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mostlysignssomeportents · 13 days ago

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Predicting the present

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/09/radicalized/#deny-defend-depose

Back in 2018, around the time I emailed my immigration lawyer about applying for US citizenship, I started work on a short story called "Radicalized," which eventually became the title story of a collection that came out in 2019:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250228598/radicalized/

"Radicalized" is a story about America, and about guns, and about health care, and about violence. I live in Burbank, which is ranks second in gun-stores-per-capita in the USA, a dubious honor that represents a kind of regulatory arbitrage with our neighboring goliath, the City of Los Angeles, where gun store licensing is extremely tight. If you're an Angeleno in search of a firearm, you're almost certainly coming to Burbank to buy it.

Walking, cycling and driving past more gun stores than I'd ever seen in my Canadian life got me thinking about Americans and guns, a subject that many Canadians have passed comment upon. Americans kill each other, and especially themselves, at rates that baffle everyone else in the world, and they do it with guns. When we moved here, my UK born-and-raised daughter came home from her first elementary school lockdown drill perplexed and worried. Knowing what I did about US gun violence, I understood that while school shootings and other spree killings happened with dismal and terrifying regularity, they only accounted for a small percentage of the gun deaths here. If you die with a bullet in you, the chances are that the finger on the trigger was your own. The next most likely suspect is someone you know. After that, a cop. Getting shot by a stranger out of uniform is something of a rarity here – albeit a spectacular one that captures our imaginations in ways that deliberate or accidental self-slayings and related-party shootings do not.

So I told her, "Look, you can basically ignore everything they tell you during those lockdown drills, because they almost certainly have nothing to do with your future. But if a friend ever says to you, 'Hey, wanna see my dad's gun?' I want you to turn around and leave and get in touch with me right away, that instant."

Guns turn the murderous impulse – which, let's be honest, we've all felt at some time or another – into a murderous act. Same goes for suicide, which explains the high levels of non-accidental self-shootings in the USA: when you've got a gun, the distance between suicidal ideation and your death is the ten feet from the sofa to the gun in the closet.

Americans get angry at people and then, if they have a gun to hand, sometimes they shoot them. In a thread /r/Burbank about how people at our local cinemas are rude and use their phones in which someone posted, "Well, you should just ask them to stop." The reply: "That's a great way to get shot." No one chimed in to say, "Don't be ridiculous, no one would shoot you for asking them to put away their phone during a movie." Same goes for "road rage."

And while Americans shoot people they've only just gotten angry at, they also sometimes plan shooting sprees and kill a bunch of people because they're just generically angry. Being angry about the state of the world is a completely relatable emotion, of course, but the targets of these shootings are arbitrary. Sure sometimes these killings have clear, bigoted targets – mass shootings at Black supermarkets or mosques or synagogues or gay bars – more often the people who get sprayed with bullets (at country and western concerts or elementary schools or movie theaters) are almost certainly not the people the gunman (almost always a man) is angry at.

This line of thought kept surfacing as I went through the immigration process, but not just when I was dealing with immigration paperwork. I was also spending an incredible amount of time dealing with our health insurer, Cigna, who kept refusing treatments my pain doctor – one of the most-cited pain researchers in the country – thought I would benefit from. I've had chronic pain since I was a teenager, and it's only ever gotten worse. I've had decades of pain care in Canada and the UK, and while the treatments never worked for very long, it was never compounded by the kinds of bureaucratic stuff I went through with my US insurer.

The multi-hour phone calls with Cigna that went nowhere would often have me seeing red – literally, a red tinge closing in around my vision – and usually my hands would be shaking by the time I got off the call.

And I had it easy! I wasn't terminally ill, and I certainly wasn't calling in on behalf of a child or a spouse or parent who was seriously ill or dying, whose care was being denied by their insurer. Bernie's 2016 Medicare For All campaign promise had filled the air with statistics (Americans pay more for care and get worse outcomes than anyone else in the rich world), and stories. So many stories – stories that just tore your heart out, about parents who literally had to watch their children die because the insurance they paid for refused to treat their kids. As a dad, I literally couldn't imagine how I'd cope in that situation. Just thinking about it filled me with rage.

One day, as I was swimming in the community pool across the street – a critical part of my pain management strategy – I was struck with a thought: "Why don't these people murder health insurance executives?" Not that I wanted them to. I don't want anyone to kill anyone. But why do American men who murder their wives and the people who cut them off in traffic and random classrooms full of children leave the health insurance industry alone? This is an industry that is practically designed to fill the people who interact with it with uncontrollable rage. I mean, if you're watching your wife or your kid die before your eyes because some millionaire CEO decided to aim for a $10 billion stock buyback this year instead of his customary $9 billion target, wouldn't you feel that kind of murderous rage?

Around this time, my parents came out for a visit from Canada. It was a great trip, until one night, my mom woke me up after midnight: "We have to take your father to the ER. He's really sick." He was: shaking, nauseated, feverish. We raced down the street to the local hospital, part of a gigantic chain that has swallowed nearly all the doctors' practices, labs and hospitals within an hour's drive of here.

Dad had kidney stones, and they'd gone septic. When the ER docs removed the stones, all the septic gunk in his kidneys was flushed into his bloodstream, and he crashed. If he hadn't been in an ER recovery room at the time, he would have died. As it was, he was in a coma for three days and it was touch and go. My brother flew down from Toronto, not sure if this was his last chance to see our dad alive. The nurses and doctors took great care of my dad, though, and three days later, he emerged from his coma, and today, he's better than ever.

But on day two, when we thought he was probably at the end of his life, as my mother sat at his side, holding the hand of her husband of fifty years, someone from the hospital billing department came to her side and said, "Mrs Doctorow, I know this is a difficult time, but I'd like to discuss the matter of your husband's bill with you."

The bill was $176,000. Thankfully, the travel medical insurance plan offered by the Ontario Teachers' Union pension covered it all (I don't suppose anyone gets very angry with them).

How do people tolerate this? Again, not in the sense of "people should commit violent acts in the face of these provocations," but rather, "How is it that in a country filled with both assault rifles and unimaginable acts of murderous cruelty committed by fantastically wealthy corporations, people don't leap from their murderous impulses to their murderous weapons to commit murderous acts?

For me, writing fiction is an accretive process. I can tell that a story is brewing when thoughts start rattling around in my mind, resurfacing at odd times. I think of them as stray atoms, seeking molecules with available docking sites to glom onto. I process all my emotions – but especially my negative ones – through this process, by writing stories and novels. I could tell that something was cooking, but it was missing an ingredient.

Then I found it: an interview with the woman who coined the term "incel." It was on the Reply All podcast, and Alana, a queer Canadian woman explained that she had struggled all her life to find romantic and sexual partnership, and jokingly started referring to herself as "involuntarily celibate," and then, as an "incel":

https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/76h59o

Alana started a message board where other "incels" could offer each other support, and it was remarkably successful. The incels on Alana's message board helped each other work through the problems that stood between them and love, and when they did, they drifted away from the board to pursue a happier life.

That was the problem, Alana explained. If you're in a support group for people with a drinking problem, the group elders, the ones who've been around forever, are the people who've figured it out and gotten sober. When life seems impossible, those elders step in to tell you, I know it's terrible right now, but it'll get better. I was where you are and I got through it. You will, too. I'm here for you. We all are.

But on Alana's incel board, the old timers were the people who couldn't figure it out. They were the ones for whom mutual support and advice didn't help them figure out what they needed to do in order to find the love they sought. The longer the message board ran, the more it became dominated by people who were convinced that it was hopeless, that love was impossible for the likes of them. When newbies posted in rage and despair, these Great Old Ones were there to feed it: You're right. It will never get better. It only gets worse. There is no hope.

That was the missing piece. My short story Radicalized was born. It's a story about men on a message board called Fuck Cancer Right In the Fucking Face (FCKRFF, or "Fuckriff"), who are watching the people they love the most in the world be murdered by their insurance companies, who egg each other on to spectacular acts of mass violence against health insurance company employees, hospital billing offices, and other targets of their rage. As of today, anyone can read this story for free, courtesy of my publishers at Macmillan, who gave permission for the good folks at The American Prospect to post it:

https://prospect.org/culture/books/2024-12-09-radicalized-cory-doctorow-story-health-care/

I often hear from people about this story, even before an unknown (at the time of writing) man assassinated Brian Thompson, CEO of Unitedhealthcare, the murderous health insurance monopoly that is the largest medical insurer in the USA. Since then, hundreds of people have gotten in touch with me to ask me how I feel about this turn of events, how it feels to have "predicted" this.

I've been thinking about it for a few days now, and I gotta tell you, I have complicated feelings.

You've doubtless seen the outpourings of sarcastic graveyard humor about Thompson's murder. People hate Unitedhealthcare, for good reason, because he personally decided – or approved – countless policies that killed people by cheating them until they died.

Nurses and doctors hate Thompson and United. United kills people, for money. During the most acute phase of the pandemic, the company charged the US government $11,000 for each $8 covid test:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/06/137300-pct-markup/#137300-pct-markup

UHC leads the nation in claims denials, with a denial rate of 32% (!!). If you want to understand how the US can spend 20% of its GDP and get the worst health outcomes in the world, just connect the dots between those two facts: the largest health insurer in human history charges the government a 183,300% markup on covid tests and also denies a third of its claims.

UHC is a vertically integrated, murdering health profiteer. They bought Optum, the largest pharmacy benefit manager ("A spreadsheet with political power" -Matt Stoller) in the country. Then they starved Optum of IT investment in order to give more money to their shareholders. Then Optum was hacked by ransomware gang and no one could get their prescriptions for weeks. This killed people:

https://www.economicliberties.us/press-release/malicious-threat-actor-accesses-unitedhealth-groups-monopolistic-data-exchange-harming-patients-and-pharmacists/#

The irony is, Optum is terrible even when it's not hacked. The purpose of Optum is to make you pay more for pharmaceuticals. If that's more than you can afford, you die. Optum – that is, UHC – kills people:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/23/shield-of-boringness/#some-men-rob-you-with-a-fountain-pen

Optum isn't the only murderous UHC division. Take Navihealth, an algorithm that United uses to kick people out of their hospital beds even if they're so frail, sick or injured they can't stand or walk. Doctors and nurses routinely watch their gravely ill patients get thrown out of their hospitals. Many die. UHC kills them, for money:

https://prospect.org/health/2024-08-16-steward-bankruptcy-physicians-private-equity/

The patients murdered by Navihealth are on Medicare Advantage. Medicare is the public health care system the USA extends to old people. Medicare Advantage is a privatized system you can swap your Medicare coverage for, and UHC leads the country in Medicare Advantage, blitzing seniors with deceptive ads that trick them into signing up for UHC Medicare Advantage. Seniors who do this lose access to their doctors and specialists, have to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for their medication, and get hit with $400 surprise bills to use the "free" ambulance service:

https://prospect.org/health/2024-12-05-manhattan-medicare-murder-mystery/

No wonder the public spends 22% more subsidizing Medicare Advantage than they spend on the care for seniors who stick with actual Medicare:

https://theconversation.com/taxpayers-spend-22-more-per-patient-to-support-medicare-advantage-the-private-alternative-to-medicare-that-promised-to-cost-less-241997

It's not just the elderly, it's also the addicted and mentally ill. UHC illegally denies coverage for mental health and substance abuse treatment. Imagine watching a family member spiral out of control, ODing, or ending up on the streets with hallucinations, and knowing that the health insurance company that takes thousands of dollars out of your paycheck refused to treat them:

https://www.startribune.com/unitedhealthcare-will-pay-15-7m-in-settlement-of-denial-of-care-charges/600087607

Unsurprising, the internal culture at UHC is callous beyond belief. How could it not be? How could you go to work at UHC and know you were killing people and not dehumanize those victims? A lawsuit by chronically ill patient whom UHC had denied care for surfaced recorded phone calls in which UHC employees laughed long and hard about the denied claims, dismissing the patient's desperate, tearful pleas as "tantrums" :

https://www.propublica.org/article/unitedhealth-healthcare-insurance-denial-ulcerative-colitis

Those UHC workers are just trying to get by, of course, and the callouses they develop so they can bear to go to work were ripped off by last week's murder. UHC's executive team knows this, and has gone on a rampage to stop employees from leaking their own horror stories, or even mentioning that the internal company announcement of Thompson's death was seen by 16,000 employees, of whom only 28 left a comment:

https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/unitedhealthcare-tells-employees

Doctors and nurses hate UHC on behalf of their patients, but it's also personal. UHC screws doctor's practices by refusing to pay them, making them chase payments for months or even years, and then it offers them a payday lending service that helps them keep the lights on while they wait to get paid:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frr4wuvAB6U

