#because THAT'S within his power. universal minimum wage is not.

[captainjonnitkessler]

what do you people think the president's powers are

[nicklloydnow]

“Back in 2015, Leonard De Monte was feeling settled. At 31, he had health insurance and was making a union wage at the Vons grocery store in Woodland Hills, Calif., where he had worked for more than a decade. A familiar face in the bakery section, he knew dozens of frequent shoppers’ orders by heart.

Then came a corporate merger: Albertsons acquired its rival Safeway, Vons’s parent company. Mr. De Monte’s store was sold to a third chain as part of the deal, and within months of the change, the store’s new owner declared bankruptcy. Mr. De Monte found himself out of work.

Former customers vouched for him, and he found a new job at a local Pavilions, part of another grocery chain owned by Albertsons. But he had lost his seniority and was demoted to minimum wage.

“All my hard work was flushed down the toilet,” Mr. De Monte said.

Now, nearly 10 years older and having finally worked his way up to a wage of nearly $27 per hour, he’s experiencing déjà vu: Albertsons is trying to merge with Kroger in a $24.6 billion deal that will be the biggest grocery combination in history if it goes through. The two chains have agreed to sell 579 stores — out of about 5,000 — to a third company in an effort to satisfy antitrust regulators. The Pavilions where Mr. De Monte works is on that list.

Mergers often create anxiety for workers who stand to lose jobs or benefits when companies combine. The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, or U.F.C.W., which represents most in-store workers at Kroger and Albertsons, has spoken out against the proposed deal, though it doesn’t have much ability to stop it.

But the union does have a powerful ally: the Federal Trade Commission. The agency sued to block the combination, and a trial that will decide whether the two chains can join forces is scheduled to start in federal court in Oregon on Monday.

(…)

But within its legal complaint is another claim, one that has surprised some antitrust experts because of its novelty. The combination of the nation’s two biggest supermarket chains, the F.T.C. argues, would erode the bargaining power of unions and harm not just consumers, but workers as well.

Starting in the late 1970s, after a period of robust antitrust enforcement, regulators eased up on challenging corporate mergers. Regulators under the Biden administration, however, have made cracking down on corporate concentration a priority. And for the first time, merger guidelines updated last year by the F.T.C. and the Justice Department explicitly outline the agencies’ emphasis on how corporate mergers could reduce competition for workers and result in lower wages or worse benefits.

“Recognizing that there’s a web of intersecting harm that can happen is an extension, in my mind, of the underlying principles of antitrust enforcement,” said Christine Bartholomew, a professor at the University at Buffalo School of Law who teaches antitrust. “The pendulum is swinging back to recognize the broader types of harm from anticompetitive conduct.”

The attorneys general of Colorado and Washington State, who have separately sued to block the supermarket deal, also centered workers in their complaints.

The grocery industry has seen waves of consolidation since the 1990s. Now just four companies — Walmart, Kroger, Costco and Albertsons — account for about half of all grocery sales.

Kroger and Albertsons collectively employ about 700,000 people. The new corporation would operate under the Kroger name, and a Kroger spokeswoman said all frontline workers would keep their jobs and existing union contracts. But Mr. De Monte is not convinced that his job and benefits would be guaranteed, or that the chain buying his store would keep it open.

The F.T.C.’s position today looks very different from the one it took in 2015. Back then, the regulator approved the merger of Albertsons and Safeway, satisfied that the 146 stores eventually sold to a third party — Haggen — would prevent dominance by a single supermarket chain in certain markets.

The U.F.C.W. did not strongly object to that merger or to the sale of stores, either, something the union came to regret once Haggen filed for bankruptcy and thousands of workers lost their jobs.

This time around, Kroger and Albertsons have proposed a similar solution to gain antitrust approval: selling 579 stores — along the West Coast and in Colorado, Arizona, Illinois and a handful of other states — to a company called C&S Wholesale Grocers. But the F.T.C. is not convinced that separating out about a tenth of the stores would effectively maintain competition or mitigate the harm to workers and consumers.

Although only about 13 percent of grocery store workers are unionized, most of the workers at Kroger and Albertsons are represented by the U.F.C.W.

(…)

The U.F.C.W. is concerned that the combined strength of Kroger and Albertsons would intensify a power imbalance with the union. John Marshall, a financial analyst for U.F.C.W. chapters in California and Washington State, said that, individually, both chains had been aggressive at the bargaining table. In 2003, they each demanded concessions from the U.F.C.W., including the introduction of a two-tiered pay structure. Despite setbacks, unionized workers at the companies have retained health and retirement benefits that their counterparts at nonunion rivals like Walmart lack.

Kroger has said it needs to merge with Albertsons to compete against Walmart and Amazon. Walmart employs two million people and has been accused of illegal union busting, allegations the company has denied. A Kroger spokeswoman said nonunion rivals would become “even more powerful and unaccountable” if the merger was blocked.

The F.T.C., however, argues that a combined Kroger and Albertsons would erode unions’ ability to negotiate better pay and benefits in bargaining talks.

“The unions that represent grocery workers leverage the fact that Kroger and Albertsons are separate companies competing for customers and workers to negotiate better terms of employment for union grocery workers,” the F.T.C. complaint reads. The deal would “eliminate that competition” and lead to lower wages, worse benefits and weaker worker protections. An agency representative declined to provide additional comment beyond the legal complaint.

Eric Posner, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School who focuses on antitrust, noted that a more dominant Kroger would chip away at unions’ ability to use strikes as a bargaining tool.

“If the worker can find an equally good job elsewhere, then the workers can stay on strike longer, and that means the employer will have to give and make concessions,” Mr. Posner said.

He said he was not aware of any other antitrust cases that limited the scope of harm to unionized workers. And regulators have raised labor-related concerns in only one other case that has gone to court, Mr. Posner added. In that 2022 suit, the Justice Department successfully blocked a merger of book publishers, focusing on authors as workers who stood to be harmed by the deal.

On top of weakened bargaining power, workers — especially those who experienced the fallout from Albertsons’s takeover of Safeway a decade ago — are concerned about potential store closings and layoffs.

(…)

Kroger has portrayed C&S, which has signed up to buy the 579 stores that would be shed under the merger, as a pro-union operator. Lauren La Bruno, a C&S spokeswoman, said the company would recognize the union work force and honor all collective bargaining agreements.

But Mr. Marshall of the U.F.C.W. said that at two meetings in January, C&S representatives had refused to promise to negotiate new collective bargaining agreements with the union once the current contracts expired. Contracts covering more than 100,000 Kroger and Albertsons workers, mostly on the West Coast, are set to run out next year, he said. Ms. La Bruno did not respond to a request for comment on those meetings.

C&S is primarily in the wholesale grocery supply business and currently operates just 23 supermarkets nationwide, according to the F.T.C. While Ms. La Bruno said the company had enough financial strength and experience in food retailing to operate hundreds more stores, antitrust experts and regulators say another Haggen-style collapse is likely if the deal goes through. They argue that C&S doesn’t appear to be equipped to efficiently operate hundreds of supermarkets.

(…)

“This company might just shut down the stores after buying them,” Mr. Posner said.”

“The United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 555 has changed course in its support for the proposed $24.6 billion Kroger, Albertsons merger, releasing a statement on Saturday announcing it’s pulling its support for the deal.

The union represents some 30,000 workers, many of whom are employees at Kroger and Albertsons banners in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming.

The move comes as roughly 4,500 workers at Kroger-owned Fred Meyer stores in metro Portland, Oregon, authorized an unfair labor practices strike. The union has not yet selected a date for the strike.

(…)

“Their obnoxious decisions at the bargaining table have let down both their workers and their customers. We’ve had no other option but to file a federal lawsuit on the matter and withdraw our support for the merger.”

(…)

The decision comes six months after UFCW 555 announced its support of the merger, making it the only local in the country to support the deal.

The issue for the union is centered on the store divestiture part of the deal, wherein Kroger and Albertsons would collectively sell 579 stores to C&S Wholesale Grocers in an effort to appease federal regulators and attorneys general across the country concerned that the merger would create a monopoly.

Many of those stores on the divestiture list are located in Oregon, Idaho, and Southwest Washington.

In February, Clay said a meeting with C&S Wholesale Grocers leadership eased the union’s concerns that C&S Wholesale Grocers would uphold labor obligations made by Kroger and Albertsons.

“C&S has the opportunity to bring a long-term strategy to a grocery industry focused on the short-term demands of shareholders and private-equity investors,” Clay said in February. “Employees of Kroger and C&S will be better off than employees of other potential buyers whose actions never seem to match the image they project publically. In a refreshing change of pace, C&S seems poised to deliver a much-needed fresh perspective for employees and customers alike.”

Miles Eshaia, a spokesperson for Local 555, said in an interview with Supermarket News in February that Albertsons owner Cerberus Capital Management plans to sell the chain even if the Kroger deal falls through.

Meanwhile, unions across the country have opposed the merger. In July, members of locals 7, 324, 400, 770, and 3000 held a press conference to voice their opposition to the deal.

That press conference came one day after Kroger and Albertsons released a full list of the 579 locations that would be divested if the deal is approved.

“Yesterday, you may have heard that Kroger and Albertsons released a list of 579 stores across the nation that they are proposing to divest to C&S Wholesale Grocers if the merger is allowed to proceed. Making this list public changes nothing,” UFCW 770 President Kathy Finn said in July. “The merger is not a done deal, and this coalition continues to do everything we can to stop it.””

“Big companies promoting terrible mergers that cause untold layoffs and consumer and market harms — while promising none of that will actually happen — is a proud, fifty-plus year American tradition. And it requires a symbiosis with lazy, (not-coincidentally also highly consolidated) major media empires.

Case in point: grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons are floating a $24.6 billion merger that regulators have been justifiably skeptical about. Experts who study grocery consolidation for a living all indicate that, just like most major mergers, the deal will likely harm consumers and workers alike. States and the FTC have sued Kroger, and Kroger countersued the FTC, claiming antitrust enforcement is “unconstitutional.”

Kroger (and tell me if you’ve heard this one before) is pinky swearing that increased consolidation in the already consolidated grocery space will increase jobs, boost competition, and lower prices for consumers. On that last point, the company this week told the press that if the merger is approved, they’ll dole out $1 billion in immediate savings to consumers.

The promise is baseless. As you see in tech and telecom, pre-merger promises are utterly valueless. U.S. regulatory enforcement of merger promises is completely feckless, and getting weaker in the wake of major Supreme Court rulings. Antitrust academics insist there’s nothing in the promise that’s worth anything. And yet Bloomberg, Reuters, and CNBC all parroted the claim mindlessly: (…)

One local Boise outlet, BoiseDev, actually crunched the numbers, and found that even if Kroger followed through on the promised price cuts (which again they wouldn’t, because that’s not how consolidation works), they’d amount to about four cents per store visit per consumer.

Several Senators and State AGs have expressed concerned that the one-two punch of consolidation (read: less competition), fused with new dynamic store-shelf display tag pricing tech, could make it easier than ever to screw consumers. Combine that with a Supreme Court regulatory assault on regulatory oversight of, well, everything, and the potential harms to Americans become rather clear.

I don’t mean to wander outside of our beat into grocery news, but the treatment of the merger by major outlets is a perfect demonstration of the U.S. press’ complete failure to fully, accurately report on corporate behavior and its real-world impact. Most U.S. business journalism isn’t journalism, so much as a weird fan fiction that tells investors, executives, and media owners precisely what they want to hear.

It’s a world where history doesn’t exist, academic antitrust expertise doesn’t exist, real-world consumer and labor harms are downplayed or ignored, and executive statements are almost always taken at face value, even if the executive has a long-history of lies. The coverage broadly reflects the anti-regulation, anti-consumer, anti-labor, shot-term profit seeking interests of center-right billionaire ownership. The same ownership, that, again, not coincidentally owns what’s left of mainstream U.S. journalism.”

“Albertsons (NYSE:ACI) may face a bleaker future if it isn't able to complete its almost $25 billion sale to Kroger (NYSE:KR).

"There are limits to what we can accomplish without the scale," Albertsons attorney Enu Mainigi said during the opening statements of the first day of the trial of the Federal Trade Commission's attempt to block the deal on Monday. "If a go-it-alone Albertsons is going to have a chance of competing effectively, it will need to fundamentally change it's cost structure."

The standalone strategy for Albertsons (ACI) may include layoffs, closing stores, and/or exiting certain markets," Mainigi explained.

(…)

The FTC sued to block the combination in February, saying the supermarket deal would lead to higher prices for consumers. Eight states and Washington, D.C. also teamed up with the regulator to halt the deal. Colorado and Washington also separately filed lawsuits to try to put an end to the deal.

The supermarket chains argue that they need to get bigger to better compete with Walmart (WMT) Amazon (AMZN) and Costco (COST). They also say that through the divestiture of nearly 600 stories to C&S Wholesale Grocers they will be creating a viable competitor in the supermarket space.

The trial is expected to last until Sept. 13 in Portland, Oregon federal court in front of Judge Adrienne Nelson.”

[warningsine]

In every Thai election since 2001, the party that has won the most seats in the House of Representatives has been run by or linked to Thaksin Shinawatra, who served as Thailand’s prime minister from 2001 to 2006. This trend has held even as Thai politics entered an era of chaos. Thaksin was ousted by a military coup, ending 15 years of constitutional transfers of power; he went into exile. In 2008, a government led by his brother-in-law Somchai Wongsawat was dissolved by the Constitutional Court. Thaksin’s sister Yingluck Shinawatra was overthrown as prime minister in another military coup in 2014.

The leaders of the 2014 coup still rule Thailand today, and Thaksin’s 36-year-old daughter, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, hopes to lead the Thaksin-linked Pheu Thai Party to victory in the national election on May 14. Whether Paetongtarn can prevail in a stacked electoral playing field and whether the traditional establishment would accept the result remain open questions. Thailand’s next prime minister will again be selected by the democratically elected 500-seat lower house and the 250-seat Senate, which is appointed directly by the military, a change that followed the latest coup.

On May 14, the Pheu Thai Party hopes to win a large enough landslide—or assemble a large enough coalition—to overcome the challenge posed by the Senate and make Paetongtarn the prime minister. But a too-resounding victory for Pheu Thai will threaten Thailand’s conservative establishment, made up of both military leaders and monarchists, and raise the risk of another coup. (The 2006 and 2014 military coups came after months of anti-government protests by hard-line royalists known as “Yellow Shirts.”) Pheu Thai could avoid a similar scenario by working with a military-linked party. However, this compromise may rankle its own supporters, not to mention the reform-minded young activists who led mass protests in 2020.

Thaksin remains one of Thailand’s most influential political figures. During his time as prime minister, his populist economic policies—such as introducing universal health care and debt relief—reduced poverty and earned him widespread support, especially among the rural poor. But his mass popularity posed a challenge to the monarchy, and he upset the military by limiting defense spending and promoting personal allies through the ranks. Paetongtarn, who has never held public office, has evoked nostalgia for the time before 2014 and for her family name during her campaign. She has embraced similar messages as her father, including a pledge to increase Thailand’s minimum wage.

The Pheu Thai Party was founded to evade legal bans on previous political parties linked to Thaksin. The party won 136 seats in the 2019 Thai elections, the first held after the 2014 coup, but the Palang Pracharath Party—led by junta officials—received a big head start. Because the military appointed the Senate, coup leader Prayuth Chan-ocha easily overcame Pheu Thai’s electoral advantage and was confirmed as prime minister by a vote of 500-244. Although that system remains in place, a schism within the traditional establishment has fueled some hopes that the opposition now has a real chance at the prime minister’s office.

Late last year, Prayuth joined a new party called United Thai Nation, leaving the Palang Pracharath Party in the hands of Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan, another former general. But some analysts are quick to splash cold water on the idea that this could divide the Senate in the opposition’s favor. “I don’t think the Senate would actually split up,” said Titipol Phakdeewanich, dean of the political science faculty at Thailand’s Ubon Ratchathani University. Both Prayuth and Prawit want to “hang on” to power, he said, and “in the end they will just compromise and work together.”

Thailand’s conservative establishment currently reflects an alliance between the military and the country’s powerful monarchy—both of which view the power of a figure like Thaksin and calls for greater democratization as a threat. “Sure, there will be divisions among senators based upon a Prawit-Prayuth schism. But if the option is a pro-Thaksin government, then senators will unite against a Pheu Thai government,” said Paul Chambers, a lecturer at Thailand’s Naresuan University, adding that the 2023 election is a “poll created by, for, and of the monarchy-military alliance.”

If Pheu Thai does ally itself with one of the military-affiliated parties, partnering with Prawit and the Palang Pracharath Party might be more palatable for its supporters than working with the main coup leader. “We can’t rule out that possibility,” Titipol said. “Pheu Thai talks about democracy, but it’s also about political expediency and how to take advantage of the system. They are not really focusing on democratic principles.” Facing a barrage of corruption charges, Thaksin hasn’t set foot in Thailand since 2008. One of Pheu Thai’s main goals is to secure his safe return, Titipol added. The party would likely make concessions to ensure that happens.

However, Pheu Thai faces a potential challenge from its current coalition partner: the progressive Move Forward Party, which is firmly committed to democracy. The party is popular among Thai youth and succeeded the Future Forward Party, which was dissolved in 2020 for financial misconduct—charges that supporters and rights groups say are politically motivated. The Future Forward Party surprised many observers by winning the third-most seats in 2019, its first election. Move Forward leader Pita Limjaroenrat said that this year, the party aims to take the most seats in the lower house, running on a message of “decentralizing the country, demonopolizing the country, and demilitarizing the country.”

Public polling suggests Pheu Thai is still expected to win the election, but the progressive party appears to be a force to be reckoned with. Pita said that Move Forward would work with Pheu Thai but would “definitely not work with the junta’s successor parties.” “We believe that the pro-democracy parties, the current opposition parties, are the best option for the country to form the ruling coalition to lead Thailand through a challenging time,” he said. Depending on its performance, Move Forward could complicate an attempt by Pheu Thai to broker a compromise after the election—or it could be left out in the cold.

