#i have a 94 in the class right now

[wewontbesleeping]

ugh just finished my final exam and i'm already sick thinking about how much my grade is going to drop.

[abiwaif]

BREAKING: Straight A's Streak Continues

Fall semester 2024 is in the books and all my grades are back. In all my classes I either stayed even or improved my grades since midterms.

I know that those of you who have followed me for some time know that I went to college against the wishes of my overly dominating and legalistic mother. She told me that I would fail college. I was smart in High School so I had no reason to believe her. Thus far I have completed eight semesters and have straight A's. Yes, that is right, straight A's - a perfect 4.0. I do not say that to spite my mother. My mom has been nothing but a thorn in my side since I started. All I know is that it is nice to prove her wrong. I do not say that arrogantly. It just feels good to know I am not what she thinks I am (which includes such a choice moniker as "the Spawn of Satan").

One more semester to go for my B.S. and then continuing for my Masters and PhD (I am on track for a PhD but will determine whether or not to get it as I go).

Here are my final grades

Statistical Learning I (95% A - +1%)

Computational Physics (96% A - Even)

Partial Differential Equations I (96% A - +2%)

Soft Matter and Biological Physics (94% A- - +1%)

Mechanics (95% A - Even)

So I am smart and sassy and smol all rolled up into one tidy little package. Now I just want to be wild and engage in some unspeakable acts. 🤪

Thanks for all the encouragement from you my followers. I really do not know why you follow me, but I a grateful for you all and am glad you do!

[the-100-days-of-junkan]

Day 100

One hundred fuckin’ days. God. Actually happened. 

I spent 3/4ths of the year drawing more Junkan art than I think anyone else on the internet ever has. Which might be presumptuous of me, maybe i’m just looking in the wrong places y’know? I’m a solid second place bare minimum.

And like, that’s still pretty funny right? This whole event is something I’m gonna cherish forever, the memories, the art itself, the friends I made because of it. But like, c’mon. I drew 100 fucking pieces, learned new skills like digital painting, animation, all that shit, for a ship that I used to hate, and a ship that for the longest time I thought was gonna get me fuckin banished to the deepest depths of the internet just for drawing a poor sketch of them kissing. This ship has become more deeply entwined into who I am as a person that it’s passed up Tokomaru, the ship that literally made me realize I’m a woman.

It’s gotta be at least a little funny, right?

Ah but enough of that, I can talk more on that subject a bit later. For now I reckon I should focus on our art piece for today! Wouldn’t you agree?

Yeah it’s the Wedding. I’d say even before Day 60 I decided the final pic of the Project would be The Wedding, even before I decided to draw a comic of the proposal. Because like, c’mon, it’s basic but how the fuck else was I supposed to end of the project? With something that ISN’T a wedding????

And very shocking to hear after this entire project has gone by, but I did in fact scale back this pic massively. You wanna know what the original idea was?? 22 images, each one depicting different parts of the wedding and afterparty, including the kiss at the end. And the kiss at the end? I was gonna feature every character from the 3 main classes + Ruruka, Seiko, and Yasuke. Fucking why??? Because Excess is all I know people ITS ALL I KNOW.

However I had decided that I wanted this project finished and ready before October, because I wanted to do the Vampire Fic to coincide with Day 30. And again, say it with me here, “Jem was severely burnt out on the project!” 

So it went from 22 images, to “However many I can get done in time + the big group shot” and then that became “Just the big group shot,” and then finally, i cracked and just drew The Kiss. 

Speaking of which before I divulge some more info about the original plan, i’ll get all the fun things about the actual art I did go through with.

As you can tell I shaded this differently from anything in the project. I normally have two different ways of shading art, I don’t think these are the proper words but I call them Soft Shading and Hard Shading. If you need immediate examples, Day 95 was Soft Shaded, and Day 94 was Hard Shaded. Generally speaking I prefer to do Hard Shading, as I think it works better with the rest of my style, and also just looks better in general. Soft Shading is what I do for pics with like, a very specific tone and energy to them that I can’t really put to words. It’s also significantly easier to do compared to Hard Shading. 

A few months back for a commission of Kaede and Marceline from Adventure Time hanging out (yes this is relevant) I was trying to capture a very specific aesthetic that I’m obsessed with called Frutiger Aero. This mostly was in the background, however when lighting the pic I needed a very specific aesthetic that I didn’t know how to capture with just one of my shading styles. So . . . I fuckin did both. And in my opinion (which is crazy because this requires I compliment myself) it looked fuckin great. That said it was significantly harder.

I think I’ve done it only one other time after this, but I don’t remember what the pic was if it exists at all. But obviously as you can see, I decided that to really commemorate the occasion I’d go all out and do both shading styles again. It was very worth it, but fun fact! Doing this style on Roses is a fucking pain in the ass and if I ever have to do it again I will fucking SCREAM!

Anyway, the pic was definitely a lot harder to work on because of that stylistic choice, but the end result makes up for it by a massive margin. 

Hope ya’ll like the dresses because they were the hardest part of this! Fun fact, Val (She’s back!) did a chapter for her legendary Year of Love and Despair fic where the gals are in wedding dresses. And the designs she came up with are amazing! I still really wanna draw em when I get a chance! However! I woulda felt bad if I just yoinked em for this, so I had to do everything in my power to come up with completely different designs. And given that I am a perfectionist, that was significantly more difficult than it probably shoulda been. But I did it! I really like how Mikan’s dress turned out specifically, I thought giving her a fit that covered up more skin than a normal wedding dress would be fitting for her. Also I really like drawing Mikan’s hair in a bun, I never had a chance to say that so I’mma say that now. 

Wow fuck I just realized there’s probably a lot of random details or thought processes I have on this ship that I just never got an opportunity to talk about, either because I had a different topic to cover on previous posts, or I just forgot, or I just didn’t have a good segway! Crazy right? 

Also yes! Shading Junko’s hair was heavenly~

Okay i’ve run out of words on the art. Time to tell you about everything I cut! Now I’m sad to say but no, I didn’t actually cut 22 planned images. I never got far enough to actually figure out each individual pic. Only a small handful, which I almost speedily sketched out for this post, but I don’t have it in me, especially on my current schedule. So i’ll just do my best to describe what I had in mind!

First piece would have been Mukuro being on Security for the Wedding, because of course. She would have also enlisted the help of Mondo and his entire gang, because that combination in this context sounds funny. Don’t worry though they were well behaved.

Ruruka was gonna handle the Wedding Cake, with Teruteru on the rest of the food. Either Ruruka or Mukuro would have been giving him a death glare during the process of course.

Behind the scenes Mikan would be getting prepped for the Wedding. And by prepped I mean Seiko, Ibuki, and Sayaka would be trying very hard to keep Mikan from crying as a result of how happy and overwhelmed she is (Ruining her makeup). Seiko trying to blow air into her eyes to keep them dry while Sayaka and Ibuki desperately try to find an outlet to plug in a hairdryer in because that would be significantly more efficient.

On the reverse, Junko would be doing all of the work on prepping herself for the wedding, with Ruruka, Yasuke and Tsumugi standing in the background, questioning why they’re even there. Junko would yell at them that they’re morale support in this instance. 

Warriors of Hope would of course be there being scamps of course, Kotoko would be the Flower Girl because I play favorites. Toko and Komaru would probably be there trying to keep them in line.

I didn’t have anything in mind with the afterparty but I more than likely would have drawn the drunkest Junko I possibly could. Maybe even Mikan too!

For the Bouquet Throwing I was gonna have Syo jumping at it like a feral animal, and thinking about it now I’d probably also have Tenko jumping for it with killing intent in her eyes.  

And I think that’s it for ideas I had prior to cutting them. Which means it’s time for me to get sappy about the fact that the project is finally ending! Fuck! Usually when I write these I try to have a decent idea ahead of time of what I’m gonna fucking say, this time however I’m just gonna talk, and i’m gonna keep talking until I’m either struck down by nature or I run out of things to say. Sorry! 

This is going to get silly, sappy, and maybe even a little venty, jump in at your own risk. 

If you told me at the beginning of 2024 that I was going to draw 100 days worth of Junkan related art, including a gif and a music video, 2 comics, and also get back into writing to make gay fanfic, I’d be so god damn confused. Because what the fuck right? And that’s not even counting everything I drew AFTER I fuckin finished! Like hold on a minute i’m gonna count up how many times i’ve drawn these two, including the individual comic pages from the three i’ve made.

204.

Fucking, I. I didn’t even know we passed 200 by this point. 

And that’s not counting the sketches I’ve drawn on paper in my sketchbook. It’s also not counting unfinished pics. It ain’t counting the art I might draw WHILE writing this! It’s not counting the stuff I probably forgot about while searching my files cause I suck at naming the aforementioned files!

AND I’M STILL NOT BURNED OUT EITHER?

