#which is kind of wild considering I write everything in the same program

[quinndominion]

Like MadLibs gone right?

Um, I'm not really here...yet. I mean I have been back in stealth lurk mode since the beginning of the month, resisting any impulse to shitpost or foreshadow things to come because getting back into the groove of simming is slower going than expected so who knows when anything's actually coming. But I am finally making time every day for just catching up to myself with my ginormous backlog of story. And I'm having fun.

Speaking of which, I don't mind the auto-capture for word completion in LibreOffice. Comes in handy. But I tried to see if I could permanently delete some of the stupider captures, strings of numbers or my one-off nonsense words, and came across this little gem of a framed capture in the Hs. Almost like the pattern from just writing the story itself was in on the foreshadowing...Not quite, just...almost.

[sibylance]

Hi Sib!

I just read about an author privating their works out of fear of being accused of using AI, and as a fellow writer (a newbie when it comes to writing in English, no less, so I don’t even have older works to show from before AI was a thing), I’m honestly considering the same. I use and love a writing program that doesn’t have doc history, and some of my writing has been flagged as AI a few times with low percentages. I thought that was kind of normal since I’d read several articles about ESL writers triggering AI detectors more often, but then that group of people came out saying that no, that’s actually BS, so now I’m just… scared.

What do you think could be done to make these people stop? At this point, I don’t even care if someone writes their stuff with AI (not that I get it, it’s fanwork for a reason), because the fear this has caused is simply not worth it. Even if they had the best intentions (which is debatable, considering how they responded whenever anyone disagreed or asked questions), this has become too dangerous to continue. But they don’t seem to realize that.

What should we do? How are we supposed to keep going, knowing they might just decide to throw our writing into AI detectors (detectors keeping those user datas and using the same AI algorithms they’re so vehemently against) and effectively feed people’s work into AI, probably making them all the more unreliable?

I love your art, I love your opinions, and I love your blog. It feels like a safe place in these wild times. Thank you so much for everything you do.

Thank you for the message and your kind words, I hope you are taking care of yourself.

I've seen an unintentional side effect of people opting to stop caring about ai, due to how they all went about it, which is both interesting and incredibly sad (not a direction I want people to go in myself).

You are not alone with these sentiments (in fact there are more people than you think that simply do not buy into those allegations), I've been in discussion with others about these very issues - seeing that evidence provided in defense isn't sufficient, the way ai detectors are weaponized and they aren't even accurate, the frankly abhorrent treatment to anyone that disagrees.

Know this, they are not the monolith of the community. I cannot tell you they won't do it again, because unfortunately they probably will. But we can mitigate the response by making people aware what is and isn't ai - to educate rather than punish. Also a healthy block/mute so you don't have to interact with them as well (I'm a firm believer in curating your own spaces).

I hope the authors that have privated their fics will one day re-share their works - and I hope you will one day share your creations (I would very much like to see!).

[paramouradrift]

#Avatar BioShock Crossover AU" 2023 please!!!

This one's a doozy.

I don't remember precisely what triggered this one, but there was a period of a couple weeks last year where I got really into the idea of an Avatar/BioShock crossover AU. This spawned several AUs, only one of which made it into my WIP folder, apparently, so the rest must be lurking on discord with my beta reader. This particular AU has a few scant character notes, some timelines, and a discussion of themes that paint what I would consider a compelling but overly-ambitious picture.

The themes in play: destiny, causality, consciousness, free will, and moral choice. We are pulling material from BioShock, BioShock 2, BioShock 2: Minerva's Den, BioShock Infinite, Avatar: the Last Airbender, and Legend of Korra. Rapture exists in its own right, whereas Columbia is replaced with Republic City. Tears, Spirit Portals, and Spirit Wilds are all the same thing, linking Rapture and Republic City across time and space. Bending and Splicing are the same, as well, with the "Avatar" being someone who has spliced up to an incredible degree and not died of every kind of cancer. The Avatar State is thus a kind of berserk mode that uses up all the EVE in the Avatar's body, leaving them powerless and vulnerable at the end. Past Avatars exist as coherent ADAM ghosts.

Aang, in this story, is a Jack/Eleanor Lamb character originally from Rapture who escaped into Republic City through a tear, and set about trying to find a way back to Rapture's past to undo all of the damage he ended up causing. He's a man haunted by guilt whose efforts are ultimately futile, because that's not how causality works.

Korra is our Elizabeth, whose ability to open and close tears makes her valuable to Aang in his quest for redemption, but also makes her a target for everyone on both sides of the veil who wants a slice of the Rapture/Republic City pie. But opening and closing tears destroys entire sections of probability space, creating fixed points in spacetime and releasing a ton of spiritual energy that gets eaten by the bioluminescent mass that sits beneath Rapture, spitting ADAM slugs back out into the world, accelerating the chaos and decline of both cities.

I have here that Aang somehow travels back to the past and becomes the founder of Rapture, which means he later creates and then kills himself while trying to do everything he can to avoid that outcome. It probably made more sense in my head the time. The other members of the Gaang are listed as Rapture's Best & Brightest: Zuko and Sokka are divorced and miserable, with Zuko trying to be a single dad and Sokka inventing the Thinker; Katara is the city's foremost doctor and philanthropist; Suki is a detective/private security chief; and Toph runs the banks because nobody else is capable. She also laid a lot of the city's foundation.

The Mechanist is here inventing things. Wu is a popular singer with his own radio program. Suyin is a prima donna ballerina. Asami is...presumably doing something amazing, but I didn't write that bit down.

The villain rogue's gallery is all here as well, moving back and forth across the tears and causing mischief and mayhem. Zaheer's radical spirituality causes Aang (Rapture Founder) to ban religion, and Unalaq tries to get control of the Avatar Program so that he can become an Avatar himself. Ozai and Zhao extend their feelers throughout both cities, seizing power and resources for themselves. Amon slots himself nicely into the Atlas role (plot twist and all), so nothing really more to say there. Kuvira is apparently a former police officer turned mob boss capitalizing on the chaos for her own gain. Long Feng is a cold technocrat who runs a private security firm and manages assets for city big wigs. My note on him is "a less affable Sinclair."

Pro-bending/ADAM boxing is a thing, so Mako and Bolin are here trying to make it big in the big bad city/ies, which probably means I planned some background Wuko.

I have no idea what my endgame was. I don't know what the actual plot was going to be. This project wasn't one I seriously considered planning out in detail because I was in the middle of H&V/J&R work, and that takes priority over anything else with this level of ambition. Having said that, it might be interesting to take another pass at the concept and see if I can turn all of that up there into something workable.

WIP Game master post.

[liriostigre]

hey! I wanted to ask what your favorite poetry books are? I have a few but I want to read new and interesting stuff, and I trust your taste :D

hiii ♡

tbh i only started reading poetry collections like,, last year. i'm subscribed to poetryfoundation's newsletter (poem of the day) so i usually just read random poems

anyway, i'm not sure my recs could be considered new (cause i'm gonna start with Mary Oliver ♡) but feel free to message me if you want to know the themes, style, feeling (vibes, if you will) or anything you want to know about these collections. for now, i'm linking my favorite poems in each collection, i hope this helps you choose! ♡

here you go:

Dream Work —Mary Oliver (“Wild Geese.” “Dogfish.”)

Red Bird —Mary Oliver (“Summer Morning.” “Love Sorrow.”)

Blue Horses —Mary Oliver (“To Be Human Is to Sing Your Own Song.” “Loneliness.” “Little Crazy Love Song.”)

The Wild Iris —Louise Glück (“Sunset.” “Retreating Light.”)

Haruko/Love Poems —June Jordan (“On a New Year’s Eve.” “Mendocino Memory.” “Toward a City That Sings.” *under the cut)

Extracting the Stone of Madness —Alejandra Pizarnik (“Primitive Eyes.” “Summer Goodbyes.” *under the cut)

Ariel —Sylvia Plath (“Tulips.” “The Rival.”)

Prelude to Bruise —Saeed Jones (“Postapocalyptic Heartbeat.” *under the cut)

Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth —Alice Walker (“Coming Back from Seeing Your People.” *under the cut)

I Must Be Living Twice —Eileen Myles (“Edward the Confessor.” *under the cut)

Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth —Warsan Shire (“Conversations About Home (at the Deportation Centre.”)

The Black Unicorn —Audre Lorde (“Hanging Fire.” “Sister Outsider.”)

Bright Dead Things —Ada Limón (“The Riveter.” “Glow.”)

Night Sky With Exit Wounds —Ocean Vuong (“Thanksgiving 2006.” “Logophobia.”)

Postcolonial Love Poem —Natalie Diaz (“Manhattan Is a Lenape Word.”)

Crush —Richard Siken (“Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out.”)

Once —Alice Walker (“So We've Come at Last to Freud.”)

“Toward a City That Sings” by June Jordan

Into the topaz the crystalline signals of Manhattan the nightplane lowers my body scintillate with longing to lie positive beside the electric waters of your flesh and I will never tell you the meaning of this poem: Just say, ‘She wrote it and I recognize the reference.’ Please let it go at that. Although it is all the willingness you lend the world as when you picked it up the garbage scattering the cool formalities of Madison Avenue after midnight (where we walked for miles as though we knew the woods well enough to ignore the darkness) although it is all the willingness you lend the world that makes me want to clean up everything in sight (myself included)

for your possible discovery

“Primitive Eyes” by Alejandra Pizarnik

Where fear neither speaks in stories or poems, nor gives shape to terrors or triumphs.

My name, my pronoun — a grey void.

I’m familiar with the full range of fear. I know what it’s like to start singing and to set off slowly through the narrow mountain pass that leads back to the stranger in me, to my own emigrant.

I write to ward off fear and the clawing wind that lodges in my throat.

And in the morning, when you are afraid of finding yourself dead (of there being no more images): the silence of compression, the silence of existence itself. This is how the years fly by. This is how we lost that beautiful animal happiness.

“Summer Goodbyes” by Alejandra Pizarnik

The soft rumor of spreading weeds. The sound of things ruined by the wind. They come to me as if I were the heart of all that exists. I would like to be dead, and also to go inside another heart.

“Postapocalyptic Heartbeat” by Saeed Jones

I. Drugged, I dreamed you a plume of ash, great rush of wrecked air through the towns of my stupor. And when the ocean in your blood went toxic, I thought fire was what we needed: serrated light through the skin, grenade in the chest—pulled linchpin. I saw us breathing on the other side of after. But a blackout is not night; orange-bottled dreams are not sleep. II. I was a cross-legged boy in the third lifetime, empire of blocks in my lap while you walked through the door of your silence, hunting knife in one hand, flask in the other. I waited for you until I forgot to breathe, my want turning me colors only tongues of amaryllis could answer for. It owned me, that hunger, tendriled its way into my name for you. III. In a city made of rain each door, a silence; each lock, a mouth, I walked daily through the spit-slick streets, harbingers on my hands in henna: there will be no after Black-and-blue-garbed strangers, they called me Cassandra. (I had such a body then.) Umbrellas in hand, they listened while they unlistened. there will be no no. after

the world will end no.

you are the reason it no. ends

you no. IV. I didn’t exactly mean to survive myself. Half this life I’ve spent falling out of fourth-story windows. Pigeons for hair, wind for feet. Sometimes I sing “Stormy Weather” on the way down. Today, “Strange Fruit.” Each time, strangers find me drawing my own chalk outline on the sidewalk, cursing with a mouth full of iron, furious at my pulse. V. After ruin, after shards of glass like misplaced stars, after dredge, after the black bite of frost:        you are the after, you are the first hour in a life without clocks; the name of whatever falls from the clouds now is you (it is not rain), a song in a dead language, an unlit earth, a coast broken— how was I to know every word was your name?

“Coming Back from Seeing Your People” by Alice Walker

Coming back From seeing your people You were So wonderfully Full Of yourself.

But now You have supped With vampires They have fed Feasted On you.

They arise Bright-eyed Fit.

You alone have lost Not only Your sleep But also Your glow The luster of Affection Heart welcome Your people Sent home With you.

Beloved You must learn To walk alone To hold The precious Silence To bring home And keep the precious Little That is left Of yourself.

“Edward the Confessor” by Eileen Myles

I have a confession to make I wish there were some role in society I could fulfill I could be a confessor I have a confession to make I have this way when I step into the bakery on 2nd Ave. of wanting to be the only really nice person in the store so the harried sales woman with several toned hair will like me. I do this in all kinds of stores, coffee shops xerox shops, everywhere I go. And invariably I leave my keys, xeroxing, my coffee from the last place I am being so nice. I try so hard to make a great impression on these neutral strangers right down to the perfect warm smile I get entirely lost and stagger back out onto the street, bereft of something major. It’s really leaning too hard on the everyday. My mother was the kind of woman who dragging us into stores always seemed to charm the pants off the cashier. She was such a great person, so human though at home she was such a bitch, I mean really distant. I imitate her and I don’t do it well. She didn’t leave her wallet or us in a store. I’m just a pale imitation it is simply not my style to open the hearts of strangers to my true personhood. I hope you accept this tiny confession of what I am currently going through. And if you are experiencing something of a similar nature tell someone, not me, but tell someone. It’s the new human program to be in. It would be nice for at least these final moments if we could sigh with the relief of being in the same program with all the other humans whispering in school. I can’t quite locate the terror, but I am trying to be my mother or Edward the Confessor smiling down on you with up-praying hands. I am looking down at the tips of my boots as I step across the balcony of the church excited to be allowed to say these things. Outside my church is a relationship. On 11th street this guy and this woman are selling the woman so they can get more dope. All their things are there, rags and loaves of bread and make-up. And there was— this was incredible. Two men lying by the door of the church giving each other blow-jobs. They were sort of street guys, one black one white. I said hey you can’t do that here. They jumped up, one spit come out of his mouth. If you don’t get out of here I’ll call the cops. Don’t call the cops we’ll go, we’ll leave. That was a shock. That was more than I expected to see in a day. Something about seeing the guy spit come out of his mouth. He didn’t have to do that. I guess I scared him. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I was scared too.

[dirtycccat]

the demon bros+ undateables showing their love

thought about this for 5 min then had to write it out so enjoy

lucifer

first off you notice he treats you differently

and by differently i mean like you’re his favorite child  sibling

you get away with anything??? and he’s softer with you than with the others (which is canon)

then you see that?? he keeps buying you stuff you said you wanted when he was present

and you’re ofc impressed

but you’re more impressed by how open he’s around you

he’ll leave most of his walls down around  you

which means you’ll get to experience unfiltered lucifer

he’ll laugh around you more, make dumb dad jokes, nap with his head in your lap, complain drunkenly about his work and bros, give you sloppy cheeks and forehead kisses

you find it rly cute though

if you’re in the human world he’ll 100% take this chance to send you beautifully written letters asking you how you are and leaving some verses that reminded him of you on the back like a 19th century vampire

“dear mc, how is your life? mine is filled with woe and unease since i do not  have the light of my life around anymore...anyway here’s a poem about being horny and alone by a 18th century romantic author hope to see you soon, xoxo lucifer”

you try to respond in the same way and send him memes on the back instead of  poetry (or real poetry depends on your mood)

mammon

protective of you 100% will throw hands with anyone that even glances weirdly your way

but also wants to show you off? like look at this human!!! this is MY human!!!

gives you random thoughtful gifts that reminded him of you

wants to be around you 24/7 so he invites you to all the events that he thinks you’ll like

you wanna party? perfect. you wanna go on a weird ghost stories tour around the city? cool. you wanna waltz in one of those old people parties? he’s already reserved two tickets. you just wanna lay around and nap? he’s already on your lap.

it doesn’t matter if you’re in a romantic relationship or not this man WILL serenade you outside your window

rapunzel style with an acoustic guitar or with a boombox like a rebel 80s kid

anyway here’s toxic by britney spears babe this is for YOU

levi

considers you his bff ofc

but also at first he’s still really awkward around you and doesn’t really know what to do for you and feels bad thinking only you do things for him

until you reassure him you enjoy just being around him so it’s fine

he blushes and starts inviting you more to his room to game/ watch stuff

at some point he starts buying two tickets to all concerts he goes to and invites you along

but also? he asks you what you’re into and starts marathoning your favorite animes/ movies/ series so he can talk with you abt them

you feel really moved that he’d do that for you???  like??? bruh...

your relationship is basically friends respecting each other and wanting to know each other the best through their passions even if it means getting into some weird shit

it’s rly wholesome tho

if you’re romantically involved he’ll totally do roleplay as your favourite character and you do the same for him and it’s really cute

also imagine: artistic collabs. you make fanart together??? you can program games together???? you do cosplay together??? the possibilities...

satan

he’ll hate to be compared to his dad brother but he does show how much he trusts you by showing his unguarded side too

when he first talked about lucifer without the filter of his nice guy persona you were pretty shocked

like he was really going at it

but then you realize? he’s just like that when he’s comfortable

and it’s not all mean spirited, he just has,,, a strong personality and a lot of opinions about stuff (which you sometimes share with him)

but you also found out it’s really fun to gossip with satan

since he knows all the juicy gossip from his multitude of ties (he’s sharing the title of gossip queen with asmo that’s why they get along so well tbh)

also if you even find a teacher you hate he’ll tell you all their embarrassing moments to make you feel better

he also recommends you books and poems and sends you quotes that made him think about you

so you sure as heck don’t need to buy books while you’re in the devildom bc he’ll buy you an entire library 

asmo

compliments you without comparing you to himself which is the highest compliment he can give

like mammon he’s more into the showing everyone his favorite human around while also protecting them

he’ll take you to his parties and gatherings as a guest of honor, he’ll make you meet all kinds of people and open up opportunities for you

he’ll be the one that pampers you

you’d think lucifer is the sugar daddy of the family but nope it’s asmo

he’ll buy you cute clothes, shoes, beauty products everything that he saw and imagined would look bomb on you

if you’re not into clothes he’ll buy you art supplies, books, anything you want but he’ll still probably  buy you at least some clothes he thinks are cute

if you’re romantically involved,,,, he’ll buy other toys for you as well which you can try together wink wink

beel

cooks for you

no questions asked when it’s his turn to cook he’ll think about what YOU would like to eat first before making something

which is??? really touching coming from beel

and also means sometimes he’ll make the same dish three weeks in a row and annoy the others while you just get excited bc ??? you get to eat your favourite dish??? again and again???? 

thank you beel you truly know how to touch someone’s insides

also opens up to you and talks to you about his fears and thoughts

expect to get 4 am msgs from beel if he had a nightmare

which would end up in you coming to cuddle him (and belphie also joins sometimes)

which tbh is that even a thing you can complain about?

belphie

is more baby less murder when you’re around

naps on your lap, naps on your shoulder, naps with you anywhere

but also let’s you nap on HIM

besides being soft around you he actually opens up to you too

and talks to you about his traumas and issues

which he has in common with his twin what can you do

so you have weekly cuddle parties with him and beel where you talk about shit and actually make them resolve their issues instead of just,,, ignoring them

also if you’re into each other you probably tease each other and flirt really shamelessly in public while the others cringe and or blush at your language

are you a cowboy? because i want you to ride me all night 

simeon

writes you fancy letters with poetry like lucifer, but his ink is scented and  his envelopes contain pressed flowers more often than not

if you’re together you even do letter sexting if you’re into it

creates characters based on you in his stories (which you don’t believe even if levi points out you that the two of you are kinda similar)

asks you to spend more and more time with him and luke

invites you to picnics, reads to you while your head is in his lap, cooks you snacks

if you’re a theatre kid too,,, you do musical love confessions too,,, sometimes by just reciting the lyrics of really popular musical theatre songs in a death panned voice

cough a heart full of love from les mis but read like poetry through the fence of the house of lamentation cough

asks you cryptic shit hannibal style like “tell me mc what does it mean to want to be consumed whole by another? is it a desire to become something bigger than yourself or is it related to our need to become one with our loved one like some cultures pointed out before?”

