#that structure will ALWAYS have people working within it that will do harm

[galatikid]

Mr. Beast partners with Amazon who is run by Jeff Mr. Moneybags Bezos to do a Squid Games Esq game show and everyone is baffled that it's a bad time for contestants.

I'm sorry that these people weren't encouraged to foster their critical thinking skills at a young age. I'm sorry they didn't have people around them to challenge them and their perceptions of the world.

Mr. Beast sucks and he's played the world for suckers. He's not a philanthropist, he loves money. He doesn't care about people, it's about the revenue. He got too big and the world being what it is he was able to limit test optics for a very long time. It shouldn't surprise anyone that his house of cards is crumbling, people should be disappointed that it didn't happen sooner. Viewers should be disappointed, and use this as a lesson for the future.

Always look closer, if something seems off question it. Confront it.

[youshouldjustliveinmychurch]

Not to Merlin-post in the year of our Lord 2024, but I love Gwen as a character. She goes through too much honestly. She deserves such a good life and so much love. I want to see a spin off show about Gwen's reign as queen because that would be awesome.

FULFILLING THE GREAT PROPHECY

I was always frustrated because I felt like the "Arthur is going to be this great king and unite Albion" thing never came to pass or only kind of did sparingly BUT maybe it's that thing with prophecies where they come to pass in unexpected ways.

So maybe the great prosperity and uniting of Albion happens because of Gwen's peaceful, fair, and progressive reign, which technically happens because Arthur made the choice to marry when she was a commoner. She wouldn't have been on the throne otherwise. I'm calling it. I believe she would be a freaking great queen. With her empathy and intelligence and bravery? Hell yeah!

It's very likely that she had the guts to finally lift the ban on magic during her reign (and all that entails) which Arthur was never able to do because he had trouble /didn't have the chance to work through the negative feeling about magic that had been instilled in him by his father. Merlin was never able to push him to do so because he became too entrenched in supporting the current power structures because he was blinded by his love for and devotion to Arthur. Maybe they could have gotten there in time (there are hints of that), but instead the revelation is made inadvertently and the end of the show happens before they cross that boundary. That's one of the great tragedies of the show. It painfully demonstrates how power corrupts and people can be forced to try to work within a system that is actively harming them, especially when they love and believe in the people entrenched in that system.

Maybe Morgana had a twisted sixth sense about this too because she's peculiarly focused on Gwen being queen for a lot of reasons (SHE EVEN HAS VISIONS ABOUT IT).

Anyway, I'm sure someone has said this before.

Thoughts?

[tinystepsforward]

im sure ur getting a lot of questions but i would like to say, thanks for posting about the Situation at hand, the context youve provided has been really insightful about the internal health/workings of tumblr. i am worried about the future though.. despite everything, i really dont want to see this website die.. in any case, i hope something good happens to you today

i don't want to see this website die either. it does worry me — i wouldn't have made the posts i did if i didn't care, if i hadn't spent six years doing my best at automattic and much longer than that growing up in open-source and on tumblr. (this is a new account, a couple of years old, but i've been around a while.)

the thing is, terfs (and nazis, and so on) are not a tumblr problem. the increasing legal burden on large websites to effectively moderate their sites in the face of increasingly strategic tos-compliant hate groups is not a tumblr problem. and the state of the tech industry over the last few years has made me very disheartened in general about where we're all supposed to go to keep in touch with each other — nothing out there is built and run both by people who have enough money to hire a policy team and a trust and safety team who will be treated well enough to design a less hateful platform from the ground up, and people who actually want to do that.

capitalism, as always, you know? moderating tumblr effectively would both require it not to be led by people like matt and to have the resources to cultivate a healthy, happy company where free speech without bigotry is at the fundamental heart of the product's design.

i don't think we'll get there! i think the structural problems with tumblr are structural problems with Big Tech, with venture capitalism, with capitalism as a whole, and so on, and cannot easily be fully fixed within that system even if matt suddenly decided to log off after fully empowering all staff to focus solely on harm reduction. i do however think that, as with twitter, people will make the best of what we've got, and contradictions and tensions between different groups will sharpen as they have offline, and we'll all be along for the ride.

maybe a boring old person thing to say but: i get a lot of fulfilment out of organising in person. i've been a prison abolitionist alongside a lot of other qtpoc comrades for nearly a decade now, and the good work we do helps me believe in a future we can thrive in. if that's available to you, doing good in some small way with people who believe in it is good for the soul and the world.

[thebiggerbear]

"I hate you." "You have a weird way of showing that." - Tom Hanniger Prompt Response

Summary: You went to visit Tom in the mines for a little Valentine's Day fun. Who knew that one decision would lead to everything that's happened? Will you be able to help Tom or will he be lost to you forever?

Pairing: Tom Hanniger x Female!Reader; Tom Hanniger x Sarah Mercer; implied past Deputy Martin x Female!Reader

A/N: Prompt from @creativepromptsforwriting (#941). This was so much fun to write. I just love this character and there is so much to explore with him. I also really love the dynamic between him and the reader in this one. Hope it came out alright.

I decided to give Deputy Martin a name. He deserves one. Also, I loved Tom and Sarah at the beginning of the movie. I had actually been hoping Sarah would leave Axel and be with Tom again until it was revealed that he was the one doing the killings. That grocery store scene when they see each other again for the first time after a decade...it broke my heart in the best way. Jensen and Jaime did a great job (Kerr too though I hated his character the entire time lol). So I kind of feel a little guilty here but I had to throw in the Sarah factor; not trying to crap on their relationship, I promise.

I tried my best do my research and be respectful in regards to DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) but also keep this a few years post-movie (2009) while also staying within the context the movie provided but also explore a bit, if that makes sense. Please note I do not work in the psychiatry, psychology, or medical fields. If I got anything appallingly incorrect about this disorder, its symptoms, its treaments, anything, please let me know. Also, I think it goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway), not every single person who has been diagnosed with DID is violent or a threat to others nor are their alters violent or a threat to others. Obviously, this is just a work of fanfiction based on a fictional story where the main character had an alter that was violent and a threat to everyone. No harm or disrespect is intended with this fanfiction at all.

There is a note at the end.

This takes place pre-movie, all throughout it, and post-movie.

Unbeta'd so all mistakes are mine.

Warnings: violence; description of injuries; blood; sex (smut-light); angst; mentions of murder; semi-hostage situation; threats of harm/murder; psychiatric hospital treatment (I'm not sure if that's an actual warning or if it should be but I'm putting it in case)

Sidenote: I'm sure we all know this but I'm putting here in case anyway: if you ever go into any mines or similar underground structure, please always wear your hardhat and do what your guides/experts tell you/follow the rules to stay safe.

Word Count: 11k+

Taglist: @avada-kedavra-bitch-187; @rieleatiel

Tom Taglist: @heartlessdelusions; @nancymcl

Jensen Taglist: @samanddeaninatrenchcoat; @deansbbyx

"I hate you." "You have a weird way of showing that."

Soldier Boy version ✨ Beau version ✨ Dean version ✨ Jenny version ✨ Jason version ✨ CJ version ✨ Rachel version ✨ Anael version ✨ SDV Leah version ✨ Alec version

You pulled up outside of Tunnel 5 in your car, your friends laughing and cheering as you parked. You weren’t as excited to be here but they managed to talk you into it. 

A Valentine’s Day party was happening in Tunnel 5 and most people your age were going to be there. Why they had decided on a tunnel in the Hanniger mines as the primo party spot you had no idea. If there was one thing you had learned in your life so far, people were weird and most college-aged kids would party wherever, whenever. Especially in a small town like this one.

You got out of the car, heading towards the trunk, ignoring the dibs your friend Destiny was calling on every hot single guy to your other two friends, Carina and Taylor. You handed six packs of beer out to each of them before grabbing the last one and shutting the trunk lid.

“You okay, Y/N?”

You glanced up to find Carina watching you while Destiny and Taylor were waiting impatiently to get to the party. You forced a smile. “Yeah, I’m okay, Rina. Promise.” She knew how hard this might be for you and you appreciated her checking in with you. She returned your smile and turned to follow your two other friends, with you close behind her. 

You passed a few cars until a familiar tall figure entered your vision, sans his usual ball cap. You watched as Tom Hanniger opened the back door of his truck, searching for something. You moved a little closer to Carina and discreetly handed her your six-pack. “I’ll catch up,” you whispered.

She glanced over to where you were staring and gave you a look. “Y/N…”

“I’ll be fine, Rina. You go ahead. I’ll catch up with you guys in a few.”

She seemed uncertain but nodded, doing as you asked. You watched her hurry to catch up to Destiny and Taylor, and then you turned your attention back on Tom. You waited for two people to pass by before you made your way over to him.

He had a six-pack in his hand but he was standing stock still, almost as if he was lost in thought. You then watched as he put the beer back down, holding a hand to the side of his car, and you could tell he was taking a deep breath. Your heart broke for him a little. This couldn’t be easy for him, being here, and being back here especially. You wondered what had prompted him to come here and then you realized, your heart breaking a little further: Sarah.

You pressed your lips together and decided to get this over with. “Hey, Tom,” you called softly.

He spun around, surprised to see you. “Y/N…hey.”

You took him in and you hoped your pain wasn’t showing through. He looked good for the most part, still handsome, still tall and statuesque, his figure being cut from playing football. The only difference you could make out was the nerves that were plain as day though he tried to hide them from you. “How are you?”

He shrugged. “I’m doing alright, I guess. How about you? I hear congratulations are in order. You got into med school. I always knew you would.”

“Thanks,” you whispered. You had worked hard in school, filled up your interim semesters with classes to help you get closer to graduation, studied like hell for the MCAT, and got into the med school of your choice — well, one of them — just like you’d been hoping for the longest time. “Are you here alone?”

“No, uh, I’m here with…” He gestured back towards the tunnel.

“Sarah,” you supplied.

“Yeah.” You could see some of his discomfort showing through. “Sarah.”

You attempted a smile. “That’s good.”

He nodded but didn’t say anything, just kept his eyes trained on the hat in his hand.

You wished things weren’t so awkward now between you. They never used to be.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed, his eyes lifting to yours. “For how things turned out. I never meant— I never meant for any of this to happen.” You could see the regret in them, an echo of some of your own regret.

“I know,” you whispered, your eyes burning at the corners. “I’m sorry, too.”

And you really were. Perhaps if you had been a better girlfriend a year ago — a better person even — you both wouldn’t be here now, feeling as if the blood on your hands would never wash away.

It was Valentine’s Day and you knew Tom was working in the mines all day. He still promised to take you out afterwards, once he’d gotten a chance to shower and clean up. You were looking forward to it.

You had no idea when the thought popped into your head but once it did, it took root and stayed there. Until you found yourself visiting him at the mines. Of course, you’d gotten a lot of dirty and suspicious looks as you dressed in a miner’s uniform and plopped a hard hat on your head (it was the rules). Some guy you forgot the name of the second you’d been introduced to took you down in a cart. While you weren’t crazy about going further underground, you told yourself that once you were with Tom, you would be safe. And it would all be worth it once he saw the present you had for him. 

You got to your stop, the guy called for Tom to come down and mentioned he had a visitor, and not too long after, Tom appeared. You grinned at him when you saw the look of surprise on your boyfriend’s face. 

“What the— What the hell are you doing here, sweetheart?”

“Surprise!” You hugged him as fiercely as you could with his equipment on him. 

He shook his head, smiling as he took in your outfit. “You came all the way down here just to surprise me?”

“Of course I did.”

“But sweetheart, it’s not safe.”

“Don’t tell me that, Tom. I worry about you enough being down here as it is. And don’t worry, I won’t be long.” You smirked up at him and he immediately got your meaning. 

He uncomfortably cleared his throat. “I can take it from here, Fred. I’ll call a cart down when she’s ready to go back up or you if you’re still around. Thanks.”

Fred shook his head, most likely knowing what you two were up to. “I’ll be over in 3 if you need me,” he gruffed out. You both watched as the cart disappeared down the shaft.

“Sweetheart, you really shouldn’t have come down. It’s not safe,” Tom told you but you could feel his hand resting on the seat of your uniform. 

“I have a surprise for you.”

“A surprise?” He smiled. “What kind of surprise?” 

“You’ll see,” you teased. “Is there somewhere we can go?”

He glanced around quickly before taking your hand. “Yeah, there’s a place. Come on.” He led you back up the shaft a little ways and into a pocket, hidden from view. He whisked off his hard hat and yours before eagerly pulling you to him, making you giggle into his mouth. 

“I’ve never had a girl visit me at the mines before,” he murmured, kissing your jaw. 

“And you better never have any girl other than me coming to see you.” You playfully poked his chest in warning.

“No other girl for me,” he whispered to your lips before kissing you again. “You’re it. Always.”

“Awww.” You began to unzip your uniform, wanting to give him his present already. Something sweet like that deserved a reward. 

He pulled back to help you and once the top half was off, his brows drew together in mock confusion. “My surprise is your jogging sweats? I really appreciate the thought, sweetheart, but you could’ve given that to me later tonight and not risked coming down here.”

You swatted at his shoulder, making him snicker, as you slowly unzipped your top half. His eyes followed the trail of the zipper and they widened when you opened the shirt and pushed it back to your shoulders. You smirked, seeing his reaction. He wasn’t laughing or making fun now.

Underneath your sweats, you wore new lingerie you had bought just for this moment. It was a red and white lacy bra that had hearts all over it, ending in a cut-out heart design over your breasts, with a little bow holding it altogether. “You like?”

“I like.” He trailed a finger along the edge of the cut-out heart. “I like it a lot.” He twirled the ribbon over his finger, smirking over at you. “Do I get to unwrap you?” He teased.

You shrugged. “It is your present. Don’t forget about the bottom half, too.” You pushed down your uniform and sweats to reveal similar looking underwear. “But the tie’s at the back.” You leaned forward slightly so he could see. He grinned as he ran a hand over the cut-out heart shape back there, tugging at the ribbon playfully. “So you like your surprise?”

“I love my surprise.” He kissed you as he untied the underwear and let them fall forward into his waiting hand. He stuck them into the pocket of his mining uniform and you felt him begin to touch you in the way he knew you liked. He groaned into your mouth when he felt you. “You’re all ready for me.”

“Of course,” you hummed. “I never half-ass a present.”

He brought his hand down on your bare ass cheek in a slap, making you squeal, and squeezed it. “No, you do not.” He stuck his tongue back into your mouth and you worked to get his uniform unzipped and off of him. He had untied your bra and he broke away from you to take one of your nipples into his mouth. You gasped and arched your head back, your fingers gripping the back of his hair to hold him to you. You let out a moan while he nibbled away at you. He had you on the edge already and he’d barely touched you.

You pulled him back up to you, kissing him deeply, as you started working on his belt. You had just worked his jeans down enough so you could pull him out to stroke him when his hand stopped you. “Sweetheart, wait, wait.”

You pouted. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t have a condom.”

You smirked. “Is that all?”

“Is that all? Uh, yeah, and that’s a problem. My wallet’s in my locker up top. I know we usually just…you know, if we don’t have them, but uh, I’m not going to lie, I really want to enjoy my present right now,” he ended with a nervous laugh. “Every inch of it.” He slapped your ass cheek again and leaned forward, nipping at your breast before kissing the sting away.

“Well, then it’s your lucky day that I’m the world's most amazing girlfriend, Tom Hanniger.” You reached into the pocket of your jacket and pulled out two condoms, holding them up in front of his face. 

He glanced up at you in awe. “You really are.” He snatched the condoms from you, putting one into his pocket and opening the other. You leaned in and kissed the spot underneath his ear while he got ready for you. “I told you,” you murmured. “I never half-ass a present. Happy Valentine’s Day, baby.”

He turned to look at you, holding you steady as he made sure your uniform was covering your back. He began to slip into you and you both groaned by the time he bottomed out, he was a few inches above your lips, smiling. “Happy Valentine’s Day, sweetheart.” He then kissed you and began to give you what you both wanted.