I got burned out on the project sure but the moment I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted I fucking IMMEDIATELY drew a Junkan pic for Halloween. And then I kept going, and then I didn’t fucking stop, and I don’t think I CAN stop! I don’t even WANT to stop but you’d think by now I’d be like “Well I don’t have any ideas right now-” NO I HAVE TOO FUCKING MANY IDEAS! I KEEP FUCKING THINKING OF MORE IDEAS, AND THEN I COME UP WITH AN AU AND THAT COULD HAVE LIKE 10,000 MORE IDEAS. JUNKAN IS A MENTAL HYDRA YOU DRAW ONE PIC 2 MORE POP UP IN ITS PLACE!

I can draw these pieces in like a few hours if not shorter, because I don’t have to fucking sketch them properly anymore. I feel like I shouldn’t be able to do that! This ship has done unspeakable things to both my mind and body! And i’ve said it before but i’m not trying to complain here, as you’ll see when I start talking about this ship like it saved me from falling into the grand canyon. But it’s just, so, absurd???

Danganronpa is only like my third favorite piece of media behind Bo-bobo and Fairy Tail and yet I’ve drawn more art of JUST THIS SHIP than I have of just general art of those series! That’s not even counting all the other ship art I’ve done! Like Tokomaru! Remember Tokomaru? The ship that is responsible for me being a woman and being able to find the happiness of being my true self? I think i’ve drawn that and Syomaru a combined like, 20 times across my entire life as a DR fan. ALL OF THIS JUNKAN ART SAY FOR LIKE, 5 OF THEM WERE IN ONE YEAR. 

And bare minimum for 2025, assuming I don’t make ANYTHING ELSE OF THEM (Which I will. You know I will.) I’m gonna draw 21 pics for Junkan Week, because you know I’m gonna just draw EVERY prompt from all three lists. And then 30 more for the Month of Junkan (Will try to have that prompt list up soon btw!). So that’s 51 I’m going to do. That’s over half of what I realistically was supposed to do bare minimum for this project. That’s so fucking much, and I’m gonna do it, because I love this ship, and also it sounds REALLY funny if I did that. 

I think genuinely the only other ships I could fucking do this for are like, Toko/Syomaru or Flarelu. Maybe Togachako if I did a reread of MHA to get me back in the spirit for that series. And even then i’m not sure I physically have it in me to go that distance even for those ships. I certainly want to draw a lot of them, especially Flarelu because that’s a ship so rare that it makes Soft Junkan (before I fucking flooded the tag on tumblr) look like a bustling city.

Speaking of tags, I still think about sometimes how like, the Junkan Tag maybe got like, a post like, a few times every month. The normal amount for a ship of this general Rarity. And now it’s like, for so many pages, just half of it is me. Because I was asked to bring something to eat to the function for the buffet table and I fucking crashed a Food Truck through the wall. I feel bad about it sometimes, sometimes. I’m imagining the scenario in my head where someone who likes Junkan but didn’t check the tag super often because it wasn’t like, a super commonly updated one, and then pressing it for the first time in a year and being like “What the fuck happened here?” You know what still shocks me? Not once have I gotten hate for any of this. I was so fucking scared for like half of this projects creation that I was going to get bombarded with people angry at me for shipping this, and NOTHING. I’m not complaining I’m just confused. I have to at least have had a few people block me right? It’s just so eerily quiet. And it’d be one thing if it’s just a thing of like “Why would people who hate Junkan check the Junkan tag” because yeah, that makes sense. But also I’ve been putting at least one Junkan pic in both characters tags every day for 3 fucking months, there had to be at least one Mikan super fan who is eternally fed up with my antics. Like, awesome that I didn’t get harassed over a ship, that actually gives me a little hope that nature is healing, just. Crazy right???

So like. Fuck.

I guess I’ll get to the sappy shit now?? I think I ran out of things to be confused about in terms of what I did this year because of this ship. So I guess I’ll just start talking about how much it means to me, both the ship, and this project. 

(trigger warning, mentions of abuse, nothing super graphic in my opinion but could be mildly uncomfortable. Either skim ahead or stop here)

2024 kinda, fuckin sucked for me to be honest?? I have like 2 good things I can speak for it in terms of major positive points (Obviously I had other good experiences but if I just said “Oh I read a I Love Amy and it was one of the greatest things ever” it lacks the same impact). Not counting getting this project to like, work, obviously.

I finished the 5 chapters of my webcomic that I wanted prepped so I could actually make a website and start posting (ignore how I didn’t make the fuckin website yet). And I started dating my darling Yves and Rivette. Who I cherish deeply. I made other friends this year, a lot of them in part cause of this ship. And I went through a lot of emotional change. 

But to get that change it required I unpack a lot. And by a lot, I mean one bag that was filled to the brim. Gonna try real hard not to like, talk about this in excessive detail or turn this post into some woe is me bullshit, but I feel like I should at least make mention of it.

At the beginning of the year, I asked Yves (who I wasn’t dating yet) about my previous romantic relationship. And she confirmed to me that, based on everything I had told her about it overtime, that yes, it was abusive.

During 2021-2022 I was in a relationship with a girl I won’t name here, you wouldn’t know her of course, it was a completely different community. It started out as friends, I got a crush, jumped at it because I was still inexperienced with feelings, and it didn’t work out. And that’s the simple way of putting it, and that’s how I viewed it till Yves opened my eyes.

From the getgo it wasn’t healthy. She was manipulative, constantly had outbursts towards me, and yanked me around emotionally constantly. I would later find out that she had a previous history of just, generally being an awful person. Even after we broke up we still stuck around each other, mostly because I felt guilty for breaking up with her, and was also just generally terrified of her. The abuse was all mental of course, it was long distance so she couldn’t hurt me physically at all. 

I of course, didn’t process any of that as me being abused, I even viewed myself as being at fault for a lot of it. The experience was so bad that I identified as Aromantic because just convinced I wasn’t able to feel proper romantic feelings for someone. It wasn’t till much later when I got another crush that I realized that I’m Panromantic, and me being Aro (and very briefly Aegoromantic) was basically just a coping mechanism to write off my trauma. I still feel guilty about that since it feels like I devalued the importance of people who do identify on the Aro spectrum, but that isn’t relevant here.

Point is, a lot of bad shit happened to me because of that woman, and even after a year and a half of us not talking because we both mutually decided it would be better for us to not stay in contact, she still found ways to worm her way back into my life. One conversation we had just by chance, to catch up, that’s all it took and I was thinking of her again. I never talked to her after that, and I have her blocked now, but I didn’t need to for shit to hit the fan.

So I asked Yves that question, she answered, and I now suddenly had to deal with the fact that I was abused, and that I was traumatized as a result. And like, I never really viewed myself as a traumatized person up till that point, I viewed myself as someone who wasn’t very smart but tried her best to do good by people who didn’t have too much baggage beyond some sucky school memories.

When I had to unpack what happened that kind of spiraled into severe Self Confidence Issues and even more Self Hate. I struggled to accept even the slightest compliment if it wasn’t directed at my art. The reason I even quit weed is because I used it almost exclusively to suppress all of the negative emotions I felt. 

I’m in a somewhat better place now, I’m trying to give myself more breaks from artwork, rather than overworking myself constantly just to feel something (and being fully open, I realized near the end of december that I pretty much used Overworking as a form of self harm). I’m gonna really try this year to like, actually let people be nice to me, and in turn try to be nicer to myself. And I have goals to work towards for this year. But I wouldn’t have gotten to this point without two things. One, my girlfriend Yves, who even before we started dating helped me through multiple breakdowns and has helped/allowed me to grow into a (I hope) better, healthier person. And even after I got over most of my feelings related to my Ex, has continued to help me cope with my self hatred. I cherish every moment we share and wouldn’t trade her for anything.

And the other thing, which I know will sound silly right after I talked about my girlfriend, is well. Junkan.

Let me say this, I didn’t get into Junkan to cope with my abuse. I have toyed with the notion in my head before and the idea of it pisses me off to a quite frankly irrational degree. I was into Junkan before I realized my issues. If you want my coping mechanism it’s Alex from Minecraft and no I’m not explaining that right now.

That said, it, like all the yuri ships I like, was a source of comfort for me. Originally I read stuff like Tokomaru fics just to help me reduce stress, back when I dealt with really severe anger issues due to the online spaces I occupied. And to this day reading a nice, fluff fic can calm me down a bit. But now they can serve a much deeper sense of comfort, away from all the bullshit, and obviously, gave me a way to distract/calm myself from the storm of negative emotions and memories that filled the brain.

I see myself in Mikan more than I’d like to personally admit, obviously not to the extreme, but in aspects. So it’s just, nice to see a better timeline for her with Junko, ones where she gets to be happy and maybe even heal as well. It just so happens that I also think there’s a lot of genuinely good potential for the ship from either a canon or non-canon perspective, and Junko’s just a really enjoyable character. 

Working on this project helped too. It gave me a way to dive deeper into my love for this ship, and gave me a sense of purpose and validation that helped me work through the rough. Whether it was the really bad mental health days, or just a shit streak of commission work that tore away at me because my job even if I love drawing can be a real drag at times, and i’m unfortunately a workaholic (Trying to work on it though).

