#i was discussing fob with a friend at school today and they were saying how much they loved the phoenix

[27-royal-teas]

I keep thinking about this part in The Phoenix: “the world is just a teller and we are wearing black masks/ you broke our spirit says the note we pass” and like I know I talked about this a lot in my essay where I discussed this song but I’m honestly so proud of myself for making the connection here because it’s so obvious he’s talking about a note job. a note job is a type of robbery designed to keep things on the down low while raising as little suspicion and commotion as possible. the robbers pass a note to the bank teller with the deal- this is a robbery, we have a gun, give us money. so here pete is connecting so we can take the world back with a heart attack. we are taking the world because it will not give us what we want. we have to do it ourselves with as little commotion as possible. we are the robbers in the scenario, and if the world- the tellers- won’t give us what we want, we will take it as peaceful as we can. you broke our spirit says the note we pass. I can’t get over it.

[brokeitwiththepowerofmathamatics]

It Had to Happen Eventually

So today is turning out to be a lot busier than usual so I won’t have time to actually finish this. I’m posting the raw version of this for today, but I will be editing it later into something more complete later.  Today’s prompt was Jazz and the Hospital.  

It took Jazz a moment to realize her phone was ringing. It took Spike asking her if her phone was ringing, but when she noticed, she paled. She pulled out her phone and saw the caller id listed as Amity Park Hospital. Tucker had set up something so that when - not if - the hospital called her house, the call would be redirected to her phone.

“I’m sorry, Spike, but I need to take this,” She said calmly. 

Spike looked her up and down. “Sure,” he replied, voice quiet. “Do you need help?”

“Maybe,” She said, answering the phone. “Hello, Jazz Fenton speaking, who am I speaking to?”

“Hi, this is Doctor Martin. I’m looking for Jack or Madeline Fenton?”

Jazz took a deep breath. “They are my parents, but they’re not available at the moment. I can pass along a message?”

“They need to hear this immediately,” The doctor said firmly.

“May I know what this is about?”

The doctor hesitated for a moment. “There’s been an accident. Daniel Fenton was injured and is currently in our care at the hospital.”

Jazz stood up. “I’ll be there in a few minutes; you’ll find that all the paperwork is in place for me to make decisions for Daniel if necessary.” Jazz begrudgingly thanked Vlad for pushing along so much paperwork. She wasn’t sure if he had done that out of a desire to keep Danny’s halfa status hidden from his parents, or just so he could drive a wedge between Danny and the rest of the family, but Jazz was not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“I… Okay, I’ll look for that. I would appreciate it if you’ll pass along the message to your parents.”

“I will,” Jazz lied, hanging up the phone. She turned toward Spike. “I’m sorry, Spike, we’ll have to cut this short.”

“That’s fine,” Spike said, looking up from his own phone. “What’s going on?”

“Danny’s in the hospital. The doctor implied it was urgent.”

“Want me to drive you?”

“No offense, Spike, but you aren’t a Fenton.” 

“I’ll stay off the roads until tomorrow.”

“That’s probably a good idea.” Jazz said, calmly walking away from Spike. She approached her car and took out the fob, unlocking the door and sliding into the front seat. She put on her seatbelt and started the car. 

She took a deep breath, put the car into reverse. 

And floored it. 

She yanked the steering wheel around and spun the car in the parking lot. With an ease that was completely at odds with her calm and methodical personality, she put the car into drive before it had completely faced forward. Slamming down on the gas, she peeled out of the school parking lot.

Almost immediately, she passed by a police car, who immediately began trying to pull her over. She didn’t stop as his lights went on and his siren went off. 

However, after he ran her plates, the sirens turned off, and he slowed back down to normal speeds. Amity park was a small town, and the Fenton’s were well known. The Fenton’s were never pulled over, ever. Perks of being one of the only ones capable of responding to the ghost threats. 

A twenty-minute drive was reduced to five, and Jazz parked in the hospital parking lot. She got out of her car and slammed the door, not bothering to lock it. 

She walked into the hospital and up to the receptionist. “Excuse me. I’m here because my little brother is in the hospital? Daniel Fenton.”

The receptionist looked up at her. “Room 444,” she stated with a calm resulting in a million crises happening every day.

Jazz nodded and made her way to the elevator. After waiting for fifteen seconds, she turned toward the stairway. Jazz might not have been a ghost hunter like Danny or her parents, but she still trained like she was one. She took each flight of stairs in two steps; she made it in almost no time at all. Doctors and nurses glanced at her as she walked by, but she paid them no mind. 

She found the room and found Danny sitting upright in the bed, bandaged heavily. The bandages were red with blood, but Jazz could see hints of green ectoplasm. 

The doctor turned toward Jazz. ”Ah, you’re here. That was quick.” He looked over at Danny, “He uh… he’s doing surprisingly well, but…” 

Jazz nodded. “If you don’t mind, I’d like some time with my brother?”

The doctor nodded. “Of course! Did you message your parents?”

Jazz nodded. “Oh, I did, but they’re out of signal, for now, no idea when they’ll see it.”

“That’s… highly unfortunate.” The doctor turned, “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes to discuss options.” 

Jazz nodded. “Thank you, doctor.” The doctor gently closed the door. As soon as it clicked, Jazz whirled about. “Danny! What the hell!”

Danny waved his arms about animatedly. “Jazz! Thank god you’re here! How do we tell them not to cut off my legs!”

“Oh my god, Danny, what the hell happened! I thought you said it was just the box ghost!”

Danny blushed, though it was more green than red, which was a bad sign, it meant he was really low on blood. “It was!”

“Danny!” 

“Somehow, he figured that a wood chipper was a box maker!”

“What kind of twisted troll logic is that?” Jazz shouted, pulling at her hair.

“You’re telling me?” Danny growled, “You’re not the one who got your leg trapped in it!” 

“Oh my god, Danny!” Jazz marched over and yanked the blanket off of Danny’s lap, revealing a horrific mangled mess of a leg. “You know, I expected worse.”

“Yeah, it was pretty bad when I got here.”

“Wait, it was worse?”

Danny rubbed the back of his head. “Yeah, I’m working on it.”

“What do you mean you’re working on it?” 

“I’m working on it.”

Jazz pinched her nose. “I can’t leave you alone, for five minutes…”

“Hey!” Danny shouted, incensed, “You’ve left me-”

“FOR FIVE MINUTES, DANIEL FENTON!” 

Danny’s jaw clicked shut.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but we need Vlad.” Jazz began. 

“Oh, hell no! Let’s just cut off my legs.”

“Danny!”

“Jazz! He’s going to be insufferable!”

“You can’t just cut off your legs, so you don’t have to deal with him!”

“Watch me!” 

Jazz put her hands on her hips. “Daniel James Fenton!”

Danny folded his arms. “You know that’s not my middle name.”

“Don’t care, you’re a James now. I’ve decided.”

“That doesn’t make any sense!” 

“You know what also doesn’t make any sense? GETTING YOUR LEG MULCHED BY THE BOX GHOST!”

Danny threw his hands up in the air. “I know! He’s going to be insufferable!”

Jazz pulled out her phone. “Anyways, I’m calling Vlad and getting you transferred.” 

Danny started floating off the bed. “No! No! Don’t you dare!”

“Don’t be such a baby!”

“Hey, I’m the one with a-”

The door clicked, and the doctor came back in. “Excuse me, are you ready to discuss options?”

Jazz looked at Danny, who was back on the bed, with his arms folded in a huff. “Yes, actually.” Jazz said calmly, looking back at the doctor, “though if you don’t mind, may I make a phone call? I’d like to involve a family friend who has some medical experience.”

“Oh, of course.” The doctor said. “I’ll be right back then.” 

The doctor left, leaving the door open. Danny grumbled from his spot on the bed. “I still say you shouldn’t call him.”

“You lost decision-making privileges when you lost to the box ghost.”

“You think I lost? You should see what happened to him!”

[tazzytypes]

Apocalypse: Sanctuary - Chapter 14

Hey guys! Thank you so much for being patient with me as I work to keep this story going. Between work and school my schedule is completely booked so finding time to sit down and write can be hard. As always, thank you for all the likes and comments. They really make my day and I get super excited when I see those notifications on my phone. 

Read more on AO3 or see the Masterpost for more chapters!

Emily stood dutifully with her “sister witches” in the salon of the subterranean boy’s school, glancing here and there. She was desperately trying to read the room. Tension was high, but no one cared to explain why. Instead, she felt like a toddler watching her parents get a divorce without the needed schema to even understand marriage

God, she missed college. At least there, things were actually explained to her. All Cordelia said was they were here to perform a ritual of the Seven Wonders. The name sounded familiar, but other than that, she knew nothing.

What she did know was that the Hawthorne School for Exceptional Young Men was the counterpart to Robichaux. Why they separated the coven based upon gender alone was… perplexing. Emily imagined prestige had something to do with it, a concept that made her roll her eyes at the sheer absurdity of it all. 

Emily had never been to California. One of her friends had moved there after high school, but they weren’t particularly close and the contact between them was now non-existent. It wasn’t as if she could reach out to the girl — duty being what it was and the fact that they were now in the least hospitable place in the entire state. 

It was a pity, Emily hoped she would have at least seen the beach or LA. More to say she had than out of actual desire. 

She looked up as Myrtle shimmied beside them, keys in hand. Quietly, she bestowed them upon the group — first Zoe, then Queenie, and finally Madison and herself.

“We’ll be doubling up in the broom closets they call rooms,” Myrtle said, keeping her voice low. “Make sure you check the sheets before you lay down.”

She spared a pointed look at Madison, “and don’t go about wandering in the night. God knows what these little perverts will do.”

Madison stood with her arms across her chest, an unconvincing smile more a smirk than anything else. She leaned forward and flashed a grin. “Just because I get more than anyone else in this coven doesn’t mean I don’t have standards.”

Myrtle smiled in a way that made the blonde frown and turned back to the center of the room where Ariel and Cordelia were still talking logistics. The Seven Wonders required careful planning. With the stakes being life or death, there was no room for even the smallest of errors. They also had to assure that the greasy little weasels weren’t cheating them out of their throne. 

Madison leaned in towards Queenie, eyes flickering from the boy wonder.

“I have dibs,” she said.

A brow shot up Queenie’s forehead, “On what, bitch?”

“The bed.”

“Girl. I am not sharing a room with you.”

Madison turned to Zoe. The brunette’s eyes were trained ahead, purposefully not meeting Madison’s eyes. The ex-movie star rolled her eyes which came to settle on Emily. She shook the key with a painted “6” on the fob.

“Looks like we’re bunk buddies.”

Emily spoke before she could think, “Joy.”

“Whatever.”

Across the room, Michael watched Emily. He didn’t stare, but blue eyes frequently dashed to the girl. She stood stoically a few steps away from her sister witches with a stern expression on her face. As soon as she was brought into the light, however, it disappeared. Furrowed brows relaxed with the rest of her expression, only to return as it was but a moment before. 

Her companions seemed not to notice, treating her as a bumbling and anxious thing. No, this girl was but a cat waiting to pounce from the shadows.

Emily’s eyes dashed to his as she felt his stare. For a moment they locked eyes, but she quickly averted her gaze and focused on anything but him. He watched a moment longer.

Madison whispered something and she rolled her eyes, but a blush crawled up her neck. Her eyes flickered back to him, but he quickly turned his attention to the conversation at hand.

Days before, all Emily had been able to glean from her conversation with Cordelia was that this important ritual would determine who the next Supreme would be… whatever that meant. 

For all the useless information the others had given her, they did not explain what the Seven Wonders entailed. “You’ll see,” was the closest she had gotten to a response. 

Either way, Cordelia wanted her help. What she could help with, she wasn’t quite sure. The witches seemed to find pleasure in keeping things vague. 

Thus, long story short: Emily was in an underground all-boys boarding school doing occult shit straight out of a Steven King novel. 

Green eyes flickered to a nearby bookshelf, her eyes trailing over the titles instinctively. Most of them were old, books having that rough binding with wrinkled spines that only came from constant use and gold inlaid titles. There was one, however, with no name.

Looking about, she carefully made her way over to the shelf. It wasn’t far from where she was standing — a few feet at most. Gently, she eased the large weathered tome into her arms, balancing it upon her hip as if it were a child. 

It was a grimoire written in Latin. It was the one subject she had made traction in, reassuring her whenever she couldn’t conjure small objects to her hand or make butterflies out of roses. 