Pheu Thai party leadership denies that it has a preexisting plan to cooperate with Prawit’s party, insisting that it expects to win a supermajority of seats and form a government on its own. Should this fail, the party’s deputy leader said Pheu Thai would only work with other pro-democracy parties. (Pheu Thai did not respond to a request for an interview.) But if Pheu Thai took the most seats in the lower house and partnered with Prawit and the Palang Pracharath Party, it’s not out of the question their alliance could capture support in the Senate while diminishing the likelihood of another coup.

Unlike in 2019, a few senators have already pledged to abstain from voting for prime minister or to back the candidate with majority support in the lower house, Ken Lohatepanont, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan, pointed out. “I would still view it as unlikely that the body as a whole would support a Pheu Thai or Move Forward candidate, although it is more conceivable that they would support Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan,” he said, adding that the Senate’s role in selecting the prime minister remains a “temporary provision”—and one that might not see the next election cycle.

One potential kingmaker is the moderate Bhumjaithai Party, which is currently the second-largest party in the conservative ruling coalition. “We can say for sure that whoever wins the elections will need Bhumjaithai to form a government,” a party executive confidently told the Thai public broadcaster last year. Bhumjaithai could also lead a weaker civilian government in alliance with either Prawit or Prayuth, Chambers said. The party presents itself as a middle ground between the establishment and those seeking major reforms: It has opposed changing Thailand’s draconian lèse-majesté laws while embracing social liberalization, such as the nation’s decision to decriminalize marijuana last year.

Given that Thailand has seen two military coups in less than 20 years, it’s no surprise that many observers are considering which election results could lead to another one. Chambers said he thinks a coup would be likely if Pheu Thai secures a landslide election victory, or possible even if it strikes a deal with Prawit. “If by some chance the Election Commission does approve an election result in July which gives Pheu Thai a landslide, then expect a coup in the months thereafter,” he said.

However, Titipol disagreed: “Even if Pheu Thai wins, they would find a way to compromise with the military,” he said, adding that the generals likely wouldn’t have the public backing or support of big business necessary to pull off another coup. After all, another crisis could reverberate across Thailand’s economy and sully its reputation as a stable country for tourism and investment. In 2008, royalist protesters seized control of Bangkok’s main international airport, and two years later the military massacred those protesting against the government formed in the wake of the dissolution of the Thaksin-linked administration.

If Pheu Thai does win this year, all of this could incentivize the party to compromise with the military establishment and hope for more genuine reform after the next election, four years from now. But as with any political concession, that would leave the party at risk of abandoning the values that set it apart from its political opponents in the first place. Move Forward is waiting in the wings to capture any disaffected Pheu Thai supporters unable to stomach such a deal. And if recent history is any guide, Thailand’s military could simply knock the board off the table if it feels threatened by potential reforms, whether in 2023 or 2027.

[renaerys]

PPG One-Shot: Mall Santa (Boomer/Mike and Brick/Blossom)

Summary: To earn a little extra cash over the holidays, Brick, Mike, and Boomer agree to help out their buddy Todd at a Mall Santa gig. Shenanigans ensue.

This one is for @snailbutters, @genovah, and @hanaokm. Merry Christmas and happy holidays! Enjoy some Boomike, Blossick, and Capri Sus on me. 

[Cross-posted to AO3]

xxx

There were a lot of things Todd needed: a haircut, for one. His black hair was getting too long for gel and it was really pushing the boundary between greaser sexy and sad trash hobo. Money, for another. But like any other 21-year-old townie with a high school education and two restaurant jobs, he always needed money.

A new best friend, for yet another.

“I’m not your best friend,” Brick snapped as he tied a black tie around his neck. He needed to leave in ten minutes if he was going to be early for his dinner meeting with Oliver Morbucks.

Todd put a hand over his heart like it might fall out of the wound Brick’s words had stabbed there. “Dude, of course you are. I’m totally sorry if I ever gave you the wrong idea.”

Brick grimaced so hard he was sure he’d end up constipated. “No, you idiot. I know you think I’m your best friend. You’ve never shut up about it, even after we graduated high school. I’m pretty sure the whole fucking Peninsula knows it the way you go around shouting it when you’re blasted.”

Todd looked like he’d just received news that his favorite nana wasn’t dying of cancer after all. “Oh, cool. For a second there I thought I really hurt your feelings. You know you’re kinda sensitive, right?”

Oh god.

“What do you want, Todd? I have a really important meeting and I’m not missing it for your bullshit.”

Brick checked his reflection in the bathroom mirror in his one-bedroom apartment in downtown Townsville. It was a shitty hole-in-the-wall kind of place, but Brick was used to squalor. His break was coming, he could feel it. If tonight’s meeting went over well, he’d have a more steady revenue stream and, more importantly, the connections and clout the Morbucks name brought to open doors. All the long days at Red’s Auto Shop saving and scraping by would finally pay off, and just in time for Blossom to graduate from college. It was perfectly planned, meticulously manipulated, all down to this last pivotal dinner.

“Cool, no big deal! I just need to know if you’re free this weekend.”

“Free to do what?” Brick indulged him, because Todd was one of the few people on this planet who wasn’t 100% intimidated by his very presence.

“To help me with this Mall Santa gig I got. Harry Pitt was supposed to be my number two elf, but he ate some bad prawns and they had to, like, airlift him to Citiesville General.”

Brick stopped everything he was doing and glared at his second-to-best friend, which was a key fact because second was not the same as first. “What the fuck did you just say to me?”

“I know, right?” Todd knew his way around Brick’s embarrassingly small bathroom, opened up the hair wax, and fixed Brick’s styling job. “Dude always had a weak stomach, you remember. But you don’t fuck with bad prawns. I mean, obviously.”

Brick swatted Todd’s hands away and checked his reflection. It was definitely an improvement. “Not that; the Mall Santa thing, obviously!”

“Oh, yeah. So you’ll help me out?”

“Fuck no.”

“Aw, Briiiiiiick,” Todd whined.

Brick grabbed his dinner jacket from the closet barely big enough to fit a small, starving child. Todd, who had latched onto Brick in the seventh grade like a goddamned barnacle and never let go no matter how hard Brick tried to push him away, followed. “Not if you paid me.”

“You’ll get paid! It’s $20 an hour!”

Brick hesitated over the threshold. “That’s higher than minimum wage.” It was higher than his hourly rate at the garage too.

“Seasonal gigs, man. That’s how you win.”

“It’s seriously fucking not.”

Todd, one of three people in the universe who actually cared about Brick on a personal level even though he wasn’t obligated by blood, made his blue eyes big and wide in a way that reminded Brick of Puss-n-Boots from Shrek, Todd’s favorite movie. “C’mon, bruh. Do your bestie a solid? Just this once? I really need the money and they won’t let me keep the gig without two elves to fill in. So please? Pleeeeeeease?”

And Brick, former scourge of Townsville, a Super with the power to literally raze the planet if it so much as tickled his fancy, and the dictionary definition of the boy every father dreads his perfect, pretty little girl falling for against her better judgment, cracked like an egg.

“For fuck’s sake,” he groused. “Just text me the time and place and get out of my face already.”

Todd punched the air with both fists. “Yes!! Oh, hell yes! I love you so much, dude.”

“Blow me.” Brick checked his watch. Shit, now he was merely on time.

“I’d consider it an honor,” Todd said, probably literally serious.

xxx

Boomer rolled glitter on his cheeks and around the edges of his dark blue eyes with the help of a compact as he huddled behind the North Pole set on the first floor of the Townsville Mall. When he was satisfied that he sparkled like the tinsel-festooned Christmas trees in Santa’s twelve-by-fifteen-foot “forest” themselves, he discreetly re-emerged just as the latest child slid off Santa’s lap.

“Merry Christmas, Dan!” bellowed a red and white-clad Todd behind an enormous, curly beard. “Remember to brush your teeth!”

The little boy ran back to his parents, who were having a word with the photographer about purchasing a picture of their son on Santa’s lap. Before Boomer could follow them, Brick was quick to cut him off.

“Where the hell were you?” he demanded. Sour as an un-sugared plum in his festive, candy-striped elf costume, Brick may have absolutely intimidated the seven-year-olds waiting in line with their parents for a turn on Santa’s lap, but Boomer only allowed him a bemused smile.

“Why, I was making toys for the good little boys and girls who came to visit us here at the North Pole,” Boomer said in a raised voice. He looped his arm through his brother’s and let his power surge with enough force to turn Brick around and face the crowd that was definitely within hearing range. “Isn’t that right, Elf Mursten?”

Brick pushed back with inhuman force, but Boomer held his ground with a smile as bright as the glitter on his cheeks as a little girl in overalls trotted forward.

She giggled. “I like your hat.”

“Thank you!” Boomer gushed, and he tipped his pom-pom-topped cap. “And what’s your name?”

The little girl giggled again. “My name’s Alynn.”

“Well, Alynn, why don’t you step right up and take a seat on Santa’s lap? I’m sure he has a great present for a cool girl like you. Right, Elf Mursten?”

Brick glared medieval torture at him, and he managed a smile that showed too many teeth to be anything other than life-threatening. “Of course, Elf Buller.”

Boomer’s smile tightened.

“Ho ho ho! Come on over, Santa doesn’t bite,” Todd said.

“What a psychotic reassurance,” Brick said soft enough for only the Super brothers to hear.

“Hey, Brick?” Boomer said, just as softly. “Cheer the fuck up.” He gave his brother a bone-crushing squeeze around the arm and broke from him. Brick could be a sourpuss when he wanted to be (all the time), but he wouldn’t mess up Todd’s Mall Santa gig when he’d bothered to show up and actually put in the effort at all. Complain as he might about Todd’s exuberance, Brick had always come through for his best friend since the seventh grade.

Boomer, on the other hand, had been very happy to accept Todd’s offer to work the two weeks leading up to Christmas. The hours were reasonable, the pay was good, and Boomer loved children. It was easy money in between local shows he and his garage band had booked over the holidays.

Plus, the photographer had a nice rack.

“Okay, Santa, Alynn. Look over here and say ‘jingle bells’!” A flash went off, and Mike Believe stood to his full height behind the tripod he’d set up for the day’s pictures. Even in reindeer antlers and a bright, red-painted nose, Mike filled out every fold of his brown Rudolph outfit almost to the point of popping a button. His broad chest puffed out when he put his strong hands on his hips and grinned brightly like he wouldn’t pick anywhere else to be right now.

Their eyes met, and Boomer flushed and smiled like a fool.

When Mike winked back at him coyly, his heart leaped into his throat. Mike had gotten home from college just two days ago, but the three weeks he had off for Winter Break would surely fly by like they did every year, and Boomer was determined to spend every moment together.

A tug on Boomer’s green tunic drew his attention. “Can I take a picture with you? Please?” the little girl asked.

Boomer beamed and scooped her up onto his hip. “Of course you can. Hey, Mike? Can you take one of us, please?”

“You bet! Get in close, now.” Mike readied his camera.

“Oh, wait a sec. Why don’t you take this too?” Boomer removed his festive hat and put it on Alynn’s head. It was big on her, but she laughed happily.

They posed for the picture, and Boomer hugged her cheek to cheek.

“Thanks!” The little girl tried to give him his hat back, but he pressed it to her chest.

“You keep it. Merry Christmas. Remember to be good, okay?”

Alynn’s father was waiting with a hand for her to take when she ran back to him, yammering about how she’d met Santa and his super cool elf friend, and Boomer watched them go.

“You know you’ll have to pay for that hat,” Brick said.

Boomer sighed and ran a hand through his cornflower hair. “You know I look better without it.”

Brick frowned deeply. “Uh-huh.”

“If you keep frowning, your face will stick like that.”

“Moron.”

He always had to have the last word. Brick went to stack the empty boxes wrapped in bright, shiny paper, which was probably more productive than blowing up the entire display. Boomer left him to it. It was time for their mid-morning break, anyway.

Todd got up to stretch. “Man, who knew sitting could be so tiring, huh? Whack.” His phone buzzed, and he grinned when he saw the caller ID.

Boomer, however, had eyes only for Mike as the latter turned off his camera and put a sheet over the tripod to protect it. “Working hard, I see.”

When Mike smiled, his dark eyes crinkled in the corners. He had a face made for smiling. “Oh, you know. Just helping out some friends.”

Like Brick, Todd had asked Mike to help out behind the camera for this gig. Mike didn’t exactly need the extra cash given his lacrosse scholarship that covered his college expenses, but the three of them had been as thick as thieves all through high school no matter what Brick said when he was annoyed. No way was Mike going to bail on the chance to help out a bro.

“This is cute,” Mike said, running a thumb over Boomer’s sparkly cheek.

“If only I could convince Brick to wear some,” Boomer said, lacing his fingers in Mike’s as they shuffled to the side of the exhibit behind a blinking Christmas tree for a bit of privacy.

Mike chuckled. “That’ll take a Christmas miracle. But anyway, I don’t want to talk about Brick right now.”

Their kiss was soft and mostly chaste, considering the venue, but Boomer didn’t mind at all. He rose up on his toes to lean into his boyfriend’s superior height and smiled into their kiss. Even in the middle of the Townsville Mall with shoppers mere yards away, for a few seconds Boomer got lost in the fantasy of the forest and the snow drifts, bright lights and magic that came around only once a year and had always touched his heart in a way nothing else quite could.

“Babe! You got here quick!” Todd’s excitement and a small commotion around Santa’s throne drew the lovers’ attention, and Boomer reluctantly broke the kiss. His Super hearing quickly picked up on what was going on.

“What is it?” Mike asked.

Boomer smiled wryly. “That Christmas miracle you wished for. Come on.” He took Mike’s larger hand in his and pulled him back toward the front of the display, where Todd had scooped up a very small, very fashionable Asian woman in his arms.

“Oh my god, don’t do shits in front of the innocent children, Toddy.” Hana patted her high bun and smoothed out her oversized black jacket once Todd released her.

“Hey, I just missed you is all,” Todd said with a genuine smile like he had really, truly missed his girlfriend since this morning when they had last seen each other.

“You guys are too cute,” said Bubbles with a giggle. As usual, she was adorable in blonde twin tails and a holiday-appropriate sweater dress. Shopping bags hung from both her arms, also as usual.

“Right?” Hana said, her deadpan façade melting completely as she beamed at her closest friend.

“No contest.” Bubbles set down her small nation of shopping bags. “Oh! Hi, Boomer!” She dashed to hug him in a flash of blue, and he caught her easily. “Oh my gosh, I love your glitter. You look like a supermodel!”

Boomer laughed and hugged her back. “Thanks for letting me borrow it. I really owe you.”

“Don’t worry about it. Oh, but you definitely need some touching up. Here, let me just…”

Mike had wandered over to Todd and Hana. “Hey, Hana. Are you staying for the holiday?”

Hana shrugged. “Yeah, my art show isn’t until after New Year’s. You know, I’m always looking for more models.” She raised her eyebrows suggestively.

Mike laughed. “I’m honored, but I’m really nothing special, honestly. You might try Butch.”

Todd guffawed. “Oh man, Butch is, like, one of her top models! She painted him for what, six weeks last summer, babe?”

“Seven,” Hana said, dead serious.

Mike smiled nervously. “That’s a lot of inspiration.”

“He is very inspiring,” Hana said, deader and more serious.

“That dude is goals,” Todd said, totally unironically.

“I guess I can’t argue with that,” Mike said.

“Aaaaand done.” Bubbles stepped back to admire her handiwork. “Honestly? You’re the most beautiful elf the North Pole ever employed.”

Boomer snickered. “Don’t tell Brick that.”

“Don’t tell me what, now?” Brick emerged from his useless empty box stacking task, glitter-less and severely lacking in Christmas cheer.

Bubbles gasped, right on cue. “Brick! Where is your glitter? Get over here.”

Brick made a weird face. “What are you talk—hey!”

Bubbles all but accosted him with the glitter pen. Hana cheered and applauded, and Todd joined in because he liked to cheer and applaud in general.

“What are you—get off!” Brick shoved Bubbles hard, but a flash of pink caught her before she could crash into anything.

Blossom peered around her totally unfazed sister, a tray of lattes in one hand and her perfectly sculpted eyebrow raised. “Brick,” she said.

Brick swallowed. “Blossom.”

She looked nice in leggings and a sweater dress that matched Bubbles’ style, except where Bubbles’ was white, Blossom’s was a scarlet that rivaled the shade of Brick’s eyes.

“I brought you guys coffee,” Blossom said, her eyes trained on Brick even as she held out the tray.

Mike took the tray before it could become collateral damage in whatever was going on between the two of them.

“Here you go.” Mike offered one to Boomer, who gratefully accepted it.

“Thanks!”

“I thought you weren’t getting home until tomorrow,” Brick said, as if he and Blossom were the only two people there.

“Change of plans,” Blossom said. “Problem?”

Brick seemed to remember what he was wearing and snatched his elf hat from his head. He bunched it up between his hands like that would hide his imagined shame. “It’s fine.”

It wasn’t fine, clearly. But it wasn’t Boomer’s place to intrude. He would have been extremely happy for it to end there, but sadly Blossom, like his brother, had a flair for the dramatic and an affinity for the center of attention.

She sauntered up to him and smeared the bit of glitter Bubbles had managed to draw on his cheek before he’d shoved her off. “Good,” she said, half an invitation and half a challenge.

Brick didn’t bend easily. Boomer knew his brother as well as he knew himself, and he knew Brick didn’t relent, never gave in unless he was well and truly beaten, which was rare. But he slackened now, lips parting and eyes falling. Even though his arms stayed stubbornly at his sides and he didn’t do something as scandalous as hold his girlfriend’s hand in public, he melted under her touch and attention.

“All right! Bloss, you’re back early! This is massive, like, supernova massive,” Todd said. “Hey, I know! Let’s throw a party at mine tonight! Brick said you weren’t coming back for another couple of days, so this is like a cool early Christmas present to all of us.”

Bubbles gasped. “Oh my gosh, yes! Let’s all go to Todd’s tonight, just like we used to. I’m calling Robin right now.”

“We can make it a real Christmas party,” Blossom said. Somehow, she’d gotten ahold of Bubbles’ glitter pen and now smeared a generous amount on Brick’s cheeks until he gleamed without suffering a nuclear meltdown. A Christmas miracle, indeed.

“You’ll wear the Santa suit,” Hana said. Demanded.

“Ho ho ho! You got it, babe.”

“That thing’s a rental,” Brick said. “And it’s, like, 75 degrees outside.”

“If he gets too hot, I’ll hose him down,” Hana said.

