#hoping the free day token system makes sense!

[hetaween-event]

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[minkdelovely]

love and power

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧     ✧     ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

chapter ten: part two

“i won’t die for love but ever since i met you you could have my heart and i would break it for you.”

Alastor x Fem!Reader ; MDNI 18+ ; [y/n] used sparingly ; Alias in Hell is Sylvie

tags/warnings: nothing scary to report here — welcome to your happy ending 💖

word count: 8k

author’s note: cherished ones… i can’t believe we’re finally here at the end 🥲 it’s taken me much longer than anticipated to get this out, but i hope it’s worth the wait. allow me to extend my sincere gratitude to you all for hanging in there and going on this journey with me and this series. this started out as pure self-indulgence and turned into something much more along the way and i hope this is received by you as the gift i intended it to be. they’re not off the album i used as the platform for this series, but feel free to listen to rain and take me back to eden by sleep token, which i listened to A LOT while writing this. thank you again for all of your kindness and support. i truly don’t think i could have finished this without it 💖

prelude ; chapter one ; chapter two ; chapter three ; chapter four ; chapter five ; chapter six ; chapter seven ; chapter eight ; chapter nine ; chapter ten: part one ; chapter ten: part two

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧     ✧     ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

The last couple days had been… good.

Vaggie had approached you the morning after your little sleepover with Angel to see if you’d actually take her up on the offer of managing the hotel’s books. It was a welcome distraction, easily falling back into the routine of your old work. And honestly, their records keeping system needed a complete overhaul. It kept you busy and focused, hours passing like minutes as you honed in on creating the foundations of your system.

Funny how in Hell the work you had always approached with a level of disdain in life had become something to look forward to. Something that was all yours. It was nice. Familiar.

Ironic.

You also hadn’t gone to the bar — the biggest improvement, or at least the one you were happiest about. Feeling more like yourself again and less like your father, who had been no stranger to bouts of liquored-up sulking. It was not a way you wanted to remember him by, nor make a habit of for the eons to come. And beyond just feeling better without alcohol in your system, it was great to see Husk in a more friendly capacity again. Haunting his bar in the way you did wasn’t something you were ever planning to subject either of you any time soon. 

You were regaining a level of comfortability in your room as well. Sleeping better in your bed, which had been difficult to do. For the first few days you slept on the loveseat, where you’ve now spent the last two nights curled up with a book in front of the fireplace.

It was a decent distraction, but thoughts of Alastor still plagued you. Try as you might, it was hard for them not to. He felt so present as you went about your day despite maintaining the separation; feeling his aura hovering around you like a sixth sense. You wanted to ask Husk and Niffty if they felt it like you did — if at all — but hadn’t gotten the nerve yet to do so.

What if they said no?

It was too embarrassing even to think of. The possibility of it being some kind of adverse affect from sleeping with him making your blood rush to your face. 

Maybe I took a piece of him, too… 

The heat on your cheeks intensified at the thought. Isn’t that exactly what had happened?

Sure, in a literal sense he had been the one to take a piece of you. But in return, you had witnessed him in yet another state that no one else — in this building, at least — ever had. Just the fact that he had let you help undress him… That wasn’t something you look lightly, even at the peak of your anger toward him. The nervous way your heart fluttered against your ribs at the memory only further proved the point.

You wanted the opportunity to do it again. Undress him, that is. 

What followed after wasn’t of much consequence; you’d be satisfied just the same. Whether that was helping him out of his day clothes and into pajamas or preparing him to pound you into the mattress — either result was made from the same circumstance. You found you had enjoyed it even more than dressing down his bed for the evening, which had always been a nearly meditative part of your day.

Or, well… it used to be.

Did he even bother with that now? Hell, did he ever? Or was it just more busywork? If it was… you missed it.

Taking care of Alastor was tedious at times but it hadn’t been all bad. He was petulant too, which is probably why he was always deflecting and pointing the finger in your face. But past his venom there was charm. His euphemisms and anecdotes. Grumbling into the newspaper with his ears downcast whenever he came across an unpleasant article, which happened more often than not. 

He enjoyed his coffee black and extra hot, but god forbid if it was burnt. That was one of the first things you had been tasked with perfecting, and mercifully, had been able to accomplish. Alastor never made you handle his food, not out of lack of trust but courtesy. Due to the gruesome reality of what he enjoyed eating, it wasn’t a chore he ever charged you with. And you’d busy yourself with cleaning while he ate to allow him as much privacy as possible. 

As much as he adored the structure of his morning routine, beyond that the day was his for the taking. Living the monotonous life that you had, it was admirable. Sometimes inspiring. He had a mischievous, opportunistic outlook on existence — no doubt a quality that followed him into the afterlife — while you had been (presumably) buried jaded and trepidatious.

He was… fun. Even when he was irritating. 

Before Rosie pawned you off on him, the last time you had ever felt something close to fun was killing your grandmother. A horrifying revelation, but true, though that had more to do with the satisfaction you felt from it than anything. But fun was something that was right at your fingertips with Alastor, when you looked back on the last couple weeks. He had quite the proclivity for antics when he wasn’t being crushed by the weight of his self-imposed grandeur.

The memory of when he brought you back to the alley the day after what you had done came to mind. His inspection of the bag you’d left behind had upset you so much in the moment, but now all you can remember is the glimmer in his eyes. The nearly childlike glee in his fanged smile. Sure, it had been at your expense, but that was how he liked to joke. Satire and whimsy adorned with the pretty bow of his voice and charm.

But his jokes were sometimes too one-sided. His delivery too harsh and actions… demeaning. It wasn’t a facet he aimed at you often but the sting of his cruelty ran deep, almost to the bone. Your hand came up to your throat, the pain in your neck only barely subsided. It had been impossible to tell if the chain had bruised you under all of Alastor’s love bites, but if you were being honest with yourself, there was no way it hadn’t. If even just a little.

You made due with covering yourself up. Managing to find some high-collared button up shirts left to rot in the laundry room. Nothing a good washing wasn’t able to fix. And as the days passed and the marks faded, you were able to transition back into more familiar (and revealing, in comparison) pieces of your wardrobe.

Still, being left to your own devices when Alastor had been the one responsible for not only the marks but ruining the dress that would’ve easily solved your problems with its modesty nicked at you. Not that you had expected gifts after the argument, but considering how he made you wear that dress as uniform there was no way he didn’t have plans to provide a replacement that morning. But it never came. 

Instead he had given you a threat and left you on the floor in nothing but a towel, feeling used and humiliated and alone. And yet here you were, with a book in your hand you hadn’t absorbed the last few pages of because your mind was busy remembering the feeling of removing Alastor’s coat.  

Or how disheveled and boyish he looked the morning you went into his room without permission and found him in bed. The strain in his eyes before you walked into Valentino’s arms. His drawn brows and open, kiss-swollen mouth when he made you his own on the bed right behind you. That face would haunt you for the rest of your afterlife.

But there was another face that earned the honor, too. An expression that eclipsed even your grandmother’s worst sneer. Was what you said to him that morning really so outrageous that it had warranted such wrath and disdain? Alastor had been in quite a decent mood too, before the conversation took a turn. Not that it made you feel any better, but you couldn’t shake the feeling that it was something bigger than that. You had copped attitude before and Alastor had either laughed it off as a mild tantrum or course-corrected you before you even had a chance to realize it.

Beyond that, there were also the things he had done after you fell asleep, face buried in his scarred chest. The medicine he had waiting at the ready for when you inevitably woke up from the ache of his bite, which he had taken the liberty of cleaning and bandaging. He had more than likely done it by hand as well, the same as when he tended to it on your bed that awful morning. No magic, no minions. Despite being the least he could do since he inflicted the wound, that didn’t mean he had to do it himself. But he did.

Your stomach turned thinking about it. The force of his anger just didn’t match up with the efforts he took in caring for you after your entanglement. It was the push and pull you had been battling all week, and your eyes flitted to the door. Going up to his room wasn’t something you had entertained, knowing better than to try and call Alastor’s bluff, but the desire to speak with him now was a temptation you worried you’d lose the battle against. 

Knock.

The single, hollow sound echoing off the door sent a jolt through your body, sitting up from your relaxed position on the small sofa near the fireplace. It was Friday, wasn’t it? Meaning everyone had left the hotel already except for you and…

There’s no way.

Your pulse spiked. 

Maybe you just imagined it. Or the hotel was settling. Things like that could still happen to buildings in the afterlife, right? Ghosts and hauntings and creaks and groans seemed fairly on-brand for Hell. Alastor’s shadow — that you had found yourself missing as well — was proof of that all on its own. 

It was that final thought that brought you to the door, hand hovering over the knob as your breath thinned; perspiration beading your skin like morning dew. Tormented by the prospect that opening it would either reveal him or nothing at all.

Unsure of which you were hoping for as you let your forehead fall forward, a huff of air passing your lips. Eyes closed as you relaxed into the cool lacquer of the wooden door, reaching out. Alastor felt especially close now. Typical that he would show up now that you were not only beginning to feel better, but also reaching the end of your rope in your banishment from him. If you weren’t too busy fighting the whiplash of frustration and want coursing through you, you would have laughed. 

Even reconciliation had to be on his schedule…

If he was actually on the other side of the door wanting to make up, of course. This could all be your imagination, which would be particularly cruel on your mind’s part considering how just moments ago you were feeling so desperate to see him, if only just to talk. You sighed, condensation from your warm breath pilling under your mouth hovering near the door.

Was he really there?

Your hand gripped the handle in response, heart heavy and loud in your chest as you turned it and pulled. There was only one way to know for sure.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Alastor took you in as you opened the door. An apprehensive expression on your face, but with an underlying relief. Though he didn’t need eyesight for the confirmation. Your heartbeat and scent told him all he needed to know with an honesty that betrayed you for his benefit. It was rather unfair, wasn’t it?

The life coming back to your eyes did not go unnoticed, either.

He felt what was left of his vitriol drain out of him, and in a rare moment of self-deprecation he found himself hoping his unpolished state would put you at ease. Despite the lingering tension that was still eating away at him, he truly did wish to avoid an argument. Shouting matches were simply… nasty. In a way he did not much, if at all, enjoy. 

Conversation is called an art for a reason.

A true favorite of his and it was much more his speed. With such an adaptable form you could be fencing one minute and duetting the next. Unless, of course, the conversation was bad, which was a fate worse than death. But that hadn’t been a problem with you, for the most part. He’d like that to be the case now as he prepared to linger for as long as it took to reach some kind of resolution. 

Things couldn’t stay the way they were. He knew you’d both return to yourselves eventually, but you had gotten a head start on him. Leaving him to grasp at what was on the other side of this only in regard to himself. If ever he needed you, you’d be just a summoning away. Tied to him always by your contract. Something that typically provided a sense of security to the point of aloofness. But the uncertainty of how you would approach your days independent of him in the aftermath made him falter. Made evident by the color that had returned to your face, that spark of ferocity in your eyes. 

Deep down he understood that you would carry on. 

Tied to him, yes, but not entangled. There was an unpleasant tightness in his chest at the thought, his jaw flexing with irritation. He wasn’t through exploring this, relishing the fire he felt in his blood at seeing you again up close, lungs taking in your scent to feed the flame. Your racing heart a sonnet so sweet in a way that only he could truly appreciate. Feeding a part of him that either had not existed or had been lying dormant which, now awakened, was eager for more and he found himself wondering when it ever would be satiated.

More of your voice ringing in his ears, whether it was coated in insolence or lust… or laughter. More of your scent in his lungs, oxygenating his blood with the bliss of childhood summers. More of your taste on his tongue. Blood, sweat, tears. He’d take it all, or whichever morsels you were still willing to give him. Even if all that left him with was cordiality, it would be far better than letting you slip through his fingers. How wasted you would be on some tramp off the street. Not even taking into account that the average soul couldn’t appreciate your scent, attributes like responsibility and integrity weren’t typically admired here in the pit.

Who else could see you the way he did? 

Past the pout of your lips to the lethal fangs hiding behind them; that sleeping anger you managed to keep at bay but weren’t afraid to use if necessary. Would you ever reveal that ferocity and glowing eyes to someone else in the ways he had witnessed them — induced by tapping into some of your baser instincts? It made stomach twist just to think it. 

Alastor’s imagination began to run away from him then. Flashes of you making some other sinner’s bed, fetching their coffee, and picking up clothes. Drawing a bath, hanging their coat, laughing at their jokes. That now-dear sulk of yours aimed at the faceless menace when one of those jokes went too far. Phantom hands stripping you of clothes, cupping your face, roaming your body… holding your chin. And though his urges were few and far between, worse still was the thought of you crying out a stranger’s name like a reverent prayer, writhing underneath them as you fell apart.

Foul.

Bile scorched his throat as he fought to maintain his composure in your doorway. The filthy handprints he had just pictured all over you gone in the blink of an eye as his own hand twitched behind his back, eager to hold you once more and feel the heat of your skin soak into his palm. Easy as it would be to reach out and satisfy the urge he refrained from doing so, smothering his desire in his fist. Now wasn’t the right time to succumb to impulse. 

As much as Alastor wanted to pull you into his embrace he knew there was still a hatchet to bury. You had touched quite the nerve that morning, after all, and his actions had been less than genteel as a result. As justified as he had felt at the time, it settled in now as something he was less than proud of. Warranted… What a fool he was to think so. Though misguided, all you had done was try to make sense of things. You would be well within your rights to sever any further personal ties with him, and he swallowed against the anxious lump in his throat.

He had spent so much time wallowing in liquor, wasted countless hours justifying his anger toward you to ease his own unrest. Even if you had picked the fight… hadn’t he brought you right to the edge of it with his antics over the past weeks? In truth, hadn’t making you lose your composure been his goal from the start? He had certainly got what he wanted, just not in a way that was originally intended; culminating in a misunderstanding that threatened to keep parts of yourself locked away from him for, quite possibly, eternity.

Desiring someone’s comfort the way he did yours was something he never expected to have to face, let alone something he ever feared to lose. Alastor wondered for the first time how things between you would be had you met sooner. Granted, you had only been in Hell for two-or-so months, but he was a different man now than he was even then. The Alastor of two months ago still had his microphone, for starters. His sword and shield. Now nothing but another one of his corpses left to decay in the bayou.

That man hadn’t had his confidence shaken, his power drained. Alastor had felt so invigorated when he retreated to the radio tower to mend himself after battling Adam, but the healing process hadn’t been simple. Seeing as the weapon that caused the wound was made of angelic steel, Alastor expected it would take more time than usual, but he had underestimated the reality of it. So many arduous, slow hours had passed as he used all his strength just to make minute progress in closing the gash. It took a week to finally get it to seal, the scar barely formed by the time he encountered you at Rosie’s. 

Simply put, you had weathered emotional storms that he typically had much better control of. There was a sourness in his soul that had been poisoning him from the very beginning of your relationship, which you took — more often than not — in stride. As much as he felt there was no one who fully appreciated you, Alastor believed it to be a two way street. Whether there was anyone else who could take your place — paramour, caretaker, or otherwise — was inconsequential. He simply wasn’t interested in the prospect. Hadn’t he gotten along just fine in his relative solitude before you fell to suffer your infernal fate? 

It wouldn’t be the same.

It already wasn’t, in fact, which is why his feet had brought him here when his stubbornness wouldn’t. Opening the door to him was only the first step. You could still slam it in his face, effectively shutting him out; leaving him standing alone in the hall as the Overlord who owned your soul and nothing more.

He found it to be a dreadful prospect.

“May I come in?”

Even he could hear the exhaustion in his voice, making the question heavy in air as he watched you contemplate. Nervous fingers tapping the doorframe to the same beat as his heart before you stepped off to the side to make way for him. Alastor managed to fight the instinctual twitch at the corners of his mouth. Now wasn’t the time for smiling, despite the wave of relief he felt at your accepting of his request to enter.

As long as it takes…

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

You watched as Alastor practically collapsed on your sofa, massaging his temples with a single hand as he leaned back to cross his legs. Still doing his best to maintain decorum despite how worn out he was. Discontent, you shifted on your feet, not wanting to give into the pity you felt towards him too easily. 

As much as you tried to remember your anger, there was no denying the relief you felt at being near him again. Hearing his voice. And knowing he could pick up on it only made it worse. Would it ever be anything but an uphill battle for you when it came to him? Your eyes couldn’t help but look just past him to where you had fallen to the floor, left to console yourself in your shame and grief. The memory didn’t fuel what was left of your animosity, but pricked at your sadness instead, making you feel the weight of the day.

I’m so sick of this…

Alastor’s gaze followed you as you moved to take your seat next to him, picking your book up off the cushion and placing it on the small coffee table in front of you. His eyes and hand lingered on the cover as you sat down.

“I just missed the first draft,” he said quietly, static replaced with the distant sound of remembrance. Eyes never leaving your copy of A Farewell to Arms as he continued with a small, humorless laugh. “I was eligible for the others but the only Divisions I could have been placed in were booked. Funny, isn’t it, a quota on the worthiness to die at war? But I suppose that’s a conversation for another time…”

The glimpse of his human life caught you off guard. Vulnerability wasn’t something you expected from him, especially not in the wake of your argument; the admission was given so casually you couldn’t help but soften just a bit, leaving you hungry for more of his secrets. 

He turned to you then, somehow looking even more tired than he had before. “We have our own battle to rectify, don’t we?”

You sighed and positioned your body to face him, bringing your legs up to sit criss-cross. This was shaping up to be a long night, so you decided you might as well get this out of the way. Even managing to get a piqued eyebrow out of him from the sober look that was no doubt on your face as you considered what you were about to say. 

“I wasn’t lying when I told you that I enjoyed our…,” you trailed off, looking for the right word.

Our what? 

Things had become so muddled you weren't quite sure what to call it. Sex, obviously, but… it had felt like more to you in the end. No matter how many times you reminded yourself that it wasn’t supposed to be anything other than a one night stand at best — and had spent the whole week drowning your sorrows trying not to think about the worst.

“I know you weren’t.” He said it in almost the same tone when you had admitted it in the first place, but his eyes were soft. “I enjoyed it myself, the second time. I thought that was obvious, but when you asked about the pheromones that morning… they had nothing to do with it. Not that evening. I… initiated that. Which is why I was so incensed by the implication that I was acting outside of myself.”

The confession sunk to the bottom of your stomach. You hadn’t expected him to be so forthcoming and even keeled regarding it. And while you felt relief that the pheromones weren’t at play that evening — and that he had not only enjoyed, but desired it — you didn’t miss the implication of the words he kept to himself regarding how you ended up in this mess in the first place. The more you thought about it, the more you were beginning to understand why he felt the way he did. Was that why he had returned you to your room to wake up alone, because being in his bed was too much of a reminder? Had he really regretted it that much? 

Because you didn’t.

The truth was you had been more than willing to give yourself to him that afternoon. Yes, you knew something wasn’t quite right, but you didn’t know he was fighting against Valentino’s nasty little trick. You’d never know what would’ve happened if you had denied him instead, because that’s not what happened. Would he have gone into a rage? In the state he was in, that wasn’t an impossibility. In fact, that was what you had been expecting, wasn’t it? In a way you dodged a bullet — received his affections, however intense, instead of his violence. The bruised remnants of his mark on your shoulder were a dizzying mix of both. 

Though the ferocity you received the next morning… had it been lying in wait? Using the chain on you the way he did compounded by the words he spat at you was a tough memory to forget, to the point where you wondered if you ever could. He had only punished you that way one other time, but it had been nothing compared to this. Blood burned under your cheeks as you recalled how humiliated you felt. How different would things be right now if he had just let you stay?

“Look I…,” you sighed and ran a hand through your hair, but resisted the urge to look away from him. “I really do understand why you’re unhappy with how things happened that afternoon but…”

Here goes nothing.

“It’s something I’ve been aware of in myself for a little while but… you don’t know how much it meant to me, being touched that way by you and how you let me touch you back it —” You wiped a tear you couldn’t stop from falling and cleared your throat, but the thick, choking feeling didn’t subside. The pinched look on Alastor’s face nearly sent you over the edge, but you couldn’t stop now that you’ve started. He needed to hear this as much as you needed to say it. “It made me really happy, if that’s even the right word for it.”

It wasn’t. But you didn’t know how else you could try to tell him how wanted and safe you felt underneath him. That no one had ever managed to turn your blood to kerosene; every bit of him the match, the bed behind you kindling. At this point it didn’t really matter that you hadn’t known him for very long. You cared about him, much more than you ever expected to, and you wanted to be near him in whatever capacity you could be. Whether that made you his errand girl or concubine, so long as you were spared from the more acidic side of his temper.

“And when I think about how much you regret it, it kills me, even though I know why you do. But… I don’t. You didn’t take advantage of me, if that’s something you’ve been worrying about. Honestly, now I can’t help but wonder if it’s the other way around…”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he huffed, lightly exasperated as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’ve only ever gone along with my impulses and games. My behavior in this has been… unbecoming. I fear my mother would be quite ashamed, and rightfully so, but you’ve come to know me at a low point.”

