#arson to the whole country goddamn

[rewritingcanon]

this coming referendum is going to give me cancer

[kaxenart]

24, 25 HH

24. Where did their name come from? Does it have meaning?

Parzival Géroux - either "pierce the valley" and "spear wolf" or ....spear spear? Ironically, he is not a lancer. lol I picked his name for sound more than for meaning.

Arsene - "manly/virile" A name for a bit of a chad lol

Kadir - "powerful/almighty/capable" ...last one doesn't seem as dramatic.

Vang - "king" or "gold/yellow" Spelling varies since smashing the Roman alphabet at Asian languages is messy and there are multiple systems.

Navet Jardin - "Turnip Garden." Jardin's parents were staunch revolutionaries and thought there were too many Jeans in town or something, so the whole family swapped to vegetable names during the revolution. Jardin was somewhere between 0 and 5 at the time and had no say in the matter.

25. What events changed them as a child?

I'm including teenagerhood because the older I get, the more "goddamn, you're a fuckin' baby" I am about age 16 and below.

The revolution was just a major event in most of their lives.

Arsene was probably the most affected because he super buys into the revolution and is still pretty leftist, though at the moment he views fighting in the army to defend and/or expand the country as more important than dethroning the emperor. The fact the emperor doesn't have an heir makes him think there's a future opening for Democracy 2 This Time Better. Most of how Arsene acts was solidified in his teens. He quit his art apprenticeship. He got into fights with literally anyone (the conservatives for being wrong, the other leftists not being good enough by his estimation, and everyone else trying to explain to him a minor can't properly engage in politics) and this is why he is a strong duelist now. Some Muscadin broke his nose for being obnoxious AF. The fact Arsene hasn't gotten himself killed is something Arsene takes as reason to believe he is very right about everything.

Parzival has a lot of baggage due to the revolution. He was raised fairly religious, but he has since lapsed during the anti-religion push in the revolution, but he still occasionally makes religious gestures and he still feels a somewhat constant background guilt about... literally everything. As a family on the bottom end of rich and not especially politically active, his family mostly avoided being a target for politically-motivated murder, but "if I'm not 'good' enough, someone is going to kill me" is something that kind of ate at the back of his mind. And as the revolution got messier, what option to take got harder to decide on. Parzival does spend a lot of time wondering if he is doing the right thing and agonizing and pingponging wildly between his decisions which is how you get like... on one hand, arson, on the other hand, feeding fifty street urchins every night.

He is a little less of a mess as an adult if only because his living situation is much less chaotic, but it does still kind of bother him from time to time.

Vang got pretty massively disillusioned by life as a child. His father super bought into what missionaries were saying, got called the village idiot, and wrangled the rest of the family into it. After the mission was deemed a failure, Vang's family hitchhiked with the missionaries west.

....then the Revolution happened and the church got ripped to pieces.

Vang has mixed feelings about his father, but he has been living in Valois for too long to really feel like he should go back east and since the revolution brought men from more modest backgrounds to the higher levels of politics, Vang thinks it is better to stay with the mess he knows better which is why he is interested in politics and has a long list of suggestions for the emperor. Vang only cares about practical matters since his father and the church's pie in the sky ideas were a waste of time in his opinion.

On a pettier note, Jardin has a stupid name. Jardin wishes he had a cool story from the Revolution to tell like how Arsene does (oblivious to the fact Arsene is 50% lying), but ideologically, he doesn't give a shit about the Revolution. He got bullied a bit as a kid, which is why is he pretty pugnacious. He also just wants to be a bully himself and is pretty much a giant ass to anyone who isn't another hussar.

Kadir rode out the revolution like any other Tuesday Duodi, as an enfant de troupe, mostly only affected by it because the command changed a bit as some of the upper level aristocratic soldiers decided they were going to leave and sometimes his dad's pay got really inconsistent as the new government's finances were a mess.

His dad was killed in battle and Kadir figured he had all the equipment already (give or take a few holes to patch up), and formally enlisted for full pay as soon as they'd let him. He can't really imagine non-army life.

[ghostdummieideas]

A Grave Mistake 2/?

Part 2 to the Goore series. Thank you Raine and Birdy for Beta reading this chapter!

When you woke up the next morning, you thought the whole cemetery fiasco was a nightmare. Just a silly dream that your brain created to show your anxiety for the recent job. Your eyes scanned to the electric alarm clock on your nightstand: 8:45 AM. First, you need to get a cup of coffee in your system. Second of all, you need to get your reading assignment done today. With a stretch across the bed, you stand up to start your day.  As you stride across the hall, your eyes land on something crumpled in a dirty heap by the entrance of the apartment.

The conquest for coffee was pushed aside as you approached the foreign object. You crouched down and picked up what looked to be a ratty old coat with faded lettering on the back. The remnant of letters read, ‘Woodland Cemetery’. The cemetery. Last night wasn’t a dream. You ran before you finished your first shift.

The thought of the consequences for doing so sent a shiver down your back. In the midst of the chase, the security office never crossed your mind as an option for a sanctuary. Jacket in hand, you scramble through the flat to find your phone. You had two notifications: one missed call and one voicemail, both from your boss. Knowing that you can’t hide from your mistake forever, you have to do the right thing. Gritting your teeth, you unlock the screen to listen to the voicemail.

The old man’s voice crackled on the speaker, “Hey kid, we need to talk. Call me when you’re available”. 

You bopped your phone against your forehead and whined in dismay. “I fucked up. I fucked up, and he’s going to say I’m fired.”

Taking a couple of concentrated breaths, you press ‘call back’, and place the phone against your ear. You hoped the old man would be asleep or busy doing whatever he does in his free time. Your silent prayers were ignored as you heard the familiar blip of the phone being answered. “Hello? Who is this?” your boss’s garbled voice came through.

“Hi boss. I’m so sorry about last night’s shift. I can explain!” Feeling your throat tighten from nervousness, you take a deep breath. When you were ready to explain the corpse man, you stopped. You can’t say that, you’d sound like a lunatic. ‘I ran into this bloody man and he chased me during my shift’ would sound like a sorry excuse that a teenager would use to explain why their homework is missing. “A racoon frightened me and the office didn’t cross my mind when I was running. I’m so sorry.”

The line was silent for a second before a sigh broke the silence. “I saw you running in the camera feed. Look, don’t run off during your shift again. Do you plan on going tonight?”

The question left you stunned. Do you want to come back to the cemetery? He’s not going to fire you for running off. Before you can think, you answered, “Yes, I’ll come to tonight’s shift. Do I come at the same time as yesterday?”

“Yes, same time, same place. See you then. Get some sleep kid. Bye.”

The line dies as your boss hangs up. Your shoulders drop, the death grip on the jacket in your hand loosens. You still have a job. Great. You might run into a corpse man again. Not so great. You walk over to the kitchen, take a seat, and slouch over the table. You’re going to need more than a pot of coffee today.

------------------------------

When your shift rolled around, you walked back to the small trailer in the far right of the field. You pressed the doorbell to alert your boss of your arrival. With a buzz, the door unlocked to let you in. You step into the office and close the door quietly behind you. 

“Hi boss”, you greeted the old man. This time the cue-ball had an aged ball cap on his head. He was also wearing a similar jacket to your own. The rolling chair squeaked as your boss scooted from his desk and stood up. He gave you an indifferent look before he adjusted the cap. “We have a camera knocked on the far back of the place. Some kids knocked them off this morning. Your coworker was able to fix most of the cameras, but we got two more to replace.”

You watched your boss pick up two walkie talkies from the left of the computer monitor. As he shuffled across the room, he stuffed one into his pocket and handed you the spare. "Thanks," you muttered out of politeness before you took the device and stuffed it into your empty pocket. He then walked over to the table next to the door to grab the boxes piled on top. He reached in and grabbed two orange-colored boxes, handing you one of them. Examining the box, you noticed a logo with the word ‘security camera’ printed on the side. 

“We’re going to need a couple items from the storage shed. We’ll need a ladder, screwdriver, and… you still have the flashlight, right?” 

 You fished around in your pockets before you found it, pulling the item out to show him. He nods in approval. Grabbing the massive piles of keys from the lockbox, both of you tread through the grass to the shed. Breaking the silence, you addressed the elephant in the room. 

“Thank you for giving me another chance, boss.” 

Both of you stopped in front of the wooden building with a pad lock blocking the latch. As your boss searched for the right key, he addressed your statement.

“It’s fine, kid,” he sighed. “People usually have a fight-or-flight response and you did what you had to do to stay safe. We commonly associate cemeteries with awful stuff, so I’m not mad at you for running away.”

He unlocked and opened the door to the shed. Without looking back, he clicked the light switch to illuminate the interior. Stuffing his keys in his pocket, he strutted into the building and plucked the materials for the job.

“From your background check, you seem like the type to work hard. You’re not the type to run off and party like some college kids. You have a goal in mind and you’re using whatever is in your arson and you are doing the best you can. It’s hard to find good youngsters like you.” 

This left you at a loss for words. Your impression of your boss differed from your first meeting. The bitter old man, who was courteous enough to leave trash bags in your pocket to make your job easier, now complemented you verbally. A complement you shouldn’t be receiving after last night’s stunt.

After he had gathered everything he needed, your boss stepped out of the shed and locked it behind him. “Take a tool box and ladder for yourself, kid. If anything goes wrong or a vermin chases you off again, you can call me.”

You nodded in agreement, “Yes boss”. 

Tucking the security camera under your arm, you picked up the small ladder and tool box. After confirming where you needed to go, both of you went on your separate ways to fix the damaged property. Lugging the items to the location was one thing, the remains of the previous camera was a bigger problem. Whoever the kids were, they did a magnificent job at smashing the camera from this angle. They knocked it off from the adjustable base that connected to the wall of the building. The smashed camera barely hung from the cable that was tacked to the roof. With a sigh, you put the items down on the ground, picking up the ladder and setting it in place. You reached into your pocket and put the flashlight in place. Turning it on, you rummaged into the toolbox to find a screwdriver. Once successful, you opened up the box to unravel the packaging from the new camera.

