#their reform is a wrecking ball

[lamajaoscura]

Mike Miles gains power as Houston ISD Board of Managers approves major policy changes, union files grievances and community members protest – Houston Public Media

[wilwheaton]

The harm to the institution is entirely self-inflicted by Roberts and his ethically challenged majority. The court continues to take on flawed cases that have no business being heard, and making arbitrary rulings based on their political whims, dressed up in originalist fantasies. It has to be stopped That could include enforcing a code of ethics, legislation the Senate Judiciary Committee is going to take up after the July recess, and measures recommended by the Brennan Center, such as limiting justices’ terms to 18 years and ensuring that each president gets two appointments to the court per presidential term. It would create a revolving core of justices, giving those whose terms were up the chance to take senior status and still participate as needed either on the Supreme Court or on a lower court. All of that would be great, but what the country urgently requires is an expansion of the court to block this six-member wrecking ball.

The Supreme Court is out of control and must be reformed

[beardedmrbean]

Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and retired Gen. Mark Milley went from reportedly warning that President-elect Donald Trump is "fascist to the core" to saying that the United States will be fine under his leadership.

Many of Trump’s harshest critics have gone from cautioning that he would be a threat to democracy to speaking positively about how America will fare under him, now that he won the presidential election. 

Milley’s purported claims about Trump being "fascist" and "the most dangerous person to this country" in a forthcoming book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward appear to have gone by the wayside as he spoke about America’s future at a recent event. 

"Bottom line is breathe deep, America’s going to be okay," he told MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle at a Pallas Foundation event shown on the network. "There is a lot of waves out there, but this is a big, strong country. 380 million people. Great institutions, great people, great workforce, and a great younger cohort of people that are gonna protect America."

JEAN-PIERRE BRISTLES WHEN PRESSED ON PAST 'DEMOCRACY' WARNINGS: 'DO NOT APPRECIATE HAVING MY WORDS TWISTED'

MSNBC also showed him speaking to their host at the same event and saying that the Pentagon has a long history of reforms from incoming Secretaries of Defense.

"Every single Secretary of Defense has come in with the idea of ‘reforming’ the Pentagon. It is extraordinarily difficult and it takes, in my view — first of all, it takes mature leadership and it takes an alliance, or an alignment, I should say, between the Hill, the senators and congressmen up on the Hill who pass the laws," he said.

Milley went on to argue that incoming Trump allies have the potential to bring "helpful" reforms to the Pentagon or reduce it to "rubble."

"If all you’re going to do is come in with a wrecking ball and just blow things apart, then what you’re going to get is rubble. And if that’s what you want, that’s awesome if you want rubble, but that’s not going to defend the United States," he said. 

Milley added, "So we absolutely have to transform the Pentagon and it’s going to take an effort. And industry-outside guys like Elon, Vivek and whoever – sure, they can be very helpful but they – it has to be done correctly."

[darkmaga-returns]

The collective pearl-clutching by the corporate press and Washington establishment on Wednesday after Trump announced he’d chosen Matt Gaetz to be his attorney general was something to behold. The swamp consensus is that the former Florida congressman is “unqualified” to lead the Justice Department.

Never mind that the people making this claim are themselves deeply unqualified to hold their own positions of power. (Consider Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who dismissed Gaetz as not a “serious” pick. Murkowski is poster-child for unserious and unqualified Beltway drones. She failed the bar exam four times and only got a Senate seat because her corrupt father, Frank Murkowski, appointed her to his seat after he became a one-term governor of Alaska in 2002.)

But how exactly is Gaetz unqualified to lead the Justice Department? Put another way, what does Trump’s incoming attorney general need to be qualified to do?

Mostly, clean house at the DOJ. Going back at least to 2016, the Justice Department has been a viper’s nest of politically motivated prosecutions, sham investigations, coup-plotting, domestic spying and censorship, entrapment schemes, and the terrorization of law-abiding Americans. From illegally spying on Trump to the political persecution of Jan. 6 defendants, the DOJ has become a cancer on our body politic, and we need someone to go in and cut it out.

Above all, we need a Justice Department that will refrain from trying to undermine or remove the duly elected president. As Will Chamberlain noted on X, “The best way to understand the Gaetz pick is that it’s a statement by Trump that it’s not 2016 anymore and there will be no internal coup against the sitting President.”

[quirkwizard]

Cement and Sludge Form?

New Quirk Name: Flatwork

This Mutant type Quirk alters the user's body, giving them a gray, rocky-like form similar to concrete. This form is tougher than normal, but seemingly doesn't have any defineable traits. The user can choose to soften themselves to become like wet concrete, giving them greater flexibility and mobility. This flexibility allows for greater control over themselves, letting them reform and shape themselves and harden it. This can mold the concrete in any number of simple shapes, like growing spikes around their body or moving it around to a certain point to protect themselves. The user can be selective with this, like changing the hands into hammers and leaving their forearms pliable, letting them smash them into foes like wrecking balls. This gives the user a versatile power, with their unique form having equal parts power and flexibility. They can adapt around their foes, turn themselves into weapons, crawl their way through tight spaces, use their rocky form to protect themselves, or just make little sculptures. Though the user will need to soften themselves to reshape and can spread themselves out to far, leaving them far more vulnerable to losing parts of their body. The user will need to focus in order to shape themselves.

[schraubd]

The Conservative Experiment at New College is Failing on Easy Mode

[Hey -- I recently found out that my cross-posting trigger wasn't putting up new posts. I won't be able to give you everything you missed (check out The Debate Link if you want to scan my posts from the last few weeks), but I'll manually upload the most recent ones]

I'll admit: when Ron DeSantis and Christopher Rufo announced their intention to convert the New College of Florida into a conservative indoctrination camp, I thought they might succeed. Not just in the enshrining conservative orthodoxy part, but in doing so while maintaining or increasing New College's numbers along traditional metrics of academic excellence.

Simply put, the New College is a small place (fewer than 700 students). And so my logic was straight-forward: are there 700 young conservatives with reasonably good test scores who are eager to devote their college experience to a crusade in owning the libs? Probably! Especially given the largesse that undoubtedly would be funneled to them by the DeSantis administration in support! And given the high profile of DeSantis' and Rufo's machinations, it would be easy to attract that sort of young right-wing zealot to the New College campus. Any right-wing culture warrior who would find this sort of endeavor appealing no doubt would have heard of the New College and what's being done there, and would quickly put it at the top of their application list.

The problem, I thought, was always going to be one of scalability. Sure there may be 700 such students who could make the New College experiment into a "success". But are there 10,000? 100,000? The factors which would make the New College experiment work could not be replicated across the education sector as a whole. Try this at the University of Florida and you'd just have the academic wrecking ball of mass faculty departures and an enraged student body, and nothing to show for it. So my prediction would be that some of the "cream of the crop" currently going to Liberty or Patrick Henry might redirect themselves to the New College, thus giving a false impression that there was untapped demand for the product Rufo was selling, and then we'd have to explain that redistributing the small set of baby conservative crusaders is not actually evidence of a plan that can work at scale.

