#was it the most ethical way to go about it? no

[fozmeadows]

there is no ethical consumption under capitalism

Years ago now, I remember seeing the rape prevention advice so frequently given to young women - things like dressing sensibly, not going out late, never being alone, always watching your drink - reframed as meaning, essentially, "make sure he rapes the other girl." This struck a powerful chord with me, because it cuts right to the heart of the matter: that telling someone how to lower their own chances of victimhood doesn't stop perpetrators from existing. Instead, it treats the existence of perpetrators as a foregone conclusion, such that the only thing anyone can do is try, by their own actions, to be a less appealing or more difficult victim.

And the thing is, ever since the assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, I've kept on thinking about how, in this day and age, CEOs of big companies often have an equal or greater impact on the day to day lives of regular people than our elected officials, and yet we have almost no legal way to redress any grievances against them - even when their actions, as in the case of Thompson's stewardship of UHC, arguably see them perpetrating manslaughter at scale through tactics like claims denial. That this is a real, recurring thing that happens makes the American healthcare insurance industry a particularly pernicious example, but it's far from being the only one. Because the original premise of the free market - the idea that we effectively "vote" for or against businesses with our dollars, thereby causing them to sink or swim on their individual merits - is utterly broken, and has been for decades, assuming it was ever true at all. In this age of megacorporations and global supply chains, the vast majority of people are dependent on corporations for necessities such as gas, electricity, internet access, water, food, housing and medical care, which means the consumer base is, to all intents and purposes, a captive market. We might not have to buy a specific brand, but we have to buy a brand, and as businesses are constantly competing with one another to bring in profits, not just for the company and its workers, but for C-suites and shareholders - profits that increasingly come at the expense of workers and consumers alike - the greediest, most inhumane corporations set the financial yardstick against which all others are then, of necessity, measured. Which means that, while businesses are not obliged to be greedy and inhumane in order to exist, overwhelmingly, they become greedy and humane in order to compete, because capitalism encourages it, and because there are precious few legal restrictions to stop them from doing so. At the same time, a handful of megacorporations own so many market-dominating brands that, without both significant personal wealth and the time and resources to find viable alternatives, it's all but impossible to avoid them, while the ubiquity of the global supply chain means that, even if you can keep track of which company owns which brand, it's much, much harder to establish which suppliers provide the components that are used in the products bearing their labels. Consider, for instance, how many mainstream American brands are functionally run on sweatshop labour in other parts of the world: places where these big corporations have outsourced their workforce to skirt the already minimal labour and wage protections they'd be obliged to adhere to in the US, all to produce (say) electronics whose elevated sticker price passes a profit on to the company, but without resulting in higher wages for either the sweatshop workers overseas or the American employees selling the products in branded US stores.

When basically every major electronics corporation is engaged in similar business practices, there is no "vote" our money can bring that causes the industry itself to be better regulated - and as wealthy, powerful lobbyists from these industries continue to pay exorbitant sums of money to politicians to keep government regulation at a minimum, even our actual votes can do little to effect any sort of change. But even in those rare instances where new regulations are passed, for multinational corporations, laws passed in one country overwhelmingly don't prevent them from acting abusively overseas, exploiting more desperate populations and cash-poor governments to the same greedy, inhumane ends. And where the ultimate legal penalty for proven transgressions is, more often than not, a fine - which is to say, a fee; which is to say, an amount which, while astronomical by the standards of regular people, still frequently costs the company less than the profits earned through their unethical practices, and which is paid from corporate coffers rather than the bank accounts of the CEOs who made the decisions - big corporations are, in essence, free to act as badly as they can afford to; which is to say, very. Contrary to the promise of the free market, therefore, we as consumers cannot meaningfully "vote" with our dollars in a way that causes "good" businesses to rise to the top, because everything is too interconnected. Our choices under global capitalism are meaningless, because there is no other system we can financially support that stands in opposition to it, and while there are still small businesses and companies who try to operate ethically, both their comparative smallness and their interdependent reliance on the global supply chain means that, even if we feel better about our choices, we're not exerting any meaningful pressure on the system we're trying to change. Which means that, under the free market, trying to be an ethical consumer is functionally equivalent to a young woman dressing modestly, not going out alone and minding her drink at parties in order to avoid being raped. We're not preventing corporate predation or sending a message to corporate predators: we're just making sure they screw other worker, the other consumer, the other guy.

