#probably even some unwinnable ones as well

[miraculoustakes]

marinette could survive s saw trap

.

[thewertsearch]

GC: 1T F1NDS W4YS TO 4NN1H1L4T3 TH3 P4THS WH1CH DO NOT CONTR1BUT3 CONSTRUCT1V3LY TO 1TS OWN PROP4G4T1ON

I think this is partially true, but it can't be entirely true.

If all timelines that don't propagate reality were annihilated, then failed sessions would be completely impossible. The kids' unwinnable session would have started out as a doomed timeline.

Well... I suppose reality could occasionally permit a failed session, if that session's failure contributed to universal propagation in some other way. I've talked before about how this might actually be what's happening - how Sburb might be maneuvering these kids into a position where they can stop Lord English from destroying the universes it's trying to create.

Still, situations like this would presumably be very rare. The vast majority of sessions would contribute to propagation by directly creating a universe, so if Terezi's hypothesis was true, the vast majority of sessions should be successful.

Karkat certainly seems to think that plenty of sessions end in failure - but where's he getting his information? This might just be another case of his worldview bleeding into his understanding of the game.

For now, the average win rate of a Sburb session remains a mystery. Hopefully it won't remain one forever.

GC: 4ND 1T 1S 3QU4LLY M3RC1L3SS TO THOS3 WHO 1NH4B1T TH3M, 4ND 1N P4RT1CUL4R, THOS3 WHO C4US3 TH3M

And this is even more dubious.

Like, Sburb gave them these powers. Dave has his time machines because of Sburb. Why is he getting punished for using them as intended? If the game really abhors doomed timelines, why is it giving portable timeline-doomers to its players?

I suppose it's possible that Paradox Space is actually being managed by some force external to Sburb, so it's not actually Sburb that hates doomed timelines, but reality itself. But that just raises further questions, such as: why do universes spawn from a game that breaks the laws of the universe?

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure Terezi's just guessing, here...

GC: 1T 4PP34RS TO H4V3 4 S3NS3 OF JUST1C3, DONT YOU TH1NK?

...and they've very Terezi-flavored guesses, too.

She's been primed her whole life to think about everything in terms of justice and punishment, so she's biased towards doing so, even when it doesn't quite fit.

TG: i dunno none of this is making for a very persuasive argument that i should kill doomed me GC: BUT H3 1S GO1NG TO D13 4NYW4Y! GC: WHY NOT JUST B3 TH3 ON3 TO PUT H1M DOWN? GC: 4T TH3 V3RY L34ST, YOU COULD M4K3 SUR3 1T 1S 4 PL34S4NT D3M1S3 1NST34D OF SOM3TH1NG N4ST13R >:]

Oh, she's having fun with this, isn't she?

Like Dave said, Terezi's already seen the future, so she knows what he's going to choose. To her, his final choice doesn't really matter - the fun lies in watching him squirm.

TG: this shit youre doing now TG: this is the morbid shit i was talking about TG: its not anywhere near as endearing as you probably think […] TG: this whole thing was a ruse TG: and not even the funny kind that qualify as distactions TG: i think you got my whole timeline there in front of you and you know damn well i have no intention of killing this guy ever

Dave likes Terezi, but he's clearly getting sick of being jerked around here. He wants to know if there's a point to this - and I think he's going to be disappointed with the answer.

[skunkes]

ok ok i have another way to word my thots about the movies thus far:

i think Art is pretty iconic design wise. Im not against gory slashers I think we should have more of those and I like that a series so "shocking" is doing so well...its more like.

The franchise establishes pretty immediately that it's not Serious...as mentioned the first movie has a naked woman sawed in half from crotch down so idk how you'd even make it to the 3rd one without knowing How It Is. But with how the first one barely has any plot, and the second one has A Bit More but drags on and on...its like... SO FAR (because I haven't seen the 3rd one) these movies aren't Fun to watch ykwim.

I know Saw isn't a good comparison bc its a different genre within horror but the franchise really is like a telenovela... its so stupid (good) and it has lots to complain about and pick at in the FUN way, like poking fun at peepaw and his warehouses and home depot purchases, going "are you kidding me thats so dumb" at that scene where hoffman manages to be snuck into the station in a body bag to start killing people. Varuous moments of stupid ass dialogue writing. Im not saying it cant be boring or unliked but i think it has a good balance of everything (eyerolling moments, plot, "lighthearted" and humorous moments, intentional or not) even if its not a masterpiece in the writing department.

And that's just within the series, I usually avoid bringing up fandom bc that's obviously a different beast I rarely even touch but its more about how its fandom actually has that foundation to go off of. Like you know enough about peepaw's backstory and such to springboard off of, regardless of it being good or not

Here it's like man there's a hot cool clown, lots of gore, really corny and cornily acted out writing, and its not even FUN? 😭 2 movies (again I haven't made it to the 3rd) and I wouldn't watch them again, not because of the gore but because despite not being serious, reinforced by that very drawn out over the top kill in the second one, it's not even fun... you cant even attach to the silly dialogue because the whole rest of the movie is a drag. Does this make sense? It's like. Everything combined to make it Not Fun. Whereas at least with Saw you can start joking about how someone just wasn't trying hard enough to win peepaw's foundationally silly ass "you tried to kill yourself now you're in the try not to kill yourself" trap.

It's at odds with itself. I've seen like one Halloween movie and can barely even remember it but I know all the jokes about outrunning Michael Myers (and that cat and mouse is also Fun)...theres also like 50 of those movies I KNOW theyre probably also fun to watch and complain about the absurdity... I think the issue here might also be the straightforwardness and point A point B of it all. There's not really much anyone can do against Art, which is fine, some saw traps are literally unwinnable after all. But Terrifier doesn't even give you the chance to, like, boast about how you definitely could have survived the Silence Circle trap because you're not an idiot... it's just not Fun. To me.

I think Art himself is fun and the corny dialogue are fun. I'll even go ahead and say the gore is fun because again like come on the clown literally rips a guys cock off its Absurd... but they seem to be trapped in movie(s) that so far aren't fun

[lych33dragoncookie]

alright so the main reason i wanted to make this blog; those new Wind Archer trailers.

I already had a lot to say about the first one, for... One big reason.

The fact we're going to the laboratorium is pretty exciting, but I did not expect for us to already catch a glimpse of the Ultimate Cookie. In fact, I had almost forgotten about that; I thought Matcha making MyCookie was more of a byproduct of the Beast cookies needing bodies to inhabit, but...

Well, I guess Dark Enchantress's original ambitions haven't left her. And she's really, really close to realizing her dreams; the dreams she carries on from White Lily Cookie.

It really makes me wonder how White Lily would react to these developments. To see her dreams realized, every bit as horrifying as she most likely knew they'd be, carried on by a part of herself. I really, really wanna see where they go with this.

On another note...

sorry, i just much prefer his Japanese VA HE'S BAAAAAAAACKKKKK~

You have... No idea how frustrated I was to see that the first Beast cookie to release was Mystic Flour and not him. And while it's not guaranteed we'll get him this time, either (even if i really hope we do)... Come on, it's just nice to have him back. He's a really, really fun antagonist. Sometimes, when all your antagonists have complex motives, believing that despite everything they've done, ultimately they're the ones in the right (with even Dark Enchantress only committing as much harm as she has as a response to the revelation that the world, on a fundamental level, was seemingly much more cruel, uncaring and pointless than she had ever thought; a desperate need to make a difference, no matter how many lives and pain it takes), it's incredibly nice to have that one villain, that one villain who doesn't try to find an excuse for what they do, having fun, not believing that they're doing everything that they do for some greater motive, but just to have fun, to make the entire world one big, brightly burning play area for them to toy with as long as they want, however they want. I love Shadow Milk, because he perfectly offsets the usual monologuing, self-righteous villainy we tend to see (And often enjoy, don't get me wrong, both Dark Enchantress and Mystic Flour have grown one me) with just pure, uncaring, show-stopping villainy for the sake of villainy.

He's manipulative, playful, silly, over the top, more concerned with putting on a show first and foremost than actually accomplishing his objectives; because you and I both know that he knows that he could probably just brute force his way into getting his soul jam back, into taking down the heroes without any opportunity for them to do anything about it. If he wanted to, he could very, very easily create an unwinnable scenario. But he doesn't. Because that's no fun.

And I absolutely adore him for it. Every single scene he's in is an absolute delight.

... Right, uh. Wind Archer.

I'm excited for him! It's been a while since we've gotten any Ovenbreak legendaries, and with Wind Archer in the game, it means we're likely very close to seeing Fire Spirit and Millennial Tree (Both pretty big faves for me, though Millie is the one that does unholy things to my brain just from looking at him). And honestly, this feels like a really, really good use for him! No beating around the bush, no overcomplicating anything, just going straight to the point and trying to stop the current threat at its root. He's going to fail, obviously. Even if he takes out the ultimate cookie, chances are it can just be rebuilt, and the beasts on an individual level would be way too much for him to handle. And with Shadow Milk having awoken... Yeah, he stands just about no chance. But, it will be very fun to see, methinks. It's also just a pretty natural fit; a protector of nature that hunts down anything that may disturb or corrupt said nature being sent to strike down what's pretty much a threat that's entirely artificial, unnatural, bodies made through forbidden, arcane magic and ethically dubious means, stumbling upon the culmination of someone's ambitions to create perfect life by artificial means. It works out really, really well, methinks.

But yeah that's my thoughts so far on the 2 Wind Archer update trailers, I'm actually really excited for where they're gonna take this, we've actually got some good plot progression going on and a lot of interesting writing ideas that while I don't fully trust the devs to execute perfectly, I do still really like and feel pretty hopeful for!

... Now just give me Shadow Milk and Millennial Tree and my life is yours. And Lychee, maybe. That one might take a bit. how are they even gonna do Longan in Kingdom. that's... quite a lot to try to adapt without either rehashing content or completely hijacking the plot. god i hope this doesn't mean they'll just stop at Lotus. I miss my dragons. Except not really because OB has been doing some good stuff with them.

Sorry for the really long post, but I wanted to dump some thoughts and have a sort of primer for the kinda stuff I wanna make for this blog.

Oh, and expect some shitposts along the way, too.

[thegreenlynx]

I Bite, Pretty Boy

Chapter 3: Blood-Sucking Hero

Word Count: 2k

A/N: Violence, attempted murder, and murder in this one.

It is now Saturday and Jisung is walking leisurely through the dimming streets, a heavy bag in each hand. The chilling breeze rustling his white t-shirt is the only other sound aside from the echoed tapping of his shoes against the pavement. He swings the bags mindlessly as he makes his way back to his house, where his friends are no doubt waiting impatiently for his return. 

The day of their long awaited hang out had finally arrived and the boys were all pretty excited, having had a grueling week of classes. Naturally however, you cannot have a good proper game sesh with your friends without some yummy things to munch on. And what is one to do when the friend group is in dire need of snacks but the kitchen is scarce of such comfort foods? Well obviously you play rock paper scissors and make the loser go get the snacks for the whole group; It's only fair really. 