Everything about him felt wrung out and far off, from his posture to the defeat in his unfiltered voice. It had been absent from the moment he asked to come inside, but for some reason was only hitting you now. Though you couldn’t fight the ache in your heart from the poor state of him, there was still more you needed to know before you could let yourself give in. No matter what subconscious queues your body was undoubtedly feeding him in the meantime.

“You say unbecoming…,” you began tentatively, worried that what you were about to ask could possibly upset him again. “Is that because of how you punished me that morning, or the toying you’ve subjected me to?”

If you had to choose, you really hoped that he’d feel apologetic for the chain. While they could be annoying, his games and tricks were mostly harmless. You had admitted to yourself not too long ago that you were even beginning to miss them. That was not a feeling you extended to the invisible leash that bound you to him, not the way it had been used then, at least.

Alastor removed the hand from his nose to meet your eyes, the speed of his movement catching you off guard. For the first time all night his eyes were clear and earnest; that steadfast, hypnotizing red you had come to seek and cherish.

“Would you accept it if I said both? By pushing you I think I may have set us up for the argument. I won’t say that what you said that morning didn’t upset me, since it did, but… Perhaps if I had given you less reason to think I was playing at another game it would have never happened in the first place.” 

His voice was soft as he held his left hand out to you, a different charge in the air as your eyes broke contact to flicker down to his open palm.

The olive branch.

There was no doubt he could hear the way your heart had picked up, nearly choking you with its fervor as you swallowed against it… and gave him your hand. 

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

“I was so humiliated that morning… I’ve been so mad at you.”

Alastor could hear the tears threatening to spill behind the statement, and he squeezed your hand before his thumb began to rub in soothing circles as you looked away from him for the first time that night. He took a quick moment to follow your line of sight and grimaced when he realized you were looking at the spot where he had treated you so harshly. There was nothing he could do to take back what he did. Regret was such an awful weight, reminding him of long nights trudging through the swamp to discard one of his victims. His mouth soured. It would seem he’d need to add your name to the list.

Things were never meant to end up this way. This… tangled.

He dared to lean forward, not that there was much distance to close on your quaint loveseat, and cupped your face with his other hand to draw your gaze back to his. The conflict in your eyes went right to his stomach with a kick — the chance that you would turn him away forever still there, but he was thankful you hadn’t rejected his touch. He really couldn’t have suffered through the empty ache in his hands for even another minute; the heat of your skin already refilling his cup.

And despite how much he wanted anything but, he knew he had to give you an out. It was only right.

“I was a brute… I can’t undo what’s been done but if you’d like me to leave you alone, I will. I’m not keen on releasing you from our contract, but I would let you leave this hotel if you wish.” The words scorched his tongue, but they were true. He would let you go if that’s what you really wanted. You deserved that chance. “It’s safer here, but I would know immediately if you faced any trouble. Well… any trouble you couldn’t handle yourself, that is. I know how capable you are.”

Alastor gave you a small smile, the first time his lips had curled up with any sincerity for days. It was the most generous offer he had ever given a soul under his heel, and your short, dry laugh in response was music to his ears. There was no bitterness in the sound, nor was there any coming from your scent, but that wasn’t an indication of what was going on in your mind. Something the Overlord needed to remind himself of more often. He took a moment to really breathe you in then, floral notes of almond warming him on the inside as your body warmed him from out. Would it be the last time he was ever surrounded by you like this? 

He didn’t know when his thumb began to absently stroke your cheek, but he loved the flush it brought to your face as you considered his words. A hint of iron gave the sweetness in the air just enough bite to make him swallow, his throat now parched and wanting. It took all he had not to close the remaining space between you, needing your answer before he would move an inch save the part of him caressing your face.

A jolt ran through him as your eyes locked onto his with a resolve that made his hair stand on edge, and he steeled himself as your lips parted to speak. Never could he have imagined that you would join the short list of people to hold his fate in their palm. And fewer still, one that he didn’t hold resentment toward having that power. There was security in your hold, not malice. Such a rare thing to stumble across even in life, let alone in this sulfurous chasm that had been home for the last near-century. As unworthy as he felt to receive it, the thought of losing it was even worse. He wasn’t in love… but it wasn’t impossible that he could be, with more time. 

If you would give it to him.

“I don’t want to leave the hotel,” you said quietly, and brought your free hand up to hold his chin in the same way he had held yours countless times. 

Alastor felt his ears lower despite how attuned they were to hear what you would say next, though the thumping in his chest didn’t help. To reach out and touch him of your own accord this way was bold, and he tried not to hone in on the bashfulness he felt burning his face. Why choose shame when he could have comfort? That was what he wanted, after all. A reprieve from The Radio Demon. There was nothing to be gained in postering, not with you. With you he could be… anything. And no matter your decision, he vowed to provide you with the same space. 

His schemes to mold you into something you weren’t fled him with every exhale of his lungs. It was a senseless desire… Remorseless murders were a dime a dozen here. Thrilling as it had been to see you decapitate that wretch with your teeth, the fact that you refused to do something akin to that again merely for the sake of it like so many others was refreshing. He could appreciate only killing with purpose. That had been his modus operandi in life, after all. Murder was a tool he now used to illicit fear and respect, though most souls here were free game to him even under his mortal code. You were not, and it had taken him much too long to acknowledge it.

“And I don’t want you to leave me alone… ever again, but…”

But…

The shakiness in your voice felt like the blade of a guillotine, hovering above his neck while he agonized over when you would let the rope loose and seal his fate.

“I don’t know if I could handle that again. The chain, your anger — ” A small sob escaped you then, tearing through him like a hurricane. 

Alastor didn’t even realize he was kissing your face until the salt of your tears registered on his tongue. Every little press of his lips an oath to never make you cry like this because of him ever again. And when your hands cupped his cheeks he only had a moment to relish in his relief, sighing against your skin before you captured his lips with yours. A familiar green glow enveloping you both as an unspoken agreement was made.

Peace.

What a magnanimous gift to receive. 

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Low voices pulled you out of sleep, making you aware of the cold that was beginning to sink into the front of your body. You had been so warm… so comfortable.

Safe.

More mumbling at your door as you groaned, the grievance in the sound not lost on you even in your groggy state. It wasn’t lost on Alastor either, saying something you couldn’t decipher beyond its tone of finality followed by the closing of the door.

“It’s still the middle of the night sweetheart, don’t stir.” 

You didn’t even have time to ask who was at the door before he ran a soothing hand through your hair, maneuvering himself back into place in your bed. Pressing the length of his body in close against yours as he nuzzled into your chest, humming as he found the pulse of your heart. The warm, claiming kiss he placed there sent a shiver through you, your shared embrace tightening in response. 

“What’s gotten into you? You promised you’d be good,” you mumbled, wriggling a little from the way his breath tickled your skin.

Even to yourself the warning was half-admonishing at best. But you were also just barely awake. Fingers betraying you as they lightly massaged his undercut, his contented sigh making you hide your face in his hair as if he could see the flush on your cheeks.

You’d be stronger in the morning.

Pet names and kisses like this weren’t something you were expecting to receive again so soon. It had been discussed, and you had both agreed to try and take things slow. A fresh start, of sorts. While you were used to him calling you dear, it was a term he used frequently toward other residents as well.

Sweetheart was… special.

Which he no doubt knew. Most likely saying it when he did so he could press up and relish your rapid heart like you were none the wiser.

“I know, I know,” he conceded, his words muffled by your skin. Inadvertently kissing you more due to the sheer proximity of his lips to your chest. Feeling closer to you now than he had during intimacy.

And, admittedly, cuddling in bed wasn’t exactly what you’d call taking it slow. But by the time you had finished talking — and making out on the loveseat — the two of you were so exhausted that letting him spend the night had seemed innocent enough. Like platonically sharing a bed with a friend. Though that’s not a word you would use to describe what Alastor was to you.

More than friends, not quite lovers. Beholden to each other all the same. 

“Which is why I’ll only do this… for now.”

Alastor’s words and the warning, low tone of his voice hardly registered before you felt his tongue lap at the valley between your breasts, leaving a scorching trail in its wake that made your breath hitch. The soft groan from his open mouth right over your heart only making it beat harder, pleading for more of him. His large palm splayed against your back as he pressed you against his lips to nestle and kiss and suck, as if trying to pull the frantic organ through your skin through desire alone. You gasped as the light prick of his nails between your shoulders sent a fresh shiver down your spine, ending in a warm bloom between your hips as you curled into his touch. His responding needy hum as he grazed you with his teeth making you whimper.

Stronger in the morning…

“You’re not playing fair,” you complained, but it was a pathetic attempt at a scolding. You didn’t really want him to stop. Alastor’s responding chuckle told you that he knew it, too. The sound of it making your heart ache, and you were unable to suppress the small whine from behind your closed lips as he nipped and licked at your collarbone. “I missed you so much.”

You barely managed to finish speaking when he moved up to kiss you properly, slow and sweet, hand leaving your back to cradle the crown of your head. Melting into his touch, you moaned as his tongue entered your mouth; gentle and hot, coaxing whimpers and gasps from both of you as you tangled your fingers in his hair to keep him close. 

“I missed you, too,” he said quietly, nudging your nose with his. 

Tears fell unbidden as Alastor caressed and kissed the lingering bruises from his bite, seemingly determined to make them disappear through sheer willpower. Every little touch — administered or received — was comforting in a way that you feared would leave you insatiable, but the thought that formed in your mind through the haze of affection was a reassuring one.

This was eternity.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

“Fess up, toots.” Angel plopped down on a chair across from you, gleaming as he rested his head in his hands and leaned forward conspiratorially. “You’re havin’ all kinds of sleepovers now, huh?”

You nearly dropped the mug in your hands from the sudden question, and quickly looked around to see if anyone else had overheard. Not that the reconciliation was going to be secret — which would have been impossible to pull off anyway, considering how much the two of you had been moping around the hotel — but you had hoped to at least make it through the morning with the knowledge kept to yourselves. 

“That was you at the door last night, I’m assuming?” The nonchalance you were aiming for just enough to get a laugh from him. “What did you say to him anyway?”

“Just that I was checkin’ up on my girl — which he did not appreciate me callin’ ya, by the way — after missin’ the big night out. I hope I didn’t send him to bed too mad.” Judging by the smug look on Angel’s face, he knew that Alastor definitely had returned to bed at least a little ruffled. “Buuut after I heard ya wakin’ up I figured I’d save the teasin’ for another day.”

“And you started bright and early,” you quipped, unable to help the smile tugging at your lips as you went back to preparing the breakfast tray. 

“Well ya ain’t exactly bein’ subtle, what with the two mugs and all,” Angel taunted, jerking his head in the tray’s direction, “but jokes aside… I’m glad you were able to patch things up with Smiles. Who woulda thought all it’d take was an empty hotel, huh?” He gave you a wink and you narrowed your eyes at the suggestion, but he cut you off before you could even begin to ask the question forming in your mind. “Look, I gotta run, but I’m expectin’ a full report when I get back from work, capisce? Oh! Speakin’a which — guess who’s supposed to be on set tomorrow?”

It was your turn to laugh. “It’s about time that lazy bitch went back to work. Making the rest of you pick up the slack is just rude.”

You both snickered as you added the finishing touches on the tray, rounding out the coffee with some croissants and fruit. It definitely paid to be in the Princess’ circle; grapes in particular were very hard to come by. There wasn’t much time to relish in your mirth with Angel before you felt a cool, slinking tendril climb up your leg. Alastor’s shadow soon emerging over your shoulder to glare at your friend and whine in your ear.

Angel put all four of his hands up in mock defeat and pushed away from the table. “Duty calls, I get it,” he chuckled and gave you a knowing look, popping a grape from the tray into his mouth before making his way out of the kitchen. “Make sure the boss man knows ya got plans for tonight, yeah?”

“Yeah,” you called after him, glancing behind you as the shadow growled at the spot where Angel Dust had been. Its face reverted back to sullenness when you pursed your lips, admonishing him with only a look. Any lingering irritation dissolved as it tugged at your sleeve, urging you back upstairs, and you conceded with a sigh. “You wouldn’t even be here to come get me if it wasn’t for Angel, you know. I expect you to be nicer next time.”

The shadow nodded its head and pulled on you again, its phantom grin quickly returning when you picked up the tray and began to walk back to the elevators. Baseless hostility toward Angel aside, it was hard not to smile as you watched it flitter across the floor; pausing every few feet to materialize and look back, ensuring you were right behind it. If your theories about this creature were right, it was merely acting as an extension of the demon you were making your way back to, and he was apparently quite eager for your return. A warm rush of pride left your body tingling at the thought.

Then again… it wouldn’t do well for the two of you to be late to your sudden appointment with Rosie. Who, according to Alastor, was very anxious to see you both and had something special planned that he had nothing to do with.

Yeah, right… 

When you entered your room, you found Alastor at the loveseat still lounging in his pajamas and you scoffed, “That was a lot of urgency from someone who hasn’t gotten dressed yet.”

“Well, I had to do something. Our mutual friend was getting you off-track. I thought we took the same pleasure in this morning routine of ours, but perhaps I’m mistaken?” Alastor’s tone was light, his smile teasing as he watched the blush burn your face.

You cleared your throat as you took a seat next to him after setting down the tray and decided to change the subject. What point was there in admitting what he already knew?

“Rumor has it that Donny’s finally scheduled back to work tomorrow,” you said conversationally, helping yourself to some of the fruit.

Alastor’s eyebrows shot up in surprise before his face lit up in a hearty laugh; the ebullient sound of it making the mark he had left over your heart radiate with fondness. His face sharpened with that menacing, debonair grin as he looked down at you while you poured his coffee.

“Took him long enough to pull himself together, didn’t it? You did do quite a number on him, darling.”

You hummed, pleased with the proud look he gave you, and passed him the mug; a shock running through you as your fingers touched. Silly, considering how you had been pressed together all evening… not to mention all the other marks he left that matched the one currently throbbing between your breasts. 

Even in life, you never could have imagined something like this. Sitting in the parlor with a suitor, giggling over coffee and breakfast after an evening of whispering sweet nothings between kisses. It would be foolish to think a peace like this could last forever, but this was the afterlife. Wasn’t peace the absolution from mortality and its fickleness? As you watched Alastor sip his coffee, his free hand absently massaging the back of your neck as he hummed along to the radio, you couldn’t help but think so. 

Peace, friendship, sanctuary, love, and power.

Hell wasn’t what you had expected it to be. It was home.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧     ✧     ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

ps: a special shoutout to my darlings @hazelfoureyes and @sugoi-writes for giving me their shoulders to lean on while i worked on this final chapter. you both have listened to me ramble off ideas and scenarios and have supported me with such patience and grace… i don’t know how i’ll ever repay you but i will never stop trying!

pps: i do have plans for an epilogue, but don’t have a timeline on it just yet… stay tuned 😌💖

tag list: @fairyv-ice, @wat4r, @midorichoco, @raynerrold, @krak-jj, @tremendoushearttaco, @redfoxwritesstuff, @chibistar45, @kaylopolis, @cutiebimbo, @lousypotatoes, @rfox1998, @cosmiccandydreamer, @stardustandbrimstone, @cherry-cola-100, @wonderlandangelsposts , @catticora, @velvette3, @sailorsmouth, @alastorthirsty, @reath-solia, @junieshohoho, @cxrsedwxrlds, @fraugwinska, @littlebluefishtail, @nxcxllxsevens, @swagkittybear

[bfpnola]

hi!!! so recently I’ve gained a big interest in building up my collection of patches to put onto my clothes and stuff in my journey to becoming more queerly punk in my presentation. my biggest goal is to make other more marginalized people in my community feel safe around me. so I’m looking into a lot of patches for BLM, stop asian hate, punch nazis, disability advocacy, etc.

I came across a bunch of patches symbolizing the BPP, and I’d really like to get one, but I do worry that that would be inappropriate in a way as a white person. I am autistic and struggle a lot to understand what is and isn’t appropriate to do/say in attempts at support and allyship, so I figured I’d ask.

my reasoning is that even though I’m not Black, the BPP is my biggest inspiration as a young activist looking to dedicate my life to racial and other forms of Justice. Their work, their platform, their impact, truly transformed my political conscience, but I know that I do not want to make the Black Power movement and the BPP centered around me, but at the same time I want to express how much they mean to me and how much they have influenced my ideas for activism if that makes sense.

it may seem like I am making a big deal over one patch or piece of clothing, this stuff is just so foundational to who I am and what I believe so I tend to be a bit seemingly dramatic about it.

anyways, I’m not here to ask you definitively yes or no if it would be appropriate of me to wear a BPP patch, I don’t want to tokenize your existence or work. But you know so much about the BPP and the history of the Black Power Movement that I really trust anything you have to say on the matter of the line between showing allyship, and centering history that’s not about me, around me. so if you’re up for answering, I’d love your personal perspective on white people using BPP symbolism to show allyship and if there’s any historical examples of why that would be good OR bad.

anyways sorry for the long ask and either way, thank you for everything you do and I hope you have a wonderful day!!

hi lovely! life has been exponentially rough for me lately so in advance, i do not have the emotional capacity to respond to this in the degree in which i'd prefer BUT i feel terrible letting it sit in our inbox forever. here's my most basic perspective for now, in bullet points to help organize my thoughts:

first off, i absolutely adore that you're collecting revolutionary patches! a friend i've made over at Queer Youth Assemble (QYA) has a similar jacket and it's always so colorful, i love it!

thank you for reaching out! i think it shows you have a lot of respect for the Black community and everything that the BPP stood for, which i greatly appreciate.

because i'm aware you hold a deep respect for the BPP, i honestly think it's fine that you have a BPP patch, so long as you understand that history. the BPP were pretty accepting of folks of all races, as shown through their acceptance of non-Black members/partners and serving non-Black communities. a few chapters still exist today around the country (i got to meet a few from the Louisiana chapter, some moved over from California) and they openly teach anyone that's willing to listen! it's just that their focus is on how Black people specifically are affected by systemic oppression and how we can liberate ourselves from such.

[ID: A black and white photo of two children around the age of 9 or so, one white, one Black, eating at the Black Panther Party's free breakfast program. They have white paper plates with crumbs and leftovers on them, cartons of what looks like juice, and plastic utensils. The white child is wearing a Black Panther Party beret with 3 Black Panther Party pins on it as well as a thick coat. The Black child looks down at his plate, his coat zipped up all the way. The caption below the image reads, "Two boys in 1969 at a free breakfast for children program in New York City sponsored by the Black Panther Party. Bev Grant/Getty Images." / End ID]

i think, though, that this is best exemplified through the Rainbow Coalition (now co-opted unfortunately), the alliance Fred Hampton created alongside the Young Patriots Organization and the Young Lords. over time, other radical grassroots orgs began to join like the Brown Berets and the American Indian Movement! the BPP truly respected each of their orgs in their support of their respective communities and it's truly unfortunate that the coalition didn't get to fully take off.

i would refrain from wearing any full regalia though, as this would definitely come off as appropriation. respect and admiration are not the same as a full understanding of the struggle! BPP was about far more than just putting on a specific outfit or throwing up a couple symbols. it was a lifelong commitment, even after you technically left. there was real, heavy trauma associated with one's membership, especially those higher up in leadership. i remember reading elaine brown's autobiography, how she felt herself becoming more violent, having folks beat to a bloody pulp right in front of her eyes. folks frequently had to live in fear that they or their partners would be killed as well. that changes a person, and so do the years spent in jail by so many of the party's members. there was ongoing abuse, misogyny, power struggles and more. it definitely wasn't all sunshine and rainbows.

be aware that my opinion is only my own, so others may not agree!

in summary, go for the patch, just be mindful!

some resources related to what i mentioned:

How three unlikely groups worked together to achieve interracial solidarity (podcast)

This article on Richard Aoki

After the list was finalized, Newton and Seale asked Aoki to join the newly formed Black Panthers. Aoki accepted after Newton explained that being African-American wasn’t a prerequisite to joining the group. He recalled Newton saying:

“The struggle for freedom, justice and equality transcends racial and ethnic barriers. As far as I’m concerned, you black.”

Seize the Time: The Story of The Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton by Bobby Seale (novel)

A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story by Elaine Brown (novel)

Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur (novel)

again, i apologize that i couldn't answer this with the depth i'd like to, but hopefully this helped!

-- reaux (she/they)

[seeklovenet]

‎ourtime : Mature Dating App On The App Store

‎ourtime : Mature Dating App On The App Store

The price of Reply For Free is $8.ninety nine per 30 days, though it may possibly differ depending on subscription sort and consumer location. Information about sexual consent can be available, in addition to a listing of hotlines to name when you need help for points like home violence or sexual assault. You aren’t capable of view what the location presents except you've an account, but the sign-up process solely takes a few minutes. OurTime walks users through its simple sign-up steps with prompts to add in primary info and addContent a photograph.

