#especially historically but also today that shit is expensive

[raspberry-gloaming]

When you really want to talk about your fix it au for a series, but not only is there no fandom for it, but the only person active on tumblr even related to it and a nonexistant fandom is the author herself.

[fallowhearth]

Not going to participate in any of the main threads, but my feeling is that pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding are really the least of my problems when it comes to the prospect of having children.

People's unwillingness to have children now has to at least partly be because of the modern expectations for childrearing, right? Like, parents are expected to spend so much more time with their children than at probably any other point at history. And it's never been harder to offload them for long stretches of time!

Even within my own life, there's been a noticeable shift. For comparison, in my 90s childhood, I spent a lot of time as part of a roaming pack of kids on our quiet urban street. There were quite a few families with similarly aged children; our houses were close by and everyone knew each other. We'd play on the street, in someone's backyard, in someone's house. At most points none of our parents knew where exactly we were. They knew we were somewhere. And if they did want to track us down, they could do so quickly. (Shockingly, they did not track us down often. Our presence was actually not that vital most of the time.) We weren't even restricted only to our parents - for example, there was an older couple without kids on our street and they had a pool (!) which we were allowed to swim in sometimes. That was a treat!

There are even now people who culturally are more likely to send kids to live with a relative for a while. Casting a wider net, historically it's been pretty common for children to be mostly unsupervised - or communally supervised, in a general sense. Or if you were wealthy enough, you'd pay other people to look after your children, from wetnurses, governesses, tutors, etc. If you were a working household your kids would have tasks to do, but otherwise their time would be their own. It's also been pretty common to send children to stay with wealthier relatives as servants, or to related households needing extra hands for whatever reason. Your extended family could care for your kids. Or you could pack them off to boarding school (like my dad was, in the 60s).

It's pretty unusual that now we insist children need to live in a house with their parents and nobody else, and that their parents need to be actively entertaining them for all hours they aren't sleeping. The US has always been more intense about supervision, but even in Australia a roaming pack of kids would be expected to have at least one parent with eyes on them, today. Kids are annoying, exhausting, and frequently disgusting. They just need more time and attention than even two people can reasonably give. Especially if those two people also work full-time.

That's not even to go into the fact that children are so expensive. You're expected to buy so much shit. I can just about pay my own way through life - there's nothing left over for freeloaders!

Of course I'm not making any argument about what is better, here. That's not my point. I'm not particularly interested in that question, in the context of this post. Simply that the calculus of parenthood has shifted and is unlikely to shift back.

[mermaidsirennikita]

Do you have favorite romance covers?

What do you think of the covers nowadays? I see the one from the historical romance were painted and beautiful and look at the ones we have now...they are not even well done pictures

Edit: omg I got so aggressively bitchy I forgot to mention my favorites lmaoooo TYPICAL

I love a Lindsey cover. Silver Angel, Defy Not the Heart, Tender is the Storm all come to mind. Any naked man cover.

I love the original cover for Indigo by Beverly Jenkins.

I LOVE the original cover for A Knight in Shining Armor by Jude Deveraux, that shit fucks so hard.

I love the original covers for A Hunger Like No Other and Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night by Kresley Cole. Those are both werewolf books, and damn if it doesn't look like those guys are about to literally eat their heroines alive.

I have a lot of issues with covers, both as someone who enjoys art and as a creative who works with creatives.

So first off--outright, I hate AI covers. I do not automatically jump to blaming authors, especially trad authors. Trad published authors usually don't have the final say on their covers. And even when they do have influence (which is typically restricted, beyond a bare "what do you like?" to big names) they aren't usually instructing "and use this graphic designer" this artist, etc. They don't have that kind of power. I don't think that most of them know AI is being used for their covers until they know.

And even indie authors, I don't want to automatically assume are using AI. There have been vocal AI defenders out there (Kerrigan Byrne, Elsie Silver, though I don't know if either has used AI covers yet). But I'll be real, I know that the vast majority of indie authors outsource, and there have absolutely been cases in the past in which authors have been tricked by designers or cover manufacturers. I can think of one such case in which Laura Thalassa, a fairly known indie author at the time, found out after the fact that her cover designer had reused or stolen a cover that was already sold to a different author. She had to replace the cover. That wasn't her fault. I don't expect authors to know AI off the bat, either. I am fairly certain that there are designers and manufacturers passing off AI covers to authors who don't know any better.

I absolutely know there are authors intentionally using AI for covers, and not only does it create a poorer quality product--it deprives creatives of jobs and also often steals from existing imagery without compensating the original artists.

ANYWAY. That aside, I generally am disappointed with a lot of book covers today, and not just with historicals. Obviously, I prefer the old school stepbacks with painted covers and the gorgeous work of artists like Robert McGinnis and Pino. I majored in art history; I love art; I think romance novel covers are so unique and have their own special space, and I think that we are absolutely losing that art form, and it makes me sad. I love stepbacks, I miss stepbacks. I collect old school covers. I don't think we will ever get those back, because publishing is so dominated by capitalism and it is obviously more expensive to make those covers.

(I'll also add--paranormal romances used to have some killer illustrated covers too, which have been replaced by more digital, photoshop heavy covers. Take a look at the original A Hunger Like No Other cover. SO GOOD.)

But even the digital photographic stepback and covers are fading out, and I'm sad about that too. I really dislike these cartoonified covers from authors like Evie Dunmore (Tessa Dare and Suzanne Enoch have also been getting cartoonified covers or re-covers). I hate them for contemporaries, too. Like, I would take a million covers with shirtless guys on them versus the cartoony covers. I think the cartoony covers are confusing, they make it difficult to know a book's heat level, and they express a level of shame about the genre that I can't get behind.

Like, honestly? If you're that embarrassed to be reading romance a) do you really love romance or b) use your e-reader or audiobooks. I don't get this concept of like... hiding what you're reading from the world.

So yeah, I have an issue with current cover trends visually, ethically, morally, and like... societally lmao

[murderturtles]

Okay this is actually pissing me off so let’s have a chat about the internet and specifically Americans on it

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. A city I grew up not far from at all, about an hour’s drive. It’s the third-largest metropolitan area in Canada and has the highest population density in the country, as well as the fourth-highest in North America. It’s the largest city in British Columbia. As of 2021 it’s home to 662,248 people. It’s known as “Hollywood North” due to its huge involvement in the North American film industry, and is well-known even among the most prolific names in the business. Vancouver has played other cities countless times in movies. It’s one of the most expensive places to live on the planet.

Vancouver, Washington, USA is a suburb in Portland. While also quite large and fairly populous, it has about a sixth of the population of its namesake to the north. Its economy is based around trade with Portland. Historically it relied heavily on the fur trade, specifically the Hudson’s Bay Company, which had swallowed a massive chunk of land around the titular Hudson’s Bay known as Rupert’s Land. The HBC exists today as an American-owned Canadian chain department store, and is one of the oldest companies in the continent that’s still operating.

Now. This is neither a history lesson nor an expression of nationalistic or patriotic fervour. I didn’t even get into the fucked up pasts surrounding the HBC and the gold rush that brought everyone over to set up Fort Vancouver in the first place. I’m pointing out that of the two cities, it’s fairly obvious which one people usually talk about. And the confusion isn’t bad, but it allows me to point out an inherent problem.

Americans continually forget that Canada exists, except to laugh at our PM when he does something they think is suitably appalling. People who aren’t American, ESPECIALLY on the internet, are expected to know everything about American politics, and geography, and culture, and Americans love assuming that everyone is also American (or if you spell words with extra “u”s, you’re British).

I’m supposed to know shit about Ohio and Tennessee and Rhode Island when 90% of people on this website couldn’t tell me how many provinces we have or what our capital is. Most CANADIANS know more about America than we know about ourselves, and that ignorance can be dangerous when it comes to election season.

The expectation that if you’re not from the US, you need to shut up and cater to those who are, to bend over backwards to not confuse them or alienate them, to push yourself out of the equation to let them in. And if you’re American, fuck if you need to give a shit about all these little countries who don’t even have nukes.

To be clear, Canada as a nation kisses America’s ass CONSTANTLY. We have to. They’re our biggest trade partner. If we fuck up IR there’s not much we can do.

But we are on the internet. We do get wifi in our backwaters that apparently nobody needs to think about.

Just remember that not everyone online is American, and you’re allowed to pull your head out of your ass and think about other people sometimes. Not sure how we get overlooked so much, we’re pretty big on the fucking map.

[captain-kit-adventuress]

Note: I'm not trying to prove myself "right," I'm not sure there is any way to actually do so, but I think this is a fascinating conversation and wanted to add my two cents!

I don't think it's as far off as maybe one might assume. If one uses the US Bureau of Labour Statistics' CPI Inflation Calculator, that number will take inflation in account, of course, but also the Consumer Price Index. Unfortunately, it only goes back to 1913, but that's because we don't have as reliable of income records before then–1913 was the first year income taxes were standardised across the US; before that it was pretty haphazard and very geography-dependent.

According to the calculator, $20 in Jan 1913 USD is the equivalent of $629.42 in Jan 2024 USD. Even taking into account a 7-10 year timing difference, It still may be a bit off, because inflation is always an average to begin with, and an index is a complicated bit of averaging as well, so both of those are subject to the same sorts of flaws any average is subject to, like outliers, population densities, etc. Or like, the fact that the US wouldn't even have all of the current states until 1950 so the data would still be expanding at that point. So there are issues, yes, but I think it's probably as representative as mathematics and incomplete pricing records can make it.

I would also argue, for example, that the suits being sold in 1904-06 were probably a lot nicer than a $600 suit of today. So the price maybe isn't comparable, but is the quality? A quick search leads me to see that an absolute clearance Brooks Brothers suit, originally just shy of $1,300, is now selling for $699. That doesn't include finished sleeves or hems–though that makes sense–and I can't seem to find whether or not alterations are included in the purchase price or not. However, that's for off-the-rack suiting. For a completely bespoke suit, it starts at $1,000, roughly, and again I don't know if that includes the labour or not. How close to Brooks Brothers would, say, a department-store suit have been, in terms of comparable quality? Or even just your average tailor if you went that route?

(From what I can see, the off-the-rack stuff at BB, in some cases, may use what I believe is fusible interfacing (I only have marketing puffery to extrapolate from) which is not exactly what I would consider a high-quality material but I'm also not a sewist of any kind, I just know some basics. And those buttons definitely looked plastic because you can bet they'd talk it up if they were anything nicer.)

Then there's the idea that these indices and comparable historical price lists were made at a time when the general pricing of, say, grocery items vs clothing vs anything was so, so different from today. That rule about rent taking up no more than 1/3 of your monthly income? Probably applicable in 1904-06, not so much today. Food, I think, would have been a lot more expensive then, as a sort of ratio of [expense] to monthly income, especially items like meat and dairy, but we would consider it dirt-cheap by just the amount.

*shrug* pricing in any era is an art, not a science.

Whatever the actual value of the food, I think we can all agree that's a shit-ton of ham and eggs lol.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, Pennsylvania, July 29, 1904

[depressoexpresso-anon]

Ok, so this is gonna be part 2 of my YV headcanons. These are gonna be mostly about Faust, Auron, and Charlie! These are also sfw and nsfw.

I'm not doing a lot of faust because Tumblr is doing a dumb and I deleting my shit. I'm so tired of trying to rewright what I originally put down so later on I'll just edit it to have more headcanons for him soon.

AGAIN THESE ARE MY OWN PERSONAL HEADCANONS! NONE OF THESE ARE CANNON! ALSO NOT PROOF READ

Faust

Material gurl all the way

Spoiled his whole life and will spoil you too

He probably lives in the hotel complex that he owns

He was kinda the golden child growing up and he would always get what he wants

He was very popular at school because he had money and that's it

People in high school would go to him for tarot and palm readings

He likes stray animals and cats a lot

He would love to have a pet crow

Don't ask him why he just wants it

Auron

Super big nerd when he was younger

Probably a Potter head

He would get picked on by Faust often because he was a big bookworm as a kid and still is now

But he mostly read historic books and biographys

Especially biographies about some of his clients

He was a happy go lucky kid till his dad died

Then when he died it kinda shaped him into what he is now

He became more quiet and cold

We found out today that Trish was his nanny and was probably hired for extra help with the boys

Trish became like another mother to Auron and was closer to her then his mom

Even though he has mountains of money he's a penny pincher

He likes to save and hold onto money

He only spends it on expensive necessities

He definitely went to a well educated private school

He was the quiet kid but the kid who everyone went to for help with homework

He would probably run a business by doing peoples homework for them

Like 10 bucks a page

When he's stressed he turns to alcohol

Mostly drinks expensive whisky and wine

Probably even owns his own wine celler

He may have developed a defined taste in wine because his mom would let him have small sips of hers

He has a addiction to power and control

I can see him as being more of a Mr. Grey type of guy when it comes to sex

Fully into BDSM and he has to be in control

Maybe even owns a apartment just for sex

The Red Apartment???

