#not exclusively but definitely a good 90% of the time

[selfproclaimedunicorn]

Aha I’m back for the oc ask game! This time around, mayhaps any of these?: Kaleb x Taryne, Sarra x Yorick, Aldreda + Brandon, and Kaleb + Cassana?

Can I hear a round of applause for world class slut & professional other man for Lord Kaleb Dormaire?

We have already established with the Aldreda ship that this man is willing to bottom, but I really think Taryne would push that limit. Does he love a strong woman? Yes. Will he take the strap like a champ? I fully believe in his ability to do so. Can he exclusively be a sub? Honestly, I don't know if he's got it in him & Taryne will not give up control in the thing she's doing Just For Herself. That said, I don't think they wouldn't not work. I feel in my bones that Kaleb & Taryne would be more a "friends with benefits" type thing than whatever exactly she has going on with Gwayne.

It'd probably start out in a similar way of "I have a pre-established relationship with Alicent, & when I came back to King's Landing to see her here is some rando she's made part of her household since Lyonel Strong's promotion/Jasper Wylde got a job. Things have now spiraled a little out of control a little bit." Kaleb would definitely have more tact than Gwayne upon first contact, but he'd wind up in a similar situation of picking up the queues of how awful & traumatizing Taryne's marriage is, & once some level of comfort was there between them he'd offer some form of companionship at the very least just to give her some moments away from her husband, & from there it just kind of builds until they act on whatever attraction is there. They'd both definitely be having a nice time, & letting Taryne be in charge on occasion is probably nice, but bestie I am looking at this man's amount of kids & his pullout game is not good enough for Taryne to have him be her regular Other Man unless he's willing to never put it in. Kaleb, I see your breeding kink. You can't hide it from me. My son, Yorick, is the same fucking way, I perceive you whether you like it or not. Taryne's definitely fond of him though! He's an actual good, genuine man who won't hurt her, & that really goes most of the way for her. Not a long way, like 90% of it. The bar is on the ground.

They've definitely got "judging & side-eyeing people at the function, & maybe they hookup after it" vibes.

Yorick & Sarra sounded familiar, so I did hunt through the tag & I have ruminated on this before actually! So linking

Oh, you mean her step-son by way of fucking both his parents?

Gonna be real, she looks at him & just sees her youngest brothers, because some of them died young enough that temporarily being heir to Lonely Light or the expectations of their dad or Ironborn (specifically at Lonely Light) never had a chance to super get to them. So Brandon is kind of a What If scenario for her. "Would any of my brothers have been like him? Would they have been friends?" That type of thing

I think he'd be interested in Aldreda as a person regardless of what canon we're going with (Alicent alive at Lonely Light with Aldreda or her canon fate) just because she's important to his parents & "she's a cool warrior woman who let me have a knife!" And that would obviously evolve as he gets older to probably seeing her as some sort of extra parent or aunt or something--how that plays out I think would just really depend on what happens with Alicent (& by extension probably where he winds up going)

Honestly though, Aldreda would probably waffle a lot on if she wanted to be around him when he's younger. She'd never be outright cruel to him or send him away, it'd be more a "do I have the mental capacity to be around a child?" Part of it is her having never thought about her own ability to have kids & the subsequent having of them/motherhood & being at least a little confronted with it by now kind of being his step-mom, & part of it is the weird "my younger brothers were all this age once" that turns into "he's older than [brother x] ever got to be." It's, like, "am I mentally okay to be around the happy, optimistic child? If yes go be near the child. If no, decide if you want to do emotional self harm or not & proceed from there." (I never said Aldreda was the healthiest person out there). She'd definitely be encouraging of him & would probably give him pointers for training, but she'd also be rolling her eyes at the knight thing, I cannot lie. But you can't totally blame her, there's no knighthood culture on the islands! She wouldn't discourage him though, she'd just privately think that there's better things to dream of. Also, she's definitely taking him out on her longship at some point because "every boy needs to go out on the ocean. It puts hair on their chest." Did she tell Alicent or Kaleb beforehand? Maybe.

I think they'd be at least casual friends, with varying closeness depending on if it's SOTF or TRP. Because, like, they were both growing up in The Red Keep, but she was also never really a part of Rhaenyra's friend group until they were both a little older.

In SOTF, it'd definitely be a case of "this is my husband's cousin's boy (aside from Laenor, of course) that I also know & have a positive opinion of. Of course I am going to be kind & welcoming to him!" Because Cassana Strong is, first & foremost, a big sweetie pie. She's a little insecure, but she's a sweetie pie & she will never make someone feel unwelcome unless they've given her a reason to. She'd maybe be a little judgey about him having so many bastards (because she's even judgey about her brother in that regard), but she wouldn't say anything to him about it. Because that's rude & also it's kind of just expected in Westeros. Not stopping her from being gossipy as hell though.

In the TRP crossover AU though, they're definitely closer since he's married to Her Girl. Like "that's Daenys's man, your honor. I have to giggle about him with her, that's girl code." Also, like Rhaenyra, she's definitely encouraging them & probably helping to set them up, because she's watching Daenys moon over him too! Her insecurity would make a bigger impact, temporarily at least, on their relationship here though. I'm not going to go into too much detail, because that's spoilers for her arc in that fic, but there would be a rough patch where she kind of ices him out & is kinda harsh towards him for a couple months. Yes, it would be a bitterness thing & she is butting heads with at least Daenys & maybe even him depending on how much he's willing to try to pus that due to her very sudden 180 on how warm & friendly she normally is. It's not beyond repair, & she gets over it, & I also think she'd be willing to tell Kaleb what was going on more than she probably is Tyland in noncrossover TRP since, like, she's known him since he was a kid.

Overall, I think Kaleb & Cass would have a very nice friendship. Maybe not a best friendship, but a comfortable one.

[rotisseries]

i don't read enough loz fic to know what the popular fanon is so maybe this already exists but there should be a revali and zelda besties agenda i think it would be good for them

[star-sim]

shhh! ☆ jayhoon

☆ non-idol! jay x fem! reader, non-idol sunghoon x fem! reader ☆ summary: your secret relationship with him (& how you get caught!) ☆ genre: fluff, bullet points ☆ warning(s)? noooo

jay ☆

okay... hear me out

school au, where you and jay are the class co-presidents

and i'm not talkin goody two shoes dutiful co-presidents

IM SAYING TYRANNICAL CO-PRESIDENTS

you and jay were the class co-presidents, but you two were also the biggest most arrogant ASSHOLES

like somehow you guys have been put into office 3 years in a row

and even though people lowk hate you both, theyre more scared of ygs than anything

yk how in some animanga there's that corrupt student council trope... thats you and jay

threatening people, bribery, blackmailing, using lackeys....... nothing crazy but yall are NOT clean goody two shoes

im just saying... yall have SO MUCH power and influence

everyone is like legitimately afraid of ygs

on the outside you and jay seem to have an exclusively business relationship

to everyone, you're two power-hungry assholes who use each other to achieve their goals

at council meetings you and jay talk very cordially and formally, everytime you're seen together, you guys always whisper to each other briefly, before putting on your painfully fake smiles again and barely ever speaking to each other again

but behind closed doors....

yall are DATING dating

who knew that you, the condescending bitchy co-president, and jay, the most arrogant bastard of a co-president, were ALL FLUFF FOR EACH OTHER???

you and jay do such a good job of concealing your relationship that there's rumors that you and him actually secretly hate each other

heck, there's even a rumor that you'll stab him in the back later this term

after council meetings, you and jay stay back to "discuss private matters"

yall know damn well that's not what's happening

the moment that your snooty class treasurer shuts the door and leaves the two of you alone, jay's already pushing you against the wall

imagine.... makeout sessions in empty classrooms, and coming out with messed up uniform, swollen lips, and suspiciously timed breathlessness

jay would LOVE it if you grabbed onto his uniform tie and yanked him toward you, he gets the butterflies big time

whenever you pull jay aside to whisper something into his ear, everyone assumes that you're telling him about some confidential or urgent student council matter

nope!! 90% of the time it's you whispering "you look so handsome" "i love you" "let's go on a date later" "i want to kiss you so bad" good lord

and the best part??? whenever you do this, both you and jay keep the straightest, most solemn faces, even though jay is 100% screaming and giggling and kicking his feet inside

and let's be fr right now.... you guys DEFINITELY hold hands under the table

like there will be a meeting about whatever and you and jay are just playing with each other's hands under the table

i think you've almost been caught multiple times but no one necessarily suspects that there's something between you two

everyone genuinely thinks that yall are just some cold-hearted power freaks, too cold to love anyone LOL

the amount of times that you guys accidentally left the door unlocked and someone barged in....

to be clear just bc you and jay are head over heels in love with each other does NOT mean that you guys still aren't crazy assholes

sometimes you guys purposefully don't lock the door and play something that jay likes to call "kissing roulette"

basically, you and jay leave the door unlocked and make out on a busy day when there's a lot of people still roaming the halls, whoever pulls away first out of fear of being caught loses!

you always end up winning lol

i also think that some people are just stupid because there are actually SO many signs of you and him having something

like tell me why jay is out here pulling you close up against him, hands around your waist and all, to whisper something in your ear and the first thing that people think is "oh i think they hate each other"

now..... how ygs get caught: i think you and jay decided to keep your relationship private for the sake of preserving it, like ppl talk too much and they wanna get in the way or wtv

like business must go forward even if you and jay were on top of each other mere seconds ago

like i have emphasized earlier, you and jay were lowk tyrannical

you don't know how it happened but someone in the council leaked one of the being discussed

you and jay didn't really think it was that serious but apparently everyone else was

like.... some of your classmates got HEATED LMAOAO

anyways so you and jay are just having another one of your... ahem... after school sessions

and lets just say that this particular session was errr very passionate... you missed your boyfriend okay?

it was hard to act like jay pracitcally didn't exist when all you wanted to do was kiss him every second of the day

so here you were, between jay's legs with him pressed up against some bookshelf of an empty classroom

his shirt's collar is messed up, probably with lipstick stains all over it

you have his tie scrunched up in your fist, while his hands find the hem of your uniform skirt (😋)

completely unbeknownst to you there's a whole group of students in your year marching around school lookign for you two

apparently to "give the presidents a piece of their mind"

you and jay are LITERALLY about to go a step further (🤭) when the door FLIES OPEN

AND OH MY GOD

THERE'S JUST SO MANY OF THEM

like particular session you SWORE YOU LOCKED THE DOOR

like that little group of kids were about to start yelling at you to "reconsider your decisions" but they were rendered SPEECHLESS

GAGGED EVEN

because like..... THE TWO CO-PRESIDENTS WHO SUPPOSEDLY SEE EACH OTHER AS MERE TOOLS WERE........ MAKING OUT IN AN EMPTY CLASSROOM??????

you and jay are just standing there, still against each other against the bookshelf dissheveled and all, like 😧😧

"s-sorry!" it seems like the sight of you two getting all intimate scared the shit out of those little protestors BECAUSE THEY JUST RAN AWAY AFTER THAT

the next day you and jay are the talk of the school

jay is getting pats on his back from dudes who he literally does not know

"AYYYY YOU BAGGED THE HOT PRESIDENT!!!"

and hes like "? do i know you"

and suddenly all the girls are sitting you down with cups of tea to ask you about the story of you and jay

"please girl we want to know all the tea"

???? weren't they just gossiping about you yesterday

it seemed like everyone was weirdly supportive??

like over night everyone seemed to like you guys a little bit more??

somehow yall become the it couple

i dont think jay and you immediately get more affectionate

but jay definitely takes advantage of this

and randomly kisses you throughout the day

sunghoon ☆

you and sunghoon work in the same department, under the same supervisor, in the same office, at the same table, with the same tasks, with the same pay and same skills

yet only one of you is deemed the company's #1 loser and the other the company's sweetheart

guess who ☠️

well sunghoon is definitely NOT the company sweetheart

ding ding ding! if you guessed that he's the loser you are correct

sunghoon's quiet, and gets his job done efficiently with little trouble

he doesn't mean to make people uneasy with how quiet he is

but sunghoon genuinely does not like anyone enough to be talkative, nor does he want to try to make any friends

emo ass

on the other hand you're the company's joy

everyone wants to hang out with you after work

you're the first person invited to work parties, even when it's from different departments, every guy in that office has had a crush on you at some point

you know damn well the interns are obsessed with you

absolutely NO ONE would expect the residential hot girl to be going home with THE biggest loser every night

but alas look where we are

you and sunghoon were dating waaay before either of you got a job here

you guys decided to keep your relationship secret to avoid any HR complaints or snoopy people

and it was a bit of a struggle

do you have any idea how hard it was for sunghoon to watch every man try to shoot his shot with you and NOT start screaming?

sunghoon really tried to not let his personal life interfere with his professional life

but JINWOO FROM THE SALES DEPARTMENT WAS LITERALLY ASKING YOU OUT RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM

and it was hard for you, too

having people swarm you for after-work plans was a mess

each time, you said that you were going to stay late to finish some extra work, and if you had time you'd join them

you never did

all of your work friends tried to set you up on dates with their own friends

"cmon it will be fun! get out a little!"

and every time you had to politely tell them that you were not looking for a relationship for the time being (only for you and sunghoon to pass silly love notes at the water cooler)

oh sorry did you not hear that?

