#ruling that communities can do whatever the fuck they want to the homeless

[wuhoh]

The presidential debate was fucking bonkers

Actual thing that happened:

Biden, decaying, barely holding on to life: Hamas is the only one who wants the war to continue. They are genocidal terrorists

Trump, with an elbow drop: No, wrong actually. Israel wants the war to keep going, not Hamas. Plot twist - I'm all for it. Let Israel genocide Palestine.

We are soooo cooked I cannot believe it

[swampgallows]

there is absolutely no world in which i would ever tell people not to vote. voting is a hard-won right, esp if you're a woman or black or indigenous or any other person of color. i just think more can be done in terms of getting involved in your community and local politics than ticking a box once every four years and acting like that's going to magically cascade down to every other concern and inequity you have.

especially the 'vote blue no matter who' shit. because i live in california we have plenty of blue bitches on the ballot and some of them are drastically underqualified for the position, or they hold views that completely contradict any sort of good they might be doing, or theyre just republicans rebranded with a blue coat of paint. for instance something EXTREMELY common is that theyll toot their horns on womens rights and gay rights (considered "radical" compared to The Opposition, hoping they can coast on that bare fucking minimum) then perpetuate the narrative about being "tough on crime" and nimby-ass "cleaning up the streets", because obv california has a huge homeless crisis. no candidate is 100% perfect but when people vote based on "blue" and vibes and not even looking at a candidate's endorsements regardless of party i would also consider that throwing your vote away.

voting consciously is HARD and can be convoluted but people crowing about doing their civic duty and then at the same time acting like voting is this totally mindless flippant process that you do once every couple of years and then forget about only contributes to people being completely tuned out of their civil and social existence. it's no wonder so many people readily adopt the 'vax and relax' mentality for covid and believe that anyone else saying "actually things are still incredibly shitty" is some kind of dissident shrew rather than the person being most brutally fucked by everyone else's apathy.

im in this headspace because ive been reading how to survive a plague and about the GRUELING effort that queer people (particularly gay men) had to endure, both from external sources and infighting within their own community, to get people to stop fucking dying and the people in power to ACKNOWLEDGE let alone actually treat the disease. the fact that someone reblogged a post from me and was lauding fauci on it for his contribution to aids research is so deeply contrasted from the years of paternalistic rejection from fauci described in the book, not to mention the petty squabbling over fucking patents and jingoism between gallo and the french over 'who discovered aids' and the decision to use the faulty american tests over the more accurate french ones. people dying by the fucking thousands, over 65% of ALL men in new york at the time being actively infected with the virus, and suits were arguing about fucking stocks and citations. jesus christ.

basically just.. i think it's naiive to believe that these people actually care about you. they dont. they want your "vote" so they can continue to do whatever they need to in order to stay in power. and every time you vote you're saying "i agree with this", even if there are parts you dont agree with. but if you never voice your disagreement and mobilize to take action on it, your silence will ALWAYS be considered tacit acceptance by the ruling class and your peers. so this idea that we cant even VOICE our concerns without being decried as fascists or trump supporters or "letting the terrorists win" is legitimately not democratic.

[aforeverunfinishedproject]

There are only two classes: Working Class, and Ruling Class.

Unless you have the kind of money that allows you to influence politics and get legislation passed that is favorable to you/your "industry", you are working class.

You take the side of the capitalists because you've acquired a level of economic comfort that the average citizen can only dream about, and that has lulled you into a false sense of security. To you, you're at least middle class, if not upper-middle class - but there's no such thing. Not really. You see yourself as "one of them", even if your money doesn't buy politicians, but you're not one of them. You're one of us, and you're just working for them like a good little boot-licker. You're fooling yourself if you think they won't eventually come for you too.

You applaud, or at the very least "look the other way" as they bulldoze the lowest earners into insecure housing, homelessness, and when they get desperate and hopeless enough, into prisons. You think that will never be you, but it is you. It's you, right now. Your prisons are fancier than those scary ones with bars on the windows. You rake yourself over the coals to afford to buy your way into your fancy prison, and tether yourself to a lifetime of indentured servitude to pay off mortgages and loans and car payments. You welcome the push towards a cash-free society because the all-encompassing they will never use your dependence on digital money to cut off your access (such child-like naivete). They've been cutting access to resources slowly but surely for everyone else, but they'll never come for you, right? Why not? What could possibly stop them from shoveling you into the new "slave class" when the time comes and when there are none of us left to fight for you?

You welcome a world where you can buy your groceries from home, and never speak to your neighbours, never stopping to wonder why we're being driven further and further towards becoming a society of islands. Individualized, isolated, insulated... Community is the greatest power of the people and we're getting to a point where "community" will cease to exist in any kind of meaningful way. Too tired to put the effort in to organize. Stretched too thin to make time for social and/or community engagement. Too insulated and suspicious of everyone else to be able to trust that anyone out there could possibly actually be honest. You're told in a thousand different ways every day that everyone else wants what you have, and that they'll take it in any way they can, so you have to protect it. Keep everyone else out.

The day will come when they do come for everything you have, but it won't be the people you've been taught to suspect and avoid. It'll be the ones whose asses you've spent your life kissing in hopes of some day joining them at their table. There was never a place for you there, and there never will be.

Some of you know it, already. Deep down in your gut, you're starting to realize it. You've felt it. The "pinch" that people in your "social class" were never supposed to have to experience. Grocery anxiety was reserved for "the poors" before, but here you are, worried about the cost of meat, and cheese, and fucking lettuce. You were comfortable, and now you have to tighten your belt a bit... and maybe you're telling yourself that it's not so bad, or that it'll get better, or whatever you need tell yourself in order to keep believing that social classes are not just false constructs designed to keep the Working Class from organizing against the Ruling Class. You're so desperate to keep believing that you're of a certain class that you're just going to lay down and suck it up and keep taking the pinch. It's just a pinch, right? Yeah. It's a pinch that's going to tighten more and more and more. Capitalism is relentless. It cannot thrive without infinite growth, and infinite growth is not possible without infinite shrinkage on the other end. That's you, now. The shrinkage has reached you, and it'll keep squeezing you until it reaches everyone.

And those who aren't feeling it yet? They will. Unless they have the kind of wealth that buys space ships and 100-year fallout bunkers and political influence, they're gonna feel it too... And when the wealthiest of the Working Class finally feel the pinch, it'll be too late for all of us.

[thelocalconstellation]

I'm gonna LOSE MY MIND why has my dash been littered with posts about terfs or infighting in the queer community again or people just generally being shitty to other people online.

I promise you. It costs nothing for you to not be an asshole. No. Come back. Listen to me. Here are the life rules I play by. You can follow em if you want to.

1) You cannot be angry forever. I suppose you can, actually, there's just very little point to it. Also it makes you generally unpleasant. Life is in fact much nicer if you can tone down the grudge.

2) you can't be afraid forever. Not everybody in the world is Out To Get You. I promise. Nobody ever said that the things that are worth it will be easy or not scary.

3) Is what they are doing actively infringing on your safety and general wellbeing? Is it going to? And I do not mean are you going to have to be in the vicinity of something uncomfortable for a little while I mean are you going to be injured/killed/traumatized by this? No. Not maybe. Not could. A very determined goose could break into a hospital and unplug all the life support equipment. That does not mean it is going to, and it does not mean we have to kill all the geese. Calm down.

If the answer to the questions posed in number 3 is no, fuckit. Let em do whatever. The fun of being a sentient being includes getting to play the daily game of fucking around and testing if we get to find out. Let em find out.

Rule three boils down to Do what you want, forever and ever (provided that you are ensuring that others are also answering no to the above questions.)

4) Take responsibility for your actions. As said in 3, fuck around, find out. It's how we learn! But y'know. If you play stupid games (fork in electrical outlet) you're going to win a stupid prize. (Explosion)

5) no, the world isn't fair. No, the world isn't nice. You don't need to be either. You should still be expected to play civil. It's known as the act of learning when to keep your mouth shut. No, you don't need to give the homeless guy spare change. It'd be nice, and you might be making the world a little more fair, but the least you can do is not harass them.

6) do not attribute to malice what could simply be stupidity. Every single person on this earth has a list of stupid shit they've done. Yes that includes you. If somebody does something that drives you up the wall, there are a few options that do not include it being an action they took Specifically to piss you off. I repeat. The rest of the world is not out to get you.

7) when shit does hit the fan, you are allowed to be upset about it. Doesn't mean you're allowed to be an asshole about it.

8) fuckit, we ball. Nobody knows what's going on at any given moment. There is no manual to adulting. There is no instruction booklet for life. If you don't know what's going on, fuckit, we ball. Roll with it for now, avoid any big rocks on the path, fuckit. More often than not, it's really kinda not worth the hassle.

9) life is too short to spend being an asshole. If you want to dedicate your life to being a little hater, feel free, but it's just sad dude.

As for an end note, I am consistently surprised by the point of being human constantly being used to say why the shitty systems we find ourselves in won't change. I dunno how to explain this but we have opposable thumbs, creativity, and resources. Wouldn't it be cool if we could stop fighting for a hot second and go to space instead. We can defy gravity and put a man on the moon, we can tap away on a funny little screen and instantly send a message to somebody across the world, we can backtrack so hard from putting a hole in the ozone layer. I am suggesting that next on our list of cool shit, we start calling people who are intent on keeping this discrimination circus going cowards. The only reason to deny human rights, to deny a fair wage, to deny people bodily autonomy, to fail to be at least a little more environmentally conscious is cowardice and pride. Like. What do they think is gonna happen if they don't buy a 73rd yacht and pay their employees fairly? Oooo noooo they're gonna buy a carton of eggs, god forbid they save up enough to pay rent?

Also the bible is a book written several hundred years ago and has been translated 70 million times. As far as I'm concerned, human bias is inescapable. If it's not the purest form of it capable of existing then you are not reading the word of god you're reading the word of a man with a shiny hat who had people whipped for wearing a colour beyond their social rank.

[astheshadowslovethecastle]

Yo, another Canadian from outside Ottawa here. I hope those protester people stop doing such things to you and your neighbours. It's disrespectful enough that they were honking their horns constantly and filling the place unmasked.

But it's a whole other level of vile that they are pulling down other people's masks. If they feel like wearing masks is a freedom issue, they still shouldn't be pulling off other people's masks; that's hypocrisy. Plus, for all they know, the people they are pulling masks off of could be immunocompromised or something. They seem to have no true consideration for others.

I hope they leave your city alone soon. I don't know if there's much I can do to help, but the situation you Ottawa folks are in sucks.

Honestly it's so frustrating.

Like, this is the capital, we have protests, that's a totally normal if sometimes inconvenient thing, so whatever, you deal. People have a right to protest. But this isn't a real protest, this is just a neo nazi street party. Like this isn't even the right capital for most of the things they want changed, that's mostly provincial regulations, but they are too fucking stupid to know that. And also what they want changed is terrible like fuck off, it's OPPRESSION to get a potentially life saving vaccine to protect yourself and others? You can still choose not to get it you just need to isolate this isn't the end of the world. You call yourself a patriot for wanting the right to infect your fellow citizens with a potentially deadly virus?? Really??? Go to hell.

What's also really irritating is that it is taking attention away to real ways our governments let us down in handling this plague - easy to blame shitty antivaxxers since they are incredibly shitty and also mostly white supremacists but ALSO the government has been defunding hospitals for decades, CERB was inadequate at best and cancelled while the plague is still here, CEWS had nothing to prevent execs from taking it for themselves to give extra bonuses while the rest of us got screwed, testing is next to impossible to get in Ontario now, schools are incredibly unsafe since there is nothing the conservatives like better than defunding education except maybe defunding health care like...antivaxxers are selfish garbage and I despise them but they are not the main reason people are still getting sick.

And most of what they are doing is waaaay more about harassing the residents than it is about bugging politicians. People have this image of Ottawa as being a bunch of privileged bureaucrats and government workers - bitch these are not the people living downtown in shitty one bedroom apartments. These are not the literal teenagers working retail being screamed at and getting death threats for enforcing mask rules. The only people downtown are the people who live there and the ones who can't do remote work and can't afford to miss work as well as many of the homeless, but the convoy doesn't care about that they literally swarmed a soup kitchen and stole food supposed to feed our most vulnerable residents. And even then the mall and a bunch of shops are closed and people are losing their pay many of whom probably can't afford that. The people that are their image of Ottawa are working remote from the suburbs; it's the rest of us that have to deal with these assholes.

And the city has basically rolled out the welcome wagon for them - like, I'm not saying break out the water cannons and brutalise these nazis they way they do to anyone protesting for like indigenous rights or the rights of our communities of colour or against police brutality etc. etc. (though the ludicrous double standards should be noted) but...give them hundreds of parking tickets! They're still ticketing the rest of the city, the rest of us who live here, why not these assholes? What about public drinking? - you're not supposed to wander the streets with open alcohol. Fuckin enforce that. We don't need new laws against defacing statues despite the incredible disrespect to Terry Fox, that will just mean more laws our SHITTY police will refuse to enforce against their buddies their pals the white supremacist shitheads but can use as an excuse to assault protesters of colour, no thanks. Just use the laws that are already there. These twerps have no permit for the demonstration even because they don't know what they are doing. Tons of little fines and citations and they can find out that the white supremacists who organised this are just grifting them and took all the gofundme money. This is Ottawa, this is Canada, we can do obnoxious petty red tape in our sleep. But they won't, because cops love and support neonazi antivaxxers and all cops are garbage. And you just know they will try to use it as an excuse for increasing their budget despite doing fuckall.

Like I am not an amazingly proud Canadian by any means, i know our country has a shitty history and, frankly, present, and i pretty much just break out the pride during hockey tournaments but I never really expected to reach the point that just seeing my own country's flag would fill me with seething rage.

[testingcheats0n]

Can I ask for your thoughts on why the Syndicate should be disbanded?

The Syndicate as it is can stay together because realistically it hasn't done much at all and it's as if it never existed, so I see why some people would be 'meh' about it.

Howeber, if we look at its core ideology, aka dear leader Technoblade, we see that it is deeply controlling and authoritarian. Him being in charge of anything makes me ill at ease and I would rather he stayed in his cabin forver.

1. Technoblade, in his firm belief that no one should tell others what to do with their lives is telling what others should do with their lives. By using strength, threats and coercion. A true hero. To start with he has no right to found a Syndicate- he has no right to dictate what others can and cannot do no matter how noble the intentions. It's not how things work, especially since take into account that we can count the members of each individual faction on our fingers. The Syndicate aims to control everyone's actions and that's very Technoblade.

2. It's formed by four to five people out of thirty three. That's 15% if the overall population. Three of those five have Wither Skulls in their possession as well as plenty of materials- in short, they're the richest of the rich with nuclear bombs going after people like Tommy who lives in a dirt house. Doesn't that make anyone else go hmmmmm, or is it just me? (and yes they are against Tommy, the average L'manburg enjoyer) Not to mention that two members (Niki and Ranboo) have no interest in being there, Ranboo is there just in case Technoblade finds about his marriage with Tubbo "Government" Underscore, and does something that Ranboo fully believes he will. Yes the Syndicate should absolutely be disbanded, if only for Michael's sake who is innocent and even has Phil worried for him.

