#this angel is bad at little lies and blatant at big ones

[lydiablackblade]

Can we just appreciate that despite Crowley being the demon and everyone expects him to be a liar, Aziraphale is the one who blatantly tells bigger lies AND more frequently?

[early2000smovieimagines]

Meeting and Dating Tod Waggner

(Not my gif)(Requested by anonymous)

(So sorry this took so long!)

- You and Tod met after being seated next to each other in class. Since you literally sat side by side, when it was time for your teacher to assign partners for classwork, you usually ended up working with him.

- When you and Tod met, neither of you were really thinking of each other in a romantic way. Tod acknowledged; in his head, that you were pretty but for a while, his thoughts never moved past that. He was more preoccupied with Christa and Blake.

- Then one day, he’d told you some stupid joke and you’d laughed, touching his arm for a split second and his heart just went …boom. He had butterflies, he was sweating, he couldn’t speak; he was a mess. After that, you were all he could really think about. 

- Tod isn’t shy but he does tend to strategize when it comes to girls. He can’t just ask them out, he has to ease into things, test the waters and make sure that they like him back. He’s not gonna jump into things just to get rejected on the first try, he’s gonna worm his way into your heart nice and slow. But taking things nice and slow is a dangerous game.

- There’s a noticeable shift in his behavior towards you but you just chalk it up to him deciding to get friendly since you’re always working together. Is is sort of strange that he’s now constantly greeting you and following you around like a lost puppy but you try not to assume anything, not wanting to jump to conclusions and wind up feeling stupid.

- A few months into his attempts and he’s preparing to ask you out. The two of you had been hanging out together when he asked if you liked him, saying it nonchalantly and joking enough that you hadn’t suspected anything by it. It was then that you dropped the bombshell on him.

“...Yeah? I wouldn’t be friends with you if I didn’t?” You’d laughed. Friends with him. Friends. He couldn’t even think of a good way to respond to that.

“Yeah, well uh, ...yeah. Just making sure, haha.” He quickly excused himself, rubbing a hand down his face as he hurried away, internally losing his mind.

- What has he done? He laid awake in bed that night contemplating whether or not he should kill himself.

- Sure, having you like him enough to be his friend was all fine and dandy, but he had not artfully flirted with you for the past few months to just be your friend. He saw now that he really had to ask you out and soon too, before you only saw him as a friend and considered other options.

“What’s your favorite food?” He’d asked you pretty much out nowhere as the two of you sat together after school one day. You gave him a bit of a quizzical look but replied to his question.

“Really? Mine too. It’s eerie how much we have in common.” He joked and you laughed, shaking your head a little as you went back to what you were doing.

“Well... you know, since it’s your favorite, and it’s my favorite, why don’t we go eat some …together?” He said a bit nervously though his voice was laced with flirtation.

- He’s still a little surprised that you agreed, even though he was almost sure that you would.

- So the two of you have your first date at a restaurant that serves said food. He may or may not have pretended to like said food just to ask you out and was stuck having to eat it because he wasn’t prepared to admit that he lied.

- You shared your first kiss on your third date. He’d taken you bowling and teasingly made a bet that if he could knock down all the pins in one shot, he could get a kiss in return. Spoiler alert: he failed, but you still generously allowed him to after he playfully persuaded you that he deserved “at least a little one”.

- And with that kiss, he’d successfully made himself a forever home in your heart.

- Lots of pda. He wants everyone to know that you’re his girlfriend; he’s very proud.

- Hugs from behind. He likes to nuzzle into you and press a kiss to the top of your head before he lets go.

- Gentle kisses. You usually lean in, expecting to pull away just as quickly, then wind up spending a full minute with your lips locked. You don’t know how he does it, but he manages to do it every time. 

- Whenever the two of you are making out; which is quite often if we’re being honest here, he’ll always chase your lips when you move to pull away. He does not make not kissing him easy. 

- Babe, baby, darling, angel, sweetheart, love of my life. And said in that exact order when you aren’t paying attention to him. He always smiles amusedly when you finally turn to him and/or realize that he’s talking to you; his grin always just gets bigger the longer it takes. 

- Does he ever stop smiling? It’s like a happy grin is his default face, and you saying that he looks adorable only makes him smile wider. 

- Cheek kisses! It doesn’t even matter if he’s giving or receiving, he just loves them.

- Want a puppy for a boyfriend? He’s always smiling big whenever you touch or call his name. You swear that if he had a tail, he’d be wagging it every time he saw you.

- Stealing his clothes, usually just to wear at his house.

- He’s a sucker for cuddling; he can never get enough of it. He’s usually the big spoon but he also really likes when you baby him, wrapping your arms around him and playing with his hair while he nuzzles his face into your chest/stomach.

- He rests his hand on your boob a lot. It’s not even a conscious decision; his hand just always ends up on your chest whenever he has his arm around you. It’s just so soft and warm, he can’t help it.

- He definitely calls himself “daddy”, like “listen to daddy” and “can daddy have a kiss”. He likes seeing the expression on your face whenever he says it.

- Getting close to George and Alex. If he’s not with you, he’s with them so you’ll see them a lot; if only just to find out where your boyfriend is.

- Study dates. He pays attention all of ten minutes before he starts to try and distract you.

- Kid and comedy movie marathons.

- Hanging out at the mall together.

- He’s pretty much up for anything date-wise. If you have an idea then he’s more than happy to do it. He just likes adventures, no matter how big or how small.

- Day trips. The two of you will just up and go do something whenever it pops into your heads, usually with little to no planning.

- Knickknack gifts. They’re oftentimes cheap and slightly tacky but you think that they’re cute nonetheless. 

- He’s probably written you; surprisingly good, romantic poetry but would literally die if you showed any of them to anyone.

- You’re always the first person he looks at whenever something funny happens. You’re also always the first person he wants to tell a story to; that is, if you aren’t around to see it happen. 

- The two of you talk on the phone practically every night, even though you pretty much see each other every day.

- You’re sort of inseparable most of the time. He isn’t a fan of doing things alone; in general, so whenever he can have you by his side, he’ll eagerly accept the company. 

- He definitely brags about you, like constantly. With a girlfriend like you, why wouldn’t he? 

- He’s somewhat obnoxious but in a cute way. You can never be too annoyed or bothered by him, especially after he gives you an adoring look whenever you call his name to tell him to shut up/stop doing something.

- He’s sort of a sissy when it comes to pain but he does tend to exaggerate his reactions just to tease you, repeatedly complaining like you just punted him into next Tuesday whenever you gently hit or push him. 

- Kissing his injuries. He swoons every time.

- He likes to mess with you. He thinks your reactions are hilarious. 

- Teasing each other. You both make small dick jokes about him because you both know it isn't really true, and he’s more than willing to remind you of that fact whenever you ask. ;)

- I feel like he likes getting hickeys more than he likes giving them. Perhaps he shaves his barely there stubble so that you can devour his neck like a vampire with the munchies at any given time of day?

- He’s weirdly meticulous about some parts of his grooming; especially after you get together. He wants to look his best for you so he always agonizes over whether or not he’s in tip top shape or if he has to add something else to his nightly/morning routine.

- He isn’t very observant so don’t expect him to be able to see when you’re uncomfortable. He won’t notice until you’re very blatant about it or finally just tell him. While he isn’t very attentive at first, he immediately tries to do something to make up for it, feeling bad for not noticing. 

- He takes care of you, doing whatever has to be done that will make you feel better and safer. Maybe calling your parents or just anxiously sitting next to and watching you, holding you loosely and/or patting your shoulder. Seeing you work yourself into a fit really spooks him so rest assured, he’s gonna keep checking up on you every other minute. 

- He doesn't accept your self depreciation whether they’re jokes or not. He’ll refuse your comments in a joking manner but the sentiment remains the same. You’re perfect, shut up.

- Whenever it rains, he’ll hold his jacket over your head so that you can stay dry, letting himself get soaked in the process. Being cold and wet is worth the kisses that you give him for his chivalry. 

- He’s sort of scared that you’ll fall for his brother. He doesn’t necessarily think of himself as a downgrade but he can’t help but acknowledge that his older brother is much more popular and sought after than he is. 

- Whenever he gets jealous, he’ll usually watch from afar, his jaw set while he fights off the urge to completely scowl. He’ll give you that typical “who was that” routine when you’re alone together again, dwelling on the matter for far longer than he really needs to.

- He’s a bit self conscious so he always appreciates it whenever you compliment and/or reassure him that you love him.

- He doesn’t consider himself to be a protective person but when push comes to shove, he’s the first one to insult or lunge at whoever is being aggressive/rude to you. He quite literally has to be held back from fighting someone in your honor.

- Things can get a little heated when the two of you get into a fight. He’s usually fairly good at keeping his emotions at bay but if you rile him up enough; or if someone else does, then he does have a tendency to curse and raise his voice.

- One of you is going to walk out at some point, either him after throwing in an “I’m not doing this” or you. If you’re the one leaving then he’ll ask where you’re going, maybe adding in an “oh yeah, sure, just walk out” as you flip him off. Pretty much as soon as you leave, his breathing evens out and his shoulders slump and he’s left just feeling really shitty.

- When it comes to apologies, you’re probably the one to cave first; even after his brother tries to talk some sense into him. The two of you will go somewhere at the same time and take turns glancing at each other for a little while before you finally speak; it’s usually you because he doesn’t want to cause more trouble. After you make the first move, he’ll apologize and admit that he’s missed you.

- Lots of “I love you’s”. They’re mainly said playfully but occasionally he’ll say one seriously, making complete heart eyes at you while he does so.

- He’s sort of planning his future around yours. You’re going to x college? How crazy, he was thinking of that one too! Hey, maybe you should move in together. I mean, just cause it’s convenient, ya know?

[stateofirrelevancy]

CALM First Listen Impressions

I’ve been doing these since SGFG and imma keep doing it till the day i die!!

Red Desert - OOF harmonies okay I see you !! Intro is hella soulful don’t tell me I’m about to cry ALREADY guys… okay that bass in the bg is thicccc and I’m living for it OOF AND THEN THE CHORUS HITS AND THOSE DRUMS BITCH THIS SONG IS SO GOOD ON JUST THE FIRST LISTEN Y’ALL AHHHHH and then that TRANSITION from chorus to second verse my mans ashton did not disappoint !! Guys I’m really feeling this song holy shit it’s so good. Bitch this RED in the bridge is rly TEASING ME like bitch KEEP GOING!!!!!!!!!! Low key this song sounds like it’s 90% saying “red desert” over and over but I’m not complaining issa bop and a half !!! AHHH THAT ENDING AND THEY REALLY WENT TO A LOWER NOTE THAT WAS SO GOOD if that ain’t my fave song on the album i’ll be hella shook. Rating: 10/10 obviously

No Shame - I’ve liked this song since the very first time I heard it it’s actually such a bop. I can’t wait to drive around with this song blasting in my car. I LOVE when Luke says “Go on and plaAaAaAce me” it’s so pretty!!! Rating: 9/10 I just wish the bridge had something different I’m not a big fan of sos ALWAYS doing slowed down choruses for bridges and once you notice it it’s hard to stop lol

Old Me - I wasn’t a huge fan of this song the first time I heard it and genuinely didn’t think it’d grow on me AT ALL, but even after the second listen I really liked it, and I’ve really come to appreciate, like, the fan service message behind it? And that music video just made me love it more. The thing I didn’t like initially and still am not a huge fan of is how autotune-y the song sounds. I know everyone uses autotune, but imo it’s way too noticeable in the song to the point where it sounds a little unpleasant once you catch it. Rating: 8/10

Easier - Okay to be honest, I hate this song LMAO like one time I was crying in the shower while I was listening to my music on shuffle and this song came on and I literally stopped crying to change the song and then went back to crying daskjfkaljl Honestly the verses are really catchy and I like the prechorus but god I DETEST the chorus so fucking much it’s so fucking annoying and that’s low key like most of the song,,, I don’t even wanna finish the song but imma force myself to lmaooooo Rating: 3/10

Teeth - I love the bass at the beginning I’m such a slut for thicccc basses. I also like how crisp? Luke’s voice sound initially idk if that’s like a weird thing to say lol. I also hate the chorus here but not as much as Easier and the other parts of the song def make up for it. Rating: 6.5/10

Wildflower - This song was also like Old Me to me where I didn’t really love it at first but really liked it the second time. It’s definitely not gonna be a favorite of the album or a song I’m probs gonna remember forever but I bet it’s gonna be a BOP at concerts which is always appreciated. PLUS I love that Calum is singing he has a very unique voice I think. Also side note I justopened the livestream and it’s a hot mess lmaooo Ash rly fucking fucked up and needed to move it onto Cal lmaoo here I thought I was in sync with everyone smh. Rating: 7.5/10 with room to grow with more listens i’m assuming

Best Years - Anyways moving on from the livestream mess from these kids who don’t know technology,,, oof first impressions: sounds like same vibes as ghost of you?? I love the line “I’ll build a house out of the mess” or whatever. The part where he sings “best yeeaaarrs” is uhhh kinda weird? I thought that when Luke sang this on live but I thought it might sound better on the track but lmao nah I still think it sounds awkward tbh. But the verses are cute. Oof that instrumental was so long I legit stopped paying attention dafkdasjlk OOF OOF OOF THAT PART WHEN THE INSTRUMENTS KICKED IN okay I live for that. Song is kinda short so it gives me vibes of Lie To Me + Ghost Of You in terms of vibe (not lyrics). Rating: 6/10

Side note: I open the stream and they’re?? Just talking abt the album???? What happened to group listen lmaoo okay I guess gotta do everything in isolation around here smh

Not in the Same Way - woah okay start right away I guess !! “You say go I won’t leave” oof I don’t like that lyric cause a bitch has dealt with it and it’s terrible!! Omg when they said “NOT IN THE SAME WAY” in unison I legit live for the boys singing in unison okay OMG WE FUCK WE FIGHT AFDKAKLDJKL he really just gets more blatant every album w these swears huh fdskjkl OOF THAT DRUM BUILD UP SOUNDED SO GOOD Okay this is def a song to bop to live I can’t wait !! “I’m sick of sadness you’re sick of sadness” oof these lyrics bitch…. okay this song is kinda repetitive which is making me kinda tired BUT it’s not the worst thing and I like the parts that they’re repeating i guess LOL oh WOAH that “eh eh ehh” part is kinda interesting OMG IS THAT AN ORIGINAL BRIDGE/THIRD VERSE? From *MY* 5sos?????????? OKAY I SEE YOU,,, Okay the repetitiveness is kinda rly annoying now but it’s okay I still enjoy the song for now but can see myself maybe not listening to this song much later bc of it (Rating: 7/10)

Lover of Mine - Okay acoustic song of the album icu icu “Butterfly lies chase them away” interesting I like that  “dance around the living room” 👀 oof this pre-chorus is really good I’m such a slut for good prechoruses !! Luke’s voice sounds so soothing and smooth but the drums in the background in the second half are a little? Much? I don’t know maybe they’ll grow on me… I really like the lyrics of this song, I didn’t focus completely on everything but,, dare I say,,,, it might be some of their strongest writing yet??!? Omg I love love love these instrumentals near the end esp the piano sounds so beautiful and kind of reminded me of the interlude after San Francisco. Overall I think this song was honestly very beautiful. Rating: 8/10