Cradling the new camera in the crook of your arm, you climb up the ladder and get to work. Taking the old camera down from the cable wasn’t that bad. Unscrewing the base proved to be a slight problem as one hole was bent from whatever impact it received. An hour later, the new camera was in place and the smashed pieces were sprawled across the grass. 

Once you got down from the ladder you rolled your shoulders to release the tension on your neck. At least that was a pleasant change from being nose deep into your books this morning. Reaching into your pocket, you produced your walkie talkie. Pressing the button on the side, you asked, “Boss ya there?” You waited two seconds before the block crackled back. 

“Yea? You done there?” your boss’s garbled voice reverberated back.

“Yes, I’m done setting up the new camera. I’m going to take a ten here before heading back to the supply shed.”

“I’m in the office. No vermin?”

You briefly paused. Was this a small joke or a genuine concern? “No boss, not a single vermin in sight so far.”

“10-4” he mumbled before the line went silent again. 

Speaking of vermin, you haven’t seen that guy again. A shiver ran down your back at the memory of the zombie. You don’t want to see him again. Not on this shift, not in the future either. 

Stuffing the black brick into your pocket, you took a minor break before you headed back to the shed. Sitting down on the second step of the ladder, you let out a sigh of relief. You tilted your head, rolling your muscles and looking up at the night sky.

The clouds covered the sky, not a single star appeared amongst the sea of gray fluff. Deep down you wished you could see a sliver of the moon or stars. You felt tranquil when you could see them in the night sky. No matter which town you were in, someone from across the country would see the same orb burning in the dark. It was nice to know you weren’t the only one looking up at the same atmosphere. It made you feel less lonely in a time like this.

 A crunch pulls you out of your thoughts. You looked behind to see the last person you wanted to see tonight: The goddamn corpse boy. He had his back towards you, and you immediately went into flight mode, your body flinging itself from your resting spot. The quick movement caused the ladder to topple over and crash into the soft ground.

The man stopped to turn his attention to you. From his hunched position, your flashlight illuminated his face. Fresh blood smeared down from his forehead. Gray paint contoured his cheek and eyes in an unflattering manner. Instead of accentuating his features, it made him look more gaunt. From afar his eyes looked dark and lifeless, devoid of any color. From this distance you couldn’t tell if it was drool coming down his chin, but something other than blood was running down his face.

The man straightened, wiping the spit-like substance off his chin with the back of his hand. You barely noticed his change in stance because all of your attention was focused on the pocket knife held in his bloody hand. With no time to lose, you made a mad dash towards the office.

“NO NO NO NO NO”, you shouted in your desperation to get to the sanctuary. The night was going so peacefully. Why did he have to ruin it? How the hell did he even get a knife? Was he buried with it? Whatever the answer was, you weren't sticking around to find out. 

To not bash yourself into the office door, you use your hands to reduce the impact against your body. You banged on the door, “Boss, let me in! Hurry!” You kept frantically twisting the doorknob, wanting to get in the second it unlocked. 

Once the door opened, you quickly slid inside and shut the door. Chest heaving from the activity, you pressed yourself against the only entrance to the trailer office. Your boss gave you a look of concern as he slightly rolled to the side in his chair.

“Vermin?” he asked questionably. 

“No, there’s a man covered in blood in the cemetery. He has a knife with him so I came running down here” you huffed. 

Your boss cocked his brow, but you could tell from the look in his eye, he didn’t doubt you. He turned back to the monitor and checked the surveillance screen for the guy you described. “The camera you set up is live.. I don’t see anyone there..” he muttered into the hand that propped his chin. You strode over to the side of your boss to examine the screen. Just like he said, the zombie man was nowhere to be found. Deep down, you felt your frustration rise from within you. 

“I’m going to lose my shit because of this zombie fucker,” you groaned under your breath. 

Extra

Mary stood there as he watched the grave worker from the night before scream and run away. His face scrunched in disgust at their rude reaction. “I guess they don’t want a slice,” he shrugged. Knife in hand, he carved another slice of apple and brought the piece to his mouth. Savoring the flavor, he stopped to see the crimson liquid staining the hand holding the knife in red. That’s when he realized, “Ah fuck, I guess that’s why they ran...I guess I should find them and talk with them like an adult.” He paused for a minute before he cackled. “Yeah, as if I can even hold a civil conversation with someone who runs as soon as they see me,” he groaned. With a roll of his eyes, he walked deeper into the cemetery. When he spotted the human-sized dent in the iron fence, he stuffed the remains of the fruit in his mouth and crawled through, exiting the area designated for the dead.

[zombiesama]

I love Nanbaka bc the dumbest shit happens.

It takes place in a maximum security prison.

A frog terrorizes a blind man.

The main plot revolves around the main character's knife hands

The blind man from before's whole backstory is about random human combustion and how he was arrested for arson.

One of the characters isnt allowed in the gardens because he'd use the plants to make drugs.

A little ten year old has magic powers and had his organs sold to pay off a debt (I think he got some of his organs back, I cant remember)

One of the characters is 9 feet tall for no goddamn reason

Like 3 characters have been text subjects in some fucked up expiraments. (2 of them were related expiraments, the third had nothing to do with the others)

2 characters burnt off their number tattoos because they didnt get their lucky numbers and because they're obsessed with japanese bath houses and most bath houses don't allow people with tattoos

The main character is Japanese but can't write Japanese at all. He does know how to read though, and we only know this because he teaches a character who never went to school how to read.

Most of the characters are from countries other than Japan. All of them know Japanese. One of them never went to school and doesnt even know how to read, yet he knows a second language.

The Japanese character who cant write teaches the character who never went to school how to read (presumably) Japanese.

This character only wants to learn to read so he can play video games and enjoy manga for something other than the cool pictures.

Two of the characters hated eachother for no goddamn reason and had to be separated because they kept getting into fights. They later make up and are friends now.

They made up over pizza.

Blind man supposedly knows many languages just for funsies.

Man gets suspended from work (for almost murdering a 16 year old) and instead of just staying home he helps build a house (and other nonsense I cant remember)

A bunch of talking dogs are guards for one of the prison buildings.

Some of them go to the beach at one point. One of the inmates buried a guard in sand and no one bats an eye.

Pretty much everyone in this all male prison paints their nails.

Most skimped after character is made fun of because he's not a pretty boy. He is, objectively, prettier than the guys actually considered pretty boys.

There's a sexy robot nurse.

The doctor and the engineer are/were married and hate eachother

There is a custody battle over the sexy robot nurse.

[agathaharknes]

How are you?

Me? Not coping. Not well. Not well at all.

I live in a shitshow of a country and we are on the 40th week of being in the red (they use a traffic light system to tell us how screwed we are).

Week 40th of being alone with my mother who makes me so mad I punched a whole in my door last month. And just before my birthday my dad belittled me so much that in order to not commit arson I got a fucking facial paralysis, which kids, can get your face deformed. MY FACE IS MY MOST IMPORTANT ASSET IN THIS GODDAMNED FAMILY AND COUNTRY THAT CAN'T VALUE ME FOR MY BRAINS.

Last week I went into a 6 days coma of sleeping 24/7 because for three months I slept very little and wasn't able to rest at ALL.

My bunny died in February. My chinchilla died in April. My dog died in June. So I've been having a blast.

The only thing that made me not feel like a fucking twat was writing but my fanfic has died and because I am pathetic and have deep seated problems that 4 years of therapy have helped me very little with, if I don't get tangible evidence that my creations aren't shit I stop doing it completely.

My family is broke because of the millions of covidiots here. My grandparents who where the rock of this family are being sustained by my mother and they've gone into a terrible depression cause they haven't left the house since March.

WORST OF ALL IS MY CRIPPLING LONELINESS. Look, I may be an Ice Queen but if I don't do booty calls every once in a while I get touch starved and you bet your life I'm not letting my mother hug me for shit. Was that over sharing? Yes. But you asked.

And that's considering I'm finally on a treatment that fucking works! BUT GUESS WHAT? It's made me lose 22kg(44pounds) in 4 months and it's lowkey triggering the anorexia my dad engrained in me since age 7! So that's lovely!

Let resume things like this; Sam Smith's music has been on repeat for two weeks now.

[kushblazer666]

ok so i just watched 11 minutes of mucinex commercials for some goddamn reason

i have several thoughts, the very first one being IT SHOULD BE FUCKING ILLEGAL TO ADVERTISE PHARMACEUTICALS IN THE UNITED STATES BUT WE NEED TO HAVE FREEDOM

guaifenesin, which is what that shit it, is the shit you dont want in dextromethorphan cough syrup if youre tryna dissociate or robotrip or whatever u wann a call it, cuz if you drink a whole bottle you’ll probably hurl and it’s personified by a talking ball of mucus, at some points voiced by jason mantzoukas 

who always gets banished within 20 seconds. its like beyond satire. the literal marketing people behind it say “Mr. Mucus has the distinction of being one of the most recognized but least-liked ad characters in the world”

like what the fuck is wrong with this country this makes me wanna commit arson

[nightwingism]

5-Years in the Making

So hey, uhm. Hi guys. This isn’t Nightwing related at all, so if you’re following me for that, I’m sorry. This post isn’t the content for you. It’s also VERY long - 5 years long - so if you don’t want to read it, don’t worry about it. It’s also why I’m posting this at 3:13 AM.

I just wanted to take the time and tell a story of my life. Just stuff that has been effecting me since mid 2014. You obviously don’t have to read it. I just wanted to air it out. Get most of it off my chest. 

I feel like it’s important to talk about things that hurt you. That effect you. It’s better to do that than to bottle things up inside you. You know? Because if you just keep it bottled up, where’s the healing? If you let it out, maybe you can make room for something better.

That’s my philosophy anyways. The stuff I tell people. And this is me practicing what I preach.

Please don’t try to figure out who people are, or anything like that. I’d like to keep that a secret. Thanks.

