#i really wanted this to look like a scientific poster

[pikpiksoup]

Piktober Day 2: Life Form

I couldn't choose just one life form

[galacticsuperstitions]

the minds of a lab at three different points (LONG rambling under the cut)

I am constantly in awe of the analyses people put out about Arknights on this website. I feel like my own interpretations are somewhat lacking as a result, but I was confident enough to post this, at least. I've had this idea for a long time now, I think since Lone Trail released, but I've only been able to make the time for it now.

Rhine Lab has so many fucked up elements and people involved in it that it's actually impressive. They were really gunning for "most unethical scientific consortium" reward. Really, though, it's just the result of Kristen gunning for her parents' wishes. All of the directors want something and all of those somethings are different.

Things I want to mention or just feel proud of (allowing myself this because of how long this took):

-I was originally planning on crossing out Saria's surname to reflect that we still don't know what it is in canon, but I don't know why whoever has this poster would do that, so I just kept it in. Hermon refers to Mount Hermon, which Saria's name apparently derives from. Technically, her name here is the same thing twice. Oh well.

-I don't know who this poster belongs to. It's just in some Rhine Lab tech's personal desk, I guess? Doesn't explain the doodles, though. Maybe they were bored and feeling spiteful about the potential job insecurity of your boss being comatose in space.

-I realized only while making this post that I made Saria's, Muelsyse's, and Jara's doodles reference Kristen, yet Kristen's only references herself and her parents. Completely unintentional, but appropriate nonetheless.

-I am so happy with how the poster came out. It makes up for how hard I had to fight Canva for it to come out like that. Here it is in full if you want to look at it closely for whatever reason. (writing an actual description for this thing was fun!)

-Andenate doesn't actually have a face under the sticky note. That's why he's still Mike Wazowski'd in the poster png. I didn't feel like drawing one since it wouldn't be shown in the finished pieces anyway. His jacket is just the same as Magallan's.

-Ifrit's picture board was a literal last-minute addition. It's why the images are sketches rather than being in the lineless style of the poster. It feels fitting, though, so I'm keeping it that way. Seeing Ifrit all grown up and doing so well in Lone Trail was wonderful. There's something in her being happy and healthy and also surrounded by not just her loved ones and friends from Rhine Lab, but also people outside of it. She's cultivated her life to be as fulfilling as she wants it to be, and while there is still room to grow, she has plenty of support and insight from others for it to do so. I may be misrepresenting her a bit (the sleepiness doesn't help), but man. I love Ifrit. She's so cool.

[cyten0]

A Symphony In Crimson

Act 1: A Movement in Black

Chapter 9

The house has been much nicer this time around. It feels like everyone is working together a bit better, there’s a closer bond of trust. The others were quite surprised by Bonnie’s marksmanship! But honestly, all of them seem a little stronger.

The first floor has been a breeze really. Which is good, since it means you haven’t had to take any hits really. Nothing to try and cover up. Plus, the party has taken less hits, which means less temptation. Stars you’re hungry.

You’re sitting down for snacks when Odile does their coinflip thing with Isa. Looks like they lost this time.

▲ “What was that about, madam?”

◆ “Ah well. I asked the Favor tree to win my next coin flip.”

✿ “Huh?”

◉ “Such a silly favor.”

◆ “Purely for scientific reasons. I wanted to see if there was anything to this Favor tree business. As we can see, apparently not much.”

The others look a little disappointed by that, and you’re just a little hurt for some reason, as usual.

▲ “… Well you didn’t put any belief into it, so of course nothing happened! Sif actually told me a bit about that!”

Huh! Oh right! You did!

◆ “Really? Tell me more.”

Oh STARS yes, you get to talk more about this, it’s so cool! It still hurts your head to talk about, but it’s SO WORTH IT!!!!

✦ “Using favor trees, and the right steps, you can call energy from the stars! The trees aren’t the only way, but its certainly one of them! But in order to do so, you have to care about what you’re wishing for, otherwise they won’t feel compelled to answer you. You can do all the steps perfectly right, and not get a thing! But if you care enough, you can get something even if you do nearly every step wrong.”

✿ “Woah! That’s so cool!”

◆ “I’ve never heard this before…... Oh, Is this a field of study from your homeland?”

Oh, they remembered! They must have spent some effort doing that. You nod.

◆ “Fascinating. How effective is this method?”

Heh, time to shock them all.

✦ “Well, it might not have been a favor tree, but. I bet the king used a similar method to get Timecraft!”

◉ “WHAT!!!”

▲ “Oh Crab!”

◆ “You’re Certain?”

✦ “Like I said, That power comes from the stars. It’s no coincidence his armor is decorated with them.”

✿ “Oh yeah! The poster!”

◉ “Does that mean ANYONE could do that? And be just as dangerous?”

No it’s not that good but… Hm… It hurts your head but...

✦ “No. Getting that much power would not only require an insane commitment, but would require really lengthy, costly, and complicated rituals that would take months in order to draw from enough stars.”

◉ “Oh thank change.”

▲ “Makes you wonder about his motive though…”

Huh. Isa’s right, it does mean the king is awfully dedicated. Big wishes like that take effort…

A wish like that is probably why your here, right? But you still need more information. This gives information as to what it is, but it doesn’t make sense why you’d be here. Your wish was way too small, can’t be that. If only you could read that book in the storage room, the picture on the cover makes you think it might be about wishcraft.

But trying to remember a language from barricaded memories of memories is a few steps of separation too many. And your head still hurts a TON from yesterday.

Ah well. You’ll figure out, bit by bit. Your making progress! It’s only been… Hm. You haven't kept track how many times you’ve looped. Might want to ask loop about that. Anyways, it’s time for snacks, and you’re super hungry! You’ll try and cut down just a little bit, but that’s gonna be a tall order.

>>>

You’re in the library. Your eyes got caught by the diary again, and Mirabelle is reading it out again. Then the others start talking about the country. It’s hard to listen to it again.

✿ “Still…. The name of that country…. What was it again?”

▲ “Oh, I think it was something like A-”

You all suddenly get a massive headache as Isa tries to say it! Your head feels like it’s going to split open it hurts so blinding much! It hurts so much you can only see red! You cover your eyes so they don’t notice. It hurts it hurts it hurts!!!!

But…. Then… The pain…. Subsides…..

You look up. That. Didn’t happen last time. What… Odile. She stopped Mira from interrupting?

✿ “Ow. Crab, that hurt way more then I thought.”

◉ “Ow ow ow… Madam, why did you let that happen?”

◆ “Gems, that hurt…. Siffrin?”

She… She did that for you…? Just so you’d have a chance to? You really don’t deserve that. Others shouldn’t have to hurt for your needs. But….

✦ “….. Starts with an A. Heh. It’s something!”

The others give puzzled looks, as you slot the diary back into the bookshelf. That one. That helps a lot more then just Siffrin. That’s for all of them.

>>>

You’re on the third floor, in the room with the person doing bodycraft again. Key is obtained, but you’re a little bored, so you decide to take a look at the closet.

▲ “Oh, look at this shirt! It’s the same material as your cloak, right Sif?”

◆ “It looks very warm. I’m surprised you managed to wear it all through summer.”

Right. This cloak was one of the first things you ever had. You never questioned it much.

✦ “It’s actually quite cool? Never get hot in it really.”

◉ “Really?”

▲ “...Sif, mind if I take a look real quick?”

Huh! You're a little nervous to have him so close, but… Okay. The only wounds you’ve taken are covered up well enough, so it… Should be fine, right?

You nod. Isabeau kneels and takes a hold of your cloak lifting it up and examining. it. You can feel his breath against your body, feel the warmth exude from him, hear his heartbeat so keenly, smell his body and it’s taste, feel the slight tugs and motions as he handles the fabric... It’s hard to focus.

▲ “… Holy Crab… This is some impressive work.”

✦ “Huh? What do you mean?”

▲ “Okay, starting on the simple side, It’s got a very interesting stitching style. Not very Vaugardian at all, and seems to focus on being highly durable. Like, borderline armor durable. It’s even fireproof. Difficult to pull off. Plus it’s been treated to be stainless as well.”

◉ “Huh! That’s some good traveling cloths.”

▲ “Oh that’s just the beginning. Someone decided to take this already impressive cloak, and literally stitch craft into the fabric. And not just a little, there’s a bunch! Self repair, temperature regulation, it even adjusts to your size! And to top it off, while you can’t tell normally, some of the fabric inside glows a little in dark places, showing some interesting patterns!... Hey, they even sewed a little butterfly emblem on the inseam!”

✿ “Woah! That sounds REALLY fancy!”

▲ “Honestly Sif, this cloak alone is practically worth an entire village?!? Where did you even get this?”

… You don’t speak. You remember Siffrin was important in his homeland. Guess you got an idea how important.

▲ “… Oh. Hey, it’s alright! I’m sure they’d be happy with how you’ve used it.”

✦ “… Yeah.”

The others are confused, but you move on. It’s fine.

>>>

Got the third floor handled, and got food at the bathrooms. Odile didn’t interupt this time, even though you ate a lot during the snack breaks, maybe because of the increased trust? And now you’ve obtained the Keyknife! And are back at the entrance…

Hm. You wonder. You’re curious about that statue. You remember Mira mentioning that these statues are connections to the Change god. Who’s is the one that blessed you?

✦ “Hey, Before we go ahead, I want to check something”

◉ “Huh? Okay, let’s go!”

>>>

You’re back in the statue room. You’re not expecting anything, but you ARE curious about it. You take a closer look.

Hm. Not to judge but… Oh, Looks like the others are judging instead.

✿ “Can noses look like that?”

▲ “Wow, it’s left eye is somehow above the right brow.”

◆ “I can’t tell if it’s smiling or frowning.

You notice Mirabelle is oddly quiet. You had suspicions but...

✦ “...Mirabelle?”

◉ “I… I was trying to make it look nice and gentle…”

▲ “CRAB, MIRA WE’RE SO SORRY!!!!”

✿ “SORRY WE SAID YOUR STATUE SUCKED!!!!”

◉ “It’s alright…. I’ll get my revenge on you all someday.”

The others shudder, and you smile a bit.

Hm. So this is Mirabelle's statue, huh? A connection between her and the change god, the only one unharmed in the house, and the one that gives you this blessing each time...

✦ “Mira, can you put your hand on the statue?”

◉ “Um? Okay, sure?”

She puts her hand on the statue, and suddenly, the room shifts!

You’re both pulled into that strange realm again! But. You’re still here? You havn’t been teleported, you’ve been brought…. Elsewhere.

You look around. It’s nothing but pure white as far as you can see. There’s a faint humming, in that sound only you can hear.

There’s a figure approaching. You don’t know what to do! Wait is that?

◉ “Euphrasie?”

Is that the name of the Head Housemaiden? They seem a little surprised, but then…

❍✿ Incorrect buzzer

❍✿ “mirabelle!!! i can't believe u can't recognize me ಠ_ಠ"

They’re wearing Bonnies face now?

◉ “Wait you changed shapes?!? Are-”

❍◉ “yay!!! o(≧▽≦)o got it so fast! it’s me! The Change God ＠＾▽＾＠”

You’re stunned. You can’t move. Wait, Mirabelle’s crying!

❍◎ “oh no don’t cry! i didn’t want to make you cry (╥﹏╥)”

◉ “I’m so sorry!!!! For not changing enough, for being useless, for lying and making everyone think you blessed me, for-”

❍▲ “nonono you’re all good! ( : ౦ ‸ ౦ : ) i’m not worried about any of that. you’re a-okay!(≧◡≦) “

◉ “Huh?

❍✿ “if I was upset, i wouldn’t have helped you all earlier! (⁀ᗢ⁀) but I did because I’m rooting for you. both of you!”

H-huh! They… they are?… Mirabelle dries her tears, and seems happier.

❍◆ “i’m about to tell you something, that you won’t remember for a lot of reasons. well, your brain won’t, but your heart will!!!”

❍▲ “it’s true that, as the Change God, i can’t do much to help you all. but i feel okay with that, because you all have the real power! you’re really strong mirabelle! ლ(ಠ益ಠ)ლ”

❍◎ “just the will to change things is enough to do anything! and look how far you’ve gotten without my help!o(>ω<)o but if that’s not enough…”

The figure’s form dissipates, revealing a single, small, cloaked figure, with the face of the statue from earlier. For a brief second, their voice feels different.

❍ “You are loved, mirabelle. i see you changing, even if you do not. you are always changing, evolving, growing. and even if you’re not, that’s ok. Because life might be about changes, but sometimes it’s about staying right where you are, sometimes. i’m proud of you, and i love you!”

She looks at them not sure what to say. You’re just happy to see her happy at this point.

❍ “and i love this stupid face you made me and i’m never letting anyone destroy it!!! got it?”

Mirabelle gives them a hug. The figure seems surprised! But allows it.

◉ “….Thank you. You’re not what I was expecting, but I’d expect nothing less. Thank you so much…”

❍◎ “hehehe…. euphie is right, you’re super stinking cute!”

Mirabelle lets go, and wipes away her tears.

❍✿ “okay! that’s your special god call! i’ll send you back now, but i’ma chat with your friend here a little more!”

◉ “Huh? WAH-”

In a blink, Mirabelle is gone. It’s just you and the change god now…

Their disguise melts. Their form shifts. Their cloak billows out and grows to tower over you. Their face pure shadow. As they speak, their demeanor shifts, ever so slightly. Their voice echoes in the unheard sound only you hear. The space fills with twirling shapes.

❍ “Sorry to keep you waiting. But I wanted to talk to her first. She needs those words desperately, and has been waiting for them from me for a while now!”

✦ “I-I um!”

❍ “It’s alright!!! I know. I know. About the island, about the timeloops, about who you are and... It’s okay…. I-I’m sorry I can’t help you much! It made me very happy to see my little gift helped make you happy!!! Y-You’ve been through a lot.”

You… They care. They care? And they did know? They know and… and you’re crying. You’ve stopped holding your eyes in shape, your horn is out, your heart glows, you just collapse. And you’re crying.

❍ “I um!! okay, maybe you just need a second to let it out a bit? Oh, I’m not very good at this….”

They give you a hug. You can barely breathe through the tears. They know what you did, this being that cares so much for life, and yet… Hearing them say it, hearing them tell you they care even despite everything...

❍ “...You know, for a lot of people, I’d be kinda upset at the whole ‘locking a major place of change in time’ thing, but I know you’re trying, and you don’t want to do that. Just like you didn’t want to hurt those on the island… I’m sure you’ll find a way to fix it, and you’ll make good use of the time. I’m rooting for you.”

✦ “I-I!!… thank you…I don’t know if I deserve it though….”

❍ “…. I have a message from my partner. A patron of your home.”

Huh?!!!

They pull back a bit, still holding you, looking you head on with their void of a face. And sing, in the voice of the stars:

Oh dear and precious fallen star

We’ve seen you travel, long and far.

Through trials filled with pain and fear

We know you’ll hold to all that’s dear

So sing your song, o mournful Dove

But know that you have always been Loved.

You… You feel hands. Hugging you. Not the change gods, but ones that feel… familiar… Feel kind. Feel like…

You see tears drip down from the Change Gods hood. They’re crying? Why are they crying for you? You killed so many… you don’t deserve it...

❍ “You have always been loved. Not as Siffrin, but as you….”

They pull you close again. Your tears mix with theirs as they pool into the space below you.

❍ “Y-Your cloak was made so you could wander the streets... Your tinkers tools so you could make things yourself…. That device in your pocket to show you the world when it wasn’t safe for you to be out... That gun so you could defend yourself even when you didn’t trust yourself up close... Your skill with music was taught because it helped you talk and they wanted to hear your voice… and…. And….”

You can’t… You can’t stop crying…. They… were for you? All along? But…. But…

❍ “And I wish I could have done something!!! You shouldn’t have had to deal with any of this!!! So please, please!!! Don’t forget that!!! Don’t forget that people have loved you always, no matter what!!!”

❍ “…You’re so young. So young for what you are. You shouldn’t have to suffer like this.”

You… you hug them back. Stars, you need to hug them. You need to hold them close. You wish you could hug these figures you barely remember, tell them you’re sorry, wish you could remember who they were. Wish you could remember why they cared for you. And… at the very least, you’ll hold close someone. You need to hug SOMEONE. The Change God hugs you tighter.

❍ “...I… Can’t keep you here for much longer. So. Don’t worry, I’ll give you the keyknife as many times as you need it, I’ll wait for you to get out of this, and… I’ll be rooting for you. Okay? Just promise me, you’ll remember what I said?”

You struggle to speak through your tears. You… really were loved…

✦ “…Yeah. I will. T-Thank you…”

You feel them fade away, as the room starts to form.