Thin White Lies - more bass yessss it sounds so good,, are these lyrics about depression? Ehhh not feeling this chorus at all, too much going on and it’s just not a bop and that’s my only criteria for liking songs lmaoo. This song is giving me Empty Wallets + Babylon vibes kind of? Which isn’t rly my favorite vibe in songs tbh it’s just not for me, I don’t think it’s a bad song, though. “I don’t really like me anymore” :((((( mood Rating: 6/10

Lonely Heart - That one two three was so hot ngl,,, ANOTHER acoustic song?? Okay okay interesting. WOAH WHEN THEY CAME IN together god I love that and this OH OH OH part sooo catchy yesss okay also smth I’ve noticed 5sos doing a lot: quiet beginning (or quiet verses) and loud/bop-y choruses… that’s like half the album look me in the eyes and tell me I’m wrong !! It’s the equivalent of YB being mostly normal guitar verses and then instrumental pre-choruses lmao at least this I like a lot more WOAH THAT BRIDGE???????? WHO IS SINGING THAT IS THAT MICHAEL? I literally don’t recognize whose voice that is has it been that long since I heard his voice am I tripping?? But either way that was really cool. The song overall was pretty? Plain but not at all bad and it’ll definitely grow on me with more listens. Rating: 7/10

High - last song im so sad ahhh oof that sound it sounded like Michael? And it was umm very ear orgasmic lmao weird to put two songs that start like that one after the other tho but whatever. Woah the way Luke sang “highly” was so angelic !!! This is very acoustic-y too, but it seems like it’s truly mostly the same vibe throughout. Oof Calum’s harmonies sound so good. I also like the background “Ah”s this song sounds very angelic and pretty. I really like the way he sings the lyrics like “I hope you think of me high… think of me highly” and the part after that kind of mirrors that line. Not a huge fan of the lyric saying your friends just want you to yourself oof friends don’t like imma be honest that line was kinda cringy lmaoo But this song was very pretty, though honestly I doubt I’ll listen to it much or remember it just cause slow songs aren’t my cup of tea, but I can really appreciate the song for what it is and it was enjoyable to listen to. Rating: 8/10

Unrelated: I like that the album isn’t crazy long like every other album of theirs. I much prefer concentrating on 12 great songs than making 16-20 and then inevitably them hating/ignoring a few of them cause they’re like,, way worse than the rest of the album

Average rating: Okay technically 7.1/10 BUT if you take out Easier, then it’s a solid 7.5/10

I liked a lot of the songs and I’m sure I’ll like them even more with more listens, but the only ones I really LOVED were Red Desert and No Shame. It’s honestly a fantastic album, I just don’t think it fits my personal vibe. I’m very proud of the boys!! I really think it’s some of their best work. (Besides Easier,,, she can choke 💀💀)

[seekingthestars]

sarah watches the untamed: liveblogging adventures, part fifteen episodes 27, 28, + 29

(aka: HAPPY BIRTHDAY SIZHUI SHE WATCHED SOME OF YOUR SHOW TO CELEBRATE BUT ONLY PARTS WITHOUT YOU IN IT)

okay well yesterday’s episodes were painful, let’s see if we can survive some more today. and HAPPY BIRTHDAY SIZHUIIIIIIIIII sweet baby angel, i’m making my way toward seeing you again don’t worry ʕ•ᴥ•ʔง

episode 27:

oh right THIS is where we left off, right, okay, starting with pain

wx looks so tormented, i wanna cry ;;;; and every time they flash to wen ning i wanna cry more ;;;;;;

wangji crying, my heart ACHES ;AAAAAA;

the burial mounds :O

meng yao listing out what wx did and i’m just over here like “YEAH HE DID, CUZ THE JIN CLAN GUYS SUCKED, GOOD JOB WX” oops

i’m glad xichen spoke up a little on behalf of wen ning/wen qing, thank you pretty big brother

i’m sorry this is SO HYPOCRITICAL like “wen qing didn’t stand up and stop ruohan so they’re just as bad!” okay well all y’all stood by while the jin clan used innocent people as live bait and just straight up murdered a bunch of them SO SHUT UP

all of these people at this gathering are making me so mad stop it! they keep being all manipulative-ey and lying and stop! >.<

WANGJI STANDING UP FOR WUXIAN <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

and yay for mianmian (sp??) for standing up for him too! at least two people standing up against these obnoxious old men in some way ;;

the blatant lies about what happened that these people keep spewing make me fjeiowafjawe ANGRY, WEN NING DID NOT FALL OFF A CLIFF, OF COURSE YOUR IDIOT CLAN MEMBERS WOULD SAY THEY DID NOTHING WRONG

DUDE SHE WAS STRAIGHT UP JUST LIKE ‘Y’ALL WACK’ AND QUIT THE JIN CLAN :OOOO

jin clan leader is a jerk and i hate him

yanli’s hair ornament is so prettyyyyy

i know he’s been a jerk but zixuan is so pretty, mr. ‘i’ll protect you for my whole life’ trying to be suave lol

poor jiang cheng looking on like ‘f*** my life, first wx and now this’ XD

wen qing and wuxian banter is SO CUTE, she brought him snacks!!

wuxian interacting with this small child is HEALING MY BROKEN SOUL, THIS IS SO CUTE, this small child is ADORABLE

WUXIAN’S JUST A GIANT BABY

i am 10000% all here for jiang cheng’s majestic cape

oh shoot his fancy whip broke the talisman!!

wx just yelling “DON’T TRAMPLE ON THAT!” anywhere jiang cheng steps is hilarious and adorable XDD

“can he count as a human now?!” jiang cheng noooo stop you’re being mean, he can hear you :(((

episode 28

wx anticipating jc and stopping him when he tries to pull out his sword A+++ very nice

jc did you really just suggest for wx to turn everyone he just saved in to the people who would absolutely just murder them BOY WHY, WE WERE ALL ROOTING FOR YOU

jc trying to use his sword and wx blocking it with his bare hand and then jc TRYING TO USE THE WIP ON WEN NING NO

“Just leave me then.” wuxian ;;;;;;; 

the single tear from wx really just breaking my heart AGAIN, will it ever be whole again ;;

yuan is SO CUTE omg

yuan coming to cling to wx and give him fruit omg A HEALING PRESENCE, HE IS SO CUTE

wen qing giving jc back the comb ;~~~~~;

WEN NING SPOKE!!!!!

look i can’t explain it, wuxian’s just very attractive

oh no they fight :(

oh NO he sliced wx! :(( oh no no they’re both hurt :((

not gonna lie, a little sad to see jiang cheng throw the cape away, it was so majestic

yanli’s dream made me sad :((((

his little surprised face lol you’ve been caught! also one of the rare times anyone is actually seen legitimately dirty lol

ONE MONTH LATER timeskipping again ladies and gents

wangji is PISSED

YUAN!!! GRABBED WANGJI!!! CUTE!!!!

everyone being like “you must be his dad!!!” and wangji having a mild panic attack XD

wx going “this child is my son!” and wangji having ANOTHER mild panic attack XDD

wj’s little tiny baby smiles when he looks as wx and yuan ;u;

this entire exchange with yuan + wx + wj in town is the CUTEST GOSH DANG THING he bought yuan toys they’re best friends now and i have been HEALED 

episode 29 that’s RIGHT we’re still going!

family dinner time!!!

I’M DYING. YUAN ON WANGJI’S LAP. CUTE CUTE CUTE CUTE CUTE

it took so freaking long to get that screenshot but WORTH IT

YUAN FEEDING WUXIAN

“Silence during meals. You too.” poor wangji gotta parent both these children

oh dang they actually getting married, like i knew it was happening but that was quick :O

wangji grabbing the toys before they rush out the door ;; <3

i can’t keep repeating myself but please know that any interaction between yuan + wj + wx is resulting in many coos and repeated “so cute!!!!”s

WEN NING?!?!?!

wen ning turned into a scary marshmallow

wen ning woke up!!!!!! my marshmallow is BACK!!!!! thank you wangji for being here to help save the day <3

looks comfy heeheehee

i’m so glad wen ning is back, my little angel T______T <3

yuan clinging to wangji’s leg and begging him to stay for dinner MY HEARTTTT

the entire dinner scene PRECIOUS

so it was being so cute and drunk, very-flushed wuxian was being ADORABLE AS ALL HECK but then it got sad again when he just kept repeating that he was useless :(( no buddy you’re not i promise!!!

wangji sitting stoically in the snow is ALSO very aesthetic, that man is just *chefs kiss* perfection

wuxian relaxing back in the cart like a king while wen ning pushes him around is freaking hilarious omg

WEN NING RUNNING SO FAST WHEN CALLED LIKE THE BESTEST LITTLE PUPPY I LOVE HIIIIIIM WHAT A DARLIN gonna squish his cute lil cheeks

[mittensmorgul]

6.01, Exile on Main Street.

Typically when I write these posts, I try to make a joking comment, or choose a pithy reference to put in this first line, but... god i hate this too much to make jokes about it...

DEAN is attacked by Djinn. Djinn: You made it through that last trip, so how about a big, fat double dose? Bad news -- it'll kill you. The good news? At least you'll go fast. That's for our father, you son of a bitch.

and of course, it's about dredging up daddy issues. These are apparently children of the djinn Dean killed in 2.20...

You might also remember I mentioned Sam's awful promise he extracted from Dean in 5.22, telling him to get out of hunting, go to Lisa and beg her to take him in? Remember that Dean actually did that, despite it metaphorically being a final act of cutting a part of himself off in order to live this terrible half-life, going through the motions of being just another normal suburban dude living a normal suburban life (which he's professed to hate the entire idea of going all the way back to s1?) and abandoning the last link to anyone who actually knows the "real" him when he cut ties with Bobby even, all because that was Sam's literal dying wish for him? Yeah... I've written a LOT about how much I absolutely HATED this entire narrative line.

This was what SAM had always wanted for HIMSELF. He wanted to just... leave the life and "be normal." Dean has NEVER wanted this. Well, maybe he had expressed that to Sam on occasion, in a "hmm, wonder what that's like" sort of way, but at the end of the day he was ALWAYS relieved to be able to climb back in his car and take off for the next hunt. And yet, Sam is SO FUCKING SURE that Dean had always secretly wanted the same sort of suburban normal life that he himself had always fled to every single time he had the chance. Except, Dean is a different person than Sam is, and he can't as easily just cut this whole element of his life out and pretend it never existed. Sam was HAPPY for the most part at Stanford. He never told any of his friends, or even the girl he thought he'd marry and spend his entire life with, about how he was raised and what his family does. At least Lisa and Ben are aware of what Dean's life before he met them entailed so he doesn't have to lie about his past to them, but it's still clear he isn't exactly open and forthcoming about the details. And he spends an inordinate amount of energy still trying to keep the whole truth of it locked up.

From the moment Sam shows up at Dean's house, it's clear that even after a year of "normalcy" that Dean is barely holding on. But this also all speaks to the Performing Dean mask that Dean had possibly sold to Sam just a little bit too successfully for his entire life. (but more on that in the report from 6.02, since that's the main takeaway from that episode...)

What I personally find fascinating with early s6 in relation to where we currently are post 14.20 is this whole feeling of a season-long runaround that-- much like the "we have to kill Lilith!" plot of s4 had proved to be a blatant manipulation. The entire Campbell Family plotline eventually becomes... wtf-laden. Between the "secretly working for Crowley" plotline, compounded with the "monsters acting out of character" plotline, compounded with the eventual reveal of Cas's involvement in the entire narrative mess because of his desperation to keep Dean out of the Apocalypse Redux mess brewing in Heaven... well, this season feels like it just randomly chooses moments to burn vast quantities of its own structure when it no longer fits the story going forward. I feel like a LOT of Dabb Era has been a direct indictment of this s6-7 narrative collapse, using the whole BMoL as the cartoonishly Evol Fall Guys we were happy to watch burn (literally! their headquarters got firebombed!), using first Lucifer and then Nick as the pointlessly recurring distraction of a Bad Guy, with supporting parts in that narrative going to Asmodeus and AU Michael (and the whole AU, honestly, serving as a glaring proof of the futility of the apocalypse from the POV of the angels who believed since day one of creation that it was the "ending" God wanted and intended them to achieve that would bring him back to them, that would please him enough to return to acknowledge their success and reward them for achieving it. Except it was all just lies, and there was no reward, there was no paradise, only more of what they did to themselves, literally the never-ending war they brought about thinking it was all part of God's plan for creation. It was all ironically the exact future they chose for themselves. They had another choice-- to serve as the guardians of the world and humanity, preserving it as a paradise for mortality they could observe and learn and understand about the point of creation, but they chose not to learn from creation itself and instead chose to destroy it. You reap what you sow...

And what s6 sows just... hurts everyone.

Dean: you been back practically this whole time?! What, did you lose the ability to send a friggin' text message?! Sam: You finally had what you wanted, Dean. Dean: I wanted my brother, alive! Sam: You wanted a family. You have for a long time, maybe the whole time. I know you. You only gave it up because of the way we lived. But you had something, and you were building something. Had I shown up, Dean, you would have just run off. I'm sorry. But it felt like after everything, you deserve some regular life.

See... Sam has convinced himself that this Apple Pie Life he himself has always wanted was also what Dean has always wanted... and it just... really, really isn't. See 14.13 for proof of that fact. I mean, you can even look backward to episodes such as 1.08 Bugs, to 5.16 Dark Side of the Moon, 2.20 What Is And What Should Never Be, 3.10 Dream A Little Dream Of Me, 8.01 We Need To Talk About Kevin, 8.09 and 8.10, and honestly a huge chunk of s9 and how their codependency has been treated in Carver Era for hints into understanding these fundamental differences between Sam and Dean, Dean's parentification of Sam from the time he was four, and the vastly different childhood experience, and the construction of Dean's performance mask that Dabb has been systematically burning down over the last few seasons. Just look to 13.05 for the treatise on just how powerfully Sam believes in that mask, and how badly he himself needs Dean to maintain it for his own wellbeing and comfort, even to the point where Dean is literally suicidally depressed and hopeless. Because Sam was fundamentally wrong about what Dean actually wanted and needed. Even Cas, set up from the start to be the effective Big Bad of this season, literally only turned down that path to spare Dean, to protect him from becoming involved in this, mistakenly believing that he'd be intruding on Dean's happiness, from the peace at the end of his road.

Luckily I know what's in store down the line, because it's the ONLY thing preventing me from outright hating Sam for this. Soulless Sam was just as manipulative and ruthless as Cas in this season:

Bobby: And I'd do it again. Dean: Why?! Bobby: Because you got out, Dean! You walked away from the life. And I was so damn grateful, you got no idea. Dean: Do you have any clue what walking away meant for me? Bobby: Yeah -- a woman and a kid and not getting your guts ripped out at age 30. That's what it meant. Dean: That woman and that kid -- I went to them because you asked me to. Bobby: Good. Dean: Good for who? I showed up on their doorstep half out of my head with grief. God knows why they even let me in. I drank too much. I had nightmares. I looked everywhere. I collected hundreds of books, trying to find anything to bust you out. Sam: You promised you'd leave it alone. Dean: Of course I didn't leave it alone! Sue me! A damn year? You couldn't put me out of my misery? Bobby: Look, I get it wasn't easy. But that's life! And it's as close to happiness as I've ever seen a hunter get. It ain't like I wanted to lie to you, son. But you were out, Dean. Dean: Do I look out to you?