All of which is to say: while I'd prefer not to live in a world where shooting someone dead in the street is considered a valid means of redressing grievances, what the murder of Brian Thompson has shown is that, if you provide no meaningful recourse for justice against abusive, exploitative members of the 1%, then violence done to those people will have the feel of justice, because it fills the void left by the lack of consequences for their actions. It's the same reason why people had little sympathy for the jackass OceanGate CEO who killed himself in his imploding sub, or anyone whose yacht has been attacked by orcas - it's just intensified here, because where the OceanGate CEO was felled by hubris and the yachts were random casualties, whoever killed Thomspon did so deliberately, because of what he did. It was direct action against a man whose policies very arguably constituted manslaughter at scale; a crime which ought to be a crime, but which has, to date, been permitted under the law. And if the law wouldn't stop him, can anyone be surprised that someone might act outside the law in retaliation - or that regular people would cheer for them when they did?

[thoughtscout]

yes, here we go - another lovely example of a false binary. it's either "let everyone engage in whatever kind of sexual activity they want to, where they want to and when they want to, regardless of others' comfort or consent, the health of the overall culture surrounding these practices, any people harmed or exploited in the process, or any other consequences" - or, if you criticize or object to that, you're "denying" all positive human sexuality, "making everyone more repressed" and "sterilizing" people and making them miserable.

does it not naturally occur to people, that acknowledging that having sex or displaying an interest in/enjoyment of sex is not in any way morally negative, does not necessarily mean that... sex is a completely neutral subject? in fact, sex might be one of the most goddamn complex subjects on this godforsaken planet. people could discuss and debate it for millenia and not reach a sound conclusion.

and acknowledging that sex can be a positive thing for many does not automatically erase it as a profoundly, overwhelmingly, destructively negative force that currently plagues our humanity. there are dozens upon dozens of human issues in which sexuality is the central focus in which it explicitly causes harm. several of them were even implied within this very post (pornography, unlawfully distributed nude photographs, and the overall ethics of sex clubs are dubious at best).

the core detail that any conversation about this topic needs to be founded upon is that there is a very, very important distinction between stigmatizing sex and criticizing sex culture, or even just having complex or uncomfortable feelings about how other people practice display their sexualities. treating them as synonymous is utterly irrational and completely unhelpful to anything.

This sounds like a shitpost but people should be allowed to be horny. As in, sexuality is just part of life for most people and there’s no reason for consensual sexual behavior to be punished. A celebrity getting “caught” at a sex club shouldn’t be a scandal. No one should be fired for having a fetlife profile outside of work. Nudes getting leaked shouldn’t be career-ending. Denying and hiding (consensual) sexual interests doesn’t make anyone more professional, it just makes everyone more repressed. And sterilizing ourselves to be better work drones isn’t productive, it’s just creepy. I’d rather my surgeon get absolutely railed on camera and come to work in a good mood, frankly.

[trans-axolotl]

so im going into therapy (or social work, more broadly) as a profession (in school rn). i know that not everyone in anti psych would support that, understandably, and im not under an illusion that therapy isnt tied to the whole system and process. but i want to bring a liberationist, anti-racist, pro-mad, and abolitionist ideology to help who i can

do you have any suggested resources or reading recommendations or idk any insight on how to inform the way i go about juggling anti psychiatry in a profession that is considered going hand in hand with it?

Hi anon.

I think there can be ways that people working in the psych system can leverage power and resources in a way where they're acting in solidarity with psych survivors and mad people, but in reality, this very rarely happens, even among professionals who identify as radical or as having lived experience.