You put yourself back together as it does. Physically at least. But the tears aren’t stopping. You turn towards Mira. She’s crying a little too.

✿ “HEY!!!!”

▲ “Mira, Sif! Are you both alright?!”

◉ “What… just happened? I can’t… Siffrin?”

You can’t speak. You can’t stop crying.

▲ “SIF?!? Are you okay? Say something!!”

✦ “S̴̯̕orry! I just… I…”

You can’t help but laugh. You… You feel a bittersweet mixture of joy and sorrow. You don’t know how to process it at all.

◉ “I think we experienced something… Incredible? But I can’t remember it anymore.”

You do. You’ll never forget. You won’t let yourself. You take a deep breath, and dry your tears.

◆ “Are you alright now Siffrin?”

✦ “I… Yeah. Come on. We have a king to beat.”

You smile. It’s bittersweet… You want to remember them. So badly now. They loved you, they cared for you. And you can’t even remember a thing about them…

No. One more memory surfaces. They said… they said…

It takes strength to see what you want from the world. Don’t give up on it ever.

You HAVE to find a way to remember them. You can’t let them be forgotten, not a second longer, not when you’ve gotten so close… But… You’ll need help… and there’s only one person who’d try. Who COULD help.

It’s time to meet the king.

✸✸✸✸✸✸✸✸✸✸✸✸✸✸✸✸✸✸✸✸✸✸✸✸✸✸

...There’s a look in Stardust's eye.

This loop was doing so good. They’re all happy. They deserve that. They’ve been at this for a while, even if they aren’t aware of it. And the change god was very kind to say that. But…

Stardust isn’t thinking clearly. They haven't been for a while. The last two they remembered clearer because you fed them proper food, but it’s not easy to get that. And you have this sinking feeling things are going to take a turn for the worse. Very fast.

You hope you are wrong.

[ask-the-dunmeshi-biologists]

What does a scientist illusttaor do? I wanted to be one when I was little, and even though I have different dreams now, I still practice drawing plants and animal around me as best I can when I'm at parks and such.

This is going to be really silly, cuz I know objectively it's an important job, but like, um, what do scientific illustrators do for science aside from make realistic illustrations for animals? What exactly does the kob entail? Is it fun? Sorry my question was definitely worded rudely I'm not quite sure how to ask it I just genuinely want to know how scientific illustrator niche fits into the wonderful world of science!

[Velwyrm: Hello there! Scientific Illustration, although not outwardly impacting research, is a fundamentally incredibly important part of the school of science! I’m glad you asked, because there is SO many amazing things that you can do with this skill.

Scientific Illustration is the skill of drawing accurate, precise drawings of scientific diagrams (bio, chemistry and physics all use these). They can be very simple, such as those seen in textbooks, or incredibly detailed, like many of the dinosaur illustrators we see today that use the most updated information available to visualise what the animal would have looked like. This is very important in the context of museum specimens and paleobiology, as fluid preserved specimens quickly bleach & loose colour, and bones can only help people visualise an animal so much.

Scientific Illustration is also used outside of the context of scientific research (though it is used in various papers and posters to gain funding, e.g. in medicine). For example, in advertising, marketing, raising money for volunteering organisations (clearing invasive species — sometimes illustrations are vastly clearer than photographs when IDing) and childrens books, or animal dictionaries that I used to love reading as a kid!

If you or anyone else is thinking of pursuing this career or hobby, then helps to have a degree in biology or other sciences (especially illustrating for medical purposes), but you don’t necessarily need one if you’re very very lucky. There’s a few short courses on Skillshare for animal illustration if you want to give it a try, but I personally would recommend getting a degree in one of the sciences though as it would open a lot more doors and opportunities.

Art and science truly do go hand in hand!]

[toboldlygohome]

Hold Me Closer

Mark Watney X Reader

Chapter 1

Summary: You were looking forward to your month on Mars, but what happens when a month-long mission becomes indefinite? Will you and Mark make it back home, or were you doomed from the start?

Character(s): Mark Watney, Chris Beck, Melissa Lewis, Beth Johanssen, Alex Vogel, Rick Martinez

Warning(s): Cursing, Injuries

You stared out the window as you ate, watching the endless expanse of darkness spin around the ship. A week from now, you would be on Mars, conducting geological surveys and testing core samples. You were a chemist first and foremost, but you were also sort of a jack of all trades aboard the Hermes. You could fix things, run telemetry, conduct space walks, keep the plants alive, identify minerals, and of course you had a fair bit of medical training. It was because of your proficiency for all things scientific that you landed yourself a spot in Ares 3.

The excitement practically radiated off of you. You were so stoked, you couldn't even eat the food in front of you. So much to see, so many samples to run! You hoped there would be signs of past water in Acidalia Planitia!

"You know Y/L/N, the food is supposed to go into your mouth." Beck strolled in with his water bottle in hand. Evidently he was here for a refill.

"Thanks for the tip, doctor. I'll keep that in mind." You said before shoveling a spoonful of rehydrated ravioli into your maw.

"You looked lost in thought there, wanna share with the class?" He asked as the water reclaimer slowly filled his bottle.

"Just thinking about Mars," you shrugged.

"Ah, for a second there I thought you were thinking about your botanist," Chris smirked.

You stared daggers into his back. "My botanist?"

Beck grinned at you over his shoulder. "Well who else would you be thinking about? You've got such a wistful look in your eyes, I thought for sure your mind was on him."

"You really need to stop with the teasing Beck. It's a small ship, it'll get back to him eventually," you grumbled.

"Look, I just call it like I see it."

"Well, you're seeing wrong."

"You've been more and more distracted lately, there's no way it's only because of Mars," Beck chuckled. Dammit. You hated when he was right. You did like Mark, but let's be honest here. Who wouldn't like Mark? He was funny, smart, and he looked way too good in his grey flight suit. Completely unfair.

"God, you can be so annoying," you laughed.

"Only because I'm right."

"Mark and I are just friends, that's all we're ever going to be. Even if we didn't work together, and for the government no less, there's no way he'd ever go for the likes of me."

"What makes you say that?" Beck tilted his head curiously.

"Have you seen him?"

"Yeah, and?"

"Dude, he's like the second most attractive person on this ship!"

"Second?!"

"Objectively speaking, Johanssen is the first. Her posters sold out like hot cakes!"

"I know Johanssen is first! I meant, how is he second? What about me?"

You raised an eyebrow at him. "Who's the one who got the super sexy Under Armor ad again?"

"... Y/N? How many times have you watched that ad?" Beck laughed.

"Shut up."

"It must have been a lot for it to be this fresh in your mind."

"Don't you have a computer nerd to go flirt with?"

"Don't you have a botanist to ogle?"

You groaned and pushed your food away, but Beck scooted it right back. "Fine, fine. No more teasing for today," he laughed. "Just make sure you finish your food, it's important that you eat well."

"What if I'm not hungry?" you asked.

"Eat anyway, doctor's orders," Beck sassed as he left the dining area with his water.

You snickered and poked at your ravioli. If only you could just follow your heart like Beck. He was set on Beth and nobody was going to keep him from her. You just hoped he'd wait until after the mission to make it official for the sake of his career.

Of course you wanted to date Mark. Beck wasn't wrong on that front, but relationships are strictly prohibited among crew-mates. Maybe if you didn't work together, you might have worked up the courage. Probably not, but it would have at least been an option.

You slowly ate the rest of your cold meal and tried to think about anything else. Anything but the plant-loving engineer who had a choke-hold on your heart.

~~~

Mark groaned and climbed out of his bunk. It had to be at least two in the morning... at least according to the Kennedy Space Center. Jeez, he was starving. Luckily their food reserves came with snacks for just such an occasion! He exited his quarters and looked toward the room beside his. The door was open, which was quite a surprise. You were normally asleep by now, and Martinez was keeping an eye on the telemetry tonight. What were you doing awake?

Watney made his way to the dining area and took a look at all of his options. Hmmmm... trail mix it is. He grabbed a bag and took the ladder to the zero g portion of the ship. Everything was quiet except for the hum of the ship and Rick clicking his pen in the cockpit. He decided not to bother the pilot and instead went in search of his favorite crew-mate.

He found you floating in the cupola with your earbuds in. You watched as Mars inched ever closer, calling you to its surface. Mark couldn't resist the urge. He grinned mischievously and grabbed your ankle, causing you to yelp in surprise.

Mark laughed as you smacked him on the shoulder half-heartedly, "Mark! you scared the shit out of me!"

"Sorry, sorry!" he floated up and settled beside you. "I saw an opportunity and I had to take it."

"Jerk," you laughed and returned your focus to the lonely red planet.

"What are you doing up?" Mark asked.

"I could ask you the same question."

"I was hungry," he caught a floating peanut in his mouth and looked at you as he ate. "And you?"

"I couldn't sleep. I'm too excited," you admitted with a smile. "Ever since I was little, I wanted to go to Mars... I can't believe it's actually happening."

Mark smiled gently and watched as your eyes sparkled with adventure. That was one of the things he loved most about you. He loved seeing you light up when you learn something new or complete something for the first time. And for the few instances you failed, he loved watching you gear up to try it again. Nothing could shake you when you had your mind set on something. (He wished you had your mind set on him...)

This was a lifelong dream of yours, something you'd thought about, planned for, and fought tooth and nail to achieve. Now here you were, watching all of the pieces fall into place. Mark felt so lucky he got to be on this mission with you, that he'd get to see every moment of excitement, every vivid dream become a reality.

"What are you listening to?" he grabbed your earbud and stuck it in his ear. He grinned.

Hold me closer, tiny dancer. Count the headlights on the highway. Lay me down in sheets of linen, you had a busy day today.

You scooted closer to Mark so he could listen with you, he wrapped an arm around your shoulder to keep you steady. Oh what Watney would give to stay with you like this. Floating softly, slowly, taking in the view. He offered you his bag of trail mix with a cheeky smile. You laughed lightly and grabbed a bite. Fuck. He loved your laugh. He would listen to it on repeat if he could.

"Hold me closer tiny dancer," He mumbled along with the song as the chorus kicked back up.

"Count the headlights on the highway," you whispered back.

~~~

Finally.

Mars was so close, you could almost touch it! And here in a few hours, you would be~

You suited up for your ride in the MDV and helped Martinez and Johanssen with the pre-flight checks. Mark and Beck were loading the descent vehicle with everyone's personal items and Vogel was making sure all of the Hermes experiments were on autopilot. Commander Lewis oversaw the whole operation and kept in contact with Mission Control about the progress being made.

Once all the checks had been made and all the cargo had been loaded, everyone piled into the MDV and prepared for descent.

You took a deep breath as you checked the on-board navigation. You were really going to make it! You were going to walk on Mars! You checked, double checked, even triple checked your numbers before giving Lewis a thumbs up.

"We are go for separation," she told Martinez.

"At your command," Martinez said, poised to initiate the separation.

"Launch," Lewis said.

Your heart rate increased as the MDV shuttered out of the docking port. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my GOD!

"Approaching ten meters from Hermes," Johanssen said.

"Engine power readings are nominal. Ship internal pressure is stable." You said, unable to keep the excited quiver from your voice. The cabin was quiet for a few minutes. The tension could be cut with a knife. It wasn't a bad kind of tension. It was exciting, like teetering at the top of the world's tallest roller coaster.

"Approaching two kilometers from Hermes. Go for engine start up," Beth said.

"Martinez, go for engine burn," Lewis said.

You squeezed the arms of your seat and closed your eyes. This was the hardest part for you. You'd worked in the International Space Station before and reentry was your downfall. What was worse about entering Mars was that there was no water to break your fall if you crashed.

You felt a gentle pressure on your hand and looked up to find Mark already watching you with a smile on his face. He squeezed your hand as the MDV inched closer and closer to Mars.

"Hanging in there?" he chuckled.

"By a thread," you joked.

"You got this, tiny dancer," Mark winked.

You chuckled and rolled your eyes. You both listened as Lewis and Martinez went back and forth calling out each action they performed. Mars completely filled the window.

You held onto Mark a little tighter.

~~~

The actual mission started off promising enough. The landing was good, setting up the Hab was a breeze, and life support was running at maximum efficiency. Unfortunately, life seemed to have this obsession with throwing you curve balls.

You scowled as you watched the screen while the storm outside raged on like an angry god.

"Jesus, we're gonna end up in Oz," Watney said. "What's the abort speed?"

"Technically one fifty kph. Any more than that and the MAV's in danger of tipping." Martinez said.

"Any predictions on the storm track?" Lewis asked.

"This is the edge of it. It's gonna get worse before it gets better," Johanssen replied.

"All right, prep for abort. We'll go to the MAV and hope for the best. If the wind gets too high, we'll launch."

If only that were the end of your misfortune. You literally had the audacity to think: 'How could this get any worse?' You got your answer when Mark was struck by a piece of flying debris. His vitals were offline, his suit depressurized on impact. He was likely dead, but still you were searching for him. The only trouble with that was you couldn't see two feet in front of you. The dust was thick and the wind was threatening your stability.

"WATNEY!" You called out, hoping the urgency in your voice would stir your friend from his incapacitation. "Watney, please respond."

"Y/L/N, I need you to get back to the MAV," Lewis ordered.

"But he could still be-"

"This isn't up for discussion. MAV. Now."

"I'm not leaving him behind. I know if it were any of us, he wouldn't give up. Not when there's still hope we could be alive."

"He's dead Y/L/N. W-we need to go, please," Beck pleaded.

You closed your eyes and forced down a cry. You didn't want it to be true, but Beck was right. Of course he was right. You were in denial... Still, you couldn't do it. If he was dead, you needed to see it for yourself. What if the numbers were wrong? What if-

You were struck with a sudden, blinding pain.

"Y/N!!" Lewis cried.

That was the last thing you heard before everything went dark.

~~~

Mark awoke with a gasp to the sound of beeping in his helmet.

"Oxygen level critical." A robotic voice said, causing him to pant heavily. His abdomen really fucking hurt. It took all his willpower to sit up. When he looked down, he found the source of his pain. The antenna for the com dish had turned him into a human shish kabob! He let out a cry as he tried to keep the antenna steady. Every movement sent a shock through his tired body.

Watney paused when he heard static in his helmet.

"Wa---y... W---ey c--- -n. Watney, If yo--- the-- please respond!"

"Y-Y/N?" Mark winced.

"Watney! Oh my god!" You sounded on the verge of tears. "I thought you were dead! I've been trying to call you for hours!" You sniffed and leveled your voice as much as you could. He could tell you were still coming down from your emotions. "What's your status?"

He groaned and pressed his head against the sand bank. "I've been impaled. Small puncture. Feel like shit," he said through heavy panting.

"Can you make it back to the Hab?" You asked.

"Yeah, I'll make it. I don't think it's deep enough to kill me." He stood up and immediately screamed.

"Mark! Are you okay? What happened?!"

"Antenna is still attached to the dish," he said through gritted teeth. He made quick work of the wire and struggled to his feet. "W-where are you? What's your status?"

"I'm trapped under the MDV. It plowed through me when I was looking for you. I'm not sure you can get me out in your condition."

Mark looked around and found the partially-mangled MDV a short distance away. Watney clutched his side and hobbled over, fearing the worst. He choked when he saw you. You were being crushed from the waist down by a fucking space ship. "O-oh my-"

"It's not as bad as it looks. I landed in some really soft sand. I managed to dig myself out from underneath, but I hit something solid and now I'm literally stuck between a rock and a hard place. The sand shifted under the MDV and now my chest hurts, but I can still feel my legs," you sighed and closed your eyes. "You need to get back to the Hab, Mark-"

"I'm not going to leave you." He grunted as he stepped closer. "If I lift this thing, can you pull yourself out?"

"Mark that's-"

"Can you?"

You grimaced and nodded, "Yes."

Mark nodded back and racked his adrenaline fueled brain for an idea of how to get you out. Still panting, he grabbed a metal bar from the ground and shoved it under the MDV. "On three," he said.

"One."

"Two."

Three."

He shoved the bar down and the ship eased up just enough for you to drag yourself out. You screamed as a searing, blinding pain ripped through your ribs. Mark felt his stomach drop at the sound.

He reached for you, but you pushed yourself into an unsteady standing position. "Fuck," you bit out and stumbled forward. "M-Mark" You inspected his wound. "Come on, we have to get this treated right now." You wrapped a supportive arm around his back and helped him shuffle back to the Hab.

His panting and gasps had only grown more pained as he stepped into the empty habitation. What little adrenaline he had left was wearing off. You rushed out of your suit as quickly as possible and helped Mark undress.

"Do you want to pull it out, or do you want me to do it?" you asked with as much calm as you could muster.

"I'll do it," he bit out. After a series of short, shallow breaths, he ripped the antenna out with a gut wrenching scream. You didn't have time to feel distraught as you shoved down his suit. He placed his hand on the wound. "There's something in it," he managed.

