#which is taxing under the best circumstances

[shiroikabocha]

I’m playing the game Dear Esther: Landmark Edition for the first time and uh. Well. I can’t tell whether this game is basically Cain’s Jawbone: The Video Game, or if I’m just too high to understand a linear narrative, or it’s some combination of A and B

I do not know if I should have combined these experiences

[hmusunoo]

𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐍'𝐒 𝐅𝐈𝐂 𝐑𝐄𝐂𝐒!

(✶) - smut

(♥) - series

ꜰɪʀꜱᴛ ᴅᴀʏ ᴇᴛɪqᴜᴇᴛᴛᴇ (ᴘ.ꜱʜ) (✶) - @simpjaes

▏Park Sunghoon is not dull, nor is he the clean cut neighbor your mother thinks he is. Oh, the horrors of if she found out that the man she set you up on this date with immediately took you home and rendered you unable to walk...he'd never be able to defend himself without a swift slap to the head.

ʙᴜ�� ᴡʜᴀᴛ ɪꜰ ᴘʜᴏɴᴇ ꜱᴇx ᴡɪᴛʜ ꜱᴜɴɢʜᴏᴏɴ! (ᴘ.ꜱʜ) (✶) - @munivrse

▏phone sex. kinda public. mutual masturbation, mentions of breeding, face fucking, degradation & praise sandwiches, reader cums once, sunghoon is a whore so he cums twice.

ᴜɴᴅᴇʀ ᴛʜᴇ ᴛᴀʙʟᴇ (ꜱ. ᴊʏ) (✶) - @heehoonies

▏you and sim jaeyun have been academic rivals for as long as you can remember, competing intensely to beat the other in every class you've ever shared. for years, you've hidden your feelings for him, burying them deep down where jake can't find them, and you're hellbent on ensuring he never discovers your secret.

ʏᴏᴜ % ʜᴇᴇꜱᴇᴜɴɢ (ʟ. ʜꜱ) - @postalenha

▏heeseung’s new gaming console has been a hinder to your relationship. but you know better, and tries to understand that he’s just enjoying the new equipment he worked so hard to have.

ᴘᴀꜱꜱᴇɴɢᴇʀ ᴘʀɪɴᴄᴇꜱꜱ (ꜱ. ᴊʏ) (✶) - @cupcakedkiss

▏Your boyfriends job was dangerous, you knew this. Putting his life at risk every night at exactly 12 am had never been ordinary to you, thus never stopping you from being his passenger princess.

ꜱᴀꜱꜱʏ (ᴘ. ᴊꜱ) - @jaysng

▏jay trying to re-gain his drama queen daughter’s attention after she got mad at him.

ᴘʟᴇᴀꜱᴇ, ᴘʟᴇᴀꜱᴇ, ᴘʟᴇᴀꜱᴇ (ᴘ. ᴊꜱ) (✶) - @ja3yun

▏visiting your tax fraudulent dad in prison and nothing was new, except the boy being carted in to the police station in cuffs. when you follow your connection on a reckless whim, it opens you up to a world filled with crime, love, and realisations about who you are.

ɢᴇᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ʙᴇᴛᴛᴇʀ (ᴘ.ꜱʜ) (✶) - @i2sunric

▏just like eva did in the garden of eden, you fell under the serpent's court and now are under his spell. you knew you shouldn't betray your boyfriend, jake, like that when he was (not) so right for you, but seeing that he spent more time out for work made you seek the love and affection you needed, and who if not sunghoon could give you what you deserved?

ᴍᴇʟᴛɪɴɢ ᴘᴏɪɴᴛ (ᴘ.ꜱʜ) (✶) (♥) - @ja3yun

▏when circumstances unexpectedly bring you and your brother's long-time ice skating rival, park sunghoon, together, you discover a surprising connection. However, your brother forbids any relationship between you. Will you heed his advice or follow your heart?

ꜰᴀʟʟᴇɴ ꜱᴛᴀʀ (ꜱ. ᴊʏ) (✶) (♥) - @h5eavenly

▏after being fired and blacklisted from the entertainment industry your life is on the verge of falling apart. An opportunity arises to save you when you get a job offer to work as a personal assistant for ex lead singer of the rock band PARANOIA! and now turned model, nicknamed the nation’s sweetheart- Jake Sim. However his image crumbles quickly when you discover he’s nothing but the devil in disguise.

ᴇᴠᴇʀʏ ꜰʀᴀɢɪʟᴇ ᴛʜɪɴɢ (ᴘ.ꜱʜ) - @stllmnstr

▏After an ankle injury lands you in mandated physical therapy sessions instead of on the ice where you should be training for nationals, you're absolutely certain you must be the most frustrated, emotionally volatile figure skater on the planet. Park Sunghoon proves you wrong.

ʙʀᴇᴀᴋ ᴛʜᴇ ɪᴄᴇ (ꜱ. ᴊʏ) - @jaylver

▏Punching a guy in the club then kissing him not long after at a hockey game wasn't exactly a fairytale, but for you, it was your reality. The worst part of all it wasn't even the incidents that happened, but the fact that you didn't know him or his name. That was until another stir of events that happened which caused you and him to actually meet, so what was the best way to break the ice after a disastrous punch and a shocking kiss together? A date. It could be love at first sight, or more accurately, it was love at first punch, or … kiss?

disclaimer - if any of the mentioned authors do not wish to be on this list and want to be removed please dm me and ill remove it! This is just a appreciation post (:

[tinydefector]

Rut Cycles- Optimus Prime

Human x gen 1 Optimus

Word count: 1.5k

Warnings: smut, size difference, breeding, Alpha/Omega hinted, mating cycles, scent kink.

Masterlist

Rut cycle masterlist

Optimus prime Masterlist

Is it 1am? Yes, did I spend all night editing this yes. I'm posting this rather than heading to bed. The votes for the next character are still up, but the next fic piece is gonna be out of my Request pile.

_______________

"Hey boss Bot, how'd the meeting with the Cons go?" A soft voice breaks Optimus out of his daze of reading over reports and signed documents. He tenses his plating as they make their way up onto the table, the ever present scent that lingers on their skin makes his processor turn and twist in anticipation And want. 

Optimus vented deeply, attempting to cool his systems through will alone, he didn't need this now, everyone from autobot to Decepticon had been hit by the rut cycle and being around humans wasn't helping one bit. The meeting with Megatron had been, taxing, to say the least, as his counterpart struggled through heightened arousal akin to Optimus' own condition. Finding a solution had been their main concern outside of setting out rules of war while in rut. 

"It went as well as could be expected, given the circumstances," he replied wearily to the human who now sits on his desk, they are less worried about being in the room with the large thorny cybertronian that they should have been. Whether it was due to Optimus' unwavering control over himself or them just being oblivious was a different matter altogether. They look up at him for a moment, the sweet energon like scent wafts off their skin. Making Optimus breath hitch, his systems whining, craving desperately to claim what he so desperately wanted" strange seeing Cons in the Ark" they state while looking over their shoulder at the door. 

"Our cycles affect us all strongly, and it results in a domino effect. For your safety, little one, it may be wise to refrain from proximity until it has passed." He tries to explain hoping that he wouldn't have to spend too much more time in the room with them, their sweet electrum like scent would still hang in the room even after they left.       

Optimus vented unsteadily, intake dry, a deep rumble echoes from him as his optics move to where they look. "Their presence here was... unavoidable, it was only a matter of time before this became an issue between our factions" he replied, struggling to focus past rising mating coding demanding he seize this delectable temptation sitting infront of him as if they were a offering from Primus.

"Please, little one," Optimus rasped, field pulled taut as battle-thickened wires. "For both of our sakes, do not test my control overly long, even if I have my limits." He grumbles as he watches the door, finding it was best he not look at them less he be tempted to pin them down to the table and have his way with them. 

"I'd rather take my chances with you OP, I don't really want to deal with the Seekers who have been stalking me around base since your meeting ended" they mumbles, partly under their breath. 

A heavy sigh leaves Optimus as he looks back down at them, part of him now wanted to claim them just to spite the lingering Cons looking for easy pickings, the other part of him shouted that it was wrong. He reaches out a shake servo to grab his cube, Optimus gulps a draught of energon, processors whirling. “You're testing all of our instincts, do you wish for me to escort you out of base?”  he asked which only earns him a head shake of a no from them. 

"Very well," Optimus rumbled gently. They hum softly as Optimus stands there looking down at them, a shutter runs up their back as they look into his optics, biting their lip. " Optimus. Name one reason someone would willingly walk into a room with a large half freal horny cybertronian" they shoot back as their hand presses gently against his frame Optimus shuttered his optics briefly, vents catching at their bold reply. 

“You were planning this?” He grumbles but doesn't pull away, A slight creak of hydraulics announces his closing fist against the table as he struggles to hold back ravaging them.

 They slowly begin undoing their shirt, throwing it across the table as they hook their hand into his plating as if to usher him closer. “Don't ask for this little Light, I can't,  not like this” he clenches his denta as he desperately tries To change their mind. 

“Optimus.  Stop being a Prime for once” they shoot back at him. Optimus' optics darken with a mixture of desire, his servo to trail up their body, his digits tracing over their skin.

they let out a sigh of relief feeling the cool metal trace over their hot skin. Optimus leans in closer, pressing his frame against theirs, his servos continuing their exploration. The contact between their skin ignites a fire within him, and he can't help but let out a low growl. “I warned you little light, reconsider now, less I hurt you because I will not stop once I lose control” he nearly snarls out. 

They cling to him bringing him down into a kiss which makes his engine roar in delight as he presses them down into the table, his servo drifting down between their legs, pressing and rubbing against them. "Optimus please don't make me beg" they whine out while grabbing onto his arm plating. 

A growl rumbles from his vocalizer as he tightens his grip, his servo responding to their urgency. He wants nothing more than to take them as his and he would be damned to the pits if he was letting them go now. 

Optimus's frame trembles with need as he takes charge, his actions becoming more urgent and possessive as his digits tease them not bothering to work them open fully. He lefts out a feral snarl as he brings his digits to his mouth, savouring the sweet taste of their arousal. If his processor wasn't so consumed with the need to claim he would have taken it slow, eaten them out until they had begged, been gentle as he could, the gentleman that he swore he was but his rut had him acting like a beast. 

 His hungry optics focus on their sex enjoying the way the whimper and moan as his dripping spike lays across their stomach as he admires the size difference between them both. A sinful whine escapes their lips, and Optimus's spike throbs in response, aching to be sheathed within them. He positions himself above them, slowly grinding his spike against them as he paints their skin with the bright pink hue of transfluid. 

He watches the way his transfluid runs down their sex, it makes something primal in him snap with the need to have his spike bulging their stomach, filling them and breeding them. "Such an eager little thing," Optimus huskily replies, his voice dripping with desire. 

He positions himself, his spike throbbing with anticipation as he aligns it with their entrance. The hunger in his optics burns through them as he presses forward, slowly but forcefully breaching their tight heat.