Definitely likes it when you dry hump his leg while he degrades you

Will call you all kinds of degrading names but his fav is either slut or cunt

Has a Sir, Mister, or Professor kink but he doesn't fuck with the Daddy kink

His cock would have to be 6 ½ or 7 ½ inches with a thick base but a large head

He will use you and just go to sleep

NO AFTERCARE AFTER SEX ONLY SLEEP

He likes to have his hair pulled but never discovered it until you pulled his hair and he moaned very loud

He said to never to do or discuss it until he processed what happened and if he allows you to

He used to smoke cigarettes but he quit smoking

He has a soft spot for animals and he used to have a Saint Bernard as a little little kid

He's a bit of a foodie but will never admit it

He says that his body is a temple and he must treat it right and not eat garbage food

I feel like trish would be more of a aunt mom

Like the person who isn't quick to anger or disabling but, listens to their side of the story and points out the wrong and the right while giving the best advice, she can give

He mostly gives gifts to show his love

He's not a big touchy-feely type

He doesn't like children and will never want children

He works too damn hard and he doesn't have time for a child

Probably had a vasectomy done just in case

He hates lying and will DESTROY anyone who lies to him

So he will always tell you the truth even if it hurts you

If he's needy he will bend you over his desk and fuck you silly

When he's stressed or when the city is too loud for his liking he will put on a few jazz records to help him relax a bit

He likes jazz music a lot because it's what he grew up to

When he was a little boy his mom would put on a jazz record and dance around the kitchen with him standing on the tops of her feet

Charlie

Trumpet kid

He still has his trumpet tucked away in the back of Jesse's apartment

He sees Jesse as a very scary mom

Like he is scared of everything but she's super intimidating

He probably lives at 711

Like I won't be surprised if he baught all of his groceries from 711

He would be one those kids that followed the crowd

Was part of the weird kid group in high school

I like to imagine him living in the slums and the poverty-ridden part of the city with only his mom

He was the kid who would have straight A's in school to make his mom proud and worry free

Since he lived in the slums he found out quickly that he could sell drugs for a good amount of cash

So to try to help with the bills he dropped out of school and started to sell full time

Once his mother heard about this she quickly kicked him out and disowned him because of this

So he went and lived with the fang after that

He is very clingy to you

He has to be around you 25/8 because he's afraid that you'll leave

He does his own piercings and he does yours too

Once he baught a tattoo gun and you and him give each other small tattoos that only the two of you can find

Has a insanely high matabalisum like Alphonse but instead of eating sweets he eats more disgusting junk food

Like he can and had ate a full can of cheese but not with anything.... Just the cheese

Once you caught him eating a cold hot dog that he got from 711 a few days ago

He's disgusting but you love him

If he's ever in trouble he'll run to you for help

He will use you as a human shield

100% a switch

He is a gentle dom and doesn't like to get too aggressive with you

He gets self-conscious about his body and his size so you have to reassure him sometimes

His cock is 5½ inches long with a wide flat head

He also has one of those thick extremely hard veins that goes from the base to the tip

He still fantasies about Al and Seth sometimes but he would never tell you

He has a spitting and cum kink because of the bittersweet lovers

Once he got tied up and watched Al sucked Seth off in front of him

When Seth came in Al's mouth he walked over to Charlie forced his mouth open and spat the cum and spit mixture in his mouth and made him swallow

He had very kinky sex with those two

He also likes to feel full so when you're not home he'll fuck himself with a squirting dildo and fill himself up with fake cum

He likes gangbangs and he would love to have a threesum with you

He will gladly eat your creampie like a starving animal

He loves to lay on your chest and sleep while you both watch a stupid movie

Loves rom-coms for some reason

He also sometimes has unholy thoughts about the milf with the milkers that he shares a home with

Still likes to play with toys and he would happily build a lego castle with you

Once he woke you up with a nerf gun and he almost saw god that day

He likes to either fuck you or give you oral while you sleep

It just has to do with your sleepy moans that get him off

He loves cheese and he honestly can't live without it

Like anything that has cheese on it he will eat it

Even though he hates it he gets embarrassed when you call him your little mouse

Really likes to watch old 80's movies and play shitty vintage video games with you

He doesn't do the drugs that he sells but he does weed

He doesn't smoke it because the first time he tried he nearly died so he sticks with cookies and Brownies

Once he did shrooms and he swore in that day that he will never do it again

He said it was like being cannibalized by satan and being a cow at the same time

Has the very shitty anime printed sweatshirts you can buy off of Facebook

As a kid, he would try to stay up late to watch Toonami but would always fall asleep before any anime would play

As a kid, he would probably knew all of the illegal websites where you can watch free movies and tv and download videos and music

Likes to wear your shirts with his boxers and he just sleeps in it

He watches horror movies only to prove that he's not a pussy

He loves the cow lingerie and wants to buy it for you

If you both have a kid it would probably be an accident or you find a kid abandoned on the street and took them in

He would be so scared if he was a dad

He would be paranoid about accidentally killing his kid

Like he holds them wrong and their neck goes yeet

Would not like to hold his kid until they were a few weeks old

He would rant about how scam movies were doing it wrong

He's kinda like the kid from birds of prey

Low key wants to be a skater boy

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Ad-tech is a bezzle

There are lots of problems with ad-tech:

being spied on all the time means that the people of the 21st century are less able to be their authentic selves;

any data that is collected and retained will eventually breach, creating untold harms;

data-collection enables for discriminatory business practices ("digital redlining");

the huge, tangled hairball of adtech companies siphons lots (maybe even most) of the money that should go creators and media orgs; and

anti-adblock demands browsers and devices that thwart their owners' wishes, a capability that can be exploited for even more nefarious purposes;

That's all terrible, but it's also IRONIC, since it appears that, in addition to everything else, ad-tech is a fraud, a bezzle.

Bezzle was John Kenneth Galbraith's term for "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it." That is, a rotten log that has yet to be turned over.

Bezzles unwind slowly, then all at once. We've had some important peeks under ad-tech's rotten log, and they're increasing in both intensity and velocity. If you follow Aram Zucker-Scharff, you've had a front-row seat to the fraud.

https://twitter.com/Chronotope/status/1078003966863200256

Time and again, everything in the ad-tech stack has been demonstrated to be fraudulent: fake audiences firing fake clicks at fake videos on fake sites that suck real dollars out of advertisers' accounts.

This was masterfully elucidated in Tim Hwang's short 2020 book SUBPRIME ATTENTION CRISIS, whose thesis is: we must deflate the ad-tech bubble intentionally, lest we get a messy rupture that destroys many of the good things the parasite has colonized.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#wannamakers-ghost

The ad-tech fraud is many-layered. On the surface, there's the counting frauds: fake clicks, fake sites, fake videos, etc. But there's a deeper fraud, a theory fraud, the fraud that with enough surveillance data and machine learning, ad-tech can sell anyone anything.

That is: even if we count accurately, ads are still overvalued and underperforming. This is also a lesson whose examples are coming with increasing tempo, as when Ebay simply stopped buying Google search ads and saw NO decrease in sales.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/06/surveillance-tulip-bulbs/#adtech-bubble

In a piece for Forbes, marketer-turned-antifraud-auditor Dr Augustine Fou rounds up some of the grossest things festering under the ad-tech log.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/augustinefou/2021/01/02/when-big-brands-stopped-spending-on-digital-ads-nothing-happened-why/?sh=5a4f9c9a1166

Like that time in 2018 when Procter and Gamble - inventors of "brand marketing" - turned off $200m worth of ad-tech buys and saw no change to their sales. Or when Chase killed 95% of its advertising and kept all of its business.

Most interesting is the tale of how Uber allowed itself to be defrauded of $150m/year, for years, by ad-tech intermediaries. It's a story told in detail by former Uber head of "performance marketing" Kevin Frisch on the Marketing Today podcast:

https://www.marketingtodaypodcast.com/194-historic-ad-fraud-at-uber-with-kevin-frisch/

It starts with the revelation that $50m of its annual spend on customer acquisitions - money paid when an ad leads to a new Uber customer downloading the app, entering payment details and taking their first ride - was fraudulent.

Here's how that worked: scummy marketers fielded low-quality apps (like battery monitors) that requested root access. These apps spied on every app you installed. If you installed Uber, they "fired a click" to the system to report you as having been "converted" by an ad.

After clearing $50m of fraud, Frisch continued to dig into the system. In the end, about $120m of the $150m was being stolen, pocketed for fake clicks on fake sites by fake users.

In a fascinating turn, Frisch describes how his colleagues were indifferent or actively hostile to his efforts. Uber was in "growth mode," trying to beef up its numbers prior to the IPO where suckers would relieve its Saudi royal investors.

Uber is a company that will never, ever be profitable. It, too, is a bezzle. It only "works" if outside investors - marks - can somehow be convinced to buy the insiders' stock, which requires the appearance of growth - AKA "A pile of shit this big MUST have a pony under it!"

So execs like Frisch were required to "spend to budget" - to maintain the appearance of growth, including (especially) the growth of its "precision analytics" marketing, where ad-tech spends turned into directly attributable customer acquisitions.

This is the story that keeps on giving, because it all starts with Sleeping Giant's campaign to force Uber to stop advertising on Breitbart, and Uber's inability to get its ad-tech "partners" to definitively switch off Breitbart ads.

https://twitter.com/nandoodles/status/1345774768746852353

The system's layers of misdirection - there to hide the fraud - meant that it behaved nondeterministically and couldn't fulfil simple requests, which triggered the search.

There's a theory that the reason Big Tech spies on us so much is that they're really good at turning data into sales (and, by extension, influence, as in elections, referenda, etc). But it is increasingly apparent that Big Tech's spying is part of a bezzle.

That is, we're being surveilled, doxed, placed under automated suspicion and digitally discriminated against all to put on a show that separates marks from their dollars.

This is the theme of my 2020 book HOW TO DESTROY SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM:

https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

Namely, that we are under constant surveillane because monopolies can get away with obviously fraudulent and dangerous conduct by mobilizing their monopoly profits to buy political outcomes that serve their ends.

This is also what happened with California's Proposition 22, the most expensive ballot initiative in US history: Uber didn't spearhead a $200m campaign to legalize worker misclassification to become profitable.

Uber will never be profitable.

All that money was spent to maintain the fiction, the fraud, the bezzle - it was an appeal to rescue the wholly fictional pony underneath that gigantic pile of shit.

[hermannsthumb]

From horny twitter: Hermann writes a very very detailed review of a vibrator online

not sfw below cut!!!!!!!!!!! 

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

Now, usually, Newt doesn’t mess around when he’s on the clock, because that’d be very unprofessional of him and that’s totally not who he is, but he’s in a little bit of a rut with his current project and could use the distraction. Online shopping is his favorite go-to distraction these days: he can lose himself in size charts and color options and hunts for coupon codes and forget, even for a few minutes, that the end of the world is accelerating towards them at an intimidating rate. Plus, he can write off half his shit as work-related expenses. Win-win. Though maybe not this particular search.

Newt has a pretty reliable arsenal of sex toys he’s used on rotation since he packed up and shipped across the world for the PPDC, but the ten-year warranty vibe he’s used since PhD #3 (and his favorite of the bunch) finally crapped out on him last week after a historically intense fight with Hermann got him historically wound up. Eleven years ain’t bad. After testing out a different charger, poking around in the wiring, and even going so far as to zap it a few times with some sorta-stolen drift tech to see if it stirred any life back into it, he finally decided it was time to just mourn, move on, and buy a new one. (Even if, unfortunately, his particular favorite model was discontinued when the company’s factory was destroyed in a kaiju attack and they never quite managed to recover. More casualties of the war.)

The sex toy market is truthfully booming during the apocalypse. It makes sense, Newt guesses—anything for a distraction. Personally, for Newt, orgasms tend to dampen his own existential dread, even if it’s just for a few minutes. He scrolls idly through a few Top Ten For 2023 listicles on various sex magazine websites to see if anything jumps out at him (some of the recommended toys are dildos he already has, and vibes that are a little beyond his k-sci paycheck), just hoping for something to jump out at him. Apparently he missed out on a limited-edition run of jaeger and kaiju-themed vibes and dildos that came out in early January, which he’s honestly a little pissed about—he’s the top expert on kaiju biology, god damn it! Didn’t anyone want to consult with him about their hypothetical junk? Accuracy matters.