It was quick, hurried, frenzied even. As much as you loved each other, this wasn’t the time or place to take your time. You both could be caught at any moment, it was dangerous like Tom said… You could take your time with each other later. 

Tom had to cover your mouth when you came and you’d had to cover his when he crossed the finish line. You’d felt every grunt sound he made against your palm and it only turned you on more. You almost wished you had forgotten the condoms but you knew Tom wouldn’t be deep inside you right now if you had. Tom was adamant about protection, just like you were, but you loved him and trusted him. Plus, you had been on the pill for years but you knew Eli Hanniger had drilled it into his son’s head to always cover it up unless he wanted some girl to put him in a position someday where he’d be trapped into a marriage and forced to share half his money. You tried not to take it too personally when Eli had looked over at you after that little nugget of his own brand of wisdom on one of the many nights Tom had to pick his drunken dad up from the local bar. 

Eli couldn’t have been more wrong. You loved Tom but you also had your own goals in life that you didn’t want deterred by parenthood earlier than expected. Not to mention, Tom could be the poorest guy in town and you would still love him and want to be with him. You’d loved Tom since you were five, ever since he’d seen you crying because all of the markers were gone in kindergarten class and everyone was making a picture but you. He came over to give you the red one he’d been using with a cute smile that was meant to reassure you. You’d smiled back at him, sniffling, your face wet, as you both worked together to make a picture. You’d been close ever since. 

Once you were in high school, things changed between you. You’d had to watch as he dated girl after girl until finally junior year came. You changed up your look a little, didn’t have your nose stuck in a book every other minute, and the guys began to slowly take notice of you. Tom had been jealous when you told him you were going on a date with one of his teammates. You two had been arguing in his car when he leaned over and kissed you out of the blue. Needless to say, you had canceled that date and Tom stopped hooking up with one of the cheerleaders he’d been casually seeing at the time.

You both were happy. You both attended the same university and you spent the holidays together with your families. Well, you and Tom spent the holidays with your family; Eli wanted no part of it. It was almost as if because you weren’t a mining family or a well-off family, you weren’t good enough for him to bother gracing you with his presence at your dinner table. Just like you weren’t good enough to be dating his son, unlike Sarah Mercer whose parents owned the grocery store in town. That was who Eli kept pushing Tom towards but Tom told his dad he didn’t have eyes for anyone but you. He loved you and someday, he wanted to marry you. Your heart warmed when you overheard him say that. Which immediately hardened when you heard his dad then say “You’re a fool. That girl just wants your money! Sarah’s an actually decent hard-working girl. You’d be better off with her than that other one.” Tom didn’t say anything else and you had gone back to the book you were reading, pretending to be caught up in it, when he came out, hurrying to take your hand and get out of there. You never let on that you’d heard what he said…and what he didn’t say. 

And you may have taken the initiative to show him how much you loved him and wanted to keep you with him. Which is why you had risked coming down here to have semi-public sex in a dangerous mine, wearing a lingerie set you would usually never be caught dead in. You had already planned to go all out that evening once you made it to the hotel room you’d reserved in town, but you also wanted to give him something to remember, something he’d never ever forget. Now, you would always be in his mind, having made your mark, no matter what might happen with your relationship. You just hoped you made a mark on his heart, too, at some point while you’d been together, and that he didn’t let his dad’s obvious prejudice against you and your family sway him away from you.

Tom’s head dropped to your shoulder as he attempted to come down from his high, trying to catch his breath. You kissed the side of his head, not caring about the damp sweat or coal mine smell coming off of him. You leaned your head up next to his ear. “I love you, Tom. I’ll love you forever,” you whispered. You knew he heard you when he squeezed you, still panting harshly against your skin.

“Always,” he whispered back to you.

You hugged him tightly then.

A little while later, you were both redressed, hardhats back on your heads as you waited for Fred to arrive with the cart to take you back up top. Tom had called Tunnel 3 to ask him to come back for you. He had his arms around you from behind and he was smiling down at you. “Thank you for my present,” he murmured. Unable to really kiss you or nuzzle you thanks to the hardhats, he pressed a kiss to your shoulder and tightened his arms around you. 

“I’ve got another one for later.”

He turned to look at you quizzically which then turned into a glimmer of hope.

You couldn’t help but laugh. “I bought another set. Deep red and more ribbons.” You wiggled an eyebrow playfully at him.

“I fucking love you.” His smile was bright as he carefully leaned in to kiss your neck, making you giggle. 

“Hey, lovebirds!” You both looked up to see Fred turning the corner a little further down the shaft, having a clear view of the two of you. “Break it up! I haven’t had my lunch yet and I don’t want it spoiled!”

Tom rolled his eyes but let you go. “Ha ha, Fred. Very funny.” 

Fred came to a stop in front of you, scowling at both of you. “Time to go.”

You hugged Tom quickly and then climbed into the cart. He had his hands out around you, ready to assist you if need be. Once you were settled inside, Tom hurriedly took his hat off and leaned in to kiss you. 

“Hey, hey! Put your hat back on, Tom! Don’t be even more of an idiot! This whole thing could come down at any time, you know.”

Tom kept peppering your lips with kisses, making you laugh and him smile, before he finally heeded Fred’s warning. He straightened up and slipped his hardhat back on, grabbing your hand and kissing it. “Take care of my girl, Fred. Get her back safe.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Fred muttered and started up the cart. 

Tom walked beside you, still holding your hand. “I can’t wait for later.”

You smirked. “I know you can’t.”

His cheeks darkened a little and he gave you a sheepish smile, letting out a laugh. “That, too, but I was talking about our date. I think you’re really going to love the place I picked out for us.”

Your smirk melted into a genuine smile. “I know I will because I love anything that comes from you.” You heard Fred snort next to you but you couldn’t care less. So what if you were being cheesy? It was Valentine’s Day and you meant what you said.

Tom’s smile grew and you could see it reaching his eyes. “I love you.” You both noticed you were about to make a turn that he couldn’t follow you down. He kissed your hand one more time and let you go. “See you tonight.”

“See you then. I love you, too,” you called back to him. You watched as he got further and further away, the last thing you saw being him holding his hand up in a wave as he smiled. You waved back before the cart completed the turn and he completely disappeared from your view. 

The date didn’t end up happening due to the collapse that happened later. Word of it spread fast once it happened and even though you knew Tom should be home by then, you still worried. Thankfully, he returned your call ten minutes later and told you what happened. You rushed right over to be with him, all plans for the night forgotten, though Eli was less than pleased. Apparently, word of your visit had spread around the mines well before you had made it to the top. 

“That girl is a problem!” Eli yelled. “She’s reckless! And now she’s made you reckless!”

Tom let go of your hand and jumped to his feet. “Don’t talk about her like that!”

You got up and hugged Tom’s arm, rubbing his shoulder soothingly. “Shhh,” you murmured. “Don’t. It’s not worth it. Okay?”

Eli didn’t like seeing that. His face got red and he was louder than before. “It’s like I’ve been telling you! That girl is only after one thing and that’s your money! When are you going to wake up, start using the other brain God gave you, and see it for yourself?” He threw his glass of Scotch at the wall, making you wince at the shattering sound, and left in a huff.

Tom went to follow him, to yell back at him, but you kept him there. “Don’t worry about it. It’s fine. He’s upset. Here, sit with me.” Tom did as you urged and you rested your chin on his shoulder. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He glanced over at you, his eyes glassy. “I think I really fucked up, Y/N.”

“What do you mean?”

“After you left, I went back to work. I was in the cage, adjusting my gear, when the condom and your underwear fell out. I forgot I had them. I picked them up as fast as I could and stuffed them back in but Harry Warden saw.” He shook his head. “He gave me a hard time about doing my job and I told him I had it, I knew what I was doing. They now think he’s one of the miners trapped. He’s unaccounted for.” He compulsively swallowed and turned to look at you, a tear rolling down his cheek. “I forgot to bleed the lines,” he whispered.

Your eyes couldn’t get any wider if they tried. You reached out to wipe his tear away as you tried to rein in your reaction. 

“I was thinking about our date tonight, about you, and I got distracted. I forgot to do the one thing I’m supposed to do every day before I leave. This collapse happened because of me,” he choked out before breaking down. You pulled him into you, holding him and shushing him, whispering reassurances to him. All while the heavy truth settled down around you and began to constrict your chest. It wasn’t Tom’s fault; it was yours.

It didn’t surprise you one bit a few weeks later when Tom broke up with you. He explained it as there was a lot happening, he was being blamed for the murders of the other miners that Harry committed, and his dad told him he just needed to continue working and keep his head down. No distractions. Which meant no more you, though Tom never actually said it but you knew that’s what he was implying Eli had told him.

It broke your heart when he broke it off between you but you understood. Tom had basically become a pariah overnight. Once he admitted to the investigators that he forgot to bleed the lines, the town he’d lived in his whole life turned against him. Harry may have done the actual killing, but it was Tom who’d put Harry in that position in the first place, or so they’d said. Some folks even gave you dirty looks in town as well but it was nothing compared to how Tom was treated. While you loved him and wanted to stay together, you could understand if he needed some space. You let him go with a hug, telling him you were still around if he needed a friendly ear, trying your best not to let any tears fall so you wouldn’t make him feel worse. His jaw had clenched but he nodded, choked out a “Thanks”, and walked to his car. You watched as he left, remembering back to the image of him getting further and further away from the mine cart you were in. Once he disappeared down the street, you finally let out the tears you’d been holding onto. A sob tore its way out of your throat when you remembered he had held up his hand in a wave, smiling, while you smiled and waved back. Because all you could think about was what you thought in that moment: Let this be the last time we separate like this. 

And as luck and Eli Hanniger would have it, in the next month or so, rumors spread that Tom Hanniger was now dating Sarah Mercer. You didn’t want to believe them, to believe that he’d finally pushed you aside for one of the girls you’d both grown up with who always had a gooey-eyed expression for Tom, the girl his father had wanted him to date in the first place. You didn’t want to believe that he would be so quick to throw away what the two of you had just to make his father happy. But deep down, you knew it was true. Tom had always wanted to get his father’s approval and he always had a soft spot for Sarah so why wouldn’t it be true? You could even understand a little, considering what had happened and Tom was in the hot seat with every resident of Harmony, thanks to you. But it still hurt like hell. You still loved him enough, though, to hope that he was happy. 

You pushed those thoughts out of your head. No use in continuing to blame yourself now. It didn’t change anything. “Are you okay…being here?”

He seemed a little caught off guard at the change of subject but then he glanced back at the tunnel entrance. “Yeah.” He turned back to you. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

You nodded and dropped your gaze to the ground, not sure what else to say. 

“Did you bring your hardhat this time?”

Your head snapped up and he was giving you half a smile, his eyes having that familiar teasing gleam in them. You couldn’t help but smile back, appreciating the attempt at levity and familiarity. “Did you?”

He snickered and shook his head, biting at his lip.

You chuckled and took a step closer. “How are you really, Tom?”

His smile faded. “Better.” He then briefly dropped his eyes. “Sarah. She helps.”

Your smile dropped altogether and you could feel that stinging sensation in your eyes again. “Oh.” You bit the inside of your cheek to keep tears from welling up. You didn’t even know what to say to that. “I’m glad, I guess.”

His expression fell and he took a step closer. “I didn’t mean—”

You took a step backwards, your hand up. “It’s okay. Really. I’m happy that she’s able to do that for you.” You took a breath. “I should go. Rina and the girls are waiting on me, so… Good to see you, Tom. I’m glad you’re doing well.” You gave him a wan smile and turned to leave.

“Y/N, wait. Y/N.”

You continued walking, eager to put some distance between you two until you could rein in your emotions. While Tom and Sarah might go off in their own section of the mine, you also might have to see them together. And you needed to prepare for that, especially with your last memories of the time you were here and all that occurred after. 

You were halfway to the entrance when you heard a scream. You stopped short, wondering if it had just been someone fooling around and having fun though it sounded terrified. You heard it again and before you knew it, people were running out of the tunnel at a fast speed, hurrying to their cars. “Oh no,” you gasped when you realized something was wrong, thinking another collapse must have happened. “Rina.” 

You were just about to run towards the tunnel when a strong hand gripped your arm, whipping you around to face Tom. “I don’t know what this is,” he said. “But get out of here. Go back to your car and get the hell away. As fast as you can.”

“What? No! I can’t leave! Rina, Taylor, and Destiny are in there! We came together!”

He framed your face with his hands. “Y/N, listen to me. You need to go. It could be another collapse.” He released you and urged you to go.

“No! I told you, I—”

Just then there were more screams as more people ran out. Tom turned back to you. “I have to go get Sarah. Run back to your car, Y/N! Do the same as these people! I’ll catch up with you later!”

Your eyes widened. “What? No, Tom! If you’re telling me not to go in, you’re not going, either!”

He went to answer you when a guy running past you yelled, “There’s some crazy guy in there killing everybody! Run!”

You and Tom glanced at one another, both shocked. Neither of you knew who the guy was talking about or why this was happening. But that didn’t matter. Screw holding your tears back. “Tom,” you sobbed. “I can’t lose you, okay? I know you want to go save Sarah but she’s probably hiding somewhere with Rina and the girls and they’ll be safe, okay?” You knew that probably wasn’t the case and it was wrong of you not to let him run in to help but you were terrified of losing him. “Please, don’t go in! Please!”

“I’ve got to go! I’ve got to get her! I’m sorry!” He yanked his arm out of your grip and turned to leave.

“I’m going, too! I can help!” 

You didn’t make it two feet until you were picked up and placed back down in front of Tom who was ducking his head to look you in the eye. “I can’t lose you, either, okay? I need to know you’re safe. Please, sweetheart, go get in your car and drive out of here.” He picked up a flashlight someone had dropped while running. “I’m going to get Sarah and get out of here myself. If I see Rina and the others, I’ll grab them, too. I’ll meet you at the hospital. There’s probably going to be a lot of people who need help.”

“That’s why I should stay. I may be pre-med but I can—”

He huffed out a breath and leaned down to kiss you. As he had probably planned, it stunned you. He placed his forehead against yours. “Go, baby,” he murmured. “To the hospital. We’ll be right behind you.”

Before you could say anything else, he hightailed it down to the tunnel, running past people who were still spilling out of the entrance but in fewer and fewer numbers. The last thing you saw was him disappearing inside before you turned and ran back to your car. You didn’t feel right leaving, especially with your friends and Tom still in the tunnel, but you would do as he asked. You’d already selfishly distracted him once; you wouldn’t do so again.     

You rang the bell of the Hanniger household for the third time, feeling impatience and worry gnawing at you. 

You shouldn’t have been surprised when a swaying Eli finally opened the door or that it was only 1:00 in the afternoon yet he was this inebriated. If he were a better man — a better father even — you might feel sorry for him. His mines weren’t doing too well these days. 

“What do you want?” He slurred out.

You lifted your chin. “I’m here to see your son.”

He snorted. “You mean my fuckup of a son?” He held the door wider in invitation.

You stepped in before he could change his mind. “No, your son. Not his fuckup of a father,” you spat before storming off to find Tom. 

“Sure, come into my house and talk to me like that! You kids have no goddamn respect these days!” He yelled.

You spun around and yelled back, “Go and get another drink, Eli! That’s all you care about anyway!”

“You little bitch!”

You ignored him and ran upstairs to Tom’s room. You found the door closed and you gently knocked. “Tom?”

No answer. 

You knocked again. “Tom, it’s me.” You briefly closed your eyes, remembering things were different than they had been the last time you were here. “Y/N.”

A moment later, Tom opened the door and stood there. He did not look well. He had deep, dark circles under his eyes as if he hadn’t slept since what happened. His face was drawn, pale, and it was obvious he hadn’t shaved for a bit. His hair looked as if he had just recently run his fingers through it. He was in a hoodie, sweat pants, and socks. It was hard to tell in this light but it looked like he had lost a little weight.

