were lenient is that if they were too harsh, they might just cause an even bigger backlash. It’s a lot like all of those little rebellions from the previous century I’ve talked about in past episodes. The Thrusting Out of Governor Harvey in Virginia, the various rebellions in Maryland and North Carolina, and so on.

If you look back on these various rebellions, you’ll notice that most of the time the rebels were never really punished with anything more than a slap on the wrist. In some cases, like with Culpeper’s Rebellion in North Carolina or with the overthrow of the Dominion, the rebellion was in fact more or less accepted as legitimate. The big exception was Bacon’s Rebellion, which ended with Governor Berkeley hanging a full 24 men. But like I said, that was an exception, and Berkeley was seen by his contemporaries as having acted far too harshly.

These sorts of rebellions were, if not exactly accepted by the authorities, then at least acknowledged as the sort of thing that happens from time to time, a way for the people to make their grievances heard. You didn’t want to be too lenient, since sometimes small rebellions could in fact become big ones, but you didn’t want to be too harsh either, and risk alienating your subjects. And so small rebellions were tolerated, and sometimes the rebels were integrated into the system. At most you’d execute a few ringleaders to send a message to everyone else.

The same basic idea applied to these riots. You wanted to punish the riots, to make sure that the colonists couldn’t form mobs with impunity, but you didn’t want to punish them so much that you just made people angry.

But perhaps the main reason that officials were lenient is that very often their sympathies were with the rioters. I mean, probably some of them were leading the riots behind the scenes, although it’s hard to know for sure. Even a conservative like Thomas Hutchinson sympathized with the crowd and was willing to work with them -- up to a point. In his words, “mobs, a sort of them at least, are constitutional.” Thomas Jefferson called them “an evil… productive of good.” It was supposed to be a last resort, when legal means had failed, but it still had a place.

And certainly the Knowles riot was such a case. British officials were acting illegally and ignoring all of the complaints being leveled against them. What else was there to do but take some hostages?

This is an alien mindset to us today, but I think it made more sense at the time. Today, there are a lot of non-violent ways for citizens to make themselves heard, most especially voting. But back then, America was ruled by a bunch of unelected officials from 3000 miles away who were often very insensitive to local demands. In that environment, mobs were a somewhat acceptable part of maintaining public order. They were dangerous, but ultimately an acknowledged part of the colonies’ informal constitution.

So that’s the background for the anti-impressment riot that just broke out in Boston.

As it happened, Thomas Hutchinson was one of the first officials on the scene. Naturally, he was pretty sympathetic to the mob, and they were willing to hear what he had to say. He managed to talk them into releasing some of the officers they were holding, on the grounds that they hadn’t been the ones involved with the impressment.

Hutchinson then left and went to the home of Governor William Shirley to inform him of the situation. The mob soon followed.

They confronted the governor, and he denied having authorized the impressment -- which was true. While they were talking some of the hostages managed to escape into the governor’s house. The mob tried to follow, but they were prevented from going inside. To vent their frustration and to send a message, they beat one of their remaining captives right there in front of the governor’s mansion. But after that they withdrew for the moment.

Later in the day, the governor went to the General Court to decide what to do. Governor Shirley wanted to call out the militia and to issue a statement condemning the mob, but Hutchinson and the rest of the assembly were more cautious. They were much more sympathetic to the rioting than the unelected governor.

The discussion went on for a while. Too long, apparently. That evening, the mob returned. They surrounded the building in which the governor and General Court were conferring. They smashed in all the windows on the first floor and forced themselves inside. Again they confronted the governor. Shirley addressed the crowd, condemning the impressment and promising to do something about it, but also condemning the rioting. And again, the confrontation ended inconclusively, with the crowd withdrawing for the time being.

A new day dawned, but Boston was still in a state of unrest. Shirley had called out the militia the night before, but to his horror no one showed up. In fact, many of the militiamen were in the mob itself. Not only that, Commodore Knowles was now threatening to bombard the town with his cannons in order to restore order and get his men back, saying, “By God, I’ll now see if the King’s government is not as good as a Mob.”

Feeling isolated and worried, Shirley fled to a nearby fort. The governor was now obviously in a very difficult position. He had to both talk down the mob and talk down the Commodore before things really got out of hand. Thankfully he was a good politician. He met with Commodore Knowles and managed to get him to promise to release the impressed men. He then offered leniency for the rioters if they would go home and let the militia come out to restore order. He pretended that the rioters were merely “a great number of Seamen and other lewd and Profligate Persons”, rather than a bunch of normal citizens.

That was enough to finally get Hutchinson and the General Court to cooperate. They now issued a statement condemning the riot and calling for the militia. Now that it was the elected legislature telling them what to do, the mob stood down and the militia took to the streets. In short order, the impressed men were released, the hostages were released, the British fleet sailed away, and everything went back to normal.

The whole affair was over in just three days. Some property had been damaged, and a few officials had been roughed up, but otherwise there had been no deaths or anything. Nothing irreversible, though obviously there had been some risks. Well, realistically I don’t think that Knowles was ever going to fire on Boston, but you never know.

Anyway, a few years after the Knowles Riot, Hutchinson lost his seat in the lower house of the General Court. But soon afterwards he was appointed to the upper house instead. From there, he continued his rise, no longer encumbered by the need to appeal to voters.

He started amassing offices, often holding several important positions at once. He was named lieutenant governor in 1758 and chief justice in 1760, despite the fact that he had no legal training. He hadn’t actually sought the job, but he accepted it when offered. As a judge, he was actually pretty popular with the common people, since he tended to use common sense when making his rulings, rather than legal technicalities. However, it made him very unpopular with other lawyers and officials, who thought that an unqualified guy was taking their jobs for his own personal benefit at the expense of good government. And really, the mere fact that he was so successful was enough to make enemies.

It wasn’t unusual for a politician back then to hold several offices, but Hutchinson took it to an extreme. And not only that, he was pretty nepotistic as well. He made sure that his unqualified sons got jobs. And not only that, Hutchinson’s family had ties to other important families as well.

Take, for example, the Oliver family. When Hutchinson was serving as governor a few years later, a member of the Oliver family, Andrew Oliver, was serving as lieutenant governor. And Oliver’s brother was serving as chief justice. They were very closely related in numerous ways. Thomas Hutchinson’s sister in law was married to Andrew Oliver. And while Hutchinson was serving as governor, three of his children married into the Oliver family. A son married Andrew Oliver’s daughter. A daughter married his nephew. And another of Hutchinson’s sons married his grandniece.

So basically the same family controlled the governorship, the lieutenant governorship, and the chief justiceship. This sort of tight-knit power naturally aroused suspicion and envy among everyone else. For the first time, people were starting to argue that this sort of behavior was inappropriate, that one man shouldn’t be able to monopolize power that way.

So even as he became more and more successful, Hutchinson’s popularity was starting to erode. His enemies were attacking him in the press on a regular basis and there were legitimate concerns about his behavior. However, he was still a respected figure in Massachusetts. That would only change in the 1760s, as America’s relationship with Britain suddenly began to deteriorate.

That brings us to the Stamp Act of 1765. You remember the Stamp Act, right? It was that hated piece of legislation passed by the British Parliament which directly taxed the colonists in order to pay for the British troops stationed in America. Taxation without representation, the worst thing you could do to an American. In Connecticut it was the Stamp Act which helped the New Lights finally take the governorship away from the Old Lights, since the New Lights were much more enthusiastic about resisting the Act.

Well, the Stamp Act caused trouble in Massachusetts as well. When word first reached the colonies that Parliament was considering passing the Stamp Act, everyone was outraged. Many of the colonial legislatures decided to send petitions to London in protest, including in Massachusetts. The lower house of the General Court drafted a very strong statement, framed in the language of natural rights, stating that the Stamp Act was illegitimate. However Hutchinson, who as lieutenant governor was also head of the upper house, blocked that statement as “informal and incautiously expressed”.

Now, Hutchinson was himself opposed to the Stamp Act, just like everyone else. He thought that the British government was overstepping its bounds in a way that was likely to provoke a dangerous reaction. But although he thought it was a bad idea, he didn’t think that the Stamp Act was illegitimate. It may have violated English norms about self-taxation, but it wasn’t illegal. Parliament had the ultimate authority and they could do what they wanted, even if it violated the traditional rights of the colonies. If Parliament was to be sovereign, that meant it was fully sovereign, and no abstract notions of rights could challenge that. Otherwise they would soon cease to have a government at all, as everyone challenged laws they hated on the basis of natural rights.

This put him in opposition to most of his fellow New Englanders. They felt that the Stamp Act was illegitimate, and dangerously so. In modern terms, they felt like the Constitution was being flagrantly violated, while Hutchinson merely felt like an informal precedent had been broken. So unlike the lower house, Hutchinson was only willing to go so far in his opposition. He was willing to fight the law, but not to fight Parliament.

So the two houses of the General Court got together to draft a joint statement opposing the Stamp Act. The populists in the lower house kept trying to insert language about natural rights and theories of government, but Hutchinson kept blocking them each time until the populists were worn down and agreed to a compromise statement which sidestepped the issues they actually cared about. But as it turned out, a lot of the other colonial legislatures did send petitions with angry talk of natural rights, so Hutchinson’s maneuverings had accomplished nothing, it just made Massachusetts seem weak and the populists feel cheated. And Parliament passed the Stamp Act anyway.