Brick smartly decided not to press her on that one.

“I like your elf costume, Brick,” Blossom teased. Maybe.

“I’m burning it as soon as I get paid,” Brick said.

“I thought it was a rental like Todd’s?”

He hesitated, trapped by his own logic, and she laughed softly and kissed the side of his mouth. Brick froze and played it off like it didn’t affect him, but his eyes were drawn to Blossom’s lips for the next six whole minutes. Boomer really didn’t get why he had to make everything so damn complicated.

“Hey, hombres, our break is up and I see a super cute kid waiting to sit on the softest lap in Townsville,” Todd said, sinking back onto his candy cane throne and patting his lap.

Brick visibly cringed.

“It could be worse,” Mike whispered to Brick. “At least this time we get to keep our shirts on.”

Boomer smiled at the memory of Todd’s last seasonal gig he’d roped Brick and Mike into over the summer. The shirtless carwash had admittedly been one of his more rewarding part-time jobs, and Boomer had the photo evidence to cherish the memory extremely fondly.

Blossom and Hana retreated behind Mike while Bubbles finished up her phone call with Robin and Brick admitted the next child on set.

“Welcome to the North Pole,” he said with all the cheer of an old tire. Nonetheless, his cheeks dazzled. “What’s your name, kid?”

She looked up at him but didn’t say anything. Boomer noticed her shyness and decided he better intervene.

“Hey there,” he said, taking a knee so he could be on her eye-level. “Merry Christmas.”

That alarmed her even more, and she hugged Brick’s leg.

“What the—” Brick put his hands up like he didn’t know what to do with them. “Great.”

The girl’s parents were busy talking to Mike about the picture packages and didn’t seem to notice what was going on.

“Uh,” Boomer said, ready to flag them down before the little girl got scared or started to cry. They’d been lucky this morning with only one child throwing a temper tantrum out of the tens they’d seen.

“All right, kid. I hope you have a good grip.” Brick floated off the ground with the little girl clinging to his leg and flew over to Todd’s throne.

Boomer was so flabbergasted by his brother’s gross disregard for this child’s safety in front of her parents that he was momentarily stunned where he kneeled. It was over in about two and a half seconds, with her parents none the wiser and the little girl still in one piece, miraculously. Brick peeled her off him and dropped her on Todd’s lap.

“Name,” Brick demanded. And then, reluctantly: “…To check you off the Nice List.”

The little girl looked up at him with wide-eyed wonderment, or maybe fear. “Morana.”

“Morana. Super. Tell Todd—I mean, Santa—what you want. And smile for the camera.”

Todd didn’t miss a beat and wrapped his arms loosely around her to hold her safely in place. “Morana, that’s a pretty name. Wanna tell me what you want for Christmas?”

Morana pointed at Brick. “That one.”

Brick turned as red as his messy man bun. Todd wheezed.

“Oh, yeah? Well, that one’s taken, but I bet I can get you a picture together. How ‘bout it?” Todd asked.

Boomer was up and moving in a blue flash. “That can be arranged.” He shoved his brother with a healthy burst of Super strength, and Brick all but fell on his knee next to Todd’s throne. Boomer waved back at Mike for the picture.

“Big smile now!” Mike said cheerfully, and snapped the picture.

“What the hell is up with these kids?” Brick asked when Morana skipped back to her parents and started chattering at them in a language Boomer didn’t recognize but assumed must be all good things from the way she grinned from ear to ear. “They get bolder every year.”

“Or you’re just getting softer,” Boomer teased.

“Yeah, right.”

Blossom laughed at something Hana said on a nearby bench, drawing both their eyes.

“Whatever you say, man,” Boomer said.

xxx

Todd’s party was a nostalgic and long-overdue affair later that evening. Unlike Boomer, who had to make do in a small studio apartment on the outskirts of Citiesville where the rent was more manageable and his commute didn’t matter when flying anywhere took only minutes, Todd lived in a big house he took care of for his often absent, globe-trotting parents. Blossom, Bubbles, and Robin had taken the initiative and strung up Christmas lights, while Boomer created and managed the playlist for the night. They had a good crowd with old friends from high school and new ones from work and college gathered for no excuse other than to have a good time.

Butch, Buttercup, Mike, and Todd had set up beer pong in the basement, where most of the festivities were taking place. As usual, the shit talking and macho bravado had soared to ludicrous heights.

“Come on, BC,” Todd goaded. “Money shot, right here.” He fluffed his Santa beard, the ends of which were damp with beer. Buttercup had one cup left to hit.

“I’m about to straight-up tea bag you with this ping pong ball, Todd, I swear to god.” Buttercup tried to focus on her aim after too many beers and the distraction of Todd’s stupid Santa beard.

“Do it, fucking do it,” Butch said, bobbing on the balls of his feet and slightly manic with the competition and holiday cheer, probably.

“I’m gonna fucking do it!”

“I don’t think you can fucking do it,” Mike said.

“Ohhhhh!” Butch hollered when Buttercup lost her temper and threw the ball too hard. It bounced off Todd’s beard and fell on the floor, leaving the last cup untouched.

“Mike, you cheater!” Buttercup shouted.

Mike burst out laughing.

“All riiiiight, the Toddster’s final shot. You filming, babe?” Todd asked.

Hana, across the table from Boomer, had her phone out and poised. “Kick their asses, Toddy.”

“Yeah, bring it on, Toddy,” Butch jeered.

“Oh, it’s about to be brought.”

“Oh god, please, you peaked in high school,” Buttercup said.

“Hey, he plateaued,” Mike said. “There’s a difference.”

“Just take the damn shot!”

Todd shot, hit the rim of the solo cup, and missed. Buttercup and Butch threw up their hands and whooped. They were still in the game, and the stakes were even higher now.

Boomer squeezed Mike’s arm in a silent excuse and went to change the music…only to find Brick and Blossom making out in the hallway like it was their last night on Earth.

The music was fine, he decided. No need to interrupt Brick and Blossom trying to fuse with the wall and face his brother’s cock blocked wrath. Discreetly, Boomer snapped a picture on his phone and texted it to Bubbles.

[Boomer: Shooketh]

Bubbles’ reply was lightning fast.

[Bubbles: More like shattered!!]

[Bubbles: Better get out of there before they catch you lol 💀]

After another hour (and Brick and Blossom’s reemergence from the wall in one piece with not a hair out of place because god forbid), Boomer and Mike decided to head out early. They went back to Boomer’s apartment, where a very excited Pomeranian welcomed them home.

“Hi, Pumpkin!” Mike brightened like the sun and scooped up his favorite girl, left in Boomer’s care while he was away at college. “Who’s ready for a walk?”

They walked Pumpkin and let her tire herself out running around the suburban neighborhood where it was too late at night for any cars to be out. A half hour later, they were curled up on the loveseat with Pumpkin snoozing in her fuzzy bed at their feet and an old black-and-white Christmas movie playing on low volume on the television.

“Hey,” Boomer said, lifting his head from Mike’s chest to look at him properly.

Mike set aside the hot chocolate he’d been drinking and pulled Boomer up by his waist. “Hey, you. What is it?”

Boomer smiled. It was silly, really. “It’s nothing.”

“Oh?” Mike returned his smile and leaned closer. He smelled like soap, a hint of chocolate, and something else that made Boomer want to bury his face in his neck.

“Just happy,” Boomer said.

“Really? I can’t tell.”

Boomer sat up a little higher. The neck of Mike’s old lacrosse jersey he wore dipped down his shoulder, too big on him and softer than a cloud. He pressed a chaste kiss to the underside of Mike’s jaw. “How about now?”

“Hm, nope, I don’t think I quite got that.”

Boomer threaded his fingers though Mike’s short, dark hair at the nape of his neck. Feeling coquettish, he gave his ear a nip. “How about now?”

Mike shifted on the couch and pulled Boomer’s bent legs onto his lap. His voice was as warm as the hot chocolate he’d been drinking. “I think I’m starting to get a vague understanding.”

Boomer laughed and painted a trail of kisses along Mike’s jaw, up his chin. He pressed a strong hand to his chest and put a little power behind it. Centimeters apart, he could taste the lingering heat of the hot chocolate on Mike’s breath. “And now?”

Mike’s eyes drooped and darkened. His hands slipped around Boomer’s waist, under the jersey, a silent entreaty. “I think you can do a little better than that, Angel.”

The secret nickname broke Boomer’s resolve, and he kissed his boyfriend full on the mouth with all the confidence and shamelessness he couldn’t give him that morning at the mall surrounded by children and their parents. Mike’s shirt soon found its way to the floor along with Boomer’s borrowed jersey. The loveseat was too short to accommodate Mike’s height comfortably, and after a few moments Boomer held him close and flew them to the bed in a flash.

“I’ll never get over how hot that is,” Mike said, breathless.

Boomer blushed, unable to help it. He was careful with his strength around Mike, but sometimes the X bonded to his bones pushed him to the raw, carnal boundaries of humanity. Mike’s hand on his cheek drew him out of those spiraling thoughts.

“I mean it,” Mike said. “I love that part of you. And I trust you completely.”

Words did not come easily, nor did they seem appropriate in that moment. Boomer bent to kiss Mike again and pull him as close as he could get. Wrapped up in the warm sheets and each other, Boomer’s silly little thought that he had never been happier grew and swelled to heights he never could have imagined before Mike. They lay there together, lazy and sleepy, as the credits of their forgotten holiday movie played on the television.

“One more semester,” Mike said, “and then I graduate.”

“I can’t believe you’re almost a college graduate,” Boomer said. “It feels like you left ages ago.”

“Four years is a long time, but it’s not forever. And you should get ready.”

Boomer looked up at him. “Ready for what?”

“To move, of course.”

“Move?”

“Hey, I love how cozy your apartment is, but I’m pretty sure Pumpkin would appreciate her own room once we’re living together full time.”

Boomer sat up properly. “You… You want to move in together? With me?”

“Of course! The only question is, where do you want to go?”

Boomer covered his mouth. Of course he had thought about getting a place with Mike, but that always seemed like the distant future. What if they didn’t stay together? What if the long distance was too hard? What if Mike met someone else at college? Brick didn’t talk about it much, but after a few too many drinks one night the year Blossom and Mike both left for college, he’d confessed how afraid he was that he would lose her forever. How can the old be exciting and fun compared to the amazing, new adventures she would be having?

But from the way Boomer had caught them all but absorbing each other at Todd’s tonight, Blossom seemed perfectly happy to keep him. And Mike…

“You’re serious,” Boomer said.

“I’ve never been more serious.” Mike took his hand and kissed his knuckles carefully. “I can’t wait to start our lives together.”

Boomer could have cried. He almost did. Life was hard, even for a Super like him. With endless bills to pay and the occasional monster to dispose of, sometimes he felt like he was being pulled in too many directions without anyone there to help pick up the slack. But this… This was his.

“Me too,” Boomer said. “And I don’t care where we go, as long as it’s together.”

“Well, cool. In that case, if you’re not opposed to it, was thinking farther north, like Metroville. There are some great photography jobs there that I want to apply for, and the music scene is bigger than it is here—”

“Yes! A hundred percent yes, let’s do it. When do we leave?”

Mike laughed. “June 1st, as soon as they hand me my diploma.”

Six months. It had a date now. Unthinking, Boomer threw his arms around Mike’s broad shoulders and hugged him tight. “I’ll mark my calendar.”

“It’s a date.”

Incidentally, they did not get much sleep the rest of that night.

xxx

I told myself I wasn’t going to do a ton of fluff, but damnit all, Boomike is SUPER CUTE and I couldn’t help myself. Let them have the happy ending they deserve. Thanks for reading!

[amyrallis]

We Were Gods In Each Other's Eyes -Gods Fall Too-

Written for the amazing (i love you) @akayauchiha for her birthday, happy birthday again anija uwu love you, and inspired and made for her MASTERPIECE, amen, we stan, just wait till i reblog uwu

And the MASTERPIECE:

İ love you and hope to write more for your pieces uwu ❤️❤️❤️❤️

-----------

Tobirama stretched next to Madara, his wings echoing the movement and widening out, the back wings -for precision, rather than power, like the bigger ones were- delicately tilting to avoid brushing against Madara’s face and awakening him.

It had been a long day. Hashirama had, once again, made it his business to deal with the mortals and settle their conflicts, even though they all knew that it was a part of them, something that couldn’t just be stopped, for humans were different, from each other and from everything else that existed in the between of worlds, an eclipse planet that most didn’t dare go to. Well except for the Senju and Uchiha, that was.

The planet was riddled with spirits and beings of all kinds, the place where lost creatures landed. It had been churning for millenium, a meeting point of the worlds and so very complex. Hashirama wanted to keep the chaos in it to a minimum, something that had always been impossible and Tobirama had been just about done with him, his sword hand itching while he twitched. Madara had been a blessing in that very second, reminding him that no, fratricide isn’t exactly allowed, Tobirama.

He could still dream.

Madara was always like that. There had been a time when they were little, both of them so very apart from each other and different, when he wasn’t supposed to do so much but still had, anyway, because what did the will of gods mean when it was right there in front of him? Madara was his gravity, the one thing that had always managed to pull him in and keep him in one piece, an orbit that Tobirama had chosen to keep, always and forever, because not everything ended.

And Tobirama knew, orbits, in most part, were things of destruction in the universe, tearing apart both the gravity and the planet but sometimes -when Madara’s hair fell in front of his eyes and a dazzling smile, just for Tobirama , lit up his face, when they were sitting in front of a fire and the crackling flames had licked Madara’s cheek, the impression of his inner fire making his eyes echo the flickering light- he felt like most wasn’t enough to give it up. 

-earth wasn’t destructive, a full balance held on by a tether so thin but still holding on strong, thriving with the danger and so much better for it. He hoped they’d be the same.-

They were.

Madara shifted next to him, his face turned towards Tobirama – as it always was, their faces always towards each other, their eyes turned forevermore into the infinity hidden so carefully in the other’s- as Tobirama raised his head to gaze at it, the soft smile and relaxation of sleep making them both more like lazy cats than anything else. His own eyes softened, the unwanted glare that had appeared to protect his eyes from the light disappearing into the ether. A humming sound left his lips while he drew close, wrapping his arms once more around his partner.

A content sigh escaped Madara, probably from being enclosed in a warm place, Tobirama thought. Madara did have a preference for warmth and soft things and Tobirama tended to be his favourite warm soft thing when he wasn’t busy being his favourite mad scientist and humanoid. Something that tended to translate to hugging, especially when Tobirama was busy with other things. -Madara didn’t like it when Tobirama wasn’t paying attention to him and Tobirama, with his running four different directions at once mind, tended to do that. A lot. 

He’d never admit he liked the hugging.

Madara, with his leech of a brother and Hashirama, had grown up with too many hugs and had chosen to be converted into the dark side, it seemed. He was also determined to make Tobirama join.

Tobirama really didn’t approve. -he loved it-

Hashirama was dealt with, for now, and Izuna was standing guard with him -Tobirama thought they both enjoyed the Hashiramasitting a bit too much to not give it away but it was their problem, he wasn’t going to deal with Madara when he inevitably found out and tried to commit first degree murder (he had plans for that situation, Anija wouldn’t know what hit him)- while they had the time to themselves, in the middle of the cloud cluster that Madara had called home for a while as he traversed earth, their eyes full of wonder and their magic leaking into the water that covered the air, making it feel like homesafetyhappywarm. –

Tobirama had always associated heat with home even though he was an ice inclined magic user, his wings tipped with the swirls of ice and White like snow, representing his soul and his magic. He had always liked and gone for heat even though his domain, his true safety was cold and water, the exact opposite. He had wondered once, his eyes focused on his hands, the tips looking like pieces of shattered ice and-

-Madara was heat. He was heat and warmth and safety, home and the one being he’d believe, trust above all. Of course Tobirama associated heat with safe and home. Madara was all of those and more.-

Madara breathed softly, slowly slipping to wakefulness under the reverent gaze Tobirama gave him because there was something almost sacred -and what did it matter if gods would take a slight? Tobirama would wage war on heavens for Madara, for his sake and for his name. He had, once. The ring settled upon his finger glinted under the sunlight, the sharingan in the uchiwa almost luminescent.- in the way sunlight caressed his face, his black mane all over the place and Tobirama didn’t mind, at all. Never would.

His eyelids fluttered decisively and Tobirama smiled as he was met with Madara’s sharingan, the three glowing red dots matching his own.

“Watching me, Senju? Didn’t know you had fallen that low.” Madara murmured, his voice lower than it’s normal squawk with the harmony of the moment, the instinctive need for silence they needed, always and forever because they weren’t made for words. They were together with their actions, not with sounds that would change and evolve within years, the sanctity of their bond feeling downplayed by such trivial things, made mortal instead of the light golden red and purple blue it glowed in Tobirama’s mind, ethereal and infinite.

Fallen. Well played, Madara. Tobirama smirked, a dangerous but playful glint in his eyes and quickly shifted, his body settling over the content and soft form of his lover. Madara gave him a smug look, knowing very well what he had just said and Tobirama smirked back, his wings rising up to present a majestic image as he leaned in, lightly brushing his feather crown over Madara’s horn. Madara’s breath hitched, a soft look gracing his face and his tail wrapped around Tobirama’s arm, the teasing soft and kind.

“Harder and faster than anything has ever dared to.” Tobirama muttered, their breaths mingling and Madara stared, something fascinated in his eyes before it turned into mischief, and Madara twisted, reversing their positions to settle over Tobirama.

Tobirama landed softly, a light chuckle escaping him as Madara settled over and leant his head down, resting on Tobirama’s sternum. He was more a cat than a demon and Tobirama would prove it, one day. “Your heart doesn’t beat like you fell. You lying, Senju?”

Tobirama raised his head, leveling their eyes once more and Madara smiled innocently from where he was laying on him, his tail drawing circles on Tobirama’s hand. “Because there was nothing scary or unexpected with falling for you. You on the other hand…” his other hand rose grasping Madara’s as a blush came over them both and laid his lips over Madara’s pulse. “You are everything I had loved and more, so much more.”

It wasn’t expected, it was filled with holes and deeper trenches, deep and mysterious like the ocean, their love, but Tobirama liked to think it was as wondrous as it too. Filled with secrets and fun, beauty unlike any other and maybe there were dark parts none dared to thread but that didn’t change it’s wonder. 