It had been a long game, the four of them getting combination after combination of unwinnable plays but eventually it ended in a miraculous three scissors majority versus Jisung's single pitiful paper. It would seem they'd finally caught on to his simple, foolish repeating pattern of throwing rock, rock, scissors, paper, and then paper again.

It didn't take him long to find and purchase the snacks, he knew his friends well enough to know exactly what they'd want without asking. These cold autumn days fell to darkness quite early however, and Jisung shivers as the cold air bites his skin. 

He has only gotten about ten minutes from the convenience store when his leisure stroll back to his house turns into a brisk walk. He begins to feel the prick of anxiety tingle its way up his spine, goosebumps permeate across the tanned skin of his arms, and the hairs on the nape of his neck raise in alarm. 

While his feet move at an increasing pace he turns his head from side to side, glancing cautiously between the alleys and behind him in an attempt to find the source of this sudden unsettling feeling. He feels as though he is being watched, followed perhaps. However, no matter how hard he looks he cannot seem to find the cause.

He attempts to dismiss the feeling, shaking his head and turning to face forward once again. Only to be met with the barrel of a gun being pointed directly at his chest from roughly ten feet away. He immediately freezes, paralyzed in fear. He barely has time to register the presence of the weapon before the masked man goes to pull the trigger. 

The expected pain never comes though; instead a blur of movement his human eyes cannot process moves in front of him, blocking the incoming bullet from reaching him. He feels warm liquid splatter onto his t-shirt, and a woman with otherworldly beauty fills his vision. 

His consciousness seeps out of him in shock and you catch his now limp body in your arms, letting out an exasperated sigh in response while you gently ease him to the ground. You aren't surprised he fainted, and really it is probably a good thing since he wasn't even supposed to see you in the first place. But by hell is it inconvenient.

As you rise from lowering the cute human to the ground, you turn to face the man who put a bullet in your side. You feel an anger unlike any you've ever known as you stare at the man pitifully scrambling, tripping over himself, to get away from you. 

It is not even really that you're mad about the wound. After all while you are bleeding, in a sense anyway, it is isn't exactly a fatal wound for you like it may have been for the human. Still hurts like a bitch, but you'll heal just fine. In a week or so you'll be back to your normal everyday health. And even so while Minho isn't going to be particularly thrilled when he finds out, he'll also be quick to treat it. Whether necessary or not. 

The anger you feel stems more from disgust at the man than anything. A gang member, a pathetic one. He is known for wearing a mask whilst killing random, innocent civilians and stealing their possessions. He even uses the most cowardly of weapons, a gun. How is a mere human ever going to have a chance against a gun? You can think of few things as pathetic as that, if you're to steal you should at least earn your goods. Fist fight for it or perhaps engage in a good old knife duel. Shooting some random defenseless college kid? That's going too far. Not only that but it's pretty stupid, what college student has anything worth stealing anyway?

"Hey Min?" You hear your own soft voice echo through the streets as you walk slowly towards the man crawling backwards on the ground. You make no effort to increase your pace, no human could actually escape you anyway.

"W-Wha-?" You ignore the human as he speaks, assuming you must be talking to him rather than the vampire in your ear piece. 

That very vampire replies almost immediately afterwards. "Yeah? What is it y/n?" His voice attentive and worried as always. 

"I need to run something by you.." You respond thoughtfully. "I had a run-in with a gang member. Tried to kill some cute goofy-looking college boy in the middle of the street till I got in the way." You finally reach the man and push him further to the ground with your foot pressed to his sternum. "I know human vs human isn't typically our area but I couldn't just leave the poor guy to die so I stepped in. Before you freak out, we're both fine. Kid fainted but I need to know what to do with this guy cause he definitely saw me and the whole being a vampire thing."

"Kill him."

You tilt your head coyly, while pressing the heel of your foot slightly into the man's chest. Not reacting as he gasps in pain. "Oh? You sure? Chan might get mad." 

"No honestly he'd probably say the same." You hear the man let out a heavy sigh in your ear. "Near the area you are patrolling I've heard about a pretty rough gang terrorizing some neighborhoods. That's kind of why you were sent there, to look and see if there was any vampire involvement in it but I'm fairly certain it's just some filthy humans."

"That bad?" 

"Oh yeah. Theft, murder, assaults, human trafficking of both women and children, opioid dealings... the list goes on and on. That group's gotten so many people killed I think everyone would agree it needs to be stopped. Vampires or not, this is probably a situation where we should step in." He hums thoughtfully and continues, "Just make sure no evidence of your presence is left behind. The cops have been on their trail for a while now but have failed to actually catch them, I will deal with the gang by pulling some strings to make sure they finally do within the next week. So all you need to do is kill the man, make it look another gang member could have done it and take the kid home... The kid didn't see you right?" 

"Even if he did he probably won't remember it, he fainted immediately. And no one would believe him anyway."

"Good point. If he's a college student he's probably got an ID, so just dig through his bag and send me a quick photo of that when you're done. I'll send you his address. Drop him off at the door, knock, and then leave and come immediately back here. You'll have about reached the end of patrol time by then anyway and I am gonna need your help with my little plan. We also can't risk anyone seeing you with him. You are not to converse with the humans, you will leave the kid at the door for his family or dormmate to deal with. He's not your problem or responsibility, understand?"

"Yes, sir!" You respond with mock enthusiasm, a playful giggle tumbling past your lips while you get up and pull the gang member off the ground by his collar. 

The man whimpers in response and you ignore it again in favor of listening to Minho. "I mean it goofy girl, be careful and get your ass back here when you're done." You can practically hear the smile on his face even as he lectures you with his ever serious tone. 

"I know, I will, Have some gyoza and ramen ready for me when I get back?" You add a pleading lilt to your voice in an attempt to persuade him to feed you; his cooking is magnificent. To die for really. Vampires may not actually need human food to live, but that doesn't mean they don't crave it every now and again. Besides, it goes wonderfully with a thick glass of blood. 

"Whatever you want, princess." Despite the slightly sarcastic tone he uses to hide it, you hear Minho's chair fall to the ground behind him through the ear piece and barely resist a snort as you imagine how he looks darting off immediately to the kitchen. You shake your head, a fond expression on your face as you turn off your mic with your free hand.

"Now, where were we?" You smile in mock sympathy at the man in front of you whilst tapping your chin in fake consideration. "Oh right! Time to die." You don't give the man time to react as you grab a knife from your sock and lodge it into his neck. 

The man sputters in response, grabs at his neck as blood seeps down into his clothes. However there is nothing he can do. His body falls slack to the ground and the life slowly leaves his eyes. 

You don't stop to watch, simply sighing and turning back to the boy laid carefully on the pavement. You reach into his pants pocket to grab his wallet, scoffing and rolling your eyes at the intricate mermaid design on the cover. You take out the ID and snap a shot to Minho, who follows seconds later with the address. How he managed to do that so fast whilst cooking you a meal, you may never know. 

You groan in annoyance before lifting the unconscious college student off the ground, bags and all, to begrudgingly take him to his home. For a grown man, he's fairly light. It also helps that you are a vampire with strength no mortal could compete with.

You use your vampiric speed to get to the address quickly. It's only three blocks away, but you aren't exactly one to dally when Minho gives you orders. Especially when he's got a nice warm meal at home. Not to mention when he sees the gunshot wound he'll probably spend the whole night treating and pampering you. Might even feed you and prepare you a nice warm bath, the sweet man he is. 

It's not as if you expect him to do that but he'll do it even if you try to refuse. It's as if he's completely incapable of not doting on you. And well, that certainly beats carrying some weird guy around town. 

Although he is pretty nice to look at, for a human. 

You gently and silently ease the soft looking nerd against the wall of his house. His white shirt is soaked with your blood and he looks cold. You stare at his face for a few moments, a complicated expression taking over your features before you breathe out a sigh. You settle his bags next to his body and look down at the oversized hoodie tied around your waist. It's surprisingly clean, free of any blood splatter. So you quickly untie it and crouch down in front of the sleeping figure. You cover him snugly into the hoodie before turning to knock loudly on the door. 

However, before anyone can answer you disappear off into the night, back to Minho.

Prev | Next | MasterList

Taglist: @estella-novella @jisuperboard @feelikecinderella

[nonstandardrepertoire]

as a Jewish transsexual, the Jewish ethno-nationalist¹ sales pitch has always left me cold.² over and over again, i've heard people plugging the State of Israel offer some form of the following: "history teaches that we can never fully trust non-Jews with political power to protect Jews; the only way to make sure Jewish people are always safe is to create and maintain a state where Jewish people have the political power, so we can look out for ourselves"

but the thing is, the worst transphobic harassment i've experienced in my life has come from Jews. i don't think this says anything about the relative transphobia of Jews vs non-Jews, anymore than the fact that most of my birthday presents come from New Yorkers says anything about the relative generosity of Californians, but still. the people who followed me out of the subway filming me while yelling transphobic abuse were Jewish. two of the most relentless boosters of the current wave of transphobia in the US — Ben Shapiro and Chaya Raichik — are Jewish. i should be safe in a state run by such people?

and the obvious response is to say that, well, this is about keeping me safe as a Jew, not necessarily as an anything else. it's a bulwark against anti-Jewish violence, not every other -ism under the sun.³ but the thing is, i'm not a potato-head person. you can't just snap off the trans part of me and the Jewish part of me and say the latter part is safe even when the first isn't. i'm 100% Jewish and 100% trans; if i'm not safe as a transsexual, i'm not safe as a Jew. and if i'm going to be having to fight transphobia anyway, what difference does it make if the people passing bills stripping my rights are Jews or not?⁴

if you really lean into the logic at play here — "no one outside a vulnerable demographic can be trusted to care about people in that demographic" — it's easy to wind up in absurdity. because if i can't trust goyim to have my back as a Jew and also can't trust cis people to have my back as a transsexual, perhaps i need a state run by and for Jewish transsexuals. but wait! white Jewish transsexuals are certainly regularly horrible to, eg, Black Jewish transsexuals, so we probably shouldn't be in the same state together, to say nothing of separating out the poor, the disabled, those without college degrees . . . and before you know it, you're committed to the idea that the only just world is one where we're each a state unto ourselves, perfectly safe in absolute isolation from one another — no society, no coming together across difference to lighten the burden of living, just infinite atomization, the perfect unending unwinnable war of all against all

and this, i think, reveals the fundamental futility of the project. as a transsexual, i don't think my safety will ultimately come from removing myself from people not like me. safety, i think, comes not from cutting ties, but from building them. i will only really be safe in a society that accepts difference, multiplicity, strangeness, variety. i will only be truly safe in a society where we come together — across the gulfs that separate us — to take care of one another

i think there are illuminating parallels with feminist/lesbian separatism here. in its most extreme versions, such separatism abandons the demand that women be safe around men and instead attempts the task of building a space without men for women to inhabit. similarly, it seems to me that Jewish ethno-nationalism abandons the demand that Jewish people be safe around goyim and instead attempts to build a space without goyim for Jewish people to inhabit.⁵ i think Jews can and must be safe among goyim. i think women can and must be safe among men. i think trans people can and must be safe among cis people. that is the kind of world i am committed to fighting for, not one where we give in to fear and retreat into gardens walled by suspicion and hostility⁶

i'm not going to pretend that that's an easy world to build.⁷ i'm not going to pretend i can point to a bunch of stable, just, pluralistic societies and go "eh, just do what they did!" (altho there's no shortage of societies i can point to that went the "this place is for us and only us" route and wound up producing dystopian nightmares⁸). i'm not even going to pretend that i think building a just world from where we are now is inevitable, or even that i always think it is possible. there are days it is very hard to believe. but i always think it's worth striving for. if a just world that guarantees a good life to all isn't worth striving for, what is? if we are to suffer defeat, let it be a slow defeat, a long defeat, a fighting defeat. i am not willing to give up on my neighbors. i am not willing to abandon the charge of seeking the good for those not like me. i am not willing to abandon the hope that will seek the good for me despite my strangeness to them. and i reject any philosophy or politics that asks me to do so

