#it means ‘do you have choices and safety nets if things go to shit’

[krtart]

Sign language for deaf tellurians in the modern interstellar era is often integrated into clearspeech translators by way of motion capture ear pieces and gloves. These same capture rigs can also be used for direct transcription (glossing) without translation.

Speech-to-tactile-text devices can fill the receptive communication gap, and other orientation and mobility skills and devices can fill the role of echolocation. In combination, these technologies can allow for a high degree of independence and self-expression.

Even so, many deaf tellurians still make use of personal assistants to serve as tactile sign interpreters and hearing guides. When speed and ease of use are a higher priority than strict single-person independence — as is often the case within many tellurian cultures — a skilled professional generally remains the preferred choice.

In-person communication within deaf communities also generally opts in favor of tactile sign.

[yb-cringe]

alright wybie here's a free ask to talk my ear off about fitpac GO

this is like a trap isnt it ih gos ok yea

the thing that gets me abt fitpac is that its not that deep. and i dont mean that in an insulting way or that their impacts on one another arent expansive and hugely helpful but i mean it in that like. theres no catch. i love spiderbit for their complexity i love fitpac for their simple, slow, love

that by no means is me insinuating its not got its edges though. theyre just. sweet.

i think both of them have a lot of trauma when it comes to imprisonment and just general fear for their lives and while that could be said for a lot of people on the server i think whats important is that they’ve recognized that in each other? or at least fit has from what ive seen

and pac (and mike tbf) need a constant right now. things are crazy people are disappearinf theres no stability but they can always trust that fit will be there and he will listen and more importantly that he SEES them and will defend them

i think my thoughts abt them boil down to ‘pac needs consistency. a solid rock. he needs a recognizable pattern that doesnt change so he can have a safety net’ and ‘fit spent so long in survival he doesnt know how to just Live and he needs someone to be patient with him’

and its not easy for Either of them especially right fucking now. whats happened is that fit is trying to be the solid foundation for a bunch of people and its wearing him thin. and pac is just speedrunning traumas.

god the babysteps thing will forever be imprinted on the back of my eyes tho. like yeah fit needs to go rly fucking slow. hes a traumatized single father and hes fucking cautious about everything. always has been. letting someone into his life and giving them space in his heart is a big fucking deal. he just cannot afford to make that choice lightly. hell even ramón had to be patient for a bit

whats the fuckin saying like. fell first but he fell harder? wheres the ‘he fell first but didnt wanna think about it until he accepted it at which point he fell so fucking hard it would ruin him to lose it’ thats qfit. he literallt cannot even say the words date or romance or love or wven really Like in a romantic context about pac because shit will get too real and he needs to go slow rven if he has to FORCE HIMSELF to move slowly.

gkd i dont even know where to start with pac. he needs consistency so bad. and mike was that- mike IS that. pac is someone who needs company he needs someone to be near especially lately after his whole kidnapping thing where he was alone in that fuckin room after whatever they did to him—

hes been through so much shit and he just needs someone to stay- someone to turn to and know he’s got slmeone on his side. like pac in his own right is sort of paranoid —not the kind of way he has been recently though.

but like if you had to force tazercraft into designations of head and heart, pac would be the mind and mike would be the heart. pac is thinking ahead, he’s trying to force himself to move on because he knows mike wont, he’s trying to avoid doing things too crazy to keep them off the radar— he’s keeping them out of trouble when he can remember to.

not to say hes not chaotic and passionate in his own right but yknow. comparisons. but hes a thinker yjnow he plans for the future and if he doesnt have someone to be his safety net he fucking panics and doesnt do things he wants to because he’s worried about being caught out alone without any support

all of this to say that he doesnt Really think of romance more then Fun because he needs safety nets first. which is also kind of why the moving slow thing works for him because he’s definitely not going to realize how in deep he is like love wise until its too late. and he probablt cant even fuckin risk it right now considering yhh like Everything going on.

[laffy-taffy-creations]

Day 1 of whumptober!

This fic was cross-posted on Ao3 here

Just One Day

Safety Net | Swooning | "How many fingers am I holding up?"

Fandom: My Hero Academia

Words: 1,040

Warnings: sickness, overexertion, self-hatred, human experiments, broken promises, adultification of a minor, child abuse

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Hey, uhhh…3?” someone asked.

I turned. “Oh, hey 7. What’s up?”

“9 sent me to see you. Whatcha doing?”

“Fixing the home remedy for tonight’s batch of allergic reactions. Our stupid ‘caretakers’ decided that fish sticks would be a brilliant choice of dinner despite at least 170 of the nearly 300 of us being allergic to fish or the oil the use to fry shit.”

“Really?”

I scoffed, “I know right? You’d think they’d realize what a bad idea that is.”

“No,” she said, “I mean you know how to combat allergic reactions?”

I looked at her confused. “Yeah, I’ve been the one making the remedies for everyone since being chosen as an experiment… did you really not know this?”

“I mean, I knew someone was making them, but I figured it would be one of the adults, not… you… do you even have allergies?”

“No, but that doesn’t really matter?”

She was stunned. “3. You’re 11. Are you trying to tell me that ontop of caring for literally every person in this facility, teaching everyone Japanese, making sure we’re all safe and that fights dont break out, keeping us educated as possible, ensuring we all make it to sleep at night and tending to the other kids teens and sometimes adults that have issues sleeping, you’ve also been the person keeping track of allergies and making the drinks infused with whatever it is that keep allergies from being life threatening?”

“Uhhhh, yeah? Why is that so confusing to you?”

“3! You’re 11 for crying out loud! Are you trying to tell me you’ve been single-handedly taking care of everyone in every aspect imaginable SINCE YOU WERE NINE?!?!?!”

“7. Calm down.”

“I will NOT! You’re a fucking fifth grader taking care of nearly 300 people on your own!”

“And I’ve been doing that job just fine for 2 years.”

“3-”

“Sayovai.”

“No, I dont wanna hear it, what the actual fuck 3?-”

“Sayovai.”

“You cant be serious, I mean-”

“SAYOVAI! YEHLISA UMOYA!”

She finally paused.

“I am fine. You are fine. I am doing what I have to so we can all survive here, I’m our safety net. Ngicela ungithembe nje, kulungile?”

She took a deep breath and nodded. “Fine. So long as you promise awuzicindezeli… you can promise me that, akunjalo?”

I laughed a bit. “Yebo, ngiyathembisa.”

“Good.”

----《 ¤ 》----

I tried to keep my promise.

----《 ¤ 》----

“3, you doing good?” Max asked me.

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I think, just a mild sickness…”

He paused. “Go back to your room.”

“What?”

“Go back to your room. If you’re sick right now, you have to go rest.”

I protested, “I’m fine Max! It’s just a mild sickness of some sort…”

“OV, if you could see yourself right now, you’d know damn well this isn’t ‘mild sickness’.”

I scoffed.

“You’re barely walking right now.”

“Liar.”

“I’m not lying, I-! Actually, you know what, stay right fucking there, I’m getting 9.”

“Okay, but I’m telling you, it’s not that bad.”

I waited for a while.

They finally returned but… Was I on the floor now? When had that happened?

There was some noise, it was faint. Like someone was calling to me. I saw what looked like a hand in front of me. I made some sort of noise, trying to respond. I felt like I should be panicking, but I had too little energy.

Next thing I knew, I was off the ground. Was someone carrying me? Everything was blurry. I could barely keep my eyes open.

Then it was soft.

Incredibly soft. I recognized the feeling of a bed.

I melted into the dark surrounding me. Eventually my hearing cleared. And I was able to open my eyes again.

“3? 3 are you awake?” I heard.

“Mmmmmm…”

“Hey, hey! Dont fall asleep again! Look at me,” it sounded like Relena.

I opened my eyes and weakly pushed myself up. This whole situation was so vague in my memory… I feel like I have something to do…

“Hey, 3, look at me. How many fingers am I holding up?”

I concentrated as best I could. “Mmmm…. Four?” I guessed.

She sighed and put her hand down, “No OV… Just rest, I’ll take care of today. You’re too out of it to do anything right now.”

That jogged my mind a bit. There’s… a lot of us… in the building… I’m meant to be taking care of us… I’m meant to be taking care of us!

I instantly started to get out of bed and was just as instantly pushed back into in. “No 3! You stay here!”

“I’m meant to… be taking care of… the others right now!” I slurred.

“No! I’m taking care of the others today! You’re sick!”

My vision started getting blurry again and I could feel a tightening in my throat. “But I-"

“But nothing! Rest!”

I felt something warm go down my cheek. “I’m supposed to- I’m our safety net! If I’m not there and something really bad happens-”

“We’ll take care of it! There’s more people than just you here, 3. If things really go wrong, we’ll figure it out.”

I was starting to have some trouble breathing. Crying. That’s what’s happening. I’m sobbing.

“But- the, the others-”

“Vee, I can take over for a day. It’s one day. You’re usually our safety net. Let us be yours.”

She lifted my mask and wiped away my tears. “We’ll be fine. Just take a break. You’ve already done way too much for your age. Just one day, okay?”

I nodded as best I could. I ended up crying myself back to sleep. Even after waking up again, this time alone in my room, I couldn’t shake the feeling I’d somehow failed everyone.

It should’ve been fine. I should’ve been able to handle it. It’s my job to take care of the others. Today shouldn’t have been any different.

“Hey, 3, you awake in here?” someone called from the doorway after a while, pulling me from my thoughts.

“Hm? Oh, yeah, what is it Agno?”

“Dinnertime. C’mon, join us. We missed you today.”

“Yeah, I’ll be there in a bit, just gimmie a moment.”

You shouldn’t have missed me today. Because I should’ve been there. I should’ve been there.

[morphlingunderscore]

pointing at you. mask, scissors, pistol, wrench for oc asks foooooor rassel (of course) and one guy of choice

Ooooh fun selection crow :3

🎭 MASKS - do they act differently around certain people? what's different between the way they act around friends, family, strangers, etc.?

Rassel: Very much so! Rassel has many facets, though they went a while where "strangers" was a factor they really didn't have to account for. Around friends and family (interchangeable), Rassel is a pretty goofy guy, if Intense. What they feel, they can't not express if they have even the slightest social safety net. They hum a lot when they're comfortable, and feel more than happy to break into song at Dec's slightest provocation. Lately, things are a little different, but they'll figure it out again.

