#i literally had to wrangle the site to post this

[ihavethedreamies]

Good Enough | Jisung

Park Jisung - NCT Dream

Rating: M (18+) MDNI

Word Count: ~6.3k [more than half is smut btw]

Pairing: Jisung x AFAB!Older!Reader

Genre: Reader-Insert, Smut, Some Plot, Friends/Roommates-to-Lovers, Absolute Filth

!!This is smut…if that much isn't clear you should probably leave now!! MDNI!

Summary: Jisung is tired of his noona treating him like her little sweet baby.

Warnings: She/Her Pronouns used, Pet Names (Noona, Sweetheart), Swearing, Very Dirty Talk, Kissing, Lots of Tongue, One Spank, Oral (M! & F! Receiving), Deepthroating, Face-Fucking, Rimming (Just a tad), Size Difference, Size Kink, Soft-Dom! Jisung (oof), Sub! Reader, Breeding/Creampie Kink, Overstimulation, Squirting, Unprotected Sex (Use a condom! Reader is on the pill)

Author's Note: I had a mental breakdown while writing this lol. This might not acutally be the filthiest thing I have written, but it feels like it because of who it's for…for some reason. It's hard for me to believe that Jisung got so fucking hot, because I remember him sitting on Taeyong's lap, but he's a MAN now. i'll sit on his lap

P.S. FUCK

I am cross-posting this on Archive and Wattpad. Please reblog! If you know anyone that would like this or future fics but they aren't on here my name and icon are exactly the same on the other sites. Happy reading!

"He's my precious."

"Your roommate is your precious?" Jisung heard voices creeping in from the living room. Groggily, he glanced at the clock on his nightstand, head peeking out of his blanket cocoon. He was still jet lagged after getting back from Korea, so it was about 3 pm.

"Yes. And he's not just my roommate-"

"He's your precious?"

"Yes. But! I was going to say he is my best friend…and my precious baby boy."

"Seriously? Isn't he only like two or three years younger?"

"My precious baby Jisung." He huffed at your coo, dropping his head back on his pillow in annoyance. For some reason his summer trip back home to see his parents triggered something in him. Jisung was suddenly extremely displeased with your relationship. He missed you horribly and you were pretty much the only thing he talked about. Once he was informed by his mother that he likely had fallen in love with you, he was…upset. More with himself at first for not realizing it, but then looking at how you two interacted, he got cranky. He was not your precious baby Jisung, he's a man dammit, had been for nearly four years. Did you see him that way though? Not even remotely. He was a step above a puppy, at least you accepted he was a human. But you constantly went on about how cute he was, and sweet, and 'a bean'; whatever than meant. You had even called him your son on a few occasions, and even though they were mostly in jest and unserious, now they really pissed him off. Jisung didn't want you to see him as your son (maybe give you one) but what really was bugging him barely made any sense. He had only heard you say it once, but it stuck in his mind…

"You realize half of the people on campus want to fuck him, right?" He was in his final year of college, and the only reason you were still in college was because you had stuck around to work for the IT department. Your friend's question was not news to him, but he was much too shy to go for any of the advances he had received. He was also much too in love with you, but he hadn't known that till literally the month before, but it made sense.

"Not allowed."

"Why?"

"Precious baby."

"He's not a baby, (Y/N). Not even close." You didn't reply for a bit, and he could vividly picture your distasteful expression.

"He might not actually be one, but he’s, my baby. My baby Jisung."

"(Y/N)." Your friend's annoyed tone was not nearly strong enough to match the levels he was feeling. Definitely not able to continue his nap, he sat up aggressively from his bed, kicking at his blankets before wrangling his comforter and throwing it onto the floor. Resting his elbow on his knee, he then rested his forehead on his hand, trying to breathe out his ire so he could leave his room without being visibly grumpy.

"My sister wants to ask him out."

"No."

"Why not?"

"No one is good enough."

"No one?"

"Nope, not even me." That was it, you said it. That simple thought was what really set him over the edge. You were the only one good enough, no one else could even be close to you in his eyes. Finally, the anger boiled over and he climbed off his bed, putting a sweatshirt on so quickly that he had to wrestle it in his haste. You kept the apartment so freaking cold… You must have heard him wrench his door open because your conversation immediately stopped. He stormed down the hall, even his socked feet were heavy on the laminate wood floor, so much so that when he came to the mouth of the hallway, you were looking at him with a shocked expression. You were sitting at the coffee table with your friend Hana, various papers spread on the surface while your friend studied for her graduate classes. Your green snake Squishmallow sat on your lap, and he wanted to grab it and throw it across the room, suddenly jealous with how close it was pressed to your chest.

"Ji?" It was clear you didn't think he heard your conversation, but Hana immediately realized, starting to gather her homework.

"I'm gonna go." She nearly shoved the papers into her folder and threw everything else in her bag.

"What? Why?" You turned back to her, and he then realized what you were wearing. Your slightly damp hair had moved out of the way, revealing the design on the back of your baggy t-shirt. It was his.

"Wait, Hana?!" You tried to get up and go after her as she dashed from your apartment, shooting Jisung a look as she shut the door. You had to shove the table to get up better, and even as you stood, you still clutched the plushie to you. Jisung exhaled harshly, storming forward and grabbing your Squishmallow and yeeting her onto the floor.

"Woah?! What'd she do to you?" You motioned to her with your hand, giving him a questioning look. You started to bend and pick her up, but his hand grabbed your wrist, pulling you back up and toward him, making your balance falter. Your bewildered eyes scanned over his face, but you still had no anger in them. Not even annoyance. You couldn't get mad at your baby boy.

"Ji?" His big hand easily held your wrist, and you squeaked when he dragged you even closer to him, so much that you could feel his breath flutter your hair over your forehead. His brow was furrowed, lips pressed tight to each other, but he couldn't seem to meet your eyes.

"Hey, you okay?" Your other hand came up to brush some of your hair away from your face, only leaving it down to dry. Your fingers then moved to his face, trying to brush his bangs out of his eyes. Having you so close and seeing how far you had to reach made him realize how small you were. He was well over half a foot taller than you and he wondered how small you would look under him. When your fingers brushed his cheek, his other hand grabbed yours, easily swallowing it in his grip. Jisung held your hand, pulling it closer, and laid your hands over his heart. With his other, he yanked you the last little bit, so you were pressed to him, wide eyes rapidly scanning his face. Your head was tilted back, almost painfully so, still not recognizing what was happening. The hand around your wrist moved so his thumb could rub your skin till it pressed against your palm. Your gaze went to your hand then, shocked at how small it was compared to his, and you seemed to be registering how small you were compared to him in general. Did he really grow so much since you had met him four years before? Your gaze went back to his face, finally seeming to notice that his face had changed as well. Yes, he was still cute, but he had become devastatingly handsome, maturing into a…man. No, he wasn't a baby anymore, but you were in denial. Even then, pressed against him, even able to feel his toned muscles through his sweatshirt, you kept trying to convince yourself he was still your baby Jisung.

"Jisung?" You exhaled his name, so quiet that if he wasn't so close, he wouldn't have heard. Your eyes followed his when they flicked down to watch your lips move when you whispered his name.

"What makes you think you're not good enough for me?" His voice rumbled through you, its deepness shocking you for some reason. When had that happened? You were so thrown off by the pitch of his voice you barely registered his question.

"Huh?"

"No one else is good enough for me, because they're not you." His hand had dropped your wrist so his arm could wrap around you, and he pressed his cheek to the side of your head. He nuzzled your soft hair, the familiar scent of your shampoo soothing his anger some.

"What?" You stood still, stiff even, trying to process what was happening.

"I don’t want to be your baby Jisung anymore, noona. I just want to be yours." He was a bit surprised with his sudden eloquence, but he just chocked it up to all his upset burning away any shyness he had in the moment. The anger had faded, and he was just upset, tired again, praying in his head that you would get the fucking hint. Your hand, the one he let go, had rested on his chest for balance, then he felt your fingers clutch the fabric of his sweatshirt. With his fingers wrapped around your right hand still, he could feel that your pulse had quickened, and you were minutely shaking.

"Y-you…?" You swallowed hard, tongue running over your lips, mouth feeling dry.

"I thought I just had a crush on you. I don't. I love you." His softened voice floated right into your ear with how his head rested on yours. The back of your nose and throat burned as you swallowed hard, tears sparking in the corners of your eyes. When you hiccupped, sniffing, he flinched, pulling back from you. It was only just enough that he could see your face, his arm still around you, hand still in his over his heart.

"Noona." He sighed softly, dipping and kissing the corner of your eye where a tear had slipped down your cheek. Nope, that made it worse. You burst into tears, chest heaving, and he pulled you back into him. You were…dramatic sometimes. Cried easily. Too easily even. Jisung loved to tease you for crying at a commercial where a little girl brought a quilt out to her sheep in the barn close to Christmas. You also tended to cry around puppies.

"I-I…I-!" Your breath was heaving too much for you to really talk. His nose nuzzled your hair, and he kissed the crown of your head. You sniffed, taking a few deep breaths.

"I love you too." you whispered, if you spoke any louder your sobs would take back over. He didn't know, but while he was gone you were in a much similar situation. You went to visit your parents as well, but it was just an hour or so drive, not across the world practically. You missed him so much, and wouldn't shut up about him, but your mother knew you well enough to see read between the lines. Because it startled you, having romantic feelings for Jisung, you became even more dramatic with the 'baby Jisung' talk.  He was your best friend, and so of course you loved him, but you couldn't admit you were in love with him. You were so worried about ruining your friendship that you just ignored your logical thoughts and pretended you hadn't fallen for him. Nearly fighting him when he pulled back from the hug again, you stayed pressed to him, not wanting him to see your face. Not only was it red from your blush, but it was also blotchy from your crying and your nose was close to running.

"Noona." He huffed a laugh, trying to get you off of him. You gripped his sweatshirt tighter.

"(Y/N)." Jisung was fully laughing at that point, partially from your actions and partially from how ecstatic he was that you loved him back.

"No."

"Noona."

"No." Finally, with a bit more force, he pulled back so you could see each other's faces. The warmest smile you had ever seen was on his face and you froze when he leaned in closer. His forehead bumped yours and his nose crinkled, cringing a bit at his own actions but it made you giggle, which made it all worth it.

"Since when?" you asked. He laughed bashfully, lips pursing.

"I didn't realize how bad it was till a few weeks ago while I was still in Korea. But…I knew before that. Something made me realize…"

"What?" You were shocked when his giddy but shy face fell into one of panic.

"W-what?" His face bloomed red, all the way to the tips of his ears and he tried to bow his head to avoid your gaze, but you could just look up into his eyes.

"Uh, well…" He cleared his throat, trying to pull back further but he didn't let your hand go.

"Jisung?" You pressed with a fake stern tone.

"I…had a dream." He faked a cough to try and hide.

"Yeah?" You were clearly not understanding that he was so reluctant to say what it was, because it was filthy. It even made Jaemin blush. The extreme embarrassment in his eyes when they finally met yours clued you in better. You stepped closer, a coy look spreading over your own face, and he took a step back. His hand was still holding yours though, so he wasn't that desperate to get away. He clenched his other hand into a fist, bringing it up and pressing his mouth to his forearm to hide his face.

"Was it something bad?"

"No! Uh…" With each step you tried to get closer, he backed up, till his back hit the wall.

"Was it naughty?" You teased, and he sneered at the cringey word. Your eyes, still a bit puffy from crying, were creased with amusement.

"Uh, I mean…"

"Do you we do something dirty?" Your head tilted up to look at his face as he tried to hide, fingers clenching yours jerkily, the digits desperate to wiggle.

"M-Maybe."

"What?" You smirked, trying not to giggle. You were always more open about sex stuff, not quite like Jaemin or even Donghyuck, but still more than him.

"No." He was throwing your method of deflection back at you.

"You know," you got up on your tip toes so you could whisper into his ear, "if you tell me, we can do it?" Your suggestion made his whole body freeze, blood turning to ice. He nearly gasped when his blood then rapidly heated, the sound of his pulse whooshing in his ears.

"Are you sure?" he whispered, needing to make sure because even just the slightest detail would reveal too much if you weren't. You nodded with a hum, then gasped when he switched your places, hand cupping the back of your head, so it didn't thud into the wall as he pinned you to it, his other forearm holding him up over your head. You could only blink in response, looking at the conflicted expression on his face.

"I don't want to hurt you." What the hell had he dreamt? You were dying to know.

"You won't." Jisung's eyes met yours, brow furrowed in worry.

"I could."

"You could, but you won't. Plus…" Your hands came up to mess with the strings of his hoodie.

"Sometimes a little pain can feel good." Jisung searched your face and saw the determination in your eyes. The hand on the back of your head dug harshly into your hair, tugging at your scalp and you gasped when his mouth sealed against yours. Your teeth clacked against his with the force of the kiss and you whined, trying to match his fervor. You couldn't. His leg nestled between yours, pressing close and against your core, and you had to stand on your tip toes. The fingers in your hair twisted the strands around them and he tugged harder, tipping your head back more, compensating for him looming over you. His knee hit the wall, his leg literally hitching you up an inch and you moaned at the pressure. Jisung snuck his tongue into your mouth then and your breath was rough out of your nose, saliva drooling from the corner of your mouth. Panting hard, he pulled back, eyes searching yours. His arm against the wall moved down to your side, still holding him up but also pressing into your waist. The hand in your hair left, the tips of his fingers soothing the slight sting he left on your scalp, then cupped your jaw. Your face looked so small cupped in his palm and something carnal, feral, rose in him.

"You're so little, noona." Jisung's tone was nothing like you had ever heard from him. His hooded gaze focused on your mouth when his thumb easily pressed against your lips, his fingers still stroking the back of your head. You watched his brow quirk up when you took his thumb between your lips, sucking on it. You had expected a blush to erupt, for his voice to sputter and for him to pull back. No. He smirked.

"Do you have any idea what I want to do to you?" Your head had to tilt up once again when he pressed even closer, chest to chest, leg still wedged between yours. You wondered if you had soaked through your panties and thin shorts, and if he could feel it. Then again, he was in sweatpants, but you could feel the fabric clinging to your folds and he had only kissed you. Yes, his thigh was pressed into your covered cunt, but he wasn't moving you on it.

"Tell me?" you whispered when he removed his thumb, eyes focusing on the shine of drool left on it. If you didn't know him better, you would take his intense expression for anger, but even with knowing him so well, you couldn't read his face. Jisung slipped his hand off your jaw, fingers pressing to the back of your neck, thumb resting under your chin. His face came close once more so close his lips brushed slightly on yours as he spoke.

"I want to fuck you so hard you can't walk for the next three days. I want to fuck you so stupid you can't even speak, just whine and beg for more. I want to make you cum so much that your cute little pussy stings. I want you to swallow my cock and I want to cum down your throat." You were going to pass out, you were sure of it. With how quickly the blood rushed to your core, your head swam. Where had your sweet little Jisung gone? How long had he been thinking like that? He couldn't even meet anyone's eyes if sex stuff got brought up around friends. But his words were thick with lust, and they swam into your ears and fogged your brain like a drug. Your thighs twitched, body shuddering when a devilish grin spread over his gorgeous face. He wasn't cute right then; he was destructively sexy, and it took your breath away. You don't think you could ever see him as your sweet little friend again.

"What do you want, noona?" The pet-name even came out different, he said it with near reverence, the single word a one-eighty from the four words preceding it.

"I want…I need you to do anything you want to me." His grin fell, he groaned, and his tongue was back in your mouth. He could taste the candy you had been eating while you spoke those fateful words, eagerly circling your tongue with his. You keened a whining moan when the hand at your neck tightened slightly, his thumb pressing into your windpipe. Your breath hitched, somehow where he gripped it gave the same heady feeling without actually restricting your breathing. What stole your air was the pleasure you were feeling just from his kiss. Your hips jumped, desperate for some friction, grinding your covered pussy against his thigh. Helpfully he pressed into you more, lifting you against the wall more, the weight of gravity pulled you onto him harder. The arm at your side that had been holding him up moved, he was using his knee then for balance, and his fingers teased along the waist band of your shorts. You whimpered when his hand continued, sneaking its way into the back of your shorts and panties, the hot pads of his fingers meeting your slick folds. You shivered and took heaving breaths when he removed himself from the kiss. His other hand was still at your throat, but he released the light pressure, making your heavy breaths easier to control.

"You're soaked, noona. For me?"

"Fuck, yes, Jisung." Expecting a kiss when he moved closer once more, he gripped your jaw, tilting your head back, thumb hooking your bottom lip. You let him move your jaw, holding your mouth open, waiting for his next move. His grin broke when he let a glob of spit fall from his lip and into your awaiting mouth. Without needing a prompt, when his thumb left your mouth, you swallowed.

"Good girl, noona." Slowly, he pulled away from you and the wall, stepping back only enough that he could take his hoodie off. He went ahead and let his shirt underneath go along with it and your heart leapt.

"Fucking hell." You gasped, reaching forward to eagerly run your fingers over him. While he wasn't necessarily to the level of Jeno or even Jaemin, for having a dancer's body he still had muscle. When had that gotten there? He barely wore anything tight let alone without sleeves, so you had no idea. He felt a wave of bashfulness rising, so he took control once again, pulling your small hands from his skin.

"Off." He prompted and you grabbed the hem of his shirt you were wearing, and he finished the job, tossing it down the hall. Clicking his tongue at your bra, you started to reach around your back to undo it, but he beat you to it. With an easy flick, it snapped open, and you let it drop, wide eyes staring at him. Where the fucking hell had he learned to do that?

"Jaemin." He must have read your mind and that made plenty of sense. Not able to even process your next move, he scooped you up easily, pressing you back into the wall. You squeaked, wrapping your mostly bare legs around his waist, fingers digging into his shoulders, he was more or less eye-level with you then. He dropped you a bit, preferring you under him more, and his nose nuzzled under your ear. He felt the goose bumps rising on your skin against his, his top just as bare as yours. His hands once again buried under the waist band of your shorts, fingers so long that the tips slipped out the leg holes of your panties, cupping your ass perfectly.

"God, Jisung!" Your body twitched when his light nuzzles immediately turned into open mouth kisses, then he sucked hard, working the skin with his lips and teeth. Popping off of your neck, his tongue ran over the flesh, blood rising and pooling at the surface. The fingers on his shoulders tightened, the blunt edges of your nails digging into his skin, and his own hips jumped then. You had been trying to ignore the tent in his pants, but he grinded his hardened cock against your cunt, only a few layers of fabric between. Jisung seemed to be big in every way.

"You still on the pill?"

"Yes, why?" You shuddered once more as he licked at the third hickey he left, that one on your collarbone.

"I need to fuck you raw." He groaned as your cunt throbbed, easily feeling it against his cock even with the clothing barrier.

"Want to pump you so full, my cum's dripping out of you for hours." Your eyes rolled back as you whined, head thrown back. You squeaked when he jostled you up higher, those beautiful and surprisingly sinful lips sucking in a nipple. Sighing at the feeling, he wasn't pleased with the gentle noise, and so he nibbled the peak instead. You yiped like a dog (ironic since he was planning on fucking you like one), a little dazed by how high up the wall he had you. Despite the altitude, he seemed to be easily holding you up, though he was able to use the wall for help. When his mouth moved to your other breast, he smirked at the red and swollen nipple he left. Your body felt like it was on fire and you both still had your pants on.