3. He actively goes into other people's houses ala gestapo to inspect their property and confiscate anything "dangerous" they "shouldn't have" and that's reprehensible. Literally Dream and Schlatt did that. "Tubbo has nukes tho." Yeah and so does Technoblade, I love how everyone just forgets about the 120 Wither Skulls currently in his possession. Would Technoblade let Tubbo do an inspection in his property as he did? No. So that's hypocrisy for the long list of faults. And before someone gets a nefarious thought, Tubbo was justified in searching Philza's house, one of the three perpetrators of Doomsday. I think people forget what terrorism means sometimes because Technoblade says it so flippantly. There are rules and they apply for everyone, not just when Technoblade wants them to.

4. He is not actually an anarchist and the Syndicate has no other plans other than Government bad- which is counterproductive and damaging. :O I hear the gasps. I'm right though. Anarchists actually believe in things like communes and mutual aid and like... don't witch hunt human beings for gathering in settlements? When has he proposed any alternative to the poor delusional slaves living in L'manburg? When has he uttered the words cooperation or commune? It's easy to make a crater out of someone's home if they don't agree, but it's simply unimaginable to offer some sort of asylum or a guide to them huh? From the citizens of L'manburg's POV Technoblade practically strolled in and told everyone to disperse or else. He's all about destroying infrastructures, but has put in 0 hours of humanitarian work- the whole point of anarchism. It's like rescuing someone from drowning and leaving them abandoned in the middle of the desert, but then it turns out that someone was actually just diving. I'd spit on his face too.

5. In his mind three groups exist. 1. Him and Philza, mighty illuminated gods as the ideal of morality that can never do no wrong and always know what's best. 2. Government, everyone who has ever told anyone to do something, humanoid representations of an abstract thought. Must be expunged from the face of the earth. 3. Slave, weak homeless orphans who don't know what's good for them, but he won't hesitate to curb stomp if they get in his way by using any means necessary including the Syndicate. I hate that and I wish someone found a way to transport him back in pre-lmanburg dsmp with an empty inventory just so he sees what's it like.

6. There is no government in the smp, actually. Technoblade made it up. In his words not everyone who gathers together, lives together and has a leader is a government. "That's like saying book clubs are a government." So he agrees that L'manburg build upon cooperation, mutual aid with the grand total of nine members max at any given time is not actually a government just because they call themselves that for different historical reasons right? Right????? On the topic of labels. He can claim the term "anarchist" despite not following the ideology's basic principles, so he should allow the same with people like Tubbo (who did more than the Syndicate ever will for the lower classes of the server such as providing housing and help), right? He can be hand-wavy with the basics and the terms and whatever, but L'manburg with their "president" couldn't?

"There are structures of power though." Yeah so does the Syndicate. L'manburg and the Syndicate are literally one and the same no matter how much he wants to twist it. Do you think that Technoblade would let anyone else but him dictate what to do, or keep the Wither Skulls? No.

7. When has he used physical force, or the Syndicate's powers for the benefit of anyone but himself? When has he actually saved someone from the evil clutches of Government? When has he done any good with the god-like powers he possesses? Never. Never ever ever. All he's done is hurt others. Even Dream cared about the smp members at some point or something. He doesn't deserve to have the Syndicate at his beck and call.

8. Technoblade has no idea what the fuck he's talking about, actually. He has zero understanding of the events prior, during or post his arrival to the server. He lives in a bubble and refuses to cooperate or at least investigate others. Is that the man you want in charge of a powerful group tasked with... uh... fighting Governments? Man isn't even aware of the actual power structure of the server- am I supposed to root for him? He called Schlatt a rightfully elected president and is helping Dream, it has to be satire I'm not understanding. The Syndicate is nothing but a small footnote to the sham that is Technoblade's entire philosophy.

So in conclusion, the Syndicate is nothing but a tool for an egoistical destructive man and it absolutely deserves to shrivel up and die like the thoughtless, cruel and exploitative organization it is if it ever decides to show up and do something.

/nm i just hate pig man. just in case

[rotationalsymmetry]

A brief history of Unitarian Universalism (casual, with swears, have not fact checked as such but I think it’s correct): In New England back before US independence, there was Calvinism -- you know, that predestination thing, you’re already going to go to heaven or hell, but you should be good anyways so people will think you’re going to heaven, or something like that. Then there wasn’t. Then there was Congregationalism. Which was a lot more chill, but still very “fuck Catholicism”. And around this time, deism was on the rise: the idea that maybe God created the universe, then fucked off, and hasn’t been actively involved with anything since. Then, some people who were actually reading the Bible, because you can’t look down on Catholicism unless you actually read the Bible, were like... wait, maybe Jesus isn’t all that. You know -- the Savior, the Son of God, one third of the Trinity, all that. Maybe he was just, like... a prophet, or some guy who said some interesting things. A teacher. And other congregationalists were like: uh, what, no, Jesus has to be all that. If you don’t think Jesus is all that, how can you even call yourself a Christian? And they decided they couldn’t really be around each other any more. So the first group, which was mostly in Boston, started calling themselves Unitarians (because they rejected the doctrine of the Trinity and instead believed in a one part God), and incidentally at some point also stopped calling themselves Christians because the other guys had a point, and the others called themselves the United Church of Christ (UCC.) Emerson and Thorough -- sorry, Thoreau -- were both Unitarians, as were John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and pretty much everyone else from Boston in early US history. (We like to claim Jefferson, because his beliefs were kindasorta similar to Unitarian beliefs at the time, but as I understand it he was never actually part of a Unitarian congregation.) (Btw: if you’re lgbtq+ and Christian, they’re a pretty friendly denomination. If you’re lgbtq+ and Christian and you think the UCC is too liberal (in the religious sense) or you want a majority-lgbtq+ congregation, consider MCC, which is otherwise unconnected to all this. If you’re not Christian and are lgbtq+ -- atheist/agnostic, or maybe something else if you’re down with worshipping with people that aren’t specifically your thing -- Unitarian Universalism tends to be pretty good. As in: we have a bunch of gay/lesbian ministers and other religious leaders, and a few transgender ones. (Knowledge of less mainstream lgbtq+ identities can vary a lot between congregations and generations -- the younger generations tend to be more aware than the gen x’ers.) I’ve been involved with Church of the Larger Fellowship for most of the past year, which did zoom worship before it got cool and serves people around the world, and people like me who live a mile from a UU brick and mortar congregation but still can’t get their disabled ass over there anyways. Anyways, CLF has more POC on the worship team than most UU congregations (the denomination does tend to run pretty white), is very social justice oriented even by UU standards, and is somewhat more cool about general weirdness than most congregations, which again for UU congregations is saying something.) Then, at some point (sadly, I’m significantly more familiar with the history of the first U than the second) there was this other protestant denomination in the South (as in, the US South) where people decided that God was too nice to send people to hell for all eternity, so they started calling themselves the Universalists, as in Universal Salvation. All dogs go to heaven. Well, time passed, each denomination evolved in its own way. (In particular, Unitarianism caught humanism pretty hard -- the joke was the Unitarians believe in one God at most.) In the -- ok, I’ll look this one up -- in 1961, there was a big old merger, creating Unitarian Universalism, and in the process, everyone got together and was all...wait, so what are our official beliefs about God and stuff? Should we even have official beliefs about God? Maybe we can unify around some ideas around how people should treat each other instead. So they did: they drafted a set of Principles (broad-strokes guidelines on how people should act -- peace is good, truth is good, people have value, stuff like that) and a set of Sources (where UU’s get their ideas about God and morality and so on from, starting with direct experience) and left everything else up to the individual. And then a little while later, the tree-huggers got a seventh Principle and a sixth Source added in -- respect for the environment and Earth-centered religions, respectively -- so now the joke is that UU’s believe in one God, more or less. Currently there’s a movement on to add an 8th Principal that explicitly names racial equality and fighting oppression as something we value, since while the current Principles mention justice and equality, they don’t specifically name race, and the people of color who have stuck with the predominantly white denomination figure Unitarian Universalism can and should be doing better on that front. Unitarian Universalism runs religiously liberal (ie, decentralized, individualistic, non-authoritarian, non-dogmatic, inclined to believe science over the Bible) and politically progressive. Unitarian Universalist congregations tend to be very politically active and concerned with social justice, mostly in a well-educated middle class kind of way: committees, Robert’s Rules of Order, donating to non-profits, Get Out the Vote, inviting in speakers and asking “questions” that aren’t really questions, forming partnerships with other congregations and community organizations, etc. Many UU congregations have put a Black Lives Matter sign out (and when necessary keep putting it out when it gets torn down or vandalized), shown up for the protests, opposed the weird immigration BS that’s been going on in the US recently, etc. In addition to more charity style work, like food pantries and homeless shelters.

Point is: yeah it’s got flaws (don’t even get me started on Unitarian Universalism’s flaws) but if you’re a social justice person and want to meet other social justice people who are doing things, Unitarian Universalism can be a good place to look for that. You get more done in groups.

You’re less likely to burn out, too. With marginalization, it’s complicated, right? Again, for LGBTQ+ people, it’s going to be better than most religious organizations. For people a little bit on the autism spectrum, you probably won’t be the only one. (If you’re unmistakeably autistic, people might be weird/ableist; it might depend on the congregation.) If you’re from a working class background or are currently kinda broke, you might run into some frustrations or feel like you don’t fit in; if you’re a poc or if you’re disabled (or your kid is) or you want a lot of personal support, you might struggle more -- this really might vary a lot, but at least the congregations I’m used to tend to assume congregants can mostly stand on their own feet, metaphorically speaking, and have some extra time/money/skills/whatever that can be directed out into the wider world. It can be a good place for pagans and Buddhists and other people who don’t want a church but are having trouble finding a church-like religious community where you can hang out with people on the same spiritual path. (Uh, for a while UU congregations were emphatically not churches and some officially still aren’t; others gave up and were all “eh, it looks like a church, whatever, we’re just a weird church.) Some congregations are more atheist-dominated than others -- many avoid Jesus language most of the time, some avoid God language most of the time (UU’s who believe in God tend to believe in God in a relatively abstract/metaphorical way), some I hear are pagan-heavy, others do use Christian language a lot more. In all honesty you don’t have to go to Sunday worship if you don’t want to, and really a lot of UU’s don’t; if you want to be heavily involved in the congregation but don’t want to go to Sunday worship and don’t want to deal with pressure to, one way out is to teach RE (religious education -- basically “Sunday school”) the RE curricula are amazing, just absolutely astounding, and if you’re teaching it you get a ton of leeway with adjusting anything you don’t like. (Which could happen -- a lot of this stuff was developed before the idea that cultural appropriation is a big problem became mainstream in social justice circles.) What adult worship is like has basically zero correlation (perhaps negative correlation) to what RE is like. (Which sucks for young adults coming of age in a UU congregation, like I said don’t get me started on UU’s flaws.) Finally: for people who care about sex positivity and sex ed, Unitarian Universalists (in partnership with UCC) developed Our Whole Lives, a sex ed curriculum that, well, it’s not abstinence based education. You wouldn’t expect sex ed coming from a religious org to be better than the sex ed in schools, would you? And yet. Comprehensive sex ed that acknowledges gay bi and trans people and that disabled people have sex too and teaches about birth control and masturbation and abuse and consent and boundaries and bullying and internet safety and abortion. It’s good stuff. The course aimed at teens is most popular of course, but there’s actually (age-appropriate) OWL curricula for all stages of life: young kids, adults, older adults, everyone. And it’s versatile enough to be taught in secular contexts (after school programs etc). Given the direction that unfortunately a lot of school districts in the US have been going in in terms of sex ed, it’s a really important program.

[mundungs]

ϟ.  → robert sheehan : genderfluid : he/they/she : dealer of illicit objects and substances : the raven by the alan parsons project ϟ  did you see mundungus fletcher ? you know ,  31 year old halfblood who was formally in ravenclaw. some say dung can be quite furtive but are known to be unreliable. they are aligned with the order .  maybe that’s why they remind me of naming stray cats, flicking a lighter over and over again, falling asleep on the subway. ϟ 

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history

ciannán o’donnell is a flighty man, one of many relationships and flings and little loyalty, and so his affair with maeve fletcher does not last long. when she tells him she is pregnant, he moves on to a different woman, and maeve has her son alone, with her sister on her side. and thus, mundungus is born (and giving an arguably atrocious name).

he grows up with his mum – a halfblooded witch and by far his favourite person in the world – in limerick, attending muggle school there. he knew who his dad was, but wasn’t quite sure how to feel about — his father is a criminal, a prominent member of the irish mob. 

he meets his dad for the first time at age seven, and was nothing but impressed. his dad showered him with gifts, his mum watching with a furious look on her face but biting her tongue. that moment was a switch for mundungus; he felt the need to impress his dad. he stole some sweets from a store on his way home from school a week later, fished some pennies out of the pockets of his classmates a few months later. when he phoned his dad to tell him, his laugh was warm and filled with life. his relationship with his dad got better as his behaviour got worse. the thrill of stealing, of doing stuff he wasn’t supposed to, lit him not only on fire because it was exciting, but also because he knew his dad would adore it. 

but ciannan, a flighty man, pushes and pulls. and so mundungus was fed disappointment by his father, liking love off a shiny knife rather than a spoon ( silver or plastic, what the fuck does it matter ). details omitted, long story made short: his dad sucks and his mother tries, but mundungus is pulled towards that what smells of danger.

DRUGS MENT. at hogwarts, dung is sorted into ravenclaw. not at all the booksmart type, he falls more into the chaotic-creativity, random-bursts-of-wanting-to-learn-everything-about-something type of ravenclaw. there’s two worlds, then: the muggle world, where he slowly dips his water further in criminal waters, and the wizarding one, where he’s chaotic and messy but a student. when he grows older, these overlap: dung starts selling some of his dad’s weed at hogwarts, and soon gains a reputation of being able to get people less-than-legal shit. 

not getting high off your own supply is not a sentiment he agrees with. not then, not later, not now. dung is fun, always in for a party and willing to supply the goods to throw it. if some rich purebloods lose a few galleons at said party, well, it sure isn’t him! END OF TW

he graduates with two newts, in herbology and potions, failing his dada and charms exams. he’s not an academic.

falling into the family business after graduation is easy. mundungus is attracted by the criminal underworld, both that of muggle ireland and that of the wizarding world. knockturn alley was a place frequented in teenage years, but now becomes more his place. he makes connections, exchanges strange potion recipes for other things. makes an odd wager on a bunch of stolen brass scales and turns a profit. 

a career is not something that interests him; he is more interested in bending rules and making quick money. thievery, selling illegal shit, heists, fraud, fuck-all. mundungus is not limited by one descriptor, one kind of criminality. he just does what he wants and hopes to make a good penny.

but then he almost gets sent to azkaban over some, in his frank opinion, bullshit. it’s dumbledore who talks the wizengamot out of it, saddling dung up with some community service and persuading him towards the order. he’s twenty three. the war is still fresh. he has no interest in it, but he owes the old man. fine.

mundungus does vehemently oppose blood purity and any kind of discriminatory ideals, an anarchist in his very bones, but he is also cowardly. to side with self-proclaimed rebels is not in his blood and yet it’s where he ends up, bringing shady ties to the underworld to the table and a sheer ability to sneak around and fuck the law. and maybe, amidst the ranks of the order, dung finds something he’s not very familiar with: a large family. and dung? well, he’s the stoner, gay, super-fucking-chaotic cousin.

personality

if jesper fahey and kaz brekker had a child, it would be dung. 

other character parallels: fezco ( euphoria ), boris ( the goldfinch ), doug judy ( b99 ), jason mendoza ( the good place ), chris miles ( skins ),  nick miller ( new girl ), creed bratton ( the office ), scott lang ( marvel ), lillian ( unbreakable kimmy schmidt )

technically he’s homeless. he’s got a bedroom at his ma’s place, has a ton of squatter connects in the muggle scene and couch surfes aplenty, but dung doesn’t rent a place. why? landlords are evil. he could afford a place, just doesn’t see the point. life’s better with some adventure.

appears very neutral in public as it’s beneficial to his role in the order??? 