I think i’ve said it before but even something simple as Val showing her excitement over the art pieces I was prepping could genuinely brighten my day even while I was at my lowest.

And then when I really started pursuing this as a project, rather than just a secret stash to satiate myself and one other person minimum, I realized I could do something good here. For the people like me who loved this ship but might have been too nervous about expressing it, the people who were just really craving it, and the people who had already made all of the fics and art that sent me into this spiral of obsessive passion in the first place! A gift to all of them, to make ya’ll happy. 

In hindsight, may not like, the healthiest mindset for setting off this whole project. But hey it all kinda circled around into eventually helping my mental health recover. So like, win?

And i’ve already spoken on how Day 60 allowed me to feel a lot more emotionally free as an artist even if I still have my struggle days. I’ve gotten better just in general as an artist as I improve more at stuff like expressions, posing, linework, etc. And I’ve even managed to make friends with some of the people I used to look up to as idols and can finally just view em as normal people now. (Even if I might still be a bit excessive in my praise, I swear I’m normal about ya’ll besties I just don’t have like, a middleground for showing my appreciation and affection for my friends. It’s maxed out unless I’m tired as shit) 

I find myself comedically terrified of how this ship has affected me over the course of 2024, and how it will likely continue to affect me through 2025 even as I try to move onto other projects not related to Junkan. I wanna show off my love for Fairy Tail on my main blog, and I really think that with a full years time and the first five chapters done I really can get my comic off the ground and focus on that for the foreseeable future.

But hey, 2025 at least we got two whole Junkan Events. And with Junkan Week I’d like to keep that going for as long as I can, unless someone else takes the reins way down the line. So this ol’ blog’ll keep going for a good while I imagine, even if it’s a lot smaller. Maybe I’ll find other ways to keep this place active, I’ve considered just making it a one stop shop for all things Junkan though I don’t think I’m really suited to manage that. Maybe someone’ll read this and try there hand at it down the line, maybe someone’ll do their own 100 Days of Junkan! 

Oh hey did I ever tell ya’ll I was gonna make a comedic video just making a guideline for how one could make their own 100 Days Project. It was gonna be like, pretty obvious points just framed in a very exaggerated and comedic tone. 

Alright anything else I should cover? Fun facts? Deep personal anecdotes? Sappy stuff?

Lemme check my files, maybe i got another dumb joke image- 

. . . 

Oh . . . Well there’s somethin.

Alright, don’t get to excited ya’ll, but just for a bit of fun, how about one last day in the project. I know 101 days doesn’t roll of the tongue as well, but I think this is vaguely interesting enough to make up for that! Tune in tomorrow. Same time, same place. 

As always, Reblogs, Comments, and Little Notes in the Tags are appreciated!~ They always make my day!~

[sticktothestars]

𝐢'𝐦 𝐦𝐫. 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧 ☆💬。

request: " PLEASE write wally clark x male reader !!!! :3 "

a/n: first of all, TYSM ANON FOR YOUR REQUEST AHHH THIS IS LITERALLY MY FIRST EVER TIME GETTING A REQUEST IM SO HYPED & I HOPE THAT I GET MORE REQUESTS AB HIM. I RLLY HOPE YOU ENJOY <33

pairing: wally clark x male! reader

warnings: homophobia, bullying, slurs & death occur throughout the story. angst. yep. angst ho. yeah i just cooked your fries in peanut oil. whatchu gonna do ab it. /j MIGHT be slightly ooc, idk.

──★

YOU have been here at Split River High as a ghost since 2005. To say the least, it was a pretty fucked up way to go. I mean, most of the ghosts here at the school have had a fucked up way to go, but this wasn't about them right now. This was about you.

You were really just a regular teenager that lived around a somewhat fucked up time. You had recently figured out you were queer & you just didn't tell anyone. Not even your parents or friends. You had already known how people in your school were when it came to people of lgbt. Charley Horosa of class of '94 was a pure example of that change. He got relentlessly bullied because of who he was & he eventually ended up dying.

You tried not to let that happen to you. But all that trying ended with a rumor spreading around about you, leading to popular people who you used to have a neutral opinion about, turned into you having a burning hatred for. It started with only words that cut deep. And then those words turned into getting nosebleeds & bruises behind the school after classes. You seriously wanted to fight back. Every fiber of your body wanted to. But you just.. couldn't. You weren't brave.

You weren't the one throwing the punches. You were the one taking them. And that was your downfall. Not being strong enough. It was during the Homecoming game. Your best friend, Sarah wanted you to come with & how could you say no? You weren't really doing anything tonight anyway.

You had decided to go get some snacks from food stands just outside the stadium. While paying for snacks, you saw those fuck asses who've been beating your ass ever since the rumor started. You quickly excused yourself when you saw them heading your way, power-walking to a safe place before spotting a bathroom. You quickly walk inside - locking the bathroom door & backing yourself into the wall, on the verge of having a mental breakdown. You couldn't do this. Not tonight. This was supposed to be fun. You were supposed to be out there with Sarah, cheering on your school's football team & having the time of your life.

But here you were, locked in a bathroom while your bullies kept banging on the bathroom door, calling you names, yelling at you to open the door or else they'd do things much worse. This lasted on for 12 minutes until it suddenly stopped. You stumbled up on your feet, wiping your tears with your jacket sleeve - quietly stepping towards the locked door, pressing your ear to the door if they were still out there. The only sounds out there were the distant cheering as the Homecoming game starts.

You took a deep breath in, slowly unlocking the bathroom door & stepping out. You looked around left & right - seeing no one. Then you finally exhaled, walking fully out. You then look to your right again, seeing a boy your age in footballer gear. You've never seen him before. You'd DEFINETLEY notice a handsome person like him before. Why wasn't he in the game? It was starting, right? You shook it off. It wasn't your business anyway.

You didn't even get five steps in before being tackled by one of your bullies who had been hiding just behind the corner. You tried pushing him off, grunting as the bully punched you in the face - eventually all the bullies started kicking you on the ground, one of them even managing to kick you in the face. HARD. They relented for a moment, starting to make teasing jabs at you.

" You have enough yet, faggot? " The bully on top of you named Daniel retorts.

" ... Fuck off, Daniel. " You retort back angrily, spitting out a gob of blood right in his face. Daniel grunts, wiping the blood off his face. The brunette grabs you by the hair, bashing your head into the ground while muttering 'little shit'. You groan out as you try to stay awake. Throughout your vision blurry you could make out the appearance of the boy from earlier, rushing over to what was happening. You felt the press of Daniel's knee on your shoulder as his hands wrapped around your throat.

Then you heard one of the bullies say 'finish him off'. And Daniel did. You struggled & tried to fight back as Daniel used his bare hands to strangle you. Tears crept up in your eyes as you tried to gasp for air - punching at Daniel's chest. It didn't last long before you grew weaker & weaker, eventually going limp. You didn't wake up until a couple of minutes later by a soft tap on the cheek.

But you didn't awake as the same you as before. No, you were something.. different. You woke up to see a pair of pretty brown eyes staring back at you.

" Hey, hey, take it easy yeah? You just took a really bad beating. " The boy in front of you said as you sat up. You were confused. Why did you feel so different? Seriously, who was this boy in front of you & why hadn't he helped you before you had just took a massive ass beating?

" Who the fuck are you? " You finally say in confusion but before the boy could answer, the sound of a shrill scream cuts him off. You look behind him to see Sarah, who came to find you after you'd been missing for 20 minutes. You quickly stood up, running over to her.

" Sarah?? Sarah! What's wrong? " You say, trying to talk to her but she seemed to not be listening. You try to grab her attention again & then...

She walks through you.

And an overwhelming shiver overcomes you as you slowly turn around - your eyes meeting your limp corpse. Oh god. Your breath catches in your throat, clasping your hand against your mouth to stop yourself from letting out a strong sob. You shut your eyes, trying to block out the image of your cold body that melted itself into the confines of your brain. You felt the gentle brush of a hand land on your shoulder - closely pulling you into a hug as you finally choke out a strangled cry.

You were dead.

And there was no changing that.

But at least there was good company.

──★

a/n #2: HAI EVERYONE!! I HOPE YOU ENJOYED THISS!! WHILE WRITING THIS, I DECIDED TO MAKE THIS INTO TWO PARTS - IDK YET! THEIR MIGHT BE MORE PARTS, I'M NOT SURE. YOU'LL JS HAVE TO FIND OUT. ANYWAY, I'M PRETTY SURE I DID PRETTY WELL BUT I WANNA HEAR WHAT YOU GUYS THINK! MAYBE GIVE ME SOME POINTERS OR ADVICE. EITHER WAY, I HOPE YOU ENJOYED!! STAY TUNED FOR THE NEXT PART !! :P

── DAMIEN !! ★

edit; here's part 2 nerds :3

[double-features]

ALIVE - TATE LANGDON x READER

˙◠˙------ tate langdon x gn!reader

SUMMARY : after finding out the captivating boy they fell in love with was dead, no more than a phantom haunting their house, reader wants to join him in the afterlife. they needed to stay with him forever.

