#coughs it's a metaphor for capitalism.

[full-of-malice]

okay so i'm the slightest bit feral over the concepts in horror in regards to the horror being a the horror of being stuck in a confined space because of a job because of the pressure of capitalism and the weight of the bills and the fear of what you're working for and being completely and entirely defenseless and you're terrified and don't know what to do but you have to come back because you need the job so you're trapped. smth about that genre of horror that shows what lengths those who are struggling could go for money because they need to live and survive

the vague horror of being stuck in this job that you want to leave so bad and you're not sure what's scarier the fact that you know that you can't leave no matter how bad it gets or the horrors you're actually experiencing on the job

[faebunnyleap]

.

[dear-mrs-otome]

Hello friends. Would you like to meet the antagonist of Faust's route? The dastardly entity responsible for untold pain and misery, for putting our intrepid couple through the metaphorical wringer? The arch-enemy of mankind for centuries??

(spoilers behind the cut)

Here you go! Yersinia pestis, or Y. pestis to its friends, in all its gram-negative, electron scanned, color enhanced glory.

Aww, but Mrs O, you say, it's so cute! Look at its widdle fimbriae waving hewwo! Its pastel pink Lisa Frank inspired palette!

But don't be fooled! This tiny cold-blooded killer is responsible for more deaths than possibly any other infectious agent in the history of humankind - we all know it as the bubonic plague. The Black Death. It's cut down hundreds of millions of people over the course of human history, and it is still a threat today.

Transmitted to humans primarily by the bite of fleas, Y. pestis is a nasty character - without treatment, mortality rates upon infection are 30% - 90%. It sets up shop in a nearby lymph node, gets busy, and the resulting damage causes tissues to die. Victims tend to develop large, swollen, and painful lymph nodes called buboes, which is where the illness gets the name 'bubonic plague'.

One thing to note though, for Faust's route, is that while we generally think of this type of plague as THE plague...there are two other forms an infection with Y. pestis can take. A septicemic infection, where the bacteria enter the blood stream rather than the lymph nodes and which is almost always fatal, and a pneumonic version. This one here is the stuff of epidemiology nightmares. It often is the result of inhaling airborne droplets from another infected individual, and it can spread from person to person very easily unlike the usual bubonic form which requires bodily contact or a bite from an infected flea. It causes fevers, weakness, and violently severe coughing, and without antibiotics is nearly 100% fatal in a frighteningly short period of time - most victims are dead within mere days. Sometimes hours.

The first major recorded outbreak of the bubonic plague was the Plague of Justinian, which began about 1,500 years ago in 541 CE and ravaged the Sasanian and Byzantine empires. It's estimated that the plague resulted in anywhere from 15 to 100 million deaths, up to 40% of the population of Constantinople at the time, and some historians believe people were dying at a rate of 5,000 per day in the capital city.

The second plague epidemic, the one many people are more familiar with, was the one we refer to as the Black Death. This epidemic began raging across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia in the late 1330s, with Europe being hit particularly hard. By the time it was over Europe would see its population cut between 30% and 60%, and the Middle East losing about a third of its people as well. Numbers are difficult to estimate but they range from 75 -200 million dead.

There is, however, a third plague epidemic, although not as well known. In the 18th century the plague made a resurgence in SW China, remaining somewhat localized until the mid 19th century when it spread to Hong Kong and from there globally. There were outbreaks in the United States, India, many African countries, SE Asian countries, Russia, South America, the Caribbean, and most importantly for our story purposes - Europe. The largest outbreak was in Lisbon, but there were many smaller pockets of infection in various cities across the continent.

This was around the time the plague bacterium got its scientific name, Yersinia pestis, because of this man - a secondary character in our vampire love story, albeit with a slightly different name:

Say hello to Alexandre Yersin, a Swiss-French doctor and scientist.

Keenly interested in bacteriology, in 1886 he studied in Paris where Louis Pasteur was doing work in microbiology and worked on antiserum for rabies and antitoxin for diphtheria, two other famous scourges. (Antiserum, in the briefest of explanations, is basically a way to transfer antibodies from someone/something exposed to an infectious agent to a different person, thereby triggering the recipients immune system earlier and more vigorously EDITED TO ADD: this also applies to venom and this is actually how antivenom is made as well!)

In 1894, he was sent to Hong Kong to investigate the plague outbreak and it was here that he identified the bacteria responsible, the one that now bears his name, along with confirmation of its transmission route via rodents. (A Japanese scientist in Hong Kong at the same time, Kitasato Shibasaburou, independently identified the bacterium almost simultaneously as well, but because his documentations were not as clear it is Yersin who is generally credited with the initial find)

Yersin spent the next few years continuing his studies of the plague, traveling back to Paris in 1895 to develop the first anti-plague serum. It was the work of scientists like him, and so many others at this time, that paved the way for modern medicine and a path towards eradicating the diseases that have held us in their skeletal grip for so much of mankind's history.

...And perhaps, in the world of Ikevamp, that path owes just a little bit to a certain bespectacled German priest.

[emcandon]

Eyyyy I got asked to write an essay about big robots and digressed into mulling over monstrous metaphors

There’s Bones in that Bot By Emma Mieko Candon When people met me at 25, the wrongness of my body was immediately apparent. It was the thinness, the frailty, the new scars and fragile veins. Another clue: the walker and its cat-mauled tennis balls. So too the oxygen tank—the fancy kind you keep in a bag that spurts air up the tube into your nose only when you inhale. Tst-tst-tst. Even when I graduated to a cane and a steady gait, I made no effort to hide the red tangle of knotty scars at my throat, though I did my best to contain the chronic cough. (A mistake, BTW. Cover your mouth, but don’t hold it in. Great way to put even more stress on the flesh apparatus.) I had by then long since been convinced by Donna Haraway’s thesis of cyborg humanity—that we as entities exceeded our flesh the second we developed tool use, and that it got even worse when we introduced the context of gifts and possessions. But as the years go on, the extended thing-ness of my body only grows more apparent. I am artificial and constructed; I am alive because I have been built.  I thought this was what brought me to a fascination with robots and AI—the extension of humanity through embodied machines! But no, my friends said. We remember the whole Gundam thing. The Machine is a Monster Right, the whole Gundam thing. About that.

This might sound weird coming from someone who’s just put out a book about beautiful giant robots, but I’ve never really been interested in robots—at least when they aren’t moving. When a giant robot is just standing there/floating in space/being a Gunpla model, a monument to itself, my eyes pass over its silhouette as they would any other large structure. Perhaps I’m impressed by its artistry, or intrigued by the underlying design, but it isn’t really an object of curiosity.

But when that titan lifts its hand? When its leg rises and its foot crashes down—when it turns its arm to reveal the medium of great violence? 

Then I am afraid. Then I am fascinated.

I am drawn to large machinery in the way I am to monsters. When I describe something on the magnitude of a spaceship, I know it can be warmth and a home, but it is also, to me, an existential threat of size and speed and impact. My body is all too familiar with its own fragility. I cannot perceive this immensity without thinking of my fundamental physical relationship to it.

I don’t know that I was thinking any of this, even on an intuitive level, when Gundam Wing first stomped into my life—when it was Toonami’s heady alternative to Dragon Ball Z that I was instantly in love with for the pretty boys and twisty political intrigue. Now, though, I am well versed in the brittle nature of my body, and I have been taking new hikes through Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans, then more recently (it just finished! go watch it!) Gundam: the Witch from Mercury. Both series are immediately and intimately Gundam at its best: 

1. an interrogation of exploited bodies in the context of vast systems and machines

2. the absurd and precious possibility of human connection.

Ah, right, and 3., the eternal backbone of Gundam as a narrative: War…bad???

The Monster is People

War bad. Seems silly. Pithy. Of course war bad. No one right with their mind, body, or soul wants war. 

Do they? Enh. Reality seems to beg to differ. War is happening, right now, all over, in all its ugliness and horror. The great machines of nation, capital, hunger, and hatred grind our smallness through cruelty after cruelty. And for all these great things are the dire mechanisms, it is small human hands that pull the triggers and incise flesh. It is a devouring cycle, it is corrosively sick, we are so pitifully trapped.

I struggle to write this with any kind of resonance or meaning. War bad. Simple, two words, three letters each, and yet abysmally less than the entirety they gesture toward. How many more words would I need? How many more letters and syllables and theories and treatises and grotesqueries must I lay down to properly express war?

Because you have to say something. The nothing is worse. Deadly. 

But how? How do you encapsulate the monstrous enormity? How do you even begin?

I don’t know, I don’t know. But I see how some have tried.

The People is the Machine

Giant robots are shockingly silly. They’re physically impossible. They’re often being painted bright LEGO colours or being constructed out of mechanized lions. As often as they’re the centre of gritty stories of human suffering (with a touch of transcendent human connection), they’re goofy warriors for goodness, light, and the power of friendship, taking part in schlocky melodrama. When asked by a stranger what I write about, I say “Oh, giant robots” in the most self-effacing tone. SILLY!

Here’s the thing: this genre has a legacy, at least in Japan. There, mecha stories arrive in the aftermath of World War II, during which Japan both suffered and was the perpetrator of unconscionable violence. And in that aftermath, the Japanese government was (and still is) often eager to honour only its own dead—and to sweep under the rug all the horrors it committed. 

How do you live with that? How do you breathe? What do you say?

I don’t think it’s always—or even usually—conscious. Maybe you just find yourself drawn to the idea of samurai and ronin, men of violence bound by rigid hierarchies and honour codes. And maybe you particularly like to write stories where their moral centres are flayed open by the commands of their superiors. “Kill that man,” says the lord. “This doesn’t seem right,” says the samurai—as he kills the man, and then has to somehow goddamn live with it.

Maybe this is what you need to express the overwhelming pressure of complicity and silence.

Or maybe you find yourself thinking in terms of the sheerly absurd. Monsters of incredible magnitude. Robots of like immensity. Maybe you use them to evoke atrocities lived and visited upon your world and body. Maybe it seems only right that they should also dance, that they should be cartoonish caricatures of human experience. Because maybe this metaphor of ludicrous size and self is just the best way to articulate a raw immensity that you cannot otherwise grasp. 

Maybe that’s why the robot needs to be larger than the world should ever let it be.

They’re Metaphors, Harold

Small wonder that, when I started writing a book driven by the dissolution of my body, I reached for the magnitude of mechs. It wasn’t intentional. It just happened. Here was an idea perfectly fashioned for a story of total self-destruction and survival. I wasn’t looking to express how I had been let to live because of my artificial hips, or because of the machines that pumped air and blood out of and back into my body. I was trying to capture a giant. 

No. That’s not right. I was trying to say that I had been captured by that giant.

No. That’s not right either. I was trying to say that the giant had pulverized me, and that in so doing, it had made me part of it, and that now I live with the tremors of its weight in my every step.

I got so fucking big.

[karamell-sweetz]

rui kamishiro, the alchemist - an extremely jumbled overanalysis

⚠️ LONG POST AHEAD ⚠️

hello rui fanclub. instead of doing schoolwork i think about rui as the alchemist. what’s new with me i know.

but why is he an alchemist specifically?

because if you look at it simply, rui’s jobs in the shows could also garner the title of ‘mechanic’. where you take a lot of metal and make it into something functional, or fix it so it works again. fundamentally that’s what he does right? with all the robots and staging ideas? and to some extent he could also be a ‘poet’ or ‘philosopher’ because we know he and tsukasa write the shows (during the pxl arc anyway) and he’s constantly coming up with new show ideas. there’s stuff like ‘magician’ or ‘wizard’, which could also be used to describe how he does things with such ease — and we’re not even going to mention ‘genius’ or ‘whiz kid’, okay?

so with all of that said, rui haters /j can essentially say that rui’s title of ‘alchemist’ is just him trying to sound a little cooler — and to some extent they might be correct. like have you seen this man

but let’s get to the nitty gritty of today’s wall of text, because there’s no way sega would call him an alchemist and not know what that entails. putting on my swirly nerd glasses.

✨alchemy✨ according to the merriam-webster kids definition is as follows:

“a medieval chemical science with the goals of changing less valuable metals into gold, discovering a single cure for all diseases, and discovering how to live forever”

and is commonly cited by most articles i read on the topic to have been a mixing of science and magic, having been the predecessor of modern chemistry. that part sounds like rui, doesn’t it?

and honestly, that alone should be enough to stop me from yapping, BUT WE NEED TO HIT THE BOTTOM. HAND ME MY SHOVEL I’M GOING IN /lyr

by the way!! i am completely aware of the more metaphorical meaning of alchemy where it’s essentially synonymous with magic, e.g. “he performed his alchemy o’er the pot and the water became soup”. but since wxs are often cited as the guys with the whimsical references to olden times (gestures wildly at revival my dream) i have no reason NOT to analyse him from the philosophical perspective.

so basically the alchemist has three main goals as we said before and just for my sanity (and my english teacher’s approval even though she’s not ever going to look at this) i’ll use them to organise my thoughts.

⚠️ DISCLAIMER: this post is not properly structured or organised and may be hard to understand. if you need any clarification on anything i say here please let me know! and ofc feel free to add your own ideas! also this is not too serious or in-depth ⚠️

websites used for research have been linked in underlined words :D (ex. wikipedia)

the transmutation of metals a.k.a. turning ‘lesser’ metals into gold

this one is pretty straightforward. rui is somewhat of a metal manipulator by making his robots, and while he doesn’t turn them into gold literally he DOES make them more valuable by giving them something better — life.

now obviously your life is more valuable than gold — although capitalism says otherwise! /j

also, as wxs’ alchemist specifically, rui’s job is to take them as they are — let’s say, their base forms — and make them shine through his directing, thus making them into something brighter, like gold! (addition for all the ruikasers in chat: gold shares its alchemical symbol with the sun and the sun is a star and guess who’s a star COUGH)

something else interesting though: according to the royal society of chemistry:

“To the medieval alchemist's mind the different elements were but the same original substance in varying degrees of purity. Gold was the purest of all and silver followed closely.”

it kinda gives a bit of weight to rui’s character and (just because i have to revise it for school) his relation to the general human experience in a way. we know that rui’s been outcasted for most of his life because of his interest in shows — but at his core he is still human, just like everyone else. i keep thinking about that line from rmd whenever i think about rui and the human experience, where little rui says “i am me, people are people”. it’s not wrong per se — but he’s just as human as everyone else, is he not? that’s why his story (especially pandemonium) hits so hard imo. it also then makes sense why rui treats his robots as his “little darlings” and gives the plants so much care, because all the world is made of the same stuff — according to the alchemist, at least.