Is it any surprise that Reddit's nursing forums are full of nurses making grim, satisfied jokes about the assassination of the $10m/year CEO who ran the $400b/year corporation that does all this?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/leading-medical-subreddit-deletes-thread-on-unitedhealthcare-ceos-murder-after-users-slam-his-record/

We're not supposed to experience – much less express – schadenfreude when someone is murdered in the street, no matter who they are. We're meant to express horror at the idea of political violence, even when that violence only claims a single life, a fraction of the body count UCH produced under Thompson's direction. As Malcolm Harris put it, "'Every life is precious' stuff about a healthcare CEO whose company is noted for denying coverage is pretty silly":

https://twitter.com/BigMeanInternet/status/1864471932386623753

As Woody Guthrie wrote, "Some will rob you with a six-gun/And some with a fountain pen." The weapon is lethal when it's a pistol and when it's an insurance company. The insurance company merely serves as an accountability sink, a layer of indirection that lets a murder happen without any person being the technical murderer:

https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/

I don't want people to kill insurance executives, and I don't want insurance executives to kill people. But I am unsurprised that this happened. Indeed, I'm surprised that it took so long. It should not be controversial to note that if you run an institution that makes people furious, they will eventually become furious with you. This is the entire pitch of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century: that wealth concentration leads to corruption, which is destabilizing, and in the long run it's cheaper to run a fair society than it is to pay for the guards you'll need to keep the guillotines off your lawn:

https://memex.craphound.com/2014/06/24/thomas-pikettys-capital-in-the-21st-century/

But we've spent the past 40 years running in the other direction, maximizing monopolies, inequality and corruption, and gaslighting the public when they insist that this is monstrous and unfair. Back in 2022, when UHC was buying Change Healthcare – the dominant payment network for hospitals, which would allow UHC to surveil all its competitors' payments – the DOJ sued to block the merger. The Trump-appointed judge in the case, Carl Nichols – who owned tens of thousands of dollars in UHC bonds – ruled against the DOJ, saying that it would all be fine thanks to United's "culture of trust and integrity":

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-antitrust-shooting-war-has-started

We don't know much about Thompson's killer yet, but he's already becoming a folk hero, with lookalike contests in NYC:

https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/1865472577478553976

And gigantic graffiti murals praising him and reproducing the words he wrote on the shell casings of the bullets he used to kill Thompson, "delay, deny, depose":

https://www.tumblr.com/radicalgraff/769193188403675136/killin-fuckin-ceos-freight-graff-in-the-bay

I get why this is distasteful. Thompson is said to have been a "family man" who loved his kids, and I have no reason to disbelieve this. I can only imagine that his wife and kids are shattered by this. Every living person is the apex of a massive project involving dozens, hundreds of people who personally worked to raise, nurture and love them. I wrote about this in my novel Walkaway, as the characters consider whether to execute a mercenary sent to kill them, whom they have taken hostage:

She had parents. People who loved her. Every human was a hyper-dense node of intense emotional and material investment. Speaking meant someone had spent thousands of hours cooing to you. Those lean muscles, the ringing tone of command — their inputs were from all over the world, carefully administered. The merc was more than a person: like a spaceship launch, her existence implied thousands of skilled people, generations of experts, wars, treaties, scholarship and supply-chain management. Every one of them was all that.

But so often, the formula for "folk hero" is "killing + time." The person who terrorizes the people who terrorize you is your hero, and eventually we sanitize the deaths, and just remember them as fighters for justice. If you doubt it, consider the legend of Robin Hood:

https://twitter.com/mcmansionhell/status/1865554985842352501

The health industry is trying to put a lid on this, palpably afraid that – as in my story "Radicalized" – this one murderer will become a folk hero who inspires others to acts of spectacular violence. They're insisting that it's unseemly to gloat about Thompson's death. They're right, but this is an obvious loser strategy. The health industry is full of people whose deaths would be deplorable, but not unsurprising. As Clarence Darrow had it:

I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.

Murder is never the answer. Murder is not a healthy response to corruption. But it is healthy for people to fear that if they kill people for greed, they will be unsafe. On December 5 – the day after Thompson's killing – the health insurer Anthem announced that it would not pay for anesthesia for medical procedures that ran long. The next day, they retracted the policy, citing "outrage":

https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/05/health/anthem-blue-cross-blue-shield-anesthesia-claim-limits/index.html

Sure, maybe it was their fear of reputation damage that got them to decide to reverse this inhumane, disgusting, murderous policy. But maybe it was also someone in the C-suite thinking about what share of the profits from this policy would have to be spent on additional bodyguards for every Anthem exec if it went into effect, and decided that it was a money-loser after all.

Think about hospital exec Ralph de la Torre, who cheerfully testified to Congress that he'd killed patients in pursuit of profit. De la Torre clearly doesn't fear any kind of consequences for his actions. He owns hospitals that are filled with tens of thousands of bats (he stiffed the exterminators), where none of the elevators work (he stiffed the repair techs), where there's no medicine or blood (he stiffed the suppliers) and where the doctors and nurses can't make rent (he stiffed them too). De La Torre doesn't just own hospitals – he also owns a pair of superyachts:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/28/5000-bats/#charnel-house

It is a miracle that so many people have lost their mothers, sons, wives and husbands so Ralph de la Torre could buy himself another superyacht, and that those people live in a country where you can buy an assault rifle, and that Ralph de la Torre isn't forced to live in a bunker and travel in a tank.

It's a rather beautiful sort of miracle, to be honest. I like to think that it comes from a widespread belief by the people of this country I have since become a citizen of, that we should solve our problems politically, rather than with bullets.

But the assassination of Brian Thompson is a wake-up call, a warning that if we don't solve this problem politically, we may not have a choice about whether it's solved with violence. As a character in "Radicalized" says, "They say violence never solves anything, but to quote The Onion: that's only true so long as you ignore all of human history":

https://prospect.org/culture/books/2024-12-09-radicalized-cory-doctorow-story-health-care/

#pluralistic #unitedhealthcare #assassination #execution #violence #murder #science fiction #radicalized #health insurance #m4a #medicare for all #Brian Thompson #guns #cancer #corruption #usausausa #torment nexus

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earthtooz · 1 year ago

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x : NOT JEALOUS ! :*+ﾟ

in which: alhaitham isn't jealous, he doesn't get jealous, so what is this suffocating feeling in his chest that only happens when you're talking to another man that isn't him?

warnings: 5.4k words, jealous!alhaitham x gn!reader who has loads of rizz, university!au, fluff with angst but happy ending, pining!alhaitham who doesn't realise that he loves you, kaveh is there, mention of cyno, ooc at some bits?, swearing, alhaitham is a little bit of an asshole at some parts sawry. he's bad with feelings.

a/n: inspired by @danijaci's jealous jealous boy comic with alhaitham! hi dani if you're reading this pls don't perceive me... hides... but i hope you all like it :,)

Alhaitham isn’t jealous.

The uncomfortable feeling obstructing itself in his throat is just because he’s beginning to develop a sore throat- that’s all. It is flu season after all, who knows what kind of bacteria are in the air? Ones capable of lathing an uncomfortable oil that burns inside his chest, the smog crowding its way into his heart, sickening him to his core as Alhaitham can’t help but eavesdrop on the conversation happening beside him.

“I’m free friday,” a voice besides you confirms.

“Okay!” you cheer, sounding a little too happy for Alhaitham’s liking. After all, it’s 9 am, who has this much energy in the morning? “lets do Friday then!”

“Sounds good, I’ll see you then. Bye Y/n.”

“Bye, see you!” Alhaitham watches from the corner of his eye as you wave to the random stranger you’ve decided to associate yourself with before finally taking the seat beside him with a sigh.

He doesn’t say anything to you, feeling your eyes glance at him expectantly as he stares stubbornly at the lecture board instead of acknowledging you or the jumble of feelings clogging up his diaphragm.

“Hello, you,” You lean over slightly, careful to not invade his personal space whilst waving at him, hoping to catch his attention. He glances at you, nodding in greeting before returning to his book, the pages and rows of words only fuelling his unease he suddenly felt. He doesn’t even know where he left off, the book’s events a blur in Alhaitham’s mind.

How bothersome. What’s happening to him?

“Talkative today, aren’t you?” Your tone is playful despite his cold attitude and Alhaitham sneaks another look in your direction, noting the way your lips curve upwards. “So, how are you?”

“I’m fine,” he murmurs, inserting a bookmark between the pages before slamming it shut, an indicator that you could keep conversing with him.

“Cool.” You tap your nails on the desks of the lecture hall. “Oh, I finished my essay the other day.”

“The one for your elective?”

You hum in agreement, “I hope I never get it back. Submitted it ten minutes before the due date.”

“You know you wouldn’t have been stressed over it if you just started it earlier-”

“I know, I know,” you huff, “spare your productivity lectures for another time, I’ll be needing them later in the semester.” The grey-haired shakes his head as you laugh, but his gaze returns to the front cover of his book as he solemnly thinks about the interaction you had with another man, right in front of him.

(What right did he have to see you smiling so earnestly like that?)

“Who was that?” Alhaitham coughs out, barely choking down his pride in time to make space for the question.

You murmur some guy’s name that he doesn’t bother to remember. “He’s a friend of mine in the same discussion group for this course and we decided to do the assignment together. He bumped into me on the way in so we were just planning when to meet to do the research.”

“Oh.” Your answer doesn’t calm the churning in Alhaitham’s gut. Not even one bit, in fact, it makes it worse.

But it’s not jealousy, Alhaitham doesn’t get jealous because he’s above petty feelings of inadequacy. He’s merely concerned for you, worried for your brainpower by the end of the project because your partner seems less-than-incompetent. If you’d picked someone like Alhaitham (or better yet, just picked Alhaitham), you would’ve aced the class without even blinking an eye.

(The two of you are friends, so why didn’t you pick him? It’s literally been proven that the two of you are compatible working together since you were both executives of Sumeru’s Cultural Society, and amidst all of the activities the club has run, you’ve collaborated many times to make each event run flawlessly. So why not him? Why would you pick another man over him?)

“You know you could have picked me, I wouldn’t mind working on the assignment with you,” he grumbles, words soft but very clear.

Alhaitham misses the way your eyes widen in shock as apologies scramble out of your mouth. “I’m sorry! I automatically assumed that you wanted to work on it by yourself. Next time I’ll ask you.”

The lecture begins before he could say anything in return and like a robot, he sets his thoughts aside and begins listening, notes document up and cursor blinking at the ready.

A mundane two hours pass by, one powerpoint slide after powerpoint slide before the lecture is finally over, much to your pleasure. Alhaitham notices the way you eagerly jump out of your seat to stretch, grabbing your bag. On the other hand, your grey-haired accomplice takes his time in packing up, forcing you to wait for him.

“Would you like to get some coffee before the meeting?” You ask.

“Sure, we can find a seat there and join it together,” he adds and you beam at him, expression bright and so enchanting that it makes him forget about all the perplexities he felt before the lecture.

The two of you make your way to one of the many campus cafés where you practically wrestled Alhaitham to stop him from paying for both your orders (losing in the end) before sitting at a booth, your laptop set up with a pair of Alhaitham’s earphones shared between you. The meeting begins to fill up with almost all committee members, even Kaveh, who resides in his room of his and Alhaitham’s shared flat. Upon noticing him, you go to text him, with the grey-haired peeking over your shoulder from time to time to see your conversation- not that he cares that much.

(Perhaps if Kaveh glanced up from his phone, then he’d see how close Alhaitham had gotten with you, breaching the distance that he prefers to keep around others. He’d also notice the headphone sharing despite how he generally tends to keep them out of anyone else’s hands.)

You’re tasked with the role of taking notes for the meeting since Alhaitham, in your opinion, is not at all a reliable scribe. His notes tend to just include vital information and never what everyone else needs to know, yet each time you scold him for it, his unbothered expression never falters, waving your complaints off with a shrug.

“Hey, Kaveh and I are going to go for lunch tomorrow after our classes. Care to join?” You ask, smiling at him hopefully as your messages with Kaveh sit open on your screen. Alhaitham doesn’t think twice before agreeing.

── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──

“It looks like it’s about to rain,” you murmur, pulling out a chair as Alhaitham and Kaveh take their seats opposite you.

“So it does,” Alhaitham notes, not caring to look too long out the window before returning his gaze to you. “You have an umbrella, right?”

“I, uh, didn’t think I needed one today.”

“Do you not check the weather before you leave?”

“Not everyone’s like you, Alhaitham.” Kaveh teases. “It’s no problem, Y/n, if it rains I can walk you back to your dorm.”