He closed his eyes, settling down once more, and with the weight of Madara on him a grounding warmth, his mind slipped away, only the light of that burning fire lighting his way home.

[arcticdementor]

Media Twitter does not hate Substack because it’s pretending to be a platform when it’s a publisher; they don’t hate it because it’s filled with anti-woke white guys; they don’t hate it because of harassment or any such thing. I don’t think they really hate it at all. Substack is a small and ultimately not-very-relevant outpost in a vastly larger industry; they may not like it but it’s not important enough for them to hate it. What do they hate? They hate where their industry is and they hate where they are within their industry. But that’s a big problem that they don’t feel like they can solve. If you feel you can’t get mad at the industry that’s impoverishing you, it’s much easier to get mad at the people who you feel are unjustly succeeding in that industry. Trying to cancel Glenn Greenwald (again) because he criticizes the media harshly? Trying to tarnish Substack’s reputation so that cool, paid-up writer types leave it and the bad types like me get kicked off? That they can maybe do. Confronting their industry’s future with open eyes? Too scary, especially for people who were raised to see success as their birthright and have suddenly found that their degrees and their witheringly dry one-liners do not help them when the rent comes due.

…

Life in the “content” industry already sucks. A small handful of people make bank while the vast majority hustle relentlessly just to hold on to the meager pay they already receive. There are staff writers at big-name publications who produce thousands of words every week and who make less than $40,000 a year for their trouble. There are permanent employees of highly prestigious newspapers and magazines who don’t receive health insurance. Venues close all the time. Mourning another huge round of layoffs is a regular bonding experience for people in the industry. Writers have to constantly job hop just to try and grind out an extra $1,500 a year, making their whole lives permanent job interviews where they can’t risk offending their potential bosses and peers. Many of them dream of selling that book to save themselves financially, not seeming to understand that book advances have fallen 40% in 10 years - median figure now $6,080 - and that the odds of actually making back even that meager advance are slim, meaning most authors are making less than minimum wage from their books when you do the math. They have to tweet constantly for the good of their careers, or so they believe, which amounts to hundreds of hours of unpaid work a year. Their publications increasingly strong arm them into churning out pathetic pop-culture ephemera like listicles about the outfits on Wandavision. They live in fear of being the one to lose out when the next layoffs come and the game of media musical chairs spins up once again. They have to pretend to like ghouls like Ezra Klein and Jonah Peretti and make believe that there’s such a thing as “the Daily Beast reputation for excellence.”

I have always felt bad for them, despite our differences, because of these conditions. And they have a right to be angry. But they don’t have much in the way of self-awareness about where their anger really lies. A newsletter company hosting Bari Weiss is why you can’t pay your student loans? You sure?

They’ll tell you about the terrible conditions in their industry themselves, when they’re feeling honest. So what are they really mad about? That I’m making a really-just-decent guaranteed wage for just one year? Or that this decent wage is the kind of money many of them dream of making despite the fact that, in their minds, they’ve done everything right and played by all the rules? Is their anger really about a half-dozen guys whose writing you have to actively seek out to see? (If you click the button and put in your email address, you’ll get these newsletters. If you don’t, you won’t. So if you’re a media type who hates my writing, consider just… not clicking that button.) Or do they need someplace to put the rage and resentment that grows inside them as they realize, no, it’s not getting better, this is all I get?

It’s true that I have, in a very limited way, achieved the new American dream: getting a little bit of VC cash. I’m sorry. But it’s much much less than one half of what Felix Salmon was making in 2017 and again, it’s only for one year.

You think the writers complaining in that piece I linked to at the top wanted to be here, at this place in their career, after all those years of hustling? You think decades into their media career, the writers who decamped to Substack said to themselves “you know, I’d really like to be in my 40s and having to hope that enough people will pitch in $5 a month so I can pay my mortgage”? No. But the industry didn’t give them what they felt they deserved either. So they displace and project. They can hate Jesse Singal, but Jesse Singal isn’t where this burning anger is coming from. Neither am I. They’re so angry because they bought into a notoriously savage industry at the nadir of its labor conditions and were surprised to find that they’re drifting into middle age without anything resembling financial security. I feel for them as I feel for all people living economically precarious lives, but getting rid of Substack or any of its writers will not do anything to fix their industry or their jobs. They wanted more and they got less and it hurts. This isn’t what they dreamed. That’s what this is really about.

…

My own deal here is not mysterious. It’s just based on a fact that the blue checks on Twitter have never wanted to accept. I got offered money to write here for the same reason I got offered to write for The New York Times and Harper’s and The Washington Post and The LA Times, the same reason I’ve gotten a half-dozen invitations to pitch since I started here a few weeks ago, the same reason a literary agent sought me out and asked me to write a book, the same reason I sold that book for a decent advance: because I pull traffic. Though I am a social outcast from professional opinion writing, I have a better freelance publishing history than many, many of my critics who are paid-up, obedient members of the media social scene. Why? Because the editors who hired me thought I was a great guy? No. Because I pull traffic. I always have. That’s why you’re reading this on Substack right now.

…

A really important lesson to learn, in life, is this: your enemies are more honest about you than your friends ever will be. I’ve been telling the blue checks for over a decade that their industry was existentially fucked, that the all-advertising model was broken, that Google and Facebook would inevitably hoover up all the profit, that there are too many affluent kids fresh out of college just looking for a foothold in New York who’ll work for next to nothing and in doing so driving down the wages of everyone else, that their mockery of early subscription programs like Times Select was creating a disastrous industry expectation that asking your readers directly for money was embarrassing. Trump is gone and the news business is cratering. Michael Tracey didn’t make that happen. None of this anger will heal what’s wrong. If you get all of the people you don’t like fired from Substack tomorrow, what will change? How will your life improve? Greenwald will spend more time with his hottie husband and his beloved kids and his 6,000 dogs in his beautiful home in Rio. Glenn will be fine. How do we do the real work of getting you job security and a decent wage?

…

But how do things get better in that way? Only through real self-criticism (which Twitter makes impossible) and by asking hard questions. Questions like one that has not been credibly confronted a single time in this entire media meltdown: why are so many people subscribing to Substacks? What is the traditional media not providing that they’re seeking elsewhere? Why have half a million people signed up as paying subscribers of various Substack newsletters, if the establishment media is providing the diversity of viewpoints that is an absolute market requirement in a country with a vast diversity of opinions? You can try to make an adult determination about that question, to better understand what media is missing, or you can read this and write some shitty joke tweet while your industry burns to the ground around you. It’s your call.

Substack might fold tomorrow, but someone would else sell independent media; there’s a market. Substack might kick me and the rest of the unclean off of their platforms tomorrow, but other critics of social justice politics would pop up here; there’s a market. Establishment media’s takeover by this strange brand of academic identity politics might grow even more powerful, if that’s even possible, but dissenters will find a place to sell alternative opinion; there’s a market. What there might not be much of a market for anymore is, well, you - college educated, urban, upwardly striving if not economically improving, woke, ironic, and selling that wokeness and that irony as your only product. Because you flooded the market. Everyone in your entire industry is selling the exact same thing, tired sarcastic jokes and bleating righteousness about injustices they don’t suffer under themselves, and it’s not good in basic economic terms if you’re selling the same thing as everyone else. You add that on to structural problems within your business model and your utter subservience to a Silicon Valley that increasingly hates you, well…. I get why you’re mad. And I get that you don’t like me. But I’m not what you’re mad about. Not really.

In the span of a decade or so, essentially all professional media not explicitly branded as conservative has been taken over by a school of politics that emerged from humanities departments at elite universities and began colonizing the college educated through social media. Those politics are obscure, they are confusing, they are socially and culturally extreme, they are expressed in a bizarre vocabulary, they are deeply alienating to many, and they are very unpopular by any definition. The vast majority of the country is not woke, including the vast majority of women and people of color. How could it possibly be healthy for the entire media industry to be captured by any single niche political movement, let alone one that nobody likes? Why does no one in media seem willing to have an honest, uncomfortable conversation about the near-total takeover of their industry by a fringe ideology?

And the bizarre assumption of almost everyone in media seems to have been that they could adopt this brand of extreme niche politics, in mass, as an industry, and treat those politics as a crusade that trumps every other journalistic value, with no professional or economic consequences. They seem to have thought that Americans were just going to swallow it; they seem to have thought they could paint most of the country as vicious bigots and that their audiences would just come along for the ride. They haven’t. In fact Republicans are making great hay of the collapse of the media into pure unapologetic advocacy journalism. Some people are turning to alternative media to find options that are neither reactionary ideologues or self-righteous woke yelling. Can you blame them? Substack didn’t create this dynamic, and neither did I. The exact same media people who are so angry about Substack did, when they abandoned any pretense to serving the entire country and decided that their only job was to advance a political cause that most ordinary people, of any gender or race, find alienating and wrong. So maybe try and look at where your problems actually come from. They’re not going away.

Now steel yourselves, media people, take a shot of something strong, look yourself in the eye in the mirror, summon you most honest self, and tell me: am I wrong?

[justfandomwritings]

Magic and Misfortune (Loki)

Pairing: Loki x Reader

Word Count: 3.6k

Request:  “I haven’t found someone that writes as well as this for the MCU for a while😂 I’ve seen AUs where gods from different cultures are in one universe and I’ve got a little scenario in my head that sounded pretty cool. Loki x reader who’s a daughter of Zeus. If you could write something like this, that would be AWESOME! Thank you!!😊💕” - Anonymous

Notes: So... I love the idea behind this fic. Not just the request, I love the Greek myth I am reinterpreting and basing it on, and anyone familiar with this particular myth will see how well it fits with Loki. BUT I think my execution here might be a touch lacking, and I’m kinda disappointed in myself and im not sure why really, so if anyone has any opinions, ideas or constructive criticism let me know. I reserve the right to turn this into a series or make this a standalone if I decide not to write part two. It works as both.

*This fic has also not been edited and that’s part of why 

There were more than Nine Realms. A point Asgard, particularly its king, often refused to acknowledge.  

The space between the Nine and the realms beyond was enough to excuse Aesir ignorance for those not amongst the royal court. When one wasn’t dealing regularly with other realms, it was easy to imagine Asgard stood alone, or at least above the rest, and it was effortless to pretend that Odin ruled all of the known worlds. 

He was Odin, after all. He was the All-Father, the Ancient One, the Great King. The stories said he was all seeing and all knowing. The Aesir thought him a man worthy of the crown atop his head. They thought themselves without equal, above all. None held this belief more than Odin.

Tales of his great conquest of the Nine Realms had died on the lips of those few old enough to know them, and many saw him only as their benevolent lord. Few knew the stories of the wars Odin waged. Not the wars against the Jotunns, those were bedtime stories of the Aesir. The subjugation of Vanaheim; the decimation of Alfheim; the destruction of Niflheim: these were stories only for the ears of those most trusted to the King and those so persuasive and cunning that no secret was beyond their reach. 

It was Loki, therefore, who was the first to make contact with Gaia. 

They were the realms closest to the Nine. Compared with the size of the universe, Gaia was practically within arm’s reach of Midgard, so close that even humanity was aware of their existence. An accessible and fortuitous target for the supposedly all-powerful King of Asgard.

But Gaia was no Midgard, and Asgard was not so without equal as they claimed to be. Gaia was the doorstep on which Odin had paused.

Gaia was an alliance of three kings, each with their own kingdom: Olympus, ruled by Zeus; Tartarus, ruled by his brother Hades; and Arcadia, ruled by the final brother Poseidon. 

They were constantly at war with each other, but nothing united the three like an external threat over which they could display their dominance. When Odin had set foot at the base of Olympus, a truly majestic realm if there ever was one, Zeus had called on his brothers, currently warring over an insignificant, miniscule ice realm known as Hyperborea. They set aside their feud and arrived before nightfall, and Odin, upon meeting the three, had left by morning. 

As a child, upon first coming to the realization of his father’s war-riddled past, Loki had asked his father why he never told them stories of how he united the Nine Realms. Odin had told Loki that he thought violence nothing worthy of praise and that his millennia of peace with Jotunheim was far more worthy of tales than any battle. 

As a man, upon hearing the stories and seeing his father for who he truly was, Loki thought the story of being humbled at Gaia was likely the true reason Odin did not speak of conquering the Nine Realms. 

Loki knew the tale by heart, and he wanted to see the place of its birth. He wanted to see the place Odin could not claim, the place Odin accepted defeat, or at least retreat.

“Father,” Loki’s silver tongue went to work. “Perhaps, we might speak of Gaia.” He had been careful to catch the All-Father alone. It would prove easier to sway him this way, and he would not be shut down by the presence of those who were less aware than himself.

“What of it, son? They do not bother us, and we do not bother with them.” Odin dismissed offhand as he sat with his younger son in the library. 

“I would like to see the place, Father.” Loki confessed. “In part, I confess, for my own curiosity. I will never sit on the throne of the Nine Realms, and for that, I’d like to see what lies beyond the throne’s purview. Though, I suppose the greater part is in the usefulness of spying Asgard’s greatest threat.”

“Threat?” Odin eyed Loki over the top of the text he was reading. “How are they a threat?”

“There is no doubt, Father,” Loki rushed to sooth, “that you and Thor and the armies of Asgard could handle an onslaught from three oafs like the ones ruling Gaia, but even a battle against three so unskilled would still cause Asgard loses given their sheer size. Does it not worry you that one day, after you are gone, they will grow discontent to fight amongst themselves? Or worse, see us as weak without your omnipotent guidance?”

“It may be worthy of thought, but your brother has trained for such a thing. Defending the Realm Eternal is his birthright, and he will do it well.” 

“I suppose, but the lives lost…” Loki sighed and looked away contemplatively. “Though, I suppose you are correct in that. The only way to prevent such a battle entirely would be to claim the three as Asgard’s newest realms, and who’s to say such a thing is possible? We know nothing of them since your return from their shores.”

Loki watched his father from the corner of his eye. All of Asgard knew of his ‘silvertongue’, as they called it. Yet, somehow, they all allowed themselves to be goaded into his thinking. Perhaps, because he managed to convince them all that it was their thinking he was commenting on and not his own. How many times had he convinced Thor to do something so thoroughly that the God of Thunder actually thought he himself had come up with such an intelligent idea.

Odin conceded the point rather hesitantly, “We know nothing of their realms or their state. It is beyond the sight of the throne and of Heimdall.”

“Such a shame,” Loki mused. “After a millennia fighting themselves, they could be a hardened force beyond compare… or entirely obliterated and ripe for the taking… I suppose we will never know.”

If Loki could make Odin see Gaia as a place teetering between threat and opportunity, a place that could make or destroy his legacy, then surely Odin would take the bait. And if he could make that opportunity seem ripe for the taking, an opportunity to finally claim his title Lord of the Spear once more, Odin would be far too greedy to let the opportunity pass to Thor. 

Loki let the thoughts stew in his father’s head for several weeks before he dropped another line about Gaia, then weeks later made another about the conquest, and months past that another about Thor’s coming reign.

It took two years before, finally, his father had slowly, subconsciously, been worked into a desperate need to, at the bare minimum, know what Gaia was doing. And there was only one man, one spy, with a tongue that could charm any ear and magic that could open any door, whom Odin would trust with the task.

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The Bifrost was built to traverse the Nine Realms. It was possible to further its reach, but such a thing would require time and attention that Loki and Odin did not wish to draw on their endeavours. 

Loki, instead, was to walk the paths the All-Father once took to reach Gaia millennia ago. 

He took a ship, piloted and manned by him and him alone, and he went out past the Rainbow Bridge, past the Bifrost itself. On the orders of the King, Heimdall’s sure hands sent Loki to Gaia’s closest realm, Midgard. 

Midgard encompassed a solar system that encircled a star called the Sun. Only one of the planets was inhabited, a planet called Earth teaming with inferior beings who thought themselves alone in the universe. However, Loki didn’t need the help of the humans who bent the knee and called him God. Heimdall, instead, dropped his ship at the edge of the solar system, just past a planet the humans called Pluto.

From there, Loki navigated fields of asteroids and stretches of empty space, honing in on coordinates that were a thousand years out-of-date, so that he might have some starting point for his search.

It took him a matter of weeks before, looming on the horizon, Loki finally saw it. 

He docked his ship amongst others porting on an exterior wooden scaffold and approached the towering walls of Olympus. 

Magnificent marble gates, carved from a single piece of stone, loomed twentyfold over Loki’s head. Their height was such that he was sure they would conceal the entire Palace of Asgard from view if they wished. 

Chiseled into their face, by the hand of a true master, were images he could only assume were from their realm’s history. The scenes wound their way in a serpentine motion down the stone with an intricacy the likes of which Loki had never seen. The dwarves would pale if they saw such flawless craftsmanship achieved by any hand but their own. 

Much of the history presented to him was beyond his understanding, but Loki recognized the still that greeted him at eye level instantly. It was a famous tale on Midgard, one clearly founded in a kernel of truth. 

It depicted three brothers standing side by side in triumph. Each held their weapon of choice, spears with an increasing number of points progressing down the line to the final brother’s trident. The marble wasn’t inlaid with anything, yet through the natural skill of its carvers the colors of the stone seemed to convey the varying material of each blade. 

The men stood atop a form the size of a mountain but was clearly a body, decapitated, the head balanced under the right foot of the one holding the single-tipped spear. The dying face turned so it’s unseeing eyes looked down on any who approached the gate. 

Crowds, carved in a far smaller height, pushed in around the massive headless beast and cheered on their new leaders who were flanked, in the background of the depiction by a stoic group of beautiful companions. 

It was the Midgardian Kronos myth incarnate. Loki would know it anywhere. 

He wondered, mostly to himself, if the sons really had killed their father, if they had simply taken credit for his death, or if they had merely indulged in some lighthearted propaganda. None seemed implausible. 

“Who are you to approach the Gates of Zeus?” boomed a voice high atop the walls. 

Loki bowed to one knee and called out, “I am Loki Odinson, Prince of Asgard, and I would be humbled to make acquaintance with your city.”

There was a loud scraping, and rather than parting as most gates would, the stone slab lifted from the ground only just high enough for Loki to pass under it. 

“Welcome to Olympus.” 

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“Welcome to Olympus, Prince Loki.”

It was the fourth time he had been greeted in such a way.