you’re either really into his cryptid talk or just roll your eyes and smooch him

diavolo

invites you around to his castle all the time

sometimes he even pulls some weird shenanigans just to make you spend more time with him

expect tea parties with him luci and barbatos in no particular combination

gives you compliments 24/7  even in public

remember how he treats lucifer? he’s that for you too but he’s learned from the lucifer experience to focus on complimenting you as a person more than how you look

if you’re into pda he’ll touch you all the time

if you ever wanted a gomez - morticia romance, here’s your goth big titty himbo that’s way too full of love

if you’re lovers expect to be pampered, i feel like? he doesn’t buy a lot of gifts and such because he’s probably tired of material things but he will make time in his busy schedule for you and spend a lot of time with you

which means more to him than gifts

(we will buy you anything you ask though)

barbatos

actually talks with you about stuff outside rad, the demon bros and diavolo

also invites you to alone time tea or wine time

where you drink and gossip

if satan and asmo are the crowned queens of gossip barbatos is the king of gossip but he doesn’t share his knowledge to most people so nobody knows what he knows

but he knows,,,, a lot

and not only that he knows a lot about people nowadays,,, but imagine the things he knows about like historical figures and such,,, 

so prepare for story time with barbatos where he  talks about how oscar wilde was almost summoned by drunk inccubi during a party once, or how  diavolo cried when he was a kid because he sent a letter to caravaggio asking him to paint his portrait and he said no

also if you get drunk together expect really energetic talkative barbatos destroying DESTROYING everyone (except diavolo ofc)

“lucifer please i once saw you crying because you thought diavolo was ignoring you when you actually forgot to press the send button to your messages ”

if you’re romantically involved diavolo will always be first in his hear but that just means you’ll have to invite diavolo along on your dates which  just means you’ve got a new lover and a new bff

solomon 

he invites you on all kinds of wacky adventures

you  visit witches, go to weird magical forest parties or orgies if you want, you go travelling the mountains for rare herbs

it’s like you’re faust and he’s mephisto  haha the irony and he’s showing you another side of the world you never knew 

ofc the others know about all this but??? they thought it’s normal and didn’t even consider you know nothing about it

but solomon knows what it was like to be just a human

and since he likes you he empathizes with your situation

he also make you meet all kinds of people

since he has 72 contracts and hundreds of years of doing wack stuff he must know some interesting people

and now his friends are your friends 

i feel like romantic solomon would be just him?? but less shady with you especially since now you understand him better 

but also he’ll probably bring you weird shit from his alone expeditions

did you ever want the tears of a mermaid? a carnivorous plant that feeds on emotions? a crying portrait? no? well too bad because now you have a room full of weird items

...that you love and treasure thank you very much

[caffernnn]

Final stroke spoilers: ⚠️‼️

I just saw a post on Twitter about the Haru and Rin scene and how they didn’t feel that it was that ooc of Haru. I thought I was the only one who felt that it was kind of justified on Haru’s end. Because both Rin and Ikuya put Haru and their friends through so much when they were lost and wanted to swim with Haru again. And I get that professional swimming is entirely different than what they’re used to, but it really sucks that as soon as the competition got a little hard they decided to just drop free and only swim their preferred styles. That’s got to be a slap in the face to Haru, because what was all of that other stuff about? Like Rin wanted for YEARS for Haru to swim on the world stage and after the first race is like “you’re on your own.” He honestly deserves it to be honest even if Haru would’ve never said anything to protect their friendship he was clearly thinking or thought these thoughts. For a show where Haru is the mc we rarely get to see how he feels about things. I wish we can see the movie soon, cause I really wanna see how that whole sequence takes place.

⚠️ Talking about Free! Final Stroke spoilers below the cut ⚠️

It’s wild to me (it probably shouldn’t be surprising; idk) how even going off of just spoilers, there is a clear divide in the reactions people are having to Haru’s actions in the movie, especially in reference to the sudden shift leading up to the fight with Rin. I can see why people are surprised by it on a base level because so much of his successes in DttF, paired with the camaraderie everyone seems to have for a majority of the movie, leads you to believe Haru has emotionally matured and stabilized since high school, which is true! He’s more open to change and examining his emotions, especially as he starts to grapple with a high-stakes long-term goal for what feels like the first time. With that said, all of this can be true at the same time Haru is going through a steady breakdown that can/will likely lead to burnout. So many people who’ve been put through rigorous academic programs or career training or anything else equally as intensive can attest to the frustration of feeling like every few steps forward (gaining experiential knowledge, making connections, learning more about your identity in reference to x goal, etc) are followed by a step back (exhaustion, plateaus, expectations you can’t meet, mistakes spilling out when you can’t keep repressing the negatives in the name of “productivity”). Haru was able to make it this far because he has grown and started to heal some of the cracks in his support group, but the sheer amount of pressure makes it easier for him to break, and old wounds that never fully healed have time to fester.

I probably sound like a broken record in these movie-related posts when talking about Haru getting obsessed with becoming stronger and not knowing what to do with that fairly new and overwhelming drive. I can’t be mad at Haru completely for his choices here (can’t wait to be called a Haru apologist when the movie comes out in more places jfjdjd) because he partially fell victim to circumstance. This is one of the first times Haru takes the expectations of him being a “hero” or “prodigy” into consideration, and now he’s trying to navigate the expectations of success that come with those titles while not being sure 1) what exactly they are beyond winning, and 2) not being sure if they’re actually attainable for him. Along with that, he’s putting faith in Ryuuji’s instruction and guidance because he needs someone with any sort of credibility or experience with the pro circuit to show him how to get to the top. Even though from an outside standpoint it’s easier to discredit and reject Ryuuji’s assertion that everyone at the top has to give something up to get there, there are a number of reasons Haru reconsiders the notion with everything he’s seeing. He’s seeing his newest rivals reach crazy success and strength through isolation, and Ryuuji is dangling a golden opportunity in front of his face by going to Haru in the moments where he’s most vulnerable and saying “yes, that strength you crave is possible for you, but only if you pay this specific price for it.” Nobody should bear the weight of “saving” Haru from his circumstances (especially not his friends on their own journeys… Ryuuji and other mentors watching this trainwreck can eat my shorts tho), but dealing with this ultimatum while his core support group is pushing forward through their own challenges and/or busy in another country, I can’t be too surprised when he starts to overextend himself and burst at the seams.

As far as the blow-up with Rin, I won’t say it’s fully justified, but it’s understandable. The way Haru has had to make peace with his hardships with Ikuya and Rin has largely been by atoning for his own involvement in those rifts and trying to turn over a new leaf without expecting much in return. He took the opportunities of swimming with both of them again to replace any apologies on their parts and largely made peace with it. As much as it’s going to hurt to watch, I’m interested to see this fight play out because it sounds like it addresses a problem we bring up a lot in meta analyses posts: there needs to be more explicit conversations and apologies between characters, or the closure feels flimsy and temporary at best. This fight isn’t about closure (it’s about a lot of things both involving and excluding Rin, but I ranted about that in the other spoiler post) but it’s acknowledgement after all of this time that there’s still a need for it. Having Rin back in his life as a rival and friend has held the caveat in the back of his mind that Rin will leave his side again if Haru’s friendship/rivalry stops serving all of his interests. Haru’s ultimate fear of being abandoned by people, of people using him without understanding him and then throwing him aside for someone/something else, is drastically coming back to the surface in all of his stress. Rin and Ikuya choosing to continue their pro careers with strokes that better suit their strengths isn’t abandonment, just like Makoto choosing a university in Tokyo wasn’t, but Haru is so lost in his own stress and despair that he can’t see these choices as anything but personal attacks in the moment. These choices don’t have to do with Haru and we’re never meant to hurt him (which he comes to realize by the end of each fight), but the unresolved issues mixed with his fears make him explode.

It’s not a black and white situation where only one side is in the right, and I hope whatever resolution comes in the second movie acknowledges that. Rin didn’t deserve Haru’s taunting and wrath in that moment, but I do want him to reflect on the whole mess and recognize that Haru’s in a desperate place not unlike the one he was in when he first went to Australia and seemingly cut everyone off. I want them both to consider that avoiding airing out those insecurities because it’d be uncomfortable or embarrassing ultimately led them back here, unsure how to talk about changes and concerns without first having one of them explode or hit rock bottom. They can be friends outside of swimming, I’d want them to be friends outside of swimming, but I think Haru isn’t blind to how much of their connection is reliant on intrigue in the water, and a part of him is scared that Rin won’t have a reason to stick around if they aren’t rivaling each other in the same stroke anymore.

All of this can make for a great chance of resolution in the second movie, if done well. There’s opportunity for Haru to realize that the trajectory of dreams can change, and just like Rin changing his stroke or Makoto changing his training emphasis, you can honor the parts of the dream that first inspired you while finding a path that honors the person you’ve become. There’s opportunity for Haru to break from the dangerous echo chamber he’s currently in telling him he has to do this all alone in a few ways. Maybe he’ll have a moment where he’s like “I gave up everything and still couldn’t get stronger, so now I need to get back to finding what gives me strength personally.” Maybe he’ll have a moment where he’s like “if my only option is a path paved in loneliness, I need to find a new dream.” There are so many directions the story can go in at this point, and I’m excited to see what happens next (and maybe write about the paths they don’t choose lol).

[shihalyfie]

02 and the question of “what a life is”

One topic more specific to 02 is the question of what exactly counts as being “alive”, which is initially brought up as a question when Ken discarding the Kaiser persona is directly caused by the revelation that he might have misjudged this, leading into the second half of the series where other issues reveal that it’s not as easy of a question as one thinks. In the end, 02 never gives a concrete answer about what constitutes the boundary between something that’s “alive” and “not alive” -- but, being a series that’s very much about pragmatism, gives a much clearer answer as to what one should do about it.

While it’s not named directly in the series itself (I’m not sure if this specific named concept was the intent, as it’s since expanded to become a fairly ubiquitous theme in sci-fi and fantasy overall), 02 deals heavily with a question related to a thought experiment called the “Chinese room problem”, which originated as a question related to artificial intelligence development and has since expanded into having philosophical and spiritual nuances (perhaps fittingly for Digimon Adventure, which is heavily about digital technology and sci-fi but mixes it with a lot of philosophical and spiritual imagery).

The Chinese room problem goes like this: let’s say you’re a person who has never learned, studied, or grown up with the Chinese language (or, really, any language you can’t understand or read; Chinese was only used as an example because the person explaining the thought experiment was using himself as an example and couldn’t read or understand it). You’re locked in a room that has a bunch of Chinese phrasebooks that give you instructions -- basically, they indicate common Chinese phrases, and sensible responses you can give to them (without actually translating it to a language you know). Someone slips you a piece of paper under the door with some Chinese phrases on them. You use the phrasebooks to write appropriate responses, and slip the paper back. The person outside the door reads the paper, sees what they gave you, and sees the response you gave them. It makes sense, of course, because the phrasebook told you to write an answer that made sense. But can you be said to actually understand Chinese? No, because you were just following instructions without actually understanding what they meant.

So let’s expand this to make it a bit more complicated: say you have an AI or a robot or something of the sort that accepts “input” -- people saying things to it, or showing it things -- and gives expected “responses” that seem sensible, through a bunch of complicated programs and processes in its programming. Can you say this robot is “alive”? One might say “no”, because, no matter how complicated and intricate it is, all of it is technically following a set of routine commands telling it to do certain things in response...or so you might say, but couldn’t you say the same thing about a human brain, which also takes input, processes it according to its own instructions (just caused by chemical processes instead of bytes and code), and creates output? After a certain point, this question is going to become far more of a philosophical, spiritual, and potentially even religious question than anything.

Adventure and 02 undoubtedly have a very spiritual element to it, given the heavy usage of Neoplatonic themes, the concept of “destiny” that hangs heavily over it, and the fact that Digimon themselves are heavily linked to spiritual things like Japanese youkai or other spirits and literally being part of the human soul. Digimon partners are treated as part of their partners’ human psyches, yet are also treated as individuals. And, in the end, it’s driven home that Digimon are made out of data -- but “digital technology” is treated as something that can communicate with such spiritual things. So here’s the question: At what point can a Digimon be called a living being?

Well, really, the first time this had really been brought up was the allusion to the issue in Adventure episode 20 -- when Taichi takes the revelation of the Digital World being a “digital” world a bit too literally and decides to treat it as a game, acting a bit too recklessly as a result. Koushirou himself buys into the theory of “real bodies” (which turns out to be false; this isn’t a Matrix situation where their bodies are sleeping somewhere, but they are actually being migrated here), but the point by the end of this episode is: just because everything is “data” doesn’t mean you get to treat it any less lightly. Do not treat the Digital World like a “game world” or something you can fiddle with at will.

Even if the technicals may make it seem like a computer, the reality of the situation is that everything you do has a permanent effect that you cannot instantly take back. It doesn’t matter what it’s “made” up out of; the issue is more about what you do, and the practical impact it has on what’s around you. (This will very important for later, so keep this in mind as we go.)

So by the time we get to 02, the first time this issue is brought up again is in 02 episode 20, when Ken, as the Kaiser, recognizes the kids’ Digimon Baby forms as the “plushies” he’d seen them carrying in real life during the soccer match back in 02 episode 8, which reveals a lot about his mentality in approaching the Digital World and Digimon -- he’d been under the impression that Digimon couldn’t leave it, apparently, and that they were therefore all part of a simulated game. Driving it in further is that Wormmon refers to the Digimon having “bodies” (as in, physical bodies), which trips Ken’s radar that there’s a lot more to this than he’d thought. There’s also a lot of evidence that Ken wasn’t just solely trying to buy into this concept for the sake of denial and self-justification; up until this point, he’d been noticeably hesitant to physically harm other humans, so he really did buy into there being a substantial difference here.

...But, funnily enough, we later learn in a flashback in 02 episode 23 that Ken didn’t necessarily always have this attitude of “Digimon aren’t living beings, so I get to do whatever I want with them” back during his original adventures with Wormmon in the Digital World. One could argue that maybe he “knew” that Digimon were alive back then and the Dark Seed just made him forget through trauma, but even Taichi hardly treated the Digimon badly back when he thought that everything was a “game” back in Adventure (rather, he was reckless with himself more than anything). Later in this very series, there’ll end up being a massive debate on what exactly constitutes a Digimon having a “soul”. No, the real issue is actually...

What tips Ken over the edge into discarding the Kaiser persona is empathy -- when he retroactively reflects on the implications of the Digimon being “alive” meaning that every single action he’d done had an impact on causing “pain” or “torture” on others. That’s why it didn’t matter so much to him back then, because he was willing to treat Wormmon with the respect of a living being, regardless of what he was made out of (and, really, humans are more likely to be kind to things than otherwise, even when they’re supposedly “artificial”; for an extreme example, see how people are inclined to treat their robotic vacuum cleaners like family members, or have a hard time picking rude choices in video games, and those are all things you have much less of an argument for there being any actual pain inflicted).

And, hence, the main reason why the kids rail so much on the Kaiser for suggesting the heresy of “resetting the Digital World”: because he’s treating something with the gravity of “reality” like it’s something he can just toy with for his own convenience. Who cares what it’s made up of? There are actual civilizations building a livelihood here and “living beings” that can feel pain or show emotion. Nobody ever gave the kids immediate knowledge that Digimon have souls or any higher answer like that -- it’s just that the Kaiser is a callous, unempathetic jerk who’s willing to toy with so many lives and living individuals for his own pleasure. And, most importantly, everything the Kaiser has done here is something he can’t take back, and has to accept the consequences of; this wasn’t a place where he could vent out his feelings of being unable to “take back” Osamu’s death and treat everything lightly.

It doesn’t actually matter what it’s made up of -- the fact is that they act like living beings, show obvious personal feelings and a propensity to feel pain, and thus have the right to be treated as such. If you’re practically able to observe this, then you should be respecting that.

Once Archnemon takes over the position as most prominent antagonist, the kids start dealing with her Dark Tower Digimon that she uses to indiscriminately destroy things. This initially creates a lot of confusion for the kids, especially when Ken and Stingmon so easily kill Thunderballmon and it looks to them like he’s gone right back into sadism after supposedly being reformed -- thus, this would provide an issue with Ken’s apparent lack of empathy if he’s allowed to keep going, because he (seemingly) hasn’t learned his lesson and will go on to keep hurting more victims.

When Golemon goes to destroy the dam, it’s repeatedly commented on how unusual it is for a Digimon to just go and destroy a dam for no reason except to ruin people’s lives -- even the enemies back in Adventure at least had a power-hungry motive, and the non-verbal “wild” ones back in File Island were ultimately territorial at worst, and certainly not interested in wanton destruction without reason. On top of that, in fact, only two people -- Iori and Miyako -- in this group of five are actually that vehemently in favor of trying to spare Golemon for the sheer reason of it being a living being -- Daisuke starts to consider the fact that it may become necessary to save potential victims before Ken is even brought into the picture, Takeru points out how close they are to push-coming-to-shove, and Hikari clearly laments the fact it may become possible but doesn’t take nearly of the strong “we absolutely cannot do this” stance that Iori and Miyako have. And, after all, Takeru and Hikari were there back in Adventure when killing some very sentient Digimon became necessary, and learned that it may be something you have to do if you want to prevent more victims, and Daisuke had personally been a victim of Vamdemon back in 1999 and also happens to be one of the most pragmatic in this group.

Thus, the reveal that Golemon is actually a Dark Tower Digimon confirms two things for them: firstly, that it’s very unlikely that Golemon is powered by anything but a sheer instinct of wanton destruction, and secondly, that Ken does, indeed, have a concept of empathy. The kids had already noticed that something was “unusual” about Golemon in that it seemed to be incapable of independent action, just an order to “mindlessly destroy”, and it being what the series refers to as “a Dark Tower in the shape of a Digimon” just happens to confirm that it may not actually be that capable of independent action or emotion -- which they then realize that Ken also realized, and thus that he wasn’t killing Digimon out of callousness. This is, also, effectively, the same reason they’d been okay with killing Chimeramon earlier -- because there was absolutely no evidence that it had been capable of sentient reason or anything besides “destruction on instinct”.

So, again: their judgment on the situation is based on a practical observation about whether the entity in question was capable of having emotions or independent thought, and, again, a question of empathy...

...because we learn that the same process, when applied to enough Dark Towers, is enough to create a Digimon who is capable of that kind of independent thought and doesn’t feel up to taking orders, regardless of whether Archnemon is his “creator” or not. So we’ve got a demonstration of a Digimon who’s clearly capable of independent thought in ways the other Dark Tower Digimon are not (he even voices “envy” for the other single-tower Digimon Archnemon creates for being unable to think about anything), and starts exhibiting irrational behavior and the concept of “emotions”.

Recall the issue of the Chinese room problem: if we’re talking about a room of phrasebooks that simply take one input and export output, you, in the middle of the room, can’t really be said to be “understanding” Chinese. But the more complex the inputs and expected outputs get, the more complicated and intricate and explanatory those phrasebooks are going to need to be, and at some point, given a complicated enough question you get, if you’re capable of answering that in the same way a human might be expected to, that information in the phrasebooks will have to be explanatory enough to an extent you’ll be said to understand Chinese. Exactly “how complicated” or “how nuanced” does a program get before we tip that boundary? Clearly there is some difference between BlackWarGreymon and the other Dark Tower Digimon, but what is it?

And when 02 episode 32 comes around and Agumon decides to have a little bonding chat with BlackWarGreymon, even he can't answer the question definitively as to what a "soul" or “heart” is -- nobody in this narrative can, and this series has no answer. There’s no real clear-cut rule as to the boundary as to when one can be considered sentient. But while Agumon may not be able to immediately yank out deep philosophy, he at least has a deep level of insight and understanding as to what it means -- you have feelings for others, you have emotions, you have things you want that aren’t necessarily what others expect you to do, and you can bring your own perspective to the table.

The debate over what to do with this also leads to the rift between Takeru and Iori that they have to work towards mending during their Jogress arc -- Takeru’s trauma regarding Patamon in Adventure has spiraled him all the way over into prejudice against anything related to the darkness, and Iori, who understands there’s more to the situation than that, but also happens to be on the other extreme of considering it immoral to kill anything regardless of whether it’s about to murder a ton of other victims while it’s at it.