_________________________________________________

¹i'm using "Jewish ethno-nationalist" here because i think it's been subject to less semantic dilution than "Zionist", and i want to avoid semantic arguments here as much as possible. whatever prescriptivist arguments you want to marshal that this or that term should mean X, i think it's clear that the descriptivist ship has long since set sail when it comes to "Zionism". (when pushed for specifics, i've seen self-professed Zionists and anti-Zionists outline essentially identical political programs, which certainly makes it seem to me that these terms are of minimal utility at best)

²obviously, what's happening on the ground is very bad. but critiquing what's happening on the ground often runs into severe questions of evidential reliability and can also leave the impression that Jewish ethno-nationalism is a good idea implemented badly, which is why i want to take aim at this level here

³given the European origins of this movement in its modern incarnation, i think it's unsurprising who gets imagined as "just a Jew" and not any other marked category. and from there, i think it's also unsurprising (if depressing) how various Jews who do exist in other marked categories have been and are treated by the "Jewish State" — the promised safety turns out to be predicated on all the usual axes of whiteness, wealth, ability, and so on

⁴indeed, i have often found that groups predicated on the idea that "we're all in alignment here" are often much more resistant to acknowledging members' various bigotries than groups not predicated on that assumption

⁵and, similarly, this attempt to cleave the world along one axis of hierarchy invariably reveals the inadequacy of one-identity-only frameworks for tackling the full complexity of the world. among other things, feminist/lesbian separatism has come under sustained critique from Black feminists like Barbara Smith for sundering ties of solidarity that are critical for fighting racism. victimhood and oppression are not fixed, ontological states, but fluid, shifting, contextual relationships. we cannot undo the snarlingly intertwined systems of oppression by replicating them in miniature

⁶the fear is certainly a real emotion; it is one i have felt at times myself. sometimes it is even based on an accurate perception of the world! but also: sometimes not. my fear of kitchen knives spontaneously levitating and flying around the room certainly feels real to me, but it's not a thing that can actually happen. one of the really hard things to do in the world, i've found, is parsing out the fears that are just feelings i'm having from the fears that tell me actual actionable information about the world and then striking a livable balance between reasonable precaution and paranoia. precautions against danger often come with their own set of risks: locking a door to keep out potential thieves ups the odds of being trapped in a building fire; using a different complex password for every site raises the risk of forgetting one and having a critical account shut down; the medications that drastically cut the frequency of debilitating migraines can raise the likelihood of other adverse health effects. more broadly, viewing neighbors with suspicion, fear, and distrust has a corrosive effect on the social fabric, and makes it harder to structure society to make sure everyone has food, clothes, housing, healthcare — all the things a society is supposed to do. (it's hard to convince people to take care of people they're afraid of, especially if they believe (rightly or wrongly) that they will have to give up something they care about (usually money, but also convenience, prestige, power) for that to happen.) and that corrosive effect can get very extreme — when fascism wants to recruit you to its cause, the sales pitch is usually less "hey, do you want to unleash horrific violence against those folks over there?" and more "hey, aren't you tired of being ~afraid~? don't you want to feel ~safe~? isn't it about time you had all the wealth, respect, and power that's rightfully yours and that's been kept from you for so long?". fear isn't the only way that horrors get unleashed, but it's a very potent one. (i don't think there's a formula for striking the right balance here. as with so many balancing acts, too much comes down to context and the specifics of all those involved, not least because the scale and nature of threats can vary so wildly. i believe that everyone deserves to be safe (insofar as any of us mostly hairless apes clinging to a thin crust of dirt on an iron ball whirling thru the cosmic void around a sphere of nuclear fire can be safe from loss, grief, accident, disaster, or misfortune...), but being and feeling are different matters, and pursuing the feeling of safety without limit can easily lead to logics of annihilation.) (and indeed, i am not the first to be struck by the fact that in many ways it is in the interests of the State of Israel, as a state, if Jews feel unsafe in the rest of the world, because that feeling of unsafety is so easily leveraged to both increase political support for the State of Israel and encourage Jewish people to leave the Diaspora and move to the State of Israel. which, unnervingly, is where you sometimes find the State of Israel and its agents taking the position that Jews don't belong anywhere that isn't the immediate environs of Jerusalem, a position that is ultimately indistinguishable from any number of dime-store Judeophobias)

⁷indeed, i think this is one of many places where it's easier to identify the problem than it is to solve it. many middle schoolers can explain the problem of Fermat's Last Theorem; barely a handful of professional mathematicians in the world could explain the proof. my cat can figure out how to break a vase even tho he can't reliably find a toy he's just been playing with when he's sitting directly on top of it (it's fine, he doesn't follow me on here, i can say that about him); in some cases, a skilled artisan can repair the vase so it functions again; no one in the world can turn back time so that the vase was never broken to begin with. it's easy to invent chessboard solutions to entrenched societal conflicts — move this border here, enact this constitution there, change this societal attitude for all involved, and hey presto!, utopia. but the world is not a game of chess. education, advocacy, activism, political organization, even wildcat direct action — these are all slow, effortful, uncertain processes, and everyone with a different vision of the future is also exercising their agency to change the course of events. i think societies are easy to break and hard to repair. in many cases, i don't really know how we go from here, the real world as it actually is with all its shattered bones and aching wounds and long-festering resentments, to there, a world of true justice. but i think it's worth trying. i think it's worth imagining. i hope you do too

⁸like, idk what even to say if "Germany for the Germans" doesn't set off alarm bells. even if they raised up a brand new continent from the ocean floor, i still think i'd be wary of the political project of building a ~Jewish state for the Jews~. i don't trust nationalism of any flavor. i think the Diasporic notion of feeling kinship with and responsibility for people all around the world regardless of borders, flags, kings, bureaucracies is beautiful and worth cherishing and protecting. i don't dream of finally being on top of the hierarchy; i dream of there not being a hierarchy to begin with

[thebiscuiteternal]

I have no idea how coherent this will be because I am still in borderline Sickness Stupid Mode, but for today's "Things I Will Probably Never Write," we have "Nie Mingjue is forced into an unwinnable choice between his brother and his sect and Nie Huaisang takes the choice from him to spare them both (some of) the misery."

So, during all the cleanup and rebuilding post-Sunshot, it becomes apparent that there is a growing problem in the Nie sect.

All of the rogue cultivators and refugee-from-destroyed-small-sect cultivators and regular soldiers hold a huge disdain for Nie Huaisang, and they aren't particularly shy about it. They signed on under the battle charisma of Nie Mingjue, and even if Huaisang wasn't entirely idle during the war (most people saw him at one point or another helping the infirmary and food tents, for example, and some of them were even treated or fed by him), the idea of this coddled little puffball ever giving them orders is a big fat No Fucking Thanks.

The spreading disgruntlement isn't curbed by the seniors and elders who'd always been with the sect, as they've never been particularly happy with Nie Mingjue's insistence on keeping his brother as heir either.

And eventually, the grumbling becomes a snap. Someone or several someones tries to incapacitate Nie Huaisang enough that he'd no longer be able to take up the sect leader mantle.

Naturally, Nie Mingjue is incensed, and when the person or ringleaders are caught, they have to be punished.

But he's not oblivious, and it quickly becomes clear to him that they have a lot more support amongst the sect than he would have thought, severely complicating the situation.

Nie Huaisang isn't oblivious either. If the punishment is too harsh; if his brother seems to be choosing him over the will of the sect on the whole, they could be looking at a succession crisis, or even open rebellion. If the punishment is light, but he doesn't remove Huaisang from his position, that will only make the attempts bolder until he has to fully pick a side. If he does remove Huaisang from his position, then no matter how harsh a punishment he chooses, there will be those who see it as capitulating.

If he does this-

If he does that-

If, if, if-

Huaisang knows that no matter what his brother chooses to do, there will be severely negative side effects, but that the worst will come from siding with him.

(He knows he isn't strong enough to have to stand and hear his brother cast him aside.)

Well... it's not like he wanted to be in line for the sect position, and everyone expects him to be a coward anyway.

So he spends a full night writing instructions to a handful of trusted servants on how to sell or release the aviary inhabitants, which of his things to sell, etc.

He packs a few paintings that will make good advertisements of his ability, a few more that will sell quickly, and some trinkets and such that will also fetch good prices. He packs the money he'd earned off his last book just before the war started, some food from the kitchen and the plainest, most unnoticeable robes he owns.

Then, just before dawn, he finishes a letter to his brother, fetches Zhihua alone out of all the birds, and slips out of one of the secret gates that's no longer manned now that the war is over.

He doesn't really have an idea of where he's going, other than it would be best if he doesn't go near any sect seats. Too many political complications if he were to be found. Maybe some seaside town? He could actually learn to fish, and his abilities would do well among tourists...

No matter where he goes, this way, his brother won't be backed into a corner any more. No matter what he chooses to do with the ringleaders, he'll have to pick another heir, so no one can say he's still coddling Huaisang from the sect's perception of his behavior.

---

To say Nie Mingjue is unhappy to find his brother's goodbye letter is an understatement. At first, he takes it as Nie Huaisang avoiding duties and consequences again, but as he re-reads it, he starts to understand Huaisang's intent to spare him from a no-win situation.

Which doesn't make him any less unhappy.

Especially not when he gets to the line about never having to practice saber again. He's sure Huaisang intended that as a joke, trying to lighten the severity of what's just happened, but all it does is remind Mingjue that his own frequent expressions of annoyance and exasperation with his brother's idle personality probably contributed to exacerbating the situation.

He can't let himself resent the sect, but he can resent his brat of a brother for never shaping up and himself for not doing better at making Huaisang do so. It all comes down to that. Really. Nothing else.

Getting up and getting dressed, he goes to speak with the elders about what punishments would be appropriate for the disciples being held in the cells and a list of cousins who are close enough to the main bloodline to be acceptably eligible, and never says a word to any of them about Huaisang.

Later, he will go speak with the servants Huaisang chose and give them their assignments, but only for the birds. He does not mention any of the instructions about selling Huaisang's possessions.

Then after that, he will take Baxia out to the coldest side of the mountain, away from the walls of the Unclean Realms, and spend the rest of the day venting the grief and rage and resentment tied up in his guts.

Then he will go back to running the sect and pretend nothing is amiss until Huaisang's next letter arrives.