The first had been the gatekeeper who allowed Loki entrance. He came down from the tower at the peak of the walls via the largest ladder Loki had ever seen, a set of rails and steps carved directly into the backside of the rock leading up to their guard tower. 

The second had been the kindly older man who came to escort the prince through the pristine cobblestone streets to the palace. 

The third had been the palace guard who asked the older man to wait with Loki a moment while he saw if any member of the royal court was expecting or wished to speak with him. Loki quickly informed the soldier that this voyage was one taken merely for pleasure, and that his arrival would be expected by none. The guard came back approximately ten minutes later bringing a beautiful young woman in tow. 

She was the fourth to greet Loki, the first to do so using his title. 

Her clothing was something more appropriate for a lowly servant girl than a member of court. The dress was a dull grey made of a scratchy, shapeless material that did nothing for her body or her coloring. If not for the way she carried herself, Loki would have believed hers the facade of a lowly maid. 

As it was, shoulders high, chin up, back straight, she carried herself with the pride and respect known only to true nobility. It crossed his mind that there may be nothing to her outfit, that it may just be the style of the place; but he recalled many properly dressed ladies as he made his way to her doorstep. She certainly wasn’t lying or putting on a show for him; he would sense that. She truly did dress this way. Her garb served some different purpose, and the idea he would deduce it later was intriguing to him.

“Thank you, my lady,” Loki bowed to her as he would any peer on Asgard, airing on the side of respectful caution. “It is an honor to be welcomed in your beautiful realm.” 

The woman smiled politely and offered Loki her arm. “I am afraid that if you came to see King Zeus you will be disappointed. It is a day of council, and our King and Queen are away with their advisors and will not return until tomorrow. The palace has been left in lesser hands.”

“That is quite fine by me. I did not come for any significant purpose.” Loki looped her arm through his and allowed her to guide him into the hall. 

The palace was, like the gate, made of marble. Much of the streets and buildings he had passed walking in were similarly carved from blocks of a variety of beautiful stones, but it seemed that marble had been reserved for the rich and royal. 

“What, may I ask, brings you here if it is nothing of importance?” The woman guided him smoothly through marble hall after marble hall, winding him deeper into the depths of her domain. 

“Nothing more or less than my own curiosity,” Loki confessed. “Your people and mine have been without contact for so many centuries that there are some who believe your existence to be nothing more than myth.”

“And are you one of those?”

“Well, I am here,” Loki pointed out.

The woman nodded thoughtfully. “This is true, but you could have notions of what we were that remain to be disproven.”

“If they’ve yet to be disproven then how could I say they were myth?” Loki countered. 

A genuine smile pulled at the woman’s lips, and Loki couldn’t help but return the gesture. It was rare that he was able to have intelligent conversations with anyone beyond his mother. He knew, for certain, that Asgard was teaming with wise and intelligent men and women ripe with knowledge, but Asgard never glorified such things. Those who did have a mind usually kept it hidden.

The woman changed the subject with ease as she pulled Loki to a stop. 

“The main receiving room is here,” The door was nothing more than a beautiful, thick purple fabric, pinned or floating by some means Loki could not discern, between two columns forming the entryway. 

“Thank you, my lady.” Loki stepped to the doorway, pausing to turn back. “Might I ask your name?”

“My name is (Y/n),” 

(Y/n). Loki thought on the name as he passed through the purple curtain. 

(Y/n) was certainly not a common name in Asgard. Nor, oddly, was it a name Loki had heard in his studies. Prior to arriving on Olympus, he had been sure to read the old Midgardian lore of its people. Like the myths of the Norse, he was sure there were inaccuracies. But the stories had to come from somewhere, and Loki knew better than most that there was always some truth to be discerned even from the tallest tale. Still, there was nothing of (Y/n).

“Prince Loki!”

Mere moments later, through the curtain Loki had just passed came the most vile woman upon whom Loki had ever laid his eyes. 

It wasn’t that she was ugly; though Loki had to confess she was not at all something he would consider attractive. More, it was her presence.

The moment she walked in the door Loki found everything off-putting. The room was less grand. The floors less polished. The air less clean. 

There was a toxicity to this woman that even Loki, prided for creating chaos and mischief wherever he went, found disconcerting. 

“My lady,” Loki didn’t bow, instead greeting the newcomer head on. Something seemed wrong about showing this woman a spot so vulnerable as his neck.

The woman waved a hand, garishly bedecked in golden jewels that only made her fingers look all the more spindly and haggered. “I am Princess Eris. It is my understanding you would have no cause to know that, so I will let the informality pass.” 

“Forgive me,” Loki conceded a nod of his head but nothing more, “Princess.”

“Think nothing of it!” With what Loki could only describe as a jump, the woman flung herself on the nearest of three settees that filled much of the space in the room. “You’ll forgive me, in turn, for sending the bastard to the door to greet you. I was not expecting any royal visits in the absence of my father. I needed the time to prepare myself but did not wish to keep you waiting.”

“The girl then, (Y/n). I had not heard her name before.”

“One of my father’s many bastards,” Eris gestured to the seat opposite her. “Please join me. I apologize. Of course, she did not inform you to make yourself comfortable. She fails at a great many things.”

“The occasional mistake cannot be helped,” Loki took the seat with a well-practiced grace and perched himself on the edge. “I must say, I have heard of you, Princess Eris, in the time I spent studying the stories on Midgard. I would have thought, with your family’s notoriety I would have heard of (Y/n).”

Eris rolled her eyes, “Midgard,” and scoffed. “Yes, well you wouldn’t have heard her name there. They got a great many things wrong in their tales, those humans. (Y/n) walked among them more than all of us. She often stooped to their level, and they were quite taken with her for it. Harmonia, that was what they called her, a far prettier name than she deserved. They thought it suited her, but alas they were wrong.”

And suddenly it all made sense to Loki.

Two sisters, dueling for all eternity, constantly trying to best each other in their own way. Eris, the selfish sister loved most by her family and their father, the entitled eldest who thrived on conflict and discord, who started the Trojan War. 

He knew why Eris disconcerted him so, and now as he saw the ignorance in her eye and heard the condescension in her voice he could see and hear nothing but his brother Thor.

“Princess, might it be too much of me to ask your leave? It has been a long and lonely journey from Asgard, and it might benefit my skill of conversation if I first rested.”

“Of course!” Eris pushed to her feet and motioned back to the curtain from whence they came. “(Y/n) will be waiting in the hall. She can take you to a room.”

“You’re most kind.” And without another word, he fled.

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“Perhaps it is not my place,” (Y/n) began quietly as she walked by Loki’s side. “You do not look weary from your journey at all.”

Loki chuckled. He had a feeling he could trust this sister, if not for his own reasons than at least in his understanding of her relationship with Eris. “Well, perhaps I am not weary from the journey, but simply weary of the company.”

(Y/n) smiled, a knowing smile. “I imagine you would not be the first to tire swiftly in Eris’s presence.”

“Your sister is certainly an acquired taste.”

“She would not like to hear you say such things.” (Y/n) hedged quickly.

Loki’s eyebrow hitched up slightly. “Would she not? Surely she must at least be somewhat aware of her effects.” 

“No, I’m sure she is. I was referring to the word sister.” (Y/n) jerked at the edge of her rough-worn dress. “Queen Hera was not my mother. Unlike most of the bastards born of my father, my mother was also nobility. I could not be so easily forgotten as the others, but I am by no means loved.”

 “And how do you feel for this? Your sister, for she is whether she denies it or not, made her views very clear.”

Something dark, dangerous, flashed behind (Y/n)’s eyes. It was gone so fast that if Loki were not Loki he would not have seen her rage. “It is not my place to say. I am fortunate the Great Goddess shows me such mercies as allowing my presence here.” The voice that came from her was smooth, automatic. 

The thought flashed through Loki’s mind one last time before he made an irreversible decision. ‘Her sister is just another Thor, another Thor not protected by Odin.’ 

Loki offered (Y/n) his arm as they rounded a corner and put a wall between themselves and Eris. “Now, now, (Y/n),” his tone, for the first time since his arrival, dropped its formality and reverence, taking on its usual teasing lilt. “You cannot lie to the God of Lies, nor do you need to.”

(Y/n) hesitantly accepted his arm but remained silent for him to continue.

“Tell me what ails you, and perhaps my knack for magic and misfortune can find a worthy hand to wield it.”

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Taglist:

Forever Taglist:

@maybe-a-fangurl / @libbymouse / @petra-arkanian-1497

Marvel Taglist:

@the-high-queen / @iamverity / @darktownairspeed / @radicalstars

Loki Taglist:

@adefectivedetective / @iamverity / @kybaeza

Other people have asked to be on the taglist that I’ve forgotten. If you are one of those, please do me the favor of dropping an ask in my box with which list you’re supposed to or would like to be on. 

[mouseyfox]

[Video description] A white woman with dark brown hair down to her chin and black horn rim glasses sits in front of a cream wall with a string of mint drying behind her. She is holding a pillow with a geometric design as she turns on her phone's video camera.

[sigh] Hi, my name is Krystal. I am a disabled queer woman and I am here to have a talk with you today about what it's like being disabled in the United States and trying to keep a job. 

[Transcript Below]

So [sighs] there's some major issues with how we as US citizens and people in general, um, deal with disability and how it relates to the job force and how [thoughtful pause] we are treated as employees. Now the Equal Opportunities, um, Equal Employment Opportunities Act, um, was a major step forward as were similar things such as the, you know, Disability Rights movement, and the Americans with Disabilites Act, and even, you know, the Affordable Care Act. Those have all had positive effects on the Disabled Community as a whole, but there's a lot more that needs to be done. Now, disabilities are not just physical. They can be emotional, or psychological, and they can also be intellectual. That means you could see someone with a wheelchair, or a missing limb, or someone who has Parkinson's Disease, or someone who has dyslexia, or someone who has PTSD, someone who's missing an eye, someone who's deaf, blind, the list goes on, honestly.

For me personally I have been disabled for ohhh well over fifteen years at this point. I have experienced over fifteen years of abuse in my life which has triggered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, um, DID, um, Anxiety Disorders, Major Reoccurring Depression, I have Trichotillomania, Excoriation Disorder, I also have physical disabilities as well. I have Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome. I also have Chronic Pain and Fatigue, I have hips that don't sit right, and a back that doesn't like sitting straight, and I also have migraines that have gotten to the point where I'm having about a migraine every week or so even with medication. I'm going in for more treatment options with a neurologist to figure out why they're happening. Now, I am a person who would benefit greatly from things like Universal Healthcare, and uh Universal Basic Income because at the end of the day I am a queer woman who is disabled and who is supporting a partner who is totally disabled as much as I can, and even just saying that could cost him his benefits, and that is heinous. We are not married, if disabled people marry and they have benefits they can loose them entirely, legally, within the US as it is today. I have a Bachelor's degree I got from the University of Louisville this spring during COVID and while I am very happy that I have finally achieved something ten years in the making for a lot of reasons it was horrible on my health both mental and physical.

As a student who is independent and was relying entirely on loans aside from very few scholarships that did in no way cover the full cost of tuition. I worked [sigh] a full time job while being a full time student at a call center uh who violated my rights as a disabled person in a number of ways and when I eventually left that job and applied for full time disability benefits, which I was denied, by the way, uhm, [the call center] lied to the SSI department, and said that I had never once filed accomodation letters to them, which is very untrue as I had spoken with an HR Director on multiple occassions, I had emailed them, I had spoken to them on the phone, I had one on ones with supervisors about how the job was affecting my physical health, as well as my emotional and mental health and how it was worsening my disabilities.

I had applied for short term disability, which is something that in the United States, is only offered by certain employers and is something that you have to pay into. There is no short term disability department with the SSI. There is no way for an American citizen currently as it stands to have short term disability to get some of the medical issues under control in the US unless you have already paid into a pool.

Now, some of you might be wondering what about FMLA, the Family Medical Leave Act? I applied for that, and they really don't like you using that for short term disability unless if it's something that was happened at the job or outside. For example, if you undergo an amputation, you might be someone who would qualify for FMLA. But, for me, a person who was just dealing with further issues with my chronic disorders that are never going to go away, um, at this point my issues are so deeply imbeded that I will have to be on medication for the rest of my life to handle my disorders and as with many people, as I age, I am as likely to get more disabilities on top of everything else.

The way that our economy, the way that our healthcare works right now we don't accomodate or help or you know just give disabled people a way to live and work without highly unfair and horrible ways of treating them. I have been gaslit by employers. I have, uh, very highly insinuated that I was lying about issues with my health just so I could go home and "be lazy", or I've been told or implied by coworkers that I was lying about my disabilities and there are all sorts of negative public stigma about people who lie about disorders so they can like get benefits. And, honestly, here's a news flash for you, it's virtually impossible to get full time SSI benefits if you're lying. I have friends who have disorders that can kill them before they turn fifty who are considered not disabled enough to qualify for SSI benefits. And these are people who are dealing with horrible diseases that will kill them or just make it really impossible for them to ever work. Like, physically, mentally, some education, uhm, or not education, intellectual disorders there's no way they're going to be able to hold a full time steady job and you know with the way that our economy works part time jobs don't cut it.

Most people are working two to three jobs because our minimum wage isn't high enough. And if you're disabled you spend so much money on taking care of yourself, and spending days at home, and that's just part of being disabled. I don't like calling off of work. I don't like being drug into my supervisor's office to get you know reprimanded for constantly having to call in or leave early. I don't like inconveniencing my coworkers either because I know that makes it harder on them, but you know what's also harder on them? If I decide to power through a day even when I'm feeling like garbage, and I make more mistakes, I will get less things done, I'll be worse off with my customer interactions, and there are days where I have worked through on ten, twelve, even thirteen hour shifts as a disabled person, and it has absolutely wrecked my health.

I have been working for ten years and I've been a caretaker for even longer, and my ability to perform at a full time job has drastically diminished in just ten years of trying to support myself in the way our current economy works and I've worked in a variety of different jobs. I've done physical labor jobs, I've worked in factories, I've worked in call centers, I've been a barista, I've been a cashier, I have been a bourbon steward, I have worked in healthcare in a variety of fields, and I have worked in library science which is what I'm hoping to get for a- for my- my education goal is I want to be a librarian. I want to be someone who helps people with research and reference work, and helps with their community. I love being engaged with my community. I love helping people. I like going to work. I do genuinely enjoy going to work! But when I have to keep working to a point that would make even a- you know someone who's not disabled overly worked and wreck their health... What do you think that does to those of us who have disabilities? Huh? Cause I can promise you it's a lot worse than you initially think. And the accomodations that they offer at most jobs are a fucking joke. They really are.

Most jobs aren't even accomodating for people in wheelchairs, for people with physical disabilities, and not to mention people who have hearing problems, or who are blind, and don't get me started on psychological problems. We could have an entire separate discussion on that one because the way that workplace cultures work and the way with microaggressions with racism, and all sorts of other factors like homophobia, transphobia, fatphobia, yes that counts, okay, because a lot of disabled people are just big, and you know what a lot of them are also really skinny, because their medical problem might be tied into that in ways that you can't understand either without a medical degree, or without being disabled yourself and having to do research.

Because at the end of the day the people who are most educated about their own disabilities are often the disabled person themselves. Yes doctors are very educated. Yes they know a lot. But you know who also knows a lot about the disorder, the person who's fucking experiencing it. I have friends who have been dismissed by doctors for years. Whose illnesses and issues have been completely mishandled and not at all treated by doctors because they wouldn't fucking listen to their patients. Okay. And, that's not something that we should be proud about as a country.

The way that we treat disabled people is horrible, and that's not even considering the problem with eugenics in this country because there are a number of people who are very interested in the fact of created designer babies, or aborting [disabled] babies, or you know, just throwing disabled people away until they die in a corner so you don't have to think about them. And that's a historical problem with this country and it hasn't gone away. We haven't fixed it. And it's something we need to work on.

But you know what? We're never going to be able to address those harder issues until we address the fact that working and having to hold multiple jobs to live for abled people that's inexcusable. It's even worse when you're disabled.

I can't tell you the number of times I have been almost homeless because my job had fired me because I had to call in too often, or I just had to leave a job because it was horribly wrecking my health. I have played yo-yo with all of my jobs for the past three years after I tried filing for disability, and you know what? They told me no. They told me I'm too young. I can't possibly have the disorders that I have or I'm just not disabled enough.

And you know what? You can be disabled at any age. And that possibility only increases the older that you get.  Because the older you get your systems start failing and you will be disabled at one point in your life. Period. Everyone will experience disability before they die in some way shape or form. So when we talk about disability rights it's not just about me. It's not just about friends of mine who are being killed by our healthcare system, and by our government, and by our economy, every single day. It's also about you. So when I ask you to give a fuck about disabled people and work and listen  to what we're asking you to do this is about you too. Because one day you're going to be in our position, and you know what? It sucks. And no one should have to deal with this.

[Emotional Pause] We need healthcare reform. We need it. Very badly. And when I say that it goes from everything to my own father who has been insulin rationing, and dealing with completely ludicrous insulin prices since before I was born.

It goes to my mother, you know, whose liver shut down because of black mold in a church my father preached at. I watched her slowly die for a year because she refused to go to the hospital because if she did, and she got the care that could have saved her, it would have killed my father because we wouldn't have been able to afford his insulin.

You know, and I'm not the only person, who's had situations like this, there are elderly people all over our nation who are dealing with similar issues all day. There are people who are disabled, there are families of disabled people, who are working to support people. There- Did you know that it's actually illegal for disabled people to marry and keep their benefits? Did you? Because I have a pertner who is disabled and even just saying that could rob him of his benefits.

That's not including issues with disability and, you know, being queer. Because being queer complicates everything. You know I don't say that because it's fun and I get "all the social benefits it brings" as Rosalarian would say because you know what? There really aren't any.

I'm queer because I'm queer. I'm disabled because my body is a pain in the ass, and because I've gone through things that no one ever should have had to go through and it has completely wrecked my mental health.

