#fuck this got long

[padfoot-lupin77]

I know this is a kinda specific request but I’m sure some of the lovely dbda fabfic writers (fanfictioners??) has written something similar (if not I might attempt to write it myself) where after they’re back to London, some ghost boy is flirting with Edwin and Charles is sooo jealous but still doesn’t realize he’s in love with Edwin so he goes to Crystal and is like “I’m a horrible person because I get upset every time Edwin shows interest to someone else it’s like I want all his attention on me” and Crystal, who clocked Charles’ bisexuality from the first moment, is like “yeah good job realizing that, why do you think that is?” And Charles goes “because I’m an attention seeker and a bad friend” and Crystal is like you fucking dumbass but still tries to help and she realizes maybe Charles doesn’t know that bisexuality is a thing (spoiler: he really doesn’t know) and Crystal’s like ok you know what we’re going on a walk you need fresh air and on the walk she brings up some girl she used to have a crush on years ago and Charles goes “wait what? Like, crush crush?” And Crystal explains to him that it’s a thing you know, you can like both boys and girls and Charles is having a bit of an identity crisis and later that day Charles bursts into Crystal’s room shouting “SO WE HAVE AN ISSUE” to which Crystal replies with the infamous “you have an issue, I have an idiot, but go on.” And Charles goes “I’m in love with Edwin” and Crystal is like Omg Finally my dumbasses have realized they’re in love!!! Now go tell him you idiot what are you waiting for??? And Charles does tell Edwin who is shocked obvi cause he didn’t think Charles could ever like him back romantically but he does!! and so now Payneland endgame and Niko in her igloo receives a message from Crystal going GUESS WHAT

[the-nanowrimo-chronicles]

Discords, forums and a decade’s worth of allegations: how Nanowrimo started a revolution against it.

I’m just gonna copy paste the Reddit post since. I cannot figure Tumblr out. So I apologise for the weird formatting. If you’d rather read the Reddit posts:

Trigger warnings: child abuse, assault, predators, racism, fetishes, ableism, terrorism, bombings, and just plain abuse. 

This will also include brief mentions of religion. 

**Terms used in the Nanowrimo community:**

Nanowrimo: national novel writing month: a writing challenge to write 50k words in November. This is also used to refer to the organisation, a Californian 501c3 that the challenge originates from, with a website and a forum. However the challenge can be done without the organisation. Often called ‘nano’ for short. 

Young Writers’ Program: a Nanowrimo run platform aimed at people under 18. A separate site with classrooms and its own separate forum. The forum is for people aged 13-18. Often called ‘YWP’ for short.

Municipal Liasions: community organisers responsible for one region. This could be a city or a country depending on size and population. They help organise local events and mod their regional forums. Municipal Liasions are not paid. There are several hundreds of them. Often called ‘MLs’ for short. 

Christian Teens Together: a group on the main Nanowrimo forums, and the largest group on the forums. Despite the name the group is not entirely composed of Christians or teens, however that is where the group originates. The majority of the group are minors. Often called ‘CTT’ for short.

Random Thoughts and Exclamations: the main thread of the YWP forums, basically a general. Often called ‘RTAE’ for short.

Prior to the meltdown, Nanowrimo had around 15 salaried staff. These are collectively referred to as HQ. However, they also have several forum moderators. These receive a $100 check at the end of the year, but are mostly considered volunteers. These mods have no involvement in the main site. However, some staff that worked on the forums were salaried and had main site involvement and so will be considered part of HQ unless stated later on.

 **Scam sponsorships.**

In December 2022, a group of Nanowrimo users raised concerns about a pair of vanity publishers that had sponsored the Nanowrimo challenge. (A vanity publisher or vanity press is a publisher where the author pays the costs and surrenders a large portion of the rights to their work.) Nanowrimo had promoted discounts for these publishers, Inkitt and Manuscripts, to winners of its challenge. Staff and mods suspended and muted multiple accounts who raised the initial concerns, but eventually allowed a forum thread discussing concerns to remain. One of the affected users explained the concerns as follows:

> Now that I’ve been unbanned, I will try to keep the last 24 hours of thoughts…concise. Inkitt should NEVER have been accepted as a NaNoWriMo sponsor. They have changed business models every few years, and every business model has involved using up the first pub rights of any author who submits, WHICH IS A BIG DEAL, and promising them sketchy ‘prizes’ or ‘contracts’ in return. People who have given them a try also say that getting their content removed is a nightmare and they had to threaten legal action. These are just the starting points.

> There are blog posts about them from many authors dating back to at least 2016, [including my own](https://wrrrdnrrrdgrrrl.com/2016/05/23/inkitt-scam-spam-no-thank-you-maam/), that are easily discoverable by searching “Inkitt scam.” None of this should ever have happened.

> That said, it happened. And the mods panicked, and I went and wrote a [whole new blog](https://wrrrdnrrrdgrrrl.com/2022/11/30/on-nanowrimo-inkitt-and-being-an-author/ ) (which I will update soon to reflect NaNo’s better handling of things today) to warn people away from Inkitt because I wasn’t allowed to do so on the forums. And because I have some audience and writer friends, that got around, and [Victoria Strauss](https://twitter.com/victoriastrauss/status/1598114401818902529) got involved, and eventually we got here.

The following day, the Executive Director responded to the concerns with this message:

> I appreciate everyone’s thoughts and feedback, and want to start with an apology that our vetting process hasn’t met the high values we place on our community care. It shouldn’t have come to this (like so many of you said), but now that it has, we’re taking it as a learning moment to improve our sponsorship processes and find ways to dig deeper into an evaluation of a company.

> We’ve also ended the sponsorship with Inkitt and Manuscripts.

> Currently, the vetting process involves talking to writers, editors, or those working in the writing/publishing “ecosystem,” and then interviewing the potential companies. We often have a long-term relationship with a company and work with them year-over-year, but as the writing/publishing landscape changes so dramatically every year, we often find out about new companies and reach out to them or they reach out to us. We will do a more thorough evaluation of these processes and policies as part of our 2023 planning process to see what changes we need to make. Our goal will be to ensure our policies are in line with our organizational values, and to make sure the process is more transparent. For example, we’re discussing how we can ensure that a wider range of community and trusted industry voices are heard in this process, and on that note, we have already asked Victoria Strauss from Writer Beware to act as a consultant. We’re really pleased that she’s generously agreed to this, as this is her area of expertise and her ethical standards are admirably high. Also, she’s been passionately committed to analyzing products and services for writers for so long.

> We’ll also be sure to consult the resources you’ve already named, such as the various forum threads where you all have been sharing your experiences with companies.

> Thank you again for raising your concerns. We take your feedback very seriously and center it in our plans to care for the community. I’m not just saying that—this has been a valuable learning moment to help us do a better job of vetting sponsors more thoroughly. Your voices are the most important thing we consider when making decisions—not sponsors, but you. I’m sorry that it hasn’t always felt like that in the past, and hope that we can make sure it does in the future. Like you, we think NaNoWriMo should be a place where writers can come for trusted resources. We’re disappointed in ourselves that we lost that trust, and we hope to regain it. I invite you to send on feedback at any time to sponsorships@nanowrimo.org.

While Inkitt and Manuscripts were removed as sponsors, it recently emerged that Inkitt was a major donor for Nanowrimo. Some users were beginning to feel that Nanowrimo was protecting their own interests over the interests of their users, which only got worse when new allegations came out the following year.

**Inaction against predators.**

In May 2023, a group of users raised allegations about a moderator of Christian Teens Together. The [allegations](https://nitter.net/Arumi_kai/status/1722007756058574916#m) were that this moderator was luring minors onto a fetish site they ran. The allegations were sent to the Executive Director and the Director of Programs, but no actions were taken after a month. An FBI report had already been filed, but the fetish site was being scrubbed, suggesting that the staff there had been tipped off after the allegations. The group built a new case and after public pressure, got the moderator removed for violations of the forum Code of Conduct after they started threatening the group and the Nanowrimo organisation offsite. This moderator could be a whole post on their own, and has used sockpuppet accounts to lurk on the forums and has commented on the situation on their tumblr. They are often referred to as Mod X, and will be referred to as such in this essay.

In June, a thread on moderation was opened, and a discussion began about the culture of CTT, where it became clear that Mod X had isolated the group and emotionally abused them. It was also revealed that the CTT had a ‘three strikes and shutdown’ system for a group with over a thousand members. One user explained the problem as follows:

> How the CTT members were given only three strikes for over one thousand people is, frankly, appalling and obscene. I can understand treating them as a group; if you give them all three strikes, that’s over three thousand strikes. But they need more than three. But even with that, hanging that last strike over their head for over six months is unacceptable, and yes, I said it before and I’ll say it again, it is emotionally abusive to tell them that one more strike and they’re getting shut down for over six months. Never knowing who’s going to make the mistake that gets them shut down or when, and worrying about when someone messes up. Worrying that they’re going to be one that messes up and is blamed by the group. Terrified of reporting things because what if that report is the reason their community is shut down? 

More users came forward with grooming allegations, but these posts were frozen and hidden. However, the cat was out of bag, at least on the main forums. And in a retrospective thread on the 10th of November, a former YWP user spoke up about a similar situation that had happened the month before.

> They did this to the YWP too. When a message was sent outlining evidence of a predator it was ignored for 3 days (iirc) and initially responded with ‘we reviewed this account and found nothing that broke our rules’ only after it was posted publicly on the forums. They did take the account down, but only hours later (once we had made a major fuss with pretty much everyone who knew the situation calling the mods out) and with no further communication for two days, which sent us into a spiral of panic and teens leaving as they didn’t feel safe on the platform.

The following day, the COO responded to this post with:

> Hi there, I wanted to speak to this directly since it relates to a lot of the youth safety issues people are bringing up, and YWP has different systems. First off, we did indeed look into the participant that was flagged on YWP. [YWP lead] and [Director of Programs] discussed and investigated on Oct. 3; they responded on Oct. 4. Our search into their history and their other social media accounts did not find evidence that they were a predator or someone else than the person they claimed to be. We were wrong to say that nothing crossed the lines set by our codes of conduct, and we should have issued a reminder about those codes. However, no violation crossed the line that would require banning. We kept a close eye on this account following the reports and encouraged participants to follow their guts and keep a wide berth. After the account was suspended due to user flags, we agreed their account should not be reinstated.

> In the long term, we’re bringing in additional moderators in the YWP forums. Role plays occasionally skirt the codes around keeping it PG and partly in response to this situation we’re adding a volunteer mod next week who will just be monitoring role plays and the forum for personal conversations, where the majority of these flags came from. 

This response was immediately torn apart by the adults on the thread, while more members of the YWP started speaking out about what they had been dealing with for years. 