“Only if you are okay with it,” you insist, “I have no problem walking home in the rain. I love the rain.”

Alhaitham intervenes with a raise of his hand. “Nonsense, you’ll catch a cold. We’ll walk you home.”

A soft but genuine ‘thank you’ slips from your lips, neither of you wiser to the way Kaveh eyes his roommate suspiciously, not missing the use of ‘we’ in his sentence and the implications the collective pronoun has. For it meant that Alhaitham is willing to take precious time out of his day to perform an act for someone that he is not indebted to do. Not that Alhaitham is inherently selfish, per se, but he is a man of routine. He wakes up every morning and takes five minutes to scribble on his stupid whiteboard in the kitchen what he has to do for the day and strictly abides by it, not even straying two minutes off schedule.

Willingly volunteering his minutes? Kaveh finds that suspicious.

“So, how’s your architecture assignment, Kaveh?” You ask, breaking the blond from his daze whilst Alhaitham pours glasses of water for the table, starting with your cup.

“A nightmare,” he sighs, sinking into his chair. “I still have so much to do, you know my professor didn’t like my blueprint? How ridiculous! I hope that man steps in a puddle and wets his sock.”

The grey-haired pipes up with a remark. “I can’t wait for it to be done, our living room is a mess right now.”

“Hey, I am the one that cleans that living room, thank you very much. Your bookshelf is still a mess even though I’ve asked you to clean it five times.”

“If it bothers you so much then why don’t you do it yourself?”

“I’m the only one who-”

“-I’m going to go to the bathroom,” you murmur, cutting the conversation before shuffling out of your chair, seemingly eager to do so.

Kaveh turns to the grey-haired again, “and you just scared away Y/n.”

“Sorry no one wants to hear about your architecture project.”

“Y/n literally asked, asshole.”

A rebuttal sits on the tip of Alhaitham’s tongue- as it always does when it comes to bickering with his roommate, but it dies out when an intruder comes to the table. “Excuse me, I hate to interrupt,” he begins, “but the person who just got up, is that your friend?”

“Yeah, why do you ask?”

“Oh, I just wanted to drop this off, mind passing it over for me?” The piece of paper he was holding lands in Kaveh’s hand. “Thanks, bro.” Is all he says before strolling away, out of sight but definitely not out of mind.

The blond does not hesitate to open it up, chuckling in amusement when reading the content. “’Hey you’re cute, here’s my number’ it says. What a bitch! You didn’t like his vibes either, right, Alhaitham?”

“Hold on, what does the note say?”

Grabbing (snatching) it from Kaveh, the grey-haired has half a mind to rip the note apart, a certain sense of distaste washing over him that intensifies the long he stares at the guy’s handwriting. His eye is twitching. Why is his eye twitching?

“Hey!” He hears Kaveh call. “Don’t scrunch it, that’s Y/n’s-“

Alhaitham stuffs the ball of paper into his bag where he’ll recycle it later even though something irrational within him tells him to burn it. “Y/n won’t miss it. You said it yourself, he’s a bitch.”

“Sure, but why are you doing-“

“Hey!” You interrupt, sliding back into your chair with a grin on your face. “So, what did I miss?”

“Nothing,” the grey-haired murmurs, assuming his crossed-arm position. Kaveh side eyes his roommate before agreeing with a hum. “Let’s order something now. We want to beat the rain, right?”

── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──

This meeting for the Sumeru Society might have been one of the most important ones of the year thus far, with almost every committee member expected to attend. After all, the annual ball was a big event that always had the largest turnout, and the amount of planning that goes into it to ensure its success is almost triple that of its other events.

So why weren’t you here?

“Why did you leave the meeting early on Friday?” Alhaitham asks as soon as he sees you.

You pause briefly, eyes widening and eyebrows raising. It must have been the way that Alhaitham’s voice raised a pitch towards the end of the question, demonstrating a nervous break in character that was not at all typical. Cool and collected would be the defining words to describe Alhaitham, as well as someone who does not care for the menial activities of others, so what is he doing asking you? And why does he care so much?

“I, uh, had dinner with someone,” you confess, continuing to grab your books and laptop, missing the way his features contort into something un-cool, and very un-Alhaitham.

“Whom?”

You murmur the name of some other guy, who he vaguely recalls to be your project partner.

“What?” Alhaitham snaps.

“I didn’t think missing out on some of the meeting would be a big deal! I got another committee member to explain what I missed,” you justified. “Besides, there’s no big events going on right now, so I thought-”

“-That you could abandon your tasks and go have fun with someone else?”

Alhaitham’s not really sure why he said that. He’s not angry that you skipped a meeting; there are larger things in the world to worry about, he’s angry because you spent time with another guy that wasn’t him.Why not go to dinner with him instead? He spends it every night with Kaveh, and you are far more favourable than Kaveh.

“Is it really something to get mad over? I already told you, I got the meeting notes and everything-”

“-You’re an executive of the society, Y/n, more is expected from you.”

“Seriously?” you ask, “how come you didn’t bat an eye when the vice president wasn’t there the other day?”

“Because she was sick.”

“Okay, fine! what about the subcommittee? they’re not always there either!”

“They’re subcom. Whether they miss a meeting or not is not crucial.”

“So, it’s just my business that you care about?” You ask, eyebrows furrowed, disbelief clouding over your expression like a mask.

Again, Alhaitham doesn’t know where these punches are coming from and why he’s throwing them against you so viciously, but his heart is tightening defensively with a burning emotion that he’s been feeling more and more recently, and his first instinct is to lash out, to protect himself from it.

Perhaps it’s because foreign things that he can’t understand terrify him and you, all you ever do is make him feel things that he’s never felt before and he can’t understand why.

“You’re not that special.”

A flash of hurt gleams in your eyes and Alhaitham knows now that he’s royally fucked up. “You’re an ass,” you grumble, about to walk away when he intercepts.

“Listen to me!”

“Fuck off!”

“Y/n-”

You’re gone before he can get another word out, retreating figure stomping away whilst his chest weaves into knots; something that no amount of deep breathing can calm. It doesn’t help that the minute he returns home, Kaveh is onto him like some sort of parasite, curious over the tense air surrounding his normally-composed roommate.

“Hey, welcome home- whoa, what’s gotten into you?” The blond asks.

“None of your business,” Alhaitham grumbles through gritted teeth, taking his shoes off and throwing them aside haphazardly. Kaveh doesn’t miss the way Alhaitham’s jaw is clenched, or the strain in his hand when he brings up a hand to run through his hair, or the very subtle and minute twitch in his cheek.

The blond ignores all signs that he wants to be left alone, and instead, follows the grey-haired to his room after he swung the door open.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on, let’s talk about this-”

“Talk about what?” Alhaitham growls.

“Who pissed in your black coffee today?”

“No one. Now get lost.”

“Aw, come on, you know what they say. Getting things off your chest is always beneficial.”

“There’s nothing on my chest, go away.”

“You sure? no stress, no deadlines, no love interest making you tear your hair out-”

“-No, no, none of those!”

“Then what?”

Alhaitham steadies himself by resting his elbows on his thighs, hands clasped together as he exhales loudly. “I got pissed and took it out on Y/n, who’s mad at me now.”

“Huh? Why so annoyed?”

“Because Y/n went to dinner with another man.”

It’s silent for a while. The sassy quip that he expects from Kaveh does not happen. Instead, the blond merely smiles, a satisfied, knowing grin that slightly irks him. “You know, I’ve been waiting for the day you realise you have feelings for Y/n.”

“What? Where did you get that conclusion from?” Alhaitham sits up straighter. There are a lot of things he knows, and he knows for sure that he does not like you in any way beyond platonic. He doesn’t have any time to spare for love. There are scholarships he still needs to apply for, internships to be interviewed for, research projects to submit- nowhere amongst the minute hand of the clock is there space for love.

“Oh come on,” Kaveh sits down on the bed beside his roommate, leaning back on his hands. “You’re not as smooth as you hope to be sometimes.”

“I’m serious, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Y’know the sooner you accept you have feelings for Y/n, the easier life will be.”

“Life is already easy and there is no sooner because I don’t like Y/n like that. Now get lost. I have stuff I need to finish.”

Kaveh shrugs, standing up with a soft ‘suit yourself’, taking seven steps before he’s out of the room. Alhaitham lets out a sigh that has lodged itself in his throat for too long, and the feeling of reprieve he gets is short-lived before he’s flooded with a certain tightness again. Maybe he did have a weight on his chest after all, not that he’d ever admit it to himself or Kaveh.

He gets up from his made bed with a grunt and decides to push aside all distractions. Time is unforgiving, and if doesn’t finish his assignment by this Friday then he’ll be a little less than pleased.

── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──

Alhaitham feels like he can’t breathe.

You’re sitting alone at a library desk, all focused and concentrated on your laptop screen with your headphones on, blocking out any outside voice as you type away. He wonders if he should say hi, maybe try apologising for the way he acted last Monday- who is this guy that’s approaching you and why does he look so familiar?

And why are you smiling so happily?

You beckon to the seat beside you and the guy readily complies, taking the chair beside you like he belonged there, like there weren’t other candidates that should be there instead (he’s not talking about himself. definitely not).

He hands you one of two coffee cups he’s holding. What kind of right does this guy have to give you a coffee? Does he even know your order?

He feels like a bit of creep keenly watching you interact with someone else from a balcony of the library, but the book and laptop in front of him lies forgotten, and in a rare moment of weakness, Alhaitham can’t find it in himself to return to his tasks, pursuit of knowledge momentarily forgotten. He can’t push aside the bile that threatens to rise, he can’t loosen his grip on the couch’s armrest, and he can’t blink for a second in fear of losing you from his sight.

(You’re laughing. Why are you laughing? How can you look so pretty laughing and why doesn’t he ever get to make you laugh like this?)

Alhaitham is losing his damn mind. So much so that the first thing he does when he sees you again is corner you.

“You shouldn’t talk to that guy anymore.”

You’re backed against the brick walls of the time-worn building that your shared lecture always takes place in, and Alhaitham, spotting you like a hawk, put you in this precarious position as soon as the two hours were over.

He can’t breathe. It’s been almost three weeks since you last spoke to him and you’re staring up at him like you’ve done nothing wrong, blinking once and twice at his uncharacteristic display of subtle aggression.

“Who?” you mutter, shaking your head to try and grasp reality once again. you hug your laptop closer to your body. “What’s this about?”

“I said you shouldn’t talk to that guy anymore.”

“What guy?”

“Your project partner.”

“Really?” you mutter in disbelief.

He nods, teal eyes shining at you firmly. “Really. The project’s over, you don’t need to talk to him anymore.”

“I don’t recall ever giving you the right to dictate who gets to be in my life or not, just like how you can’t tell me what to do with my time.”

“I’m looking out for you, so stop trying to make me sound tyrannical.”

Your mouth hangs open as you furrow your eyebrows, growing more and more frustrated with each second. So much for thinking that he wanted to resolve the awkwardness between the two of you. “I’m not even going to argue with you,” you murmur a quick ‘jerk’ under your breath before brushing past him.

Alhaitham, however, is not willing to let you go as easily as you wish, quick to chase after you. Not that you go far anyways, turning around to face him again in the spaciousness of the vacant hallway. “Why do you care?” You ask, exasperated. “You’re Alhaitham, you don’t let trivial things like who I hangout with bother you, you’re cool and collected and rational, and I just don’t understand why you’re acting like this.”

He doesn’t understand either, not the erratic beating of his heart, the stubbornness of his mind, nor this undisputable urge to keep you all to himself. Is it normal to want to hide someone for selfish reasons?

Trailing off, Alhaitham is slightly humiliated that for the first time in his life, someone has witnessed him coming short of an answer. No logical conclusion, no explanation, not even a satisfying quip, just plain, suffocating silence.

“Right. When you do have an answer, let me know.” You walk away.

── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──

Your last rebuttal still weighs heavily on Alhaitham’s mind, even two days later as he and Kaveh are seated for a lecture in a shared course. His thoughts are scrambled like never before, the messiness of it all making him feel uneasy because for once, he doesn’t have an appropriate answer to a question.

Why was he acting like a temperamental teenager? What you did with your life was up to you, and indeed he has no right trying to change that. More importantly, why was it so hard to apologise for the stuff he said-

“So, how’s everything between you and Y/n?”

Kaveh turns to him with widened eyes whilst Alhaitham’s poker face doesn’t move an inch, deceivingly apathetic.

“Good, we’ve been hanging out a lot more recently,” the other guy says, who Alhaitham quickly recognises to be your project partner and distaste rises in his stomach like bile.

“Aye, good for you, man! So when are you going to ask Y/n out?”