"Oh, you feel so good," he groans. "You're mine to breed, to fill with my transfluid.” He states, optics hald hazed over as he grinds into them until his spike settles as far as they can take it. Optimus's thrusts become more powerful and relentless as he hunches over them, gripping their hips and lifting their smaller body to meet each of his thrust that knock the air out of their lungs. 

He relishes in the gasps, cries, and moans that escape their lips, the sounds of their pleasure echoing with the slick slapping noise of their coupling that bounce off the wall of the office. Their scent pushes him further into the depths of his rut and driving him to give them even more. "That's it," Optimus growls, "Take me, Primus so tight. You are mine, my rut mate."

He continues his relentless thrusts, each one driving them both closer to the edge of pleasure. The sight of his spike stretching them, bulging their tummy has his engine purring in delight with the thought of them carrying his sparklings. He knows if the rut is affecting his processor but at that moment nothing else mattered. 

Optimus Prime's vocalizer emits a low, primal growl as he thrusts into them, their desperate moans and arching body driving him further into a state of overwhelming pleasure. He pushes his spike as deep as they can take it, relishing in the way their walls clench around him. "By the Allspark," Optimus gasps, his voice laced with desire and need. "You feel incredible... so tight, so perfect."

His frame shudders with a powerful overload, waves of electricity coursing through his circuits as he releases a floor of transfluid deep inside them. His systems whine out almost in agony from how mind blowing the release is for him as he hunches over their body. Fans blowing heated air against their panting body as Optimus' systems struggle to register the need to stop before he's grinding into them again. 

He lets out a few heavy vents as he presses his face into their shoulder. “I'll Alert Ironhide to let everyone know that we are not to be disturbed” he mumbles against their skin as he pulls away. Optics focusing in on their stretched hole as even more bright pink transfluid gushes from them. They squirm under his gaze as he lets out a rumble of appreciation at the view.

“my berth now” he states, not even giving them a chance to protest before he's walking out of the room towards command deck. 

___________________

Let me know if you would like to be added to tag list (tagged for every fic)

Taglist

@angelxcvxc

@saturnhas82moons

@kgonbeiden

@murkyponds

@autobot79

@buddee

@bubblyjoonjoon

@chaihena

@pyreemo

@lovenotcomputed

@mskenway97

@delectableworm

@cheesecaketyrant

@ladyofnegativity

@desertrosesmetaldune

[comicaurora]

do you have any tips on writing soft magic systems? I only ever see them talked about when people are comparing it to hard magic systems or criticising it, which is a shame because I love systems where magic is just in the background being unimportant, with implied rules that will never be explained

god I wrote up like eight paragraphs of explanation and I was really working out some cool stuff there and then the app glitched and destroyed it all and I'm so upset

Unfortunately this reduces to a previous problem, which is "figure out how Tolkien did it and then do that."

Middle Earth is laden with magic. Hobbits being good at hiding is magic. There's a random throne in the ruins at the end of Fellowship that lets whoever sits in it see literally the entire world, and that's hella magic. Aragorn radiates One True King magic and occasionally heals people with a touch. Galadriel's mirror lets people see any point in time, past or future. Gandalf knows several spells, but most of the time he's doing less granular stuff by making lights or small fires or going all Servant Of The Secret Fire Wielder Of The Flame Of Anor etc etc. Elves are inherently so magical that the words of their language are never forgotten by anyone who hears them, the laws of physics don't apply to them, their havens are magically pleasant and beautiful, and the planet itself is magical for them - flat for the elves, round for everybody else.

The benefit of a soft magic system is that it produces a feeling in the characters and audience that the world is vast, wonderful and unknowable. It's at its best when it can answer why, but not how.

Why did the old empire of men have a throne that let you see the entire world? That makes sense! It's hugely tactically advantageous! HOW did they get the damn thing? No idea, doesn't matter, they clearly made it work somehow because the throne's right there. Why does Galadriel's mirror give you limited, randomized omniscience? Because while it's a useful tool if you can use it, seeing the future is a dicey and weird game, and the future can change if someone knows it's coming. HOW does riverwater in a birdbath do that? No idea.

Soft magic systems start running into difficulties when the writer needs to decide how it can or can't solve a given situation, which is a very common issue in storytelling, a format almost entirely centered on problems and solutions. For hard magic systems with clear parameters on what is and isn't possible, this is comparatively quite easy. The wizard can't magic this problem away because-

They're out of spell slots :(

They don't know a specific spell that can do that specific thing

There's another caster nearby stopping them

The object that lets them do magic isn't working

They need to speak words/do gestures/use materials to cast, and they can't for whatever reason

There's something "antimagic" around stopping them

Etc etc. The possibilities are easy to run through, because the "how" is clearly defined, and can be negated into a "how NOT." If magic uses spell slots, stop the characters using it by taking those slots away. If magic needs a material focus, break or destroy it. This prevents magic from feeling like an unsatisfying "a wizard did it" fix for all difficulties because the wizards can only do specific things under specific circumstances.

Soft magic systems can contrive answers to this too, but it can be a bit tricky to justify, and if it's Too Convenient it can feel like the magic system really just does what the writer needs it to do. When asked "why can't magic solve this problem?" soft magic systems can answer in several ways:

Too tired, sorry :( magic is Taxing and stuff so the caster can tip over whenever's convenient

They're in a Bad Vibes zone that's hindering their ability to cast because soft magic can be impeded by soft problems like "somebody was very mean here once"

That specific magic is tied to a specific location, like a magical elf forest, and doesn't work outside of it because it's intrinsic to the place and can't be replicated

There's another magical being around and their kung-fu is more powerful

These explanations work, but that's conditional on the story not making the audience think the magic SHOULD work in this situation, and this is entirely based on what's been established in the story thus far. If the wizard has been able to fly up until now, parking the gang at the bottom of the cliff and saying "sorry, fly machine broke" feels contrived. But if we've only ever seen other, intrinsically magical beings fly, the audience is unlikely to expect that the party's humble wizard will suddenly bust out a set of feathery wings as a gift from baby jesus himself. On the writing side, it's really a matter of feeling it out and making sure nothing feels too jarring - if the character who's previously displayed a certain specific space of abilities suddenly does something completely unrelated (like going from clairvoyance to slinging fireballs, or from a healing touch to earthbending) that feels inconsistent AND it teaches the audience that this soft magic system is softer than they realized, and can then make it much harder for the writer to then convince them that this caster CAN'T spontaneously manifest a power or gimmick that'll save them. But if the magical characters or objects operate within a specific space - one character that specializes in fire, one object that specializes in remote viewing, one artifact that lets its holder control the winds - then the audience will expect and accept things that fit in those broad, soft categories without speculating too much on the underlying "how" of their mechanics.

But the temptation to explain "how" is very strong for writers, and soft magic systems especially have trouble with this, because soft magic systems start calcifying into fragmentary hard systems when they're forced to explain "how". It locks in a hard-defined axiom that can be logically extrapolated. Because a soft system is not DESIGNED for that kind of internal logic, doing that will usually cause axiomatic collisions as they contradict one another. If a hard system is a crisp, geometric crystalline structure where any tangent line drawn through it will intersect cleanly with other lines in very predictable ways, adding "how"s to a soft magic system is like drawing tangent lines through a bowl of pudding - you're gonna get a lot of intersections in awkward places.

To pull an example out of absolutely nowhere, if a soft system without clear rules establishes something like "this spell can be used to summon an object towards the caster, but it DOES NOT WORK on living things", there are a number of questions that can become relevant:

Who made that spell to have those limitations?

Why can't WE make spells that DON'T have that limitation?

How is the spell defining "living things"? Would it work on a plant or a skeleton or a piercing in someone's body?

Why did you let this character use it on a living thing anyway, joanne?

In a lot of soft systems that try to lock in hard spell parameters, "who made these spells" and "why can't WE make spells" become the first and most obvious axiomatic clash. If magic can be created to do what the caster wants, why and how does that work, and why can't WE do it? This forces the writer to come up with an explanation to solve the clash without letting the protagonists make up whatever spells they want, therefore solving all plot problems forever - sometimes something like "the inventors of spells were intrinsically magical beings, like elves or dragons or whatever, and thus we ordinary scrub mortals can't make new ones." That's a functional explanation, but it reduces to a previous problem again - that this hard-ish magic system was created by someone with access to an unstructured soft system.

In a soft magic system, the only answer to the question "how does this magical thing work" is "because magic." If any other explanation is needed, things rapidly collapse into hard lines and axioms and covering for edge cases. How can elves run on powder snow, shoot targets in the dark and see for hundreds of miles? They're magical. Does that mean they can fly like a balrog or sling fire like gandalf or control weather like saruman maybe can? No, of course not, that's not their kind of magic and we have no reason to expect it from them. They're just magic. Magic means a lot of different things, and in a soft system the audience has to operate based on vibes rather than rules.

This can be difficult to balance. For instance, Star Wars has a soft system in The Force, and if you squint, every single movie and show uses it differently. It's not super disruptive to the audience's immersion because it's never framed like a Hard System with Hard Rules and it almost never pulls something out of COMPLETELY nowhere, but if you look at what it does from movie to movie and then show to show, it expands from "influence the wills of the weak-minded", "seeing the future a little bit" and "force choking" to "general telekinesis" and "limited telepathy" to "FUCKING LIGHTNING FROM THE HANDS MAN" which is a hell of a twist the first time you see it, to some even more buckwild stuff in the two different animated Clone Wars (like Mace Windu fighting an entire droid army Samurai Jack style and using the force to pull every bolt out of one of them at once, or the planet with the living incarnations of the Light and Dark Side) and the explanation never goes further than "The Force is magic, it's in everything, people who are good at The Force can use it to do a buncha stuff." It's not consistent, it doesn't have rules, but the audience accepts that Force users can just kind of do stuff that fits the Vibes of the stuff it's already been shown it can do. And as SOON as they tried to say "The Force is strong in people who have LOTS OF MIDICHLORIANS" everybody hated it, because it gave us a "how" answer to a question nobody wanted to ask and it made this pervasive, wonderous, soft magic system that Surrounds And Binds Us Luminous Beings Are We into "we are space wizards because we contain an above-average number of bugs."

As a chronic worldbuilder myself, I absolutely understand the impulse to explain and overexplain and lock in the Hows and the Whys, but as far as I can figure it, soft magic systems live and die on the writer's ability to restrain themselves from saying "how." The answer is "magic." The rest is just writing the story in such a way that "magic" doesn't become plot-breaking.

[kvetchlandia]

Time For...

One of My Occasional Rants.

So, we in the United States are on the verge of a presidential election. I'm sure all of you lovely people already know that. This particular election is beyond ghastly and grim in its implications. You have one candidate who is a representative of the long term status quo and another who is more dangerous not only to the people of the United States but to the people of the entire globe than my own meager command of words allows me to express.

