#what the eff is an ask tag

[askcapital]

[ @ask-the-shiny-pokemons / @bluedoodles ]

[desceros]

fucking leo isn’t enough i need to peg him

anon-chan you are So Right, how does it feel to be the most correct person i've ever met

[theymightbegeorge]

.

[nvrswrld]

can you do rodrick heffley x gn reader who is also in a band and is the drummer ? maybe like an enemies/rivals to lovers situation idk

You and I — Rodrick Heffley

"Without you there is no reason for my story / And when I'm with you I can always act the same / Forever, yeah, if we're together / We can make it better"

— in which your rivalry finally concludes.

rodrick heffley x gn!reader

tags: rivals to lovers, not proof-read, kinda rushed at the end

notes: bless your soul for requesting this, i had literally so much fun writing it <33 i also took inspiration from lemonade mouth for the setting, which is a fuckin banger movie

Like a coyote and a lamb. Like a predator and its prey. He was always there—watching. Waiting for the moment you slipped up. At least, that was his excuse. Whenever someone asked, "hey Rodrick, if you hate y/n so much, why are you always showing up to their band's gigs?" he'd always say the same thing.

He craved your embarrassment. It's always been that way.

You had a better reputation. Despite your band being as popular as his (so not very), people never criticized it because your music was decent. And you—in his eyes—were perfect. You were everything he sometimes wished he was. You had what he wanted. Even if what you had wasn't much to be proud of, he still wanted it. Rodrick Heffley was jealous of you. Of the way people looked at you and not him. So, to see him sitting at a table all alone, staring right at you; not trying to be subtle in the slightest. It wasn't surprising, and it definitely wasn't new. In fact, you'd be shocked if he missed any of your gigs.

You were playing at a pizza joint, which was probably not the ideal place for a rock band to play, but your group was taking whatever they could get. A gig is a gig and publicity is publicity. It was a win-win in your book. Aside from Rodrick's envious glare from across the room, it was a good night.

Until after you guys played, at least. See, there were four of you. Ryan, the lead guitarist. Courtney, the vocalist. Owen, the bassist. And you, the drummer. All four of you were equally a mess. A very unorganized mess.

After playing, you treated yourselves to pizza and refreshments to celebrate a good night. The thing was that Courtney and Ryan were dating, and they weren't uncomfortable with the concept of PDA. Fortunately for Owen, his mom picked him up early. You, however, were not lucky, meaning that after taking a moment in the bathroom, you came back to see the booth you were sitting at empty, aside from the leftover food.

You knew Ryan and Courtney long enough to know what happened. They were either making out in the backseat of his car, or they left the property completely and drove back to one of their houses to make out. And considering the fact that Ryan was the one who picked you up, you were completely fucked. Your dad's car was stuck at a repair shop and your mom had no clue how to drive. You couldn't even catch an Uber because you were broke as hell.

Maybe it was fate, or maybe it was the universe being your number one hater.

One thing led to another and now you're sitting in the passenger seat of Rodrick's van, holding onto the grab handle for dear life as he sped down the street. Your drum set slid around the back of the van, taking hard hits every time he took a sharp turn. If he kept this up any longer, you'd probably get carsick.

"For the love of all things holy, slow down!" You desperately yelled over the sound of the engine purring. He gave you an unimpressed look before sighing and slamming his foot onto the brake, making the car come to a sudden stop. You almost flew out of your seat from the impact.

"Of course," he began, "leave it to y/n to ruin the fun." You brushed your hair out of your face and sent a glare his way.

"I'm sooo sorry for worrying about our safety," you shot back sarcastically. "Could you maybe try to drive like a normal person, for a change?" He glanced out his car window and smirked, pretending to put effort into considering your request.

"Huh, let me think about it... No." His smirk dropped and was replaced with his usual look of displeasure. You scoffed and threw your head back against the headrest in defeat. You should've known asking him such a thing would be a waste of breath. It's not like this was your first time driving with him. Every time you asked for him to slow down, he just ignored you; pretending that he couldn't hear you basically screaming over the engine. But for some reason, he didn't do that this time...

When he started driving again, he only went two miles over the speed limit instead of the usual twenty-plus. He was listening to you, and it was weird. Not that you hated it. Much like any normal person, you were quite grateful that your life wasn't currently on the line because of an idiot of a driver. It didn't even make sense for him to have a driver's license.

At least, you assumed he had one.

Thanks to the speed he was going, you managed to calm your racing heart and relax your muscles. You let go of the grab handle and let your hands fall to your lap. A beat of silence passed as Rodrick focused on the road.

"Did you enjoy yourself?" You asked, referring to the gig. The boy beside you didn't spare you a glance, keeping his eyes focused on the road in the meantime.

"Do you even have to ask?"

"Y'know, you usually say no, but I saw you bopping your head a few times." In response to your comment, he slammed the brakes a second time, causing your body to fly forward aggressively. You cursed under your breath and rubbed the back of your head to soothe the pain from banging into the headrest.

He, however, was unfazed and proceeded to drive. "Can it, asswipe." But you could see the hint of a smile creeping up on the corner of his lips. You rolled your eyes and rested your head against the car door window. "Why are you so..."

"So?"

"...I don't know. Why do you hate me so much?" It's not like you ever did anything to hurt him. When you first met, you tried to be nothing but kind to him. Yet, ever since he found out about your little talent, he made his strong disdain for you clearer than glass. "It's like you enjoy being confusing."

He hesitated, debating on whether to answer your question or leave you guessing. On one hand, he didn't feel like having this conversation with you, but on the other, he knew that you wouldn't take the latter for an answer.

"I don't hate you. What makes you say that?" He asked innocently, trying his best to walk around your question. You gave him a look of disbelief and sneered at his utter bullshit lie.

"You don't hate me? Yeah okay, that explains why you're always glaring at me at every chance you get. Why you always mock me whenever I say literally anything. Why you try to get in crashes every time you drive me home."

"To be fair, I always drive like that," he spoke in defense. "And I don't glare at you all the time."

"Then what—the hell—were you doing while I was playing?"

"Inspecting you." You rolled your eyes for what had to have been the hundredth time that night. Of course he wasn't holding himself accountable; why would he? He didn't owe you anything, and you never expected any less. "You're not special, y/n. Are you that self-centered that you think I have a problem with you?"

That question angered you. He was obviously trying to get under your skin, and by God, it was working. "I'm not self-centered, dipshit. I'm observant. So now that we're alone, you might as well tell me what your problem is, Rodrick."

For the second time, he was silenced. But it only lasted for a little while. Contrary to the stern look on his face, his voice was soft. "I don't hate you, y/n," he reiterated. "You're just... I don't know how to feel about you."

It was like a never-ending battle with himself. He wanted to hate you, but he couldn't. He had no valid reason to. You were nice to him no matter how many times he chose to be a dick to you. He wasn't confusing, Rodrick thought. You were confusing. Why were you so nice to him? He never deserved it. How long would it take for your patience to finally run low? Yeah, you were doing better than him in terms of social hierarchy, but you had no control over people liking you. And that answered a question for him so flawlessly: if you weren't in the picture, would anything change? Would he have the spotlight?

The answer was short, but far from sweet. Nothing would change. He'd still be the Rodrick that everyone knew and hated. You were a naturally likable person, while he was the odd one out. If he was to hate anyone, it should've been himself.

"You annoy the hell out of me and you don't even have to try." It was absurd. "You make me think about how much of an asshole I am, and I hate thinking about my actions." You held back a laugh but allowed a smile to fall upon your face.

He continued his rant. "I guess what I'm thinking is that you're a perfect example of who people want me to be. And with you being a drummer as well, it's just even more annoying. Like a comparison for everyone to see." It was like he was in your shadow, and you weren't even aware of it.

You took a deep breath and let the air escape through your nose. His words were a lot to take in, and you weren't expecting such hard-hitting reasoning from such a dull guy. Then again, you always knew he didn't apply his full potential in certain situations, so it was hard to tell with him. "Rodrick," you started, your voice soft and understanding, "I'm not all that great, and I really hope you know that. Don't beat yourself up just because I'm too much of a coward to be mean to people."

He raised an eyebrow at your words, urging you to keep talking. You complied. "The only reason why I'm not going around cursing people out is because I'm actually trying to not get my ass beat. I don't like everyone—hell, I barely like anyone at that fucked up school. But that's what differentiates us. I'm a coward and you're not."

You spoke with full sincerity and vulnerability. You were opening up to him. "It's not like I'm a perfect angel or something. I'm just a pussy. And sometimes I wish I were as confident as you are."

The only reason why you were a sweetheart to everyone was to avoid conflict. Rodrick bit his bottom lip as he listened to you. "So you just let people walk all over you? Seriously?"

"That's the only reason so many people like me," you answered. "People don't care about you being nice. It's all about whether you're a doormat or not." You unfortunately had a point. People only came to you when they needed something. "You aren't a doormat and you're not afraid to be yourself. That's why people hate you."

"So you shouldn't hate me, or whatever the case is," you explained. "Because, truth be told, you're better than me."

That last sentence was enough to make him do a double-take. At first, he was surprised at your admission, but now he was laughing. You furrowed your eyebrows, assuming that he wasn't taking your heartfelt commentary seriously. "What's so funny?"

Rodrick shook his head as he continued to snicker. "Man, I never thought I'd live to see the day you'd admit that I'm better than you." He hit your shoulder playfully with the back of his free hand, completely ignoring your semi-annoyed expression.

"Rodrick, I'm being serious."

