#this is why the uk actually isn’t allowed guns

[rowanthestrange]

strongly against abuse and oppression of all kinds obviously but if i ruled the earth every person would have a permanent shock collar that activates if they exceed a certain number of decibels

[dangerousstrawberryshark]

I Can Do Anything I Want

Requested from no one.

Tom Holland x Male Reader

(Tom be looking sexy)

Warning: Violence, kidnapping, psychotic Tom, mention of nudity, all character are above the age of 18

Background: March 21st, 2030, 7:00 PM, you were getting ready to bunker down with your mom and dad. You hoped that nothing would happen tonight but someone decided to come in and give you a visit.

Tom is 20 and you are 18

M/n: Male name.

L/n: Last name.

F/n: Friend's name

Word count: 2900

I hope you enjoy it!! Sorry if it is bad! And there are probably many mistakes and grammar errors. 

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DISCLAIMER: I MEAN NO OFFENSE, DISRESPECT, OR HARM TO ANY OF THESE CELEBRITIES! THIS IS JUST FICTION.

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MINORS DNI. FEMALE READERS… I’LL ALLOW YOU TO READ MY FICS BUT DO NOT FETISHIZE ANY OF MY STORIES

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You were sitting on the couch with your mom sitting on the left side, and your father on your right side. You were waiting for the announcement to come on. ‘It's almost 7:00 PM…” you thought to yourself. The holiday you hated the most was about to begin.

Just then the emergency broadcast came on with that ear-shattering sound. And the screen on the TV turns blue with the symbol of the NFFA in the background.

“This is not a test.”

“This is your emergency broadcast system announcing the commencement of the Annual Purge sanctioned by the U.S. Government.”

“Weapons of class 4 and lower have been authorized for use during the Purge. All other weapons are restricted.”

“Government officials of ranking 10 have been granted immunity from the Purge and shall not be harmed.”

“Commencing at the siren, any and all crime, including murder, will be legal for 12 continuous hours.”

“Police, fire, and emergency medical services will be unavailable until tomorrow morning at 7 AM when the Purge concludes.”

“Blessed be our New Founding Fathers and America, a nation reborn.”

"May God be with you all.”

Then the air horn sirens blared meaning the Purge officially began. Your family has already set up defenses. You, of course, never participate. Your family put out blue flowers to show that they don’t want to participate but they support the purge.

You know your parents, they didn’t support this “holiday” at all. Come on now, 12 hours without any laws. Your parents spoke out against it.

Some (well most) Americans find the Purge to be successful. Unemployment rates plummeted down to 1 percent, crime rates decreased, and the economy was revived.

If you are wondering how this came into reality, it all started back in 2014.

(little history of how the Purge became a tradition in American society.)

In 2014, the United States was facing economic collapse, rising social unrest, and multiple wars. The economic collapse was worse than the Mortgage Crisis of 2008. Neighborhoods across the country were destroyed by an opioid epidemic.

Then a party was founded as a substitute for the Republicans and Democrats, they called themselves the New Founding Fathers of America or NFFA.

In 2016, the first experimental Purge took place and it proved to be successful. Then in 2017, the second experimental Purge began this time it was Nationwide.

Not long after that, the 28th amendment to the US constitution was ratified meaning that Purging is now an American right.

The Purge starts on March 21st at 7:00 PM and it ends at sunrise, March 22nd, 7:00 AM. all crime is legal for 12 hours, no killing high government officials, and don’t use explosives or bioweapons. Those who don’t follow the rules will be hanged.

This resulted in crime and unemployment rates dropping down 1 percent, government spending down 37 percent, and the GDP soared to 37.21 trillion dollars.

Still, many people disagreed with this because it was believed that the Purge was used as means of population control, and to decrease the poor population but they couldn’t do anything about it.

(little history lesson over. I just wanna include that part for those who have never seen the purge.)

We got off the couch and went to go do our own things. “Sweetie do wanna eat dinner?” my mom said, I smiled. “Yes please.” she smiled at me and went to go cook dinner. You went upstairs to chill in your room. Your window was boarded up but you could easily remove it when things go down.

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Time skip (8:00 PM)

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It's been one hour since commencement. You were up in your room just watching YouTube videos. Your mother was downstairs cooking Lasagna (or whatever your favorite dish is) your father was downstairs watching the news.

The news would keep up with things happening tonight. Were watching a live stream showing what was happening on the outside. Building on fire, people killing each other, and parties. All of this was caught on drones.

You would hear the occasional screams and gunfire in the area but you and your family were secure.

Then you heard banging on the front door. The door and windows were boarded up with wood planks. ‘Who is that?’ you thought, you were worried it was one of your bullies who decided tonight was the night they get to get rid of you.

You went downstairs to see your parents. They had fear in their eyes, then the door busted one. Three men wearing tuxedos with masks on walked in. then they pulled out their guns, that’s when you dashed and went up into your room.

Your parents tried to run but they were quickly gunned down. You could hear gunshots go off and their screams filled the house.

You locked your bedroom door and ran to the window to remove the wood plank blocking it. You could hear the footsteps coming up the stairs. One of them called out to you, “M/n⁓ where are you⁓? Come out from hiding… are you in your room?”

You recognized that deep British accent, it was Tom! Tom Holland from your class! ‘What did I do to him? I never did anything wrong to him!’ but that didn’t stop you from removing the plank. You jumped out the window and ran for it.

Tom busted through your door to see that you have escaped. He gritted his teeth and went downstairs to see his twin brothers sitting down on the couch with their masks off.

“So he got away?” the older twin said. “Yeah, he did. We’ll find him though. He isn’t stupid enough to go downtown. He’ll probably head to his friend's house.” Tom said a little anger that his precious lover had gone away.

“We already took care of his friends. But we couldn’t get to one of them.” The younger twin said, Tom nodded and went out to go find you.

(Btw Tom's parents live in the UK and they don’t know what he is doing. Tom’s brothers are just helping him catch you)

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Time skip (9:00 PM)

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You were running to your friend's house hoping they would help you. You had to be careful while running through the streets, there were purgers everywhere. The city of Los Angeles was crawling with them, especially in the downtown area.

Thankfully you took your phone with you to see what time it was. ‘9:00 PM.’ you turned off your but you made sure it was on silent mode so it wouldn't bring attention to you.

You had a little encounter with Purgers but they were quickly gunned down by a machine gun attached to the back of a car. You saw vehicles on fire, dead bodies, and an old lady just watching a body burn.

‘This is all crazy!’ you thought as you ran faster just to get off the streets but what you didn’t was that someone was following you.

After running for 30 minutes you finally arrived at one of your friend’s houses. You didn’t realize that their barricades were broken until you twisted the knob on the door.

You walked in to see the whole place trashed. You walked through the rooms to see F/N parents dead, lying on the floor. Their eyes were open, you see nothing in them. “Please don’t be dead…” you said putting your hand over your mouth as you tried not to cry out loud.

You slowly walked up the stairs and approached F/N’s room. There you saw it, F/N lying on the floor dead as well. You burst out crying but that ended when you heard a car pull up.

“Find him!” you knew who that was immediate. You couldn’t run anywhere because they were downstairs, and the window had steel as a barricade. So, you hid in F/n’s closet.

You knew they had a pile of clothing in the corner, so you buried yourself in their clothes. You heard their footsteps walking up the stairs, and them breaking down the door. Then you heard them in the room.

You could see a figure walking through a small hole in the clothing pile. You covered your mouth so you wouldn’t breathe too hard. “CLEAR!” the figure yelled and went back downstairs. You heard their conversation from downstairs because of how the walls were thin.

“I thought he would be here!” Tom yelled, and out of anger shots one of his own men. The twins and the other weren’t fazed by this. They knew Tom had a few screws loose.

Then you heard them leave but you didn’t believe they actually left so you decided to stay where you were for the 2 to 3 hours.

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Time skip (3:00 AM)

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While waiting you accidentally fell asleep (why? because of plot purposes and I'm the author)and you realized that it was 3:00 AM, 4 hours till the Purge ends. You thought you could stay here but then you smelt something burning.

You got out of the pile to see the room was on fire. ‘What?! How?’ you quickly got and ran before the roof caved in on you. The backdoor was barricaded but due to the fire, it melted the steel allowing you to escape. (is that possible?)

You were on the run again but before you left, you noticed a group of people watching the house burn. ‘Are those my teachers?’ The group was your teachers from different classes. You knew they didn’t like F/N at all.

‘What has this country become?’ if this keeps happening, if more innocent people keep dying, then the nation will become the “Nation of Murders.” you decided to ignore them and run.

But one of them saw you, “M/n? Is that you?” one of them yelled. You froze, ‘how did they--?’ you turned around to see them walking towards you. “Hey don't worry we ain’t kill you. You are our favorite student!”

You looked at them shocked. “Why are you out here? Aren’t you supposed to be with your parents?” you looked down and began to cry. They noticed and said they didn’t need to know.

“Do you wanna come with us? There’s a neighborhood block party.” you nodded and decided to go with them. ‘So I guess they kill the kids they hate.’ they then took you to one of the nearby parties.

But one of Tom’s men noticed and decided to alert the big boss.

(just to be clear, in the Purge series there isn’t a legal purge. Meaning that you can kill someone who is 18 or younger. Now that’s fucked up.)

You and the teachers arrived at the block party. You see everyone partying, some had creepy masks, and others were naked grinding against each other. You lost your teachers in the crowd so you decided to just hideout.

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Time skip (6:00 AM, one hour till the Purge ends.)

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(if you are wondering why Tom didn’t show up early, it's because he was busy doing something else….. Or maybe its because I was too lazy to put anything during that time skip)

You checked your phone and noticed it was 6:00 AM. ‘One more hour!’ you smiled as the night was finally coming to an end. The sun was rising in the distance but people were still partying. ‘I survived the night.’

You even began to party yourself in celebration of surviving. You had a couple of drinks but not enough to be completely drunk. You danced with some people. Overall you were having a good time

But that happiness was short-lived when the gunfire began to go off. People were screaming and tripping over each other as they tried to run away. You already knew who it was. Tom fucking Holland and his group arrived

He noticed you in the crowd and smirked as he can finally have you before the Purge ended. You ran away from the crowd to one of those large garbage containers. You hid behind them hoping Tom won’t find you.

You could still hear the screams of people and more gunfire further down the street. You creeped out from your hiding place and walked back to the street.

You were horrified by what you were seeing. Dead bodies everywhere, your teacher’s dead bodies, and some people you were dancing with. All dead.

Then you heard footsteps behind you, you turned around to see Tom there smiling sadistically at you. You admit he was kind of hot but that doesn’t matter right now. “Why are you doing this? I never did anything to you! And did you find me?! ”

(6:55 AM)

“Why’m I doing this? Well, it's because of M/n…… I love you M/n! You never did anything wrong. And how did I find you? Well, remember there's an app where you can track down certain people’s phones? Well, that’s how I found you, that and one of my men told me.” Tom sounded proud of what he just said.

(6:57 AM)

“I thought I could use this Purge night as a way to finally have you to myself! I hope you share the same feeling like me.” you couldn’t believe what you were hearing.

“Tom…. look, you’re a cute guy, hell I would probably have dated if you just came up to me like a normal person would. But no, you went ahead and killed everyone. You killed my family and friends, and you think I share the same feeling like you! No!” you yelled the tension was thick and Tom was angry.

(6:59 AM)

“I loved you! And they were getting in the way!--” Tom took a pause, “If I can’t have then no one will!” Tom charged at you with his knife. ‘What happened to his gun?’

But you quickly snapped out when he charged at you. You dodged his attack but he stabbed you in the arm. He was about to finish when…

(7:00 AM)

*INSERT SIREN NOISE*

The siren went off meaning the Purge had come to an end. Tom was still going to attack but was stopped when a voice came on, “Stop what you are doing! I repeat stop what you are doing! The Purge has concluded. If anyone does a crime, you will face the consequences.”

Tom stopped what he was doing and looked at you, “Next Purge, I’m going to get you.” Tom then got into his car and drove off.

You felt like you were going to faint from blood loss but then someone drove up to you. “Hey, okay?! Oh my God, we need to get you to the hospital!” they picked you up and carried you into the backseat, and drove you to the nearest hospital.

The radio was on and began to report on tonight’s events. “Just after 7:00 AM, March 22nd Pacific Standard, the Annual Purge was concluded. Reports are coming from all over the nation that this was the most participated Purge yet….

364 days until the next Purge...

THE GOOD ENDING

Bad Ending.

Time skip (6:00 AM, one hour till the Purge ends.)

You checked your phone and noticed it was 6:00 AM. ‘One more hour!’ you smiled as the night was finally coming to an end. The sun was rising in the distance but people were still partying. ‘I survived the night.’

You even began to party yourself in celebration of surviving. Yo had a couple of drinks but not enough to be completely drunk. You danced with some people. Overall you were having a good time

But that happiness was short-lived when the gunfire began to go off. People were screaming and tripping over each other as they tried to run away. You already knew who it was. Tom fucking Holland and his group arrived

He noticed you in the crowd and smirked as he can finally have you before the Purge ended. You ran away from the crowd to one of those large garbage containers. You hid behind them hoping Tom won’t find you.

You could still hear the screams of people and more gunfire further down the street. You creeped out from your hiding place and walked back to the street.

You were horrified by what you were seeing. Dead bodies everywhere, your teacher’s dead bodies, and some people you were dancing with. All dead.

Just then you felt something being injected into your neck. You passed out but before you completely passed out, you got a glimpse of who it was…. It was Tom.

“You're finally mine M/n. I’ll keep you forever…. No one will take us apart….”

PART TWO CAN BE FOUND HERE

[thessalian]

Thess vs Gun Control

So here we go: the school shooting in Uvalde. Because ... y’know, I’ve been watching this shit for a very long time. Hell, this shit has been going on for a very long time - I was kind of horrified to find out that the first recorded school shooting in the US was in 1840. Numbers slowly escalated until about the 50s, when they started to increase rather faster and then fucking skyrocketed starting about 1980. And every once in awhile they have to upgrade ‘shooting’ to ‘massacre’ because of just how many people died. And I watch this and I just...

See, I live in the UK now. And in 1996, there was a school shooting that had to be upgraded to ‘massacre’. That was Dunblane. Thing is, there are two major differences between Dunblane and ... like, every unholy mess you find in the US. See, first of all, Dunblane wasn’t a student who got hold of his parents’ firearms or somehow managed to buy their own. No, the Dunblane Massacre was perpetrated by a paedophile asshole with four legally-owned handguns.

And that’s where difference number two comes in. Immediately after this whole mess - handgun ban. No ifs, no buts, no maybes. Automatic weapons are banned wholesale. Rifles and shotguns have control on the type and ammunition you’re allowed, and then only after a lot of background checks. And pistols? You’re literally only allowed a muzzle-loading pistol, and that with a license. Summary? They were tough on things here before Dunblane, but after? Nope nope nope.

Thing is, as much as I would love for this to happen in the US? I see it being a long, hard road to get there. Why? Because, again, gun culture. The US has one. The UK does not. When the handgun ban came into effect here, people quite happily took advantage of the buy-back scheme that the government ran. I don’t think that’d happen in the US ... and the worst part is? The people least likely to give up their guns are generally speaking the last people in the world who should have one.

They’ll always talk about how they need guns to protect themselves and their families, and the second amendment, and blah. And I actually had a friend who, when the Virginia Tech shooting happened, said, “If more of those kids or the teachers were armed, fewer people would have died”. Wouldn’t listen when I flagged up that was bullshit, and in fact that probably more people would have died. Because first of all, I’ve read where even armed people with military training haven’t just shot the gunman down in those situations; what the hell chance does a civilian have? And second of all - friendly fire isn’t. Once Mr Bullet has left Mr Gun, he is no longer your friend. More bullets just mean more deaths and more injuries.

As to the second amendment? That’s a horrible misreading and a moot point besides. People are granted the right to bear arms to form a militia against a tyrannical government. I mean, even if the people with the guns weren’t more likely to support the tyrannical government than oppose it, that amendment is a holdover from the days when weapons tech was a little more even than it is now. I’m sorry, but your AR-15 is going to do jack shit against a tank. So that kind of militia is pointless long-term, so the second amendment needs serious revision anyway.

But, again, gun culture. I know that everyone thinks that there should be better gun control. And there should be better gun control. The UK manages just fine without people being allowed automatic weapons and handguns. However, I don’t expect to see decent gun control in the US in my lifetime. There would be way too much push-back from way too many people who would shoot anyone who even tried to ‘take their guns away’.

And as for the people saying that Biden should just do it and to hell with what anyone else says? Keep in mind the following: that’s how Trump governed. We can’t be okay with one president throwing out an executive order for whatever he feels like at the time after we spent four years bitching about another president doing the same. That kind of law can’t just exist for people whose ideas we don’t like.

This is another one that has no easy solution. The handgun ban worked for the UK. It would never fly in the US. The only thing we can do now is try to break up the gun culture so that maybe, someday, our descendants will be able to do what we’d like to be able to but can’t.

[marlahey]

under the same roof part two: an old friend

a harry styles rpf part two of six  ratings/warnings: the stalking comes to an alarming head via chase, suggestion of violent intent, aggressive emotions, fuck the patriarchy notes: things get serious, intimacy occurs, we all suffer. moments were edited or cut to reinforce the utter lack of actual romance in a real stalking situation, but I promise we’ve made up for it in later parts!  fun fact: on a lighter note, this series should probably just be titled: sweet things that have actually occurred to annie that she forgot she wrote in and so suffers in every edit session. 

masterlist | part one | part three (14.12.2020) ... • friday, 4th january 8:34 pm • Blood roars in your ears as you sprint through the parking garage, but the sound isn’t loud enough to drown out the pounding footfalls that aren’t your own. Every gulp of air burns your throat but you can’t stop, you can’t even slow down. The hum of industrial ceiling lights overhead is the only other sound. No one would hear you scream.