Ultimately, Adventure and 02 is a narrative that prioritizes “pragmatism” first, and the moment it’s made clear BlackWarGreymon isn’t going to cause problems anymore, the kids all decide it’s fine to let him be. In the end, whether BlackWarGreymon is “alive” is a philosophical question, but...

...whether they should hold back in fighting just to “spare lives” really has no bearing on that question. Enemies like LadyDevimon and the other Digimon the kids are ultimately forced to end up fighting are clearly alive with their own emotions -- it’s just that those emotions do happen to be uncontrolled sadism and an active desire for wanton destruction. Miyako herself even observes that LadyDevimon is a “coward” -- but she’s also still emotionally torn by the fact they end up killing her, and the story also doesn’t give her grief for this, because there’s no sin for her to have empathy. She recognized what it meant to kill a life, but they also cannot be blamed for taking that life in the process of saving multiple others. The issue of “whether it’s alive or not” had always been a separate question from the morality of fighting said lives -- and, either way, it’s still valuable that characters like Hikari, Miyako, and the other Chosen Children aren’t necessarily doing this because they like doing it, because it’s still important to keep that feeling of “empathy” in their hearts, even if push did ultimately come to shove.

So when BlackWarGreymon does return, again, nobody has an answer for him on whether he has a soul or not, but in 02 episode 47, Agumon, V-mon, and Wormmon encourage him to embrace the concept of life by “experiences” -- happiness, sadness, pain, playing and enjoying life with those you care about. Because those experiences are “real”, and Agumon himself says that “those experiences have made me who I am”; regardless of the higher philosophical question of whether he has a soul or not, he’s still someone who’s capable of having experiences and acting based on his memory of them, and that’s what’s really important. And hence, when BlackWarGreymon sacrifices himself one episode later, it’s because he understands the meaning of “doing something for others”, and is also implicitly mourned by the other Digimon, who had never failed to see him as “someone they could have befriended”, regardless of what he had originally been made up of.

It’s also why the kids are so traumatized by Archnemon and Mummymon’s deaths in 02 episode 48 -- they had no reason to be personally attached to them prior to that, and Archnemon had even said that her personal goals were nothing but wanton destruction in 02 episode 29 (which had been the first time Iori had really considered that pacifism may not be completely possible here). All of the wacky hijinks between the two of them had largely been outside of their view. But even back in 02 episodes 36-37, the kids had understood that there was some degree that they were harmless if left alone, and in the end, they watched Archnemon die in unambiguous pain and Mummymon die in the name of true love, by dying in a suicide attack because of his despair over losing her.

Archnemon and Mummymon had ultimately turned out to be “artificial lives” on their own, created at the hands of Oikawa to be his minions, and also somewhat guided by “wanton destruction” and not entirely fully aware of what they wanted to do independent of him -- BlackWarGreymon’s existential crisis had caused them to question their place in the world in 02 episode 47...and quickly shrug it off again. Could you say anything about whether they were alive or not, or whether they had souls? Perhaps it doesn’t really matter -- whether or not they were able to fully have deep thought the same way BlackWarGreymon and the other Digimon had, they at the very least were able to feel attachment and pain, and that alone deserved to be respected.

In the end, you could say that’s 02′s answer -- or non-answer -- to the Chinese room problem. You may not be able to answer the intrinsic philosophical question of whether it’s got a “soul” or is “alive” or not, but if it’s clearly demonstrating an observable and practical phenomenon of showing emotions, acting on some degree of independent will, taking in experiences and acting on them, and being able to feel a sense of pain, then you should still treat it with the appropriate amount of empathy -- regardless of what it’s made out of.

Incidentally, we do actually get a very small revisiting of this topic in Kizuna, when Menoa creates a ton of Eosmon by “scientific” methods -- and, much like the Dark Tower Digimon, they’re not recognized as living beings by anyone in this narrative, because their behavior is clearly that of mindlessly following Menoa’s orders; Yamato won’t consider it a Digimon, and Menoa herself even acknowledges that this is in no way a real “partner” like her true one, Morphomon. What does get Menoa to recognize Morphomon within Eosmon is when it does one thing -- smile -- that’s clearly outside that view, and an obvious show of independent emotion, leading Menoa to realize that her true, living partner may be closer than she’d thought.

[gmariam19]

Hi, friends! I hit a follower milestone not too long ago - thank you thank you thank you! Like I did for some other milestones, I wanted to share some of my writing. So here is the first chapter of my big WIP, the one I laid out almost a year ago, the one where Big Things Happen to Poe and Finn Does Big Things, the one that got stuck several times but is now moving nicely thanks to NaNoWriMo. (I’ve added another 10k already - and it’s only halfway through November! Yay!) It’s not much--a long introduction, really. But there is so much going on in this story, I can’t wait to finish it and share it!  So thank you - and enjoy! There is more below the break - and more to come! :) EDIT: This story is now posted! It is called Reclaim the Stars and can be found on AO3 HERE! Thank you for reading!

Chapter One  

Poe Dameron is bored.

There are at least a dozen different things he should do, from reviewing the latest intelligence data to the briefing with Connix he keeps putting off; from going over the maintenance specs on the two Y-wings they'd found abandoned on Dantooine (and wouldn't he rather be working on ships instead of always reading about them) to the tactical, medical, and supply reports for their new base of operations. And that doesn't even include the constant stream of communication with the New Republic and various other planetary governments that Poe dislikes because he's terrible at it, lacking the patience and tact necessary for sensitive diplomatic discussions.

There is always something to do now that the war is over, and yet sometimes Poe wants nothing to do with it. It had been good at first, in the heady days after Exegol when they'd been so relieved to finally stop fighting, ready to move on and rebuild the galaxy they'd fought so hard to preserve. The galaxy had believed in them, had listened to them, because they'd destroyed an entire Sith Fleet, hadn't they? Leia Organa had been telling them for years that they were in danger; she'd been more right than anyone could have possibly imagined, and it was her Resistance that had saved them.

And yet, six months later, it's as if the galaxy has already forgotten the lessons of the past. After skirmishes with both the Resistance fleet and the New Republic, the First Order finally surrendered, and every day it seems a new treaty is being signed somewhere to ensure peace.  In most parts of the galaxy, planets are rebuilding, and that peace seems to be slowly settling. Yet the one thing they need most now is the one thing no one will even consider. They don't need more diplomats, or treaties, or promises to sign more treaties with more diplomats; they need security, and no one will listen to him.

Poe isn't bored; he is frustrated.

The New Republic is still slow in pulling itself together, has been since the destruction of the Hosnian system. The fall of the First Order has splintered it even more as some systems call for a more central government to bring stability to the galaxy, while others maintain they will remain independent. It's the same argument, the same players; an endless cycle, it seems, of war and peace.

The galaxy doesn't need a central set of governing principles—recent history has proven the near impossibility of such a thing.  Better to step back and let memories of oppression fade. Yet the discord between so many opposing philosophies after the fall of the Empire had allowed the First Order to settle in the Unknown Regions and slowly build its fleet, as well as its power. That can't be allowed to happen again.

Poe believes more than anything that now is the time to put in place new organizations to maintain security in the galaxy. He isn't calling for a governing military power; both the Empire and the First Order showed that military strength could be defeated. No, they need people in the Outer Rim, and the Unknown Territories, even Wild Space, guarding them against another Exegol, another Sith Fleet. It had been too easy for Palpatine to disappear into deep space and spend decades rebuilding. The New Republic needs to make sure it never happens again. Poe has been suggesting it for months, has volunteered to lead a division of the New Republic Navy devoted to patrolling the borders of deep space and gathering intelligence. Yet no one bothers to listen anymore, and they’ve found little support outside of a handful of allies who scraped together a few starfighters and a small cruiser for them.

It will happen again if there is no one to stop it. They know that something is happening out there already. They are rumors of entire villages being wiped out on distant worlds, and Poe had hoped that after Exegol, their word would be taken seriously. Apparently, that isn't the case; the New Republic is turning a blind eye yet again. Small villages on backwater planets apparently aren't worthy of concern.

It has been weeks since Poe has been up in his X-wing, and he misses it, wishes he was back in the cockpit making a difference, even if it's only recon and intelligence gathering. But more than that, he wishes the Senate would listen to him before another First Order springs up from the birthplace of the old.

Poe spends the morning helping set up more rooms in their new base, an impersonal prefab monstrosity some Senator had sent over as a thank-you gift to the freedom fighters who had saved the galaxy from a fleet of Sith Star Destroyers. Sure, they aren't sharing quarters in a cave any more, or sleeping in tents, but there is something about it that feels different, almost wrong. Maybe he isn't used to something so permanent, this symbol of victory— or of life moving on when he feels stuck.

Maybe it's too much like a consolation prize, a way to get them to stop talking about new threats when the galaxy wants to forget the old. The building reminds him of everything that needs to be done but isn't, everything that is happening and yet being ignored, and sometimes he is tempted to go back to the cave. He needs ships and people, not bricks and mortar.

After lunch Poe forces himself to find Connix and Kin and sit through the briefing. There is no news on Poe's latest appeal for funding the proposed Sentinel program. The criminal gangs that have grown in the vacuum of the First Order's sudden withdrawal are growing bolder and the Senate doesn't seem to be doing anything about them either. The New Republic is still a struggling morass of governments who can't agree on a damn thing, other than the Resistance is getting mouthy and needs to step back and let them handle it now. Some days it feels as hopeless as fighting the First Order. How had Leia done it, after the fall of the Empire?

Kin starts to go over his intelligence reports, but Poe stops listening and stares out the window, his leg bouncing restlessly. He tosses a speeder bolt from his pocket up in the air and resists the urge to spin around in his chair like a cadet. He thinks he hears something about another village attack, about Vi Moradi, about something going down on Nar Shadda, but he is too distracted.

Connix begins to go over the state of their new headquarters—it has only been a week since they moved in—and says something about a volcanic eruption on the other side of the moon that is threatening to rain down fire monkey piss. Poe frowns, wondering if he's heard her right. "What?" he asks. "Did you say fire monkey piss?"

"Yes, General," she replies.

"Is that a real thing?"

"Of course it is. From the volcano."

"What volcano?"

"There is no volcano," she tells him, shaking her head with a smile. "But it got your attention, didn't it?"

"Sorry," he says. "Kind of distracted, I guess."

Connix exchanges a look with Beaumont Kin, who shrugs and goes back to his datapad. She smiles, which Poe knows is her way of softening the coming blow. "Why don't you take a look at the Y-wings, sir? Commander Pava said she's making good progress. The Falcon should be back soon."

Damn, she knows him too well. He jumps up with a sheepish grin and leaves as fast as he can. Only to be kicked out of the landing area by Jess, then the maintenance area by Rose, and even the medical area by Dr. Khurana. So he finds BB-8 and goes for a walk, trying to work off the restless energy that is plaguing him that day. If he's honest, it’s been building for weeks, and it started not long after Finn left.

Finn is currently on his way back from an extended mission with Chewbacca, their official goal to search for other Stormtroopers who defected from the First Order after the surrender. In truth, they are the Resistance's unofficial eyes and ears at the borders, making contacts with every operative they can, gathering the intelligence they need to maintain the borders when the New Republic won't. They are the beginning of the proposed Sentinel program. Poe did the same thing before Finn had left, and Finn before him; they agreed to take turns, alternating their time away so that one of them is always around to deal with the New Republic.

Unfortunately, it also means they have barely seen one another for the last six weeks, and Poe misses Finn—going out on missions with him, leading with him. They make a good team, and in the weeks and months since Exegol, they've grown even closer. Not as close as Poe would like, but maybe someday. He thinks about it more and more, wonders if Finn feels the same. Of course, they’d have to be on the same planet at the same time.  And one of them would have to work up the courage to say something to the other. Poe’s still too scared to lose what he does have, so it probably won’t be him.

At least Finn finally told Poe that he is Force sensitive. It makes so much sense—so many things had clicked into place—that Poe often wonders how he hadn't figured it out himself. Finn is a natural leader, a brilliant fighter, and so in touch with his sense of self that of course it is the Force guiding him. He will be a great Jedi—maybe not a warrior, as Finn seems less interested in fighting now, but he could be a teacher, a leader.

Rey is training him, to help him understand his powers and learn some basic techniques. He trains in addition to his duties with the Resistance, and Poe worries about him. He feels like sometimes Finn struggles to find a balance between the two and hopes Rey isn't pushing him too hard. She went with Finn and Chewie, to continue working with him.

The Falcon has been gone for two weeks. They ran into a few remnants of the First Order, but nothing major, and Poe isn't sure if they've gathered any important intel other than what they felt safe transmitting.  They are returning several days early, and Poe is glad. He's missed them all, though if he admits it to himself, he's missed Finn more than anything, maybe even flying. He's grown so used to having Finn by his side over the past year, through the mission to Exegol, and as co-Generals, that he's felt almost incomplete the last six weeks.

And that’s the real problem: Poe is distracted. Finn is coming back, and Poe can't concentrate. It probably doesn't say a lot about his leadership skills, or his emotional state, but it's definitely the issue, and he continues around the lake again, talking with BB-8 about Finn and Rey and how much they have to catch up on when they return. If he complains about the New Republic and their lack of organization and support yet again, BB-8 has the good grace to listen and agree when he's already heard it a hundred times.

He goes around the entire lake a second time, ignoring the sun and the heat and the need for some water, and is about to start a third time when the little droid beeps excitedly and tells him that the Falcon has landed. Poe can't hold back a grin, and they hurry to the landing area as fast as they can.

The Falcon is in its usual place, and Chewbacca is coming down the ramp with some bags. Poe greets him warmly while BB-8 asks impatiently about Finn and Rey. Chewie tells them Finn's gone to find Poe.

"Only Connix said she kicked you out of your own briefing," says a voice behind them, and Poe turns to find Finn standing there, hands on his hips and a crooked grin on his face. "Because you couldn't concentrate."

Poe grins in response, closing the gap between them to pull Finn into a warm embrace. Maybe they aren't reuniting after a battle, but it has been a long time and Poe can't help it. He missed Finn and is relieved to see him—and Chewbacca, of course—unharmed when he knows anything could happen along the borders of unknown space. And he likes the feeling of Finn in his arms too much to resist holding him for a little longer than he probably should.

"Welcome back, buddy," he says, finally stepping back, but still holding onto Finn's arm.

"That's General Buddy," Finn laughs, and Poe rolls his eyes.

"That joke is getting old, you know," he tells him. "How are you? Where's Rey?" Apparently, that is the wrong thing to ask, because Finn's smile immediately disappears. Poe feels his stomach drop; has something happened to her? Why haven't they said anything?

"She's fine," Finn says, relaxing as he shakes his head. "You don't have to panic. She…well, she left. Went off on her own. Again."

Poe doesn't need the Force to know that Finn is upset about it, and in a way, he understands. Rey certainly does her fair share of running off by herself,  headlong into danger, and often without saying anything. Having worked many solo missions himself, however, Poe can also understand why. Sometimes working alone is easier, with less responsibility, less chance of getting someone hurt or killed. Get in, get it done, get out.

And Rey had grown up alone, abandoned on Jakku for years, until Finn had appeared and quite literally dragged her out of her solitary existence. It makes sense that after so many years on her own, sometimes she needs to be by herself. And Poe understands that as well: though most people wouldn't believe it, he needs time alone almost as much as he needs to be with people. It is one reason why he's such a good pilot, because he likes spending time in the cockpit with his own thoughts. And BB-8, of course.

Finn, however, had grown up surrounded by other Stormtroopers, never having a minute to himself yet always alone in a system that discouraged individuality and attachment. Finn seems to crave contact and companionship, and though he understands when someone like Poe needs their space for a little while, Rey's stubborn desire to go off on her own without warning—or protection— is still something Finn finds frustrating even after all this time.

"I see," says Poe, though he doesn't know the first thing about it, other than Rey is gone, he hadn't got to say goodbye, and Finn is upset. "Well, I'm damn glad to see you, and I have all sorts of questions, but I won't bother you yet. Want to see your new room?"

Finn’s eyes light up and he smiles gratefully at Poe. "Yeah, I would. I'm sorry you had to handle the big move without me."

"It's not like we had a lot to move," Poe points out. "We were living in a cave, remember?"

Poe leads him down the path to the new building, set in a clearing not far from their expanded landing area. It is a large, three-story building, housing offices on the ground floor with crew quarters on the upper floors. Finn and Poe, as co-generals, have two of the larger rooms on the second floor. Poe guides him upstairs, shows him the code for the door, and motions him inside.

Finn stops a few steps into the room, gazing around with his mouth literally hanging open. They are in a large open area, with a sofa and chair along one wall, and a desk opposite. There is a small kitchenette tucked into the corner with table for eating, and a door leads to the single bedroom and private refresher. It is clean and new and bright, unlike any place they’ve ever lived. There is both wonder and gratitude in Finn’s eyes, and the look on his face right now is one Poe wishes he could see more.

“Are you serious?” Finn asks as he starts moving around, examining his new home. “This is all mine?”

“I’m not going to show you someone else’s room,” Poe laughs. “It’s all yours. it’s not much. It’s just a lot better than—”

“Living in a cave,” Finn finishes. “Or a ship. Or a tent. Poe, we’re in an actual building!”

“I know, buddy. It’s taken some getting used to, but it’s good.” He glances around and smiles. “And I’m right across the hall, if you ever need anything. Like a lesson how to use some of this stuff.” He gestures toward a small communications panel set into the desk.

“It’s perfect,” Finn says. “I can’t wait to get a good night’s sleep in here!”

Poe nods. “You’ll sleep like a baby—or you’ll miss the jungle so much you won’t sleep at all. I’ll let you get settled, maybe try out the fresher—it’s private, all yours.” Finn pumps his fist and Poe laughs again. “Think you’ll be up for a debrief later?”

Finn nods. “Yeah, give me an hour. Where should we meet?”

“Command center is on the ground floor, we either pull up chairs or move to the conference room. Is an hour enough?”

“More than enough,” Finn tells him. He turns and walks back to Poe, pulls him into another embrace. “Thank you,” he says quietly. Poe breathes him in, his heart skipping a beat at their closeness. It seems Finn being gone has definitely had an effect on Poe.

“You’re welcome,” he finally says. Finn steps back and Poe thinks the other man glances down at his lips before ducking his head with a smile. It’s probably wishful thinking, though. Poe has to deliberately look away from Finn’s mouth.

“It’s really good to see you,” Finn says.

“You too, buddy,” Poe says. “I’m glad you’re back. I’ll see you in an hour?”

Finn nods and Poe turns to leave. He really is glad to see Finn. He’s just not sure how to move forward now that Finn has returned.