So although Hutchinson clearly opposed the Act, his opposition didn’t go far enough for most people. He did try to stop the Act from being passed, and when it was passed he tried to get it repealed. He even sent a formal protest to London, arguing that the Stamp Act was both unjust and economically unwise, since it would wind up costing Britain more money than it brought in. But he wasn’t willing to say that the Stamp Act was in some sense illegal. He wasn’t willing to disobey.

You may have noticed a possible contradiction here. After all, Hutchinson had been willing to passively cooperate with the mob during the Knowles Riot. So why was this different? Why support illegal resistance against the British then, but not now? Well, I think that part of the reason was that the impressments Commodore Knowles had been carrying out were themselves illegal. He hadn’t gotten permission to impress anyone and he impressed the wrong men. So in the Knowles Riot, illegality was being used to fight illegality. The Stamp Act, on the other hand, was legal, and so illegal methods shouldn’t be used to fight it.

That’s a fairly fine distinction, and it didn’t matter much to anyone except Hutchinson himself. The average Puritan in the street saw impressment and the Stamp Act as both being examples of British tyranny which ought to be resisted. He didn’t care about the specifics of Parliamentary supremacy one bit. Not many people have ever been sticklers for legal formalities like that.

So Hutchinson felt duty-bound to enforce the Stamp Act, no matter how hated it was. But to everyone else, this didn’t seem like someone standing on principle, it seemed like someone who was secretly in league with the British pretending to oppose the Stamp Act while while actually doing everything in his power to enforce it. All of a sudden Hutchinson appeared to be an evil schemer, a double agent who was cooperating with the British in order to enrich himself and his family, and install himself as some sort of dictator. John Adams, for instance, came to loathe Hutchinson. According to him, “The liberties of this country [have] more to fear from one man, the present Governor Hutchinson, than from any other man, nay than from all the other men in the world.” All this after Hutchinson had been until recently one of the more respected men in the colonies.

Absurd rumors swirled not only that he supported the Stamp Act, but that he had come up with the idea in the first place. And these weren’t just anonymous rumors either. One of Hutchinson’s main rivals in the lower house was directly accusing him of all this. Basically, the colonies were were descending into a bout of paranoia. The Stamp Act had been unexpected, and now everyone in the colonies thought that the British were out to destroy their liberties and reduce them to a state of utter submission. That wasn’t really true, although the British were trying to weaken colonial independence. But in any case, from the Stamp Act onwards, the colonies would be blanketed with conspiracy theories like the one aimed at Hutchinson right now.

Hutchinson tried to fight back, but because he was unwilling to condemn the Stamp Act in the strong language demanded by the populists, all of his protests seemed hollow. And to be fair, it didn’t help matters that his brother in law, Andrew Oliver, had been appointed as the official who would collect the stamp tax.

And Hutchinson did favor close ties with Britain, and he did believe that Parliament had ultimate authority. But despite that, he was no mere British lackey. He was willing to stand up for the interests of his fellow colonists when he thought it appropriate. Nor did he want despotism, but to resist lawful authority was anarchy, which would be no better in the long run. What he wanted was for both sides to compromise. The colonists shouldn’t challenge Parliament’s authority, and Parliament shouldn’t push its authority to the breaking point.

He hoped that both sides would avoid fighting over principles and instead negotiate over actual policies. If both sides fought over principles, then there could be no agreement. Either Parliament would win and truly destroy whatever rights the colonists had, or the colonists would win and become de facto independent. But Hutchinson thought that independence “must prove the ruin of the colony”. An independent America would be be at the mercy of other European powers, most of whom would be less gentle than the British were. He had no confidence that an independent America would survive. So it was better, “to submit to some abridgment of our rights than to break off our connection.”

Unfortunately for him, almost no one in Britain or America felt the same way. Now they were both angling for a confrontation.

And that confrontation soon came. Over nine months there were at least 60 riots against the Stamp Act across America, and against the officials enforcing the Stamp Act. They weren’t yet particularly violent, but I think everyone sensed that something had changed, that these crowds were different from the ones that had come before, less controlled and more aggressive.

On the night of August 14, 1765 a mob went after Andrew Oliver, the brother-in-law/stamp tax collector. They trashed his office and attacked his home. That same night another mob assembled outside Hutchinson’s house , demanding that he come out and assure them that he did in fact oppose the Stamp Act. Hutchinson refused to be pressured and he stayed inside. Eventually the crowd moved along.

However, twelve nights later, on August 26, a large mob returned to his house. Hutchinson again refused to go out to talk to the mob, but this time they meant business. His panicking daughter had to plea with him to flee, which Hutchinson later thought may have saved his life. After he had fled, the mob moved into his house. According to historian Bernard Bailyn, “the rioters smashed in the doors with axes, swarmed through the rooms, ripped off wainscotting and hangings, splintered the furniture, beat down the inner walls, tore up the garden, and carried off into the night, besides £900 sterling in cash, all the plate, decorations, and clothes that had survived, and destroyed or scattered in the mud all of Hutchinson’s books and papers, including the manuscript of volume I of his History and the collection of historical papers that he had been gathering for years as the basis for a public archive.” A real shame about those papers, in my opinion.

Hutchinson appeared before the superior court the next day, and protested his innocence with tears in his eyes. “Sensible that I am innocent, that all the charges against me are false, I cannot help feeling--and though I am not obliged to give an answer to all the questions that may be put me by every lawless person, yet I call GOD to witness (and I would not for a thousand worlds call my Maker to witness to a falsehood)--I say, I call my Maker to witness that I have never in New England or in Old, in Great Britain or America, neither directly nor indirectly, was aiding, assisting, or in the least promoting or encouraging what is commonly called the Stamp Act.” He closed with a plea that New Englanders might follow the law instead of turning to violence. “I pray GOD give us better hearts!”

Fears of a more general turmoil swept through New England. Other officials, seeing what had happened to Hutchinson, quietly packed up their belongings and vanished for a little while, until things calmed down.

There had been mob violence before in the colonies, but this was at a new level and it was shocking to the colonists, especially given Hutchinson’s high status. No one had been physically harmed, but people could see that things were heading in that direction. And within a few years people were regularly attacked, beaten, and tarred and feathered. And if you got tarred and feathered, that meant that hot tar was poured all over your body, followed by feathers that would stick to you. It wasn’t fatal, but it was still a very unpleasant thing. Mob violence like this will be an important part of our story, even well after the Revolution itself.

This was by no means the end of Thomas Hutchinson’s career, although perhaps it was the beginning of the end. He remained in office and he refused to be intimidated by the mob. In his role as chief justice he made sure to enforce the Stamp Act and crack down on anti-British agitation. Behind the scenes, he tried to come up with a plan which might reinforce British authority in the colonies without provoking another backlash, a plan which might restore the old order that he loved so much. But as we’ll see when we get to the American Revolution, it was all for nothing. Nobody would listen to him on either side. Although he became governor in a few years’ time, he wouldn’t stay there for long. Soon enough the Revolution would force him into a permanent exile and he would spend his last few years in England, despised by both the British and his fellow colonists as the man most responsible for the crisis.

Some of the accusations against him were true. He was nepotistic and grasping and too powerful. But he certainly wasn’t the caricature his enemies made him out to be. That was more a product of anti-British paranoia and incipient war fever.

He was a man well-suited to his age. The only trouble was, his age was fast ending. Already, partisanship had eroded the old norms of hierarchy across New England. But beyond that, there were deeper problems. The British government was determined to prove that it had ultimate authority in the colonies, while the colonists were equally determined to prove that they didn’t. In such an environment, compromise was not only impossible, it was treasonous. And Hutchinson simply couldn’t bring himself to support rebellion. He was a moderate in a time of immoderation.

But now we’re getting ahead of ourselves. It’s time to leave New England for now. We’ve followed the decline of the old order for the last seven episodes, but the rise of the new order will be another topic altogether. New England had clearly entered a new, post-Puritan age, but no one knew what that meant yet. Partisanship and violent mobs, apparently. Liberty and natural rights and republicanism as well. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Next episode, we’ll move down south and back in time to New York, to see how that colony is faring in the wake of Leisler’s Rebellion, 70 years ago. So join me next time on Early and Often: The History of Elections in America.

The podcast is on twitter, at earlyoftenpod, or go to the blog at earlyandoftenpodcast.wordpress.com for transcripts of every single episode. And if you like the podcast, give it a good review on iTunes. That helps. Thanks for listening.

Sources:

The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson by Bernard Bailyn

The Varieties of Political Experience in Eighteenth Century America by Richard R. Beeman

From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690-1765 by Richard L. Bushman

Voting in Provincial America: A Study of Elections in the Thirteen Colonies 1689-1776 by Robert J. Dinkin

Popular Uprisings and Civil Authority in Eighteenth-Century America by Pauline Maier

America’s Burke: The Mind of Thomas Hutchinson by William Pencak

Boston Riots: Three Centuries of Social Violence by Jack Tager

A Note on Mobs in the American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood

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muffintonic · 6 years ago

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MY CROSSOVER LIVEBLOG

Yes, I decided to just watch the PnF/MML leak instead of waiting because i’d rather not have to dodge spoilers until January. (Also, i’m still going to buy the new season on iTunes when it comes out, so whatever.)