You’d heard the second car door after yours, and the initial footsteps. A quick turn of your head was your worst fear realized: the blue-eyed man beelining towards you, so quickly you’d barely had a chance to try and outpace him. A heavy hand landed on your shoulder as the man grabbed a fistful of your cardigan before yanking back on the fabric. Twisting desperately against his hold, you’d heard a faint pop-pop-pop as the stitching around your collar snapped and gave. You’d practically fallen away from him before scrambling upright, sliding with little traction on the dusty concrete beneath your feet, and bolting towards the open center of the lot. Your breath pours out into the air. There are no security cameras. Why are there no security cameras? A white, hot panic inside your head makes it hard to think, but you must. You can’t take the lift as it leads to a dead end, so it’ll have to be the stairs. The torn neck of your sweater leaves one of your shoulders naked to the cold. You came so close to draping a scarf around your shoulders before you left your apartment this morning. Had you kept it on, you could have been dead by now. You tear through the door to the stairwell at the other end of the garage and take the steps by two. At any moment an obstacle could arise—a locked door, a dead phone battery, a hard fall on the stairs—and that would be it for you. You’d be a gruesome headline or a face on a milk carton. You would never see your siblings, or India, or Chowder, or your parents ever again. Hot tears sting the corners of your eyes. On the last flight of stairs before the lobby, the sound of the stairwell door slamming echoes up the passageway. You look instinctively. A black, gloved hand is making its way up the railing. You almost lose your balance bursting through to the lobby, and even though your legs are screaming, you do what all the brochures have ever told you to do and break into another full-fledged run to the lift around the corner. You wish you’d chosen a building with a doorman or security desk—some kind of human checkpoint. “No, no, no,” you beg under your breath, launching an arm between the closing doors. You stumble, half expecting it to be empty, and find yourself face to face with Harry.  His eyes skim you over, widening from behind his glasses. You’re still clinging to the doors of the lift. Down the hall and around the bend, the door to the stairwell bangs open again; you wince. Harry’s eyebrows knit together. Thinking on your feet, you lurch inside and drag your hand along the keypad, illuminating just about every random floor up to the penthouses in the twenties, but not eight, and nothing before it. Harry’s eyes dart between yours and the doors. The footsteps in the hall behind you grow louder. You smash the close door button a dozen times, but something in you knows it’s a lost effort. You rush forward and tuck yourself into Harry’s side, tearing his name tag off and stuffing it in your bag. He startles, twisting to look at you, but you stick to your guns and slip your arm around his back. A moment later your eyes meet in the vaguely distorted metallic reflection above the keypad. Harry’s eyes are full of questions; a plea is in yours. For a second time, the doors of the lift begin to close but are stopped by an interjecting hand. A third body enters. It is him. That yellow-grey hair, the wrinkles and the scar on his lip, the worn, leathery skin… Immediately, the man turns to stare at you, and scoffs. You jump, your hand instinctively grasping the back of Harry’s jacket. You will your knees to be still. The lift doors close. It is silent until the car lurches upward. Suddenly you feel a warm, heavy pressure across your shoulders. In the reflection of the doors, you watch Harry’s arm wrap around you. He squeezes once. Your frantic gaze is pinned down by his much more fixed one. He feels so solid pressed into your side, and his eyes are solemn behind his glasses. More serious, maybe, than you’ve ever seen in the last year.  Harry’s lips quirk—the suggestion of a smile—before he looks down at his feet: a ruse of casual nonchalance. Your stomach twists.  The blue-eyed man sighs impatiently. Harry moves his hand to your waist and pulls you even tighter into his side. The car bounces to a stop on the sixth floor with a ding. As the doors glide open, it dawns on you that you had not thought this all the way through to the end. Do you go with Harry? What if you put Sylvia in danger? What if the man follows you? Harry’s arm drops from your shoulders.  The same white hot panic from the garage sears behind your eyes. Is this it? Is Harry about to leave you alone to your fate?  You almost miss his hand reaching back for you, like it’s something he does all the time. Harry squeezes, hard enough to nearly be painful. It starts you into motion. Your legs feel stiff and inflexible like they can’t remember how to walk as he pulls you along, keeping himself between you and the blue-eyed man. You’re off.  The doors close.  Harry glances over his shoulder, your hand still tight in his. He gently guides you to walk in front of him, and you shudder at the thought of the man still watching. You do not hear a third pair of footsteps trailing you, and you do not dare turn around to check. There’s something eerie in walking down a hall identical to your own but knowing that none of these doors are yours.  “This is me.” Harry’s voice is low around the jingle of his keys as he nods to the only door in the hallway hung with a wreath. You say nothing as he steps aside to let you through. He peers into the hall one last time once you’re both inside before locking the door, deadbolt, and chain guard. You lean your back against the wall with your arms across your chest, clutching your sides. He looks over at you slowly, hesitates, and takes a step toward you. His Adam's apple bobs. Suddenly the air leaves your lungs entirely and you begin to heave. You feel as though you’d been sprinting on a treadmill for an hour and then stopped immediately, which keeps you from realizing that Harry has been saying your name. Tears gather in your eyes again; if you allowed yourself to blink, they would spill over. You begin to sink against the wall. Harry catches your elbows in his hands, but you keep sinking anyway. He follows you all the way down to the floor. “Sorry,” you gasp. “You’re safe.” Harry just shakes his head. “I’ve got you.” You nod and try to send a few deep breaths to the pit of your stomach, then clear your throat. “Call the police.” Harry doesn’t need to be told twice. He’s on his feet, flicking on light switches and digging his phone from out of his bag. You hear, “Yes, hello. I’d like to report… following my neighbor.” Your mind reels.  Harry’s voice sounds almost distorted, like you’re underwater. “In my apartment with me.” You catch, “...followed her into the lift,” as well as “Yes,” and “No,” to a series of questions before he reappears with a concentrated frown, watching you. “She’s safe.”  You pick yourself up off the floor and Harry gestures to the small two-person dining table. He angles his cellphone down to his chest as he’s pulling the chair out for you. “Do you want to speak with them?” he whispers. You take a deep breath and nod, holding out your hand. Your fingers tremble, so you place it face up on the table instead and turn on the speaker. He may as well find out now; you can’t imagine having to explain all this a second time.  “Hello?” “Hello, my name’s Officer Warren. We hear you’ve had quite a scare tonight. I know it’s hard, but try to stay as calm as possible and just answer a few questions for me as best you can.”  The fact that the dispatcher is a woman comforts you. “Okay.” “Are you injured?” “No.” “Can you just confirm your full name for me? And your address?”  You rattle off your details, noting with strange detachment that you and Harry live precisely two floors apart. His flat is 6F; yours is 8F. “How long have you lived there?” “Almost a year.” “And how long have you been in the UK?” “About two and a half years. I’m a student at UCL.” “I understand you’re with a neighbor. Do you feel as though you’re in immediate danger?” You look up at Harry before your eyes dart to his front door, hesitating for longer than you want to. “No.” “Can you tell me what’s happened?” You close your eyes. “A man tried to grab me in the parking garage.” “Was this a man you’ve met before?” “He’s been following me since June. I see him everywhere I go. It happened the first few times in public places like on my walk home or when I go jogging, but then I started seeing him everywhere.” Your eyes open again. “Like, I’ve seen him on campus and in restaurants where I was eating. He was walking behind me the first time I ever went to Ilford for work, which is completely out of my way. He took the same tube as me once and tried to grab my hand.” You hear Harry’s knuckles crack across the table from you. “And how long ago was that?” “December twentieth.” “Have you ever come to the police with this information?” “Yes. I filed a report at the Lavender Hill station on the first of October and we went through some headshots but none of them were him.” You hear a series of keystrokes. “Yes, I see your file here. And can you describe what happened today?” “I was picking up some archives at the Ilford Historical Society–” “For school?” “Yes. I’m a research assistant. They have a postbox under my advisor’s name. I usually pick up the archives for the week on Thursdays, but I didn’t get around to it until a few hours ago. It’s usually just three or four storage boxes but today there was a sealed yellow envelope—” Your voice runs higher, choked. You turn away from Harry as you swallow another wave of emotion, but your voice is hardly any different when you begin speaking again. When you turn back, Harry’s hand is a little closer to yours on the table. “Today there was this big yellow envelope with my name handwritten on it and I figured it was just something from my advisor, so after I carried everything to the car, I opened it, and it… there were all these pictures of me.” “Are you able to tell where these photos were taken? What you were doing in them?” Your bag sits half open on the table beside you; you can tell without looking that Harry’s followed your eyes to the mustard yellow envelope poking out the top. You don’t want to open it again. You don’t have to. The images are burned behind your eyelids. “There’s one of me on the tube looking at my phone. Another one of me leaving the shops. There’s a few at the gym.” You sniffle. “Most of them are taken through the window of my flat. They must’ve been across the street because you can see me through the blinds and I’m—when I don’t…” You stare at the edge of the table. “When I’m undressing.”  You lean your forehead into your hand. Harry is stock still across from you. The pause before the officer speaks again feels like it stretches forever. “Can you tell when the most recent photo was taken?” It takes a beat to admit, “It’s from two nights ago,” and the words taste bitter in your mouth. The clack of a keyboard is audible again through the phone.  “You said you’ve been to the Lavender Hill station before? Have you reported these photos yet?” You gather your thoughts. “I was going to go straight there, but I wrote these long descriptions of all the past times I’d seen him. The officer I spoke to the first time I went in, she told me to write down absolutely everything I remembered, so I did—the times of day I’d seen him, where I was, what I was wearing… She said having my own record would help my chances of opening an investigation. I keep all of that at home in my flat, so I decided to go home and grab my notes to bring with me to the station, along with the pictures. I borrow my best friend’s car to commute to Ilford, so I drove straight home.” “And what happened when you got home? In the car park?” You take a deep breath. And then another. Your eyes squeeze shut again. “Take all the time you need.” “I turned into the car park… I pulled into my usual spot. I took off my jacket and left it in the passenger seat, thinking I would come back to it in a minute. I got out of the car and locked it… ” You swallow dryly. “I heard a car door shut behind me. I turned around and saw the man—I recognized him.” “Do you remember what he was wearing?” “He was wearing, um, black gloves, a grey sweater, black jeans, and I think his shoes were black too.” You frown at your hands. “I could hear how quickly he was walking up behind me. I tried to get away, and he—” You swallow. “He grabbed me. Or at least, he tried. He tore the seam of my sweater and I managed to like, pull away. And then I just ran. I was too scared to try the lift so I just took the stairs all the way up to the lobby. But he followed me.”  Your eyes flicker up to Harry absently before you go on. “Harry was in the lift—the—my neighbor, so I ran over and put my arm around him to make it seem like I wasn’t alone.” Harry nods at you from across the table.  “And the man was able to follow you into the lift?” The tips of your fingers ache at the memory of slamming desperately into the close door button. “Yes.” “Did he try to communicate with you in any way?” You shake your head and then remember she can’t see you. “No. He was just staring at me.” “Has he ever approached you or tried to make contact before?” “Just the one time on the tube and the pictures.” “Were you followed out of the lift?” “No.” “And you’re in your neighbor’s flat now, is that right?” “Yeah.” You run your sleeve beneath your nose with a sniffle. “And the man knows which floor you got off at?” ”Correct.” “Do the windows in both of your flats face out on the same street?” Your stomach drops. “Yes… They do.” “I want you to remain calm and stay on the line, can you do that for me?” It’s deadly quiet as you and Harry look at each other. You feel eerily as though you’ve wound up in a Hitchcock film. “Yes.” “Move away from the windows and find a place in the flat that’s not visible from the street���” The legs of Harry’s chair are scraping the floor before you get the chance to react. “...and do not turn out any lights or change the way any of the blinds are positioned.” “C’mere.” Harry’s voice is gravely urgent. He leads you to the kitchen with a hand between your shoulder blades, and brushes past you to lower the blinds of a small window above the sink. Your eyes widen as your hand reaches toward him. “Harry—” He glances back, too late. “Don’t… ” You stumble. “Don’t fix any more of those.” He nods once.  “Yes, don’t touch the blinds. Don’t change anything that would make it look out of the ordinary. If someone has been staking out your building from the same place across the street every night, you could give yourself away and put you both at risk.” “Okay.” Harry leans against the sink with his arms crossed, and you mirror him.  “Since you already have a file on record and the whereabouts of this man are still uncertain, it might do more harm than good to have you come in again for questioning at this hour. But we’ll need you to come by first thing in the morning. You absolutely cannot go back to your flat tonight. He knows very well which unit is yours, and he’s clearly found access into the building somehow. Do not turn on the lights, do not fuss with the blinds, do not go to retrieve any belongings. If it’s something dire, an officer can escort you.” “Okay.” “And don’t leave the building, either. If you need a place to stay, there’s a section of the precinct that can hold you till morning. An officer will have to drive you there, too.” “Okay,” you parrot. “Listen carefully. It’s not forever, but right now we need you to keep yourself absolutely out of sight. Anything that could result in your being followed… Well, we would strongly advise against your taking unnecessary risks. We obviously want to keep you and anyone else involved as safe as possible.” “I understand.” “A patrol officer is en route to your address. He’ll stay posted outside the building for a few hours. If something happens, don’t hesitate to call. Is this a number we can redial if need be?” You look up to Harry; he nods fiercely. “Yes.” “Try to get some rest. You’re safe now, and we’ll see you first thing in the morning.” “Thank you, officer.” You pass Harry’s phone back to him before digging through your bag to retrieve your own. The dial tone rings in your ear as you turn to face the living room. You’re sent to voicemail. “Uh… hi, Mom. It’s me. Just give me a call back when you get this, okay? I—um… Everything’s fine I should just… give you an update, so. Anyways. Talk soon. Love you.” You set your phone down on the counter, but can’t manage to meet his eyes. Some part of you had been worried that he would judge you—or worse, pity you. He doesn’t speak, nor does he try to touch you. Your eyes are pulled towards two sets of rainbow-painted handprints stuck to Harry’s fridge—one large, one tiny. A wave of nausea washes over you at the imposition you’ve entitled yourself to, the risk involved, the implications.  “Thank you.” Harry jumps at the sound of your voice. “For everything. I should—” you loop an arm through the strap of your bag— “I should go.” “Woah, woah, woah… ” Harry catches your arm before you can take three steps. You freeze. He releases you immediately. “And go where? You heard the officer, yeah?” He’s shaking his head slowly. “You can’t go back to your flat.” “I did hear her,” you counter. It comes out more curt than you had meant it. “There’s a safe place for me to sleep at the precinct… Thank you again, I can show myself out.” “That’s ridiculous—” You turn away and he says your name, once, imploring. It’s more of a plea than a demand, keeping you still. You still have your eyes on the door, but since you’re no longer moving, Harry goes on.  “You can stay here, it’s fine. I’ve got a spare bed n’ all. You can sleep in Vi’s room.” Your resolve wavers. His voice is a pitch softer as he asks, “What is it?” Your mouth hangs open a moment before you can find the right words. “I don’t—we don’t…” We don’t know each other seems far too accusatory with everything that’s transpired between you, especially after tonight. You grind your teeth, reeling the words back. Harry’s fingers touch your elbow, hesitating, and when you don’t pull away he wraps his hand gently around your arm. Tears well up in your eyes and you can’t blame them on the guilt, fear, or relief alone… all of it at once leaves you itching to escape.  “We’re practically strangers,” you settle on finally. “I put you in danger, and I put your family in danger—” Harry’s thumb rotates in tiny circles in the crook of your arm, a touch so light you can barely feel it. You think unbidden of the lift on New Year’s Eve, and the brush of his lips over yours. You want to fall headlong back into that memory—to abate what is shaping up to be one of the worst nights of your life. “I’m Harry.”  You blink. “What?” He smiles at you—a quick, sanguine flicker of a thing. “I’m Harry… Styles. I’m twenty-six. I graduated from Kings with a Bachelors in Art History and Psychology. I’m an Administrative Assistant to the Director of the National Gallery—” his smile is real now, wider— “But sometimes I pick up shifts keepin’ an eye on the gallery for the extra few quid… I have a daughter named Sylvia. She’s almost five. I get her every other week. I grew up in Cheshire. I have a sister named Gemma and my mum’s name is Anne.” You sniffle. “Why are you telling me all this?” “So you and I aren’t strangers anymore.” You have no idea how to respond. “You’ve never been here before,” Harry continues. “If someone’s been keeping close tabs on our building, then maybe this is the safest place for you right now. If I felt you were putting my daughter in harm’s way—” you open your mouth to speak and he raises a finger— “I would ask you to leave… As it is, if you go now, I feel that I would be putting you in harm’s way… And I don’t want to.” The two of you stand at a stalemate. “Please don’t make me.” Harry lets go of your arm and eventually backs up to lean against the sink again. You could leave if you wanted to. Eventually you sigh and drop your bag down to the kitchen floor with a thud. “Are you hungry?” Harry asks. “I was gonna fix something for myself anyway.” You shake your head. “I don’t think I could eat anything right now.” The more powerful urge is to erase this night from memory, to scrub away the feeling of a rough hand on your shoulder. You absently rub your thumb into the sleeve of your shirt where the grime from the door to the stairwell had smeared. Your shoulder is still bare from the gaping hole. Harry tilts his head, as if he’s going to say something more, but you blurt, “Could I use your shower actually?” “Of course.” He leads you to the end of a brief hallway with three adjacent doors, only one of which is open. “Be back in a sec.” Harry emerges moments later with two folded towels, then flicks on the light as you trail behind him. Your eyes are immediately drawn to Harry in the broad mirror that covers the entire wall above the sink. His bathroom is virtually identical to yours, but it’s striking to see his familiar reflection somewhere outside of the lift.  Harry pushes aside the curtain to the shower. “Fuck.”  He sets the towels down on the toilet seat and hastily gathers up the army of rainbow rubber ducks lined along the rim of the tub, before yanking off a plastic water wheel suction cupped to the faucet. Clear synthetic stickers in the shape of cartoon rocket ships and planets cling to the shower wall which Harry peels off in a stack before scooping out a myriad of other colorful knick-knacks from the bottom of the tub. “Harry, you don’t have to do that.” “I’m just now realizing how mad this must look to someone who isn’t the parent of a four-year-old—” “Harry, please. You’re already doing so much for me. You don’t need to remodel your bathroom.” “Alright, well… ” Harry rises, brushing his hands down the front of his suit trousers with flushed cheeks and glasses halfway down his nose. He cards his fingers through his hair. “Just be careful not to step on those little sparkly buggers. They’re the most painful by far.” “I’ll keep that in mind.” You have to suppress an laugh at the image of him having stepped on every last toy in the tub enough to compare. “So, like, the red is hot and obviously the blue is cold but it’s very sensitive so I find it’s best to just leave it at about three o’clock—wait you…” Harry shakes his head with a frown. “You probably have the same one, don’t you?” You nod, wringing your hands. “Do you have a shirt or something I could borrow for after?” “Of course,” he almost cuts you off, disappearing into the hallway. You perch on the edge of the tub and run the faucet to adjust the temperature. There’s three raps on the door. “Come in!” you call. Harry squeezes through the door and you catch his eyes in the mirror. “Let me know if these fit.” You watch his reflection lift the clean towels, put down the bundle of clothes, and restack the linens on top with the ease of someone who’s clearly used to taking care of someone else. “Thank you, I’m sure they’ll be fine.” He nods and closes the door firmly behind him. Sylvia’s bath wrap, bright yellow and embroidered with her initials, hangs by its duck shaped hood on a hook next to the door. Steam is starting to rise from the shower. You take a deep lungful and step in carefully. Although childrens’ soaps and clutter are unfamiliar, the water pressure is the same as the shower in your apartment, if not better. It pounds down against your back and shoulders, and for a minute you let yourself just stand in the hot spray. It takes several seconds of inner coaxing before you can close your eyes and tilt your head back beneath the water. A hardened blue stare flashes in your mind’s eye, but you push it back determinedly. You think of Harry’s clear, level gaze. You think of the way he’d looked as he pinned a poppy to your chest—as he’d drank from that half-empty bottle of Prosecco.  So you turn your attention to the soap instead. It’s strange to see the source of several of the mingling scents you’ve picked up from him in the lift over so many months, and even more strange to pick the bottles up and use them on yourself. But there’s something cathartic in the act of scrubbing yourself raw, especially the spot on your shoulder where you had to wrench yourself away from that painful grip. By the time the last of the shampoo and soap are swirling down the drain, buoying a tiny rubber duck that Harry had missed, you finally feel a bit more like yourself again.  The towels are in easy reach. You wrap your hair in one, wind the other around your body, and tiptoe across the bathmat, wading through a junkyard of toys. A hotel toothbrush packaged in plastic lays atop the pile of clothes Harry had left, so you quickly brush your teeth before giving the bathroom a cursory tidy. You have to roll up the cuffs of his sweatpants to your ankles. You can barely see your own reflection, so you crack open the door to air out the steam a bit. Somewhere a kettle shrieks. You creep into the hall, clutching a neat bundle of your clothes and set your things down on the chest table in the entryway before joining him in the kitchen. Harry has changed out of his work suit and into a plain white tee shirt and grey sweatpants. Sundry, mismatched tattoos are scattered all along his left arm and it catches you by surprise. No rings. You have no idea what to do with yourself, faced with the reality that you’re standing in Harry’s flat, wearing his clothes, smelling like him. You lean gingerly against the counter, sort of surprising yourself as you blurt out, “I thought you said you were hungry?” Harry freezes, like he is both realizing you’re there, and also that he contradicted himself. “Lost my appetite I guess. Tea?” “I’d love some, yeah. If there’s enough water. Thanks.” “Sure.” You watch as Harry pulls down a veritable armada of teabags. “Gotta be prepared,” he says with a vaguely self-deprecating smile. “We take our tea seriously over here. These—” Harry gestures—  “haven’t got caffeine.”  Something tells you that an entire bottle of cold medicine couldn’t knock you out tonight. “Whatever you’re having is fine.” Your phone vibrates against your hip and you pull it out to skim the text from your mom. Hi honey. Sorry I missed your call, hope everything is alright… It’s late for you now so I’ll try back in the morning. Hugs. You pull your bottom lip between your teeth as guilt taps you on the shoulder. You’re drained and it would be lovely not to rehash tonight’s events for a second time when you know it would do nothing but worry her. Since you’re in reasonably good hands, you lock your phone and shove it back into the pocket of Harry’s sweats. “How do you take it?” Harry murmurs. “With a little bit of milk, if you don’t mind.” He places your tea on the counter beside you before adding the milk. “I don’t mind,” he mocks your accent gently, and it bothers you how good he is at it. Harry passes you the mug. You raise it to your nose and inhale the steam. “Thank you, Harry, for being so… okay with all of this, and for just like, making me feel… ” You trail off, shaking your head. “I wouldn’t have thought it was possible to have, like, an ounce of normalcy tonight after all that.”  You tuck a strand of wet hair behind your ear. Harry pushes his glasses up his nose with his thumb and idly plays with the tag hanging by a string over the side of his mug. “I’ve heard you take responsibility a dozen times tonight for the danger that someone else put you in,” he says after a minute. His eyes are vaguely unfocused, and trained on the blinds. “Tonight was not your fault. Like, you were smart, brave and all that, but you shouldn’t have had to be.” He takes a sip. “I’m glad I was there.” Harry doesn’t say anything else. It’s cathartic in a way you wouldn’t have expected, to hear him state it back to you so plainly and without nuance. There’s not a thing you could say to that in defense of the argument that you are indeed to blame. But there were other choices I could have made. I shouldn’t have gone running that morning. I should have known to be more vigilant, buying those groceries. It was reckless of me to choose sheer curtains. I should have apparated to class instead of taking the tube. The logic sounds absurd to you in a new way when held up to the light. You absently stir your tea; there’s an orange tabby painted on the ceramic. “Chowder!” Harry’s eyebrows fly up. “Sorry?” “My cat! He’s all on his own in my apartment.” “Does he have water?” “Yeah, and food. And he's a few years old so he’ll be fine. I just feel awful, he’s never spent the night alone.” You shake your head. “Sorry for making you jump, it just crossed my mind.” “No, it’s okay… Do you want—should I go up and check on him for you?” “No, no. That’s not necessary. I’m just, you know, a terrible cat mom.”  “Ha!” Harry barks. It’s the loudest sound you’ve ever heard him make. “You don’t even want to… Oh Christ,” he shakes his head, creasing with laughter, “You have no idea.” “What?” You ask after a minute, unable to help yourself from joining in his laughter. His face is turning pink. “Do you have any idea how many nappies I’ve put on backwards? How many haircuts I’ve botched? I mean with my real, human child. I assembled both of Sylvia’s cribs upside down because the instructions were in Japanese. One after the other. It was the same fucking crib.” He deadpans your name at you. “Sylvia’s first word was fuck because Daddy couldn’t shake the habit of saying it all the fucking time.” “Oh my god.” “Yeah. We thought she was just a quiet kid, but then we were getting concerned that she wasn’t speaking by her second birthday. We took her to a speech therapist. So imagine you’re me, watching your daughter in her little highchair with her mum right up in her face, going, “Vi can you say ma-ma? And the child throws her binkie… and yells, Fuck!” You’re laughing so hard it’s completely silent.  “Didn’t say it.” He swipes a tear from the corner of his eye, and it bumps up his glasses a little. “Yelled it. Not a thing wrong with her… Oh,” Harry sighs. “Annie wouldn't speak to me for a week.” He shakes his head. “That’s incredible.” “So, like, newsflash… ” He takes a sip of his tea. “Nobody has any idea what they’re doing. There’s no such thing as a perfect parent or, um—cat mum as you said.” “So…” you venture after a pause. “Annie?” Harry laughs once through his nose, rolling his eyes. “Alright, alright. Fair.” He sets his tea down on the counter. “Thought maybe we’d get to have this conversation over Prosecco,” he says, chuckling dryly. “Sylvia was definitely… unexpected… ” Harry begins delicately. “But she’s, like the funniest person I know and also my favorite person on the planet. So… I dunno. It worked out.” He clears his throat. “She was conceived on the night I met her mum at a pub in Essex and that was that. Haven’t really looked back. Annie—Vi’s mum—is an amazing person. We were never in love or anythin’ even close, but she’s the best co-parent I could ever dream of.”  “Vi’s a cute nickname.” “S’her first name, actually.” Harry smiles over the rim of his mug. “Lanh Vi.” His voice dips low and elongates the first syllable. “Lanh means gentle, happy. Vi is a family name. Annie wanted to give that to her parents, a proper Vietnamese name on her birth certificate. Sylvia’s sort of a good compromise for when she goes to school.”  Harry stares at some middle distance, smiling like he isn’t even aware he’s doing it. “Annie’s parents took a little convincing that any of this was going to work out—mine too—but I love our unconventional little family, and I’m really looking forward to her wedding. Sylvia’s in store for two really incredible mums.” He looks back at you and shrugs. “It’s not such a bad life. Sometimes I wish there was a more exciting answer.” “That doesn’t seem like a bad life at all.” The corners of Harry’s lips drop a little the moment you open your mouth. His head is tilted slightly as though he’s trying to gauge your reaction. You try to mirror the same, reassuring smile he’d given you earlier, then cover a yawn with your hand. “What time is it?” you ask. Harry checks his phone. “Half ten—or just gone.” “No it’s not,” you frown, but he holds up his phone to show you. “Oh god…” “Time flies when you’re talking about parenthood.” He takes your empty mugs, setting them carefully in the sink. “Thank you.” Without turning around Harry announces, “I think I’m gonna have you sleep in my bed and I’ll take the air mattress in Sylvia’s room.” “No.” You shake your head. “Harry I swear if you insist on that, I’m calling a taxi to the police station.” “No, honestly… They’re the only two rooms in the flat with the blinds consistently drawn, and her room’s empty most nights anyway since I’m such a pushover.” It takes a moment for that comment to sink in and when it does you feel your heart melt a little. “You’ll sleep much better in my bed than on my inherited air mattress from the nineties.” “I won’t,” you lie seamlessly. “I don’t sleep well in new places anyway, so at least one of us should get a good night’s rest.” “Whatever makes you most comfortable,” he relents. You’re glad you don’t have to argue about it. “Thank you.” Harry leads you to the linen cabinet in the hallway and removes a cardboard box from the very top shelf. An enormous dust cloud falls like an avalanche down his shirt and he coughs hysterically, scrunching his nose. “Last chance to change your mind,” Harry croaks, wiping his glasses on the front of his shirt. You shake your head and he turns to the door across from his, where his bed is half visible in shadow. The two of you shuffle into a cubby of a room, and Harry drops the box onto the plush pile rug with a thud.  Your neck cranes as you look around the tiny space, about as roomy as the lift. The walls are painted navy blue with silver and gold stars exploding in a galaxy across the walls, and your hand floats to your chest in memory of when Sylvia had pointed at you with a tiny finger, recognizing the shape at the end of the chain hung around your neck. Her bed frame is painted a deep, forest green and the two small pillows upon it are shaped like rain clouds. Plastic dinosaurs of all different sizes and colors line her windowsill. A small, homemade bookshelf is aligned by the bed. “You mind helping me spread it?” Harry’s voice brings you back down to earth, and you grab two corners of the plastic to lay out the mattress like a picnic blanket on the floor. It’s a tight squeeze, but at least it’s a queen. You look down at it with your hands on your hips, and Harry tilts his head, running a hand over his stubble. Harry steps back out into the hallway, ducking into his bedroom. You hear the creak of a closet door and shifting fabric as the beam of light from his room slants across the hall into Sylvia’s, illuminating a diagonal path right up through the wooden slats of her toybox. There’s a small, familiar shadow outline on top. You crouch down to pick up Jojo and his mother in one hand, running your fingers over the soft velvet of their floppy ears. It feels a little odd, to be so comforted by a child’s toy that doesn't even belong to you, but here you are. “I see you’ve found an old friend.”  Harry leans against the doorframe, watching you. His arms are full with a clean sheet, spare pillow, and quilt. The fondness in his voice is hard to miss, but you wonder if it’s for his daughter, for the toy, or for you. “I would’ve thought Sylvia brought him to her mom’s, too.” Harry’s lips twitch with amusement before he puts the pillow and quilt on top of Sylvia’s dresser. “She used to take him everywhere.” He visits every corner of the mattress to tuck the sheet around. “Here, let me help you with—” “No, no, it’s always easier like this before you blow it up.” Harry steps into the corners of the room that aren’t completely swallowed up by the giant, deflated bed. He removes a paper lantern night light with constellation cutouts from its outlet, replacing it with the motor to the air mattress. “This part always takes a bit.” The small plastic box sputters into a whine and the mattress begins to inflate. “Just give it a few minutes… S’ old.” Soft whirring fills the room before he speaks over it. “We almost lost him on a trip to Brighton once—” he nods at Jojo, still in your hands— “Vi was inconsolable until we found him wedged between the bed and the wall in the hotel. Managed to convince her that leaving him at home—or at least only to Bridget’s on the first floor while I’m at work—was the best way to keep him safe.” He steals a glance at you and unfolds the massive quilt on top of the bed as it rises, before fluffing the pillow and tossing it to one of the long ends. “Then she started insisting on leaving him here on the weeks she spends at her mum’s.” “How come?” Harry’s smile is somewhere between pointedly self-deprecating and unbelievably loving. “Says she doesn’t want me to be lonely while she’s gone.”  Before you can fully process all the ways your heart is both warmed and a little broken, Harry is disappearing into the hall again, returning with a throw blanket and fanning it out over the quilt. “Okay.” He pushes his glasses up his nose. “That should do it. Do you want another pillow?” He turns to you suddenly, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder. “I have a couple more on my—” “No, no. This is more than enough… Thank you again, Harry,” You reassure him with the understanding that this is goodnight. Harry runs a hand through his hair and a little puff of dust is drawn out. “If you, um—If you need anything, I’ll be… my bedroom’s just there.” He twists around to point. “Don’t hesitate to like… yeah, wake me up if you need—if you feel… ” He laughs once at himself, exasperated. “Sorry, I’m tired.” You shake your head and smile sympathetically. “So am I.” “Goodnight, then.” Harry backs out into the hallway. He pauses in Sylvia’s doorway, his hand still on the doorknob. At that exact moment, the motor clicks off and the sudden silence feels unbearably loud.  “I want you to feel safe here.” The room is so still that you see the shadow against Harry’s neck bob as he swallows in the yellow light of the hall. His eyes are steady and clear. You take a breath in, and nod. “I do,” you say, steadfast. “I promise… Goodnight, Harry.” He shuts the door behind him. • saturday, 5th january 12:46 am •