YOU AND SUNGHOON PASS SILLY LOVE NOTES AT THE WATER COOLER!!!!!

it’s always the most random ripped pieces of paper with the silliest love notes

like you will rip up a spare legal document nd write “if u were a fruit you’d be a fineapple”

sunghoon tho is the type up a whole document and print it out, it’s filled top to bottom in silliness and he hands it to you like it’s an official important document 😭

every morning he makes you coffee and brings it to your desk

lers be real ppl suspect things

NOT ON YOUR PART BUT ON YOUR BEHALF

like everyone thinks that sunghoon is this loser that’s in love with you ☠️

i mean cmon… weird quiet guy that talks to no one but makes coffee every morning for that One Hot Girl???

the workplace gossips have a field day w it

in their eyes, it’s really pathetic because sunghoon is this weirdo and ur this hot woman and he’s in love with you oh my gosh this is so embarrassing for him 😭🙏🙏

they keep telling you stuff too

“omg did you see the way sunghoon looked at you?”

“he’s so weird, it’s so obvious that he liked you”

"this is so embarrassing [name] you need to reject him before he gets too eager" FREE HIM

little do they know that when you and sunghoon stay a little bit later than everyone else sometimes, the office becomes really empty

kissing in empty offices… thats it, that’s the tweet

otherwise there's a lot of other small things that you do with/for each other 

when no one's around in the break room, you love to creep up on him and give him a back hug

it scares the shit out of him but the moment that he realizes that it's you he melts right away

idk how ppl didn't notice yet

one time your washing machine malfunctioned so both you and sunghoon's white dress shirts were dyed a subtle pink color

you came into work both wearing your dyed shirts and no one stopped to think "hm why do these people both have washing machine malfunctions that malfunctioned in the exact same way?"

tbh you and sunghoon are just vibing

other than sunghoon needing to conceal his wrath every time someone flirted with you and you having to hide your increasing irritation with the amount of party invitations you got

can i just say tho

being coworkers w sunghoon is a dream

imagine what happens when yall get home tho

i know the gossip goes CRAZY… you both hate your boss so every conversation you have about him rips him a new one

now... how you guys get caught

two words: work dinners

you and sunghoon never go to them

because like... why would you want to hang out with your coworkers when you have each other?

and when you do go to them, you never really have fun

other than eating and chatting a bit you never drink or really open up…. again, because you have sunghoon... why do u need anyone else

same for sunghoon, except he literally never looks like he wants to be there so people are already reluctant to invite him

but there's this one particular work dinner that you and sunghoon are both unable to get out of

it's been a long and tiring week, both of you want to go home and take a nap together but your team had other plans

sunghoon is annoyed, yes, but hes like whatever at least there's you with him

you? youre LIVID

youre barging into that work dinner with a storm cloud around you

you have to deal with coworkers who lack boundaries every day of the week and the one time you can escape them they march back in

youre not having it 😭

you ordered like 3 beers because you were so annoyed

and also bc sunghoon was there... if anything happened you knew that he would protect you

so here you were 3 beers down…. a liiiiittle bit tipsy

okay maybe a little bit MORE than tipsy… como se dice... drunk?

when jinwoo from the sales department comes up to you

sunghoon is sitting RIGHT next to you but jinwoo ignores him

"hi [name]"

you stare at him... thousand yard stare ahhh because your drunk ass does not have it in you to endure him ☠️

"what."

jinwoo DOES NOT TAKE THE HINT

"after this, i was thinking about going for karaoke. do you want to go with me?"

normally you'd be polite and decline

even if you were a little bit tipsy you'd normally just laugh and say no

but this time

with you boyfriend right next to you, with all your tiredness, with all your anger...

"fuck no," you say plainly

the way everyone gets quiet ☠️ ppl don't hear you swear that much

but the real thing that surprises them is when you pull sunghoon towards you, hugging his head to your chest

“i have a boyfriend and you’re shamelessly flirting with me”

while sunghoon is like “!!!!!”

everyone is staring liek WHAT???????

jinwoo from sales department is GAGGED BRUH

sunghoon immediately pulls away, all red in the faced

he grabs your hand and begins dragging you out the door

"sorry everyone she's drunk right now we'll be on our way!!" and yall leave

you don't remember anything so when sunghoon explains it to you, looking like a kicked dog, youre just like "okay and? whats the problem i put jinwoo in his place" #girlboss

you're the talk of the office

this still doesn't scare off your multiple suitors

but it does allow sunghoon is be a #hater fr

he's smug

[blood-stained-lollipop]

the pastas if they had a normal life

BEN- Gamer boy who lives in his parent's basement. You saw it coming. Ben would literally spend his days living off energy drinks and chips. Brags about his game collection even though he doesn’t have a job. He doesn’t care that he doesn’t have a job, but he should.

Jeff- He never moved on from the emo renaissance. He has posters of MCR and other emo bands up on his walls. They’re chipped and wilted, but he’ll be dead before they get taken down. Definitely uses a pair of broken wired earphones because he thinks he’s too cool for AirPods.

Eyeless Jack-Jack would be the most pretentious male manipulator sorry. Donna Tartt would have a field day with him. He exclusively only listens to music from the 80s and mansplains everything. He is intelligent though, and he dresses immaculately. 

Toby- That friend who has never been calm in their life. One second he’s at home, then the next he’s in Portugal on a solo holiday. Should not be allowed a bank account. Always the life of the party. People wonder how he’s still alive. 

Helen- Weird art kid. Spends all of his time in his room, either playing piano or painting. He thinks he’s destined to be the next Picasso. Has good grades and big dreams, but no friends to tell them to. 

Liu- Probably the most normal. Good grades, decent social life. He��s not popular, but he’s not a loner. Kind of mainstream. Always drinking coffee, probably works like two jobs. Has connections everywhere. 

Jane- She walks down the street and like 90% of heads turn to look at her. Quiet, but not shy. Has a small group of friends, but feels like none of them know her. Probably has a glass of red wine every Saturday night. Has a cat. 

Nina- The town's bravest girl solely because she’s single-handedly bringing back scene-core. Doesn’t care that people give her weird looks on public transport. Makes kandi bracelets and gives them out to strangers. Literally SO sweet and for what. 

Clockwork- No one wants to get on her bad side. She has like two friends but she loves them with all her heart. Doesn’t give a fuck about grades. She probably works out a lot but never drinks water. Lives alone. 

[whorbidmore]

okay, so, I've fallen victim to the leon kennedy brainrot steadily overtaking me, following me from Tumblr to Pinterest, to Instagram and even the absolutely fucking dreaded application of TikTok. I don't even use it that often??? and the algorithm is just like 'wow, yeah, this little fuckers gay as hell send in the 40 year old meow meow!!' and having watched Death Island fairly recently, I'm gonna have my opinions on what this dude would be like. Cus my brain loves to rationalize shit and think ab 'what if this mf was someone real?' so... fuck it.

Leon Soft Kennedy Headcanons

SFW

accidentally bigoted. - im sorry but let's be so fucking real here. he's a 40 something year old man who spent the majority of his life in either the military, a police training academy in the 90's, or otherwise working under the U.S Federal System with minimal/no time between missions to unpack absolutely everything he's got going on... the guys gonna have some problematic tendencies. Obviously that doesn't mean he means any of that or is incapable of change, etc. etc., but I know for damn certain this dude would laugh a little at Bill Burr's borderline to blatantly misogynistic material and has probably chuckled unironically at the attack helicopter jokes. But, he's not a complete dick, and would definitely become more critical of those kinds of jokes if it's pointed out to him.

honest to God, Dad Without Kids™ - it's not simply enough for me to leave it at 'but it's the vibes!!' so, I'm gonna break this shit down. Leon is absolutely Gen X incarnate. I can fucking guarantee you that on his off days he accidentally ends up dressing as an undercover cop; I'm talking cargo shorts, light blue button up, those fucking standard issue boots cus "they're perfectly good shoes" and those stupid ass sunglasses... you know the ones I'm talking about. Let's say you're living with him, right? And you're... you, and you wanna watch something on TV. This dude would strain himself getting up like a turtle fallen backwards on its shell, stand up, walk right in front of the TV screen and stand there with his hands on his hips. It doesn't matter that he had to piss, he needs to get a better look of what's happening! Does those really loud, obnoxious coughs and sneezes, absolutely blows his back out doing one at least five times a year.

Only watches British Reality TV - Considering he's canonically a film buff, I'll say that this is purely for whatever he gravitates towards on general streaming services. I honestly don't see him being the type to regularly tune in to standard American cable TV, or only does so under specific circumstances like American Ninja Warrior or maybe Forged in Fire if there's absolutely nothing else. It's not something that's exclusive to Americans, — I'm from New Zealand and I do this too, — but Leon absolutely falls into the category of watching British Reality and Game shows purely because of the accents. I'm talking Jeremy Kyle, The Big Fat Quiz of Everything, Taskmaster, The Great British Bake Off and so on and so forth. It doesn't matter that baking isn't his forté or a passion of his, if Josephine curdles her buttercream by over mixing, his hands are in his hair in utter disappointment. 100% tries to mimic their accents too. We all do it, don't lie.

Has... very dated music tastes - I don't know if you could guess, but the last paragraph included me calling myself out and name dropping some shows I watch anyway or grew up watching, and I'm just saying that this is gonna be no different. If anything? This'll be worse! Since I'm very passionate about the music I listen to and have the inability to keep my interests separated from the other, of course my love of particular bands will bleed over into my interpretation of Leon's character! Anyway, all that for me to say that Leon fucking LOVES 90's grunge musicians, specifically Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, as well as early nu metal bands like Korn (their dubstep phase did not happen.), TOOL, and Rage Against the Machine — and no, he unfortunately doesn't see the irony of him being a fed and listening to Rage, — but would also have a soft spot for psych rock, post-punk and shoegaze. My man's definitely laid awake at night, sobbing without expression as he struggles to accept that Ada never really wanted him like he wanted her while listening to fucking Slowdive. My hottest take here is that he doesn't really listen to Deftones. Like he'll occasionally blast My Own Summer, Change, Bored or Rosemary, but anything outside of those? He just didn't listen to 'em. My second hottest take is that he does NOT like Slipknot, which kind of pains me 'cus I do, but I fucking bet you this dude would actually adopt one piece of "Gen Z lingo" or whatever just call them cringe. Though admittedly he would've been jamming the fuck out to Psychosocial and The Devil in I when they came out. Went off the deep end in Vendetta, obviously, and drunk-cried himself to sleep on the couch listening to Linkin Park.

Very confusing spending habits - On one hand, we all understand that Leon came from money, — he was implied to have been born into a mob family from my understanding? And I doubt he'd ever really had to worry about being fully, irrevocably broke, — but I'm sure that growing up in the U.S Foster Care System made him at least a little more cautious of where his money comes from, where it's going, what he's spending it on, etc. So, on the one hand, he's apprehensive to spend recklessly, particularly on perishables. But also, if he can drop over $100,000USD on a motorcycle that got absolutely fucking cheese grated into the road, and spend a perceived, metric fuck ton of money on designer leather jackets and massive watches, it's gonna be hard for me to call him 'financially conscious'. On one hand, he gets apprehensive on spending more money than he needs to on food since he's "just gonna shit it out later", but if he sees a cool watch or a nice suit in a shop window? Money's suddenly not an issue! Not because he's materialistic, but because the one thing he really maintains a sense of control over in his life are his possessions and the way he dresses. The D.S.O can call him in for another months long mission whenever they please, and all he can realistically do is allow the government to tug on his leash and put him where he's needed. He may as well spend their money on things he wants!