And I've gotten so much better than I used to be! I used to be so much worse off and put up with stuff that was absolutely wrecking my mental health and physical health because your mental health does a lot of stuff with your physical health that you might not be aware of. [Cat sneezes]

The United States as a nation is literally working itself to death, and that doesn't just affect able bodied people. It affects disabled people a lot worse. And you know what, I like working, but I like living a lot better. [Turns off video]

[mrlnsfrt]

Use it or Lose it

This is my third post in the Waiting, Watching, Ready series. We began with Matthew 24:36-51 (The Faithful Servant), then we studied Matthew 25:1-13 (Character is not Transferrable) and have now arrived at Matthew 25:14. In this portion of the Bible Jesus is teaching His followers about His second coming. Here’s what we have learned so far:

The first parable taught us that the second coming of Jesus will be unexpected. Matthew 24:42-44 (The Faithful Servant)

The second parable taught us that we have to be more than merely passively waiting. We have responsibilities, things to do as we wait for Jesus to come again. Matthew 24:45-51

In the study of the third parable, we learned that we must be prepared for an unexpected delay. Matthew 25:1-13. (Character is not Transferrable)

The fourth parable goes beyond the first three (Matthew 24:42–25:13) in that “it expects the watchfulness of the servants to manifest itself during the master’s absence, not only in preparedness and performance of duty, even if there is a long delay, but in an improvement of the allotted ���talents” till the day of reckoning.” (Carson, D. A. (1984). Matthew. In F. E. Gaebelein (Ed.), The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Matthew, Mark, Luke (Vol. 8, p. 515). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House.)

In the parable of the talents, Jesus showed us what it means to watch for His coming. “The time is to be spent, not in idle waiting, but in diligent working.” (White, E. G. (1900). Christ’s Object Lessons (p. 325). Review and Herald Publishing Association.)

The kingdom of heaven is like…

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a man traveling to a far country, who called his own servants and delivered his goods to them. And to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, to each according to his own ability; and immediately he went on a journey. - Matthew 25:14-15 NKJV

The man traveling into a far country represents Christ, who, when speaking this parable, was soon to depart from this earth to heaven. The “servants”, or slaves, of the parable, represent the followers of Christ.

As we get ready to dive into this parable, it is worth keeping in mind that according to 1 Corinthians 6:20, we are not our own, since we have been “bought with a price.” And 1 Peter 1:18, 19 adds that we were redeemed not “with corruptible things, as silver and gold, … but with the precious blood of Christ.” The conclusion then is that we who live, should live no longer for ourselves, but for Him who died for us and rose again. 2 Corinthians 5:15

All of humanity has been bought with this infinite price. We are also called to do service for Him who gave all for us. This parable teaches us that we will be required to render an account of how willing we are to do the work which Christ called us to do at the great judgment day. We have been redeemed for service, to live as Christ lived. Jesus showed us by how He lived His life that ministry is the true object of life. Just like Jesus, we are to live a life of service to God and our fellow human beings. As we minister to others we are brought into a closer connection to Christ, we better understand His heart. What an incredible privilege to co-operate with Jesus for the salvation of souls!

Talents

In New Testament times a talanton (“talent”) was a unit of exchange and estimates of its value very enormously for several reasons. A talent could be of gold, silver, or copper, and each has its own value. Also, the weight could vary from 58lbs to 80lbs (26Kg - 36Kg). You could try to calculate the value by weight and metallic value, but inflation makes this quite inaccurate. A talent could also be a unit of coinage, one common value assigned it being six thousand denarii. (The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Matthew, Mark, Luke (Vol. 8, p. 516) Matthew 20:2, John 12:5 refer to a denarius as a day’s wage, so if we could say that one talent is roughly the equivalent of 6,000 days’ wages. There are 261 working days in 2021 and if I divide 6,000 by 261 I get roughly 23. So, one talent is about 23 years’ worth of income. If someone is making $7.25 an hour (federal minimum wage in the US) and working full time (40 hours per week) this person would make $15,080 per year. Multiply that by 23 and you get $346,840. If someone was to give you that much money, could you think of some ways to make that money work for you? What I want you to understand is that even one talent is worth quite a bit!

It is also worth noting that the Master is trusting his servants with a great deal of responsibility, essentially making them partners, giving them the opportunity to invest, grow, and develop. These servants are receiving capital and creative freedom.

In the parable, the master gives his servants an amount of money. But how can we make a practical application from that if Jesus never walked up to us and handed us a bag with hundreds of thousands of dollars? A traditional approach that I believe is very valid and works well is to look at what God gives us. Besides salvation and eternal life, God also gives us things that we can use in our lives here on earth. The Bible describes these as gifts of the Spirit.

To better understand this let’s take a look at 1 Corinthians 12 where Paul talks about the gifts and blessings given to us by the Holy Spirit.

for to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge through the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healings by the same Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, to another different kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as He wills. - 1 Corinthians 12:8–11 NKJV

We do not all receive the same gifts, but to every servant of the Master some gift of the Spirit is promised.

Though Jesus had promised the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to His disciples (John 20:22, Luke 24:49), it was not until after His ascension was the gift received in its fullness. And it was not until the disciples had surrendered themselves fully through faith and prayer that they received the outpouring of the Spirit.

“When He ascended on high, He led captivity captive, And gave gifts to men.” - Ephesians 4:8b NKV

The gifts are already ours in Christ, but their actual possession depends upon our reception of the Spirit of God. God is willing to give us the gifts, are we willing to accept them? Do we surrender to Him and pray for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit?

“The promise of the Spirit is not appreciated as it should be. Its fulfillment is not realized as it might be. It is the absence of the Spirit that makes the gospel ministry so powerless. Learning, talents, eloquence, every natural or acquired endowment, may be possessed; but without the presence of the Spirit of God, no heart will be touched, no sinner be won to Christ. On the other hand, if they are connected with Christ, if the gifts of the Spirit are theirs, the poorest and most ignorant of His disciples will have a power that will tell upon hearts. God makes them the channel for the outworking of the highest influence in the universe.” - Christ’s Object Lessons p328

What are my talents?

At this point, you might be wondering what are your talents. I have often wondered what my talents are. I have taken many inventories to help me discover my talents or gifts. I have discovered that my talents or gifts tend to change with the stages of my life and the current needs, in other words, my talents seem to change depending on my environment. I have not experienced complete changes but rather shifts in how I apply what God has given me to help His kingdom grow.

I would like to encourage you to not only think about talents as special gifts given by the Holy Spirit. Many of you might be tempted to feel as I often have, that I don’t have any special gifts or talents. I would rather encourage you to think about your natural, acquired, or spiritual gifts and abilities. In other words, as we become disciples of Jesus we offer ourselves to Him and that includes all that we are and have. The way I imagine it in my head is that I give God all my abilities and He takes them, purifies them, multiplies them, and returns them to me ennobled so that they may be used for His glory in blessing people within my sphere of influence.

Stop comparing yourself with others.

Could it be that part of the reason that the servant buried his one talent is that he resented the others for receiving more talents? Maybe he thought it was not fair that the Master gave him only one talent. We don’t know the answer to this, but I have met people who refuse to do anything just because they do not have the talents that others around them have.

And to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, to each according to his own ability; and immediately he went on a journey. - Matthew 25:15 NKJV (bold mine)

Each man and woman receives from God according to their ability. If you struggle with using one talent for God, do you really think it would be easier if you had more talents? First, put to work what you have. In the parable, both the servant who received five and the one who received two talents receive the same words of affirmation. It is not a race or a comparison, rather each servant who puts what the master gave her to work receives a reward. All you have to do is use what you have for the honor and glory of God. Don’t worry about how many talents someone else has, or how gifted some people are, you just focus on being faithful with what God has given you, and He has given each of us something.

Instead of concerning yourself with how much you have received, it is far more beneficial to concern yourself with what you are doing with what you have.

Goal, Purpose, Meaning

2020 was a very challenging year, and 2021 will likely be full of changes and challenges. So what do we do? We can complain about how things are, how different life is, and all the new challenges we are facing. Suddenly we are having to learn new skills and adapt. I would say most of us have been thrust out of our comfort zones and had to re-analyze how we will go about life this year. I have a few notions that have helped center me whenever I feel the tendency to spin out of control, to get discouraged, or to lose sight of the main goal or purpose for living. So here are a few statements that help center me:

The development of all my abilities is the first duty I owe to God and to those around me.

If I am not growing daily in capability and usefulness then I am not fulfilling the purpose of my life.

I should cultivate every faculty to the highest degree of perfection, that I may do the greatest amount of good of which I am capable. 

I am not perfect, but perfection is my goal. I think this way because it keeps me humble, it keeps me relying on God, it keeps me hungry for opportunities to learn and grow in every area of life. The growth that I seek is not humanly attainable, so I have to rely on God, and God gets the glory for all the success in my life.

Never should we lower the standard of righteousness in order to accommodate inherited or cultivated tendencies to wrong-doing. - Christ’s Object Lessons p330

Another reason that I personally aim for perfection is that to lower the standard would mean there are some sins that I want to bring to heaven with me. I am not trying to save myself by good works or to become sinless through self-discipline. I simply confess and turn to Jesus for help as I become aware of things in my life that are not as they should be. I imagine I will be on this journey my whole life, and I am okay with that. I am saved by grace through faith. I aim for perfection so that I can better serve those around me. It is for the sake of the mission.

I find that my greatest struggle is to completely surrender my will to God. I am still practicing and learning how to do this. I find that I have the greatest victories and joy when I surrender to Christ, I have also discovered that I don’t always stay surrendered. It is a daily routine, and some days it feels more difficult than others.

Shoot for the moon!

According to this parable, it is possible to multiply that which God has given you. So think through this with me.

Do you think that God wants to use you to bless those around you (Genesis 12:2)?

Do you think that God wants to fill you with His Holy Spirit (Luke 11:13)?

Do you think that God wants to save others and is willing to use you in the process (Matthew 28:19-20)?

Now imagine yourself going through life accomplishing very little, and the only reason is that you only dared to try very few things. Imagine the only reason why you haven’t accomplished more being that you have not prayerfully tried to do more. You simply settled assuming this was all there was to life.

In the parable, the Master gives the talents, but the workers decide what they will do with their master’s resources. The way I see this is that God can give you all you need to succeed, but you can decide to just bury what He gave you.

How can you reach higher than what you aim for? You can’t. So aim high. You will find that in ministry, and oftentimes in life as well, barriers that you overcome give you the courage to keep going. They help you grow and develop and grow stronger. But you will never know that you are capable of doing for the honor and glory of God from your comfort zone. You have to step out and prayerfully move forward according to God’s plan for your life.

Choose Love over Fear

We have all made mistakes. I know I have made plenty. However, do not allow past mistakes to prevent you from trying new things. Look at past mistakes and regard them as warning signs. This way your previous mistakes and defeats pave the way for your future victories. This is how we disappoint Satan and honor Jesus. Instead of being afraid of making mistakes, decide to do what you love, what Love calls you to do. You will likely make more mistakes in your journey, but it is part of the journey, it keeps us humble and leaning on God.

The Secret to Success

“I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. - John 15:5 NKJV

Imagine wanting to do something that God wants you to do. Something that God has called you to do. Do you think that God would enable you to accomplish it? Would you agree that God enables you to do that which He has called you to do?

And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work. - 2 Corinthians 9:8 NKJV

Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. - Ephesians 3:20-21 NKJV

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen. - Matthew 28:19-20 NKJV

Jesus Himself is the answer to all our needs and to our success in ministry. When we turn to Him He supplies all our needs and enables us to do that which He has called us to do. It is Jesus who gives us success. I find that ministry keeps me dependent on Jesus, ministering to others reminds me of my great need of Jesus.

The Master Returns

After a long time the lord of those servants came and settled accounts with them. - Matthew 25:19 NKJV

One day we will face Jesus and give an account of how we lived our lives and how we used the His resources that he lent to us. I don’t mean to scare anyone, however, if it would be dishonest of me to skip over this portion of the story.

“So he who had received five talents came and brought five other talents, saying, ‘Lord, you delivered to me five talents; look, I have gained five more talents besides them.’ His lord said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.’ - Matthew 25:20-21 NKJV

The servant with the most talents invested them and doubled what his master had originally given him. The master is happy and rewards him with more responsibilities and access to the joy of his lord.

He also who had received two talents came and said, ‘Lord, you delivered to me two talents; look, I have gained two more talents besides them.’ His lord said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.’ - Matthew 25:22-23 NKJV

The servant who had two talents also doubled what his master had given him. Even though in the end he only had four talents, not even the same amount the first servant started off, he hears the same words of approval as the servant who had 10 talents for the master.

So far we have seen that the master has rewarded each servant for being faithful to what he was given. The servants were not compared to each other. Each servant worked with what he had received and gained more and the master was pleased with them. From this, we learn that any work done for God with a full surrender of self is as acceptable to Him as the highest service. No offering is small that is given from the bottom of our heart with honesty and joy.

The Wicked and Lazy Servant

“Then he who had received the one talent came and said, ‘Lord, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you have not sown, and gathering where you have not scattered seed. And I was afraid, and went and hid your talent in the ground. Look, there you have what is yours.’ - Matthew 25:24-25 NKJV

The servant who had received one talent did nothing with it and blamed his lord for his behavior. He viewed his lord as a hard man and he froze in fear, perhaps in fear of doing something wrong. Some people try to motivate others into involvement in ministry out of fear, but I do not think that is a healthy approach. I really hope this post does not have that effect. I want you to be excited about doing your best for your Master, and not terrified of His judgment.

Judgment

To be clear, all the servants had to face judgment. All servants were given resources and all servants had a say in what they would ultimately do with what they were given. Two servants invested what their lord gave them and one servant decided to bury what his lord had given him.

“But his lord answered and said to him, ‘You wicked and lazy servant, you knew that I reap where I have not sown, and gather where I have not scattered seed. So you ought to have deposited my money with the bankers, and at my coming I would have received back my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to him who has ten talents.

‘For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ - Matthew 25:26-30 NKJV (bold mine)

The lord describes this servant as wicked, lazy, and unprofitable. Turns out the whole fear thing was an excuse for a servant who deep inside really was not interested in putting his talent to work for his lord. The servant was not only wicked, but he was also lazy and that made him unprofitable. This servant was not invited “into the joy of [his] lord.”

What this servant overlooks is his responsibility to his master and his obligation to discharge his assigned duties. His failure betrays his lack of love for his master, which he masks by blaming his master and excusing himself. Only the wicked servant blames his master. “The foolish virgins failed from thinking their part too easy; the wicked servant fails from thinking his too hard” (Alf). Grace never condones irresponsibility; even those given less are obligated to use and develop what they have. - Carson, D. A. (1984). Matthew. In F. E. Gaebelein (Ed.), The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Matthew, Mark, Luke (Vol. 8, p. 517). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House. (bold mine)

It is also interesting to note what Jesus said in Luke 16

He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much. - Luke 16:10 NKJV

I believe it is safe to assume that the servant who received one talent, would also have failed to multiply five talents if he had received them. How we do small things is how we do everything. The importance of the little things is often underrated because they are small, but they supply much of the actual discipline of life. There are really no nonessentials in the Christian’s life. Our character building will be full of danger while we underrate the importance of the little things.

Conclusion

Studying the parable of the talents we have learned that talents used are talents multiplied. We also noticed that success is not the result of chance or of destiny; it is the outworking of God’s own providence, the reward of faith and responsibility, of character and persevering effort.

Jesus desires us to use every gift we have; and if we do this, we will have greater gifts to use. God does not supernaturally endow us with the qualifications we lack; but while we use that which we have, He will work with us to increase and strengthen every ability.

While we yield ourselves as instruments for the Holy Spirit’s working, the grace of God works in us to deny old inclinations, to overcome powerful propensities, and to form new habits. As we cherish and obey the promptings of the Spirit, our hearts are enlarged to receive more and more of His power, and to do more and better work. Dormant energies are aroused, and palsied faculties receive new life. - Christ’s Object Lessons (p. 354)

It does not matter how small you think your talent is, God has a place for it. Your one talent, wisely used, will accomplish its appointed work. By faithfulness in little duties, we can work on the plan of addition, and God will work for us on the plan of multiplication. These littles will become the most precious influences in His work. Stop waiting for some big work to satisfy your personal ambition, and start being faithful in the small things in your life. We do not get to choose our talents. God often uses the humblest instrument to do the greatest work, His power is revealed in human weakness.

But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, - 1 Corinthians 1:27-28 NKJV

Whatever our work may be, we can honor God by doing it well, wholeheartedly, and cheerfully. However, when we fail to use our talents when we bury what God gave us, we lose it. Just like other things in our life, things that go neglected and unused for a long time weaken and decay. Idleness leads to death, not only physically but also spiritually.

When we employ the gifts God has given us to bless others, our gifts increase. However, when we shut up our gifts and only use them in a self-serving way, they diminish and are finally eliminated. 

God has given you gifts, and it is up to you whether you will use them to bless those around you and bring honor and glory to God, or whether you will busy the and lose them.

The choice is yours.

Choose wisely.

[marcjampole]

Police unions and minorities should be allies in the battle to reduce economic inequality

The right-wing is happy to label initiatives to change the relationship between police and the communities that they protect as “disbanding” and “defunding” the police. As many are pointing out, those on the left who use these terms are playing into the hands of Trump and his merry band of fascists. Much better terms are “reform,” “reimagine” and “reallocate.”

Language is a powerful tool in the hands of propagandists because for many people, language creates or, at the very least, shapes reality. The presumptive Democratic nominee for President, Joe Biden, is wise to steer clear of “disbanding” and “defunding.” The fact he says he does not approve of either indicates nothing more than his awareness of how people will respond to these loaded terms. He is in favor of a reform that reimagines police forces to make them more sensitive to community needs and, quite frankly, less racist in their use of tactics. Furthermore, he will go as far left as Nancy Pelosi wants to go on any issue, and Nancy wants national legislation to reform police departments across the country.

But exploring the ramifications of “disbanding” brings us to the nexus of a conundrum befuddling the Democrats the union movement. By definition, disbanding a police department kills the union, which gives municipalities the opportunity to rehire a police force at a lower cost. (“Defunding” could theoretically lead to replacing unionized police with nonunionized community workers, but it is likely that the first place municipalities will look to cut police budgets are unneeded and extremely expensive military-grade weaponry and hardware.) Killing unions has long been one of the central tenants of the right-wing, so “disbanding” police departments sounds like a conservative solution. And yet, the voices for disbanding are coming mostly from progressives.