"Can I fuck you raw, noona? Feel your pussy cling to my cock?" His mouth was at your ear again, having dropped you back down to an easier level. His dick hadn't even entered you and you felt too stupid to talk.

"Please." You mewled and your submissive tone made him groan. Jisung's hands left your shorts, shoving them down off of you as he partially let you go. Your feet dangled slightly as you toed off the last of your clothes, then you yelped as he slung you over his shoulder like a sack of rice.

"J-Jisung-!?" You yelped as his hand smacked your ass, most likely leaving a big red print on your skin. The sting of the spank sent tendrils of fire right to your cunt as he stormed down the hall toward your room, your bed bigger than his. You flinched at the slam of your door as he closed it, huffing as he nearly dropped you.

"Knees." He prompted, ordered, and your body instantly obeyed. Going down the rest of the way to the floor, you sat with your knees in an 'M', gazing up at him with big glossy eyes. You were trying hard not to gape at the bulge in his sweatpants, or to run your gaze hungrily over his bare torso.

"Go ahead, noona." He nearly laughed at your eagerness, quickly reaching for the waistband of his pants and pulling them off, his hard cock bobbing in the air before you. Your wide, enraptured stare on his dick gave him a rush of nerves and pride all at once. While you came to terms with your fate, he shoved his sweatpants to the side, and you shuffled forward. Whimpering, your hand wrapped around the base of his cock, big and pretty like him. Swallowing your eyes met his.

"C-Can I grab something?" Your request threw him off, but he nodded, and you scrambled up and to your nightstand. Trotting back over, you stood demurely before him, holding the item out with both palms up. He took the little bottle from you, looking at it.

"Throat numbing spray?" His brow crooked and he looked at you, biting your lip with a giddy glaze over your eyes. It still had plastic wrap on the nozzle. Nodding once, you sank back to your knees, and he groaned low when you opened your mouth wide, tongue out.

"Why do you have this, noona?" His tone was slightly patronizing as he tore the plastic off, then spritzed the watermelon flavored spray into your mouth. Swallowing a few times, the dull sensation you could even register faded, leaving a very minute feeling in your throat.

"Guess." You giggled, hand wrapping back around his cock. Jisung buried his hand in your hair again, tugging hard to make you look back up at him.

"You've used it before?"

"I'm not a virgin, Ji." Your normal, casual tone didn't sit right with him in the moment, and he twisted your hair again, the stinging twinge making you moan softly.

"Only for me now?"

"Yes." You nodded to further emphasize your point, and his grip loosened. With a much softer hold on your head, he pressed you closer, letting you take over. Swallowing a buildup of saliva, your tongue swirled around the head of his dick, the salty taste of his precum eagerly lapped up. He was barely half-way in your mouth when the head hit your numbed throat, your jaw protesting some already. His eyes shut as he groaned, only fluttering open to watch you take his cock even deeper down your throat. The spray helped you not to gag, and you swallowed over and over, holding your breath, your nose pressing to his groin. Your hand fell, landing next to your other one as you pressed your hands to the floor. Pulling back enough that you could breathe, you twisted your head like a curious dog, eyes searing into his.

"Ready?" You moaned and his hands were back in your hair, hips jumping, burying his cock back inside your throat. Despite the numbing, tears sprung to your eyes, a slight gag leaving you. Holding still like a good girl, Jisung pumped his fat cock into your mouth and down your throat, breathing harshly through your nose when you could.

"Fuck, you feel so good, noona." He sighed, head thrown back, making sure not to use full force as he rolled his hips. Even with him holding back, you could feel the strength of his movements and you felt a puddle of wet forming on the laminate floor under you, cunt clenching around nothing.

"You better swallow it all, (Y/N)." He tried not to whimper, but he couldn't help it, letting you inhale deeply before burying his cock all the way into your gullet, pumping thick strands of hot cum down your throat. Your core spasmed, eyes fluttering as you eagerly swallowed over and over, the heat of his release warming your chest. When you woke up that morning you never dreamed you would be eagerly swallowing Jisung's cock as he came buckets down your throat. As the last little wave died, he quickly removed his still half-hard cock, brow furrowing with worry as you gasped for air. Tears were flowing down your cheeks, face red and messy, but you opened up, tongue out, to show him you obediently swallowed every drop.

"You're so fucking good, sweetheart." You gasped softly, the pet-name going straight to your needy cunt. Jisung used his index finger to gather the saliva and pre that had dripped down your chin, letting you lick it off.

"Get on the bed, it's my turn." As soon as his finger retracted, you stood quickly, albeit shakily and went to stand by the bed.

"W-which way?" His hands on your shoulders turned you to face the bed, back to him. With a shove, you fell onto the mattress, chest pressed to the surface, hips bumping the end of the bed. You then heard a light thump, and his hands were back on your ass.

"Fuck!" You gasped as his thumbs spread your soaking folds, blowing a stream of air against your fluttering core.

"Did you cum when I did, sweetheart?"

"Y-yes."

"Good girl." You could hear his smirk, then you cried out as you buried your hands into the sheets, his tongue burrowing into your hot cunt. Jisung easily held your hips still, his arm wrapping around the front of your legs, his free hand splayed over the small of your back. When his tongue left your pussy, it swirled over your clit, and he sucked it in once before running through the slit of your folds and wiggling back inside. He did this a few more times, eagerly drinking your slick.

"Fuckfuckfuck." You shuddered, not even able to warn him as your next orgasm hit, much stronger than the small one you had not even five minutes prior. He held you down as your body shook, gummy walls fluttering and throbbing around his tongue.

"You taste so good, noona." You nearly heard him lick his lips, pulse still whooshing in your ears.

"A-ah?!" You squealed when his hands parted your ass cheeks, his tongue moving up from your soaking cunt and swirling over your pucker.

"J-Jisung!?" You gasped harder, not sure how to feel about the sensation. Grateful you took a shower not even two hours ago, you still weren't really expecting his tongue to go from your pussy to your ass.

"Don't worry, noona. I just wanna taste today." He lapped over your pucker once more, then pulled back, huffing in amusement at your still twitching thighs. You were already tired, he could tell, but he was painfully hard again. Jisung's thoughts ran rampant as he tried to decide how he wanted you as he fucked you first. Your pose would do just fine.

"Hm, so wet, sweetheart." He stood so he could lean over you on the bed, one hand by your head to hold him up, the other hand leading his cock to run through your folds. You knew it was big in your mouth but feeling it at your entrance made you shiver. As the head of his cock started to breach your gummy walls, the burning sting made you sigh in delight, the heat of his skin scorching through you. Breathing hard, trying to relax, your cunt fluttered still as he buried deeper, slowly. His deep, low groan faded into a chuckle as he watched your pussy suck in his cock. At the last inch, he snapped his hips, filling you fully, head pressing into your cervix.

"Ah, FUCK!" You white knuckled the sheets, toes curling, forcing you to tip toe, his pelvis pressing to your hips. You breathed raggedly, getting used to not just the burn his fat cock forced from your walls, but the stinging pleasure the same burn forced through you. You hadn't been fucked in way too long, and you were already sure no one would ever feel as good as Jisung did right then. You had needed him, not just any guy, but him. That's why you hadn't tried looking for a date, your subconscious knowing you needed your sweet friend to rail you stupid. Jisung breathed hard as well, trying to let you get at least a little used to the stretch, but your sticky, wet heat felt too good.

"I need to move, (Y/N)."

"Please~" You whined, squealing with delight as he pulled back no more than halfway, then slowly back in. It was like he sucked the air out of you, then forced it back in, but his next thrust made you see stars. As he leaned over you, hips battering your ass with hard, shallow thrusts, his hands laid over yours, weaving his fingers through yours. The sweet move was overshadowed by his animal pace, your whimpers and squeaks just as feral. He was still trying to hold back some, but when he couldn't hold back a hard snap, he felt the same flutter as before and ground his cock into you as you came, spurts of slick coating his groin and balls as you squirted over him. Your shudders and pulses lasted nearly twice as long and when you finally laid still, he started back up himself. Your cunt stung slightly, not ready for the friction once more, but the pain just fueled the pleasure. Without the bed underneath you, you would have melted onto the floor, no strength left. Wanting to protest when he unwound your fingers, he fell forward, his bare chest to your back. Not too tightly, he wrapped his arm under you, across your collar bone, then chest, pulling you up just enough that the arm around you restricted you, forcing your elbows to your hips. Your nails dug into the fabric under your lower stomach, Jisung easily holding you up just a bit from the bed. His other arm also snaked around you, his hand laying over your lower stomach. You were sensitive there, more than most people, and just the pressure alone made you mewl. Jisung pressed harder, able to feel the bulge of his cock below your skin and as he settled into position, you realized why he was holding you so tight. He was holding you in place. His next thrust started with only the head of him inside, then he barreled his cock back into you, fucking you with abandon. You gasped, not able to even squeak or moan, mouth open in a silent scream, drool dripping from the corners of your mouth.

"Ji-Jisung-! Please, fuck!" You breathed out, your next orgasm washing over you, leaving the friction painful. The pain crested hard and fast as he continued to pound into you, fading back into pleasure. So much of your release and wet spilled from your fluttering cunt that it dripped onto the floor, down both of your thighs.

"I'm going to cum, noona. Fill you up, yeah?" He whimpered deeply, almost groaning, hips faltering just slightly.

"Yes, yes, Jisung!" He dropped both of you to the bed then, pressing you down into the mattress, gouging his cock as deep as he could, and pumping your protected womb and cunt full of hot cum. It spurted out in globs with your own cum, dripping a bigger puddle on the floor, the hard pulse of his cock even stronger as he filled you. Your vision blurred, ears ringing as you came once more, grateful that he stilled, actually really hurting at that point. Reveling in his full weight on your back, he then registered he was laying on you like that and pulled up just a bit.

"You okay?" He nuzzled the back of your ear.

"S-stings." You got out hoarsely.

"Ah." He winced with you as he pulled his still half-hard length from you, more globs of jizz and slick leaving your cunt.

"I don't think I'll walk for four days." You muttered. It took him a second to register what you meant, before he burst into laughter, pressing his sweaty forehead to your shaking shoulder.

"Good enough?" Jisung asked, making you hum.

"Fucking perfect."

Master-Master List

NCT Master List

[1863-project]

I’m not so sure the younger players starting out with Scarlet and Violet will appreciate the nuance of a character like Larry, because they haven’t had to fight for their survival in a capitalist society yet - at that age, their guardians are still fighting the fight for them.

But as an adult in my 30s, that shit hits HARD. I remember my time in grad school, where at one point I was simultaneously a full-time student, had an internship, and was working a job on the weekends. I went literal months without seeing my friends that semester. I was lonely and miserable and kept getting sick. I was doing something I loved in grad school and at my internship - archiving - but the job (a gig as a tour guide at a historic site) was sucking the life out of me. When I finally got out of that job and started applying to archival positions, my parents actually commented on how the tour guide work had been slowly killing me.

Spoilers for Scarlet and Violet below the cut.

Larry has a job he absolutely despises, probably because he felt like he had to get one to survive, because being a Pokemon trainer often doesn’t pay the bills - in fact, we do frequently see Gym Leaders in this franchise (and even Champions, in the case of Cynthia - an archaeologist - and Steven - the scion to a business) working actual jobs. It’s not lucrative and it’s not necessarily something you can survive on doing alone. Even my favorite characters in the franchise, Ingo and Emmet, run a public transit system alongside a battle facility. It’s the former that’s likely keeping their rent paid.

Larry has distinct skill as a battler - indeed, he’s both a Gym Leader and a member of the Elite Four, specializing in a different type for each (though with a Staraptor on both teams) - and he also has a distinct Poke Ball throw reminiscent of a sidearm pitcher’s windup (see here and here for more on that). But he also talks about his actual job, which he distinctly hates, and how he hopes the player character doesn’t have to use Facade in real life. Larry’s passions lie elsewhere - perhaps in Pokemon battling, or perhaps even in a potential baseball career cut short, if his throw is anything to go by - but capitalism forced him to take an office job, and he is miserable. It’s a distinct misery you understand once you’ve had a job eat you alive and leave you next to no time for your passions - or if it does leave you that time, it exhausts you so much that you can’t do them anyway.

He hasn’t lost his kindness, though - he treats the player character to dinner, and when you battle Nemona on even footing once you’re both at Champion Rank and all the Gym Leaders come to watch, he’s in the back, but he still takes time out of his schedule to make it. He’s doing his best despite being broken down by his job. And so many of us have been there, especially now that those of us who have played since Red and Blue are now in our 30s and 40s.

The kids whose first game is Scarlet or Violet might not quite get it yet. But for those of us who wrangle with capitalism on a daily basis, Larry hits too close to home, and it makes him a great character.

(I also suspect he might be an allusion to Game Freak’s employees being overworked by TPCi, but that’s a post for another day.)

[wander-wren]

almost escaped the anti-ao3 posts this donation round but of course today i get smacked with a few, so i go hunting for this year’s arguments, which, as expected, touch a lot on palestine.

what i’m seeing here is a shitton of inflammatory language and very few sources, and even fewer sources that aren’t screenshots of That One Tweet. most of the arguments from both sides are made on things that aren’t entirely true. i dislike this. so let’s clear the air a bit, hm?

1) ao3 is a racist/zionist organization

ao3 has had its scandals, including the 2023 management scandal in its full glory, which you can read about at the linked fanlore article. that covers several different areas where ao3 messed up. i will not defend these instances. i will, however, point out that very few of the current anti-ao3 posts mention them.

additionally, there is this fanlore article specifically about the issue wherein a volunteer was told to remove “from the river to the sea, palestine will be free” from their status, which is the singular piece of evidence referenced for ao3’s zionism. it has been spread that the otw banned or kicked out this volunteer, which is untrue; they left voluntarily. the otw also offered to allow the volunteer in question to change the status to “i stand with palestine,” communicating the same message in a less polarizing way.

you are allowed to dislike this decision. i do. but the otw slack is first and foremost a professional space, and they are within their rights to ask for political discussion to be kept out—or, in this case, to a politics channel so it can be opted out of. i am not currently aware of anyone having asked the otw board to ban or otherwise address pro-israel sentiments in the slack server, so i cannot actually make any statements about unequal decisions, because those decisions were not made.

ultimately i do not disagree that otw/ao3 have made poor choices rooted in racism in the past, but i also believe many of these posts discussing it now are performative, inflammatory, and misleading, which is not helpful

2) donating to ao3 during a genocide is bad/selfish/racist/etc

there are always problems in the world. this is literally the same argument as every previous year with new paint on it. people can care about more than one thing.

3) ao3 is a scam/mismanages money/gets more than they need/is horrible for not paying volunteers

here is a post i made last year breaking down ao3’s budget. what’s funny is, i saw a post going on for paragraphs about how they “calculated” that ao3 has 2.8 million in reserves (assuming their 2023 numbers shook out, it is like $1.5 million at best. these numbers are public and easy to find) and that they have “no idea” what to do with it and are deliberately not being transparent about it (they have publicly stated in news posts exactly what that money is for).

one very confusingly-worded post seemed to argue that it is morally wrong to have volunteer library workers, which is the same as ao3? something about master’s degrees? i just thought that was funny because. like. what. do you think the volunteers are the ones with a master’s in library science, friend?

also, people have said it’s a scam because they don’t update the site, and i’m like….what do you want them to update, exactly? i just want more tags wrangled. i suppose that translates to me wanting an update on the servers or whatever bit of hardware is limiting the tag system. otherwise i don’t see why you have to fix a good thing.

4) ao3 hosts evil bad fanfiction

ah, the age-old “child porn” argument. or racism is a big one this year. do i have to get into this one? it’s so goddamn annoying. just read the about page or a wiki article with your eyes. anti-censorship. yada yada yada. also, if you use the phrase “child porn” i do not respect you or take you seriously.

okay, first of all, fanfiction does not meet the definition of csam. it’s fanfiction. it’s fiction. there are tags for a reason. none of it is illegal. most of it has been published in real books for money before. you can hate it, but it deserves to exist, and with the way explicit material is getting deleted off the internet (see: wattpad’s new policies, google drive’s new policies), ao3 is a last bastion in the storm.

5) you should check out end-otw-racism for more helpful info

honestly i thought this movement was dead by now, but i’ve seen a lot of it mentioned today so i went to check. some things i found, scrolling alllll the way back to august:

a pinned post from SEVEN months ago that is several paragraphs of back-patting from the mods about how much “work” and “goals” have been accomplished and how grateful they are to the community. no mention whatsoever of what those goals were or what specifically was accomplished. also says the mods are going on break for a while, which presumably is still in effect

a few posts about the otw’s board meetings for various months, each rehashing how a board meeting runs and when the next one is being held. no information about what questions or comments the organization wants to focus on for each meeting or specific actions supporters should take

post about substack being a nazi site now (this is the only post i fully respect)

more board meeting reminders of no substance

a post reviewing the board elections, going over each candidate. the post acknowledges that no candidates mentioned the campaign or its specific goals, and instead grasps at vaguely related topics as if to show the volunteers are listening to them and they have done something

more board meeting reminders

a post about an update to the board’s strategic plan for 2023, which also acknowledges that the update does not really do anything end-otw-racism wanted it to do. many instances of “could have been a great opportunity to” do what they wanted. this one DOES finally state eotwr’s “recommendations” for the next strategic plan update, which literally all boil down to “more transparency,” which i suppose is fair enough

absolutely NO mention of palestine whatsoever

post on the weibo scandal, which is fine but generic, and again, not something brought up ever again despite being made in AUGUST

here i will give you a reminder that some of eotwr’s goals, particularly the ones around moderation and censorship, were unrealistic given the otw’s mission. while i believe eotwr started with good intentions, it seems to have rapidly dissolved into something performative and did not have solid enough organization to actually make any difference. their silence on palestine (and they are still posting despite the “break”) also makes bringing them up in convos about otw’s potential zionist leanings very weird.

at the end of the day, support ao3 or don’t. your morals and reasonings are your own. just don’t lie about them in ways that can be easily disproved, mkay?

this discourse also made me realize it’s been a minute since i reblogged a proper donations masterpost for palestine, so i am on the hunt for a good, up-to-date one now. feel free to link me any you know of.

[psychic-refugee]

OK, so I don’t give money to garbage articles, I’m mostly pulling from what I can remember seeing people post about it. Some things to look out for when trying to disseminate information over the internet. 

First off, be very weary of “anon” sources for gossip. PHW isn’t Richard Nixon, and this isn’t Watergate. There’s no need for anyone to be anonymous if they’re stating facts or speculating/giving an opinion. Tim Burton isn’t Kevin Feige, who employs cloak and dagger tactics for an 8-episode tv series only on one streaming network and will never be syndicated.  