“No way, bro, not yet. I’m such a wimp, but I hope I grow the balls to ask soon because I really like-”

“-looks like you got some competition!” The blond nudges Alhaitham, and if it were anyone else, they would not have glanced twice at the grey-haired who seemed unmoving and uninterested. However, Kaveh is not anyone else because he noticed the darkened look in Alhaitham’s eyes instantly, anger seeping into his composed gaze as his nose scrunches in disgust.

── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──

“So, you and Alhaitham still aren’t talking?” Kaveh asks, leaning on the table of the restaurant with curious ears, hoping that he can grab some answers out of you as to why there was a stalemate between you and his roommate.

“Nope,” you sigh.

“Why not?”

“I’m just-” you pinch the bridge of your nose, “I’m just waiting on an apology from him.”

“An apology? Why? What did he say?”

“He didn’t tell you?”

“You know how he is. Always insufferably secretive, so no, I don’t know anything that happened.”

“Alhaitham just said some hurtful things to me, and he was being weird when I told him I was going to dinner with a friend of mine. Just kept being in my business.”

“Really?” The architecture student quirks a brow, confusion plastered on his face. “That’s not like Alhaitham at all.”

“I know, right? He kept trying to be like ‘don’t hang out with him’ and ridiculed me for not playing my part as an executive of the Sumeru society,” you complained, “like sorry I have other things I want to do.”

Kaveh nods in understanding as the conversation briefly stops when the waiter comes to drop off utensils at your table. As soon as they were gone, however, you begin again.

“And even though he was all up in my business, trying to tell me what not to do, he then said that I wasn’t special, which is so confusing because like-”

“-hold on. Alhaitham said that you weren’t special?” You nod at his parroted claim. “To him?”

“Yeah. Stung like shit when he said that, especially since I thought we were friends but guess not,” you murmur sadly, fiddling with the fork.

Later that night, almost immediately after meeting you over dinner, Kaveh barges into his roommate’s room, not even changing out of his outside clothes. The sudden intrusion shocks Alhaitham who was busy typing on a document, textbook splayed open beneath him but momentarily forgotten as the blond takes a seat on the bed.

“What the- not even a hello?” The grey-haired asks, confused by this uncharacteristic silence of Kaveh’s. It’s pretty normal for the blond to barge into his room without notice, but it was not normal for him to be so quiet, practically brooding on the mattress. “Whatever. Where have you been? Have you eaten yet, because I made-”

“When will you just confess to Y/n?”

The mention of your name causes a spike in Alhaitham’s heartbeat and he swivels around instantly, attention fully directed towards his roommate. “Where is this coming from?”

“Y/n told me everything that happened between you two by the way-”

“-what, when?��

“Tonight, we just met for dinner.”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“What would you have done if you knew? Showed up and made things worse?” He doesn’t say anything in retaliation, merely shutting his mouth and furrowing his eyebrows. “Why did you say that Y/n wasn’t special to you?”

“I didn’t,” Alhaitham sighs, very loud and very perplexed. “I didn’t mean for it to come out the way it did.”

“Don’t you miss Y/n? You two used to hangout so often.”

“I do, of course I do!” He exclaims, burrowing his face in his hands.

“So why aren’t you apologising?”

“Because whenever I’m around Y/n, I’m not who I normally am,” he mutters, “especially everything whenever that project partner is around-”

“Jealous, much?”

“I’m not jealous.”

“Oh come on, you’re ridiculous. Stop pushing away your feelings and just be honest with yourself, Alhaitham! Y/n is not just a friend to you and you know it.”

“But, we are just friends-”

“So you mean to tell me that if I hung out with someone else- like if I hung out with Cyno, you would be pissed?”

“What? No, of course not.”

“Then why is it different with Y/n?” Once again, Alhaitham doesn’t have an answer to the question, sitting as still as a statue hunched over his desk. “Fine, I’ll spell it out to you. You like Y/n, more than just a friend!”

The silence leftover from Kaveh’s outburst is tense and full as the grey-haired lets the words sink in.

“I’ll let you think about it,” the blond murmurs, voice softening dramatically as he stalks out of the room. Before he closes the door, however, he leaves a few final words. “Just- be honest with yourself, Alhaitham, and I wouldn’t delay trying to talk to Y/n.”

A sharp click rings through the room.

Alhaitham is no stranger to being alone, for who needs the company of others when you are happiest by yourself? Yet, in the weeks that you have not been speaking to him, a cardinal urge as been growing each and each day, wanting him to do something so atypical of him: to reach out and make the first move. Every passing day doesn’t lessen the thoughts that plague his mind, rather, they make him more and more impatient, because what if you get swept away by your project partner?

(What if he’ll be too late? What if you won’t know of these powerful emotions that are steering through the storm in his heart? What if you won’t know just how badly he was been wanting you- wanting to see you, wanting to apologise, wanting to see you beam at him like you always would.

What if you won’t know that he adores you, especially now that he’s figured it out?).

── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──

A rain droplet falls and lands on your nose, another lands on your forehead, then another lands on your lip then more and more keep falling from the cloudy sky, falling through the leaves and landing on the bench you were currently sitting on. Goodness, you should have checked the weather before leaving your dorm. Why was it now out of all times that it had to rain, what would Alhaitham think after he finally decided to reach out to talk?

Taking your phone out to message the grey-haired about relocating, an umbrella is suddenly held over you, stopping the gentle drizzle from falling onto you. Looking up, you’re greeted by a familiar face that you have been missing too much recently.

“Hello, you,” you breathe, voice gentle and quiet and Alhaitham feels like he can finally breathe after so long, the scent of rain washing away all perplexion.

He nods at you in greeting before offering you the bouquet of flowers he was holding. A gorgeous arrangement of pink of white stare prettily at you and a man even more gorgeous expects you to accept it.

“For me?” You ask.

“For you.”

“Thank you, they’re so beautiful,” you take his gift with gentle hands, holding it close to your chest.

“I want to apologise,” he firmly states, getting straight to the point; very Alhaitham of him. “For treating you the way I have been recently.”

You beam at him, so bright and so gorgeous that it renders him speechless, a feat pretty difficult when it comes to someone like Alhaitham who has a whole dictionary of words, in multiple languages too. Somehow, they all flock out of his mind the second you smile at him.

“I accept your apology, thank you for reaching out, must have been hard for someone like you, huh?” You tease, standing up from the bench.

“Well, I had do for someone as special as you.” The grey-haired’s voice is deceivingly confident and assured, but you know better, especially when he looks away to hide his expression with his neatly styled bangs.

“No need for the flattery, you know, I’ve already forgiven you.” There’s a moment of silence that occupies the air, caused by Alhaitham’s hesitation as he fishes his brain for the courage to ask you out. You speak before he can get a word out, however. “I got asked out the other day.”

“By your groupmate?”

“He has a name, you know, but, yeah. I rejected him, though,” you laugh awkwardly, almost like you were trying to cope with it by playing it off. “Did you know that he would do that?”

“Yes. I did.”

“Is that why you were so adamant on me not hanging out with him?”

“I guess you could say that. We can talk more about it another time,” he tells you, voice gentle and caring to mask the subtle hit of jealousy he feels in his chest, scolding himself for letting someone else confess to you before him. However, it’s a minute sensation in comparison to the triumph Alhaitham feels knowing that you rejected the other party.

“We have a lot to talk about, don’t we?”

“We do, but I want to ask you something first.”

You nod, hugging the bouquet closer to your chest, anticipation heavy in the air as you spur him to continue.

“If I asked you out, would you reject me too?”

A mere second passes by where you don’t respond, yet the second stretches out to what feels like eternity as Alhaitham’s stomach churns. Patience is something he doesn’t lack, but how can he be patient when his heart wants you so bad?

Then, you take his hand, and the heavens sing at the feeling of your hand in his. “I wouldn’t, but are you asking me out?”

“Are you free right now?”

“I am. Why?”

“Let’s go out then. On a date.”

“I'd love to.” You rise up to place a lingering kiss on his cheek, one that has his heart racing with joy rather than frustration.

The smile you earn is gentle, shy, but says more than Alhaitham's words ever can.

#i didn't edit this btw don't judge #alhaitham x reader #al-haitham x reader #alhaitham x you #al haitham x reader #genshin impact x reader #fluff #alhaitham fluff #al-haitham fluff #genshin fluff #genshin x reader #alhaitham fic #genshin fic

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desperatelyseekingcannibals · 6 months ago

Text

Telling Hugh Dancy about trans masc Will and more...

As some of you already know by now, I went to Boston Fanexpo this past weekend for another stop on the unofficial Hannibal 2024 Reunion Tour.

I had planned to do autographs on the Friday before the Hannibal panel and had brought some gifts for Hugh which included a copy of Adapt. Evolve. Become: The Genderqueer Fandom of NBC's Hannibal, which I compiled and edited last year. I also got him to sign my own copy (above).

It all moved quite quickly, but I did have the chance to explain that it's a volume by and about trans, non-binary, and genderqueer Fannibals that includes art, fics, essays, and personal pieces. He seemed intrigued and I said I hope he'd have the chance to read it and that the art isn't explicit/sexual but some of the fics are - he laughed and said he appreciated the warning.

It was all quite the whirlwind, especially after coming all the way from the UK, so I was absolutely mortified when I remembered the next morning that I had talked with a few trans Fannibals who had specifically asked me to let him know that he/Will is a trans icon. So I went back up to see him again on the Saturday morning when it wasn't too busy (and get more stuff signed) and this is what happened:

[I wrote notes down right after so this is as close an account I can get without having filmed it!].

Me: I saw you yesterday Hugh: I remember (smiley-friendly) Me: I gave you a book Hugh: I remember (smiley-friendly) Me: well, I forgot to tell you. A few trans Fannibals reached out to me to tell you that Will is a trans icon to them and we all love you for it. Hugh was surprised (in a nice way) and I was pretty much going to walk away then - job done and feeling like time for me to stop bothering Hugh lol. But before I could walk away he sort of held out his hand to stop me and said something along the lines of - I don't mean this in a disrespectful way, don't take it the wrong way... I'm genuinely curious- I get that it can be about identity- but what is the connection to Will and being trans? Luckily - my essay in the book is exactly about how Will can be read as trans, so I sort of gave him a summary of that. I explained that (obviously) both Will and Hannibal can be read as queer, and that - especially as both characters have dominant masculine and feminine traits, it's also easy to read them both as trans or in some way genderqueer. He was nodding and agreeing, so I further explained that with Hannibal, he is fully formed - he's already whatever he is - which Hugh also agreed with. But that Will is still becoming, still transitioning and therefore can be more relatable to trans fans who see that journey in themselves. So although it's not necessarily the same journey - there is enough to it that it resonates with trans people. I said that in the show there is also the added bonus of Will being seen and accepted for who he is, just as trans people wish to be. He was nodding along and agreeing with me and then he thanked me for explaining that. It was pretty quiet previously but I'd been there a few minutes so the queue was building up a little but he was so focused on me - so genuinely intent on hearing what I had to say and learning more. SO I CARRIED ON. (lols) I explained to him that it goes further than the show, that we have found a community in the fandom and that many trans people have a catalyst in their life that sparks their journey - like Will had in his friendship with Hannibal. For us it might be a person, an event, or even a TV show. I explained how the fandom are so supportive of trans people - that we are SEEN. That I for one wouldn't have been able to afford top surgery without the kind donations of Fannibals back when I was not in a good place (mentally or financially). That we all help each other and for some of us that has been life-saving. He did the hand on heart thing and said "wow" and was clearly moved. I said to him that so much of this is in the book, that I completely understand if he doesn't want to read the fanfic, but I really hope that he will at least read each of the personal pieces - that each of the fics and art also have a little write up from their creator about what the show and/or fandom has meant to them and their gender journey - how important this has been in our lives. He repeated a couple of times that he would definitely read it. I thanked him and he held out his hand and gave me the most genuine hand shake I've had in my life.

I want to really stress here how much this was instigated by Hugh. That he really wanted to know more and understand and didn't even look at the slowly growing queue but was instead intently focused on knowing more about the trans Fannibals and about why this show and the characters mean so much to us.

I then went off and spoke with a few Fannibal friends in the queue before getting around the corner to another Fannibal friend and having a bit of an emotional moment/breakdown. I can't even explain how grateful I am that he gave me the opportunity to explain all this to him. And I was especially glad I got to tell that Will is a trans icon because I'd have felt terrible if I'd have not done that after people had asked!! Thank you for trusting me to pass that message on for you!

💖

I know for many of you Adapt. Evolve. Become: The Genderqueer Fandom of NBC's Hannibal might have gone a little under the radar. So here is some more about that >>

It was compiled last year for Trans Hanni Day, edited by Max Turner of (and in conjunction with) A Coup of Owls Press - and published under Max's ACoO imprint.