.... tortured artist. writes poetry and loves to draw and paint. 

tattooed the fuck up. some are his own designs.

can usually be spotted wearing The Coat, a rly expensive, vintage long coat that he once stole of a pureblood. he’s enlarged the pockets with some handy spellwork and pretty much carries everything he owes in there, like his produce and his money and his second pair of shoes and his art supplies and probably some random trash. 

loves animals. he loves stray cats especially <3 they are his kin. 

an anarchist. a bit of a punk. a deep idealist with a cowardly heart so constantly betraying himself (and sometimes others?)

queer! enby! genderfluid! i used he/him pronouns throughout this intro but dung truly doesn’t give a damn what u use. loves to dress up in feminine clothes. 

has a ton of aliases, lol, the most important one being marigold fincher. 

cusses too fuckin much to be healthy :/

oh no he is a big sad insecure kid deep inside :/ dont tell anyone how embarrassing!!!! shhhh!! it’s a secret.

quick connection ideas

victim. wow please. if your character is rich. let me steal from u. pick ur pockets. break into ur house. get some of ur stuff and drop it on the black market. 

customer. dung sells. whatever u need. drugs. weird magical things. ask and ye shall receive. his prices are whack but he does deliver <3

pal. party friends! order friends! random encounter friends! dung has a trashmouth and loves to talk pls let him chat u up and u will never be rid of him <3

couch. he couch surfs. a lot. if ur character trusts dung enough to let him into their home (which they shouldnt) then pls let him sleep over for a night. he will leave a strangely expensive necklace on ur kitchen table as a thank u. or wilted flowers. no in between.

skeptic. ur char is in the order and thinks dung is a liability and maybe they have a point. a point mundungus would rather not face :)

dmle bitches. dung hates anyone authoritative but esp the coppers at the ministry (hit wix & aurors) (yea he calls them coppers sorry he doesnt respect them enough to call them aurors <3). give me that doug judy/jake peralta dynamic. or just someone in the dmle who is like ... sigh this guy again??? 

fwb/one night stand/fling/etc. he’s a bit slutty <333 give him some ppl he’s hooked up with / will hook up with.

[rachelbethhines]

Tangled Salt Marathon - Rapunzel and the Great Tree Part 2

Continuing on with the midseason finale of season two.

Part 1 is here  https://rachelbethhines.tumblr.com/post/628826170657570816/tangled-salt-marathon-rapunzel-and-the-great

Summary: After Adira saves Rapunzel and the group from the hurt incarnation, Cassandra makes her suspicions of Adira known which causes a falling out between her and Rapunzel. Meanwhile Hector uses the dormant power of the tree to try and attack everyone. 

Cassandra’s Motivation Doesn’t Aline With Her Later Actions 

If you’re going to have a character do a complete 180 from her original goal, than you need a better reason than just mommy issues; or validation issues, or career problems, or just simply having a falling out, or jealousy, or a ghost girl whispering in your ear, or whatever the fuck they’re trying to do with Cassandra.  

Going from ‘protect’ to ‘murder’ is a huge moral alignment shift that needed clear and reasonable justification. Cassandra is never given that. Instead they just throw everything at the wall that they can think of in the hope that something sticks. 

Only it never does because her original story was re-written at the last minute.   

Well That Was Pointless

Max and Pascal wind up saving Eugene and Lance from the man eating plant. Which adds nothing to the story. It happens and is then never brought up again. It’s just an excuse to write Eugene out of the Cass and Raps conflict and not an extension of either his or Lance’s own narratives. 

That’s a problem, because Eugene should be a main character and Lance an important supporting side character. Instead Eugene is regulated to side character status while Lance is unimportant comic relief. Not only does this ignore that fact that Eugene was the protagonist of the movie same as Rapunzel, but it also ignores the basic writing rule of ‘don’t add in characters who don’t serve a purpose in the story’. 

Adira Just Saved All of Your Asses, Cass

Boy does Adira put up with a lot of bullshit in this show, and 90% of it comes from Cass being a little bitch. 

She has no biases for this argument. Adira hasn’t done anything to warrant this accusation. In fact she’s proven herself time and time again only for Cass to lash out like a spoilt teenager with an inferiority complex. 

And Cassandra is 23!!!    

The young adults on this show are constantly written like pre-teens while the only actual teenager is constantly forced to be the most mature person in the show. 

It’s mind boggling. 

Rapunzel is In the Right Here, But the Show Wants Us to Sympathize with Cass Instead?

Oh No! Raps raised her voice at Cassandra and made her feel bad, you guys. Feel sorry for the poor paranoid baby who who’s acting like a jealous brat for no reason. 

Bull Shit. 

Cassandra not only has nothing to back up her accusation but the narrative never goes on to prove her right either. Adria is on the up and up, and always had been according to Destinies Collide. For all the show’s efforts to make Cass seem reasonable by having Adira mysteriously pop in and out, it all falls flat once you know where everything is heading. 

Plus, even if she were magically right about Adira that wouldn’t excuse her bossing Rapunzel around and insulting her intelligence. Had she done that to me I’d be telling her something a lot harsher than just to knock it off. 

Oh, But I Thought You Said Flashbacks to Corona Would Be Too Confusing?

So one of the writers, Ricky, has gone on record stating that they did originally have plans to show flashbacks to Corona to show what was going on with Rapunzel’s parents, Varian, and the Saporians. He then said they dropped them because they feared that it would be too confusing for the audience. 

Yet we get this pointless scene thrown into the middle of the mid-season finale. 

And by the looks of it it’s before even Beginnings, or maybe after Beginnings, who knows; so it’s not just a change of scene, it’s also a change in time as well. A point in the timeline that’s not been firmly established enough. So it not only has less reasons to exist then a Varian flashback would, but it’s also potentially more confusing than what a simple single episode set in Corona would have been. 

I don’t know who to blame for this poor decision making, if it’s just Chris, Chris and Ben, or a shared blame with all of the writers, but while the buck does stop with Chris, much of what Ricky has said online doesn’t reflect very well on his writing skills. Cause that’s a huge and utter bullshit excuse. 

So What Does This Add, Exactly?

Cass gives Rapunzel this purse as a gift. A purse that’s not been shown to be all that important before and isn’t made significant again. Then Raps launches into this speech about how good a friend Cass is and how lost she’d be without her. 

I understand what the thought process for this was; it’s to show how far Raps and Cass have grown apart recently and what Cassandra herself liked about being friends with Rapunzel to being with, which was the validation boost of being useful and needed; but there’s a lot of problems with including it here. 

For starters, lack of validation isn’t enough to suddenly switch into ‘kill mode’ which is where all of this is eventually leading.  

Validation shouldn’t be the foundation of any long term relationship and so rather than proving how good of a friend they are to each other, you’ve only given futher reason for why they’re toxic together. 

You needed to be building them up all throughout season one before launching into this break up plot. This scene is too little too late because we’ve spent too many episodes tearing Raps and Cass down for this plot to have the effect that they wanted it to. 

Cassandra is just doing her job. She’s suppose to show Rapunzel around and help her with shit, that’s what a lady in waiting does. Cassandra’s friendship with Rapunzel shouldn’t be so tied to her career trajectory to begin with. Not only is it unhealthy but it then is used to victim-blame Rapunzel for all of Cassandra’s problems. Even though the only thing actually holding Cass back is herself, as proven in season three. 

Timeline Confirmed

So it is indeed six months since Secret of the Sun Drop, give or take a few days to organize stuff before the trip. Meaning we’re now a year out from Before Happily Ever After. I point this out now, in order to prove something later on. 

This Logically Should Have Been the End of the Argument, But the Writers are Dragging Things Out Needlessly 

You know what I hate more than a ‘lack of communication causes drama' trope? Characters taking the time to communicate and still missing the bloody point and not resolving anything. 

Technically, Rapunzel is still in the right. She is an autonomous person capable of making decisions for herself, and Cass does need to get over herself and treat Rapunzel as such and stop getting butt hurt over not being the one in charge. 

But then we have to ruin that message by throwing in this line. 

Like, yes you’re technically in charge here Raps, but making decisions shouldn’t mean walking all over someone's feelings either. Being a leader is just as much about listening as it is about taking charge and neither of these characters understand that yet. 

And they never will, cause the writing for them is shit. 

When I first saw season two I honestly believe that this would tie into Rapunzel’s previous conflicts regarding responsibility and hypocrisy. I thought they had an arc here about learning to balance assertiveness and personal boundaries, with genuine compassion and respect for others. Had they went through with that then this could have been something truly special, but they go and throw it all away come season three. Now its just heartbreak and frustrating to watch. 

Also Stupid ‘Sisters’ Plot Foreshadowing 

More on this later, but just know if you hate the idea of calling Raps and Cass sisters then blame Chris. 

This Song Underlines The Core Problem With Cassandra's Arc

There’s no stakes.

I’ve already discussed at length now about how Cassandra’s goals and motivations are inconsistent, and how her actions don’t line up. But the reason the writers are struggling so hard to find something that fits her, is because the story has grown past her. 

We’ve already seen characters who struggle with poverty, homelessness, neglect/abuse, and oppression. There are now tons of people in the story who are fighting just for survival, and they’re all regulated to either supporting roles, one off appearances, or are background characters. 

So with that in mind what is there to justify Cassandra getting focus over them? What is she struggling with here that deserves more screen time and attention than, Eugene, Varian, Lady Caine, or even Adira? 

Cassandra isn’t poor. She lives well off in the castle and has high ranking connections. She’s not even struggling with a job she hates anymore because we’ve already seen her promoted to the one she wanted by this point.  

Cassandra isn’t homeless, she once again lives in the castle and if she chooses to leave she has plenty of opportunities waiting for her, as evidenced by Goodbye and Goodwill and Beginnings. Plus she’s shown to be capable of supporting herself both in this season and the next.  

Cassandra isn’t oppressed. She can leave anytime she wants to. She can defy the king's orders in SotSD because she’s the princesses’s bestie. She doesn’t face jail or hanging just because she and Raps has a fight now and then. 

The only thing going for her is possibly neglect/abuse, but that’s not been introduced into the story yet and isn’t what she’s discussing here. It also contradicts what was previously established between her and Cap in season one when it does come into play. 

Validation Alone is Not Enough to Connect With Most of the Audience 

Even the stanchest of Cassandra supporter often has to heavily project onto her in order to connect with her. Which isn’t a bad thing in of itself. Everyone projects to some degree or other when exploring media, that’s part of being human. But the problem is that because she’s so thinly written you’re left with little else but projection. And so you’ll hear excuses like, well she’s fighting the class system, she’s an abuse survivor, or she deserves to lash out over not getting what she wants when she’s worked so hard for it. But none of those excuses are actually presented on screen. 

Cassandra doesn’t fight against the class system. If she did she would be fighting for everyone. She’d be singing about everyone’s problems not just her own. 

Cassandra’s past abuse is just slapped on at the last minute and then disregarded when convenient. It doesn’t actually factor into the decisions she makes later on.  

Also, you don’t deserve anything just because you ‘work hard’ nor because you just really, really want it. 

It’s that point that I really take issue with. 

On the surface Cassandra should be the most relatable person in the show. I mean what young adult or teen living in this post apocalyptic nightmare of a capitalist dystopia not ever felt disappointed over not getting the job they wanted or not being given enough positive validation while crushed underneath mounting unrealistic expectations. It’s the main reason why so many of her supporters are teenagers and LGBT+. 

But all of those worries stem from something deeper than just a lack of positive reinforcement. 

You know why I had to give up on my career as an animator?

It didn’t pay benefits. 

I had medical issues and needed health insurance, but since most animation is commissioned and/or contract based, particularly if you live/work on the east coast, then you’re not going to get that most of the time. And this is after spending the majority of my time in college homeless, living out of my car, crashing on friends and families couches. I did this for three fucking years because I didn’t want to wind up in a textile mill or a carpet factory like everyone I else knew growing up, and I was told my whole life that if I went to school and worked hard enough I could have a well paying job that I enjoyed and got me away from my abusive home life. 

People like me, we’re bitter over not getting the jobs we wanted or the support we needed, not because we believe we’re special and therefore deserve it or some such bullshit, but because our very lives are dependent upon it! We’re victims of a class system that lets you starve if you don't find work. Where you’ll be trapped in abusive situations cause you can’t afford a home on your own. Where simply being yourself can be dangerous as there are people who vocally want to deny us rights and even kill us. 

Cass is an entitled whiny brat in canon because she doesn’t have any of those underlying issues. She doesn’t face real discrimination, oppression, poverty, or the looming threat of death hanging over her. She’s just throwing a temper tantrum. 

Once Again Adira is Saving Your Butt Cass

Adira is quickly becoming one of my favorite characters in the marathon. I’m sorry I didn’t appreciate her more when I first watched the show. 

Also, I’m Sorry I Didn’t Recognize the Awesomeness That Is Hector Until Now Either.

Like this is a good conflict. They both have legitimate reasons for what they do. They’re both in the right here. That’s what makes them interesting. 

They’re both fighting for something. They’re home and the belief that they can fix things, vs the fate of the world and their loyalty to both the cause and their family. All on top of having their own relationship issues. 

Hector so should have been the main villain of season two, because he just has the most reason to be opposed to the mains’ goal. 

That’s more than whatever Cass and Raps are fighting about. The only thing at stake there is their friendship, which isn’t that big of deal when you compare it to the lives and safety of billions of people. 

Plus Hector’s just flat out entertaining. 

Why is Everybody Just Standing Around Doing Nothing Here?

Fucking do something you lugnuts!!!

You’re all capable fighters. You’ve all taken down much harder enemies than one lone guy and two bearcats. Why aren’t you helping Cass fight back? Or heck, if you wanted Cass to face Hector alone then have her be a distraction so that the others can escape. Anything but having them just stand there and be useless!

Yet Again I Have to Ask Why Should Cass Care? 

Or rather why should the audience care? 

Cass isn’t a lady in waiting just because some random jerk who's already taunting her and trying to kick her ass calls her such. Hector’s not from Corona and has no knowledge of Cassandra’s life beyond what he may have heard repeated by Adiria (who is also not from Corona) or what Cass herself said in her very metaphorical song.  Nor does either them have a say in how Cass’s career goes. 