“It’s all off,” Newt mutters grumpily as he examines a 360 view of one of the kaiju dildos. Trespasser. “It’s not even the right color. Fucking amateurs. Did they even try?”

“What are you doing?” Hermann says.

Newt slams his laptop shut. Hermann decided to cut his lunch break short today, apparently. “Shopping,” he says.

“You sounded awfully angry about something, is all,” Hermann says. He clacks over to his half of the lab and shrugs off his big parka, then pauses. “Do you need to...talk about it?”

“No,” Newt says.

Hermann breathes out in obvious relief. “Good,” he says.

He takes his usual spot at his chalkboard and resumes his calculating. Newt re-opens his laptop and scrolls away from Trespasser before he can make himself angry over anatomical inaccuracies again. The jaeger vibes from the collection are pretty cool, actually; the designs are a lot cleaner, and their artistic license is a lot more forgivable. The highest-rated of the set is one obviously (but not enough to invoke copyright infringement, if that can even exist for a jaeger) modeled off of Coyote Tango, with like, a million different settings, and an astronomical cost to match. Newt eyes it enviously. He could be shoving that up his ass right now if he’d just signed up for a stupid email list last year.

He follows the link to Amazon to read through some of the reviews enviously, too. Life-changing; best money ever spent; warranty lasts a lifetime. Ten stars across the board. Sold out, obviously. No idea when it’ll be back in stock. He could get the Striker Eureka model for twice the original cost as when it came out, if he wanted, but the idea of constantly having to associate the twenty-something punk Hansen kid with his intimate affairs makes him shudder.

A nine-star review for the Coyote Tango model from someone named MathLover69 is the only one to make Newt really pause, on account of how absolutely insane it is.

I saved quite a few paychecks to purchase this vibrator, and though the cost is steep, I must say it is absolutely worth it. As opposed to my normal vibrator (here another vibe is linked, and Newt’s eyebrows jump at that price, too), which has only five settings, an admittedly bulky body, and average battery life, the CT2023 has a generous ten, a sleeker design, and charges fully in a matter of minutes. The orgasms I have experienced while using it are higher in quality (and more numerous) than any resulting previously from masturbation, though I have not tried beyond setting six yet. It also works wonders for stress relief. (I have an incredibly irritating colleague, and nothing calms me down so much as a quick round with the CT2023 after a spat with him.)

The body is versatile enough to be either inserted into one’s—

Newt feels heat rise to his cheeks in spite of himself, and he skims the second paragraph of MathLover69’s review to get the gist of it—that there are, uh, plenty of ways to utilize the vibe, that it’s discreet and small enough to wear to work (if you were inclined to do so, as MathLover69 implies he might’ve been) and that when combined with the Yamarashi dildo, the pleasurable experience increased tenfold. Talk about oversharing. Jeez.

My only complaint would be that the design is a poor approximation of the real Coyote Tango, and for that I’ve docked a star. I would recommend this product.

“This guy is a total nut,” Newt says to himself.

“Hm?” Hermann says.

Newt considers the implications of showing Hermann the vibrator listing: Hermann will know he was shopping for sex toys, Hermann will know he was shopping for kaiju and jaeger-themed sex toys, Hermann will know he was shopping for kaiju and jaeger-themed sex toys during working hours a mere ten feet away from him. Embarrassing, but on the other hand, MathLover69’s review is too funny to not share with someone else. “Hey, Hermann,” Newt says, angling his laptop towards Hermann. “Look. Who comments shit like this?”

Hermann descends his ladder carefully and inches up behind Newt’s shoulder, squinting at his laptop screen. He immediately turns bright red. Newt must’ve offended his Victorian sensibilities with the mere suggestion of self-abuse. “Oh,” he says. “Er.”

“Way TMI,” Newt says. “Listen to this line. ‘With the Yamarashi toy inserted into one’s mouth, and the CT2023 inserted up one’s—'”

“Well, how else is one meant to review a masturbatory aid?” Hermann snaps, surprising Newt. He looks oddly flustered. “Details can be—er—helpful. Can’t they?”

“Sure, dude,” Newt snorts. “Except they’re obviously just screwing with people. They literally have a 69 in their username.” He taps at the MathLover69, and doesn’t mention—on behalf of Hermann’s delicate mathematician feelings—that the MathLover part is obviously meant as a joke too.

“Well,” Hermann says. “Perhaps it’s just his—er, their birthdate.”

Newt turns around to stare at Hermann, taking in his red cheeks, his red ears, and the gaze he’s fixed steadily on his shoes. It’s all Newt can do to not to gape at him. “Hermann, you’re kidding,” he says. “Right?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Hermann says.

“You didn’t,” Newt says.

“I,” Hermann stammers. “Well—”

“I didn’t even know you—”

“That I what?” Hermann says.

Newt gives a half-shrug. Hermann doesn’t seem the type to engage in any sort of vice, let alone this kind. And especially not with the type of sex toys he apparently gravitates towards. (If Newt was a little bolder, and had a little less shame and care for hygiene, he might ask to check out the Yamarashi, because anatomical inaccuracies aside, wow that sounds awesome.) “I mean, you know,” Newt says. “You’re kinda you. No offense.”

Hermann takes offense. “I am human,” he says. “I am allowed to masturbate, Newton, and I was merely attempting to educate other customers about the—product—with my thoroughness.” He adds, awkwardly, “My review was voted very helpful, as you can see.”

“Okay,” Newt says with a grin. “I get it. Sorry.”

Hermann marches back over to his side of the lab with a scowl. Newt waits until he’s sure Hermann’s not watching him, and is too distracted by muttering angrily under his breath, to bookmark MathLover69’s page of reviews.

It turns out (as Newt revisits the page later that night, in the privacy of his bunk) Hermann buys and reviews a truly staggering amount of dildos and sex toys, and on top of that, has absolutely zero filter behind the wall of anonymity. It’s to the extent that some of his reviews read like goddamn sexts.

It took me three occasions to successfully work myself up to taking in the entire length…

My orgasm was so pleasurable I alarmed my colleague with the noise I made, who believed me to have injured myself…

The highest vibration setting is a bit of a disappointment…

These are excellent for double penetration…

It also turns out Hermann is a veritable sex fiend. Or at least a masturbation fiend. Judging by his reviews alone, Hermann’s purchased more than a dozen different toys in the past three years alone. That’s four a year. One every three months. That’s not even including buttplugs, which (according to other reviews) he sometimes just wears into the lab (“work”) for the hell of it, which Newt isn’t even going to think about right now. How the hell has Hermann kept this much of his life under wraps? When the hell does he have time to jerk off as much as he apparently does? No wonder they never seem to have any fucking funding; all of Hermann’s paychecks are funneled directly into his—well.

Newt recalls the faux-injury incident Hermann mentioned in a comment with mild embarrassment. No wonder Hermann had been so weird and flushed when he opened his door, and made excuses to say bye to him so quickly—Newt just caught him (oh, boy) immediately following the best orgasm of his life. Well, mild embarrassment, and a little more than mild arousal. What Newt would’ve given to have been there five minutes earlier, to watch Hermann in the act of the best orgasm of his life, to maybe even be the one to cause it…

What Newt would give to use Hermann’s fancy-shmancy vibrator on him, or literally anything from his giant masturbatory arsenal. Or even just watch him use it on himself. Hermann’s just so damned buttoned-up and uptight—it’s all about the contradictions. Juxtapositions. Newt unzips his jeans and sticks his hand down his boxers. “Stupid Hermann,” he moans, as he begins to bring himself off to the image of Hermann with that stupid kaiju dildo down his throat and that stupid jaeger vibe up his ass. Negotiator of peace between the two? Stupid joke, stupid Hermann. Or maybe he’s picturing Hermann showing up to the lab, all plugged up and loose from using a different vibe on himself that morning. Or maybe Hermann pushing two dildos into himself at once. How the hell can he even manage that? Ass his size— “Oh, goddamn it,” Newt moans again, and comes all over his hand.

Whatever. It’s not like Hermann’s ever going to find out about this.

[fremedon]

Brickclub 2.1.15, “Cambronne,” and 2.1.16, “Quot Libras in Duce?”

I’m not really sure what to make of 2.1.15. It’s a very clear statement of Hugo’s ideas about the value of making a doomed last stand, spitting in the face of defeat—making the protest of corpses, as the anonymous insurgent at the barricade will say. It’s very clear; I’m not convinced that it’s true.

It’s also maybe the clearest statement that Waterloo being necessary does not make it right, or good, or even acceptable. And that’s something the book will keep coming back to, but never resolve. Enjolras and Combeferre will still be having this argument at the barricade (and, as @everyonewasabird points out, so will Combeferre and Combeferre), and they’re both right.

Scattershot observations:

“To have this response to the catastrophe, to say this to destiny, to provide this base for the future lion…” He means for the lion monument, but am I stretching things to see “base for the future lion” as meaning “support for future revolution?”

“…on the spot where Joseph, who drives the Nivelles mail-coach, now passes, at four o’clock in the morning, whistling and cheerfully lashing his horse.” Cambronne’s last stand was epic, it was the spirit of the Revolution speaking through him—and society, in the form of the horse and cart, rolls right on and takes no notice.

The chapter title of 2.1.16 is from Juvenal: “Expende Hannibalem: quot libras in duce summo invenies?” (“Weigh Hannibal: how many pounds do you find in the greatest of leaders?”) This chapter isn’t about what constitutes good or bad leadership, but what difference a leader, any leader, can make. We’ve talked about the succession of the great man by the good man as a necessity of progress, a moral imperative; now we’re talking about whether great men are even able to shape history, or only to be its agents, or its pawns.

But through that discussion, we’re also returning to the idea of divine Providence versus human fatality again. In previous chapters, Hugo had reached a synthesis of those ideas—of chance as the tool of Providence. Now he’s breaking down the antitheses that went into that idea, using the contrast between the leadership of the two generals: “Never did God, who delights in antithesis, set up a more striking contrast” than Napoleon and Wellington.

So. In the first paragraph of the chapter, Hugo calls Waterloo “this catastrophe of human genius grappling with divine chance.” If chance, fatality, can be a tool of the divine—can be divine—what does that leave for humanity? If we’re flipping the terms of the preface, divine chance should be facing off, not against human genius but against human destiny. But the next paragraph is only a single sentence: “In this event, which bears the stamp of transcendent necessity, the role of men counts for nothing.”

When Providence uses fatalité as its tool—when chance becomes divine—it is implacable; humanity may use all its genius, may rage like Cambronne—it doesn’t matter.

In between these two lines, there’s a passage I’m not sure what to do with:

“All the other historians are to some extent blinded, and their blindness leaves them groping in the dark. A blinding day indeed, with the collapse of the military monarch, which to the great amazement of kings brought down all kingdoms with it, the downfall of might, the routing of war.”

This…didn’t happen? Hugo picks up the idea and runs with it, talks about nations being made great by their poetry, by their people, more ideas we’ll see developed by and through the Amis, but this statement, and the one a little later, “Civilized people, especially in our own times, neither rise nor fall by the good or bad fortune of a leader,” just reads like wishful thinking. That greatness is not synonymous with military might is a statement of values; that Waterloo somehow imposed a recognition of these values on history is…not even true from the vantage of 1862.

But. Hugo has been telling us that Waterloo was necessary, that it was inescapable. Now he tells us that its outcome was, essentially, random: “Let us render to chance what is due to chance , and to God what is due to God. What is Waterloo? A victory? No. A lottery. A lottery won by Europe at France’s expense. It was not really worth putting a lion there.”

When chance is seen as the divine tool of Providence—Napoleon’s fall was inevitable. From the framework where chance and God are separate and even opposing forces—the frame of the preface—his fall is random, unpredictable, even accidental.

So one thing this chapter is doing is making it clear that, in Hugo’s view, chance and Providence are united—because Napoleon’s fall was necessary, was inevitable—but that’s not going to be how the book presents them most of the time. The frame of the preface is the frame for the whole book. I think that’s largely because the view of divine chance is—as Hugo sets up, with the discussion of the disagreement among historians in the first paragraph—a historical viewpoint. We can only see the hand of Providence moving through chance in hindsight--“What we admire above all in a conjuncture such as that of Waterloo is the amazing ingenuity of chance.” But while we’re in the story, things just happen.

And that split viewpoint is the hinge for so much of what Hugo is doing in this book, and for what he’s doing in this chapter specifically. It is inevitable, Hugo says, that tyrants will fall—but they won’t always fall today. They won’t always fall this time, in this battle. Sometimes there is no leadership that will win the day, because chance is not on your side. Sometimes leadership isn’t Napoleon, the Romantic genius, or Wellington, the classical plodder, but Cambronne, channelling the heroes of Revolution to shout defiance in both their faces.