Gets out... enough? But also, not really? - So, personally I've pegged Leon as more of an introverted person, — amateurly typed his MBTI as possibly ISFJ? — so he doesn't really feel the need to go out and meet new people or really hang out with anyone. If somebody invites him out? Sure, he'll go. Otherwise, it rarely occurs to him to meet up with friends or colleagues at a cafe or anywhere. I think he'd prefer to just go there alone, mostly for the sake of having somebody else cook for him as opposed to actively seeking out the atmosphere. It's pure convience in his mind. And remember when I said in the beginning about him accidentally being at least a little misogynistic? Yeah, that was me trying to say that he regularly tries to hit on younger waitresses. Not because he actually wants anything to do with them, but simply because it's an ego boost. He likes that he can make girls half his age blush or offer him their numbers, because it tells him that he's still desirable, and ultimately, that gives him the power to reject them politely and go about the rest of his day. If they don't reject him first, of course. Admittedly, Leon's audacity towards women peaked during Infinite Darkness.

Since I'm planning on posting more NSFW headcanons for this guy, — and more NSFW kinds of posts, — here is the obligatory Minors DNI attachment. For your own safety, I don't care if what I have to say is tame so far, you can hold it off I promise.

[dokidokitsuna]

Tragic Sky

(very long salty rant ahead (+new Alterna backstory, though! ^^;))

So I've always thought Alterna’s backstory, despite being presented as a grand mystery that’s definitely worth fighting through 90% of the missions to uncover in its entirety…was kinda stupid. :/ I’m all for humanity destroying itself for ridiculous reasons, but trying to launch a rocket in an enclosed space?? Are you serious…? o_O How could the Alternans devote such immense amounts of time and energy to something like that without once thinking, “hey, uh…burning metric tons of high-energy fuel inside of our flammable safety dome might be a little unsafe, idk”.

And it shouldn’t even have been necessary! DX I mean, if they were able to build a dome like that in the first place, wouldn’t they have some sort of scaffolding or elevator system they could use to reach the top and just literally climb out if they wanted to leave that badly?? Had Alterna existed for so long that the technology used to create it was lost to time (seeing as it’s implied that Alterna was destroyed by its SECOND generation, I doubt it)...?? Or, did the writers suddenly realize that coming up with pseudo-scientific lore that explains why inkfishes resemble humanity is wholly unnecessary and adds nothing to the themes of Splatoon…but it was too late to rework the concept, so they just finished off the story with whatever-the-heck and called it a day. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ I guess we’ll never know...

Anyway, my version of Alterna’s backstory starts with a similar premise: humans invented crystal thingies that can manifest people’s desires and whatnot…but this alone caused conflict that eventually doomed Alterna. People began to make their own interpretations of other people’s desires, judging and condemning them for how they manifested. They began treating the crystals’ reflections as compulsory measures of morality and worth, rather than simple expressions of the human heart that exist outside of a good/bad binary. Alterna’s leaders envisioned themselves creating a society of ‘pure truth’, free from the destructive power of deceit and subterfuge…all the while ignoring the destructive power of paranoia and exclusion that they immersed themselves in.

Exclusion escalated to oppression, which eventually spawned rebellion: plans were made to create a rocket that would allow a select group of ‘undesirables’ to escape Alterna for the surface world, destroying the integrity of their safe haven in the process. Despite not knowing what was waiting for them out there, they were willing to take the risk in the name of freedom. Eventually, this secret plan was revealed to the public, resulting in Alterna’s first and last civil war. As the Alternans began to fight and kill each other, the crystals were overwhelmed with the unprecedented ferocity of their clashing desires-- “a violent and terrible chain reaction ensued”, and the energy within them exploded outward. The sky dome, still filled with the beautiful blue of the peoples’ wishes for peace and happiness, came crumbling down, raining fire and shrapnel upon Alterna. The still-poisoned air of the outside world flowed freely into the cavern, ensuring the eventual death of anyone who might have survived.

…Then the crystals fell in the ocean, the sea creatures were imbued with human hopes and dreams, yadda yadda, all that’s basically the same as the canon too. And although I still think it’s unneeded (the mere concept of a bygone humanity in Splatoon carries plenty of weight without all this “lore”, imo), at least now the story isn’t stupid!

It speaks to the way humans actually treat each other, and blames their downfall on their long-established bad habits of cruelty and callousness, rather than morally-neutral traits like ambition and pursuit of the unknown (I would never have expected “curiosity killed the cat” as the lesson of the day from Splatoon, of all franchises. o_O This IS the same game that celebrates individual expression and forging your own path, right…?)

Anyway…I’m gonna be using elements of this rewritten backstory and the theme of “manifesting desires” to flesh out the final boss encounter and Agent 3’s subtle character arc. So please look forward to that~

[makesims]

Vintage Pride Shirts - Pride 2023

This year for pride I’m taking inspiration from the pride protests and figures of history. This set includes 18 unisex t-shirts all made from real designs from the 70s-90s. 

Download and more info under the cut.

Download (no ads, no paywalls): SFS | Patreon

CREDIT: These shirts were made using meshes from @its-adrienpastel, who graciously allows meshes to be included in recolors. The fem mesh uses their Talia T-Shirt, and the masc mesh uses their Repeat T-Shirt. You do not need to download these for my recolors to work, but you should definitely still check out their CC if you haven’t. 

Note: To honor the real history here, I am choosing not to translate any of the text into Simlish. This is rare for me, and I know a lot of people hate English text in the game, so just know that I almost never do anything in exclusively English like this.

Feeling generous? Here are some good charities - Gendered Intelligence (UK), Act Up NY (USA), The Trevor Project (USA), and Mermaids (UK). I’d also recommend looking into any local charities in your area that could use volunteers if you have the time to spare! <3

And if anyone is interested in the background for some of these images, you can find that here. :)

[psalmicwitch]

🔹 Psalm Magic 101 🔹

I practice with psalm magic a lot as a Christian witch, but it’s not exclusive to Christian witches. I’ve said this before on my blog, but the psalms are some of the oldest, most well documented pieces of magic we have.

The psalms, commonly attributed to King David, but there’s actually no evidence of who authored any of the psalms. We have no idea who they came from, but we know they came from much older sources. Using the book of psalms as magical test is a sort of pre-Wiccan traditional witchcraft practice.

I tend to follow Ariel Gatoga’s method of psalm magic, though there are many traditions.

Step 1: Start with a Psalm

Start with a psalm. It helps if it has a meaning that aligns with what your intentions are, but it isn’t explicitly necessary. You’ll have a harder time working the psalm, but it is definitely not impossible. I like this index of psalm meanings.

Your first read through of the psalm you’re going to treat it like an incantation. Recite with intent and with energy, whatever that means for you. Do this without stopping. (If you stop you do gotta start over)

This doesn’t have to be out loud, if you’re in the broomcloset, but read through it as if you were reciting it out loud. I like to describe this as “all but” letting the words come out of your mouth.

Step 2: Work the Psalm

Next, we move on to working the psalm. Our next read through, mentally or out loud, we’re reading and digging deeper, verse by verse, finding the occult meanings behind certain words.

What are occult or double meanings? I really like, again, Ariel Gatoga’s booklet on discerning the double meanings of certain words.

He describes finding these words as seeds which we plant and grow into magic. The description that resonates with me is knitting these words together to grow into a functional spell.

There’s no inherent magic in reciting a psalm. The magic comes from working and weaving its pieces together with intention to work towards your goal.

Sometimes, if I have the energy, I’ll do a second working of the same psalm. Don’t do more than one psalm a day. One thing about psalm magic is that it can be exhausting. I remember the first time I really had success with a working it completely drained me and I passed out immediately after. Even if you don’t get physically tired, it is mentally taxing, so don’t overdo it. (Remember to always raise energy before and ground after.)

Ending and Circuits

I personally end with incanting the psalm once more, putting special emphasis on those occult or double-meaninged words. I made this up. It helps me feel like I’ve gone full circle, but truly, we were finished after we worked the psalm. This second incantation is really just putting frosting on the outside of the psalm cake.

Circuits are an integral part of psalm magic, unlike my little frosting on the cake. When you work a psalm, it’ll work, but to add more energy to what you preformed, you’re going to want to recite similar psalms the next few days. My favorite circuit is definitely 9, 90, and 91 for healing illness.

To work a circuit, pick the 3-6 psalms you want to work, and work them, one a day, 3-6 days straight, depending on how many psalms you picked. After, take a few days rest and evaluate how you feel about what you did. I search deep for my gut to tell me where I stand in the problem. If you feel good, great! If you don’t, do the circuit again.

I like psalms because psalmic magic does not rely on anything else. You can create a ritual around it (I do!) but nothing else is required. You can be the most inconspicuous witch ever. You only need a Bible or a book of psalms.

A final note, if you feel detached from the language found in the book of psalms, especially if you’re not a devotee of an Abrahamic god, it’s important to reframe it. In this text, you are god. (Heresy alert lol). Remember, these texts predate what they’re used for in the Bible. Change your frame of reference, and realize you are the god of the texts. (Or if you do resonate with the way they are written, don’t bother.) It’s about how to make the text work with you. There is no power in the exact language with which the psalms are written.

Once you learn the process, psalm magic starts to feel like second nature.

If you ever don’t want to write your own spell, if you want to recite some old magic, or even if you are worried about getting caught, psalm magic has something for everyone. I really do implore you to give it a shot.

Lastly, if this has been helpful or insightful to you, please consider donating to the ALS Association.

I’m on a mission to end ALS. If you can’t donate, reblog my pinned post, or hey, send a psalm up for healing those with ALS, or knowledge for those working for the cure.

[steddieunderdogfics]

This week’s writer spotlight feature is: @morningberriesao3! morningberries has 15 works in the Stranger Things fandom on AO3 and all of them are in the Steddie tag!

@steddieas-shegoes recommends the following works by @morningberriesao3:

Sweet Surrender

Sneaky Link

How I’d Kill (to See You Again)

"If I could write a sonnet, it would be about berries. She specializes in that very specific angst with a happy ending that grips you by the jaw and spits in your mouth and then you say thank you because it tastes so good. So anyway love her, love her work, love everything about what she writes and does. 10000/10" -- @steddieas-shegoes

Below the cut, @morningberriesao3 answered some questions about their writing process and some of their recommended work!

Why do you write Steddie?

Funnily enough, it all started when I exclusively read Eddie x reader on tumblr. I didn't have an account yet, so I made a quick burner and would gobble up anything under the tag. I always saw people on the internet "shipping" characters but never really understood it, until I came across one particular fic called Wild Parts, where the pairing was reader x Steddie. I remember being more excited for Steve and Eddie to fall in love than I was with the reader aspect. It all went downhill from there when I discovered there was a whole community that loves Steddie. I decided one day, yeah, I want to make them fall in love, too!

What’s your favorite trope to READ?

Honestly, the first thing that comes to mind is the classic friends-to-lovers where Steve has a sexuality crisis because he's falling for Eddie. I could read it over and over and never get sick of it.

What’s your favorite trope to WRITE?

I feel like angst with a happy ending is common ground for, like, 90% of my fics. I also find myself constantly writing miscommunication, and giggling at all the comments that say, "IF THEY JUST TALK TO EACH OTHER!" Yeah. That's a point to be made.

What’s your favorite Steddie fic?

It's quite literally impossible to choose just one when there are so many talented Steddie writers creating new works everyday. I'll rapid fire a few that pop to mind first (all on AO3): Sea Legs by Midnightdrive. Drought by a_star_danced. Wanna Hurt You Just to Hear You Screaming My Name by DotyTakeThisDown. I've Been Having a Horrible Time Pulling Myself Together by Deadrats. Stupid Cupid by DirtyValentine. Money, Power, Glory by StrangerThings1975.

Is there a trope you’re excited to explore in a future work but haven’t yet?

Definitely! I want to write ALL the tropes! I think the reason writing Steddie hasn't become redundant for me is because each time I write a fic, I want it to be different from the last. I rack my brain like, "Okay, I've already done Kas Eddie, Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, No Upside Down, Modern Setting, Rock Star Eddie... What's next?!" 

What is your writing process like?

It's a very linear process for me. I'm somewhat of a daydreamer; I see the things I write in my head almost like a movie. And then I just type it out as it plays in my brain. I rarely outline anything, but I'll have random gibberish in my notes app to remind me of ideas or big plot points I need to wrap up. I'm honestly surprised anything I write makes sense when I'm through with it. I'm waiting for the chaos of it all to bite me in the ass one day.

Do you have any writing quirks?