Fundamentally, the psychiatric system is one that perpetuates structural violence, and in smaller and larger ways, anyone who works within the system to legitimize it contributes to and is complicit in that violence. So I think that for anyone who is planning to work within the system, you need to be upfront with yourself that there is harm occurring and that isn't something you can just ignore or act like that's something you're separate from. Even if you're not working inpatient or facilitating forced drugging of someone, there's still a lot of ways that therapists can be complicit in psychiatric violence.

One of the most obvious ways is through mandatory reporting. I believe that in order to be an ethical therapist you must break the law--mandatory reporting is a dangerous way that mad people are surveilled by the state, and therapists must work to interrupt that and prevent it. There are a lot of therapists out there already talking about practical ways to avoid mandatory reporting and how to be upfront with clients about it, and I can link some of that at the end of this post. I won't say it's always easy, but we have an obligation to each other to do everything we can to stop psych incarceration from happening.

I think there's a lot of ways that even outpatient, therapists are asked to enable other forms of psychiatric violence. Even if in your practice, you're really focusing on liberation, respecting autonomy, etc, there are ways that other psych professionals might try to get you to help them perpetuate different forms of harm. And because of your degree and licensure, there's this power imbalance between you and your client that means you do have the power to enable these kinds of harms. The degree next to your name means that you will always be believed over your client and that is a lot of power to hold. If you're working with a client with an eating disorder and their dietitian gives an ultimatum that they have to be hospitalized or they're refusing to provide care, what do you do? If your client's psychiatrist is refusing to answer questions or let them switch to other types of medications, what do you do? If your client is involved in a court case and you're getting subpoenaed for their medical records, what do you do? If your MSW program requires you to do one of your internships in an inpatient program, how do you prevent that from happening? There are a lot more examples I can think of, but these are just a few things I wanted to highlight for ways that therapy is still entangled in the larger system.

Another thing that feels important to me is to make the distinction between being a "good therapist" and helping people, because I don't think those things are the same. I see a lot of "radical" therapists get fixated on this idea that they need figure out ways to make the psych system run smoother, to improve access, to overall make the psych system better, and that this is the only way to help people. It's really important to be able to separate those ideas. For me, psych abolition is a project of building up our capacity to care for each other while destroying the systems that currently enact violence on us, and reformist ideas about expanding psychiatric systems, increasing funding, and legitimize psychiatric authority gets in the way of actually transforming care. I think in order to help people, you need to commit to being a "bad therapist" in the eyes of a capitalist healthcare system.

One recommendation I have is to read Franco Basaglia's writing and learn about his approach of the democratic psychiatry movement. As a psychiatrist, he saw his role as a way to disrupt the system and deinstitutionalize. He has this quote where he talks about how they weren't focused on eliminating problems, but rather on how deinstitutionalization would create more chaos and new problems--and how that created so much possibility for transformation. I think he's proof that there are certainly ways that psych professionals can act as accomplices who actually are in solidarity with psych survivors, but it's rare.

Last point I have is that although you gain something from professional training and licensure, there's also a lot you lose. MSW programs often don't actually teach you the skills you want to learn about how to actually support people--there's a lot you're going to have to learn from continuing education credits. From my friends who have gotten their MSW, I've heard a lot of complaints about how surface level a lot of information is, and also about how a lot of the way that information is taught reinforces hierarchal ideas and doesn't respect patient autonomy. I'll also say that gaining licensure oftentimes creates barriers for radical action--I've seen so many therapists who then become so attached to holding onto and not losing that licensure that they weigh it above mad people's lives. I've heard so many therapists say "Oh I can't speak up against restraint because I'll lose my job/I can't ignore mandatory reporting because I'll lose my license/etc etc etc." And I think that can be a really damaging mindset that harms your potential to actually help people. There are several therapists I know who are in the process of intentional de-licensure because of this, but regardless if you pursue that path or not, this is a mindset you need to be on guard against.