WARNINGS : (attempted) suicide, topics of death

GENRE : my crappy attempt at angst!!

───────────────୨ৎ───────────────

The little bottle of prescription pills should have worked its magic. But..

You were still alive.

Having lived in the so-called 'murder house', you figured your death would be inevitable; bound to happen whether you liked it or not. And frankly, you liked it. Being just another angsty teenager, you thought that maybe things would have gotten better,

And for the most part, they did. And who else was there to thank for that than Tate. The mysterious boy that drew you in like a moth to the flame. Maybe it was his cute dimples, or those intense near-black eyes that sent shivers down your spine every single time you looked at them.. Maybe it was the morbidity that seemed to follow him, how someone so angelic had so much baggage following him.. Whatever the case, you were both intrigued and smitten.

“I would never let anyone or anything hurt you” God, Tate had such a way of making you feel seen. Making you feel like the most special person on the planet, even if you thought of yourself far from such.

You were important to him, that's all that mattered.

'My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains', you were never one for poetry before you met the boy who seemed to pop up out of nowhere; but he sparked an interest in you like no other. Tate made you feel, he was the one who kept you grounded. Poetry ended up being one of the most important things in your life after he mentioned Keats once.

He was like a guardian angel sent from the skies to protect you. Whether or not the big man up in the clouds was real, you were certain that Tate was meant to be your savior. Your wonderwall.

Such an ironic choice of words, really. Oasis' frontman himself gave the explanation on what the hell a wonderwall was; an imaginary friend who could save you from yourself. There were so many layers to that, so many connections to what you were dealing with now..

Alas, you two had been so in love. Sappy, lovesick children who clung to each other like lifelines. Tate needed you, you needed Tate. His idolization of Kurt Cobain meant so many sessions where the both of you just sat together and listened to Nirvana, cuddled up on the bed. You were locked inside his heart-shaped box. All the comfortable sweaters he lent you to keep warm at night..

“I love you. I've never felt this way about anyone..”

You should have known it was all too good to be true. Someone who fits perfectly with you? Yeah right. You still couldn't forget the sinking feeling in your gut when you first read that news article that just so happened to pop up when you were looking for Westfield High's website--

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

Westfield Highschool student Tate Langdon, age 17, shot and killed 15 fellow students, injured countless others. There is no motivation known as to why the boy went through with it- some speculate drugs and bullying might have been involved, but others claim he hadn't even dealt with much.

“I didn't really know who he was, I remember that he sat in the library a lot. Just sat there, like, me and a few of my friends would stop in there during our study hall and he'd just be seated, looking at whatever book he picked out for that day,” states one student we interviewed after the massacre.

Whatever led to such a tragic event, late yesterday evening, the FBI shot the class of 94' alumni and brought justice to the innocent students he murdered just earlier in the day. Was this an elaborate suicide act? We may never know the real reason behind the sickening actions of Langdon.

All we can say is, for the families of the lives lost at Westfield, don't give up. None of this is your fault...

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

It was all so sickening.

Tate. The boy you had clicked with, the boy you gravitated towards, quite possibly one of the first major loves of your life. This.. psychopathic monster was not the Tate you had grown so fond of. Sure, Tate was a little weird, there was obviously some sort of chemical imbalance, but he would never do anything so horrible.. Would he?

Every time you click on another article, the more dread filled the pit you feel deep inside you. All the glee that being with Tate had brought you so far since your move all seemed to crumble, along with the trust you had built. Tate was a ghost.

A ghost. Dead. Just a part of your imagination. At first, you believed that maybe you had heard the name somewhere before and created this delusion of a boyfriend. But that didn't explain how the pictures perfectly matched the appearance of the grungey blond.

That was your breaking point. The moment your seemingly recovered misery returned, it hit harder than ever before.

Tate was dead. He killed people. You didn't even notice the sting in your heart at first until you saw the prescription medication in your peripheral.

Maybe it was the need to be with Tate in the afterlife, maybe it was just the old ideations bubbling over, or maybe it was the guilt of 'dating' someone so damaged. Whatever the reason, the impromptu decision led you to where you are now; in the arms of the boy you loved, under the running frigid water of the shower.

You were still alive.

Feeling the wet, cold sleeves of a sweater wrapped around your waist, you leaned back into the person seated behind you. Curse Tate for being so strangely comforting! You weren't supposed to crave his touch anymore, you were supposed to hate his guts.. But you couldn't bring yourself to do that. You could never hate Tate.

Never.

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

Even hours later, not a single word was shared between the both of you guys. When he finally released you from the cramped tub and let you cope alone in your room, there was a strange pit inside of her, an emptiness that only Tate filled.

On your bed, you blankly stared at the ceiling and debated whether or not you wanted him there by your side in that moment. No matter which way you looked at it; he was the push factor for your failed attempt. Then again, it was worth mentioning that..

Tate saved you.

Contradictory, isn't it? The conflict is also the resolution. The usual pessimistic attitude you held would tell you that the negatives outweighed the overlying positive, but not this time. Your thoughts all led you to one need. Tate.

Weakly, you called out into your room, not nearly loudly enough to be considered a yell. “Tate..”

By your bedside appeared the tall boy, looking just as empty as you felt. He looked like the shell of what you knew him to be, there was no doubt that, just like you, he was affected by what happened. Why wouldn't he be? He loved you.

For what felt like forever, the two of you stared into the others dull gaze, searching for any sign of emotion to appear. It was quickly broken by him, voice shaky as he slowly sat down next to you.

“..Why would you do that..? Why would you hurt yourself like that..?”

For the first time in what seemed like forever, you didn't have some silly comeback. There was nothing funny about this at all. “I..”

“Is something wrong..? Was I not a good enough boyfriend..?”

“I'm still alive..”

The comment seemed to take Tate off guard, evident with the widened eyes and lack of a quick response. “You're-- Yeah. You're still alive..”

Alive. Because of Tate. For now, you decided to keep your awareness of what he did in his lifetime to yourself. Since, despite everything, he was still your savior. Misery loves company.

───────────────୨ৎ───────────────

≽^• ˕ • ྀི≼ ------ reblogs & likes are always appreciated, keeps me motivated to continue creating :)

A/N : first attempt at angst, totally rushed because it was my goal to just get something out before christmas. posting schedule is NAWT existent, sigh.

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

how are men victims when men are straight up so powerful, women feel inferior next to them

Well, first off, thanks for the compliment.

What you describe is actually part of how we got where we are today, because just as men evolved to be bigger and stronger than women, so we too evolved to put the safety of women (and children) before men. That's just how the human race adapted to best survive.

But women did not evolve to put the safety and well-being of men before their own. This turns out to be very important, so keep that in mind, because we'll be coming back to it later.

Once (a minority of) women began demanding the vote, more than a hundred years ago now, men - seeking to aid women in whatever way they could - gave into their demands, and women became more and more involved in political changes and lawmaking over the following decades. This resulted in laws that favored and gave special provisions and protections to women, all in the name of "equality", and usually at the expense of men, who, as before, went along with it because we are hardwired to want to aid and protect women over men.

With the rise of the second wave of feminists, around the turn of the 1970s, this massively intensified, leading to a relentless demonizing of one half of the human race as a class of, well... demons, essentially, and perpetual demands for more aid and special advantages for women. Any man who pointed out that this was not in any way "equal" treatment was tarred and feathered as a "misogynist" and never heard from again. The Marxists infiltrated feminism and the feminists infiltrated the courts, the media and the political and education system, and they all promoted the hell out of this agenda, and women en masse went along with it because of all the free stuff it promised them, and felt no innate drive to see that the other half of humanity was being cared for and treated as well and fairly as themselves.

So now, 50 years on, we live in an age in which 80% of the homeless are men, 80% of the suicides are men, and 94% of all workplace deaths are men. And no-one cares. Universities all across the western world are now 60/40 female/male, and it's common corporate business practice to refuse to hire people for a job simply on the grounds of them being white-skinned and/or male.

So, while I would not want to label men as a class "victims" (the pursuit of victimhood as a political goal and path to success and popularity is another of the biggest problems of today, and another one which likely attained such prominence due to women's increased involvement in political discourse), it's certainly true that men are now systemically disadvantaged in many ways that women are not, and women as a class have many rights, privileges and special protections written into law to advantage them, while men have none.

[shsl-hubris-guy]

The timeline autism pleads for the Makoto/Komaru age post

HELL YEAH LET'S DO THIS.

So, Komaru Naegi is the younger sister of Makoto Naegi, as we know. Makoto's birth date is 2/5, while Komaru's is 5/31, just under 4 months apart. Therefore, Makoto's and Komaru's birth years must be at least one year apart.

A school year in Japan starts in April, and Makoto and Komaru are on separate sides of the cutoff. Makoto would be in the younger part of his class, while Komaru would be in the older half of hers. Because they're over a year apart, this means that they're 2 grades apart.

