#in order of their involvement with the series
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Just to point out some features of mainstream American culture (not exclusively white American culture, but some of this will be white people specific):
You know what a hamburger is enough to have a specific preference for toppings. (Same with hot dogs, pizza, and ice cream.)
You could, if you wanted, grill something. In fact you have been to at least one outdoor event where hamburgers or hot dogs were cooked on an outdoor grill. It likely also involved paper plates, plastic cups, and a cooler.
You are at least generally familiar with American pop music. You know who Taylor Swift is and what her music sounds like.
You are also at least generally familiar with American movies. You know who George Clooney is and can name a movie he's been in.
You know that there was at one point a bunch of movies about Marvel comics, and can likely name at least three Marvel superheros and also at least three DC superheros. Also you know the difference between Marvel and DC.
You think that WW2 was a good war, perhaps the last good war your country ever fought in.
You go to sleep on a mattress covered in sheets on a bedframe, or if you don't you know people are "supposed" to do that.
A romantic relationship progresses in the following order: meeting someone, dating them casually, forming a real permanent relationship (which is the point at which you are no longer allowed to romance other people), moving in with them, becoming engaged to be married (a process which involves specifically the guy getting on his knee and giving the girl a ring which is not their eventual wedding ring), getting married. A relationship can only progress forward in this series: the only way to move backwards is to break up entirely.
A wedding ring is a gold ring with no other ornamentation worn on the fourth finger of the left hand. You have looked for the presence of this ring to assess if someone is married at least once. It would be quite surprising to you if someone was married but was not wearing a ring like this.
If you live with a romantic partner, you sleep in the same bed with them.
The archetype of a house in your head is a square with a triangle on top, and some rectangles for the door and windows. Other types of houses exist, you've seen them, but that's still the archetype.
A house has, or at least is supposed to have, a backyard and a front yard. These yards are both supposed to grow grass and nothing else. A common chore in American households is mowing the lawn.
75 is a reasonably comfortable temperature for you. 95 is quite hot and 115 is very hot. 55 is somewhat chilly and you probably wear a sweater or something. 35 is cold, 15 is very cold, and -5 is very very cold.
You intuitively understand how fast 60 mph is but not how fast 100 kph is.
1 of your country's currency is about the price of a candy bar. 100 is about the amount that you might carry in your wallet total. 10000 is the price of a cheap car. 1 million is about where you would consider someone rich, and is also a pretty reasonable amount for someone to save for retirement. 100 million is very rich and 10 billion is obscenely rich.
You know what a t-shirt is, what jeans are, and regardless of your gender have worn both of them together at least once in your life.
John, Mary, George, Jane, Fred, and Beth are all very normal names to the point of sounding a bit boring. You have met at least one person with each of these names and likely more than one. Despite a president being named this, Barack is quite an exotic sounding name to you: you probably have not met a Barack.
You have associations with certain common American names. Agnes is probably old. Shaquille is probably black, and in fact you probably associate that name pretty strongly with the basketball player. Mia is probably young. Chad is probably white, fairly young, and at least upper-middle-class.
Most people you know are "middle class" regardless of their actual economic situation. It's rude to explicitly call someone either poor or rich to their face.
You refer to most people by their first name, and would think of someone who insisted on being referred to as "Mr. or Ms. Lastname" as a bit snooty. Also you were expecting me to say "Mr. or Mrs." there.
the reason you, a white american, believe that white americans don't have culture is the same reason fish don't believe in water
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A Star in Time, an ISaT post-canon fan series
What Remains - 14,399 words, 3 chapters
What Remains is a retelling of the final act of In Stars and Time, from the perspective of Loop. They take a more active role in the story and the decisions they make set the groundwork for the series.
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Should Our Orbits Decay - 74,803 words, 14 chapters
Orbits is a full length novel that follows Loop, freshly returned from the bliss of nonexistence and hating every moment of it, as they travel from Dormont to Bambouche, dealing with the lasting effects of severe trauma, like psychosis and suicidal ideation. Siffrin may have wanted them back, but Loop has nothing but murderous intent for their binary star. It's up to Isabeau, Mirabelle, Odile, Bonnie, and even PĂŠtronille to help their suffering, forgotten friend work through things like schizophrenia and self-loathing in order to save both of the unfortunate time-loopers and help them become whole again.
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A Memory of Decay and Permafrost - ~63,000 words, 12 chapters
AMoDaP is a shorter novel that cuts in right after Orbits, throwing our beloved characters into a story of uncertain mystery and psychological torment. Mirabelle is trapped in a time loop, trying to save all of Vaugarde from the King's curse, and desperately needs help, because every time she fails more of her body becomes encased in hard crystals of ice. She makes a request at the Favor Tree for one of her companions to finally believe her and help her escape, only to find two people where normally there is just Siffrin. One of which is a strange creature with a star for a head, who happens to know a lot about time loops, how helpful!