I don't know if it's a quirk so much as a fault, but I do this thing where I let my comments pile up and pile up. I won't let myself answer one until I can answer them ALL, because I don't want anyone to think I'm ignoring their comment specifically. I also have to match the energy of the comment, so when it's super long I HAVE to write something back that's super long. This makes it an hours-long task when I let them go for as long as I do unanswered. If anyone hasn't gotten a reply back yet, I PROMISE I WILL!!! 

Do you prefer posting when you’ve finished writing or on a schedule?

In a perfect world, I'd only start posting a project when it's completed so I could keep up with a posting schedule. Reality is: having 20 WIPs saved to my laptop in which I'll post the first couple chapters as motivation for me to finish it. It's a flawed system, but it works out most of the time!

Which fic are you most proud of?

I think it'll always be Sweet Surrender. It was my first fic and the first time I had ever completed something similar to a novel after it was wrapped up at 150K. When I look back, I see some flaws, but I'd never want to change them. If we're talking about which fic I think I wrote the best, I'd say How I'd Kill. The fantasy universe allowed me to get creative with the plot and scenery, and I think my excitement for that is reflected in my quality of writing.

How did you get the idea for Sweet Surrender?

Sweet Surrender is an amalgamation of every fic I read and loved when I first was introduced to the fandom. I basically owe it to all the favourite fics I mentioned earlier. Without their inspiration, I never would have started writing fic in the first place. 

When writing Sweet Surrender, what was something you didn’t expect?

The response. I cannot capture in words how GOOD it felt when people started reading, commenting on, and loving something that I created. You see it mentioned all the time, but it really is true when they say that a comment goes a long way. I was absolutely gobsmacked to see people following along from the beginning. It was such a motivator, and truly a feeling that nothing else could give me.

What inspired Sneaky Link?

I read Must Be a Devil Between Us, Or Whores In My Head by whateverokayFINE (a modern, OnlyFans AU that Sneaky Link could never touch)—loved it SO much that those daydreams I mentioned took off. It stayed as an unposted WIP for a long time because I told myself that I couldn't write a convincing modern AU. I'm so glad I did though, because I've never had a response to a fic like I've had with Sneaky Link.

What was your favorite part to write from Sneaky Link?

There were so many fun side plots to Sneaky Link—the whole thing was a blast to write. One of my favourites was the main conclusion, when Chrissy got to be the hero. Glitter and Chanel No. 5 really saved the day. Of course the first few chapters were hilarious, too. Dumbass, clueless Eddie will never fail to make me giggle, and his obliviousness to Steve's hidden identity really drove everyone up the wall.

How do/did you feel writing How I’d Kill (to See You Again)?

This story really had its CLAWS in me. I wrote the chapters so fast that I think I put out almost 50K words in a matter of four weeks; I've really never written that quickly before or since. The last few chapters were a little slower going, though. I think I was nervous as the plot got a little heavier how people would react, so there were definitely some mixed emotions.

What was the most difficult part of writing How I’d Kill (to See You Again)?

When I wrote Eddie betraying such a soft, loving, trusting Steve. When he pinned that part of his personality against him. I love writing angst, but I had never delved quite this deep into the trope. I definitely teared up a couple times making Steve go through it like that.

Do you have a favorite scene and/or line from any of your fics?

Without spoiling much, I think the end scene of chapter 7 of How I'd Kill (The Judas Kiss) was absolutely thrilling to write, and of course the following chapters as well. This whole idea of "morally gray" Eddie Munson was the reason I started writing the fic in the first place. But when I got to the bit where he had to be morally gray and posted the chapter, I immediately had this fear; I didn't know how the readers were going to react, or if I, as the writer, would be able to properly explain Eddie's motivation or make him forgivable for what he did. It was an "oh shit" moment for sure, but I think I ended up doing an alright job pulling it off.

Do you have any upcoming projects or fics you’d like to share/promote?

I'm currently writing a piece for the 2024 Steddie Big Bang called "A Thousand Flowers Could Bloom". It's in collaboration with Inflomora-art, so I'm completely thrilled that I'll have gorgeous artwork to go with this fic. I'm sure by the time this is posted, it'll already be live! I'm so proud of this story—it might be the best I've written yet. So yeah, if you're reading this, please check it out!!! 

Outside of these questions, Is there anything YOU would like to add?

I don’t think so, but thank you so much for this! It was really fun to answer all these questions <3

Thank you to our author, @morningberriesao3, and our nominator, @steddieas-shegoes! See more of morningberries' works featured on our page throughout the day!

Writer’s Spotlight is every Wednesday! Want to nominate an author? You can nominate them here!

[financeprincess]

It is so inspiring hearing about your weight loss :) i was wondering if you had any particular weight loss tips you’d like to share? I went through a period of weight loss myself, but have lately gained back a lot of what I’ve lost and I’d like to know if there’s anything that helped you get back on the wagon. Love your blog btw!

Don’t be too hard on yourself, its rough out here especially in the US. it’s easy to accidentally slip up and gain 15 pounds just by eating a lil extra every day.

Some things that helped me:

Intermittent fasting, only a 13 hour window though. The 16:8 was too much for me and with women it can screw with your hormones if you’re not careful.

Drinking lots of water. Like a ton. I put those hydration multiplier electrolyte packets in my water as well.

Get good quality sleep. I got some Brooklinen sheets and they are 100% worth it. Definitely improved my sleep quality. I also have a really nice down duvet and an Egyptian cotton cover for it. I also have a silk eye mask and a silk pillowcase from Slip that I love. Sleep is extremely important.

Get 10k steps a day or at least just walk as much as you can. I’m sedentary a lot for school/work/etc. so I absolutely have to get out and walk and get moving. Even if you just aim for a mile or two a day it’ll greatly help.

If you don’t want to lift weights that’s okay. It’s not for everyone. I used to be super into powerlifting and got pretty muscular but it doesn’t excite me like it used to. I do a mix now of walking, jogging, pilates, rollerblading, cycling, kickboxing, swimming, yoga, ice skating, and weightlifting. That way I’m never bored and the variety allows me to choose what I want to do.

Consistency is key. Doing 4 workouts a week at a light/medium intensity is better than doing 1-2 a week of super high intensity and burning yourself out. Every little bit helps.

I do a full body stretch every day. This is super important. Our bodies get so stiff during the day. If you don’t stretch this can lead to injuries when you try to do other things.

I love the sauna (and hot yoga too). If you can find and afford a gym that has a sauna, I would highly recommend. Sometimes I will just go and walk on the treadmill for 30-45 minutes and watch YouTube videos and then sit in the sauna. It’s the best.

Make sure you’re not deficient in anything. Take a complete multivitamin and get blood work done. I was severely deficient in vitamin D and it was making me depressed. Once I took a supplement, got more sun and got my levels up it really helped my overall health.

Cut out grains, sugar, junk food, fried foods, etc. and just eat real foods. Anything with a long ingredient list usually isn’t a good idea. It’ll take a minute to get used to it but once you start eating almost exclusively vegetables, fruits, proteins, and healthy fats you won’t miss it. I have such a big sweet tooth sometimes I’ll have to eat like five servings of berries with a few tablespoons of honey just to satisfy it, but that’s better than ice cream or candy any day.

Don’t deprive or starve yourself. I eat as healthy as I can manage 80-90% of the time. But every once and a while I will eat a huge plate of pasta, gelato, tiramisu, croissants, those types of foods that I love. It’s not helpful to punish yourself and you gotta live a little.

I got a smart scale in my bathroom, the one I got is from FitIndex. It has an app that connects to your phone and it syncs to other health apps. it shows you body fat, muscle mass, water weight, everything. Honestly super triggering at first because I felt called out lol but now I step on it once a week just to make sure I’m on the right track.

You do not need a gym membership to workout. YouTube is the best. I love Yoga with Adrienne, MadFit, Move with Nicole, Charlie Follows, Vicky Justiz, and there’s a bunch of others. Find what you like and try to stick with it as much as you can.

Rest is super important. Don’t run yourself ragged. If you’re sore don’t force yourself to workout.

MyFitnessPal is super helpful. If you have a history of disordered eating this might not be for you but it’s good to be conscious of what you’re eating. Figure out what you need to lose fat/maintain/gain muscle and then track to see where you’re at and adjust accordingly.

Eat more protein. Protein, healthy fats, and fiber keep you full. You will be starving if you eat only salads. Fruit smoothies with protein, protein oats, salmon, yogurt, eggs, etc.

Get cute workout gear. It makes it more fun for me to workout with my pink towels, my pink hydroflask, my lululemon yoga mat, I have a baby blue jumprope and pink dumbbells and pastel colored resistance bands for at home workouts. A lot of my workout clothes are from lululemon, alo yoga, free people, and aerie. I have some of those blender bottles in cute colors for preworkout, protein powder, super greens powder, electrolyte mixes, etc. Some of this stuff is pricy but I’d rather be investing in my health than paying medical bills down the road so it’s 100% worth it to me.

The only way to see permanent change is to make it a lifestyle. Unfortunately you can’t just go back to eating unhealthy foods once you hit a certain goal. Those models who say they live exclusively off of pizza and pasta and cheeseburgers are lying through their teeth. It’s perfectly healthy to have days off where you indulge or don’t exercise but most of the time you’ll have to find ways to eat healthy and exercise and prioritize your health.

[ballsballsbowls]

I had intended to only screencap one of these comments but respond to them all, more or less, until I remembered that the worst thing I can do on the Piss On The Poor website is decontextualize a conversation like this. That will cause problems for both you AND me.

So, if you had asked me even 6ish years ago if there was a market for a romance novel with these sorts of elements, I'd not have a good answer for you. I was still reading dead-tree books exclusively at the time (though they weren't all tradpub), and only what I could scrounge up secondhand, so I was reading a lot of decent-to-mid stuff that did not exactly have its finger on the pulse of romance publishing. It certainly wasn't like anything I was reading at the time, so you might have gotten a resounding "...maybe?"

But I'm willing to put myself out there as an object of ridicule and say this: I don't particularly like booktok or bookstagram and don't have a presence in either space, but they are not universally evil in terms of their effects on the industry over the past few years. In fact, one of the net goods they have had on the industry is there has been a lot of topics/subgenres crop up that would have been unthinkable 10 years ago.

But right now, in 2024? There is definitely a market for stories like this. I'm confident people would pay for them and enjoy them (I mean that level of whump has been crazy popular in fanfiction for decades, right? People ARE reading this). But do I have the slightest idea what the correct current subgenre is for this exact type of story? Offhand, no.

Especially because I will also loudly tell anyone that will listen that Dark Romance, the most reviled of all relatively new subgenres (and what people would probably recommend for you), is actually a bunch of people accidentally reinventing 90s alpha male clinch cover romance without reading 90s alpha male clinch cover romance. Like, you replace the 90s racism with a new racism and the 90s edgy sex scenes with edgy 2020s sex scenes and they're contemporary instead of historicals, down to the exact uses of sexual violence that you describe in your comments (it's one of several reasons Dark Romance doesn't do much for me either, honestly).

But I think there has to be someone out here already doing this, probably with less writing skill than you, and getting paid for it. I suspect just like when you were getting into selling fetish pics, the right answer is to find out which marketplace is the least likely to have an issue with what you are writing on a TOS basis and start from there.

That is, unfortunately, also something I'm not especially knowledgeable about and I've stuck to Amazon and Smashwords for buying stuff, pretty much. Maybe someone else would know would have some idea where to sell from, at least? I know it can get a little dicey once you start exchanging money for things like this, but surely there are more-tolerant and less-tolerant storefronts in terms of what is permitted.

[riant-draws]

You're so big brain yes yes yes moon and younger pebbles thoughts yes I'm eating up your art

First, thank you!! Sorry I took so long to respond ;-; been pretty tired lately and had to give this a lot of thought… perhaps too much… eheheh buckle up, anon, you’re in for an essay~ (also, I know you asked about Moon and younger Pebbles but this is like, 90% an analysis about Pebbles, oops-)

^ excuse me what happened here

also please in mind that these are just my headcanons (although some of them are very closely tied to canon, which is why I’ll be referencing some pearls) sooo uhh yeah! rambles under the cut!

To talk about Pebbles as a “kid” (in quotes because I don’t believe iterators have a childhood or developmental period that can effectively be compared to humans), I first have to talk about his construction—mostly because it was so unique.

When reading the pale green pearl (exterior) to Artificer, Pebbles mentions that his construction was very controversial among the council. And, when given to Moon, one of the white pearls reads:

“‘We, of the Five-hundred-and-ninety-second High Convocation of the True Anointed Citadel, do hereby demand, with full force of Law and Religious doctrine, an Immediate end to construction of the Apostate Superstructure Abomination. To place shadow upon the Divine Body of the True Anointed Citadel is outrageous blasphemy and cannot be tolerated, no matter the circumstances...’ Clearly this was ignored.”