**The Wild West of the YWP.**

The YWP had two or three mods, which changed across the years due to differing roles. These were members of HQ, and now have all been fired or quit. These were: a Lead Forums Moderator who resigned in October 2023 and had stopped working with the YWP a while before that, a Community Manager who was put on leave at the beginning of November 2023, and the aforementioned YWP lead and Director of Programs who were either fired or quit in December 2023.

There are three parts to the YWP: the individual users, which are under 18, the classrooms, which are controlled by a teacher and are meant for educational settings, and the forums, which are open to users aged 13-18 whether they’re writing individually or as part of a classroom.

However, investigation revealed that the security of these classrooms are remarkably lax. It only required an email, username and password for an ‘educator’ to set up a classroom, and student accounts didn’t even need an email. Multiple YWP users confirmed that they had used this to gain access to private messages, as the classrooms have a PM feature while the forums did not. On top of this, it was confirmed by a moderator that classrooms are basically unmoderated:

> it's almost impossible to moderate these. There was a rash a few years back of the kids themselves making classrooms and the only way I could track them was to manually go through the admin panel and look for the most recent ones and click. They're almost entirely disconnected from the moderation tools and are completely unmoderated unless someone in one reports something. I actually gave up even trying to patrol the classrooms in any form because there's too many and the admin tools suck.

And on the forums themselves, it only got worse. The moderation often ignored its users, and when they intervened, the intervention often worsened the situation. This got to the point that in August 2022, a group of users held a [strike](https://speak-out.carrd.co/) against the moderation due to neglect and incompetence. However, the problems only continued to grow, and in December 2022, there was a incident of a user faking a disorder and, when called out on it, sending death threats. This user also made accounts in order to impersonate and harass users on the sites. It was not uncommon for users to run others off the site, which, justified or not, was often fueled by lack of mod intervention. 

This came to a head in October 2023, when a predator was found and the moderation response was once again inadequate. On the 1st of October, moderation was privately contacted  by a group of YWP users about a predator that had been on the forums for two years. After three days with no response and no action taken, the group took the information public and a mass flagging campaign began in order to gain the attention of the mods. And five hours after it began, a response was finally posted by the YWP lead:

> Ні,

Thanks for writing to us with your concerns, and for being so thorough keeping track of the places that made you uncomfortable.

> First of all, I want to say: good on you for following your gut. If you ever run into something online that makes you feel scared or worried or unsafe or just seems a little bit off, it's always okay to back away. Trust yourself, and don't do something that makes you feel uncomfortable, no matter who is asking you.

> The other moderators and I looked (and are continuing to look) more into this person, and from what we can tell, it seems like they are who they say they are. Nothing in their posts crosses the lines set by our Codes of Conduct (though they do come right up to the line sometimes). Like I said before, you can absolutely draw a boundary and not interact with them anymore. It just means we can't take any action on site besides marking their profile such that we pay extra attention to their posts, as well as the other account you flagged as a potential alt.

> If we notice anything in the future we can follow up on it more directly.

> Thank you for being so passionate and thorough about trying to make sure the YWP forums are a safe space, and let me know if you have any questions or want to talk anything through more.

This response was torn apart by the users, and 12 hours later people noticed that the threads the predator created had been taken down. However, there was no comment in the public moderation thread on the situation, and the users had no idea whether the account had been banned or not. This caused a mass panic, and several users pulled back or left the platform due to safety concerns. 

Early on the 6th of October, a user tried to goad the moderators into responding to the mess by posting a message to the mods in the official announcements forum, which was supposed to be mod-only:

> There is always an explosion of newbies in November, and you have children as young as 13 here. And your inaction is making the site dangerous. We are being forced to defend ourselves against something we should not be dealing with because you can't be bothered.

> This is more than inaction. This is dangerous incompetence. And don't respond to this with another 'we'll do better' apology, because they never last. I've seen this cycle too many times. Tell us that he's gone, that we don't have to worry about him, and tell us what you're doing to make sure this doesn't happen again. And stop forcing children to be the adults in your place.

However, this post remained up for around 12 hours. At that point, the moderation decided to close the forums for a week, giving the users only a day’s notice. And when they reopened, they threatened to make the forums for writing topics only. Although they walked this back due to user pressure and claimed it was due lack of staff, it came off to some users as a punishment for complaining. 

There were more incidents over the next month, and these were mentioned in the retrospective thread, which came as a complete shock to the adults, who had been told that a large part of the funding was going to the YWP. Some began to call for the moderators to resign:

> I sincerely hope they are all drafting their resignation letters. we won’t even give them grief this time for writing it together and recycling the same wording.

> they had their chance to listen to their users, to develop action plans and timeline and to publicly respond. they chose not to do that and knowingly let abuse and harm continue on their watches. both here and on ywp. 

> resign or get fired. either way this is no longer their house, they are being evicted.

**The Nanopocalypse.**

The Nanowrimo Board intervened in the evening of the 12th of the November, having been contacted by users in the retrospective thread. They immediately set the main forums to read only barring threads they made to discuss the many issues. However the YWP forums were not immediately closed, and so the users from the retrospective reported back on RTAE. 

Two hours after the main forums were closed, a YWP user received a message from the Director of Programs threatening to ban the user. Moments later this user and two others were temporarily banned from the forums. And the forums exploded on both sides. On the main forums:

> Do something for these YWP kids being banned for speaking up about their abuse.

And on the YWP: 

> no cause if you're so threatened by MINORS joking at your expense take a good long look in the mirror

The same user on commented on the main thread:

> Just so yall know, the ywp is honestly going to hell rn. People are getting banned, some of the people who talked to you yesterday got banned for saying enough. I got warnings for saying that adults shouldn’t be threatened by teens making jokes. It’s a really bad situation and a lot of people are stressed and overwhelmed

One user commented on how bad the YWP had gotten as follows: 

>FOR REAL !!! i joined when i was 16?? THE FIRST FUCKING THING I DID WAS MODERATE. i had to skip the classic nano ywp cringe newbie stage because i had to swoop into an argument that was obvious a moderator wasn’t going to ever deal with. and i did that for like the year and a half i was on nano. and like i don’t give a shit in the sense it doesn’t hold a candle to being 14 and moderating for three years straight but. the amount of power hierarchies the ywp has because of us who. play mod. it’s stressful and not fun and i would not wish it upon my worst enemies. this might be petty but? i’d pay real money that none of the staff team remembers me despite me doing their jobs since the moment i clicked create account

> i have not seen a single case of

someone getting fairly banned, nor of someone problematic and upsetting having consequences for their

actions. 

>nano is a weird place because a lot of shit happened offsite (ex; my connection to [redacted]. the nanoer who was lying and trauma dumping to me and some of my close friends. that all happened in “adult nano” dms. but we were open about it. and even with multiple call-out posts in places with chats that don’t bury posts often and theoretically ones mods should be checking? nothing was done.) but the guessing game on when mods finally arrive to a scene is awful. the brace for impact everyone collectively did when

someone finally showed up? was awful. these are teenagers. and when these teens can’t trust the moderators who’re supposed to be monitoring their website, who are they supposed to trust?

A few hours into the board thread, YWP users called out one of the accounts on the main forum for being a predator. The group confirmed that this person had been removed from the YWP but that they had been allowed to remain on the main site. Users confronted this account directly:

> correct me if i’m wrong (i’m not) but i do remember you being one of (if not the most) manipulative, spiteful, maliciously incompetent people i have ever encountered. do you, perchance, remember all the times you told that little 15 year old the sexual things you wanted to do to her? i remember. i remember everything you said. i might not be able to prove all of it but we know. we didn’t forget. playing dumb won’t save you now, boy.

> don’t you dare sit here and pretend this  was an okay thing for you to do. you got suspended but you’re still here talking aren’t you ?? it’s two years old we still have the very same predator (most people active in the lounge in the last year or two [in the ywp] knows you. no one who knows you likes you.) roaming the adult site. how is this not an issue that needs to be addressed?

The account was suspended a few days later. 

That night, the board confirmed that they were unaware that the YWP was a separate site, and the YWP forums were shut. With no read only mode on the YWP, it erupted into chaos. Users said their goodbyes, and some expressed their anger with the moderation for how they turned out. This led to the Director of Programs threatening to close the forums early, despite the users only having a few hours to say goodbye anyway. One user put it as simply as:

> me when my entire community of the last three years is being ripped away lol

And the last three posts?

> FUCK THE MODS FR

> im gonna miss this website so much. love you all and its not our fault this is happening, it’s the mods stay safe stay amazing and love you all, youre the best.

> Im so sorry the mods destroyed this. hate that we have to lose this beautiful thing because of them. I have one last

thing to say: 

>FUCK. THE. MODS.

> Imao

And with that, the weekend from hell was over. 

But the Nanopocalypse had barely begun.

**It wasn't just kids that were abused.**

The board threads went down a few rabbit holes, but it was a testimony on the 28th of November that started the next fire. This came from an ML, and spoke of a situation a decade before. 

> In 2012 (might have been 2011) I had an adult participant explain the explicit omegaverse erotica that she was writing to a 14 year old. She then left her laptop open to go and get a drink, with the instruction “i’m not telling you to read it, but I’m not not telling you that, and if I just leave my laptop open and you happen to see it, there’s nothing wrong with that, is there?”

> The teenager approached me before NaNo the next year and told me about this. She said that it made her extremely uncomfortable and that the adult participant had spent a lot of time telling her how clever she (the teen) was, how she was more mature than other teens, and how other adults just didn’t understand. Which is all classic grooming. The teen asked if this person was going to be at events that year, because she didn’t want to see her again.

> I contacted HQ with this, and asked if they would back me up if I told this person that they were no longer welcome at our events.

> The response I got was that not only would they not back me up, I was not allowed to ban this person from our events because they had to be held in a public space and be open to anyone who wanted to come and write.

> the teenager never came to another in-person event.

> The adult in question came back, and that year groomed and sexually assaulted a 17-year-old who she met at our events. I didn’t learn about this until several months afterwards. I once again contacted HQ, and was told that I still couldn’t ask her to stay away from our region because the incident took place after our event and we weren’t allowed to ban people based on behaviour outside the scope of our events

>I then posed the question: If the abusive ex of one of our wrimos turned up at an event, with the apparent intent to write with us, could I ask them to leave?

> Once again the answer was no, unless there was evidence of a police report, or the ex became abusive during the event. It was heavily implied that the victim ought to leave if they were uncomfortable.

> I had no training in how to handle this kind of thing, and I received the opposite of support.

> Having heard stories from other MLs I am convinced that the only reason I was not removed from the position is that I chose not to fight them.