It is worth building a barricade, because tyrants might fall today; it is worth dying there, because tyrants must fall eventually.

Scattershot observations:

“Who was this twenty-six-year-old Corsican?” Napoleon’s rise starts where Enjolras’s life ends, and Fantine’s—and Saint-Just’s, for that matter.

“The field of Waterloo today has a peacefulness that belongs to the earth, man’s impassive pedestal, and it looks like any other plain.”

Um. Even before the next sentence starts describing how it’s full of ghosts—if it looks like any other plain in this book, that is not a good thing! Meadows and fields are uniformly unheimlich and terrifying in LM—Petit-Gervais’s plain, the plain in Valjean’s dream, the Field of the Lark with its murder history…oh shit every field in this book is just Waterloo, isn’t it?

(Insert astronaut meme here: “It’s all Waterloo?” “Always has been.”)

[mimssides]

One Spade for five Hearts: Chapter 2

Read on AO3

Masterpost | Taglist

First | Previous | Next

___

Today had been supposed to be a normal Wednesday. Quite frankly it had been a perfectly normal Wednesday until Remus had not come to PE in the last period of the day.

Logan had found it a little unusual; Remus liked chaos but kæ was not someone to skip class, especially not one kæ liked so much. The teacher had asked the class if someone knew where kæ was but eventually just started the lesson.

When Logan had gone back to the changing rooms together with Virgil, he had planned to ask their friend where kæ was, only to be met with twelve very panicked messages from Patton. With a frown Logan halted and looked over the few first messages until he felt Virgil looking over his shoulder.

“Did something happen?” Virgil asked.

Logan held up his phone for him to read and commented: “Probably, but I am unsure of exactly what had happened. Can you glean anything from this?”

Virgil’s eyes darted over his phone screen for a few seconds, he was as quick in reading as he was in running, and shook his head a few moments later.

“They might be freaked out about Remus? Maybe they know something; we can meet up with them after changing?” Virgil proposed as they continued walking and finally entered the changing room.

Logan nodded and texted Pat that they could meet up after Virgil and he had changed if they desired so. Then he put his phone down to get back and change.

When Virgil and him had changed quicker than usually, Logan checked his phone again but found no new text. While exiting the building Logan sent a new message to Patton asking if everything was alright.

The answer he got came not over text.

“Logan!!!”

It was easy to startle Virgil. He sometimes jumped at the sight of a speck of dust being enlightened in the sunlight at the wrong moment. But to startle Logan one had to be truly gifted.

So, it was a rather rare sight of both Spades jumping on the spot, as Patton cried for Logan as soon as they had seen him exit the building. With a hand over his heart Logan looked over to Patton, who was running towards Virgil and him. It seemed like they had cried, eyes red, usually always present smile wiped away from their lips and Logan felt his heart sink. Something was wrong.

The thought got only stronger, when he noticed Roman and Damian following them. As far as Logan could tell, Roman seemed enraged and Damian something between annoyed and worried. This seemed to get more complicated than Logan had expected.

Patton ran quicker and only did not crash into the pair because Logan managed to catch them in time and now was holding them by their shoulders. Patton trembled under Logan’s grip and he quickly let go only for the slightly smaller boy to surge forward and tackle him in a hug, gently crying into nape of Logan’s neck.

“Okay, wow, this is bad,” Virgil commented weakly and shot Roman and Damian a terrified look as they caught up.

Damian put his hand on Roman’s shoulder, who was about to explode, as Logan finally patted Patton’s back to calm them and asked the two: “Could you please figuratively illuminate us about what is going on?”

“Sid Kent has struck yet again!” Roman growled and Logan felt his lips twitch. “And this time he’s getting Remus expelled!”

“What?!” Virgil hissed panicky while Patton’s crying got louder again.

Alerted Logan walked a few steps away from the school building, the others following and asked Roman with a pressed voice: “What has this dimwit done this time?”

“Remus or Sid?” Damian said with an eyeroll and earned two angry glares from Virgil and Roman.

“I was asking for Sid but you can tell me too what Remus did wrong.”

A wet cry came from Patton and all four others looked at them as they wailed: “Nothing! Kæ ‘idn’t do a-anything ‘rong!”

Logan and Virgil exchanged a look. Not that Patton was not reliable, but the possibility that Remus did nothing to cause kæs situation kæ was currently in was astronomically slim.

“I get the looks but,” Roman said walking up to Logan and Virgil and stemming his hands in his hips, “for once in kæs life kæ actually wasn’t at fault. Sid and his friends trapped kæm in the storeroom for plant seed in building K. Apparently one of them knocked kæm out and now kæ is stuck in there. Rem needed a minute to figure out where kæ was and only then kæ texted Pat what happened.”

“Remus is stuck in K?!” Virgil asked perplexed and Logan felt a migraine approaching.

In building K they had the conservatory and next to it the gallery with an exhibition of historical artifacts from the city. It was off limits to be in there for students without permission after 16:00 and if someone got caught, they had to expect to deal with the consequences. And Remus, who was notorious for kæs pranks or just talking out of line in the worst possible moments, would most likely be expelled for a few days after everything kæ had done in the past no matter if kæ had meant to be there or not.

“Gods be damned,” Logan mumbled under his breath.

Virgil next to him began to pace around mumbling ‘shit, shit, shit’ over and over again as Damian sighed once more and crossed his arms in front of his chest. Meanwhile Roman stepped closer to Logan and Patton and put his hand on the latter’s shoulder. They finally let go of Logan and turned to look down at the still furious redhead and sniffled their nose.

“Are we now going to break kæm out, dearest Pat?”

At once Virgil stopped in his tracks and flabbergasted stared at Roman.

Damian groaned and hid his head in his hands saying: “We cannot do that Roman! I’ve said it fourteen times and I will say it again: We cannot break Remus out of there! We’d need to get the key for this damn storeroom, which we only could obtain from one of the members of the gardening club and we all know that they are all narks and won’t give us that damn key. And even if we could get that far, after that we’d need to check if someone is inside the building to make sure kæ could get out safely. How on earth would we do that?”

“I don’t care how! I’m going to get my brother out of there!” Roman contested vigorously. “You cannot possibly think this is fair! If it was kæs own mistake, if kæ had brought this over kæmself, I wouldn’t care, but there’s no chance that the teachers would believe kæm that kæ has been pranked. They won’t take kæs side, so I will. I will make it right when the authorities fail.”

There was a beat of silence. Patton’s sniffle broke it and Roman’s eyes softened and he squeezed their shoulder gently. They smiled a little at Roman’s attempt to comfort them and Logan realized that Patton would help Roman break into the damn building.

And with that realisation followed the impact of the things Roman had just said. Remus would be treated unfairly. He knew kæ would. All the teachers were harder on kæm in every class they shared. Of course, Remus was loud and tactless but even more so kæ was brilliant and intuitive.

And kæ was Logan’s friend.

With that thought Logan looked from the two Hearts over to Virgil, whose expression changed from worried to mortified.

“Your will in all honour, but this is not going to work. I mean, even I agree that this isn’t how Remus should be treated, I would like to help kæm, but not at my own expense,” Damian objected softly trying to talk some sense into Roman.

Sadly, Damian’s efforts would be for naught as Logan took a deep breath and said reluctantly: “Actually… There might be a way to get kæm out. But that would require your help, Virgil.”

Logan looked over to Virgil and saw his apparent panic. He knew how much Virgil did not want to stand out, how much he liked disappearing in the background and how much he most certainly wouldn’t want to get involved into breaking Remus out of this building. But he knew also that Virgil was excellent at thinking quick, adjusting to new situations and that he was the most supportive and gentle friend anyone cold wish for. Which was why he had never let Logan walk into new and scary situations on his own despite being absolutely mortified.

“Fuck, L,” Virgil mumbled shakily. “You know I can’t let you do this on your own. You might get scared breaking the rules without me.”

Logan just huffed as an answer and looked over to the two Hearts beaming at him in glee and the Dimond shooting him a glare.

“You can’t be serious, Ward,” Damian said and rubbed over his blind eye.

With a shrug Logan pointed to the tie around his neck and said: “I am always serious, Lucas. Now for the plan.”

___

It was 17:58 now and their plan had worked far better than Logan could ever have expected. Just as planned Roman, Patton and Damian had caught a girl from the gardening club after leaving building K and distracted her with a conversation as Virgil silently picked the key off her. The charm of three very charming red Suits paired with Virgil’s stealth had worked outstandingly well in their favour, just as Logan had predicted.

Now it was time for the next step and Logan hoped that would work just as well. Virgil and he himself would get the key to Remus, so the boy could exit from the inside. They could do so, since the little storeroom had a slim window, which Virgil could reach if he stood on Logan’s shoulders. With a clear view Virgil could teleport the key inside the room and Remus would be able to free kæmself.

Before though Patton, Roman and Janus would go inside to silently check if someone was still on the first floor there and meet up with Remus to get kæm out of there. In case someone would see them, it was way more probable that they could talk themselves out of the situation than Logan, Virgil or Remus could.

Remus had been informed through Patton’s and Roman’s texts and after they saw the janitor leave the building the three red Suits went inside and Logan and Virgil walked to the backside of the building. Quietly they positioned themselves under the little window and Virgil climbed on Logan’s shoulder with little issue. For a moment Virgil checked the room he could see through the dirty glass and saw Remus sitting on the floor next to the door. The screen of kæs phone lit kæs face.

Inhale. Exhale. Concentrate on the spot next to Remus, Virgil reminded himself and clenched the key in his hand until it disappeared from his fist and reappeared in the spot where Virgil had envisioned it. Remus flinched and then looked up to the window suddenly a bright smile on kæs face. Eagerly kæ waved at Virgil before taking the key and unlocking the door to kæs prison.

With a sigh Virgil let Logan know to let him down. For a second they just looked at each other before Logan took his phone out to check if everything was going well with the others.

Everything would be fine if Roman Butkus hadn’t lent Damian his yellow crayon that day in forth grade. If that hadn’t happened, they wouldn’t have become best friends, he wouldn’t be emotionally attached to this impulsive Heart and he wouldn’t be pressed against a wall together with him and Patton because they had seen a member of the gardening club and stupidly fled up the stairs to where Remus was trapped, instead of saying that they had forgot the time and were now leaving.

But Roman had lent him this crayon and now he was here and Remus could not for the life of kæm open any doors silently even if kæs life would have depended on it. Which was why the steps downstairs suddenly stopped and Damian could almost feel how the gardening guy was turning around and walking towards the stairs.

This was bad. Really bad. Suddenly he felt Roman grabbing him by the wrist and he was pulled along with Patton towards Remus. The Club wanted to speak but kept kæs mouth shut when kæ saw Patton gesturing and Roman’s serious look.

Damian looked back to the staircase and Patton typed something into their phone and showed Remus the screen. The dim light illuminated Remus’s face and made it clear that kæ expression changed from confusion to concern. Frantically kæ looked around, as kæs eyes suddenly settled on the window down the hallway. Like a flash an idea came to Remus and kæ looked towards kæs brother in the hopes that he would have come to the same conclusion. And luck was with kæm for once, as Roman nodded and took Damian by the arm and quietly walked towards the window at the end of the hallway.

Remus took Patton by the hand and blindly typed to Virgil and Logan that they needed to come to the window at the eastern side. Only a few seconds later Patton and kæ stood next to Roman and Damian. Both Pat and Damian looked a little lost until Roman opened the window and both became pale in an instant.

As quietly as Damian could he whispered towards the twins: “You can’t be serious?! I’m not getting out of here through the window!”

Just then footsteps from the stairway echoed through the halls and Remus took Patton by the hand and hopped on the windowsill. With a swift movement kæ swung the squealing Heart over kæs shoulder and looked down.

___

Remus stood on the windowsill of the second floor. It was not too high, ten feet maybe, ten and half feet at best but still Remus was not supposed to stand on the windowsill with Patton over kæs shoulder.

“What are you doing?” Logan hissed watching as Remus looked back over kæs shoulder and then looked down to the Virgil and him again.

“We’ve gotta run and you’ve gotta catch us!” kæ said stiffly smiling and just like that jumped.

Virgil was quicker than Logan. Hurriedly he had stepped in front of him and caught both Remus and Patton. Maybe he was grunting and barely capable of holding them both, but he had managed to catch them nevertheless and it was more than Logan could have hoped. Clumsily he stood to the side as Virgil toppled backwards and let both Remus and Patton down.

“What-?” Virgil was asking but broke off and stared down to his hand.

Logan didn’t get to ask what was wrong when he heard a yelp and saw how the second twin, this time with Damian in his arms, stood in the window.