For just the analysis bits, look for actual paragraphs instead of single sentences.

Doof was seriously considering Cavendish’s offer: his nnnnnnnnnnno was drawn out, it had more of a curious/hesitant tone at the beginning, and he freaking glanced down. In the end, he’s already got a boyfriend, though.

Continuing PnF’s habit of showing Buford and Baljeet hanging out alone, I see....nice.

DID BALJEET JUST DAB

They’ve already done “Act Your Age” and confirmed that Doof stayed a high school teacher after “Doof 101,” but he seems to be an agent here, so.......”The OWCA Files” takes place...before....this???? So this special takes place.........after “Doof 101??″ PNF USED TO BE SO GOOD AT CONTINUITY; GIVE ME SOME INFO, HERE.

DOOF CONTINUING TO SEMI-UNDERSTAND PERRY IS MY LIFEBLOOD.

DUCKY MO-GO

BUFORD STOP SACRIFICING BALJEET

I always love Phineas being supportive of Ferb talking/expressing himself. :’)

YES. YES, IT HAS. THREE YEARS.

Oh, Phineas.

They already played darts across the city in “Bullseye!” and badminton in Across the Second Dimension....isn’t this kind of redundant?

It’s actually pretty lucky that Doof’s time machine has food on it...otherwise they’d have been long-dead.

PERRY AND DOOF PLAYING HOT SAUCE TOGETHER. :’’))

Cavendish insisting that Dakota be careful a ton of times: good stuff.

YEAR. MONTH. CUP-HOLDER. I LOVE YOU, DOOF.

THAT’S RIGHT, HE’S GOOD AT INVENTING THINGS!!! HE’S A LEGITIMATE SCIENTIST, AND SOMETIMES SCIENTISTS CAN BE LIKE THAT! (source: i’m a doctorate student)

How long has it been since they started openly taking over, exactly? For the kids to have been aware? Phineas and Ferb knew long enough to have a satellite workshop with a lot of inventions housed in it...

“Weaponize it?“ Buford, PLEASE.

They already studied good/bad luck in “Just Our Luck,” so this shouldn’t be too hard.

SOLDIERS?? Phineas is Ready for war. D: Poor baby.

“We...have no frame of reference for that“ THAT’S RIGHT, THEY HAVE THE WORLD ON A SILVER PLATTER. Phineas and Ferb are, like, the opposite of Murphy’s Law.

“Lemony fresh.“ God, i’ve missed Buford.

Doof is really stuck on that soda.....mood.

QUIRKY WORKY.

Candace being pragmatic, but also knowing that her brother is going to want to keep Milo around: good stuff.

DON’T BE RUDE ABOUT HER NECK. SHE WAS A MODEL IN “Runaway Runway.”

FOUR MEN AND A PLATYPUS. ....I still don’t like how MML uses cutaway gags (and physical humor, actually)--too Family Guy for my taste.

Oh, shut up, Cavendish. He’s the one who invented time travel in the first place.

HIS VOICE IS GREAT, SHUT UP!

NOW HE’S TAKING IT OUT ON DAKOTA??? SHUT. UPPPPPPPP!

So escape is shorthand for “self-destruct?”

WHY DIDN’T PERRY GO WITH HIM. PERRY, THAT’S YOUR BEST FRIEND WHO’S SAD!!!

They’re going to beat the pistachions with the soda, aren’t they.

Mr. Slushy Dawg reference??

Doof.....already built a time machine all the way back in “Lotsa Latkes,” though.... I miss PnF’s excellent continuity............ (his apartment’s interior in the beginning of this special was different, too, yet we saw in AYA that it hadn’t changed in 10 years...and what happened to Xavier Onassis, anyway?)

I’m still not completely on-board with the whole “Doof-is-Professor-Time-and-he’s-venerated-in-the-future” thing. He wanted to be big and important in PnF after spending most of his life being ignored or actively bullied, but by the end realized that he didn’t need to be the ruler of the Tri-State area or anything to be loved and have a good life....this kind of reveal feels like it’s sort of flying in the face of that.

Why do Dwampy love rap so much? I’m not a fan.

THE ISLAND OF LOST DAKOTAS??????!

THE PHINEAS AND FERB EFFECT = THE MYSTERIOUS FORCE

Remember how Candace has super bad luck? Like, Phineas even commented on it in “S’Winter” when she kept getting the brunt of obstacles. Doof seems to have this kind of bad luck, too. My theory: certain people, like the original Murphy, have concentrations of the negative ions that cause bad stuff to happen. Murphy just happened to have a lot, and they got passed down to his descendants. Doof and Candace happen to have negative ions, but just not to the level of those descended from Murphy’s line.

BUUUUUUFORD

CAVENDISH FINALLY LEARNS

THEY’RE HUGGING HIM

UGH, CARE ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT, GUYS. Wait, wasn’t Doof into “Greevil” (green + evil) and stuff before? What happened to that??

I mean, they don’t really need the suit...Phineas and Ferb can just stand on either side of Milo.

THE POWER OF ORANGE SODA REPELS YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ISABELLA!!!!! Looks like she was getting ready for war/a rescue mission, too.

Perry saving Doof from falling...ah, yes, just like always.

CAVENDISH SAVING DAKOTA FOR ONCE

“And if you get hurt, I don’t have one either“ CAVENDISH CONFIRMED TO BE WILLING TO ISLAND HIMSELF FOR DAKOTA

Okay, I just can’t take this whole dramatic “compassion” scene seriously because the MML art style looks like Word clipart. Sorry, Dwampy. (I think they should’ve used slo-mo, too)

Perry protecting his family. :’)

DAKOTA JUST BODILY PICKED UP CAVENDISH AND RAN AWAY WITH HIM. STRONG.

IRVING!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

BUFORD!! AMANDA!!! (my favorite MML character)

RADIOACTIVE WATERMELON. Why are watermelons such a running gag for Dwampy?

BLOWTORCH AND PEANUT BUTTERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

LINDA AND LAWRENCE GOT PISTACHION’D, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Come to think of it, i’m getting some “Night of the Living Pharmacists” vibes, now.

I think Dwampy left Isabella out for half the special and got her pistachion’d so quickly because they knew she’d be able to save everyone otherwise (like in NOTLP).

Nice speech, Doof!

So....this timeline is originally 15 years too early for Doof to be Professor Time. In AYA, which takes place 10 years in the future, he has white hair. When he comes back through time from the future right here, he doesn’t have white hair. WHAT THE HECK, CONTINUITY?! I’m so disappointed.

God, the way they do time travel in this series is....so confusing. Give me BTTF simplicity any day. Honestly, realistically going back and stopping the whole thing in the first place should have created an altered timeline....or this whole thing happened in an altered timeline in the first place since originally nobody was supposed to be replaced with pistachions until Derek got knocked into the timestream.

Dakota hugging Cavendish and calling him partner: GOOD STUFF.

Again, Doof’s building has to have been rebuilt some time between now and AYA.

Mmmmm, so MML takes place on the other side of town. In Jefferson County. So, now we know PnF takes place in Danville, which is in Jefferson County, in the Tri-State Area.

Okay, it’s confirmed: MML is merely an OVA for PnF. Dwampy honestly should have just either continued PnF, or let it die a good death as a wonderful period piece with fantastic continuity. Seriously, Doof was 47 in PnF and was a teen in the 80s....MML takes place after 2016, so DOOF WOULDN’T BE THAT AGE IN 2016. THERE WERE FLIP PHONES AT THE BEGINNING OF PNF. GOD. I’m beginning to consider not thinking of anything that happens in MML to be canon to PnF, especially since it seems to take place in the “The OWCA Files” continuity where they got Doof’s ocelot backstory (and bedroom) completely wrong.

#overall my feelings are ambivalent and can be summed up as: Thanks! I hate it!#phineas and ferb #milo murphy's law #The Phineas and Ferb Effect #mml spoilers #mine #while it was good to see the old cast again it seriously muddles up continuity (& character development a bit) and that pisses me off #at least nobody was OOC

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negasonicimagines · 7 years ago

Text

Teacher’s Pet

Hey dweebs it’s me! So, my gf gave me this request, though I modified it a bit and added an idea I’ve been playing around with in my head, though the original idea was smutty as FUCK ! (so if you want a part two it will be fucking in a classroom hahaaaaaaaaaaaaa) anyway! I did modify it a lil bit sorry babe I’m not that good

Think about this(because I'm looking for some self indulgence) the reader is insanely smart, like super high IQ smart, and as such is super socially awkward and is into Ellie, but of course Ellie doesn't know that. But Wade does because for whatever reason the reader is more relaxed around wade and is actually able to talk to him. And wade of course tells Colossus because Ellie's obvious pining for the reader is obvious and of course Colossus knows. And Colossus and wade talk about it and they try to get the two together but they're both so fucking awkward, like what even are social skills?? And so Colossus pairs them up for everything he can manage to pull the strings to arrange and eventually while working on a project one of the students is like "oh would you two just fuck already," and Ellie is fucking shook and the reader is like "Oh I don't think she'd be interested" and then Ellie is shook×2 because what the fuck is this cutie talking about, she would jump at the chance and she accidentally says something along those lines and jaws drop, faces turn red and Ellie is stuttering and blushing and being very cute(you know how she do) and the reader just smiles and links their pinkies and kisses ellie's cheek and then you can either stop there or continue it but I also have more ideas too

You were thrilled that Xavier was allowing you to return to the school to get your credits as a teacher’s assistant. You’d graduated extremely early, and decided that because you had more time to do college than most, you were going to take the plunge and become a teacher. English had always been your favorite subject, so, of course, that was the genre of teaching you chose.