I'm no particular fan of Kamala Harris. As a lifelong socialist, I see her as a candidate of capitalism, and a socially moderate one at that, essentially a Clinton Democrat, the sort of Dem who would have been a Republican 60 years ago. In other words, the sort of candidate that under normal circumstances I'd never consider for one moment voting for. However, her opponent is a veritable monster; a multiply convicted felon; a man found civilly liable for sexually assaulting a woman and then libeling her after his conviction; a serial liar of astronomical proportions; a man who is supported by open fascists and KKKers; a man whose own open racism and antisemitism is decades old; a man who bragged on television about assaulting women; a man who coddles autocrats and openly aspires to be one; a man who urged his brownshirt wannabe followers to commit a putsch against the legally elected government then referred to those putschists as "heroes" and has promised, if elected, to pardon those convicted of their violent crimes; a man so self-interested that the only thing he really accomplished during his previous presidency was to give himself (and, as an after effect, his fellow billionaires) a whopping tax cut, paid for by raising taxes on the working class; a man who bragged about depriving women of their right to control their own bodies; a man void of culture and knowledge and one so ego-damaged that his own aides admitted that they had to place his name in huge all caps in his daily briefing books to get him to even skim them, since the only thing he was interested in was himself; a man who completely botched the response of the United States to the COVID epidemic and who then recommended to his followers that they inject bleach and that they shine lights on their bodies to cure the virus while he, when he contracted it, of course got state of the art medical care; a man who will reshape the courts, as he's already done to the Supreme Court, so that they're little more than a voice of medieval religious obscurantism and political reaction and a man who has already promised to use the military to quash demonstrations against him and his policies and to go after those who have or who continue to oppose him. I could go on and on, but you get the point. If Trump is elected, which is a distinct possibility, that's the end of American bourgeois democracy, always a limited and partial thing at its best.

Trump has promised to drill for even more oil and to end this country's investment in alternative sources of energy, thereby all but ensuring that complete environmental collapse due to global climate change will take place in the next few decades, if not sooner. It's already an ongoing process.

If Trump is elected, he's promised to deport more than 10 million people. That, of course, is nearly impossible, but that won't stop him from trying. Should he really undertake that blind, racist endeavor, it would of course be politically and morally wrong, but it would also cost trillions of dollars to do (where would they be placed before they were loaded on trains and deported? Camps would have to be built. Who would guard those camps? Tens of thousands of people would have to be hired, trained and armed). And then, of course, the American economy would collapse, since it's those people who do so much of the work that keeps the economy running. I don't see many Americans lining up to harvest the fields or work in the garment sweatshops for starvation piece-work wages, nor do I see many Americans willing to work at the tough, usually non-union, low skill construction jobs that keep the economy rolling. Needless to say, those millions of deportees won't be buying any of the commodities they now purchase on a daily basis to support their families. Bye bye, profit.

All of this is well known. None of it takes any research to uncover. The voting age population has lived through it and everyone is aware of it. Nonetheless, and this just boggles my mind, the polls keep telling us that the race is a toss up. That means that tens of millions of people either don't care or support the horrors that Tump embodies and stands for. That is truly frightening. I'm not convinced that Trump is a fascist, for a number of historical and analytical reasons that I'm sure none of you are interested in, although a number of his supporters are members of fascist organizations. Fortunately, as of right now, the United States still doesn't have a mass fascist movement and I don't see one developing soon, for reasons related to why I don't consider Trump a fascist. He is, though, openly disdainful of the bourgeois democracy that is represented by the American status quo and he's both expressed his desire to be a dictator and has said he made a mistake by leaving office in 2020, despite losing the election (which he pretends was rigged, although he damn well knows it wasn't). If he's re-elected, the only way he'll leave the White House is when he's rolled out on a gurney. Yet this is all OK with millions of Americans. I don't like to draw inappropriate analogies with the catastrophe that befell Germany starting in 1933, but it's hard not to see similarities despite the very significant differences. One of those similarities is the passivity of that part of the population that might not be hardcore MAGA cultists and worshippers of their bloated demigod, but will nevertheless vote for Trump, for whatever reason they cite. That's how Hitler came to power and many of those passive non-nazis had no problem when the Nazis began the roundups of Jews and political opponents of the regime. As a person who has long been politically active, I don't think I'm being at all paranoid when I say that I fear, soon after a re-elected Trump took office, that we would quickly start having those midnight knocks at the door and disappearances into the night and fog.

OK, rant over. Now I've managed to depress and terrify myself even more. I need a stiff drink.

[talonabraxas]

Hekate, New Moon in Scorpio 🌑♏︎ Talon Abraxas

The New Moon In Scorpio Says Catch Your Breath, Then Move Forward

The moment to improve our circumstances is now as November 1’s new moon in Scorpio occurs — even though we might resist the notion. We need to relinquish our fears about attaining a new state of being. This will help us achieve the life we need and fancy, though we may have been too afraid to admit it, both to ourselves and to others.

Saturn retrograde in Pisces connects with the new moon, heightening insecurities and frustrations. We may doubt our plans, intentions and goals. But don’t fret! There is a silver lining to Saturn’s slow and challenging energy. We can use Saturn to teach us lessons from the past and incorporate them into our aspirations. Then we will figure out the right way to achieve our dreams. Ask family, friends, mentors or advisors for guidance. Their wisdom, combined with our past experiences, can give us a clear understanding of how to move forward and beyond our expectations. Trust that this will help us get out of the funk.

With Mars about to switch signs (the planet of action enters Leo on November 3), we will all want to rush into making decisions. Situations may feel like they are now or never, but they are not. There is always time to choose the right path. Impulsivity can lead to regrets so it’s vital to catch our breath and think things through. Take time instead. The same reasoning applies to how we react to others. Don’t snap at someone because you’re restless; listen to every detail to be in the know. Remember what your school teacher said: “Patience is a virtue.”

Emotions will be profound but should be constrained. The key is not to let people gaslight us. Staying true to our convictions is vital but we should allow some wiggle room for improvement and growth. Don't forget that Scorpio is the sign of sex, death, taxes and transformation — so change is inevitable under this new moon. However, that change will come a piece at a time, which means we will take strides towards our aspirations, rather than giant leaps. This is the best method to integrate healing, evolution and transcendence into our lives because we can savor the moment and go at our own pace. Remember, we are all works in progress.

Scorpios tend to jump into romances so we should also be forewarned that getting to know the people we’re crushing on is vital. Use this new moon as an opportunity to connect to and understand your boo. Before you splish-splash with them in the intense scorpionic waters, relish the conversations and attraction. Explore their minds and share the past with them. The bond you craft now will last a long time. If you have an S.O., the intimacy you share and crave will be heightened, and you’ll become closer as a result.

Beyond that, the watery and intuitive vibe of the new moon in Scorpio might make us align with the universe in metaphysical ways. Since November 1 is Dia de Los Muertos and All Saints’ Day, we will connect with different energies. The line between the physical and spiritual world will be thin, allowing spirits and entities to come through. It’s advisable to do protection work, such as creating a circle of protection around the home with salt or keeping an obsidian crystal close to banish negative entities and make a positive space. Visions could be more prolific as a result, permitting us to lead with the heart and to trust our gut.

The new moon is a great time to manifest our passions and to plant seeds for a fresh start. Think about what you want to bring to fruition and how to make it happen. Stating your objectives is the first step to letting your sentiments and thoughts be heard and known. Don’t hold back. Speak your truth and reclaim your power.

[pmpmyread]

Epistolary Blues

CW: Spoilers, references to JJK chapter 268.

Gojo Satoru didn’t need the closure.

At least, that’s what he’d told himself, once.

Ten years was how long it had taken to even begin to achieve a semblance of a coping mechanism; an intense, self-imposed restriction that had proven to be far more taxing than all of Gojo's curse technique training combined, only to have him helplessly witness the fruits of his arduous labor evaporate in the matter of a moment, on the fateful afternoon that saw Geto Suguru return to his old campus’ grounds.

On that day, it was through audacious words and cavalier actions that Suguru confirmed, in no uncertain terms, the tragic inevitability that would have to come with anything resembling the closure that Gojo had once fought so hard to avoid, but now understood to be something he would have to learn to have an appetite for again, no longer for himself, but for the fate of humanity.

This latter motive was largely what allowed the Strongest Sorcerer to sustain this drive through the twenty-fourth day of that December, right up until the moment he extinguished it, along with his best friend’s life.

Circumstances had long since changed. For once, Gojo was facing a battle for which victory was not a foregone conclusion. It was in the face of his mortality that he, once again, found himself pondering the idea of closure.

Such were the thoughts that carried him, one sleepless night, to the home office which had doubled as the headquarters for the operation that sought to defeat Sukuna. Even now, in his capacity as the master of his ancestral home, Gojo would have felt like no more than a visitor, were it not for the few mementos he’d brought back with him.

Amongst those, was a letter he would never send, one he’d penned in what he’d long called a moment of weakness, one that would never achieve its objective of understanding the heart of its once seemingly unreachable recipient, after having made him decidedly so, almost a year prior.

Tonight, it was under a decidedly different mindset that he operated, having long since adopted the identities of teacher and mentor, with a newfound understanding of the role he was to play for the sake of humanity and of the fact part of his legacy would necessarily be downstream from a certain degree of closure.

On the eve of his battle against the King of Curses, Gojo Satoru found himself making use of his fancy, metallic-trimmed featherweight stationery as he took pleasure in jotting down the light words he would leave for the students who would form the next generation of great sorcerers.

Each of these letters would find its destined recipient.

Of this, Gojo would make sure.

Thanks for reading! 🩵

[pessimisticpigeonsworld]

It's so annoying how people claim Rhaenyra was a bad queen because of her "horrible tax policy". She was fucking at war, war requires a lot of money to fund. Aegon got his money by putting the Crown further in debt to banks in Essos, that's not a good idea. Setting up your administration by burying your country in debt while allowing your brothers and armies to destroy a bunch of your land is setting yourself up for failure.

Rhaenyra made the best call she could under the circumstances. She couldn't let her brother's army continue to lay waste to the country and she had to root out any hidden rebels so they wouldn't try to assassinate her or her remaining children. This takes funds, funds the crown didn't have after Viserys' less than frugal reign and Aegon's reckless borrowing.

So yes, Rhaenyra did levy a heavy tax, it was necessary, but it was yet another heavy burden for the smallfolk. They had endured a lot from the war, which was entirely the Green's doing, and were riled up further by religious fanatics (who had loyalty to the Greens). The tax and Helaena's death were just the last straws, if Aegon had continued ruling, they would have rioted against him.

So no, Rhaenyra's tax policy did not make her a bad queen. If there was no war, there would have been no need for a severe tax or the inquisition run to root out Green supporters. Therefore, once again, it all traces back to the Greens, the Dance and everything that happened in it is their fault, end of story.

[thetallowman]

Some analysis and predictions for the trio, now that I'm through the first bit

Lucy: what I would call the group's moral compass. (Not in the sense that the others are lacking morals, but in that she's the only one pointing somewhere.) She wants to do things right, not just morally but practically as well - the kind of person who likes to have a plan, who is invested in the process just as much as the results. She started out focused on the mystery, on solving the case, but the encounter with John shook her, and now she's worried about the local Others as well. Her mother actually seems like a decent parent (in a Wildbow story: shocking), and her friendship with Verona is firmly established. There's definitely s some sort of trauma packed away in there that we haven't seen yet, but I'd say she's the most stable of the three - at least insofar as the whole magical girl detectives thing isn't a direct improvement to her life. Probably the most likely to actually solve the case.