Logan didn’t register how he moved forwards, nor how he stretched out his arms, as Roman took a leap and Damian screamed. The impact from both boys and the rough fall to the ground he did feel though and gasped for air.

“Oh, my gods, Logan!” Logan heard Patton say.

Someone pulled him on his legs. Logan blinked. It was Remus. Kæ looked a little weird but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He didn’t have the time to think about it any longer either as Remus asked hushed: “Can you run, specs?”

Logan blinked. He heard some one yelling from the floor above them. Right. They needed to go.

“Affirmative,” Logan mumbled and like that Remus started running, pulling Patton along.

Virgil followed suit, even overtook them and Roman took Janus by the hand and started sprinting as well. And with that Logan started too. At the rear, he saw his friends run away from the school grounds.

This operation had turned into a mess. It could have gone a lot worse and maybe it would get worse later, but as they ran further, as building K lay behind them, a loud, excited, joyful whoop from Remus cut through the air. And the tension fell apart. Roman joined, Patton laughed and Logan watched Virgil look back and give him a little grin. Even Damian looked no longer as scared or annoyed as before slightly shook his head at Remus’s whooping.

Logan’s nerves calmed and his spirits rose. It was messy, unplanned and uncoordinated. But it worked. And it was right. Somehow this felt right and Logan liked this feeling very much.

Finally, they reached the end of the school grounds and slowed down. Logan’s breathing was heavy, running was not his favourite form of exercise, but otherwise he felt fine. Silently, he watched as the others stood still, as Patton went from one to the other to ask if they felt okay eventually stopping by Remus, who somehow had managed to cut himself during the fall.

It was then when Logan noticed something. At first, he couldn’t place it, only as his running pulse slowed down and the blood rushing through his ears got quieter. Only then he realized that he heard something.

He was hearing noises. Weird noises. Noises that sounded so different from what he knew. They were nice and soft and he felt attracted to them. As if he was under a spell. But they didn’t come from anywhere. They were in his head and Logan looked to the ground and listened closer.

It was different things that made noises. One sounded a bit like loud breathing but not.

 Phuu. Phu. Phu. Phuuuuuuu.

It sounded a little nervous but friendly, the noise changing the length and the pitch in some weird patterns.

Patterns. Pitch changes.

Logan looked up. Looked to Virgil. Realized how well the Phuu matched him even though he could not explain why. And then he looked around more.

There was a soft Ting sound next to energetic Bonk sounds. They fit Patton and Remus.

And lastly two more delicate sounds. Quick and swift Plings and a steady mmmmng sounds, which wavered and squeaked a little. Perfectly matching Roman and Damian respectively.

And all of them, despite being so different, the played alongside each other. Had played alongside each other, since the moment they had started running. Logan just hadn’t heard because his heart had beaten so loud and fast.

But now he heard and the sound got stronger and louder in his ears. His heart began racing again. The beat loud in his ears, but no longer louder than the –

- the music.

Logan heard music for the first time in his life.

Which meant that he and his soulmates had shared a moment of harmony for the first time.

Which meant that his five best friends were his soulmates and Logan had to deal with the fact that the strong feelings he harboured for each one of them might not be solely platonic as he had told himself for varying amounts of times.

“Lo? You good?”

The Phu got flimsier and the melody of the Ting changed just as fast. Virgil and Patton looked at him and Logan wanted to cry. His stomach was heavy and Virgil’s mismatched eyes saw far too easily through him to not notice as much. He needed to get home.

“It’s-” Logan looked down to his watch.

A different worry nestled itself in his stomach and he looked back up to Virgil.

“It’s 18:14. I should have been at home 1 hour and 14 minutes ago. I apologize, I need to go,” Logan said and didn’t wait for a response.

With a pounding heart he turned around and ran away. He tried not to hear the faint squeak from the mnnnnng, the rapid Bonks or the slanted Plings. But he did until he was finally far enough away from them.

He kept running for a bit, until his shoulder hurt from his satchel rubbing on the fabric of his shirt, after which he finally paused. He took a few breaths. He was almost home. He was clammy, sweaty and uncomfortable. Father would be home for dinner. And Logan would look like a mess, be late and emotionally compromised.

Just great, he thought, gulped and rubbed over his eyes to keep the tears from overflow from his eyes.

___

@varthandi

@sammy-is-obsessed / @exhaustedfander

@alexisrealgay

@softie-sushi

@wolfs-feder

@just-a-neoclassical-painting

@winter-jay-official

@a-ghostlight-for-roman

[thinking-in-symbols]

Quinquennial Life Assessment

So, it’s been a few years.  When I was 19 I posted a sort of “roadmap” for the evolution of my life on this blog.  Today I thought I’d revisit that.  I want to take a look back and see what progress I’ve made, and then in a separate post I want to turn to the future, think about how my vision for it has changed, and consider how I can reincorporate these goals into that vision.

This is the list of things I wanted to get done in varying time frames.  I’ve crossed off the things I’ve done to get a sense of my progress:

1 year:

At 19, my hopes were to accomplish the following things by age 20:

- Joined, and consistently participated in, at least 2 campus organizations that suit my interests, at least 1 of which should be competitive in nature - well, I joined the ISO and KVRX, my college radio station!  Neither of those were competitive, but in retrospect I don’t really care about that :-)

- Made concrete plans to study abroad - Nope, unfortunately I never did this.  I’m not quite sure I regret that, all things considered - I traded that experience for other things.  I did make plans to spend a few months abroad of my own accord, and I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for that meddling global pandemic.  But as it stands I haven’t done this.

- Learned C++ and python to proficiency - Hm.  “Proficient” is a relative term.  But I think I have a tendency to downplay my skills, so in the interest of counteracting that I’m going to count myself as “proficient” in these languages.  I think that’s fair.

- Gone on at least a several day road trip with at least 1 friend - I’ve gone on several trips with @meeshbug​, my very lovely girlfriend and best friend in the world :-)

- Decided on a concentration beyond the extremely vague umbrella of “computer science” - Unfortunately as far as my education is concerned I never really did this.  If anything my interests have *broadened* rather than becoming more focused.  More on this later...

- Made meaningful, ongoing contributions to an open-source project - You know what?  I’ve published the source of everything I’ve ever made, and I’ve gotten to the point where I can make stuff that’s not trivial.  So I’m giving myself credit for this one.

- Learned to cook enough meals to eat in most days and not get sick of my own food - I wish.  I’ve learned to cook a fair amount of stuff but I still get way too depressed and lethargic to apply that consistently.  Whether I consider myself to have achieved this honestly depends on the month.

- Learned to keep my living area clean - I’m much better at this than I was at 19, but at 19 I could barely clear a path to walk across my room.  So there’s more work to do.  More on these last two later.

- Gotten a pet - Meesh and I have a dog named Courage (after the dog of cowardly fame) and a cat named Jax!

2 years:

- Independently written a piece of software to completion and deployed it publicly - I’ve always pretty bad at actually seeing projects through to completion, but I do have a few full, independent projects under my belt at this point.  I’ve built a simple game engine, a pathtracer, plugins for games I like, and some other stuff.

- purchased and begun regularly using some basic amateur radio equipment - Ah man.  I got my license but I still haven’t gotten any equipment.  I guess I have to get on that...

- purchased and begun experimenting with some basic music recording equipment - This one I’ve done, but I haven’t done as much experimenting as I’d like.

- hosted a party - I did this for my 21st birthday and it’s one of my favorite memories!  Honestly this was probably the last time I had all my really close friends in one place.  I’m actually getting kind of emotional about that.

- done some kind of hallucinogen - I have now done this.  I definitely did get something out of it, albeit not what I expected.  This is something I actually only did pretty recently and it’s still having a pretty profound effect.  Maybe I’ll write a separate post about this.

- Gone camping with friends - Despite my best efforts, this hasn’t happened yet.  Pretty fucked up.

3 years:

- learned to play another instrument besides the piano (guitar?) - I don’t feel comfortable crossing this one off quite yet, but I went ahead and bought myself some guitar equipment and have been messing around with it lately :-) I think I’m going to have to bite the bullet and pay for lessons if I’m serious about this, which I am.

- Written and recorded a song - Damn, I can’t believe it’s been 5 years and I haven’t even done this.

- Met a group of people I can play music with - nope

- Owned a leather jacket.  I can’t believe I’ve still never even owned a leather jacket - I’ve done this and wore it frankly too much.  Kinda cringe.

- Worked as a professional software developer - Yep!  Worked as a software developer for a retail company for a couple years.  I’m actually not working as a software developer right now, though; I’m working in a sort of adjacent position.  More on this later.

- Participated in research related to my field - That’s pretty ambitious.  Not sure I’ll ever do this, unfortunately.  But we’ll see.

- Been to a film festival - Oh shit, I totally forgot about having written this.  That’s a cool idea.  I should do this, it’s not like it’s hard (well, at least in principle.  I guess covid kind of changes the situation).

- Gotten a dog - Courage is one of those, I think, although he might also be part rat.

- collected 50 records - Lol, my dumb ass really thought I was going to buy $1,000 worth of records on college money.  No, I haven’t done this, but I’m on my way there.

- Purchased a desktop computer - Well, my dad gave me his old desktop.  That’s not really a purchase but I think it counts.

5 years:

- Begun accepting freelance development gigs - haven’t gotten here yet and I’m not totally sure this is a direction I want to go in my career.  Freelancing has its own stressors as I’ve come to learn from others.  No career path is sunshine and roses and I’m trying to internalize this fact.

- Participated in a student film - Nope.  I don’t even know why I wrote this down to be honest.

- Gotten laid by solving a 5x5 Rubik’s Cube in front of a girl because surely that’s gonna have to work on someone eventually, otherwise I wasted a lot of time - These are getting weird.  Surely I didn’t really expect this to happen, right?  Well, either way I now have a long-term girlfriend, so I don’t - wait, Meesh has seen me solve a Rubik’s cube and she saw it before we started dating.  So actually I’m going to give myself credit for it.  I’m the one who makes the rules here.

- Fleshed out my political opinions - Yes, I now know everything about politics and can answer 100% of questions on political issues.  Just kidding.  But I know where I stand.

- Participated in a protest or some other kind of political event - Done!  Went to a few protests as part of the ISO, participated in lots of their events, and attended some protests with friends as well.

- Studied abroad - Nope :-/

- Learned a language other than Spanish - I took a semester of French!  But I don’t quite want to give myself credit for this one because I really would like to learn a different language to something resembling fluency.

- Run a marathon - Lmao.  I am in much worse shape now than I was when I wrote this post, and even at that time I could probably do like 7 miles if I really pushed myself.  How sad.

- Gone hiking outside of texas - This is weird because I’d literally already done this when I wrote this post.  But I’ve done it more since then, so hey!

- Been out of the country with a friend - This I had also already done.  I guess the point is to have done it without “adult supervision” or whatever.  I haven’t done this since writing this list so I guess I have to leave it uncrossed.

10 years:

- Lived with a girl for an extended period of time - Meesh 🥰

- Spent at least 6 months living on the road in an RV, preferably with a dog and a girl - God, I am so close to being able to do this.  I don’t want it to be an RV anymore - those things are expensive.  But a van?  Still pricey, but doable, especially if I’m willing to sacrifice some comfort.  This has actually been front-of-mind for a while.  I’ll let you know when I get the balls to pull the trigger.

- Started making Real Money - Well, yep, I have gotten to that point.  I do have other thoughts on this, though.  Money is weird, man.

- Lived in a long-term living space outside of Texas (i.e. not including RV time) - How long is long-term?  Three months?  If so, I’ve done this by living in Boston with Meesh for a few months after she went there for law school.  However, I anticipate staying there much longer in the near future, so I’ll wait on this crossing this one off.

- Written a book about something, idk - Not yet.  I’m halfway to the deadline on this one and I have some ideas, but ideas aren’t worth all that much, especially to me, who rarely sees them through.  We’ll see where this goes.  It’s not exactly a priority and historically I struggle to get even my priorities done.  It might make more sense to replace this with recording a concept or narrative album, for which I also have ideas that I happen to take more seriously.

- Learned to solve a 6x6 Rubik’s Cube - nope

- Gotten laid by solving a 6x6 Rubik’s Cube - nope

- Lived in an apartment where I pay all the rent - Yes!  :-))) We love independence

- Earned an advanced degree (this one’s iffy) - This hasn’t happened, and whether it will ever happen is something I’ve been thinking a lot about.  I sort of decided half-way through college that I would be totally burned out on school by the time I graduated.  But in retrospect it takes way less time to burn out on work than it does to burn out on school, and grad degrees are a different kind of thing.  So it’s worth revisiting.’