"Sit down," you ushered him to a chair and slid on some gloves. You made quick work in cutting away his shirt, administered a series of injections for pain and infection, and grabbed the retractor and forceps. "I'm sorry Mark, there isn't time to wait for the medicine," You didn't hesitate to insert the retractor and open the wound. He tossed his head back and blew out a long, shaky sigh. You bit the inside of your cheek and grabbed the object with the forceps. Carefully, you pulled it out and sat it in a dish. Mark groaned deeply. He was so pale and sweaty. You wanted to reach out and hold him, but you had a job to finish.

With the hard part done, you were able to relax and clean him up. The stitches were the final step. By then, the medicine was kicking in and Mark's strangled cries slowly turned into steady breathing. You leaned back in your chair and relished in the sound before standing up. You felt around your ribs for a moment and huffed before grabbing Mark some juice.

"Thank you..." He said, taking the bottle with shaking hands.

"You're welcome," you sighed and carded your fingers through his damp hair.

"Are you okay?" He rasped.

"I'm fine, just a couple broken ribs on the right side. I'll live." You gave him a tight smile. "How are you feeling?"

"Like I just ran a marathon," he chuckled, then winced.

"We should get you to bed-"

"Not yet," He shifted awkwardly in his seat. "There's an elephant in the room..."

"Ah," you sighed and sat down across from him, pushing away the pain in your ribs.

"What are we gonna do?" Mark murmured.

"Our odds aren't the best, but we'll make it work," you reassured him though you weren't sure it was the truth.

He closed his eyes and blew out a sigh. "You should be safe on the Hermes..." He swallowed. There were many stupid nights he wished you and him were the only two people in the world. Now he was beginning to realize how selfish that was. You were trapped on Mars because of him. If he hadn't have stopped to suggest the stupid rover plan, none of this would have happened.

"You should be too," you pressed a hand to his knee, sending a trail of goosebumps up his leg. Even now, you had him entranced with a single touch. "We should both be on our way home right now, instead we're here. But we're trained for this... We'll make it back, we're just gonna be fashionably late is all," you gave his knee a squeeze and pulled back.

"Can I see it?" he asked.

"See what?"

"Your ribs."

You opened your mouth to disagree, but decided a second pair of eyes on it might be for the best. You slowly lifted your shirt. Mark paled again as his eyes fell on your ruined abdomen. The whole thing was covered in splotches of purple and blue. Your back wasn't much better and he was sure your chest had received similar treatment.

His fingers ghosted over the bruises. "Shit," he whispered.

"It'll buff out," you lowered the hem of your shirt.

Watney closed his eyes and wished that this was all a nightmare, but upon opening them again, all he saw was you. You looked exhausted. No, exhausted was an understatement. There wasn't a word in the English dictionary that could describe your expression. You were devastated and trying to hide it. And why wouldn't you be? You had an endless supply of family and friends expecting you home. He only really had his parents to worry about. You had your parents, siblings, nieces and nephews, all your university and work friends... It should have been him and only him. You didn't deserve to be trapped here, least of all with the lowest ranking crew-mate on Ares 3.

"So, we're in a Hab designed to last 31 days..." You thought out loud. He could tell by that look on your face that you were puzzling through something.

"If the oxygenator breaks down, we're gonna suffocate. If the water reclaimer breaks, we die of thirst. If the Hab breaches, we'll explode. And if none of that happens, we starve to death." Watney said, giving in to the hopelessness of it all.

"If the oxygenator breaks, we have the spare. It's built to last 5 days for seven people. With only two of us, that will be... 30 days. More than enough time to fix the oxygenator." You thought out loud.

Ah, now he saw what you were up to. "If the water reclaimer breaks, we build a piss distillery while we fix it..." Mark corrected his earlier statement.

"We'll do bi-weekly checks on the Hab canvas to look for tears." You leaned back. "But you're right. Food is our biggest problem. We're gonna be a couple of hungry, hungry astronauts in a few months."

Mark laughed and shook his head. "Looks like we're gonna have to science the shit out of this..." He looked at you and was pleased to find you smiling back at him. "But that sounds like tomorrow-Watney's problem."

"For sure," you snickered. "There is no way I'm doing all that math tonight."

His heart fluttered as he watched the grin spread over your lips. Your enticingly soft looking lips... What is wrong with you Watney? Stop thinking about that! JEEZ... Creep... Anyway, just a moment ago, Mark was ready to give up. Now he had a little more hope that everything would turn out fine. Today fucking sucked, but tomorrow was a new day. Things are only hopeless when you give in to fear, and it was clear you had no intention of giving in.

"Y/N?"

"Hm?"

"You should run for President when we make it back."

"What?" You laughed and clutched at the spot above your broken ribs.

"I'm just sayin' I'd vote for you," he shrugged in a playful manner.

You sighed, "what am I gonna do with you, Watney?"

"Make me your Vice President?"

You raised an eyebrow at him.

"I'll settle for Secretary of Agriculture."

"How about the Secretary of Homeland Security?" You smirked.

"But that's the bottom of the line of succession," Mark grunted as he sat up.

"Exactly," you laughed before groaning and cradling your side again.

"Alright, that's enough for today," he pushed himself into a standing position. "No more laughing for... how long does it usually take for broken ribs to heal?"

"Like, six weeks."

"I knew that," he smiled and helped you stand up. "No more laughing for six weeks."

"What you're asking for is impossible," you winced. "You always make me laugh. It's why you're my best friend."

"I'm your best friend?" Mark asked, unable to hide his surprise at the admission. He hesitantly wrapped his arm around your back, worried about making the pain worse in his attempt to help you.

You huffed and leaned into him, "don't let it go to your head, Watney."

"Too late," Mark smiled and led you slowly to your bunk. It wasn't easy for either of you to maneuver with your injuries, but eventually you managed to get settled.

"Comfy?" Watney asked.

"That's a relative term," your eyes softened at him, causing the botanist to go all weak in the knees. What a mess he had gotten himself into... "Are you sure you don't need help getting into bed?"

"You took good care of me Y/L/N, It doesn't hurt so much anymore thanks to you... Maybe if the President thing doesn't work out, you could be a doctor," He leaned his bare shoulder against the ladder.

Your eyes trailed down his chest to the bandages keeping the stitches from view. Your eyes started to burn, but you pushed it down and looked up to the bunk above you. "And take Beck's job? As if~"

Mark could almost believe things were normal. That they weren't all alone in a desolate wasteland. You were an anchor. He wasn't sure what he'd do if you weren't here. Would he have the strength to try? This would have broken most normal people... was he one of them? Or was he like you? Brave, selfless, and full of resolve to keep going. His chest hurt. You had gone looking for him... and now you were here. It was his turn to be your anchor.

You felt his eyes on you, but you couldn't bring yourself to meet them. You felt pathetic. Once again, Watney had to pick you up when you were down. For as long as you'd known him, Mark had been your helping hand. He had a sixth sense about these things. The moment things go wrong, he's there to dig you out of the rubble. You closed your eyes and remembered being in orbit. You remembered how he covered your hand with his and made everything okay again. You couldn't keep relying on him like this. It was your turn to be his helping hand.

"Somebody's sleepy~" Mark cut through the silence.

"It's been a day," you sighed and dragged your eyes to meet his.

"A sol," he corrected.

"Smartass," you fought the urge to chuckle. "Go to bed, before I get up and make you..."

"Don't need to tell me twice," He raised his hands in defeat. Mark moved to leave, but paused and grabbed your hand. "Hey Y/N?"

"Y-yeah?"

He gave your hand the gentlest of squeezes, "you're my best friend too..."

You glowed as the smile reached your eyes.

"Don't let it go to your head," he winked.

"Too late."

You held onto Mark a little tighter.

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

Taglist: @jolovesfandoms

If you would like to be added to my taglist, feel free to reach out!

Thank you for reading!

[my-head-is-square]

Sidekick

I used one of the alternate prompts for day 1, as I couldn’t come up with many ideas from the prompt list. This is the movie universe, but very inspired by the book because I really missed Meredith in the movie.

There were others, before Ballister. Nimona always sought out other misfits, others who were as hated as her. Some were better than others--one of the people they had sidekicked to turned out to be actually evil, going so far as wanting to murder them. Nimona left that situation the second she figured out they were just a piece of meat to him. But the most memorable of them by far, baring Ballister, was Meredith Blitzmeyer.

It was about a century or so before she met Ballister--Nimona didn’t remember, she stopped keeping track of time a while ago. Flying cars didn’t exist yet, and the Institute was somehow stricter than it was before her and Ballister dismantled it. Meredith was the first, and only, that Nimona didn’t find through wanted posters. They found her at a fair.

They were slinking around through the edges of The Kingdom as a cat when she came across the science fair. She wandered the fairgrounds aimlessly, bored by the majority of so-called scientific discoveries that were really just excuses to sell something. But when they glanced over at Meredith’s booth, she was intrigued.

Meredith’s booth was virtually empty, everyone steering clear of it. She was set up with a strange green device that Nimona didn’t pretend to understand even after she read the sign. “Anomalous Energy Enhancer”? Yeah, that meant exactly nothing to them.

So Nimona slinked over with ease, as no one was in her way because no one was there in the first place. She wiggled around a little before jumping onto the table of the booth, sniffing around the device while Meredith fiddled with something inside a cabinet, meaning she’d yet to see them. Nimona watched her carefully for a second to be sure she was entirely busy and not about to turn around before stepping closer to the green device.

It was small and circular, with many screws and a bunch of moving parts and it looked more advanced and complicated than Nimona could understand. It wasn’t that they weren’t smart, but science was not her thing. They were the sidekick, not the inventor. She batted at it a little with her pink paw, careful not to knock it over. It seemed sturdy enough, and it glowed when they touched it. She batted at it a little more, forgetting that they should be careful right now, and flung their paw at it hard enough that it rattled atop the wooden booth.

“Hey!” Meredith said, looking up at the noise. Nimona couldn’t see her eyes behind a pair of large scientific goggles. She stood up and shooed at them, Nimona dodging her advances easily. “What are you doing, you miscreant! Don’t touch that!”

Miscreant! The nerve of this woman! Nimona swatted at her hand, and she seethed when their claws managed to scrap a few small lines of blood from her. Meredith clutched her hands and leered at her, to which Nimona merely huffed proudly, head held high in victory, before jumping off the table with their tail swishing behind her.

Curiouser and curiouser, Nimona thought as she made their way from the fair. The strange goggle woman had seemed different from all the other scientists there, albeit just as rude, and even more interesting was her device. It had sent a spark up their little cat body when she touched it, like an electric shock. Her body still buzzed a little from it, and when they were far enough away she tried to shift into a bird to fly away.

But she couldn’t. No matter how hard they tried, shifting wasn’t working. It was increasingly frustrating; what was wrong with her? Shifting always worked! They couldn’t remember a time when she couldn’t shift, but--

Finally, the electric shock wore off, and just as it did, Nimona was a bird flapping their wings unsteadily. They proceeded to fly away after they regained their balance, but it still shook her to the core.

She would have to investigate this scientist. For her own safety, of course.

[capybaraonabicycle]

Thank you so much for your ask btw im having so many ideas! I'll return the favour, no 8 (in secracy) for osgate as well?

Thank you!! I've had a blast, even though this is like my 3rd (4th) time writing osgate and only the second time with both of them in one room. Also the third time writing either character at all, so...I might need some more practice but this is exactly how you get that, right?

I also need to warn you that I know zero eu material of Osgood or Kate and I haven't watched any episode after potd, so some things mentioned in here might have been contradicted by canon already.

This ficlet goes a tiny bit into the nsfw direction so I am putting the rating high for that and I hope you don't mind. If you do, lmk, I will tweak some things so you can read it :)

Without further ado:

Taking a Breather (Osgood x Kate)

Rating: Mature

Genre: Fluff

Kate knew immediately which corner Osgood had chosen to disappear to and she was proud that she could further pinpoint almost the exact moment she had fled the scene. It had happened somewhen between Kate schmoozing the minister of defence and her casually mentioning UNIT's success in saving an aquatic power plant from alien parasites in front of an energy baron. Before Kate had addressed the minister, Osgood had been chatting with the scientific support the ministry of international relations had called on site. And when Kate turned away from Mrs "I own one third of our country's wind parks because I don't invest in delusions", Osgood was nowhere to be seen.

Not that Kate could blame her; she had warned Osgood beforehand that the function would be straining for her and had offered her the night off. But Osgood had insisted on helping and it had reassured Kate immensely to be able to count on her support, especially once she had instructed Osgood strictly to take care of herself and take a (temporary or ultimate) leave the moment she needed it.

The afforementioned corner had caught Kate's eye already when entering the venue as it had Osgood written all over it. It was a little nook on the way between women's bathrooms and entrance - secluded, quiet, easy to reach (with possibility of using the bathroom as an excuse to get there) and devoid of outside stimulation except for a poster on fire regulations.

The poster was the main detail that had tipped Kate off: it was a good excuse to look at when you wanted to pretend being busy but couldn't deal with a phone screen and the clear, pragmatic language it was written in should appeal to Osgood, similar as it was to the security instructions in her lab.

In fact, when she approached the nook, Kate found Osgood in exactly the pose she had expected her to assume: Rigid back, subtly fidgeting hands that her jumper's pulled down sleeves hid insufficiently and her gaze fixed on the poster as she seemed to read one and the same sentence over and over again.

"Osgood" Kate greeted her softly from afar as not to startle her.

Osgood didn't turn around but her fidgeting stopped for a second and Kate knew she had heard her. She walked up next to her and leant against the wall casually, waiting for Osgood to address her first.

"What are you doing here?" Osgood asked after a while, gaze still on the poster.

"Taking a breather with you" Kate answered.

Now Osgood tilted her head her way slightly. "Aren't there more important things you should be doing?"

"Than checking in on you?" Kate mused. "I can't think of anything more important than that."

Osgood bit her lip in pleased embarrassment.

"I'm okay" she said. "I've only used my inhaler twice so far, that's pretty good, isn't it?"

"Marvellous" Kate agreed. "I'm glad it's going alright and that you're keeping your promise of taking a step back when needed."

Now, Osgood finally looked her way, frowning.

"You're not really keeping your promise though" she pointed out. "Of treating me like any other operative tonight."

While they didn't hide their relationship internally at UNIT - even though Kate did her best to keep personal and professional life apart and not play favourites - they had decided it best for the evening not to let potential investors know Kate was dating one of her subordinates. After all, they were on thin ice as it was, what with Kate having had to disappear for several years followed by her blowing up the brand new office building and immediately needing a new one.

"I'm allowed to care about my regular operatives!" Kate argued. "If anything that makes me a good boss!"

"True, but I reckon you wouldn't have noticed just as quickly if it had been Janet to disappear" Osgood said and Kate's face softened.

"I suppose you might be right" she amended. Then she straightened her back, taking a deep breath. "Regardless, this isn't just about you. I can really use this break, too."

"You're brilliant at smoozing big money though" Osgood praised.

Kate had to smile at the choice of adjective. Osgood had heard the Doctor use it twice and immediately integrated it into her daily vocabulary. Some things never changed.

"Brilliant, sure" she allowed. "But I'd take an army of cybermen over ministers and their friends any day."

"I know. Me too." Osgood's fingers brushed against hers, lightly, as if on accident. But Kate knew her girlfriend did not initiate physical touch on accident. It gave her hope that she wouldn't mind too much if Kate bent the rules a little further.

She hooked their pinkies together, smirking when that made Osgood's breath grow heavy with excitement.

"Don't worry, I'll go back out there in a minute" she promised. "And things are looking good; I'm almost certain, we'll get our deal."

"That's great!"

"If not, I'll give them hell" Kate promised determinedly. "But until then, I'll keep charming the pants off them. I'm sure I can manage that, now that I know you're alright."

"I'll come and join you as soon as I can" Osgood said bravely and Kate shot her a reassuring smile.

"Take all the time you need."

"I'm already feeling more like myself, now that we've talked" Osgood vowed and Kate nodded.

"I'm feeling better, too" she agreed. Then she gently pulled at their intertwined fingers to entice Osgood to come closer. "But I know what would help that along some more."

"Kate, are you sure...?" Osgood followed the invitation and stepped up in front of her and she also let her intertwine the rest of their fingers. But her eyes were shining with equal amounts excitement and worry.

"Always." Kate brushed a strand of hair behind Osgood's ear and Osgood's eyes fluttered close.

Kate threw one last glance over her shoulder, but the only place in eyesight was the women's bathroom and no one had entered or left there since she had stepped into the alcove. The coast was clear.

"No one's going to see" she murmured reassuringly, leaning in far enough that her breath was fanning Osgood's lips. "I'll be quick."