All that being said, I think there is a need for more abolitionist therapists who are able to help support our communities, both in terms of creating that space for individual support and on a collective level. There are ways that you can leverage your access to resources and the way you're seen as legitimate in the system to help advocate for people, get them support, and interfere with psych violence. I have a therapist comrade who keeps working in inpatient psychiatry specifically so that they can continue to sneak in banned materials to the ward, prevent illegal restraints, be involved in court proceedings as an advocate, connect people to mad liberation resources, let psych patients use their phone, document psychiatric abuse with the plan to fairly soon release that information as a whistleblower, and more that I'm not going to talk about publicly. They still grapple with the fact that they are currently perpetuating harm at the same time, but to them, it's worth it to be able to sabotage things in that way. And I think that there are ways that you can take the information you learn in your program that is actually useful and find ways to bring that directly to your communities, and that there is good you can. I just think you have to be very intentional and aware of what it takes to actually do that, rather than just staying complacent with the label of being a "radical therapist" without doing anything to make that true.

For resources--here's my psych abolition drive with a lot of different zines, books, workbooks on different psych abolition topics. I really would recommend reading Psychiatry Inside Out by Franco Basaglia as an example of successful psychiatric resistance.

I would also suggest checking out Mutual Aid/Self Social therapy--the people who created this project are trusted comrades of mine, have both gotten their MSW or LMFT, and they have a lot of helpful insight into how to navigate things like avoiding mandatory reporting, de-licensure, etc. They have a discord server and also have regular online MAST meetings to train people on what MAST is and how to set up a MAST collective.

Genuinely wishing you the best of luck through school and appreciate that you're actively thinking about these things.

[grandwitchbird]

Ethically strong games that are not indulgent:

Pillars of Eternity (and most obsidian games post-NV)

Death Stranding

Disco Elysium

The new GOW games (if you want a much stronger story about regret and mythic conflicts and family and responsibility after playing Veilguard: go here)

Ethically strong games that are pretty smart about using indulgence:

Fallout NV

Witcher 3/Cyberpunk

RDR2

Persona 3 portable fem MC route specifically

Every RGG game but especially Judgment and Yakuza 5, 6, 7, Gaiden

Sleeping Dogs

Bioshock

[bythehearts]

not to bring tiktok drama on tumblr but like every time a ‘scandal’ comes out with one of these ‘production companies’ that make fan films i always hope we’re finally gonna discuss how they professionalize something that should be an hobbyist endeavor… and yet every single time i’m disappointed.

[icewindandboringhorror]

examining a seemingly normal image only to slowly realize the clear signs of AI generated art.... i know what you are... you cannot hide your true nature from me... go back where you came from... out of my sight with haste, wretched and vile husk

[ashleeofjupiter]

Yeah, okay.

I just finished Life is Strange: Double Exposure and, despite my apprehension in the lead-up to its release... it's safe to say that I'm back on my LiS shit.

I have so many thoughts and feelings fja;vnrisfjkd;

[leonardalphachurch]

sometimes i remember that most north fans don’t write him as an absolute insane person ethical manipulative girlfriend style and i’m like. what is he even then… just a pleasant white man? you know what. more power to you if you need a pleasant white man for a blorbo but god that could not be me

[headfullof-ideas]

Doing a separate post for the tags i added at the end of my last one about Mildew. I also need to fix some of Stoick’s lines, because at first I didn’t have much of a plan for him, but after outlining the story more and winging some later scenes, I’ve built a character arc for him, and also fleshed out more of his opinions and views on the raids as Chief of one of the tribes most affected by them. And after re-reading some chapters to figure out where to shove Mildew and his complaining in, I realized some lines might be a bit more antagonistic than they need to be, or entirely out of character for the character i have planned. I think I’ll write a character study for him after I’ve finished writing and posting the first film, about the character I’ve written for my story, and his mindset on everything and why he’s the way he is at the start of the story. But I need to fix some of his lines as they don’t exactly fit the character I’ve been building now

[bigskydreaming]

The thing that absolutely drives me wild about Batman as a concept is that Bruce Wayne COULD change Gotham on a systemic level, with a proper commitment of his resources, I feel. Money absolutely is a gamechanger and a billionaire's wealth is like. Staggering when you actually think about it. There's a reason we talk about how the ten richest people in the world could change the entire world if they just stopped hoarding their resources and used them for the fullest benefit of all, and like yeah one billionaire isn't going to single-handedly change the world (particularly if the others are setting up roadblocks), but one city, Gotham, as a proof of concept? It could be done. It wouldn't be easy, it wouldn't be fast, but like....the kind of resources Bruce has to devote to things....it could be done.

