#but then they have really vague definitions for what constitutes adult

[toughtink]

wish people would stop saying cosplay is banned in florida

[symptoms-syndrome]

Hi! I’m curious to hear (in a vague way) what the process was like uncovering the DID if you’re comfortable answering. Like how long did it take? Did your therapist(s)/treatment team first consider other diagnoses? And anything else you feel comfortable sharing.

Hihi! This is sort of a hard question to answer for me, but I can try!

What constitutes my "treatment team" is sort of hard to define in this sense, because IDK if you mean "the ppl over the course of my life" or like "the one who wrote it on paper."

I've been seeing a therapist since I was 6 years old. I started going to outpatient programs like when I was in my early teens for Behavioral Problems. In those I was diagnosed with everything in the book so like. In that sense other diagnoses were considered? I think by the time I was 18 and kicked out of the house/able to see a professional of my own volition not connected to my parents/disciplinary programs, I was mostly labeled as BPD, PTSD, depression + anxiety, OCD, maybe NPD or ODD. I don't really give a single shit about any of those because I don't define myself by diagnoses anymore, or try not to, and my therapists as an adult told me it was majorly fucked that I was diagnosed with all that as a teenager. Most of them weren't even legit they were just labels to try and pin down why I was a Bad Kid. Spoiler for that, the answer was that generally teenagers act out when they're subject to intense trauma basically all the time and aren't listened to and are institutionalized. Tends to fuck your brain up real bad. I'm a lot better now not bc I got over the laundry list of diagnoses, but because I'm in like. A stable and supportive and independent environment.

I was officially diagnosed as an adult, exact ages escape me but probably like 19? It came as a surprise to me but fit like a glove re: my experiences with memory loss, not remembering where I am, meeting people who have met me before but I didn't remember, people telling me I did things I don't think I would, etc. It was really upsetting to hear because it's such a. Permanent and perception-of-life altering disorder. I was definitely hoping it was something that could be like. Cured more easily. It was also definitely hard to come to terms with the fact my childhood was That Bad, when I didn't really think it was before.

My therapist at the time said it was almost stupidly obvious that was what I had, even tho I wasn't like. Aware of it.

So like. How long did it take is hard to answer. Overall, if you count all the time I was being seen by psychiatric "professionals?" Over 10 years. If you count just that therapist? Like one year.

I'm a lil scatterbrained RN, so I might add more detail later or if u send another ask. I guess the question is so open and vague it's hard to answer without a full autobiography LMAO.

But I guess it would be useful to know why you wanna know. Then I could probably give a better answer. Are you considering the diagnosis for yourself? Are you trying to see if ur experience is shared w others? But also keep in mind I'm a weird little anti-psych dog who in general rejects the idea of seeking diagnosis for treatment. RN in therapy I mostly talk about my day to day struggles with whatever (like "damn, I've been really fixated on [specific trauma] this week" or "I made a friend" or "I'm really stressed about this argument I had" or "later this week im going on a date and i don't wanna fuck it up") and occasionally parts stuff comes up. Therapy hasn't majorly changed I don't think. Then again I'm real shit brain right now and my memory sucks ass. Maybe I can answer better later I just know if I didn't answer at all I'd forget.

[omegasmileyface]

Bound by the Food Chain

"man what if there was something incorporating both the Ghost King and Ghost Hunger aus" i say, not prepared to spend weeks writing up an entire ecosystem structure for the ghost zone,

thanks @attackradish and @ectolemonades for help figuring out the science and writing!

summary: The ghostly Staff who've taken up residence in Phantom's Keep notice Danny doesn't eat any ectoplasmic food. That can't be good for him.

warnings: detailed description of ghost hunger, which is vaguely like cannibalism

words: 2830

AO3 link

===

“King Phantom, when do you feed?”

“Huh?” Danny looked up at the Keep’s Librarian, Vellum. It felt like an odd question, seeing as he was currently actively eating a sandwich he had packed up with him into the Zone. He was spending a few hours in the Keep that day since it was nice and quiet for getting work — from both realms — done, and he had brought some earth food over. Ghost plants just didn’t taste very good.

Vellum looked a little shocked, like she hadn’t realized she’d asked her question aloud. “I mean, clearly you eat human food quite a bit,” she gestured to his sandwich, “but I’ve never seen you take in any sort of ectoplasmic substance.”

Danny wasn’t an expert on the (strangely psychological) ecology of the Infinite Realms, but he was familiar with the fact that all ghosts had to take in some sort of ectoplasm if they wanted to be anything more than an inert impression of emotion. Since he had never gotten any enjoyment or significant energy from eating ghost plants or breathing in the stuff ambient in the air, he pretty much just stuck with eating human food and converting the chemical energy between his forms. He was lucky that he could do that, being part human. He knew he automatically gained some energy from the human emotions around him (including his own, another benefit of being liminal) but it was negligible. He got drained pretty easily, and he knew there were things he wasn’t trying, but… he was tired, not desperate. He’d be tired anyway, with his lack of sleep.

“That’s because I don’t. I can still use the chemical energy I get from human food in my ghost form, so…” he shrugged. “This is pretty much it.”

Vellum’s brows furrowed in concern. “Are you not a—” She pursed her lips. “Are you not tired?”

“What do you mean? I definitely eat more than a regular human, and as far as I’m aware I don’t lose any of my energy in conversion. I’m getting by.”

“I think we should talk to Dr. Marchs. I don’t know if it’s… ok, that you’re not feeding ectoplasmically.”

With some exasperation, Danny let himself be brought back to the Throne room, the preferred place for anything that could constitute a “meeting”. Apparently, talking to the Keep’s Doctor, Chef, and some other Staff members about his diet counted.

The various adult ghosts looked at Danny with shared expressions of confusion and concern from where they stood around him. He was sitting on the arm of the Throne, not the most comfortable but it still felt wrong to be properly seated in it unless necessary.

Dr. Marchs finally spoke their piece. “Forgive me for asking, Your Majesty, but… are you not a hunting-ghost?”

Danny was already out of his league culturally. He had a lot to learn. “As in… like, a predator?”

“Exactly! Your core best processes ectoplasm directly from other ghosts, correct?”

Danny paled. “I don’t… know? I tend to avoid going around, just… eating other sentient creatures.” He tried to say it in a humorous way. It didn’t work.

“So you’ve never tried! I had thought… Well, I think you must be a hunting-ghost. You put out a radiant power that is only associated with that core type.”

“None of us have seen you feeding,” added Vellum, “so we weren’t sure you didn’t just defy that association. I don’t think anyone really understands all the complications of half-human physiology.”

Dr. Marchs jumped back in easily. “It’s still just speculation. You have said that you don’t enjoy eating plants from this realm, yes?” Danny nodded. “And you don’t seem to get significant relief from human emotion. Well, we’re just going to have to have you try feeding on some ghosts.”

Danny jumped to his feet. “What?! I don’t… need that, I get by fine on human food!”

“But aren’t you tired?” pointed out the Chef. Her eyes widened. “That’s why you get so drained after using big attacks! Your energy reserves aren’t being nearly refilled.”

“I believe she’s right, Your Majesty. There’s only so much energy you can take from human food, which isn’t even alive… I think you’re always tired because your core is designed to have a level of energy that you can’t provide it without processing Vital ectoplasm.”

Danny didn’t want to admit that he was consistently pretty damn tired. Instead he tried to change the subject. Ghosts were passionate beings, and as much as he hated to take advantage of that, having one of the Keep Staff gush about one of their passions to him was much better than talking about his relationship with what was essentially cannibalism. “Vital?”

Dr. Marchs’ eyes sparkled a little. “Vital as in living, not as in essential. Ectoplasm comes in three major forms. Ambient plasm makes up most of the Realms, in environments and atmospheres and auras. All ghosts are made up of Vital plasm, and those with cores have their Obsession or Purpose imprinted into the crystal structure of their own ectoplasm, which can be turned into Charged ectoplasm. The Charged form can take up an elemental type according to the ability of its source, and it has the most capacity to hold or be converted into ectoenergy. The Charged form is used to transmit intention onto a target, so it’s generally created by Cored ghosts, who are creatures of intention, in attacks or construction. Regardless of type or state, ectoplasm processing depends on its form — Uncored ghosts can process strong human emotions or Ambient ectoplasm into the Vital type. Among Cored ghosts, hunter-ghosts can best process Vital ectoplasm, gatherer-ghosts the high-activity type of Ambient plasm found in ghost plants, and scavenger-ghosts human emotion. Additionally, Charged plasm no longer linked to the source of its intention will eventually disperse into Ambient, as its most inert form.”

Danny, sitting down, had already known part of that, but the Doctor was properly smiling at this point. Dr. Marchs blushed as they realized they had just been talking, but none of the other ghosts in the room appeared to mind.

“…Regardless, King Phantom, we should really find some blobs for you to try eating. I cannot in good conscience leave you persisting off such low energy.”

He wanted to argue, he really did, but all the Keep Staff present were looking at Danny with this pleading expression. They looked genuinely concerned, and he remembered a comment he’d heard before about some of the Staff latching onto the King with their Obsessions. Some unfortunate result of the connection they’d formed with the Keep, Danny certainly didn’t deserve it, but he did know how it felt to Obsess over taking care of someone and have them turn down that care. With the same concerned look directed back their way, he got up and was led to the Garden out back.

Danny was having second thoughts again once he found himself surrounded by blobs that had been enjoying the intricate plants and high Ambient ecto levels of the Keep Garden. They were squishy but soft, like mochi coated in a good layer of starch, each a bit smaller than his head, and they all looked at him with these big vibrant eyes. Their postures were energetic, like they expected to play a game.

Once he sat down with the rest of the small group — why did he have to have an audience? — the blobs swarmed around him, resting on the sky blue grass and on his shoulders and in the others’ laps. They looked almost as expectant as the Staff in front of him.

“I…“ he bit his lip. “I can’t justify eating a living creature when I can choose not to. I know lots of ghosts have to eat others to persist, but I have the privilege that I can eat human food instead. Since I have that option, I can’t just… end another creature so I can feel a bit better.” Hey, Sam would be proud of him.

The present Staff donned looks of confusion. An Advisor who used the Keep as a home spoke up, eyes wide with realization. “Ah! Living creatures all share a survival instinct — that’s a natural result of evolution, yes? Things that do their best to live have their genes passed on? That’s not necessary for Uncored ghosts, since they do not reproduce and therefore don’t evolve. The only instincts experienced by the Uncored are instincts to better the Realms. Unless they’ve developed a strong individual personality, the Uncored are much more interested in contributing than in persisting.”

Danny’s head tilted in curiosity. Dr. Marchs took the reins on the rest of the explanation.

“The Realms are built socially where the living realm is built physically. Our homes and well-being are made from emotion, belief, and community. So for Uncored ghosts, spawned of the dimension itself, they want their ectoplasm and energy to be where it supports those communities the most, and that means ensuring the health of the ghosts in charge. Generally speaking, the more powerful a ghost is, the more likely they are to have some importance to the Realms. The Uncored — and many Cored — can sense a ghost’s power due to how much excess ectoplasm they let off. In fact, that excess is almost immediately put off as Ambient ectoplasm, meaning that there is simply more Ambient plasm around a powerful ghost, and the Uncored are often attracted since that provides sustenance for them . It’s a mutualistic relationship where one entity feeds off another, and in the end the resources of the weaker ghosts are given to the stronger, supporting the Realms. In fact, there are some cultures who believe that converting ectoplasm into a form the Cored can process is the entire reason for the existence of the Uncored.”

Vellum smiled slightly as she added on, “It’s not an entirely accurate strategy, as the most powerful ghost around is not always going to be a hunter type. They usually are, seeing as that’s the most efficient form of feeding, but it’s not impossible to be otherwise. The result in these cases is Uncored ghosts following around said Cored ghost, and as the same aspect of community comes into play, that ghost soon ends up hanging around a hunter type, who feeds on the prey that was collected.”

Danny cringed a little at the use of the word “prey”.

He looked around at the blobs nuzzled up against him. Those who didn’t look to be something resembling unconscious were peering up at him. They certainly looked expectant, as much as something without even a permanent mouth can.

After he was silent for a few moments, another Staff member spoke up, likely wanting to lighten his mood. “They really do like you! I’m not surprised, even aside from your natural power, the role you play as High King causes ectoplasm to be magnetized to you. I’m sure they’re having a little feast themselves!”

It did not lighten his mood. Danny felt genuinely guilty. Even if he wasn’t doing it on purpose, wasn’t he effectively manipulating these creatures into offering themselves up to be eaten? It wasn’t right, to make them feel as if they want to be ended, just because he had some sort of aura.

But the gathered Staff were still concerned, and anticipatory, and, somehow, hopeful . He couldn’t turn them down at this point. He’d just have to bite into one of the little ghosts surrounding him, just once. He’d throw up, disgusted with himself, and the Staff would realize it wasn’t better for him, and the remaining blobs would remember that they don’t want to die, and they’d flee, and everybody would just leave the subject alone . He only had to try.

(The human dread he was emitting at this point must have been feeding everyone else.)

“…Okay,” he said simply, and gently picked up a blob that had been sitting on his leg.

Before he could rethink himself again, he brought it to his lips. He opened his jaw slightly wider than a human’s would likely go and, fangs instinctually extended, bit down.

Danny was familiar with the scent of ectoplasm. Copper and citrus and battery acid and salt. But when he broke the surface of the small ghost and the viscous fluid burst into his mouth, the salty and bitter aspects were lost on his tongue, replaced by a thick sweetness and the cold tingle of energy. Where his fangs pierced an inch down into the substance of the ghost, he tasted this fulfillment in its emotional ectoplasm. He’s not sure he would have been able to taste it if he weren’t part human. Still, the feeling was something distinctly ghostly, a similar satisfaction to fulfilling an Obsession or a Purpose. It was hard to feel bad, sympathizing automatically with that simple rightness. The way the emotion pressed at his brain, the way the semisolid edges of the ghost slicked against his tongue, his own self-revulsion melted to the back of his mind. The ectoplasmic flesh met his teeth with a thick resistance, but it was nothing to break past it and open up to the deeper substance. It was vibrant, a pure cool energy that pulsed against his fangs. (His core sucked it up greedily.) His mouth met the energy with a pulsing of its own, a harmonizing signal sent from his core throughout his body like a heartbeat. It came out as a low purr that vibrated deep through the charged air around him. He couldn’t help but rush to swallow, though his body absorbed it just as easily without.

The blob ghost had been the size of his foot, and now it was part of the energy making up his own form. Compared to the power his core was passively putting out, to the amount it longed to have refilled, it wasn’t all that much. Unconsciously, his core put out an ectoenergetic signal that he was ready to feed. The blobs around him nuzzled closer yet, making themselves available. Danny could feel a few other Uncored ghosts who were drifting nearby come into the garden and join them.

He looked up from his ectoplasm-stained hands at the Keep Staff. They were looking at him, relieved, pleased (even though they just watched him tear into a living thing and then absorb it into his being like it didn’t even matter, said a part in the back of his consciousness. It was hard to focus on, though. It was coming from his brain, not his hungry core, after all). With his core this active, he could feel the presences of all the other ghosts around. The blobs flocking around him had auras that were weaker than the Cored Staff, but sturdy. There was a balance to them that signaled the ectoplasmic types they were taking in and storing. He sensed the Uncored pulling in the Ambient ectoplasm that sloughed off of him, barely connected to him anymore if not for the weight of the space surrounding him. And he could feel all of their stores of energy-dense Vital plasm.

He could also feel, just as an aspect of his being, his own energy stores. The metaphysical space in his center that his form and all his strength drew from. He could remember, abstractly, the moment he died and that reservoir came to be and was instantly flooded with energy. The way the portal had searched the air until it found his body and his little human soul and used him as a conduit, and all that electricity punched a hole between planes right where his ghost was trying to form, and something tore outward from that starting place just on top of his being, and the vacuum that formed on earth and in the Zone and everything in between pulled until the Infinite Realms rushed his body and in one instantaneous moment his forming core was flooded with enough ectoplasmic energy to become entirely corporeal (if it hadn’t, his ghost wouldn’t have manifested nearly quickly enough to keep him alive), and his being was stretched beyond its limits containing everything. For one moment, he had been filled with more energy than he had thought possible, and his ghost had formed itself to accommodate. Since then he’d felt so… empty. His body took what it could from human food and environmental energy, but it was made for more than that. He had blocked out the awareness of his reserves and gotten used to trying to power all his defenses on so little. He was always so tired.