This allows you to rapidly get an thought of which profiles you're feeling are the most effective match for you. Additionally, Hernandez notes the site’s capability to sort by exercise date and give consideration to discovering individuals who have logged in recently—and that you can use it on a desktop, not only an app. Online, open to seniors in USA, Canada, UK and all international locations. So that mature singles interested in on-line relationship, finding a companion, and relationships can browse profiles, chat and hope to find a match. What we’re not followers of, though, is that the site does really feel quite antiquated and the pricing construction will get fairly complicated with subscriptions, add-on purchases, and tokens—all in a single.

Ourtime Faq

In 2008, Jason earned a Bachelors of Science from the University of Florida, where he studied enterprise and finance and taught interpersonal communication. No, OurTime is a paid dating app that does offer some restricted choices to attempt for free. If you’re excited about trying out what that entails, take a look at the OurTime free trial guide. Our Time members can search support by way of a thorough FAQ web page. The web page includes a search perform that permits for quick navigation of the topics covered.

The dashboard makes it easy to find precisely what you’re looking for, and has buttons to navigate to options including who “likes” or has considered your profile. With options like a non-public messaging system that doesn’t require a telephone quantity change, OurTime permits customers to soundly get to know different customers and find a romantic associate. “Flirts” and “likes” enable customers to show interest in other profiles, and “virtual gifts” could be despatched to these with whom you want to connect additional.

Price | How A Lot Does Ourtime Cost?

Members fill out a user profile and upload a photo. Once their profile is full, customers obtain entry to their dashboard and may easily search singles in their area or browse profiles beneficial by OurTime. OurTime is an online dating app designed for singles over the age of fifty. Features embody liking particular person profiles, sending messages to other singles and a “Discovery” characteristic to find different singles. OurTime is an internet dating group for people in their 50s, 60s and older. Through the app, users can customize their profiles, browse curated matches and exchange messages.

We’re not saying that’s happening, nevertheless it does make the path for them a lot simpler. While OurTime serves matches primarily based on your location, you can’t filter searches based on distance. Even should you input your ZIP code or search by state, you ought to still be served matches who are 50 miles away, which can be farther than some customers prefer. • Engage in chats and dialog by sending messages to different members, earlier than you determine whether or not to fulfill up. • Receive a personalised, curated list of every day matches that meet your search criteria.

How Does Ourtime Work?

Very few of the patrons in my preferred age vary ( ) appeal to my sense of sight and activity stage. Waste of my time digging via the piles to search out that "needle" within the haystack. Jason Lee is a data analyst with a ardour for studying on-line relationship, relationships, personal growth, healthcare, and finance.

Ultimately, OurTime is certainly not a nasty web site and it definitely doesn’t have anything manifestly wrong with it. In fact, we've heard of many singles having success on the platform. It could presumably how does ourtime dating site work be worth testing, particularly with the amount they put behind advertising which most likely drives some greater membership numbers.

OurTime receives largely constructive reviews on-line and from senior courting experts and is relatively easy to navigate. You can select a free or premium membership with three fee options for $19.ninety five per thirty days, $15.ninety six per 30 days or $34.96 per thirty days. Virtual presents permit you to ship somebody a “gift” by way of their profile. Gifts include photographs with a message (for example, a virtual rose with the message.) You can use tokens to send virtual items. Tokens are bought in bundles (55 tokens are $2.ninety nine, one hundred ten are $5.ninety nine, and 280 are $9.99).

I’m giving it a break for a month or so to see if the match I made works out. I’m sure it'll, however I’ll positively use the app again if not. • Send and receive a limiteless variety of likes to different members--the more you ship; the upper the probabilities you make of constructing a mutual connection. Boosts – These are additionally purchased a la carte and basically function the identical as PromoteMe, but they aren’t purchased with a credit score .

[jadienjaystoriesandart]

Here it is!

This is AU is called The World and You and is based upon TWEWY (The World Ends With You) and Submas (Ingo and Emmet). I hope I keep their personalities consistent while also making a good AU.

Also art in included of rough drawings of characters.

To start

Plot: You/Insert Character, have suddenly woken up in a subway station, people walk by you as if they don’t see you, some even walk through you, like you don’t even exist. As you try to gain your bearings, a message suddenly flashes on the TV’s around you. ‘YOU HAVE SEVEN DAYS’

Basically you are now part of a game that is survival of the fittest, seven days to not die or become an Angel or Reaper. Like in TWEWY you have a token you pay to enter, and entry isn’t really a sign up things, sometimes you are just forced into it. Your token can be memories, a person or pokemon you care about, your looks, your face, even your own being. And is used as a chip against you to win the games, should you lose, you’ll have no chance of getting it back. each one has a higher stakes than you, some consider your freedom and memories to be the highest price to pay.

So what will you do in order to survive? Would you fight the gods/creators of this world if it means to save your friends, or would you betray them and escape?

Notes:

1. Emmet is the Composer of sorts, his chosen people are called Angels. And his symbol, as seen on the picture after this, is a bird that is upright. He’s more exaggerated in his clothing, and always has a smile.  For those who are ‘chosen’ by Emmet, he pretty much takes your token for himself. The only one to be chosen is if you ‘die’ in a game he sets up on one of the 7 days. Not everyone gets chosen, but those that do... they don’t really have a choice. 

2. Ingo is the Conductor, and his chosen are called Reapers. Same as Emmet, his brother, his chosen often ‘die’ in one of his games. He takes their token, and makes them into a Reaper.  His outfit is more torn and ragged, and his symbol is upside down on his cap. He often is seen wearing a neutral face or frown. 

3. The twins don’t really hate each other in this, if anything this game is just that to them, a game. To test peoples will and strength outside of Pokemon Battles they always do. They want to see what makes humans tik. In a sense, they are ‘gods’ and very strong. Representing the duel aspects of things. Truth and Ideals. Light and Dark. Order and Chaos. How they got this power is a mystery, but if ask from Arceus, they laugh.

4. The point of these games is to test a humans resolve to live. How far is one willing to go in order to be free, to save someone, or maybe to even live for tomorrow? In a way, it’s the twins way or reminding people the importance of seeing tomorrow, to remember to connect with people.

5. The things is, the twins are ‘Good’ people themselves. They are primordial beings after all, they don’t really have human emotions, but are good at faking them. But they are ‘Kind’ people to their chosen, even if most are unwilling.

6. The job of an Angel is to ‘help’ people and keep ‘order’ in the game system. Being getting rid of anyone who tries to glitch or hack the system. Even if by force. Helping though is a very loose term to use. As their force of helping can also be messing with the person in a round about way. Angel are said to be Crueler than Reapers. They seem to have less humanity in them, and enjoy doing some rather dirty work to get what they want. Goals set by the Composer are to be met, no exceptions. Even if it means making sure some people don’t win the game. Because if the Composer wants you, he will get you.

7. Reapers however are set to delay you, to try and get as many people out as they can. They break up teams by causing chaos and strife, they create road blocks in forms of fights or puzzles, and overall are just the useless quests that always like to hinder your progress. Yet Reapers are shockingly very polite people, and possibly have more humanity left in them then Angels. Though their job is to hinder you, they do make it reasonable to complete things they set. And are willing to give hints if your really struggling. The Conductor isn’t meant to be the villain of this story after all, he’s just meant to make sure those who really want it will work for it.

8. Unlike in Twewy though, the Composer and Conductor are on the same power level. And hence why they each get a day to themselves to come up with the end goal. The difference in them is how they control their Chosen people. One points and has them do, the other makes them move as he wishes.  Depending on who had the most win their contest, is who gets a say in the last day’s final task. Sometimes they just opt to work together.

9. There is a way to... kill them, or more so weaken them. But you have to be willing to do so, which is hard as the twins do have a likable personality. And are know to fake identities to play the games with the other humans if only to watch them up-close. Weakening them has the effect of the games being shut down for a while, which in a short run you save others for a few years from the pain you went through. But if anything, the twins find it amusing when someone tries, as no one has been able to yet. Plus if you fail, the twin you went after, has the right to kill you back. Most of them end up a Reaper or Angel.

10. Only two have ever gotten close enough to winning the game like this. Akari and Rei. Whoa re now the right hands of Ingo and Emmet. Their jobs are just to relay their higher messages and keep the Reapers and Angels in line. Sometimes sort of acting as the mouth piece for their leader.  These two are harden and cold, not easily swayed by human pleading, but you get the sense that they once were like you... but now have been broken enough to serve dutifully. The rest of the Angel and Reapers fear them. After all, disobedience is not taken lightly by the twins.

11. As for how you enter the games, you either died in the mortal world, fell in through an opening, or were dragged in kicking and screaming. Either way you slice and dice it... good luck.

12. Like I said the twins aren’t evil, they just don’t really understand humans that well. And this is their way of finding out about humans and also teaching them a lesson in what it means to be human.

[hshouse]

Hii can you explain it to me I have no idea what it is but i know is similar to bitcoin (which i know almost nothing ugh) and bad environmental impact

Hi bby,

I’d love to! My favorite thing is getting complicated things into plain language.

tldr; imagine I told you to buy money in neopets and keep it there, can you think of a thousand reasons that sounds dumb? (almost) all of them apply to blockchain

Real Money Basics

So how real money works is that you have a value that is backed by the wealth of a government. That means (in very simplified terms) that a piece of paper that says $5 is worth $5. If you’ve ever heard of the 1929 crisis or any developing country that struggles with inflation (which when you constantly need more money to buy the same thing) you have seen what happens when there is loose regulations or the government is sleeping at the wheel. It’s a mess. This is very very very influential stuff that will determine whether we have jobs and food on the table (literally). So the government regulates THE SHIT out of it. You can’t just throw money around and the only entity that can produce money is the government. 

Finance Basics 

Example: I bought a share (a piece of a company) for $1. Tomorrow the NYT publishes a piece on how great the company is and a bunch of people want to buy shares. I’m gonna say hey great guys but who is gonna give me more for this. Oh this dude is willing to give me $51 dollars for it? Sweet here man have it. I just made $50 by doing nothing: paid $1 and sold for $50. Multiply this by a million, it is investing/finance in a nutshell. This has an *insane* potential to be exploited so it is H E A V I L Y regulated and taxed. I’d have to pay taxes on my $50(million) that I made. That means the 50M isn’t reallllly 50M cause I have to pay taxes. 

Back to Blockchain

So the blockchain people are like government sucks let’s do this ourselves so we don’t get taxes and regulations that make me lose money.

Blockchain is a system that operates (mainly) outside of “real money”. It’s its own system of money that the government does not regulate. This is great for libertarians (people that hate the government) but inherently very very bad. So you buy a token (the currency) that is worth let’s say $1 dollar. You can then exchange that token for a good online. In their idealized future you could go to the corner store and use a token to buy gum. We’re not there but there are things you can buy online with it. So far you are following it that it is exactly like dollars but instead of the government regulating, the government is totally outside of it.

Running this operation takes a massive amount of computer power. Think about how a transaction works in real money. You buy something with your credit card. The credit card company then puts a hold on that money (you can’t spend it again) and then charges you a few days later. They can do that because money is backed by the government. They know that the value won’t change significantly even if they charge you in a year. There is so much security for the bank so the system is not super complicated. Not with blockchain. There is no backing this currency. So everything needs to be automatic because it is likely that the value will shift so if I buy token it better show up now on my account. So they need massive computers to do this. (this is why it is environmentally a shitshow)

How do they do this? They (as in the system, not a person) “pay” you to use your computer power. So you can produce money by lending your computer to run this thing (sort of like torrent download if you know what that looks like). This sounds like free money (which, as a general advice, is 100% of the time shady). You produce money at an insanely slow pace because the more people join the more computers there are. This is the carrot: join, make free money.

But for money to work it needs to be finite of course. This is where economics kicks in. The more people there are wanting one thing, the higher the price will be (our old friends supply and demand). So people that have bought tokens want you to buy tokens too so their tokens are worth more in real money. Investing! Remember? Same thing. But here there are zero regulations and zero taxes. This is their goal. But this means that there is also zero safety nets.

If you buy a token for $50 and tomorrow the whole network is shut off for whatever your money is gone. Legit gone. Because WHAT YOU BOUGHT HAS NO INTRINSIC VALUE. It’s a number on a computer. That’s what you gave your hard worked dollars for. 

“But isn’t that what investing is? wtf is a share?” 

If you buy 1 share (realistically millions) of Apple that money is secured by everything Apple owns (the factories, the copyrights, the offices, literally everything) so even if Apple goes bankrupt tomorrow, there is a special court that will sell literally every piece of furniture to buildings that Apple owns and distribute the money. You actually did buy something tangible that can be transferred back into money if the company gets shut down. Realistically though, companies don’t actually go truly bankrupt often.

The price of the share is decided by people who look into Apple to decide its intrinsic value. Investing is based on real stuff, not a thing that does not exist. You are putting your money in a box and hoping you can take it back for more.

The people investing in this know this is a shitshow. They want you, that does not know, to buy tokens. For millions of people to buy tokens. They will then quickly “cash out” (sell their tokens for a lotttt more than they bought) and go back to real money cause that is the only currency with intrinsic value backed by a government that will never fail and they know it. It is the only safe way to have money. It’s investing (which people think it is like a shady way to make money) times a billion.

NFTs are like a token but it is a “product” that you buy and get to say “hey I own this” but unlike a chair or a table anyone else can have the thing. You just have the “real version”. Again no fucking intrinsic value. It is NOT like real art dealing. Having a painting by Pollock that he literally touched and made has intrinsic value. It is ACTUALLY different than a photo of it I print on my computer.

Anyway, hope this makes some sense.

[multifandomfanfiction]

You Are My Sunshine Chapter 7

TITLE: You Are My Sunshine Chapter 7 PAIRING: Marcus/OC RATING: T CHAPTER: 7/? SUMMARY: The FBI is setting up a task force to deal with international art theft and they’re in need of an analyst. Willow Reid, younger sister of the BAU’s resident genius, applies for the job and gets it. She and her new boss, Agent Marcus Pike, get off on the wrong foot due to her overly friendly personality. What will the BAU do when they realize that he’s taken their sunshine away?

“Willow, can I see you in my office?” Marcus asked.

Willow nodded and followed him, aware that the whole team was staring at them.

Marcus shut the door and sat down at his desk. “Is something wrong, Marcus?”

“There was a robbery at a nearby museum and they have security footage of it happening.”

Willow nodded. “Great. I’ll just need their IP address.”

Marcus looked at her, confused.

“I can backdoor my way into their system and pull the footage we need and if I can’t do it, Penelope can.” Sometimes she forgot that Marcus had no background in technology or hacking.

“I was actually hoping you could accompany me,” he said.

“Oh! I guess I could do that. Just let me grab my laptop and we can go.” Willow grabbed her laptop from her office and brought up her software as Marcus drove.

“So did Penelope show you how to do that?” Marcus asked.

“I learned everything from Penny. Before I joined the FBI, I would go to work with Spencer and shadow her.”

Ever since that night in Willow’s office, Marcus let her decide when to bring up her brother or the BAU.

They arrived at the museum and went inside.

Willow tried not to blush at the feeling of Marcus’ hand on her lower back.

“Ah, Agent Pike!” the curator said, rushing towards them.

“This is our technical analyst Willow Reid. She just needs to get a copy of the security footage so she can analyze it and hopefully bring them to justice.”

The curator nodded and led her to the security office.

Marcus stayed back to let her do her thing without being disturbed while he looked around at the paintings. He hadn’t been to this museum yet. Work had kept him busy, delegating tasks and traveling around for cases.

Willow soon joined him.

“Hey, get what we need?” he asked.

Willow patted her bag and said, “As soon as we get back, I can run it through some facial recognition software and we should have our unsubs.” “Unsubs?”

“Unknown subjects. Sorry. I still forget this isn’t the BAU.”

“I’m sure the curator would appreciate that. There’s a gala in a few days and he’d like the paintings back before then.”

Willow frowned. “You don’t think they would have sold the paintings by now?”

Marcus shrugged. “We’ve been following these ‘unsubs’ for a while. They tend to hold onto them for a little while until things die down.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The art thieves were apprehended thanks to the help of the FBI’s extensive databases.

As a token of appreciation, Marcus and Willow were invited to the gala. Willow wanted to turn down the invitation, but Marcus urged her to accept it. It would look good for the FBI and foster a relationship with the public.

Willow called Penelope. “I have a fashion emergency.” She explained what happened and begged Penelope to help her pick out a dress. She smoothed her hands over it again as there was a knock on her door. Willow grabbed her purse and answered the door.

Marcus was dressed in a black suit with a white shirt and black bow-tie. “You look…you look…wow.”

Willow blushed. Her was dress was white with black lace covering the bust and the inside hem of the dress. It came up to her knees in the front while the back brushed the floor. “You clean up pretty good as well, Pike.”

Marcus smiled and nervously looked at his shoes.

“I guess we should get going then,” Willow said.

“Uh, yeah.”

They went downstairs and Willow saw a limo.

“The owner of the museum insisted,” Marcus explained to her.

“I guess it’s okay. I was wondering how I was going to fit in your little Mazda.”

Marcus laughed and opened the door for her. Willow climbed into the limo, Marcus following.

The drive to the museum was spent in a comfortable silence. Neither of them felt the need to speak to break it.

They arrived at the museum and Marcus got out first. Willow took a deep breath and stepped out, clutching onto Marcus’ arms as they ascended the steps.

Once inside, Willow grabbed a flute of champagne. Maybe it would calm her nerves.

Marcus noticed her nervousness and put a hand on her back. “Hey, you okay?”

Willow nodded and leaned in towards him. Marcus wound an arm around her waist and held her close to his side.

To the outside world, they would look like a pair of lovers as opposed to co-workers.

“Do you wanna go look at the paintings?” Marcus asked her.

Willow nodded and let Marcus lead her around the gallery.

With a few drinks in his system, Marcus talked at length about the colors and the artists’ intent behind the paintings.

Willow couldn’t help smiling. His eyes lit up when he talked about art and you could tell he was passionate about it.

“Who knows? Maybe one day your drawings will be on these walls,” Marcus said.

“I think you’re drunk, Marcus.”

Marcus’ eyebrows furrowed adorably. There was that self-deprecation sense of humor again. Why couldn’t she see how talented she was? Marcus was about to something when the owner cut him off.

“Are you an artist too?”

“I draw in my free time,” Willow told him, “But it’s really just a hobby.”

“I’d love to take a look at your work sometime.”

Willow was speechless.

“She’d love that,” Marcus answered for her.

At the end of the night, there was a toast to the FBI, specifically Marcus and Willow. Marcus and Willow said their goodbyes and went outside to wait for the limo.

The temperature had dropped and Willow shivered.

Marcus took off his suit jacket and put it around her shoulders. “Here. Can’t have our computer genius getting sick.”

“The cold doesn’t make you sick. What you have to worry about is frostbite or hypothermia. Both conditions can lower your immune system and in turn, that can lead to you getting sick.”

“That a fact you learned from your brother?” Once again, Marcus read her like an expert.

“I retain a lot of what my brother says, even if I don’t have an eidetic memory.”

The limo finally arrived and they rode back to Willow’s apartment.

Marcus got out and walked her to the front door.

“I had a nice time tonight, Marcus.”

“Me too, Willow.”

Willow started to take his jacket off, but Marcus shook his head. “Keep it. Gives me a reason to come over sometime.”

Willow blushed and Marcus realized what he had just said.

“Oh my god. I didn’t mean it like that. I meant…”

Willow laughed and put a hand on Marcus’ forearm. “It’s okay, Marcus. I knew what you meant.”

They stood there for a few moments before Willow said, “Well, goodnight Marcus.” She leaned up and kissed him on the cheek before she could stop herself. She quickly ducked inside as her heart pounded in her chest.

Marcus reached up and gently touched his cheek. He turned to the door, which he knew Willow was just on the other side of. “Goodnight, Willow.”