NDA’s might be part of employment contracts, but they’d be hard to enforce, especially if part of the alleged information had already been leaked by a third party. If this person did have “insider” information worth anything, then their paycheque and job benefits are worth more than anything some rando clickbait gossip site could give them. Even minimum wage jobs aren’t worth risking in order to gossip about a C+ and rising star.

Secondly, beware of incredibly vague descriptions such as “Netflix Insider.” According to google, Netflix employs 12,800 people. I don’t know if this counts people they contract out to, such as people who do closed captioning or ratings wrangling, but this could range from the CEO to sanitation staff, to make up artists and PAs on sets of their movies/series.  

Or could it be an independent contractor that works for Netflix, so not technically a Netflix employee.

Or it could be some guy who has a Netflix account.

We don’t know what job this person has or from whom they heard this gossip from. Hell, it could be some rando who wandered “inside” of Netflix HQ. WHO KNOWS?!

If there is no legally regulated definition of something, then anyone can slap that label on anything and be done.

They keep it intentionally vague to bypass anyone claiming they actually said anything.

If some dumbass uses the article as a reference in a defamation suit or say to harass someone on Twitter, then the writers can say “well, we technically didn’t say that or mean it in such a way, so don’t get us involved or blame us in any way.”

Thirdly, if there is CYA (Cover Your Ass) language, just assume they’re pulling everything out of their ass. If the “insider” wasn’t vague enough, then they simply tell you “this hasn’t been confirmed by…” and they generally put this at the end, where they assume after you read the juicy stuff, you’ve stopped reading. Or they’re counting on you not caring because you just want something that confirms your bias.

Either way, they muddied the waters of whether or not they are for sure standing behind anything they wrote. They’re basically saying “We’re claiming this sensationalist drivel…but don’t quote us on it.”

Remember, any asshole can create a website and sell ad space to create a gossip site. Literally. Just because it's online, doesn’t make it actual news.

Like with the accusers, these rag sites are normally not worth going after even if they post the biggest lies because 1) they don’t make any actual money to cover attorney fees much less punitive damages. 2) No serious or reasonable person takes them seriously, only gullible dumbasses.

So @heyharoldsboo is correct. Do not click on these pages, don’t give them money, or encourage them to write more with your internet traffic.

[olderthannetfic]

The post about the creation/migration to AO3 and early user IDs made me decide to finally checkout fandom IDs, because the first user IDs were more about site development when I tend to think of them as BNFs and early adopters. Can you tell me why /works?fandom_id=27 is the only working one in the 1-30 range and what some other low ID fandoms are? Also, trivia curiosity, in the early days, were any smaller fandoms added sooner because of developers being interested in them, not because of size?

--

I had totally forgotten that fandom ID was a thing.

I assume that a bunch of test fandoms got created and then deleted as the coders were building the initial archive.

It's also likely that some of the low numbers were not in whatever standard form we developed later. There weren't any wrangling guidelines at this point. If fic authors saw a later common tag and switched the tag on their actual fic, the old (low ID #) one may have ended up deleted.

Did the coders seed popular fandom tags?

It sounds like you're assuming that must have happened, but pre-making tags isn't really an AO3 thing most of the time. (There's little point both because we were experimenting with giving people freedom and seeing what they did and because AO3 is designed to only show fandoms that have content. A tag with 0 works won't appear in the index.)

I'm sure they made a few tags just to test, but most of the early fandom tags were very likely made by people uploading fic. So if a tester was into a small fandom, there would be a tag for that, same as if they were into a big fandom.

I remember that pretty early on (but after that kind of very initial development), we were asked to import old works just so there would be something in the archive to use for testing. I imported my first fic, which was cranky responsefic inspired by someone's wrong and stupid take on Saitou from Rurouni Kenshin.

Poking around, my guess is that the low-numbered fandoms are actually just the fandoms of actual works the developers/first testers were importing.

31 = Dead Poets Society

37 = Boondock Saints

These are absolutely not juggernauts of the day. They are, however, the sorts of smaller fandoms the early adopters are often fond of. (I'm guessing Dead Poets Society is watersword's fault. She's #12, so I'm thinking she was coding or testing at the time.)

46 = LOTRiPS

56 = Gravitation

65 = Avatar

70 = SGA

83 = Narnia

86 = David Cook RPF

90 = American Idol RPF

91 = HP

Oh, here's a case in point: 91 isn't the ID of the main common HP tag in use today. It's the ID of the tag that's literally just 'HP'. That's how the tag IDs work: they're for that exact tag, not whatever it is synned to.

114 = Grey's Anatomy

121 = American Idol

129 = Farscape

162 = SGA (a different tag for it)

164 = The Dead Zone

169 = My Chemical Romance

(LOL. That tracks.)

183 = HP again

187 = Smallville

196 = CSI

203 = Torchwood

206 = House

250 = Firefly

259 = POTC

266 = Hellsing

272 = House again

273 = The Sentinel

287 = Final Fantasy XII

288 = Song of the Lioness

298 = Copenhagen

We apparently don't get to RK until ID# 2737. I guess I was lazy about uploading.

Here's a Wayback Machine copy from Oct 6, 2008. It says:

95 users to date

182 fandoms to date

1145 works to date

[astaroth1357]

The Obey Me Cast on a Camping Trip (Part Two: The Undateables)

This post is split in two due to length (I had too much fun again…) For the Brothers, please click HERE!

Intro:

Another day, another team building activity between the demons and the exchange students. It was Diavolo’s idea to go on a camping trip to the human world (because of course it was), and there were very… mixed responses. That sentiment wasn’t helped when he refused Lucifer’s insistent pleas to just purchase cabins for everyone to stay in. Oh no, the Demon Lord wanted to rough it out in the wilderness, and now everyone else was getting dragged along with him…

Wonder how that turned out?

Diavolo

He was soooo excited to get to experience camping! He had been asking the MC about human camping trips for about a week before making the announcement and he was pumped!!

Barbatos chauffeured him to the campsite in his own car (of course) but he insisted on taking every roadside, touristy stop they came across which doubled the drive time considerably…

He wanted to help everybody set up the camp but Barbatos and Lucifer were having none of it… So he took pictures and offered moral support instead! Good work everyone! 😁

He had his own tent about the size of a small house (ngl it took Barbs and Lucifer about a half hour to set the whole thing up). Barbs even somehow managed to pack a collapsible desk in there for him so he could still work… greeeat…. 🙄

Diavolo wanted to try everything. Literally everything. The man even traded his uniform out for full on outdoors gear, right down to one of those floppy fishing hats with the tackle stuck to it.

Politely insistently asks that Lucifer does things with him. The MC could come along as well (and in many cases Luci begs them to do so) but he wants to get some bonding time in with his best friend!

Unfortunately for Lucifer, Diavolo would get sidetracked quite a lot… Which is how he ended up having to physically steer his Lord out of harm's way more than once…

At one point while hiking, Diavolo was so distracted by taking pictures that he nearly walked right into the path of a passing bear and her cubs. Lucifer had to tackle him down into some bushes until they went away... His brothers teased him mercilessly when they heard about...

Dia also loved the camping food quite a bit. He's never gotten the chance to cook his own food before, even if it's just marshmallows over a fire, so it was all a brand new experience for him! S'mores are now declared a human world delicacy.

Man had the time of his life! He'd love to do it again, hell, maybe even make it a yearly event! (Few of the brothers share his sentiment, but hey, it pays to be King 😏)

Barbatos

If his Lord orders it, then he follows. He'll just have to double check that everyone is prepared for the occasion…

Drove Diavolo there with the patience of a saint (while also, like, being the exact opposite of that). Had it been anyone else in the car, they might have told him, "No, we can't stop for pictures of every moose you see," but Barbs is as accommodating as he is loyal.

It was pretty much all on his shoulders to direct the others when setting up camp. Lucifer would claim it was his, but let’s be completely honest here, Lucifer can't order Barbs to do shit. 

Naturally, he had his own tent close to his Lord, more modest in comparison, but big enough to hold a majority of the belongings and gear Diavolo had requested.

He also managed to bring a almost fully functioning kitchen setup for him using magic, minus a working oven by Diavolo's instruction. If he wanted a heat source, he had to use the campfire and he found the challenge intriguing…

For once in his extended life, Barbs had to do some trial and error in the kitchen. As it would turn out, fireside cooking can be a little difficult to master, but by the end of the trip he could still somehow dish out four course meals without so much as a sweat (according to the MC the secret was tinfoil and cast-iron cookware… who knew?)

When he isn’t prepping their next meal (which let’s be honest, with Beel on the trip that’s a constant activity) he’s guarding the food from Beel and Solomon…

The sorcerer wanted to help, but Barbs has already learned the hard way that if he so much as pokes a dish its flavor is ruined… It’s enough to make him wonder if it was a curse laid on him at some point…

Watching Barbatos deny Solomon becomes a pretty funny routine in and of itself. He’s not above just smacking the man’s hand away with a wooden spoon if it gets too close. Barbs doesn’t play in his kitchen. Back off. 😠

Barbatos is happy with the trip so long as the young Lord enjoyed himself. If that’s the case, and it was, then he’d happily do it again if asked… not that he’d have much of a choice anyway.

Simeon

Simeon was familiar with the concept of camping, he’d written about it in his stories, but he’d never actually done it himself… He had hoped it'd be an interesting experience! And uh… it was that from the very start… 

Purgatory Hall got its own car and Solomon was put in charge of driving… But no one mentioned that he drives like a complete maniac. Speed limits, stoplights, even the ROAD ITSELF be damned. Solomon drives in a straight line from point A to point B and if there’s anything in the way he’ll just use magic to get around it…

It’s safe to say that by the time he and the others got to the campsite (which was significantly quicker than the rest) the angels weren’t in the emotional state to pitch tents… He and Luke just waited for the others to catch up while praying and praising the solid ground beneath their feet…

He shared his tent with Luke and didn’t mind at all. It was probably for the best anyway because the little angel was scared of human world predators like bears and wolves coming for him in the night… Poor boy…

Simeon took to hiking quite a bit. Going out and exploring the area around the campsite made him feel invigorated! The forests were beautiful and it gave him ideas for a bit of a guilty pleasure he's been debating on writing, "The Tale of the Lonely Prince." 🤭

It was on one of those trips that Simeon discovered human world creatures love him. Pretty much all of the wildlife gravitates towards him like he's a Disney Princess.

At one point he came back to camp riding on a moose with birds chirping on his new friend's antlers. He offered to take the MC out for a ride, but the brothers threw a fit about it…

He WAS able to get a couple more wrangled for Diavolo, who naturally dragged Lucifer along (though he clearly didn't want to touch the thing). 

The three ended up getting into a mooseback race because Diavolo wouldn't let Lucifer take the lead. He was glad to see Luci enjoy himself for a change! (It helped a lot that he won of course 🙄😏)

All and all, Simeon had a great time. Maybe he should ask the MC to show him more human places… But he's never getting in a car again. Pardon his language, but fuck those things!!!

Luke

He doesn't know what's worse… being out in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of demons or the absolute insanity that was the "drive" down… 😣

He spent the entirety of Solomon's Magical Ride of Nightmares clinging to Simeon or the armrests for dear life. He swore his entire life flashed before his eyes, can angels even have heart attacks???

Stayed right next to Simeon when they finally pulled themselves together enough to leave the car. He was so happy that Michael didn't see any of that… Who knew human transportation was so horrifying…???

His saving grace (literally) was getting to share his tent with Simeon… After Solomon told him that bears sometimes get curious and ransacked campsites, he clung onto the older angel like a protective charm.

...Whiiiich he wasn't too off about actually after he saw Simeon playing (yes PLAYING) with the human wildlife… Simeon had to introduce him to some of the nicer animals for him to eventually get over his fear and venture out past the campsite.

Luke loved to swim in the lake or river with MC and the others. The MC found a sturdy branch where they set up a rope swing and the little guy amused himself for hours!

Sometimes he'd watch Barbatos prep and cook using the campfire… He didn't even know you could make lasagna in a Dutch oven…

At one point the MC convinced him to go with them and the twins on a particularly long hike…

He got tired halfway through and Beel offered him a piggyback ride, but of course he'd NEVER let himself be that close to a demon!! (Just kidding, poor boy was so tired he climbed onto Beel's back and held on the a kola until they got back. Then he jumped off to save face)

He had a better time than he thought he would, but still doesn't want to go camping with demons ever again. (He and Simeon also begged Lucifer to drive them back instead of Solomon so the brothers' van was pretty much a clown car on the return trip).

Solomon

Solomon hasn't been camping (for enjoyment) in quite a while, so when the prospect came up to do it with the MC and the other students he was intrigued...

When Simeon asked he knew how to drive, he said yes. He knows how to start a car, put it into motion, steer, and then come to a stop. That's all driving is really. 🤷‍♀️ You can't blame him for not memorizing all the rules, he's been traveling by portal for decades!

Was pretty confused why his angel friends fled the car so quickly... He got them there in one piece, after all. 😕🤷‍♀️ He put up their tents himself since they were too busy thanking their father then made a magic barrier around the site for protection purposes.

He and the MC both have their own tents, of course his is enchanted to be a lot bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, but he's only let the MC in on that little secret in case they want to visit… 😏

When everyone else finally arrived, Solomon was happy to help the MC introduce the wonders of the human wilderness to their companions! Including the breathtaking vistas, beautiful flora, bitter temperatures, man-eating predators, waters filled with disease… Hm? Oh, Luke won't leave the tent now…? Whoopsie.

Solomon kept himself occupied on the trip the best way he knew how… relentless trolling (particularly of Asmo and Barbs because they're used to his shit).

He'd alternate between poking fun at Asmo for the almost ritual length routines he was going through to try and save his looks to genuinely trying to encourage him and downplay the severity of the downgrade...

Meanwhile he was bound and determined to serve at least one of his own dishes during the trip (but Barbatos had banned him from the "kitchen," the food tent, and even the spoons...)

Diavolo, nice guy that he is, eventually made Barbs relent and let Solomon cook for ONE night… It went as well as to be expected. (They sent Solomon to grab more supplies then everybody took turns washing their mouths out with lake water... Diavolo apologized profusely, he had no idea...).

Solomon was confused why the angels would rather squeeze themselves in with the brothers than ride with him back but he wasn’t upset about it. That meant he could make a few extra stops without anyone complaining! He knows a guy in New Orleans he’s been meaning to see again… Luke and Simeon can wait a little for their stuff, right?

Click HERE for Part One. Check out my Masterlist for more!

[scribeofred]

Thanks to @onereyofstarlight for the tag!

 1. What fandoms have you written for?

This is embarrassing but I actually had to look at both FFnet and AO3 because I couldn’t remember all of them. TRON: Legacy, Assassin’s Creed, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit, Sherlock, Final Fantasy VII and XV and Kingsglaive, Voltron: Legendary Defender, Merlin, Skyrim, and, of course, Thunderbirds. I have a couple other fandoms that crop up in various wips, including a Tom Swift/Thunderbirds crossover that I really should finish.

2. How many works do you have on AO3 &/or FFNet?

FFnet has 45, and AO3 has 41. There’s also a couple stories lurking on tumblr, notably a final chapter for Reflection.

3. What are your top 3 fics by kudos on A03 &/or Favs on FFNet?

AO3 dominates in this area, if I can use a word like “dominates” for stories that have less than 125 kudos each haha. Oh well, the numbers don’t matter!

1.     118 kudos on tell the shades apart (my world is black and white)

2.     94 kudos on Reflection

3.     91 kudos on The 43rd Hour

4. Which 3 fics have the least kudos & Favs?

Again on AO3:

1 kudos on I Am You (And You Are Me)

5 kudos on The Dragonborn Chronicles

6 kudos on cynosure

5. Which Fic has the most comments and which has the least?

Reflection has the most at 29 threads, and I Am You (And You Are Me) has the least at zero.

6. Which complete fic do you wish had gotten more attention?

Lodestar, definitely. Sure, it’s for something of a rarepair, but they aren’t that rare, and I just really really like the way the story came together. On the other hand, of course my unfinished Merlin fic has gotten probably the most attention, because that’s just the way it goes, eh?

7. Have you written any crossovers?

None that I’ve published! I have various crossovers lurking in mostly unfinished states, including the aforementioned Tom Swift/Thunderbirds crossover, and an Assassin’s Creed/Thundeerbirds crossover that is very good and I should also finish. There’s an Expanse/Thunderbirds fic lurking in my brain that I may or may not ever commit to paper, who knows. I’ve also very vaguely toyed with a Batman/Thunderbirds crossover, in the sense that “nebulous” is too strong a word for the kind of toying I’ve been doing.

8. What is the craziest fic you’ve written?

I don’t really write crazy or crack or humor in general, so probably the closest thing to “crazy” is On the Lam, which was the result of wanting to throw Scott and Penelope toward an Egyptian stud farm. It ended up being the host for a bad joke about that, courtesy of one @thebaconsandwichofregret, who consistently gives some of the best dialogue advice I’ve ever encountered.

Actually, the true answer is probably a chapter in Glimpses into a Supernova, maybe the one about blood? It seems bonkers when I think back on it now, but I admittedly haven’t read it in many years. Possibly I am misremembering. Glimpses has some weird ones, though.

9. What’s the fic you’ve written with the saddest ending?

It’s a tossup between The Painting and a place where the water touches the sky. The former deals with a prior off-screen death; the latter is (maybe??) an on-screen death. People seemed upset by it, at any rate. I said it was ambiguous!

10. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

“Happy” is probably a matter of perspective? Depends on the overall reading experience and the ending within that context. Either septet or Three Towels and a Tracy, they’re both pretty fluffy overall.

11. What is your smuttiest fic?

protoinstincts, which I completely forgot I wrote and then rediscovered like a year later and realized “hey, this is actually pretty good” and you know what, despite it not being overly spicy, it is pretty good.

12. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Not hate, per se, but someone left a review on Less Than Nothing saying they “didn’t like” that I “wrote the story as a series of drabbles.” Cool, I didn’t write the story for you, random guest reader, and the back button exists, friend 😂 It didn’t bother me on a personal level because I wrote the fic for an audience of one (incidentally, not myself and rather the recipient of a secret santa event), but I was mad because the reviewer had no way of knowing where I was at as a writer, and I know from longtime observation how that kind of comment can crush less experienced or confident writers.

Don’t leave flames, kids, you don’t understand the power your words have. Don’t like, don’t read.

13. What is the nicest comment you’ve received?

The nicest? Goodness. Hmm. I’d have to go hunting to find the nicest, but in recent memory, @ayzrules sent me a couple passages from Spanish texts she’s been studying that reminded her of my writing, and I was honestly so touched by the fact that she even thought to make such comparisons, much less mention them to me. Taking the time to familiarize yourself with someone’s style until you can make comparisons between it and someone else’s work is so much more meaningful to me personally than a basic “Nice story!” or “Loved this!” type of comment ever could be. <3 Ayz <3

14. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I’m aware of, but I’ve never gone looking on any sort of copycat site or whatever either.

15. How many fics do you have marked as incomplete?

Two. First is The Dragonborn Chronicles, which is a retelling of Skyrim from Lydia’s perspective via her journal, to complement the in-game journal. It’s a slog of a style to write, though, even for someone who loves writing first person and doesn’t really want to write a lot of dialogue, and the outline is huge, and the story will be many times more huge, and just. Some day. Some day.