Nothing is as it seems in this bewildering story of lies and trust, and no one is quite who they say they are. Will Mirabelle fight her way to the King before freezing to death, or will she fall victim to the machinations of an unknown threat that is pulling the puppet strings of everyone involved?
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#just leaving this here where it will be easy to find#masterpost#in stars and time#in stars and time spoilers#loop isat#writing#siffrin#ao3#fanfiction#isat mirabelle#isat spoilers#isat#isat au#fanfic
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happy pride month to queer high republic authors!!
Cavan Scott (he/him/they/them) - author of The Rising Storm, Path of Vengeance, The High Republic comic, The Monster of Temple Peak, Saber for Hire, Tempest Runner

Justina Ireland (she/they) - author of A Test of Courage, Out of the Shadows, Mission to Disaster, co-author of The Edge of Balance Vol. 1, Path of Deceit and Defy the Storm

Tessa Gratton (she/he/they) - author of Quest for Planet X, Temptation of the Force, co-author of Path of Deceit and Defy the Storm

Alyssa Wong (they/them) - co-author of Escape from Valo, author of short story Rogue Element

Vita Ayala (they/them) - co-author of Galactic Bake-Off Spectacular

#in order of their involvement with the series#the high republic#thr#almost started typing djo's name and went to double check and he's just a very cool ally actually. good for him#thank you star wars writers with pronouns
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~The Dream~
Excited to finally share this after many months :)
done with a couple microns and lots of love
#fate stay night#fsn#fate grand order#arturia pendragon#saber#fate series#traditional art#illustration#fan art#this was fun because it involved looking a bunch of Arthurian manuscripts for inspo#the ending of the fate route always makes me SO sad so this was my way of coping with it hahaha
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i just HAD to say "worm life series au" and now my brain is spinning
this is gonna distract me from current ongoing fics i just KNOW IT
#the thing is worm aus are not easy#bc for those who havent read it worms power system involves characters having superpowers that are direct physical metaphors for their#coping mechanisms to the traumatic situations that caused those powers to develop#so in order to competently write wormpowers for characters you have to understand that character and the traumatic events they have faced#and pick out what the maladaptive responses to those traumas are and then do the work of translating that into a set of superpowers#its so much work and now im gonna be distracted thinking about it#trafficblr#life series#life series au
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Dear THK viewers who understand Thai:
I was wondering if anyone has/would be willing to translate the bits we can see of the page that was attached to the pictures of Fadel and Bison's parents? Does it give us any added insight?
#asking very respectfully to please help us ignorant inter fans out >w<;;#the heart killers#the heart killers the series#thk#fadel#bison#thk ep 4#thk spoilers#(just in case)#the big numbers make me wonder if this documents how much the hit on their parents costed whoever ordered their kill#or if it was about a business deal that their parents were involved with and why it was worth ordering the hit on them#OR maybe its about an investigation into why they were killed (like police investigation document)
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tbh, I stopped caring about houses that much when I found out that it's an otome/dating sim game with srpg gameplay sprinkled on top. In other FE games, you either gather supports by pair ups or by having units standing against one another. And mechanics like cooking in Fates were done to get some more stat boosts. And even if the avatarization of the game started with New Mystery, Robin and Corrin feel more like customizable characters than an avatar for the player.
In houses, Byleth is like every typical dating sim protag, that does not speak and the few times they do is by having the player choose options that may raise heart points with a character or lower them, you have to find lost items and when you give them back you gain heart points, you have to give them gifts to gain heart points and cooking now doesn't give you any beneficts in battle and only works for, you've guessed it, getting heart points. And let's not kid ourselves, tea time is like the "dates" in otome games, in which you can spam gifts till you raise the affection to the max. The only thing that distincts those points from the otome ones, is that those are necessary for proficency and for unit classes.
Heck, we even have a ring to give to the chosen blorbo in order to get a special custom made cutscene, when in pasts games getting an S support gave you a broken unit to deploy and a little blurb of text during the credits. And of course, calendar/day systems are also common in these tipes of games too.
People complained about awakening and fates for turning the franchise into a dating sim, but 3Houses is literally one in and of itself, and yet is praised as peack FE experience and as peack srpg.
(I could also argue that is because of this otome nature why the characters are "tell don't show" with their given trauma, unlike in pasts games when it was "show don't tell" (Nino, Reison, Camilla, Leif, Soren...))
Well,
When you put it like that, it becomes obvious that the other games (FEH, Engage) mentionning Fodlan are stuck on the uwu monastery part of the part 1 and not the, y'know, events happening that will lead to part 2 because as you said, the SRPG aspect is just "sprinkled on top" lol
However, the "pair up your units and build their relationships!" has been a non gameplay mechanics for decades now (FE4's was a gameplay mechanic, it had no support convos - FE6 added the support convos and gave a small gameplay boost but it didn't commit and we had no endings, FE7/8 had endings, FE9 had convos but FE10 removed them and yet had endings depending on the pairs, etc etc) even without avatars.