And from the end of the episode where we're given even MORE insight into just how "wrong" Sam is:

Sam: Look, I practically shoved you at them. Dean: That's a funny way to put it, but all right. Sam: I'm just saying, I really wanted that for you. And when I told you to go, I-I thought... You could have it, you know? But now I'm not so sure. I mean, you got to consider the fact that you'll be putting them in danger if you go back. Dean: So, what, it's better to leave them alone, unprotected, and then they're not in danger? I did this to them. I made them vulnerable the moment I knocked on their door, and I can't undo that. But what I can do is go with the best option. Sam: I hear you. I guess I just, wish you were coming, that's all. Dean: Why? Sam: Don't be stupid. Dean: No, I mean it. I mean, you know plenty of good hunters. I'm rusty. I did something seriously stupid going out there. I almost got us both killed. Sam: And that's exactly why I want you. Dean: What are you talking about? Sam: You just went. You didn't hesitate. Because you care, and that's who you are. Me? I wouldn't even think to try. Dean: Yes, you would. Sam: No, Dean. I'm telling you, it's just better with you around. That's all.

From my chatbubbles @ lizbob:

without his soul, Sam was freaking ruthless he said or did whatever it took to manipulate everyone, and of course Bobby would want to believe that Dean was truly happy... essentially living out the life Bobby himself lost when he killed his demon-possessed wife... I mean if Bobby could have a do-over, we know exactly what he'd do differently now... it wouldn't have taken much for Sam to convince Bobby that Dean was legit happy with Lisa and Ben, despite the evidence of our eyes that he was basically going through the motions, zombie-style

But was Dean REALLY happy with Lisa and Ben? REALLY?!

[swissmissficrecs]

Highbrow fics

This is the other set of recs I wanted to put together for @ghislainem70​ to ease her recovery. (The first list of BDSM-themed fics is here.) These are fics with a slightly more intellectual edge, inspired by ghislainem70′s many excellent and thought-provoking fics, such as The Omega Sutra, On the Side of the Angels, The Indestructibles, and Mad, Bad and Dangerous.

A Broken Engagement by ButterscotchCandybatch (18K, Explicit, Johnlock) Sherlock Holmes, the younger son of the Baronet Siger Holmes, is forced to break off his engagement to the commoner, young Navy Lieutenant John Watson. He retreats into cold isolation and a laudanum addiction and it appears he may never have another offer of marriage. When the rich and dashing Captain Watson returns eight years later, he is now courting a family friend, Mary Morstan. Can Sherlock win back his John? Regency period AU.

A Dangerous Liaison by Holly Sykes (89K, Explicit, Johnlock) Sherlock Holmes is married to crippled aristocrat Sir Victor Trevor and he has shunned the life of the flesh in favour of that of the mind. But what happens when he meets rugged gamekeeper John Watson, a disillusioned ex soldier with a murky past? Love and physical passion come up against the class divide, but there’s also a murder, the high society of 1920s London and Sherlock in costume.

All Things Will Die, Nothing Will Die by Holly Sykes (109K, Explicit, Johnlock) Time: January, 1831. Something suspicious is happening at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital: corpses are brought in and sold to the surgeons, but Sherlock Holmes suspects foul play. He’s not alone: at Guy’s Hospital, Doctor John Watson refuses to pay twelve guineas for a body that he fears has been tampered with. The lives of the two men collide one frosty winter night and from that moment on, they will never be torn asunder.A macabre AU story of grisly murders, passion, sex and mystery, with an unambiguous happy ending; inspired by the London Burkers crimes, by several short stories written around that period and by the book The Vampyre Family by Andrew McConnell Stott. Also, a very big help was the Italian Boy by Sarah Wise, which chronicles grave robberies in 1830's London.

Attribute Nothing to Fate by recreational (37K, Explicit, Johnlock) A journey to Italy calls up old desires, but John Watson, trapped by the social conventions of his time, is not prepared to give in to temptation and change his life forever. It takes someone else to do that for him.

Bel Canto by bendingsignpost (127K, Teen, Johnlock, Adlock, and Irene/Kate) After years of waiting for wealthy patrons to faint, Dr John Watson discovers a far more interesting patient in the opera house basement.

Books of Mystery by fresne (58K, Johnlock) Sherlock Omegaverse written as a medieval Romance. In this lai, I set forth the adventure that relates how the good knight Jean Lanval came to cleave with Mystery, and how though an ever leftward turning path he and his Lord chose, still they came to the right.

Lightning and Sea Glass by 221b_careful_what_you_wish_for (18K, Explicit, Johnlock and Mollrene) The mad Professor Moriarty and his reluctant assistant John Watson have reanimated the dead – and the results are beautiful. At least John thinks so. When Moriarty rejects his creation, John disappears with the creature to protect it, sealing their fates together.

One Night in December by Holly Sykes (126K, Explicit, Johnlock) London, 29th December 1940, 8 pm. The London Blitz reached its nadir with the bombing of the City of London and the area around its most beloved landmark, St. Paul’s Cathedral. John Watson and Sherlock Holmes meet as the flames blaze and roar all around them. But who is that dark-haired young man and why is he risking his life in such a careless manner? This is what Doctor Watson is wondering, as he eventually becomes enmeshed in a mystery that will take him away from his dreary, hopeless life and plunge him into the secret life of wartime London.

Sketchy by serpentynka (629K, Explicit, Johnlock and Mycroft/OMC) What (and who) will be left when nobody cares about your Work?  A slow-burn fic with cases, places, mistaken identities, unfair choices, essential changes, violent feels, blatant lies, fearless portraiture, family secrets, high-risk bespoke gifts, durable friendships, bedtime stories, foreign travel and tongues, sickness (and health), and the significance of things which are slow to unfurl -- but cannot be ignored.  Oh, and...porn.

SPQR by hoc_voluerunt (156K, Teen, Johnlock) The year is AD 68. Emperor Nero is on the throne, the Judaean Revolt is nearing its end under the firm hands of Vespasian and his son Titus, and Marcus Caelius Piso Vannus, son of a British freedman and former surgeon to the Fifteenth Apollonian Legion, has just returned from the provinces with an injured shoulder and no veteran's benefits to rent a shabby room in the shadow of the city wall. Thrust into his life, however, comes Amulius Cornelius Celatus -- a noble man from an ancient family, with good hair, a better toga, and the biggest ego this side of the Tiber. You wouldn't think they'd end up living together, let alone fighting crime; but then, neither would you think that one shadowy criminal figure orchestrated the fire of 64...

Stars in a Phrygian Sky by fresne (60K, Explicit, Johnlock, Adlock, Viclock, Mollrene, and others) Sherlock got rid of everything that he had ever known about the stars when he was nine years and five months old, which given his plans to be a pirate in the West Indies, the importance of astral navigation for a pirate, and given that he was him, that had been quite a lot. He didn't give away his mariner's astrolabe until much later.When Irene was ten years old, she fell in love with the most beautiful, perfectly-perfect amoral Omega woman ever. Which is to say, she read Steinbeck's "East of Eden".John stayed up one particularly nasty March night until 2:32 am reading "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom". Hail rattled against the window. To John, it was the sound of desert sand on dry canvas.

Tanto Monta by fresne (62K, Explicit, Johnlock, Sheriarty, Sherlock/OMCs, John/OCs) Sherlock began to turn into a desert when he was nine. Desertification took years, but grain by grain his Memory Palace turned from a primordial forest into scrub brush and sand. Only mad dogs and Englishmen could love the desert that he'd made of himself.When John was fourteen, he stayed out late one particularly nasty March night at the rec centre reading a book. The results of that choice left him feeling like an ill fitting cog the rest of his life.Or equal opposites in balance.

The Beast of Baskerville by mildredandbobbin (74K, Explicit, Johnlock) 15th Century/fairy tale AU. An invalided John Watson comes to the isolated village of Baskerville seeking shelter with his sister, only to become embroiled in a grisly murder. As the villagers point to a local werewolf legend, the odd but brilliant friar, Brother Sherlock, disagrees and soon he and John are on the the trail of a murderer. Captivated by the enigmatic friar, John finds himself struggling with his illicit feelings for the celibate man of God.

The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole by Holly Sykes (90K, Explicit, Johnlock) Britain, 1925. Sherlock Holmes – young detective, violin player and virtual misanthrope – has been hired by a mysterious and immensely wealthy man to find the missing manuscript of a contentious novel. John Watson - doctor, ex soldier and widower - is older and disillusioned. They meet on a rainy night in Sussex and from then on both their lives are changed forever. As their tentative friendship turns into a more intense relationship, Sherlock and John’s big adventure sees them end up in Venice, where the mystery is finally solved.

Underneath the Veil by Holly Sykes (73K, Explicit, Johnlock) Lord Sherlock Holmes is a wealthy aristocrat who lives almost like a hermit and indulges in opium-eating and sporadic crime solving. One evening, in the throes of a drug-caused hallucination, he stumbles upon Doctor John Watson. It’s love at first sight for the still-virgin Sherlock, but he’s convinced the other man could never feel the same. When a renowned painter is killed, Sherlock convinces John to help him with the investigation and their friendship takes an unexpected turn.

Unreal Cities by breathedout (312K, Explicit, Johnlock, John/OMCs, Irene/OFC) Sherlock, John, and the Bloomsburies, gallivanting across Britain and the Continent in the early twentieth century. In 1920, two years after the end of the Great War, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson investigate two disappearances, eerily similar but separated by 80 years. In the process, they make enemies (and friends) of Bloomsbury intellectuals; travel to Sussex; deal with the aftermath of John's past in the trenches; read Victorian pornography; drink copious amounts of tea; and, of course, fall in love.

Watson’s Folly by Diana Williams (299K, Mature, Johnlock, Mystrade, and MorMor) John Watson, the new Earl of Saughton, is madly in love with the beautiful Mary Morstan. But he has returned from the Peninsular War to find his family on the brink of ruin and his ancestral home mortgaged to the hilt. He has little choice when he is introduced to Mycroft Holmes, a civil servant of apparently unlimited wealth and no social ambitions for himself - but with his eyes firmly fixed on a suitable match for his only brother, the unorthodox and irascible Omega Sherlock Holmes.  Can John forget the woman he loved and find happiness with a man so very different from his lost love?

[talihahiman-blog]

Finding Home and Starting a Blog

All my life I have been a curious, questioning seeker of Truth.

I think most people encounter a severe period of Questioning in their lives before they fall back or abandon their quest and resign to stop even thinking about it. But some, like me, remaining searching for a Truth that seems immutable. Finally, Alhamdulillah, I feel like I have found that Truth. And its name is Islam.

This is not a discovery that I happened upon in an instant: there was no thunderbolt from the sky demanding I give myself to it, no massive horde trying to bend me into shape, no men with knives at my throat denouncing me for what I was; no angel hovering beside my pillow, no giant billboards on the highway trying to point me where it thought I should go, no conversion school telling me I was inherently flawed.

This discovery came from a lifetime of asking questions, not accepting vague, mediocre and uninformed answers, the realization that the only way I would find the right answers was to embark on exploring matters of the sacred on my own, and then reading, researching and experiencing first-hand several different paths to the Ultimate. 

Each path taught me profound lessons about myself and my relationship with God; each brought me closer to Him and helped clarify what was really important to me. 

Last year, in particular, after an unexpected end to my marriage, going completely broke, homeless and feeling worthless, I found myself lying on the floor of my greataunt’s bedroom one February evening, still alive after two suicide attempts in one night, with an acceptance that if I was still alive, it was because God willed it.

“You have to show me why You’re not letting me leave,” I demanded of God. “Clearly You’re keeping me here. And I don’t know why. I still don’t even know You like I want to. I have nothing left. I have no will to stay. I’d leave now with no regret if You just let me. But if You won’t let me go, then show me why You want me to stay.” It was a moment of utter surrender.

The answer was not immediate. 

There was a period of three months from that moment where I felt like I was in limbo. No answers, no direction.

In March I decided to move back with my family in Trinidad indefinitely to let the situation and my demand incubate. Slowly, I felt an urging in my heart to come back to NYC and start over, completely alone. It was not at the only option by any means - but it was the craziest possible option. I had nowhere to go, no money, no family here. Yet I was completely homesick. I never understood homesickness was an actual thing until I was in the place that I was born and raised in surrounded by my entire family, and all I could think about was NYC! 

To everyone else - and, admittedly, to even myself - it seemed as if I were jumping into shark-infested waters when I could barely even swim, but somehow I understood that coming back would be the catalyst for God’s answers to my sincere plea that February.

By mid-May, I used the money I saved from working in Trinidad to buy myself a plane ticket back to NYC on June 2. Getting off the plane with nothing but one suitcase and a carry on bag of belongings and marching into the homeless shelter, I steeled myself with faith that if God was bringing me back, He would get me through anything that life could possibly throw my way.

So began the most incredible turnaround of my life.

I was faced with trial after trial, and in oftentimes what appeared to be impossible situations, He always showed up. On time. I learned in a very tangible, undeniable way that a true relationship with God was not simply talking to Him, but an active conversation with Him: you talk, you ask, you explain - then you shut up, you watch and you listen. 

The answer is not always in obvious places.

For most of the year, I also identified as Hindu if anyone asked, and I hated when people asked because it never felt like it correct answer, which I found common to all to all of the religions I involved myself in at some point or the other. While the nature of the missing pieces would change, something was still missing anyway.

As a major world religion, naturally Islam was on my to-do list of religions to learn more about, but l thought that the only thing we might have in common is my belief that Jesus was a prophet and not the Messiah. The end! After all, it was a war religion that suppressed women, right? And they couldn’t listen to music, right? And they could only eat food from halal places, right? And you had to take a Muslim name! Right?! 

And how could I forget: a Muslim group in Trinidad known as the Jamaat-Al-Muslimeen was responsible for an attempted coup d’etat in 1990 that resulted in 24 deaths, severe injuries to the President of the country, and my birth merely three years later meant constantly hearing the story of the “bad Muslim guys” even long before 9/11. Then 9/11. Then ISIS. 

Everywhere I turned the narrative was the same: Islam is oppressive and dangerous. And living in NYC, where the new World Trade Center stands tall reminding us of the tragedy that befell this city and the world before it, it also reminded us constantly of that running narrative. 

How could I ever be one of them? 

Also as a languages enthusiast who loves spending time listening to different things from around the world, I suddenly started to stumble upon several Arabic and English Islamic songs that I really loved and listened to on a regular basis, moved, sometimes to tears, by the beauty of them and pure sense of joy, connection, and devotion contained within them. 

While there were many such songs which captivated me at that time, these two became very special to me:

Listening to these, I couldn’t help but think, “Perhaps we’ve got this Muslim thing all wrong.” 

But I couldn’t seem to get past that point.

It turned out that I started a new job this year, and in doing so found myself a close friend in a Bengali-American Muslimah from a neighboring department. She did not wear hijab nor was fussy about her shirt necklines, but was outspoken about her belief in Allah (SWT) and her excitement about Ramadan, as well as the role that Islam played (and continues to play) in her choices. For the first time, I had a wonderful Muslim woman in my inner circle who was my age, so relatable and so...normal. 

Almost like instinct, I began asking her to tell me more about her beliefs and was fascinated to hear of her stories about the Jinn and why Ramadan is important. Even though I was raised in a country where Muslims were very visible and Ramadan was celebrated visibly, I discovered through conversations with her that even Ramadan was not what I thought it was - and it was certainly more than just getting bags of yummy treats on Eid. (Barfi, kurma and gulab jamun, anyone?)

From the little I had learned through my new friend and my quickly-expanding catalog of saved Islamic songs on YouTube and Spotify, my interest grew quickly about what Islam really said about the big questions. Shortly before Ramadan, another new hire at our organization came in - she was my age, proud feminist, fresh out of breaking up with her neglectful boyfriend, a real move-maker and unapologetically herself. We, too, became instant friends and quickly found ourselves contemplating modern religious thought and female empowerment. She was also an Arab-American Hijabi.