My assumption is that each of the three will pick up either an implement, a familiar, or a demesne first. (Practically, due to diverging interests, and narratively/metaphysically, for reasons of balance and cohesion - the trio of witches, each with a different defining feature, etc.) My prediction is that Lucy will get her implement first - something straightforward, physical, capable of directly influencing the world around her, shift it from what it is towards how it should be. My initial guess was a sword, but the ring somewhat fills that role - so a tool of some kind? Something versatile, like a multitool? (I'm thinking back to the awakening ritual, and the emphasis she placed on adaptability and self-sufficiency. She's suited to something that can cover multiple bases.)

Avery: the odd one out. Less interested in the magic than in the friends that come with it. (A package deal.) She's got issues with self-esteem, with being overlooked; she's happy to follow there others' lead, but she wants to be recognized for her contributions. Wants to not be left behind again. Her parents seem nice - they're failing her in some important ways, but not out of malice. (They've got what I would call too many kids.) There's a line earlier, where Avery's thinking about a sandwich, which feels like it sums up her role amongst her siblings: "She couldn't help but feel like any one ingredient could be changed out for something similar and it would make the sandwich ten times as good."

My guess is that Avery will be first to find a familiar. Might be some level of wishful thinking - could go a long way to resolving the self-esteem problem. (It worked for Blake, at least: isolation and alienation are no match for the power of a cute animal companion.) Could be something from the Forest Trail she was given - remains to be seen.

Verona: very relatable. If a magical creature had approached me, as a callow youth, and offered the chance to trade a life of magical adventures for the "normality" of college, taxes, and a 9-to-5 - I'd be taking that deal, guaranteed, common sense be damned. (Heck, I'd probably do the same tomorrow, given the chance.) She's in it for the escapism, essentially. There's a murder to solve, and her best friend's along for the ride, but magic itself is the main selling point. Under normal circumstances, whatever she does she can't win - the things she cares about aren't "important," she doesn't care about the "important" things, and even when she puts in the effort it isn't seen as good enough. Her dad sucks - I won't belabor the point - but it's true amongst her classmates as well, with sports and the app and so on. She's happier investigating the "eat your own fingers" ritual than doing yardwork, which makes perfect sense.

Verona's going to get a demesne. No idea what that will look like, but of the three, it fits the most. Having a place other than her house - somewhere that she controls, gets to make the rules for - should go a long way. (In some ways, I'm reminded of Blake - though her definition of freedom seems less about what she can do, and more about what she doesn't have to do.)

[lexicals]

System collapse notes made as I read:

(Spoilers, obvs, mostly out of context)

Amazing opening page as usual. This feels like coming home I'm so happy

Side note, "one of you" - like, is this being delivered to an actual audience, or does mb just like to pretend it is? I know it's just an in-universe excuse for the conceit but either option is so good

ART canon tax fraud?? ART canon embezzlement???

ART @ BE ship: "people die in car crashes all the time. I just thought that was interesting :)"

The note about iris having grown up alongside ART is so funny. And the note about her being ART's ratthi is so sweet from both sides of that comparison

I adore Three so much. The fucking baby deer comparison killed me this poor construct

I could be misremembering but it feels like secunit's narration has more colloquialisms than before, which is fun if I'm right

Love than mb and mensah have the exact same reaction to the extra settlement lmao. Handshake meme

ARGUCUSSION

SECUNIT YOUR BOUNDARIES. YOUR NEEDS. PLEASE STOP TELLING PEOPLE YOU'RE FINE

"Fun stuff like space battles and rescuing people and space monsters and throwing asteroids at planets" this bot loves its cheesy tv so much I'm gonna cry

WHY DO YOU KEEP REDACTING THINGS SECUNIT PLS THIS IS STRESSFUL. I can't tell if this is it editing out trauma discussion or something else

Mb casually using ART as a dictionary lmao

Oh god is it hurting over 2.0 specifically. Oh man of course it is. God this poor bot I'm so 😭

Mb and ART working as a team so fluidly.... best friends......

Ratthi can tell secunit is busy thinking/working just by glancing at it.... FRIENDS.....

"SENTIENCE SUCKS" LMAO. YEAH OKAY WE'VE ALL FELT THAT

MB JUST HAS THE VIDEO FILE OF RATTHI ALMOST GETTING EATEN BY A WORM ON HAND. AMAZING

Mb and pin-lee bonding over watching scifi car crash videos. Incredible

SECUNIT THE SELF-DESTRUCTIVE TENDENCIES. LITERALLY TRYING TO JUMP OUT OF A PLANE WITHOUT A PARACHUTE. PLEASE

I'm gonna cry pls mb stop beating yourself up for being traumatised. This is exactly what you were giving mensah shit about!!!!!

"It was always my job to get hurt" I Am Going To Fucking Cry

CITING ITS SOURCE ON THE PRE CR HISTORY LESSON LMAO

God I feel like this poor bot spent six books building up its confidence and it's all just been shattered after the thing with 2.0. Like it's so palpable in the narration that it thinks it's broken in some way and is forcing itself to carry on regardless but with no regard for its own survival, which has always been of pretty high priority for it even in ASR!! It's let itself get beaten up in the other books but it's never been reckless like this. Mb please stop punishing yourself.....

Ohh tarik and mb shared corpo trauma..... can we talk about that maybe

Ratthi correcting iris about the ex-secunit thing.... ouuououugghghh

"Under normal circumstances that would be kind of hilarious" mb honey as a reader. That IS hilarious

Mb "so is this guy your..... ex-security..... not that I'm feeling jealous or insecure rn....."

HEY GUYS YOU EVER HAVE A PTSD FLASHBACK SO BAD YOU PASS OUT. GUYS

HEY GUYS HAVE YOU EVER HAD YOUR BRAIN-CRASHING PTSD FLASHBACK ANALYSED IN DETAIL BY A BUNCH OF PEOPLE YOU WANT TO RESPECT YOU

Mb once again having the worst time of its life but being offered a media archive by a friendly bot: oh fuck yes hello there

Ooooh pre-corpo media no less......

THE ART THERAPY-SPEAK..... "that’s for humans" "this affects the part of you that is human" I'm going to yell and yell and yell

"No, it doesn't read my mind, it just knows me really well" 🥺

I feel like MW has gotten more up to date on current gender/pronoun usage since the earlier books which is nice to see. We've had neopronouns before but having pronouns attached to feed/character intros is new and appreciated

Mb: "aw fuck am I being tall and intimidating again"

Local secunit physically repelled by power phrase "sexual discussion" like a fucking skyrim shout

VISUAL EQUIVALENT OF A WET BLANKET..... SECUNIT......

OHH...... OHHHHH!!!!! OHH MY GOD THE. IS THIS THE. WHEN I TALKED ABOUT THE CONCEIT EARLIER.........

Oh okay no BUT MURDERBOT NEW CREATIVE DIRECTOR POSITION BABEY!!!!!

And ratthi is so supportive. God I'm so. AAAAUGH

Just patch out the anxiety lmao. New mental illness fix dropped please restart your OS to apply

Telling your bestie to fuck off IS a kind of love language and I'm glad that ART appreciates it 😌

LITERALLY "(INTERNAL SCREAMING)". LMAO

Mb literally in a life or death situ rn: I could just burn part of this person's brain out to save us..... that seems mean though :/

"I lack a sense of proportional response" LMAO ART. At least it's self-aware

"I didn't come here to make friends" says the secunit who literally cannot go anywhere without forming some kind of allyship with someone

The delayed-hack though, that's fun. Wonder whether this file is gonna slowly make its way from CR secunit to CR secunit as mb gradually becomes some kind of mythic figure, lmao

"Be safe" 🥺

FINAL GIRL IS OUT. FINAL DRONE IS IN

ART: "Oooh you guys care about me ^^ lol"

LMAO ART YOUNGER SIBLING BEHAVIOUR

ALSO YES SET THREE UP WITH THE OTHER CRAZY SMART AI THEY CAN ALL GET A SECUNIT BESTIE!!!!

Murderbot trauma acknowledgement 😌 You go working through your feelings mb you're doing so well ily

WHERE ARE WE GOING NEXXXTTTT THAT IS INDEED THE QUESTION!!!

Summary thoughts: this was really good and I like that MW has taken the time to address the NE fallout before moving on to whatever is coming next, I'm mostly just excited for that whatever-comes-next now. I didn't expect this story to still be focused on the same planet, but it's cool that it was! And now we're moving on with more machine intelligences and rogue secunits in play!! And they mentioned the comfortunit from artificial condition so hopefully that'll come back into play soon as well! I feel like something is building up wrt construct rights in the setting and I'm very excited to see that, but in the meantime I loved getting this familiar romp through MB having a very bad day and working through its emotions while also trying not to die. And it was fun having the twist on the usual formula with things being so isolated and it having to handle everything while being off its game, it felt a lot more tense than some of the other entries just by virtue of the fact that MB's narration was so much less confident than usual, and it made it really nice to hear the fire come back to its voice once we hit that point in the story. 11/10 as usual I love this bot so goddamn much

[dailyanarchistposts]

B.2.6 Can the state be an independent power within society?

Yes it can. Given the power of the state machine, it would be hard to believe that it could always be simply a tool for the economically dominant minority in a society. Given its structure and powers, it can use them to further its own interests. Indeed, in some circumstances it can be the ruling class itself.

However, in normal times the state is, as we discussed in section B.2.1, a tool of the capitalist class. This, it must be stressed, does not mean that they always see “eye to eye.” Top politicians, for example, are part of the ruling elite, but they are in competition with other parts of it. In addition, different sectors of the capitalist class are competing against each other for profits, political influence, privileges, etc. The bourgeoisie, argued Malatesta, “are always at war among themselves … Thus the games of the swings, the manoeuvres, the concessions and withdrawals, the attempts to find allies among the people against the conservatives, and among the conservatives against the people.” [Anarchy, p. 25] This means that different sections of the ruling class will cluster around different parties, depending on their interests, and these parties will seek to gain power to further those interests. This may bring them into conflict with other sections of the capitalist class. The state is the means by which these conflicts can be resolved.

Given that the role of the state is to ensure the best conditions for capital as a whole, this means that, when necessary, it can and does work against the interests of certain parts of the capitalist class. To carry out this function the state needs to be above individual capitalists or companies. This is what can give the state the appearance of being a neutral social institution and can fool people into thinking that it represents the interests of society as a whole. Yet this sometime neutrality with regards to individual capitalist companies exists only as an expression of its role as an instrument of capital in general. Moreover, without the tax money from successful businesses the state would be weakened and so the state is in competition with capitalists for the surplus value produced by the working class. Hence the anti-state rhetoric of big business which can fool those unaware of the hand-in-glove nature of modern capitalism to the state.