It was your first day, and you were excited to see the friends you’d left behind. Wade was beside you. You’d done your studying in New York, and as a favor to the X-Men, he’d kept an eye on you, checking up on you from time-to-time to make sure you were taking care of yourself. You were a bit of an eccentric genius, often forgetting to eat, change clothes, et cetera when you were doing something else that you considered more important, like a research paper for class, or organizing your notes so you could study more effectively in the future. He’d accompanied you back home, helping you with your bags.

You’d be doing your college online in the afternoons and evenings, and helping Ms. Frost in her class during the day, teaching entire lessons by yourself every Friday.

“Y/N!” A chorus of voices, a crowd of people your age, some who you barely recognized, rushes at you.

There was a face you were looking for, but you should’ve known she would’ve hung back, waited to say hello. She wasn’t a fan of crowds.

You accept the hugs, even the kisses on your cheeks and forehead, with a grateful, albeit awkward, smile.

Wade looks amused when the large herd finally dissipates. He lifts his mask slightly, licking his thumb and swiping Jubilee’s magenta lipstick off of your forehead.

“Really, just the stuff that’s on my forehead?” you ask with a slight laugh.

“Well, your forehead’s just overkill. But if a certain someone sees lipstick stains on you..”

“She’ll laugh?” You already know where Wade is going with this.

“She’ll be jealous. She was so pissed when she found out I was getting to visit you and she wasn’t.”

“You’re so full of shit, but even if it’s true, that doesn’t mean she likes me like that!” you argue.

“Who likes you like what?” the girl in question asks, and Wade nudges you.

“No one, Ellie. No one likes me.” Smooth recovery, Y/N.

“And here I thought I was the gloomy one,” she says, and you find yourself laughing at an extremely high, nervous speed and pitch.

“So, who left the uh, lipstick?” she gestures at your face, and you think she looks a little more sullen than usual, but it could possibly be maturation.

“Oh, uh..”

“Everyone,” Wade informs her. “Seems like lots of lipstick wearers missed our little jelly bean.” Wade says, ruffling your hair. You narrow your eyes at him, and from the corner of your eye you think you see her do the same. “Well, uh, Y/N, let’s get your bags up to your room, huh?” Wade offers you an out, as the conversation was drying up.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s a good idea.” You nod rapidly, and he begins up the stairs. You scramble behind the unnaturally tall man.

“Later, then…” Ellie says, sounding a bit miffed, not that you pick up on it in your nervous state.

“Yeah, uh, later!” you call back to her from further up the stairs. Once you and Wade make it into your room, he bursts out in laughter.

“You’re a human disaster,” he comments.

“No, I’m not,” you pitifully attempt to argue.

“Then, what the hell was that?” he asks.

“I’m a human disaster,” you admit, burying your face into a pillow.

“C’mon, kid, it’s not that hard. She likes you back!”

“No, she doesn’t...And even if she does, like it’d last.”

“Shut up, Y/N! You’ve never even been in a relationship before, how do you know that they’re all bad!?”

“I never should have told you that,” you grumble.

“I won’t die happy if you don’t at least try,” Wade tries to convince you to try.

“You mean you’ll die if I do this? Shit, maybe it’s worth it,” you snark.

“Oh my god, it’s like you’re the same person. Get married. Have her babies. Let her have your babies. I want grandchildren, Y/N!”

“Grandchildren?” you ask, perplexed.

“You’re the closest thing I have to a legacy at this point, you absolute dork!”

“Wow, thanks. I’m so honored,” you scoff, not lifting your face from the pillow you’d buried it into. Wade slides off your shoes for you.

“Listen, I gotta head back to NYC and to my Tootsie Pop Angel Darling Honey Bunny, but I’ll check up on you still, because you’re precious. See you around, kiddo.”

“You got it, Grandpa.”

The door closes, and then you hear a knock.

“Who is it?”

“It’s, uh, me.”

“Come in, ‘Me.’” You reply, face still buried in your pillow.

“You okay?” Ellie asks, and you attempt to sit up too fast, resulting in you flopping around like a dying fish because of the way you’d been lying down. You manage to sit in a normal way, though, but not without getting a rather bug-eyed look from the girl you would rather not get a bug-eyed look from.

“Ellie, hi, yeah, I’m okay, are you okay?” You ask, deflecting as quickly as possible.

“Yeah, I’m fine.. Just making sure you were, y’know, adjusting okay or whatever… Ms. Frost wants to see you and Piotr asked me to make sure you knew where Ms. Frost’s room was… Even though you’ve gone to school here before… It’s dumb, I know.”

“No, it’s fine. That’s really nice of you guys.”

“You’ve still got that lipstick on your face,” Ellie comments.

“Oh, I do, don’t I? Shit!” You scrub at your face with the inside of your blazer sleeve.

She looks bug-eyed again.

“What?” you ask, genuinely confused for once.

“Uh, sorry, I just don’t think I’ve ever heard you swear before,” Ellie explains, appearing actually rather amused.

“Oh, yeah, I guess I kinda picked up the habit. Y’know. College. New York. Wade.”

“So, you guys are like, friends?” She seems conflicted about the idea. Maybe there was some truth to what Wade said before, that she’d wanted to be the one to help make sure you were safe.

“He made sure I didn’t die of sleep deprivation, so, yeah, we’re like, friends,” you reply, chuckling a little.

“Huh. A few of us wanted to visit, but they said you had to focus on your studies.” By a few, she means herself, but you don’t know that.

“Lame,” you scoff. When you weren’t thinking about your big fat crush on her, you could actually form semi-coherent sentences in her presence.

The two of you make your way to Ms. Frost’s room in rather awkward silence.

“So, uh, here is the place you already knew the way to.”

“Ms. L/N!” Ms. Frost sounds rather enthusiastic for, well, her.

“You don’t really have to call me that, Ms. Frost,” you reply, but it’s kind of nice being referred to like a teacher, a peer.

“I should, though! You’re practicing for the real thing! I’ve always thought you should be a teacher,” she says, her last phrase sounding rather somber, like she was remembering something she didn’t want to. Her typical serene expression returns. “It’s good to see you again.”

“You too, Ms. Frost.”

“Well, see you around, Y/N,” Ellie says, having done the required task.

“That’s Ms. L/N to you, young lady,” Ms. Frost half-jokes as the girl with buzzed hair leaves.

“So, I wanted to go over the standards and such with you, so that we could coordinate a proper lesson plan. You’ll be sitting in every day but Wednesday, and then every other Friday you’ll be teaching, correct?”

You nod. “Yeah, I mean, uh, if that works for you.”

“It does, perfectly so. I think doing something different on Fridays will help the students stay more focused. They’re usually so excited for the weekend that they don’t even pay attention,” Ms. Frost explains.

“I remember those days…” You say. “I mean, I always paid attention, of course.” You scramble to clarify, but she just chuckles.

“So, this first week, we’re…”

The two of you continue to discuss the lesson plan, even during dinner. You don’t notice Ellie’s disappointed glances. She’d hoped to sit and talk with you, maybe even set up a hangout of some sort. Oh, well. She should’ve expected you’d be too busy for her. Ellie should’ve shot her shot when she had the chance.

When Ellie walks into her AP ELA class, she forgets she was expecting you. You sit at a desk similar to Ms. Frost’s, but in the back.

Ellie’s spooked, having flashbacks to being in this class together. Copying your answers on worksheets she’d forgotten to do as homework, stealing glances at you at every available opportunity.

She almost misses it, but seeing you all dressed up...That delicious F/C blazer with that crisp button-up that she just knew was hugging your body in a way she could only dream of… It made her not miss it at all.

The seats near your desk are taken, so Ellie settles for the one in the opposite back corner.

Ms. Frost clears her throat, and the pre-class chatter immediately silences.

“Most of you know her already, but if you’re new, or didn’t get the opportunity to meet her when she went to school here, we have the lovely Ms. L/N sitting in with us today.” Ms. Frost gestures to you.

Ellie, happy at the excuse to look at you but not showing it on her lips, turns to you immediately. You’re blushing an adorable shade, and you give a shy wave to the class, who waves back enthusiastically, excited to have someone both old and new around.