There had been a knock, of that much you are sure. One solitary rap jolts you from sleep, followed by the raucous succession of a dozen more as you sit up on the air mattress. It stops for a moment. Then starts up again. “Harry?” you whisper into the blackness, your heart suddenly pounding. In your groggy trance, you weren’t sure the first time you heard it if someone was knocking on the door to Sylvia’s room, but by the time your eyes adjust, you’re sure it’s coming from farther away. It stops. You’re still for a minute, careful not to rustle the quilt. There is no sound apart from a faint siren in the distance. You unplug your phone from where it charges beneath the nightlight, squinting at its bright little face. 12:46. Perhaps it’s a police officer? Surely they would have announced themselves, wouldn’t they? You slide down the mattress and creep up to the door, pressing an ear against the wood. There is nothing but the echo of your own blood rushing in your ear. You have to close your eyes and count to three before turning the doorknob. Harry is already in the hall, the door to his bedroom left gaping. He turns to you and immediately brings a finger to his lips. The sound of an open hand smacking against the front door is unmistakable. Harry inches towards the noise. He freezes suddenly, then twists to look at you, reaching his hand back with fingers outspread. Stay here. Harry rounds the corner out of sight until it becomes unbearable to stand there a moment longer. You tiptoe in his wake, and move at the same time he does. The only light in the flat spills from his open bedroom. Here in hall, the shadows are long and dark and Harry’s expression is harder to make out until he glances over his shoulder. He nods at you once before training his eyes on the door again. Your feet move of their own accord, as though they have unilaterally decided that the safest place for you is as close to Harry as possible. It seems jarring to you, that this man in a tee shirt and boxers is the same man who, not a week ago, seemed like a piece of art with his burgundy suit and damp curls; the memory of loose limbs and laughter clashes against the image of him fraught before you. Harry peers through the peephole. Your eyes are cemented to the back of his head and you begin to feel dizzy, only just realizing you’ve been holding your breath. He tenses. In a freezing rush of dread, you suddenly know exactly who is on the other side of that door. You know you shouldn’t panic. Harry raises a finger to his lips again in another soundless imperative and you know—from a place that feels somewhere outside your body—that the last thing you should be doing is opening your mouth. But this is a terror hurtling beyond fight or flight. Your primary functions are in a deadlock with a searing hysteria clamoring for you to scream, and something desperately carnal that believes you could only survive this moment if you were silent enough.  Harry is still gesturing at you to keep quiet. He turns his back to the door and approaches you, the weight of his gaze keeping you motionless. He reaches forward and presses his palm firmly against your parted lips. All of a sudden you’re just as close as you were in the lift four nights ago when he tasted like brandy and the beginning of something new. The look he had given you on New Year’s was playful and wanting. In this moment, however, a pair of hard and urgent eyes bore into yours, igniting the pit of your stomach with a different kind of fear. Harry wraps his free hand around your wrist. You blink and blink. Beneath the steel resolve in his face, a desperate question forms: Do you trust me? You want to answer but you don’t know how. So you just keep staring. He pushes you backwards, gently, leading you around the corner and down the hall, his hand cupped to your mouth all the while. Even if you’d wanted to glance at the front door, Harry’s gaze is a magnet to your eyes. He walks you all the way into his bedroom, until you feel the mattress on the backs of your knees. You’d fall if not for Harry letting go of your wrist to guide you down with a hand on your waist. His lips move soundlessly around the words, stay here, and you manage to nod. Only then does he release your mouth. Your eyes can only focus on the closet door directly in front of you. It takes every ounce of your concentration to just keep breathing so you don’t pass out as Harry doubles back out into the hall, leaving you on the edge of his bed. You can feel an outbreak of sweat around your temple and on the back of your neck. You know you’re shaking but that feels distant, too.  You have no idea how long Harry is gone, you just know he closes the door upon his return. You’re still trying to pace your breathing as he crouches down in front of you. He has his phone to his ear. You can only catch a few of his words at a time.  “My name is Harry Styles… previously reported an, um, incident involving… yes… no… returned… knocked on the door. No, he’s gone now… I waited, to be sure. But I—” There’s a pause. “I think he’s knocking on every door on this floor.” You hear something like a choked gasp. Only when Harry’s eyes dart to yours do you realize it was you.  You have put the entire building in danger.  “Yes, she’s still here.” His free hand reaches up to your knee as he listens to the dispatcher, but he seems to think better of it at the last moment, worrying the edge of the duvet between his fingers instead. “Right, yes. I understand. I will. Thank you.”  Faint ringing replaces the feeling of water in your ears.  “They’re sending someone,” he murmurs after hanging up. “He’s gone.” You hear that broken gasp again. “He’s gone, I promise.” Your shoulders cave inward when you feel the full, painful heave of your sob. Tears stream down your cheeks as you cover your face. Harry’s hand lifts again. You shrink away and he immediately moves from you to stand. “I’ll be—”  You seize at the first part of him you can reach, grasping a weak fistful of his soft cotton tee. Harry is completely still beneath your trembling fingers. He doesn’t pull away or move closer. He just hovers there, steady. “Please…” You want to ask him to stay. You want to ask for help. You want him to touch you so you know that you’re real—that you’re not in fact still trapped alone in the most terrifying part of a nightmare, but the words are unbearable.  The sound of your name in Harry’s mouth undoes something inside you. Through your tears you finally lift your head to find his eyes. His expression seems torn, like he wants to comfort you but doesn’t know how. You’re not sure which one of you bridges the gap, but your forehead lands in the warm slope between his neck and shoulder and that seems to be all the confirmation Harry needs.  His hands slide up your back to hold you as you all but collapse into him, crying with enough force that Harry draws you off the bed and onto the floor with him. He smooths one hand up and down the length of your spine as the other wraps so far around your back that you can feel his fingertips hooked over your hip. “S’ok,” he murmurs, his lips pressing into your temple like he intends to seal the words to your skin. Harry doesn’t try to shush you. “S��gonna be alright. ‘M here… I’ve got you. You’re safe… I’ve got you.”  When your wracking sobs give way to hiccups and finally to something halfway controllable, he stops talking and just holds you, rocking ever so slightly in a sort of motion that only a parent can do. You have no idea how long you sit like that, a tangle of limbs and soaked collars and cheeks, until you’re finally able to speak.  “I’m sorry,” you choke out. “You—”  “None of that,” Harry says immediately. You feel his nose dig into your hair, his breath warm as he sighs. “I mean it, alright? No more apologizing for any of this. Might have to make you a jar like the one Annie has for me in her flat.” The thought is strange enough to pull you, however briefly, out of your current misery. “You have an apology jar?”  He exhales sharply. “Swear jar, actually.”  Your laugh bursts out unexpectedly, sort of wet and weak, but there nonetheless. You feel the soft stroke of his thumb on the back of your head. “That’s more like it.”  You draw back and Harry’s grip tightens, just for a moment, before he releases you. He brushes your damp cheeks with the side of his palm before you can do it yourself. You see the same concentration he wore when he’d pinned that Remembrance Day poppy to your jacket. It takes effort to silence the instinct to be ashamed and keep his eyes.  “They said it might be a bit before an officer can get up here,” he says, searching your face. “They’re puttin’ together a couple patrol teams to canvas the building and stay outside the rest of the night.” All you can think to do is nod. “Can I get you anything? Water?” “Please,” you reply, grateful. “I should—” you make a vague gesture at yourself— “clean myself up a bit.” Harry opens his mouth like he wants to comment, but just nods instead. You use his shoulder to push yourself to your feet; his hand covers yours and you feel his thumb running across your knuckles.  You say, “Thank you,” but it’s not nearly enough. He squeezes gently, staring up at you and saying nothing. You walk on unsteady legs to the bathroom. You can feel his eyes on you even when you close the door. Lacing your fingers atop your head, you sigh at the tearstained, swollen-eyed version of yourself staring back at you in the mirror. After blowing your nose and splashing a few handfuls of water across your face, you join him on his side of the bed. His phone is in his hands. He finishes sending off a long, blue bubble of text before looking up and passing you a water from the nightstand. He runs the tip of his index finger around the rim of his own glass.

