#for context: i have a govt job

[llondonfog]

hiatus until I'm mentally okay again

[eyepatchdate]

persona cops or related (blood or professionally) to cops list: mr. suou, katsuya, tatsuya, akihiko, kurosawa, chie, naoto, makoto, sae, akechi, last but not least, adachi

[thatshadowcomic]

Relationship Dynamics/timeline

Previous | Next

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This will appear in the comic, but it plays a part/context to his relationship. It's kinda spolier but not really, so skip is optional. This might change as the comic is created!

Pre Doom: Shadow x rouge failure

Rouge's positive influence on Shadow can't be understated, but Rouge digs too deep, even manipulating and attempting to use GUN methods on shadow to help him. This triggers the memory of Maria's shooting. This gruesome image creates confusion and the lack of certainty makes him suspicious of Rouge, given her job and connection to GUN. It was a GUN solider in his memory. It causes him to close off from her, and he becomes directionless. Shadow wonders aimlessly, in an attempt to find something familiar. Rouge, trying to maintain their connection, becomes more of an enabler than a partner, coddling him as he continues inward. Eventually they realize their dynamic is turning them into the worst part of themselves, and they return to being friends in an attempt to rebuild what was lost. Rouge offers shadow a place at GUN, maybe an agent under the Govt, or a bed at her new home. Shadow denies them, still unsure who to trust. This feeling is familiar and he longs for a connection, a purpose...

Doom: manipulation and self resolve

Click "Shadow's story" for shadow's canon lore Click "prologue" for my headcanon lore, post "shadow the hedgehog" (2006). Black Doom's return starts nov, 2005 and concludes march, 2006. The Toll takes place 1 year later, late feb 2007.

Post Doom: Fight with Sonic

Shadow joins GUN, much to Sonic's disappointment. He claims Shadow needs freedom and time to rediscover himself and should join team sonic. This ends in an argument, with Shadow deciding to be firm: "Are you joining because you want to, or because you think you have to? I just don't want you to be stuck under another hive mind's control and lose sight of yourself, because you're scared to face the world. You're not alone, by the way, you got friends, you got me--I think what you need--" "ENOUGH! We are not friends and you do not get to tell me what I need. Thank you for saving me, sonic, but I don't owe you anything, but I do owe the world... my debt will be paid through doing good with GUN, and that is my choice. When next we meet, it will be business or for the sake of the world. Goodbye." Sonic takes this very seriously and seems to spend a long time alone from everyone. Neither discuss the argument with anyone. Shadow often visits Amy's cafe because Sonic avoids it. She gradually wears him down and they become surprisingly close, like siblings. He begins to mull over the sonic situation with her, asking her advice and generally obsessing with sonic.

Nearly 1 year later: Fear of the public.

Shadow works for GUN, but the public views him as a fraud, a ticking time bomb and a weapon. GUN has him under media/social lock down, with his travels and events planned to better his report with the public. Shadow requires GUN's permission for most events. After being denied or having the permissions be granted AFTER the event, Shadow stops asking. He becomes withdrawn and restless, even to Amy. Shadow begins memory hypnosis and general trauma therapy to truly move on, but this only intensifies his unrest as November comes around... Rouge is unsure how to help him. She's fearful he will become defensive again and shut her out for good. (Omega doesn't understand these complicated emotions well enough to assist beyond offering his own views on his own experiences.) --------------------------------------

[olderthannetfic]

I know with social media the way it is, and how horrible the us political climate is, that this sort of response to Audrey as an OTW candidate was probably just a ticking time bomb. But damn, I went to her actual Twitter, and honestly? She seems like one of those old-style, fiscal conservative Republicans who may want to change things from within the party, however unlikely that may be. She literally pointed out how small govt means less govt messing with our rights, and how the current Republican national party is hypocritical about that.

So many of her typical tweetings (?) are pretty socially progressive. If she's in deep south Missouri, it may be that she had to run Republican for any chance of changing things for the better in her local area.

I do not support Republicans as a whole. I think they ARE dragging the country to a horrific, fundamentalist grave. But she is an individual, and from what I can tell, supportive of lgbtq rights and freedom of speech on the internet. I likely would not have voted for her anyway, but nothing she has done or said so far has earned her the hate and vitriol she has received over such a short period.

Tiffany was ALSO not a CCP spy working for the Chinese govt. She was literally not even in confirmed to BE in China for fucks sake. Chinese people have been leaving the country in droves! Was she a good fit for the board? Hell no! But she wasn't voted in, was she?

I'm just so exhausted of people assuming the absolute worst and going on a hate campaign based off their own misinformed assumptions. This is not helping anyone see the "left" or "proshippers" or whatever our "side" is, as reasonable, helpful people.

I'm exhausted of defending people whose positions I don't even agree with, because the people I do "agree" with are acting so abhorrently.

What are your thoughts on this?

--

Yeah, that's my read on her in the context of local US politics. Running as an independent and then a Republican where she is is typical of people with her type of platform. It doesn't make her Fundie Satan.

Like Tiffany, there are plenty of different reasons not to vote for her, so we don't need to worry so much about the minutia of her political stances. Only if she were a great candidate but with a couple of red flags would we need to dig into this.

Like I said last year, working for OTW means having people assume the worst constantly and come for you with pitchforks. There are reasons it's not attractive above and beyond internal mismanagement. It's hard to get enough people to run for Board to even have a contested election. We usually do these days, but in the past, we often didn't. It was just people taking turns to jump on the grenade.

This kind of response to someone agreeing to the worst job in OTW just reaffirms that it's not worth it and discourages future candidates.

I think everyone should chillax and vote in somebody else.

ETA: and while this has been sitting in the queue, it has become a moot point anyway.

[fandomtrashbag]

I am aware this isn't a Destiel meme but the shitty memes grab enough attention and that's all I need. It's been a long day.

Hi! It's trashbag again. I've got a migraine but I'll power through with a more detailed summary about the Job Quota Protests in Bangladesh.

Currently Bangladesh has 56% quota allocated for govt jobs. 30% of this is for the descendants (children/grandchildren) of freedom fighters. In comparison, ethnic minorities have 5% and the disabled have 1%. It's nearly impossible to get into the govt jobs without inside connections due to rampant corruption and nepotism.

Students have protested for this before, back in 2018. It was bad, university students got tear gassed and shot with rubber bullets.

July 1st the public universities began the protests for the job quota reform again. Coincidentally this also coincided with public university faculty going on strike because of the Prottoy Pension Scheme, which does not provide enough of a financial safety net and also takes a significant chunk out of the faculties' income. So, students did not have any classes to worry about when they went to the streets.

July 14, PM of the country let us just call her Granny because I don't want to raise red flags on my blog. Granny came back from a visit to China, and of all the statements she gave, one said "if there is no quota for the freedom fighters, who will there be quota for? The Rajakars?"

For context, Rajakars were the paramilitary force that were against the independence of Bangladesh. They did their best to thwart liberation. They're national traitors. They've done concentration camps, genocide, murder of intellectuals, rape, torture.

So, the leader of the nation just called us the local equivalent of a Nazi for demanding to lower the freedom fighter quota. She did not want more merit based people working in the government, which as a leader of a nation is absolutely wild to me.

There was a considerable amount of outrage. Students of Dhaka University (DU) who have been protesting since July 1, took the streets at midnight to chant slogans. The chants lose a lot of weight in translation, but they're essentially calling themselves Rajakars (ironically) for wanting equality.

July 15. We've had student protests erupt around the country. The ruling party sent their student wing, BCL, to suppress. Students occupied the dormitory halls and barricaded. People were beaten and attacked in broad daylight. Rajshahi University (RU) had a raid attempt by BCL at 11PM. Jahangirnagar University (JU) had an attack at 3AM.

July 16. Nationwide protests surge. Private Universities - BRAC, NSU, AIUB, IUB, UIU and so on took to the streets and occupied the roads. There's been blockades. The police got involved today, there was an attack on Primeasia University. The first martyr for the movement, Abu Sayed, 25, died by police gunfire. The video of his murder has been all over Facebook. BCL brought in reinforcements. RU had arson. There was open gunfire in DU.

