#this was in my drafts i fully meant to post it yesterday my bad

[gorillawithautism]

aaaaaa primates :D

the gibbons are white cheeked gibbons! the black one is male and the yellow one is female. fun facts about gibbons: they're specially adapted for brachiation which is a form of movement that other primates aren't really capable of. we can replicate it (think: kids playing on monkey bars), but our shoulders can't move in a full circle like theirs do, and they have ball-and-socket wrist joints which we don't have, so their body has been perfected for brachiation in ways that humans can't achieve. because they're built like this, when they walk on the ground they do it bipedally :)

the next animal is a white faced saki! males are the ones with the white face and females are the more brown ones. in the first picture the female is grooming the male. grooming is an important bonding activity in primates :)

the last primate there looks like a golden monkey?? i think?? which is wild to me because i didn't know there were any golden monkeys in zoos. to be fair though it's hard to research about them because when you google "golden monkey" you just get a bunch of results about golden snub nosed monkeys and that's a whole different animal. they're my favorite monkey btw. the scientific name for them is cercopithecus kandti if you wanna look them up without google giving you the wrong monkey

okay wait edit: i forgor there are other monkeys that also look like that 🧍 i just like golden monkeys so much i forgor sory but it could be ceropithecus mitis which seems more likely and more accurate to its coloring (<- very normal about monkeys)

did you see any primates :)

YES. bro i was gonna send you an ask but the wifi was shittttt 😭 but yes. i saw some gibbons and immediately thought of you

[sternbagel]

Inspired by the wonderful OC lore that @charlotte-balfours-garden​ wrote and posted, I decided to finish this piece that’s been sitting in my drafts for months about my own RDR OC, visual references here!

Note: This takes place in canon, Chapter 3, and while everyone calls her Alberta Taylor at this point, it’s not her real name, just something she’s been going by for years because of something in her past. Professionally, she’s a bounty hunter, but has dabbled in other things. 

Read This First

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, at least the one thing today that hasn’t been surprising is Arthur finding Al has dragged a chair over to his tent to read, one leg propped up on the chest at the end of his cot. Sometimes she’ll set up there to get ample shade from the sun, and according to her, the chest is the perfect foot rest height. 

“Afternoon, Arthur,” she greets lazily as she turns the page.

“Miss Taylor. Comfortable?”

“Sure.” She cuts her eyes up at him from under the brim of her hat, seemingly just to give him a greeting glance and smile, but when she spots the shiny new accessory pinned to his vest, her head raises higher. “You steal that off a dead lawman or somethin’?”

And it begins, Arthur thinks with a snort. “No, Dutch—” he waves an arm in the direction he came from, though Dutch has long ago left that area—“got us ingratiated with the local sheriff, so now we’re honorary deputies.”

“Was Sheriff Gray drunk?” 

That’s surprising. They only met the sheriff yesterday, and he’s not sure the full story of their encounter has been relayed to the rest of camp, just the orders not to cause any trouble. “How’d you know his name?”

As soon as the words leave his mouth, he realizes that most likely, it was Hosea. Those two are close. 

She answers with a cavalier shrug before he can say anything. “I’ve been here before. Once. Didn’t stay long.”

Arthur takes the bait she leaves out. “Why not?”

“Well, it’s Lemoyne. I don’t spend very long here if I can help it. But first time I got to Rhodes lookin’ for bounty posters, Sheriff Gray was puking in the bushes. Somehow he managed to get out that they do all the bounty hunting themselves. No reason to go back.”

“Well, that’s pretty much how I found him when I went lookin’ for Dutch and Bill.”

“Figures,” she laughs, shaking her head. “Not that I really care, but where is Bill? Didn’t see him come back with y’all. Still with the Sheriff, ingratiating himself?” She looks thoughtful for a moment. “I didn’t get that impression off him, but I wasn—”

Arthur holds up a hand and shakes his own head with a smirk. “No, no, the Grays around here don’t seem… his type. Matter of fact, I should probably warn Bill to just play it cool—“

“What, drunk, dumb, and ignorant ain’t Bill’s type? What about that guy we saw him chattin’ up at that saloon in Armadillo?”

“That ain’t what I mean,” he snorts.

“I know.” Al flashes a playful smirk. “I’m just messin’.”

“Well, anyway, no, he’s off hidin’ some wagon full o’ moonshine we stole off some bootleggers under the Sheriff’s orders. Hosea’ll know what to do with it.”

“Moonshine?” This seems to pique her interest, again to Arthur’s surprise. “You know who you stole it off of?”

“Yes…” Arthur’s eyebrows knit together. He slowly lumbers over to his table, laying down the deputy badge and watching her carefully. Al’s expression is calm, but it’s a thin enough veneer that he sees the curiosity building by the second. “What’s it to you?”

“Curious.”

“Yeah.”

The book in her lap finally closes. “I used to run with some moonshiners not too long ago.”

“Alberta Taylor. Well, I never took you for a bootlegger.”

She throws an arm over the back of her chair and lets her head fall back, exposing more of her neck. It’s then that Arthur notices she’s not wearing her usual green neckerchief. Or her green jacket. She must be really burning up to be in just her workshirt and jeans. “Not every professional bounty hunter is a staunch upholder of the law, Arthur Morgan,” she says matter-of-factly with a lift of her brow.

“I never said that. Didn’t mean it neither. I mean, look who you fell in with, I know better. I just ain’t seen you drink much moonshine.”

“Sure. Always been more of a beer and tequila woman.”

He plops down on his cot and lights a cigarette. “Then what you doin’ runnin’ with moonshiners?”

“Tell me who you stole the liquor off of first, cowboy.”

Arthur concedes. Al is stubborn. “The Braithwaites. And those fellers that run around here with those yellow bandanas. Sadie and I ran into ‘em a few days ago. Uh—”

“Lemoyne Raiders?” She sneers. “I’d hoped someone had snuffed ‘em out by now. Hijo de putas.”

He takes a long drag of the cigarette before answering. “Yeah, that’s them. You’ve had some run-ins with ‘em, huh?”

“Like I said, just the once. Three of them stopped me on my way into Rhodes. Brought ‘em into town, dead, which is when I met Sheriff Gray. They didn’t have any bounties on ‘em, so all I got outta one of his deputies was five dollars. I know they weren’t even worth that much, but he coulda paid me more,” she grumbles. Her light Cuban accent comes out more the lower her voice goes.

“Sounds about right. Least ya got paid somethin’.”

“I guess.” She picks at the spine of her book for a moment. “Wasn’t long after that I met a… moonshiner legend, so to say, through a mutual friend. Though friend seems to be pushing it.”

He gets the sense she’s not fully sour on the “friend,” so his shoulders shake in amusement. 

“He was a lot like Uncle, actually.”

“Lord.” Arthur snickers, smoke billowing out of his mouth. 

“Yeah. Not as lazy. Probably younger, but who knows.”

“I reckon Uncle ain’t as old as he wants folks to think. Besides just bein’ too lazy, it’s probably why he don’t trim his beard.”

Al laughs, rougher than usual until she coughs and clears it up. “Damn humidity.”

“Tell me about it,” Arthur agrees, leaning forward and propping one elbow up on his knee. “So, this… moonshiner legend.”

“Ever heard the name Maggie Fike?”

The name isn’t familiar, but it isn’t unfamiliar either. “Don’t think so,” he settles on. 

“Well, she’s been mostly out this way rather than out where y’all been running around. Revenue Agents caught up to her a couple years back, tried burning her alive. Didn’t work, but gave her a nasty scar and bad eye. Almost puts Marston to shame. Almost,” she adds with a grin as he walks between Arthur and Strauss’ tents.

“Take a look in the mirror, Miss Taylor,” he grumbles back. Then he chucks a cigarette butt at a chuckling Arthur. “You too, Morgan.”

John disappears around the side of the tent as Arthur brushes off the butt. “Cranky cause he ain’t had his midday nap.”

“Pick better material.”

Al chuckles and presses the palm of her hand on her hat, affixing it more securely to her head. “Anyway…”

“Anyway…” Arthur sighs lightly. “You said she survived?”

“Yeah, went into hiding for a while. Somehow got a hold of my ‘friend’, who then asked me for help gettin’ her business back on its feet. Easy work at first. Finding a good location for the shack, gettin’ her some supplies, that stuff.” She waves a hand around. “Most folks don’t pay much mind to a bounty hunter buyin’ supplies in bulk like I was or destroying illegal stills. Sometimes I brought in the other moonshiners to the local town to collect on a bounty. Made for a better cover for what I was really doing.”

“Takin’ out the competition.” Arthur chuckles. 

“Exactly. Then came—”

“What the hell are you two talkin’ about anyway?”

Al puts her hand back on her hat before tipping her head back, almost touching the back of the chair, and looks at John, upside down. Arthur leans forward more to get his own look and the rangy outlaw, who’s circled back around to the other side of his wagon. 

“And what the hell is that?” John asks. He’s looking directly at the badge on Arthur’s table, disgust etched into his features. As if it’s some rotting, maggot infested carcass Arthur’s using for decoration.

Arthur sighs and briefly explains again.

“So this is just another excuse for you to play dress-up, eh? Guess I need to tell Hosea you’re itchin’ to go scammin’ with him again.”

“You do that, it’ll be your pecker in the stew pot next meal.”

Al’s crossed her arms over her chest and is watching them with barely contained amusement. “Playing dress-up? I don’t think I’ve seen that side of you yet, Arthur.”

“And you won’t,” he growls. “Only reason Hosea takes me on those jobs is because he knows I hate it. Just once I’d like him to take Marston instead.”