He still felt low, running on just enough to operate something humanish. But his core had latched on to the ectoplasm provided by the blob, the kind it was designed to process, and finally felt a little relieved. Most ghosts that stayed within the Realms were almost always full. Danny wasn’t nearly there yet.

He reached down and grabbed another blob.

[jasontoddiefor]

Summary: Obi-Wan is up late studying and his new Padawan sleeps next to him on their sofa. AN: @thenegoteator enables all my wishes for smol Padawan Anakin and Obi-Wan bonding so I hope you like this! Read on AO3!

Despite common misconceptions, the Jedi temple at night was still as busy as it was during the daytime. The many nocturnal members of the Order went about their daily life, training, teaching, learning, preparing for missions, and tracking down wayward Padawans deep in the temple building. Not as seldomly as they’d like to, they also sent one of their diurnal Jedi, awake despite their rhythm, to bed.

Sleep eluded them all often enough, visions and twisted dreams keeping them awake and as such, they all took care to ensure they did get a healthy dosage of sleep.

This was the precise reason Obi-Wan Kenobi was not in the archives but in his quarters.

He yawned for what felt like the twentieth time in the past ten minutes, staring at the light screen of his datapad.

It was the only source of light illuminating the dark room and consequently hurting his eyes. Obi-Wan could have turned on the main lights, but he hadn’t really expected to still be sitting here at this hour.

He should have gone to bed about four hours ago or so, he wasn’t entirely sure how much time had passed and hesitated at checking the chronometer, but Obi-Wan also still was about two hours of work away from where he wanted to be with his thesis paper.

He didn’t have the time to sleep. Staying awake was an entirely reasonable course of action.

He reached for his cup of tea, black as the deepest voids of space. It wasn’t his favorite by any kind, but it did its job at keeping him awake better than any of his favorite teas or kaf did. When he raised his cup to his lips, he noticed that not only it was cold, but also almost empty. He could have sworn he had made it just ten minutes ago.

Displeased he set it on the living room table and sighed. Right, only about ten pages and a conclusion to go. Obi-Wan was able to work through those pages without any tea keeping him alert. He could, of course, get up and make himself another cup, but that also meant moving his small companion out of the way and possibly startling him awake.

Obi-Wan looked down at his lap where his Padawan was dead to the world, the rise and fall of the bundle being the only sign that Anakin was asleep. Obi-Wan could hardly see Anakin, wrapped up in three blankets as he was. Obi-Wan doubted that Anakin would learn to sleep with less than three layers any time soon.

His only visible feature was his crown of messy golden locks. Anakin had been up until just two hours ago, working on his own homework first, then had continued working on his sheer endless numbers of mouse droids and, when even that hadn’t kept him busy anymore, he had started drawing. Only after he had gotten too tired to hold onto his pencil had he started pestering Obi-Wan with questions about his paper until he had fallen asleep. At first, Anakin had been leaning against Obi-Wan’s shoulder, but the longer the night had gotten, the more did he slip off until he had ended up dropping into Obi-Wan’s lap where he was now snoring lightly.

Obi-Wan smiled at his Padawan, then gently so he wouldn’t wake him, ran his fingers through his hair. Anakin’s hair was surprisingly soft and, when the boy remembered to shower, smelled of spring flowers instead of motor oil.

He had a Padawan.

A small, cute, kind, and good-hearted Padawan who deserved a world that would treat him gently and the best of teachers who could guide him well.

And Obi-Wan had no idea how to handle him. He was doing his best and he was quite sure that he was at least on the right track, but he definitely could improve still.

But first, he had a paper to finish.

It was ridiculous.

He had been supposed to be done with it months ago. When his Master and he had been called to Naboo, Obi-Wan had just started writing it, a vague thesis in mind and some literature assembled. Most of the work had been in his head and constituted of the endless discussions Qui-Gon and he had had about the true nature of the Force. They had spent years discussing what it felt like what its purpose was – It was a heavy topic, and Obi-Wan could have gone with an easier one such as the traffic laws in Coruscant’s lower levels, but instead he had chosen to go with such a research-heavy field.

It was a chore and a half to work on this paper. Not so much writing the paper in and of itself, Obi-Wan happened to be one of those bastards who enjoyed writing up reports and forcing people to go through his elaborations on the banalest of topics. Handing his papers in had always been his utmost delight. There were very few sights that could compare to someone seeing that they’d have to proofread his paper.

No, the problem with his theses was the agonizing pain that came with every revisit to all the memories he had made with his Master. Getting even half a sentence transferred to the datapad was an ordeal Obi-Wan had never experienced before. Whenever he had to look up literature, he felt as if Qui-Gon was standing right beside him, commenting on the material, or quizzing him on it.

Qui-Gon would have a lot to say about his paper: Obi-Wan could just picture him making one remark after another, grilling him about every sentence and pointing out every flaw in his argumentation. Obi-Wan would hate every second of it, disagree with Qui-Gon on at least 215 accounts, but in the end, he’d hold his paper in his hands and could say that it had been a job well done indeed.

His Master would be proud.

His Master wasn’t here to see it.

Anakin whimpered.

Obi-Wan looked down at his Padawan again and soothingly ran his fingers through his hair again, sending him reassurance over their bond, hoping his emotions would reach his young charge even when he was asleep. Anakin, for all that he enjoyed talking a lot, was a very quiet child when he wanted to be. He didn’t make a lot of noise when he moved through their quarters, he hardly made any noise when he was sleeping. He didn’t let out a single cry despite the nightmares that must be haunting him now.

Obi-Wan began to hum a melody that had been sung to him in the creche. It was meant to calm children down during or after nightmares. Obi-Wan had always been prone to such, visions of darkness, death, and decay haunting him. Soon after he began singing, his Padawan calmed down and returned to an easy sleep.

Obi-Wan smiled down at Anakin’s form. It was nice that at least one of them could catch a couple of hours of sweet rest.

Sighing, Obi-Wan focused on the text on his datapad and began re-reading his last paragraphs.

He hadn’t typed anything that made any sense for the couple last hours. It was ridiculous.

“I should stop,” Obi-Wan muttered. “This is useless when I’m tired.”

Frustrated, he saved the document and then turned out the datapad, leaving himself in total darkness with only the weight of Anakin as a gentle reminder that he wasn’t truly lonely.

For a moment Obi-Wan contemplated just staying like this and sleeping here. He didn’t want to move, he was semi-comfortable, and Anakin by his side was more than enough comfort.

But he did have a bed with a good mattress, and so did Anakin. As his Master, Obi-Wan should set a good precedent for Anakin and follow healthy habits, avoid falling asleep on the sofa where his neck would make him pay for it in the morning.

Slowly, Obi-Wan pushed Anakin of his lap. The boy grumbled and Obi-Wan froze, not daring to move an inch. He breathed in and out, once twice, but Anakin kept on sleeping, still knocked out. Obi-Wan suppressed a laugh and then stood up in one swift move. Once standing, he cracked his bones and neck so that the stiffness would disappear from his body. If he didn’t take care of his body now, it would come back to haunt him when he attempted any of his usual Ataru sequences.

Not that Obi-Wan had been doing many of those lately. Form IV had become uncomfortable since Naboo, but he had yet to find something easier. A few of the Soresu practitioners had pointed out that he seemed to be well suited to it, but Obi-Wan wasn’t sure.

Sighing yet once more and putting the thought aside for another day, he then turned around to his Padawan and scooped him up in his arms. It was good that Anakin was so small still and didn’t weigh too much. With the boy settled in his arms, drooling on Obi-Wan’s shoulder, he walked past the many datapads spread across the ground and carried Anakin to his room. He opened up the room and danced past the various droid parts carelessly thrown everywhere until he reached Anakin’s bed. With careless use of the Force, he threw back Anakin’s other two blankets before setting the boy down. He considered moving Anakin out of the cocoon to spread out the blankets properly but figured it wasn’t worth the effort. He’d just roll himself up in them again. Instead, he grabbed the two remaining blankets and tugged him in, his covers secured so that no air would get in.

“Good night, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said and turned around to leave.

He had not stepped two feet away from the door when he heard a soft, “Obi?”

Anakin had woken up.

“Yes, Anakin?” Obi-Wan looked at his Padawan again who was now staring at him with his bright blue eyes and the kind of look that Obi-Wan knew he wouldn’t be able to deny him anything.

“Can you sleep here tonight?”

“I-“ Obi-Wan hesitated for a split-second. He had his own bed to return to, one that was made for an adult and not a child, with his own blanket and pillows.

“Sure,” Obi-Wan agreed and kicked off his slippers so he could crawl into bed with Anakin. His Padawan made space for him, but the moment Obi-Wan was also under the covers, Anakin pressed himself against him, somehow already having untangled his limbs from his blankets so he could stick his cold feet and hands beneath Obi-Wan’s war robes. Obi-Wan hissed at the cold contact and shot Anakin a look.

“You are a menace,” he told the boy seriously, but Anakin only giggled, seeing through his ruse.

“Nuhu, I’m cold,” he replied and promptly moved his hands just below Obi-Wan’s ribs where Anakin knew he was ticklish.

Obi-Wan jumped up, all signs of exhaustion were forgotten. Oh, it was on.

“You will regret this!” He declared dramatically and began tickling Anakin, who let out high-pitched shrieks in between his joyful laughs.

“Mercy! Obi-Wan I can’t-” Anakin begged as the rest of his sentence was swallowed by his giggles.

Obi-Wan stopped for a moment and thoughtfully crossed his arms, giving Anakin a minute to recuperate. “Oh? On what grounds!”

“Uuh,” Anakin pouted. “It’s late?” He suggested “And we should sleep. And I won’t make you cold again.”

“That’s a lie,” Obi-Wan pointed out, already knowing that Anakin would stick his freezing hands beneath his shirt.

Anakin shrugged easily and grinned at Obi-Wan. “Yeah.”

Well, at least his Padawan was honest enough to admit to it.

“Alright, let’s sleep then,” Obi-Wan said and laid down again next to Anakin. He pulled the many blankets over them both and wiggled underneath them until he was comfortable. The bed really was a little small for them both, but there was no helping it. Perhaps they should just sleep in Obi-Wan’s the next time.

“Night, Obi-Wan,” Anakin muttered and yawned.

“Good night, Anakin.”

He tugged Anakin’s head under his chin and sooner than he could count, they were asleep.

[shivbooks]

The Dilemma of Susan Pevensie

If you're a lover of books or Narnia, you know what happens in the end. Susan Pevensie does not go back to Narnia. Why? Well, that's up for debate...

"My sister Susan," answered Peter shortly and gravely, "is no longer a friend of Narnia."

"Yes," said Eustace, "and whenever you've tried to get her to come and talk about Narnia or do anything about Narnia, she says 'What wonderful memories you have! Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children.'"

"Oh Susan!" said Jill, "she's interested in nothing now-a-days except nylons and lipstick and invitations. She always was a jolly sight too keen on being grown-up."

"Grown-up, indeed," said the Lady Polly.  "I wish she would grow up.  She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she'll waste all the rest of her life trying to stay that age.  Her whole idea is to race on to the silliest time of one's life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can."   - (C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle)

Read Neil Gaiman's The Problem of Susan  here. It's definitely interesting. The Susan problem is one that has been debated about because it's so vague. Why doesn't she return to Narnia when everyone else has? People usually use Jill's argument of why Susan was excluded from Narnia. But the real reason is what Polly said. It's not what J.K. Rowling said about Susan liking makeup and sex that got her excluded.

"There comes a point where Susan, who was the older girl, is lost to  Narnia because she becomes interested in lipstick. She's become  irreligious basically because she found sex. I have a big problem with that." - (J.K. Rowling)

The real issue is that Susan chose to forget Narnia. She purposely ignored it. She thought it was childish and stupid. She became vain, uncaring, and selfish. She forgot her values. She was a child trying to be a "grown-up" and wanting to stay youthful and one age forever. She probably partied so much to escape the painful memory of being told that she couldn't go back to Narnia. Deep down she knows Narnia is real but she is actively trying to forget and repress her memories. She thought Narnia was for children and she didn't want to be a child anymore. To be fair, she was a child, grew up and ruled a country, then was stuffed back into a child's body. After that I wouldn't want to be treated like a kid either. But this isn't about readjusting to being a child or adults not taking her seriously, Susan simply wanted to forget Narnia because she thought it was silly and "for children". Lewis said "When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." This idea that because something is "made for children" or "childish" that it is somehow lesser, is wrong. It is this notion of superiority that goes with being an adult. That being an adult is somehow better than being a child.

Why is being a child bad? Is it the innocence and naivety? If adults are afraid to be like a child, maybe we should look at how we treat children. They are constantly talked down to and nothing is ever explained to a child and they are dismissed without a thought when they suggest something because they don't understand the "real world". Childishness is associated with stupidity, not being able to take responsibility, immaturity, and naivety. When in fact it's the opposite, we all know an adult who acts immature and a child who is very mature. There is no such thing as being childish. If you want to dye your hair and read fairytales and YA when you're 45, go ahead. Lewis is criticizing the idea of being "adult". Why is being an "adult" good and being a "child" bad? What constitutes being an adult? Being dark and cynical and lying? Apparently, Susan knows because that is all she is focused on being. That is the problem. By wanting to be an "adult", Susan is being "childish". She is abandoning her faith and by extension, her family. It wasn't an accident. It was a choice and she has to deal with the consequences. That doesn't mean there can't be redemption.

In his Letters to Children, Lewis said:

"The books don't tell us what happened to Susan. She is left alive in  this world at the end, having by then turned into a rather silly,  conceited young woman. But there's plenty of time for her to mend and  perhaps she will get to Aslan's country in the end... in her own way."

"I could not write that story myself. Not that I have no hope of Susan’s  ever getting to Aslan’s country; but because I have a feeling that the  story of her journey would be longer and more like a grown-up novel than I wanted to write. But I may be mistaken. Why not try it yourself?"  - (1960 letter to Pauline Bannister)

It sounds like he had plans for Susan and never got around to it. He also seems to be encouraging debate or writing your own interpretation of what happens (fan fiction?). Whatever the case, Susan probably has a long and difficult journey but eventually gets back to her family.

You can argue C.S. Lewis was misogynistic, sexist, racist, and yeah it shines through a bit in Narnia where the Calormen people (Indian/Arabesque) are depicted as cruel barbarians. But then there is also Aravis who is a Calormen woman who fights and wields a sword and is the hero (so basically a epic brown princess). For being a misogynist, both Susan (at least in the movies) and Lucy fight in battle alongside their brothers and can hold their own. Lucy, the youngest, a girl, was called the Valiant. It is implied they earned their titles and even if they grew into them, I wonder what exactly you would have to do to be called Valiant. Even the men in Narnia cry and kiss each other's cheeks, which would be considered "gay" or "girly". I would say Lewis is a feminist with chivalric traits. Lewis didn't exclude Susan from the end because she was a woman and interested in having sex and being free, she was excluded because she was afraid of change and didn't trust Aslan anymore. Doubt is one thing. It's okay to doubt but Susan didn't trust and became afraid. As a character, Susan is the "mom" of the group. She is the most practical and sensible and realistic. She sees the world very scientifically and lost her sense of wonder. She fears change and is the least adventurous out of her siblings. She is dismissing anything childish, anything Narnian, as lesser than her. She has become haughty and egotistical which is the problem. Children aren't stupid and "childish" things aren't lesser than "adult" things. Maybe it is a bit harsh to go down to the train tracks and identify your siblings bodies but she didn't want anything to do with them. It sounded as if they had stopped talking. She didn't believe in Narnia anymore because she thought faith and belief was childish. She thought she was better than her siblings. She became vain and self-centered, far from the selfless, gentle woman she really was. As Lewis said, Susan will get back in her own way, once she has learned what she needs.

In a letter, Lewis said: "And why not write stories yourself to fill up the gaps in Narnian  history? I’ve left you plenty of hints–especially where Lucy and the  Unicorn are talking in The Last Battle. I feel I have done all I can!"