It features essays, personal pieces, fanart and fanfic by and about trans, non-binary, genderqueer and otherwise non-cis Fannibals.

IT IS FREE TO DOWNLOAD, however we ask that if you do that, please consider donating to one of the linked trans orgs if you can afford to (or a similar organisation/charity of your choice).

It can be purchased on Amazon, however, as the proceeds go to charity, and Amazon only gives royalties, more is earned/given if bought directly via Max's shop.

Dearest trans Fannibals, please know that YOU ARE SEEN!

#hugh dancy #hannibal #will graham #trans will graham #trans fannibals #fannibals #fannibal family #boston expo #hannibal reunion tour 2024 #meat up

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batmanisagatewaydrug · 10 days ago

Note

I think you mentioned you're cis, right? Many of my friends and acquaintances right now are cis women, some not even part of the lgbtq+ community. I'm a trans girl, and I'm very bad at standing up for myself. How should I talk about language they use that makes me uncomfortable? I don't know if I'm able to explain why "biological women" is a term I'm wary of because it's so often a dog whistle, or when they talk very sweepingly about the effects of male/female socialization, or espousing very cisnormative beliefs in general. I don't wanna be misunderstood and I don't think the words they are using are necessarily wrong or bad or hateful, I've just seen them so often in that context and am a bit shaken hearing them. I also don't think they want to hurt me or are cognizant of my discomfort. I'd love your input on this.

Thank you for reading this, mx batman.

hi anon,

I am so grateful that you trust me with this question and I am so sorry if you're looking for a way to do this gently. possibly you wee hoping that I would have some insights into how to gently call out cis women without upsetting them but the gag is that almost all my friends are trans and I'm an insane bitch who will unhinge my jaw and devour people at the first whiff of transphobia.

all you need to say is something to the effect of "you may not mean any harm by it, but the terms you're using spread transphobic ideas and hurt women like me and make me feel unsafe. please find other ways to express the thing you're trying to talk about." and that has to be sufficient for these people, or they aren't your friends.

listen to me right now. you Do Not need to justify why those things make you uncomfortable. you are not required to provide a dissertation to prove that your feelings deserve to be respected. if these women are your friends they are required to give a shit about your feelings, and that includes not requiring you to provide an entire powerpoint when you ask them to stop using terms that are transphobic. when a friend says "you're hurting me," you're supposed to just stop fucking hurting them.

if they want to educate themselves, which I strongly recommend the do, there are plenty of people who are writing books and articles and video essays and podcasts that will hold the hands of cis allies trying to learn Don't Be A Transphobe 101. you ARE NOT obligated to be that person for every person in your life, and they do not have the right to demand that of you.

recently I was listening to an episode of the podcast Vibe Check, which is excellent, and one of the hosts (I believe it was poet Saeed Jones, but don't quote me on that) offered some advice to the effect of "if you tell someone that they're hurting you and you tell them what they need to do to stop, and they do it again, they've told you everything they need to tell you." live that learn that love that. being fiercely protective of your needs and boundaries is an act of protection and self-preservation and it's what you deserve; cut a bitch OFF if she won't listen to you and be a better friend.

also hey as a cis woman. and specifically as a white cis woman. do NOT let them come at you with the cis lady tears, especially the white cis lady tears. anyone who starts whining and crying and acting like you're attacking them for just asking them not to say things that hurt your feelings, run. run so fast. those women do not love you.

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sturnsdarling · 3 months ago

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teenage dirtbags, part two

Skater!Matt goes to overachiever!readers dorm so she can help him with his essay

vibe check: bickering, matt fancying the fuck out of reader but being unaware, reader being a snob, kind of flirting? idk if you can call it that lol.

1.7k words

A/N: this is so FUN. in my head, Matt has always secretly thought reader was gorgeous, but any and all good natured feelings were swallowed by an avalanche of irritation and borderline hatred

intro, part one, part three

love and cigs, merc

You were sat on the floor of your dorm, clad in a big knit jumper, little shorts and fluffy socks, cross legged on the carpet with a pencil dangling from your mouth as you scanned the margins of some 19th century text about the French Revolution.

You were pulled from your focus by the sound of your door rattling, three short knocks sounding through your room over the low hum of your record playing in the back.

You looked to your watch, 7:03, Matt was actually on time.

You pushed yourself up off the floor and made your way over to the door, unlocking it and pulling it open with a less than welcoming look on your face. You were met with Matt, board in hand and headphones hung round his neck, a flat grin on his face that quickly dropped.

Matt couldn't help but scan your figure, he'd never seen you in anything other than your clean cut outfits, so seeing you in a baggy jumper that hung off your bare shoulder and shorts that just covered your ass was, interesting.

"come in" you said, pulling Matt from his accidental objectifying gaze and stepping to the side to let him in.

"thanks" Matt said as he walked past you, taking in the sight of your room, it actually did smell like vanilla and academic over achievement.

You had more books than he had ever seen in his entire life, the walls covered by rows of bookshelves all packed to the brim with classic literature.

"this is a lot of books" Matt said, gawking at your collection.

You nodded, lips tucked between your teeth as you raised your brows slightly.

"have you read all of these?" Matt asked, pointing at the shelves.

you scoffed with a smile, "no" you shook your head, "just over half, probably"

"that's still impressive" Matt shrugged, dropping his stuff on the floor.

"should we get started?" You said, wanting to cut the small talk and get this over with.

"yeah, sure" Matt said, following your movement and sitting on the floor opposite you, pulling a bunch of crumpled up notes from his bag.

You looked at them in disgust as he tried to flatten them out on the floor, shaking your head as you got up, scanning over your shelves to find anything you had on existentialism. You pulled a few books out and returned to the floor, opening them and scanning over the pages. Your movement grabbed Matts attention, him watching you intently as you began to rip through all the possible approaches he could take, listing off essay summaries as if you knew them like the back of your hand.

Matt wasn't listening, mostly because he had no idea what you were talking about, but also because your hair was falling in your face slightly as you leaned down to scan the books, the strands framing your face perfectly as you spoke with your plump, glossy lips. Matt noticed the small constellation of freckles on your nose, how your eyes darted around the room as you spoke, as if you were literally searching your brain for information, how your brows knit together every time you said 'obviously' and how...what the fuck is going on

"are you even listening?" you snapped, pulling matt from his haze.

"huh?" he said, meeting your glaring eyes, "yeah, yeah, I'm listening" Matt said, shaking the thoughts from his brain.

"because I don't have to do this for you, you know that right? I have much better things to be doing with my time and you're honestly the last person I want to spent my evenings helping" you began to complain, your tone cocky and fed up

"charming" Matt scoffed, "trust me, y/l/n, you're not exactly someone I want to be spending my evenings with either" Matt quipped back, matching your cadence.

"right, well, maybe if you listen to me, this can go a lot faster, and we can go back to pretending we don't know each other" you said with finality.

"fine" Matt shrugged, holding your eye contact

"fine" you repeated, having to get the final word

Matt chuckled, shaking his head with a slight eye roll. You squinted at him, scrunching your face up as his attitude.

"what?" you spat.

Matt couldn't help but grin, "you haven't changed at all" He met your gaze once more.

"what are you talking about?" you said, your voice thick with attitude.

"you always have to have the last word" Matt shifted where he sat, bringing his knee up as a rest for his arm.

"no, I don't" you replied with a scoff.

"yeah, you do" Matt grinned, nodding.

"no, I don't" you pushed.

Matt didn't respond, only raised his eyebrows and tightened his smile, looking at you in an accusatory manner, as if you responding the way you did only proved his point.

You scoffed, rolling your eyes and returning your attentions to the book in your lap, "lets just get this over and done with"

The rest of the night went...fine. There was some bickering, mostly started by Matt not listening or simply being himself. You ended up getting his introduction done before you decided it was time to take a break, needing to decompress from all the arguing.

You and Matt sat in silence, you fidgeting with your pen as you scanned over what Matt had written and Matt wandering around your room like a lost puppy, in his search through all your things, his attention was caught by the crates of records that looked as if they were holding up your mattress.

There were hundreds of them, all in alphabetical order, stacked on top of each other in the makeshift bed frame you had made with the crates. Matt scanned the names, in awe of the fact that not only did you collect music, but it was good music. Maybe you did have something in common.

"are these all yours?" Matt said, unable to take his eyes off your collection.

You looked up from the page, looking over to Matt who was crouched on the floor, peppering soft touches with his long, slender fingers over the spines of the records.

"who else's would they be?" you said, raising a brow at him as he looked over his shoulder at you.

"this is an impressive collection, y/l/n" Matt said, ignoring your attitude.

"thanks" you cocked your eyes to the side, generally irritated by him regardless of what he said.

"I didn't know you fucked with music like this" Matt returned his attention to the stacks, "maybe you're not as lame as I thought you were" he looked back to you with a boyish grin

You screwed your face up at him, giving him the biggest condescending smile you could muster up. Matt cheesed at your face, looking back to the music and scanning some titles.

"oh shit, Fleetwood Mac, I fuckin' love them" Matt said, pulling out the Rumours album and turning it over to read the track list, "still not as good as their self titled album from 75" Matt shook his head, putting the record back in its spot.

"are you serious?" you scoffed, "Rumours is easily their best album"

"absolutely not" Matt shook his head, sitting back down opposite you.

you simply stared at him for a moment, trying to process your bafflement, "In what universe is self titled better than Rumours?" you put the page in your hand down, leaning your palm on the floor so your body was towards Matt, your movement causing your jumper to fall down your shoulder slightly lower.

"In this universe?" Matt chuckled, "self titled has Rhiannon and Monday morning" He shifted, one leg tucked beneath him with the other acting as a perch for his arm, knee in the air with his foot on the carpet.

"and Rumours has the chain?" You pressed, "and dreams"

"okay, and?" Matt shrugged with a grin, drawing out his first word.

"you can't be serious?" you shook your head, "Rumours is incredible, you can literally feel the tension between the band with every sentence they sing, the energy is on a different level"

"so the album is good because everyone was beefing? how does that correlate to good music" Matt pushed, only slightly relishing in how worked up you we're getting.

"because?" you scoffed, "it's real, and raw, and the live shows were insane"

"you don't think self titled was real and raw?" Matt raised his brows at you.

"no, idiot, I didn't say that" you rolled your eyes, "rumours is just different, it was like all the anger from everything that happened was spilling out over the sheet music, it was...beautiful" your eyes wandered the ceiling as you explained your reasoning to Matt.

He couldn't help but smile as he looked at you, watching you speak so passionately about something other than how much you despised him was awe inducing, especially something like music, which he would have never have pegged you to care about this much.

You continued to argue your point, but the feeling of Matts eyes on you made your cheeks warm, and you stopped your rambling to look at him.

"what?" you deadpanned, cocking your eyes to the side quickly.

Your change in tone snapped Matt back into reality, and he was quickly reminded of who he was gawking at.

He cleared his throat, "nothing" he dropped his gaze from you, searching the floor for something to pay attention to other than the strange feeling in his stomach.

You furrowed your brows at him, watching the top of his head as he clearly tried to avoid eye contact with you at all costs. what the fuck was that about? you decided not to look into it too much.

"lets carry on, yeah?" Matt said, opening the book in his lap and clearing his throat once more.

"alright" you said, ignoring the tension in the air and returning your attention to the paper in your lap.

You spent the rest of the evening in silence, only talking if you really needed to and staying a good five feet apart at all times. Matt left once you had finished the outline for the body of his essay, still not looking at you for any longer than a second and hurrying out your room moments after you said that you could pick where you had left off tomorrow.

taglist: @sturniozalt@mattslolita@shaquilles-0atmeal@blahbel668@sleepysturniolo@le4hsblog @sarosfilms @joemamaaa42069 @2muchofaslvt @seluky10 @cherib3lla @jetaimevous @witchofthehour @sofieeeeex @ncm9696 @lovesturni0l0s @pepsicola-pussy @ifwdominicfike @dani-sturn @stupendousjellyfishpost @aesthetixhoe @sturn-rose @mattsnronebitch @chriscorqutte @elizasturn @ribread03 @st7rnioioss @maggieflms

#©sturnsdarling #matt sturniolo #matthew sturniolo #matt sturniolo x reader #matt x reader #matt stuniolo fanfic #matt sturniolo imagine #sturniolo #sturniolo fanfic #sturniolo fluff #sturniolo x reader #sturniolo imagine #sturniolo triplets #Spotify

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greenapplebling · 4 months ago

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Do you guys ever think about how much of a contradictory character Jamil is?