Second is tell the shades apart (my world is black and white), which has always been unfinished because the outline itself is over seven thousand words and the fully written story would undoubtedly land between 100,000 and 200,000 words, and there’s no way I’m writing that. I’ve always meant to upload the outline, but I got kind of self-conscious about the way I formatted it, and ugh I just haven’t bothered. One day, one day, right?

Moral of the story is I’m intensely a short story writer, and I’ve really found myself settling into that role over the last couple years. Better a clipped, punchy short story than a bloated slog of an epic.

16. Which of the WIPS will most likely be finished first?

Literally no one knows that. I wrote 95% of the observable entropy of a closed system over five years ago, and then I proceeded to pull it out roughly once a year and write and rewrite various endings until last month, which was when I finally figured out how I wanted to end the story. septet, too, languished for about five years before I finally remembered it existed and managed to wrangle an ending. Endings are hard, man. So are those third plot points. Terrible creatures, those, bog me down every time.

17. Which WIP are you looking forward to finishing?

Uh... mm. See. If I were looking forward to finishing any of them, I’d be actively working on them. At this moment, writing fic isn’t exactly high on my list of priorities, but I am also coming off a four-day idle game bender, so I still feel like I haven’t quite reengaged with myself as a living person. Give me another few days and I might have an answer.

(I am always most looking forward to finishing this ridiculous Ignis-drives-the-Audi-R8 fic that’s been languishing in my wips for literal years. As mentioned above, third plot points. Killer, man.)

(oh and also the working-titled the art of murder. Scott and Penny attend a private art auction. Things don’t go to plan. It, too, is stuck at the third plot point. I know, I know I have a problem, shush.)

18. Is there a WIP that you’re considering abandoning?

Any wip has the potential to be revived—this year and the old wips I’ve unearthed, dusted off, finished, and posted have been proof of that. I don’t intentionally permanently abandon anything for that reason, some stories just probably will remain dusty old wips forever because I didn’t actually need or want to write the full story for one reason or another.

19. Which complete fic would you consider rewriting?

Now that’s an interesting question. Hmm! Honestly? None of them. Once I finish a story, I’m not inclined toward rereading it again any time soon, to the point of years in some cases, and I feel like I’ve moved on from the stories I wrote one, two, five, eight years ago in the actual writing sense. They’re finished stories, and on top of that are relics of their time, which doesn’t mean the stories don’t have any ongoing significance on a reading level—I just don’t have any interest in rewriting those particular stories. I’ve gotten them out of my head, to the point of not remembering at least a third of them on demand anymore, and I don’t have any desire to “retell” those exact stories. I do tend to tighten the wording and fix perceived errors/weaknesses whenever I do end up rereading an old story, and I usually silently update the AO3 version if I make any significant changes because AO3 makes it a breeze to update a posted fic. I might do FFnet too if I’m feeling up to it or have the time.

20. Which complete fic is your favourite?

Once upon a time I would’ve said Holding On, but I honestly find it kind of unbearably melodramatic now. the observable entropy of a closed system is equally melodramatic, as it was written in the same era, but at least it has the excuse of being told in second person and via a style that is a half step away from being poetry. Possibly I will reread it in a few years and find it equally obnoxious and overly dramatic, but it received some shockingly positive comments, which I wasn’t expecting at ALL, and I’ve been honestly blown away by the amount of praise it’s received. <3 to everyone who’s said anything about it!

21. What’s your total published word count?

141,000 on AO3, 160,000 on FFnet, but technically the light of my life SS wrote fifty thousand words of each. It’s too late for math.

 I tag @velkynkarma, @lurkinglurkerwholurks, @writtenbyrain, @thebaconsandwichofregret, and anyone else who wants to play!

[mcwriting]

starstruck (8)

Hellooooo... sorry I didn’t post this on Friday, I was super busy all day/night finishing up my summer college course + other stuff. I haven’t finished 9 yet so it should go up next week :)

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9

Fandom: Tom Holland

Ship: Tom x reader

Setting: LA, Seoul

Word Count: 1964

Warnings: maybe some mild language idk

Rating: K+

                             __________________________________

Tom burst through the door of the hotel room being used as a lounge for his and his castmates’ teams while they did press.

He was late, and his management stood up as soon as they noticed him.

“Thomas! Where have you been? We’ve been calling all morning! This isn’t a good look,” his publicist started.

“Yeah we’ve been having to make excuses for over a half hour for you. Everyone else started interviews ten minutes ago. Let’s get you in there,” the manager continued.

“No,” Tom replied blankly. 

“What?” they asked at the same time.

“I said no. I’m not doing things on your volition anymore. I’m tired of disappointing people and living a fake life just because you two have decided against the things I want to do. I’m sorry to do this right now, but you’re both fired.”

“You can’t be serious Tom. You know me! I’ve been with you for years!” his now ex-manager said.

“Yeah, come on. Who’s going to keep you relevant without me?” the former publicist asked.

“I think I’ll be able to manage just fine by myself, and if I want new help I’ll find someone better than both of you. You two have been jeopardizing my personal life for far too long in the name of fame and I can’t stand for it any longer. Harry will arrange for you two to get to your homes. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go do my job.”

With that, Tom walked across the hall into the interview room, where he was met with a few cheers and the smiling faces of his costars.

                             __________________________________

“How are we gonna get her back to you?” Harrison asked late that night as everyone huddled around a table eating snacks. “I mean, I don’t think she’s going to come running back into your arms any time soon.”

The boys munched on chips and swigged Korean beer as they contemplated. Tom felt like a weight was off his shoulders now that he was free from his management.

“Doesn’t she have that friend? Maybe she could help us out.” Sam suggested. 

“I don’t know, man. Y/n said she’s a huge fan. But they’re also best friends. Would she even be willing to let me near y/n? And if so, do you think she’d keep a secret that big?” Tom replied.

“It’s worth a shot, innit? Maybe she’d understand?” Harry thought aloud.

After some deliberation, the boys settled on sending b/f/n a dm through Harrison’s instagram to seem slightly less conspicuous in case you happened to notice her dms.

They didn’t expect an immediate reply. Midnight in Seoul was 8 am in LA, but luckily b/f/n had woken up early to work out since you were going to her house later that day.

The message asked her to help you and Tom reconnect and hopefully reconcile in person, and asked her to keep it a secret.

She was shocked to say the least, and unsure of whether to trust them after the hurt you’d experienced, but finally answered back after a few minutes.

Okay. I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I know I can get her to this formal next Friday night if you can make it. 

She sent a link to the page for the upcoming event. It was a fundraiser gala for people of all ages. The site said it was sold out, but Tom knew he could probably find a way in.

That’s perfect. All you need to do is get her there. And you absolutely cannot tell her any of this or the whole thing might be ruined

Oh believe me, I won’t. I honestly want this as much as you guys, she’s been super bummed still and I just want to see her happy again. I’ll try to get back to you with her dress color and stuff if you want to coordinate.

Perfect. We’ll be in touch.

The boys fistpumped and high fived as they planned out flights and scheduling and finding a way to get those tickets. Eventually, they retired to their respective hotel rooms, since Tom would have one last day of press before heading home.

                             __________________________________

Back in LA, b/f/n was now standing with you in her kitchen, watching you mix up some sauce for mac and cheese.

She leaned back against the counter as you stirred and added ingredients.

“Hey are you still going to the formal next Friday?” b/f/n asked.

“The what?” You didn’t look up.

“Remember? The big formal next week? All our friends are gonna be there.”

You thought about it for a second and then looked over at her as you turned off the stove burner.

“Oh my God. I totally forgot about that. I guess not since, 1: it’s probably sold out, and 2: I don’t have anything to wear.”

B/f/n smirked, turning to pick something up from behind her while you poured the sauce and pasta into a baking dish, topping it with breadcrumbs.

“Well I think I have the first thing covered…” she trailed, holding up two tickets.

“You didn’t,” you smiled, stepping away from the dish. “No way.”

“Yes, way. I figured you’d forgotten with everything going on and snagged one up, even though I was mad at you. Who else would I take as my date? It’s not like I have a boyfriend.”

You went up and hugged her.

“You are literally the best friend ever.”

“Yeah, I know,” she replied proudly.

“But I still don’t have a dress. I don’t even know where to start,” you worried aloud as you put the pasta in the oven.

“Well… I kind of maybe looked up places at the mall that have dresses I know you’d like.”

“Oh my gosh. Is that why you want to go to the mall so bad? I can’t tell if I love or hate you for that.”

“You know you love me. Now how long is that mac and cheese gonna be? My stomach is growling.”

                             __________________________________

After your pasta lunch, b/f/n and you drove to the mall, where she took you to 3 different dress shops. You were relieved to find that no one had followed you, as it seemed interest in you had diminished after everything you’d said.

“I’m getting the feeling I’m not gonna find anything I like. Maybe we should just give up,” you suggested after almost two hours of trying things on.

“Come on. There’s one more place at this mall and I saved it for last because there’s a dress I think you’ll really like.”

She drug you through the building and up an escalator until you finally came upon the shop. There were some really pretty dresses in the window display, so you felt a little bit less nervous when you walked in.

An employee asked if you needed help upon entering. B/f/n showed her a screenshot on her phone, and the lady immediately led you towards the back of the store. She pulled a black bag from the rack and hung it on another one near the dressing rooms.

“I think this is the one you’re looking for. Let me know if you need anything else,” she said, walking off.

“Okay, y/n. Close your eyes so I can unzip the bag. I want to surprise you.”

You did as told, putting a hand over your face for good measure. You heard the zipper and some rustling before b/f/n told you to look.

You opened your eyes to find a long, navy, satin dress staring right back at you.

“Whoa,” you whispered, going up to inspect it closely.

It was beautiful. It had a classic ball gown shape with a slit up the thigh and a beaded lace bodice. The neckline was in a deep V and the straps came up and over your shoulders. The back was low cut and a thin strip of silver beads circumvented the waistline.

“Sooo… what do you think?” b/f/n questioned.

“I- b/f/n. This is incredible.”

“Wanna try it on?”

You nodded enthusiastically and stepped into a dressing room with it. After a good minute of struggling through the inner tulle layers, you finally got it secure and was able to zip it yourself.

When you stepped out of the room and saw yourself in the mirror, you gasped.

“Y/n. You look amazing. What do you think?”

You didn’t answer her because you were too focused on how you looked to even process what she said.

“How are you ladies do- wow. That’s a gorgeous look on you,” the lady from before said as she came around the corner.

She helped adjust it a little, seeing whether it needed alterations or not.

“You’re in luck. This fits you like a glove. It does seem a bit long, but I’m assuming you’ll wear heels?”

You nodded, still speechless.

“So? This the one?” b/f/n asked.

“Yes. Absolutely yes,” you returned, beaming.

“I’ll go ring you up, then,” the employee said, leaving you to take off the dress and put your normal, boring clothes back on. You’d initially been saving up to buy a dress, and still had the funds since forgetting about it.

You and b/f/n hauled the dress bag around like your lives depended on it as you went on a search for matching shoes.

It took another half hour or so of walking around stores and trying on heels before you found a pair.

They were strappy and silver and the perfect height for your dress length. You couldn’t believe your luck.

                             __________________________________

Now that you’d finally gotten everything, you and b/f/n headed to your house so you could show your parents, who were by then off work.

Your dad was fixing himself a snack when you both came in the door, you wrangling the dress over your head and her carrying the shoe box.

“Woah, girls. Whatcha got there?” he asked.

“Just my dress for the fundraiser formal next Friday…”

“Oh yeah I forgot about that. I think your mom and I will be skipping out this year but I’m glad you’re getting to go.”

“I forgot too until b/f/n reminded me. I’ll go put it on here in a minute. Where’s mom?”

“She’s in the office. Why don’t you surprise her?” he suggested, so you did exactly that. 

You quickly got the dress and shoes on (with b/f/n’s help) and tried to quietly come down the hall. It was difficult since your heels clacked, your dress swished, and you and b/f/n tried not to let out cackles.

You popped just your head in the office doorway.

“Hey mom. What are you up to?”

“Oh hey honey. I’m just filing some charts. I’m almost done. Why?” she replied, only looking up from the computer to initially address you.

“Well I just wanted you to see something. And by something, I mean this.”

You slid into full view, and your mother’s jaw dropped. B/f/n appeared in the doorway behind you.

“Sweetie, you look beautiful! Did you just get this today?” you nodded as she got up to look at the dress closer. “Is this for next week?”

“Yeah. B/f/n bought me tickets and then took me out to look at dresses today,” you slung an arm around her shoulder. “I basically have the best friend in the world.”

“Well I love it and I’m so excited to see you both dressed up together next week. I think this is the perfect symbol for new beginnings!”

With that you gave a “hear, hear!” in agreement.

                             __________________________________

Tag List: @marvel-lously, @jackiehollanderr, @one-big-fangirl, @dreamyvans, @lisannehus, @honeymoonpeter, @shootingstarsaretearsofheaven, @chenellearose, @photoshopart15, @parkeret, @ilikealotofpeople-younotsomuch, @racewife2004

To be added, pls message me or send an ask. Also lmk if you’d like to be part of my permanent tag list!

[lavenderek]

fwiw i’m an A*3 volunteer - i do tag wrangling, actually - and i really do need to emphasise the fact that we are VOLUNTEERS, and there’s really nothing we can do when it comes to bigger issues re: the core of how the site runs and the values people feel it holds.

what i am really tired of is people assuming things about me because i’m a volunteer. people can be so ridiculously vitriolic - like that anon you got who was immediately at you like ‘SO YOU’RE FINE WITH CHILD ABUSE?’ is a perfect example of what i mean. no, i’m not, but i honestly do appreciate a rare space online that is *relatively* unmoderated - which is NOT to say it isn’t completely unmoderated. like you said, there are so many cultural aspects to even simple tags, and as a tag wrangler, you’re ‘trained’ on that. that’s just tag wrangling - i’m sure higher up volunteer positions also take the time and care to educate volunteers correctly on how to manage their roles.

again, though, there is fundamentally very little us volunteers can do for parts people might disagree with. we come from all walks of life and there are so many roles and we all only have so much time. fact is, the website is the way it and it’s unlikely to change beyond perhaps adding more ‘social media’ type functions, like blocking people. if you feel that there is content that is inappropriate or commenters that are inappropriate or whatever, you can report it directly to the people running the website (which i’ve personally done before for an extreme underage fic about a real life - albeit of-age - person), and i obviously didn’t check back to see if it had been removed, but i assume it was dealt with because i genuinely do have faith in the moderators. anyway, just some insight as someone who works with the site.

hey! thanks for the info actually this is really interesting. sorry about the delayed response, i saved it as a draft to come back to it later and then i got busy at work and forgot

while you're here, you mind if i ask you some questions? feel free not to answer, you're not obligated

i separated it into sections because i’m what? longwinded and easily confused

1. can this happen (has questions for you in it)

it's my understanding that the big uproar vis a vis CP fic on a*3 is more that a*3 is inadvertently creating a space where p*dophiles feel safe and can establish a following, in turn allowing them to normalize what they're doing and gain access to potential victims.

tldr, it's less "this is inappropriate" and more "the person who made this is dangerous." like, if the person who wrote that nasty fic you reported had a whole profile full of similar content and was gaining a following from it, that would be concerning.

is the overall effect a user has something that you all take into account when you're going through content on the site, or are you instructed to take the specific piece of content at face value?

and, do you think that's something it's possible to address by moderators? regardless of whether or not it’ll actually happen, do you think that is possible on this system?

and, even more optional than the other questions, if that was possible, what do you think that would look like? 

2. what is the process like on your end (has questions for you in it)

just for my own curiosity, how much leeway do you as a volunteer have over whether a fic should be reported? 

is it up to your own judgment or is there like a rubric or something? 

and what happens if the moderators decide that yeah, this fic can't be up anymore, do they remove the fic or kill the user's profile or what?

what happens if you report something, and the moderators decide it’s fine? does that reflect on you in their eyes? 

how often do you report fic? 

3. clarification of motive (does not have questions for you in it, now i’m just talking)

like i hear you that you, personally, Anon J. Wranglerton, don't have control over the site itself. the topic of CP and abuse is touchy and wigs people out because it sort of self perpetuates.

it's like that anecdote that went viral a few years ago where a bartender explained that allowing one polite n*zi into the bar leads very quickly into lots of n*zis being in the bar. people want the n*zis removed from the bar. 

i'm sorry people accuse you of being an abuse apologist because of that, i think the idea that people wouldn't really see abuse as a concern is like, actually horrifying to them lmao and i can't necessarily blame them for that in and of itself

4. if i see where they’re coming from then what’s my problem (does not have questions for you in it, now i’m just talking)

i guess i don't share that reaction because disgusting content online isn't anything new for me. i accidentally came across it all the time when i was a kid going online. i nearly fell victim to an actual predator when i was 12 or 13. thankfully, once he asked me for more personal information i was able to get scared and see some red flags. (or if he wasn’t a predator then i should probably go and find my chat room boyfriend Oukami who explained “yiffing” to me and told me to send him pictures of myself so he could make me a wolf fursona)

from my perspective, the a*3 debate looks like this: predators are a concept that is deeply embedded in every corner of the internet, and very suddenly, people are very up in arms about a very specific website having predators on it. it’s like if all of a sudden people were like, “there are customers at Target who yell at the employees. if you still shop at Target, unfollow me.” 

like, yeah, you’re right, and that’s bad, but why Target specifically, and why now, you know? 

i think predators should be made to feel extremely unsafe in fandom spaces lmao, but i also think that’s something that can only be tackled socially. playing whack-a-mole with predators is a tale as old as time.

5. online predators (does not have questions for you in it, now i’m just talking)

this is just me talking out of my ass, but my theory is that a huge component in kids today getting caught up by predators online is that the concept of anonymity and fear of strangers online has some holes in it on here.

first of all, people just a couple years younger than i am grew up on social media. that was the entire online landscape ever since myspace.

influencers use their real names and faces, and they have millions of followers and are treated like celebrities. a lot of these social networks make it extremely difficult to hide your identity at all. you sign in to youtube with your google account, which is linked to your phone and all your other accounts. instagram, twitter, facebook, and tumblr can all be connected, and a few of those apps encourage it and will interrupt you posting to be like “do you want to also put this on twitter, Firstname Lastname?” no, janet, i’m good. thank you though

this lends a certain amount of freedom to predators, because there is nothing stopping them from assessing somebody’s vulnerability and reaching out to them. 