Then we entered the avatar era and if it added the "my waifu and my bae" shenanigans, FE13/14 were still more centered on the story aspect that on the "dating sim" aspect, as in, even if you could raise affinity with a character by doing X or Y, it wasn't really coded in a minigame - came FE16 which you analysed perfectly : tea time, gifts, eating, S-support CG, etc etc.
That being said, FE is a RPG, meaning it has characters : you play FE for the solid gameplay but you also build characters, and imo the best way to develop and write characters is to interconnect them with other characters, and/or with the plot/lore.
Sure, Arden functions as a wall/tank. But through the 5 lines he has, you learn that he is part of a group of knights, has friends who often tease him but is relied upon by those people and takes pride in that, he'd also like to find a wife someday and has self-esteem issues.
Is he as developped as, say, Xillia's Alvin? Hell no! But they're characters from two different genres, Arden has those 5 lines that puts him above any "generic" armor.
(I find it interesting how UO and in a way, FE11, gives you the opportunity to play with generics instead of playing with named characters, in UO generics will turn out to be better since you can change their growths, but they're generics. Do you want the RPG of the Tactics/Strategy aspect?)
So, I'd say that support conversations are important, I love Saias and Ralf to bits, but I'm sure I'd love them more if they had more lines. And since support through battle can be a chore (hello FE GBA and trying to get Bartre and Karla's supports when she joins 2 chapters before the end!), I initially welcome any way to grind those supports faster lol.
However, it can quickly spiral in, well, the otome mechanics we have in FE16 - if you want to build support then why not have an entire mini-game for that, and meals and chorals and whatever else?
It's all about finding balance between developping your characters without turning your game in a dating sim or what I'd call "playing the sims and pairing those dolls with those other dolls you like".
Still, let's not kid ourselves, nowadays the "dating sim" aspect of the series is, while decried by some, very popular - and FE is first and foremost, a series that has to sell.
3H is not peak SRPG not peak gaming experience or even in FE gameplay that'd be FE5 but I can't ignore the fact that its dating sim aspects might be part of the reason why it's still very popular.
#anon#replies#fe series#for my part i never liked harem protagonists or games/mangas it always pissed me off#but say if Lloyd can end up with different people and ladies in ToS#it's not the first argument that's thrown around when people praise the game#or even discuss about it#it's an accessory#i know redshit isn't a monolith but#for all the sass some had decrying mooners thinking with their ovaries and wanting to pick their uwu pwince to build a s support with him#UO's redshit has a lot of 'which waifu did you choose' posts#it's fun#granted the dating sim aspect of UO is also something i'm not fond of even if they tried to write it in the plot#still unlike Billy eating 150 meals per day#Alain doesn't have to sit with people eating#like you can order a meal between rodrick Joseph and Monica without Alain#I like seeing how characters are interconnected to each other and all#which is why I hate avatar or MC scissors#I can't help but wonder if the weak writing for the characters in Fodlan isn't due to Supreme Earl Grey#and the fact that they all must be able to uwu about Billy so can't have meaningful bonds#I remember some people joking that Alain can legit break what would be canon or heavily implied to be canon relationships in UO#which is all kinds of uhh writing wise for the characters involved#it's even more hilarious when the characters favor their already built relationship over the one you force with the MC lol#but anyways back to FE Fodlan I thought like#the writing for characters was shallow because they all must be able to ditch friends family and lovers for Billy#and that's just... as tasteless as a watermelon to me
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it's both a really good feeling and a really bad feeling to have the next three videos planned out and drafted, and the next four to six videos planned for after that...
like i'm glad to have a vision and all, but i'm staring down the barrel of a lot of work, and a path which i can't necessarily diverge from now
#IV#it feels episodic which i guess might be fun to watch!#this is kind of why i'd like to do one long video to get it all done with but that wouldn't allow me to be as detailed as i'd like to#what was supposed to be a quick interlude video has now evolved into a large video has now involved into three successive videos#that is going to be so much work but well it needs to be done and said and it's not gonna do itself#like there is a whole timeline of 'first this then that' which needs to happen IN ORDER#and it's annoying bc i'd like to do some videos on more specific topics but before i get these done i can't do those#because these topics are literally foundational to everything else i'll talk about ever#im just relieved that large video is done as i explained witcher's origins in fantastyka and why i dont like the netflix show LOL#because those things are probably the hardest to explain#everything else is like OK well we have a book series in front of us. read it lol
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when people think anakin wouldnt have turned to the dark side if qui-gon trained him im just ?????