Police unions have dug in their heels for decades, fighting every reform and protecting their bad eggs, apples and seeds. Everything the heads of police unions have said since the George Floyd murder suggests they will continue to support even the most egregiously racist and violent behavior by individual officers and oppose any and all reform. The unwillingness of police unions to consider change puts a deep wedge between them and the Democratic Party. The law-and-order Republicans may look like a better bet for the cops on the surface, but transferring wealth from the middle class and the poor up the ladder to the wealthy remains the alpha and omega of 21st century conservativism. When it comes time to renegotiate union contracts, police unions will face more opposition from Republican mayors and city councils than from Democrats. Think of New York City, where the police worked without a contract for years under the Bloomberg Administration but quickly came to terms favorable to them after Bill De Blasio took over as mayor. That bought De Blasio a lot of credit with the police until the very first time he raised even an iota of an inkling of a question about an incident of police brutality.

The recalcitrance of police unions to change reverberates beyond issues of public safety and equitable treatment under the law. Unionism used to define the Democratic Party. Democrats would depend on union voters to win elections and in return, the Democrats passed legislation that helped blue collar workers. The tight-knit seams binding Democrats to unions began to unravel in 1968, 1972 and 1980, when many union members ignored their leadership to vote for Richard Nixon and then Ronald Reagan. Racism, often disguised as law-and-order, primarily motivated union members to switch.

Yet it wasn’t just union members abandoning Democrats. Democrats also moved away from a full embrace of the union movement. Many centrist Democrats like both Clintons, Obama, Al Gore, Booker, Yang and O’Rourke have supported charter schools, ignoring that the big money and conservative ideologues behind the idea of charter schools have had as their sole objective the destruction of teachers’ unions. In their eagerness to enact school reform that did not involve increasing school budgets, Democrats in a sense abandoned teachers’ unions in pursuit of the pie-in-the-sky false premise of charter schools. As is usual when non-union workers replace union workers or when government functions are privatized, everyone lost. Studies show that two-thirds of charter schools do no better or do worse than the equivalent public school and that many of the top performing charter schools have cooked their books. Moreover, students who remain in public schools in districts which add charter schools suffer from a reduction in overall funding.

When we talk about the constituencies of the Democratic Party today, we mention city dwellers, minorities, immigrants, college grads and the LGBTQ community. We hardly ever mention unions, which reflects not only the alienation and racism of primarily white blue collar workers, but also the decline of unions as a meaningful share of the population. It’s a very troubling trend, because no nation in world history has ever been able to create even a modicum of economic equality without a strong union movement. Even when certain unions were slow to admit minorities, minorities benefited from their presence, because unions raise the wages of others at the same company, other companies in the same industry and other companies in the community. Unionism, and not Reagan’s trickle-down theory, is the tide that lifts all boats.

Progressives talk about raising the minimum wage, universal healthcare, taxing the wealthy and making college free to all. I agree with all these positions, but assert that the most effective way to reduce economic inequality and to pursue economic justice would be to pass legislation that made it so easy to unionize that the percentage of the workforce that is unionized could climb from the current 13% to 30-60% within a few years.

The current situation approaches the tragic. The police and those they are supposed to keep safe should be allies in creating vibrant and safe cities and fighting the predations of the ultra-wealthy. Instead, they are at loggerheads.  

We are not asking much of police unions: Don’t defend cops who use excessive force. Don’t hire cops who have been fired for problems by other departments. Don’t apply a double standard in the use of force, but treat all citizens the same regardless of race, ethnic background and sex. Never shoot to kill. End the use of chokeholds and other inherently dangerous tactics. None of these are unrealistic requests. Police officers and police unions should be clamoring to get behind reform. In return, the Democratic Party should embrace the union movement as both part of the coalition opposed to the right-wing and as the primary strategy for reducing inequality in America.  

[perkwunos]

Silvia Federici has pointed out that alongside the rise of “capitalist technological innovation” there has been “the disaccumulation of our precapitalist knowledges and capacities”:

The capacity to read the elements, to discover the medical properties of plants and flowers, to gain sustenance from the earth, to live in woods and forests, to be guided by the stars and winds on the roads and the seas was and remains a source of ‘autonomy’ that had to be destroyed. The development of capitalist industrial technology has been built on that loss and has amplified it. (191)

This disaccumulation has had strong effects in our very relation to what knowledge is. There is no longer a living knowledge, something directly known. “Life” and “knowledge” become opposed elements: knowledge is value-free and objective where life is valuative and subjective. This is not just the inevitable result of further specialization, but is carried to its extreme limits by the disconnection at all times between the creation of our world and the means by which we do so. Knowledge about how to practice things outside of specific rote mechanical skills is a power and “autonomy” not suitable for the typical wage laborer. Because of this, the modern worldview has approached its knowledge in an alienated and fetishizing way. It accords special status to the end-product of the experiment detached from the purposive, creative activity of the experimenter: its theories and formulae are seen as insights into a value-free, objective nature, while experience, lived time, intentionality etc. are seen as illusory. The essential contradiction that reveals the perversity is that this “value-free” knowledge is acquired by valuing the types of life-activity that will produce it. As A.N. Whitehead put it, “Scientists animated by the purpose of proving that they are purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study.” His point here is literally true: the role of knowledge under capitalist conditions is an anthropological subject that will increasingly attract attention, as an example of these capitalist conditions’ depraved effects.

The American pragmatists, alongside Whitehead, argued against this dualism. The experimental method and the science that it produces is continuous with the rest of nature, having evolved out of it: it is an organic, meaningful process. The way the modern scientist learns is the same way that all lifeforms learn. Eduardo Kohn, following C.S. Peirce, proposed that all living things have a “scientific intelligence”, in that they are capable of learning by experience (77). The forest is teeming with this intelligence in its diverse manifestations, organisms interpreting their environment and producing further signs. It’s in signs that we think and gain knowledge, in the uncertain meanings by which we “read the elements”--and this is always done with some purpose: meanings are means to an end, expressions of an intentionality. As Kohn put it, “it is appropriate to consider telos—that future for the sake of which something in the present exists—as a real causal modality wherever there is life” (37). A living thing acts to achieve an aim, and in the course of doing so it not only conceptualizes and valuates its object of desire but interprets its environment, working according to meaning-structures through which it can interact with the potential future: this potential future is, after all, the location for the possible achievement of its desires. Insofar as the meaning-structures work, they reveal some knowledge: in this way all life produces its science.

There’s no nonarbitrary point at which we can claim a stop to the evolutionary continuity of this valuative activity, even if we find grades of complexity and various distinctions in its modes of being. Just as the boundary at which point one organism stops being one species and evolves into another cannot be given a fixed delineation, the point at which “life” itself begins cannot be defined, so that an absolute outside to it is not rationally conceivable. “Telos,” purpose, must be found everywhere. All becoming occurs according to what the interiority of the becoming thing conceptualizes or intends. However, this interiority in its becoming must relate to its given environment, take on material constraints and direct its intentions to what can be achieved in the given world. The material constraints in their determining capacity habituate desires to flow specific ways. Our technology is dependent not on any eternal laws or corresponding brute mechanisms, but on the habits strongly ingrained in the intentionality of various entities: most especially the entities most typically considered lifeless who seem to show a minimum of will-power, interpretation, or novelty. Modern scientific understanding approaches from the outside in its description of these processes and thus misses the fundamental concept of habit, of a general aim socially pursued in desire. As a consequence these notions--intentionality, desire, generality, value etc.--are rediscovered on the purely human level and given misleading form.

The 21st century has already seen a wealth of thinkers criticizing and attempting to move past this human exceptionalism and dualism, as evidenced in the “posthuman” focus of many thinkers in anthropology and related social sciences, from Eduardo Kohn to Bruno Latour and Donna Haraway. As Federici put it, there is “the emergence of another rationality not only opposed to social and economic injustice but reconnecting us with nature and reinventing what it means to be a human being” (196). But this will not just come about through academics creating new terminology and concepts. Rather, like the shift towards modern thought that accompanied capitalism’s onset, it will be happening within and through movements that change our material basis, i.e. the change in property relations and how they define our ability to work with one another and with our environment. That is to say, these philosophical and anthropological concepts concerning the supersedence of dualism, new understandings of subjectivity and meaning, etc. must be approached historically: their existence is not sustained by an individual consciousness interacting with a book but by the functioning of whole societies. Federici points to one important site for the further emergence of new modes of consciousness in “women’s struggles over reproductive work”:

… there is something unique about this work—whether it is subsistence farming, education, or childrearing—that makes it particularly apt to generate more cooperative social relations. Producing human beings or crops for our tables is in fact a qualitatively different experience than producing cars, as it requires a constant interaction with natural process whose modalities and timing we do not control. (195)

The reproductive labor that has been gendered as “women’s work” may indeed reveal a different logic from the typical view of industrial production that sees it as an instance of what Philippe Descola termed the “heroic model of creation”:

The idea of production as the imposition of form upon inert matter is simply an attenuated expression of the schema of action that rests upon two interdependent premises: the preponderance of an individualized intentional agent as the cause of the coming-tobe of beings and things, and the radical difference between the ontological status of the creator and that of whatever he produces. (323)

Under capitalist conditions the value of reproductive labor is often hidden from being socially recognized, isolated into the domestic sphere, while the dominant mode of socially recognizing the value of our activity occurs through wage-labor and commodification, i.e. through the value-form. The shift away from this bifurcating ordering of production could also mark a shift away from our bifurcation of reality into intentional subjects and brute objects--instead rediscovering a thoroughly intersubjective (and, indeed, interobjective) process.

There’s no question that where we are attempting to reinvent such fundamental categories, we are caught up in a metaphysical and speculative pursuit--and thoroughly metaphysical figures like Whitehead and Peirce have gained new life among recent thinkers--but we also shouldn’t take “metaphysical” thinking to mean an airy detachment. Following Whitehead, I see metaphysics and speculative philosophy as an historical endeavour: as he put it, it is like an airplane that must lift off from a specific moment, spend some time in imaginative construction and reconstruction, and touch back down. I would historicize Whitehead’s thought even further; not to fundamentally alter his methodology nor his scheme of thought, but to point to some differences in the location and situation it is in response to. For instance, Whitehead often overemphasizes the responsibility of Aristotelian philosophy and its notion of substance for modern philosophy’s focus on atomized individuals. We may instead see this as not some development occurring just in the world of philosophy, but rather as a reflection in these modern philosophers’ thoughts of the material development of capitalism, its alienation and atomization. Whitehead offered a radical and deep critique of this alienation in its higher-level ideological expressions, and in doing so passed on a crucial tool for our existential understanding, clearing blockages of long-accumulated modes of thought and shifting the momentum in our perspectives away from those reflecting bourgeois categories. But we must also recognize that these errors in thought are part and parcel of a wider social problem that has to be faced in more than reformulating categories, that the direction of our consciousness towards such reformulations find their drive in the wider struggles of our life.

Works cited:

Descola, Philippe. Beyond nature and culture. University of Chicago Press, 2013

Federici, Silvia. Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons. PM Press, 2019.

Kohn, Eduardo. How Forests Think: toward an Anthropology beyond the Human. University of California Press, 2013.

[cariosum]

ive harangued multiple people now into letting me rant at them about the eldritch angel emiya verse so HERES AN ACTUAL VERSE INFORMATION POST FOR IT YEHAW

first off: the “angel” that Emiya is is not an “angel” in the Abrahamic sense. He’s not a religious figure, not really -- you can pray to him if you want, he doesnt care, and for all he knows there might be one singular power at the center of the Universe, but he’s never met it. He’s incredibly low-ranking, about as low as an angel can be, so he doesn’t know what goes on in the higher power levels of bureaucracy.

“Angel” is a word which the human languages simply applies to “higher beings”. Emiya is an entity from some plane adjacent to ours, filled with a being that benefits off the protection of humanity. They feed upon stability and health of the human race, so it’s in their best interest to keep humans protected and happy insofar as they can. They’re not all-powerful, and often tend to focus on a singular person. 

Said feeding isn’t vampiric, they don’t drain health from others. It’s more like symbiotic relationship, where both parties benefit equally. Mostly, angels will either disguise themselves as humans and go to influence human behaviour and actions or live alongside a given human for however long they feel like it. They see no difference between individual health and collective health. This is essentially the idea of a guardian angel. 

Emiya’s true body, like that of all angels, is incomprehensible and inhuman. A mess of fire and wings and eyes, constantly shifting. He disguises himself as a human for the most part, though because he’s both low ranking and lazy, his human body is definitely not normal.

He’s in the uncanny valley of pretty, the sort of beautiful where it makes him look actively nonhuman. There’s a reason angels figure as godly in myth and its because all of them are Like This.

If you look at him through a reflection, his reflection wavers around the edges, glowing like there’s a fire behind him, and some motions will let you see bits of eye or wing or fire that humans shouldn’t have.

He does have wings, and can have quite a lot of them, and can very easily unfold the stereotypical angel wings from his back if he chooses to. His are a dusty grey colour. He can unfold more of his true body as well if he wants to, but he probably shouldn’t because it’s a lot to deal with.

What he knows about humanity is incredibly patchy. His task is to learn more so that he can continue to function within humanity and work towards the goal of protecting them. Ergo, he heads out and attempts to gather information through experience, because his higher ups are forcing him to. He finds this a huge pain in the ass.

What he knows is generally “how to speak any language that’s spoken towards him”, “where he is in time and space”, and how to make himself look blended in. Anything else? Super hit or miss. He learns quickly, at least, and one explanation of like “sir you really cant just bite into an egg and call that eating” is enough for him to learn and remember in the future.

He’s super petulant he doesnt wanna be wasting his time working with people but he has to so SIIIGGGHHH I GUESS. he guards humanity with all the feeling and care of a minimum wage fast food employee.

Emiya can and will grant blessings to people if they help him out, though its things like “you have better luck” “in an abstract moment of danger, you will be protected” etc. etc., theyre not really tangible things.

He has money and clothing through just a system of abstract mimicry. It’s techincally fraud any time he uses a credit card but digital money is just numbers, after all, and it’s very easy for beings beyond space to mess with numbers. 

He;s still very golden as an angel, bright golden eyes and if he’s hurt he bleeds gold ichor and light, but generally he’s pretty human looking. No scars in this verse.

[fatchocho-blog]

It happened through a friend of a friend of mine

It happened through a friend of a friend of mine. That’s usually how these things go. She had found, through a network of girls, a website that paid decent money for cam girling if you put the work in. I signed up, submitted my name, ID, bank details and some photos and within 24 hours I was approved as a bonafide Cam Girl ­with no bloody idea of what I was doing.Each network will ask you to fill out a brief bit of biographical information — list your interests, and try to sound fun — and then check a box or pull down a menu saying that you're 18 or above. You'll need to submit some sort of identification proving your age, but with standards low, laws international, and documents scanned, forging such a thing is a cinch, making underage cam girls a real problem."There are advertisements on university campuses," says Ilisei. "Students get direct Facebook messages with offers of work. And the studios are very corporate - exactly like an entry-career job in other fields. The language is all about empowering young women, being independent, learning skills, even getting bonuses if you convince your friends to try it too."On her end, the website looks like this. This is where she sits and waits. (Click to expand)

One of the cam girls, Rosie Renee, became a camgirl in May because she wanted a job where she could choose her own hours and work from home.The first time I went ‘private’ with a guy I freaked the fuck out. All he wrote was ‘get naked’. And so far all I’d done in a chat room was flash my boobs for an influx of tokens. I froze up in stage ­fright and closed the room. In my group chat I wrote: Sorry, cam froze.” And I logged off for the night."What can a member do to me? If he crosses a line or even if he is rude to me, I just click the mouse and stop it. And I can talk to the administrator on the website and they ban the IP address, so the guy can never enter again even if he changes his nickname. I mean, those people are thousands of miles away from me. They don't touch you - nobody touches you. You go online alone and you work online alone. This has nothing to do with prostitution.""That or exotic places," says Andrea. "This is not only a sex business as some people think - models have to speak with a member as if they are in a normal, online relationship. Being able to discuss many subjects brings comfort to both parties."

What I found out was a self discovery as much as a way of ‘sticking it’ to my friend. It was something I had always known, deep down, but perhaps had never quite put words to, as I had never felt that it had come into question. And here it is: When I am working, I am portraying a sexual stereotype, but how I am using that stereotype is a point of difference. When I am working, I am consciously becoming that stereotype and so I, in a sense, own it. I am taking it from the man, because yes, he created it, but when I dance, I have the power. I am subverting and I am reclaiming that stereotype for my own personal and financial gain.Sometimes self-­regulation regarding finances is the best option for some people: I’ve been treated better and more fairly as a Cam Girl and nude model than I was in my last retail job where I, no word of a lie, got fired for ‘looking sad’. Yet despite how much control one can have over their career as a Cam Girl there are certainly discrepancies within the industry, including safety issues and issues of future employability, as well as what is considered a fair payment and no guarantee on a basic minimum wage for hours put in. It leaves a lot up to chance.I'm definitely one of the cam girls who would hardly ever say no. I've always wanted to try new things, but that's not because I felt like I had to. It's just personally what I want to do. I want to tick stuff off my list, I want to try everything once especially when it comes to sex positivity. Even if it's something I'm not necessarily into, I'd still give it a go. If I didn't like it, I'd be like ‘sorry, I'm not really into that.' But there's a lot of people that would say no to a lot of stuff.”The young woman proudly boasts a menu when she is online – in the form of a whiteboard which shows her viewers what she will do and how much it will cost them. CONTINUED BELOW...

[phroyd]

On the 12th December, The Guardian published an article entitled ‘If you want to understand the Gilets Jaunes you have to leave Paris’. The article had little by way of analysis, devoting itself to a standard ‘look at me I live in France’ one up man-ship. The ostensible topic, the Gilets Jaunes and questions concerning why now, who and where – surely the key questions – were largely ignored or under-developed.

I too live in France, about 800 kilometres from Paris: in South West France. My department is one of the poorest in the country. Moreover, even within this department, the area where I reside is backward in a developmental and progressivist sense: there are no motorways, the towns are little more than villages, there is little by the way of hospitals, work or facilities and, despite its fantastic natural beauty in the shade of the Pyrenees, the towns display an obvious air of poverty, unemployment and civic decay.

Support for the Gilets Jaunes is everywhere. One in two cars displays some sort of yellow vest on their dash. In the conversations at local bars, in the anger and ferocity filling the language of placid individuals, in the complaints of small shop-keepers and finally, in the Christmas newsletter from the mayor of my village.