Neither of these new Muslimah friends tried to tell me that I should be like them, but they were both excited to hear of my interest in Islam, and both proud talk to me about their understanding of and experiences in it. I was being pointed in one direction by God now, and it would have been stupid of me to ignore it.

As the days counted down to Ramadan and conversations continued, it felt very natural to decide that for Ramadan this year, I would sincerely undertake to learn about Islam with an open mind. I had technically already started, and I was surrounded by equally open-minded people who would support me along the way - it finally was the right time. I told my friends of my intent to learn for Ramadan but did not tell them that I would also fast.

I started off Ramadan reading the Quran on my phone telling myself I’d just get the gist of it, but after a week it was inadequate - there was so much I wanted to reread and explore that I needed the real thing in my hands. I desperately wanted to let my mind dance between its pages and get lost in it, find gems and other surprises and come back out with a new understanding. After scouring bookstores for the right first* Quran, I decided on a translation by Tarif Khalidi.

 *I already suspected at that point that this one would only be an introduction and that I would desire to read more ‘advanced’ translations and even the original text in Arabic after having a good initial understanding it in English, and this translation struck me as a beautiful cross between capturing not just the meaning but also the poetic and linguistic beauty of the original Arabic.

Ten days into Ramadan, on the second day with my new Quran, one thing was as clear as day: everything that was portrayed to me about Islam was wrong. All of it. The media and sociopolitical landscape is riddled with severe misconceptions and abuse of Islam, and I was completely unprepared for how tainted and ignorant the media perception is when I began to see what it is really is. Seeing past the misinformation and blatant lies being told, I knew that sharing the actual beliefs of Islam with others would become a very important task for me, even if I did not embrace it as my own.

There was also another issue I was praying about in the past few weeks and keeping myself open to answers for, and on the following day the answer came to me in the form of a particular episode of a podcast. I was just scrolling through and clicking on random things to listen to at work instead of my regular playlists to get me through the day, and although I’d been listening to such podcasts of several days at that point, that one was the one that confirmed to me that God was truly listening. Call it convenient confirmation bias if you will - that doesn’t change the fact that it was a direct answer. 

I found myself suspended in time, awestruck and understanding in a different way from any path I had ventured into before that this was it. 

It was what I’ve been on the hunt for my entire life. Everything I’ve done, felt, questioned, experienced, hoped for, run from, aspired toward and battled with myself about converged into that moment. I didn’t know precisely what I was looking for...until I found it.

Allah (SWT) spoke. My heart understood. And without even knowing it then, I accepted it.

I finally found my spiritual home. I am a Muslim. 

Up until now, my travels led me to places that were interesting and useful, but still hollow and incomplete. For the first time, I feel whole.

And so here I am on the 14th day of Ramadan, feeling like simultaneously everything is different yet the same. I have not officially taken Shahada with witnesses, but I know that the real moment when I became Muslim has already happened. It was on that eleventh day on work when time stood still, and everything became clear. 

There are still two more weeks left in Ramadan, and I’m not sure yet if I’d like to take Shahada on Eid, as I will be spending it with my Beng-Am Muslimah friend from work and her family again, and I think that would be a wonderful opportunity to do so. Otherwise, I may choose to wait some more and continue to study a while and find a community that I can be a part of it, not just my bubble of work acquaintances. But if I hold off to ‘study more,’ I feel like I will end up never taking it because I may never feel ‘ready’ - and Islam is a way of life and an ongoing act of submission to Allah (SWT), so I understand that officially converting is only the beginning. I really appreciate how often I see and hear the advice that one does not have to know everything to take Shahada - one simply has to be prepared to know, with the guidance of God.

Regardless of when I decide to take Shahada, I feel quite certain that my wandering soul is home at last, and I feel immediately called to share the things I am learning, contemplating and experiencing as a new Muslimah in NYC. Inshallah, it is my hope that someone out there will be able to either relate or at least learn something new, wonderful and unexpected about Islam along the way!

[dlamp-dictator]

Allen Rambles about Disgaea 5

Quick note here, this post is going be talk about the endgame of Disgaea 5's story, so they’ll be spoilers ahead.

Wow, been awhile since I did one of these. 

So, for those new, I’m Allen X. I do lyrics, drawings, and occasionally make opinion pieces on games, anime, and other things I’m into. Recently, I’ve been playing Disgaea 5 on the Nintendo Switch and I’ve been loving it. I got the game on PS4 and beat it already, but having it on the Switch has been a blast. 

I’ve spent nearly 95 hours on this game. It’s a fun game, though not for the reasons you’d think.

Ah, but first a quick synopsis.

The story of Disgaea 5 is a simple one, like many of the Disgaea games with the exception of Disgaea 4. You play as the wandering demon Killia, a loner who travels the Netherworlds in order to find and kill the Demon Emperor Void Dark, an evil tyrant that’s conquered many worlds with his overwhelming power, and has enraged Killia for reasons that are fairly obvious after chapter 3 or 4, but the game continues to play it up as a mystery. You go through the game slowly recruiting allies and Overlords, learning more about your teammates as their trials and struggles come to light through Void Darks rampage. That’s the basic gist of it, but... 

The Story

Well, for as simple as the plot is, and as much as I’m willing to shrug off most of Disgaea’s story-writing, there are some blatant issues that even I can’t help but be irked by, namely with the endgame and especially with Killia’s background. Killia’s big secret is that he’s the brother of Void Dark, or at least his brother-in-law. The two trained together under the same martial arts instructor, Goldion, who is Void’s actual father by blood. During a heated argument between the two, Void kills Killia’s girlfriend(?) and Void’s sister, Liezerota, who got inbetween the crossfire of their fight. That was the catalyst that sent Killia into a frenzy of vengeance and Void into a frenzy of madness. 

And despite the fact that what I just was an endgame spoiler, this was obvious after the first three chapters.

It was obvious that Lieze was the catalyst for Killia’s revenge the moment we saw her in flashback, but for some reason we didn’t get exact answers until near the endgame. It’s obvious that Killia’s calm nature was hiding a more savage and merciless side to him, but we don’t know the exact details until near endgame. For a Disgaea game, a game that’s very tongue-and-cheek with it’s plot until around the last 4 chapters of their games, this obvious mystery feels more annoying and intriguing. I think the only shocking revelations that came from Killia’s story is that he was the brother-in-law of Void and that Lieze was Void’s sister, at least in terms of how their family worked. But thankfully, everyone else’s character arc was done well.

Something that’s surprising to me is that all you party members get a character arc. In most Disgaea game it’s only a character or two that has a true arc. Laharl and Etna in Disgaea 1 and D2, Rozalin and Axel in Disgaea 2, Mao and Almaz in Disgaea 3, and Emizel in Disgaea 4. Outside of these character everyone else was more or less static, not that it was a bad thing. But Disgaea 5 really fleshed out all of the many cast, some to better effect than others. My favorites being Usalia’s and Christo’s. 

Usalia is probably my favorite character in the Disgaea 5 thanks to her character arc. When Usalia joins the team, her parents had been killed by one of Void Dark’s head generals, Majorita. Majorita was an orphan demon around Usalia’s age that lived in poor conditions until Void Dark saved her and made her his general. As such she became fiercely loyal to him, committing several atrocities in his name, torturing, killing, and destroying anything in her sight. 

One such act of this was cursing Usalia to eat the food she hates the most, curry, to stave off a curse that would turn her into a savage beast, destroying all she care for before the curse took her life. Her parents, the rulers of her home and fearful for their daughter’s life, agreed to do whatever Majorita demanded for 100 days in an attempt get the curse remove. But on the 99th day, Majorita decided to kill Usalia’s parents anyway. When Usalia confronts Majorita later in the story she’s enrages with anger, cooling off slightly as the story progresses, but refusing to forgive her. Even after she learns of Majorita’s background, she refuses to let that excuse her sins. By the end of her arc, Usalia takes her revenge and finishes Majorita off, pledging to at the very least make her netherworld a utopia where demons that wanted peace could have it, and people like Majorita could have a peaceful home. 

That’s a really powerful message, especially since Usalia is about eight-years-old by Disgaea’s aging system. Eight-years-old. Eight-years-old and she has a better idea of morals that most of us, promising to be better than her tormentors, but not blindly ignoring their acts of evil.

Christo’s arc was a bit more obvious, but enjoyable to watch. An angel hiding among demons, seeing himself superior as an angel and demons as mere pawns, but growing to see not all demons are bad, even saving their lives on a few occasions. Christo’s arc is very personal to him, he doesn’t show his emotions and thoughts to others, so a lot of his development was internal. I found that interest in terms of how it was written, even if it felt little forced when his big chapter came. Even his final skill and new evility didn’t appear until his arc was fully complete. I find this very in character for Christo, but as a gameplay function... a little annoying Christo’s third skill is the most damage he’ll do in a fight, and his second evility makes him one of the best support units in the base game. 

Everyone else... their arcs are just as obvious, but I think it’s gonna’ depend on the person. Zeroken’s arc was a classic coming-of-age story arc where the coward becomes brave. Red Magnus’s arc was on his hubris and lack of introspection, turning into a more helpful, less selfish leader. Killia learned to accept his past mistakes, rage, and disappointment in himself, channeling it into motivation to do better rather than a regret. And Seraphina... learned to deal with the downsides of capitalism. Okay, she also learns to be more upfront about her feelings and confess her love to Killia, but... really, her arc was kind of dumb no matter how you slice it. I think Red Magnus had a good arc, considering how little I cared for him as a character, but... yeah, those are the high points of the story. 

But for the game itself...

Gameplay

This is where the game truly shines. It’s like Fantasy Tactics except on hyperdrive. You play on a grid-like map, and control where to place your units and attack. There are several mechanics to where and what range your character can attack depending on the weapon you’re wield. You also have classes with special passive skills called Evilities. Every character has a unique Evility and with some side Evilities they can purchase. Killia's stats increase by a (pathetically) small amount every time he attacks. Seraphina, the female lead and gunslinger, does extra damage to male targets. The list goes on. 

You also build a Revenge Gain as you take damage, that brings you to Revenge Mode, a powered-up state that turns all your hits into critical attacks, boosts your stats, and if grants certain characters to use their Overloads, skills that are unique to certain characters with a variety of effects. Seraphina can charm all male units within a five-space radius. Christo, your main healer and debuffer, can increase the evasion and accuracy of all allies for a single turn, the list goes on.

And then there’s the subclass system, which lets you train up a separate class while using a single character. You also get their addition Evilities as you level the class up. At this point my Valkyrie has 5 ranks in her class, the Samurai Class, the Armor Knight Class, and the Horseman Class. My Kunoichi has ranks in her original class, the Ninja Class, the Rabbit Class, and the Samurai Class. You can make some ridiculous combos with this. My Valkyrie can one-shot quite a few peons when she moves far enough. My Kunoichi can instantly kill most enemies since her speed stat is usually always higher than the enemy’s. The combinations can get insane. This is where I think the fun part of the game lies, the customization options and potentials. Handcrafting the perfect unique with just the right amount of skills, going out of your way to break the game in whatever way you can, stuff like that just gets me interested in the game. It’s here where the game shines.

Conclusion

So yeah, Disgaea 5 isn’t a great game in terms of story, but in terms of gameplay and customization, it’s a blast. If you guys want something to sink over 100 hours in, then I recommend Disgaea 5.

[sometimesimawriter]

Mirror Effect

Part 5

A/N yep this is it, part five. I just realized how big this story is but I like long stories. I hope you guys do too. Also for the future: I’m gonna want to make short stories (like actual short stories), maybe quick romance scenes. I’m also working on a sequel to this, but someone’s gotta let me know if they actually want to read it. I know this is boring and I’m sorry but trust me it really picks up as you go along. Thanks!!

The StOrY:

It was early the next morning, the sun was beginning to creep into the room, reflecting off the tall mirror leaned against the wall, and making the various scientific tools strewn around the room glimmer. Klaus lied in the world's fluffiest bed and wondered how the hell Kayla even got up in the morning. He'd been awake for some time now, woken up by some screams of the dead- they tended to have no concept of time. What kept him pinned here, despite the way the mattress begged him to stay here for eternity, was the red hair that spread across his chest. Also the wings were kind of pinning him down. He noticed Kayla tended to sleep on her stomach, probably because it was more of a comfortable position. Her face was buried into his chest and she was sound asleep. He cradled her next to him with his left arm, and lightly stroked the wings with his right. He really hoped she couldn't feel him doing that, because, well, that's creepy. He also couldn't stop himself, they were so soft, and the sun made them seem golden- actually... he took a closer look- there might be gold in the wings? He could make out, below the feathers, a network of veins, but the veins seemed to pump liquid gold in them- strange. He looked back up at the ceiling, thinking about last night. They had their fun, but it felt a little different than his normal hookups. Normally, he would've been gone by now, either back at home or in his designated bedroom on the first night he spent here. Now, he really didn't want to leave, rather he wanted to wake her up and start all over again. A smile spread across his face, and he wondered how his other brothers' nights had gone- if Diego finally worked up the courage to even have a normal, non-Max-related conversation with Emma, or even if Five knew how to approach a girl. He smiled at the cluelessness both of them possessed. He turned his head again to look at the sleeping beauty; she looked serene- may he add... angelic- no, too cheesy. He laughed a bit to himself, and then she began to stir.

"Hey," Klaus said, almost in a whisper, "Didn't mean to wake you."

Her voice was still very sleepy, "No, you didn't. I wake up a little earlier than this usually, don't know why i slept in today."

"I think i may know the answer."

She pushed herself off of him and the wings retracted. "Don't know if it was a dream or not, but were you...petting me?"

He sat up on his elbows, "Uhh, no..."

She smirked at him, then with the sheets wrapped around her, she grabbed for the robe she had thrown next to the bed. Then, sitting on the bed with her back to him, she shrugged it on, stood up, and tied the front. "C'mon, let's get breakfast. We have a busy day."

He groaned, throwing the sheets off of him and stood up, disregarding the very blatant fact that he was nude. Her face blushed and she turned away, and he looked her up and down once more as he shrugged on his boxer shorts from last night, then his jeans, and his black button-up, except he didn't bother to button it up.

Together, they made their way down the flight of stairs to the kitchen. It was still early and no one else was awake.

"You want coffee?" Kayla asked.

"Yes please, black like the souls that scream to keep me awake." He half joked. This made her giggle and the sound left his chest feeling mushy. Kayla pulled out a red kettle, filled it with water, and put it on the stove. Then she moved to the coffee maker, poured some grinds in, and let the machine do the rest of the work. Through all these small, meaningless movements, Klaus watched her every step. The caveman side of his brain wishing to see what was under the robe all over again, but the more sophisticated side of him really just wanted to be next to her, a simple touch, or to be joined at the hip. He knew that if he did do that, then she would be weirded out, so he kept his distance, sitting at the kitchen table, watching her.

Then she caught him staring, "Do I have something on my face?" her hands moved to fix her eyebrows.

"No, no. Just thinking..."

"About?"

"What the old man is screaming about in the basement. Why people like kale. Californian's obsession with avocado. You. The true meaning of becoming a vegetarian."

"Why me?"

"Well, we did just have some fantastic sex." She began to twist her hair, and he could tell she didn't like discussing it. Which made him want to discuss it more. "Man, the way you moved-"

He was cut off by a shattering of glass and a roar.