Maybe he was encouraging fan fiction? We'll never know, but the end result is the same; it's all up for interpretation.

See more posts at https://www.shivbooks.com/

[thelittleredheadedmusician]

First Lines

So @klaineharmony @wordshakerofgallifrey and @radioactivepigeons ​all tagged me to do this so uh here it is. This is NOT including academic stuff. But it IS including original work. 

Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all!). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favorite opening line. Then tag some lovely people!

Hitch Hiker - my book:

It’s raining, hard enough to hit the windshield in fat drops though he can still clearly see the wet road ahead. Oliver isn’t speeding, in high school he would’ve flown around the curves out of town. But now? Coming home and in bad weather? He manages to stay just below the speed limit. And a good thing too.

I don’t want to linger any longer - DCU, Batman, Green Arrow:

Alfred was leery of the summer camp. Bruce went to public school partially because of Martha's pointed remarks regarding democracy and public education, partly because of her pointed remarks regarding Thomas's own time at boarding schools and prep schools surrounded by equally rich and entitled boys. Alfred never said anything at the time, it wasn't his place, and would never say anything now but, he whole heartedly believed both. Especially after his own childhood in private schools, even if the times and the British and American systems were very different. Regardless, Bruce was remaining in public school with all the trials it entailed. Including the socializing problem.

untitled post final chapter short for Hitch Hiker:

“I’m so glad I get to be here for this,” Eve practically flung herself onto the couch, bouncing slightly before settling. She’d just gotten dropped off after rehearsal and was miraculously still teeming with energy.

Give Me the Stars - an original short story:

Morgan leaned closer to the mirror, shifting her hair so she could examine the new growth near her scalp. It was a dark, almost dull brown and the scalp itself didn’t seem red or irritated. She half combed her fingers through it while she shook her hand loose of the strands. Where the few centimeters of brown ended, a shifting cascade of colors began. A swirl or wave or reflection of green and blue and purple with notes of black and pink and sometimes silver. Like an oil slick made tangible. Except, after two months it’d lost its glimmer, its shine. Which didn’t really matter since Morgan spent about seventy percent of the time tucking it up under one hat or another.

glitter and gold - DCU:

She hadn’t been expecting the second explosion. None of them had been expecting the second explosion. Luckily, they were all clear of the debris but Steph’s ears were ringing. A gut feeling said her comm had been knocked out but it’s not like she’d be able to tell right now anyway. She swayed, unsteady. But Batgirl had to worry about the people around her, not herself. A cursory glance looked as though the block’s residents had gotten back far enough before the blast hit. Leaving them covered in dust but unharmed.

five phones on the table - DCU, Titans:

The long table with its numerous chairs was, by proximity to the kitchen, a dining table but due to the nature of the building it occupied doubled as a meeting and strategy table. The small net, paddles, and light plastic balls stored in an innocuous box in the kitchen meant it tripled as a ping pong table.

Adulting Fail - DCU, Titans, Nightwing:

“RICHARD JOHN GRAYSON,” Donna says and for an instant he wonders how a woman who has never met his mother can sound exactly like her. But then again, Donna has always been and will always be his older sister, never mind the fact neither are sure if it’s by three months or three thousand years.

Seventh Floor Walkup - DCU, Titans, Nightwing:

Dick may slightly regret asking his friends to help him move. See, he didn’t have the funds for real movers but had promised pizza if they helped. Except Roy and Garth could each eat a whole pizza, Donna could eat two, and Wally half a baker’s dozen. Which left Dick carrying eleven boxes of pizza to his seventh-floor walkup.

Et tu Brute - DCU, Flash, Batman:

“What the-?” Barry shifted his momentum with ease, turning from where he’d been running towards the Batcomputer and Bruce waiting there for him to instead run towards the metallic object low to the ground and glowing a dull green he’d spotted out of the corner of his eye.

you were shunned and burned your cradle - Newsies:

Being a changeling in New York City hurts. It makes his skin itch and his lungs burn and his eyes water. From the iron that surrounds him, fills the very air along with the smoke. If he’s not careful when he reaches out or brushes against something his skin comes away with a sharp, searing scar.

The Devil Wears What? - DCU, Hellblazer, Zatanna:

“What is this?” John slurred, arm flopping towards the television screen.

The Hattrick - DCU, Green Arrow, Hellblazer:

There is a strong possibility that Mia is in hell. It’d be vaguely poetic and certainly fitting if her personal hell were an empty warehouse. The fact John Constantine is here definitely sells the idea.

Inhouse House Party - Les Miserables: 

“I thought we agreed that we weren’t doing Halloween this year?” Enjolras half grumbled, half called up the steps. “In light of the fact that there is a global pandemic and we’ve been responsibly quarantining and social distancing this whole time.” Despite his complaints, he still fixed the ridiculous headband he wore as part of his costume. The halved wiffle ball glued onto it made pretty decent looking fly eyes, but the weight was weird and the whole thing kept slipping as a result.

Second Time is Coincidence - DCU, Green Arrow, Hellblazer:

“Oh c’mon,” Mia groaned, slumping against the bonds that currently had her suspended from the warehouse ceiling. “Not you again!”

Three Musketeers - DCU, Batfam:

Bristol was technically in Gotham City limits. Though the gilted mansions and private woods with pastures and stables seemed like a whole other world in comparison. The residents liked to think so too, especially because – despite Gotham’s robust public transportation system – it was almost impossible to reach the rich suburb from the city proper. It was because they lived in this separate world that Bristol’s wealthy residents often fought to receive special treatment or even secede from the city all together.

Deal? Deal. - DCU, Hellblazer, Zatanna:

“No,” John whined, drawing it out into about six syllables. He stretched his arm out, nearly falling off the couch in the process, but Zatanna just pushed the half-empty glass of whiskey further away from the edge of the coffee table and out of his reach.

Pumpkin Guts - Les Miserables:

There had been strange noises coming from the kitchen all afternoon. Combeferre was staunchly ignoring them because he’s trying to finish reading this journal article before anyone else came home. Having Courfeyrac in the vague direction of behind him and doing who knew what all is more than enough of a distraction. Besides, Ferre can fairly well ignore the sounds coupled with Courf’s slightly off-key humming of Nightmare Before Christmas.

Sunrise Shadows - DCU, Batgirl, Starman:

It was late, or early depending on your perspective, and Steph was that bone deep tired that came after a fight to save the fate of the world. Which was fine, they’d won, but she didn’t really know where in the world she was and Steph really just wanted to crawl into bed. Maybe take her suit off first. Possibly slap some Neosporin on her cuts and scrapes. But mostly sleep.

The Good Stuff - Newsies:

Kath pulled her favorite armchair into the doorway of her apartment. The antique wingback her friends had helped her liberate from a thrift store in Queens and then clean and reupholster. It was, undeniably, too heavy to be shoved across the hardwood like that but Kath wanted to be comfy. And there were the little felt things on the legs to protect her floor.

Salt and Iron - DCU, Batgirl: 

Steph pried her bedroom window open before slipping in and closing it firmly behind herself. Then locked it for good measure. Sure, she’d seen some weirdness since first putting on a mask, and just a few months into her time as Batgirl she’d even fought off some Segway riding vampires with Kara. But this was different. For one, they weren’t real vampires but Dracula from an old film brought to life. For another, it looked like literal hell had overtaken Gotham.

Well, I either have really long opening lines or my understanding of what constitutes opening “lines” is skewed. Also my formatting didn’t always past so poo on tumblr for that. Hmm, this is mostly Halloween fics but also fairly indicative of what I write which is nice. I like that I start with dialogue so often, it’s weirdly fitting for me as a person. The cold open musing on Gotham’s social, political, economic structure at Three Musketeers isn’t my favorite but I am obsessed with it. I think Second Time is Coincidence is my favorite because Mia’s response to John is the only response anyone should ever have to John Constantine. 

All of my friends have already been tagged~ 

[rpbetter]

I genuinely don’t think the problem is as deep as people are seeing it as, with that whole resource blog and vent blog drama. I was there when it began, and it started because someone sent a submission that was recognizable enough to trace to that resource blog, who ended up calling themself out, and then a bunch of people dogpiling them, and then it turned into the 2021 edition of good old tumblr wank, mocking sockpuppets included. I essentially watched a bunch of 30 year olds call each other doodooheads like a couple kids on the playground, but at least kids forgive and forget after a day or two.

That’s probably why they’re avoiding this situation like the plague. The first time a submission went through about that resource blog, it made people feud like the Montagues and Capulets. Obviously they don’t wanna risk fueling that type of drama again. If it’s true that they aren’t letting these submissions through and it isn’t tied to reasons like tumblr eating the ask, then it’s probably because they don’t wanna be involved in this drama anymore. And I don’t blame them, because honestly, even as an observer I’m tired of seeing it, I can’t imagine how exhausting it must be for y’all who are actually involved. Geez. Who even has the energy for this much drama anyway? I’m tired just getting outta bed.

Sorry, Anon, I really had to!

Anyway, I'm sorry it took forever to get to your message, not only did I need a break from this, I needed to space out things related to it, it had taken over the blog. I appreciate that, despite how over it all you are, you were polite about how you feel. I know that is not always easy, and I do really appreciate it!

I hope that you don't feel I am being hostile to you about anything I say, it isn't meant that way. Differences of opinion, when not expressed hatefully, are always welcome here. I'm just going to try to express some of this situation from another perspective, and full disclosure, I'm pretty pissed off about it whether or not I actively want to be. This did impact my hobby, it did hurt people I care about, and I cannot believe such an unnecessary act lead to shit that is still going on.

On the first point...most things aren't as deep as we're given to feel they are after we've been made to feel incredibly unsafe, targeted, repeatedly let down and lied to, and experienced an astronomical level of sketchy behavior out of muns in a position that one is supposed to have some minor level of responsibility (as well as decent comportment) within. So, maybe it isn't that deep, but at this point, I very much cannot blame people for their concerns and suspicions.

And it was incredibly sketchy. CoaR, I'm just going to say it, everyone knows of which blog we're speaking at this point, did all of the following, breaking their own rules for moderation repeatedly:

allowed an actual, openly stated, callout blog to interact with their posts

allowed a meme blog to use their posts for the point of off-blog drama mongering, callouts, and outing themselves

would not moderate this situation as stated in their rules, when they've a bit of nasty record in the not too distant past of mass-blocking for far less and far more questionable reasons

did bother to post about how they weren't getting involved, as though this did not break multiple rules and absolutely is one's problem if it is your vent blog someone is using to create and foster bullying - simply giving the bizarre statement that blocking won't help anyone, when that isn't the point at all lol the point is being intolerant of people using your blog, that has to operate on a basis of being as safe a place as possible for venting (which is drama), this is about a stance and blog security, not being anyone's parent

just as weirdly vaguely threatening everyone first with all the mods "watching," because that's not actually implying an Orwellian parental role no one asked for, then with Sky once again misunderstanding the difference between being a " disciplinarian" and an ass

consistent lack of transparency on all counts

and then, yeah, there is the choice of publishing submissions/rebuttals combined with all of this and those submissions/rebuttals being what they are - not all related to "the drama," or in violation of the rules either, but the apparent willingness to publish them from one side of "the drama" there for a bit

I cannot blame people for feeling like all of this combined is a legitimately sketchy situation. One in which they've already, again, been made to feel unsafe within because COAR was used as a list for callouts.

When people see someone like Raven getting wildly different treatment by not being so much as warned, they're going to feel suspicion about the mod(s). It makes it so much worse that they chose to make the statements they did instead of a transparent, reasonable one like, "We apologize that CoaR was used the way it was, we should have blocked the callouts blog right away, but didn't. To reiterate the rules we've had in place for years, this blog is never to be used for callouts or taking bullying off-blog. Due to how widespread the problem has become, we will not be publishing anything related to it any longer. Submissions will be deleted so we can begin putting this behind us."

Acknowledge fault, apologize for it, say what you're doing to mitigate it now. That's it. Don't actively make it worse!

About the submissions...I know I'm alone in having tested that out. It isn't limited to things that either break the rules or are related to the issue. It's very select topics that are a bit uncomfortably aligned with the bias displayed, and from very select blogs. That's a problem. It's not selectively publishing based on drama-avoidance or rules, what CoaR has always done and no one here is taking an issue with.

I have 0 interest in things like trackers, they're far too easy/tempting to use maliciously for most people, and at the very best, they foster an environment of paranoia. What I know about them comes from really minimal personal experience (I wanted to see what posts people were most interested in on another blog, but it felt creepy with the amount of information I had, so I dropped that very fast) and what mutuals who use them have told me/questions they've answered.

So, is it possible the mod(s) is selectively deleting submissions from blogs they feel are a problem? Yes, it is totally possible. Do I know that for a fact? No, I totally do not. My point is that this is exactly the sort of paranoia that takes off when too many suspicious things happen back to back. You begin seeking the answers you are not getting, and you're seeking them because every day for a month or two, your experience logging in has been one of what the fresh hell. It's a need to insulate yourself from further exposure to harassment.

It's a very simple formula: act sketchy, people look at you like you're sketchy.

And I'm not going to condemn anyone for that.

I will also say that, unless several people deleted their comments or have me blocked in multiple places they somehow know of and take issue with, I did not see what you are describing when I read over the total explosion that happened...what, like a month, two months ago at this point? It was very fresh at the time.

What I saw was someone having submitted about a meme blog screenshotting their mutual's rules. Raven going off about it in a reblog. Two commentators trying to discuss the issue and finally, just saying they weren't surprised what meme blog it was once Raven outted themselves like a fully hinged individual interested in following CoaR's rules.

One of those s commentators is a friend, the mun whose rules were in the posts is a friend. I've never been anything but transparent about that. I'm also familiar with some of the other parties who ended up going on hiatus, but only from discussions on the vent blog over the years. So, yes, I do have personal investment here, and I do not feel like any of those people telling Raven and the callout blog they were at least involved with that their behavior was bullshit can be equated to immature shit slinging. There were even two muns who repeatedly tried to have a civil conversation with Raven, specifically, and for their efforts, got some of the most wildly juvenile treatment.

The worst things I saw came from hate anons and the callout blog.

The people receiving that treatment were largely driven off tumblr. For a time, forever, it differs with all of them. So, I feel like saying that about the thirty-year-olds thing is a little off. I'm not trying to be shitty, Anon, but the muns who tried to address Raven's bullshit were all of that age range. They're definitely continuing the drama, they're not here. They can't feel comfortable enough to be on their own blogs still.

I also am required ethically to say that we all really need to stop with throwing around ages like this. Again, I'm not trying to be hostile to you, Anon. I've been trying to show other people's perspective in this (it doesn't matter if you agree or not, I just think it's important to understanding, stopping, and prevent problems to have a fuller perspective that we often lack because we are incredibly tired of whatever is going on, and you're right, we are all really damn tired and also Tired), and as it is an advice blog, I try to address problems here. The pervasive ageism in the tumblr RPC is a problem.

It's a problem that gets discussed when it involves adults not wanting to interact with minors and, as I've seen it put several times, "treating them like the plague." There are a billion "conversations" and complaints about that, but there aren't many at all when it comes to the RPC's bizarre ideas about what age constitutes an adult (you're an actual child until around 23, you're ancient and need to die already, you pedo, at 26) and what being an adult actually is.

You do not turn thirty and lose your hobbies. You also do not turn thirty and become an ultra-mature adult, no leveling up into arcane Adult Knowledge and Behavior unlocks when you wake up on your thirtieth birthday. Between the ages of 17 and 27, you go through so many rapid changes in your cognition, but it levels off considerably after that. You're largely the same person at 32 as you were at 27, and you cannot say that about being...17 and 20, 22 and 25. It begins to take longer to see changes in who you are, those changes are less extreme - your personality, preferences, and viewpoints remain largely the same, they just refine a little here and there.

There is no line at which people "should" stop engaging in any hobby, and it's incredibly gross that the RPC seems to think anyone out of college-age should have no interests, let alone passionate ones, outside of going to work, having a family, and paying bills. That's a bit horrifyingly 1950's isn't it? It's also really misogynistic, considering that the primary base of the RPC is female or afab. When you deal in this, you're literally telling thirty-year-old people with uteruses that they should have no interests outside of birthing children and caring for them.