If you want to push the narrative that Cass is still a lady-in-waiting and a maid, despite having earned Cap’s approval and being appointed by the king to guard Rapunzel, then you damn well need to establish that among the mains. 

Or you know, stop trying to go back on what you’ve set up in season one. 

So How Is This Suppose To Work?

So from the backstory that we get on both the Tree and Zhan Tiri herself, this shouldn’t happen. Like Zhan Tiri is currently trapped in another dimension and according to season three she has no possession powers herself. 

Now the tree itself is said to be sentient and that Zhan Tiri took control of it, but how? How is a tree sentient? Why is it sentient? How did Zhan Tiri bend it to her will? Why is it still under her control while she’s been trapped in another dimension for hundreds of years? Why and how does the spear keep it dormant? Why does the tree itself have possession powers when Zhan Tiri has none? Is there any connection between this Great Tree and the cursed tree that was suppose to free Zhan Tiri back in Painter’s Block? If so then why are these things never brought back into play during season three? 

Give me answers damn it! 

Now This is a Good Conflit, Shame It’s Never Resolved 

Both have valid reasons to do what they do. Both are neither right nor wrong. Both however wind up getting in the way of each other because neither will listen or trust the other. 

Rapunzel thinks that this will stop Hector, and she is right it does, but more importantly she chooses this route because it gives everyone else a chance to run away. The problem is that she can’t control it, but from her point of view that’ll only put her and Hector at risk if everyone else will just do as she says and leaves. 

Cassandra thinks the spear will stop it because it’s done so before, and that’s a logical assumption. It also means that Rapunzel herself won’t be in any danger, though the others might. Cass can’t free everyone at once like Rapunzel can. It’ll also be a threat to herself, and there’s the risk that tree will stop her before she can deal the final blow.  

So what’s happening on a personal level is that Rapunzel thinks taking charge means that everyone needs to follow her say without question. Cassandra thinks Rapunzel should listen to her more, not because Rapunzel needs to listen better in general, but because she doesn’t feel Rapunzel is mature enough to make big decisions and that she herself should be in charge of the group. Both girls feel superior to the other and above other people as well, because they’re convinced they’re always right. 

Had this been the actual conflict that they went with in season three, had they actually had both characters held accountable for their actions and learn something, and hadn’t dragged innocent people into their bullshit with so much as a ‘by your leave’ or ‘I’m sorry’; then this might have been a decent story. Perhaps not as impactful as Varian’s, but still meaningful, thoughtful, and well, coherent. 

But that’s not what they did, and we’ll see no real resolution to this disagreement. 

So Why Is No One Affected By the Hurt Incantation This Time?

Eugene here was injured by the tree earlier, that’s why he’s past out, but everyone else remains unharmed by Rapunzel’s singing. Even though just last episode everyone around her were dying from it, and again in the season finale everyone dies from said incantation. But here and in Rapunzel’s Return, Rapunzel can use the incantation without harming anyone nearby so, how does that work? 

Some people have suggested that when Rapunzel focuses her hair on a target like the tree here or the amber later, that it doesn’t spread to other people, but that’s never stated on screen so it’s still a flaw. 

 Well This Goes Nowhere 

I think the writers just like throwing in shocking ‘twists’ and moments like this just for the sake of looking edgy and ‘deep’ but then they never actually follow through on the impact of such moments on the characters nor consider the more troubling implications of including them. 

I grew up on Gargoyles, Batman the Animated Series, the 90s X-Men Cartoon, and The Pirates of Dark Water. I’ve seen far more shocking and edgy stuff than this when I was six years old. In many ways the american animated tv landscape has regressed since the early 2000s when it comes to more mature cartoons, and no that’s not a complaint about modern cartoons being bad; some are good some are bad, just like its always been; but that culturally we’ve shied away more from darker moments like this and we’ve having to push for them all over again in media.   

But the difference between Tangled and those 90s cartoons I’ve mentioned is that Tangled’s darker moments are misplaced. It clashes horribly with the more comedic route that the series usually takes and as such they don’t get the focus that they need too. 

After season two is done, Cass’s hand will never be mentioned again. It does not tie into her later motivations at all nor influences her actions. Throughout the series she’ll be able to use it easily without consequence. We don't even get any on screen confirmation if it’s healed by grabbing the moonstone, by the sundrop incarnation in the finale, or if she just forever has a burnt arm. That’s how little importance it is to the story. 

This Also Goes Nowhere

Hector calls out this warning but it’s then never followed up on. Adira is proven not to be a liar at all and nobody in the group is actually doomed. Yes the wider world is put in jeopardy, but that’s Cass’s fault not Adira’s. 

The writers were too focused on making Adira the red herring for Cassandra that they forgot to make her an actual person, with wants, feelings, desires, goals, and a life beyond her mission. She’s never shown helping her family and barely interacts with them, she’s never given a reason for why she keeps disappearing, and the idea that she’s doing this to save her home is just supposition on my part because otherwise she has no reason. The series never gives us one. 

And ‘Destiny’ Is Not A Fucking Reason!!!

Oh, So Adira Will Help Hector But Not Quirin or Varian?

If Hector and Adira consider each other siblings because they’re both in the Brotherhood, than logically Adira would consider Quirin her brother as well, and Varian would be her nephew. 

She was around long enough to see the final battle in SotSD. That’s why she appears at the end of that episode, how she knows Rapunzel is the sundrop and has ‘seen her power’, and how she knows that the group has met both Quirin and Varian before now. 

She knows that Quirin is trapped in amber. She knows her nephew has been arrested by a kingdom with a poor track record of punishing orphaned teens and poor people with overly harsh sentences. So why didn't she do anything there? 

We find out during season three that the black rocks can cut through the amber, and its established that Adira’s sword can cut through the rocks, so clearly she didn’t even try to save Quirin has just given him up for dead. But there’s no reason why she couldn’t have broken Varian out of the prison and taken her with him. 

In fact Adira hiding Varian from the rest of the group during season two would have been an actual reason for her disappearance and an actual reason not to trust her. That would have upped the stakes and given Cass reasons for what she does. Plus more time for Varian’s redemption, more chances to call out Rapunzel and Fredric on their BS, and ties seasons one and two together better. 

Seriously leaving Varian out of season two was the dumbest decision in television. Putting Varian back in actually fixes everything in the show. 

The Real Reason for the Burnt Hand is a Costume Change for Cass

I don’t know if she even got merchandise for this costume.   

Conclusion 

Much like season one’s arc episodes, The Great Tree held a lot of promise that was then completely wasted by season three. It’s also one of the very few episodes in the season to have actual stakes and conflict so it easily jumps to the top of the pile. But what it sets up is then never resolved or expounded upon, making it a waste. 

Next up we’ll have the mid season recap. 

[theprincesslibrary]

#4: Baleful - Close your eyes

Warning: violence, past trauma, mention of abuse, mention of rape, domestic abuse, blood, torture 

He’s waking up. 

He doesn’t remember much. He was coming home after a night out, drunk and alone, the girls weren’t receptive to his charms. And then nothing. Just darkness and a violent pain at the back of his skull. He’s fully awake now, though his reality looks like a nightmare. His reflection is staring at him from the ceiling, eyes wide from fear. He is strapped to an operating table, naked, unable to move. He doesn't understand why he's here. 

I’d feel bad for him if I didn’t know any better. But I do.

I know what he did to his wife, to his previous girlfriends. I know what type of monster he is. But I’m worse. The saw in my hand is itching to cut, but I can’t start yet. Everything must be done to perfection. So I step out of the shadows and move closer, tape his eyelids open, so he can't close his eyes. Putting that mirror on the ceiling was a real pain in the ass, it’d be a shame if all that work went to waste. I wouldn’t want him to miss the show.

*****

When Thancred reaches the scene everything looks like it did for the previous murders: they still don't have the crime scene, just the dumping area. A godforsaken place where nobody cares what you do or say: welcome to Ul'dah's low town, where the jewel city doesn't shine so brightly. Here only the rule of the three wise monkeys applies: see nothing, hear nothing, and above all shut the fuck up. The perfect place to get rid of a body.

These corpses are not your typical murder victim though: no crime of passion, no hit-and-run. Everything is clean. It’s the third case of the type to end up on his desk, and it's a fucking nightmare. Let’s be clear, the modus operandi is dirty as fuck: shallow cuts all over the body, severed limbs, head cut off… all of that ante mortem, a fucking slaughter. But the scene is fucking spotless, perfectly ordered like a freaking Mog Station warehouse. They don't really have a corpse, more of a human puzzle: the organs and the head sit in separate jars, the limbs are all wrapped up mummy style, personal belongings in a cardboard box... And the cherry on top: not a single witness.  

That’s when Thacred's expertise comes to play. See, a regular cop would harass the lab, call them every 5 minutes, pressure them day and night… be a pain in the as. But not detective Thancred Waters. Nah. He has his way of doing things. He lets the lab rats alone, especially with a scene like that which is as much of a nightmare for them as it is for him. If puzzle number 3 is like its friends, CSI can’t do much for him right now, they need to unpack all that shit, literally. So he leaves them the fuck alone, they’re happy, and when they have something conclusive they call their favorite detective: how far one can go by not being an asshole is astonishing.  

Instead, Thancred likes to interrogate people. Relatives, of course, that’s police work 101, but he pays extra attention to the little monkeys on the streets: the guy no one notices sitting in the corner, the drug dealer in his vintage car, the homeless lady who sleeps here at night. He just knows how to make them talk. It must be his lucky day because he saw his favorite monkey when he arrived at the scene. It would be rude not to check on his old friend, although “friend” might be a bit of a stretch. He met Theodric in Limsa Lominsa, back when he was still a street urchin, stealing purses from unsuspecting passersby. They were in the same band of petty thieves, followed the same path, except one day Thancred targeted Louisoix Leveilleur. Instead of turning him in, the man saw his potential, and took him under his wing. His life changed that day. Theodric wasn’t so lucky. He got involved with the wrong crowd, took the wrong drug, and ended up here, in one of Ul’dah’s worst neighborhoods where not even the refugees dare to come. 

Yeah, not really friends, and considering what he's about to do to him, it's better that way.

 *****

Thancred’s fists hurt from punching Theodric’s ugly face, he needs a break from all that “friendly catching up”. He reaches for a cig and lights it up. Gods, how he loves the taste of tar… finally some stale air to help him breathe. He spares a look to the little monkey slouched against the tainted wall of a shabby restaurant. His face is covered in blood, but he’s not talking. He hates when they stay quiet, he’ll just have to be more explicit. 

“You know Theo, I can call you Theo, right? You know… it’s the weekend for me too. As you can imagine that I have other things to do besides fucking up your hideous face. I'm not asking you to share every tiny detail of your sad existence, I’m not your therapist. I’m not even asking for the name of your dealer. Just tell me who the fuck threw away the mummy. That would make me incredibly happy, I’d be able to go home, have a nice bath, you know, normal people shit.”

Thancred takes another puff from his cigarette and looks down at the man who was once his partner in crime. It’s almost like staring at a twisted version of himself, at the man he would have become without Louisoix. Six months ago, he might have gone easy on Theodric, might have tried to help him out. Six months ago, he would have been the man Louisoix wanted him to be, but that guy died in Lahabrea’s basement. All those months of sequestration and torture did a number on him, fucked him up so bad, his soul died back there. Now he's just this empty shell, pretending to be alive out of spite. Just to say “look at me now, I’m still there”. But he's not, not really.

He draws the last puff from his cigarette and crouches next to Theodric, his face on the same level as the junkie's. The little monkey has one open eye, just one, the other is too fucked up. There’s fear in that one eye, but he’s still not talking. Thancred gets his cig close to Theodric’s good eye, so he can understand what’s going to happen next. He likes to let people understand the rest on their own, it stimulates communication. 

“You might think I hate you Theo, but I don’t. I don’t give two flying fucks about you. But you see, my shrink told me I had to externalize my rage. When you don't talk to me, it pisses me off, so I have to externalize. On your face. You’re not a bad guy, a little drug here, a little dealing there, it’s not that bad. I’m a whiskey guy myself so really who am I to judge? Just tell me who threw this corpse, so I can calm the fuck down. I don’t need to externalize as much and we both go on our merry ways.” 

Thancred punctuates his question by crushing his cigarette's butt on Theo’s arm. His screams echo in the empty street so loudly dogs start to howl, not that anyone cares. Noone would come to his aid, not in this part of town, not when a cop is the one making him scream like a pig. The wise monkey rule reigns supreme. But now he’s in enough pain for Thancred to believe whatever he’s gonna say next. 

“Fuck Waters, I swear I don't know anything. You know me, I'm not that brave, if I knew anything I’d be singing like a fucking canary right now. Please let me go, I promise if I hear something I'll tell you. I swear Waters.”

*****

Theodric looks sincere.

It pisses him off, cause now he’s gonna have to resort to a more classic approach and act like a regular cop: talk to the wife and relatives. He hates to act like a regular cop, hates to talk to the wives. He doesn’t know how to deal with crying people. He used to be good at people skills, he’s not anymore.

He needs a drink. 

He ends up at the Quicksand like always. It’s a second house for all sorts of human trash: bikers, dealers, pimps, him...  

Thancred likes the atmosphere, and the barmaid, Lya. Lya is good. It sounds dumb, but she is. She smiles all the time and listens to everyone’s bullshit without judging. She’s pretty too, beautiful even. When she smiles it's a bit like a breeze blowing over a field of poppy, it shakes him to the core. It shakes up any guy. They all want to throw themselves in her arms and let her lull them to sleep as a mother would. She could turn the most vicious wolf into an obedient little lamb with just one smile. All the guys here come for her: the alcohol tastes like piss, the food is barely decent when it’s not expired, and the walls grow mold. But she's here. They all want her, but no one touches her. She’s broken, they all know that. They might be a bunch of heartless assholes, but they have principles. And Lya is off-limits. Her last boyfriend used to beat her up to a pulp, she still has a scar running down the side of her face. It doesn't take away from her beauty, but it drives him mad with rage.  

One night he was taking a piss behind the bar – mind you the alley’s hygiene is better than the loo inside – he saw the guy slap her, and felt the irrepressible urge to externalize his rage on the asshole’s face, so he did. Repeatedly, until he was the one lying on the ground, pissing himself. They’ve been friends ever since. She listens to his stupid jokes, gives him the best food, stops pouring drinks when she thinks he’s too drunk and smiles at him. She smiles so brightly he feels like a little boy in a candy store, hopeful and fearless.  

She looks out of place in this dirty joint full of heartless assholes, like a porcelain doll forgotten in a construction site, but she’s one of them: damaged. They don’t want to break her, they can all see the cracks in her porcelain skin, so no one touches her. They just pretend, pretend they have a chance, pretend they’re good enough for her. They even play this game where the last guy standing can ask her out. They drink until they either pass out or leave, and only one guy is left. The winner never asks her out, but still, they come every night to drink and dream. 