YOU THINK THAT WOULD HAVE STOPPED PALPATINE???
i mean qui-gon took anakin to be trained cause he thinks anakin is the chosen one or this is at least a major reason why and like??? PALPATINE WOULD HAVE JUST PIVOTED LIKE
"it's such a shame my boy that the council and even your master only see you as the chosen one and not your own person"
"i hope that they trust you as a jedi and not just part of a prophecy"
"i fear that qui gon only wants you as the chosen one and if you weren't, you would never have left tatooine"
LIKE PALPATINE WOULD HAVE DONE THAT! HE ENGINEERED A WHOLE WAR JUST TO TAKE POWER AND QUI-GON BECOMING ANAKIN'S MASTER WOULD HAVE DESTROYED PALPATINE'S PLANS???
idk just gets on my nerves and feels like a slight against obi-wan who yeah wasn't perfect and the circumstances for becoming anakin's master weren't ideal but i think he was a great master and this idea also makes palpatine seem far less manipulative, cunning, and evil
the man once said he would gladly make vader again given the chance, even knowing how it would eventually end, so he's not stopping just because anakin has a different master
#sheev palpatine#emperor palpatine#anakin skywalker#qui gon jinn#star wars#just gets on my nerves#sorry to everybody who has watched me like anakin turn to the dark side#the dark side is becoming obsessed with star wars#i have not been this obsessed with something or a character my god i love anakin but yeah not since voltron#so that's saying a lot#also from what i know about the jedi apprentice series and extended universe legends stuff about qui gon#dude does not have the best track record with padawans#he is very unorthodox and yes does not end up like the rest of the order in that like vein of being an arm of the senate or you know#being so involved in politics even tho they're peacekeepers and a religious order basically#but i think the whole chosen one thing would be much more present and constant in anakin's life#with anakin being fed both like#the in canon youre super powerful omg such a great jedi#thing from palpatine but also yeah oh they probably dont like you or trust you which is canon too except for you're their chosen one#youd probably still be a slave oops sorry but yeah you probably would be#and anakin is mentally ill enough already that palpatine taking a slightly different approach wouldn't really change much#same results different method#now... the obikin fic ideas i can come up with with qui gon being anakin's master and how all that happens#now those are fascinating
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made these alignment charts a while ago on a whim now im posting them to open three cans of worms that are three fandoms ive never interacted with on tumblr before. its an Experiment
whatever. go my sherlocks
#pabster posts#i in fact want to rewatch bbc sherlock. but i promised someone id watch arcane first...#the great ace attorney#ace attorney#bbc sherlock#sherlock#fate#fate grand order#admittedly i dont know as much about fgolock.#but this has proven to me that as a Normal Person that isnt involved in Planetary Threats. he is the most normal#which is surprising for fate series#type moon
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crying hysterically i have such a good fic idea for post-cataclysm teyvat but i just dont have enough time for another series rn
#so after doing the elynas quest#spoilers for that by the way#and the mary ann quests#but anyway#post cataclysm teyvat was rlly like an#apocalyptic place#kind of like fallout where abyss energy was like everywhere and very radioactive#and the institute had devoted itself to clean the abyssal energy but after it disbanded when the director died during the cataclysm#a secret group called the ordo formed and experimented with the energy in elynas's corpse -- who is assumed to be another dragon-creature o#rhinedottir and we already know that one of the secret members had interacted with the energy and became something akin to an#abyss inquisitor but he was unaffiliated with the fatui and the abyss order#but now i lowkey want to write a long fic series where reader was part of that secret group post-cataclysm#and also became corrupted by the energy and it would flip between the past and present#-- since we dont know neuvillette's part in the cataclysm i assume he was defending fontaine but that's only an assumption#and then maybe after the cataclysm he was filling in the power vacuum after the lord of amrita's death (first hydro archon)#but regardless in the past reader was going to be close with neuvillette maybe she was an ambassador for the narzinssenkreuz institute#before it disbanded which is how she met him and got the chance to get close to him. then the catacysm happens where they're forced to#separate because of all that's going on#and after it#she gets involved with the ordo. it would flip between the past and present#where in the present she's started to affiliate with the fatui -- reasons unknown as of yet but im not writing a fic without dottore as a#love interest but it would showcase the past and present - kind of like how little dark age did with half of the chapter set in the past an#the other part in the present -- so it would showcase 1) her relationship with neuvillette both while she's part of the institute and then#the decline of it as she becomes part of the ordo. it would also showcase pre during and post cataclysm fontaine. and then the present woul#probably focus on directly before pre-canon (like heliotropes) and into maybe both the sumeru archon quests and the fontaine archon quests#where she would end up meeting neuvillette again. this fic i would try to keep this one close to canon fontaine unlike heliotropes
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consistently torn between "nanami and saionji should just never speak to touga again" and "touga finally recognizing he wants genuine connections and putting in the effort to fix what he's broken and the three of them reaching some sort of catharsis with each other Despite It All"
#ITS LIKE#i think it's completely justifiable to just want them to not be involved with each other#but also kind of inherintly it is less interesting to have them just not interact with each other bc it means you can't really#explore their dynamic any further#mostly nanami just needs to have the option to not be reliant on him in order for anything between them to work itself out#i do think it CAN be salvaged despite the akio/anthy parallels but. on god it needs some craaaaaazy work#as for saionji i honestly think the series covers a lot of development ground for him already#but similarly i think he needs to divorce himself a bit from touga#in general all of them need to not center him in order to have a relationship with him. how's that for an oxymoron
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does anybody remember when I accurately predicted how game of thrones tv show would end bc I had a basic understanding of how the Tudor dynasty ended. lol.