But it turns out I was still giving Rufo and DeSantis too much credit. Because the early returns are in, and while they've certainly done a number in terms of destroying the New College's academic reputation and standing (over a third of the faculty have departed, alongside dozens of transferring students), the new crop of students coming in are actually less impressive than those the college attracted before the takeover.

Rufo speaks a lot about academic excellence and the virtues of a classical liberal education. But as Steven Walker of The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported in a damning July story, the incoming class recruited by the new administration has lower average grades, SAT scores and ACT scores than last year’s class. “Much of the drop in average scores can be attributed to incoming student-athletes who, despite scoring worse on average, have earned a disproportionate number of the school’s $10,000-per-year merit-based scholarships,” wrote Walker.

With all the publicity, and all the conservative cheerleading, and all the momentum of the right's latest culture war, the New College couldn't even attract a few hundred talented right-wing youth to create the impression of a successful reform? Hilarious.

And it gets better. Rufo defends the recruitment of underperforming athletes on the grounds that -- wait for it -- there are too many ladies at the New College.

Rather than reviving some traditional model of academic excellence, then, it looks as though New College leaders are simply trying to replace a culture they find politically hostile with one meant to be more congenial. The end of gender studies and the special treatment given to incoming athletes are part of the same project, masculinizing a place that had been heavily feminist, artsy and queer. When I spoke to Rufo last weekend, he offered several explanations for New College’s new emphasis on sports, including the classical idea that a healthy body sustains a healthy mind. But an important part of the investment in athletics, he said, is that it is a way to make New College more male and, by extension, less left wing.

In the past, about two-thirds of New College’s students were women. “This is a wildly out-of-balance student population, and it caused all sorts of cultural problems,” said Rufo. Having so many more women than men, he said, turned New College into “what many have called a social justice ghetto.” The new leadership, he said, is “rebalancing the ratio of students” in the hopes of ultimately achieving gender parity.

But gender parity is not necessarily compatible with a pure academic meritocracy, which Rufo claims to prize. Women are outpacing men in education in many parts of the world, including Saudi Arabia and Iran. In Hungary, nearly 55 percent of university students are women, leading the government to warn about the “feminization” of higher education. Selective American colleges tend to have more female than male applicants; to maintain something approaching a gender balance, some have adopted lower standards for men. In other words, it often takes deliberate intervention — one might call it affirmative action — to create a student body in which women don’t predominate. New College isn’t jettisoning gender ideology. It’s just adopting a different one.

Oh buddy, I hope upon hope someone sues the New College for sex discrimination based on these passages. 

It's entirely appropriate to call Rufo's endeavors an affirmative action program for men. And while the SSFA opinion is about race-based affirmative action, even before that case conservative lower courts had been reflexively applying their affirmative action skepticism to sex-based programs (for example, in Vitolo v. Guzman, the 6th Circuit struck down preferences for women in COVID relief programs using essentially identical analysis to why it struck down race-based preferences). The logic of SSFA should, if fairly applied (I know, I know: that's one hell of a caveat), cover a case like this as well.

But even absent SSFA, the sex discrimination here is worse than a standard affirmative action case.Not only does the quoted language from Rufo suggest that the New College's decisions were taken "because of, not in spite of", the effect they'd have on women, they also demonstrate that explicit hostility to women -- a belief that too many women leads to "a social justice ghetto" and creates "cultural problems" -- was a motivating factor in the decision. This is far more powerful evidence of discriminatory intent than one would find in, say, the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology case (where race-neutral changes to admissions policies were alleged to be motivated by discriminatory animus against Asians). Even defenders of affirmative action have never agreed that an affirmative action program could be justified by disdain for the overrepresented class. And one would struggle to find a more overt admission of misogynistic motivations than what one has here -- all in the service of further degrading the New College's academic quality in service of an ideological indoctrination effort.

There's still time for Rufo to, er, "right ship". If you dump enough money and resources into the New College, it will attract students no matter how bad its academic reputation gets. A lavishly funded subsidy program for right-wing kids really should be able to find an audience even if it's being run by incompetents.

But for now, this is just delightfully embarrassing. What a joke.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

One June 20, I'm live onstage in LOS ANGELES for a recording of the GO FACT YOURSELF podcast. On June 21, I'm doing an ONLINE READING for the LOCUS AWARDS at 16hPT. On June 22, I'll be in OAKLAND, CA for a panel and a keynote at the LOCUS AWARDS.

#20yrsago Canadian copyfight hots up: Liberal MPs on the take from copyright industries? https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2004/06/copyright-reform-needs-a-balanced-approach/

#15yrsago Digital TV’s history in America: the DTV transition nearly cost the USA its technological freedom https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/06/dtv-era-no-broadcast

#15yrsago Hundreds of top British cops defrauded the public for millions in phony expense racket https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/jun/14/expenses-fraud-detectives-scotland-yard

#15yrsago $134.5 BILLION worth of US bonds seized from smugglers at Swiss border https://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=15456&size=A

#10yrsago Atheism remains least-trusted characteristic in American politics https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2014/05/19/for-2016-hopefuls-washington-experience-could-do-more-harm-than-good/

#10yrsago Canadian Supreme Court’s landmark privacy ruling https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2014/06/scc-spencer-decision/

#10yrsago Court finds full-book scanning is fair use https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/06/another-fair-use-victory-book-scanning-hathitrust

#10yrsago Not selling out: Teens live in commercial online spaces because that’s their only option https://medium.com/message/selling-out-is-meaningless-3450a5bc98d2

#5yrsago Porno copyright troll sentenced to 14 years: “a wrecking ball to trust in the administration of justice” https://torrentfreak.com/copyright-troll-lawyer-sentenced-to-14-years-in-prison-190614/

#5yrsago Ukrainian oligarchs accused of laundering $470b, buying up much of Cleveland https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/how-kolomoisky-does-business-in-the-united-states/

#5yrsago Empirical review of privacy policies reveals that they are “incomprehensible” drivel https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/12/opinion/facebook-google-privacy-policies.html

#5yrsago Beyond lockpicking: learn about the class-breaks for doors, locks, hinges and other physical security measures https://memex.craphound.com/2019/06/14/beyond-lockpicking-learn-about-the-class-breaks-for-doors-locks-hinges-and-other-physical-security-measures/

#5yrsago Hong Kong’s #612strike uprising is alive to surveillance threats, but its countermeasures are woefully inadequate https://www.securityweek.com/surveillance-savvy-hong-kong-protesters-go-digitally-dark/

#5yrago Reverse mortgages: subprime’s “stealth aftershock” that is costing elderly African-Americans their family homes https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/06/11/seniors-face-foreclosure-retirement-after-failed-reverse-mortgage/1329043001/

#5yrsago Maine’s new ISP privacy law has both California and New York beat https://thehill.com/policy/technology/447824-maine-shakes-up-debate-with-tough-internet-privacy-law/

#1yrago How Amazon transformed the EU into a planned economy https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/14/flywheel-shyster-and-flywheel/#unfulfilled-by-amazon

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Mark Sumner at Daily Kos:

As much as Donald Trump denies it, it's clear that Project 2025 is a blueprint for what will happen if he manages to occupy the White House a second time. With more than 140 members of Trump’s past and current staff involved in writing the Heritage Foundation’s plan and running mate JD Vance lavishing praise on it, this is a document custom-written for Trump. Vance even wrote the foreword for Heritage leader Kevin Roberts’ new book. The connections between Trump, Roberts, Vance, and the 900-page handbook for scrapping American democracy and replacing it with a Christian nationalist authoritarian government run deep. But that doesn't mean Project 2025 is just about Trump. Because it takes more than the power of the White House to rip apart our institutions—at least at the start. To really get the wrecking balls flying, Project 2025 would also need some quislings in Congress. And few are more open about their support for the Heritage Foundation than Florida Sen. Rick Scott. Scott is deeply connected with both Project 2025 and Roberts. It’s not just a matter of Scott praising Roberts (although that has certainly happened), or of Roberts praising Scott (although … that too). 