[just-a-thing-still-alive]

i can't help but think how that's kyomami (especially the 'you are not permitted moral distance) to me because in canon they're literally "i survived a codependent homoerotic friendship" it's not asecret that kyouko has looser morals (in a "loose morals but more "sense) than mami, but that it didn't start that way at first, she was very similar to early sayaka with heroes and justice and stuff and mami seemed the perfect hero, so kyouko tried to be like her of course they had their breakup but the thing about "your soft hands are just as bloody as mine"

it's that mami isn't so different from kyouko post-breakup, at least when looking at the consequences of their actions when kyouko went back to her home turf, she got full survival mode, and any magical girl that passed through her territory was more often than not not kindly asked to go away she beat up nomad magical girls, magical girls with no territory that often have trouble finding a stable supply of grief seeds and well magical girls are resilient, very resilient, but they're also very fragile, one bad enough day and poof they're a witch now and well, how many magical girls that kyouko beat up, for no other reason than because she could, or because it was her territory, ended up becoming witches or dead i'd say quite a few in a few years that's not to say kyouko is evil or anything, but she has some blood on her hands plus you can't tell me she hasn't killed a magical girl at some point, magical girls fights are vicious kyouko has blood on her hands, she knows it, she acknolesge it, she doesn't shy away from it, she survives then there's mami mami is powerful very powerful and that along with the nature of her powers help her take down magical girls who would want to take over her territory without killing them mami is allowed to be merciful because she's strong and she takes pity probably, if a magical girl is pitiful enough, alone enough, she'll either give her grief seed or offer to take the magical girl under her wing

they leave eventually, they always leave (mami always ends up alone in the end, maybe it's because she comes on too strong, she's desperate not to be alone) but they stay, for a while, and some of mami's morals bleed on them how could it not, mami is strong, she looks like the hero of justice children dreams of (she desperately try to look the part, crumbling all the way) how many magical girls died because they believed mami, because they thought others would be like her (some are, and it's not fair to say that it's mami's fault, but the magical girls world is ruthless, and mami not truly acknowledging that fact because she's strong, or because she's scared, does the magical girls under her wing a disservice) but what about the girls she pushed/convinced to become magical girls (sure they get a wish, but you know how much of an scam that is) how many of these newly born magical girls, who only knew of heros magical girls, who were pushed into an unwinnable fight died, because mami tried to fill the hole in her heart so yes, mami has blood on her hands and kyouko hates that mami refuse to acknowledge that fact, and maybe pities her that's where the "admit your soft hands are just as bloody as mine. say it. say it" kyouko wants mami to acknowledge what she did, she wants mami to acknowledge herself, that way, maybe she could understand, or at least accept what kyouko did without looking at her like she's some kind of horrible, greedy, lost soul kyouko loves mami, she'll always love mami, even if she hates her they got too close, too dependant on each other before for everything to be swept away just like that and if mami just acknowledged everything, if she stopped putting a "moral distance" between them (kyouko won't allow her to) well kyouko would do just about anything for mami

[inairbinad]

Steve's Got a Date with a Vampire! (4)

part four of seven | Explicit (eventually) Part One | Part Three | Read on AO3

“Come on Steve, we never get quality one-on-one time anymore,” Dustin whined into the phone, trying to get Steve to forgive him and hang out again.

“That’s because you’re a little sneak,” Steve replied casually, examining his cuticles as he held the phone cradled between his ear and shoulder. It’d been two more weeks since the closet incident, but Dustin’s punishment of no rides—even when the other kids were getting them—had only lasted a few days. Steve couldn’t stay mad at the kid, but he could keep lording it over him as a guilt trip every chance he got.

“I promise I won’t do anything like that again,” Dustin pleaded. “But you have to admit, you guys are closer now, right?”

Steve had seen Eddie a few times since, and things did seem at least back to their flirtatious status quo, but it was never just the two of them. They very pointedly hadn’t brought up the feeding situation, either, though Steve was more than willing to offer again. He spent too much time worrying if Eddie was eating at all, actually.

(And if Steve started exclusively jerking off to the memory of the Eddie’s teeth in his wrist and tongue on his skin after that, well, that was Steve’s business.)

“If you say so, Henderson,” Steve relented without giving too much away. He hadn’t admitted to anyone exactly what happened in that closet, not even Robin. But he couldn’t deny that Dustin’s little scheme had done something to shift whatever relationship he and Eddie had now. “What did you have in mind?”

“How do you feel about a night at the fair?” Dustin asked, smile obvious in his voice. 

Steve didn’t trust the sound of that smile, but he agreed anyway.

———

Steve was completely unsurprised when Dustin’s version of ‘quality time’ together involved Eddie. In fact, he would have been more surprised if Eddie didn’t magically run into them at the fair in some capacity. Eddie, on the other hand, seemed to be at least a little appalled by Dustin’s blatant lying.

“You said you wanted to spend time, and I quote, ‘just the two of us!’” Eddie cried. “No offense, Stevie.”

“None taken.” Steve could only laugh at the nerve of this kid they practically shared custody of. Steve knew this was just another ploy to get him to spend more time with Eddie, but at least Dustin would be a buffer between Steve and his wildly inappropriate thoughts this time. He was willing to go along with it as long as Eddie was. “He told me the same thing.”

“Is it so bad of me to want a family outing?” Dustin crowed, pleading his case. “Where we can all spend some quality time together?”

Steve rolled his eyes and didn’t dignify the display with any more of a response. “You got us here, alright? Now what are we doing first? Food, rides, or games?”

“Games!” Dustin and Eddie said in equally excitable voices. Steve smiled at them both and led them off towards a row of booths filled to the brim with unwinnable stuffed animals.

First Dustin made them play their hand at water pistols, a game Steve resoundingly hated. But then, it was already well established that he was bat guy, not a gun guy. Dustin ended up winning, but all he had to show for it was an off-brand Star Wars themed pencil sharpener and a finger cramp that he wouldn’t stop complaining about. 

Next they went to have their fortunes told by an old lady with scraggly gray hair and a (probably fake, Steve suspected) mole on her nose to complete her witch’s getup. She took one look at Eddie when he sat down, whispered “I see blood,” and all three of them booked it out of there faster than she could say boo.

After that Eddie wanted to shake off the creeps and play Skee-ball, claiming he was “the master,” and that Steve couldn’t possibly beat him. Steve begged to differ, as that title had historically been his, and a whole lot of bickering and competitiveness ensued. Eddie tried his usual tricks of trying to distract Steve with various gutter-minded and flirtatious remarks (“Bet you can’t get it in the hole,” said in the most delighted and daring voice was one Steve was having trouble forgetting), but Steve did his best to steel his nerves and ignore it. 

He was only partly successful, so after a couple of rounds he decided to play dirty, too. 

At first Steve stood back, his hip cocked and his arms crossed as he very deliberately stared at how Eddie’s body moved with each throw. But he waited for Eddie to come to him.

“What, Harrington?” Eddie asked, after his second toss, looking a little put out. Dustin perked up, expectantly watching the both of them with a stupid grin on his face. 

“Nothing,” Steve said, innocent. But Eddie wasn’t buying it. He just crossed his arms over his chest and mirrored Steve in a challenge, just like Steve had wanted. So Steve shrugged noncommittally and said, “Your stance is wrong, is all.”

“My stance—” Eddie huffed and cut himself off with a disbelieving smile. “You’re losing and you’re critiquing my stance?” 

“I’m not losing,” Steve pointed out, because he wasn’t. He probably would be after this round, based on how many 100s Eddie was hitting, but that was all the more reason to try and throw a wrench in the works. “Score, Dust?”

“Steve’s right, actually,” Dustin replied with ease, and Steve couldn’t help but suspect Dustin was trying to help him out. 

Eddie grumbled something unintelligible under his breath, and Steve just chuckled when he dropped his chin to his chest in resignation. Then something in his posture changed, and he looked up at Steve with a dangerous grin. “Why don’t you come show me what I’m doing wrong, then?”

If Eddie thought he’d found the upper hand by suggesting it, Steve couldn’t wait to show that this was exactly what he’d been gunning for. Or maybe they both just wanted to give Steve an excuse to touch Eddie and all of this was just silly pretense. Either way, Steve didn’t care.

He inched up behind Eddie with a crooked smile, and gently put his hands on Eddie’s hips. Then he twisted Eddie back towards himself a bit, until Eddie’s right hip pressed into Steve’s. Steve just barely kept his nose out of Eddie’s hair when he murmured, “Just tilt your hips like this. It's all about finding the right angle.”

Eddie scoffed, but it sounded a little stiff. All the same, he managed to bite back, “You’re not the only one who knows how to use their body, jock.”

The line might’ve given Steve a plethora of ideas of what else Eddie might’ve been able to do with his body, sure. But invoking jock culture also gave Steve a devious idea.

“Fair enough, nerd,” Steve laughed lightly, then smacked Eddie’s ass as if he’d just made a great play on the court. He lingered just for just a moment before he retreated back to his perch beside Dustin. 

Eddie looked mildly scandalized, while Dustin just snickered and gave Steve an appreciative pat on the shoulder. Eddie managed to recover well enough to shake his head with a laugh and throw the ball, but it was the first time he’d missed potting a 100 in several throws.

Steve didn’t do much to contain his self-satisfied smirk.

In the end it was close, but Steve failed to account for the special vampire advantage, and he lost on the last throw. He couldn’t even be bothered to care, because the victory dance Eddie did somehow managed to be both cute and sexy when he wiggled his hips and his shirt rode up a little. 

All-in-all, Steve was willing to consider it a win.

Dustin wanted popcorn next, so Eddie went off to get some while Steve and Dustin wandered around, looking for their next attraction. When they came upon the basketball free throw game, Dustin immediately bounced on his heels and pointed at a giant pink stuffed bear that was hanging there as one of the grand prizes. 

“I have it on good authority that Eddie very much wants that pink bear,” Dustin said, loudly.

“Oh? Did he tell you that psychically?” Steve asked. 

“No,” Dustin grumbled. “I just know him well enough to know he would love it.”

“Good for him,” Steve shrugged. He knew exactly where Dustin was going with this, but Steve was pretty certain it was an impossible ask. Steve had spent a lot of time and trying to win prizes from this game, thinking he’d have an advantage since he was good at actual basketball, but these hoops were too small and the ball never had the right amount of air in it. He could never get the feel of it right, much to the disappointment of several of his former dates. 

“You should win it for him,” Dustin suggested, but it sounded more like an order. 

“Pretty sure that would be weird,” Steve said, instead of addressing the more glaring problem with the fact that he didn’t think he could win it. 

“It would not,” Dusting sighed. “It would be romantic! God. I thought you were good at this stuff.”

“I am,” Steve defended himself weakly. “But these games are rigged anyway. The hoop is too small!”

Dustin opened his mouth to argue some more just as Eddie sauntered up to them both, munching on a giant stick of cotton candy and handing over two bags of popcorn for Steve and Dustin each. Steve had to do a double take.

“What—“ Steve stopped and tried to figure out a polite way to phrase his question about the dietary restrictions of vampires. “Does that even taste like anything to you?”