In the UDG opening, Komaru introduces herself and her life in the apartment to the audience, stating that she's been trapped in here for roughly a year and a half, and that she got kidnapped after the unrest of the Tragedy had already begun.

Another clue comes from a clipping from a newspaper. Notably, every other clipping from this group of collectibles is implied to have been released either immediately before or during the events of the game, as they revolve around Towa City and its collapse. The one I'm calling to, though, is speaking on the death of Junko Enoshima, specifically citing that it's been 3 months since her death. This is one of the ones that still speaks positively of how safe Towa City is, so we know it came before, but quite likely not by much.

The final clue is from that very unfortunate minigame Kotoko puts us through in chapter 3. It opens with a line from Kotoko, stating that it's "the opposite of child porn" and therefore makes it okay to keep the game's rating where it is. This all but confirms that Komaru is of legal age in the game, and because they never actually state her age at any point, it means that the character must be assumed as of legal age regardless of what country you're playing the game in. Ergo, she's at least 18.

Now, let's go back to when the game is taking place. Just over 3 months following Junko's death and the end of THH. This is rough estimation, but we can reasonably assume that THH took place during April. While you might think there's no way to guarantee this, the cherry blossom trees in the dojo prove otherwise. They're in bloom, and normally are in bloom in the spring, late March-early May. So we know that it is happening around the time of year the characters think it is, even if it's not the same year. If we want to take it a step further, Byakuya states in one of his FTEs that it's his birthday, and Byakuya's birthday is 5/5, but that's not exactly reliable testimony considering he's wrong about the year, and may be wrong about the exact date as well. That said, THH takes place over the course of just over 3 weeks, so it's entirely reasonable to say that it could be May by the time the game ends. This would put that "3 months" article either near the end of July, or the start of August, and the events of UDG therefore most likely in August. Why is this important?

We know that Makoto and Komaru are at least 2 grades apart, that THH and UDG happen in the same year, and that Komaru is 18 during UDG specifically. Komaru's birthday, once again, is 5/31. That would mean her 18th birthday takes place between the two games, and that this would hypothetically be her last year of high school were there no Tragedy taking place. It stands to reason, then, that Makoto's "last year" was 2 years ago, meaning he's 19 now.

If Makoto's 19 now, then he was 17 entering Hope's Peak, as you can enter at age 16 or 17. I've already gone over why Makoto's class entered in April 2011, so assuming we're right, that would put Komaru turning 18 in 2013 and born in '95, and Makoto born the year before her in '94.

I'm at work so I can't pull up any screenshots or anything, but I can go hunt them down later. This whole post is kinda running on memory lol but that's my theory!

[acti-veg]

do you support a one or two state solution? what is the difference between the two?

The one-state solution generally advocates merging Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip into a single state. Some favour creating a single democratic country, where Arab Muslims would outnumber Jews, thus ending the Zionist project of Israel as a Jewish state. The other version involves Israel annexing the West Bank and either forcing out Palestinians, annihilating them or just denying them the right to vote or take part in civic life. A two-state solution is advocating that Israelis and Palestinians both have their own independent state, though the variations between different approaches on this one tend to be much wider. People argue over what the political arrangement would look like, where each state would end, UN membership etc.

I think that the ideal scenario would be a one state solution where Israelis and Palestinians were both represented, under a fair democracy, with wealth redistributed and displaced Palestinians return home. The problem is that with things as they are now, because of the western support, wealth and military power Israel enjoys, practically speaking, the ‘one state’ would be Israel. Israel would likely keep its existing power structures and prejudices, Palestinians would be second class citizens, poor, very likely oppressed and with minimal representation.

For that reason, I’ve always advocated for a two-state solution under the terms of a return to something resembling armistice lines that were agreed at the end of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. I’d also want to see the return of Resolution 94, which stated that Palestinian refugees who wish to return to their homes should be allowed to do so. Israel would also need to fund the rebuilding of a prosperous Palestinian state.

I'll admit though, it is difficult to see how this could be agreed in practice. With Israel committing genocide in the region, they will create a whole new generation of terrorists, freedom fighters, and militants of all political stripes, who have been radicalised, orphaned, disenfranchised or displaced by the genocide. The IOF have all but ensured another century of conflict, even if the West does decide to withdraw their support of the genocide.

I really don't know what the right answer is, I just know that an immediate and permanent ceasefire, is required to even begin to figure it out. Which ever 'solution' you advocate for, any reasonable person will agree that there can never be an end to the conflict while Israel continues to torture, displace, execute and starve the Palestinian people. And not until the West stops supplying the IOF with arms and political support, either.

[sweetbottletops]

Aya looks really nice here. The mug shot will be immaculate.

Ch. 94

Three gyaru spending the entire passing period in the bathroom, in retrospect, should not be a surprise. She's going to look amazing ripping them all a new one though.

Koga hardly made it past the doorway. Dropped her phone even. And it does look like a good chunk of the class are involved. Her body language is obvious, but none of them have put a stop to it.

Aya saw the lyrics. At least enough to *know*. The title is her own words. She looks right over to Koga who *knows* that she knows and looks particularly struck in that moment.

Aya seeing it seems to have really set her off.

"It's Koga-san's latest hit...such a great song (LOL!)" For anyone wondering, Japanese fans are interpreting him as mocking, malicious, and inexcusable. His behavior is clearly wrong.

Aya's gap is scary.

Read the room, buddy. You stole her private notebook and wrote her private feelings on the classroom wall.... AND sullied it with MTL!

I do think he was trying to give her a hard time because she went viral online and had the audacity of being good at English. She seemed like fair game when if he knew her he'd know she isn't looking to go viral, wanting attention, intentionally hides everything about herself like being fluent in English, and never intended sharing her song beyond Aya.

(Were those feet Koga running past Aya into the hallway where the other girls are? Those are her school shoes. I'm having spacial problems.)

Aya understands that music is where Koga is safe to feel things. Music is how they connected and communicated in playlists. Hidden in a song in a language Aya doesn't know is Koga's true feelings. Likely meant only for her to hear someday.

(Is Koga literally throwing up or is she having trouble breathing?)

Not now, Baldy.

Aya having a hold-me-back moment. She's going to get in trouble anyway so might as well go feral.

I'm not sure Koga has ever had anyone defend her so completely. She shields Joe from a lot of stuff and he can't be everywhere at once.

Last time she had a friend things went bad when faced with adversity, but she should know Aya dgaf about the crowd herself and won't ever ask Koga to either. Things won't go down the same way this time around.

I am almost expecting this will trigger a parents' conference. Maybe I just really want them to all meet. Aya's parents raised a gyaru kid so have to be pretty nice. And I want everyone to see how cool Joe and Kanna are. (And I wanna see that loser boy realize how out of their league he is vs them.)

[lesbianreginageorgeisreal]

Ask away (I'm bored)

1: Name

2: Age

3: 3 Fears

4: 3 things I love

5: 4 turns on

6: 4 turns off

7: My best friend

8: Sexual orientation

9: My best first date

10: How tall am I

11: What do I miss

12: What time were I born

13: Favorite color

14: Do I have a crush

15: Favorite quote

16: Favorite place

17: Favorite food

18: Do I use sarcasm

19: What am I listening to right now

20: First thing I notice in new person

21: Shoe size

22: Eye color

23: Hair color

24: Favorite style of clothing

25: Ever done a prank call?

27: Meaning behind my URL

28: Favorite movie

29: Favorite song

30: Favorite band

31: How I feel right now

32: Someone I love

33: My current relationship status

34: My relationship with my parents

35: Favorite holiday

36: Tattoos and piercing i have

37: Tattoos and piercing i want

38: The reason I joined Tumblr

39: Do I and my last ex hate each other?

40: Do I ever get “good morning” or “good night ” texts?

41: Have I ever kissed the last person you texted?

42: When did I last hold hands?

43: How long does it take me to get ready in the morning?

44: Have I shaved your legs in the past three days?

45: Where am I right now?

46: If I were drunk & can’t stand, who’s taking care of me?

47: Do I like my music loud or at a reasonable level?

48: Do I live with my Mom and Dad?

49: Am I excited for anything?

50: Do I have someone of the opposite sex I can tell everything to?

51: How often do I wear a fake smile?

52: When was the last time I hugged someone?

53: What if the last person I kissed was kissing someone else right in front of me?

54: Is there anyone I trust even though I should not?

55: What is something I disliked about today?

56: If I could meet anyone on this earth, who would it be?

57: What do I think about most?

58: What’s my strangest talent?

59: Do I have any strange phobias?

60: Do I prefer to be behind the camera or in front of it?

61: What was the last lie I told?

62: Do I prefer talking on the phone or video chatting online?

63: Do I believe in ghosts? How about aliens?

64: Do I believe in magic?

65: Do I believe in luck?

66: What's the weather like right now?

67: What was the last book I've read?

68: Do I like the smell of gasoline?

69: Do I have any nicknames?

70: What was the worst injury I've ever had?

71: Do I spend money or save it?

72: Can I touch my nose with a tongue?