As Chomsky notes:

“There has always been a kind of love-hate relationship between business interests and the capitalist state. On the one hand, business wants a powerful state to regulate disorderly markets, provide services and subsidies to business, enhance and protect access to foreign markets and resources, and so on. On the other hand, business does not want a powerful competitor, in particular, one that might respond to different interests, popular interests, and conduct policies with a redistributive effect, with regard to income or power.” [Turning the Tide, p. 211]

As such, the state is often in conflict with sections of the capitalist class, just as sections of that class use the state to advance their own interests within the general framework of protecting the capitalist system (i.e. the interests of the ruling class as a class). The state’s role is to resolve such disputes within that class peacefully. Under modern capitalism, this is usually done via the “democratic” process (within which we get the chance of picking the representatives of the elite who will oppress us least).

Such conflicts sometimes give the impression of the state being a “neutral” body, but this is an illusion — it exists to defend class power and privilege — but exactly which class it defends can change. While recognising that the state protects the power and position of the economically dominant class within a society anarchists also argue that the state has, due to its hierarchical nature, interests of its own. Thus it cannot be considered as simply the tool of the economically dominant class in society. States have their own dynamics, due to their structure, which generate their own classes and class interests and privileges (and which allows them to escape from the control of the economic ruling class and pursue their own interests, to a greater or lesser degree). As Malatesta put it “the government, though springing from the bourgeoisie and its servant and protector, tends, as with every servant and every protector, to achieve its own emancipation and to dominate whoever it protects.” [Op. Cit., p. 25]

Thus, even in a class system like capitalism, the state can act independently of the ruling elite and, potentially, act against their interests. As part of its role is to mediate between individual capitalists/corporations, it needs sufficient power to tame them and this requires the state to have some independence from the class whose interests it, in general, defends. And such independence can be used to further its own interests, even to the detriment of the capitalist class, if the circumstances allow. If the capitalist class is weak or divided then the state can be in a position to exercise its autonomy vis-à-vis the economically dominant elite, using against the capitalists as a whole the tools it usually applies to them individually to further its own interests and powers.

This means that the state it not just “the guardian of capital” for it “has a vitality of its own and constitutes … a veritable social class apart from other classes … ; and this class has its own particular parasitical and usurious interests, in conflict with those of the rest of the collectivity which the State itself claims to represent … The State, being the depository of society’s greatest physical and material force, has too much power in its hands to resign itself to being no more than the capitalists’ guard dog.” [Luigi Fabbri, quoted by David Berry, A History of the French Anarchist Movement, 1917–1945, p. 39]

Therefore the state machine (and structure), while its modern form is intrinsically linked to capitalism, cannot be seen as being a tool usable by the majority. This is because the “State, any State — even when it dresses-up in the most liberal and democratic form — is essentially based on domination, and upon violence, that is upon despotism — a concealed but no less dangerous despotism.” The State “denotes power, authority, domination; it presupposes inequality in fact.” [The Political Philosophy of Michael Bakunin, p. 211 and p. 240] The state, therefore, has its own specific logic, its own priorities and its own momentum. It constitutes its own locus of power which is not merely a derivative of economic class power. Consequently, the state can be beyond the control of the economically dominant class and it need not reflect economic relations.

This is due to its hierarchical and centralised nature, which empowers the few who control the state machine — ”[e]very state power, every government, by its nature places itself outside and over the people and inevitably subordinates them to an organisation and to aims which are foreign to and opposed to the real needs and aspirations of the people.” If “the whole proletariat … [are] members of the government … there will be no government, no state, but, if there is to be a state there will be those who are ruled and those who are slaves.” [Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 328 and p. 330]

In other words, the state bureaucracy is itself directly an oppressor and can exist independently of an economically dominant class. In Bakunin’s prophetic words:

“What have we seen throughout history? The State has always been the patrimony of some privileged class: the sacerdotal class, the nobility, the bourgeoisie — and finally, when all other classes have exhausted themselves, the class of the bureaucracy enters the stage and then the State falls, or rises, if you please, to the position of a machine.” [The Political Philosophy of Michael Bakunin, p. 208]

This is unsurprising. For anarchists, “the State organisation … [is] the force to which minorities resorted for establishing and organising their power over the masses.” It does not imply that these minorities need to be the economically dominant class in a society. The state is “a superstructure built to the advantage of Landlordism, Capitalism, and Officialism.” [Evolution and Environment, p. 82 and p. 105] Consequently, we cannot assume that abolishing one or even two of this unholy trinity will result in freedom nor that all three share exactly the same interests or power in relation to the others. Thus, in some situations, the landlord class can promote its interests over those of the capitalist class (and vice versa) while the state bureaucracy can grow at the expense of both.

As such, it is important to stress that the minority whose interests the state defends need not be an economically dominant one (although it usually is). Under some circumstances a priesthood can be a ruling class, as can a military group or a bureaucracy. This means that the state can also effectively replace the economically dominant elite as the exploiting class. This is because anarchists view the state as having (class) interests of its own.

As we discuss in more detail in section H.3.9, the state cannot be considered as merely an instrument of (economic) class rule. History has shown numerous societies were the state itself was the ruling class and where no other dominant economic class existed. The experience of Soviet Russia indicates the validity of this analysis. The reality of the Russian Revolution contrasted starkly with the Marxist claim that a state was simply an instrument of class rule and, consequently, the working class needed to build its own state within which to rule society. Rather than being an instrument by which working class people could run and transform society in their own interests, the new state created by the Russian Revolution soon became a power over the class it claimed to represent (see section H.6 for more on this). The working class was exploited and dominated by the new state and its bureaucracy rather than by the capitalist class as previously. This did not happen by chance. As we discuss in section H.3.7, the state has evolved certain characteristics (such as centralisation, delegated power and so on) which ensure its task as enforcer of minority rule is achieved. Keeping those characteristics will inevitably mean keeping the task they were created to serve.

Thus, to summarise, the state’s role is to repress the individual and the working class as a whole in the interests of economically dominant minorities/classes and in its own interests. It is “a society for mutual insurance between the landlord, the military commander, the judge, the priest, and later on the capitalist, in order to support such other’s authority over the people, and for exploiting the poverty of the masses and getting rich themselves.” Such was the “origin of the State; such was its history; and such is its present essence.” [Kropotkin, Evolution and Environment, p. 94]

So while the state is an instrument of class rule it does not automatically mean that it does not clash with sections of the class it represents nor that it has to be the tool of an economically dominant class. One thing is sure, however. The state is not a suitable tool for securing the emancipation of the oppressed.

[kainekron]

since im writing down my world building i felt like posting it some where public if you feel like reading it go ahead

at the bottom of this you can find a short magic system explanation and a world map

    One of the world’s current superpowers koreen is still young by the standards of other great countries on the central continent, some look at the land’s history of rebellion and the constant cycles of fracturing and reunification and see it as ephemeral, but it’s far more united then the last empire which stood their.

   History 

  As it is taught in modern Koreen their history starts with the kingdoms that existed there right before the creation of koreen the 7 Usri princedoms, who were a group of kingdoms once part of an older grander empire that fractured a hundred of years before their successors fell. 

  The princedoms are often characterised by modern Koreenights as wasteful, greedy, and vain, a not untrue statement if looking at the historical record, vicious infighting, rampant wars, and unsustainable hunting practices have led to environmental change during the princedoms reign and that is often cited as the main reason why the rebellions that felled all 7 princedoms within the same month started thought if you're reading about these events in Koreenight histories its often exaggerated into being on the same day. 

  Looking at the original 8 Fens' writing on the matter you do find some mention of other reasons as simple as frustration from how unorganized and corrupt the princedom of Dova by who would later become the first faceless of house Katum, a want form a stronger military leadership by the first head of house Rittu, or just a simple peasant revolt as was the case for what is now the lands of house Umse. 

  They all came to their dealings with Stillwater through different means, though some speculate that after the first few deals with the entity, it began to manipulate the circumstances so that others would rebel and give it greater power. It is pointless to debate the intentions of Sau, but Stillwater was an instrumental part of the rebel’s victory, providing them with fresh water –rare at the time– and rejuvenating their fields.

 Their victory was quick, the princedoms having lost the favour of their people by constant pointless wars, and wasteful actions. The common people, especially the wielders denied many rights, rallied around the idea of determining their new future, and the old noble cast fell easily under these conditions.

And as with many great Sau after it had granted its champions power it struck with them a deal for its continued assistance, though the exact terms are unknown it’s assumed that the deal in simple terms was. Maintain your power keep your people well and healthy –the best theory as to why some patron Sau care so much about how the peasantry is treated is because perception effects their minds in some way– and your water’s shall never run out, and your fields will remain ever bountiful. There is some speculation about the Fen’s creating standard’s for their houses to follow, but we can not be sure of this.

Caste system

The original Fens had an interesting sense of humour, much of their governmental visions and culture practices have been made as an echo, mockery, or improvement upon similar things within the time of the princedoms. Such as maintaining the caste system but adding more mobility and rights to the lower castes.

Undocumented citizens (one names): these are the lowest caste in Koreen consisting of children unregistered with the government, unclaimed bastards, newly arrived immigrants and the occasional village uncontacted by tax collectors and censuses for a long time. Though they may go by any number of names they chose, they legally only have a personal names 

Citizens (two names): these are the main bulk of Koreenight society, they are recognized by their government and have gained their right to requisition clothes, food and shelter from governmental centres found in any town or city a limited number of time throughout a year. Rising to this caste is as simple as having a magister’s office fill out a forum and spending a small amount of money. Allowed both a personal and family name, most who rise for undocumented states chose simple names.

Clan associated Citizens (three names): these citizens, either through birth or what ever specific method the clan has for initiation, Clans can be what other countries would be considered governmental branches, most clans are founded because 2 or more Fens have agreed on a reason to found one –this could be as simple as a regional need for a specific job or service, and it is easy to cox people into joining clans, or it could be for more complicated political reasons– but most clans are made for a specific purpose, a need to fill a duty that must be done, the joining of clans doesn’t provide much extra in the law, but does provide more connections and governmental backing for the clan’s primary activity. Clans can be easily distinguished by age, as long-lasting clan’s such as the Tajo and Riosa clans have spread all over Koreen as a nation and provide essential services, the Tajo being upholders of the law guarding the streets and maintaining communal cohesion -the Tajo are compared to other clans as there original founders were all foreigners coming form Serkan as a force to assist the Fen’s in their fight for freedom– and the Riosa clan having the duties of cleaning and maintenance of cities, though as ancient clans these two have very broad duties most modern clans have simpler ones such as producing a specific kind of commodity or the maintenance of a specific service. Most inducted to the clan keep their old names and simply gain the clan’s name, those born in the clans have their family name replaced by a district or by their rank in the clan.

Fen houses (four names): these are not necessarily the descends of the original fens they are also a mix of land mangers and bureaucrats that mange their land’s, their guards, and what ever specialized services a fen choses to provide. Such as the Umsria a travelling troupe of performers funded and managed by house Umse. Having their personal and family names alongside the name of the houses and their rank.