"I know that. That's what makes it hilarious." Eventually, his van drove up to a red light and came to a stop. He rubbed his face with his hands and let out one last airy laugh. "Shit, y/n..."

You glared at him for a few more seconds before staring down at your lap. A smile slowly forced its way onto your face. You wanted to laugh because of him. He was so childish...

"I really couldn't hate you if I wanted to," he confessed. "Thanks for the compliment though, dork."

You didn't think much of his comment. Instead, you enjoyed the one rare time you and him weren't trying to strangle each other. Not like you ever hated it. It was more entertaining than anything, and you looked forward to it most days. Sometimes, the insults he called you were a little too funny to ruin your day. Now that you thought about it, Rodrick never did offend you. You liked your stupid little rivalry.

...huh.

"...I don't hate you either," you muttered awkwardly. "In case you're wondering."

"I knew that, but I never understood why." You simply shrugged and watched the cars beside you begin to move once the light turned green again.

"You never gave me a reason to. I mean, I never really took your insults seriously." You didn't need to look at him to know that he was unsure about what you were saying. "You're not as intimidating as you think you are. Far from it actually."

"Oh really? Then what am I to you?" He asked. You could've sworn there was some sort of smug aura to him. "What do you want to be?" You questioned. He shook his head with his signature smile, refusing to answer your question. He wasn't smiling out of joy, he was smiling out of uneasiness. "That's a stupid question to ask."

"Why are you avoiding it?"

"Because it's stupid."

"You basically asked me the same thing!"

"Yet you never answered me." He got you there. But you weren't sure how to answer the question. It was like trying to take a shot at someone in the dark. What was Rodrick to you? You were never sure if you could consider him a friend, but he wasn't your enemy as far as you were concerned.

"I don't know what you are to me," you answered truthfully. "Seriously, we have, like, a love-hate relationship or something... Not that I can even call it that since I don't hate you. So, I don't know."

You turned to him and stared at him with your curious eyes. "Now answer my question."

As you said that, he pulled into the driveway of your house. He pulled his hand away from the steering wheel and folded his arms against his chest. He looked down at his lap, much like what you did whenever you got nervous or annoyed. "Alright, I'll be real with you."

"It wouldn't, like, suck if I was, like, yours, or something." You paused. Actually, it felt like the whole world paused at that moment. Rodrick Heffley, that demon of a boy, liked you. You weren't embarrassed. You were shocked. Mainly because all of that tormenting he did was just an act, and that was a little hard to believe. But it all made sense once you remembered what he told you.

He couldn't hate you if he wanted to.

Once the shock finally cleared, you grinned and scratched at your neck anxiously. "Oh yeah? That's how you feel?"

"That's what I said, isn't it?" You rolled your eyes and unbuckled your seatbelt before opening the door and climbing out of his van. "Come help me." Rodrick let out a groan that was mixed with both annoyance and fear. Fear that you would make fun of him for thinking of you in such a way. He got out on his side and sluggishly walked to the back of the van to help you carry your drum set to your garage.

"Y'know, you can just hurry up and hit me with the 'ew no, don't ever talk to me again'," he offered. "It wouldn't be the first time I heard it."

"What makes you think I'd say that?" You inquired. He let out a scoff. "Why wouldn't you?" It would make more sense if you did.

You both stayed silent as you brought your equipment back to your garage. When you finished, Rodrick began to walk back to his van. But you stopped him before he could get back in.

"Hey, Rod?" He hummed and turned around to face you. You walked up to him, took him by his cheek using your thumb and index finger, and pulled him down so you could press a short peck onto his lips. Afterward, you pulled away from his lips but stayed in his proximity. "Call me when you get home," you ordered in a quiet, smooth tone, "okay?"

He stared down at you in astonishment, his mouth hanging ajar as he tried to process what the hell happened in the last ten seconds.

"Uh—yeah, uh... I can do that," he muttered bashfully. You responded with a 'good' and gently patted his cheek two times before walking to your front door as if you hadn't just flipped the guy's entire world upside down.

"I'll be waiting," you called out before shutting the door and leaving Rodrick outside, frozen in place.

It was totally fate.

written by @nvrswrld

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Rsync corrump linkdump

I'm coming to DEFCON! On Aug 9, I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On Aug 10, I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

As per the uje, I've arrived upon a Saturday with a backlog of links that I have not managed to squeeze into the week's newsletters/blogs, so it's time for another linkdump, 22nd in an erratic series. Here's the previous 21:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

Let's start with some seasonal material, and by "seasonal," I of course mean Hallowe'en. Yes, August is the official start of Spooky Season, and yes, I am a monster for insisting on this, but being a monster is the point of Spooky Season (which is what differentiates Spooky Season pushers like me from the creeps who insist that you need to start prepping for Xmas in late September – they're monsters, too, but Yule Monsters are bad) (with the exception of Krampus).

I was a monster kid and now I'm a monster adult. It all started when I was bitten by a radioactive Haunted Mansion at the age of six:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/10/22/how-a-haunted-mansion-addict-fell-in-love-with-the-greatest-ride-on-earth/

I am a sucker for all things monstrous, and so I was intrigued when I got a book of "creepy-cute" stickers in the mail from a publicist at Simon & Schuster:

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Creepy-Cute-Sticker-Book/Gaynor-Carradice/Creepy-Cute-Gift-Series/9781507222515

"Creepy-Cute" turns out to be an official designation, embraced by the illustrator GaynorCarradice, who has created several books on these lines, featuring her chibi/monster crossover creations, which do exactly what it says on the tin, by which I mean, there's some genuinely creepy stuff in the mix, along with the cute.

It's when the cute pastels rub up against the gore, skulls, eyeballs and other visceral viscera that these illustrations really kick off some heat – I've rounded up a few of my favorites here:

https://craphound.com/images/creepycute.jpg

One of the surefire signs that Spooky Season is upon us is that the (sometimes NSFW) Tumblr account Halloweenlandmotherfucker emerges from dormancy with a stream of images of vintage Hallowe'en cards (these were a thing!), photos of people in costume and other delightful visual novelties:

https://www.tumblr.com/halloweenlandmotherfucker

Monster culture isn't just for Hallowe'en, of course. The ancient and noble tradition of compiling and publishing bestiaries is alive and well, thanks to RPGs. In the beginning, there was the D&D Boxed Set, with its Monsters and Treasure booklet:

https://www.americanroads.us/DandD/ODnD_Monsters_and_Treasure.pdf

Then came the Monster Manual, the first hardcover D&D book, succeeded by the Fiend Folio, which featured Charlie Stross creations like the githzerai and slaad, Indeed, there was a whole, iconic library of hardcovers that fit perfectly in an oversized backpack that I dragged everywhere so that I could obsessively read and re-read them.

Eventually, these gave way to new hardcovers with new rules as well as new corporate owners (Wizards of the Coast, then Hasbro), culminating in the release of the Open Gaming License, an "open content" license that was a) grossly defective; b) largely irrelevant; and c) hugely controversial in 2023, when Hasbro terminated it:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/12/beg-forgiveness-ask-permission/#whats-a-copyright-exception

The Open Gaming License purported to license out game elements that weren't copyrightable (rules, tables, etc), as well as material that you could likely use under copyright exceptions like fair use:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/01/beware-gifts-dragons-how-dds-open-gaming-license-may-have-become-trap-creators

And worst of all, it was revocable, so games publishers who tooled up to publish supplements and sourcebooks based on the OGL could have the rug yanked out from under them at any time (that time turned out to be early 2023).

Hasbro's OGL rug-pull had three salutary effects:

I. It gave gamers a crash-course in what was – and wasn't – copyrightable in an RPG design;

It encouraged game developers to look beyond D&D's OGL rules and into truly open (and often superior) alternatives; and

It inflicted so much reputational harm on Hasbro that, 20 months later, they announced that they would release a new set of D&D rules under the Creative Commons Attribution Only 4.0 license:

https://www.dicebreaker.com/games/dungeons-and-dragons-5e/news/dungeons-and-dragons-2024-srd-wont-be-another-ogl-fiasco

Now, CC BY 4.0 is a real-ass license. Notably, it corrects a defect in the earlier versions of the CC licenses that gave rise to a class of predatory copyleft trolls like the odious Pixsy:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/24/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-licenses-has-enabled-a-new-breed-of-superpredator/

If Hasbro follows through on their promise, the new CC materials will kick off with the 2025 release of the next edition of the Monster Manual:

https://dungeonsanddragonsfan.com/new-2024-dnd-monster-manual/

It's wild to think that tabletop RPGs are now a cutting-edge way to learn about digital policy, but on the other hand, D&D arrived in my home around the same time as my Apple ][+, which was also around the time I first heard the name Ronald Reagan (rest in piss).

The legacies of the 80s – RPGs, digital technology and Reaganomics – cast a long shadow. Last month, many of us discovered the hard way that Reaganomics – specifically, the embrace of monopolies as "efficient" – has produced a world of unimaginable brittleness. Millions of people around the world found themselves cut off from ATM cash, flights, hospital care, and many other essentials thanks to the Crowdstrike Blue Screen of Death outage. While many of the explainers have focused on how Crowdstrike fatfingered a software update that crashed all those computers, there's been a lot less commentary about how it is that one company had it in its power to do so much harm.