This has been a long-term collaborative partnership. Scott has worked directly with Roberts and the Heritage Foundation to produce a video series blaming Democratic policies for the national debt without mentioning the effects of Republican tax policies. Scott’s video series also blamed inflation on President Joe Biden’s policies while ignoring the need to keep businesses and individuals solvent during the pandemic or the disaster that Trump left behind. Scott has appeared on Roberts’ podcast to criticize investigations into Trump, and Roberts has praised Scott’s plan for fighting “woke extremism.” It’s no wonder why: With its nationwide ban on abortion, plan to replace public education with a voucher scheme, and of course “keeping men out of women’s sports” talking point, Scott’s 12-point agenda (which actually includes over 100 policy proposals) contains a lot of the same ideas as Project 2025. In fact, Scott has already put the Heritage Foundation to work in the war on democracy. When he was governor of Florida, Scott hired the author of Project 2025’s chapter on election reform, attorney Hans von Spakovsky, to help conduct a purge of Florida’s voter rolls. Voter suppression has become critical to the GOP’s hold over Florida.

Rick Scott (R), one of the two Senators representing Florida, is excited to help enact the Trump/Vance Project 2025 agenda.

[regaliasonata]

An idea for zords I have is: What if Zords could reformat?

I headcanon reformation of any Zord that is technological or techno-organic reformatting into a new design yet still being what it was prior.

A zord reformat is triggered by cosmetics, extreme damage, or having a completely new ranger. For example, in Dino Fury, the Tricera, Ankylo, Tiger, and Stego zords would’ve reformatted due to having new rangers.

Oh I love this! DF really did show off some cool combinations that I'd love to see later on th the franchise even in Super Sentai.

Unrelated but the only thing I didn't really appreciate about DF was how the Tyrannosaurus Zord took up most of the formation, not too much of a pet peeve but I love when a megazord has more add one instead of red taking up all the space.

But back to your ask oh definitely, plus this could go into some headcanons about the variations a ranger has altering other powers. Like if a black ranger had a serpent but the blue ranger turned it into a dragon or coiled shell of sorts. It gives me Voltron vibes with how they can change the base of their mech(I need to rewatch the nicktoons show from years ago but I remember Yellow center wss my favorite with the wrecking balls and space fighting)

Oh and also more sentient zords and ones that are like Mystic Force and Jungle Fury where they are either from within the rangers or themselves in order to save them more organic.

[eyecicles]

top (insert number here) lines or moments that have stuck with you from a DN fanfic you've read? if you want!

Oooh, nice, let's see:

1. Actually so many from Those, but one that comes to mind first is L's media interview in which he incorporates the lyrics of Under Pressure:

""This is proof of my client's inability to retain information because of the effects of affluenza and drug addiction, I'm glad you're all here to witness it," L says, ignoring the client and actually pushing him offscreen to talk to the reporter. "Drugs and life on the streets. People on streets, under pressure, is what led to the incident and why I congratulate the judge on his decision. Because 20 years in prison or a death sentence would solve nothing. It wouldn't bring those people back and it wouldn't change what happened. The best legacy we can give those people is to reform this man into an upstanding member of society. We should at least give him a chance."

I now can't listen to Under Pressure without thinking of that scene, haha

2. Spoilers, so I won't explain what happens, but the end of white chocolate roses...

"He sleeps that night with his nightstand bearing the weight of a folded, endless, timeless paper, listening to the ticks on his lefthand wrist guide him against its forever enthralling allure. A heartbeat."

3. Another painful fic filled with scenes that stuck with me: This Is How I Disappear

"I'm sorry. There's a—one more group of people I should address." Ignoring the camera completely, Light turned his face to the Task Force. "To the men who are here today to…take my life…thank you. I forgive you." Then, softly: "Don't miss."

4. like like - one of my fav oneshots:

“Did you hate it?” L says back, in his face, there, never any space for heat to evaporate between their pressed bodies, “Did you hate it?” L says back, and Light has no reply for him.

5. Okay, I have to mention another Those scene, just because there's honestly no fanfic that affected me as much. Another favourite scene of mine:

Sensing someone in the doorway, I force myself to look up in case I’m in someone’s way. L looks down at me, cast in shadow, but doesn’t say anything. Neither do I. I can’t read him, I don’t know what he’s thinking. I just exhale and feel how exhausted I am, and how relieved I am to see him. I thought you’d left me again, just when I made a clearing for you to take everything I have and make it yours. I’d take your name if you wanted me to. If I could. I’d become your property until the wrecking balls came, and be proud of it. After a little while, I grasp my hair close to my scalp until it hurts and my eyes scrunch up from pain. For me in another time, this would be a mistake. It wouldn’t have happened. What the fuck went wrong? L bends to pick up my dropped application for divorce, sees what it is and looks at me like he expects me to explain it. But I don’t have to, do I? I can’t give any more of myself than I already have done. When I don’t say anything, he walks to me and sits against the opposite wall. I’m not sure how much time passes with us sitting like that, but eventually he crawls towards me and kisses me like it’s a thank you. We don’t need words, you and I. I touch the back of his head as another removal man steps over us.

[fictionadventurer]

For the Cinderella asks, I want to hear more about Paper Wings!

This was a Cinderella story set in my Lost Library universe, where humanity exists on the shattered remains of continents that float in the sky and have only recently developed flight technology to travel between different lands. It's a mix of Edwardian aesthetic and technology (we have early electricity and planes) with Age of Exploration swashbuckling.

Except that this story ignored most of that in favor of a small domestic tale that came from combining Cinderella with Mansfield Park and Persuasion. The premise was that Cinderella's father was an airship captain undertaking dangerous exploration to faraway lands. He left her in the care of an aunt and provided money for her upkeep, but he doesn't come back when promised, the money runs out, and the relative resents having to house Cinderella on her own dime, so she makes Cinderella do menial labor to earn her keep. It's now been years and everyone assumes he's dead, but Cinderella feels she can't leave for another place, because if her father does come back, how would he find her?

Meanwhile, an irresponsible flirt of a prince comes into the neighborhood. (Cinderella's aunt cares for a library connected to a university, and he came there to study). Cinderella's cousins try to charm him, but he becomes intrigued by Cinderella, who heavily disapproves of him. True to Mansfield Park form, it becomes a matter of honor for him to charm her into falling in love with him, until he unexpectedly falls in love with her instead.