The ML spoke more about trainings regarding racism.

>It’s been videos (I think 2 were workshops, but they were only run in US timezones so the rest of us just had to watch the videos and read transcripts) which have so far been exclusively on a US-centric approach to race and racism. One of the first 2 was run by a white person with a… questionable background… And [Director of Community Engagement]’s response to that being raised as an issue boiled down to “we have some MLs who won’t listen if it’s a black person”. Honestly, if you can’t handle being taught about racial issues by a person of that race, maybe you shouldn’t be in a position of power? 

> We have the ML Agreement (which, until very recently, forbade MLs from criticising NaNoWriMo in any way. So recently that [Director of Community Engagement] used that clause to remove at least one ML in the last year without knowing/remembering that they took that out).

The discussion quickly pivoted to the treatment of MLs, and to the ML discord server. This was considered unofficial, but needed to get in touch with the Director of Community Engagement, who oversaw the MLs. The user who broke the news about Mod X gave a summary of the problems there:

> A ML was banned from the ML discord for suspicion of "leaking information shared in the ML discord with non-MLs". 

> I've seen the (frankly a bit baffling) accusation by MLs (both on and off the main discord) that I have ulterior motives in bringing light to the issues facing the NaNoWriMo organization, so I'll reiterate - again - that l'm only one of a very large group of users over multiple offsite platforms who have been documenting these issues.

> The only reason I'm fairly visible in this situation is because it was decided my twitter platform was the best chance to bring wider attention to the issues in a way HQ would listen to (since efforts here on the forums were being shut down, silenced or obfuscated). I want to note that it's extremely concerning that the default in the ML discord is to focus on "someone leaking information or sneaking into our server" rather than address the systemic problems that have led to so many MLs feeling like they need to seek outside help for their treatment by the ML community. Not to mention the harm of indulging that paranoia when energy would be better focused on strategies to address the crisis facing the NaNo community.

> The main ML discord has obtained a list of users on NaNoWriMo discord servers that allow open criticism of HQ, and is kicking any ML who appears on the member list of the dissenting servers.

However, it seems that only two MLs were kicked for being in a dissenting server.

The kicked ML explained:

> I was kicked out for supposedly sharing screenshots from the ML discord with other people. I only know this, because when I said "hey, I can't find the ml discord any more" another ML went 'holy shit, that was you?' and told me what was being said about me.

> They also told me that what I had supposedly done was not against the rules at the time. [server admin] changed the rules after she kicked me out for "breaking" them. 

There was another ML testimony that deserves its own section and we’ll get to in a second, but a response to it brought a new and horrifying light on the actions of the Director of Community Engagement.

> I’ve mentioned I was co-ML 2018, 2019, and 2020. My region had no ML for 2021 because my previous co-ML and I protested how [Director of Community Engagement] treated me.

> So. I am autistic as fuck. I am also physically disabled, and legally blind. We were promised access to the new 2019 forums months before NaNo, since we were MLs.

> I got access two weeks before NaNo.

> Two weeks, for my blind, autistic ass to figure out these very non-intuitive forums before time to kick things off.

> Clearly, this was not really a possibility for me. Because, again, autistic and blind.

> So my co-ML and I decided that I would handle all the online-but-offsite things (Facebook and the discord server I’d set up the year before) while he handled in-person and on-site things. This worked out great for us; our region was well taken care of between the two of us.

> I put so much love and care into my region’s discord server when I created it in 2018 (I had unexpectedly moved a few hours from my region in October, so the three of us co-MLs for that year worked out together what I would do to still hold my end of things up). I was cheering people on on the daily, running daily virtual write-ins for anyone who wanted to pop in and write with me. Any time my co-ML had a physical write-in, I scheduled a virtual one for the same time for anyone who couldn’t go in person

for whatever reason, and a co-ML would connect on their device so that the in-person and the virtual participants could talk to each other before time to write. For the 16th, I scheduled a full 24 hours virtual write-in that people could pop in and out of as they wanted to try to double up their word counts (I ran it the full 24 hours myself and then went to bed afterwards). I was even able to run some of the virtual write-ins from the hospital. I had so many people thank me for it, because they lived too far to make it in person easily, or they worked nights, or they were disabled, or they were immunocompromised so couldn’t go in person.

> Since that worked so well, I also did it for 2019, except even more because I loved my region and I love my people. I love cheering people on. I love helping them figure out a sticky problem in their project. I love just celebrating that they wrote, whether they wrote a full 50k or not, they tried this impossible thing and they did their best and that’s what NaNo is about. I worked my ass off in 2019 to make up for the fact that I couldn’t deal with the new site. Because, once again, I am autistic and blind.

> But also, before I move on to 2020, let’s talk about some of the gaslighting bullshit that HQ fed us. And yes, it was gaslighting I do not use that term lightly.

There was no validator. We were promised there would be a validator. We tell our regions “don’t worry, we’ve been promised there’ll be a validator, it should be ready in a few days”. Then HQ says “oh, sorry, it’ll be a little longer, you’ll have it by the end of the month, though, we super promise”. So we tell our regions, “sorry, it’s not going to be a couple days but they promise we’ll have it by the end of the month”. HQ was still telling us to tell our regions that the validator would be there by the end of the month even after HQ had decided there would be no fucking validator, not even by the end of the month, just never. When we were like “the fuck??? why would you tell us this, then???” we were told that we had just misunderstood what they meant. Gaslighting. That is actual fucking gaslighting.

> So now let’s go to 2020. Two successful years running my Region’s discord - and we added a Whole [country] discord, too! Go us!!!

> I re-apply to co-ML again. Don’t hear anything, assume that I didn’t hear anything because I was approved. In May, Sarah posts in the ML Facebook that if we re-applied and didn’t get an email from her to email her and let her know. So I emailed her. She had forgotten to email me. She had set my application aside because was I sure I could be a good ML since I had barely posted to the site in 2019. The year that the entire site changed and my blind autistic ass could not navigate it. I explained the situation, that I hadn’t been able to navigate the site so my co-ML and I had divvied things up so that I could run all the online-but-offsite things, etc. I told her about the region Discord and all the virtual write-ins.

> [Director of Community Engagement] says that all my efforts the previous years don’t count because it’s not on the site. That off-site can’t be moderated so it’s really discouraged that regions have anything online but offsite. She emailed my co-ML to tell them that she’d find a co-ML that could support them better. My co-ML responded along the lines

of “if you take [ML] away from me, I fucking quit”. So [Director of Community Engagement] tells them that I’m on probation but not to let me know. Which. They did anyway because they’re also one of my best friends and platonic life partners.

> I’m fine now, it’s been three years, I can deal. But when I say that being told that everything I’d set up didn’t count, that broke me. I had worked so hard, literally from the fucking hospital, to be told that it didn’t count. That the thing that I had set up as an accommodation for disabled or immunocompromised didn’t count. 

> We MLed for 2020, because we finish our commitments. When 2021 rolled around and no one volunteered to ML, I still took care of my region. I still ran the discord, I still ran the virtual events, I still answered their questions and cheered them on. Because I’m not going to leave my people out to dry even if the person in charge doesn’t care.

> So. That was 2019 and the early parts of 2020. And it’s why I will never ML again while [Director of Community Engagement] is in charge.

> When I volunteered as a moderator, it’s because I genuinely wanted to help the community that I care so

much about. But I volunteered under [Community Manager]. [Community Manager] wasn’t perfect, but [Community Manager] cared. Whatever her

failings, she fucking cared about us. I told [Community Manager] when I disagreed with her, but I did it to her face and I tried to be kind. (Not necessarily nice, but kind. Because kind will tell you when you’re fucking up. Nice will not.)

> Right before NaNo started, I was no longer helping [Community Manager], I was now having to answer to [Director of Community Engagement]. So maybe I was more reactive than I would have been had [Director of Community Engagement] not broken me three years ago. Because of that, I tried to temper my reactions more, to make sure that I was reacting to the actual thing and not to who was saying it.

I have had it confirmed since I quit that [Director of Community Engagement] saw me as a problem and was trying to make me quit. And, well, she succeeded. Because I did quit when [Director of Community Engagement] said that mods would now be silencing any criticism of HQ.

> I love this community, or I would have left in 2020. I love the people, and I love the spirit of NaNo. I love that the spirit of NaNo lives in all of us, that we all have this little flame inside all of us that’s part of the bigger fire. I love that we come together to cheer each other on, and help each other when we’re stuck.

> But fuck the way MLs like me were treated. If I was treated this way, I bet there are others.

As of writing this, the Director of Community Engagement is still in her position and still oversees MLs.

So the MLs had to tolerate ableism and racism to do their jobs. And it only got worse. Let’s go back to that other testimony, which revealed:

**That time HQ made a game with a terrorist in it.**

Yep. 

> In 2017 the staff decided to roll out an in-office game they had apparently played amongst themselves to the wider public.

> This game was a treasure hunt type activity, where one had to stop a terrorist called Ivan the Icy from blowing up NaNo and the world.

> This hunt included a now removed video of a very convincingly dressed man monologue at the camera about how he was going to bomb NaNo. So convincing in fact it took very long into the video before signs of it being fake emerged.

> Several faked emails sent to you, in that same vein that eventually led to a hidden page on the site where you had to disarm a bomb. Failing to do so would make it explode. Granted, upon exploding it filled your screen with penguins, but until then it was far too realistic.

> This was not communicated to MLs prior to sending out. Nothing had been mentioned. If it had we could have told them why this was a bad idea. The game might work in office where everyone knows each other’s sensitivities and humour (although even then one can wonder why this topic), but on a global scale this is tone deaf at best.

> MLs were the ones who raised the alarm and contacted HQ as quickly as we noticed. We had to explain in detail the potential ramifications, after which action was taken. We then helped NaNo cover this up.

> Note that at this point we had already lost so much faith in HQ that we were actively brainstorming how we could potentially flag it to youtube and facebook to get the video taken down if HQ would not respond to us as they often didn’t.

> To explain just how tone deaf this game was. The very convincing video was posted (not used) on 9/11. This was the year after the bombing in Brussels during NaNo. Two years after the bombing and shootings in Paris that had the Parisian Wrimos stuck in a write-in near the bomb site and active shooters for hours. And the same year a bomb had been detonated in the Manchester arena.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, a user who was on the YWP at the time confirmed that there was a YWP element:

> I didn’t find out that this came up in conversation yesterday until today but I feel like I need to add that the YWP had a dedicated forum thread to Ivan the Icy and was encouraged to participate and solve the terrorism scavenger hunt

> Yeah the terrorism scavenger hunt was a whole thing. I couldn’t even solve it because it was so heavily locked behind Facebook so I didn’t find out the full implications until the “apology” was sent out, but we on the YWP had an entire forum thread created by the mods (I want to say [YWP lead]) dedicated to solving it

So. That was a thing. Moving on.