You bring the drink to your lips, then lower it immediately; the glass clacks against your teeth with the tremor of your hand. You can feel Harry’s eyes on you even though he doesn’t turn his head. Again, you try taking a sip with the same result and sigh. “I think I’m gonna try my parents again.” “Sure.” You set your water on the nightstand and head to Sylvia’s room, shutting the door behind you. You take a deep breath before collapsing back on the mattress. The stars rotating on the ceiling like a merry-go-round make you nauseous so you unplug the nightlight before dialing. Your mom answers after the first ring, emphasizing your name like a scolding. “Hi, Mom.” “What are you doing up? It’s the middle of the night in England. Is everything alright?” “That’s actually what I need to talk to you about.” You hardly get a sentence in before you hear her rushing to get your dad and the three of you have an hour-long, emotional crash-course on the last five hours of your life. There isn’t too much to fill in as you’ve kept them more or less updated on the blue-eyed man and your previous trips to the police department. You assure them that you’re in one piece and that you couldn’t have wound up with a more generous host, but that doesn’t assuage your mom from insisting on speaking with the police herself. She makes you promise to stay on the line until the authorities arrive. Before long, you hear a light rap on your door. “Yes?” Harry cracks it open without peeking his head inside. “Police are here—take your time. I’ll go out and speak with them.” “Thanks, Harry… Mom, some officers just arrived I think.” You pinch your phone between your cheek and shoulder, softly close the door behind you. “I’ll call you back once we’re done with everything.” You rush through a quick goodbye and meet Harry in the entryway. He’s thrown on some gym pants and a sweater and his arms are folded across his chest. The fully-uniformed men seem bulky and out of place in the sixth-floor hallway, as though they couldn’t squeeze in Harry’s modest apartment. It’s not like you’re the one in trouble, but your heart skips a little anyway. “… every floor of the building and searched the surrounding perimeter with no sign of anyone matching the description, and from the security footage we seized, we can see that he pulled out of the car park about forty-five minutes ago.” “Okay.” Harry nods, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Alright. Great.” The officer who had been speaking turns to you. “And you must be the young woman who—” “Yes.” You jerk your head quickly. It’s more like an anxious spasm than a nod.  “That’s me.” “We were just filling your neighbor in that we were unable to find the culprit, but the building and surrounding area seem to be clear. If at all possible, we think it would be best for you to stay here just for the night, then come straight to the station in the morning to make a plan.”  You simply nod again. “I will.” “You’re flat 8F, is that right?” “That’s correct.” “Were any of these marks on your door before this evening?” The officer pulls a cell phone out of his pocket, unlocking it to reveal the last few pictures in the camera roll. Your stomach drops. He flips through several photos of a long, black streak above the handle of your front door, and a sizable ding in the wood by the door jam. The impact was hard enough to scratch the paint. “No,” you manage. “I don’t recognize those. Did he, um…” “The door didn’t give,” the officer says. It’s just reassuring enough to keep your knees from buckling. He turns to face Harry again. “And you’re certain that the man showed no signs of knowledge that she—that the two of you were in this particular flat?” “Yeah. I watched him make his way down, knocking on a couple more doors.”  “Was he stopping by every door?”  Harry takes a moment to think. “No,” he replies. “It seemed a bit random if I’m honest.” “Right. Well, keep an eye out for any unusual activity in the next few days, especially on this floor. Don’t hesitate to let us know if anything changes.” The officer looks to you again. “In the meantime, we’ll see you at the station tomorrow?” “Yes, um… ” You clear your throat as your cheeks warm. “I’m sorry. Would one of you be willing to speak with my parents on the phone? They’re a bit worried and want to talk to a professional.” You hold up your cell. “Of course.” After dialing for him, you hand the officer your phone and he begins to engage your mom in what sounds like a very animated, reassuring dialogue. You and Harry are leaned against opposite walls in the hallway, spaced out in exhaustion. You cover a yawn with your hand and catch him doing the same. Do you dare check the time? Your hands absently pat your front and back pockets, and you frown in trying to recall where you’d last set your phone. You roll your eyes in glancing up at the officer pacing in the entryway on the phone with your mother. “S’ just gone two,” Harry mumbles. You make a light noise in the back of your throat. “I’m sorry, Harry.” “That’s a tenner in the apology jar.” You breathe a laugh without humor, shaking your head back and forth against the wall. “I just can’t wait for this day to be over,” you whisper. “Would you like to speak with her again?” The officer’s voice clips into your half-conscious conversation. You hold out your hand and tuck the phone between your cheek and shoulder again as Harry thanks the officers one last time before showing them out.  Apparently satisfied with the conversation she’d had with the police, your mother circles back to the matter of your current state of limbo. “You’re sure you’re comfortable staying with this neighbor? Where are you sleeping?” You can practically hear the alarm bells from across the Atlantic. “It’s fine, Mom. We’re friends… sort of.” Friends that drunkenly make out in the lift. “He has a spare mattress. I’m staying in his guest room.” She digests this information in silence. “I’m alright, I promise. It’s just for tonight.”  There’s a long pause on the other end of the line. “I want you to call us, alright? No matter what time it is here or there, I want you to check in with us every day until we know for sure you’re absolutely safe.”  “I will,” you vow. “I’ll call you in the morning, okay? I’m exhausted.”  “Right yes, go get some rest. We love you.”  You swallow with a little difficulty. “Love you too.”  Harry’s idling by the sink with your empty glasses.  “Sorry about that,” you say, and then wince when he gives you a sidelong look. “They can be a bit protective.” He shakes his head, his expression somehow more grave than you were expecting. “I know exactly how they feel.” Harry rubs his eyes under his glasses. “I’m sorry,” he says into his palms. “I’m knackered.” “Yeah, of course… Get some sleep.” You hesitate. “You sure there’s not anything else I can get you?” “I’m sure.” He pinches softly just above your elbow. “See you in the morning.” Harry disappears into the hall. You listen to the sound of his bedroom door click shut before tilting your head to the ceiling and letting your eyelids close, literally twenty feet below your own apartment. You could probably throw a basketball higher than that. You sigh and look back down at your phone on the counter, quickly drafting a text to India and then deleting it. For a minute you stay like that, a statue in the pale light of Harry’s kitchen—the relic of a girl who woke up this morning unscathed. It’s probably for the best that you get some sleep tonight, but standing in front of the nursery with your hand on the doorknob, you can’t bring yourself to face the pitiful air mattress again. You turn to Harry’s bedroom door in defeat. Who on earth are you trying to fool? Heart hammering, you swallow your pride and crack open the door to Harry’s bedroom, stepping gingerly inside. It shuts behind you with a delayed click-click, impossibly loud. Nothing apart from blackness is visible before you, but suddenly comes the sound of a long breath in from somewhere in the room. Blankets rustle. Your fingers tighten on the doorknob behind you. With a tink, soft, yellow light spills over every surface in Harry’s bedroom. His nose scrunches and eyes squint. His hand flounders once against the nightstand before he locates his glasses, pushing them swiftly onto his face. Harry’s expression relaxes as he props himself up on one elbow to get a better look at you. Your face stings with heat, but you hold your ground. His eyes are soft, careful, yet strangely unaffected. Without a word, or the slightest suggestion of ambivalence, Harry reaches out an arm to the opposite side of the mattress, and tosses the corner of the duvet halfway down the bed before meeting your gaze from across the room. It feels like a weakness, to cave and accept his offer. You want to explain yourself, suddenly, but there are no words for this time of night and the chasm you’re hanging over by your fingertips. So you approach the bed in silence and slide beneath his covers.  Backs turned to each other, you curl up so far from Harry that your knees hang over the edge of the bed. You hear the cool sliding of blankets once more before absolute stillness. The last image of your day is the dim, golden glow of Harry’s lamp vanishing on the ceiling. • saturday, 5th january 4:07 am • It’s disorienting, adjusting to a room you can immediately tell isn’t your own, momentarily teetering between asleep and awake. It’s even more disorienting when you realize that you are not alone. There’s a knee between yours and a heavy arm slung over your waist. You’ve migrated to the center of the bed somehow during the night, flipped on your back. But what draws your attention the most is the warm breath in the curve of your neck. “Harry?”  It was the asleep-half of your brain that had thought to croak his name. You don’t know what kind of reply you’re expecting to receive in this blue, small morning hour. Perhaps you won’t get one at all. Perhaps you’re dreaming. You stare up at the ceiling.  If you close your eyes now, would you even remember this come dawn? But the grip around your waist tightens, just for a moment, before you feel his body slide up against yours, a sigh fanning over your cheek.  “Yeah.” Harry’s voice is low and gravelly, but unmistakable. You can feel the rise and fall of his chest through the fine cotton of the shirt he’d loaned you, and he sounds surprisingly alert. A small silence lingers. “Alright?” Your eyes stay trained on the ceiling. Are you?  Part of you wants him to clarify the question: are you alright after everything that happened tonight? Are you alright… with this? “Yeah,” you breathe.  Harry doesn’t say anything else. For a moment you think he’s fallen back asleep but then he shifts closer to you. You watch as the shadow of his arm reaches over your body for your hand—you had left it open and maybe a little vulnerable beside your head on the pillow. You can feel the calluses on Harry’s fingertips as they slide up your palm and find the space between yours. You don’t dare turn your head because there is a question in your eyes that you realize you can no longer ignore, and you are afraid of his answer. So you close your fingers around his and do not speak. Harry exhales. You’re hyper aware of the way his body relaxes as he squeezes your hand. You take a deep breath. You know it’s no use wondering whether or not Harry is going to remember this in the morning. Even if this is a dream, you cannot deny that you’re warm and you’re safe and that you will remember, possibly forever, regardless of whatever happens or doesn’t happen between you. It’s a vaguely scary thought.  You close your eyes.

[baited-beth]

My close friend, a TRA, has just gone home after spending the night and god did we have a deep and difficult discussion on women's rights and tran's rights... I love her and I'm so thankful she's happy to remain good friends and wants to plan to meet up soon, but we just really really disagree on this and I'm emotionally exhausted. She's so intelligent, but she is absolutely blind to the flaws in her arguments. Practically all of her reasons for disagreeing with me are:

dismissing the points without really engaging in them and saying that that's obviously not what's happening

saying that they're just headline fodder intended to cause outrage

simply stating that my point is hateful (rather than biological fact)

believing that a study should be dismissed because it hasn't been repeated/she doesn't trust the conditions it was conducted in (although lack of study into puberty blockers is fine🤔)

a seemingly willful belief that women can't be subject to male violence if the male person states they are trans

A general lack of understanding in the differences between male and female bodies and how puberty works

She got really uncomfortable when I asked her what a woman was. She tried to say it was anyone who identified as a woman. So I pointed out you can't use a word in its definition, and asked again. She said that it was anyone was felt more comfortable with the woman's shape or clothes etc. I tried pointing out that was a sexist assumption of what a woman was. Does that mean butch lesbians aren't women? She kept distracting from the point by implying I was only asking the question as an excuse to exclude trans women.

I also asked her why a 12 year old child bride was being married off and she responded "power and paedophilia". Okay, so why isn't it happening to 12 year old boys? If a 12 year old boy goes round telling everyone he's actually a girl, they aren't going to marrying him off. Apparently it probably does happen to 12 year old boys and I'm making a generalisation.

FGM. Who does that happen to? People with female genitals apparently. Why? "Power. And not wanted them to feel pleasure". Okay, so why is that not happening to boys? "Well it's happening to trans boys." Right, but what do they have in common with the girls? It's happening because they're female and they can't identify out of it. Apparently this argument isn't helpful because we really should be talking about the UK where this isn't particularly prevalent (which I wish I had countered now).

I pointed out the yearly stats for the number of trans people killed is actually mainly trans women who have been prostituted in Brazil and South America, and that actually the number is either 1 or 0 in the UK. Apparently she knows anecdotally that the number is far higher and thinks suicide should be included. I tried to point out that suicide isn't necessarly occurring because they're not being accepted as trans, but instead because they have mental health issues that have not been solved by transitioning.

We didn't get too deep into trans athletes, but she seems to think that oestrogen and surgery significantly reduces male strength to female levels... similar to how she's convinced that puberty restarts straight away once you come off puberty blockers. Completely misinformed on how different hormones and puberty affects bodies based on their sex.

She had no idea about the Karen White case. Apparently that kind of thing shouldn't happen because the crimes of the 'trans women' should be taken into account when they're transferred to a women's prison. I'm annoyed I forgot to bring up the recent ruling on this. I also tried to argue that a number of men were starting to pretend they were trans to be transferred and she again argued that the prison services should be able to separate the real from the fake, and she made a big thing about how trans people need to live in their chosen gender for a year before they're allowed a GRA so obviously prisons wouldn't allow it until they'd done this (laughably false). My point that the prison service can't make that decision without being labelled transphobic fell on deaf ears. I even pointed out that in California they out condom machines in women's prisons because of this and she dismissed it as something that probably got made up and blown out of proportion for headline fodder. She also seemed to think that I was wrong to point out that male people were more likely to be violent and that trans women were male. Apparently this shouldn't apply because they're trans women?

Oh, the best bit was when I asked why women and children should be subjected to a penis in a single sex changing room. Apparently "trans women don't go into changing rooms just to wave their dicks in people's faces". And rather than them, as a very small population, making women feel safe by taking a third option for changing spaces, women should accept them and deal with it if they feel uncomfortable.

When I pointed out that men will take advantage of the safeguarding loopholes created by gender ideology, her basic argument was that will men access those spaces if they want to regardless so it makes no difference. Which absolute amazed me? She was almost angry with me for suggesting the safeguarding needs to exclude some people in order to protect a bigger group. There was a lot of refusal to admit that women are more vulnerable to male violence and so need single sex spaces.

There was so much else we talked about and I'm proud of myself for actually sticking to my guns and having examples and difficult questions to back up my corner. But it amazes me how willingly blind she is. She really is spouting out the same lines I see all over TRA's blogs and twitter feeds without actively engaging with what they mean. She also said she thought she was being 'quite generous' with me about some of my opinions which... given she couldn't actually give a definition of what a woman is?

Anyway, we parted friends and agreed that we would exchange books so we could get out of our own bubbles. I'll read Detrasition Baby if she reads Trans by Helen Joyce. Hopefully some of what I said will stick with her and she will begin to question things more.

I feel like I should add links to all my above points but right now I just need a nap.

[good-omens-classic]

Hi Good Omens fans, ever since making this blog, and trawling through the archives for old art, I have been thinking again about trends from before the TV-show, and the way people draw Aziraphale and Crowley.  I wanted to make this post addressing it but this is not “discourse” or to start a fight, in fact I would be perfectly content if all I did was make people think critically about what I am about to say and not even interact with this post at all, but I feel like I need to say it.

Talking about any racist undertones to the way people draw our two favorite boys usually makes people dig their heels in pretty fast.  This is not a callout post for any artist in particular, this is not me trying to be overly critical of artists especially since they have more talent and skill than I do, and I’m going to address some common counterpoints that I frankly find unsatisfactory.  Let’s just take a moment to set aside our defensiveness and think objectively about these trends.  It took me a while to unlearn my dismissive attitude about these concerns so maybe I can help others get over that hurdle a little faster.  Now let’s begin.

I’ve been kicking around the Good Omens fandom since maybe 2015 and for art based in book canon, whether it was made before the TV show came out, or because the artist is consciously drawing different, original designs, I’m going to estimate that a decent 75% of all fanart looks like this

Aziraphale is white and blonde and blue-eyed while Crowley is the typical “racially ambiguous” brown skin tone it’s become so popular to draw podcast characters as nowadays.

And the question is why?  With the obvious answer being “it’s racist,” but let’s delve a little deeper than that.

A common thing I hear is that people get appearance headcanons fixed in their mind because the coverart of the book pictures the characters a certain way.  My first point is this only shifts the question to why the illustrators drew them that way, when there aren’t many physical descriptions in the book.  My second point is that while there definitely are cover arts that picture Aziraphale as cherubic, blonde, and white and Crowley as swarthy, dark-skinned, and racially ambiguous...

(side note: why is Crowley’s hand so tiny?  what the hell is going on in this cover?)

It’s much more common for the covers to simplified, stylized, and without any particular unambiguous skin tones

I don’t know about the UK but the most popular version in the United States is the dual black and white matching covers

And while you could make an argument that the shading on Crowley’s face could suggest a darker skintone, it seems obvious to me that lacking any color these are not supposed to suggest any particular race for either of these two, and the contrasting colors are a stylistic choice to emphasize how they are on opposite sides.  If anything, to me it suggests they are both white.

In short I simply do not buy the argument that people are drawing Aziraphale and Crowley this way because that’s how they were represented on the cover art of the book.  If you draw them the way they are on the cover then whatever, I don’t care, but I don’t believe that’s what’s driving this trend.

The second thing people will say is that Good Omens is a work of satire, and it’s based in Christian mythology which has this trend of depicting angels as white, and it is embodying the trope of a “white, cherubic angel” paired with a dark-skinned demon for the explicit purpose of subverting the trope of “white angel is good, dark demon is bad” since Aziraphale is not an unambiguous hero and Crowley is not a villain.  “It’s not actually like that because Crowley isn’t a bad demon, and Aziraphale isn’t actually a perfect angel” is the argument.  This has a certain logic to it and allows some nuance to the topic, but to this I say:

Uncritically reproducing a trope, even in the context of a satire novel, is not enough to subvert it.  Good Omens is not criticising the racist history of the church, and while the book does have some pointed jabs at white British culture (such as Madam Tracy conning gullible Brits with an unbelievably ignorant stereotype of a Native American) it is not being critical of the conception of angels as white and blonde or the literal demonization of non-white people.  That’s just not what the book is about.  So making the angel white and the demon dark-skinned, playing directly into harmful tropes and stereotypes, is not somehow subversive or counter-cultural when doing so doesn’t say anything about anything.

Please consider fully the ramifications of the conception of white and blonde people as innocent and cherubic and dark-skinned people as infernal and mischievous, especially in modern contexts...

Black people are more likely to be viewed as violent, angry, and dangerous.  Priming with a dark-skinned face makes people more likely to mistake a tool for a gun.  Black people are viewed as experiencing pain less intensely by medical professionals.  Black men are viewed as physically larger and more imposing than they actually are.  The subconscious racial bias favoring light skin is so ingrained it’s measurable by objective scientific studies, on top of the anecdotal evidence of things like news stories choosing flattering, “cherubic” pictures of white and blond criminals while using unflattering mugshots for non-white offenders.

This is why I say that if you’re going to invoke the “whites are angelic” trope, you better have a damn good subversion of it to justify it, because this idea causes real harm to real people in the real world.  And Aziraphale being a bit of a bastard despite being an angel, I just don’t see that as sufficient.  I am especially cautious of when it’s my fellow white fans that make this argument, not because I believe they do this out of any sort of malice or hatred of people with dark skin, but because I know first-hand it stems from a dismissiveness rooted in not wanting to think about it for too long because it makes us uncomfortable.  Non-white people do not have the luxury of not thinking about it, because it’s part of their life.

Now the strongest textual evidence people use, in the absence of much real descriptor, is this:

"Many people, meeting Aziraphale for the first time, formed three impressions: that he was English, that he was intelligent, and that he was gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide. Two of these were wrong; Heaven is not in England, whatever certain poets may have thought, and angels are sexless unless they really want to make an effort" 

This piece of art has circulated in the fandom for so long I don’t know the original artist and it’s been used for everything from fancovers to perfume.  This is where I found it and it’s one of the first things that come up when you google this quote about Aziraphale.  

Doesn’t it just feel like this is the man that’s describing, some blonde effeminate gay man?  Well guess what, there’s the “blonde as innocence” trope rearing its ugly head again, because the stereotype of gay men and effeminacy as being a white and blonde thing is--ding ding ding you guessed it--racism.  And why would intelligent suggest a white and blonde person, except if the stereotype of a dark-skinned person is less intelligent?

Now the point of “people assume Aziraphale is British” is another sticking point people will often use, claiming that the stereotype of a British person is white and blonde.  I guess this has some merit, since the British empire was one of the biggest forces behind white colonial expansion, and it seems disingenuous to assign “British” as “nonwhite” as soon as we’re being satirical, in the same way I found it distasteful that the TV show made God female when so many of the criticisms of the church are about its misogyny and lose their teeth as soon as God is no longer male.

However consider that 1.4 million Indian people live in the UK.  I heard a man say aloud once that the concept of a black person having a British accent was a little funny, as though Doctor Who doesn’t exist and have black people on it.  And I’m not overly familiar with the social landscape of the UK, but I understand they’re experiencing a xenophobia boom and non-white Brits aren’t considered “really British.”  The stereotype of non-white people not being British only exists because of reinforcement in media.  If you really want to be subversive, drawing Aziraphale as Indian goes way further than drawing him as white IMO.

Now let’s talk about Crowley.  He is almost always drawn with a darker skin tone than Aziraphale, even when they are both white, and while I’ve outlined above how this is problematic on terms of linking light skin with innocence, I think it does have an extra layer.  I think it also has to do with the exotification and fetishization of brown skin and non-white people.

This artist’s tumblr is gone now but their art is still on dA and while it’s definitely beautiful and well-done, I think this is a very good example of what I’m talking about.

Crowley and Aziraphale necessarily contrast each other, so describing Aziraphale as “British” might suggest that Crowley is “foreign-looking.”  I also know *ahem* that the fandom generally thirsts over Crowley to hell and back, so making him a swarthy, tall dark and handsome is not necessarily surprising.

An interesting thing happened when the TV show came out, and everyone started drawing Michael Sheen!Aziraphale and David Tennant!Crowley more and more often:  It’s not ubiquitous, but it does happen that sometimes artists will draw David Tennant’s skin darker than it actually is.  The subconscious urge to see Crowley with dark skin is for some reason that strong for many people.  And I really encourage people doing this to think about why.  Not naming any names but I’ve working with fanartists before for collabs who I had to ask to lighten “bad guy” demon’s skin tones because it looked like they were making the skin darker on purpose to make them look scarier.  This person is a perfectly pleasant person who tries not to be racist!  And we both still fell into it accidentally, and it took me a while to notice and point it out, because the ingrained stigmatization of darker skin is pervasive yet often goes unnoticed.