The "paper" part of the title comes from Cinderella having a genius for crafting things out of paper, and (in some versions of the idea) befriending people who run a stationary shop that also sells things like paper decorations and adornments and toys that are very popular in this land. The ball is a festival that features lots of these paper ornaments and Cinderella wants to attend, until her aunt forbids it, and then a godmother character (and/or the friends at the paper shop) arrange for her to attend with a dress decked out in lots of paper flowers.

But to get back to the point--at the ball, to Cinderella's consternation, she catches the attention of the prince, who insists on dancing with her, and who publicly proposes to her at midnight. Cinderella, horrified, flees just as a rainstorm comes up that wrecks most of the adornments on her dress. The prince comes to her the next morning to return her lost slipper and to push his suit again, and despite strong urging both from him and her aunt, Cinderella absolutely refuses to marry him. Things get much worse for Cinderella after that, because her aunt think her even more of a burden now that she turned down a marriage proposal from the most eligible possible man. I wavered on whether she'd stay with this family and continue to endure poor treatment from them, or if this turn of events helps her to find her strength to head out on her own and get a job elsewhere.

Well, anyway, this story was supposed to explore whether the prince ever could reform in a believable way. So years later, he comes back into Cinderella's life. After his disappointment in marriage, he took the other path his father demanded in his quest to make him to take up responsibility, and he got a job. As a mail pilot. Which is prestigious and glamorous enough for someone of his rank, thanks to the danger involved. Getting into a lifestyle where your hard work and skill is all that gains you respect--and where you're in constant danger of death--has a way of rearranging your priorities, and he comes back as a much more honorable and noble person. Cinderella doesn't believe it, but his work with the mail intersects with her work at the library (or the mail job she took after leaving the library), and so they have to interact. And since he doesn't renew his attempts to win her, she gets to have lots of little Pemberley moments showing that he has truly reformed.

Eventually there's another much more informal dance at the airfield, where Cinderella finds herself actually falling in love with him--only for some disaster to interrupt the festivities and her prince having to run off into danger to save the day, and Cinderella helping him somehow. And then Cinderella does fully fall in love with him and she accepts his proposal and they live happily ever after.

There's a lot in this story, and it felt like at least two separate Cinderella retellings. I couldn't choose between the possible paths, or figure out where to start the story or what elements to cut, so it fell into the background. It's more a loose collection of possibilities than a story. But I'm fond of some of those possibilities, and so it lingers in my brain despite the small chance that it'll ever come together.

[underforeversgrace]

healing the wounds we hid - 7

title: healing the wounds we hid

Finally, the sequel to broken trust and the wounds hidden behind! (Refresh here on AO3 or here on Tumblr)

Story Summary: Now that his father knows, Danny's life is changing for the better. Jack encourages him to let his friends and the rest of the family into his small word. Unbeknownst to Danny, Jack is secretly worried about how Maddie will react to the news upon her return to Amity - and how to confront Vlad once Jack learns his true identity. Amidst it all, an enemy lurks and plots their revenge.

Chapter 7 of 11: Confronting You

AO3

Tumblr Chapter One

(Tumblr Chapter Eight will be here)

~~~~~~

From far away, in the Infinite Realms, the Master of Time watched the threads of Fate circle around each other, dancing eternally, snapping and reforming and changing as decisions changed and weaved.

He watched as war averted itself merely because a barista filled an order for decaf by mistake, rendering a commander too tired to get angry at what other nations were doing. The others who wanted war stayed silent without his approval.

He watched as the apocalypse failed to happen because a man didn’t signal properly as he changed lanes, getting into a wreck that would keep him from getting into the mood with his wife later and rearing a child that would’ve had the powers and rage of a vengeful god.

He watched as a little girl squealed as she ran towards the road after her ball, getting the attention of her large dog, who chased her and managed to grab at the back of her dress, jerking her out of the way of a speeding car and avoiding tragedy.

Some of his favorites he watched on repeat - he did so love when small things created a domino effect, so many cogs and moving parts that very few forms of life were sentient enough to follow the chain. 

A depressed teenager with desires of death in their fingertips stumbling, allowing them to hear the cries of a hurt cat, both their lives now saved. That teen, handing out two meals to the wrong people, allowing two soulmates to find each other and build a life together. One husband distracting the other while he tried leave work, causing him to run late and get into a (non-fatal) accident when he was in the blind spot of someone who failed to use their blinker, the same man from earlier who would have caused the world to end if he’d made it home to his wife.

He watched all of it with an idle interest, everything from the banal decisions which caused a woman to run five minutes late to work to the choices of galaxy altering proportions, that fueled stars to premature supernova, that burned suns into early collapse.

As he turned his gaze to more interesting topics, however, he frowned.

He had not seen this coming.

In so many millennia of never-living, he had never not seen something coming. He was all-knowing, all-encompassing, he was a constant of the universe which rooted itself into him, he was a pillar of existence.

Yet as young Daniel Fenton fell in love with his best friend, Clockwork frowned. He was glad his unofficial, self-appointed grandson had found love, he was. He was most decidedly unhappy, however, that he hadn’t seen it. It was a plot twist, something he was not used to and that he did not know what it meant. How could he not see it?

Scowling, the Ancient pressed his palm to the viewpoint’s faux glass, focusing on the threads of time wrapped around Daniel’s life. An unfamiliar feeling slammed into his very core as his eyes widened. He had to force the viewpoint to show him the scene, had to focus on it in a way he never had before.

He realized it was shock he felt as he watched the strings of choice build into a future he had never before seen, as he had to continue pouring his energy into watching Time as something kept trying to wrest control from him, keep him from viewing that which was rightfully his.

Oh, no, Clockwork thought as the scene, the likely futures, finally played before him as his power overcame whoever was trying to interfere with his Sight.

He growled, a deep rumble in his core that vibrated the ectoplasmic air around him, throwing out his staff to form a portal. Power crackled around him as the Ancient raged, slamming open the doors to the Observant’s Meeting Hall, interrupting them from whatever conversation that he could not find himself to care about.

“Clockwork? What is the meaning -“ One of the Elder Observants started.

“You dare interfere with me? With my Sight, my very core?” Clockwork interrupted, venom in his voice.

Several of the Observants stilled as they felt Clockwork’s power wrap around them, binding them, his anger burning them.

“Clockwork, cease this at once!” The Head Observant yelled, flying down from her podium and hovering in front of the Ancient. “We have a deal and have since Pariah’s fall. You work for us.”

“I work with you,” Clockwork seethed. “My core is sacred, you do not get to use the old magicks to place limitations on me.”

“Is this about your core, Watcher? Or is it because of what we blocked you from seeing?” She asked, braver than her brethren, who continued to be cowed by Clockwork’s unrestrained power.

“Of course it’s about my core,” Clockwork responded coldly. “Though I also do not appreciate you hiding such events from my view.”

“The boy’s a weakness to you, Watcher,” she answered, uncaring of the way he scowled. Clockwork was so much more than a mere Watcher, just another observer of Time. He was Time, he was the seconds and he was the eons, he was the passage of eternity. And they tried to reduce him to merely a passive viewer.

“No, he is not,” he answered, though even he knew it was a lie. At some point, he'd come to care for the halfa. And what he’d just seen had him worried, another feeling he’d never had before, because now he knew Daniel’s future was no longer one he could define as clearly. His core, Time itself, had been interfered with directly, because of the young halfa. And now Clockwork was too close, for Time cannot view itself. “It would do you well to remember, Omenalth, our agreement can be broken. I chose to follow you at a time when the Timelines nearly fell to ashes. Do not forget - I am bound to you by nothing more than choice.”

Omenalth glared at him, her single eye with an iris of gold burning with anger as he used her true name. The Observants had all abandoned their identities when they formed their order, Clockwork was one of the few old enough who still existed to know their names.

Clockwork was forming a portal before she could speak again, but she managed to stop him before he exited.

“The boy is doomed, Watcher.”

Clockwork didn’t even deign her worthy of looking at as he answered. “Do not be so sure, Observer. He has Time on his side.” And then he disappeared into the swirl of the portal.