- Given a best man speech (Sam, this means you have to get married within the next 10 years.  Good luck out there.) - Holy shit, Sam, you maniac, you actually did it!  Sam got married back in 2019 and I gave his best man speech! It’s another one of my favorite memories :-) 

- Gone on a cruise with someone I’m dating - Hmm, not yet.  I’ve gone on cool trips, but none on a boat.  Maybe that’s something to aim for after the pandemic passes :-)

Retrospective:

1yr: Completed: 5/9

More than half isn’t bad!  I’m not gonna worry too much about whether I got these things done within their assigned “time-frame”.  I’m a procrastinator in my heart and I don’t see any reason to put that kind of pressure on myself.  The point is, they got done.  That’s enough for me.

The things I did best in in this category were academic things, and things to do with relationships.  I’m proud of the academic achievements, I really feel like doing them has increased my belief in myself and my sense that I’m good at the thing I’ve spent the last four years studying.  And of course, I am so happy to be in a loving, fulfilling relationship that brings so many good things into my life.  I almost feel like the things I accomplished sort of fell into my lap - of course I’m gonna do programming stuff as a programming student, and getting pets / going on road trips are things I did as a result of my relationship with Meesh.  I don’t say that to downplay the accomplishments, but I do think it’s worth noting.

The things I haven’t done are more to do with personal development, which is disappointing.  I would like to be able to say, 5 years down the road, that I’ve done the personal development I expected to do in just a single year, but maybe that’s a lot to expect.  These are problems I’ve dealt with my whole life.  I think what this means is that I can’t expect everything to fall into my lap.  Those things are going to take real concerted effort to change.  I’m not quite sure how to go about that, though.

2yrs: Completed: 4/6

Two-thirds!  Even better!

Lots of these are one-time accomplishments, not so much long-term commitments to personal development.  The good news is, I did them, and I think those resulted in some development in their own right :-)

Again, though, the things I didn’t do so well are the things that require long-term, concerted effort.  For instance, while I crossed off the one about experimenting with music, it’s really only the initial investment that I’ve really done at this point.  It remains to be seen whether I’ll be able to follow through on the commitment to actually experiment and learn.

3yrs: Completed: 4/10

This category also follows the same pattern I’ve noticed with the last two.  The other thing I’m noticing is that so, so much of my effort over the past few years has been going towards developing a very particular skill: programming / computer science.  Music and art are so important to me, but I’ve done very little real development in those areas.  I mean, I’ve done some.  But not as much as I would have hoped for half a decade.

5yrs: Completed: 4/10

This is getting a little more fun because less of my goals have to do explicitly with my degree.  I’m starting to think beyond college, which is good, because the stage of life I’m in right now requires me to start thinking about the kind of life I want to build now that I’m done with school.  Also, I’m at the deadline for this one right now!  So this is a particularly interesting category because it really shows where I thought I’d be by this time.

The goals I accomplished in this timeframe are, again, mostly things I’ve done through my relationship, but politics also feature pretty prominently on this part of the list.  I spent a lot of time reading and researching political issues during college and really did look for ways to participate.  I honestly made politics a pretty big part of my identity over the last 5 years, and I think it will stay that way forever, but I’ve gotten to the point where I think I need to devote less of my mental energy to knowing more.  I know what I need to know.  It’s time to think about other things.

10yrs: Completed: 4/11 (and counting!)

There’s some career stuff in this section that I’ve been able to do, which is good news.  I’ve always been scared about entering the working world.  All things told, it’s gone more smoothly than it could have.  But I also have lots of lingering doubts about what I want to do in the long term.  So one of the most pressing goals I should aim for is to resolve those doubts.

Ultimately, I have a lot of time left, and I’m not even done with this time frame, so I’m not gonna spend much time dissecting the things I haven’t done.  What I’ll do instead is say that while I didn’t do everything on this list, I feel proud of the things I have accomplished.  I said when I first wrote this list that it’s sometimes hard for me to feel that my life is moving in any particular direction, and I’m still feeling like that five years later, to be honest.  But looking back on these things has helped me see that I actually am making progress in my life.  Not in all the ways I want to, but that’s OK.  There’s still time.

In the next couple days I want to come back to this and reorganize this list into an updated set of goals, for the same time frames.  Maybe that will help me think through exactly what it is I want out of the next five-ten years, with the benefit of having analyzed the things that I did and didn’t do well over the previous five.

[drunkkenobi]

Catt’s Favorite BuzzFeed Unsolved Episodes

This Friday (March 27, 2020) BuzzFeed Unsolved is going to air its 100th episode! I have no idea if they’ll acknowledge it, but exciting all the same. In celebration of it, and because watching two dummies ghost hunt and talk murder is actually a good use of everyone’s time right now, I’m going to list my Top 10 Supernatural and Top 10 True Crime episodes. (But first, subscribe to Watcher)

BFU Supernatural Top 10

10. The Haunted Quarters of the Dauphine Orleans Hotel - Both New Orleans episodes are a hoot and a half, but I give the edge to the Dauphine because of the bedsharing, the spooky footsteps, “I STOLE THEM OFF A WOMAN WHO DIED ON THE TITANIC”,  and, of course, two ghost bros chillin’ in a jacuzzi tub six inches apart.

9. The Search for the Mysterious Mothman - While this episode is so enjoyable (the pizza, the ogling of the Mothman statue, the Mothman calls, etc.) on its own, I love it so much for introducing Mothman into the BFU mythos. I think about Ryan saying he’d ride Mothman for life almost every day of my own life.

8. The Hunt for La Llorona - The Weeping Woman - Yes, a sponsored episode made my top 10 and it’s because Curly is a goddamn treasure and brought out so much weird chaotic horniness in Ryan. Also they got some spooky spirit box answers at the cemetery.

7. The Subterranean Terrors of the London Tombs - The best Unsolved episodes are when some spooky stuff actually happens (as it does here, with some unexplained noises and a light turning off), but what freaks Ryan out the most is just a very normal haunted maze attraction. Magnifique. 

6. The Mysterious Disappearance of the Roanoke Colony - This one is just so fucking funny. Ryan’s theories getting increasingly bonkers are always a fun staple, but never better than when he gets to drop that “the Roanoke colonists turned into zombies” bomb on Shane who throws Timmy’s ball he’s so mad.

5. The Unbelievable Horrors of the Old City Jail - a newbie, but still worthy of the top 10. Yes, Ryan’s freakout on his solo investigation is what makes this one, but we can’t forget the completely bizarre bellybutton courting and Ryan and Shane’s rap. Nor the way Shane very softly greets Ryan after his freakout.

4. Return to the Horrifying Winchester Mansion - I love the Winchester mansion, it’s a place I’d love to visit someday. (I don’t think it’s all that haunted, I just think it’s neat). The boys return is very fun, especially their overnight stay in separate rooms. Ryan’s running monologue of begging the ghosts to stay away from him (even though he’s there to collect evidence of their existence) is never funnier than here. It also gave us an all-time moment in the Post-Mortem where Ryan admitted that Shane provided him a great deal of comfort.

3. Three Horrifying Cases of Ghosts and Demons - The one that started it all. It remains a favorite (and their most watched) for a reason. The original Winchester ghost hunt and the Island of the Dolls are good enough on their own, but it’s Sallie House that made the show into what we all know and love today. Ryan screaming at a flashlight, Shane laughing at Ryan screaming at a flashlight...that’s it, that’s the show.

2. The Terrors of the Yuma Territorial Prison - “This episode is underrated!!!” she screamed from the rafters. Shane is in a very odd mood in this one, insisting to Ryan that he did hear some strange footsteps (and Ryan doesn’t seem to believe him), he gets into an argument with a possible ghost on the spirit box, “I’m strange and OFF-PUTTING!”, that goofy ass gift shop investigation, and then there’s the bats. It’s a great thrill to see what Shane is like when he’s actually a little freaked out, and it’s, as always, an even greater one to see Ryan reduced to tears.

1. The Demonic Goatman’s Bridge - Is it an obvious #1? Yes. Does that make it any less worthy? No. One of my favorite things about this episode is that Shane’s iconic antagonizing of Goatman happens in the first half of the episode. Then they have to go into the woods and yell about cult stuff and be afraid of real people hanging out in said woods after! The energy started chaotic (”Are you taking off your pants? We’re in public!”) and never stopped from there. An absolute classic and it always, always makes me laugh. 

BFU True Crime Top 10

10. The Historic Disappearance of Louis LePrince - I think season 3 of True Crime is really strong, in general. As a true crime fan, it had a lot of cases I had never heard before and I think they’re all pretty interesting, this one included. I also like that it gave Shane a chance to shit on Thomas Edison. He deserved it.

9. The Odd Vanishing of Amelia Earhart - Like Shane, I do like to imagine Amelia crash landing among the crabs. It’s a good mix of a classic mystery we all know a little about and the boys taking it to the extremes.

8. The Enigmatic Death of the Isdal Woman - One of the best directed episodes of Unsolved (great job Sara), I really enjoy all the flourishes this episode has. Plus, it’s a great mystery. Yeah, she was probably a spy, but that’s only one part of the story. 

7. The Terrifying Axeman of New Orleans - The boys have a lot of fun with this, especially the rumors that the Axeman was somehow supernatural and able to shrink down to enter doors. 

6. The Creepy Murder in Room 1046 - One of those mysteries I had never heard before and I was totally enthralled for this episode because of it. I’ve even heard this on other True Crime programs since then, but Ryan and Shane talking about it is still much more interesting and entertaining to me. This episode did introduce us to the running joke that will not die, Ricky Goldsworth, but it’s helped by the realization that Ryan 100% named his ~evil alter ego after his childhood dog.

5. The Thrilling Gardner Museum Heist - This one holds a special place in my heart because it was the episode that really hooked me on the show. It wasn’t the first I watched (that would be Bobby Mackey’s), but it was the one that interested me enough to keep clicking around on YouTube to keep watching these two cute doofuses. It’s also a very fun mystery since no one dies.

4. The Disturbing Murders at Keddie Cabin - One of the most visually stunning episodes of BFU, the boys trip to the Keddie Cabins is one of the most genuinely unsettling episodes. The rainy day and glances of townspeople watching them poke around the remnants of the cabin where a woman and children were brutally murdered really add to the mood, especially because of the rumors that town and police corruption are why these remain unsolved.

3. The Mysterious Death of the Eight Day Bride - Ah, the polyamorous episode, as I refer to it in my head. It was nice to see them tackle a case that included a possible queer angle and treat that part of it pretty respectfully. It was also nice for Ryan to compare himself to the third wheel of the story when talking about hanging out with Shane and Sara all the time. (this episode also gets a slight boost for having the best Post-Mortem of all time. He would ride Mothman for life, y’all.)

2. The Strange Disappearance of DB Cooper - It’s just hilarious. They have a ball discussing one of the biggest American mysteries of the 20th century, nearly choking on their bourbon and sodas, “SPRING BREAK!!!”, and laughing at the “phantom of the sky”. 

1. The Treacherous Treasure Hunt of Forrest Fenn - Ryan Bergara emerging from a Best Western bathroom dressed up as Indiana Jones while Shane stares in stunned silence is the greatest 3 seconds this show has ever produced. I will not be taking critiques at this time.

No, but seriously, this episode is a full-on blast. I love how different it is from anything else they’ve ever done. I love the “over-produced montages”. I love the actual thrill when Ryan sees that square rock. I, obviously, love the Indiana Bergara of it all. I love that they really did do a lot of research into where to look for Fenn’s treasure. I loved their stupid Post-Mortem outfits and renting an expensive car all for a stupid bit because that’s why I love these two dummies. They delight each other so much with their similar bullshit and sense of humor and it’s never more apparent and charming to me than this episode. 

[theradioghost]

...ok what's up with corsets?

I mean, mostly just a lot of misconceptions about how they worked and what they were for. I’m going to ramble a lot here, but please know that I am not by any definition an expert on any of this, just a 19th century lit major who’s studied a lot of historical context stuff for research and fun purposes.

One clarification is, to simplify the complex and annoying evolution of language over centuries, if it’s from the  early 1800s or later, it’s a corset. If it’s from the 16th-18th centuries, it’s “stays” or a “pair of bodies.” (I think bodies was an earlier term more commonly used for outer garments while stays were undergarments, but don’t quote me on that.) Stays were basically conical with quite a long torso, and you couldn’t lace them particularly tight because metal eyelets weren’t invented until the 1830s and the fabric couldn’t take that strain. Depending on the fashion at the time, their basic function was to create a perfectly smooth, very long silhouette, push your boobs up, or both. Typically their structure came from cording, reeds, whalebone, or layers of paste-stiffened fabric; steel stays from this period are essentially orthopedic devices (or, and I’m obsessed with this idea: fakes created by 19th century fetishists. There’s a reason the 19th century is my favorite historical period and it’s because everything was absolutely nuts, all the time). They also fell in and out of fashion at times – if you look at the naturalistic, Grecian styles of European dresses in the 1820s, for example, many women were wearing either very light stays just to push their bust up, or none at all.