#like genuinely the parallels in the book arenât even slick#<-although again letâs hope the book series doesnât end same as the show LOL#Robert = Henry viii#Joffrey and tommen as Edward vi (boy prince who dies young)#dare I say stannis = Mary I bc religious extremism#Cersei as lady Jane grey probably#or if you want the whole ânamed someone their successor in their will and got killed very quicklyâ you could say that sheâs Ned#although then succession order would be wrong#that does leave us without an Elizabeth though. renly is my Elizabeth I though đ#and THEN you get James I coming down from#Scotland to sort out everyoneâs mess đĽ´#<- and thatâs why I guessed a stark. and an unimportant one at that who hadnât been involved in the fighting I argued. itâs funny that I was#except he was gay and everyone hated him and he set in motion what led to the civil war so đ¤ˇââď¸#anyway as a girlie with a history degree nothing in those books is insanely#shocking to ME personally. although itâs interesting to see how my opinions have shifted in the last 4 years#early modern U.K. isnât even rly my era and I still know this sndjdkfkf#also I know#in theory everyone says the books are based on war of the roses but imho robs rebellion works better in that sense than anything else#so then I use the Tudors as my framing for what goes on during the timeline#but again itâs all circular bc you have the war of the roses and not too much later you get the English civil war so#anyway dynasties I actually studied at uni are like. the Carolingians and Capetians and Hohenstaufenâs / Holy Roman Empire#and then tang song and Sui . which all give me a lot of perspective on how these processes work#election based succession no look at Holy Roman Empire#âbest amongst brothersâ succession yes look at dynastic China#my conclusion here is that renly was correct rip đŤĄ#<- although I would be remiss to not highlight that several Chinese dynasties did practise primogeniture. but many of the most successful#ones didnât#like I still canât believe so many fans still think renly was insane like blood tanistry literally was such a thing historically that it#even has a silly sounding name. it was widely practised#him wanting to call an older brother is also what dany did and no one shits on her for that đĽ´
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I don't think i will rest and watch literally anything else until i've watched every single thing on grian's channel
#trying to bring back 2019 soooo bad#i've finished 2 of his life series (wild & secret life) so i'm kind of going in the reverse order?? idk#but i am sucked in#it's such a good concept#there are minecrafters who are just really good at their specific thing especially hermitcrafters right#as much as grian is a wonderful builder he REALLY shines as an entertainer ..... and gives life (heh) to whatever series he's involved in..#i want to watch some other hermits too i love quite a lot of them but i don't have the time to keep up with half of the server#like i did in high schoolđ
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Story below the cut to avoid a paywall.
There was no explanation, no warning. One minute, I was in an immigration office talking to an officer about my work visa, which had been approved months before and allowed me, a Canadian, to work in the US. The next, I was told to put my hands against the wall, and patted down like a criminal before being sent to an Ice detention center without the chance to talk to a lawyer.
I grew up in Whitehorse, Yukon, a small town in the northernmost part of Canada. I always knew I wanted to do something bigger with my life. I left home early and moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, where I built a career spanning multiple industries â acting in film and television, owning bars and restaurants, flipping condos and managing Airbnbs.
In my 30s, I found my true passion working in the health and wellness industry. I was given the opportunity to help launch an American brand of health tonics called Holy! Water â a job that would involve moving to the US.
I was granted my trade Nafta work visa, which allows Canadian and Mexican citizens to work in the US in specific professional occupations, on my second attempt. It goes without saying, then, that I have no criminal record. I also love the US and consider myself to be a kind, hard-working person.
I started working in California and travelled back and forth between Canada and the US multiple times without any complications â until one day, upon returning to the US, a border officer questioned me about my initial visa denial and subsequent visa approval. He asked why I had gone to the San Diego border the second time to apply. I explained that that was where my lawyerâs offices were, and that he had wanted to accompany me to ensure there were no issues.
After a long interrogation, the officer told me it seemed âshadyâ and that my visa hadnât been properly processed. He claimed I also couldnât work for a company in the US that made use of hemp â one of the beverage ingredients. He revoked my visa, and told me I could still work for the company from Canada, but if I wanted to return to the US, I would need to reapply.
I was devastated; I had just started building a life in California. I stayed in Canada for the next few months, and was eventually offered a similar position with a different health and wellness brand.
I restarted the visa process and returned to the same immigration office at the San Diego border, since they had processed my visa before and I was familiar with it. Hours passed, with many confused opinions about my case. The officer I spoke to was kind but told me that, due to my previous issues, I needed to apply for my visa through the consulate. I told her I hadnât been aware I needed to apply that way, but had no problem doing it.
