#there is also something else that is not a technical exception but the rule governing it but I cannot recall that either

[sorryiwasasleep]

Already edited to size for setting as a smart-phone lock-screen background 🫡🫣🤩🥳🫠😁💕😒🔥👀👉👈🥺😏😡🫠😔🙃🥲🙄😤🤞⬇️ ;)

[elysiuminfra]

good afternoon. some thoughts on southern baptism, a society built on shame, and my upbringing in the bible belt.

i don't have many memories of my childhood, but i am slowly uncovering them, piece by piece. i remember being a child, in church, being taught the concepts of heaven and hell. heaven is where good people go. the purest believers, those closest to the lord christ, would go to heaven, and no one else. the definition of who was worthy enough to go to heaven was well-defined as someone who lived without sin, but what counted as *sin* was not. hell was the place sinners went, and was the ultimate punishment. it was, i would come to learn, shockingly easy to go to hell, and others would try very hard to condemn you to it if you stepped out of line. a funny remark that shocked some friends was the pictures we were shown of heaven. suburban houses in the clouds, roads paved in gold, an american paradise with white picket fences. that itself is already a commentary itself. i don't need to elaborate on why a white-dominated church would teach this. it speaks for itself!

it is a culture built on shame, secrecy, and i will admit, child abuse. sinners went to hell, so no one was a sinner. the nuclear family was the ultimate paradise, no matter what went on behind closed doors. parents would pride themselves on how good their kid behaved. if your child behaved poorly, it was a sign of failed parenting, of sin in the house. so parents tried very, very hard to keep their children from bringing them shame. this is not hyperbole. most christian children i knew were regularly hit by their parents, including myself. some worse than others. it was an open secret with the children, but adults never spoke of it. no one wanted to admit they beat their kid with a belt until they left welts. they called it "discipline" and not "physical torture against a 5 year old," because that wasn't proper. this was also enforced in my not-technically-but-basically-christian elementary school. you were threatened with beatings if you misbehaved. some kids i knew were beaten. it's so normal i knew more children that were abused by their parents in some kind of way than children who had parents that didn't abuse them.

shame played the biggest role. emotionally and mentally it took its toll on everyone. if you sinned, you were punished, cast out, ostracized, no longer included. you had to redeem yourself by repenting and being shameful for what you did. and by the lord was everyone ashamed of something. no one was open about anything, except for how good they tried to look. no one wanted to admit that they drank every night. no one wanted to admit they stole their child's adhd medication. no one wanted to admit that they were cheating on their partners because of how miserable their marriage made them feel. everyone sinned - in sometimes very self-destructive, but fixable through community type ways - but no one admitted it, because to be open about your life meant inviting shame. even benign things, such as liking certain "sinful" shows or books or anything deemed the devils work brought shame. and shame is a very powerful tool. it keeps people isolated, it keeps people scared, and that's what southern baptism operates on. everyone else but the Flock is an enemy. the Flock is safe, but the rules of the Flock were so strict, everyone was too afraid to break them. this trapped people in endless cycles of self-destruction. i saw it happen to many people. shame stops you from getting help, not that the people you were around would help you as judgmental as they are, but your church was your world.

the church was more real than the government. heaven was more real than other countries. christ was more real than capitalism. i once believed this. many, many people truly believe this. it's why a lot of christian southerners are so deranged and miserable. you're indoctrinated into this honor-built society where you must flagellate yourself just to be considered a good person. and if you were gay, or trans, heaven forbid, you were at genuine great physical risk by people who you once sat next to in church. but i will elaborate at a different time.

i have more thoughts but this post is already so long. but do you see what i mean? it's more like a cult than anything else. i was very lucky to stop going to church. some people never escape. they enforce it on their own children. unloved children enter loveless marriages and continue living miserably until they die. and the cycle repeats.

[queen-of-prophecy]

Politics Headcanon:

Queen Vine's method of ruling is technically the same as everyone elses; a subnational monarchy. It pays homage and delegations handed down by another power, in this case Lucifer. However, since Lucifer trusts her to make her own decisions, she instead rules her nation as a semi-constituional monarchy.

Unlike in absolute monarchy where all power resides in the ruler, or constitutional monarchy where the ruler is more of a figurehead, Vine chooses this mixed form of ruling to maintain power while also delegating duties she'd rather not deal with to other figures. Her Society of Hags for instance, has many of the same powers of governance she has...except their power can be revoked and the figures removed if they go against Vine's designs or interests. This is beneficial, as it allows her to appear "equal opportunity" by granting powers and privileges among her citizens, while also having easy scapegoats when something goes wrong.

However, even if her witches in power decide to be corrupt, that is not a guarantee they will earn the Queen's ire or disapproval. If they prove their corruption benefits her enough to be maintained, she will simply look the other way.

All in her kingdom serve the Queen after all, and that's just the way she likes it.

[tea-cat-arts]

(Disclaimer incase some of y’all don’t have the “Honkai spoilers” and “Genshin spoilers” tags blocked: This post will contain some pretty major spoilers from both games. Also this post is more of a repeat shower thought of mine than a proper analysis)

Something I find… disappointing about Mihoyo’s writing is that it only ever seems to be people who are already in positions of power and authority who get redemption arcs, where as characters who were genuinely just forced into these terrible situations will get villainized and killed off.

Examples:

Ei, leader of a nation and a god, hunted down poor and middle class vision holders (technically a minority group) and stripped them of their will or killed them if they resisted, but the story goes out of its way to show us her grief and hardships, which are supposed to make her worthy of redemption

Dr. MEI, main leader of her era, committed way too many war crimes to list here (main one being experimenting on soldiers and sending them to their death without their consent) and defunded or distracted at least two of the leading scientists working on alternatives, but the story frames her actions as noble and a necessary sacrifice

Otto, part of a ruling lineage and leader of a government party, also committed too many war crimes to list here but we’re gonna focus on the part where he kidnapped and tortured children for science, was given a story the centered around showing us his humanity, motivations, and good intentions/ outcomes

Sirin/HoV one of said children Otto kidnapped and tortured, lashes out and attacks the ones responsible for her pain and those who defend them. Killed off

Kevin, literally just some guy pulled off the street who stepped up when nobody else would, took on a task that was way too big for him to handle, watched almost all his friends die, watched as he was powerless to stop the world from being destroyed, and went along with a desperate and incredibly dangerous plan that he hated, but thought was the only way to prevent what he already lived through from happening again. Deemed a monster that has to be killed

La Signora, a young village woman who’s lover died in a pointless war between gods, had her home destroyed, turned her body into liquid fire, and joined the side that was looking to take down the people who caused her all this pain. Presumably killed off probably not gonna stay that way though so we can come back to this one in a couple years

Some potential exceptions to this trend/ less straightforward examples:

Fu Hua and Kujou Sara (arcs handled similarly, so I’m lumping them together). Though they are both technically leaders, they aren’t by any means the one in charge. Their motivations, reasoning, and potential for redemption is established incredibly early on and the story is quick to show us that even though they’re on the bad guy team at first, they have noble intentions. They also spend the majority of their time in the story actually doing the leg work to prove they’re a good guy

Scaramouche. Though he is technically the child of a god, he’s still a parental abuse victim and the story repeatedly puts him in positions of powerlessness and servitude. He also spent the majority of his life living in poverty. Though he hasn’t exactly been redeemed for his war crimes yet, the story is giving him a chance to work for it

The grand sage. Example of a corrupt person in power we actually did get to take down. Though it should be noted that the story frames it as though that power was never rightfully his in the first place

Idk, it’s not enough for me to go and try and accuse Mihoyo of anything, nor am I trying to say that all these stories were handled poorly (and yes, I’m fully aware that a lot of my descriptions were oversimplifications of the canon). It’s just a pattern that I’m side-eying Mihoyo for. A trend that does make me straight up go “hey, Mihoyo, what the fuck-“

Why is every scientist tampering with human biology and evolution depicted as some puppy-kicking lunatic? Why does the story focus so heavily on demonizing their areas of research and acting like those are the problem, not the fact that they’re committing several OSHA violations? I know I’ve ranted about this point before, but I just find it incredibly strange

[catgirl-catboy]

Oh valid! Sleep is good!

Honestly I understand why you say that Marco should be explored more as a character, but I also feel like it's kind of cool that there are so many great characters that go unexplored in One Piece? It honestly really makes the world feel big and lived in that you could have an entire canon that focused around a different protagonist within the same universe and write maybe the same number of chapters if not more? And have it fit seamlessly into what is already written?

It's honestly one of my favorite things about One Piece shipping compared to some of my other fandoms is just how deep the world is, from characters to actual worldbuilding, you can basically always add something on that isn't explored well in canon and now you're making headcanons! Now you're writing fanfic! Now you're drawing art! And it all just happens and it doesn't feel as contradictory as in shows with narrower scopes.

If I want to fan out about Marco or Buggy or Katakuri or any number of other characters that don't touch Luffy's life for very long but still have a super interesting story? There is so much for me to imagine!

Also, exploring Marco more (except if they made him a novel, like Law or Ace) would probably require Oda to explore Marco more in the context of Luffy's story, and what I'm honestly interested in is Marco as his own protagonist. If that makes sense?

Sorry, that was probably a super long way of saying that... whoops.

Law: God I know, but it is also fun to imagine. This is one case where it would make sense for some more canon clarification because he spends so long on board the sunny with everyone, but also it's fine narratively to leave it up to the imagination. But yeah, all those little interactions, platonic or otherwise, are super fun. I love the idea of occasional smoker!Law sharing a cigarette with Sanji while both compartmentalize issues with their own self-worth by refuting the other's negative self-talk. Or Law training with Zoro. Reading with Robin and hating on the government together. Talking about medicine with Chopper...I could go on. Anyway, all that to say if you DO ever find that Law & Brook fic, I'd love to read it. It sounds awesome.

