#you learned too much about me and your kindness was repealed.

[shadelorde]

“To hate me is to give me breath. To fight me is to give me strength.” Is actually like one of the gayest lines spoken in Legend of Korra and yall sleep on it WAY too much

[fitscientist]

These are all totally genuine questions, I'm not trying to be rude or snarky at all, just trying to clarify and learn! This subject has always kind of confused me... But just curious about your tag about the last time net neutrality came around - wasn't it kind of always around unofficially/there were no rules really before being solidified in 2015 and then they repealed it a couple years later? Do you mean you lost 3k followers in 2015 or when it was repealed? And how does net neutrality make you lose followers - isn't it basically just about all sites being treated without discrimination by internet providers? Again, genuinely asking!

Hi anon - you haven't followed me long enough have you? hahaha :) I don't want to talk too much about it (especially since, well, I lost a lot of followers, the most I ever had in my life), but I will answer, since I think it's an important topic and that well, it brings up an important discussion about what content is "allowed" by the masses especially when you're a blog that isn't fandom or random.

TL;DR is that when Net Neutrality was threatened (idk, 2017? 2018? can't remember, it's late at night here so I can't be bothered to google when exactly, but you get the gist), I posted a lot about it, trying to bring awareness and showing that YES this is an important topic and people should be aware - I don't want to pay a premium internet service to get on Facebook, or have my connection drop because I want to go to tumblr and tumblr didn't make an agreement with my internet company to provide faster service. This was especially important for me, since I was long distance with my boyfriend at the time-now husband, and the only way to connect with him (for free, as you know long distance calls - phone calls - are insanely $$$$ and I was a poor grad student) was over the internet - we used Skype and Facebook and I couldn't imagine being in a position to have to pay extra to access the websites I used to connect with him. I did post a lot about it. Unfortunately, and obviously, that didn't go over well, because I'm a Fitblr™ who is only allowed to post Fitblr™ Things™. I'm not a person, only a curator of Aesthetic™. So, yeah, LOTS of people left and unfollowed me around that time. 3k worth. In fairness, I did post quite a bit (well, I was anxious about it! I'm sorry!), but it wasn't more than a few posts a day for a couple weeks? Idk. Didn't seem like a lot at the time, but perhaps it was. Since I wasn't a random blog, I had a Blog Theme™, and in hindsight that's definitely why people unfollowed - they didn't want to see or hear anything that wasn't my theme- fitblr. They wanted fitness and health and food content, they didn't want to see some political(?) BS. I don't blame them at all, yet on the other hand I guess people have to realize the people running these different themed blogs are... people? And at the time, it was absolutely an outlet for my anxiety and stress. I was being overworked and burned out in grad school, and the thought of losing access to my person - was unbearable. And the way to feel more in control? Post about it. I couldn't donate money, and I didn't want to protest or sign petitions (shit, I didn't have time tbh), but at the bare minimum I could post about it on my blog to gain awareness.

I was being snarky the other day when it was trending again, so obviously I needed to reblog the Destiel meme and add my snark tags because, that's how we tumblrians do it. Because, well, good riddance, people suddenly agree five years later it's an issue and are suddenly actually in support of net neutrality!!! I was mad so the snark came out, and honestly I shouldn't have posted that. But I was snarky. Good riddance. I was right all along. And, I'll even say that in the body, not the tags.

[cuiizhu]

Helios Rising Heroes - Grandiose Chinoiserie

Chapter 6:

Gast: Eh….Marion, what is it?

Marion: Not yet, it hasn’t been removed yet.

Marion: Brad has given me a special mission. It seems like if this is completed without incident, the appeals for my dismissal as a mentor will be completely repealed.

Gast: Special mission?

Marion: It’s from the former principal of the Academy, who apparently runs a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown.

Marion: The venue is used to hold self-defense classes for citizens 3-4 days a week. The requirements of this special mission entail helping with that.

Ren: That kind of thing counts as a special mission…..?

Marion: I know what you mean. I tried to argue with that too, but…

Ren & Gast: …………..

Marion: Ren, you should come with me.

Ren: Eh-....

Marion: This special mission also counts as rookie training, and I was told to bring one rookie with me.

Marion: While the mission is active, my time will be taken up by that and I won’t have as much time to dedicate to your training.

Marion: The mission is to teach self-defense techniques. This will be a good opportunity for you to review what I’ve taught you so far, and we can also teach together.

Ren: ………..

Gast: Isn’t that nice~. I wish I could go too~

Marion: ….what?