Come evening, there's been a massive misinformation campaign ongoing. There is fear being incited wherever you look. The latest was 27 rapes at Dhaka University, proven false. The main source of communication is Facebook, and they've slowed that right down. There's now confusion on if there will be protests tomorrow. False information that tomorrow's protests were cancelled on the occasion of Ashura spread too far.

Local media isn't reporting shit. Al Jazeera, AP, Reuters, the diplomat have but there needs to be more.

6 officially dead. One is a highschooler.

At least 200 injured. Real numbers are close to 400.

All hope is not lost - 5 DU halls have pledged to ban student politics. But there is a lot left to be done. Please boost this before we spiral into a much worse situation.

[rosegoldenatlas]

Ok pal, tell me about those OC’s of yours.

OHOHOHO WELL NOW THAT I HAVE AN EXCUSE.....

Buckle in because this will be a long one

For context; they are all set in a fictional world I made set in a classic medieval fantasy type setting but with my own spin on a magic system and diff govts etc.

So I'll start with the ones who have gotten the most attention over the years, Rose and Atlas (yes my user is based on them, the names are funky due to a cultural thing I can't get into right now bc I will have to write two essays instead of one if I got into all of that)

Atlas and Rose were adopted siblings from a small northern seaside town. Atlas was adopted first when he was very young and was taught how to sail and fish from his parents. His parents were retired map makers who sailed the southern oceans to map out the thousands of islands there. But now that they were stuck in one place for so long they felt suffocated by the responsibility and lack of travel. So they began to make small one month trips alone once or twice a year while Atlas was being watched by his aunt. They quickly exhausted all of the places one can go in a months travel, so they extended it to two months, then three. Until Atlas was an early teen who rarely saw his parents. During this time his aunt was teaching him how to cook and take care of the house.

Then one day, his parents came home with a young child, Rose, who was only a few years old. They had stayed for nearly three years before craving adventure again. But this time their aunt had something to say. There was a long drawn out argument that led to the aunt feeling abandoned by her own sister (Rose and Atlas' mother). They left and the aunt didn't take it well, having a hard time raising two children by herself with only a fishing job. Atlas began to teach himself carpentry and woodworking to help with the money. As time went on Atlas began to realize that his parents weren't going to be seen again and stepped up to help raise Rose and take care of his aunt, who had just gotten a serious leg injury.

Because of the injury and the serious stress he was now under, he turned to magic to try to heal his aunt. In this time, magic was a very taboo practice due to the heightening tensions between the humans and magical creatures in the east (including fae). Sadly, all he could find were half burned journals on elemental magic. But even so, he began to teach himself in secret along with all of this other stuff hanging in the balance.

When Rose was a late teen and Atlas was nearly thirty, they had an argument. Atlas was being overprotective and secretive over what he did and Rose was sick of it. Using the argument over him keeping secrets as an excuse to talk to him about how he would refuse to let her help out with the responsibilities around the house. Rose stating that if their parents didn't leave that he wouldn't be pike this. Atlas claimed that knowing that didn't change anything and that they weren't coming back so what was the point of playing 'what if?' Rose stole some of Atlas' money in front of him and walked out.

Thinking she just needed to cool off for a bit, he went to his room to cool down as well. But when she wasn't home when the sun went down, he went to town to look for her. After a bit of asking he found out that she had stolen a skiff and had begun to sail west.

He panicked and immediately returned home to pack a bag and rented a small boat to sail after her, after all he knew where she had probably gone.

Rose wasn't the best sailor, because of Atlas' insistence that she didn't need to do hard work and that she should just be learning how to do everything around the house first, like he did. So when she was caught in a storm she didn't know what to do and was tossed around the ship in the winds. Finally hitting her head against the side of the ship and passing out.

When she woke up she discovered that she and her boat and washed up on an island in the middle of the ocean. Three humanoid sea monsters inhabited said island, Vivian being based on a sea serpent, Moon being based on a jellyfish, and Sam being based on a siren. She had gotten a very serious head injury that would have eventually lead to her death if Vivian, who knew healing magic, hadn't helped. The three had told her that they would fix her ship for her if they got to sail with her to The Seven Kingdoms (where Rose's parents are presumed to be). She agrees and after a few days they begin to sail there.

Atlas' trip to The Seven Kingdoms was a lot easier for him, he was a talented navigator and sailor by this time and was lucky enough to not be faced with any major storms in his path because even though the route Rose had taken was shorter, he knew it was almost constantly assaulted by severe storms and had opted to take a slightly longer way, assuming Rose had done the same.

They both made it the The Seven Kingdoms at around the same time to fin that their Parents had stayed there for the past few years after getting a well paying job as advisors to people who went on long distance trading trips across the world. In a fit of rage, Rose had convinced the three sea monsters to terrorize the boats that their parents had advised. Letting them return only to tell people not to listen because they sent the ships directly into monster territory.

Then Rose asked her parents to return home with her and Atlas. Which they refused quickly, claiming that Rose and Atlas had grown up well and didn't need them anymore so they were free to travel. Atlas, knowing this would happen, rented a place for them to stay for a while and looked for work. It took only a week of this for Rose to grow stir crazy. Atlas suggested that she get a job in something she enjoyed. She considered this for a few days before she heard stories of pirated that had raided some trade ships from The Seven Kingdoms' ports. She realized that she could do that, become a pirate, and became obsessed with the idea. She could use that to also help save hybrids like Moon or Vivian from villages that casted them out (rising tensions between magical creatures and humans cause many villages to ostracize or even harm hybrids or any other magical creature).

While Rose, Vivian, Moon, and Sam planned out how they would do this over the next two and a half years, Atlas had made an entire life for himself, making friends, getting a stable job, and even gaining a partner.

When Rose turned 21, she proposed the idea to Atlas. He immediately turned it down, warning her of the dangers and all of the trouble it could bring. But she was going either way, over the years her and her friends had saved up enough to buy a new boat and weapons and food and everything they would need. When Atlas refused a second time, Rose had decided to tell Jim about her near death experience, using his gear of her being hurt like that to convince him to join her on this.

The next day they were sailing away, Atlas had locked himself in his quarters below deck as soon as he could.

For a while there was a routine; visit a new village, collect the magical creatures that had been ostracized or harmed, maybe steal from the town to tech them a lesson, and relocate the people to somewhere safe.

But then they came upon a village who was having land disputes with fae, leading to battles with them. The crew saw the borderline torture subjected to fae and other beings that had nothing to do with this and grew angry. Burning down the village before they left.

Then a new step was added to the routine, before leaving the village, stuff will be damaged, be it ships, fields, houses, or people.

Atlas, who had simply waited these ventures out before, had started to desperately talk Rose out of doing these things, not every village was like the one from before, he would say. But the comments would slide off of her.

So while she would burn down the villages, he would quietly sneak off the boat to help people escape, using what little he knew about elemental magic to put out fires on peoples houses or making ice to cool the burns on their skin before running back below deck before she would notice. Using magic slowly becoming more accepted in areas in the west because of him using of to safe people so often. To the point of it- in some areas- becoming studied broadly.

When nearly a year later, Vivian found out about this, he had kept it a secret from Rose. Vivian didn't agree with Roses methods completely, so while he didn't help Atlas safe people, he didn't out him either.

Though, Rose did find out eventually, sparking an argument that lasted several days and ended with Atlas being dropped off back at The Seven Kingdoms.

Atlas got back with his partner and friends, but with so many bad memories associated with The Kingdoms, he convinced his partner to move north with him. They ended up in the islands of Reshyr, mostly comprised of small villages on the northwest. He found that they had been one of the villages Rose had used to stock up on food at, staying on some barrier islands for several days. While she was doing that he had helped many people rebuild on the main isle. They had been people who saw what he did with magic and now studied it, making friends with neighboring fae to learn as much as they could. So when they saw him they welcomed him, showing Atlas what they had done. They gave him and his partner a home and asked him all about magic. After he shared all he knew, he offered to help them learn together.