For kidlaw I mostly go off vibes? A lot of my draw to the ship initially was fanart if I'm honest. I don't even know that I have anything bookmarked I usually just go to the tag, sort for the shit that's rated E and then just read for a while 😅

Good argument! I'm the sort that loves to overanalyze literally everything about my fandoms, but I could totally see how so many moments being offscreen could be a draw to some fans!

Yeah! I have so many headcanons for the One Piece world. You could make a fan island that could have literally anything and it would technically be within the rules of canon. That being said, I wish the concepts of how seasonal islands work is explored more. Do bears that live on Summer islands not go into hibernation? Also, Little Garden raises tons of questions on how immunities work in One Piece. If an insect can infect Nami, can't it go the other way? If it went the other way, that we would be more dangerous to Little Garden wildlife than they would be to us (germ wise. They could still kill us in other ways.) There could be an entire civilization from there that was unknowingly wiped out by some pirates. Else does having so many pirates come through there help with herd immunity?

I know a lot of One Piece is just because it is cool. I'm still going to overthink it though.

The plot of the law and brook fic was basically a post-dressrosa conversation that followed the popular fan headcanon that Law was either okay with, or actively planning to die to take down Doffy. Brook talked about losing his crew and the value of life. It always stuck with me.

[the-whispers-of-death]

Fun Facts

I kinda did this with the COD OCs with what didn't make it into canon, so now I'm going to be doing this with the Iriecester OCs but these things are actually canon.

Orinothicor has had 16 children (including Crathicor and Lerdadicor), but due to his curse all of them, except Crathicor, Lerdadicor, and one possibly one other, are dead. (Yes, I'm straight up thinking of adding yet another OC to this roster, despite not even making the basic info posts for the band of thieves yet.)

Crathicor, despite having a less involved role in the governing of the realm compared to Lerdadicor, is older than Lerdadicor. The exact age difference is unclear. (Because what is sorting out how old they are when they've been alive for more years than a mortal can comprehend?)

Lerdadicor was married once, she is no longer married because her wife died protecting the realm. (RIP to her.)

The Hexiltor did create Marsaicor, but they're not considered family since he created them solely for the purpose of being his apprentice. That's not to say they don't have a strong, almost father-child, bond, they do. They just both don't consider each other family.

That being said, Marsaicor does have the -icor suffix because while they're not considered to be the Hexiltor's family, they were named the suffix as a sign of respect since they will one day be the next Hexiltor (hopefully).

Sashithia has never met his Worunithia father, Jarith, despite being born in Xrathia (where every non-humanoid Yonuthia lives). He also technically never met his Yonuthia mother, Kierithia either, since she died when he was a newborn.

Bredadith's cloudy white eyes aren't just because he's blind, but also because it's a reminder to everyone else that he's survived a dip in Grithior and that one day, Grithior will finish its job and drown him fully. Also a reminder that Grithior is the reason Bredadith has advanced powers.

When Bredadith was pulled out of Grithior by the Hexiltor, many other Yonuthias speculated he was Orinothicor's firstborn son (because Orinothicor himself is unsure if his firstborn son is still alive and walking the realm in Neximor form). However, that rumor was dispelled when Bredadith's blood was tested against Orinothicor's and there was no familiar match.

Orinothicor has only ever had children via creating them with the Neximors. Not a single child of his was created via normal reproduction.

Crathicor, while he is not tempted by Grithior, can smell the river's waters in Bredadith's veins. For that reason, Crathicor tries not to go down the hallways in Castle Rathia that Bredadith likes to frequent.

Reblogs are welcomed & appreciated! Asks are open, feel free to pop in and request something! (Check the rules in "Rules for Requesting NSFW" before requesting.)

[rnelodyy]

c!Dream and the rules

(/dsmp /rp, all names refer to characters, not content creators)

I think one of the most striking parts of Exile is something that I rarely see talked about, and it’s Dream’s rules. Or rather, how his rules were made to be used as justification to hurt Tommy.

The thing about exile is that, outside of the initial rule of “Don’t go back to L’Manburg”, Dream never told Tommy the rules, yet constantly operated under the assumption that Tommy already knew them, and had accepted them. The rules also changed constantly, without Tommy ever being notified until he was already in trouble.

The second time Dream told Tommy to put his armor in the hole, he didn’t tell Tommy to do that right away. Instead, the conversation went like this (slightly edited to remove stammering and unrelated dialogue).

Dream: Do you have, uh… something you wanna put on the floor here? Tommy: Yes. (drops two pieces of red concrete as Dream digs a hole) Dre-eam! You’re evil. You’re evil. Dream: Anything else, Tommy? Tommy: Nope! Dream: Oh c’mon, I know there’s something else you wanna drop down here. Tommy: (panicking slightly) No, there… (messages BBH “take this and run”, throws him the disc BBH had gifted him earlier) Um… I don’t reckon there is! (pause) Dream: Okay, are you suuuure? Tommy: YES. Dream: Alright… How ‘bout your armor, Tommy? Tommy: Well, no, this is- I actually earned this myself. Dream: I know you did! Tommy: Leave me alone. Dream: Just drop it in the hole, Tommy. Tommy: Wh- no, NO, you can’t just come and demand things from me! I’ve been exiled, I’ve done your shit, what do you mean?! Dream: (sing-song) Tommy… Tommy: What? (Dream hits Tommy with his axe, taking over half his health) Tommy: (screams, drops his armor) OKAY OKAY OKAY OKAY OKAY OKAY OKAY!

The only rule Tommy was aware of at this time was that he wasn’t allowed to go back to L’Manburg. Dream had taken his armor the night before, but there was no indication that he expected Tommy to do this constantly. Taking his armor upon initially arriving at Logstedshire made some kind of sense, allowing Tommy to keep it would run the risk of him trying to fight his way back into L’Manburg. Taking his new, very shitty armor (seriously it was an iron chestplate and a pair of golden leggings he got from a ruined portal chest) made no sense at all, so the fact that Tommy was confused and refused to cooperate at first isn’t unexpected in the slightest.

And the thing is… Dream was aware of this fact. Throughout the conversation, he never really sounded annoyed, and was actively teasing Tommy at times. This isn’t a good thing btw, it’s a sign that he was fully aware that Tommy didn’t know what he wanted from him, and that that would create a situation where Dream could “put him in his place” as it were.

If you’re a parent, and your kid does something that’s not allowed, without knowing it’s not allowed, you don’t start off with a beating. You sit them down, calmly explain the rules to them and explain why those rules are there, then send them on their way with the knowledge that they shouldn't do it again.

This interaction wasn’t an instance of Tommy acting out and Dream correcting him. This interaction was a trap. Dream set Tommy up to fail by not telling him the rules beforehand, and when Tommy offered even the slightest bit of resistance and asked why he needed to drop his armor, Dream jumped straight to beating him. It’s a powerplay, plain and simple.

This is demonstrated again with the destruction of Logstedshire. Dream got pissed that Tommy disobeyed him by having hidden chests with gear under his house, and retaliated by destroying everything Tommy had built, destroying every item he’d collected, killing his pet and only foodsource, barring him from the Nether, banning everyone except himself from visiting, and telling him to start over from scratch after a whole lecture about how Tommy betrayed him.

Again, I wanna point out some specific lines from this lecture that illustrate my point very well.

Dream: You were lying to me! You were lying to me. Tommy: No- Why was I lying?! Dream: What do you mean, why were you lying?! Tommy: I wasn’t hi- I wasn’t- Dream: You hid things in a chest knowing they were things I wouldn’t want you to have! And you hid it in a way that way I would never find it!

Except Tommy didn’t know that. The contents of the stash were all items that Tommy had obtained previously without any issue (diamonds, emeralds, iron, ender pearls, some pickaxes, and some purely sentimental items like flowers, a jukebox, and pictures of Tubbo and L’Manburg). In fact, the vast majority of them came from Tommy’s aboveground storage, which Dream had full access to, and had looked through before!

Dream also never said Tommy wasn’t allowed to hide stuff, and there was nothing to suggest he didn’t want Tommy to keep secrets from him.

There’s been a theory floating around for a while that Dream knew about Tommy’s item stash beforehand, since it was a very strange place to dig a hole (like, right in front of the house in the center of Logstedshire itself, instead of out in the plains where the TNT wouldn’t damage any structures), and Tommy had previously forgotten to cover up the entrance ladder. While Dream hadn’t looked inside the house, he would’ve definitely heard Tommy place the block back.

If this theory is correct, then this was yet another trap. Dream knew Tommy had a hidden room, and instead of just saying “hey, I don’t want you to have a hidden stash, go put this back and fill in the room” (which would’ve still been bullshit btw), he went COMPLETELY ballistic, destroyed EVERYTHING Tommy had, and while doing it, kept admonishing Tommy for betraying him, said shit like “I thought we were friends”, and even accused him of preparing to attack Dream. Again, a powerplay.

Hell, even the exile conflict itself is this! Tommy was exiled for griefing the king’s property while being a high-ranking official in L’Manburg. Except Fundy, the then-president’s son, CONSTANTLY griefed Eret’s shit after the L’Manburg war, ranging from ripping down one of their towers to “shrink” it, filling another tower with water, and multiple elaborate plots to steal the throne from under their nose. But apparently, between all of that shit and the exile-conflict, the rules were silently changed, meaning Dream could exile Tommy for breaking a couple blocks and placing some rude signs in George’s house. Even the punishment itself was changed without warning, as Tommy went from being exiled from L’Manburg to exiled from “everywhere that’s ever been touched.”

...I was originally gonna make a different point here. I may put it in the reblogs, because I still think it’s very interesting. But, in the middle of writing this essay I had to stop because it was late, then I spent the entire next day packing up because I’m in the middle of a move. It's now the next evening, I'm sat in my new room, on my camping bed, I opened this doc because I pretty much forgot what I typed, I reread it, and then I realized… This isn’t an isolated series of events. This is a pattern for Dream.