It’s an anger that’s has been building for a long time. The two-lane main road from Auch to Toulouse has been blocked by strikers, farmers or truckers, on a dozen occasions in the last two years. Two months before the initial protests in Paris, a worker at the local hardware store spent 10 minutes listing to me all the complaints which subsequently informed the protests.

But more evidence of the long-standing anger now exploding is contained in the prolonged, spontaneous, entirely local and informal guerrilla campaign targeting French radar speed cameras.

A campaign which means that, currently, it is estimated that nearly three-quarters of the radars across France are out of service.

In my department, only one out of twenty-seven is still intact and that remaining one has been wrapped in state plastic bags to avoid ‘citizen decommissioning’.

The figures are staggering nationwide: 18 radars are out of service in the Alpes-Maritimes, 18 in the Var (out of 21), 60% in the two departments of Eure and Seine-Maritime, 25 out of 34 in Tarn-et- Garonne, 14 out of 15 in Cantal, 20 out of 30 in Allier, half in Indre, Morbihan and Nièvre, 19 out of 34 in Eure-et-Loire, 25 out of 27 in Côtes-d’Armor , 10 out of 16 in the Cher, 16 out of 33 in the Yonne and 40 out of 57 in the Gard.

In Nord-pas-de-Calais, the Voix du Nord counted at the beginning of December 5 intact radar out of 70, in the Puy-de-Dôme only one remains from 22, in Dordogne 3 out of 24. In the Alpes de Haute-Provence they are all out of order, 18 out of 28 are in Haute-Loire, 14 out of 27 in the Landes, 19 out of 23 in Dordogne, 10 out of 21 in Mayenne, 33 out of 44 in Oise, 22 out of 24 in the Channel, 10 out of 27 in Haute-Saône – one of the least affected departments with Corrèze (5 out of 21). Most of these have been destroyed with a combination of metal grinders and tyres filled with petrol.

The Gilets Jaunes’ demands are based in part around driving. In a lot of ways their struggle is a struggle for movement, basic movement, entry level requirement movement like getting to work; the movement required to live in the most immediate sense. This is the social world of practices and everyday actions. It is not the world of globalist abstractions.

These demands for movement concern police speed practices lowering the speed limit for revenue raising, and of course the price of diesel. The war against the speed cameras informal, spontaneous, uncoordinated, is the fight of the social world against the state noose, a desperate desire to breathe. Yet the demands of my very local group (composed of the small local town and surrounding villages) include the following as well: ‘No to the carbon tax for individuals, yes for polluters. Really force manufacturers to provide us with products that are not overwrapped, more ecological, more intelligent. Coherent and efficient public transport in our countryside’.

Yet they are also demanding reversion to 75% minimum inflation indexation of wages allowance for disability pensioners; revision of retirement and taxation brackets. True increase in purchasing power without help from the SS. Political will to cancel tax evasion. Suppression of privileges for the elected and their home. Tax transparency. Possibility of visibility of expenditures of all state agencies by taxpayers.

In other words, these are the demands of an impoverished populace in rural locations, currently reliant on cars and with little income. As the local mayor put it in his strongly worded Christmas newsletter, an abandonment of rural areas in the service of the profit from excessive re-centralization and the ideologically led development of metropolitan centres.

Now the Gilet Jaune have emerged into public view via Television and the abstract world of global news; now, for the last ten weeks, there have gathered on a unprepossessing roundabout down the road, a tiny group of somewhere between 10 and 16 people waving Gilets Jaune banners and wearing yellow vests.

The two local gendarmes stand quietly watching these people hand out flyers, barbecue their lunch on an overturned oil drum and encourage motorists honking their support. It’s freezing cold across the bare landscape of clay fields. For the most part the Gilets Jaunes on this roundabout are middle aged men, though there is a regular stream of both women and some younger men. All of them are dressed in multiple layers of cheap clothing and every time a car passes, (this is not a heavily trafficked road), they leap and run to them calling and yelling for support, not in an aggressive manner but with enthusiasm and energy. And this is the same throughout the region.

On a recent trip of forty five minutes I encountered 7 of these roundabout protests. All were bigger, some have set up tents, many decorated with the French tricolor; all of them have BBq’s blazing, all of them exhibit a friendly fervour as if they have suddenly discovered they are not alone. They offer passing motorists demands clearly printed locally, some of which mirror wider demands, some which are particular to the area. Many of these roundabout groups have strong female contingents and youth presence. Evidence for this wider support is everywhere: the local farmer who lent them his field adjacent to a roundabout so the Gilets could erect a cabin for cups of tea. Trucks honk continually, cars too, three quarters of the cars have yellow vests on their dashboard or trailing behind. In every village houses are decked with yellow vests dangling from windows or nailed to doors and this is repeated all over France as even a cursory glance at Gilets Jaunes Facebook sites confirms. Motorways are being blocked, not continually but steadily, all over the country, either by groups of protestors or truck drivers or farmers.

Nor is this support simply confined to what could be loosely termed working class people. Support, at least in my area, covers everyone, working and middle class people alike. It includes for instance the woman PA for a managing director of quite a big company; a woman who, despite having worked at the company for 16 years, is still being paid what is colloquially referred to as the ‘smic’, the minimum wage.

Indeed almost all the people around here are paid the bare ‘smic’ no matter what their qualifications, something true of 80% of provincial France. Another woman described as basically running a large storage facility, performing all admin, doing the accounts is, despite her university degree, similarly only earning ‘smic’. For this middle class social capital she travels almost two hours a day.

All complain constantly about taxes; uniformly they claim to have nothing left at month’s end. These are all real examples and along with that there exist other more pernicious impositions draining their income. The common practice concerning Public holidays for instance; many of which in France fall on Tuesdays or Thursdays. In such circumstances, companies will commonly announce a compulsory closure on the intervening Monday or Friday; in the process making what is termed in France a ‘jour de pont’: a week end bridge. Of course, workers don’t get paid for this compulsory bridge. If they want to be paid they take it as part of their annual leave.

In this area, the Gilets Jaunes ARE the social world, all the people and all the world. And because they are so diverse their protests didn’t begin with the certainty of ideology, or a traditional political affiliation or indeed any wild ideas concerning ‘the correct organisation of the working class’ or the purity of the race. Things are far too serious for that.

The people protesting at the local roundabout are, in effect protesting on behalf of the being-ness of their entire social world. Further, as proved by the endless YouTube/Facebook posts, the spontaneous actions of these people are simultaneously mirroring actions, ideas and perspectives appearing all over the entire rural world of France, everywhere outside Paris.

The Gilets Jaunes is the revolt of France Profonde – the social world of Deep France, defined as:

an expression used originally by Parisians to designate the provinces in opposition to Paris. More generally, it refers to the most remote regions of France, without urbanization and rooted in tradition. It can have a pejorative connotation depending on the context.’

The hint of class prejudice in the final line is crucial. Paris, even before it was the nominated as the single globalist city for France, for long before that, Paris has sneered at and despised Deep France.

Simply by its existing, Deep France is in revolt against globalization and therefore against Paris and the French state. But it is something else that really terrifies and disgusts Parisians of all political persuasions, left and right, concerning France Profonde. France Profonde is also a revolt in the name of something positive, a vision of France as a place of equality, a place of valued parts, not one single globalized whole no matter how pure.

What’s more, Paris knows that, whether it be the industrialized North or the rurality of the south, it is this ragged positive vision, shared at the level of personal and communal being-ness which unites the Gilets against the state.

Deep France is more a feeling and a meaning in common than an ideology. Which is why it is ragged and uneven and hybrid and diverse. As it should be.

This is the vision contained in the dirty flags that strew the country roundabouts or the dirty scraps of yellow vest, poking from an upstairs window.

And if this positive vision were encapsulated in abstraction, then it is through their vision of equality, fraternity, equality and liberty, the three words that best reflect the contradictions and truths within their own lives. A slogan which encapsulates for them what they are, what their world is and why it needs to be protected. It is a demand both from them and in the protection of their lived experience. And this is why it is not xenophobic nationalism, indeed not nationalism at all. It is far too particular, far too local far too concrete.

This is why the term ‘those left behind’ is yet another silly liberal metropolitan designation. If the Gilet on my roundabout wanted to be in Paris they’d have been there a long time ago. Lots of people they know already are. What these people are doing instead is standing up for their culture, their own place and their own understanding both of what it means, and of their place in it. They are here because they want to be…who they are.

Read On

Phroyd

[getsuchan]

Shopping Therapy

Kirei knew there were at least thirty-three ways this could go wrong. He just didn't think that the King of Heroes would be able to practice all thirty-three simultaneously and then add his own personal flair to it all.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11945029/1/Shopping-Therapy

https://archiveofourown.org/works/7013947

A/N: This is the result of me trying to actually learn how to do my laundry- the result of that was rather... unexpected. So, as I remain in exile in my room, scorned by all who don't appreciate my high intellect, this came to mind. So enjoy!

"It was my understanding that all Servants receive knowledge of the modern world upon materialization. Correct?"

"Indeed."

"You do understand that you cannot go outside like that. Right?"

The King of Heroes looked at his attire in confusion. "Why not? I suppose it may seem a bit out of place-"

"You will be arrested for indecent exposure."

"-but until I can replace the clothing Tokiomi purchased upon my request, I don't have any other choice." Gilgamesh finished with a glare.

After the end of the Fourth Holy Grail War, Gilgamesh had decided to stay in the Church with Kirei. Kirei himself thought it a better solution for the King to simply go buy himself an apartment complex and visit him, say, once a month for dinner. But that particular King wasn't someone you could kick out of your church without dire consequences, one of which would be something sharp and pointy into various places in your body. So far no real problems had risen, well, other than Gilgamesh complaining constantly about how his church was dark, dank and sinister (which coincidentally was just the way Kirei liked his churches, thank you very much) but in the last few days, the King had decided that the church had nothing more to offer him in terms of pleasures, what with the wine supply at its limit and all. As a result, he had determined that he would have to grace the unspeakably ugly modern world with his presence. Kirei didn't mind at all- in fact, he was certain that so long as nothing provoked him terribly, combined with his relatively good mood, he would be sensible and no one would end up with half a dozen Noble Phantasms pointed at them and the police asking questions he probably couldn't answer. But even so, Kirei couldn't possibly allow the King of Heroes to go out dressed like... that.

"But you can't go outside like that." Kirei insisted.

"Why? It is a perfectly fine piece of cloth, far superior to whatever cheap qualities pass for decent in this era."

"It is perfectly fine, so long as you can avoid every slight gust of wind or movement in general."

"You jest. I have seen women in less."

He can't be serious. Kirei thought with a sigh. "Gilgamesh, you are wearing nothing but a chiton. A very short, thin chiton that covers nothing from the navel up and the knee down. It doesn't even cover that much of what it is supposed to cover."

"Yes."

"You can't go out like that."

"Don't tell me what to do."

"But-"

"No 'buts'!"

Kirei pinched the bridge of his nose in a rare show of desperation. Despite that, however, when he next spoke his voice remained its usual monotone.

"Very well. I shall offer you one of my own uniforms for the time being and you can go shopping for new attire."

"You dare to ask of the King to lower himself to wearing your peasant clothes?"

"Just until you can buy your own!"

Gilgamesh opened his mouth to respond but then thought it over. Even he could see common sense when it was thrust right in front of his eyes covered in neon signs. (1)

"Very well. I am convinced."

The priest sighed in relief and went to his room with Gilgamesh close behind. As he took out one of his uniforms and handed it over, something came to him- something horrifying and good at the same time. Good, because if his suspicions were correct he would have some morsel of control over the obnoxious blonde behind him. And horrifying because the Holy Church was facing some financial difficulties and the first to get a decrease in salary were, of course, those who "lived for their faith and thus had no need for earthly pleasures". Namely, the priests of the Eighth Sacrament. Kirei barely managed to get a bit over the minimum wage for his role as a Holy Grail War overseer. That was not to say that Kirei didn't make some decent profit from his congression- he was a very skilled preacher if he said so himself and he was regularly ripping off the people of Fuyuki. The poor and unfortunate didn't see much of that profit either. However, when it came to the King's taste in clothing, it was unlikely that robbing a bank would suffice to do anything more than cover the expense of one shoe. And while Kirei knew that Gilgamesh was unlikely to have any qualms going out wearing only one shoe, he found himself unable to allow it.

"King of Heroes." he started, trying to approach the issue in a way that would not offend said King. "You do have the proper currency for this era in your vault, correct?"

The King stared at him with an eyebrow raised. "You mean those flimsy papers the modern people use? Of course not. Such peasant ways of acquiring the necessities for my lifestyle are beneath me. Behold Kirei! The true capacity of the King!" he announced and with a theatrical bow several Gates appeared and golden coins rained from the ceiling. Which was all nice and well, but this wasn't going to work quite the way the King thought. Kirei picked up a coin and examined it (stuffing a handful in his pocket while Gilgamesh was busy laughing).

"You cannot buy even a gum with those, let alone clothes."

The rain of ancient Sumerian gold ceased as did the laughing. "What?"

"You will most likely get yourself arrested for illicit trade in antiquities," he glanced meaningfully at the King, "on top of indecent exposure if you don't put the shirt on as well." Kirei pointed out and Gilgamesh complied with a scowl. "You need to have the currency of this land you find yourself into Gilgamesh. Didn't you learn that when you materialized?"

"Gold's value is the same in all eras."

"It... doesn't work that way exactly."

"Oh."

"Yes."

The silence stretched for a while.

"There is a black market in this place I presume?"

"You are not allowed to bring the mafia into this."

"As if I would ever grace such scum with my presence! Don't get too cocky with me mongrel!"

"I am sorry. But the issue remains that you cannot sell any amount of pure, ancient Sumerian gold in perfect condition or any fist-sized precious gems in the black market without a dozen men in black suits paying you a visit."

Another long, even more awkward silence. Gilgamesh sighed in frustration.

"Very well. Rejoice Kirei! In return for the gold in your pocket, you shall have the honor of paying for my purchases!" the King of Uruk declared, blatantly pleased with his generous offer.

So he saw that.

"There is no way I shall use your mongrel attire more than once. If you don't plan on accepting my decision, I shall be merciful and not punish you Kirei. Instead, I think I will simply change back into my own clothes." Gilgamesh said with a smirk. Kirei stared at him blankly for a while, with the King staring right back. It was the third long and uncomfortable silence today and a staring contest was a difficult thing when your opponent's slitted pupils kept changing in size. As he admitted defeat with a sigh, Kirei made a mental note to cook mapo tofu for dinner tonight.

"It's all junk! Is that what passes for quality fit for a King?" Gilgamesh proclaimed in frustration. And God, was his frustration loud. Too loud for Kirei's tastes, especially considering they were inside the best shop the mall had to offer. Most people would pay just for breathing in front of its windows, but Gilgamesh was looking in disgust at a hand-made leather jacket (a well-over Kirei's official abilities hand-made leather jacket- thank God for Rin Tohsaka's assets), the fourth item he had rejected within the past ten minutes. The assistant glared with vicious hatred at the ancient King, but quickly settled back to the universal fake, holier-than-thou smile assistants had on their face in the presence of costumers. After the King's rude dismissal of yet another over-the-top expensive shirt however, the woman left the counter and moved with confident strides towards them.

Oh good. And here I thought this was going to go down smoothly.

"How may I be of assistance?"

The moment Gilgamesh turned around to glare at the woman, Kirei abandoned all hope and decided to just roll with it.

Besides, how much worse can this get?

A/N: Oh Kirei, you silly billy. Don't you know that you should never ask such silly questions? ]:)

(1): [SPOILER]: He can't, not really, but this is what fanfic powers are for, no?

[centrifuge-politics]

Brick Club 4.1.4

This chapter gave me freaking whiplash, when can I just talk about Enjolras and the fact that I love him again?

We start off with a truly mind-boggling claim. “The terror which arises from social struggles is chargeable neither to the king nor to the democracy…let us, then, impute these terrible collisions only to the fatality of things. Whatever these tempests may be, human responsibility is not mingled with them.” Ooookay, this has me saltier than the Dead Sea. What are you saying, Hugo?? What happened to society and power are the villains? Let us, then, impute these terrible essentialist arguments only to the temporary blindness of an old privileged white guy. “God makes visible to men his will in events, an obscure text written in a mysterious language.” If only God had invoked a series of people’s uprisings against sundry monarchies and empires, so mysterious, if only we knew what he meant by all that. France witnessed six regime changes in as many decades from 1789 to 1848; I was under the mistaken impression that God knew French.

“Factions are blind men who aim straight.” Oof, partisanship, am I right? We all agree that something is wrong, but we can’t seem to agree on what it is and why or how best to fix it. Hugo says “factions,” but he pretty clearly means neo-royalists legitimists. The grand old parties…

The socialists are here! Finally, my people. They take the philosophy the revolution and the sundry political parties and say, ok, what do we do with this? How do we utilize the resources of society to ensure people are happy? “From these two things combined, public power without, individual happiness within, results social prosperity.” Be still my Marxist heart, someone has been reading The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844! What he’s describing here is the elimination of alienation from one’s labor and from society at large (public power) and a system that allows workers to proportionally benefit from the fruits of their labor.

Hugo rips on England for being capitalist pigs, but assures us that “It is of course understood that by these words…we designate not the people, but the social constructions.” Hugo says destroy the free market, increase strengthen the welfare state and social security, raise the minimum wage, free universal education, and nationalize the shit out of everything. He’s only doing this because I dragged him too hard in the last three and a half chapters and he wants to win me back…it’s working.

We turn the corner on 1832 and the slow moving lava is now a lightning storm, all of France can taste electricity in the air. The scene isn’t looking better on the international stage, but I’m not quite prepared to try and sort out that European mess. Worth mentioning is the sister revolt of silk workers during the First Canut Revolt in Lyon in 1831, a labor uprising to match Paris’s political uprising, “one the city of thought, the other the city of labour; at Paris civil war, at Lyons servile war; in the two cities the same furnace glare.” This revolt, and its follow-up in 1834, were praised by Marx and Engels as the first uprising of the working class (in the Industrial era at least) and it inspired a number of other proletariat revolts both at home and abroad. That’s class consciousness, baby.