Around strangers, Rassel tries to be... Like, the perfect stranger, if that makes sense? They try to be nice, or at least civil, but they keep their distance. Even if they can't hold in their Eccentricities entirely, they kind of strive to be forgettable. They aren't interested in making new friends. (Or, at least not without forced interaction, like a feral cat through a closed door.)

Brian: (Of course I choose Brian. Cmon.) Brian used to act differently around different people, to the point that some folks might ask "Are you sure we're talking about the same Brian?" It wasn't really intentional, she was just a social chameleon type. Made things easier.

Now, though? Who gives a single shit. If you don't like her as is, die mad. Rassel hasn't found a way to bind her to a rock and throw her in the void yet, anyway, so she's probably fine.

✂️ SCISSORS - what is the "last straw" for them to cut someone out of their life? how easily do they let go of people?

Rassel: Eugh boy. I don't... Think they have one? Like, even at their worst, when they hated 10 completely for the sacrifices and what he did to Dec, and barely had any happy, pleasant memories of the guy to give them a reason... They didn't really let him go, did they? They stayed in his orbit. I mean, it was hard not to with the quad As They Were, but... I don't know.

I don't think they really can let people go. Even if that person is for all intents and purposes gone, dead, whatever, I think they'd still carry them. Call it loyalty or clinginess or whatever you think. You can't get rid of them, and they can't get rid of you.

Brian: Perceived betrayal or someone entirely outliving their usefulness. Even before Brian was lost in her obsession with breaking open the world like a kinder surprise, she was a bit ruthless when it came to casual relationships. Close ones, though, that's tougher. That would take something big, like ripping off all her work and claiming it as your own, or killing her in her sleep instead of in the streets like a rabid, sick dog. To give some entirely unloaded examples.

Rassel is a special case, for her. In a very literal sense, cutting ties with Rassel would kill her for good, or at the very least strand her somewhere she knows nothing about. Rassel could get away with a lot more than they probably realize.

🔫 PISTOL - do they trust people easily? how easily will they turn their back to someone? have they been backstabbed before? will they betray someone if given an ultimatum?

Rassel: Very, as much as they may say otherwise. A bright-eyed amnesiac, Rassel latched onto all of their forgotten friends with very little prompting, and even some new ones. Even if there was some Baggage, and even if you claimed that was subconscious trust, they did try to rig a presidential election for someone that they (in their mind) met like, a month or two ago. They're an octopus. It's part of why they try to stay clear of new people; they don't need the grief.

Not easily, for turning their back on someone. I mean, they turned around for "10", and they thought he just had a concussion or something. And they have been backstabbed, literally, by a blue-haired braided girl, as well as figuratively (though accidentally) by Brian. As for betrayal... Hm.

If given an ultimatum with a heavy enough weight, Rassel would, yes. But that weight couldn't be their own life. That's not worth betraying a friend, never.

Brian: Lmao, no. Brian only really trusts Rassel because she can literally get a sense on Rassel emotions almost 24/7. She can care for or like someone and not trust them a lick. It's pretty much how she operates. She'll turn her back on pretty much anyone if it means saving her own hide and protecting her Goal to enlighten the world. Key words being pretty much; there are a few folks in her past she refused to let go, to the bitter end.

She's been backstabbed quite a lot, academically, and then Quite Literally. Though she claims her death was this, the intent was born of fear for her, not of her. For what she might face, after all she did. That it would be worse than death. That she didn't deserve it, even if she killed someone, risked the whole city's lives several times over.

Brian will betray anyone if you can sell it well enough. You just have to speak her language.

🔧 WRENCH - are they good at fixing relationships? or do they tend to avoid doing so?

Rassel: Mm, tricky question. I'd say that they're... decent at it, for a few reasons. They did try to improve themselves to fix their relationship with the quad (specifically Echo and Dec), and they did actually make progress! They found a way to cope with their anger issues, they stopped attempting to hurt 10 when he was near, they even held a somewhat civil conversation with 5 when they thought he was 10!

But... They're also not great at other aspects. Mending bridges after a long time away seems like an impossible feat. Everyone has grown, and they feel like they've only gotten smaller. They don't know where to stand in the picture frame.

So... Decent. They'll get there. But they always, always want to try.

Brian: I think she could be, if she felt it was fixable. I think she's very much the type to say fuck it, that bridge is burned, mourn it later. Practical, if not very reasonable. She can be very determined if a goal seems plausible, but it's far more likely that she'll decide it isn't worth the grief to try to make amends. As is, she definitely avoids trying.

Even with Rassel now, she never says sorry first. If Rassel doesn't say it, it doesn't get said. She'd rather stew than admit there's something to fix, that it's anything that can be fixed.

[crystalelemental]

Select Scout A (New Years 2023)

So you’re looking at those select scouts.  And you’re looking at your paid gems you failed to talk yourself out of buying.  And you’re like hey.  Is any of this worth it?  There’s like six sync pairs here, and I’m only getting one of them out of this.  How worth it is this?

Classic Red remains a pretty solid unit, in that he’s able to apply Supereffective Up Next and can enable fast-ramping for first sync in CS.  I’ve always disrespected Red.  Always.  And I feel like now, I can disrespect him further.  NY Jasmine is better in like every meaningful way.  If you pulled Jasmine, you do not strictly need Red.  He’s got far less healing, is just as dependent on your ally buffing their Atk/Sp Atk themselves, but has no defensive boosting ability for maximum survival.  And can Red solo Tornadus?  No, this Red, we know about the damned rat.  Anyway, I feel like Classic Red is a viable option if and only if you’re both lacking Winter Jasmine, and if you’re going for longer Gauntlet streaks.  Because I don’t think he enables all that much otherwise.  If you already had Red, and you’re considering a copy for higher move levels, 2/5 is useful for On a Roll and Hostile Environment, the former being good utility and the latter being nice Gauntlet support for Tornadus/Uxie/Cobalion.  3/5 gives the coveted Safety Net, and MPR on Mini Potion.  It’s not a terrible choice.  But 1/5 is also fine, given MPR on trainer move allows multiple uses of SEUN.

Classic Blue is...fine.  I guess.  Hyper Beam is good DPS, but listen to me.  SS Diantha though.  Like, you want to win?  You pull for SS Diantha.  Who is Rock-type, and will make this man sad for the rest of his life, because he’s like the only guy who doesn’t specifically benefit from her presence beyond the Zone.  Still, Zone-based Hyper Beam, big funny.  I will give Blue a lot of credit for three things though.  He’s super self-sufficient with buffing, has Dire Hit All+ for team support even if he’s not your primary damage dealer, and Endurance is a fantastic Gauntlet skill.  Hyper Beam DPS is, as usual, fine 1/5.  2/5 really just gives Sharp Entry and Accuracy +10 on Hyper Beam so it won’t miss.  3/5 is when you get Haymaker sync potential.  I don’t feel his grid is essential, so at least there’s that.

Ingo is fantastic, if you don’t have him, get him.  Role compression is tremendously valuable in this game, so having Sandstorm on a support frees up a lot of options.  He’s downright essential for Sandstorm teams, and is quite good outside of them as well, capping crit and giving a nice +4 attack and +2 special attack, alongside potential Free Move Next for the team.  Add in Potion and accuracy debuffs, and Ingo’s a great all-around unit.  I will admit, however, that 1/5 was somewhat disappointing.  No MPR on Sandstorm is limiting, no MPR on Potion means he struggles, and he doesn’t fully cap offenses either.  That said, candy exists, and this is one of the top 4 supports in the game.  Absolutely the best pick here.

SS May is not worth your time at 1/5.  The only thing she does is fast-ramp by a turn on her own.  It’s definitely a niche, but you probably want your tech to do a bit more.  Which, she can.  Dire Hit All+ is always helpful.  And she can technically debuff both defense and speed per Low Kick.  If she mega evolves, she hits -2 defense per hit, but there’s the catch.  SS May’s often too slow to get those drops rolling in CS to operate independently, so she’s still team reliant for defense drops.  To make matters worse, absolutely nothing changes at 2/5.  It’s not until 3/5 that she gets anything good...and where she gets a lot of good tools.  But...well, Fire-type.  No one is hurting for a good Fire-type.  So as much as SS May can hit like a truck, and is generally a decent unit, I have a lot of trouble saying she’s worth your gems here.

Lucas is a character I’ve shit on a lot, and I think it’s time to make amends.  I’m sorry, Lucas.  I don’t hate you.  I just don’t like you more than Dawn, and you took one of my favorite legends.  I’m still sour about it, but I think we can move past this.  Lucas is good.  1/5, he provides Dragon Zone, which is a unique ability and a very good one.  What makes Lucas so amazing as a third pick at 1/5 is that he is gauge-free.  X Speed+ means he can cap his own speed, and generate a lot of gauge.  But each use of a trainer move also gets Free Moves Next, which turns his solid 4-bar spam into a completely free action.  He’s one-turn setup for max offense too, so there is like no inefficiency in his kit.  Lucas is a great option.  That said, nigh-identical issue to SS May.  2/5 does nothing for him.  It’s 1/5 utility, or 3/5 full power.  There’s nothing for him in between.

Raihan is...a choice.  Seriously buddy, why are you here?  You’re a really old PokeFair, are people seriously clamoring for you?  Is it because Steel-weak Glacia?  It’s because Steel-weak Glacia.  To get right to the point, I find Raihan terrible as an investment compared to the others.  His only real claim to fame is big boosts on entry at 1/5, leading to a powerful DPS Steel move that is special, making him the current best answer to Steel-weak Glacia, one of the most frustrating stages.  But also that’s not a good justification.  He doesn’t do enough otherwise.  Despite having good boosts, his trainer move doesn’t seal the deal, still requiring him to take other entry skills to top off.  He’s not even getting anything at 2/5.  You need 3/5 to actually acquire anything that makes him self-sufficient, or reasonably powerful on sync.  But as an older PokeFair, even that is no longer enough.  Raihan has a 5/5 grid, where he gets useful tools like Trip Twice, Cakewalk, Weathered Warrior 3, and...Sand Sync.  Man, they really just said “Use Cynthia” this month, huh?  Anyway.  This new grid can 100% replace everything else he had.  But then you give up self-sufficiency on buffing.  Raihan’s just another casualty in the 5/5 grid costing full energy debacle.  I don’t think Raihan is strictly bad.  But I also very strongly feel that he exists mostly for Steel-weak Glacia, which he can do at 1/5, I’ve tried, and otherwise is probably just waiting for Gloria and Steven to get expansions that put him under.