Before Tommy first joined the server, there were only three set rules: no stealing, no griefing, and no killing people. Except by that point, those rules weren’t enforced at all. In fact, Dream broke all three at once at one point, by killing George and burning his diamond armor because he didn’t feel it was fair that George got to run around in full diamond when everyone else still had iron.

Tommy joined the server, and broke the rules like everyone else. He stole shit, broke shit, killed George for funsies… and he got exiled for it. Seriously, they dumped him in an empty snowfield for breaking rules that nobody had enforced for weeks. So technically, the Exile-arc isn’t even the first time something like this has happened to him!

During the events that would eventually spark the Disc War, Sapnap stole a bunch of Tommy’s items (including the only Netherite chestplate on the server at the time), and told him he’d only give the stuff back if Tommy helped him with a conflict he had with Ponk. Long story short, Dream tried to intervene and was killed by Tommy and Sapnap, and Dream stole Tommy’s discs to force him to apologize. He then kept the discs, and the Disc War followed. Sapnap, despite being the aggressor and arguably forcing Tommy to participate in the conflict, was never punished.

This proves not only that the rules can change whenever Dream feels like it, but that they’re arbitrarily enforced. Dream refuses to punish his friends for the same crimes he endlessly fucks over Tommy for.

L’Manburg was created in part because of the fact that the rules were unevenly enforced. Tommy, Wilbur, and later Tubbo were repeatedly killed, stolen from, imprisoned, and even held hostage for very minor crimes, while the people killing, imprisoning, kidnapping and stealing from them were able to do so without impunity.

This was also the point where Dream just started making up new rules; there was no rule against having governments on the server, or making a separate area where Dream’s rules wouldn’t apply, so Dream banned governments, and used this new rule as an excuse to kill them, take their items, and tear their land to shreds.

And that’s another thing: the punishments for breaking Dream’s rules are INCREDIBLY harsh.

Kill him non-canonically one time? Your most prized possessions will now be dangled over your head and used to hurt you for the next few months.

Make a country with different laws that doesn’t infringe on anyone’s territory, has no desire to expand, is explicitly pacifistic and open to trade negotiations? You’ll be forced to fight a war you’re in no way equipped to fight, you’ll be betrayed and murdered and have your land destroyed in front of your very eyes until you literally have no choice but to surrender.

Mildly vandalize the king’s house, which nobody else has ever been punished for? You’ll be dragged into court, exiled from your home, and subjected to weeks of abuse until you believe that all of your friends hate you and you actively want to kill yourself.

Hide some stuff in a secret chest? Your only shelter will be exploded, your pet/only food source will be killed, all your items will be destroyed, you’ll be banned from the Nether, and none of your friends will be allowed to come see you.

This is all such disproportionate retribution it’s ridiculous. It’s like punishing someone for speeding by blowing up their car with a ballistic missile.

So to sum up: Dream’s rules are arbitrarily enforced, and he can just straight up make them up on the spot if he feels like it. Sometimes, he won’t tell you a rule exists until you’ve already broken it, and you’re treated as if you broke it out of malice instead of genuine ignorance. And if you do break a rule, and he decides you have to be punished, it will always be a punishment so harsh it doesn’t even ATTEMPT to fit the crime.

I don’t know about you, but that sounds pretty fucking corrupt and tyrannical to me.

When people say Tommy deserved exile, or made Dream spiral into villainy, or abused Dream somehow (seriously I’ve seen this take multiple times and every time it makes my brain melt) by breaking the rules, I would invite them to take a step back and ask themselves, why did that rule exist? Did Tommy know it existed? Was it enforced for everyone other than him as well? Does the punishment fit the crime?

Dream has a bad habit of making up rules, or enforcing old ones that were never enforced before, to punish those who threaten his power. None of the Dream Team were ever punished for anything, despite committing the same crimes as the L’Manburgians. That is, until they founded Mexican L’Manburg (i.e. went against Dream’s rule), at which point they were attacked by Dream and George was dethroned for “not being neutral enough.”

Tommy should’ve faced consequences for what he did. But those consequences should’ve come naturally, and been carried out by the people he hurt. Like, if Dream hadn’t intervened, griefing George’s house would’ve resulted in George griefing Tommy back in revenge. In fact, he DID do that, by turning Tommy’s entire house into granite and putting the Jump In The Cadillac picture on his front lawn.

These are natural, proportionate consequences. Exile was none of that. The Disc War was none of that. Everything that happened to L’Manburg was none of that.

Dream’s rules and how he enforces them are inherently corrupt and tyrannical. To pretend it’s anything but is disingenuous at best.

[naveenkumarchandra]

The man with the tin heart.

While he has read about them, heard his friends and workmates talk about them, watched them being referred to in the movies, yet, all his life, as far back as he can remember, he has not once felt what they refer to as emotions. Each time he brings the subject up though, he is silenced, people tell him it’s his overthinking and his constantly taking the simplest of things and examining them in the most grotesque way possible, devoid of any soul, using what they call stainless logic, which in turn they tell him is due to his compulsive need to follow procedures all the time. They are surprised though as to how can someone who is always finding faults is not sad or at least appears unhappy. They tell him that him not feeling these emotions is also an emotion, that he is displaying indifference and being almost sociopathic all the time. This they say are in their own ways extreme emotional responses and thus he is not so abnormal anyway.

He believes them.

What else, he wonders it could be? Maybe these people are right, they are of course. Surely he is not some kind of an exception, all humans are supposed to feel sad, happy, love, hate, anger, anguish and despair and all of rest of the emotions from the long list that he has seen everyone around him so fancifully display over the years. It leaves him questioning himself after each such display, it’s just a plain logical question though, “Why can’t I do any of that?”. It’s not that he doesn’t know anything about them, he is aware of them and can easily recognise them by facial expressions that they bring forth. It’s just that he has not experienced any of it first hand. Not that he remembers if he had. Surely it can’t be some disease, he has seen a few specialists over the years and they have made him undergo almost every test there is to look for some or the other deficiency or defect or mutation but no luck. It is weird in a way that someone can be looking forward of learning that he has a disease after each diagnosis but that’s how it was for him, no luck. He was medically “normal”.

He believes them.

He works in the local government office, he is a clerk. It makes his life easier. Emotions are not something desirable for someone to be working and dealing with a lot of people on a daily basis. It helps when one considers them as just numbers and figures, it helps to look at these figures and leave the rest to rules. It helps to just read the said rules and follow them to the word, blindly. That’s what he thought his job was. So one thing surely was going his way in his life, his job was a perfect fit. He was doing great there, as per his performance reviews, he was meeting all his targets, posting maximum numbers of cases disposed month after month. Though some people did tell him that he does his job as efficiently as he does because he doesn’t consider any case with any empathy at all and takes them as they come, by the rules. This did make him pause a bit but then he saw people lining up at the counter just beside him and being emotionally manipulated and extracted to grant favours. This made him think if in fact being empathetic was so desirable & these people are showing empathy, why are the people lining up crying and howling and shouting and the ones who in fact did look happy were so identical, in their appearances. He did his job mechanically, he was told by his colleagues, but it meant if it was a fit case, he would do it immediately, and if not he’d reject it with the same promptness, which was rarely the case with the so called empathetic employees. He went on time, left on time, took no breaks, and while people did cry in front of him at times, they understood there was nothing that he could’ve technically done about their request. “This is what happens when you are an emotionless robot”, said one of his colleagues. “But you said I do display emotions remember, you told me that I am indifferent”, he replied. “Well maybe you were right to begin with, maybe you do not feel any emotion, may be you are abnormal. I mean why else would you reject the claim of that poor lady, you knew she deserved it and just because she made a small and insignificant error in the filling of the form, you rejected it. You do know that she would now do the entire procedure again?” she said wit visible anger as her face turned slightly reddish. He could see the anger now, he could recognise the cues but had no idea why would someone be angry on him for he did his job as required. “It’s not my job to determine the significance of the error, if it was in fact insignificant, it wouldn’t be an error to begin with”, he said, plainly, as always. “You know what, a lot of people hate you in the office, their reasons are as you would expect, they hate you as you do your job without any expectations, you don’t indulge, that makes the rest of them look like absolute villains. I always liked this about you but at times you turn away from such cases, like this one, and that’s when you give me a reason to hate you as well”, she said in the same tone of now fading anger, perhaps realising it’s of no use. “Well, if people hate me for doing my job, I can’t do anything about it, I would continue doing it”, he replied. “Well, your job needs you to have a heart at times, but then, I guess your heart like your emotions, is made of tin”, she said and walked away. He believed her.

[masterhandss]

May I ask, what happens in the short stories included in the Hamefura manga volumes? (e.g. highschool AU, kindergarten AU, genderbend AU, etc.)

Well, okay! I'm not good at summarizing stuff, so sorry in advance! I'm also writing these without rereading the Bonus SS so there may be small inaccuracies in these summaries. Some of these are gonna be longer than others depending on how much of I still remember lmao

I still suggest everyone go buy the manga volumes and give them a read, these extra chapters are so fun it makes me wish the anime fillers are always these wacky and entertaining (in fact I had to put writing this on hold because Season 2 adapted one of these, kinda XDD)

// spoilers for the hamefura manga volume bonus ss/special oneshots

Volume 1 - Untitled

Bakarina wakes up and realizes that she has no control over her body. She is confronted with a familiar scene of Katarina bullying Maria in Fortune Lover, and realizes that she's experiencing it from a first person point of view: through Katarina's eyes. She comments on how cruel Katarina is and explains the different ways she'd treat Maria differently, until Keith and Geordo arrive to save Maria. Bakarina feels unnerved and saddened by the angry and hateful looks that Keith and Geordo are giving her (Well it's Katarina, but Bakarina feels like they are look at her), and nervously wakes up from the dream. It is revealed that the dream took place some time before her arrival at the Magic Academy, and that she vows to work hard not to fall into a Bad End so that she'll never receive such hateful looks and be scorned by the otome game characters who she now considers to be her closest friends.