That being said, she was far from fluent. Some words and basic sentences popped out at her, but beyond that was incomprehensible. Emily wished she had her pile of references with her. It would at least give her something to do while the adults tackled the issues at hand.

“Finis venit,” she muttered under her breath, eyes narrowed as she read the handwritten note on the inside cover of the book, “ante initium.”

The end comes before the beginning?

A burning sensation in her hands nearly made her drop the tome with what would no doubt have been a very loud, attention-drawing thud. Biting her lip to keep from crying out, she eased the book back to its place. 

Her eyes darted around the room as she shuffled away from the bookcase. No one seemed to notice her faux pas, too engrossed in their own thoughts and tasks. Eventually, her gaze was drawn to the blonde boy who stood next to Ariel, Hawthorne’s headmaster. His hands were positioned behind his back, fist clenching as he continued to pay attention to the discussion before him.

Glancing back to her hands, she found a small circular burn mark around her right middle finger. Red irritation bloomed brightly upon her skin but quickly faded into nothing.

“God, I need a cigarette,” Madison whined beside her, crossing her arms and leaning back on the wall. Bored, her eyes trailed back to her new Sabrina. “Why are you here, anyway?”

“Cordelia asked me to come.”

Madison scoffed, “What does she want you to do? Throw up on them?”

“Who the fuck knows,” Emily said with a sigh. The reaction gained her a small, cheeky smile from the blonde. The amusement didn’t last long.

“If you know you’re not a witch, why the hell do you even stay here?”

“Cordelia thinks I have potential.”

“Ha!” Madison said, “What a load of crock.”

Queenie rolled her eyes as she stood beside the two, Madison sandwiched between the human voodoo doll and the powerless newbie. 

“Can you stop being a bitch for, like, five seconds?” Queenie snapped at the blonde.

“Whatcha’ gonna’ do? Kill me?” 

“Don’t tempt me.”

A small smirk crawled onto Emily’s lips at the banter, but quickly vanished the second she felt Madison glance towards her. From across the room, Michael couldn’t help but be amused at the scene. He did his best to hide a smirk of his own, covering it with a hand in an attempt to save face.

Madison rolled her eyes and scoffed before shuffling away from the pair to put as much distance between them. Emily glanced at Queenie and they both snickered.

“Like I said,” Queenie said, “I got you, girl.”

“I’d hate to be on your bad side.”

“Damn straight.”

Emily pushed off the wall and stood a little straighter as she noticed Cordelia turn. The warlocks retreated to their side of the room save for Ariel and the curly-haired angel. Green eyes met blue and the two simply stared at each other for a long moment before diverting their attention back to the reigning supreme.

There was something about that boy… something Emily couldn’t quite place. 

“Today we take part in an ancient ritual used by our coven for generations,” Cordelia spoke, “The new must be ushered in and the old ushered out to maintain the strength of our coven.”

Finally, she turned to the boy-wonder, “Are you ready to take on this momentous task.”

“I am.”

Emily jumped as a loud chorus of cheers erupted above them, boys stomping their feet and yelling as loud as they knew how. She forced her eyes back on her headmistress and tried to quiet her racing heart. 

Cordelia didn’t look pleased, everyone else too preoccupied with the noise to notice. It was a slight difference: the near imperceivable furrow of the brow and thinning of the lips.

Her eyes then trailed to the boy. He was smiling up at the crowd, basking in their adoration. It was a genuine smile — not the one he had shown when they first arrived.

The rowdy boys were quickly silenced with a well-aimed look of their headmaster. Emily could hear the shuffling of feet above her head as they skittered off into the halls, leaving the room feeling tense and lifeless.

“Like little roaches,” she heard Myrtle whisper to Zoe. The girl’s response was drowned out by the voice of their headmistress.

“Let the test of the Seven Wonders begin!”

***

The Seven Wonders was a test of seven magical talents… or at least that is what Emily observed. 

Telekinesis was the first wonder, an easy enough skill for those who could actually use their magic. She felt a surge of jealousy at that thought. It was easy for Cordelia to say magical talent didn’t matter when she had more than Emily could hope to possess. 

Michael held up his hand and a book crossed the room as if it had a mind of its own. The grimoire was a heavy tome in her arms, but the boy made it look as light as a feather. 

He opened it to the first page, brows furrowing as he read the hand-scribed dedication. Closing the book, he looked to Ariel. The man was grinning ear to ear, clapping the boy on the back and praising him for a job well done. 

“This is but the first test,” Cordelia reminded, voice stern, “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

 The fair-haired woman turned to Michael, “The next test is Concilium. Control the minds of someone in this room.”

That wording did nothing to ease the tension in Emily’s body. She quite liked being in control of her own thoughts and actions. The thought of someone being able to override her autonomy at will made her palms sweat.

Emily didn’t know what to expect until Madison and Zoe started dancing at random. Their faces betrayed their true feelings, Michael’s powers not strong enough to make the pair like one other. A small smile flickered to Emily’s lips at the frowns carved into their faces, but it quickly vanished when she felt the boy’s eyes on her.

They danced and danced and danced some more in a silent room. If not for the circumstances it may have been poetic. The strings of the puppet-master were far too visible, their bodies too stiff. It made her skin crawl. 

Just as the dance ended, Emily felt a sudden presence behind her followed by a feather-light tap on her shoulder. Her hair stood on end and a shiver ran up her spine. Hands instinctively curled into fists which swung back towards the sudden presence. 

The problem with instinct was that your body moved before your mind could decide to. Her fist was mere inches from his face when she finally realized what she was doing. Michael’s hand swung out to block the blow, fingers curling around her hand as he caught the punch mid-air. Emily’s heart was racing in her chest and the boy-wonder could feel her heartbeat through her hand. 

Power flickered through the air. Michael feeling like he was on the other end of an electrical shock. Gently, he let her hand go and it pulled back to her side as if his touch was fire.

“Careful,” He warned, a crooked smile curling at his lips. Emily’s eyes narrowed ever slightly. “You’ll end up giving someone a black eye.”

Emily’s eyes narrowed ever slightly, biting back a retort. If someone didn’t want a black eye, they shouldn’t sneak up on others. She was tempted to throw the other fist… but she doubted her headmistress would approve.

“You have conquered transmutation,” Cordelia noted, the pair turning back to the current supreme. Michael stepped back from her charge with the expression of a content cat. The Supreme’s frown was more prominent now, her eyes filled with annoyance she could no longer hide. “Now it is time for you to conquer the next task.”

She spared a glance at Ariel who stood beside her. He beamed at his student, looking to the woman beside him with an air of smug contempt. He was comically shorter than the woman, but her own expression did nothing to squash his silent gloating.

“One of your mentors has hidden something in this room. Find it using divination.”

Michael stepped around Emily, the girl taking a step away from him as he made his way towards the blonde woman. Stopping before her, he held out a hand palm-up. After a moment, Cordelia placed a dozen or so runes and bones into his hand. 

Turning on his heel and taking a few deliberate steps, Michael crouched in front of the fire. He tossed the objects onto the floor. Emily stared at them, trying to sense their meaning. She had read tarot cards before — accurate readings, too… or so her friends had said. Runes and bones, however, were another beast entirely.

The bookshelf. Her own thought startled her as if she had heard another’s voice inside her head. She watched Michael’s eyes flicker up to one of the many bookshelves. 

Then he was gone, vanishing into thin air. Emily moved closer to the wall, hairs standing on end once more. The next thing she knew, the boy-wonder was standing next to his headmaster who jumped as a hand was placed on his shoulder.

“I believe this is yours,” Michael said to the man. Ariel grinned and laughed, patting the boy on the back as he took back his pocket watch.

With every task, Cordelia’s mood soured. Anyone outside of Robichaux wouldn’t have been able to tell the slight difference in her demeanor. Her posture straightened into a thin line, her eyes growing sharper and sharper until her gaze could cut stone.

Pyrokinesis and Vitalum Vitalis. Michael made them look easy. Flames roared when drops of his blood hit the wick of a candle. He made a mouse come back alive after snapping his neck.

The latter disturbed Emily more than the former. Emily realized she had never seen anything die before. She’d experienced death, naturally — old pets and family members passing to the other side. There was something about the sharp cracking of tiny bones accompanied by a shrill shriek that made all her hairs stand on end. Her body buzzed and she felt a momentary pressure on her forehead. 

Zoe turned at the sudden snap of power which echoed through the room. Emily stared at the sight before her, her eyes distant. It unnerved Zoe, the way the other girl stared. It felt like a black void had curled around Emily. 

The second the mouse was brought back to life, the spell which entranced the woman broke. Clarity came back to Emily’s eyes and she finally felt the presence of eyes upon her. Zoe averted her gaze, pretending she had seen nothing. 

“And so, we arrive at the final test,” Cordelia announced, “Descensum.”

Slowly, Michael’s hands came to rest behind his back. The more wonders he accomplished, the more contempt he held. Cordelia worried what his plans for the coven were. There was something about that boy that sat her on edge.

Her eyes flickered to Emily for but a moment, watching her whisper something to Queenie. Green eyes widened at the senior witch’s response.

Emily’s attention darted between the line of witches now standing before the fire. Queenie had chosen to stay with the younger witch to explain what was going on.  

“What’s Decensum?” Emily asked

“To prove you are the next supreme, you have to go to hell.”

“Hell?”

“I didn’t believe it at first, either.” Queenie said, “but, then again, I’m a human voodoo doll so anything is possible.”

Emily’s lips twisted as she took in the information, trying to decide how she felt about the concept of hell existing. She had never been a particularly religious person… agnostic at best. It was an existential conundrum — one existing thus implying the other did as well.

Closing off her thoughts, Emily forced herself to save the existentialism for after their little trip. Hopefully, by then she would forget about it entirely.

Cordelia’s voice pulled them from their whispered conversation. Their headmistress’s voice rang loud and clear throughout the room, demanding attention.

“But today I am not asking you to perform this wonder,” The Supreme continued, dragging her eyes back to Michael, “I am asking you to conquer it.”

Emily’s eyes flickered back to Queenie as she shifted to her other foot, eyes narrowed at her supreme and brows furrowed. 

“What is she doing?” Queenie muttered. Emily pulled her eyes away from her companion and looked to the scene before her. The wizards shifted uncomfortably, lips pressing into thin lines. Emily’s eyes then settled back on Cordelia.

“I’d like you to retrieve my dear friend, Misty Day,” the blonde woman continued, “who lost her own battle with this very task.”

“That’s impossible!” one of the warlock’s snapped, an African American man — Behold — dressed to impress in the same black color they all donned. “Those who don’t return from Decensum are gone forever; property of the underworld. 

“But even Orpheus was able to challenge Hades to bring back Eurydice,” Emily muttered. She felt eyes upon her, but when she looked to the boy-wonder his attention was solely on Cordelia.

Queenie spared the girl a glance, “What was that?” 

Emily slowly removed her eyes from Michael, “Nothing.”

““No other Supreme’s been made to do this, ever. This is not only unfair,” Another wizard — Baldwin — noted, angry eyes encased by thick-rimmed glasses, “this is suicide!”

Cordelia cut them off with ease, “Which is why I offer a compromise.”

The Supreme looked to Emily expectantly. The brunette glanced about the room, unsure of what was coming. Finally, after a good moment, she stepped out of the shadows. Cordelia offered her a reassuring smile as Emily came to stop by her side. She could feel the warlock’s eyes on her and she found herself focusing on the floor after meeting their gaze.

“Emily is a catalyst,” Cordelia explained to the warlocks. “One of the strongest I have ever seen. While she has yet to show any magical ability, we have found that others of our kind can tap into her magic and use it to power their own.”

“This is sabotage!” Baldwin said, his pose reminding Emily of a hungry wolf. What was Cordelia thinking? She wasn’t ready for this. She didn’t want this. She didn’t— 

“Michael will need all the help he can get,” Cordelia reminded. 

All this while, Ariel had been quietly fuming. He should have known the witches would try and undermine the alpha. Jaw clenched and expression sour, he did his best to keep his cool.

“Enough.” He said, head turning to his fellow warlocks before his gaze returned to the blonde witch, “Cordelia—”

Cordelia’s head cocked ever slightly to the side, waiting for him to speak.

“I need a word.” He finally concluded, words rushing past his lips. Cordelia simply nodded, and he led the way back into the shadow-filled halls of Hawthorne.