Taglist: @bxnnywriting @sugarontherims

[herorps]

Hi Flo! I just wanted to get in touch to see if you had any tips, or knew of any posts out there already about how admins can encourage diversity (and combat a lack of) within their rp's? Thanks!

g*d i can’t think of any particular posts in mind right now that i can link/reference but !! there are a lot of things i’ve seen that ( imo ) have encouraged people into joining with diversity. 

i think first things first, the admins have to set the example themselves. there’s already a lot of think pieces out there about this point---it’s not enough that you encourage it or ask for it, you have to put your money where your mouth is and not only take up a character that’s of color or not-cis or body diverse, etc. but also actually take the time to develop them into a character that you want to play. i can’t tell you how much of a turn off it is for me as an enby poc to look at the admin roster ( of like 3 or 4 admins ESPECIALLY ) and see maybe 2 characters of color of the 10 the admins have taken up. don’t treat your diverse characters as tokens, im begging u, diversity points dont exist, ur just a dick if u think it does. 

but i also think on the other hand of that, don’t try to enforce quotas or bans unless it makes sense. it’s the right energy but in my experiences when g*nder bans were a thing, people just took up characters randomly just to get the ban lifted. 

what i would suggest you do instead is create incentives for people to join as diverse characters. if your rp runs on a points system this is a great way encourage people. offer maybe 20 extra points for bringing in a diverse character or allow them to be accepted quicker if your rp accepts only on certain days. 

another way i personally would encourage diversity is to make it a rule. there will always be people in your group who want to play multiple characters so make sure that, say, if they play 3 characters at least 1 of them has to be diverse in some way.

if you’re running a skeleton or bio rp, i think it’s a little simpler---you can suggest/cast diverse fcs almost exclusively for characters you want to see diverse. don’t be afraid to be firm about these things, yes, the portrayal of the character is utp but you as an admin and the “creator” of that character has every right to be stern about the way you want to see this character on the dash. if, when you were creating this character, pictured someone who was plus sized, the only fcs you would accept should be plus sized. and of course, you can also be as flexible as you want, for example if you casted riz ahmed because you liked his overall vibe but you could also see chay suede in the role, that’s valid too. 

you could also give the more diverse characters a bigger role in the group’s plot. sometimes i can tell in an rp which character is supposed to be the “main character” and who’s just supporting. give your diverse characters more to do, give them interesting bios/skeletons, make them important to the rest of the cast of characters. make it so they’re one of the bios/skeletons that gets 10 applications. some of the rps i used to be in would have all the white characters taken up but very few of the characters of color taken up. and also not a single body diverse character in sight. 

as for combatting the lack of diversity, i would say make sure you’re interacting with diverse characters. i have left several rps and given up certain characters because i wasn’t getting the same amount of attention as my other characters. and it wasn’t for lack of me trying either. rp is interactive, it thrives off giving each other attention and interaction. if half of my characters are being ignored, i’m going to feel like it’s not worth my time and effort to play them anymore and it’s terrible to think but it’s true. you as an admin or you as a player who wants more diversity needs to make sure that these diverse characters are wanted and needed in the rp. if they only have 4 notes in the starter tag and 3 of them are just likes, go ahead and reply to them. 

these are all things that i personally implement or that i personally look for before joining an rp. and because of that i haven’t had an issue where i was in a group with people who weren’t game to write diverse characters in a very long time and it also has to do with the people in your roleplay too. don’t be afraid to implement these tips because the people that you want to actually be in your rp --- people that will not only bring diversity but will also write them well -- will 9/10 be fine with it. 

i hope this is helpful and if you found it so, feel free to reblog and share this post. and if you have more questions or more suggestions please let me know! 

[snarktheater]

Ready Player Two — Opening Cutscene & Chapter 0

Hello again.

It’s been a while. I haven’t been active on this blog since, fittingly enough, Ready Player One. I was going to do this sooner—even had an alarm set up and everything—but then, it turns out, I’m feeling so much negativity about the world in general that a book just pales in comparison.

Seriously, I had to scrap this post’s entire intro because it’s not even 2020 anymore as I write this. And you know, maybe that’s for the best. I’m not really in the mood for doom and gloom and bitching anymore. I uninstalled Twitter from my phone a while back, I’ve been doing good at my daily writing sprints, my biggest fanfic project concluded on a positive note from people I didn’t even realize had been following it for years.

So I don’t know what this is going to be like. My commentary, I mean; I’ve heard echoes of what the book is like, so I’m not expecting a surprise there.

The book opens right after the end of Ready Player One, in a “Cutscene” where Wade recounts to us what happened after he won Halliday’s contest. It also assumes you remember exactly who the main characters of the book are, which is a bold move for a sequel that came out almost a decade after the original.

Technically, I could just look up the details I’m fuzzy about. But also, I think it’s more authentic if I don’t. I trust my memory enough that if I’m wrong, it’ll be in subtle enough ways that it’ll almost be a private jokes between all of us. An “if you know, you know” sort of error system. And I don’t think there’s anything more true to the spirit of this book than that.

Shoto had flown back home to Japan to take over operations at GSS’s Hokkaido division.

So Wade starts his tenure with nepotism. Wasn’t Shoto really young? Why is he qualified to run anything?

Aech was enjoying an extended vacation in Senegal, a country she’d dreamed of visiting her whole life, because her ancestors had come from there.

You know what, I’m not touching “send the token black character back to Africa.” This isn’t my lane.

And Samantha had flown back to Vancouver to pack up her belongings and say goodbye to her grandmother, Evelyn.

Why is she saying goodbye? Why, she’s moving to Columbus to be with Wade, of course! It’s not like there was anything else in her life. Was there? And why isn’t she referred to as Art3mis? I’m pretty sure Wade found out all of their offline names in the last book, and the inconsistency mildly bothers me.

These three sentences are back to back, by the way. Someone—I forget who—once described Ready Player One as a book that’s fun to write a wiki about, because it’s got fun concepts to summarize about until you realize that all the emotional connective tissue you need to turn a list of things into a story is missing, and that’s roughly how this first page feels.

Hell, the first line of the book is Wade telling us he remained offline for nine whole days after winning the contest, but by the end of the second paragraph we’re already to him logging back into the OASIS to "distract himself from [his and Samantha’s] reunion.

I’ll give Ernest Cline one thing: it feels like he wrote this opening nine days after the first book and did about as much maturing as a teenage boy would do between the two books.

Way more time is spent describing Wade’s OASIS rig, or the in-game planet where the climax of the last book happened, than anything else in this introduction. He is immediately greeted by a crowd of adoring fans who have been waiting over a week for him to come back in the game, because they’re all grateful that our protagonist and his friends restored their avatars after they were annihilated by the Sixers.

You’d think the adoring fans would serve some kind of purpose, or that something would happen, but no. Wade immediately goes “ew, people” and teleports away, since he essentially has ultimate powers within the game. With a caveat: the powers are actually coming from the Robes of Anorak he’s wearing, and I’m mentioning that in the hopes that it will pay off sometime in the book’s future, assuming Cline at least learned to do that. But still, let’s not skip too fast the fact that we introduced that crowd of adoring fans for no other purpose than to tell us they’re out there, because it fits right in with the last book’s attempts at saying as little as humanly possible in as many words as possible.

Anyway, Wade went back into Anorak’s study, where he arbitrarily checks out the Easter Egg he got at the end of the last book, and finds an inscription on it. I was dreading another riddle, but no, it’s just straight-up instructions to a vault in the GSS archives, so Wade logs off and goes to check it out.

Of course Halliday had put [the archives] [on the 13th floor]. In one of his favorite TV shows, Max Headroom, Network 23’s hidden research-and-development lab was located on the thirteenth floor. And The Thirteenth Floor was also the title of an old sci-fi film about virtual reality, released in 1999, right on the heels of both The Matrix and eXistenZ.

I’m equally shocked that it took two whole pages (on my ereader) to get to the first slew of references, and that one of these references is from 1999. I didn’t know we were allowed to think of anything that isn’t the 80s. Speaking of which, I’ll spare you the whole paragraph, but the book does feel the need to explain why it’s vault 42.

Inside the vault, there’s another egg containing a super-fancy and advanced OASIS headset. The egg also has a video monitor that plays a video message from James Halliday shortly before his death.

But despite his condition, he hadn’t used his OASIS avatar to record this message like he had with Anorak’s Invitation. For some reason, he’d chosen to appear in the flesh this time, under the brutal, unforgiving light of reality.

That oh-so-important message? An infodump about the headset’s working. He called it an OASIS Neural Interface, ONI for short. It basically lets you experience the OASIS through all your senses with sensory input just like the real thing, you know, that thing Wade had to get a fancy suit and massive rig to do in the first book. And yes, Wade does spend a paragraph or two comparing it to other works of science fiction. Of course he does.

More importantly, it also records all the sensory input into a separate file, which can then be replayed over to re-experience said sensations, or live someone else’s experiences. Halliday tries to frame it as a tool to generate communication and empathy, seemingly all without acknowledging the potential creepiness of that. But hey. Who knows. Maybe that’s because this is the setup stage, and it’ll pay off eventually.

I also wondered about the name Halliday had chosen for his invention. I’d seen enough anime to know that oni was also a Japanese word for a giant horned demon from the pits of hell.

Add “reducing Japan to anime” to the list of things the book has failed to improve upon. By the way, the narration insisted on spelling out ONI letter by letter earlier, so it’s weird to make that link now. It’s also just kind of inelegant to just tell us “this is the symbolism behind the name”, but that’s just the sort of thing I’ve come to expect from this book.

Anyway, the reason Halliday kept this for his successor to find is he wants Wade to test out the technology and decide if humanity is ready for it. Why Halliday thinks the most glorified pop culture trivia / video game competition qualifies you for such a decision should be a problem, but sadly, a lot of billionaires have said and done a lot of dumb and eerily similar things in the past few years since I read Ready Player One, so actually, I can’t fault the book for that one. Tragically, our fates really are in the hands of people who should rightfully be cartoon villains.

To his credit, Wade does question Halliday’s motives in keeping this under wraps at all rather than releasing it himself. So hey, maybe it really is setting something up.

Wade goes back to his office with the ONI, and we’re treated with this lovely piece of narration:

I was grateful that Samantha wasn’t there. I didn’t want to give her the opportunity to talk me out of testing the ONI. Because I was worried she might try to, and if she did, she would’ve succeeded. (I’d recently discovered that when you’re madly in love with someone they can persuade you to do pretty much anything.)

There’s a lot to unpack about the implications this has for their relationship, but it’s way too early in the book for me to editorialize when one character hasn’t even been on the page yet. So I’ll just leave it here for the record. Hopefully you see the problem without me needing to point it out anyway. If not, feel free to hit my inbox.

So Wade, confident in the fact that Halliday would have warned him if there were any risks to using the ONI, decides to try it out. Even though he immediately follows up that statement with this:

According to the ONI documentation, forcibly removing the headset while it was in operation could severely damage the wearer’s brain and/or leave them in a permanent coma. So the titanium-reinforced safety bands made certain this couldn’t happen. I found this little detail comforting instead of unsettling. Riding in an automobile was risky, too, if you didn’t wear your seatbelt…

Wade. My dude. What the fuck is this simile. And why don’t you see that maybe a machine where you’re forcibly trapping yourself inside a virtual reality might be dangerous? Hell, when I said this was setting something up, I was expecting something vaguely interesting about the potential breach of privacy, or how you don’t need to literally walk in someone’s shoes to feel empathy for them, or anything substantial, but now I’m worried it’ll just end up as “man, sometimes science fiction machines will scramble your brain, isn’t that weird”?

Like, I don’t know, to me “it will put you in a coma” sounds like a good reason for Halliday not to release the ONI. Maybe we can still make it into a commentary on how corporations will sell stuff they know is directly harmful if it can make them a profit. Who knows.

The book waffles on about more risks, and the mechanics of how the ONI activates, and the warning disclaimer when it does turn on. Specifically, there’s a time limit of twelve consecutive hours, after which you’ll be automatically logged out, because yes, using the thing for too long can also cause brain damage.

Gregarious Simulation Systems will not be held responsible for any injuries caused by improper use of the OASIS Neural Interface.

See, now there’s the sort of thing that could be a source for commentary, but no, instead it’s thrown in there like it’s nothing and Wade glosses over the entire warning, and instead keep wondering why Halliday didn’t just release the ONI if even the safety disclaimers were in place.

By the way: this whole system has apparently gone through several independent human trials already, so I’m finding it hard to imagine that it’s actually a secret Halliday took to the grave as Wade says. Unless he also had everyone involved in those trials killed afterwards. Or maybe they all ended up with brain damage which rendered them incapable of talking about it.

And before you think I’m being unfair and maybe we’re supposed to understand that ourselves even if the protagonist doesn’t, I’ll remind you that the book didn’t trust its reader to know what the number 42 is a reference to, or what an oni is, even though I don’t think anyone in the target audience wouldn’t know about these two things.

There’s also the fact that, since this book came out, a video game did release with a scene intentionally designed to cause seizures, and it had countless fans flocking to defend it over that fact. So you’ll have to excuse me if I’m not assuming this book’s stance on whether your video game console causes brain damage and possibly coma is actually a bad thing, or just an acceptable risk.

Wade certainly seems to think so, since he agrees to the terms of service.

As the timestamp faded away, it was replaced by a short message, just three words long—the last thing I would see before I left the real world and entered the virtual one. But they weren’t the three words I was used to seeing. I—like every other ONI user to come—was greeted by a new message Halliday had created, to welcome those visitors who had adopted his new technology: READY PLAYER TWO

Well now that’s just silly.

And that’s our opening cutscene. And while this post is already long enough, I feel like I have to go on to chapter 0, because it feels like barely anything has happened so far. We didn’t even introduce any new character motivation or conflict, or a mystery to set the plot into motion, unless I’m supposed to think “why didn’t Halliday release this?” counts.

So Wade is back into the OASIS, and tells us about how much more real it all feels thanks to the ONI. I especially have to question how he can smell or taste anything—both of which he tells us he can. Like, who coded that? Did Halliday implement every single smell and taste himself, without anyone noticing? I hope you don’t need me to tell you that’s not typically how features are added to a large-scale video game.

If it feels like I’m nitpicking at the logic of the book, even though I always say I’m not very interested in that and would rather talk themes, it’s because I am, because there isn’t much else to discuss so far. Wade is happy about tasting virtual fruit. That’s the scene.

He tests out if he can feel pain, but no, the ONI reduces pain (a gunshot is translated as “a hard pinch”). On one hand, good, it would be a nightmare otherwise. On the other hand, I sort of hope there’s a setting for that in there, because otherwise, you just lost an entire clientele of kinksters.

This was it—the final, inevitable step in the evolution of videogames and virtual reality. The simulation had now become indistinguishable from real life.

Ah, now we have some juicy themes. Because if you think this is the inevitable final step in the evolution of video games, I invite you to look at literally any other art form, and what happened to them once hyperrealism became easy. Hint: they didn’t stop evolving, because it turns out realism isn’t the only goal one can achieve with art.

The realism discussion is not a new one in video games, mind you. In case you’re out of the loop: most of the big-budget blockbuster games (“AAA” as they’re known) are aiming for hyperrealism nowadays, and it results in development teams being forced to work in horrible conditions (known with the equally horrible euphemism of “crunch”). And, because it turns out that 1) humans working themselves to the bones isn’t healthy and 2) racing for realism with little to no vision besides it makes for poor creativity, a lot of these games come out as disappointments. Oh, there are hordes of Gamers™ who will defend them to the bitter end, but inevitably, in the months following release, the defense cools off while the criticism keeps on going, because the defense was a knee-jerk reaction born of a mix of people hyping themselves up for a game they hadn’t seen that much of yet, then attaching a part of their identity to liking that thing.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that this throwaway line feels like it comes from someone who is so out of touch as to accidentally support a world view that has in fact resulted in the biggest part of the industry stagnating artistically while growing more toxic for the people working in it. All the while, more and more independent games come out every year, proving that that realism is nowhere near the most important thing to making a game good, and that you can achieve much better results with a small team.

What I’m trying to say is: watch Jim Sterling’s channel, they’ve been bleeding out subscribers since they came out as nonbinary and make much better commentary on this topic than I could, and play Hades.

Back to the book, which sadly hasn’t become any more interesting since I decided to go on a tangent. Wade tests the ONI functions some more, all the while musing on how he knows Samantha would disapprove but that he doesn’t care, because what loving relationship doesn’t consist of that?

Among the functions, he tries the ONI files, the aforementioned recordings of someone else’s experiences. Specifically, a woman, which Wade tells us by telling us he suddenly has breasts, I suppose because Ernest Cline saw that subreddit about men writing women and went “I want a piece of that”. Oh, and also, those sample files were recorded from real people, in the real world. And yes, this goes exactly where you think it does.

SEX-M-F.oni, SEX-F-F.oni, and SEX-Nonbinary.oni

Look, I actually started writing a complaint about the boobs thing, and I deleted it, but now Cline is doing it on purpose. So, here goes: I saw a quote from this book on Twitter that looked like Cline attempting to make up for Wade’s casual transphobia in the first book. It wasn’t good, but it at least sounded like he was trying. So to immediately get this is…a lot? Let’s go for a lot.

I can almost excuse the use of “M” and “F”. You gotta name your files and you could excuse a non-exhaustive list. But…nonbinary? On one hand, I want to know what Cline means. On the other hand, I don’t think he can come up with an answer I’ll find satisfactory.

We are thankfully spared from finding out because Wade has just lost his virginity to Samantha a few days ago and he’s 1) not ready for this and 2) pretty sure this counts as cheating. You could make a case that this is more like porn, but I can see that this is more of a personal distinction anyway, and I can respect that one. Plus, you know. I don’t want to find out.

Wade logs off, and he can’t tell the difference between the OASIS with the ONI, and decides this will change the world. And then it’s back to the “how did he do it and keep it a secret”, even though Wade now finds out in the documentation that this had been in development for twenty-five years, basically since the OASIS launched. So it’s not really that it’s a secret, so much as there are a lot of people under very strict NDAs out there. Or, again, they’re all dead and/or otherwise incapacitated.

The ONI is the product of the Accessibility Research Lab, and Wade tells us about other stuff that the lab has produced using similar technology, mostly for medical purposes.

GSS patented each of the Accessibility Research Lab’s inventions, but Halliday never made any effort to profit from them. Instead, he set up a program to give these neuroprosthetic implants away, to any OASIS users who could benefit from them. GSS even subsidized the cost of their implant surgery.

Look, it’s nice that you want Halliday to be the good guy through and through, but it’s kind of hard to take any social commentary seriously when you think this is how a billionaire is made. Hell, even when he shut down the lab and fired its entire staff, he gave them a big enough severance package to set them for life. You know. Capitalism!

Hey, remember when Samantha said she was going to end world hunger if she won the contest, a thing billionaires right now could be doing, but aren’t, and she is now the co-owner of GSS? Yeah, I kind of hope the book remembers that too.

Speaking of the co-owners, the book just completely skips over the debate that our four main characters have over whether or not to release the ONI to the world. All we know is that they voted, and the vote goes in favor of releasing it. I mean, why have characters who could have opinions and feelings that could create a discussion? That might make us care about them! And who wants to care about characters in a story?

We put them on sale at the lowest possible price, to make sure as many people as possible could experience the OASIS Neural Interface for themselves.

What exactly is “the lowest possible price” here? Your company literally owns money. Like, OASIS money is real money. There is literally nothing stopping you from giving them away, especially because what you’re giving away is access to the platform you’re already running for a profit.

It’s almost like, even trying to make “good billionaires” out of its protagonists, the book can’t stop and actually make them significantly good.

Oh, I should mention. If you thought my Ready Player One review was angry at capitalism, wait until you see what the past couple years have done to me.

Anyway, once they his 7,777,777 simultaneous ONI users, a new riddle shows up on Halliday’s website. Because yep: our plot is apparently not about the implications of releasing the ONI, or any of the potential ideological discussions associated with that, it’s another riddle. Oh boy, do I wish I’d known that.

Seek the Seven Shards of the Siren’s Soul On the seven worlds where the Siren once played a role For each fragment my heir must pay a toll To once again make the Siren whole

I cannot wait to have the book give me just not enough information to solve the riddle until it’s solved by the book itself. That was so much fun the other…what was it, five times? Six times? Something like that. Wade already tells us the Siren might be Kira Morrow, because her alias was named after one of the sirens of Greek myth, so I can’t wait for that plot point to stick around. It was so fun to hear all about this man pining for another man’s wife the first time!

So this is the “Shard Riddle”. People are apparently convinced it was made by Wade and his crew as a publicity stunt, but of course, they know that that isn’t the case, and they also don’t know what that riddle is supposed to lead to. So, that’s great. We have a puzzle, and we also don’t know what the stakes are. All we know is that Wade wants to solve the puzzle essentially because it’s a challenge.

We skip over a year, and Wade tells us about how IOI collapses and gets absorbed by GSS because of the ONI’s launch. Remember IOI? They were the bad guys, so I guess we have to cheer?

GSS absorbed IOI and all of its assets, transforming us into an unstoppable megacorporation with a global monopoly on the world’s most popular entertainment, education, and communications platform.To celebrate, we released all of IOI’s indentured servants and forgave their outstanding debts.

On one hand: good for the slave. On the other hand: not gonna cheer for a monopoly, you guys.

Another year’s skip, and now 99% of the OASIS users are using the ONI, and yes, that includes trading their experiences with one another too. And I guess we’re still hand-waving any possible problems associated with that technology, because the technology is made so that all recordings must be shared and played through the OASIS.

This allowed us to weed out unsavory or illegal recordings before they could be shared with other users.

How? Do you know any of the problems associated with content moderations on the current platforms? I don’t know if I want to point to Youtube’s extremely faulty algorithm, Twitter’s complete apathy towards its Nazis, or Facebook doing moderation by making underpaid staff watch all potentially problematic content, which resulted in serious psychological damage to said staff.

You can’t just say that as if it solved everything. The chapter later says this is handled by an AI called “CenSoft”, and as an AI engineer myself, let me tell you: this is not going to work. Again: Youtube is the way it is for a reason.

It also let us maintain our monopoly on what was rapidly becoming the most popular form of entertainment in the history of the world.

And again, monopolies are totally a good thing as long as it’s in the right hands!