Once Ms. Frost begins talking again, the class settles down and begins to listen as they go over the syllabus. Ellie doesn’t stare anymore, but her mind is on you. Surely you weren’t into her the way she was into you, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t at least think about what it would be like if you did.. Well, maybe class isn’t the best time to think about that, she decides, her face a bit warm.

After class is over, Ellie leaves, but not before looking at you one last time. You catch her eye, and give an awkward smile, blushing. Oh, no, did you know? You were pretty damn smart, you probably knew. How awkward! Ellie wants to shrivel up and die as she makes her way to math class.

You watch today’s lecture online that evening, going over your notes from each of Ms. Frost’s classes you attended and condensing them. Someone knocks on your doorframe, and you jolt.

“Oh, hey, sorry,” Ellie greets you.

It’s Ellie. You’re a little bit scared, but overall happy.

“Hi, it’s fine, sorry, you startled me. What’s up?”

“Uh, nothing, I was just, y’know.. Uh, walking by, so I thought I’d, I don’t know. Say hi? Uh, forget it,” she explains, leaving. You don’t stop her, but worry about the reason why she was acting so irrationally. Oh, god, she knows. She knows and she hates you. Fuck! You wanna shrivel up and die as you continue to go over your notes.

Friday comes far too soon. Well, at least Ellie was in first period ELA, so it’d be like ripping off a bandage.

“So, we’re going to uh, play a game! You might have played this before, if you’ve taken a keyboarding class, or, um, you may have even played it in another English class. Basically, you’ll each get into groups of five, and work together to write a story. First, uh, one person from every group will draw a slip from this bowl here,” You explain, gesturing to said bowl. “It will have a word or phrase to help inspire the story.” You can feel Ellie’s eyes on yours, and you make contact for a brief moment before looking away nervously, your lips twitching up at the attention, before you get nervous again.

You continue: “Th-then, um, each person in the group gets a turn to write, for exactly one minute. It doesn’t matter who goes first, or what order you go in, as, uh, as long as everyone gets a turn. The point of this is to write a story that flows well, but it can still be funny or weird, in fact, I encourage it, because at the end of the game, each group will read their story for the class. It doesn’t matter how you read it, if you want one person to read it or to let each person read their part, as long as it gets read. After that, the class gets to guess what your inspiration was,” you explain to the rather attentive group, fidgeting as you do so. “Um, you can divide yourselves, if that’s alright with Ms. Frost.” Emma nods. “Any questions?”

Everyone shakes their heads, and they become a herd, scrambling to reach friends and partners and those known for being better writers.

As the game progresses, you set timers and let the class know when they’re over.

“Okay, so, who wants to go first?” you ask.

Jubilation Lee raises her hand, much to her fellow group member, Ellie’s, chagrin.You smile, excited to hear what they wrote.

“Alright, Jub’s group, you first!”

The five shuffle to the front, and Jubilation excitedly reads the story. It’s pretty funny, but you especially laugh in the middle, where the lonely protagonist attended a speed dating convention. The protagonist meets an absolutely beautiful woman; however, the protagonist is only allowed to talk about anything relating to time on Wednesday. It’s Friday, and the woman is asking questions like, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” The protagonist manages to answer other questions, but when the woman asks if she has plans this Saturday, the protagonist can’t say.

After the story is over, and the group sits down, someone from the group who sits near Ellie appears to nudging and smiling at her. She actually looks a bit happy, and you wonder why.

That afternoon, there’s a knock on your doorframe again.

“Ellie?” you ask.

“Nope, just me,” Wade replies.

“Hey, that’s almost as good,” you tell him.

“Almost? It’s better!” he playfully brags, flopping onto your bed. You currently sit at your desk, re-organizing your notes once more. “How’s my precious Y/N been? It’s funny, the day after you left I swung by your old apartment to check on you.”

“Aw, Wade, really?” you ask, a bit surprised.

“Nope!” he cackles, and you laugh as well. “Just kidding again, I did. It’s weird that you’re not in NY anymore.”

“Hey, Y/N- Oh,” Ellie had stopped at your door.

“W-what’s up, Ellie?” you ask.

“Uh, nothing. It can- Um, it can wait,” she decides, looking a bit fretful before leaving.

“Oh, she totally likes you. Totally. Why aren’t you two married, again?” Wade asks.

“Shut up, she does not in any way like me back, Wade. I’m so sure of it. I’m so far from her type.”

“And what’s her type?”

“Anyone but me,” you inform him.

Ellie, listening while against the wall beside your open door, is shocked. She’s, like, so obviously into you that it’s not even funny. You’re a genius and you can’t even tell how badly she wants your legs wrapped around her head! Which is really badly, by the way!

When her section of the story made you laugh earlier, she nearly cried blood, she was so ecstatic! She almost wants to say something, but doesn’t want you to think she doesn’t respect your privacy, or that she’s just some creepy stalker. She really does like you, a lot.

“Oh, well. What’s up, Wade?”

“Do I need a reason to visit my BFFAE?” he asks, and you laugh. Ellie loves your laugh, not that she’d ever tell you that.

“I guess not, but I just figured you would have one now that I’m not one-hundred percent alone.”

“Well, I wanted to check on you. How are the classes going? Have you given anyone detention?! Ooh, that’s one way to get some time alone with her.”

“Wade, that’s creepy. She probably sees me as like, an old person now, anyway. I really need to get over this whole thing, stop allowing myself to feel this way for someone so unattainable, so far out of my league. Because there’s no way she likes me. No. Fucking. Way.” It sounds like you’ve flopped onto your bed.

“Don’t be so rough on yourself, kid. Crushes are normal at your age.”

“Nothing else about me is normal for my age, so that doesn’t really help,” your voice is muffled by your bed.

Well, at least Ellie now knows you like her, too. Now, to do something about it. Fuck, Ellie has no idea what to do. Does she tell you she likes you, too? Does she confess she was eavesdropping? Hell, what if Wade was just being weird, and referring to another girl without saying names, in case Ellie was still in earshot?! It didn’t make sense, but Ellie’s overthinking combined with Wade’s weirdness made for some pretty wacky conclusion trampolines to jump to.

She makes sure to get away before someone sees her peeping.

The following Tuesday, Ms. Frost requests that that the class pair up; however, there are twenty-five students. Every once in awhile, one or two of the mentors that only teach extracurriculars will assist a teacher. Piotr, Ellie’s mentor, was here today.

“Ellie can pair up with Y/N, no?” He suggests, and you look as uncomfortable as Ellie feels.

“That’s a perfect idea, Piotr. Don’t be giving her the answers, though,” Ms. Frost teases, giving Ellie’s crush (you) a wink.

Ms. Frost passes the worksheets down the rows, assigning everyone but Ellie a partner once they are passed along.

Ellie moves to sit with you, and she swears you blush.

“So…” you start, but trail off.

“So,” she replies.

“I guess we’re supposed to read this Greek myth and analyze it? Don’t tell on me, but sometimes when Emma starts talking about lesson plans I zone out,” you tell it to her like it’s a real secret, an adorable little smile on your lips that charms her into one of her own.

“Oh, won’t you two just bang already? The level of denial is obnoxious,” a nearby student groans, and you look like a deer in the headlights. A cute deer, Ellie thinks.

“I’m pretty sure that’d be pretty inappropriate, and even if it wasn’t, I’m sure I’m way below her standards, or anyone else’s, am I right?” You laugh it off, unsure of what you want her to say. A yes would be heartbreaking, but a no would leave you absolutely defenseless to the overwhelming feelings you’d been shielding yourself from for so very long.

Are you crazy? Anyone would be lucky to date you.

You go deep red, then dead-faced, then red. Oh god, Ellie had said that out loud.

“I- Uh- Well- Um…” She tried to remedy it, but no such luck, as she is cut off by Ms. Frost.

“Your relationship drama can wait until after class, Miss Phimister and Miss L/N,” Emma tells the two of you, furthering embarrassing you both.

“So, uh, Perseus. Andromeda. Greek… stuff,” you say, but your hand finds its way to hers, pinkies interwoven on the table as you read. She watches your soft lips move, observing your still-flushed cheeks. You’re wearing a similar shirt to the one you wore the first day, but in black. It looks good.

You feel her eyes on you, so you turn to her. She looks up and away, commenting something snarky about how dumb Andromeda’s parents were. You agree.

Class continues, the two of you filling out the worksheet together and awkwardly discussing how to answer each question.

Throughout the rest of the day, Ellie physically cannot stop thinking about you. If it was bad before, it was terrible now.

She’s on her way to her dorm when she’s stopped by a particularly annoying man in a red suit.

“Hey, you seen Y/N around?”

“How long have you known?” Ellie asks, and Wade seems to get it.

“Oh, about a month after meeting her. I commented on a guy’s really good looks, she said he wasn’t her type. I said, ‘What’s your type? Ugly people?!’ She said, ‘Girls.’ Then-“

“I mean, how long have you known that she likes me?”

“I was getting to that. A few days later, I asked her if she knew you, ‘cause you guys go to the same school and are about the same age. She got all flustered, it was precious.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because that would be really shitty of me to do as Y/N’s BFFAE? Duh! Now, I have a Y/N to find.”