***** 

I always start with small incisions, quick and superficial. It stings just a little, but not too much. The most important thing is not the pain or the screaming, it’s the fear, the anticipation. It’s a wholesome experience: he gets to feel, see, and smell all of it. People often forget to mention the smell, iron and urea, blood and piss. The mix elicits a primal reaction: run, it says, run. But he can’t. 

*****

It’s Monday and Thancred has an appointment with the third victim’s wife. She looks vaguely familiar, must be from the file or the guy’s belongings. The murderer never bothered to hide his victim's identity. Hell, they even leave a special box for passports and other personal stuff. So yeah, she looks familiar, but he’s been in Ul’dah for a while, so it’s not a surprise. What he can’t stand is the way she's fidgeting on her chair. 

Thancred doesn’t like when the witness fidgets because a regular cop would think ‘hum, that’s suspicious'. Thancred tried being a regular cop once, wasn’t for him, so he stopped, started being an asshole instead with some instinct sprinkled on top, it was a wholesale price. Still, the fidgeting is annoying. And she still looks familiar, more than she should from just a file picture. Thancred can’t put his finger on it. Maybe he fucked her once. He was kind of a womanizer before his life went to shit, before Lahabrea. It doesn’t explain why she’s so nervous, or why she keeps nervously rubbing her arms. Nor does it explain the five layers of clothes. It’s at least 35° out, and she’s out in the sun with a freaking turtleneck. The outrageous makeup has to be the icing on the cake. 

And that’s when it hits him. He knows her, but not from the file, or a one-night stand. She’s from Lya’s support group for battered women. That’s why she’s nervous. Not because he’s her former lover, not even because he’s a cop, but because he’s a man. That’s why number 3’s dead: he was trash like the rest.

"Excuse me for a few minutes."

Thancred gets up and exits the room, leaving the widow alone. He spots Minfilia across the room and strides towards her.

"Hey Min, I'm gonna need you to take this one."

"Why?", she teases, "finally found a widow impervious to your charms?"

"Pretty sure our so-called victim wasn't the loving husband he owed to be."

Understanding flashes on her face, she drops the file she was reading on her desk and follows him to the interrogation room. Relief washes over the widow’s face when she sees Minfilia.

“This is my colleague, Detective Warde. She’s going to take it from here.”

Then he’s out again, leaving the two women alone. He goes to his desk while Min does her thing, and looks for the victim’s name in the database. He doesn’t need to watch Min do her work, he trusts her to get the answers they need. The petite blonde has great people skills, and she’s one of the good ones. She's so good, it's hard not to hate her. He doesn't though, never did, never will. 

She’s one of the few friends he has left, one of the few people to put up with his bullshit after Lahabrea's "incident". He loves her like the little sister he never had, and more than anything he respects her. She's a good friend and a good cop, something this city sorely lacks. Rhabdan runs a tight ship as chief of police, but there's always a few bad apples in the bunch, not Min though. She's one of the good ones, not some disillusioned asshole like him. It's hard to be hopeful in a city like Ul'dah where being rich means one can escape any form of responsibility. Like number 3 here. His wife's medical record is a testament to his behavior: bruised face, broken ribs, even lacerations. It's a miracle the woman is still alive. But her in-laws are rich, and influential: Lolorito's people. That's why Thancred is not so sure he wants to catch the killer, not when they're doing what he's not free to do himself.

When Minfilia is done with the interrogation, she motions for him to join her in the break room. She confirms what Thancred already knows: the guy was an asshole.

He needs a fucking drink. 

*****

First I remove his dick, not like he’s gonna need it anymore. I do this slowly, very slowly. I want him to suffer. This is also what the mirror on the ceiling is for, and the tape on the eyelids, no escape. He must see everything and especially hear everything, the slightest tear of his flesh, the sound of his blood dripping on the sanitized tiles, the scalpel cutting his flesh, my slow breathing. The shock of emasculation makes him pass out. It’s okay, we have all the time. I cauterize his wound, I don't want him to bleed out and die. Not yet.  

*****

Another corpse: emasculated, dismembered, and wrapped up like his buddies. 

Thancred lights another cigarette and crouches down in front of the jar containing the head. He knows this face, he broke that nose: Lya's ex. Suddenly the crime scene doesn't seem ugly anymore, it shines with glitter and shit. It makes him happy to see that stupid face in a jar, means he won't be a problem for Lya anymore. He's also the second "victim" who likes to take out his anger on women, there has to be something there. Thancred needs to take another look at the first three victims, they can't be all that clean.  

He ponders whether he should tell Lya about this. Would that make her happy? It might make her feel better, safer. "By the way, the asshole who used to beat you up is dead, a serial killer took care of it." 

Yeah. Maybe he needed to work on his speech. 

It’s just him and the old Bernie now, playing that secret game of theirs. The old man sends him a dirty look before finally getting up. Thancred wins tonight, and he plans on taking her out for real, not just in his head. It's a lucky day after all, maybe she'll say yes.   

The bar is empty that time around. ‘Good’ he thinks, 'Her smiles will all be mine.'

She’s smiling more than usual, she looks happy even, so he decides not to say anything. She smiles, but she’s seldom happy, no point in ruining the mood. The asshole will be just as dead tomorrow. So he sits at the bar to be closer to her, and drinks while he tells her stupid nonsense. One drink, then a second, and finally a whole bottle.

*****

He waking up again, and we’re back in business. Killing a man isn’t easy work, but a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. My mom used to tell me: “When things get hard, just put them in different boxes and deal with them one at a time.” So I do just that: I cut him into small pieces, wrap them up, put them in nice little jars.

First his right arm, the one he used to slap his women. I cut just below the elbow, he screams like a piglet being bled out. Then his left arm, all the way up to the shoulder, his legs, and finally his head. 

*****

He wakes up to an empty room. Of course, she’s not here, why would she? She’s in his fantasy, not in his reality. It was such a vivid dream, it left him hard and wanting. He buries his face in the sheets, and he can almost smell her. As if dreams could leave a scent behind. Fucking morning wood. He needs release and a shower, but first, he wants a smoke.

He dreams of Lya that night.

She's riding him like a fierce amazon, her breasts moving to the rhythm of their bodies. Everything about her is erotic, her hungry gaze, her mischievous smile. That smile excites him as much as it soothes him. Fuck, he doesn't want to get out of this dream, but his alarm rings, and the dream is gone.

He walks to the kitchen naked, he lives alone and doesn’t give a fuck about flashing his neighbors. She’s standing in his kitchen, a coffee mug in hand. She’s wearing one of his shirts; it’s a bit too big for her, but too short to be decent. She’s so fucking beautiful wearing his clothes, if he wasn’t hard before, he certainly is now. And then he remembers everything.

She kissed him outside the restaurant, he wouldn’t have dared, but she kissed him. They ended up at his place. They made love on his couch, in the shower, in his bed. He didn’t fuck her, no, he worshiped her: kissed every inch of her skin, licked every freckle. He prayed to her body like a mad man, as much as he could, as much as she let him.

She said yes.

All the alcohol made his brain soft and mushy, but he remembers now. He helped her close the bar, and they went to that new place near his precinct. The one that stays open until 3 am. They talked, he told her he was a cop, she said she knew. It was written in the way he moved, in the way others moved around him. They talked all night long, and she smiled. Gods, that freaking smile got him good. They talked so much, they got kicked out. 

He must look like a fucking idiot now, with that surprised look on his face and his hard cock because she bursts out laughing. A laugh that explodes like fireworks and ricochets against the walls of his apartment, leaving notes of bright colors everywhere. It's crazy how beautiful she is when she laughs. He wants her, needs her.

He strides towards her, lifts her off the floor, and drops her off her gently on the kitchen table. He doesn’t want to break her, doesn’t want to worsen the cracks in her porcelain skin. Then he makes love to her, in the middle of his kitchen, with the blinds open for the world to see. Because he can, because she wants him as much as he wants her. 

***** 

His instinct about the victims being trash was right. 

After some heavy digging in the first two victims’ past, he finds what he needs. Victim number one’s a serial rapist: used to slip roofies in women’s drink, raped them, and filmed the whole thing, threatening to release the tapes if they tried to report him. Not that they would, the guy was filthy rich, another one of Ul’dah’s “cream of the crop”, these women knew they didn’t have a chance to see justice. If it wasn’t for his “barely legal” deep dive in the guy’s personal belongings - he might have stolen his computer after breaking into his parents’ house - Thancred wouldn’t even know about it.

Victim number 2 was no better, he had a long history of domestic violence and child abuse, but no open case, not even a complaint. Now adding number 3 and Lya’s ex to the list… these guys all deserved to die like pigs. He should say it, should even think like that, but he does. He doesn’t even want to catch the culprit, for all he cares they should be free to rid the city of these predators. Should even get paid for doing public service.

Looking at the so-called victim’s file drives him mad with rage. He wants to drink, but more than anything he needs to see Lya; He can even pretend to do police work while he’s at it. She knows at least one of the women, she’s a victim herself, maybe she knows more. 

The Quicksand is packed. He has to share her smile and his time, it annoys him, but it's okay. Tonight she will be his, and his alone. He sits at the bar, she smiles at him, and he’s not mad anymore. He orders whiskey, then another, and another. After the third glass, the rush finally dies down, and they can talk. He tells her about his investigation, and tells her about her ex. She's a little shaken up, but it's okay, she is strong. 

He shows her pictures of the victims, not the one from the autopsy, he’s not that stupid, pretty pictures with happy smiles and perfect lives. Moments of happiness he knows to be fake. He asks her if she knows the victims or their wives, through her support group, or by word of mouth. She nods. She knows the wives of 2 and 3, she talks to them often. She recognizes the last victim, of course, he was her monster. 

Thancred’s curious to know what she thinks about all this, that’s the cop in him, but he’s also worried about how it’ll affect her.

“I don't know… well I do. I know I shouldn't be happy, but I am,” she admits. “I'm a little less afraid.”

He hates that she feels guilty.

“I’m glad he’s dead,” he states, hoping she’ll feel relieved that those words are coming from him. “Now, I know he won’t  prowl you around anymore.”

She smiles softly, and he has the urge to make love to her on the bar, in front of everyone. But he won’t, Lya is a goddess, not a girl who gets fucked in a bar. He’s going to buy her flowers, and maybe a nice bottle of wine. He might even light some candles to set the mood, then he’s gonna make love to her, again and again until they both pass out in blissful exhaustion.

*****

I dispose of his body in one of the city’s garbage dumps. It’s the perfect place to get rid of a body. And this open sky trash dump is perfect for me: exactly what this trash deserves. The people who live here all look dead, the only thing that sets them apart from my guy is the steady movement of their hearts. That, and the fact that they’re all in one piece, for the most part.

*****

Reports come back on Lya’s ex.

Toxicology’s clean, no head trauma either, he wasn’t drugged or incapacitated like the others. He might have known his assailant. The rest of the report looks similar at first glance, cuts all over the body, severed limbs, emasculation, beheading. It’s the same MO but somehow it feels messier: the body shows hesitation marks, the cuts are deeper, meant to hurt... it feels more personal, like an act of revenge. 

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. 

*****

He opens up his flat’s door and practically runs towards the kitchen. He needs a drink before seeing Lya. It can’t be her, when she smiles the ground shakes, she turns wolves into lambs. She’s so small, with soft porcelain skin, tiny hands… It can’t be her, yet his guts tell him otherwise.

He’s halfway in the kitchen when he spots her. She’s waiting for him, his backup gun in those tiny hands of hers. When he dreamt of coming home to her that’s not what he had in mind.

 She’s smiling at him, a sad little smile because she doesn’t want to kill him, not really. He might be an asshole but he doesn’t hurt women. Maybe she likes him too. She’s crying now, tears rolling down her beautiful face. It’s stupid but he still wants to throw himself in her arms. It’s stupid because she’s going to kill him. 

She’s gonna try anyway. 

*****

Gunshots echo in the room, followed by the loud thud of a lifeless body hitting the ground.

[rametarin]

tempting.

Reflecting on my health issues, since age 17. And my living situation.

So since around the age of 16, I’ve been plagued with unpredictable bowel problems and digestive ills. Like, everybody gets constipated every now and then, but I mean I’d get just, excruciatingly backed up and my family wouldn’t help me get seen or anything.

Basically from the time I was 18 onwards I was told my medical bills were mine. But oh by the way [Ram. Not my real name, but the name fam calls me], you gotta pay us every dollar that isn’t devoted to keeping yourself alive :^)

I’d be like, family, I cannot afford this, it’d be in your best interests to invest in my health so I can figure out what’s fucky about my bowels and stomach so this can stop happening, I can live a normal life, and we can all continue on our merry way.

Basically I was told, “tough shit, do it yourself, also pay your fair share to The Family” (aka, give mom all your money.)

It was never just fear of homelessness, but fear of homelessness while my GI tract was fucky and my teeth were rotting out of my head that made escape from here impossible. It’s why I didn’t just climb into a hole in the wall and escape this garbage fire of a mother and do that bootstrap shit. Because it sincerely made  me wonder sometimes if I was being poisoned by my mother to keep me powerless and in need of help, but perpetually weakened to where the best I could do is move towards help but just be put on a treadmill for someone elses financial benefit.

Perhaps my bitterness makes just a touch more sense now, right? Because Maine is a long-drive state. You need a car. You absolutely need a car to get anywhere. Not having one means you walk everywhere, you ride a bike everywhere and are FUCKED during the winter, or you go nowhere because you don’t have anywhere you need to be and don’t drive.

Now that said, imagine having bowel and ass problems so bad just the idea of driving makes you question if it’s safe for you to even be on the road.

That has been my existence for twenty years now, because my family wants me just close enough to extract what mom things “she’s owed,” but absolutely will not help me with anything. There’s no security in staying here because the whole fucking POINT of putting up with a family’s infantilizing “everything has its place” mentality, is you’re able to wisely squirrel away your income without paying a landlord anything and your income going up in smoke

If your mother is just the worst sort of landlord, you’re basically just paying a narcissistic bitch of a mother to be a narcissistic bitch of a mother. There’s absolutely no upside.

So I’ve been stuck in this virtual tutorial of an existence because my own digestive system was torturing me and seriously deleting my ability to operate independently. And mom, whom has always wanted absolute control over my finances and my future, saw it as a holistic way of penning me up and making be desperate. Never a wasted opportunity with this fucking monster.

Well. I eliminated cottonseed oil and chicken proteins from my diet and, while not perfect, the amount of excruciating pain and pressure and weird cold-acidic burning in my back and bowels has subsided a lot. As well as my stomach issues receded considerably.

The truth is I was loathe to even try and escape without figuring out these problems, but I couldn’t figure them out because I never had the money. I tried to get a barium enema x-ray when I was 17 and suffering a massive, excruciating flareup. I missed prom (I didn’t have anyone to go with anyway) because of what felt like it could’ve been anything from gall stones to bowel cancer.

Had a big useless cleanse that was excruciating, then had the guys that give the barium enema tell me, “lube is expensive” when I screamed about how much it hurt to have the thing shoved up my ass. My already inflamed, tender ass.

Absolutely nothing was found in my bowels. Which did absolutely nothing to explain why they felt inflamed and miserable. But it did give me a $1,700 bill, which proved.. absolutely nothing except they couldn’t find tumors or any object lodged in my butt. Given how it took me two summers to acquire almost that much working a shit job for my shithead father’s girlfriend, maybe you can appreciate how heartbreaking that is. Spending all that money and you don’t even learn WHY you’re suffering, you just learn why you aren’t.