“You sure about that?” Al studies John as if she’s a talent agent in the big city. “Doesn’t he like to avoid mayhem on those jobs?”

John snorts indignantly. “Yeah, well, I’d like to see you try and follow Hosea’s lead. I swear even he don’t know what he’s doin’ half the time.”

“But it works.” Her eyebrows raise pointedly. 

“But it works,” John concedes. 

“Well, next time you go, let me know. I’d love to watch y’all work.”

“Whatever,” John grumbles as he waves her off and saunters away. Apparently he’s given up on butting into their conversation.

“I ain’t pullin’ that type of job with Hosea again. What we had set up in Blackwater, sure, but not...” Arthur wags a finger in the air, then unfurls the rest of his fingers and waves his hand once before letting it fall back in his lap. “Not that. The girls and Trelawny are much better’n me anyway. Safer that way.”

Al shrugs. “I won’t argue that.”

“So, back to what you was sayin’?” Arthur’s not willing to let the moonshiner story drop. It’s not often she lets down her walls and tells stories of her past that don’t directly involve some bounty she’s nabbed. He knows what happened to her family, but that had been a moment he wasn’t meant to see, and neither of them have ever brought it up again.

“So after we get a shack set up, she gets word of where this old buddy of hers is, go rescue him so he can make our moonshine. Not long after that, her nephew’s gettin’ moved from Sisika, so I go rescue him.”

Arthur pulls the cigarette from his lips and folds his arms across his chest, leaning back against the wagon. “Just you against a bunch of lawmen?”

“Don’t sound so surprised, Morgan,” she drawls, lolling her head to the side.

“Suppose I shouldn’t be,” he chuckles.

“No, actually, I had a couple friends with me, cashed in on some favors. I’m not stupid or reckless enough to take on an armed prison transport.”

Arthur just shrugs. “Woulda believed you either way.”

“You’re too trusting,” she remarks. There’s a teasing lilt to her voice, but her eyes sparkle with something else. 

“Perhaps you’re right.”

“Well, we bring them back to the shack, get the business up and running. Enact some revenge on a rival of hers in the meantime, I get to kill the agent who tried to burn her. Spent about a year with them. I didn’t do a lot of the actual running of moonshine, one of those friends who helped me break out Maggie’s nephew, Lem, did most of that. I focused on taking out the competition, clearing out Revenue Agent roadblocks when we were sure we couldn’t sneak past them. The real dirty work. But I didn’t mind, kept me moving, out of the government’s crosshairs enough that I could keep killin’ those damn agents.”

Arthur cocks his head curiously. But she isn’t done talking, so he lets her continue, holding onto his question for now.

“Couple months before I ran into y’all, I told them I’d have to leave. I’d spent so much time in this area, couldn’t… Needed to get out and go back out west. See some old friends, see some open country. They reckoned they’d be fine without me, but threw them the name of another friend I knew’d be able to help them, pick up my slack.”

“So… you think they’re still runnin’ that shine?”

“No reason not to. Never heard anything about her being captured. Got a letter from them while I was in Blackwater, actually. They’re doin’ well.” She gives a fond, reminiscent smile. “That friend is working with Maggie now, too. Dunno how she stands him, but…”

“Good. Since we’re over this way, you plannin’ on seein’ ‘em?”

“They’re north, Roanoke Ridge territory. Might, if I feel safe leavin’ you fools by yourself for more than a week.”

Arthur chuckles and shakes his head. “I reckon we can survive without ya for that long.”

“With all the trouble you been causing lately? I don’t think so, Mr. Morgan.” Al fans herself with her book, smirking at Arthur pointedly.

“I actually got another question for ya,” he diverts.

“Shoot.”

“I been thinkin’ about this since you got here, but now, knowin’ how much you seem to hate the Revenue Agents, how come you’re a bounty hunter, takin’ payouts from the government, but runnin’ with a bunch’a outlaws? After a year of runnin’ shine, that is.”

A simple shrug is her reply, and the pause is so long Arthur isn’t sure she’ll actually give him an explanation, until, “You have your code, I have mine.”

“Huh,” he grunts. They watch each other casually for a long moment, then he asks, “You gonna explain?”

He can see her weigh her options, and eventually she relents. “You know…” Her expression immediately tells him what she means: her past, what happened to her. 

“Yeah,” he offers quietly.

“Well, nobody’s born a seasoned gunslinger. When I first started bounty hunting, I had to take the easier targets. Most big pay days, or the jobs that are good start for those of us that’re green, they’re people who rob banks with a pen, rich people doing rich people crimes. They’re soft, easy, and all it really takes to catch them is knowing the land better and being tougher than city folk. Which ain’t hard at all. So, until I could stand on my own, those were the only kinds I took. Then I started goin’ after the bastards I really wanted to. People like the Johnson Brothers.”

She nearly spits the name. Arthur feels the sting in her soul.

“I never take those soft bounties anymore,” she continues after a deep breath, seeming more like herself again with every word. “Unless I need a break. But it’s been a while since I have.”

“Been a while since you took a bounty at all.”

She must notice the question in his voice. Not judgement, but question. “No. You’ve been kicking up too much fuss. Wouldn’t be smart for me to be seen around town here more than once or twice.”

Arthur rolls his eyes. While it is mostly true, it’s about all he’s going to get out of her, but he knows the real reason why. Even if she won’t admit it to herself. “Got me there, Al.”

“Not hard to do, Arthur.”

[sinnabonka]

Hey Hun! Lots of love to you. For starters I wanted to say that there should be no cell in your body blaming yself in any way. You and your blog were hope for so many people. You were the "you are not crazy" of the final weeks, and I'm forever grateful to you. Instead of dying of anxiety I managed to have a blast in this time of waiting, thanks to you. I passed my master thesis, because you gave me strength to see past the fear. I laughed in those weeks more than in last 5 years, and all of it because of the hope you gave me.

The rest of the msg is going to be pretty emotional rant about the awfulness of it all, and I know my opinion doesn't matter to anyone but I wanted someone important to me to hear my thoughts, if that's ok. It's also ok if you don't want to read it ofc. It's like my breakup letter to the show.

I hear many people cheering for the finale and i find it really hard to deal with. I always considered myself an open person who fights for healthy love as the only redeeming quality of the universe. I could see people's point of view, even if it didn't sit well with mine, and I would always try to hear them out respectfully until they weren't being respectful themselves. That said, I'm fully unable to understand cheering for this type of spiteful content and hearing those cheers makes me feel like the entire world is listening to "this is how you treat your fans, this is how to abuse your power over naive sheep, this is how to keep dumb, hopeful minorities in check" and taking notes.

It also upsets me that the people who gave this show all of themselves and tried to understand it to the core are given no resolution, are spitted on and buried under the rug for doing their best to appreciate the art and the story it was telling. Yet people, who just hang around and watch the show doing the dishes, with no consideration to it's story or characters, got as nonsensical ending as their whole idea of character development in SPN.

I know people say that it was good enough, because it leaves space for guessing and own interpretation, but I feel it's really undermining the extend to which the finale was awful and hurtful to the fans. There is no end that realistically could stop fanfic writers from finding way around it in the world of Supernatural, so saying it was thoughtful of them Is like excusing abusive partner because "they could hit me harder, but they didn't. That means they care"

Lose ends, characters being written in a way that is totally not true to them and their development (personally my biggest allegation), dismissing years of story development, proving that it was all 'queerbaiting' in big part in the end (hell, even the whole "Cas is in heaven so do with it what you will" is a shameful way of appalling to LGBTQ community after using them so hard.

In the pie scene, the roles should be swapped, it's Dean who should say that Cas is on his mind and Sam explaining him that it's only right to keep on living doing good in their name. That's what Dean told Sam at the beginning of the season, when Sam lost Rowena, so it would be at least a bit poetic. This would at least give us some truth from Dean for once, but he died how he lived, in shadow of his fear to be true towards his feelings and needs. And as he died, he bound his little brother to the hunting till the end of his days, by guilting him into it on his deathbed. Guess Dean took after his father.

Have you realised what that emotional "love speech" from Dean to Sam resulted in? It was writers taking back Cas' confession after they didn't need our viewership anymore.

They basically gave us love confession to get us to follow the finale and when they didn't need us anymore, not only they didn't commit to the confession, but they undermined it by having Dean's speech to Sam go the way it did with obviously higher emotional charge, successfully taking back the value of Cas' confession and making it about a bait for "Tumblr idiots"

Finale killed my feelings towards Destiel, not because it wasn't confirmed canon, but because from what I see in the episode, they canonically confirmed that

- for Dean, Cas was only means to an end, which is such an awful way of ending Cas' character arc. They gave him everything he was scared of and nothing close to consolation price and they dare to tell us he had a happy ending, "because they said so". Well, I didn't see him being happy, and knowing what i textually know i can empathise enough to say that he faced a miserable finish. Even Chuck got an end that was better than Cas' fate.

- Dean, given power to do anything he could dream of, chooses to not even greet Cas, after Cas gave his whole life to Dean, told him he loved him and died for him. I know some people consider the little smirk of Dean confirmation of his feelings, but let's be real for just a second. If someone you deeply loved for years confessed to you, told you they thought you don't love them back, you would be freaking running to see them and tell them how much you love them. That smirk to me reads as "I'm relieved to know you're not going to spend eternity in mega hell that i left you in" and we really need to stop giving credit to writers for scraps like this when it's the last episode ever and we know this isn't going anywhere.

Not to mention that by having Jack bring Cas back behind the scenes it just highlights the fact that Dean didn't ask him to do that in episode 19.