Writing last week for EFF's Deeplinks blog, my colleague Rory Mir tackled that (far more important) issue:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/07/crowdstrike-antitrust-and-digital-monoculture

Market concentration – monopoly – is the common thread wound around so many of our daily horribles. Think of the tech billionaires who threw in their lot with Trump last month. How did they get to be billionaires? Monopoly power. Remember back in 2017, that notorious photo of the tech industry meeting at the top of Trump Tower, with Peter Thiel at Trump's left hand?

https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/14/donald-trump-meets-with-tech-leaders/

People were appalled that this group of corporate leaders, who between them controlled virtually all the technology in our lives, would debase themselves by paying fealty to this buffoonish would-be dictator.

But far more consequential was the fact that you could fit everyone who controlled all of our technology around a single table. Once everyone important to an industry can fit around a single table, it's only a matter of time until they find a table to sit around, and that's when it all starts to go wrong. As the Communist firebrand Adam Smith once wrote, "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

Enshittification starts with market concentration. This is a subject I'm going to be going very deep on next Saturday, when I give my Defcon keynote, "Disenshittify or die! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification":

https://info.defcon.org/event/?id=54861

When I give that talk – and afterwards at my book signing – I will be wearing an N95 mask, just as I did last year. Why am I wearing a mask? Two reasons: first, Long Covid is a horror. One of the best writers I know – a living legend – recently told me that their book-writing days are likely done because of Long Covid brain fog.

A new Lancet article gets deep into the science of Long Covid:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S014067362401136X

The principle author of the Lancet article is Oxford health professor Trish Greenhalgh, who gave an excellent lay summary in her newsletter:

https://independentsage.substack.com/p/long-covid-a-dystopian-game-of-pinball

In particular, Greenhalgh describes why some people don't get Long Covid, and some people do – and, most important, explains why the fact that you didn't get Long Covid last time doesn't mean you won't get it next time:

https://independentsage.substack.com/p/long-covid-a-dystopian-game-of-pinball

So I don't want to get covid, and so I'm gonna wear a mask. Because masks fucking work. A new study reveals just how well they work:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/ebiom/article/PIIS2352-3964(24)00192-0/fulltext

The study shows that wearing any mask, even without knowing how to fit it well, offers substantial protection against both contracting and transmitting covid. Even better: wearing an N95 (even without paying attention to correct fit) offers "near perfect" protection against covid:

https://today.umd.edu/n95-masks-nearly-perfect-at-blocking-covid-umd-study-shows

I didn't get covid at Defcon last year, and I didn't get it at HOPE, and I didn't get it on our family vacation in July – all events where friends got sick. The difference? I wore a mask. Which works.

OK, I need to go work on my Defcon speech some more, so I'm gonna sign off, but I will leave you with just one more link, the wonderful new public domain image search tool, Public Work, which crawls and indexes the Met, the NYPL, and other sources:

https://public.work/

I rely on public domain, CC and other freely usable clip art to make the collages that accompany this newsletter/blog's stories. While I have very little talent in the visual arts, I'm getting steadily better. I mean, look at this amazing image I womped up for last week's story on Bitcoin bros' election campaign finance fraud:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/53893519593/in/album-72177720316719208

You can see a collection of my recent collages in my Flickr gallery for them:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/albums/72177720316719208?sd

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/03/smorgasbord/#creepy-cute

Image: Anne Lindblom (cropped) https://www.flickr.com/photos/kajsawarg/3600415175

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[sassysausage]

Stop being hilarious when it's absolutely my own fault for not sleeping rn

does argyle have a last name

[murfpersonalblog]

Amel is the CEO of Loustat Inc. He did NOT force Les to Beat/Drop Lou in 1x5. Stop it, y'all.

I was scrolling the main tag & saw the most desperate copium from anons in this braindead fandom.

Grown frikkin adults want SO dang bad for AMC to baby everyone by using premises from CHILDHOOD shows, and treat the fandom like we're too effing stupid & immature to handle the realities of toxic and abusive relationships explicitly shown on screen for 2 whole seasons; to instead put ALL of the onus of Lestat's pisspoor decisions & actions on an effing spiritual possession.

The same folk who were so gung-ho that the fight/drop never happened & that the Trial would revisit everything & prove Louis AND Claudia were evil liars are back at it again, hoping the Drop will be revisited AGAIN in S3; but that this time AMEL will be shown possessing/influencing Lestat during the Ep5 fight to explain why Les was an abusive a-hole who dropped Lou & broke all his bones.

People are still convinced that AMC's gonna retcon S1 AND S2--EFF agency/autonomy/ADULT accountability, EFF Lestat's abandonment issues stemming from his traumatic past laying at the heart of his paranoia & oppressive behavior in the present cuz cycles are cycling--all to say:

See!? It wasn't your sweet innocent blorbo's fault at all~! It was that naughty scamp AMEL, the spirit in Akasha that powers all vampires, that made this grown effing man Lestat so wildly insecure about the "fragility of their union" & his own child possibly taking his grown husband away from him; that it made him chokeslam his child and throw her across the room so he could go back to punching the living daylights out of Louis and bite all over his face/cheeks and crack the bridge of his nose and blind him in one eye and even though he's clearly LUCID when he asks Louis if he's leaving & trying to restrain HIMSELF he simply MUST be possessed to smash Lou through a wall and drag him out of the courtyard by his effing jaw and tell their terrified traumatized sobbing daughter to her face as he clutched Louis' battered bloody face IDGAF about YOU and fly into the effing Oort Cloud draining Louis dry to beg him to say "Lestat I'm never going to love you, it would help ME a great deal to hear it from your lips, your quivering hateful lips" and say "anything for you" when Louis demanded Les "let go of me!" to watch as Louis fell 2km from the effing sky and NOT dive down to catch him before he smashed back down to earth "LIKE AN EGG FROM AN AIRPLANE" in a broken effing heap as their daughter cried her eyes out and he floated gracefully down to watch with a YEAH I DID IT TRY ME AGAIN look of resolute coldness on his face before he effed off to Algiers for 6 effing years to bone his mistress.

And they KNOW they sound wild as all hell, cuz they put in the I'm not a p.o.s. I promise! disclaimer; anyone who doesn't agree just isn't Intelligent(TM):

Even though abuse apologia is EXACTLY what you're doing. It wasn't possession or protection or a "a mistake, an accident" or any other BS--it is what Lestat outright SAID it was:

And ofc they focus on the Drop being the moment Amel steps in, cuz it uses the exact same footage from Ep5, confirming that Louis was HONEST about his eye being busted (which the bedroom revisits don't show, meaning his eye got effed up by whatever else Les did after smashing Lou thru the wall, cuz it's already swollen when Lou's being dragged by the jaw). The Drop is the most horrific aspect of Ep5 & the culmination of everything that happened, that even made the sadistic AF audience at the Theatre gasp in shock while Santiago tried to DOWNPLAY the Drop & Lestat's fault in it--"teased until you toppled" my arse. As always, ANY excuse to absolve him. 🙄😒

WHO THE HELL IS #THEM!?! Too effing late!

See how people spread hatred, ignorance, & bigotry through shady AF microaggression? This Us vs Them jargon is so racially charged it's not even funny, cuz it's been about black!Louis & white!Lestat ever since Jacob's casting was announced, and ESPECIALLY ever since Ep5 put everything that was already sus about Lestat on the show AND in the books in 4K HD resolution and AMC STILL hasn't walked it back.

What Bipoc Louis fans/stans H A T E & get offended by is racist AF gaslighting that villainizes the Black MC (& his fanbase) into believing that Black voices can't be trusted or respected without some white person's confirmation (Daniel & Lestat); and that mistreatment & abuse & outright assault at the hands of white people can't happen without y'all bringing up an abuser's tragic backstory or concocting a whole effing paranormal entity to excuse the evil actions privileged people inflict against those with less power than they have.

Believe it or not, not ALL Louistans hate Lestans, or Lestat, or Loustat being together. Ofc I can't speak for anyone else, but I for one love Lestat, and Loustat's my IWTV 2022 OTP, and I have Lestan mutuals (who aren't racist p.o.s.).

Not ALL Louistans are offended by or even GAF about DM--who weren't even MENTIONED in this convo; why even bring that up or drag them into this????

Not ALL Louistans hate Ep5 & the implications of the fight & the nuance of toxic relationships. I for one effing LOVE how real it all is. And actually, it was mostly LESTANS who were crying about Ep5 not having trigger warnings, pissed AF about Ep5 making Lestat look like the abusive villain, spinning their tops tryna figure out a way to excuse/explain it all away for the past 2 years--case in point from this desperate anon's message!

But why am I even blaming the anon, when apparently it's Lestat's superfans like Nalyra who made these wack ideas in the first place!?

And yet people swear that we--#them--are LYING (like Louis & Claudia) when we talk about the insidious problems in this fandom being funneled through superfans who actively create this BS that their followers then spread like radioactive waste all over the fandom; then they wanna wring their hands as if they're not the problem & that #those people are bullying them!?

Sure, walk it back NOW that AMC's definitively confirmed that the Drop/fight/abuse really happened & that LESTAT was at fault for choking out Claudia first. But y'all are SO determined to make sure to victim blame & cast fault at Louis' feet for DEFENDING his child--

--as superfans fake neutrality while ignoring the FACT that Lestat attacked CLAUDIA & started the fight between them by attacking Louis' DAUGHTER; encouraging people to read ill intent in everything Louis does & wish ill upon him by every effing character--

This isn't fanfiction they're writing for the lolz, this is what they literally want to see AMC make canon to shut #them up about abuse. Like, it's not even BOOK canon that Amel would EVER feel that way about Louis! I wonder how much of the books Nonny even bothered to read to think AMC would even come up with this plotline, when not even RHOSHAMANDES was that evil & mean-spirited when he kidnapped Louis & Gabrielle & Marius.