And that's the kind of exploration I would kill to see in comics. And its also why I have very little patience for the "but you guys act like Bruce Wayne never does anything for the city except as Batman, he supports all these charities, he makes sure WE employees have the best benefits, employs tons of jobs, etc"....nah. We're talking about BILLIONS. He could do more. If you want me to believe that a literal billionaire is committing the fullest thrust of his resources to maximizing the potential of his city and the lives of everyone in it, then you can't give me this bare minimum bullshit, because it will always come across as him just doing the comic book equivalent of doing philanthropic work as a tax write-off. If nothing visibly is changing in Gotham's status quo, and nothing is visibly changing in terms of Bruce's personal bottom line and his wealth and resources....then no, you're not going to impress me with that because he's ultimately still not doing anything that real world 1 percenters aren't already doing.

And sorry not sorry, but I'm not gonna buy the whole ethical billionaire thing ON THE BASIS that "but he's a comic book character, you can't apply real world optics/expectations so yeah in comics it IS possible to be an ethical billionaire" if ultimately, you're still playing it safe with this character and he's at best still just matching particularly charitable real world one percenters. Like, if he's still a billionaire....he could be doing more. Ethical billionaires don't exist not because real world and comic books are different, they don't exist because ethically, nobody NEEDS to be a billionaire so a truly ethical billionaire would at a certain point have divested himself of so much of his personal wealth in an effort to help others that he would technically no longer be a billionaire.

(And yes, I'm aware there have been times Bruce hasn't been a billionaire but never because of what I'm talking about here, that's always been as a reactive consequence to storylines aimed at villains targeting his wealth, etc).

So....writing Dick as having essentially given away enough money that he no longer counts as a billionaire IS a more honest approach to that particular issue than the usual "oh well Bruce regularly gives more to charity than anyone else, etc" stuff. I will give it that.

BUT.

The reason I don't give Taylor any ground here is because like. As much as I truly believe that an honest to God billionaire's resources could definitively act as a game-changer to the status quo of at least a single city, if properly utilized.....

You have to show the work.

And that's the part Taylor never had any interest in. He talked a big game about having Dick realize that this was bigger than anything he could conceive on his own, that he asked everyone around him the best way to go about things, blah blah blah....but he never actually...SHOWED what any of that looked like, beyond the most shallow, superficial level.

I believe that comics have the potential to act as....social laboratories in a way, extrapolations of what society or social dynamics or societal interactions COULD look like if we were able to change various real world parameters....such as disenfranchised individuals having superpowers that could make them the equivalent of entire institutions or states attempting to oppress them, for instance. Or the application of a billionaire's wealth and resources devoid of having to bear the weight/burden of the exploitation that would HAVE to be at the root of that much initial wealth if it was wealth accrued in a real world setting. Or with X-Men comics in recent years, the examination of is it even possible for an ethical ethnostate to exist if one could theoretically be enacted without a displacement of an initial population or actual colonization, the crimes against humanity that go hand in hand with any real world attempt to create an ethnostate BECAUSE of the logistics of forming one in a real world setting, etc.

But it means nothing if you attempt to handwave a radical change to the status quo as just a progressive front, like Taylor did IMO, without having any genuine interest in doing that in order TO explore a specific vision of the future, a specific ethical/moral question, any kind of real thought experiment or extrapolation of some aspect of the world-as-is in pursuit of imagining the world-as-it-could-be.

And there was none of that in Taylor's Nightwing run. Same as there was none of that when he had Jean Grey do pretty much the EXACT SAME THING on a nation-building level in X-Men Red, with her literally going around to various visionaries, scientists, philosophers, etc and going "hey let's brainstorm how to make the world better for mutants" and then making a big deal about I've done it! I've figured out a better road forward!