Like I don't have the energy rn to write a full essay with proof and all about it but?? The way we're told that Jamil is the kinda person to use someone else for the dirty work but when we look at his actions Jamil actually does a lot of the hard work himself and, specially when it comes to Kalim, refuses to take shortcuts for some goddamn reason???

Shipping aside, am I really supposed to believe Jamil when he says he hates Kalim when:

There's a voice line where Jamil says he actually isn't into cooking but does it for Kalim out of convenience, and yet explains (in his school uniform vignette I think?) that it's probably safe for Kalim to eat food from the cafeteria, which makes sense!!! After all, what kinda idiot would poison the whole school (full of elite students btw) just to get to Kalim?? And yet, Jamil still insists on cooking 3 meals a day every day for him...

Jamil does his hair with magic so he doesn't have to waste time on it, but does Kalim's headpiece and makeup by hand every morning (I know that kind of magic is hard and takes a lot of practice but hear me out, he had at least 5-10 years to practice on Kalim)

At the start of the Glorious Masquerade event, Jamil, despite quite literally having a mental breakdown over how much he doesn't want to take care of Kalim or be around him in book 4, seems very anxious and worried about leaving Kalim... FOR 3 FUCKING DAYS

Also how he thinks he's really good at masking his feelings and true intentions and yet Kalim is waaay better at him at masking. Like no one in-game nor most of the fandom ever seems to realize Kalim often masks his negative feelings with a positive and (intentionally) naive attitude. But when it comes to Jamil? Leona, Azul, Vil, Floyd and whoever else, all of them looked right through Jamil's act and some of them even said/implied Jamil is easy to read...

So yeah, Jamil often lies... mostly to himself

#yami rambles #meta #meta post #twst #twst jamil #jamil viper #disney twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland #scarabia #twst kalim #kalim al asim #character analysis #kinda #twst leona mention #twst vil mention #twst azul mention #twst floyd mention

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olderthannetfic · 1 month ago

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Ok. Dumb question incoming, but I'd much have a 'conversation' than try to read fanlore or watch video essays or something because I want to hear individual people's contributions.

Why Star Trek?

Don't get me wrong - I like the franchise! I'm not super duper familiar with it, but I do enjoy the bits and pieces that I do know. But I am wondering why that in particular is hailed as the grandmother of all fandoms? Obviously people were fannish before Trek, but I don't think anyone can deny the impact that OG Trekkies had on fic, zines, and eventually on the internet.

I know that it's always been popular and well-liked, but it's not as if there was NO SUCH THING as popular culture/fan culture before that (I mean, come on, the term "parasocial" predates the first Star Trek episode by 10 years!) . Was it just a perfect mix of timing + popularity + etc? Is there something in particular about ST that "hit different" than other series at the time? Or is the fandom really really just that mighty and it's almost "luck" in a way? I guess I'm wondering what particular dominoes cascaded in a line in order for Star Trek to have the impact on fandom that it does today.

or am I wrong? were there just-as-big fandoms before and I simply overhype Trekkie power in my head / happen to see more talk of that than I do of other fandoms? It could definitely be a social circle bias thing.

Ugh. Asking OTNF why Star Trek is so important to fandom history feels very much like asking a Russian History major why War & Peace is so important to literature - hence why I warned you that it'd be a dumb question! But I am just so damn curious what sort of crack was in early ST fandom that made it SO widespread and SO strong.

Like, I guess the TLDR is: what was particularly 'different' about Star Trek, either as a fandom or as a franchise or both, that made it Theeeeee OG fandom, rather than something, like, i dunno, LOTR or the earliest versions of Marvel/DC comics or General Hospital or something else like that?

I await the hordes of angry Man from U.N.C.L.E. fans eager to prove that they were first.

And, no, it wasn't that popular. Hence the aggressive Save Our Show campaign and explosion of fan culture when it ended after three seasons.

Part of the answer to your question is that there were like three things on TV at the time. What big fandoms? 'Parasocial' was about non-subculture people feeling warmly towards news anchors or hosts of variety shows or something, wasn't it?

LOTR got rediscovered in the 60s or 70s from what I hear, but science fiction and fantasy books were for fringe weirdoes. SFF was not mainstream for the most part. There are a bunch of History of Book SF Fandom things on Youtube, and you should consult them on the complex role of LOTR in that space. LOTR wasn't a mainstream thing until there were live action movies a billion years later.

The key about Star Trek is that it was a hit with the pre-existing book SF crowd. They were an organized subculture. Some of their favorite writers wrote episodes. Other shit on TV was for people who did not form subcultures in that way. Other shit for SF fans had an audience 1/10,00th the size.

MFU was insanely popular. Illya Kuryakin was the heartthrob of a certain era of girl and inspired many a Russian major. (Seriously, there are soooo many Russia-boos of a certain age who probably still have a poster of him somewhere.) The actor set a record for fanmail. The show may have more influence on fandom history than we think now, but it also didn't rerun the way Trek did, at least in some eras, and it didn't have sequel series in a franchise. I'm always finding 2015 movie fans shocked that there's a still extant and semi-active fandom—or even shocked that the movie is based on something.

Starsky & Hutch was also hugely important and is the moment slash fandom and "Media Fandom" really split from book SF fandom. As Trek fans moved on to buddy cops, they were into a completely mainstream show but in a non-mainstream way. Trek was an awkward bedfellow at SF cons, but S&H just didn't fit at all.

Of course, while Trek is the grandma of AO3 type fandom, don't forget that a shitton of modern fans who are doing "research" just look at the same few sources. Enterprising Women is great and all, but even other fans of the same stuff are like "Oh, that was just X's friends. Where's [thing] and [thing] and [thing]?" Ditto Textual Poachers and the other scant early sources that people think have academic weight.

While Trek would still be central, the picture of what was going on in the late 60s-early 80s would look a bit different if you just found a bunch of 70-something nerds and asked them than if you regurgitate other people's research, you know?

If you want an idea of what else was going on in SF fandom back in the day, check out Galactic Journey, where they roleplay that it's 55 years ago and review SF things "as they come out".

If you want to understand MFU, here's a vid of Illya:

youtube

What say you, readers?

What have acafandom and fandom history and meta left out?

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ginevrapng · 1 year ago

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"did sirius black just wink at you?"

no. you're trying to pretend he didn't at least, this is the second time so far this term sirius has winked at you and he smirks at you whenever you accidentally makes eye contact.

sirius black cannot like you, he just can't. he likes loud, confident, thin, conventionally attractive girls, he does not go for girls like you. black dates 'hot' girls like marlene mckinnon, not you.

not a girl like you, soft, cute, round.

black cannot like you, he likes someone who's like him, a gryffindor, popular, likeable, approachable, someone with the same friends. someone who he can walk next to in the corridor as he can sling his arm around their shoulder with zero shame.

that's why sirius black cannot like you. you're not his type and at this point you're getting annoyed with his constant fucking around with you.

you pretend you've never shown much interest in him before. you don't talk to him in class and don't talk to him in general, you pretend to think his jokes are immature and his hair is ridiculous and everyone believes you, apart from the man himself. you scoff and roll your eyes at the snarky remarks made in class towards the teachers although you hide your mouth behind your hand and slightly smile, you bite your lip trying to stop giggling, you pretend you want to support your house and watch all the quidditch matches but the only reason you attend every single game is to watch sirius play.

sirius black is smarter than people believe him to be, he knows that it's all an act that you put up. and he loves it.

he loves the way you turn your head away from the door every time he walks into class late. he loves to hear you stifle your giggling as you see the latest prank he's pulled like snape walking around with bright green hair. he loves the big jumpers you wear when you always pull your sleeves down so they cover your hands. he loves the way your chubby cheeks become more prominent on your face as you're talking carefree to your friends.

"black did not wink at me, he probably doesn't even know my name. i'm not his type."

you're sitting in the courtyard and you're pretending you haven't noticed the marauders. you want to read to get some work done but the library is too cold and your common room is too crowded. you try and focus on your essay but not only are the marauders near you, a couple of your friends are distracting you too.

one of your friends is bending down to your eye level, blocking out the sun while complaining that you're wasting the day, your other friend being just as melodramatic waving their hands about complaining about something you're paying zero attention to.

in the corner of your eye you see james potter laying on the ground fiddling with a golden snitch, which you think is strange because though you go to the gryffindor games to watch sirius you do know that james is a chaser. remus lupin's reading a muggle book and is somehow being able to ignore his mates chattering. peter pettigrew has his hand stuck in a can of something that he's trying to shake out off while sirius is snickering at him.

thinking you've looked at him long enough for it to start becoming suspicious you turn your full attention back to your essay.

"oi, black's looking at you again." your friend shouted to you in a whisper.

"no he's not," you hiss back not looking up.

"yes he is!" came from both of your friends.

"i'm not his type guys," you reply getting exasperated, feeling like you've had this exact conversation so many times by now.

"who says?"

you freeze, knowing that voice, having dreams about that voice. finally you look up from your essay to see sirius smirking from behind you having heard your conversation. your two friends have the biggest grins on their face, i told you so grins.

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newrochellechallenger2019 · 1 month ago

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i need a fic where patrick gets a crush on one of art’s smart stanford friends 😭😭 like an english major girl or something 😭

*forehead kiss* (as promised)

omg yes did you crawl into my brain and see the english student inside me???

you first meet patrick zweig when you knock on art's dorm door and the door swings open to reveal the tall, curly haired brunette staring back at you instead.

he leans against the doorframe, his eyes looking you up down, unsubtly checking you out. 'hey' he says, voice dripping with flirtation.

your brow furrows, jostling the paperback under your arm. 'is art in?', turned off by his cockiness.

there's a rustling of bedcovers from inside the dorm and art appears by the door. 'yes- hi- uh- this is patrick, we went to school together and uh-.' he says, tone apologetic.

'i'm a professional tennis player.' says patrick suavely, extending his hand out for you to shake.

you nod, shaking his hand politely. 'nice to meet you patrick.' you say formally and he smirks, seemingly victorious. 'anyway, i just wanted to drop off my book, i've put all the notes in so you can look over it before the next lecture.' you smile at art, handing the copy over.

his face lights up 'seriously? oh you're a lifesaver!' the blonde says warmly and your smile grows. 'it's no problem really.' and he shakes his head 'nah i owe you one, thanks.'

you wave goodbye and the door closes, art turns on patrick 'no.' the blonde says quickly. 'what? i wasn't even-' protests the brunette, feigning innocence. 'no way, she's way out of your league dude.' art says firmly 'that hurts man.' patrick mock pouts.

despite art's protests, patrick was unperturbed and started to take more trips down to stanford to 'visit art'.

the second time you meet patrick is in the library, you'd been pouring over your essay for half the day when patrick stopped at your table.

'thought that was you' he grins, and even though it hardly been a month since you last saw him, his charm felt familiar somehow.

you look up from your laptop 'what brings you here? this is for students.' you say coolly.

he barks out a laugh 'yeah i know that, art dragged me here to look for some textbook for his presentation.' he waves in a direction dismissively and slides into the seat next to you.

'what are you working on?' he says, peering over your shoulder and as your shoulders brush, you feel a jolt of electricity.

'essay. you wouldn't get it.' you say shortly, trying to ignore the way his body feels against yours.

he clutched his chest dramatically, feigning hurt and you roll your eyes. he nudges ever close, practically pushing you out of your chair as he reads. '...prevelance of...american colonisation...' 'yeah okay.' you interrupt, turning to him. 'thank you.' you say with finality, staring at him as a signal to leave you alone.

he leans back in his chair and eyes you with a wry grin, 'you're right, it's too smart, i don't get it.' and you shake you head, turning back to your laptop.

'patrick!' interrupts art, and you both look over at him. 'there you are, you left me talking to myself by the shelf like an idiot' and patrick hardly stifles a snigger at art's put-out face. 'sorry.' he manages, not a trace of apology in his tone.

'come on.' art says to patrick, before turning to you. 'sorry, good luck with your essay!' you nod in acknowledgement and patrick stands up with a groan, 'spoilsport.' he hisses to art, 'never going to happen.' retorts art and they leave the library.

it'd been a couple months since you last saw patrick, art had said that the tour was too far out for him to travel easily so you'd forgotten all about the sparks that had flown between you that day in the library.

it was the early hours of the morning and you were browsing the aisles of the college supermarket, looking for a final caffeine fix to cram before your exam that day.

you hear a rustling behind you and a hiccup, 'i like the...caramel ones...' slurs a voice and you turn around. patrick is stood behind you, staring at you, eyes slightly glassy, his arms filled with an array of snacks. you blink at him, 'are you-' and he waves his arm to cut you off, 'art got some drinks.' and you nod 'right.'

you turn back and grab a coffee from the fridge, a caramel one and his face brightens, 'good onesss....yes?' he grins wide, 'sure', you reply with a tight lipped smile.

you walk down the aisle toward the cashier and patrick follows, wobbling slightly, 'hey- come back with- hic- me.' he says and you shake your head, 'i'm okay, i've gotta study.' art should be too but you don't say that part and the footsteps behind you pause and you turn around, patrick's staring at you like you just said the most outrageous thing in the world, 'study?!... study study study, is that all you do?'.