6. online predators in fandom spaces specifically (does not have questions for you in it, now i’m just talking)

i think the fandom space cultivated on tumblr has actively contributed to that. 

look at all these blogs, they’ve got “about me” descriptions with their name, their age, a blurb about their interests, their gender identity, their romantic/sexual preferences, sometimes their fuckin myers-briggs designation. this is all expected behavior on tumblr. 

it starts as a sort of “this is my blog, here’s what i’m about,” and is compounded by like, “NTs can reblog this post but don’t say anything stupid,” or “minors DNI, how old are you,” like, you have to kind of verify that you’re “allowed,” in a sense, to participate in some conversations or interact with some posts. 

i think there’s merit in both of those things, blogs are for self expression and for interacting with likeminded users; and i don’t think it’s “gatekeeping” to stop straighties from clowning on your post about queer issues. 

but this has inadvertently created a sort of entitlement to private information. it also creates this false idea that because you and i have x and y in common, we can interact comfortably. 

it’s crucial to remember that predators aren’t all scary white men who want to visit you at home. some of them are cool 20-somethings who just happen to be normalizing sexual content with children in it. and they genuinely don’t see what they’re doing as wrong. if they’re already your friend, and you see them saying shit about how they’re not hurting anybody, it’s just pretend, it’s just a kink, then you’re probably going to sympathize with them. 

this isn’t to say, “stupid kids, they’re bringing this on themselves by oversharing to the wrong people,” because it’s neither kids’ fault nor unique to children. this kind of oversharing is taking place with all ages and kinds of people on tumblr. 

this is to say, this is what this particular subculture has caused: healthy boundaries are kind of bulldozed to make room for a kind of disorganized sense of community and morality.

7. back to CP on a*3 (does not have questions for you in it, now i’m just talking)

i think this kind of “CP is disgusting and you’re disgusting for looking at it” shit is dangerous. 

things this is NOT because of: 

CP deserves a place online

It’s A Slippery Slope, What Will They Ban Next

um, kinkshaming

there is no point in even trying to get predators off a*3

i just think it’s completely unhelpful. it’s literally a waste of their time. they’re wasting their time and hurting themselves and others in the process. it’s lacking in nuance and perspective. 

what we should be saying is “CP is a red flag. CP tells you something about the person posting it.” 

we shouldn’t be asking “are you okay with child abuse,” we should be asking, “what does this content say about the person posting it? are they unsafe to have around? if i realize too late that they’re unsafe, who can i turn to?” those are the kinds of questions we should be asking if our goal really is to protect people.

what the collection of block lists of supposed abuse apologists says is this: “you have to choose between not having to police online behavior, and proving your morals to me, a complete fucking stranger. if your morals are lacking, you’re out, we don’t speak to you anymore, and we tell everyone who will listen that you are a bad person.” 

not to delegitimize their concerns, but it’s fully just mccarthyism. like... that’s what mccarthyism was like. the fact that mccarthyism was bad isn’t even the point, it’s important to recall that mccarthyism did not work. it stopped happening for myriad reasons, one of which was that it was hurting people and wasting resources and doing absolutely nothing else. 

i obviously don’t want to be labeled “anti-american pinko scum” and fired from my job and disallowed from my neighbor’s house. who would? they’re not actually weeding out anybody dangerous, they’re just rounding people up who are just as angry as they are or who are scared of them lmfao. 

ever since that shitty post of mine went viral (which - “viral,” i guarantee it isn’t viral, i stopped looking at it literally that night) i’ve been terrified that one of these days i’m gonna like, comment on something and have the OP be like “wait a minute, you’re that bitch who made fun of some anti-a*3 people, unfollow me” lmfao. like, that’s what this rhetoric is accomplishing. 

i’m not boohooing, i deserved a slap on the wrist for making rude comments. i’m just telling you the extent of the results they’re getting. they made me feel sad. so at least there’s that. 

8. anti-a*3 people (has questions for anyone in it)

“fine, so we’re not trying to evangelize for not liking CP. so what? we don’t want people who like CP around. supporting that stuff is disgusting. we are blocking them for our own safety and don’t appreciate the tone police coming in and telling us it’s no big deal.” - an anti a*3 person, probably

yeah i mean, i get that. if i was really upset about something important and somebody told me “you’re right, but shut up about it,” i would also be pissed. 

my question, though, is this: is the underage tag on a*3 the limit we want to place on our activism against predators online? at minimum, is yelling at and blocking people about it on tumblr making us feel safer?

and also: how are we going to define the things we are trying to get rid of? what is underage? how do we account for differences in culture? how do we account for nuance when we make broad judgments? 

and also: who do we really hold responsible for this? who do we think is at fault and what do we want them to do?

i feel like we could all benefit from some perspective here.

9. back to you (has questions for you in it)

so like, is it fun? how’d you get the position? how long do you work typically?

do you talk directly with higher-ups or whatever? do you have coworkers?

do you have to read through lots of fic yourself or does stuff get reported to you and then you look at it? 

what other stuff do you report content for, aside from abusive content? like i read a post saying people shouldn’t be advertising their paypal or whatever on their a*3, do you nip stuff like that in the bud or is that something else? 

what if it’s just mistagged, presumably by human error not by a legitimate abuse of the system, what do you do? do you tag it for them or do you reach out to them and tell them to fix it or what?

who decided on the color scheme? can there be a skin that’s orange and avocado green? can you pass that on for whoever does the colors? i think i’d spend more time on any particular website if the color scheme was a nice, desaturated orange and avocado green.

nice

[tonkilongisland]

Smartreporter mac os x 10.4

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You can also get coconutIdentit圜ard, a simple little program that tells you when your Mac was built, where it was built and whether it is stolen. It provides a slew of useful stats about the battery in your laptop Mac - essential info for any road warrior.īut the coconut apps don’t stop there. Download site Cool stuffĬoconutBattery is easily one of the most popular downloads here at thriftmac. Among them are AppFresh and SnapNDrag - both recommended by thriftmac. Mac360 lists some essential and not-so-essential Mac freeware utilities. I’m not sure how they get away with it, but if you’re into lyrics, grab Harmonic while you can. Unfortunately, the music industry has put the kibosh on both of them, because lyrics are copyrighted and can’t be distributed without permission.īut then we have Harmonic, a Dashboard widget that has somehow skirted all the legal wrangling and presents what so many people want: lyrics. There used to be two programs that did this: iLyric and pearLyric. But there are still many people searching for a program that will get the lyrics of their songs for them. We don’t normally mention widgets here, even though there are literally hundreds that are free. But let’s just say it definitely shows a trend. Of course, it’s impossible to determine from these figures how many people are actually using Firefox. Spread Firefox chronicles the amazing growth since the count started in 2004. That’s quite a feat for the upstart challenger to Microsoft domination. Download site Web browsersįirefox has now been downloaded more than 400 million times. Have a look for yourself-there’s bound to be something to tickle your fancy. Some, such as French Vocab or Speed Reading, are educational.

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It would be a herculean task to download them all and test them, but the few we’ve tried seem well crafted, even if the interface is on the plain side. There are a couple of them-Find A Word and SuperGHOST-in the thriftmac collection in the games category. If ever you have fantasized about frolicing in a field of seemingly endless freeware, you might find that your dream has finally come true at Custom Solutions of Maryland.Īt last count, there were 37 programs listed at the CSM website. While you’re over there, you might want to do some exploring. Although there is one other that really should be included-I use Script Menu quite often to handle a couple of AppleScripts. But I’m really just scratching the surface, and there’s no way I could possibly list them all. I have a few of them listed here at thriftmac: Jumpcut, MenuCalendarClock, WeatherPop, TinyAlarm, and MenuMeters. The really cool part is that the vast majority of them are freeware. But Britta Gustafson has collected more than 100 of them, sorted them into categories and posted them in a handy list on her website. I had no idea there were so many Mac menubar items. On top of that, he also has some ‘crazy ideas.’ Read more at Webware. Basically, he hopes to further integrate the browser so that it becomes more of computing platform than simply a way to surf the Internet. With the imminent release of Firefox 3 in June, Chris Beard, VP of Labs for Mozilla is already talking up features planned for Firefox 4.

[gatewaytothebalkans]

Get to Know Me

Hello!

My name is Nikki R. and I am a student pursuing a double major in Criminal Justice and Physics at Missouri State University. In October of 2021, I was given the opportunity to apply for a study abroad program in the Balkans. During this trip, we will be visiting several important historical sites and meeting fellow Criminal Justice students at some of their finest universities. For the purpose of this program, we were given the option to either journal about our experiences or to author a blog. I opted to create a blog, allowing anyone who is interested to know more about my time in the Balkans, and what I learned, and hopefully, encourage more people to visit some of these amazing countries.

A LITTLE BIT ABOUT ME

In the middle of nowhere, with a population of only a few hundred, I come from a small, close-knit town. On the outside, it looks like a gas station and a post office, nothing more and nothing less. As an insider, I have met some of the most wonderful people, learned hard lessons, and witnessed what the sentiment, "it takes a village," truly means. I've had the same three friends for over ten years, and I love them like my family. As for my family, I have a wonderful mother and step-father in the area who live just one street away from me.

Most days I spend my time studying or working as the manager of sales for a septic company (literally a crappy business), but when I have free time I love to spend it with my friends or family. Also, I pride myself on being an active person, so I enjoy gardening, trying to wrangle a massive lawn, taking long walks (not hard to do in the country), or taking my dogs out for a swim. On rainy days or when it's simply too blazing hot to want to leave the AC, I enjoy cooking (grilling if the weather provides), reading, or forcing my friends to subject themselves to another awful game of Monopoly.

WHY THE BALKANS?

The first thing my family said to me when they learned about my study abroad trip was, "Who would want to go to Bosnia?" The second was slightly ruder, "Is it expensive over there?" Over the months leading up to my trip, I've been asked nearly a dozen times by the same five people. There is a grain of truth to the questions, because when you Google the top ten vacation destinations the Balkans don't tend to make the list.

However, my professor leading the trip is a Balkan national, so she is able to utilize her experiences to walk us through each step of the program. Secondly, the Balkan states are a place of diversity, where people from all backgrounds and religions have come together. If one of my primary goals for studying abroad was to develop a stronger understanding of foreign cultures and diversity, the Balkans are the perfect place to do it.

Most importantly, this program offers me the ability to engage with fellow Criminal Justice students across the world. Not only will I be able to tell them about what I've learned in America, but they will be able to help me continue my education. Unfortunately, not everything can be learned through research, sometimes it involves going out into the world to find your answers.

WHAT TO LOOK FORWARD TO

On this blog, I plan to document all of my experiences in the Balkans. Each day, I will update with pictures of the sites, as well as a journal detailing what I've learned and how I felt. My goal is to be as open and honest as possible, so that others who are interested in traveling to the Balkans or learning more about foreign cultures can understand my experiences not only from my perspective, but see the good, the bad, and the really pretty pictures to go alongside it.

[the-final-sif]

While tags may rarely be influenced by write in campaigns, at this point, the SMP fandoms are at the end of our rope for what to do. It's been two years for the Dream SMP fandom alone with no progress and for several fandoms, mistaging has severely worsened. There has been absolutely no public communication of the issue, timeline for resolution, or even public acknowledgement that there is an issue and that it will be resolved.

The state of things is so bad, that the "Not RPF" has over four thousand works, and the "Tags With the Same Meaning" is literally over a page of people desperately trying to clarify their work, confused about A03's tagging, or openly complaining about the mistagging. Highlights include:

please this is not rpf

tag wranglers don’t tag them with their real names please it’s so creepy

NOT RPF i swear those are just the only tags available...

ao3 can you STOP using the cc's actual name for the tags????

Not actual RPF the character tags are just stupid

still hate the fact that the tags are their names

why is it rpf as the tag its not

why the fuck is bad's entire name in the tags

why the fuck is BadBoyHalo's tag his real name

And that’s not counting all the variations I’ve found that haven’t been roped into there yet. All because the tagging system for SMPs is basically non-functional.

Again, it’s not like this is a recent issue. My own message to A03 was 5 months ago, and other people have been writing in for far longer, with absolutely no visible change or plan. There are 40,000+ works explicitly marked “Dream SMP” that are all forced to either be mistagged as Minecraft (very annoying for the people writing minecraft fanfiction) or Video Blogging RPF (also very annyoing for the people writing Video Blogging RPF). All these fandoms are jumbled together without a fandom tag.

At some point, the wrangling of tags comes off as actively malicious to some users. The clearest example of this being the poor Last Life SMP fans.

https://echotunes.tumblr.com/post/665026130119622656/well-it-was-nice-while-it-lasted

That’s a post in which one fan discovered to their delight that there was an abandoned “Last Life (Web Series)” tag that was already canonized in October. The tag was literally perfect. Fans were excited to finally have a distinct fandom tag, and took to posting/moving their works there right away. Literally nothing needed to be changed in order for the tag to be better than the current situation. Yet, in under two days, the tag was redirecting to Video Blogging RPF. Last Life SMP was several months old, starting in April of 2021, and while it has a sizable fanbase, it’s not extremely large like the Dream SMP or even Hermitcraft (which, at the very least has a Hermitcraft RPF tag, which is just barely better then the complete clusterfuck that is the Video Blogging RPF Tag). There’s no reason for it not to have it’s own Fandom tag, let alone for the one that fans found to be uncanonized, seemingly specifically to force users to categorize their works as RPF.

When these changes are done silently, against the vocal wishes and needs of fans, and with no public explanation as to why, or any resolution, then it sours an entire community of fans on the archive. I’ve seen tons of users decided Wattpad is a better site for them, because the tags are more functional in regards to the Dream SMP. That’s a terrible look.

It’s incredibly frustrating for fans, and frankly, it is downright unfair treatment. Fans of SMPs are beyond exhausted and annoyed at the complete lack of progress or public communication. If A03 needs help from fans, if it needs lists of tags that need to get fixed or extra volunteers or anything else, then it needs to be communicating. Fans can and are willing to do any of that. But on the public front we’ve had absolutely no communication as to why these issues happened, why they are still happening, and what the plan to resolve them is. That’s unacceptable.

The foundation of protesting is being hard to ignore. That’s how you get things done.

Will a write in campaign be annoying for A03 support volunteers? Will it slow down responses and generate more work?

Yes. Absolutely. That’s part of the point. It will be annoying, and the only resolution for that annoyance will be to address the issues. If enough of a disruption is created, then it can strongly encourage addressing important issues to fix the disruption.

This is also only the first step. Should this step fail, then I have further plans including creating increasing amounts of public pressure on social media, contacting chairs and heads directly where possible, to getting more SMP fans involved in OTW elections and pressuring candidates directly to address the need for change. The cost of membership is only 10$ yearly, and last year the number of ballots cast was only 2305. In order to swing an election for  candidates that promises to prioritize fixing the issue a very small percentage of SMP fans would need to sign up for a membership and be ready to vote. A good chunk of us, like myself, might be already members. With awareness and proper coordination, SMP fans could get any valid candidates elected regardless of other support as long as they are willing to commit to fixing the problem or at least communicating about it. The fandom has spent way more money and effort on significantly less meaningful causes.

That’s the last resort though. Ideally, we will get public discussion and a plan for resolution before we’re forced to those measures. For right now, I think it’s best to start with a write in campaign, be a bit annoying, and should that fail we can keep moving forward with bigger steps after that. But doing nothing hasn’t changed anything, so we won’t be doing that anymore.

A03 and the SMP Problem

Hello Tumblr!

If you've been a fan of any major SMP for the past however long, you may've noticed that we've got something of a problem on A03. For reasons unknown to me, SMPs are constantly categorized as Video Blogging RPF. Characters on the SMP are forced to share a tag with their content creators and be listed as RPF even when that isn't accurate and makes tagging complicated. Worse, if a content creator plays more than one character, both characters are merged into the cc tag. Which is incredibly confusing, and hard to follow tags for.

In the past, I've contacted A03, and gotten this reply:

Thank you for writing in about Dream SMP. We are currently reviewing the Dream SMP situation and having discussions about creating a Dream SMP fandom tag. The tag wranglers will look into other servers of similar types in the future. If an SMP is canonized, all fandom tags that clearly reference the server will be moved over to the new canonical tag. There are a number of issues we need to work through before we can do so, including ensuring that users are aware the tag is for Dream SMP members, not for other Minecraft streamers. While we can't promise that all the issues can be resolved, please do know that we are doing our best to resolve them.

Now, I was hopeful when I got this message back in November that changes would follow. However, we are now at well over 5 months past, and there's still no changes for any tags. Tags keep getting wrangled and forced into categorizations.

A03 is a fandom space, it is supposed to be by fans for fans, and it's ridiculous that a huge chunk of fandoms, including Dream SMP, Hermitcraft, Last Life, Empires, and more are forced into RPF tags that aren't remotely accurate or reflective of the works. It sucks for the people writing about the SMP, and it sucks for the people writing actual RPF. Series like Critical Role or The Adventure Zone don't have their actors listed, so why should SMPs be forced into the RPF tags?

Thusly, I would like to propose a coordinated campaign to put pressure onto A03 to create proper fandom tags for SMPs, separate from RPF tags, and with separated tags for characters and content creators. I think that a show of support for this change would help demonstrate how many people are currently being effect, and that this isn't something that can just get brushed off. They need to see how many fans are actively upset about this failure of tagging. At the very least, we deserve a public statement with what's going on and the timeline for fixing this problem.

If you're interested in participating in this campaign, my proposed dates are May 1st - May 7th.

During this period, people can, and should:

Send polite, constructive, messages to A03 support requesting:

undefined

Reblog and create posts discussing this issue on social media. Encourage your followers on different platforms to reach out to A03 and ask them to fix the mistagging. You can use the tag #SMPsNeedTagsToo on any platform to help spread the word.

Within this tag, it would also be lovely if lists of SMPs that need this change could be created, as well as a list of characters + other tags that will need to be split from the RPF tags. These lists could also be sent to A03 to make the process of splitting easier.

If you are already planning to post a chapter or fic on A03 during this period, consider including an author's note encouraging your readers to reach out to A03.

Remember to remain polite! This is not a harassment campaign, A03 is an amazing website, and the point of this is to call attention to the issue and improve the website we love. Not drag it down.

Equally, please do not be nasty or judgemental towards RPF readers/writers. We're not trying to shame anyone for what they're reading or writing, we just want to have proper categorization so people can post their works correctly!

If this is something that interests you, reblog this post to spread the word, and when May 1st rolls around, get started! If you have questions, feedback, or suggestions, feel free to add on to this post or send me an ask!

[beatrice-otter]

An Open Letter to AO3 Regarding Fandom Tagging Changes

ETA: Checking the archive this morning, I found that the Wonder Woman (2017) tag no longer redirects to DCEU, but takes you directly to Wonder Woman (2017).  Also, someone said that even last night, you could (from the DCEU page) click on the "Fandoms" list on the sidebar and filter to just Wonder Woman (2017), but I don't know if that worked last night when the tags were merged, because in my poking around in disbelief, I forgot the 'filter by fandom' option on the sidebar.  I am writing another message to support thanking them for fixing the issue.

ETA 2: @melannen checked with the DCEU taggers and confirmed that redirecting the Wonder Woman (2017) tag was a mistake and not part of an overarching plan for DCEU or any other megafandom.  Somebody clicked the wrong button, I guess, and they fixed it as soon as they figured out it had happened.  Thank you to all the people working hard at tag wrangling and support to keep the archive going, and fix problems like this.

My original letter is below the read-more.