Nevermind that Amel canonically COULDN'T compel strong vampires to do EFF ALL so long as he was trapped in Akasha's body while she was asleep & there were too many vamps sucking his core dry--hence Akasha's purges once she woke up.

Nevermind that it's only been AFTER Akasha died (in the 1980s) that Amel had gotten stronger, so by the 20teens he was able to commune with Lestat, the (chosen) one he'd wanted all along--not Rhoshamandes or Mekare.

Nevermind that when Amel DID start communicating/compelling vampires (AFTER Akasha was finally dead), he wasn't interested in making vampires kill each other over petty/toxic/jealous effing squabbles--he was busy making moves so someone could get rid of The Twins & give him (the Sacred Core) a better host, cuz he was TIRED of being TRAPPED as a prisoner in another vegetable. He was driving vampires crazy with bloodlust so that THOUSANDS of vamps around the world would die & he could be free; NOT because he hated them personally & thought "Dropping you was exquisite."

Nevermind that when Amel FINALLY got Lestat to accept him inside his body and be Amel's new host, Lestat AND Louis were skeeved out by how hard Amel SHIPPED Loustat! XD I explained this ages ago:

Amel never touched Louis during the vampire massacres. Heck, even Akasha knew that harming Lou & Gabs would be THE dealbreaker on Les ever working with her; which is why the most epic scene in QotD happens when Akasha used her Fire Gift to SAVE Gabs & Lou & Les while they're escaping the concert.

Istg y'all.

I'm convinced y'all read the books with both eyes closed.

That must be it, cuz this is too easy.

Amel felt a connection with Louis not only cuz he loved Lestat & Lestat loved Louis, but also (less importantly?) for the simple/vain fact that Louis has green eyes--and Ame also had green eyes back when he was living in Atlantis--and so did Mekare, his favorite back when she was a mortal witch who could still commune with him (& the Twins were green-eyed gingers like he was, too; he likes red hair).

The ONE aspect I can see AMC possibly changing is Louis' Fire Gift affecting his power levels, and the fact that Lou DIDN'T actually die/flatline when he tried killing himself in 2x5 a la Merrick; which permanently cut him off from Amel's neural link/silver cord/etc.

WHERE in any of the actual book canon written by Anne Rice herself is there any indication that Amel would hate Louis and actively WANT Lestat to hurt him?

Can I see AMC making Amel a bigger threat than he was in the books? Of course, since a lot of his nonsense happened off-screen anyway. But Rhoshamandes is the REAL problem in the PL Trilogy, not Amel. And during the QotD era, Amel's too weak to do much, and Akasha STILL decides to spare Louis cuz she knows what side her bread's buttered on. Once she's gone, the only compelling Amel gets Lestat to do is related to renovating the Chateau & winning Louis back so Loustat can get married & be happy together and Amel can stare at Louis & marvel at how pretty he is, cuz EVERYONE's a simp for Louis; suck on THOSE eggs! And in NOLA, Amel DEFINITELY couldn't compel Lestat to do a single bloody thing, cuz Akasha's not even awake yet. Anything book/AMC!Lestat did to Louis in NOLA was a decision HE made on. his. own.

[eddiestightywhities]

SNIPPET SUNDAY

tagged by @kitteneddiediaz—thank you baz, my love! you can check out their latest wip HERE btw :)

mine is from one of my gazillions of wips, this one a (sort of) fake dating scenario that maybe isn't so fake for every party involved.

.

“Eddie!”

Buck somehow manages to sound like he's hissing the name as he reaches out through the crowd, reminding Eddie a little of the pregnant Rattlesnake from that one house call in Inglewood earlier in the week.

He's probably going to grip Eddie's left elbow and lean in to say something about the song currently booming through the super base-y speakers, or tell Eddie that it's his round and that Buck wants one of those purple cocktails Karen was drinking earlier on in the evening (Eddie knew Buck had been secretly eying them up).

But then Buck's getting even closer than that, all wide-eyed and wild like that spooked animal again, and rasping into Eddie's ear, “I'm sorry but please just don't say anything, alright? And just—

“What?” Eddie's hollering back, even though he heard Buck just fine.

“—just go with it and follow my lead, okay? Please, Eds, just—you gotta just play along, alright?” he's insisting, and he seems pretty harried, his forehead wrinkling in that adorable way it does when something's bothering him.

Eddie has no clue as to what the hell Buck is talking about. Buck's hands are now circling both Eddie's biceps as he waits impatiently for a signal from Eddie, and something signifying Eddie's confusion likely flashes across Eddie's face when he shoots a quizzical look at Crazy-Eyes Buck, the pair of them just standing there on the edge of the dance floor painted in alternating blues and pinks yellows by the club's swirling, neon lights.

That's when he remembers Buck asking him to play along, so Eddie gives his signal of compliance by schooling his expression into something neutral and pointedly says sweet eff ay more than nada de nada.

If Buck asked him to keep schtum, then Eddie's keeping schtum.

See, Eddie will always give Buck whatever Buck needs because Eddie is a relatively decent guy—which means that when it comes to this sort of shit, he is fairly secure in knowing he would still be serving up the whole world on a silver platter for Evan Buckley whatever the weather, even if Eddie weren't so stupidly gone on him.

He tries his best to put that thought out of his mind as he looks at Buck and makes his eyes say I get it—only it's a little more under the cover of the fan of his lashes than usual, because Buck is standing way closer to Eddie than he normally would be in a social setting (he isn't counting work).

Then everything goes stock-still and impossibly silent as Buck's fingers begin to trace both sides of Eddie's neck, each big hand now moving to span Eddie's jaw—and Eddie very much does not get it when Buck leans in, as if he's going to fucking kiss Eddie.

And then Buck is fucking kissing Eddie.

.

my tags are beneath the cut, play or nay :)

@inell @rosieposiepuddingnpie @sortasirius @angela-feelstoomuch @woodchoc-magnum @eddiegettingshot @mazzystar24 @daffi-990 @treasurehuntbuck @veronae-buddie

[edenfenixblogs]

What are you doing to help black people?

Several things! (A Note on My Personal Limitations: I am not black. I am unable to protest for health reasons. I do not have much money at all)

I elevate black voices whenever I can

I joined an anti-racism book club where I can learn how to be a better ally and unlearn as much systemic prejudice as I can

I do not tolerate anti-black racism from anyone in my life for any reason. I call it out every time, publicly.

I donate (when financially possible) to several causes devoted to both long term and immediate aid to to black people including: various bail funds in my current state and my home state, the southern poverty law center, the Homeless Black Trans Women gofundme, the ACLU, and others.

I consistently educate people in my life about the goals of BLM — including defunding the police — in order to reduce their knee jerk reactions and foster better understanding.

I shut the eff up unless I can help. I’m no savior; I know this. I don’t break into conversations that don’t involve me. I just listen. Most of my public advocacy is amplifying black voices on issues that affect the black community without adding my irrelevant opinions as white-passing person.

Privately, I have and continue to reach out to the several black people in my life to let them know I support them and that I am listening. I listen to them vent to me about their pain and suffering. I let them tell me if I’ve fucked up somehow without getting defensive. Then I apologize sincerely and onboard the new information and don’t do whatever the offending action was again. I have not had anyone tell me I’ve fucked up in that way in over a decade, though. I did, however, realize (during my continuing journey of learning how to be anti-racist) that I’d held problematic opinions as a teenager (nothing crazy. Just ignorant teen bullshit borne from growing up as a liberal in a red state and thinking I was more progressive than I actually was at the time) and proactively reached out to the black friend I’ve known since my teenage years to say that I know I was an idiot back then and I’ve learned a lot since then and I will continue to learn and to apologize.

My work involves public communications. In my role, I continually advocate for anti-racist, black-affirming language in our company guidelines and publicly disseminated materials, even when that means confronting my boss—who is a white man.

I vote in every election in which I am able, researching every politician and bill thoroughly from multiple sources and voting as leftist as possible and educating people in my life about these bills details and the politicians platforms and records.

I am not perfect and don’t claim to be. I only claim to try my best to continually improve.

I don’t make a habit of sharing private communique and am only doing so now because this post asks for receipts. Here are some excerpts from conversations had during 2020 when tensions were a little higher. I decline to share receipts from more recently, as those conversations include more private and more identifying information. The pictured conversations involve friends I’ve had since pre-school, high school, and college. Again, this is not something I would normally share, because saying “I have black friends” is tacky and gross. But I am trying to respect your request for my commitment to the black community, which does of course include my friends. It feels wrong not to mention them in this context, even though I feel awkward saying it at all. Im also sharing only the start of longer conversations, as my friends’ pain and concerns are not for public consumption.

Idk if replying to your question alerts you, so tagging you just in case. @phantomdiebe

[the-lady-general]

fic author q&a

@curator-on-ao3 thank you so much for tagging me! 💚✨ It's taken me a little to answer (almost) all the questions, but here you go:

1. Why do you write fanfic?

Sometimes I need to get an idea out of my head, sometimes I need to get an idea down on the page, sometimes I want to write for the sake of writing.

(The REAL real reason why I write fanfic instead of original fic is so that I don't have to come up with names and physical descriptions for a bunch of different characters. *shoves all-oc wip back under the floorboards*)

2. Which of your posted stories do you think about the most, even though the story is “finished”?

For now it's Change the World. That one was a lot of fun. I re-read it loads because it makes me laugh.