What is the solution?  I don’t know, and as a white person I’m not really qualified to make that call.  Do we draw them both with the exact same skin tone?  Is it better to make them both white?  Should we make both of them non-white?  Should we only make Aziraphale non-white?  I am consciously aware of the fact that the Good Omens fandom is mostly white people, so most of the art we make is being both made by and consumed by white people, so I don’t feel comfortable saying “draw these characters of color specifically” because that can also veer into fetishization territory very quickly.  This is not specific to good omens but I think we should pay attention to what fans of color say in all fandom spaces and weigh our choices even if they seem insignificant.  And it’s important to realize that fans of color will not be a monolith in their opinion either, and it’s our responsibility to recognize that everyone can be affected by racism and social issues differently, the same way all women are affected by misogyny differently so just because one woman says such as such is misogynistic and another says it’s not.  I’m sure there are non-white fans who think it’s perfectly fine to draw Aziraphale as white and Crowley as ambiguously non-white.  I’m not saying they’re wrong.  And I’m not saying you can’t reblog this kind of art, or that people who make or made it should feel bad about themselves.  But so often this sort of thing goes unaddressed just because people don’t like thinking about it, and well, avoiding hard questions never really goes well I think.

[angrylizardjacket]

mouth full of white lies {Machine Gun Kelly} 3

3. i thought love was a kind of emptiness

Summary: So you’re in love with him. Not great. And you wanna tell your brother about it, but that means coming clean about everything, and you’re not gonna do that! So you’re just gonna suffer, because it’s for the greater good. And you’re not gonna make things weird. Speaking of weird though, how is this even going to end? Colson sounds kind of like a masochist when he talks about it, but there must be a way to make neither of you seem like the bad guy... When this all ends. Which it will, much to your chagrin.

A/N: watch me have no idea about american geography

the brainstrust: @sataninsatin @silvertonguedserpent @juliarose21 @kellysimagines @estxxbritt @machine-gun-casie @harringtonstudios @misscharlottelee @narcvissa @hiworlditishumbleme @angelwarner28 @nevilles-insinuations @rumoured-whispers @mgkobsessed @edwardtriggerhandzz @suckerforbarnes @wastelcve @bakerkells @local-troubled-writer @freddiessmallnipples @oopsiedoopsie23 @mayaslifeinabox @mrs-machinegun-norris @hxbbit

----

For the record, and if anyone asks, when Colson sends you a photo of himself in full Tommy Lee makeup, your heart definitely doesn’t skip a beat. The long wig, the sharp contouring, the eyeliner, it does absolutely nothing for you. You definitely don’t spend a good five minutes contemplating how much you want his lipstick to stain your mouth. Because he’s not your real boyfriend. You’re doing this to minimize the amount of nasty messages you get online. The fact that he’s hot and funny and surprisingly kind and weirdly observant, and god, have you already said hot? Because he tends to walk around your shared hotel room in shorts and little else and it’s really not doing great things for your productivity. 

The point is, all those things are a bonus! A happy little accident, if you will, a positive side-effect of this whole arrangement. Like getting a job and realising that you’ll be working with your brother, who currently is quickly becoming very, very close with your fake boyfriend.

There’s no-one you trust more in the whole world than Douglas, but if you tell him that your relationship is fake, you’ll have to tell him why you’re in a fake relationship, and he’s not above starting an online rampage against people sending his little sister death threats. Which, by the way, you’re not getting a lot of since dating Colson, honestly you might even be getting less than before, so it’s working.

Your absolutely fake relationship with Colson Baker, whom you have no feelings for whatsoever is functioning exactly as intended. 

Except for the fact that when you’re on set, and you see him in costume, smiling, it kind of makes your day. Watching him play drums? He just looks like he’s having so much fun, and you can’t help but be endeared by it! This was outlined as low commitment, high reward, and now your feelings are ruining it for everybody. Well, just for you. Because it’s just a small crush, and he’s your friend, so you’re not going to make it weird.

Which, right now, it isn’t. He hogs the blankets, which you pretend you’re annoyed by, and sets about fifteen different alarms for himself that have you waking up at the crack of dawn so that he can go in early to get his tattoos covered, even though you don’t need to be there until much later than he is. So you grumble into the blankets, and when you get to set there’s always a hot drink waiting for you. 

He’s out most nights, not late enough that he’d need to oversleep to be functioning the next morning, but it’s not uncommon for you to be curled up on your side of the bed, usually scrolling through social media, and he’ll come in, sometimes humming something, sometimes chattering away on the phone. Sometimes he’ll shower, but he always smokes, watching the stars, right before he comes to bed.

Or you’ll join him. 

On the weekends, you’ll grab dinner together after filming, and he’s in his eyeliner, the foundation sometimes a little worse for wear, and you’ll explore the nightlife that LA has to offer, seeing live bands, or going to clubs. Of course, as a famous musician, DJs will pull Colson up into their booth, to play a song or two, and you, without fail, always managed to feel out of place. So you hang back, maybe have a dance, or maybe get a drink, or even just people-watch. You enjoy it, but you enjoy going back to the hotel more.

Tabloids, or the modern equivalent at least, get familiar with your name, and it’s not long before your image starts to change.

About six minutes into a twenty minute ‘tea spilling’ video, the host says your name.

“Now, [Y/N] Booth, DuckDuckBooth, whatever you know her as, has been all over the mainstream media lately because - shock horror - she’s in a relationship with someone with a bad reputation! Because that’s what we love here, ladies and gents; rumours and slander,” the host, a young woman with bleach blonde hair and a thick English accent rolls her eyes, sarcasm dripping from her tongue, “so a bit of a run-down for those who don’t know, [Y/N] is a lifestyle and, I don’t know, entertainment industry insider - YouTuber? She makes videos on what it’s like to work all different jobs in the industry. And her brother’s famous? I think?” She looks to a point off-screen, presumably where her laptop was sitting, letting her look him up. “He was in Jupiter Ascending, he was the weird prince-dude; Douglas Booth, and he was in a bunch of stuff that was only really released in the UK.” 

It cuts to a new shot of the host tucking her hair behind her ears.

“So [Y/N] recently started dating Machine- MG- uh, I don’t know how to say it, it sounds wrong coming from me; Machine Gun Kelly? He’s a rapper I think? He’s been in a few shows on like, streaming services? I don’t know, I don’t know him that well, but apparently he’s one for scandal - allegedly.” She emphasises, before taking a deep breath, “and now he and [Y/N] are working on the same project, and have started dating, like two adults who like each other might start doing!” It’s condescending, as if directly responding to some less than polite criticisms she’s seen online, but she shrugs it off flippantly.

“Anyways, I’ve been following [Y/N] for a while, I’ve seen her recent uploads and Instagram stories and such; they’re cute, okay? I don’t personally enjoy his music, but that’s just my tastes, you know? And I don’t understand all the negativity she’s suddenly receiving; you all know she’s an adult, right? Like not just in the UK, she’s over 21, she’s allowed to go out and drink, and be a human being. It’s not like she’s suddenly become a different person; just because she’s not acting in the way your overly-sanitized view of her should, doesn’t mean she’s a different person, or that she’s corrupted or whatever. She’s not a bad person for enjoying herself.”

“Everyone speculating about whether it’s fake or not, like they have nothing in common, well it’s almost like you don’t know them personally; if it’s fake, who even cares, that’s -” she laughs a little, “that’s Hollywood, isn’t it? I think the people hating on her, or on him, or wanting them to admit it’s fake or just break up, are jealous, honestly, because even if it’s fake, it’s a hell of a commitment.”

“Do you ever worry?” You can’t help but ask, it’s late, much later than you know you should be up, but he’s awake too, yawning, looking at his phone. Both of you tucked up in bed, he takes a moment before looking at you. There’s something about the shadow of eyeliner he hadn’t quite been able to remove that just makes him look edgy and gorgeous.

“I try not to,” he answers candidly, “but about what?”

“About people finding out about us.”

“Usually,” he cracks a half smile, “when a girl asks me that, it’s about people finding out that we are together,” and he’s smiling, but you just frown in the dark, unable to appreciate the humour. 

“What’ll they say? Of course you’ll be fine, but I-” you swallow, shaking your head, “sorry, asshole thing to say; of course I care about what they say about you, just as much me, but -”

“But you’ve got a lot further to fall than I do,” he says with a surprising honesty, and you meet his gaze in the glow of his screen light, “honestly I have no idea how this is gonna end, I thought you did.” And you feel your stomach drop. 

How were you supposed to respond to this?! There is absolutely no way you can say what you’re thinking, that you don’t want this to end because you’ve started to catch real feelings. 

“I’m winging it,” you admit softly. Something about his expression softens, but his screen goes dark before you can see it, “I know you’re a good person but-”

“Then you don’t know me that well, Ducky,” he laughs a little, though the sound is hollow, and you can hear him rustling around as he looks up at the ceiling in the dark, “kid, you don’t know me at all -”

“Don’t call me kid,” you bristle, quietly defiant, but he just seems to ignore you.

“I know I’m a bad dude, okay? And if you want this whole thing to end with everyone thinking I’ve broken your heart, then do it, I’ve been through worse. I’ve done worse; if you wanna just worry about yourself, you can.” 

“So it’s black and white; I’m red riding hood and you’re the big bad wolf? That’s how we end this?”

“You think in fairy tale analogies,” he huffs an almost disbelieving laugh, “I’m just saying that if you didn’t have to be with me, you wouldn’t be; you wanted scandalous but not a scandal, I get it, okay? I’m good at that; good at both, actually, but I guess you’re cute enough that you can pick one and not the other.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” You snap, feeling angry, almost betrayed by his callous words. In the dark, you can make out the shape of his silhouette against the stars.

“You’re all clean and shiny and shit, you’ve got a philanthropist big brother, and a life in the entertainment industry without the actual pressure of being an actor, and yeah, YouTube is hard, I get that, now more than anything else, watching you ‘s definitely given me a new appreciation for the effort that goes in, but -”

“But what? It’s not a real job?”

That shuts him up fast. 

Fuming in the dark, you clamber from the bed, and head onto the balcony, slamming the door behind you. The night air is cool and crisp against the warm anger bubbling just beneath your skin, and you take a few deep breaths. Why you’re out here, you’re not sure; you should have gone down the hall and stayed with Douglas, but here you were, cooling off on the balcony. 

You’re in his seat, the seat he always sits in to smoke before bed, and it feels strange, but you’re not going to give up the seat, even as he opens the door. He doesn’t look at you, instead, he leans against the railing, looking out at the ocean glittering with stars.

“I wasn’t -” he starts, before sighing, “fuck, I know it’s a real job, okay?”

But he’s met with silence.

“I was gonna say - fuck, there’s like, a quote thing someone once told me, I think it was Shakespeare or some shit - there’s more things in Heaven and Earth, you know, than are dreamed in your philosophy.” He paused, “I’m dealing with more than just your shit, you know? Every fuckin’ person wants to hate me right now; your shit is small fish, Ducky. If you’re not getting hate, then it’s worth it, okay? And after all of this, I’ll still be averaging the same amount of hate as I always get, not that I give a shit. It’s pebble in a stream stuff.” When again, he’s met with silence, he sighs gently, hanging his head, before heading back inside, though he doesn’t close the door.

On your own, for only a moment, you feel your insides twisting, frustrated at overreacting, heart warming at his words, just a little. 

“Pebble in a stream stuff?” You ask quietly, when he joins you once more, this time with a joint and his lighter.

“Immutable,” he says, voice flat as he focuses on lighting up, before taking a long drag. After a moment of holding the smoke in his lungs, he breathes out, watching it as he speaks, “like a river, if you throw a pebble in, it creates a ripple, but the current always corrects itself. No matter what you do, the river just keeps flowing in the same direction.” 

“Deep,” you muse.

“It’s from X-Men,” he responded, and there’s a beat, before the two of you break out into laughter at the absurdity of it all, of his philosophical ramblings being ripped from a comic book movie, of the idea of the two of you ever getting into this situation in the first place.

When the laughter dies down, you find yourself smiling at him, watching him while his grin is turned up to the stars.

“You say I don’t know you, even though we’ve been doing this for almost a month and a half now; I wanna know you,” you tell him as genuinely as you can manage in your tired state, and he turns to you with an unreadable expression, and you catch yourself before you act on the fluttering in your chest, “to make it more believable.” You add, and he nods, and his gaze goes back to the sky; if it was a little disappointed, you try not to think about it too hard, “so you don’t like cutesy dates like fairs, what do you like?”

Licking his lips as he thinks, he finally turns to you, eyebrow raised.

“Honestly?”

Why does his gaze right now make your pulse race?

“Honestly.” You dare not break his gaze.

“I like going to clubs with you, to see bands and shit,” he tells you, and... oh, you weren’t expecting that. There’s that soft, unreadable expression again, though he seems endeared by your genuine surprise, “but I sometimes get the feeling that you feel, uh, out of place?” He seems concerned.

“I mean, not really, it’s fun and all!” You try, but he gives a smirk.

“You don’t have to sugar coat it -”

“It’s sticky, and it feels weird with all the dudes trying to grind up on me when I’m like, meant to be with you. I always feel like someone’s about to pull out their phone, snap a photo and accuse me of cheating.” You blurt out, and Colson’s expression turned from surprised to amused.

“Stick with me then -”

“I don’t wanna be a bother; I’m not a music person, I shouldn’t be in like, a DJ booth I don’t think.”

“You’re with me, you can go wherever you want.”

The night is cool and crisp, and he’s got an early start, but the two of you sit out there, talking, laughing, actually getting to know each other. He tells you all about Cassie, about how proud he is of her, how much he misses her, and how proud she is of him in turn. You, in turn, tell him stories of yourself and Douglas from your childhood, of how he’d always been your biggest fan, and your first defender, and how you’d been to all of his premieres. At this, Colson’s eyes glaze over a little, lost in thought.

“I have no idea how this is gonna end,” he says gently, before looking to you, “but whenever you wanna call it quits, say the word.”

But you hear I’m read to cut and run at any moment, and you know it’s selfish, but it’s not what you want to hear.

“Thanks,” you respond, with a small smile instead, “same to you; don’t just stick around for my benefit,” you try to laugh, but it doesn’t quite come out right. It’s quiet after that, though it had to be said, and it’s not long before the two of you go to bed.

It’s a turning point, it’s where you start to really try to get to know each other, rather than just being around each other. Maybe it’s just hope, but it feels a little more real with each day that passes.

“Hello! Hello and welcome back, ducklings! Today we’ve got a very special guest! And if you’ve read the title of this video, you know who it is! That’s right, my boyfriend is going to try and teach me the basics of drumming!”

The comments of the video tell you that you both look so happy, look so cute, look so in love.

“You’re a good actor,” Colson tells you, as if he believes the starry-eyed looks you give him are a carefully calculated ruse. You, on the other hand, feel like a fool only moments from being outed as being in love with your fake boyfriend, which was ridiculous; he’s the only person who needs to believe it’s a ruse after all.

Even Douglas tells you the video is good, and suddenly you’re starting to feel like an asshole for lying to him for so long.

But it’ll work out. It has to. And neither you nor Colson is gonna be the bad guy. Because he’s not, no matter what he says .

He keeps buying you hot drinks if his alarms wake you up, and he keeps you close whenever you go out, and he gives you a blanket whenever you fall asleep in his trailer during breaks, and -

“Has Duck ever told you about how she found a frog when we were little, like a live frog,” Douglas was grinning over lunch, while you were slowly becoming more embarrassed by Colson's side, your forehead pressed to his shoulder as your brother recounted one of his favourite stories, “and she named it after me, because she was always a bit of a menace, but it got free, and mum and dad almost lost their minds when she came crying about how ‘Doug was missing in the woods!’” He grinned, both fond and a bit sharp, “they only realised she was talking about the frog when I joined the search party after getting home from a friend’s house.”

You heave a sigh, but Colson gives you a gentle, reassuring pat.

“No, that’s fuckin’ adorable, but no she hadn’t told me that; but I had heard about how you made the both of you duck costumes for your school’s Halloween,” and Colson gives him a toothy grin as Douglas flushes with embarrassment, though he seems endeared by the nostalgia of it all, “primary school, was it?”

“Not Halloween, it was a book fair,” Douglas corrected, and you surfaced finally, leaning into Colson, who wrapped an arm around you, and you level a soft smile at your brother, who returns one in kind, before his gaze flicks to Colson’s, and back. A smile. A nod. A silent approval. Fuck, you hate lying to him.

But you’re not above a little white lie to the internet for some advice.

r/AmITheAsshole posted by u/idkquackythrowaway

AITA for falling for my fake boyfriend and lying to my best friend about it?

So hello, throw away account because if either of them find this, I’ll be mortified and have to run away to canada and live as a goat farmer.

So I started ““““dating”“““ my “”””boyfriend””””, let’s call him C, a few months ago, because all of our friends kept accusing us of dating, and it was easier to just go along with it than deny it - there’s a lot of extenuating circumstances here; and yes I have issues lying to my friends, but I can deal with it for the greater good. It’s better for C and me in the short-term anyways.

Anyways so my best friend, D, is someone I’ve never lied to, we’ve always been so incredibly close, but now he’s getting to be good friends with C too, and approves of the two of us, but I’m just worried he’ll be betrayed if I tell him it wasn’t real.

Also, I might have real feelings for C, which he Does Not Have for me, so I feel like I’m betraying him too, by pretending that it’s not fake. ANd I wanna tell D about this, but then I’d have to come clean about everything, which....... its a lot. 

So Am I The Asshole for catching feelings in a fake relationship, and lying to my closest friend about it?

[324 comments]

The reaction is mixed.

And mostly unhelpful.

A lot of people are calling you the asshole, which, ouch, but you had kind of already come to terms with that. A lot more people, however, are just abstaining from making judgement, considering there was definitely more to the story. You’re not sure how to deal with those comments; you want to defend yourself, or give more context, but you also know you absolutely cannot. 

Eventually you decide to come clean.

“I’m in love with Colson.”

About the wrong thing. To the wrong person.

Douglas blinks slowly at you, a smile slowly spreading across his face.

“Really?”

“Really really.” You sigh, with an air of defeat, though this has him frowning, putting his fork full of pasta down. 

“What’s wrong, did he do something?” Douglas is playing the protective older brother, just as he has done for as long as you can remember, but it’s all you can do to shake your head.

In truth, Colson’s been fucking perfect; despite his reputation, he’s a fantastic - fake - partner. Perhaps it’s that you work together, so he doesn’t have to find a distraction outside of his main focus. 

“Duckling,” Douglas says it so gentle, taking your hand over the dinner table, “I’m happy for you, as long as you’re happy.” And what can you say to that? Another lie? You feel like you’ll be ill if you let another lie pass your tongue in front of Douglas.

“I love him,” you say, weakly, and you feel your eyes misting at the implication, the reality of your words. 

“What’s wrong?”

“I-” you choke on your words, and tears start to gather, threatening to spill, “I think I love him more than he loves me.” It’s not a lie, but it’s enough for Douglas. 

“I’m sorry,” he sounds so genuine, holding your hand tight in his, finishing dinner, and taking you both back to the hotel. He does the only thing he can think of to cheer you up; put on a movie on his laptop and wrap you up in blankets like he would when you were kids. The movie’s a little outdated, but he’s trying, and that alone makes you feel a little better. 

“Hello! Hello and welcome back, ducklings! Today we’ve just got a low-effort video, it’s just a top ten comfort movies from childhood that survive a modern rewatch! As decided by me and Douglas!”

Filming is set to move locations soon, from being on-location on the Sunset Strip to a back-lot about an hour away, somehow closer to the hills, and you feel like you can hear the ticking of a clock counting down.

“When filming’s over, we can end it if you want,” you tell Colson as you’re packing up your suitcases.

“Oh,” he seems surprised.

“Oh?”

“That’s soon,” is all the clarification he gives, but he doesn’t sound happy about it, “are you sure?” 

“I mean, I don’t wanna outstay my welcome,” you try to joke, but he makes a noise that you can’t quite decipher, “what?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Just thought it would maybe go until the premiere.” He admits, and you pause, actually surprised at his words, and he clears his throat, “it would be weird seeing you there if I was with someone else, right?”

“Right,” you muse quietly, before going back to folding your clothes, “that’s a year away still, I’m pretty sure.” You tell him, and he hums, but doesn’t seem bothered by it.

“Well I’ve got a few events before then I need a date for,” he says, noncommittally, “and we’ll see each other before then; if you wanna be convincing you can crash at my place if you wanna, in The Hills, at least for a bit, if you ain’t got anything else to do sort of thing,” he actually sounds a bit hesitant, and you swallow hard, before letting yourself smile, pleased.

“I think you like having me around.” When you look at him, he’s trying to hide a smile of his own.

“'course I do.”