Kayla looked towards the foyer, "What the fuck?"

What sounded like an army of footsteps came barreling down the stairs, with a chorus of "What the hell was that?" "Is anyone hurt?" "Fuck's going on?"

Then a woman screamed outside, and what sounded like a man cursing in German. Followed by another roar, a real pissed off roar.

The six raced outside, and across the street was Razor, but he looked...animalistic. His hair was now messy and was past his shoulders, and he grew in size. His muscles now ripped through his white shirt, and his pants seemed to barely fit. His nails were longer, more jagged, and he was holding a blonde woman by her throat. A black van was parked outside, with a big dent in it, as if something had crashed into it. The back doors were open, then a man came out, wearing a gas mask that looked like it was from the 50s. Razor took his other arm, the one not holding the woman, and dug his nails into her stomach. Blood seeped through her white blouse, and he released her, and a sickening thud resulted from her deceased body hitting the concrete. The man held up what looked like a gun, aimed at Razor and then fired.

A dart found it's way into his neck, and he began to shrink back to regular size. His eyes looked towards the group, and he features grew tired. He found Klaus's eyes, and yelled, "Run", and then promptly collapsed.

Involuntarily, Kayla squeaked out "Max!".

The man turned around, and through the muffle of the mask, he said something that sounded like a cat chewing on a plastic bag, but Klaus could vaguely make out the word "themen".

Whatever that meant, it didn't sound good.

Emma called out "Who the fuck are you?" And was rewarded by the man turning to face her, and began to aim the gun again.

Diego poised to throw a knife, but before Klaus could see him release, a whoosh of air pushed his black curls into his eyes. When he moved his hair back, all he saw was a pair of wings in front of the man, holding the gun towards the sky. The man let off one shot, but it never had a target. Then, the wings pushed off the ground, carrying the man to the sun. The Angel and the man reached an altitude of about 50 feet, her holding the collar of his shirt, and then she released. His muffled scream was soon silenced by his body cracking against the pavement. Kayla then floated back down to the ground, and picked up the robe that the wings had ripped off her body, and she shrugged on the remains of it after retracting the wings. Emma and Christina approached her, but the brothers stayed back. Klaus's eyes were wide, and he looked over at his brothers. Five looked surprised, and Diego disturbed. Klaus didn't know what to think, he had never expected such ferocity to come from someone as small as her.

Christina crouched next to the man, and her hand hovered over the mask, preparing to take it off. Emma's right arm ignited, probably in case he survived a fall like that. Kayla on the other hand, moved to wear Max had collapsed, putting to fingers to his throat. Christina lifted off the mask, and Klaus approached the body to get another look. There was blood leaking out of his nose, and his eyes were wide open, a frozen look of fear remained on his face. Christina checked his pulse, "He's dead."

Emma's arm cooled down, then she looked down at Christina, "Who do you think he is?"

Kayla walked back over, "He's German definitely. My guess is that he's one of those scientists."

Diego nodded his chin towards Max, "Is he breathing?"

Kayla turned to him, her face unreadable, "Yeah, whatever was in that dart just knocked him out." She gestured towards the corpse, "Whoever these guys are, they know what they're doing."

Five then looked between the woman, the man, and Max, "What are we gonna do with them?"

Emma spoke up, "Call up the Commissioner, tell him we got a bigger issue, then maybe they can lock up Max."

Kayla gave her a bewildered look, "They're not locking him up."

This left a twisting feeling in Klaus's stomach, "What? They have to. He killed those people, he would've killed us."

Kayla turned to him, "No, he wouldn't. He told us to run, he knew these guys were dangerous. I say we take him inside."

Klaus stepped towards her, "No! We're not doing that."

"Too bad."

She then turned and walked over to his unconscious body, "Anyone gonna help?"

Klaus, Diego, and Five were all in Five's bedroom. Diego was pacing, Five had his hand on his chin while sitting on the bed, and Klaus was sitting with his legs crossed on a chair in the corner. Klaus didn't like having Max in the house at all, and he hated that Kayla was sitting in the infirmary with him. He did like it that she agreed to handcuff him to the table, using a pair of Diego's cuffs. He kept thinking how she focused on Max the moment she saw him, like what they shared during the night meant nothing. He really wasn't one to follow up with someone after he had a one-night-stand with them, but this time, it felt like part of him was connected to her still. His mind was still fuzzy, and he had to push images back otherwise it would be pretty obvious to his brothers what his mind was really on.

"I don't trust Razor." Diego stated, stopping mid-pace.

"Understatement of the year, dear brother." Klaus muttered.

Five looked him up and down, "You seem especially affected by his presence. I also noticed your room was vacant last evening, care to share?"

Diego's eyebrows raised, and Klaus looked between the both of them and smirked. "I told you two last night, I went up to Kayla's room to check on the blood."

Five looked him up and down, "Sure you did," he sighed, "anyway, I'm going to let Luther know that we might be staying here longer than the weekend. See you two at dinner." He then rose from the bed and exited the room.

Diego glanced at his brother, "Guess I'll give the Commissioner an update." And followed suit.

Klaus then looked about the empty room, "Maybe I'll check on the blood samples again," he said to no one in particular.

[tadomodoka4-blog]

from I am to see to it that I do not lose you. https://ift.tt/2uAW6mP via IFTTT

Highbrow fics

This is the other set of recs I wanted to put together for @ghislainem70​ to ease her recovery. (The first list of BDSM-themed fics is here.) These are fics with a slightly more intellectual edge, inspired by ghislainem70′s many excellent and thought-provoking fics, such as The Omega Sutra, On the Side of the Angels, The Indestructibles, and Mad, Bad and Dangerous.

A Broken Engagement by ButterscotchCandybatch (18K, Explicit, Johnlock) Sherlock Holmes, the younger son of the Baronet Siger Holmes, is forced to break off his engagement to the commoner, young Navy Lieutenant John Watson. He retreats into cold isolation and a laudanum addiction and it appears he may never have another offer of marriage. When the rich and dashing Captain Watson returns eight years later, he is now courting a family friend, Mary Morstan. Can Sherlock win back his John? Regency period AU.

A Dangerous Liaison by Holly Sykes (89K, Explicit, Johnlock) Sherlock Holmes is married to crippled aristocrat Sir Victor Trevor and he has shunned the life of the flesh in favour of that of the mind. But what happens when he meets rugged gamekeeper John Watson, a disillusioned ex soldier with a murky past? Love and physical passion come up against the class divide, but there’s also a murder, the high society of 1920s London and Sherlock in costume.

All Things Will Die, Nothing Will Die by Holly Sykes (109K, Explicit, Johnlock) Time: January, 1831. Something suspicious is happening at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital: corpses are brought in and sold to the surgeons, but Sherlock Holmes suspects foul play. He’s not alone: at Guy’s Hospital, Doctor John Watson refuses to pay twelve guineas for a body that he fears has been tampered with. The lives of the two men collide one frosty winter night and from that moment on, they will never be torn asunder.A macabre AU story of grisly murders, passion, sex and mystery, with an unambiguous happy ending; inspired by the London Burkers crimes, by several short stories written around that period and by the book The Vampyre Family by Andrew McConnell Stott. Also, a very big help was the Italian Boy by Sarah Wise, which chronicles grave robberies in 1830’s London.

Attribute Nothing to Fate by recreational (37K, Explicit, Johnlock) A journey to Italy calls up old desires, but John Watson, trapped by the social conventions of his time, is not prepared to give in to temptation and change his life forever. It takes someone else to do that for him.

Bel Canto by bendingsignpost (127K, Teen, Johnlock, Adlock, and Irene/Kate) After years of waiting for wealthy patrons to faint, Dr John Watson discovers a far more interesting patient in the opera house basement.

Books of Mystery by fresne (58K, Johnlock) Sherlock Omegaverse written as a medieval Romance. In this lai, I set forth the adventure that relates how the good knight Jean Lanval came to cleave with Mystery, and how though an ever leftward turning path he and his Lord chose, still they came to the right.

Lightning and Sea Glass by 221b_careful_what_you_wish_for (18K, Explicit, Johnlock and Mollrene) The mad Professor Moriarty and his reluctant assistant John Watson have reanimated the dead – and the results are beautiful. At least John thinks so. When Moriarty rejects his creation, John disappears with the creature to protect it, sealing their fates together.

One Night in December by Holly Sykes (126K, Explicit, Johnlock) London, 29th December 1940, 8 pm. The London Blitz reached its nadir with the bombing of the City of London and the area around its most beloved landmark, St. Paul’s Cathedral. John Watson and Sherlock Holmes meet as the flames blaze and roar all around them. But who is that dark-haired young man and why is he risking his life in such a careless manner? This is what Doctor Watson is wondering, as he eventually becomes enmeshed in a mystery that will take him away from his dreary, hopeless life and plunge him into the secret life of wartime London.

Sketchy by serpentynka (629K, Explicit, Johnlock and Mycroft/OMC) What (and who) will be left when nobody cares about your Work?  A slow-burn fic with cases, places, mistaken identities, unfair choices, essential changes, violent feels, blatant lies, fearless portraiture, family secrets, high-risk bespoke gifts, durable friendships, bedtime stories, foreign travel and tongues, sickness (and health), and the significance of things which are slow to unfurl – but cannot be ignored.  Oh, and…porn.

SPQR by hoc_voluerunt (156K, Teen, Johnlock) The year is AD 68. Emperor Nero is on the throne, the Judaean Revolt is nearing its end under the firm hands of Vespasian and his son Titus, and Marcus Caelius Piso Vannus, son of a British freedman and former surgeon to the Fifteenth Apollonian Legion, has just returned from the provinces with an injured shoulder and no veteran’s benefits to rent a shabby room in the shadow of the city wall. Thrust into his life, however, comes Amulius Cornelius Celatus – a noble man from an ancient family, with good hair, a better toga, and the biggest ego this side of the Tiber. You wouldn’t think they’d end up living together, let alone fighting crime; but then, neither would you think that one shadowy criminal figure orchestrated the fire of 64…

Stars in a Phrygian Sky by fresne (60K, Explicit, Johnlock, Adlock, Viclock, Mollrene, and others) Sherlock got rid of everything that he had ever known about the stars when he was nine years and five months old, which given his plans to be a pirate in the West Indies, the importance of astral navigation for a pirate, and given that he was him, that had been quite a lot. He didn’t give away his mariner’s astrolabe until much later.When Irene was ten years old, she fell in love with the most beautiful, perfectly-perfect amoral Omega woman ever. Which is to say, she read Steinbeck’s “East of Eden”.John stayed up one particularly nasty March night until 2:32 am reading “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom”. Hail rattled against the window. To John, it was the sound of desert sand on dry canvas.

Tanto Monta by fresne (62K, Explicit, Johnlock, Sheriarty, Sherlock/OMCs, John/OCs) Sherlock began to turn into a desert when he was nine. Desertification took years, but grain by grain his Memory Palace turned from a primordial forest into scrub brush and sand. Only mad dogs and Englishmen could love the desert that he’d made of himself.When John was fourteen, he stayed out late one particularly nasty March night at the rec centre reading a book. The results of that choice left him feeling like an ill fitting cog the rest of his life.Or equal opposites in balance.

The Beast of Baskerville by mildredandbobbin (74K, Explicit, Johnlock) 15th Century/fairy tale AU. An invalided John Watson comes to the isolated village of Baskerville seeking shelter with his sister, only to become embroiled in a grisly murder. As the villagers point to a local werewolf legend, the odd but brilliant friar, Brother Sherlock, disagrees and soon he and John are on the the trail of a murderer. Captivated by the enigmatic friar, John finds himself struggling with his illicit feelings for the celibate man of God.

The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole by Holly Sykes (90K, Explicit, Johnlock) Britain, 1925. Sherlock Holmes – young detective, violin player and virtual misanthrope – has been hired by a mysterious and immensely wealthy man to find the missing manuscript of a contentious novel. John Watson - doctor, ex soldier and widower - is older and disillusioned. They meet on a rainy night in Sussex and from then on both their lives are changed forever. As their tentative friendship turns into a more intense relationship, Sherlock and John’s big adventure sees them end up in Venice, where the mystery is finally solved.

Underneath the Veil by Holly Sykes (73K, Explicit, Johnlock) Lord Sherlock Holmes is a wealthy aristocrat who lives almost like a hermit and indulges in opium-eating and sporadic crime solving. One evening, in the throes of a drug-caused hallucination, he stumbles upon Doctor John Watson. It’s love at first sight for the still-virgin Sherlock, but he’s convinced the other man could never feel the same. When a renowned painter is killed, Sherlock convinces John to help him with the investigation and their friendship takes an unexpected turn.

Unreal Cities by breathedout (312K, Explicit, Johnlock, John/OMCs, Irene/OFC) Sherlock, John, and the Bloomsburies, gallivanting across Britain and the Continent in the early twentieth century. In 1920, two years after the end of the Great War, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson investigate two disappearances, eerily similar but separated by 80 years. In the process, they make enemies (and friends) of Bloomsbury intellectuals; travel to Sussex; deal with the aftermath of John’s past in the trenches; read Victorian pornography; drink copious amounts of tea; and, of course, fall in love.

Watson’s Folly by Diana Williams (299K, Mature, Johnlock, Mystrade, and MorMor) John Watson, the new Earl of Saughton, is madly in love with the beautiful Mary Morstan. But he has returned from the Peninsular War to find his family on the brink of ruin and his ancestral home mortgaged to the hilt. He has little choice when he is introduced to Mycroft Holmes, a civil servant of apparently unlimited wealth and no social ambitions for himself - but with his eyes firmly fixed on a suitable match for his only brother, the unorthodox and irascible Omega Sherlock Holmes.  Can John forget the woman he loved and find happiness with a man so very different from his lost love?

[beinglibertarian]

Rolling Stone Gathers Moss

“Why bother with newspapers, if this is all they offer? Agnew was right. The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits – a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.”

– Hunter S. Thompson

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by “Raoul Duke” first appeared in Rolling Stone magazine in November 1971. The preceding quote from that publication sums up the environment that led to the rise and, eventually, the fall of the great Rolling Stone itself; the shift away from the counterculture that it once represented and the pathological deterioration of principled liberalism.

If these words were to be circulated on the campuses of U.C. Berkley today the same way they were in 1971, you could expect firebombs launched through windows, police cruisers overturned, and any poor fool in a red hat to be viciously assaulted with a bike lock. University students today surmise that musings this offensive, have been manufactured by the primitive IBM computer that once spat out numbers used to help exterminate Jews in the Nazi death camps; a right-wing hate machine. Or maybe Milo Yiannapolous wrote it?

The suffocating media bias of the 1960s was difficult to escape. A lethargic gray specter of middle-class America was distributed with cunning sterility through the generic, bogus smiles of cable news networks and traditional print. Despite the election and assassination of Kennedy and the signing of the Civil Rights Act, if you had turned on a T.V. this was still Eisenhower’s America: regimented, religious, conservative. And the cultural vacuum created by the Eisenhower years had began to suck even harder with Lyndon Banes Johnson at the helm.

American media was out of touch with this new generation. Elitist authoritarians were preaching their moral superiority stamped with stars and stripes to a generation of cynics. These kids didn’t have a fucking clue what they wanted, but they wanted no part of what they were being given. So rose Rolling Stone, a counterculture bible for babyboomers, co-founded by Jann Wenner.