3. If you could give yourself fic advice from when you first started writing fic, what would that advice be?

You don't know English yet, but once you start learning: on eff eff dot net, cock means penis, not rooster. No advice on the writing, your Gerudo self-insert Mary Sue is already perfect. 💚

4. What’s your relationship to fic stats?

I don't care at all, unless I'm being sulky. I like to think that getting it out of my system relatively quietly makes me the charming ray of sunshine that you, kind and radiant reader, knows and loves. 😁

5. Is there a pairing or scenario or friendship you miss writing? If so, why? If not, why not?

I miss Joseph/Hemmer, that was fun to write. I couldn't stick the fix-it part of the fix-it fic, so I abandoned it in my wips, but I like coming back to it and rereading the more coherent scraps.

6. What motivates you to write?

Mostly jokes! My latest, Life, When It Gives You Lemons, is based on that genius Darmok and Salad at Tanagra pun.

(That's probably the reason why nothing ever came of my Joseph/Hemmer or Una prison break fics: there's enough dead kids and dead parents in SNW to stop me laughing.)

What motivates me for my current WIP is mostly "Can I do this?". The answer so far seems to be yes, provided I can string enough jokes together.

7. Why do you write for the fandom(s) that you write for?

For Star Trek it's mostly friends (hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii, hi! 👋🖖), for LotR it's because somehow, there's still not all the stories I want to read out there, and for 40k it's my desire to throw war dollies around without ever having to memorize a different codex every time I blink.

8. If you’re stuck writing a WIP, what do you do?

I give up and add it to my ~private library~ or I ask for help. The bragging rights of producing something of AO3 quality makes editing worth the hassle. That's my hoard, that is. 🐲

9. What do you wish people knew about comments?

I'm really bad at answering them, so if you, smart and elegant reader, want a reply, trick me into a conversation by asking me questions!

If I don't reply that means your comments ended up as a coal on the warm cozy fire in my heart that's keeping the "Not A Talentless Hack" feelings at bay and I never figured out how to adequately repay that kindness. Thank you. 💚

10. Maybe there’s a question you wish had been on here. What’s that question (and answer)?

I couldn't think of any since getting tagged, so in the interest of finally answering the other nine questions: No, but thank you for asking!

This was fun! I've lost sight of who's already played and who might like to join in, so without pressure: @cicaklah @ichayalovesyou @indignantlemur and anyone else who wants to give this a shot!

[sincerelyamee]

[How I imagine Gojo teaching 5-year-old Megumi about his Ten Shadows technique aka recipe for disaster]

Most sorcerers with flashy innate techniques typically awake their powers around five or six years old - right around the same magnificent age they discover crayons are wonderfully effective for decorating more than just coloring books (RIP white walls everywhere).

Innate techniques in particular have a mind of their own, essentially “calling” to their user like an overly eager pet begging for treats and attention. One day, baby sorcerers just wake up, and bam - suddenly shadows are tugging at their skin or flames are sparking from their fingers, no warning or parental consent form required.

Little Megumi has been feeling the very first stirrings of his Ten Shadows for weeks now. Random surges of cursed energy that are definitely not just from sneaking extra pudding cups. Mysterious but insistent tugging sensations from the shadows, like ghostly hands trying to initiate a game of tag.

So, it’s time he gets some pointers on it, right? At least, that’s what Gojo decided.

On one peaceful morning, Gojo whisks out a whiteboard and markers from… somewhere. With such theatrical showmanship, one would think he was auditioning for Broadway itself. Yet the children serve as the ultimate tough crowd, responding only with raised eyebrows and curious glances.

Still, Gojo strikes a scholarly pose.

“Alright, my star pupil - Today’s lesson is on your badass upcoming technique!” Gojo announces, gesturing for Megumi to sit front and center.

As Megumi hesitantly takes his place, Nanako leans over to Mimiko. “How come he just happens to have a random whiteboard ready? Where does that even come from?” She whispers. Mimiko just shakes her head, too busy stuffing her mouth with chips.

“To start, your very first summons will be these adorable Divine Dogs!” Gojo proclaims enthusiastically. “Though at first, they’re more like Divine Pups…”

His marker zig-zags wildly as he tries sketching two majestic wolves. Emphasis on tries. The end results look something akin to a pair of mutant chickens wearing tutus. That elicits poorly contained giggles from the girls. Megumi simply stares, somehow experiencing all seven stages of grief simultaneously.

“Those are some weird chickens, nii-chan.” Tsumiki blurts out with all the sophistication of a future art critic.

“They look like they survived a nuclear blast,” Nanako adds.

Why does she even know what a nuclear blast is? Kids these days. Gojo makes a mental note to berate Geto later for letting the devil’s spawns watch too much TV. But since he’s Gojo, he forgets about it immediately. For now, he blinks down at his drawings, then back at the giggling, unimpressed kids.

“Clearly you heathens lack the artistic vision to appreciate my creative genius.” Gojo huffs before erasing his previous attempts in stunned outrage.

But Gojo Satoru isn’t one to give up easily, or ever.

Like a runaway freight train, Gojo charges full steam ahead. His Louvre-worthy artistic visions expand stranger the longer the ridiculous lesson continues. With each stroke of the marker, Gojo’s illustrations venture further into worlds unknown by man or beast. Eldritch creatures populate the poor whiteboard as head scratching and sideways glances spread among the children.

Megumi watches in dismay as the hours tick painfully on, the squeaking hamster powering his brain throwing itself from the rusty wheel. The last of his sanity packs its bags and flees into the abyss rather than witnessing more of Gojo’s artistic assaults against nature. At the rate this is going, he half expects his first summon to be a potato with Gojo’s face haphazardly drawn on it.

A glaring oversight dawns on the boy - for all Gojo’s useless prattling and monstrous drawings, explaining the actual summoning process appears a mere afterthought, if the man is even capable of actual thoughts at all. When asked, he simply waves off the question with a dodgy uh-huh. Just as effective as inquiring an orange tabby on quantum physics.

“It’s not that hard.” Gojo shrugs dismissively. “You’ll figure it out.”

Megumi rubs his temples, contemplating if it’s too late to grab Tsumiki and flee this madhouse, perhaps taking the twins as well. No one deserves such ruthless torture. Gojo may be well on his way to becoming another villain overlord with questionable artistic skills, but this? This right here marks Fushiguro Megumi’s very own villain origin story.

Staring blankly ahead in post-traumatic shock, Megumi knows one truth with the certainty of death itself - never, ever again will he make the fatal error of taking a lesson from Gojo. No, he must figure out this Ten Shadows technique solo going forward. Though now Megumi ponders whether deliberately summoning all those nightmarish abominations is something best avoided altogether.

read the whole thing here on Ao3: A Family of Villains - A wacky villain origin story/Kinda a slice-of-life fic exploring the logistics of 18-year-old sashisu being the greatest villains in the jujutsu world while on the run and raising 4 kids. Mostly fluff and humor of course.

[gaysindistress]

When Night Comes - eleven

Summary: Who would win in a staring contest? New York’s resident mob boss and master of the side eye Bucky Barnes or the daycare teacher who really wants to go home and smoke?

pairing: Mob!Vampire!Bucky Barnes x reader

warnings: mob!Bucky, cursing, major character death mentions

word count: 2.6k

ten | masterlist

tag list: ​ @elizacusi-blog @mal-adaptive-dreams @thebuckybarnesvault @unaxv @hidden-treasures21 @buckybarnessimpp @cakesandtom

disclaimer: credits to original creator/poster of image/gif. found on Google/Pinterest

Alix slams the car door much to Juliette’s dismay and she makes a faint grunt of annoyance. Juliette follows after her into the building before them. It’s one of their hideouts gifted to them by Peggy when she’d made the original agreement. Peggy claimed that no one would be able to find them there and they would be safe to lay low. 

“Please don’t slam my door, it’s new.” 

Alix froze and only turned enough to see her subordinate out of the corner of her eye. No words came out alas Juliette is terrified and shrinks into herself as they continue their walk inside. 

The stress of being in New York wears into Alix’s shoulders and she hunches more than before, hiding her true size. Compared to her siblings, she’s small but standing at just over 6 feet, she dwarfs most other Lycan women. She’d used it to her advantage when she came up through the ranks but she would’ve made it either way. After her parents died, the pack leadership fell to her oldest brother but when he backed out for a woman, she took over.The disgrace of his actions followed her around but that didn’t stop her from fighting tooth and nail for the title of pack leader even if it is her family’s birth right.

Alix all but dumps herself onto a cot and shudders at the mild relaxation it offers her. Juliette sits down next to her, placing a hand on her knee as she watches the tension drain out of her. 

“You know…” she trails as she moves her hand further up Alix’s thigh. 

“Get your fucking hand off of me.” 

Juliette doesn’t answer or comply. Alix’s claws flash and she grips into her wrist, yanking it from her body. She drags the woman off of the cot and to the window that overlooks a 2 story drop. 

“Don’t ever fucking touch me. I won’t hesitate to tear you apart limb by fucking limb, you slut.”

Tears well in Juliette’s eyes as she nods feverishly to prove that she understands. She lets out a cry of relief when Alix drops her and goes to lay back down on the cot. 

“Did Peggy give you anything yet?”

“Uh…” she sniffles as she wipes at her face and digs into her jacket for her phone, “They’re going to Bucharest.”

“You already told me that.” “Oh I’m sorry. He only took the Rogers, Yelena, and Natasha with him so they’ll be low on security but she warned that he has people everywhere looking out for you. She advised that we wait before trying to go in.”

Alix lets a deep breath of frustration, “She can take her advice and shove it up her ass. Get John and Brock ready. We’ll leave in two days.”