In 2014, during my Junior year in High School, both my Uncle and my Grandpa died. My Uncle, who I was named after, died from an 11 month battle with cancer. My Grandpa died due to smoke inhalation during a house fire a month later that destroyed my Grandparent’s house, due to possibly arson caused by a person who was living in the home. This happened during the months of May - July, roughly. If I’m being honest, this time period really blurred together for me, as it happened just so fast. During this time, my maternal side of the family got really close to each other.

I mean, when I talk to other people about family and stuff, we were always abnormally close, but we got even closer during this time. We had a shirt made up and everything “(Blank) Strong” and what not. Over summer, we spent an ungodly amount of time with each other, as a sort of “mending period.” Slept over at each other’s house, never went anywhere and just stayed cooped up in the house. To be able to lean on each other for comfort. 

Which was very odd for me, since for the previous 17 years of my life, I was essentially bullied by most of them for showing any kind of emotions, for being too emotional. Verbal, emotional, physical. The normal bullying. I’m the youngest, and a boy, so I guess I was supposed to be this unfeeling, unemotional, robot? So to be expected to let out these emotions was weird. I don’t know. I wasn’t able to do it. It just never felt right for me to express sadness when the pain was so much stronger in others. It was a really hard time, feeling like my feelings were invalid due to others and the fact that I just felt like I couldn’t let them out.

It’s not like I didn’t feel bad, or missed - miss - them. I do. Still do 5 years later. But seeing how hard it was for my mom, dad, siblings, and just that whole side of the family, I felt like I had to kind of just saddle that shit up and put on some kind of front. I don’t know. Like I said, it was a really hard time.

My cousins weren’t much older, but they sure loved to act out the adult stuff. For that week, I went to every single party I could go to. Which was basically all of them. And I got my first taste of the stereotypically “high school parties” and all that comes with it. 

I got drunk for the first time, I got high for the first time, I got cross faded for the first time. The whole 9 yards. Turns out? Not a fan of the former and latter - the middle is alright I guess. Being doing the former a lot recently (but that’s a whole different can of worms). So after that, I basically said “nah, not for me. I don’t need that.” Can you really call it cutting it cold turkey if it was only for a week? I guess to just illustrate that point.

2014-2015 senior year went by and we continued to be a really close family.

For Christmas that year, in 2014, my Aunt boasted that she had got us all tickets to go to Cancun for the 4th of July weekend in 2015. Cool, great. During this time we all /loved/ each other, we’re all so close. We would all be 18 years or older by then, so we would all be legally able to drink in Mexico. What could possibly go wrong??

The answer is everything. Everything could go wrong.

This was during Summer School during my 1st year in college, where I was doing Cross Country and in the middle of the training days. So during the trip, I would have to run on a treadmill and workout. Not important to the story, just trying to situate this in my own personal timeline.

The first two days were fine. My cousins and I went to the “club” and I danced with a girl twice my height and totally out of my league. I swam with my newborn niece, babysat my young cousin. My dad recommended me some drinks that mask the taste of alcohol. It was fun. At night my cousins and I would “FaceTime” all of our girlfriends before going to bed or whenever. I put FaceTime in quotes because we had to use this special app due to location and everything. it was weird. I also don’t have an iPhone so.

It really was a great trip those two days.

Then the third day came around. It was on July 3rd. I only remember the date because it was literally the day before the 4th. So 4 - 1, yeah. Anyways. I forget how this whole thing started, but basically I wanted to stay in the room and talk to my at the time girlfriend. I missed her and all that. And I really didn’t want to play volleyball with random girls? But I was talked into it, and i said fine. Whatever.

Went to play, we played a few rounds. It was whatever. After those rounds, they said they were going to clean off and we’ll start a new round. I didn’t want to clean off, since we were still playing and that would just be a waste, so I waited around.

And waited. and waited. and waited.

Half hour goes by and I’m wondering where the hell they were. Turns out, they went to play a whole different game in the pool and just never told me. Ditched me in a game I didn’t even want to play to begin with.

Rude.

But whatever. So I went to go hang out with my niece because I love her and she was barely going to be 3 months. So still cute. 

We were told that we would have to wake up early for the next day (the 4th) because we had something planned, and to make sure we had alarms and room service and all of that situated. I made sure to set that up.

That night, the two cousins wanted to go out to the club again. I was still upset with them so I said no, it was going to be an early night for me. And it was an early night. That is, until they came back into the room at 3am drunk out of their minds with two random girls.

They were the opposite of quiet or considerate. I woke up basically right away. I forget how the conversations went, but the main thing that stuck out to me the most was one of them saying “If he wakes up, I’m leaving.” So I pretended to be asleep so they can have their fun. Whatever. I just want them to shut up and let me sleep.

After an hour of them talking loudly to each other and failing to get them in bed, my cousins take them back to their rooms. So this is roughly 4ish

Me being me locked the door on them, but had second thoughts and unlocked the door. That would have been funny but cruel.

But it probably would have been better than what I did.

So remember when I said I put alarms and room services? Yeah well I totally forgot about that. Turns out I asked for room service for 6am?? Which is an ungodly hour anyways. Lots of metal pans and plates and metal stuff was ushered into our room, and it was like a scene from a movie.

And I was irrationally pissed at everything. And I take full responsibility for being an idiot and not taking the high road. But at the moment, and at the time, it felt like the thing to do.

So I banged on a few of the pans. Turned on the TV and for some reason Women’s tennis was playing. Great. Turned that shit up high. And I really just wanted to give them a taste of their own medicine. Show them how it felt to be rudely woken up.

Well they didn’t like it much. After a few verbal spats thrown towards me, which is nothing new, been told most of those things by them my whole life, whatever, one of them says “he’s a (last name), of course he’s a bitch, all the (last names) are bitches” and that really got to me. 

Because, sure yeah, I can be a dick, an asshole, a douchebag, whatever. But he brought my family into this. My mom, my dad. My whole paternal side. And that really just broke the camel’s back.

To this day, I don’t know how I was able to get out of my bed, get into their bed, without spilling my bowl of cereal, and without them reacting before I was able to throw my 4th punch, but on God, I did it.

Though, I really wasn’t able to get a 5th one in, when they were able to react and go all 2v1. One held, one hit. That was a fun time. I learned I have a pretty solid head that could take a good amount of punches. Almost went blind in my right eye because one of them did the old “thumb in the eye socket” technique. Still have the scar under my eye from it too. But I got a nice clean cut on that one’s neck.

After that we had a very long verbal spat about how “we’re a family goddamn it” and “grandma and my mom thought you’ve been a douche this whole trip” and “you’re just jealous of how we are closer than you could ever be”, oh and a few more random things thrown in there.

They went back to bed, and I sat there on my bed. Watching Tennis. Each wack of the racquet just kind of reminding me of the events prior. 

Oh and it turned out we didn’t have to be up until like 9. So I laid there for like 2 hours like that. I just remember typing everything that happened and sending it to my girlfriend, because I just needed to tell someone, and I didn’t want to forget any of it.

It was also then that I basically had a dilemma.

If I told my family what happened, the trip was over. Completely over. This getaway adventure to escape our troubles would turn into a family spat. And I just couldn’t do that to them. I couldn’t.

So i didn’t.

I remember thinking up a lie on the spot to explain why my eye was bloodied. I said I fell into the side of the drawer. I remember my rational was something along the lines of “I needed something to be so obviously a lie, that they wouldn't bother to ask me to elaborate now”. And they didn’t.

This was the 4th. And I think we went home on the 7th? So I just needed to avoid everything for the next 3 days and then I was home free.

Before it was over, my mom and sister got into a little fight, so we both isolated ourselves from the group. She asked me what really happened, and I told her. So she really helped me throughout those days.

The trip was over. Woot. Now I never had to see any of them again, because I would be able to just say no to family get-togethers. Get a life of my own.

NOPE.

We had a dodger game THAT Friday. And we already bought the tickets. So I couldn’t really say no. And my girlfriend was coming too, so at least I’d have her to keep me sane.

Well, here’s the funny thing. It wasn’t until the drive to the game where my family finally turned to me and asked “So what really happened”.

Before I told the story, I literally BEGGED my mom not to say anything. I made her promise multiple times that she wouldn’t. And she promised and agreed. So I told my tale of astonishment, everything up to this point. How they were all called bitches and that’s what set me off to turn it physical.

Again, I just want to say that I know I shouldn’t have turned it physical. But insulting me is one thing, insulting my family is a whole other level.

Anyways, we get to the game. (There’s a part where my grandma was upset because I didn’t hug her? But I honestly don’t remember that because I just remember trying to find the bathroom. So maybe it happened, maybe it didn’t, I still don’t know) I get my food, and we go up to the seats. I’m already sitting on the top - away from everyone as much as I can - and everyone starts to work there way in. Eventually my mom and dad start walking up.

And this is where all hell breaks loose.

My mom shouts “the bitches are here” and that was really just. Wow. Insults are hurled, slander is tossed. It was a very lively discussion. And there I was. Just sitting there, because the ONE thing I didn’t want to happen, the ONE thing I tried so hard not to let happen, is unfolding right in front of me.

I remember one of the female cousins who wasn’t involved try to argue some point, one of the male cousins crying, and my aunt saying “did you see what he did to (my son’s) neck!” and my mom responding “Yes I did!” all proud. 

Fast forwarding to April 2016, and to sort of just fill everything in from Dodgers game to then, it was basically full of Facebook digs directed towards us, my grandma saying for us to knock it off and stop enticing them, and then more digs. 

For someone reason, no one in my family was safe. All of us had something negative to be said. But it basically boiled down to it being targeted at me (of course), my mom, and my oldest sister. 

Anyways, in April, my grandma was having a birthday party. I forget how old she was turning, but we had a big celebration. I remember it was only supposed be “X” amount of money, but it seemingly doubled over night to pay for things that weren’t needed to be paid. A lot of wasted money.

It was my grandma’s birthday though. And that wasn’t a thing I was going to miss, regardless of how everything was.

A lot of things transpired that night. Small things. But things none the less.