[feminist-propaganda]

The War - On Drugs

One of the things that pisses me off when it comes to drugs, is the idea that somehow they make people more peaceful.

Drugs tend to be associated with spirituality (LSD, marijuana) or parties (cocaine, MDMA). Not taking drugs is seen as something “fachist” or “intolerant”. All of the cool kids are doing it, only the stuck up ones are saying no.

Even though humans discovered a lot of psychotic substances by observing animals use them (such as the goats who were chewing on the coffee beans in Ethiopia ) it simply isn’t true that drug usage is a peaceful practise. Quite the opposite.

I want to talk about how historically drugs have been used to fuel war.

1. Snorting Cocaine in the Trenches

The very first factory that ever produced cocaine is located a couple of kilometers away from my house, in a town called Amstelveen. 

In 1875, some coca plants were transferred from Brasil to Java, where they were cultivated by the locals under Dutch supervision. In 1900, the Nederlandsche Cocaïnefabriek was created and quickly became the biggest producer in Europe.

It’s only during the first World War though, that the Nederlandsche Cocaïnefabriek really made it’s mark on the pages of History. It sold cocaine to both sides (The Allies and the Germans). Soldiers were taught to cope with the atrocities they saw on the battlefield, the long marches and the rest of it all because they were using cocaine as an upper and opium as a downer.

In the period between the two Wars; some regulations were passed and manufacturing cocaine ceased to be so lucrative, as you could only sell it as a medical product. Fortunately for the Nederlandsche Cocaïnefabriek, during the Second World war, they were once again able to turn a profit by selling opiates to the German Army.

2. Walking to Russia on Ecstasy

During the Second World War, Hitler used methamphetamines to motivate his soliders and give them the energy they needed to walk 30 km a day. People have written at length about the engines and machinery that were developped during the Third Reich, but fail to mention or understand that twenty year old men would’ve probably not commited mass murder and genocide had they not been high on methamphetamines.

Don’t believe me? This is how Time magazine put it in January 2020:

“Few drugs have received a bigger stimulus from war. As Lester Grinspoon and Peter Hedblom wrote in their classic 1975 study The Speed Culture, “World War II probably gave the greatest impetus to date to legal medically authorized as well as illicit black market abuse of these pills on a worldwide scale.”

3. Murdering people on Hash

You might not be convinced that Drugs are the fuel of war and violence because I’ve only talked about the hard drugs, also known as the “party drugs”. How about Hash? The word “assassin” comes from a murder cult called the “Hashishin”. These people formed a group of killers in Northern Iran in the 11th century. The members of the group were offered hash and while they were high would enjoy sensual pleasures such as sex with young women and good food. When they came out of their transes, they would go on murdering expeditions where they were expected to kill specific people.

The secret group was very well organized in a hierarchy of five levels, and only the lowest level was tasked with killing individuals. The decision makers believed that it was better to kill a select number of people that had differing opinions or views than them rather than waging a war.

The killers belived that they were fighting a holy war. In reality, the leaders of the organization would receive commissions from third parties who would pay for the assassination they ordered. They were also great at extorting money, and used the threat of the “Hashishin” to convince their victimes of paying up. 

But why do I care about this anyway? Can’t I just let users use whatever they want to? Why am I giving you this history lesson?

The reason I care is because we tend to think that men are violent, we use the phrase “boys will be boys” to illustrate our belief that we don’t think there’s anything we can do about this. It’s almost as if we think it’s intrinsic to their nature, that they have to let it out sometimes. We think it’s expected and we can’t be upset if they use violence to express themselves.

The idea that men are violent serves a very specific purpose. We don’t perpetuate it for nothing. It’s function is to justify Wars. We teach little boys to own guns and fight, we make videos games that are full of violence, then when they become teenage boys we give them beer and joints. By the time they are adults they’re transformed into violent, dangerous citizens. 

Sending such a man off to war is easier than sending a man who is well read, who likes to paint and writes poetry about his emotions. How could such a man accept the War? 

We perpetuate the idea that men are violent to justify War.

I disagree. Men are not intrinsically violent. During their childhoods, they are told to suppress their emotions, taught that emotions are dangerous, that their emotions make them less worthy of love, that their emotions are so undesirable that if they allow themselves to feel them; they might be excommunicated, that their own mothers might stop loving them.

Later in life, men start resorting to drugs to avoid feeling and dealing with their emotions. And we all know what the consequences of this behavior is. But hey, let me just share some numbers:

- In the UK, suicide is the second biggest cause for deaths in Men. According to one article on the BBC:

It’s the same in many other countries. Compared to women, men are three times more likely to die by suicide in Australia, 3.5 times more likely in the US and more than four times more likely in Russia and Argentina. WHO’s data show that nearly 40% of countries have more than 15 suicide deaths per 100,000 men; only 1.5% show a rate that high for women.

- Men are more likely to develop an addiction to the effects of alcohol. The Center for disease Control in the US reports:

Adult Men Drink More than Women

Almost 59% of adult men report drinking alcohol in the past 30 days compared with 47% of adult women.1

Men are almost two times more likely to binge drink than women.1-3 Approximately 22% of men report binge drinking and on average do so 5 times a month, consuming 8 drinks per binge.2

In 2019, 7% of men had an alcohol use disorder compared with 4% of women.4

-Men are also more likely to be homeless. According to the Demographic Data Project: 

Homelessness in America is largely a gendered phenomenon. Men are the overwhelming majority individuals counted in the HUD-required annual Point-in-Time Count. They are also more likely than women to be unsheltered.  Ending homelessness requires better understanding of the issues that cause so many men to become homeless, and the particular housing, employment, and services solutions that would best end their homelessness.   

When will we stop romanticising drugs as something that makes us creative, friendly or funny and actually see them for what they are? 

[neptunium134]

Send in the Clowns analysis (eh?) pt2

@midsomer4life​, you wanted this, get redy for more of this maddness

After this scene, I am convinved Jamie was a Scout:

(We’ve used paraffin lamps in Scouts while I’ve been there, so if Jamie was a Scout he would undoubtedly have used paraffin lamps, or paraffin to light the Trangas). Basically, if I asked my non-Scout friends to idenity what smelled of paraffin, I doubt they could do it as it’s not common anymore, seeing as we have electricity and none of them were Scouts.

Jamie was a Scout or has a DofE under his belt, or both. 

Jamie wearing wellies to the Gun Club:

I mean that’s just cute. John or Sarah probably bought them for him.

Jamie’s facial expressions in the abattoir:

I mean, same, mate. 

John doesn’t look that uncomfortable, more focused on Mostyn, but Jamie looks like he wants to puke. This could just be down to age and experience- John has had more experience with going to weird places like abattoirs, and he’s seen a lot of gore in Midsomer, while Jamie is still relatively new to it.

Mostyn picking on Jamie, and asking John “You sure he can handle it”, and John looking at Jamie before going in (some of which I haven’t screencapped, but if you’ve seen the episode you’ll know the part I’m on about, if you haven’t seen it, it should still be on the ITV Hub):

And I just love this low-angle shot. Let me geek out about media for a moment, but this shot is amazing and I love it:

Notice how the audience are looking up at the characters, as if we’re the pigs almost? The camera was probably on some sort of ledge or dolley, but we are effectively the pigs in this scenario.  The shot also makes Jamie look shorter, pushing our focus on the two important figures in the scene: Mostyn and John. Jamie is being pushed back and down so the audience’s attention is on the action in the scene.

Mostyn’s ‘red room’ is understandably and disgustingly creepy:

Ugh, that is so gross, it makes me wanna vomit just looking at it.

And this red herring:

Making the audience think it’s the rifle when it isn’t, well done, screenwriters.

Father and son sitting down at the same time:

(Not that good of a screencap, but oh well)

I just found it cute.

This line perfecly capuates every kid’s feelings to their parents not listening to them:

(Just to be clear, this line is being said by Harry, not Joe)

This should not happen:

That clown should not be able to outrun Jamie. We’ve seen Jamie sprint after suspects before- the first ones that pop into my head are Crime and Punishment (S19, E2) and The Lions of Causton (S20, E4)

TLOC was literally two episodes before this, Jamie could not have slowed in a few in-canon months, if anything he should be quicker.

I know it’s to build tension and conflict so we don’t find out the original issue of this episode before the plot is ready to advance in such a way, but Mostyn cannot outrun Jamie. It’s impossible, espically when Mostyn is wearing that stupid outfit and the oversized shoes.

Raoul outing every magician to have ever magicked:

Jamie once again proving the wonders of modern technology:

No, this is literally what my classes do when we haven’t got time to make notes in class.

Jamie is Gen Z confirmed.

The infamous oil scene:

Now, there’s a bit to unpack in this, so let’s try to break it down.

In my opinion, Jamie is focuing on his phone in order to impress John with what he found out. Me and @midsomer4life​ have a theory where Jamie was ignored by his parents, so he’s reaching out to the first parental figure who has shown impression with what he’s done. I feel like that’s what Jamie’s trying to communicate in the last photo. A sort of “don’t bring up my parents” kind of look.

But it does also fit into what we’ve seen of his personality- a little absent-minded and determined to please. In CaP, Kam describes him as “cocky” and “arrogant”, but aside from that episode and maybe a little bit in Curse of the Ninth (S19, E6), there’s not really any evidence for that.

To me, Jamie is just trying to impress John, and as the seasons go on, it seems less of a ‘trying to impress the boss to keep a job’ and more of a ‘trying to impress a parental figure’. 

But that’s just my take.

 Also, big steppy:

Fleur making John say “please” in front of his son:

She’s just trying to make sure John is raising his son to be polite.

John and Jamie finding Mostyn’s ‘red room’:

The only appropriate reaction.

This interaction:

Bommy Vommy Jamie.

Also, I love this running joke that John loves old movies- we had to look at a Hammer horror film poster for media, and I think it was from the 60s. If we’re using the actor’s ages for the characters, then Jamie, at this point, is roughly 33-ish (annoyingly, the UK airing date is almost two years after the US one, so I’m using 2018 as a benchmark). Hammer horror films reached their peak around the 1970s. Once again, if we use Neil’s age for John, then John would have been 20 around 1981. It’s likely he saw some Hammer films before he went to uni, which could be the reason why he likes old movies so much- they bring back good memories with his parents/ family.

I just love that it references a niche love of John’s and it gives John the chance to poke fun at Jamie for his younger age, like how Jamie did to John in TLOC.

This throw-away line that’s actually quite funny and incredibly British:

Priorities

This line:

Once again, this is showing Jamie’s younger age- he’s referencing a children’n storybook.

As much as I would love to think John has read this to Jamie as a bedtime story, it’s more likely Jamie’s read it to Betty if he’s ever babysat her (which would be amazing, ITV make it happen!)

The way Jamie moves in front of John when Mostyn points the rifle at them:

Let me protect you, father

The this shot which I just love:

Despite Jamie being in the foreground, he is in blurred-focus while John is in-focus. This once again allows the audience to focus on John as he is talking while keeping Jamie in their view. It’s not a POV shot from Mostyn, the positioning’s all wrong for that, so it’s obviously a narrative shot.

John refering to Mostyn’s ‘red room’ as his “chamber of horrors”:

Personally, I think this is referring to The Village That Rose from the Dead (S19, E1), where Jamie refers to the snake room as “the deadly room of serpents”, which John instantly shut down. A canonical year later, John is using similar wording to refer to Mostyn’s ‘red room’, suggesting that Jamie’s playfulness has rubbed off on him and he’s taken to using it in a similar way certain social groups use the same words of phrases to create or strengthen a bond. 

Using these kinds of words in that order that directly references something Jamie said could be John’s way of trying to strengthen the bond between him and Jamie, in a similar way to how parents will try to understand the language and slang their kids use, in order to appeal to them so they can strengthen that bond.

This episode focuses heavily on families and familial bonds. It’s probably unintentional, and I’ve just picked up on it due to my English Language course, but if it was intentional, we could be looking at a much stronger familial bond being formed between John and Jamie in S22 and onwards.

Right, I’m gonna end this part here, the next one should be the last one since I’m running out of screencaps and they’re all from the end of the episode.

Once that part’s done, you won’t have to endure any more of this

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

I wasn’t expecting Russia to invade Ukraine until after their next election in 2024, but it looks as though things may kick off sooner rather than later.

In 2014, a pro-Russian candidate ���won” a very dubious election, and the people ousted him from power. Russia subsequently invaded and annexed the Crimean peninsula under the guise of “providing military aid” to the ethnic Russians in the regions. It’s kinda like if the United States took over southern Ontario to protect Americans living abroad.

Shortly after this, pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine (Donbass) rose up against the government and have been fighting a civil war ever since. Russia hasn’t directly gotten involved in the conflict, they just give supplies and funding to the rebels; imagine if the US started selling guns and tanks to pro-American rebels along the rest of the border.

While Russia could plausibly justify annexing Crimea because it had once been part of Russia and ceded to Ukraine in the 50s, there’s no way to justify taking a big chunk of eastern Ukraine. The war in Donbass has been raging on-and-off for years; there have been dozens of ceasefires, but none of them have lasted long. Russia is now building up troops along the border, signaling their intent to actually invade and help the rebels directly. This would be an inexcusable act of open war in Europe, which NATO would not stand for. Ukraine isn’t part of NATO, so they’re not technically obligated to respond, but they’re not going to just let Russia expand its sphere of influence by taking land from a strategically significant sovereign nation.

But Putin’s not stupid. He’s not going to start a war he doesn’t think he can win. NATO can’t really do anything to stop him unless the entire alliance commits to it, and there are at least three major obstructionists; the US, the UK, and Turkey (together the three largest militaries in NATO).

American foreign policy is all over the place, flipping back and forth depending on which political party controls the presidency; under Trump, the US would not only have allowed a Russian invasion, they would have encouraged it. Under Biden, he’ll take a more hardline stance (“hardline,” which like Obama in 2014 means sanctions and a strongly worded letter). Congress won’t want America to get involved in another foreign war; Republicans support Russia, and Democrats support Ukraine, but neither side will sign off on American interference because there’s no oil to be had. We’ll fuck around in the Middle East, sure, but Ukraine? Not gonna happen. And we’re so close to leaving Afghanistan, the longest war in American history, there’s no way Biden could commit troops to another war so soon after this one; it would be political suicide, even if it would help the Ukrainians.

UK foreign policy largely shadows the US, though the Conservative party (analogous to American Republicans) are staunchly Eurosceptic. They want to distance themselves from the continent as much as possible; they left the EU and will almost certainly try to leave NATO if the only other alternative is going up against Russia in a proxy war. Trump wanted to withdraw the US from NATO, and if some other Republican president follows through on this threat in the future, the UK will absolutely follow suit.

Turkey is backsliding towards authoritarianism; Erdogan was democratically elected, but has hijacked the executive branch to consolidate power and become a new Ottoman Emperor. Turkey is the second largest military in NATO behind the United States, and in recent years has been becoming closer to Russia then the rest of Europe. Erdogan and Putin are, for the moment, buddy-buddy; kindred dictatorial spirits. Turkey will likely withdraw from NATO to side with Russia in the Ukrainian conflict because they control the only straits connecting the Black Sea with the Mediterranean. Russia needs to be in Turkey’s good graces or else they’ll be landlocked (save for Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg, but we’ll get to them later). Like Hitler and Stalin, they have an uneasy truce of convenience, but will almost certainly turn on each other later.

Putin has a blank check to do whatever he wants in Ukraine because Western Europe doesn’t want to start another Cold War. I thought for sure Russia would wait until 2024, then call the results of the election fraudulent as pretext for invasion. They very well still may, but given the troop buildup it’s possible the rebels are going to be getting a lot more support in the coming months.

And don’t even get me started on Belarus. Right now, there’s no indication that Belarus is involved with the Ukrainian situation, but the second they back Putin, it’s all over for Ukraine. Ukraine borders Russia to the east, and Belarus to the north; Kiev is within striking distance of the Ukraine-Belarus border, so if Belarus sided with Russia, then Russia could march troops directly on the Ukrainian capital, toppling the government and turning it into a pro-Russian satellite puppet. Belarus has been run by the same dictator ever since becoming independent from Russia in 1991, and the two countries share close personal ties, having joined the Union State in 1999. The Union State is a pact of Russian-Belarusian brotherhood, calling for economic and military unification.

Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia want to join the Union too, as does Moldova in Europe.

That said, the Belarusian dictator is a hardcore nationalist who wants to maintain independence from Russia rather than be annexed. He wouldn’t just let Russian troops occupy his country and march on Kiev; it would be like Belgium during the World Wars, with Germany (Russia) using them as a stepping stone to take France (Ukraine). We need to watch Belarus carefully to see how they respond to Russian interference. If they stand back and let it happen, Ukraine will fall without a fight, but if they try to maintain independence then it will trigger a full blown European war (quite possibly a prelude to WWIII)

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are part of NATO, so Russia can’t touch them without inviting total war. But do you notice that purple spot between Lithuania and Poland? That’s Kaliningrad, and though separated from the rest of the country, it’s part of Russia. Just north of Estonia, off the map, is St Petersburg, which along with Kaliningrad represent Russia’s only two port cities in the Baltic Sea. They both freeze over in the winter, rendering them unusable, which is why Russia cared so much about taking Crimea with its warm water ports in the Black Sea.

If Turkey and the UK and the US were to leave NATO, the entire alliance would pretty much collapse, giving Russia another blank check to do whatever they want with Eastern Europe. If Russia annexes Belarus, they could very likely annex Lithuania to reconnect Kaliningrad with the rest of the country.

The closest thing to a super power Europe has that could butt heads with Russia is Germany, but they’re dealing with their own internal struggles right now; the Alternative For Germany party (neo-Nazi party) is the fastest growing party in their parliament, and though they have nowhere near a majority it’s terrifying to think they could assert influence over the other right-wing parties and form coalition governments.

This is all just rampant speculation; Putin knows more than I do, he’s not an idiot, and I don’t claim to understand the inner machinations of the Red Army, but I can see the writing on the walls. There may not be a direct war, but whatever the conflict, it will look very similar to the events posited above.

In the unlikely event that Russia marches on Kiev, the Ukrainian government may fall back to a national redoubt (secondary capital) in the west, perhaps near Lviv or in the Carpathian Mountains along the border with Romania. If this happens, I could see Ukraine being split in two like Korea or Germany; East and West Ukraine, though both sides would claim sovereignty over the entire country.

[robotslenderman]

Thoughts on Wayhaven Chronicles

I am partway through book one so this may be out of date by book two. I really hope the author got the research thing figured out by book two...

I am playing Meredith Jones, aka my VTMB2 thinblood.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m having a great time, but I have to rant about a few things. So, cons before pros!

Cons:

Author has done zero research on anything. Like, zero. Not even a google search.

You play a detective. “What kind of detective?” you say. Detective constable? Detective sergeant? Detective inspector? Detective chief inspector??? IDK but apparently it’s the rank that reports directly to the mayor and is important enough that the mayor shows up to your promotion, but not so important you have any confidence about what you’re doing??? BITCH IT TAKES THREE SECONDS TO GOOGLE DETECTIVE RANKS, WHY DID YOU NOT DO EVEN THAT????

YOU CAN’T JUST BE GIVEN “THINGS ON THE HOUSE” BECAUSE YOU’RE A COP WHEN YOU TRY TO BUY SHIT THAT’S CALLED CORRUPTION AND IT IS SUPER ILLEGAL. FUCK, MY DAD IS A GODDAMN PROGRAMMER AND HE’S  NOT ALLOWED TO ACCEPT A CUP OF COFFEE WITHOUT A PILE OF PAPERWORK BUT THE BAKER CAN JUST GIVE COPS A BAGEL WHENEVER????

At one point you enter a lab to investigate it. Apparently, when packing up to leave, the person who used to work in the lab had a seizure and/or a tantrum and just threw beakers everywhere. Why? It’s never said. Instead of meeting with a supervisor who’s freaking out about people potentially being gassed to death, MC is just allowed to stroll right in there and do whatever and inhale whatever substances have just been. thrown. around.

Also nobody labels their fucking beakers or test tubes. They just leave shit lying around mixed in beakers out in the open. for no reason. How does a vampire know your blood is in a test tube? They snort that shit, that’s how, they don’t read the fucking label because THERE ISN’T ONE.