Final Thoughts and My Pick Priority is, in my book, Ingo > Lucas > C!Red > C!Blue > SS May > Raihan.  Ingo is by far the most valuable, though Lucas gives a good run for his money.  Classic Kanto Bois are decent but far from essential.  SS May doesn’t feel as worth it, and Raihan is miles behind the others, especially if you’re getting him at low move levels.

As for myself...I’m still torn.  I’m debating picking up C!Red.  I do want to go for a 100 win streak in Gauntlet, so it would make sense to take the support that can save my life, but also I kinda want to take Lucas.  I think he’s been a good option to have on hand, and I do love Dialga, so now that I’m over the initial salt, I kinda want him to do well for himself.  I’ll definitely be pulling, but I think it’ll depend on if I get lucky.  If I get Red, I’ll take Lucas.  If Lucas hits 2/5, I’ll take Red.  If neither shows, snap decision.

[sucuretcannelle]

BUSTS DOWN THE DOOR.

Star, Moon, and Sun for Aibre, Atlas, and Azzy.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOW-

I'm a little late but you'll see why

I'll do Azzy tomorrow but I want this OUT

Ai's whole life revolves around her relationships. Without them, she feels like nothing. Feeling like nothing would help her so much but we all know she's constantly on the wrong path. One thing that wouldn't change at all is where she gets her inspiration from, which would be her mind and past life experiences. Half of her ideas and choices come from that, or whatever someone told her that she should do.

The Sin of Wrath? Being generous? You'd be surprised. She's forced to clean up after Nash's hellish rule, there's only two options she could've gone with. Be worse than he was (that would be very difficult to do naturally) or deal with it in peace. She didn't choose violence, she knows that her life has only just started and any mistakes and cruelness she shows people will just put even more mental chains on her, and she doesn't want to be weighed down this quickly, she knows how it's affected Nash already and that's the type of shit you watch from a distance. That doesn't mean she's a great person though. But between her and Nash, one of them is the lesser evil.

Serenity isn't a term that sits in her head. Her life is a constant balancing act. No highs and lows, just a plateau with gentle bumps that would eventually turn into deep lows or lofty highs if she took a step back from her control, and she chooses not to risk it.

She shouldn't have hope. We've all seen that hope has continuously left her empty handed, but it's still something she yearns for. Hope brings a sense of comfort that she's never had. If hope was in the sky, she'd have her face glued to the ground out of pure stubbornness and her mental exhaustion and then she'd complain when it leaves without her.

Ai has a very small ideas for the future. She cares about the future in only certain aspects of her life, and throws the rest away only to pick up the same ideas later, decide how she feels about them, just to throw them away again. "Oh what're her ideas for the future," you don't get the right to know that yet...you know that right?

(I somehow already addressed the moon with her, I'm just too good)

Okay I'm done with being negative. The sun is a great card! Enlightenment from the Sun card is great, but it focuses on one person and not everyone else around them.

The thing is, Ai has no idea what her version of enlightenment is or how she would get to it. Silence would give her guidance, but not enlightenment. Fuck, I'm her creator and I wouldn't know. That's all up to fate and she chooses to just leave that alone.

For her, I would rewrite finding truth as finding clarity. She knows enough now to be able to address things as soon as they come up. Her relationships don't need to be unnecessarily mudded up for any unknown reasons.

A moment of glory that first came to her head was her Investiture in her home world. Yeah she was bothered that Al didn't go (honestly she's still mad about it to this day but who wouldn't be) but that wasn't about him anyway. It was the first time she has ever been truly rewarded for her efforts. It was almost bittersweet because Ai knew that her fate was no longer in Orion's hands and her safety net was basically gone for her, but she knew that she had to move forward. It was sink or swim and she still had enough energy in her to keep going without a second thought.

Let's be honest, Ai trusts her abilities. Not as much as Nash does, but not too little to the point where it makes her seem too hesitant. If you asked two years ago, you wouldn't be able to get an answer from her because she'd be so terrified; I say that's character development.

Atlas is strange. I think we already know that by now but I can barely figure him out sometimes and I made him. Most of his inspiration comes from fights he's had at some point in his life. Mostly in a debate manner, but he's been in his fair share of physical fights here and there. That feeds his wisdom and he always feels the urge to learn, but mostly the hard way, so he knows every step of a situation he comes out of.

Atlas is generous to those who are generous to him. He doesn't really have to think it through either; if someone's nice to him, he'll treat him with respect. Those who defy him in any way are getting run over with the force of 10 trucks. What are they gonna do? Fight back?

Atlas' mind is always a little empty. He chooses not to think too much, all his focus is on keeping balance between the thinking and working side of his brain and the empty, slow moving side of his brain. He gets extremely overwhelmed and even ill when that balance is unstable. So in all truth, he usually lives in some sort of state of serenity. But it's also why he's so forgetful...

Atlas is a very practical, grounded individual. Hope isn't a thing that he takes into account in his life. Luck, yes, but hope? Hope is something that can constantly change, therefore he feels like he has no reason to trust it. He'd rather just let things unfold in front of him before hoping for something just for it to be the opposite of what he expected.

Speaking of hope, Atlas has nothing to look forward to. Not in a depressing manner, but he's seen just about everything so nothing could really affect him, good or bad at this time. If one would look into a traditional version of The Star in the deck, his mindset would be the water being poured. There's an endless supply of it and water can withhold a bunch of shit, and even destroy sturdy structures. And just like water, his reactions to situations are in a constant cycle. No changes can stop that, as long as his mind, the water, is still in existence.

Atlas has been through so much, he has nothing to fear. At least nothing that would be surprised by. The roleplay takes place during the flattest, least important part of his life. He has nothing to stress out about so he's not going to go out of his way to find things that stress him out. He doesn't enjoy anything that would contribute to any mental stimulation that could be sparked in his brain, making it extremely hard for him to think outside the box and use his imagination. This could cause him to slightly lose sight of his goals (if he has any important ones at this point) just because he chooses not to think harder.

In all truth, Atlas has already reached personal enlightenment a few times. Despite him being known to be sluggish, he's accomplished more than many other gods ever could. He understands how to find truth and clarity, and he's so talented at it that it makes him seem like a lie detector. Everyone thinks it's some sort of magic, and it is, but only because of the things he's done in what he calls the "physical realm."

If you were to ever ask Atlas for a moment of glory, he would pick when he was finally able to beat Siran in a fight. That would be easy for him now, but that was the first time his father ever rewarded him for something that was super energy draining. That would've also been the day he was crowned the God of Stars.

Atlas trusts his abilities too much. Not as cocky as Nash, but way cockier than Ai. He thinks that everything he does is going to work, but when he sees something that's practically impossible, he won't step in and try to intervene.

[alarajrogers]

Oh, but we have been doing the "lower the birth rate ethically" thing.

Make a birth control method available. Expose women in X location to the understanding that such a method exists and that other women can not only get it, but live in an environment where men don't dictate their choices. Women in X location choose to get their hands on birth control and choose to fight for their right to control their own bodies.

You cant do it more invasively than that and still be ethical, but we have drastically dropped the birth rate in developed countries, to the point where many people are terrified that "the white race" will die out. (It won't, but you could help by not letting the earth be a capitalist hellscape, racist dude.) In countries where the social safety net consists of "Have a lot of sons, they'll take care of you", parents are incented to have a lot of children, unfortunately, but anywhere in the world where women think they can get a better deal out of life if they have fewer kids, they start fighting for the right to do that.

Another method to lower the birth rate non-invasively: make male birth control that is easy, cheap, and totally reversible. Men will be lining up around the block if they don't think it will damage their libido or ability to have sex. In fact we might see a catastrophic drop in the birth rate if that happens, which wouldn't really be good for the world so I hope they fix the things that make people unwilling to be parents before that (I mean the fixable things, like capitalist hellscape and ecological doom).

Sooner or later, countries that rely on children as a social safety net will figure out that that no longer works. (China actually did a series of ads promoting having girls because your daughter will take better care of you in old age, which is one way to fight back against gender overselection, I guess.) But no other country can force them to fix their shit any more than anyone's been able to make America fix its. I do think we're going to see demographic reversal before long, as many, many places drop below replacement rate.

Anyway, though, as others have stated, the problem is overconsumption by a relatively small number of humans that exist, not the number of humans total.

The vegan to ecofascist pipeline

[phoenixyfriend]

SW Suddenly-Omegaverse AU: Surrogacy, Worldbuilding, Obi-Mom

Truly the main irony of all this is that everyone considers Obi-Wan the Better Omega but Anakin is the one who's actually 👀👀👀 about pregnancy

Obi-Wan: I have the deepest respect for those who do it, but the idea of growing another person inside of me is weird and gross, no, thank you.

Meanwhile Anakin is like. Immediate baby fever. Someone actually approaches him like "hey... there are forms you can fill out to request an exception for pregnancy, and like... regulations" because he's that obvious about it.

I assume that if they've got safety nets for accidental pregnancies, then they're probably aware that there are people who want to do it on purpose? I feel like in an omegaverse where 'biological imperative to procreate' can be so much more intense, then maybe there's old precedent that stuck around even after suppressants got most of those hormones under better control.

Bit torn. Just know I want Anakin to Make Baby.

"Anakin, what are you--" "Do you think offering to be someone's surrogate would be acceptable to the council as a way to be pregnant without getting attached." "...what." "They'd probably accept that as a way to practice not getting attached, right?" "N...no, that's not... what?"

Anakin approaching Bail and Breha and being like “Do you... still want a kid? I would provide a kid. Do you want one here*?”

* in this dimension

Great way to give up the baby as a parent because he'd still be able to see them once in a while but also like... it's not HIS kid, technically. He can be a cool uncle who happened to give birth, which is distant enough to not be 'attached,' but close enough that his Tatooine-raised 'must ensure family is safe whenever possible' background doesn't flip out. It helps that 'Core World Royalty' is like... a top-tier family to be raised in.