Then she said something strange: âYou didnât do anything wrong. You are not in trouble, you are not a criminal.â
I remember thinking: Why would she say that? Of course Iâm not a criminal!
She then told me they had to send me back to Canada. That didnât concern me; I assumed I would simply book a flight home. But as I sat searching for flights, a man approached me.
âCome with me,â he said.
There was no explanation, no warning. He led me to a room, took my belongings from my hands and ordered me to put my hands against the wall. A woman immediately began patting me down. The commands came rapid-fire, one after another, too fast to process.
They took my shoes and pulled out my shoelaces.
âWhat are you doing? What is happening?â I asked.
âYou are being detained.â
âI donât understand. What does that mean? For how long?â
âI donât know.â
That would be the response to nearly every question I would ask over the next two weeks: âI donât know.â
They brought me downstairs for a series of interviews and medical questions, searched my bags and told me I had to get rid of half my belongings because I couldnât take everything with me.
âTake everything with me where?â I asked.
A woman asked me for the name of someone they could contact on my behalf. In moments like this, you realize you donât actually know anyoneâs phone number anymore. By some miracle, I had recently memorized my best friend Brittâs number because I had been putting my grocery points on her account.
I gave them her phone number.
They handed me a mat and a folded-up sheet of aluminum foil.
âWhat is this?â
âYour blanket.â
âI donât understand.â
I was taken to a tiny, freezing cement cell with bright fluorescent lights and a toilet. There were five other women lying on their mats with the aluminum sheets wrapped over them, looking like dead bodies. The guard locked the door behind me.
For two days, we remained in that cell, only leaving briefly for food. The lights never turned off, we never knew what time it was and no one answered our questions. No one in the cell spoke English, so I either tried to sleep or meditate to keep from having a breakdown. I didnât trust the food, so I fasted, assuming I wouldnât be there long.
On the third day, I was finally allowed to make a phone call. I called Britt and told her that I didnât understand what was happening, that no one would tell me when I was going home, and that she was my only contact.
They gave me a stack of paperwork to sign and told me I was being given a five-year ban unless I applied for re-entry through the consulate. The officer also said it didnât matter whether I signed the papers or not; it was happening regardless.
I was so delirious that I just signed. I told them I would pay for my flight home and asked when I could leave.
No answer.
Then they moved me to another cell â this time with no mat or blanket. I sat on the freezing cement floor for hours. Thatâs when I realized they were processing me into real jail: the Otay Mesa Detention Center.
I was told to shower, given a jail uniform, fingerprinted and interviewed. I begged for information.
âHow long will I be here?â
âI donât know your case,â the man said. âCould be days. Could be weeks. But Iâm telling you right now â you need to mentally prepare yourself for months.â
Months.
I felt like I was going to throw up.
I was taken to the nurseâs office for a medical check. She asked what had happened to me. She had never seen a Canadian there before. When I told her my story, she grabbed my hand and said: âDo you believe in God?â
I told her I had only recently found God, but that I now believed in God more than anything.
âI believe God brought you here for a reason,â she said. âI know it feels like your life is in a million pieces, but you will be OK. Through this, I think you are going to find a way to help others.â
At the time, I didnât know what that meant. She asked if she could pray for me. I held her hands and wept.
I felt like I had been sent an angel.
I was then placed in a real jail unit: two levels of cells surrounding a common area, just like in the movies. I was put in a tiny cell alone with a bunk bed and a toilet.
The best part: there were blankets. After three days without one, I wrapped myself in mine and finally felt some comfort.
For the first day, I didnât leave my cell. I continued fasting, terrified that the food might make me sick. The only available water came from the tap attached to the toilet in our cells or a sink in the common area, neither of which felt safe to drink.
Eventually, I forced myself to step out, meet the guards and learn the rules. One of them told me: âNo fighting.â
âIâm a lover, not a fighter,â I joked. He laughed.
I asked if there had ever been a fight here.
âIn this unit? No,â he said. âNo one in this unit has a criminal record.â
Thatâs when I started meeting the other women.
Thatâs when I started hearing their stories.
And thatâs when I made a decision: I would never allow myself to feel sorry for my situation again. No matter how hard this was, I had to be grateful. Because every woman I met was in an even more difficult position than mine.
There were around 140 of us in our unit. Many women had lived and worked in the US legally for years but had overstayed their visas â often after reapplying and being denied. They had all been detained without warning.
If someone is a criminal, I agree they should be taken off the streets. But not one of these women had a criminal record. These women acknowledged that they shouldnât have overstayed and took responsibility for their actions. But their frustration wasnât about being held accountable; it was about the endless, bureaucratic limbo they had been trapped in.
The real issue was how long it took to get out of the system, with no clear answers, no timeline and no way to move forward. Once deported, many have no choice but to abandon everything they own because the cost of shipping their belongings back is too high.
I met a woman who had been on a road trip with her husband. She said they had 10-year work visas. While driving near the San Diego border, they mistakenly got into a lane leading to Mexico. They stopped and told the agent they didnât have their passports on them, expecting to be redirected. Instead, they were detained. They are both pastors.