This is what I just sent off to AO3's Support. Hi!  First, before I get started, I want you to know that I have loved AO3 since its beginning.  I know how huge an endeavor it is, and how much work goes on behind the scenes (all of it on a volunteer basis), and I am grateful for it.  I also understand that there are situations where there is no good answer to a problem because of either technical issues behind the scenes or conflicting needs/wants of users, and I actively try to be charitable in how I interpret the decisions the archive makes, for the reasons stated above.  I know that large fandom trees were straining your servers, and you needed to find a solution. The flexibility of the tagging structure on AO3 is about 90% of the reason I love the archive.  And by that I mean, the ability to use tags to find EXACTLY what I want to read, instead of slogging through hundreds (or thousands, in some fandoms) of fics I am not interested, is THE MAJOR THING AO3 has always (until now) done better than any other fic archive or website.  My main frustrations with the archive have been when tags aren't granular enough--when I want them to be more specific than they are.  For example, when I wish that character tags were filtered by whether someone was a major or minor character in the story, or when I'm trying to find fic specifically about X-Men: Days of Future Past and get redirected to all XMFC fic.  And I don't think I'm alone in this.   So any change to make them less granular, even when it might make the back end run smoother, is a big problem for me. In particular, your that solution to current tagging woes (merging sub-fandom tags into one over-arching fandom tag) has broken the archive for me in some of my fandoms, and (if it is rolled out across other fandoms in the same way) will break all of those fandoms for me, rendering the archive virtually useless for doing anything other than reading fic I have already bookmarked. As a first step, merging the individual movies of the Star Wars Original Trilogy together into one tag is a pretty good decision, and I was actually surprised that it hadn't been done already.  It works because the three movies of that trilogy tell one unified story with pretty much the same characters.  There may be people who love one movie in it and hate the others, but I've never met any; and the fandom has not historically split along intra-trilogy lines.  There are very few people who, when they click on "Return of the Jedi" and get all OT fics, are going to be seriously upset or discommoded by it (and many who would actually PREFER to get all fics in that trilogy).  So when I saw the tumblr post saying you were going to do that, I went, "oh, yeah, good idea, that makes sense," and went about my day.  I assumed that other instances of merging things would be similarly merging things that were already a unified fannish category with little individual distinction and went on about my business. Then I found out that all of the DCEU movies have been merged together into one fandom.  That, my friends, is  WHOLE DIFFERENT BALL OF WAX.  Unlike the three movies of the OT, there are NO characters that are shared between all DCEU movies.  There are no overarching plot threads between them all.  There are MAJOR differences in plot, characters, theme, and many other points, between these movies.  It is quite possible to love one movie, and hate, loathe, and despise another.  There are LARGE swathes of the fandom that don't overlap.  There are many people, like me, who love one movie, like another, and actively try to avoid other movies in that megafandom.  This is quite common for megafandoms.  Every megafandom I'm familiar with--Star Wars, DC Comics, Marvel Comics, MCU, Stargate, DCEU, Star Trek--is too varied for people to like all of it equally; you end up with a handful of people who genuinely like the whole thing and most people who focus on parts of it.  Except now, there's no way to separate out the stuff you ACTUALLY want to see from all the OTHER mass of stuff in the megafandom.  And while that's not that big a deal in a small fandom where there isn't much fic to sort through anyway, it's a pretty BIG problem in a megafandom with is, you know, MEGA, with lots of fic. For example, I LOVE Wonder Woman (2017), am only occasionally interested in in the DCEU Superman and Justice League movies, and am only willing to read Suicide Squad fic if it's a Harley Quinn story that's mostly comics canon with a few Suicide Squad details.  With the old way the archive was organized, this was not a problem.  I could regularly look through the Wonder Woman (2017) tag for new fic, dip into Superman and Justice League on the rare occasions that I was in the mood for Batfleck and Cavilman, and pretty much never have to deal with anything Suicide Squad.  Now, I click on Wonder Woman (2017), and instead of getting pages of exactly what I want, I get the entire DCEU.  On that first page of 20 fics, there are currently only four that I would even be interested in considering reading.  Your tag change has dropped my rate of finding interesting things from 100% to 20%.  That is an 80% reduction in my ease of finding fic.  An 80% reduction in how useful your tagging system is. Let me repeat that: your new tagging system has decreased the usefulness of this archive by 80%. We're not talking, "oh, a small reduction in user satisfaction for a HUGE gain in back-end functionality."  I don't know how much easier this makes things on the back-end for you, but it is a FRICKING HUGE reduction in foundational ease-of-use for the entire site.  This is not a minor change.  This makes the most basic function of the site--finding fic to read--80% harder.  The only scenario in which I would view this as a workable solution--not a good solution, mind you, but one that I could accept--is if it was literally a choice between this and closing the archive. Let's talk about what my use of the archive would have to look like going forward if this change is maintained and expanded, so you can see what I mean.  Up until this change, if I wanted Wonder Woman fic, I clicked on the tag and got it!  Now I can't do that.  So my options are: 1) slogging through the entire DCEU, 80% of which I don't want.  This is the only way to be sure I see every Wonder Woman fic I actually want.   Problem: it will take me at least 80% longer to find stuff I ACTUALLY want.  So, I would be less likely to look for new fic, and more likely to just go re-read old favorites, because it's so much quicker to do.   As a reader and a writer, this is a problem for me, because I do want to read new fic, and I want other people to be able to find MY new fic. 2) putting together a long string of boolean search terms, probably based on characters.  So, for example, I couldn't just search for "Diana (Wonder Woman)" because she appears in too much Justice League and Batman Vs. Superman fic (which I very seldom want to read).  Searching for her would be better than just DCEU, because I wouldn't get Suicide Squad, but it would still be a ton of slogging through fics I don't want.  I could search for "Diana (Wonder Woman)" and use the "Search within results" box to exclude Justice League and Batman and Superman.   But that would miss any fics about Etta Candy or Steve Trevor or Hippolyta or any other Amazon in which Diana didn't appear.  So, then, maybe use boolean search terms for Diana OR Steve OR Etta OR Hippolyta, and eliminating Justice League and Batman and Superman.  Except that would still miss any fic that is, say, general worldbuilding for Themyscira, that doesn't have Diana or Hippolyta in it.  And I love worldbuilding, but not everybody tags for it.  Do I have to build up a boolean search string for EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER IN THE MOVIE in the hopes of catching everything?  How many boolean terms can I use at once?  Or do I need to run several separate searches, which would mean sorting through a lot of these fics multiple times, as they would pop up under multiple search strings?  I would STILL probably end up missing things that I would be interested in, and it would take A SHIT-TON of extra effort on my part.  Far more effort, for less reward.  And, again, as both a reader who wants to find new fic and as a writer who wants other people to be able to find MY fic when I write it, everything about this is terrible. 3. Use AO3 Savior to do some of the filtering for me.  I don't know, blacklisting some tags would probably cut down on the number of boolean terms to rack up, but then I would have to go in and un-blacklist things on the rare occasions I actually wanted to read Batfleck fic.  But this would become of less and less utility as people stopped tagging for individual movies and just tagged everything with the current canonical metatag for DCEU.  Also: there is only one site I know if in which browser extensions are required to make the site useable, and that is tumblr which is a shambling hellscape of a site.  Is that AO3's new goal?  To become as user-hating as tumblr?  Because while I appreciate how hard you guys work, that's what this change feels like. Now, I know you may be reading all this and going, "well, yeah, Wonder Woman fic is a problem, but you won't even notice the changes in most fandoms!" Let me present to you a list of the fandoms I have read the most of over the last year: Star Wars (but only some parts of that fandom, and not others) Star Trek (but only some parts of that fandom, and not others) MCU (but only some parts of that fandom, and not others) Wonder Woman (but not the rest of the DCEU) DC Comics (but only some parts of that fandom, and not others) Rivers of London And much as I love Rivers of London, I've spent a LOT more time reading fic in those other fandoms, because there's simply so much more of it, even when you only count the small pieces of each megafandom I'm interested in. What this means is that if you keep this tagging change and roll it out to other megafandoms, you will SERIOUSLY AND FUNDAMENTALLY BREAK how I use the archive.  And given a) how many other people on this archive are in megafandoms and b) how large a percentage of the people in megafandoms only read fic in one corner of that megafandom ... you are seriously and fundamentally breaking the websites functionality for a very large percentage of your userbase. At one fell swoop, you turn AO3 from an archive I love and support (including financially) to an archive I hope is replaced (soon) with something better, because it's a pain in the ass pretty much every time I try to use it.  Please, please, please, find some other way to fix the problem.  If you need money for more servers, or to hire a professional coder to do some serious backend changes to make things workable with the old tagging structure, I'd be fine with that and I would contribute to any fundraiser you did.  Your current choice is not a solution, it's a nightmare.

comments Comment? http://ift.tt/2EUYkRw

[iamthescalesofjustice]

so a few days ago whatever version of tumblr the site is actually running finally stopped being compatible with the way that i access the site (ie i went from only being able to get to a semi-working version of the dashboard from which i could make new posts after reblogging something in a different tab to not being able to reblog posts at all and therefore not able to make any new posts at all)

so i was like ugh fine i will finally get the app even though i hear all about how its so shitty. but i couldnt get the app because it needed ios 13 or later.

so i was like okay maybe if just use a different browser that could help. after all the nonworking dashboard has that ugly yellow notification that its supposed to be used with crome or firefox.

but firefox also needed a more recent ios than i had. chrome did too but it at least said 'hey do you want the last compatible version at least?' (to which i replied yes why is this not a default option offered by all apps and subsequently found out that the kast compatible version also did not improve re: accessing tumblr.)

so i was like. ugh. okay i guess i might have to finally update the ipad for the first time since 2016. and then settings said it couldnt wirelessly update to the newest ios from a version this far back (it was 9 point something and beautiful and after 5 years was exactly how i liked it despite the fact that at the time i lamented the loss of ios 7 and how when i finally had to use 7 i lamented the loss of the comfortable classic 4 from the ipod touch days etc etc)

so then i had to figure out The Laptop Situation. The Laptop Situation is as follows: i had one and its been nonfunctional since 2017, when a number of problems that would have been individually fixable if actually tended to finally conglomerated together to make it inoperable without professional help, which i did not ever get. i would have to at the very least get a new battery and charging cable to even try to start it again but like for Reasons i just never did.

so then i had to use my moms laptop which has its own problems which mean that it is constantly at risk of starting to fry its own componants from the heat caused by sheer overwork despite the fact that Nobody Is Even Doing Anything It Is Literally Just Sitting There (part of it is a problem with startup programs part of it is bloatware i cant convince her to deal with etc etc) and i had to fight it just to get it calmed down enough to fucking, install itunes.

so wrangling that, then untangled the crooked web of how various apple ids and thus cloud accounts are connected to various devices because no one in this family has ever been remotely literate in this stuff including me and we all have an annoying tendency to just make new accounts rather than try to figure out what any of the other bastards in this family have set the passwords to, then the thing wouldnt even update the first few attempts...

all in all it was hours to get it to happen and now, i have been rewarded with a browser capable of accessing a more functional version of tumblr than ive had in a long time, so i dont have to install the app, but cursed at the same time bc god ios 14 is so ugly and unfamiliar and i hate it and how i had to delete and turn off a bunch of stuff pretty much immediately. and this version of tumblr may work but it also is ugly and unfamiliar. and both are clunky and unintuitive in ways not just deriving from unfamiliarity.

[hellsangelsheavensrejects]

The Purgatory Files: All Roads Lead to Purgatory, Chapter 1

This was originally a roleplay, and I edited and spliced the existing part of it to more resemble a fic for the site I’m putting together to house these stories in a more polished form. So I’m just going to post that here.

Harry woke to an insistent nudging at his rib cage, and slapped drowsily at the offending disruption of his pleasant and blissfully deep sleep.

“Msgwymmmhslpng,” he said, and rolled over, sliding a hand under his cheek.

His bed sure did feel hard. Like lying on a rough concrete floor. Had it always been that hard? He thought about buying a new mattress, which he probably couldn’t afford anyway, then promptly fell back asleep.

Another, firmer nudge pushed past the haze of the sweet, sweet sleep that he never seemed to get enough of these days. “Mouse!” he grumbled. “Go away. I’ll feed you la–”

His sleep-crusted eyes creaked open in mid-sentence as he pushed at what he believed to be his dog, but his hand hit smooth, dusty leather instead of Mouse’s shaggy mop of fur. He stuttered into silence, and squinted at the boot that rested on the ground before his still-blurry vision. Slowly, he slid his eyes upward, up a pair of shapely, jean-clad legs, a fringed, black leather bomber jacket fitted around a wiry frame, and an angular face displaying an expression of simultaneous perplexity and amusement. Dark hair fell in a wavy curtain around the woman’s shoulders, and she stood with one hand propped on her hip as she peered down at him.

She wore a gun on that hip, a big old-fashioned revolver that looked like it belonged in a museum, thrust through a black leather holster hung on a conspicuous ammo belt. Harry could feel a heady pulse of magic swirling around and through the gun. Yeah, that was no prop or museum piece.

As the world continued to fade into view around him, he realized that he was lying in the middle of a road. To either side, stretching for what looked like eons, arid grassland waved and rustled in the growing breeze, enclosed behind barbed wire fencing.

And he had no idea whatsoever how he had gotten there.

Hell’s frickin’ bells. What did he get himself into this time?

“Uh,” he said, because he was eloquent like that. Slowly, he rolled to his knees, then grimaced as a sudden headache bore down on him. The world swam before his eyes briefly, and he drew in a breath, then sneezed explosively as he got dust up his nose. It did not improve the stabby-stabbiness of the headache. He rubbed his fingers at his temples and blinked dust out of his eyes. “Augh. Urk. Ow. Nice gun. Where the hell am I?”

“Bless you,” the woman said. Well, then. A polite gun-toting dame.

She crouched down beside Harry and peered at him, a spiraling lock of hair falling over her shoulder. He noted, because he was a detective and all, that her hand stayed close to that gun. His face scrunched up as he looked at her, and he tried to blink the sleep out of his eyes. A flicker of dimples puckered the sides of her mouth as she smiled at him. She had cute dimples.

She… had cute everything, actually.

Down, boy. Focus. She had a gun. She had a magic gun. She had a magic gun and was probably Trouble with a capital T, because that just seemed like a girl-with-a-magic-gun sort of thing to be.

“Aw, thanks,” the woman said. She was still smiling but her eyes were watchful. “It’s real. And I hate to tell you, but you’re in Purgatory. How much were you drinking that you don’t know where you are? Or that you fall asleep in the road?”

Harry realized he was grinning like a great, big dope. She did have cute dimples. And he did like her gun. It was a nice gun. “Real,” he echoed, and giggled with a little snort. Don’t look at me like that, he thought deliriously. That was a manly giggle. A giggle of manliness. Manly amusement. The little chuckle she gave in response was simply an appreciation of the manliness of that giggle. “Yeah. I kinda gathered that,” he said. He giggled again, then grimaced and resisted the sudden, uncouth urge to spit. He didn’t resist it for very long. The inside of his mouth tasted like sweaty gym socks well overdue for a laundering.

Then a particular one of her words swam into his awareness, and he sat blinking as his still-sluggish brain tried to process the word purgatory. He stopped giggling. Thank God.

“Uh,” he said again, then wagged his head side to side to see if it would rattle. It didn’t. Wonders never ceased. “That… uh. Wouldn’t be literal purgatory, would it? Because I seem to be having that kind of day.” He shook his head again and wiped a hand over his face. Several days’ worth of stubble on his jaw prickled against his palm, and he lowered his hand to stare dumbly at it for a few seconds.

The woman began to laugh outright, and he glowered up at her. “Hey, it’s a legitimate question. You have no idea how legitimate in my line of work.”

“Literal purgatory?” The woman shook her head, still snickering under her breath. “It’s small and just about everyone here has the personality of rancid milk but…I wouldn’t go that far.”

He nodded sagely and the world swam. He resisted the urge to lie back down and take a very long nap. “Y’know,” he slurred. “’M startin’ to think I got roofied…”

She stopped laughing at that and stared at him, her expression suddenly serious. “Oh.” She regarded him a moment more, and he could almost see the wheels start to spin in her mind. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

“Uh…” Damn, he was just a regular master of words today. He rubbed his eyes with his left hand, its gruesome scarring still hidden beneath a black leather glove, and tried to remember where he was before he woke up here in Dustville, USA. He half expected a tumbleweed to saunter past while he tried to drag up the memory.

Remembering was a lot harder than he thought it probably should be, but he finally had a flicker of image: standing at his worktable in his basement, wrapped up warmly in his flannel bathrobe and consulting Bob about a local cryptid. “I was talking to a skull,” he told the woman. “I do that sometimes.”

“A skull?” She looked down at the him for a moment longer, nodding ever so slightly as she did so. The wind caught her hair and blew a few strands across her face; she brushed them back and tucked them behind one ear. “Sure. Why not? You and Hamlet. Talking to your skulls.”

Har har,” Harry said flatly. “Ha. Ha. Hamlet. Oh, my sides.”

Somehow, he managed to wrangle his long legs in such a way that he maneuvered them under himself, and stood, swaying precariously. He began brushing off his clothes, and in doing so, looked down at himself. He was wearing a blue plaid shirt and jeans under his leather duster, his feet nested comfortably in his well-worn cowboy boots. No bathrobe in sight. He could feel the weight of his revolver in his coat pocket. “Apparently I changed clothes after.”

He caught sight of his staff and his battered old backpack lying on the ground nearby and bent down to collect them, nearly faceplanting again but managing, miraculously, to steady himself at the last minute. He was nothing if not graceful. Straightening up to his full height until he towered a good foot over the woman, he turned back to her and looked her over, his eyes coming to rest on that gun. She seemed relaxed, even a bit amused as she watched his every move, but she had been keeping her hand near the butt of that revolver the whole time, and he had a feeling she had a hell of a fast draw. He just hoped she didn’t randomly decide he looked like good target practice. People sometimes did that to him. It has an unfortunate side effect of ruining his day.

“So,” Harry said, finally leveling his eyes back to her face– not quite to her eyes, though. Something told him that a soulgaze with this gun-toting dame could make his headache turn into Armageddon in his skull. “Almost afraid to ask. But… what day is it?”

“Not to add to that fear, but it’s September twenty-second. First day of fall. Terrifying, I know.”

“Wait, what?” He boggled at her for a few seconds, jaw agape. “September? Fucking September?” He could feel his eyes bugging out of his head. He probably looked even kookier than usual right then. “Fucking hell! Hell’s fucking bells!” He paused a beat. “Uh. Pardon my Francois.” He probably butchered the accent.

Her lips pulled up into a smirk. “Not the worst thing I’ve heard. Not even the worst thing that I’ve said.”

He barely heard her. It had been June. He was absolutely certain of it. He had lost three months. Three. Friggin’. Months.

Taking a half-step back, arms folded across her chest, she watched him from beneath a raised eyebrow as he attempted to make sense of his predicament. “Not a fan of September?” she deadpanned.

“Not when summer was heating things up in Chicago last I remember,” he said. “It was June. Jesus. Missing time. Can’t say I’m a fan. How the hell did I get out here?”