When I’m implying that the book does not care for any of these potential problems, I mean it. These enormous ethical issues are sidestepped in cold narratin, and we just keep going on introducing new slang that I hate, but have to quote so help you keep up.

“Sims” were recordings made inside the OASIS, and “Recs” were ONI recordings made in reality. Except that most kids no longer referred to it as “reality.” They called it “the Earl.” (A term derived from the initialism IRL.) And “Ito” was slang for “in the OASIS.” So Recs were recorded in the Earl, and Sims were created Ito.

There. You have been infodumped.

In the midst of all this (still extremely dry) exposition about how this changed media, we also get this tidbit:

You could take any drug, eat any kind of food, and have any kind of sex, without worrying about addiction, calories, or consequences.

Now, I was going to rant about this, but then, a page later, this happens and spares me the trouble:

I’d struggled with OASIS addiction before the ONI was released. Now logging on to the simulation was like mainlining some sort of chemically engineered superheroin.

So, you are aware that addiction isn’t just possible, but extremely facilitated by this. But sure, no worries! It’s perfectly safe! Because our protagonists are good.

Also, remember how the last book ended on a weak attempt at having a moral that maybe the real world is good, actually? Yeah, Wade tells us the ONI helps poor people live enjoyable lives in the OASIS. So. Fuck that message, I guess. It only applies if you’re the literal wealthiest man on Earth.

And me? All my dreams had come true. I’d gotten stupidly rich and absurdly famous. I’d fallen in love with my dream girl and she had fallen in love with me. Surely I was happy, right? Not so much, as this account will show.

Aside from the aforementioned returning OASIS affiction, there’s the Shard riddle that Wade is now obsessed with, to the point of offering a billion-dollar reward to anyone with information about the riddle’s answer.

I announced this reward with a stylized short film that I modeled after Anorak’s Invitation. I hoped it would seem like a lighthearted play on Halliday’s contest instead of a desperate cry for help. It seemed to work.

On one hand: good, Wade finally has a character flaw that the book actually acknowledges as a character flaw. I can work with that. On the other hand: this is all told to me in such a dispassionate that I am dreading how the book will handle this character flaw. Which is to say, I’m not expecting it to be very good.

(For a brief time, some of the younger, more idealistic shard hunters referred to themselves as “shunters” to differentiate themselves from their elder counterparts. But when everyone began to call them “sharters” instead, they changed their minds and started to call themselves gunters too. The moniker still fit. The Seven Shards were Easter eggs hidden by Halliday, and we were all hunting for them.)

Especially when this is something the narration feels is more important to tell me about.

Anyway, skip another year, and a gunter finally leads Wade to the First Shard. Solved that riddle, I guess. And wait, wasn’t part of why IOI was ~evil~ in the first book that they were paying people to find the Easter Egg for them? How is this any different, Wade?

And when I picked it up, I set in motion a series of events that would drastically alter the fate of the human race. As one of the only eyewitnesses to these historic events, I feel obligated to give my own written account of what occurred. So that future generations—if there are any—will have all the facts at their disposal when they decide how to judge my actions.

And that is the end of our chapter 0. And can I just say: what a mess already. I don’t think my snark can properly convey how utterly devoid of emotion this book’s writing is, and that alone is honestly more of a turn-off than anything else in the book so far. Even, knowing that I railed about it in the first book, I still feel newly unprepared for it. And it’s not like this double-prologue is making me hopeful that the book will show an ounce more critical thinking—or decent fucking humanity towards marginalized groups—as its predecessor.

So, that’s a lot to look forward to! For the sake of my sanity and schedule, don’t expect me to do such big posts every time. I’ll probably do one chapter a week from now on, if that. We’re in for a long ride, but I hope it’s worth it, at least.

[worstloki]

What if Loki made scented candles, but like candles with oddly specific scents? I’m not entirely sure where this thought came from but I wanted to share it with you because I figure you’d appreciate it

Because I wanted to, I decided to write on this. You’re welcome.

---

While readying for his attack on New York - a location he had picked due to a very specific landmark that he believed ought to attract the heroes’ attention sooner rather than later- Loki finds himself with a rather large block of free time.

Leaving the SHIELD base with Clint and Selvig had, predictably, but also to his immense disappointment, proven to be an ingeniously efficient way to gain the required research and to amass enough villainous hands to actualise the equipment to open a portal; members of the spying business such as Barton do tend to have useful knowledge on a wonderfully large amount of people, especially of the opposing side, after all. 

Having been touched by the mind stone, Selvig carries out the scientific theory aspects of the wormhole generator without assistance. Hawkeye’s ability to successfully market a sales pitch that should not be appealing in the least (re: “trying to help an alien prince conquer the world, you interested?”, “I’ll owe you one if you can find the time to help build a portal machine to space” and “there’s free food in it for you if you join with no questions asked”) has resulted in enough people contributing to get the work done.

From there everyone began to organise themselves, and Loki had been thoroughly left with nothing to do. Nothing world-saving (or, as everyone else will insist, ‘world-dominating’) at least.

As is often with Loki, his best ideas occur when he is completely and utterly bored. And right then, sitting in the dark sipping on hot chocolate (yes, he had invested in a drink machine. He has employees and just because he may be perceived as such, he is not actually a monster. Not enough to say no to coffee for Barton.) he looked out at the assortment of people scurrying about to get work done, and he realised he was bored. It was nice of Clint to offer him the sweet drink, but he could not spend the next few days occupying himself with cocoa beverages.

Loki knew his physical capabilities were a bit tenuous at the moment and it would be unwise to take part in any activities that would take up too much energy, but sitting on a step in the dark watching his workers buzz about, helping simply because they could, Loki decided they should be rewarded with a token gift at the very least.

Sitting on a step in the dark Loki decided; using the smell of the sickeningly sweet drink to ground him to the present, using the heat of the mug in his palms to warm his hands, tracing the pattern on the painted ceramic to hide the slight tremors in his fingers that hadn’t seemed to be lessening despite having left the company of his extremely kind patrons a full day ago, with the taste of the flavoured milk on his tongue, Loki decided he would gift them each with something of equal value. Something that would calm their anxieties and ground them, give them warmth, and if he could figure out how, he would even get the candles to induce taste.

After a full five minutes combining a creation spell meant for refilling candelabras with one meant to draw on memories to scent the air Loki is able to create the first candle.

It is, in appearance, a regular wax candle; not unlike one expected to be found in a normal Midgardian store. After some thought he adds a casing made of green and black stained glass and places a gold bordered sticker reading “loki”.

When lit Loki knows the candle will not only warm the vicinity more than a single flickering flame ought to, but will also smell of and provide the comfort he felt as he drank the chocolatey beverage, to whomever lights the candle, for as long as the flame burns. The candle will also last a tad bit longer than regular candles and Loki sincerely hopes no one will notice something like that.

Such simple spells of creation should not require much time or effort to make on his part and the candles will provide the perfect personalised gift to thank the people working under him who for whatever reasons seem disinclined to accept monetary payment. It is, in his opinion, the ideal gift as it can be used for decorative or pragmatic purposes and can be theoretically placed anywhere and still induce the calming effect the scent will have.

He begins drafting ideas for memories he believes would be suited for each worker on a notepad he’d purchased on his way from escaping the SHIELD base.

His task force is not too large but considering moments which he would wish to share into each candle, moments which they would enjoy as much as himself, requires some thought. Despite the amount of thought he is putting into what smell different people would find comforting he assures himself that he is gifting these candles out of a sense of duty as it would be dishonourable not to pay the people who are genuinely helping him… for the sake of helping him. They are, after all, his workers, and only a portion of them even required the sceptre. Servitude should be rewarded, even if they refuse to be paid in cash or gold.

Despite not harbouring any care (not even a drop of care, honestly speaking) for the humans around him he spends most of the afternoon brainstorming smells and matching his people to experiences he thinks they would like.

---

After a quick walk around to gauge the rate at which progress is being made, he takes a seat on the side of the room and starts coaxing the first candle into existence. He is annoyed when he feels The Other pulling his attention, but projects himself away anyways as it would be quite rude to ignore. (And is quite mentally agitating to ignore.)

“The Chitauri grow restless.” The Other states.

Not even a hello? Loki thinks bitterly before replying: “Let them go at themselves - I will lead them into glorious battle.”

“Battle?” The Other all but spits, “Against the meagre might of Earth?”

“Glorious, not lengthy”, Loki assures him, wondering if The Other realises he is insulting the very reward Loki had agreed to (bargained for), before deciding that No, The Other wouldn’t recognise an insult if it slapped him across the astral plane. To prove his own point he continues, “…if your force is as formidable as you claim”.

“You question us? You question HIM? He, who put the sceptre in your hand, who gave you ancient knowledge and new purpose when you were cast out, defeated?”

Not at all, Loki thinks, in fact, I did not utter a single question.

Just to see how off-topic he could veer their conversation this time, he decides to reply with the first petty thought that comes to mind.

“I was a king! The rightful king of Asgard! Betrayed!” he yells, as he instead concentrates on the feeling of his feet sinking into white sand and the sharp smells of the salty expanses of water that appear in southern Alfheim during the rainier seasons.

He already decided he is got everything he was going to get out of this conversation, and so he continues creating the candle on Earth, paying only enough mind to keep the conversation going.

“Your ambition is little, born of childish need.” The Other reprimands, “We look beyond the Earth to greater worlds the Tesseract will unveil.”.

“You don't even have the Tesseract yet.” Loki points out, pointedly.

The issue with dividing your conscience is that sometimes you forget the brain to mouth filter needs to be left on.

When The Other moves as if to attack him for his insolence he makes sure to console the six-handed-one’s ego enough to not get him to dig into his brain and cause him pain with his mental capabilities. Limited though The Other’s mind-bending powers are, he would not allow himself to stop it because his flimsy cover of being on the dark side would be blown.

It would also be inconvenient for The Other to realise he was thinking of sandy beaches and only had 34% of himself paying attention to him while the other 66% was thinking about Alf beaches in the monsoon.

The rest of the conversation with The Other was unimportant, and as usual he was dismissed with a sharp pain in his head.

It did not matter. When he returned his full consciousness to himself, he grimaced for only a second before looking down at the unassuming candle laid before him. Its casing was of purple and black stained glass and there was a white label with fancy gold outline and the word “Barton” in black calligraphy.

---

By the time it was morning Loki had finished distributing the candles. He’d made 143 of them; one for everyone in his service, and 2 extras for the men that had broken down into tears and dropped their candles the first time around.

Apparently, though these people had joined him of their own volition, they were still people. Most of them had been driven to a negative lifestyle by their living conditions and society’s discrimination which apparently had no system in place to give hospitality to all who came under their governance and needed assistance.

He found himself wondering if he actually should try to take over this world; the planet is clearly in need of a central governing system to prevent all their internal spats. The fact that they could discriminate within their own species to such extents was shocking, even to Loki: even indecisive enough to contemplate what to wear weeks in advance as he tended to do, it had only taken him going through a few academic papers to come to the opinion of humans as monstrous. Not all of them, of course - only a select few were truly abhorrent, and yet what a select few they were.

No, he thought, even I would not be able to fix this mess without blood, sweat, and tears. Not that he cared for Earth or anyone else in the realm.

---

He lasted as long it took for Clint to say he had a plan before he succumbed and made everyone a spare candle. Just in case.

He would not want Hawkeye to miss the salty tang of air that would soothe his nerves and remind him of the softer sounds in the world when his hearing aids or childhood memories suddenly cropped up to trouble him. He would not want Samson to miss out on the sensation of Asgard’s warm sunlight brushing his skin on a day when his terminal illness sent his chill bone deep. He wouldn’t want to deprive Demerton the smell of grass and the feeling of happiness Loki had felt when he tried to throw a knife onto the target and for the first time it actually landed – not that Demerton needed to know the unimportant details about the self-esteem boost –with his image issues the feeling would be something he needed.

Loki would not want his gifts to go unused simply because one of the foolish mortals managed to break their candle before they got the chance to light it.

“Tell me what you need,” Loki had answered Barton.

As they worked through the plan together, Loki tried not to think about what good gifts he had come up with, and how generous he was to be bestowing not just one, but two of the candles onto each member of his misfit group of helpers. Not altruistically of course: he hoped his workers would gain him the favour of earth through the candles. Somehow.

---

Twenty minutes into being in a glass cage had Loki deciding that it would be wrong of him to simply abandon all who were helping him, especially since he was planning on being defeated. This was fine for himself since he had made the decision to take a role as a villain, but them? Not even one of them had been given a choice when the universe forced them out of their homes or jobs or family. With nothing else to turn to except a life of crime or death, of course they had decided to live. As someone who had once chosen the latter option, he could not simply abandon them.

He sent most of his consciousness to a building across from Stark’s with 72 floors. It was not as tall as Tony’s, but it did not need to be. While monitoring Earth in his preparations for coming to ‘take over’ the realm, he had taken the building for loan when it had been on sale around a year ago.

It had cost a hefty price since it was across The Stark Tower™ and had been built over land that had previously held a building that looked near as old as Odin, but the price was nothing to him. Not after he bought it with Stark’s money (and the billionaire fool had not even noticed since it did not dent his net-worth, not that he was complaining… Stark’s credit cards were useful).

For now, he sat in a glass cage clearly not built for him (they could never have predicted someone as glamourous as himself showing up in time to have built this). But he also stood in an apartment building kilometres away from the Helicarrier.

He walked around using powered gestures to renovate the building. He would leave behind enough for his group to have the choice between villainy and an honest living.

The hours passed and the Loki in the skyscraper (an adequate name for such buildings) had put together the most therapeutic and entertaining of centres; it had candles and spas and facilities for every relaxation method imaginable but combined the space with recreation for all ages with indoor water rides and arcades and laser tag.

The hours passed and the Loki in the glass cage hadn’t required any of his attention at all; he may have spoken to the Black Widow but with 12% of his consciousness holding the conversation he could not be sure his guise of genocidal maniac had held up – he honestly would’ve liked to meet her under different circumstances, but hoped she hadn’t been able to tell he wasn’t completely present when talking with him.

---

After a nice chat where he blatantly revealed to Stark that his plan had been to lose this entire time, Loki attacked New York. The battle, as he had promised The Other, had indeed been glorious and not lengthy, although anyone actually siding with the villains would disagree. Luckily, Loki was not actually siding with the villains and had no qualms about being smug in his victory (no matter what others thought this was).

Before he left the realm in chains, he had been sure to announce to his batch of subjects that each of them had a job available with Ikol Industries anytime. (Barton, Selvig, and the few others which had the mind stone’s influence upon them had of course been excluded from this job offer.).

Most of the people under him had accepted the deal happily. A lot had teared up about it. Some cried shamelessly. Even less had declined, but Loki had not wanted those spies to stick around anyways.

Loki may have ended up fighting the Avengers with a depleted amount of magic, but that did not matter. He had lost. Everything had gone according to plan.

He may have even left some unassuming therapy candles for each of the Avengers to indulge in, courtesy of Ikol Industries. Each in a glass cover with their colours with names in gold over a white label, it was not difficult to imagine the Avengers becoming regular customers and nicely asking if they had more of ‘their’ candles from those that had assisted him in his faux attack. They wouldn’t even be wrong in assuming the candles were theirs. Loki had themed a floor of relax and rec after each of the avengers and the scents they enjoyed were indeed always magically in stock.

As a keeper of secrets it was incredibly easy for him to inexplicably know what scent and sensations would calm their mind if they were ever in need; especially Banner, who would indeed find his special green candle strong enough to silence the Hulk within him. Tony would not find himself waking in the night in distress if he had a candle by his bedside. Steve would find the dull ache in his chest reduced even when he thought of the life he had left behind when he dove into the ice. Natasha would accept her past actions without any inflation of guilt if she lit the candle during her morning stretches. Clint would always know it was not his fault as the salty tang reinvigorated his senses and reminded him that he could not be blamed for a past he could not control and the lives he could not save. Thor’s candle had a green flame and smelt of his rooms on Asgard.

Perhaps their super-secret boy band would question the individualisation of the candles. Perhaps they would notice the candles lasting a tad bit longer than regular candles. Perhaps Stark being unable to read anything on the composition of the candles would be suspicious. Perhaps they would joke about Ikol Industries being ‘Loki’ Industries and would joke about the ridiculously badly thought-out palindrome and the magical voodoo of the candles which had no apparent source location but were never out of stock. Perhaps they would recognise the workers as previous criminals. Perhaps they would realise the decisions that led them to that life had been circumstantial. Perhaps they would follow their suspicions up and Loki would be unable to answer: either locked away in a cell or dead.

But for all the trouble Loki had caused and for those he had brought suffering upon - even if his intentions had been good - his calmest and happiest memories were the least he could leave behind this world to assist in their recovery.

[firstagent]

Review: Digimon Adventure: (2020) Episode 21: The Tide-Turning Update

In this episode, with Takeru free and hopping through suspicious craters on his own, it’s up to Taichi to pull the win out of his own ass this time.

It’s both a blessing and a curse that the action flows so smoothly from one episode to the next. We enjoy the continuity and everything staying meaningful and the plot moving forward, especially here as they reach the destination they were told to seek out all the way back in episode five. At the same time, SkullKnightmon taking Angemon’s digiegg creates a thread that has to be followed, with no time for Yamato and Takeru to celebrate their reunion or to get Takeru up to speed on what the hell world he just fell into. Given how the story fails to progress past the castle gate and the one big development is an indication of bad times to come, we’d much rather have those instead.

We generally excuse this when the action is meaningful enough. Rescuing Takeru is important whether or not we care about Takeru. There is nothing meaningful about this fight, just a token summoned opponent getting in their way. Splashmon does his best, the miasma adding extra danger to an already unique and challenging attack pattern. But MetalGreymon and WereGarurumon use conventional tactics to fail to beat it, which don’t cut it. Not when battle creativity has become one of the show’s biggest assets and not when you recall the sort of wild manipulative insanity Taiki used to beat him in Xros Wars. There’s nothing inspiring here. Splashmon is too good an enemy to use in this situation, and the heroes aren’t ready to rise to the challenge.

In desperation, Taichi tries to pry MetalGreymon out from Splashmon’s clutches and triggers a new mode that instantly ends the battle. It’s worse than it sounds. You gather we’re supposed to be impressed at Taichi getting in there, harming himself in the process. Thing is, Taichi’s been riding with Greymon on the front lines for the entire series. Just because he actually suffers this time doesn’t mean he’s taking any more of a risk now than he has this whole time. His dramatic speech isn’t even out of concern for his partner. This isn’t Haru diving into a virus-filled pool out of concern for Dogatchmon. Taichi just wants to save the world. Worst of all is you just know this extra weaponry is going to be used as a psuedo-evolution for everybody, and if this is any indicator we still won’t get the character development that’s supposed to go with it.

But that’s what Takeru’s for, right? Now Yamato might have emotions and more to think about before making decisions! Or maybe now that he got what he wanted and can ensure his brother’s safety, he doesn’t care about the rest of the mission. Or… maybe he’s going to barely register Takeru’s presence and stash him away at the first opportunity to go fight the bad guy like always. And despite leaning into the over-protective, worrying tendencies we’ve had teased this whole time, when he hears Takeru wandered off on his own in a hostile environment and accidentally released the monstrous ElDoradimon, Yamato only pats him on the head and says good job.

Takeru doesn’t even get the kind of telling introduction Taichi and Koshiro got in episode one. He doesn’t say much of anything, nor do we get into his head as much as his actions should demand. His strange obsession with a giant crater compels him to a perilous climb on his own, where he reaches the barrier sealing a giant eyeball that responds to the digivice, which he rolls with. So what we’re gathering is that he’s a very vague little child, barely aware of the situation around him, preferring to defy common sense to follow odd compulsions rather than actually think about what’s happening. Doubt it was intentional, but the vibe we’re getting is either he has some sort of mental health issue, or he’s a straight-up cryptid.

We don’t want to diminish what’s going on in the real world. It’s far more encouraging, as Joe and Mimi show their commitment to the cause before surprised relatives and Koshiro and Sora watch the network going to hell all over again. But Joe and Mimi are just fleeting moments. What they do is good, but it will take extended time with their families and actual tension before they’re where they need to be. The Algomon returning and swarming around Calamarimon as they reroute a tanker to plow into a port is nicely ominous, especially with a bunch of Rookie Digimon the only ones there to stop it. It’s not enough on its own, but it does keep our hopes up. What’s going on the Digital World sure don’t.

My Grade: C+

Loose Data:

They don’t do a whole lot, but it was nice to see Falcomon and Spadamon return to help Taichi and Yamato out. It’s more to affirm that they’re still around and still will be around in the future, but those are positives.

We’ve been informed about Mimi’s wealth, but actually seeing her estate helps orient us immensely. It’s also so stark having Mimi’s grandfather, this new and awe-inspiring figure, sitting at the table with her parents, the exact same pair from the original series.

With Taichi’s mom barely aware of his absence, it’s good to see Sora and Joe’s mothers actually being worried and nagging them for disappearing for three days in a crisis. And what does it say about this family that Shin had a bugout bag already prepared for the moment Joe showed a hint of independence?