The next day, I sent a text to my aunt, telling her what I felt and why I felt that way. I believe it was mainly addressed to talk how she was being rude to my girlfriend, and I didn’t appreciate that, and asking her to treat her with more respect. Didn’t go over well. I think I got a meme as a reply that was saying “the world doesn’t revolve around you”. Yeah.

A few days later, my oldest sister and I went to my grandma’s to talk to her. Because we felt like this was just an awful situation for us and we wanted to try to get her to see that we weren’t doing anything. Anyways, I guess during this time, one of the male cousins was texting my other sister.

Essentially, he said my sister lied about a very traumatic effect that happened to her, which still effects her to this day, and that if it “really did happen, there would be a police report”.

I don’t think I’ve cried that hard in a long time. I remember breaking down and just. Yeah. We showed it to my grandma, because there’s no way this could be real? Right? And I remember I was furious. I was so fucking pissed off. I was /visibly/ shaking.

For the next, I don’t know, 2 hours, me and him went back and forth in text messages. Just hurling insults at each other. I eventually started to target his mom, my aunt, because he made a side comment about “don’t talk about my mom” and, cmon, that’s like, an invitation at that point, especially in that mindset. 

Side note, a lot of those insults thrown at me are now inside jokes between my friends and I because they were just the stupidest things I’ve ever been called.

So I was insulting him, insulting my aunt, and just ready to take on the world at this point. Because, honestly, at this point I was just holding on to my anger. It wasn’t good at all. And to have something like that be said about my sister? It really brought that fire to life. And it’s the main reason why I can never really forgive them. At least him. 

But that’s a whole other story on why.

So maybe a couple days later, my whole family gets a message on facebook. It’s a 6 paged message that essentially boils down to “this is what is wrong with you, you, you and you, and you guys are toxic as hell and you guys are out of our lives.

My favorite part is when I’m called a “selfish, ungrateful, self-entitled punk” and how I’m jealous and want to be like my cousin. Which is hilarious. She also mentions the traumatic experience in quotes, which pissed me off, because quotes usually indicate the idea of a falsehood that is being passed along as facts. 

From there, we don’t talk. We don’t talk for a year or so.

I don’t think it was until mid to late 2017 where people started to talk to each other again. Thanksgiving and Christmas usually forced us. But we slowly started doing things together, and having family events with each other that last longer than an hour.

And now it’s 2019. And we are doing full on holidays again. Inviting each other to these things out of the blue. Acting like nothing ever happened. Back to the “old days” sort of deal. 

“The healing process.”

And I just don’t know. I don’t like going to these things still. I’m still angry at everything. I’m still hurting from it all. 

I’ve been wearing this fucking mask at these events all these years, reinforcing it after each use, acting like I can stand to be there, that I don’t want to get up and just run away. I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to use school as an excuse to leave events early this year. But that could only go so far.

And it’s been 5 years. And I don’t know what to do. 

Except write it all down, throw it into the wind, and just try to heal I guess. Heal as much as I possibly can.

[the-very-rubiest]

4 5 7 12 25 36 53 💫 can't decide on less i'm afraid

And I'm glad you didn't! So many questions, THANK YOU, you're a gift and a blessing. Without further ado, here goes:

4. what are you looking forward to?

Right now? The time after my exams when I'm finally FREE and don't have to constantly choose between forcing myself to study or the nagging guilt of not-doing-enough. The BC show + VIP thingy in September (GJPA if you ruin this for me, I will commit actual arson). Hopefully getting to travel and leave the gODDAMN COUNTRY again in October (maybe for a week?) and seeing a plane from the inside for the first time since 2019. All of these are so uncertain right now. And everything else is even MORE uncertain. Help 😭

5. is there anyone who can always make you smile?

A whole list of people! The first one is my dad, who can eventually get me laughing again no matter how sad, frightened or grumpy I am. My best friend, who's basically my family at this point and has been a constant in my life when everyone else keeps coming and going. My best guy friend from uni, who's just the best kind of Lunatic (affectionate). As far as celebrities go, the one-n-only Joel Hokka. And now…I guess there's you, too. This is gonna sound cheesy, but talking to you has unlocked a part of my personality even I didn't know I had, and it scares me a little but I wouldn't have it any other way.

7. what was your life like last year?

Like, exactly one year ago? Pretty bad, but about to get better. Lockdowns still had my mental health in a chokehold, my brain was constantly trying to convince me I was severely ill and dying over the tiniest things, I was skinnier than ever and just felt frail and like I was fading. I'd gotten my first vaccine dose recently, and between the world opening up and my mom making me exercise and finding refuge in the world of fiction I was slowly regaining my sanity. Then a few days later PMA by All Time Low and Pale Waves came out and it revived me a little, and another few weeks later I got my second dose and decided to finally check out BC after knowing of them for a while and my life has gotten so much better since. The rest is history.

12. what is something you want right now?

Already answered here, but I'd like to add: Some time where I don't constantly have to do something, enough that I don't need to fret and decide what to do with my precious few unscheduled hours. The power and motivation to study for my oral exam, as much as I need to study. Some certainties where so much in my life is uncertain. Right now, those are the most urgent things.

25. role model

I don't have just one, I steal traits and skills from everyone I find cool like a greedy little magpie. I guess the closest to an aspirational figure for me is Aleksi though? I admire how comfortable he seems in everything he does, the effect he has on people, the way he can win their love so effortlessly and keep it despite his quirks and pointy edges. One day I'd like to have the same effect on others, radiate the same comfort and childlike joy of life paired with twinkly-eyed maturity. I guess it's because I see so much of myself in him that this actually seems achievable, you know?

36. 3 dreams you want to fulfill?

I was gonna say "Just three?" but now I honestly have trouble coming up with three at all. I'm not counting goals where achievement is just a matter of time here BTW, only "I hope this can happen someday/it'll likely happen but no idea when," no "this will happen in the foreseeable future."

Dream 1 is to move out to a place I like, a place that's my own, where I can decide what I eat and when I sleep and when I do chores and don't owe anyone an explanation when I want to go somewhere. Just…freedom within four walls. That's all I ask.

Dream 2 is to find someone I love who loves me just as much and just…experience what it's like to love and be loved. Build a life together if it works out. If not, at least know what it feels like and that I'm capable of experiencing it…does that make sense?

Dream 3 (AKA the most unrealistic one…I guess?) is to create a story that finds a large audience. I'm talking active online fandom, fanworks, maybe even an adaptation of some kind? I wouldn't even wanna be famous for it myself. I'd just like to see something I write reach so many people and see what they create out of it.

53. 5 things that make me happy

1: Listening to my favorite songs, undisturbed and uninterrupted, just jamming out.

2: Getting friends or loved ones into stuff I'm into.

3: Plushies!

4: That feeling of being done with a task (or just your work for the day) and knowing you can kick back and relax now.

5: Doing my silly little exercises and seeing how strong I've gotten. Progress! 💪

Well! Those were all the questions. Thank you for these, you made me literally bare my soul in front of you, hope you enjoyed the ride! 💖

[palestinianliberator]

Story of our family’s blood curse

OKAY SO I didn’t realize how detailed this was until I actually sat down to try and write about it...but I’ll try to keep things juicy and concise.

It’s important to preface this by saying that in my village, there are three major families, or “clans”. There’s Manasrah, which my family hails from, Saramah, and Awowda. These clans supersede the immediate family units, and are incredibly unified and caring of one another. 

The story starts with my grandma Mohdia and her three brothers, Musa [also known as Moses], Yousef, and Tawfik.

My grandmother spent her whole life in Palestine, very rarely leaving, while her brothers moved around the world to find work - Tawfik and Yousef moving separately to the US, and Musa moving to El Salvador where he started a family and became known as “Moses al-Arabiy” [Moses the Arab].

Yousef had 5 sons and and 4 daughters, one of his sons were Waleed and one of his grandkids was Khaled. Waleed was a good kid, working with his father and helping to support both his family, while Khaled was a gambling alcoholic who would beg friends and family for money. Yousef’s wife [who hails from the Saramah clan] had a daughter from a previous marriage who herself had a son, Mohammad. This daughter and son were not a part of their new family [my family basically], as they were loyal to her biological father of the opposing clan and remained with them. I KNOW THIS IS PROBABLY CONFUSING BUT BEAR WITH ME!

One day in the mid to late 1960s, Khaled went up to Mohammad, who was a wealthy man, and asked for money. Mohammad denied him and apparently chastised his behavior and inability to support himself. Khaled, drunk and furious at the slight, gunned Mohammad down and ran off, going into hiding.

Now my village is INCREDIBLY strict when it comes to dishing out justice, and they take family honor and alliances very seriously - when it came out that Khaled was responsible for the murder of Mohammad, our family offered up his life to make things even, knowing that he was guilty of murder and should face punishment for what he’d done. Not everyone agreed with this, but it was seen as the best way to keep things from escalating. Khaled was then executed, and after a period of mourning for both victims, things went back to normal.

Except that the mother and uncle of the family friend that was murdered weren’t satisfied. Keep in mind, my grandma’s brother/my “uncle” and my family are of the Manasrah clan, while the murdered man and his bereaved family were from the Saramah clan.

The mother, distraught at the loss of her successful and beloved son, went out into the village declaring that God had not allowed true justice to prevail, and that she would cast a blood curse on Yousef [her mother’s new husband], his family, and his entire lineage, and that she would seal it with blood so that nobody will ever forget the crime committed against her, her family, and her clan. Think of how serious and committed someone must be to go out and publicly speak of blood magic in a relatively conservative village like this - she wasn’t joking around. Not long after this, she disappeared completely. 

Things remained somewhat tense, but overall okay.

Several years later, however, one of Yousef’s kids was killed under “unknown circumstances”, his body dumped in the street. The general consensus was that the family of Mohammad, the man killed previously, was responsible, but otherwise nothing solid and things eventually moved on.

In retrospect, that was the “blood” that sealed her curse.