~~~~~~

Jack struggled to stay still as he waited for Maddie to exit the Amity Park airport, drinking water to try to force down the acidic bite of anxiety lining his throat. Today was the day and Jack couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this panicked. Sure, he’d been bad off when he discovered Danny’s secret and knew his life was about to change forever, but this…

When he’d learned about Phantom, there’d been no uncertainty. He knew his son and he knew how to help him, he knew what the future looked like. But this? He only knew two things, right now - Maddie was about to learn the truth, and their lives were about to change.

Jack could only hope they changed for the better. Their family deserved better than this. His son deserved a better afterlife than this.

The bottle of water emptied, he tossed it into a nearby trash can and grabbed the piece of cardboard in front of him. Sure, it wasn’t necessary, but somehow it had become a thing between the two of them, whenever one of them came home, ever since they'd seen it in an old movie. So Jack did his best to grin as he held up the sign with MADELINE FENTON written across it above his head. He was easy enough to see - he was in bright orange and over six feet tall, after all - but the normalcy was oddly calming. If he didn’t think, he wouldn’t have to remember the fear tonight held for them.

He saw Maddie before she saw him and he couldn’t help the smile that split across his face at the sight of her in her blue hazmat suit, her auburn hair pulled into a ponytail, having grown out in the two months since he’d seen her last.

When she caught sight of him, her own face broke into a grin and she made a beeline for him, squeezing around the people blocking the path between them. She didn’t say anything as she threw her arms around Jack, pressing her face into his chest. He dropped the cardboard and clung her to him, hoping that if she heard the frantic pounding of his heart she’d assume it was just his joy at seeing her.

Please, he sent as a final plea to whatever deity watched over his family and pressed a kiss to the top of Maddie’s head.

“I missed you, Mads!” He said, still clutching her in a tight hug.

“I missed you too, Jack,” she responded, pulling back slightly so she could get on her tiptoes and kiss him. “I’m so glad to be home.”

“I’m sure you are,” he said and the two made their way to the luggage return. “You haven’t been gone longer than a week in two decades!”

She chuckled slightly. “Oh don’t say it like that, you’ll make me feel old.”

“We’re getting old,” Jack pointed out, grabbing at her bags as they appeared on the carousel, handing Maddie the lightest of the three.

Will Danny get older? His mind wondered, unprompted, and he forced the thought back down. He needed to act normal, everything was fine.

They chatted as they made their way to the GAV, parked at the very back of a long parking lot, and Jack relaxed the more he heard his wife’s voice as she asked about the kids and how they’d been while she’d been gone. Despite the number of lies he had to tell - nothing interesting has happened lately and the kids are the same as ever - it was nice to hear her immediately go into talking about their kids, the love he could hear in her voice.

When she asked what he’d been up to that day, he again lied. In reality, Danny had gotten a nasty cut from a kid pirate that Jack had had to stitch up, showing Tucker how similar it was to normal sewing if he just ignored the oozing green blood, but Jack couldn’t say that. So instead, he said he’d worked on a device designed to stabilize a ghost’s form so the ghost couldn’t go intangible. At least it was only a partial lie - he was working on something like that - he just omitted the fact it was to help their son hold his ghost half even when ran to the brink of exhaustion.

As they slid into the GAV, Jack was already tired. How had Danny lied like this for two years?

Fear was a great motivator, he supposed.

“So, did you learn anything at the symposium?” Jack asked, turning the key and causing the engine to roar to life as he began the trip home.

Maddie just snorted inelegantly. “No. Just that group projects being hell on earth is apparently a fact that isn’t exclusive to school. I thought since I was one of the organizers this year I’d be treated with some level of respect. But, no! I spent half the event tracking down other people for basic information I should’ve had easy access to, and the other half explaining to idiots in costumes that this was a scientific event, not some kind of nerd convention for people to dress up as ghosts!”

Jack laughed as she ranted. “I’m glad I chose to stay home, then. Relaxing at home with the kids was a dream.”

“I definitely will not be accepting their offer to help run the event again in five years,” she grumbled. “There wasn’t even any major progression in the ectology field! And they again refused to accept we had managed to open a permanent portal to the Ghost Zone, especially since we haven’t been in yet. They’re scientists! They should know all the safety procedures we have to follow before we even try to enter another dimension! It could kill us after we take one step in, after all!” 

Jack nearly choked on air at the last sentence, but Maddie was, mercifully, too busy raging about some misogynistic Swedish scientist that had her ready to see how well the man could hold up to a woman with a black belt to even notice her husband’s reaction.

“Ugh, anyway. How about you? Made any great discoveries or scientific breakthroughs?” She asked, pulling Jack back to the conversation and out of his spiraling thoughts about being too little, too late with portal safety.

“Uh, kind of, actually. Danny and I have been working on a project together,” he answered, the story he and Danny had agreed on. It was still up to Danny to give the full story, though.

“Oh? What kind of project? Anything to do with Phantom?” Maddie asked excitedly, her anger at the other scientist quickly receding.

Jack flinched at the eagerness in her voice when she asked about Phantom. “It’s a surprise, Mads!” He managed to answer with enough faux excitement to be believable. “We’re gonna tell you all about it over dinner. We’ve actually got a whole thing planned out at home! Jazz helped, and so did Sam and Tucker!”

Maddie immediately straightened up in her seat. “Did Danny and his friends finally make up?” She asked, suddenly serious.

Jack gave her a weak smile. “You noticed that too, huh?”

“Yeah,” Maddie sighed. “He never hangs out with them anymore. Did they really all get back together?”

Jack nodded. “They did! And, you wanna know a secret?” He answered, lowering his voice jokingly.

“Oh?” Maddie answered, her tone dropping as well.

“You can’t tell anyone I told you, okay?” Jack asked, sounding every bit like a little kid conspiring with his siblings to steal the cookie jar.

“Cross my heart.” Maddie said, making the motion with her face set in playful seriousness.

“I think Danny and Tucker might even be dating!”