***

“You’re changing the rules!” Ariel exclaimed, voice rising and anger taking the forefront as soon as they were out of earshot. He paced back and forth in his office, trying to contain his rage. “Michael should only have to descend as you did!”

Cordelia stood calmly at the center of the room, poised with her hands resting in front of her. Her stillness was unsettling… more similar to a snake than a woman. It only served to anger Ariel more, waving his hands as he talked just to keep from imploding.

“You didn’t see what I saw,” the woman noted, voice stern and unwavering. Stubborn. Just like her mother. “Our world hangs in the balance. There is darkness coming and, if Michael is going to be the one who leads, us he needs to be able to withstand anything.”

Ariel stopped in his tracks.

“Bullshit.”

Cordelia’s gaze was as cutting as a knife, her hushed tone betraying her surprise, “excuse me?”

“I saw you drop. I know what’s really happening here.” Ariel said, satisfied as Cordelia’s face fell into a frown. “You’re fading, but you’re afraid to let go.”

“And you’ve hit a wall. Grand Chancellor is as far as you’re going to get,” Cordelia spat, “You and your powers have reached their limit. Your kingdom will only just be this hole in the ground.”

Ariel sputtered, unable to find a single retort. The woman was a scorpion and she was more than ready to sting him with her tail.

“Unless, of course,” She continued, “you use Michael to extend your influence.”

“This is pathetic — accusing me to cover your blatant attempt at his life. I won’t lose that kid over some sad, futile cling to power.”

“I’ll remind you that I am also risking one of my own girls in this venture.”

“An inexperienced whelp!”

“Who has more untapped potential than you can ever dream to have!” Cordelia snapped, “You may insult me, but I will not let you insult one of my girls.”

“But you would send her to her death… What a supreme you are.”

“You actually believe I am trying to get them killed?”

Ariel took a step towards the woman, then another, “What I think, Cordelia, is that you are your mother’s daughter, who I knew fairly well. You may come with a kinder facade, but deep down, you’re nothing more than a weak, frightened woman… just like Fiona.”

He watched as Cordelia’s eyes betrayed her fear, her insecurity. Ariel had hit the pressure point, the Achilles heel. Cordelia’s sad eyes hardened, her own rage boiling in her belly.

“With a flick of my finger, I could crush your larynx and tear it from your throat.” Cordelia warned, “Do not think for one second I am weak. I have humored you men, and coddled your fragile egos, but in no way does that mean you actually have a say.”

The woman took a step towards the man, forcing him to step back in turn. “I outrank you. I can destroy you. So, I suggest you fall in line because I am still your Supreme.”

A creaking interrupted them, their eyes trailing to the door which now stood open. Michael stood, doors moving without his touch. His hands sat behind his back with a solemn and resolute expression. 

He locked gazes with Cordelia. There was something about his eyes that made her hair stand on end. He looked human, but his eyes seemed off and his presence made her stomach churn.

“It’s okay,” he said, “I’ll get your friend back.”

***

The warlocks and witches had divided themselves in opposite corners of the room, leaving Emily to stand aimlessly in front of the fire. Their whispering was a roaring sea in her ears, an annoying buzz to a mosquito she couldn’t squash. She found her head quirking just to free her ears from the sound.

 Sparing a glance at the warlocks, she was met with narrowed and sharp glances. Baldwin spared a look in her direction before turning back to Behold to whisper something. They turned their backs so she wouldn’t read their lips. 

The gaze of her fellow witches was less than reassuring, themselves whispering about the circumstances just as the warlocks. Zoe looked up and the younger witch quickly averted her gaze. Cordelia’s announcement blind-sided them all. Emily had always said she was going to go to hell… she just never expected it to come this soon.

“Cordelia’s sending her to her death!” She heard Madison hiss.

“Keep your voice down, bitch!” Queenie responded, slapping the girl’s arm before they also turned to keep Emily from hearing their conversation. 

With a sigh, the brunette turned her gaze back to the fire. Curling her arms around herself, she stared into the flickering flames. Fire had always comforted her, its warmth and snapping flames. She could stare at it for hours, trying to make meaning out of the chaos. 

Higher, she commanded in her mind, watching a single flame sputter higher before returning to its place. When she was small, she’d amuse herself for hours with the instances of coincidence, commanding waves to rise or wind to howl and pretending she had any control over it. 

It was the silence Emily noticed first. It pulled her from her mulling like ice water poured over her head. Slowly she turned to find Michael standing behind her. He watched her eyes dilate at his sudden presence before returning back to normal, allowing him to watch the colors of her hazel eyes switch ever slightly. The girl practically vibrated with anxiety.

“Cordelia says you are a catalyst.”

“Try a charger hit with lightning,” Emily noted with a scoff. Michael’s head turned slightly to the side, analyzing her response. The gusto behind her words quickly faded, hand moving to fret with her bracelet. “Or… at least, I’ve been told.”

Holding out a hand, he watched it as she regarded it. Eyes once wide in doe-like fear narrowed into calculating pinpricks. Blue eyes stared at her, judging which piece in the puzzle she was. She didn’t look him in the eyes for very long. 

“Shall we?” Michael asked.

Hesitantly, her hand rose from her side and her eyes flickered to his face. She was searching for something. Neither of them knew what, but whatever she saw was satisfactory enough for her to place her hand in his own.

Emily had never been one for physical contact. Her high-school years had been spent perfecting the art of walking down a crowded hall without brushing a single arm. Michael’s hand was warm, somewhere between natural and unnatural. It was as if the boy had a fever. 

Her hand, in contrast, was unnaturally cold. Her fingers were like ice against his flesh and twitched slightly at the contact. 

“Tell me what I need to do.”

“Just focus on my words,” He told her, true meaning lingering in the air.

And don’t mess up.

*** 

Emily’s nose itched and her head buzzed, but she did her best to ignore it. It was as if there were a hundred bees in her body, all batting their wings at once. She had yet to get used to the infrequent thrumming of her bones.

The silence was oppressive, sounds of breathing and footsteps more akin to howling wing and roaring thunder. Cordelia knelt beside them, muttering spells as she slowly wound a ribbon to connect Emily’s hands with Michael’s. 

When she looked up to the warlocks, they were whispering one another. As before, they shielded their faces from view, glancing back at Cordelia every few seconds. 

Emily found herself speaking before she could think, the monotonous silence far too overwhelming, “So which underworld do you have to conquer?”

Michael’s voice was somewhere between bored and annoyed. 

“Does it really matter?”

“I mean… different religions have different tales — Greek, Christian, Egyptian — it changes based upon the culture.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about that, dear,” Myrtle spoke with a small chuckle. She did not even try to mask her contempt of the boy. “it’s all semantics.”

“Until you have to have Anubis weigh your heart,” Emily muttered to herself. A smile flickered to Michael’s face and left just as quickly.

The boy-wonder laid on the floor, his head in Emily’s lap. Her hands were placed on his chest where his arms crossed like he was buried in a casket. His golden hair tickled her arm. She could feel his eyes on her, but she refused to look at him. 

What did Cordelia expect her to do? Even if she was a catalyst, she couldn’t control that power. Emily’s hands felt clammy in boy-wonder’s. Suddenly the ribbon felt itchy and his hands too warm.

Apparently, the binding was supposed to channel her magic into his own. Emily just thought it made her look stupid. Cordelia gave her a reassuring smile as she finished tying off the brunette’s right hand. Touching the girl’s cheek, the Supreme pretended Emily’s jaw wasn’t tense beneath her fingers.

The coven gathered, standing around the pair. They were like giants, looming over them. Emily was less than pleased about having someone at her back. Michael felt her fingers twitch against his own.

“Ready?” Michael asked the girl, forcing her to finally meet her gaze. Emily nodded and his eyes looked past her and towards the ceiling.

“Repeat after me,” He told her, “and focus on the words.”

“Got it,” Emily said, voice barely louder than a whisper. 

“Deduce me in tenebris vita ad extremum,” He began to chant, “ut salutaret inferi.”

“Dedice me in tenebris,” she repeated, doing her best to put weight behind every word, “vita ad extremum…”

“Decensum.” They spoke in unison. 

Myrtle stood by Cordelia, a hand on the woman’s shoulder as the blonde fretted at her necklace. Emily would alright, she reasoned. The transfer of power did not mean she would be lost to the underworld forever. 

The rest of the witches looked towards their fellow sisters. Eyes shifted between their companions and the girl on the floor, gaging their reaction to what was occurring before them.

“Deduce me in tenebris vita ad extremum,” Emily continued to mutter, Michael’s voice already falling silent as he descended. Her brows were furrowed in concentration, hands squeezing the boy’s. “ut salutaret—”

Her breath left her like a sigh. With a dull thump, Emily fell limp to the floor. Her body curled around Michael’s head; hands still outstretched towards his. The rope that bound them together burned until it was ash. Their hands were still connected, holding onto each other as if their lives depended upon it. 

Zoe lurched forward instinctively, a spell already on her lips. Cordelia’s hand shot out, her arm keeping the other woman from taking another step. 

“No,” she said, voice betraying her concern, “we must not interfere.”

“She’s not ready for this!” Madison said, rounding the group so Cordelia was forced to look her in the eye. The ex-movie star gestured towards the sleeping girl. “She can’t even make a flower change colors and you expect her to find her way out of hell?”

Cordelia was less than impressed with her student’s reaction.

“You underestimate her power.”

“And what would that be?” Ariel demanded, voice raised and hands clenched to fists at his sides. The Supreme could feel his eyes boring into the side of her face. 

Slowly, Cordelia turned to regard him.

“Emily’s power is entangled between this dimensions and the next,” she said, trying to convey her urgency with every word. It was getting hard to keep her anger from overflowing. “A rare gift. There is no one more suited to this task than her.”

Brown eyes flickered to the slumbering girl, her body lacking its previous tensions. It was the calmest Cordelia had ever seen her. A small, proud smile claiming her lips.

“When she is finally able to pull that power into the waking world,” Cordelia noted, eyes boring into Ariel’s like a knife, “she will be a force to be reckoned with.”

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Pluralistic: 05 Mar 2020 (New Pinkwater, RIP Jim Tyre, Right to Repair and covid, Radicalized is a bestseller, African Whatsapp modders)

Today's links

Daniel Pinkwater wrote a new novel! Yippee for "ADVENTURES OF A DWERGISH GIRL!"

Warner Chappel discoved a new form of copyright fuckery so dense it blew a wormhole into another dimension: From the people who fraudulently claimed to own "Happy Birthday" for decades.

RIP, Jim Tyre: The free internet just lost one of its most dedicated defenders.

Decentralizing the web is a human problem: The web needs stewards, not owners.

Right to Repair is the right to resilience: Independent repair is how we keep things going during emergencies.

Keyless car fobs can be defeated with a cheap RFID cloner: Car manufacturers wontfix a showstopper bug. Again.

Bookstores, libraries, human thriving and mental health: Books are great, even if the science behind their greatness is thin.

Copyright experts' panel on fair use removed from Youtube: A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?

Radicalized is out in paperback: Just hit every one of Canada's national bestseller lists, too!

African Whatsapp modders are outcompeting Facebook: Adversarial Interoperability is how you beat digital colonialism.

This day in history: 2015, 2019

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

I'm coming to Kelowna, BC today! I'll be at the library from 6-8PM with my book Radicalized for the CBC's Canada Reads. It's free, but you need to RSVP (and most of the seats are gone, so act quick).

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cbc-radio-presents-in-conversation-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-96154415445

Daniel Pinkwater wrote a new novel! (permalink)

Well, this is amazing news. Daniel Pinkwater has a new middle grades novel coming out in September: ADVENTURES OF A DWERGISH GIRL!

https://tachyonpublications.com/bestselling-author-daniel-pinkwater-returns-in-classic-form-with-the-illustrated-middle-grade-adventures-of-a-dwergish-girl/

Molly O'Malley is a clever, adventurous girl. She is also a Dwerg. Dwergs are strange folks who live very quietly in the Catskill mountains, have lots of gold, and are kind of like dwarves (but also not!).

Molly isn't interested in cooking and weaving, as she is expected to be. So, she sets off to see the world for herself. Which means a new job, a trip to New York City, prowling gangsters, an adorable king, a city witch, and many historical ghosts. More importantly, it means excellent pizza, new friends, and very quick thinking.

Now someone is pursuing the Dwergs for their gold. Can Molly O'Malley save the day?

IOW: this is a book with every single thing I love about Pinkwater novels. Reading Daniel Pinkwater – as a kid and as an adult – was hugely important to my development as a writer and a human being. Meeting another Pinkwater fan is always a sign that you are among good people.