The Fen (five names): the leader of the houses and the highest authority in their specific region of Koreen. Mostly picked from the children of the pervious Fen, anyone from the Fen’s houses can become the next Fen, so long as they are chosen as the heir of that houses. Each house fen has their own title, such as house Katum’s Fen being called the Faceless and them taking up a ritualistic name, more a short sentence dictating the goals of their rule. Or house Rittu’s Lord/Lady Captain Commander. And a symbol of Rule, a magical effect attached to their bodies*. A fen’s power is usually checked by a small counsel of representatives chosen by the other Fens, and their national laws, dictated by a counsel of all 8 Fens. Name depend on the houses 

Shao (four names): mostly seen as outsiders of the normal system, Shao are technically the adopted children of the current Fen raised for the purpose of protecting their legitimate siblings or taking their place if the need arose, they go through similar rituals and are educated to a similar level. Chosen from birth for their potential to become great wielders, the Original Shao were peasant children taking for their great talents in Automy to serve as concubines or guards for the Princes.

Nameless (no name): becoming a Nameless is reserved for only the worst criminals among a Fen’s houses, those convicted of high treason or high profile murders and assaults.  

Sentinels

Sentinel is a specific rank made to grant specific rights and privileges to wielders of Automy due to their help during the revolution. They are split into multiple professions ranging from ones that need the use of Automy to function to ones that don’t, they are:

The fist (assigned as bodyguards for the Fen houses and important clan leaders)

The pen (diplomats and envoys sent to foreign countries) 

The scale (now more a specific rank of magister in modern times, but they used to be an order of travelling judges that formed Koreenight common law) 

The hawks (guardsmen and social workers –mostly dominated by the Tajo clan)

The Claw (thief cachers and bounty hunters) 

 The forge (craftsmen that push the bounds of their arts though Automy) 

The song (they are researchers who study Automy its limits and the reasons it develops –the name of this order is taken from the Miosmodian Path of the same name)

Most of the reason people seek to become Sentinels is because of the extra funding they get from the government, most if not all of the duties upheld by the orders are done by people outside the orders, just with lesser funding. 

 Cultural notes

As stated before much of their culture is made in response to the Usri and their culture, their places instead of being demolished and built over are still in use as markets and town squares their wilting beauty a symbol of the Princedom’s fall. Modern plays and musical performances draw on many instruments and tales once only for the Princes themselves, public museums and art galleries were made out of the private collections of noble families beautiful private gardens made public and up kept throughout the generations, the learning of reading and writing once guarded is now near mandatory. Kire coats – half sleeve coats that usually hang loosely on the wearer– once a hallmark of the noble cast of the princedoms now a common piece of clothing worn by most citizens, though like with most articles of clothing it goes through trends such early coats being solid bright colours to modern coats being made with lace and in neutral colours. 

Fashion in Koreen hasn’t changed much over the years on a broad level, most people of either gender going with loose shorts or traditional skirts in the more coastal areas, with longer tighter pants in inland areas loose tunics currently the biggest difference between how men and women dress is women dressing in colder colours while men prefer warmer colours. Hair has always been kept long in koreen currently bleached hair is in fashion with women, while men grow their hair to be tied into a tail like the Rosani Orin who dominate modern plays as its heroes. Beauty in Koreen has nearly always been the physical excellence reached by wielders, among men and women alike.

Work: All trades have been seen as equal throughout Koreenight history and this has led to the high martial pride of countries like Onta, Merba and Deora to be seen as overtly silly and ridiculous though the skill is respected, but concepts like warrior honour and the unique talent’s of specific bloodlines has been often mocked by the public. Though, this attitude has challenged by modern stories of Ro’sani’s Orin.

 Service contracts and gifts of introduction: service contracts were once used by the ruler of a princedom to hand out favours for services rendered, these contracts were made in an attempt to make more deals among noble houses more above board. Now they serve as a way to give unskilled labourers or out of work artisans a way to gain what they need, as they pay quite well. Gifts of introduction are small trinkets give by specific groups of artisans and artist as well as sentinels to people they see as worthy apprentices or those who might need help of a high ranking member who might not otherwise hear them out. And some groups require new recruits to collect a few before joining.

International relationships

Deora: generally favourable, as they have been since the start of the current regime. The two countries have had a close relationship since the start of the rebellion against the Usri princes, and trade from Deora’s ports to Koreen have been constant. Socially, while the militant nature of many Deorans is mocked, the people are much respected for their ability to stand against the princedoms for as long as they have.

Miosmodi:Koreen has a very little history with the island nation, and their modern relationship has been one of intellectual and cultural trade. Once held as mystical and alien, Miosmodi’s culture and its practices have slowly become part of the norm for Koreen. 

Tsai: there have been at least two serious attempts at folding Tsai into Koreen holding, the capital of the empire that once ruled the greater area of the continent would have been helpful in showing the permanence of current Koreen, but both attempts were rebuffed and further attempts prove inconvenient. It’s people and their martial pride are the reason Koreen holds such attitudes about it. Tsai leadership shifting as it is keeps Koreen an arms length away. 

Niar: very tense on both sides, but since Niar isn’t willing to break its deadlock with Serkan, they will probably remain in this state. The common people of Koreen view Niar it’s monsters Nobility and their Lehab warriors with fear, their image of it flavouring their view of the Usri princes.

Serkan: long time allies since it’s rebellion outside of military training, assistance, and trade routes not much is exchanged between these two. Mostly seen through the lens of the Hawks, therefore leading to confusion about the existence of criminal Serkanians.   

Ardira: like most other countries, the relationship between Koreen and Ardira is mostly one of trade in either fine weaponry or intricate machinery. Famous for its metal work, most Koreenights see Ardira through its artisans. 

Merba: as it’s a fractured and decentralized area, there isn’t much of a political relationship between it and Koreen, stories told of barbarians, enslaved wielders, acidic black lakes, cults and ghost towns do give the region a freighting reputation  

Ro’sani: not much of an official political relationship exist here as Ro’sani is too isolated from world politics, a lot of stories and works of art and philosophy have been making their way to Koreen and becoming quite popular.  

Ro’kan: a courteous relationship exists between the two, mostly to give support against any Ontan aggression. Its people are viewed in a similar over serious way as the people of Deora.

 The Freepeople: they are given free rein to host their festivals and trade, but their land trade is limited to specific routs and cities. They are seen as an entertaining if greedy people. 

 Onta: relations are kept polite but distant, both seeing the other as a future enemy. Its people are seen as prudish, moronic and arrogant.

Kaguru: no real relations exist between them, but refuges are allowed entry to Koreen without much fuss.  

Notable Groups:

The Blackcoats: originally a group of folk healers, after the establishment of the current regime they have become a standardized force throughout all of Koreen. Identified now as before by their offices deep black coats adorned with many pins representing the many services they are allowed to give to patents from either natural healing and Medicean to magical Automy resealing and surgery, to more esoteric thing like vital essence treatments or willsoothings. The Blackcoats have always been there as an informal roll filled by someone in almost any village, but now are more regulated in what they can do.

The hand of Challenge: an organization of mostly artisans and artist who seek to become better at their respective crafts at least as it’s viewed publicly, the deeper in you enter, the more you see many more skills seen as art and the more vile the views of the organization seem.

The sons of the hawk: supposedly the descendants of Gallan the hawk the near mythical killer of Prince Shial the horned one, the strongest of the Princes, his lands so great that they were split into the lands of Houses Katum and Suftan. Though the line has those who revere it, most see it as pointless. 

The keepers of the sword of end time’s sun: the keepers of this blade are sworn to up keep its temple, maintain its history, and warn any who wish to draw it of the dangers.

The Norkao organization: once an underground organization of the Usri merchant class made to settle disputes and finalize deals, not through negotiation but through blood sport, it was only allowed to exist for a few years after the uprising because of their help in it, but it simply moved back underground. House Katum has discovered it’s continued existence and has been keeping an eye on it

Numalorn: a small tribe composed of those who used to rule the lands of house Rittu before the rise of the princedoms thorough they are ethnically very similar to the rest of the people living in these lands they are distinguished by a pair of pale triangular birthmarks on their cheeks and the strange taunting night terrors they constantly have to deal with.  

Notable Sau manifestations 

The basins: a set of 24 mystical stone bowls of differing size that Stillwater created as part of it’s deal with the original Fens, they produce a great amount of water, and were used to help revitalize Koreen’s wildlife

The flower of Riola: a flower only found when rumours of its existence abound. When crushed it becomes this odd transparent goo, if that goo is mixed in with any other kind of dye it will take on that dye’s properties.

The sword of end-times sun: brought to Koreen by the first Tsai Emperor, this ancient blade of unknown origin is only released from its stone sheath in times of change for the world usually all who approach the temple are allowed a chance at lifting the sword.

Odes: a type of small blueish crow with bronze eyes they like many crows are highly intelligent, though these can teach each other things without the need for any form of communication, some tamed verities act as messenger birds.  

*symbols of rule: 

House Katum: the faceless appears as if submerged in water seen from afar murky and indistinct, only the eyes unobscured.

House Rittu: a crown of ice spikes sprouts from along the hairline.

House Umse: a ribbon of clean, pure water floats behind the Fen.

House Kalri: a mantel of fog coalesce around the fen’s shoulder and drifts down to the ground.  

House roval: frost appears on the skin of the fen.

House genal: a layer of water snakes it’s way around their upper body.

House Teru: a puddle of seawater follows the Fen around.

House artum: their eyes take on the appearance of water.

Automy: magical power gained by means unknown, as some develop it as soon as they are born, but it can develop at any moment. Unconsciously, Automy will empower and support the Wielder’s body from improving muscle development to lessening pain, and sealing wounds, even allowing the Wielder to grow as tall as they can without any real complications. Consciously, a trained Wielder can use it to manifest anything their body is capable of producing, Muscle, bone, skin, organs, hormones (in setting called vital essences) all can be made warped and fully reshaped so long as it’s in some way still attached to the body, appearing semi-translucent and made of one solid colour different between individuals arbitrarily. Wielders describe their ability to use Automy as an extra body or muscle, a thing onto its own that you can use and train and that differers in ability between people. There are some tests to test these differences, mostly in terms of Toughness compared to original body part, time of sustained manifestation, and distance of maintained manifestations.

Willworking: a power usable by anyone, it allows you to communicate your thoughts to anyone through waves sent out through movements these waves appear as a multicoloured mirage lines, An emanation of a fully clear imagined or real image or a strong emotion appears as a trail of black sparks too many strong thoughts cause a subject to seeds up or go limp. An untrained user needs a clear surface level and true thought to be communicated through a huge gesture, a master can convey complicated and even untrue thoughts through subtle gestures. They can also let thoughts linger in a specific spot or object, communicating their thought when touched. It’s most forbidden use is willshaping allowing through the use of esoteric means effectively controlling the mind of a person making them believe the willshaping as their own thoughts.