(It would have to be post-war because he probably shouldn’t be risking his life while very pregnant. He needs to be reminded of that sometimes.)

Bail/Breha is an alpha/alpha relationship and while a pregnancy is still possible,* it’s a whole lot more difficult, and that's on top of Breha's canon medical issues that resulted in her heart and lungs getting replaced.

* AFAB alphas can get pregnant, and AMAB omegas can inseminate, but the success rate on that angle is much lower than the 'traditional' alpha/omega roles, as is any attempt at reproduction outside rut/heat. They're low-fertility overall for the non-dominant aspect of their reproductive system, which... ha, Anakin and Obi-Wan try to get explanations for why the senary system works the way it does, but it's a very longform history lesson that comes down to 'idk this got cemented so long ago that nobody really knows why anymore.'

AKA "why do you title these roles male omega and female alpha instead of intersex omega and intersex alpha since both parties have both genitals."

ANYWAY

Anakin: I want to make babies. But I don't want to get kicked out of the order. But I don't want to give up my own babies for adoption. But I can't keep my own babies if I want to stay a Jedi. So basically I want to have someone else's babies? Anakin: ...wait shit that's just surrogacy.

Anakin, calling up Obi-Wan: Hey are the Organas still struggling to have a kid? Obi-Wan: ...not really your business. Anakin: You're friends with Bail again though, right? Obi-Wan: I am, but-- Anakin: Do you think they'd want me to be a surrogate? Obi-Wan: What.

I can't decide if it's funnier for the Order to be like "I mean... technically there's no rules against this?" or if this is a precedent set by at least three omegas every generation because that's just how a/b/o manifested for omegas in a biological and cultural sense.

Bail: Wait, your former apprentice is... volunteering... to be our surrogate. Obi-Wan, exhausted: Yes. Bail: He barely knows us. Obi-Wan: He respects you and you're the closest people he knows that want a child and would be good parents. Bail: And he's just... volunteering? Obi-Wan: Yes. Also, you did say your primary worry was that a surrogate might be targeted for assassination and you couldn't ask someone to risk that, right? Anakin is very much able to avoid assassins, and would be staying primarily in the Temple anyway. Very safe, and not particularly scared of assassins in the first place. Bail: Your words say you approve, but your tone says otherwise. Obi-Wan: Anakin considers me his father. I'm not old enough to be a grandparent. Bail: Ah.

Anakin is a surrogate and enjoys it and everything is fine and then like a year later he's accidentally pregnant with his own and Rex's kid, and nobody knows how to ask if it's actually an accident.

A suggestion from @gelpenss:

OH MAN i.... have to drive home. But I just had a thought about like. I always want to poke at Betas in A/B/O like are they “normal” or different from our standard or.... but ANYWAY assuming they have a pheromonal thing I just think it would be neat if betas had the ability to be the Bucket of Cold Water. Like if caught early enough, and with the caveat it’s not permanent, a beta could arrest a rut or heat in its tracks until a more ideal time. Like. They aren’t birth control. But they are the remind me later button.

Okay done driving I am Returned to bring up why I brought up betas and it’s this: well okay 1. It plays nice with a popular but inaccurate dog breeding urban legend that female dogs will like, delay heat cycles? so that the bitches above them in pack hierarchy have first choice of mate selection. And I think in omegaverse it would be cool if that was a Bio Fact, and also historically enforced by the third designation. 2. It gives me an excuse to have betas have the Most Sensitive sense of smell because it’s their “job” to pick up on things before they go too far to be put on pause. 3. I’m just thinkin ‘bout a beta clone [...] just hovering around Obi-Wan because they found out how much stress his heat cycle causes and they’re like “okay cool I will help make sure it does Not”

I want to like a/b/o verses but betas niggle at me. I want to give them a hat and a Function that woulda helped before modern medicine.

I'm not sure how I feel about betas being able to delay heats, but I do like the idea of them having a more sensitive sense of pheromone smell than most. Most aliens assume it's omegas with the best sense of smell, and betas with the worst, but it's more complicated than that because they all specialize: Alphas are actually less attuned to pheromone smells, but more attuned to things that were useful back when humans were still a hunter-gatherer species. Omegas tend to be heightened towards danger smells like fire or aggression, and pheromones relating to children/care. Betas, as suggested above, are very sensitive to pheromone changes relating to mood and behavior of the community around them.

I like the idea that betas were historically the ones that ended up taking care children, unmated omegas, and so on during people's heats and ruts, because they kept their heads about themselves long enough to do things like cook and clean while someone was reeking of hormones. The checks and balances work out that betas may have lower fertility, but it makes them better able to support the network around them.

It works in with humanity's general collective history of thriving the most when working as a community.

Given that I decided that this is Jangobi, the clones might all subconsciously view Obi-Wan as Mom. Not intentionally, but, you know... Obi-Wan the not-evil stepmother. He doesn't know how he got into this situation, but he sure is here, and he sure as hell doesn't know how to get out.

Obi-Wan "I don't need to get pregnant, I have three million stepchildren" Kenobi

I definitely love "clones all want to make Obi-Wan's heats less stressful" but like in a different way from Whatever The Fuck Anakin's Got Going On.

Obi-Wan using the force to dull the pain in a Shiny's broken leg while the medic works on it and the Shiny just mumbles "Thanks mom" and everyone gets very embarrassed and pretends it didn't happen.

But then it happens again. And again.

Obi-Wan asks for an explanation from Cody and gets a halting response that, since Jango is technically their father, and his scent has been all over Obi-Wan recently... and Obi-Wan puts in a lot of effort to take care of them all.......

Anakin overhears the clones calling Obi-Wan "mom" and just. The most judgmental eyebrow raise.... Mostly in the sense of "You never let me call you dad" "Thought you said you weren't anyone's parent." "Hey, hey, Obi-Wan. What the fuck."

BOBA. BOBA ABSOLUTELY CALLS OBI-WAN MOM WHENEVER POSSIBLE. IT'S DEEPLY FRUSTRATING.

Obi-Wan eventually manages to admit that he's uncomfortable with it at minimum because of the gendering the word has for him, can they at least use the neutral 'buir' instead?

Word spreads like fire, takes like two days max for everyone to switch.

(Anakin demands cuddles as compensation for not getting to call Obi-Wan any true parental term for years.)

[thatbadadvice]

Help! I Can't Afford Not To Destroy My Cleaning Lady's Life

Dear Prudence, Slate, 20 September 2021:

Q. Collections department: ​​A few years ago, I hired a cleaning lady. She had a small business, with a few employees working for her. I’d prepay her in batches, and on occasion she’d ask for additional funds due to something unexpected, but she’d always work it off. Then the pandemic hit. Her staff abandoned her, and she had become too unwell to clean herself, so she closed her business, with $1,200 of prepayments from me. I told her back in January she’d need to pay me back, since she could no longer clean, but I wasn’t in a hurry for the money and knocked the repayment down to $1,000.  I’d asked her to send me $100 payments and wanted it paid off by the end of the year.

So far, I have only received $500 back and have had to hound her. She comes back with sob stories of getting fired from various delivery and driver services and saying she doesn’t have any money, after agreeing to pay me when she gets her monthly Social Security deposit. This month, after not receiving a payment in August, I have tried contacting her, and this time no answer. I’m tired of hounding her and could live without the cash, but I can’t live with the resentment of getting taken advantage of by her. I have three choices: Let it go, continue to hound her, or give her an ultimatum that I need to be fully paid back by the end of the year, or I’ll take her to court. I feel like I’m working for my money all over again. What should I do?

Dear Collections Department,

The last 18 months have been incredibly difficult; we are living (well, some of us) through an unprecedented global pandemic that has absolutely decimated supply chains and entire industries, forced parents to make terrible no-win decisions about raising and schooling their children, and separated families across the globe. Many of us have lost and will continue to lose friends and loved ones. Others are economically destitute, forced to work long hours for dying wages in a country with a cruel fucking sham of a social safety net.

And then, of course, there's you — COVID's number-one victim. Sure, Zoom funerals suck, but how about some of these entitled chucklefucks try going a year wiping down their own countertops! Wah-wah-wah, you haven't met your grandchildren? Boo-hoo, you had to put off important medical treatments because you didn't want to risk dying alone on a ventilator in the ICU? Bleat about devastating isolation-induced depression all you want, the real issue is that it's been 18 months since somebody came by to personally clean up your filthy shit.

This cleaning lady ~ claims ~ that a deadly airborne pandemic impeded her and her staff's ability to freely enter peoples' homes to spend time indoors with strangers at length. Pretty improbable, if you ask me! I mean, any rube could have smelled that pile of horse manure from a mile away! Here your cleaning lady is, living the life of Riley on a monthly Social Security stipend that likely extends into the high tens of dollars, withholding from you a king's ransom that could be put to good use for any number of things — lining your purebred hamster's cage, wiping your ass, being set on fire and launched into the sun for shits and giggles. The possibilities are endless, except for the possibility that you just let this fucking woman whose whole life has fallen apart just have five hundred goddamned dollars that you wouldn't even look twice at if it grew fucking legs, put on a trench coat, and started blasting Peter Gabriel on a boombox outside your window.

Poor people are poor on purpose and because of their moral failings, whereas people who would literally never miss $500 but who threaten to take a struggling woman to court to ensure she pays off a meaningless debt at the lowest point in her life and career are good and worthy! It is your cleaning lady who must be taught a lesson about the value of money, and what better instructor than you, a person who deserves all that comes to them in this life, and hopefully also in the next.