“Hey.” His voice sounded rough, as if he either hadn’t been using it for a while or he had been yelling and near losing it. You hoped it was the former. If it was the latter, then that could mean possible night terrors and you didn’t want that for him. 

“Hey. Is it okay if I come in?”

He nodded and walked away, leaving the door open. After you closed it behind you, you noticed he was trying to cover the messy bed with the blanket. You noticed a stale smell, as if a window hadn’t been opened in some time, and you spied dirty plates spotting the landscape of his room. You also took note of a half-empty bottle of liquor on his desk. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t expecting company.”

“That’s okay. Don’t worry about it” You laid a tentative hand on his back as he moved and was pleased to see him not immediately shirk it off. After what happened with Harry Warden in the tunnel, for a while he hadn’t wanted anyone touching him. “I just came to see how you’re doing.”

“Not great,” he muttered, turning to sit on his bed. You took a seat next to him, waiting for him to elaborate. “I don’t know what to do, Y/N,” he eventually confessed. “I see him everywhere. I see him when I sleep, I see him when I’m awake. I see him everywhere I go, no matter who’s around, night or day. I don’t know what to do.”

Harry had woken from his coma that night and gone on a killing spree. First at the hospital and then at the mines. Right to the Valentine’s Day party that was being thrown. He didn’t care who he came across, Harry killed them one by one. Sadly, Destiny and Taylor hadn’t made it. Rina had; she was injured but she’d survived. Sarah, Axel, and Irene made it, too, though they were traumatized. They were all traumatized, just like Tom. Tom, who had gone back for Sarah, urged her to run out of there with Axel, and had nearly gotten killed for it. When you thought about how close you came to losing him… You really didn’t want to think about it.

You carefully placed a hand on his bicep and when he didn’t tense, you rubbed your thumb back and forth soothingly. “Have you given any more thought to seeing someone…and talking about it?”

He pulled away from you and ran a hand down his face. “They’re just going to think I’m crazy and want to throw me on meds.”

“Maybe not,” you whispered. “You’ve been traumatized, Tom. They might give you medication to help you sleep but trauma isn’t something that has a magic cure all. I’m not a doctor but I would think that they’ll probably recommend therapy. I mean, is Harry…talking to you when you see him?”

“No, Y/N, I’m not hearing voices in my head if that’s what  you’re asking,” he snapped before getting up and walking away.

“Tom, that’s not what I— I’m sorry, I know you’re not hearing voices. I was only trying to make you feel better by ruling it out. That’s all.”

He shook his head and ran his hand through his hair. He glanced down at you, his jaw tight. “I’m glad you came here today. You should know, I’ve decided to leave town.”

You were immediately on your feet. “And go where?”

He shrugged. “Wherever that isn’t here.” He moved over to the bed and threw off one corner of the blanket to reveal a bag he had been packing. “I can’t stay here, Y/N. It’s too much. Maybe if I can get far enough away…”

“He won’t follow you,” you finished, still staring at the half-packed bag. You almost had to wonder if he would have told you if you hadn’t shown up today. He hid the bag from you for a reason; he knew you wouldn’t want him to leave.

You should’ve known it was coming to this or Tom would have a full on breakdown. First, he broke up with Sarah. Then he withdrew from the public altogether. Now, he was holed up in his room, never leaving it, and repeatedly being terrified and thus re-traumatized each time he saw Harry. Something had to give; he needed to get out of here. 

You felt a lump forming in your throat at the idea of him leaving but you swallowed it back down just as fast. This wasn’t about you. If this was what Tom needed, you would support him. You met his gaze. “Will you call me once you get to where you’re going? Just so I know you made it safely and that you’re okay?”

His eyes softened and he came towards you, cupping your face. “You’ve always understood me. Better than anyone else in this goddamn town.” You noticed he didn’t answer your question and you had a feeling that he planned to leave permanently, never looking back. This time, you couldn’t prevent the lump from forming in your throat or the tears building in your eyes.

“Are you going to be okay?” You nearly winced at the breaks in your voice.

“I will be,” he whispered before pulling you into him and pressing a kiss to the side of your head. Sighing into your ear, he hugged you tightly. “I will be.”

You burrowed into him further, whispering against his shirt, “I love you, Tom. I’ll love you forever.”

You knew he heard you when he murmured back to you, “I love you, too, sweetheart. Always will.” You could hear the breaks in his own voice but still, you smiled. As painful as this was going to be, as heartbreaking as it was, Tom still loved you, just as much as you loved him. Always…and forever.

You were just finishing up notes in a patient file when someone knocked on your open door and stuck their head into your office. You glanced up to find a familiar face and smiled.

“Well, if it isn’t Dr. Y/L/N,” he said, waltzing in.

You closed the file and took off your glasses. “Well, if it isn’t Deputy Martin,” you laughed. He handed you a cup of coffee. “Aww, thank you. You don’t know how much I needed this.” 

“No problem. You still take it that way, right?”

You took a sip. “I do,” you smiled. 

“So, how’s things in the world of psychiatry?” He took a seat on the edge of your desk.

“Interesting. As always. How about you? How’s things in the law enforcement world?”

“Interesting. As always.”

You chuckled and took another sip of your coffee. “So, what brings you to my side of the hospital? And bearing gifts, no less?”

He shrugged. “I was in the neighborhood and figured I’d check in.”

“Oh? That’s nice.” Chris pressed his lips together and you tilted your head at him, knowing what that little tic meant. “Uh oh. What’s going on?”

He smirked, shaking his head. “I hate it when you do that.”

You couldn’t help but laugh. “Then don’t be so obvious. I know you too well, Chris. Come on, tell me. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. I just… I was wondering if you knew that Tom was back in town.”

Your smile immediately dropped and you placed the coffee down. You put your glasses back on and opened the file back up, holding the pen in your hand as you glanced over your notes. “Yeah. I heard he was here.”  

How could you not? It was a small town after all. News and gossip spread faster than wildfire here. The word on the street was that Tom was back to sell the mines and no one was happy about that.

When you didn’t hear anything else, you glanced up to find Chris giving you a knowing look. “What?”

“Has he been by to see you?”

Well, that hurt. You knew Chris wasn’t asking you that to hurt you but it didn’t mean the question still didn’t cause you pain. You shook your head and went back to your file. “No. And I don’t expect he will be.” 

Ben had already complained down at the local bar, before Tom even showed up, that the damn kid was going to sell the mines and Eli would be turning over in his grave if he knew. He was only coming into town to sign the paperwork and then he’d be off again to God knew where. He’d even assured everyone he switched the paper signing until the Monday following Tom’s arrival, in hopes that he could get him to change his mind. 

When you heard Tom was coming back, you didn’t get your hopes up though your heart lightened at the news. You hadn’t seen or heard from Tom in ten years. He’d literally pulled a disappearing act. While you expected it, it still hurt that he never once called or wrote to you to let you know that he was still alive. Not once.

Besides, you already knew who he’d dropped in to see the minute he hit town. You supposed one needed groceries and toiletries, that sort of thing, if they were going to stay for a weekend they hadn’t initially planned on. And the fact that Sarah now ran the store and was there practically all day every day was just a coincidence.

You knew better of course and you couldn’t pretend like it didn’t break your heart just a little more. So, no, you didn’t expect to see him at all. And as much as it hurt to admit it to yourself, it was probably for the best. 

While a part of you still loved Tom and always would, you now had the benefits of maturity, age, and experience. When you looked back on your relationship, it had been one of intense young love and folly for you, first love even. And while you had more compassion and understanding along with a more detached view of things through a different lens now, you could admit there were some things that occurred that weren’t so great. For example, your decision to surprise him in the mines for a Valentine’s Day quickie, all because you loved him so much and was desperate to do whatever it took to keep him with you. You’d put both of you at risk and while Tom was an adult who was responsible for his own decisions, you still took responsibility for being the one to initiate the whole thing. It had been your idea after all. Then there had been his breaking it off with you and choosing to date Sarah not even a month later. While he was single and an adult, free to make his own decisions, the fact that he did it partially to please his father was not an okay reason in your book to hurt you and toss you aside as if you meant nothing. As the adage went, hindsight was truly 20/20. You were no longer that young, foolish girl anymore. If Tom wanted to see you, he would see you. If he didn’t, then he didn’t. It was that simple. You weren’t going to sway things one way or the other.

“Come on, Y/N. I know you just as well. You’re telling me, you don’t hope he stops by before he skips town again?”

You smiled up at Chris. “Not in the slightest.”

You threw on your lab coat, lifting your hair out of the neckline. You twisted your hair up into a bun and stuck a pen through it. You placed your stethoscope around your neck and then traded your heels for the nurse’s shoes you kept in a desk drawer for situations like these.

There had been an explosion at the mines and it was an all hands on deck situation in the ER. So far, two survivors had been found and were being brought in. They were still clearing the mines to make sure no one else had been hurt. You were getting ready to lock up your office and head down to see what you could do to help. 

You were grabbing pens to put in your pocket, tossing a red pen back into the drawer, when out of the corner of your eye, you noticed a figure in the doorway.

“Doc,” a man gasped.

“I’m sorry. I’m about to run down to the ER. There’s been an emergency in town and all doctors are needed. I can find you a nurse if you—”

You dropped the remaining pens in your hand when you glanced up to find a bleeding Tom Hanniger standing in your doorway, holding onto his side. “Tom,” you gasped, frozen. 

His pained glare suddenly transformed into one of the most terrifying smirks you had ever seen in your life. “Guess again.” He then shut the door behind him, locking it, before he started making his way over to you. 

You rushed off the elevator, hurrying over to where a bloodied Sarah was nervously pacing in the surgery waiting room. You noticed Chris was with her as was Deputy Ferris. Sarah’s little boy, Noah, was sitting on one of the seats behind her, playing quietly with his toy.

“Sarah,” you called.

She turned to see you approaching and immediately hurried over to you, throwing her arms around you, beginning to cry. You rubbed her back soothingly and shushed her. “You’re alright now.”

Sarah pulled back out of your embrace. “Tom, he’s… He’s gone.”

You pressed your lips together, your eyes tearing up. “I know,” you choked out. Based on what you had just seen and heard, you knew she was speaking the truth.

She hugged you again and you embraced her back tightly, tears rolling down your cheeks as you saw Chris watching you both. You squeezed your eyes shut and let out a quiet sob when you heard Sarah crying again. You both held each other as you both quietly mourned the Tom you both had loved.

You unlocked your office door and stepped inside before locking it again. You began to empty your pockets of the supplies you’d nabbed when a figure moved from behind a filing cabinet in the far corner and appeared in your vision, making you quietly gasp.

There stood Tom, still holding his wounded side. “What took so long?” He demanded.

Your jaw tightened as you remembered who you were dealing with now. “Sorry, Harry. I had to get supplies without causing any eyebrows to raise. That takes time. Now, come sit down.”  

He warily approached and sat down on the edge of the desk as you directed. You snapped gloves on and he moved his hand away from his side when you prompted him to. He hissed in pain as you began to prod at the bullet wound.

“Can you fix me up or not?” He growled.

“Well, Harry, as I told you, I’m not a surgeon. But I will do my best.” You began to gently wipe away the blood, from both the entry and exit sites. “The good news is it looks like the bullet went straight through.”

“I told you that,” he snapped.

“Yes and I’m confirming it,” you snapped back. It was very strange to have someone you hated so much inside of the body of the person you loved most. 

“Just do your goddamn job, Doc.”

You snapped up straight and looked him right in the eye. “Let’s get something straight, the only reason I’m helping you right now is because of Tom. I could care less what happens to you, you son of a bitch.”

He gave you that smirk again that made your blood run cold. “And let’s get something else straight. If you don’t fix me up, I’ll kill you. Got it?”

You didn’t answer him. Instead, you grabbed a pad of gauze, dumped some of your finest alcohol on it, and slapped it onto the injury site, making him yell out in pain. You smirked in satisfaction though inside you felt guilty. Sorry, Tom. You really wished you could expel Harry from him, like he was some sort of demon you could exorcise. 

“Sorry about that.” You were anything but. “I have to clean the site before I inspect it for further damage.”

His chest was heaving and he was glaring at you. “Just do your job, bitch. Or you’re dead,” he grunted.

You huffed out a snort and repeated the process with the exit site, making him grit his teeth, a pained yell straining against them. You proceeded to make sure there wasn’t any critical damage that you could see and then went about starting to suture the wound. You ignored the grunts and gritting of his teeth the entire time and just focused on falling back on your training. You’d barely flinched when he started drinking your booze. (it was his fault he wouldn’t let you use any needles to apply local anesthetics) When you were done, you snipped the loose tail of the sutures and then bandaged up the area. You quickly cleaned and bandaged the wounds on his face and treated any burns he might have. The entire time you did, you felt pain and remorse for Tom for each wound you found that would now scar his body. Though you supposed scars were a small price to pay considering the explosion he’d been in that could have killed him. Your jaw clenched at the thought and you hated Harry even more. 

You finished cleaning him up and threw out the last bit of bloody gauze. “It’s probably a waste of time to say this to you but you need to take it easy with that bullet wound, keep the area clean, and come back in two weeks to have the sutures removed. If any extreme bleeding occurs, you should get to the ER immediately. If the sutures pop out, you should do the same. If you start to develop a fever or other—”

“Yeah, Doc, I got it.” He slowly got to his feet and held a hand to his side. “Not bad.”

You took off your gloves and threw them to the side, crossing your arms. “Am I free to go now?”

His eyes snapped over to you and you could swear you could see a whole other person. In Tom’s eyes, the eyes you loved, you saw Harry, and they were darker and harder than Tom’s green could ever be. Tom clearly wasn’t the one in the driver’s seat, even if his behavior and personality right then weren’t already making that obvious. “For now. But if you screw me over, I’m coming back for you.” A hint of a smirk appeared on his face as if he enjoyed that idea, almost hoping you would give him the excuse. 

You knew he was waiting for you to tremble in fear at his threat but you didn’t. “Truly, Harry, I hope I never see you again.” With that, you walked out of your office and you refused to give him the satisfaction of looking back.

You knocked on the open room door and stuck your head in. “Hey,” you greeted with a small smile.

Axel and Sarah both glanced over and saw you.

“Hey.” Axel faintly smiled. 

Sarah got up and gave you another hug. You rubbed her shoulder as she returned to her seat next to her husband and you came to a stop at the foot of the bed. “So, how’s the patient?”

“He’s doing well.” Sarah smiled as she took Axel’s hand in hers. “He’ll be in here for a little while but then he can come home.” Axel turned his smile onto her. You glanced back and forth between them. Apparently, that marriage was no longer on the rocks. You were glad for Sarah’s sake, though you still thought she could do better. Despite how things went with Tom, you didn’t blame her or hold her responsible. She had always been kind to you, good to Tom, and you knew she was a decent person. You could almost understand why Tom had loved her so much.

You forced a smile onto your face. “Glad to hear it.”

Another knock on the door garnered your attention. You turned to see Chris walk in. He came to a stop next to you. “Hey, Sheriff. Sarah. Y/N.”

“Hey,” Axel greeted. You gave him a nod and Sarah gave him a smile.

He turned to look at you but you were already steps ahead of him. “Did you do as I asked?”

He nodded. “Picked him up about an hour ago. Had to ask for that town’s sheriff to help but we got him. And he doesn’t know it has anything to do with you. We purposely mentioned in front of him that a store owner from that town called it in after recognizing him from the news.”

“Thanks.” He gave you another nod.

“Wait, what are you two talking about?” Axel asked. Sarah looked just as curious while also fearful.

You pressed your lips together and Chris turned to face his boss. “We picked up Tom Hanniger in the next town over. We have him in custody and we’re starting processing.”

Both of their eyes went wide. “Tom’s alive?” Sarah gasped.

The deputy exchanged glances with you. “In a way but he goes by Harry now.”

“Shit,” Axel breathed. “You need to call in every reinforcement. We don’t have the manpower to hold him.”

Chris held up a placating hand. “It’s already done but trust me, we’ve got him locked down. As it is, the DA and the Judge are deciding what to do with him.” He looked over at you.

“Deciding what to do with him? What does that mean?” Axel’s eyes were on you, too.

“Harmony isn’t the place for Tom to be right now. It’s his trigger and that’s why Harry is currently in control. I’ve asked for a meeting with the DA and Judge Harrison as well as the Chief of my department to discuss Tom’s case.” You took a breath, knowing this next part wasn’t going to go over well. “We’re looking to get him moved to a maximum security psychiatric hospital up North.”

“Are you kidding me?” Axel started to sit up but grunted in pain. 

Sarah got up and gently pushed his shoulder down. “Axel, be careful. You just had major surgery yesterday.”

“Sheriff, easy. You’re still healing,” Chris chimed in. 

He ignored both of them. “After all of the people he’s killed? People are going to want justice and to see it done here in Harmony.”

You could feel an age-old anger welling up inside of you but you tried to tamp it back down. “He’s not mentally competent to stand trial, Axel.”

“Not mentally competent? Really? That’s the excuse we’re going with here? He was mentally competent when he killed those people! When he lied about it and tried to cover it up and blame me! When he attacked me and my wife, about to kill us! When killed Rosa and came for my son!” He gripped onto Sarah’s hand.

“I understand that. But the law states—”

“No offense, Y/N,” Axel interrupted. “But you’re not an expert on the law. Leave that to people like Judge Harrison who actually know the law.” Well, so much for you keeping that anger and resentment in check.

“None taken. And no offense, Axel, but you’re not an expert in psychological disorders, either. Leave that to people like myself who know what we’re talking about,” you snapped.

Chris laid a gentle hand on your shoulder and held up his other hand in Axel’s direction. “Hey, hey, now. We’re all on the same team here. We all want the same thing.”

You narrowed your eyes at him. “Do we?” He dropped his hand. You then glared over at Axel and Sarah. “Let’s not pretend like you two and Irene didn’t leave Tom there to die back when Harry was on a killing spree which severely traumatized him and that’s why all of this happened in the first place! That’s what started this whole thing!”

Sarah looked ashamed and stayed quiet. Your ire wasn’t really for her anyway. You knew she had been wanting to go back to help Tom before Harry threw that pickaxe. Axel, on the other hand, saw red. “Are you kidding me? We were about to be killed! I had to get her and Irene out of there! Tom would have done the same had it been him and it would’ve been the right thing to do! Regardless, it doesn’t excuse anything that Tom or Harry or whatever the fuck he calls himself now did! And us leaving him alone started this? No, let’s talk about really started this whole thing off! You decided to go down into the mines to give your boy toy a little nookie, he got distracted and forgot to clear the lines, then boom! The mines collapsed on top of Harry Warden and the others and that’s what really started this off! Because Harry wouldn’t have been in the mines a year later, killing people, and nothing would have happened to Tom or any of us! So you want to play the blame game? Look in the mirror, Y/N!” Sarah was softly telling him to stop but he ignored her. “Oh, and let’s not pretend that you’re not doing anything but trying to make excuses for the guy you’re still hung up on after all these years who didn’t give a fuck about you and dropped you like a bad habit the minute his daddy told him to! Who left you behind to rot!”

Your left eye was starting to twitch, something that only happened when you were either very stressed or very angry. Right then, it was definitely the latter. Sarah’s gaze was trained on her hand covering her husband’s and Chris was looking down at the footboard. You forced yourself to speak calmly but firmly. “That has nothing to do with this. It has to do with helping someone who needs help. I’m simply doing my job and the right thing at the same time. When was the last time you could say the same for yourself, Axel?” His jaw clenched but he stayed quiet and you gave him the worst glare you could summon up. “Get well soon.”

You turned and walked out of the room. You were right about one thing; Sarah could do better.

You were waiting for the elevator when you heard Chris come up behind you, laying a hand on your shoulder to stop you. “Hey, hey, hey.” You spun around to face him and he rubbed his thumb back and forth over the fabric of your coat. “Are you okay?”

You unclenched your jaw long enough to say, “I’m fine.”

He nodded and lowered his hand. “You know, it’s no excuse for the things he said but Axel’s in pain right now, he’s not thinking straight, and they just went through another traumatic experience of their own. And they have their son, who was there when Rosa was killed. He’s just dealing with a lot.”

“I get that, Chris. I do. But Tom didn’t do those things, Harry did.”

He sighed and put his hands on his hips. “Y/N, I’m not disagreeing with you but Tom did lie, he covered it up. Like the motel killings. Did Harry drive away from the scene, ignoring the trucker’s dead body in the lot, before we arrived or did Tom?” 

You shook your head, looking away from him.

“I know Tom means a lot to you and I respect that. I know you have history and you want to help him.” He cupped your chin and forced you to meet his eyes. “But I also care about you. I don’t want to see you get hurt. There’s a possibility that Tom himself may not be who you actually think he is. Who any of us thought he was growing up.”

You gently lowered his hand. “Chris, I appreciate your concern and I know we had…something between us for a while. And I’m grateful that you helped me earlier, I really am. But I know Tom. He’s not a killer. He’s not Harry. Harry only exists because of the trauma he suffered. He doesn’t even know who he’s killed or what’s happened. I need to get him out of this town so I can begin working to get him back.”

Chris sighed and studied you for a moment. “Then how did he know about Megan and the words written above her body?”

“He got it from the card she wrote. You told me that yourself, Chris, because Sarah told you about it.”

“No, I mean, if Tom saw the card and Harry killed Megan and wrote those words in her blood, then how did Tom know they were written above her body?”

You realized he was making a good point but that didn’t change your mission. “I don’t know, but I intend to find out.” You then got onto the elevator that had just arrived, you and Chris watching each other as the doors closed.

Tom didn’t remember how he got here. He didn’t even remember waking up. One moment, Harry was about to attack him and Sarah wouldn’t save him, again. The next moment, he was in a white t-shirt and white pajama pants, stuck in a cell that looked strangely familiar. Had he dreamt all of it? Going back to Harmony, seeing Sarah again, dealing with that asshole Axel, trying to figure out who the killer was — all of it —had it all been one big nightmare?

He soon realized that wasn’t the case. His lawyer came to see him and informed him of the things he’d been accused of (after the man had been contacted to come back and speak to his actual client). As of right now, he was found to be mentally unfit to stand trial thanks to an impassioned argument by his doctor as well as himself. But that could change at any time. Tom insisted he hadn’t done those horrific things, that Harry Warden did, but nobody seemed to believe him or was even listening.

For the first few days, Tom had been desperate. A doctor came in and met with him, asked him how he was feeling, and then fully explained the disorder he had been diagnosed with. It turned out that he had been misdiagnosed in the last institution he had been in and improperly medicated. That was why the medication never worked. They had been treating him for delusions when in reality he had Dissociative Identity Disorder. He was going to be starting a therapy regimen as soon as possible. Harry had already been involuntarily involved in the program since his arrival here. The doctor also informed him that they had to keep Harry heavily sedated but depending on how things went with Tom, they might not have to do the same with him.

Tom had been completely dumbfounded. It was bad enough that he still carried the trauma of what happened back in ‘98 and it had followed him around for a decade, literally, but now Harry had become a permanent part of him? He would now never be able to outrun Harry. Not to mention, he was now officially on the hook for multiple murders thanks to the surly son of a bitch, even after what happened in 1997 and then a year later when he woke from his coma. Tom’s body count was extensive and he himself hadn’t even done anything. Well, except forget to bleed the lines that one time which led to the collapse that then started all of this, he supposed. So maybe he truly was responsible for all of those people’s horrific deaths, whether he swung the pickaxe himself or not.

One morning before the therapy began, they came to get him and brought him to a room that looked strikingly similar to a police interrogation room, with the two-sided mirror and everything, though there was white padding on the walls. He protested when they strapped him into a straitjacket but they told him it was for his own safety as well as the doctor’s. As if that weren’t enough, two large orderlies picked corners of the room to stand in, watching his every move. 

Someone popped their head in to tell Tom his doctor would be meeting with him shortly, they were just finishing up with another patient. All Tom could do was nod. “Thanks,” he muttered.

A few minutes later, the doctor he’d been waiting for walked in. His eyes nearly popped out of his head when he saw it was you. You gave him a small smile and took the seat opposite him. “Hello, Tom. I’m Dr. Y/N Y/L/N. How are we feeling today?”

“Um…okay.” He was still trying to recover from the shock of seeing you there. He hadn’t seen you since that night all of those years ago, right before he left town. He also thought you were working at Harmony Memorial last he heard, a pit stop he planned to make once he’d signed the papers to sell the mines. That is, before everything went to shit. “Y/N? What’s going on?”

“It’s Dr. Y/L/N,” you corrected. “And nothing’s going on. I’m here to evaluate you before we start your therapy regimen.” You opened a file and began glancing at the papers within. “The court requires it.”

Tom felt so lost. It had been hard enough waking up to what he did but now you were here? Clearly his doctor? And you were pretending not to know him? He didn’t know what to think or where to stick his head. “This can’t be real,” he said to himself and shook his head. “This can’t—”

“Shhh,” you soothed. “It’s okay, Tom. This is very real and we’re going to help you.” You clicked your pen and began making notes in his chart. 

“Yeah, but you— You’re— And you’re pretending like— This can’t be real.”

Your eyes snapped up to his and you stopped writing. He didn’t know what you saw but you got to your feet and circled the table. You snapped your fingers and both orderlies looked away. “Actually, Tom, there’s something I forgot to mention.” You came up behind him and his nerves began to spike. Was he about to be drugged? Attacked? Would he finally wake up from this nightmare? Maybe he’d wake up to you; he’d give anything to have that happen. 

He jumped a little when he felt your lips at his ear. “I’ll love you forever,” you whispered.

Automatically, the corner of Tom’s lips tipped up in a smile. Hearing that from you brought back so many good memories of your times together, of your relationship. He didn’t instantly relax but he felt a little lighter than he had a moment ago. 

“Welcome back, Tom. I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too, sweetheart,” he whispered back to you.

His smile grew when he felt you brush a tender kiss to the side of his head before you straightened up and made your way back around the table. You snapped your fingers again and the orderlies were now facing forward, watching you both intently. 

You sat back down and picked up your pen, giving him a genuine smile. “Now, Tom, shall we get started?”

He wished he could reach across the table and take your hand in his. You still looked at him as you did all of those years ago, like he didn’t have a murderous personality that left pain and suffering and dead bodies in its wake. You still looked at him as if he was the same guy you’d given your heart and body to back in high school. The same guy you’d once told that after you finished med school (when you got in), that you’d want to settle down with him and eventually start a family with him. The same guy you said you’d move wherever whenever for him if he didn’t want to stay in Harmony, if he didn’t want to take over for his dad one day. The same guy you looked at with complete devotion, affection, and reverence that he knew he didn’t deserve. And with you looking at him just like that right now, he knew he still didn’t deserve it but God did he love you for it. You still loved him; it was clear as day in your eyes. He realized then that you had meant back then every single word of what you just said; you would love him forever. He had meant what he said to you back then, too. Though he never should’ve given you up when his old man demanded it. What the hell had he been thinking?

You arched your brows at him expectantly, almost as if you knew what he had been thinking. 

He leaned forward a little and gave you a soft smile, hoping you would understand what he was trying to tell you. “Always.”

You returned his smile, giving him a wink. You’d heard him. He began to relax and your smile then turned into a more professional one. “That’s what I like to hear. Alright, Tom. Let’s begin, shall we?”

A/N: For the record, I highly doubt Y/N could have been Tom's doctor, especially since a prosecutor could have argued that it was a conflict of interest and possibly gotten any records she'd made inadmissible. I think, anyway. But it was too fun an idea not to explore. Plus, I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that someone who has been diagnosed with DID is not incapable of being tried by the law for crimes committed, even if it was committed by one of their alters and they are completely innocent (I think). But I couldn't just have Tom go straight to jail in this one or even to trial. I wanted to focus on him coming back and Y/N helping him as well as their sort of reunion.

Please let me know if you would like to be tagged for this character.

dividers by @firefly-graphics

banner by @cafekitsune

Main Masterlist

Main Tag List Submission Form

[beatrice-otter]

Genuine question for you, since iirc you're a pastor? Are there other ways to understand the Great Commission? I am not a Christian, but I am trying to be friendlier to Christians. My problem is: evangelism has deeply hurt my people through colonialism, forced conversions, and supercessionism. I cannot be neutral about this. On the other hand, I know it's a central Christian teaching and it's not so easy to just uproot things that are the word of God to their practitioners. I don't want outsiders forcing interpretations or suggestions on my people so in the spirit of interfaith understanding, is there a Christian way (or ways) of understanding it that doesn't force Christianity on the rest of us?

The Great Commission, as practiced, has done a lot of harm to a lot of people (understatement).

Short answer: no. Long answer: yes.

If your question is, "is there a way of interpreting that specific passage so that it doesn't mean Christians should try and convert people to Christianity," the answer is no. It's cut-and dried, and it's by itself--it's not a single verse in the middle of a longer passage of teaching that can be recontextualized. 'Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”' (Matthew 28:18-20). That's it. Boom. Done.

But there are two major factors in how it actually plays out that have HUGE impacts on everything about it.

The first is power. When Matthew was written, Christians were a persecuted minority. The idea of Christians being fed to lions and whatnot was largely a myth, the persecution was never as widespread nor as harsh as Christians remember it being, but it was still a thing. Christians had little or no social power in the larger community; a very large proportion of Christians were poor and/or women and/or enslaved. "Making disciples" could only happen when the prospective disciples voluntarily decided that following Jesus was the right thing to do because they could see the difference it made in the lives of Christians around them, or because Jesus' words touched something in their hearts. That is a very different thing from a colonial power coming in and imposing Christianity by force, and then trying to eradicate anything that doesn't fit within Christianity.

We get a lot of examples of how that worked in practice; the entire book of Acts is "what did making disciples look like in the early church." And what it looked like was ... tell people about Jesus, and if they don't want to hear, then don't bug them about it and move on. We also have Jesus' instructions to his disciples, when he sent them out to preach the first time: if people want to listen, great, stay and teach. If not, move on. (Note: at this point, their preaching would not be proselytizing Christianity, because Christianity didn't exist yet. Jesus was one of a fairly large number of traveling rabbis wandering about Judea teaching whoever would listen. The disciples were being sent as Jewish teachers into Jewish communities--this is before any of them believed that Jesus was the Messiah.)

In the 4th and 5th Centuries, Christianity became welded to the Roman Empire and became a tool of Imperial unification. Most Christians of the time seem to have thought it was a good thing because power! authority! wealth! and yet it warped a LOT of stuff about Christianity. Pacifism got jettisoned immediately, for example. There are a whole bunch of Jesus' teachings that are fine or beneficial when practiced by people with little or no social power that become toxic when they are the Official Position of the power structure. The Great Commission is one of those teachings. And now, of course, any thoughtful Christian has to reckon with that. Even as we lose our political and social power and hegemony (and I believe that's a good thing!), we've still got to reckon with the toxic and harmful ways we've used that power in the past.

Which brings us to the second mitigating factor, which is "what relative importance do you put on the Great Commission?"

That command is three verses long. Matthew has 1071 verses. The Great Commission is therefore only .2% of the Gospel of Matthew ... and it's not found in any of the other Gospels, or anywhere else in the Bible. There are 3,779 verses in the Gospels (the books directly about Jesus' time on Earth) and 7,957 verses in the New Testament as a whole (the specifically Christian books of the Bible). The Great Commission is mentioned once for three verses. Add in the Hebrew Bible (which Christians call the Old Testament), and the Christian Bible is 31,102 verses long.

And yeah, Jesus sent out disciples to preach ... but not to outsiders. And yeah, Acts is all about spreading the Gospel to new people, but the Gospel message is not "you need to learn this and pass it on like it's a pyramid scheme." Not to mention, Acts is very specifically clear that they are going out and spreading the Good News because the Spirit is calling them. Not just "Christians should go out and tell people" but "this specific person should go to this specific place and tell this specific person about Jesus." It's not about humans choosing to go out and conquer the world for Jesus, it's about following the call of the Holy Spirit. So if the Holy Spirit isn't calling you to proselytize ... shouldn't you be listening for what the Holy Spirit is actually calling you to do?

If you add in the book of Acts and count it as part of the Great Commission, that's 1,010 verses out of 31,102. We're up to 3% of the Bible, but still only 3%. Then we turn to the rest of the New Testament, and it's just not there. Paul spends a lot of time telling his churches what they should believe and how they should act. You know what he doesn't tell them? He does not tell them they should be going out and converting other people. Paul himself spends a lot of time making disciples, but he is not concerned with whether or not those disciples then go out and make other disciples. He has his ministry; theirs is to be the Body of Christ.

How much weight do we give to three verses out of 31k+? How much time and attention do those three verses require of Christians? When Christianity was the religion of the great imperial and colonialist powers, it was given a lot of weight because it provided a religious justification for imperialism and colonialism. But that's not an inherent reflection of how important it is in the Bible itself.

Most Christians in most times and places have not spent much time worrying about making disciples out of non-Christians. Even if you lived next door to non-Christians, it's not something the average Christian spent much time thinking about. It wasn't something theologians spent much time thinking about, and not something ministers spent much time preaching about, either. If God called you to be a missionary, great. If you were such a good example of Christianity that your neighbors saw your example and wanted to become like you, even better. But "making disciples" was not a major concern ... until you get to the massive wave of colonialism in the 19th Century. All of a sudden, it became this major thing. Every Christian was expected to participate in one way or another--missionary societies sprang up like weeds, dedicated to learning about missions to "heathens" and raising money for missionary work. The Great Commission came to the front and center of Christian teaching just as colonialism was coming to the front and center of European and American political concerns. This was not a coincidence.

Let's contrast that with another foundational commandment, shall we? The Great Commandment: 'Jesus replied, “The most important [commandment] is Israel, listen! Our God is the one Lord, and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this, You will love your neighbor as yourself. No other commandment is greater than these.”' (Mark 12:29-31) Now, besides the fact that Jesus himself says that this is the greatest commandment, it's recorded in multiple Gospels (cf. Luke 10:27-28, Matthew 22:36-40). Also, Jesus is quoting! The "love the Lord your God" part comes from multiple places in the Hebrew Bible (most notably the Shema Yisrael, Deuteronomy 6:4-9). "Love your neighbor" comes from Leviticus 19:18 and is the driving theological point behind a lot of the Law and the Prophets (in the Hebrew Bible) and the Epistles (in the New Testament).

Moreover, the Great Commandment is the lead-in to one of the most important parables, the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37). And while it doesn't explicitly appear in the Gospel of John (which is a very different book than the other three Gospels), John has the Farewell Discourse. After the Last Supper (but before his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane), the Gospel of John has a timeout where Jesus spends three whole chapters giving his disciples one last lecture and then praying for them. And while that lecture covers a lot of topics, one of the ones it keeps hammering home is love of God and love of neighbor.

The Great Commandment doesn't come out of nowhere, nor is it isolated. It is laced throughout all of Scripture. Multiple books of the New Testament are meditations on what it means to love God and love your neighbor.

The Great Commission, on the other hand ... is three verses.

When "loving your neighbor" and "make disciples" conflict, which one should we follow? I know which one I choose.

[ranticore]

pelagic spiral villages

It's not the prettiest diagram and might be hard to follow. First off, the spiral is a region in the south of the western continent of Siren

the spiral region is not limited to the actual physical structure of the land, where the characteristic ridges and valleys of Siren crumple up into a twisted shape, but also extends south as far as the icecaps, with the ridges continuing their spiral but underwater (on the map above, the visible spiral is only what extends above water)

It comprises all of the pale blue water in this map area, bordered by the darker deeper water and what is known as the Ice Wall in the south.

The most densely settled areas are within the tallest ridges at the middle of the spiral, as these ridges form physical walls and barriers which prevent many of the dangers of the open sea from entering villages without having to traverse what is quite frankly a labyrinth of narrow valleys beforehand. But at the edges of the spiral, nearer to the ice wall, lies the pelagic village of !uamaa. This is where Huarva comes from and what's pictured at the top.

it is populated by phocids and some selkies underwater and Ice Wall shortwings above water (they are similar to penguins). It consists of a huge three-tiered underwater hall with an air pocket trapped by a tethered tent-like cap made of transparent material derived from sipho scales. The bottom tier is stocked with oxygenating plants (i can only assume they are VERY productive). The middle tier is submerged and where the in habitants enter the hall (through the round openings pictured). Shelf-like beds attached to the sturdy woven walls provide platforms where a phocid can sit with their body submerged but their head out of the water, which is the most comfortable position for them as they do like to have water supporting their weight as much as possible.

The hall was built over a hot water vent in the seafloor. The vent water is directed up through a stone s-duct, which leaves a flat surface above the water which is constantly heated. This is used as a cooking stone; there is a pot of perpetual stew always bubbling here and every villager is expected to contribute something to it every day in return for being allowed to take as much stew as they like.

The other buildings are these balloon type structures which are anchored both to the sea floor and to the floating pontoons above. The balloons do not have oxygen generating plants, but must be manually raised and lowered to the surface to trap more air every day. The colour palette is overall a strongly contrasting black and white (fun fact, pelagic people are hypersensitive to the colour red out of the water, to the point where it might cause headaches)

What's life like in the village? Huarva is often asked this but he cannot truly answer, because he was never a villager. Living out here is extremely tough and demanding, and experience is valued above all else. The eldest and most experienced person in the village is called the All-Bearer and their word is law. The All-Bearer is a matchmaker among villagers, pairing those who are thought to work harmoniously together in arranged partnerships, similar to marriage. Huarva's parents were not arranged; in fact they were strictly forbidden from reproducing because they did not work harmoniously together. They fought and argued and struck sparks off one another, but were inseparable. The All-Bearer gave no blessing for them to have a child.

^the All-Bearer.

In these cases it's not uncommon for the pregnant parent to find a matched pair and attempt to convince them to claim the child. That way nobody is harmed. But it didn't work out in time, on this occasion, so the child - Huarva - was born and immediately outcast from the village as a potential troublemaker. A pretty rough start all things considered. Huarva was an outsider, not a villager. they could hang around the place, beg, speak to people, but never be granted the elders' wisdom lest it be misused by a child of intrinsically bad character. They basically grew up homeless and uneducated in their village.

And this is a major handicap because of how dangerous this region is. Children are sorted into same-age 'generations' which go through a strict and standardised education before being unleashed as leviathan hunters. A couple years of that, and (assuming they survive), that generation moves on to the next-most dangerous job, replaced by the generation below them. And so on and so forth until what remains is the oldest generation, who are finally granted a safe and comfortable life in return for sharing all the wisdom gathered over the years working different professions. Few will remain by then.

The culture is cold. Repressed. Quiet. Fighting is an exile-worthy offense and disagreements are stifled. The All-Bearer makes every final decision and you cannot question them because you do not have the requisite experience to contradict anything they say. If you must be upset, do it where nobody can see, and never openly express discontent.

Huarva survived to adulthood by choosing to stick around the shallows on top of the underwater ridges. They tried many times to earn the All-Bearer's favour enough to earn a place in the village to no avail. Until the All-Bearer finally had enough of them and sent them away on a fetch quest doomed to fail, because Huarva did not have the education to know how to spot the warning signs of a flow of aerated water. Finding themself trapped under it, they panicked, never having learned any methods to slow their heart and extend their usable breath, and almost drowned. Sheer luck saved them; a leviathan-sized giant sipho flying for the surface caught them between its scale plates. It didn't notice its new passenger and ended up dragging Huarva almost the entire way across the dark and to the spire before they got free.

[romancerepulsed]

disclaimer: i am american and i can only speak for how it is here, but regardless this post is about online spaces

i have to say it. "romance negativity" is not a thing and you all look like clowns for saying it and placing it right next to sex negativity. sex negativity exists within a large system oppression. its a set of beliefs an individual can have, yes, but those beliefs in and of themselves are nothing without their institutional support. sex negativity, though it hurts queer people the most, negatively affects every person who desires to interact with sexuality in any way. sex negativity is major websites and apps banning porn for the sake of profit. sex negativity is restricting abortion access. sex negativity is absitence-only education. sex negativity is the criminalization of sex work. sex negativity is rape culture.

romance negativity does not exist in this way. the most romance negativity could possibly harm you is it hurting your feelings a bit when an aromantic person expresses their frustrations with amatonormativity. our institutions actively push for romance and partnering. our whole society is structured around it. all of our entertainment is infested with it. there is no significant cultural push to devalue romance the same way there is for sex, and thats why the discussion of the evil repulsed aros who hate romance and hate you for experiencing it is so fucking stupid to me. like, every romance repulsed aro i know is so painstakingly polite and supportive to the alloromantics and romance favorable aros around us. we are constantly gritting our teeth and working through it, because thats what we have always had to do.

ive also seen posts complaining that romance repulsed aros make the community feel unsafe for romance favorable aros, which... i have not seen any of the rumored aro elitism this implies at all. im sure there are some guys out there who exclude romance favorable aros, and they absolutely suck ass. but this is not a widespread problem at all. and i need you to put yourselves in the shoes of a romance repulsed aromantic person right now. someone who has just found the language for what theyve been struggling with all their lives, and theyre excited to find a community for people like them, a community thats supposed to be free from the talons of amatonormativity, only to find out most of the people there are still talking about their partners, their crushes, the romantic things they wanna do with their friends, etc. its isolating. this isnt to say aromanticism isnt a spectrum or that people shouldnt talk about their experiences as romance favorable aros, im just trying to get you to understand *why* repulsed aros can seem so irritable or aggressive at times.

so im sorry that romance repulsed aros expressing their frustration with the very fabric of society being against them hurt your feelings. but i think maybe thats just something youre gonna have to deal with. if you need tips on sucking it up then maybe ask a romance repulsed aro, we're used to it 👍

[nyarlathotep-thecrawlingchaos]

Below you will find the character profile for my One Piece OC (one of them, anyway. I have at least five, but I'll be working the most closely with this one for now).

So, here we go. Only been working on this shit for like...three days. Okay, technically over ten years since I used to write her ages ago when I was on fanfiction.net, but I've redone a lot of things.

I'm already in the process of working on a novel-length Mihawk x AFAB!OC fanfic, so here's the overly extensive character sheet for my OC because I always put way too much effort into character development.

The character history practically devolves into a mini fanfic itself around the middle by total accident, but whatever.

The fanfic(s) will toe the line between Live Action and Manga canon. We'll just call it AU and leave it at that.

Karimi Lionne

Associated fanfics: Hearing Problems (coming soon to an Unknowable Horror near you) and Any Way The Wind Blows (eventually, bear with me)

Age: 24

Occupation: Pirate; Mercenary

Abilities:

Kiku Kiku no Mi: A Paramecia type devil fruit that grants the user the ability to hear...well, everything, all the time. Within a certain range she, can hear the thoughts of people around her. The range varies with her focus; standard, it's anyone within a range of about fifty feet in any direction. She can close that circle down to either listen to one person's thoughts, or expand it to search a city or town for a particular person. Activated (which she hasn't yet), it allows the user the ability to plant thoughts in others' heads, and potentially control their thoughts.

She considers the ability more of a curse than a blessing since she has never managed to hone it quite well enough to shut it off entirely, and can often be found sitting at a dock or on a beach with her feet in the salt water, just to get some peace and quiet in her own head.

Blades: Karimi carries a pair of daggers with ornately carved ivory handles, the head of a lioness carved into the top of each hilt, in sheaths at either side of her belt. They belonged to her grandmother, who raised her from age four to age fourteen, and also taught her most of what she knows in combat. She also keeps a handful of throwing knives in a holster belted to her right calf, a couple inches below her knee.

Her fighting style relies primarily on agility, evasion, and accuracy rather than raw strength due to her relatively small stature of 5'2".

Haki: Not a master by any means at all. Learned from Red-Haired Shanks during her brief stint working with his crew, used largely to assist in suppressing her devil fruit abilities and making them more manageable. Not really proficient enough to use it for any other application.

Music: Karimi was taught to play guitar, fiddle, and piano by her grandmother, but she hasn't touched an instrument since her grandmother died, so she doesn't know how much of the ability she has retained. Karimi also learned several sea shanties from her, and often hums or quietly sings them to herself while out to sea.

Appearance:

Faceclaim: Jane Fonda c. 1960s, facial structure, skin and hair edited via Faceapp

Long, dark green hair, in wild curls that she can't do much of anything with except tie back in a bun or stuff under a hat. Sharp emerald green eyes. Fair-skinned with a handful of freckles.

The Resting Bitch Face is strong with this one.

Slender, petite, 5'2" tall.

Tends toward wearing long-sleeved shirts/dresses to cover the scars on her arms. Almost always wears her grandmother's hat, an old and tattered brown leather tricorne with a patch on the front left brim and a few more in the back.

Personality:

Confident, toeing the line of outright arrogance at times. Humor that ranges from dryly sarcastic to quite silly, depending on who she's around. Guarded. Brooding. Cynical. Empathetic. Gentle. Uses sarcasm as a coping mechanism. Not easily offended. Prominent issues with self-harm and PTSD.

Backstory (prior to beginning of fic)

Karimi has next to no knowledge of her origins. She knows her mother died shortly after giving birth to her, that she was born on her father's ship, and that she got her hands on a devil fruit the crew had found and ate it when she was three or four years old, not knowing what it was. Shortly thereafter she was taken to live with her grandmother on a remote island village called Conch Cove, somewhere on the Grand Line.

Her grandmother, Helena Lionne, had been a pirate captain shortly before Gol D. Roger came around and into his earlyyears of piracy, but Karimi didn't know much about her history. Helena was a powerful haki user, and was able to use the power to dampen Karimi's devil fruit abilities, largely for the sake of the girl's own comfort and sanity. Helena trained her to fight in order to defend herself in the event that she ever left the island, as well as survivalist training. She wasn't shy about telling Karimi that the world could be a dangerous place, particularly for a woman on her own, amd wanted to ensure that her granddaughter had everything she needed to safely make her way in the world.

Karimi found out more about her grandmother a week after her fourteenth birthday.

She discovered that her grandmother had been captain of the Siren Pirates. She discovered her grandmother possessed the abilities of the Mizu Mizu no Mi (logia type, water). She discovered that her bounty was in the billions...and still very much active.

The Marine Admiral who showed up to the island, Admiral Jackson "Volcano" Vesper, brought a large crew with him, with no intention of taking Helena alive. His moniker stemmed not only from his explosive temper, but also from his own devil fruit abilities—the predecessor to Fire Fist Ace, he possessed the power of the Mera Mera no Mi (logia type, fire). He also possessed an intense desire for revenge on the woman that had killed his father.

He didn't bother revealing how he managed to track her down—he simply went in guns blazing. The battle between him and Helena, between his crew and what remained of hers, waged for nearly two entire days, leaving several Marines and villagers dead and the town in total ruin. Karimi stayed hidden the entire time as her grandmother had asked her to, but with Helena's haki focused on defending herself and her allies, Karimi could hear everything with her devil fruit abilities.

She could hear the moment when Admiral Vesper's first mate got the drop on her grandmother, pinned her to the ground with the butt of his rifle, which he had coated in a layer of sea stone, instantly sapping her strength and her devil fruit powers.

Karimi could hear Vesper's thoughts, his intentions to humiliate her, kill her, and return to Marineford with her head.

And Karimi emerged from hiding and managed to toss a throwing a knife into the back of his leg.

She was captured almost immediately. Her physical resemblance to her grandmother in the woman's younger years was noted immediately by Vesper, and he knew in that instant that he had won.

And Karimi knew it too, with the man's bowie knife to her throat.

He agreed to let Karimi go in exchange for Helena's life, and Helena gave in without a second thought when she saw the bowie knife start to cut into her granddaughters neck.

He took the remainder of Helena's old crew as prisoners—the only four other villagers on the island left alive, but not before slitting Helena's throat and sawing her head from her neck with his bowie knife, while Karimi was held captive and forced to watch.

Then he and his men left her there on the remote island, in a ruined village with nothing but the corpses of friends and neighbors and the woman who raised her to keep her company.

She doesn't remember much of the following two weeks. She knows she was able to make a spear out of a throwing knife and a shovel handle to catch fish for food in the shallows around the island. That she had a fresh source of water in the form of a pond. She knows she was nearly through building a raft out of the rubble that was left of the town when another marine ship arrived at the island, captained this time by Vice Admiral Garp the Fist. She was understandably beyond wary of Marines, and she fought tooth and nail, kicking and screaming, when they took her back to their ship.

They took her throwing knives and her grandmother's daggers, and she was forced to stay in the brig because she made very clear that she would gladly gut any marine who came near her. She was still treated with kindness and provided full meals given her situation, and as she bided her time and got her strength back she formed a plan of escape.

She was able to use her devil fruit powers effectively in her escape—by listening around and finding the easiest target. This came in the form of a fifteen year old cadet who would check on her and talk to her during his downtime. He thought she was pretty and couldn't believe she had managed to keep herself alive for two and a half weeks after what she had been through, admired her sheer strength of will. It was incredibly easy to sweet-talk him into getting her weapons back to her, playing on his sympathies by telling him that they were all she had left of her grandmother.

She hid them once she had them, and did a little more sweet-talking...until he agreed to steal the keys and get her out of the cell. Once she was out, she wasted no time in knocking him out, stealing his uniform, stuffing her hair under the hat, and discreetly stealing enough rations to last herself a week and slipping away on a dinghy.

She had no idea where she was or how she was going to get anywhere, but she wasn't exactly of sound mind after the trauma she had endured. Her only thoughts at the time were that she wanted to put as much distance between herself and the Marines as possible.

She was picked up by a merchant vessel after a few days, and they took pity on her story and allowed her to remain on board the ship, assisting in cooking and cleaning in exchange for room and board and safe passage to their next stop. They were bound for Loguetown in the East Blue, and that suited her just fine.

Loguetown was a large city right outside the only passage onto the Grand Line, and it gave her plenty of options for work. She worked odd jobs that provided her with room and board, saving up money over the course of the following two years.

She was working in a tavern and staying at the attached inn when the Red-Hair pirates made port in Loguetown, and she knew she had her ticket back onto the seas, with only one goal in mind—to find her father, and tell him what had become of her grandmother.

Her memories of him were too vague for her to give any decent description, but she wasn't telling anyone her reasons anyway. She waited for her shift to end before approaching Shanks himself and asking, confidently, to join his crew.

That got a tremendous laugh out of the crew at large, but only a little bit of a chuckle from Shanks himself.

"And why would a little slip of a thing like yourself want sail around with a bunch of old men?"

"That's not really important." She sat down at the neighboring table at this. "But what I can provide your crew is."

"And what might that be, love?"

"I've trained with daggers and throwing knives since I was four years old. I also possess the abilities of the Kiku Kiku no Mi."

Yasopp, sitting between Shanks and his first mate Benn Beckman with bis feet propped up on the table, snorted at that, grinning. "So what, it improved your hearing?"

Karimi leveled her eyes with his. "Immensely," she daid. She gave a small smile...and began narrating his thoughts out loud. "'The hell is this girl's deal? Does she have any idea who she's even talking to right now? She can't even be much older than my—Wait. What the hell? What the hell is she—'" His feet slipped off the table, his mouth falling open as he registered what was happening. "'Holy shit, is she in my head? Is—'"

"Okay, you made your point, cut it out!" he half-shouted, staring at her in alarm.

No one was laughing anymore—and she knew she had their full attention now.

"That," Shanks said lightly, the amusement gone from his eyes and replaced with caution—but also intrigue, "is a very dangerous ability for someone as young as yourself to possess."

"I've had it since I was four. I've learned to manage it."

That was, of course, only half true—she could deal with it, yes, but she couldn't fully control it.

After a long, silent moment, in which members of his crew exchanged glances and Shanks quietly studied her, he leaned back in his chair, nodding to himself.

"Let's give you a real test," he said, leaning his arm over the back of his chair. "See how well you can put your abilities to use." Karimi lifted her eyebrows, waiting. "I want you to sneak into the Marine base here in Loguetown. Find where they keep the treasure and money they've confiscated from pirates and thieves they've arrested...and walk out with as much as you can carry." He lifted his bottle of rum from the table. "Undetected."

"Have you lost your goddamned mind?" Shanks glanced across the table at Benn when he spoke up.

"That's been gone for years, but go on."

Benn gave a growl of annoyance at his captain. "She's a kid. You're talking about sending a kid into a damned Marine base to steal from them. That's a suicide mission."

"The girl wants a chance to prove herself," he said simply, shrugging a shoulder. He looked back at her. "That's my offer, love. We're setting out no later than noon tomorrow. You bring your haul to the ship, you can come with us."

Karimi nodded, and stood from her chair. "Then I will see you all no later than noon tomorrow."

A few hours later, when the tavern closed for the night and the crew returned to the ship, they were met with the sight of Karimi, wearing a Marine uniform and sitting on a sizable burlap sack right in the middle of the deck. She stood from it and kicked it over, spilling gold bricks, jewels, and piles of Berry notes and coins across the deck.

Sneaking into the base had honestly been a piece of cake—she found a half-drunk Marine a couple years older than her at another tavern, did a little sweet-talking and got him back to her inn room. Suggested some rather kinky activities that would involve him stripping down and being tied to the bed and he jumped on it. Once he was securely tied, she gathered her few belongings, put on his uniform, put a do-not-disturb sign on the door, and slipped out the window.

It had taken longer to find and get into the rooms where they kept any seized contraband, but it had been as simple as keeping her head down and listening. Hiding and ducking down empty halls when she heard anyone drawing too close. The entire ordeal had taken just under three hours.

After a long stretch of silence, it was Benn Beckman that voiced what everyone was thinking.

"Holy shit."

Shanks grinned over at him. "Suicide mission, aye?"

She was officially welcomed aboard the ship at this, as promised, but there was some deal of commotion when she told them her name.

Particularly her surname.

She learned very quickly that both Shanks and his first mate were familiar with her father—and that Benn utterly despised him. To the point that he, however briefly, threatened to throw Karimi off the ship himself against his captain's will if necessary. The brief altercation ended in Benn storming off to the gun deck on his own, leaving Karimi wondering if she had made the right choice of crew.

Shanks was far more personable.

He told her about her father—Lyon D. Rollo.

He described her father as having been like "the annoying little brother he never wanted." Told her about their time spent as deckhands aboard the Oro Jackson. About his devil fruit abilities that had caused absolutely nothing but trouble for years because they were incredibly difficult to master without massive repercussions: the Kaze Kaze no Mi (logia type: wind).

Told her how they met Benn not long after Roger's execution after setting out on their own—Benn and his younger sister, Sedna, who he had looked after on his own since he was around sixteen and she was six, when their parents had been killed by raiding pirates.

Who Karimi's father had apparently fallen inmediately head over heels for. Said he refused to leave town without her, and did exactly as he set out to. Benn had refused to leave her side, and came with them despite his hatred of pirates at the time.

It was a year later that Shanks and her father had gone their separate ways. It had always been the plan, as they were both too stubborn to accept being anything but captains. Once they gathered enough of their own crew members and got their own ships, they parted as friends. Benn stayed with Shanks, and Sedna remained with Lyon.

It wasn't long after that they recieved word that Sedna had been killed during a firefight with the Marines.

"He never mentioned a child," said Shanks, shaking his head and looking at Karimi like he was looking at a ghost as he leaned forward against the railing around the bow. "I imagine he couldn't have been much older than seventeen." He shook his head a little, still in disbelief. "I don't think I need devil fruit abilities to know what you're doing here."

Karimi nodded shortly. "Do you know where—?"

"No, unfortunately."

No one knew where Lyon was—it had been five years since Shanks actually last saw him, and he and his entire crew seemed to have just vanished into thin air around a year ago, despite still holding active bounties.

Karimi didn't tell him anything else, not why she was looking for him—only that she was, and that she had no intention of remaining with the Red Hair crew for the long term. Just long enough to get a bit of money together and purchase her own ship, something small like a sloop that she could handle by herself.

She ended up sailing with the Red Hair Pirates for around two years, give or take few months. Shanks became something of a mentor to her over that period of time, taking time to train her in Busoshoku Haki, the same type of Haki that her grandmother had used to repress Karimi's Devil Fruit abilities, so Karimi could use it herself when she wished to. It wasn't fool-proof, but it at least helped lessen the mental load.

Once on her own, Karimi ultimately began working as a mercenary; taking on jobs with various pirate crews that required stealth or a subtle touch, avoiding Marines as much as possible, and attempting to gather any information she could about her father, but to no avail on the latter front—it really seemed like he and his crew had just vanished into thin air. His bounty was still active, along with those of his first mate and officers, but no one had heard hide nor hair of them in literaly years.

Nothing much changed for her until Karimi took a job from the Buggy Pirates a few years later, at twenty-four years old. Buggy was searching for a map of the Grand Line, and he needed someone to steal it for him, since he and his crew more or less stood out like sore thumbs and couldn't very discreetly sneak into the naval base in Shells Town where it was being kept. She was reluctant to accept—she usually avoided jobs that had anything at all to do with the Marines, but Buggy made an offer she couldn't refuse.

He claimed to have information about her father that he would gladly trade for the map.

She kept her ship anchored next to Buggy's overnight to set to preparing, planning to make way for Shells Town first thing the following morning...but news came down the grapevine that night that the map had been stolen during a break-in by another pirate crew into the Marine base.

In his rage that his plans were foiled after spending months gathering information, Buggy laid the blame on the hired hand—that she had left immediately, she could have beaten the other crew to the base and gotten the map first. He ultimately sunk her sloop, nearly with her on it before she managed to gather her most valuable items and get herself onto Buggy's ship, where he informed her she would be working for him until her debt at failing to get him the map was paid off—now she was going to have to steal it from the pirates that had taken it.

Karimi had little choice but to agree—being a devil fruit user, it would be far too risky for her to steal a dinghy and take her chances with thr open oceans.

They found the crew on a schooner and took them prisoner easily enough, given that there were only three of them. Karimi recognized one of them from a description Shanks had mentioned during her time with the Red Hair Pirates of the boy he had lost his arm to a sea monster saving (a story that she had honestly thought had to be an exaggeration), who claimed to be their captain and insisted he was going to be king of the pirates...while the other two claimed they weren't even a crew.

Whatever the case, Karimi knew they were her ticket out of servitude to the Buggy Pirates, and mutinied against them the second that the odds shifted in favor of Luffy, Zoro, and Nami.

Luffy was more than happy to welcome her aboard their tiny ship, especially on learning that she knew Shanks. She didn't tell them of her devil fruit abilities, still keeping them suppressed with Haki, a mistake she would regret in the next island they made port at due largely to their schooner springing a leak. They lucked out on landing in a town with a shipyard, but none of them really had a Berry to spare between them to actually purchase a new ship—the vast majority of the money that Karimi had saved herself had sunk to the bottom of the ocean with her own ship amd most of her worldly possessions.

On meeting and quickly befriending Usopp at the shipyard and learning the owner of the place was his "best friend," they had something of a plan, if a bit of a ridiculous one—Luffy was convinced that if he just talked to Kaya and explained their situation, she would just give him a ship and they could be off and on their way.

Both Karimi and Zoro recognized the butler Klahador, but couldn't quite put their finger on why. This was Karimi's mistake—she didn't think enough of it to release her haki and just listen in on his thoughts. It wasn't until everything later fell apart in Kaya's mansion that she did release her haki and quickly learn he was Captain Kuro, a cutthroat captain who had been believed dead for years, that he had been poisoning Kaya for years, and that he planned to murder Kaya and take over the estate himself that night.

She also learned while her abilities were active that Nami had every intention of stealing the Grand Line map and taking it to the pirate crew she was serving against her will. By this point Karimi had developed a soft spot for all three members of the Strawhat Crew (even if two of them still claimed not to be a crew), but she decided not to confront Nami about it—yet.

Kaya was more than happy to gift them a ship after they helped defeat Kuro and freed her from his suppression. She offered Karimi one as well, but she declined, stating that she would prefer to purchase one herself once she had the means to do so—but that she would happily return to Syrup Village and purchase one from Kaya's family's shipyard. In truth, she was honestly enjoying her time with the ragtag little crew, and wanted to stick around with them just a bit longer to see how far Luffy's ambitions could take them.

Usopp joined them at this point as the crew's sharpshooter. They were intercepted not far from Syrup Village by a Marine ship, and Karimi recognized Vice Admiral Garp almost immediately—as did Luffy, to her and the others' astonishment on finding our that Garp was his grandfather. Luffy was able to use his devil fruit abilities to deflect a cannonball thrown at their ship by Garp, and damage Garp's ship enough for them to slip away into a dense fog and lose their pursuers.

They happened by pure luck upon the restaurant ship Baratie, where our story begins in earnest, following Luffy's idiocy at trying to pass off a very expensive bill with an I.O.U. and getting stuck washing dishes in the kitchen to pay it off.

Relationships

Helena Lionne (OC): Grandmother, deceased. A powerful pirate captain in her heyday, Helena disappeared from the seas without a word one day and no one really knew where she had gone. Helena raised Karimi from age four to fourteen, when she was tragically murdered by a revenge-crazed marine admiral whose father Helena had killed years earlier when she was still pirating. Karimi looked up to her immensely and loved her to death, and thinking about her still hurts.

Lyon D. Rollo (OC): A active pirate captain on the grand line, though no one has heard hide nor hair of him or his crew (the Hurricane Pirates) in years. She's been trying to find him for the past ten years, to tell him what happened to her grandmother/his mother, since Karimi was the only witness left alive and no one else would be able to tell him exactly what happened. It doesn't help that she last saw him at four years old, and remembers next to nothing about him. He's actually the one who gave her the hat—he took it when he left home at thirteen to become a pirate himself, and left it with her when he took her to her grandmother. (A/N, if and when I ever get to working on Any Way The Wind Blows, it will be about his history.)

Red-Haired Shanks: Working with the Red-Hair pirates for two years led to her becoming fairly close with Shanks. He had known her father over two decades and became quite protective of her as a direct result, with her looking at him almost as a father figure as well as a mentor.

Benn Beckman: The first mate of Red-Haired Shanks, Karimi learned from Shanks that her mother had been Benn's younger sister, Sedna, and that Benn absolutely despised her father and blamed him for his younger sibling's untimely death. As a result, Benn spent a while both wary and untrusting of Karimi and treating her with indifference that bordered on hostility; but he eventually let it go, accepting that she was capable (and, in his own words, "a hell of a lot smarter than Lyon D. Dipshit"),

The Marines: Karimi positively despises Marines, with the sole exception of Garp since has come to recognize that she wouldn't be alive if not for him, though good luck getting her to admit it.

Luffy: For her short spell traveling with Luffy and his "crew," she bonded with Luffy pretty quickly, coming to see him like a goofy little brother. He absolutely reveled in hearing stories about her time on the ocean, especially any that involved her time on Shanks's crew. She's quick to scold him for his naivety and questionable decisions, but it's mostly out of care; his ambition is definitely infectious, and she wants to see him achieve everything he's set out to do.

Nami: As the only other girl on the Going Merry, Karimi did her best to get close to Nami, especially on learning about her tragic situation with the Arlong Pirates via her devil fruit abilities, but Nami makes herself intentionally distant.

Zoro: She butted heads a fair bit with Zoro, largely due to both of them being exceedingly sarcastic, but she doesn't hate him by any means. Quite the contrary, she admires his abilities as a fighter and passes time sparring with him on the deck. They're about evenly matched in fighting ability, as his style relies largely on strength and her own on evasion and agility.

Usopp: Usopp is always quick to pipe in with his own epic stories of his supposed adventures when Karimi mentions any of her own past ventures. Not unlike Luffy, she looks at him almost like a younger sibling, though honestly he annoys her a little more than Luffy.

[purrincess-chat]

I wonder, if for some reason Adrienette were to break up in the upcoming seasons (not necessarily due to a fight, but simply deciding to stop their relationship for a while), would you stop watching the show? Honestly, I think this might happen in the next seasons due to things related to their superhero lives (maybe even Lila influencing it to annoy Marinette and try to take Adrien for herself). Also, to achieve character development, they probably need to show that constantly keeping secrets can harm relationships, and the Love Square is structured in a way that one part of their lives affects the other. What happens on one side of the Love Square can impact the others. I don't think it would make them as a couple unworkable because: 1. It has also negatively affected their romantic relationships with other people; 2. Our hatrel to Gabriel Agreste will always be not enough. All the negative consequences could have been avoided if not for this guy who left kids with problems for several seasons ahead.

For me it would depend on the reason/how it was done. For instance, if the break up is something they're forced to do, but they're still very obviously madly in love with each other (i.e. Ben and Leslie from Parks and Rec), then maybe. 🤷‍♀️ What I don't want is some bullshit contrived reason if they are going to do it. Because after everything that went down in s5 and how hard they fought to stay together, it seems like kind of a waste, imo. If s5 had been different and their relationship a bit more shallow and rocky, then I could maybe see it, but they worked really hard at their relationship to make it work in s5. And I don't even know that secrets would be an issue because we've had an episode addressing that, and Adrien has shown that he doesn't fault Marinette for not telling him everything, he just doesn't want to hurt her. Because truthfully, it would make him a bit of a hypocrite bc he is also keeping a secret from her?? So, he really doesn't have a leg to stand on.

I think a lot of the push for them to break up comes from a couple of places, and they're both salty. 1. People will find any excuse to salt on Marinette and her knowing about Gabriel is just the latest excuse, so they feel she needs to be "punished" by losing her relationship, which ew. 2. People just really can't get over Adrinette being canon, and at this point, it's just kind of sad.

In my honest opinion, there is a lot that we don't yet know about future seasons, so it's not really possible to judge right now. I don't think we as a fandom realize how much shit just got flipped on its head when Gabriel made that wish. The world that we have been living in within the ML universe up to this point is GONE. Things are vastly different now. Yes, the characters may still be the characters we know and love, but we don't know how much control Gabriel exerted over this new world. We don't know everything that he changed and how it will affect the characters moving forward. Adrien might care that Marinette knows things he doesn't, or he might not. He may never even know she knows something he doesn't. It may never get brought up. Or it might. 🤷‍♀️ we don't know. The show may choose to explore a breakup, or it may not, and honestly, I'm just tired of people assuming it will happen or insisting that it has to happen. It's the Chloe redemption arc all over again, and if they don't go that route, people will bitch and complain about bad writing and a butchered story and how they should have done it another way and the writers are so stupid and bad. Then on the other hand if they do break up, people will be like see? Adrinette was bad, and I just...

I'm tired of seeing people root against the love square and be pissed about every little thing. And personally, I don't think the love square NEEDS to break up in order to be interesting or move forward. Those things aren't necessary in a relationship. It's not as realistic or interesting as people think it is, and I'm tired of people pretending it is. I vastly prefer seeing couples that overcome trials together and stay together. Those are the couples that can survive anything. If they break up over every little thing, that is not a healthy relationship model, and I don't want to root for it. Rip to everyone else, but I'm different. It may come as a shock to some people, but they can address secret keeping without breaking them up. It can definitely be a blow to their relationship, but they could work through it and come out the other end stronger without needing to totally end things. I just find it hard to believe that all of the cheerleaders for Adrinette's downfall are doing it innocently or because they think it's narratively necessary. I don't buy it.

I dunno. I've already said that whether or not I stick with ML will depend on how s6 goes up to mid-season. Thomas stepped down as head writer, so the writing of the episodes may feel different. The new world may be trash (it is Gabriel we are talking about). The new heroes might get too crowded and annoying. (I already wasn't a fan in s4, I didn't care for Penalteam at all). There are a lot of factors that could sway me in either direction, but honestly, I could forgive some of those if the love square interactions are still good. (I honestly think Adrinette hard carried s5, personally) But if you pair several of those with an Adrinette break up, then yeah, I don't see me having a reason to still watch. If I don't enjoy the show anymore, I'll stop watching. (A novel fucking concept for some, I know)

[dailyanarchistposts]

A.2.9 What sort of society do anarchists want?

Anarchists desire a decentralised society, based on free association. We consider this form of society the best one for maximising the values we have outlined above — liberty, equality and solidarity. Only by a rational decentralisation of power, both structurally and territorially, can individual liberty be fostered and encouraged. The delegation of power into the hands of a minority is an obvious denial of individual liberty and dignity. Rather than taking the management of their own affairs away from people and putting it in the hands of others, anarchists favour organisations which minimise authority, keeping power at the base, in the hands of those who are affected by any decisions reached.

Free association is the cornerstone of an anarchist society. Individuals must be free to join together as they see fit, for this is the basis of freedom and human dignity. However, any such free agreement must be based on decentralisation of power; otherwise it will be a sham (as in capitalism), as only equality provides the necessary social context for freedom to grow and development. Therefore anarchists support directly democratic collectives, based on “one person one vote” (for the rationale of direct democracy as the political counterpart of free agreement, see section A.2.11 — Why do most anarchists support direct democracy?).

We should point out here that an anarchist society does not imply some sort of idyllic state of harmony within which everyone agrees. Far from it! As Luigi Galleani points out, ”[d]isagreements and friction will always exist. In fact they are an essential condition of unlimited progress. But once the bloody area of sheer animal competition — the struggle for food — has been eliminated, problems of disagreement could be solved without the slightest threat to the social order and individual liberty.” [The End of Anarchism?, p. 28] Anarchism aims to “rouse the spirit of initiative in individuals and in groups.” These will “create in their mutual relations a movement and a life based on the principles of free understanding” and recognise that ”variety, conflict even, is life and that uniformity is death.” [Peter Kropotkin, Anarchism, p. 143]

Therefore, an anarchist society will be based upon co-operative conflict as ”[c]onflict, per se, is not harmful… disagreements exist [and should not be hidden] … What makes disagreement destructive is not the fact of conflict itself but the addition of competition.” Indeed, “a rigid demand for agreement means that people will effectively be prevented from contributing their wisdom to a group effort.” [Alfie Kohn, No Contest: The Case Against Competition, p. 156] It is for this reason that most anarchists reject consensus decision making in large groups (see section A.2.12).

So, in an anarchist society associations would be run by mass assemblies of all involved, based upon extensive discussion, debate and co-operative conflict between equals, with purely administrative tasks being handled by elected committees. These committees would be made up of mandated, recallable and temporary delegates who carry out their tasks under the watchful eyes of the assembly which elected them. Thus in an anarchist society, “we’ll look after our affairs ourselves and decide what to do about them. And when, to put our ideas into action, there is a need to put someone in charge of a project, we’ll tell them to do [it] in such and such a way and no other … nothing would be done without our decision. So our delegates, instead of people being individuals whom we’ve given the right to order us about, would be people … [with] no authority, only the duty to carry out what everyone involved wanted.” [Errico Malatesta, Fra Contadini, p. 34] If the delegates act against their mandate or try to extend their influence or work beyond that already decided by the assembly (i.e. if they start to make policy decisions), they can be instantly recalled and their decisions abolished. In this way, the organisation remains in the hands of the union of individuals who created it.

This self-management by the members of a group at the base and the power of recall are essential tenets of any anarchist organisation. The key difference between a statist or hierarchical system and an anarchist community is who wields power. In a parliamentary system, for example, people give power to a group of representatives to make decisions for them for a fixed period of time. Whether they carry out their promises is irrelevant as people cannot recall them till the next election. Power lies at the top and those at the base are expected to obey. Similarly, in the capitalist workplace, power is held by an unelected minority of bosses and managers at the top and the workers are expected to obey.

In an anarchist society this relationship is reversed. No one individual or group (elected or unelected) holds power in an anarchist community. Instead decisions are made using direct democratic principles and, when required, the community can elect or appoint delegates to carry out these decisions. There is a clear distinction between policy making (which lies with everyone who is affected) and the co-ordination and administration of any adopted policy (which is the job for delegates).

These egalitarian communities, founded by free agreement, also freely associate together in confederations. Such a free confederation would be run from the bottom up, with decisions following from the elemental assemblies upwards. The confederations would be run in the same manner as the collectives. There would be regular local regional, “national” and international conferences in which all important issues and problems affecting the collectives involved would be discussed. In addition, the fundamental, guiding principles and ideas of society would be debated and policy decisions made, put into practice, reviewed, and co-ordinated. The delegates would simply “take their given mandates to the relative meetings and try to harmonise their various needs and desires. The deliberations would always be subject to the control and approval of those who delegated them” and so “there would be no danger than the interest of the people [would] be forgotten.” [Malatesta, Op. Cit., p. 36]

Action committees would be formed, if required, to co-ordinate and administer the decisions of the assemblies and their congresses, under strict control from below as discussed above. Delegates to such bodies would have a limited tenure and, like the delegates to the congresses, have a fixed mandate — they are not able to make decisions on behalf of the people they are delegates for. In addition, like the delegates to conferences and congresses, they would be subject to instant recall by the assemblies and congresses from which they emerged in the first place. In this way any committees required to co-ordinate join activities would be, to quote Malatesta’s words, “always under the direct control of the population” and so express the “decisions taken at popular assemblies.” [Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas, p. 175 and p. 129]

Most importantly, the basic community assemblies can overturn any decisions reached by the conferences and withdraw from any confederation. Any compromises that are made by a delegate during negotiations have to go back to a general assembly for ratification. Without that ratification any compromises that are made by a delegate are not binding on the community that has delegated a particular task to a particular individual or committee. In addition, they can call confederal conferences to discuss new developments and to inform action committees about changing wishes and to instruct them on what to do about any developments and ideas.

In other words, any delegates required within an anarchist organisation or society are not representatives (as they are in a democratic government). Kropotkin makes the difference clear:

“The question of true delegation versus representation can be better understood if one imagines a hundred or two hundred men [and women], who meet each day in their work and share common concerns … who have discussed every aspect of the question that concerns them and have reached a decision. They then choose someone and send him [or her] to reach an agreement with other delegates of the same kind… The delegate is not authorised to do more than explain to other delegates the considerations that have led his [or her] colleagues to their conclusion. Not being able to impose anything, he [or she] will seek an understanding and will return with a simple proposition which his mandatories can accept or refuse. This is what happens when true delegation comes into being.” [Words of a Rebel, p. 132]

Unlike in a representative system, power is not delegated into the hands of the few. Rather, any delegate is simply a mouthpiece for the association that elected (or otherwise selected) them in the first place. All delegates and action committees would be mandated and subject to instant recall to ensure they express the wishes of the assemblies they came from rather than their own. In this way government is replaced by anarchy, a network of free associations and communities co-operating as equals based on a system of mandated delegates, instant recall, free agreement and free federation from the bottom up.

Only this system would ensure the “free organisation of the people, an organisation from below upwards.” This “free federation from below upward” would start with the basic “association” and their federation “first into a commune, then a federation of communes into regions, of regions into nations, and of nations into an international fraternal association.” [Michael Bakunin, The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 298] This network of anarchist communities would work on three levels. There would be “independent Communes for the territorial organisation, and of federations of Trade Unions [i.e. workplace associations] for the organisation of men [and women] in accordance with their different functions… [and] free combines and societies … for the satisfaction of all possible and imaginable needs, economic, sanitary, and educational; for mutual protection, for the propaganda of ideas, for arts, for amusement, and so on.” [Peter Kropotkin, Evolution and Environment, p. 79] All would be based on self-management, free association, free federation and self-organisation from the bottom up.

By organising in this manner, hierarchy is abolished in all aspects of life, because the people at the base of the organisation are in control, not their delegates. Only this form of organisation can replace government (the initiative and empowerment of the few) with anarchy (the initiative and empowerment of all). This form of organisation would exist in all activities which required group work and the co-ordination of many people. It would be, as Bakunin said, the means “to integrate individuals into structures which they could understand and control.” [quoted by Cornelius Castoriadis, Political and Social Writings, vol. 2, p. 97] For individual initiatives, the individual involved would manage them.

As can be seen, anarchists wish to create a society based upon structures that ensure that no individual or group is able to wield power over others. Free agreement, confederation and the power of recall, fixed mandates and limited tenure are mechanisms by which power is removed from the hands of governments and placed in the hands of those directly affected by the decisions.

For a fuller discussion on what an anarchist society would look like see section I. Anarchy, however, is not some distant goal but rather an aspect of current struggles against oppression and exploitation. Means and ends are linked, with direct action generating mass participatory organisations and preparing people to directly manage their own personal and collective interests. This is because anarchists, as we discuss in section I.2.3, see the framework of a free society being based on the organisations created by the oppressed in their struggle against capitalism in the here and now. In this sense, collective struggle creates the organisations as well as the individual attitudes anarchism needs to work. The struggle against oppression is the school of anarchy. It teaches us not only how to be anarchists but also gives us a glimpse of what an anarchist society would be like, what its initial organisational framework could be and the experience of managing our own activities which is required for such a society to work. As such, anarchists try to create the kind of world we want in our current struggles and do not think our ideas are only applicable “after the revolution.” Indeed, by applying our principles today we bring anarchy that much nearer.