Volume 2 - Doom Route★Private School

Katarina gets awoken by Anne telling her that she needs to get ready to school. Katarina is surprised to find out that she has a school uniform and that she'll be heading to school in a fancy car. Anne tells Katarina that Keith won't be coming with her because he's already at school. When she gets there, she gets greeted by Keith who is part of the School's Disciplinary Committee. She is also greeted by Geordo, the SC President and his twin brother Alan, the Secretary. Keith's job is to check everyone's uniforms, so he reprimands the twins for their custom uniforms. Geordo tells him that he'll just have the rule changed, and that Keith's uptight attitude is why he doesn't have a girlfriend. This is how Katarina finds out that the engagement between Geordo and her is a verbal agreement between families, so she's technically engaged to him but it's not official.

After meeting up with all her friends, Katarina enters the classroom to find it looking just like her old one in Japan. She finds that she had scribbled doom flag avoidance plans on her desk and notebooks, and realizes that she's still in an otome game. Maria then enters and is introduced as the new scholarship student, and Katarina runs out to read her notebook. Everything is the same, from capture targets to rival characters , except the setting is a modern. Katarina finds out that her bad ends only lead to her getting either expelled and transferred or getting a restraining order. Katarina becomes confident in befriending Maria, and enthusiastically plans to enjoy her new life in a modern school. The chapter ends with Katarina buying lots of melon bread from the cafeteria, and wakes up form the dream before she could eat it.

Volume 3 - My Next Life in a Fantasy RPG

Katarina is awaken by Miri, who tells her that she is late and that she needs to eat breakfast. Katarina dresses up and realizes that her clothes looks like a cute outfit form an RPG. After being greeted by her father and being given a simple japanese breakfast (which made a bit emotional), Miri scolds her and tells her to hurry since she and Keith needs to check up on a few things before they leave. When Katarina asks where they are going, Luigi tells her that she and Keith are headed on a journey to become heroes and defeat the demon lord. She is told that they are the two chosen from the village as representatives. Katarina, being confused about being in an RPG-like world instead of an otome-line one, realizes that she is in a dream and is excited to play a heroine role in the fight against the monsters. Katarina is awoken by Keith during their carriage ride, and told that they were at the castle. Despite being representatives of their village, they still need to be selected as a true hero. She asks on how they were selected as the representative, and Keith tells her that it's done by lottery. Katarina admires the RPG-style outfits of everyone in the crowd, before the high priest arrives and announces the details of the selection.

Everyone is divided into small groups and left to face monsters in order to assess their abilities. Katarina, who has never fought before, is scared of the task because she's never fought monster before. Unlike Keith who looked like a knight, her weapon is a hoe. She asks the officiate beside her if she can just eliminate herself and watch from the side, to which Keith sighs in disbeliefs and the man giggles at the confession. As the officiate yelled at the sight of a world, everyone got ready for battle. While Katarina admired the fight from afar, she realized that something else was growling besides the wolf. Timeskip to hours later, Katarina was selected as a hero with the title of "Monster Tamer", and the officiate reveals himself to be Prince Geordo and asks to be a part of her party. As Katarina and her party march on to face the demon king, they encounter a witch, who reveals herself to be Miri with a book of manners. Katarina then wakes up from the dream.

Volume 4 - Dreamland Genderbender

Katarina wakes up to the sight of a male butler waking her up to tell her that she is late for school. When she asks him who he is, he says that he is Anne, Katarina's faithful butler. Katarina realizes that Anne is a man, and that she isn't a she, but a HE! Katarina freaks out at the fact that he is a man and realizes that there is something on his waist that definitely shouldn't be there. Before Katarina could ponder about it for too long, Anne helps him prepare for school. He gets greeted by Keith, and he becomes overwhelmed by how cute (and yet somehow very Keith-looking) she was. When they got to the Academy, Katarina is greeted by Geordo and Alan, who are princesses instead of princes. Due to the fact that everyone's names were still the same despite being gender-switched, she realizes she's in a dream and plays along. Mary greets Katarina good morning, and Katarina notes how gentlemanly and dashing he looked. Katarina was then greeted by Nicol, whose smile was so lovely it made everyone blush. As she pondered on whether the female Nicol was more charming than her male counterpart, Sophia greets Katarina.

On their way to class, Katarina looks into a window and feels bad about how mostly the same he looked despite being a boy. Geordo clings onto his right arm as she tries to lead him to class (emphasizing her chest while doing so, which Katarina notes as being possibly bigger than Mary's), while Keith takes the other arm and gets angry at the princess for her behavior. Katarina is overwhelmed by Keith's adorable height, and lets go of both of them to hug her. Geordo takes a hold of Katarina, vocalizing his jealousy over his touchy-ness with Keith and demands the same treatment because they are engaged and because she is much more attractive than Keith. The argument between Geordo and Keith becomes heated, discussing whether or not a huge chest is much more attractive in a woman. Alan doesn't want to be a part of it, and Nicol stops their discussion as it is embarrassing to hear for the other students. Katarina doesn't know how to react since she is a boy in this situation. When they get to the classroom, they are greeted by Maria, which prompts Katarina to contemplate on what the differences are in the world now that they all swapped genders. When they get to student council room, Katarina compliments Raphael on how small and adorable she looks, bringing back the heated discussion between the girls about chest sizes. Katarina shouts that he has no preference, and then wakes up from the dream.

Volume 5 - Doom Route Kindergarten

Anne introduces herself as a daycare worker at Doom Route Kindergarten, and awaits the arrival of the students. First car arrives with Geordo and Alan, children from a well-off family. Anne is asked to take care of the two, who she nicknames "Sebastian the Butler". Anne notes on how well mannered the two are, and how they are apparently children of a government figure. Next car arrives with Mary, who is a the very feminine fashionista among the children, who loves flowers and fashion. Next car arrives with Nicol and Sophia, who were admired by the staff because their loving parents drop and pick them up from school themselves. Nicol is rumored to be a future seducer by the staff, and Anne notes on how they used to never interact with other children until recently. Next comes a woman on a bike, revealing herself to be Maria's mother who is there to drop Maria off. Despite being the daughter of a normal company employee, Maria was able to enroll into a private kindergarten through a scholarship due to her talent in baking despite her young age. Maria used to have a hard time adjusting to being a school for rich kids, but she had become more enthusiastic about school more recently.

When Maria asked Anne if Katarina will like the treats she made, on cue, another car arrives. Miri angrily drags a half asleep Katarina out of the car, reprimanding her for napping as soon as she finished eating breakfast. Miri apologizes for her daughters rudeness, and Anne replies that she's used to it. Anne tries to wake up Katarina by telling her that Maria made treats for her, which works and jolts Katarina awake. Katarina constantly clings onto Anne and asks her to play with her, while the other children tries to get Katarina to play with them instead. Anne notes how happy she is that Katarina likes her so much, even if she gets glared at by the children as a result. After receiving so much offers of different activities to do, Katarina settles on challenging Alan, which everyone follows them to. Anne runs after them telling them not to climb any trees again. After that, Katarina wakes up from the dream.

Volume 6 - Magical★Girl Flag Breakers

I already made an attempt to translate this chapter, since Manga Volume 6 has yet to come out in english, so I suggest reading it! I'll still summarize it though I guess

Katarina is on her way to school, running with a cucumber in her mouth, until she accidentally bumps into what looks like a small doll. The doll talks back to her, making her realize that it is sentient. Katarina and the doll, who reveals himself to be Raphael the Spirit, have a quick banter that escalates into a discussions about the nature of spirits and the danger that the planet will soon face. As Raphael finishes his explanation, monsters summoned by the evil organization began to attack in a nearby park. Katarina and Raphael checks it, and finds a giant stuffed bear rampaging. Katarina attempts to flee, but Raphael asks her to help him. In a panic, Katarina says yes, and the two form a contract. Katarina transforms into a magical girl and attempts to fight the monster. Despite being confused, she was able to win, and thus beginning her journey as a magical girl.

Timeskip to a few weeks/months later, Katarina mentions that she had found more magical girls among students in her school which includes Mary from the Gardening Club, Sophia from the Literature Club and Maria from the Student Council. The three were recruited by a spirit named Anne. The four are close friends who walk together to school. During one of their walks, they are interrupted by Geordo, one of the Four Kings of Ruin who are part of the Evil Organization. Mary, Sophia and Maria get angry at him for ruining the moment between the girls, and Geordo calls upon his allies in order to be alone with Katarina. From the sky descends the other members of the Four Kings: Alan, Keith and Nicol. Rather than being excited for battle, the three instead berated Geordo for calling them during their free time. Geordo asks them to fight off the other three girls so that he can be alone with Katarina, but instead they interact with Katarina whom they have already met prior. In the end, Geordo is arguing with Mary and Sophia, Alan and Keith are flushed in the corner at the sight of Katarina, and Nicol and Maria are sharing food (since he dropped his pasta after being summoned by Geordo). Katarina wonders if she really is a magical girl since they haven't actually been fighting whenever they encounter each other, and then wakes up from the dream.

Rereading this now, I may have made these summaries a little too long... I hope this doesn't discourage anyone from reading the Bonus SS yourselves!! Please read them, they are so funny and good!!

Detective Katarina's Office isn't available yet, I might edit this post when that drops.

Thank you for the ask (help my fingers hurt from typing jshdfg)

[ot3]

What's the core appeal of orv? I know the premise but why does it make you so hyped up?

OH BOY OH BOY....... i will try to be as concise as possible here but i could write without exaggeration thousands of words about why orv is good. But I guess here's the big stuff.

- Its funny, for starters. it is extremely funny, which is very high up on my media priority list. in orv, there will be incredibly grim things that make you laugh, and incredibly cringe and silly anime bullshit that will hurt you as heavily as any other media you’ve seen. 