As result, I'm unable to look at any Destiel scene and not think "in here Cas already loved him and in here Dean already abuses the power he had over Cas, because of his one-sided love"

And yet, the episode and endgames for everyone (maybe not Sam, but he was seriously pinning for Dean his entire life. Wincest much?) managed to be so bad, that not even bringing Cas back or following up on Destiel would make a difference in my eyes. I know you believe that Destiel would save it, but for me as much as it would be a redeeming quality, it wouldn't be enough to save this awfulness that writer doomed characters with.

And all the Wincest scenes in the finale... I low key expected them to make out and it made me feel physically sick. Also, cutting Misha out because of coronavirus is a cheap excuse. We all know better than to believe that, so let's not fall for the self pity play from the abuser.

If you managed to stay with me till this point, thank you so much for hearing me out. I hope i didn't anger you with my monologue. I will always think of the lamp when i think of you. The reality is that you were the lamp for so many of us in this darkness.

Love you so much, wish all the best to you, take care of yourself and stay safe!

Oh my god, if I didn’t cry with the final, I definitely am crying now. And now I have to explain my partner why I’m staring at my laptop and sobbing ugly. What have you done? 

First of all, I hear you pain, my friend! I share it! I didn’t spend a second after the final without the feeling of my heart being shuttered into million pieces, being stitched back just to break again, and so on and so on. 

I had my first panic attack in two years yesterday, when I kept thinking about the message the show sent to the fandom via Dean’s fate. I have a few posts in my draft on the matter, but I am not sure I will ever share them, because it is one strong depresso, and I don’t think people following me should see how fucked up it really is (if they didn’t get it by themselves, of course). 

I want to remind you, my gentle soul, that the story belongs to us. We know Dean, we know Cas, we know Sam and others. We know that the final is not who they are! I know it’s hard to ignore the text, the canon, because it’s kinda godsent, but the truth is essential. And the final is not the truth.

The truth: 

Cas loves Dean, he sacrificed himself for him, he saved his life on multiple occasions, he told all those beautiful things and he meant every word.

Dean loves Cas, he was on his lowest every time he lost him, Cas was his “big win”, his best friend, his brother, his white light that lead him out of his anger, hatred and despair. He took a dog and called it Miracle, he was looking for a job to retire from hunting, he didn’t kill Chuck - all of that, because the sacrifice Cas made was not in vain! The message was clear. 

I choose to ignore the “Carry on”, the only attention it is going to get is me creating 20 more mails just to put a one star review there and to drop some more salty or bitter comments with it. Maybe I will read through some reviews, too, add them to my collection. 

Maybe I will one day write here an article from scriptwriting perspective how fucked up in was, because that’s what I can do about it, without throwing up. 

If you can’t ignore it, I understand it. It is painful, it is disrespectful, I hate it as much as you do, probably. 

If there’s anything I can do for you to feel better, just drop me a message, we can talk about it. I am on the lowest, too, but maybe we can help each other.

You say I was your lamp. Let me lead you our of the darkness one more time <3 

CW can suck my metaphorical dick (I’m tagging every angry post with it), but Supernatural is not just the show on CW, it’s a big family. 

And you can’t give up on it! You can’t give up on Dean and Cas, you can’t give up on Destiel! It’s so much bigger then the show itself.

Rediscover the show for yourself, remind yourself that Dean and Cas are real, it was never one sided, it was always something amazing. 

What is real? We are.

Don’t you ever change.

I rather have you, cursed or not.

It’s love, hun, and love always wins. 

[sapphirewolf1122]

Coming in, Fat

Summary: All you want to do is use your quirk to help others. But sometimes, you go a little overboard.

Word Count: 1, 477

A/N: Sorry, got distracted by another project and didn’t finish my research in time to post this yesterday! But on the bright side, put together a wedding compilation video that I meant to do like three months ago! Anywho, this is just a scene that came from a convo I had with my sister about someone who had a quirk that let them manipulate their fat all around their body and, potentially, others. Which led to the idea of her swatting Fat Gum clear across a room...soooo, here ya ago. My sister may post a romantic version of this but I don’t wanna tag her and call her out like that. Thanks for reading and hope you like it!

“One bowl of miso ramen, topped with ajitama and negi, please. Oh, and ten onigiri, all tuna.”

The vendor eyed you doubtfully; you had distributed your fat pretty evenly today so you appeared to have a fairly thin figure. “Where you planning on putting all that food?”

“Food powers my quirk, so I have a heartier appetite than you might think,” you said with a smirk.

Seemingly satisfied with that answer, the vendor got to preparing your order. Soon, you were walking down the street, munching on one of your rice bowls. You had eaten the ramen by the vending cart before starting your patrol.

You hummed contentedly as you reached into your food bag for another rice bowl, though you still kept a sharp eye on the surrounding streets. There had been a rise in crime in this district recently so you’d decided to check it out. The one that was part of your usual patrol route had been very quiet lately, so you’d grown bored with it. Though your chest swelled with pride at the thought that you’d been part of the reason it had quieted down so much.

Your friends over at Naruhata had advised against patrolling out of your own town, saying that it led to a greater chance of getting caught red-handed. But you had brushed off their concerns. Disguising yourself was a specialty of yours after all.

Reaching into the bag again, your mind wandered back to when you were still in school. Many had been quite envious of your quirk, especially the girls. But no one had ever considered it worthy of hero work. Not even your parents, who had refused to let you even attend the hero course entrance exam at your local high school. To them, your quirk was all about looks. 

Which reminded you. Stopping to look at yourself in a shop window, you squinted, thinking about what to do with your features today. You didn’t want to be too recognizable after all. Hm…you’d go more masculine today. Your profile had you pegged as female, so assuming a male look would really throw them off.

Concentrating, you broaden your shoulders and maneuver some fat into your face so that your features were a bit more rugged. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much you could do about your height.  But you found that it often worked to your advantage anyway. Thugs didn’t normally expect those who were smaller than them to beat them up so much. In fact, it sometimes became a bit of an issue…

You’re too hot-headed and brash with your quirk. And that’s what’s gonna get you in a load of trouble one day.

Tch. Hot-headed...it’s not hot-headed if they had it coming. They're the ones who decided to pick a fight. You were completely reasonable. Satisfied with your disguise, you pulled up your hood and turned to continue your patrol.

Only to be knocked back as a body slammed into you, causing you to drop your food as you landed on your behind. Dumbfounded, you stared at the scattered contents. None of the remaining rice balls were salvageable. You heard the person mumble something but that didn’t stop your vision from filling with red. What kind of monster exhibited such a nonchalant and wasteful attitude towards food?

Whipping around to the rapidly retreating figure, you watched as they turned down a side street. As they did, you thought you saw the glint of a weapon in their hand. Your eyes widened. Could this person be a villain in more ways than one?

Rushing to your feet, you chased after them, rounding the corner to the side street to find that it was relatively deserted. The villain was a ways ahead; you wouldn’t be able to catch up by running after them. Good, you hated running. 

Leaping into the air, you rapidly directed the majority of your fat into your legs, concentrating them around certain muscles for the most effective energy absorption. As you landed, you used the accumulated fat to send you springing forward again, this time higher and further than before. In fact, you may have overshot it a bit…

Suddenly, a yellow mass appeared in front of you with a yell. Unable to stop your fall at this point, you crashed into them, fully expecting both of you to go tumbling. Except...you didn’t? You’d barely registered that you were actually sinking into them before you shot back out.

As you flew back, your mind was racing. There was only one person who could’ve done that...only one hero.

You landed hard on the pavement. It took a lot of quick quirk improvisation on your part to keep you from getting too banged up; you managed to absorb most of the energy by concentrating your fat at key impact points. Still, you were left quite stunned once your tumble session was over.

Staring up at the sky, you had pretty much forgotten about the villain as your brain tried to process who had just launched you across the street. 

Could it really be him? What district was this again? You weren’t on his patrolling grounds, were you? How could you not know if it were his patrolling grounds? No, there was no way. You would totally know if you had a chance of running into Fa—

“Hiya.” A big, grinning face in a yellow hood appeared above you.

“Gah, Fat Gum!” You practically jumped out of your skin as you rolled upright.

“Sure am. You all right there? Seemed like a pretty nasty tumble.”

“I-I’m fine.”

The BMI Hero: Fat Gum, the pro hero whom you admire more than any other, cocked his head. “Yeah, looks like it. Got some sort of absorption quirk? What was that jump you just made? Y’know using your quirk in public is illegal right; if I didn’t know better, I’d say you were chasin’ that guy. Actaully, you seem kinda familiar…”

Fat Gum recognized you?!

Before your mind could spiral any further on what that could mean, you heard a shout behind you. Turning, you saw a red-headed boy holding onto the guy who had knocked you over.

“Hey Fat, I got ‘im! Didn’t put up much of a fight. That other hero okay? That sure was a manly jump!” He gave you a sharp-toothed grin.

“Good job, Red. Detain him til the cops can get here. And all good here; was actually just about to ask our friend some questions. For one, they ain’t no hero.”

Crap, that didn’t sound good. “I...uh…” You started to back away but froze when Fat Gum placed his hand on your shoulder.

“In fact, looks like we got ourselves the vigilante, Futoi. She’s normally pretty hard to catch since she can manipulate her looks with her quirk but it seems she’s used up her excess fat.”

At his remark, you automatically went to touch your face to find that he was right. Your disguise had melted away due to the lack of fat left in your body. You felt a spark of your anger from before come back; this is why you’d needed those rice balls!

“Now young lady, please come with me. You’re wanted for several counts of illegal quirk use.”