As we can see in the game, Pebbles was built mostly on top of what’s now Shaded Citadel—which really pissed off the monks and religious leaders of the True Anointed Citadel, a very holy site. While talking to Artificer, he speaks casually and plainly, so you can assume that he didn’t mind their disdain for him. Granted, by the time of Arti’s campaign, all his citizens are long gone, so perhaps he just doesn’t care about their opinions anymore (if he ever did to begin with). But. When he was still brand new, he would have had to listen to so much hate directed at him, all for simply existing. While I did say earlier that I don’t think iterators have developmental stages like humans do, they definitely still mature and develop. Just because you’re created with an adult brain doesn’t mean that you’re automatically mature and experienced. Even Pebbles reflects on how he’s changed while reading the viridian pearl (garbage wastes):

“[…] much of my early work was encrypted before storage. Though my younger self has done a very poor job. […] now I can just see all of the holes in it. Created from a youthful and reticent mentality.”

So, clearly, iterators do learn and grow. But getting back on topic, I imagine that especially since Pebbles was very young when all that hate was piled on him, it would’ve been traumatic. Additionally, it’s implied (again, mainly in the pale green pearl) that he’s not exclusively hated. The pearl’s author clearly doesn’t want to piss Pebbles off, and they also state that one problematic House “[has] less than forty members on the Council, but still Tilt the spiritual Discourse with Our Iterator in a direction that most obviously Displeases him, and is hardly High Held by anyone in the Community either! We can not Risk this!”

(Of course, the pearl’s author is probably biased so who knows if they’re a reliable source of info or not, but there’s no way to verify that and hey it’s in the game after all so I’m just gonna roll with it.) This means that there are citizens (possibly even the majority) who actually like him, or at least want to remain in his good graces. With him. Y’know. Being responsible for their livelihoods and all. And you might think: great! Pebbles isn’t being universally hated! Well. The outpourings of both love and hate from his creators would create such a toxic environment and cause a lot of cognitive dissonance in him: he’s adored, even worshiped, a proud iterator revered as a godlike figure. But on the other hand, he’s despised, called horrible things like “Apostate Superstructure Abomination,” generally told he has no right to exist, etc etc. And this probably went on for years and years (or whatever the in-universe equivalent is). That would wear down anybody’s self-esteem. Which, in canon, you can see echoes of those thought patterns when the storyline takes place, who knows how long later. This stuff has affected him deeply.

All of this to say, I think his arrogance and god complex (that he displays in canon) are coping mechanisms—whether he’s aware of it or not. He tells himself that he’s “godlike in comparison” to everything that walks this forsaken world, that he’s so much better. In doing so, he runs from his mistakes and doesn’t process his emotions and traumas, generally making a bigger mess of himself. Because to admit the truth would be to admit that he’s broken, that he’s lonely, that he hates himself, I could go on but this isn’t getting any shorter aha…

Moooooving on, not to state the obvious, but it’s heavily implied throughout various pearls and bits of dialogue that Pebbles was one of the last iterators ever built. Given that he was constructed far closer (relatively speaking) to the time of public mass ascension and the fact that Moon was struggling to care for them, his creators would’ve likely been desperate (and perhaps a bit sloppy) while building him. As a result, the parts of him responsible for regulating his emotions and decision-making (his equivalent of a prefrontal cortex) are stunted, as that would’ve been one of the last things to develop. All of this just contributes to his, well, susceptibility to mental health issues/instability. Yaaaay.

side note: I also headcanon that iterator cans are more grown than built. When reading the light pink pearl (outskirts), Moon mentions that structures are infused with microbes that initiate healing cycles that gradually heal and waterproof broken structures. While she’s likely referring to structures on the ground, it would make sense that at least all parts of an iterator below the rain layer would be made in the same fashion. And if you take the bronze pearl (Metropolis), for instance, Moon tells the player that “It’s a blueprint for a type of large immobile purposed organism. This one seems to be specifically for the cities built on top of our structures. […] newer designs began to use a mass-produced cellular build called living blocks,” she’s basically saying that the buildings on top of Pebbles and other newer iterators are primarily organic. So why not grow large parts of their superstructures as well? We already know that iterators are partly biological, and also, growing them certainly would make a lot of the construction process at least semi-autonomous. And this way, the ancients wouldn’t have to risk their lives to go below the rain layer and work on his legs, underhang, etc.

Time for one of my favorite headcanons! And one that’s much more headcanon-y than the others lol, that is, Pebbles’ puppet being child-sized. Big head, big eyes, sorta stubby limbs, rounder features (except his antennae, those are triangles for some reason ffs lol idk what I’m doing) etc. First (and more boring) reason is that if Moore’s law applies in some form in-universe (not an all-important Law of Science or anything, just an observed trend meaning that as time goes on and developments improve, tech gets both smaller/more space-efficient and better), that means Pebbles shouldbe both one of the most powerful iterators and one of the smallest. But if the whole reason e was built was to provide a home to Moon’s citizens because she couldn’t care for them very well anymore (deep green pearl, Metropolis—this is Moon’s reading, but Pebbles’ is interesting, too), why would they make his can smaller? Simple: they didn’t. Instead, his can has more empty space inside it as components are smaller, and his puppet is tiny. Like. Waist-high on an ancient.

Another reason he was designed to look childlike was to try to make him look as appealing & likeable to the public as possible. With how controversial his construction was, his creators and whatever equivalent of a marketing team they employed would’ve hoped to sway the monks and everybody who strongly opposed his construction, like, “look! he’s just a little guy! look at those pink cheeks! you wouldn’t hate a ‘kid’, would you?!?” (spoiler alert: they would)

But as consequence, his image was very marketable soooooooo

yeah idk man pebbles plushie canon

On the more angsty side of things, unfortunately for Pebbles, many ancients and even other iterators (looking at you, Sig and Suns) didn’t take him very seriously since he permanently looks like a kid. This just added fuel to the fire, making him even more frustrated and feeling unheard. Just. All of it is such a bad situation.

Moon, of course, sees how he’s being treated by his citizens (who used to be hers, and she wasn’t fond of them anyway) and her own peers, she knows it’s so harmful to him, but what can she do? She may be the local group senior and his administrator, but he strikes me as having such an independent personality (yay more stuff caused by trauma) that he feels like he’s caught in her shadow, perhaps. “Looks to the Moon’s little brother.” So he probably isn’t… very receptive to her attempts to build him up, but man, she still tries. And it’s worth mentioning that he’s also a workaholic, so he always thinks that he has “better things to do” than, say, spending time with his sister.

I bet she’d still try to play games with Pebbles (and he’d probably indulge her on occasion), show him cool things, engage him in conversation, try to get him to talk about his interests, etc., all to bond with him and get to know him better. And he’s a stubborn little piece of work, sure, but he genuinely does care for her (it’s in canon and shows up in several places).

I could say more but this has gone on long enough, but I do wanna clarify that while I don’t support his decisions or actions, his motivations are understandable. my guy is a dude who was put into a horrible situation and screwed over from the beginning. sure, all the stuff he’s been through doesn’t excuse his garbage, sometimes immature behavior in canon, but it certainly explains it. (good lord, I could write an essay on how he’s changed by the time of Rivulet’s campaign alone) uh anyway he’s a fascinating character who I spend too much time thinking about thank you for reading if you made it this far lol

(also, gotta say that a lot of these apply to my fic, too, shameless plug and some of them have already been mentioned or alluded to in it—it’s a time-travel fix-it that starts waaay back in the past so if that’s your thing, hey XD)

[dailyanarchistposts]

An interview with Peter Gelderloos

– So, first of all I think this is what we’re generally going to be talking about: the topics of violence, non-violence, diversity of tactics, and all of these discussions that have been happening for quite some time in social movements. So maybe to start with it would be good to know, if you could tell us a bit, where does this debate come from? What’s the history? Why is it such a divisive issue, and a bit of history of this conversation that has been happening.

For starters, when we talk about non-violence, we’re talking about an exclusive practice that tries to only allow tactics or methods that they define as non-violent. And so the counter to that: not violence, but a diversity of tactics, and a diversity of methods, and beliefs and strategies, without an obsessive focus on often moralistic definitions of whether or not a specific action is violent.

There are as many histories to this debate as there are people who can tell it. In my experience, coming of age around the anti-globalisation movement and then the anti-war [ed. – in Iraq] movement, late ‘90s, early ‘00s, it was very much a question of a non-violent hegemony that for the most part social movements in the Global North were dominated by. Non-violent groups who often co-operated with the media and the police to prevent anyone from breaking with the action plans that they set out, or the limitations on tactics. So in that context it was very much an effort of some people to reconnect with histories of struggle that were more radical, that were more effective, and that used a very wide range of tactics. We had to break the strangle-hold on discourse, on strategy, and reconnect with these histories: which had largely been silenced.

But to be fair, there’s going to be a lot of other histories, other points that that debate comes out of. So some folks who survived certain struggles in the ‘60s and ‘70s: there were also moments of debate where maybe a specific movement was very locked into a more militaristic strategy. To me, to criticise that effectively, that’s a critique of militarism, and not of violence per se: which is of course a very vague category. But there were certainly other moments when people were getting into this debate over what tactics and strategies are appropriate from a completely different angle.

– And has it always been the case... well, not always, but in the current period has it always been the case that nation-states and other institutions, part of the establishment, have tried to use this rhetoric of labelling people violent or non-violent? Or is this a modern phenomenon?

It’s been going on for a very long time. I don’t think the word violence, the category, was used systematically to describe – or police – the actions of people in social movements until the 20th century; really especially with the popularity (particularly Gandhian) non-violence. Although certainly categories of violence were used to generate social alarm about supposed dangers to society, certainly going back to the 19th century and before.

Governments will particularly encourage people on the Right, on the right-wing, to attack other members of society who are portrayed as dangerous or disloyal. But then they’re very, very invested in policing anyone who is talking about some kind of liberatory, emancipatory, revolutionary change to society: anyone who’s talking about a world in which everyone can be free, a world in which we actually address these very deep oppressions that run all throughout our society. Anyone who’s coming at social change from that angle is of course held to these strict standards of non-violence by the media, by politicians, and by all institutions of the State.

– Although, something that we’ve seen a lot recently in some of our movements (in particular in the environmental movement, in the UK and other countries) is that activists themselves have taken this rhetoric of non-violence, and advocating it as the most effective strategy. What do you think are the main issues with this enforcement and promotion of non-violence in political movements?

Referring specifically to the newer formations in ecological movements, just the level of historical amnesia is a huge problem. And the level of disrespect to other ongoing movements. The environmental movement isn’t new, there are just some new players on the scene, that have been getting a lot of media attention. They not only have ignored a lot of historical movements that were very important, and that give us a lot of experiences that we can learn from: but they also ignore movements that are ongoing today, or that have been extremely recent: like the various ZADs in France, “zones to defend”, especially the most famous one at (pardon my French) Notre-Dame-des-Landes which stopped an airport. It stopped a project linked to one of the industries most involved in the destruction of the planet. They successfully stopped that airport project, and in the meantime all sorts of people create a completely different relationship with the land: one that’s based in knowing the land and respecting the land, becoming a part of the land rather than these sort of alienated machines that just move over and outside of nature...

That’s extremely important, that’s a major victory. And it was won using a diversity of tactics. All of the struggles against pipelines in North America, inspired by and in many cases centered on indigenous resistance... There would be a diversity of tactics there, and connected to a much longer history of struggle. Struggles in indigenous territory all over the world, shutting down mines, stopping hydro-electric dams, forestry plantations, and use a diversity of tactics...

And it’s just absolutely arrogant to come onto the scene and not connect with those other struggles, not learn from them, not engage in dialogue in them. Of course every new movement can offer something new, any new person or a group of people who starts participating in the struggle have something new to bring and they have something new to say that’s valid. But not if they’re not able to listen, not if they’re not at all interested in the people who are already out there, holding it down and who’ve been passing on experiences of how to fight back for generations.

Which is probably why exactly those movements are getting so much media attention: because they’re helping accomplish the break that capitalists need and that politicians need so that the very people and institutions who are responsible for destroying the planet can be the ones that sell us back the solutions. Which is basically green capitalism, government financing for huge infrastructure projects that will let those who already own everything profit a little bit more.