Warner Chappel discoved a new form of copyright fuckery so dense it blew a wormhole into another dimension (permalink)

I've seen some next-level copyfraud fuckery in my day, believe me, but Adam Neely's tale of Warner Chappell's copyfraud reaches a new height of absurdity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM6X2MEl7R8

This is sleazy even by Warner Chappell standards, and they're the crooks who fraudulently claimed ownership over Happy Birthday for decades.

https://vimeo.com/172715640

Buckle up for this one, as it is an onion of bizarre, bad-faith corporate behavior, with each layer peeling back to reveal another, even weirder and more terrible one. It starts with a garbage lawsuit against Katy Perry for including a piece of background music in her song Dark Horse that was similar to another very generic lick in an obscure Christian rap song called "A Joyful Noise."

No one claimed that Katy Perry lifted the brief snatch of music from Joyful Noise. Rather, the case turned on the precedent set when Martin Gaye's heirs sued Robin Thicke over "Blurred Lines," arguing that the song had a similar vibe to Gaye's. Gaye's heirs should not have won that suit. But they did. And it opened the floodgates to nuisance suits targeting the likes of Perry and her publisher, Warner-Chappell. They lost the suit and got hit for $2.8m.

This isn't even the fuckery part, by the way.

Enter Adam Neely, who created a massively successful viral video defending Warner Chappell and Katy Perry, arguing that the suit was garbage. The video was so successful he went on national media to discuss the case and was even asked to sign onto an amicus brief.

Let the fuckery begin:

Warner Chappell has claimed copyright over Neely's video, claiming that a few seconds of music that he used was the "melody" of Katy Perry's song.

Further fuckery:

In the case, Warner Chappell argued that this specific musical phrase was not the melody, and was rather some incidental background sound.

Fuckery extreme:

The Warner Chappell claim was not automated. A human manually claimed this phrase of music as Warner-Chappell's, despite:

a) Them having disclaimed ownership of it in a lawsuit,

b) Losing that suit and being told by a court that it wasn't theirs.

Fuckery to the max!

But the musical phrase they claimed ownership over was from "A Joyful Noise," the song they lost two point eight million dollars over, having claimed that their song was not confusingly similar to it.

The two musical phrases – the one from "Dark Horse" and the one from "Joyful Noise" – were so similar that Warner-Chappell's own copyright enforcers mistakenly claimed copyright over the wrong one!

2020 folks. Don't forget to tip your servers, they work hard.

RIP, Jim Tyre (permalink)

My old EFF comrade Jim Tyre just died.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/rip-eff-special-counsel-jim-tyre

Jim was a tireless civil liberties litigator, a titan of First Amendment law whose entree to tech law was defending people who criticized censorware companies who wildly overblocked what schoolkids could see. He was also incredibly garrulous, funny, a born raconteur whose encylopedic memory served him well both as a storyteller and a litigator.

Jim worked on the 2600 DMCA case, he defended Ed Felten when he was threatened by the RIAA, he fought ICANN, and he was key to our longrunning suit against NSA over mass surveillance.

Jim always worked offsite. He lived in LA and had eye problems that rendered him nearly completely blind. But he kept a stash of cash at the EFF offices so he could contribute to every whip-round for a baby gift or a wedding present.

He was a true mensch.

Decentralizing the web is a human problem (permalink)

My old EFF colleague Mai Sutton just published a smashing primer on competition, interoperability, and stewardship and the world of tech:

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200228/22053744006/defeating-tech-giants-with-open-protocols-interoperability-shared-stewardship.shtm

After delivering a good backgrounder on the history of the wars between shared protocols and proprietary technologies, Mai delves into the thicket of laws that have cropped up to prevent technologists from adding interoperability to existing technologies.

This has led to a new online enclosure, with "Google" becoming synonymous with "search" and "Facebook" synonymous with "social media." These businesses once competed, but today, they preside alone, over protected territory.

But some of that is changing. Between legislative proposals, new standardization efforts, the Decentralized Web movement and its protocols, and a reinvigorated threat of antitrust enforcement, there's some hope that the web will reopen and redecentralize.

Ultimately, Mai writes, this has more to do with how we view the web than how we use it. If we think of the online world as a shared space for humanity then the technologists who keep it running are stewards, not owners.

(Image: Dietrich Ayala (https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/07/introducing-the-d-web/) and Open Clip Art (https://openclipart.org/)

Right to Repair is the right to resilience (permalink)

Writing in Wired, Kyle Wiens makes the crucial link between the Right To Repair and resilience, especially during moments of disruption to global supply chains.

https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-right-to-repair-will-help-us-endure-outbreaks/

It's no coincidence that farms and farmers have been leaders in Right to Repair: when you're isolated and you're not allowed to fix your stuff, it means that you can neither nip down to the shops for a replacement, nor easily have an authorized repair tech come to your place.

Covid can put everyone – even entire nations – into the position of that isolated farmer. As Long Beach port is denuded of shipping containers, as air- and rail-links are broken between parts of the country, the stream of parts, replacement units and technicians stops.

A key principle of resilience is to put resources at the edge, replacing hub-and-spoke models with point-to-point, peer-to-peer ones that infuse the system with redundancy. Neoliberalism hates redundancy and equates it with wastefulness.

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1228326004508151808

But redundancy is the key to graceful failure-modes. Limiting repairs to authorized service centers works well (reliable, and certainly great for shareholders), but it fails very, very badly. Right to Repair is how our hospitals, schools, infrastructure maintenance, first responder and other vital services will keep the lights on if things go horribly wrong. Resiliency may be bad for shareholder value, but it's vital to human survival.

Keyless car fobs can be defeated with a cheap RFID cloner (permalink)

Toyota, Hyundai and Kia keyless ignition fobs can be cloned by attackers who get within a few inches of your pocket (say, at a conference), thanks to implementation errors that the auto-makers made with their Texas Instruments DST80 security systems.

https://www.wired.com/story/hackers-can-clone-millions-of-toyota-hyundai-kia-keys/

All you need is a Proxmark RFID scanner, which retails for about $300. That's more than the range-extenders used to steal cars from out front of targets' homes, but unlike those attackers, fob-cloners can start and stop the car as often as they like.

https://hackerwarehouse.com/product/proxmark3-rdv4-kit/

The researchers who did this work come from KU Leuven and the University of Birmingham. Their paper is great:

https://tches.iacr.org/index.php/TCHES/article/view/8546/8111

The attack on its own does not let you start the cars. All it does is disable the immobilizer that stopped people from hot-wiring the ignition system with a screwdriver.

"You're downgrading the security to what it was in the '80s." -Flavio Garcia, University of Birmingham.

The implementation mistakes by the car companies are embarrassingly basic. Kia and Hyundai's implementation only has 24 bits of randomness ("a couple milliseconds with a laptop"). Toyota uses a serial number as a seed, then transmits that serial number in the clear. The companies, naturally, are saying it's no biggie. Toyota claims the attack requires "a highly specialized device that is not commonly available on the market." This just isn't true. I found it with literally one search.

None of the vendors have offered to fix the problem for drivers who bring their cars to garages.

It's depressing, but at least now you know whether you can trust your car's security.

"It's better to be in a place where we know what kind of security we're getting from our security devices. Otherwise, only the criminals know." -Flavio Garcia.

Bookstores, libraries, human thriving and mental health (permalink)

I love Lydia Smith's hymn to the mental health benefits of books, libraries and reading (even if I think the science is less than convincing)

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/transformation/how-books-and-bookshops-improve-our-mental-health-and-why-we-must-protect-them/

Reading fiction definitely stretches your empathy. For a novel to work, you have to be invested in the lives of people who don't even exist. The death of the yogurt you digested with breakfast this morning is technically more tragic than the deaths of Romeo and Juliet. The yogurt was really alive and now it's really dead. Romeo and Juliet neither lived nor died. Fiction reading is varsity-level empathy!

I agree that the traditional fiction arc – adversity met and overcome – can lighten a dark day. I turn to Kim Stanley Robinson's "Pacific Edge" whenever I'm blue for that reason. I even played a small role in getting adapted for DRM-free audio.

https://boingboing.net/2015/01/15/audio-edition-of-pacific-edge.html

(Pacific Edge was just reissued as a "Tor Essential" in an omnibus with the other two "Californias" novels, sporting a fabulous intro by Francis Spufford. Run, don't walk!)

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250307569

It's also utterly true that books are a path to resilience and self-reliance, filled as they can be with how-tos, analysis and technical knowledge. As the Whole Earth Catalogues used to have it, "Access to tools and ideas."

(It must be said that the net is infinitely better at this than print books, provided you can get online. The use of a time-transported town library to jumpstart post-industrial civilization during the 30 Years War in Eric Flint's 1632 is delightful)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1632_(novel)

Libraries, of course, are the last place in our civilization where you are welcomed because you are a human being, not because you are an ambulatory wallet. Librarians, resist the urge to call people "customers." They're "patrons." That's far more dignified (and accurate).

And working in a bookstore is certainly therapeutic, for certain values of therapy. It can be a grind, but OMG is it ever great connecting people with books that you love and watching them fall in love, too. Generally I'm in accord with the essay. I just don't think the studies cited are of very high quality and/or recency.

It's OK to say, "I love bookstores and libraries because they're fabulous" without having to provide evidence for that fabulousness.

Copyright experts' panel on fair use removed from Youtube (permalink)

NYU law school's Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy held a symposium on copyright and the net with a panel on "when one song infringes the copyright of another and to prove if the accused song is 'substantially similar' enough to be illegal."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVQTz65Bq70

The video of the panel was taken down from Youtube after multiple copyright complaints from rightsholders who claimed that the brief clips, chosen by America's leading copyright experts as being fair use, were infringing.

https://www.law.nyu.edu/centers/engelberg/news/2020-03-04-youtube-takedown

These clips weren't just fair use; they'd been chosen by top legal scholars to illustrate what fair use was.

The rightsholder reps who issued the takedown claims for these videos did so manually – that is, these complaints were not automatically generated.

In the grand tradition of copyfraud fuckery, when the law professors appealed, the rights enforcement dimbulbs (trained on xeroxed procedures in three-ring binders) reasserted their claims, putting the law school at risk of losing its Youtube account.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/05/warner-chappell-copyfraud#warnerchappell

The law profs knew they had the law on their side, but they weren't ready to appeal, because if they lost their appeal, they'd get a Youtube "copystrike," which could also cost them their accounts. And since there were multiple claims, they weren't sure if they'd get multiple strikes by appealing. Youtube's docs don't make this clear, and going through Youtube channels yielded nothing but radio silence.

Now, these are eminent law professors at a top university, so they were able to make some insider calls to Youtube, who lifted the complaints altogether and reinstated the video. But no one ever clarified the multiple-claims/multiple copystrike procedure.

Moral: When it comes to Youtube, it doesn't matter if you're a nationally recognized copyright expert. You can't argue with anonymous, hamfisted rights-enforcer assholes to assert your speech rights. The only way to guarantee those rights is to know someone on the inside.

Radicalized is out in paperback (permalink)

My book Radicalized, a collection of four science fiction novellas, just came out in paperback!

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250229250

It's quite a week for the book! It's a finalist for Canada Reads, one of Canada's national book prizes, and the paperback immediately hit all of Canada's national bestseller lists!

I'm especially delighted to make the indie stores' bestseller list:

https://www.cbc.ca/books/the-bestselling-canadian-books-for-the-week-of-feb-23-29-2020-1.5484366

It's headlining the Toronto Star's list:

https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/2020/03/04/toronto-star-bestsellers-for-the-week-ending-march-4-2020.html

And there's one more national bestseller list that it's hit, but I can't name it until later this week, when it's published. But yeah, it's a hell of a week!

African Whatsapp modders are outcompeting Facebook (permalink)

Whatsapp is more popular than Facebook in Africa – but unauthorized, souped-up, third-party mods of Whatsapp are more popular still.

https://qz.com/africa/1804859/fake-whatsapp-app-more-popular-than-facebook-instagram-in-africa/

African software developers have modified the Whatsapp app to make it suitable to local users. The mods are transmitted from person to person, and sideloaded onto mobile devices.

The king of mods is GB Whatsapp, which allows for multiple accounts on a single device, ups file-transmissions from 16MB to 50MB, and includes privacy features like masking when you're online. GB Whatapp alone has more African users than the Facebook app.