This isn't what you were doing, Anon, but it's part of the tumorous growth of this ideology that we casually throw around things like "a bunch of 30-year-olds" to make a point. We've seriously got to stop doing that, it isn't a message that most of us would agree with. There are other ways of saying "I think these people should behave more maturely since they're adults."

If I said something like, "well, they were just in their mid-twenties lol what do you expect?" I'd get hate anons, pants would be shat in, and more importantly, it would be wrong. That needs to work both ways, this isn't a separate issue.

An issue that repeatedly comes down to the absurdity of finding differences and drawing lines into cages around people in an environment in which we have the freedom to be more equal than in offline reality. We're all just people here, all just writing and interacting and loving characters. That's all we need to be, and all we need to be judged on is our behavior.

I'm sorry that anyone behaved in a grossly inappropriate manner during any and all of this. It was a heated thing that came to involve too many people and too much harassment, and those are factors that will always see people behaving in ways they would not normally engage in.

And like I said, you don't become some wise master of maturity at thirty! There is a problem mun I'm currently dealing with on another blog that is my age who is one of the most immature people I have ever run into. I have mutuals and friends in the early to mid-twenties who I'm confident weren't as childish as this mun when they were literal children. So, do people thirty and over behave in a seriously unbecoming, childish as hell manner? Yes, they so do! Whether it should be this way or not, you can't expect everyone to be at the same maturity level psychologically at any given age. To me, that just says that I shouldn't age-type people negatively. It isn't relevant where their behavior is.

Otherwise, I'm holding people at some nebulous age over thirty to higher expectations than other equally adult-range people. It isn't acceptable for anyone to behave in the ways I witnessed and was subjected to. It's not even acceptable in teenagers, it's just more understandable (not excusable) because they're working with many things they quite literally cannot control at all times. To act this way is telling everyone below thirty that they're just immature, irresponsible, dicks. It's insulting to them to be labeled in this way, too, even if too many of them see it as a free pass and are, thus, okay with it right now. They won't be, eventually.

Anyway, again, I'm not trying to be shitty to you! I don't think you meant anything in your message in a nasty way, and I cannot say how much I appreciate that after the bullshit brought to this blog and that I've been dealing with privately to help some of those affected feel like the RPC is a place they're safe and welcome in again.

I am definitely tired! Everyone else involved is as well. At least, on what I have to term as "this side" of the equation. I cannot speak to the other side, obviously, but I think they got tired enough of it not being tolerated to be quiet at least. When you make it unfun for people like that, that's usually what happens, after all.

So, I don't think it's them trying to continue the drama. Most of the people I know have remained in their corners happily or been obliged to leave for a while. As for the other people with suspicions...like I said, there are a lot more factors going on here than wanting to perpetuate drama. Sometimes, when we try to make ourselves feel safe, vindicated/vindicate a friend, there isn't any other option but to have the topic come up or breed into suspicions, correct or incorrect ones.

It's a situation that CoaR had a great deal of culpability in, and as such, had a lot of power to mitigate this well before it got to suspicions of who was modding the blog. That wasn't done, and won't be. Like Raven's antics, I have to feel like they've brought some of this on themselves. I do not and will not condone any hate messages sent their way, but again, right or wrong, people do have a right to feel the way they are.

If I were you, I'd stay as far away from it as possible. I don't go on CoaR unless I have to in order to answer something. I had a single blog blocked over here until this all went down (hilariously, it happened to be one that was involved, too, sometimes the red flags are legit, folks), now I have a sadly large number of them. It's now added to liberally, and I hate to do that, I like this blog to be open even to people who disagree with me. I can't deal with the constant drama, though, and I'm not going to be in a new callout every month until I die. Outside of being true to my word about accepting any and all vent messages, I don't want to see it, I don't want to be involved with it. I tag the posts so that followers can filter it, but I'm not going to function as a semi-callout blog by telling people who they should avoid. Just that they should avoid anyone who is making them feel this tired and done. Myself included.

I hope things have settled down in your corner of the RPC since you sent this! They have over here, thankfully. I think most people are staying away from the vent blog and hoping a new and better one comes along. It's back to the usual drama of "stop calling muns pedos for aging up characters."

[bruadarxch]

Wonderstruck (1/4)

Delphine Lacroix raves about Miss Shirley and her crazy lessons. Her uncle Gilbert thinks his niece surely has an overactive imagination, but one day he has to pick her up from school and a certain redhead covered in paint from head to toe crashes into him.

OR: Gilbert Blythe puts his foot in it when he meets Anne in every universe. Luckily for him, she didn't have any heavy objects around in this one. (AO3 link)

***

“Blythe.”

A voice makes Gilbert stir in his sleep. He lets out a whimper and rolls over, refusing to wake up.

“Blythe. Gilbert,” the voice insists, and he feels a hand shaking his arm.

Bash?

“Wake up you moke!”

Yup. Definitely Bash.

Gilbert finally manages to slightly open his eyes and the afternoon light blinds him. Bash is standing over him, looking slightly exasperated.

“What?” Gilbert asks, voice muffled with sleep. “What time is it?”

“It’s almost one in the afternoon,” Bash replies. “I know you had a long shift at the hospital last night but this is an emergency.”

At this Gilbert bolts up in his bed, his doctor brain taking over any trace of sleepiness. “What happened? Are you okay? Is Delly okay?”

“Everyone’s fine!” Bash quickly says, wincing. “Sorry, not that kind of emergency.”

“Bash!”

“I’m sorry! But it is an emergency,” Bash insists. “I wouldn’t wake you up if it wasn’t.”

“Okay, okay,” Gilbert says, rubbing his eyes. “What is it?”

“You need to pick up Delphine from school.”

“That’s it? Don’t you usually call a babysitter for that?” he asks, slightly confused.

“Yes, Blythe, but Mr Barry just called about a last minute situation with the exports team and Mrs Lynde couldn’t come on such short notice,” Bash explains, visibly frustrated with his adoptive brother’s refusal to just get up already. “So can you please do your uncle duty and go pick Delly up?”

“When does she get out?”

“In half an hour, ” Bash says pointedly.

“Oh shit!” Gilbert finally gets out of bed and hastily starts getting dressed. “Okay, I’m coming.”

“Thank you!” Bash calls out, already rushing out the front door. “I’ll text you the address. Don’t be late!”

*

Gilbert is late.

It’s not completely his fault, traffic in the afternoon is always a nightmare even in their relatively small city. That, and he had never been to little Delphine’s school so he accidentally gets lost. He’s not extremely late though, so he’s sure he’ll be able to persuade his 7-year-old niece into forgiving him with a quick trip to her favorite ice cream shop. He just hopes Bash thought ahead and called the school so her teacher doesn’t think he’s trying to kidnap Delly or something.

He vaguely recalls Delly talking about her teacher during dinner. Gilbert never took his niece’s stories about Miss Shirley too seriously, knowing how wild Delly’s imagination is. It’s just impossible that a teacher would do things like take her students on a field trip to the middle of the forest so they could “whisper secrets to the trees, the best listeners nature had to offer”. It simply sounded ridiculous, but Delly did complete a very nice project on the different varieties of trees in Prince Edward Island.

When Gilbert finally arrives to the school building—and only about ten minutes late, to his infinite relief—he feels uneasy. Like there’s something momentous about to happen to him but he doesn’t know exactly what. Weird. He’s walking up the steps to the front door when someone pulls it open from the inside and a red-headed figure barrels into him.

“Whoa!” he exclaims taking the young woman by the arms before they both fall down the stairs. “Are you okay?”

Then she looks at him with big blue eyes and his heart picks up speed. His mind goes blank as they both take each other in. She’s short, barely coming up to his shoulders. Her long red hair is cascading down her back and she’s looking at him with parted lips and a faint blush on her freckle-covered cheeks. Cute, his unhelpful mind supplies. He swears the world slows down around them, and he almost forgets where he is. Then it’s like the woman in front of him suddenly shakes herself off the weird spell between them.

“Sorry,” she sputters. “Oh god! I’m so sorry!”

“It’s okay, no worries,” he smiles at her.

“This is mortifying,” she continues, avoiding his gaze. “Utterly mortifying! I wish this was the first time my overactive brain makes me lose sight of my surroundings but I can promise it’s not, probably not the last either...”

“It’s fine, really!”

“...which is why the principal will have a field day with this,” the redhead rattles on, “she was just reminding me about the perils of being distracted in the school environment and not even an hour later here I am. Harming people!”

“You just bumped into me,” Gilbert quips, amused.

“Oh but only because you’re an adult, and my tiny constitution couldn’t possibly make a big impact, but imagine the catastrophic consequences of such an accident if I were to crash into one of our tiny students!”

“Well, I won’t tell if you don’t,” he gives her a teasing grin. “This... accident can stay between us.”

The woman rolls her eyes but seems grateful. He takes a proper look at her this time and that’s when he notices that she’s covered in paint of different colors from head to toe. There’s a big splotch of green on her right cheek and multicolored droplets all over the tips of her red hair. She’s wearing an apron that maybe someday was white, but now is anything but. She looks like she’s just come back from a paintball battle instead of a classroom. She notices him staring and crosses her arms in front of her, self consciously.

“Can I help you with anything?”

“Uh...” Shit. Gilbert had almost forgotten why he was in the school in the first place. Luckily for him, this is the moment his niece finds him.

“Uncle Gilby!” Delphine squeals, throwing herself at his legs. He smiles and picks her up, almost forgetting the weird encounter with the woman still in front of him.

“Hello Princess Delphine,” he says warmly. “Daddy couldn’t come pick you up, wanna have a date with your favorite uncle?”

“You’re late!” she chastises him, crossing her little arms.

“I know,” he says, apologetically. “Will you forgive me if I buy you ice cream?”

“Three whole balls?” she asks excitedly. Gilbert laughs.

“Okay, but don’t tell your dad,” he whispers conspiratorially. Delly giggles and he puts her down, taking her little hand in his. Then he turns to the woman still standing in front of them. “Sorry, I forgot to introduce myself. I’m Gilbert Blythe, Delphine’s uncle. Her father couldn’t pick her up today, he had a last minute situation at work.”

The redhead begins to introduce herself but the little girl in Gilbert’s arms interrupts her.

“Uncle Gil this is Miss Shirley! She’s super smart like you,” Delly says excitedly. “Isn’t she the prettiest girl in the whole world?”

At this both adults blush a deep red. They both avoid the other’s eyes and Gilbert clears his throat wishing his niece hadn’t inherited Bash’s gift for embarrassing him in public.

“That’s impossible, Princess Delphine,” he answers, very pointedly not looking at the indeed very pretty woman in front of him. “You are the prettiest girl in the world. Now go pick up your stuff, we should get going.”

Delly giggles in delight and runs back into the school building, leaving the two adults alone in an awkward silence. Gilbert looks back at the teacher and tries to clear the tension.

“So you’re the famous Miss Shirley?” he asks, flashing her a smile.

“I guess I am. Most adults just call me Anne, though,” she replies, offering her hand. He shakes it and he does an okay job of ignoring the strange tingling sensation the handshake gives him. Anne clears her throat this time—looking similarly affected, might he add—and tries to stir the conversation into a safe topic. “Delphine is a very bright girl, you must be proud.”

“Oh yeah, I am,” he smiles warmly. He never thought he’d be the type of person to get sappy about kids, but watching Delly grow up has been one of the greatest joys of his life. She’s brought so much joy to their home, and she continues to amaze him every day with the things she learns and the adventures she get herself into at just seven years old. He can’t quite contain the expression of pure love that takes over his face, and Anne must pick up on it because she smiles back at him. He looks back at her... colorful current state of being and chuckles. “I’ve heard a lot about you, actually. I thought Delly was making your crazy lessons up, but I guess I was wrong.”

He didn’t mean it as a bad thing, but the icy glare she gives him tells him his choice of words was definitely a mistake.

“Excuse me?!” she whispers, anger clear in her voice. Gilbert gulps.

“Oh I didn’t mean...!”

“I’ll have you know that my methods are calculated and highly efficient,” she hisses. “It’s enough that the old fashioned people at this school question me even though I’ve proven myself time and time again. I won’t tolerate it from someone who’s only known me for fifteen minutes and hasn’t even set foot in this school once!”

Gilbert is at a loss of words. He obviously didn’t mean to offend Anne, but the fire in her eyes suggests she is very much offended—even tempted to hit him with something given the opportunity. He hates himself for it, but underneath all the embarrassment he thinks Anne Shirley is a passionate individual alright. He can’t lie to himself and say she doesn’t look beautiful all riled up, because she does—hands resting on her hips, eyes bright, flushed cheeks, looking ready to take on the world.

Before he can say something even more idiotic and give her an opportunity to actually slap him, his very opportune niece bursts through the door again demanding the ice cream he promised.

He lets sweet, unaware Delly drag him away as he casts an apologetic look at the still furious teacher. She merely crosses her arms in front of her.

“Good afternoon, Mr Blythe,” Anne says coldly. With that she turns and disappears inside the building.

Gilbert is left with the strongest shame clouding his thoughts and a heart doing somersaults inside his chest. Fuck.

[leatherbookmarking]

i. know i had that post abt qin su and jiggy finding out, being appropriately terrified and orchestrating jgs’ murder with an army of his bastards, but since i had a thought about jin rusong the alive child...

consider: the above, except qin su is already in love with the child that’s growing inside her. he was, as opposed to some, conceived out of love; there’s no reason to punish him for crimes he didn’t commit. jiggy, of course, has a different opinion, and they argue in whisper-shouting (which is, to be honest, quite counter-productive, so they quickly stop and/or move behind the mirror). they reach an understanding,

and eventually jin guangyao and young madam jin are known as the most unbearably paranoid future parents to ever exist.

healers hate them. no, young madam jin, mild pollen allergy usually doesn’t kill-- i’m sorry, it simply does not kill. it is not possible. what about colds? a-yao said he would catch a cold often as a child, what if it’s-- the chief healer of the jin sect takes a calming breath. everyone gets sick sometimes. but jinlintai is properly isolated, so unless you’re dangling the baby out in the cold on purpose (i am only assuming you would not do that), with the proper care it will DEFINITELY receive, NOTHING WRONG SHOULD HAPPEN.

young madam jin is silent for a while. chief healer is about to sigh with relief.

and then the horrible woman opens her mouth again.

the healers should just give her the baby to deal with, says one cousin to another over tea. if she has to feed, entertain and clean after the baby, she surely won’t have time to complain and bother everyone with her never-ending questions! i understand being scared, i had my doubts as a young mother, but...

oh, but you know, the father is jin guangyao, the other cousin says. this man would rather eat his own hat than have something not under control. imagine the life of this kid!

exasperated nods.

by the end of qin su’s pregnancy, the entirety of jinlintai would, without batting an eye, heartily assure her everything is on order, in fact, that’s how it should be! perfect! even if her child had six fingers in both hands and a tail growing out of its forehead.

(they, however, hope nothing of this sort happens.)