“No, I have a Y/N to find.”

Wade, despite wearing a mask, appears to narrow his eyes. “Wow, she was right. You do have good bone structure. Now go! I want grandbabies!”

You think she has good bone structure? That encourages her, and she checks Ms. Frost’s room. She’d checked yours before running into Wade.

“You just missed her. She’s on her way to your dorm, unless she chickened out after asking me where it was.”

Ellie goes to her dorm, but you’re not there. She looks around, unsure of what to do.

“I thought you were at Y/N’s dorm. That is what I told her when she discovered you were not here at your own,” Piotr informs Ellie, who groans, jogging to your dorm in hopes of catching you.

She does.

“Hey, I’ve been looking all over the place for you,” you greet her nervously.

“Well, uh..” Ellie blushes, having no clue what to say, but she knows what she wants to do, so she does it, and kisses you. It’s clumsy, because she’s never kissed anyone before, but she gets the feeling you haven’t either, so it’s okay. It’s good. It’s perfect.

The kiss ends after what feels like two seconds, but also forever, and Ellie didn’t know it was possible for either of you to blush deeper than you already had been, but it was.

“That was, um.. I liked it.”

“Me too,” she replies. “So.. Do you wanna, like, I don’t know.. date and eventually give Wade the grandchildren he’s so obsessed with having? Well, grand-kittens?”

You nod, a bit speechless at her offer.

“Great. Good work, team,” she begins rambling a bit to fill the awkward silence, and you kiss her cheek, looking at her with a proud smile and a beautiful look in your eyes.

#negasonicteenageimagines #negasonic teenage warhead x reader #negasonic teenage warhead imagine #ellie phimister x reader #ellie phimister imagine #fanfiction #wlw fanfiction

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wolfeyeslonelynights · 7 years ago

Text

Strip Club III

Liam was seriously starting to wonder when his life became a series of sexual dance offs. Sure once could have been considered random Mason induced insanity. Twice, maybe an odd fluke he had admittedly instigated in petty revenge. But three? Three was starting to feel like a pattern.

And lap dances? Of course he’s watched a few naughty videos, what teenage boy hasn’t? Although those had generally been of the female variety and with a specific task in mind. Now though, Liam felt like the world was turning an odd joke over him. With a name of Theo fucking Raeken.

Because here he was, sitting in a ridiculously tall chair, feeling beyond awkwardly embarrassed while Theo tried not to laugh standing about five feet from him. From the edge of his sex throne Liam could see Mason in a similar position, although his expression was far less humiliated and more eager. Corey at least looked slightly uncomfortable. Leaning forward just as the lime green booty short dressed instructor stepped into the room, Liam hissed under his breath.

“I am never answering your guys 911 phone calls again!”

He kicked his feet, which were hanging about four inches off the ground, in irritation. When Mason replied he didn’t see the grin so much as heard it.

“We needed two more people to get the discount.”

Liam harrumph, knowing damn well that his friend was just being a busy body. Since the club incident Liam had been doing everything he could to not pay attention to anything beyond school and lacrosse. He didn’t answer most texts, ignored phone calls, and even took to actually locking his bedroom window at night. His mother was ecstatic on his grades improvement. Liam was, he would only admit to himself, a grumpy little shit.

“Oh come on,” Theo practically purred at him- soft enough that only their sensitive hearing could pick up- “I’ll make it good for you.”

Liam scowled at the hazel stare sparkling with laughter before Theo was turning to listen to whatever the flamboyant teacher was saying. He just pushed himself farther back into the chair, arms crossing protectively over his chest. It wasn’t that he was denying the reactions and emotions to the chimera; in fact the only reason they hadn’t ended up in Liam’s bed or the back of Theo’s truck after the night of dancing was only because of Mason and Corey’s presence. No, Liam was avoiding the issue because he didn’t want to get hurt.

Watching the teen in front of him, not really a teenager anymore at nineteen, reach up to absently run a hand through his hair, Liam felt shook. He didn’t think the older boy would hurt him in the way murderous asshole Theo would have done- and honestly even then, he had been trying to help Liam; albeit with slightly more horrific and malicious intent. No, he was afraid that it would be similar to the punch in the soul that Hayden abruptly leaving had caused.

He suspected it would be worse. Not that Hayden hadn’t been important; she will always be his first love, first loss, and a few other firsts. But their relationship had been created on remorse and protectiveness that was formed during a highly stressful time in their lives.

Theo though.. he was a foundation. That saw everything and still was like ‘okay, that was stupid but lets not be too stupid.’ And when It came down to it, when shit got really bad and the body count was growing; Theo didn’t leave Liam behind. Nope, the chimera showed up even when he had no real reason to. Even when Liam tried to push him away.

“Alright everyone, think of a song you wanna dance to while you and your lucky partner connect to the small blue tooth speakers.”

The instructors bubbly voice broke through Liam’s thoughts. Looking up he caught Theo watching him closely; the usual smirk replace with a thoughtful expression. The sincerity of it made him more nervous. Tightening his arms and shoulders he grumbled “What?”

The chimera dug into his pants, dark gray joggers, for his phone taking a minute to connect it to the small speaking next to Liam’s chair. There was a brief blast of Celine Dion causing Liam to flinch before Theo was able to press pause. He stared up with at the big bad chimera; eyes wide before he was grinning.

“All by yourself huh?”

Liam’s grin grew as Theo looked speechless before the chimera lifted his shoulders in a shrug that tried for nonchalance but was too self-conscious to totally pull it off. Laughing softly he relaxed in the chair. Theo narrowed his eyes on him, while reaching over to snag Corey’s fedora hat.

“Don’t even think that is adequate blackmail Dunbar, because it really isn’t.”

His reply was interrupted by the teacher clapping and telling them to get into their places. Liam ignored the droning on about how this was just for fun and practice before giving a couple claps to set them off on their own. Glancing around he saw that a lot of couples were mostly goofing off to various songs all talking about how it was hot in hurr or get low, too uncomfortable to really get into it.

FKA twings Two weeks started playing loud next to him snagging his attention as Theo easily slid back into a relaxed stance. He had placed the fedora hat at a jaunty angle, upper half of his face shadowed as he rolled his shoulders once. This didn’t seem like a particular lap ‘dancey’ song but then Liam didn’t think much more as Theo slide a leg out in a smooth movement.

The words were breathy as Theo twirled slowly in a way that reminded Liam of a ballet, hand coming up to grip the back of the hat just as the song crescendo; rolling it down a forearm and popping it in the air at Liam, tank top covered chest rolling deep that sent muscles rippling under the tight material as feet skimmed in rotating steps that had him suddenly much closer to the chair.

He barely had time to toss the hat blindly aside before Theo was there in his lap. Crouched like some damn cat instead of werewolf; hips moving in slow undulated waves, inches from Liam’s chest. Hot hands sliding from the chair letting fingers grazing skin and shirt before gripping the top of his thighs hard - jolting heat through Liam’s jeans as Theo was sliding down, down, down until Liam could only see brightened eyes at the level of his crotch.

There was a pause, Liam trying to not to groan at the picture in front of him, how his body was responding painfully, and then Theo was up and around the back of the chair, a hand moving up his shoulder and neck before a finger tip touched the corner of the his lips, slipping inside enough to wet it before it was gone.

Liam was pretty sure he was silently mouthing words that he would no doubt be mortified if anyone could read. Expecting a fast dance of thrust and jerky movements, maybe something silly like the sexy chicken dance but Theo’s slow actions were ten times worse.

The chimera did something with his feet that made it seemed like he glided around the chair. Not that Liam cared about his feet, his eyes were having a hard time moving from the region of his midsection and face. Especially when Theo stopped right in front of him, eyes locked on; stare intense as his body slowly, excruciating slow that had Liam biting his bottom lip and tasting Theo, rolled until it reached his hips, then he reversed the move until he was straddling Liam’s lap. Rough hands coming up to cup either side of his neck, thumbs lightly pressing against the racing pulse.

Several things occurred to Liam in this moment. A: He was going to be super mortified when he had to stand up and let everyone see the raging hard-on he was currently sporting. B: Theo was crossing a line with that damn finger leaving a tase of him in his mouth that had Liam almost begging. C: Begging for something he actually had no idea what he wanted, but it needed to happened and fucking quick. D: Theo was semi-erect and it seemed wrong to only be halfway there. E: He definitely heard the unsubtle sound of a phone’s camera shutter, indicating that his best friend was going to have to die.

He hadn’t realized he was holding his breath until Theo whispered “Breathe Liam, breathe.”

Looking up he wasn’t sure meeting Theo’s gaze was a smart move. The desire he was feeling echoing in the chimera’s face with a dash of that infuriating arrogance. He didn’t realize he had slipped his hands underneath the tank top, softly brushing the skin on Theo’s side until he noticed the slightest shiver through the body on his. He smiled broadly, opening his mouth to comment when a loud voice burst into their bubble.

“Well! Magnificent performance! Though I dare hazard a guess that you are not an amateur no?” When the instructor was smiling over them Theo quickly slid off Liam, hands quickly slipping in the pocket of his pants. Liam caught his eye, raising a brow in amusement, ignoring the glare sent his way.