Piyomon and Tentomon have to carry Palmon through the network, but Gomamon glides on his own.

The Strait of Malacca with the hijacked tanker is between Malaysia and the island of Sumatra in Indonesida. No word yet on whether the tanker is targeting a cursed Masaru on holiday.

See reviews of every Digimon episode at Digimon: System Restore! Support the site by joining our Patreon!

[kabane52]

An Introduction to Christian Faith: God’s Existence and Identity

This is a draft of something which may or may not, after many revisions, become part of a full-length apologetic introduction to Christianity. I’ve written it at my leisure in bursts. I figured it was probably worth it to upload it here. My intention is to unfold the central concepts in the Christian interpretation of the world while making a positive case for thinking that it is indeed the most plausible interpretation of Reality.

God’s Existence

How many numbers are there? You know the answer: there are an infinite number of numbers. No matter how high you count, you can always add one. Very well- perhaps you can tell me where in space I can find this infinite set and how I might see and hear it. Immediately one recognizes the folly of such a request: no number can be seen or described in spatial terms. And what would a world with different mathematical rules look like? What if two plus two came to five? Again, one almost instantly perceives the impossibility of the proposed circumstance. Numbers aren’t the sort of thing which could be other than they are. So we have on our hands a sort of thing which cannot be seen, heard, or felt. It cannot be located in space or remembered in time. They cannot be limited or changed, but are what they are by utter necessity and with perfect certainty- to prove a numerical proposition is not a game of probabilities.

At this point, I hope you have begun to see what many philosophers, theologians, and even scientists have seen. We are not simply considering numbers – we are describing the classical attributes of God- One who is infinite, incorporeal, timeless, and is who He is by necessity- that is to say, He does not change. The similarities don’t end here. Without numbers, one could not live one’s life- nearly everything one does presupposes them in one way or another. One’s day is measured in discrete units of time. One eats a certain number of meals and walks a certain number of steps. One has a certain amount of money, and that money can purchase a certain number of goods. The moon is a particular number of miles away, and its position relative to the earth correlates with the oceanic tides in a mathematically regular way. In other words, nothing makes sense without numbers.

This is the classical conception of the divine nature as well. 

Among orthodox Christians, Jews, and Muslims, God is not best understood as a discrete being which is just one of many things on our list of “things that exist.” It is not that we all agree that people, plants, and planets exist, but theists add another being on top of them. What theists believe everything else is, at its most basic level, is a derivative of God. People, plants, and planets only exist within God and depend in their natures and relationships on those qualities which exist infinitely and perfectly in the mind of God. God’s existence is like the existence of numbers: they are present in all things and are presupposed in every word spoken about anything. This is why it is false to say that believers have a burden of proof from which the unbeliever is free. Both the believer and unbeliever make a positive claim. The unbeliever sees the cosmos as self-perpetuating and existing in and of itself. The believer sees the cosmos as perpetuated and sustained at every moment by the infinite God, existing not of itself but contingently- it doesn’t have to exist. It is not a matter of one person making a positive claim for which another sees no evidence. Either option demands a positive claim about reality.

The connection between numbers and God runs deeper. Indeed, it should be obvious that my description of God does not allow numbers to simply exist alongside Him. God is infinite and suffuses all things. Numbers exist because of that infinity- they exist as ideas perfectly and timelessly present in the mind of God. And it is with this recognition that the mathematical structure of the world begins to make intuitive sense. Everything we know about the universe indicates that it does not have to exist. It’s perfectly conceivable to imagine a situation where nothing existed at all. After all, if the universe needed to exist, everything about it would need to exist. Otherwise, we have only pushed the question one step backwards- if there is anything in the world that doesn’t need to be the way it is, one must explain how it came to be the way that it is. But the fact that things change proves this idea to be false. If the universe must exist and must exist in the exact way it exists, then nothing about it could change- that would be as ludicrous as saying that two plus two might as well be seventy-three. This possibility presses the question upon every thinking person: why is there a world which might not be or which might exist differently?

So we have a world- a world which is only intelligible through timeless, spaceless, infinite numbers- which does not have to exist. Obviously, these numbers cannot cause it to be the way it is- or else it would exist just as necessarily as the numbers themselves do, since numbers cannot change. This is why philosophers of the great monotheistic traditions have always held God to be the only conceivable explanation for the world’s existence. Unlike numbers (when considered in themselves), God is personal. It is only a personal being who could make choices one way or another. If the world does not need to exist, why does it? The natural answer is that its existence was chosen by One who had the capacity to choose- and that demands that the One be personal, for only persons can make choices. Numbers are ideas, and ideas exist only in minds. Since there is an infinity of numbers, the only mind “large enough” to hold them is an infinite Mind.

What all of this adds up to is the reality that basic, simple truths which we assume in our day to day lives end up demanding- when their proper meaning is reflected upon carefully- that God in the classical sense is a real being. Or, put more precisely, He is Being itself, the Existent One in whom all other existent things find their source and continued reality.

That is God in the classical sense.

What Hath Abraham’s God to do with Aristotle’s?

“But why”, some ask, “should I think that this ‘God of the philosophers’ has anything at all to do with religious conceptions of God?” After all, there were and are believers in God who are entirely nonreligious- not by an inconsistency, but by their system of thought. Even if one takes the infinite God described above as the ground of all being, what possible reason would we have to expect that he has any interest in a creature like man? Next to Infinity, it is sometimes suggested, we are essentially nothing at all- and it is foolish to expect an infinite being to have any concern for us. To provide a sound answer to this argument, one must first recognize that it is less an argument and more an intuition. An argument is predicated upon a logically valid inference, whether that inference is deductively certain or inductively probable. But what is the inference being suggested above, and how does it follow? The key premises of this implied argument are left unstated. For example, there is the unstated assumption that the kind of interest one being is expected to show to another is proportional to their relative size, strength, or intelligence. Yet, upon what basis do we make this assumption? When the strong disregard or bully the weak, we do not regard this as praiseworthy. Man nearly always takes such a tendency as a defect. By the same token, the wiser and more intelligent are almost always expected to use their gifts for the good of all, whether intelligent or not.

Christians hold this outlook to have its basis in what is really good and right. And since perfect goodness and justice is an essential component of nearly all religious conceptions of God, it would be circular to argue against this concept by assuming what it denies. That the God of Christianity is intimately concerned with those who before Him are as nothing is not an argument against Christian theism, but one of its great emphases.

I believe, however, we can go even further than this. Not only is the philosophical concept of God compatible with the Christian notion of God, we have excellent grounds to expect that this God has something to say to mankind. The real surprise, I suggest, would not be if the Infinite spoke to the human creature, but if He did not. Consider what we have just done. We have surveyed a series of logical deductions which ought to tell us something about the nature of Reality. Human beings have been doing this kind of thing for millennia. When the physicist wishes to express precisely the relationships that stars have with each other, he does so with a series of mathematical equations. If he wants to express the behavior of subatomic particles, he again does so with a series of mathematical equations. It is true that man is very small in spatial terms when considered relative to the universe as a whole- and contrary to the popular myth, so did the ancient Greeks. But in another sense, the mind of man expands to the size of the whole cosmos. Try to teach a fish cosmology or the laws of logic. The task wouldn’t be hard- it would be impossible. You could take the smartest fish to have ever lived and give him the best lessons anyone had ever taught. You could give him these lessons every day for one-hundred thousand years. On the last day, the fish would be no closer to understanding differential equations on the day you started.

Why is this? It’s because the difference between the human mind and that of a fish isn’t about degrees of competence. It would be a category error to say that we are “one-hundred” times smarter than a fish and “thirty times” as smart as a dog. The kinds of intelligence are as different from one another as seeing is different from hearing. Trying to teach the fish cosmology is like trying to train the human eye to hear birdsong. It cannot be done because the capacity to reason is not reducible to brainpower or practice. To reason is not to have a cleverer mind than a fish, but a different sort of mind. Think about it this way. When we spoke about numbers above, you understood that I wasn’t talking about a number of something. I wasn’t talking about an infinite number of stars, or five-thousand chairs, or two arms. We experience numbers in a concrete way when they describe particular things. But to say I own two television sets is not to say that I own the number two. You understood what I meant when I spoke of the number itself as an abstract category of being with its own qualities, a being which creates the possibility for its concrete realization in particular things without creating the necessity of it.

The same principle applies to countless other subjects. When you look into heaven after dawn, what do you see? A blue sky, a golden sun, and red birds. We experience sensibly blue, gold, and red as they exist as properties of beings which exist concretely. But we all know that isn’t the end of the story- to see a red cardinal is not to see redness itself. Having experienced something which is red, we can contemplate the idea of red in itself. Red in itself is an idea – it is something which exists as a concept in the mind. Or, as Plato would say, it is a form. This distinction is why there are pure mathematicians and not just mathematical physicists. Pure mathematicians study numbers solely according to their properties as ideas. There are more numbers than there are particles in the universe. Numbers make things what they are, but before they describe anything in particular, they exist formally, in mind. Pure mathematics comes before mathematical physics and is- by its very nature- infinitely more vast than mathematical physics.

Mathematics describes the qualities which make countless things what they are. We can only make sense of the world because we have the capacity to assess and understand things not merely as expressed to our senses but also in themselves as ideal forms or abstractions. So far as we know, human beings are the only beings in the universe who can do this. And this has everything to do with how we might expect God to relate to humankind. You see, the “God of the philosophers” described above is the One who contemplates all truths- every number, being what it is, has always existed in His Mind- that’s why there are numbers in the first place. All colors we can see- and countless colors we have never seen and lack words for- are subjects of His divine thought, known completely and wholly according to their particular set of qualities. According to what we’ve argued above, He made the universe by making something which did not have to exist and which exists with a sophisticated set of qualities, mathematical relationships, and behaviors drawn from the infinite wellspring of qualities that could be made into specific stuff.

And among all the creatures that we know anything about, we’re the only one who can make sense of those mathematical relationships. We can write out beautiful mathematics that not only describes the way the world is, but the way the world could have been. Our senses perceive ten chairs and two tables: our reason draws from this the idea of the numbers ten and two. Wholly apart from the chairs and tables, we reason that ten is the result of adding two and eight.

In other words- and this is of immense importance- humankind has capacities and qualities which make it – relatively or absolutely- unique among the countless physical beings- animal, plant, star, moon- that we have studied.[1] But we do share this unique set of qualities with one more Being- the very God whose existence and properties were deduced above by philosophical reasoning.

The God of the philosophers, therefore, shares a great deal with man that He does not share with any other physical being of which we are aware. We exist in a peculiar likeness to God. The Bible describes this peculiar relationship as man’s being fashioned in the “Image of God.” But I emphasize here that the fact of this likeness requires no special appeal to scripture. It can be known simply by reflection on certain aspects of philosophy. Does this prove that God has communicated with man (in a way other than man experiencing the existence of things)? Does it prove He has anything special to say to man? No, it doesn’t prove it in the sense of making it a perfect, logically necessary inference. But it does give us very good reason to expect that the God about whose existence we have learned from philosophy is and has been interested in a special relationship with the human family. The universe which He thought up and knows perfectly- the universe which He is even now holding in existence- contains a very unique creature who can think God’s thoughts after Him and, like God, fashion things into new sorts of existence.

If one had learned of this sort of God for the first time, the most reasonable question he would immediately turn to is whether this God with whom we share so much has ever talked to us. It’s possible that He never has, but it would certainly be a great surprise given the special status we have in relation to Him. Now let us say that this person had never learned about the traditions and thought-systems of the human race, and was considering these questions for the first time. Having asked = whether God had communicated with the human race, and having some reason to expect that He had, he discovers that more than half of the human population declares that an infinite and all-sovereign being who both made and sustains the world had spoken to human beings and made Himself known. When the inquirer finds that such an enormous portion of the human population speaks of this God, he will have very strong reasons to give the memory of that revelation the most serious consideration. After all, if God wished to communicate with the human race and did so, one might expect such revelation to have had some success. That the God of Abraham is the subject of devotion for half the human race – in light of the expectations of God derived from philosophical reasoning- makes Him the likeliest candidate (all things being equal) for that God as He has been made known by direct commerce with the human race.

None of this proves that God talked to the human race. Nor does it prove that if God did talk to man, He did so as the God of Abraham. But if God exists and has made Himself known to the human race, we would very much expect something like the situation in which we find ourselves- with the real  revelation being the most famous of all stories told of His self-disclosure.[2]

God in Christianity

But Christians say a great deal more about God. Religious monotheists say that God is all-good. Most say- when the word is properly defined- that God is all-loving. But thinking through these attributes reveals that we really aren’t saying anything very distinct from what has already been said about the infinity of God’s existence. To say that a thing is “good” is to say that it is how it ought to be. And a thing has be-ing because it has been given it from God. Naturally, then, God is all-good, for the way in which we use the word “goodness” refers to its being what it is supposed to be- being which it has at every moment from God. To say that God is all-loving is to take us into the next major point: the cardinal emphasis of Christian theism. God is Trinity, One as well as Three.

Christianity has always been recognized as a bit odd for its profession of God in Trinity. Many critics have summarily dismissed it as an obvious contradiction. Even ancient Greek “pagans” such as Porphyry criticized its apparent waffling on monotheism. At face value, these arguments seem extremely plausible - I just made the claim above that two plus two must always be four, and could never be any different. How then can I make the claim that one plus one plus one equals One? The answer is simple: I would never think of making such a ridiculous claim, and nor would theologically educated Christians. The theology of the Trinity has never entailed anything like this. To say that God exists in Trinity is indeed to say that He is both One and Three, but His Oneness and Threeness are not meant in the same sense. God is One as well as Three, but He is Three in a different way than He is One.

Recall that everything which exists does so by participation- in one mode or another – in God. The cosmos does not exist alongside God, but “in God” insofar as it is perpetually sustained by the free activity of its Creator. The redness of the finest ruby and the green of the most precious emerald exists in these particular things because these qualities have existed in the mind of God from all time- He who contemplates all perfections and has in Himself all possibilities. In other words, He could have created any world that He wanted. Moreover, since we see that the world does not have to exist, but is in a state of flux and development[3]. Putting these realities together leads us to the obvious conclusion that God did not need to make a world, but is fully and perfectly Himself even apart from any possible world He fashions. No quality in creation can have its ultimate source in the creature.

But here we come to a serious difficulty. For the very feature which permits there to be a world in the first place is the fundamental relation between things. God is not identical to the cosmos, but is constantly in creative dialogue with the cosmos. When we look at the structure of the world, we find that mutuality and complementarity is arguably its most pervasive feature. A galaxy finds its proper context in the larger galactic cluster, but the galactic cluster depends on that galaxy in granting it its unique qualities. I, as a distinct subject, am in the world- the world is my home, my dwelling place, the necessary context for my life as a distinct human creature. And yet the world is also in me- I am made up of “world-stuff” which I take in and process from foods. I live in a water-drenched world just as water makes up a large part of my body. My relationship with the cosmos around me is one of constant mutuality, exchange, and dialogue. I make the world what it is, the world makes me what I am. Examples could easily be multiplied: it is only in light of the past that the present is the present. And it is only in light of the present that the future is the future. Each aspect of time makes the other two aspects what they are, and each is made what it is by the other two aspects of time.

This structure- mutuality, dialogue, interplay, and relation – lies near the heart of what it means for anything to exist. And yet, for the simple monotheist, it is relation which is precisely what does not exist prior to the creation of the world. God, being God, is only One, and lacks another subject with whom He is related. This leads to the conclusion that God and cosmos mutually necessitate each other- and there were indeed many in the classical metaphysical tradition who took that path. But this path is, in the end, just as dead as naturalism. The change and flux and development which defines our world is exactly what cannot exist if it is in a mutually necessary relationship with God. For God’s existence is as necessary as that of numbers- He can no more not exist than can two equal three. And if God, being what He is, produces the creation as a necessary result, then the cosmos is equally necessary- and thus equally changeless. Perhaps one might counter that the existence of the cosmos is necessary but its particular qualities fluctuate. This simply will not do- necessity is not something which can merely be predicated of a thing without reason. If the cosmos is necessary, it is only because qualities internal to the definition of “cosmos” render its existence intrinsically necessary. Any contingent quality is as good, philosophically speaking, as a contingent cosmos.

This question- that of the relationship of One to Many, of unity to plenitude, of identity to diversity- has been the subject of philosophical reflection at least since the period of classical antiquity. Conventional approaches can usually be classified as reductionist or nominalist. Reductionists emphasize the unity inherent in the world, interpreting distinctions in things as variant manifestations of what is really a single primordial element. This was a popular approach among the pre-Socratics, though different philosophers argued for different “primordial elements”- some thought all things were ultimately a variation on fire, others thought all things were reducible to water, and so on. The other approach, that of nominalism, tends to emphasize distinction and diversity as the ultimate principle of being. In this approach, different things are different from each other on an ultimate level, without being qualified by an underlying unity. If one sees two yellow flowers, the nominalist would argue that there is no single quality known as “yellowness” really manifest in two different flowers. Instead, the two objects are irreducibly different in each of their particulars. The yellowness of one is utterly different than the yellowness of the other.

It is not my intention to explore the history of this question in great detail, and the positions I have summarized above have been articulated with far more precision and subtlety than can be done justice to in a few paragraphs. My intent is rather to call your attention to the existence of the question. Surely, a cogent interpretation of the world demands that we do justice both to unity and distinction without abandoning either. And if it is true, as argued above, that God is the ultimate source and ground of all being, all creatures having their source in ideas in the divine Intellect, then the one and the many must have some basis in the life of God Himself.

This is the philosophical backdrop for the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Far from reflecting the incoherence and triviality that some think characteristic of theology (i.e. “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin”), the theology of the Trinity turns out to have deep relevance to the most ancient metaphysical conundrums and ubiquitous features of the world and daily existence.

[1] How do we distinguish a creature with these capacities from one without them? How do we know, in other words, that this isn’t true for a bumblebee or rosebush? Well, there are two answers. First, the capacity to apprehend qualities in themselves and not merely particular things having those qualities is expressed in complex language. Take the word “blue.” The formation of the linguistic sign (or token) is made out of four letters in the English alphabet, one syllable when said aloud. But this is not at all the same thing as giving the meaning of the word. There is a quality, visual sensation which we experience when looking at the sky on a cloudless day or on certain sorts of flowers- and it is that quality which is the meaning of the word. The word itself is a symbol pointing to that which is symbolized, and the capacity to make that distinction between the nature of the word’s formation and the actual meaning of the word constitutes the essential character of rationality and language . Language separates the rational and the irrational because it requires on the part of both speaker and hearer a capacity to see the universal concepts being pointed to by the form of a word. If I write the same word twice on a piece of paper, those two instances are in one sense utterly different from each other: they are separated in space, they were written at different moments in time, and the material which makes up the physical markings is not the same. If all we knew were particulars and not universals, there would be no way that one could begin to understand the reality that two instances of one symbol point towards an identical concept.

 But there’s a second aspect to this answer. Perhaps, one might argue, the bumblebee and rosebush do have this very linguistic and communicative capacity, but the mode in which it is realized is so profoundly different than ours that we do not recognize it as such. Even if this is not likely, I confess that it is possible. What are we left with? Well, since we are dealing with the claim of a likeness between the God of the philosophers and the rational, speaking creature, it is important to notice the kind of likeness that it is. The likeness is precisely the capacity to be communicative, to engage in mutual understanding through the contemplation of identical forms. And so even if we hold that all creatures embody a kind of rational will and capacity to reason, this would lead us all the more to expect a divine initiative in facilitating the dialogue which, after all, is the purpose of communication. It would merely be that the audience of prophetic revelation would include, in its own way, the bumblebee and rosebush. In the end, then I think we find ourselves in the same place.

[2] Some might think that this is sleight of hand- surely it’s not sensible to lump Christianity, Judaism, and Islam together in this context when the very same author is about to insist that Christianity alone provides the proper description of divine realities. Here is why I disagree- countless naturalists speak as if they hold about Christianity only what the Christian holds about other religious traditions. That is, the Christian holds that all religious traditions besides his own are without rational grounds, and the naturalist merely adds the Christian tradition to the list of those without basis. This is a profound mis-statement of the actual point of contrast. The Christian does not hold that Islam and Judaism are without basis in the way the naturalist means.

 Both Judaism and Islam exist because of their concrete, historical relationship to what orthodox Christians believe is an authentic and historical revelation of the one true God. The Jewish tradition would not exist were it not for God’s call of Abraham, His revelation on Sinai, and His prophetic messengers. Islam would never have existed without all of these events and the ministry of the historical Jesus of Nazareth. In different ways, Islam and Judaism have transmitted certain misinterpretations of these revelations. But if we are speaking of how to explain the religious landscape, the naturalist and Christian share almost nothing in common. For the naturalist, the Abrahamic traditions are the result of chance historical circumstances and human self-delusion. For the Christian, the Abrahamic traditions are the result of a lengthy sequence of self-disclosures by the true God- to which was added on the tail end certain traditions of misinterpretation and/or rejection.