**The board drank HQ’s kool-aid.**

The board was originally relatively helpful when they first intervened, but things soon took a turn. They took a break over American Thanksgiving [20th-26th November], and the responses soured following the break. The first clue of this was their defensive attitude towards the Executive Director’s $128K salary, when users figured out that since Nanowrimo ran a ‘salary first, operating budget second’ model, the operating budget was around $88K.

However, it was a comment about what Nanowrimo meant to the board member replying that started the anti-board attitude:

> Until two weeks ago, I had never used the forums; they just aren’t my thing. I mention all of this to say that not everybody who is part of this community hinges their experience, sense of belonging, or sense of value for NaNoWriMo on the forums. Part of my love for/experience of NaNo was doing a weekend writing retreat every November. I have very fond memories of these the years I did them. NaNo takes different forms for different people.

And when questioned about how this came across from an economic perspective, the elaboration was as follows:

> I am going on a writing retreat this weekend with my regular crew. It involves renting an AirBnB and each of us paying $200-$300 plus preparing one meal during the course of the weekend.

The fact that the first thing given as what nano meant to the board was a $200 writing retreat came off as inconsiderate in part due to reasons I’ll discuss later. 

The next red flag was a reply in response to the idea having staff credentials in their account bios:

> Frankly, this isn’t a huge priority given that we’re asking staff to focus on other issues and since it’s pretty easy to look people up on LinkedIn. In a previous thread, someone posted the LinkedIn profiles of staffers.

> Again, we don’t view ourselves as concealing this information. Our staff bios are pretty standard and this information is available online.

However, users quickly pointed out that since the board member used their pen name, they couldn’t find their LinkedIn.

A few comments in a question and answer thread were also received poorly:

> The Board recognizes that people want answers now. After all, THEY ARE SHOUTING AT US IN ALL CAPS.

> We get that people ARE UPSET but we can’t do much about unrealistic expectations.

However, it was one of their last responses that really cemented their downfall:

> That is not what [other user] said. Please answer the actual question that was asked.

> And get better at reading comprehension, christ.

> Thank you for proving why the forums are so hard to moderate and for giving the Board reason to consider that we might never be able to make them safe. Because how can anybody feel safe when confronted with vicious sarcasm after committing the utterly human fallibility of misreading?

The board stopped responding that weekend and closed the remaining threads on the 4th of December.

Well. Almost all of them. A few hours later users noticed that the ‘about the Nanowrimo board category’ thread wasn’t locked. Users scrambled to post a final goodbye to the forums in a similar manner to the YWP shutdown a few weeks before.

> It has been an honour being in the trenches with so many of you. I’m sorry that it’s coming down to this, but here is where we are.

> So many of us did not deserve the way we were treated. So many of us were failed by a staff that should have done better.

> And I will never NOT be angry that protecting [Mod X] was more important than protecting children.

And with the battlefield closed, everyone retreated to their discords to discuss.

**The donation begging.**

Despite making between $1-$2 million a year, Nanowrimo always seemed desperate for more money. The first sign of this was the aforementioned Inkitt donor situation, but the second was ‘double-up donation weekend’, where donors got twice as much goodies for donating. This was during the 4th and 5th of November, and while the actual number of emails sent is disputed, one user simply said:

> too fucking many

However it was probably between 8-11. Over two days. And people have alleged that they sent more in other days.

Graphics from a recent presentation also revealed that they were trying to solicit donations from people in poverty. The graphic said to donate less if

> * Love NaNoWriMo and want to support us alongside 8,000 annual community donors!

> * Have little to no savings

> * Work more than one job to meet your basic needs

> * Have dependents (children, elderly loved ones, household partners, neighbors, etc.)

Another graphic suggested that people making $12K a year should donate $300 a year.

However, it was revealed after the forums were shut that Nanowrimo had been soliciting donations from users of the YWP since 2016, and that it had been a regular thing since 2018. And only once did they add a disclaimer:

> P.S. Today is #Giving Tuesday, and this year NaNoWriMo has received a $20,000 matching donation. So if you know someone who might want to support our organization, encourage them to donate today and double their impact!

The emails did in fact link to the Nanowrimo store.

**And then the memes attacked.**

When the forums were shut on December 4th, the some regional forums ran by MLs were allowed to remain. However, around the 11th of December, a lifeboat group received intel that the regional forums were soon to close. The day following, there was a rush of posts in the regional forums from members of this group alerting regional members of this. There were also allegations that the Director of Community Engagement had her own reasons for shutting the forums down.

> The decision to close the regional forums over the holidays was indisputably an "oh fuck" maneuver. It was NOT to shield MLs from emergency situations that they wouldn't be able to handle in Sarah's absence. It was NOT out of concern for the MLs.

> And I have proof.

> On November 30th, [Director of Community Engagement] reached out to the MLs who had chosen to keep their forums open. She asked if we still wanted to keep them open. **And she presented us with the following additional options:**

> * 1) Set it to "only MLs can start threads"

> * **2) Set it to "only MLs can post" (i.e. use it only for announcements or record keeping)**

> * 3) Set some or all existing open threads to "slow mode" so they can't be posted in as frequently

> * 4) Close some or all of the existing open threads

> **Option 2 would have eliminated this concern entirely.** My region is set to Announcements-only right now. No one else can post there. So, unless the MLs themselves were the concern, there would have been no need to close the forums *entirely*. 

> Except... some MLs *are* giving HQ the migraine of their lives. **They need to silence ALL dissident voices, including those of MLs.**

> Hopefully you can view the form [Director of Community Engagement] sent MLs on November 30th here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdTbrRNrhfFV6HoXVUMWghomicP7xzvqWdLxC-R6cJ7Q8pfFA/viewform

And one member put it as:

> At this point I'm so confused, but what I see is HQ continuing to fuck up.

On the eve of the 15th of December, as the regional forums were taken down, the group discovered a thread on a regional forum, dedicated to memes about the Nanowrimo challenge. They flooded it with anti-HQ memes, in a last middle finger to HQ. A large amount of the memes consisted of promotional pictures of staff with humorous captions, such as The Good Place quote ‘I took the form of a 45 year old white man for a reason. I can only fail up.’, with the Executive Director photoshopped on. However, there was one that was purely text, from a YWP member: 

> she nano on my wrimo till i shut down the forums

As the memes winded down, users settled in for a night of watching the forums go down. It was a long night, with users posting haikus to pass the time.

> Just a reminder

> The forums will shut down soon

> Save the threads you want 

>Save the threads. You want 

> Community, but darkness  

>Prevails. Just for now.

However, some forums were never closed and are still open to this day.

**The smouldering remains.**

The entire YWP staff has gone, as has the social media manager. The Executive Director has been ‘demoted’ to Financial Stewardship Director. The current Executive Director is the board member that works under a pen name.

Nanowrimo has yet to reopen the forums, and besides disabling the ability to self-identify as an educator on the YWP, have yet to implement any of the changes that they promised. 

More information can be found at r/nanowrimo, which is an unofficial Nano group without staff involvement. 

[lifeisabitch-butimcute]

8 & 12 rosekiller!!! <3

omg hi! it’s lovely to hear from you <3

8. Who is a morning person? Who is a night owl?

I truly believe they’re both so bad at sleeping that it’s hard to characterize it 💀 evan will go to sleep at a normal hour because my man loves a routine, but he’ll wake up at 2 AM and then just be awake until the next chance he gets to nap. if he can make it through the night he’s waking up at 6 AM on the dot. Barty is staying up until 3 AM, but once he’s asleep he’s either out until 2 PM or 8 AM. the two of them sleeping in the same bed is an adventure in who’s exhausted, restless, hungry, horny, etc. I do reserve a special place in my heart for somno rosekiller - part of the reason they don’t have sleep schedules is bc they can’t keep their hands off each other and Barty especially has a Thing for sleeping Evan

12. Who prefers calling to texting (& vice versa)? Bonus: Who is so bad at texting it made the other think they weren't interested when they first started hanging out? [This could be hypothetical as much as real].

Ohhhh this is my favorite headcanon and I think it’s shown up in every rosekiller fic I’ve written 😅 Barty is an avid texter but he texts like a 13 year old in an early 2000s Disney show - he’s using acronyms he made up himself so no one know what the fuck he’s talking about. caps are off, autocorrect is off, that message is between him and god. it makes Evan INSANE. Evan likes to text but he’s on his perfect grammar perfect spelling shit and he straight up won’t respond to Barty’s texts if they’re too unintelligible. I feel like Barty isn’t big on phone calls but he loves a good FaceTime call. Facetime makes Evan nervous and he’ll talk on the phone if he thinks it’s the most efficient way to communicate.

otp ask game

[ashpkat]

can we talk about this cover? besides the fact that it’s my favorite cover of the series and gorgeous but also the contents of the cover

first off, WHERE ARE THEY? there’s not a place in the magisterium that looks like this, i suppose you could argue that it’s the elemental prison, but i don’t think it was described like that? and i remember in someone else’s post, don’t remember who, that it looks like european architecture (which. don’t fact check me.) and going with that at the very least this isn’t the magisterium and is somewhere else in the world entirely, does this potentially mean The Bronze Key we got was not the original concept at all?

to add onto this! let’s talk about the knife calls holding. it isn’t miri. i suppose you could attribute the odd design to the fact that none of them are consistent in the covers, but the one thing that throughout books has stayed the same is the design of Semiramis. it gets used several times for chapter headers and ALWAYS looks similar and or exactly the same. and at the very least, if the knife he’s holding was meant to be Semiramis, don’t you think they wouldn’t have curved the blade? kept it straight? here’s my conclusion, the knife he’s holding is The Cosmos Blade. the original title for The Bronze Key.

but.. why? why does the cover not align with the book? this is the ONLY book it happens in.