He bit back a laugh when Theo turned away from him to mutter a “Yeah you could say that.”

There was a brief pause as the other groups stopped staring to go back to their half hearted attempts, leaving Liam to shoot a dirty look at Mason and Corey’s smirks while trying to get his pants to be comfortable again without bringing attention to what he was doing. Theo was busy with his phone when the teacher called that it was time to switch places.

Liam froze as Theo whipped his head up grinning like the devil.

“Uh no.”

Theo smiled wider, “Uh yes.”

Frantically thinking of a way out because if Liam had to dance like that in a room full of all these people who were side eyeing them in hopes to see if he was as good as Theo. He was going to die. Or puke. Possible both in either order.

Theo didn’t help, simply yanking him out the chair, leaving him to stumble for balance while collapsing back into it as if it was a recliner. Scowling he glanced over to see that Mason’s eager expressions was dimmed now as he too looked over at Liam.

“I, uh, didn’t think this through.”

Feeling his irritation melt away as the need to help ease Mason’s anxiety away, Liam cracked his neck and dramatically rolled his yes.

“You two never think things through.”

Ignoring Corey’s muttered “Like you two can talk.” he pulled his phone out to start browsing through his music. Just because it was a lap dance didn’t mean he had to do everything in Theo’s lap right? Simply thinking that had his cheeks warming. Also, this was definitely not a place to play a song he would one day like to be fuc-

Liam paused at the last thought, face rapidly losing its color as he realized songs were getting nixed because they were ones that he could picture them, jesus him and Theo, having sex to.

“Young man? Are you having trouble picking a song?”

The teacher’s question knocked him out of the downward spiral that his mind had been going. Looking up he saw his friends giving him slightly guilty looks of concern. Theo’s expression was unreadable; stance still disgustingly relaxed in the chair, legs spread apart as he watched Liam have a mini existential crisis. Actually, he smiled up at the mostly naked older man receiving an automatic one back.

“No sorry I’m good now thanks.”

Waiting until the man had nodded and backed away, Liam had flashed a devious smirk at his friends before taking the few seconds to connect his phone to the speaker.

“This better not be that barbie doll song or something stupid Liam.”

Theo’s voice was a warning and a tease and he was going to enjoy wiping that goddamn kissable smirk off his smug face. Instead of saying anything, he simply pressed play and slid out to stop in front of the chimera.

Feeling the same weightless exhilaration similar to when they were just goofing off in the club, he felt the smile linger as he started a few shoulder jerks, legs matching the movements as 3OH!3’s Touchin’ On My blared. Throwing in a few heel steps he waited until the chorus hit before starting to pop lock in earnest; grin growing at Theo’s snort of surprised laughter, the chimera’s body leaning forward as he returned the smile.

When the second verse kicked in, Liam spun fast, hands yanking his shirt up and over before launching it at Theo. Using the distraction he slid on his knees between Theo’s still spread legs. There was an instance, hazel eyes flaring wide, before Liam basically crawled up into his lap. He let fingers trail over pants, pressing closer on the inside of Theo’s thigh. Slightly brushing on something more. He was still grinning even if the chimera wasn’t; mouth tight with restraint as Liam’s nose slid up his neck, continuing up with a brush of their noses, passing until he was standing.

Liam let a few seconds pass, hands pressed on the back of the chair behind Theo’s shoulders, listening to the chimera breathe shallow.

The next time the chorus played, he slid away from Theo - noticing how hands had started to rise like the teen was going to pull Liam back. His own hands were still on the back of the chair, holding fast as he twirled around to stand behind it. Ignoring the song now, he used his arms to tip the chair backwards, Theo tensing as his head fell back to look up at Liam - face paused level with Liam’s erection.

Liam beamed when Theo’s eyes darted from his face to his pretty obvious bulge and back to his eyes again before muttering “Christ almighty Liam.”

Abruptly righting the chair, he walked over to shut off the speaker as the next song started playing. Turning he sputtered when his t-shirt slapped into his face. Yanking it down he scowled at the glowering chimera walking towards him.

“What the fuck?”

Theo waited until they were inches apart, “That song and move is going to come back to bite you in the ass…literally.”

Yeah, it was definitely becoming a pattern. He was in absolute deep shit. Liam tried to hide the pleased smile.

#Thiam #Thiam Drabble Dabble #I don't know what the hell this is #I wanted to do silly songs and they said no #Shitty fanfic #My refrigerator is making a super ominous noise

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drferox · 7 years ago

Text

20 Questions with Dr Ferox #17

Time for another post of 20 questions and comments I’ve been asked recently. I’m not sure how well the tagging system is working at the moment, so if you’re waiting for a question to be answered I’d recommend checking manually.

@Its-janeway-or-the-highway said: For other useful bits of strine see also: Spitting the biscuit: throwing a tantrum out of sheer frustration, Bitzer: a dog that is of mixed, unknown origin (bits of this, bits of that), blood worth bottling: someone who is such an excellent individual their blood is worth bottling, such as Dr Ferox. I think your Aussie followers could have a field day with this subject.

We probably could, but the lingo also varies from state to state. For example, I didn't know for the longest time that 'Freckle' is also slang for 'anus', which gives a whole new meaning to “wouldn't give a fat rat's freckle” (means I couldn't care less)

Anonymous said: Guinea pigs or Hamsters? Which one is your fav?

I have been asked about hamsters several times, so I say it again. Never seen one. They're not available as pets in Australia.

Anonymous said: Can you tell us more about the issue of cropping and docking dogs ears and tails? Or if you know some good sites to read up on this info, where I might be able to read more about it? Thank you!

We're talked about it before on this blog. There's a handy dandy search function you can use as there's lots of posts that are worth a read, including those tagged with docking and cropping.

Anonymous said: As a Brit, and largely thanks to our celebrity chefs who like to advocate for ethical and sustainable meat-eating practices, I know that our welfare standards for veal calves are better than Europe at large, and also that, thanks to that preconceived notion of milk fed calves locked in a tiny crate, Brits are too horrified to eat veal at all. I wish people knew properly sourced British veal was much more ethical than exporting or simply shooting a male calf at birth :/ I'd support it if I could!

In Australia, a 'veal calf' is just a steer that hasn't been weaned yet, usually 200+kg, so is still being fed by its mother. Then they have one very bad day where they're 'weaned' and slaughtered on the same day, which isn't all that much worse than regular beef, in context.

Anonymous said: My cat passed away from kidney failure earlier this year. He'd been diagnosed very young but last year the vet decided to give him an ultrasound because he was curious and found out that his kidneys were terribly misshapen. He believed they had been like that since birth, and that his kidney function had always been compromised. I decided to cremate his remains, but now I am thinking that over again. Is it weird to tell a vet that they can keep organs as a teaching specimen if they want to?

Yes it's weird, but it's also very welcome if that vet has any connections with a university or teaches students. After death arrangements are a highly personal choice, and I wouldn't judge anyone for the choices they make. Keeping organs as specimens is a difficult conversation for a clinician to have.

Anonymous said: QT: came for mythical animals, stayed for the stories. Question: my dog will sometimes get his ear (not very long, and soft/semi-floppy) flipped/stuck inside out when he rolls around on the sofa cushions (which he loves to do). I flip them back by petting along the ear (it's super easy and there's no resistance, physical or behavioral) but I'm curious: does it hurt? It looks like it should. He doesn't seem to mind, but I don't know if that's just because he knows he can't fix it without help.

It probably causes no pain at all. And I dare say he could flip them back himself by shaking his head, most dogs can.

Anonymous said: What's your opinion on heated cat beds? Worth it if it's an older arthritic cat? Useless? Just curious. Also, Question Tax: Came here for the stories, stayed because I'm an aspiring avian vet.

Cats certainly enjoy them in the colder weather. I don't really like leaving the electrical ones with cords on while they're unsupervised, in case they get chewed or urinated on, and personally prefer the microwavable ones for that purpose. Care should be taken with cats that have mobility concerns to ensure they don't overheat.

Anonymous said: What is your opinion on cats eating bugs? If there is a fly in the house or a silverfish, basically anything non-threatening I can identify, I let my cats get it. However I am increasingly worried about spiders since I can't really identify them beyond daddy long legs and black widows (the only deadly type in my area) and even not so dangerous ones can have pretty painful bites. For the tax: what dinosaur would you have most liked to be a vet for?

Good luck trying to stop them from eating the bugs. I haven't figured out how to stop my boys from eating any bugs they catch.

@bighugmug said: Those capsule backpacks for cats are cute, but they look quite confined! Is there a vet opinion on how comfortable these are for kitty?

I don't know, and it probably depends on the cat. Cat's are not that bothered by being confined in transport, most cats like a box, and they tend to like a good vantage point to survey their surrounds, but it's not a carrier I see a lot of and I imagine would take some getting used to.

Anonymous said: If an animal is overstimulated and/or overly energetic, are they self-aware enough to try and calm themselves down?

Probably not.