All these mods communicate with users of the stock Whatapp system and with each other. They're tremendous examples of #AdversarialInteroperability, where hackers give users better, situation-appropriate tools without asking an incumbent's permission.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

They really cleanly illustrate how Adversarial Interop defeats network effects by using it against incumbents. The fact that Whatsapp is the most popular app in Africa is an ADVANTAGE for Whatapp modders: they get to treat every Whatsapp user as a potential customer. These mods also show how Adversarial Interop is key to technological self-determination. Rather than meekly submitting to digital colonialism, modders ignore the choices and preferences of a massive US firm and its shareholders and deliver local solutions for local people.

Facebook's response is predictable. Mods violate our terms of service. Modders are crooks. Users caught using mods face bans.

Modders just tell their users to sign up with secondary phone numbers to avoid bans.

Colonial American industry enjoyed a huge advantage over UK rivals because it disregarded UK patents and copyrights, allowing American firms to leapfrog the former colonial masters. Now that it is a net exporter of tech, it expects foreign countries to respect its rules.

This day in history (permalink)

#5yrsago Justice Department issues "scorching" report on Ferguson's Police Department https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/03/ferguson-cops-routinely-block-public-from-filming-them-doj-says/

#5yrsago Matt Haughey retires from Metafilter https://metatalk.metafilter.com/23626/Sixteen-Years

#1yrago The NSA has reportedly stopped data-mining Americans' phone and SMS records https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/us/politics/nsa-phone-records-program-shut-down.html

#1yrago Jibo the social robot announces that its VC overlords have remote-killswitched it, makes pathetic farewell address and dances a final step https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/3/4/18250104/jibo-social-robot-server-shutdown-offline-dead

#1yrago BATHDOOM: A Doom level based on a terrible bathroom remodel https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/eveknn/the-hot-new-doom-mod-is-a-nightmare-diy-bathroom-renovation-bathdoom

#1yrago The People's Republic of Walmart: how late-stage capitalism gives way to early-stage fully automated luxury communism https://boingboing.net/2019/03/05/walmart-without-capitalism.html

#1yrago History is made: petition opposing the EU's #Article13 internet censorship plan draws more signatures than any petition in EU history https://www.change.org/p/european-parliament-stop-the-censorship-machinery-save-the-internet

#1yrago London councils plan to slash benefit payments with an "anti-fraud" system known to have a 20% failure rate https://news.sky.com/story/thousands-face-incorrect-benefit-cuts-from-automated-fraud-detector-11651031

#1yrago America is not "polarized": it's a land where a small minority tyrannize the supermajority https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/05/opinion/oppression-majority.html

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Carl Sondrol (https://twitter.com/sondrol), Naked Capitalism (https://nakedcapitalism.com/), JWZ (https://www.jwz.org/blog/), Danny O'Brien (oblomovka.com/)

Hugo nominators! My story "Unauthorized Bread" is eligible in the Novella category and you can read it free on Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Upcoming appearances:

Canada Reads Kelowna: March 5, 6PM, Kelowna Library, 1380 Ellis Street, with CBC's Sarah Penton https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cbc-radio-presents-in-conversation-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-96154415445

Currently writing: I just finished a short story, "The Canadian Miracle," for MIT Tech Review. It's a story set in the world of my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I'm getting geared up to start work on the novel now, though the timing is going to depend on another pending commission (I've been solicited by an NGO) to write a short story set in the world's prehistory.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: Disasters Don't Have to End in Dystopias: https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/01/disasters-dont-have-to-end-in-dystopias/

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a very special, s00per s33kr1t intro.

[katie-dub]

The Princess of White Chapel (1/12)

Dr Killian Jones is having a terrible day. He’s got a mission, he’s got a time machine, he’s got … drunk. What could possibly go wrong?

AO3

Rated M for alcohol use, violence, minor character death, frank discussions of depression and grief

This is not a Millian fic, but their relationship is discussed and shown in a positive life, if that's not your bag, no hard feelings!

I’m beyond excited to finally share this story with you all for this year’s @captainswanbigbang! I feel like I’ve had this one sitting in my docs forever (forever, nearly two years, same difference), and I can’t wait to see what you all think.

The amazing @princesse-swan created my banner and has some stunning art to share with you while I’m posting. She’s so freaking talented and is the best cheerleader I could have ever hoped for - I don’t know how I got so lucky as to be paired with you lady! Give her some love, because she deserves all the flailing! You'll find her art for me here!

The fantastic @distant-rose and @ultraluckycatnd were my betas, sounding boards, muses and tireless defenders of the oxford comma. Ladies, I salute you!

I have approximately a million more people to thank for helping me to bring this to life, but to save this turning into an embarrassing, over-long, emotional mess like an ill-advised oscars acceptance speech, I’ll just leave your names here, you know what you did and I love you for it. @mahstatins @killiancygnus @phiralovesloki @icecubelotr44 @sambethe @winterbythesea @justanotherwannabeclassic @welllpthisishappening* @fluffandnonsense @belovedcreation @ladyciaramiggles and the ladies of the hub and the ISB.

*psssst it’s Laura’s birthday today! So this chapter is dedicated to her, and you should all go wish her a fabulous day!

A soft hand wrapping around his waist. A mess of tangled curls tickling his cheek. The scent of spices and sex filling his nose.

He kept his eyes closed, basking in the blissful sensations. Life with his love felt like the most perfect dream - and he wasn’t willing to give it up just yet.

“Killian,” a husky whisper in his ear, “Killian, darling, time to wake up now.” A nose nuzzling against the sensitive spot behind his ear, tickling him and making him twitch. Stubbornly, he squeezed his eyes together ever more tightly.

Sharp teeth biting down on his earlobe finally startled him enough to open his eyes. He turned to glare at Milah, forcing himself to hold her gaze so as not to be distracted by her many assets. She giggled at the look of exaggerated fury on his face, ducking down to his ear to whisper “Oops” before licking where her teeth had been.

Killian groaned as she trailed her lips and her tongue along his jaw, kissing, licking, and sucking as she went. His eyes closed as he revelled in the sensations left in her wake, his breath quickening and his pulse starting to race as she inched ever closer to his lips.

When she finally, torturously slowly, brushed her lips against his, he lost all patience. He growled as he tangled his hands into her hair, capturing her lips in a fierce kiss. He rolled her onto her back and broke away, resting his forehead against hers as he caught his breath.

“You’ll be the death of me, my love,” he murmured, peppering Milah’s face with kisses.

“But what a way to go, aye?” was her teasing reply, the last of her words lost to a gasp as he began to kiss his way down her body.

Killian awoke from his dream, disoriented and disheveled, by the sound of his phone ringing. He fell off the sofa as he scrambled about to stop the incessant noise, knocking his elbow on the coffee table and sending a glass of water flying in the process.

“Bloody hell!”

God, he wanted to be back in that dream, a decade in the past where he was with Milah, in love, their naked bodies entwined. Alone, in pain, and wearing the contents of his drink on his now soggy shirt. This was his reality now.

He spotted the phone and grabbed it, barking “what?” as he stalked towards his kitchen for something to clean up the mess.

“Hi Killian,” Belle answered benignly. She always did have saintly levels of patience with his bullshit. “Just checking if you’re going to make it to book club tonight? We’re discussing Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman.” Killian glanced at the clock, 7:35. He was meant to be there… five minutes ago. Fuck. “And before you try fobbing me off by saying that you haven’t read the book and wouldn’t have anything to add anyway, you suggested this one Killian. In fact, you’re meant to be leading the discussion. I believe you said that it’s one of your favourites, a ‘modern classic’?” He could actually hear the air quotes he had no doubt Belle would do if they were together.

“Belle, I’m really sorry, it’s just something important came up.” He glanced at the letter lying on his coffee table, alongside a now nearly empty bottle of rum, his jaw clenching at the sight. “I just can’t tonight.” He winced as he waited for the inevitable backlash. Was she going to get angry? Guilt him with the weight of her crushing disappointment?

“Oh. That’s a shame. I really wanted to introduce you to a friend of mine. Maybe another time.”

Killian made a vaguely noncommittal noise in reply, wanting to rant at her for pushing him towards a new relationship. While Belle was kind enough to be so understanding about him bailing on her yet again, he didn’t feel like he could, but the rage simmered all the same.

“I've got to go, everyone’s waiting. Call me later?”

“Sure, Belle, bye.” Killian hoped he had sounded at least vaguely civil as he jabbed at his phone to end the call. He dropped it next to him as he slumped back against the sofa. Unconsciously, he began to play with the ring on the prosthetic that had replaced his left hand while he fumed silently at Belle’s presumption. When would they all understand that what he had with Milah couldn’t just be replaced? That he didn’t even want to try?

Perhaps if they understood his plans, they wouldn’t push him so hard. He didn’t need a replacement for Milah. He needed to save her. And he would.

So long as time hadn’t run out.

He picked up the letter that had driven him to drink until he passed out when he received it earlier that day. It had been a long time since he had spiralled like that and lost sight of his goal. He re-read the words, still in disbelief, somehow hoping a few hours would have changed their meaning. If it weren’t for the official King’s College London letterhead, he might have thought it was a wind up.

“Dear Dr. Jones,

It is with regret that we must inform you that, in line with the current economic troubles society is facing, we have made the decision to withdraw your funding at the end of the academic year.”

Killian couldn’t read any further. He knew who was behind this move. Bloody Gold, the beast who killed his Milah and took his hand, was still playing games with him. It was one of his favourite things to do: fuck with the man who fucked his wife.

He would never get over how having endless funds could apparently absolve you of any sin. That, combined with powerful allies (a mixture of establishment school friends and power-hungry fools who’d been suckered in by one-sided deals), made him untouchable. He had never even gone to court for his part in the death of his ex-wife and maiming of her lover. Killian’s protests of Gold’s guilt had been taken as merely the ravings of a man crushed by grief.

Everyone had indulged him kindly, until they hadn’t.

The principal and president of King’s College himself had come to Killian to explain how his vendetta against the eminent philanthropist harmed not only his future prospects but threatened his entire faculty’s continued existence. Gold’s generous grants were vital to the university, as he was reminded, and it wouldn’t do to upset the man.

So Killian had chosen to play the long game. Almost as soon as Milah was killed, he had sworn to himself that he would use his research to find a way to save her life. And after months of enduring Gold’s bullying, he had also made it his mission to destroy the man while he did it.

It was so much easier to smile and make nice where necessary when he could picture how he might one day rip Gold’s throat out.

Reductions in funding could be brushed aside as he enhanced his prosthetic so that it moved as fluidly as his remaining hand - and was more deadly than it could ever be. Academic papers that were blocked from publication without justification became but a minor nuisance as he trained to take on Gold’s henchmen. Applications for grants and proposals to present research that were denied were just mild irritations while he worked on the time machine that would bring all his plans to fruition.

Killian scrunched the letter up and threw it into the bin, then dragged his hand through his hair.

The end of the academic year. That was only one month away. He had one month to make his time machine work or 10 years of endless toil - and his only chance to save his love - would have all been for nothing.

He had been without his Milah for longer than he’d been with her now, but he still felt her loss as keenly as the night he lost her. The sound of her voice may be dimming in his memory, but the way she made him feel would never fade, his love for her would never die. At times, he felt as though Gold had reached right into him and ripped his heart from his chest back then. In its place was a black hole that allowed for no love, no joy and certainly no mercy.

Belle, Robin, Will, and the rest had no idea what they were dealing with when they tried to play matchmaker. When they tried to get him out of his shell and having fun. When they tried to make him live his life like a respectable member of society.

Oh, if only they knew.

Killian had always been a man of many vices: drink, gambling, sex. But then Milah had come along. She had changed him, had made him better. He still indulged, but in a socially respectable fashion and not with the crazed air of a man on the brink of destruction. When she died, he could practically feel his friends holding their breath, waiting for the wildfire to ignite. What they didn’t know - couldn’t know - was that he had something else to keep him going now: her rescue and his revenge.

His head felt fuzzy, the hangover from his earlier desperate binge already kicking in. This was why he had abstained. He couldn’t afford to feel like this. Not when Milah needed him.

He closed his eyes and remembered the first time he saw her.

His head was swimming after several hours of shots and pints and god knows what else. Yet, one look at her and everything became clearer. She was sat in a corner, looking lonely and nervous, glancing about furtively. She had looked up from her drink and caught his eye, smiling shyly and quickly looking away. She was stunning.

Then a brute of a man stepped between them.