Shaking off his hand, you backed away with a shake of your head. “I just use my quirk to help people! To help heroes like you catch the bad guys!”

Fat Gum’s smile seemed to soften. “While that is very noble of you, without a license, that is considered the work of a vigilante.”

“It’s not my fault my quirk wasn’t deemed worthy of one,” you scowled, aware that you sounded rather bitter.

“Perhaps not, but that doesn’t negate the fact that you’ve performed illegal actions and for that—” 

Fat Gum had started to reach for you again but, panicked, you swung at him, using his own excess fat to your advantage to send him flying. He crashed into a wall, blinking at you in surprise. Both you and Red Riot stared after him in shock. You recovered your senses first though and turned to sprint away.

Holding back tears, you mentally yelled at yourself. You attacked Fat Gum! Your hero role model! You had dreamed of joining his agency if you ever managed to obtain a license. Now you had made sure that would never happen. Ugh, Koichi would never let you hear the end of this.

~~~~~~~

Back in the alley, Fat Gum still lay among the rubble where he had landed, staring after you in shock. Kirishima rushed towards him, dragging the unconscious thug with him.

“Fat, you okay?! How could she send you flying like that?”

It was several moments before Fat answered. “Someone get that girl a license and sign her up for my agency immediately. Also, find me some takoyaki, will ya?”

~~~~~~~

A/N2: Yes, I know, I wasn’t very original with the vigilante name...but I like names to have meaning and I feel like Reader wouldn’t have really put much thought into it.

I tried to incorporate a few references to the Vigilante series; that was actually what my extra research was, haha. Wasn’t til after I wrote up the first draft of this that I remembered that Fat Gum literally featured in the series about vigilantes. Obviously, this is set a lot further down the timeline than where the current volumes are at.

Finally, if anyone has any name suggestions for the fic, I’m open to recommendations. Thank you again for reading!

[darwinquark]

Bamon AU fic, Heretic!Bonnie

Y’all, I started writing this ages ago for @blaxicanbby (for the Bamily gift exchange), and it honestly just got way too long on me because I’m annoying and can’t write anything without complicating the shit out of it. This was meant to just be some fun UST from heretic!Bonnie meeting Lily’s eldest son for the first time, and then I went and gave it a plot I don’t have the time to finish right now, lmao. But in any case, I just found it in my drafts today and figured I’d post the first installment because I enjoyed re-reading it. I can’t promise I’ll finish this, but if there’s a lot of interest, I’ll see what I can do. Blah. Blah. TIME. So restricting. ANYWAY, without further ado:

title: a vampire and a heretic walk into a bar rating: pg-13 summary: After finally escaping the prison world her coven of fellow Heretics had been sent to in the 1970s, Bonnie Bennett is itching for adventure, but their strict coven leader, Lily Salvatore, is keeping them all on house arrest after the bloodbath they brought on Mystic Falls upon arriving. Desperate for a night out, she tries to come up with a way to leave the sealed house undetected and, unsurprisingly, fails. However, when a tall, dark, and grating stranger shows up unannounced in her bathroom--a stranger who happens to know the Salvatore mansion inside out, a stranger she realizes she has leverage over--she sees a unexpected way out. And much to his chagrin, she takes it. 

These family meetings were getting really old.

Bonnie glanced at her nails—short-cropped, a chipped navy blue, nothing worth fixating on. She was edgy. Bored. Eager for a little action. It’d been months since they’d finally escaped from the prison world, months since they’d snuck their first real taste of freedom in decades, and yet all Lily seemed interested in doing was keeping them in the house.

Short-leashed.

Out of trouble.

And to a degree, she understood the logic: as a group, subtlety wasn’t really their forte, and flagrant violence and excess was what had gotten them trapped in the first place. They all had a taste for it. An appetite for chaos. It ran in their blood, a side-effect of the clash between the magic and the vampirism, constantly battling for dominance inside them.

But she also knew it was a risky move, cooping them all up like this. Forcing them to stay put in the big, looming Salvatore mansion, a modernized snapshot of the house they’d already been stuck in for decades. Every day she felt everyone grow more restless—even Beau was starting to get edgy. He’d hurled a knife straight through the eye of a bird that wouldn’t stop chirping yesterday morning.

Covering a pot didn’t stop the water from boiling over, and at the moment, they were all operating at a low, dangerous simmer.

She needed out.

Her stare lifted off her nails and zipped across the room to Nora. If anyone was willing to risk getting on Lily’s bad side for a bit of adventure, it was definitely her, and where Nora went, Mary Lou went. Malcolm was too big of a kiss ass, Oscar was too content getting high and playing video games, and Valerie was too busy being Moody and Misunderstood™ to be any fun. Beau was a possibility, given his complete lack of fear of Lily, but small town shenanigans were generally too lowbrow for him.

Whatever. His loss.

She arched a ‘let’s talk’ brow at Nora that the brunette responded to with a nod, and Mary Lou frowned at the exchange, glancing up at Nora. Her head was resting in Nora’s lap, blonde hair fanned over the couch, and Nora merely shrugged, lips quirking as she dropped a swift kiss against her nose.

Bonnie tried not to envy them. It wasn’t just the fact that the rest of them had all been stuck in a repressed, sexless existence for years, but also the fact that she couldn’t imagine ever meeting someone who understood her as well and Nora and Mary Louise understood each other. Her history, what she was, what she’d been through, her allegiance to Lily—it was so deeply ingrained into her, into all of them, and she couldn’t imagine an outsider ever being able to fully know her.

And hell if she was about to cozy up to Malcolm.

And Beau was too much of an older brother.

And Oscar was just a mess.

It was gross to think of any of them that way, really.

She sighed, dropping her chin into her hand as Lily droned on about implementing some new ‘family rules’—she’d just have to settle for something else. Who knows. Maybe something better. Maybe something worse.

“So, before we wrap things up, does anyone want to share something about their day?” Lily clapped her hands together, spinning around amongst her ragtag collection of strays like a doting elementary school teacher. Everyone was silent, already checked out and ready to get on with the day, so she went for her reliable target. “Malcolm?”

He straightened a bit, face slowly shifting into that preening look everyone hated. “Well, as a matter of fact, I—”

Whack.

A pillow hit him in the face, courtesy of a sour-faced Valerie, and he squawked out in protest.

“Manners, Valerie,” Lily tutted like an exasperated housewife, as if she wasn’t capable of slicing everyone in the room to shreds with her teeth, and Valerie shrugged.

“It slipped.”

Malcolm glared at her like the spoiled four-year-old that he was, eyes stormy, and Lily sighed. “Well, if everyone insists on being terse and moody, we’ll just share about our days over dinner. Eight o’ clock, don’t be late—we have guests coming over tonight.”

Bonnie frowned—guests? Who the hell would be coming over to visit? “Do you know what she’s talking about?” she asked as Nora approached with Mary Louise, and the brunette shrugged.

“No idea. Maybe we’re eating the neighbors.”

“Nora,” Mary Lou tutted, as if it was a preposterous thing to say, and Bonnie arched a brow—Mary Louise had reduced the first few people she’d come into contact with after the prison world into limbless splatter paintings. It wasn’t really Bonnie’s thing, the whole rippery feasting-off-the-blood-of-the-innocent approach—she had too much of the Bennett code ingrained into her for that—but a fair few of the rest of them got off on it.

Especially Malcolm. Power-hungry little cad.

“Let’s go out tonight,” Bonnie said, shifting gears in a low, urging voice, and Mary Louise’s face fell just as Nora’s lifted.

“How?”

“I don’t know, we can siphon the binding charm from the house, sneak out, hit the town bar—whatever.”

“Whatever?” Mary Louise echoed, flashing an anxious gaze over her shoulder before leaning in with a whisper. “Pissing off Lily is not worth it for ‘whatever’—I’m still growing back my pinky finger.”

“Lily’ll be fine.”

“No, she won’t,” Nora said with a snort, “but even if she was, we have a dinner tonight—how are we supposed to get out of that unnoticed?”

“We’ll go after dinner.”

“Bon—”

“Guys, aren’t you losing it?” Bonnie pressed, voice lifting with a note of desperation. “I’m dying in here. We’ve been locked up for years, and now we finally get out and what’s different? More food? Air-conditioning?” She let out a bright scoff. “Let’s sneak out, have a good time, prove that we can behave, keep the townspeople in one piece, and then Lily’ll have to reevaluate this whole lockdown thing.”

Mary Louise looked entirely unconvinced, arms crossed and expression nervous, and Nora merely shook her head, stare glittering with amusement.

“We are so going to pay for this.”

There was a slight snag in her plan.

Well, a little more than slight—she couldn’t seem to siphon the binding charm keeping them locked inside the house. She wasn’t sure why. She’d tried it a hundred times. She’d tried it at different boundaries along the Salvatore property. She’d even snuck into Lily’s room to try it there, just in case there was some sort of loophole she’d set up to make it easy for her to come and go.

Nothing.

She’d siphoned binding charms before, it was usually pretty cut-and-dry stuff, but this one wasn’t budging. She could literally feel it repelling her magic away. Lily must’ve known one of them would try to escape.

She slipped back into her room with a sigh, shutting the door behind her and leaning back against it. How was this freedom? How was this any better than being locked in 1904? There was a whole, giant world out there, a world full of new things, new people, new buildings, new inventions. She’d spent the entire first month of being back scouring the internet, delighting in it, finding out everything she could about the present.

And now?

Now she wanted to live it. Needed to live it.