The adjective “cruel,” meaning to willfully cause pain or suffering to others and feeling no concern about it, paired with the noun “faggot,” the antiquated pejorative used to define a homosexual man, is Thompson’s description of the media community of the day. A description evidently endorsed through publication by Jann Wenner in 1971. Because according to Thompson: “…there is no such thing as objective journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.”

Wenner today lives with his common law partner Matt Nye in, I’m guessing, New York City. He gives big money to Democrat candidates and makes millions off fabricated stories about the gang-rape epidemic at the University of Virginia. Then loses that money and gives more money to Democrat candidates. Wenner’s closet homosexuality in 1971 didn’t have him take any offence to Thompson’s comments, or at least not enough to hinder publishing the “hate speech.” Maybe it was the dollar signs flashing in his eyes, knowing that something as wild as Thompson’s Vegas adventure was a viable revenue stream. Or maybe liberals back then had more important things to bitch about.

Things were different in the 1960s. The anti-war movement and the civil rights movement were a just cause. The catalyst for a just movement of equal rights for women and gays and minorities was free speech, of which Jann Wenner was a huge proponent. When students at U.C. Berkley marched in the streets in the 1960s, it was an attack on the elitist, authoritarians and an establishment hellbent on keeping opposing viewpoints and the ideas of personal liberty stifled. The gang of “cruel faggots” kept the official narrative running but no one under 30 was listening.

The whole goddamn world had had enough of the travesty of war in Southeast Asia. There was no ignoring the ineptitude of American politics. The only reasonable thing to do in 1969 was to drive out to Altamont for the weekend, load up on heinous chemicals, hunker down and rethink your approach to the political process.  

Thompson, the then-young, liberal anti-hero, could often be found gobbling LSD and firing his guns (he was a lifetime member of the NRA) at propane bottles for a crowd of jeering burnouts or Bay area bikers at his fortified compound, Owl Farm, in Woody Creek Colorado.

It was Jann Wenner’s idea to put Hunter, with all of his fear and loathing, on to the campaign trail in 1972. Why not get the guy who wrote Hell’s Angels? Hunter was someone with a penchant for dealing with vicious thugs and sick freaks gone crazy on power, someone who could draw a parallel between Richard Nixon and Sonny Barger.

Thompson’s openly-biased, subjective and wild account of the 1972 presidential election was the red Chevy convertible of campaign coverage. ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ on repeat and at full volume, barrelling across the country at 110 miles an hour or so and in search of an honest politician. In Hunter’s eyes, the only one that even came close was George McGovern, the senator from South Dakota.

McGovern’s non-interventionist platform focused on a complete withdrawal from Vietnam, amnesty for draft evaders and a Milton Freidman inspired, negative income-tax meant to replace the bureaucratic burden of social welfare programs and a complicated tax code. Thompson’s version of events is the story of an idealistic underdog fighting against the odds only to be crushed by postmodern Americanism and the establishment incumbent, “Tricky Dick Nixon.” McGovern might have owed a White House win, in part, to Thompson’s and Rolling Stone’s relentless support had he not owed his White House loss to the mental distress of his vice-presidential pick, Thomas Eagleton.

There’s no way to properly explain how great Rolling Stone was in those early years. How well the magazine represented the anti-establishment culture, individual liberty and equality for everyone. It can’t be compared to anything else because there was nothing else, only the traditional mainstream garbage and Rolling Stone.

In the four decades that followed, the magazine continually fell behind market trends in the music industry, clinging nostalgically to some bygone era. They were late to the party covering punk in the 70’s. While they tried to figure out what had happened in 1991 Seattle they had totally dropped the ball on hip-hop. All of a sudden it was three years later, Kurt Cobain was already dead and they had lost so much ground in the L.A. scene that the black community had given up on them.

Wenner had pompously brushed off having any type of internet media strategy until around 2009, when he appointed one of his sons in charge of the “digital media” division. The type of position acquired only by a millionaire trust-fund brat of a rich liberal.

For years, Rolling Stone was unable to get a handle on what was happening in music or technology. Incompetence was a bad rash that spread through the entire organization. Getting caught with the University of Virginia gang-rape lies was an obvious black eye on the magazine. Wenner’s ability to make sound decisions was in question. His son should have been sent to North Dakota to learn how to weld. Despite all of that, the magazine was still making money, selling something like 1.5 million copies monthly. Not that anyone would admit to reading it or spending money on it.

On February 20, 2005 Hunter Thompson blew his own brains out in the kitchen of Owl Farm. His chronic alcohol and drug abuse had rendered his writing profitless and that was of no use to Rolling Stone. He had survived the last 10 years by republishing old articles and collections of his work from different outlets. He had already lost faith in the American political process. After Bill Clinton failed to appease his concerns over firearms, marijuana legalization and the American constitution, Hunter simply lost interest and poured himself a stiff drink.

One of the core tenets of Thompson’s “Gonzo journalism” was: total subjectivity; blatant, outright bias. An approach emulated by current Rolling Stone top shelf contributor, Matt Taibbi; a pliable, milquetoast impressionist with a learned sense of Thompson’s wit and scorn. The trick, which Taibbi understands as did Thompson, is that good journalism has a subjective theme, of course, but doesn’t blur the lines that keep public servants accountable. Taibbi likens journalists cozying up to politicians to the separation of church and state. Lacking objectivity, a good journalist should still keep an arms length from politicians and be critical of all of them, especially ones entrenched for decades in unashamed cronyism, a disregard for human life and vicious foreign policy.

“Reporters are supposed to be unpleasant, grumpy people who instantly deface the posters of the powerful whenever they get the chance”

– Matt Taibbi

In 2008, Taibbi had the opportunity to join other journalists on one of Obama’s campaign flights. He liked Obama, but when he noticed all the pictures that lined the walls, pictures of Obama and all the different journalists, all with their arms around then candidate Obama and smiling, he admits that he felt a little dirty.

The real downfall of the magazine was that Jann Wenner had hitched the Rolling Stone wagon to a political party instead of a political principal.  

Obama graced the cover of Rolling Stone annually through his presidency. Jann Wenner and him had carved out their friendship and put it on display. Few presidents have had the opportunity to sustain 8 full years of foreign bloodshed without any outrage from Wenner and co.

Now that Obama was out, there was a constant theme in the election for his replacement and the primaries leading up to it. Americans were sick of the status quo. They were sick of being fed lies from mainstream media and “fake news.” People were waiting to revolt in the wake of establishment politics. Just give them a guy who’s going to shit on everything and see what happens.

American media today is out of touch and not only with this new generation. Outlets like Rolling Stone keep the official narrative going, but no one under 30 is listening.

When Rolling Stone endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, that was it. The joke was over. Jann Wenner had finally come out of the closet as an elitist authoritarian and a cruel faggot.

* Darcy Gerow is a family man and tradesman. He is a national board member for the Libertarian Party of Canada and the co-founder of @TheHardTruthsBookClub, an organization committed to causing greatness in working age me through brotherhood and literature.

The post Rolling Stone Gathers Moss appeared first on Being Libertarian.

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[knightofbalance-13]

We all are.

http://dudeblade.tumblr.com/post/163386771476/i-am-so-tired

Yeah, we all are, you two. Well, not me. I find this kind of logical deconstruction fun.

I am so tired of being told that I have to be The Good Gay™ and take all the homophobia and harassment and beatings and everything with a smile on my face in order to be respected. That I have to be grateful when someone laughs in my face because they noticed me!

Okay, let me break this down quick:

1. Yeah, you do have to fight for it. Respect is not entitled to you, it is something you earn. You earn people’s respect by doing the right thing, by being cool headed and logical in debates, by enduring. You can’t just have respect handed to you: That devalues the concept. Yeah it sucks but welcome to life.

2. What homophobia? What Harassment? What beatings? I’ve never seen that around here and if it is as common as you say it is, then surely you can prove it. How do I not know you are just crying wolf for attention or trying to make yourself look like a victim to do whatever you want or maybe you were being a dick about something that is only tangently related to your sexuality at best? Without context and proof, why should anyone listen to you?

And if it’s not happening directly to you: Then don’t talk abut it as though it is personally happening to you. Especially if it’s not happening in your country since who knows what the other country is like and the way you talk groups all of humanity together which we are NOT a hivemind.

And what does being a “good gay” actually entail? because with you Invested, it could mean anything from “taking abuse” to “not screeching homophobia at everyone who doesn’t exactly agree with you.” Because I have seen you attack people for saying you are looking too deeply into stuff when you YOURSELF agreed you were looking too deeply or when a content creator just thinks shipping has gone out of hand (http://invested-in-your-future.tumblr.com/post/161686615570/wait-can-i-ask-what-the-issue-with-murderofbirds). And BTW: Being called a bigot in this world of ours is worse than being black or LGBT or whatever, especially since minorities are treated as not being ABLE to be bigots and that the “majority” should just take the abuse with a smile.

Because unless you are one of The Good Ones™ who always is nice no matter what kind of privileged bullshit Straights™ keep spewing, then you are literally a demon for daring to feel awful and to want to have equal rights.

Exactly that: equal rights. Equality. That just means that people should stop caring about you and treat your argument about your sexuality and race the same as everyone elses: Nonexistent. People stop giving a shit about what you are both ways and treat you as WHO you are. And considering this is the type of person who screams homophobia at everyone who disagrees with you (including members of your own community!)

And you talk about the “privileged bullshit Straights” when you used a similar statement to be sarcastic about the situation with the Good Gays, meaning that you are being malicious towards straight people the same way you perceive malice being directed at LGBT people, especially since the context of this post stells me you want every straight person to support whatever you do because you are LGBT: You are literally being a bigot the same way you say people are being towards you. A straight person calls you out for calling a series creator(s) homophobes for not pandering to you immediately and not supporting your attacks on them? Well, then they are a bigot and not being a Good Straight and is wrong.

You want equal rights? Okay then: You are a liar since you lied about JAC’s video being anti-LGBT when it was anti-shipping, you tried to portray Murderofbirds as being a homophobe when eh just dooesn’tw ant to get into the whole shipping debacle. (http://invested-in-your-future.tumblr.com/post/161686615570/wait-can-i-ask-what-the-issue-with-murderofbirds) as well as lied about them being involved in the BMBLB controversy. Which brings me to my next point: you act like BBLB is being homophobic when this exact same thing happened to Black Sun shippers so by your logic it would be equal because they did it to the biggest hetero and homo ships in the fandom. (http://invested-in-your-future.tumblr.com/post/162372941890/you-know-its-funny-people-keep-claiming-rt-is-so) You misinform people by saying the person is calling you a crazy feminist when they were just asking you why you have to act like everything is political and they don’t want politics in their media, which is good considering how blatant politics ruin media. You are a hypocrite in saying that there are homophobes in the fandom when the top ships in the fandom are LGBT (Bumblebee, Sea Monkeys, White Rose, Freezerburn, Lady bug, Monochrome, Nuts and Dolts) and you are seen as weird for not shipping LGBT, a big compliant in the fandom is no LGBT characters and the big names are LGBT. You act like you are entitled to representation and such even as you attack and insult whereas if someone criticizes you, they are labeled with one of the most dangerous labels in our society. None of this is because you are LGBT: I would say this all to a straight person. What is going is that you are just not a good person and it becomes associated with your sexuality because you force the two together.

Its kind of hilarious because it all stems from the very same heteronormative bullshit of “normalcy” - unless you conform to the privileged heteronormative society and say “thank you, kind sirs” for every hit, the Straights™ will go out of their way to shame you and claim you are not normal or you are dangerous.

Heterosexuality IS normal: it is literal the norm being about 75-80% of americans at most  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_sexual_orientation#United_States / http://www.alternet.org/sex-amp-relationships/19-percent-americans-dont-consider-themselves-heterosexual)  and  around 5% at least (http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/us-adults-overestimate-homosexual-population-much-tenfold) fact is: being heterosexual is normal. Not being hetero isn’t bad: it just means you’re not normal. And that’s not a bad thing for sake.

And homosexuals DO have more rights in some aspects than heterosexuals: If a baker doesn’t want to bake a cake for a heterosexual couple, no one would bat an eye. But if not for a homosexual couple, a controversy is created. If a straight person is stereotyped, it’s fine but you can’t be stereotyping gay people. This comes right down to phobia: homophobia has a lot of stigma behind it whole many people refuse to acknowledge heterophobia. Straight people are not the only privileged people on the planet.

And guess what? You, Invested, ARE dangerous. Not to straight people but to your own brethren. You keep talking this way, acting this way, speaking this way and thinking this way soon enough people will give up on trying for representation and equality because they will think the LGBT community is unpleasable and just not even bother anymore. And at time, real bigots will come in and take that one step further and start taking your rights away again. until the world you are talking about actually happens.  All because you keep asking to be treated specially and differently instead of equal.

Well you are goddamn right I am dangerous threat to society - I have ALL episodes of Orphan Black and L Word on DVD and I am not afraid to watch it!

... You’re an idiot. That has nothing to do with the topic at hand. And if you want t live in your little bubble for the rest of your life: Well, humanity won’t be missing much except for another bigot,

And now for...Dudeblade.

The “Normies” should be afraid of disgruntled minorities. They should be very afraid. Nothing is scarier than a person who wants equality, and has nothing to lose. This is why the Civil War happened people. The African Americans weren’t going get their equality by being The Good Black™ and taking all the shit that they took back then. Why should the LGBT+ Community be the same?

First off: These people are not like African americans back then: They have rights now. They have equality now. Now, they are asking to be treated like delicate angels who should have whatever they want. And they are going to fuck it all up for everyone. Stop defending these people, Dudeblade: you’re just making things worse.

And you’re right they didn’t get their equality in the Civil War. Ever heard of Jim Crow laws? Segregation? the Grandfather Clause? All happened after the Civil War and all limited the rights of africian americans. The time they got their rights was, shocker, the Civil Rights Movement in which they acted EXACTLY the way you mock. The only thing that extremeists got in that time were fear and their cultural counterparts: When the Black Panthers went to far, the KKK rose up as a result. Do you WANT an LGBT version of the KKK? because that is what will happen when things go too far.

[sole-cuore-amore-e-droga]

EUROVISION IS LIKE A BOX OF CHOCOLATES #1 - a pre-review bulletin

Hey hey! Sorry I haven’t gotten out my review of Albania’s yet, I promise I’ll do it sometime before reviewing the Spanish entry. For now I’mma publish something I could easily vent off on simply because talking to the same folks over and over, especially if they won’t shut up about their faves, gets kinda annoying, especially if you mention that you don’t like a fanwank and you await for the fandom to jump at you.

I’ll go ahead and split this into sections. first one being “fanwank assimilation” where I look over some unexpected fanflops all at once before Destination Eurovision possibly overkills us with a new wave of their own:

Mirud - Nënë: the very first fanwank to crash and burn this season. Well it’s not a wonder it was the first one as the NF it hails from is exactly the first ESC NF that an ESC entry comes out. Now take a look at this ballad in depth. Lyrically it’s about Mirud’s cold mother that abandoned the poor boy in some way, all projected onto a... kind of a 00′s ballad sound from the Balkans. It gets kinda better but then kinda more specifically from an old Eastern drawer by the end of the song. It's nice sounding but the revamp could have kicked this song in the balls SEVERELY. I cannot really judge Mirud's performances and why would have juries had issues with him (as I only watched the FiK 56 final), but deeply in my heart I'd still rather support that guy - despite not immediately 'buying' his song, I still think he deserved a fair shot in the finals just because. I also went to console him on Instagram and he thanked me. Kosovar Americans STRONK

Florina - In the Shadow: This little songstress right here had a potentially large pop career ahead of her, and I do think that she still does... if she sticks to singing in studio. "In the Shadow", while competently composed, is such a blatant "Chandelier" knockoff it hurts, and I hate "Chandelier".