[makeste]

but I just feel too tired to be fighting

this is a follow-up post to what I said in my recap the other day about this arc being the Deku Angst arc, as opposed to the Villain Hunt arc or the Deku SIXQUIRKS Exhibition arc. I feel like the fandom discussion tends to focus on the flashier parts of the chapters -- the sexy villains and the new quirk reveals and the Shindous -- each week, and so the quieter emotional beats sometimes get overlooked, especially since the character arc here is playing out in little bits and pieces over time rather than all at once.

this has always been a very reactionary fandom, and there’s a tendency to judge the chapters week to week without ever going back to look at how they all fit into the big picture. so I figured I would try to attempt that, and basically go chapter by chapter here to look at what exactly Horikoshi is setting up and how it all fits together.

so let’s start with the end of chapter 306, which is when the arc officially kicks off. specifically with the very last page:

this is imo one of the best pages Horikoshi has ever drawn. I got the sense that this was a scene he’d had in his mind’s eye for quite a long time, and that he was excited to finally get to this part of the story. it’s extremely effective as both a chapter-ender, and an arc-opener. like, look at this:

it establishes the initial premise of the new arc -- the world is in chaos, and Deku is now seemingly on his own

it leaves the readers with a number of questions. why did Deku leave U.A.?? is he really on his own now?? why does he look so beat-up and exhausted?? what is he up to?? what is the world like now that all these villains have been unleashed and the heroes have been decimated?? and most importantly of all, what the fuck is going to happen next??

it pays homage to some of Horikoshi’s comic book influences -- Batman in particular

it dramatically hits us with that “THE FINAL ACT BEGINS” and lets us know that shit is getting real now

that’s some good shit. so much so that I think people tended to overlook the other notable thing about this page amidst all of the initial excitement and discussion and speculation about where the series was headed. and that is the fact that the final panel in this chapter is NOT the panel of Deku standing above the city. the very last panel, the one that this chapter actually ends on, is instead the close-up of Deku’s face. his face, which is covered in shadow; and his eyes, which have dark circles under them and are prominently missing the usual flecks of light that give him his signature “sunny optimistic shounen protagonist” look.

not to mention this last line here, which is a call back to the very first time we saw the 14-year-old Deku way back in chapter one.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Horikoshi chose to throw this reference in. nor is it a coincidence that THIS is the scene he actually chose to end the chapter on. what this does is show us the drastic shift in Deku’s emotional state of mind, and his attitude towards being a hero. he’s gone from being thrilled and excited to being jaded and exhausted. he’s matured, but at a great cost. it’s always been his dream to be a hero, but “be careful what you wish for” is a popular adage for a reason. and right now he looks the furthest thing from happy.

and this is the emotional beat that Horikoshi chooses to end the chapter on. this is the panel that closes out the War arc, and begins the final act. to me the message could not be clearer -- this arc will be about the exploration of Deku’s character, and his struggle as he tries to live up to the expectations that have been placed on him as the Last Holder of OFA and quite possibly the World’s Only Hope.

it’s a character arc that builds on a lot of the things we’ve already learned about Deku over the course of the series, such as the fact that he is reckless, and that he focuses on others often at the expense of himself. but more importantly, it’s an arc that finally expands on the dark side of what has up until now been a net positive for Deku -- the power of OFA. up until this point, despite its ups and downs, it’s been a boon for Deku overall and has allowed him to pursue his dream. but now we’re finally reaching the point where the monkey’s paw part of the OFA blessing/curse finally starts to come into play. OFA gives Deku more power than he could have ever dreamed of, but it also comes with a built-in destiny that he can’t opt out of whether he likes it or not. AFO is on the loose and out there trying to destroy the world. and now everyone has pinned their hopes on this sixteen-year-old kid, and the question of whether or not the sixteen-year-old kid is ready is apparently not one that anyone feels inclined to ask (possibly because they’re afraid that the answer might be “no”).

he doesn’t have a choice in the matter. he has to do it, because there’s no one else who can. that’s the kind of pressure that is on Deku now.

and on that note, we begin the Deku Angst arc.

chapter 307

this in hindsight was mostly just a set-up chapter to better establish the current state of the BnHA world at large (spoilers: it’s not good), while also providing an answer for one of the big initial questions of the arc -- namely, “what happened to all of those villains that AFO released from Tartarus?” these are important things to touch on, but the pacing could definitely have been better, and the bulk of the chapter was dedicated to providing fanservice to all of the Shindou fans who spammed the most recent popularity poll (which, whatever lol). anyway, so this was the sole chapter thus far with absolutely no Deku development. thankfully the arc picks up from there.

chapter 308

on to the next one! this was the one and only chapter thus far which I think actually qualifies as an “exhibition fight.” this was definitely all about showing off Deku’s current powerset, as well as introducing us to another of the SIXQUIRKS. however, there was Deku development here as well, most notably in this scene:

this is the scene that got a lot of people speculating that this arc was going to focus on Deku hunting down all of the old villains. but I think people got so caught up in that speculation that they overlooked what this scene tells us about Deku’s mindset. and yes, there is new information being revealed here, and it’s not just a rehash of the stuff we already knew. like yes, we know that Deku was shaken up by the recent encounters with Dabi and Tomura, and we know that made him start questioning why villains become villains in the first place, and all that good stuff, and that’s great. however, there are two additional important things that this scene helps establish for us.

the upcoming battle with TomurAFO is weighing heavily on Deku’s mind. this is something that will become a recurring theme in this arc. Deku is thinking about this constantly. the question of what to do when he finally encounters TomurAFO again is knocking incessantly at the back of his mind, and this won’t be the last time it comes up.

Deku is using these villain encounters as test runs. can Tomura be redeemed?? is he just being stupid and naïve?? or is this really something worth attempting?? the interesting thing about this is that Deku’s resolve to save people is usually so strong and unwavering that it’s more than enough to overcome any doubts that he might have. but this time it seems like the repeated objections posed by the Vestiges and Gran Torino have really gotten to him. it’s possible I’m just reading way too much into things, but to me it really feels like Deku’s recent attempts at Talk no Jutsu were meant to do more than just show his growing awareness that the line between heroes and villains is thinner than he once imagined. they’re also serving as trial runs for the real test, when it finally comes. if he can “save” even a villain like Muscular, there’s hope for him being able to save Tomura as well. and so that moment when Muscular rejects him out of hand is all the more disappointing to him, even if it wasn’t really unexpected. basically it wasn’t the answer that he had been hoping for.

aside from those little notes though, like I said, this was unquestionably an exhibition fight first and foremost. which is fine; we needed to establish where Deku is currently in terms of strength, and it was also just fun to see him kick some ass, ngl. in terms of story purpose this chapter was similar to 219, which showed us how Shouto and Katsuki had powered up after getting their provisional licenses. people who don’t care about those characters might argue that these fights weren’t necessary, but as someone who stans all three characters hard, I would disagree! but anyways, moving on.

chapter 309

in contrast to the previous chapter, this chapter focuses more on establishing Deku’s current mental state, as opposed to his physical state. and this is what we learn:

(1) Deku is ~technically~ being shadowed/accompanied by All Might and the Hawksquad (but in practice he’s avoiding them).

(2) it was Deku’s own decision to leave U.A., and he did it because he didn’t want anyone else getting hurt in order to protect him.

and finally, (3) Deku’s game plan is to stop Tomura and All for One before they reach full power.

this last part is very important, because it means there’s a countdown in effect. as far as Deku is concerned, there’s only a finite amount of time before TomurAFO becomes unstoppable. which means that he’s not only under “gotta get stronger” pressure, but time pressure as well. he doesn’t have the luxury of taking his time and training in safety. he’s being rushed now; this is do-or-die.

this chapter is also the first in this arc in which we get to see Deku’s expressions without the hood covering up his face, and what we see is very telling. as previously stated, the light is gone from Deku’s eyes. he keeps his expressions very neutral, and the only time we even see a hint of a smile is when he hugs his mom in the flashback, and it’s clear from the dialogue (“it’s okay, I’ll come home to you”) that he’s doing it for her sake in order to comfort her.

but aside from that, this is very much not the Deku we’ve grown accustomed to. this is the chapter that really establishes his current mental state imo. above all else, he’s afraid that more people will get hurt because of him, and so he’s distancing himself from everyone around him. and he’s also morbidly preoccupied with the inevitability of having to face TomurAFO again, and soon. the chapter ends on the flashback of Gran giving him his cape, and telling Deku that “killing can be another way to save someone.” there’s a lot on this kid’s mind, to say the least.

chapter 310

this chapter opens with a gang of civilians who are trying to open fire on a nice fox lady whose only crime was walking around in the rain at night. Deku intervenes to save her, and it’s the first time in this arc that we see anything close to the “old” Deku, who just wanted to save people with a smile.

but it’s bittersweet, because all the lady can talk about is how scared she was, and how horrible everything is right now. and so Deku, who feels responsible in a lot of ways for everything that’s happened, just feels that much more pressure to somehow make things right again.

there’s also this extra throwaway line which is especially heartbreaking:

“I can’t afford to be around anyone.” fucking ouch. just reinforcing once more how incredibly isolated Deku is right now -- not by choice, but because he feels like it’s not safe to let anyone else get close to him. and so he’s out here running around this dystopian cityscape in the middle of the night in the pouring rain all on his own, and neglecting himself to the point where All Might practically has to force a bento on him.

but does he complain? of course not. because his focus is never on himself. instead, when he settles down to eat, his thoughts immediately drift back to, guess who...

it’s that time pressure once again. “unless I draw out One for All’s full power, I can’t stop any of this.” it’s just nonstop, I have to get stronger, I’m running out of time, I have to do better, and constantly thinking about that inevitable confrontation.