....and never fucking showing even a hint of what that actually looks like, beyond employing a bunch of buzzwords that sound great on a completely superficial to the point of meaninglessness level, but utterly lack in substance the very second you start to scratch at the surface to see if there's anything more underneath that gloss.

Taylor's Dick Grayson said all the right words to come across as heroic but humble, "I'm committed to doing the right thing" but with only vague gestures at what the right thing is and "I'm smart enough to know I don't have all the answers" but never making an actual attempt at coming up with ANY answers vs just doing an "inclusive world tour" of people he asks for the answers or to help him find the answers that ultimately is just the height of performative....

Because no actual conclusions are ever drawn about WHAT to do. No actual novel ideas or ground-breaking risks are proposed. Absolutely nothing about the status quo in Bludhaven is ACTUALLY changed on ANY level that we can actually SEE....

Its just Taylor (through Dick) saying no I've done it, see, I've changed the status quo.

....DID YOU, though?

And yeah, like Em said, that's why Watters already has 110% more of my attention because like. Even with unlimited resources and the BEST of intentions....which I do believe Dick Grayson would always have, if embarking on a quest to truly enact societal change on a large scale....

NOBODY has the answers for how one individual can change an entire city. But that doesn't mean you're saying shit by just having the comics emphasize Dick saying "oh I don't have the answers" before then jumping to "but let's pretend that what I'm doing here IS the answer anyway."

The REAL follow-up to one man acknowledging he alone does not have the answers and has no infallible blueprint or roadmap to making a better future for his city is not just being like "oh I'm just a mere mortal, I can't figure this out on my own" -

It's following up on his attempts to change things and owning the fact that MISTAKES ARE GONNA BE MADE.

And the real crucible for him as THIS kind of hero is going to be what he does in the face of mistakes he makes when trying to change things on this level, wield societal power on this scale, all while not having a divine mandate that ensures he'll get shit right on the first try.

THAT'S the struggle I'm actually interested in seeing....and whether that convinces Dick its a mistake to try and be this ambitious and reverts him back to just regular day to day street vigilantism....or whether we get to see him pivoting and learning and growing from these mistakes, accepting the responsibility of them without making them an excuse to just stop trying to make things better.

I'm bored of heroes who have the power to change the world but never fucking do anything world-changing with the power because "oh we don't have the right to dream that big" because like....there's a point there, sure, but I don't particularly think that needs to be the point of every single story that imagines people with that level of power. I think there's room for stories about heroes with that power who can acknowledge and own the fact that hey, maybe nobody has the right to wield that much power but that doesn't necessarily change the fact that they DO have that much power and inaction IS still a choice in how to wield world-changing power....even if its simply by not wielding that power and thereby being complicit in the perpetuation of a broken status quo.

I DO want to read stories about someone - particularly someone who does have experience being disenfranchised and at the mercy of those with far more social power than him - being like okay, this is where I'm at. This is the reality....things need changing and I am in a position to change things, and maybe I'm not the right person for that job but maybe there is no right person and I'm just trying to avoid responsibility by saying oh this is too much responsibility.

But like. If you're going to write that story, you have to actually WRITE THAT STORY. We have to SEE this journey unfold on the page. And you have to go into that journey knowing that your hero is gonna get shit wrong before he gets stuff right, and the consequences of that HAVE to be major. Because playing with things on this scale IS major. It demands that kind of scrutiny.

And Taylor didn't want to do any of that, and that's why I have no respect for the lip service his stories pay towards showing a better, more progressive tomorrow. He never actually SHOWS anything. He talks about how his characters are going to make that future, has them make a lot of promises about how things will be different, and then goes right back to writing a next issue where literally nothing is different in any tangible, substantive way.

But if you want to actually write about, imagine, envision a better future for your characters to help bring about, you need to actually bring something to the table. An actual vision, an imagining, a step forward that readers can actually follow and be like okay, we're with you so far....

Rather than just throwing a bunch of characters at a buzzword dartboard and expecting readers to do all the work of imagining what the better future these characters are all talking about and promising might actually look like, and how any of them actually get from the Point A that is the status-quo-in-current-comics to the Point B that is your-claims-for-what-the-current-status-quo-in-comics-could-someday-become.