You also have the option to shoot your gun when you don’t actually feel like your life is threatened, so that’s... pretty accurate, actually, given the information that’s come up from the recent police brutality protests. Altho I know for a fact Australian cops can’t even unholster their guns without getting paperwork for it later, regardless of whether or not they use it later, so I don’t know if British cops are much different in that regard.

City people are EVILL?????? also we DISOBEY RULES but GOOD HONEST COUNTRY PEOPLE don’t??????? CITY PEOPLE HAVE NO EMPATHYYYYYYYY

why the fuck is it called a “small town” and not a “village”? Is this set in the UK or not????

I genuinely can’t tell if the writer is a country person who’s never been to the city, or a city person who’s never been to the country. They represent both sides of it that goddamn inaccurately.

I genuinely can’t tell either if the creator is actually British, because aside from British English usage there’s like... nothing pinging my “fellow Brit” radar. I don’t see any British colloquialisms, or any of the traits that British “small towns” are known for. If it weren’t for the spelling I would be SO SURE this wasn’t set in Britain.

(I mean fuck, maybe I’m completely wrong and it’s not set in the UK?? My friend told me it was)

WHAT THE FUCK IS EVEN THE POINT OF VAMPIRES IF THEY CAN WALK AROUND DURING THE DAY. GET THAT TWILIGHT SHIT OUTTA HERE.

I really don’t care about alternate viewpoints. I don’t want to read about the serial killer or some spat Adam and Nathaniel are having. I just wanna do shit.

You only get to pepper spray Adam once.

barely any worldbuilding.

none of the other cops, all two of them, seem to give a shit there’s four random people hanging around. they don’t even have to sign in or get a dangly thingo? Yeah.

Pros:

Genuinely riveting and enjoyable, even though I’m constantly screaming at my monitor “DID YOU GOOGLE THIS SHIT EVEN ONCE???”

Enough options that I don’t feel like I’m being railroaded into choices most of the time. Most of the time. I really, really wish MC was able to try to kick Team Bravo out right at the beginning, even though it would (naturally) result in not being able to, because they were fucking insubordinate as hell -- but for the most part, almost all potential choices are available.

Adam was a fucking asshole but he’s grown on me. Like a tumour. I am a sucker for enemies to lovers (he and Meredith were butting heads constantly in the beginning) so if I romance anybody it’ll be him. If.

Nathaniel is an actual cinnamon roll.

The main character has an actual mother and you can actually meet her and she’s a professional and does shit!! that is SO RARE.

“ A flood of rain bursts through the new hole, pouring down onto Meredith. The halo of blood begins to dilute and wash away. “ God DAMN that’s an amazing image.

Despite the extensive list of cons, I’m having a good time. My biggest pet peeve is the total lack of research, followed by how 2D the worldbuilding is (I can go into that more if people are interested but I think I’ve complained enough, lol). The strongest feature is the wide variety of choices and reactions your character can have.

I just feel strongly that the story needed an actual editor and didn’t get one. It’s like, so close to being good. At this stage, it’s like -- well -- Twilight. Enjoyable, but not good.

Maybe book two will be better in these regards.

[thanksjro]

Last Stand of the Wreckers, Issue #4: This Series is Awash With Lippy Sons of Guns

Issue #4 starts off with an uncomfortably handsome Prowl. I mean honestly, look at this asshole, he’s simply too pretty.

I don’t think Roche has ever drawn the guy ugly, but this is on another level.

We’re in a flashback sequence here, as we start to gain an understanding of just why exactly Ironfist got put on the Wreckers in the first place. Back when he was working at Kimia, Ironfist got a call from Prowl. Seems Prowl’s read his work, and is impressed by the sheer amount of effort he’s put into it. They chat a bit about it, but no call with Prowl is ever casual, and he asks Ironfist if he’s ever been interested in actually being a Wrecker. Which, of course he has, but he’d never exactly been cut out for that kind of work, especially after his Accident™. Prowl has a little push in that area, because he’s Prowl, and makes a deal; Ironfist joins the Wreckers as a weapon expert, and in exchange he does something for Prowl.

We won’t find out what exactly Ironfist’s agreed to do until later, as we jump back to the present, where the Guzzle and Kup are about to lay the smackdown on some unsuspecting Decepticons.

With how many cameras are currently trained on you guys, I can’t say you really have the time for wisecracks, old-timer.

That big vault door behind them leads to the cell of one of the most notorious Autobots ever to grace the galaxy- Grimlock. This is the “help” Springer requested they find, meaning that he’s a sort of last resort, which tells you just how much of a powerhouse the guy is. Volatile, sure, but a powerhouse regardless.

Too bad the cell’s empty.

Snare steps in to explain just why that is, having snuck up on our Big Gulp duo.

Well I’m sure that won’t be a plot point later on.

Of course, Guzzle doesn’t really feel inclined to believe a word of what this Getaway kitbash says, and starts threatening to shoot him. Snare however, has even more secrets to tell.

Perceptor and pals have finally discovered just what the hell it is that they’ve been looking for all this time. Aequitas is a supercomputer, and a massive one at that. They’re here to download its memory files. Topspin is less than pleased with this whole thing.

Ironfist agrees- there’s no way they’re going to be able to get all the data in Aequitas downloaded before the Decepticons get through to them and tear them to pieces. Verity, however, is more concerned about the size of the computer itself.

A large part of Aequitas is made up of something called a culpability drive, which breaks down factors like motivation and accountability into a streamlined equation so it can do something completely ridiculous: calculate guilt. Yes, someone had the bright idea to break down guilt into a binary system, without any “human” element involved. Because that couldn’t possibly backfire.

Then the narrative catches up to Topspin, and Ironfist and Verity get put on babysitting duty while he deals with his phantom pain. Pyro’s made to help Perceptor with booting up the computer.

Over with Springer, he and Impactor have a little heart-to-heart, while Twin Twist is passed out with a shadow over his face, probably waiting for the horrific reveal of what the dentist’s done to him. Springer feels really bad about Impactor having been sent to Garrus-9; he’d figured that after the trial, Impactor had been sent to rehab, or at least a prison that wasn’t quite as torturey.

Impactor points out that Springer’s testimony at Aequitas was pretty damning, and I’m starting to wonder why Springer didn’t see this coming. Unless they somehow managed to move that massive friggin’ supercomputer in the last few years, Impactor’s trial happened on Garrus-9. Kind of seems like a foregone conclusion that anyone who got put through the Aequitas wringer would end up staying if found guilty.

Impactor still doesn’t think that what he did was wrong, and the only reason they stop verbally duking it out is because Twin Twist does his dramatic face reveal and the dentist comes back in to finish off those fillings.

Funny, they had a similar setup at my old orthodontist’s.

As the dentist prepares to turn what’s left of Twin Twist’s face into the “Lust” scene from Se7en, we get back to the real point of this whole miniseries: fanwanking. Ironfist is telling Verity about the Decepticon’s answer to the Wreckers- Squadron X.

This group is made up entirely of characters who only existed in the Marvel UK comics, and even then only barely. This is convenient on multiple levels; it allows the Wreckers to have an antithesis to their own group that won’t disrupt any of the ongoing storylines outside of Last Stand of the Wreckers. Nobody’s really vying to use the guy who beat up a piano and then got thrown out of a bar, now are they?

It also allows you to use an already-established character that still has plenty of wiggle room for story application. No point in trying to make a new set of characters when we’ve got a bin full of nobodies off in the corner. Especially when we’re only going to have these guys around for a few minutes.

But we’ll get to that later.

Back to Ironfist’s story…

Oh hey Whirl.

Springer’s in a bit of a pickle- his lower half is trapped under a busted barricade, and Squadron X is closing in. Impactor has no intention of leaving Springer behind, so it’s time to get crazy. Springer tells Impactor to blast a hole through his TORSO so he can surprise-attack the approaching enemy. Impactor does so, reluctantly.

Please note that the emphasis is not mine, but the narrative’s.

That’s just a cool panel.

Once all that’s over and done with, Squadron X are all put into inhibitor harnesses to keep them from trying anything funny while in custody. But oh ho, what’s this? They’ve escaped! And they’ve ripped Sandstorm’s arm off! Surely, this must be dealt with, and who better suited for the job than the dude who’s been obsessed with taking these guys out for years now? Impactor gets to work.

And thus the day is saved, thanks to the Wreckers! Yaaay!

With Ironfist’s story concluded, Perceptor takes the time to mention that they’ve got a problem. Turns out Aequitas has some state-of-the-art security measures going on- in order to even turn the thing on, someone’s got to feed the thing their spark. You know, a robot soul. This thing runs on souls, and the donator has to be a willing participant otherwise it won’t work.

Well that’s awful convenient for you, now ain’t it, Percy?

I’m assuming they just never turned the thing off during the trials, otherwise they would have run out of juice very quickly.

So it’s slim pickings in terms of sparks. Perceptor’s playing IT, Topspin’s whole spark situation is a consent minefield, and Verity’s soul is the normal, human, intangible kind. And now we get to the part of our story that’s a little sad.

Pyro and Ironfist aren’t popular. They’ve never been in the spotlight. They aren’t important. They were brought on the Wreckers to die, plain and simple, because it’s a game of numbers, and their numbers are miles below the likes of Springer and Kup.

Pyro isn’t on-board with this at all, saying that this isn’t how it’s supposed to go down for him.

Say what you will about his delusions of grandeur, but this is a guy who knows what he wants.

While Pyro’s dreaming big, Topspin’s having a really bad time in the background. That vicarious perception’s hitting real hard right now.

Ironfist plays the child in a bitter divorce between Pyro and Verity as they argue over who the hell should die so the plot can keep moving. Ironfist has a lot to say, a lot that he really should say, but he doesn’t. He’s not proud of himself, or the things he’s done as a weapons’ expert. After reflecting on his life- a life that hasn’t been profoundly wondrous or meaningful- he concedes to being the one to die.

But that doesn’t happen, because Topspin takes matters into his own hands and puts the goddamn dog to sleep. The dog in this case being himself and Twin Twist. Aequitas thanks him for his donation, sucks out his spark, and over in the torture chamber Twin Twist explodes.

With the twins(?) dead, Aequitas is online, and not a moment too soon, because those Decepticons are starting to bring the door down. Perceptor hands a headphone jack to Ironfist, tells him to plug it into his brain, and to get ready for the hurt, because they’re about to download the entirety of this supercomputer into his head.

Back with Impactor, he’s about to get his cornea scratched, when Guzzle and Kup come to save the day, following Snare’s guidance.

I just want to say, Guzzle wins the Worst Crotch award. It’s simply awful.

So Kup and Guzzle free Springer and Impactor, just in time for Springer to revenge-stab the dentist with the torture stick. Too bad he’s already shot Snare.

Play… makes you free... in the prison that’s been turned into basically a death camp. Is… are we really doing the Holocaust parallels again? God, I hope I’m reading too much into that, I really do.

We finally find out what the prize for winning the Pit fights is: you can either fight Overlord, or kill yourself. Not much of a prize, if you ask me.

Speaking of the Blue Terror, he’s on his way over. Snare asks that Impactor just kill him, because there’s no way he’s going to risk being found out by Overlord that he was being sneaky. Impactor obliges, crushing his brain module between his fingers.

Then Overlord quite literally explodes into the room.

Back over in the Aequitas chamber, Ironfist’s just finished with his upload, and he’s shaken by what he now knows. The Decepticons have nearly broken down the door at this point, and there’s only one way to save themselves- they have to detonate the prisoners’ deterrence chips. This, of course, includes Impactor. Perceptor’s all for it, but Pyro’s wholly against the idea. Verity tries to put in her vote, but humans don’t have rights in the eyes of Wrecker law, so it all comes down to Ironfist.

You heard the man, let’s kill the purple guy.

[virtual-lara]

GameSpot UK Interview With The Tomb Raider 2 Team

Interview appeared on Gamespot UK website as part of their 'Lara Week' in promotion of Tomb Raider 2. This interview appeared on Friday.

This Friday Lara Croft gets a new look thanks to graphic designer Stewart Arkinson and rest of the development team. They've been working around the clock to get Tomb Raider II finished for those all important pre-Christmas sales. Their lack of sleep should be offset by the royalties for the new game (each one should receive a cheque for at least six figures).

GameSpot UK:

What was the biggest challenges on Tomb Raider II?

TR2 Team:

Getting it finished on time!

Seriously though, I guess the biggest challenge was to include all the new elements such as new moves, Lara's ponytail etc, plus to improve gameplay. We had a lot of feedback saying that the original game didn't have enough action. This time we've got a 50-50 balance between action and exploration. We had a few problems fitting all the new levels into the game as our map designers got a bit carried away...! The end result is a much bigger game that will last for even longer.

GameSpot UK:

What's the most important improvement you've made to Tomb Raider II?

TR2 Team:

Some would say it's Lara's ponytail!!! There are a lot of very subtle improvements such as refined control of Lara and an improved camera system but the most important is probably the new lighting effects such as the flares, flickers and gun-flashes. It really makes the game more realistic and atmospheric when you can mess around properly with the lighting.

GameSpot UK:

Is Lara Croft bigger than the game?

TR2 Team:

Well, she is certainly better known amongst the general public than she was this time last year!

I guess in some ways she can stand alone from the game. A lot of the media coverage such as 'The Face' and 'FHM' has concentrated on Lara rather than the game. This has resulted in lots of people recognising Lara but when you ask them about the actual game they're pretty clueless! Lara seems to have become a bit of an industry icon and is often associated with 'Girl Power'. I think we were very lucky with our timing: Lara was born just as the whole Girl Power thing was taking off. Her no-nonsense, independent attitude really seems to appeal to the mainstream media. Of course, the way she looks has a lot to do with her success but she's also the first female games character who has been given a credible personality.

GameSpot UK:

What's the difference between the PlayStation and PC versions?

TR2 Team:

Not much. The PC looks super cool in high resolution, but the PlayStation version has some neat transparencies and other effects.

GameSpot UK:

What's the minimum Spec for Tomb Raider II?

TR2 Team:

A PlayStation or a P90 with 16MB RAM.

GameSpot UK:

Which levels best show off the PC 3D support?

TR2 Team:

Take your pick! They all look silky smooth when accelerated, but as to which level is best it's impossible to say! We hope that each level has something for everyone.

GameSpot UK:

Lara has had a bit of a make-over in Tomb Raider II, why did you do this and who idea was it?

TR2 Team:

The new game engine has allowed us to give all the characters a lot more detail so we've been able to smooth out a few of those rough bits and give her a ponytail...

GameSpot UK:

What's your favourite enemy in Tomb Raider II and why?

TR2 Team:

The scuba diver? The yeti? The moray eels? We all have our own favourites it seems! Again, it's a personal thing. Nearly all the enemies are brand new with the exception of the rats! You'll find that there are plenty of human baddies as well as animals. All enemies are a lot more intelligent than TR1, so you'll need to have your wits about you, especially with some of the human characters.

GameSpot UK:

Do think there's enough mileage in character for a third instalment of Tomb Raider?

TR2 Team:

We shall have to see - at present there isn't enough mileage in us to even contemplate doing it again without a very long holiday!!!

GameSpot UK:

Why is Tomb Raider II going to be the game of the year?

TR2 Team:

We hope that we've added enough new stuff to make Tomb Raider II a whole new game instead of just a sequel that includes 'more of the same'. We're expecting people to be more critical this time around - let's just hope it lives up the your expectations. It would be complacent for us to simply assume that everyone who bought the first game will rush out to buy the sequel (but we can always hope!) Lara's new-found fame might encourage a few more sales from people who want to see what all the fuss is about!

GameSpot UK:

Is Lara Croft a spice girl or barbie girl?

TR2 Team:

Neither! She's been labelled 'Digital Spice' and 'Shotgun Spice' amongst other things, but we like to think that she's in a class of her own. Barbie girl - DEFINITELY NOT !!! but look out for the action figure next year!!!

All rights belong to GameSpot and/or their affiliated companies. I only intend to introduce people to old articles and preserve them before they are lost.

[themumfriend]

No. 3 for the ask thingie (rant) 😙

Thanks for asking! 💫💖

(Feel free to ask more no one else asks haha)

Ok uhhhh, what to rant about?

So I study a Politics A Level so I know a fair amount about UK politics and what I’m talking about when I enter a debate (we do them in class frequently to help with our essay plans). This is context.

Unfortunately, as in other subject areas I am interested in, politics is a largely male dominated area.

So, let’s set the scene. There I am, 4 months into my 1st year of my Politics A Level, bright eyed and bushy tailed, still full of hope and joy about politics debates, little did I know, this was about to change.

There we are, a class of 11 (3 girls, I’m the only girl on my debate team) ready to debate whether devolution in the UK is good (as a Welsh person I can safely say that yes, in my opinion I do like devolution).

Our team are arguing that yes, devolution is v good

The other team are meant to argue against us

At this point I should point out that I had what we all called, my ‘politics arch nemesis’. Me and this guy, I’ll call Gruffydd, have entirely opposite political views (not entirely but like, this guy calls himself an anarchist, thinks guns are a good idea, ect)

Here I am making an incredible argument, as to why devolution is a good thing, doing the opening argument for our team, everything is fine. I finish my point by talking about how devolution allows devolved governments to cater to their citizens in a more effective way than a single government for all four nations. I finish my point. The opposition look intimidated (good), I turn back to my desk to look over my notes and ensure I covered everything. And then- this voice pops up from the other team, and instantly I know I’m not gonna enjoy this.

This guy, Gruffydd, completely ignores all the points I just made, and goes straight for the ‘well I don’t think we should have any government and live in a lawless society’ ‘survival of the fittest’ ‘guns should be legal’

First of all, what has anarchism to do with the pros and cons of devolution?

Second of all, how about instead of just throwing away everything that has evolve over the past 8 odd centuries, and maybe start trying to fix the issues we have?

Third of all, what the frick??

I was so annoyed

This probably isn’t actually that annoying for anyone else

But like

This guy was the bane of my existence

[the-desolated-quill]

BBC’s The War Of The Worlds blog - Episode 2

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

Never before have I witnessed something this god awful. I’m actually gobsmacked. I knew Peter Harness was a terrible writer, but I didn’t think even he could fuck up this badly. I was utterly dumbfounded by the end of the second episode. I couldn’t believe what I just watched. Not only does this fail as an adaptation of War Of The Worlds, it fails as a story in and of itself.

The problems with Episode 2 surface almost immediately within the first few minutes. A flash forward to a post apocalyptic Earth where we see Amy taking care of her son as humanity struggles to survive because of the red weed (which doesn’t look terribly convincing sadly, but that’s the least of this series’ problems). From there the episode continuously switches back and forth to the invasion and the aftermath throughout, which completely ruins the pacing, but it’s actually even worse than that. These flash forwards also giveaway the ending of the story. That the Martians end up losing. Harness tries to act all clever-clever with it by having British propaganda claim that the army defeated them, but the damage has already done. Thanks to this reveal, Harness has successfully managed to completely suck all tension from the story completely. The Martians no longer pose a threat because we, the audience, know they eventually lose, and we know that Amy at least survives, so at no point do we ever worry about her safety. I was absolutely flabbergasted when I saw this. I couldn’t believe any writer could be this stupid as to sabotage their own story by completely defanging their villains. As for the red weed slowly killing the planet, not only do I feel this unnecessarily complicates a perfectly simple narrative, it also opens the door for humanity to overcome their Martian oppressors when the whole point of the original story was that we only survived by the skin of our teeth. Our human ingenuity had nothing to do with it. We’ll have to wait and see what Episode 3 brings, but I’m not optimistic.

Meanwhile the invasion itself is still just as stilted and lacking in focus as it was before. Certain scenes stand out, like the black smoke enveloping London and the Tripods attacking the ferries, but because we know the Martians ultimately lose and that Amy survives, there’s absolutely zero suspense. (And yes, I know War Of The Worlds is a hundred year old story and everyone knows how it ends, but that doesn’t mean you can’t build tension). Also because of Harness wilfully reducing the Martians to incompetent fools, he has to resort to cheap shock tactics in the desperate hopes of scaring the audience, like when we see one of the Tripods kill a baby. Or how about the bit where Amy almost gets raped in the post invasion scenes? After all that performative feminist posturing last week, it’s quite galling to see such a sexist trope be used here for a cheap bit of drama. It’s fucking pathetic.

And once again the focus is in all the wrong areas. Instead of depicting the horrifying events of the Martian invasion, Harness is more preoccupied with Amy and Rupert Graves’ character (I’m sure he has a name, but I can’t be bothered to remember it at this point) squabbling every five minutes. Guys! Humanity is being destroyed by fucking aliens! Can this not wait?!