[readingaccountability]

snow crash - neal stephenson

my playlist (because of The Way That I Am)

final thoughts:

okay, im going to be honest right out of the gate- i cant decide whether this is a book id recommend or not. it was really fun for the most part, but personally there was a lot more exposition than id like. the early portions of the novel have exposition which feels completely fair, mostly things relating to worldbuilding. stephenson creates his own vision of future america, and some places online referred to it as cyberpunk, and some as post-cyberpunk. id be more in the latter camp, mostly due to the way he plays with tropes, leaving the reader unsure of which will be subverted and which wont.

the use of language was really fun, and i enjoyed the worldbuilding a lot. his vision of a futuristic capitalistic earth feels surreal in its immediacy and recognizability. the back jacket blurb ends with "a future america so bizarre, so outrageous, you'll recognize it immediately." which, yeah. a texan info-tech magnate? two competing corporations owning the highway system? suburban city-states? this was another enjoyable thing- everything was colorfully named, and names treated totally normally, which kind of poked fun at how we have everyday things named very ludicrously and for the most part we are totally blind to it.

one aspect i really enjoyed was that the author often doesn't make certain things clear to the audience, until he does, and then it becomes necessary to reassess the entire story and setting. this goes to underscore the theme of the importance of information and the ways we take it in and perceive the world based upon it. for example, we don't learn that y.t. is fifteen until maybe 75 pages in, at which point a lot makes sense in retrospect. the same thing occurs in the worldbuilding, as suddenly a detail is given in passing and the reader must incorporate it into the setting, which by default we assume to be similar in many ways to our idea of america. it keeps the reader on their toes as well as furthering the worldbuilding. for the most part, the tech stuff didnt feel outdated to me, despite being a future projected out from '92.

however, aspects of the book are definitely very 1992. id put these into two camps: the first, being that the book does at different times use slurs. the main character is black and asian, the n word is used a few times by racist side-character/antagonist types, as are a few other racial slurs. there was also the occasional usage of the r slur, within the narrative prose itself, rather than usage as an insult within dialogue.

the protagonist, who is named, unfortunately, hiro protagonist, is a great character and felt very fleshed out to me, though at times he reminded me more of dirk strider than normally would be ideal. (its obvious that stephenson and andrew hussie are of a similar type of writer, and play with similar tropes, lmao.) hiro is a man of many worlds. he seems to shift between them easily, though never fully existing in any of them. this is reflected in his background, both in his biracial identity and in having been raised on a myriad of army bases. this is layered further in his fluidity in interacting with both reality and the metaverse, yet remaining slightly, consistently aloof. fascinatingly the first moment i sensed this drop was when we meet juanita- aka where his real and meta realities coincide. the description of them as the adam and eve of the metaverse is both insanely romantic and thematically key (good god i wish we had more than like, two conversations between them). juanita designed the facial component to metaverse avatars, doing the majority of this work when the two were together, and hiro can see echoes of both their facial tics in the face of every avatar in the metaverse. in a way, by having done this work juanita is positioned by the narrative as one of the gods of this digital realm. she is also hiro's call to action, being aware of the coming trouble and alerting him to it, as well as connecting him to the informational database he needs to prepare.

y.t., the secondary protagonist, fucking ruled. i loved that she was just a fifteen year old punkass kid whose mom doesnt know how crazy this part time job is. y.t. being worried about her mom was a great thread throughout, and a really good balance to how obviously independent y.t. is. i do wish there had been a chance to explain more about her background (she has a dad who left who is mentioned in a throwaway sentence, and a boyfriend who is mentioned near the beginning but never again.) i really enjoyed how obviously hyperaware y.t. was at all times about her own place within the insanities of the setting, while also consistently writing her as a teen maybe in way too deep who thinks about things in typically teenage ways. but like, that wasn't ever held against her? the narrative meets her where she is. it was honestly awesome. HOWEVER,

i absolutely hated the raven and y.t. scenes. how creepy!!! he basically statutory rapes her!!! we know hes at least late 20s early 30s, because hes the same age as hiro. if this sort of content is upsetting to read for you, i definitely do NOT recommend this book. (if you want to avoid reading these bits: ch 47 y.t. meets raven, ch 50 they are in a bar eating, ch 52 things happen that result in y.t.'s anti-assault device activating- she did not activate it on purpose, but forgot it was there- and raven is knocked out.)

please PLEASE dont take any of the following analysis as like, trying to be apologetic towards this scenes. because again they were awful and hard to get through and really gross. but im also cognizant that the author was obviously trying to convey something by making the choice, like the way it was written is obviously not condoning this sort of thing.

i think maybe what stephenson was trying to get at with that, was that we see hiro internally negate any potential for anything untoward with y.t. basically immediately, since he kind of senses that she might have a small crush on him (though this doesnt last more than a fleeting moment, especially from her perspective). vs raven, whose 'poor impulse control' warning tattoo eventually elicits a sarcastic remark from hiro after he finds out raven and y.t. were "a thing". i really dont think hiro knew how far it went? like it was just suuuper weird, but i figured it was meant narratively to 1. execute the chekovs gun of y.t.'s anti-assault device, 2. contrast hiro and raven (especially considering the bike-racing argument where theyre telling the story together, which is supposed to parallel them, while contrasting the differences in how they ended up?), and 3. just to get raven unconscious, i guess. but good god it was weird and i hated every second of it, why couldnt the device have like, activated way earlier?? gah. fucking upsetting. moving past that!

honestly i was really frustrated by how little screentime juanita got, because the way she was introduced was so fucking interesting and then shes mostly off doing her own thing. the bits of explanation she gives at the end about what she was up to on the raft are so sparse and im like damn, can we get a little bit of her pov in here? please? that would have ruled. additionally, shes supposed to be hiros love interest, but we see so little of them interacting outside her intro scenes. a huge portion of why hiro is getting into the sumerian mythology is literally framed as something that will help him understand juanita, but we dont get to see him talk to her about it barely at all.

the supporting characters were quite fun, i particularly liked the librarian. big surprise, i liked the overly literal ai information-dispensor, lmfao. watching him and hiro interact reminded me SO hard of geordi laforge having honest to god conversations with the computer where he tries to coax information out of it, aka one of my favorite little aspects of tng.

and lastly, the major plot themes themselves. i adore the way stephenson approached action, it was very entertaining. usually i cant really visualize action scenes written out, but his use of language was really really effective and engaging. the plot itself was absolutely fascinating, though i found the premise pretty contrived. which isnt bad in itself, i was fully suspending my disbelief until the last hundred pages or so. which for a 550+ page book, isnt too bad.

i did like the approach of linking the ancient to the modern, that is always really neat. and i think ultimately stephenson did it in an interesting way, not how i would have done it, but definitely interesting! creating these ideas about information infrastructures, and there being words that can access those and be used to control people, was wild. not sure if i agree about the equating of religion to a virus, though he did specifically establish that it was more the approach to religion, than religion itself. (maybe if juanita had been more goddamn present in the narrative that could have been elaborated on a little more. literally her perspective would have been perfect in balancing that out!!)

ultimately what did me in was the very very very long winded MONOLOGUE where hiro re-explained the whole premise, in ways that didnt really neatly organize into a cohesive argument. a lot of the scenes where hiro talks to the librarian, which are interspersed throughout the book, are really exposition heavy, because stephenson is rooting his ideas in historical concepts that need to be explained to both hiro and the audience. and i thought all that was fine, because it was a conversation where hiro was grappling with the information, and he was figuring it out along with the reader, and most importantly it was a conversation between him and the librarian computer program.

howeverrr later on we get a full rehash of all that, where hiro makes clear some stuff that was just implied for the reader, and hes literally just telling these important men whats up in this big long monologue. utterly worthless. i kept reading it and going YEAH, we KNOW, we know this we know this. and the important men barely interjected. it added basically nothing to our understanding of the situation, other than reframing it. but everything added was already an implicit thing, and didnt really need to be said again.

the resolution to the book was stellar, the last 30-40 pages, once hiro is onto the raft, were great. ultimately after reading and giving some time to digest it, i think it was a solidly great book with a few big drawbacks near the end, but which dont carry through and sully the ending.

[fairymadnessyeah]

BNHA Ship to Finish the Year

ShishiKoda (Shishida Jurota x Koda Koji)

Canon

Before anything, two important things.

Koda is non-binary, pronouns they/them. Also, Koda is selectively deaf.

They only talk with the people who are close to them, with animals, or if they absolutely need to.

I believe that there are a lot of types of heroes, there are daytime heroes, underground heroes, infiltration heroes, etc.

And one of those types, that is rather new, is the eco-hero. They are heroes who, apart from fighting against crime, they also fight for the planet and the animals.

Both Shishida and Koda are Eco-heroes.

I feel like they would start working on the same agency at first, being desk mates.

Koda is selectively deaf, so they communicate with sign language. But not everybody knows, so Shishida translates and gives out the number of a good ASL teacher.

It makes them grow closer, and that is how they start branching out towards the Eco-heroics.

They find an agency that works kind of like Greenpeace having mission out in the world to help with the environment.

They first start local, their first missions aren't even together. Koda is sent to a zoo protest, and Shishida to a stop a deforestation.

They do have to re-study some laws for this job though. UA might be a great school, but they can't teach you everything.

They study together, with Shishida making the coffee and Koda bringing some of the cakes their roommate Satou bakes.

Satou, who is very protective of his roommate and friend Koda, notices that something is going on. But when he asks about it, Koda shrugs it off with pink cheeks.

Shishida doesn't have any roommates, but he still hangs out with his friends from class B. I imagine one day, they drop by uninvited and interrupt one of their study hang out. 

Koda understands and leaves, but the class B boys can feel the sparks in the air.

They tease him non-stop about it, while Shishida tries to deny it.

"Somebody got a crush~," "No, I don't,"

"I bet you want to take them out to that new restaurant you were talking about," "As friends,"

"You should ask them out! They looked ready to pick up what you were giving," "I won't,"

"You are afraid they'll say no and then don't talk to you again, aren't you?" "Terrified,"

Shishida would ask Koda out, but they are so shy that he is afraid that if he does, the relationship they have been building up will crumble.

But that's okay, Shishida can wait.

They keep working and hanging out together, and then one day, they are put on a mission together. This mission takes place in the Amazon, on Brazil.

The two need to travel, and while they are there, Shishida asks Koda out.

They say yes, and when they go back to Japan, they make it official and become the significant other of one another.

I like thinking that Satou starts acting like a protective big brother to Koda and glares at Shishida when he comes to pick him up for dates.

Family

Koda is the only child of a single mother. She doesn't have a name yet, but I think she is a like a 50's mom.

She bakes cookies, she dances to the music of the radio, and leaves lipstick marks on your cheeks when she kisses you.

I also love the idea that no matter who you are, no matter what you are doing, you are going to get greeted with a bear hug by Koda's mom. 

Shishida was not ready. I also like the idea that Shishida has a bun on for the first meeting. He would look so dapper in one.

I also think he would use his strength as a good selling point. Oh, Miss Koda's earing fell under the dishwasher? No worries, Shishida will lift it with his bare hands and place it back where it was once she got it.

I have no ideas as to who Shishida's parents could be, but one thing is for sure, Koda wants to crawl under their bed and stay there until the night passes.

They are a mess and get anxious thinking about it. On the drive there, Koda's mind conjures situation after situation, and how bad and disastrously are all going to end up.

Of course, nothing like that happens.

Shishida's parents are nice and know sign language, so they can communicate no problem.

I don't think they would have kids, but I kind of seeing them moving from the big city and settling in a small village with a giant lot where they rescue animals.

They are some of the only heroes around the small town, along with a few others, and nothing much happens. 

But considering the hectic years they spent as heroes and as students, a nice, quiet town seems like a good option.

When Koda moved out of the apartment, Satou cries and hugs him, while saying that he'll miss them. It's a sad day, but they keep in contact.

Also, their house is so big that both classes come for reunions, and they are even able to bring their kids. 

They have a rehabilitation program, but some of the animals they rescued aren't able to go back to the wild, so they have a few rescued pets.

They have a fox, who ended up blind after getting caught in a trap. His name is Red, and it likes to scare their mailman by screaming at him. Have you ever heard a fox? It's crazy AF!

They also have an owl inside the house. It was hit by a moving car, and it damaged its wing, making it unable to fly. Its name is Big eyes, and sometimes it chills with Shishida in the library.

They also have a wild horse on the back. They called it Hone, in dedication to Honenuki because when the Hone smiles, which it does a lot, its smile looks like their ex-classmate.

Hone was rescued from a circus, and is now living a retirement on their home.

AU - Tarzan AU

So, you might read Tarzan AU, and think:

"Well, Shishida could make a good Tarzan. He is wild, hairy, curious, and kind of look likes bigfoot when he uses his quirk. It makes sense that he would be Tarzan,"

But you are wrong. This is a different Tarzan AU.

For once, it happens in the woods instead of the jungle. So our Tarzan is closer to civilization than the classic.

Koda was just a small three-year-old when, on a camping trip, their parents died. They were crossing a stream when the bridge broke, and they feel into the river. Their parents drown and died of hypothermia, but Koda somehow survived.

They were taken care of by the animals. Because, yes, they speak in this AU, but only Koda can understand them.

Koda lives like a cryptid, and becomes an urban legend of the woods. They are known as the creature-man. Many go into the woods to get a peak or a capture them on a picture.

The people know them to be a generous being. If you get lost in the woods, they will guide you back home. If you get hurt, you may find yourself healed by the next morning.

Shishida is new in town, recently graduated from college and has a psychology degree.

He doesn't believe in the existence of creature-man, and thinks it's just a tourist attraction. 

The rest of the town tries to convince him, but he is a stubborn one.

But one day, a couple of his friends invite him on a hike on the woods. They are hoping that with this trip, he might start believing in Creature-man.

The storm catches them by surprise. It comes out of nowhere, and it makes Shishida slip and roll down a hill. He hits his head on and blacks out, but when he wakes up, he is not alone.

Koda found him and started taking care of him. Shishida had a concussion and a broken arm, so Koda couldn't take him back out of the forest.

Shishida, now an absolute believer of Creature-man, takes them to his home, to re-introduce them to society.

He starts by cleaning them and dressing them, but it's not as easy as he believed it would be. Koda is afraid of everything, and knows nothing of the world.

Shishida doesn't tell the rest of the town about having their cryptid creature on his home. He knows that they will freak out and want to see him, and that could overwhelm Koda.

But one day, Koda freaks out, and runs back to the forest. The whole town finds out, and questions Shishida.

He explains that Koda, is not a creature, but a person who grew up in the woods and was not introduced into society.

The people decide to leave Koda alone, but Shishida feels a deep conection with them. He feels responsable for them, and doesn't want to see them hurt.

He visits them daily, and starts writing a psychology book on them.

Fanon Opinion

I can't see Koda having sex.

I just can't. Maybe it's their shy demeanour, their muteness or the way they look, but I can't see it.

I think I might headcanon them as asexual to much for me to picture him in sexual acts.

I think this is a cute couple, but it's very cracky.

There is no content for them. No pictures, nothing written, there isn't even a ship name.

I think that whoever requested these two, took somebody from class A and then somebody from class B that is not that known, and paired them together.

They have only one interaction, when they faced against each other on the A vs B battle. 

But, weirdly enough, they make sense together.

They are the personification of looks like they could kill you, but it's a cinnamon roll x looks like a cinnamon roll, and it's a cinnamon roll.

If there ever is a veterinarian x librarian AU, they would be perfect for it.

Like, Koda is super sweet and shy, and Shishida is a gentleman, who dresses in suits.

 I think they also make sense to me due to their quirks. 

Shishida looks like an animal when he is all big and hairy, and Koda can talk to animals.

It's a weird ship, however.

But it definitely deserves more love.

It's also not that impossible to happen. They are the same age, they go to the same school, they are in the same career, same side.

I know this is short, but there is nothing to go on with this couple.

It's a background character with an even less important character.

[cherryblossomflowers]

An Old Life Meets A New (Finale)

Pairing: Jensen x Daughter, Danneel x Stepdaughter, Jared x Niece

Warnings: Slight Cussing, Angst, Fluff, Death Mentioned, Car Accident Mentioned, Anxiety/Depression, Arguing, Panic Attacks, Yelling, Fighting, Sex Mentioned, Child Abuse, Drunk Abuse, Relationship Abuse, Alcohol

Summary: After the recent death of her mother, Harper must adjust to her new life in the Ackles home, this includes a new stepmother, half-siblings, and reconnecting with her father.

A/N: And that’s a wrap! Thank you to everyone who supported me in writing my first series!! There are many more to come, don’t worry. Thank you to @mlovesstories for inspiring me to post my writings. Without her I probably wouldn’t be where I am. I love you, My Cherry Blossoms. Enjoy the finale! 

The finale is set 3 years into the future!!!

No hate on Danneel or Jensen please. Feedback is greatly appreciated!

***ASK OPEN***

*LET ME KNOW IF YOU’D LIKE TO BE IN MY TAG LIST*

An Old Life Meets A New Masterlist

Chapter 30: Epilogue

An 18-year-old Harper Ackles was currently painting a landscape on her wall. She had just returned from her therapist appointment after school and wanted to do some painting. JJ suggested something with horses, so Harper immediately got to work.

Since her first mural years ago, her walls all had different paintings on them now. One wall was the entirety of Central Park, another had a few paintings of flowers of all sorts, her back wall still had Time Square and below it was the Texas Capitol, but the current painting she was working on was a landscape of a grass field with wild horses.

JJ was doing her homework on Harper's bed when she looked up to Harper, "Hey, Sis?"

Harper turned from the wall, "Yeah?"

"I’ve done everything, but I still don't understand this stuff. Can you explain it one more time, pretty please?" asked JJ, flashing her puppy eyes at her sister.

Harper chuckled and turned back to her painting, "PEMDAS stands for parenthesis, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction. You work through a math problem in that order, starting with-"

"That I understand, but the order is multiplication then division and addition then subtraction. What happens if the problem has more than one of each?" JJ pointed at her book, "Like this one has (2+9) - (9-2).”

Harper smiled at JJ, "The order of operations still stands. Parenthesis first from left to right then subtract them."

JJ stared at her book for a moment before smacking her forehead, "Oh, man. I'm so stupid!"

Harper let out a laugh, "No you're not, JJ. You're in 4th grade. It's difficult at first but the more you do it, the easier it gets," she pointed at JJ with her paint brush, "Don't forget, I use letters and words in Calculus. You're lucky to still have just numbers."

"It’s only because you're also old," JJ mumbled.

Harper set her paint supplies down and stepped down from the latter, "What was that?"

JJ held up her hands in defense, "Nothing, I said nothing."

Harper stood with her hands on her hips, "Yeah right. Just because you're 10 doesn't mean I can't still treat you like a kid. Come here!"

Harper lunged at JJ, but JJ jumped out of the way last minute. Harper chased her around her room, screaming and laughing, until they both got too tired and fell to Harper's bed, laughing at their childish games.

JJ laid on her stomach and looked at the landscape mural, "I really like this one. It feels like I'm actually there. Like I can feel the breeze and hear the horses."

"That was sort of the point," Harper stared at her painting, "Besides, it would be bad if you didn't like it. This will be your room someday after all."

JJ's eyes widened, "What? Really?"

"Well, I'll be off to college soon. And as a teen, you'll want your own space. Believe me, I know," Harper rolled her eyes.

"Harper, there's mail for you!" Jensen yelled from the living room.

JJ turned to Harper, "I'll race you."

Harper shook her head, "No, not today. I’m not really feeling it."

Then Harper shot up from the bed and ran to the door with a laugh. JJ chased after her to catch up. Harper jumped down the stairs followed by JJ. Jensen, Jared, and Genevieve turned from the couch to see the commotion from the girls.

"Oh, you totally cheated!" JJ exclaimed.

"I'm the oldest, I do not cheat. I just outsmart," Harper stuck her tongue out at JJ.

JJ scoffed, "I'd call waiting until you got to the bedroom door cheating."

"Well I call it strategy."

"Okay, girls. That's enough," Danneel said stepping between the two, "JJ, did you finish your homework?"

"Well, um, about that..." JJ chuckled nervously.

Danneel pointed upstairs, "When you finish, then you can come downstairs."

JJ rolled her eyes, groaned, and stomped upstairs.

Harper chuckled, "Well, she'll be a delightful teenager if she's like this now."

Jensen stood from the couch and walked up to Harper, holding out a letter, "Guess who it's from."

Harper took the letter with a shaky hand and looked at it with a gasp, "NYU?"

Jensen nodded, "You should open it."

Harper hesitated, "But what if I didn't get accepted?"

Jared stood and walked over to Harper, "And what if you did? You'll never know until you open it."

Genevieve walked up and wrapped an arm around Harper's shoulder, "Besides, whatever it says we'll support you in any decision you make."

Harper smiled at her family and sighed, "Okay, I'll open it."

She took a few steps forward and slowly began to open the letter. Once it was opened and the pulled the letter out, she paused.

Jensen walked forward and laid a hand on her shoulder, "What's wrong?"

"I'm scared. I know that I want to go to NYU because their art and education program is so good, but what if they didn't like my application? What if they think my paintings and drawings are average or even below average? What if-"

"What if you're stalling?" Jared interrupted her.

Harper rolled her eyes and chuckled, "Yeah, thanks Uncle Jared."

He smiled, "Anytime, kiddo."

Jensen shook his head at Jared then turned back to Harper, "Babygirl, open the letter. No matter what it says, you know we all think you're an amazing artist."

Harper let out a long sigh and nodded, "Okay."