It was what she’d left her coven for so many years ago. Freedom. Independence. She’d joined Lily’s movement to break away from the shackles of the Bennett line, the pressure to ascend to coven leader, to spend her whole life being groomed to take over, having it all mapped out for her. Becoming a Heretic was a move she’d made in the name of actual, real, unfettered freedom, and yet here she was, more stifled than she’d ever been.

She needed to know she’d made the right decision.

She needed to know her independence was still something she was in charge of.

Going out seemed stupid, frivolous, but it was more than that.

She loved Lily, respected the hell out of her, and was unendingly grateful for everything she’d done for her when she was just a hungry, runaway teen with nowhere to go, but she needed to know she still controlled her own life.

Otherwise, they were going to have some problems.

A sudden, muffled rustle of noise made her stiffen, sensitive ears pricking in attention. No one was supposed to be home. They were all out on a rare Lily-approved excursion to get groceries for dinner—she’d feigned sick to stay behind and probe the house. A brief stretch of silence passed, just enough to make her think that maybe she’d imagined it, before she heard something else—the clink of glass. Her head snapped to the left, eyeing the partially ajar door across the room. Someone was in her bathroom.

If friggin’ Malcom had come home early and was going through her things again she was going to slit his throat. She swiped up a metal nail file sitting on her dresser and eased over to the door, light on her feet, just the way she’d learned to be when they were all on the run, and leaned forward to peer through the crack. She saw the outline of a man reflected in the mirror: dark hair, tall, stocky.

Not Malcolm.

She burst through the door in a flare of adrenaline, blurring forward and shoving the intruder hard against the wall. His back hit the plaster with a sharp thud, a few picture frames crashing down around them from the force of the impact, and she shoved the flat of her forearm hard against his windpipe, nail file pressed against the pulse point in his neck.  

“Who are you,” she growled, fangs bared, veins sprouting like scarlet lightning from her flooded eyes, “and how did you get into this house?”

“First of all,” he gritted out, voice strained from the pressure her arm was putting on his vocal chords, “rude. Second of all—”

His face swiftly saturated with bloodlust, and before she could adjust, he’d blurred them across the bathroom till they’d crashed against the opposite wall. She winced at the flare of pain in her head, momentarily shaken, and he seized the chance to flatten his large frame against her, hard and uncompromising, hands pressed against the wall on either side of waist. “This is my house.”

The low growl broke through the ringing in her ears. His house? But that was—the only other people who’d lived her were… she blinked a few times, the dark veins clearing from her face as she stared up at him. Sharp jaw. Wintry blue eyes. Aquiline nose. General glow of volatility. She saw the resemblance.

“You’re Lily’s son.”

His lips flickered into a humorless smile. “The one and only.” His brow promptly furrowed, corners of his mouth diving downward. “Well. Of two.”

A vague memory of names swam through her brain—Lily used to talk about them quite a bit, back before they’d been imprisoned. “Stefan,” she ventured, seizing onto the first one that came to mind, and his head recoiled a bit.

“Ew.”

Not Stefan, then. The other one—the older one. Problematic, Lily had said. Rebellious. Stubborn. “Damon,” she murmured, taking a slower, longer look at him, and his face eased into a cocky half-smile.

“Much better.”

He was different from what she’d imagined. Rawer. Less refined. In pictures, he’d always looked distant, elegant—a sullen little boy with bright, moody eyes and skin like porcelain. The guy pressed against her was serrated. Rough. He still had a sharp beauty about him, his eyes a striking contrast to his shock of dark hair, but there was a ferocity to him that was palpable, unpolished. It charged the air.

“And who might you be?” he pressed after a moment, stare similarly slipping down her face, taking her in, assessing his opponent.

“Bonnie,” she offered, stare hard. “Bonnie Bennett.”

“Bennett?” he echoed, hinging on the name, stare flickering a bit. He looked momentarily puzzled. “The hell’s a Bennett witch doing getting ordered around by my batshit mother?” Her eyes flared at the insult, blood heating as she surged a few inches forward, and his hands slid off the wall to catch her waist, voice lowering to a rumble. “Easy, witch.”

“Might want to watch how you talk about Lily around me.”

His stare took on a glitter as it raked over her face, a mere breath away from his, looming in shadow. “I dunno, I kind of like seeing you get all hot and bothered about it.”

Her grip on the nail file in her hand tightened. “Try me.”

He pursed his lips, stare sly, as if considering it, though after a moment, his face cleared. “Maybe some other time.” He eased himself back from her and turned toward the counter, loping over to the spot she’d first seen him in. “Right now, I have a mission and a girlfriend, and both of those things make wasting time on you feel like a potentially bad idea.”

“What kind of mission?” she asked, eyes narrowing as he opened a drawer, and he lapsed into a dramatic sigh.

“I hate when people move around my stuff—I had a strict organizational system going on here.”

“What kind of mission, Damon?” she pressed, voice sharpening as she took a step forward, and he shot her an annoyed look through the mirror.

“Nothing you need to be concerned about, little Bennett.” He shut the drawer and opened the one beneath it. “Just an exiled dude coming back to his rudely usurped house to pick up some of his rudely moved around stuff before resuming his exi—”

Her hand snapped forward and grabbed his wrist just as he tried to slip something beneath his sleeve, wrenching it up to her face. All she caught was a glimpse of metal before he swung her around by the arm, yanking her back against him in a harsh pull and blurring their bodies back up against the wall. Her cheek slammed up against the wallpaper and she winced briefly, teeth gritting—he was a block of cement behind her, hard and unmoving, his arm wrapped around her waist in a deadlock.

“Really not trying to hurt you here, witch,” he gritted into her ear, breath tight against the force of her pushback, and she let up for a second before breaking her arm loose and driving the nail file into his side.

“Jesus—” his breath hitched at the flare of pain and she took advantage of it, shoving him back and whirling around. He stumbled back a few steps, tightening his jaw as he made to pull the file out, and she kicked his legs out from under him before he could, sending him crashing to the ground.

She was on him in a heartbeat, knees hard on either side of his hips, ankles pinning down his shins, small hands holding his wrists above his head in a fierce, detaining grip that was at violent odds with their size difference. The nail file was still stuck in his waist, a bloom of blood spreading around it, and his chest was rising and falling quickly beneath her, breaths elevated from the fall.

“See, the trouble is,” she began in a low growl, face slowly dropping to hover just above his, looming like a threat, “I really don’t care about hurting you.”

He made a sudden move to flip them and she flattened him easily, spelling him to the ground with her magic and doing the rest of the work with her strength.  

“So,” she ventured, voice lightening a bit, “now that we’re both comfortable and settled in, I have some questions.”

“Great,” he breathed, knocking his head back against the floor.

“The first one being: how’d you get in here?” She stared down at him, brow furrowed, demanding of an answer. “The house is sealed, people can only enter and exit if they’re with Lily.”

“What are you all, grounded?” he said with a snort, and she quickly dug her nails into the underside of his wrists, shrinking his eyes into a wince.

“How?”

“This house was built during the Civil War,” he gritted out, stare lifting to glare at her death grip. “It’s full of lots of different escape routes. The last one was made after Lily died—or, you know, pretended to die so she could live it up and leave her kids with their abusive alcoholic father.” He shot her a blithe look.

“So she doesn’t know it exists,” she supplied, feeling her skin start buzzing with possibilities, and his lips lifted humorlessly.

“Bingo.”

She had a way out. One that didn’t require any magic, any siphoning—she literally had a way to stroll out of here undetected. It was perfect.

“Second question,” she said, combining his wrists and plucking up the metallic trinket he was trying to hide with her freed up hand. “What is this?”

“Pendant from a necklace,” he said casually, quickly—an obvious lie. “Belonged to my girlfriend, left it here when you guys took over, was hoping getting it back for her might get me lai—” he hissed as she twisted the nail file deeper into his side, stare slitted and impatient.

“Try again.”

“Family heirloom.”

He winced as she pushed harder. “I can do this all day.”

“Can you?” he gritted out, breaths tight. “Because Mommy Dearest is going to be home soon, and if she finds me here, she’s going to know there’s another way in, and unless I’m wrong, I’m getting the subtle impression you don’t want her to.”

Her jaw tightened a bit as she stared down at him. He was smarter than he looked. She decided to switch tactics. “See, I’m getting the subtle impression that this ‘heirloom’,” she gave the trinket a brief waggle, “isn’t something you want Lily to know about either, which means ultimately, we both want to avoid dragging this little rendezvous out. So,” she ventured, shoulders easing into a cool shrug, “we can either sit here and try to out-blackmail each other until Lily gets home, or we can make a deal.”

He let out a hollow chuckle.

“You help me, I help you.”

“Pass.”

She stared down at his amused stare for a beat before sitting up, redoubling the strength of the spell holding him to the floor. “Fine.” She held the trinket with both hands and closed her eyes, channeling the other half of her magic into a destruction spell. “Hereditatem perdere integrum…”

The object began glowing in her hands, and she felt him shift a bit beneath her. “What are you doing?”

“Hereditatem perdere integrum…”

It began vibrating with energy, the molecules starting to pull apart.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Breaking your toy,” she offered breezily, eyelashes starting to flutter from the power coursing through her, and he started fighting the spell grounding him in earnest.

“You don’t know what you’re doing, witch.”

“Unfortunately for you, I know exactly what I’m doing.”

“Stop the spell,” he gritted angrily, and her chanting merely knocked up a few notches.

“…perdere integrum…”

“Stop the fucking spell!”

“…herediatem perdere…”

A flash of light filled the room as the object began pulling apart, bright white seeping through the fissures, and he finally cracked.

“Okay, fine, I’ll help you!”