For a while the town learned and learned as much as they could, implementing schools to teach children magic as well. When Rose eventually found out about this, she visited, not to burn down the village, luckily. But to ask Atlas to join her again. She was planning on trying to reap the benefits she could from a war in the east between humans and fae that had just started. And with her crew ever expanding she knew she could get a lot. Atlas refused firmly, not letting her try to guilt trip him again. She begged for a few more days before leaving.

Now, Atlas is leading the people of Reshyr in studying magic and even was able to (with insane amounts of help) convince The Seven Kingdoms (considered the richest collection of countries) to begin making extravagant schools for learning specific types of magic. Rose visits every do often to ask him to join her crew but Atlas is happy here.

There is so much more than just these two but it is getting late and I doubt you want to read much mor about my little brain guys.

Thanks for reading!! Feel free to ask questions lol :))

[studynxiety]

Im not sure if anyone cares, but im back in contavt with my friends after nearly 100 hours of blackout in Bangladesh. Im so happy. I missed them so much. If this shows up on your feed, contact that one friend you have been meaning to talk to, call the people you love and tell them. You never know what might happen. More than anything, i am just glad that everyone is safe.

For context: bangladesh has been in a state of civil unrest for the last week. On july 18th, 9 pm bangladesh time, the govt effectively cut off cell reception and internet and the country was in complete black out until yesterday night when some regions started to regain network. This was the longest communication blackout in the country.

The reason for the civil unrest is simple: students protested against an unfair quota system over civil service jobs. The government responded with state violence which angered the poeple even more so it turned into a quota movement + overall antigovernment movement. There has been confirmed 300+ deaths and educated guesses estimate more than 1000 people died.

[dapperinsanity]

Need to discuss some worries I have regarding the upcoming usa election and its potential effect on my life as a disabled queer trans-man.

As a disabled trans man who just started HRT, I’m terrified about my future and this election. For the first time in my life, the suicidal ideations have completely gone away. I never knew how bad my dysphoria was/is and assumed my ideations were just part of other conditions I have. Before HRT, I was constantly exhausted and had no motivation to take care of myself or do anything at all. I know I’ve only been on HRT for about a week and a half but to my surprise, the boost I got when starting HRT hasn’t stopped at all. I feared it was just another wave of a happy mood swing and then I’d crash. Yet now, I haven’t crashed at all and it’s been a good couple of days and my energy levels have stayed the same. I’m no longer dissociated and my head is clearer despite having auDHD. I don’t feel miserable anymore.

Yet, I’m fully reliant on my parent as I’m disabled and in the middle of trying to find services to help me out. I don’t know if I’ll be able to sustain a full time job, all by myself, with no help. It’s a wait and see game right now. Also, I have no money as I lost it all to them. Again, I also have no one else to help me out or support me. Doesn’t help my parent is probably voting for Trump as well.

With that context being provided, if the worst comes to be what am I going to do? I can’t do anything. It’s already hard enough for everyone trying to be independent right now. The govt. is already screwing over people who can’t work and it’s only going to get worse if the worst outcome happens. Despite me living in a safe state, if they manage to ban gender affirming care in the entire country or try to make it less accessible, I’ll simply revert back to the miserable state I was in except it’ll be amplified this time. If that happens, I’m not going to be able to survive this time.

Look, I’m already concerned about my future regardless of my trans identity. I’m already struggling with college immensely and due to this I’m doubting I’ll be able to hold down a full time job and manage to maintain independency with no help whatsoever. If I can’t work, I feel like I’m going to be screwed for sure. Unfortunlety, besides the gender affirming care I’m getting, I have disabilities that need to be managed. If they aren’t managed, at least one of them, will for sure kill me since it’s physical and not neurological. So, if I can’t work, what the hell am I supposed to do?

[sophie-frm-mars]

Given your stance on UBI (which I have pretty much come around to myself, i think), I am curious if you have any thoughts on the discussion of the policy at the end of Bullshit Jobs? Is Graeber just not thinking through it enough there?

I think it's important to understand firstly that UBI is a non reformist reform, so in real terms it could create a moment that frees up more of the working class to organise and fight. Secondly, it's important to understand Graeber's analysis in the context of him describing a revolt of the caring classes (which I believe is stalled but still coming). Thirdly it should be acknowledged how far right and anti-human our govt in the UK has gotten in the years since he wrote it. All of this comes together to a situation where the state exists in flagrant and naked opposition to the working class, UBI is not achievable without made organising and at this point it would only be a pacification tactic by the ruling class. I think that advocating it at the time he was in the context he was was fairly worthwhile although it still marries the month to month survival of the working class much more to the state and pushes back against any anti imperialist consciousness, which is again, the only way we can fight to make the society of the future better.

[yj-98]

my brain is perpetually melting lately so im like not super comprehending it but i looove hearing ppl talk about what theyre into and i am just nodding along so enthusiastically when you talk about rdr2 . also take this as me asking about it as i said im nodding along

crow im sorry </3 honestly i understand 100% and i hope the brain fog lifts for you<3 but im happy its fun to hear about <3 thank you for nodding along and asking about it (in spirit) so let me lay the generic history + synopsis of both games because i have . sort of just been dropping context as i talk about two brothers and their horrible father (<3 and the good one)

anyways im about to be very autistic<3 buckle up

red dead redemption (2010) started off as a spiritual successor to a game called red dead revolver (2004) that rockstar bought after the game had been cancelled after it failed to follow thru with funding issues in 2000 (capcom. as in mega man capcom, was paying for a studio to make it, but funding dropped and and that studio closed so rockstar acquired the studio + eventually got the rights for rthe game). HOWEVER they wanted to do more w/ the concept

so john martson was born in 2010 w/ the first red dead game. youre introduced to a this former outlaw in 1911 who's family is being used for blackmail as he makes his way across a fictionalized version of the american south/west + mexico trying to track down his former friends because the US govt wants them dead. hes polite but no-nonsense and hes sarcastic sometimes and mentally unwell and also so kind. hes very funny honestly like rdr1 john my beloved. and he helps people along the way! he makes associates with all kinds of people. he deals with the people in his old gang (javier escuella and bill williamson), including his father figure dutch van der linde. hes described as his fathers greatest success and greatest downfall. hes returned to his wife and son and 'uncle' only for the US govt to raid their home, kill uncle, and it forces john to tell his wife and son to run while he makes a last stand, knowing that theyd stop at killing him. because ultimately these games are about redemption. and it almost succeeds, but his son grows up to avenge him

and its a fun game! its a wonderful story its really well done with interesting twists and turns and a HEARTBREAKING ending with this kid just. continuing that cycle. killing a government man puts a target on his head too. and rockstar couldve gone with a sort of . 1910s-1920s set sequel where you explore what the kids fate is. instead in 2018 we're given a prequel in the form of red dead redemption 2.

its 1899 and its the end of the golden age and the age of the "west" is honestly decades gone. dutch is clinging to an old life because he hates the US government, doesnt trust the law, etc. hes got a group of misfits including two men hes raised since they were preteens (arthur morgan + john marston) alongside his oldest friend (platonic life partner? sorry. theyre toxic old men* in love) hosea matthews.