 I hasten to add that this is also true by a different historical medium for the non-Abrahamic traditions. Even the crudest paganism cannot be explained except with reference to circumstances involving the activity of God, and it is a rare thing indeed to discover some tribe who has no trace of belief in One being, standing above the other divinities of the celestial commonwealth, set apart by its unique sovereignty and principal or sole role in creating the world. Indeed, the belief in a Creator God set apart sui generis from all other beings called “gods” is a very common feature of religious traditions all over the world, and such is the expectation on a Christian description of Reality where the forefathers of the entire human race had commerce with the God of Heaven. See Winfried Corduan, In the Beginning God, Concepts of God in Africa etc. 

[3] As we discussed above, a thing which has to exist cannot change- or else the qualities making it what it is are passing in and out of existence, intensifying or fading, and so on.

[libertariantaoist]

Vietnam should remind conservatives that whenever you put your faith in big government for any reason, sooner or later you wind up an apologist for mass murder.

The revolution occurs when the victims cease to cooperate.

It is curious to note that when for reasons of conscience, people refuse to kill, they are often exempted from active military duty. But there are no exemptions for people who, for reasons of conscience, refuse to financially support the bureaucracy that actually does the killing. Apparently, the state takes money more seriously than life.

In a laissez-faire society, there could exist no public institution with the power to forcefully protect people from themselves. From other people (criminals), yes. From one's own self, no.

Laissez-faire capitalism, or anarchocapitalism, is simply the economic form of the libertarian ethic. Laissez-faire capitalism encompasses the notion that men should exchange goods and services, without regulation, solely on the basis of value for value. It recognizes charity and communal enterprises as voluntary versions of this same ethic. Such a system would be straight barter, except for the widely felt need for a division of labor in which men, voluntarily, accept value tokens such as cash and credit. Economically, this system is anarchy, and proudly so.

It is flawed by one thing: the abstraction of patriotism. People who will damn the government from morning till night, and oppose the State in a million and one ways will, at a time of national crisis, become incredibly patriotic, and begin to say they will do anything for the State. And they begin to talk of duty, service, sacrifice … all of the words that are the worst words in the world, it seems to me, in a human sense. … I don’t know why this is, unless it is that these are such good-hearted people that they really believe that the American state is totally different from any other state—and it’s certainly somewhat different. And they feel that it is important to preserve—they feel they’re preserving the country, but the only language that’s available is, to preserve the State. I have an idea that one of these days, there will be another language, in which we can talk about preserving the country—the landscape, the neighborhoods, the people, the communities—without talking about preserving the State. At which point there will be a lot of radical farmers, factory workers, and small-town residents in this country.

I loved education, which is why I spent as little time as possible in school.

Libertarianism is rejected by the modern left - which preaches individualism but practices collectivism. Capitalism is rejected by the modern right-which preaches enterprise but practices protectionism.

We do not want to lead or be led. We want to be free.

No person is so grand or wise or perfect as to be the master of another person. Teacher, perhaps. Setter of good example, perhaps. Genius, perhaps. But master, no.

We have the illusion of freedom only because so few ever try to exercise it. Try it sometime. Try to save your home from the highway crowd, or to work a trade without the approval of the goons, or to open a little business without a permit, or to grow a crop without a quota, or to educate your child the way you want to, or to not have a child. We all have the freedom of a balloon floating in a pin factory.

My own interest is the responsibility of people to be responsible for their own lives and, with their neighbors, for their public space and actions. To sing their own songs. To make their own inventions..To build and not just to envy. To light that candle which is so much better than cursing the darkness. To be as much as the human condition can sustain, rather than being only what a system can allow.

The Declaration of Independence is so lucid were afraid of it today. It scares the hell out of every modern bureaucrat, because it tells them there comes a time when we must stop taking orders.

For loving, working, and creative people to throw off the yoke of power it is necessary to abolish power itself, not merely to make the yoke comfortable. Where some have power, others do not, and the two classes persist. A free society is where all have power-power over and responsibility for their own lives, power and reason to respect the lives of others. This is also a society without classes, a society of human beings, not rulers and the ruled.

Liberty, finally, is not a box into which people are to be forced. Liberty is a space in which people may live. It does not tell you how they will live. It says, eternally, only that we can.

Everybody knows that the federal government promises a lot and delivers damn little, and pays for most of what it does deliver out of the earnings of individuals rather than the profits of great corporations.

All who love liberty are enemies of the state.

To survive, the people in neighborhoods are going to have to secede.

I am in total opposition to any institutional power. I favor a world of neighborhoods in which all social organization is voluntary and the ways of life are established in small, consenting groups. These groups could cooperate with other groups as they saw fit. But all cooperation would be on a voluntary basis. As the French anarchist Proudhon said. “Liberty [is] not the daughter but the Mother of Order".

Government programs aim at getting money for poor people. Our hope was that knowledge would in the long run be more useful, provide more money, and eventually strike at the system-causes of poverty. Government believes that poverty is just a lack of money. We felt, and continue to feel, that poverty is actually a lack of skill, and a lack of the self-esteem that comes with being able to take some part of one's life into one's own hands and work with others towards shared - call them social - goals.

The most revolutionary thing you can do is get to know your neighbors.

They [anarchists] spring from a single seed, no matter the flowering of their ideas. The seed is liberty. And that is all it is. It is not a socialist seed. It is not a capitalist seed. It is not a mystical seed. It is not a determinist seed. It is simply a statement. We can be free. After that it’s all choice and chance.

There is no better way to return the matter of taxation to full public discusssion than to repeal the withholding taxes on wages and salaries. Only when the American people are confronted with the enormous excesses of government in a personal and direct way - by an annual bill for services rendered - will they be able to make an informed judgment about which services they want and which ones they can do without.

Libertarianism is rejected by the modern left - which preaches individualism but practices collectivism. Capitalism is rejected by the modern right - which preaches enterprise but practices protectionism. The libertarian faith in the mind of man is rejected by religionists who have faith only in the sins of man. . . . The libertarian insistence that each man is a sovereign land of liberty, with his primary allegiance to himself, is rejected by patriots who sing of freedom but also shout of banners and boundaries.

What I have learned about corporate capitalism, roughly, is that it is an act of theft, by and large, through which a very few live very high off the work, invention, and creativity of very many others. It is the Grand Larceny of our particular time in history, the Grand Larceny in which a future of freedom which could have followed the collapse of feudalism was stolen from under our noses by a new bunch of bosses doing the same old things.

The fundamental question of politics has always been whether there should be politics.

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[jungwoohoos]

at the end of the day

pairing: prince! namjoon x warrior! reader

genre: royal au, angst, little bit of smut (more like steam)

word count: 4.5k

warnings: mentions of war and death, pregnancy, mild politics

prince! namjoon has always been your unlikely confidant, but on the eve of the biggest battle you’ve ever had to fight, you wonder if he’s more than that

note: this is the longest thing i’ve ever written, and i feel like i’m sending my baby to kindergarten. i tried to keep the timeline historically accurate, but some things are a little jumbled. thank you to my best friend for editing this, and hope you like it!!

“Is everything okay?”

Yunho had been silent the whole training session, lips pulled tight and eyes hard, his face only breaking to push out a breath when your sword pressed against the cushion of his chest protector. What otherwise would have been met with a riled complaint—“Oh come on, you know I only gave you the opening because you gave Baram an extra carrot this morning”—was instead a quick bow and the kick of dust from his feet as he headed toward the pavilion.

His back was to you when you walked in,  and the soft rain of grit onto sword was the only indication that he was present. You unlaced the chest protector and hung it on a hook before making your way to the stone bath, settling next to him. The sprinkling of sand and the soft clang of metal were the only sounds to fill the room before you had asked the question.

He continued sharpening, hands insistent on the blade, but you saw his lips purse. So he heard. 

Swish. Swish.

He made no move of responding, so you laid your sword down and turned to face him.

“If this is about Minji, I know,” you said softly. You had gotten more intimate with the princess over the past few months, what with your training with Yunho and your shared love of the gardens. She was strong and witty, you came to discover, swift to deliver a teasing remark and even faster to lend a hand. You had only ever seen her as such, but you were also aware of the looming presence of Jaebeom, the youngest member of the advising counsel. Though the grounds were large, gossip was a skilled traveler. You would be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn’t stumbled upon his brash proposals of marriage, whether it be directly from his arrogant mouth or from others’. A fool could see that Jaebeom desired nothing less than nominal power, the chance to run his fingers over the cold gold of the throne. But as the son of the head of the Hwabaek, nepotism led him far, and his advances were hastily pointing to an engagement.

So though the princess hadn’t divulged the information herself, you found yourself acting as if she had. Though her words were just as amiable, her smile just as bright, she would be quiet, possibly mistaken for pensive, when she let her mind wander to those thoughts. Sometimes her mouth would turn down when she was admiring the peonies, and you would make sure to inhale the sweetness of the flower and with a sigh, mention how much the scent reminded you of Chulsoo, her youngest brother, after training. She would laugh, retell a story of his nearly fatal smell, and bring you to the hibiscuses. The squeeze of your hand at the end of your walks served as a silent token of gratitude for your company.

“We don’t have to talk about it. I can’t imagine how you feel because I’m upset,” you continued. “All of this,” you frowned at the glint of metal in your hand, “it shouldn’t have to happen. It isn’t right.” You wondered if the weeks to come would only be whistles of errant swords and screams of dying men.

“I spoke to Namjoon yesterday, and Hwabaek hasn’t made an official decision yet, so there’s still a chance. What with the diplomat here, I’m not sure if it will be the decision we want,” you falter, voice trailing. “But if we must go, you know Minji is safe within the walls. Namjoon and Chulsoo won’t let anything pass them, and you know how much her handmaiden loves her. She’ll probably poke someone’s eye out with a chopstick if they so much as pull on Minji’s hair too hard.”

The corner of his mouth quirks at the thought, but his eyes remain on the sword in front of him.

You turn back to do the same, letting your attention wander elsewhere as to give Yunho some space.

“10 days walking, maybe 4 days in the valley, 10, 11 days back. We’ll be back before the melons get too ripe. Less than a month away, which you know isn’t enough time for Jaebeom, even with his brainless haste, so if you’re worri--”

“She’s pregnant.” 

The words are soft enough that you have to strain your ears. His gaze hasn’t moved from in front of him, but his hands have stopped moving, now clenched hard enough on the side of the tub that the color begins leaving his knuckles.

You free your hands and rest one on his arm. The tension in his body is obvious, and the arm underneath your palm flexes at your touch.

“She’s what?” You hope your voice isn’t wavering because your limbs are suddenly limp.

Yunho brings a hand up to his nose and hurriedly wipes at it. “She’s pregnant, maybe 12 weeks along. In a month, she’ll be showing, and I,” he pauses, a breath rattling through him, “if I don’t come back, I can’t let her go through that alone.

“What kind of father would I be, what kind of hu—.” He doesn’t let himself finish, and you know he can’t bring himself to say what he can never be.

He’s looking at you now, jaw tense and eyes hard. One tear’s beading down his cheek, threatening the well in your own eyes.

“I can’t go. For Minji and for our child, I can’t go, I won’t. But for duty,” he grits, and you watch as another tear falls, “for my kingdom, for my people, and for my child’s future, I have to.”

He leaves, the only sound from him the clash of the sword against the rack and the slam of the door, leaving you in the dark quiet of the room, wondering how you can convince the Hwabaek to let your men stay. The tears blurring your vision made it difficult to see, but you were able to feel the cool metal of the doorknob. You placed the practice sword in an empty slot on the wall and ran toward Namjoon’s office.

The guards in front of Najmoon’s office informed you that it was empty. He had been out since 8 that morning, and hasn’t returned since. Hwabaek meetings never lasted less than the whole day, meeting when only the servants were up and adjourning long after the oil lanterns had to be lit. It was barely sunset, the light washing over the central courtyard, so you had at least several hours before you would be able to see him. The center was bustling in preparation for the harvest festival that night. Servants balancing trays of multi-colored food and tying white banners with well-wishes written on them, sights that made you frown and turn your head.

Your bouncing leg was revealing your anxiety, so you will yourself to calm down. You had too much time for you to let the thrumming in your body take over, and you needed to be able to gather your thoughts.

Silla was falling. The thought of your kingdom, your home, at the end of its era made your heart and mind heavy. It was by no means a sudden revelation; the past few decades had been marked with failed battles, one too many famines that left the doctors weary from carrying bodies, and a waning sense of pride. Nearly 800 years of culture and beauty, stripped nearly bare by the Goguryeo kingdom of the north. The exchange came slowly. First, the riders pushing too close to the border, stating their search for a convict when they were met with arrow tips in their faces. A couple years later, the invasion of the perimeter. Pillaging and devastating the farming villages that produced the majority of the livestock and crops for the kingdom. Your grandfather told you stories of when your father was still young and optimistic, how he had seen the fires and smelled the rotting flesh, and came home, remaining silent throughout the two day trip. He transferred to the royal guard soon after and never spoke of what happened outside the palace walls.

There was internal turmoil too—corruption, fraud, negligence—you knew that. It was impossible to turn a blind eye while a member of Hwabaek, the most prestigious advising counsel to the king, openly rutted himself against the princess’s credentials in hopes of landing a title. These were bad men, men who thought rarely of others and only of themselves. It was their misguidance that led Silla to the state it’s in now, and you feel nothing but rage, rage that they failed to protect their people and rage that they continue to look at their riches instead of the crumbling kingdom.

But there were also just men, ones who spoke up and were unafraid to point fingers. Though only a prince, Namjoon had assumed all the roles the sick king was unable to perform. You’ve always butted heads with Namjoon, over who would get the last rice cake when you were kids and then which villages would be most fit for a tenant system as adults. He was too diplomatic, you too impulsive.  You could never mask your emotions while he was groomed to speak coolly, calmly. There were few things you could agree on, but you knew of the good in his heart which, regardless of how much you disagreed, made you trust him and his judgment.

The day had grown dark by the time you made it back to the courtyard. Glowing with the light of three hundred lanterns, the courtyard’s bathed in a soft light that makes you ache. Every type of rice cake and dessert was piled high on plates, nearly the height of the doorway. Noodles, meats, fruits, whatever the kitchens could make were on display, flanking the space in the middle that was packed with people. Villagers wearing their best clothing, their nails scrubbed clean of dirt. Children weaving in and out of legs to catch fireflies in translucent pots. The dizzying twirl of bodies and ribbons to the beat of drums, which you could feel in the tips of your fingers and toes. It was all too much. The lights, the laughing, the food. Too much for the next month of cold grass and hoarse screaming you will most likely have to endure.

Your feet carry you to the outskirts of the center, up the few steps until you’re resting against a pole. You’ve never been good with crowds, funnily enough, and the reality of tomorrow makes it even harder to stomach the joy.

I have to find Namjoon, you remind yourself. But in a few minutes. Eyes closed and arms wrapped around the beam, you allow yourself a few deep breaths. Five seconds in, two seconds out, eight times. Namjoon had taught you that the night before your first ride.

It had been nothing more than a rebellion taming, something that died down the moment the royal seal was seen. Some villagers in Gyeongju had threatened to throw a royal representative into a river if the price of the fish wasn’t lowered. The rebellion never went further than insults and one tomato being thrown, but you were summoned to lead a small pack to diffuse it.

You had started inviting yourself into Namjoon’s chambers at that point. Your ladies knew by the braid still intact on your head at the end of each night that nothing interesting was happening; his guards knew you only ever talked until the early mornings. 

The night before your first task, you had your first attack. You had mistaken it for a headache at the beginning, the symptoms typical of one—temples pounding and vision blurring. The day had been long, hours of training in the sweltering heat and a ceremonial welcoming for a visiting scholar. You blamed the busy schedule and little water you had been able to drink, until your heart began to patter too quickly. Breaths came out too short and fast, and your racing heart seemed to push on, a type of pain more than physical.

Warmth was around you within a second, firm hands framing your face. You could only see the outline of Namjoon’s lips, every other feature too indistinct to focus on. His lips were moving, but it wasn’t until several moments had passed that you realized he was speaking.

“Breathe, breathe,” he whispered, doing with his own mouth what he wanted you to do. His thumbs soothed soft circles into your cheeks, but he was intent in his grip, not letting you go until your exhales were regular.

You dreamt about his hands and his lips that night, but scrubbed the images away the moment your armor weighed heavy on your skin. There was no reason to dwell on an obligatory touch. He had said on multiple occasions after you had come from the infirmary with bandages that he didn’t want your blood dripping onto his bamboo mat. The night before was simply in the best interest of his mat. And you had no reason to look at him in such a way. You had never before, never felt the small stone of nerves in your stomach your ladies often chattered about. The next time you saw him, he didn’t mention it and neither did you, but you couldn’t help but glance at his hands holding the pen.

It became an unspoken ritual. There was no lack of bickering and arguing, but the moments in which you could feel your breath quickening, his hands were on your face, soft words encouraging you to breathe.

So when you felt warmth around your back and a hand on your arm, you continue the exercise, trying to overcome the shakiness of your breath at the exhales. Your eyes are still shut—you knew you would be dizzy if you opened them too quickly—but you feel your arms being detangled from the pole. An arm secures itself around your waist, and the familiar smell of sandalwood and lavender envelops you. You follow the smell as your feet begin to move. It’s not until a small murmur for you to step up that you open your eyes.

The dim lighting is still a little too bright for you, but you’re shuffling forward anyway, still guided by Namjoon. He sits you down on the bed before taking a seat next to you. The heat from his thigh presses into yours.

“You okay?” he says softly, tucking a loose strand of hair behind your ear.

It takes all your willpower to resist chasing the warmth of his hand. “Yeah, that was a bad one. Must’ve been Mrs. Yun’s fish.” You give a half-hearted chuckle.

He frowns, ignoring your teasing comment, and runs the pads of his fingers gently down your cheeks. There’s nothing but silence and his roaming touch, and you squirm in your spot, the attention flustering you.

 “Do we have to go to the valley?”

You hate how small your voice sounds, as if you’re 16 and shaking before your first ride. Daughter of the head of the royal guard, the only female general in the kingdom, head trainer, and the consequences of war still turned your skin to gooseflesh.

He drops his hand from your face at the question, and you strangely miss the feeling of his skin against yours. You sit quietly, waiting for his answer.

The hand that was touching your face rakes through his hair. He releases a breath, and in the lighting, you can see the dark circles underneath his eyes. It’s been plaguing him too.

“You know we don’t have a choice.” His voice is tired.

“That’s not true,” you said, shifting to cross your legs. “There’s always a choice. We can negotiate with Baekje, obtain some land, push our line west, get fresh land for crops.”

Namjoon shakes his head. “The diplomat wouldn’t negotiate with us until we agreed to send soldiers. Bold of him since their soldiers are the ones who need help.” He gives a little snort and rubs his forehead with thumbs. “But he knows how desperate we are for land. They offered half of the valley and connecting ports.”

Your back straightens at his words. “Half?” 

His mouth quirks at your tone. “Half. That’s 30,000 pyeongs of the most fertile land. And access to ports to and from China along the Han from January to June.”

A pause and a quiet exhale. “It’s the best option that we have.”

“What about the soldiers?”

He meets your eyes then, and you have to shut yours to keep from wavering.

“The diplomat got news this morning saying that 10,000 are dead. Only about 2,000 on the Goguryeo side.” He sees you bite your bottom lip to stop it trembling. “The casualties are so high, we have to make the sacrifice. Hwabaek decided 20,000.”

Your breath catches in your throat. 20,000 men, nearly 80% of the soldiers. A number that large hasn’t been deployed since the beginnings of the kingdom. Only the royal guard and some soldiers patrolling neighboring areas will be left to maintain order, which means. Yunho.

“Park Yunho. Let him stay.” You bite your tongue, deliberating how to continue. Namjoon might not even know Yunho, nonetheless know he’s the father of Minji’s baby. He speaks before you can give an explanation.

“Tall guy, scar down his nose, right?” He’s picking at a pill of lint on the end of his sleeve. “I already gave him a leave of absence.”

Your elbows give way, and your upper body nearly collapses into the bed. Scrambling up to your knees, you look at Namjoon in disbelief.

“You what?” 

He’s still pulling at his shirt, head tilted to the side so you can only see his profile. You swat at his hand and take his chin to face him forward.

You notice he’s smiling. It’s the smile that he gives to the cook’s child when he asks Namjoon for help with writing his name, the one that touches every part of his face. You tamp down the urge to thumb at his dimple and instead flick it, willing him to talk.

“I was able to convince the scribe to write a letter of absence for him. Said something about Minji demanding a riding teacher, even though she hasn’t ridden a horse since she fell into the dung pile 10 years ago.” The corner of his eyes crinkled at the memory. “The scribe kept getting mochi powder over the writing, so I couldn’t see exactly what he wrote, but I’m guessing it was good enough. Whether Yunho takes it is something else entirely, but we’ll let Minji deal with that.”

Sitting back on your feet, you let out the breath you’ve been holding. Yunho was dedicated and proud, putting his duty first, but he at least had official leave. He could stay.