And today I still fume with rage over being told, “ass lube is expensive so we’re skimping on it” and then be charged almost two thousand god damned dollars.

Absolutely could not get my family to help me pursue any other avenue. They just kept insisting, “it’s all anxiety, it’s all in your head. You just need to get off the computer and do more manual labor/make us money and your problems will go away. :^)”

But then they would not help me do it. They wanted me to take on all the risk while they got the guaranteed income from my needing to be around them.

My need to grow step by step was their opportunity to mitigate my life, every step of the way, so non-compliance with their exploitation would result in homelessness and complete uprooting. If I wasn’t going to voluntarily follow draconian rules, then I’d be governed by those rules anyway in the absence of them being verbally stated. Just, using poverty and immobility as a way to impose it.

But I refused to comply. I wasn’t going to suffer every day unendingly AND get my income snatched away, BY MY OWN GOD DAMNED FAMILY. A family that didn’t even pay RENT to live in the house we were living in at the time, and a family that made 65-70K a year, with another house they owned in a less convenient location worth $350K. My mother had ABSOLUTELY NO BUSINESS other than fun and profit as an excuse as to why I needed to buy, “the family,” a car. Other than making it the “family” car giving her defacto control over it but my obligation to pay for it. Just another indirect way to give her absolute control over my options and alternatives.

So I didn’t work. I sat at home and dealt with her abusive bullshit, because it was the only card I had left in my deck. She didn’t want the stigma of throwing out a sick man without a license, a car or any savings. I didn’t want to voluntarily throw myself out and die in the street.

So I dealt with my health problems as best as I could. There were a good many times living in this house, that we’ve lived in and she’s owned since 2006, that I questioned whether I should phone an ambulance and just say fuck it, go into tens of thousands of dollars of debt just goosechasing this problem, thanks to the backdoor socialized medical system that exploits the profit motive but uses government assured payment fixed to taxes in order to afford it.

That’s probably what pisses me off the most about my situation. Our medical system has been turned into a farce by socialists deliberately making medicine as toxic as they fucking can in order to then bat their eyes and go, “Bet you just want single payer and to basically make medicine another ring of the government NOW, don’t youuuuuu? It’d make all those woes go awayyyyy!” while turning the screws to our bodies by denying us affordable medicine. All while blaming capitalism for shit that’s assured to work at any cost by the government.

Other people pine for a more socialized system to make the disgusting exploitation and abuse stop. But the truth is, that’s just like wanting to marry a pirate so they’ll stop lobbing cannonballs and demanding tolls at sea from you. Yes, the actual literal war on you and your community and your personal sovereignty will be over, but you’ll also be institutionalizing pirates in order to make them stop taking complete advantage of you on their terms instead of taking complete advantage of you on mostly-their terms but you get to act like you’re consenting to it.

I digressed. Anyway...

Well. I’m curious about pursuing a shit job just to see if I can KEEP some income, but I know, and have always known, my mother will not allow me to do anything with that money but barely keep myself alive. While she uses it to just buy enormous bulk loads of garbage and hoards them in the corners, or throws hundreds of dollars at friends-of-the-family/neighbors and extracts that money from me to do it.

I know going into it that the job would be otherwise worthless. She wants her ten pounds of flesh a year from me, and if I worked, there’d be no getting around it. She isn’t going to allow me to profit living with her, in any way. Everything has to revolve around her, or I get made homeless.

But trying to hold a job would mean possible (there’s that ‘potential vs. guarantee dichotomy again) feelers out to couches to surf on. Or credit building.

It’d still be a sexless existence dictated by someone so fucking petty that they can’t help you fix a broken tooth but do miraculously have the money to buy you a cell phone and a plan, “if you want it,” purely to always have you at their beck and call and/or have control over your phone plan. And it’d mean committing to something that runs a minimum of a year while being able to have a foot crushing my neck and destroying whatever I’m trying to do in an instant.

but it’d also mean being able to financially pursue what’s wrong with me and fixing it.

But I will hold this grudge against women and the actual, objective privilege they have from the legal system and our social system in the US for the rest of my life. Everybody around me saw what she was doing to me and my life, and they’ve done and said absolutely nothing. An abusive woman in this society is basically on par with the richest barons in a young adult novel, and all you have to do to get that kind of institutional power, rich or poor, is have a vagina and be a mom.

Then other women will sympathize with the mother, whom can never be totally wrong about anything, and at best you might get silence and indifference about the way you’re treated.

You can be cornered, debased and neglected until you’re a greasy shoggoth of a person, and if it’s a woman doing this to you, it’s your fault for not escaping. After having every escape route made as torturous and unsustainable an option as possible, you’ll be held accountable for yourself.

I’ll be relieved and pleased when this disgusting pig of a woman dies of natural causes. She’ll have gotten away with grabbing my life and thrashing around with it for 20 years while the world passed me by, just to keep control, just for fun, just for profit.

But in the meantime, maybe there’s a local niche I can fill. Just enough of something to find somewhere else to live. Without conditions making it more damning to pursue than nothing at all.

But I’m not hoping too hard.

[theliterateape]

Why Can't We Just Share the Last Slice of Pizza?

by Don Hall

I had the first TV dinner in possibly forty-years a few weeks ago and it was kind of incredible.

Sure, it was a Hungry Man® chicken and mashed potatoes concoction and had more sodium than a bucket of sea water but it was still oddly delicious and covered in a gravy comprised of nostalgia and gluten. I didn't buy the frozen tray in a cardboard box. No, my wife has, in the pandemic, taken to rebranding her self as a 'resource locator' otherwise known as a 'dumpster diver.'

It sounds odd but I'm convinced that when the Second Great Depression takes hold, I'm married to the most resourceful and extraordinary partner on the planet. She finds brand new shoes, genuine Shriner fez's, and food. Cans of food thrown away. Expired bags of pretzels. And still-frozen TV dinners.

The nostalgia of consuming this marvel of the fifties, the fully-prepared dinner, ready to heat and eat in front of the television comes from my youth. In terms of economic status there were times in my earliest days when we were 'poor'. Now, mom wouldn't let us use that word to describe our situation. She preferred to say we were 'broke'. That distinction was my first lesson in reframing your perspective to fuel optimism.

Whichever it was called it was common practice growing up to eat TV dinners and mom would cut each portion in half (even the weird lava-like brownie or apple-crunch) so we had a meal the next day as well.

When we couldn't afford a Swanson-manufactured meal, she'd make what she called 'Spanish Rice'—Minute rice, a green pepper, tomato sauce, and Tabasco—another rebranding that certainly made this odd and rough cultural appropriation seem both unsavory and about as white as it could be.

Mom worked hard. My recollection was that she was often working several jobs and doing the best she could to keep us in clothing and food with a roof over our heads despite the fact that the minimum wage at the time was $1.60. She also had a way of reframing things so that, at no point, did we feel like we were missing out on much.

On top of that raising me could not have been easy.

We moved around a lot so I was always the new kid in school. Even with teachers and administrators, there is a tribal imperative to put the new members in their place, establishing the rules of behavior and assigning the slot for the newest members. I was never much of a conformist so this dance of going along to get along didn't take. All of which made my struggling mother's life one of battling the powers that be to protect her less than socialized monkey-son.

There are stories. The time I was forbidden to speak in class so I drew pictures of a butt and a butt pooping to silently curse some kids out. The incident of my failing to stay put during classes and finding escape routes during lunch that caused an epic battle as the Vice Principal decided to ban me from the Free Lunch program out of pique and spite. The summer when I was caught beating up Cub Scouts because they wouldn't let me join due to my mother's financial inability to buy me the requisite uniform.

There's an image I have in my head of my tiny mother almost coming to blows with a much larger woman because the woman called us "poor white trash." We were white but my mother wouldn't abide her children embracing the twin ideas of us being poor or being trash.

“No, Donald. You cannot just eat the last piece of pizza. You need to learn to share.”

In Chicago there's a thing called 'dibs.' 

Sometimes it snows big and the streets are plowed but the parking spots are all but obliterated by small mountains of snow. The diligent among residents get their shovels out of the garage and clear out the snow from in front of their homes so that they will then have a place to park. They have done the work, so they feel entitled to the benefits of that labor.

The problem lies with those who do not shoulder in and remove the snow yet still feel entitled to park on public streets that they, after all is said and done, have paid for with their tax dollars.

Thus 'dibs.' The shoveler decides to put a lawn chair or card table or statue of the Virgin Mary in the spot they have labored over so when they come home from work, the spot has been saved for them and them alone.

It all sounds silly until you look at from an economic perspective. There are more cars in Chicago than there are legal places to park. It's a fact. The demand for spaces is greater than the supply. Parking tickets cost drivers thousands of dollars a year and the 'ticket dicks' are as numerous as the homeless. When it snows and the plows come through there are suddenly even less spaces than there were the night before.

Given the city will clear the roads but not the curbs the solution for half the population is to carve out their own space and the other half parks wherever they can. Those who take the spots but do not shovel are capitalizing on the labor of those who do and it pisses them off.

“No, Donald. You cannot just eat the last piece of pizza. You need to learn to share.”

I was thirteen. I was growing. I ate like a fucking locust with the table manners of the Cookie Monster. There it was—the last piece. I wanted it. My sister was small and weak. What was she gonna do?

“Offer your sister the last piece.”

“…do you want the last…”

“YES!” she barked and shoved the whole piece in her mouth.

“That’s NOT FAIR! We coulda split it! That’s not sharing, that’s theft!”

That’s Capitalism. Cut throat. Haves and Have Nots. It is simply not in human nature to share. In all of recorded history there has always been, in every society and civilization, when approached with abundance, a small percentage of those at the top and a much larger percentage at the bottom. Call it what you want—winners and losers, the One Percent and the Ninety-Nine (great name for a prog rock band), Bourgeoisie and Proletariat—it all amounts to the same dynamic.

It occurs to me that in the fight to get people fired from their jobs for tweeting arguably terrible things the double standard in place is exceptionally capitalist. On the ‘cancel culture’ side is the idea that people should be held accountable for their words in the world and, if they cross the line, then employers should fire them. On the other side, these same people will scream that an employer who decides that a kid wearing the costume of his culture or using grammatically incorrect language cannot be fired.

Both are individuals putting themselves and their ability to express themselves at the center of a business that has little to do with the individual. Everyone should have the right to their own specific identity as they see fit but no one should have the right to exert themselves above a business that pays them a salary in order to center things on them.

It’s frustrating. Economic class is the true great divider in the world. Because it is so ingrained in the human experience to live with those who have the cash and many who do not, economic class seems an unassailable unfairness. It’s an immovable and undeniable trait in societies of every stripe. 

The landlord who leverages herself to get loans to buy an apartment building, fix it up to be livable, and rents it out to people has shoveled the snow. The tenant who claims it is unfair to be evicted from that apartment building because they cannot pay the rent is parking wherever there is a spot.

And it pisses everybody off.

No, it is neither race nor gender that is the engine of inequity. It’s almost entirely economic class.

Since the existence of class is so ever-present and unmoving, we focus on other things to change society. The battle to curb billionaires has never really taken hold despite the obvious problems they present. So we focus on race, we focus on gender. We spend our energy ignoring that most of inequity that exists between humans is about economics and find as many differences between those of us on the Have Not side as we can.

Why is it so hard to get rid of billionaires and that pernicious One Percent? Because we all want what they have. We all want the last piece of pizza and the parking space. We all want the luxury of luxurious things. We resent the things we'd have to do to get that luxury so instead we tear at anyone and everyone to gain whatever slice we can.

No one wants to shovel out that goddamned parking space. Trust me. In thirty years of living in Chicago, I shoveled tons and tons of snow to get that coveted spot. I never did the 'dibs' thing but I empathize with the fury at someone taking that spot I've labored over. 

Study after study indicates that it is economic class that holds us back far more than race or gender but the road to power is through a perception of grievance these days and the only evil when presenting poverty as the problem is human nature. Men and women can be demonized. That game has been around for-freaking-ever. African Americans can demonize whites (but not black Americans because African immigrants in America do, on average, far better economically than whites). We can go the People of Color vs White People but, in order to make that case, Asians have to be ignored or made white-adjacent. 

No, it is neither race nor gender that is the engine of inequity. It’s almost entirely economic class. Not that acknowledging that will change anything.

The utopian ideals of Socialism and even Communism sound better than Capitalism. The problem is the humans are built from the DNA to compete. Compete for resources, for sexual partners, for jobs, for shelter. Competition is as instinctual as our desire to procreate and Capitalism is a competitive sport. Throughout history, progress toward learning to truly share that slice of pizza is slow because it goes against our very nature. Not impossible and thus worth the effort but fucking S-L-O-W.

A friend recently posited that maybe I have gained some wisdom in my aging. He then switched and decided that maybe what we think is wisdom is just age plus exhaustion. Whichever it is, I have learned to share. I've also learned that in order to share, I have to assume my offer of the last piece of pie is going to be taken and stuffed into my sister's mouth. I can be wounded by the gesture, I can even be annoyed by it. I have to let it go.

I'm comfortable with the concept of enough. Meaning, if I have enough to share, I have enough to survive. Even if it's only enough of my mom's Spanish Rice.

There will be those, always those, who are so imbued with the need to compete that there is never enough. There will be those, perpetually those, who have not had enough and are willing to tear it out of the mouths of those who have.

And there will always be those, unendingly those, who are fine parking in the open spot knowing that someone else put in the work and not caring enough about anyone else that they take up the space and benefit from the labor without contributing.

On the best days, I don't run into them.

[luked4nuke]

If, I were President of the United States. (I just wanna state I’m not a democrat or republican)

First I’d enforce Quarantine and extend it. I’d also attend the poorest families or individuals first and provide them with the financial assistance they need. People are struggling hard enough as it is living paycheck to paycheck.

Second I’d shut down the schools as I believe safty more important especially for the future kids who will rule this place. I also don’t like how schools give so much homework and stress. They just condition kids into beleiving working 40 hours a week is normal and that you should be lucky to have weekends. Staying in classes all day then returning home only to be forced to complete more homework that takes up time and robs them of social interactions. These schools don’t even test knowledge. They test obedience and reward them for being quiet little slaves that will slowly become a “regular worker.” They really don’t care about how smart you are, they test memory over all else, when they study a subject and pass the test they move on quickly to the next one stressing them out. If they failed the test, to bad they’re still moving on with you. (Sorry this got way of topic. I just hate how schools operate and also how low they pay the teachers)

Third I would dismantle the police force and create a new one. A better one that focuses on real problems like sex trafficking and drugs. All the horrible crimes that are allowed to fly under the radar. Any excessive use of force would be heavily punished. Fired, fined and jail time. No shooting at peaceful protesters, seriously dafaq is wrong with them unleashing hell upon unarmed civilians and sneaking in rioters to escalate it to justify the force.