(it, coincidentally, is exactly what the horrible future parents have wanted)

a-yao, says lan xichen very gently, i really think you shouldn’t worry so much. your child is lucky to be born to such wonderful parents, and--

jin guangyao’s eyes widen in panic. er-ge, he whispers. er-ge, i don’t know how to be a father. how am i going to--? what if i do something wrong--? what if---?!

lan xichen gazes gently into the camera.

young master jin, future jin rusong, is born; the birth itself is quick and uneventful, save for, well, the baby being born. he is healthy, not too small, not too big, with healthy lungs. young madam jin wasn’t even in that much pain. gods themselves have smiled upon young master jin, people say! no, the people in jinlintai think. WE have FROWNED at young madam jin’s belly (carefully, behind her back), diplomatically suggesting for the baby to be in perfect health, OR ELSE.

oh, do they eat their words. oh, do they wish the boy was of fragile constitution, staying in bed or safe in his warm room. because future jin rusong is demon incarnate. he is also, coincidentally, the most beautiful child anyone has ever laid their eyes upon, having his mother’s dark, innocent eyes and his father’s charming dimples, but this is where his good traits end.

he is a MENACE.

presented with OBJECTS, he grabbed the brush and immediately shoved it into his mouth, almost making his poor mother drop him; and that gesture will stay with him for the rest of his life. he tries to eat his mother’s fingers, his father’s fingers. robes? do you mean a snack? actual food is of no concern to him if he can CONSUME literally everything around him. jin guangyao turns away for one!!! (1) second, yet when he turns back, he finds his son has, in the meantime:

nibbled on the inkstone

tried the ink as well

and got it on his little stupid hands and his little stupid offwhite robe

tried the brush, guess which tip

started on the letter his poor sod of a father was writing.

is this normal, whispers young madam jin weakly.

yes, says the head healer automatically.

qin su and jiggy stop worrying as an act and start worrying for real.

by the time he’s six, jin rusong has tasted most of what there is, and isn’t, to taste in jinlintai, including but not limited to curtains, floors, his mother’s jewellery, suibian (to put it gently, it was a memorable day), baxia’s hilt (nie mingjue snorted), the ends of lan xichen’s head ribbon, alcohol, the cup that used to have alcohol in it, by which i mean that jin rusong dumped it on his face, licked his lips and then the cup clean, fairy’s ears, fairy’s paws, nie huaisang’s fan, the robes of perhaps every resident, a bell, a hand and hair of his cousin, jin rulan.

he’s a horrible thief and doesn’t even notice it. he just starts idly playing with an object, like his aunt’s bracelet, after a while says goodbye like a well-behaved boy and leaves, and then several hours later comes back, terrified out of his mind, apologizing, in tears. and oh, does his crying face make everyone’s hearts melt.

he’s sneaky and his steps are virtually inaudible, and upon finding out about this fact, several people in jinlintai suddenly flash back to their affairs and feel cold sweat on their back. some suspect he has developed the ability to turn invisible. his parents and teachers are out of ideas on how to keep him in his room, aside from “iron handcuffs and an iron pole with a stabilizing talisman on it” which seem a little bit too much. who teaches him all that? unclear.

he was supposed to copy a text and think about it; he is found three hours later, soaking wet and with a new friend (frog). he’s been hiding in the lotus pond, ducking underwater when there was someone passing by. he was supposed to practice sword forms with jin rulan and an older disciple; they are found gorging on steamed buns in the nearby market. jin rulan doesn’t know how it happened, and it infuriates him. the disciple knows, and the answer is “those damn dimples and sparkling eyes” but no one’s asking him, so.

by the time he’s nine, he limits the CONSUMPTION to the bare necessary minimum (food, his own fingernails, and the correct tip of the brush) but follows jin rulan like an enamoured puppy, thinking he is Literally The Coolest. jin rulan appreciates that very much, but sometimes... when he’s trying to be cool, you know? an annoying little cousin shouting at him to COME SEE I FOUND A REALLY COOL BUG? is kind of, ruining his vibe, okay.

you know what, actually i planned to end this post like 200 words earlier, with a vaguely ominous passage about how “sect leader jin and his wife are a perfect couple! usually there are rumors, even minor, about all sect marriages, but none about them! truly an example to be followed!” (meaning: they were MURDERED). 

then i was like oh! what if rusong was a mess, and there was no assassination attempt, or rather: there were, but through food, and rusong’s parents caught on quickly and started to train their child, who likes to CONSUME, to automatically neutralize various types of poisons with his core (once he ate something that would have killed a non-cultivating adult man and only mentioned it was ‘making his tongue all tingly’. that’s very funny, a-song, jin guangyao said, and then went to have a fucking drink)

but... then... i got distracted by Chaos Child Jin Rusong... and i don’t know what happened? please imagine jin rusong, 13, seeing “”””mo xuanyu”””” and being like oh! oh! xiaoshu! XIAOSHU YOU’RE BACK LOOK I HAVE A SWORD WOW YOU’RE SO TALL

““““mo xuanyu”““““: ????? whomst the Fuck

what else happens in this au? does nie mingjue not get murdered, due to ‘being the cool uncle with a big saber’? does that mean wwx does not get resurrected? does jiggy kill mingjue anyway, and everything is as it was originally, along with the guanyin temple and there is ONE MORE traumatized person? does it go completely differently? i don’t know!!! i don’t know!!! i really don’t know!!!

[zmwrites]

Novel Prep Tag Game: Just Jane

Hello everyone! I was tagged in this game by the always delightful @nistrada! Thank you, friend!! (I’m sorry, I know you tagged me two months ago.)

I’ve been putting it off as I haven’t had a new WIP that’s made it past the basic idea stage. But now that I’m working on Just Jane more, I figure it’s a good time to fill this out finally!

First Look

1.) Describe your novel in 1-2 sentences:

Jane, a scrawny street rat who’s made it to adulthood by the skin of her teeth, is taken in by Percival Greystone, a freshly returned war hero, after she’s caught trying to rob his house. They soon find themselves wrapped up in complex political machinations, as Percy is called upon to advise their young ruler, Duchess Anwen, who is being threatened with war by a former ally, and Jane is enlisted for help by the eccentric wizard trying to track down ancient artifacts said to be imbued with magic to protect the Duchy’s sovereignty. 

2.) How long do you plan for the novel to be?

I’m aiming for somewhere between 80k-100k? It might go over that if I go hard on the world building. It’s definitely an adult novel so I’m okay with it being a bit over the 100k marker.

3.) What’s your novel’s aesthetic?

Glowing runes, stone grinding against stone, massive gears opening doors that make the ground rumble, thorns, a river of golden blood, cryptic riddles, impossible trees, swords and shields and suits of armour, pale blue dresses, letters sealed with wax, faces hidden behind fans, regret that clings like burrs.

4.) What other stories have inspired your novel?

Definitely taking from Robin LaFevers’ His Fair Assassins series again, as well as the video game Skyrim and every book where the orphaned nobody turns out to be the chosen one.

5.) 3 images that get the feel of my novel:

Have this Pinterest board I’m still working on. I’m not happy with it, but it should give a general idea.

Main Characters

6.) Who is your protagonist?

Jane, 23. A street rat who steals to survive. She can pick pockets and locks with ease, can find a safe spot to sleep in any district, knows which merchants pay if she makes their deliveries, and knows which taverns are likely to take pity on her and give her a free meal. She’s also adept at climbing just about anything. She’s blunt and often says whatever comes to her mind, a fact that doesn’t earn her many friends once she enters the world of politics and fashionable society.

7.) Who is their closest ally?

At the beginning of the story, either Isaac or Wilamin. Isaac is a fellow thief who brings her jobs and has taught her a thing or two over the years, and is also the only person Jane is willing to try flirting with as she knows he doesn’t see her like that. Wilamin is a childhood friend who is now the top courtesan at the Temple of Saint Syra, the patron saint of pleasure, and allows Jane to sleep in her bed when she’s working in the Temple.

8.) Who is their enemy?

At the start, her only real enemies are hunger and the cold. As she moves into Percy’s world, she quickly makes new and varied enemies with her blunt nature and lack of manners.

9.) What do they want more than anything?

Security and somewhere to call home.

10.) Why can’t they have it?

She’s been on her own for as long as she can remember. She has friends, but when things are tough it’s every person for themselves. As much as she craves a home and security, she also rejects anyone who tries to get close to her who might be able to give her these things. She doesn’t trust that anyone (other than Wilamin) can see her as anything other than what she can do for them. This continuously keeps both things she so desperately wants out of her grasp.

11.) What do they wrongly believe about themselves?

There are a few things! That she’ll never amount to anything more than a scrawny street rat, that she’s not worth noticing, that most people only like her for what she can do for them... the list goes on. She hits a lot of the beliefs one would expect to be held by a young woman who’s had to fight for every scrap she’s ever gotten.

12.) Draw your protagonist!

As anyone who follows me probably knows, I have zero drawing skills. Instead, I offer you this creation from the well-known but now-defunct picrew:

Plot Points

13.) What is the worst thing that could happen to your protag?

To be stripped of her independence.

14.) What secret will be revealed that changes the course of the story?

It has something to do with Isaac that will make Jane have to choose where her loyalties truly lie.

15.) Do you know how it ends?

Nope! I have some vague ideas, but that’s all. I’m on the first chapter and making most of it up as I go along.

16.) What is the theme?

Friendship, family, and what constitutes a home. Because I’m so early in the drafting process, I’m still figuring it out!

17.) What is a recurring symbol?

Again, I’m still figuring a lot of it out. I definitely want some symbols and imagery around locks and keys, but I don’t know the specifics yet.

18.) Where is the story set?

In the Duchy of Chalan. It was founded by Galverel Valynore but is currently ruled by the Keriell family, though they still carry the Valynore blood. The current capital city is called Summerlight, where the Dukes and Duchesses live in Bellsover Citadel. It has a moderate climate, with only a few weeks of extreme temperatures each year. The current Duchess is twenty-four year old Anwen.

19.) Do you have images and scenes in mind already?

A few! Most of my ideas are fairly abstract still bc I’m working with only a very vague outline, but there are a few visuals I’m really excited for along the “quest” plot line.

20.) What excited you about this story?

I’ve wanted to write a story centred around a thief for a while now, so that was the main reason I wanted to write this now. I’ve also been very into subverting tropes and the idea of people stepping up to save the world bc it’s the right thing to do. The opportunity to play with a character who might not always have the best morals (see: thief) but who gets dragged into this conflict where she’s gotta do something or let her country crumble was too good to pass up.

21.) What is your usual writing method?

I’ve discovered I work best when I do a “zero draft” or a “discovery draft” to start off with, then make an outline based on that, then write the story as I’d want to read it. It lets me explore the world and characters before settling on a final plot.

Oh boy, I forgot how dang long these things are!! But it’s done, and if you’ve read all of this, I applaud you.

I’m going to tag @leah-yasmin-writes​, @theouterdark​, @letswritestories101​, @the-orangeauthor​, and @solarflare-ink​! As always, no pressure. :)

[kariachi]

@kuphulwho A long bit of fic (like, nearly 2000 words) that isn’t quite for that au we were talking about earlier. More like, vaguely adjacent to it.

Kevin has a suitor. Looma sets Tasks. It’s a whole thing.

~~

Coming to the palace at all should’ve been considered an act of courage. Or foolishness, as his friends swore up and down. Kreth was an adequate enough fighter, but the prince- The prince, who came into his shop three times a week to buy parts, could more than easily beat him. May the Goddess help him, he was a more powerful fighter than his sister, who’d proven herself unweddable already. There was no way he could win an engagement challenge, but he had to try. He couldn’t imagine another way to get a prince- adopted yes, off-worlder yes, but still a prince- to notice him.

Maybe he’d get lucky and be challenged in turn to better results.

So of course, when he’d declared his intent to the royal family, it had been the princess to step forward. Immediately Kreth began fighting off panic. This was off script, it should’ve been Overlord Zaell stepping forward to accept his challenge in her son’s stead. Maybe this was part of preparing for her eventual takeover? She’d looked back at her mother, then turned to him with a grin.

“My brother’s aren’t Khoron,” she started, and Kreth could’ve died right out of pure nerves (this is why he’d never become a warrior, he didn’t have the constitution for doing more than defending his store), “and I’ve questioned whether it’s appropriate to marry them off the Khoron way.” Somehow her grin got wider and more frightening. “Especially since they’ll most likely be supplying my heirs, surely the challenge would have to make up for both of us.”

He was going to die, a sentiment only heightened when he glanced towards the princes and saw ‘his’ with his face in his hand. The elder of them looked horribly amused.

“We’ve spoken before about the differences in these things between our cultures,” she continued, “and from Earth there’s a challenge I think is very appropriate for the situation.” She managed to stand straighter and taller and Kresh tried to do the same. He was well taller than her, but she still seemed to loom over him. Named appropriately, apparently.

“If you want to marry my brother, Prince Kevin of the Red Wind Kingdom, you will bring me three things- the sweetest sound, a star from the sky, and the fresh head of a forgehunter.”

Yep, definitely going to die. How? He ran a shop too small to have employees, how was he supposed to get a fucking star? And a forgehunter head?!

And then there was Kevin, out the corner of his eyes. A smile, small and apologetic and sending his heart straight into his throat like it always did…

“As you ask, Your Highness.”

~~~

Of course saying it was easier than doing it, and three days later found the door to his shop closed and Kresh sprawled behind the counter, staring at the ceiling. He didn’t know where to start.

“Are you alive in here?”

“Well since none of you will let me die in peace I suppose so.” The door to the backroom slammed loudly shut and his sister Prehra knelt by his side. She too looked horribly amused.

“Still trying to figure out how you’re going to win your little prince?” He didn’t even turn his head.

“I’m a failure. I can’t do this.” Tutting, she shook her head and stood up. The till chimed, but Kresh ignored it. He owed her money anyway.

“You know how his brother sometimes shops at Luxxi’s?” Her sister-in-law’s shop, little everyday things- hairclips, pens, that sort. The elder prince was an uncommon customer, but Kevin’d once said he enjoyed the quality of buttons they sold there.

“Yes?”

“Well, according to her, Zin asked him to confirm the gossip about this whole weird situation and he said that the key to the whole thing was to the smart about it.” The entire royal family hated him, he was sure of it.

“Because that answers any question ever asked.”

“I think,” she said as she knelt by his head, counting out money, “it means your expected to be creative with it.”

“There’s only so many ways to get creative with bringing in a fresh forgehunter head.” Prehra tutted again.

“You’re a smart man, I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”

~~~

‘The sweetest sound’ was the least straightforward of the ‘items’ required of him, so Kresh decided to start there. It was practically a riddle. What was the sweetest sound? It had to be subjective, right? So was he looking for what she considered the sweetest sound? What Kevin did? That of the greatest segment of the population? (If the right answer turned out to be the sound of sugar boiling or something, he was going to throw something and someone, possibly Princess Looma herself.) In the end, he decided to hedge his bets on his own preference and gossip that the princess was just as bad as he was.

The next time Kevin walked into his shop, flashing him one of those heartsnatching smiles, he started recording.

~~~

‘A star from the sky’ was somehow easier and harder at the same time. At least there was a riddle and hope involved in this one, it was a straightforward request, but oh was it a request. There were plenty of creative ways to interpret it, and things he could do for it, but he didn’t want to risk not meeting standards…

He wasn’t a wealthy man, but he also wasn’t new to risky investments. There’d been no time limit, so he took a few months to track down and purchase a boxful of iron meteorites that he immediately upon delivery took to one of the smaller local forges to be worked. On his way back, he’d stopped into another local store to commission a simple box in the dimensions he needed.

A week later he had had a star-shaped box in his livingroom, along with a cut sheet of meteorite iron to match and the equipment to attach it to the lid.

He was careful to fill the box with the sort’ve parts Kevin was always looking for.

~~~

The forgehunter head that really had him worried. He wasn’t a warrior, not anywhere close, and it often took several of them at once to kill one of the great, spider-like beasts. It was a certainty that bringing back the head of a baby one wouldn’t be near enough, not for a prince, not for Kevin, not when he was already being smart enough with the other items that he kept thinking this must be some sort’ve trap. No, he couldn’t go easy, he couldn’t go smart, he was going to have to get an actual head, actually fresh, from an actual adult forgehunter.

As soon as he figured out how to do it without dying.

He’d been in the process of fretting over this, compulsively cleaning the shop into the night as he considered if he could maybe scrape together the money to get somebody to kill one for him when a loud thud had sounded in the backroom. Rarely a good thing, especially since he knew none of his kin would be visiting. It was a tense Kresh we made his way to the door, grabbing his battle axe along the way and slowly, cautiously, opening it to find a forgehunter head.

A forgehunter head, as fresh as could be expected, its wounds cauterized to prevent mess, and a stripped tail passing out of sight outside, familiar to anyone in the capital by now.

Kresh’s heart lodged in his throat.