All of that’s impossible if you have a view of defending the Earth that’s sees people as a part of nature, that’s connected to indigenous struggles and worldviews, that’s connected to an anti-capitalist or anarchist analysis.

In general I think across the board, with any struggle, I think a good basic rule is: don’t trust people or organisations that don’t show solidarity with prisoners of the struggle. So there are people who are in prison right now because they’ve been breaking capitalist laws to defend a forest, to defend a swamp or a salt-marsh or a specific species, or to defend that they grow food in relation with the land, or to strike back against animal testing; or any of a number of things, there are people in prison right now for those reasons. I think the motivations of a supposedly environmentalist organisation that doesn’t even mention them, that just lets them rot in prison, are highly suspect.

– Why do you think such activist movements adopt these ideas? Are there institutions which play a role in promoting them, like NGOs, political parties, progressive media, and stuff like that? And how do they accomplish that?

That’s a problem with the Left in general. And any critique of the Left: it’s very messy. These organisations, these movements, they bring together people who are absolutely sincere – with whom it’s completely possible to be in solidarity – together with opportunists, with powerful institutions which are part of the problem, which are seeking to profit off of the problem. So it’s tricky to make these criticisms in a way that that don’t make potential allies stick closer to those who we need to fight against.

I think I need to answer that question on different levels at once. On the one hand, what’s happening to life on this planet, what’s happening to all of us, and all of the living beings that we live in relation with is extremely depressing. And when something is so depressing, when so much harm is being caused by such a huge, inexorable machine, the easiest thing is to either ignore it – just close your eyes, pull up the covers, and hope that it’ll go away – or rush to magic-wand solutions.

By a magic wand solution, I’m talking about something where we think we can just pull a lever, where we don’t have to give anything back, we don’t have to engage in any fundamental transformation, and it will just spit out a solution. So governments that have been ensuring that ecocide continues apace will suddenly be the ones who are protecting the environment; or the corporations that are making billions off of exploiting people, exploiting other living beings, exploiting the planet as a living system will suddenly start producing products that protect the planet.

That’s absurd; any reasonable person can see that that’s absurd. But all of us have a huge emotional interest in not seeing the absurdity of that because otherwise it means it’s on us. Otherwise it means we have to do the really hard work and face the very serious risks of changing this, of putting a stop to this ecocidal machine.

So people on the base; that’s on the one hand a sincere, honest mistake of why they’re supporting methods that aren’t going to help, and that might even make things worse. On the other hand, governments stay in power by mobilising social conflicts and by presenting themselves as the arbiters of social conflicts and social crises; so if anyone’s going to solve it the governments have to be at the table, they have to be able to define the process. So we get things that have really no hope of (even in terms of this very limited, technocratic focus on climate change) preventing the tipping points that we need to prevent, like the Paris Accords. The important thing is that people are spectators watching ‘their’ governments, ‘our’ governments supposedly, talk about solving those things.

Capitalism is facing a pretty huge crisis of accumulation, they need constant interventions, constant financing, constant investment opportunities. There needs to be a new industrial expansion and switch to so-called green energy, that would be certainly a great boon to capitalism. So they’re very interested in financing an environmental movement that is domesticated, that plays ball, and that aids in this more technocratic reductionist approach. Which is mostly only looking at atmospheric carbon rather than looking at the earth as an interconnected web of relationships of which we are a part; in which every single thing affects every other thing. So you can’t look at atmospheric carbon without looking at sea otter populations, without looking at hunting practices, without looking at how we grow our food, etc. etc. etc.

And you also have NGOs in there whose directors make huge fricking salaries and who are involved in genocide, like the WWF which is involved in genocidal practices in Africa; because they’re still locked into this colonial mentality where nature and humans are mutually exclusive. So they’re helping fund paramilitaries that are attacking indigenous people and kicking indigenous people off their land.

The problem’s not humans: humans have been around for a really long time. Planetary-scale ecological disaster is relatively recent problem; it’s caused by capitalism, it’s caused by colonialism. And then the regional- or continental-scale problems that you saw before that; they didn’t happen everywhere. There are plenty of human societies that still exist today that know how to exist as a healthy part of their ecosystem.

Whether we want to be or not, we are a part of the ecosystem always. We can continue to rationalise nature, to turn it into a factory and control outputs, inputs, and so forth; preserve a few spots as nature reserves that we can charge tourists money to access. Or we can actually realise that we’re a part of the earth, and we’re connected to all other living things; and to get rid of capitalism, to get rid of all the social machinery that alienates us and that prevents us from acting that way.

– Yeah, absolutely. And also in terms of how these ideas spread and what role do they play in the machinations of the State, there’s this idea of counter-insurgency that the states use in order to undermine social movements. And I wanted to know a bit, if you could talk about what that is, and how it’s related to non-violence; and how do the governments use it to accomplish their objectives?

In the science of the State, they’re studying things for social control: for maintaining and increasing their power. In the past, in the more modern period – using this Hobbsian metaphor of society as a body, with the State as its brain – peace was thought to be the natural order of society. (With the note of course that the only society they’re interested in is a society ruled by a State. So they’re ignoring the possibility that other kinds of societies.) So they were inclined by their prejudices to believe that peace was the natural state of the statist society, and so using the biologicism that was common during modernity they would look at disorder as an infection, a sickness that was caused by some agent coming from the outside.

So frequently in the late 19th and early 20th century, these police agencies that were cooperating across Europe and North America, sharing information (at that moment in particular about anarchist agitators): they frequently used the metaphor – which one gets the impression they weren’t even aware was a metaphor – of these anarchist immigrants as a pestilence, as this external sickness that needed to be expunged from the social body in order to make the social body healthy. That police philosophy and that science of social control proved again and again to be ineffective. And so finally (with the British actually taking the lead in this, primarily with their experience against the independence movements and anti-colonial movements in Kenya, but immediately connecting this to experiences and the science of social control in Ireland, in India, elsewhere; and immediately connecting other colonial/neo-colonial and settler states like France and the US), they realised that in fact it’s much more helpful and more accurate to realise that the natural condition of society under the State is constant warfare. Which interestingly enough is very similar to the idea of social war developed by the anti-authoritarian feminist André Leó, who was a veteran of the Paris Commune, a century earlier; and since then really elaborated by insurrectionary anarchists and others, this idea of social war.

So basically that’s the reality: the State is warfare against all of us constantly. States actually have to realise that their existence hinges on warfare; against their own populations. Because counter-insurgency methodology pretty much immediately was adapted by States to use against their own privileged citizen populations (privileged citizen in the sense of it was initially developed in Kenya; it as quickly brought to Brixton, Bristol, Los Angeles and Detroit). So it was never really a marginal reality for the colonies; it’s something that in a way unites how States view any of their subjects, colonial or otherwise. So they had to realise that the conflict was permanent, and that they couldn’t ever... even though they continued to use the troupe of outside agitators because it’s a good way to delegitimise people, they couldn’t actually think like that. They had to realise that they’re in constant conflict with their society, and what they had to do was manage the conflict.

So that means, for example, intelligence agencies and police agencies: sometimes they’ll let a certain amount of stuff fly. They might be doing intelligence gathering and they’ll be aware of illegal activities and decide not to arrest anyone because if you arrest people, then you’re shocking the movement; you’re giving away information on what you know. And then the movement has the opportunity to improve their security practices. Whereas if you just keep spying on them and watching, and do social mapping, then you have a better chance of knowing everything that’s going on, and your opponent – your enemy, the social movements – will hopefully (for the State) continue to be lax about their security practices.

So that’s just one practical difference that counter-insurgency strategy brings about. Basically the broad goal of counter-insurgency strategy is that conflict stays at the least level; which is non-violence. Frank Kitson, this British military figure theorised three different levels of social conflict, with the lowest being preparation, being non-violence; and the highest being full-blown insurgency. So basically the State wants to avoid the conflict getting to full-blown insurgency, which is basically the point at which all of us – all the subjects of the State – realise that we are are war, and fight back. The State would prefer for this to be a one-sided war.

And so non-violence is useful to the State within counter-insurgency methodology because it disciplines people to formulate their struggle as demands, in dialogue with the State. Which of course ensures that the State will always have a role in that: and can prevent being negated in the process of the struggle.

– This is a topic that is a bit difficult to research, because you can find out a lot of information about it online, even you can buy some of the field manuals from the US Army (you can find the PDF online, I think it’s the 3–24, something like that), or you can even buy the one that you see in NATO and all of that kind of shit. But that’s always written from their perspective. And it’s really useful to read about it, to read them to learn how they think. But also it’s difficult to extrapolate what they are actually trying to do. So what are good resources or ways that people can better understand how the State approaches these tactics; what strategies they use?

There’s a really good history of policing in the United States (although some references are made to the UK) by Kristian Williams; Our Enemies in Blue. And there are a number of... I think a lot more anarchists are starting to deploy this thinking in our analysis of ongoing social conflicts. Even the concept of recuperation which figures very heavily in [Alfredo M.] Bonanno, or in Ai Ferri Corti (At Daggers Drawn); that’s – in different language – a very direct reference to how the State works, including with methodologies of counter-insurgency. That is without a doubt useful.

There have been some essays that have been written that have been very good, analysing the anti-racist/anti-police rebellion that began (or began again) after George Floyd’s murder in the US this past summer; and which of course spread to many other places, the UK included. At the moment I can’t remember the title of the main article I’m thinking about...

– Is it one of the ones published by Ill Will Editions, maybe?

Yeah, they definitely incorporate that thinking; that would be available. And I’ll try to think of others and type them in as we go. Also if anyone out there has read anything good? That’s definitely a recent case in which people were analysing counter-insurgency strategies. Oh crap, I wrote something too, looking at how the outside agitator troupe was used to delegitimise the resistance: ‘The Other White Vigilante’. So please, anyone who’s listening, feel free to share articles or recommendations. But that lens have been very prevalent in analysing. Especially from the Left: because interestingly enough, even though the right-wing and the cops have killed several dozen people in the course of that uprising, it seems that it’s actually been the institutional Left and the centre-left that have been more effective in pacifying those rebellions.

– That’s a really interesting point. Why do you think that’s the case?

I think that’s frequently the case. The right-wing needs to make recourse to a far greater level of violence in order to just completely stamp out movements and social struggles; which of course they’ve done in the past, famously. But that level of violence and that level of murder and repression also tends to have disruptive effects on capitalism. Whereas the institutional Left is better positioned to divide and pacify the movement; at least for a while. We saw how quickly city council members and what-not went from advocating abolition to defunding the police in a month... With the institutional Left being closer to the movement (and sometimes part of the movement), they have better intelligence, they can identify different, divide the movement into sectors, identify radicals and isolate them through discourses of non-violence. Through discourses of responsible reform.

And when the movement is divided like that, and the radicals are isolated, then police repression also becomes more effective. Because the police are not very intelligent, and often the way that they direct their violence radicalises more people, encourages more people to fight back, destabilises things even more.

– Yeah, I think that’s something that is very important for people involved in social movements to be aware of. Because it’s quite disheartening for a lot of people; and sometimes hard to believe, that movements, organisations and people that you may see as your ally: they can play this role in the counter-insurgency strategy of the State. I think it’s something people should be aware of for sure. So, we’ve talked a bit about how non-violent proponents hide the history of social movements in order to make their points. But something that I think you talk about in your books is that diversity of tactics is not only something that has always been present but also that tends to be actually effective, and actually deliver better results than keeping to just non-violence, whatever that means. Why do you think it’s the case? Why do you think allowing for different strategies to exist together; why’s that more effective for social movements?

For a lot of different reasons. In situations of conflict in the streets it’s just a lot more difficult for a centralized, unified enemy – like the State, like police forces – to go up against a very complex, heterogeneous (and sometimes even chaotic) opponent; which in one place is using peaceful tactics like a candle-light vigil or a peaceful march, or shaming officers; and in another place it has a shield-line and is trying to push past the police: and in another place in engaging in running street-battles, vandalizing, looting, attacking and disappearing. That’s historically (and there’s recent examples of that as well, and old examples of that) always been much more difficult for States to go up against.

In terms of the ecosystem of a social movement, the more breadth and diversity and difference there is, the healthier that social movement is. The healthier debate there is. The more different practices you can try out at once; it can work as a laboratory. It can tackle multiple issues of the problem at the same time.

Centralised decision-making is actually very connected to unity; the unity of tactics, and the unity of strategies that the Left is usually referring to. That unity; it has to pass through some kind of centralised point of decision-making and legitimacy. And centralised decision-making is never more effective, it’s never faster: the only advantage that it has is it allows authoritarian control of a larger body, by creating a choke-point where legitimacy can be doled out.