She unfolded the letter and started to read. Her hand slowly came up to cover her mouth and she turned from Jensen, walking away from him. Jensen turned back to Danneel with a sad look on his face and shook his head. Jared and Gen exchanged an upset look as well.

Then Harper turned back around, uncovered her mouth, and quietly said, "I got in."

Jensen took a step forward, a surprised looked took over his face, "You what?"

"Dad, I got in! I'm going to NYU!" Harper yelled out.

Jensen ran up to her and picked her up, spinning her in a circle. Danneel ran over and hugged Harper as well. Jared and Gen doing the same.

"Read it to us, Harper," Genevieve said excitedly.

"Okay, okay," she cleared her throat, "Dear Miss Ackles, We are glad you have considered NYU and have completed the first step in joining the Bobcat family. We would like to be the first to congratulate you on your admission to New York University. After thoroughly looking through your application and artwork, we would also like to offer you a full ride to our university. We look forward to hearing from you soon and we'll see you this fall. Sincerely, The Director of Admissions and Recruitment"

Everyone was cheering and hugging Harper. They were so happy for her. She is following her dreams, continuing school, and moving forward with her life.

Danneel hugged her tightly, "Harper, I'm so proud of you. You're so grown up now, going off to college and starting your life. I knew you were destined for greatness."

Harper smiled, "Thanks, Mom."

Everyone suddenly paused. Harper's face got bright red as she realized what had just came from her mouth.

Danneel held her out at arms length, "What was that?"

Harper shook her head, "Nothing, nothing. Sorry, I didn't mean...it just slipped. I'm sorry...I shouldn't have-"

Danneel hugged her again, "Harper, it's okay. If you feel that way, it's completely okay with me. If you want to call me Dee or Mom, it's your choice."

Harper backed away and looked down, a tear falling down her face, "I've actually wanted to call you Mom for a few months now. I just didn't know how to tell you."

Danneel smiled, "Well if you ask me, I think that was perfect timing."

Harper ran her fingers through her hair, "I mean, now or never right?"

Just then, JJ ran down the stairs to interrupt them, "I was kind of standing behind the way and listening. But Harper," she ran to hug her, "Congrats! I'm so proud of you, Sis."

Arrow and Zeppelin ran into the room as well. Arrow walked up to give Harper a hug, as did Zeppelin.

Harper bent down to look at them, "Well, it looks like you three will finally all have your own rooms in a couple months."

Zeppelin looked at her confusingly, “But I already have my own room.”

“Yeah,” replied Harper, “But now you won’t be across from both Arrow and JJ.”

Zeppelin crossed his arms and mumbled, “Maybe then I won’t get my nails paints every weekend anymore.”

“Nice try,” Arrow spoke up, “This weekend, JJ and I are having a makeup party! And you, little brother, are at the top of the guest list.”

Zeppelin groaned in response, which got a laugh out of everyone in the room.

The rest of the afternoon was spent celebrating Harper's admission into NYU. Jensen went out and got a cake, Danneel made spaghetti and meatballs for dinner as it's Harper's favorite, and Jared and Gen brought their kids over for a pool party.

Harper felt so loved and filled with so much joy that day. Things were changing, and they were changing for the better.

A couple months later, Harper's room was packed up and she was off to New York. Jensen, Danneel, Jared, Genevieve, Tom, Shep, Odette, JJ, Arrow, and Zeppelin all took her to the airport to say goodbye.

"I promise, I'll call you when I land and I'll send you pictures of my dorm," Harper said as she hugged Jensen and Danneel goodbye.

Jensen wiped his tears, "Please do. I want to see everything."

Danneel kissed her cheek, "Just please check in with us whenever you can."

"I will," Harper laughed.

She hugged Jared and Gen, then their kids, and finally the Ackles kids. JJ kept her arms around Harper's neck, trying to make her stay.

"JJ, I have to go," Harper said trying to pull JJ off.

JJ kept her grip though and continued to cry, "No, you can't leave."

Harper felt her heartstrings beginning to pull, Is this how I felt when Dad left?

Harper held her sister at arms length, "JJ, I can promise you this. I will come back. I'm not leaving forever. You'll see me for Thanksgiving. Just promise me something okay? Be good, keep studying hard, and stay out of trouble. If you ever need help on your homework, call me. I'll try my best to help you over the phone."

JJ sighed and nodded, "Will you call me when you land?"

Harper looked up at Jensen and they exchanged a smile.

She turned back to JJ and smiled at her then bringing her into a hug, "Of course, Sis. I'll call as soon as the plane touches the ground."

Harper stood up from hugging her, tears were flowing from both of them. Harper then walked back up to Jensen.

"Harper, I'm so proud of you. You're such a smart girl, and you've really grown up," he said.

Harper shrugged, "I learned from the best, Dad."

Jensen laughed, "Be safe, okay?" then hugged her.

Harper hugged him back, "I will. I love you, Dad."

"I love you too, babygirl."

Harper pulled away from the hug and grabbed her carry on bag. She waved goodbye at the Padelecki's and Ackles' families and walked towards the security area.

Both families started to leave the airport, but Jensen didn't move.

"Honey, is everything okay?" asked Danneel.

Jensen wrapped an arm around her, "Yeah, Dee. Everything is perfect," he kissed her temple, "Our little girl is all grown up now."

Harper's flight was 3 hours, but felt quick. She touched down in New York, got her bags from the baggage claim, and walked out of the airport. She called home to let her know she had gotten there safely, and JJ was very excited to hear from Harper.

She got a taxi and it took her to NYU. She checked in, got her dorm keys, and put her bags in her room. She took a few pictures of her room and sent them to Jensen.

She sat down on her bed and thought for a moment. She stood up and searched her carry on for her sketchbook and her pencils. Then she grabbed her dorm key and left the dormitories as quickly as possible. She took a taxi and went to the cemetery. Once she arrived, she took a stroll to the corner where her mother was.

Harper sat down next to the headstone, opened up her sketchbook, and sighed, "Hi, Mom. It's been a while, huh? Let me catch you up on everything that's happened."

The End

------------------------------

Masterlist

My Cherry Blossoms

@mlovesstories @adorable-minibot @chessurkait​

@desiredposion @idksupernatural @thevelvetseries​ @let-me-luve-you​

@obsessedwithfandomsx​ @mangueweaschester​ @starchildwild​ @deans-baby-momma​ @spnbaby-67​ @unicornmadness2444​

@emery--nicole--morrison​ @spnfamily-j2 @wecantgiggleitsafandom

[steve0discusses]

The Full Metal Alchemist Live Action Movie Part 8: Watch This Episode Covered in Butts be the Only One Not Flagged by Tumblr

Gonna be risky business and not only upload all of these caps the way I screenshot them--which has just SO MANY poorly CGI’d butts but also gonna do it on the Tumblr Drafts folder, which I have been assured works now.

I’m so worried about so many things, but considering all the fears I have about like...everything else in the world right now...I guess I’ll take a risk on tumblr.

Edit: I cannot believe that I had 8ish episodes of Kaiba’s tall dueling tower get flagged but not this movie. I just....wow I cannot.

So anyway, last we left off, General Hakuro stepped in and was like “Hi guys, you like my wily plans that no one in their right mind would have ever guessed???”

Yo remember this part of the anime? Where the bodies drop from the ceiling and it’s a hunk out of the final arc--it’s here. In this movie. This movie that can’t possibly afford to do that. Lets get some CGI animated bodies in here ASAP.

(see some texture regrets under the cut)

It’s like a Monet, as the Mean Girls say, because far away and shrinked to 500 pixels this looks kinda neat. They sort of look more like those slime ball that grow in the back of your throat rather than human bodies, but they still look pretty gross hanging up there.

But then.....we zoom in. Remember again that this was full screen on my computer, and at one point was on a freakin movie screen. This level of 3d...was on a movie theater screen.

The mind boggles. The mind boggles!

Like as you know, I am an artist, and I’ve dabbled in...basically everything in my pursuit to make a dollar...and I have taken about 2 years of classes in 3D art with Maya and all those. I’m not thaaat great at it--I’m much more an illustrator/painter--but I feel like I have that reference point. Can I just say--the model is...fine...you can do a lot with layers of bump maps so you don’t need a truly detailed model (not like they did that, because they didn’t do that, but I can figure that maybe they had an intention to do that and forgot?)

But, there’s no connection of the wires to bodies. They just kinda float? The bodies are also all the same shiny-ness? To the point that it looks like a copy paste? (I don’t think it is, the wires are slightly different on a few of them) There’s just not much in the way of a texture map or a bump map. It just...there’s also something missing from the skin.

Skin is actually kind of rough to render, so when I did it back in the day, I followed like a checklist to make sure I had all the layers and steps to make someone look...clammy. Some things are kinda translucent, they reflect light a different way...especially white skin like this wouldn’t be just...white like putty. Dunno if you ever saw a white person, but we got so many veins...there was so much potential to make something really gross and fleshy.

Instead we got silly putty. It’s fine. I’m fine.

So General Hakuro decides to just...kill everyone right now.

This makes no sense to me.

That means that the whole thing of Lust killing Hughes was completely unrelated to General Hakuro. All Hakuro needed was Shou Tucker, who has been in prison for...I assume months since Ed shipped him off. And Shou was only released today? Just now? Just now when Hughes was shot?

So this all just happened at the same time by accident?

I mean the General sent us to the wrong lab initially, so he didn’t actually want us to be here, and now that we are here, he’s going to set off an entire army as a reaction to three people walking in and going “oops”?

So, lets get a look at our army.

Oh it was so disappointing, this reveal. Not just the eyeball that has a bounce light coming from below the top lip there (how did that even happen???) but also when it opened it’s mouth, it had a flat animation of skin breaking--it wasn’t actually rendered 3d skin, it was like a jpg wrapped around it or something (or at least that was the illusion I got. That is fine for a video game or a TV show, but this is a movie. This is shot so that it can be displayed in a size bigger than your own house.

What happened to the animation team on this one? Not saying I can do better, cuz no, I can’t, that 3d chapter in my life was a while back, but I’m just one guy. This was an entire animation studio and they just...didn’t render 3d face ripping (which is their entire job, to work in 3d) and then they kinda just turned on the stock physics dynamics and dropped em instead of animating them.

The way they fell was like fish from a bucket--the same amount of speed, too. they all ragdolled like a 3D shooter, their rigs just hanging on for dear life (and yes, you could see the deforming happen on the joints of these models.) I’m fine with having a computer program render something out with a physics engine...but there is a balance.

You do have to still go in there and finangle it back because...real life is hella stupid. Real physics? So stupid. It was hilarious how nonthreatening it was, too because they’re like...the size of shrimps in that zoom out image. The scale is just so wild!

It was like one bored guy in a sound booth and they multiplied his voice three times. Golden. Absolutely golden.

So these guys stride over, all of them with the same amount of speed (leading me to think it was probably a recorded walk cycle they all share with slight alterations between all of em) and they kinda just...pile on eachother in a weird way.

I will give them this: I was happy to see something that wasn’t physics or procedural. They mo-capped and animated that part for sure. It had the touch of an artist’s hand. It was also a very funny way for Hakuro to die because this guy was on screen for like 5 minutes, and maybe 7 minutes of this whole movie.

Youknow...I think it really says a lot about your nude 3d models if they’re not disturbingly human enough to trigger the tumblr filter, youknow?

Anyway, Envy looks on.

And then Gluttony saves the city.

Meanwhile, they decide to bust out the fire effects and Mustang becomes the most useful person in this entire movie. Like honestly this movie was poorly named, because it should have just been “Mustang saves the FullMetal Alchemist’s Entire Ass.”

The next part seems like I forgot a cap, or maybe missed something. I swear to you, I did not.

First off, Al becomes fullmetal and makes this happen without an alchemy circle. The show doesn’t really care to talk about that though, it’s just a thing he can do now, and you’d only notice it if you were writing a Tumblr post about it.

I swear to you, Winry is just inside of Al and there is no explanation.

There is no explanation for this.

She was on the couch...why is she not on the couch? What?

And then when you think they might have a moment, Ed’s like.

Damn.

For reals what the hell was that entire scene except for a way for Ed to get his arm stitched back on in like 2 minutes?

Outside, Envy and Lust are just strolling around the back-alley of this red brick building we have seen used for this entire movie.

And like...it’s so funny to me because they weren’t trying to run or hide. It makes complete sense why they got shot. This is what happens when you just...walk away when the whole military guard wants to kill you.

Now lets go see how Hawkeye is faring.

Luckily, all of the ambling bodies have decided to walk slowly through this one weird grass section between extremely long buildings.

And Hawkeye tells everyone “You have to shoot their heads off” and I want you to look at that scene and tell me how many of those bodies still have heads.

Oh, all of them. Don’t worry about it.

Kinda hard to see, but Ed shows up to give Mustang a hand, which was fully unnecessary but we’ll get to that in a bit.

This movie is such a gem.

Ed goes big brain and realizes that Envy is still burned up, and thus is about to pass on.

And whatever, I’ll take it. It’s not like the movie has told us that they are made out of 1000000 lives, for all we know, in the movie universe, they really are only 4 lives. Like half a cat. Maybe Father only killed half a cat instead of an entire city.

Yugi Muto would be so freakin proud of Envy for how often this guy gets hit square in the chest with fire balls. It’s basically every scene where Envy and Mustang share screen time.

And don’t worry, I don’t think Envy died? But they sure made it look like he did, which I’m sure everyone everywhere was really happy to see, since Envy’s death was one of the climaxes of the whole series. Like people used to make these lists of “top 10 saddest anime deaths” and how many people had Envy on there? Like everyone? People freakin love Envy and they did him so much dirty in this movie.

Again I have no explanation for Winry.

So Mustang is like, Ed, you make sure Winry doesn’t biff it in that corner, and I’ll do my actual job over here on this side. And yo, he did.

And so then that’s it, Lust is dead, and now we have a Sorcerer’s stone.

Man it looks delicious, right?

I’d eat the hell out of that.

Anyway, we only have one more update and we’re done with this movie!

I know!

I know! They only have 10-15 minutes to resolve pretty much everything, and that’s assuming that the credits don’t take up a heap of that. Hell, I might only have 3 caps next episode if that’s all credits. I honestly don’t remember.

Anyway, hope y’all take it easy this February, here is a link for people who just got here to read these FMA recaps in Chrono order.

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/fma/chrono

[funkymbtifiction]

Hi Charity!

I wrote in earlier about sending in a “Type Me” post and you suggested I make a list of things I’m good at and ask my family or someone impartial who has known me for a while which cognitive functions they think fit me.  Thank you! As it turns out, they were unanimous that my thinking function seems very definitely Aux Ti…but they also think my feeling function seems slightly more Aux Fi than Tert Fe X-D.  Since I’m torn between ENFP and ENTP, my family’s analysis didn’t narrow it down much, but it did sort of highlight where I’m most confused, which is the my feeling function.  Hopefully you can help shed some light on this?...

I think ENFP. I didn't see any rationalizing / Ti, but a steady stream of self-conscious awareness of morals and how you could be better at them, ethical decisions (such as not taking credit for things you didn't do yourself), a focus on relationships and how others are reacting to you / how you need to be more aware of people's needs, and a few things that "trigger" your Fi enough to get upset (while being generally permissive / easy to get along with otherwise). I'm guessing you have a strong presence of Enneagram 9 and a 3 fix.

[seriouslyhooked]

Feels Like This (Part 3)

Emma Swan is a once lost girl who is now making good. She has made a way in the world for her and her young son, Henry, and after years of hard work, Emma is in her last stretch of schooling for the career she’s always wanted. Unexpectedly, she finds herself in a tiny nation no one’s ever heard of for her last year of study. She knows nothing about the place except that it’s beautiful, has a world-renowned child life program, and is filled with possibility. Meanwhile, Prince Killian is hardly happy with the title he received at birth. As the second in line for the crown, Killian has long tried shaking his royal duties. He built a career in the royal navy, and has stayed out of the limelight, but his ship has been called to port indefinitely at the request of his brother, the King. Fate (in her many forms) brings Emma and Killian together and the resulting fic is a cute, fluffy, trope filled romp featuring heart felt moments, a healthy dose of insta-love and an assured happily ever after. Story rated M and will have 12 parts. Part 1 Here, Part 2 Here. Available on FF Here and AO3 Here.

A/N: Hey everyone! So thank you so much first and foremost for the love you guys have shown this fic. I have been so excited to write this and have been waiting ages to share it all with you. This is the kind of fluff and cuteness I personally need in my life right now, and I know a lot of you probably feel the same. Strap in for my usual dose of CS feels, and yes, for those of you asking, this is the moment CS will meet. Hope you all enjoy and thank you all so much for reading!

“And you’re sure you’ve got everything?” Emma asked, looking at Henry and knowing that he was ready to head into camp. They’d been over this numerous times, and at this point they were already out of the house and in front of the hall where campers congregated every morning. Still, Emma couldn’t help trying to soak up the moment with her kid just a little bit longer, and if that meant running through their list once more, so be it. “You have your lunch?”

“They give us lunch there, Mom.”

“Oh right,” she said, still shocked at how much was provided seeing as this program was free through the University. The children of all faculty and students were allowed to come, and it completely eradicated a need for her to find alternative childcare. Back in the States they had nothing like this built in anywhere. Getting Henry to camp previously either took a funding miracle, an insane amount of luck, or extra shifts at a second job. Usually he stayed with Mrs. H and Emma tried desperately to make it up to their neighbor. But now community sponsored help was becoming a given way of life, and every kid in Montenarro, no matter their background, seemed to have at least one path to a bright and happy summer.

“You’ve got your bag? How about water?”

“Yes and yes. We ran through this already, remember? I told you everything I had while you made breakfast.”

Emma smiled, knowing he was right, as crazy as it sounded. It was wild to her that on a weekday she would have the time, the patience, and the extra bit of cash to afford the spread they ate together today.  They had eggs, fruit, bacon, oatmeal and there were fresh pastries if they wanted. It was like their special holiday brunch, which happened on Christmas or on one of their birthdays, but they’d had this or something similar every day for nearly two weeks. It might seem over the top, but between the later starting hours here in Montenarro, her reduced work schedule with a generous stipend, and the fairer prices at the markets, Emma finally felt like she could give her son what he deserved. For years they’d chowed down on discount cereal, and now, in an attempt to enjoy themselves and resemble their new neighbors, they were taking a slower, and far and away more luxurious approach.

“I remember, kid. So I’ll be back here at four, and if I’m a little late -,”

“I just hang out a while longer, I know,” Henry said, looking to the doorway. A grin appeared at his face as he spotted one of his new friends. The other young boy waved in their direction and Henry waved back, causing Emma’s heart to melt. Her son not only had friends here, he was thriving. He was so happy, and seeing him this way made her happy too. “You don’t have to rush, Mom. I know your work ends early now, but maybe you could do something just for yourself.”

“Are you trying to tell me you’d rather stay later?” Emma asked, and Henry looked embarrassed for a moment before nodding.

“Not too much later, but Michael and Talia stay until five, and we’ve got this cool game going that we made up yesterday. It’s kind of hard to explain. But I can come home at four still. It’s okay, I’ll just -,”

“No, no, Henry, I am thrilled that you’re having a good time. I’ll be here at five.”

“Cool! Thanks, Mom!” Henry exclaimed, giving her a quick hug before heading for the door. “See you at five!”

She watched him get in safely, and the director of the camp who she’d met last week wished her a fond hello as she checked in Henry. Her greeting was pleasant and polite, and Emma knew if she had time the woman would talk her ear off about what it was like to be from America or the upcoming summer festivals. As it was though, Emma had to get going. She wasn’t late for work or anything, but she was eager to get there. Her work at the JR foundation was shaping up to be amazing. She was learning a lot, but she already felt like one of the team. Everyone who was there appreciated her, not just for working and helping out, but for her ideas. They were so responsive to suggestions, and always willing to try out any new concepts Emma had only really read about in books.