The next morning, as the papers talked about the fresh meat gifted in the night to the orphanages, schools, and hospital, he packed up the head and his other gifts and made his way back to the palace.

~~~

His gifts- a star box with a meteor lid, a forgehunter head, and a recording of his prince’s laughter gathered over several visits that was playing on repeat- sat on display in front of him as Princess Looma and Prince Argit looked them over with critical eyes and Kresh tried not to fidget.

It was very difficult.

They kept muttering between themselves as their family watched on, in tones too low to be understood even if Kresh had known the languages they were speaking. There was gesturing, eye rolling, snapping of teeth, checking inside the box and then more muttering over the contents.

“So,” Overlord Zaell asked when, he assumed, she got bored of the show, “has he met our exacting standards?”

“Well,” the prince said, still eyeing the items, “the head’s pretty small.” Kresh glanced up to see Kevin, stood at Warlord Gar’s side, silently glaring murder.

“We already knew he wasn’t a warrior,” the Warlord pointed out, and his children hummed a reluctant agreement. Crossing his arms, Argit looked Kresh over.

“Don’t make us regret this,” he said, “or you’ll regret it.”

All the tension of the past months sloughed away like sand from a glass as the princess lifted him off the ground in a hug and the warlord and overlord stood to clap hands on his shoulders. Everyone was talking, congratulations he thought, but there was nothing in his world but Kevin, still stood by the thrones, with such a smile on his face.

Like a hidehund who’d managed to snatch a whole beast from the dining table.

~~~

“So, were you hoping to move into the palace or…?”

“I assumed I had three years to judge the extra space versus your sister’s… enthusiastic reputation.” Leaning on the counter, Kevin snorted, still with that smile on his face after two days.

“Yeah, she’s a bit of a spitfire-” Kresh would’ve have been surprised if she could, if some of those rumors were true “-but she’s a nice sort. And she likes you, she and Argit both, no matter that little show they put on to rattle you.” Pausing in the sorting of his latest purchase (Prehra had pulled him aside when he’d told his family to remind him that fiancés got a discount, no more) Kresh levelled him with a concerned look. This wasn’t the first time they’d spoken since his won his prince, but they hadn’t really talked about… things.

“Even if I’ve put their brother’s honor in danger?” He’d been thinking about that since the head had been dropped off, a stone of guilt sitting in his stomach even as he couldn’t bring himself to reject it and get one himself. It was cheating, he hadn’t earned this, and though the damage going along with it would do to his reputation if anyone realized was great, the damage to Kevin’s was…

Kevin looked at him in confusion, then realization, then simply waved the matter off.

“When a man’s set Tasks,” he said, the capitalization audible, “there’s no rule saying his potential spouse can’t help if they want. In fact, there’s some very famous stories where they do pretty much half the work.” Kresh resisted the urge to chew his cheek.

“Really?”

“Yep.” A wicked edge came to his smile. “Besides, like I said, they like you. Why do you think you got set Tasks in the first place?”

“I assumed to ensure an early grave.” Kevin chuckled.

“I’d have never forgiven them.” Flashing teeth, he used the counter to lever himself high enough to kiss him, a welcome surprise that killed all of Kresh’s higher brain functions. “Looma knew damn well you couldn’t win me in an actual fight.”

“I, suppose I should thank her then.” He could never remember sounding quite that faint.

“Yeah, we probably should.”

[seven-oomen]

Since you’ve been posting candid type pics/story ideas, this is one I found that I had almost used for one of the moodboards, because I was like “hey, group of the adults”, but it has Susan in it, and I wasn’t sure if you had plans to bring Natalie into the story or not, so I skipped it.  But it’s adorable and worth sharing, anyway.

And your explanations for Jackson and Ben are entirely sensible and logical, but I still like my theory. XD  I also look forward to meeting whatever future spawn you decide on for the boys.  I can’t decide if it would be more entertaining for Noah’s mini-me to also be a druid or turn out to be a wolf.  Speaking of twins, a friend’s 10yr old daughter said recently “if I had a twin that was five minutes younger than me, I’d tell them ‘When I was your age’ and then describe what I was doing five minutes, ago”, and I can’t figure out if it sounds more like Allison or Malia, but it definitely sounds like one of them.

Apples to Apples is basically like a more kid-friendly version of CAH, unless you are playing with people like my friends, who can find a way to make anything deeply wrong and vaguely offensive if they wish.  And also I feel like there are many incidents of Stiles and Jax getting stupidly heated while playing Candy Land with their little siblings, to the point where they end up banned from joining in.

I adore the idea of clothes sharing (hence me being so determined to find images of them in what I could pretend was the same black button down for the family moodboard.)  And I feel Chris and Peter would have vastly different ideas about what constitutes “too tight” than Noah and would occasionally try to get him to wear some of their shirts anyway, for their own enjoyment.  (The olive green hoodie Peter is wearing in the ep where he and Derek hire Braeden seems very his style, for example.)  I don’t think either of the other two are quite brave enough to try Peter’s “v-neck cardigan worn like it’s a normal shirt” look, though. XD  All of which also begs the question of whether they do it for…other reasons, too.  Like if Noah is ever stuck in an endless budget meeting only to suddenly get a text from the other two of them wearing some of his spare uniform shirts and very little else.  Or if Peter ever comes home to find his Omegas each wearing one of his leather jackets  (because you know he’s got several) and their triskelion necklaces, and suddenly he’s getting “we missed you, Alpha” crooned in both ears simultaneously in a gravelly whisper, and wow I’m getting way off topic here…  Anyway, yes to clothes sharing, is what I’m saying.  (Also, the pen thing is golden.  Just imagine the looks on people’s faces.)

And I like the new preview, am super happy to see Jordan.  I can’t wait to see how he fits into things and helps with everything.  I don’t think I’ve ever really seen an a/b/o that tackled how nb identities would fit into that sort of society, so I’m excited to see it explored.  Also he always tends to come across as pretty calm and easy-going, and lord knows they could use a few people like that right now.

Hope you’re feeling better, and that Mo has calmed some.  I know just how much the pressure changes from storm systems can mess with someone, especially if you were already not feeling the best.

I’ve honestly just been smiling at this the whole day and I managed to write 3.3K to the draft because of this message and the new review by @ready-to-kick-some-ass. 

Right now the chapter has almost 8K on it and I will probably try and get it to 10-12K.

I’m not sure if I’ll add Natalie and if I can naturally fit her into the story. But I definitely know she was a part of the friend group in this universe, so that picture is just really fitting. It’s so sweet <3.

As for the twins, I’ll let you have your headcanons. But I’m not gonna tell too much. It’s fun watching you speculate ^^.

Speaking of twins, a friend’s 10yr old daughter said recently “if I had a twin that was five minutes younger than me, I’d tell them ‘When I was your age’ and then describe what I was doing five minutes, ago”, and I can’t figure out if it sounds more like Allison or Malia, but it definitely sounds like one of them.

Both of them. Either of them. Malia or Allison would absolutely do this to Jax and Stiles. They’re both about 20 minutes older than their younger siblings, so they would definitely describe something they’ve done 20 min ago just to piss the boys off.

And my god would they be banned. I feel like Chris just listens to them screaming for twenty minutes until he finally has enough of all this bullshit and just bans them from playing that game ever again. Malia is quickly banned thereafter when she gets heated over having to move backward and loses to Ben and the youngest twins. Allison and Lydia take over playing the game with the kids.

And you know they would. Chris has quickly figured out that he can get either of them home within ten minutes if he sends them a risque picture of him just wearing a toolbelt with his hunter gear on it. He’s not wearing anything else, just the toolbelt with the guns and bow and the triskelion necklace. But it works just fine. (The weapons are positioned in just such a way that he’s not actually revealing any of the goods, but he’s also not wearing any clothes. So.. yeah)

Chris and Peter would send Noah pictures of them wearing his uniform shirts while he’s in budgeting meetings or performance reviews or whatnot. Especially during the months when they’re actively trying to expand the family, things would crank up to 100 with these boys. But even when they’re not, they love to get each other riled up with sexy pictures.

And I feel Chris and Peter would have vastly different ideas about what constitutes “too tight” than Noah and would occasionally try to get him to wear some of their shirts anyway, for their own enjoyment.  (The olive green hoodie Peter is wearing in the ep where he and Derek hire Braeden seems very his style, for example.)  I don’t think either of the other two are quite brave enough to try Peter’s “v-neck cardigan worn like it’s a normal shirt” look, though. XD

Fair point, they absolutely would try and get him to wear their shirts. Because let’s be real, he’d look absolutely smoking in a tight shirt or a tight-fitting hoodie. And seeing Noah in their shirts just does something to Peter and Chris. It’s a matter of staking their claim on their sheriff.

And I think nobody can wear those v-necks but Peter. Chris lovingly refers to them as the porno shirts. Because honestly, only Peter or a porn star could get away with a shirt cut that low.

They certainly need a calm mind right now, and I really wanted to add a trans* NB character who’s also on the aro/ace spectrum and somehow that just clicked for Jordan. I don’t know why. But I really want to explore a society where there are two ‘main sexes’ (both with two variations male and female) and then add someone who doesn’t identify with any of them. And yet said person is probably the most level headed and calm of them all, so to speak. I’m excited to add Jordan to the cast list and explore his identity.

Mo and I are doing okay today, he’s been really clingy after the thunderstorm but it’s slowly getting back to his usual behavior. I reckon he’ll be fine by tomorrow.

[galaxa-13]

Back in Seekers of the Master and lots of bullshit happened.

So everyone hunkered down for a long rest in Erol’s magical hut. Sia found her new body didn’t really do sleep and while she tried she noticed Flock leaving the hut. She followed after him, but as soon she exited the hut she found no sign of him. Not feeling up to a solo adventure after everything she’s been through she went back into the hut and managed to somehow actually sleep.

Erol made her a five-star meal after they woke up (he made stew for the others with the left overs) and Sia told them about Flock’s departure. She and Sorrow also discuss Flock’s amazing ability to survive and knife to the face and how he’s probably undead. Tafari realizes he was a revenant. No one feels a particular need to search for him and they exit the foyer back into the Underdark.

They make it back to the acid pits and find the giant has left, but he left behind the painting he was working on as a gift for them. Amon and Tafari hope over to the island he was painting which had a chest on it. When Tafari attempts to kick it open it is revealed to be a mimic! Not a malicious one, though. It offers to play a riddle game. Amon answers two of the three riddles correctly and wins a gem and a potion of cloud giant’s strength. The chest then burrows into the rock and out of sight. The party notices that the tunnel they had come through back when they first came through here has had a collapse so this tunnel is now they only way forward. Erol summons a winged riding lizard for him and Sia to hop over the acid with and Sorrow attempts to make the jump herself. She failed and only made it to the island thanks to the winged cat pulling on her hood. She gets singed hooves and a near heart attack for her troubles. Everyone hops down the hole.

On the other side they find no trace of the mimic, but there are a lot of tracks (both animal and humanoid) and plants. There are many types of mushrooms here and Tafari begins to chow down. His amazing constitution saves him from getting poisoned seven different ways and instead he gets high. There are four paths to take in the cardinal directions. In the west they come across a bunch of wildlife, mostly sheep-sized cow-like creatures native to the Underdark. Sia becomes a Disney princess and is adored by the herd. Tafari moos and terrifies them. They scatter in all directions, save for one calf who cowers behind Sia. She ties a rope around it and names it Fluffy. Sorrow tries to find some edible plants and just picks weeds. Erol, who actually knows what the fuck he’s doing, slaps them out of her hand and picks some actual edible plants and even catches a fish. 

While all that’s going on Amon sneaks off to open his decanter, intending to release the genie inside. Instead he gets sucked inside. Tafari sees this happen from where he’s fallen on the ground, but he’s high as fuck so he thinks Amon just disappeared with the cows. Inside the decanter Amon meets a very annoyed genie. She’s on full tsundere mode, complaining about how Amon’s been ghosting her for such a long time and that she was worried. He tries to explain that he was in a different realm and couldn’t contact her, but she turns away in a teary huff and punts him back out into the world.

Backtracking the group then heads north and doesn’t find anything of note except some bones. These bones have a leather bracer that bears the symbol of the kingdom they had all departed from. This is one of the missing civilians they were supposed to find. Sorrow deduces that these bones are months old, given that they are, well, bones and that plant life is already growing around them. The disappearances had only started a week before the party had been sent out to solve the case, so it’s evident that their time in the vampire’s realm did that equal the same time elsewhere.

Now heading south the group happen upon a group of mushroom people sharing a bong. Tafari tries to eat one of them, but some others gently nudge him off (”hey man, be cool”). Amon asks them if there is a town or city nearby and they give vague answers of drow and dwarfs running around a lot. Which way? East. No, west. Definitely east. West for sure. The party leaves them be and heads in the last possible direction, east.

Down this way there’s the sound of someone muttering in Undercommon and magical blasts. Sorrow sneaks ahead to investigate. She’s so sneaky no one in the group even notices her leave. Sia just marches up towards the noise, with Fluffy in tow. Behind a giant mushroom is a drow boy reading from a tomb and sending magic blasts out through his wand. There is a dog-like mushroom creature with him. He’s so engrossed in his practicing that he doesn’t even notice Sia’s approach. That is, until Fluffy moos. He jumps and tosses his book to the side and points the wand at Sia, demanding who she is and what she’s doing.

Sia introduces herself and admits to having no idea where she is. This causes the boy, who is around 10 (exceptionally young for a drow), to turn up his nose at her and just all around be a noble snot. Of course this causes Sia to act in kind and they two are just having a snob-off with one another. The boy let’s slip that he’s from House D’Seer and Sia immediatly asks if he knows Orlereni, since he’s missing she’s been looking for him. He scoffs and says he isn’t missing, he’s with his family. Why should he take her to him? Sia informs him that she’s his apprentice, to which the boy basically says, “Nuh uh! ‘Cause I’m his apprentice!”

While they’re arguing Amon and Tafari also approach.

The boy is wearing a cape remarkably similar to the one Sia herself is wearing. The one she took from the apprentice chest back in Master Orelereni’s room. She shows it off to him in a “see?!” manner. (This robe probably used to belong to this very kid, not that she would realize that) 

She then presents Orlereni’s staff, which she has been carrying with her all this journey and finally the wind seems to go out of the kid’s sails a bit. He asks he where she got it, she says his room after her left, but before anything more can be said bolts rain down from above. Luckily Sorrow is hiding under a mushroom so shes safe and Erol knocks some away with his sword from his own hiding spot. Tafari just barely gets nicked, Amon’s armos mostly saves him but his wings do get pierced, a single bolt bounces off of Sia’s porcelain skin leaving a crack, and Fluffy managed to avoid the bolts altogether. The bolts were poisoned, but Sia’s lack of flesh saves her from any poison and Tafari already has a cocktail of poisons in his system thanks to the mushrooms that he’s not affected either. Amon is just super healthy and shrugs off this puny poison.

Above them the party now notices two riding lizards on the ceiling, both ridden by drow (one adult and one child even younger than the one arguing with Sia). The adult leaps off his mount and then safely lands amongst the group using some sort of magic. He grabs the apprentice kid and just tosses him to the side and draws a sword. Having been attacked Tafari decides to whip out his dick light, blinding all the drow present. Sorrow shoots an arrow at the adult. Sia starts waving her arms around and yelling that they shouldn’t fight! She just wants to see Master Orlereni!

The kid peeks around the adult and mutters that maybe they shouldn’t be fighting, but he is quickly cut off by the man. He does not trust these people. Failing to convince him Sia takes her new pet and scurries under the cover of the same mushroom Sorrow was hiding under. The child still on the ceiling fires off more bolts. Amon now tries his luck at persuading their attackers, but as he does not know Undercommon tries Elvish. They do not understand him and the adult is further convinced that they should not be trusted.

Tafari’s turn to parlay, he says he’ll put his light away if they can just talk. The adult demands that the children be let go. Tafari, still high as a kite, says they weren’t ever interested in the cows to begin with. He does turn off his indecent flashlight, though. Once he’s no longer blinded the adult starts putting his sword away, but then he casts Darkness on himself. The group wait, but don’t see him come out of the black sphere. When the spell ends there is no sign of him, and the two younger ones seemingly ran off as well.

Sia is very annoyed by all his and collapses on the ground to pout.

[askthedespairkids]

A World Without Assassins

*The two walk side by side, Sly messing with his knife looking kinda of nervous*

Maki: What’s up with you? You’ve been weird ever since you asked me to hang out.

Sly: I don’t know, honestly I’m kinda nervous about this. It’s almost like this is our first time doing something together.

Maki: Outside of any missions? Yeah, it is. Unless you count New York on New Year’s Day.

Sly: That was a uh…. Special day. Thank you for being there for me, you always seem to know when i need you most.

Maki: You get this look on your face, that’s why. Other people don’t notice it, but your eyes give you away. For an assassin, you aren’t perfect when it comes to hiding your emotions.

Sly: Is that really a bad thing though?

Maki: To some, yeah I think it would be. Assassins are supposed to be emotionless so they can’t get attached to their targets or potential targets. And yet...no, never mind.

Sly: Hmmm…. Hey when have i ever been known to not handle a target.

Maki: That’s not what I mean. But I think you go easier on the ones you feel something towards. Ones you have history with, and there have been a few.

Sly: I mean as much as people think that assassins have no humanity, since I've taken over its something i try to pride myself and my people with. We aren’t just killing machines, we’re people with interests and feelings and all that other stuff. In some cases it makes us stronger.

Maki: When did you start talking deep? I bet it was that class of yours. You hanging out with entertainers and writers and all these people...it’s odd.

Sly: My class is great, I feel like I’ve grown a lot because of people that I have met and interacted with, but I can’t lie there were a lot of times where I missed being home.

Maki: That’s not really weird. No matter who you are, as long as you have a sense of what constitutes “home” then you’re bound to miss it at some point.

Sly: Maybe I shouldn’t have left. What kind of leader abandons his people?

Maki: I mean, you made it so people could handle it without you around for a while. And besides, I think being away has been good for you…

Sly: *Playfully* Did you miss me Maki?

Maki: Do you wanna die?

Sly: Hmph. Well I missed you. At the beginning it was weird not seeing you everyday and as the days went on you’d often come mind and then one day you just showed up.

Maki: Yeah, thank Kurosaki for that one. He told me where you were and I was still kinda pissed off at you...well, I’ll admit I’m still angry about it now. But I can look past everything that happened. I dunno what Kurosaki knows, but I need to be here.

Sly: I’m not sure either. The guy knows a lot more than you would think by interacting with him. But either way at first I was upset he brought you here but I think it might be better this way.

Maki: You think so? Good to know we agree on something…

Sly: Let’s go somewhere.

Maki: Somewhere? That’s oddly vague of you.

Sly: You trust me right? I just wanna show you something.

Maki: ...alright, whatever.

*Sly leads Maki to his favorite spot on the island. The cafe/spa that looks over the rest of the island*

Sly: This is it.

Maki: I’ve...never been here before. This is kinda remote. Why is this place in the dorm building?

Sly: I don’t ask any questions. But I love the atmosphere.

Maki: ...it’s like that cafe we had to work together for a job. You remember? It was a year before you got the letter for Hope’s Peak.

Sly: You think so? Maybe that’s why I’m so drawn to this place.

Maki: I can see what you mean by the atmosphere. It’s almost soothing.

Sly: We should order some tea. I think you’d like it.

Maki: If you say so. You know this place better than I do.

Sly: Get anything you want. I’m a regular so I got it. I know how much you like sweets.

Maki: Well…*She scans the menu* I’m not really sure what’s good here.

Sly: *He smiles* So you want me to help you. Hmmmm I think you’d really like the cinnamon rolls they have here with a side of sweet tea.

Maki: Alright then. I’ll trust you and go with that.

*The two order and eventually their food comes out*

Sly: *He sighs* This is nice.

Maki: Certainly a nice change of pace from the work we’re usually given here. *She bites in the cinnamon roll* ...ah, it really is good! You actually picked something nice.

Sly: Did you expect me not to?

Maki: It was a joke. Hah. But this food...it’s like an Ultimate Baker works here or something.

Sly: *He laughs* You’re cute. You’re almost right, they almost became the Ultimate Baker but thankfully they didn’t or else this place would be a lot more busy.

Maki: *She ignores the ‘cute’ comment* Yeah. Probably wouldn’t even get a table majority of the time.

Sly: You know I’m not too good in social situations so I definitely wouldn’t be here as much as I am if it was busy. It’s like my little secret.

Maki: It’s a good secret to have. *She takes a sip of the tea* Now...Are you and Watanabe dating?

Sly: *He looks shocked* Wh-What?

Maki: I was talking to that one kid in your class. Hypnotist. Said you two get along well. Says anytime he sees you with someone in your class, it usually with Watanabe.

Sly: We-We’re just friends. She always makes fun of me, calling me a harem protagonist like we’re living in a manga.

Maki: She’s the Ultimate Harem Mangaka, right? Obviously that’s how her mind would work.

Sly: It makes sense in a way, I just don’t fully understand why I’m her target.

Maki: ...geez, you’re still so dense.

Sly: What do you mean? I don’t have a harem.

Maki: Obviously, you’d need to have a flock of people around you at all times and you’re too intimidating for most. That’s not what I meant though...but if you don’t get it, then it’s fine.

Sly: You know I hate when you do that.

Maki: *She smirks* I know.

Sly: *He takes a sip of his tea and then takes a deep breathe* On a serious note though……

Maki: Hmm? What is it?

Sly: I don’t really know where you and I stand in terms of our relationship but I’ve decided that I wanna help you achieve your goal.

Maki: ...a world without the need for assassins, you mean?

Sly: Mhm. I want you to have that normal life you always talked about, and i realize that with assassins still around you can’t truly have that. So I wanna help you.

Maki: You know what that would mean, right? Disbanding or repurposing the agency. Having to find something else for you to do with your life. Not to mention you might have to deal with protests.

Sly: My whole life, I’ve been groomed to be the best assassin in the world. I was groomed to eventually lead the cause. But I wanna do something different. I wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for you. So I wanna lead our organization into something better. And maybe that means we can both live normal lives, maybe even build one together. That’s more important to me than surpassing my dad, I won’t let his shadow control me anymore.

Maki: ...I feel like we cause more harm than good. It’s just better if we do this. I’ll admit, I wasn’t sure if I could do it alone, but if you’re gonna help then there’s a much better chance of success.

Sly: You’re my partner. Of course you’d convince me eventually *He smiles*

Maki: We’re not partners. We’re friends.

Sly: Y-Yeah friends. *He hits his head* Damn it, why am I feeling like a lil kid.

Maki: It’s not like either of us really have a proper chance to grow up. But don’t hit yourself like that, you’ll bruise.

Sly: I’m glad you care Maki.

Maki: Not like either of us had a lot of people we could care about growing up. We have to look after each other.

Sly: Always and Forever.

Maki: *She smiles a little* It’s nice seeing you relaxed. Almost like a normal teen…

Sly: Once we turn world back to normal, we’ll truly be normal adults helping rebuild society.

Maki: Yeah...so, *She sips her tea again* If not Watanabe, maybe it’s Kurosaki? Few people would go so far for one person they’re just friends with.

Sly: …..If I have it my way, it’ll be you.

Maki: …..*She sighs and sets her cup down* Sly...I don’t know what’s going on with me, but you can’t pushing this. If anything it’ll just muddle everything further.

Sly: I know you like Akamatsu, but I….*He sighs*

Maki: I can’t give you a clear answer right now. Sorry.

Sly: Don’t be. If we become something more of course I’d be happy but if not and you end up with her, I won’t be upset. As long as you get that normal life and don’t have to think about bloodshed anymore.

Maki: That’s what I want for you too.

Sly: Look at us, who would’ve thought years ago we would be here together talking about a life without bloodshed. Things really change. I think we’ve both grown.

Maki: It’s these other Ultimates. That’s the only explanation I can think of.

Sly: I wouldn’t be surprised. You would think assassins live for something like the world ending, where they can do whatever they want and business would be greater but here we are trying to save the world. Two little orphans change the world *He laughs*.

Maki: Yeah, it’s really something. Of course we still have to actually change the world before we can brag about it.

Sly: It’s like our mission and if there’s one thing that's true, its that when you and I are together we always find a way.

Maki: Right. I’ll be counting on you one last time then for this mission.

Sly: Wouldn’t have it any other way.

[trifoliate-undergrowth]

Taveau, the Duros, and the Magical Sonic Shower

HE’S BACK, HE’S STILL DRUNK AND HE’S STILL A COMPLETE TRASH MAN(dalorian) GET READY FOR THE CONTINUED ADVENTURES OF TAVEAU STARSIDE (in association with my buddies’ characters Grif the human and RRRRAWWWFWJDLDAARRRRRR the wookie, and introducing a Mystery Woman). 

Long post (very long this time) below the cut, featuring fuzzy copilots, failed perception checks, and reality-bending Nat 20s 

Session 2 opens with me reminding everyone that I’m drunk driving and asking DM SpeedyJellyfish if I crash into the side of the spaceport building. He tells me to roll. 

I have a +8 to the Pilot skill, so the score I ended up with was a 23. 

DM: you LOOK like you’re going to crash-Grif and Rralwarr (that’s apparently how we spell the Wookie’s name that I was hearing as ‘Rowler’ before) are clinging to their seats in the back; at one point Grif slides off and Rralwarr grabs him-but at the last moment you make a perfect 90 degree turn and come to a complete stop right next to the building. 

Me: I step out of the cockpit and bow deeply. And then almost fall over.

Grif: I try not to throw up. 

Rralwarr: I am scarred for life! 

DM, to Grif: Roll constitution. 

Grif: (5) 

Joey: ...you lose it. You stumble out of the speeder and it all comes up. ...Other than that you’re fine.

We enter the spaceport and it’s empty and abandoned (not surprising, considering there’s an invasion happening) except for a single, distant figure. As we notice it, DM tells us it’s a Duros, but it’s too far away to really tell much about it-- (Grif does really well on a perception roll) oh in that case, it’s a female Duros in a dark flight suit and boots. 

Meanwhile, Rralwarr’s player H made a joke about ‘making a good perception roll in real life’ because he’d realized that T, M’s girlfriend, was now on Roll20 and was probably going to be playing that character. And lo and behold, she was. Her character’s name is Umbra. 

T (Umbra) then makes her own Perception roll and gets a 13, so DM describes what the group approaching her looks like to her. 

DM: You see a human, a wookie, and something in Mandalorian armor. It appears humanoid. The wookie is taller—seems very well armed. The shorter male human seems to have a bit of a swagger about him, and his clothes look decent but a bit scorched. The third figure appears to be in some kind of vaguely Mandalorian armor, brownish-like, and a poncho. That person you can’t tell much about, but he or she seems to be stumbling a bit, like it’s either very sleepy or drunk.

Grif begins to approach the Duros, and I declare my intention of “sort of mindlessly shambling after him.” Rralwarr says he’s going to grab onto me and hold me in place. DM says “roll a grapple check” and 

we 

both 

roll 

an 

11. 

DM: ......Oh. Well that’s a contested grapple check. Um. Rralwarr, you try to grab him but he just sort of.... wobbles away from you... Like, you’re not even sure Taveau knows what he’s doing, but you fail to get a firm grip on him. 

Me, after I’m done “wobbling” around Rralwarr’s attempts at restraint: I follow Grif. 

H (Rralwarr): I follow to make sure Taveau’s blaster doesn’t go off. 

Me: I’m not touching my blaster! 

H: That’s what YOU think! 

Me, remembering last session’s crit fail: ...You Have A Point

We approached T’s character Umbra and Grif struck up a conversation with her which resulted in her offering us a ride in the shadiest language possible. I didn’t get notes on her opening speech because it was long and I was just fangirling over having another girl in the group, but it gave off a very, very strong aura of ‘sly, arrogant trickster who’s likely to double-cross you at every step of the way’. 

Also, brief context: Rralwarr did really badly on a “lore” roll earlier in the campaign, before I was there; so badly that they’re still making jokes about how he originally thought that Hypori was a tropical planet full of beaches. 

Grif: What matters is that we need to get all three of us to Hypori. 

Umbra: Hypori. Hypori, y’say? Why Hypori? 

Grif: Well 

Rralwarr: Don’t tell her! 

Grif: ...My wookie friend, here, is completely convinced it’s a tropical paradise, and he’s dying to get to Hypori, so... You know, I try to humor him. I’m thinking, once he figures it out, the shock might knock some sense into him. 

Rralwarr: ...You’re really enjoying the fact that nobody else here can understand what I’m saying, aren’t you. 

Grif: :) 

Umbra tells us, shadily in her shady way, that for the right price, she can ‘get us a ship’. Meanwhile, 

Me: Taveau sits down on the floor. 

Rralwarr: Wookie is satisfied! (that I’m not going to accidentally shoot anyone from here)

Umbra, pausing her Bad Guy Speech: ...Is your Mandalorian, ish, friend okay?

Grif: Oh, yeah, he’s fine. He’s been through some rough patches, I think he just woke up an hour ago. 

Taveau: Yyyyyyep. 

Umbra: What sort of rough patches? 

Grif: Oh well you know, there’s the invasion, for one thing. 

Umbra: Invasion? Of what? 

Taveau: Oh, did you miss the invasion, too? 

Umbra: ...There’s been no invasion, to my knowledge... 

Taveau: Aaaaeeeyyyy, you’re just as much of an idiot as I am! 

Grif, making a very halfhearted attempt to smooth things over, tells her she’s ‘just as sane as I (Taveau) am’ and I point out that that might be considered an insult. Grif tries to Persuade her that that’s not what he meant... and rolls poorly, while Umbra rolls a high Perception. 

DM: Yeah, she is not convinced, and she is a little insulted. 

Me: I’m just laughing at all this. 

After Grif mentions the court hearing (that they missed, before the session where I joined) Umbra goes ‘oh, so is it your face I’ve been seeing on the holo-posters?’ but is required by the DM to make a Deception check (because that’s blatantly not the case, and Grif of all people should know) and doesn’t do very well. 

Grif: Wanted posters? What no why would I be on a wanted poster--the invasion happened before we could get to court! 

Umbra: Ah, must’ve been someone else then. 

Grif: Anyway. May we see these ships? Don’t like putting my money into something I haven’t seen yet. 

Me: Taveau is now completely prone on the floor. 

Rralwarr: Wookie is further satisfied. 

DM, to me: Roll constitution. 

Me: Why? 

DM: To see if you pass out on the floor. 

Me: OK you’re right that would totally happen--(and yet, I pass the roll and remain awake). 

Umbra leads Grif off to the docking bay, and Rralwarr hangs out near my limp body, watching them from a diplomatic distance. 

Umbra: Alright, this is the docking bay. Behind some of these doors are ships. Some of them could probably take you to Hypori. Some of them... you really don’t want to open. But I’m not just going to open any of these doors. Like this one? Yeah, it’s got a ship behind it... But it’s got a wicked security system, and I lost the key. So if you want a ship, then... It’s gonna cost 2000 credits. Or, behind this door... go in there and see about getting you a ship for about... 1500 credits? Or you could just pick one of the doors, but... the security systems in this place are pretty tight. 

Grif: Now, I don’t want anyone to get hurt here! I feel like you’re telling me to run headlong into danger, and if I got hurt, my friend here would be very upset. 

Rralwarr: *moves a little closer* 

Grif: *does well on his Persuade roll* 

Umbra: *does well on her Perception roll; can definitely tell that Rralwarr is giving her A Look from across the room* 

DM, interpreting the rolls: Umbra is definitely intimidated by this, she kind of shrinks back a bit, looks a little defensive... seems like she might be willing to lower her prices.

Umbra:  Yeaaaah... I, I, I’ve heard of a few wookies... not bein too happy when someone got hurt... Tell you what, I gotta make a living too tho. For the first door, I’ll go down to 1470, and for the second door, mmm 1250.

Grif: Oh come on now... 

DM: Is Taveau still lying on the floor? 

Me: Yep. 

DM: Roll Perception! 

Me: ...Okay? (rolls low) 

DM: MMmm. Nope! You don’t notice anything :) 

Me: 

Me: I Feel Uncomfortable 

Me: But Taveau does not, and is very much enjoying the experience of being completely relaxed on this nice cool floor. 

I ask DM to describe the floor. He says it’s kind of like a Walmart floor. Taveau’s standards are low. It is a smooth horizontal surface & he is very drunk. He continues to enjoy it, blissfully ignorant of anything that might have required a good Perception roll to notice. Meanwhile, while we’re having technical difficulties with showing T (the new player) how to use Roll20, I ping her character a couple of times on the screen. She responds with: 

Umbra: Your drunken friend is eyeing me... 

Me: Oh, is that what I’m doing? Just... staring at your boots, across the floor? 

M (Grif): Shiiiiiny. 

Rralwarr, who’d been checking on whether the computers had access to cameras showing the ships (they didn’t), then Percepted on the doors and went over to tell what he’d noticed (notably, that they were equipped with cameras AND GUN TURRETS) to Grif. Grif, now even more on edge, continues trying to bargain with Umbra, and DM then tells me to make another perception roll, and this time I get a 15. 

DM: OK... So close to the floor, Taveau, you can hear something. You hear a rumbling noise, that seems to be coming closer, but you can’t really tell what it is, or where exactly it’s coming from. 

Me: I get up a little bit, like up on my elbows, and see if I can figure out where it’s coming from. (decent tactics roll) 

DM: It’s coming from the direction of the city, heading in your direction. 

Me: I get up and lurch over towards Grif and the Wookie and go “hey uhhh do you guys like, do you guys hear somethin”

Grif, still attempting to haggle with Umbra: --scuse me, one moment—what now?

(His *sweetie, not now, mommy’s talking to her adult friends* voice was something to be marveled at.) 

Taveau: Do you uh. Did you, like. Can you guys uhhh hear somethin? Like, a rumbling, like... I thought I heard somethin. 

Me: I flop back down on the floor. 

(Imagine the CLONK of drunk-human-filled armor just dropping down onto this jank WalMart tile spaceport) 

Rralwarr: I gently get down on the floor too. 

(No clonk. The soft sound of a very large teddy bear settling itself onto the floor of the WalMart Space Tiles.) 

DM: Roll Perception! (He doesn’t do very well.) You hear something. But you can’t tell if it’s a speeder bike, an army of droids or a herd of rancors.

Then Umbra rolls, and gets a nat 20. 

DM: Oh you know instantly what this is. You jump up off the floor and go “yep that’s a squad of droids coming this way, they’ll be here in 10 minutes.” 

Grif: SON OF A BANTHA THEN WE NEED TO GET OFF THIS PLANET LET’S GO 

Umbra: Well, yes, but I still expect to be paid first--

Rralwarr: I Shall Intimidate Her (rolls a 22) 

Umbra: (makes a roll to resist this and gets a 10) 

DM: You are very very very very intimidated, cuz he just stomps up and roars at you. 

Grif: I’m sure you understand, we’re just trying to get out of here. Once we’re safe in space I’ll offer you some compensation.

Umbra: I... Still expect to be paid upfront.... 

DM: I don’t think you understand. You have just been... very. Intimidated. 

Me: I felt the vibrations from the deafening wookie roar travel through the floor and through my helmet and into my face. 

DM: Yeah, you’re more concerned about not getting your arms ripped off than about getting paid up front. 

Umbra: ....Okay....

Grif: Now just get us to the best ship-- 

Umbra: Best ship? Oh you didn’t say anything about getting the best ship--

Grif, losing it:  Just give us any ship and it’ll be the best ship cuz it’ll be what’s left because EVERYTHING ELSE IS GOING TO BE DESTROYED WHEN THE DROIDS GET HERE! 

Taveau, still prone on the floor, pounds lethargically on the floor a couple times and goes “hear, hear...” 

Umbra is convinced. But she’s not happy about it, and she’s not a huge fan of us. She opens one of the hangar doors no problem, and successfully resets the alarms after letting herself through. Grif immediately trips the alarms while attempting to follow her, and T provides sound effects. 

T: WEE WOO WEE WOO WEE WOO! 

Taveau: THANKS FOR YOUR “HELP”, LADY! 

Umbra then has to make another mechanics roll to unlock the ship. She gets another nat 20. 

DM:  Mmm okay! You take your probe, and just slide it smoothly into the access port and the hatch opens up, the lights turn on, you can hear the engine powering, it sounds like everything is working perfectly, and not only that but you see that there is a nice hot pot of caf sitting inside the gangway. Fun things happen when you nat 20. 

Grif: ooh caf! I love caf-- 

Taveau: I NEED THIS

Rralwarr, to Grif: Yeah let him have it, if he’s gonna fly this thing I think he needs it more. 

Taveau takes off his helmet and dumps two-thirds of the caf into it. Since this is the first time his helmet has come off, they ask me to describe him. He’s a youngish human man with short, dark hair and beard, darkish tan skin nicked with scars. He hands the rest of the pot to Grif, and walks off sipping caf from his helmet. 

Taveau: Grif. You can have the rest. 

Grif: ....Why thank you. 

Rralwarr: But at what cost 

DM, to me: Roll constitution. (Mediocre.) Yeah, you’re good, nothing unusual happens but Taveau is now slightly more awake. 

Taveau is in fact awake enough to get the ship up off the ground with a single pilot roll this time. Meanwhile, Umbra has disappeared, after sneakily making a few rolls and communicating with the DM behind the scenes--we knew they were up to something because one of her messages that was supposed to be whispered (visible only to him) wasn’t formatted correctly and came up in the public chat. The DM tells us we’re not currently being shot at, but if we want to continue to avoid that we should use the ship’s radar to figure out where the droids are. Taveau is flying and Grif has a better use computer skill, so he goes and does that, leading to this exchange: 

DM: The droid ships are mostly on the dayside of the planet. 

Grif: Taveau, fly into nighttime—

Rralwarr: “Fly into nighttime”??

Grif: Shoosh I’m trying to be useful. Hey, fly to the night side of the planet, there aren’t any separatist ships over there. 

Me, blanking on how to respond and temporarily becoming Travis McElroy (Adventure Zone’s “I do that!” man): Thank you, yep, I do that. 

DM: Meanwhile~.... (rolls a 1d4 and gets a 4) Oh. Well, the little gift that Umbra left you explodes, but she placed it terribly so it falls into an empty cargo hold and does nothing. (He explains that a 1 would have knocked out the main engines, a 2 or 3 would have damaged the shields or other secondary systems, and a 4 avoided real damage entirely.) 

Taveau, only aware that there was just a very sudden, very close explosion: WHAT WAS THAT WHAT JUST HAPPENED 

Rralwarr goes to check and tells Grif what he learned; then Grif has to communicate that to Taveau, who doesn’t understand Shyriiwook (wookiespeak). Grif decides to do this by using the most complicated sentence structure and the most specific jargon he possibly can, resulting in Taveau, who is Literally Too Drunk for This(TM) and just wants to know in words small enough to absorb while drunk driving a spaceship whether the thing he’s in is about to explode, shouting at him: 

Taveau: USE NORMAL WORDS WHAT HAPPENED 

Grif: 

Grif: Bomb in cargo bay. Didn’t damage anything important. 

Taveau: GOOD THANK YOU 

DM, to me: Can you walk Grif and Rralwarr through making a hyperspace jump? (I roll pretty well; Grif and Rralwarr roll to see how well they understand me and Rralwarr does better than Grif.) ...Okay, he explains it very thoroughly, though a bit too fast and with a lot of slurring, so, Grif, you’re still kind of lost. Rralwarr, you get it, so you make the jump. (Another passing roll and a hyperspace jump later): You did it, congratulations. You’ll be in hyperspace for about an hour, if you want to rest. 

H (Rralwarr): Would Han Solo be proud of me? 

DM: I mean, you didn’t do a great job, you’re still a beginner; you just kind of... made it work. So no, Han Solo would not be impressed. 

H: Would Chewbacca be impressed, though? 

DM: Chewbacca was Han Solo’s navigator, he was the one who calculated the jumps to hyperspace for him, remember? So no, Chewbacca would not be impressed. 

Rralwarr: :/

Me: So are you in the copilot seat now? I just kind of silently reach over and fist-bump you after you make the jump.

Rralwarr: :D

Grif goes off to explore the ship, and the DM describes it to him. 

DM: There are 4 cabins each with a small single bed-- 

H (Rralwarr): How small? D: 

DM: ...You might could fit. 

Me, remembering a thought I’d had earlier, about the unlikelihood of Taveau having had a shower anytime recently: Is there a shower? 

DM: There is a small shower, yes. It’s a sonic shower, to conserve water. 

Me: A what now

DM: It’s a type of shower in the Star Wars universe that cleans you without water. 

T (Umbra), snickering from the background:  Clean with the soundwaves. SCARE the germs down the drain. 

DM:  Moving on, there’s a small food prep area, a few weeks’ worth of food, a lot of instant caf, and one bottle... one single bottle... of koati(?) rum. 

Grif: Ooh :D I take the rum and I claim a cabin. 

Rralwarr: I also claim a cabin... Do I fit in the bed? 

DM: Roll an acrobatics check! 

H: WHAT

Me: To see if you can curl up small enough to fit? :D 

H: ..... 

DM: (observes roll) Yep, you fit. Sort of. Your neck might be sore when you get up, but you fit. 

Me: I’m going to take a shower. 

DM: roll dex. 

Me: ...For getting into the shower...? Oh. Oh my gosh you’re right I’m so drunk. Oh no... (nat 20) OH 

DM: OH. OKAY THEN. (thinks for a minute) You get in the shower, you disrobe in the shower and switch it on, and you feel the vibrations from the sonic waves start, and you feel your body start vibrating along with them. And you’re not sure what is happening but you kind of like it. So you keep vibrating for a few minutes and then you’re like, OK, I should probably get out. And you put your clothes back on and get out, and then you realize... you’re not drunk anymore. 

Me: Not even slightly??

DM: Nope. You’re back to normal. 

Me: I’m not even hung over!? 

DM: Nope. You’re still a little tired but you’re OK. 

H (Rralwarr): Hide the rum

DM: are you all resting? Roll to see how much you recover. 

So the session ended with a mysteriously de-drunk-ified Taveau returning to the cockpit and curling up in the pilot’s seat to take a nap while the others rested in their cabins. The strange properties of the vibrating shower will mystify him for days to come, but in a place where people throw rocks with their minds and giant slugs run crime rings, it’s honestly not all that strange, and he’s able to shrug it off as just another weird quirk of the universe and go to sleep. 

I wonder what he dreams of. 

[Episode 1]

[Episode 3]

[ruminativerabbi]

Strangers and Citizens, Parents and Children

Because we are all different people coming from different backgrounds and carrying along different kinds of cultural baggage, we Americans are naturally going to respond in different ways to the phenomenon of families caught trying to cross the southwest border illegally being separated when parents are incarcerated in prison and their children are handed over to the Department of Health and Human Services to be watched over or, at least ideally, placed in foster care until their parents’ cases are adjudicated. And even thought the President’s executive order of earlier this week appears intended to ameliorate the situation with respect to future families, there are apparently no plans to reunite families already separated. Nor is it clear precisely what the effect of the President’s order will be even if the courts to uphold its legality with the respect to the now-famous Flores decision of 1997 according to which children may only be kept in detention for a maximum of twenty days. In other words, the fire is slightly less hot than it was earlier in the week, maybe, but the pot is definitely still in serious danger of boiling over.

For me personally—as well, I’m sure as for all Jewish souls like myself whose lives are lived out against the backdrop of the Shoah and its aftermath, the sight of crying children being forcefully taken from their parents and sent off to be detained in special facilities set up to house them is not only emotionally upsetting but viscerally repugnant.  More than 2,300 children have been separated from their parents since the zero-tolerance program went into effect in May. Some, the fortunate ones, have been placed in foster care. (This number includes 239 children, some as young as 9 months of age, who have been sent to the New York area.) Of some of the less lucky, we have heard lots: the 1500 boys housed in that Walmart store in Brownsville, Texas, for example. But of the others of those being housed by the government, we have heard almost nothing other than some vague references to at least three “tender age facilities” where babies and toddlers are being kept.

Of course, children in our nation are routinely separated from their parents when their parents are incarcerated after being sentenced in court to prison. But in such cases the parent facing incarceration has the time to arrange for the child to be looked after and cared for, and the possibility of the government losing track of where exactly that person’s child is being housed is nil. Yet that appears too to have happened in this case, as admitted the other day by Steve Wagner, an official at the Department of Health and Human Services, when he testified in the Senate in April that his agency had lost track of 1,475 children who had been apprehended crossing the U.S.-Mexico border on their own and subsequently placed with adult sponsors of various sorts. These are specifically not children taken from their parents. But it does not bode well for those who have been taken from their parents’ watchful supervision in these last weeks since the zero-tolerance policy has gone into effect.

The whole situation feels intractable. But while some aspects of the situation feel like details in need of working out—how exactly to determine any specific individual’s application for refugee status, for example—the question of whether the enforced separation of families, including families with very young children, should be permitted under any circumstances does not feel that way at all to me. In the end, either we are a nation that can countenance doing irrevocable harm to children or we aren’t.

One of our Shelter Rock physicians, Dr. Steve Goldstein, showed me a remarkable essay the other day published by the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University under the directorship of Dr. Jack P. Shonkoff, the director of the center. The essay, entitled “Excessive Stress Disrupts the Architecture of the Developing Brain,” explains how subjecting a child to toxic levels of stress can actually affect the child’s brain in ways that may well be irreversible even should the child be eventually restored to a stable, caring environment either with his or her own parents or in some other setting. You cannot, it turns out, simply subject a young child to traumatic levels of stress and then suppose that the child will return to normal later on when things calm down. Some damage, it turns out, risks to be permanent.

I have to say, I felt bowled over by reading this—amazed both at how little I knew about the topic and also by the fact that this information, at least so far, has largely failed to inform the whole discussion about the question of separating children—most of whom don’t speak English and who barely understand what it happening to them—from their parents and incarcerating them in facilities that were neither built nor designed to house children and which are staffed by overwhelmed officials unable to communicate even poorly with most of the children  in their charge. (To read the essay, click here. It’s only seven pages long and it will affect your thinking on the matter dramatically. For Dr. Shonkoff’s most recent statement about the potential damage to children forcibly separated from their parents, issued just the day before yesterday, click here.)

And then there was Attorney General Sessions’ remark the other day that he perceived himself to responding to, of all things, a biblical mandate in pursuing the zero-tolerance policy that leads to the separation of children from their parents.

The Attorney General was speaking to a group of police officers in Fort Wayne, Indiana, when he first mentioned the biblical passage that he identified as the source of his motivation to punish the children of illegals (or, more precisely, would-be illegals) with separation from their parents, specifying to the officers that he had in mind the passage from the New Testament that opens the thirteenth chapter of Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Leaving aside the question of why a federal official would base himself on a passage from Christian Scripture rather than the Constitution when determining policy, the choice itself is an interesting one. The text in question reads as follows:  “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.”

Those lines have their own place in our nation’s history. They were used by loyalists to argue against the colonial Americans who were preparing to go to war to gain freedom from Britain in the eighteenth century. And they were last cited in Congress in 1850 in support of the Fugitive Slave Act, possibly the most odious piece of legislation ever to be enacted by our American Congress. But my question for the Attorney General is not about his grasp of history but, since he opened the door himself, about his personal beliefs: does he really believe that there are no governments at all other than those that God in heaven has established? I don’t think so. I doubt any of my readers do, particularly those who endured life under the Nazis (who did not, after all, seize power violently but who came to power after winning the most seats in the Reichstag in the election of 1932). And I can’t believe Attorney General Sessions thinks that either.

As it happens, I know a few biblical verses myself. My Bible imagines a slave escaping from a brutal master and says, “You may not return a fugitive slave to his master after he has escaped from that master and sought refuge with you.” My Bible imagines people naturally inclined to mistrust foreigners and says, “You may not oppress or make anxious the stranger for you yourselves were strangers in the land of Egypt.” My Bible features two Egyptian midwives, women with neither power nor status, refusing to harm Israelite children merely because the king of Egypt has commanded them to do so, and says of them, not that whatever the government commands is by definition just, but that “God granted great favor to the midwives and made them the matriarchs of their own burgeoning clans” in recompense for having resisted the government’s command to harm children.

That “…for you yourselves were strangers in Egypt” trope repeats over and over in the Torah. All instances are interesting, but one stands out in particular to me: “The stranger shall be to you as the citizen, and you shall love the stranger in your midst just as you love your fellow countrymen for you were strangers in the land of Egypt just as surely as I the Lord am your God. Do not pervert justice!” I suppose we all have our favorite verses.