Now switching gears and going back to Moses al-Araby, my grandma’s other brother living in Bolivia. He was involved in leftist revolutionary movements and opposed the US backed government that took over following the coup in 1964. I don’t know too many details about his life, but I hope to learn more as I reach out to family still in Bolivia in the future. Anyways, after the collapse of the organization Moses was involved in, he went into hiding.

Several years later, sometime in the mid to late 60s, Tawfiq [the last of my grandma’s brothers] travelled with his son to Bolivia to meet with Moses, not knowing ANYTHING of his involvement with leftist revolutionary groups, and not being involved in any sort of political movements himself. Tawfiq was falsely identified as Moses, and was assassinated along with his son by a hit squad. Moses used this as an opportunity to flee the country, going into hiding in the Middle East for a period, before he himself was eventually killed by Israeli forces in the late 80s. 

Now back to Yousef, who in the late 70s was living in Idaho with his wife and some Waleed, where they owned a jeans and fashion store. One day, both Yousef and his 25 year old son Waleed were assassinated in a case that, to this day, remains an “unsolved murder”. The funny thing is, we know who did it, and we know where this individual currently lives.

Anyways, it was made well known that the assassination of both Yousef and Waleed was still part of the mother’s payback, and she followed through with her threat to murder her biological mother’s new husband. This entire time, however, she remained missing. She was never seen again after her initial threats of a blood curse. The building where Yousef and his son was assassinated is know known as a “haunted location”, a building in which future tenants have claimed to here voices and shouting, and where a man eventually hung himself. You can read about some of that bit here. So it’s great to know that if I ever want to visit my distant uncle, I can find his spirit in that building. 

The body count at this point is 7, including the original murder and murderer. 

Given this brazen attack on our family, and given that we knew the two men responsible for the murder, our clan decided to strike back. One of the two murderers was killed and his body hidden in a dessert in Las Vegas. you can read about that in the link above^. I don’t know who was responsible exactly, but it’s common knowledge that it was all in connection to the assassination of Yousef and his son.

Man there is so much more that I’m glossing over, but I’m trying to keep this from turning into a novel x_x.

There’s an ENTIRE other story about how this back and forth killing led to a feud so big that the IDF had to storm Deir Dibwan to resolve things, all sparked by two more killings tied to clan relations with this blood curse/feud.

By the end of the initial killing spree, each of my grandmother’s brothers had been murdered, with people at this point blaming the blood curse, and hoping it was the end.

Well...it wasn’t. 

In the years since - two of Yousef’s sons died in car accidents, and a third was gunned down in a random attack. One of his daughters died with her family in a house fire.

One of Moses’ kids was gunned down in Bolivia under unknown circumstances.

Two of Tawfiq’s kids lost ALL of their money in different ways, leaving their families in shambles. One of his daughters committed suicide.

One of Tawfiq’s grandkids, the ~rapper~ Mally Mall [who is my cousin lol] had his house burn down, killing his pet wildcat.

Another of Tawfiq’s kids just went missing one day, and was never found.

One of Tawfiq’s grandkids also went missing, but he was eventually found in his car, which had been set on fire with him inside.

My grandma’s sister, who had been through enough shit with al-Nakba and some stuff that had happened to her due to Israeli forces, ended up losing her eye.

Then you have my immediate family & immediate aunts and uncles - I don’t want to divulge THEIR personal details here, but suffice to say......things are pretty messy. My grandma lost two of her children, and three of my aunts and uncles lost 4 children between them. My aunt had her San Francisco store burned down in an arson attack and lost a child to drowning. I came into this post fully intended to discuss some of the personal details with my family/uncles that more recently reflected manifestations of ~the curse~, but I realize now that I don’t want to share that info publicly...sorry x_x. 

To this day, the curse and this entire ordeal is pretty well-known throughout the village, and two clans have since made amends. There have also been multiple “attempts” to tackle the blood curse, but.....you know, HOW do you know when one has been lifted? Especially one cast out of such malice. And sure, you can just go and blame any negative occurrence on ~a curse~, but given that the body count is well over 20, given the extreme unlikelihood that so many houses in my family have been burned down, given that my uncle’s goddamn spirit is said to still haunt the building where he was assassinated.......you know??

At this point, any negative major event that happens, we joke about as being the result of the curse~ [and those that know me..............well.. (: ]. At this point I’m going to stop typing, because holy hell this is long.....and I should probably proofread it first, but I just want to post it before I lose everything. 

[number63liveblogs]

Cat’s Cradle 39-50

Midgets are, after all, diversions for silly or quiet times[.]

He’s a goddamn human person. Like, no doubt this was how people used to think and talk about people with visible disabilities, but just imagine what it was like, living your life with people just… gawking at you no matter where you went. Absolutely unbelievable.

Ugh.

“The hook,” he said. “No fines, no probation, no thirty days in jail. It’s the hook. The hook for stealing, for murder, for arson, for treason, for rape, for being a peeping Tom. Break a law—any damn law at all—and it’s the hook. Everybody can understand that, and San Lorenzo is the best-behaved country in the world.”

If breaking any law is met with the same punishment what reason does someone have not to start murdering people because they are worried they get caught for littering? This is not how humans work.

I think I’m seeing where the plot of the book is going. We know that both the US and USSR have ice-nine, so it getting to the ocean and destroying the whole world is all but an inevitability, but considering that this is a book and the narrator is just about to meet two of the three people we know have ice-nine (unless Newt’s ex stole all of his stash) it’s much more likely that they’ll end up causing the end of the world somehow.

How they’ll do it depends on what the book is trying to say. We have some of the same theme of inevitability and free will as in Slaughterhouse Five, and that book was pretty clearly for trying to defy your destiny.

But we don’t actually know what Jonah’s grand purpose actually is, do we? Just that it has something to do with Dr. Hoenikker, so most likely ice-nine. It might be that his destiny is to stop the end of the world.

[smokeybrand]

The Worst

I wasn't really planning to touch this one because I'm so goddamn tired but this sh*t with the Duggars is itching my booty so I'm going in. I got time today. Josh Duggar f*cks kids. Some of those kids were his own sisters. He was caught, convicted, and sent off to conversion therapy camp instead of jail because his pops' unwieldy power in Arkansas. In 2015. This all came out in 2015 because of rather diligent reporters and investigators. That's when we found out about the transgressions, which actually took place before then. Dude went through all of that, did all of those terrible things, BEFORE 2015! By the time all of this came out, the "issue" had already been resolved and that coward hid behind his "faith" through PR snippets and cats just okey-doked it. Sure, the Duggar lost their show, but who cares? They're still supported by the religious zealots on the Right. They still wield unheard of power in Arkansas, all because the Duggars are “Christian” in the “right” way. Because they're "good" people. Well, it's 2021 and ol' Joshy-boy is facing forty years for the same sh*t he got busted on, way back before 2015. I guess f*cking kids is “Christian” in the “right”, according to how these people interpret the bible. Why the f*ck is this even a thing? How the f*ck is this a thing. More importantly, where the f*ck are all of these bible-thumping, Conservative hypocrites, who support straight up insurrection, now that one of their own is about to be nailed to the wall for the most heinous sh*t a person can do? Today, I awoke and chose all the violence.

Duggar was convicted as a minor but was never held accountable for his bullsh*t and now, some sixteen years later since he was exposed as a predator and threat, cat is on the hook for some verifiable, factually provable, horrific sh*t. The feds found terabytes upon terabytes of graphic child porn on his personal computer. Dude had a whole ass Ashley Madison account a while back, for which has since apologized,but those thing are used strictly for adultery. So, Joshy-boy is on record for molesting kids as a minor, cheating on his wife through the interwebs, and has now got the feds on his butt, because he picture of kiddy butts on hand. You see, that's a patter of escalation. Josh Duggar is a monster and it makes me wonder how that monster was allowed to roam or, more importantly, how man other monsters are hiding in that f*cked up family. Of course, the family is denying the claims but, with that verifiable history, you can really be telling me this asshole ain't out here f*cking all of the underage partners he can get his hands on. Really? He f*cked his sisters, man! There are no limits to this dude's disgusting predilections. He's been doing the same sh*t he got nailed with from before, for decades. Why would he ever stop? Who stops their bullsh*t, especially after getting caught and let go with a slap on the wrist? If I burn down an orphanage and you make me pick up trash as a consequence, I'm just going to keep committing arson on sh*t because picking up trash ain't sh*t. The juice id definitely worth the squeeze at that point and I am thirsty, bud. So was Joshy-boy, but for kiddy-diddling, not theoretical arson.

Josh Duggar has been getting away with f*cking kids for decades. Decades of slipping the noose because of his clout and the fact his family is viewed as 'God fearing.” I'm not even going to get into that toxic mess, and how it enabled this scumbag, but ol' Joshy-boy has little girls in his own home, where, because of his "faith" his word is law. What the f*ck is he doing to those kids? He diddled his little sisters. That's fact. He was convicted of that in the court of law. That's fact. He has a record for that and was never properly disciplined for it. That's fact. If he could do that to them, and get away with it unscathed, it's not unheard of to think he could do it to his own. And that's not to slight his boys because, if he's been doing this since he was a kid and escalation is a thing, pretty sure a little boy butt is fine now, too. Of course, this is all speculation on my part but I'm comfortable throwing around these alleged accusations considering the actual evidence onhand. I'm comfortable say Josh Duggar f*cks because he f*cked his sister when she was a kid. One is more than enough, bud. Which is why I don't understand how he has gotten away with this sh*t for years after. Why wasn't Duggar put on a list like a regular person? Why wasn't he forced into proper therapy? Why wasn't he watched like a hawk for the rest of his life? Why was he allowed to escape consequence and re-offend for decades? Why were his sisters forced to interact with this dude on that show for years, when every KNEW what he did to them? Why the f*ck was he allowed back around kids and no one said a peep until the feds found straight up, hardcore, graphic child pornography on his home computer?