Killian’s first thought had been sheer irritation at having his view of this goddess blocked. But then he noticed that the man had one hand on her shoulder, his grip harsh.

Killian hadn’t stopped to think before racing over to her. As he moved closer, he could see that his instinct about this man had been right: she looked anxious and annoyed.

He tapped the giant on the shoulder, smiling brightly at him when he turned around.

“Excuse me, would you mind letting go of this lovely lady?” Killian winked at her and was delighted to see a faint blush and a barely suppressed smile cross over her face. “Once you’ve done that, could you go… well, anywhere else?” Definitely not his wittiest line, but Killian was just impressed that he managed to sound clear and confident.

A confused expression crossed over the man’s face and he did indeed let the lady go. “Were you talking to me?”

“I’m sorry, did I talk too fast? You’ve managed to take your hand off the lady, excellent work. 10 out of 10 for that. Now all that’s left is for you to kindly fuck off.”

“And what if I don’t?”

“Well…” Killian tilted his head to the side, as if musing on the question. But then he balled his hand up into a fist, punched the man hard and knocked him to the ground.

He looked up at the woman who had captured his attention. Her eyes were wide with fear and, if he wasn’t mistaken, admiration. She stared at him in shock for a moment before speaking.

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

“He shouldn’t have been touching you without your consent.” All of a sudden Killian panicked; he knew how the situation had looked, but perhaps she hadn’t been a damsel in distress after all? “I mean, you looked very unhappy about him being here, did I get that wrong?”

“No, you were right. But you shouldn’t have done that.”

“Why not?”

“He’s one of my husband’s men sent to bring me home.” She spat out the words, her eyes darting around the room as if checking for others. After a few moments of searching and presumably finding nothing, she seemed to relax.

While Killian did note this odd behaviour, he was more preoccupied by the word “husband”. He felt his face fall. Of course this goddess was unavailable. She looked up at him and grinned wickedly.

“I wasn’t ready to go home anyway. Want to have a drink with me … ?”

“I’m Killian,” he supplied, looking down at her left hand to see a ring stubbornly placed on her finger. “And you’re married.”

“My name’s Milah, actually.”

Killian laughed at that. “It’s lovely to meet you, Milah.”

That had been the start of a dark and dangerous affair that had ultimately led to his Milah’s death. Killian squeezed his eyes together, fighting back tears. Even before her untimely end, he had wondered if his presence in her life was more trouble than it was worth, but she had always reassured him that his love had made her complete. He had certainly felt that way about her - and with her gone, he was broken and could never be whole again.

He needed Milah back, and time was running out. What better time than the present to go back to the past?

He didn’t stop to consider the obvious factors working against him: he was tired, stressed and intoxicated. He was fairly certain that “drunk in charge of a time machine” went against some kind of time traveller rule.

(Probably up there with “don’t change the past”, but he was hardly going to obey that one, was he?)

Then there was the small matter that he hadn’t yet managed a successful test. Most of the time, he would switch the machine on and nothing would happen.

But every now and then, it would glitch and cause odd ripples in the world around him. His educated guess about the strange phenomenon was that the machine was swapping his particles with particles of Killian Jones from alternative universes - pulling pieces of some other him into this one. One time his prosthetic shimmered and mutated into a hook and back again before he could so much as groan at the cliché. Another time, he went colour blind for a few hours. Once his hair mysteriously turned blonde for a week until he could recalibrate the machine.

(He had to wonder at the alternative version of him who thought that was a good look. He assumed in that reality Killian Jones did not have a friend like Will Scarlet, intent on mocking him relentlessly.)

But he was confident that his calculations were all correct now. This time he would manage it.

He grabbed the bag that he had packed long ago with everything he needed to exact his revenge and stumbled down to the tube. The air was oppressive in the underground station thanks to the late July heat as he waited for his train. He swayed, swallowed down a wave of nausea and cursed himself for choosing the hellish heat over cycling to campus as he usually did. Some sensible part of him had realised that he didn’t have the wit needed to cycle through London traffic - and yet that self-preservation instinct wasn’t strong enough to stop him from propelling himself on a dangerous quest.

The dry, hot wind of the approaching train provided some relief even as it burnt his skin. He clambered aboard and settled into an empty seat. He was grateful for the unspoken British rule that one must sit as far away from other living souls as was physically possible and never, upon pain of death, make eye contact with or talk to strangers. And so, he made it to Embankment station without once having to so much as glance at another human, instead ruminating on calculations and probabilities in his head.

The air outside was only marginally more refreshing than that below ground. It didn’t have that stale, recycled quality, but it was thick with humidity and the scent of melting tarmac. He tugged at his collar and loosened yet another button on his shirt. In his rush to leave, he had failed to change out of the shirt he had fallen asleep in and he could smell alcohol and sweat in the fabric. It suddenly felt inauspicious to greet his lost love in such crumpled clothes, but time was against him. He had to press on.

No one stopped him as he made his way into the nearly deserted building. The undergrads were home for the summer, so the halls were stalked only by the professors who finally had time to do their real work, students plugging away at their doctorates and the unlucky few who needed to retake exams using the month before resits to study hard. At this time of night in particular, few were to be seen in the Strand, unless, of course, they were haunting the bars that were littered in and around campus instead of devoting themselves to academia.

Killian Jones had long since accepted that his habits fell far out of the realm of what most considered normal. And to be completely honest? He couldn’t care less.

He finally made his way to his lab, unlocking the door with a buzz of excitement. It was finally happening.

He strode straight to the machine, stashing his bag in the footwell then climbing inside and buckling in.

He took a deep breath, staring blankly at the calendar on the wall in front of him. He had long thought about this moment. He knew exactly when he needed to go to: one week before Milah’s death. Enough time to get to Gold and stop him, but not long enough to risk meeting himself. He hoped anyway.

He paused for a moment, suddenly realising how reckless this was. He hadn’t run any last checks. No one knew what he was doing.

But then he thought of Milah. She deserved this.

He input the coordinates and hit the command to send.

For a long moment, nothing happened.

Then lights began to swirl in front of him, moving fast enough to make him dizzy. He saw a beam of light shooting out from the machine and blasting through a window - that certainly hadn’t happened before. He hoped that was a sign of success, he really didn’t want to have to clean up the mess if it wasn’t. Then, just as suddenly as the light show had started, it stopped. Everything went still.

Had it worked?

Killian cautiously stepped out of the time machine and looked around. He was still in the lab surrounded by his equipment. His eyes flicked to the calendar on the wall. It stubbornly continued to read 2017 and he knew this attempt had failed.

He clenched his jaw in an attempt to keep the tears from his eyes. He’d let Milah down. Again. After all these years, he still couldn’t save her. If this hadn’t worked, he honestly didn’t know if anything would.

“It didn’t work,” he muttered to himself, racking his brain for something, anything, that he had done wrong. He must have miscalculated something, but he had been so sure he had it this time. “Why didn’t it bloody work?” He swept his hand across the nearest counter, sending everything scattering to the floor in his frustration.

His head pounded and his stomach turned, reminding him of how much alcohol he’d consumed. He knew he should stay, should try to understand his mistake for Milah’s sake, but he just couldn’t. His soul was weary with the weight of yet another failure, of carrying the burden of his revenge alone, of the sad and empty existence his life had become.

Tears pricked at his eyes and his chest ached with anger. If only Gold hadn't interfered again, pushing him to act before he was ready... This was all his fault.

No, it's yours, whispered a voice from somewhere deep inside. This is your failure. Why did you ever think that you could achieve the impossible?

The whispers of his inner tormentor grew louder and more cruel, detailing his faults, all the ways he let down those he loved, and showing him that he could never have his happy life back. He had done too much, been too distant, his life was empty because he made it so. The vicious narrative overwhelmed him until he felt physically sick.

He needed to get out of there, so he left, leaving his supplies and the shattered remains of his window scattered across the floor.

[bigbadbarry-toyrobot]

I started writing this post back in July, so a bit out of date now, but though I best post it since I’ve spent nearly 3 months writing it! Ha!

As a result of this blog, something that started as a sort of secret diary to empty my head, I’ve met people in the flesh and online, some that live near and some on the other side of the world, some that are at a similar stage in their journey through parenting a child with additional needs and some that are just starting, I often get asked for advice about school and how it went for Bailey and I’ve been meaning to write this for months, so here it finally is, a bit about our first year at school and the things that worked for us.

The start of school for any parent is scary, even more so when your a parent of a child with additional needs, will they love school? Will they hate it? How will you all cope with this next step? How will other children react to your child? What will the parents think of them? Will he be classed as the naughty boy? Will people gossip about him; us behind our backs? Will he be included, will he make friends, will people tease him and he’ll be oblivious, the questions circled round and round my head for weeks and months, we worried, though we shouldn’t have....my sons school was recently graded outstanding, I myself have been through 3 ofsted inspections the most recent this year, it isn’t easy and I can honestly say that any grade a school gets today is mostly a fair representation of how the school works and what it rightfully deserves. We can all pull an outstanding lesson out the bag with a bit of effort but my sons school was graded outstanding in all area and I have seen first hand how outstanding their SEN provision is, in particular the schools senco has been a dream come true. She has made Baileys transition from nursery fairly smooth, there have been some bumps along the way, some pretty big ones in fact, a broken nose, some tears; mostly mine, I’ve bitten my nails down to nothing with worry and Bailey also did a bit of biting himself, which fingers crossed is now very much in the past.

The school reacted accordingly and have put in place the support that he is entitled to, deserves, and what is essentially needed for him to be in main stream education, where he currently most definitely should be. He has 1:1 support and bunch of clubs and interventions are used to support him and other students across the school that need that bit of extra help. Baileys has had Lego therapy, lunch time games clubs, SALT and a specialist autism teacher come to support staff because as a teacher you pretty much get zero training for teaching kids with ASD; ‘read that PowerPoint slide guys, now go teach’ - that’s a whole other blog post though...I only finally feel confident teaching autistic kids, because of Bailey, because I understand that what works for him won’t work for another kid, like most kids! Any way as a teacher I thought I had a good understanding of what he was entitled to and how to get it, but it’s often different from borough to borough, I can’t recommend enough getting a good understanding of what your child is entitled to, with or without a EHCP. An amazing book for this is a book called ‘How to raise a happy autistic child’ I wish someone had given it to me when he was diagnosed, its full of what you need to know for school, unfortunately I discovered the book after we’d been through it all. However we found our way and it’s not been easy, somthing that did make it a little easier was that we requested termly meetings with Baileys SENCO, the school doesn’t really have to offer that unless they have a EHCP, however these meetings were hugely beneficial, to discuss his progress but also just to immediately act on what our next step would be. We are still in the process of trying to get his EHCP, a task I’ve had to take on myself again...we have secured him a PRA- pupil resource agreement but this doesn’t even slightly cover the cost of his 1:1. There are a tonne of acronyms used in education even more in SEND, it’s extremely useful getting to know what they all mean, it’s stops you feeling so lost and definitely gives you a bit more confidence when talking to professionals because unfortunately some will talk to you like you are an idiot or fob you off, I’ve had the Borough SENCO not only take it upon themselves to make decision that had a negative impact on my sons education but also lie to me about it, so getting a understanding of education lingo is massively beneficial!

Though school has been brilliant it is decisions that we have made as a family that have also greatly impacted on his first successful year at school. We were unsure about immediately telling people he is autistic as it’s just a small part of who he is, we were scared about creating a label for Bailey, we didn’t want him to just become the ‘Autistic boy’ but equally we didn’t want people to label him the ‘naughty boy’ because he actually isn’t, being naughty generally isn’t in his nature, but even now through lack of understanding other children label him as naughty.

When Bailey started school his language delay to the untrained eye wasn’t so obvious, it still isn’t obvious unless you know what your looking for or you spend a great deal of time with him and start to spot the repetition. However language is something that is difficult for him, early in reception he found it difficult to express himself verbally and unfortunately for us and him, he took to biting as a way of keeping unwanted attention at bay...someone tickled him too much and he didn’t know how to make them stop, so he bit them, someone snatched a toy and he bit them, this happened 3 or 4 times, not loads but enough to put him on peoples radars, parents were called and I was worried it was going to start the gossiping, the stay away from that boy, he’s naughty conversations, so we made the decision that we would be open and honest and share that Bailey is Autistic, and frankly it was one of the best decisions we made. Parents mostly have responded well and I know as a result many families are talking about neuro diversity with their children and that’s fantastic.