I met a family of three who had been living in the US for 11 years with work authorizations. They paid taxes and were waiting for their green cards. Every year, the mother had to undergo a background check, but this time, she was told to bring her whole family. When they arrived, they were taken into custody and told their status would now be processed from within the detention center.
Another woman from Canada had been living in the US with her husband who was detained after a traffic stop. She admitted she had overstayed her visa and accepted that she would be deported. But she had been stuck in the system for almost six weeks because she hadnât had her passport. Who runs casual errands with their passport?
One woman had a 10-year visa. When it expired, she moved back to her home country, Venezuela. She admitted she had overstayed by one month before leaving. Later, she returned for a vacation and entered the US without issue. But when she took a domestic flight from Miami to Los Angeles, she was picked up by Ice and detained. She couldnât be deported because Venezuela wasnât accepting deportees. She didnât know when she was getting out.
There was a girl from India who had overstayed her student visa for three days before heading back home. She then came back to the US on a new, valid visa to finish her masterâs degree and was handed over to Ice due to the three days she had overstayed on her previous visa.
There were women who had been picked up off the street, from outside their workplaces, from their homes. All of these women told me that they had been detained for time spans ranging from a few weeks to 10 months. One womanâs daughter was outside the detention center protesting for her release.
That night, the pastor invited me to a service she was holding. A girl who spoke English translated for me as the women took turns sharing their prayers â prayers for their sick parents, for the children they hadnât seen in weeks, for the loved ones they had been torn away from.
Then, unexpectedly, they asked if they could pray for me. I was new here, and they wanted to welcome me. They formed a circle around me, took my hands and prayed. I had never felt so much love, energy and compassion from a group of strangers in my life. Everyone was crying.
At 3am the next day, I was woken up in my cell.
âPack your bag. Youâre leaving.â
I jolted upright. âI get to go home?â
The officer shrugged. âI donât know where youâre going.â
Of course. No one ever knew anything.
I grabbed my things and went downstairs, where 10 other women stood in silence, tears streaming down their faces. But these werenât happy tears. That was the moment I learned the term âtransferredâ.
For many of these women, detention centers had become a twisted version of home. They had formed bonds, established routines and found slivers of comfort in the friendships they had built. Now, without warning, they were being torn apart and sent somewhere new. Watching them say goodbye, clinging to each other, was gut-wrenching.
I had no idea what was waiting for me next. In hindsight, that was probably for the best.
Our next stop was Arizona, the San Luis Regional Detention Center. The transfer process lasted 24 hours, a sleepless, grueling ordeal. This time, men were transported with us. Roughly 50 of us were crammed into a prison bus for the next five hours, packed together â women in the front, men in the back. We were bound in chains that wrapped tightly around our waists, with our cuffed hands secured to our bodies and shackles restraining our feet, forcing every movement into a slow, clinking struggle.
When we arrived at our next destination, we were forced to go through the entire intake process all over again, with medical exams, fingerprinting â and pregnancy tests; they lined us up in a filthy cell, squatting over a communal toilet, holding Dixie cups of urine while the nurse dropped pregnancy tests in each of our cups. It was disgusting.
We sat in freezing-cold jail cells for hours, waiting for everyone to be processed. Across the room, one of the women suddenly spotted her husband. They had both been detained and were now seeing each other for the first time in weeks.
The look on her face â pure love, relief and longing â was something Iâll never forget.
We were beyond exhausted. I felt like I was hallucinating.
The guard tossed us each a blanket: âFind a bed.â
There were no pillows. The room was ice cold, and one blanket wasnât enough. Around me, women lay curled into themselves, heads covered, looking like a room full of corpses. This place made the last jail feel like the Four Seasons.
I kept telling myself: Do not let this break you.
Thirty of us shared one room. We were given one Styrofoam cup for water and one plastic spoon that we had to reuse for every meal. I eventually had to start trying to eat and, sure enough, I got sick. None of the uniforms fit, and everyone had menâs shoes on. The towels they gave us to shower were hand towels. They wouldnât give us more blankets. The fluorescent lights shined on us 24/7.
Everything felt like it was meant to break you. Nothing was explained to us. I wasnât given a phone call. We were locked in a room, no daylight, with no idea when we would get out.
I tried to stay calm as every fiber of my being raged towards panic mode. I didnât know how I would tell Britt where I was. Then, as if sent from God, one of the women showed me a tablet attached to the wall where I could send emails. I only remembered my CEOâs email from memory. I typed out a message, praying he would see it.
He responded.
Through him, I was able to connect with Britt. She told me that they were working around the clock trying to get me out. But no one had any answers; the system made it next to impossible. I told her about the conditions in this new place, and that was when we decided to go to the media.
She started working with a reporter and asked whether I would be able to call her so she could loop him in. The international phone account that Britt had previously tried to set up for me wasnât working, so one of the other women offered to let me use her phone account to make the call.