73: Is there anything pink in 10 feet from me?

74: Favorite animal?

75: What was I doing last night at 12 AM?

76: What do I think is Satan’s last name is?

77: What’s a song that always makes me happy when I hear it?

78: How can you win my heart?

79: What would I want to be written on my tombstone?

80: What is my favorite word?

81: My top 5 blogs on tumblr

82: If the whole world were listening to me right now, what would I say?

83: Do I have any relatives in jail?

84: I accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what’s even cooler is that they endow me with the super-power of my choice! What is that power?

85: What would be a question I’d be afraid to tell the truth on?

86: What is my current desktop picture?

87: Had sex?

88: Bought condoms?

89: Gotten pregnant?

90: Failed a class?

91: Kissed a boy?

92: Kissed a girl?

93: Have I ever kissed somebody in the rain?

94: Had job?

95: Left the house without my wallet?

96: Bullied someone on the internet?

97: Had sex in public?

98: Played on a sports team?

99: Smoked weed?

100: Did drugs?

101: Smoked cigarettes?

102: Drank alcohol?

103: Am I a vegetarian/vegan?

104: Been overweight?

105: Been underweight?

106: Been to a wedding?

107: Been on the computer for 5 hours straight?

108: Watched TV for 5 hours straight?

109: Been outside my home country?

110: Gotten my heart broken?

111: Been to a professional sports game?

112: Broken a bone?

113: Cut myself?

114: Been to prom?

115: Been in airplane?

116: Fly by helicopter?

117: What concerts have I been to?

118: Had a crush on someone of the same sex?

119: Learned another language?

120: Wore make up?

121: Lost my virginity before I was 18?

122: Had oral sex?

123: Dyed my hair?

124: Voted in a presidential election?

125: Rode in an ambulance?

126: Had a surgery?

127: Met someone famous?

128: Stalked someone on a social network?

129: Peed outside?

130: Been fishing?

131: Helped with charity?

132: Been rejected by a crush?

133: Broken a mirror?

134: What do I want for birthday?

[argyrocratie]

Breaking the Chains of Nationalism

"Nandita Sharma and Mahmood Mamdani, the two scholars whose interpretations most heavily influenced the previous sections of this paper, agree in large part on the necessary approach to the problems outlined there. The evil to be abolished, as Sharma describes it, is “autochthonous discourse,” characterized by “essentialist and ahistorical ideas of nation and race, both of which are then made the fundamental basis of legitimate political claims,” a corresponding claim that “National-Natives are the original and ultimate source of law and the grantors of rights,” and a demand to “transform land into nationally sovereign territory.”90 To reject these things is “to reject the postcolonial system of nation-states and build social relationships, social bodies, and practices of social reproduction able to meet liberatory demands.”91

This is not to say, of course, that Sharma in any way opposes demands for justice for Indigenous people; she unambiguously opposes the “long and infamous list of scholars trying to deny and to depoliticize the violence enacted upon those categorized as Natives and to reject their demands for liberty.” She challenges, rather, “the strategy of laying claim to national sovereignty….”92

…I join the many others who have taken “lines of flight” away from essentialist, ahistorical, and reified views of social relations and recognized that difference making is always political. Along with the mythical builders of the tower of Babel creating their own heaven on earth, I follow the many, many people who have forged solidarity across – and against – gods, empires, and nations and who have worked for a worldly place that is a home for all…. Claiming this “we-ness” is also a political decision, of course, one that, unlike nationalist autochthonies, is borne out of a shared political project, not a shared genealogy or a shared territory. This book urges us to join the many people over time and place struggling to liberate our land and our labor from expropriators and exploiters. Now, as then, a heaven on earth will only be of our making.93

The call to replace the nation-state, Sharma observes, seems to imply a “postnational state – that is, a state that merely administers its territory without setting any boundaries of state belonging, a state that merely acts as a system of redistribution and protection without demanding adherence to one or another form of identity.” But states, as such, can be problematic; the very concept of the territorial state carries historical connotations of domination.

Yet, states are much more than administrative institutions. Historically, states emerge when a ruling class is formed. In the process, land is turned into state territory upon which people’s labor is exploited. This is an aspect of each and every form of state power: monastic, monarchical, imperial, or national. It is through these sorts of relationships, ones that govern people’s sense of both time and place, that certain forms of state-mandated identities, such as “race” and nation, arise. Such identities are indeed state effects. This is to say that a world without borders, without racisms, without people being separated into categories of Natives or Migrants, is not a matter of making a slight administrative fix. It would turn the Postcolonial New World Order upside down.94

Here she appears to be calling for something more like an end to the state itself, at least of the Westphalian type that has existed for the past four hundred years. As possible models for what might take its place, she suggests the historical precedents of the builders of the Tower of Babel, who “set out to defy God’s claim to be their Lord by collectively erecting a tower to the glory of their self-produced heaven on earth,” and the Diggers, who “demanded not only a return of the commons stolen from them, but its expansion to encompass the whole of the world being taken by capitalists and colonists”; and the Ranters, who “refused distinctions of place” and called for the people of the nations to become “one people and one body.”95 This evokes something that transcends the state – something both larger than the traditional state, in that it has no boundaries, and at the same time less statelike and more administrative in the exercise of its powers.

In regard to demands for justice to the dispossessed and expropriated, Sharma distinguishes between claims to land based on possession – including customary common or other communal rights based on actual physical possession by communities – and theoretical collective title to a territory based on ethnicity. What should be restored, through landback or land reform policies, is the right of people, as people and not a People, to maintain occupancy of land – either individually or communally, including seasonal hunting grounds – of which they are and have been in physical occupancy. What is to be restored is possession, both physical and functional, by concrete communities, and not by imagined and constructed communities on the basis of ethnic identity.

Unlike demands for a return of land (and water and air) in order to liberate people from exploitative relationships such as demands for the return of the commons…, demands for territory are political claims that define the extent of the sovereign’s domain over land (and water and air) as well as the labor of the people living on it.96

Mamdani’s vision is slightly less ambitious. Rather than a new Tower of Babel or Digger commonwealth, he proposes something like the denationalized state Sharma mentioned in passing.

I don’t pretend to know exactly what this next world will look like. Decolonizing the political is nothing less than reimagining the order of the nation-state. I cannot prescribe the outcome. I do have some recommendations for getting there, though. First, to reform the national basis of the state by granting only one kind of citizenship and doing so on the basis of residence rather than identity. Second, to denationalize states through the institution of federal structures in which local autonomy allows diversity to flourish.97

As his call for local autonomy suggests, Mamdani makes it clear that abolishing the national state, as a territorial sovereignty grounded in ethnic identity, does not as such rule out some form of corporate existence for ethnic groupings within the territory of a state. For example, he proposes the continued existence of self-governing Native American communities in the United States, along with the restoration of land to them as corporate entities.

What would decolonization mean from the point of view of Indians in the United States? In the words of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, “That process rightfully starts by honoring the treaties the US made with Indigenous nations, by restoring all sacred sites, starting with the Black Hills [of South Dakota] and including most federally held parks and land and all stolen sacred items and body parts, and by payment of sufficient reparations for the reconstruction and expansion of Native nations.” Decolonization should also feature “extensive educational programs” and extend beyond Indians, requiring “the full support and active participation of the descendants of settlers, enslaved Africans, and colonized Mexicans, as well as immigrant populations.”

The further question, as I see it, is what exactly the participation of the settlers should look like. Dunbar-Ortiz rightly points to the payment of reparations; I would add further conditions. One is the establishment of constitutionally defined federal autonomy. This could mean statehood, building on the demand of the Five Civilized Tribes “for admission as a state of the Union.” Such a change would be impossible without the cooperation of the wider American people and their representatives in Congress. Another possibility is to end the status of wardship by granting reservations themselves representation in both houses of Congress, abolishing the BIA, and democratizing tribal governance.98

In the United States, he continues, decolonizing the political in practical terms “would involve full and equal individual rights for all citizens, whether they live within or outside Indian reservations.”

It would involve the abolition of reservations and their replacement with a constitutionally defined form of autonomy, akin to that of individual states of the Union. This autonomy would mean an end to Congressional rule by decree, and its corollary, the exclusion of autonomous Indian communities from representation in both houses of Congress. These communities would be empowered to make local laws in place of the federally sanctioned, Bureau of Indian Affairs-supervised regime of customary laws. Finally, decolonization of the political would incorporate reparations for the wrongs done over centuries, a measure of social justice for Indians and for descendants of enslaved Africans as well as for Mexicans and Puerto Ricans forcibly incorporated into the United States….99

Nevertheless, the existence of a high degree of decentralization, on the “community of communities” model which Mamdani seems to suggest, does not extend to national sovereignty of the Westphalian type. The larger territorial state is denationalized entity whose people transcend their former identities as natives and settlers, as “survivors.” “The only emancipation possible for settler and native is for both to cease to exist as political identities.”100

As an anarchist, I find the proper approach to abolishing the national state much closer to Sharma’s Tower of Babel than to Mamdani’s denationalized state with local autonomy and landback. If he seeks to free the state from the nation, we must take one step further and free governance and administration from the state. This issue will be addressed in the third and last part of this paper."