Some nice examples of stays from this period are this, this, and this, from the V&A’s collections. Looking at most portraiture of women from the 16-1700s also pretty clearly displays the conical silhouette that stays produced, but I’m going to refrain from adding images to this post because I already suspect that it’s going to be incredibly, frustratingly long.

Women basically weren’t wearing structured undergarments before the Renaissance, so medieval stays are not a thing.. Although on a fascinating side note, a few years back someone found a bunch of medieval bras, which we had no idea were a thing until then, so that’s really cool. 

Regardless of whether you’re talking stays or corsets, two important things. First of all, they were not worn directly against the skin what the hell, firstly because that is incredibly uncomfortable, and secondly because in periods where most people owned fairly little clothing and a lot of that was wool, having a linen or cotton undergarment under all your clothes helped keep them cleaner by separating them from your skin. Historically most often that was a shift, basically just a big long undershirt thing.

The second important thing is whalebone, historically always the number one material for corset boning. Whalebone is an incredibly misleading name, and I hate it, because it took me forever to learn that “whalebone” is not bone but baleen, the bristly stuff that filter-feeding whales have instead of teeth. It’s made from keratin, same as our hair and fingernails. It’s light, flexible, and becomes bendable with warmth, meaning that over time, the boning of a corset would conform to your natural body shape as it was warmed by your body heat, and would stay in that shape. All-steel boning only really became A Thing in the last couple of decades that corsets were an everyday garment for most women, and that wasn’t because of superior structural properties. It was because it was cheaper, given that after centuries of whaling, there were a lot fewer whales to hunt, and acquiring baleen became more expensive and difficult. Even then, a lot of manufacturers just moved to things like featherboning (made from the shafts of feathers), coraline (made from a plant whose name I cannot remember), cane, or just cording (often cotton or paper cords), rather than steel. They also tended to use spiral steels, which can flex more, as opposed to solid steel bones. The main use of steel in corsets was actually to reinforce the closures, the front busk and the back where it laced.

(Most modern corsets are either all-steel waist training corsets or “fashion corsets” boned with flimsy plastic, but there’s actually a modern product called synthetic whalebone which is a plastic designed to replicate the properties of baleen as closely as possible.)

Then we get to the Victorian period, and that’s where pop culture really kind of loses its shit over the idea of corsetry? All the fainting and shifting organs and women getting ribs surgically removed (what) and generally the impression that Corsets Are Horrible Death Garments.

Tightlacing is one of the big things here. Yes, there were Victorian women who tightlaced to reduce their waists to dramatic extremes, and it was not healthy. There are also women today who put themselves through dangerous, unbelievable things to achieve the most fashionable body possible (tw in that link for disordered eating, self-harm, and abuse), and that article only covers the extremes of the professional modeling industry, not everyday things like high heels, for example. Most women who were tightlacing were young, wealthy, and fashionable, not worrying about being healthy enough to work as long as they could achieve ideal beauty – the same people who do this kind of thing now. And part of the reason we know so much about it is that it was extreme and uncommon even then. Medical experts ranted about the dangers of tightlacing, people campaigned against it. It was definitely not the case that all women were going around suffocating in tightlaced corsets all the time.

It’s worth considering our sample of evidence. You see a lot of illustrated fashion plates, which don’t look like real women now, and didn’t then either. By the late 1800s, photographers had already figured out plenty of tricks with angles and posing to make a model look as wasp-waisted as possible. They would also just straight up paint women’s waists smaller in a lot of pictures. And when you consider surviving garments, a disproportionate number of them are from rich young women who hadn’t yet married and had children, because for a variety of reasons those tend to be the clothes that are preserved and survive. The constantly-swooning women of Victorian literature are for some reason presumed to be representative of real life and the constriction of corsets – let me tell you, as someone who studied 19th century literature specifically, everything is exaggerated and melodramatic, especially extremes of emotion (and men also swoon a lot too). It also seems weird that we nod along unquestioning with the most extreme claims of 19th century panics about the medical harm of corsets (rib removal? with 19th century surgery???) and then just mock those silly, stupid Victorians when we read about things like bicycle face or the claim that fast vehicles would make women’s uteruses fly out of their bodies or whatever.

In fact, corsets were a pretty sensible garment in a lot of ways. They seem really restrictive to us now, but historical garments in general didn’t stretch the way modern knit fabrics do. In addition to supporting the bust just like any modern bra, corsets could actually make moving and breathing easier by helping to support the weight of ridiculously heavy dresses. Women did in fact live everyday, active lives wearing them, including lower-class women who worked physically demanding jobs. Late-Victorian women actually started doing a lot more sports, including cycling – that cyclist at the top of the bicycle face article is definitely wearing a corset, for example. They were used to them, too, and used to the specific ways you move in those kind of clothes, which most modern folks who try to wear that stuff one time are not. One interesting thing I’ve heard is that while corsets helped posture a lot – a lot of people today use them medically to help with back pain and support for just that reason – over time that understandably means that if you’re always wearing a corset, your abdominal muscles won’t be very strong because they’re not doing as much work keeping your posture straight. No ab crunches for Victorian women I guess.

Looking at extant Victorian-era clothing, the fashionable wasp-waisted silhouette actually had a lot more to do with the optical illusion achieved with extensive padding, which widened the hips and turned the upper body into a smooth, Chris-Evans-esque triangle. In comparison, the waist looks smaller. (Seriously, look up some photos of late 19th century ladies, their whole front upper body is this perfectly smooth convex curve. That’s all padding.) Silhouette was what the Victorians really cared about, and padding is a lot more sensible and comfortable than tightlacing.

My basic point here is just I guess that there’s a common and weirdly moralizing perception now that the historical corset was, invariably, this horrible constricting heavy steel cage thing that damaged your health and was a Tool Of Patriarchal Oppression. There’s also a lot of really bad costuming in historical dramas. I just think the reality is a lot more interesting. Also that modern steel waist training corsets kind of terrify me?

If you want more info and some good primary and academic sources from people who actually study and recreate historical garments and Actually Know Things, I recommend Bernadette Banner’s videos (here and here) on corsets – also just her stuff in general, I’ve been incredibly happy to see her gaining a lot of attention lately because she’s delightful – this video by historical costumer Morgan Donner wearing a corset daily for a week and talking about what it feels like, and this article, which cites among other things a really interesting late-19th-century study by a doctor trying to actually gather data on corsetry and its effects. Also for that matter, the aforementioned YouTube costumers have respectively made 17th-century stays and a late 19th-century corset, and seeing how these garments are put together is really interesting.

(I feel like I heard somewhere once that S-shape corsets from 1900-1910ish might have been more potentialy harmful because they did weird things to your back posture, but honestly my historical knowledge and interest drops precipitiously when you hit the 20th century.)

[resourcesofcolor]

The Suffragettes Were Not Allies to Black Women, They Were Racist.

Excerpts of an important article written by ShaRhonda Knott-Dawson in August 2019, to address the problematic nature of celebrating White Feminism and the 99th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment. 

Knott-Dawson explains, “If the adage is true, 'those who forget about history are doomed to repeat it,' it is my duty as a parent to teach my children the truth about American history. And it’s our collective duty to teach the truth about the fight for women’s suffrage to the children in our schools—warts and all.”

WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE WAS A POLITICAL COMPROMISE

We teach our students that the idea of political compromise is part of what makes American democracy “great.” But for those of us who are not White men, “compromise” isn’t great at all. In fact, it’s horrible. The political compromises made by our government are almost always made at the expense of the most marginalized groups in America. And the 19th Amendment is a prime example of how American democracy’s compromises work against Blacks folks.

The truth about the 19th Amendment is that it was a political win for White women at the expense of Black women.

POLITICAL COALITIONS: BLACK FOLKS AND WHITE WOMEN

Black people and Northern White women realized they were disenfranchised and formed coalitions to advance the civil rights of both groups. This is the part of history that is often highlighted in our history books—both Black folks and White women, working hand in hand to fight for the right to be included in American democracy.

Here’s the part we don’t teach:

SOUTHERN WHITE WOMEN WERE ACTIVE PARTICIPANTS IN THE ENSLAVEMENT, DISENFRANCHISEMENT AND DEHUMANIZING OF BLACK FOLKS.

Black folks and Northern White women were political allies. However, in the conservative South, there were no coalitions between Black folks and White men, and especially White women. Southern White women were active participants in the enslavement, disenfranchisement and dehumanizing of Black folks. Some records show that up to 30% of slave owners were White women. Additionally, after the Civil War, White women were full participants in the KKK, lynching Black men.

THE SPLIT

After the Civil War, the Northern coalition between Black folks and White women was strong. With the win and a majority in the House and Senate, they quickly went to work on changing government policies to allow new participants. However, when the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were passed, White women were left behind.

From the moment Black men gained suffrage rights and White women were denied, the coalition was fractured. The suffragettes were furious. It was clear to Black folks that White women were not their allies and many had no real belief in equality. In fact, it became clear to Black folks that although White suffragettes may not have believed in slavery, they were White Supremacists all the same.

Anna Howard Shaw, president of the National Women Suffrage Associatio at the time, is quoted saying, verbatim: “You have put the ballot in the hands of your Black men, thus making them political superiors of White women. Never before in the history of the world have men made former slaves the political masters of their former mistresses!” 

A NEW COALITION

The suffragettes realized they needed to change their alliances from Black folks to Southern White women. Southern White women are a lot of things, but inconsistent in their hatred for Black people is not one of those things. And if the suffragettes wanted to partner with Southern White women, there could be no “racial equality” stuff.

During the Reconstruction, Southern White women were participating in one of the darkest periods of American history for Black folks that some have called, “worse than slavery.” Mass incarceration, brutal beatings, dire poverty and the barbaric act of lynching were running rampant in the South. For Black people, stopping lynching was the priority, and they hoped their “suffragette allies” would publicly join the cause.

That is not what happened.

What had happened was White suffragettes decided that the right for White women to vote was more important than lynching. From then on, Northern and Southern White Women decided to side with “Whiteness” and argue that the inclusion of White women in democracy was more important than any racial inclusiveness at all.

BLACK SUFFRAGE LEADERS

Our children rarely, if ever, hear about Black suffrage leaders in their history classes. Yet, Black women were out there doing the work— even when no one wanted them on their team. Black women refused to accept their exclusion from White suffrage organizations or the racist tactics they employed. In fact, some Black women pushed back— hard.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, a Black woman journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist and Civil Rights leader, planned a boss move— a strategic, savage takedown of the phony White suffragettes.

She called out White suffragettes who were working with racist, Southern White women, while pretending in the North to be anti-racist to their major funders, the British Anti-Racist societies.

When she realized the game the White suffragettes were playing, she decided to fight. Wells got on a boat and went to London, met with the funders for the suffragettes and spilled all the tea about how the suffragettes were compliant and forming coalitions with White folks who were still doing barbaric shit, like burning and lynching a pregnant woman and cutting her stomach and letting the baby hang by the umbilical cord over the fire pit.

The British were outraged and immediately pulled funding from the American suffragettes. Because their funding was in jeopardy, the White suffragettes made more public attempts to seem anti-lynching, while simultaneously coalition-building with Southern White women.

FEMINISM WAS NEVER FOR BLACK WOMEN

Feminism, even and especially the feminism of the beloved suffragettes we remember when we mark the anniversary of the 19th Amendment, has never been for all women. Feminism has been for White women, usually upper-middle-class, White women.

Plenty of White women’s suffrage leaders held racist, White supremacist views and worked against the freedom of Black women. Black women understand this betrayal. In the same way we are clear that Black people were not part of the “independence of America,” we are also clear that Black women were not part of “women’s suffrage.”  

The suffragettes were focused and even formidable at times. They organized effectively, they marched and they picketed. They were beaten and wrongfully imprisoned. They went on a hunger strike and were forcibly fed. They were strategic and used the public sentiment to win “Votes for Women.” They deserve some recognition for this. But we must also recognize that they played a powerful role in maintaining White supremacy.

But Black feminists have been fighting for equality—both racial and gender equity—since the founding of the United States and not only have their struggles been ignored by White feminists and suffragettes historically, but the issues that are priorities for Black women are attacked by White women acting from racial bias today, who, ironically, claim to be feminist.