That, of course, was a lie. Kate might have been a terrifically disciplined woman, but to expect of her that one small peck onto Osgoods lips was what she would content herself with, especially when all that was waiting for her away from her girlfriend was a room full of annoying rich people to smooze, was just a little unrealistic. Mind, Osgood wasn't exactly complaining when one small peck turned into two, then three, then just a hint of tongue - until Kate was pressing her up against the poster on fire regulations, mouths moving hungrily against each other, her hand tangled in Osgood's hair while Osgood was grasping onto the smart shirt Kate had put on for the occasion.

Osgood was making the most beautiful keening sounds, when suddenly Kate grew aware of another noise that made a spike of anxiety shoot through her: the tapping of shoes on linoleum. Someone was coming their way!

As soon as she faltered, Osgood noticed it, too, and they reacted in unison. Quick as lightning (and clumsy as newborn calves) they shot apart. Osgood quick-wittedly grabbed Kate's arm and turned her around towards the poster, their sole, terribly telling cover. But at least now their backs were turned towards the steps, hiding their flushed faces. Not that it would make much difference, not with how they were panting and how Kate was still trying to right her blazer and Osgood her hair while also fighting with their rapid breathing.

Kate pricked her ears, and to her immense relief she heard the steps passing and departing without ending up at their little corner. She breathed out audibly, catching Osgood's gaze.

"That was way too close" Osgood sighed, fingering for her inhalor inside her pocket.

Kate grinned. "The first exciting thing to happen tonight. We should have done that hours ago."

Osgood used her inhalor, but before she could even put it down, her lips curled into a smile around it.

"We've got to stop this" she decided. "Or you'll make me regret coming here. This deal is important."

"I know. And I agree" Kate reassured her, brushing her hand against Osgood's arm but only lightly. She nodded resolutely. "I'll quit fooling around and get us that new building, right now."

She turned to leave and make good on her promise, but Osgood held her back.

"Hang on" she pleaded and pulled out a hankerchief from her pocket. It was the one with the little red questionmark stitched into a corner and she lifted it to tenderly dab around Kate's mouth.

"You lost some of your lipstick there" Osgood said softly when she had ended (and Kate was just about ready to press her into the wall again - luckily her self-control and self-preservation skills were finally kicking in) and presented the dark stain on the white cloth. "But now you look lovely - I mean, professional. Just a bit flushed but they will blame it on the heat."

Kate nodded. "The ventilation in this place is atrocious."

"I think it might be aliens" Osgood said offhandly. "I'm looking into it."

"I love you" Kate said automatically, before she could stop herself.

Osgood smiled broadly, but gently chided her: "Now you've gone and broken your promise again, Ma'am."

The use of her title was no accident and Kate squared her shoulders.

"Fine then" she said resolutely. "I'll behave and go back to my duties. No more slip-ups."

"Good call" Osgood said and it sounded so close to 'good girl' that Kate's heart did a double take even though it knew Osgood was way too sensible to call her that now of all times.

Not that Kate should have wanted her to either; she had an important deal to finalise and already having misheared her girlfriend's words was bound to distract her more than she could allow herself tonight, nevermind the unfinished kiss they had shared. And if anything, she really should have taken that as her cue to leave but once you had set a one-track-mind running... They were right next to the bathrooms after all. Not that Kate was the bathroom kind of woman - or at least so she had thought - but suddenly that door looked rather inviting.

“Kate?” Osgood was looking at her quizzically, her arm hovering between them as if she wanted to touch Kate to pull her out of her thoughts but didn't know whether it'd be wise. Kate didn't know either (but she had her suspicions it wouldn't be).

“Right, I'm leaving” Kate stumbled away from her, clinging to the shambles of her resolve. “Back to work, no more kissing, you can make it up to me later tonight.”

Where had that come from now? 'You can make it up to me.' That had been supposed to be merely a thought, a secret wish, not something she told Osgood outright, especially when they were already having trouble getting away from each other.

Osgood's breath hitched at hearing the words, but she quickly caught herself.

"Sure" she said with a warm smile and a slightly hoarse voice that sent tingles down Kate's back, "I'll make it up to you."

***

Are they actually managing to get away from each other? We will never know.

Sorry for ending this so apruptly, but, you know, I wanted to send Kate on her way like 500 words earlier and then she simply refused to go. So in the end I decided I could leave it open whether they manage to separate for the night. Very difficult to pry that women away from her girlfriend once she's decided to be a little unprofessional for a minute❤️

Thank you very much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it!

[tentacledwizard]

Come Look At Shark Movie Posters With Me

As a patron of the arts, it is my job to find and review pieces that others might overlook. Recently, I found some intriguing movie posters, all of which belong to a single genre- the low-quality shark movie (also called the sharksploitation genre). Despite the blatant scientific inaccuracies, I took it upon myself to share these unique artworks with the world.

     Now, this one is a classic. “Sharknado,” the title proclaims in a bold gradient red. “Enough said!” This poster knows exactly what it’s trying to communicate. It doesn’t talk down to the audience. It already assumes we understand what it’s about. After all, a clever portmanteau of “shark” and “tornado” can only mean one thing! I am really blown away (no pun intended) by the complex wordplay and bold statement of this poster. 

The visuals are striking (it has a nice orange and blue color contrast, a staple of great posters everywhere). Of course, the sharknado is front and center. The spinning, cartilaginous vortex is creating fire and explosions for some reason- showing its nature as an otherworldly, diabolical force. A Ferris wheel topples into the stock-image inferno. There’s no time for leisure when this sort of catastrophe descends on your city. 

     The sharks themselves are excellent, mainly Great Whites with one mako. All of them appear to be screaming bloody murder, their denticles (shark scales) shimmering against a dark tornado. Two of them seem to be the same image flipped around. There’s an element of tragic nobility among these creatures. They were just minding their own business before getting sucked into a horrible, never-ending spiral. These sharks are somehow alive above land. They’re tough. They’re survivors. They never wanted to be a weather phenomenon, and they could have lived peaceful fishy lives without ever seeing Los Angeles. Are their open jaws a sign of aggression, or a cry for help? 

  RATING: 4.7 out of 5. This poster is fin-tastic. Enough said!

This one is interesting. Not as dynamic as the version where Mega Shark was chomping a plane. This time, Giant Octopus is doing the damage, using a ship as a sort of bath toy. The title font is obviously symbolic, portraying Mega Shark as a shiny gold and Giant Octopus as silver. It’s pretty clear who will win in the end. (After all, there was also Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus. And Mega Shark vs. Kolossus. And Mega Shark vs. Mecha Shark. I think it’s safe to say Mega Shark survives.) 

     Again, there’s an intense orange-blue contrast. This time, though, it’s overdone. It lacks Sharknado’s finesse. There’s some kind of heavy vignette filter, and the colors are dark and dingy. The aptly named leviathans are duking it out. A broken Golden Gate Bridge (?) is seen in the background. This, and the gold font used for Mega Shark, seem to signify a dark night of the soul for our CGI protagonist. As Robert Frost once said, nothing gold can stay. 

   Giant Octopus is dragging Mega Shark down, its papillae spiky. The tip of its arm is in Mega Shark’s mouth. Okay, Giant Octopus. I’ll pretend to not read into it, for your benefit. (And I’m not! After all, a shark’s weapon is its mouth! I’m choosing to ignore… whatever Giant Octopus is doing.)

 RATING: 3. Spicy, but an eyesore. 

  Hmm. Nah.

   I don’t like this poster. It’s very unoriginal. (Look up the poster for Jaws. You’ll see what I mean.) The shark is doing the generic Oh No, Scary Shark pose. Hear that sound in the distance? That’s the sound of violins playing, but they’re clearly part of a bad remix. Also, the lower part of the poster still suffers from an odd-looking vignette effect. This time it’s crimson, because why not.

    I know this is supposed to be about the poster, not the movie, but I’ll say it: Sand Sharks seems like an especially bad movie. I mean what would the plot be? Sharks bursting out of the sand and surprising literally no one because people could see the dorsal fins and get off the beach? 

   So, we have the mandatory Bikini Woman who will become shark chow very soon. She’s laying down on the sand without a towel or anything, pushing her chest up in this super convincing pose. Then there’s the shark, who has concerningly needle-like, snaggly teeth. (Wait, I just looked it up. Turns out snaggletooth sharks are a thing. I apologize to any snaggletooth sharks out there, all of you are amazing.) Here’s my main question: how did Generic Shark find Bikini Woman? Generic Shark’s ampullae of Lorenzini are clearly visible. Ampullae of Lorenzini are used for electroreception, which is this incredible sixth sense sharks have. I can’t go into long paragraphs about this so I suggest you look it up (it’s awesome). But Generic Shark is swimming under sand, so it wouldn’t be able to use electroreception and find prey. How does it know where Bikini Woman (or anyone) is? Also, how does it breathe? How does it swim? Why would it evolve to swim in sand, when it could evolve to better hunt seals? Sharks don’t even think humans taste good, so why-

   Sorry about that, it was getting long. RATING: 2. Blah. 

   Now THAT’S what I’m talking about! 

    Really, where do I begin? This is incredible. Cathartic. Powerful. From the very original name to the beautifully rendered detail, this has watered my crops, cured my loneliness, etc etc etc. The title is a rich scarlet, and it’s luminescent against the crashing waves. Sure, the tagline describes Jurassic Shark as a “dinosaur from the deep” even though dinosaurs are reptiles, but I can excuse that.   

    Jurassic Shark is a looker for sure. He (Pretty sure it’s a he) has a huge, cavernous mouth framed by excellent teeth. (Again, no offense to snaggletooth sharks.) He’s the focal point, as he should be. A primordial emotion simmers in his handsome black eyes: hangriness. He’s presumably been dormant for a while, so of course he’d swallow the nearest big thing in hopes of sating a hunger too big for this time period. Around him, the ocean froths and convulses. Rain pours down from the heavens, signaling the arrival of this Cetus-like, deific megalodon. I may need some cold water, it’s just that good.

     Of course, there’s a Bikini Woman, wearing a bikini in the middle of a storm for some reason. She’s jumping off a boat, apparently preferring to drown rather than experience the honor of being consumed by Jurassic Shark. Rusty flames pour from the mangled boat, highlighted by glittering sparks. Take notes, Mega Shark. This is an excellent orange-blue contrast. A helicopter hovers just above Jurassic Shark, helpfully illuminating his many scrapes and scratches. I find myself unable to stop staring at this. 

RATING: 5. A modern masterpiece. It feels unfair to judge this against the others.

I was planning on putting Dinoshark here, but then I learned that the movie’s subject is not a dino or a shark. It’s a pliosaur. So you’ll have to stick with Shark Exorcist.

     Anyway, this poster shows the presumable Shark Exorcist, who is surprisingly not wearing a bikini. Clad in an oily black exorcist outfit, he lifts up a cross glowing with a divine power. His pose seems to say, Get smote, you hideous burnt toast! Take a swim in some holy water.

   Said burnt toast is the shark. His skin is charred and peeling, cracking open to reveal red-hot flesh. Probably representing one of the seven deadly sins. Or it’s a metaphor for getting a sunburn. Demon Shark is hocking up a big fiery spitball, and he’s bursting out of the… sand? Water? Who knows.

    Actually, this particular shark is a mere puppet piloted by the Devil. The big guy, Satan himself. Sharks are often demonized in the media, and this movie really went the extra mile! I feel bad for the shark, though. 

    Above the shark/Devil, the tagline reads: SATAN HAS JAWS. I’m kind of confused by this message. So before possessing a shark, Satan didn’t have jaws? Interesting. The whole poster has no visual contrast so it just seems like a burnt orange mess. The color scheme could work, but it doesn’t here. 

 RATING: 2.5

   Ah, yes. Jaws, the big snappy mother of all low-quality shark movies. The actors hated each other and the animatronic shark kept breaking, but they still managed to make a film that gets paraphrased over and over, as exemplified by the low-budget movies I already discussed. 

    But then a terrible thing happened. Jaws tried to paraphrase itself. The resulting sequels are widely regarded as paragons of horrible selachian fiasco films. One of the most infamous is Jaws: The Revenge. Let’s see whether the poster is as bad as the movie. 

   At first glance, it’s nicely put together. The colors are crisp and saturated. I bet I could taste those blues if I licked my screen enough. Which I might, just to feel something. Anything. I also like how they replaced the A in Jaws with the shark’s snout. This shark doesn’t have time for your franchise name. It’s suffered through some horrible, no-good, very bad sequels. (Assuming it’s the same shark the whole time. I haven’t watched the sequels.) The whole poster has this really nice painterly aesthetic. Nice lighting and shading, too. You can see the sparkling water droplets as they crash onto the boat. But Why Did They Write The Tagline Like This? It Looks Kinda Weird With The Rest Of The Poster. Still, “This Time It’s Personal” is absolutely iconic. One of the greatest taglines ever written. I will use it as a positive affirmation when I’m feeling bad, it’s just that awesome and motivational. 

     The foreground looks cool. It’s a pivoting boat with a similarly diagonal blonde on top of it, grabbing an oversized toothpick. The cerulean waters ripple as she prepares to face off against the dashing Carcharodon carcharias splashing around in the water. Not much else to say there, let’s move on to the shark.

     The shark is great, just fantastic. It’s clearly a great white and I LOVE the sharp layered teeth. Just look at those pearly whites. Amazing. It jumps out of coruscating waves, presumably to invite Blonde Lady for a swim. Its eyes reflect the red letters surrounding it. Nice touch. 

RATING: 5. Awful movie, great poster.

  Okay, this poster is not as bad as it could have been. I’m still not sure whether it’s a sequel to 5-Headed Shark Attack (“You can’t SURVIVE the FIVE!”). It probably is. How that shark keeps growing heads is anyone’s guess. 

    So, this poster shows a wobbling boat, exploding in a spray of orange Cheeto dust. A Bikini Woman jumps overboard (again), because she’s anti-Cheetos? I’m not sure. It’s not like jumping off will do anything in this situation. It’ll probably get her eaten faster. 

     The title leaves little to interpret, and the tagline is a brilliantly poetic stroke of genius (as usual). A shark head bites off part of the A in ATTACK. I’ve found this sort of thing is very common in shark movie posters. Sharks just don’t have time for your titles. 

     Each shark head is very busy consuming a mangled person (or letter). I’m amazed by this poster’s homage to Goya; namely, his painting Saturn Devouring His Son. The poster draws upon the unsettling feeling shown in the first artwork, giving it a unique spin by making Saturn the six-headed shark. Limbs dangle from each mouth as the creature goes into a frenzy. It contrasts nicely with the tropical colors and blast of cheese powder. Normally I’d wonder how a six-headed shark digests several people from several heads, but since it’s obviously symbolic I’ll let it slide. 

    Still, the whole poster is kind of a mess. Who thought a six-headed shark was a great idea for an on-budget movie? It seems rather jarring and schlocky, what with the heads all having the same pose and expression. 

RATING: 3.5. Not bad, but not excellent. Okay, I may have picked too many posters.

   This is the last one on the list, and everything’s coming full circle now. Remember Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, and how the two creatures seemed rather cuddly? According to this poster, they got really cuddly, and now their child is learning the family trade.

    Okay, that’s not true. Apparently the titular Sharktopus was “created for the military,” but that doesn’t matter. Mega Shark/Giant Octopus is canon! Observe their hybrid child, with his glossy skin and random spikes around his gills. Just look at those tentacles. Yes, technically they’re arms. But still, just look at the way they loop around Bikini Woman’s leg as she attempts to look afraid. Notice the way she puts her hand in Sharktopus’s mouth. It keeps happening! (I jest. The Sharktopus OTP is Sharktopus/Whalewolf.) Passion gleams in his dark eyes, while Bikini Woman stares at his mouth in slack-jawed fascination.  

   The background is a nice contrast to the dark allure of the scene. It’s a plasticky turquoise ocean that shines under an unseen sun, a backdrop to the incredible CGI happening before us. It’s just so excellent. Sharktopus looks like he’s been dipped in clear varnish, and his mottled, bruise-colored tentacles allude to his tumultuous youth. It also alludes to the fact that he’s part octopus, and octopuses are awesome. I know I say that about a lot of things, but octopuses are mind-explodingly incredible. The idea of a shark/octopus hybrid is a gift from the Muses themselves, delivered to whatever mystic prophet was brave enough to make this film and subsequent poster. 

RATING: 4.5. Very cool.

That brings us to the end of my list. I hope you enjoyed our dive into the selachian fine arts. It’s important to note that I don’t condone the mistreatment or endangerment of sharks. Despite what these movies may communicate, sharks are not demonic and bloodthirsty. The biggest one isn’t even carnivorous! Plus, meat-eating sharks dislike the taste of human flesh. Most “attacks” were the shark taking a nibble, then spitting the person out! These low-quality shark movies have been criticized for making more people hate and fear sharks. I encourage anyone reading this to actually learn stuff about sharks because they are cool.