- it executes it’s thematic arcs with pinpoint precision the likes of which i’ve hardly ever seen anything else manage to do. regardless of whether or not the themes themselves are the sort of themes you go bonkers for in media, it’s always just delightful to see something perfectly stick it’s landing in terms of the big concepts its trying to grapple with, and orv does

- it’s got fun and fascinating worldbuilding mechanics. the core concept being ‘reality now operates on the rules of a shitty novel’ means that the worldbuilding doesn’t have to function logically, it functions thematically. it’s explicitly stated in orv canon that some of the internal rules governing this new reality are objectively really stupid and illogical, but they just have to roll with it because that’s what was in the book, and i think it’s a really enjoyable way to do it. This may at first sound like a copout, where the writer is trying to excuse their own bad worldbuilding, but it isn’t. The world building is actually incredibly deeply thought out, but it doesn’t exist for the sake of rational function, it exists for the sake of, once again, furthering orv’s thematic arcs. the rules by which this universe operate do a magnificent job of strengthening the core concepts the authors are exploring. 

- it deals with morality in a really wonderful and nuanced way. there are almost no characters in orv’s extremely large cast of characters who are just explicitly morally condemnable, and almost every conflict allows you to understand exactly why the antagonists believe they’re in the right by opposing the actions of our protagonists. the central conflicts are never pure right and pure wrong; they’re always about contrasting goals, conflicting worldviews, and different priorities between ends and means. this makes the conflicts all feel so much more dynamic and engaging than those where the only stakes are physical harm. 

- the characters interpersonal relationships are some of the most interesting ive ever seen. orv is very slow burn and it takes a long time for a lot of these to come out of the woodwork, by design, but by god once they do they fucking hit. similar to the plot conflicts, the interpersonal conflicts also almost never occur where there’s one side clearly in the wrong. the characters are almost all genuinely attempting to do their best by each other, and the tension comes from the ways in which human communication is fundamentally imperfect and part of our feelings and intentions get lost in translation. it’s very heartwrenching and heartwarming to see unfold, in equal measure. 

- following from that, it’s a narrative that really meaningfully prioritizes non-romantic relationships over romantic ones as the central focus. obviously there’s shipbait and the ot3 is real and good and my friend but if you’re looking for deep complex platonic, (found or otherwise) familial, and antagonistic relationships that never get ruined with forced romantic arcs, we got em baby!

- the pacing is unlike anything i’ve ever seen before. from a purely technical standpoint, it is genuinely a fascinating case study in how to execute a narrative that is almost constantly escalating without exception. there is very little downtime or breathing room in orv, which is insane for something that clocks in at over a million words, and somehow, it still works. i’ve never felt more like a frog in a pot of slowly boiling water than i did when i was reading orv and i can’t believe they pulled it off. it’s so interesting to read something like that.

- it is a tragedy without resorting to cynicism and a very adult narrative that’s really steeped in childlike wonder. i’m a big fan of cartoons made for children cartoons made for children are my favorite things to watch because i like media that is uplifting and encouraging. but of course children’s media will always be simplified and not very relatable to an adult. orv is very much a serious and heavy adult narrative, and a deeply tragic one at that, but this is never tragedy for tragedy’s sake. it’s a very compassionate piece of media over all, that holds a lot of reverence and sympathy for the ‘naive’ optimism of children that gets stripped down over time. if you, like me, feel more like a grown up child than an adult someday, i think it’ll hit for you. 

- if you are a person who has ever gotten deeply involved in media to ignore bad things happening in the real world, which i know you are because you are reading my tumblr blog, then there is going to be a lot about orv which resonates for you. a lot of metanarrative has attempted to comment on the voyeuristic nature of media obsession and storytelling, but a lot of it does so in a bizarre way that almost seems to shame the audience for having the audacity to... enjoy the product the creators have produced for them. orv is what i can only describe as a love-letter to its own audience, and it’s really a manifesto about how engagement with media can foster genuine human intimacy, even if initially it’s something you’re using as a crutch to replace that intimacy. the closest thing to orv’s metanarrative i can think of would be undertale. if undertale made you Feel some Things, orv is gonna make you Feel some Things as well. 

- it is extremely cathartic and meaningful. i am not exaggerating at all when i say that reading it gave me the closest thing i have ever felt to any sort of spiritual breakthrough. it helped unfuck my head a ton during some very grim times and i think the perspective it offers on the value of human life is a really really good one

- its really funny i promise

- its cringe in a way that’s hype

- please read orv please not even for me do it for yourself i want you to experience what i experienced for YOUR sake not mine

[mariaiscrafting]

I keep fucking thinking of little c!Techno things, and ik I have to make that character analysis post later and not right now because it will take forever and I'm really fucking tired, but I'm just gonna dump a few things so I don't forget them:

- history of being unable to verbally express his emotional attachment to anyone except Phil unless it's in moments of immediate danger (tommy about to get killed by dream, ranboo in peril bc of the egg)

- adhd brain go brr, inability to focus on conversations nts might consider super important bc his brain just looks for other things to focus on after too much excitement (also applicable to cc!techno after too much lore, basically)

- other than when he's pushed to his emotional limits, being really lighthearted/dismissive of things that make him feel too emotional because he just doesn't want to deal with emotions (reaction to tommy's death with hesitance then masking it with false joy, getting really scared of sapnap killing him for .2 seconds then masking that with jokes and intense focus, feigning indifference when ranboo gave him a replacement axe of peace)

- constantly getting emotionally and physically hurt by people and never getting closure, so he just compounds all his emotional hurt and severely internalizes it, so now he has literally no sense of self-awareness and takes no damn accountability for his actions bc to him, it's all justified by every time someone hurt him

- his anarchism stemming from a view of governments as unjust, perpetuating unjust violence, rule, and punishments; now he gets so paranoid about another government forming after almost getting executed by one that he jumps the gun

- even though the egg is technically more of a government and more of a danger than snowchester at the moment, techno doesn't realize that he still holds a grudge against tubbo after all these months, and also has some unaddressed guilt for the time he took one of his canon lives, all culminating into resentment that made him hyper focus on tubbo and snowchester this stream, even if, objectively, that made no logical sense

- the progression from joining the first rebellion against the manberg government after the rebellion's creation, to nipping the new tubbo presidency in the bud with the withers, to now checking in on snowchester before it's even established itself as a nation (progression of trying to prevent shit before it starts, increased paranoia)

- an innate need to make sure everyone else is always less powerful than him because he's just so damn afraid of death. everyone talks about how c!dream is scared of death, and yet views himself as a god, and techno is such an interesting parallel to that. when equipping the rebels before the pogtopia vs manberg war, techno gave everyone purposefully inferior armor (all the armor he gave had fire prot iv or something similar instead of prot iv). he grinded for hours upon hours upon joining the server, just so he would no longer be in iron armor while everyone else was in diamond. he went completely overkill with potions in his fight against quackity, despite knowing that his pvp skills are better than quackity's anyways. he literally spawned withers in l'manberg just so he could get his axe back from fundy and ranboo because he felt so vulnerable without his one, op weapon. now, he doesn't see his wither skulls as comparable to snowchester's nukes bc his skulls, in techno's eyes, are simply a necessary form of self-defense, while surely snowchester could turn violent at any moment (/s).

[rays-animorphs]

In honor of tomorrow being primary elections in my state (which is also the Animorphs' state), I'm going to speculate on the Animorphs' voting and other political habits. Once they come of age. After they all survive, naturally.

Cassie: votes every. single. election. Works the polls when she's not busy doing something else. Calls her national representatives regularly on issues that she cares about, generally environmental and humanitarian concerns, and writes passionate and eloquent letters to her local and state representatives. Sometimes gets roped into driving people to the polls by her parents -- not her favorite thing, but she understands it's important.

Jake: understands it's his Civic Responsibility to vote and that he should do it. Votes most of the time. Might know the names of his representatives. Probably votes Democrat because Cassie would be annoyed at him otherwise. Values integrity and competence. Is not big on contacting his representatives because he figure the whole point of a representative democracy is that it's the representatives' jobs to figure out what legislation to pass. He does his job, they should do theirs.

Rachel: I would like to think that Rachel gets super into leftist politics in her late teens or early 20's. She's either indifferent to who and what is on the ballot, or is going all out for her preferred ballot measure or candidate. Will she spend hours and hours phone banking? Yes. Will she powerwalk through neighborhoods putting up doorhangers? Yes. Will she pester all of her friends and family and casual acquaintances until they've said they've voted? Yes. Will she use her Animorphs skills to secretly do things like blow up police buildings? Also yes.

When she discovers you can set up meetings with your representatives, she goes and does that, a lot. Sometimes Cassie comes along, but Rachel takes a very confrontational style that makes Cassie uncomfortable so it doesn't always go well for her. Her favorite times are when she can get together a group of people to show up at city counsel meetings and shout at them when she thinks they're doing the wrong things.

Tobias: thinks voting is a waste of time. Also, it's hard to vote when you spend all of your time as a hawk.

Marco: Marco is interesting. As far as I can tell his main goal in life is to make absolutely egregious amounts of money, which means he would be inclined to vote Republican except...the Republicans keep being fucking racist, and worse, fucking racist about people like him and his mom. So I think that keeps him voting Democrat. At least in the major elections.

Ax: so, I'm not sure either what Andalite governance is like or what happens to Ax at the end of the series, so I'm going to make up what I think would happen if Ax stuck around on Earth after the war and got naturalized as a US citizen.

I'm not sure how Ax would vote. But I think he would absolutely love jury duty.

I'm not joking. The arcane rules about what jurors are and aren't allowed to do, the legal arguments, the lawyers going into technical details about bullet trajectories or under what circumstances businesses need to put safety warnings on their products...Ax would love it, you know he would. It's better than the reading the World Almanac.