Last April during Autism awareness week we set up Baileys just giving page, we shared it with his class group and his SENCO who then shared it with the whole school. A bunch of Baileys school friends came and supported him and it was incredible to see his friends and their parents showing their support, it was around this time in the year that the worry started to ebb away for me, I mean it never really goes, but things were starting to click into place for us, for him. He loves school and loves his friends dearly, more than they are probably even aware.

Bailey was sponsored across the school, the school shared his just giving page in the newsletter for about a month, which obviously got people talking about autism and neuro diversity. I worked with the senco and we talked about ways we could help the children gain a better understanding of what it means to be Autistic, they delivered circle time across the school tactfully and Bailey even delivered a little presentation about his walk during a whole school assembly. Bailey still struggles to tell me about his day but occasionally I hear bits through his teacher or from his friends...usually the girls and it always has me close to tears, he is so well loved and he’s done this all by himself by just being him , up until recently no one knew who me or Sam were, as he goes to breakfast and after school club we had limited contact with other parents, but as he’s constantly invited to parties I’ve got to know some parents now. I often get stopped and people say ‘oh are u Baileys mummy?!?...ohh he’s so sweet, Or I love him so much, I think being in the choir has also made him more visible to the parents and other kids of the school, which has also been a good thing, as he now has a bunch of friends across the school. I also think it’s been really good in supporting him with taking part in groups, making friends and has given him more confidence, though he’s always been pretty confident. Baileys reception choir teacher is also lovely and has gone out of her way to make sure he has a role in the choir, even though his participation is alway a bit hit or miss, the fact that he actually sings is incredible as he never did before he started school not even nursery rhymes. Baileys reception year choir dedicated and donated all the money they had raised from their first public performance, (which Bailey picked his nose the whole way through) to his just giving page, this took the total money he raised to over £1000.

The first year has not been completely smooth sailing for us always, and I’m not going to lie it can be tough and hugely over whelming juggling family, work and school, despite that Bailey has loved every minute of school so somethings going right. Being so honest means I’ve been contacted by parents who are about to embark on their scary first year with their child with additional needs and it’s been great to support them as they start their journeys, and I hope that as result of our honesty and the schools support, their children our coming into a school that respects diversity in all its forms.

Finally Bailey may not be able to read or write, but he’s nailed making friends, and that is all I ever wanted for him. I always though it was the academic things that were most important to me, but when we met the autism specialist teacher she asked us what we most wanted for Bailey and I immediately went to say that he can write and read and she looked at me, head slightly tilted with that expression...really? ..... and In that moment I immediately realised I didn’t! I couldn’t care less about those things, as long as he’s happy, I’m happy and having friends is what makes him so very happy, so reception was not about learning to read or write it was about learning to make friends and I’m happy with that. watching him with friend he actually plays with and not along side is amazing! Fuck knows how he’s learnt how to be such a social butterfly... It’s not a skill his learnt from his mum, though he definitely got the showing off from Sam!

[iwastoldthisisgoodforme]

7.9.19

Class. Felt a bit jipped since I was placed with lower level people so the exercise ended quite early.

Was planning to head to Lentils but Lorraine texted me after class (she had been sent downstairs with Dave so I thought she already left) and asked if I wanted to chill. I had to jump off the train since she wasn’t even at the station and waited for her. She asked what I wanted to do and I said I was hungry so she said we should go to Town Hall. She asked if I had anything going on later and I said nothing so she teased me for being a loner. On the train she gave me shit for wearing sunglasses since I looked like a douche but I told her my eyes are sensitive to light and I pointed out the old Asian people wearing sunglasses so she said I look like a FOB which I said is fine but I’m still not a douche. We discussed class since she went down with David and his teaching style but also talked about Libby. We said that she’s pretty nice but she is pretty insecure and doesn’t seem to realize it. When we got off at Town Hall I mentioned to her how Libby one time asked if I knew what’s been going on with her the past few months and when I said yes, she asked how I knew and I said that she always mentions it in her circs.

Lorraine suggested some food places including Pepper Lunch but we ended up going to the udon place that I ate at with Mina and Hyejin.  While walking there she mentioned how Libby likes someone at the Pulse but she wouldn’t say who although she gave me his initials C.C. which I thought was Chris Combes especially when I asked if he’s a dancer.

She asked me how long I planned to stay at the Pulse and I had to fess up to her that this would likely be my last term. She seemed visibly upset about it and asked if there were any alternatives and I told her the deal with the farm work and trying to get a sponsored job. I also told her about how I had no idea what I’m going to do back in the US and explained to her how I can’t just hold a part time job in the US like I did here in Australia. I also was telling her how I was scared I would end up like my cousins who are single and not really going anywhere but she reminded me that I am not like them because I don’t want to live comfortably and I want do something more. I started telling her how I think a lot of what is holding me down lately is just being exhausted and being tired of trying so hard all the time only for me to fail like my struggles with engineering and relationships.

She asked me if I wanted to head to Tomntoms coffee and chill there. It was like a Korean starbucks from what she told me so I said I’m down, I’m always down. I think we started talking about people dating each other at the Pulse and I mentioned Zac and how he mentioned there was something going on with another girl. I said he never told me who it is and she asked me who I think it is and since I didn’t know her initials I just said she was in today’s class and she immediately guessed Courtney. I asked her why she though Courtney and she said that Courtney just has that personality that she thinks guys would like. I also brought up how Anna said something along the lines of “I want you Chris, I haven’t had you in so long” and how nobody seemed to be laughing at that except me but Lorraine said her and Amandine were trying to keep their laughter in.

After ordering coffee, Lorraine said she was going to use the bathroom and I realized Yuna had called me to my surprise. She apologized for bailing on me last night and she sounded sincere but I told her if I knew she was working so long, I would’ve picked another day. She was asking if I was free that night. I was having a bit of trouble hearing her so I stepped outside but went back in. She said she had some training to do but would be free later so she’d text me when she finished. Lorraine was laughing at me and said I was talking with an accent and asked if I was speaking another language.

When we settled in a little bit, she told me she was going through some things too. She said she had been second guessing her relationship because she doesn’t really put priority into it since she’s always busy with work or acting. She often gets home late. I asked her if this is because she’s just so busy and she wants to put in effort or if she just really doesn’t see him as a priority and she said it’s the latter. She doesn't really put in any effort to see him and said that he loves her more than she loves him and actually said she loves him but isn’t in love with him. But she did tell me she could see herself marrying him and that he was perfect in the sense that he was very accommodating in that he’s patient in letting her follow her dreams and that he would be willing to move to the US in 2-3 years like she wants. She told me James said it sounded like she’s breaking up with him but she said that she was just voicing how she thought and that she didn’t think it was fair to him. He told her she should talk to her high school friends about it since they knew her best. So she was planning to meet up with them later but she said she knew what they were going to say. I told her how I felt, especially about being with someone out of convenience.

She told me she shouldn’t been in a relationship because she’s selfish and she’s used to having things go her way. I asked her if she didn’t want to be in relationship but she said she did.

We eneded up bitching about the Pulse like the prices and how unstructured it is and how they make us figure out a lot of things for ourselves. Not only does it waste our time, it’s misdirectional and we’re wasting money. We talked about Tony’s activity earlier that day and how he had no idea what he was doing to make a good activity and yet he had already done a few yet still didn’t know what he needed to do. Not only that when Chris was questioning him about it, it didn’t seem like Tony really understand the point Chris was trying to make.

Yuna texted me and called saying she finished but I missed her call so I called her back. She asked where I was and when I said at a cafe near Town Hall she said she could be there in about 30 minutes so she would text me when she arrives.

Lorraine and I talked more for a bit but then she started fighting with her boyfriend over text so we didn’t talk so much after that. Yuna called me to tell me she’s in front of the woolies so I went to meet her. When I went to say goodbye to Lorraine, she hugged me tighter and longer than usual.

I saw Yuna sitting down waiting for me. She was facing towards the Woolies so she didn’t see me come from behind. She was quite excited to see me and gave me a big hug. She asked if I was hungry (I wasn’t that hungry because of the coffee but I could eat) and so we went to get food. I asked her what kind of training she had to do at work and she said crime training against robberies which surprised me. We passed by the hotel where Clara and I had drinks so I mentioned that place has a good happy hour so she said let’s go afterwards. I noticed while we were walking she would stay fairly close to me and our hands would brush up against each other sometimes. She wanted Japanese food so we eneded up going to the rice bowl place next to Marukame udon. She got a teriyaki chicken bowl while I got a curry plate (I realized I accidentally ordered one without meat). She gave me some of her food and I let her try my curry as well. She likes spicy food and added more spice to her food. I got her some water and showed her some pics from Hawaii and the wedding. She seemed a little bit reserved when we were eating at first but started to open up a little more as we kept eating. She asked about where I work and I showed her Kintaro’s work location. Yuna also asked if US was cheaper or Australia and I said living and working in Australia is more expensive. I asked if she missed Misaki and she said of course and I said she lost her cooking partner and she showed me some of the food she made in her apartment with Misaki and some of their classmates. She asked me if I had to exchange money when I came to Australia and I said I did and she asked why since we both used dollars. She asked what color and I said green, everything green. She asked if even the coins are green and I said no, silver except for pennies which are copper but she didn't know what that is.

Afterwards, we went to the Albion Hotel although we passed it. We ended up buying a pitcher of Sapporo and she was so excited to see Japanese beer that she took a picture. It was the first time she saw Japanese beer in an Australian pub. She said it was better to share and I know she can drink quite a lot so I knew we should get a pitcher. She said she’d get the next round. We ended up sitting at the same place Clara and I sat. 

I asked if she likes sake but she said not really. I told her I started to like sake after working at Kintaro and told her about junmai, ginjo and daiginjo but she just started laughing because I knew more about it than her.

I told her that in the US we need to drive and showed her a picture of my car which she found cool. She didn’t have a car in Kanagawa but her parents did.

Vaguely remember talking to her about pasta and showing her ravioli. She likes Attack on Titan like me. Her favorite is Levi and Mikasa and I agreed but I told her I like Sasha because she’s so funny.

I told her about how we call raccoons trash pandas and how Aussies call the ibis, bin chickens, which she found amusing. I showed her the pet birds I had.

I asked if she did any sports and she said yes and showed me pictures of a skiing trip she went on here in Australia with her classmates.

I taught her a bit of english since she told me about the difficulty she had with lashes and rashes. She showed me some of the beer they have at the pub. I asked if she worked as a bartender before but she hadn’t. She asked me if there’s any words she can use besides cute and I told her adorable (I also said Yuna is adorable as an example). At some point I also told her how certain English words mean different things like tension, which is a good thing in Japanese (excitement) but is generally bad in English unless it is something like sexual tension.

At one point, she showed me some pictures from when she visited Hawaii and I was actually surprised since the picture of her looked quite different from how she looks now. I said she she is still cute but in Japanese which I guess sounded weird so I had to tell her in English that she looks pretty in both pictures. She also showed me a picture of her parents. Her dad is quite tall, even taller than me by but 1 or 2 cm.

She showed me the screenshots she took of her crime training and was saying how she didn’t understand it and asked if I understood but I said I didn’t without the background info. Her phone wallpaper was some Japanese model. She also told me that when she was younger she wanted to either work with animals or learn English but learning English was more practical so she picked that. She also showed me her dog. Her favorite animals are dogs and dolphins and we talked about how smart dolphins are. She told me the cafe she works at, Komma, is fairly new but all the employees are Asian. She said they’re nice but she likes working at the bar more because they’re Australian so she can work on her English.

She had to go to the toilet many times which surprised me since it’s usually me that needs to go. She bought some Carlton Draught for us to try and we liked it.

Yuna was craving ice cream so we walked over to Regent’s place. We saw some cheesecake at Uncle Tetsu’s so Yuna asked if I wanted to share so she bought one and we tried a chocolate one which was pretty good. Afterwards, we went to Matcha and shared the green tea and black sesame. Yuna really liked it because earlier I asked her if she likes dessert and she said she likes ice cream but doesn’t like cake or really sweet things. She kept mentioning how much she loved the dessert. When we sat down to eat it, she actually took a spoonful and fed me so I did the same with her. When we finished, I asked if she wanted to walk around so we went near Mooi and she looked at the earrings. She showed me which ones she liked but said they were expensive. We also tried on some sunnies, some hats, and some headbands with the LINE characters. She was shy about me taking pictures of her.