-Kevin Carson, "Landback - Abolishing Ethnonationalism and the Ethnostate: With Particular Regard to the Israel-Palestine Conflict"

[sergeifyodorov]

I’m curious because of how you rank Cale, who do you think are the top 10 players in the league? (We can exclude goalies because they’re such an entirely different skill set but would love to hear their separate ranking)

oooh ok this is. an inchresting question... under the cut bc dashclog Et Cetera.... the cody sergeifyodorov unoffishul players rankings at This Very Moment In Time. get mad at me if u want idk let's dance

number ten: sidney crosby. Old Man Still Has It, More At Ten

number nine: david pastrnak. arguably -- and i am going to argue it -- the best pure shooter in the league. the reason hes not like theee goalscorer of all time is bc he generally lacks puck carriers/space creators/isn't much of a puck carrier or a space creator of his own, but like. based off shot alone? hundredth percentile.

number eight: elias pettersson. two way centre... the usual vancouver oish% boost but also just a fantastic dual threat AND a legit lady byng candidate with a penalty differential big enough to severely boost his value just based off that. like imho there's nothing that petey is specifically Good At (like how pasta is a pure goalscorer) but he's basically got no weaknesses. and hes gay

number seven: cale makar IS very good. conn smythe norris etc but most importantly he did win a hockeyblr babygirl of the year award so theres that too. some crazy bobby orr pointgetter. real good defensive results too. like hes crazy good and they say hes crazy good for a reason

number six: ill concede. leon draisaitl

[GAP OF PRETTY SIGNIFICANT SIZE]

number five: quinn hughes. i don't know what fuckass magic this sad little man has. decent finisher. great playmaker. best power play quarterback in the league. makes anyone who plays with him appear to be "oh shit, this guy's a great partner for hughes!" (i have seen this with at least 5 diff players, not one of whom anyone would consider Quite Good on their own.) L + ratio + oish% + makar has devon toews + youngest captain in the league + you bet that conn smythe and norris combo is his soon enough

number four: nathan mackinnon. best dual threat in the league (no one who's a better passer than him is a better goalscorer, and no one who's a better goalscorer is a better passer.)

number three: nikita kucherov. i want you to do something for me. i want you to go to espn dot com. i want you to go to espn dot com slash nhl. i want you to go to espn dot com slash nhl slash team stats tampa bay lightning. it should be sorted by points for you. there's dearly beloved creepy eyes keeta right there in first. 94 points as of me writing this. crazy number for right now. wolfboy of all time brayden point should be in second. take a look for me rn at the difference between those two in points. what the fuck

number two: auston matthews. is this leafs bias? sure. im a leafs guy. im just saying that he's a better goalscorer than ovi in his prime, and he's a centre and great defensively too. i could tell you that he is fifth all time in goals per game, and two of the four guys ahead of him were born in the 1800s. i could tell you that he has 48 goals in 52 games right now, and 0 empty netters. i could tell you that if you only counted goals he scored when the leafs were down one or tied, he'd be in the top ten in goals this year.

[GAP OF PRETTY SIGNIFICANT SIZE]

number one: connor mcdavid. he has almost as many assists as the second-best in his draft class (mitchell) has points. he has 930 points in 620 games. he is the only player in the salary cap era to have a 150-point season. idk there's just fuckin . no one like him. like generally an untrained eye can't really see how much better or faster any given player is than the rest but like. you can with him. he just Looks a step ahead of the pack. top five all time, and he's in his prime rn!!!! lets go connie all my homies love connie

[seat-safety-switch]

Although retirement is out of reach for many of us, there’s one thing that we can all still get. Shitty old 90s Mustangs. As long as we do it right now, before the investors get over here and start driving up the price to as many as two thousand dollars, we can all have a little bit of anemic grand-touring hardtop in our lives. Unless we want a stick shift, a V8, or a convertible. Or a running car. You know what? Forget this whole thing, I just saw a Craigslist post for a wrecked ‘94 V6. Seller wants nineteen grand for it, abandon market.

There’s a lot of cross-class appeal to the Mustang, whose reputation has in a few short decades broadened from “attractive successful businessperson’s car” to the stick-axled understeer demon that menaces car meets and trailer parks alike. Unfortunately for all of us dirtbags, the price has continued to rise along with its demand. Nowadays, you can’t get one of Vanilla Ice’s prized 5.0s for less than one of those aforementioned trailer homes.

Some of you out in the audience are probably throwing things at your monitor, lashing out at the very idea of me claiming that the Mustang’s increase in price is proportionate to its increase in demand. It is true that Ford Motor Company has, since the fateful year of 1964.5, produced more total Mustangs than there are currently alive human beings on Earth.

We could all have one, if the economy were better managed and the means of production seized. Karl Marx himself did not write extensively about Mustangs, mentioning them only briefly (Engels was more of a Firebird guy,) but his intentions were clear. However, this analysis fails to comprehend the fact that virtually 95% of all Mustangs have been destroyed in low-speed single-vehicle accidents with stationary objects. Some scientists now believe there are as few as eight four-eyed Capris left in the world, and some guy from Topeka somehow ended up with all of them.

[hondafuckingodyssey]

X-men comic recommendations

The other day I went on a rant about how nobody should attempt to read all of the x-men comics in order because if the x-men have no respect for the spacetime continuum, you shouldn't have to respect reading their shit in order.

So here's a list of comics series, some that I've read and some that are on my to read list. Mind the authors and the dates, Marvel likes to recycle titles so sometimes you'll accidentally pick up something that's a completely different story from ten years later.

If you're going to getting your comics from the library and different sources (cough archive.org cough), or skipping around to different eras, I recommend an app like Comic Geeks where you can track which issues you've read. As a bonus, you get a satisfying little dopamine hit every time you check off a comic you read.

The original silver age comics from 1963 Stan Lee and Jack Kirby These are fun, but they kind of suck. I believe X-men was one of their worst selling titles for many years. They are campy fun though, like that island has a giant acme magnet on on top of it, I wonder if that's Magneto's secret base, hmmm? I'm kind of working through these when I just have my phone because they're easier to read on a smaller screen than the new stuff with full page spreads.

Chris Claremont's classic X-men run, starting in 1975. This is the classic starting point I hear recommended again and again. You start with Giant Size x-men number 1, and then go to X-men issue 94. This is where all the classic x-men are introduced. You got your Dark Phoenix saga, and Days of Future Past, and a lot of the storylines that were used in the 90's animated series. Everybody should read some of these. But Chris Claremont was writing the X-men for FOURTEEN years. Do not attempt to read all of these before you move onto the modern stuff.

The Dark Phoenix saga, 1980 Chris Claremont, issues 129-138 Ok, I just finished these last night and they're so good that I want to make a special call out for them. I jumped ahead to read them and I'm so glad I didn't wait. I can't figure out how the movies sucked so bad when they had this source material to work with. We could have had an epic moon battle? If you don't read anything else from this era read these. Pro tip: get the epic version of like a prayer stuck in your head right before starting on issue 137. Really adds to the atmosphere.

X-men Season 1 by Dennis Hopeless, 2012 This is a graphic novel (so published altogether instead of in individual issues) retelling of the original silver age comics. It's mostly from Jean Grey's point of view. It's very fun.

Children of the Atom, 1999 by Joe Casey, 6 issues Sort of a prequel, explains how Charles Xavier recruited a bunch of teenagers. This looks good, but it started out with mutants being lynched, and with the way I always compare being a mutant to being queer, and the election and project 2025 looming, I decided this one was too much for me right now.

X-men First Class, 2006 by Jeff Parker, 8 issues I read the first four of these and they were cute. Bobby is writing home to his parents about his time in school, Scott and Jean go to the beach. Lots of fun character stuff. Originally 8 issues but it looks like they immediately did another run of issues the next year.

New X-men, 2001 by Grant Morrison his run starts with issue 114 This is a great place to jump in if Deadpool & Wolverine got you interested in x-men comics, because it's got Cassandra Nova in it. She's doing her weird finger thing! Supposedly this is one of best places to jump into modern x-men. I've read about 6 of them, so far so good.

Astonishing X-men, 2004 by Joss Whedon This is supposed to be the best x-men run ever. It continues directly from Grant Morrison's run. I'm saving it for next time I have a mental breakdown a rainy day.

All-New X-men, 2013 by Brian Michael Bendis This is what I'm reading the most of right now. Cyclops is being an asshole, and Beast decides the best way to solve this problem is to go back in time and bring the original teenage x-men from '60s back with him to confront him. This works particularly well as a jumping in point because they keep explaining backstory through the kids finding out all the ridiculous things that have happened. Like, poor Jean asking how she died, and they're is like, um which time?