Their director, Marco, wasn’t like a normal boss. He didn’t hover or micromanage or come across as inaccessible. In fact, despite all the other calls on his time, Marco was with them all helping the kids and participating in their activities as much as he could. That leadership was so amazing in a space like this, and from everything Emma had experienced, the precedent he set was entirely reflective of the culture at large. Every person at the institute was determined to do right by these kids, and the children, despite the sad circumstances surrounding most of their lives, were doing so well and seemed so happy despite it all.

It was only a few city blocks from Henry’s camp to the center, but Emma let herself linger in the walk. She moved more slowly, matching the pace of the people around her, who never seemed to rush, and instead just enjoyed each day as it came. People were always smiling and laughing, and even the fighting was good natured. The streets were bustling but not full. They were cleaned regularly, maintaining the gorgeous cobblestone walks and the beautiful vintage architecture. It was warm here – a quintessential coastal retreat in the Mediterranean that she’d only ever imagined in her dreams or seen on travel TV. Everything considered, it was the opposite of New York, and despite having lived in the city she and Henry called home for more than ten years, Emma had to admit she didn’t miss it… at least not as much as she thought she would.

Don’t get too attached, Emma. This is temporary. Enjoy it while you can, but your real life is nothing like this.

The voice in her head was negative, but had a point, and Emma had no choice but to heed the advice. She would enjoy every bit of this she could, but she couldn’t get too comfortable, otherwise she’d miss this when they left. Even thinking of the heartbreak that may come if Henry continued to love it here so much left her reeling, but Emma carried on, pushing down that worry as she made her way past the institute’s front gates. It was important that she be in the right headspace when walking through these doors. The kids deserved her at 100%, and that was what she planned to be for them. Shaking off the worry from moments ago she moved inside, and as soon as she arrived, she was greeted by the sound of children running and laughing.

Some people might look at this place right now, apparently filled to the brim with kids who were wired and excitable now that it was officially summer and the school term was over, and think that this was chaos, but Emma knew better by now. Every child here ranging in age from six months to sixteen was attended to and accounted for. They had a large brood of kids, with sixty-seven at last count, and this was the biggest home under the JR foundation, though there were half a dozen more around the small country. Many children who were here would eventually be adopted, or would merge into part of a nationally funded fostering program, known for being one of the best systems in the world. In their last two years of school, older children went to special homes or foster placements designed just for them, to give them the attention and time they needed (instead of leaving them to the wayside for the sake of younger, needier children), and to prepare them for life outside of the system. Emma would eventually shadow a center that worked with those young adults, but for now, she was enjoying the hustle and bustle of the general group.

“Look, Char, it’s Emma!” one young boy named Thomas proclaimed to his little sister Charlotte from across the room, and in seconds every child had turned and was excitedly greeting her. Some of them came right up to hug her or give her a high five, but at the very least they all nodded in her direction and chirped out a fond hello.

“Good morning everyone,” Emma said, noticing the bags along the doorway and how the older kids were dressed in a uniform of navy colored shorts and florescent green shirts. “Did I miss something?” Emma asked aloud, not really to anyone in particular, but an answer came from one of the institute’s most trusted sources.

“Flora is taking the older children to the seaside today for a science lesson.”

The woman who filled Emma in was named Elsa, and despite the humidity in the air and the exuberance of the children all around them, she was totally put together and looked completely unstressed. Her hair was tied back in her usual braid, and her turquoise colored summer dress flowed in a way that looked poised for a summer catalogue. Elsa was effortless in an enviable way, but she was so kind and eager to be of help that Emma couldn’t begin to muster jealousy. In a short time Emma had begun to consider Elsa a friend, but though the two of them were roughly the same age, Emma was still a student and Elsa was a fully-fledged child psychologist who lived at the institute full time. She, and her sister Anna, who also worked at the institute, but as an activity’s coordinator, were two peas in a pod, but they’d done everything they could to include Emma and help her get her bearings in this new world.

“Lessons? In the summer?” Emma asked, not surprised that the institute was providing supplementary schooling year-round. She’d seen as much since starting here, but she was more taken aback at how excited these kids looked. Every child aged ten and older was gathered down here, no doubt waiting to fill the two institute vans out back. Still, how fun could a science lesson be?

“We use the term lessons lightly. For the rest of the morning the children will explore the tide pools at the national endowment’s shoreline about an hour north. There are some very unique ecosystems there, and so there is a whole lot to learn. But Flora will have them break for lunch and Anna takes over in the afternoon.”

“What’s she got in store for them?” Emma asked and Elsa shook her head.

“Well I can’t exactly say, as I’ve been sworn to secrecy.” Her smile grew at how silly that sounded, and she looked over her shoulder to check for Anna, but gave a little more when she saw that the coast was clear. “Let’s just say it’s going to be a jam-packed day that will go out with a blaze of glory.”

The emphasis Elsa used on the word ‘blaze’ made Emma think that there would likely be a beachside bonfire included, but before she could get confirmation, things started moving quickly. The older kids were summoned to the shuttles to go out for their day, and Emma meanwhile saw the clock and realized it was time for her to report to Marco’s office to get her assignment for the day. Moving through the playroom and the sunroom, which had the younger children and the babies respectively, she finally found her way and after knocking she walked into the brightly lit hub of all things here at the institute.

“Ah, good morning, Emma,” Marco said with a big smile, waving her in and gesturing that she should take a seat beside one of the other workers at the institute, Marie. Marie was Marco’s second in command, and though she never used the phase herself, the children had taken to calling her Nana. She had a maternal way about her, and every child seemed to love her as they might a favorite grandmother. “You’re here just in time. I’ve been talking with Marie and we think that today would be a perfect opportunity to try one of your intervention measures.”

“Really?” Emma asked, surprised, but excited at the thought. This would be the third that they had tried, and the last two had gone off without a hitch. “Which one?”

“The ‘Music Makes Me…’ one seems like a good choice. We have a few children who, to now, have been less responsive to our normal socializing measures. Their either shy or hurting, and we’re hoping to help them open up. Elsa’s our counselor on shift today and she’s eager to help oversee this. You’ll take the lead, but she’ll be there for any help you might need. We realize it’s a long-term project,” Marco said, looking down at a piece of paper to check his facts. “You wrote here three times a week for eight weeks. Is that right?”

“Yes, sir. Ideally. Positive identity work can start yielding results as soon as three weeks, but the Princeton Psychology Review did a study this winter that showed children’s habit forming reaches its peak effectiveness after the eight-week mark.”

“And this is one of the projects you modeled off of your own parenting experience, correct?” Marco asked as Emma nodded. Her throat grew tight at the genuine emotion behind this tactic, but this was a place with people she trusted not to judge her. As such, she shared what sparked the idea.

“When Henry first started school, he was one of the only kids that wasn’t in a two-parent household. Even the other single parents had some sort of family behind them, like grandparents, aunts and uncles, or other kids. I’m not exactly sure how long he struggled with being different in that way, he’s an independent kid and he kept his pain over that closed in, probably to spare me from being worried. But when his teachers gave me their assessment and told me what they thought was happening, I set something not dissimilar to this up. We tried painting and crafting to express his emotions, but the music seemed to help so much more.”

“It’s really remarkable, the way you’ve melded your experience with your son and your own past in with all of this cutting-edge research. It’s one of the many reasons we’re so thrilled you’re with us this year,” Marie said cheerfully and Emma warmed at the comment. Telling the story of her son’s pain at not having a father, however vague she had kept it, was hard, especially because Emma lay awake many nights wondering if he was missing something fundamental by not having a father. She wondered if it may hurt him in the long run. But she was reassured by the fact that she always did her best for Henry, and that her experience could help not just her son, but the children here who had no present parents at all.  

“Given that it’s rather late notice, do you think you can manage? We’ve got a window right now for a few hours. Elsa’s already selected the children who may need the intervention most. She kept it in the 5-8 age range as you suggested.”

Emma immediately assured them that she could pull this together, as the concept was not hard. Basically what this practice/exercise included was playing music that was grounded in emotion. Some that were happy, some more subdued, some fast, and some slow, and encouraging kids to do what they wanted when they heard that. For Henry he’d always loved to run around and dance at the fast-paced songs. Then the slower ones were always more interesting. Sometimes he picked up a favorite toy, drew a picture on the supplies she left out, or created his own little imaginary game. All the while, however, Emma’s job was to engage, support, and ask questions.

The questions always started mildly. What’s your favorite color today? (she’d learned early not to box her son into ultimate favorites). If you could have any snack in the world what would you choose? What animal makes the funniest sound? Then the questions would evolve. Her son, like many kids, was a vivid dreamer and Emma often asked about those night time visions. Sometimes they meant nothing but sometimes they told her a lot. She wanted to include that with these kids, but also include more focused questions to them about how they felt here at the institute, what they felt like when they told people from the outside about living here, and what they dreamed of for the future. She’d always ended each session with Henry in two parts. The first was to ask Henry what his biggest wish was for someone else, and the second was to ask his biggest wish for himself. Kids at his age were filled with wishes and wants, but Emma knew from personal experience, that that may already be flickering away in kids without parents. She’d been seven years old when her hope truly started to fade away, and she believed if she’d had these kind of positive affirmations and people who were working to see her happy and well situated, her relationship with the world and herself would have been much easier.

In the end, Marco, Marie, and Elsa decided that there were five best candidates for today’s intervention. Stella and Timothy were a biological brother and sister who had been at the institute for about a year. They were eight and six, and both of them were doing pretty well despite their parents losing custody of them from continued problems with substance abuse. They were likely moving into a fostering situation by the end of the summer, but they had been here a bit longer than normal because they were bonded together and making that accommodation took patience and the right placement. According to Elsa, Stella’s teachers a few times had mentioned her shyness, especially when people brought up her home life. Malek was a seven-year-old boy from a similar situation, though his father was in the process of getting clean for his son. The institute was always cautious for replacement with parents who struggled, but if his father could demonstrate stability and stay clean a full year, the legal system would grant him custody again. Malek, understandably, had mixed feelings about going back, and Emma wanted to try and help him with those through this process. Carlos, meanwhile, was a rambunctious six-year-old who had been given up at birth. He was shaped by his status as an orphan, and had a few close adoption calls that ultimately fell through. Luckily, though, a new family with sincere interest and the means to take care of him was stepping up, and they had exactly eight weeks before the system would process their filing for adoption, a perfect amount of time to help Carlos with some of these image issues before he settled into his new home.

The final child in Emma’s care today, however, was Cecilia, or as the other children called her, ‘CeeCee.’ Cecelia was a newcomer to the institute, and at just barely five years old, she was the youngest in Emma’s group today. She was quiet and withdrawn, but given her background that was all to be expected. At such a young age Cecelia had already been through so much. When she was two her parents had tragically passed in a car accident, and she’d moved in with her grandmother. Her grandmother was loving and did everything she could for her, but she was in poor health, and was now in need of care herself. Emma wasn’t here on the day that Cecelia came to the foundation, but Elsa had mentioned it with tears in her eyes a few days prior.

“I’ve seen so much heartbreak in this job, but watching that little girl realize she was being left behind… It was awful. She cried so quietly and for so long. It took us weeks to get her to say anything at all.”

Even now Cecelia was always quiet. She’d blended in a bit more with the other children, but she wasn’t particularly bonded to any of them. She had grown to be more trusting of the adults, but not in a really promising way. With Emma she’d always been sweet and well-tempered, but Emma hoped that this process might help her, and might get her to a place where she could be better socialized and cared for.  The next few hours proved to be even more promising than Emma dared to hope. All five children not only had fun, but made good steps towards progress. They all confided a little bit in Emma and Elsa, and they all responded well to the method. When Emma asked them if they’d like to do this again in a few days, all five of them were thrilled, and little Cecelia, who was normally so shy, was the biggest shock of all. Over the course of the few hours she’d opened up so much to Emma, and by the end of the session she was holding Emma’s hand tightly, intent on going with her through her day. Emma was so happy to see this little girl doing so much better, and she had to admit she was invested in this child, perhaps more than any other she’d met so far at the institute.

“Do you think it’s all right?” Emma asked, motioning downwards, but not saying everything aloud. The last thing she wanted was for Cecelia to not feel wanted when she’d made such tremendous progress, but she was worried about what might happen if she grew too attached.

“This happens sometimes. Kids have a sense for safe spaces. She was already responding really well to you before,” Elsa said, crouching down and waving at Cecelia, sharing a soft compliment for the toy rabbit she was carrying with her today, which made the little girl smile and chirp out a gentle ‘Thank You.’ Even that little show of gratitude and the genuine smile was an improvement, and Emma felt a burst of pride seeing this young girl come out of her shell. “We’ll keep an eye on it, but I think it’s best to see where it goes. She’s showing no signs of dependency, and hopefully you’ll be the perfect gateway for her to let the rest of us in.”

Emma hoped that Elsa was right, and as everyone in the center gathered for lunch, Cecelia stayed close by. Emma did her best to stay attentive to all of the kids who choose to eat with her today, but she also wanted to lead this lost little girl towards others who may be her friends. She was making good progress with another five-year-old named Ava, who was eager to be friendlier with Cecelia, when Marie approached, appearing frazzled and a little shaken.

“Is everything all right?” Emma asked, careful to keep her words calm and her tone even so as not to scare the kids. Her instincts were that something bad must be happening, but Marie shook her head, quickly dispelling her of that notion.

“Everything is wonderful, dear. We just have an unexpected visitor – actually I guess visitor is the wrong word. He’ll be staying on here for a while to work with us all. It’s a bit unexpected, but I dare say it’ll prove a delight in the end, for us and for the children.”

“Who is it that’s coming?” Emma asked, and Marie looked poised to blurt something out, but then caught herself and weighed her words carefully.

“One of the members of the family who run the foundation.”

Emma now began to understand the sudden rise in stress. Whatever JR stood for, and whichever family it was that could afford to spend so much on these resources, they must be both terribly rich and powerful. Being so new here, Emma didn’t know any background about the endowment, but she hoped that whoever was coming would be a help and not a hindrance. Surely they’d come here and see how much good work was being accomplished. She hated to think they’d be coming to make cuts or roll back funding.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Emma asked and Marie shook her head.

“Oh no dear. You’re doing a wonderful job. This isn’t an assessment of any kind. I believe it’s a genuine act of charity. You see he’s been in the military, and now he’s come home. His family’s no doubt pushing him towards some kind of occupation, and he’s chosen this as his pursuit.”

Emma wanted to ask more, about if this mystery man had any experience with kids or why, even if he was so very rich, Marie displayed school-girlish enthusiasm at his coming, but the older woman moved on to handle something else. Instead Emma waved Elsa over and asked her if she knew the man who was coming.

“Of course I do, everyone knows him,” Elsa said, thoroughly adamant that this stranger was of some notoriety. Then her features softened and she took on a thoughtful expression. “Well I suppose we know of him. We’ve never met, you see. But it’s impossible not to know him.”

Emma nodded, but she was still somewhat surprised. To this point she hadn’t gathered a sense that the family who ran the endowment was exceedingly involved in the day to day of the center. But then again, Elsa had been here far longer than her, and so she probably needed to keep track of the important players who were their most generous donors. Emma could have remained hung up on the strangeness of it all, but instead her mind wandered to the few details she did know. He was a military man, newly home, and he was coming here to make a difference. She thought about that and what that meant, and she found that she already liked him, or at least his attitude. Serving in the armed forces meant a life of service – to come home from that and still want to help others was admirable, and she hoped it would provide a good role model for the children, no matter what his actual child life background might be.

From the window in the great hall where all of the children and staff took their meals, they could all see down the back drive where a second entrance to the center was located. At that moment three black SUVs began their ascent, and the children’s attention immediately perked up as they ran to the windows. Emma felt the growing anticipation at the new arrival, and she wondered why there would need to be three SUVs. It reminded her of the protective details that sometimes came in the city, when big time politicians made their way to city hall where she worked for some sort of meeting or photo op. But what would be the reason for such a display today? Why would anyone need one of those when coming to a children’s center? It was hard to grasp, but then she questioned her instinct. The men who exited from the vehicles weren’t in high profile suits. They were more casually dressed, just like any workers here at the center. She wasn’t able to see all of them, but soon enough there were voices in the hall. Marco and Marie greeted the newcomer, and Emma only caught a snippet of the conversation.

“We’re thrilled to have you here, Sir.”

“Killian, please.”

“Killian. Right, sorry. That may take getting used to.”

“Not a problem. We have time.”

Emma was caught up in the sound of the new voice. It was distant, but even from here she felt an impact at the gravel in the tone and the lilt of the accent. It washed over her, sparking a sizzling sensation that was foreign to her, and after weeks in this country she’d always found the accent pleasing, but never responded like this. She found herself wanting to know what this man looked like, to see what kind of appearance could go with a voice that enticing, but she was getting ahead of herself. What did it matter what he looked like? He was going to be a coworker, right? This was hardly the time or place to be interested in someone. Still her stomach swooped with the tell-tale flutter of butterflies and she shifted in her seat. The action, along with the new voice in the hall, sparked something in Cecelia to change from comfortable to tense. The young girl grabbed at Emma’s shirt, latching on for a sense of perceived safety. Emma’s heart reached out to this poor, sweet girl, and she took her hand gently, trying to assure her as swiftly as she could.

“It’s all right, honey. You’re safe here. I promise.”

“I don’t like strangers,” Cecelia said and Emma tried not to get misty eyed at the sense of uncertainty this little girl held so tight.

“I was a stranger once, wasn’t I?” Emma asked and Cecelia considered that before nodding. 

“But you’re nice to me. You read us stories and play us music. You’re my most favorite friend.”

“And you are my friend too, honey. So let’s wait and see what kind of person he is before we decide if we like him, okay? You never know – he could be your favorite too.”

Cecelia looked skeptical but ultimately agreed, and Emma was glad to have that sorted. She had been so focused on curtailing Cecelia’s worry that she forgot where they were. Now she noticed everyone else was standing, children and staff alike, so she helped Cecelia down from her seat and stood up herself. The sounds of people walking in played out around her, but Emma took a moment to make sure her young charge was settled before looking back up. She patted Cecelia’s hair and brushed her full brown curls from her face, with care. Only then did she look up. But when she did, she never could have expected what would happen. 

As her eyes took in the stranger, their gazes met, and she was struck by a sense of recognition and realization that she’d never felt before. Something clicked for her in that moment, in the first few seconds of their seeing each other, and her awareness grew stronger and stronger. So much bubbled up to the surface, emotions and feelings and desire and interest. It was like something was opened within her, and she felt drawn into this man and unable to resist. This stranger had blue eyes, intense but warm all at once, piercing in a way that they seemed like she knew them and they knew her. Instinctively she looked to the rest of him - Killian he said his name was - but it didn’t help her sense of disorientation. His face was remarkable, strong and sure. His hair was dark, and his figure was no doubt honed for the expectations of his years of military service. She felt herself taking him all in, and then caught herself and thought about what a scene she was making. This wasn’t appropriate. Oggling this man just because he was hot – okay more than hot, he was… god was it lame to say perfect – oh Christ she was doing it again. She needed to stop, but when she looked up at him, she caught him doing the same thing to her. It was incredible to feel his interest, and for a moment it was like the world stopped spinning so the two of them could find each other. 

Find each other? Jesus, Emma, get a grip. The thought ran through her head as Marco began to address them all.

“Everyone, this is our newest friend here at the institute, Killian.”

“You’re big,” a boy named Seamus called out, unceremoniously and for a beat Marco and Marie looked concerned, but Killian only laughed.

“You should see my brother.”

“Is he coming too?” Marie asked, looking like she might actually be done in by the news.

“No, ma’am,” Killian said with a small smile and Marie let out a sigh of relief. What was that about?

“Why do you stand so straight?” another boy asked and Killian explained.

“I was in the royal navy.” This was met by a chorus of oohs and aahs, from the girls and boys alike.

“Are you a good person?” someone asked, and only after a moment did Emma realize it was Cecelia. She was shocked at the display of bravery from her little companion, but then that was compounded by Killian’s movement towards them. He split his looks between Cecelia and her, but when he approached he crouched down so as to be eye level with the little girl.

“What’s your name, little one?”

“Cecelia.”