     Still, these posters will live on as shining examples of what happens when some guy named Spielberg says, “You know what would freak people out? SHARKS,” and then everyone else agrees. These posters are surprisingly deep and artistic. They form an entire galaxy of 1-star reviews, shining brightly amidst the murky “high-budget” shark movies. Who knows, Sharknado may well outshine The Meg in a few years! Let me know if there are other schlocky masterworks I can review. I’m always on the lookout for modern classics.

[giantkillerjack]

Yo I don't know if anyone else is seriously bothered by this but those "good luck" posts where everyone goes wow this post really works you HAVE to reblog it or else you won't get the good thing that happens when you reblog it and therefore it's your fault if the good thing doesn't happen because you didn't reblog the post,

Yeah, those posts. They don't ummmmmmmmm

They don't work.

Like, listen, a little prayer of good luck to give yourself hope is one thing, but every single one of these posts has a comment that is like "this is literally magic I received life-altering amounts of money because of this post REBLOG THIS NOW." And assuming these accounts aren't just also the original poster emotionally manipulating people - And brushing over how foolish/cruel it feels to give false hope and additional tasks to those in poverty AND moving on from how absolutely shitty these posts are for people with compulsion-related disorders or difficulty discerning reality--

it feels to me that the more we make up magic that doesn't exist in this world, the harder it is to see how things really are, and the more it obscures from us the magic that actually does exist. Things like magnetism, electricity, human thought and connection, emotion, storytelling, machinery, fire. That's the sort of magic we have in this world. These magics are real and they can be manipulated in miraculous and terrible ways.

And maybe it's just the way my mind works, but if I am able to convince myself that a photo of a four-leaf clover has any amount of cosmic power over my life, then I am no longer looking clearly at my situation and what I need to do to change it. I am no longer able to truly see the magic that IS there.

I feel the same way about astrology honestly. I don't think it's bad to believe in as long as you're not ascribing it to unwilling people, but I personally do feel like if I believed the shapes the Romans saw in the stars made me who I am, then not only would I deny myself autonomy, but also I would miss out on the magic of the stars as huge lonely nuclear light giants indifferent to and ignorant of the lives of humans in terrifying and beautiful ways. I might even dismiss scientific discoveries that didn't fit my view. And I think I've seen enough of the damage that can do for one lifetime. (I am aware that I probably wouldn't have so many problems with astrology if I wasn't a furious ex-Catholic. But again, there's nothing wrong with faith as long as you're not slapping it onto other people.)

But, gods, I hate these fucking good luck posts.

I am not poor due to the stars or the lack of luck-money posts on my dashboard. I am poor because I live in oppressive power structures that I hope to see burn in my lifetime. I need as clear a view of this reality as possible.

If you want to spread positive magic, you have to spread love and information and images/stories of a beautiful shared future that other people are invited to be a part of.

I'm a big believer in Hope. I believe hope is a sacred thing. But I'm not a big fan of false hope.

So in conclusion, if you reblog this post and then tomorrow something very lucky and seemingly unrelated happens, it had nothing to do with this post.

The only Magic will be the magic of unfathomably huge amounts of data transferring all across the world instantaneously to reach you and show you words that came from someone else's heart and mind.

The only Magic will be however it makes you feel to know that if you need luck, at least one other person in this world wants good things to happen to you: I care that you are found. I care that you are loved. I care that you are safe. I care that you live long enough to find or be found by happiness and that you then live for a very long time after that. And I don't need to meet you to know that I'm right.

Know that I will spend the rest of my life working to build spaces where you would be welcome. And maybe you and I will never meet, but I happen to know there's a whole lot of people like me in this world. And I happen to know that as long as you are alive, there is a chance you will grow old in warmth and comfort, surrounded by friends. There is a chance that your old eyes will be crinkled at the sides with laugh lines. And that's magic. That's real magic.

[yamatossideboob]

One Piece 1116 spoilers!

My spottings this week:

Yamato's taking his time getting ready for his field trip but whatever as long as he's on page. ily Yamtoe!!!!! hi Otsuru!!!

Struggling to remember here, were the Ancient Weapons known at all to the greater public? even as myths or historical fact? either way they are now lmfao

There's something so unsettling about seeing Imu looking up at that portrait, and I can't articulate why... it's weirdly human coming from someone/thing who's previously been so removed from humanity.

aww Ingram, Karoo, its okay lads, shes on board a sky ship fleeing political retaliation with an albatross man and Monsieur Mangetot

i do hope we get a moment with Vivi seeing her own missing persons poster. or! or! her own wanted poster??

okay I'm really glad we now know this stolen Mother Flame business, AND finally get confirmation that the weapon used to destroy Lulusia IS an Ancient Weapon, and Uranus to boot! This is immense!!! Aside from the confirmations, this also potentially puts a cap on any AW use since their fuel source is clearly limited, which stops them from like. breaking the OP endgame bc why else wouldn't the WG just spam it constantly lol. Althoughhhhhh since York is still likely to make it off Egghead, and she surely knows how to recreate it, I could well be wrong...

also wow York is even worse than we thought

One Punch King????? howrya mate!

srsly though, the knowledge of what really happened to Lulusia reaching the public is gonna be the fucking cherry on the Fuck The WG sundae coming very soon

This is such a packed chapter and yet *this* is the moment I've been waiting for.

I've said before on here how I wished the link between Vegapunk and the extermination of Lulusia was emphasised more. The parallels between Vegapunk's innovations and real life scientists having their work used for evil purposes is too great, and while OP isn't quite the series to explore a subject like that as it deserves, I'd been holding out hope that this manga would at least lampshade it, if not have Vegapunk address this. I can be satisfied with this. I am glad Vegapunk understands what his work lead to, even if he never meant for it to. Such is the price of capital and the state dictating scientific development babes.

also damn I hope that little panel of Momo and Kinemon means they won't be completely caught unawares by the Blackbeard gang showing up to pilfer Pluton a.a ;;;

ah yes hi Mr Oral Fixation, good to see you as always sexy

aaaaaaaaaand hi Shirohoshi. I forget if you know *you're* an Ancient Weapon too lmao

actually yeah Joyboy why DID you preserve the Ancient Weapons whats that about hmmm

Sengoku trying to off himself by onigiri choking to avoid questions about wtf he knows about the Elders and Void Century

Akainu maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad

FUCKING YES CROCUS!!!!

I still hate how cute you are York. stop being horrible.

Man I can't wait to see how the hell Stella pulled this off lmao

Also YES THE GIANT ROBO HAD A PURPOSE THE WHOLE TIME LMFAOOOOOO

(I'd heard the theory wrt the transponder and the robo but I didn't believe it fsr 💀)

So this will take the heat off the giants and Strawhats long enough for them to gtfo, I guess the Ancient Robo will meet its end here by Elder claws? I hope at least we find out what its connection to Joyboy is before it gets scrapped

Rayleigh soused as a student during Rag Week, I hope he shows up again in a more long-term way sooooooooooooooon

AND another chapter next week!! this absurd ridiculous gargantuan lore drop keeps on chugging!!! What will we learn next? What cameos shall we have? Will the Ancient Robo actually do something beyond one (1) panel?

Tune in next time nakama! Til next time! 💪✖️

[klaasje]

unrelated to the current ask game but the words "kimharry x-files au" are now burned into my consciousness. no pressure to write it though!! i'm just grateful for you introducing the concept to my brain, i will be thinking about it continuously for at least the next month

PTOLEMY PRYCE: Lieutenant Kitsuragi, thank you for coming on such short notice. We see you've been with us just over two years.

KIM: Yes, sir.

PRYCE: You went to medical school but you chose not to practice. How'd you come to work for the R.C.M.?

KIM: Well, sir, I was recruited out of medical school. I saw the R.C.M as a place where I could distinguish myself.

PRYCE: Are you familiar with an officer named Harrier Du Bois?

KIM: Yes, I am.

GOTTLIEB: How so?

KIM: By reputation. He's a Koenigstein-educated psychologist who wrote a monograph on serial killers and the supra-natural that helped to catch Monty Props in ‘31. Generally thought of as the best analyst in the violent crimes section. He had a nickname at the academy... Spooky Harrier.

PRYCE: What I'll also tell you is that Yefreitor Du Bois has developed a consuming devotion to an unassigned project outside the bureau mainstream. Are you familiar with the so-called "X-Files?"

KIM: I believe they have to do with unexplained phenomena.

PRYCE: More or less. The reason you're here, Lieutenant Kitsuragi, is we want you to assist Du Bois on these X-Files. You will write field reports on your activities, along with your observations on the validity of the work.

KIM: …Am I to understand that you want me to debunk the X-Files project, sir?

GOTTLIEB: Lieutenant, we trust you'll make the proper scientific analysis. You'll want to contact Lieutenant-Yefreitor Du Bois shortly. We look forward to seeing your reports.

———

(The elevator rings and the door slides open. Kim steps out into the basement and comes to an office secluded in the back. He knocks on the door.)

HARRY: Sorry, nobody down here but the R.C.M.’s most unwanted.

(Kim opens the door to see Lieutenant-Yefreitor Du Bois sitting at his desk wearing glasses, going over some slides, as The O.O.’s ‘35 hit We Go On blasts from the radio. Walking slowly to him, Kim sees various pictures of cryptids and a poster that reads "I Want to Believe" with a phasmid on it. Harry looks up at Kim.)

KIM: Detective Du Bois. I'm Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi, I've been assigned to work with you.

(Harry shakes Kim’s hand.)

HARRY: Oh, isn't it nice to be suddenly so highly regarded? So, who did you tick off to get stuck with this detail, Kim?

KIM: Actually, I'm looking forward to working with you. I've heard a lot about you.

HARRY: Oh, really? I was under the impression...

(He smiles.)

That you were sent to spy on me.

KIM: If you have any doubt about my qualifications or credentials, th...

(Harry stands and takes out a paper from a pile, using his telephone as a paperweight.)

HARRY: You're a medical doctor, you teach at the academy. You did your undergraduate degree in entroponetics.

(He takes off his glasses and looks at the paper.)

Nilsen’s Helix Paradox, A New Interpretation. Kim Kitsuragi, Senior Thesis. Now that's a credential, rewriting Nilsen.

KIM: Did you bother to read it?

HARRY: I did. I liked it.

(He takes a slide canister and puts it into the slide projector.)

It's just that in most of my work, the laws of physics rarely seem to apply.

[lacenvs3000w24]

hopping back on the nature train🚂🌱

If the prompt for this week, a quotation by Edward Hyams, were a food, it would be.. like.. a CLIF bar or something. Small but mighty. So let’s dig in.

Natural history. It’s a legendary tale, a rival to the greatest myths written by the greatest minds. sometimes there’s a hero, a villain, a climax, a happy ending, and sometimes it’s a simpler, meandering story. When interpreting nature through the lens of history, I think it valuable to carve out a foundation, set the scene, tell a story.

This can be a daunting task, especially for science students. From our * formal education *, we’ve learned to separate the fanciful tales from the cold hard facts. We’ve been encouraged to rid our work of human bias. We’re in the training process, the “proving ourselves” process, where cold-hard science is the limiting nutrient. We’ve been instilled with the scientific integrity that forms the backbone of an honest, genuine interest in the natural world.

But that is not how this story should end.

We wouldn’t be doing nature justice to stop there.

Because we’ve also been given the basic tools necessary to start weaving the story back together, after having broken it down, boiled it to bits in beakers. Here, we’re going beyond that, back to real life where humans want to talk to other humans as if they’re humans. And that takes a different kind of integrity: interpretation.

The quotation begins, “There is no particular merit in ancient things”. Nature is an ancient thing, and no, nature is not good or bad — it’s amoral, neutral. Still, I think it’s fair to say that from our humble lil human perspective, nature does have value, and it has meaning.

Hyam continues “…but there is merit in integrity, and integrity entails the keeping together of the parts of any whole.”

I understood this, through the lens of this unit, to mean that integrity, or interpretation, can give “merit-less” nature value and meaning. Nature cradles seeds of meaning that are fertilized, that bloom, when we interpret, when we pull together the parts of the whole into a tale to be told. To have the scissors and glue in hand, poster board in front of you, to collage everything together, is a wonderful responsibility to have, and I think Hyam’s words capture the great power entangled with that responsibility.

image sourced from: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/9NR9ON (artist: Kirsten Harri)

A blade of grass on its own seems so slight, so meager, and honestly kinda boring. But a trained storyteller can weave together all the unseen aspects of that little green miracle. We can come to appreciate how long the evolutionary path has been to have landed at this blade of grass today. Its uses by a wide web of species, by human cultures through time, its love for sunlight and rich soil.

To me, the latter half of the quotation, where Hyam presents his metaphor of the train passing through the station, reflected the vastness and complexities of the timescale of nature’s story. Even more so, the point about the station not only existing for the moments “our train was in it” translates so well into the topic of nature interpretation as a whole. Nature interpretation is not one-dimensional. Nature exists everywhere on our planet (we’ll stick to those confines to simplify this conversation a tad), it exists for so many different people in so many different ways.

So, I agree with Hyam that it is borderline absurd to “think, feel or act as though the past is done with” — to not profoundly appreciate all the time and work that has gone into the world around us, here and now, to not acknowledge the different cultural dimensions of nature over that timescale. And culture is important here because, well, we interpret for other people in the end.  

Really looking forward to hearing everyone else’s thoughts for this one,

Thanks!!

[kevin--of-desert-bluffs]

WTNV quick rundown - 54 - A Carnival Comes to Town

Hey it's the holidays let's get this done! Featuring the additional vocal talent of Dylan Marron as Carlos the Scientist.

The secret to a long life lies in how acutely you perceive time. Welcome to Night Vale.

A carnival comes to town and parks on Bandera Street. It seems to be a completely regular carnival, but Cecil twists it to sound weird due to the NV-normal xenophobia and lack of an understanding of what a carnival is.

Cecil acts like the carnival has low-level hypnotic properties, but it doesn't really do anything and as the mob drives them out the workers seem genuinely afraid and mention that they're just really lost and that NV is weird.

They burn some of the toys that were left behind and celebrate their victory shaking farm tools and animal parts. Also shouting 'interloper' at new people is apparently the NV norm and, mandatory.

We also hear a voicemail from Carlos. In his usual rambling way (got that Autistic swag going on), he reveals to us that the pictures in the lighthouse aren't pictures so much as windows to other dimensions. You can't go into them, but you can watch them. Carlos uses it to watch Cecil shave and apologises for having no time to look for a way back. He declares the otherworld to be the most scientifically interesting place he's ever seen.

Old Woman Josie and the Erika's have finally broken ground at the 'new old opera house' location. Nobody in NV actually knows what opera is. Nor will they acknowledge the Erika's are angels yet, even though they have it all over the new Strex's posters etc that the company is 'angel owned and angel operated'.

Intern Maureen is actually alive and seemed interested in the carnival, so is upset that Cecil helps to drive them out by encouraging people to revolt. Cecil says he just doesn't understand teenagers.

Apparently there is a twice-annual 'cleaning of the books' at the library. This is done to make sure that the librarians have not sneaked in any 'forbidden literature' like Pride and Prejudice. Dana supports this but thinks that the librarians are more dangerous than the books. Tamika does not support this and says that everyone should be able to read any book they want. Cecil supports the suppression of books and tries to 'compromise' by saying maybe they could allow only a few trustworthy people like Tamika to read books and allow everyone else to stay ignorant.

Weather: "Bremen" by PigPen Theatre Co pigpentheatre.com

Doug (the giant masked warrior) has a partner, Alicia, who is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns. They have a dog and are trying to make a new currency based on sand.

The Erika's have seven cheekbones.

Old Woman Josie refuses to let the Erikas help her making the cement, and scolds them for not recording things on TiVo, reluctantly admitting she can watch catch up TV elsewhere. It's clear she has a lot of authority over them/they respect her a lot.

Approved literature includes biographies of Helen Hunt and all four of Dean Koontz' novels.

People with human bodies and coyote heads, eating armadillos out of duffel bags, turned up to mourn Maureen at the rec centre when they thought she was dead for the second time. Cecil assumes they're from the college.

There is an 'Abandoned Lot District' which is apparently full of lots that people do own, but they're not allowed to build on so just stand around talking hopefully about one day that rule being lifted.

Stay tuned next for people arguing about sports. Not on the radio, somewhere else. Somewhere and soon people will be arguing about sports. I don't know what's happening next on the radio. I never do. And as always, good night Night Vale. Good night.

Proverb: Say what you will about dance, but language is a limited form of expression.