@hood-ex Do you happen to have that post handy where you talked about the differences in Watters' approach to having Dick try and tackle social issues in Bludhaven vs Taylor's more shallow "look I had him create a foundation, it fixed things, I don't intend to explore why or how but trust me, it fixed stuff" approach? I noticed it when I was online briefly a couple weeks ago and I was like "that sounds right but I don't know enough to support it" at the time, but I've caught up and now I feel like I know enough. I would like to support it.

[completeoveranalysis]

[11]

Ok ok ok I’m all for this but I’m not sure I follow. 

Mokona asks if the integrity of time and space is coming apart due to Evil Wolverine shenanigans, and Yuuko says yes. This thematically and chronologically matches up the parallel conversation they had in Tsubasa, noting that reason itself was coming apart due to Evil Wolverine. 

That part I get, but the reason Mokona asks this is because the time frame Kohane received the feather doesn’t match up with when the feathers were scattered. 

Which like, was already the case across the multiverse wasn’t it? Time flows differently everywhere, so sometimes the feathers showed up a hundred years before we the readers see the world at all, but it was all technically at the same time. Like in Fai’s world, when the feathers showed up who knows how long ago, but when he shows up in Tsubasa it’s only moments after we see the feathers get scattered in the first place. 

So is THAT the product of Evil Wolverine as well? Or is that just the normal universe schedule, and Kohane received the feather even more out of sync than other people?

I suppose it depends entirely on when the feather actually showed up, which we don’t particularly know I think? How do you even track time in xxxHolic?

BUT. 

I SUPPOSE, ALL THAT ASIDE, we can just not pay attention to the specific details that I’m not sure we have and just focus on the important things, such as:

Time and space are falling apart

And

Sakura’s feathers show up to people who want to protect others

WHICH… TRACKS?

Actually that’s an amazing detail to throw in here unprompted. I’m mentally going over all the ones I can remember and it does seem to be the case. I especially like how this echoes with Fai discovering his one in the wild, while trying to protect the townspeople, and using the other to create Chii, who he used to protect his brother and later Ashura. 

NEAT.

[void-botanist]

Rose's Kiss Week Day 6: Home Alone

OCs: Sierra Callawel and Ian Carlisle (Spinder's oldest sister and her husband)

Words: 1189

Content warnings: none

Notes: Ian's canid form is a common raccoon dog. It is also well-known that shifting to that form makes you itchy.

When Sierra looked up from her computer, she could see the full moon hanging too-large over the faraway trees outside her window.  She’d lost track of time.  Ian would be transformed, now, and she hadn’t seen him at all.  She locked her computer and stood up.  The kids were out, so making a circuit of the house wouldn’t draw them out of their rooms and interrupt the nice night she wanted to spend alone with her husband.

“Ian?” she called as she started up the stairs.  “Where are you?”

She heard a mournful squeaky-toy noise from somewhere down the hall and smiled to herself as she went to find the source of it.  When she flipped on the light in her bedroom, she got a louder and angrier squeak from the bed, where a golden brown and black fluff of a dog was burying his little face under his front paws.

“Sorry,” she said, going to turn on her bedside lamp before turning off the overhead light.  He didn’t raise his head until she sat down on the side of the bed, and then he tried to crawl in her lap immediately.

Laughing, she held him back gently and got fully onto the bed, leaning back against the headboard before she let him snuffle his way into her space.  He seemed content to put his paws across her legs and rest his head on them, but she scooped him up all the way, holding him close against her.  His response was to put his paws on her arm and set his head there instead.  He was probably just tired after transforming, but he always looked so cute and sad in his dog form, and it made her want to hug him tighter.  So she did, pressing her cheek to the top of his fuzzy little head and then kissing him there.  He let out a longer squeak, stretching his neck out further, and as she petted his head she followed his gaze to the brush he’d set out for her.  Oh, of course.  Grabbing it was a bit of a stretch, and she almost dumped him out of her arms accidentally, but once it was in her hand she settled him in her lap and began running it through his fur in long strokes, head to rump.  Instantly he was a dog-shaped puddle in her lap, his only reaction little snuffles of pleasure.  