(with the sort of exception of The Golden Tower, my friend has a theory that it’s aaron on the dragon and not alex and they resorted to just making alex blond in the book but. whatever not the point because there’s not as much evidence)

and the original translated synopsis— which might be fake and i’ve never confirmed as real so take this with a grain of salt— does NOT match up with the book at all. could it be that more than midway through the book they completely scrapped the idea? opting to go with The Bronze Key to fit with the metal theme? could this explain why the cover took so long to come out? there’s more i want to say on this but i cannot find the words for this.

i don’t doubt that through the production of a book ideas will change, but let’s talk about when these changes occur. unlike with small changes like The Copper Gauntlets change from The Copper Mask, this change actually is huge. because in TCG, a mask IS mentioned, constantine’s mask. but in The Bronze Key, not even a passing mention on anything that could remotely be The Cosmos Blade is mentioned. and let’s talk about the under use of european mages, yeah it gets sort of explained why they hate makaris in The Golden Tower with maugris but let’s not forget! maugris was implied to be improvised by the authors.

there are tumblr posts from the authors mentioning the european mages, saying that yes they would get mentioned in the third book or at the very least the fourth one, posts that just BARELY predate The Bronze Key.

this post isn’t me being sour that aaron died in TBK, because let’s be honest here, he was always going to die. nor is this me being sour that calron was never canon, because i could care the fuck less if it was (my main issue with callmara is how underdeveloped it is and how it totally watered down tamara’s character to a love interest like they did with celia. im a callmara fan, but everytime i read it in the books I GAG).

this is me being sour at the AUTHORS for choosing to devote more time to their already established and more popular book series. they had too much on their plate. they chose to opt for a potentially more simple plot for time purposes with each book having less and less pages. they needed better time management skills. they are NYC best sellers and yet, and yet, these final three books are lack luster in quality as their own series thrive and continue to climb in popularity.

so yeah. justice for The Cosmos Blade.

[amrv-5]

sorry this is out of curiousity and you totally can not answer it but what is the long fic you’re writing about

ahh hello!! no problem I’m happy to answer (i love.... talking about writing....i will ALWAYS love talking about writing. it fills me with absolute joy to talk at length about themes ideas motifs etc in my writing. even if they’re just ‘what in god’s name were you thinking’ i will ALWAYS love questions!!)! 

in general terms, the as-yet untitled Long Fic is just another post-war fic about Hawk and Beej trying to adjust back to life in the States on their own, and eventually finding their way back to each other again. extremely down-the-line, absolutely no supernatural twists, high realism. It’s only stupid long because I’m trying to give that the space it needs to feel real to me, and that amount of space is turning out to be: A Lot.

a broader series of themes & questions (so far lol) are below the cut for mild thematic spoilers, length, and (sorry) minimizing exposure to pretentiousness purposes:

So You Want to Know What the Long Fic is About: A Condensed Thematic Overview of 158K (For Now) of Straight-Up Realist Historical Fiction Where, No Joke, a Significant Portion of That Length is Dedicated Solely to Guys Thinkin’ Real Hard About Stuff, Guaranteed to Make You Say ‘Holy Fuck, I’m Sorry I Asked, Please Just Shut Up’ With Parker, Your Resident Guy Who is Normal About TV

1. Mis- and non-communication.

What happens when you go from sleeping three feet away from your best friend in the world to living so far away a letter takes two weeks on a round trip? How do your methods of understanding each other (and misunderstanding each other…) change? How does or can one maintain closeness when literal proximity is denied? How does somebody handle abandonment when the abandonment in question was unavoidable (i.e. nobody to blame--the death of a mother, maybe, or the end of a shared living situation)?

2. Justice, suffering, and recompense.

This is where the pretentiousness comes in, I know this makes me sound like an asshole I just care about American case law a lot and it infects all of my writing, etc. etc. Anyway. How do we approach ideas of suffering and justice when they fall outside the jurisdiction of an American view of legal culpability? How does one go about trying to seek justice when they are provably, demonstrably hurt, but there is nowhere to direct the blame? These questions are kind of slippery and weird, so I’ll try to frame it more directly: somebody in this story is going to struggle (as they always do in my work) with despair. It is a serious and life-long struggle. How does a person in that situation move beyond ideas like fairness, justice, and being owed relief, to accepting that ‘fairness’ doesn’t really exist in terms of things like personal neurochemistry? And how, then, does that acceptance hold itself in relation to larger forms of human injustice--how does somebody accept their own ‘unfair’ situation as a reality they must bear while continuing to maintain ideological opposition to injustices that can be changed?

3. Empathy and invisible strife.

A little bit of an overlap with the previous set of ideas, but this one flows out of one of my favorite poems in the world, “Musee des Beaux Arts” by Auden (check it out, if you haven’t read it!). The narrator states:

About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters: how well they understood Its human position: how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;

And then, later: 

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

I am compelled by how frequently awareness of strife is set aside in day to day life, especially in American life, and that comes through big time in the Long Fic. 

At a psychological level, there’s a certain idea, I think, that it is very evident when people are doing badly; that you will always be able to tell; that the solution is as simple as reaching out, or asking for help. Unfortunately, that is often not the case. Somebody can be having the worst day of their life, be absolutely at the end of their rope, be seconds away from losing it completely, and five feet to the left there could be somebody else making a ham sandwich. So that comes through a lot in the work--this borderline absurdist, tragicomic idea that nobody’s ever really going to know exactly how you feel, and even if they did, they might be too busy doing the crossword to notice.

And at a less granular level, you can apply this (and will see it applied) to the American cultural response to the Korean War, which was incredibly muted. Even though millions of people died, even though the daily suffering of people, especially local civilians, involved was immense, because it was so (to an American domestic point of view) far-off, most people just went on with their lives. People celebrated birthdays, TV shows were produced, city council meetings dragged gaily on.

These things seem inevitable, and the ideas behind them kind of obvious: of course the world keeps turning when bad things happen. People just aren’t built to maintain ceaseless fear, anger, outrage, etc. at tragedy that is not directly affecting them, because they are concerned with the business of being alive. The people that do manage to maintain constant attention to large-scale but abstract or not immediately visible tragedies tend to go crazy, self-immolate, and/or quit their fancy math professorships at Berkeley in order to start direct mail marketing campaigns. Everybody else tends to feel bad about an issue, maybe they’ll see if they can do something small to help, and then they forget about it and keep managing the minutiae of their own lives. Yes, of course this or that issue is tragic--but I’ve got to do my taxes, or I’ve got to hit a deadline, or I’ve got to go to the store. The ploughman keeps working, too busy to investigate the splash. The ship sails on with somewhere to get to. 

But then again, even if the logic is sound, from Icarus’s point of view the world has got to seem awfully cold and mean.

[mintaii]

take responsibility

[incredubious]

MODERN AU ACESAN !!!! first impressions with a guy who barely passes the No Shoes No Shirt No Service rule

[purple-goo-writes]

Going through my blog found this BobaDin post and hit with sudden inspiration.

You see Mando'ade literally adopt any unattended child (at least in fanon but well also canon).

Mandos have a history of adopting ade/children.

Danny has a history of loving Space and ending up through random portals.

Din meets Lost Danny before the events of the Mandalorian.

Din has new son.

Din raises new son, who has powers but eh if a Mando can be trained to fight magic space wizards, perhaps said training can help train magic space wizard.

Yes din thinks Danny may be a Jedi child, he has no context for otherwise and well kinda a hypercompetent himbo.

By the time the show starts, Danny has found a way to at least access the Ghost Zone, though doesn't go Home cause perhaps the reason he was lost was cause Home no longer exists. (Good Parents Au where the Fentons go scorched Earth to protect their wounded son, and we all know how much of an asshole GIW is in fanon and canon.)

Danny is also like may 20-26 now.

But, Danny does find a semi stable portal to the DC universe. He may have been doing freelance work here as a bounty hunter/part time hero.

And well, he may or may not be courting the cute speedster, (Wally!Flash). Actually correction he is courting the cute speedster, very seriously. But he is doing it Mando style cause he may have forgotten how Earth dating works and only has Mando or Ghost to fall back on...

Which honestly aren't too different but Ghost usually involves more trying to kill each other instead of simply trying to show off via sparing/fighting together.

Now whilst this is happening, Danny doesn't keep in contact with Mando-Dad. Or ManDad as Danny likes to pun. Turns out the GFFA is in the same universe as DC just light years away, explains why they didn't know Star Wars. Makes getting a signal out a bitch at times but he had Technus do some upgrades to his armor which help.

Plus Danny needs Courting Tips from Dad at times. Din has seen some of the holos Danny made of the JL fighting invasions and wonders why his sweet ad/child choose the speedy one and not the heavily armed tank (Batman) at times. But love is love as he understands plus some Mando'ade seek partners whose fighting styles complement their own and the speedy one does fight well with his son. (Grumbling parental approval, Danny is over joyed!)

The Mandalorian Events happen, largely the same. Just With Danny making a few cameos, and Din more used to raising a super powered kid. At least this one can't phase through walls. Danny now sporting a mud horn crest cause Clan of Two is now Clan of Three.

At this point Danny and Wally are dancing around each other in a Will They or Won't They situation.

Perhaps ManDad seeks to lay low a bit with Danny to repair th Razorcrest? JL is briefly confused when next invasion Mando shows up with another Older Mando...and they both go by Mando?

Until Danny explains its a culture thing, Outsiders can't know our true names sorta situation. Just call his dad Beroya, since that's his main job title in the Tribe. Plus it's pretty easy to tell them apart considering Dins armor is very shiny and Danny's is painted black with white accents and some orange. Also the height, Danny is well Dan's height now if leaner and his dad while nearly 6ft is Short in comparison to his tank son.

(Grogu is there just not noticed yet)

So anyway, Wally and Danny are surrounded during the invasion. Both injured.

Danny says the line, "I'm with you until we Both Fall." And They both start kicking ass.

when invasion is over and everyone is in medical, Danny is helping his Dad clean his wounds in a curtained off part. And the press is taking about the invasion on the TV, somehow managed to catch the Line during their footage via drone cameras. Din chokes loudly causing everyone to look over to the curtained off area as suddenly there is a whisper/yelled conversation in Mando'a.

Danny may be trying to keep his dad from leaving the cot to strangle Wally. Overprotective Buir/Parent lol.

The JL want to know what was said.

If "I'm with you until we Both Fall." Isn't the most Romantic and Mandolorian thing to say and isn't a Fucking Proposal, then Romance is dead.