Sau: magical creatures or objects of variaing levels of power made through belief and empowered through their own ability to either kill their kin or make deals with humans. 

[witchw00d]

donna struggles with fertility issues. alllll of these struggles and this journey are documented on her insta reels, where her followers can see a human side of donna. she works so hard to do the right things and be healthy. she's mindful of her diet and she loves to exercise. she's tried all the vitamins and supplements, etc., etc. it's hard enough for donna to get pregnant in the first place, but she suffers from several miscarriages and false positives before she and dan ( @hatchetswung ) explore fertility treatments. it's a lot of stress and it's physically taxing on her body, so dan is the one that suggests they seek adoption. she tries her best to not feel like it's out of defeat, but she struggles to wrap her mind around it without feeling like a failure for a while before they adopt a newborn that was surrendered: a baby girl named delilah that is every piece of perfection to start mending donna's heart.

what comes as a surprise is ten months later when donna finds out she's pregnant. she and dan hadn't been trying ( but not necessarily preventing ) considering her struggles and the fact they're more than happy with their baby girl. and, of course, it can't happen under normal circumstances, considering the first scans reveal not one, but two babies. donna is a bit of a freak about getting the boys monitored until her ob/gyn assures her she's in the clear, but it's still considered a high risk pregnancy with her issues and the fact that it's twins, which will very likely deliver early. at 34 weeks, she delivers two very healthy baby boys, donovan and dawson. and although they now have three kids under two years old, donna has never felt more fulfilled in her life.

[cagedchoices]

RELATIONSHIP META - DOLORES & CALEB (PART II)

[PART I HERE]

In The Mother of Exiles, we catch up with Dolores and Caleb, cementing their bond as revolution bros by doing what bros do best... Going shopping together! They need to look flashy enough that they don't seem out of place while infiltrating the 1%, but also not draw too much attention at the same time. Caleb doesn't wear many suìts in his line of work, so he feels a little hopelessly lost when trying to pick a convincing outfit. Luckily, Dolores is good at this sort of thing, so she helps him out.

DOLORES: Did you choose something? CALEB: (Groans) I don't know where to start. It's not really my style. It's not really my social set, either. DOLORES: It's tribal. They use plumage to identify themselves...which makes them easily fooled. CALEB: So who is it? That we're going after? DOLORES: The person who took your future. But first, we have to take his...and to do that, you have to pretend to be one of them.

I always saw Dolores's use of "They" in this context as being about "The Rich." As in she doesn't associate Caleb with the rest of them because he possesses more humanity than most of them, but also because he's a working class guy who would, under normal circumstances, never have any business interacting with anyone in this particular tax bracket.

Dolores and Caleb leave the store and Caleb expresses some concern that the guy whose money they stole to buy the suit will find out about it, with Dolores assuring him that they won't get caught. Even if they were to get caught, the guy they stole from won't even realize his money is missing until it's too late to do anything about it.

Uh...You know I think this is just- this is two friends running totally normal rich people errands here. What's a little light murder among friends? Doesn't really look like anything to me.

Okay jokes aside, though... Dolores kills this man, a financial manager by the name of Michael Tritter, who manages Liam Dempsey as a client. She takes a syringe and fills it with his blood, which contains an encryption key in the form of a unique blood marker, and then injects it into Caleb.

They travel to The RGGR Centennial, a bank designed specifically for the financial elite in the world. The job here is to transfer all of Liam's money out of his account and covertly into Dolores's possession. To do that, Caleb impersonates Tritter using the blood marker, and Dolores uses Liam's personal hash key, which she acquired earlier with the help of Connells-Dolores.

CALEB: I thought we were going to a bank? DOLORES: This is a bank. For a certain social set. Blood marker should be good for another fifteen minutes or so, but try to stay calm. The faster your heart beats, the faster the marker degrades. CALEB: What happens if it degrades too fast? DOLORES: We do this the old-fashioned way. CALEB: The old-fashioned way? DOLORES: I kill everyone.

Fortunately, things at the bank go fairly smoothly and nobody has to die, although for a minute it feels like a very real possibility.

Caleb is nervous and it makes his hands sweaty to the point that the blood scanner can't get a clear reading on his ID. Seeing Dolores start to reach for the gun she has concealed in her handbag probably doesn't help with his nerves much either, but she hands him a cloth and after he wipes down his hands, the scanner is able to get a clear ID on the blood marker and the money transfer is successfully taken care of.

The next part of the plan is to intercept Liam at a masquerade event, where sex workers and models auction off their various services to wealthy patrons. The proceeds from the auction sales are donated to charitable organizations.

One of Liam's friends passes him a vial of an experimental drug known as Genre, a virtual movie marathon that is meant to be marketed as "The Poor Man's W/estworld" and allows its user to experience reality as seen through the lens of popular movie genres. Liam pockets the drug for later, and attempts to enter the auction so he can bid on a girl, but he discovers he has no money, not knowing Dolores has it all.

Dolores and Caleb move in to catch Liam, but her old friends Bernard and Stubbs reach him first, thinking Dolores has already killed and replaced Liam with a host copy, or is planning to, to gain control of Rehoboam. They escape from the auction hall. Dolores passes Caleb her gun and sends him ahead in pursuit of Liam, while she stays behind to fight and subdue Stubbs.

DOLORES: Stay on Liam. I'll handle this one. CALEB: You sure? DOLORES: Take it. I won't need it.

As has been pointed out by the lovely @copiesofme [in this post], Dolores's fight with Stubbs is never intended to kill him, nor is it fought on bad terms between either of them. It's only fought out of necessity and Dolores does everything she can to fight fair and not hurt Stubbs too badly.

I will also point out, Dolores giving Caleb the gun in this situation speaks to just how much trust she has in him! As Connells-Dolores will tell Bernard just a little bit later in either this episode or in the next, he's the only host they can't replace. Meaning that if Caleb had felt threatened or at all like he had to shoot Bernard, then Dolores's grand plan would've probably been fucked. But Dolores knows this, and she can trust that Caleb won't bring Bernard to harm.

Their friendship remains pretty unchanged from the end of Mother of Exiles to Genre. Partly because there's not really anywhere else to go for now, Caleb has already committed himself to helping Dolores. He has seen her kill and as concerned as he was about "what the fuck are you doing??" it didn't discourage him from wanting to keep helping her.

Toward the beginning of Genre, Caleb gets drugged by Liam with the dose of Genre he was given previously, which also sort of stunts how much growth Caleb can achieve at this point. If he's not making woozy faces or shooting worried glances at Dolores, he's busy trying to help her keep Liam alive.

Caleb does have A moment (or two) where everything becomes rose-tinted, time slows down, a romantic piano melody plays in the background, and he finds himself staring, eyes wide and glassy, mouth agape - at Dolores while she fires a gun at Serac's men. It's all very silly and lovey-dovey at a first glance.

I think this does reflect, as do ALL of the Genre phases he experiences, what Caleb is feeling in his subconscious (he goes from the pensive mystery of film noir, to a cheesy action hero in the thrill of battle, to romance, to drama, with a brief interlude of reality before finally arriving at the finale of horror). But I'll also say that from start to finish of the romance sequence, he never speaks a word. He just looks. To me, that's the most honest telling of his internal feelings being externalized. He doesn't act on or expect any romantic feelings to be reciprocated just because he might happen to feel them.

I don't ship Caleb and Dolores in the romantic context. I think all the potential was there for it. I don't know, maybe there will come a day where I change my mind on this, but after what happened with both William and Teddy respectively, I don't think Dolores would be okay with putting Caleb through anything similar to those experiences, and even more importantly I don't think Dolores would be okay with putting herself in that kind of situation again.

So I've kinda avoided talking about this for over 3 years because I genuinely didn't really know how to put it into simple words until now (also at some point early on someone had like. anon messaged me saying my caleb with my main dolores was their otp and i was like 'uhh you mean the relationship that isn't romantic in any way whatsoever on our part?' but. that was a long time ago i'm trying to get over it okay. It did put me off from wanting to talk about things for fucking ever tho).

Anyway, romance rant over I didn't mean to write an entire essay there oops. Caleb manages to snap himself out of the daydream and get back to fighting even though he's definitely not at the top of his game. By the end of the scene he starts to look over at Dolores again with the love theme reprising itself, only to be interrupted again, this time by Giggles popping up to tell everyone he knows exactly what drug Caleb is on. Ash sarcastically refers to him as Loverboy, and then everyone quickly moves on.

The group makes their way down to the LA Metro station and Dolores makes the final preparations before sending the entire world their Incite profiles, which will radicalize them against Rehoboam. Caleb has all kinds of conflicted feelings about seeing the real world as Dolores sends everyone their profiles detailing their various fates. It's chaos and anarchy which he's not the biggest fan of because innocent people can and will get hurt, but it's also people acting out and rebelling in the realest ways they can against an unjust system, and that part of it is very appealing in a world that had no free will before.

Dolores moves in front of Caleb, shielding him from taking these bullets and killing the enemies who seemed like they were after Caleb specifically? But they're not dressed like Serac's people so maybe they were just random criminals. Maybe the bounty that got put on him in episode 3 is still up? He did see some suspicious-looking guys when they first entered the Metro station and seemed pretty convinced they were bad news considering how quickly he alerted Dolores to them, so maybe these two enemies were working with those guys.

Whatever the real reason is, Caleb experiences the shocking revelation that Dolores is not a human, because she just tanked 5 bullets without a thought and didn't die. Dolores just. zips up her jacket to hide the wounds because we are not talking about that right now we have other matters to take care of. Caleb, still in disbelief, follows right ahead.

CALEB: Back there... The shooters... DOLORES: We can talk about it later. We need to get to the airfield. (Gesturing to Liam) We don't need him anymore. What do you want to do with him?

At the beach, beneath the same pier where Dolores first brought Caleb to show him the truth about his world, things take a turn. Liam begs the group to let him go and whines that they've taken everything he had. He claims that the system isn't the prison and that people don't have a choice in who they are by nature. Caleb tries to confront Liam directly, but experiences a PTSD flashback. Ash shoots Liam, angered by his remarks, and Caleb tries to stop Liam from bleeding out, reminded of how he watched Franci die.

There's nothing he can do for Liam here, so Liam dies.

After Dolores and Caleb arrive at the airfield, Caleb has some doubts as to whether or not they are doing the right thing. His hands are still stained with Liam's blood, representing a sense of guilt for what happened, as well as foreshadowing what he'll learn the next time we see him, in Passed Pawn.

CALEB: Maybe Liam was right. Maybe people shouldn't know their own fate. DOLORES: People have the right to know. You wanted to know, right? CALEB: Well, maybe I'm not like other people. DOLORES: Neither am I.

Dolores boards the jet and Caleb has a moment of hesitation, as if he's maybe thinking about leaving instead, before ultimately choosing to board the jet and continue on with following and helping Dolores.