Sh*t like this is why i don't understand how Conservative people feel like they know the moral way. They use the bible as some sort of blanket, get-out-of-jail-free card, refusing to even acknowledge their transgressions. Even Matt Gaetz is doing that sh*t. Sure, he's leaning heavy into the "cancel culture" lie, even though there are literal Venmo receipts of him buying sex from a minor, but he claims this a witch hunt predicated on his loyalty to 45 and his strong Conservative values. Values that are intrinsically linked to that Jesus jargon. So, according to him, he can traffic women for sex, at leas one of which was underage but we'll see how many actually were, while being engaged to a woman he claims to love, but this is persecution? This is a politically motivated attack? He's the victim? Really? It doesn't even stop there. Most cats who still believe in 45, and i mean actually believe in him because they think that asshole is some sort of real life Second Coming, conveniently dismiss his long record of adultery, the fact that he uses their faith as a disingenuous prop, and, more to the point of this discussion, THE COUNTLESS ACCUSATIONS OF CHILD RAPE! Dude beat up a fourteen year old before raping her, because he wanted to take her virginity by said rape, but Epstein raped her first, so she was “defiled” when it was his turn to rape her and he was mad about it. So, I repeat, Trump beat up the fourteen year old girl before he raped her, for already being raped. Your president did that sh*t and I know he did because she sued. Put that in your pocket because we're going to circle back around to it in a bit.

There was an entire documentary about Epstein on Netflix and 45's name is riddled throughout it. There are Cosby levels of victims in his ledger and, like Cosby, where there's smoke, there is definitely fire, bud. Trump has for sure f*cked at least one child and that's more enough. He should be castrated and tossed into a hole, not uplifted as some great leader who is going to lead America into it's next golden age. If you actually think that, you're a f*cking idiot, and I mean that in the most aggressively disrespectful way possible. If you actually, in your heart, believe that Donald f*cking Trump is some sort of moral barometer, that he is the one best fit to guide this country into the future, you are the worst kind of person and don't deserve a voice in our democracy. The girl who sued him over her traumatic experience, is in that doc and recalls her story exactly the same way she's told it for decades, exactly as i heard it a decade and half ago. See? Full circle. This chick sued him and he settled. He paid her to make that sh*t go away, per usual, the December before his inauguration and no one talked about that. The difference in her case and the many, many, other settlements, is the fact that Trump doesn't pay anyone without at least three appeals or the Feds force him. He shot this chick an undisclosed amount of loot almost immediately. I don't even think her case made it to trial. I think they were still in Discovery and he whipped out the checkbook. Why was that? Maybe he didn't want her talking after he became President? Or maybe because she could substantiate the horrible f*cking claims she has never deviated from making, for two whole ass decades? I f*cking wonder.

Now, I'm not, in anyway, saying the Left doesn't have their issues. Of course they do. When you get to a certain amount of wealth and power, your moral compass goes wacky and you end up in the papers for giving everyone herpes or trying to start a cult or some sh*t. Celebrities are f*cking weird, bud. What I am saying is the fact that most of these ridiculously damaging and hypocritical f*ck problems, tend to err on The Right more than the Left. I mean, Hilary Clinton has buried bodies, for sure, and i don't mean just Benghazi but, since 2000, the Right has been riddled with some of the most egregious acts you can imagine, in terms of Christian morality. There's a list you can check out on Wikipedia and that hard "R" pops up a great many times. Lots of infidelity on the Left. Lots of the OTHER stuff AND infidelity on the right. It's pathological with these people. The harder you thump that bible, the harder you're apparently thumping some strange. Be it trans trysts, adulterous liaisons, getting it the gay way, straight up sexual battery, or outright rape, the Right is just out here, throwing their sh*t around at whatever will gush. However, when caught, they hide behind their “faith” as a deterrent from actual accountability. It's f*cking disgusting, dude. I mean, Bill Clinton got head from a co-ed in the Oval office but Trump gave head to a nine year old in one of the elevators at Mar-a-Lago. These are not the same and just because one overtly pretends Jesus is his savior, doesn't mean he should get that pass or that the comparison is in anyway apt.

The cognitive dissonance between espousing the virtues of Christ and actually living them is always so stark with these Conservatives. It's a tool to them, not a calling, not a guide. But so many of their proliferate eat that sh*t up. F*cking why? These people are pandering to you. They don't respect your beliefs. They literally f*ck kids. How can they be good Christians and do sh*t like that? None of those people are genuine in their belief. How the f*ck can you just give these assholes the pass? How can you exalt them as idols worth following, protecting, and aggrandizing? None of those frauds worship the way you do. Hell, the people you look to in order to deliver the Word, don't even live the Godly life. They're multi-millionaires flying around in personal jets they bought from Tyler Perry, because God told them they shouldn't have to fly coach with all those demons. Those demons are you, you f*cking sheep. That's how they see you. From your Orange demagogue to your sycophant senators to your televangelist false idols, you are the demons. You are the fodder. You are the rubes. And they know you'll turn the other cheek as they spread them kiddy cheeks, because all they have to do is hold a bible upside down from time to time and say “God is good.”

[vixianna]

But Where’s the Legislation?!

Is it just me, or are other PoC uncomfortable with the white discoursers obsession with legislation as the One True Form of Systematic Oppression? Not only is that not true, but expecting legislation in a 21st century western country to specifically mention a group completely misunderstands how oppression actually works.

Black people are still oppressed in America, and it’s not because there is specific legislation mentioning us to keep us from getting houses or marrying. That’s not what oppression looks like in America. (For the most part. Not even the bathroom bills that target transness specifically mention trans people.)

What you should look for in legislation, when you’re looking at legislation, is disproportionate impact. You are looking to see if how the law is crafted, regardless of if it was the crafter’s intent, disproportionately impacts one group over another. 

The reason for marriage equality isn’t because it specifically targeted LGBT+ folks, but because it disproportionately affected(basically entirely affected) the community. The reason the voter ID laws are getting struck down right now isn’t because it specifically mentions PoCs, but because it disproportionately affects us. 

And this is a specifically white problem and outlook. It’s the same as when white racists scream about how “Jim Crow is over and there’s no segregation and there’s no oppression now!” It’s the same with the white liberal obsession with legal rights, like marriage equality, meaning that LGBT+ oppression is over. It’s the same when exclusionists and inclusionists center their whole goddamn arguments about whether this or that legislation actually does fucking whatever to ace people. (Show me the country where it’s ILLEGAL to be ace?????!)

That’s a damn smoke screen. Oppression, systematic oppression, isn’t based around explicit marginalization from society. Marginalization in this case being the society in question is trying to force the group out of society itself. To be “marginalized” here isn’t the same as what most people in the discourse use the word to mean. Being kicked out of your home, denied housing, fired from your job, ect. are forms of marginalization. They seek not to exploit members of the class, but drive them from society itself.

The most basic forms of oppression involve economic exploitation. So, you’ll see members of this class concentrated in positions that allow their labor to be extracted from them without fair(or with no) compensation. This is why, one of the reasons why, LGBT+ people are disproportionately poor. (The same with PoC. There’s a longer, semi-related post, about how race was created and maintained to craft a social class of proles to be economically exploited for the norm’d classes benefit.) 

There are other forms of (systematic) oppression of course, but marginalization is the most severe form of physical material oppression. When Marginalization takes place, the society has “decided” this crafted class is so “abhorrent” they aren’t even worth economically exploiting. (Think of the genocides of indigenous people’s around the world.) 

Therefore, it’s possible, and in fact entirely probable that systematic oppression is taking place without Marginalization.(the final form of Marginalization is attempted or completed genocide btw.) By the time legislation comes into play that is specifically crafted to curtail the rights, movement, freedom, ect of a crafted class, you are in the beginning stages of Marginalization. 

Most oppression these days(ableism is an exception), isn’t in a Marginalization stage. It’s in less extreme stages of oppression(this includes against PoC, including fellow black people.) 

That being the case, how can we conclude systematic oppression is taking place before we get to the extremes of Marginalization? 

I mentioned Economic Exploitation, and considering we’re living in a Capitalist fun house of death and suffering, that’s a good place to start. There’s also Systematic Violence. I consider all forms of oppression systematic violence, but in this cause I mean physical(and emotional) violence and abuse. Increased deaths, sexual assault, physical assaults, arson, defacing of property, ect. You’re looking at people burning down or bombing religious centers(or the attack on the LGBT center that happened recently). This will happen at the individual and larger levels of an identified group. So, disproportionately violent interactions accruing to a certain group is an example of systematic oppression. 

For systematic oppression absent Marginalization, we would expect to see Economic Exploitation and Systematic Violence.

So discoursers, on both sides, should be asking:

- Are aces disproportionately targeted for physical violence? - Are aces disproportionately poor? - Are aces disproportionately homeless? - Are aces exposed to increased violence against their property?(i.e. someone torching your home for being ace)

Ect.   

Another form of systematic oppression is “powerlessness” and this comes from the group in question being forced away from positions of power in society. This is open LGBT+ people being removed from office or not voted for. This is, in an internalized way, members of the group thinking they will never end their own oppression(I’ve seen discourers say this, all of them exclusionists, but this is a common sentiment among the oppressed). Radical liberation thinking involves the idea you can accrue power and dismantle the system oppressing you, and one of the more insidious ways that oppression works to keep the oppressed buying into the system itself is forcing them to believe their oppression is inevitable and unchangeable.

One of the biggest results of “powerlessness” on a personal level is psychological disorder. Feeling you have no control over your life or power to protect yourself/do things, causes psychological distress. For groups affected by oppression which takes the form of powerlessness(and powerlessness is a psychological campaign taken up by the norm’d group in power), you’d expect to see increased mental illness. You also expect feelings of brokenness, worthlessness, self-esteem problems, comparing themselves to the norm and hating that they deviate, ect.

So discoursers on both sides should be asking:

- Do aces experience higher than average rates of depression? - Do aces experience higher than average rates of anxiety? - Are they more likely to be suicidal or self harm? - Is this psychological distress used to signal that they are ‘unfit’ or inherently ‘sick’? - Are aces disproportionately barred from positions of power in society?