[redyouthunited]

FRAGMENTS FROM THE PAST (2021)

From Hearst Lee

RED YOUTH, FORBIDDEN DIALECTICS, & ANTI-FASCISM 

In 2016, i co-founded an organization in the south. 

This was only some days before Trump was elected president. we had no solid ideas, platforms, or programs. At the time, our only real plans were an ideological commitment to marxism-leninism; and some vague idea of how to go about “doing politics”. We anticipated reading groups and light mutual aid projects but nothing more than that. i drafted up a paragraph for an About section on our Facebook page, and that was about the extent of our politics. 

When Trump was eventually elected, we immediately got to work putting together a mass meeting for any and all left groups in the area to come out and present their ideas on how to move forward politically. As big a “mass meeting” as a DIY tin shack could fit. After getting a good read on what the organized left was like in the area, as well as their security situation (or lack thereof), me and my comrade quickly devised a short-run political strategy and tight security protocols for the group itself. What we developed was a series of extensive checks on our backgrounds, personal information, and social media accounts: all of which were scrubbed. What little remained of our private lives online was cordoned off and relegated to what i call “info bubbles,” completely disconnected from our political lives in every sense. 

Everything we organized in public was promoted on social media sparingly, with the bulk of our agitation and outreach done through postering and word-of-mouth. We used aliases and we masked up for all the marches we went to, as well as public street level events. We used Tails OS, VPNs, and proxies; we used “secure platforms” like Telegram and Signal to coordinate (but we tried to keep as much internal work on a face-to-face basis as humanly possible). 

We were super conscious of the reality of two queer types organizing a revolutionary communist group in the south; we were also aware of the burgeoning neofascist movement and the state surveillance apparatus. All that provided more than enough initiative on our part to run shit tight. we wanted to be as safe and anonymous as possible, not only to protect ourselves, family, and friends but to enable a great degree of tactical freedom in our political work. We developed more intensive measures as time went on but all of that shit’s complicated. Suffice it to say, it got the job done. And we butted heads with pretty much everyone else on the organized left there on that topic. 

We also placed a premium on “doing good politics,” rather than having a specific set of ideas that were “proven correct” in theory. we were marxist-leninists, sure, but on the ideological level, all we really believed was that the Party should act as the primary center for the most experienced organizers in the proletarian movement (to whatever extent that actually exists here) and that the post-rev scenario should take the form of proletarian dictatorship in the transition to world-communism. Everything else was up in the air, at least in the short-run and mid-term kind of way. Our methods and tactics would be developed through our experiences and experimentation. 

We tried to be scientific about it. It was all about methods and tactics; experiment and experience. Ultimately, the closest thing to movement pals that we had were the insurrectos out of the nearest city, who we worked with quite a bit. Our main contention with them was just that they had fine action and tactical sense but no program or strategic outlook, which was really the problem. 

That was the logic we applied to politics. In my opinion, it was a pretty good way of looking at things and i still have a hard time finding fault in it. To me, there weren’t any glaring issues with the way that we thought about security and politics. The issue was how the two were linked together, or linked together poorly, which led to serious problems down the line. There was an awareness of politics and security but no attempt to bridge the two either conceptually or practically. 

The problems Sakai describes in Basic Politics of Movement Security are derived from a very different understanding of security/politics than the vast majority of movement people have. In his mind, the two are deeply enmeshed: good security can’t save bad politics, and good politics can’t compensate for bad security. The anecdotes he shares have less to do with shitty politics, shitty ideas, or shitty security culture but rather shitty decision-making, shitty behavior, and shitty logic. 

They’re stories of human error and weakness instead of mistaken political lines or security culture. What he intended to do was to demonstrate the need for strategic thinking that acts and operates on a higher level than simply avoiding bad shit. (If the issue at hand was only avoiding bad shit, you could simply choose not to engage in this line of work!) He wants to cultivate a level of political consciousness in the movement that prevents bad shit from happening, that enables our people to outsmart and move freely against the state and capital. This requires identifying, isolating, and correcting these weak links and problems one-by-one in both an intellectual and practical capacity. 

There’s no such thing as a totally bad or a totally good thing. There’s good aspects to bad ideas and bad scenarios; then bad aspects to the good stuff. What you have to determine is if that thing is principally bad or good, and look at that thing critically, from as many angles as possible, to find the good in the bad and the bad in the good – and act on that assessment. 

When Trump was elected, that didn’t bode well for immigrants, workers, and everyone on the receiving end of the settler state/garrison’s institutions. Many, many people were afraid that a fascist dictatorship would arise from a combination of the settler state’s repressive apparatus and the settler garrison’s amped-up street-level movements. On the other hand, the liberal 

political establishment was in total disarray and many more people were recognizing that progressive politics and the liberal nanny-state, in themselves, couldn’t deal with any of those particular issues. 

Trump’s administration was, rather, an extension of Obama’s in every capacity but that fact was always immaterial. What mattered was that movement people believed Trump was uniquely terrible, which equipped them with a sense of radical urgency and political initiative. The terrain had shifted: to the broadest base of liberals, political weirdness now reigned and “mass psychosis” was the norm – a morbid symptom of the failed amerikan experiment! 

From an ideological point of view, considering what a lot of movement people were feeling, thinking about, and down for, it was like a blank check to us. It was a Vibe. And we decided to move with the motion of the ocean, find Our Riders, and get weird with it because, as far as we were concerned, this damage to amerikan prestige and the “failure” of its institutions opened up a far greater degree of political freedom than we’d ever seen in our lives. We decided we could do whatever the fuck we wanted as long as we didn’t get in too much trouble and most people would support us, if only passively. We identified, isolated, and acted on all these things. 

This is what i mean when i say there’s no such thing as a completely good or bad thing. That’s just Dialectics. 

When you open up new areas of work, you always struggle on two fronts: you struggle to capitalize on the potential to do good stuff and you struggle to contain new possibilities for having bad stuff happen to you. When we got involved in the anti-fascist struggle, we were presented with a number of great opportunities to test, train, and discipline our open militancy. 

On the other hand, there were a handful of subcultural and social elements (particularly among the legal left) that tended heavily towards fronting and flaunting their so-called militancy. It was the Macho Shit. It was mostly the Men who did it: they loved to posture and peacock around at the demos we ran security for; they picked fights with any fascists they could get to so much as pay attention to them. They didn’t give a fuck who they endangered when they drew the fash to 

them; they didn’t care about the pickets we guarded, nor the political function of routing and demoralizing the fascists with tactical offensives. That was beyond their capacity for rational thought and what little brainpower they had, they wasted on grooming their egos and public personas. 

This isn’t to say we didn’t also struggle with these things. In fact, i still struggle to control my own Macho tendencies to this day. The difference, however, was that we tried to grow as much as we could in every direction we could and that we remained sensitive to mistakes we made, as well as those we observed in others. 

On top of this intensive Cadre mentality being a great political advantage, it made us hyperaware of certain personalities who simply weren’t on our fucking Level; it better equipped us to identify and grasp the reasons why they weren’t. It also helped that me and our comrades all came from backgrounds where the tendency to just sleepwalk through life usually landed you

in prison or dead, or both. Hence, we had a certain Spidey Sense when it came to dangerous situations and personalities. 

ABOUT CALLIOPE 

calliope dropped out of hs at 16 with a crippling alcohol addiction, riding on a half-year stay in a psych ward for a suicide attempt; she came out of it and immediately got active in politics, she found her way into the first proper, internal meet of red youth thru parker, who was her friend at 

the time. i saw some of myself in the way she lived and in her personality, but i saw some of the future too: a communist who was motivated not only by the conditions of their life but by virtue (maybe "pre-analytical"), who only had any real investment in the political and methodological potential of communism. i watched and participated in her lowest points of alcoholism and drug abuse spring of ‘17; then i watched her as she tapered more and more off the booze through our sec runs and antifascist work. 

she later admitted that it was red youth that helped her survive, and my encouragement and insistence that she should be completely sober during our actions. that was over the summer in 2017. over the fall and winter that year, she got completely sober. it was only through her own dedication and discipline that she pulled through. as she emerged from that, we reconstituted red youth after something like 10 hours of discussion and debate. she was committed to the organization and our comrades, up until our collapse. when the strain was too much for anyone involved, including me, to bear. 

we were each other's students through everything. we were the best and worst friends we could've had. we were comrades. i love and miss her a lot, every day. 

POLITICAL PROFILE ON CALLIOPE 

POLITICAL STYLE… 

similar to mine ig but more outgoing socially and emotionally levelheaded. she was also more devious, pragmatic, and pessimistic than i ever was. 

i'd say the way that she tackled study and security runs, for ex, was almost robotic, no emotion or sentiment, only tasks and calculations. i think it made her political analysis a lot clearer and more concrete than mine by far, but it also kinda put her in a position where she could only act on immediate tasks if it was more or less a command. 

in terms of outreach, agitation, mobilization, and recruitment, she had a lot more initiative to innovate, worm her way through different circles, scope people out, and win their trust, then bring them back to me so i could invite them into the org depending. we also combed through circles together, whether that was at a show or other orgs' meetings or on the street. she always led in that area, and i backed her up when i saw an in for my nerd/thug shit.

it was also helpful that i'm a cis dude, albeit a faggot, so when people would ignore her and actually talk to me i'd know instantly we were dealing with an asshole not worth our time or i'd simply be in a better position to menace said assholes so they didn't disrespect either of us. 

a cold, calculating, and unpretentious fighter; tho also somewhat awkward and inexperienced. she relied a lot on her baton and knife; she used her hands less to disable or hurt anyone but to shock and scare them as much and as quickly as humanly possible. there was like nearly no catharsis or self-indulgence involved. (she had a very strict division between her personal and political life. in the former, there was a lot of both involved. tho she was also just a teenager for a lot of it.) 

she also had a pain tolerance that was about on my level and she could summon this look in her eyes that scared the shit out of people, on command, which is something i have too. all of that was helpful lol 

granular attention to detail, in getting a read on people, keeping an eye on fascists, cops, and creeps at demos and shows, and spotting/keeping track of both physical things and social/political ongoings/processes. but her narrower perspective, low theoretical development (not necessarily bad but sometimes unhelpful) and lack of life experience prevented her from assessing and analyzing all of those aspects at higher levels of abstraction and with a more general viewpoint. 

she was basically at the mercy of my ability to organize all of her thoughts and observations, put them into perspective, and argue for a particular political line for us to act on. which ofc contributed to her political fetish for following orders and led to a few big mistakes i made whenever i was indecisive or waffly. 

in terms of leadership the dynamic was kind of fucked up because it was ultimately up to me to initiate and propose plans, and ease her into a position where she felt comfortable criticizing and iterating on them. 

POLITICAL PERSPECTIVE... 

she watched all her childhood friends get hooked on meth or start drinking, go back and forth between hating her and liking her for her willingness and ability to fight for them, and drag her around from one crisis to the next. i was there too and the only things i have on her are my age and my basic detachment from people she knew all her life. we tried to hurt and scare a lot of people to try and keep our comrades safe; we tried very hard to give them a place for them to settle and grow politically, without drugs or drama or booze. that was our whole local program, which was what really mattered to her. 

as far as she's concerned, she's proud of the attempt we made, thankful for the things we learned, and still thinks we were on the right track before everything crashed and burned; but she concluded it was a political failure as far as fayetteville was concerned, and that she didn't

know if it was truly possible to organize something like RY in the area, under those conditions and especially without a strong foundation and backing. 

INTENSIVE CADRE DEVELOPMENT... 

where her very automaton-like attitude towards political work was useful was how she volunteered herself as a blank slate for cadre development. like a kind of guinea pig for cadre-specific/street-level approaches, angles, and methods that we tried to come up with: everything from security protocols to agitating and propagandizing (which really involved some degree of social engineering in order to isolate creeps/pigs, preferably to the point in which no one cared what happened to them; parker was our standout example - "social death" [!!]) to self-defense/offense to social conduct to organization-craft (microscopic counterpart to statecraft) to investigative and technical skills to autopropaganda (cultivating the image of an exemplary cadre to boost our rep in a downswing; i legit credit her being on the spectrum for preventing the clout, attention, and popularity from going to her head). 

she learned them, tested them, and practiced them out in the field, then she'd come back and talk with me at length about tactical advantages/disadvantages, immediate effects, levels of engagement, etc. etc. (though it was always up to me to provide a broader and more strategic view for us to debate over.) beyond what i already knew as sound political practice, i trusted her judgment of tactics immensely and followed her lead with regard to the conduct and practice of a communist cadre to a fucking tee. i still do. this held just as well for her much more extensive defense/fighting experience (in politics, at least). 

we wanted each other to learn how to groom and cultivate the most advanced possible cadre given our circumstances and objective limits; to use her, primarily, as an exemplary model to reproduce in fayetteville, just for starters, and develop further from a theoretical point of view (that included me, too); to weave between disparate social circles and groups, and try to find 

more candidates for the work according to character, ability, and background; etc etc etc whatever. 

on my end, approaching intensive development from a more theoretical standpoint, i cribbed half of my fresh ideas and suggestions - all kind of piled together in fragments - from sherlock holmes, fantomas, and philip marlowe stories, and especially john le carre novels. lilith simply volunteered to act them out, test their solidity and potential effectively with an open mind; then reflect on how and what they altered. (every action an experiment, every function an investigation, and every locale a laboratory...) 

in politics, she never had a great eye for her self-image or level of development, which is a good check against egoism but bad for self-recognition and self-esteem. as a result i imagine she's still ignorant of just how good of a political operative she really is. 

above everything else i think it's pretty funny that there's (probably!) only one other person in the world who runs their political shit in this same, weird fucking way. even if nothing else i do amounts to anything politically, and if i have nothing, i'll still have her as my One Cadre.

ON THE LEGEND OF THE FLORAL MAO BANDANA 

one night me and calliope got wasted on a shitty captain morgan knockoff at a party and she ripped her arm clean open as a bit while i was teaching her how to play five finger fillet in the kitchen lmao 

i spent the rest of the night doing first aid and cleanup with my twee mao bandana and a shirt i had on and we managed a whole crisis scenario where a few people were trying to get her to a hospital and we had to fervently argue that if that happened she'd just end back up in residential at the psych ward for another year if she went to the ER. overall a success. the twee mao bandana attained legendary status in our circles 

before i got brass knuckles i used to load my fist with a lighter and wrap the bloody mao bandana around my palm and between my knuckles whenever i was getting ready to jump dudes who were being dicks or harassing girls at shows/in moshpits 

we discussed heating my butterfly knife up on the guy's stove and cauterizing that way but i was really worried about the after-care aspect cuz it could've gotten super infected in a way neither of us were used to lol. 

while i was walking calliope home that night, i told her to put her injured left arm around my shoulder and squeeze my jacket sleeve with her hand as hard as she could so i could easily tell if/when she was going to faint from blood loss. i put my right arm around her waist and told her to lean on me to support herself while we walked. she mumbled something about what if the pigs stopped us. i told her we were fine cuz everyone would just think we were a couple drunk fags and move on. and she was like, yeah makes sense. we only stopped once in the mile to her grandma's place so she could smoke, while i was on lookout and making sure she stayed awake, and i got her there safely. 

THAT FAG DISEASE 

one time we were debating why queers make such dedicated, devious, and solid cadres. i had this elaborate theory of oppression, status-privilege, and obstacles to our subsumption that i described and how stealth, manipulation, and agitation comes to us more easily and comfortably than it does with pretty much anybody else. when i was done, calliope ruminated for a bit. then she said, "we got that Fag Disease." 

THE RIDERS 

We believed that our Riders were the historical product of neocolonialism. For us, this condition was social and political; personal and psychological; ideological and cultural. Neocolonialism itself was a structural reality in the form of various institutions which recuperated and bourgeoisified sections of historically oppressed minority groups; it also operated on ideological repressive apparatuses like identity politics and the politics of “recognition.” 

At the same time, neocolonial politics was a conscious program and counterinsurgency strategy devised and organized by the ruling classes in order to divide, isolate, and assimilate the

radicals from the Old Movement. This was done with the goal of neutralizing these historically progressive and radical blocs; to prevent them from unifying in quite the same way – to the limited extent that they did back then – and forming the basis of a new mass movement. As far as we were concerned, from a theoretical point of view, the bourgeoisie succeeded and the strategy worked. 

We were born in the demise of the Old Movement and we were brought up in the wreckage that remained. Politically, what that meant for us – the sort of Riders we were – was that we had no one to turn to but ourselves. 

The organization was a means of loving, supporting, and helping our Riders, as well as a weapon to serve Revolutionary & Proletarian forces and strengthen the Class. We wanted a place to heal and we wanted it to be a vehicle for achieving self-emancipation and carving out political power from bourgeois and petit-bourgeois Turf for Our Riders & Class. 