“Awww, I always thought those two were adorable with each other!” Maddie said, giggling.

The two laughed and joked around with each other the rest of the drive back to FentonWorks. Jack was able to pretend everything was fine until he turned on to the road they lived on and then cement appeared deep in his stomach. Everything would be fine, he tried to convince himself. Danny would not get hurt, no matter what.

Jack owed Danny that much.

“The kids should already be here,” Jack said as he pulled into the driveway, the Ops Center atop his home suddenly ominous in a way it never had been before. As much as he pretended to Danny that he had confidence in Maddie, they had all agreed on an escape plan for Danny. If Maddie pulled a gun, Danny and Tucker were to run to the Ops Center and flee while Jack, Sam, and Jazz tried to talk sense into Maddie.

Other than Jack, only Jazz knew the true stakes, the true back up plans. She’d cornered her father the night before, asking what, exactly, the plan was if Maddie couldn’t be talked into accepting Danny?

When Jack had confessed to her the lengths he and Vlad had decided to go to, she had only nodded and agreed.

…if Maddie did end up choosing to love her son instead of hating his ghost, Jack hoped she never discovered the lack of trust the entire family had had in her.

“Well, let’s go!” Maddie said excitedly, releasing the seatbelt clasp and jumping from the GAV, Jack scrambling to catch up with her. He managed to grab her arm right as she was about to open the door. She just turned to him, eyebrow raised questioningly.

“I love you, Mads. You know that, right?”

She laughed. “I love you too, Jack. Other than the kids, I’ve never loved anyone else more.”

“I know what you mean,” Jack said, a forced grin on his face.

Maddie frowned slightly at him. “Jack, is everything okay? You’re acting odd.”

“Everything’s fine,” he lied, pushing open the front door as she eyed him with concern.

A sense of wrongness tingled in the back of his mind as he entered the living room, his son notably missing as he saw Sam and Jazz standing to either side of Tucker, all three of their faces morphed into something akin to horror.

“Hi kids!” Maddie said cheerily, not yet registering the looks on the teens’ faces.

“What’s wrong?” Jack asked.

“Dad…” Jazz said, glancing at Tucker.