[mudpuddless]

Q-Branch's Saturday night dish

aka. tofu & veggie noodles, because they make everything better, even nightshifts. (recipe under the cut)

Ingredients are (as the name suggests) highly variable and partially not even strictly necessary but if you want a simple simple dish you can always eat microwave lasagna, so:

noodles (instant ramen? rice noodles? leftover spaghetti? anything goes)

veggies (I used aubergine, zucchini and pea pods because thats what I had on hand. usually at the very bottom of a fridge there are at least some carrots, even in q-branch)

tofu (self explanatory. also not technically required but. ya know. just do it. q-branch typically has some on hand because it keeps for forever)

furthermore:

soysauce

sesame oil (no, its not necessary. its only a teaspoon. I'm not saying you need to add it but you absolutely need to add it)

cooking oil or butter

chili (powder? chopped and dried? fresh? or *gasp* none at all? doesn't matter. of you're cooking for the rest of the team you might want to leave that to personal preference but ya know.((if you want to join team villains, just dumb a whole bunch and dont tell anyone))

lemon juice (again not necessary but you should still absolutely put it, trust me)

garlic

onions

cream/ coconut milk (as per preference. you can always leave it out completely but it helps if you prefer milder dishes)

peanuts (just. peanuts. they can be salted or plain or leftover from some trail mix. again: check with the rest of the shift if anyone is allergic. putting peanuts in food for someone with a nut allergy won't even land you in team villains, even we aren't that bad)

sugar (or honey, if your boss happens to be the extravagant kind and keeps honey for tea around)

water (you always need water. if not for the dish because your noodles are already cooked and your veggies dont need to be steamed, you could always drink some. also take your meds.)

Then you need some kitchen appliances:

a pan, coated of possible because yes

a cutting board for this veggies you are adding because scurvy is not something someone from the 21st century should die from. also for the tofu.

a knife (NOOO) or two knives. or three if youre feeling fancy. the more the merrier and so on

a pot or kettle if you need to cook your noodles and depending on which noodles you're using.

maybe a measuring spoon, but you know. the rules were made to be broken.

NOW. COOKING *cries in teenager*

(these steps read like a choose your own adventure novel except there are no numbers because no. just follow the instructions)

#1 NOODLES:

-> if you have leftover spaghetti: good for you. onto the veggies.

-> if you are using instant ramen: prepare them like usual, except you don't add the seasoning and chilipowder and plant oil and whatever else, to make the worlds most disappointing bowl of ramen.

-> if you are using any kind of asian noodles: usually you can cook them pretty easily by playing them in a bowl and pouring boiling water on top. just let them steep and you're fine. (if they need to cooked, as in "in a pot" cooked (like spaghetti) , do that instead. if you have a choice between spaghetti and any kind of ramen, choose the ramen though)

#2 VEGGIES:

(just. pick whichever veggies youre using, again: these can grow cold so you could use left overs. just. consider what spices are already on them)

-> carrots: cut into thin slices (like wheels but more angled for fanciness points), roast in cooking oil with a pinch of sugar

-> zucchini: cut into 3 mm or 1/8 inch wheels, place in a bowl, cover with boiling water and a pinch of salt, till you like the consistency (usually 7-10 minutes), then drain

-> aubergine: steam with water and a pinch of salt until done, add more water as necessary, place aside when done

-> peapods: roast with a bit of oil and a pinch of salt, place aside when done

-> broccoli or cauliflower: split the little tree thingies into quarters along the vertical axis, roast with a bit of oil and a pinch of salt, place aside when done

-> peas or corn: if they're fresh, add them to a pan with a spoon full of water and roast in a bit of oil and a pinch of slat and sugar when they're almost done

-> any canned veggies (peas, corn, bamboo sprout slices etc): drain and put aside, canned veggies are all cooked in the canning proccess

!!! IT DOESN'T MATTER OF YOU NOODLES/ VEGGIES COOL DOWN OR GO COLD ENTIRELY, SO JUST MAKE THEM WHENEVER YOU HAVE TIME!!!

#3 TOFU

-> cut your block of tofu into cubes (circa one inch or 1.3 cm), place the cubes on a paper towel to get rid of excess water. in a pan heat a tablespoon of oil, a pinch of sugar, a pinch of salt and some chili flakes. add the tofu when the oil is hot and fry till golden brown.

!!! IT DOESN'T MATTER OF YOU NOODLES/ VEGGIES COOL DOWN OR GO COLD ENTIRELY, SO JUST MAKE THEM WHENEVER YOU HAVE TIME!!!

to finish off:

slice up some onions and roast in a bit of oil and a pinch of sugar and salt.

add crushed and diced garlic

add crushed or diced peanuts

add all your veggies and stir

add your noodles and stir

add any amount of soy sauce depending on the amount of food you're making. keep in mind the amount of salt you added to the individual veggies. (safe amounts are anything form one to four table spoons of soy sauce)

add one teaspoon of sugar

stir.

when you think you're done, keep stirring for another ten seconds.

taste: does it need more salt? sugar? soy sauce? this recipe is too vague on everything else for me to give precise measurements for the sauce, so taste test!!!

if you added too much salt, added too much chili or like coconut milk: add coconut milk

stir again

place in a bowl

sprinkle as much chili as you like on top

add (depending on your portion size and preference) half to a full teaspoon of sesame oil by drizzling it on top

stir and enjoy

use your newfound energy to take over the British government from the inside. join team villains :)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Privacy Without Monopoly, EU edition

Tech monopoly apologists insist that there’s something exceptional about tech that makes it so concentrated: “network effects” (when a product gets better because more people use it, like a social media service).

They’re wrong.

Tech is concentrated because the Big Tech companies buy up or crush their nascent competitors — think of Facebook’s predatory acquisition of Instagram, which Zuckerberg admitted (in writing!) was driven by a desire to recapture the users who were leaving FB in droves.

Google’s scale is driven by acquisitions — Search and Gmail are Google’s only successful in-house products. Everything else, from Android to Youtube to their entire ad-tech stack, was once a standalone business that Google captured.

Monopolies extract monopoly rents — like those delivered by Googbook’s crooked ad-tech marketplaces, or Apple/Google’s 30% app shakedown — and use them to maintain their monopolies. Google gives Apple billions every year so it will be the default Ios and Safari search.

These are the same tactics that every monopolist uses — high-stakes moneyball that creates a “kill-zone” around the monopolist’s line of business that only a fool would try to enter. Tech DOES have network effects, but that’s not what’s behind tech monopolies.

We see monopolies in industries from bookselling to eyeglasses, accounting to cheerleading uniforms, pro wrestling to energy, beer to health insurance. These monopolies all follow Big Tech’s template of mobilizing monopoly rents to buy or crush all competition.

The differences between the anticompetitive tactics that monopolized these industries are largely cosmetic — swap out a few details and you might well be describing how John D Rockefeller and Standard Oil monopolized the oil markets in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Big Tech does have network effects, but these are actually a tool that can be used to dismantle monopolies, as well as maintaining them. Network effects are double-edged swords: if a service gets more valuable as users join, it also gets less valuable as users leave.

If you want to understand the anticompetitive structure of the tech industry, you’d be better off analyzing switching costs, not network effects. Switching costs are the things you have to give up when you leave a service behind.

If your customers, community, family members or annotated photos and other memories are locked up in Facebook’s walled garden (or if you’ve got money sunk in proprietary media or apps on Apple’s, etc), then the switching cost is losing access to all of that.

Here’s where tech really is different: tech has intrinsically low switching costs. Latent in all digital technology is the capacity to interoperate, to plug a new service into an old one, to run an old app inside a simulator (“runtime”).

There’s no good technical reason you can’t leave Facebook but take your treasured photos with you — and continue to exchange messages with the people you left behind.

True, Facebook has gone to extraordinary lengths to keep its switching costs high, deploying technical countermeasures to block interoperability. But these aren’t particularly effective. Lots of people have figured out how to reverse-engineer FB and plug new things into it.

Power Ventures created an app that aggregated your FB feed with feeds from rival services, giving you a single dashboard. NYU’s Ad Observer scraps the political ads FB shows you for analysis to check whether FB is enforcing its own paid political disinformation rules.

And there’s a whole constellation of third-party Whatsapp clients that add features FB has decided Whatsapp users don’t deserve, like the ability to block read-receipts or run multiple accounts on the same device.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/african-whatsapp-modders-are-masters-worldwide-adversarial-interoperability

Most of these are technical successes, but they’re often legal failures. FB has used the monopoly rents it extracted to secure radical new laws and new interpretations of existing laws to make these tactics illegal.

Power Ventures was sued into oblivion. Ad Observer is fighting for its life. The Whatsapp mods are still going strong, but that may be down to the jurisdictions where they thrive — sub-Saharan Africa — where FB has less legal muscle.

With low switching costs, much of FB’s monopoly protection evaporates. Lots of people hate FB, and FB knows it. You’re on FB because your friends are there. Your friends are there because you’re there. You’ve taken each other hostage, and FB benefits.

With low switching costs, you could leave FB — but not your friends. The kill zone disappears. All we need is interoperability.

Enter the EU’s Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act, proposed regulations to force interop on the biggest Big Tech players.

The EU has recognized that mandating interop can reduce switching costs, and reducing switching costs can weaken monopoly power.

Some critics (like me!) of the EU proposals say they don’t go far enough, asking for “full interop” for rival services.

Against these calls for broader interop come warnings about the privacy implications of forcing FB to open up its servers to rivals. It’s hard enough to keep FB from abusing its users’ privacy, how will we keep track of a constellation of services that can access user data?

Last Feb, Bennett Cyphers and I published “Privacy Without Monopoly,” for EFF, describing how interoperability can enhance privacy.

Interop means that users can choose services that have better privacy policies than Facebook or other incumbent platforms.

https://www.eff.org/wp/interoperability-and-privacy

But in theory, it means that users could choose worse services — services that have worse privacy policies, services that might be able to grab your friends’ data along with your own (say, the pictures you took of them and brought with you, or their private messages to you).

That’s why, in our paper, we say that interop mandates have to be backstopped by privacy rules — democratically accountable rules from lawmakers or regulators, not self-serving “privacy” limitations set by the Big Tech companies themselves.

For example, Facebook aggressively imports your address books when you sign up, to connect you to the people you know (this isn’t always a good experience — say, if your stalker has you in their address book and automatically gets “friended” with you).