“Of course it does. Like pure sugar,” Eddie flashed him a toothy grin, showing off his dimples as he did. “It’s like drinking the blood of a Care Bear.”

“Charming,” Steve remarked, but couldn’t keep his grin quite contained. Eddie noticed and only smiled bigger at him. 

“What were we arguing about, dearest family?” Eddie asked, turning to Dustin. 

“Steve doesn’t think he can win the free throw game,” Dustin said immediately. 

“Please,” Eddie scoffed. For a split second, Steve thought he might be taking his side, but then Eddie faced him full on with that same daring smirk. “I’ve seen you play. You can kick that game’s ass.”

Steve appreciated the vote of confidence, but he was too busy getting stuck on the words ‘I’ve seen you play’ to pay it much mind. “You have?” he asked, baffled. “I thought you hated basketball.”

“Um.” Eddie shifted his eyes quickly between Steve and Dustin, apparently realizing he’d admitted something he hadn’t meant to. Dustin had a look of pure glee on his face, and Steve had to admit he was probably nearly as happy in that moment. At some point, Eddie must have decided to roll with it instead of being embarrassed, because he leaned in and rested a hand against Steve’s chest, then said in a low tone, “I do hate it. But I believe in you, Stevie.”

Fuck me, Steve thought. Now he had to win that goddamn bear. 

It took him three rounds—the first to really get a feel for what kind of force he had to toss the ball with, the second to actually use that knowledge and get into a groove, the third to perfect it—but he did, in fact, win the goddamn bear. Eddie and Dustin were both bouncing up and down and cheering him on. 

“How in the hell did you actually manage that?” Eddie asked between cheers, squeezing Steve’s biceps in excitement as he did.

“I thought you believed in me?” Steve asked, playing at being offended. Eddie’s eyes practically sparkled as he opened his mouth to respond, but the kid working the booth interrupted when he flagged Steve down to ask which prize he wanted.

Before he even had a chance to ask and make sure he picked the right one, Eddie leaned into his ear and muttered, “I’d pick that teddy bear, if I were you.”

Dustin overheard it anyway, because he snorted so loud that any astronauts in orbit probably noticed. He didn’t have to say I told you so for Steve to hear it anyway. 

Steve pointed out the pink bear, and once it was in his hands he promptly handed it over to Eddie with a bow and a bit of flourish. 

“For me?” Eddie put his hand flat over his heart and let his eyes go wide. Steve couldn’t help but smirk.

“Couldn’t have won it without you,” Steve said, and Eddie gingerly accepted the bear from him. It was so big it stretched from the top of Eddie’s head to his knees, so he had to wrap his arms all the way around it to wrangle it in. Steve reached out and felt the soft plush of the bear’s fur between his fingertips, making sure to let his knuckles brush against the back of Eddie’s hand as well. He moved a fraction of a step closer and dropped his voice for only Eddie to hear him say, “It just takes a soft touch, is all.”

Steve was close enough to see the way his words made Eddie shiver, but Eddie managed to keep a straight face throughout. 

“I think I’ll name him Lars,” Eddie said, turning back to his bear. 

Steve bit down on a triumphant smile.

They took a long enough break for Steve to force Dustin to eat something resembling real food, before Dustin insisted on going to ride the Ferris wheel next. He practically skipped on the walk over while Steve begrudgingly trudged along behind. Strictly speaking, he didn’t exactly find the concept of a Ferris wheel appealing, and he hadn’t braved getting on one since he was about thirteen.

But by the time they’d already been in line for fifteen minutes, Steve couldn’t really bring himself to stay back and wait for Dustin and Eddie to ride it on their own. This night was going too well, and Steve refused to be a party pooper on account of his fear of heights. He decided the best thing he could do was suck it up and try not to look down. 

Once they were next in line, he thought he’d talked himself down enough to try and enjoy it. Even though it was four to a car, Eddie and Steve were struggling to fit Lars in while Dustin idled behind them. Once they finally did, Eddie plopped onto a bench and Steve sat beside him. To Steve’s surprise, the operator closed the door behind them without Dustin getting in. 

“Wait, where’s Dust—“ Steve started to ask, looking around the platform for Dustin’s Thinking Cap, before it dawned on him exactly what just happened. Again. 

Eddie could only manage a bubbling laugh, probably resigned to the fate of dealing with this kind of shit from Dustin for the rest of their lives. Not only was he not getting on the ride with them, he was absolutely nowhere to be seen.

“He better not have gotten kidnapped,” Steve grumbled. “Because I’m just assuming he’s a little shit and doesn’t actually need help.”

“He’d be an awful person to kidnap,” Eddie said around his laughter. “They’d give him back before they even made a ransom demand on account of his meddling in their personal lives.”

Steve snorted, unable to disagree with that. Instead of getting even more worked up than he already was, he tried to settle in for the ride. He leaned back in his seat and stretched his arm across the backrest, casually resting it against Eddie’s shoulders. “Guess it’s just you, me, and Lars.”

To Steve’s complete surprise, Eddie responded by leaning further into his side just as the wheel started to turn. 

“He’s very invested in our getting along,” Eddie said quietly. 

“Who, Lars?” Steve asked, and Eddie lightly slapped his arm.

“Dustin,” he corrected with a lopsided grin.

Steve held in a scoff, not yet wanting to admit aloud what Dustin was actually trying to do here. Eddie wasn’t stupid, and Steve thought he had to know already—but Steve still wasn’t sure if Eddie was actually open to more than whatever it was they were currently doing.

“Well, to his credit, I think it’s working,” Steve said, unable to keep his hesitance from bleeding into his voice. Last time he’d confidently asserted that he and Eddie were on good terms, he turned out to be very wrong. 

“Oh, it definitely is,” Eddie said, staring at his hands in his lap with a small smile. “In fact I think he’s going overboard. We’re already friends. What more does he want?”

Steve’s mouth went dry as he searched for any answer to that question that wouldn’t leave him caught out. He pretended to clear his throat before saying, “I don’t know. Friendship bracelets?”

“Oooh, or we could wear matching outfits,” Eddie suggested. 

“Yeah? You wanna go through my collection of khakis?” Steve offered. 

“Don’t kill our friendship in its crib, Harrington,” Eddie warned, pointing a finger at Steve’s chest. “Especially not when you’d look much better in my clothes.”

Steve spent a good long pause getting caught up in picturing that in his head, but was abruptly interrupted when the wheel jerked to a stop. 

“Uh…” Steve said, braving a look towards the ground. They were nearly at the top of this thing, and the view alone was starting to make his heart hammer in his chest. He knew sometimes Ferris wheels paused for people to ‘hang around,’ so to speak, but he didn’t think it usually came with a screeching grinding noise. “Is that normal?”

“I—“ Eddie looked down as he was cut off by the sound of the guy in the car below them yelling. 

“What the fuck!” He practically screeched.

“—don’t think so, no.” Eddie finished. Then he looked back at Steve’s face and frowned. “You okay, Stevie? You’re looking a little green.”

“I, uh, don’t exactly love heights,” Steve admitted. Eddie went paler than usual.

“Then why in the fuck did you get on a Ferris wheel?” he demanded.

“Didn’t want to ruin the fun?” Steve tried, only to be met with a truly unimpressed look from Eddie in return. 

“You need to learn to tell people no, my friend,” he chastised, while staring Steve down quite effectively.

“Well I didn’t think the damn thing would get stuck, either!” Steve cried, starting to feel himself panic. Stupidly, he looked out over the edge of the cart again, where he saw the damn child they had operating this thing run off in search of help. Steve dragged his eyes back into the car and stared at his shoes as he felt his breath come in quick, short spurts. 

“Okay, okay. I’m not helping.” Eddie realized aloud. He looked around him, apparently scrambling to come up with some kind of idea to help Steve calm down. He seemed to settle on a course of action when he twisted in his seat to face Steve, and gently tugged Steve’s chin between his thumb and forefinger.

“Look at me,” Eddie prompted, then dropped his hand when Steve did. He almost whined at the loss of contact, until Eddie took both of Steve’s hands in his own instead.  “Don’t look down, don’t look at the horizon, don’t look at anything but me.”

Desperate never to look down again, Steve followed Eddie’s instructions. He focused on Eddie’s eyes, on the deep brown of them that sometimes seemed tinged with amber these days, and the softness with which they regarded Steve in that moment. 

“Good,” Eddie praised. “Now breathe with me. In, two, three, four….out, two, three, four…again.” Steve followed Eddie’s breaths until it seemed like he and Eddie were the only two people that existed, sitting here on top of the world together. He stayed in that presence of mind for as long as he could hold onto it with shaky, desperate fingers. By some miracle, it started to calm him down. 

“Where’d you learn to do that?” Steve asked once he felt like he could speak again. He could still feel the buzz of something excited and a little scared in his veins, but he wasn’t entirely sure that was his fear of heights so much as it was just a side effect of Eddie still gently holding onto his hands. 

“Wayne,” Eddie answered with a faint smile. Steve’s surprise must have shown on his face, because Eddie elaborated. “I used to get panic attacks, especially after I finally moved out of my parents’ house and in with him.”

Steve didn’t have much time to process that information, because now that Eddie seemed satisfied that Steve wasn’t going to hyperventilate, he turned away and started digging around in one of the many pockets in his leather jacket. Steve had been wondering why Eddie’d even worn the thing at all, but then realized he could probably get away with fashion statements without overheating anymore. After another moment of fidgeting, Eddie huffed out a small ‘aha’ and dug a flask out of one of the pockets. He presented it to Steve like it was a prize. “Drink up, big boy. Looks like we’re gonna have to wait here.”

Steve accepted the flask and took a swig, not caring much about whatever might be in it. It turned out to be vodka. 

“Why did you bring a flask if you can’t drink anymore?” Steve asked after taking a gulp. The burn of the vodka at the back of his throat did a lot to make him feel more grounded, despite the fact that he was currently suspended about a hundred feet in the air.

“Thought you might want it,” Eddie shrugged, apparently trying to avoid Steve’s eye. 

Steve thought it was very cute that Eddie thought of him at all, but eventually his brain caught up to the part of that explanation that didn’t quite add up.

“I thought you didn’t know that I’d be here?” Steve tilted his head to try and get a better look at Eddie’s face. The most he could make out was a faint, crooked grin.

“Please,” Eddie scoffed then looked back at Steve. “Henderson is very predictable. I just put on that surprised act to guilt trip him for being a little liar instead of just asking, ‘Hey, wanna go to the fair with me and Steve?’ like a normal person.”

Steve felt a little smug at the admission, but he didn’t rub it in. Instead he said, “Thanks. For bringing it, I mean. It’s helping.”

“Yeah, well.” Eddie scratched the back of his neck. “Technically I owed you a drink. Or a transfusion. And don’t try to tell me that I didn’t need to do that, either.”

Steve pressed his lips together and mimed locking them and tossing the key over the side of the car. Eddie rolled his eyes in an affectionate kind of way and rested his chin in his hand. He never took his eyes off Steve, who took one more swig from the flask before capping it and handing it back over. He needed the liquid courage for his next question. 