(*old for 1899)

so arthur morgan is born in 2018. hes not mentioned once in rdr1 because he didnt exist! and rockstar gives themself the very hard job of making us LIKE a protagonist new to the story as a whole. and it works basically immediately. id argue its almost impossible to hate arthur when he feels so human. ive rarely like. played a game that beat for beat feels very much like reading a novel and i am. so honest when i say he feels human. they all do. but you hear his thoughts, you read his journal entries, you hear his comments to himself and his way of interacting with the world around you, let alone with other people. hes so endearing, if not a bit gruff and rough around the edges, and then he warms. especially around hosea, or in quiet moments with john or his friendship that blooms w/ a man named charles (i will not get into this.) or his kindness with sadie adler, a widow you meet in the prologue (shes sooo).

and then arthur starts dying. hes dying from the end of chapter 2. theres 6 chapters total + two epilogues w/ john. chapter 1 is essentially the prologue. youre given ONE whole chapter with arthur before It Happens. and hes declining. and you get hints. he starts coughing.

rdr2 is a story of arthur and the events that lead to rdr1 with a splintered family. you know the events of rdr1 will happen as absolutes: bill dies. javier dies. dutch dies. john and abigail (his wife) will die. jack, their son, who in rdr2 is maybe all of 5 years old, will one day kill a man. but that seems so distant

its a death march, its an avalanche, its a butterfly effect. its a car crash its a trainwreck. and youre a rubbernecker. you cant look away, you have to play his part in the play. the events that ultimately are the catalyst happen a month prior to the games opening: dutch picked up a man named micah bell, and micah is not a nice man. and he knows exactly how to play dutch like a fiddle. and dutch's ego is too big to know hes being played. they rob a ferry boat. it goes badly. people die. the pinkertons are after them all. they run into the mountains and almost die. dutch's ego is bruised and he Needs to correct it. they run into his old nemesis and they steal that guys plans to rob a train. you could say that this was the true catalyst for the events for the rest of the game but ultimately it doesnt matter. micah has his grip on dutch, and dutch just robbed one of thee wealthiest men in america, who has an ego that matches

meanwhile arthur is an attack dog, and he attacks the wrong target on orders he doesnt like. a weak man dying of tuberculosis. it infects arthur, unwittingly. arthur can quit these jobs. its doesnt matter. he will die in 6 months

rdr2 is a story of trying desperately to pump the breaks as more and more people die. its about hope and trying to save as many people as you can. its about people who fall through the cracks and who the 1% hate coming together and the reality of being used in a cult of personality. its about one man falling apart and taking 20+ people who looked to him like a shepherd, down with him. its about desperately clinging to the past as the future rockets forward. its about loyalty its about betrayal its about dying.

arthur is shown chapter after chapter as he gets weaker that his father is willing to let family die. that when dutch loses hosea in ANOTHER botched robbery he is not the same man. that he's willing to let both his sons die. and when arthur realizes his time left is short, hes desperate to make things right

arthur dies letting john escape. dutch and micah look down at him as hes dying and walk away. arthur is buried facing west. for the sun. john inherits his hat and journal. john tries to build that fateful home with abigail and jack. you spend the epilogue with him as he tries to make wrong puzzle pieces fit and shave down the parts of him that were his fathers son so that they can try to live normally. he succeeds. the epilogue lets you face micah and dutch as john and arthurs friends who survived (charles + sadie). you kill micah. he deserves it. dutch lets john live.

time does not stop. rdr1 looms ahead. you ignore this and play ranch simulator as john draws in arthurs journal and writes and scratches out words and draws hearts around his wifes name. you can find arthurs grave and sit with him.

i spent 1 month putting off arthurs death. i mourned him in real time when he died. games to CHANGE the brain chemistry

[tacticalhimbo]

so!! i finished watching runs of phantom liberty... and vin's getting a new canon. this dlc and its new ending are canon for him.

i just think the storyline does a great job at showing what vin really wants, and what it takes for him to realize that.

dlc storyline spoilers under the cut, even if they're pretty out of context/explained horribly.

also if ya see this twice very sorry posted this on my rp blog too but i post abt vinny a lot here so y'all get the character development too ♡ i'm so fucking normal (lie)

when this happens is after? you talk to the vdb. so vin's already been up shit's creek by this point. there's the shit with ev. the shit with takemura. the shit with the cados. he's been tugged around.

and then? then his relic gets hacked! and he's told to get his ass to the most dangerous part of nc? alone? yeah. yeah. he's not happy. johnny isn't either, but at this point vin's at a low and honestly could see him following songbird hoping to die.

and then he gets everything thrown on him.

- hey i need your help saving the president.

- hey im the president i need your help getting out of here, the attack came from the inside and i dont trust anybody.

- hey youre now a federal intelligence agent and tour making contact with a sleeper agent bc my runner that contacted you went missing thx.

he's already there, fuck it. maybe some gonk-brain will kill him. but. but!

there is a part of him still kinda hopeful. maybe one more step and he gets the help he needs. one more contact. one more task. and it just. keeps. going.

he's pulled into the monotonous bullshit he tried so hard to escape from. being pulled around on all these fronts again, especially as it comes out songbird is the traitor; this has been in the works for what? months now? because she knows about militech's own version of soulkiller and she, being led on by meyers, was used as a bow and made a portal for the blackwall to conduct govt espionage.

but it just. keeps. getting. worse!

songbird leaves him for dead. reed is stonewalling him. alex is fucking dead. johnny's quieter than usual. he's all alone in fucking dogtown and the only person he feels REMOTE TRUST for is feeding him nothing. and it sucks! but he's still trying to believe that he'll get that out.

and there's so many good convos with the characters in this dlc about morality, mortality, and consequence.

and it ultimately ends with vin trusting reed and them breaking songbird outta maxtac custody, bc surprise the blackwall connection makes you go cyberpsycho. and she makes it to the derelict militech lab that u go into alone alone, bc johnny gets sliced and ur comms are fucked. and there's this whole sequence of almost dying, being hunted alien isolation style by a blackwall ai controlled spider mech, and then you find songbird and she BEGS YOU to kill her. BEGS. and vin just... cant.

it's ironic coming from him considering so many of his dumb decisions are an expression of his suicidality, but he helps. he continues to help!

and even after, he's treated like shit. reed keeps stonewalling him. president myers is a cunt who cordially reminds him of the oath he took and the nice, tight leash she has around his neck.

and then? when he's finally "rescued"? ||he doesnt even say goodbye to anyone. and that hurts the most. arasaka ending sucked, sure, but this? no rooftop talk with misty. no goodbye to vik. just a text explaining he'll be outta town for a bit. and then it ends up being TWO YEARS. HE'S IN A COMA FOR TWO YEARS. ALONE. IN LANGLEY.

and when he wakes up, reed continues. to. stonewall. him. keeps it vague. apologizes, sure, but even now he cannot bring himself to actually care. which is understandable when you look at his character but. vin is livid.

there was no closure. no guarantee he'd even wake up. he could have up and died and nobody would ever fucking know!

and then he gets back to nc and... oh.

oh things changed. things really changed:

- vik became a corpo doc, working for some zetatech corp. he says he didn't have a choice.

- misty is just gone. you run into her after getting jumped by street mercs, and she's on her way to poland.

- arasaka? fucking gone. takemura and hanako went into everything alone and *hanako just up and fucking died.* no explanation. dunno if yori killed her or what. but takemura is in hiding now bc they believe he killed hanako *and* saburo. then yori stepped down as ceo all together.

- didnt see the others' calls so idk what happens with panam, judy, and river, but it can't be much better for them.

and i just...

the whole idea of vin being forced into the background being both a relief and a terror to him is so... it's so good. the idea that he lost everything again, but he now has control over that.

it fucks him up, that's for sure. the dialog you have with reed? with vik? with misty? some real shit. he's on the verge of that suicidality again, but he lived. he can live. he has control over that now.

and it's for the first time in a long time, considering the fact he worked with arasaka counter-intel. he awaited death for so long, knowing it could come at any second, that there's a... bitterness. in losing that feeling. a confusion in the fact he can just. exist without consequence.

this is really the meat of it tho. the last bit. the fact that vin is both the exact same man he was and someone entirely new.

the fact that he changed and didn't. that he's messy and there is no truly happy ending for him, that he's just... human.

that in the end, he still fucked over johnny (except at least in the arasaka ending, he was kinda understanding to a point. here? he's just angry. dejected. vin's last words to him were that he couldn't forgive him for the shit he's done to his body) and still LOST the game of life.

he still lost. but he lost in the best way possible.

the legend of v is out there, but he doesn't have to be that. live up to it. he can just be... him. and i think that's all he really wants, in the end. to learn who he is and to be him. a chance to just exist without consequence. to not have to make choices on who gets harmed and why. to make choices of dire urgency. to just... breathe.

it just took so much for him to realize that, and it's going to weigh on him for god knows how long (if not his whole life, whatever remains of it).

[sabrielandorangejuice]

For around 6 months when I lived with my friend, and about a year before that, she had a foster child. I can day from personal experience that the Australian foster system could not be more perfectly designed to traumatise children and carers if it tried.