“June.” She gave him an inscrutable look, her tone deadpan. One slender shoulder lifted in a brief shrug. “Beats me. You were lying in the middle of the road.” She half-turned while extending one arm to point to the blue-and-white striped pickup truck that was apparently hers. “I’d thought you were dead, actually.“

“Well, unfortunately for some, I ain’t dead yet. Hell, I think my ghost’d probably be making trouble even after I’m in the ground.”

She something that sounded like, “Please don’t,” and he couldn’t help but smile a little, despite his bewilderment. He could commiserate.

It also made him wonder what sorts of things this woman with a magic gun had dealt with in order to make that kind of remark.

Sighing, he looked around himself, grumbling under his breath while trying again unsuccessfully to get his bearings. Then his eyes, of their own accord, traveled back and did another gratuitous sweep of the woman’s figure, and he definitely didn’t notice how svelte and shapely that figure was. It was purely professional observation. Of a highly appreciative nature.

Trouble, Harry. Capital T.

He frowned deeply for a minute, thoughts finally picking up speed to whirl around dizzily inside his head. Missing time. Memory tampering. Dumped in the middle of Buttfuck Nowhere, equipped with staff and spell-shielded coat, and– yep, there was his blasting rod, hanging from its loop on the inside of his coat, and there was the smooth, cool metal of his revolver in the coat’s voluminous right pocket, tucked in with a box of ammunition.

All like he had been preparing for battle.

Something nagged at his brain. The M.O. sounded familiar. Way too familiar.

He stewed on that for a minute, leaning slightly on his staff, then shrugged. Hell, for all he knew, Trouble over here was responsible. She did just happen to be hovering over him when he woke from my blissful stupor, after all. Complete with magical gun.

He didn’t believe in coincidence. Especially not one as big as that.

He gave a little pause, then said, “Thanks, er…?” He trailed off, hoping she would supply him with something to call her in his head other than the smoking, gun-toting dame, also known as Trouble.

“Wynonna. Wynonna Earp.”

“Earp?” he echoed. “As in…”

His words elicited a heavy sigh from her, and she rolled her eyes. “As in Wyatt Earp Earp. That’d be the one.”

One corner of his mouth twitched into a smirk as Wynonna Earp– what a name– heaved a sigh. She probably heard no end of it, name like that. He offered her a hand, stealthily extending his senses as he did so.

“Harry,” he replied, careful to keep the cadence and resonance of the name neutral. Names are hard currency in the magical world. Wrong being gets hold of your Name, the full and true version of it, and they can wield all sorts of power over you. You don’t give it out willy-nilly to anything smelling of magic, especially in circumstances like this, and he wasn’t taking any chances.

“Harry,” she echoed again, looking at him under raised eyebrows. He nodded. He guessed she was expecting him to give his full name, but that wasn’t going to happen until he could figure out what the hell was going on here and who this random woman who just happened to find him at the right time and the right place really was.

“So, uh, Wynonna,” he ventured as he held his hand extended. “You wouldn’t happen to know where the nearest pay phone would be, would you?” He needed to call some people. They were probably scouring Lake Michigan or something for his body by now. Murphy was going to freaking kill him.

Finally, she accepted the offered hand and shook it, and as he closed his fingers around hers, a faint tingle rushed through his palm, shivering up through his wrist and into his arm. Magic. Faint, but indisputably present. Probably not even enough to fuzz up electronics. Lucky girl.

“Not too many of those still working here,” she said. “But there’s one at the cop shop.” Her hand slipped from his, and that wry smile quirked at her lips again.

Harry was glad she hadn’t offered him a cell phone when he had mentioned needing to make a call. He would have hated to accidentally fry it, her being so nice and all.

“Cop shop,” he said, and nodded. “Gotcha. You’re so helpful with your words.” He looked around, gesturing at the endlessly rolling fields and the empty stretch of road currently dominated only by Earp’s big blue and white pickup, Earp herself, and a lost, perplexed, and increasingly annoyed wizard. Overhead, clouds were starting to gather, shadows sweeping across the ground like an incoming tide. A big raindrop plopped on his nose, and he was pretty sure he went cross-eyed for a second as he reflexively tried to look at it. Great. “And the cop shop would be…? Where, exactly?”

Wynonna tilted her head, a momentary look of disbelief on her features. For a minute, she looked ready to bite his head off, literally. “Cop shop,” she repeated, her tone acidic. “The sheriff’s office. Which is in town. Where most people have their law enforcement offices. ”

Anything more that she could have said was cut short when fat rain drops started to hit the ground. More rain fell, picking up the pace a little bit and threatening an incoming deluge, and Wynonna turned her back on him, tossing a few last words over her shoulder as she stalked towards her truck. “Would you like a ride or would you prefer to walk, Hamlet?”

He felt a little pang of guilt twist in his chest as he watched her spin on her heel and march back to her truck, obviously affronted by his oh-so-charming demeanor. Damn it, Harry, he thought. It’s not her fault you got in over your head again and wound up stranded on the side of the road somewhere with your head screwed around with and three months blanked out.

It probably wasn’t, anyway. Jury was still out on that. But he could at least act like a civil human being until he was in a place to pass that particular judgement. Give at least that much benefit of the doubt.

He paced to the truck, managing by now to walk in something resembling a straight line, tossed his staff in the cargo bed, then opened the door to the passenger side of the cab and climbed inside. Silence stretched for a beat or two before he said, “Yeah. Sorry. Didn’t mean to bite your head off. I’m just a bit… discombobulated right now.” He managed a little smile, glancing up at her. “Hey, thanks for the ride. And, you know, for stopping in the first place. I owe you one.”

She glanced back as his staff clattered into the bed of the truck and turned just a little to watch him come into the cab. About three seconds after that a peal of thunder crashed overhead and the heavens let loose. Wynonna sat for a moment, one hand poised on the steering wheel and her attention on him.  Finally, she laughed, shaking her head.

“That wasn’t even close to what I would consider head biting.”

Well,  that sounded suspiciously like an innuendo. Harry’s eyebrows climbed again. He had a feeling they’d be doing that a lot around her. “Sounds like you’re a bit of an expert,” he quipped. Let the innuendos flow.

Her lips twitched up into a small smile. She sat up a little straighter and kept her eyes on the road when the rainfall became more intense. He glanced up as its patter rose in volume, rattling against the roof of the cab. Guess they got in the truck just in time.

“I know what I’m good at,” she said. “And the stopping just made sense. I didn’t feel like cleaning guts off my truck.”

Harry quirked his mouth into a sardonic grin. He concurred. He didn’t feel like her cleaning his guts off her truck either.

“Can’t argue with that.” The truck rumbled as she revved its engine, and the rain fell in sheets around them, starting to pool on the pavement and in the grass. He hoped they got where we were going before it started flooding or something.

He unzipped his  pack and sorted through its contents, unsurprised to find once again he had come armed for bear. Magical bear. The pack contained all your basic thaumaturgical and ritual supplies– candles, matches, his old army-surplus knife, a compass– and a number of seemingly innocuous items that he had found to be very useful for distance magic in the past.

What the hell had he gotten himself into?

Sighing, he craned his neck to look at the bed of the truck, where his staff was resting in a rapidly rising pool of water. “Damn,” he said to Wynonna. “My staff is getting soaked.”

“Staff?” She looked at him like she was trying to decide if he thought he was Gandalf or something. “I thought that was a ridiculously ornate walking stick.”

Wynonna had missed a golden innuendo opportunity with his carefully worded staff quip. I mean, come on. I left myself wide open. He smirked at her and shrugged. “It is a ridiculously ornate walking stick. Slash traditional Ozark folk art, slash… uh, security blanket.” He stretched his long legs as much as he could in the limited space. It wasn’t that her truck was small, it was that he was built like an NBA player. “Never leave home without it.” At least not when he thought he was going to come up against something big, bad, and potentially interested in turning him inside out for funsies.

“Security blanket. Right. Makes sense.” Her voice once again dripped with sarcasm, but he saw her brush her fingers lightly against the grip of the revolver. Her voice softened a fraction. “It’s pretty.”

He eyed her, and then found himself smiling at her, an actual, genuine smile without the slightest trace of irony, for the first time since waking up in the middle of the road that day. “Thanks.”

Harry settled back in his seat and looked out the window. He was feeling a bit less hazy now, but still every bit as confused. He watched the fields drift past, obscured by a nearly opaque veil of falling rain. Something kept nagging at him. He felt like he should know exactly why he was here. But, no matter how hard he tried, he could not call up the memory.

Missing time. Mind tampering. Elaborate games. Layers of manipulation. Players arranged like pieces on a chessboard (was Wynonna a chess piece too? Instinct told him she was, but at whose behest?). What creatures on his own personal rogues gallery had all of these things on their villain bingo cards? Vampires definitely had their fingers in the mind tampering, manipulation, and game playing pots. All the Courts. But he didn’t feel any lingering effects of Red Court venom, he was too mentally present to have been tampered with by the Black Court, and he didn’t feel any particular need to mindlessly worship anyone in the White Court and do their bidding.

There were some warlocks who could also pull off that kind of mental mojo, locking memories away, twisting perception, building subtle and not-so-subtle compulsions. But that sort of magic leaves a mark, a scar on the psyche that he was sure he would be able to feel. Whatever had been done to him was subtle, expert, surgical.

Something one of the Sidhe might have been able to do. In fact, if he went down the list of his circumstances and what they hinted at, it sure as hell seemed like faerie M.O. to him.

“Hell’s bells,” he growled under his breath. “God-damned fucking faeries.” The question was, which faerie?

He really needed to learn how to keep his thoughts inside his head.

Wynonna’s eyes snapped to him and stared. “I’m sorry. What did you just say?”

He cast a desperate look up at the ceiling of the cab and hoped he could explain his way out of this one without getting unceremoniously dumped off on the side of the road as a lunatic in the middle of a freaking deluge.

“Uh–” he started, but then there was a resonating bang that had him reaching for his blasting rod, and they were swerving wildly and hydroplaning and probably going to die horribly, because how else would his luck go today?

“Shit!” The curse slipped from Wynonna’s lips as she worked to regain control of the truck. It continued to fishtail for what felt like an eternity before she was finally able to guide it to the shoulder of the road. For a long moment she simply sat still.

Harry realized he was both holding his breath and clenching the dashboard in a death grip with his good hand. Slowly, he pried his fingers loose.

After belatedly realizing the truck was still running, Wynonna snatched the key out of the ignition and turned to him. “You okay?”

He withdrew the blasting rod from his coat and hefted it in his right hand, because every instinct he had was screaming “Danger, Will Robinson!” inside his head. He cast a glance towards Wynonna at her question and flashed her what he hoped was a reassuring grin. It probably looked more like a grimace. “Peachy. You?”

“I’d be better with some whisky and a dry shirt, but other than that I’m great!”

Rain continued to pour buckets on them, sluicing in opaque waves down the windows, and he felt his hair standing on end as a rising sense of the two of them being a couple of ducks sitting around waiting for their date with destiny seemed to permeate the air inside the truck. That sense spiked into an all-out crescendo when there was another reverberating crack, and the back window exploded.

“Shit!” He ducked– hey look, a pun— and at the same time reached over to drag Wynonna down beside him, shielding her with his body as best he could in the limited space. Twisting so he could maneuver his arms, he slid his right hand into the pocket of his coat and withdrew a wizard’s best friend: his Smith & Wesson Model 29. Setting aside the blasting rod for a minute, he checked to see if the revolver was loaded with the .44 Magnum rounds he always used. It was.

He’d called it, all right. Prepared for battle.

“Starting to think this wasn’t a tire blow-out,” Wynonna muttered. “Dicks.” He felt her twist around beneath him, and a moment later, she held her own revolver in her hand. She looked at Harry and did a double-take at the gun he was holding.

What? He couldn’t carry around an unlicensed firearm?

”Are they shooting at you or me?” she snapped.

“How the hell should I know?” he growled back. “I just woke up, goddammit!”

Another bullet slammed into the truck, and his lips curled into a snarl as he tried to keep both Wynonna and himself out of the range of fire.

This just kept getting better and better.

[earlyandoftenpodcast]

(John Winthrop, an early governor of Massachusetts)

In this episode we look at the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, as well as its early struggles over the proper role of popular participation in government.

>>>Direct audio link<<<

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Transcript and Sources:

Hello, and welcome to Early and Often: The History of Elections in America. Episode 10: The Pig Who Invented Bicameralism.

Last time, we followed the Pilgrims as they established a small colony at Plymouth Bay in what is now Massachusetts in 1620. The Pilgrims proved quite disruptive to the fragile balance of power in the region, but even after 10 years Plymouth’s population was only about 300. But although Plymouth wasn’t too successful, its presence paved the way for bigger things.

In 1629, just a few years before the founding of Maryland, Puritans began streaming into Massachusetts, totally swamping everything and everyone that had been there before. Within a decade over 20,000 settlers would arrive. This was the real founding of New England, much as the real foundations for Virginia were only laid a decade after the settlement of Jamestown.

Back when the Separatists had left England for the Netherlands in the early 1600s, their rejection of the Anglican Church was very much a minority position. The Church of England hadn’t adopted too many Puritan ideas, but it was close enough to their beliefs, and it had taken a live-and-let-live attitude for the most part. There were plenty of Puritan ministers and Puritan sympathizers within the Church. But James I had proven less sympathetic to the Puritans than his predecessor Elizabeth had. And his son Charles I was even less sympathetic than his father. Charles, remember, was married to a French Catholic.

So throughout the 1620s and ‘30s the Church clamped down on dissent and more rigorously enforced Anglican orthodoxy. Puritan-sympathizing ministers were removed from their posts and Catholic-style practices were reintroduced. All of which goes a long way towards explaining why, during the English Civil War in the next decade, Puritans so resolutely sided with Parliament, and why when Parliament won, it was in large part a Puritan victory.

In the face of this official pressure, it was only natural that true believers might start considering immigration. The fringe beliefs of the Pilgrims started to seem more sensible to mainstream Puritans. And tens of thousands of Puritans did in fact pour out of England. Some went to the Netherlands, some went to the Caribbean or to Central America. Those migrations would be largely forgotten in time. But a large minority followed the Pilgrims to New England, where they managed to create for themselves an entire culture of their own that would last for centuries.

In the late 1620s a group of men, mostly prominent and wealthy Puritans or at least Puritan-sympathizers, began meeting to plan out a new colonization effort in New England. Things came together quickly, and in 1629 they secured approval from King Charles for the creation of the Massachusetts Bay Company, a joint stock company like in Virginia. Indeed, the document was modeled on one of the Virginia Company’s charters. This new company absorbed all the preexisting land claims in the region, with the exception of Plymouth Colony.

The Company’s charter gave them the right to create a government for their colony and to administer it as they saw fit. The inhabitants were to retain all the rights of Englishmen. The same sorts of things I mentioned for Virginia back in Episode 2. In principle, legally this was very similar to other past colonization efforts. But while the Company’s official goal was to turn a profit, for the most part religious concerns were the actual motivation. Although I’m sure they didn’t make that clear to the King, nor did they talk about just how independent they wanted to be from his control.

While the legal wrangling was going on, in 1628 they had sent John Endecott to New England to prepare the way for a larger colonization effort. Endecott would go on to become governor of Massachusetts for 16 years, but very little is known of his life before this period. Personality-wise, Endecott was typical of the Puritan leadership, zealous and uncompromising. He was certainly willing to persecute Indians and religious dissenters when called on to do so.

Endecott arrived at what was soon named Salem, Massachusetts, of later Salem witch trial fame. This was the site of a previous failed colony, but there were still a few settlers eking out a living. Endecott and the other new arrivals took over and began constructing buildings to prepare for the coming migration.

After Endecott had been there a few months, in April 1629 the main fleet set off for Massachusetts. There were five ships carrying maybe 300 passengers. This expedition was far better equipped and better prepared than any previous one to date. No doubt learning from past failures helped. At least they sent an advance party instead of just showing up and hoping for the best.

The Puritans who were traveling to Massachusetts resembled the Pilgrims in many ways. A very large majority were coming in family groups rather than as individuals. Even the servants who came, came as part of a household rather than being unattached. Forty percent were female, and according to David Hackett Fischer, “nearly half were children under sixteen.”

They were somewhat better off economically than the Pilgrims had been, and much better off than the average indentured servant in Virginia. The Puritan immigrants were generally what we’d call middle class. And basically no aristocrats went, so the top of the social hierarchy was missing as well. They were artisans and merchants, as well as farmers who owned their own land. But farmers were a minority. Instead, the migration was very disproportionately urban. They were unusually well-educated too. Two thirds of men were at least literate enough to sign their own names. And there was a large group of highly educated ministers as well.

So the Puritans were educated, egalitarian, middle-class, and hyper religious. And that was what New England would be, for a long time to come.

After an easy voyage, the Puritans arrived at Salem that summer and were met by Endecott. There were no moments of big drama like in Jamestown or Plymouth. They just got to work. Thanks to the healthy climate and adequate preparations, there was no big die off that first year. Everything went well, for once.

The success was encouraging. The next year an even larger fleet of eleven ships carrying a thousand passengers set sail. This fleet was led by John Winthrop, aged about 42, who would go on to be governor of Massachusetts for 12 years. He’s important, so let me give you some background.

John Winthrop was born in 1587, the son of a prosperous lawyer/landowner. As a young man, Winthrop followed his father to Cambridge University. By the time he was in his early 20s, he was becoming extremely devout and concerned for the state of his soul. He soon became a staunch Calvinist. He held various minor offices and basically behaved as someone with his status was expected to. He was by disposition inegalitarian. Social inequality was part of God’s will, after all. In his words, “in all times some must be rich some poore, some highe and eminent in power and dignitie; others meane and in [subjection].” Great men were to show mercy to their inferiors, and lesser men were to show obedience to their betters.

The laws of the state should be based on those found in the Bible, though with additions as needed. The common people were incapable of self-government. He didn’t believe in natural rights or liberty or anything like that. Rather, he instead believed that men submitted themselves to a divinely ordained central authority, and then that central authority could grant its subjects rights on a case by case basis. The authorities themselves shouldn’t have too many constraints on their power, other than their individual consciences and their devotion to God. This was a rather Hobbesian view, although he was writing decades before Thomas Hobbes penned Leviathan.

But Winthrop had more immediate concerns than political philosophy. He was facing financial problems, and Charles had just stopped calling Parliaments and was trying to rule on his own. The Puritan cause seemed weak. So Winthrop, disheartened both personally and politically, contacted the Massachusetts Bay Company and helped organize a fleet. Thanks to his status and his drive, he immediately became an important figure in the project, and was soon elected as the next governor of Massachusetts.

He also helped come up with a clever idea to secure greater Puritan control over the colony. It was proposed that, basically, the Puritans in Massachusetts buy out the investors in the Company who were in England and transfer the entire Company from London to America. That would transfer almost total control to the Puritans. This was questionable legally, and certainly against the intention of the colony’s charter. But they did it anyway. Now, with the Company nothing more than a legal formality, Massachusetts would have almost total independence, and almost no duties or obligations toward England. The Company was fast becoming just a government.