As a final semi-related note, there is a difference between visibility, hypervisibility, and invisibility, that isn’t really talked about in discourse. Neither hypervisibility or invisibility is good or a privilege. Black people are hypervisible(and invisible), trans people(especially trans women) are hypervisible. NDN people’s and Asian peoples and Ace people are invisible. People who are hypervisible often see invisibility as a gift or proof of lack of oppression. It’s not. To be invisible is to be rendered not just unseen, but silenced. Your pain, suffering, oppression isn’t just ignored, it is denied. Both the “model minority” myth for Asians and “all NDNs are extinct” myth exist to deny, ignore, and (at the most extreme) silence the experiences and oppression of these two groups. Hypervisibility requires being surveilled but not seen. It means being viewed as an object, being fetishized, being treated as rhetorical device instead of human. It means being viewed as a threat, as an walking stereotype and example of a group instead of a person. It is depersonalization through means of obliterating personal identity.  

That ace people are “unknown” isn’t invisibility on its own, however, enforcement of invisibility requires certain things. It requires the denial of examples of systematic ill-treatment. It requires the silencing of attempts of the group to organize, to create language to describe their own experiences, to accept their experiences as having happened or valid examples of prejudice against them. To enforce invisibility is ultimately about silencing. So examples of invisibility will mostly be focused around attempts to deny the reality of or redefine the reality of the groups in question.  Truscum rhetoric is based around enforced invisibility as an example. 

Proving that aces aren’t hypervisible isn’t proof on its own as a lack of oppression(as that’s not what oppression is/means). A lot of groups who are hypervisible define their experiences as the real oppression. And the same can be said of invisible groups. Every ace who has ever typed “well, at least people know what being gay is!” is mistaking hypervisibility for visibility.(visibility here being the state of being seen, acknowledged, understood, and listened to, the default state of the norm.) Most oppressed groups experience both forms of social oppression, but some experience only one or the other. (NBs for example suffer from being invisible, not hypervisible, and gay and lesbian people are for the most part rendered hypervisible not invisible.) But the fact one group is hypervisible and another is invisible does not mean that either group isn’t experiencing oppression.

You need to look at actual stats about the group in question.

This is aimed at everyone in the discourse, please please stop centering Systematic Oppression around legislation and legal rights. That’s not the only way oppression takes places. That’s not even the most common way oppression takes places in 21st century western countries. Branch out and actually talk about oppression and oppression dynamics rationally. Study the oppression of various groups outside of the LGBT+ family if you have to! The (basic) Dynamics of Oppression don’t change, just the target. 

[nyxelestia]

Here, have the first 1/11 of the next chapter of Frost Bite.

Since it’s spiraling out of control. Again.

Let me know what you think. :)

Steve woke up to the sound of Stiles' screaming.

Same way he had for the last three days.

Lurching out of his bed was almost routine at this point. He ran out of his room, almost hitting the opposite wall as he shot across the hall to Stiles' room.

Inside, Steve barely dodged Stiles' flailing limbs to squeeze in behind the sleeping boy.

"Stiles," he said, in the calmest voice he could manage. He wrapped his arms around Stiles', pinning his arms in an embrace as the boy continued to thrash around, still stuck in a nightmare. "Stiles!"

Stiles jerked and his eyes finally opened as he yelled, "Dad!"

"He's okay," Steve said immediately, keeping his voice calm despite the flailing teenager in his arms. "He's okay, you're okay, you're in your bedroom, and the attack was several days ago."

Stiles stilled and looked around, chest heaving as he realized his surroundings. Clutching Stiles as tightly as he was, Steve could feel Stiles' heartbeat start to slow down.

"...Steve?" Stiles asked.

Steve nodded, his chin rubbing against the top of Stiles' head as the teen slumped down in bed. "Yeah," he said. "It's me."

"I woke you up, again," Stiles mumbled, squirming to disentangle himself from Steve's embrace. Steve let him go, sitting back a little and giving Stiles the space he needed.

"It's okay," Steve said. "I'll grab a nap later."

Stiles nodded - well, it was more of a vague jerk of his head, but close enough.

"Let's go make breakfast," Steve said. "We both need it."

He and Stiles didn't say a word as they headed down to the kitchen. He kept an eye on Stiles, letting him take the lead on breakfast. The simple actions helped wake him up and pull him further and further away from his nightmare. By the time they sat down to eat, Stiles was even grumbling about enriched wheat and whole grains and whatever the hell he decided was wrong with Steve's waffles, now.

Steve had tried to encourage Stiles to go running with him, that first night. It was a no-go, but cooking worked well-enough.

Halfway through, Steve heard the ringtone of Stiles' morning alarm from upstairs. Stiles jolted, but slipped upstairs to shut it off - and didn't come back down.

With a sigh, Steve covered up his breakfast to finish later, before clearing the rest of the plates.

He hoped Stiles was eating enough at school, because he sure as hell wasn't at home.

He hoped, but he didn't expect.

Upstairs, Steve got dressed and washed his face, scratching at the growing beard - but he still didn't shave it. A teenaged serial killer murdering several police officers in their own station drew press from across the country, right on the heels of another serial killers. The last thing this town needed was the media circus of Captain America in town.

Thank god his beard seemed to be a shade or two darker than his hair. Combined with a hat and some sunglasses, and no one ever had a clue who or what he was.

That came in handy half an hour later, when he and Stiles pulled up to the school. Steve parked just to be able to get out of the car and pull Stiles into a tight, full-bodied hug before letting him go.

"Thanks," Stiles said, not pulling away for several moments.

"Any time," Steve said. "And remember, send me a text or call me, and I'll come get you, okay? No matter what time it is. Your dad and I can clear things up with your school later."

Stiles nodded against Steve's chest before he pulled away. He clutched at his backpack straps, and looked nervously towards the school. There, Steve could see several students glancing right back at him.

"I hate living in a small town," Stiles said. "Everyone all up in each other's business."

"Is that why half of them seem to be pointing at me?" Steve asked. No one seemed to be pulling out their smartphones or anything, so it didn't look like he'd been made.

Stiles flushed. "When you went missing for a bit, I kinda mentioned my 'special forces uncle' in class, once. I think people were starting to think I'd made the whole thing up, until now."

Steve nodded. Hiding his face did nothing to hide his body, and he had no delusions about his physique. He patted Stiles on the back, reminded him to keep his phone on, and watched him walk into the school.

Stiles went, pausing once and only once as he looked to the side of the school. Steve followed his gaze to the bike racks, spotting Scott wheeling in and bending down to lock the bike. As soon as Scott looked up, Stiles turned away and walked into the school.

Scott didn't seem surprised, or even particularly hurt. He just looked resigned, slumping a little, before jogging up to the main entrance and slipping into the school, too.

Something was going to break, soon - and it killed Steve that he had no idea what it would be.

He climbed back into Stiles' jeep. It took him two tries but he got it working, and headed back home.

Beacon Hills had suffered two serial killers in a span of only a few months. Between Kate Argent's killing spree to cover up her arson, and Matt Dahler's bloody and brutal rampage through the local police force, most of California and half the rest of the country were zeroing in on this small town - and the survivors of the teenage serial killer's bloody last stand.

There were only about half a dozen reporters parked around the neighborhood, but they were bad enough.

While Stiles normally parked the jeep out in the driveway or even on the street for convenience, Steve pulled the jeep into the garage. Between the beard, the hat, and the sunglasses, it was unlikely that anyone would recognize Steve, even the press - but none of them were interested in tempting fate, or igniting a man-hunt for Steve's identity.

The house was a little dim, due to all the blinds being pulled shut. Granted, this being California, that didn't necessarily mean much, but it was such a jarring contrast to how it usually looked. Steve headed into the kitchen. He found John sitting at the table, working his way through the egg-white omelet Stiles had left for him while working on his department laptop.

Steve caught a glimpse of mangled, blood-covered flesh on the screen, and turned away.

"Are you home for the day, or just on a working lunch?" Steve asked.

"Bit of both," John said. "My deputies made me come home to eat, shower, and get some sleep, but I'll head back in a few hours." With a bitter smile, he said, "Every other law-enforcement agency with even a scratch of jurisdiction is coming in on this, anyway. Goddamn vultures." Taking another bite of his omelet, he muttered, "At least the FBI didn't send Rafael, this time."

"Scott's father?" Steve confirmed, reaching for his plate of unfinished waffles on the counter. Covered in fruit and saturated in syrup, John looked almost offended by it when Steve sat at the table and went back to eating it.

"Yeah," John said. "The man specializes in serial killers and mass murders. This sort of thing would be right up his alley. The only reason it isn't him is because of his own son's involvement." John clicked and typed something on the laptop, before pushing it away a bit. "God, I need a drink."

Steve froze, wondering if he needed to find an even better hiding spot for the booze he'd pilfered out of the kitchen when he first got here. John saw this, though, and waved away his concern. "Relax," he said. "I've barely got my job back, I'm not going to hit the bottle again anytime soon." He sighed. "I just really, really want to."

With a sympathetic nod, Steve resumed his breakfast, though he made a mental note to relocate the two bottles he'd found, just in case.

"Press still out there?" John asked. Steve nodded around his mouthful, and John groaned. "Fantastic," he grumbled. He eyed his laptop, seeming to debate something, then with a sigh, pulled it closer to him.

"Stiles always tells me not to read my own press," Steve said, realizing what John was doing.

John raised an eyebrow. Steve conceded with a silent nod, turning his attention back to his food. He didn't listen to that advice as much as he should, and John had even less buffers between him and the press than Steve did.

“What the…”

Steve looked up from his waffle to see John frowning at the news.

“Hm?”

“It’s saying that the only non-fatal injuries were me and Stiles,” John said, bewildered. Steve waited for him to elaborate, taking another bite of the waffle. “Steve - Scott was shot!”

The fork froze halfway up to Steve’s mouth, syrup dripping onto the table.

“…what?” Steve demanded, setting it down.

John kept reading, looking more and more panicked as he did.