“I really…”

“I don’t care what you think, just fucking do what I said. God I’m getting so sick of everyone’s back talk.”

Juliette swallows another hopeless cry and rapidly fires off messages to the pack, ensuring that they’ll be ready for the inevitably bloody fight that is going to happen.

“Ms. Sunny! Ms. Sunny!” Wyatt calls out to her as he bounds across the vast gardens of the Bucharest estate. 

Before Sunny and Peggy lay hundreds of flowers of all varieties and colors along with enough trees to create a wall between them and the outside world. In his hand, Wyatt held a small bouquet of flowers he undoubtedly picked from the bushes. Peggy flushed (if that’s even possible) at the sight and quickly got up to take them from the boy before Bucky saw.

“Oh honey, we don’t pick these flowers remember? They’re very special to Uncle Buck and he wouldn’t be very happy to know that you picked them without asking,” she said louder than needed, in efforts to make sure Sunny heard.

When she comes to sit back down, her plan seems to have worked because Sunny does immediately ask why they’re special. She pretends to bite back her response and acts as if she hadn’t meant for her to hear before “giving in” and telling her. Peggy starts by coyly looking at her son who is playing with Yelena and then dives right into the story of Celeste. The gardens had been her pride and joy when the weather allowed. She would spend hours upon hours outside, making sure that every flower got the attention it deserved. It warmed Bucky’s heart to see his love taking joy in a life that only offered pain to their kind and even more with their business. Peggy spared no detail in her story, exposing every secret she could think of from how Sunny and Celeste looked identical down to their ardent dislike for Bucky at first to how she had been found dead by him. She doesn’t bother to look at the human as she lies out of everything she knows about Celeste and Bucky, mostly because she doesn’t want to see the shock of betrayal that is undoubtedly stretched across her face. 

Peggy draws her tale to an end with a small smile and fake look of sadness to Sunny, “It was an awful time for him, you have to know. He had just about every memory of her destroyed or hidden. I almost forgot what she looked like until I saw you and it was like seeing her again. I can only imagine how much pain he must have been in seeing you and not being able to have his dear Celeste again.”

Sunny stares forward with a stunned look on her face, unable to even begin to process the story she’s just been told. Her mouth opens to say something but words are not her friend at the moment and nothing comes out. She tries again and only a few come out, “I’m just a replacement.”

Peggy places her hand on top of Sunny’s, “Oh no I wouldn’t say that. You may look like Celeste but you are your own person and I’m sure Bucky loves you for you.”

Sunny rips her hand away and shakes, “He loves me?”

“Well…” Peggy starts but is interrupted by Yelena who’s being chased after by Wyatt. 

“Jesus, does this kid have an off switch?” she jokes as she sits on the edge of the bistro table the other two women are sat at. She looks at Sunny and her smile drops instantly at her appearance. 

“Is everything okay?”

Sunny shakes her head as she snaps out of her trance, “I need to see Bucky, where is he?”

Yelena pushes off of the table, “I think he’s inside, do you want me to take you to him?” “No,” she says abruptly and marches off towards the house. Yelena takes her seat and looks to Peggy for an explanation but she’s no help and has given her whole attention to her son. 

Sunny pushes open the french doors that lead into a living room of sorts but Bucky is nowhere to be found. Faint men’s laughter rings out and she follows it like a bloodhound on a trail all the way to the other side of the massive house. She’s met with a set of large oak doors but behind it are the voices of Steve and Bucky. Debating on knocking, she forgoes the formality and walks straight into the surprise of the two men. 

“Draga,” Bucky sighed when he saw that it’s just her, “How are you?”

“Steve, get out. I need to talk to him, alone.” 

Steve looks to Bucky for guidance and gets up regardless. Bucky gives him a nod of approval and stands as well to meet Sunny. With his hands out, he goes to cradle her arms but she takes a staggering step back just as Steve closes the door. 

“Peggy told me about Celeste,” she whispers with pain etched deeply in her voice and across her face. 

He takes a deep breath as he rubs a hand down his face, “What did she tell you?”

“Everything.”

“Everything,” he repeats while he leans against a window seal that overlooks the very garden where it all happened. 

“Why didn't you tell me?”

He takes a moment before answering, “I didn’t want to scare you.”

She scoffs at his excuse, “But telling me that you’re strigoi was fine? This ”crossed the line though?” 

“I can see where I messed up,” he barely offers, voice devoid of anything but just underneath the surface he yearns to hold her and make things better. 

Her own voice isn’t up to par with his and it creaks as she tries to get out any words at all, “I trusted you. I don’t even know how I feel about you but I trusted you. I let Yelena go for you because I thought I could trust you.” 

That catches him off guard and his jaw tenses as his emotions begin to take over. 

“You did what?” 

“Right before I called you, Yelena and I broke things off.” 

His tongue pokes at the inside of his lip and he finally looks at her to see what he’s done to her unintentionally. Her eyes are watery and beginning to puff up from her efforts to hold back her tears. Her body is rigid from the stress of everything she’s been through. He can see the fatigue in her features and in her physical state. Since getting to Bucharest, she’s barely taken care of herself, granted it’s only been a matter of days but the neglect is clear as day. She needs him to be honest with her before the mental toll is too much and he risks losing whatever sliver of a chance he had. 

“Come here,” he calls to her in the softest voice he can manage. He too had been taken over by the severity of their situation. His facial hair has grown out to create a dark shadow across his face and his hair is longer than it’s been in years. He’s foregone any sort of luxury attire and instead lives in t-shirts with jackets and jeans. 

She hesitates for a moment but the calm call of his voice coaxes her closer and she disobeys her internal monologue to listen. With one arm outstretched, he beckons for her to tuck into his side and she doesn’t, staying just outside of his reach. 

“Come here,” he whispers again, leaning to graze his fingers against her arm and to catch her. She takes one small step forward and it’s enough for him to grasp her arm, tugging her the rest of the way. Wrapping her own arms around him, she buries her face into his shoulder and her emotions consume her. 

He lets her use him as a comfort object although he knows she doesn’t truly want him. She would take comfort from anyone or that’s what he tells himself. He whispers reassurance into her ear in Romanian and runs his hand up and down her back as her years come to an end. 

Sunny pulls away enough to look at him. Her hands take a hold of his face and she leans her forehead against his, closing her eyes as she does so. Their breaths mingle together and he allows himself to find comfort in her touch as well. His hands match hers; taking a hold of her face and holding her close enough it’s beyond tempting for him. 

“I’m not her,” she finally says. 

“I know.”

“Say my name.”

The black veins of his true self begin to raise and take over his self control. He snaps his eyes shut and goes to drop his hands  but she catches them in hers. 

“Say my name, Bucky.”

“Sunny,” he says shallowly as if there is no air in his lungs. 

“My name,” she emphasizes as she drops his hands to her neck and repositions hers on his face. 

“Don’t do this to me doll,” he warns as he tries to pull away but she refuses to let him. 

“Bucky, my name.”

The whine in her voice makes his lungs constrict and he feels her lip ghost over his. 

Before she fully pressed down into his, she asks him again to say her name and he complies this time, “Y/N.”

Satisfied with his response, she takes his lips in hers and kisses him. He stiffens in the start but relaxes into her embrace and gives into the kiss, fully allowing himself to enjoy what he’s been dreaming of. Sunny leans into him and his hands catch her waist so they don’t fall from her going practically limp in his arms. Soft sighs and moans leave her mouth as they kiss. Bucky pulls her into him even more and uses her noise of shock to slip his tongue into her mouth. One of her hands leaves his face to catch herself on the window frame as they lean back into their kiss. She pulls away for a moment to get a better look at the man before her and smiles at the sight. The black veins around his eyes have begun to recede while his dark blue eyes remain hidden behind his long lashes and short puffs of air leave his swollen lips. Her fingers drift over the veins and his eyes flutter open at the feeling. 

“Y/N,” he whispers against her fingers as she trails them down his face. 

“Bucky,” she whispers back.

“Y/N.”

Her smile grows softer the more he says her name, not her nickname but her name.

“What did you mean by ‘don’t do this to me’?” she asks as she continues to trace over his features. 

He chuckles while dropping his head so he doesn’t have to look at her when he answers her, “You already know.”

“No I don’t,” she says whilst drawing him up by his chin, “What did you mean?”

“Remember what I told you that night?” he sighs, letting the vulnerability consume him against his better judgment. 

She nods, her finger trailing across his lips and poking at where his fangs disappeared into his gums. 

“I’m weak when you’re around,” he tells her and kisses the tip of her finger. 

“Because of Celeste?”

He shakes his head, “It’s you, it’s always been you.”

“What did you tell her?” Steve harshly demands as he finds Peggy out in the garden with their son. He stalks up to her and nearly shatters the glass of her table when he slams his fists down. 

She doesn’t even flinch, instead offering him a sweet smile, “What are you talking about?”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about, now tell me what you said to Sunny.” 

Peggy shrugs her shoulders and waves to Yelena who is being chased around by Wyatt. 

“You told her about Celeste didn’t you?”

She shrugs again, looking at him from under her lashes, “She was going to find out sooner or later. It was only a matter of time.”

Steve scoffs in disbelief, “That wasn’t for you to tell. Why would you do that?”

“Like I said,” she said, more defensive than before, “She was going to find out sooner or later so I sped up the process.”

“I hope you realize what this means for you.”

“And what exactly does this mean for you?” she hisses, spinning around to face her husband, “You’ll pick your friend over your wife? The mother of your child?”