Winthrop’s fleet of eleven ships set sail in the summer of 1630. While at sea Winthrop gave the famous “City Upon A Hill Speech”, where he said that “The eies of all people are uppon us. Soe that if wee shall deale falsely with our God in this worke wee haue undertaken, and soe cause him to withdrawe his present help from us, wee shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. Wee shall open the mouthes of enemies to speake evill of the wayes of God, and all professors for God's sake.” In other words, Massachusetts was to be a model for right Christian living, and its failure would damage true Christianity the world over.

Winthrop arrived at Salem, but the Puritans found the town to be too small for their needs, so settlers spread out quickly along the coast, founding a number of new towns including Boston, which soon became the capital, thanks to its advantageous harbor. Two hundred colonists died that winter, though that was about the worst of it. Conditions improved rapidly and the Puritans set out building their new society.

As far as the economy goes, from an early date, the New England colonies were engaged in trades such as fishing and shipping. Shipyards were opened in the 1640s, and a small commercial culture began to grow as soon as the initial settlement phase was over. Boston in particular became relatively cosmopolitan.

But of course most New Englanders were still just farmers living in small towns scattered throughout the region. In the more northerly climate of New England, it was much harder to profitably grow cash crops like in the Chesapeake, so big plantations never emerged. Family farms were the norm, and these tended to be similar enough in size. In a typical town the largest farm might be no more than a few times bigger than the average one. There were no landowners who had orders of magnitude more than their neighbors. In fact, in some towns, plots of land were given out at random, with each family drawing lots.

Some families were wealthier than others, of course, but there were few poor and few rich. Indeed, the poor and to a lesser extent the aristocracy were actively discouraged from migrating. There were still ranks, but the top and bottom were closer than usual. Cities and ports were less egalitarian, but they were just a small part of New England’s social fabric.

Another important difference with the Chesapeake is that there was less fertile soil, and there were fewer navigable rivers. These factors encouraged the settlers to live in towns, rather than spread out across far-flung plantations. These small towns became the religious and political centers of New England life.

By far the most important building in any town was the church. Puritan churches, or “meetinghouses”, were tremendously ascetic, made of unpainted wood and entirely undecorated inside, other than a single, staring eye painted on the pulpit to remind them of God’s omnipresence. Each Sunday parishioners sat through two separate hours-long sermons, each analyzing some fragment of the Bible. They were a very, very grim people, paranoid about their spiritual health and about unnaturalness. According to Fischer, “90 percent of executions for witchcraft in British America occurred in the Puritan colonies.”

From the very first church in Salem onwards, the Puritans followed a Congregational model, where each community had an independent compact with God and was largely in charge of its own affairs. They hired their own ministers, and admitted new members themselves. (Just to clarify, people who weren’t members of their local church would have still attended church, they just weren’t official members, that’s all.) There was some overarching authority, of course, but nothing like you’d find in the Church of England. The government could call for synods to be held, meetings that would keep the various churches on the same track, but they were still all ultimately independent. They weren’t totally breaking away from Anglican authority, at least not officially, but they were coming pretty close.

Of course, not everyone in Massachusetts was a Puritan. But two thirds or more of the colonists were, and half of the remainder were servants of the Puritans anyway, so that was still the dominant way of thinking. And this overwhelming religiosity permeated the government as much as it did everything else.

There were distinctions between civil and religious authority. In fact, the separation between religious and civil officials was much greater than in England, where the positions often overlapped. In England, a minister might also have a role in town government, but not in New England. Puritans of course saw this as a return to the original church, before it had been corrupted by involvement in politics. But still, government officials saw it as their duty to enforce Puritan beliefs with the full force of the law. Religious dissenters were sometimes executed. Quakers, who were heretics in Puritan eyes, had their faces branded or their ears cut off.

And there were plenty of laws that may not have been religious per se, but were certainly grounded in a desire to enforce the community’s sense of upright behavior. The Puritans strictly regulated how people lived. Nobody was allowed to live on their own. Single men in their own houses were forced to move in with families. The profits of businessmen were curtailed and idleness was strictly punished. These weren’t all unusual. Other societies were opposed to excessive profits and idleness, but the Puritans were far more rigorous in their control. Punishments went all the way up to being burned alive, though hanging was more usual. Not for idleness, of course. For lesser crimes, public humiliation was common. But although these laws were strict, they didn’t need to be enforced all that frequently since lawbreaking was relatively uncommon. Life in Massachusetts wasn’t actually an endless parade of punishment or anything.

Interestingly, because of their strict reading of the Bible, marriage was seen as a civil matter rather than a religious one, and divorce was relatively easier than elsewhere at the time. So as you can see, the fact that the Puritans were so religious didn’t always mean that everything was subordinated to the church. There were separate sources of authority, even if those separate sources were still ultimately secondary to the will of God.

Despite the presence of elections, the goal of a Puritan government was not to follow the will of the people, or to ensure individual liberty. What “liberty” there was, was the liberty to be a proper Puritan. Popular participation in government was a means to an end, the establishment of a Godly regime. They didn’t consider themselves democratic, although they did believe that power in society came from the bottom up rather than the top down. But that bottom up power meant different things to different people. To Governor Winthrop, it meant that the people surrendered themselves to a rather absolute authority. To others, it meant genuine popular control. The fight between those two views was played out in the fight over the colony’s charter.

Massachusetts’s charter was a de facto constitution which detailed how the government was supposed to operate. Overall, it was somewhat similar to that in Virginia, at least structurally. There was to be a governor, a deputy governor, and 18 Assistants or magistrates, who had a somewhat similar role to the Councilors in Virginia, forming a sort of executive council. Unlike in the Chesapeake, all of these positions were to be filled by annual elections, with the freemen of the colony voting each spring, unlike the irregularly scheduled elections for just the Burgesses in Virginia.

Additionally, there was to be a General Court, which was the equivalent of the General Assembly. This was a unicameral body consisting of the Governor, Deputy Governor, Magistrates, and the freemen of the colony, or at least their representatives, although the exact nature of that representation was kept vague in the charter. The General Court was to meet four times a year and it had the power to pass laws and appoint men to various offices.

So like I said, this was similar enough to Virginia at the time. But of course the fact that all of these offices were all to be elected was a quite significant departure. However, the colony’s leaders weren’t always willing to adhere to the charter’s generous provisions.

In the colony’s first few years, things were simply too unsettled for the charter to be followed. Endecott, since he was the leader on site, served as governor, but there was no real formal structure beyond that. And the arrival of Winthrop upended things yet again.

Winthrop became governor, but his first term was irregular. He was appointed in England, rather than elected, and his term both began before it was supposed to begin, and ended after it was supposed to end. In other words, they were winging it. In fact, when Winthrop got to Massachusetts, the earliest meetings of the government were simply held under a tree.

But although things in the colony soon settled down and moved indoors, that didn’t mean that the charter was now going to be followed. None of these earliest officials were elected, and frankly Governor Winthrop would have been happy to keep it that way. Democracy was, in the words of Winthrop, “the meanest and worst of all formes of Government”, and more importantly democracy lacked Biblical sanction, unlike monarchy. He sure didn’t believe in representative government and so he tried to limit the representative nature of government as much as possible. In his mind, and in the minds of many leaders of the colony, at most elections were there for the leaders merely to affirm their positions. Representation existed to justify a de facto oligarchy. Elections weren’t supposed to be a real outlet for popular opinion or anything like that. At least, that was the idea according to some.

Now, the charter called for a General Court to be held four times a year to represent the freemen. But “freemen” was, as always, a vague term, especially in a colony with so few servants. So the very earliest General Courts that first year in 1630 were, I think, just meetings of whichever colonists showed up. Obviously this would not do.

So in 1631 Governor Winthrop decided that “noe man shalbe admitted to the freedom of this body polliticke, but such as are members of some of the churches within the limitts of the same." Political participation was being limited to men who were members of their local church. In other words, to just the Puritans of the colony, since they were the ones setting up the churches. This religious test was in quite flagrant violation of the rights that had been given to all freemen, but who was going to stop it?

Also contrary to the charter was the decision to cut meetings of the General Court from four times a year down to one. Many of the eighteen Magistrate positions were left vacant. They also ended the direct elections of the governor and deputy governor. Instead, the Magistrates were to pick governors from among themselves. And the ability to create laws was taken away from the General Court and given to just the governor and his Magistrates. Winthrop raised taxes without popular consent, which of course raised fears of Stuart despotism. The Governor and his allies were moving hard and fast against elections, and breaking the law to do so. If he’d had his way, elections would have had no real connection to any actual power.

However, all of these arbitrary and illegal limits on popular government got pushback from the colonists and even from the deputy governor, and so many of Winthrop’s changes had to be rolled back within a few years. The direct elections of governor and deputy governor were restored in 1632, though not completely. Voters were still limited to choosing men who had also been elected as Magistrates. And lawmaking was returned to the General Court, which was additionally given the exclusive power to raise taxes, as with any good English legislature. Two years later the General Assembly was again called to meet four times a year.

In this modified system, the freemen of each town were to send two or three men to meet in three General Courts a year, while the freemen themselves would all meet together for the fourth General Court, to vote for the Governor and Magistrates.

So some, but not all, of the changes were successfully reversed. Most importantly, the restriction of voting rights to church members was kept in place. Although most colonists were Puritans, that didn’t mean that they were all formally members of their local church, since gaining membership was an arduous process involving lengthy interviews where you had to prove your religious sincerity. And of those who were church members, not all bothered to formally become freemen, either, since that could mean more work with little benefit. But maybe half of all adult men were freemen in those first few decades, though estimates vary. Very high by the standards of the day at least. Plus towns often had looser requirements for voting than the Court did, which I’ll talk about in a few episodes.

Women could and did send petitions to the Court, but that was the extent of their formal participation.

Moving on to the elections themselves. Officials in the first few years of Massachusetts history weren’t elected the way officials are today, with voters showing up to the precinct nearest them to cast their ballots, which are then all counted up. Instead, voters had to actually be in Boston on election day to cast their votes. This was called the Court of Election. Of course this system meant that the well-to-do and those who lived in Boston had an advantage over everyone else, thanks to their simple ability to show up. So this system was modified quickly, in 1634. Now, the men of a town could write their votes on paper ballots and send a deputy to Boston to deliver their votes to be counted. If no candidate received a majority, the election was decided by the General Court. This was a practice distinctive to the region. England and the other American colonies all still voted by voice or by show of hands.

Although voting was now done with ballots, this system was still, at best, semi-anonymous. Certainly anonymity wasn’t a goal anyone had in mind at the time. You didn’t have to sign your name on your ballot generally, but you still would have had to hand it in, visible for all to see. There were no special precautions for privacy yet.

Actually, for a few decades people voted for the magistrates not with a paper ballot but with kernels of corn. If you wished to approve of someone’s nomination as a magistrate, you would drop a white kernel of corn in a hat. If you disapproved, you would drop in a black kernel. The deputy from your town would then take the corn to Boston to be counted, avoiding as many birds as possible I assume.

But as Massachusetts grew, so did the number of deputies, until even this system proved unwieldy. There were multiple attempts to cut back on the number of deputies, but the towns would have none of it. It seems to me like it would have been simpler to just tabulate the votes in each town and send those totals to Boston instead of this more elaborate procedure, but perhaps there were concerns about fraud. Or perhaps it was just traditional and no one thought to change it. But in any case, similar systems of paper ballots (and corn) would be adopted by several other of the New England Colonies.

Elections in Massachusetts began at 8 AM with a no-doubt rousing election day sermon. Soon election day in the towns became a festive holiday, with the serving of “election cakes” and “election beer”, a tradition sadly forgotten today. I actually found a recipe for election cake, though it’s from over a century later and may have been different from what was served in these first few decades. The recipe, for one extremely large fruitcake, reads as follows:

“Thirty quarts flour, ten pounds butter, fourteen pounds sugar, twelve pounds raisins, three dozen eggs, one pint wine, one quart brandy, four ounces cinnamon, four ounces fine colander seed, three ounces ground alspice; wet the flour with the milk to the consistency of bread over night, adding one quart yeast, the next morning work the butter and sugar together for half an hour, which will render the cake much lighter and whiter; when it has risen light, work in every other ingredient except the plumbs, which [you] work in when going into the oven.”

Sounds like quite a production! You can find modernized recipes for smaller election cakes online if you just Google “election cake”. Let me know if you make one.

Given all the effort that went into them, it's clear that New Englanders cared a great deal about elections. Remember, they did all that each and every year. It wasn’t just for show. There were in fact some contested elections and changes in power. For instance, after Governor Winthrop’s attempts to limit popular participation were rebuffed he lost the next election to one of his rivals and was out of power for a few years, though he’d be back.

But elections were still much less partisan than today, and the turnover of officials wasn’t that rapid either, apart from the first decade. Officials were more likely to step down of their own accord than to lose reelection. I mean, the governorship was held by a rotating group of just four men for 41 of the next 43 years. So stability was pretty high.

There’s one other early political development to discuss: the division of the General Court into an upper and lower house. In Virginia and Maryland, the split was due to the division between the unelected Councilors and the elected representatives. In Massachusetts both the Deputies and the Magistrates were elected, but there was still a split. The Delegates were more in tune with popular opinion while the Magistrates were a bit more elite.

It didn’t take long for the two groups to become irrevocably at odds, and it was all thanks to a completely minor disagreement over a single pig. More specifically, a lawsuit over a sow. In 1636 there was a stray pig wandering around Boston. No one else claimed it, so it was taken by

Robert Keayne, a wealthy moneylender. When a year went by and still no one had claimed the sow, Keayne had it slaughtered. But after the pig was dead, a lawsuit was brought against Keayne by Goodwife Sherman on behalf of her husband, who was in England at the time. Sherman claimed that they had lost a pig of their own and that it was the same one which Keayne had unjustly taken and killed.

The evidence was apparently against her, and she lost her suit. However, popular sympathy was with Sherman, since she was from a poorer, but well known and well liked family, while Keayne was rich and unpopular. Keayne brought a countersuit for defamation which went before the General Court, which at this time also sometimes acted like a real court, not just a legislature.

The case split the Court in two. Most Magistrates found for Keayne, but most Deputies found for Sherman. There were more Deputies than Magistrates so Sherman got the most support, but unfortunately for her, just getting a majority was insufficient. You also had to get the approval of the Magistrates specifically, since they could on their own block any action from the Delegates, just like how in Virginia the Council could veto laws passed by the Burgesses. This Negative Vote, as it was called, was a way for the Magistrates to keep the Deputies in check. It gave the elite a way to negate popular power. This led to a quite acrimonious dispute between the Deputies and the Magistrates, over whether this Negative Vote should be kept. This was basically a continuation of the disagreement between Winthrop and the Deputies over the powers of the legislature, with the Deputies still pushing to increase their own power.

Relations between the two factions got pretty acrimonious and in 1644 the dispute was finally resolved by dividing the General Court into an upper and lower house, both of which had to approve all legislation. Now, both the Magistrates and the Deputies could block laws. This was right about at the same time as when Governor Berkeley probably split the General Assembly, and just six years before Maryland’s Assembly became bicameral.

But the running dispute between the Deputies and the Magistrates continued, over various constitutional issues like who should be in charge when the General Court was out of session.

And there were further attempts to place some officials beyond the reach of elections altogether. For instance, some of the Magistrates tried to form a new body where a few of them could just serve for life, but that attempt was blocked. Winthrop even tried to block the Court from writing a law code, since he thought that would impinge upon the freedom of the magistrates to do as they wished. He argued that there was no need for a law code, since the magistrates’ oath of office pledging to protect the well-being of the state was sufficient to keep them from behaving tyrannically, even without any formal limits on their power. That argument was rejected, but the disputes were such that it took some 15 years for a satisfactory law code to be passed.

But eventually things settled down after both sides had reached a compromise position. In essence, elections remained the ultimate source of authority, but the governor and magistrates remained powerful in their own right. And voting was still limited to church members. The colony’s charter wasn’t being precisely followed, but neither had it been thrown out completely.

As its form of government was being worked out, Massachusetts was developing in other ways. During the 1630s some 200 ships carrying some 20,000 colonists came to New England. By 1647 there were 33 different towns in Massachusetts.

Laws were passed in the New England colonies mandating that all children be taught to read. According to Fischer, another law “compelled every town of fifty families to hire a schoolmaster, and every town of one hundred families to keep a grammar school which offered instruction in Latin and Greek”. And children in Massachusetts got twice as much schooling as those in Virginia. This was mostly to teach kids the Bible, but of course literacy has many other benefits.

Harvard University was established in 1636, while the first college in Virginia, William and Mary, would only be founded in 1693. Now, Harvard at the time wasn’t a prestigious and world renowned university like it is today. It was mainly just a school for the training of ministers, but the difference is still striking. And the first printing press in New England was set up in 1638, a full 90 years before the first one in Virginia.

Perhaps partly because of this focus on education, the Puritans proved to be financially successful. The colonies wasn’t profitable in the way that the plantations of the Caribbean were, but the colonists themselves were able to live quite well by the standards of the day. The Puritan migrants had been middle class in England and they remained middle class in New England.

They were allowed to do all this, to build their own quite distinct society, without any real interference from the Crown. Which may seem surprising, given Charles’s obvious hostility to the Puritans. Why did he let this happen? After all, it’s not like Massachusetts was totally cut off. People went back and forth and word certainly got out about what kind of society the Puritans were building, and how hostile it was to the English establishment. I mean, they acknowledged the King’s authority only grudgingly and their churches had completely broken away from the Anglican bishops. Well, there were concerns raised, but there was only so much that could be done. Remember, this is the decade when King Charles was ruling without Parliament, so he was busy just keeping everything together in England, and by the end of the decade he was sucked into a war in Scotland. And of course after that, the English Civil War hit, and no one at all in England cared about the colonies. And in any case, the Puritans were less of a threat over there than at home. So despite various worries, New England was mostly left to do its own thing, at least for the time being.

Next episode, we’ll talk about the other colonies of New England, Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, and how they built upon the Massachusetts way of doing things while making significant innovations of their own. So join me next time on Early and Often: The History of Elections in America.

If you like the podcast, please rate it on iTunes. You can also keep track of Early and Often on Twitter, at earlyoftenpod, or read transcripts of every episode at the blog, at earlyandoftenpodcast.wordpress.com. Thanks for listening.

Sources:

The Colonial Period of American History Volume I by Charles M. Andrews

History of Elections in the American Colonies by Cortlandt F. Bishop

Puritanism: A Very Short Introduction by Francis J. Bremer

The Charter of Massachusetts Bay

Saints and Strangers: New England in British North America by Joseph A. Conforti

Albion’s Seed by David Hackett Fischer

The Political Thought of John Winthrop by Stanley Gray

A Reforming People: Puritanism and the Transformation of Public Life in New England by David D. Hall

A History Of Election Cake And Why Bakers Want To #MakeAmericaCakeAgain

The Reformation by Diarmaid MacCulloch

'Election Cake' Makes a Modern Day Resurgence by Keia Mastrianni

Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick

A Model of Christian Charity by John Winthrop