If you try to take your address book with you when you quit, FB claims your contact list isn’t “yours” — it belongs to your contacts. To protect their privacy, FB has to block you from exporting the data — making it it much harder to establish social ties on a new service.

It’s not obvious who that contact info “belongs to” (if “belong to” is even the right way to talk about private information that implicates multiple people!).

But what is obvious is that Facebook can’t be trusted to make that call.

Not only has Facebook repeatedly disqualified itself from being trusted to defend its users’ privacy, but it also has a hopeless conflict of interest, because privacy claims can be used to raise switching costs and shore up its monopoly.

In our paper, Bennett and I say that these thorny questions should be resolved democratically, not in a corporate boardroom.

Now, as it happens, there’s a region where 500M people are protected by a broad, democratically enacted privacy law: Europe, home of the GDPR.

Today, in a new appendix to “Privacy Without Monopoly,” EFF has published “The GDPR, Privacy and Monopoly,” my analysis of how the GDPR makes interoperability safer from a privacy perspective.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/06/gdpr-privacy-and-monopoly

Working with EFF’s Christoph Schmon and Bennett Cyphers, we develop a detailed analysis of the GDPR, and describe how the GDPR provides a lawful framework for resolving thorny questions about consent and blended title to data.

The GDPR itself seeks to promote interoperability; it’s right there in Recital 68: “data controllers should be encouraged to develop interoperable formats that enable data portability.” But loopholes in the rules have allowed dominant companies to stymie interop.

For years, Europeans have had the “right” to port their data, but nowhere to port that data to. The DMA closes the loopholes and dismantles the hurdles that kept switching costs high.

The GDPR’s consent/security/minimization framework sets out the parameters for any interoperability, meaning we don’t have to trust Facebook (or Google, or Amazon, or Apple) to decide when interop must be blocked “to defend users’ privacy” (and also shareholders’ profits).

Big Tech platforms already have consent mechanisms (and must continue to build them) to create the legal basis for processing user data. An interoperable FB could be a consent conduit, letting your friends decide when and whether you can take their data to a new service.

And the GDPR (not a tech executive) also determines when a new service meets the privacy standards needed for interop. It governs how that new service must handle user data, and it gives users a way to punish companies that break the rules.

Today, if you leave Facebook, your friends might not even notice. But in a world where FB is a consent conduit to manage your departure and resettlement, all your friends get signals about your departure — perhaps prompting them to consider whether they should go, too.

Far from prohibiting interop, the GDPR enables it, by creating an explicit privacy framework that is consistent across all services, both the old monopolies and the new co-ops, startups, public utilities, and other alternatives that interop would make possible.

Monopolies distort the world in two ways. The most obvious harm is to competition, choking out or buying out every alternative, so you have to live by whatever rules the monopolist sets.

But the other kind of harm is even worse: monopolists can use their political power to get away with terrible abuses.

Ad-tech concentration produced monopoly rents that blocked or weakened privacy law for decades, allowing for a grotesque degree of commercial surveillance.

We don’t want competition in surveillance.

Opening space for interop poses a legitimate risk of creating a contest to see who can violate your human rights most efficiently.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/08/leona-helmsley-was-a-pioneer/#monkeys-paw

Yet, it’s obvious that monopolists themselves shouldn’t get to decide where they should be subjected to competition and where they should be subjected to regulation. That’s a job for democratic institutions, not autocratic board-rooms.

Adding privacy regulation (strong privacy regulation, with a private right of action allowing users to sue companies for breaking the rules) to interop is how we resolve this conundrum, how we make sure we’re banning surveillance, rather than “democratizing” it.

[linkspooky]

This Thing

de·hu·man·i·za·tion 

noun

the process of depriving a person or group of positive human qualities.

This thing A meta on the dehumanization of villains done by the heroes in the manga My Hero Academia, if you’re interested read more underneath the cut.

Before saying anything else, yes crimminals are a group of people who can be dehumanized. People who break the law are still in fact people, and while this is mainly talking about a fictional work it’s worth remembering that dehumanization is a tactic used to justify violence and the taking away of human rights from crimminals and incarcerated people. 

People are still people. No matter what bad things they do they’re still people. And victims are victims even if they don’t present their victimhood in easy to digest ways. The conflict in My Hero Academia is one much more complicated than hero vs. villain because it exists within a society that generates its own villains through intentional neglect. I say neglect, because most heroes seem to be of the perspective that villains are either born evil, or choose to do evil entirely of their own free will and are never victims of circumstances or forced into the livelihood. 

Villain isn’t just what costumed crimminals are called in MHA, it’s a literal legal definition that are given to certain crimminal offenders. We don’t know what exactly the legal ramifications are, but the fact that you can literally be called a villain just for being a repeat offender shows the way hero society views it’s crimminals. 

Villain has different connotations, it means an inhuman evil, not just a person who has done bad things. Police also have much more power in comparison to our society as well, in the manga vigilantes when his sister Makoto brings up the fact that technically her friend who has been accused of villainry is innocent until proven guilty and formally charged. 

Tsukauchi gets physically angry with her. 

What’s important in this situation is the girl they’re arguing about pop step is an innocent victim. She was kidnapped by a man, had a parasite inserted into her brain and is being physically controlled. What she needs to be is saved not put down, but the law is so inflexible it’s only capable of seeing her as a villain not as a person caught in a bad situation who needs to be saved from that situation. 

And it’s much later revealed that there is technically a way to save her life, but because it requires breaking of the laws the police and heroes won’t ever do it. Beating her up won’t save her, it’ll just kill her as an innocent victim of circumstance, and stop her from doing any more damage to the people around her. Even if the police knew the way to save her life they won’t attempt it because it breaks the law. 

Being a by the book cop is all well and good, but when the law that exists doesn’t protect people there’s something wrong with the law. This isn’t an isolated incident either, we’re shown over and over again in the main manga as well this is always how villains are responded to, violent suppression. 

At the start of the manga Shigaraki says this, that heroes and villains are both violent but because heroes are categorized as such their violence suddenly becomes heroic. All Might just dismisses what he says as him being a madman.  

Not only that but in the aftermath of the break in the heroes all attempt to dissect Shigaraki’s character. They all make him out to be some kind of insane person that could have no possible rationale or reason behind his actions. 

They dismiss Shigaraki’s attack as him simply being a man-child who thinks he can do whatever he wants. There’s no possible way that he could have any kind of sympathetic reason or human rationale, because he’s a villain, right? Except we learn later that’s not the case. 

The words that Shigaraki is saying to All Might echo the words of his abuser. Shigaraki is like this not out of his own choice, but because he was deliberately shapped and moulded by someone. The reason why Shigaraki is impuslively violent is because as a literal five year old he was exposed to violence over and over again, and told this is who he was, this is what he was for. 

All Might later discovers that Shigaraki is not only the son of Nana Shimura’s son, a child he was personally responsible for when his mother died but decided to go along with his mother’s plan to abandon him (for his protection) and then also that All for One had specifically raised Shimura Tenko as a weapon against him. All Might knowing completely the manipulative kind of man that All for One is, and that Shimura must have been young when All for One took him in. Is still able only to see Shigaraki as a crimminal. 

He is literally told that he can’t see him as anything other than a villain otherwise his judgement would be affected. At this point it’s not even ignorance, it’s intentional neglect. All Might SHOULD know that something is up with Shimura Tenko and that he didn’t choose to become a villain and was most likely influenced by All for One and yet the heroes all choose to ignore that fact and instead put him down like any other crimminal. 

The problem with dehumanizing crimminals is that cops are not omniscient. Cops make mistakes. Cops are wrong, like... a lot. When you give people the power of law, there are people who are victims who were just trying to survive who are going to get caught up and treated exactly the same as people who are genuinely dangerous and out to hurt others like AFO. There are people who are perfectly innocent sometimes who will get caught up in it too.

People like Tsukauchi and Gran Torino may be good cops, they may be by the book cops, but that’s it. They’re the type that gets angry at the fact that due process exists because they believe that cops always suspect the right people, and that their hunches are never wrong or they could never possibly arrest someone who doesn’t deserve it. Neither of them acknowledge that the system is flawed and often makes mistakes, and because of that they end up believing that the police are always in the right, that the police could never prosecute someone wrongly, and those are dangerous beliefs to have for literally any law system, especially one with guys that shoot lasers out of their eyes.. The reason due process exists is not to slow the hand of justice, it’s because the legal system is really flawed. 

The problem with giving too much power to police is that we don’t exist in a perfect world where the police will obey even their own laws. Why don’t we just put cameras in everybody’s houses? People who aren’t doing anything illegal won’t have anything to worry about. Unless suddenly things like speaking out against the government become illegal because the police now have the power to enforce it. What I’m saying is the rule of law does not necessarily = good or evil. Rules are not always good, and they’re also not absolutes they change all the time, and they also don’t always exist to protect people they need to protect. We see this literally happen in My Hero Acadmia, the government uses it’s power to kidnap a child and erase his name literally the exact same way All for One did so he could be raised as a child soldier. 

The conflict in My Hero Academia is not good guys vs bad guys, especially when the good guys don’t even act as good guys, and a step beyond that rigid laws and adherence to social order is not ever going to solve the problems associated with villains like Shigaraki because those laws are fundamentally unjust. They don’t exist to protect the people who most need protecting, they exist to oppress a minority in order to maintain social order. 

Yes, violent crimminals are still a group of people. They are still human beings with rights. If they’re not guaranteed those rights they will be abused. We’ve literally seen this play out in action. 

Hawks corners Twice, and then says he’ll go out of his way to Save Twice because he personally likes him. The only one of the villains Hawks treats as a human and not just an enemy to put down is Twice, and only because he personally likes him. 

Twice brings up the fact that all of his friends deserve to be saved the same way he is. In fact, he even goes out of his way to say that he would die to save these people, and Hawks just ignores them because he sees no humanity in them only the one he personally likes. 