Fourth, gold is a finite resource. Pretty much all the money you’ve ever spent is fake, all digital backed by nothing. Personally I hate it but you’ve all becomes achstomed to it so I would attempt to fix the economy so people can afford essential things, like homes and food. Instead of kicking out homeless people Id build shelters. They make it to easy to fall down into poverty and nearly impossible to climb back up. Once you’ve been arrested, once you’ve been homeless, you understand the struggle of trying to reintergrate with society. The easiest path become the dark one. I would attempt to control the population, America is a gigantic habitat and likewise it has a carrying capacity. If you’re gonna argue people have to pay unreasonable amounts of money for food you’re crazy.

Immigrants are definitely allowed as long as they follow the rules and don’t commit crimes. America was litterally founded on immigrants. American stole land from the natives violently and even managed to capture Hawaii, which was its own nation. They taxed us and recognized us as a small power. Iolani Palace has electricity flush toilets and even phones before the White House did. Queen Lili’uokalani signed in duress. It horrible and sheforfeited her whole kingdom in exchange for the people, as a leader should. The people make a country, the government already should put the people first. Without all the hardworking Americans working, there is no country.

We don’t serve the government. As a government worker we serve the people. It’s our duty to ensure everybody is treated fairly. To make sure everybody that we oversee has the essentials for life, a home and food.

And for LGBT rights. I personally don’t care what the heck they do. Love is love, let it be. They can chose to identify as whoever they want and pursue relationships with whoever. You can’t force things onto people. America is supposed to be freedom personified, we can chose to do as we please as long as we don’t bring harm to others. Those camps are wrong. America is also religion free, you can be whatever you want, Christian Muslim, litterally anything. Being a satanist is totally legal as long as you don’t hurt anything. Believe in what you want and don’t force it on others. Gay people are amazing! We all are, were all human and we can change and create change. We are all human at the core and we always have been. We have a right to love, and to be loved by all around us. Love is love, let it be, theres always been love. I can identify as a man or woman, and I can damn well love either as I please as long it’s reciprocated. I’d always rather say I love you too much then not enough.

Climate change is real. The pollution of those stupidly large companies is also VERY real. As an individual you contribute less than a percent of the actual pollution, it’s literally the big corporations. That needs to stop. I’m not exactly sure how but I AM GOING to start a wave of change that will benefit the worlds health. We all live here. This is not political, I don’t have time for games, scientists that have studied their whole lives are begging for us to change. We can all have solar electricity farms and then it’d be FREE. “But you can’t charge people for that you can’t make money.” I’m NOT TRYING TO MAKE MONEY I DO NOT CARE ANOUT MONEY. IM AIMING FOR SOMETHING BIGGER THAN GREED THE BETTERMENT OF HUMANITY. I don’t care about ruining electric companies and other random fossil fuels bullshits that will run out, I want the future to be bright!

Screw it im going off the rails, schools main courses should focus on stuff like self sustainment, like farming and wilderness survival. Creativity because that’s the most human thing about us! Empathy basic Psychology. Kids can get mad they should learn and understand why. Understand why they feel the feelings they feel and giving them all better emotional control. EMPATHY. They need to learn things like taxes since they’re such a big part. Also why the heck are taxes so complicated. It’s just targeting the illiterate foreigners and immigrants who struggle and try to understand it and I believe that’s horrible. Make it easier to become apart of America the land of freedom and the getaway from the crueler areas of earth. Maybe just limit the population. Also seriously fuck off with taxes! Why the hell are you charging and taxing 14 year olds that aren’t allowed to vote, thats taxation without representation.

Taxes should be like Mario kart and Ancient Greece. Quote from some thing I googled

“The philosopher Aristotle developed the theme. His "magnificent man" gave vast sums to the community. But poor men could never be "magnificent" because they did not have the financial means. True wealth consists in doing good, Aristotle argued in the Art of Rhetoric: in handing out money and gifts, and helping others to maintain an existence.

The idea is simple the higher up you are on the financial ladder the more you have to pay taxes and contribute to society. The large taxes from the rich help fund financial aid for the poor and stuff. The rich did not earn that money they climbed to top on top a mountain of millions of shortcuts and underpaid workers It should be an honor to be taxed and help the poor people survive. Like in Mario kart, the higher you’re placed the harder it is to maintain it and the last place people always get the better power ups giving them a constant fighting chance. At most I believe wealth should be hoarded to sustain like one generation of kids, two at the most. Maybe three but theres no reason anybody should have all that money that your never going to spend or all that money that becomes worthless once a war or breaks out or aliens attack or something. Life is more important than money. Something simple everyone should consider.

I think everybody should be able to pursue a career and each career should be sustainable. Enjoyment in a job of your choosing without worrying about financial burden. Jobs would be divided into smaller simple groups and the pay would based on their contribution to society. Like doctors getting paid more and getting teachers paid more, but small retailers wouldn’t get paid as much but they could survive not living paycheck to paycheck. The motivation is everybody should free to pursue the hobby they love without being punished. Maybe little Timmy doesn’t want to be a firefighter, maybe he desires a simple fun life selling flowers. That’s fine! Maybe they don’t wanna become the hero but it’ll be an honor to society. As long as you have a job that contributes to society you can live for free. If everybody is constantly trying to make the most profit, then we all become a bucket of crabs dragging each other down. I can’t sell my $10 good that costed me $2 to make. Also the whole buy back thing irritates me, I spent $60 on this goddamn game and GameStop can only give me like $10 in store credit or $5 in real life? That’s isn’t fair and that applies to pretty much everything. That’s $1000 phone you bought is barley worth $357 right now. I’m pretty sure it didn’t cost that much to make these things but like DAMN. Capitalism sucks.

In summary, I don’t know much about politics but I would be the human party. I don’t care about left or right. I’m the one that doesn’t care about money. I care more about life and creativity. Peoples right to enjoyment and living a happy life with others regardless of gender. Survival of the human race and advancement into the future where more things are free and we can constantly focus on creating an even BETTER one. We can’t go anywhere without each other especially if we’re all just a bucket of crabs. To greedy and self destructive constantly looking out only for themselves. Seriously get your act together humans before you kickstart your own downfall. If we’re all trying to make a profit, nobody does. The best things in life are free. You can pursue wealth for your future or you can focus and live and enjoy and love the now. Mario kart style, where all in this race for life and we all deserve a winning chance.

[honeymoonjin]

roomie - taehyung x reader

A/N 2k words, angst+fluff oneshot. When an unfortunate circumstance lands you in jail overnight, you don’t expect to fall in love with the criminal sharing the cell with you.

“Hey, princess.”

You scowl and try to avoid his hungry gaze, glaring at the guard just outside the cell who seems to be completely disinterested in them.

“Princess,” he repeats, “I’m talking to you. Come on, we’re stuck here together for the night. Might as well make the most of it.” You can hear the smug grin in his tone. “Isn’t it so cold in this cell? I’ll keep you warm.”

Before you can think to be the bigger person and just ignore him, you scoff. “I’m not having sex with you, asshole. Pretty sure sex in public is illegal.”

He chuckles deeply, and you swallow hard at the richness of his voice. “What are they gonna do, arrest us? Anyway, I wasn’t meaning I fuck you in this grimy shithole. It’s good to know being in public was your only deal breaker, though.”

This time you do turn to glare at him and his shiteating grin. “This is all just a misunderstanding. I wasn’t actually arrested. Some of us know how to follow the rules.”

He raises an eyebrow languidly, gesturing to the small cell you both find yourselves in. “And how is that working out for you?”

Your face heats up. “Look, I don’t want to do…whatever this is, I just want to sit in silence and wait for my friend to come pick me up. So, just shut up, okay?”

To your relief, the man just shrugs and leans back against the wall, legs spread wide as he sits on the metal cot across from yours. His eyes begin roaming over you, inch by inch, taking in the minutest of expressions on your face, and the exact curve of your breasts underneath your thin pajama top, and then finally landing right between your thighs.

You fold your arms over your chest and cross your legs. “What are you doing?”

His dark eyes slide back up to make eye contact with you. He grins and makes a motion of zipping his lips, then shrugs.

You roll your eyes and make a sound of frustration deep in your throat. “Fuck, stop being such a child! Is it too much to ask for you to act like a decent human being for five minutes?”

He tuts at you. “Princess is full of demands today. Do you want me to cut my dick off and hand it to you on a silver platter too, so you don’t feel threatened?”

Before you can reply with a scathing retort, the guard is rapping on the cell bars with his nightstick and pointing to you. You look over in relief, hopping up immediately and stretching out the aches from sitting on the stiff metal.

“Woah, lady, don’t get excited. Boss just called in to tell me your friend can’t make it tonight. Says she’ll come back tomorrow first thing. Sorry ‘bout it.”

The man across from you cracks up, eyes clenched shut and hand over his stomach as his whole body shakes from the force of it. You take a deep breath, and walk over to him slowly, waiting until he finally calms down to shove your hand out.

He wipes some non-existent tears from his eyes and blinks up at you. “What’s this?”

You clear your throat to make sure your voice comes out polite enough. “We got off on the wrong foot, but we’re stuck here overnight, so let’s start from scratch. I’m Y/n.”

His eyes flit over your face curiously, and after a moment, he takes your hand in his much larger one, shaking firmly but gently. “Kim Taehyung.”

You give him a short smile and return to your side of the room, sitting cross-legged on the cot and hugging a pillow to your chest. “So, what crime did you commit to get in here? I hope I didn’t just give my name to a serial rapist.”

He lifts his legs up and mirrors your position, giving you a flat look. “If I was a serial rapist, would they put me in a room with a scantily-clad woman?”

You frown at him, feeling self-conscious for being in a jail cell in nothing but a pair of Dumbo printed pajama shorts and an old t-shirt. You shrug petulantly. “You could be a gay rapist. Then putting you in a room with a woman would be preferable to another man.”

He stares at you oddly for a moment, before nodding. “I guess that’s true. At any rate, I’m not gay nor am I a rapist.” You raise your eyebrows at him, indicating that he should answer your original question. He bites his lip and sighs, the first hint of vulnerability you’ve seen from him yet. “My best friend did some stupid shit. Hacked into our high school database to change our grades for a final. The police found the IP address leading to his computer, but I told them it was just me.”

You stare at him deeply, seeing the hidden depths of pain behind his eyes. “Why?”

“He wants to go to a good university, get a good job. He doesn’t need a criminal record holding him back.”

“You’re a good friend,” you reply genuinely. “He’s lucky to have someone like you looking out for him. Won’t it affect you, though? A criminal record, I mean.”

He just shrugs apathetically. “He was always the smarter one. I’ll be happy flipping burgers and watching him become CEO of Apple or some shit.” He gives you a cheeky grin. “Who knows, maybe when he gets rich and famous, he’ll give me some of his money as a thank-you and I can retire at 30.”

You stay silent for a while, thinking it over. From the moment you were led into the cell and laid eyes upon him, you had self-righteously pinned him as a dirty criminal, some scumbag who needed to be kept off the streets. But here was a man basically throwing his life away completely unwarranted because he wanted a better future for his friend.

Taehyung coughs, breaking the heavy silence. “What are you here for, princess? Had a bad nightmare?”

You laugh weakly at him. “My apartment was broken into, and I have to wait for my friend to pick me up so I can stay with her. But she’s not nice like you. She’s probably out partying right now, trying to flirt with the cheerleading caption. Fucking Jung Hoseok. If he didn’t exist, I’d be at her house with a nice hot chocolate, curled up in bed.”

His eyes twinkle. “Looks like you need a Taehyung in your life to take care of her when she’s not around.”

“Sure seems that way.” You smile back at him, then crane your head to try and read the time off the wall clock in the hallway. Just after 2 in the morning. You look back at him sheepishly. “I’m kinda tired after the whole ordeal, I think I’m gonna turn in. Stay on that side of the room, okay? No funny business.”

He laughs good-naturedly. “No funny business.”

The cell falls into a more comfortable silence for about twenty or so minutes as you breathe steadily, throwing a hand over your eyes to block out the light from the harsh bulbs in the ceiling. After a while, though, a thought fills your mind and you can’t get rid of it. “Taehyung?” you whisper out.

A soft chuckle and a baritone whisper. “Yes?”

“What happens after?”

“What do you mean?”

You lift up your arm and look over to him, squinting in the light. “Will you get a fine, will you do community service? Will you go to jail?”

He’s silent for a while, and just when you think he’s not going to answer, he replies softly, “up to one year in prison. Hopefully less since it’s my first offense.”

Your sniff and shaky exhale echoes around the quiet cell, and you know he can hear your voice crack. “That’s really sad, Taehyung. It’s not fair.”

“Hey,” he soothes, “it’s for the best. Kookie, my friend, would never survive in prison.”

“And you can?”

His voice is lilting, trying to keep the atmosphere light. “You believed I was a thug. I’m sure I can convince others.”

You feel exhaustion begin to take a hold of you. “Tae,” you mumble sleepily.

A bemused chuckle. “Mm?”

“Can I come visit you?”

The last thing you see before falling asleep is his kind eyes and soft smile. “I would love that.”

The cell is empty when you wake up.

In the end, Taehyung only got three months. You knew this because you were at his hearing. He was let out after only two on good behavior. You also knew this because you were the one who picked him up at the front gates of the men’s prison.

In fact, you had been planning this very day once a week since he was sentenced, during the Thursday afternoon visiting hours.

It was difficult forming a relationship with someone when your every move was dictated by the very loud and insistent ‘no touching!’ yelled from the guards every ten or so minutes, but in many ways the two of you got so close so fast because you knew you were being completely honest and open. You were homeless, living on your friends couch while insurance took ages to come through, and he was in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.

The day you two had planned begun with you taking him straight to his apartment so he could have a hot shower and some decent food.

He lived with that friend of his, Kookie, but the kid was home visiting parents, and so they had the place to themselves, not that they stayed there long.

Taehyung wanted to experience all the joys of freedom the world had to offer: walking in the park, drinking freshly brewed coffee in his favorite café, running down the street to make the green pedestrian light. It was exhilarating seeing this man, who had always stayed positive in those two and a half months you had known him, be overcome with joy at the little things.

He insisted it would be your first date, because he didn’t want to count anything before that, and so from 10am until long after the sun had set, he barely let go of your hand for a moment, walking so close that your shoulders would bump.

Just before midnight, he drove you back to your friend’s apartment, walking you up to the door.

“I had fun today,” you confessed. “I’m so glad you’re finally out. You didn’t deserve to be in that place.”

He tuts at you playfully, swinging your interlocked hands between you. “We’re not going to talk about that place anymore. I want to look forward. Enjoy the taste of freedom.”

You laugh, breath billowing out like smoke in the cold night, although you feel warm all over. “Oh, and what does freedom taste like?”

His tongue darts out to wet his lips. “Let’s see.”

Before you can process it, he’s placing his hands on either side of your face and swooping in for a bruising kiss.

Two months of ‘no touching!’ result in some pent-up emotions, and you can feel each and every one of them in the passion he kisses you with.

His lips are chilled, but the inside of his mouth is hot, and he wastes no time before he’s tipping your head back and pressing on your jaw with his thumb, opening your mouth up to him wider.

He claims you with all the fire of a man possessed, and it’s all you can do to keep standing straight and take it, nerves alight with the way his tongue intertwines desperately with yours.