Tucker gulped. “Mr. F, we’ve got a problem,” Tucker said, turning the PDA’s screen to face him and fury rose in Jack even as terror wrapped an icy grip around his heart.

~~~~~~

Far away, Operative O grinned, pulling off his glove and running his hand down the ghost’s icy face while other agents fought to subdue the animalistic ghost they’d released as bait.

“You’re not getting away from me again, Phantom,” O whispered as unfocused green eyes slowly closed. “Not again.”

[axewchao]

The Mass of Muscle in Mario Kart, The Enforcer That'll Make You See Stars in the Smash Bros. Boxing Ring, it's Morton Koopa Jr.!! I'd already hoomanized this loveable goof waaaay back in 2017, so I guess this can be considered a long-overdue upgrade instead of a debut :3

Admittedly, I don't have much to say in regards to his design. Rather disappointing in hindsight, since this is the team blabbermouth I'm talking about here… :'D

At most, I wanted to do a bit more than just give him a tank top and shorts and call it a day. Dunno why I thought "bomber vest," but much like Larry's crop top it was a match made in heaven. Getting the right shade of red was a bit tricky, though. I wanted to avoid having something too dull, but also wanted to avoid burning people's eyes. Hopefully I was able to do just that owo"

Time to make a list with a Morton-worthy word count! >:3

Morton's magic is primarily creation/transformation-based. You know those spells where you form objects, weapons, or even buildings out of whatever's around you? Yeah, those kind of spells. While Morton primarily uses these spells to construct the various castles across the Worlds during a kingdom takeover, don't be surprised when a giant chunk of wall is suddenly ripped away, mashed into a misshapen ball (with or without spikes for extra pain), and promptly thrown at you.

However, that isn't to say he can just build whatever the hell he wants on a dime. When it comes to any project, big or small, he needs a clear and detailed visual either in his mind or on paper, lest the result fall apart within minutes or even seconds after Morton casts the spell. Hence why he has a construction company in tow instead of just building castles solo. He's not good with blueprints...

Morton's talent wasn't discovered until he accidentally reformed a wall in the Koopa Castle library. He was touring the castle during a class field trip, got lost, and was enamored by the seemingly endless array of magical tomes. For future reference, you shouldn't try to read incantations aloud, especially if you don't know what they're supposed to do.

Kamek wasn't sure whether to scold this grade-schooler kid for nearly destroying his precious library or praise him for reading the incantation well enough to just 'rearrange' the bricks instead of wrecking an entire castle wall. Morton was sent home that day with little more than a stern warning, but a few days later a letter shows up with his name on it, asking Morton to return to Castle Koopa to take an aptitude test. If this kid's got any magical talent in his veins, letting him run amok without proper training is just asking for trouble down the line.

This time he DID destroy a wall. And part of the ceiling. And two windows. And maybe terrify his dad a little, to the point where custody was handed over a little... quicker than expected...

To say that Morton was hurt by the above incident would be an understatement. He... he passed the test, didn't he? He's gonna train under the royal advisor now! Why was his father so... scared...? How could he just... leave Morton like that?! If Bowser Jr.'s Journey is any indication, loyalty is very important to Morton, and this kind of betrayal was unacceptable. That night, with angry tears in his eyes, Morton swore to never call that man his father ever again. His new King Dad was sure to be much better anyway. 

By extension, he refuses to speak to his other biological family members either. Though some of his siblings have tried to call...

Much like Larry, Morton is prone to info-dumping about the things he likes, which usually revolves around whatever show or book he's hooked on that month. Nothing excites him more than a well-crafted story, full of adventure and lore or just something that makes the viewer/reader stop and think for a moment. He's popular in a number of forum circles for always crafting long but well-thought-out essays on the subject in question.

He's always recommending things to his siblings, catering each title to each Koopaling's tastes. Do they actually check the titles out? Not as often as he'd hope.

Ludwig once decided to take up Morton's suggestion and watched a Mario-verse equivalent of Your Lie in April. He blamed Morton for the hours he spent sobbing afterward.

Every now and again he'll take a stab at writing his own stories, be it original or fanfic. If Morton suddenly starts talking in third person, that's a hint that he was trying to write something recently and couldn't turn his "writing mode" off.

He reverts to short, choppy sentences when he's upset and can't think straight. This may even lead to him mispronouncing words or using improper grammar. Think "MORTON STRONG! MORTON MORE TONS!!"

He's quick to develop crushes on girls with great physical strength. This is actually pretty common amongst Dragon Koopas, as many of them view those with great power, be it magic or muscle, as very desirable mates. Not even Ludwig can resist such allure at the end of the day~ >;3c

That being said, he's not one to act on said desires as soon as he has them. As much as he likes tough girls, he's actually very shy when talking to one, and forces himself to be very polite out of fear of scaring her off.

His magic wand was turned into a hammer-shaped belt buckle. Yes he will insist that it's a hammer, not a pipe. Hammers are awesome, pipes suck, end of story.

[victoriams]

ɪ ᴀᴍ ᴛʜᴇ ʙᴀᴅ ᴅᴀᴜɢʜᴛᴇʀ, ᴛʜᴇ ꜰʀᴇᴇᴅᴏᴍ ꜰɪɢʜᴛᴇʀ, ᴛʜᴇ ꜱʜᴀᴘᴇʀ ᴏꜰ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴍᴀꜱᴋꜱ. ɪ ᴀᴍ ᴛʜᴇ ꜱɴᴀᴋᴇ. ɪ ᴀᴍ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄʀᴏɴᴇ.

lucy boynton . cis woman . she/her ➶ I RECOGNISE THAT FACE ! that’s LIVINIA CRANE , the TWENTY-EIGHT year old GAMEMAKER from THE CAPITOL . they’ve been in the capitol around HER WHOLE LIFE , long enough to gain a reputation for being so POISED & OSTENTATIOUS . they’re so lucky getting to live in the tribute center for the duration of the games! ( character ISN’T part of the uprising )

STATISTICS

FULL NAME livinia diana crane

NICKNAMES liv, livi

DATE OF BIRTH may 26, 66th year

AGE twenty-eight

DISTRICT capitol

ROLE gamemaker

GENDER cis woman

ORIENTATION bisexual biromantic 

PERSONALITY

POSITIVE TRAITS intelligent, poised, strategic

NEGATIVE TRAITS selfish, ostentatious, callous

MBTI intj-a – the architect

ENNEAGRAM type 1 – the reformer

MORAL ALIGNMENT lawful neutral

DEADLY SIN pride

HEAVENLY VIRTUE diligence

ZODIAC gemini

CHARACTER PARALLELS shiv roy, succession / claire, fleabag / natalie berzatto, the bear / madelyn stillwell, the boys / michaela pratt, how to get away with murder / blair waldorf, gossip girl / abigail armstrong, dance academy

RELATIONSHIPS

AUGUSTUS CRANE, SENIOR father

RHEA CRANE mother, deceased

AURELIUS CRANE older half-brother

AUGGIE CRANE older sister

MAXIM CRANE twin brother

PRIAM PLINTH husband

BIOGRAPHY

You do not come into this world alone.

Well, this isn't entirely true – you exist in the world for exactly twenty five minutes and thirty-nine seconds before your brother, your twin, your other half – Maxim, arrives, kicking and screaming and demanding your parents' attention. Unfortunately for both of you, two older siblings wait outside of your mother's delivery room, eagerly anticipating the arrival of their new baby brother and sister. They are the heir, Aurelius; and the spare, Auggie. What does that make you and Maxim? Little more than decorative ornaments, bodies to fill up space in the family portraits. Two extra names at the end of birthday cads. Two extra plates at dinner.

There are exactly three things all Crane children have in common – blonde hair, delicate features, and that you are trained to thrive on attention. You all learn to find it in different ways. Aurelius finds it wherever he goes – your father's firstborn, the only child with the genes of his beloved – he seems to do nothing and have everything. He even wins your mother's favour. He is strong, powerful, and disciplined. Your father says he will inherit the earth, one day. Auggie fluctuates between finding attention by being the perfect foot soldier, and by being a wrecking ball. Your father punishes this. When Auggie exists within the mould she has been assigned, your father promises great things. Promises her the kingdom, if Aurelius cannot take it. A step out of line, and she is charged with treason. Your father watches with an eagle eye – he dares her to defy him. She cannot get away with the things Aurelius does by being the golden child, nor what you do by being forgotten. You think it is the scraps of attention, of hope, that keep her coming back.

For you and Maxim, attention is much harder to come by. You're not sure whether your parents had even wanted any more children. They had their heir, their spare – and sometimes you think that Maxim and you had been unfortunate byproducts of an ill-fated tryst. You are never particularly close with either of your parents. Maybe they had loved each other, once, but by the time you are old enough to recognise it, any affection is long gone. You don't know why the wedge exists between them – maybe your mother could never live up to the woman she'd replaced. Or maybe your father resents the way she bleeds his resources dry. But, apparently, you remind him of her. Unlike Maxim and Auggie, you possess your mother's features. Her pointed nose, her pale face. Even her demeanour, to a certain extent. Your father resents you for this, and he fails to see you beyond a pale, and far less useful, imitation of the woman he'd married.

Your father may not be your father's daughter, but you are certainly your mother's. She tends to you like her own personal garden, sewing poisonous seeds that will forever be rooted in the back of your mind. She can never decide whether she loves or hates you; whether she wants to use you to correct her own mistakes, or send you down the same treacherous path out of spite. You had been a sweet child, once. You had loved dancing and music. You were afraid of the dark and monsters under your bed. You don't remember that girl now. Your mother said that softness wouldn't serve you in the long run, and so she eradicated it. She teaches you to look in the mirror and despise what you see – to strive for better. To starve and groom yourself until you can no longer be criticised. To hide your teeth behind a smile, to never display weakness. She tells you that you have started life at a disadvantage – that the only way you will ever make it in this world is through underhanded tricks and strategic alliances – nobody will ever give you anything for free.

You hunger for perfection. You hunger for her approval. You hunger for your father's love. You will always be hungry.