[atotc-weekly]

Book the Second—The Golden Thread

[X] Chapter VIII. Monseigneur in the Country

A beautiful landscape, with the corn bright in it, but not abundant. Patches of poor rye where corn should have been, patches of poor peas and beans, patches of most coarse vegetable substitutes for wheat. On inanimate nature, as on the men and women who cultivated it, a prevalent tendency towards an appearance of vegetating unwillingly—a dejected disposition to give up, and wither away.

Monsieur the Marquis in his travelling carriage (which might have been lighter), conducted by four post-horses and two postilions, fagged up a steep hill. A blush on the countenance of Monsieur the Marquis was no impeachment of his high breeding; it was not from within; it was occasioned by an external circumstance beyond his control—the setting sun.

The sunset struck so brilliantly into the travelling carriage when it gained the hill-top, that its occupant was steeped in crimson. “It will die out,” said Monsieur the Marquis, glancing at his hands, “directly.”

In effect, the sun was so low that it dipped at the moment. When the heavy drag had been adjusted to the wheel, and the carriage slid down hill, with a cinderous smell, in a cloud of dust, the red glow departed quickly; the sun and the Marquis going down together, there was no glow left when the drag was taken off.

But, there remained a broken country, bold and open, a little village at the bottom of the hill, a broad sweep and rise beyond it, a church-tower, a windmill, a forest for the chase, and a crag with a fortress on it used as a prison. Round upon all these darkening objects as the night drew on, the Marquis looked, with the air of one who was coming near home.

The village had its one poor street, with its poor brewery, poor tannery, poor tavern, poor stable-yard for relays of post-horses, poor fountain, all usual poor appointments. It had its poor people too. All its people were poor, and many of them were sitting at their doors, shredding spare onions and the like for supper, while many were at the fountain, washing leaves, and grasses, and any such small yieldings of the earth that could be eaten. Expressive signs of what made them poor, were not wanting; the tax for the state, the tax for the church, the tax for the lord, tax local and tax general, were to be paid here and to be paid there, according to solemn inscription in the little village, until the wonder was, that there was any village left unswallowed.

Few children were to be seen, and no dogs. As to the men and women, their choice on earth was stated in the prospect—Life on the lowest terms that could sustain it, down in the little village under the mill; or captivity and Death in the dominant prison on the crag.

Heralded by a courier in advance, and by the cracking of his postilions’ whips, which twined snake-like about their heads in the evening air, as if he came attended by the Furies, Monsieur the Marquis drew up in his travelling carriage at the posting-house gate. It was hard by the fountain, and the peasants suspended their operations to look at him. He looked at them, and saw in them, without knowing it, the slow sure filing down of misery-worn face and figure, that was to make the meagreness of Frenchmen an English superstition which should survive the truth through the best part of a hundred years.

Monsieur the Marquis cast his eyes over the submissive faces that drooped before him, as the like of himself had drooped before Monseigneur of the Court—only the difference was, that these faces drooped merely to suffer and not to propitiate—when a grizzled mender of the roads joined the group.

“Bring me hither that fellow!” said the Marquis to the courier.

The fellow was brought, cap in hand, and the other fellows closed round to look and listen, in the manner of the people at the Paris fountain.

“I passed you on the road?”

“Monseigneur, it is true. I had the honour of being passed on the road.”

“Coming up the hill, and at the top of the hill, both?”

“Monseigneur, it is true.”

“What did you look at, so fixedly?”

“Monseigneur, I looked at the man.”

He stooped a little, and with his tattered blue cap pointed under the carriage. All his fellows stooped to look under the carriage.

“What man, pig? And why look there?”

“Pardon, Monseigneur; he swung by the chain of the shoe—the drag.”

“Who?” demanded the traveller.

“Monseigneur, the man.”

“May the Devil carry away these idiots! How do you call the man? You know all the men of this part of the country. Who was he?”

“Your clemency, Monseigneur! He was not of this part of the country. Of all the days of my life, I never saw him.”

“Swinging by the chain? To be suffocated?”

“With your gracious permission, that was the wonder of it, Monseigneur. His head hanging over—like this!”

He turned himself sideways to the carriage, and leaned back, with his face thrown up to the sky, and his head hanging down; then recovered himself, fumbled with his cap, and made a bow.

“What was he like?”

“Monseigneur, he was whiter than the miller. All covered with dust, white as a spectre, tall as a spectre!”

The picture produced an immense sensation in the little crowd; but all eyes, without comparing notes with other eyes, looked at Monsieur the Marquis. Perhaps, to observe whether he had any spectre on his conscience.

“Truly, you did well,” said the Marquis, felicitously sensible that such vermin were not to ruffle him, “to see a thief accompanying my carriage, and not open that great mouth of yours. Bah! Put him aside, Monsieur Gabelle!”

Monsieur Gabelle was the Postmaster, and some other taxing functionary united; he had come out with great obsequiousness to assist at this examination, and had held the examined by the drapery of his arm in an official manner.

“Bah! Go aside!” said Monsieur Gabelle.

“Lay hands on this stranger if he seeks to lodge in your village to-night, and be sure that his business is honest, Gabelle.”

“Monseigneur, I am flattered to devote myself to your orders.”

“Did he run away, fellow?—where is that Accursed?”

The accursed was already under the carriage with some half-dozen particular friends, pointing out the chain with his blue cap. Some half-dozen other particular friends promptly hauled him out, and presented him breathless to Monsieur the Marquis.

“Did the man run away, Dolt, when we stopped for the drag?”

“Monseigneur, he precipitated himself over the hill-side, head first, as a person plunges into the river.”

“See to it, Gabelle. Go on!”

The half-dozen who were peering at the chain were still among the wheels, like sheep; the wheels turned so suddenly that they were lucky to save their skins and bones; they had very little else to save, or they might not have been so fortunate.

The burst with which the carriage started out of the village and up the rise beyond, was soon checked by the steepness of the hill. Gradually, it subsided to a foot pace, swinging and lumbering upward among the many sweet scents of a summer night. The postilions, with a thousand gossamer gnats circling about them in lieu of the Furies, quietly mended the points to the lashes of their whips; the valet walked by the horses; the courier was audible, trotting on ahead into the dull distance.

At the steepest point of the hill there was a little burial-ground, with a Cross and a new large figure of Our Saviour on it; it was a poor figure in wood, done by some inexperienced rustic carver, but he had studied the figure from the life—his own life, maybe—for it was dreadfully spare and thin.

To this distressful emblem of a great distress that had long been growing worse, and was not at its worst, a woman was kneeling. She turned her head as the carriage came up to her, rose quickly, and presented herself at the carriage-door.

“It is you, Monseigneur! Monseigneur, a petition.”

With an exclamation of impatience, but with his unchangeable face, Monseigneur looked out.

“How, then! What is it? Always petitions!”

“Monseigneur. For the love of the great God! My husband, the forester.”

“What of your husband, the forester? Always the same with you people. He cannot pay something?”

“He has paid all, Monseigneur. He is dead.”

“Well! He is quiet. Can I restore him to you?”

“Alas, no, Monseigneur! But he lies yonder, under a little heap of poor grass.”

“Well?”

“Monseigneur, there are so many little heaps of poor grass?”

“Again, well?”

She looked an old woman, but was young. Her manner was one of passionate grief; by turns she clasped her veinous and knotted hands together with wild energy, and laid one of them on the carriage-door—tenderly, caressingly, as if it had been a human breast, and could be expected to feel the appealing touch.

“Monseigneur, hear me! Monseigneur, hear my petition! My husband died of want; so many die of want; so many more will die of want.”

“Again, well? Can I feed them?”

“Monseigneur, the good God knows; but I don’t ask it. My petition is, that a morsel of stone or wood, with my husband’s name, may be placed over him to show where he lies. Otherwise, the place will be quickly forgotten, it will never be found when I am dead of the same malady, I shall be laid under some other heap of poor grass. Monseigneur, they are so many, they increase so fast, there is so much want. Monseigneur! Monseigneur!”

The valet had put her away from the door, the carriage had broken into a brisk trot, the postilions had quickened the pace, she was left far behind, and Monseigneur, again escorted by the Furies, was rapidly diminishing the league or two of distance that remained between him and his chateau.

The sweet scents of the summer night rose all around him, and rose, as the rain falls, impartially, on the dusty, ragged, and toil-worn group at the fountain not far away; to whom the mender of roads, with the aid of the blue cap without which he was nothing, still enlarged upon his man like a spectre, as long as they could bear it. By degrees, as they could bear no more, they dropped off one by one, and lights twinkled in little casements; which lights, as the casements darkened, and more stars came out, seemed to have shot up into the sky instead of having been extinguished.

The shadow of a large high-roofed house, and of many over-hanging trees, was upon Monsieur the Marquis by that time; and the shadow was exchanged for the light of a flambeau, as his carriage stopped, and the great door of his chateau was opened to him.

“Monsieur Charles, whom I expect; is he arrived from England?”

“Monseigneur, not yet.”

[whentherewerebicycles]

wow ok i am profoundly grumpy this morning and I think it is for the following reasons:

it's cold and EXTREMELY gloomy/wet/gray out which puts me in a funk (and then puts me in a bigger funk if i dwell too long on the fact that it's just going to be Like This for months and months)

we had to table outside for 2.5 hours yesterday which i find socially taxing under the best of circumstances. and then today we have to table outside for another 2.5 hours and THEN host a 2.5 hour ice cream social so the entire day is going to be eaten up by performing Great Enthusiasm in 30-second interactions with strangers. i wish 2 hibernate not socialize thank you

my nausea has been coming and going over the past couple days and this makes me feel :-/// despite my best attempts to hold everything loosely right now. last time around i feel like the major sign that something was Not Right was that my symptoms were moderately intense for a bit and then waned pretty fast, and so i feel like my brain (always prone to a doom spiral) is like oh it's Happening Again. but i honestly think that the gloom outside is just tipping me into a negative headspace in general so i'm trying not to lean into these feelings too much

i have to invite all these people to be on my steering committee, most of whom i don't know that well, and i feel like it's like asking someone to homecoming or something lol like i send my nervous little email to them and wait for them to check Y/N on whether they like me or not based on the meeting we had earlier in the year. also it's just a new experience like i don't really know what to Do with a steering committee and so i am nervous that the projects i am proposing are dumb and everyone's going to be like "lol why would THAT be the thing we undertake"

i went off my adhd meds today as i am going to try to not take them for however long this lasts. i feel like the primary thing the meds do for me is stabilize the volatility of my moods... like i'm better able to focus and make decisions and organize information because i'm not adrift in the dark roiling sea of my own changeable feelings. the first week off will be the hardest and then i think it'll be manageable but idk it's just not fun you know and i am sure is contributing to my extreme grouchiness today

i have a ton of project work today but all of my time is being sucked up by these tabling events and it's fine but also like when do i get to do my work lol. when!!!!!

i'm scared things won't work out why is it so hard to hold onto joy

i want to crawl into my bed!!!!!!

but also my work bestie just arrived and we walked to get coffee & donuts and giggled a bunch so like. it'll be fine lol. also tomorrow is friday and i get to WFH and then it is the WEEKEND