Some context on Australia: from the foundation of the country until the 1960s or 70s it was government policy to take indigenous children from their parents and place them either with White Christian foster parents (if they had fair skin and could ‘assimilate’) or in Christian boarding schools (if they couldn’t pass them off as white). This was called the Stolen Generation and caused a lot of Inter generational trauma as you can imagine. I moved here in 2009 so I don’t know exactly when this started, but I think ~2000 the country/govt started caring very much about Reconciliation, except they care more about looking like Being Seen To Make Amends than actually making anything better.

Some context about my friend: She’s white, she’s the oldest of 6 kids, she’s a teacher. She’s always had an interest in helping disadvantaged kids: those with disabilities, those with behaviour problems. She’s taken courses about how to deal with and help these kinds of children specifically. Her husband is less formally educated but similarly nurturing and has worked in childcare his entire adult life. They were young (mid-20s) and didn’t have kids of their own yet but were otherwise perfectly suited to being foster parents.

The kid that they fostered was a friend of my friends younger brother (15 years between my friend and the kid). The kids parents were separated, and both suffered from the kinds of problems that often affect those in poverty and are very difficult to overcome: addiction, difficulty holding down a job, etc. The kid was living with his dad, who was also a friend of my friends family. The kid was also half-aboriginal.

When the kid was removed from his father he was initially placed in emergency care with my friends parents (and the 3 of her siblings still at home). They weren’t able to keep him long term, but everyone involved agreed it was best to keep him in a kinship placement: aka with people he already knows and trusts. That’s why my friend and her husband stepped up to take him.

They went through the process of becoming registered carers, made easier by the fact that they both already had blue cards (working with children licence). The kid was placed with them and they were told that although kinship placements are best, they had to make sure they were supporting his indigenous heritage and keeping him connected with his culture. My friend agreed, of course that was important, of course they wanted to do that.

I don’t know exactly what happened before I moved in with them, the proper order of events, but I do know this:

This was a 10 year old boy who had been taken from his parents for the second time in his short life. He didn’t have many positive role models. Of course he had behaviour issues. Of course he didn’t trust the new situation, even if he did know his carers this time. My friends were patient with him, they assured him that they wanted to do everything they could to help him, that they loved him. That for as long as he lived with them he was as much a part of their family as my friends parents, her husband, her siblings. It was slow, but they made progress with him.

I know that my friend and her husband let the kid choose what to call them; whether that was mum and dad, auntie and uncle, or just their names. After a while he chose to call them mum and dad. I know that they took him to a youth group for indigenous boys, run by indigenous adults, once a week. I know they wanted to do more, and asked child services for help, to connect them with more people or services, but they never heard back.

Around a month before I moved in with them, the whole family: my friend and her husband, her parents, all her siblings, went on a trip to the neighbouring state for a family wedding. When they started planning the trip, months in advance, they told the kid: we want you to come with us but your mum and dad and child services have to agree. Both the kids parents were fine with it, and told child services that, and child services didn’t raise any concerns, but they also didn’t approve it. “We’re just processing the paperwork” his case worker said, “there shouldn’t be any problems, we’ll get it approved before you go don’t worry”. So my friends told the kid that.

Time went on, child services started saying things like “what are you doing to support his indigenous heritage. You should be doing more to make sure he stays connected to his culture”. They still didn’t give my friend any help with doing that. The holiday still wasn’t approved, or denied. They kept asking and kept being told they were processing it. The kid was so excited about this holiday he was going to go on with his new family!

Im sure you can guess where this is going. 2 or 3 weeks before the trip child services said “you can’t take him out of state. He has to stay close to his family”. It didn’t matter that both his parents had agreed to the trip. It didn’t matter that everything was booked, that my friends were going to the family wedding regardless. It didn’t matter that they had no one to look after him while they were gone, and it was so short notice that they’d struggle to find someone. It didn’t matter that they’d taken so long to decide, and misled them that it would be approved the whole time, that the kid fully believed he would be going on the trip. My friends said he was part of the family! Of course he was going on the family trip! None of that mattered. He couldn’t leave the state.

Now at this point I knew that I’d be moving in with my friend and her husband and the kid just a few weeks after they got back. To do so legally I also needed a blue card, and I needed to submit the details to child services. That’s the law, anyone living in the same house as a child services kid has to do it. So I was in the process of that while the holiday drama happened.

What did they do with the kid while the whole family was away? They placed him with a relative of his mothers. In a house full of people without blue cards. A house full of generationally traumatised people with poor coping mechanisms. When everyone was home he said that they hit him, and the kids father said he knows at least some of the people in the house were drug users. But child services did t care because they were relatives, and more importantly they were aboriginal relatives.

At this point I moved in with them, and so I know all the details. My friend’s family had already been supporting the kids dad to overcome his struggles (things a decent child services should do). After the holiday they realised it was unlikely child services would let my friend keep the kid long term, and that the best place for him to go would be back to his father. So they started helping the dad even more, supporting him in his self-advocacy to child services and supporting him as he sought legal counsel.

I know that child services started getting more aggressive and combative with my friend. I know that it’s because she always advocated for what was actually best for the kid, instead of just shutting up and doing as she was told. The kids case worker came over once every week or two to check up on him. They were supposed to spend a little time with my friend discussing how he’d been, and a lot of time with the kid himself. Asking for his perspective on how things were going and if there was anything he needed. On at least one occasion (but i think more like 2 or 3) I know that instead they sprung a surprise meeting on my friend where they would berate her for not doing things their way, and they wouldn’t speak to the kid at all.

Most damningly I know that the kids trust in my friends was completely broken. I can understand why, they promised he was part of their family, and as the ultimate sign of that he was going on their family trip. Except suddenly 2 weeks before it happens he’s suddenly not going, and instead he has to spend the time alone with extended family he barely knows. I don’t know if he’d even met them before that. And he’s a traumatised 10 year old, he doesn’t know that it wasn’t my friends fault, he just knows that they lied to him.

All the trust they’d gained and all the progress they’d made with his behaviour disappeared instantly, and his behaviour just got worse the entire time I lived with him. At the time I nearly hated him. The only other kids I knew were my friends younger siblings who’d grown up in a supportive loving environment and were accordingly so much nicer. It was just a bad coincidence but the more I got to know him the more abusive he got to. Not usually to me, but to my friends, to his friends, to my cat. My friend and I both had cats, but mine was much younger and more fun to play with, which also meant more vulnerable to the kids ire. Our time living with my friend overlapped for about 6 months and for the last month of it my cat stayed with other friends for his own safety. By the end he would try to hurt either my friends or himself at least once a day and would have to be physically restrained.

When my friends first took the kid in there was talk of keeping him with them until he was 18, possibly even adopting him if they could. When it became clear child services wouldn’t let that happen they wanted to look after him for long enough that he could go back to his dad. Unfortunately though, the stress of dealing with both the kids worsening behaviour and the constant berating from child services, my friend got sick. They told child services they couldn’t look after him anymore, they were no longer the best place for him to be, and eventually they had to issue child services with an ultimatum because even with this they were dragging their feet. I don’t know anything about the next carers the kid ended up with, except that they were both aboriginal.

My friend spent a lot of days in the few months after the kid left bedridden with pain from the stress ulcers she’d developed. It took nearly two years for her to physically recover fully. The kid got a whole new load of trauma, lost a friend (remember this all started because he was friends with my friends brother), and lost a family that cared about both him and his biological parents.

And all because The System didn’t see a little boy in him, they saw a little aboriginal.

How do you think we can make the foster care system better?

Honestly, by making sure as few kids end up in it as possible.

Contrary to popular belief, physical abuse is not the most common reason that kids end up in foster care. Only 13% of kids taken into foster care are there because their parents physically abused them. The biggest reason that kids end up in foster care is actually neglect - neglect is the primary cause of 62% of foster care referrals.

When you look at those numbers, though, it's important to remember that "neglect" doesn't necessarily mean that parents withheld food and necessities from their children because they were careless or lazy or cruel - it often includes parents who desperately want to provide the necessities to their children, but can't afford to do so. Many jurisdictions don’t really make a distinction between kids whose parents purposely starved them and kids whose working parent left them home alone because she couldn’t afford daycare - that makes it hard to really know what we’re dealing with here. 