[gigglomancer]

To Antoine de Saint-Exupery,

I owe you many thanks: first, thank you for being born 93 years before me. Had it been 94 or 92, you would have been such a different person, and you and I would not share asteroid B-612. Did you feel it beneath your feet when you were born? Maybe not, but it was there in your 4th house that day in late June, just as it passed over you in the 10th in the African desert. While it was very noble of you to proceed me by almost a century, this unfortunately means you're dead now. Your sacrifice has meant a lot, and I hope you were not alone in your life. Somehow, I doubt you were. Second, thank you for being French. Bet no one ever thanked you for that, right? I read Le Petit Prince for the first time in my 5th grade French class. With the Collins French to English dictionary in my lap, your book and my notebook on the desk, I diligently translated my way through your story to search for meaning. And honestly? Initially, I was terribly afraid you were dry and boring instead of terribly condescending like most adults, but when the question of "the hat" came up, I knew your frustrated heart immediately, and I started paying real attention. Had you not been French, I would have had to read Jules Verne, and he was a wonderfully bright-hearted person, but he and I do not share B-612 - you see the problem? Who could have told me about the rose, the sheep, and the baobobs, if not you? Finally, thank you for teaching me the basic premises if magic, which my heart already knew, but was threatened to extinction in my mind.

I come from a long line of pirates, travellers by sea and sky. Long ago, my ancestors travelled from a distant point and landed in West Africa, thousands of miles from where you met the Prince in the Sahara, but closer than where either of us were born! They passed over B-612 once, long before the rose sprouted, and they saw your golden-haired Prince without thinking much of him. You see, pirates aren't just explorers, they're treasure hunters, only interested in the prizes that glimmer under sunlight. They abandoned their watery little planet in search of "something of value." They knew nothing about baobobs and the work it took the little prince to maintain his home, nor why it should matter, for B-612 is just another small asteroid, thus of no particular value. They met the man with his tallies and sums, and jealous were they indeed! "How smart was he, to think of owning the stars? We wish we thought of that first." But truthfully, "matters of consequence" were too troublesome; the pirates couldn't stomach the tediousness of just watching him count. Imagine if they had witnessed the Prince caring for his rose - they could not fathom such a thing at all. "Life grows from the ground to feed our bellies," they'd say, "not to make demands." As far as the pirates were concerned, the sun rose to warm and darken their skin; the wind blew to wick their sweat; and the ground rose up out of the ocean to bring them vantage points from which to seek new treasures. They know nothing of taming - that relationship to effort and time which gives things their importance - because pirates wish to steal even time. Earth is a place of great treasures, they tell me, where many things glimmer and shine, and no one has to work so hard as to count the stars, light the lamps, or weed the baobobs. "What is the value of working so hard?" But this is also what they said when Earths treasures were out of reach. They would declare something of value, then soon after say "but to work so hard for it? It's not so valuable." But if you listen to pirates, what's valuable is always meant to be sold or exchanged, is of no use to the self, and changes with every news cycle. How can anything truly be valuable? How can anyone who truly feels their own beating heart ask that? I come from a long line of pirates, so I have seen and come to know that nothing is truly valuable - nothing is truly anything, and frankly, nothing is true. Or rather, there is no singular truth: we are awash in a sea of subjectivity, the waters of our subconsciousnesses washing up against each other, shifting temperature and tide. Most only see what washes up on the shores of their minds; in the desert, you had nothing but endless shore. There, you discovered the first building block of magic, as I see it:

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

The only things of true value are the ones that glow in your heart; that which calls to us, again and again, the tantalizing and frustrating alike; that which you tend to daily.

"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."

This is the love of oneness Virgo and the 6th House speak to, the asymptotic relationship humans have to perfection: if you tend to your beloved rose daily, maybe one day, you will cease to be separate.

"One only understands the things that one tames," said the fox. "Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me . . ."

"Taming," as the fox puts it, is the art of familiarizing yourself with reality by spending time within it. One only understands that which one tames, and so one can only do spellcraft or energy work with that which is tamed by the self. Spend time in nature, with plants, animals, and stones, and one will find over time that each calls to mind different (although at times overlapping) sentiments - emotional flavours - that one can utilize creatively in their workings. I will never make spell lists; my spells will not work cast by anyone but me, they are made up of that which I have self-tamed. Likewise, so will your most effective spells - the spells of others are only worth studying for their composition and creativity, not because they can be robotically applied to your own circumstances. Beyond nature, all things in this world are tameable, from its sights (visual art, photography, sculpture, etc) to its sounds (music, speech, storytelling, etc) to its tastes (foods, candies, spirits, teas, nectars, etc), and so on. To tame is to know, and to know is a process of experiencing over time. Not all things we tame will be sweet to us; this world is full of spice and bitterness too. Taming is a two-way process, but most of reality desires to experience and be experienced by others - to turn away from that process is to turn away from life itself; those who do not wish to experience surely wish to not exist. Experience is all we ever do; for the aspiring magic practitioner, that experience demands more examination: life demands to be deeply felt, and each feeling in each passing moment tasted and considered. 42 sunsets in a day and never bored. We long to experience reality with the same attention to detail our bodies feel when the hairs stand up on your arms or legs, each felt individually. A tree feels like one big thing until, one by one, the leaves come flittering down. Thank you again for being the first of many friends, inspirations, and mentors that have lead me on this path. I'm sure it would bring you happiness to know you sparked a lasting sense of wonder in a young child and a hopefulness in my journey to find others like us, beings I might never have imagined had I not chanced upon your story. Perhaps, one lifetime or another, you'll chance upon mine too.

[thepolyamorouspolymath]

Fun fact to share with anyone who tells you about how they vote Trump because of prices or the economy, the "gas and eggs" lie that even leftists seem to believe...

Eggs have gone up in price around $0.70 since 1980 as has gas when adjusted for inflation.

So no it wasn't a choice between wallets and human rights -- because those prices haven't changed much.

It's taking more of your money to pay for essentials because of an artificial housing crisis (of Republican support), an out of date utility system (of Republican support), and wage suppression (of Republican support.)

You can check here

for prices on goods like gas and eggs and milk, adjusted for inflation every year.

The idea that Republicans are better on the economy is a lie. It's simply not supported by actual data. If we were in 1925, then we could debate the value of liberal and conservative economic policies -- they were both largely untried, simply theoretical math.

But it's been almost a century and every time conservative economics have been put in play, a market crash and recession inevitably follow. When liberal policies have been put into place, we rebounded from the biggest economic disaster in history to the longest period of sustained growth, created the middle class, funded not only our own part in WWII but a goodly portion of the UK's as well, paid to reconstruct Europe, increased education, created a safety net for our elderly (FDR post Hoover depression), had an economic and technological boom, a soaring stock market, ran a budget surplus, (Clinton post Reagan/Bush recession) restored industries, improved healthcare, came back with 72 months of sustained job growth (Obama post Bush 2 recession).

Now I will not blame Trump for the economic problems in his last year in office -- pandemics can happen to anyone and while better economic policies could have helped, that's theoretical which is up for debate, and I'm here to address FACTS. Hard data from unpartisan sources that is publicly available FACTS.

And Biden's "terrible" economy? Yeah we had the lowest inflation in the western world (EU inflation in 2023 was 6.59% versus US inflation in 2023 was 4.1% -- as of October 2024, inflation was at 2.6% versus Trump's 2.3% inflation rate in 2019) at a time when inflation is INEVITABLE (literally every pandemic has an inflation period after it, since forever -- look at the Black Death sometime), the highest GDP (21.43T for 2019 versus 27.36T for 2023) and GNP (21.73T in 2019 versus 29.03T for 2023) in history, jobs growth every quarter (unemployment rate of 3.7% in 2019 to 3.6% in 2023, which means we not only got back everything we lost from COVID, but then some), and an increase in the median wage from $35k per person per year to $59k.

For those of you who have some weird devotion to tax rates in 2019, the federal income tax rates were 10%, 12%, 22%, 24%, 32%, 35%, and 37%. In 2023 they were... exactly the same. Your tax rates remained unchanged by Democrats at all. Also the largest budget deficit in history occurred under Trump's first administration. Personally I find these less than irrelevant (FDR put on a top tax of 94% and spent more than anyone knew you could spent and it paid off spectacularly.) But if you want to claim to be a fiscal conservative (tell me you don't understand history or economics without telling me...) then you should care.

The stock market is the worst indicator of economic health as its based on perception rather than value and has relatively little effect on daily life for most people. So how did it do under Trump (pre Covid number) versus Biden?

The S&P 500 value as of January 2020 was 3289.29. As of October 2024, 5705.45.

Again, those are all publicly available numbers.

STOP LETTING THEM GET BY WITH THE IDEA THAT THEY ARE GOOD FOR THE ECONOMY BECAUSE NO THEY ARE NOT. THEY HAVE LITERALLY NO DATA TO SUPPORT THAT.

Economics is a hard science. Data matters.

We can debate the role of religion or parental control or the fundamental nature of man. But basic arithmetic? No, sorry that question has been answered.

And anyone who tries to use it as a justification for supporting Nazis is wrong, lying, or both.