Her eyes flew open, otherworldly light vanishing from the room in the span of a heartbeat. The heirloom seized back into one piece like a magnet in her hands. Her lips flickered into a smile. “Great.”

He dropped his head back against the tile with a harassed sigh, jaw flared tight with annoyance. Stubbornness was radiating from him—she could tell he was a guy who was pretty used to getting his way—and it added a glint of smugness to her gaze.

He wasn’t the only one.

“So, now that we’re feeling more agreeable,” she said, sending the heirloom flying over to the drawer of her nightstand with her magic and sealing it in there, “let’s work out this deal.”

She recaptured his wrists and lowered her body back down against his, reverting to brute strength in light of the drain to her magic, and his stare darkened a bit as it rolled down her looming frame. “If you’re going to blackmail me for sex, you’re going to have to let me on top at least a few times.”

Her lips flickered darkly, and even though she knew better than to indulge in the distraction, she felt her voice take on a rumble. “I stay on top of everything and everyone I do, baby Salvatore.”

She couldn’t help it—it’d been decades since she’d had anyone attractive to flirt with, enemy or otherwise. Like obviously she wasn’t going to sleep with him—he was potentially dangerous, untrustworthy as hell, and on top of all of that, seemed like a bit of an asshole—but she was repressed as hell. She could afford a little flirting.

His gaze lit with a subtle glitter of intrigue at the comment, and she decided to nip it in the bud before she got too distracted. “Unfortunately for you, cocky shithead vampires aren’t my type—particularly ones with girlfriends they seem to forget about—so we’re all set.”

His bright expression locked up at the girlfriend mention, glitter rapidly disappearing from his eyes, and her mouth quirked in satisfaction.

That’s what she thought.

He knocked his head back against the floor with a sigh, seemingly back to being prickly. “So, what do you want, then? A Marauder’s Map of the house? A Lily-proof way out of here?”

She chewed her lip, expression growing thoughtful. Was that all she wanted? A way out, and then she’d figure the rest out alone? She’d planned on taking Nora and Mary Lou on the assumption that whatever way out they took would be a temporary one, but now that she might have a permanent door to freedom, she wasn’t sure she could risk it. Whatever Nora knew, Mary Lou knew, and whatever Mary Lou knew, her fear of Lily usually meant Lily eventually knew.

Which meant if she did this, she’d be completely on her own, running around without any idea what she was doing. She couldn’t afford to waste time figuring things out. She needed to be efficient. She needed someone who knew her situation and also knew this time period. She glanced back at Damon.

“You seem like a fun enough guy, Damon.”

His lips flickered mirthlessly. “They do call me the fun brother.”

“Great, then it’s settled.” She pulled up to a sitting position and held her hand out, offering it for a shake. “You’re sneaking me out of here tonight.”

He immediately tried to break out from under her but her magic had restored itself enough to throw him back to the ground. He hit the floor with a thud and a wince.

“And then you’re going to show me around town.”

He lapsed into a bright scoff. “What?”

“I’ve been working on a list of things I want to do when I break out of here, and you’re going help me do them.”

He began laughing, breathless from having the wind knocked out of him. “I am not going to be your babysitter, witch.”

“Heretic,” she corrected a little sharply—she didn’t like it when people reduced her down to her old identity—and he waved a bored hand. “And I’m not asking you to be my babysitter, I’m telling you to be my tour guide.”

“And I’m telling you I’m not going to do either.”

“Well, then I guess I have an ascendant to destroy.”

He stiffened a bit, amused stare sobering as it flicked back up to hers.

She wrinkled her nose. “Turns out detection spells are a lot more reliable than questioning hostages.”

His jaw tensed as she pressed on.

“An ascendant, though?” She clucked her tongue. “Aiming pretty high there, buddy. I can only imagine what you want to do with the ability to travel to prison dimensions, though I’m pretty sure it won’t be something Lily’ll be happy about. In fact, maybe I shouldn’t destroy it, maybe I should just give it to her and she can figure out what to do wi—”

“Fine,” he gritted out, voice a terse growl.

She leaned forward, as if having trouble hearing. “Sorry? What was that?”

“Fine, I’ll be your stupid tour guide.”

“Well, the ‘stupid’ part’s up to you,” she replied breezily, waving a hand. “Assuming it’s not an inherent trait.”

He shot her a dry scowl. “Can you get off me now?”

“I can, but it only seems fair to warn you that I’m the only one who can unseal the drawer I put the ascendant in, and I’m also fully capable of destroying it in three seconds from right here, so if I were you, I wouldn’t try making a break for it again.”

He glowered at her and she smiled.

“Deal?” She sprung her hand back out and after a sullen beat, he sighed and took it.

“Deal.”  

She gave it a firm shake, green stare glinting against the harsh annoyance of his, and okay, yeah, maybe he wasn’t her ideal tour guide, but for better or for worse, she was getting out of this place tonight. She was finally venturing off on her own. She was going to see the world—a tiny, tiny glimpse of it, obviously, but still—it was all she’d been thinking about since they’d arrived here.

She was doing it.

It was happening.

And no scowly shithead vampire was going to ruin that for her.

A/N: if anyone’s interested in picking this story up, btw, like maybe taking on Damon’s PoV and co-authoring, pleeeeeease let me know! 

[reefasrobot]

My @pjosecretsanta2016 gift for @an-yagami! I do realized this is insanely late. Like. Complete, absolutely late. I feel awful. I honestly thought I put this post on my queue, but I was looking through my drafts and it was just sitting there and I really am very sorry. Hope you enjoy this anyway. I’ve never written percico since I’m pretty neutral about it, but I hope you like this anyway!

a long time coming

The first time it happened, Percy Jackson was twelve and on the front steps of his school, waiting for his mom to pick him up. He was probably going to end up getting kicked out (again, his mind supplied helpfully), but right now he just wanted to be home and the school wanted him gone, so it worked out for both sides. He hoped his mom wouldn’t be mad. She probably wouldn’t be, but she might be sad, which was even worse.

“I didn’t start it,” Percy said to himself, repeating the words he told the teacher. “I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone.” He never was, and his mom knew this. Just an unfortunate gift for being at the wrong place, at the wrong time. There wasn’t much anyone could do about it.

Suddenly, he felt an odd, tugging sensation. Percy blinked, the pull distracting him from his thoughts. He looked around, but nothing seemed weird. He stood up and faced the playground on the other side of the street, where the pull was strongest. He took one step—

And his mom’s car pulled over, blocking his view. His mother was smiling sadly from inside, and whatever Percy felt was pushed away. He entered the car and launched into an explanation, an apologies and complaints and stories wrapped into one. His mother didn’t ask for one, never did, but Percy always told her, if just because she’s the only one who understood.

He failed to notice the woman in the playground, the young girl at her side, and the small boy in her arms, watching the car drive away with curiousity and wonder in his eyes

 (Sally Jackson was a kind and strong woman. More than anyone, she loved her son, loved him even when it meant rushing out of work to pick him up from school for something that wasn’t his fault. It never was, and it saddened her to see him struggle to explain to her something she already knew. Still, she could never forget that day when her son entered the car with bright eyes and a faint black halo around him, as it dawned on her that maybe her son wasn’t going to share her fate after all)

Nico di Angelo never put much faith in soulmates. Having a soulmate didn’t guarantee having someone to stay by your side forever, and neither did not having a soulmate mean you would never experience love. His mother had a soulmate, but his father left when he was a baby. He had met people who weren’t soulmates, yet loved each other anyway.

This is why he thought they were stupid. The signs were too vague, and there was no clear way to find your soulmate even if you had one. He wouldn’t even believe the fact that he had one, if Bianca hadn’t told him he already met his soulmate once when he was young, on their last day with their mother before the accident, when he glowed blue in front of her eyes.

Nico still thought it was stupid. The day after he met his soulmate, his mother died. Only another sign that soulmates were a bad thing. Bianca has shook her head sadly when he told him this.

Only a couple of years later, when Nico and his sister and several other kids from the orphanage were visiting a museum, they passed by a group of students. Nico was overwhelmed by a strong voice telling him to go, go, go, but his sister would kill him if he wandered off on his own. So he grabbed her hand and held it tightly, using her to anchor him to his spot, keep him from drifting away.

Bianca was staring at him with wide eyes, mouth open in a small ‘o’ and Nico finally realized what happened. Still, he stayed in his spot, his sister’s hand gripped tightly in his and he willed himself to stay and not run after that group of students. Bianca was all he had left, and he wouldn’t give her up for anything. Not even when Bianca’s eyes softened and told him to just go, or when he wondered if his soulmate wanted to go to him too, but was held back by something.

 (Bianca’s heart filled with joy when she saw her brother glow again. His glow was breathtaking, a beautiful mix if blue and green that rippled and moved around Nico like waves. She knew then, that his soulmate was good. She knew that they would watch and take care of her brother if she couldn’t. Bianca hoped she’d be able to see Nico meet his soulmate. Only family can see one’s glow, and Bianca had a feeling that should she have to leave him, Nico wouldn’t open up to anyone)

The trip to Montauk was entirely unplanned. Percy just woke up one day and decided he had to just go. His mom understood without him saying a word, already off to the kitchen as he contacted Annabeth and Grover. He wanted to hang out with them originally, but something in his mind told him to just go.

Annabeth understood. She had something similar happen to her once, when she had dragged Percy off to a concert without warning. Percy was glad to be there, to see Annabeth's hand clasped in another and a brilliant golden glow wash over her. (It was only later did he realize that oh, that meant Annabeth saw him as her family, and he saw her as his)

He set off, lunch and dinner packed in his bag, and he went without knowing where to go, climbing on the train before even checking where it was going.