I’m assuming the whole baby killing thing was an attempt to show us the selfish nature of man or something, but George and the Artilleryman barely make the effort to actually look for the baby and the scene doesn’t go on nearly long enough to get us invested in the search and their eventual failure. The baby is practically thrown away just so Harness can have a moment where social media will go ‘OMG, they killed a baby in War Of The Worlds! How edgy!’ And the annoying thing is the book does actually have morally grey and shocking moments that Harness could have adapted if he wasn’t too busy trying to second-guess the audience and show what a dark and edgy writer he is. There are two important characters in the source material that the narrator encounters who offer different points of view on the events of the novel. There’s the priest who we see slowly lose faith in God and become more and more panicked and erratic, and there’s the Artilleryman, who represents British colonial attitudes, believing that humanity will ultimately triumph when the evidence clearly doesn’t support this. Here the Artilleryman is played by Dudley Dursley himself Harry Melling, who does a decent job with the material he has been given, but unfortunately the character he’s being forced to play is just utterly inadequate.

Continuing with his trend of writing allegories to things that have nothing to do with War Of The Worlds, Peter Harness takes the opportunity to comment on military conscription, even though conscription wasn’t introduced to the UK until 1916. So now the Artilleryman isn’t some impressionable nationalist that has willingly bought into imperial dogma, but rather he’s a scared little bunny rabbit forced to fight a war against an enemy beyond his comprehension. Worse still, George gets conscripted into the military for literally no fucking reason. He doesn’t get given a gun or anything and despite the fact that he knows more about the Martians than the soldiers do, none of them fucking listen to him when he tries to explain the heat pulse thing or why it might not be a good idea to shout at a Tripod. Then, when they think they won the battle, the captain points his gun at George and forces him to wade into the marshes and investigate. Again I must stress that George doesn’t have a gun! It’s just utterly contrived!

Oh but don’t worry. Harness finally addresses what the source material is actually about. British imperialism and colonialism. Unfortunately he does it with the subtlety and nuance of a giant steamroller driven by Marilyn Manson. Now admittedly the book isn’t very subtle about it either as the narrator comes right out with the comparisons between the British and the Martians, but the thing is the book gets away with it because it’s told from the perspective of a journalist writing about his own experiences after the fact. H.G. Wells has the licence to draw direct parallels because the narrative form he has chosen allows him to. A TV series however - a visual medium - cannot get away with this. Harness, not having the faintest idea how to address the themes of the source material organically in the visuals or the plot, resorts to sledgehammer tactics to get the point across. In the flash forwards to post apocalyptic Britain, we see Amy’s son reading a book that details how the British defeated the Martians as part of some propaganda initiative. A speech is made about how powerful and unstoppable the British Empire is, whilst intercut with soldiers having their arses handed to them by the Tripods. We see several characters maintain a stereotypical ‘stiff upper lip’ attitude as though the Martian invasion was a minor inconvenience instead of a shocking tragedy. There’s even a moment where the Minister of War is babbling on about how much more powerful the Empire can become if they can use Martian technology before succumbing to the Martian’s black smoke and we see literal bile foam from his mouth. It’s all so painfully on the nose and doesn’t offer any intelligent points or topics for discussion other than ‘empires are bad.’

And that’s not to mention all the other contrivances and annoyances in this episode. Despite Eleanor Tomlinson giving it her all, I still couldn’t give two shits about her character. Rafe Spall’s performance as George is still utterly atrocious, running around with a gormless expression on his face as though he’s just lost his wallet. Rupert Graves is utterly wasted as George’s brother and has no good material to work with. We also have a little girl join the group in a desperate bid to draw some sort of emotional reaction from the audience (it doesn’t work) and we have a sick older woman who serves no purpose whatsoever as far as I can see. In fact she really pissed me off due to the way in which she gets poisoned. It’s clearly meant to be there to establish the Martians terraforming Earth, but good God it’s stupid. How does she get poisoned? By drinking a random cup of water someone had just happened to leave lying around in the middle of a field.

I... I... Harness.... Harness, does your brain work?! How the flying fuck did you ever manage to get a career as a writer?!?!

BBC, I beg of you, please stop using our TV licence fees to fund hack screenwriters’ poorly thought out and unentertaining fanfiction!

PLEASE!

[inkdomain]

Step By Step Guide To Set Up Your Facebook Shop

The phrase Facebook Shop is not a favorite of most e-commerce websites. And, like Murphy’s Law, they seem to happen at the worst possible moment…when you least expect it.

I’m sure you are aware of the BIG announcement made by Facebook’s owner, Mark Zuckerberg. You may not be aware of how you can use this new feature to improve your business and compete with the big guns.

Facebook launched its own virtual shop, a new feature which will allow businesses to be able to sell to customers through Shops, potentially posing a challenge to e-commerce rivals such as Etsy and Amazon.

This is good news if you solely wish to have a physical storefront in front of foot traffic. Besides, the golden rule of every business is to meet your customers where they are.

If the idea of creating an online store on Facebook has been going around your head for a while, in this guide, all your possible questions will be answered:

What is Facebook Shop?

Facebook Shops is a simple version of your online store that lives inside the Facebook and Instagram mobile apps. These virtual shops make it easy for billions of users to find, browse, and buy your products in the apps they use daily to discover new experiences.

Facebook Shops will make it easy for businesses to set up a single online store for customers to access on both Facebook and Instagram.

Shops will be primarily aimed at businesses, allowing them to sell to customers on the app.

Why Should I Sell On Facebook?

Selling on Facebook is such a good idea!

Keeping up with the competition in a world filled with multi-platform companies is hard unless you don’t want to expand your business to where your customers hang out the most.

And it just so happens that Facebook is one of the places online where people spend the majority of their time.

With more than 2 billion active users on Facebook, imagine the impact of such a powerful tool and traffic would do on your business.

Actually, an average of 40+ minutes is spent by a Facebook user per day on the popular social network – and a large share of that goes towards shopping on Facebook.

That’s quite a bit of time considering this happens on a daily basis!

Without counting the time, many of us spend clicking on links and liking posts on Facebook throughout the workday.

Hence, this is a great time to take advantage of the new Facebook as a selling platform!

Pros and Cons of Having a Facebook Shop

It sounds good to have an online Facebook shop. But the question in everyone’s mind is, how profitable is it to sell more products among viral videos about cats, songs, and photos of family members?

Let’s start weighing it all out.

Pros

Every potential client, or almost all of them, are on Facebook—and we want to be where clients are, don’t we?

It is free; this is always a plus.

It is easy to set up with a few clicks.

You can easily share your product links as if they were a normal post once you have created your products and offers.

A marketplace where you can showcase your new products to attract customers to your shop.

Product tagging features that enable you to publish a picture where one of your products appears, you will be able to tag them so users can click on them.

The shopping feature will also eventually appear on WhatsApp and the company’s other messaging apps and integrate with live streams.

Once a buyer decides they want to spend money, they will usually be directed to the company’s website to complete the transaction.

And if problems arise or a buyer wants to ask questions, they can do so through Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, or Instagram Direct messages, some of which are already used by companies for that purpose.

Cons

It takes time: although it is easy to set up, if you use a native tool, you will need to spend some time on updating prices and images.

Low visibility: unless you share and change your products a lot, at least for the moment, only a few people know about Facebook Shop.

The payment is made on your website. So if you’re in the USA, using Stripe or PayPal can already complete the purchase without leaving Facebook, but it is still not possible in Europe.

What’s Great About A Facebook Shop Page?

With the Facebook page, you don’t even need to have any preexisting store – and if you want, all your operations can be done via Facebook.

But the benefits don’t end there. With a Facebook Shop page, you can:

Easily add an unlimited number of products,

Organize your products into collections and categories,

Communicate with your customers through the page directly,

See stats on your sales, visits, and more,

Get your products appearing in Facebook Marketplace, giving you access to a much larger base of potential customers.

Just the last thing from this list is a good enough reason to look into this whole Facebook Shop page on its own!

How Much is Facebook Shop Fees?

Creating a Facebook Shop is free and straightforward.

You can easily choose the products you want to feature from your catalog and then customize your shop’s look and feel with a cover image and accent colors that showcase your brand.

This simply means no matter your size or budget; you can bring your business online and connect with customers wherever and whenever it’s convenient for them.

In doesn’t stop there, you can bring your products or services to Facebook market with a shopping experience that feels native to each platform, on any device.

Showcase your distinct brand and products by customizing the colors and layout of your Facebook Shop and organizing product collections into featured tiles to match your store’s look and feel.

Nearly a million businesses in the UK and around the world can now set up a single online store to sell products, with no fee, on Facebook and Instagram.

The initial stage of the Facebook Shops rollout has been brought forward and extended because of Covid-19.

The stores will appear on business pages, Instagram profiles, and targeted ads.

The company has already used a no-fees approach in its Facebook Marketplace for personal classifieds.

“IT’S BIGGER THAN USUAL JUST BECAUSE WE WANT TO MAKE SURE WE’RE MOVING QUICKLY TO GET THESE TOOLS IN THE HANDS OF AS MANY BUSINESSES WHEREVER THEY ARE, BIG OR SMALL, TO HELP THEM SURVIVE DURING THIS TIME,” FACEBOOK’S LAYLA AMJADI SAID.

And product manager George Lee said it had been in the pipeline for at least half a year.

“Obviously, given the current situation, we have accelerated a lot of our efforts,” he said.

“We’re in a unique position to be able to contribute to the survival of a bunch of these businesses.”

The rollout is part of a wider range of changes planned for shopping across Facebook’s products, including:

A loyalty scheme that will link things such as points from local coffee shops to Facebook

A Shop button, where products and brands will be showcased, on Instagram’s main navigation bar.

Anthony Ha, a senior writer at technology news site TechCrunch, said “the pandemic lockdown might have worked in Facebook’s favor.”

“After all, if your favorite store has changed their hours, or switched to online delivery or doorstep pickup, they’ve almost certainly posted about it on Facebook or Instagram,” he said.

So it makes sense for Facebook to make the purchase process as easy as possible from those profiles.

From a business perspective, the obvious goal is to drive more advertising.

“BUT IT’S ALSO WORTH REMEMBERING THAT THE PANDEMIC’S ECONOMIC FALLOUT WILL LIKELY KILL OFF MANY SMALL BUSINESSES, INCLUDING THOSE THAT POST AND ADVERTISE ON FACEBOOK. SO THE COMPANY HAS A STAKE IN HELPING THOSE BUSINESSES SURVIVE IN ANY WAY IT CAN.” RELA

How do I set up a Facebook Store?

Selling your products via Facebook store is fast and easy, and there are two ways to do it:

One of the basic ways is a Facebook Store with product listings and directly connect your payment option to the cart on the platform. This simply means there won’t be a need for your customers to leave the platform to buy your product, and you won’t need external platforms.

Alternatively, you can make use of e-commerce websites, like Shopify, BigCommerce, Woo, Channel Advisor, and create a web store on Facebook. Thus, enabling you to link your products on the e-commerce websites to your Facebook Store page.

The second option is most preferred because it extends your online presence to different platforms, which is better for your business.

Note that selling products using your personal account is against Facebook terms.

 An example of a Facebook shop

How to Create a Facebook Shop

Creating a Facebook shop isn’t the most daunting task in the world. On the other hand, it’s pretty easy.

When creating your shop, the number of steps you take will depend on the template of your business page, which you can change at any time.

Step 1. How To Change Your Template

Facebook automatically select a Standard Template for you when creating a business page.

What you need to do is to change the template to Shopping. This step is only necessary if you don’t see the Shop tab below your Facebook page cover photo. Just click Settings at the top of the Page > Templates and Tabs in the left column > Edit next to your template > View Details > Apply Template > OK.

Here’s how it looks in practice:

An Example of a Facebook Shop Page Templates

After you’ve changed the template, you’re welcome to take the following steps.

Step 2. Click on ‘Shop’ in the Left Menu

Following the Add Shop Section link, you’ll find the information that this section allows you to do. Click to continue upon reading.

Making a Facebook shop

Step 3. Agree to Facebook’s Merchant Terms and Policies

After you click the Add Shop Section button, Facebook’s Merchant Terms and Policies will appear. Don’t forget to read them carefully before agreeing. They might include useful information about what you’re allowed to sell on Facebook and how you should solve any problems that appear with return and refund policies, for example.

Facebook shop policy

Step 4. How to Select Checkout Method

After you’ve agreed to the terms and policies, you can proceed to select the type of checkout you prefer. Simply put, when opening your Facebook Shop, choose your payment method. Typically, there’re two methods of checkout on Facebook – Check Out on Another Website and Message to Buy.

Check Out to Another Website simply allows you to send your customers to other e-commerce websites where they will complete their purchases.

Checkout Method

Choosing this checkout method means that you will have the URL of the e-commerce website when listing your products and filling in the underlying form.

Step 5. Choose the Currency for Your Shop and Hit Save

Now, you have decided on your payment method. It’s time to choose your choice of currency that will appear on the product description after you add it completely.

Facebook shop currency

Note: Should you choose the wrong currency or wish to change your checkout method, you will need to delete your shop and create another one. This means all the products listed in the shop will be deleted.

Delete your shop, click on the Shop Tab, find the gear icon in the right-up corner, and choose Delete.

how to delete a Facebook store

Step 6. Describe What You’re Going to Sell

Congratulations!

Now you can fill in some general information about the products you’re selling and add them to the shop. A little box will appear, where you can describe what you’re going to sell in 200 characters.

describe what your Facebook shop sells

Step 7. How to Add Products to Facebook Shop

After you’ve added a little description of what you’re going to sell, you can add your first product.

This is doable from your computer, and you can only sell physical products, according to Facebook guidelines.

The box you’ll see will look like this (in case you’ve chosen Message to Buy as your checkout method). You’ll see completely intuitive and user-oriented on-screen instructions. The form requires adding a photo, name, price, description, and visibility of your product. Also, there are some other toggles you can play with.

how to add products to your Facebook shop

But here are some rules and best practices to complete your Facebook online store. You won’t be able to publish a product without adding at least one photo. Please note that customers will be happy to see more than one. The best dimension for a photo would be a square image of 1024 x 1024 pixels, according to Facebook’s recommended photo guidelines.

product pictures for Facebook shops

It’s also possible to add a video of your product.

Let’s see what you can do next.

Clearly, put down the name of your product.

Fill in the price. You can mention only one price, but if you decide to choose “This product is on sale,” you can change it. This way, your clients will see how much they save.

Describe your product or tell about its advantages in short sentences, preferably with bullet points.

Avoid company-specific information.

Don’t use URLs or emojis; both will be broken in the description. According to Facebook, the descriptions cannot contain phone numbers, email addresses, long titles, excessive punctuation, capitalized letters, or in lowercase, book or movie spoilers, or external links.

In Edit Options, you can add options describing the size and color of your product.

There, you can also choose your shipping information and policy.

After you click the Save button, Facebook begins to Process your product. It may take up to 24 hours to review if it complies with Facebook policies.

Share the product on your page. When you have created a product, you can publish an announcement telling people what’s new in your shop. If you add many products, it’s better not to share them on the page all at once. You will be able to do this later.

Step 8. Add Collections

Facebook allows you to create collections if you want to sell many products of different types. Categorized collections make navigation easier for buyers and improve the shopping experience.

This feature becomes visible when you’ve already added some products. The next thing you’ll have to is to create a name for your collection, add products, and choose “Feature this Collection” to make it stand out in your shop.

Nordgreen, a Danish brand of watches, for example, has collections of women’s and men’s watches separated on their Facebook online store. Check it out:

Facebook shop collection

  Step 9. Change the CTA Button

Facebook does a lot of things automatically, and setting your CTA is no exception. It creates your call to action button on the right corner under your background image that leads to the shop on your page.

Famous brands like Tiffany & Co. use a simple message in their CTAs: Shop Now. However, when you’ve set up a store on Facebook, you can easily change the CTA button and even link your website to it. It’s up to you!

Shop Now button on Facebook

Frequently Asked Questions on Creating Facebook Shop

What are the Products I Can’t Sell on a Facebook Shop?

Facebook has a list of prohibited items. Some of the unapproved products include prescription drugs, weapons, animals, alcohol, and anything that promotes discrimination.

You check Facebook Community Guidelines to understand their policies.

Which payment types does Facebook accept?

This depends on where you are. For US stores, where customers can checkout directly on your Facebook page, your money will come through either Stripe or PayPal.

If you’re outside the US, you will need to arrange a different payment method. This could be a bank transfer, cash, or telephone payment. This is easiest if you allow customers to contact your page through Messenger.

Can I sell digital goods on my Facebook Store?

Sadly, the answer is no!

This is another important reason for not relying on Facebook for your online business. You can only sell physical products through your Facebook Store.

But with websites like Shopify, BigCommerce, Woocommerce, you can easily sell both physical and digital products!

How do you increase your conversions from a Facebook Store?

To increase your conversions from your Facebook Store, you need to grow your Facebook audience. This can be done through paid ads, promoting Facebook posts – if you have the budget – or simply through increasing your Facebook activity.

You could also try searching for Facebook groups related to your store and post about your store in those, which may help increase your traffic and boost your conversions.

What are the image requirements for product photos on a Facebook Shop page?

Your best bet is to check out Facebook’s guidelines for listing products – since the requirements change on occasion.

There are also several things to worry about, such as dimensions, image formatting, and backdrops. For instance, at the time of this article, Facebook recommends having image resolutions at 1024 x 1024 or higher, along with white backgrounds and square images.

Why my customers can’t purchase multiple products in one shopping cart?

This all depends on your own website and payment processor. Facebook doesn’t offer its native shopping cart in some regions, so transactions are redirected to your own shopping cart and payment processor. That said, Facebook is rolling out these features to new countries as we speak.

Your store is not available in countries other than your own.

The privacy settings of your whole page might be set incorrectly. An easy mistake to make. Go to the Settings of your page and make sure that the Page Visibility parameter is set to Page published.

Do I have to add my products manually?

That depends on a couple of factors. Here’s the gist of it:

If you’ve set up your Shop page via an external e-commerce tool like Shopify or BigCommerce, everything should be synchronized automatically.

This means that Facebook has information on how to link your shop and sync all of the products with the Facebook Shop page.

If you’ve set up your Shop page manually, then yes, you do have to continue adding your products manually. The same goes for updating any details about them (price, availability, descriptions, etc.).

What are the Requirements to have a shop on Facebook?

Your Facebook shop must:

Sell physical items

Agree with our Merchant Terms

What are the Benefits of having a Facebook Shop Page?

Facebook Shops have different features depending on your location. They can be valuable to you because you can:

Add as many products as you want: You don’t need to upload a product catalog anywhere else first, and there’s no limit on how many products you can add.

Customize your product inventory: You can organize your products into different collections so your customers can browse your shop by category.

Communicate with customers: Your customers can message the shop on your Page with questions.

Get insights: You can see views, clicks, and purchases for each of your products.

Is Facebook Shop a good platform to sell products?

F-commerce is a powerful source of income and traffic. It isn’t really the most profitable way to sell your products if you depend 100% on Facebook. Of course, it’s free and straightforward to set up, but it’s still a social network and not an actual online platform to sell products.

Then, there’s also the algorithm where Facebook makes constant changes to it, so you’ll always have to adjust your strategy.

Overall, if you really want to build a strong brand reputation for your business, it is important to have to own your personal online store.

In the end, having a Facebook store is really worth it as it is one of the most useful tools to promote your products, but if you wish to have some extra options to personalize your online brand, make sure to do thorough research and find the best platform that will suit your needs.

Congratulations!

You now know everything you need to know about setting up a Facebook Shop. Indeed, if universities handed out PhDs in the field of Facebook, you’d have one by now!

Yes, just knowing all the tips and strategies is quite an accomplishment. But the truth is, packing away all this information in your noggin won’t do you any good if you don’t use it. And that’s why I suggest you take action – starting right now – by creating your Facebook Shop. Because the sooner you get started, the sooner you can turn this “Ph.D. in Facebook” into real results!

If you have any questions about setting up a Facebook Shop page, leave a comment in the section below. If you’ve successfully established your Facebook store, feel free to leave a link for others to visit and check out the techniques you’ve used to make your page unique.