Anonymous said: QT: I was actually sent one of your posts on euthanasia by a friend just after I'd had to put my 16yr old cat down & it really helped, so I followed! Anyway: my (~3yr old, 50lb, unknown mix breed) dog is friendly but cries literally continuously at the vet (& ONLY there), to the point that they told us they had to give him a treat to distract him long enough for them to hear his heart beat. How big a problem is something like this? Any stress reduction techniques you'd recommend?

Sounds like positive reinforcement with treats is probably the way to go. Short, consistent training sessions of 'happy vet visits' that allow your dog to associate the vet clinic with wonderful treats should make him feel more positive about the experience.

Anonymous said: feel free not to get to this for a while! i know your inbox must be bursting. i'm just wondering how preventable you think a urinary blockage in male cats is? mine doesn't have one but for some reason i am SUPER PARANOID about him getting one and i wanna do everything in my power to prevent it

I'm super paranoid about it too. Spending Friday night trying to catheterize a tiny, slippery cat penis is not my idea of fun, especially if it ends up being my own cat. Keeping them active and at a healthy weight is the single most important thing you can do to reduce their risk.

Anonymous said: I really hate to bother you, but I was wondering if tumors in a dog's anal glands is very serious. I recently took my dog to the vet for an unrelated reason and she told me that when she went to express his glands, she wasn't able to express anything and the glands felt very hard. She believes that it's either due to scaring or a tumor. If it is a tumor, the surgery is too expensive for me to ever afford. Will my dog be in pain without surgery? Could this be life threatening?

Unfortunately anal gland tumors usually are life threatening, and usually diagnosed too late to prevent spreading to the sublumbar lymph nodes. Malignant anal gland tumors will eventually make the dog sick, and as they grow they may prevent the dog from being able to defecate. You should discuss this with your vet.

Anonymous said: What are your thoughts on when to spay a bitch? We had a German Shepherd who passed away last year of hemangiosarcoma. We always wonder if this cancer was accelerated by the fact she was taking oestrogen- due to being incontinent- which we wondered about being caused by her spay. She was spayed at 4/5months old. I just wondered if you could sum up the possible implications of a spay pre and post the first oestrus, particularly for German Shepherds, but really all dogs. Thank you!

She probably did not develop the haemangiosarcoma (HSarc) from taking oestrogen. She probably developed it because she is a German Shepherd and it's one of the things that they very commonly do. Desexing does increase the risk of certain rarer cancers like HSarc and lymphoma, but not desexing drastically increases the risk of mammary cancer and pyometra. If hip dysplasia is not an issue, I'd consider desexing between 9 and 18 months for a female large breed dog. I am still very pro desexing.

Delayed desexing has also been discussed here.

@animaljunkie said: I'm an American vet student who is seriously considering practicing in either Australia or Ireland. Would you have any advice on career choices or practicing outside your home country?

I've never practiced outside Australia, but I would check what the requirements are for your employment with the national or state vet registration board for your country of choice, and it's probably wise to chat to other expats before committing to that idea.

Anonymous said: Hi Dr. Ferox! My roommate keeps buying her cats different types of food, and I was wondering is this could be harmful to them? The brand stays consistent, but she tends to buy whichever type (senior, weight management, indoor, etc.) is on sale. The cats are ~1 year and 5 years. And she doesn't do the 'wean off one food and onto another' thing. (Question tax: I hc that you -all vets really- look at animals with a mix of "you're so adorable" and "so many things could go wrong with you") Thanks!

If it hasn't caused an issue yet, it probably wont. Most issues from sudden food changes are vomiting or diarrhoea, and I'm sure you'd notice if it was an issue. Some animals have tougher stomachs than others, some are exquisitely sensitive and can only stomach one flavour of one food without gastroenteritis.

And yes, there are so, so many things that can go wrong with every singe animal. When you're trained as a hammer it's hard not to see everything as a nail.

@2goldensnitches said: Doc, we've recently acquired a kitten. Sometimes he knows how to use the litterbox, sometimes he wants to eat the sand. Why?

The whole world is a toybox to a kitten. It's most likely just learning and playing, but I can't guarantee it doesn't have some sort of pica and you should check with your vet.

Anonymous said: What kind of information should a vet be expected to know before I consider seeking help elsewhere? I recently had an avian vet do a house call for some birds, and he seemed knowledgeable. He was detailed and came up with a treatment plan that suggested he knew what he was talking about. Then he said, "Nothing's using the lower part of the aviary. You could put some reptiles in here." Is that a huge red flag? It seemed very wrong to me, but maybe that sort of thing isn't in a vet's wheelhouse?

It might not be part of that vet's knowledge base, though it seems a really odd thing to say. I can't imagine what they were thinking. If you're satisfied with the treatment of your birds then don't feel like you have to change vets, unless you want to of course.

@knikna said:Non-vet question for a bit of fun! If you had the Doctor's Tardis and could travel anywhere in space and time in this universe, where would you go first?

I would chose to go see a Thylacine. Past or future, I don't care. That way I'm unlikely to stuff up any kind of time-space continuum, and my own microflora wont cause any sort of massacre.

Anonymous said: Hi I just wanted to let you know I've been laughing at the fact your cat's name is trash bag for about an hour. I hope you and trash bag have a wonderful day

See, I knew it was a funny name.

Trash Bag has recently learned about the whole new world under the blankets, and how wonderfully warm they are for snuggles.

#20 questions #blog housekeeping #veterinarian

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abstruseness · 6 years ago

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Canon MX492 Scanner Driver Download Normal Option for Contemporary Landscaping Artist

The Wedding photographer

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The Stamping

Till just recently David's partnership with Canon possessed never extensive over and above his usage of their video cameras. Following viewing the grade of his charitable trust item 'Autumn Light' created by the Canon representative Velmex Submission, David was very very happy to take shipping of his new printer a, 44" 12 colour Impression PROGRAF iPF8100, sizeable file format printer, immediately after the event. "What smacked me initially was only how calm the Canon was. My prior A1 gadget wasn't a Canon product or service; it had been extremely slow-moving and surprisingly loud".

Before using the Canon MX492, On account of the flexible the outdoors in the iPF8100 he or she is now able to produce a complete size cut of his printing (emulating a dark room fashion crop) so that you can match it at any point. "This alone is preserving me three times as much multimedia." He said. The reason why you could do is caused by an original Adobe plug-in that comes with the printer. "The Adobe plug-in is fantastic! It's very simple to quick, convenient and use. It gives me complete power over the colour production I create. It saves me a lot of press and i also don't ought to mess around with customized sizing, plus I could produce from Photoshop with no reason to resave records first."

The outcome is a reduce quality result, whilst the printer can create a higher quality impression. The Canon Photoshop connect-in can instantly change a 16 tad impression in Photoshop, to some 12 little interpolated picture for the printer, recording the maximum high quality accessible. The eye struggles to distinguish the visible difference between 12 little and 16 little, nevertheless in between an 8 little bit and 12 little bit result the visible difference, even going to the inexperienced eyes, is visible. "16 little offers superb gradation on my a few meter graphics, it will make a huge difference to my kind of operate. Now, from picture record to productivity I have the ability to printing at the highest quality. The visible difference is obvious if you ask me, specially in the sharpness of depth I recieve in blue skies or the details of greens, in which usually the 8 little variation can appear flat." The inspiration powering David's picture taking is to record the outdoors in their purest type.

The pictures are all picture in RAW formatting creating image styles any where from 150 super pixels to 200 mega pixels, creating a level of sharpness and depth vital when printing at this particular scale. Upwards of 4GB, having an 80GB hard-drive is invaluable, "Because the size of my files are so large. Before the file has completely downloaded, the files download straight to the printer freeing up my desktop and the printer will start to print even. The dual print out-heads offer you me fast publishing. Paper-heads are semi long lasting characteristics that don't will need swapping with each ink cartridge transform plus I will swap the print heads me personally. This gives me a cost preserving I'd not anticipated, and with no lower time. The printer ink cartridges can be bought in 300ml and 700ml tanks and can be hot swapped although the device is working, rendering it unbelievably versatile when printing my 3 metre images. The printer even offers a reserve tank which retailers printer to guarantee the produce is completed with out preventing. This prevents any likelihood of having a dried out line by way of the middle of a produce. Some thing you don't require when publishing about three meter images! "

These huge structure printers may be managed by simply the 'Canon MX492 Scanner Driver Download' something that David finds very helpful when working his printing careers. "In the past I would personally estimate my ink cartridge costs by work as I didn't have a similar degree of detail I have now with 'Job Manager'. I can entry it through any internet browser empowering me to discover the ink usage on every print. I can also check ink levels, which document I've loaded inside the printer as well as the length and width from the roll. I am just now in full control of my generating charges, something that I surely didn't have just before".

Archival work

This process David utilizes to complete his printing is 'Face Installation to Perspex'. This is a process where the done print out is sandwiched among some Dibond and Perspex or perhaps an Aluminium backing page. The latest analysis by Wilhem-Analysis.com implies that a colour print from your Canon 12 colour Appearance PROGRAF iPF6100*, on gloss media within Perspex substrate could give you a light-weight fastness of 176 several years. "This really is 101 yrs more than my prior printer could claim providing my buyers an increased archival worth."

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