'no!' you say defensively, bristling with hurt as you reach the cashier. patrick slides alongside you and hands over cash to pay for your coffee before you can stop him, unceremoniously dumping his own purchases on the counter.

'i'm sorry...i didn't mean that' he says with about as much sincerity as a drunk man can, 'it's okay.' you say quickly, grabbing your coffee and starting to leave.

his heart breaks, the alcohol coursing through his veins making him more dramatic than usual, 'wait! don't go!' his voice breaks, and you look at him a bewildered expression, 'what? why not?', looking at him expectantly.

'i'm in love with you' he blurts out and your eyes widen, and he catches sight of your expression 'no- hic- i have a crush on you- i mean.' and his face is so serious, you have to press your lips together to fight a smile at how endearing he's being, 'i figured.' you say quietly and his mouth falls open. 'and do you-.' and you pause, taking him in, he was handsome, that much was obvious and when he wasn't being an ass, which was seemingly all of the time, he was sweet.

you step closer towards him, your smile growing, 'i don't know yet' you say flirtatiously and his eyes light up, 'kiss...' he slurs leaning in and you lean back, 'outside.' you redirect, taking his hand and leading him outside of the shop, leaning against the wall.

you slowly cup his face with your hands and lean in, his lips meet yours gently as you kiss but it doesn't take long for the kiss to grow sloppy, his hands going to your hips and lifting you up against the wall, forcing you to wrap your legs around his waist.

he breaks the kisses, forehead against yours as he pants heavily, 'best...kiss...ever.' he mumbles, 'you're drunk' you laughingly respond and he shakes his head dramatically, before putting you down, 'gonna go back to- hic- art.' he says dazily and you stifle a laugh 'good idea.'

you watch him walk off, heart warmed by the brief makeout session you'd shared even if it was outside a college supermarket in the middle of the night.

he turns around, 'come see me on tour baby!' he calls and you grin 'will do!' and he looks overjoyed, half-running, half-stumbling in the direction of art's dorm.

hope you enjoy love <3

#merry's inbox 👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩#merry writes 𓋼𓍊 #i actually really enjoyed this lol #patrick zweig x reader #patrick zweig fluff #patrick zweig #challengers #challengers 2024

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justatypicalwizard · 1 year ago

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A scrap from your book

Bakugo x reader, aged up, college! au, quirks don't matter, no warnings, just heartwarming

Roommate Bakugo who is forced to share a room with you for about three months due to unexpected construction works in the college apartment he occupied. The whole Bakusquad was moved to random rooms. To make it worse they were all shared ones. You agreed to take in a male occupant.

Roommate Bakugo who tries to spend as much time outside of the cramped college room as possible. He feels like he's kinda invading your privacy as well as just finding the whole situation uneasy.

Roommate Bakugo who has to complete a bunch of assignments but the library is packed in the late afternoon hours, the air thick with gossip, stress, sweat and annoyance. Bakugo finally wandered off to the dorm room to find some peace for his work.

Roommate Bakugo who spotts you always turn off your lamp and tune down the brightness on your laptop when he tells you he's going to sleep.

"You don't have to do that." He grunts, already wrapped up in heavy covers.

"I don't mind, you do the same." Because he does.

Roommate Bakugo who walks on you watching a film he loves. At first he just circles the small room mindlessly, more interested in the unwrapping dialogue between his two favourite characters than the laundry he's picking up.

"You wanna watch?" You ask, pausing the movie.

"No. I was going to do my laundry."

"I can wait, I can buy some snacks in the meantime, I was looking for an excuse to do it anyway."

So the two of you ended up finishing the film together, sitting on your bed.

Roommate Bakugo who talks to you more, geting used to the situation faster than he thought he would. You both sit by your desks working on the boring college stuff. He spotted you were trying hard, not slacking around and keeping most of your deadlines. Even if he didn't want to admitt it, he was impressed. Not that he didn't do the same, it's just rare to find a person who actually cares.

Roommate Bakugo who didn't know how to phrase a sentence. He was working on a piece of paper for the last two hours after an intense day of workout and his brain refused to cooperate anymore.

"Can I ask you for a favour?" Your face appeared from behind your laptop screen.

"Depends on what is it."

"I finished a short essay and I wanted to ask if you could read it and tell me if it makes sense."

Might as well take a break to refresh his mind. Bakugo read through the text and came to the conclusion that you were a good writer. A very good writer in fact.

"How would you say that in other words?" He asked after you were happy with your work, your laptop tossed aside as you lay on your bed scrolling through your phone.

You skipped to him, read through the sentence and gave him a paraphrase, one that he wouldn't think of himself.

"Thanks."

Roommate Bakugo who was eying you book collection for some time. You had a bunch. When he asked the two of you started talking and in went on and on and on. Finally, you stood up on your bed, the sheets dipping in where you stretched out to reach the highest shelve. Picking out a book you handed it to him.

"My favourite."

So he started to read it.

Roommate Bakugo who got a text from you that you wouldn't be back in the dorms for the night. After a shower he laid down in his bed, shirtless, with your book in hand. It was definitely worth it and he was way past the half already. Suddednly the doors opened only to reveal you, eying him up and down.

"The fuck you doing here?" Suddenly Bakugo felt a tad bit embarassed about his bare chest and lose sweatpants.

"My friend cancelled, sorry, you have someone over?" A small sly grin appeared on yoru lips.

"Jeez no, I'm just half naked."

"I don't mind." You shrugged, throwing your bag on the bed.

And what was that supposed to mean?

Nevermind. Bakugo wanted to get back to the story when he spotted something horrific. His hand gripped a nice chunk of the page, torn out of the book. He must have done it when you startled him with the grand entrance. It was readable as he only torn the cream white but it still looked nasty.

"Shit, I'm sorry." He didn't even look at you, opting on eying the damage, embarassement creaping up his cheeks for destroying someone's else belonging. One of yoru favourite belongings.

You came over, looked at the book and started to laugh.

"What's so fucking funny?" From embarassed Bakugo quickly merged into defensive.

"You look as if you killed my grandma. It's just a book." You saw that it didn't make him feel better, in fact the frown in his brows deepened. "I like my books being used. Lets treat it as a memory of you reading it. Give me the torn piece, please." Your hand reached out and he put the scrap into your open palm.

You skribbled something down on it using a pen fished out of your drawer. When you gave it back to him, the paper read 'Don't stress so much, dummy.'

"You can keep it." A smile brightened your face as you turned around to do other things.

Roommate Bakugo who would never admitt to anyone that he kept that scrap in the back of his phonecase at all times.

Roommate Bakugo who would never admitt to anyone that it took you roughly two months to steal his rock-like heart away.

#bakugou #katsuki bakugou #bakugou x reader #bakugou katsuki #bakugo #katsuki bakugo #mha bakugo x reader #katsuki bakugo x reader #bakugo x you #bakugo x y/n #bakugo x reader #bakugou katsuki x reader #katsuki x reader #mha

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mostlysignssomeportents · 16 days ago

Text

Battery rationality

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/06/shoenabombers/#paging-dick-cheney

After 9/11, we were told that "no cost was too high" when it came to fighting terrorism, and indeed, the US did blow trillions on forever wars and regime change projects and black sites and kidnappings and dronings and gulags that were supposed to end terrorism.

Back in the imperial core, we all got to play the home edition of the "no price is too high" War on Terror game. New, extremely invasive airport security measures were instituted. A "no-fly" list as thick as a phone book, assembled in secret, without any due process or right of appeal, was produced and distributed to airlines, and suddenly, random babies and sitting US Senators couldn't get on airplanes anymore, because they were simultaneously too dangerous to fly and also not guilty enough to charge with any crime:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/20/damn-the-shrub/#no-nofly

We lost our multitools, our knitting needles, our medical equipment, all in the name of keeping another boxcutter rebellion from rushing the cockpit. As security expert Bruce Schneier repeatedly pointed out back then, the presence of (for example) glass bottles on the drinks trolley meant that would-be terrorists could trivially avail themselves of an improvised edged weapon that was every bit as deadly as 9/11's box cutters.

According to Schneier, there were exactly two meaningful security measures taken in those days: reinforcing cockpit doors, and teaching basic self-defense to flight crews. Everything else was "security theater," a term coined to describe the entire business, from TSA confiscations to warehouses full of useless "chemical sniffer" booths that were supposed to smell out bombs on our person:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/01/airport-scanner-scam/

Security theater isn't just about deploying measures that don't work – it's also about defending yourself against risks that don't exist. You know how this goes: in 2001, Richard Reid – AKA "The Shoenabomber" – tried to blow up a plane with explosives he'd hidden in his shoes. It didn't work, because it's a stupid idea – and then we all took off our shoes for a quarter-century:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Reid

In 2006, a gang of amateur chemists hatched a plan to synthesize explosives in an airplane toilet sink, scheming to smuggle in different reagents and precursors in their carry-on luggage, then making a bomb in the sky and taking down the plane and all its passengers. The "Hair Gel Bombers" were caught before the could try their scheme, but even if they had made it onto the plane, they would have failed. Their liquid explosive recipe started with mixing up a "piranha bath" – a mixture of sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide – that needs to be kept extremely cold for a long time, or it will turn into instantly lethal gas. If the liquid bomb plot had gone ahead, the near-certain outcome would have been the eventual discovery of an asphyxiated terrorist in the bathroom, lips blue and lungs burned away, face down in a shallow sink filled with melting ice-cubes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_transatlantic_aircraft_plot

The fact that these guys failed utterly didn't have any impact on the dramaturges who ran the world's security theater. We're still having our liquids taken away at airport checkpoints.

Why did we have to defend ourselves against imaginary attacks that had been proven not to work? Because "no price was too high to pay" in the War on Terror. As Schneier pointed out, this was obvious nonsense: there is a 100% effective, foolproof way to prevent all attacks on civilian aircraft. All we need to do is institute a 100% ban on air travel. We didn't do that, because "no price is too high to pay" was always bullshit. Some prices are obviously too high to pay.

Which is why we still get to keep our underwear on, even after Umar Farouk "Underwear Bomber" Abdulmutallab's failed 2009 attempt to blow up an airplane with a bomb he'd hidden in his Y-fronts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umar_Farouk_Abdulmutallab

It's why we aren't all getting a digital rectal exam every time we fly, despite the fact that hiding a bomb up your ass actually works, as proven by Abdullah "Asshole Bomber" al-Asiri, who blew his torso off with a rectally inserted bomb in 2009 in a bid to kill a Saudi official:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_al-Asiri

Apparently, giving every flier a date with Doctor Jellyfinger is too high a price to pay for aviation safety, too.

Now, theatrical productions can have very long runs (The Mousetrap ran in London for 70 years!), but eventually the curtain rings down on every stage. It's possible we're present for the closing performance of security theater.

On September 17, the Israeli military assassinated 12 people in Lebanon and wounded 2,800 more by blowing up their pagers and two-way radios whose batteries had been gimmicked with pouches of PETN, a powerful explosive. This is a devastating attack, because we carry a ton of battery-equipped gadgets around with us, and most of them are networked and filled with programmable electronics, so they can be detonated based on a variety of circumstances – physical location, a specific time, or a remote signal.

What's more, PETN-gimmicked batteries are super easy to make and effectively impossible to detect. In a breakdown published a few days after the attack, legendary hardware hacker Andrew "bunnie" Huang described the hellmouth that had just been opened:

https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/2024/turning-everyday-gadgets-into-bombs-is-a-bad-idea/

The battery in your phone, your laptop, your tablet, and your power-bank is a "lithium pouch battery." These are manufactured all over the world, and you don't need a large or sophisticated factory to make one. It would be effectively impossible to control the manufacture of these batteries. You can make batteries in "R&D quantities" for about $50,000. Alibaba will sell you a full, turnkey "pouch cell assembly line" for about $10,000. More reputable vendors want as little as $15,000.

A pouch cell is composed of layers of "cathode and anode foils between a polymer separator that is folded many times." After a machine does all this folding, the battery is laminated into a pouch made of aluminum foil, which is then cleaned up, labeled, and flushed into the global supply chain.

To make a battery bomb, you mix PETN "with binders to create a screen-printed sheet" that's folded and inserted into the battery, in such a way as to produce a shaped charge that "concentrat[es] the shock wave in an area, effectively turning the case around the device into a small fragmentation grenade."