So a diversity of tactics and methods is more effective for all those reasons and more.

– How can we prevent these institutions who spread these ideas of non-violence, who impose the ideas of non-violence; how can we keep the diversity of tactics alive and healthy in our movements? How can we promote it? What kind of strategies have you seen? What have you tried? What kind of ideas can you give us to do it ourselves?

One thing that I think is really important and I think is not thought about enough (at least in the English-speaking world), is this idea of historical memory. Which is just translating from Catalan; it’s also common in Spanish and Italian. Which isn’t this idea of history as something that lives in books but something that exists in groups, in collective sharing of experience. So in this view history is something that we have to keep alive, it’s not something to just have in archives, and in a movement that means constantly reconnecting with the past, with experiences of struggle, reconnecting with the people who survived those struggles who are still alive today, sharing stories from even older struggles. And keeping them alive, keeping them in the streets; having events about these histories of struggle and how they directly connect to the present in our social centres, in our events and so on and so forth.

I’ve noticed that non-violence – exclusive non-violence – is strongly connected to historical amnesia. It’s strongly connected to movements that forget their past. I think it’s good to check in every now and then – how many people in a movement have a good strategic memory of things that happened five and ten years ago? Whether it’s cases of repression, or a big protest movement and riot, or a particularly effective resistance, and just having conversations with folks who maybe you knew them five or ten years ago and checking in with them if they know about these arrests, if they know about those riots, if they know about such and such campaign. And if a significant number of people don’t even have a strategic memory of things that happened five and ten years ago... and by strategic memory, I mean they don’t have to be able to write a fricking doctoral thesis on it, but at least they should be able to know enough about the meaning of that event that they can use it as a strategic reference. Like, oh when that happened, it really really helped that people started having potlucks among all the friends and family members of all the people who got arrested, because it let us see each other, we could support each other emotionally, and so on and so forth.

That’s what I mean by strategic memory; at least enough details that we’ve learned something from it. If a significant number of people in a movement don’t have a strategic memory of things just five and ten years ago, then we’re in trouble. So that’s one thing, this continuity of history. I don’t know how things are in the place where everyone lives right now, but if you’re in a moment of social peace, if you’re in a moment when the State is successfully hiding, covering up the main conflicts: mostly these tactics and these strategies they live on in movements, but if there’s not a strong movement at the moment then we can do events popularising movements that inspire us. You can be inspired by the ZAD and block the airport. You can do a video-call with people who participated in the struggle at Standing Rock, or trying to stop oil pipelines and so forth. So we have to actively keep memory alive, we have to actively build relationships and build connections, they don’t just pop up by themselves. And I find that when we do that, then people are most inclined to be really aware of the tactics and methods that have been used to win the few victories that we’ve won, to protect the few things that we still have that we can call our own; whether they’re traditional governance, whether they’re labour rights, or whether they’re wetlands or forests that haven’t been destroyed.

– Yeah, I think that’s definitely very, very important. Personally, learning about the history of our struggle from the places I was born: that was completely hidden from me when I was growing up. It was extremely important in my radicalisation, and I think that’s the case with many, many other people. I think that’s something very important to keep alive. Talking about the victories we’ve had, something that you talk about in The Failure of Non-Violence is that sometimes the criteria that non-violent campaigners often use to determine what a victory is, and to claim a victory, doesn’t really represent a meaningful victory for what we want. And instead you talk about a different criteria that we can use to evaluate the victories that we do have. So if you could talk a bit about that, that’d be great.

Personally, the main example for me is that as I was growing up and as I was starting to become active in social movements, referring to the Civil Rights movement in the US (the ‘50s and ‘60s, the movement that got rid of legal segregation by race in the US): basically all the white people that I spoke with considered the movement a victory. And all the black comrades I spoke with did not consider the movement a victory; they considered it either a failure, or something that was still going. That’s a very distinctive difference.

If a victory can win a change that makes survival a little bit easier for a group of people, or if a movement can win a symbolic change which effects how a group of people is viewed by the rest of society, or how they view themselves: that’s important. That’s not something to ignore. But when a problem is so deep-rooted that it runs through every aspect of society – like capitalism, like white-supremacy, like the exploitation and the destruction of the environment – it’s just completely insincere to claim a major victory when the only thing that’s been won is at best a step towards a meaningful victory. And it’s obviously very much in the interests of power (and this is certainly in line with counter-insurgency thinking) to spread the narrative that a movement won, if that movement had potential.

So any movement that questions environmental destruction has the potential for being radical, because – like you pointed out in the introduction – anyone who’s willing to open their eyes, they’re going to start staring capitalism right in the face. Because capitalism is inherently ecocidal. Anyone who’s concerned about racism and white-supremacy; that’s potentially very radical, because they have the potential to see how that’s an organising principle across society, how it’s connected to colonisation (which is how Western society became global in the first place). It’s connected to the birth of capitalism. So it would require us to start criticising all of these other aspects of our society.

It’s very much in the interests of the State for people to think that a struggle against racism was successful. Because then people can think “oh good, there’s no more racism; or there’s only a few backwards people who are still racist today.” Or in the case of a decolonisation movement, it’s very useful for the State to get people to think that the independence movement in India was a complete success; because then we’re not going to be looking at neo-colonialism. We’re not going to be looking at how that power can continue in some other form.

And then a different example (also extremely useful): it’s very, very helpful for people to think that non-violence in the anti-war movement was the decisive factor in ending the war against Vietnam. Which is of course historically a total manipulation: that’s not the case at all. But non-violence advocates believed their own lies; which the State and the capitalist media certainly helped them to promote, such that in 2003, when the US and the UK and other countries were getting ready to invade Iraq again, there were all these people who thought that a peaceful protest movement would actually be able to prevent the invasion. So after the largest protests in human history, in March of 2003 – which were in most countries exclusively or almost exclusively non-violent – all of the non-violent campaigners then predicted that it would be impossible for those states to invade Iraq, because they had this movement that was even larger than the peace movement over Vietnam. And of course that was delusional; that did not end up being how that played down.

So that’s a very direct example of how the State – by helping to spread a non-violent version of history – was able to protect itself from real, forceful and dangerous resistance.

– So I don’t want to take much more time, I want to give the opportunity to people to ask questions and make contributions. So if people want to ask questions on the chat, or even if they want to un-mute themselves, just let me know on the chat. Or if they want to make contributions, talk about useful memories of resistance that they want to share with us, experience with non-violence campaigners and how that’s affected them and stuff like that: just really anything, feel free to do so. So we have a couple of questions in the chat: one of them is, do you have any advice on convincing groups or individuals to reject exclusive non-violence? So this would be a typical case of, you have a friend, or you are in some assembly or something and people are really stuck on the non-violent thing... How would you go about trying to move that conversation into a more useful space?

First I want to say sorry for being long-winded: and for the questions I’ll try to be more concise and make room for other people. And also, to repeat, by all means don’t feel obliged to ask a question: if you’d like to share your own experience or something, it doesn’t have to be in that frame.

For the first question, on convincing individuals to reject an exclusive non-violence: I would say that it’s very important to encourage people to understand the types of movements that are already happening. Particularly indigenous resistance (which is crucial to challenging colonialism, to challenging capitalism, and also in terms of protecting biodiversity around the world); so it’s just absolutely absurd to try to conceptualise an environmental movement that doesn’t include the present of indigenous resistance.

– If people want some example of indigenous resistance that they can draw from, we did do a live-stream a little bit ago about the Mapuche struggle for autonomy. We’ve got someone from the Mapuche Solidarity Network, or Chile Solidarity Network, to talk about their history and their struggle and their fight. I think they are a really great example that we can draw upon. So if you wanted to learn a bit more about that, that could be a place to start.

If you can convince people to recognise indigenous and anti-colonial struggles connecting with those other struggles that are going on, rather than just invisibilising them, really the next step will be to say “well, it’s great over there, but it’s inappropriate or ineffective over in...” insert wealthy, white-majority country wherever they happen to be living. And so then you just need to the critique of not-in-my-back-yard politics (or ‘nimby’ politics); which has long been pointed out to be a racist politics, a way of dividing globally... How convenient: the people in these poorer countries have to face all the risks, whereas we have to pour fake blood on ourselves on the steps of Parliament. So it’s just an acceptable division of risk.

So that can be useful to convince people. If people have based their idea on these statistical studies that have gone around that supposedly prove that non-violence is more effective, you just need to point out that those studies – aside from being formulated by and promoted by people who worked for the US government, for the State Department and the Defence Department, and aside from getting rewarded very richly by current power structures – it doesn’t uphold the most basic standards for a statistical comparison. Because they don’t even use the same standards for deciding which examples get included in Group A and which examples get included in Group B. So it’s basically a trash study which went international because it’s saying what corporate media want people to hear. And I break that study down in more detail in The Failure of Non-Violence and also in an article that I got published recently... ‘Debunking the Myths Around Nonviolent Resistance’.

– So we have another question: what are your thoughts on non-human resistance and on anti-speciesism being a fundamental aspect to consider in order to achieve a total liberation? Have your views on it changed after your ‘Veganism: Why Not’ essay was published?

I think non-human resistance is really important: honestly, I think anti-speciesism tends to be a liberal philosophical framework. It seems to be just a sort of extension of the basic concept of the liberal framework. And I also completely disagree with this arbitrary taxonomy or distinction between animals and other forms of life: I don’t think that’s either respectful or realistic, or very helpful.

I think we absolutely need to understand ourselves and constitute ourselves as respectful parts of our ecosystems; not any better or more important than any other form of life, not something that exists on top of the ecosystem. We shouldn’t understand other forms of life as things that exist for our exploitation. And I certainly don’t think that any living thing should live in a cage. But I also think that we need to be very guarded about consumer politics, or politics that have that potential for just diverting into ethical consumerism: which is a trap, which is encouraged. I mean, the United Nations is encouraging a vegan dietary politics, there’s plenty of progressive cities, like Barcelona, the city government is encouraging that kind of ethical consumer politics... The strategies that are most effective in terms of humans relating with their environment, for example there’s just tons of struggles for traditional hunting and fishing rights within indigenous movements across the Americas: a culture that’s based on supermarkets really has no grounds for criticising that deeper and much more intelligent way of relating with other living beings.

Here in Catalunya there’s actually movements connected to a very long history of commoning, of preserving the commons and also sustaining a more sustainable and respectful role for humans within their environment, that are actually coming from pastoralists, from shepherds who in the region of the Pyrenees. You move the whole flock from the highlands to the lowlands or vice versa; that actually pits them against the individualised property regime that was brought in by capitalism.

– Someone else on the chat made a really good point that another way to undo the narrative of non-violence is to challenge what we define as violence. Violence can be seen as poverty, as oppression, not just physical violence or property damage, and I think that’s a really, really good point. And Peter, you have done it in other places as well, and I think it’s one of the biggest hypocrisies: I’ve seen a lot of non-violent movements, what they consider non-violence, why they consider violence, what they don’t consider violence... So we have another question as well: how do those using diversity of tactics find ways to collaborate with ethical pacifists? For example, people who are non-violent for religious reasons rather than pragmatic reasons. Is there anyone in the chat who wants to do any contribution, like we were saying: share a bit of their experiences with struggles, how they’ve tackled them, any of that? If you’ve tried to educate anyone about these topics or anything like that; if you’ve had any issues. This would be a great time. I know people are always a bit shy to un-mute themselves and speak... but don’t really worry about it! Oh, someone is just saying they just received a very angry message in a group for sharing this event on Twitter; which is very relateable, for sure...

I appreciate the question. The first time I went to jail, my cell-mate for two weeks was this Franciscan monk, Jerry Zawada, who dedicated his life to going onto military bases and getting arrested again and again to draw attention to US militarism, to death-squads and nuclear weapons; and he was a total pacifist, and this really beautiful human being. I think it’s really important to make connections with folks like that and to talk sincerely about a diversity of tactics in which there really is room for all kinds of people, all kinds of sensibilities. In which we place great value on peaceful tactics that are around communication, or mediation, or conflict-resolution, art, healing, all these other things. There’s a place for everything: or almost everything, not snitching... can’t have that of course.

Sometimes part of the problem is that the context that we’re in, the hegemony of non-violence is often enforced as the rule; like sharing a tweet about a discussion – so far I don’t think anyone there is hitting anyone else or anything like that, so I think this discussion so far has been pretty peaceful.... But just the fact that we’re questioning non-violence, they’re getting angry about it.