“Cecelia. That’s a beautiful name,” he said honestly and Cecelia swayed side to side a bit with the compliment. “Now as for your question, I certainly try to be good.”

“But you’re a stranger,” Cecelia said, looking at him with a furrowed brow, as if this was some kind of simple math he should understand.

“For now I am. But not forever, I hope.”

“My Emma was a stranger too. She’s a good person. Are you like my Emma?”

Now Killian rose to full height and he addressed Emma as much as he did Cecelia. “I do like her.” Emma’s heart skipped and then she watched his face shift in embarrassment as he realized what he said. “I mean I hope I’m like her, lass. But only time will tell.”

“Miss Emma, does time talk?” Cecelia asked and Emma bit her lip to keep from laughing as her eyes caught Killian’s again.

“No, honey. It’s an expression. It means that with a little bit of time you will know if he’s a good person. You just have to be patient.”

The look Killian gave her in that moment was packed with so much. Gratitude, interest, and something more. There was a charge between them that she just couldn’t deny, and she could tell he felt it too. But before he could say anymore, Marco called everyone’s attention again.

“Anyone have any ideas as to how we should welcome Killian?” he asked and a chorus of answers came flooding in.

“I know! I know! We should show him our giving tree.”

“No! We should show him our playground!”

“I want to show him my pirate ship!”

“We should feed him the turnovers Cook makes. She hides them in a secret spot but I know where they are!”

“Well that all sounds brilliant, especially the turnovers. Why don’t we do all of it?” Killian asked, before looking to Marco who nodded readily. The kids looked excited, and were eager to go, but before things got too crazy, Killian looked back at Emma and grinned.

“It was a pleasure meeting you, Emma.”

And with that, and with so much swag and sexiness it made her a little dizzy, this mysterious new man set off, throwing himself into the deep end with these kids, and showing them all that he could hold as own, just as surely as he could hold her attention.

Post-Note: So there we have it! I know, I know, you’re probably mad I kept their meeting so short and waited until the very end, but next chapter I am planning to include this first meeting from Killian’s POV. This story, as much as any of my stories can, has a bit of a slower build, because there are a lot of elements I really want to include, but I promise there’s plenty of fluff in store and a lot of cuteness that yet to come. Thank you all so much for reading, and I really hope you’ll leave a comment or a review. I’d love to see what you all think and what you’d like to see going forward in this new fic. Anyway, I will do my best to update soon (probably next weekend), but in the meantime I hope you’re all well, safe, and happy in this uncertain time!

[arcticdementor]

Oscar Wilde supposedly said George Bernard Shaw "has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends". Socialist blogger Freddie DeBoer is the opposite: few allies, but deeply respected by his enemies. I disagree with him about everything, so naturally I am a big fan of his work - which meant I was happy to read his latest book, The Cult Of Smart.

DeBoer starts with the standard narrative of The Failing State Of American Education. Students aren't learning. The country is falling behind. Only tough no-excuses policies, standardization, and innovative reforms like charter schools can save it, as shown by their stellar performance improving test scores and graduation rates.

He argues that every word of it is a lie. American education isn't getting worse by absolute standards: students match or outperform their peers from 20 or 50 years ago. It's not getting worse by international standards: America's PISA rankings are mediocre, but the country has always scored near the bottom of international rankings, even back in the 50s and 60s when we were kicking Soviet ass and landing men on the moon. Race and gender gaps are stable or decreasing. American education is doing much as it's always done - about as well as possible, given the crushing poverty, single parent-families, violence, and racism holding back the kids it's charged with shepherding to adulthood.

…

For decades, politicians of both parties have thought of education as "the great leveller" and the key to solving poverty. If people are stuck in boring McJobs, it's because they're not well-educated enough to be surgeons and rocket scientists. Give them the education they need, and they can join the knowledge economy and rise into the upper-middle class. For lack of any better politically-palatable way to solve poverty, this has kind of become a totem: get better schools, and all those unemployed Appalachian coal miners can move to Silicon Valley and start tech companies. But you can't do that. Not everyone is intellectually capable of doing a high-paying knowledge economy job. Schools can change your intellectual potential a limited amount. Ending child hunger, removing lead from the environment, and similar humanitarian programs can do a little more, but only a little. In the end, a lot of people aren't going to make it.

So what can you do? DeBoer doesn't think there's an answer within the existing system. Instead, we need to dismantle meritocracy.

DeBoer is skeptical of "equality of opportunity". Even if you solve racism, sexism, poverty, and many other things that DeBoer repeatedly reminds us have not been solved, you'll just get people succeeding or failing based on natural talent. DeBoer agrees conservatives can be satisfied with this, but thinks leftists shouldn't be. Natural talent is just as unearned as class, race, or any other unfair advantage.

One one level, the titular Cult Of Smart is just the belief that enough education can solve any problem. But more fundamentally it's also the troubling belief that after we jettison unfair theories of superiority based on skin color, sex, and whatever else, we're finally left with what really determines your value as a human being - how smart you are. DeBoer recalls hearing an immigrant mother proudly describe her older kid's achievements in math, science, etc, "and then her younger son ran by, and she said, offhand, 'This one, he is maybe not so smart.'" DeBoer was originally shocked to hear someone describe her own son that way, then realized that he wouldn't have thought twice if she'd dismissed him as unathletic, or bad at music. Intelligence is considered such a basic measure of human worth that to dismiss someone as unintelligent seems like consigning them into the outer darkness. So DeBoer describes how early readers of his book were scandalized by the insistence on genetic differences in intelligence - isn't this denying the equality of Man, declaring some people inherently superior to others? Only if you conflate intelligence with worth, which DeBoer argues our society does constantly. It starts with parents buying Baby Einstein tapes and trying to send their kids to the best preschool, continues through the "meat grinder" of the college admissions process when everyone knows that whoever gets into Harvard is better than whoever gets into State U, and continues when the meritocracy rewards the straight-A Harvard student with a high-paying powerful job and the high school dropout with drudgery or unemployment. Even the phrase "high school dropout" has an aura of personal failure about it, in a way totally absent from "kid who always lost at Little League".

DeBoer isn't convinced this is an honest mistake. He draws attention to a sort of meta-class-war - a war among class warriors over whether the true enemy is the top 1% (this is the majority position) or the top 20% (this is DeBoer's position; if you've read Staying Classy, you'll immediately recognize this disagreement as the same one that divided the Church and UR models of class). The 1% are the Buffetts and Bezoses of the world; the 20% are the "managerial" class of well-off urban professionals, bureaucrats, creative types, and other mandarins. Opposition to the 20% is usually right-coded; describe them as "woke coastal elites who dominate academia and the media", and the Trump campaign ad almost writes itself. But some Marxists flirt with it too; the book references Elizabeth Currid-Halkett's Theory Of The Aspirational Class, and you can hear echoes of this every time Twitter socialists criticize "Vox liberals" or something. Access to the 20% is gated by college degree, and their legitimizing myth is that their education makes them more qualified and humane than the rest of us. DeBoer thinks the deification of school-achievement-compatible intelligence as highest good serves their class interest; "equality of opportunity" means we should ignore all other human distinctions in favor of the one that our ruling class happens to excel at.

So maybe equality of opportunity is a stupid goal. DeBoer argues for equality of results. This is a pretty extreme demand, but he's a Marxist and he means what he says. He wants a world where smart people and dull people have equally comfortable lives, and where intelligence can take its rightful place as one of many virtues which are nice to have but not the sole measure of your worth.

…

I'm Freddie's ideological enemy, which means I have to respect him. And there's a lot to like about this book. I think its two major theses - that intelligence is mostly innate, and that this is incompatible with equating it to human value - are true, important, and poorly appreciated by the general population. I tried to make a somewhat similar argument in my Parable Of The Talents, which DeBoer graciously quotes in his introduction. Some of the book's peripheral theses - that a lot of education science is based on fraud, that US schools are not declining in quality, etc - are also true, fascinating, and worth spreading. Overall, I think this book does more good than harm.

It's also rambling, self-contradictory in places, and contains a lot of arguments I think are misguided or bizarre.

…

At the time, I noted that meritocracy has nothing to do with this. The intuition behind meritocracy is: if your life depends on a difficult surgery, would you prefer the hospital hire a surgeon who aced medical school, or a surgeon who had to complete remedial training to barely scrape by with a C-? If you prefer the former, you’re a meritocrat with respect to surgeons. Generalize a little, and you have the argument for being a meritocrat everywhere else.

The above does away with any notions of "desert", but I worry it's still accepting too many of DeBoer's assumptions. A better description might be: Your life depends on a difficult surgery. You can hire whatever surgeon you want to perform it. You are willing to pay more money for a surgeon who aced medical school than for a surgeon who failed it. So higher intelligence leads to more money.

This not only does away with "desert", but also with reified Society deciding who should prosper. More meritorious surgeons get richer not because "Society" has selected them to get rich as a reward for virtue, but because individuals pursuing their incentives prefer, all else equal, not to die of botched surgeries. Meritocracy isn't an -ocracy like democracy or autocracy, where people in wigs sit down to frame a constitution and decide how things should work. It's a dubious abstraction over the fact that people prefer to have jobs done well rather than poorly, and use their financial and social clout to make this happen.

…

I think DeBoer would argue he's not against improving schools. He just thinks all attempts to do it so far have been crooks and liars pillaging the commons, so much so that we need a moratorium on this kind of thing until we can figure out what's going on. But I'm worried that his arguments against existing school reform are in some cases kind of weak.

DeBoer does make things hard for himself by focusing on two of the most successful charter school experiments. If he'd been a little less honest, he could have passed over these and instead mentioned the many charter schools that fail, or just sort of plod onward doing about as well as public schools do. I think the closest thing to a consensus right now is that most charter schools do about the same as public schools for white/advantaged students, and slightly better than public schools for minority/disadvantaged students. But DeBoer very virtuously thinks it's important to confront his opponents' strongest cases, so these are the ones I'll focus on here.

…

These are good points, and I would accept them from anyone other than DeBoer, who will go on to say in a few chapters that the solution to our education issues is a Marxist revolution that overthrows capitalism and dispenses with the very concept of economic value. If he's willing to accept a massive overhaul of everything, that's failed every time it's tried, why not accept a much smaller overhaul-of-everything, that's succeeded at least once? There are plenty of billionaires willing to pour fortunes into reforming various cities - DeBoer will go on to criticize them as deluded do-gooders a few chapters later. If billions of dollars plus a serious commitment to ground-up reform are what we need, let's just spend billions of dollars and have a serious commitment to ground-up reform! If more hurricanes is what it takes to fix education, I'm willing to do my part by leaving my air conditioner on 'high' all the time.

…

DeBoer spends several impassioned sections explaining how opposed he is to scientific racism, and arguing that the belief that individual-level IQ differences are partly genetic doesn't imply a belief that group-level IQ differences are partly genetic. Some reviewers of this book are still suspicious, wondering if he might be hiding his real position. I can assure you he is not. Seriously, he talks about how much he hates belief in genetic group-level IQ differences about thirty times per page. Also, sometimes when I write posts about race, he sends me angry emails ranting about how much he hates that some people believe in genetic group-level IQ differences - totally private emails nobody else will ever see. I have no reason to doubt that his hatred of this is as deep as he claims.

But I understand why some reviewers aren't convinced. This book can't stop tripping over itself when it tries to discuss these topics. DeBoer grants X, he grants X -> Y, then goes on ten-page rants about how absolutely loathsome and abominable anyone who believes Y is.

Remember, one of the theses of this book is that individual differences in intelligence are mostly genetic. But DeBoer spends only a little time citing the studies that prove this is true. He (correctly) decides that most of his readers will object not on the scientific ground that they haven't seen enough studies, but on the moral ground that this seems to challenge the basic equality of humankind. He (correctly) points out that this is balderdash, that innate differences in intelligence don't imply differences in moral value, any more than innate differences in height or athletic ability or anything like that imply differences in moral value. His goal is not just to convince you about the science, but to convince you that you can believe the science and still be an okay person who respects everyone and wants them to be happy.

He could have written a chapter about race that reinforced this message. He could have reviewed studies about whether racial differences in intelligence are genetic or environmental, come to some conclusion or not, but emphasized that it doesn't matter, and even if it's 100% genetic it has no bearing at all on the need for racial equality and racial justice, that one race having a slightly higher IQ than another doesn't make them "superior" any more than Pygmies' genetic short stature makes them "inferior".

Instead he - well, I'm not really sure what he's doing. He starts by says racial differences must be environmental. Then he says that studies have shown that racial IQ gaps are not due to differences in income/poverty, because the gaps remain even after controlling for these. But, he says, there could be other environmental factors aside from poverty that cause racial IQ gaps. After tossing out some possibilities, he concludes that he doesn't really need to be able to identify a plausible mechanism, because "white supremacy touches on so many aspects of American life that it's irresponsible to believe we have adequately controlled for it", no matter how many studies we do or how many confounders we eliminate. His argument, as far as I can tell, is that it's always possible that racial IQ differences are environmental, therefore they must be environmental. Then he goes on to, at great length, denounce as loathsome and villainous anyone who might suspect these gaps of being genetic. Such people are "noxious", "bigoted", "ugly", "pseudoscientific" "bad people" who peddle "propaganda" to "advance their racist and sexist agenda". (But tell us what you really think!)

…

This is far enough from my field that I would usually defer to expert consensus, but all the studies I can find which try to assess expert consensus seem crazy. A while ago, I freaked out upon finding a study that seemed to show most expert scientists in the field agreed with Murray's thesis in 1987 - about three times as many said the gap was due to a combination of genetics and environment as said it was just environment. Then I freaked out again when I found another study (here is the most recent version, from 2020) showing basically the same thing (about four times as many say it’s a combination of genetics and environment compared to just environment). I can't find any expert surveys giving the expected result that they all agree this is dumb and definitely 100% environment and we can move on (I'd be very relieved if anybody could find those, or if they could explain why the ones I found were fake studies or fake experts or a biased sample, or explain how I'm misreading them or that they otherwise shouldn't be trusted. If you have thoughts on this, please send me an email). I've vacillated back and forth on how to think about this question so many times, and right now my personal probability estimate is "I am still freaking out about this, go away go away go away". And I understand I have at least two potentially irresolveable biases on this question: one, I'm a white person in a country with a long history of promoting white supremacy; and two, if I lean in favor then everyone will hate me, and use it as a bludgeon against anyone I have ever associated with, and I will die alone in a ditch and maybe deserve it. So the best I can do is try to route around this issue when considering important questions. This is sometimes hard, but the basic principle is that I'm far less sure of any of it than I am sure that all human beings are morally equal and deserve to have a good life and get treated with respect regardless of academic achievement.

…

That last sentence about the basic principle is the thesis of The Cult Of Smart, so it would have been a reasonable position for DeBoer to take too. DeBoer doesn't take it. He acknowledges the existence of expert scientists who believe the differences are genetic (he names Linda Gottfredson in particular), but only to condemn them as morally flawed for asserting this.

But this is exactly the worldview he is, at this very moment, trying to write a book arguing against! His thesis is that mainstream voices say there can't be genetic differences in intelligence among individuals, because that would make some people fundamentally inferior to others, which is morally repugnant - but those voices are wrong, because differences in intelligence don't affect moral equality. Then he adds that mainstream voices say there can't be genetic differences in intelligence among ethnic groups, because that would make some groups fundamentally inferior to others, which is morally repugnant - and those voices are right; we must deny the differences lest we accept the morally repugnant thing.

Normally I would cut DeBoer some slack and assume this was some kind of Straussian manuever he needed to do to get the book published, or to prevent giving ammunition to bad people. But no, he has definitely believed this for years, consistently, even while being willing to offend basically anybody about basically anything else at any time. So I'm convinced this is his true belief. I'm just not sure how he squares it with the rest of his book.

…

"Smart" equivocates over two concepts - high-IQ and successful-at-formal-education. These concepts are related; in general, high-IQ people get better grades, graduate from better colleges, etc. But they're not exactly the same.

There is a cult of successful-at-formal-education. Society obsesses over how important formal education is, how it can do anything, how it's going to save the world. If you get gold stars on your homework, become the teacher's pet, earn good grades in high school, and get into an Ivy League, the world will love you for it.

But the opposite is true of high-IQ. Society obsessively denies that IQ can possibly matter. Admit to being a member of Mensa, and you'll get a fusillade of "IQ is just a number!" and "people who care about their IQ are just overcompensating for never succeeding at anything real!" and "IQ doesn't matter, what about emotional IQ or grit or whatever else, huh? Bet you didn't think of that!" Science writers and Psychology Today columnists vomit out a steady stream of bizarre attempts to deny the statistical validity of IQ.

These are two sides of the same phenomenon. Some people are smarter than others as adults, and the more you deny innate ability, the more weight you have to put on education. Society wants to put a lot of weight on formal education, and compensates by denying innate ability a lot. DeBoer is aware of this and his book argues against it adeptly.

Still, I worry that the title - The Cult Of Smart - might lead people to think there is a cult surrounding intelligence, when exactly the opposite is true. But I guess The Cult Of Successful At Formal Education sounds less snappy, so whatever.

…

I try to review books in an unbiased way, without letting myself succumb to fits of emotion. So be warned: I'm going to fail with this one. I am going to get angry and write whole sentences in capital letters. This is one of the most enraging passages I've ever read.

School is child prison. It's forcing kids to spend their childhood - a happy time! a time of natural curiosity and exploration and wonder - sitting in un-air-conditioned blocky buildings, cramped into identical desks, listening to someone drone on about the difference between alliteration and assonance, desperate to even be able to fidget but knowing that if they do their teacher will yell at them, and maybe they'll get a detention that extends their sentence even longer without parole. The anti-psychiatric-abuse community has invented the "Burrito Test" - if a place won't let you microwave a burrito without asking permission, it's an institution. Doesn't matter if the name is "Center For Flourishing" or whatever and the aides are social workers in street clothes instead of nurses in scrubs - if it doesn't pass the Burrito Test, it's an institution. There is no way school will let you microwave a burrito without permission. THEY WILL NOT EVEN LET YOU GO TO THE BATHROOM WITHOUT PERMISSION. YOU HAVE TO RAISE YOUR HAND AND ASK YOUR TEACHER FOR SOMETHING CALLED "THE BATHROOM PASS" IN FRONT OF YOUR ENTIRE CLASS, AND IF SHE DOESN'T LIKE YOU, SHE CAN JUST SAY NO.

I don't like actual prisons, the ones for criminals, but I will say this for them - people keep them around because they honestly believe they prevent crime. If someone found proof-positive that prisons didn't prevent any crimes at all, but still suggested that we should keep sending people there, because it means we'd have "fewer middle-aged people on the streets" and "fewer adults forced to go home to empty apartments and houses", then MAYBE YOU WOULD START TO UNDERSTAND HOW I FEEL ABOUT SENDING PEOPLE TO SCHOOL FOR THE SAME REASON.

I sometimes sit in on child psychiatrists' case conferences, and I want to scream at them. There's the kid who locks herself in the bathroom every morning so her parents can't drag her to child prison, and her parents stand outside the bathroom door to yell at her for hours until she finally gives in and goes, and everyone is trying to medicate her or figure out how to remove the bathroom locks, and THEY ARE SOLVING THE WRONG PROBLEM. There are all the kids who had bedwetting or awful depression or constant panic attacks, and then as soon as the coronavirus caused the child prisons to shut down the kids mysteriously became instantly better. I have heard stories of kids bullied to the point where it would be unfair not to call it torture, and the child prisons respond according to Procedures which look very good on paper and hit all the right We-Are-Taking-This-Seriously buzzwords but somehow never result in the kids not being tortured every day, and if the kids' parents were to stop bringing them to child prison every day to get tortured anew the cops would haul those parents to jail, and sometimes the only solution is the parents to switch them to the charter schools THAT FREDDIE DEBOER WANTS TO SHUT DOWN.