We walked around more Regent’s like looking at the doriyaki and were going to check out Daiso but it was closed. There was a picture of deer in Nara and I asked if she had been there and she said yes. I asked if she liked deer but she said not as much as dolphins or dogs. I remarked how everything in Australia closes early and how Daiso is expensive there which she agreed. We also checked out the restaurants nearby which I think she had gone to a few. We didn’t know what to do afterwards so we just walked around aimlessly. I asked what she will do tomorrow and she said she will go to a BBQ and invited me but I said I have to work. We passed by a bar she had been to and she said it was nice. I asked if it was expensive and she said not too expensive. We were going to grab just one drink but I got turned away because I was too red. We talked about how crazy that is. In Japan she said everyone is blush and drunk but nobody gets turned away. She asked if I miss the US and I said some things I miss like not being turned away at a bar. I asked if she misses Japan and she said only her family and friends. She also told me that in Australia it is easy to find Japanese food compared to when she lived in Malta. We also passed by her cafe and I told her I would visit her there but she said to visit her when she’s getting off so we can hang out afterwards.

When we passed by a conbini she asked if I like any of the candy there so I said yes and pointed out the sour patch kids and said they have it in the US also. I said they are sour and sweet but not too sweet. She offered to pay for it but I said it was ok. When we opened the bag she took one and fed it to me so I fed some to her too. She really liked them. We were heading towards Darling Harbor and saw a club nearby. She had never been to that club before so we decided to go. On the escalator ride I told her I wanted to try her cooking and she said she would make me a bento and asked what I like. I said anything is fine and she asked what kind of meat I like. When we were trying to find the next escalator we grabbed each others hands and started holding them. On the way down I held her and “Yuna, hontou ni kirei” and she smiled and said thank you. We stood in line for the club and she was trying to hear the music. We took out our IDs but she was shy to show me her passport. When we got in, the cover charge was $25 so we left since it was too expensive. She was really shocked about how expensive it was. When we left, Despacito was playing and she said she liked that song and started singing it. She had a really lovely voice. We mentioned going to karaoke.

We ended up walking around Darling Harbor a bit  and held hands at some points and sitting and talking while feeding each other candy. We looked at the flavors and there was blackcurrant which we don’t have in the US and is apparently illegal. I asked if she liked coffee and she said she did so I said if she goes to Lentils in the daytime, I’ll make her coffee. She asked about Lentils since she forgot the name and said how vegan food is so healthy. We also talked about Thai food and I showed her my favorite, pad see ew. I told her how I get paid tomorrow for the floor manager so she said no wonder I work there. She asked if I’m busy next week and I said just Monday and Wednesday and when she asked why I said I have class. She asked what kind of class and I said acting so she was quite surprised. I asked her what season is her favorite and she said fall (she told me how people in Malta were confused cause Brits call it autumn) because she likes the fall colors and her birthday is in fall. She said she wants to go the beach but when it’s warm so she can wear a bikini and I said let’s go (I really want to see her in a bikini).

We walked back afterwards to the bridge but I told her I would walk her home. At times she would hold my arm and I put my arm around her to keep her warm. She showed me the bar where she works. I commented on how I was surprised that hotels here are bars. There was also the Pyrmont hotel we passed by and she said she had gone there with her roommates a few times and it was a pretty standard bar. We also talked about rent prices and her apartment where she lives on the 9th floor. She asked about renting a car and said she wanted to go to the beach so I said let’s go sometime. When we got to her place, she hugged me tight and thanked me so much and told me to text her and to tell her when I get home. Before I left I asked if I could kiss her and she pulled me against the wall so the guy couldn’t see us and we kissed each other a bit. I wasn’t sure how into me she was but she did kiss me on her own before I left.

[flauntpage]

Wushu Watch: Neckbeards and Nunchucks

A love for weaponry is sometimes seen as quirky but it isn't exactly a social taboo. Whether it is an armory full of firearms or a wall covered in blades and staffs, you can probably recall at least one acquaintance that collects or collected armaments. Cars, weapons, power tools: boys will always love their toys. Most treat a collection purely as a hobby and a passion, but you will run into the occasional collector who is convinced he is preparing for something bigger. That one friend who jokes about how well they would do in the zombie apocalypse but brings it up often enough to make it clear that they actually do dream of becoming the savior of the wasteland. No single item of weaponry has developed quite the same peculiar cult around it that the katana has. It is a rare week on the Internet, particularly the martial arts side of it, that you don't see a photo of a doughy teenager, possibly wearing a trilby or fedora, holding a katana and glaring at the camera. Thanks to anime the katana has become the weapon of choice for what is colloquially termed the 'neckbeard'.

Perhaps the hoping for 'barbarians at the gate' or the zombie apocalypse can be explained quite simply: when else are you going to get away with carrying around a sword outside of your house? This question cuts straight to the kokoro of the issue with the cult of anime swordsmanship: no matter how good you get at cutting through water bottles (or rolled up tatami if you're going authentic) no problem you ever encounter will occur while you are wearing a replica Edo era sword at your waist.

At least… that is what the normies would have you think. As it turns out there have been numerous cases of the katana actually changing the course of real life altercations in the twenty first century. For instance, in April 2015 a man in Cordoba repelled three home invaders, one allegedly armed with a pistol, by seizing a decorative sword from his wall and going berserk. In 2009, a John Hopkins student killed a suspected burglar with a katana. And perhaps most famously there is the story of Kairo Seijuro.

One night in 2012, a standard World Star recording was turned into a Kurosawa movie when a bystander drew a katana and defused the situation. Showing a lack of self-awareness that would make Tony Ferguson do a double take, Kairo Seijuro gave this legendary interview in the aftermath:

Four years later the 30-year-old Seijuro died after his kayak capsized while he was taking his 16-year-old female disciple to practice swordsmanship on 'Sunflower Island'. I wish that any part of that were a joke, but sadly it is not.

At any rate, the sword bros may have a point. If you happen to be carrying a katana when the muck hits the fan, or within reach of a katana when your home is broken into, you will be better off for it. It is hard to dispute that a long bladed weapon that can be swung or thrusted wildly from half a metre away isn't handy to have in a life or death altercation. Frankly, if you have a sword and zero training with it—even if it isn't good quality or sharp—you are at a tremendous advantage in defending yourself from everything but a gun, held by a decent shot, at a range beyond sprinting distance. And for those who like knights more than samurais, getting angry about this concession to katanas, yes that is equally true of a longsword.

The Chuckers

A stranger fascination is the one which exists among real, trained, career long martial artists. I am referring to the endearing fetish that martial artists have for the nunchaku or 'nunchucks'. Part of this must be the taboo: there are plenty of places in the Western world where two bits of wood joined by a string are illegal. Norway, Spain, Canada—the U.K. even censored out Michelangelo's use of nunchucks in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Why? Ten seconds of nunchaku twirling in Enter the Dragon most often receives the blame. Bruce Lee's small segment of nunchaku use caused an army of children to whip either themselves or their siblings in the eye with improvised 'chucks'.

More of the nunchaku's appeal has to be that you can do neat tricks with them. They were the original fidget spinners for weird kids. Bruce Lee did them and they looked super cool. Nick Diaz used them between bong rips on a Strikeforce conference call and he's too cool for school. And just to be clear to those who don't own a set of chucks, they are fun. Well, they are fun if you use a foam set. If you use a wooden set it is essentially self-harm.

The origins of the nunchaku are murky at best. Some say they used to be a rice flail, others say they were 'clappers' used by officials to gain the attention of crowds. Either way the belief is that they started out as something inconspicuous and evolved into a weapon. And that's the beauty of the nunchaku when you consider them in the context of say, Okinawa, where weapons were prohibited but crime was as common as any society without street lighting or a police force. Joe Average could pick up a set of nunchucks without ever having seen them before, start swinging, and have a good chance of hurting whoever gets in the way. That is the genius of a flail after all—all you have to do is swing it.

But to a traditional martial artist a flail is more than a flail, it is as versatile as the human hand. The simple bit of string (or occasionally chain) that binds the two pieces of wood has become an obsession to chuckers. Every book or video you encounter on nunchucks has someone demonstrating how to parry a straight punch—it's always a stepping straight punch with these people and if you read Wushu Watch on the regular you know why that is—and entwine it.

Then the opponent is thrown down by the wrist, somehow, as if his other hand isn't entirely free to do whatever he feels like in the meantime. This stupidity reaches its height when knives come into the equation.

Once again, if you happen to be attacked in your home and you have a set of nunchucks handy, they might help you. If you have a knife, or a baseball bat, or almost anything else, they will probably work better. The downside of flails is that they need a bit more space and as soon as they clatter off a wall or doorway, that swing is worthless. That is why passing your nunchucks all the way around someone's wrist or neck in a single smooth motion is so far-fetched. Fortunately few teachers are advocating taking your nunchucks with you, though in Nunchaku for the 21 st Century, George Dillman insists that you take your chucks in your bag with you at all times.

In Nunchaku for the 21st Century, G-Dilly also lays out some of the more unorthodox strikes available to the chuck-master. Defeating the point of holding a flail, Dillman insists that throwing the butt of one of the sticks into the opponent's face, while holding the other, is a great surprise technique. But is it better than actually swinging at someone with a flail?

Fumio Demura's classic text, Nunchaku: Karate Weapon of Self Defence, contains a whole heap of silly stuff. For instance, using the area of the nunchucks with the most slack to catch that mythical overhead knife strike, entwining it, and throwing a perfect high kick.

Where Demura's book is at its best from a strategic stand point is encouraging the nunchuck user to simply swing at what is available. Clip yourself with a wooden nunchuck and it hurts. Take a full swing at someone's arm or leg and you're going to do some damage. Overwhelmingly material on nunchucks focuses on defend and counter, which is all well and good from a chivalrous stand point, but if you have a weapon in hand, any time the opponent is close enough to attack you and they don't have a weapon, you have undermined the main reason to have a weapon. As with almost everything we discuss in Wushu Watch, nunchuckistadors focus on overcomplicated responses to oversimplified problems. A guy is coming at you with a stepping straight punch? Give him one of these!

If the stories about the origins of the nunchucks are true, they made sense at one point. The purpose of most weapons in most martial arts is to make use of what was permitted or available. The Shaolin monastery developed a reputation for its spear techniques, but to a single monk travelling on the road, who will likely run into trouble if he is waltzing around with a spear, the staff is far more useful because it makes use of what is ostensibly a walking stick. Similarly the weapons of Okinawan kobudo all seem reasonably discreet. The tonfa, which is essentially a night stick, is reckoned to be the handle from a grindstone. The kama is simply a sickle used for farmwork. The kuwa is just a hoe, and the eku is just an oar. The bo and jo are just plain old sticks. Other traditional weapons from the 'weaponless kingdom' include unnecessarily sturdy and sharp hair pins. Much like carrying a baseball in your car to justify the baseball bat in the trunk, all of these things can be justified in their context. If you carry around a sickle or sword or nunchuck today you'll draw a lot of questions and look like a tit.

The interesting thought is that there are tons of things that you carry around or encounter every day that can comfortably be weaponized almost as effectively as the stuff that we suspect Okinawan peasants had to make do with. The most obvious example that almost everyone will have in their pocket right now is a sturdy, jagged key.

Though this grip has often been criticized for the damage it can do to your hand if your connection is messy or your grip isn't sturdy.

Might be a door key, might be a car key. Better if it's a car key because it has a nice plastic pommel on it that you can clench in your fist, projecting the metal part from between your fingers like a low budget Wolverine cosplay.

Here's a fun thing to think about though: in twenty years time we might have moved away from car keys and towards the cards or contactless fobs that many new cars use now. Will martial artists in a hundred years' time reflect on the key as a weapon of circumstance with limited and simple application, or will they find a thousand ways to entangle a stepping straight punch between the key and the key ring?

Still, after taking a dump all over nunchucks it is well worth mentioning this video that made the rounds this week. A chap at a Dog Brothers meet up, successfully using a three section staff (essentially giant nunchucks) to fight at range, ensnare and close on his opponent, and apply a stick choke for the finish! Events like this always look painful, but they allow martial artists who train with weapons to combat test their skills in an open environment. Of course, he's unlikely to carry that bad boy around with him all the time hidden down his trouser leg, but you can't fault a guy for playing with new techniques and applying them against resisting opponents, rather than slowly walking a class through on how he would disarm a knife-wielding attacker.

Wushu Watch: Neckbeards and Nunchucks published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv