#the many benefits of living in the middle of nowhere

[secretmessages1983]

home appraisal this tuesday and then it looks like sometime next week i will officially own my first house

[mariacallous]

The far-right violence against foreigners in the United Kingdom these days strongly reminds me of a novel published in the 1980s: J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians.

Coetzee, a South African novelist who won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2003, describes in this slim volume exactly why and how this kind of violence erupts: because communities have been drip-fed lies and racial prejudices for a long time, until they form an image of strangers—in this novel, the barbarian nomadic tribes—that has very little to do anymore with reality.

The central character in Waiting for the Barbarians, which Philip Glass turned into an opera in 2005, is a middle-aged magistrate who has been running a sleepy border settlement of an unnamed Empire for years. Nothing ever happens in the village or in neighboring towns and villages. Everyone knows everyone. The subjects of the Empire and the barbarians living on the other side of the border, which is totally porous, have bent the rules so that everyone can go about their business without bothering others. The barbarians come to the village for food and medicine and go home afterward.

The magistrate must implement the rules of the Empire but tries to do this in a human, benign-ish way. When there is an occasional cattle raid, for example, he has a serious talk with those who did it. He hardly ever takes prisoners, and when he does, they are fed, kept clean, and often released early: “All my life I have believed in civilized behaviour.” In his view, conflicts do not benefit anyone and should be avoided. All is certainly not perfect, but it keeps the peace. The communities live more or less quietly side by side.

Then, one day, a delegation from the Empire’s secret service (the “Third Bureau”), led by Colonel Joll, visits the village. Joll, an unbending bureaucrat, is convinced that the nomad tribes are secretly preparing an attack on the Empire. He leads an expedition in search of rebels and radicals and comes back to the settlement with many suspects in chains. They are terrified. Suddenly, the prison is full. The inmates are humiliated, starved, and tortured. The magistrate tries to stop this (“These are fishermen, not rebels!”), but Colonel Joll sidelines him and continues to torture the barbarians until all “confess.”

After the colonel’s departure, the magistrate feeds the prisoners and sends most of them home. One of them is a nomad girl. He tends to her wounds, washes her feet, and sleeps with her. Eventually, he brings her all the way back to her tribe. When he returns home after the long journey, Joll is back. He has the magistrate charged with treason—“consorting with the enemy”—and throws him in the same jail where the barbarians are kept.

No one comes to the magistrate’s rescue. Many villagers have become as hysterical as the colonel, and the rest are lying low. By now, every barbarian seems like a terrorist to them. Any behavior that was once normal has become suspect. Eventually, of course, the village just destroys itself—without a single barbarian going on the attack. The settlement is a ruin. Most people have left, including the colonel and his people. The magistrate stays: He has nowhere to go. As a bitter winter cold sets in, he feels stupid, “like a man who lost his way long ago but presses on along a road that may lead nowhere.”

Although the novel was published in 1980, it has stark relevance for our times. Coetzee, whose Empire of course depicted South Africa under apartheid, shows how easy it is for a few zealots to turn communities that have long managed to live in peace against one another. All they need to do is to plant false, scary rumors about a particular group; embed them in a larger narrative about sovereignty, nationhood, and security; and then start pumping that narrative around. If citizens are scared enough, they are willing to believe it all. As Hermann Göring, the architect of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi police state, said when he was asked how he got the German people to accept Nazism: “The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.”

With this grim novel, Coetzee issued a strong, principled condemnation of South Africa’s apartheid regime, then still in full swing. (He immigrated to Australia later, in 2002.) Its relevance for today’s “far-right thuggery” in the U.K., as Prime Minister Keith Starmer put it last weekend, is no less clear. When far-right politicians fan the flames of racial and religious hatred for years, amplified by social media and newspapers calling migrants and asylum-seekers criminals, at some point Muslim communities and mosques will be targeted, asylum centers will be set ablaze, and Nazi salutes will be seen on the street.

In a democracy, words have consequences. A democracy is a political system that must ensure different communities in society do not get at one another’s throats. All communities have different interests. Therefore, there is always some friction between them. Because society is always changing, the balance between the communities is always changing, too. Democracy is meant to help them find a new balance, all the time. This applies to all levels of governance: local, provincial, national, European. Politics, journalism, and other institutions have a role to play in this system—a clear responsibility. Incitement, provocations, the spread of fake news, and the demonization of one community because of skin color or religion mean that they reject that responsibility. These are forms of democratic sabotage.

Coetzee’s message, voiced through the magistrate, is not a happy one. “To the last we will have learned nothing. In all of us, deep down, there seems to be something granite and unteachable.” Still, the magistrate plows on—what else can he do? He may be far from perfect, but he is a good man.

In the words of Coetzee, the real danger in society “always comes from within.” The U.K. is lucky to have a prime minister who seems to understand this.

[random-ln-stuff]

New New Theory:

The Little Nightmares Universe looks like this:

There’s our world on one side, The Eye’s Nightmare Domain on the other side, and the Nowhere is right there in the middle. “Two flows from one, and here (in Nowhere), is whole again”

The Nowhere is a place with many connected but individual places with unique functions. I imagine that as being a place where each individual location has its own unique THING that the people there are drawn to and a specific person who runs that place. The Maw has Gluttony as its vice and the Lady runs it, the Pale City is addicted to TV and Escapism and the Thin Man Runs it, ETC.

The Spiral though, is a specific part of Nowhere that’s slightly overlapping and closer to the Eye’s Domain, so things are different. More Non-Euclidian. It’s a “cluster of disturbing places” layered on top of each other, with travel between these areas being particularly difficult and travel outside of the Spiral as a whole being downright impossible (hence why Low and Alone are trapped there with them using Mirrors to travel throughout the Spiral).

Also found in the Spiral are many things that the regular Nowhere just doesn’t normally allow, like the Giant Baby that seems to be mechanical in nature. Sure the Nowhere can have things that are just off with reality, like the Nest having strange gravity and the Signal Tower’s warping of time, but in most places reality is somewhat similar in nature to our world. The Maw still follows Euclidean Geometry, The Pale City is perfectly stable reality-wise unless you enter the tower, which is alive and follows its own rules, etc.

Actually, I think each of Noone’s dreams have been placing her in various places in the Nowhere, both closer and farther from reality and the Eye. More specifically, just like this:

Ep 1:

The Stone Giant is the closest Noone has gotten so far to the Eye and the furthest she’s gone from reality. The things described by Noone in episode one simply don’t make sense compared to the other dreams and the games as a whole. A Stone Giant with a endless snowy field on top, with the inside being run by clockwork, and also there’s thousands of other people chained inside rooms, a workshop and a entire courtyard, just inside the Giant.

The Lady In Chains also makes it obvious that this entire dream is symbolism for the Lady and The Maw, which doesn’t make sense if this happening in the regular Nowhere because the Lady is already living here. So Episode 1 is located just outside the Nowhere, in that zone where the Nowhere begins to break down into raw nightmarish chaos.

Even the child Noone encounters here may not be an actual child. Their hair is described similarly to the Lady’s own Shadow Magic, a feature that no other child seen so far has, and it’s possible that this child may also just be a product of the Eye’s Nightmarish, Random Chaos.

Ep 2:

Episode 2 seems to take place in the actual Nowhere. It’s similar, VERY similar, to the Maw and how Guests are brought there, like suspiciously similar, but I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt just this once.

Ep 3:

Episode 3’s Mall is literally just the Signal Tower pre-signal tower. A sentient mass of flesh desperately trying to keep Noone distracted from reality to prevent her from leaving. However, I’ll say that this dream seems to be closer to reality because not only does the Mall pull real things from reality to keep Noone happy, those things are objects that Noone personally knows about and likes. A doll that she’s always wanted, a movie she’s seen 100 times, clothes including the dress she first wore to the institution, etc.

The Mall Signal Tower Flesh Walls are also heavily implied to be near the Ferryman in terms of Power, being one of the only entities to react to his presence and possibly being the thing that pulled Noone into this specific dream just this one time. So the Flesh Walls can definitely come this close to reality, with the Ferryman and (unseen so far) North Wind probably being the only others that can.

Ep 4:

I’d we don’t see a circus in Little Nightmares 3, I’ll eat my own hat. A unique antagonist and location never seen before with no symbolism or any obvious connections to previous monsters. Even the Ferryman fails to appear in this dream. This is obviously a location in the Spiral.

[azimachra]

You know what’s annoying? The fact that people are right about exercise. For years and years I told myself that I wasn’t an athlete. I’d tried more sports than I could count on my fingers and I was bad or disliked all of them. I’m slow so track didn’t work. Ice skating was fun but everyone started so much younger than I did and I felt like I would never catch up. My hand eye coordination and reaction time are actually terrible so tennis was a disaster. The list goes on.

Eventually I convinced myself that sports just weren’t for me. Everyone told me that being active in some way or another would improve my mood and help me get better sleep. I knew from experience that sports and being active would do nothing but make me (more) miserable. I relegated myself to the position of the eternal nerd. I didn’t need *sports* to live a fulfilled life or to feel good in my body.

Cut to a year and a half ago. I had some childhood experience with martial arts (I stopped in middle school because it wasn’t feminine enough or something like that) and decided after some of the quarantine restrictions lifted that I wanted to try again. the place I trained when I was younger went under during the height of covid and that sport was pretty rare so there was nowhere else to train. I chose a martial art I’d heard about at random - Brazilian Jiu Jitsu - and tried it.

I’d like to say that I was a prodigy, that I understood the sport instinctually, that I was praised by my coaches for my natural talent. That, unfortunately, would be a lie. I was downright terrible when I started. Everything was so difficult. Other people understood the principles and applications in a way that I couldn’t. It seemed like everyone was either way more advanced than me or twice my size. The first few months, I was learning techniques and training but I still didn’t get it. My coach told me that the instinct would come with time. I was worried that this would just be another piece of proof that I’m not athletic, that I don’t have the body or mental fortitude. I was scared of failing, but I loved the sport. Since then, I’ve massively improved. Some things that I struggled with before have fallen into place and I’ve found new things to struggle with. I’m competent for my level and I even competed in a tournament. Has it been easy? No. Do I always feel confident in my ability? Absolutely not. But BJJ has undeniably changed my life for the better. I feel more comfortable in my body, I’ve gotten stronger and more resilient, found a new community, and yes it totally has helped with my sleep schedule and emotional wellbeing.

While I love BJJ I am not promising that you will too (although it is amazing for self defense, a skill everyone benefits from but is extra useful to women and femme presenting folks in our current society). What I’m trying to say is that despite my years of disbelief it turns out that everyone was in fact correct about physical activity/sports being good for you. It also turns out that I was wrong about my belief that I was inherently un-athletic. I also want to say that you can do this on your terms. There are so many more ways to move your body than just hitting a ball with a stick or running in circles. Don’t let yourself stay trapped in a cage with fictional bars; in an 80’s movie trope where you can only be a jock or a nerd; in a mindset that limits you from being happy and healthy. Find something that makes you excited to do because I promise, it is out there.

[onestormeynight]

Penny Helps Out

It was Penny's day off and she was enjoying some old shows she hadn't seen since she was kid watching TV with her parents. She didn't have anything on the agenda; Billie had moved in with her fiance, Rosie was still on her honeymoon and B was away at another programing conference.

She spent some time outside painting and people watching. It was disorienting to her to see so many people walking around. Wasn't it just yesterday she was living in a one room shack with Rosalie, paying the bills with her flowers while trying to graduate high school? Who were all these people in the middle of nowhere?

A text on her phone pulled her from her thoughts.

<<Pen, I need help.>>

<<What's wrong?>>

<<I can't get Ellie to calm down, please help me.>>

<<OMW>>

Penny was able to make it to Oasis Springs in record time. Ricky basically forced his infant into her arms when she walked through the door. Ellie was screaming and fussing, showing no signs of slowing down.

"Woah, okay rockstar," Penny said, bouncing the fussy child. "You got some lungs on you, don't you? Alright, now it can't be all that bad, shush. Calm down."

It took several minutes, but eventually Ellie calmed herself enough to start nodding off on Penny's shoulder.

"How did you do that?" Ricky asked. "I've been trying to calm her for hours. Sam was never this fussy."

Penny shrugged. "She knows you're stressed. I'm not worn to my nerves like you. Here, I'll put her down and make dinner for you guys. Go take a shower, you're gross."

Penny started cooking them dinner with what she could find in his fridge, which was not much. She managed to pull something together, though, and hoped it would feed them all for a few days. Food had become her love language.

While dinner was in the oven, Penny caught up with Sam. He was doing well in school academically, but was chronically shy. Even talking to Penny made him nervous. Eventually Penny let him sit quietly and just watched TV with him.

"Listen," She said to Ricky when he came out of the shower. "Dinner will be done in half an hour and I have a long drive back home. Why don't I feed you an appetizer before your main course and then I'll be on my way."

"Appetizer?"

Penny gave him a knowing look that would have made anyone else blush. If she was going to have a friend with benefits, she was going to take advantage of those benefits.

((prev)) ((next))

[ldysmfrst]

Hello and welcome to Breaking and Entering Master List! The Taglist is currently open for this story.

This is an original story. I started writing it as my first attempt at story writing. When I wrote the first few chapters, I was also very sick with COVID-19.

This story is a Werewolf Pack AU and is currently rated as YA. There are no chapter titles, but each chapter will have a name listed that indicates which POV the chapter is from.

Y/n is a girl who lives her life bouncing between foster homes; at almost 18, you land in the town of Lunar Ridge, where you learn werewolves are real and the new Alpha won't let you go.

Chapter 1 - Lovren

Foster care isn't easy, and now they have stuck Lovren in the middle of nowhere. Just a little longer, then she will age out of the system, and she will be free, but will Lunar Ridge let her go?

Chapter 2 - Mikhail

Lunar Ridge Pack has changes coming soon, but this one comes as a surprise to Mikhail.

Chapter 3 - Lovren

The first day of senior year at a new school brings painful beginnings.

Chapter 4 - Mikhail

Training has become Mikhail's life, but as of today, that is all changing. Will this change in routine be the start of a much larger change in his life?

Chapter 5 - Lovren

Being an Invisible isn't always easy, and the day just keeps proving it.

Chapter 6 - Mikhail

It's the first day of High School for the young Alpha-to-be, and it starts off strangely.

Chapter 7 - Lovren

Lovren tries to hide in her safe place only to be called into a meeting with ... the Mayor ???

Chapter 8 - Stanislav

Being an Alpha has many responsibilities, but being part of the Alpha's counsel means the same. Will titles cause more harm than good to the up-and-comers?

Chapter 9 - Erik

Getting pulled into Alpha's office was one thing, but things went in a direction for the second time that wasn't expected—or maybe it was the third for that day.

Chapter 10 - Jonathan

Lovren's history is more complex than jumping Foster homes. It may be time to explain a few things.

As a paid member of my Patreon, you can read extra spicy smutty scenes or additional content for select stories and have early release benefits for each chapter!

TO BE CONTINUED...

[moregraceful]

re: arenas (you and the post you rbed are both correct)

a great example of how you can't just put an arena way out in the middle of fucking nowhere is the sens arena (canadian tire centre)! they've been trying to move the sens to lebreton flats downtown for almost a decade (and i think there's an agreement now? no idea how long that will take to actually happen lol) because it's 20+km outside of downtown, traffic is always awful on game days, our public transportation is notoriously shit especially out of the downtown core, and that leads to bad attendance. you can't just decide to go catch a game without planning extensively, cause unless you live in the far west end (like kanata was a whole separate town before ottawa was amalgamated in 2001) you will either be dealing with highway traffic in a car and paying for parking or trying to deal with the bus. and getting stuck on the 417 in a bus.

also like. they'd probably make more money if they could sell more 15$ beers which would happen if almost everyone didn't have to drive 20km and could instead take the LRT straight there lol. they'd make more money if tourists with no cars would get there. having your own arena is not worth it if you end up like ottawa!!

(for reference, the ctc isn't shared between many sports. there are concerts and new this year very occasional lacrosse, but it isn't a usual multisport arena)

answering some asks while watching the surfing competition so i don't just like go into my bed with a plate of pizza just to be under flannel and a heated blanket lmao.

[in reference to this post]

anyway thank you for this perspective and insight!! i'm fascinated to learn that ottawa the nhl team DOESN'T have a generally multi-sport/multi-use arena, given that the sens are. a canadian team lmao, i always assume canadian arenas are in constant use due to the hockey of it all. but i think you say something really important, that where an arena is has a huge effect on attendance and fanbase growth too. like if your team is bad AND your arena is hard to get too AND you can't drink away the pain, how much of fanbase are you able to really build. especially in a canadian market???

and like it's so complicated too, bc moving any team of that size and building the size arena needed to house them is like. who is getting displaced here, is it local businesses, is it neighborhoods. and how much of the trade off is worth it for the city, even when it always benefits the team. i have no idea if canada does fuck ass arena and ballpark subsidies like the us does, but there is always that balance of who benefits besides the team and is it worth it or not.

[just-sp-in-inginthevoid]

Sorry I'm a little dumb but what's a Schrödinger's cat? Really wanna know! :D

Schrödinger's cat is a cat trapped in an opaque box that we can't confirm if it is either dead or alive (until we open the box, that is); by such it is both alive and dead (until the box get opened and we can check).

It is an idea Schrödinger (that's a real man that existed) used to illustrate something (about quantum physics): a cat trapped in a box where a poison could kill it at any moment or possibly never (the condition for the poison to be released is totally unpredictable; it could happen or it could not) - no real cat were harmed.

When I talked about wanting NNA to feature an astro named 'Schrödinger cat' - it doesn't have much to do with what Schrödinger demonstrated with his theory: simply the example with the cat in itself. An astro in which it is impossible to affirm if its holder is dead or alive - because they are both while being neither while being only one of those options. An astro which makes the alive-or-dead status of its holder completely blurred, in which there is no clear-cut answer: and if the holder were to believe too much they are one or the other, it'd become true - believing constantly they're alive would allow them to avoid death but how far can you believe you aren't going to die? There must be a limit to the damage you can take before whole-heartily thinking it is your end, even if you are aware you have an astro that can save you from that - and thinking you're alive would make you vulnerable to death since to die one has to live, whereas when you're dead you can't exactly die a second time. So - if the holder isn't able to change the answer depending on what would benefit them the most (and choosing death isn't really beneficial, but choosing life wouldn't make you survive a bullet through the head - because living beings don't survive that) - the best solution is to refuse to give an answer, to refuse to think of one (a bullet through your head won't kill you since you're already dead but you won't 'act' dead, your body and consciousness won't die, because you're still alive. unsure as to how far this astro would work on self-regeneration), to solely focus on having a consciousness and free-will and that being enough - to make them trivial matters because if they're not then you're condemning yourself to the answer you choose. You can't die because you are already dead and you can't die because you are still alive. You're stuck in the middle and nowhere at all while being simultaneously on both sides. And being neither dead nor alive makes you pretty hard to get rid off (which is why I want Goshiki to have it (while not believing it's going to happen at all), it fits him).

It's not exactly an invincibility astro since the holder feels the pain and can't fix their wounds - they're simply stuck in status quo in which damages can't kill them but it still hurts like a b (depending on the severity of it ofc). It's not a regenerative one either, because while they're unable to (actually) die, getting better all depends on if the body is itself alive or dead, and that too can't be chosen because then it'd doom the holder - being dead means no regeneration is needed, being alive means regeneration happening (slowly, but happening still), stuck in status quo just means... that... I don't know. Perhaps the bleeding is put in hold? It doesn't get better but it doesn't get worse either. Such astro holder needs to find someone else with an astro able to heal other people. Imma stop thinking about how it could work. It's a zombie-but-you-still-feel-the-pain astro and it has many drawbacks(also, you don't eat brains and don't move slowly and you body can't rot), let's just sum it up like that.

Visually-speaking, I don't see it manifesting as cat ears and/or tail or other cat characteristics - Kuran is the only catboy we need - but I don't exactly see it manifesting as a box either. I could accept the box, I'm just not sold on what my mind is coming up with yknow? It not manifesting on the body but through the link could work as well, and then the link could be a closed box, i guess.

With the meteors strike, I'm sure a lot of people must have wished for something related to increasing their life expectancy; either because they had planned to wish for immortality or being cured by incurable disease before the meteors even fell, or because they got trapped under rumbles following the strike and were left to wish to survive whatever situation they were trapped in. That being said, healing astros aren't the only solution to these entrapped situations: thinking about the possibility that hat-girl from chapter 19 got trapped in an elevator because of the meteors strike and ended-up with her elevator astro because of it (wishing to 'get out of here/get to destination/smth else') - I am not saying it's the only possible explanation as to why it's her astro, there could be a lot of possibilities, knowing Wakui.

[nevesmose]

When I was a kid, there was a hill overlooking our little town with a mysterious concrete structure at the top. To get there you had to go over the old canal, through the abandoned quarry filled with unidentifiable rusted-out equipment scattered around, and then past the creepy broken-down barn where some comedy genius had written "INSERT DICK HERE" next to a suspiciously-positioned hole in the wall.

The whole place was forested over thickly enough to muffle most sounds, and every so often you'd tread hollowly on discarded shotgun cartridges from farmers and/or farmers' mums sneaking out to shoot rabbits at night.

It was also haunted by the ghost of a drunk horseman, but being drunk we decided his actual ability to inflict harm on us would be fairly limited.

In any case, having avoided tetanus, gunshot wounds and catastrophic dick chafing, you'd reach a small sunlit clearing right at the top of the hill. The views were truly spectacular - to the north, fields. To the east, fields. To the south, fields. To the west, fields. The benefits of a rural childhood.

Right in the middle of the clearing was a kind of rectangular metal hatchway set low into the ground. Looking at it you could tell it had been opened up and filled in with concrete at some stage, and needless to say our little minds ran rampant trying to guess what was down there. For about fifteen minutes anyway, and then we'd wander off and smack the shit out of each other with tree branches - we were only kids after all.

The main theory, settled on with all the gravitas and judiciousness we could muster, was that it was some kind of Cold War era nuclear bunker. Not that we really knew much of what that meant, all being members of the first post-Soviet generation who didn't have to grow up with ideas like the four-minute warning or Protect & Survive knocking about inside our heads.

Somebody remembered seeing War Games on Channel 4 one weekend afternoon so we based our mental image on that and conjured up a miniature Scottish version of NORAD sitting empty under our feet, all big maps and flashing lights drowned forever in grey concrete.

And then we grew up a bit and thought, nahh, there's no way it was a bunker. It was a radio tower platform or a power substation or something, right?

But it was a bunker though. I looked it up years later and it was a two-person Royal Observer Corps fallout monitoring station to be used for keeping track of the devastation of our closest city, about 20 miles away. The entirety of the UK is hoaching with these things and I can guarantee you if you grew up anywhere in Britain you were much, much closer to them than you might expect.

Not just close to the bunkers but to the people who would have crewed them in the event of armageddon. That's the thing about the ROC, as I've found out since - it was a voluntary service operated by people living nearby.

So who, I wonder, were the unsung unknown uncalled-upon heroes who'd be there when the end came? Who in my sleepy little village with one school, one church and one main street would have had to leave their families to their fate and spend their next, and probably last, two weeks of life in that tiny concrete cell eating strictly rationed food, breathing strictly filtered air, and working out just how many kilotons had been expended on our little corner of the world?

I have my suspicions, but it's not the kind of thing you can just ask your old neighbour out of nowhere. Would they even have gone if they had to? I wouldn't blame them for a second if they chose to stay home instead. I imagine it was something they all had to decide for themselves and no one, least of all the happy beneficiaries of a better world than the one they lived in, has any right to judge.

I feel as though I'm dragging myself to a Meaningful Conclusion here. Oh boy. The past is always closer than you might think, I suppose. Just around the corner, just out of reach, but always there wherever we happen to be.

This post was mainly motivated by reading the excellent Attack Warning Red: How Britain Prepared for Nuclear War by Julie McDowall, who also does the Atomic Hobo podcast which is well worth a listen if you have any interest in this kind of thing. Don't have nightmares.

[the-occultists]

Dp x Dc

Prompt - Danny is Death and Ra's Al Ghul has been avoiding him for way to long.

I sighed as I looked down at the list in my hands. Ra’s Al Ghul, he was long overdue to join my kingdom. I was fed up with him using contaminated ectoplasm to keep going. If he wasn’t going to come willingly then I was going to force him to come. I huffed out a breath before pulling the hood over my head.

Ra’s Pov

The Batman and his little birds were once again trying to stop me from making the earth a better place. I dodged another blow by the hooded one and swung at the red and black one.

“Damian, you know my plans are only to help the earth.” I called to my grandson. He knew better than anyone what I was doing was only for the benefit for our planet.

“Ra’s your plans are greatly flawed and doom everyone.��� Was my only response before he lunged at me with his sword.

Suddenly the Lazarus pit behind me started shifting, turning into a whirlpool draining itself. Once it was empty I saw a hooded figure floating in the middle of the pit dripping with Lazarus water.

“HOW DARE YOU? THIS IS NOT YOUR BATTLE! GO BACK TO WHERE YOU CAME FROM!” I shouted at the wannabe hero who thought they could interfere with our family business.

“I am here for you. You and I are long overdue for a visit.” The person said as he floated out of the pit and landed on the edge. He pulled off his hood and smiled. His smile far too sharp and his body too angular and long. Suddenly I realized who was in front of me.

“No. You leave me alone. I command you.” I told it as I took a step back.

“Protect me Batman. Damian, come protect your Grandfather.” I commanded them. They just stared at me but didn’t move. I continued to back up as it advanced on me.

“You are long overdue Ra’s Al Ghul. If you do not come willingly I will have no choice.” It said dropping two sickles and spinning them.

“You can not take me. I will not allow you to.” I told it, pulling out my own sword. Before I could even blink before it was on top of me.

Bruce’s Pov

I watched as Ra’s backed away from the figure. Ra’s called for me and Damian to protect him from the being. The being looked unnatural. It had teeth that were too sharp, it was unproportioned, limbs too long for its body and its angles were too sharp to be human. Ra’s was actually backing away from the being as it advanced on it.

“You are long overdue Ra’s Al Ghul. If you don’t come willingly I will have no choice.” It said, it’s voice sounding like millions of screams, it echoed over and over in the empty cave. When I looked closer at the being I saw it’s eyes were glowing like the pit but brighter and more toxic. I watched as two sickles appeared from nowhere and the being spun it. continuing toward Ra’s.

“You can not take me. I will not allow you to.” Ra’s commanded as he pulled out his sword. Before Ra’s could do anything the being was on top of him, pinning him to the ground. I decided that I would at least try to talk with the being.

“I know he has done many wrong things and deserves punishment for it but it is not for us to sentence him to death. We are not meant to choose when his end will come.” I explained carefully. The being’s head turned to face me. It’s neck cracking as it spun too far for a human.

“You are correct. It is not for others to decide when death comes. It is for death to decide and I have decided that he is long, long overdue for an appointment with me. He has been using my gift to your world for evil, to cause suffering, for selfish gains. If he does not come with me then I will have no choice but to take him. Do you understand? I am death.” It said, it’s eyes glowing brighter as the cave darkened.

“You may believe you are death but death is no person.” I continued.

“You are right again but I am no human. And now I must finish what I have come here to do. Bruce Wayne, you will live a long life. Your children have died and I have brought them back to you. I gave you your children back. I wonder.” The being drifted off its head spinning back to Ra’s and pinning him to the ground with one of its sickles. It stood back up and walked over to my kids. I watched as its form changed. It changed from the eldritch being to a teen, with snow white hair and glowing green eyes.

“Danny?” Dick, Jason and Damien asked.

“Hey guys. I’m glad to see you’re adjusting well. You guys know you’re always welcome to visit. I miss having you guys around. And remember Jazz is always there if you need to talk.” The being said as he held his arms open for hugs. I was surprised that Jason and Damian went in for the hug.

“Dami, I know Ra’s is your grandpa but he’s been messing with me too much and now I have to deal with a lot of angry people. If you want me to, I'll be nice about it but I have to admit he’s pissed me off quite a bit.” The being was speaking so differently to my kids versus Ra’s.

“Go ahead. All he’s ever done was raise me as a weapon, just make sure mom doesn’t find out.” Damian said with a small smile.

“Thanks but seriously you guys need to come visit and bring everyone else. I want to meet them.” It said with a kind smile.

“Alright. I need to talk with Jazz soon anyways.” Jason said.

“Is it bothering you?” It asked turning to face Jason.

“There’s still some rage left from it but not enough for you to worry about.” He reassured the being.

“Alright. I’ll let her know you’re coming. Now I’ve got a bastard to deal with.” It said as its teeth grew into long sharp points.

In the time it had been talking to my kids Ra’s had been trying to escape.

“You can not escape death Ra’s Al Ghul.” It said before pouncing on him and tearing him into ribbons. I looked over to Damian to see all my kids had blindfolds on and earplugs in. Jason as per usual was trying to see what it was doing.

“Jason.” The being scolded and surprisingly Jason stopped.

“Danny, come on. I’m old enough to see it.”

“I know but that doesn’t mean you should.” It continued before snapping Ra’s neck and standing up. All the blood that had been all over him was gone and so was Ra’s body.

The being turned back into the teenager before floating over to me.

“My name is Danny and I am Death. I know it’s confusing but I promise it’s true. I love your kids dearly but I really don’t want to see them under proper circumstances. I know that you’re probably freaking out but I mean no harm to anyone that doesn’t use my gifts as Ra’s had. He’s been avoiding me for centuries and it was getting on my nerves so I apologize for the scene I made.” He said as he held out hand for me to shake.

“Don’t worry I won’t steal your soul.” He teased as I shook his hand.

“You three. Visit me. Jazz, Sam, Tucker and Dani have missed you guys.” He said with a smile before jumping into the empty pit. As soon as he hit the bottom it filled back up as though he had never been there in the first place.

[blujayonthewing]

for that one oc ask - GHOST and DESIRE for uhhhhhhh Melliwyk! I know very little about your OCs yet so i'm tempted to just keep throwing asks at you but I don't wanna overwhelm lol

hi hello first of all please do feel free to send more... if the spirit moves you...... 👀

ghost: Who or what haunts your OC? What happened? How do they live with their ghosts?

When asked about the scars up her arm, Melliwyk usually explains it very briefly as the result of a lab accident when she was still a student, laughing off almost dying and how the discharge launched her across the room, but it also launched her academic and research career. What she does not generally explain is that the other thing that happened was her then-roommate happened to walk back in unexpectedly at the exact wrong moment, got caught in the face with magically charged electrified shrapnel, and was permanently blinded... the incident may have accelerated Mel's arcane studies, but it ended Amberly's.

It set the tone for the rest of her career. Even having exploded, her experiment was highly impressive and promising, especially from someone so young and still early in her arcane studies, so it opened up a lot of opportunities for her-- and on the other hand she got a reputation for keeping an eye on the bigger picture and not letting personal risk or others' feelings get in the way of meaningful progress, a reputation she leaned into an benefited heavily from despite the fact that Amberly getting caught in the accident in their dorm wasn't even really her fault. There were lots of other times in the years following where she was more than a little flippant with risk management or others' wellbeing in the pursuit of her work. It got her a lot of professional respect, and mostly her reputation ensured others kept themselves out of risk around her; she got really used to not thinking about anybody else whenever she did anything, for better and for worse.

This was decades ago, now; for most of that time, she's consciously thought about it very little-- and definitely less and less over the years (although it subconsciously has affected her decisions sometimes, like moving out into the middle of nowhere alone to get into weirder and possibly more volatile experimentation). She's been thinking about it a lot lately, though. Adventuring is the first time in a long time she's had to live and collaborate with others, and relies on mutual trust for her own survival. Doing Hero Shit in the real world, with real people enduring real suffering, has also put her back in touch with her humanity after spending so much time in magical academia and then total isolation. She's had to think, a lot, about how many people have been hurt or killed by things like not barring the door while working on something dangerous, or thoughtlessly drawing aggro to an already injured NPC, or failing to safeguard her loved ones after knowing that her becoming an enemy of the state would put a target on their backs as well. She liked Amberly. She hadn't meant to hurt her, and hadn't even meant to be careless about her safety; it worries her how hard it seems to be for her to protect others from her own actions, even when she wants to-- how dangerous she is to the people she cares about. She's not entirely sure what she can do about it other than isolate herself again, and that isn't really an option anymore.

desire: What's one thing your OC wants more than anything in the world? Are they open with that desire? Why or why not? What would they do to fulfill it?

Oh man this is a really interesting question for her right now! For her entire adult life, her greatest desire was to either reinvent or rediscover artificing, which was a millennia-lost art in her world; she kind of figured, you know, either she'd do that under less fraught circumstances, or it would be a lifelong pursuit that she could work to further but would never personally live to see the end of, so, honestly she's feeling more than a little unmoored right now in terms of, you know... personal goals..... entire life's purpose...... that kind of thing. Fortunately she's still got the broader overarching desire for discovery in general to keep her going, and slightly-more-dubiously-fortunately the Ongoing Adventure demands all of her attention right now (more, I would almost argue, than she has to give...), but Being An Artificer when that was a theoretical/ experimental field has been so central to her identity for so long that I think if you asked her right now what she desires most she'd get really stressed and existential about it, lmao. She hasn't had a chance to figure it out yet! I mean, of course, there's always going to be an answer, and right now it's probably 'to destroy the sorcerer king [our bbeg]' for various plot and personal reasons-- but even that, you know, I think she'd be uncomfortable and dissatisfied with the thing she wants the most being 'to beat the bad guy' instead of something more personal and/or interesting.

ask about my OCs!!

[cropscruel]

Oxi Changes and Ideas

(unrefined babbling warning. It’s going to be redundant because that is how I talk.)

I've been pondering where to go with Oxi. I've felt the story to portray an unflattering picture as opposed to what I know it could be at its best. I've decided to change some aspects of it! It's really not like anyone knows much about my stories anyway, but in the event anyone does—I shall regale.

The Many Layers of 'Doppelganger': My intention after the first couple months after Oxi's initial recreation was for him to be a demon; then to be someone possessed. Shortly after that I decided altogether the demon idea was stupid. I split Oxi into two separate characters again and used that re-redesign to change the story entirely. But how was I to explain to the audience what Doppelganger Is? Doppelganger is his own thing. Not technically an actual doppelganger since that name is just a placeholder, not much alike to the folklore of demons and devils; not a changeling. I don't want the story to feel familiar in some senses, while the tale communicates that of a town, and its scenery just as ours; these characters are in a position that they themselves can't understand; just as the viewer should feel(? I hope).

Doppelganger is most like a parasite in numerous aspects. Birthed into this world by living inside the body of a man as an unwanted guest, and subsequently escaping from the man's optic canal; killing the man in the process, and has no purpose beyond latching itself into the lives of others; benefiting at the other's expense.

Oxi's Housing: For a long time Oxi's family, religion, and housing was incredibly secluded and limited. Intended for Oxi to live similarly to the Amish, as an example. I liked the idea of a secluded nightmare scenario, while also by belief intended to live 'strictly and simply' is enforced. I realized after  an embarrassingly long time that this left for... Many plot holes, and also reinforced visuals to make Oxi look Christian—which, in prior times, he was. To deflect this, I decided for Oxi to remain heavily religious, his actions and thoughts reflecting his faith; but not so strictly. In fact, I hope to be able to lay grounds and establish that while yes, the religion holds many similarities to real life’s myriad of faiths, I’d hope to make it clear that it is more closely a fictional branch-off of any (pretend) religion. I plan to make this discoverable through the character's dialogue and subtle reveal of in-world history. Does any of this mean Oxi isn’t far away from any town? Of course not! I’ve been pondering this; I really do feel as though Oxi and his family have decided to celebrate their religion and make it far more open, far less strict as before, but still the worship takes place in a location in the middle of nowhere near a national park; as that’s where they and the historically founded themselves upon. They want to celebrate and share their unique religious history to the town. They are located miles out—accessible by a dirt road or a hiking trail in the middle of a national park. Oxi’s housing is on the very outskirts of said national park, living on a plain grassy field. They have several buildings on the property, one notably being a farmhouse consisting mostly of livestock; but they do have a decently stellar garden (with the help of a greenhouse) considering the harsh climate they live in. They reside on a cliff leading towards the ocean. Since part of their worship is smoke and flame, it would seem a bit silly to have set up habitations in such a wet and windy environment. But really, it isn’t, the explanation I have entirely made up was that it made the ceremonies far more special when there is the opportunity to do so outside. So much so; in fact, the family organizes and hosts little town get-togethers and little festivals on those days for publicity and celebration.

What the Hell is Oxi’s Religious title: I don’t know.

Oxis’ deal (cont):

The minimum I KNOW is that Oxi is a…Form(?) of preacher(???), tour guide??? and ironically does most of the public speaking…. It’s quite confusing at the moment. Goodbye…… More to say, sorry. Oxi; whilst being generally quiet and unapproachable with his strange gangling appearance, is undeniably gifted with his descriptions. Able to paint both beautiful and awe striking pictures with his words. He’s important! Has an important role that would be hard to fill…….. Is currently hard to fill.

Conclusion:

With the religion being far more open and willing to take in more people, and in doing a lot of public services such as historical tours, catering small parties and inviting public viewings of important ceremonies within their beautiful chapel of sorts, is far more accessible to the towns near them for any one interested in converting or just learning. All this together adds a wonderful amount of drama and pressure into the plot related events! With any form of reputation the leading characters wish to uphold, finding themselves in a truly unexplainable, supernatural position, is definitely the last predicament they’d wish to be in.

[plurdledgabbleblotchits]

Excerpts:

"Case and Deaton documented an astonishing fact: unlike virtually every other demographic group in America (and other rich countries), the death rate of white, middle-aged Americans was rising instead of falling. And that this macabre trend was being driven largely by a rise in what they would call "deaths of despair" — from suicides, drug overdoses, and alcohol abuse — especially in the population without a college degree."

"When Deaton first came to America in 1983, he recalls being gobsmacked by how indifferent his fellow economists were to rising inequality, and how ideologically opposed they were to government intervention in the economy.'

"I was appalled when one of my new colleagues (publicly) proclaimed that 'government is theft,'" Deaton writes. "I had grown up in a country where I, my parents, and our friends saw the government as benevolent, a friend in times of trouble, and I found it hard to believe that a distinguished academic could be so cynical and so libertarian. I still do not agree with his sentiment, but I have come to understand the extent to which state and federal government in the United States often work, not to protect ordinary people but to help rich predators make ordinary people poorer."

"Deaton writes that "the decline of good jobs" is a crucial driver of despair. "This decline, in response to globalization and, more importantly, technical change (robots), is made much worse in the United States than elsewhere by the grotesquely exorbitant cost of healthcare," Deaton writes. "Beyond that, when bad things happen and people need help, the safety net in the United States is fragmentary compared with those in other rich countries."

"In all this, Deaton sees economists as largely as complicit in the changes that have made life harder for millions of Americans. He argues that many (but not all) of the people in his profession have provided an intellectual legitimacy for a range of policies that have stripped away support for working-class Americans and forced them into an increasingly cutthroat labor market."

"They are apostles for globalization and technical change that have enriched an elite and have redistributed income and wealth from labor to capital, all the while destroying millions of jobs, hollowing out communities, and worsening the lives of their occupants," Angus writes. "And when confronted with deaths of despair, they blame the victims and those who try to help them."

(I get it... Donald Trump didn't come out of nowhere and he pandered to this MAGA demographic. I am sympathetic to a degree: they feel like they don't have anything to lose, by trying to shut down the government, and all the other stunts they are doing around the country. But the problem is they are out for blood and attacking everyone with the same vitriol, even people who are not their real enemies [like gay rights issues, and womens rights issue, and other minority issues, etc... using these groups as easy scapegoats, instead of correctly identifying the problem. The entitlement mentality of the dominant hegemony of white nationalism also plays a role in this dysfunction.]

In this, I think the MAGA people are being manipulated and being misled by those who want to confuse or conflate the real issues to service their own personal agendas.

And Donald Trump is a false Messiah for them. True, he tapped into the problem but used it for his own benefit and helped create the false narratives using these easy scapegoats to feed the flames.)

[arizonaconservativegal]

You said something about buses being better than trains a while ago because you can change the routes as the needs of the public change.

I agree they are better than trains, but in my city they never close a route. We've got a couple that just run empty around their circuit each day. Basically it looks really bad if a politician lets a bus route close during their term and if that happens they never get reelected.

Also our (Seattle) bus system has the same wonderful collection of needles and unwashed homeless assaulting people and etc...

I'm not trying to say that buses are a perfect solution but they are a much cheaper way to get potentially a much better product. Obviously the added benefits are going to depend a lot on the people running your city's public transit systems. And keeping the buses clean and safe would be kind of critical if you want anyone to actually ride them, so maybe some basic law enforcement would be helpful too? But Seattle doesn't seem keen on that idea lately lol.

Transit policy is a beast and it's not my personal area of expertise, despite having spent an unreasonable amount of time on transit tax issues. But from my time working in the system, I can tell you there are a lot of factors that government takes into consideration before making changes to things like transit routes, and most of it boils down to bureaucracy, not politics - federal grants come with a lot of strings attached and even just mentioning ADA will stop a local government in its tracks nine times out of ten.

I should probably clarify that when I said we could change the routes as needs change, I meant more along the lines of increasing frequency or adding service areas because yeah, government is always reluctant to kill routes. But I also see this as being a bit like the post office servicing rural areas - yes, we could save a lot of money and improve efficiency if we stopped spending so much time delivering mail to one or two people who live out in the middle of nowhere, but that isn't the point of the post office. The point is to make sure that everyone has access to the service. I see more flexibility in buses but that is still factor and one that I think is a valid consideration.

We could potentially solve the low usage service question pretty easily with something like vouchers for on demand rideshare service. Or even just find the two or three people who actually use the route and just ask them what times they actually need the bus and schedule service at just those times. Or swap out for a neighborhood circulator that would get people from the low usage stop to a connection on a more travelled route. The first two would almost certainly be a better product for those riders at a lower cost to the city. The third might be less of a benefit to the original riders if you're not careful but if you do it right, it could be much more helpful for them and might even increase ridership in that neighborhood if you plan it right.

Oh what I would give to live in a world where we could scrap the whole system and start over instead of having to navigate piecemeal fixes to the existing system... Even just not having to rely on federal dollars and accept their strings would give us so many more options.

[dadsdepictionofdiscipline]

Are you pro Ana? I’m scrolling through your blog and you use like a lot of pro tags and reblog a lot of triggering stuff. Genuinely curious, sorry if this seems rude.

It doesn't come off as rude, you're fine 💜

Short answer is it's complicated?

I'm all for weight-loss, but this is clearly a kink blog, so there's other things going on here too. I love the sense of control, restriction, and power that I feel from starving, having someone beg me to eat.

On the other hand, I'm an ana coach (secretly I'm a life coach with a specialization in physical training) that ACTUALLY helps girls reach their goals, and they HATE IT. I'm working with a girl rn who's trying to go down 30kg (60+ lbs) and already she's seeing the benefits of doing what she's told; eat more calories, do more physical activity, work within her cycle, positive reframing, encouraging her to see real doctors for mental illness, having mini therapy sessions with her among many other EXTREMELY difficult life changes to achieve her desired self. Simply put, were undoing the damage that years of tumblr, friends, family, and other sources of her body dysmorphia and ED.

As for the Ana stuff, I use it both as a kink, and a way to trick unhealthy bonespo girls to clean up and find a new, healthy mental image of who they want to be.

But like anything, if you want to be ana, you will be. If you want to be fat, you will be. If you want to be bones, you will be. If you want to be a muscle mommy, you will be. If you want to be coked out living in a shed in the middle of nowhere doing tabs of lsd until your brain melts, you will be. No one can stop you from doing what you want to do.

The scariest, most terrifying thing in the world is your liberated sense of freedom.

As for your triggering aspect, I'm very sorry that it's making you feel this way, and maybe you and I don't need to interact if your feeling like that. Please block me. If you don't block me, feel free to DM or simply continue viewing my blog.

I hope that this explains everything you were wondering about, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day! 💜💜💜

[denimbex1986]

'Given “Oppenheimer” director Christopher Nolan‘s well-known penchant for doing as much as possible practically, it’s unsurprising that he scouted Los Alamos, New Mexico, as a potential location for his film’s many scenes set at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Unfortunately, he quickly realized the town wouldn’t work for his period film. “Chris and his son took a road trip out there, and the present-day Los Alamos is very modernized,” production designer Ruth De Jong told IndieWire. “There’s a Starbucks on every corner and that sort of thing. So he said, ‘If you want to go see Los Alamos, you can go see it, but I’m not interested in shooting there.'”

De Jong and Nolan scouted various areas in New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado, looking for a location where they could build the town of Los Alamos and get the epic vistas that Nolan desired. They landed on Ghost Ranch, a 21,000-acre retreat in Northern New Mexico that had a nice plateau on which De Jong could build the town; it also had incredible backdrops in every direction. “We wanted an overwhelmingly epic location that would help the audience understand what it meant for Oppenheimer to have taken his team to the middle of nowhere with nothing around,” she said.

Initially, De Jong planned to build everything, both interiors and exteriors, on that Ghost Ranch location. She drew up an elaborate recreation of Los Alamos, which was then rendered physically as a 3D white model — a model so large that it had to be stored in the production office backyard. The idea was for the actors to be able to move from exteriors to interiors in fluid shots, but “it was just beyond what we could afford,” De Jong said. “I mean, you hear Matt Damon say in the movie that they spend two years and $2 billion dollars on the real Los Alamos, and that’s 1942 dollars. The government gave them massive resources — my resources were a little different.”

While the area around Los Alamos looked too contemporary, many of the individual buildings remained period perfect. “Some of these buildings have been literally untouched,” De Jong said. As the team was trying to figure out how to control the expense of an interior/exterior build, De Jong proposed shooting most of the exteriors on the Ghost Ranch set and most of the interiors at the real Los Alamos. It turned out to be a cost-effective solution that had the added benefit of giving the actors something real to play off of, as it allowed Cillian Murphy and Emily Blunt to play out scenes in the house where the Oppenheimers actually lived. The verisimilitude extended to other locations as well: “There was a women’s dormitory from the ’40s that housed a lot of the women that worked there, and we used that for the lab with the bowls of marbles.”

Combining the exterior set with the practical interiors from the period gave the actors an immersive experience that De Jong felt found its way into their performances. “It really impacted them and put them in a great mindset,” she said. “We wanted to transport them back in time.” That philosophy informed even the sets and locations where De Jong took a bit of creative license. “You know, we cheated a lot. We did go to Berkeley, but we did a lot of Berkeley in Pasadena. Similar to the way we combined exteriors and interiors in Los Alamos, I could find the same craftsman house in Pasadena that I could find in Berkeley but then utilize the campus in Berkeley. It was always challenging, but at the end of the day Chris and I were just always pushing for authenticity.”'