I see people on Twitter and Reddit post their stories from child prison, all of which they treat like it's perfectly normal. The district that wanted to save money, so it banned teachers from turning the heat above 50 degrees in the depths of winter. The district that decided running was an unsafe activity, and so any child who ran or jumped or played other-than-sedately during recess would get sent to detention - yeah, that's fine, let's just make all our children spent the first 18 years of their life somewhere they're not allowed to run, that'll be totally normal child development. You might object that they can run at home, but of course teachers assign three hours of homework a day despite ample evidence that homework does not help learning. Preventing children from having any free time, or the ability to do any of the things they want to do seems to just be an end in itself. Every single doctor and psychologist in the world has pointed out that children and teens naturally follow a different sleep pattern than adults, probably closer to 12 PM to 9 AM than the average adult's 10 - 7. Child prisons usually start around 7 or 8 AM, meaning any child who shows up on time is necessarily sleep-deprived in ways that probably harm their health and development.

School forces children to be confined in an uninhabitable environment, restrained from moving, and psychologically tortured in a state of profound sleep deprivation, under pain of imprisoning their parents if they refuse. The only possible justification for this is that it achieves some kind of vital social benefit like eliminating poverty. If it doesn't, you might as well replace it with something less traumatizing, like child labor. The kid will still have to spend eight hours of their day toiling in a terrible environment, but at least they’ll get some pocket money! At least their boss can't tell them to keep working off the clock under the guise of "homework"! I have worked as a medical resident, widely considered one of the most horrifying and abusive jobs it is possible to take in a First World country. I can say with absolute confidence that I would gladly do another four years of residency if the only alternative was another four years of high school.

If I have children, I hope to be able to homeschool them. But if I can't homeschool them, I am incredibly grateful that the option exists to send them to a charter school that might not have all of these problems. I'm not as impressed with Montessori schools as some of my friends are, but at least as far as I can tell they let kids wander around free-range, and don't make them use bathroom passes. DeBoer not only wants to keep the whole prison-cum-meat-grinder alive and running, even after having proven it has no utility, he also wants to shut the only possible escape my future children will ever get unless I'm rich enough to quit work and care for them full time.

When I try to keep a cooler head about all of this, I understand that Freddie DeBoer doesn't want this. He is not a fan of freezing-cold classrooms or sleep deprivation or bullying or bathroom passes. In fact, he will probably blame all of these on the "neoliberal reformers" (although I went to school before most of the neoliberal reforms started, and I saw it all). He will say that his own utopian schooling system has none of this stuff. In fact, he does say that. He sketches what a future Marxist school system might look like, and it looks pretty much like a Montessori school looks now. That just makes it really weird that he wants to shut down all the schools that resemble his ideal today (or make them only available to the wealthy) in favor of forcing kids into schools about as different from it as it's possible for anything to be.

I am so, so tired of socialists who admit that the current system is a helltopian torturescape, then argue that we must prevent anyone from ever being able to escape it. Who promise that once the last alternative is closed off, once the last nice green place where a few people manage to hold off the miseries of the world is crushed, why then the helltopian torturescape will become a lovely utopia full of rainbows and unicorns. If you can make your system less miserable, make your system less miserable! Do it before forcing everyone else to participate in it under pain of imprisonment if they refuse! Forcing everyone to participate in your system and then making your system something other than a meat-grinder that takes in happy children and spits out dead-eyed traumatized eighteen-year-olds who have written 10,000 pages on symbolism in To Kill A Mockingbird and had zero normal happy experiences - is doing things super, super backwards!

[nicknellie]

For sure, as I (believe) mentioned before music is Luke’s way of showing that he cares (Julie with bright ect) so it would make the most sense for him to be the only one who sings it to Alex.

Oh no, I was thinking that however I’m just now picturing it in my head like the last verse is just Luke because the other boys are crying so hard and Luke is as well but he needs to finish the song because Alex has to know.

Precisely, although the band wouldn’t be the same without one of them (they literally changed band names when they added Julie) it’s hard for any of them to think that they matter as much as they do.

Yes, I think that as well although Luke never intends for it to happen he is usually either the reason why fight starts are involved in them. Mostly due to the fact that as you said he is headstrong, and while I do think that he open minded sometimes with his opinions it takes longer for him to consider the other side (Him telling Julie that she needs to get back into the music program ect).

Although with Willie for Alex we see him sometimes being able to stand up for himself I feel like when it comes to his bandmates he sometimes may not have that back bone mostly because in the back of his head he’s afraid that they will kick him out. (Not that they really did anything that Alex needs to call them out for however just in general)

Depending on which fic you’re talking about I might have read it as well, but I’ve seen theories/stories about that as well.

Honestly I keep thinking that the boys met each other rather young however I completely agree, for a few years Bobby just didn’t have a lot of friends

Sadness, I’ve also saw a comment somewhere in which someone mentioned that for the boys stuff to be in the garage it was Bobby who probably put it there and that’s upsetting. (Poor Bobby)

Just randomly he sees one of Alex’s jigsaws and their random hobbies and he burst into more tears (could possibly be were he thinks that using the songs would be a good thing)

I can just see Reggie trying to lure Alex into a wild goose case just because he’s trying to get him confused (Alex is more so concerned but just moves on) Yes, that exactly how Bobby and Luke react. Also they can’t really lie to Alex so they won’t make eye contact with him, which is how Alex is able to tell that Bobby isn’t truthful.

Exactly, that’s what I was thinking as well! Bobby looks calm however he’s able to deck someone if needed, honestly after a while people just know not to mess with him however Luke still comes as a surprise because he acts like a puppy.

Wait yes!! Reggie learned art from his grandad (also partly where his love of country music comes from but none of the boys know why he started writing country music) (Luke always tries to get him to stop writing them however whenever Reggie is feeling sad they tend to play his grandads favorite country song which is the only one that Luke will accept)

Wait yes!! I was thinking the exact same thing, I could just see him taking a picture and then painting it. Reggie just makes paintings of all of them but as Luke is the most photogenic a majority of them is of him.

Yes, comfort music and poetry (also comfort baking especially for Reggie because Alex can’t say no to Reggie even though he once requested a Han Solo cake)

Precisely! For a bit of time the boys would be concerned just because they associated Alex baking with him being stressed (even if Alex says it’s nothing if they wake up and the garage smells like someone has been baking they know). I actually remember reading this fic that basically had Alex make cookies and then give them to a random stranger (Willie) and your idea kind of reminded me of that. But yes, and Alex is such a god baker that although the boys need him to go to sleep immediately they don’t protest to the immense amount of baked goods.

Completely, Reggie doesn’t seem tired however he is so active that the boys just know. (Possibly could’ve been when he thought that fixing his amp in the rain was a good idea).

Oh wait yes, and there’s no in between either just those two and Alex is always prepared.

If Trevor and Mitch were close then it definitely would’ve been easier for Trevor to help him make the charity. (It took Emily and Mitch a bit of time to recognize where they knew Trevor from because unlike the boys they weren’t able to pinpoint him immediately)

They definitely saw the boys as their sons, (depending on the time line) when Alex ran away he went to them first and Emily was one of the first adults (soon after Bobby) who Alex came out to.

Honestly I was thinking that for a bit of time Trevor wouldn’t announce who he was however I think your theory makes a lot more sense and I prefer it. Also I do feel like they could’ve been neglectful but Sunset Curve found a family within each other so it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been that they didn’t have the best parents.

It’s the only logical explanation that she’s Julie’s mom and if she isn’t then there has to be a reason for her character outside of a worker you know. (I’ve seen some theories where they say that Caleb is behind their murder so if that’s the direction that they take and if she’s supposed to be like a spy for his club I will rage)

Yes, basically everyone thanks Rose because she is amazing.

Honestly I have quite a bit that I expect from season two but I just really hope that they touch upon those story lines also developed and spend more time on their characters (Flynn and Willie deserved better). I’d love flashbacks like that as well, and going along with your theory kind of like in unsaid Emily as the song is continuing and all the sudden we get like a flashback scene (how they did it) that’s what they should do, if the boys sit down and tell Julie about their past.

He is such a family man, honestly if anything I just don’t really feel like they developed Trevor enough to tell what he is like as a parent however I just don’t see him as someone who doesn’t care because he had quite a few examples of not so great parents growing up, (not being supportive, neglectful, not accepting their kid and fighting in front of them jus to name a few) that he never wanted to be like them.

So I’ve been thinking about this for a bit so I’ll bring it out now, in stand tall when Carrie makes a comment before the show we see his face kind of scrunch up and I feel like season two could have a scene where he talks to her about her behavior and could possibly be how they do her redemption arc (?). Because he loves her so much, and although he may not be the best at showing it (now that he lost the boys it’s been hard for him to get close to people even his own daughter due to the fact that he’s afraid of losing them)

Exactly, it feels like they don’t care about the fact that they died. For some people it does take longer to react to things end it could just be that they’re still processing it however we get no insight to the fact that they’re even mildly thinking about it. I do think part of it is that although even has changed they still have each other and therefore they can try to get through everything that they possibly could.

Alex is such a sweetheart, and that’s exactly what he would do because he genuinely enjoyed helping people also the fact that Bobby means so much to him just made him feel like he was on cloud nine.

That’s exactly the song, The boys are so concerned and Alex and Luke at one point turns to Julie and is like that’s why I didn’t want him to know about Jar-Jar, I can’t believe he’s done this again (occasionally Reggie brings out heavy metal and no one knows why)

(So I’ve never seen Star Wars either, honestly I just said that character because he is adorable)

Julie is just concerned about them in general however during this moment she’s just so confused (I feel like Carlos is a huge Star Wars fan, part of why Reggie likes him so much so due to that fact she’s also a fan) however they spend the next 20 ish minutes talking about how much the franchise has changed ect.

It would totally be their thing, and although Alex isn’t into photography as much as Reggie is, they both just love the experience and spending time together. Also they loved having Luke and Bobby there as well, surprisingly Bobby knows a lot about photography as well or at least the developing stages so if the boys are there then Reggie and Bobby usually take over doing the developing and Luke and Alex just watch.

Yes, this is how Reggie gets into lots of scrapbooking conversations (also randomly gets stickers from people) for the fact that he’s so well known for how much he loves scrapbooking.

That’s exactly how the shoot for the deme photo went. One of the photos has Reggie out of place and the boys in movement and since Reggie thought it was the last one he almost burst out into tears (they quickly discovered that there was another picture which became the cover).

Yes, Reggie just keeps giving Julie scrapbooks of Luke. (Reggie is the embarrassing mom friend that would pull out baby pictures just to spite someone)

Instagram account- yes, and his followers are sometimes confused as to how he could possibly get those pictures without being seen but they just accept it as Reggie being Reggie. For sure, Flynn and Reggie would be the best friendship duo and the photos are insane. (Luke is photogenic but Flynn is a whole level because she will gladly do a 2 hour photo shoot)

Luke would definitely let Reggie have the wrappers, and that’s precisely what Alex‘s reaction would be.

That’s what I was thinking as well, he’s just so shaky and the writing is so blurry to him because he has so many tears in his eyes and eventually he just can’t look at it anymore (that’s why the photos are not in the scrapbook but just placed inside because although he knew how much it would mean to Reggie, Bobby didn’t have the strength to make a new page)

Yes Luke would definitely wrap the gifts in tinfoil (‘I have more class than that Luke’ ‘Reggie, you wrap your gifts with newspaper’)

Everyone just takes Alex’s hoodies, even Julie.

You described that beautifully that is exactly what their relationship is.

The hoodies are essential during movie nights because Luke and Reggie have enough room to pull the hoodies over their face so they don’t have to see what’s on screen. Over time Alex isn’t scared by them however (despite seeing the film like four times) Luke let out a gigantic scream once at a film and it terrified Alex. Ah I love that you included Willie (who is the king of stealing hoodies much to Alex’s sadness) and that is exactly what would happen.

Yes, and Alex takes his job as a choreographer very seriously (honestly it’s just for entertainment because Alex is very amused) The picture that Owen posted somewhere buried in the scrapbooks there is a similar one of sunset curve in similar costumes that Luke has tried to get Reggie to burn. Also although Luke is not interested he is the best dancer and it’s very normal thing to walk into the garage and see them waltzing with each other.

I love the way that you said this and I completely agree, it’s one way that Alex and Julie bond (also she finds that picture of Luke and Alex waltzing and she forces him to teach her how to waltz)

Honestly at one point I was going to say I love how all of this started because of a jigsaw.

I’m sorry this took me so long to get to but as I predicted I’ve been writing my response for a whole hour and I’m hoping it’s worth it 😂 oh god I loved literally all of this, more under keep reading :)))

Ok so originally I started bullet pointing everything and I planned to put it all into a big thing like I did before, then I accidentally started putting more detail into the bullet points and just stuck with it 😂 the first few aren’t as detailed but it gets better the longer it goes on. That’s also why they’re all numbered lmao

1. Luke’s voice breaking as he holds the last note at the end of the song and him desperately trying to make it all the way without crying so Alex can see how much he cares

2. All of them knowing they’re like family but also constantly feeling like they’re stepping on eggshells because they’re so used to making mistakes within their own homes that they think it’ll be just as easy with all their friends

3. Interesting that you mentioned the music program - implies he always thinks that his ideas aren’t necessarily the best but they’re for the best and he struggled to change his mind to see other sides of the argument which is where the fighting started

4. Alex was usually the mediator because whenever there was a problem he would lay the facts out in his mind and sort through all outcomes to the best possible solution that would hopefully please everyone - generally everyone agreed after Alex intervened and it was rare he was involved in arguments himself

5. Totally right about Alex not standing up for himself (see “And you can’t make us either! ...Sir” to Caleb) and that’s why he was hardly ever involved; when he did argue he could actually get kind of nasty which made him feel awful

6. Yeah same I think he just seemed like a bit of a loner and let’s be real kind of intimidating despite his chill personality and the guys were the first to break down his walls

7. I’ve seen stuff like that - like it was probably him who had to identify the bodies and take their stuff back and that’s a horrible weight for a 17-y-o to bare and it makes me wonder how people can dislike Bobby based on actions and choices he made when he was grieving for his family

8. Omg he goes through each of their bags after he’s taken them back to the studio that night (not Luke’s bc Mitch and Emily have it) and he finds the tiny easy jigsaw Alex uses before shows and a half completed crossword book in Reggie’s stuff

9. Also!! Reggie does sudokus too! I kept forgetting what they were called and wanting to add them in, but sudokus!! He loves them

10. Yes lmao Reggie starts off with a really confusing lie that makes Alex asks more questions - it once ended up with the completely false story that Reggie was planning to climb Mount Everest and they weren’t telling Alex because he was afraid of heights

11. I love thinking that the boys just can’t lie to each other because we see in the show they can’t lie (high-pitched ummmm and “we were looking for the kitchen...?”) so tiny things like that are perfect I’m so in agreement

12. Exactly yes!!!! Luke is friends with everyone he speaks to until they say something that rubs him the wrong way and he just kind of explodes (unless it’s someone he’s close to)

13. YES OMG I didn’t even think of that being where Reggie’s love of country music came from but YES omg totally

14. Because I love Johnny Cash I’m claiming Reggie’s favourite country song as Ring of Fire because it’s quite upbeat and I can see him and his grandad jamming out to it in the old days - other favourites were I Walk The Line and A Boy Named Sue

15. I feel like Reggie’s art style would swing between very realistic like when he paints the boys and also kind of similar to Booboo Stewart’s art

16. Alex tried his hardest to deliver with the Han Solo cake and it definitely could have turned out worse! Reggie helped decorate because he couldn’t wait until it was finished to see the result

17. Yes omg like the boys trying to say like “you good buddy?” through huge mouthfuls of cake and the whole effect of concern being lost - Alex eventually starts baking even when he’s fine so it’s harder to tell when he’s stressed, but baking always cheers him up so they don’t mind

18. That fic sounds really sweet omg 🥺

19. Absolutely omg! It’s like the middle of the night, full-on storm outside, and Reggie just thinks “oh yeah I gotta fix my amp, no time like the present” and it didn’t go well obviously

20. Yes and now you’ve said that I kinda feel like Emily was the second person he told who took it well? Like Bobby was first, then his parents reacted badly, and then he went to Luke’s house - Emily asked if he wanted to see Luke but he kind of broke down and asked if he could talk to her instead

21. He told her everything and she was incredibly supportive - because for a while Alex wanted to keep things on the down-low Luke didn’t even know he stayed at his house that night

22. Yeah I just need more found-family 90s Sunset Curve moments along with the found-family present day Julie and the Phantoms moments 🥺

23. idk if you saw but the book confirmed that Rose is her mother!!!! It’s officially canon!!! So no worries about her being a spy for Caleb, I think Rose is way too nice for that (oops sorry if you’re avoiding book spoilers 😬)

24. Omg louder for the people in the back Flynn and Willie deserved better!!! They deserved so much more screen time, Flynn deserves her own storyline (personally I’m rooting for her to be the first to reconnect with Carrie and I’m a hardcore Flarrie shipper so that would be cool, but I’d settle for them just being friends again) and I’d love to see Willie dealing with the emotional baggage and realisations that come after Caleb’s stamp gets lifted

25. Exactly!! This!! He loves his family so much, probably blames himself a little for the boys’ death (for not going with them, even though there was nothing he could have done, or for encouraging them to go) and he doesn’t want to lose his family!

26. Omg I’ve never considered that but I love it! I want more Trevor and Carrie moments in general and him showing some good parenting by helping her be better would be totally perfect yesssss

27. Yeah I get that, like the main thing is that they have each other and as long as they have that they’ll be fine - although like you said because it takes some people longer to process it I’d love to see either Luke or Reggie start thinking about it when they realise that Julie and the others are growing up but they’ll be 17 forever

28. Ajakkffjsl YES Reggie just randomly writing heavy metal songs, either about something he hates or just. Totally for no reason other than he likes the freedom of screaming (but he doesn’t like listening to it as he doesn’t like shouting)

29. That’s Gizmo??? Omg yes oh my Lord idk what that thing is but I would die for it and so would Reggie

30. Carlos and Reggie having lightsaber fights. That’s it. All Carlos can see is a floating lightsaber but they both have the time of their lives/afterlives

31. Omg what if Bobby learnt about the developing thing bc as we’ve established Reggie is not that careful but Bobby is very gentle and it’s something you need to be gentle for so he learns it just to help Reggie

32. For most famous bands or whatever they get asked for autographs or whatever but not Reggie - he gets given stickers and people ask to take photos, then make him keep the photos and ask them to put them in his scrapbook; even though Sunset Curve were still relatively small he had a whole album dedicated to photos with fans

33. Lmao yeah they just couldn’t time it right and thankfully got the photo on the very last try - Reggie literally cried with happiness

34. Yes!! This!! Oh my god!! Whenever Luke is being particularly annoying Reggie just calls Julie over and sits her down with a photo album - the best ones are the photos of Luke stuck in weird places (idk I feel like he’d do stupid things and get stuck a lot. He once got his head stuck in a train door and instead of helping the boys just laughed at him. That happened to me one time which is why I thought of it)

35. Hell yeah Reggie’s photography account blows up, especially when Flynn starts managing it. And those two hour shoots are almost always her idea - she’ll just show up at the studio with a bunch of outfits and shout to the air “Reggie get your camera ready!”

36. Omg don’t do that to meeeee 😭 he couldn’t make himself flip through the pages and stick the photos in because he didn’t want to relive all the memories that had suddenly turned painful 😭 so he just carefully slips the photos inside and never looks at them again

37. Julie in Alex’s hoodie is possibly the greatest mental image I’ve ever had - he can’t find it, and usually it’s Luke or Reggie, and nowadays Willie tends to take it too, so Alex marches into the studio and asks which one of them has it, at which point he sees Julie huddled up in it for warmth and he just melts because she’s freaking adorable and he can’t believe how lucky he is to have her as a best friend

38. Lmaooo Reggie and Luke hiding under the hoodies is PERFECT and yes Luke is such a scaredy-cat no matter how tough he tries to act

39. Alex looks forwards to their dance sessions every time lmao and YES he got them all matching costumes and Luke despises the photos

40. Sunset Curve (and later Julie and the Phantoms) dancing with each other was not something I knew I needed in my life but I’m so glad you said it because YES

41. Kinda considering buying a custom JatP jigsaw from somewhere because now I feel like I deserve one