[cosxtan]

thoughts about iron widow, its yin yang imagery, and how patriarchal societies keep everyone down

General thoughts on Xiran Jay Zhao's book Iron Widow. Spoilers!

iron widow comes right out the gate with yin yang imagery. it starts with a butterfly with yin yang wings, the dual pilots of the mechs are characterized by yin and yang properties, and the mindscape they enter during battle is just a straightup a yin and yang. the first lines of the book get into it too.

but what the book also touches on is how brutally women are treated in the patriarchal society of the story. we're in the perspective of wu zetian, a frontier girl whose only paths in life were to die as a concubine soldier, or to marry to a random man to satisfy his every whim. girls are often drowned locked in pig cages when they are dishonored or disobey.

zetian is a physical manifestation of the society's toxic norms. her feet have been so broken by foot binding done for aesthetic purposes that she has to wobble places with a cane. The author is always very deliberate in describing zetian as hobbling, not walking (side note, look up foot binding. It's real and it's highly disturbing!)

after many shenanigans, including killing her sister's abuser (based) and dumping his corpse out of a mech during a livestream (BASED), she gets matched with a pilot that's bound to kill her: li shimin, a death row inmate who was spared for his aptitude with mechs. he killed his whole family! one of the worst crimes in their society. he has to be muzzled and chained and bribed with alcohol to cooperate, piloting the most powerful mech in the fleet: the Vermilion Bird

but all is not really as it seems. after their first violent confrontation doesn't kill one or both of them, zetian and shimin are put in housing together and trained while under constant threat of execution if they dont comply. zetian learns that as a death row inmate, shimin was forced into labor camps and administered electric shocks if he didn't work fast enough. so much so, in fact, that his hands have lost their finer functionalities. he can no longer paint or write like he was able to as a child, something that brought him comfort and joy.

the symbolism is pretty clear to me. with two functioning feet and two functioning hands between them, they represent a unique kind of symmetry that the yin yang generally embodies. they are both disabled, but they work as a single unit within the Vermilion Bird.

it also brings up another layer of flaws in the patriarchal society. while the mistreatment of women is obvious and brutal, the men are harmed by this system as well. shimin was contorted by the government and media to look like an unhinged serial killer (this also makes reference societal racism, as he isn't fully Han like the rest of the cast). even as a man, he's just another cog that people want to discard because he's not up to par. they even ripped out one of his kidneys and half his liver.

but i think it goes a layer deeper than that. because while shimin and zetian are both abused and harmed by the society they live in, shimin still gets the better end of the deal. he isn't immediately executed for his crime of patricide, when zetian surely would have been. while he's disabled, he still has limited use of his hands. meanwhile, zetians feet are forever broken and unusable. he had options in his life before the incident. she did not. i think at their core, zetian and shimin represent yin yang from a unique perspective of being symbols of the damage patriarchal structures and societies can do to people. it's a really solid and consistent theme for a ya book. like, genuinely interesting and nuanced. hats off to zhao for their impeccable writing

[toughknit]

ok let me put a few thoughts into words in order to share them. i had a very stressful, insightful and beautiful conversation with ****** today about relationships, labels, and feelings. for months now ive been working on my master's project which is roughly about truth as affective & sensical and not as what is or appears most meaningful. feelings vs language. so this is all ive been thinking about non stop. in my healing journey, i found out that i needed my relationships to be unconventionnal in order for me to love -- i'm just someone who loves very deeply and who sees through people, i can't help it, and that's what gets me in trouble when insecure people want to take advantage of that. i needed to learn that about myself in order to protect myself and seek relationships that fulfill me and welcomed that nurturing that is so easy and natural for me to extend. the word "friendship" is what i use to communicate with people and relate to them, but to me it is more a concept than a word; at the very least, its conventionnal definition is closest to what makes sense according to what i'm feeling for people. for example, if i'm ever to start dating someone, they will have to be okay with the fact that all my friends are on the same level as the romantic relationship, and that in fact i might want to act romantically towards my friends even if we don't share physical intimacy. language is a structure that has been incredibly harmful on my mind because of the meaning attached to every word. for the longest time it felt like everything, down to my very own sense of self, was at stake because of meaning and the possibility of misunderstanding. it is impossible to translate feelings into words, feelings are information on their own and it is active/activating. what remains true at all times are the feelings i feel, because they come from within, and they always make sense. language is something i learned and that is constantly moving within society. when you intellectualize feelings, you put meaning on them and you bind them in a structure. i'm not one who needs structure or habits in general, i like to be able to change my mind and experience new things, so it's easier for me to say. but within relationships, which are in my experience all about feelings, putting words and labels on someone or a dynamic that you have with someone is a way to describe it and is not definitive. or even effective. it traps sense and desires in a structure. language helps you go through things, but what you're always going through is your own feelings and your own perception; nothing means anything unless you decide to. everyone has the power to find truth within themselves by precisely proving their own existence to themselves; putting truth and meaning together creates discourse, narrative and ideology which has the potential to be incredibly restrictive and as we know from power dynamics(!) within societal structures, harmful. when you seek meaning you seek understanding, which is a very human thing to do; but there is no understanding without affect, and meaning has no affect, it has been produced and seeped through language, which is conveniently what you use to compartmentalize your feelings and organize your perception. therefore to me, truth is what affectively makes sense to yourself alone, before language, and what is true to you may change as your perception of yourself evolves.

[sincerely-sofie]

(For context, these three posts came before I received this ask, and might help if what I say here is confusing)

Hey, thanks for the request for clarification! I understand that it must have been nerve-wracking to send. I hope answering a screenshot of your initial ask works? I wasn't sure how to structure the post otherwise, as I'm answering your question and the context it provides specifically, and I figured if one person was wondering, more folks likely felt the same and a public response was better. That, and I don't know how private anonymous answers work either, and wasn't sure if you would be able to see a response. I really hope this is okay. My tech illiteracy and unfamiliarity with Tumblr etiquette strikes again. 

Yes, I believe marriage is ordained by God for use between a man and a woman, and that biological sex is an important part of a person's eternal identity. Speaking as someone who experiences some pretty gnarly gender dysphoria, the latter is an important thing for me, as it's brought me a lot of comfort when I'm having bad mental health days. The idea that I don't have to worry about passing as X or Y because I'm already Z and always will be is, personally, very reassuring to me! But I understand that this is a distressing idea for those who don't come from my perspective. This is where my testimony of people's agency is so important.

You're free (or ought to be free, because unfortunately not all places are as open to individual agency as they should be) to live and believe as you choose. You don't need to believe what I believe, and if you find my beliefs distressing, you are fully within your rights to distance yourself from me and people who believe like I do. I hope you don't feel a need to, but I understand if you do, and ask that you look out for your mental health with whatever choice you make. 

I don't believe in shunning people, and I don't believe in being unkind to anyone. If you have a significant other of the same sex, I'll ask to be introduced and say hello, just like I hope you'll extend that same kindness to me if I were in a relationship of my own. If you're trans, I'll respect your pronouns and chosen name, just like I hope you'll respect my identifying with my biological sex despite my dysphoria! Everyone is deserving of compassion and respect. A simple disagreement on religious ideology doesn't change my opinion on that. 

I hope this answers your question well. I believe in what my church’s doctrine says, but I don't think I believe in a harmful way. I'm sorry if I came across that way before— that wasn't my intent, and I'll try to phrase things clearer next time!

[the-greatest-fool]

what's your opinion about Bojack's self destructive tendencies?

I think that broadly speaking, BJH (which I hereby use to denote BoJack Horseman, the show, vs “BoJack”, the person) does two things with his self destructive tendencies. Spoilers.

The first thing it does for much of its run is peel back the layers of his self-destruction. From the first episode we see fairly relatable examples of BoJack’s self destruction. So for instance, he fails to meet deadlines, doesn’t like commitment, etc. But, over the course of the next seasons, we see him destroy his public image, sabotage the closest he’s ever had to a healthy relationship, commit ethical violations you wouldn’t even want say out loud—in short, he fucks up real bad.

So what do I think about that? It’s easy to say he’s just a simple moral metaphor, a cautionary tale. Don’t be consumed by alcohol, sex, self-loathing, and pettiness like him. Don’t cope like he does, do the terrible things he does. But maybe that’s too easy an answer. We see his back story of childhood abuse, constant self-doubt, and alcoholism. There are many times when I feel the BoJack in myself coming out.

It’s “easy”, and even in vogue, to believe in Good People and Bad People. We normal people watch in horror as The Bad Men, or indeed The Bad Hollywood Men (you know who), have their way and wreck wanton violence on the world for their gain and pleasure. But we have the kernel of possibility within us, and in many ways act out similar behaviors in our lives. Here I am somewhat ready to blame this conclusion on my masculine perspective so that I can be One Of The Good Men who knows It’s My Fault and I Should Do Better. Which—yes! I should. But the fact that there are even Bad Hollywood Women (fine, just think about Princess Carolyn if real world examples are too controversial) goes to show that it’s not so simple so as to reduce the problem to people’s “fundamental natures”, whether it’s just that “some people are bad” or “men are bad.”

And this brings us to the second thing the show does about BoJack’s self destruction: it tries to undo it. The last season comes in the midst of MeToo. Should BoJack see justice, or at least be freed from his Sisypheseun cage? Well—it’s complicated. He works on himself, as I should, and as we all should. He tries to better himself, make amends, and do good unto the world.

But even after all that, he seems to fail. He starts drinking again. His attitude towards women—as disposable or instrumental—seems to remain. He loses it all. And in a moment so rare in fiction or real life, he gets punished, *but* has a chance for redemption in the final. What I read from this is the genuine difficulty of changing.

I have terrible habits. I wish I didn’t have them. I wish I treated my loved ones better. I wish I processed pain and difficulty better. It’s not easy, but everyday you wake up and you just have to try. You have to. It’s what we’re called to do. We do right.

And the thing is, destruction is NOT just self-inflicted. Self-care can’t undo structural harm. BoJack runs into producers who commodify and pervert his genuine artistic dreams, media environments that are swift to condemn and unlikely to admit fault or nuance, and generations of trauma, violence, and misogyny. What’s truly needed is a family of care and love, a little luck, and his bravery to try to live in the face of a world that seems not to care.

For most of BJH, BoJack feels like a tragic character in the truest sense, always seeming so close to redemption or fulfillment before crashing down. I don’t think there’s a guarantee we always get a happy ending in life. We can only try to live not as bitter cynics and nihilists who don’t care because it’ll all fall apart one day, but as genuine artistic romantics who do right for right’s sake.

[allsadnshit]

Hello! Just wanted to reach out and say how much I admire your openness about your struggles and how you manage to still see life through such a beautiful lens. I recently went back to school because the field I was working in just was not working for me and my body (it was a lot of manual labor) and while I am eager to work in this new field school is just kicking my ass! The structure of higher education does not suit me and makes me feel like I’m constantly failing and not cut out for it even though what I want to do requires this new degree. Seeing you go through similar body problems as me and work through your anxieties and still find small joys and bask in the love of your husband is so inspiring to me and I look at your page often when I feel overwhelmed by life! Thank you and sending love <3

I had SUCH a terrible experience in school!!!! it truly scares me and I despise it because it's not really about learning anymore it's all standardized testing and severely under funded and also pretty transparently ableist... so I always have so much sympathy for people who NEED a degree to do what they want to do!

I've honestly been thinking about that a lot the last few years as well since a lot of what I'm interested in like Traditional Chinese Medicine and herbalism does for real require pretty serious education and schooling and I have just always failed within those system, especially memorization since I have memory loss problems from childhood big T trauma + chronic illness. But I try and remember I'm an adult now and I don't have to see myself or my skill sets through those frameworks, even if it's still being pushed on me!

I think it's awesome you're doing something that's hard, it's big work big payoff forever and ever! Just please make sure you don't sacrifice your soul or your health just because it's normalized or expected of you, you can't ever get your time back and it takes twice as long to heal yourself as it does to harm.

big love to you! I am praying you get what you need <3

[philosopherking1887]

Another rant about Neo-Rousseauianism on the Left

Why do people in the online Left have to set up this false dichotomy between “people are inherently evil” (i.e., selfish, competitive, aggressive) and “people are inherently good” (i.e., altruistic, cooperative, caring -- since those are the meanings we all tend to assume these days)? Showing examples of people being altruistic, or evidence that ancient humans cared for the vulnerable in their communities, doesn’t prove that that is the pure, sole essence of human nature; it shows that that’s part of human nature.

Human beings everywhere, in all cultures and time periods, have always shown a mix of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ behavior. Both tendencies exist in all groups; (almost) all individuals have both tendencies within them. Why is it so difficult to draw the inference that both are equally natural, and neither is a mere imposition of the artificial conditions of civilization (or capitalism, or Western colonialism, or whatever)? Then you won’t be ~shocked~ when people sometimes are selfish and violent, sometimes for no good reason -- i.e., when it’s not somehow determined by their social situation (or they’ve been “corrupted by society,” in more overtly Rousseauian terms).

Why does this bother me so much? It all comes back to what my professor in a history seminar on the French Revolution said about how Rousseau’s philosophy led to the Terror, which I didn’t fully understand at the time, but which has come to make more and more sense as I spend time in Leftist spaces on the internet. Rousseau claimed that human beings are naturally good, but living in society, particularly in corrupt social structures that makes some people dependent on others, corrupts their natural inclinations to sympathy and leads to envy and the desire to dominate others. If we can just institute perfect social structures, then, everyone would return to their naturally innocent, benevolent state. (Rousseau’s own views are a little more complicated, but this is more or less how the Jacobins read it.)

But what happens when people continue to show selfishness and the desire to dominate within a social structure that has been (in theory) perfected? What’s wrong with them? Ideally, they can be ‘reeducated’; but if they persist in not being appropriately good-natured, they must be dangerous anomalies, and there’s no choice but to extirpate them from society, to purify it. This was what happened during the Terror, when people appeared to the Jacobins to be working against the good of the people (as they understood it): they must still be corrupted remnants of the old society, unsuited to have a place in the new.

Left Anarchism rests on the Rousseauian assumption that if you just leave people to their own devices, they will all be benevolent and prosocial; that what actually makes people bad is the existence of laws and institutions, and if no one has institutional power, then no one will harm or wrong anyone else. But we have zero evidence that this is true, and it honestly just seems like a perverse interpretation of human history. Under lawless as under lawful conditions, people still show a mix of benevolent, self-interested, and malicious impulses and behaviors.

The idea that humans are or should be naturally good, not naturally a mix of good and evil, encourages the idea that people should be punished not just for breaking explicit laws, but for behaving immorally (or even just having those inclinations), because it shows that they are somehow intrinsically wrong or corrupted, a dangerous deviation from wholesome human nature. And the only mechanism available to sanction anti-social or ‘immoral’ behavior in a society without laws and institutions is vigilante or ad hoc mob violence. Who decides what’s deserving of punishment? Who decides what the punishment is? Anyone and everyone. It has the potential to collapse into a kind of totalitarianism, where everyone has to fear their neighbors -- but now they have no clear way of knowing what will incur punishment. (And frankly, we already see this kind of thing in microcosm in the self-cannibalism and purity politics of online spaces dominated by certain strains of Leftist ideology and social justice rhetoric.)

A system of laws is preferable to anarchism for exactly the same reason that it’s preferable to authoritarianism and client-based systems of affiliation and loyalty (feudalism and its smaller-scale variants): it minimizes arbitrariness. Generally speaking, people have a way of knowing what they can do and what they’ll be punished for; they’re not subject to the whims of individual rulers or vigilantes. Most people will follow the laws because they want to be cooperative, or just because everyone else is doing it. But some people need the threat of predictable sanction so that their self-interest will guide them to behave in ways that are beneficial to the community. The rule of law rests on the assumption that people are a mix of altruistic and selfish, cooperative and opportunistic. Ideally, institutions moderate the ability of opportunistic individuals to wield power arbitrarily. They are built to harness a combination of the altruism and self-interest, the generosity and ambition of individuals to work for the good of the whole society.

And if the laws and institutions aren’t working for the benefit of the whole society? You change them; you don’t tear them all down on the assumption that the mere existence of institutions is what causes oppression and injustice, and that an egalitarian utopia will materialize as soon as all the Bad People (the billionaires, or the cishet white men or whatever) are guillotined (or eaten, or shot into the sun). There’s not a single class that can be identified and pruned out as the source of all evil in society. There will still be selfish, opportunistic, competitive, violent tendencies within people after the ones currently in power have been executed; you can’t rely on Fundamentally Good Human Nature to reassert itself in the absence of those Few Bad Apples.

You think there shouldn’t be billionaires? Great, I agree on that. But the solution is not to execute the people who are currently billionaires because they made all their money by exploiting people and they were immorally hoarding all their wealth instead of giving it away to people who are starving. You know what that sounds like to me? The revolutionaries beheading Louis XVI not because he broke any identifiable laws, but because “no one reigns innocently.” You can’t execute people for being immoral. You make laws so that people who are inclined to behave immorally can’t do massive harm to others without incurring predictable penalties. You rewrite the tax code so that it’s impossible for anyone to become a billionaire without breaking the law. You change employment laws so that employers can’t exploit their workers in the ways that were necessary for the owners to become billionaires. If the billionaires broke existing laws to amass their wealth, make sure they’re prosecuted “to the full extent of the law,” as they say. But the sentence for committing financial crimes, tax fraud, employment violations, etc. is unlikely to be the death penalty. Can you prove that bad working conditions caused deaths? Great, maybe you can get ‘em on negligent homicide. But there’s no sane, rational, sustainable system that can license summary executions for people who caused a lot of harm by doing bad things that were legal, or didn’t carry the death penalty, at the time they did them.