When she paused to pull out the mat of hair that had collected in the brush, he rolled over onto his back, cradled in her crossed legs.  She scratched behind his ears while she drew the brush along the contours of his ribcage and haunches and arms.  He didn’t even tense as she carefully brought it over his neck and chin.  As soon as she set the brush aside, though, he was getting back out of her lap, jumping down onto the floor with a cacophony of clicking nails and pausing in the doorway to look back at her.  She smiled and followed him back downstairs to the kitchen, where he waited by the table while she got their dinner out of the fridge: sliced chicken, lentils, and a touch of cranberry sauce.  For him, at least.  She could have as much as she wanted.  His was already in a bowl, so once she pried off the lid she set it in front of him on the floor.  He wagged his tail but didn’t move.  While she made her own plate from the main bowls of food, she saw him bend down and sniff his bowl, his eyes never leaving her.  

“You can start without me,” she said.  

He made a sound somewhere between a shriek and a growl and sat straight again. With a laugh she returned the food bowls to the fridge and brought her plate to the table.  

“Blessed be the fruits of the earth, and us among them,” she said, and he squeaked out the same cadence before shoving his face in his bowl.  She ate with half an eye on him inhaling his food, mostly because his enthusiasm was adorable.  

On the way back to bed she carried him up the stairs, letting him jump down on the bed before she got into her pajamas.  He didn’t stay on the bed, though, since she had to go to the bathroom to brush her teeth and he apparently had the energy now to not let her leave his sight.  He brushed against her ankles where she stood in front of the sink, hopped in the bathtub, and started rolling around on the textured treads on the bottom of it.  That was why he was accompanying her.  He’d told her before that there was something sublime about the feeling of the bathtub treads specifically that he really couldn’t explain.  He didn’t feel that way about them in human form.  She didn’t care as long as he didn’t leave his fur in the tub, though she was often the one who cleared it out to take a shower anyway.  But it was worth it to see him being so happy in there.  When she left the bathroom, he followed, and she scooped him back onto the bed.  He curled up right next to her while she read her book for a bit.  After she turned out the light, he yipped along with her presleep prayer, and she gave him a last pet on the head before relaxing into the dark.

At the crack of dawn the sudden weight on the bed woke her.  In the light that sifted around the edges of the curtains she could see Ian, now fully human, getting under the covers.  He turned his back to her—he might not even remember that his transformation always woke her up—but she came over to him anyway, putting a hand on his side as she kissed his shoulder.  When he shifted onto his back, she kissed his scratchy cheek, then gave him a peck on the lips before leaning back on her elbow to look at him.  There was always something a little canine about him to her, but it was stronger when he’d just come back—the way he blinked at her like a sleepy dog melded with the way he still smelled of fur.  And it was his smell, because he smelled the same if she met him in the middle of the hallway, or raiding the fridge downstairs.  After he took a shower it would fade, but for now she breathed it deeply.  She could never explain it to anyone but him, but these were the hours when he smelled most like himself, like her Ian.    

His hand slipped into the curls at the back of her head, guiding her into a deeper kiss.  She wrapped an arm around his warm chest as he smoothed his other hand over her shoulder.  He kissed her a second time, then ever so gently pushed her away.  

“Okay, I’m sleeping now,” he said with a tired smile.

She caressed his cheek, then laid back on her side of the bed.  “Goodnight.”

RKW taglist: @jezifster @kk7-rbs @vacantgodling

Shifters taglist: @outpost51 @kk7-rbs

[bmpmp3]

the villainess flips the script is a really fun manhwa with gorgeous art and my wonderful son luca who is a little bitch who i love so much BUT i will say. the family tree situation as the story has gone on makes my head hurt

[derpinette]

i have a physiognomy that is so aching for a cigarette

[designernishiki]

oh baby I knew it from the fuckin moment the addc was introduced that there’s just no damn way they DIDNT have some legally sketchy shit going on with the alzheimers/dementia patients and unethical clinical trials. I feel so vindicated right now