[shouyuus]

18+, vi-shaped brainrot, mdni

consider college roommate!vi who is the star of the rugby team and just such a fucking jock about it, spends hours at the gym, has pre and post workout drinks and never closes her door when she's blasting rock music, leaves pink hair dye on the bathroom counter, stains the tub when she gets drunk and tries to redo her roots, calls you everything but your name -- sweetcheeks, dollface, cupcake, princess -- isn't shy about her hookups, doesn't even bother to apologize the mornings after another pretty cheerleader scampers out of her room, shrugs and winks when you come out of the bathroom with a tiny thong dangling off your finger that's clearly not either of yours.

college roommate!vi who does kickboxing on the weekends and teaches a kid's course at the local gym. the first time you go there to drop something of her's off as a favor, you can't help but stare at the way she laughs and chases the kids around, so gentle with her movements, so careful, guiding their punches, correcting their forms. and the kids love her -- it's so easy to see, the stars in their eyes, the color high in their cheeks, the way the girls cluster around her legs and the boys are constantly vying for her approval, how she tries her best to divide up her attention equally between all of them.

college roommate!vi who goes real quiet the first time you laugh in her presence, a real laugh, not one of those ha-ha ones you snipe at her when she's trying to get a rise out of you, or teasing you about spending all your time in the library, but one that shakes your shoulders and makes your whole face light up. who has to blink when you cock your head and ask if she's okay bc she was so busy staring at you, wondering about the weird thumping in her chest, the tightness in her throat.

college roommate!vi who's there for you when you're stressed about your dissertation, and she knew you were smart, but listening to you rant about it at 3am in the morning, she's starting to realize that... you're kind of a genius. to be so young and already doing a doctorate in mechanical engineering, and the things you're trying to do -- they could conceivably change the world one day. who freezes when you let your head drop onto her shoulder with a heavy sigh, telling her that you don't know what to do.

"you'll figure it out, cupcake. with a brain like yours? you always do."

college roommate!vi who realizes way too late that she's kinda got it bad for you, bc since when did she start getting used to the sight of you wearing one of her gym shirts in the mornings, making scrambled eggs, rolling your eyes when she yawns her way into the tiny kitchen, leaning an arm against the fridge as she looks you over before asking what's for breakfast. who's gotten so used to falling asleep to the soft clatter of your computer keys that when you leave to visit your family for a weekend, she tosses and turns and can't figure out why it's impossible for her to get to sleep, wanders into sliver of space you guys have crammed a couch and tv into to call a living room, slumping down there to stare at the ceiling, only to feel her fingers graze against something on the ground, who tugs out the thing from under the couch only to find herself staring at one of your bunched up socks with the goofy cartoon cats pattern, and she remembers (suddenly) finding you tearing your room apart the week before trying to look for it because it's your favorite pair of socks.

she finds herself chuckling, letting the sock fall again, but the tightness in her throat doesn't recede, and invisible fingers clench in her gut as she lets her eyes fall shut.

"well... fuck."

college roommate!vi who doesn't know how to act when you get back from your weekend away, when you throw yourself into her arms, your skin still smelling of the crisp fall air and something warm, and spicy -- it reminds her of the holiday market you dragged her to last year, the cinnamon and spiced apples, the hot, mulled wine, the way it burned all the way down when she took the first sip, the way it worked the most darling flush into your cheeks above your pink knit scarf.

"i've got a present for you!" you say, when you finally extricate yourself from her gasp, your arms still around her shoulders, her hands still settled around your waist.

"y-yeah? you didn't have to do that, sweetcheeks --"

"yeah, but i saw this in a store window and -- well i just... it reminded me of you," you say, pulling back to dig something out of your travel bag, and it takes everything in vi not to tug you back into her chest. so instead, she settles for knitting her arms across her front and coughing to hide the fact that her throat's just tightened over itself at your words. you? seeing something and thinking of her? gods, she was so far gone.

"here," you say, pulling a small black box out and offering it to her on the palm of your hand.

vi stares, before reaching out to take it, her eyes flickering up towards your face, only to catch you chewing on your bottom lip in a way that makes her mind frizzle out at the edges. she refocuses her attention on the box -- opening it, she finds a tiny little gemstone, set on a thin golden chain --

"oh..." she breathes, tugging out up to let the gem dangle from between her fingers.

"it -- it's an alexandrite stone," you say, your voice a bit reedy, but you push on as vi continues to stare, "it's uhm -- one of the rarest gemstones in nature, but the cool thing is it changes colors depending on what kind of light it's under --" you reach up to grasp her wrist, her lungs seizing at the contact as you tug her into the incandescent light of the kitchen. "see? it was light blue a second ago, right? and now it's --"

"violet," vi says, her voice soft and disbelieving.

you quickly let go of her wrist, pursing your lips and wrapping your arms around yourself, looking anywhere but at her face.

"yeah -- i just --" your shoulders shrug up as she stares at you, her sky-light eyes wide, "it... it reminded me of... you."

college roommate!vi who, ever since the "necklace incident" (as the rest of the rugby team likes to call it), hasn't really been the same. she's put on the necklace and not taken it off for even a second since the day you gave it to her, but now she doesn't really know how to act around you -- bc did you actually like her? i mean, the necklace is... a pretty big thing to just give someone, but what if you were just giving it to her as a friend? as a roommate? she agonizes over it to the point that the rest of the team are so, so sick of hearing about it, they lovingly tell her to just fuck her and get it over with already. but vi insists that she can't -- it's different with you.

college roommate!vi who's stunned speechless when she gets home to find you staring at your computer, your expression blank. and at first, she thinks something's horribly wrong, but then you're slamming into her, squealing about how you've done it -- your thesis defense went well, that you're a doctor now -- and she's picking you up, spinning you around, buoyed up by the effervescence of your happiness, pressing a kiss to your cheek --

"oh my god, congrats princess! i knew it! i always knew you could do it!"

"thanks -- god, i just -- i've wanted it for so long i... i don't know what to do with myself now that i've got it, y'know?" you say, still suspended in vi's arms, your feet lifted off the ground. it takes a moment before you both seem to realize the position you're in, and vi clears her throat as she lets you down, you looking away, pressing your palms to your cheeks to cool the heat gathering there.

after a brief pause though, vi chuckles, reaching out to slip a finger beneath your chin, tilting your face up towards her's.

"c'mon, put on one of those pretty dresses of yours. we're going out."

"out?"

"yeah. to celebrate."

you blink as vi pulls her hand away.

"but it's like... 4:30 on a tuesday."

vi cocks an eyebrow, a smirk twitching at her lips, "yes, and? c'mon cupcake --" her eyes catch yours and instead of looking away, she holds it this time, something flickering behind their powder-blue depths that makes your skin prickle with heat, "i'll show you a good time."

college roommate!vi who takes you to one of her favorite clubs, tugging you through the crowd, the jostling bodies, holding your hand in her's, trying really hard not to think too much about it (or the fucking insane little black and pink miniskirt you put on), telling herself that it's just to make sure she doesn't lose you in the crowd, grinning when someone knocks you into her chest, and she finds her arm wrapped around your waist, fingers scrunching the material of your skirt, your palms splayed on her chest.

she buys the both of you a round of shots, watching with a hitched breath as your tongue flickers out to lick the salt daubed on your wrist, the way your eyes squeeze shut when you take the shot and your lips wrap around the lime slice, tries to ignore the twist in her gut like a turning blade, the way her whole body flushes with heat, the dull ache caught between her legs when you wipe your lips, your eyes bright and a little blown out, your cheeks flushed with color as you giggle and lace your hands with hers again --

"come on! i wanna dance!"

college roommate!vi who is just drunk enough to let herself dance with you, to let herself lean in to the way you're twisting your body, fingers in your hair, your eyes closed, an indulgent smile on your lips, who let's herself imagine (just for a second), pulling you in to kiss you, how soft your lips might feel on hers, how silken your skin might be beneath her hands, who tries not to groan when you lean in closer, link your arms behind her neck, press your whole body against her's, who grips your hips just a little too tight, grinds you against her, sees the way you gasp, your eyelids fluttering as you eyes glaze out --

college roommate!vi who can't help how she groans at the sight, tugs you in by the back of your neck to mash her lips to yours, crushing you to her as she kisses you (finally, finally) and you let yourself he kissed -- your fingers tangle in her choppy pink hair, and she swears you make this sweet, mind-bending whimpering noise in the back of your throat that drives her up the wall and right over it --

but when she pulls back, she sees the look on your face -- shocked and little confused, but you're drunk, and she doesn't wanna do this with you -- at least, not like this.

college roommate!vi who pulls away, only to have you follow her all the way out the club, into this small dark alley, her shaking her head, feeling a strange, saltwater prickle at the back of her throat as she says --

"shit -- sorry. i didn't mean to -- i just -- you were just so -- and i -- fuck, i didn't --"

"vi -- vi -- no, violet, listen to me --"

it's her full name on your lips that makes her pause, makes her turn to find you walking towards her. your lipstick is smeared, your hair a waterfall mess around your shoulders as you corner her against the rough brick of the club's exterior. faintly, she can still feel the pulse of music reverberating from inside the club, but out here, the air is damp and cold and quiet.

"i -- i'm sorry i kissed you," she says, her voice cracking over the syllables. she bites her lips as you frown up at her, your eyes searching her's before you let out a soft sigh and a scoff.

"well. i'm sorry you feel that way. cause..." you take half a step back, your arms curling around yourself before you glance back at her with a hard, determined light to your eyes as you press back into her space, your cheeks bright with color.

"i was really kinda hoping you'd do it again."

vi's breath punches out of her chest; it takes a few seconds of sputtering before she gathers herself enough to speak.

"wait -- what? you..."

you crinkle your nose, rolling your eyes, "i -- i thought i was making it obvious -- i mean, with the whole necklace thing -- it doesn't take a genius to figure how i feel about --"

you squeak as she pins you against the opposite wall, her lips seeking yours out, her fingers rucking up the material of your top, making you hiccup as they tease under the wire-rim of your bra.

college roommate!vi who can barely control herself when you sink your fingers into her hair, tugging lightly as you gasp out a breath, her lips tracking fire along the side of your neck, intent on making you whimper again, just the way she likes, grazing her teeth along your collarbone even as you jerk at her hair --

"vi -- fuck -- vi, not here --" you swallow around the burgeoning desire, and when you glance down to find her looking up at you, her eyes so dark they're almost black, you fight back a groan, cup your palms around her cheeks and pull her up for a long kiss.

"let's --" you suck in a breath even as vi whines at the loss your lips, "let's go home --"

"holy fuck," vi swears, somehow managing to pull herself back just far enough to taste the misty night air. she stares at you, your chest heaving, a daisy-chain of hickeys blossoming along the long expanse of your neck, your makeup good and smeared, your hair a mess, your eyes bright and so full of love as they flicker over her face.

vi smiles, helpless to the loud, uncertain drumming of her heart as she says, "y-yeah -- let's get you home, princess."

college roommate!vi who barely waits for the elevator door to close in your building before she's got you shoved up against the wall, hoisting you up, her fingers seeking out the softness of your skin, tugging up your shirt, her other hand dipping into the waistband of your skirt, her mouth open and hungry as she kisses your neck, bites down at the junction of your shoulder just to hear you moan.

college roommate!vi who's way too good at undoing your bra with one hand the second you get back to your apartment (if you were more coherent, you might've thought it hot), the door slamming closed, the pair of you toppling onto the room, breathy laughs and panting whines as she hoists you into her arms and carries you to your bedroom, laying you down so gently, kissing up your stomach till you're whimpering, your own hands pulling your top off your body, leaving you in an undone-bra and a miniskirt, your cheeks flushed. you push yourself up onto your elbows, watching as vi peaks up at you from between your legs, shooting you a wink before she's tugging down your skirt and panties all in one, an eyebrow ticking up at the lil lacey thing you had on beneath the skirt all along.