Arguing in favour of the value of combative tactics and destructive tactics and illegal tactics: we really have to fight sometimes to get people to recognise the value of these tactics that have been so delegitamised and so demonised. But we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that a diversity of tactics is not effective if it’s a ladder of tactics. From the less important tactics to the more important tactics. Because that’s just inviting certain social hierarchies to creep into our movements, and make it hard to make effective or strategic analysis of what we do.

We really do need to value different forms of being in the movement, and being in the struggle, that includes many peaceful activities that are vital to any healthy movement.

Write to the Kill the Bill Prisoners

Last updated: 28th August 2022

Ryan Roberts A5155EM HMP Swaleside, Brabazon Rd, Eastchurch, Isle of Sheppey ME12 4AX 14 years

Mariella Gedge-Rogers A8811ET HMP Eastwood Park, Falfield, Wotton-Under-Edge, GL12 8DB 5 years 5 months

Matthew O’Neill A1596CT HMP Guys Marsh, Shaftesbury, Dorset, SP7 0AH 5 years

Ben Rankin A1261AY HMP Portland, 104 the Grove, Easton, Portland, Dorset, DT5 1DL 5 years

Ryan Dwyer A4276AT HMP Portland, 104 the Grove, Easton, Portland, Dorset, DT5 1DL 4 years 6 months

Brandon Lloyd A0806EE HMP Portland, 104 the Grove, Easton, Portland, Dorset, DT5 1DL 3 years 11 months

Callum Middleton A1817ET HMP Portland, 104 the Grove, Easton, Portland, Dorset, DT5 1DL 3 years 9 months

Kane Adamson A1103ER HMP Guys Marsh, Shaftesbury, Dorset, SP7 OAH 3 years 6 months

Shaun Davies A4075ER HMP Portland, 104 the Grove, Easton, Portland, Dorset, DT5 1DL 3 years 6 months

Kain Simmonds A9381EQ HMP Portland, 104 the Grove, Easton, Portland, Dorset, DT5 1DL 3 years 3 months

Joseph Foster A1421CD HMP Bristol, Horfield, 19 Cambridge Road, Bristol. BS7 8PS 3 years 3 months

William Houlton A1824ET HMP Portland, 104 the Grove, Easton, Portland, Dorset, DT5 1DL 3 years

Charly May Pitman A8737EV HMP Eastwood Park, Falfield, Wotton-Under-Edge, GL12 8DB 3 years

Rose Lazarus A1411EW HMP Eastwood Park, Falfield, Wotton-Under-Edge, GL12 8DB 14 months

Callum Davies A4634EV HMP Bristol, Horfield, 19 Cambridge Road, Bristol. BS7 8PS 2.5 years

[1] “The group’s first actions were reported on July 15, when windows were smashed at a research organisation named the “Cambridge Arctic Shelf Programme (CASP)”. Holding charitable status, CASP maps oil and gas reserves in mineral-rich areas of the earth’s crust. Its donors, most of whom happen to be large fossil fuel companies, receive regular confidential reports on their findings, with information only released to the public after a “suitable delay”. In the three weeks following the action, activists also targeted the headquarters of industrial technology firm Aviva, which provides automation software for coal-fired power stations, refineries, and other facilities, the BP Institute, and the chemistry department of the University of Cambridge, a prestigious research centre holding contracts with BP, Shell, and Schlumberger” (This Is Not A Drill: activists target fossil fuels research facilities in Cambridge, August 10 2022, freedomnews.org.uk).

[2] See solidarity.international

[3] See autonomynews.org/kill-the-bill-demonstration-bristol

[rainbowrocketquotes]

random little post to spruce up the posting on here because I live and die by the queue function and by god have I been forgetting to add to it

presenting: what music I think the villains listen to

//note : this is based mostly off of people I associate with the villains because everyone I hang out with is a music freak. if you think an 50 hour playlist is bad, wait until you get a hold of my best friend's 600 hour one

Giovanni

No way in hell this man isn't a swing fan. His playlist is exclusively 50's—70's and there is no coherent genre. If you listen to music with him you could be vibing to Marvin Gaye and then Elvis could come on.

Maxie

Pry Roar and The Front Bottoms from his cold, dead hands. Just BIG Folk Punk vibes from him. Also, a good amount of Alt-Rock. His guilty pleasure, though? Country music. He's probably the one that listens to the most music, just because he feels like the kind of guy that can't work without background noise.

Archie

Very well rounded, says he doesn't have a preference, but has a slight one for rock music. Specifically he enjoys 80s & 90s metal. He feels like the kind of guy to be really into Megadeth. Maybe sprinkle some Tech N9ne in there for flavor.

Cyrus

Realistically he's definitely a full Alternative fan. I think he's super into Weirdcore (See: Lemon Demon, Will Wood) but would never admit it. He also listens to Emo Rap and Russian Rap on occasion but doesn't really consider them favourites. He pretends he doesn't like music, though, so he only really gets to listen to what other people force him to.

Ghetsis

Screamo, next question—

Kidding, but he really does like screamo, metal, and hard rock. He'll pretend he only likes vague classical music to seem more mysterious and then you look at his history and it's all Slaughter to Prevail and Korn.

Colress

I like to think he doesn't really listen to music in his free time. He usually listens to whatever is on, which is usually Ghetsis's screamo. He keeps him from ruining speakers. He does enjoy Green Day, though, and some Olivia Rodrigo.

Lysandre

He really likes single instrument covers, especially violin. Absolute Lindsey Stirling fanboy. Also enjoys Lana Del Rey and MARINA a lot. Those kinds of pop artists, you know?

Guzma

He's definitely the most well-rounded with his tastes, mostly because he listens to a lot of it. He listens to a lot of pre-2010s hip-hop & rnb. He loves dance music and electronica as well, and generally just a lot of old school stuff. Anything from 2pac to Gewn Stefani, baby. Mood/genre-switched covers are also a thing, and just covers in general. Catch him in his room at 2am listening to egg on repeat (then back away awkwardly and shut the door because he gets too into it and starts crying).

Lusamine

Listens to a lot of what Lysandre does. Lorde, Billie Eilish, anything hard pop that can pass as alternative. Nobody will ever trust her with the aux/bluetooth/radio/etc. because she always plays music nobody likes. She once got into a fight with Cyrus on what is and isn't alternative music and he didn't speak to her for a month after.

Bonuses, villains I don't include on the blog

Rose

Classical music. Bach & Chopin always playing from his office. More for ominous ambiance than anything, but he does genuinely enjoy it.

Oleana

She doesn't really listen to music, but she likes rap. She won't go out of her way to listen to anything, though.

Volo

Echoey latin chants with ambient noises in the background /hj. If he was in the modern day, I think he'd like NF and Panic! At the Disco.

[drdt-headcanons]

MUSIC RELATED HCs FOR THE CAST!!

Xander - when he sings, he sounds like Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day faking a British accent on American Idiot

Veronika - she loves metal, but her favorite subgenre is death metal. she’s also very well versed in the lore of Mayhem

Ace - if you ask him what he’s listening to he will name something hardcore, but he’s actually listening to a very pop-centric playlist comprised of exclusively female artists

Hu - besides listening to a lot of music with the zither, she also enjoys soft jazz and very old classical tunes because she thinks they’re relaxing. she can also play the piano.

Eden - she’s a huge swiftie. she’s not very open or direct about it, but she secretly follows a lot of Taylor Swift related pages and blogs, and is constantly listening to her music

Arturo - I think he definitely has a thing for women like Doja Cat and Nikki Minaj. you’d probably catch him simping in the comments of their instagram posts

Min - only listens to classical music because it’s proven to make you the most intellectually stimulated out of any genre. she also has a lot of a superiority complex regarding this.

J - she is a huge rock & metal fan, and really likes to listen to ‘cool’ stuff. her favorite bands are Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park. she’s also tried to learn guitar and although she hasn’t stuck with it, she owns an electric guitar and can play simple songs.

Levi - listens to prime dad rock. a lot of this is early rock and roll, but surprisingly a lot of this also contains 90s alt and Weezer.

Rose - even if she’s not fixated on a task, she’s always looping one of those 2hr study lofi videos on YouTube, just for background noise. she just finds it very soothing and it helps her escape from reality.

Nico - they don’t listen to music much, but when they do, it’s at the lowest setting. They started to get into music a bit more after meeting Hu, and they really like soft instruments pieces

Charles - he genuinely does not listen to music and knows almost nothing about it. he doesn’t like sharing this so if anyone ever asks him about his music taste, he always says his favorite artist is Frank Sinatra to try and impress them

David - he actually likes jazz a lot and is not a bad singer at all. he doesn’t like to sing, but sometimes he will break out into song in the shower, wether it be jazz or a darker song. he also knows how to play piano.

Teruko - knows nothing about music, but she tries to blend in by listening to trending artists and trending audios online, regardless if she likes the song or not

Arei - she loves to do karaoke, but she’s completely delusional about being good. she’s absolutely terrible, but it’s fun for her to sing and it’s fun for her audience to watch her try and rock a Lady Gaga song

Whit - his entire taste is white trash 2000s pop music, and he will defend his taste with his life. he’s also watched Britney Spears’s music video for ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’ a zillion times on YouTube and liked it on 64752567 alt accounts

:)

[sapphire-weapon]

I think people tend to ignore Leon fucking up (like with Shen May), because they have the mindset of "oh no, that's my favourite character! So he can't do anything wrong or have any flaws!" It's such a limiting way to think. I mean, I really like Leon too, but I'll openly say that he often gives me the fucking ick, lmao. The Shen May scene had me recoiling. Man's a stereotype of "that creepy guy at the bar" and he exudes that a LOT. I'm glad he was turned down. Even the characters we love need to be humbled when they're full of shit, because it's realistic and interesting. It's okay to think outside of the caveman "he good! no bad!"

Also, tacking on, because despite it being a different topic, I may as well stick to a singular ask. Jilleon is such a weird concept to me, lmao. I think for the most part it's treated pretty lightheartedly, but I'm confused because I couldn't really identify where it came from, other than that they're both attractive. I love Jill, but I don't see her reciprocating any attraction. Like, remotely. They get along fine, but I can't even see a close friendship. Maybe I'm biased though, cause I love her and as much as I enjoy Leon, dear god above he doesn't need another love interest. Also Capcom please just grow your balls and properly address Valenfield. We all know they're either a couple or have been pining for several decades.

I'm not gonna lie, if OG Leon asked me out, I'd have told him I had a boyfriend, too. Or maybe just even told him I wasn't interested in men all together. His approach is so... old-fashioned in a bad way. It's evidence that his development was arrested in 1998; he hasn't matured past that point, so he thinks that it's still a thing to just go up to a cute girl and ask for her number right after getting her name.

So like. I'm not surprised that it's pretty much exclusively early 20s and younger ppl who don't think he's trying to ask her on an actual date, because no one does that shit anymore. That was already out of fashion by the time I was in high school, even, and I entered high school in 2003.

But for any tiny childrens who are reading this: yes this is literally how relationships would start in the 80s and 90s. Out of nowhere and on a whim between complete strangers and just hoping it works.

Re: jilleon

Prior to Death Island, I would have agreed with you. 100% I didn't understand what the basis for it was, and I didn't think she'd be interested in him at all.

Then I watched Death Island. And I'm 85% sure that they've already slept together LMAO Chris dropped the ball between RE5 and DI, and Leon just kind of slid in there and took his shot and actually seems to have made it???

If I'm not mistaken, Jill is the only person other than Remake Ashley in the entire series who actually laughs at Leon's jokes. And she actually gets him to laugh out loud in return -- which is almost unheard of for him.

They just seem very comfortable around each other in general. Jill seems more at ease in his presence than she's been in Chris's since... Lost in Nightmares? And Leon is definitely more comfortable being with her than he is being with Ada or Claire. Like, Jill seems as comfy as a presence for Leon as Chris and Ashley are.

I just really like their dynamic in general. I don't think of them as romantic, but I see them as very, very good friends who just fuck every once in a while.

Like, Chris is still Leon's best friend, but their relationship is a lot more intense. But Jill is the person that Leon first thinks to call when he needs to nerd out about movies or to just bullshit in general. And then every so often, a text message conversation happens like:

"Gonna be in DC for a weekend for BSAA shit. Pick me up from the airport?"

"Sure. What hotel?"

"Staying with a friend actually idk if you know him. Leon Kennedy? In the DSO. Brown hair, blue eyes, giant cock?"

"Never heard of him. Sounds like he's in for a fun weekend though."