“Abdominal,” John muttered, reaching the end of the clipping and looking lost as he looked at Steve. “He - I remember - it was the only shot Dahler fired, that night. I remember Melissa’s scream, and the blood…when Dahler was locking her in the cell, Scott was standing right next to me and he was - he was barely standing, and Steve, I could smell the blood, there was that much!”

The fork bent in his hand at that mental image, at the idea of a teenager locking up Melissa in one of the jail cells at gun-point.

A bullet-wound to the gut would have been the only thing keeping Steve at bay if someone held his mother at gunpoint.

The problem being that back when his mother was alive, such a wound would’ve killed Steve. But Scott…

“That’s not possible,” Steve said, thinking of this morning.

“I saw him-”

“I saw him bike up to school, this morning,” Steve said. John’s jaw snapped shut. “He - he was a little slow, but he was still moving and he didn’t seem to have any problem bending down to lock up his bike.” Steve swallowed, absently wiping that drop of maple syrup off the table. His conversation with Nat resurged in his memory. “He’s moving like I do, a few days after getting shot.”

John looked down at his sugar-free orange juice.

“This can’t be…” John took a deep breath. “That night, when Matt locked up Melissa in the cell…she was begging him to let her take care of Scott.” John shut his eyes, and Steve pretended he didn’t see the moisture on the man’s eyelashes. “Matt seemed so sure that Scott would be fine. I thought it was just typical teenaged misunderstanding of how the world works. Too many action movies, not enough education…” He opened his eyes, looking at Steve. “But at one point, he said…when Melissa was begging, Matt said to Scott, ‘they have no idea, do they?’”

Taking a deep breath and losing his appetite, Steve pushed his plate away. “Wait here,” he said, and went to retrieve his tablet.

Five minutes later, he was playing the video, one of the two Steve had made Nat send him. "This is the first video Natasha showed me," Steve said. When Scott and Allison started laying into each other, John's eyes opened wide and round in shock. "She's been helping Scott with his techniques, and Scott's been working with his girlfriend on it, too."

"This..." John swallowed, still not taking his eyes off the video. "This is - I had no idea he was even capable of something like this!"

"Neither was she," Steve murmured. "Originally, it was - I guess you could say the 'style' of the fight that first got to Nat. Allison and Scott look the way Natasha and I do when we spar, and Allison's fighting style was a little too familiar to her."

John slowly nodded. When the video ended, he looked Steve in the eye and asked, "'Originally'?"

Steve pulled up the second video. "It came around eight hours after this one, which Nat critiqued to help them." He hit play, then added, "Watch his lip."

A minute later, John frowned when Allison busted Scott's lip. It took another ten seconds for the implications to sink in, horror and confusion spreading across his face as he watched the remainder of the video in shocked silence.

"...eight hours?" John croaked, once it was over. "What - what does..." He shook his head, standing up and pacing by the table. "How can Scott have an advanced healing rate?" he asked. "No way in hell is he old enough to be a part of any kind of super-soldier experiment."

"And most child-soldier programs involve kidnapping a much younger child and isolating them from their family," Steve continued.

"God, everything's been so weird, lately," John said. "We still don't know whether or not Matt is connected to Argent, somehow. Hell, we still can't figure out why she murdered the Hales!"

Steve frowned, something niggling at his memory. "Hale?" he asked.

"Yeah, they're the family Kate Argent murdered six years ago," John recited. He paused, then looked at Steve. "Why?"

"That name sounds familiar," Steve said. It took him a few minutes to remotely access the SHIELD servers, but he ran a search on the name, narrowing it down to Beacon Hills.

Then his eyebrows shot up at the file that came up.

"Steve?"

"SHIELD had a file on them," Steve said. Eyes wide, John rounded the table, and Steve tilted the tablet towards him. It currently showed an old photo of the Hale family, dated to a decade ago. "But it's only the Bullshit Bureau."

"The what bureau?" John asked, looking between Steve and the old picture.

Steve set down the tablet , trying to figure out how best to explain this. "They're officially called the..." He tapped one of the more bureaucratic links on the file. "Department of Thaumaturgic Analysis and Preternatural Intelligence," he read off. "They study myths and legends to look for useful grains of truth. They rarely come up with anything, but when they do..."

"...when they do?" John prodded.

"...some of the mythological creatures from history and legend are real," Steve said. "Which I imagine would shock me more if my first mission in the 21st century didn't involve me fighting alongside a god from Norse mythology to battle aliens."

John fell back into the chair by Steve's. "That..."

"Apparently, either mermaids or selkies or something along those lines are real," Steve said with a shrug. "And serve as a unit in the US Navy. There are also rumors about a lot of programs around the world tapping into myths and legends. No one paid attention to them or thought they were anything more than Cold War propaganda. At least, not until there was a Norse god wandering around the halls and asking how to use the coffee machine. And the thing is, the object that started the Chitauri invasion? Also once nothing but another myth the Bullshit Bureau was chasing down, until it was in SHIELD's labs."

With a slow nod, John said, "And they're...what, investigating the Hale family?" he asked.

Steve started skimming the files on his screen again. "It's hard to tell - SHIELD is very need-to-know, so I can't actually see much. But..." He frowned. "It...looks like the Hales might not be human?"

John's eyebrows shot up. "On a scale of you to Thor, how 'not human' are we talking?" he asked.

"I have no idea," Steve admitted. "I'd put in a request for more access, but..."

"If it's not a mission or case you're working on, you're unlikely to get it," John said. Steve nodded, and the Sheriff sighed. "Okay, well - is there anything on the Argent family?"

"Believe it or not, I might have to ask Nat about that," Steve said.

"Natasha?" John asked.

Steve pursed his lips. "Those videos I showed you? It was Allison that made Nat take a closer look at them in the first place. Something about the combat style between her and Scott was familiar for her, so she started digging." When John opened his mouth, Steve repeated, "They look like us - me and Nat - when they spar."

"And you have super-healing, and Scott might, too," John said, rubbing his forehead.

"On the surface, it looks like the Argents are a pretty typical arms-dealing family," Steve said. "Renown for high-caliber weapons among law-enforcement circles. Boutique and custom weapons to private citizens, some of which tap-dance on the edge of legality at best. Minus the serial killer, there's nothing unusual. If they lived in the Bible belt, it would even be typical."

John nodded, reaching across the table to drag his laptop over. "Pretty much what we found," he said. "Our own initial assumption was that there were some organize crime ties gone wrong. We dismissed that since the Hales had no ties to organized crime..."

He trailed off. "John?" Steve prodded.

The Sheriff took a deep breath. "The Hales have no known ties to any kind of organized crime - but they were a very wealthy and influential family. The family's been here since the Gold Rush, they practically founded this town. There was a lot of money that seemed to disappear or couldn't be tracked, but even after the murder, we didn't think too much on it. Old money like that, it's expected. They got into all kinds of disagreements with local political leaders, school boards, that sort of thing. But there was never any indication of anything downright illegal. Nothing even that unethical, beyond the usual suspiciously-timed public works donations that influential families get into."

"But you think there was something else going on, after all?" Steve asked.

"Honestly? I don't even know anymore," John said, skimming something on his laptop. It looked like financial records, something Steve could make neither heads nor tails of. "There is nothing to suggest either the Hales or the Argents had any kind of organized crime ties. The only organized crime even in this town is a little Yakuza chapter, and while I can't pin anything on them, they mostly seem to deal with white-collar crime. I haven't exactly looked, but I don't recall anything connecting them to either family."

"And either way," Steve said. "It still wouldn't explain how Scott got a healing factor."

John's fingers froze over the keyboard as he remembered.

"...damnit," he said, leaning forward and rubbing his forehead. "You're right. The Argents and the Hales could both turn out to be hidden suburban crimelords, and that still wouldn't explain half of this. Scott, the animal killings, or any of the other weirdness." Leaning back in his seat and staring rather helplessly at the screen of his laptop, he said, "There's something going on, something bigger than competing crimelords or plain old serial killers." After a moment, he snorted. "'Plain old serial-killers'. That's not a phrase I ever expected to have to say."

Steve looked at John's face, the laptop, then his tablet. With a rough swallow, he set down his tablet, shut down the laptop, and pulled John's plate across the table.

"You should finish your breakfast," Steve said.

"I'm not hungry."

"That's why."

With a rough laugh, John nodded, finishing up the last few bites of the omlet. He looked at the laptop when Steve put their dishes in the sink, but ultimately he went upstairs, took a shower, and went to bed.

Steve washed all the dishes, then went back to bed himself after sending off a text to Nat, asking her to send him anything she could get her hands on about the Hales and the Argents. A few hours later, he woke up in time to see John off, the Sheriff resoundly ignoring the press barrage. One upside, at least - the reporters followed him to the station, leaving the house alone.

Which was good, since a little while after, Steve got a text from Stiles reading simply, Please come get me.

Steve shot off a quick text to John to call the school, and by the time he arrived at Beacon Hills High School, Stiles was waiting in the front office. He all but leaped up from the bland chairs when he saw Steve.

"You okay?" Steve asked, mindful of the administrative ladies listening in as he pulled Stiles into a tight hug.

"Yes," Stiles lied. "Coach cancelled lacrosse practice because the FBI is interviewing him about Matt and my last period is just a study-hall anyway and I can't - I don't want to deal with people, Steve, please don't make me-"

Stiles' rambling was muffled by Steve's jacket, as Steve slowly pulled them out the door and into the parking lot. He considered letting Stiles drive to help relax him, but between the boys' shaking hands and drooping shoulders, Steve opted to make the drive, himself.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Steve asked.

Stiles snorted. "The school is making me see the counselor, tomorrow," he said bitterly. "And she'll make me talk about it, anyway."

"That's always fun," Steve drawled. "I still have to see a psychiatrist once a month."

Stiles snorted. "How long are you in town for?" he hedged.

Steve shrugged. "As long as you need me? As long as SHIELD lets me?" He shot Stiles a hopeful, sidelong smile as they pulled up to the house. "I'll be here for the last lacrosse game, that's for sure."

This time, Stiles' laugh was wet and bitter.

Steve knew the feeling.