We would, of course, be remiss to talk about your childhood without mentioning your twin. Maxim exists by your side as a shadow. Save for your shared birthday and upbringing, you have little else in common. And yet, he is the person you feel closest to in the world. He is the only person who has ever existed on equal ground – looked at you, not as a competitor, or an asset, or a liability, but as a friend. He is also the only one who can see past the facade build. You had quickly learned that scrutiny hurts less when your exterior is made of stone. Easier to be criticised when you know the person they critique is a fabrication – made up, not you. Maxim sees through it, and, in turn, you see through his loud, blustering, careless charade. Maybe it really is a twin thing, or maybe you just both know how to craft yourselves into something you aren't. You both know how to identify the gaps in a structure and squeeze yourself into them. You become ice – cold, calculated, indifferent. Maxim becomes fire – warm, raucous, passionate.

You are married when you are twenty. It hadn't been your idea, but you go along with it nonetheless. At the time, you are your mother's only eligible daughter, and she seeks to secure your family's social and financial status with a neat little union. You won't get anywhere without a husband on your arm, Livinia. At the time, her words had felt like gospel. At the time, you had been a sickly, wretched thing – living off scraps of love and affection and little else. Begging simply to be seen, to fill the void inside of you. At the time, you think that maybe marriage will fix you. That it will satisfy the relentless hunger that has existed within you since you were a girl. Your mother seems to think that it will, anyway. Priam is a decent enough candidate – the second born son from a well-off family. He is a few years your senior, chivalrous and kind. He takes a position at your family's company along with your hand.

You are married, and yet you are still hungry. Garden parties and book clubs and gala dinners bore you. The idea of children nauseates you. You watch Priam go off to work each day and realise you have nothing to keep yourself occupied, you are alone in a big, beautiful, empty, dreadful house. Your parents have pushed you from one cage and into another – but you come to realise that they have forgotten to lock the door. Outside of their house, you feel more free than you ever have in your life. You may not have chosen Priam, and you are not sure if you will ever love him as you are supposed to, but he cares for you. He supports you. It is not something you have experienced before. Maybe you are selfish, but you cling to it, you consume it, like a ravenous creature. You cling not to your husband, or the vows you had made, but the sanctuary he provides, the way his doting makes you feel. You become more emboldened – dressing in different clothes, speaking your own mind. You enjoy things – not for others, but for yourself. And yet, freedom and affection do not satisfy your hunger.

You had never really given much thought to what the future held in store for you – part of you, buried and subdued, had always longed for greatness. That part of you had wanted the throne, but the more rational part of your mind knows it was never going to be yours. Your father and your siblings have made this abundantly clear. But, without the constant, overwhelming pressure to be the perfect daughter, you realise you want something. You have wasted your life hungering for attention, for respect, for love – but now you turn your appetite towards something more substantial – glory.

You take inspiration from your late uncle, and manage to secure yourself a role as an apprentice gamemaker. It is the perfect fit for somebody like you – so clinical, calculating, methodical. Your parents do not approve of the choice – your mother, because it does not follow the plan she had made for you; your father, because it is the job that had gotten his brother killed, that had cast a stain on your family's name for almost two decades. Where you once would have shrivelled, you hold firm. You rise through the ranks quickly – you become known not for your name, or your looks, or your husband, but for your skill, your intelligence, your wit. You think maybe this will be enough to satisfy the hunger, but it's not.

You taste greatness, and you want more, more, more. Come to think of it, maybe your siblings have four things in common. It is not in your natures to be satisfied.

[educatedinyellow]

Festivids 2022 -- a few recs :)

I knew almost none of the sources in this year’s Festivids collection, but fortunately you don’t always need to know the original to appreciate a good vid. I have only looked at a small portion of the collection, but here are a few recommendations for vids I really enjoyed!

Got the Time by usuallyhats (The Adventures of Tintin animated cartoon, 1991) SUCH. A. CHAOTIC. GOOD. TIME. This vid is so energetic & kinetic, I can feel the serotonin hitting my bloodstream as I watch -- a total lark!!

Handmade by feedingonwind (LiZiqi YouTube channel) An incredibly soothing, beautiful, fulfilling tribute to a young Chinese woman who shares very aesthetic YouTube videos showing her process for crafting home projects and lovely clothing. Just makes you feel good about life.

Weapon of Choice by JetpackMonkey (Busby Berkeley musicals). An incredible fever dream of a tribute to this inimitable subgenre of highly geometric 1930s insanity.

Black Tie by such_heights (A League of Their Own TV series, 2022) This was a tender and joyous celebration of the show’s many queer characters and is overflowing with beauty and pure 1940s ambience. The song could not be more perfect.

Rita by Rhea (Little Women South Korean TV series, 2022) OK, so this is 1) set in the modern day and 2) the subplot that this vid focuses on has absolutely nothing to do with anything in the Little Women novel, though I assume the series as a whole connects somewhere to the original story. None of that matters though, because this is a sumptuously beautiful distillation of pure longing that is breath-taking despite my total lack of context.

Where Is the World Going? by Dee_Laundry (120 battements per minute / BMP: Beats per Minute, 2017) As the summary says: To quote suzanne_f, "It’s about a) French people b) doing activism c) by arguing a lot with each other about d) prison reform and populism. It’s also very much a movie made about the AIDS epidemic by queer people."  ACT UP Paris in the early 1990s. Subtitles for the song are available in both French and English, and I’d recommend using them -- there are some powerful lyrical matches. This vid was deeply beautiful and inspiring, and far less bleak than one might imagine given the subject matter, though not soft-pedaling the reality either.

That’s What I Am by larissabernstein (Victor/Victoria, 1982) A very charming vid with a song that could not be more perfect!!

Don’t Forget You’re Precious by bingeling (Severance TV series). I haven’t seen this show but I know the premise and this vid is a hauntingly precise illustration of it.

Beverly Hills by Tafadhali (Columbo TV series) LOL, I already reblogged this one but can’t leave it off my official rec list! A very funny vid about this crumpled newspaper of a man as he shuffles his way through each case, the embodiment of an unassuming wrecking ball tearing through the schemes of glamorous villains.

[weenie-extraordinaire]

When I retired, they all asked me, "How did you defeat Imposition?" Well, the main difficulty in fighting Imposition was his invulnerability. You could beat on him all day with a crowbar, and all you'd get would be tired. Combined with his ability to be a literal and proverbial immovable object, you had a real mess of trouble. He had to actively concentrate to remain immovable, but wrecking balls couldn't even bruise him. Extreme temperatures weren't effective either. But he did have that famous tendency towards monologuing. Here's the thing, though; the more I fought him, the more curious I got. What was the point? Why was he always so chatty? So this one time, he'd hatched this surprisingly subtle scheme where he'd infiltrate an armored car en route to the bank, access the vault when they brought in the money, and then simply wheel it right back out along with as much extra he could pack into the back of the truck. Unluckily for him, I was doing some banking that day, at that bank, and as soon as the alarms sounded I slipped in the back real quick to foil whoever was robbing the place.

See, I'm slick, real slick, after all, I'm about the slickest, but he managed to get the drop on me by accident, and when I came to, it was inside the vault, cuffed to a cart of money and laid out with a wicked headache. He was holding the vault door shut with one hand, rambling away. So, to buy for time, I just sat and drank it on in. I mean, they weren't getting the vault open anytime soon; they're kinda hard to break into, after all. After a few minutes, I'd kinda picked up a bit, so I started asking questions. Each set of questions sent him down another tangent. So I just kept asking questions, and eventually, he started telling me all sorts of things. Stuff about his parents, things about his high school years, how cool he thought that painting of Washington crossing the Delaware was... Anyways, he just kept talking and laid out his whole life story, his hopes, his dreams, his regrets, and eventually, his goals.

So here's the thing: we all knew Imposition was a villain because he was constantly trying to pull off crimes for cash, getting caught committing said crimes, and then breaking loose at various points during his journey through the criminal justice system. It's kind of hard to transport a prisoner who can simply cease moving while the vehicle continues moving. Hard to try a case when the defendant can simply stay in place where he likes, when he likes. And he was a shoe-in for escapes, too. Who doesn't like having someone bulletproof between them and their jailors?

But back to what I was saying, no one really bothered to ask what he needed the cash for. Imposition was young, brash, and impervious, and he had a head full of ideas about right and wrong. He styled himself something of a Robin Hood, but he also had... personal reasons. Country like this, the hospital costs an arm and a leg, literally. It wasn't an easy process, and it wasn't cheap, and it took a lot of politicking and horse trading and a few twisted arms, but we pulled off a major reform, and improved the lives of so many people...

So I'd say, I didn't actually defeat Imposition. I helped him. Now, I'm enjoying my retirement, and Rock Solid is still making the headlines. I still think Imposition was a great name, but I can understand wanting a fresh start. Now get, my soaps are about to start!

Interview with Lester H. Sylvester, aka Ace Ardent

A supervillain known for going on tangents during a monologue has captured the hero. The hero broke free of the restraints a while ago but pretends to remain captured to see how off topic the supervillain will get.