And you might be surprised to learn what child protective services considers to be "necessary" for children. In most parts of Canada, for instance, it is legally required that children over the age of 5 not share a bedroom with opposite-sex siblings. Having six-year-old fraternal twins share a bedroom would be categorized as neglect; technically, the parent is failing to provide the children with adequate housing. But of course, the genders of your children don't influence how much money you get from your employer or from public assistance. In my area, a mother with a boy and a girl is legally required to rent a larger apartment for her family than a mother with two boys - but it's up to her to find the money to afford that. Partitioning one room or co-sleeping with the children is not allowed, and is also considered neglect. It might sound ridiculous, but I have worked with multiple families that have faced the potential removal of their children because of this, even if family co-sleeping is the norm in their culture.

1 in 10 children in the US foster care system are there at least partially because their parents don’t have adequate housing. Keep in mind, there are 424,000 children in the US foster care system on an average day - that means that housing was a major factor for more than 42,000 of them. Before we can truly reform the system, we need to understand what it is, exactly, that we’ve created - and what we’ve created is an incredibly expensive, inefficient and culturally insensitive system that is stretched so thin by the task of “solving child poverty” that it can’t do what it was actually designed to do, which is protecting abused children. Instead of a child protective system, we have an intergenerational meat grinder that effectively turns traumatized children into traumatized adults who create more traumatized children to go back into the system. Around and around we go. 

The question of how to “fix” foster care could be a doctoral thesis, and it’s a far bigger problem than any one person can solve. But my few cents as someone who has worked with at-risk and homeless youth for nearly a decade now would be:

Dramatically increase affordable housing. Trying to fix child homelessness with foster care is like trying to put out a grease fire with a sledgehammer - it’s not solving the problem, and it’s only causing more damage. Truly affordable housing would keep many families off CPS radar - if affordable housing was available, many victims of family violence would be better able to flee their violent partner with their children. Calls to CPS because families are living in cars or shelters would cease to exist. “Fixing housing” is easier said than done, but I don’t think we’ll ever solve foster care without also addressing this.

Decolonize child welfare standards. In most parts of the US and Canada, child welfare standards adhere closely to Western European parenting practices. Things that other cultures have been doing for generations - like co-sleeping - can land non-white families in trouble with CPS. And there are huge discrepancies in how child welfare standards are applied - wealthy white families can homeschool, deny their children medical treatment and co-sleep without CPS knocking on their doors, but Indigenous families cannot say the same. 

Create universal affordable childcare. Many families needlessly end up on CPS’s radar because their parents cannot afford childcare. Single working moms of colour have found themselves losing their children - or even facing prison time - after leaving their children unsupervised to work or attend job interviews. Compounding the issue is the fact that many working-class parents have shiftwork jobs, making it even harder to secure childcare.

Improve access to free and confidential family planning education and services. People who find themselves with unplanned pregnancies that they are not financially or emotionally ready for are at greater risk of ending up on CPS’s radar. When people are given access to family planning resources, they are better able to delay pregnancy until they feel more prepared. 

Improve wraparound supports and early intervention. Removing a child from a home is - and should always be - a last resort. CPS are often alerted to at-risk families before they reach the point where removal is required. To truly do their job of protecting children, CPS needs more resources to offer these families in order to help them stay together in a healthier way. Culturally sensitive in-home and community-based supports, including mental health supports, addictions supports, and material supports, should be immediately available to all families who are potentially at risk. 

Offer greater support for placements within families or communities of origin. Sometimes parents unfortunately just aren’t a healthy or safe option for their children. There are always going to be cases where that’s simply the reality of the situation. Many of these children, though, may have a family member who would be willing to take them in with the proper supports - which they can’t afford on their own. Offering more resources to family placements could help a lot of children stay within their families of origin instead of being sent to live with strangers. Likewise, many children from small communities - particularly Indigenous communities - end up being sent hundreds of miles away for foster care placements because the resources for them simply don’t exist in their communities. Ending this practice and committing to caring for children in their own community would help children grow up more connected to their roots and culture.

Decrease CPS worker caseloads. Many of the systemic issues with the foster care system stem, at least in part, from how abysmally and unbelievably overburdened the system is. There are too few workers and placements for far too many kids. In the US, the average CPS caseworker has 67 children on their caseload - in six states, the average is over 100. Nobody can provide adequate care to a caseload of 67 children, many of whom may have complicated cases. It’s just not possible. The workload contributes to the immense amounts of burnout and high turnover within child services - the average turnover rate (how many staff quit every year) for most agencies is 23-60%, with some agencies actually exceeding 90% annual turnover. We have a system of new, inexperienced workers burning out and passing on their enormous caseloads to newer, even less experienced workers and everyone is worse for it.

Provide more training, resources and support for foster parents. Many of the children entering foster care have complex trauma, as well as complex mental or physical health needs. Some areas do a better job of preparing foster parents for this reality than others - and everyone suffers when foster parents don’t have the resources and education that they need to meet children’s needs. 

Extend aftercare supports well into adulthood. Many youth make an abrupt exit from foster care - at some point between age 18-21 they suddenly “age out” of supports. Some areas do offer supports that extend into a youth’s early 20s, but many of these areas require youth to be full-time post-secondary students to continue receiving support - youth who aren’t able to take that step often have no support, despite perhaps needing it the most. Outcomes for former foster children are bleak; only around 55% finish high school (compared to 87% of their peers), and in Canada, as many as 90% are on welfare within 6 months of aging out of care. Realistically, as it becomes more difficult for young people to achieve financial independence, many of these kids may need support that extends well into their late 20s and beyond. 

This is just barely skimming the surface of what needs to change - there is so much that’s wrong, and I’ve barely touched on how to fix it. But when it comes to foster care, I really believe that an ounce of prevention is worth 100lbs of cure.

MM

[boct-kimerakal]

The Eye..

it’s a trickhawk AU but rex is here too. trickhawkrex AU even.

ehrm okay so basically i got a bit too insane and like hey haha. here’s this. the three of them are young adults working for an agency known as the eye (fun fact: it’s a reuse of an old AU) which has one purpose and that’s to eliminate dangerous supernatural entities. and BY GOD will i use this squint a little at the misinterpretation/misuse of + modern day exoticism of asian mythology by mainstream media. and also to stab at my own hypocrisy (yet again) (as most of my original lore does)

... also monster hunter trope funny. yeah i’m probably going to private this because i feel weird about talking about lore entwined with cultural backgrounds online HAHAHA. do i just feel uncomfortable discussing the topic because i’m deluded into feeling like it’s going to be tokenised and capitalised on?! but also i don’t want to sandpaper them into pop culture!! like our backgrounds do matter & can be so important to context & not used as just a gimmick actually

ehrm considering this takes place somewhere in the UK (might retcon/redevelop. i always struggle with working with real places, and ones i’ve never even been make me worried!!) the current brief background concepts (and BEAR WITH ME!! THIS IS SUPER BIASED. THIS A PROJECT BORN FROM BIAS) are

a) i was thinking trick is of anglo-indian (father’s) and malayali (kerala specifically, mother’s) ethnic heritage, with family in kerala? raised christian but disconnected from religion. that got made worse by the whole pseudo-yakshini thing where after they almost died, they kind of became halfway one and now ask their mother a lot about her heritage (before she got married, converted and immigrated. which by the way my aunt is a hindu convert to catholicism but she still creates shrines except for catholicism now. which is fascinating and i’m leaning into this a lot) i feel like it leans more into folkloric than religious but we’ll seeeee? i was thinking also trick and their mother both identify with queerness in some capacity and it’s something they talk about. trick moreso in social gender and body stuff and their mother moreso in sexuality. also! their mother is a professor of some kind (her original lore has her in some akin to sociology BUT. HM.), father in something government. which is vague. and there’s a lot of govt. jobs. so give me a MINUTE.