Then Hawks goes out of his way to mention that if Twice doesn’t stop fighting back, it’s his fault if they die. Twice is trying to argue with Hawks that the people he sees as a danger to society, and that need to be taken down are humans capable of being kind just as much as they are a threat. 

Twice murders him. He goes out of his way to murder him and stab him in the back. Hawks acting in a capacity as a hero, goes out of his way to dehumanize Twice again and again, completely ignore his own feelings and words, and then that conflict eventually escalates to murder. The point is not that Hawks had no choice but to kill him, but rather Hawks convinced himself he had no choice but to kill Twice. 

The problem with applying this extremely harsh and punitive, even war-like view of law and order is that innocent people like Twice who literally only wanted to keep his friends happy will get caught up in it. Hawks literally thought that Twice had a chance for rehabilitation, that of the league he was the one most likely to rehabilitate and he still murdered him.

Heroes aren’t interested in rehabilitation. They are there to beat up villains. For several of them, it’s not even that far of a jump to get to the point where they start justifying killing villains. Miruko is almost excited to murder the Nomu who are, you know, innocent victims of mad science. 

They want to take down Ujiko, but they don’t care at all about his creations which are all former people, and the heroes know this by this point. Finally, I want to discuss one of the most empathic characters in the manga. 

Aiawa is the current guardian of Eri. He participated in the mission to rescue her from Chisaki. He is someone who views Eri as a victim, and never gets upset with her or blames her for her out of control quirk the same way Chisaki once did. 

Not only that but Aizawa himself has had a friend kidnapped and stolen away by All for One. He knows personally what All for One can do to a person, by changing Shirakumo to Kurogiri he completely warped his personality and controlled him to the point where the person he once was was almost gone. 

He knows All for One is capable of having that affect on people, not only that but Kurogiri himself says that Shigaraki is like a lost kitten that he can’t throw away because he feels responsible. 

Aizawa has rescued a victim who is in similiar circumstances to Shigaraki. Aizawa has literally seen his best friend warped and changed by All for One’s hand. It should be obvious what Shigaraki has been through by now, and yet Aizawa doesn’t seem to care about Shigaraki’s circumstances at all.

Shirakumo has done bad things in AFO’s name as well. However, Aizawa decides to see Shirakumo as a victim. Even though Shirakumo is also complicit in the grooming and raising of Shigaraki for what he is, and almost certainly had a hand in manipulating him. 

Aizawa empathizes with Kurogiri because he knows him personally, because he wants Shirakumo back. He doens’t bother to care about Shigaraki, because he doesn’t know Shigaraki personally. It’s not only hypocritical, it’s also just plain ignorance. 

Aizawa is literally given every story reason to care. Shirakumo literally tells Aizawa that Shigaraki is a person he wants to protect and that he’s fond of. Aizawa believes that despite the terrible things he’s done, there’s still the boy who wanted to become a hero somewhere in Kurogiri, and he’s literally proven right. 

Shirakumo still has a chance and is given a chance to become a hero, because Aizawa cares about him because they were friends but that’s about it. It’s not like Aizawa is driven by a very rigorous and strict sense of justice. He’s clearly willing to make exceptions, even for people who have put his students at risk, or even personally attacked him. He’s willing to reach out and understand Shirakumo’s circumstances, so clearly he doesn’t have a completely black and white view of good and evil. However, Aizawa’s reasons for sympathizing with Kurogiri and only Kurogiri are ultimately pretty selfish. It’s because he wants Shirakumo back. He doesn’t care about the circumstances, or even who Kurogiri cares about now he just wants his old friend back. Therefore he has no reason to care about Shigaraki who was victimized in a similiar way to Kurogiri, just because he doesn’t know him. I guess you’re not obligated to care about anybody, but it’s the exact opposite of empathy, especially in a character like Aizawa who has always shown to be especially protective of children. Nobody tries to understand Shigaraki, nobody tries to empathize with him, even though he also once had the exact same dream as both Shirakumo, and even Deku. 

But Shigaraki’s just a monster that needs to be put down and stopped, there’s not a fragment of good in him like there was for Kurogiri, like there was for Twice. 

Aizawa even gets angry at Ujiko for the callous way he treats human lives. For the way they were tossed aside. He’s righteously angry for Ujiko’s victims, especially Kurogiri. But he doesn’t stop to think for a second that Shigaraki is possibly another victim manipulated by the likes of Ujiko. Once again because Aizawa doesn’t personally know Shigaraki, or because Shigaraki is a bad person, who cares if he gets hurt and manipulated by Ujiko. 

So we see by the heroes, Shigaraki referred to as a thing, Shigaraki referred to as an it. He’s just a monster to be stopped. It’s like he’s a boss in a video game the heroes need to kill. 

Even though they literally see him being experimented on by Ujiko, an actual abuser who has used his money and connections to commit inhuman experiments his whole life that too must be Shigaraki’s fault somehow. The heroes are repeating the exact same lines that Shigaraki’s abuser All for One did on him. 

By treating him as a monster. By treating him as a thing that needs to be killed, rather than a person who needs to be saved. They are doing All for One’s work for him by creating a symbol of fear and robbing a lifelong victim of abuse of his humanity. It’s like they want villains like Shigaraki to exist so they can remain heroes. 

[duxhess-kryzewan]

Could you do protective Obi-Wan? If Obitine had a daughter and there was some boyfriend troubles? *Waggles eyebrows*

Authors note: This isn’t technically what the prompt says but I was having a bit of writers block so I tweaked it ever so slightly. I hope it still was what you were looking for.

- Mothers Daughter - 

It came at no surprise to him that being raised predominantly by her mother resulted in Jinn inheriting Satine's various traits. She was certainly her mother through and through, the exception being her mane of auburn hair and occasional proclivity for tactical combat, something Obi-Wan was more than happy to teach her, and while Satine disapproved she allowed him to show their daughter everything she would need to know about self-defense.

He should have known though that as she entered her early teenage years she would end up more and more like her parents. Clever, but at times a little too keen on breaking the rules. Really he would blame Anakin's influence, but he couldn't deny the simple fact that he and Satine did their fair share of illicit affairs at her age.

Still, when he glanced out the balcony window and towards the gardens the last thing he expected to see was Jinn hand and hand with one of the younger guards, pulling him quickly into the cover of the trees. He knows the spot well; it was the same hiding place he and Satine used.

He sprinted to Satine's study without a second thought, all but throwing the door open and startling her in the process. Her had only just arrived back from the temple and hadn’t even alerted her of his presence.

"Are you trying to scare me to death?"

Normally he would apologize for spooking her - the last thing he wanted was to ever put her in some form of distress - but he was too focused on the mission at hand.

"I saw Jinn in the gardens." He begins.

Satine blinks, "They are part of her home Obi-Wan."

He shoots her a mild glare, "With another person."

"I presume this was a boy or you wouldn't be so flustered at the moment." She concludes.

"With one of the guards. One of her guards I can only assume and I have a strong feeling he wasn't accompanying her for protection."

The laugh from Satine is so unexpected that he really has to question if that's what he's truly hearing.

"Our daughter is sneaking away to the gardens with one of her appointed guards and all you can do is laugh?"

Satine had finally lost it, he concludes. Years of ruling Mandalore and maintaining such a strong government has finally taken it's toll on her and made her go absolutely mad. It's the only explanation he can come up with to justify her reaction.

"She's 17, Obi-Wan. Do you remember what we were doing around that age?" Satine says, clearly trying to hold back another fit of giggles.

He does, which makes him all the more concerned.

"Illicit activities that our daughter certainly shouldn't be doing."

Satine shakes her head, clearly still bemused by his distress, "Our daughter also isn't on the run virtually alone with a handsome Jedi. I think our situation was a bit different than Jinn having a crush on one of the hundreds of people in the palace, Obi-Wan."

It was a valid point. Even with Qui-Gon presence, he and Satine had been relatively alone together for almost an entire year on the run. It was inevitable that they were going to develop feelings and in turn became just as physically involved as they were emotionally.

"The circumstances were very much different. She isn't being forced on the run with only that person or constantly facing the prospect of dying at every turn." He defends.

"I hope you're not implying that's the only reason we're together."

He inwardly sighs. Satine was never one to twist his or anyone else's words to her benefit, and he knew part of her was joking, though he worried there was another part he just unintentionally hurt in the process.

"You know that's not the case," He says softly, reaching out and taking her hand in his own, "I simply mean that they're two incomparable situations."

She smiles softly at him before standing up from her desk, still holding on to his hand, "Jinn is intelligent. I have full confidence that's she's a bit too preoccupied with her future endeavors to become too entangled with a guard, and you-" She leans forwards and pecks him on the lips, "- need to stop being such an overprotective father."

"I'm not being overprotective, I'm being appropriately concerned about her extra curricular activities." He defends.

Satine laughs again, "I am more than certain she will divulge the details to her love life should it turn into something more than a simple crush. She does share an awful lot with me."

He feels a pang of guilt inside. While things within the order have certainly changed; with the fall of the chancellor and the rules against attachments have all been abolished, he still was away on missions much more than he would like to be. Not that Satine or Jinn would ever complain. Satine was too busy governing the planet and Jinn was preoccupied with the academy more often than not.

Still, it worried him that perhaps she trusted Satine more because she was the constant in her life.

"Don't do that to yourself." Satine says. How she would always know exactly what was going through her mind, he'll never know.

"I'm not doing anything."

Satine gives him a tender smile and cups his face in her hands, "You could be here every hour of everyday and she still would come to me about her love life. It's a female thing."

He kisses her. Of course she's right. She normally is when it comes to Jinn. Anakin was the closest thing he had experienced to having a teenager around and force knows his daughter is much more behaved than his former Padawan.

Then again, his Padawan did go and start a relationship behind his back too, so who knows anymore. Certainly not him.

"In any case, sneaking around didn't work so bad for us."

He sighs. No, it certainly didn't. ​