“Have you, uh, been eating well? Since?” Steve winced at himself, but he was dying to ask. He tried to lighten his tone a little, at least, by adding, “Or is cotton candy one of the food groups for vampires?”

“Oh, god,” Eddie groaned, but it seemed mostly good-natured. At least Steve hoped it was. “You’re gonna fuss over my eating habits for the rest of time, aren’t you?”

“Probably, yeah.” Steve shrugged and smiled. Eddie cast him a sideways glance and then ran his hands through his hair, fluffing it up in the process. He kept staring forward though, and Steve couldn’t help but miss the eye contact.

“I mean, cotton candy is enough of a nothing food that it won’t make me throw up later,” he said, as if that part of Steve’s question had been serious at all. “But it doesn’t give me much of a sugar high anymore, which is sort of the whole goddamn point.”

“Eddie—“ Steve started, but Eddie cut him off.

“Fine, yes,” Eddie huffed. “I’ve been eating.”

“Good.” Steve nodded, bit his lip, then decided to throw caution to the wind and say what was on his mind anyway. “Because I can—“

“Let’s just call that a one time thing, yeah?” Eddie cut him off again before Steve could even offer to do it again. Was it weird that he wanted to? Eddie seemed to think so, otherwise he wouldn’t have been quite so short about it.

“Oh,” Steve pushed out, his voice sounding pathetic to his own ears. He was sure his face had drooped into something pitiful looking as well. “Okay. If that’s what you want.”

Steve went back to staring at his shoes, but he could feel Eddie’s eyes boring holes into the side of his head. He couldn’t bring himself to look back up, though—at least not until Eddie gently nudged his knee against Steve’s.

“Did you…” Eddie started to ask something, then bit his lip and stopped. Steve returned the knee-nudge to try and encourage him. “Was that something you wanted to do? Again?”

“I mean,” Steve’s voice creaked, and he had to clear his throat again. “Yeah. If you wanted to.”

“No seriously, Steve,” Eddie said. “I’m not asking what I want. This won’t be another ‘sure I’ll ride the Ferris wheel even though I’m terrified’ situation. Do you want to?”

“Yes,” Steve breathed out, not bothering to lie. Robin was really the only other person who ever asked Steve what he wanted most of the time, and hearing it come from Eddie too opened the floodgates. “Is that weird? Because if it is—if it’s too fucked up for you—I understand. Like absolutely no offense would be taken—”

Eddie put a hand on Steve’s arm to get him to stop rambling. Steve chewed the inside of his cheek to keep himself from starting up again, while Eddie took a beat to choose his next words. 

“It’s not too fucked up, Stevie. It’s just the right amount of fucked up, actually.” 

His shy grin made Steve feel like he could fly, but still being trapped up here, the thought kind of made him nauseous. Or maybe those were just the butterflies that were kicking up in his stomach. Either way, he couldn’t stop the dopey grin that spread across his face, like agreeing to let someone drink your blood was the height of commitment. 

It was pretty damn intimate, though, Steve had to admit. 

“Okay then,” Steve nodded, unable to tear his eyes away from Eddie’s. 

“Okay then,” Eddie repeated. They were still incredibly close, even by the standards of the enclosed space they were stuck in. Steve felt the heat of each place their bodies made contact—where Eddie’s hand still rested on Steve’s forearm, where their thighs were pressed together on the narrow bench. Steve watched as the breeze picked up a stray curl and made it dance across the sliver of Eddie’s collarbone that peeked out beneath his shirt. Steve wanted to tuck it behind Eddie’s ear and leave his hand to rest right on Eddie’s neck.

Steve thought this would have been the perfect set up, on Dustin’s part—to the point were Steve wondered if Dustin had actually managed to sabotage the ride himself, somehow. All except for the one detail that threatened to ruin it. They were in public. There was literally nothing Steve could do about the way Eddie was looking at him now, not with so many prying, small-town, small-minded eyes around to catch them out. 

Steve didn’t know if he was more grateful or infuriated that the ride lurched forward in that moment, then began its descent back towards solid ground. 

By the time Steve managed to drag himself out of the car, his knees felt wobbly. He felt Eddie come up behind him and gently put his hands on Steve’s waist to help stabilize him. 

“You alright there, soldier?” Eddie murmured in his ear. Steve gave a stiff nod, curling his toes in his sneakers to try and bring some sense of stability back into his body. 

“I’m good,” Steve assured him. “Don’t forget Lars.”

“As if I ever could,” Eddie huffed out a laugh. Steve felt it against the curve of his neck and had to suppress a shiver. Just as quickly as it had come, Eddie’s presence at his back vanished. He reappeared by Steve’s side a moment later, Lars in hand, and said, “Now. Shall we go find us a Henderson to kill?”

Dustin was full of excuses once they’d found him. He’d said, “I didn’t do it on purpose!” and “I saw a friend I had to say hello to!” so many times that none of the words sounded like English anymore. Eddie and Steve only exchanged a series of exasperated looks over the top of his capped head before giving him more shit for being an incorrigible liar. 

They spent another couple of hours on rides that Steve actually liked, or just wandering around, or listening to Dustin’s lame excuses for ditching them. It was absolutely an improvement over Steve's minor meltdown, but really it was all about Eddie wanting to be sure that Steve was okay to drive home on his own as well. Steve never really felt the effect of the couple of swigs from Eddie’s flask he’d taken at all, beyond the way it helped him feel a little less like he was about to die at the top of a Ferris wheel. 

All the same, it felt strangely nice for Eddie to fuss over him and buy him a funnel cake to be sure.

Eddie offered to take Dustin home since Steve brought him, but Steve only agreed to it once he’d made Eddie promise not to throw the little interloper in the quarry. Then they’d hugged goodbye in a lingering sort of way that made Steve want to scream.

Instead he settled for rolling the windows down and letting the sticky July air come whooshing into the beemer in a rush, blaring I Want to Know What Love Is and singing it at the top of his lungs as he drove home alone.  

Steve called Robin the second he got home. She didn’t answer until the sixth ring. “Hi, Steve.”

“How did you know it was me?” he asked, once again wondering how she always was able to guess.

“Only my favorite platonic soulmate would let it ring that long on a Friday night and still expect an answer,” Robin said. Steve could hear the shrug in her voice.

“Well obviously I was right,” Steve pointed out as he twisted the phone cord between his fingers. “Are you busy?”

“Nope,” Robin sighed. “My favorite platonic soulmate ditched me to hang out with a fifteen year old tonight, if I remember correctly.”

“You said you had plans with Nance!” Steve yelped indignantly. 

“Jesus, calm down. I did, dingus,” she said with a scratchy laugh. “I’m just fucking with you. What’s got you all squeaky?”

“Guess who also just happened to be there, also hanging out with the fifteen year old?” Steve offered.

“Gee, could it have been Eddie?” Robin asked, full of mock surprise.

“It was, indeed,” Steve confirmed, then launched into a rather whiny recap of the events of his evening. When he got to the part about his and Eddie’s little blood pact, though, he hesitated. “I should probably also tell you about something that happened when we were trapped in the closet at your graduation party.”

“Okay…” Robin said, clearly wary. “I thought you already told me all of that?”

“I kind of left out a key part of the story,” Steve hedged. 

“Like?”

“I may have let Eddie…suck my blood. Just a little.” Steve knew enough to pull the phone away from his ear a bit as soon as he stopped talking.

“You WHAT?!” Robin screeched, and Steve knew he’d made the right decision.

“He hadn’t eaten in two weeks, Robin—“

“Get your ass over here right now, Harrington,” Robin cut him off with her sternest tone. “I need details.”

The line went dead before he even had a chance to consider if he wanted to agree or argue with her. Steve sighed and grabbed his keys.

———

Naturally, Robin had about a million questions. By the time Steve thought she’d exhausted them all, it was nearly midnight, and he was sprawled out across her bed feeling completely sorry for himself.

“What am I going to do, Robbie?” he whined. “Eddie is not an idiot. He has to know what Dustin is doing, because he is not subtle.”

“Neither are you, apparently,” Robin deadpanned, and mimed biting her own wrist. Steve pulled a pillow over his face and let out a muffled howl.

“I know,” he agreed once he was done. “I’m a disaster.”

“Well, to be fair, you weren’t subtle before the blood sucking either,” Robin pointed out. Steve hated that she was right about that, too.

“Yeah, well,” Steve stammered his way into an excuse. “That was when I thought he was just fucking with me or playing around. Now he’s got to know I was serious about all of it.”

This time it was Robin’s turn to scream into a pillow. When she emerged, hair mussed and face a little red, she said, “You big baby.”

“Robin,” Steve whined again. “I’m in crisis.”

“Oh my god. Look,” she shifted her posture to sit up straighter, like she was about to level with him, so Steve made sure to pay attention. “If he realizes you’re serious, that’s a good thing. Because then maybe you’ll both stop being assholes and tell each other how you feel instead of whining to your friends about it—“

Robin abruptly cut herself off, and her eyes widened like she’d just let something slip. 

“Rob…” Steve drew out her name in a way that he hoped would make her confess. Her cheeks were turning increasingly more pink, and she refused to look at him. 

“What?” she asked, then bit her lip. 

“What do you know?” Steve asked, sitting up for the first time in probably an hour or more. He hugged the pillow he was still holding to his chest and stared her down. 

“Nothing,” Robin squeaked.

“Robin.” Steve said, and put on his best begging face—the one he knew she could rarely resist.

“Ugh, please don’t look at me like that,” Robin tried to look away from him, but he just kept shifting back into her line of sight.

“I’m going to cry if you don’t tell me what you know,” he threatened.

“Fine!” Robin growled. “Nancy may have told me that she has a similar problem with Eddie whining to her about you. It was very cathartic to talk to someone who understands what idiots you two are, honestly.”

Steve gave himself a good minute to process what Robin had just said, because he was pretty sure his brain was audibly making a whirring sound. 

“…Whining about me how, exactly?” Steve said, when finally managed to ask a follow-up question. 

“The same way you whine about him! About how he’s totally into you, but keeps worrying that you’re gonna realize that and hate him!” Robin exploded this time. Probably a little too late, Steve wondered if her parents were home. “Because of the fucking popsicle, of all the damn things!”

“The popsicle?” Steve asked in a tiny, dumbstruck, yet hopeful voice. “Why?”

“Because for most of the day you were flirting your ass off, but after that you avoided him all night,” Robin explained. “And now you’ve been dancing around each other without admitting you want him for weeks.”

“I only avoided him after that because I was so…” Steve paused to look for the right word, “affected by it.” 

“That’s what I told Nancy. And that’s what Nancy told Eddie. But I’m pretty sure he’s gonna have to hear it from you, dingus.”

Steve thought about that for what was probably too long to be considered a natural pause in the conversation, but Robin humored him and waited patiently while he digested all of it. It made sense, since Eddie pulled away after the pool party, and then seemed to be under the impression that Steve was afraid of him again until the closet incident. 

Goddamnit, Steve was such an idiot sometimes. 

“It felt like if we weren’t surrounded by people earlier—“ Steve trailed off, feeling his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth as he tried to push the words out. Robin poked him in the side and urged him on. “I don’t know. It felt like we might’ve kissed, if we were alone. Or if we were a boring straight couple.”