We were all in this together.
With nothing to do in my cell but talk, I made new friends â women who had risked everything for the chance at a better life for themselves and their families.
Through them, I learned the harsh reality of seeking asylum. Showing me their physical scars, they explained how they had paid smugglers anywhere from $20,000 to $60,000 to reach the US border, enduring brutal jungles and horrendous conditions.
One woman had been offered asylum in Mexico within two weeks but had been encouraged to keep going to the US. Now, she was stuck, living in a nightmare, separated from her young children for months. She sobbed, telling me how she felt like the worst mother in the world.
Many of these women were highly educated and spoke multiple languages. Yet, they had been advised to pretend they didnât speak English because it would supposedly increase their chances of asylum.
Some believed they were being used as examples, as warnings to others not to try to come.
Women were starting to panic in this new facility, and knowing I was most likely the first person to get out, they wrote letters and messages for me to send to their families.
It felt like we had all been kidnapped, thrown into some sort of sick psychological experiment meant to strip us of every ounce of strength and dignity.
We were from different countries, spoke different languages and practiced different religions. Yet, in this place, none of that mattered. Everyone took care of each other. Everyone shared food. Everyone held each other when someone broke down. Everyone fought to keep each otherâs hope alive.
I got a message from Britt. My story had started to blow up in the media.
Almost immediately after, I was told I was being released.
My Ice agent, who had never spoken to me, told my lawyer I could have left sooner if I had signed a withdrawal form, and that they hadnât known I would pay for my own flight home.
From the moment I arrived, I begged every officer I saw to let me pay for my own ticket home. Not a single one of them ever spoke to me about my case.
To put things into perspective: I had a Canadian passport, lawyers, resources, media attention, friends, family and even politicians advocating for me. Yet, I was still detained for nearly two weeks.
Imagine what this system is like for every other person in there.
A small group of us were transferred back to San Diego at 2am â one last road trip, once again shackled in chains. I was then taken to the airport, where two officers were waiting for me. The media was there, so the officers snuck me in through a side door, trying to avoid anyone seeing me in restraints. I was beyond grateful that, at the very least, I didnât have to walk through the airport in chains.
To my surprise, the officers escorting me were incredibly kind, and even funny. It was the first time I had laughed in weeks.
I asked if I could put my shoelaces back on.
âYes,â one of them said with a grin. âBut you better not run.â
âYeah,â the other added. âOr weâll have to tackle you in the airport. Thatâll really make the headlines.â
I laughed, then told them I had spent a lot of time observing the guards during my detention and I couldnât believe how often I saw humans treating other humans with such disregard. âBut donât worry,â I joked. âYou two get five stars.â
When I finally landed in Canada, my mom and two best friends were waiting for me. So was the media. I spoke to them briefly, numb and delusional from exhaustion.
It was surreal listening to my friends recount everything they had done to get me out: working with lawyers, reaching out to the media, making endless calls to detention centers, desperately trying to get through to Ice or anyone who could help. They said the entire system felt rigged, designed to make it nearly impossible for anyone to get out.
The reality became clear: Ice detention isnât just a bureaucratic nightmare. Itâs a business. These facilities are privately owned and run for profit.
Companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group receive government funding based on the number of people they detain, which is why they lobby for stricter immigration policies. Itâs a lucrative business: CoreCivic made over $560m from Ice contracts in a single year. In 2024, GEO Group made more than $763m from Ice contracts.
The more detainees, the more money they make. It stands to reason that these companies have no incentive to release people quickly. What I had experienced was finally starting to make sense.
#christofascists#ice raids#mass deportations#trump regime#canada us relations#police state#dictatorship#antifascist#the future we were promised
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Short explanation of what the hell the Luffy tab on top of the dashboard is:
- For some reason the tumblr marketing team decided to make a deal with Netflix to promote the new live action One Piece movie with a site wide tab, instead of like... An ad.
- The Tab started with the name Luffy, the protagonist of the series. It has now changed to Zoro. There's not explanation given but I suspect it's in the order of the One Piece rap
- The tab seems to be very broken, only showing 5-7 posts that were posted months ago. The users who's art and posts have been included were not asked permission to be used in an ad campaign.
- The disclosing of this being an ad has also been suspect, with many only finding out through word of mouth rather than the tab telling it. I'm not a lawyer but I think that's at least skirting a crime.
- The popular reccomendation is to not engage with the tab, because it'll encourage tumblr to pull more stunts like this. Their sponsors will be delighted the more you click, no matter if its out of confusion or not.
This whole thing is a mess and I hate how marketing teams are trying to bypass adblockers by making alternative ads that get people talking. The act of me posting this is what they want and I'm enraged.... Still, uh, I want to spread the info we've gathered as a community. Let me know if you find more or something is incorrect.
Ps. dont attack one piece fans, they didn't know this was gonna happen either. Please dont leave weird comments to the posts in the tab, the OPs are not involved.
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