When he finally pulls away, it’s only because the two of you have run out of breath. He pants, resting his forehead against you.

Even though he’s too close for you to see properly, you know he’s grinning. “That’s odd,” he comments lightly.

You hum contentedly. “What’s odd?”

He flicks his tongue out to lick at the corners of your lips teasingly, making your breath hitch. “Freedom tastes exactly like Sal’s pepperoni pizza.”

[jakattax]

You wanted a scary story, I’ll give you one

May I introduce you all to St. Botolph’s Church, Lincolnshire (aka Skidbrooke church, aka demon church)

A 13th century Anglican church near the market town of Louth in my home county. As you can see the church is disused, abandoned and was declared officially redundant in 1973.

Like all abandoned buildings, especially places of worship, ghost stories abound. The church is widely regarded as one of the most haunted locations in Lincolnshire with tales of phantoms, demons and satanic activity.

https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/1891120/the-most-haunted-derelict-demon-church-in-the-uk-has-been-cursed

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bostonstandard.co.uk/news/offbeat/lincolnshire-s-top-8-terrifying-and-bizarre-paranormal-cases-1-8190903/amp

https://hauntedhistoryoflincolnshire.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/surrounding-areas/skidbrooke/

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.louthleader.co.uk/news/experts-claim-church-is-paranormal-paradise-1-1015932/amp

https://youtu.be/mZdlERW6iJI

So the story goes is that a coven of satanists performed dark and profane rituals in the church in the 1970’s and 80’s and there was a resurgence in 2004 of animal sacrifices, occult symbology and evidence of fires being burned. Now any self respecting occultist will know that just because a pentagram is involved and a few chickens were sacrificed it does not make it satanic (well certainly not LaVeyan Satanism which was at its most popular in the 60’s and 70’s as killing an animal goes against the tenth Satanic Rule on Earth) and that the deeds could have been carried out by any magical practitioner. It just sounds more dramatic and spooky to blame the satanists.

Anyway.

Skidbrooke church has a very menacing and a very infamous reputation among pretty much every one in the county, it becomes a rite of passage almost to go there and check it out. And so I did.

It was perhaps 4 years ago around midsummer and my best friend Dom decided he wanted to drive to the church and see what ghosts and ghouls we would encounter. This was a point where my occult side was just one of my many eccentricities, I certainly wasn’t an open magician yet so I was asked to tag along. It was myself, Dominic, Laura, Yas and Sam.

The drive from Grimsby to Skidbrooke isn’t long , probably around 40 minutes through the gorgeous Lincolnshire wolds, just expansive farmlands and rolling hills of woodlands. Proper farmers country. I remember the drive profoundly well because I was desperate for the toilet, and these long country roads don’t really have lay-bys. I was genuinely on the verge of pissing myself and Dom refused to stop until I threatened to piss in his new car and he eventually found somewhere so I could relieve myself. Weird diverge i know but I need to recount the tale from memory.

So we got to the church, or should I say the gated road that leads to the church. It was twilight so the sky was that beautiful dark orange colour, just as it meets the pale blue. The sun was setting and darkness was coming. The thing about Skidbrooke church is that it’s in the middle of fielded land and the only way to it is to park by the road and walk down a small country road to it. The road towards the church is gated off so driving there is not an option. The fields were wide and open so the sound of the wind and rustling of nearby trees were quite loud. Sound carried very well. It was very children of the corn, as in the grass in this field was huge. Very daunting, very atmospheric.

So off we went. There was definitely a sense of fear among us all, but we were quite jovial about it all, it was thrilling, fun almost. Dom and Sam are sceptics, they were adamant nothing was going to happen. Yas and Laura weren’t really 100% comfortable, especially when I was boasting that I was going to stir the supernatural pot. In all honesty I had no intention to perform a ritual as I didn’t have any tools or books with me to do so, I was just trying to spook my friends.

The thing about the church grounds is that they’re well kept and groomed. It’s a grade I protected building so I imagine the national heritage employs some poor bugger just to keep the grounds tidy. And it was a functioning church until the 70’s so it’s only respectful to keep the graves nice and clean. It was quite an awesome sight to be honest, the building is quite beautiful. Dom and Sam weren’t so much afraid of ghosts and Demons but more if the church was used by homeless people who might take umbrage to us poking around. We swept the graveyard before entering, just to make sure no one was around who’d fuck with us.

And we were indeed all alone. And so we entered the church proper.

An abandoned church is a bizarre thing. No pews, no altar, no stained glass, just a large bowel of rotting stone and pigeon shit. That’s what hit us, just the smell of dirt and decay. The only features that remained was the heavy oak doors, everything else was gone. From a place that is steeped in centuries worth of devotion and joy is now just a stone skeleton, forgotten in the middle of a field in England.

What struck me probably more than my friends was the heavy atmosphere of the place. Not saying necessarily negative but certainly a strong, musky and intense heavy energy attached to it. We explored the building briefly but honestly it was just a big empty room. It was getting progressively darker and I think we were all starting to spook ourselves a little.

So me being me, I rallied the troops and said I was going to call out. Now I applied no serious occult method here, I just gathered my friends and did the whole “I call beyond the veil, make a noise if there are spirits present” routine. I specified that if Spirits were present they should make themselves known by knocking on the oak doors. I added some flourishes to my calls, adding the names of Malach Ha’Mavet (an angel of death) and some other terms just for the dramatic effect. In hindsight very silly of me to do, but I just wanted a thrill, a bit of a spook. The worse thing was is that it was enough for Yas and Laura and they wanted out. Very douchey thing of me to do really, just to scare them for the sake of it.

We decided it was probably best to leave now. We were all realising that we’re in the middle of nowhere in the dark and me being that weird occultist was trying to commune with the dead (again in actuality I did no real magic here, bit of foolery) and me realising that I’ve scared my friends I didn’t feel too proud of myself so we go.

Our pace is significantly faster as we go back down the road to the car, now it is fully dark so we’re relying on our phones to light the road. Sam walks ahead with the girls, me and dom walk slower behind as we smoke. We decide to look back on the church, and it looked just damn ominous now under cover of night. And that’s when we saw something, or perhaps someone.

On the small belfry tower to the left of the picture, standing on top of it was the distinct figure of a dark shrouded man. It was faint to see with the figure being black against a dark sky and it was very small but it was there. It’s horribly cliche to see a dark hooded figure but that’s what we saw. Hard to define as we were a distance away but it moved and swayed in the wind violently. We thought it was a flag but as you can see there is no flagpole.

It’s fair to say we lost our shit and pelted it to keep up with Sam and the girls. We told them what we saw and they thought we were fucking with them. We were all now running back to the gate and the car. I did look back a few times but couldn’t make anything out. Back to the car and were out of there to a local pub to calm our nerves.

Was it a ghost? Was it a flag or natural phenomenon? I don’t know. It could entirely be a trick of the mind, and it could have easily been a ghost upset at petulant kids poking around his church. Or it could have been demonic, a force stirred up by the sorcery which profaned the hallowed ground. Even though I’m a practising magician and I’m use to stirring up spirits to some tangible form, it’s still chilling to see something out of the blue. Did I unintentionally summon something with my pseudo-magical calls?

In all honesty I put this one to a case of psychology. I think due to the atmosphere, the fame of the building, the situation we put ourselves in we were simply seeing things the mind wanted us to see. We went looking for s ghost and we got one. In the darkness the mind plays tricks, let alone when your in the darkness in an abandoned ‘satanic’ church with a history of haunts and black magic. Yet also as an occultist and magician I must acknowledge that places do indeed carry on the scars of magical influence, a church is such holy and sacred ground that it inherently carries vast potency, especially a church that has been there for 700 years. And i must acknowledge that “satanist” or not, groups of people do gather at the church and vandalise it with pentagrams and carry out rituals, so it is soaked in the supernatural.

Whatever we saw, if we saw anything at all was more than enough to scare away. I haven’t been back to Skidbrooke, but being a more responsible, learned and all around proficient magician makes me want to. Not to try and stir anything up, just to investigate with a more clear head.

Want to come with me?

[beholdingavatar]

But I’m Afraid You Absolutely Did Choose It

A Rumination on Fear, The Magnus Archives, and the Modern Queer Experience

***

Given the source material on which this draws, there is only one way this piece can open.

Statement begins.

I first listened to The Magnus Archives on the recommendation of the King Falls AM discord server. I’m hardly a horror fan - most horror movies make me want to throw up and then give me weeks worth of lasting nightmares - but the KFAM discord has yet to steer me wrong, so I took a chance. It was - so utterly worth it.

The Magnus Archives is a serial fiction podcast, centering around an institute for paranormal research, and particularly the archives. The series begins with the appointment of Jon Sims as the new head archivist after the brutal murder of his predecessor, Gertrude, and follows - at least for the first season - his attempts to digitize the archive. I suggest you read no further if you are interested and want to avoid spoilers, because the conceit of this piece concerns spoilers from season 2 onward.

The universe in which The Magnus Archives (hereafter TMA) operates is affected by eldritch fear entities, each with their own acolytes and servants, their own rituals to try and enter our world and rule it. I’m no stranger to fear. How could I be, with the world as it is? I’m queer, I’m autistic, I have non-citizen immigrant parents, I’m mixed race - that’s a veritable laundry list, in this day and age. And that’s without tagging on the healthy paranoia that’s developed as a result of years of having every authority figure, every person I considered a friend, pull the rug out from under me at some point or another. Usually, between the fear and the paranoia, the idea of using horror as an escape seems laughable. But there’s something about TMA that makes it different.

Maybe it’s the low, soothing, audiobook voice that Jon reads the statements in. Maybe it’s the fact that the theme music is so good. Maybe it’s relating to archival assistant Martin and his glaringly obvious crush on his boss, Jon. Maybe it’s Basira and Daisy. Maybe it is a lot of things. But the first season of TMA kept me listening, kept me waiting with bated breath for the final line of every episode, when Jon would reveal the creepiest shit to us as listeners. And after the meta plot reveal, the speed with which I listened almost doubled.

There are the fourteen fear entities in the TMA universe. Some of them are fundamentally terrifying to me, like The Buried (the fear of being buried alive, of being trapped), or The Flesh (which is almost exactly what it sounds like, and I will never forgive Jonny Sims and Alex Newall for imprinting in my brain the Foleys for a flesh pit). Some pose interesting frames through which to view myself - as someone perpetually othered due to being autistic, there’s something delightfully empowering about The Stranger (the fear of the outsider, the unknown, what doesn’t belong). Jon, Martin, Basira, Daisy, and Melanie, our core cast, work for another, The Beholding, which is far and away in my mind the most interesting of them all.

The Beholding is the Fear of being known. Not of having someone know of your general existence, but rather the fear of being utterly known, of having some other being know every inch of you, know your innermost thoughts and innermost fears, the things you would never say to anyone. I am utterly fascinated by the Beholding, for a number of reasons. The first is that I want Jon Sims’ job. I could write you a whole other essay on why I would make a fantastic Archivist, but that is not where I want to go here. No - I want to talk about the concept of Being Known.

I’m someone who doesn’t fit into the norm by any stretch of the imagination, due to a variety of parts of myself that I cannot change, all of which have neat little labels. The only problem with this is that as soon as I tell someone one of those labels, they feel entitled to all that there is of me associated with that label. The best example of this, for me, is being queer.

I’m a lesbian, technically. I’ve just never been overly fond of the term, for a whole variety of reasons, ranging from its use as a slur directed at me during my childhood, to some very complex family history I’d really rather not get into in an essay I’m going to put online eventually. Given this lack of fondness towards the term “lesbian”, I’ve gravitated towards other labels, and I’ve settled - after not very long, to be perfectly honest - on queer. Maybe that’s because I grew up around queer historians, who were rather formative, but that’s beside the point. I chose queer, the queer of “we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it”, and of “queer anger is queer power”, and of “not gay as in happy but queer as in fuck you” because that was the person I knew myself to be.

Now, when I say I’m queer, its like whoever I’ve told feels like they can ask whatever question they want regarding my life and my identity, purely due to my use of the word. That’s not how it works. Or rather, that shouldn’t be how it works. What I have instead is the perpetual decision to make. Do I want to come out to this person? Can I deal with the questions right now? Are they the kind of person who I won’t mind knowing all of that? Maybe this is why The Beholding is so interesting to me on some level. Of all the Fears, it is the one I feel I contend with the most, the one that holds the most danger for me as a queer person.

The Fears exist as manifestations of common phobias - Jonny Sims, the creator and writer of TMA (not to be confused with the character he voices, Jon Sims, the Archivist), has confirmed as much in his season Q+As. But in seeing their presence in the world of TMA, seeing the ways that they affect those who interact with them - there’s a bizarre sense of comfort in it. Yes, says every statement Jon reads, there is a plausible reason for it all. They are swept up in the Knowing, in the Othering, there is something hovering that makes all the things you fear utterly legitimate, regardless of whatever else you might hear said. You are allowed to be afraid, there is reason, and there is reason that others will ignore, will overlook, but your fear? Your fear is valid. And, says everything that ever goes wrong in a TMA episode, more importantly, you are right to be afraid.

We, as queer people, so often end up being the keepers of the horror. We are left to remember our dead. We are left to fight battles everyone else has declared won. We are stuck in the trenches while the fronts move, trying to maintain a line without support. We scream until we are hoarse because we know from experience that “silence” is a word for gravestones, a word that leads to gravestones. We hold within our community memory, just now recouping the losses that are the consequences of silence by those in power, all the horrors that we have suffered, because no one else wants to remember them. We, as a community, Know.

So The Beholding is ours, twice over. We Know things otherwise forgotten, in the way of the avatars of the Fear, like Jon, and we are Known, and we fear that happening in ways that we cannot control. And if The Beholding is ours, then we also belong to it. We belong to The Beholding in the same way that the archival staff do. And if that is true, then it chose us. 

There is something glorious about the inexorability of joining the service of a Fear, for the sake of this extended metaphor that is really just me screaming into the void about the brilliance of Jonny Sims and my love for TMA. The Fear chooses you, and you are marked by it and bound by it. We have been marked by the fear of Knowing and of Being Known for as long as we have known who we are. It is the fear that we carry with us at all times. It has marked us. It is the Fear that drove me back into the closet for my time at high school in Virginia. It is the Fear that makes me scared for the lives of those I love. It is the Fear informed by the Knowing, by the statistics we see about suicides, about murders, about homelessness, about illness. It is our fear, as a community, as queer people in this modern world. We are afraid of the history we carry, of being silent, of not being heard, of being known too much in the wrong places, by the wrong people, at the wrong time.

I have a pair of earrings that are eyes - the symbol of The Beholding. I was gifted them long before I started listening to TMA, but now they have taken on a new meaning. I put them on any time I know I will have a tough day. I put them on when getting out of bed is a struggle. I put them on, because they belong to The Beholding, and I like to think of The Beholding as mine, as ours.

And if I’m wearing something of The Beholding, maybe it will listen to me. Maybe it will send my story on. Maybe someday, an Archivist will sit down with a tape recorder and commit this to magnetic tape, so that I am never completely silent, so that I can be Known in a way that I can control.

Statement ends.