Steve shakes his head before walking away, neither confirming nor denying her assumption. 

The minute he’s not within sight she pulls out of her phone to text Alix one thing and one thing only; the Bucharest Estate address with specific instructions on how to find Sunny’s and Bucky’s room. 

[fatphobiabusters]

I hate people like this with a passion. Stop using fat positive tags just to get views and clout when you are the complete opposite of fat positive. No one wants to see you praising your weight loss in tags made for highlighting fat bodies. To not just use these tags while your trying to lose weight but to also then brag about becoming thinner in the post itself is gross.

To the people who do this: you don't care about being a "fat babe," so stop flooding fat positive tags. This happens constantly, and each time I feel absolutely lied to and used. You're banking on fat positive people looking for representation to give you attention and notes while not actually giving a shit about fat liberation. The most egregious of the tags in this screenshot is "effyourbeautystandards." Eff what beauty standards?? Because you're bragging about conforming to them!

So many fat people who are hated by the world go to these tags because they're the only semblance of a safe place and solidarity that we have. How cruel can you be to then flood these tags with the fatphobia that fat people came to briefly escape? I look for fat representation a lot because I run and mod for fat positive blogs, and I can tell you that this is far from the only person who has pulled this. I even once wrote a comment asking someone who did this to stop using fat positive tags for their weight loss updates, and they block evaded me multiple times because they were furious about me supporting "toxic positivity."

I can't even look at these tags anymore because so many of the posts are nothing but people trying to lose weight and thin people trying to claim they're "plus size" for clout or whatever other fatness euphemism is popular this week. Not every tag is meant for everybody, and a fat positive tag is not meant for people bragging about weight loss. I can't believe I even have to say this.

Stop it!

-Mod Worthy

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Saturday linkdump, part the sixth

On September 12 at 7pm, I'll be at Toronto's Another Story Bookshop with my new book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation.

On September 14, I'm hosting the EFF Awards in San Francisco.

I usually write this blog 5-6 days/week, but every now and again, I take a break, and when I do, I get massive link backlogs of stuff I want to write about, but lack the time to address in depth. When that happens, I turn my Saturday edition into a linkdump. Today, I present the sixth in the series – here's the other five:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

Why was I offline and away from my blog? I went to the dirt rave. Yes, I was one of the 70,000+ people stuck in the mud at this year's Burning Man, and when I emailed my editor at the New York Times to say I might be late on the op-ed I was working on, she asked me to write about what this year's mud crisis meant:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/06/opinion/burning-man-flood-playa-climate-change.html

tl;dr:

Bad weather is normal at Burning Man (it's a feature, not a bug);

Mostly burners leapt to the occasion, which is what people almost always do in disaster situations;

This is the second Burning Man heavy weather year in a row;

The climate emergency is tipping the Black Rock Desert from "extremely challenging" to "impossible";

This isn't the last event, place and tradition that will have to be radically reconsidered in light of the climate emergency;

But now I'm home, in my hammock, with all the laundry done – just in time to leave again. I'm about to head back to my hometown of Toronto for a book launch. The Internet Con, my latest nonfiction (from Verso Books) came out last week, and I'll be appearing at Another Story Bookshop on Tuesday:

https://anotherstory.ca/events/29283

Internet Con is a "Big Tech disassembly manual." It explains how Big Tech got so big (lax anti-monopoly enforcement, which led to regulatory capture, which let Big Tech abuse our privacy, labor rights, and consumer rights), and how we can use interoperability so it's no longer Too Big to Fail, nor Too Big to Jail:

https://www.versobooks.com/products/3035-the-internet-con

You can read a long excerpt from the book in Wired, which lays out some of the shovel-ready legislative, regulatory and technical proposals that are the book's main purpose:

https://www.wired.com/story/the-internet-con-cory-doctorow-book-excerpt/

You can also hear me read the whole introduction and first chapter of the audiobook on my podcast:

https://craphound.com/internetcon/2023/08/01/the-internet-con-how-to-seize-the-means-of-computation-audiobook-outtake/

That comes from the audiobook, a DRM-free, independent edition that I financed, produced and narrated myself. You can get the audiobook everywhere except Audible, Apple Books, and Audiobooks.com, all of which have mandatory DRM policies. You can also get it direct from me:

https://transactions.sendowl.com/products/78992826/DEA0CE12/purchase

The DRM-free ebook is available everywhere ebooks are sold (Kobo, Kindle, Nook, etc), as well as in my own DRM-free ebook store:

https://transactions.sendowl.com/products/78992801/9C4FC2B8/purchase

Verso's books are sold in bookstores around the world; you can support your local bookseller by buying it through Bookshop:

https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-internet-con-how-to-seize-the-means-of-computation-cory-doctorow/18771891?ean=9781804291245

If you'd like a signed copy, there's stock at Book Soup:

https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245

Now, it was inevitable that I would do a book event for Internet Con in Toronto – I've never had a bad event there, and I love my hometown – but the timing of this event was driven by a non-book-related factor. Talking Heads is appearing together at TIFF, to support the re-release of Stop Making Sense, the greatest concert film in human history:

https://pluralistic.net/StopMakingSense

People often ask me what my favorite book is, and I always tell them that you should never trust people who have one favorite book, as it inevitably turns out to be The Bible, The Fountainhead, or Mein Kampf. But while I don't have a favorite book, I have a clear and unambiguous favorite band.

If I was forced to listen to no music other than Talking Heads for the rest of my life, I would be perfectly happy. Ecstatic, even. Throw in David Byrne, Tom Tom Club and Casual Gods and I probably wouldn't even notice anything missing.

There's a running joke among my Burning Man campmates that whenever I'm in charge of the music, I'm just shuffling Talking Heads rarities, and whenever someone puts on anything else, I demand to know which Talking Heads album it came from. Which is all to say: I have tickets for the Talking Heads event at TIFF and I could *not be more excited.*

Continuing on the Canadian theme, one of the annual highlights of Canadian media is the Massey Lectures, a series of public lectures given around the country and rebroadcast on CBC. These are always great, but recent years have been superb – Ron Deibert's 2020 series was unmissable:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/10/dark-matter/#citizenlab

This year's Masseys are shaping up to be the GOAT. They're presented by Astra Taylor, an activist rock-and-roller turned documentary filmmaker who is one of the founders of the Debt Collective, fighting for student debt cancellation. Everything Astra does is amazing and her profile on CBC Ideas gives some background on the role that unschooling played in making her the powerful activist she is today:

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/astra-taylor-interview-2023-massey-lecturer-1.6959320

There's no question that things are messed up right now, but Astra and people like her shine out like beacons of hope. 17 years ago, self-described "democracy nut" Tom Stites gave one of the seminal lectures on the role news media play in democracy:

http://citmedia.org/blog/2006/07/03/guest-posting-is-media-performance-democracys-critical-issue/

17 years later – and from his perch as editor at the essential International Consortium of Investigative Journalists – Stites presents us a long-overdue, extremely pertinent followup: "Building Civic Energy is the Goal, Not Saving Old News Business Models":

https://banyanproject.coop/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Hope-College-speech-for-Banyan-website-1.pdf

Stites's intervention is extremely timely, because policymakers all over the world have made the mistake of thinking that Big Tech is stealing the news media's content, which is absolutely untrue. It is good, actually, to index news stories and let people discuss, quote from and link to news stories. News you're not allowed to talk about isn't news, it's a secret.

But Big Tech is stealing from news. They're not stealing content – they're stealing money. The Google/Apple duopoly rakes 30% off every subscription payment collected in an app. The Google/Meta duopoly rakes 51% out of every ad-dollar (and maintain that death-grip through creepy, privacy-invading surveillance ads). Meta and Twitter hold social media subscribers hostage, forcing publishers to pay to reach their own subscribers.

We don't want the news to be Big Tech's partners – we need them to be Big Tech's watchdogs. "Link taxes" and other profit-sharing arrangements between the media and tech cut against the civic energy Stites wants to build.

(You can read more about this – along with policy prescriptions for halting Big Tech's rent-extraction from the news – in "Saving the News From Big Tech," my EFF white-paper:)

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

If your spirits are lifted by stories of principled activists achieving important – and improbable – victories, you could do worse than to attend the EFF Awards on in San Francisco Sept 14 (I'm the emcee). This year, we're honoring Alexandra Elbakyan for her founding of Sci-Hub, the Library Freedom Project and the Signal Foundation:

https://www.eff.org/awards/effawards/2023

In more activist news: Mozilla produced a startling and astoundingly good – if demoralizing – report on the state of digital privacy and security in the automotive sector:

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/its-official-cars-are-the-worst-product-category-we-have-ever-reviewed-for-privacy/

Entitled, "It’s Official: Cars Are the Worst Product Category We Have Ever Reviewed for Privacy," the report reveals just how absolutely terrible the automotive sector is when it comes to privacy practices, collecting (and selling) (and giving away) information about your sex life, your geneology, your genetic characteristics, and your smell (no, seriously).

Their recommendations for which new car you should buy boil down to "don't buy a new car." I have been urging consumer research groups to release a report like this for a decade. There are whole categories of gadgets – like, say, "smart speakers" – that are unsafe at any speed. At a certain point, reviewers need to have the guts to say that every manufacturer in an entire sector is a dumpster fire and they should all be dragged in front of a firing squad – or at least a Congressional committee.