Deku is a thinker, you guys. and when left to his own devices he will overthink, every time. his mind will run in endless loops while he mentally works his way through all of the possibilities. and that’s one of his greatest strengths, don’t get me wrong, but at a time like this it’s also one of his greatest weaknesses. it’s just so fucking easy for him to get stuck in his own head, in his endless rambling thoughts and analyses. and without anyone else there to help distract him, or help him focus, he’s become fixated on his mission, and it’s slowly consuming him.

this, incidentally, is also the chapter in which we finally see Two and Three’s faces, and learn why Two in particular is so reluctant to lend his power to Deku. he appears to be the lone holdout at this point, so stay tuned on that, because I don’t doubt this will wind up being crucial to Deku’s future development, however it winds up playing out.

chapter 311

this chapter flips back to the Hawksquad for the first half, so we get a brief respite from the ongoing Dekuangst. right before we switch back though, we do get confirmation of something we had pretty much already guessed:

like, that much was already apparent based on what we’d seen (the bags under his eyes; the fact that he refused to sit still in any one place for very long even at night), but it’s always nice to get the official confirmation so that people can’t dispute it lol. so yeah, Deku isn’t sleeping much. and not eating much either, if all he’s getting is the occasional bento from Dadmight. so basically not taking care of himself at all, huge shocker there. but this is something that’s important enough to the story that Horikoshi took the time to point it out in the dialogue, in addition to all of the visual clues we’d already gotten.

and just in case we needed to drive that point in any further, this chapter ends with the appearance of Lady Nagant! like yeah, no shit Deku isn’t getting much sleep, what with him having to fend off racist civilians and hired assassins every five fucking minutes. smdh. can he live??

chapter 312

so this is the chapter that properly introduces Lady Nagant, who maaaay or may not be one of the primary antagonists of this arc?? like, it’s really unclear right now tbh, but she gets hyped up by Hawks and AFO, and has a flashback and a mysterious past and a weird trump card (where did you go, Overhaul) and all that good shit, so yeah? one can hope at any rate.

but anyway. so to his credit, Deku’s first thought is to retreat, but he quickly abandons that plan once he figures out Nagant’s location. this is played off like a logical strategic decision at first, but the subsequent chapter quickly makes it clear that Deku’s decision to take the fight to Nagant is less rational than he might have you think.

chapter 313

so yeah. last but not least, the most recent chapter, in which Deku’s real reason for targeting Lady soon becomes apparent:

what’s more, it quickly becomes clear that he miscalculated and probably would have been better off following Hawks’s advice, seeing as he promptly gets himself shot, and subsequently realizes that AFO gave Nagant an extra quirk, something he hadn’t taken into account. but instead of cutting his losses and running at this point, he doubles down instead and not only breaks out Smokescreen, but also the Third’s quirk which he has never even used before.

it’s worth noting that both En and the Third start telling him to chill at this point, and warn him that what he’s attempting is too dangerous. but tbh if they were expecting him to listen, they haven’t been reading the same arc I’ve been reading. once again, Horikoshi makes it clear that Deku has one thing and one thing only on his mind right now.

of course. once again it all comes back to this. hunt down AFO. it doesn’t matter that he’s exhausted. it doesn’t matter that he’s just been shot twice. it doesn’t matter that Hawks, despite knowing what Deku was capable of with his OFA abilities, specifically warned him away from this one person only. it doesn’t matter that even the Vestiges are trying to tell him you’re going too fast and you’re trying to do too much and it’s too dangerous.

he just doesn’t care. long story short, the only thing that matters to Deku right now is tracking down and defeating TomurAFO. and as the person who knows him best once so aptly put it, “he doesn’t take himself into account.” and therein lies the major challenge of this arc.

and so this is where we’re currently at now. and this has been a very long post, but if nothing else, I hope I was able to get this one point across: there is absolutely no way that Deku will be able to defeat TomurAFO as he is now. not a chance in hell. somehow he’s managed the uncommon feat of waging a war of attrition against himself, which is really quite an accomplishment. he’s not taking care of himself, and he’s refusing to listen to sound advice from the people surrounding him, and is trying to skip ahead to the final boss battle before he’s ready, because the guilt and pressure from feeling responsible for the current situation are eating him up. the only way that the world can go back to normal is if he can defeat AFO; therefore he has to do it as soon as possible, because time is running out and everyone is counting on him. this is who Deku is. and this is what inevitably happens when his saving mentality is taken to extremes, and left unchecked.

anyway so to wrap up this post now, I do think this arc is a lot more cohesive than it’s gotten credit for thus far, and Deku is the glue holding it all together. I for one am loving the exploration of his character and all the subtle little angsty touches as we build up to the big moment, whenever it finally comes. just keep in mind though that if his decisions right now seem reckless and short-sighted, it’s because they’re supposed to seem that way, because Deku is not in a good mental state right now. the cracks are finally showing in our perfect protagonist, just like everyone has been wanting this whole time. he is just a kid. he is doing his best. he is trying far too hard to do his best, and it is hurting him so badly, but he doesn’t even realize. this arc is not an endorsement of the Angsty Nomad Hero lifestyle, lol. it’s the exact fucking opposite, and I think it’s being wildly misinterpreted with all of the emphasis on “oh look at that, he mastered another quirk with no effort”, as opposed to “oh look at that, he is shutting down emotionally and is a few more missed nights of sleep away from a complete and total breakdown.”

tl;dr the overarching storyline of this arc is all about Deku slowly falling apart due to his trauma from Jakku, and the subsequent pressure that was put on him by the Vestiges with their whole “GUESS WHAT, YOU’RE THE LAST USER OF OFA, THAT’S RIGHT, IT’S ALL ON YOU BUDDY” pep talk. and mark my words, things are not going to go according to plan. something is going to go terribly wrong here. whether it’s something happening to All Might, or AFO setting up a trap for him, either way Deku is being set up to fail in a major way. unless of course, someone (or a group of someones) manages to intervene first, and possibly stage an intervention or something. it’s what he needs right now, but idk if Horikoshi is going to make it that easy.

anyway, but in other words, the point of this arc is not to show how much stronger Deku has gotten and how he doesn’t even need his friends anymore. it’s the exact opposite -- the point of this arc is to show that Deku needs his friends now more than ever. that in spite of OFA and all of its mystical trappings and fancy SIXQUIRKS, Deku can’t do this alone. he needs his friends. that’s the core message. and right now, we are at the “I can get by on my own” part of the story. and the part we are all waiting for, but which is coming -- I guarantee it is coming, you guys -- is “the thing is, you don’t have to.”

and that shit is going to slap hard you guys. and I for one can’t wait. but until then, enjoy the angst.

[cwicseolfor]

And I proposed that a lot of these tropes were also coming to be used in ways that read as allegories for the impossibility of resisting the conditions of late capitalism.

From Texas, where forced labor is the law of the land, whether that of prisoners put to it or “free” women and all other people able to be pregnant, feeling that noose tightening all the time, and then having the explicit comparison drawn to all the ways it was already around your neck really hits hard.

Claiming whatever agency is on offer because it is not none is a necessary skill for those of us in situations where we lack power and privilege.

And if we do not wish to ever-widen the nets seizing the agency that remains to others, then those of us who possess power or privilege, however intersectional or convantaged, must learn to do the same thing on behalf of those with less.

Prioritizing the real agency of victims over your own betrayed vision of what real justice would look like, in order to maintain a path toward justice, is the skill called for here and now.

Neither the punishment of the directly culpable nor the punishment of the enablers can matter as much as the innocent or we are fucking lost.

We all feel the noose of late capitalism. But the failure of an offer to assure inalienable rights to public protected speech, instate a social safety net, and comprehensively end the police state should not void the obligation to select for governance which at least does not want to actively slaughter protestors en masse, legally pardon those who do, deport dissenters, obliterate the remaining rights of the poor, and criminalize and expand the police state fully and permanently across the half of the population (approximately one hundred and sixty-seven million people) who have uteruses. One of those outcomes is worse, for everyone. The failure of an offer to immediately halt the horrors worked in Palestine and elsewhere with our financial and logistical and munitions support does not void the obligation to select for governance which at least does not want to actively accelerate the extermination of the Palestinian people by any means possible, expanding our support of genocide from sending shells to be used on refugees in tent camp “safe zones” to active participation with our own troops, to providing large scale explosives, to pardoning war criminals to go and commit more crimes, to rerouting support from Ukraine directly to bribemasters in Russia, and to resuming - because it did happen last time, if you perhaps forgot - the threats to deploy nuclear weapons at any lack of international deference to the US empire. One of those outcomes is worse, for everyone. The primary was the right time to vote for the candidate you actually wanted, enter a protest vote, refuse to show up, refuse to engage (and always is.) The general election, when it represents a choice between bad and worse, means that worse would be actually worse, for many many more innocent people. Walking away doesn’t make the consequences less real for anyone, across the world or at home, strangers or your loved ones or yourself. It just means you will be watching even more innocent people get hurt. (And I practically hear some asshole about to raise that “some of them won’t be [innocent]” - because I had to listen to that shit back in 2016 - and to that I say that if you are willing to see an extra fifty thousand or hundred million children go hungry or murdered in order to be gratified by the embarrassment of your idiot blue-màgà neighbors, you’ve wandered so far from any moral fiber that I don’t know how to resurrect it in you.)

Addressing the reality we’re in right now and taking the next step which allows for any significant future for people alive today, or the planet at all, is a matter of recognizing and understanding that we don’t live in an acceptable world, and that the only hope of getting one lies in taking the next available step of least worst future paths.

And if you noticed that framing includes both the contextual inference of voting, and a whole lot of other things you can also be doing, you get it.

Back in 2014, I did a panel at CON.TXT on dubious consent tropes: sex pollen, fuck or die, omegaverse, and so on. And we talked about how the same tropes can carry different kinds of narrative weight, and how the ways they're used have evolved over time--how tropes that started out as a way to get around the rape culture assumption that Nice Girls Don't were repurposed to interrogate rape culture. By making the coercion external to all parties to the sex act--by removing culpability--they allow for rape and rape culture stories without rapists.

And I proposed that a lot of these tropes were also coming to be used in ways that read as allegories for the impossibility of resisting the conditions of late capitalism. A character is placed under complete social or biological constraint, with no power to escape or fight or do anything but submit, and their only choice is whether to submit gracefully or make a token and futile resistance. And that their decision to make the experience something they want--to claim whatever good they can in it--is an act of power. That to consent, even internally, and make it meaningful, even when they have no way to enforce a refusal, is an act of power.

Because it was a panel on dubcon, and saying Yes is what differentiates dubcon from noncon, in fiction, we talked mostly about stories where the protagonist says Yes; we talked about these consent tropes as allegories for the ways that people do, in fact, find good in conditions they cannot opt out of. People do build good relationships under rape culture. They build communities under late capitalism. These things do happen, outside of fiction, and a story about someone reconciling to life as an omega can have a lot to say about the complicated internal struggles people go through to make them happen.

We didn't talk so much about the flip side of these tropes--that by making that internal Yes meaningful, even in circumstances where No has no power, they also imply that there is meaning in No, even where it has no effect. They validate the worth of an internal resistance, even where it achieves nothing. Maybe we mentioned it? I don't even remember--it was a panel on dubcon, not noncon, and that internal No has the power to change the genre, if nothing else.