The first thing Percy thought when he saw the other boy was, ‘Who the hell wore a jacket to the beach?’. He stood in the water, his black hair and absolute mess, pants rolled up to his knees and his too big jacket flying around in the wind. As Percy got closer, he noticed other details; the deathly pale skin, eyebags too dark for anyone that age, eyes bloodshot, and something very, very, sad about that boy.

Naturally, Percy sat down near him and offered a sandwich. The boy glanced warily at him, but eventually accepted the sandwich. He ate like someone who hadn’t eaten in days. Seeing how thin and sickly the boy looked, it might actually have been the case. Either way, it made Percy sad.

They didn’t talk. They simply sat, the boy devouring the rest of Percy’s food as Percy himself only ate a piece of the sandwich. Percy offered him a drink. He took it with less restraint. After that they sat in silence, enjoying each other's presence even though both of them were fully aware that the other was a stranger to them. Percy didn’t always like the silence, but if felt right.

Eventually, the boy stood. Percy considered asking what happened to him that hurt him so badly. He decided against it. The boy said a soft “Thank you,”  before disappearing from sight. Percy returned home feeling good in a way he never felt before. His mother would later tell him that he was glowing, faintly.

 (Annabeth didn’t know what happened the day Percy cancelled their plans and disappeared to who knows where. The next day though, when Percy sat down at their usual table looking completely the same but entirely different, Annabeth realized what happened. Sometimes your soulmate calls to you, intentionally or unintentionally. Either way, you answer)

Nico scared his roommate, when he returned home late, climbing in through the window with a smile on his face. He didn’t smile much. Not since Bianca, and definitely not around anyone but Hazel. For the first time in a long time, Nico felt good, in the way he struggled to be for a long time before he net Hazel, and even then it was hard.

He fell into a peaceful, dreamless sleep, and woke up feeling alive for the first time in a really long time. His roommate was quiet when he rushed out to find Hazel, excited to tell her about what happened. She was still half awake, hair a mess as she leaned on Frank's side in the common room. Frank eyes him curiously as he moved around the kitchen and returned with three plates of eggs and toast for the three of them.

The smell of food woke up Hazel fast. Nico and Frank both laughed. Nico quickly launched into a rapid explanation for yesterday’s events. His decision to go out on his own, how he snuck out to go to the beach. His sister’s words about Nico’s soulmate. The pull he felt, and the boy.

The boy. The boy with the dark windswept hair. Green eyes he could drown in. The sandwich in his hands. The rightness Nico felt. But he couldn’t tell, couldn’t tell for sure if that boy was the one. No way to tell if he was the one other than gut feeling, but that wasn’t the point. What if he wasn’t, and Nico was going to end up losing someone he cared for again?

Hazel laughed and placed her hand on this, reminding him to calm down. She didn’t know for sure either, not until months after she and Frank started dating and they went on a trip to visit his grandmother. “It’s going to be fine,” she said. “Give it a chance.”

 (and unspoken, though Nico heard it anyway, “I could help, please, I want to, but you have to let me in.”)

Percy talked to his mother. His mother, who never found out if she had a soulmate or not. His mother, who didn’t know but fell in love with his father anyway (the one who left, the one Percy never met). She told him it just felt right. If he met them, he would know. She did, and she didn’t regret a thing. “Because you’re here now, and I’m glad for that,” she added.

Annabeth was his second option, because he was there when it happened for her. She smiled and told him that it might have already happened for him, and if he just bothered to ask his mom, he would know and they wouldn’t need to meet up at all. She was smiling throughout the entire explanation, and Percy knew she was glad he called her anyway.

Grover on the other side, just laughed. “If you want to go for it, go for it,” he told Percy. “You’re the one who’s going to know in the end. Call for the boy. He’ll show up.”

Percy didn’t, not that day.

The week after, he came into the café, sat down at the table by the window. The only thing in his mind was, ‘I want to see you again.’

 (Grover thought Percy was great, really. He helped him get through so many things before, and Grover would probably be dead in a ditch somewhere if it weren’t for Percy — and Annabeth. So it was only right that he told Percy to go for it. He didn’t know about having soulmates, but he did know about feeling right. The way he felt when outdoors, surrounded by nature. If this boy made Percy feel that way, then of course Grover wanted that for him)

The week after, Nico felt a strong urge to go. After last week, he decided that following his gut feelings might be a good idea, so he went. Although he did tell Hazel this time, instead of disappearing without notice. Hazel smiled softly and told him to be careful. Things had been a bit odd between after last weekend, but that day Nico was done with that. He wanted her to know.

As he left, he noticed a bright golden glow around both Hazel and Frank. He smiled.

The pull brought him to a small café, tucked in between two buildings. Through the window, he saw the boy, eyes bright as they met Nico’s. The boy grinned and waved at him. Nico felt another rush of rightness, the feeling that drove him to let the boy stay that day at the beach.

They talked, on and on and on until the day grew dark and they ran out of important things to talk about. He learned that the boy’s name was Percy, he was 19 and lived with his mom. He loved the sea, loved swimming in it and all the animals in it and he was studying about the sea. He told him that his favorite color was blue, and that his mom always tried to make him blue food since a fight with his ex-stepdad. Percy told Nico about his friends, Annabeth and Grover, and how he wouldn’t be studying in college, but probably dying as a homeless man in an alley somewhere.

Nico told Percy about Will, his too cheerful but usually well meaning roommate, who grew from an unavoidable annoyance to someone he might consider a friend. He told him about Hazel and Frank, who helped him get back in his feet when he really needed it. He told him how other people usually saw him as weird and creepy, and how a majority of them had this strange believe that he could talk to ghosts. Even better, he mentioned that some of them genuinely believed that he could raise the dead and control them into a zombie army to take over the world. (“Well,” Percy supplied with a laugh, “For a really long time I convinced Grover that I could breathe under water.”)

He told Percy how he used to live in Italy, before he moved here with his mother and sister. His mother, who died when he nine. His sister, who died a couple of years later and left him alone and slowly fading away, the only thing keeping him around was a feeling that there was still something waiting for him.

“We’ve met before,” Percy said.

“Yeah. We have,” Nico replied.

Percy laughed and Nico joined in, feeling the happiest he’s been in a really long time. ‘This is nice,’ he thought to himself. ‘Really nice.’

At the end of the day, they both agreed on two things; Pizza was food of the gods, and the definitely should have done this soulmate thing a lot sooner.

(their glow was deep, rich, midnight blue, a mix between Percy’s vibrant blue and Nico’s dark colors. Nico decided it was his new favorite color.)

So yeah! that was a really odd soulmate AU, but I tried? I really just wanted to write a soulmate AU? I hope it made sense. Yeah.

[agirlnamedsteve]

I’m getting published! Cool!

Yesterday I got an email from the main editor of Killer and a Sweet Thang about a piece I submitted saying that they loved my writing and want to publish me in december which is some sort of weird dream for me. Not that it gives me any sort of recognition and it’s a really random website that not many people I know follow, but it’s a really big deal for me! I love online publications and would love to someday create a space like KAAST but mostly just love that I get to contribute something. And it’s a really deeply personal piece. I’ll attach it below. It’s basically just a revised version of a previous blog post. I was reading through the blog and seeing that there was such a wide array of articles, not all of them being about sex, and one of them even had to do with kavanaugh and who he is! I am assuming that the readership of this blog is anywhere from 16-25 ish probably? And I feel like the politics of my body is a way that I conceptualize my political involvement and also make sense of who I am. So I figured I would see if they wanted to publish me. It just affirms to me that this is what I want to be doing! Creative stuff! I like writing as though the world is my public journal. I am such an open book and love that about myself. Can’t wait to get back to school and see if there are any pubs I can get involved in.

“The Politics of My Body: Conceptualizing My Sexual Assault in a Post-Kavanaugh World”

I woke up relatively hungover in my hotel room and checked my phone to see more texts than I was expecting. Being halfway across the world, it’s not uncommon for people to check in on me and reach out during the hours when I’m sleeping since those are peak hours back home. Today was different though.

I was prepared for the news that a sexual assailant was joining the ranks of our oldest and whitest in government. I was prepared for the news, knowing fully well that even my foolish hopes that the outcries of survivors would make an impact on the vote couldn’t save us from this outcome. There was nothing I wasn’t prepared for, since the past two years since I started college and our country began its governance under yet another racist, sexist pig (I miss u Obama) I have felt that every news alert, every oppressive tweet, and every disappointment has just taken my body and thrown it against a building repeatedly. While it doesn’t show on the outside, my internal organs are bleeding and I have a heart that is bruised.

I received texts from friends who are with me abroad offering their support, from my older sister, former partners, and people who love me from all walks of life. I have recently made myself more vulnerable by sharing more personal details about myself on the internet and being much more politically active on my social media platforms regarding the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh and the nuances of women and survivors in a society where politics have never regarded anyone except white males as deserving of full respect. Reading some Brittney Cooper (“Eloquent Rage”) and the words of bell hooks and Cleo Wade and other intersectional feminist writers who I admire and engage with daily had been cathartic for me. It’s put things into perspective for me, and it’s expanded the ways that I go about processing difficult information.