Us, our comrades, and supporters were all drawn from very deprived backgrounds: poverty, violent and neglectful homes, and abusive relationships. We were all euro-amerikans, which seemed to jibe well with Butch Lee’s theory of desettlerization. We were all queer, trans, or gay in one way or another. We had very little in the way of formal education: many dropped out, others’ schooling was cut short by juvie or residential holds in psych wards. 

A local structural factor was the presence and persistence of pagan revivalism in the area. Many of our younger comrades had grown up on rural communes in the outskirts of town or in communal living, deep in forests to the north, with their families. While the beliefs held by their families were eclectic and informal, they universally subscribed to a form of nature-cultism. For them, Communism was ultimately a return to their Roots, and Proletarian Dictatorship was the principal means of achieving it. 

Growing up, the younger comrades observed and celebrated the natural cycles with Rituals & Other Fun Stuff; practiced private rites in devotion to natural deities or elements; and came into sharp contradiction with the much broader base of southern baptists and evangelicals in the area, as well as any other monotheists, atheists, or anti-theists (so, i mean everyone). 

The moment they became “adults,” they were dropped into hostile territory, forced to find waged work, and struggled hard to adjust to their new social moorings: Business-As-Usual for the old society. The necessity of organization for the Riders, as well as using it as an outlet for generating a strong communal culture, presented itself very clearly, very early on for us. 

While all this intense spirituality and comradely feeling went very far in melding us all together, in a heartfelt and caring fashion, it didn’t deal with the profound and aimless violence in their lives nor the cruelty and coldness they casually subjected to each other. In their personal lives, the little comrades comprised little more than an intimate yet unstable clique.

These were kids who made games out of mindfucking one another so severely that they likely sustained permanent emotional trauma from those experiences. They were innately fearful of rejection, unavoidably impressionable, and frequently reckless to a dangerous degree. They were deeply scared of losing their friends and family to drug addiction, alcoholism, violent relationships, jail, or death; they blamed themselves for the ones they already lost to “the game,” abusive partners, and overdoses. They were emotionally and physically violent to themselves and others around them; relentlessly ferocious and vicious to their perceived enemies and rivals; and extremely hateful of their “superiors” and “authorities.” 

They were my Riders, and i understood this to mean that without political education, consciousness, and discipline, the little comrades could very likely end up in prison or die young if they just “vibed” through life Pure & Simple. We all understood this from a political standpoint, of course, but we could never integrate it into our personal lives as deeply as we really needed to, in order to get the job done. The fundamental level of trust and unconditional love that we cultivated among each other left us vulnerable and to some extent primed to be taken advantage of in one way or another. 

BLONDIE’S SARCASM 

blondie had this permanent sardonic affect that seemed kind of like she was just goofing around all the time or being insincere. 

one night during a one-on-one, i stopped and told her, "you know, i understand that when people like us grow up, we develop a lot of ways of coping with the lives we've had. irony's one of them. it keeps you detached. i gave up on it, i don't have the patience to be insincere just to be fashionable anymore. what about you?" 

and she told me, in the usual sarcastic tone, that it wasn't an affect, that the only way she could speak was Like That. her entire personality from puberty to early adulthood had developed around a socially conditioned verbal tic and she couldn't get rid of it. 

i stared at her for a bit just to process that, then i apologized and said i couldn't imagine what kind of hell it made of her life. she said, "yeah, it's kinda like a nightmare that never ends...?" 

THE CASE OF SUBJECT A 

Subject A was a person who grew up in relative comfort and lived a life without much consequence. He was a student from a middle-income family of professionals. He engaged with the social world around them primarily as a social-striver, and a Hustler. He indulged in heavy drug abuse and slept around a lot in a fairly self-destructive capacity. 

Subject A had a poor understanding of social boundaries and a low level of real sensitivity to the needs and feelings of our comrades. He fundamentally had no sense of self-awareness, thus no real capacity for developing a political consciousness – at least so far as we could help that. He was extremely insecure, both interpersonally and politically, and eager to impress those around them, especially authority figures, in desperate ploys for their approval and support. His flirtation with political militancy was conducted in a very pathological fashion, in order to compensate for feelings of impotence and cowardice – which also contributed to his on-and-off steroid abuse.

We sympathized with his social insecurity and isolation; to some extent, we also pitied his attempts to find and embrace a community worth fighting for. He experienced deep alienation in his upbringing, his romantic and sexual life, and in his studies. He was a sweet person to all our comrades, even if he didn’t understand us, or much of anyone else. He was also youthful, exuberant, and attractive. Youthful, even among a group with an age range of sixteen to twenty-three years old; exuberant in that his want for passion far outweighed his intelligence; and attractive in a sort of conventionally handsome and boyish way. 

His first introduction to our organization was through my close comrade, when he tried and failed to sleep with her after a college party out of town – then sold her an ampule of vape juice laced with fentanyl. At the time, we excused this as kind of shitty and very stupid – but we were just these desensitized little edgelords, so it was more funny to us than anything. However, we decided that it would be best if they were kept at a comfortable distance from our political work. If we ever got around to integrating him, we would keep him under our tight control and only allow him to engage with us in a very limited capacity. This is to say we knew he was a liability from the beginning. 

He had a reckless fascination with guns and gun culture, and attempted to rope comrades into shooting practice at firing ranges every once in a while. Which would’ve been fine, if there was anything, like, even superficially trustworthy or Solid about his character and how he acted. In the midst of a busy summer pulling “sec runs,” too, he introduced my comrade to heroin and taught her how to shoot up on the side of the road on the way back from the Action. On the “sec runs” themselves, he displayed a reckless disregard for the safety of our comrades, elaborated on sadistic fantasies in casual conversation. and showed a taste for adrenaline in our engagements with the fascists. 

He ultimately weaved between two conflicting political circles, including us: he would feed information on both groups – us and the PSL – to each other, inundated with egoistic bullshit to make him look good in the eyes of their respective leaders; to further pit us against each other. He also mistakenly identified me as the “leader” of our organization, for what seemed to be purely due to the fact that i was the only cis boy of the group; that i had the most “book smarts”. From early on, this instinct of his alerted me to potential problems from them in the future: an inevitability that i anticipated and tried to alert and prime other comrades for its Happening. 

As a consequence of our work and security culture, Rumor and gossip always abounded. Though, we preferred the former to the latter, as a means of cultivating an image for agitational and recruitment purposes. Unfortunately, the legal left and the middle-class core of the DIY scene we interacted with engaged in a level of Speculation we felt was just as dangerous for us as it was for them. The lasting impression that our agitational Style, combined with word-of-mouth Rumor, left on the broader base of local people who we barely interacted with was that we were “vigilantes” and “terrorists.” As an indirect and unintended consequence of that needless chatter, all these things contributed to an aura of mystique and social-banditry that proved attractive to problem personalities like Subject A.

Subject A bought into the whole, intense mythos of “social-banditry” himself. He remained quite childish and naive regarding Lumpenland, and in his own capacity as a desperate Lumpen poseur. He tried his hand at hustling that year; he started to come out with cloudrap tracks; he started talking about "trapping" from his student housing unit; he started Finessing just to impress us. It was so fucking dumb, but that was the thing: he was so stupid it was disarming. 

He was basically impossible to take seriously at that point, so we neither took him seriously as a person nor a threat to us. Our rationale was less that he wouldn’t cause trouble for us before we dealt with him Proper. It was that he was so dumb with it that he couldn’t be that much of a danger to us in the shortterm – nothing we couldn’t handle – and that he posed the most danger to himself, and the inevitable fallout could be contained within his own little, private life. 

On the other hand, the mental strain of his Business and his renewed access to heroin through Connects quickly escalated the level of risk on our end, and encouraged us to find a political solution to his personal issues – an intervention of some kind. We saw that as a Test of Faith for our Comradely Love and our culture, so me and the little comrades were on board. We also prepared to isolate and Purge him at our first opportunity if that plan fell through. 

However, Pragmatists that we were, we needed him to drive us out of town to meet our comrade in the meantime. Because he was the only one with a fucking car: a critical asset for any queer-exclusive organization. 

At the root of it, that was the problem on a purely logistical level. Because he had the car, he could cover a lot of ground very quickly; he could zip around town, out of town, between states, whatever – faster and more frequently than our Eyes could keep a beat on. And with Subject A’s descent into Junkie-ism (chasing thrills as well as heroin) escalating just as quickly as he moved around, he quit their steady and well-paying, if shitty, kitchen job to make a full-time vocation out of the Hustle. He tapped every possible source of new revenue. 

At this point, he proved extremely difficult to control – or isolate – and wormed around so much in search of Tips & H that we couldn’t possibly keep track of what he was doing or where he was going. We knew he had the car; we knew that he was visiting our out-of-town comrade; we knew how fucking dumb he was; and we knew what he was Moving. What the little comrades knew – but didn’t tell me until later – was that he was trying to Hustle our comrade for Interviews & Sidegigs. he Networked extensively out-of-town, and this was a source of consternation for me and our out-of-town comrade, with whom i shared a lot of Common Ground. 

The breaking point for us was when he wheeled into our Space and tried to get high, which we had a very strong policy against. We seriously just trashed our plan to intervene and get him to rectify in a matter of seconds; the Subject A situation was beyond helping and, anyways, we had another comrade who got us rides at that point. He was Politely escorted out of the apartment and our organization.

At that time, he had started pushing Everything; he was permanently strung out and Hollowed; he was getting involved with greasy motherfuckers and psychosadists because he wandered through Lumpenland like a petulant toddler in a toy store – blind to himself and the world around him. The night of his expulsion, my trusted comrade asked me when i thought the Bust was gonna happen. She guessed a month, i guessed less than a week. Within three days of that meeting, before dawn, Subject A’s student housing unit was raided. 

They busted into Subject A’s room while he was sleeping, where they found enough Stuff to put him away for fifteen years. They insisted that they had “probable cause” to search Subject A’s safe, which A unlocked and opened for them; they grabbed Subject A’s phone (and he only had one of those, by the way) and told him to unlock it, or they would seize it and crack it on their own time, which he also unlocked and opened for the pigs. Then he was hauled in for processing, questioning, and holding – and presumably more Questioning before release. 

i’ll leave it to your imagination to fill in the wild and impressive kinds of Possibilities the scene opened up at the time, for me and the younger comrades – in spite of our own rigorous Sec Protocols. 

Our immediate response was to play it cool and safe: we’d lay low, continuing with our usual meetings and activities so as to not look Amiss to the pigs that were hovering around Subject A and, by association, us. We still thought it could’ve Sorted Itself Out and blown up in Subject A’s face alone or with minimal collateral; but playing it cool was the Move to make. The real question was whether we could stay the course without flaking or acting out. That was the challenge on a political and psychological level. 

However, the younger comrades still had some difficulty bringing themselves to fully isolate Subject A. They were considerably angry at him for ignoring their pleas and reason to abandon the Hustle, kick the poppy and heroin, and stop buying all those fucking guns, too. But they still pitied him. They still considered him a friend if not a Comrade, then. For the most part, they were very compassionate and conscientious but this proved a political vulnerability. 

As word spread among the little comrades that Subject A planned to Talk, they began to unravel. 

One day, one of our Core OD’d on a combo of acid and DPH – construed as a suicide attempt by the ER and placed on a psychiatric hold; another day, and another Core was triggered so severely by the situation that she shut down completely and spent two weeks in a non-functional state – just the year before, her Coworker had been shot to death in front of her; the next comrade briefly followed the first two, suffering a nervous breakdown under the strain of political work and personal crisis management, on top of the Subject A Situation, and on top of witnessing the former twos’ descent and failing to mitigate the potential harm to her comrades – she quickly relapsed into on-and-off drinking binges that lasted for months afterward. The other younger comrades followed in one way or another. Many finally isolated Subject A but they did so from a Haze, and i was alone for a while.

AESOP FABLE (PROSE FRAGMENT) 

That night, Fox and Spider were perched on stools by his living room window, watching Aesop's hipsters and university stragglers pass by on the trail outside. 

Fox turned to her in the opposite stool with a perky look on his face. He pulled out a fist and wiggled his thumb in her direction: Smoke time? She nodded and pulled out a cigarette for him, then another for her. She twisted her hand to the side, with her thumb and forefinger casually extended: Need a light? Gently, Fox held out his palm as he reached for his lighter: Got mine. 

Without thinking, Fox propped the cigarette between his lips, nearly lighting the filter on the opposite end. He frowned and stared down his nose: another lucky. Looking up from her cherry, Spider read the quiet exasperation all over Fox's face. She snorted and giggled at him, "It's really never your day, is it." 

"It sure fucking isn't." Fox turned the cigarette around and finally lit the right end. "Really don't know what the Lady has against me, honestly." 

"Same. Beef with Death, maybe?" 

"I dunno, I always felt like they'd get along. But I dunno." 

"Me either," Spider blew smoke into the window, her eyes drifting from the awkward gait of an old granola-hippie on the trail to the grimy corners of the window sill. She took a sip from a mug of chamomile and groaned a little. "The Rat problem." 

"Productive? Fun? Problematic? Thoughts?" 

"Out. He'll stay out. Work's done," She paused to fidget with the holster of her ka-bar. "The only problem is-" 

"He's still around our comrades. Interpersonal relations," Fox blurted out. "Please allow me to finish," Spider shot back with a frown. "He doesn't get it. He's dumb as fuck." 

"I'm sorry for interrupting." 

He turned over his hand, his fingers relaxed and palm exposed: We good? She nodded and returned the hand with her palm facing down: It's okay. We're still good. "Anyway," Fox said. "I completely agree with you. He's a fucking student. Fundamentally no understanding of consequence and very little awareness of fear. No self-awareness, either. If I'm being completely candid, I'm scared for when he's inevitably gonna get busted. I'm scared for the comrades." 

"I feel like he didn't even get the message from us." Spider shook her head in frustration. "He's so fucking dumb." 

"That's a big problem," Fox held his face in his hands and whined. "Very big. Very, very bad. We need to get everyone on the same page and isolate. Like, yesterday- immediately." Spider looked him in the eyes with a lot of incredulity and a little impatience. She shrugged and said, "Well, we could take care of him, too." 

Fox held up his forefinger: Query. "How the fuck do we pull that?" 

She put out her hand and wiggled her fingers: We can figure it out.

They paused to think quietly for a while, to collect their thoughts. Spider stubbed out her cigarette in their ashtray, then turned to Fox and asked: "So, how long until he gets busted and gets fucking locked up for 15 years?" She grinned. "I give him a month." 

Fox told her, "Less than a week." He prodded out his cigarette and grimaced at the thought. 

He looked up, pushing his last deep drag out of his lungs and into the ceiling fan. He watched the smoke coil up slowly, before being cut down by the rush of the running blades. He sighed and moaned and groaned. "Jesus Christ," he muttered. "What a mess. What a mess..." 

As usual, Fox was more correct than he ever wanted to be. Rat's bust took place three days later, at 4am on a Monday. It was carried out by the Joint Drug Task Force and supported by a tactical unit provided by the State Police. 

FRETTING USELESSLY 

calli always told me, "you worry about us too much. we can handle it, we can figure it out. don't worry about it." but i never really trusted that instinct of hers. 

her spectrum shit made her a little bad at reading social cues, people, and emotions, maybe not like in terms of her ability but more in terms of her outlook, which was just very blunt and simple, and her age/lack of life experience contributed to a level of self and situational awareness which, while impressive considering, was at a lower one than mine by comparison. 

from an analytical perspective, she was the kind of strategist who could only see three feet in front of her. she accused me of deluding myself into thinking i could see five miles ahead, and she was mostly right about that. but i was basically right about her shortsightedness too. 

during the subject A episode, her and the little ones were right about me fretting about them much more than was necessary or helpful. i put that on myself, really. for a year and a half i set myself up to take the fall for any of the little comrades, for anything; to provide them with exits if they needed to leave the org or the New Movement. i wanted to protect them, not only from everything and anything else but from themselves and each other if necessary. 

and if they had second thoughts and wanted to leave behind Our Work, and go proper Legal and Stable, i wanted to be able to arrange that for them. it killed me to see them in so much pain and fear that summer. i really loved and cared about them. so i worried a lot 

IN THE AFTERMATH 

There were many factors that weighed on us, and i struggle to find the principal issue. The issues at hand seemed like they were all principal issues, which didn’t point to any particular juncture nor resolution – but to the vibe that we couldn’t have possibly been prepared for a crisis beyond the scope of almost all known political activity and experience for the past fifty years. It was a helpless feeling, trying to mentally ransack every theoretical and practical development of the Old Movement that i knew of – trying to find answers, trying to calm my nerves, trying to find the right words to tell the younger comrades when they cried in my arms, too scared to sleep. Then, there was no political Center to hold them together. 