"all this for me, pretty?"

you press your lips, eyes cutting away as she looks between the bra dangling off your shoulders and the panties caught round your ankles. her lashes flutter.

"oh, a matching set," she cocks her head, running her palms up your thighs, pinning them open again as you try to press them closed, feeling suddenly much too seen (bc you'd be straight up lying if you hadn't put it on in the vague hope that the night might evolve into something like this).

she clicks her tongue, shaking her head with a cocky, shit-eating grin that makes your heart skitter in your chest. her drops a light kiss to your inner thigh, savoring in the way you whine again.

"nope, keep 'em open princess."

college roommate!vi who takes her time with you, bc rly she's been waiting way too long for this, has imagined it one too many times, but nothing can compare to the way your hips jerk up against her mouth, the way your fingers tighten in her hair every time she licks up the seam of your cunt, the way your breath catches on her name over and over again, like you can't quite get the word out even though it's just a single syllable. she groans against you, too lost in the taste of you to care about what a mess she must look like, with her tongue fucking into your desperate hole, her nose nudging your clit, her fingers digging crescent moon marks into your hipbones.

she's sure that if this were an old-fashioned cartoon, there'd be big, balloon hearts popping out of her eyes. she can't get enough of you like this -- moaning her name, your legs on either side of her face, your skin littered with the remnants of her. she has the eye-rolling thought of you the next morning, of how all these marks will still be there to remind you of her every single time you see one of them.

college roommate!vi who doesn't expect you to flip over after she's literally eaten you out seven ways to sunday, to tug her in for a soft kiss (though she really does like pressing your own taste back into your mouth with her tongue), before your fingers are inching down the length of her body to tease at her hips, trailing circles down the lines of her abs, toying with the thin line of hair that leads into her black boxer briefs.

"what are you --"

you shoot her a look that has her mouth going dry.

"what? didn't think i can give as good as i get?"

college roommate!vi who's literally going to lose her mind with the way you're fingers (at first sight so thin and delicate, but gods are they stronger than they look) are pressing into her, curling up with the kind of precision usually only associated with doctors, and then a voice in the back of her head reminds her -- oh, right, you are a doctor now. but logical thought dies after that, bc you've somehow worked your way between her legs and are looking up at her with those big dark eyes of yours, smiling sunshine bright before you drop a kitten-lick against her clit and she's twitching, keening as she cums all over your fingers.

"jesus fuckin' christ, doll -- is that what you're learning in those engineering classes?"

she's breathless, cheeks flushed, and honestly just a little embarrassed at how quickly she came, but she has to bite back another groan as she watches you lick your fingers clean, grinning sweetly up at her as if you didn't just get her off in record time.

"no, but i did do my dissertation on human-based robotics, which included a lot of late nights memorizing anatomical models so..."

vi pulls you in for a kiss, laughing against your lips.

"you're amazing, y'know that?"

college roommate!vi who can't really believe how much she's lucked out, sharing an apartment with her girlfriend, who literally cannot shut up about you, but the rugby team all agree that they'd rather have this than the months of endless pining. who brags about her genius gf to anyone who'll listen, and looks for you in the stands of all her practice matches when you can make it, who kisses you in front of everyone even when you make a show of trying to wiggle away bc she's sweaty (you don't really care).

who loves telling the story of how you guys met bc she still can't quite believe it herself, and the story always starts with --

"well, actually -- we started off as roommates."

[rotzaprachim]

too many conspiracy theories about oil in gaza and not enough practical understanding of the fact that bibi netanyahu and his cronies have extreme personal reason to keep this war going as long as possible and at any level of civilian cost because the moment it's over he'll no longer be a wartime prime minister and will have to face the repercussions for being a massive reason why the october 7 attacks ended up with a body count as high was it was

[possamble]

Needlessly close reading and long commentary on chapter 57 and how the audience actually has an extremely limited view on what Marcille has been like over the course of her life.

I am once again thinking about how pre-dungeon Marcille is so quiet and stoic that she seems like a completely different person. How jarring chapter 57 is for the audience. Like you have Marcille, who has been just the most blindingly expressive person with resting baby face

And then the chapter drops a title page of Marcille hearing from Falin for the first time in four years and it's like.

Who is that. Genuinely. Would you even realize that's Marcille without the context clues?

And then the chapter just keeps coming in with the sucker punches.

We have SEEN Marcille meet strangers. It was never with this understated of a smile.

literally who the hell is this. the few times the audience gets to see some Signature Marcille Faces that they're used to is when she finally gets to see Falin again

when she's testing out her new spells

(and when Laios and Falin are fantasizing about her being their damsel in distress, funnily enough)

And then finally. Finally you get to a fully recognizable Marcille when she fucking DIES and comes back to life to geek out about necromancy.

We know she loves magic. We know she loves Falin. So it's not so surprising that she wouldn't be able to keep a mask up when thinking or talking about the things she loves. But why the mask in the first place? Where does it come from? It's tempting to think that, maybe, Falin's departure just hurt her so much that it turned her into a quiet person.

But that's only half true. If you go back, the first instance you see of this incredibly mild personality is actually introduced much earlier, in chapter 17.

What if she was always like that. What if her default after her father died was to hold people at arm's length, to never really emote past being polite and friendly. What if Falin was the first person who was able to bring her out of her shell, and when she left, Marcille just went back to how she was.

And when comparing her detached demeanour with someone else...

It's not exact, but wouldn't you say there's a resemblance? Wouldn't you think she might be trying her best to imitate what she saw of her own mother working as an accomplished mage?

It would certainly explain why she's hiding behind her portrait in her nightmare, at least.

We aren't told that Marcille has been distancing herself from everyone around her using a mature and dignified personality she modelled off her mother. But we sure as hell are shown it, I think.

[bixels]

Now that Ghibli's new movie is coming out soon, I've been thinking about anime films and wanna talk about my favorite animated movie ever, Tokyo Godfathers.

TG is a 2003 tragicomedy by Satoshi Kon, following three unhoused people––an alcoholic, a runaway girl, an a trans woman––who find a baby in a dumpster and set off across Tokyo to reunite her with her parents.

If you like the sound of that, go watch it because the rest of this post is spoilers and I have FEELINGS about this movie.

URGHH, the fact that only two moments of true kindness, generosity, and care given to the three protagonists without any expectation of reciprocity are given by a Latin-American immigrant couple and a drag club full of queens and trans women. The fact that, despite her loud and dramatic personality, Hana is the glue that holds the team together and the heart of the whole movie. The fact that this movie pulls no punches at showing the violence and inhumanity committed by "civilized Japanese society" against the unhoused. The fact that Miyuki craves to be loved by her parents and ends up seeing Hana as her true mother. The fact that Miyuki starts off accidentally using transphobic language against Hana, but slowly begins calling her "Miss Hana" out of respect. The fact that, according to Kon, Hana's role in the story is as a mythological trickster god and "disturb the morality and order of society, but also play a role in revitalizing culture." The fact that Hana so desperately wants to be part of a true family, yet is willing to sacrifice her found family so they can be with their own, and is rewarded for her good deeds in the end by becoming a godmother. The fact that, throughout the movie, wind and light have been used to signify the presence of god's hand/influence (this movie's about nondenominational faith––faith in yourself, faith in others, faith in a higher power. Lots of religious are referenced, such as Buddhism/Hinduism, Christianity, and Shintoism), and in the climax of the film, as Hana jumps off a building to save a baby that isn't hers, a gust of wind and a shower of light save her from death. The fact that god saves a trans woman's life because she proved herself a mother, and that shit makes me CRY.

[clubsmarties]

"Good. I need a moment to rest after being on all night with everyone at the gala." Wally made a slight face as he knew how new schools could go. "He's in for a new adventure. I hope he finds a happy little note in his new school. Little league? That sounds fun and like something that could potentially help acclimate him to his new surroundings. Was little league your idea?' There was a slight smirk at the question. He'd once heard her talk about baseball but it had been so brief he didn't think she'd think he'd remember.

"Ours." He repeated. "Why do you sound surprised? This is a you and I endeavor. Well, she can love both of us at the same time. You can't deny that you are special to her." Dolly made it clear she liked Liz whenever she'd come over and spent the night. That pup had a lot of love to give. "Next time ask her if she wants to come with you on a new adventure. Maybe better for her when I have to travel for work."

"Penguins take the cutest cake. I'll give you that. I can't believe that they have one of the sweetest mating rituals. If I could be any animal I'd be a penguin. For multiple reasons." He watched her and felt his eyebrows knit together. "That's okay. Maybe it was for the best. You can make a better nee memory next time. But if not at the place then maybe someplace else."

He nodded his head and sighed. "It was nice but still sometimes it was a bit lonely. I was my sister's third wheel when they met their future husband's and wife. We're close and in a way I'm lucky that my brother in law's were cool with me but still somedays it was a little weird to be surrounded by couples when you were just the odd man out." Wally had never shared this part of his reasons why he left to do his own things when the couples were out for an adventure. "It worked out too because then I got to explore." Her thanks made him nod in response.

"I don't know if words do it justice. I guess it's kind of weird to assume you'd ever been to a luau? It's nothing like that," he laughed, nervous all of a sudden. "They have projections on the tallest buildings. Each year it changes but the lights are colorful. The archway you walk through moves a little bit. So you get to see the lights reflected as you walk by."

Wally couldn't help but smile as he, too would call his family predictable. But it was only because they never really had a real family holiday growing up so doing it for the kids was like they were healing some part of their childhood that had been broken. The laugh still making it clear he didn't take offense at all. "I'm with you there but no, it's more like my sisters and I didn't celebrate the holiday as kids. You'd think, why? Weren't we rich? We'd have everything. Thing was that my mom was in Louisiana. My aunt didn't celebrate any holiday. So for us growing up December was just another month. Just birthdays for half of us then normal. We'd go out to the lake to see fireworks. My aunt worked four jobs to keep herself and us afloat. Her husband, my uncle cut her off when they divorced. We still missed our mother. Wanted her to come. In our innocence we wished for Santa to bring her to us every year. Took nearly a decade and some change for Santa to bring us all together again. When my aunt couldn't take us to the lake because she was waitressing here," he pointed to the establishment they were in. "She'd take care of us and we'd see the Christmas lights from the balcony." He laughed as Liz hit it right on the nail. "We do dinner. Usually at Andy and Di's. We all help out to make sure we all get fed. We actually took on my brother in law's tradition of staying up until midnight on Christmas Eve so the kids can open their gifts and then go to bed. Then in the morning they wake up to see what Santa brought them. Every year is rotates who gets the Santa gifts. Adults get something from the guy too. Watching the kids be so happy and filled with so much joy, that is what makes the holiday worth it. What we couldn't have as kids, the second generation have."