I am thinking now, though, about the rise within fandom of a purity culture that strenuously rejects these tropes--while also granting them remarkable power. That claims that, because real life does not have the distinction possible in fiction between dubious consent and nonconsent, that not only is fictional dubcon no different from fictional rape, it's no different from real rape. That returns culpability to these stories and places it firmly with the author. That says that a fictional character cannot consent, to anything--and that the real author, being the only person involved with actual moral agency, owes it to the character to keep them safe.

To exercise moral choice on their behalf.

To say No, in the fictional world where that No is meaningful, and to imbue that No with an irresistible moral weight in the real world.

At any rate I'm not saying the crowd that thinks not voting to withhold their consent from things done in their name is somehow a meaningful form of protest just needs to read some sex pollen about it. But I'm not not saying that.

[power-chords]

I decided to open Twitter today (a mistake, always) and have been monitoring the Steve Albini thread re: pandemic touring, which is a great thread, but I feel crazy reading some of the responses from fans. To be clear: I think you should extend touring musicians and crew, all of whom are risking their health, the basic courtesy of doing whatever the fuck it is that they’re asking you to do inside the building. If that means wearing a mask when you’re not taking a swig from a can, then wear the goddamned mask. As someone who bounces around like the Tasmanian Devil for two straight hours at gigs, I understand how unpleasant it is to be breathing through a damp flap plastered over your face. But if it makes the people on stage more comfortable, I’m willing to be less comfortable. They’re putting a hell of a lot more on the line – personally, financially – than I am.

But it’s also completely delusional, IMO, to pretend that it makes a significant difference in crowded, poorly ventilated rooms where people are regularly removing them to drink. Where people are singing, dancing, and yelling at each other over the din to be heard. Maybe, pre-Omicron, there was some substantive pretense of additional protection. But this is BA.2 we’re talking about now. If masks are coming off at any juncture……. who the hell are we kidding? And I don’t blame people for saying “Fuck this, I’m not going,” or bands for saying “Fuck this, I’m not touring.” But to see a tweet reply, like, “I managed to avoid COVID for two years, but the last show I went to, 90% of people were unmasked, and I got it. Not a coincidence.” My dude, you were in an enclosed, windowless theater with 400 other people for three hours. That’s the elephant in the room right there. What did you think was going to happen, what was basically guaranteed to happen eventually, masks or not? Did you think the venue was going to shutter the bar, the source of 90% of their income in a night (which is probably, realistically, the thing to do to reduce transmission)? People will not go out and see shows unless they can drink at them. And clubs will shutter unless they can sell their overpriced booze. If it stops being fun, it stops being profitable, and the operation is barely profitable as it is.

I was talking to Roadie Guy about this last night, too. He doesn’t have a choice. A lot of bands don’t have a choice. They tour, or they don’t survive. Clubs put on shows and sell alcohol, or they don’t survive. NIVA funding and SBA loans are not enough to sustain an entire industry for the duration of a pandemic. If I think about this for too long I want to kill myself. So I get it, you know? It is an impossible fucking bind that we’re in, artists and live music fans alike, and it’s easier to point your finger at the people physically next to you than go absolutely batshit insane trying to wrap your head around the complete lack of a safety net for people whose livelihood depends on GATHERING IN CROWDS INDOORS. Or the implementation of both PRE-ENTRY VAX AND RAPID TEST CHECKS. Swab your nose within three hours of doors, result gets logged in the AXS or Ticketmaster app, scan on your way in. The shit we could be doing that we're not doing, that is so much more rational and enforceable than "ask drunk people to keep their masks on."

[thegeminisage]

hey liz, i also just watched the rundown job and it blew my mind!!! and i saw you just watched it too. now i really want to know how your thoughts on parker eliot and hardison’s relationship

HI SORRY TO LITERALLY ANSWER U TWO WEEKS LATER. was sick. the answer is obviously that's a throuple!!! but also since you can't do that on tv, i think it was suuuuch a good call to have it officially be parker/hardison w/ eliot as the unofficial third. cause you can't do gays on tv either, and otherwise the official couple would be parker/eliot, and i just don't think collectively they're functional enough to do that on their own. hardison is the most grounded and the most functional and the most emotionally available of the three of them - it's gotta be hardison and SOMEBODY.

otherwise i like the dynamic bc they balance each other out well:

parker and eliot both have that darker history that means horrible things are...if not more acceptable to them, then less shocking? (see: the episode on the mountain.) so it's actually good for them to have hardison to be like, HELLO? this is horrible?? like he's very practical whereas they sometimes get caught in their own heads. and they're good for HIM because they want to protect him and are capable of keeping him calm when a normal person would understandable be freaking out (the coffin episode, eliot's pep talk in the rundown job).

parker and hardison haven't like. fucking killed people lol or been in as many life-or-death situations (which are surprisingly rare in leverage given their professions) so it's good to have eliot there as their safety net, who can think darker than even parker sometimes...and they're good for HIM because they treat him like a normal ass person and don't make a big deal about it ("ok, we keep walking") instead of like a tiger in a cage. like hardison will throw shit at him. he's killed people and committed war crimes and they aren't scared of him at all

and then meanwhile eliot and hardison are both very like...idk how to word this. you know how parker is off-step a little bit with the rest of the world and doesn't really "get" some things? it's like a very ND way to be, but eliot and hardison aren't like that as much, so it feels like sometimes her different way of thinking and experiencing the world would get them out of "normal" thought patterns they wouldn't even think to question otherwise. and they're good for her because when she doesn't "get" something they're usually willing to explain it to her (even if eliot is cranky about it sometimes)

like if you put any two of them together it's not as good as all three of them, but out of every two-person pairing hardison/parker is probably the best one, so that was an utterly correct choice.

also speaking of parker, her whole deal is very like...whatever is going on in her romantic or sexual relationships is Not very traditional, so strong aro or aspec vibes there too. parker my beloved <3

[hoe4almondmilk]

Safety Net: Chapter 1

Present! Carol Denning/Reader

Hiiiiii, so I noticed the lack of Carol content and fics on here soooo I decided to write my own. I posted this on Archive of Our Own and i got such a great response! This is my first time writing an OITNB fanfic so please be nice! I’m also totally open to requests while I work on this story! I plan for this to be series so please enjoy!

This is such bullshit. I knew we were gonna have to pay the consequences for the riot but putting all of us in max? Some of us didn’t even participate in the actual rioting. Letting out a deep sigh, at least you didn’t get any added time, that’s all that matters. Of course prison wasn’t what you would call “fun” but by the looks of max, you could tell it was much worse than camp. 

After being in Ad Seg, you and a few other girls were finally getting moved to Gen Pop. C-block to be more specific. God, finally you’ll stop hearing Piper whine about Alex so much now. You felt for her but shit you were all going through it not just her. You didn’t even really understand why you were in Ad Seg and getting questioned. You mostly kept to yourself during the riot. 

“Welcome to your new home, Inmates.” the ginger guard announced to you all as she began to uncuff you. 

“Bitch, we missed you!” you heard an inmate yell. 

You looked over and saw a group of girls clad in navy blue scrubs running over to Badison. Blowing up that bitch’s ego like a fuckin balloon. You rolled your eyes and looked down at the bag you were holding close to your chest.

“Hey, you three, meet your new family,” Badison said to you, Piper and Blanca. “These C-block bitches will either save your life, or make you want to die. Your choice.” you gulped, social anxiety was probably one of the worst things to have in prison. 

After Badison introduced Piper and Blanca it was your turn. “And this is-“ she paused for a moment. “I actually don’t think I’ve met you yet. What’s your name again?” she asked. You weren’t sure if she actually wanted you to answer her question or not. 

You took your chances, answering her question. “It's (L/N)...” you said meekly, grasping your bag even tighter making your knuckles turn white.

Badison brayed with laughter, “Are you scared?” 

“N-no.” shit, really? 

“I think I’m going to call you Mouse, Mouse.” she smirked. “Not only because you look like one but you already seem like a fucking pussy.”

And you’re a cunt, you retorted in your head. Great now that she pointed out the obvious you were for sure going to get shit from everyone for this. 

“Flores, you are in C-203, Chapman C107. Hoefler, You’re in C-210 now.” The ginger guard announced reading from her clipboard 

Wait what about me? you thought. Are you not supposed to be in here? You panicked.

“Excuse me I didn’t-“ 

“Aw. I don’t get to be roomies with the baby killer no more?” Badison interrupted with an annoying baby voice. “I’m going to miss you, scary mommy.” you watched as she belittled Hoefler or as some of the others called her “Beth The Baby Killer”.

“Don’t do that baby voice, you know I hate it.” said a stern icy voice.

You looked over and saw a woman with a hollow face, big round glasses, and an outdated 80s hairdo. She stood there with a red lollipop in her hand. Her eyes gleamed mean.

Badison was suddenly quiet except for the big gulp she let out. Was Badison actually scared of someone? “Sorry, Carol.” she replied slowly making her presence less known.

Carol glared at her while slowly putting the lollipop back in her mouth slowly, beginning to walk away. 

Why was she so scared of her? I mean she looks mean but Badison didn’t seem like she was scared of anything. you thought to yourself curiously raising a brow. Oh shit. What room am I in? you snapped back to reality.

 “Wait you forgot me! I didn’t get a bunk.” you scurried over to the guard before she closed the gate. 

She rolled her eyes looking back down to her clipboard. “(L/N), you’re in C-206, with Denning, Good luck.” she said as she locked the barred gate closed.

Who the hell is Denning? you slowly turned around and met eyes with her. Oh shit, that’s Denning. Carol. Carol fucking Denning.  

She stared at you for a good few seconds, looking you up and down, her eyes scanning you. If you weren’t so dehydrated from being in Ad Seg for so long you’d probably piss yourself. Now you understood why Badison was scared of her. 

“Follow me.” she said. 

You nodded not giving it a second thought. You hurried behind her. She was not someone to keep waiting. Once you got to the bunk you stood in the doorway, waiting for her next command. 

“Top bed is yours. I like my room clean and my roommates quiet.” 

You could feel your body shake with nerves as you slowly placed your bag on the top bed. Carol sat down on bed, beginning to lay back as she opened a magazine that had a husky buff man on the cover.

Gross. She was one of those women. 

“So how long hav-“

“Shut the hell up and get out.” 

“But I-“ 

“Do I need to repeat myself? Get the fuck out.” Carol barked. 