…sorry that was me extrapolating. MOVING ON

finding a single cure for all diseases

now we get into the stretchy parts of this analysis.

getting rid of all diseases would theoretically better the entire world, at least in a medical point of view. now what does rui use all of his fancy robots for? as a catalyst for making people smile with his shows, of course! as we all know, laughter is the best medicine, and a smile can brighten someone’s day (so they say).

and furthermore, all of rui’s little exploits, and generally just his character overall, work for the good of others. i don’t know if i’m using this term correctly but i feel that he’s sort of a chaotic good person: working for what is good and just, even if it goes against authority. i mean, we see this right from the start of the game’s story — making nenerobo so nene can continue pursuing her dreams; the mall area conversation where he makes a balloon stegosaurus when the employee isn’t looking, claiming that it’ll be a much better present for the lucky kid who receives it; doing his robot shows in public even if the police chase him and nobody stops by to watch it all anyway, perhaps in the hopes that just one person will be even lightly amused by his antics. even when he intended to work alone, he sought to better other people’s lives, even if they didn’t appreciate him for it. (which ofc makes me so sad)

finding the elixir of immortality

now this one i initially struggled to get a good argument for because there’s a lot of things you can talk about here. the immortalisation of an individual is one of them — in making a show or story you essentially make a permanent memoir of the ideas you had for it, or the world at the time in which you wrote it, and i suppose in the case of the wonder stage immortalising the memory of a person in keeping grandpa otori’s stage alive.

but then it hit me.

rui wants to immortalise a *moment,* not necessarily one person. the time he has with wxs. which we are all aware that they are running out of.

this isn’t that clear in the early story because he’s not as attached to them yet — which i suppose leaves a hole in my argument since he’s used the title since before the main story. but maybe he only gained this goal in its full extent after joining wxs. curtain call and our happy ending make it very clear that rui wants to be with wxs, ideally, forever. and let’s not even MENTION the fact that they worked in phoenix wonderland which is supposed to be an immortal bird!!

i suppose at its core the idea of immortalisation is to spend time with the immortal individual forever, so that they can continue to have all the wonderful moments of life. everyone fears death to some extent, after all. so therefore: rui’s current alchemic quest, alongside/after the wxs training arc, would be to find that elixir for wxs and somehow find a way to make shows with them forever… even though realising that he *needs* to let go is probably going to be the most groundbreaking part of his character progression.

rui’s philosopher’s stone (not the harry potter book)

you might be wondering why i’ve titled this section this way but i promise i’ve got a point

so the philosopher’s stone is basically related to all three of the alchemist’s goals in some form. apparently if you put it in the ground it produces metals faster? (because apparently they thought it just grew like that. you DO get stones from the ground so i guess that checks out. AND THAT’S WHY RUI IS A GEOLOGIST IN THE KIRAPIKA SET.) i think i saw an image with its symbol that called it the ‘end of all ends’. so it’s kind of a miracle object in the sense that, once discovered or created, will instantly fulfil the aims of alchemy.

now obviously being in the modern age, rui isn’t looking for something that can solve all the world’s issues forever, because that’s proven impossible. but maybe there’s something that can do the next best thing — and for rui, that’s doing shows. it might sound silly (and i’ll come back to that in a bit) but rui knows how wonderful shows can be, how they make people smile and forget their ailments for just a small moment — they don’t get rid of them, of course, but they offer the next best thing he can give. that fateful little mermaid show gave him a purpose in life, basically, something he could work towards that could affect people in ways that a robot on its own simply couldn’t.

and i suppose, in that sense, all of wxs are alchemists, too…? well, if we apply this to some sort of medieval fantasy game, they’d be in his party and help him out, right?

the alchemist as an outcasted figure

so basically from most of the stuff i read, alchemy was generally frowned upon (and even outlawed in england) due to being associated with fraud, with con artists of the time utilising the transmutation thing for their own personal gain, and just generally looking for something impossible. i think in some way this could be connected to rui being ostracized by his peers because of his ideas — he’s not a fraud, but the actual alchemists of the time tended to receive the same reputation as the con artists. and i imagine the alchemical experiments were pretty dangerous back in those times, so there’s that whole thing with people not trusting rui’s ideas to be safe and practical.

bonus related discussion: do you think maybe people were envious of rui’s ‘genius brain’ and wished he would use it for something other than shows… like scientific endeavours? idk this is just a half formed thought i had after writing this particular section. in the same way that alchemy started to become an old practice, did rui’s love for theatre and whimsy grow to be seen as farfetched at any point? maybe in that mysterious elite high school— okay that one is just me grasping at straws. but it makes you think, right?

main conclusion

the role of alchemist really fits rui to a tee, right down to the context of the times. and i’m karamell, chairwoman of the rui fanclub. and there are literally so many things that sega could play with in regards to card symbolism (COUGH the alchemic symbols COUGH COUGH) that i secretly hope to see in the future!

(and now you, dearest reader, have some completely impractical information about a bunch of pixels under your belt. read and flourish!)

bonus: planetary references

in ancient alchemic writings the planetary symbols were actually used for alchemy as well, as in they were used to identify some of the main metals. as such most of the metals are associated with the solar system as well, notably gold with the sun, silver with the moon, and mercury with, well, mercury.

now… what is rui’s colorfes card themed around?

that’s right: SPACE.

now this could be entirely coincidental bc its implied in the story that his colorfes sekai was based on one of his favourite sci-fi books (show? movie? i’m a fake rui fan what text type was Trip to the Moon) but sega likes their extended metaphors and symbolism.

so anyway that’s the REAL end of the post. that will be all. no, i didn’t need to write all of that, but i did because isn’t that what my training is for?

[mikeo56]

The Corporate Sewage Promotion of Mental Masturbation by Marc Andressen, CEO of “I’m a Fart in a Whirlwind” and “Venture Capitalist Are Not Much of Shit”

Andreessen is a software engineer by training. He developed the first widely used web browser called Mosaic in case anyone can remember this. He has later had his hands, or money really, in a lot of companies that paid off handsomely, including but not limited to facebook, twitter, skype, and eBay. He is now one of two partners at a Venture Capital firm, so basically they’re investing into startups hoping to hit big. He has an estimated net value of 1 point 7 billion dollars. I’m telling you this just so you can put the following into context.

Andreessen starts his manifesto by complaining that someone is lying to someone about how technology is bad.

The Techno-Optimist Manifesto is a 5000-word essay by billionaire and Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. I think we need to have an eye on what those Silicon Valley people are up to, so let’s have a look. Andreessen is a software engineer by training. He developed the first widely used web browser called Mosaic in case anyone can remember this. He has later had his hands, or money really, in a lot of companies that paid off handsomely, including but not limited to facebook, twitter, skype, and eBay. He is now one of two partners at a Venture Capital firm, so basically they’re investing into startups hoping to hit big. He has an estimated net value of 1 point 7 billion dollars. I’m telling you this just so you can put the following into context.

Andreessen starts his manifesto by complaining that someone is lying to someone about how technology is bad. Then he declares: “I am here to bring the good news. We can advance to a far superior way of living, and of being… It is time to be Techno-Optimists. Techno-Optimists believe that societies, like sharks, grow or die.” So they stop growing and die. Not sure that metaphor works as intended. “We believe everything good is downstream of growth.” Like the chemical industry polluting rivers. Or more like trickle down dollars that by the time they arrive have turned into food stamps? “The only perpetual source of growth is technology.” Before the technology, there needs to be knowledge. It’s really knowledge that is the source of growth. “Give us a real world problem, and we can invent technology that will solve it.” Well, the real world problem that he has is all the people who disagree with him, and it doesn’t look like he’s got the technology to solve that problem does it. “We believe free markets are the most effective way to organize a technological economy.” Good old neoliberalism. “We believe the market economy is a discovery machine, a form of intelligence – an exploratory, evolutionary, adaptive system.” Ah, now that is interesting. I actually mostly agree with that. Except that market economies don’t optimize resources distributions just magically on their own. They need some framework to make sure they work as desired. This is why, cough, we have anti-trust laws. And why there should be a tax on carbon and so on. You really can’t have a market economy without some way to enforce market rules. “Centralized planning is doomed to fail, the system of production and consumption is bex.” True for the time being, but as technology advances it’ll be able to solve increasingly complex problems. So, yeah, let’s talk about this again in 100 years.

“David Friedman points out that people only do things for other people for three reasons – love, money, or force. Love doesn’t scale, so the economy can only run on money or force.” Love doesn’t scale. He writes that so confidently. But the more economically prosperous civilizations have become, the more humans have begun to care about other living beings, genders, races, nationalities, animals, indeed the entire biosphere. There’s even a name for it. It’s called the Moral Circle Expansion and is an idea that goes back to the philosopher Peter Singer in the 1970s. “We believe markets are generative, not exploitative.”  Nothing exploitative at all about working three jobs and still struggling to pay rent, says American billionaire. “We believe the techno-capital machine of markets and innovation never ends, but instead spirals continuously upward.” I’ve been wondering what this reminds me of, it’s the catholic profession of faith. I believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, spiralling continuously upward.

“The techno-capital machine makes natural selection work for us in the realm of ideas.” It’s not a natural system, it’s a man-made system and it will only work if the rules of selection are set up suitably.

Humans are for example terribly bad at integrating information about the long-term future in their every-day decisions. The libertarian free market ideal assumes that we do that, when in reality we don’t. No one stands at the gas station future discounting the social cost of carbon.

This is why a lot of nations leave the really long-term investments to governments. Yes that is inefficient. Yes, a free market could do it better, but simply doesn’t do it. Also, Venture Capitalists are profiting very nicely from government investments so maybe he shouldn’t overstress the free market thing too much. “We believe intelligence is the ultimate engine of progress. Intelligence makes everything better.” Many of the most intelligent people in the world contribute surprisingly little to progress. Think chess masters or Ed Witten. By my personal experience, it’s the upper-middle-class of intelligentsia that makes things happen. Like Bill Gates or Elon Musk. Not the Ed Witten chess master sort of intelligence. More the getting-shit-done sort of intelligence. Andersseen then goes on about how artificial intelligence will make everything better, but we’ve heard this all before, so I’ll skip it. Societies thrive with energy supply, true but nothing new either. Then comes section on Abundance, where he writes: “We believe Andy Warhol was right when he said, “What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest… A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke.” I once spent an afternoon in a villa of a billionaire in Hollywood. It’s a long story but yes Coke was served. It was served by members of the staff. Together with champagne. Americans are all equal but some are more equal than others. “We believe the global population can quite easily expand to 50 billion people or more, and then far beyond that as we ultimately settle other planets.” Yes, 50 billion is probably possible. But is it desirable? We now come to the section “Becoming Technological Supermen“ which is just two steps away from the meaning of life, so hold tight.

-Sabine Hossenfelder

[rrasado]

• Serpentine Warning •

A long ago written fic finally seeing the light of day. Talk of a lavishly thrown banquet had reached your attention, will you risk the seeping venom to partake in the labyrinth of genuine deceit?

Semi Slow burn, potential enemies to lovers, set in an older time period.

Tag a snake stan perhaps?

The estate where the Asim family resided can be described by an array of metaphors, usually falling among one of three classifications. A genie’s threshold where anything you wish regardless of foolishness, may be granted by miracles possible in wealth. An endless catalyst for the wonders of the very scalding sands merchants traverse in the name of prosperity. And the more unpleasant.. A den of vipers waiting to feast on sinners unworthy of the world’s finest gold. Just how exactly these whispers of two way grandeur came to be, was a tale left to be told by whoever managed to avert their longing.

Despite the countless uncertainties that surround the estate, we are but only human where it’s in our nature to go after what we can’t reach in hindsight. Ambition? Desire? Greed? Time and time again these fickle reasons plague the human heart, try as you might but not even the rush or lack of blood can disprove the temptation whenever one lays their eyes on the doors looming the visage of fools. Had you been none the wiser…would you have turned away? Or did the venom already entice you before you could take one step on the embellished tiles?

How pitiful…then again, so was he.

—

The heat wasn’t all that forgiving, neither was the vendor you tried talking to in hopes of gathering a bit of knowledge regarding that diamond in the rough, a building that can never be missed for a mirage in this literal desert. A subtle sneer left their lips before finally caving in due to your state.

“That gold den-er- estate is where Asim and his family live, with more children than a run of the mill town, there ain’t wondering why it beats the property size of the capital…”

Eyes blinked in thought over what the vendor said, a promising beast tamer such as yourself had seen many things over your travels, a wealthy family isn’t inherently new but this was a different case. One may even call it dire.

“Asim… say, sir. How well do they take to guests.?”

That vendor soon relished in his fit of cackles, hand waving before reaching for the side of his stained turban. It was obvious he didn’t think of the question seriously, much less taking this new face traveler in a genuine manner. How can he? 

“Listen kid- they may not be royalty or sultan in status but trust me when I tell ya that-”

A mere single coin was thrown over his counter, the gold glint of maddol caught the vendor’s eye but he merely shook his head before pushing back the money over to you.

“-regardless of tipping, this is just friendly advice. Call it hm..good deed? Good karma? Whatever the shaftland folks call it- unless you’re a big shot yourself you’ can't exactly waltz over to their door and expect to be received lightly”

The traveling beast tamer could only sigh in response, but his honesty was appreciated at least. Old eyes scanned your reaction, it wasn’t entirely rare for merchants to just come and aim for a hook with the Asims but observing you told him that you had pure intentions. He coughed to get your attention to which you gingerly complied by looking back up at him.

“Buuut those folks are holding a public banquet or something along those lines- rich folk get bored in confusing ways honestly” 

With newfound hope and turning on their heels they gave one final wave to the vendor, before turning their gaze over to him once he was a good distance away. Pulling down the hood of their worn out cloak to flash a genuine grin.

“I’ll take your word for it, thank you again”

He could only grin in giddiness when he found a few of his fruits gone in exchange for twice their price. Maybe Shaftland morals work after all, he thought.

What exactly was your goal here? Simple really… as simple as trying to find a place to stay for the week is. Let’s rewind shall we? The worn out cloak on your back covers the brooch one called Dire Crowley bestowed on you, as his student in the art of beast taming. Yet it’s that very same man who gave one ambitious assignment before you can be truly called a full fledged beast tamer.

‘Reach the other end of the map, your prize and insignia as a beast tamer will wait for you. Aren’t I so gracious for molding you into a fine veteran of your field~? But a good beast tamer must be able to withstand the curses of the world just as their beast can withstand the orders of their master. Use any means necessary, just make sure to get to your destination.’

You can still hear the echoes of his frivolous laughter in your head, or were the effects of the sun’s heat already taking effect? Either was just as bad as the other truth be told. Recalling the old vendor’s words, you hoped that you’d stumble upon a kind host within that banquet, the sun was at its afternoon peak so you should still have a bit of time to prepare. An inn would’ve been an option if you actually manage to find one not crawling with greedy thieves. The last one you tried had almost stolen your brooch! Life was hard, even you  understood that, resorting to a life of crime isn’t gonna keep you on the brighter side of life… that’s what you’d like to believe anyways.

Your train of thought came to an abrupt stop when you harshly bumped into someone, two grunts collided rendering you both to retreat. Lost in your own lamentation you failed to notice someone carrying what looked to be bags of fruits and vegetables…a bit too much for one simple family dinner you thought.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t looking-”

“Don’t, no need…”

Velvet like voice ringed in your range of hearing, only now did you observe the man you’ve had the misfortune of bumping into. Dark hair cascaded down his back in sets of braids embedded with bits of gold. You immediately kneeled down to help collect the scattered fruit muttering a string of apologies to which he didn’t say much on rather, focusing his attention on reorganizing his bought goods. You look up only to be met with deep charcoal gray eyes, laced with neither gratitude nor disdain. Perhaps the sun’s heat was beginning to take its toll on your senses but all you knew was that he had already finished recovering from the nasty fall.

Without being given another chance to apologize he briskly stepped past you and left the scene, earning a scoff on your end for his rude conclusion but then again you did admit that it was partially your fault… And yet you couldn't help but to feel a tad bit irate with how passive he was with your sincerity, the least someone could've done was communicate normally, yes?

The thought only made your head hurt, refusing to succumb to the heat’s effects. You shook your head and allowed your steps to take you to a well shaded area. The formation of the dry plants along the stone benches told you that this was supposed to be some sort of park. Was it well kept? In a way perhaps one could call it that… So with a heavy sigh you rested until it was time.

—

Any blemish within the estate's reputation burns and disappears on certain nights. Just like this moment where your feet are leading you to the tall gold encrusted doors where guests of all status are pouring in like moths drawn to a flame, the open banquet was truly an enchanting fire to behold. With the occasion being held by none other than the merchant Asim, said to be a monarch of the trade world but such descriptions were never left spineless. This open banquet where even the poorest of street rats or the richest of peacocks may make merry in the name of festivity. Was this a flaunt of wealth? Power? Influence? A warning? An invitation? It always depends on who's asking. 

The outside should've given you a sufficient heads up for what lies beyond the doors, the towering structure against the twilight sky felt ethereal from afar sure but when the heel of your shoe made contact with the carpet…

“-to your liking is it?”

Gaze locked with sharp serpentine like eyes, your attention piqued the moment the tall male gave a small smile. It was the same man from earlier...only now did your eye catch the circular bronze tray under his arm, was he a staff here perhaps? It didn’t take you much to notice his mannerisms. They were attentive with an air of caution. A small nod was given in return to his inquiry, laced with the slightest bits of bittersweet respect.

“Yes, its reputation precedes it…”

He gave a slow nod, when he first bumped Into you he didn't think much of the accident, simply writing it off as that- an accident. Your attire did gave him a vague idea but now that you stepped foot on the family's estate? He couldn't tell whether you'd still remain as a forgettable face on today's boisterous event. Jamil subconsciously gripped the tray tighter, deeming your presence as something to try and minimize contact with. He needed to do that while everyone was at their lightest, he heard your conversation with that old vendor earlier- a beast tamer at a time like this? It posed a threat to his otherwise calculated plan of action.

There was something about his gaze that made you feel on edge, yet it wasn’t the type that urged you to stay away. Earlier you could barely observe any display of emotion under the scorching sunlight but now it's effect was the opposite, the feeling left you standing where you stood, eyes lingering to his distanced figure. 

"You should scurry along then…loitering won't do you much good"

And here you thought he'd at least hold the hospitable front a bit longer. Your first impression of him had no immediate mark but now he was finessing his way over to your iffy list. Gingerly following his advice you gave an instinctive scoff, hastily walking to a safer spot where you wouldn’t be blocking the entrance. What was it with him? Dropping by and whisking out of your sights the next, it was as if he was purposely doing it. The mere thought was provoking on your end and had you been none the wiser perhaps you would've tailed that man. 

You did your best to put those thoughts to rest, making small talk with most of the guests in hopes of finding a good host for travelers such as yourself. Standing next to these lavishly dressed personnel felt humbling, truth be told, each parading their utmost worth for the public eye. You weren't too low on the tier of prestige, showing elements of sage Island fashion with the addition of your dearly loved brooch pinned to the left of your chest. A prospect beast tamer like yourself earned you your fair share of charismatic talks, perhaps associating with that oh so gracious bird kept your social ammunition full and loaded. 

Talk led you down the line of guests, eventually coming into contact with the king of merchants himself. Despite being new around these parts there was just a certain air of luxury radiating off of the grinning man you're currently conversing with. If you possessed a keener sense of smell there were faint traces of foreign herbs laced on his person here and there. 

"Why- if it's a place you need then I have rooms upon rooms for guests of your sort! It'd be a shame if a student of Crowley couldn't even be treated accordingly!"

You had to suppress a cough when he patted your back with the slightest bit of force, lost in his own glee of receiving yet another fine guest at his humble abode.

"W-why thank you for your hospitality sir. I'll be sure to inform my mentor of your gracious act"

This was what earned your ticket to a safe haven of rest, you thought, not catching the way he called for someone to come over.

"Oh you're too kind my child- your field is an art to behold! I'm quite a fan myself if I'm being honest, Oh the menagerie you'd love it! Who knows you might be even able to assist in taming this new find we had shipped from the north!-  ah but where are my manners? Look at this old man bombarding the youngster with his nonsense- I'll have you escorted by someone to your quarters."

The shared smiles on your faces dropped when you saw who exactly your escort was. They say once was happenstance, twice was coincidence and third…

"Oh? If that's the case...then I'll see to it that they arrive there safely"

...three times is enemy action.

"Thank you Viper, you're in good hands here my dear guest"

"Is that so…"

The grand chandeliers reflected a golden hue over his expression, displaying sharpness for whatever he was intending to do. You of all people would know what that foretold, reading a beast's mannerisms were part of your skills and only few would admit that it was the same with people.

Jamil in turn observed your expression, it was one he himself had to be cautious of. He's served this estate all his life and that guard you refuse to lower would either hinder or work in his favor. Keeping formalities in mind he gave a partial bow to your figure where even his master can see the servant's deed. Subtly extending an arm forward for you to take.

One week, for one week neither of you are free from the other's thoughts. And had you known it would have cost you your tranquil peace of mind, you wouldn't have jumped into this den of venom. Nor would've you accepted his hand for guidance, calloused yet tender warmth left as soon as it met your own skin.

A/N: This is a starter fic, should demand call for it then a continuation will be given 👀. Jamil is fun to write and He'd be more fun to characterize in a situation where his priorities and morals will be compromised.

[antoine-roquentin]

As the virus seized the world last year, a new, epidemiological metaphor for bad information suggested itself. Dis- and misinformation were no longer exogenous toxins but contagious organisms, producing persuasion upon exposure as inevitably as cough or fever. In a perfect inversion of the language of digital-media hype, “going viral” was now a bad thing. In October, Anne Applebaum proclaimed in The Atlantic that Trump was a “super-spreader of disinformation.” A study earlier that month by researchers at Cornell found that 38 percent of the English-language “misinformation conversation” around COVID-19 involved some mention of Trump, making him, per the New York Times, “the largest driver of the ‘infodemic.’”

This finding resonated with earlier research suggesting that disinformation typically needs the support of political and media elites to spread widely. That is to say, the persuasiveness of information on social platforms depends on context. Propaganda doesn’t show up out of nowhere, and it doesn’t all work the same way. Ellul wrote of the necessary role of what he called “pre-propaganda”:

Direct propaganda, aimed at modifying opinions and attitudes, must be preceded by propaganda that is sociological in character, slow, general, seeking to create a climate, an atmosphere of favorable preliminary attitudes. No direct propaganda can be effective without pre-propaganda, which, without direct or noticeable aggression, is limited to creating ambiguities, reducing prejudices, and spreading images, apparently without purpose.

Another way of thinking about pre-propaganda is as the entire social, cultural, political, and historical context. In the United States, that context includes an idiosyncratic electoral process and a two-party system that has asymmetrically polarized toward a nativist, rhetorically anti-elite right wing. It also includes a libertarian social ethic, a “paranoid style,” an “indigenous American berserk,” a deeply irresponsible national broadcast media, disappearing local news, an entertainment industry that glorifies violence, a bloated military, massive income inequality, a history of brutal and intractable racism that has time and again shattered class consciousness, conspiratorial habits of mind, and themes of world-historical declension and redemption. The specific American situation was creating specific kinds of people long before the advent of tech platforms.

To take the whole environment into view, or as much of it as we can, is to see how preposterously insufficient it is to blame these platforms for the sad extremities of our national life, up to and including the riot on January 6. And yet, given the technological determinism of the disinformation discourse, is it any surprise that attorneys for some of the Capitol rioters are planning legal defenses that blame social-media companies?

Only certain types of people respond to certain types of propaganda in certain situations. The best reporting on QAnon, for example, has taken into account the conspiracy movement’s popularity among white evangelicals. The best reporting about vaccine and mask skepticism has taken into account the mosaic of experiences that form the American attitude toward the expertise of public-health authorities. There is nothing magically persuasive about social-media platforms; they are a new and important part of the picture, but far from the whole thing. Facebook, however much Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg might wish us to think so, is not the unmoved mover.

For anyone who has used Facebook recently, that should be obvious. Facebook is full of ugly memes and boring groups, ignorant arguments, sensational clickbait, products no one wants, and vestigial features no one cares about. And yet the people most alarmed about Facebook’s negative influence are those who complain the most about how bad a product Facebook is. The question is: Why do disinformation workers think they are the only ones who have noticed that Facebook stinks? Why should we suppose the rest of the world has been hypnotized by it? Why have we been so eager to accept Silicon Valley’s story about how easy we are to manipulate?

Within the knowledge-making professions there are some sympathetic structural explanations. Social scientists get funding for research projects that might show up in the news. Think tanks want to study quantifiable policy problems. Journalists strive to expose powerful hypocrites and create “impact.” Indeed, the tech platforms are so inept and so easily caught violating their own rules about verboten information that a generation of ambitious reporters has found an inexhaustible vein of hypocrisy through stories about disinformation leading to moderation. As a matter of policy, it’s much easier to focus on an adjustable algorithm than entrenched social conditions.

Yet professional incentives only go so far in explaining why the disinformation frame has become so dominant. Ellul dismissed a “common view of propaganda . . . that it is the work of a few evil men, seducers of the people.” He compared this simplistic story to midcentury studies of advertising “which regard the buyer as victim and prey.” Instead, he wrote, the propagandist and the propagandee make propaganda together.

One reason to grant Silicon Valley’s assumptions about our mechanistic persuadability is that it prevents us from thinking too hard about the role we play in taking up and believing the things we want to believe. It turns a huge question about the nature of democracy in the digital age—what if the people believe crazy things, and now everyone knows it?—into a technocratic negotiation between tech companies, media companies, think tanks, and universities.

But there is a deeper and related reason many critics of Big Tech are so quick to accept the technologist’s story about human persuadability. As the political scientist Yaron Ezrahi has noted, the public relies on scientific and technological demonstrations of political cause and effect because they sustain our belief in the rationality of democratic government.

Indeed, it’s possible that the Establishment needs the theater of social-media persuasion to build a political world that still makes sense, to explain Brexit and Trump and the loss of faith in the decaying institutions of the West. The ruptures that emerged across much of the democratic world five years ago called into question the basic assumptions of so many of the participants in this debate—the social-media executives, the scholars, the journalists, the think tankers, the pollsters. A common account of social media’s persuasive effects provides a convenient explanation for how so many people thought so wrongly at more or less the same time. More than that, it creates a world of persuasion that is legible and useful to capital—to advertisers, political consultants, media companies, and of course, to the tech platforms themselves. It is a model of cause and effect in which the information circulated by a few corporations has the total power to justify the beliefs and behaviors of the demos. In a way, this world is a kind of comfort. Easy to explain, easy to tweak, and easy to sell, it is a worthy successor to the unified vision of American life produced by twentieth-century television. It is not, as Mark Zuckerberg said, “a crazy idea.” Especially if we all believe it.

[backwardscapsmh]

as always, i was in my whiskeytango feels and decided to write something! they live in my mind rent free so enjoy! as always, comments and constructive criticism are appreciated! 🥰

oh, just to be near you // don't you know how good that feels? // these are all the things i should've said // did i miss my chance? is it too late to say?

- million words by the vamps

It’s quiet when Whiskey walks into the Haus after his last class of the day. And anyone who is familiar with the Samwell men’s hockey team knows that this is cause for concern. It may be quieter now that Ransom and Holster are gone, but it’s almost never this quiet. It’s eerie, and Whiskey doesn’t like it.

Last year, Bitty would be stress-baking in the kitchen, either muttering French flash cards or singing Beyoncé songs. Ollie and Wicks would be playing Super Smash Bros on the couch in the den, chirping and jostling each other. (Whiskey still thinks they’re together but no one besides Ford believed him when he brought it up). Dex usually stomped around, occasionally tinkering with machines around the Haus and affectionately arguing with Nursey. Chowder will aggressively watch Sharks games, sometimes angrily yelling at Devyn Dubnyk for his seeming inability to guard a goal.

But Bitty’s not here anymore, and neither are Ollie and Wicks. As far as Whiskey can tell, Dex and Nursey aren’t here at the moment (probably on a date that they don’t want the team to know that they’re on). Chowder’s absent as well, most likely in his senior programming class he despises.

The one voice he should hear but doesn’t is Tango’s. Tango’s almost always talking. He’ll ask about Dex’s tinkering and his occasional pie baking. He’ll talk to Chowder about the Sharks and how they’re doing during the season, occasionally asking about players. He’ll play video games with Hops. He’ll ask Bully about his motorcycle and his drawings. He’ll talk to anyone about anything, asking questions, pushing for explanations, and smiling when they get excited about the topic.

It’s strange to not hear him talk, not hear the cadence of Tango’s New Jersey tenor. The Haus doesn’t seem like the Haus without it. He should be here, he doesn’t have class and after Ollie and Wicks gave him their dibs (he’s one of the only ones able to tell them apart), he should be here. Worried, he shoots a quick text to Ford.

Me: Hey, where’s Tango? He’s not here.

Ford: he should be there resting

Ford: lost his voice, so he can’t talk

Ford: dex said that he’s making some soup when he gets home but maybe check in :)

Me: Okay, thanks.

Ford: no problem! see u soon

Well, that answers his question.

Not wanting to disturb Tango’s nap, he settles on the green couch that Bitty got cleaned as a graduation present from his parents. It’s not so disgusting now and Whiskey appreciates that he can type out his essay without worrying if that sticky stain on the cushion is just soda or some other concerning substance. It finally looks like you won’t get an STD after sitting on it for more than five minutes.

But for the newly clean environment, Whiskey can’t seem to get comfortable. He keeps feeling like something’s not right. There’s this feeling that won’t leave him alone: something, or someone, is missing.

And that’s when he realizes, he misses Tango. There’s no warm presence next to him. There’s no 6 feet of New Jersey native pressed up against the back of the couch, the arm of the chair, or the front of the couch, leaning against Whiskey’s knees. It’s quiet, and cold. It’s awful. He didn’t realize Tango took up this much space in his life.

Fuck.

In an attempt to distract himself, he wanders into the kitchen. He’s trying to ignore the newly realized feelings about his best friend, but in his mindless state, he ends up making a warm mug of lemon ginger tea. Even when he’s trying to not focus on Tango, he subconsciously focuses on him. There’s a metaphor in there, but Nursey is the English major, not him.

Carefully picking up the mug that someone ended up making once upon a time in a ceramics class for a required art credit, he starts the trek up the creaking stairs to the attic. With everyone out, or otherwise busy, it’s quiet. All Whiskey can hear is the creak of the stairs, his own breath, and an occasional mechanical whirring sound.

When he reaches the top of the stairs, the door is closed, which usually means “disturb with caution” so Whiskey tentatively knocks. He ends up quietly calling “Tango?” before remembering that Tango’s lost his voice and should be resting. So he slowly cracks the door, walking into Tango’s room.

“I brought you some tea,” he says, bringing it over to where Tango’s sitting on his bed.

To be completely honest, he looks terrible. He’s still wearing pajamas and is wrapped in about three different blankets, surrounded by a mountain of tissues. He looks paler than usual, his hair sticking up in different directions, no doubt from fitful sleep. His eyes are sad and glassy and his nose is red. He doesn’t look like Tango. He looks like a shell of himself.

“I thought it might help,” he continues, handing the mug over. Tango just nods his thanks.

It’s weird, not having Tango smile brightly at him and prattle on about whatever’s around them. He just looks sad, and Whiskey curses every time freshman year he wished Tango would just shut up. His freshman year self got his wish and it’s awful. He hates it.

And because Tango can’t talk, there’s just silence between them now. Whiskey’s not good with words. He doesn’t know how to make them come out right some of the time. So he just lets them swirl around inside him until they become too much to bear and they force their way out of his mouth.

But Tango isn’t like that. He’s loud, he’s bubbly, and he lets every word in his head come out when it wants. He talks about what he wants to talk about. He’s generous with his words, freely talking to anyone about anything. It’s breathtaking to be around him. He fills the world with ideas and thoughts, and Whiskey loves it.

Being around Tango feels like warmth and love. It feels like sitting on the bus together: Tango with his friendship bracelets and Whiskey with his homework that he gives up on doing when Tango ropes him into watching a movie with him. It feels like his Abuela’s cooking. It feels like sitting in the sun in the Quad, surrounded by friends. It feels like...Tango.

But it doesn’t feel like that right now. Tango’s quiet. So Whiskey takes a deep breath and starts talking.

He talks about his day. He talks about his confusion when he walked into the Haus and it was quiet and how he was scared someone died (Tango tries to laugh a little at that but ends up in a coughing fit). He talks about Arizona. He talks about the latest Capitals and Rangers game. He talks about classes. He talks about whatever he can think of because if he can make Tango feel as warm as he makes Whiskey feel, he’d say about a million more words.

But a million words still wouldn’t be enough to explain how much he loves him.

[flying-elliska]

so, I finished the magnus archives ...(spoilers)

unfortunately i'd been spoiled for most of what happened in it but it was still cool to listen to especially since the audio work on it was incredible (those haunted tape noises are the coolest thing i've ever heard on a podcast, it was so slick)

it worked for me on the level of the emotional reaction. it was very sad and poignant. i often find horror stories difficult because either the characters are assholes and then i don't care and the whole thing becomes pointless for me or i get too attached to the characters and then I'm devastated when bad things happen to them and this was definitely the former. I really wish these characters existed in a spooky paranormal fantasy/workplace comedy-drama where they could get the comfort and overwinnings they deserved, but alas. i get they were bound by the genre though and that bad things needed to happen. i think they did a good job of balancing the horror and tragedy and not making it too grim at the same time.

it didn't blow me away either tbh, like for instance the s4 ending did. but i think after all the insane levels of world-building up they did, it was bound to be a bit underwhelming, with some arcs and characters left underused (Agnes!!!!). it misses a bit of a wow factor i had at other times in the series. the thing with horror is that there is only so far you can push character growth before it becomes too optimistic, and so when you go really deep into a character arc that's not strictly a corruption, it can often feel frustrating and unfinished in terms of emotional payoff.

I have mixed feelings about s5 as a whole. It's really cool that they experimented with something new, the concept of the fearscape is fascinating, and some of the statements are among my favorites in the whole show (the Sick Village, Recollections, the Gardener, Wonderland, the Processing Line, Moving on...) and really bring the cosmic horror/metaphor for the horrors of capitalism/ableism/abuse/etc in a way that feels strangely cathartic and understanding and glorious - but a lot of the others, especially in act 2/3, felt very forgettable and repetitive, and less like stories that could stand on their own, which i loved about the more traditional statements. Once it becomes clear that Jon (and Martin as a consequence) can't really be hurt, and the more it all becomes very detached from the real world, the sense of doom and foreboding that they did so well throughout the whole show kind of vanishes. The tension weirdly feels lower because the worst has already happened. I really believe in 'more is less' when it comes to scary things, and in a hell world where everything is horrible everywhere, it has less impact after a while. I did love the relationship between Jon and Martin providing those moments of humanity and warmth in the midst of it all, though, that was sweet.

the end itself...well, I found the dilemma interesting on a character level. of course Jon would sacrifice himself ; he feels so guilty he would doom the entire world to die rather than have to shoulder even more guilt for the fears potentially conquering other dimensions. he's spent so long feeling powerless and out of his depth that he would grasp this chance to finally make a choice and have agency and protect at least some people and keep the fears from extending their reach. but i love that he wasn't able to see it through either. it's so human. him and Martin breaking their promises to each other isn't miscommunication, it's deeply rooted in their respective personalities. of course Martin would do anything not to lose Jon since that love is basically the thing that saved him from the Lonely.

i don't think any of the options they had were the 'right choice' - both were shitty and atrocious, but the one that ended up happening is the one i would have picked, because it leaves some space for hope. If Jon had chosen to end their world to trap the fears, killing billions of people in the process, that would have been certain doom. With the fears sucked into other dimensions - first of all they had no certainty that the fears didn't already exist somewhere else, and any of the other worlds still have a fighting chance. I mean, it still sucks tremendously, it's very scary and ethically questionable and a massive risk, but at least it's open and it leaves it up to the people in the other worlds to make their own choices. And their world has a chance to recover. I find the idea that people remember what happened and the concept of a post-post apocalyptic world fascinating. I also really like that Melanie, Georgie and Basira (and the Admiral) made it out alive, and that we don't really know what happened to Jon and Martin. For a horror podcast that's super dark, violent and depressing, it's kind of awesome how they managed to sidestep 'bury your gays' very elegantly.

I've read this head canon somewhere of Jon and Martin being scattered across dimensions as these not-quite-human anymore entities that work to warn people and counteract the fears, powered by love and the desire to make things better, and I think that's my favorite post-canon option, because while it's still kind of a horrible fate it's also the one that gives them the most agency and it's also kind of romantic (way too much for a horror podcast, I'm aware, but i like that open endings like these allow you to make your own decisions about what happened).

also, the Web won, which is terrifying. the idea that it's using people as neurons ! horrible. amazing.

on a philosophical level I'm not sure i find the whole thing all that interesting, as a thought experiment, because i don't believe the universe is this consistently evil in the real world, so i don't find it super relevant. I'm also not the kind of hardcore fan who remembers a lot of details about previous seasons, so maybe I'm missing something.

But yeah overall I think in terms of storytelling this remains a pretty decent ending with enough layers to make it satisfying. it wasn't transcendent but it didn't ruin the whole thing, at least (*cough cough the Black Tapes*) and I can see myself listening to it again in a few years. and i'm definitely going to need a few fix-it fics now.

[defensefilms]

Defense Films Names His Top 5 Favorite Rappers

In All It’s Infinite Glory And Magnanimity, Defense Gives You His Top 5 Favorite Rappers. 

5. 50 Cent 

To this day, when you need a playlist for a MMA class and the group is hella diverse, you’re not really sure which way to go with it, pop in that 50. Can’t go wrong with Get Rich Or Die Trying (the original), or even that G-Unit Beg For Mercy.

That run from late 2002-2005/06 was unlike anything you’ll ever see again. That was a perfect situation where there was organic support from fans and there were people at a business level, mainly 50, that knew how to turn it into the wave that it became and industry has been trying to replicate this ever since.

While most people remember is the numerous scandals, beefs and controversies of that time but it was the music that moved the audience. For all the ways 50 Cent’s success mirrors ruthless American capitalism, his debut album is low key one of the most inspiring albums you’ll ever listen to. 

It’s a foxhole mentality on wax. It’s me-versus-you type thinking. It’s someone has to lose and I’ll be damned. It’s who ever has to get hit, is gonna get hit. 

See the first time I listened to it, it was about “In Da Club”, “Wanksta”, you know the more palatable records that got on radio and all that but the more I listened the more I realized, it was actually built on the backs of songs like “Patiently Waiting”, “Many Men”, “Back Down”, “Don’t Push Me” and “Gotta Make It To Heaven”. On one side it’s as motivational as you can think of but it’s not the wacky kind of naivé motivational talk because it’s willing to get it’s hands dirty and go in to much grittier ideas. 

Like his predecessors, 50 pulls off the trick of balancing easy-to-listen-to records on a foundation of graphic and aggressive songs.  

Recommended Songs: Maybe We Crazy, When It Rains It Pours

4. Jedi Mind Tricks

I’ll give you props if you know who these man are but they are legends. Point blank. Violent By Design will forever rank as one of the great group albums in hip-hop history.  Vinny Paz, Jus Allah and producer/DJ Stoupe The Enemy of Mankind, gave hip-hop a shockwave they weren’t ready for, especially back in 1999.

Hip-hop as a business wasn’t ready to market a group, whose themes were rooted in topics like government control, military warfare, covert control tactics, religion and psychological warfare. To have all that in one bundle wasn’t something that big time A&R’s were ready for. 

Had they started this group in 2010, they would have walked in to a business landscape that was far more suitable to who they were as an act and as MC’s. 

Even with that JMT still enjoyed a lot of notoriety and they definitely succeeded in establishing their following, despite the odds. 

While Violent By Design may serve as the magnum opus of their body of work, their run really starts in 1997 with the Psycho-Social, Biological & Electro-Magnetic Manipulation Of Human Kind. 

Yes guy, that’s an album title. You gotta think now, I was in high school the first time I heard this and I was very into conspiracy theories and nonsense, so this album hit me right between the eyes. The idea that someone could use the medium of hip-hop in this way was crazy and the album would have been more than 10 years old when I first heard it.

No, the hip-hop historians among us will argue that Wu-Tang were a better and more influential group and I’d tend to agree, I can also bust back and say, “these dudes took Wu-Tang’s formula and gave it a whole different edge.”

 I’ll break it to you like this, Wu-Tang gave the world swordsmanship and the first projectile weapons like bow and arrows, spears and the likes. Jedi Mind Tricks gave the world gun powder, advanced modern explosives and semi-automatics. You see what I mean?

Recommended Songs: Untitled, Retaliation Remix

3. Jay-Z

No top rappers list is complete without my man. The only reason he ain’t higher is because, I rate a rapper more highly if they’re in the prime of their musical abilities. If this were an all-time list he’d be way way higher. 

Beginning with Reasonable Doubt is really the only place to start when it comes to Jay. The production, the skits, the way every sentence was so tightly wound together, the word selection and sentence construction. It’s remembered as an album of hits because of tracks like “Cant Knock The Hustle”, ”Feelin It” and “Brooklyn’s Finest” but Reasonable Doubt was really defined by “Dead Presidents”, “D’evils”, “Politics As Usual” and “Can I Live”. 

The first batch of songs gave the album some relatability, as far as depicting club vibes and nightlife glamour because that second batch of songs were all built on darker themes like betrayal, jealousy, greed, blind ambition and deception. That combination of themes as well as the production to match each one is why that album will always rank high among a certain listenership. 

With that being said, never make the mistake of thinking Jay or any man is perfect. There’s like a 3 album run where there’s moments of dope-ness but not a truly complete album. 

Still with that, songs like “Imaginary Player” and “Where I’m From” will rank among his best songs.

It’s only when you get to The Blueprint can you start to see Jay perfecting the art of crafting, whole, complete albums that bump from start to finish. The Blueprint was near perfection in this regard. “U Don’t Know”, “Heart Of The City” and “Momma Loves Me” will rank as his best efforts and yeah, I skipped a few.

The Black Album replicated the Blueprint’s listenability, while also dealing in topics that created an album that sounded very personal to Jay. 

All told, the best parts of his catalogue are so strong that there is no denying his place on my list.

Recommended Songs: Dead Presidents, I Love The Dough

2. Action Bronson

I cannot for the life of me fathom how this man doesn’t get the love but the real ones know. 

The mixtape download era (2010-2017 give or take), had many unlikely success stories. An overweight white guy, who grew up cooking in his parents deli/eatery, turned pro-chef then turned rapper, is beyond unlikely. Only the internet could allow this man to succeed and thank the hip-hop gods it did.

From 2012 to about 2018, Action was one of the only constants in my playlist. I still remember where I was the first time I heard “Brunch”. His catalogue starting with the Tommy Mas produced, Dr Lecter and boasting full collaborations albums along side Statik Selektah and the Alchemist, and of course the classic Blue Chips series. This man’s prime will be underrated. 

If you’re going to take one chapter of Bronson’s art and study it, it’s going to be Blue Chips 1 and 2. Both are thematically perfect without ever trying to be. Which is what allowed Party Supplies to make production choices that grabbed you from the jump. From the first time you hit play on the opening of Blue Chips 1, you’re hit with the sound of falling shards of glass and a violin sound that makes the opening song un-skippable. The songs themes are also a perfect introduction to the man himself. Debauchery, expensive taste, hedonism, revelry, unabashed pleasure-seeking, drug use and just enough self-depreciation that you felt you were along for the ride rather than just a fly on the wall, turning your nose in disgust. It was a perfect mixtape, at a time when mixtapes were at a crazy dumb high standard.

It’s not so much that a rapper made punchlines about food, that would be an over-simplification and really missing the trick. It’s that he made everything he said sound like the dopest thing ever and the most underrated trick about his music is that he made grown man rap without needing to be thuggin’. A rare feat. 

Bronson has since gone on to establish himself as a content creator/producer/food review guy but man, what he accomplished as a complete body of work is nothing short of astonishing.

Recommended Songs: Midget Cough, Bonzai

1. Headie One

So it’s late last year. I’m hanging with my boy Phil and Brown, we had just finished some content and Phil says “yo listen to this”. He proceeds to play Golden Boot and it hasn’t stopped bumping since. 

A UK rapper with a lyrical nous and wit that rivals even legends like Jay-Z, but rapping over trap and drill beats. What Headie One is doing is not the norm and I’m talking in terms of his lyrics, sentence construction, word selection, metaphors, he does it all and like all the greats, he makes it look easy. 

His collaboration with RV definitely helped mold him, with both the “Sticks and Stones” and “Drillers and Trappers” mixtapes giving you an idea of what Headie offers as a lyricist. He compliments RV’s brash, aggressive boasts with slightly less obvious but incredibly witty boasts of his own.

His discography though really starts to peak with 2018′s “The One”. That’s where Headie begins find a sweet spot between his lyrics, production and the themes of his songs. A mixtape like this can only exist via independent release because outside of the aforementioned “Golden Boot”, ain’t none of those songs getting any radio play especially in a country as “conservative” as England. Even in a genre saturated with gangsta/trap, “The One” stands out for what he accomplishes lyrically.

Headie would follow that by releasing “The One Two” in June of 2018 and he ascends even more in what he’s able to accomplish with the words.

 The track “Banter On Me” should be in an all-time list somewhere for being the wittiest track of all time. The song is literally just Headie finding new and innovative ways to boast, call out and bait his foes. Hip-hop/Rap has plenty of beef songs that weren’t really direct call outs to any known public figure but were still definitely taking shots at someone. 50 cent’s “Wanksta” and “Officer Down” are some examples of such songs I can think of. Those did not really have the kind of wit Headie displays here. The constant streams of alliterations, double meanings, puns, metaphors, inferences and innuendos is just astonishing. There’s a real mastery of language at play here. The song is a lesson in language, no textbooks. 

Headie has since released his debut album along with additional tracks for the delux version of the album. His debut studio release “Edna” does what studio releases are supposed to do. “Parle-Vouz Anglais” and “Aint It Different” will standout and are difinitely the most palatable songs as far as radio play. Those are the 2 songs I’d play for first time listeners. 

Recommended Songs: Hard To Believe, Dues, Zodiac

[kjack89]

Zoom

For the 2020 Same-Prompt Fic Challenge as set up by @shitpostingfromthebarricade, which had to use the quote, “I didn’t know you could do that”.

This is a different take on a COVID-19 self-isolation fic, mainly because I started my Quarantine AU before my state, at least, actually had a stay at home order in effect. That’ll come up at some point in that fic, but in the meantime, I thought it would be fun to come at it from a slightly different approach.

E/R, modern AU, Zoom call-related shenanigans and hijinks because why not?

Enjolras took a deep breath before clicking the link to the launch the first official virtual Les Amis meeting. The Stay at Home order had gone into effect almost two weeks, but with the chaos, Enjolras had made the decision to delay meetings. Between the Stay at Home order and navigating the schedules of those members who were essential workers, it had taken this long to find a time where they could all actually be on the Zoom call together, and even though he knew it was just going to be some of his closest friends, he still felt inexplicably nervous.

His nerves disappeared almost instantly when the first person he saw was Grantaire, hunched in the dark, a beer bottle just in view at his side. “Are you the first one on?” Enjolras asked, and Grantaire shrugged.

“It wasn’t like I was doing anything else,” he said, a little sourly, “especially considering—”

He was cut off by the tell-tale chime of someone else joining the meeting, and Combeferre appeared on screen. “Good evening,” Combeferre said, and Enjolras grinned at him. 

“I know you and I just talked but it’s really nice to see you.”

Grantaire mimed throwing up. “Get a room, you two,” he said.

Combeferre flipped him off as several more people joined the meeting at once. For a few minutes, there was the usual wild cacophony of nearly a dozen people having at least a half dozen conversations at once, and Enjolras waited patiently for the general din to die down so that he could get started.

As per always, whether virtually or in person, Grantaire, Joly and Bossuet were the last ones to stop talking, and everyone else had mostly stopped when Joly asked, curiosity clear in his voice, “Grantaire, where the hell in your apartment are you?”

Grantaire glanced around himself. “Oh, uh, I’m in the closet – physically, obviously not metaphorically.”

He winked, and after a few scattered laughs from the group at large, Bossuet asked the question most seemed to be thinking. “Why are you in the closet?”

“Because my walls are paper thin and I didn’t want my mic picking up every time a train goes past?” Grantaire said, as if it was obvious.

Joly arched an eyebrow. “Yeah, but you’ve got your headphones on, so would it even pick it up?”

Grantaire rolled his eyes and sighed. “Ok, fine, truthfully, I’m hungover as fuck and the dark in the closet helps. Happy?”

“Hang on,” Feuilly said, jumping in, “It’s five in the evening and you’re hungover still?”

“What the fuck is this, twenty questions?” Grantaire snapped, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “Besides, what the fuck else is there to do in isolation besides get drunk all the time?”

Enjolras cleared his throat. “As ever-fascinating as the subject of Grantaire’s drinking is,” he said, a hint of disapproval in his voice, “how about we actually get back on subject?” His arched eyebrow was enough to silent the rest of the conversation, and he allowed himself a brief moment of triumph before continuing, “Alright, I’m just going to go ahead and mute everyone— There. Ok. So obviously the biggest thing we have to worry about is further degradation of workers’ rights in light of this pandemic. We know the right-wing talking points, we know that they’re going to pivot pretty quickly toward being ok with sacrificing poor folks, and black and brown folks, and we need to figure out a way to safely demonstrate that we will do everything in our power to stop that from happening. We’re about three weeks out from International Workers Day, so I think that means—”

He broke off as his phone chimed. “Oh, hang on a second, I’m so sorry, I forgot to put it on silent—”

Again he broke off, this time because of the text from Combeferre: You appear to have muted yourself when you muted everyone else.

He looked in horror at his screen, at the 20-odd messaged in the Zoom chat, and at the telltale microphone icon with a line through it. He closed his eyes and counted to five before clicking to unmute himself. “Was no one going to tell me sooner?” he asked with a sigh.

“In fairness, we did,” Courfeyrac said after unmuting himself, grinning. “Not our fault you didn’t bother to check the chat.”

“Besides, we’re all social distancing,” Bossuet added. “What did you want us to do, hop in a car and drive to your place to let you know you were on mute?”

Enjolras gritted his teeth. “Preferably, yes,” he said, glaring at the screen. “Though it isn’t actually necessary, considering—”

“Why don’t we just cut to the chase and go over whatever damned document you shared us on before this whole thing began?” Grantaire interrupted. “Because I’m almost out of beer and at this point, this meeting could’ve been an email.”

There was what certainly sounded like a murmur of agreement, and Enjolras bristled. “Fine,” he snapped. “Everyone, open the document and let me know when you’ve got it opened.”

“And how would you like us to let you know, dear leader?” Grantaire asked, his voice saccharine sweet. “Should we all raise our hands when we’ve got it? Blink twice if we aren’t able to get into it? Perhaps bring into song and—”

“Or you could just tell us if you aren’t able to access it,” Courfeyrac interrupted, saving Enjolras from the rant he had been a second away from launching into.

“Besides which, he can tell if you’ve clicked away from the Zoom meeting by using Zoom’s attention-tracking feature,” Combeferre added, a note of warning in his voice.

Enjolras blinked. “I didn’t know you could do that,” he said, sounding surprised. “That seems like a huge invasion of privacy! Should we be switching to another platform? I don’t want—”

“The feature was permanently removed at the beginning of April,” Jehan interrupted, sounding bored. “The easiest way is probably just to see if we’re all in the Google Doc.”

“Right,” Enjolras said, and while it was hard to tell with the lighting in his shot, it certainly looked like he blushed, just a little. “That’s what I was planning on doing.”

Joly let out a cough that sounded suspiciously like a hastily-stifled laugh. “In that case, it looks like we’re all in the doc.”

Enjolras heaved a sigh. “Very well,” he said. “Then let’s get started.”

The next twenty or so minutes of the meeting went without a hitch, and Enjolras felt himself finally relaxing, feeling much more like he would at any regular Les Amis meeting. 

When they had finished with the document Enjolras sent before the meeting, he pivoted the conversation. “So obviously the federal government has been focused on mortgage relief, which is great for the owner class, but doesn’t do a hell of a lot for the renter class. I had Combeferre compile some statistics and proposed solutions, and I’m just going to share my screen with everyone to show those, give me a second—”

“Great time for me to get a refill,” Grantaire said, draining his beer bottle. “Someone chat me if I miss any other great technology SNAFUs.”

With that, the thumbnail of his image went black, just displaying a capital R, and Enjolras rolled his eyes before turning back to the statistics Combeferre had sent him. “Ok, they should be shared now, so Combeferre, go ahead and walk everyone through them, and I’ll just scroll through as you go.”

“Absolutely,” Combeferre said, adjusting his glasses, his tone already sounding professorial. “So let’s start with this chart demonstrating renters vs owners in all the city wards.”

He took over from there in earnest and Enjolras muted himself before sitting back in his chair and breathing a sigh of something close to relief. As little trouble as he had talking in front of any variety of large groups of people, he didn’t do so well in virtual meetings, and it was nice to let someone else do the talking for the moment.

A hand touched Enjolras’s shoulder and he practically jumped up, whirling around before instantly relaxing again when he saw who it was. “Jesus Christ,” he huffed. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”

“Sorry,” Grantaire said, sounding anything but. “I told you I needed another beer.”

“I know, but I didn’t think you’d stop in here on your way back to the closet.” Enjolras couldn’t quite stop the smile that twitched at the corners of his mouth. “Sorry to make you go in the closet, by the way – it was the only part of my apartment I could think of that, well, didn’t look like my apartment.”

Grantaire shrugged. “It’s honestly not bad,” he said, “though being out here is infinitely better.”

Enjolras nodded sympathetically. “Better lighting,” he offered, and Grantaire rolled his eyes.

“Better company,” he corrected, leaning down to press a kiss to Enjolras’s forehead.

Enjolras laughed, somewhat breathily, and tilted his head up to capture Grantaire’s lips with his own. “It’s not like you don’t get to see me on the screen,” he pointed out, and Grantaire gave him a look.

“That’s not the same and you know it,” he huffed.

“There’s only another half hour left,” Enjolras told him. “And then after that, I’m all yours.”

“No,” Grantaire corrected. “After that, you’ve got at least three other meetings you’re supposed to be sitting in on, so forgive my lack of enthusiasm, but—”

He let out an ‘oof’ as Enjolras pulled him down onto his lap. “Yes, but for those meetings, I don’t have to be on screen and I also don’t care all that much about those, which means that you and I can spend the entire time—” He tilted Grantaire’s chin up with two fingers, his grin matching Grantaire’s. “—doing this.”

He kissed Grantaire, deeper this time, his mouth opening against his when Grantaire ran his fingers through Enjolras’s hair and—

“Um, Enjolras?”

Enjolras pulled back from Grantaire, who groaned and leaned forward to rest his head against Enjolras’s shoulder, and reached out quickly to unmute himself. “Yeah, Combeferre, what’s up?”

There was a moment of silence before Combeferre cleared his throat delicately and asked, “You do know that when you present your screen, we can still see you, right?”

Enjolras and Grantaire froze. “Wait, what?” Enjolras asked weakly, as Grantaire repeated, “You can see— Oh, shit.”

Without warning, Grantaire practically rolled off of Enjolras’s lap, assumedly dropping out of frame as he fell heavily to the floor. Of course, judging by the cat calls and hysterical laughter that greeted them, it was far too little, far too late.

Surprisingly, Joly was one of the first to stop laughing, mostly so that he could ask, mock-stern, “Enjolras, what is Grantaire doing at your place in violation of the Stay at Home order?”

“It’s not technically in violation of the Stay at Home order,” Enjolras muttered, his face beet red.

“What in the hell is that supposed to mean?” Bahorel asked.

Grantaire reappeared on screen as he slowly struggled to his feet. “It means, uh, it means we’ve been keeping something from you,” he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. “And when the stay at home order was announced, Enjolras thought it would make more sense for me to stay with him than to stay at my place.”

“How—” Courfeyrac started, his voice cracking. “How could you possibly keep this from us?! During a mandated isolation order?! I could have been living for this instead of rewatching Love is Blind a million times on Netflix!”

Enjolras sighed. “We didn’t want to tell anyone until we knew for a fact it was going to work.”

“And?” Jehan prompted. “Is it?”

Enjolras and Grantaire exchanged glances, a smile returning to both of their faces. “Well, we haven’t killed each other yet,” Grantaire said bracingly. “So I guess it just might be.”

“Ok, but you have to tell us—” Bossuet started, but Enjolras cut him off.

“We aren’t really going to spend the rest of the time talking about this, are we?” he asked exasperatedly.

“Why, you got someplace better to be?” Courfeyrac asked, clearly still smarting over having not been told earlier.

Enjolras considered it for just a moment. “Actually, yes,” he said. “We’ll reconvene next week.”

With that, he clicked the Leave Meeting button, turning to look up at Grantaire. “What do you say, want to go do something better?”

Grantaire grinned. “Absolutely,” he said, fumbling for his phone in his pocket, where the Zoom call was still active. “Let me just—”

Before he could leave the meeting on his phone, they could both hear Courfeyrac squawk, “Hang on, did he just hang up on us?” at the same time Bahorel demanded, “Wait, how is Marius now the host?”

Grantaire laughed as he left the meeting, sliding his phone back in his pocket before pulling Enjolras out of his chair. “Now,” he murmured, leaning in, “where were we?”

Enjolras kissed him hungrily, both of them stumbling towards Enjolras’s bedroom and quickly stripping out of their clothes and falling onto Enjolras’s bed. After a long moment, Enjolras pulled away to glare at Grantaire’s pile of clothing, from which his phone kept chirping obnoxiously. ”Who is blowing up your phone right now?”

“It’s Venmo,” Grantaire said with a laugh. “Just our friends, paying me what I’m due. Now get back here.”

Enjolras rolled his eyes but went back to kissing him before pulling away again. “Hang on, does that mean that you bet on us?”

“You bet your ass I did,” Grantaire said, grinning. “Easiest hundred bucks I’ve ever made, and when the Stay at Home order is lifted, I am using that money to take you out—”

“To a locally-owned, locally-sourced, vegetarian restaurant?” Enjolras asked, only half-teasing.

“To wherever you want to go,” Grantaire told him. “Now shut up and kiss me.”

For once, Enjolras was only too happy to oblige.

[theatersanddemons]

I’m going to share with you all one of my favorite scenes I’ve roleplayed with my partner.

Notes: Dia is Diamond (Balan and Fia’s child) and Nightlight is Lance and NiGHTS’ child

Nightlight refers to NiGHTS as ‘Nidad’ and Lance as ‘Nibi’

Dia refers to Balan as ‘Papa’, Fia as ‘Dad’ and Lance as ‘Zizi’

It’s a running joke that Dia burns things/sets things on fire by accident, they are not a pyromanic.

My partner plays Balan, Lance and Nightlight

I play NiGHTS, Dia and Fia

And no, I don’t constantly capitalize NiGHTS because it gets tiring

The ‘run over by a tractor’ bit is a reference to one of the chapter trailers

Balan gets in trouble with his mate

"Stop acting like I'm a pyromaniac!" Dia whined softly. "I don't try to set things on fire!"

"No, it's just sometimes you don't realize how hot you've made things or how much power you're putting into something." Fia chuckled softly, taking a slice as well and trying it. "Mm~ Agreed, you've definitely improved~"

"Thank you..." Now they're blushing at their parents' and best friend's praise.

"You're welcome my dear! Keep it up and you'll be making cuisine's like Lance in no time!" He gave his lil bean a kiss on the temple before making the other half of his slice disappear.

"I believe my parents would love to try this as well, I'll save them some for later." Nightlight grabbed 4 pieces and placed them on a napkin before floating away to the kitchen.

"You think so?" Dia perked, smiling bashfully.

"That reminds me, Lance still owes me a cooking contest." Fia chuckled softly cause their child to groan playfully.

"Oh no, not again!"

"A cooking contest? I'm afraid I missed when that became a reality. Is this a new concept?" Balan questioned, his head tiling to the side just a tad.

"Eh... not really? It's just a little thing for fun Lance and I have done a couple times. We take turns choosing a dish to make and have others try them." He shrugged.

"Him and Zizi are tied 3 for 3." Dia huffed playfully. "But the kitchen is a war zone when they do it."

"I can tell it drives my nibi insane with the clean up they have to do afterwards." Nightlight chimed in after flying back to sit beside Dia. "Things get quite interesting during those contests."

"No more spicy things, last time I swear I was gonna have a hole burned through my tongue." Dia pouted before sniggering. "It was good though."

"We'll be sure to ease up on the spices." Fia chuckled softly.

"That would appreciated, my stomach was not happy with me after that...very uncomfortable evening."

"Huh! That sounds like fun! How come I was never invited to any of these?"

"Every time it happens you are in other realm kicking corrupted things and getting chased by flying rocks." They quietly explained, taking a sip of their boxed chocy milk. "It's quite humorous honestly."

"Oh...that explains a lot." The maestro replied, a bit shocked he actually kept missing out. And that Nightlight knew about the rock incident.

"We do try to arrange them for everyone to be available." Fia rested his hands on his hips as his lips pursed, "But Nightlight's right, you're always working during them." Such is the pain of having a workaholic partner. "And what's this about being chased by flying rocks?"

Dia covered their mouth to hide a grin, "Watch out Papa, Dad's got that tone again."

Balan flinched slightly as he glanced away somewhat nervous now, lightly pulling on his shirt collar. "Oh haha, about that! It was nothing I couldn't handle, just missed my mark that's all!"

"Uh-huh..." Fia squinted at the maestro before sighing and rolling his eyes. "One of these days you're going to get a concussion."

"...Dad, you say that like Papa hasn't had a concussion before." Dia looked genuinely confused.

"He hasn't, as far as I know?" Fia looked back at Balan with a raised eyebrow.

"...I have no idea what they're talking about." If he could sweat he would be drenched by now. "...." He grabs another slice of pizza and pulled the rim of his hat down to hide his eyes as he took small nibbles of it. For once he didn't want all the attention on him.

Nightlight snickered softly at the scene before them, they could only guess even partners didn't tell each other everything.

"That's not surprising, considering how out of it you were." Dia leaned on their hand with a grin, "You remember, right Nigh? Papa was sooo dazed from that hit."

Fia pinched the bridge of his nose with a sigh, "......"

"If I recall correctly, he walked into several walls thinking they were doors."

"Kids, could you please stop trying to get my head kicked off?" He squeaked out. It was embarrassing enough remembering his rare blunders but now he was in the hot seat with Fia and...let's just say you don't want to be in the hot seat with Fia!

"Sorryyyy Papa." Dia drawled. "But honestly, we thought Dad knew! I mean, why wouldn't you tell him?"

"Gee, I wonder." Fia deadpanned, shaking his head.

He's slowly sinking into the couch cushions now. His metaphorical goose is cooked no doubt about it now!

Nightlight just shook their head in fond dismay, their uncle was much too easy to tease.

Dia's giggling behind their hand, honestly it was just too funny to watch their papa and dad interact like this. That's why they saved those kinds of moments. And they and Nightlight weren't the only ones.

Rolling his eyes, Fia gently poked his mate, "Oh don't be so dramatic, Balan." Honestly, "trying to get his head kicked off", please!

He had better ways to "punish" his lover

"Didn't you know Fia, I'm all dramatic." He slowly lifted his hat to uncover his eyes again and pouted. "I run on the drama."

"You have never spoken a truer words, Balan." Well well, look who's returned from their lovely date!

"Nibi, Nidad!" They floated off the couch and flew over to their parents rather swiftly to hug and nuzzle them. "Welcome home."

Lance smiled warmly before nuzzling back. "Thank you lovely, were you good for your uncles."

"Yes, Dia and I made pizza. I saved you some slices in the microwave."

"Oh that's wonderful, dear." Nights chirped as he hugged them back, beaming.

"Yes, but there's your drama and then there's the over the top drama." Fia hummed, "Welcome back you two."

"Thanks~ What have you all been up to?"

"Putting me in the Tim house, that's what." Balan answered, somewhat glaring at Dia and poking them in the belly. "Otherwise not much else."

"I see, it sounded to me like they were spilling all of your little mishaps. Like that time you-"

"Lance! I am in enough trouble as it is do not making it worse." He warned while turning around, his death glare rather evident. "It is nothing I can not handle."

Dia squeaked and batted at her papa's hand, "It's not our fault you won't be honest with Dad!"

"No, no, by all means, Lance. Tell me what else I don't know." Fia took hold of Balan's hand gently to stop him from making Dia into a mouse.

"Gladly.~" They are grinning like the Cheshire cat as they floated over to the couch, with Nightlight following behind. "Before I had been interrupted, one of our guests had a fear of chickens. And during a bout he had been rolled over by a corrupted egg."

"Uuuuuuuugh........" Time to sink into the couch again.

"This happened before you arrived Fia. He once told me he had been run over by a tractor while observing one of our past visitors. It is a mystery that he didn't notice it before hand."

"Run over by a tractor." He repeated flatly.

Nights cough/laughed against his hand, "Oh goodness..."

Dia couldn't help giggling at the exasperated look on their dad's face.

"I was paying attention to other things, I guess it didn't pay it any mind."

"Did you not feel any vibrations Balan?" Lance questioned, raising an eye ridge.

"...If I recall correctly...I was flying so...possibly not."

"That is...rather amusing." Nightlight commented with a slight smirk.

"How did you get run over if you were flying?" Nights questioned, tilting his head. "Surely you were high enough to avoid it?"

Fia's just gonna pull the maestro to him, shaking his head.

"...Okay perhaps it was more like hovering...a few inches off the ground."

"That makes more sense."

"Uh-huh..."

"Oh yeah!" The Nightmaren hit his palm, "I remember you mentioning to me about that kid obsessed with flying and all the crashes that happened! Didn't he make you go flying by accident?"

They all are just trying to see who can get the maestro in the most trouble.

“...Yes. A rather enthusiastic child..." He pulled the rim of his had down and slumped. Had he really been that klutzy? How embarrassing.

"You seem to have a knack for getting yourself hurt, Balan." Fia mused softly, his tone neutral.

"And it sounds like you don't know the half of it."

"Are you alright Uncle Balan?"

"Fine, it was bound to come out anyhow." He began nibbling on the pizza crust quietly, just looking like a hat with two holes in it...and a pizza crust. "Mm...needs cheese." He murmured, who doesn't love a good cheese crust?

"I'll keep that in mind for next time." Dia hummed lightly, stretching out with a sigh, "I'm gonna make something for everyone all by myself!"

"I'll have the fire department on speed dial."

"Daaaaaaad!"

"And the fire extinguisher on hand." Balan remarked, with a slight glance towards his child.

"I'll keep a close eye out for them as well." Nightlight chimed before laughing and poking Dia's cheek with their horn. "As a head chef of sorts."

[dwestfieldblog]

A VERY REMOTE ENGLISH TEACHER

Where meditations, rants, reverie and absent seizures cross over... closer to one gun with one bullet, the rose of ruby and the cross of gold...uff, and MENTACIDE IN THE TIME OF MASQUES. Although I have never suffered from the guilty masochistic torture of ‘pleasure anxiety’, Bacchus hath indeed drowned more men than Neptune.  So I stopped drinking for 18 days to fool myself I was doing something positive and threw away enough things to be minimalist again. Arf. Beauty and/or function uber alles.  

Been treading water for three years and trying not to drown...big round of one hand clapping for the former poet. Meanwhile, in this temporary world and perception I have created of it, I am looking at a very possible exile one way or the other...my ‘plan’...a long phased withdrawal or hasty retreat. My wish is to stay, but once I leave, it might well be very hard to return.  Read as many metaphors as you want into that but in spite of my dislike of the conservatively minded Aristotle’s ‘either/or’ nonsense, there do indeed appear to be only two this time. And appear is the operative word. Appearances can be deceptive and emotions (unless raised and focused) cloud over what should be clear. Pain has a tendency to breed worry and fear too but let’s draw a veil over that for now eh? Suppress, suppress, release comes later...breathe deep and try not to cough, onward we go where the game gets rough...Just like Tom Thumbs Blues 65.  

Remember Roman Protasevich...As Lukasenko himself said...‘Belarus stood at the edge of an abyss and I helped it take a step forward’. Look good on your tombstone that will Al. Fecking outrageous the Indian PM only admitted in May that covid was transmitted in the air. He needs removing... as do two thirds of all the other world leaders East and West. Hello Bollsanaro. People are very easy to manipulate when they’re are scared or angry...and right now the world majority are both. But, ‘there is a crack in everything... that’s how the light gets in’... and ‘things could change’, doesn’t have to be for the worse. It can take decades to realise this as actual truth, but still nice to read and try internalise the following last week.’The odds actually favour the optimists, since dissipate structures are more likely to evolve into more information rich (intelligent?) forms than into primitive or chaotic forms.’ All my friends bar my best one are optimists..Hello you:-)

Ever onward deeper downward with Orban in Hungary and his mission of ‘Christian values’, which involves a familiar routine of arresting, beating and disappearing dissenters in the name of Christ and taking over the universities to replace professors with those who understand on which side their bread is buttered. Decent judges long gone. Nice fascist communism...and ex soldiers in France and the Czech republic warning of civil war...

And now spiraling we go into the black hole vortex of Disaster capitalism, ‘Let the bodies pile high’. There’s gold in them thar ills....ISLAND PARANOIA and PERFIDIOUS ALBION! A country which demands a contract, agrees, signs to it and then refuses to honour it. We look worse than ridiculous, we look deceitful. Gentlemen, your places please. Boris Johnson is a clumsy, inept, disgraceful charlatan, con merchant and LIAR. A blustering master bullshit artist, the only decent thing about his recent secret wedding is that now he legally has one less bastard child.  

Recently I read that British people are displaying signs of Stockholm syndrome...in that they dislike those who hold power over them and make the rules but during the time of pandemic, they are the ones who will release the saviour vaccine and get everything moving again. So rather than rocking the boat and daring to express dissent at the DIABOLICAL handling of the last 18 months, they have mostly kept quiet and voted for the same endlessly failing, corrupt and venal politicians who made a bad situation far worse. (That said, it bears repeating that there are a few million in the UK who didn’t quite understand that that the spread of a highly contagious airborne virus can be slowed by the wearing of masks/applying basic hygiene and even took offence at being told what should have made sense to any adult homo SAPIENS half capable of cogitating for themselves. Morons and scum. Same where you are?

By the way BBC...the colossal dearth of stories about the endless government failures in relation to Covid, death, corruption and the NHS...ever since they blackmailed you with threats of revoking the TV licence fee and got you to change Directors has been noted. Long may Have I Got News For You continue the satire and balance needed in a DEMOCRACY. Obey your public servants? Why, when they do not serve few but themselves? Power OF the people? Which ones...the mob? The same bleating pricks who follow populists?

Four eyed beanpole fop Rees Mogg, with his wonderful line that the benefits of Brexit will be seen ‘over the next fifty years’...well yes, that is why most people vote in democratic elections eh?...So they will be dead or ancient before the change they hoped for comes...and the politicians who lead them now, will have all long moved on to revolving door chairman of the board offshore limited liability company paradise. Bread today jam tomorrow fairytales. What I tell you three times is true.  

O, but the English do so love to be told what to do by dumb posh boys who treat them like dirt. Some are forelock tugging and some are self flagellating middle class upper class wannabes who will never get there but still feel proud they are not street level proles. Doby the house elf alien hamster Michael Gove found guilty of breaking the law. Nothing. Internal inquiries run by those connected to the money changing hands find nothing illegal. Corruption for all to see...and ignore. ‘Well, what can we do?’ The uselessly inept serial failure Dido Harding to be in charge of the National Health Service? (she of the collapsed Woolworths, Talk Talk and the 22 BILLION pound loss of the Covid Track and Trace program where non working consultants/insultants, were paid 1000 pounds a day). American style privatisation is coming where only the wealthy or criminal can afford to be repaired and well. Sick.  

Meanwhile, All our imported nurses out, and all the lobster red fat Spanish costa de la sol criminals back in. Great exchange, fair trade and forward thinking. The Kremlin are manipulating/supporting Scottish independence... I read years ago about their base in Edinburgh for Russia Today (the foul insert in The Daily Telegraph) and they were already encouraging it. Rees Smug has accelerated and supported their freedom with his snobbish utterances on countries in the UK other than England and their ‘foreign languages’. With every patronising, arrogant pronouncement, the Eton trifles fuel the fire in Scotland which has a long bitter history of being tortured, murdered and subjugated by their southern masters. Perhaps the chumocracy in Downing Street believe the Celts to be as easily cowed as the middle and working classes down south. Here’s hoping not. ‘Rebellious Scots to crush’? Not this time pal.

As for the future of Britain? A dystopian open prison where the lower social classes toil only at the pleasure of their masters. The higher caste getting richer and all others cast into a living Hell of debt, crime, and sickness. Serve until you die and be thankful we allow you to exist. Increasing in utter irrelevance to the world, other than as an example of how wrong a former democracy can go. This future started decades ago...its baobab roots truly deep now. Better education and critical thinking for the masses in the UK (or anywhere else) is highly unlikely now. Optimism huh? As long as I am not in England, I will still be able to tap into it, but once enclosed long term in the group mind there...trapped in a grey quagmire. Keep smiling...

Several weeks ago, I watched a video on YT of apparently English protestors running after the police in London, some attacking and throwing things, one pulling off the pandemic mask of an officer and all shouting abuse at the outnumbered cops who had to keep pulling back. As always, to get my caffeine rush of fury going, I read the comments and was surprised to see two or three from Chinese names. Almost all comments were against the government (fair enough) and dumb against the lock down, masks, vaccinations etc. Checking again, I saw the video had been posted by CGTN...a media company owned and run by the communist party in Beijing...and not one author of diatribes had mentioned this, nor speculated with a critical thought as to why such an organisation might enjoy turning people against their own democratically elected government (however mind rippingly foul and corrupt they are).

I copy pasted the Wikipedia paragraph about the company onto the page and hoped someone else would make the connection. I wouldn’t mind so much IF there were a credible and decent alternative other than the diseased populist poison for which the demonstrating goons chant. China really cares about the standard of democracy in Britain eh? Persuade your enemies to weaken themselves. Destroying countries by encouraging their ‘patriots’.

(That was written on the anniversary of Tienanmen Square...a few days later Xi Jinping gave a speech saying ‘...a lovable and respectable’ China must be presented to the world and must ‘expand its circle of friends’. Tell that to your teenage ‘dissidents’, Muslims, Falun Gong and Tibetans being tortured and brainwashed in prisons or being used for organ harvesting. Tell it to Hong Kong and Taiwan.) 

Unholy America...against abortion and the pill, sex education’s not Gods will and in the Name of Christ they kill...if truth be known, we’ve failed the test...but Jesus was a Socialist and Republican conservatives hate them. The founding fathers of America were Very clear about separation of church and state with damn good Reason. Another part time Christian, Mike Pompeo wants to be president. Q Onan deepstorm morons/Kremlin stool pigeons aka POLEZNYYE IDIOTY continue to push for Trump and his Big Lie...He with the brain where ‘In the left, nothing is right and in the right, nothing’s left.’ Arf.

Over the last two decades, the dumb have been finding their voice and are now louder and prouder of their dumbass ignorance. 74 million in the US alone, their egos unable to retreat in the face of endless evidence to the contrary, they all double down. Like children sticking their fingers in their grimy ears sing songing ‘la la la can’t hear you’. 74 million versions of Eric Cartman, loud, proud and wrong. And uuff, Megan Markle,  Majorie Taylor Greene, walking Picasso collage (bad car driver) Caitlin Jenner and Ivana Trump in politics...not exactly holding a proud lantern for women eh? I’d like to buy them for what they are worth and sell them for what they think they are worth. Not very PC?  

That was the point. Could easily been written about all of the men written about here too. Next examples follow...

Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones compete for who can be as mentally ill as trump. The Miami school where the husband and wife directors told teachers not to return if they had HAD their vaccine shots because their proximity to students was interfering with menstrual cycles and uuuufff...The sickness of utter mind buggering stupidity. I had my first shot, now waiting to turn reptilian when the 5G masts triangulate my position. Fnord. Covid appears to be killing more overweight meat eating males than females...perhaps testosterone is not useful for the coming Race of non binary mutant hermaphrodites...and look out for the end of the Y chromosome, coming to a temporary universe near you...in 4.6 million years. Yes, really.  

Glad Netanyahu is out at last, smug corruption is never a good look unless one is a rich criminal. Ha.  The Promised land of Israel...If I was in court for serial murder, breaking, entering and stealing and then defended my actions by saying that God had told me to do it, would the Judge; A. Call for a psychiatric report, B. Disregard the statement as unprovable and pass the appropriate sentence, C, say Ok mate, you’re free to go, good luck to you. ? Moses had a good schtick.

The law is only to punish the poor, do you feel as if you suffer from empathy? Once you know, you no longer need to believe. What does ‘reality’ seem to be? The more certain you are, the stupider you get and belief is the death of intelligence. The machine is running the engineers. What is the definition of rationality...the quality of being based on or in accordance with reason or logic. 

Nothing is, but thinking makes it so. Epicurus.  

EVERYTHING NOT COMPULSORY IS FORBIDDEN.

The glamour illusion of the mass of pointless hot influencers needs a constant renewing of the Banishing Ritual as much as all the pigslop bile coming from Fox News and Sky. Bloody long haired commie liberal faggot they cry against any not identical to them. Some days I have only flamethrowers of hatred for these idiots. Other days...not exactly self doubt, just questions...most of us seem to believe our opinions are more valid when there are emotions connected to them. Including me. Again, this seems like a very weak version of ‘truth’, unless disciplined, channeled and focused to a certain end.

Life appears to exist in order to become via chaos.

Most of us are working only not to be homeless, some because of the joy in our chosen work regardless of finances. Until ‘reality’ kicks in the door...the bondage gets tighter when you struggle. How much hardship is the individual willing to endure these days by choice? Surrounded by a universe of distraction and destruction, Maya mewling for our attention. Five years of Trump, rampant populism and Brexit doing a Hexagram 23 on democracy, compounded by the pandemic...all on top of ‘normal’ daily life. The ego feeds and the immune system breaks down. Hard to ignore without being on a mountain or in a parallel dimension and emotion free other than compassion. But BY GODDESS IT CAN AND WILL BE DONE. Ladies of Life Nin Khursag, Isis, Kali, Aradia...Love one, Love ALL. At very least have respect for thyself but be not thou proud of thine arrogance nor thy suffering.  

Or just Remember where you came from, what you were, seem to be and will become.

Heal, heal, more work to do, more love to give, more love to feel, Heal. Stay in drugs, eat your school and don’t do vegetables. Impose your own reality upon and through yourself, breathe, exhale, repeat, and continue, LOVE UNDER WILL. Experience and absorb but ‘It’s a house of tricks, ignore the world’’.

Stay well, be seeing you:-)

[writing-royza]

Royai Week Prompt Three - Old Wounds

Old Wounds

Weapons could be used to wound. Any first-grader that got a lecture from their mother about scissors and sharp knives knew that. But he had hit upon one that, although it had wounded him time and again, it also healed him. Riza had been the cause or reason for several major marks inflicted on him – physical and psychological – and yet Roy knew he’d never be able to let go of her. On the surface, sure. Physically, yes. But never in the deepest recesses of his heart.

Because any wound she caused or he incurred on her behalf, he had only to look at her for it to fade away.

———————-

Logically speaking, he shouldn’t be scared of her.

She was a lone thirteen-year-old girl that kept to herself, did her homework, kept a level head on her shoulders, and somehow still managed to keep the entire house (besides the library) clean and have a hot meal ready at the end of the day. There was absolutely nothing about her that should make him break out in the cold sweat that every hormonal teenage boy dreaded… but that was the exact effect she had on him.

If there was anyone with the last name ‘Hawkeye’ that he should be scared of, it was her father. Her terse, intimidating, single-minded father… but somehow, he garnered much less fear in Roy’s book.

He sat on the overstuffed couch in the study, both feet on the floor, both hands on the book in his lap… and tried to recall what he was supposed to be reading. Every muscle was tense, his jaw clenched, he was afraid to move… and all she was doing was sitting on the opposite couch, facing him, scribbling on a notepad and occasionally checking some bit of information in the book beside her. Her legs were tucked up underneath her, the toes of her bare feet wiggling idly as she worked, light concentration turning those already serious brown eyes somber. That was as much as he could see without lifting his head and making it obvious he was watching her.

Finally, enough of the tension eased from his chest to allow him to speak. “What —“ Having been quiet for so long, his voice gave one of its embarrassing mid-puberty squeaks, and he coughed to unsuccessfully cover it. Riza looked up, and he almost lost his nerve, then swallowed hard and tried again. “What are you working on?”

“Oh.” She held up the book. “Book report. Although it’s less of a report and more of a ‘I hope I’m getting this right,’ because the prose is heavy and kind of hard to understand.”

Roy tried a smile. “Yeah. I recognize the title. That’s a rough one.”

His heart started racing as she returned the smile – in a very pretty fashion for someone so terrifying, he had to admit – before she shifted to sit with her back braced on the armrest, her knees drawn up to create a kind of easel for her notepad. “I’ll still take this over my math homework any day.”

“You have trouble with that, too?” Curiosity was drawing him in, now. At her confirming nod, he set his book aside. “Maybe I can help. I mean… I’m a couple years older than you; chances are I’ve had to deal with it already.”

The look she gave him was sidelong, evaluating the offer. After a moment, she said, “Well… I understood basic trigonometry well enough. Sine, cosine, all that. But we just started talking last week about “functions” and I’m already lost.” Her lips twitched in a suppressed smile. “You might say my math skills have become… non-functional.”

He knew he was staring at her. Open-mouthed, no less. He hadn’t been expecting a joke like that, not from her. She was so quiet, so reserved…. This had to be once-in-a-blue-moon sort of thing for her. Laugh, he thought hazily. Laugh before she gets insulted and puts you out of your misery for good.

He settled for a smothered snort, shaking his head with a grin. “I might be able to help a little bit. That stuff was clear as mud to me, as well.” He looked up, still smiling. “What do you say – shall we make it a study date?”

It was exactly the wrong phrasing to use. He saw her walls go up, saw her dart back into her shell… a dozen metaphors came to mind, all leading to the same conclusion. Roy had firmly overstepped his bounds, had trod on this already tenuous new ground, and stepped directly on the new flower of a possible friendship.

You don’t use the word ‘date’ that fast around a kid like her, idiot, he scolded himself. If she didn’t already barely tolerate you, now she’s just going to think you’re a creep. How are you going to fix —

“I… don’t think a date is necessary.” His train of thought cut off abruptly as she dropped her feet to the floor, gathered her book and notepad, and rose. “I should go,” she added quietly. There was no other emotion in her voice, no obvious discomfort, no open dislike… and somehow that was worse. More condemning.

Roy could think of nothing to say as she headed for the door. His mind was reeling with a combination of embarrassment, rejection, and returning fear, all three emotions leaving painful little scratch marks on his heart. Just as her hand reached for the doorknob, he managed a quiet, “I’m sorry.”

Riza froze instantly, then turned to look at him. “Pardon?”

Swallowing the hurt, he sat straight and forced himself to look her in the eye. “I… made that really awkward, and put you in an uncomfortable position,” he said, knowing he sounded overly formal but not having any idea what other words to use. “I’m sorry about that.”

She watched him for several agonizing heartbeats, her expression unreadable, then nodded. “Apology accepted.” She tilted her head, that small smile coming back. “And, hey…. I said no to the date part, not to some help studying. If you’re still willing.”

———————-

Sometimes, he wished he had paid more attention to constellations and important stars in school. Alchemy, chemistry, physics… that had all come first in his mind, not little points of light in the night sky that would still be there when he decided to take the time to learn about them.

Of course, in Central, seeing stars at night was a rarity. The streetlights dimmed them, if not causing them to vanish altogether. At the Academy, he’d been so tired every night when he finally crawled into the bunk that he couldn’t stay awake to stargaze even if he’d wanted to.

But here, in the desert landscape of Ishval, the sky came alive at night.

Lying on his back, dark eyes wide, he stared the sparkling skyscape overhead, trying to memorize all the stories Riza would spin for him, trying to memorize name after name… and failing horribly. He alternated between watching the sky and watching the graceful movements of her fingers as they traced shapes on the starry backdrop.

“This one is Eagle’s Flight,” she said, pointing to a cluster of stars in the shape of a capital T. “The tip of one wing, to its head, to the other wing, with the tail back here. And this is the first one I learned about: Mother Bear.” She traced an uneven rectangle between four stars. “The body…” Her finger trailed along several bright dots. “…a tail…” In front of the rectangle, she added a triangle that culminated in a single forward-facing point. “…and her head.”

He couldn’t help himself. “Bears don’t have tails that long.”

“Seen many bears, have you?” she shot back easily.

Rolling his eyes, he gave up, pointing instead to another section of stars. “What about that one? Is that anything?”

Riza thought a moment, then nodded. “The Seated Queen. She said that she and her daughter were more beautiful than any sea nymph, and that made the god of the sea so angry that he sent a sea monster to destroy the kingdom. The only way he would stop was if the queen and her husband sacrificed their daughter to the monster.”

He turned his head so that he could see her, lying on her back in the sand like he was, her eyes on the stars. “…You’re kidding. You’re making that up.” She shook her head. “What kind of crazy fairy tales were you reading as a kid?!”

“It’s not a fairy tale, it’s a legend,” she corrected him, though teasingly. “Anyway, the daughter was saved before she could be eaten, by a hero – that’s his constellation over there – and the queen and her husband – over there – were placed next to each other in the stars.”

“Hey, that’s a good deal,” he said dryly. “Agree to sacrifice your daughter and be immortalized forever as a bunch of balls of hot, burning gas.”

She laughed quietly, and the two of them sank into companionable silence. Roy breathed deep of the cooling air, wondering how a moment like this – a moment of personal peace and relaxation – could be achieved in the middle of a warzone. He had almost no right to be lying here, calm, when tomorrow he could be sent back out with the first wave of a new attack.

He turned his head slightly, just enough so that he could see her, and watched her eyes still roaming the sky. They flitted from one group of stars to the next, trailed the lines that, of the two of them, only she could see. He could see a shadow of that young girl he’d known, had helped to figure out math homework in the dusty, close confines of her father’s personal library.

Back then, she’d had bruised and scratched-up legs from being outside every moment she could. The soles of her feet were blackened and calloused, requiring a scrub in the bathtub every night, from going barefoot in the summer heat. She had climbed trees with the best of them, swum in the small stream two hundred metres behind her house, and sat perfectly still to let a butterfly alight on the palm of her hand while he watched breathlessly.

And now she was here, with him. She wore the same uniform he did. She had the same tired, dark circles under her eyes that he did. Her hands held the same bloodstains as his… and it was all his fault. She had followed him to this place, and in doing so, he had condemned her, body and soul.

He looked away quickly; too quickly. She noticed.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” he said, casually, knowing that the answer wasn’t going to satisfy her. “Just thinking.”

A moment of silence, then, “Not thinking.” Her voice was soft, knowing and sympathetic… but unyielding. “Brooding.”

“Hm.”

Her elbow nudged his ribs. Not painfully, but enough to signal that a second nudge might not be as gentle. “Say it aloud,” she advised. “It’s not going to do you any good if it just sits and festers in your mind.”

Roy held his tongue, trying to wait her out. If he didn’t admit what he had been thinking, she couldn’t hate him for it. She couldn’t hate him for drawing her into this life, for using her father’s research the way he was. She couldn’t hate… him.

But he should have known better than to try to out-wait a sniper. Finally, after fifteen minutes of near-deafening silence, with her head turned so that her eyes were staring holes into his cheek, he let out a a deep sigh. “All right, all right, you win already. I was just… I was thinking that… I’m sorry. Sorry that I drew you into this life.”

Riza said nothing, and after several awkward seconds, he sat up, staring out at the nighttime sands. “I’m sorry that you felt you had to follow me into the military, that it got you sent here, that you’re forced into doing… what it is we do.” More long seconds of silence followed, twisting the knife of guilt a little further into his heart. “I’m so sorry, Riza. For all of it.”

“Does that include thinking so little of me that you believe I’m incapable of my own decisions?”

His head whipped around to find her still lying flat on her back in the sand, her legs crossed at the ankles, her fingers laced together and resting at the bottom of her ribcage, her eyes calm and on the stars once again. “…What?”