“Wait,” you say, bringing your attention back to Namjoon. “So you know?”

He finally laughs, a sound that you haven’t heard in a long time.

“You really think I lived with Minji for 24 years and didn’t know she was pregnant? She almost gagged when she saw we were having bean stew for dinner last week. She practically hoards bean stew in the pottery in her room so she can eat it at night. Finding out it was Park Yunho wasn’t too difficult. I found her hanging around the pavilion, which she never does because she complains about the smell, and I saw him sneaking into her room a couple times. She was giggling so damn much, I’m surprised the whole wing didn’t wake up.”

The thought of Yunho tiptoeing around guards made you smile. He was all brute force and no grace, but for the princess, he made sure to tread lightly on his feet.

“Are you...okay with it?”

It was a question that held far more than its words, demanded more than answering if he accepted his sister being pregnant outside of marriage. Did he accept that his sister, the princess, was pregnant with a common soldier’s baby? Did he accept the future of interconnected social classes? As a future king, would he allow society to trend toward that?

He shrugged, looking far less concerned than any other nobleman would have in the situation.

“He seems like a good man. You’ve mentioned him in the past, now that I think about it. He’s a soldier, so he has honor, dedication, drive. And,” he pauses, eyes trained on you. “He makes Minji the happiest I’ve ever seen her, well except now, when she can’t stand the thought of bean stew.”

You sigh, your heart full at the thought of a babbling baby, running in the shade of the peonies with a wooden sword.

“He’ll take care of her. You know he will.” But as you speak, eyes locked with Namjoon’s, you can’t help but think that your words aren’t about them.

He doesn’t speak, so you’re left in quiet. It’s strangely calming, the feeling of not being compelled to talk to break up the silence. That’s always how it is with Namjoon though. He made you comfortable.

A few more beats pass before he speaks.

“Don’t go.” 

It was a murmur, lighter than a hummingbird’s kiss, but it rushed through your ears as loud as ocean waves. He didn’t have to say it, but you knew. You knew because your fingers pulled toward the bump of his knee, landing softly on fabric.

A hand covered yours, and the warmth that you’ve become so attuned to blossomed up your arm and throughout your body, making your eyes prickle.

“You know I have to,” you can’t help the shake of your voice. 

He gives a sad smile, turning your hand over so that the palm was facing up. A finger traces lightly over the love line, and the tickle makes you close your hand around his finger.

“Yeah, I know. I’ve had some experience with stubborn warriors,” he says. The thumb of his other hand traces your bottom lip. It quivers under his touch.

“I’m usually good with words,” he snorts, a sound that turns into an uneven breath when he feels the scrape of your teeth on his thumb.

“I—Can I show you instead?”

He waits, body still except for his breaths. He’s waiting for your answer, your okay, because no matter how much you argue, he wants your comfort, your happiness. All the times he’s held you, retaught you how to breathe, let you speak your mind even though you were speaking from emotion rather than logic. The realization is nearly as dizzying as his scent slowly wrapping around you, and you can feel your head spinning.

Him. You had to find him. 

You’re met with soft eyes, a world of understanding behind them, and all you can do is nod before you’re reaching for his face.

The kiss is wet and salty from your tears, but your heart is light. His lips are gentle, encouraging you to push against him, fit yourself into where you belong. You adjust yourself until you’re settled in his lap, the heat of him against you pulling a quiet moan from your lips.

He takes the break in your breath to lick down your neck, sucking at the juncture of your neck and shoulder. A sigh bubbles out, but you can’t distinguish whose. Your small sounds mix with his muffled breaths, and you can’t imagine what it’ll be like when you can hear him unhindered.

A particularly sensitive spot has you mewling and rubbing your center down against his, earning a groan that falls so sweet against your ears. You grind again, gasping when you feel him push up against you. He’s hard and insistent, and his hands on your waist keep you pressed down onto him so you can’t do anything but roll your hips in hopes of relieving the tension building up in you.

You cup his face to bring it to yours, connecting your lips once again. The pants and sighs feel better against his lips somehow, and the puff of air you feel when you push your fingers into his hair elicits a moan from you.

“Show me,” you mumble into his lips, knowing that he would keep you against him like this until the morning unless you said something.

“As you wish,” he answers, an arm wrapping around you and laying you back until you feel the cushion underneath your head. Body cushioned by the silk of the red sheets and Namjoon’s hands untying your shirt, you can’t help but feel like a queen.

The kisses along your hairline make your eyelids flutter, the delicious ache between your legs a reminder of why you’re so close to falling asleep.

You’re curled around him, legs intertwined with his. The bare feeling of him against you settling warm in your stomach. You were drawing circles by his ribs until his complaints of tickling became too loud in your ear, so you settled your hand on his chest, which is where it lay now, sitting against his heartbeat.

You tilted your head up when you felt the ghosting of his lips leave your skin. He leaned down to place a kiss on the tip of your nose. You smile into it, scooching up to do the same to him. He scrunches his nose when your lips touch him.

You look at each other, eyes roaming over each others’ faces. You didn’t want to admit it, but you were memorizing his face. That dimple in his right cheek. The full lips. The strong brow.

He opens his mouth, but closes it soon after.

“You know what I want to say, don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” you answer, and you do. You could feel it through him.

“Seems wrong though, like it’s not enough,” you say.

He hums in agreement. “For once, I agree.”

Your finger pokes into his side, earning you a laugh. The rumble through his body into yours makes you hug him tighter. 

“That means you have to come back to me.”

You lift your head up from his arm to look at him. There’s a wet trail inching by the corner of his mouth, and you distract yourself with wiping it so you can’t see his eyes.

The fresh path that forms after your thumb swipes the tears make you quake, but you tell yourself to be strong. After what Namjoon has done for you, the least you can do is give him a fraction of the peace he created within you.

“Of course,” you murmur into his lips.

“You know I’ll always come back to you at the end of the day.”

[nai-has-jams]

Day 33; No Sleep

Structures. What are they for? Population control? Self-identification?

Most feel more comfortable with the latter explanation. It gives them a sense of control. 

The common man has no control when they see the very structures they’ve grown so accustomed and have abided by are not their own choice. Time allowed the lines of free will to be blurred. Am I drinking this tea because I’m thirsty or someone told me to? Who told me to? Was it me or someone else? How could I know I’m not being watched by someone I can’t see the very same way I do on a television. Watching a character, who’s been given lines of what to say from the minute they were born out of the creativity of someone else’s mind. The character itself was born into a structure. Everything for that character was decided for them; the setting, plot, their dreams, goals and desires. From start to finish, the character has already gotten a fate that’s been decided. In the creative medium, that character thinks all its choices are freewill… not knowing they’re actually a script. When you look at film and media from the lenses of blurred reality, it opens the door for comparisons to our own real life experiences.

From the day you are born, you are given a series of labels, followed by structures you will have to grow to mold yourself in. From day one, you are told your name, that you must live up to the actions of those bearing the same name, and fixated to a cult of family known as a bloodline and further fixated into a religion or lack thereof. You are decided to be poor, or rich. If you’re on the inside or outside of the socio-economic barriers called class. You’re given choices to make with consequences, whether they be dire or not. You grow to find people are easily manipulated, that you can commit acts of dishonesty and they’re none-the-wiser without proof other than your hearsay. It becomes easy to you. You’ve learned how certain people think. You are able to predict how they react in certain scenarios and then begin to craft scenarios for your benefit, hoping to get their reaction to go according to your plan. You’ve now eliminated them of freewill. They think their choices are their own. On a smaller scale, this type of manipulation is harmless. ‘A little white lie’. But on a gargantuan scale, this small like can grow from harmless to devastating. 

Unbeknownst to them that you have been feeding them the very information they believed to have come up with on their own. You allow them to feel that sense of power while simultaneously stripping them of it. You are in control of what they say or do because you have an understanding of structure. How it’s not real. It’s only information you’ve been feeding them and they’re expected to conform because that goes with your plan. You’ve used the very structures that were given to you to keep you in line to keep the ones who’ve structured you in line. Act accordingly while simultaneously observing their nature. If I am dishonest about this and i am not caught, I have outsmarted the system because now, only I know the truth. Have you ever noticed what happens when you hide the truth from someone? They’re blissful until that truth has been unveiled. If you can keep the veil on, there is no other truth to their knowledge. 

Maintaining that hidden truth proves difficult to do amongst a small group of people. They begin to talk and find inconsistencies with one another due to perspective. One’s own perspective influences their interpretation of the truth. Perspective allows for a system of belief. In other words. “I’ve seen this with my own two eyes, it must be true.” But if they’ve been seeing an illusion for most of their lives, they’ve attached themselves to their beliefs rather than their rationality. They become  synonymous with the truth they’ve been fed. Reminding the control of this only reinforces the strength of the veil. Any moment they began to question if the information they’ve been fed is the only truth has been erased because they’re now self-righteous and belief oriented. Humans are very stubborn beings. Once their belief is challenged, they will do anything to convince others of their correctness. Why? The short answer is fear.

Fear of what would happen if they were wrong. That means having to confront a truth they’ve spent so long in the dark about. Not knowing what's on the other side of that truth they’ve been fed. To question one believe opens another door to question everything you’ve been told and have taken as fact. It destroys all your structures. What’s real and what’s not real? You come into this world belonging to someone or something. A structure has been made for you when you are born. 

As I’ve grown older, the lines between fiction and reality become harder and harder to see. I notice the patterns in nearly everything. I try to ignore them and stay blissfully ignorant, but there’s no denying that some things are just… weird.

Some phrases repeated a few too many times, some shapes look a bit too familiar. Deja-vu over and over. I know I've been here before. Have i visited it in a dream? Have I been here in a different timeline and my consciousness is being shared with someone else? Is it narcissistic to think that said consciousness is an alternate version of me? What if it’s a completely different person born to a completely different structure and we synced because of our position under the stars or some bullshit like that. I could never be sure without allowing myself to give up this reality and explore endless possibilities and theories.

It started after I was addicted to playing games that allowed me to be fully in control.Prime example; Sims 4 I was the god in their world. I birthed these characters. Decided what I wanted them to look like, how I wanted them to act how I wanted them to be. Decided personality traits, where they would live, what kind of job they would have. How much money they’d make. Everything they ever did, I was in control of. I told them when to shit, when to eat, when to fuck. Everything. That kind of power allowed me to step outside of being myself and to be someone else. God. I didn’t understand why that felt so freeing. It wasn't until I began to question my own sanity outside the game. What if I don't actually want to play this game? What if I’m the actual Sim thinking i’ve got free will and someone else is controlling what I do or say? Then what? My power diminished. I was nothing more than a vessel. I’d never know unless I sought out the truth past the structures I've been given to live in.

Blurring those lines prove dangerous to me. I’m a black woman. A gay black woman.

These structures i’ve been confined within make it difficult to leave this vessel. They hold weight. I’m expected to live out past my structures. To make something great of myself despite the labels I've been given. These labels are “self empowered” we always hear about a struggle behind these labels. How hard it is to live within them because I live in a system designed not for my socio-economic benefit. An apologetic system that wants to allow a certain percentage of people from my sort of background to be the “token” of businesses. To demand they show a fair balance between me and that of my possibly Caucasian counterparts. Affirmative action-y type of thing. It’s not winning if it’s handed to you, right? But everything has been handed to me. And I don’t mean that in a “my life is super silver-spooned” type way. I mean that in, these cards were not my dealings. I didn’t sit at this table to talk about why I am what I am. Who I am.

I was told this was my name, this was my class, this was my gender, this was my struggle, do something about it. 

It’s almost as is my life is one big test and I'm being monitored by someone i can’t see. Someone who constantly is scripting my movie, making changes to parts of my life. And flashbacks and deja-vu are scenes I've filmed already as this character that are part of the deleted scenes.

The only escape is through dreams. And even then, those contain a whole new take on what reality actually is. I’ve had recurring dreams littered with signs or allusions to my life outside of that realm. I’ve felt the most free in my dreams. I struggle to remember them when i wake up but i always seem to remember the point of them. How they’re messages or sometimes, often times, escapes. 

Then it hit me. I felt free when I was God in that game, not because of that sense of power. But because I could spend time not being binded to these structures that I live in everyday. I could spend time being someone else.

And that’s why writing in first person these stories about Korean performers was so liberating. I was writing as If i was really a Nam Joon or Ji Min. Exploring and observing their personalities on camera and alluding to what it would be like to reduce their existence to characters in a story where I could make them do what I wanted. Feed my own emotions into the piece at the time and make them react to real life situations I dealt with as themselves and instead of me. It fucks with you when you stop writing and you have to go back to being confined in your structures. But it fucks with you more when you work a 9-5 like a zombie knowing this is nothing but another structure where your creative outlet is being muted so you can make time to be someone you are not. 

But is that really any different than sitting at a computer for 7 hours concocting a tale of lust, angst and drama. Pretending to be someone you are not. I am the god in my stories. I am the god in my video games. I am not the god in my present day life. 

[morethankradio]

Something Awesome: Data Thief or Gift Recipient

Okay, we’ve seen more than a few attacks that can be performed when someone clicks a link or navigates to a website.

Cryptojacking

Cross Site Request Forgery

Drive-By Attacks

Zoom 0day

But it’s time to pay homage to the attack that’s hidden in plain site. 

tldr; head over to https://fingerprintme.herokuapp.com/ for some fun.

Passive Data Theft

I hesitate to call it theft when in fact we are giving all of this data to every website we visit like a little gift. 

Please, accept this bundle of quasi-identifiers as a token of my appreciation.

Many internet users have no idea just how much data is available to websites they are visiting, so it’s worth exploring just what is in our present.

IP Address and Geolocation API

Like any good gift giver, we better write on the tag. 

To: <website server> From: <your IP address>

Your IP (Internet Protocol) address is a little 32-bit (now possibly 128-bit) number that uniquely identifies your device on the Internet. This is by design; people need to be able to address you to be able to send you any packets. A static 1:1 mapping of devices to IPs is definitely a massive exaggeration today as as we use technologies to let multiple devices share one IP, dynamically acquire an IP for each session, and our ISPs (Internet Service Providers) may also dynamically assign our IP address.

Nonetheless, IP addresses have (again by design) another function; location addressing. This is because when you’re internet traffic is propagating through the Internet (a global network of routers) it needs to know where it physically needs to go, and fast. Owing to this, the internet has taken on a hierarchical structure, with different ISPs servicing different geographical regions. These ISPs are tiered such that lower tier ISPs service specific subsets of the upper level tier’s region, providing more geographical specificity. It is this property of IP addresses that allows anyone with your IP address to get a rough idea where you are in the world. Moreover, IP addresses from specific subnets like AARNet (for Australian Universities) can be a giveaway for your location.

Try Googling “my ip” or “where am i”. There are many IP to Geolocation API services available. I have made use of https://ipgeolocation.io/, which has a generous free tier 🙏.

User Agent

Every request your browser makes to a server is wrapped up with a nice little UserAgent String bow, that looks a little like this,

User-Agent: Mozilla/<version> (<system-information>) <platform> (<platform-details>) <extensions>

Oh how sweet 😊 it’s our Operating System, our browser and what versions we of each we are running, and if the server is lucky, perhaps a few extra details.

Here are a few examples from MDN:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:47.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/47.0

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X x.y; rv:42.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/42.0

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/51.0.2704.103 Safari/537.36

Why might this be a problem? Allow me to direct you towards my earlier post on Drive-By Attacks. Vulnerabilities are often present in specific versions of specific platforms. If an exploit server detects that your particular version of Chrome for Windows (for example) has a known vulnerability, well then prepare to be infected. 

Navigator

Okay, I think we’ve been polite enough, it’s time to rip this packaging open! Ooh what is this inside? It’s an invitation to our browser of course! 

When we send off a request to a web server complete with our IP and User Agent string, the web server will typically respond by sending us a web page to render. These days a web page can be anything from a single HTML file with a few verses from a dead poet, to a fully fledged JavaScript application. To support this development, browsers are exposing more and more functionality/system information through a special JavaScript interface called Navigator.

From MDN,

The Navigator interface represents the state and the identity of the user agent. It allows scripts to query it and to register themselves to carry on some activities.

...to carry on some activities... I wonder. The list of available properties and methods is pretty comprehensive so I’ll just point out a few interesting ones.

getBattery() (have only seen this on chrome)

connection (some details about your network connection)

hardwareConcurrency (for multithreading)

plugins (another important vector for Drive-Bys)

storage (persisted storage available to websites)

clipboard (requires permissions, goodness plz be careful)

doNotTrack (i wonder who checks this...)

vibrate() (because haptic is the only real feedback)

While I’ve got it in mind, here’s a wonderful browser localStorage vulnerability I stumbled across https://github.com/feross/filldisk.com. There’s a 10MB per site limit, but no browser is enforcing this quota across both a.something.com and b.something.com...

I have no idea why Chrome thinks it’s useful to expose your battery status to every website you visit... Personally, the clipboard API feels the most violating. It requires permissions, but once given you’re never asked again. Control/Command + V right now and see what’s on your clipboard. I doubt there’s many web pages that you’d actually want to be able to read your clipboard every time you visit.

Social Media Side Channel / CSRF

Okay, now we’re getting a little cheeky. It’s actually possible to determine if a browser has an authenticated session with a bunch of social media platforms and services.

It’s a well known vulnerability (have a laughcry at some of the socials responses), which abuses the redirect on login functionality we see on many of these platforms, as well as the Same-Origin Policy SOP being relaxed around HTML tags, as we saw was sometimes exploited by Cross Site Request Forgery attacks.

Consider this lovely image tag.

<img src="https://www.facebook.com/login.php?next=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Ffavicon.ico%3F_rdr%3Dp">

As you can see, the image source (at least originally) doesn’t point to an image at all, but rather the Facebook login page. Thanks to SOP, we wouldn’t and shouldn’t be able to send an AJAX request to this website and see the response. But this HTML image tag is going to fire off a GET request for it’s source no problem. 

Thanks to redirect on login, if a user rocks up to the login page with the correct session cookies then we won’t have them login again, but rather we redirect them to their newsfeed; or, as it turns out, whatever the URL parameter next points to. What if we point it to an actual image, say the website icon, such that the HTML image tag loads if we are redirected, and fails if not.

Simple but effective. You can try it for yourself here, by opening my codepen in your browser when you’re signed in to Facebook, and when you’re signed out (or just use Incognito).

Fingerprint Me v1.0

Okay, time for a demonstration. I took the liberty of writing my own web page that pulls all this data together, and rather than store it for a rainy day (like every other page on the web),  I present it to the user on a little web dashboard. It’s like a mirror for your browser. And who doesn’t like to check themselves out in the mirror from time to time 🙃

Random technical content: I had to fetch the geolocation data server-side to protect my API key from the client, then I sneak it back into the static HTML web page I’m serving to the user by setting it on the window variable in some inline script tags.

I bust out some React experience, and have something looking pretty (pretty scary I hope) in some nondescript amount of time (time knows no sink like frontend webdev). I rub my hands together grinning to myself, and send it off to some friends.

“Very scary”. I can see straight through the thin veil of their encouragement and instead read “Yeaaaah okay”. One of them admits that they actually missed the point when they first looked at it. But.. but... nevermind. It’s clearly not having the intended effect. These guys are pretty Internet savvy, but I feel like this should be disconcerting for even the most well seasoned web user... 

Like that moment you lock eyes with yourself in the mirror after forgetting to shave a few days in a row.

Fingerprint Me v2.0

An inspired moment follows. I trace it back to the week ?7 activity class on privacy:

It is very hard to make a case for privacy. What is the inherent value of privacy? Why shouldn’t the government have our data, we give it to a million services everyday anyway, and receive a wealth of benefits for it. Go on, have it. I wasn’t using it for anything anyway. 

It is very easy to make a case for privacy, if there is any sense that someone malicious is involved. As soon as there is someone who would wish us ill it becomes obvious that there are things that the less they know the better. 

<Enter great The Art of War quote here.>

~ Sun Tzu

Therein lies the solution. I need to make the user feel victimised. And what better to do it than a green on black terminal with someone that calls themselves a hacker rooting your machine.

DO CLICK THIS LINK (it’s very safe, I promise) https://fingerprintme.herokuapp.com

Some more random technical content: Programming this quite synchronous behaviour in the very async-centric JavaScript was quite a pain. It was particularly tricky to get around the fact that React renders it’s component hierarchy top down, so I needed the parent components to mount empty in order for them to be correctly populated with child components later. It was also a pain to access and render child components conditionally, especially if you want to have sets of child components in different files, as though they aren’t ultimately nested in the DOM, React will treat them as if they are.

Some User Reviews:

“It feels like I should shut the window”

“This is SO RUDE”

“Battery level. I mean. Literally. How.”

Excellent.

Recommendations

Know what’s in your present, and who you’re gifting it to 🎁

To protect your IP address/location consider using a VPN or ToR

Check out NoScript, a browser plugin that will block JavaScript by default, but allow you to enable it for trusted sites.

Check out and share https://fingerprintme.herokuapp.com 😉