Wally shrugged his shoulders not really knowing if they were the same. "I suppose so, never been to either. Just heard of them actually. Laser tag any fun? Do you win or do you let Orion win?" The idea of a dark room could be fun but it also made him uneasy. Dark rooms usually weren't the most safe. Things could get out of hand quickly. "This is another reason why you and I go. Lighthouses are more interesting." He smiled given the topic at hand and how it seemed like it had her excited. At least if he nerded out she wouldn't completely think he was weird.

In a show of interest he stopped eating and pulled his eyes into attentive mode. Watching her with a smile as she reciprocated a lighthouse fact. This intrigued him and liked that she felt comfortable to do the same to him. He liked that she was comfortable talking to him and not letting the conversation die out. "Actually no I didn't. We should go to Maine." He'd take some time off work and thought why not go seek adventure with her. "I promise I will keep my random facts under ten if we go together. How'd you get into lighthouses?" Anything she'd share with him he'd eat up. He wanted to know her in a way she had never been known before. "Is it being the prettiest a scientific fact or your opinion?" He asked just wanting to know why if it was her personal opinion, was it the prettiest. What made it so for her. "How many are on your bucket list?" As he asked he took out his phone and opened up his notes. He wanted to see how many they could cross off the list just by being on this side of the world.

On the side there were about five wait staff that looked over at Wally's table and murmurs could be heard over his date. The whispers kept coming as they saw how invested Wally was and it seemed like to them that his companion also shared an interest. It was all in the body language they said.

"Ah, you are a kind sir considering my charging time. So few even acknowledge that a charging time is needed for us lot." It was said in another joking manner. Had it been anyone else but but Wally, or hell, if she had just been in a bad mood, she might had taken the comment personally. There was just something else about not taking everything so personally and letting herself enjoy hanging out with the man that seemed to be in her best interest right now. Not that she didn't enjoy it normally, but she knew that she was guarded, suspicious of his want to be around her. It was natural to her survival, if she let her guard down too much, he might learn the truth of her, which would just be the worst, dangerous. End up with her behind bars and that was the last thing she wanted.

With a sigh, she answered. "Good. They're enrolling him in a new school, closer to their home. Charlie says he seems to be interested in little league, so if there's still time, they're going to try to see if they can get him on it too. So, well I would say."

"Ours?" Her surprise evident in her tone. Something about being included in this scenario of his made her feel happy, it was a strange way though. Chalking it up to just being tipsy, she shook it off. "No, I'm pretty sure she loves you too much to want to just willingly follow me anywhere I go. Maybe a day, but I'm sure she'd miss you after that."

It wasn't that she didn't want to go back, but there were places that just held onto tiny bits of her that she didn't want back. Memories that she rather not have come back, had she been stronger like Charlie, she'd have no issue going back anywhere and everywhere to revisit sites with new eyes, new perspective, but that wasn't her. Always outrunning one things or another. "Yeah, something like that," she muttered in agreement. "I don't remember much," she lied. "So I would just say the lagoon, its where the flamingos were anyway."

There were moments where Elizabeth truly felt like she was someone else. Not the criminal pretending to be a regular person, just another person having a conversation with a friend, in a place that could become a home. These were one of those moments. Talking with Wally about inconsequential things like the mating rituals of animals and going to the zoo made her feel like a normal person. "That's because there's nothing as cute as penguins." She felt the need to defend, what she now knew , thanks to him, was her favorite animal. Her brows quirked at the sound of a head flag, a closed lip smile at his laugh as she tried to hold back laughter herself at the thought of a flamingo just shaking its head around to try to find a mate. Her hand came up to her mouth to keep her from laughing too loud at the image Wally presented of a person doing such a thing. Controlling her laughter, she added. "Penguins are too. They usually don't stray unless their partner dies or never comes back when they go for food, which is a long time, when the chicks are hatched. They build their little nests, rookeries, together starting with that one rock that the mate accepted and that's where they come back, stay, hatch their eggs. Everything."

It wasn't that she assumed she knew him, because that was further from the truth. She only knew what he had shared with her, which was a lot, but not everything. The only thing she did know well was that he always had some quip, fact, remark ready at the go to fill the silence that she always seemed to want to settle between them but he never did let it. It struck her as strange now that she couldn't recall the last moment they shared in silence, and stranger still that she actually had began to enjoy their conversations. To imagine him as anything but talkative seemed farfetched but the way he spoke about that time in their lives just clued her in that the upbringing that she had assumed he had was the furthest from it. Okay, so she might have made some assumptions, but based on her old experiences, it was miscalculated assumption. "It must have been nice to have them there, growing up I mean. And I thank you," she decided to be nice. "For the access to friendliness."

"Oh, you mentioned that during Easter. What's that like?" She was nothing, if not curious. Even if she wouldn't be around to experience a lot of what this place had to offer, she would at least hear about it. "Christmas, so," she took a moment to think before chuckling out. "Predictable." It wasn't meant as a mean thing, but she knew that someone like Wally, with family, would love the holiday. Most of them anyways. More interested on the flower before her, she added. "Not in a bad way, but with the way your family is so close, I can see why you would like Christmas. I bet you guys get all together and do the Christmas dinner thing and wait until the kids go to sleep to say Santa came, huh." It was more wistful than presented as a fact. She hoped that he did, something about him, though the little time she had known him, wished that for him. The kind of families that she read about, saw through windows, an actual family.

She had to stifle a laugh at glow in the dark room, thoughts of an old dealer that ran in the same circles as her came to mind. The darkened room with tie dye glow in the dark, black light posters of psychedelic designs that littered the walls. "Umm." Thinking over how to best answer that, she took another sip from her drink and thought about a time she did laser tag with Orion, that seemed like a better answer. "Does a laser tag room count? From the way you describe it, it sounds like its something that I can totally skip. I'm more excited about this lighthouse." For some unknown reason, she felt the need to show that she took could be filled with useless facts about something they liked. "Did you know Michigan has the most lighthouses and there's even one off Lake Superior that you can see the aurora borealis at but the prettiest ones are in Maine." That was actually a matter of opinion, hers, and it would not change. "But there are some nice looking ones around the world, want to see them all one day."

[elitisim]

so, i hit 1k sometime in the beginning of June ✨🥳. Which means my incessant yapping about absolutely nothing on every post I make and multiple months-long unannounced hiatuses didn't scare all of you off yet, so thanks for that y'all.

No, but for real tho, I genuinely want to express my gratitude to each and every one of you for putting up with me and all my BS, so my 1k+ gift exclusively consists of hairs requested by YOU!  Which is totally about giving back to the community that has supported me and NOT just an excuse to dump all the requests that have been sitting here piling up for months.

there are only 7 hairs in the preview image but a bunch of these are from sets, so all-in-all you're getting 17 female hairs!

INFORMATION:

None of this is my original work! All mesh credit goes to @sheabuttyr, @ebonixsims, @daylifesims, @simstrouble!

Set contains 17 hairs for for Teen ➤ Elder Females

due to how the meshes where made the Poloma Passion Twists and Monae Beads don't have root/tip controls so they’re only 2 channels the rest are 4 like normal.

credits, preview pictures, links to originals, poly counts and individual download links for every hair is under the cut.

polycounts are ALL over the place. Lowest hair is +10k, Highest one is +32k. Please reference the list under the cut before downloading!

Files comes in two flavors: Merged and Unmerged

Both types contain the exact same type of stuff (package file and preview images) except version one is one big merged file and the version has individual files.

[DOWNLOAD MERGED]

[DOWNLOAD UNMERGED]

[PICK AND CHOOSE]

Tagging list: @pis3update, @naturalhair-sims3, @xto3conversionsfinds, @kpccfinds

@simstrouble Adeline Braids//22.2k poly// requested by @paigeywaigeyy

[DOWNLOAD]

@sheabuttyr: London Locs // 16.2k Poly //requested by @thesirensims

[DOWNLOAD]

@daylifesims: Honey Sun Clover Dreadlocks v1// 10.8K Poly //requested by anon

[DOWNLOAD]

@daylifesims: Honey Sun Clover Dreadlocks v2// 10.9K Poly // Under hats // fully recolorable// 1 channel// requested by anon

[DOWNLOAD]

@ebonixsims: Monae Beadset V1//32.7K Poly! // Under hats // Recolorable beads 4 channels//no tips or root controls due to mesh//requested by anon

[DOWNLOAD]

@ebonixsims: Monae Beadset V2//30.5K Poly! // Under hats // Recolorable// 4 channels//no tips or root controls due to mesh//requested by anon

[DOWNLOAD]

@daylifesims :Honey Sun Alfalfa Braids v1// 10.1K Poly // Under hats // fully recolorable// 1 channel// requested by anon

[DOWNLOAD]

@daylifesims :Honey Sun Alfalfa Braids v2// 10.1K Poly // Under hats // fully recolorable// 1 channel// requested by anon

[DOWNLOAD]

@sheabuttyr: Daija Dreads V1 // 28.6k Poly //requested by anon.

[DOWNLOAD]

@sheabuttyr: Daija Dreads V2 // 30.8k Poly! //requested by anon

[DOWNLOAD]

@sheabuttyr: Paloma Passion Twist V1// 25k Poly//requested by @paigeywaigeyy

[DOWNLOAD]

@sheabuttyr:Paloma Passion Twist V2// 25k Poly//requested by @paigeywaigeyy

[DOWNLOAD]

@sheabuttyr:Paloma Passion Twist V3// 25k Poly//requested by @paigeywaigeyy

[DOWNLOAD]

@sheabuttyr:Paloma Passion Twist V4// 25k Poly//requested by @paigeywaigeyy

[DOWNLOAD]

@sheabuttyr:Paloma Passion Twist V5// 25kPoly //requested by @paigeywaigeyy

[DOWNLOAD]

@sheabuttyr:Paloma Passion Twist V6// 25kPoly //requested by @paigeywaigeyy

[DOWNLOAD]

@sheabuttyr:Paloma Passion Twist V7// 25kPoly //requested by @paigeywaigeyy

[DOWNLOAD]

@sheabuttyr:Paloma Passion Twist V8/ /25kPoly //requested by @paigeywaigeyy

[DOWNLOAD]

[dizzybizz]

FoM (fields of memes (pt1))