Olivér Berkes - Világítótorony: Coming from probably the most diverse NFs of them all (after Eesti Laul), A Dal, is this gem in a form of a piano ballad played by a fancy waiter in a restaurant. Seemed warm and touching enough... and then came the staging. Say what you want about it but personally it could have used a lil' more oomph - instead you got a fisherman in front of an additional backdrop thing, standing like a wooden statue that all kinds of bugs could feast on at a later time in the future, trying to sound all kinds of emotional with barely any of emotional investment with the viewer's feelings - oh, and also transmitting a 0,5 of a bum note live. I saw people still rooting for this song despite the performance, especially the Hungarian ones on the ESCBubble livejournal for the show (same with "Frida"). As well as those who're still upset by the flop of the song somewhat (looking at the tumblr acc siklosiors). But there are some fans who rather understood its flop, too. And I wasn't even a fan but I felt bad for its deeply invested fanbase. Say what you want about this not really being a fanflop, but people around my area did like it a lot in studio before the shows and even had it as one of their big favourites if not THE big favourite and that counts for me

Gabriella - On cherché encore (Never Get Enough): Last but not least is the Little Miss Congeniality of Destination Eurovision 2019. She seemed fairly active on Twitter, called the Eurofans from there "low key wild" and appreciated everyone's support. She was also invited to a groupchat with me as a part of it and I do think we did interract somewhat, and she even retweeted a post of mine once. Now, what could have possibly fallen apart? The utter 'friendliness' of hers might have seemed somewhat annoying, but I doubt she would have deserved to flop JUST because of it... the problem lies in the international jury for sure. I think that, had they not overfocused on Seemone so much, they would have possibly paid some more attention to the little violin angel Gabriella and her... pretty "Apollo"-in-ESC-esque performance (only because of the odd decision on being up those darn stairs... nothing else). Even one of the Frech jurors was SHOOK over the flop of hers (that judge being Christophe Willem - check his Wiwibloggs video interview for to verify what I just typed).

And this one, well for it I don’t have any special pictures for it but I am gonna introduce you to my crazy-ass opinions for some reason. With this I’m obviously alienating half of my remaining audience that still uses Tumblr but I better vent because reasons.

• I prefer “Roi” over “Tous les deux” (Destination Eurovision). I am not telling it to many Twitter people who really believe in their saviour Seemone, so I saved it for Tumblr, which was evacuated by many after the NSFW regulations scandal. Thing is, I somehow got that f*cker "Roi" stuck in my head, already hitting the 5th stage of grief towards it. And it also kinda grew on me?

• “No puedo mas” is not a disappointing song (OT Gala). Okay, maybe just a little bit? Kinda? On a second listen to it, it seems kind of substandard - it's like you could easily just strip Famous off the song, add an English-singing soul 'legend', also make lyrics English and there people would like it better... unless it would end up on EYD. EYD is a huge NO of the NF realm for another year in a row. Famous did his best though, and if I got that sour televote score, I'd be disappointed too!

• Our NF fanwanks kind of suck (Eurovizijos atranka). Barely anyone cares about it but still - no one from our selection ain't it, honestly. Well, maybe at least "Light On" doesn't sound very terrible as a candidate. But I'm honestly sick of our fanwanks every single year, especially the ones pushed by juries. You gotta need whatever they are smoking to understand the beauty of some of their loves.

that’s it

[5hfanfiction]

Metanoia [ 3 ]

Chapter Three: An Uncertain Distant Future

A/N: *Disclaimer, before you start reading please know that this chapter involves blatant homophobia, sexism and racism. I know they are serious topics, but I wanted Metanoia to show realism, not to mention those subjects were heavily shunned in the 40s-50s. I know my writing would not totally give justice to these topics, but Metanoia is all about hope and love. I only wish to be able to deliver that properly. I hope to hear your thoughts on this chapter soon, thank you.

The morning after was a little less painful to Lauren, her grandmama was there to keep her company, Buddy too. It’s been a while since she saw Buddy. Lauren was only ten-years-old when her father’s dog, Buster, brought him at her grandmama’s estate. But, when the family decided to come back from their trip to Miami to Los Angeles, the Jaureguis were forced to let Buddy stay with Laura and Buster.

It was also the last time Lauren saw Buster alive. She could vividly remember how her father sat her down in the kitchen and told her Buster passed away peacefully in his sleep.

Lauren shook the thoughts away. She was still reluctant to talk to anyone else, even Laura. What’s the need of talking anyway? It’s not like I’m going to be able to talk to my mom and dad again. 

She found herself frowning as she sat up and rubbed her eyes with her knuckles. Her morning began with Buddy greeting her with a bark. Buddy waggled his tail as he sat on the floor and looked up at Lauren. She had to admit that she missed the company of this dog. Lauren only has good memories with Buddy and she’s thankful that he hasn’t left her as well.

“Hey there, Buddy.” She crouched down and started to pet him on his head. Buddy wasn’t really a big dog, he’s smaller than a normal Bernese Mountain dog. Well, as far as Lauren know that’s the breed he fairly resembles.

She was just enjoying petting Buddy when out of nowhere he suddenly slipped out of her room, her bedroom door left ajar. Lauren doesn’t remember leaving it open last night.

She sighed softly before finally standing up from her bed and decided to follow her small companion. Lauren was still in her pyjamas, hair slightly disheveled and her face bare of any cosmetics. When she reached the garden of the estate, the morning breeze sent chills all over her body.

However, a faint sound of what seemed like a girl’s sobbing alerted Lauren. From where she was standing, it sounded as if she’s not far from where the source is. After a couple of steps, Lauren found herself peeking from a tree and found herself staring at a girl. She was crouched down on the ground, her hands were clasped around her shoulder while her head was buried along her knees.

Lauren was sincerely concerned, but she didn’t want to bother her and of course not while she was wearing her pyjamas. So, she decided to take a step back and leave the girl in peace. Maybe she won’t notice me.

Crack!

Just then a twig snapped in half, Lauren shut her eyes and hoped that the girl didn’t hear a thing, but she was wrong to think that.

“W-who are you?” Her voice quivered and by the sound of it, she had been crying for quite sometime.

There was only a faint groan that escaped Lauren’s mouth. She opened her eyes and saw this stranger standing and staring at her, green and hazel meeting for the first time. Somehow, Lauren could feel as if they shared the same pain. It was then that her eyes noticed the girl’s brownish blonde hair that curled around her chest, while her pale pink lips stood out the most. She’s beautiful, very beautiful.

Jan 21st 1949 - Cabello Estate

It was around midday when a news around town was announced. The Cabello family were quietly eating their lunch when Shaun paid a visit. He told everyone that there was a sentencing about to occur in town, apparently it’s about a coloured woman who tried to run away with the mayor’s daughter.

“Papá, I do believe it’s unwise to attend such a thing.” Karla suggested, her voice was very soft, almost as if she was pleading.

“My love, we don’t normally have a sentencing around town anymore! It should be fun.” Shaun stated as he smiled at Karla, though she knew there was something wrong with how Shaun was being. He’s not normally over enthusiastic. “It’s quite fascinating too. A woman and a woman. Not to mention, one happens to be black.”

There was a flash of red in Karla’s eyes. She couldn’t believe he’d actually say something about the matter. She completely snapped and before she knew it she already made a mistake, “Watch your damn tone!”

There was a moment of silence in the dinning table. All eyes were on Karla and she felt her shoulders deflate as her father spoke in Spanish in a very serious manner. “Karla Camila Cabello-Estrabao, that’s not the right way to talk to your husband.”

Karla clenched her jaws and looked straight in her father’s eyes. “He’s not my husband.” She retaliated.

“Hija, don’t talk back to your father.” Her mother joined in and soon Karla was outnumbered.

“Yes. Your parents are right, that’s no way to talk to your husband.” Shaun smirked, clearly content of what he had caused. “So, are we going?” He turned to Karla’s father and smiled darkly.

“Actually, I invited that halfbreed friend of yours, Karla. I told her you’d be there.”

Karla’s eyes widened as soon as she heard Shaun. Her heart rate increased as she couldn’t believe this disgusting oaf. “Why would Laura want to be there?”

“Because you’re going to be there.” Shaun simply said. “She seems fond of you.”

The implication was intentional, but Karla thanked the heavens that her parents didn’t caught it.

“I’m one of the few friends she has in town. I’d like to think she’s fond of me.” Karla glared at Shaun, obviously exasperated with his game already. “Let’s just all go. Right now, so we can catch that sentencing.” She immediately went back to the early topic, dropping her cutleries and standing up to get herself ready.

It only took twenty minutes for Karla along with Shaun and her parents to arrive in town. There were already people gathered around, guards were also huddled on one corner while some of the audience were already sitting down. Karla’s steps became heavier by the minute, she felt as if all the food she ate was going to come back up her throat. There, in the middle of the street, stood a girl tied up to the post. It was clear that they inflicted damage on her face, half of it was swollen and bloody. However, her attention was driven away by the loud screams coming from a familiar face.

“Jessica…” Karla mouthed, her eyes grew as she saw her friend crying in Laura’s arms. Karla looked at the woman tied up on the post once again, the longer she looked the better she got to see her face. “Layne…”

Laura’s eyes met Karla’s and she looked at her carefully with tears in her eyes. The mayor came out and took his daughter away from Laura, and after that Laura made her way into the seat she was arranged for, which was next to Karla. Being in the middle of Laura and Shaun didn’t make it easier for Karla, her parents being just centimetres away from them. Laura tried to reach out for her hand, but Karla was forced to keep her distance from her lover that day.

“We’re here today to witness this vile, vile woman to be put in her rightful place, after trying to instil her wretched evil to my only daughter. Rest assured, Jessica. I will not have this woman corrupt you any further.” The mayor spoke with a strong and passionate voice.

One so delusional, Karla thought.

“We are here to sentence this woman for the disgusting crime she has committed. Trying to abduct my daughter was foul in itself, but forcing yourself onto her is a crime that should be punishable by death. Wickedness lies within this woman–

“I can’t…” Karla mumbled, as she shut her eyes and tried to block the mayor’s words from getting in her head.

Laura immediately noticed that her lover was in distress, she leaned in closer and whispered. “Karla, it’s okay. Don’t listen to him.”

The loud cheers and insulting remarks thrown at Layne filled the town. Karla and Laura could not believe how foul people are.

“May you rot in prison in hopes to wash away your sins.” The mayor ended, before the guards practically dragged Layne by the shoulders and tied her hands together.

“Dyke!” One of the guards yelled in a guttural voice. 

Karla couldn’t help it anymore, she clenched her eyes close and held Laura’s hand. Laura was aware that Shaun is beside Karla, as he was aware of her parents too, but she couldn’t careless. If by holding Karla’s hand will reassure her lover that nothing bad is going to happen to her, Laura was willing to do it whole-heartedly.

All Karla wanted to do was to lean on Laura’s shoulder, but she feared Shaun would suspect her even more. With a small sigh, Karla leaned her head to the other side and rested in on Shaun’s shoulder, her eyes still closed.

Layne and Jessica were good people. Karla teared up at the fact that the world is against them, when clearly they’ve done nothing but to love one another. Just like how she loves Laura. 

She’s in love with Laura and she doesn’t want to deny it any longer. But, if she does, then both of them would only be punished for it.

“We’ll get through this…” She heard Laura’s faint whisper and somehow that’s everything she needed to reassure her.

————

Lauren continued to stare at her, still speechless with no words even ever planning to come out of her mouth. However, she felt a hand over her shoulder and when she turned back, Lauren found her grandmama with a smile on her face.

“I see you’ve met Amelia.” She said, as she gestured for ‘Amelia’ to stand up.

“Y-you know her… I’m… I’m so sorry Laura… I didn’t know.” She splutters, completely embarrassed.

“She’s my granddaughter. The one I was talking about.” Laura spoke to the girl and Lauren was utterly confused. “Lauren, I want you to meet Amelia. Or Jade, as she prefers.”

Lauren wanted to speak, but words were choked down her throat.

“She’s Norma’s youngest child.”

Norma? Of course, she used to look after the estate. “Norma’s…” Lauren’s voice trailed off. Norma passed away a few months ago. Lauren remembers this because she received a phone call from her grandmama who was upset at the time.

Jade was able to pick up on Lauren’s silence, therefore she offered a hand and let her lips curved into a smile. Lauren gathered herself together and finally took Jade’s hand and held it firmly before shaking hands with her. Lauren caught the small smile on Jade’s lips and couldn’t help but smile back. She also noticed that Jade’s hands were soft, it feels so delicate, which frightened Lauren because of the thought of hurting Jade’s hand.

“Nice to meet you, Lauren.” She said, now smiling with her teeth.

Lauren only nodded, but what really was on her mind was that a few seconds ago she saw Jade crying so vulnerably, but now she acted as if nothing ever happened.

“Why don’t you go on and get change, Lauren. Breakfast will be ready soon.” Laura broke her train of thoughts before Lauren did what she was told.

However, before she was fully out of sight, Lauren turned back and caught Jade’s eyes once more.

“It was nice to meet you too, Jade.” 

send me your thoughts on wattpad

[eisforeidolon]

You know, every time I see Cas stans whining about how ~*abusive*~ Dean is to their fave, I just can't help but think that if I was a hunter and some non-human I considered an ally:  beat me up for wanting to make a mitigating bad choice in a hopeless situation he helped create and couldn't solve either, lied to me continually for a year about working with an enemy and then demanded my unconditional trust, tried to manipulate me with a blatant lie of claiming he always responded to my calls for help, knew he fucked up resurrecting my brother but just left me to deal with the soulless bloodthirsty shell of him while his soul continued to be torn apart in hell, maliciously broke my brother's sanity and tried to run away at first when I asked him to heal it, released nigh-unkillable monsters that nearly took over the world while “saving” it against the advice of everyone not-a-demon (Balthazar totally had it coming for dissent, amirite?), personally murdered a fuckton of angels and humans while power-mad during the same debacle for disagreeing with him (or being motivational speakers) and told me to be thankful for not being thrown back in hell (for the second time), called me untrustworthy not so long after abandoning me without a word in the monster-ridden armpit of creation (even though he could hear me asking for help literally every night) because he didn't want to leave Purgatory and have to deal with the consequences of his actions, and not only trusted Lucifer's word against all common sense, but loaned out his vessel to said villain without a single goddamn word of warning to anyone?  Putting aside his unfortunate tendency to get brainwashed into trying to get me to end the world or kill me, which is not his fault but still a big problem? He'd be lucky to continue to be treated like a semi-useful tool and not just get repeatedly stabbed in the face.  

Yes, Cas is an ally that has helped the Winchesters in a lot of little ways and a few big ones. Yes, he usually means well and some of his worst decisions were made while brainwashed, crazy, or desperate.  Yes, the Winchesters have more than their own fair share of fuck ups.  Yes, Dean can be callous and dismissive when it comes to Cas, both in things he says and in a palpable lack of concern when Cas is obviously messed up or playing kamikaze.  Yes, the Winchesters tend to assume Cas is far more self-sufficient than he actually has been post-apocalypse (they have a broader history of being thoughtlessly insular to the point of neglecting their allies and possibly they and Cas are still hung up on the power dynamics from when they first met and Cas seemed indestructible).  But acting as if Cas is some blameless paragon who is always putting himself out to help every time they need it, who has done absolutely nothing worthy of ill-feeling and mistrust, who has never caused his own problems by hiding or refusing to ask for help, who the Winchesters should bow down and worship for not always being 100% a complete fuck up? It's laughable nonsense.  