Doing so will reduce the capacity of the battery by about 10% or less, which is within the normal variations we see in batteries. If you're worried about getting caught by someone who's measuring battery capacity, you can add an extra explosive sheet to the battery's interior, increasing the thickness of a 10-sheet battery by 10%, which is within the tolerance for normal swelling.

Once the explosive is laminated inside its (carefully cleaned) aluminum pouch, there's no way to detect the chemical signature of the PETN. The pouch seals that all in. The PETN and other components of the battery are too similar to one another to be detected with X-ray fluorescence, and the multi-layer construction of a battery also foils attempts to peer inside it with Spatially Offset Raman Spectroscopy.

According to bunnie, there are no ways to detect a battery bomb through visual inspection, surface analysis or X-rays. You can't spot it by measuring capacity or impedance with electromechanical impedance spectroscopy. You could spot it with a high-end CT scan – a half-million dollar machine that takes about 30 minutes for each scan. You might be able to spot it with ultrasound.

Lithium batteries have "protection circuit modules" – a small circuit board with a chip that helps with the orderly functioning of the battery. To use one of these to detonate a PETN-equipped battery, you'd only have to make a small, board-level rewiring, which could deliver a charge via a "third wire" – the NTC temperature sensor that's standard in batteries.

Bunnie gets into a lot more detail in his post. It's frankly terrifying, because it's hard to read this without concluding that, indeed, any battery in any gadget could actually be a powerful, undetectable bomb. What's more, supply chain security sucks and bunnie runs down several ways you could get these batteries into your target's gadget. These range from the nefarious to the brute simple: "buy a bunch of items from Amazon, swap out the batteries, restore the packaging and seals, and return the goods to the warehouse."

Bunnie's point is that, having shown the world that battery bombs are possible, the Israelis have opened the hellmouth. They were the first ones to do this, but they won't be the last. We need to figure out something before "the front line of every conflict [is brought] into your pocket, purse or home."

All of that is scary af, sure, but note what hasn't happened in the wake of an extremely successful, nearly impossible to defeat explosives attack that used small electronics of the same genus as the pocket rectangles virtually every air traveler boards a plane with. We've had no new security protocols instituted since September 17, likely because no one can think of anything that would work.

Now, in the heady days when the security theater was selling out every performance and we were all standing in two-hour lines to take our shoes off, none of this would have mattered. The TSA's motto of "when in trouble, or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout" would have come to the fore. We'd be forced to insert our phones into some grifter's nonfunctional billion-dollar PETN dowsing-box, or TSA agents would be ordering us to turn on our phones and successfully play eleven rounds of Snake, or we'd be forced to lick our phones to prove that they weren't covered in poison.

But today, we're keeping calm and carrying on. The fact that something awful exists is, well, awful, but if we don't know what to do about it, there's no sense in just doing something, irrespective of whether that will help. We could order everyone to leave their phones at home when they fly, but then no one would fly anymore, and obviously, no one seriously thinks "no price is too high" for safety. Some prices are just too high.

I started thinking about all this last week, when I was in New Delhi to give a keynote for the annual meeting of the International Cooperative Alliance, which was jointly held with the UN as the inauguration of the UN International Year of Coops, with an address from UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres:

https://2025.coop/

When I arrived in New Delhi, my hosts were somewhat flustered because Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had just announced that he would give the opening keynote, which meant a lot of rescheduling and shuffling – but also a lot of security. I was told that the only things I could bring to the conference center the next day were my badge, my passport and my hotel room key. I couldn't bring a laptop, a phone or a spare battery. I couldn't even bring a pen ("they're worried about stabbings").

Modi – a lavishly corrupt authoritarian genocidier – has a lot of reasons to worry about his security. He has actual enemies who sometimes blow stuff up, and if one of them took him out, he wouldn't be the first Indian PM to die by assassination.

But the speakers and delegates gathered in the hotel lobby the next morning, we were told that we could bring phones, after all. Because of course we could. You can't fly people from all over the world to India and then ask them to forego the device they use as translator, map, note-taker, personal diary, and credit card. Some prices are just too high.

They took a lot of security measures. Everyone went through a metal detector, naturally. Then, we were sealed in the plenary room for more than an hour while the building was sealed off. Armed men were stationed all around the room, and the balcony outside the room was ringed with snipers:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/54165263130/

We were prohibited from leaving our seats from the time Modi entered the room until he left it again, despite the fact that the PM was never more than a few steps from the single most terrifying bodyguard I'd ever seen:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/54164805776/

And yet: the fact that we were less than two months out from an extremely successful, highly public demonstration of the weaponization of small batteries in personal electronics did not mean that we all had to leave our phones at the hotel.

After that, I'm tempted to think that, just possibly, security theater's curtain has rung down and its long SRO run has come to an end. It's a small bright spot in a dark time, but I'll take it.

#pluralistic #batteries #terrorism #security #security theater #modi #bombs #petn #bunnie huang #aviation #tsa #fin de siecle

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rainyreading · 11 months ago

Note

If you want to (no pressure), could you do one for Theo?

The reader (girl) and Theo are friends in their sixth year and have to babysit, maybe the reader's niece or nephew.

Maybe Theo isn't good with kids and the reader helps him. You can decide all that, I'll leave that up to you.

Thank youuuuuu <3 <3

Babysitting

Theo Nott x bestfriend!sytherin!reader

wc: 1.5k

a/n: requests open

(not my gif)

It was winter break and you were staying at Hogwarts. A lot of your friends were staying at Hogwarts for break as well. You got a letter from your sister asking if your niece could come stay with you. You wrote back and replied with a yes.

Your niece was 4 years old. She was a little ball of fire, who always kept you on your toes. You truly loved your niece and cherished any time you spent together. So you were excited that she was coming to stay with you for a little bit.

Sixth year was equally exciting. It was like you were one of the oldest kids on the grounds, witch felt good. You had amazing friends and your classes were doable. It was hard to imagine next year was gonna be your last year at Hogwarts.

You and your friends decided to have a picnic by the black lake. Everyone in your friend group was there, which you were happy about. Some elves in the kitchen helped you out with the food, so you were very grateful.

"This is nice," you began.

"Yeah it is," Draco responded.

"Makes me want to jump in the black lake," Theo said through a mouthful of bread.

"You totally would," you teased.

"Listen, I have my niece coming to visit soon and I was wondering if you guys could help out, please," you begged.

"Yeah of course," Pansy agreed.

"I'm not good with kids," Theo put out.

"I'm sure your better than you think," you reassured.

"I'm really not," Theo argued.

"Well I still need you to be there for me," you deadpanned.

"Yes mam," Theo saluted.

Eventually your group finished up being around the black lake. Everyone packed up the picnic and carried on with their day. You stayed in the Slytherin common room reading a book by the fire.

Theo came strolling in, spying you curled up on the couch. It was in Theo's nature to bother you. He was always with you and always paling around with you. You were his best friend and he'd like to think he was yours.

"Hey Y/N/N, whatcha reading?" he asked.

You flipped up the book angling it to show him the cover then said, "Pride and Prejudice."

"What's it about?" Theo asked.

"The relationship of a boy and a girl as they try to overcome the titular sins of pride and prejudice in order to fall in love and marry."

"Sounds interesting," Theo stated.

"You're not gonna let me read are you?" you sighed.

"Well when you put it like that it sounds bad, but I just want to hang out with you," Theo smiled.

"Aw you're sweet," you cooed as you ruffled his hair. Theo swatted your hands away.

"What do you suggest we do?" you questioned as you shut your book, after bookmarking it.

"Well I haven't gotten that far yet, Um I don't know we could talk, take a walk, play a prank on Filch, maybe gossip?" Theo suggested.

"Ha ha ha," you laughed.

"You want to gossip?" You were surprised.

"I mean if you want to yeah," Theo shrugged.

"Well I just happen to know Draco asked out Astoria but she turned him down. And he was all like "I'm not taking no for an answer," but she said no. He told me he's not gonna give up though," you explained.

"I bet they will end up together, they would be good together," Theo replied.

"I herd Pansy got a F on her potion essay." Theo shared.

"Oh my god no way really?" You put a hand over your mouth.

"Yep. She was pissed," Theo responded.

"I bet."

"Blaise told me he likes Luna like a lot," Theo began.

"Wait what that's crazy. I never would of guessed," you stated shocked.

"Yeah I know right!"

"What are you two crazy kids up to?" Pansy saunters in and takes a seat next to you on the couch.

"Nothing much, just talking," you say.

"Oh well I hope it's about me," she flips her hair.

"Of course Pans," you laugh.

The three of you all chatted for a while, talking about the break. How excited you were to have time off from classes. The three of you were enjoying the break and being able to be carefree.

——————

The next day you woke up early. Your niece was coming today. You were a little bit nervous and anxious to see how she would get along with your friends. She was adorable though so you knew your friends would love her.

You went to the gate to pick up your niece and she was already there waiting for you. You were excited because you haven't seen her in a long while. You quickly embraced her after you said hellos.

"I've missed you Evie," you greeted.

"Missed you too," Evie responded.

"Come on let's walk to the castle and you can tell me what you have been up too."

Evie told you about her days and how happy she was to be visiting you. She told you about her mom, your sister and she told you about her friends in preschool.

When you got back to the castle you wanted to introduce your friends to your niece. You wanted everything to go smoothly so you secretly prayed it would.

You assumed everyone was in the common room. You made your way to the Slytherin common room with your niece. When you arrived all your friends were sprawled out on the couches and by the fire.

They all looked at your direction when you entered.

"Hi guys. I want you to meet Evie. Evie this is everyone. Everyone this is Evie." You gestured to the group and to Evie.

"Hi Evie it's nice to meet you, I'm Pansy and that's Draco," Pansy spoke up.

Evie waved to both of them.

"Hi Im Blaise," Blaise greeted.

"Hi," Evie whispered.

"And this is Teddy," you introduced.

"Teddy? Hi Teddy!" Evie is exclaimed.

"Hi little one," Theo addressed.

Evie came over to Theo and looked at him curiously. Theo smiled at her. She then reached out her hand and then stopped.

"Can I touch your hair?" she asked.

"Um sure," Theo replied.

Evie touched Theo's hair and then she giggled.

"It's so fluffy!" She laughed.

Theo gave you a look that said "what do I do?" You laughed at his lack of being around children.

"Give her a high five"' you suggested.

Theo raised his hand and said, "High five!"

Evie grinned and slapped her hand on Theo's. Evie took a liking to Theo and you could tell fairly quickly. Evie was one of your favorite family members and you were glad she liked your friends.

"Do you want to take a walk with me?" Theo asked.

"Yeah!" Evie answered.

Pansy, Blaise and Draco decided to stay in the common room. You, Theo, and Evie decided to roam the castle grounds. Evie was a bundle of energy.

"Could I have a piggy back ride Teddy?" Evie asked.

Theo looked to you for approval which you granted.

"Yeah of course," he allowed.

Evie jumped on his back and threw her arms around his neck. Theo grabbed ahold of her legs and shifted her up a little bit.

"Giddy Up horsey!" Evie called out.

Theo laughed and started to run. Evie yelled "weeeeee!" You started to catch up with them happy that Evie was having so much fun. Theo stopped at the top of a grassy hill.

"Can we roll down the hill?" Evie questioned.

"I don't see why not," you shrugged.

"Teddy go first," Evie pushed Theo on the back, urging him to roll down the hill first.

"Ok ok ok I'm going," Theo rushed out.

Theo laid down and then turned around to begin rolling down the hill. You started laughing as he speeded down the hill.

"Your turn Auntie!" Evie insisted.

"Alright settle down I'm going I'm going," you responded.

You got down on the ground and rolled down the hill. You ended down by Theo's feet and he helped you up.

"Come on Evie, tumble on down," you called.

"You guys ready?" Evie asked.

"Yes!" You and Theo both answered.

Evie came tumbling down giggling and getting covered in grass. You applauded her when she reached the end of the hill. She was beaming. Theo also joined in and clapped for her. Evie took a bow.

Eventually you all went back to the castle chatting about anything and everything. Evie held your hand and Theo's hand as she walked in the middle of you guys.

When you guys returned back to the common room Evie was tired and wanted to take a nap. You were so excited that Theo and Evie were getting along you didn't notice that Evie fell asleep on Theo's lap.

"Are you ok?" You mouthed to Theo.

"Yeah she's fine right here," he whispered.

It made your heart melt at the sight. You were thankful for Theo's help today and hoped that Evie had fun today, you certainly did. You hoped the three of you could hang out more and more. You watched as Evie slept completely content resting on Theo.

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