“What what?” she countered. “Do you honestly think that I followed you into the military because of some schoolgirl crush? Or maybe you think that you spoke so eloquently about rebuilding the country and using alchemy to help people that I just threw away whatever dreams I had of a civilian life and dashed headlong for the nearest recruitment centre?” She snorted quietly. “Give me some credit, please.”

Roy wasn’t sure what to say, either in general or that wouldn’t make her angrier than she clearly already was, so he kept his mouth shut. Riza continued. “You may have sparked the idea, pardon the pun, of joining the military, but you’re far from the reason I enlisted. I made that decision on my own, based on my own interests. Yes, that led to me being stationed out here, yes, that has led to my having to do things I regret. But in all of it – enlistment, training, being assigned to Ishval – the only point where my hand was forced is in, as you said, doing what we do.”

She got to her feet, brushing herself off. “I gave you my father’s secrets, Roy. I didn’t give you control over my actions or my life. You want to be a leader? You’d do well to remember that.”

Turning, she started back toward the nearby glow of the tents and campfires, leaving him feeling as though one of Kimblee’s explosions had gone off directly underneath him. It sank in, slowly, like ice-cold fingers, that he had probably just ruined one of two genuine friendships he had in this hellhole, and when Hughes heard about this, he could kiss the second one goodbye as well.

You idiot, his mind growled at him. Get off your ass and get after her. Don’t lose her after all you’ve been through.

Scrambling to his feet, he took off, sending sand flying. “Hawkeye, wait up!”

To his relief, she paused, half-turning to watch him approach. Her expression gave nothing away, neither anger or willingness to forgive. Roy skidded slightly as he came to a halt, swallowing hard in nervousness. “I – That was… unfair of me. I assumed a lot of things out of… of guilt, I guess, at finding you here, in a place like this. I feel….”

He struggled with the words for the moment, but she waited, hands folded, watching. “I feel… responsible for you, somehow. Your dad asked me to look after you, and up until now, I’ve done a pretty piss-poor job of that.” He ran an agitated hand through his hair, trying to figure out just how the hell expressing oneself was supposed to work. “You were right, the decisions that brought you here are yours. You’re responsible for your own life. I guess… I just feel guilty that I haven’t done more, and can’t do much, to make sure it’s a happy one.”

When it was clear his words had run out, she spoke. “Would you like to know something that does make me happy?”

He grinned lopsidedly, and only half-heartedly. “Will it make me feel less awful?”

“Maybe.” Her smile was small, knowing. “Something that makes me happy… is seeing someone receive information, and accepting that information and using it to change their outlook. To grow themselves as a person.” She tilted her head to one side, regarding him closely. “And I believe I just saw that.”

He felt it go, felt that cold ice-knife of guilt slide out of the rip it had torn into him, felt the warm, affirming words close up the wound with no blood spilled, and leave him just a little stronger.

“I’ll try to live up to that.” He glanced upward. “Maybe it’s not worth being immortalized in the stars, but it ought to count for something.”

Her fingers brushed, feather-light, against his and then withdrew. “It already counts for a lot.”

———————-

He remembered thinking “oh, good, that’s the last of it” before catching a faint whiff of charred skin, and having to turn away to be violently sick. The tent was too confined, too dark, too oppressively hot all at once, and yet his pulse roared in his ears, spots of light swam in his vision, and a deep chill ran through him.

He spat the foul taste of bile from his mouth, glancing back over her shoulder.

Riza was on her knees, crouched low, her forehead pressed to the sandy ground that served as a floor. He could hear her breathing, the sound coming in sharp hisses around the leather belt clamped between her teeth. Her right hand, the only one he could readily see, slowly clenched and unclenched, compressing and flattening the same palmful of grit over and over.

His voice was hoarse when he spoke. “Hawkeye?”

Her hand froze, then reached with agonizing slowness to the belt and pulled it from her mouth. “Bottom of my kit,” she gritted. “Small white bottle. Get it.”

Roy’s stomach rolled as he moved to do as she said, but he swallowed hard and kept whatever was left in his stomach down. Wriggling a hand through the various articles in her pack, down to the bottom, he fished about until he found something that felt like a bottle. It rattled as he brought it out.

“Pain pills?” he asked, turning toward her.

“For… you know.” She had shifted so that she was sitting, though she was still bent forward. Her cheeks, ashen until now, coloured slightly. “For… ‘women’s troubles?’”

He looked at the label again, read the active ingredient in the medication, and the dosage, his brain feeling fuzzy and sluggish. “…Damn, it hurts bad enough for extra-strength?”

She held out her hand, crooking her fingers impatiently. “Dealing with that means I can deal with this,” she said, just a little sharply. “Two should help.”

“Right, sorry.” He noticed, belatedly, that his fingers were shaking as he twisted the cap off the bottle. The little white tablets inside rattled even harder as he eased a pair of them from the container and passed them to her, watching in dull surprise as she dry-swallowed them, one by one.

He had a sneaking suspicion he was in shock. The one rational part of his brain could realize that. The confusion, the cold sweat, the tent seeming to tilt one way then another around him… all signs pointed to it. He should tell Riza, tell her so that when he most likely passed out, she would know why. It seemed only polite.

She was sitting calm and collected, her eyes closed, taking deep breaths in through her nose and out through her mouth. Maybe he should try that. Mimic her, and in doing so, find some kind of emotional anchor in this storm of emotion.

It hit him again. What had he done? To her, to one of the single most important people in his life, to the quiet girl and stoic woman whom – he had to admit – he had somehow fallen head over heels for? He had marked her. He had marred her. She had been perfect and whole and now —

He watched as she gathered the tan overcoat of her uniform to her chest, apparently realized rather belatedly that she was sitting in the dark without any sort of covering up top. She hugged the fabric, looking his direction… and stopped. “…What?”

“…Can you forgive me for this?”

Brown eyes, dulled slightly by the pain, stared at him for a long moment. Then, quietly, “Roy, I asked you for this. I asked you to destroy it.”

“I didn’t. Destroy it, I mean. Not all of it.” Her eyes flashed with hot anger in the darkness and he scrambled to explain himself. “Riza, I couldn’t! I don’t care how strong you are, that much would…. Even if I held back the most I could, it’d kill you. You can’t go to the medics with this, you know you can’t. They’ll ask too many questions. If I burned that tattoo in its entirety, you’d go into shock and you’d die. Hell, I’m in shock and all I did was snap my fingers!”

Her eyes still smoldered, unrelenting. “So then how —“

“The parts I burnt are absolutely vital to understanding everything else. They tie it all together,” he explained. “It’s… it was surgical, I guess. Precision shots. Without those three spots, the rest is next to useless.”

She was quiet for several beats, then murmured, “Precision shots…. Like a sniper.” The heat was gone from her eyes, the glare fading. “I’m…. I can still be my own person.”

“You always have been.” The smile he offered was nowhere near strong enough to be genuine, but it was a valiant try. “You’re the smartest, strongest, most independent, self-reliant, quick-witted person I know. I’d keep going with adjectives, because I know there’s at least three dozen more, but I can’t think of them.” He closed his eyes, willing the tent to stop spinning, or at least to spin a little less violently. “I want that for you, I want you to have that freedom to be yourself because if any of us deserves to come out of this place with even half a chance, it’s you. It’s you and Hughes.”

“You’re leaving somebody out,” she prodded gently.

He shook his head. “I don’t think you realize how badly this place has hit home for me. I said I wanted to help people, but… I think I’ve got an entire nation – and any others we’re fighting with – to help. I’m not dragging you two into that. Hughes has that girlfriend of his to go home to, you’ve got the rest of your life in front of you.”

“You’re right on that, but wrong on another thing.”

His eyes opened just in time for her to press a soft kiss to his cheek, her hand folding around his. “I’m not leaving here without you.” The words were soft, but anchored stolidly in conviction. “You’ve got big dreams for this country… and thanks to you, so do I. And you’re going to need help to make those happen.”

———————-

His eyes snapped open to darkness, but it wasn’t the darkness of lying on the sand under an Ishvalan sky. Instead, only the whitewashed ceiling stared back at him. The sheets were tangled around his legs, some faint draft turning the sheen of a light sweat icy against his bare chest. Even that did nothing to dispel the summer warmth permeating the apartment.

Nights like this often brought the past back to him in dreams. Sometimes pleasant, more often not. But more and more frequently in the not-too-distant past, it had become much easier to handle.

The reason why was sprawled next to him, her hair lying half on her pillow and half on his, one hand beneath the pillow and the other curled to her chest, her dog draped over one extended leg, and her mouth open just enough for the faintest of snores to issue forth.

Turning onto his side, Roy slid an arm around Riza’s waist, tugging her close against him. If she only knew that she became as un-Riza-like as physically possible while she slept…. He suspected she would find that potentially embarrassing, but he loved it. Hell, he loved her.

And, in the end, that was the miracle balm for any wound, no matter how far in the past or near the present it was.

[indiaalphawhiskey]

When you see this, post a snippet of your WIP.

Apparently, Louis’ album release news and a new Harry song are all I need to get shoved out of my writers’ block. I love Larry. Bow. - Where one type of discomfort ended, a second set of nerves began. They danced from the tips of Louis’ fingers, up his arms to his neck, leaving his mind whirring, completely wired. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done a reading – thought it may have been sometime in the early months of grad school, when his work was disastrously unpolished and bursting to the brim with overly pretentious, nonsensical metaphors. Needless to say, that day did not go well. Now, Louis couldn’t remember a single line of the assignment he’d read out loud. All he remembered was a devastatingly beautiful, painfully talented, way-too-intelligent-for-him boy in a tattered The Cure shirt calling his protagonist ‘a reject from the dregs of one of Salinger’s primary school papers’. Said boy had graciously offered to take him out on a date as soon as the bell had rung, completely oblivious to the fact that Louis had felt like he was slowly dying from humiliation with every second he stood in that classroom. Still, like the smitten fool that Louis was, he’d agreed. “Idiot,” he cursed at himself quietly, shaking his head as he walked to the podium. He tried desperately to shake off the memory as he stepped onto the elevated platform, No Control’s spine cracking open satisfyingly like a physical reminder of how far he’d come since that class, and that relationship. He looked up and found the crowd had gone quiet with polite interest. Pockets of people beamed up at him, clutching their copies of his book to their chest and balancing themselves on the edge of their seats. At the back of the crowd, wedged in between the book display and a group of men wearing No Control t-shirts, stood Marcel. Louis balked slightly at the realization that he had left his seat on stage and walked into the crowd to… what? Heckle Louis? Even considering their less-than-amicable relationship, that seemed unlikely. And also, whatever. Louis didn’t have the time to dwell on that right now, anyway. He coughed away from the mic before smiling at the crowd. “Good afternoon everyone,” he began, his tone firm but gentle. “I’m Louis William Tomlinson, and I’ll be reading you an excerpt from my best-selling debut novel No Control.”

The audience clapped, a few excited whistles rising above the sound, but Louis kept his eyes on Marcel, using his familiar face as a grounding point. He only broke eye contact to read the familiar paragraph of text before him. “It was hot. Loathe as Zee was to admit it, a part of him had not been expecting it. Or maybe he had been hoping – after all the overconfident drivel HQ had spouted about these state-of-the-art, acclimatizing space suits – that he wouldn’t feel it. Surprise, surprise – he did. It was a different kind of hot though. Different in comparison to what, he couldn’t really tell you, couldn’t… what did the doctor call it? Couldn’t ‘remember’? There was something attached to that word that felt wrong, made his mind feel restless and incomplete. He could see the way the doctor had paled when he’d said it, the way he’d stammered, like he was desperate to snatch the word back from the air and hide it, so Zee would never hear it again. Whatever, Zee thought. The point was, it was fucking hot...” Louis lost himself in his own words, and in the memories attached to this paragraph in particular. He could almost see the garrish purple pen his ex-boyfriend had used, the jagged hatch marks he’d all but stabbed into Louis’ manuscript across long-forgotten sentences he’d hated, the tiny green post-its with stars on them to mark the parts Louis could keep. It made him laugh now, how desperately he’d lived for those post-its. As he came to the last line of the passage, he looked up to find Marcel again. He could see Marcel’s mouth moving, but he wasn’t quite sure what he was trying to say. He peered at him intently, confused. The shapes Marcel’s mouth were making were… familiar. It almost felt like his and Louis’ syllables were matched. Louis’s eyes widened slightly when it finally clicked, the two of them uttering Louis’ last seven words completely in sync: “And, Zee knew, Mars was home now.” Marcel was reciting a passage from No Control… by heart. It took everything in Louis to stop his mouth from popping open in shock, the gravity of his realization still evading him, dancing around his mind just a notch out of his reach. Marcel – Marcel Pain-in-the-Arse-Since-the-Day-They-Met Styles, that Marcel – was a fan. His fan. And not just any old fan, either, it seemed. No, Marcel was a fan with a capital F, a read-your-book-multiple-times fan, a quote-you-back-to-yourself fan. “Oh,” Louis breathed, just shy of bewildered as the full weight of it finally hit him. “Oh.” The gentle round of applause coaxed him back to attention. He smiled softly at the crowd, and then ducked his head quickly to hide the mischievous smile he knew he was wearing, his mind doing ecstatic cartwheels at the thought of how much fun he was going to have with this brand new information. Angela’s voice was like white noise to Louis as she recited her spiel about the mechanics of the Q and A, but he made sure to keep his eyes trained on the crowd even as Marcel slipped back into the seat beside him. Louis counted out three… four… five beats before Marcel noticed the the smug-as-fuck smile on his face. “Why do you look like you stole all the cafe’s muffins?” Marcel asked, his voice wary around the lip of his water bottle. “Mm?” Louis hummed, his smile never wavering. The too-innocent, overly saccharine ‘Whatever do you mean?’ went unsaid. Marcel pursed his lips but said nothing, dead set on pretending he wasn’t the least bit interested, though the flicker of his jaw gave him away. Louis revelled in the taut string of tension being pulled tight and thin between them, his smile widening ever so slightly as the words rolled, honeyed and delicious, off of his tongue. “You’re a fan,” he all but giggled, finally turning to face Marcel. He watched gleefully as Marcel’s flush went from a gentle pink to burning red when he added, “A fan of me.” Louis grinned wide, relishing in the nervous way Marcel’s Adam’s apple bobbed – the only physical sign that Louis had him cornered. Marcel opened his mouth, a tiny, aborted, half-syllable slipping out before a switch seemed to flip, his shoulders going square and strong as he lifted eyes to meet Louis’ gaze head on in challenge. “Your book,” he said, tone bored and flippant. “I’m a fan of your book,” he corrected, and Louis might’ve been inclined to believe him, if only he wasn’t still such a sweet, sweet shade of bright fucking crimson. Louis’ smile turned easy as he shrugged. “Whatever you say, darling,” he sang over his shoulder, making a show of batting his eyelashes, slow, and coquettish, and ridiculous. He chose to ignore the way Marcel’s eyes flickered, fierce and green, but he couldn’t stifle the small zip of lightning the heated look sent up his spine.