[click2watch]

Florincoin – the 2014 Altcoin You Don’t Remember – Is Attracting Real Users

One of the most recognizable names in the crypto space (and perhaps even outside of it) is using one of the least recognizable blockchains.

Overstock.com subsidiaries Medici Ventures and tZERO have been utilizing the FLO blockchain for some time in work aimed at re-organizing property rights. At one time, a video of the tZERO homepage even showed the little-known blockchain at work.

Still, if you haven’t heard of FLO before, you won’t be alone. Maybe Florincoin, the blockchain’s moniker when it first launched in 2013, shortly before the 2014 altcoin boom – will ring a bell, at least those who were in New York at the time.

Joey Fiscella was a staple in the growing New York City crypto community during that area. A young, extroverted programmer, he had the ability to schmooze with the best of the business types. While the rest of the scene was focused on bitcoin, to a certain extent litecoin and for the lolz dogecoin, Fiscella was instead always talking Florincoin – a coin that’s visage bears a golden fleur-de-lis.

He was a regular at the New York Bitcoin Center and was always handing out thin strips of paper with Florincoin private keys (I used to have one, but as is the nature of small scraps of paper, it has been lost).

The idea was simple: Florincoin was bitcoin but with additional room for transaction comments, 140 characters at that time. And those characters would allow a decentralized social media (what else had a 140-character limit back then? Twitter), one that couldn’t be censored or stopped.

It’s a dream that’s still being toyed with today – from Steemit to Peepeth to Minds – but since then Florincoin, now FLO, has moved on.

Today, most of the developers and businesses involved in FLO are interested in it as an indexing tool, something that could provide the backbone of a blockchain-based Google.

Not only has Medici Land Governance begun adding property records on the FLO blockchain (and partnered with the state of Wyoming, the city of Tulum in Mexico and a government official in Zambia), but T-zero is adding digital locate receipts, which locate the ownership of a stock, into FLO to mitigate naked short selling.

On top of that, FLO is being utilized by the Open Index Protocol (OIP), a database for decentralized publishing of all kinds, and an app on top of OIP called Alexandria, which allows users to search and browse info in that database.

The list of users goes on too.

The California Institute of Technology, also called Caltech, uses FLO to store more than 17,000 records of information gathered with microscopes, and just recently announced the creation of another repository of microscope data.

So how, a crypto enthusiast might ask, did FLO become a blockchain with actual users (and seemingly without gloating in the hopes of sparking a price pump)?

According to Chris Chrysostom, a senior software developer at Medici Ventures, “As a developer I’m always open to looking at other solutions; people mention bitcoin a lot because right now it’s a good starting point for communicating concepts.”

But, he continued:

“One thing that FLO provides that bitcoin doesn’t is, right now, it has the ability to accept 1,040 bytes of metadata. FLO is able and willing to take on the blockchain bloat that many people are critical of in bitcoin.”

The bytes and the bloat

To understand how one of the most-anticipated and regulated token projects in the space came to use a blockchain that most people don’t even know about, you have to start with its first real business case.

Utilized by husband and wife team, Devon and Amy Reed, Florincoin became the underlying technology of the Decentralized Library of Alexandria (DLOA).

A blatant nod to the ancient world library that was burned down (while it’s become a modern-day symbol for the loss of cultural knowledge, the crypto project used it as a way to illustrate the problems inherent to centralization), the project was initially touted as a decentralized library. According to Amy, the co-founder of the project, in an earlier interview, all types of content, including books, blogs, video, audio and art could be added to the blockchain and secured from censorship.

DLOA was the forefather of today’s decentralized content platforms, hoping to untangle the messy distribution models that currently exist for content creators and viewers online.

The project chugged along for a couple of years quietly, until Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web and the founder of the W3C, a standards organization for the web, was given a demo of the app.

According to Amy, Berners-Lee loved it, but said: “change the name.”

So the application – a Google-like search for the data, became just Alexandria and the protocol, which allows content creators to decide how their content is categorized before adding it to the FLO blockchain, became known as the Open Index Protocol (OIP).

And as that change happened, the number of bytes that could be stored in a transaction was increased as well – from 140 to 528 and then to 1,040, the limit today. But what’s perhaps the most fascinating about OIP is that in a mess of new competition, the project has stuck with FLO.

From Storj to Filecoin or even more broadly ethereum or EOS, there’s a slew of blockchain projects looking to tackle a similar use case – decentralized file storage – and these new players tout advanced architecture that makes their platforms faster, stronger, overall better.

But Devon remains unphased by the shiny new toys.

“When we started the project, our goal was to build a shared data layer that is censorship-proof, persistent and as interoperable as possible,” he told CoinDesk. “This required certain technical choices, which FLO fit perfectly – and even though other things have been launched since which do a variety of things, they don’t meet those needs better than FLO does.”

For that index that OIP is, Devon contends, the project needs full global state replication (to make censorship attempts transparent), proof-of-work consensus (to make censorship attempts expensive and defensible) and the ability to directly benefit from bitcoin’s developer community (a fork of bitcoin).

According to Devon Reed, sure, OIP could instead store its index on ethereum, and with that gain a different developer community and plenty of hype.

But, he said, the project would lose in other ways. For instance, after sharding is implemented, the project wouldn’t any longer get full global state replication; and after Casper – ethereum’s switch to a proof-of-stake consensus algorithm – the project wouldn’t have the security of proof-of-work.

On top of that, the publishing fees would no longer be decided by the OIP working group, and would instead, entirely be a function of the gas costs – priced by the ethereum core developers – of certain operations.

For many intents and purposes, FLO has become a kind of single purpose blockchain specifically for OIP. And that wasn’t a bad thing for FLO. While other institutions are starting to use FLO now, for many years Devon and Amy were the only ones really focused on FLO and they brought in a significant number of the developers that work on the blockchain to this day.

The original angel

Take Sky Young, a senior full stack developer at Alexandria.io, who started working on the FLO protocol because of her role with Alexandria in August 2015.

Or Jeremiah Buddenhage, also known as bitspill, who began developing on the FLO blockchain after he completed and claimed a bounty posted by the Alexandria team to update the protocol. After that, Buddenhage told CoinDesk, Alexandria offered him contract work until hiring him as a full stack developer in the summer of 2017.

Both developers get paid to work on OIP, which many times involves the development of FLO, keeping the blockchain up-to-date, probably more so than it would be were there not a company so tied into its success.

Before OIP and Alexandria, there was only FLO’s (then Florincoin’s), creator, a pseudonymous developer going by the moniker SkyAngel. It’s pretty similar to bitcoin’s Satoshi Nakamoto, although SkyAngel remains around here and there, said Fiscella.

SkyAngel did not return requests for comment.

In June 2013, Fiscella was trolling crypto forums looking for altcoins to mine and stumbled on FLO – hours after the software was released, he began mining the cryptocurrency and after noticing a couple of bugs (nothing consensus-related) in the code, he contacted SkyAngel within a week of its release. He’s been volunteering his time towards development ever since.

And while Fiscella got his fair share of shit for messing around with FLO – this was back in the day when people thought all altcoins were useless or worse, scams – there’s a sense of pride now.

“FLO is one of the oldest altcoins that is still actively traded and developed,” he told CoinDesk.

And it’s done so, he continued, without a pre-mine for developers, without raising huge amounts of money in an initial coin offering (ICO), without even a million dollars from a venture capitalist. Although, the FLO developers have raised $50,000 from the community over the past six years and the OIP and Alexandria team have raised a few $100,000 here and there, which they used to continue FLO development.

As such, many of the developers working on FLO right now are also pretty happy with the way it’s all turned out.

For instance, Young describes FLO as “hidden” and “undervalued.” And although Buddenhage was initially only attracted to FLO as a way to make money from small programming gigs, his “appreciation and understanding” has grown significantly over the years.

He told CoinDesk, “The big idea that made me want to keep working on this project is the idea of building a public space – allowing users to determine the worth of their own work and for the consumers to determine if it’s appropriate (rather than being held to the mercy of rates decided by a private company or a vague definition of ‘advertiser friendly’).”

In describing my story, meeting Fiscella years later at a crypto meetup and thinking, ‘Holy shit, Florincoin still exists,’ Buddenhage, who’s been in the space since 2013, laughed, saying:

“It’s great to see people react when they re-discover that FLO/Alexandria have not joined the ranks of shitcoin yet nor is it merely idling on but has actually grown in the shadows.”

Enter tZERO

It was Chris Chrysostom, a developer that was looking to build a simple application called a bill of sale on a blockchain, that found FLO and eventually brought it into the Medici ranks.

While he began the project hoping to utilize bitcoin’s OP_RETURN feature, Chrysostom quickly became frustrated with that because cumbersome to use and doesn’t hold enough data to create anything substantial. So he started looking around, reading through some content about Factom and the Storj white papers, both of which mention FLO (again Florincoin at that time).

That led Chrysostom to Alexandria, where he worked alongside Devon and Amy, building out the project’s payment capabilities.

Then in July 2017, he was picked up by Medici Ventures.

Now a senior software developer at the venture capital subsidiary of Overstock.com, Chrysostom brought to the job his interest in FLO. Chrysostom was assigned to a project within Medici Ventures focused on property rights – the idea being a global property rights registry – and FLO and the work being done by the Open Index Protocol seemed like a natural fit there, he told CoinDesk.

“We use it specifically for projects, proofs-of-concept and research for this property rights project,” he said.

While Patrick Byrne, the founder and CEO of Overstock, announced a partnership in late 2017 with Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto with a similar intent, Chrysostom said his work using FLO at Medici Ventures was different, yet could easily support the De Soto project if necessary.

According to Chrysostom, he was looking for a proof-of-work blockchain with similarities to bitcoin, so many similarities that the development work on bitcoin’s core team could then be applied to the other blockchain as well. For instance, security measures and scaling technologies like Segregated Witness.

“FLO was really appealing – bitcoin wants its use case to be focused on value transfer (and that’s fine); FLO has taken it upon itself to have a lot of similarities to bitcoin but with the added feature of application data,” Chrysostom said. “Which is more suited for the property rights use case.”

And sure enough, Chrysostom has similar things to say about the project’s ethos and morals.

“It’s really appealing that FLO hasn’t gone down the path of turning itself into an ICO; it didn’t try to segregate coins in a certain way, like the staking mechanisms; it’s quite admirable that it has remained an open-source project,” he said, adding:

“Four to five years have gone by, and it’s still about what its founding was all about – an open blockchain with a little extra use case. I just find it admirable that it’s stuck to that.”

And as for OIP and Alexandria, those teams get Chrysostom’s praise too since, according to him, they focused on building out the software instead of hyping the coin.

Chrysostom said:

“FLO has been quite the stealth coin in my opinion.”

While Chrysostom would, of course, love to see the developers and projects building on FLO get rewarded for their work, he understands that with investment comes responsibilities that might divert the focus away from the open index goal.

For Medici Ventures part, it does not provide investment to FLO developers, Chrysostom explained, although he continued, “If the day comes that someone wants to make a pitch to Medici Ventures … I think they’d listen. They listen to all kinds of things.”

Keeping it afloat

Still, that’s not to say everything has run smoothly in the FLO community.

For instance, toward the end of 2015, customers of Cryptsy, the only digital currency exchange that listed FLO, began having withdrawal issues, and shortly after the exchange claimed it was insolvent after a July 2014 hack.

While a class action was mounted at Cryptsy in the aftermath, the parties that brought the class action against the exchange didn’t list FLO as one of the coins you could redeem. According to Fiscella, there are 11.5 million FLO coins in one Cryptsy wallet that haven’t moved since February 2014, so he suspects not that the exchange’s founders ran away with the coins (because then they probably would have sold them off at some point) but that these coins could not be recovered by any party, the exchange or even law enforcement.

“It wasn’t worth anything at the time,” Fiscella said. “But FLO was once around 40 cents.”

At that price, the coins lost in Cryptsy would have been worth more than $4 million.

Since then Bittrex and Poloniex have also listed FLO (actually on the same day in March 2015), although Poloniex removed it shortly after the exchange was acquired by Circle. Poloniex didn’t give a reason for the delisting of FLO, though the coin was taken off the site with a handful of other altcoins.

While some thought the reason was low volume, Fiscella argues that other coins that were not delisted had lower volume than FLO, so really he speculates the delisting was about FLO’s low hashrate, which meant that FLO could be relatively easily 51% attacked.

This was right around the same time that Crypto 51, a website calculating the cost of 51% attacking (and then double spending) cryptocurrencies, appeared. Once that website was up, a number of cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin gold and vertcoin, began dealing with attacks.

And FLO, which was on the Crypto51 list with an attack price of only $300, was exploited on Bittrex in September 2018 and 25 bitcoins were stolen. The attack works like this: an anonymous account deposited hundreds of thousands of FLO coins into Bittrex, traded that FLO for the 25 bitcoins, withdrew the 25 bitcoins and then rewrote about 480 FLO blocks. In this way, the FLO deposit was reversed and the hacker was able to reclaim the hundreds of thousands of FLO they had initially deposited and was also out with the bitcoin as well. The wallet at the exchange then didn’t have the FLO to deposit into the accounts that had bought the altcoin.

When Bittrex’s system detected this, it shut down FLO trading for about a month, until the developers fixed the issue.

“And by fixed it, I mean we paid 700,000 FLO to Bittrex,” Fiscella said, adding:

“And by we, I mean me.”

Bittrex did not respond to requests for inquiry.

Joey used the FLO he had been mining since the beginning to pay back the exchange and other FLO developers set up a “Big Mac Fund” for Joey, where community members have donated about half of the 700,000 to Joey for his ongoing work on the protocol.

Before the attack happened, Fiscella had been discussing the issue with Alexandria’s Devon Reed, saying they needed to increase the hash rate before something like this happened. But it was too little, too late.

After the attack, the developers working on the protocol decided that FLO needed to add some additional security measures to the scrypt-based mining algorithm (an alternative to bitcoin’s SHA-256 algorithm) since scrypt-based mining made it easier for an attack to take place.

The developers decided to add an extra rule to the consensus algorithm, a so-called max reorg depth limit feature. This feature requires large reorganizations of the blockchain be rejected, and it’s a similar feature to that used by bitcoin cash and ravencoin.

If that sounds like something that could kill a cryptocurrency, make people so skeptical of its security and value that they sell off their bags and leave it to die, it’s definitely happened before.

But FLO has endured and actually, it’s developers learned from its mistakes and evolved.

“The people who have joined have not asked to be paid, they’re just activists or investors,” Fiscella told CoinDesk, adding: “Everyone joined organically and they’re using their skills and network to grow the community. I think that’s really important.”

Today, there are about 10 active mining pools and another 10 that sometimes mine FLO, which increases the robustness of the coin. Also in early 2018, FLO’s code was updated to Segregated Witness, a protocol change that adjusts the way data is stored, making blockchains more scalable.

Echoing Fiscella’s comments about FLO being successful because of its determined developer community, Buddenhage concluded:

“They all appear to know what they’re doing and why they’re here putting in the effort whenever/wherever life/work allows the opportunity being that it’s a side project and volunteerism keeping it going, perhaps slowly at times but always moving forward with dedication and purpose.”

FLO coins featured image via gunkworks.no; images in the article via Joey Fiscella

This news post is collected from CoinDesk

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