b) rex is from a taiwanese family with a taoist background. taoism mostly because i’m projecting a little bit again. i totally love being mixed and knowing nothing from either side guys. wow this hasn’t been showing in recent lore at all. anyways! rex is a international student whose parents are foreign (and they’re finance people) with a permanent residency in the UK. thinkin. his maternal grandmother and grandfather moved in recently too due to getting old and safety concerns. i’m not fully sure about this yet but yeah. also there’s abandonment guilt here. also his family tree is more like a family forest btw he has like 6 uncles & aunts on his paternal side. lunar new year visits back are hell for him. i may actually change this to be hongkong but i’ll have to think about the implications of that and kind of stare a bit at political stuff so hold up.

c) i’m torn between making hawks an international scholarship student or having immigrant parents and being raised here. hawks is also central asian, but i’m once again struggling to decide between uzbekistan and kazhakstan. because background is important but like not in a put-you-in-a-box way. agh, sorry i think i really dislike when characters are caricatures of cultures as an attempt at representation? i feel like this has been out into words before in a way better than i will though. anyways researching cultural and economic information is not something i’m awesome at so it’ll take me a sec. the family is irreligious but there are some ideas of spirituality her parents have that she also possesses. she has a half-brother. her family being nuclear and very estranged from her relatives due to her mother remarrying feels like crucial information to mention.

i want to also involve the culture of their setting too and the other non-native cultures that have been infused into it because i feel like that’s cool and neat for countries with large immigrant populations and. ponderous. hm. i feel like i lost the plot thinking about the background LAWL okay back to the beef of it. oh that was terrible to say.

PLOT CONCEPT?! > comically borrowing some ideas from The End Of Times which is an old dead lore world of mine. wait hey.. actually.. this can be referred to as the conceptual successor of that.

trickhawk is a lot worse in this by the way. hashtag mutual parasitism! so this is not the same as original trickhawk sorry not sorry.

The Eye is a publicly known agency that deals with supernatural threats that have suddenly become commonplace after some kind of seal was broken. workshopping this but it’s your usual lame “oooh myths are real and this ancient secret society that has been dealing with them forever gets officially recognised by global governments as an enforcement body but also like. it’s a sovereign entity with no official oversight and everyone is kind of worried about that actually.”

trick and rex were both employed by it around the age of 17 and have been partners since. they were part of a larger team as apprentices before going solo. rank at the lower levels of this organisation is probably relaxed and field agents get a lot of free roam since they tend to have unique abilities and also this used to be a SECRET society up until 30 years ago and stricter administration hasn’t caught up with it well.

trick is here as a result of being kind of afflicted by a curse maybe. yakshini-adjacent abilities that they gained at age 15 after getting straight up hit by a car, which have been freaking them out. they’re essentially partially undead and not pleased about it. supernatural ties are luckily an employable skill in this world so boom! that! and rex is here due to receiving a divinely blessed weapon which i think is also the cause of some guilt in his family. the power he wields has ties to the goddess mazu and oceanic themes. which fun fact! trick also values coastal symbols due to their family in kerala. i think it’s something that binds them.

UHM SO. trick and rex meet hawks in school and gets called away to deal with a supernatural thing that happens to be in the vicinity, hawks stubbornly and unfortunately gets involved. finding out what trick is, hawks offers blood to trick for a ticket into the agency which she believes will help her out. why. great question. I’M FIGURING THAT OUT.

hawks getting involved in some level of magecraft (something not innately magical employees of the eye tend to do) as a result of needing to succeed makes her siphon magic off of trick who constitutes as a magical creature. yay they’re both parasites. this is not symbiotic as they’re both being harmed? rex kind of is there to heal both and maintain the cycle. FYI rex’s divinity does contrast a bit with trick’s more malevolent mythic nature but. thinking of how yakshinis have different regional interpretations. thinking about that but not doing anything with it.

anyways oh my god this is so cringe and tropey AND UGH I HATE IT BUT I WANT TO THINK ABOUT IT FOR WHATEVER REASON. them as a trio dynamic is so appealing to me all of a sudden. also trick’s exaggeratedly friendly obsession with hawks in this AU is hitting me some kind of way. (it’s me going “oh i saw a character dynamic i like but it’s not me-coded enough. going to do it my way now”)

also! new tag.

[tacticalvalor]

«────── « HEADCANON » ──────»

so!! i finished watching runs of phantom liberty... and vin's getting a new canon. this dlc and its new ending are canon for him.

note: i also have to update some canon bios but... shh ♡ also ty ty i'm safe the tornado didn't hit near me. there will be typos here tho because i'm too tired and i'm on mobile.

i just think the storyline does a great job at showing what vin really wants, and what it takes for him to realize that.

dlc storyline spoilers under the cut, even if they're pretty out of context/explained horribly.

when this happens is after? you talk to the vdb. so vin's already been up shit's creek by this point. there's the shit with ev. the shit with takemura. the shit with the cados. he's been tugged around.

and then? then his relic gets hacked! and he's told to get his ass to the most dangerous part of nc? alone? yeah. yeah. he's not happy. johnny isn't either, but at this point vin's at a low and honestly could see him following songbird hoping to die.

and then he gets everything thrown on him.

hey i need your help saving the president.

hey im the president i need your help getting out of here, the attack came from the inside and i dont trust anybody.

hey your now a federal intelligence agent and tour making contact with a sleeper agent bc my runner that contacted you went missing thx.

he's already there, fuck it. maybe some gonk-brain will kill him. but. but!

there is a part of him still kinda hopeful. maybe one more step and he gets the help he needs. one more contact. one more task. and it just. keeps. going.

he's pulled into the monotonous bullshit he tried so hard to escape from. being pulled around on all these fronts again, especially as it comes out songbird is the traitor; this has been in the works for what? months now? because she knows about militech's own version of soulkiller and she, being led on by meyers, was used as a bow and made a portal for the blackwall to conduct govt espionage.

and naturally, vin's a little upset (he's a lot upset), but fuck if he doesn't need that tech. and it's a hell of a lot better than the prognosis anyone else has given him so far!

but it just. keeps. getting. worse!

songbird leaves him for dead. reed is stonewalling him. alex is fucking dead. johnny's quieter than usual. he's all alone in fucking dogtown and the only person he feels REMOTE TRUST for is feeding him nothing||. and it sucks! but he's still trying to believe that he'll get that out.

and there's so many good convos with the characters in this dlc about morality, mortality, and consequence.

and it ultimately ends with vin trusting reed and them breaking songbird outta maxtac custody, bc surprise the blackwall connection makes you go cyberpsycho. and she makes it to the derelict militech lab that u go into alone alone, bc johnny gets sliced and ur comms are fucked. and there's this whole sequence of almost dying, being hunted alien isolation style by a blackwall ai controlled spider mech, and then you find songbird and she BEGS YOU to kill her. BEGS. and vin just... cant.

it's ironic coming from him considering so many of his dumb decisions are an expression of his suicidality, but he helps. he continues to help!

and even after, he's treated like shit. reed keeps stonewalling him. president myers is a cunt who cordially reminds him of the oath he took and the nice, tight leash she has around his neck.

and then? when he's finally "rescued"? ||he doesnt even say goodbye to anyone. and that hurts the most. arasaka ending sucked, sure, but this? no rooftop talk with misty. no goodbye to vik. just a text explaining he'll be outta town for a bit. and then it ends up being TWO YEARS. HE'S IN A COMA FOR TWO YEARS. ALONE. IN LANGLEY.

and when he wakes up, reed continues. to. stonewall. him. keeps it vague. apologizes, sure, but even now he cannot bring himself to actually care. which is understandable when you look at his character but. vin is livid.

there was no closure. no guarantee he'd even wake up. he could have up and died and nobody would ever fucking know!

and then he gets back to nc and... oh.

oh things changed. things really changed:

vik became a corpo doc, working for some zetatech corp. he says he didn't have a choice.

misty is just gone. you run into her after getting jumped by street mercs, and she's on her way to poland.

arasaka? fucking gone. takemura and hanako went into everything alone and *hanako just up and fucking died.* no explanation. dunno if yori killed her or what. but takemura is in hiding now bc they believe he killed hanako *and* saburo. then yori stepped down as ceo all together.

didnt see the others' calls so idk what happens with panam, judy, and river, but it can't be much better for them.