“See?” Robin immediately shifted from exasperated to bouncing with some kind of optimistic glee. “He’s into you. Clearly. He literally wants to eat you. Just do something about it.”

“Just do something about it,” Steve repeated it like a mantra. 

“Yes,” Robin agreed. “But do something about it tomorrow. Because we have to work the morning shift and we should go to bed. I washed your PJs from the last time you stayed over.”

“Aren’t your parents here?” Steve asked, though he already knew the answer.

“Oh sure,” Robin scoffed and rolled her eyes. “I regularly scream about my friend the vampire and his sad little bisexual boyfriend for my parents to hear. Of course they’re not here, Steve. They’re out of town.”

“Alright, alright,” Steve held his hands up in retreat. “Just checking.”

Long after Robin had fallen asleep beside him, Steve laid awake with images of amber brown eyes and Ferris wheels turning in his head. When he finally drifted off, it was with a newfound sense of hope. 

I know I probably don’t have to point out that it’s unwise to do a shot of vodka, have a panic attack, and then drive, even if you do have a vampire to buy you a funnel cake and make you walk it off. But I’m pointing that out anyway. Anyway, next update is gonna be a double chapter. Take from that what you will!

[tunashei]

First impressions of Animoprhs!

I'm listening to the Animorphs series while I work, through Animorphs Aloud - a fan made reading of the series. Here are my first impressions/random thoughts about them! Spoilers below if you haven't read them.

Book 7: The Stranger

I often think how you'd REALLY react if you were faced with something paranormal or magical, because it wouldn't just be the monster or ghost or superhero you have to contend with - but your entire knowledge of the universe flipping on it's head. Legit consider how insane you'd go if you found out monsters were *really* real. And they do this to a random person in the start of most books! Ha.

Kind of surprised they consider a human-alien relationship with any sort of seriousness. How progressive. But then there's been a few hints towards Rachel liking Tobias and he's...a bird. Rachel is very open minded.

Somehow I have my doubts Rachel will move away. The clue is the 47 books that come after this.

Man I feel for Tobias, having to spend the rest of his life as a hawk while potentially watching his friends move on. It's not like he can make new friends. Also how long does he even live? Does he have a hawk lifespan now of 10-15 years?

Rachel wants more firepower and she skips the POLAR BEARS? GIRL. Those things are fucking terrifying! Though I did do a bit of research and turns out when Polar Bears and Grizzlies compete for food it's usually the Polar Bears that leave.

Also I have a hard time believing a bear has more 'firepower' than an elephant. Bit easier to move around and get into places as a bear though.

Still can't get over the frequent use of the slang 'hooked up' to mean meeting. Very different meaning nowadays.

The mental image of them fitting pretty much a centaur into a dressing room is very funny.

Wow. Stopping time definitely blindsided me. This Ellimist is like a god?? Was not expecting that.

The descriptions when the Ellimist is showing off the beauty of earth make me very sad I will likely not get to experience it. It's so sad to know coral reefs exist out there, beauty unparalleled, and you can't simply go and see them. Not without money. It's a cruel joke that we're placed on such an amazing planet and yet how little of it we'll see.

Man this is a genuinely tough decision. I really like Cassie's perspective, that humans are now the endangered animals potentially rejecting the one thing that could save them. Honestly if what seemed like a literal god told me the fight is unwinnable I'd probably give in and tell them to take me to a new planet.

Aaaand now the kids are getting eaten alive. I LOVE the amount of traumatising scenarios in these books. Main reason I started em. Feel a bit bad for the Taxon, imagine eating some innocuous snack and it swells up and bursts you from the inside.

Ax has a thing for cutting off people's arms.

You're the second largest carnivore on land Rachel, Polar Bears got you beat.

Also Rachel totally just murdered a bunch of human people.

Now...time travel? Hm not a big fan of time travel.

Damn the Yeerks invested in free, superfast and wide-covering public transport? I'd vote for them.

This is why I don't like time travel. Is it deterministic? Can it be changed? Boggles the mind. The implication is they refuse the Ellimist's offer and stay and fight, and lose, and Rachel becomes a controller. But why would Ax being there mean the future has changed? Did future-Rachel lie about there being six humans to Visser-Three? Why?

PFFFF I'm sorry but as horrifying as the idea of them killing and consuming Tobias after being infected and turned into controllers is, it's also like Disney-level villainy.

If this is the future and it can be changed, why can't Visser-Three kill them? Sure he wouldn't have controller Rachel so the future would be different but the goal of invading would work?

Well this is looking bleak.

I wonder who is keeping Ellimists in check that they even need rules.

Surprisingly quick and efficient mission! And that's the end of that one. A bit confusing, but I wonder if the Ellimist stuff will get clearer later on.

[mewmedic]

A Deal with the Devil

Someone on the Lolita fashion subreddit asked what we can do about newbies who do not know how to find clothes outside of (the well documented scam site) Devil Inspired. I wrote the following in response and thought it was worth cross posting here.

To be very blunt: most people are too illiterate to read pinned posts (even though that should just be basic reddit etiquette) and too lazy to move their eyes to the area of their screen where there is a link to a guide that answers their questions. You can't fix stupid at a certain point, once people get stuck in their ways.

Really, the only action we could do would be to change the subreddit banner image at the top to say "PLEASE DON'T BUY FROM DEVIL INSPIRED. READ A GUIDE ON HOW TO BUY FROM TAOBAO." We probably need a pinned post saying the same thing in the title, with an explanation of taobao in the body and links to some guides. That may be absurd, but I truly think its the only bullet we have left in the chamber. Even then, most people will ignore it. It really sucks that this subreddit has become the Devil Inspired Customer Service Hotline.

There are just too many people (some millennials but especially zoomers) who lack the ability to use the internet properly. With the "enshittification" of google, people now expect human beings on reddit to answer every single one of their lingering thoughts. But let's be real, the "let me google that for you" situation existed for a decade before google started to suck. Devil Inspired is the first result when googling lolita fashion because they pay to have good SEO and be at the top. Most people are not internet savvy enough to google "[store name] scam" or "[storename] alternatives" when they encounter a new store online. That's not even getting into Devil Inspired shoving sponsor bucks down influencer's throats so they can vomit advertisements back out onto their naive audience.

I understand why a normal western person would know nothing about taobao. However, anyone with intermediate internet experience should be able to tell that Devil Inspired does not manufacture the clothes they sell. No one makes that wide of a variety of styles that quickly, plus the wide variety in photography styles (and they sometimes forget to hide the original store's watermark.) Next, they should know to reverse google image search photos from Devil Inspired's catalogue. Their last resort should be to go to the "find this dress" pinned post on this subreddit. Then, if they discover there that the dress is from a taobao store they could just google "how to buy from taobao." But they don't do any of these things because the average internet user does not know they can.

Just a few days ago we had some one here ask to be spoonfed information about gothic lolita, something they could easily find themselves. When some one kindly gave them a link to the lolita wiki, the OP had the nerve to complain because they don't like Fandom wikis. I fucking hate Fandom and have a personal beef with them, but I wouldn't complain about being spoonfed information for free from there. That person will never comprehend why people created fandom wikis in the past and they definitely won't understand why it's very hard to leave Fandom wikis. I am including this recent experience to illustrate why Devil Inspired is not the only problem here, people's attitudes just plain suck some times.

TLDR: We are fighting an unwinnable battle against people's illiteracy, refusal to learn, and Devil Inspired's fat stacks of marketing cash.

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

Reading the detailed, evidence-based, popular-support policy platforms that Cornell West and Jill Stein have posted and feeling the kind of deep soul crushing grief that comes with having spent the last like 30 years watching these two people offer genuinely solid, middle of the road center-left policies that literally every opinion poll suggests the whole country likes regardless of party affiliation, and all they get for it is being treated like laughing stocks by all sides of the political spectrum as if that isn't LITERALLY the fucking problem we are having politically

Like. We just insist that 3rd parties could never win but these are literally the policies we keep begging the major dual party system to support so like. Why the fuck would they support things WE THE VOTERS keep reinforcing as "unelectable"

Like

We could all just vote for the policies we believe in even if we think it won't win because god what a nightmare that basic humanity is considered unwinnable. We could just reward the politicians who actually HAVE the policies we want.

This too is purity politics, the idea that there's no point voting what you believe because it's not popular enough even though we all know it is.

Honestly, this, more than any other year, is a time to challenge this. A time to say "you do not get to be president if you were in political power during a genocide" by rejecting BOTH PARTIES on the premise that will force us to accept the genocide as inevitable. We can tell them that, no, in fact, it isn't, and anyone who claims otherwise is barred from power.

I wish I believed that when I tell people to "vote their conscience" in the ballot box, they actually did that on the basis of the candidates policy platforms, not on the basis of who they're "supposed" to vote for.

Anyway, here are some people running for president who AREN'T either Trump or Harris, and specifically, links to their policy platforms/proposals. I no longer give a fuck what anyone does with their vote this year because I cannot have an opinion and remain sane in this fucking world, but I **can** say that if you vote for a candidate without comparing their policies to their opponents in the race, then I would genuinely rather you have chosen not to vote at all. To walk into the polling station and vote based on social pressure or vibes or feelings or threat without having done a single goddamn mote of research into who in the race is offering what is just.

It's an abdication of responsibility.

Don't care if you read them all and decide your favorite one is different from mine. I don't care if you read them all and prefer the same one but won't be voting for them. I don't even care if you read them all and don't understand what any of them are saying and go with your social-pressure/vibe/external pressure candidate from before you looked into it! But for the love of god, at least pretend to give a fuck what you are voting against let alone what you're voting for.

There will be policies on these lists that make you as afraid as Trump's will, and policies on these lists that are probably exactly what you've wished a president would run on for years. I don't actually expect to mobilize a real 3rd party movement on Tumblr of all places, but seriously, why aren't we asking more questions about what "is and isn't" possible in a USA political election? Why aren't we challenging the manufactured consent when we know full well from decades of polls that policies like medicare for all aren't only GENUINELY uncontroversial and near universally supported once you take people's political trigger words out of the proposal, but also about what a fucking laughing stock it makes us as a nation that seeks to beat and bully and control around the globe thinks one of the mosy globally popular, generally centrist, and effective to implement human wellfare policies in goddamn history?

How much longer are we going to let our politicians lie to us that it's too dramatic an ask for us even though 80% of the goddamn world has already been managing it for years or decades or generations??? How much longer are we willing to knowingly vote for people who don't support our interests "because they'll win" as if we've ever actually given ourselves a fair shake election for such a thing to be inherent truth rather than inflicted oppressive reality.

I dunno. If you're going to vote for someone who's going to sell you out in 2 years or less, at least give yourself the chance to see it coming and plan ahead, goddamn.

[valeriefauxnom]

Euden's Moral Confusion of Self

Let me introduce this rant/analysis (rantnalysis?) in a more humorous way: did you know that the act Euden did for the circus event never was specified? No, it never was, but I have a pretty good guess what he excels at: mental gymnastics!

Jokes aside, Euden had a very... robust set of tendencies that were not quite so healthy, and sometime in the future I'll probably go over more of 'em. First, though, I'm attempting to tackle his deceptively-poor self-image. Of course, long post ahead!