Not even staying long enough to apologize you ran out. You felt your heart pounding and your chest tightening up. You were having a full blown panic attack. You hid behind one of the walls. You could feel tears falling out of your eyes. 

Stop crying. Stop it! wiping the tears with the back of your hand. 

“Aw, the little mouse is crying.” a very familiar and annoying voice said mocking you. You looked up meeting eyes with Badison. She had that smug smile on her face. “Carol’s last roomie only lasted a week. Let’s see how long you last, Mouse.” she patted your cheek,  laughing as she walked past you.

You wiped the rest of your tears away and took a deep breath in. Challenge accepted. They weren’t going to break you. Not this soon. 

Chapter 2 here

[thessalian]

Thess vs Economy Logic

So before I go back to fun liveblogs of video game stuff, a few thoughts on how short-sighted these not-really-capitalist plutocrats that hoard the money instead of paying their workers, and the oligarchs who protect all their money by putting all the financial burdens on those who can’t bear them, are actually being. Basically, this in the context of those stupid “Millennials are killing the [Whatever] industry” articles we keep seeing. Millennials are killing the diamond industry. Millennials are killing the golf industry. Millennials are killing the Hooters franchise. Etc etc etc.

Because ... yes, that is what happens when you deprive the general population of money. They will stop buying useless things because they can no longer afford useless things, and the industry will die. There’s something about poverty that really narrows the focus in terms of what we need and want in life. And the first things to go are going to be things like ... overpriced blood rocks mined in miserable conditions and kept scarce and thus supposedly valuable by hoarding the really good ones, or knocking tiny balls into holes on ecologically unsound land that would make a way better nature preserve than it does an overpriced lawn with holes in, or a misogynistic chain restaurant that uses breasts instead of decent food as its selling point. Because not only are they not necessary, they’re not even all that good. We honestly feel better not supporting that shit. And the whole point of capitalism is that if people no longer want to buy your product, you adapt or you die.

Except, no. No, now we have the plutocrats and oligarchs trying to make damn sure that the capitalism model only changes in ways that give them the most money for the least effort, so it’s all bitching about how we’re “killing industries” instead of just fucking adapting.

That’s going to cost them, in the end. Because what goes after the dross? We’re having to tighten our belts more and more every year. Here in the UK, people are going to go hungry and cold, for the next few weeks (since they guesstimate that the last frost here will be mid-late April) and in the autumn, when apparently fuel prices will go up even more. And since wages won’t rise to properly compensate, those who are just managing now will have to choose between heating and eating, and those who are already in that position won’t have either.

Also add to that the physical and mental toll all this takes. People are working and still starving and cold. People have to take multiple jobs. The disabled have to try to find jobs. Their health will suffer, and they will end up being unable to work, which means no more money, or very little with the paucity of social safety nets, and they’ll have to tighten their belts even more. And that’ll just lower the number of people able to work, making the ones that remain work harder for even less, until such time as companies no longer have enough staff to even partially make it work.

Know what that means? I mean, if you’re a heartless selfish jackass of a plutocrat, know what that means?

More dying industries, that’s what that means.

People will have to whittle things to the bone. And the next things to go will be a combination of “things that spark joy” and “essential but I can make do and mend a little longer”. The clothes industry is going to suffer as people struggle to learn to mend things and make the cheap clothes that were all they could afford last a little longer, and more and more people turn to charity shops. Same for housewares. Hell, there are bedding banks in this country, and baby banks, because people can’t afford those things. People are going to cancel their streaming services because they have no choice, and turn to either piracy or, again, charity shops. A fair few people are going to get more choosy about their video games because they’ll only be able to afford a few, so that industry can kiss their NFTs and loot boxes and pre-order bullshit goodbye as a lot of people say “It looks good but I’ll wait for the Steam sale”. The convenience food industry is going to suffer. Hell, most of the food industry in general is going to suffer because at least in this country, people are refusing things like root vegetables like potatoes at food banks because they can’t afford the cost of the energy it takes to cook them. People will more and more often go for the cheapest of things, specifically because they can’t afford anything else, and so any industry that focuses on luxury items is going to suffer - except for the really massively overpriced luxuries that only the truly rich can afford anyway.

At which point, their bubble economies will burst, because they’ve all been predicated on an illusion of infinite growth. News flash: that only works when people still have money to give them. Once we don’t? Well, they can’t perpetuate growth when profits fall simply because no one can afford to buy things anymore. So there are a few options for the future, and I honestly don’t know which is most likely.

Option one: frankly, riots. The above are bread and circuses - the things used to pacify the masses since ancient Rome. When we stop having that? Well, there’s not going to be a lot else to do but riot, is there?

Option two: enough companies will collapse that it’ll cause an economic downturn that actually touches the well-off enough that they’ll have to see some level of sense, in the form of actually paying their workers a little better.

Option three: government will see the writing on the wal as regards options one and two, decide that’s no way to keep power, and take just enough steps to keep the status quo at a level of “miserable for the plebs, just fine for the rich”.

None of these are ideal. Frankly, a lot of people are going to die in all three scenarios. But this is the only place logic takes us. Unfortunately, most of the wealthy don’t believe in logic. They believe in insane troll logic where somehow growth can be infinite and they can effectively print money with share buy-backs, but we all saw how creating infinite money on that scale worked for the Confederacy. That’s all share buy-backs are. That’s all laying off staff to make profits look bigger to match the Oracle of the Stock Exchange’s predictions means. It’s the Confederacy making money that’s not backed by anything and expecting it’ll work out because “Hey, more money”. But you only get more actual backing for that money in a service economy if you treat your workers well and pay them properly. They feed that money back into the economy and the cycle continues. “Trickle-down economy” was never a good concept anyway, but when the ‘trickle’ becomes an occasional drip, like that one faucet in the house that doesn’t leak quite enough to merit fixing but still drips once a week, death ensues. Death of people (which is my main concern), and death of industries (which is the nightmare of the sociopath money-hoarders).

Y’know, there are TV series dedicated to helping hoarders through their addiction to it. Maybe we should sic them on various captains of industry. It’s not my favoured method of dragon-slaying, but anything to get the hoard into the hands of the people who made it possible by working for it.

[stellaestra]

evening shower’s ribbon [kim seungmin]

evening shower’s ribbon [kim seungmin]

pairing: kim seungmin/mc [reader]

description: side scenario where seungmin came to realistion about his feelings. // drabble 

genre: platonic relationship, slight! pining, the “I suppose I'll love you in quiet, subtle ways. I'm content.” type of love. soulmate au // red string of fate 

author’s note: loosely connected with (my upcoming fic) “i told the stars about you” but can be a stand-alone drabble 

p.s. this cld be taken as both ways? romantic? platonic? take your pick lol

this is majorly just word vomit that came from my brain juice as i try to get my motivation back for writing again hA send help thank u for reading mwah feel free to drop kick me into the sun idk im just vibing n trying not to smack myself in the face whenever i think of my old crush in hs when i wrote this...im just projecting it onto seungmin here LOL im sorry </333

word count: 707 words 

cw: none

unedited // no beta read, we’ll die like men here 

“It’s raining again, Seungmin,” You chuckled lightly, staring outside through the windows of the university’s student lounge room, “I didn’t bring my umbrella, this sucks, guess I’ll die at this place!”

Seungmin rolled his eyes at you, “don’t be so dramatic.” He continued typing on his keyboard while listening to you whine about wanting to eat something cold due to the cold weather, causing him to glance at you with an unimpressed expression.

“You’re going to get sick if you do that,” he pressed his lips into a thin line, watching the way your eyes twinkled with mirth as you sent him a shit-eating grin, wiggling your eyebrows in a teasing way.

“Well, well, well, Kim Seungmin, admit it, you’ll miss me and feel lonely if I was gone a couple of days because I got sick!” You hummed, twirling your finger around. Seungmin sighed for the nth time for the day and most of them were aimed at you and your shenanigans before continuing to slave away on his assignment report that was plastered on his laptop’s screen.

Deciding to finally give up at poking fun at your friend, you chose to stare out of the window and admire how the rain droplets pitter-patter against the glass windows and it reminded you of one of your photography work.

The unintentional candid snapshot of your soulmate in the rain.

A bittersweet smile curled on your lips at the thought of the memory.

Meanwhile, Seungmin spared a glance at you and noticed the faraway look in your eyes as you gazed outside the windows. A knowing glint shone in his dark eyes as he recalled back to a memory where you jokingly mentioned that you were envious of those who had already met their soulmates and live their lives afterwards with a piece of their soulmate with them as they move on.

He was sure he wasn’t your soulmate and you weren’t his either. He was aware of soulmate defects where the universe decided to fuck some people over or there was a glitch in the system where someone wouldn’t be able to have a soulmate to pair themselves with or their soulmate wasn’t theirs and they weren’t destined together and it was a one-sided, unrequited thing.

He was sure that the two of you weren’t a matching pair of soulmates due to the fact that his pinky finger didn’t sense a tugging feeling whenever he was near you. So, why does his heart beat a little faster and his whole demeanour softened whenever you were around to bother him.

He was certain that he wasn’t in love with you. He does love you though as someone dear towards him.

Seungmin liked to think that soulmates were gifted to them by fate as a choice whether or not you were willing to agree to spend the time with them. It was a choice whether others wanted it to be a romantic one or a platonic one too. They were given options and they get to play with their cards on their deck with them.

That was why the red string of fate was tied around the pinky. It was like a careless, fleeting promise. 

He didn’t mind the concept of soulmates but that doesn’t mean he would play by its rules. Therefore, he would continue to gaze at you and admire the way your eyes would lit up at the sight of something that inspired you to create your artworks. The way you would throw a peace sign and sent him a teasing grin after successfully throwing him off his rhythm and pranked him.

For now, he didn’t mind what the two of you had with each other. It was comfortable. He was content with everything. 

That’s why he would continue to love you and cherish you in his own quiet and subtle ways where he would always stay by your side and act as a safety net for you whenever you would fall. 

The second you turned to flashed him that infamous cheeky smile of yours, he snapped out of his daze and his heart skipped a beat.

...Ah.

...Maybe, he was falling. Slowly and uncertainly. 

Perhaps, he was content with whatever he was feeling. He guessed.

---

[masterlist]