and i just... the whole idea of vin being forced into the background being both a relief and a terror to him is so... it's so good. the idea that he lost everything again, but he now has control over that.

it fucks him up, that's for sure. the dialog you have with reed? with vik? with misty? some real shit. he's on the verge of that suicidality again, but he lived. he can live. he has control over that now.

and it's for the first time in a long time, considering the fact he worked with arasaka counter-intel. he awaited death for so long, knowing it could come at any second, that there's a... bitterness. in losing that feeling. a confusion in the fact he can just. exist without consequence.

this is really the meat of it tho. the last bit. the fact that vin is both the exact same man he was and someone entirely new.

the fact that he changed and didn't. that he's messy and there is no truly happy ending for him, that he's just... human.

that in the end, he still fucked over johnny (except at least in the arasaka ending, he was kinda understanding to a point. here? he's just angry. dejected. vin's last words to him were that he couldn't forgive him for the shit he's done to his body) and still LOST the game of life.

he still lost. but he lost in the best way possible.

the legend of v is out there, but he doesn't have to be that. live up to it. he can just be... him. and i think that's all he really wants, in the end. to learn who he is and to be him. a chance to just exist without consequence. to not have to make choices on who gets harmed and why. to make choices of dire urgency. to just... breathe.

it just took so much for him to realize that, and it's going to weigh on him for god knows how long (if not his whole life, whatever remains of it).

[jenna-louise-jamie]

Okay I promised an explanation so here we go!!! Also I wanted to note, I definitely messed up wording on some of these. I did not have enough characters to explain in the detail I wanted and that affected how a lot of these were worded, and so some of them are just completely worded incorrectly. My apologies!! And beware of spoilers if you haven't read books 1-11 I suppose!

1. “hijacked a crane to drop a drug barge on a police station.” TRUE ✅ alex did this in point blanc!

2. “watched a man get drowned in 8 million quarters.” TRUE ✅ in eagle strike, damian cray killed a man by drowning him in 2 million dollars worth of quarters, or 8 million quarters total. alex watched this happen.

3. “got shot in the heart by a sniper and lived.” TRUE ✅ at the end of scorpia alex got shot in the heart by a sniper, and we find out in the next book that he lived!

4. “got put into a giant fish tank with only a single portuguese man o' war in it.” TRUE ✅ in stormbreaker the villain puts alex in the fish tank to kill him.

5. “shot his own insane murderous clone in the head.” TRUE ✅ he shoots him in the head in scorpia rising. i suppose it's julius isn't exactly alex's clone, but I don't know how else to refer to him in simple terms. his evil twin? a dr grief clone that was given extensive plastic surgery to look exactly like him? idk i didn't have enough characters to properly explain. you know what i meant.

6. “lit a boat on fire while still on said boat.” TRUE ✅ in skeleton key alex does exactly this.

7. “crashed a helicopter into the science museum in london.” FALSE ❌ I MADE THIS UP. he parachutes into the science museum in london in stormbreaker. no helicopters were damaged in this incident.

8. “blew up a dam to destroy poisoned crops that the govt was going to bomb.” TRUE ✅ it happened in crocodile tears. why? you'll have to reread the book i don't know.

9. “used a plane float as a makeshift kayak & then almost died in rainforest rapids.” TRUE ✅ it happened in snakehead.

10. “got launched into space against his will (instead of a monkey).” TRUE ✅ he replaced the orangutan that was supposed to be launched into space. alex did not want to be launched into space he wanted to go home and i really can't blame him.

11. “disarmed multiple bombs that would've destroyed the entire world.” TRUE KIND OF IN A WAY ✅ okay here's a prime example of my phrasing that is just kind of wrong. alex did disarm multiple bombs throughout the series. in skeleton key, in eagle strike (technically sabina did but alex told her to and she couldn't have done it without him), in ark angel and in snakehead (he technically blew this bomb up but it didn't hurt anyone and he removed access from the villain so that counts as disarming by definition) ((I'm grasping at straws here)). would all of the bombs destroyed all of the world? no but collectively they might've. oops. you still get points if you picked this one because good god I phrased it in an insane way.

12. “got chained to a cement block and thrown into the ocean.” TRUE ✅ it happened in never say die. you don't get context.

okay explanation over! remind me to never work on another poll like this in the middle of the night. i was frantically fact checking myself whilst making this but clearly i didn't do a good job (looking at you answer 11) and my memory is bad. hope you had fun though!

disclosure: this includes books 1-11. reblog for a bigger sample size & throw your hat in the ring to guess what alex hasn't done if you've never seen or watched alex rider !

[cosmicpuzzle]

7th Ruler and Meeting Spouse

So on request from one of my follower, I decided to make this post. It is not necessary that the house placement of 7th ruler must always indicate the environment or how you meet them.

Sometimes, the house location of Venus or Jupiter can work. Sometimes even the sign placement of Venus or Jupiter can indicate where you meet spouse. So you need to apply this with judgment.

7th Ruler in 1st : In traditional societies, a classic arranged marriage where bride and groom meet in presence of family. Sometimes you may know the person from childhood, like they are your relative or stayed in same house as you did. In western world, this can mean your spouse sees you somewhere and then approaches you for marriage.

7th Ruler in 2nd: This can mean again a marriage arranged by your family. Even in western societies, this can mean your family has selected one particular person already, may be they are your family friend from childhood or your family does business with their parents and they take over etc..may meet them at work too or when you go to bank or shopping.

7th Ruler in 3rd : This can mean marriage through matrimony or newspaper classifieds in traditional societies. In western world, can men through dating apps, all kinds of social media. You may meet them as team mates at office. You travel to a seminar or lecture and meet them there. You may meet at school, college, places of learning or your friends/siblings introduce you to them. They may be friends of friends.

7th Ruler in 4th: This can mean an arranged marriage by family in traditional societies. You may marry a relative too or someone known to your family circle. They may be distantly connected to your family. you may marry someone from your childhood, so someone you went to school with and later you propose them. Similar to 2nd house at times. You may also meet at office.

7th Ruler in 5th: This can mean you meet your spouse at a very young age like 7 to 10 years as 5th house is children. So you may meet them in school, playgrounds or they were your neighbors when you were a kid. Can meet at social parties, places of fun , drama theatres, magic shows, exhibition, political events, theme parks for children, children birthday parties etc.

7th Ruler in 6th: This can mean you meet them at work, you may meet at supermarket, gym, when you visit a doctor, or places where animals are cared for like PETA, medical shops, relief camps, donation places, NGO's etc.

7th Ruler in 7th: This can mean a formal arranged marriage. You may meet at foreign places or at weddings, social events or through your business partners.

7th Ruler in 8th : Nothing specific, you may meet them during emergencies or they come into your life suddenly out of nowhere like friends turning into lovers which you didn't plan for or marrying your friend's spouse after they get divorce..may be when you go to a funeral, you may meet at night clubs, forbidden places or they may be introduced when you get some therapy like they are your psychiatrist friend or your astrologer's friend. An astrologer may even give hints about your spouse. someone who may have had marriage already. You may also meet at places related to money like insurances, taxes, bank loans etc.

7th Ruler in 9th: You may meet them at college, university, when you pursue bachelors or masters. You may meet at religious places like temple or church or when you go to a pilgrimage. Sometimes this can also mean a marriage based on law like court marriage, you may meet at a trial, you may meet when you go abroad or you meet a foreigner online.

7th Ruler in 10th : You may meet them at work, in context of your job, or your boss introduces you to them, I have seen some cases where the person was personal assistant to boss and then they got married later, you may meet through business conferences or at Government offices, may be you need to renew some Govt. document etc.

7th Ruler in 11th: You may meet them over internet, dating apps, matrimony websites, business meetings or through professional colleagues. They may be your friend initially and becomes lover later. You both may have common friends. If you do business, then in context of advertisements, promotion campaigns etc, They may even be a celebrity.

7th Ruler in 12th: You may meet in foreign lands, when you go abroad, in hospitals, airports. I have seen one case, the guy was a travel agent and booked tickets for his client and went to airport to send off his client and met his wife there as she was client's sister. Meeting could be destined or fated in some way.

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