To start framing what I'm getting at, I'd like to cite the scene I used in a previous rant, wherein Euden declares his efforts to continue the path he's pursuing 'selfish.'

It's a very small footnote of his overall character, but it is consistent. He, in short, has flipped his (well-known) tendencies toward self-sacrifice and otherwise protecting other people from a 'virtue' to a 'vice'. We can see this in anything from Jurota's to Mitsuhide's stories, the latter wherein he wins her otherwise unwinnable game by framing his act of saving villagers as 'selfish' instead of 'selfless' to beat Mitsuhide's "no acting for others' sake rule" in her Uprising Game.

Taken to its logical extreme, this means that pretty much all those times Euden was being recklessly selfless or otherwise sacrificial, he himself views it as a completely selfish action. There is something to be said, in that he's not entirely incorrect: he is acting because acting that way makes him feel good/reaffirms his moral code, but past a certain point this view is...harmful.

For Euden also outright will raise a rare criticism to those being selfish to the point of endangering others. It is a 'bad' thing to be selfish in his mind, especially when it starts endangering others, and understandably so. I think largely that's a view many cultures share.

Still, it is a twisted little part of a psyche when you can frame any degree of self-sacrifice as being selfish in my view. In what probably will be another rant/analysis someday, Euden seems to have a lot of trouble with identifying himself as his own person, on his own merits, even before Nedrick entered the picture. Even in a bit of a lighthearted note, he rarely identifies himself as a prince or otherwise someone held in esteemed position very quickly, often leading to miscommunication and surprise on many people's behalf to learn that this teenager is actually lord of the land, like Elisanne experienced first when she took him as Zethia's manservant.

But I digress. The end result of that is the same: Euden seldom voices thoughts about himself as a person, but even rarer are positive ones, and this is a prime example of it. He's cultivated an self-image of mediocrity, 'nothing special', and with him flipping 'virtue' to 'vice' with his extraordinary (say, supernatural) selflessness, he can't even take some esteem in "I think I'm kind/generous/good at giving back" we might throw around in a 'introduce yourself to the class' introduction.

We can see the overall message I'm trying to get across plain in Gala Leif's story. Here's two notable highlights for my ideas:

(Oh, Luca, yes they do have 'unique personalities', and they're all their own unique messes. I love them, though, disasters that they are.)

Ahem. Here, Euden lays out plain that he views his desire for a future to be built without sacrifices and making everyone happy as selfish, himself as arrogant instead of kind, and otherwise unremarkable in any other sense.

All in all, though, this starts to paint a sad picture. What good qualities Euden does have, he flips to negative attributes instead (Selflessness=selfishness, developed sense of right/wrong/kindness=arrogance, etc) and what negative attributes he does have are kept as-is, and neutral attributes are viewed as standard for anyone and not something that should be praised (he sometimes flips 'positive' to 'neutral' attributes instead, though, sometimes attributing his selflessness to nothing special or something expected of everyone).

So...yeah. Euden doesn't hint to it often, but he's got a bit of a twisted view regarding himself, something I'm sure has no negative repercussions in any other aspect of his life...(not foreshadowing at all, no, no...) He goes beyond modesty and into self-deprecation. Even worse, he has it perfectly straight when it comes to dealing with other people. Self-sacrifice is a virtue, even if it was done out of duty or pride, etc. This mess of morality is all for him and him alone. And that's kinda messed up.

If you've stuck around this long, though, thank you! I hope I'm not spamming the tag or anything. I guess all this new access to be able to articulate my many non-fanfic thoughts on Dragalia where people will actually understand them has been too tempting of late! I'd also like to reiterate that I'm always down to discuss Dragalia (I miss it!), so if you've questions/comments/rants you want to ask about it (or Tales of the Abyss, a lot of other JRPGs I'm not listing here, or my fanfics) feel free!

[thefreakandthehair]

Oh, sorry! That was meant for the softball fic. The epilogue you posted on here made it seem like there was a strong probability it wasn't mutual, that Steve didn't feel the same as Eddie, that it was just a temporary fling for Steve. And that made me sad so I had to ask.

oh gosh, I’m sorry if that was confusing at all? if there’s anything specific in the epilogue that made it read that way, please let me know so that I can fix that up! but I’ll clear it up here as well! (spoilers for rounding third, sliding home below the cut)

Steve’s breakdown in his POV chapter I thought was super duper clear that he’s just as ass over ankles in love as Eddie, plus him alluding to Eddie that he loves him before he leaves. it was never a FWB situation. Steve refers to him as his boyfriend when talking with Robin before he leaves, and he even tells Hopper that they were together “with feelings.” not to mention his whole conversation with Tommy about how he met someone back home and fell for him. 💕

but in the epilogue, Steve goes back to Indiana in the off season to spend time with Eddie and help him get ready because he’s moving out to California with Steve permanently, they’re getting ready for the banquet together, and Steve says in the speech:

“The Steve Harrington who left California in February came back with a renewed sense of hope, a better sense of himself as a person, and entirely, head over heels in love. And as much as my regimen of physical rehab helped with my injury, being in love has helped me heal some other aspects of myself that I didn’t realize were getting in the way of my full potential until they weren’t anymore.”

and then:

“And to Eddie, who’s walked this recovery with me from day one. Your love and encouragement and warmth held me up when things felt impossible, when it felt like the game we were playing was truly unwinnable. We both know now that it’s never unwinnable. I hope that I make you at least half as proud as you make me every single day. I love you more than you’ll ever know.”

he’s definitely in love, Steve says it very publicly, they’re very much together, and they live happily ever after! hope that clears it up!

[hellokittyshinkansen]

My most intense TTTE headcanon is one that barely relates to canon. It is as follows:

"Well-adjusted newbuild" is an oxymoron.

Some do better than others, sure, but when you're playing resurrectionist, some sort of trauma to someone is almost inevitable. The little narrow gauge lads who are basically just a new [x] in the family tend to take it better, 'cos they're in this little preserved bubble where the inter-engine culture hasn't necessarily changed that much- there's been a great and terrible upheaval, and everyone bears those scars, but there's a comfort in running routes that have stayed the same for centuries. the likes of Tom Rolt (Talyllyn no.7) and Corris 7 tend to have a bit of time to get their bearings before they're eased into knowing about The Horrors.

Straight replicas of a specific engine have it harder, even if there's still classmates knocking about, especially if there's only ONE classmate. They're effectively imperfect clones, and while that's not as uncanny-valley as it would be to a human, I think a lot of their relatives still wouldn't like it. Perhaps a stronger effort would be made to find common ground there, to let the personality of the newbuild make them distinct from the original in one's memories, but the oddness would probably never quite fade.

And then you have your full on Jurassic-park situations, your Steam Into History no.17s and T1s (pending completion) and Tornadoes. Those are... divisive. Opinion varies from "spit in the face of the originals" to "resource-draining leech taking time and money from restorations" to "Vapid showboat with no culture or common sense" but are rarely good. They're also brought into the world pretty much alone- no railway, no classmates, no nada. Thus begins an unwinnable and inevitable process of "proving" themselves, which happens one hard-won opinion at a time rather than as a general shift in culture. There's the constant need to perform to several different expectations at once, AND the under-socialisation from essentially lacking a family, AND the obvious angst of being physically part of a group you're culturally outside of. Healthy!

[rat-pagi]

Kaleesh Week Day 5 - Wives

Downtime between battles leaves Vekka jai Kandakis (that is, Qy's adoptive grandmother) and her lovers with some time to spend together.

Well, without people shooting at them, anyways. (Vekks is the one in the middle, the one at her left is...maybe Rallia? And idk the name of the one sitting below her, but I'll call her Mechanist for now)

Vekka jai Kandakis! I think I've spoken on Qy's grandmother once before, but she's a a bit different in the weird little AU I've got going on for Kalee. For one, she's fighting the Yam'rii, not the Bitthævrians (though the Bitthævrians are on the Yam'rii's side, and inter-planetary politics, etc. etc.), and she's more or less, the victor, driving them off of Kalee for...well, at least a little while (eventually, they get trickier, then come back at about the time Qy is born). So how does that happen? And who the heck is Kandakis anyways? She was born the heir to the jai clan, back before the jai clan was a big deal (that actually could probably be attributed to her more than anyone else), and most of the Kaleesh alliances were formed. Kalee was under attack and the Yam'rii were, by all accounts, winning. When she's in her late teens, her father is killed in a largely unwinnable battle and she takes on leadership of the clan. Haunted by his death, which she had been there to see, the already intense young khan starts a relentless, terrifyingly well-planned campaign against the Yam'rii and does what no one one had managed yet-- to win. And then win again. With each success, narrow as they often were, other clans started to turn to the jai for leadership in the chaos and atrocity of this invasion, forming the first kolkpravis. With the diplomatic bonds, however, came the need for generals, and with generals came, for the first time in Kandakis' life, comrades. Some of whom, like the two women in the image above, she loved.

As more and more of Kalee came together (excepting some isolationists, such as Aschal-Kalee, home of the San clan), the khan--now khagan--'s victories continued, and they managed to push the insectoid colonists from their base on the equator of the planet, and into their last and largest stronghold Ti'rrinoa in one of the small islands between the southern Tarili islands and Grendaju to the south. This, at last, earned the khagan the name she is best known by-- Kandakis, or, "favored one", as the intervention of the dead was said to have played no small role in her ability to re-take almost all of Kalee, and moreover with no losses among her spouses and closest generals. Yet this was soon to change. The kolkpravis mounts its first assault on Ti'rrinoa, yet this time, the Yam'rii had prepared, and, sending a desperate message to their homeworld, secured a small star destroyer from the Republic which fires upon the Kaleesh forces. The loss of life is immense, and includes, not just one but all of Kandakis' spouses. She has known grief-- known it many times before, but not in this magnitude. When she looks up at the sky and sees not the stars, but the ship that stole her lovers' lives, she vows, quietly, below her breath. to burn the entire stronghold to the ground. The plan, in some ways, is simple. She surrenders herself to the Yam'rii, knowing well that they will bring her before their leaders on their homeworld for execution-- from a shuttle that departs from the destroyer above. If she looses her bonds-- and she does-- she can fight her way to the bridge and, should the gods grant her this one last favor, send the entire ship crashing into the stronghold below. It's an act of sacrifice, yet in some ways also a rejection of her own life-- for Kandakis does not know how to start again, after the loss of those who she had loved for so many years. And yet-- the gods grant her one more favor than she wanted, asked for-- she survives. Rising from the wreckage, she rejects the role of khagan, the aftermath of the war, even her name, for Kandakis seems but a cruel joke after all she has endured. Instead, she takes the name Kull-- the Kaleesh term for the dead that wander, unable to reach their kin in the stars--and returns to the steppes she had once grown up on, hoping to find some solace in their stark beauty. Instead, she meets a young Kaleesh, angry at the world, and far, far too eager to be a part of the ashes of her life.

(Also, tagging @zyanova-- I know you mentioned you'd be interested in hearing more about Kandakis and I am late but it is here at last Hope you enjoy it!)