They scattered and retreated into their private lives, nursing bad habits and slowly turning against one another. They refused to engage with one another, hurt each other, and turned their comrades’ friends against them. The bad blood went in every direction, and it seemed for no other reason than that they had to React to a situation in which they were totally helpless and devastated. 

They didn’t so much implode as waste away. And watching them degenerate so quickly from a loving and troubled collective to a bunch of vicious fucking backbiters was really what killed me inside. It was maddening, and i was powerless to get anyone to communicate or reconcile: they were beyond the point of listening to me or caring about their comrades. i watched them Hate each other every single day, and it made me furious. 

Every single day, i felt more alone and i grew to despise Subject A in new ways that went far beyond words. But the thing was, Everything was too risky, so i figured if i really did hear anything solid, that’d be the end of it anyway. i didn’t wanna fucking think about it anymore. i just wanted some sleep. 

i remember this moment i had with our comrades back then. It was the reading group just after the Bust, and i had us on Basic Politics of Movement Security to put it all in perspective and give everyone a chance to talk it through among ourselves. i was standing and reading aloud to them, in a place on the rim of the circle where i could see everybody, everybody could see me; everybody could hear me, i could hear everybody else. 

The younger comrades paused to talk about how good Grampa Sakai was at telling stories – how they’d want to just sit around and listen to him tell stories from the Old Movement forever. We started joking about how we should preserve his brain and plug it into an AI supercomputer, where he’d be fed all this New Movement data and experience. Then he’d be able to come up with stories and lessons forever, and we could listen. i looked down at the page so i could clear the riffing and start reading again. 

They went quiet for me, and i looked back up. i blinked twice and between the first and second blink, it was like i was looking at the younger comrades with new eyes. i felt like i’d just aged five years in a millisecond, because i looked around and realized that, for the first time in my life, i was the only Adult in the room. My heart sunk and the blood ran out of my face. i was so terrified and so worried for them, and i wanted to run away and hide. 

But i had to be strong for them and stick by them, no matter what. That was what i drove into myself that summer, and that’s what kept me from Losing It completely, and kept me stone sober, those days i was totally alone. Cuz i love my comrades and i protect them with my life.

HADES FABLE (PROSE FRAGMENT) 

Zagreus took the edge off the plateau with a pull from a McCormick handle. Huddled up with his kneecaps to his cheeks in the corner of the living room, he gave out a full-body shudder so intense he had to blink twice. 

Nyx and Artemis sat on either side of the couch. While Nyx picked at another line of bright blue powder with her debit card on the face of the German Ideology, Artemis sat still, legs crossed, her eyelids relaxed as if lost in a profound thought. 

She stretched her skinny arms out. "I want to be a body without organs." Nyx suddenly broke into hysterics. 

Dazed, Zagreus asked, "What the fuck are you even saying?" 

"I want to be a body without organs." Artemis said, as if Zagreus simply did not - or could not - grasp the significance nor gravity of the moment.

[mesillusionssousecstasy]

Never I Have Ever: season 4 - Quotes

“- Damn. That’s messed up. But do you have any friends or someone you could talk to about this?” (The basket player - Episode 1)

“- And that’s when I realized love is a verb, not just a noun.” (The basket player - Episode 1)

“- Devi, this really is an elegant gift. And if I may, I am so pleased to see a young girl this day and age not dressed like a pinup poster in a prison cell.” (Teacher - Episode 1)

“- Devi felt like she was on a roll, and so she decided to do the mature thing and talk to Ben. Sometimes, when things don’t go your way, you can still be graceful and learn.” (Devi’s voice off - Episode 1)  “- But apparently, one pretty mediocre bang was all you wanted from me before you moved on to the next warm body. And when Devi was hurt, she did not always make smart choices. - I... I think this is escalating in a unnecessarily public way.” (Ben - Episode 1) “- Well, that’s probably because statistically men are more... (Devi) - Stop. I’m already offended by however you’re going to finish that sentence. Devi, you know it’s ok if you still have feelings for Ben. (Dr Ryan) - What? That’s what you got from this? (Devi) - I mean, what you two shared was something incredibly intimate, Devi, and then he abandoned you.” (Dr Ryan) - What is wrong with me? What would make Ben sleep with me and decide not to be with me? (Devi) - And I don’t mean that feminist woo-woo “every woman is beautiful” kind of thing. I mean real beauty. You’re extraordinary, Devi. (Dr Ryan) - I am? (Devi) - You are. Why else would I keep seeing you? Girl, you drive me crazy. Okay? Women always wanna take something out on another woman when most of the time it’s the man’s fault. (Dr Ryan) - Yeah, ‘cause it’s easier to be mad at women ‘cause we know what sneaks we are.” (Devi - Episode 1)

“- Uh, hey, uh, Margot? Do you have a second? (Devi) - Actually, no. I’m trying to avoid psychotic bitch energy as much as possible.” (Margot - Episode 1)

“- Hey, we’ve talked a lot about my dick lately. Can we move on? Look, I think we’re both just insecure and competitive, and we always manage to hurt each other. (Ben) - So Devi heard herself saying something she almost never said. I accept that.” (Devi - Episode 1)

“- Ms. Vishwakumar, you’re ten minutes late. (Ms. Warner) - I’m so sorry, Ms Warner. My car was recently a victim of automotive misogyny.” (Devi - Episode 2)

“- Well, now I heard you won’t be getting a Dr. Keyes rec. You know, after you, sent her to the hospital?” (Episode 2)

“- I mean, I get that he’s hot, but he’s also kind of degenerate. Yeah, and what about Trent? You can’t just give up on him. (Devi) - He doesn’t wanna be with me. He’s made that very clear. And as Dua Lipa said, the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else.” (Eleonor - Episode 2)

“- He’s beautiful, he’s dangerous, and it feels like there’s always a wind hitting him somehow. (Eleonor) - It seems scientifically impossible, but I do see it. (Fabiola) - Well, El, as someone whose senior year has already gone tits up, I support it. Follow your bliss before some jealous slore steals it from you.” (Devi - Episode 2)

“- Yo, Ben. I hope you know you’re dating a straight-up psychopath. (Devi) - Well, wouldn’t be the first time”. (Ben - Episode 2)

“- Ben, I’m your girlfriend. You should know I’m not a criminal.” (Margot - Episode 2)

“- Let’s just say Margot is about to be Mar-gone.” (Devi - Episode 2)

“- Then I’ll beat you to death with this one. You can’t go around messing with something that belongs to someone else. (Devi) - So you’re kind of mean, huh? (Ethan) - No, I just believe in justice. Yeah. Well, whatever it is, I’ve never been yelled at like that before. (Ethan) - I find that hard to believe. (Devi) - It’s kind of hot. Yeah, when you were yelling at me, I was like...”Damn. Devi’s kind of sexy. (Ethan - Episode 2)

“- Bad girls don’t need books. (Ethan) - Okay, yeah, maybe I do like being bad. (Devi) - And the baddest part about you is that you’re betraying your friend. It’s so hot how you’re stabbing her in the back. He feelings are gonna be so hurt.” (Ethan - Episode 3)

“- Fab, I am on the rebound. So if I wanna fantasize about being a degenerate’s girlfriend, let me have it.” (Eleonor - Episode 3)

“- Picking up on a titch of melancholy.” (Episode 3)

“- So, Devi, why don’t you tell me how you can relate to a story about falsely accusing someone and almost ruining their life? (Episode 3)

“- I’m sorry. This is just how it has to be for now. (Ben) - She doesn’t have to be this threatened. She does know our sex was bad, right?” (Devi - Episode 3)

“- I’m not surprised he scammed us. His whole family’s a bunch of con artists. But like most hot guys, Ethan was blissfully unaware of the drama surrounding him, and he had no idea he was being avoided.” (Episode 3) 

“- You got dumped by a guy who loved you so much that he proposed to you after a meaningful relationship and tons of amazing sex.” (Devi - Episode 3)

“- Have you ever done this before ? (Ethan) - Once. But it didn’t got so great. (Devi) - Well, that’s because you didn’t have sex with me.” (Ethan - Episode 4)

“- Sometimes, certain people can cloud our judgment.  - Oh no, she does. She just thinks that Ethan’s bad for me. (Devi) - Oh, well, that’s true. - Yeah, he’s like an anchor pulling you down into the depths.” (Episode 4)

“- No, I’m only applying to acting conservatories. I’m not a liberal arts person. I’m a one-art person.” (Eleonor - Episode 4)

“- Ethan, thank you so much for this incredible sexual awakening, but I think I’m now having a moral awakening. I need to be with someone who knows right from wrong, and that doesn’t seem to be you.” (Devi - Episode 4)

“- I mean, she was much more perfect than you in high school. She made zero mistakes and had no fun.” (Ben - Episode 5)

“- Well, you put it out in the universe I wasn’t getting in, and then I didn’t. (Devi) - I was just... trying to manage your expectations.” (Nalini - Episode 6)

“- Anyway, I need to see what I can add to my résumé to make myself seem more desirable to them.” (Devi - Episode 6) “- Well, great. I am glad my suffering is bringing you such joy. (Devi) - Oh, kanna, I am so sorry. But this is really what I was trying to tell you. Sometimes things don’t go our way. (Nalini) - Mom, come on. I really don’t wanna listen to anything rational right now. You know what? Being deferred was already a stab in the heart. I didn’t also need to be stabbed in the back.” (Devi - Episode 6)

“- And I went from feeling like a winner to such a loser in seconds.” (Episode 6)

“- Hey, you gotta let it go, all right? This is not worth losing a good friend over.” (Episode 6)

“- I am so sorry that I made you feel like you couldn’t talk to me.” (Devi - Episode 6)

“- I hear you, but remember, getting deferred isn’t such a bad thing... (Dr Ryan) - Why do people keep saying that to me? Getting deferred is a bad thing. It means they’re not sure about me. They’re not sure I’m good enough. (Devi) - But do you think you’re good enough? (Dr Ryan) - Honestly, I don’t know anymore. I mean, right now I feel pretty mediocre. My own mother assumed I was gonna get rejected. (Devi) - Devi, if this Princeton dream has so much power over your self-worth, have you ever considered that maybe it’s not serving you? Devi, I’ve just lived longer than you have, and I know that sometimes, you can work incredibly hard for something, and things just don’t go your way, you know?” (Dr Ryan - Episode 6)

“- Listen, I wasn’t trying to jinx you. I was just trying to, I guess, protect you from that kind of disappointment. And you know what? Even when things don’t work out, they usually do work out. As long as you don’t give up.” (Nalini - Episode 6)

“- Oh! I don’t wanna sleep with your girlfriend, dude. That’s really not something you should be offering people.” (Episode 7)

“- Dude, you are fully clothed. (Devi) - Yeah, well, emotionally I’m hanging D.” (Trent - Episode 7)

“- Look, why are you setting a goal that you’re probably gonna fail at? It’s okay if I fail as long as I tried.” (Episode 7)

“- Because you came up to me out of nowhere and asked me to take your virginity as a complete stranger? (Paxton) - Okay, don’t make me sound like I’m nuts. You’re the one that said yes.” (Devi - Episode 7)

“- Maybe to let go of who you were and find out who you wanna be.” (Episode 7)

“- There are some vibes that are still alive and well.” (Paxton - Episode 7)

“- So don’t worry, we’ll still be roomies. Oh, and also prom dates. I was talking to Addison, and they’ll be out of town for prom, so I thought the three of us could go together. (Fabiola) - Yes! I love that. I mean, you two are the best relationship I’ve had in high school.” (Devi - Episode 8)

“- So, what’s the deal with you guys? Ah! A teen girl classic, pretending to not be interested in the person you’re interested in (McEnroe). He’s the one that said we should never be together because we’re both too insecure and competitive. And he’s right. He’s too mean, and I’m too crazy. Together, we’re just two otters trying to dunk each other.” (Devi - Episode 8) 

“- Change was in the air for the Vishwakumar clan. Scary as it was, Nalini was right. Change was good.” (McEnroe - Episode 8)

“- But in typical Devi fashion, had created too big of a mess to enjoy it.” (McEnroe - Episode 9)

“- Hi, Ms Warner. Wanna talk to me? (Ben) - Well, I never want to talk to you, young man.” (Ms Warner - Episode 9)

“- Yeah, that’s all true, but I wanna know why you are who you are.” (Episode 9)

“- God, why do I have to be a psycho all the time? (Devi) - I like your psycho side. It makes things interesting. (Ben) - Being rejected and wait-listed by everywhere you applied is, like, the definition of pathetic, so look, Devi, you are many things. A maniac, a liar, a heavy sweater, a reckless driver,.... (Ben)  - Hey, this is very hurtful. (Devi) - But you’re not a quitter. (Ben)  - I’d want someone to put me in like a medically-induced coma. Yeah, I would like that. (Devi) - But if you don’t try everything that you can, you’re gonna regret it.” (Ben - Episode 9)

“- You survived, baby. You’re a survivor. (Dr Ryan) - You really mean that? (Devi) - This little college thing, this is just a bump in the road compared to everything you’ve already overcome. You can do anything you put your mind to. (Dr Ryan) - Princeton was actually a dream he and I came up with together. I think I’ve so fiercely held on to Princeton so that I could keep holding on to him.” (Devi - Episode 9) 

“- Because I promise you, Devi, if you do not pack tonight, I’ll put you in that suitcase Mafia-style. (Nalini - Episode 10)

“- So it turns out we’re a pretty good team for two people who hate each other. (Ben)  - I don’t hate you. I just think you’re pretentious and unlikable.” (Devi - Episode 10)

“- Now, this is our last night together, so we have to grab this party by the balls and just squeeze every last drop of fun out of it.” (Devi - Episode 10)

[self-winding]

Recently, I’ve been hearing Rachel Dolezal mentioned again in relation to identity issues.

I’m actually pretty sympathetic to the concept of transracialism, I think she is just a uniquely bad poster child for it because her identity seems so bound up in “political” blackness and the need to feel oppressed. 

But if you accept that race is a social and cultural construct rather than an immutable physical reality which flows out of biological ancestry, the idea that someone’s race can be negotiable and at least partly based on their social/cultural reality, rather than purely on ancestry, seems pretty straightforward.

I don’t remember the dude’s name but I remember reading an article about a musician with Eastern European ancestry who was fairly dark-skinned and had grown up in a predominantly black community.  Even though none of his ancestors were from Africa, he was perceived as black and saw himself as black.  And that’s not even going into mixed-race people who can pass as either/or.  Even more so than sex or gender, racial categories are very fuzzily defined and porous.

I guess (to state the obvious) the more controversial aspects of “transracialism” come in when people whose natural appearance is more stereotypically white start modifying that appearance to look more black, as Dolezal did.  I will admit that this is more viscerally uncomfortable to me than an AMAB person wanting to present in a very feminine way, and of course there’s the association with blackface performances, but gut feelings are just gut feelings.  Every attempted argument I’ve seen for why these things are different takes one of two tactics:

1.  Transmedicalism; “it’s different because being transgender is a diagnosable medical condition, and transracialism is not.  There’s currently no body of research to support the idea.”  The obvious drawback to this is that a lot of trans people also don’t buy into the transmedicalist framework and consider it pretty limiting.  There are large numbers of trans people it excludes.

2.  Authenticity-by-oppression.  Trans women “catch up” to cis women pretty quickly in terms of the types of discrimination they experience, and might even outpace them, whereas a Rachel Dolezal probably doesn’t experience the same degree of discrimination as someone who naturally looks very black.  There are obvious issues with this framing as well, in that it treats the “realness” of someone’s identity as purely defined by oppression.  If trans women stop being oppressed do they stop being “real women”?

So, does this mean I think Dolezal is “valid”?  I mean, there’s plenty about her as a person that I find objectionable.  But just asking, “Is Dolezal ‘really’ black?” implicitly buys into the idea that “black” is an immutable metaphysical category.  Scientifically, it’s not.  Socially and culturally, it is (at the very least) kind of hard to define in any rigid way, so we’re reduced to a kind of “I know it when I see it, and that’s not it” way of thinking, but that way of thinking has plenty of obvious pitfalls.  My brain still has trouble accepting that a tomato is a fruit and that Pluto is not a planet.

If I allow myself to play devil’s advocate to myself:  Yes, I do subscribe to the common sense definition that if you’re going to call yourself black you should have at least a little African ancestry, but how much is “a little”?  I mean, technically we all have African ancestry.  Also I know jack shit about how DNA works, beyond what I learned in my high school biology classes.  All right, so if you’re going to call yourself black, you should be able to pass as black without modifying your appearance too much...but what is “too much”?  Do dreads count, does a perm count, does a tan count?  Well, you can do what you like with your appearance as long as your primary motive isn’t to appear black...but okay, now we’re talking about subjective, wobbly stuff like motive and it’s getting very tricky.

Idk man.