Cars, after all, are nightmares of privacy invasion and rent-extraction, the source of autoenshittification on a massive scale, a mobile form of technofeudalism:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

The fact that cars score so badly on privacy is especially ironic given the campaign Big Car waged against the 2020 Massachusetts Right to Repair ballot initiative, in which car manufacturers held themselves out as the defenders of driver privacy from unscrupulous third parties who couldn't be trusted to handle the vast troves of data your car collects with every hour that God sends:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/03/rip-david-graeber/#rolling-surveillance-platforms

This is a familiar refrain: monopolists often claim that any check on their absolute authority over their users will expose those users to privacy risks. Apple has run a global ad-campaign claiming this, and while Apple does prevent Facebook from spying on iPhone owners, they also secretly spy on those customers in exactly the same way that Facebook used to, and lie about it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

It turns out that giant companies just aren't good proxies for their customers' interests, and that the power they amass through monopolization shouldn't be counted on as a source of user safety. Monopolists won't reliably defend user privacy – that job belongs to democratically accountable regulators. That's an argument I developed in detail with Bennett Cyphers in our EFF white-paper "Privacy Without Monopoly":

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

That is, rather than getting privacy by "voting with your wallet," you need to get it by voting with your ballot. "The market" is an election that you vote in with dollars, which means that the people with the most dollars always win. When there are zero cars on the market that are safe to drive, you can't vote with your wallet by buying a good one.

On a related subject, the DOJ Antitrust Division has brought the most important tech anti-monopoly case of the century, charging Google with monopolizing search:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/06/technology/modern-internet-first-monopoly-trial-us-google-dominance.html

Part of the DOJ case turns on the fact that Google goes to extraordinary lengths to keep you from every trying another search engine, paying out more than $45 billion every year to be the default search on every device, program and service you might use. In other words, Google spends entire Twitter's worth of dollars every year, lighting it on fire to keep you from finding out about rivals.

Google argues that this is fine, actually, because these are only defaults, and users can dig through their settings to change their search engine. Sure, Google – and the first 20 search results you serve are only defaults, and it wouldn't matter if you were ordered to put them ten screens down, because users could always scroll to see them.

But search defaults aren't the only way that Google locks in searchers – and then harms us by invading our privacy. Google's ubiquitous Chrome browser ties Google's search to Google's invasive, nonconsensual, total surveillance. Chrome turned 15 this year and Google made a huge PR splash out of the anniversary:

https://blog.google/products/chrome/google-chrome-new-features-redesign-2023/

But all that puffery conspicuously failed to mention that Google had quietly rolled out its long-discredited, new surveillance technology, FLOC, which it pretended to kill in 2021:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/22/ihor-kolomoisky/#not-that-competition

FLOC is back, rebranded as the Topics API: this is a system for spying on you so advertisers can target you. Google is spinning this as a privacy improvement because it might someday replace "third party cookies," one of the creepiest web surveillance systems.

But as Ron Amadeo writes for Ars Technica, Chrome is the last major browser to support third party cookies – both Safari and Firefox block them by default. So Google is basically saying, "We are going to improve your privacy by changing how we spy on you, even though all our competitors don't do this kind of spying at all":

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/09/googles-widely-opposed-ad-platform-the-privacy-sandbox-launches-in-chrome/

This kind of gaslighting, where Google pisses in all our mouths and tells us it's raining, is the hallmark of a decrepit, arrogant, crapulent monopolist that needs to be shattered in the courts. Kudos to the DoJ for doing the people's business here – and kudos to DoJ antitrust boss Jonathan Kanter for promising that he will not go into corporate law when he finishes his stint in government.

The DoJ isn't the only public agency that's serving the American people. The FCC just announced proceedings to force cybersecurity labels for "smart" devices:

https://www.fcc.gov/consumer-governmental-affairs/fcc-proposes-cybersecurity-labeling-program-smart-devices

This is long overdue, and it's a welcome action from the FCC, which was hamstrung for years because cowardly Democratic senators joined with homophobic, libelous Republicans in blocking confirmation hearings for the amazing Gigi Sohn:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/15/useful-idiotsuseful-idiots/#unrequited-love

After years of abuse, Sohn bowed out. Now, Anna Gomez has been confirmed to fill that fifth FCC chair, turning the FCC into a fully operational battle station:

https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/senate-votes-approve-anna-gomez-5th-fcc-commissioner

The fact that there's all this great stuff going on in the administrative branch is easy to lose sight of amidst the circus of federal electoral politics, in which Donald Trump has retained his role as ringmaster and chief distractor.

Thankfully, we have expert Pantsless Emperor skewerers like Ruben Bolling around – his latest Tom the Dancing Bug revives his brilliant Calvin and Hobbes-inspired Trump gag:

https://boingboing.net/2023/09/06/tom-the-dancing-bug-a-calvinesque-and-hobbesian-look-at-taking-a-mug-shot.html

Well, that's me signing off for the weekend – I've got to pack for my flight to Toronto. If you're looking for more weekend fun, check out the trailer for Fractured Veil, the video game my old pal Chris DiBona has been working on for seven years and which is heading for Steam early access next month:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjNd3QQnENU

Just watch it. I mean. Wow.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/09/nein-nein/#everything-is-miscellaneous

Image: Roel Schroeven (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/roelschroeven/45413895

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

[writergeekrhw]

I love Elementary as a Holmes adaptation, but I have to ask about the copaganda. Not so much the overall presence/depiction of the NYPD as the generally benevolent venue for Joan and Sherlock to solve crime, but rather the occasional ep that veered off into wtf-level acts of police mouthpiecing: for example, the ep where Joan and Marcus flip the eff out after discovering that Marcus' girlfriend works in Internal Affairs. I'm curious whether stuff like that came directly out of perspectives native to the writers' room, or if it was more dictated from external sources as a cost-of-doing-business requirement. Similar to, "Microsoft will give your production money AS LONG AS you show your characters using Microsoft products to positive ends", was there a "you can depict the NYPD and call it by name AS LONG AS you include such-and-such lines of dialogue/story about how Police Are Great And Admirable And Beyond Reproach"?

(I get that you may not be able to or want to answer this question, but I caught the ep with Marcus' girlfriend yesterday and it's just so...vehement, in some really fucked up ways. I can't not ask, even if you don't answer. Thank you for keeping your askbox open!)

ON COPAGANDA

Great questions without an easy answer. Personally, I'm usually very cautious about outright copaganda, though I have a very close friend who joined the CHP and rose pretty high in the ranks, and I respect the hell out of him and what he did. That said, I think police are people and run the gamut from great to awful, like anyone. Worth noting, my buddy comes from a cop family, his older brother is a cop, and I know someone from a citizen group who basically said his brother was NOT a good cop at all. The opposite.

I've mostly had pretty good experiences with police, but when I was young, I was pulled over for driving while poor. I had a weapon in the car (a wooden club). Things got very tense. And I'm pretty sure that if I weren't so damn pale, that night might have gone way worse.

My friends who don't share my skin tone have, generally speaking, a much worse time with the police. I once gave a friend of mine shit for keeping his dealer tags on his car long past when he got his plates. His response: "It's another way to prove I own this car without having to reach into my glove compartment." My response: "Oh. Sorry. I'm an idiot."

So if you want to see what I think of the police... well, I wrote Bell and Gregson as good cops. I also wrote "End of Watch" and created Gina Cortes. I think, on the balance, ELEMENTARY showed good cops and bad, including shitheals like Captain Dwyer and outright villains like Frank DaSilva.

As for Shauna, in my opinion, Bell reflects the rank-and-file dislike for IA, and the fact that he blows up their relationship over it is supposed to be a huge mistake. Shauna is ultimately a good person, and Bell's prejudice costs him what could've been a wonderful relationship.

And yet... Gregson and Bell are heroes. Pretty much straight up. Sherlock and Joan work for the police, more often than not. And this is portrayed as a good thing. We had NYPD consultants on the show, and though they were mostly very helpful with making the cop stuff realistic, and I liked them a lot, they weren't super thrilled when we did stories about bad cops. I can't ever remember steering away from those stories because of their feedback, but... yeah.

On the balance, I'd say while ELEMENTARY did have our share of copaganda, we did try to create a more nuanced portrayal of police that most network procedurals.

I totally get it if you think differently.

And thanks for watching!

[writingquestionsanswered]

My character has a telepathic connection with another character, so they communicate like that often. What word style should I use to differentiate between Character 1's inner dialogue and their conversation with Character 2? I'm not sure about using quotations since they're not speaking out loud.

Formatting Telepathic Communication

The way I've usually seen it done, there's no distinction between internal monologue and mental dialogue, because the difference is inherent. With internal monologue--or inner dialogue as you call it--the character is talking with themselves so there's no response. With telepathic dialogue, there's response--and that would be tagged the same way as external dialogue, just without quotes. So it's obvious there's an actual conversation going on. You can also use tags to help indicate when something is internal monologue vs when it's internal/telepathic dialogue.

I watched the time on the clock, willing it to go faster. Come on, come on. We don't have all day.

Mrs. Cahill droned on about rocks at the front of the classroom. "Can anyone tell me the difference between igneous and sedimentary?"

Maria's voice popped into my head. Could this class go any slower?

I stifled a chuckle. No, it really couldn't. I feel like we've been here for days.

"Didn't anyone read the chapter?" Mrs. Cahill asked.

No, Mrs. Cahill, I thought to myself. Nobody read the chapter. You assigned homework on homecoming weekend for eff's sake.

Hey, I thought at Maria. "Are we still meeting at the lockers at four? Or should we meet earlier now?"

The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can forget about it. I'll try to be there between three and 3:15, Maria's voice answered inside my head.

See you then.

I hope that helps!

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

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