DIFFERENT TIME, SAME STORY

This is the complex and complete history we need to teach our children about the women’s suffrage movement because the impacts of these political bargains are still alive and well today. Black people are still disenfranchised, especially in the Southern states. And, just like the suffragettes who worked so hard to pass the 19th Amendment, White feminists are quiet about racism, White supremacy and voter suppression. Luckily, Black folks realize that White feminists are not allies. They are about advancing the rights of White women—no matter the cost.

[bomberqueen17]

so much doings

So I posted on Instagram yesterday about my Big Adventure, but like. Wow. I barely scratched the surface of just how cool it was. (Hint: the stuff was cool, the people were even more interesting.)

I get that for everyone involved, this is a labor of love. Our local fibershed is very much luxury goods at this point. I was thinking about it because on Sunday I went to the boutique where my Middle-Little sister works, and I looked at all the expensive clothes, and there was one jacket in particular that caught my eye-- from five feet away, it looked like it was made of tightly-quilted solid black cotton, all quilted in fantastic wiggly patterns, with large chunky details (like a fold-over asymmetric lapel, and a chunk of the bodice, and the cuffs) in what looked like needle felted wool.

But it wasn’t. The body was poly-acrylic, printed with kinks to look quilted in that pattern, and the chunky bits were just printed polyester. It was still a lovely jacket, but it was, well. Plastic, through and through. 

If you made a jacket like that of quilted cotton and felted wool, it’d be $350 at least, if not more, and not machine-washable; the plastic version was like $150 and I think was machine-wash cold hang to dry. But I would be so much more likely to splash out any money at all on a really quality piece like that, especially if it was local, than I would on the imported plastic one. (Like hell would i pay $150 for a plastic jacket. Oh my god.)

But the idea of a local fibershed is something I’d been thinking about a bit, and it was so wonderful to speak to these people who also felt the same way. As MJ drove us around, we were passing historic markers for the Battle of Saratoga on the left and the right-- that’s where that shit went down, all in Schuylerville, and everyone there knows at least a bit about it. And they all were aware that this region produced a lot of flax and hemp in days of yore, and processed a great deal of cotton, shipped up the Hudson from the port at New York, mostly imported from the South-- and didn’t they have mixed feelings about the Civil War, too, MJ was very frank about that. They all knew why that cotton was so cheap but it being so cheap meant there was room to make a good living on the markup from processing, and losing that meant a lot of the mills went out during and after that war-- but, isn’t that better?

The flax we lost last of all, to the rapidly-changing market after WWI, and today nobody has any idea where to get industrial-scale flax-processing equipment in this country. Mom’s got records of patent after patent for such things, all filed by management at the Cable Flax Mill in the town she’s historian of, but we don’t know how they worked or how to replicate that. Anyone who makes linen clothes or goods buys in finished cloth from the Baltic.

(How do I explain to my Dude that I want to go visit his ancestral homeland but only if he learns the language well enough to ask them for a flax mill tour??)

ANYHOW I have more to say but I have to go hang out with Farmkid. 

[azfellandco]

Hey there, so your reply to my comment on the vampire AU, about Aziraphale and consumption and such, has been rattling around in my head since I read it, and I was hoping, if you have the time/energy/desire of course, to pick your brains about what kinds of meta/headcanons you've got? Because Aziraphale and food and softness and subversion give me LIFE and I have some thoughts of my own but I'd love to hear yours :D

I would love to talk about this some more, hell yeah. Thank you so much. Please do also tell me your headcanons, @dwarven-beard-spores, I definitely want to hear them. Here is the AU in question for anyone else who might be interested.

Anyway I’m going to have to put this under a read-more because this has become like… thesis level long. My apologies to anyone on mobile. 

The thing I love about this book in general is that there’s such a rich vein of history of thought to explore baked into the premise. Angels and demons and god and the devil and satanic nuns and witches and the four horsemen and the antichrist and the Book of Revelation’s “capital A for Apocalypse” exist in this universe and because so much of it is played for humorous effect there’s a lot of wiggle room as to how these things actually interact with their real world theological equivalents. Which is all building up to say: I am absolutely fascinated with the dichotomy in popular conception between angels as good/holy and angels as monstrous, and how to a lot of people that really isn’t a dichotomy at all. 

Here are some quotes I think about in conjunction with Aziraphale a lot. 

“Did you ever notice how in the Bible, whenever God needed to punish someone, or make an example, or whenever God needed a killing, he sent an angel? Did you ever wonder what a creature like that must be like? A whole existence spent praising your God, but always with one wing dipped in blood. Would you ever really want to see an angel?“  –The Prophecy

“Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the hierarchyof angels? and even if one of thempressed me against his heart: I would be consumedin that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothingbut the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,and we are so awed because it serenely disdainsto annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.” –Rainer Maria Rilke

Every angel is terrifying. What? Whomst? Aziraphale, light of my life, in love with a demon who thinks bullet-hole window transfers and expensive divers’ watches are cool, calls said demon “my dear”, is terrifying? Excuse me? 

I am utterly in love with the idea of Aziraphale as this potential force of nature, with the righteous fury and the wings and the sword and wait. What did Aziraphale do with that sword? He gave it away to the humans that got kicked out of paradise, because they looked cold. 

The first thing Aziraphale does in the whole book is a renouncement of this particular idea of angels, and we see him sort of… butt up against it later, when he talks to the Metatron. Aziraphale doesn’t want the world to end, of course he doesn’t, but I just have… so many feelings about the way Aziraphale talks about the war versus the way the Metatron talks about the war. 

The point is not to avoid the war, it is to win it. –the Metatron, pg. 242

The Metatron is the kind of angel above, blood and fury, and Aziraphale’s voice goes “flat and hopeless” in the face of it, “the bitterness in his voice would have soured milk”. Aziraphale doesn’t want this war to happen, and the way all his thoughts and feelings are tagged versus the sort of netural, descriptionless way the Metatron’s are (pretty much the only characterization the Metatron gets is “a well-educated voice” and “a shade testily”, the latter of which is in response to Aziraphale saying he has to delay returning to Heaven) has always struck me as like… the difference between Aziraphale and other angels is that Aziraphale cares so much. We talk a lot in this fandom about Crowley and “the truth was that Crowley rather liked humans. It was a major failing in a demon” but Aziraphale is the same, he’s just… subtler. 

Where the heck was I going with this. I’m so fond. 

Ah yes. Aziraphale is different from other angels because he cares, because he wants. I wrote a fic about this, too, actually. So it’s sort of interesting to me that it’s in the things Aziraphale wants that he is most an ”every angel is terrifying” angel, even though in some cases it’s a muted and complex kind of thing, a lot of which has been helped along for my by popular fandom and my love of gothic lit and isn’t necessarily comping from the book anymore, everything from here on out is my headcanons.

The most obvious example of Aziraphale’s desires being the most monstrous thing about him comes from that same conversation with the Metatron. I’m sure everybody here is aware of the good old “Aziraphale was willing to kill a child so he could stay on earth and keep eating sushi” post which, while reductive, is essentially what I’m getting at here. Aziraphale calls the Metatron with the specific intent of the Metatron killing Adam and stopping the ball rolling because he likes the world and he likes living there and I really do think, when it comes down to it, that’s a purely selfish decision on Aziraphale’s part. Crowley knows that the things about the world that will get Aziraphale on his side near the start of the book are all things Aziraphale likes. 

“No more compact discs… no salt, no eggs. No gravlax with dill sauce. No more fascinating little restaurants where they know you. No Daily Telegraph crosswords. No small antique shops. No book shops either. No interesting first editions. No–” Crowley scraped the bottom of Aziraphale’s barrel of interests, “regency silver snuffboxes.” –pg. 46

It’s all well and good to like people and want to help them and want to save them, but in the end, for a certain kind of person (the kind of person I see Aziraphale as), you have to make it personal. And people, as I’m sure everyone is aware, will do truly awful things in the name of protecting what is personal to them. 

I don’t know where to put this observation so it’s going here. That one line that’s like “Six millennia exposure to humans was having the same effect on Aziraphale as it was on Crowley, only in the opposite direction”? I’ve generally seen this taken to mean “six millennia had made them both more human-like by making Crowley less evil and Aziraphale less good” but personally I’ve always taken it to mean that exposure to humans has made Crowley like humans more and Aziraphale like humans less. My angel is antisocial and likes people in a general sense only, because it’s important to his self-image to love all of God’s creation or whatever.

On that slightly ominous note let’s move on to the point about consumption. There’s a sentiment in some feminist literature about desire, and sexual desire, and hunger, and how they overlap that is relevant here but I cannot find the exact quote I am thinking of so these will have to do. 

For a woman who has learned to make herself physically and emotionally small, to live literally and figuratively on scraps, admitting that you have an appetite is a source of cavernous fear. Women are often on a diet of the body, but we are always on a diet of the heart. The low-maintenance woman, the ideal woman, has no appetite. This is not to say that she refuses food, sex, romance, emotional effort; to refuse is petulant, which is ironically more demanding. The woman without appetite politely finishes what’s on her plate, and declines seconds. She is satisfied and satisfiable. –Hunger Makes Me by Jess Zimmerman (if the contents of this meta i’m writing interest you then I suggest you read this article as well)

Please also see this “a softer world” fancomic which is a remix of the poem Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe– “And we loved with a love that was more than love, I and my Annabel Lee.”

To want is to hunger and to hunger is to want and it’s extremely important to me that Aziraphale’s particular temptation, and one Crowley knows full well, is lunch. Wanting as selfishness, as monstrousness, is… how you say… my entire shit. The subgenre of gothic horror that is about women who want and the way this makes them feel, as though they’re destructive and dark and dangerous, is pretty much the reason I am the person I am today. Crimson Peak, Shirley Jackson’s work but especially The Haunting of Hill House (speaking of which i am going to personally eviscerate whoever approved that netflix series, how dare they), to some extent Karen Navidson’s story in House Of Leaves, probably lots of others but those are the main ones that come to mind. They’re all about women who want, and feel they shouldn’t, and how that disconnect makes them othered from themselves and the world around them. 

I’ve always seen some overlap between this and the concept of queering the villain, because historically the idea of sexual desire has been made to look monstrous by bigots and assholes and that absolutely has not stopped us from grabbing these characters and archetypes and saying “mine now”. I’m never going to stop loving queer-coded villains as long as I live, because if society wants us to be evil we will damn well show them evil. 

But of course, wanting isn’t actually evil. It’s just human. Aziraphale is not especially selfish, for a human, even when that selfishness manifests as disregard for his companion’s feelings or stubbornness about the big picture (”That only works, right, if you start everyone off equal… that’s the good bit. The lower you start the more opportunities you have. Crowley had said, that’s lunatic. No, said Aziraphale, it’s ineffable.”) it’s still just… human. People have a notoriously hard time caring about suffering beyond themselves, it’s why we invented morality. Wanting has no moral value, not really, just as hunger doesn’t. 

But I can’t help but think that, if Aziraphale agrees with this assessment, it’s taken him thousands of years and certainly until after the apocalypse to arrive there. Aziraphale wants to be good, and he wants his side to be “the good side”, so much so that he’s deluded himself for ages into thinking he doesn’t care about or consider the validity of the stuff Crowley says and believes. There is no textual evidence to support the statement “Aziraphale feels guilty for wanting things and part of the reason he’s so attached to Crowley is that Crowley makes him feel less guilty”, but there it is. 

Aziraphale wants, and other angels don’t, or at least, Aziraphale wants in a very concrete and specific sense that other angels don’t seem to–food, wine, books, snuffboxes, Crowley– in short, to be in the world and experience. Aziraphale wants sensual things, pretty things. Comfortable things. Aziraphale is such a soft and homey character despite all these little apparent sharp points, and I adore that about him. 

Let me quote my own fic for a moment, the vampire fic that prompted this ask in the first place.

Everything about Aziraphale said “soft” to Crowley, it was something he’d always rather liked about his friend. Soft curls framing his round face, gentle hands, warm and unfashionable clothes covering his pudgy middle. There was absolutely nothing about Aziraphale that looked even slightly predatory, and Crowley had never been able to determine if this was intentional camouflage or just the way Aziraphale was [footnote: it was both]. 

Aziraphale is selfish and petty and can be inconsiderate and obtuse, but he gave away the thing that identified him as an angel because some humans were suffering and needed it. He loves wine, and books, and he’s fat goddammit, because of course he is. He’s nonthreatening because he’s chosen to be. He’s human because he’s chosen to be, just as Crowley is. It just took him longer to realize that’s what he’d done. He’s got the potential, by virtue of being an angel, to be this incredibly powerful and dangerous thing, and instead he owns a bookshop and feeds the ducks and goes to lunch with his friend. 

I’m sure I’ll think of like ten additional things I want to say about this after I post it lmao prepare yourself for that, I guess.