First there’s the knowledge that women of color have always had it this bad. That Dr. Ford was more believable because she’s an academic and a white woman. That Anita Hill never had the chance Dr. Ford was given to be widely supported and believed. I’ve learned more about white feminism, and I’ve learned about who out of the men in my life are interested in speaking out and who will remain silent. I’ve appreciated and admired every person that has spoken out on their social media platforms and every person who had reached out to me and other survivors in any way, shape, or form to acknowledge our humanity and our anger. While it is easy for me to get caught up in the parts of my identity that have been more difficult–– being raised by a single mother, having an emotionally and physically unavailable father, growing up bisexual and struggling with body image, surviving sexual assault–– there are parts of my identity (my whiteness, upper-middle socio-eonomic upbringing, liberal arts college education) which grant me privilege and power that is simply not accessible to all people, especially POC. Additionally and above all, because I have benefitted from my whiteness, I often fail to see the intersections that amplify my power and recognize that regardless of how much I try to engage with female writers and activists of color, I can and should always be working to do better. And to know that I have this privilege, and to use it for the advancement of all people. But I digress…

That week I joined the survivors who came forward with their experiences of sexual assault. It has been two years and a few months, and I just never found the right time. It also took quite a bit of learning and unlearning for me to understand the depth and weight of what had happened to me. It took me a long time to remember that it was due to others not stepping up and sharing their stories and concerns with his behaviors of the past that I was put in the vulnerable position I was to be assaulted that night. He never would have been there in the first place if others had expressed their concerns of his predation. I don’t harbor any resentment for the situation I was placed in. I do, however, feel that it is my duty, as it was the duty of Dr. Ford, to out the people who have harmed us in an effort to make the world a safer and more just place. When I shared my experience, I don’t know what I expected. Learning that the process of due diligence meant that he needed to be contacted about what I had shared caused me immediate panic. I felt so heard and believed when I reported the incident. But I felt conflicted by the news that he would face consequences for his actions, or at least learn that he has had this lasting impact on someone he’s probably forgotten about. While I knew that must be part of the process, I had discounted how much it would affect me that he would have my name spoken to him, my experience relayed to him. I’m not pressing charges, so i’ll never have to sit in a courtroom opposite him and hear his voice, which will likely tell tales of assumed consent and blurred lines. The way I see it now, I was incapacitated, I blacked out during it, I have felt unsafe for myself and others in that space ever since.

On that morning, I drafted an email and decided I was done carrying the invalidation I was placing on myself on my shoulders anymore. In sending that email I didn’t suddenly become free. I didn’t call for celebration and I didn’t even feel different on the inside. But what’s followed has been the daily reminder to myself that I have survived and maybe even grown from my experience. An experience nobody should have to go through. Dr. Ford continues to be harassed daily, while I have been able to share my story in a much more quiet, almost secret in a way.

For people who are struggling with whether or not to share their stories, and those who have been burdened by the social media streams of personal experiences of victims and the reminder that so many people we know have been affected by sexual violence, I see you. I wish you peace. I know that even from my positionality it still took me a very long time and lots of support to come to terms with my experience. I have been realizing more and more that the need for me to speak out came less from a place of personal redemption and more from the understanding that my experience, my sexual assault, was political in and of itself. If we can’t hold men in our own communities accountable for their actions how can we expect that to be reflected in politics? It’s complicated, but watching Dr. Ford come forward with bravery and conviction convinced me that I could do the same.

[designforsocialimpact]

19 - “Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new.” Og Mandino

So I’ve become accustomed to posting in this blog in a way that is more “tell you everything we’re doing” than examining a specific area that we’re exploring as a group. I’ve changed that up a bit this week.

Let me explain. Our courses are challenging us quite a bit more this semester with the “who are you as designers for social impact?” and “what are your roles and responsibilities?” questions. It may come as no shock that rather than arriving at definitive answers, these questions lead to more questions for us on a personal and a group level: What do we value? What does design mean for us? Social impact? How do we see ourselves designing for a better world? What does this world look like? Who specifically are we designing for? What are we contributing? How do we make sure that what we’re contributing (and how we are contributing it) are responsible and ethical? How do we encourage others in our discipline to do the same? How do we measure impact? And how do we do all of this in the context of a world that is changing so rapidly with social, economic and governmental systems as we know them being fundamentally challenged and changed?

Snowy weather and brisk runs help with the posing of questions

These are only a few of the questions we’re considering, and each of us has a different focus. As we progress further in the semester, you’ll witness through this blog a lot of our daily work and efforts that help us to formulate our responses to some of these questions, and, to be sure, there will be a lot of other questions that come to fruition in the process.

In the meantime, I will share a bit about our endeavors through the week (were you worried I wouldn’t? Never fear, the play-by-play is still here).

I see the week starting on Sundays, so I’ll begin there. The day entailed working on the thesis first draft (yesterday was the first official week of my thesis sport integration project. We started with a trial week to try and recruit players to commit for all six weeks. We were gung-ho, until we realized that our assumptions about the pre-registration process were, well, not accurate. But this is what prototyping is for! We learned that people who register might not necessarily come, and that people who do not register WILL come. This is helpful for us as we iterate the program each week. It meant some serious struggles and questions for me in terms of evaluations, as I based my evaluations plan on a consistent group of people coming - but fortunately I have some awesome mentors who have helped steer me anew. I’m strong in my faith that this will be as God wills it, and it will work out for good). 

Here is a pic of week one of the program - this week we had to cancel because of an event at the church, an inability to play outside because of the snow, and a hard situation for one of our leaders preparing for his refugee status interview. Praying HARD that this inspiring human is rightfully granted the status to continue his noble work in France. 

The rest of the day contained church service, reading for school, and preparing a presentation for Social and Urban Governance demain.

Monday, a LOOOOOONG haul of early social and urban governance on community mobilisation, which raised tons of questions about the ethics of activism for me. How far is too far in challenging the powers that be and bringing power to the powerless? Saul Alinsky, in rules for radicals, makes an argument that ridicule is a most powerful weapon - but is it ethical? Super stimulating subject area - I’m loving our readings and linking them with the readings we have for Designer’s Social and Ethical Responsibilities.

We followed this with Research & Methodologies, which was a peer-editing workshop, for the most part. Lillian took the time to connect with each of us and give wise advice. I really appreciate her as a professor. She is encouraging, insightful and dedicated. Not to mention wonderful at keeping those of us who may be a bit neurotic (ahem, moi) grounded.

Tuesday is group KILLING IT day as we forecasted the future for the Sprout Methodology that we are lucky enough to work through with Maurizio & Laureano. I would share more details about the process, because it’s a practice that I find really useful for any professional domain, but because our professorial duo is waiting to publish, I’ll refrain (I’m encouraging those interested in developing for the future to keep an eye out for the methodology when it’s published). We finished the day discussing our social and ethical responsibilities assignment and I spent an absurd amount of time deciding on an example of “bad” design from an ethical and social responsibility lens and examining different ethical theories. I was really convicted by some of the current trends we’ve been discussing in design studio with AI, as well as an ethics reading about the mental manipulation that mega corps like Google and Facebook design their technologies for. I went to bed with more questions about a solid “bad design” than I did answers.

Wednesday AM is a MakeSense morning, where we meet with Sabine (and Layla, my thesis mentor) and discuss our projects individually. This was crazy-helpful for me in re-evaluating WHAT I’m evaluating with my thesis project. Was it easy to go through? No, but so important for me to reassess with the advisement of these women who are well-versed in the social business sector.

I spent quite a bit of time devoted to my hefty pile of french assignments (yes, a lot, but so good for me! And the professor, Emma, is INCROYABLE - I feel myself learning a lot, even if it’s hard to keep up with! The wonderful thing is that Emma is one of the most attentive teachers I’ve encountered in terms of a) practicality and b) adaptation to the level of each of her students. She also GENUINELY cares and wants each of us to excel. She doesn’t play favorites or make anyone feel incompetent - it’s a joy to delve into this beautiful language with this strong woman guiding us!

Then I spent the evening trying to figure out our ethics assignment. It was incredibly challenging; I was reminded from my undergrad days in philosophy just how mentally demanding the field is - especially when it comes to ethical arguments on something like Facebook (which was the “bad” design I chose to focus on).

Thursday and Friday, as I’m sure you know by now, are long ones for us. We “sprouted” with Maurizio and Laureano in Design Studio, learned about the professional practice of art buying and consulting from Matilde Biondi Morra di Belforte. 

Then Friday AM rolled in (me for French) with cozy socks for a fully-loaded friday, and settled in for a SUPER discussion about Tactical Urbanism (Holla at our girl Smarti for a bomb presentation) and even toyed with questions of ethics when it comes to designing with vs. for communities. Which was a nice segue into ethics presentations, where each of us chose a “bad” design to present on.

Rica and I didn’t have time to present, but Smarti delved into the good and the bad about the “sweater of the future” made of recycled plastic fibers, Emilie Logan talked to us about the ethics of the swank LA-based fashion brand Revolution, Vaila filled us in on the good intentions but bad consequences of a water pump playground in Africa, and Hanna brought us into a critical space regarding a project called salivation, meant to make a statement about food rationing and the future. It was reassuring to know that I was not the only one in the group that really struggled with the assignment in terms of trying to apply these ethical theories to our bad designs. 

“Can something really be designed well if it does not consider the ethical impacts that it may impoe on our planet and people?” This is the big question for us moving forward. 

More to come on this next week as Rica and I present. Until then, we’ll be reading and thinking critically about our design projects for this class (if you have ideas for us, please don’t hold them back!)

Us asking Thomas Watkin, our Social and Urban Governance prof, to pose for us for the blog. He was a good sport and laughed with us as we did the least-candid “candid” shot ever. 

Have any thoughts on the questions from part one of the post? Or any questions of your own? Please let us know! One thing I feel certain of: as designers for social impact, we cannot work alone - we can contribute better when we collaborate with each other.

Thanks for joining with us in exploring a better future. We believe that more smiles are in store.