Gast: -is what I’d like to say, but I’ve been a little busy lately. I appreciate that Ren’s accompanying you in my stead.

Marion: I think you should learn self-defense techniques too.

Gast: Eh, really? I’m pretty good at physical fighting, so I didn’t really think I needed it but….

Marion: Your technique is far too rough. I get the feeling you’ve never covered the basics and just brute force your way to victory.

Gast: Well, it’s true that I didn’t learn from the basics, couldn’t get a grasp on rules cuz I learned everything from fighting other delinquents.

Gast: I don’t plan to use it for that kind of thing anymore, so I thought it’d just be handy to remember as another fighting method, but…was that wrong?

Marion: It’s not “wrong” per se but….

Marion: Ah well nevermind, let’s get back on topic…..Ren, what do you think?

Ren: I understand, I’ll go with you.

Gast: Do your best, Ren, and Marion too. I’ll be rooting for ya♪

Marion: What’s that about rooting? Saying something so high and mighty again…

Gast: Eh-, That’s what you’re mad at!?

Marion: Sigh, you really are asking for the whip.

Gast: W-wait wait! Control! CONTROL, Marion…..!

Prev || Masterlist || Next

[devolusion]

thoughts related to the quest clean house :

kokomi isn’t the only miko with experience with “diplomacy.”  i’m obsessed with the idea of kokomi training girls with statecraft prowess.  not only do the shrine maidens manage the spiritual aspects of the shrines, some of them also assist and carry out her wishes politically.  shizuru is very shrewd, merciless, and experienced, suggesting she’s been at this for a while and, if she learned from kokomi, that kokomi is much the same.

this is kind of genius to me.  kokomi (  and gorou  ) are canonically building a secret military force, but even those are likely to be suspected.  but having shrine maidens that can infiltrate, get close, ask questions the shogunate would never answer from a soldier...very impressive, your excellency.

i’ve long - suspected that the shogunate’s ‘allowance’ of watatsumi’s existence was not one which was beneficial.  i don’t necessarily think ei (  or the shogun  ) were particularly shitty themselves — both of them strike me as the type to respect a deal struck enough not too encroach on watatsumi.  but the samurai and others in the shogunate army clearly gave them no such leniency, and the shogun likely didn’t notice or care.  some quotes from one of the samurai that i find particularly interesting :

“is this why you fought?  for a dead god? please!  your great serpent has long become shiny rocks in a cave for us to forge into swords!  you bowed down to that great serpent in the past, and now you bow down to the swords forged from its bones.”  

“you didn't want to submit to the shogun, and we allowed you to make that choice, didn't we? [  ...  ]  It was the shogun's mercy that permitted your survival, and you repay her graciousness with rebellion against the shogunate..."

they hate orobashi and view them as a weak, nothing - god.  they consider the people of watatsumi’s rightful place to being bowing to their swords, and that the island’s survial and ability to worship as they wish is one that the shogun — and, by extension, the shogunate — have ‘permitted’.  not a right they have, but a gift that can at any time be taken away, such as now, when watatsumi has not shown sufficient gratefulness.

the same samurai also describes shizeru (  and all of watatsumi  ) as hillbillies who don’t know anything.  the shogunate resents the repealing of the vision hunt decree for the ‘livelihoods’ and the ‘tax revenue’ that’s been lost.  they blame sangonomiya for hiiragi shinsuke being imprisoned for conspiring against the shogun.  it’s clear that the shogunate collectively hate watatsumi and aren’t even particularly loyal to the shogun herself, if they don’t view betraying her as a bad act but exposing that betrayal as the problem.

the fatui may have fanned these sentiments (  and did so among kokomi’s men as well, kokomi was just better able to hide that because sara isn’t a liar  ) but i don’t think that changes the fact that these thoughts were always there.  with kokomi’s men, the fatui pointed out that the shogunate could not be trusted, which, like, fair.  it seems like, to the shogunate, their aim was more specifically that sangonomiya was the cause of the nation’s problems, and not sufficiently grateful for the shogunate’s ‘allowance’ of their continued existence.  this isn’t a new feeling.

i’ll talk eventually about the climate that’s lent to the island, but for now suffice to say that watatsumi’s people and especially kokomi have always felt very closely watched by the shogunate and not entirely safe under their gaze.

the shogunate army destroyed wards and blamed it on the rebels lmao.  you could sort of assume this based on the note about killing the people of higi vision and blaming that on sangonomiya’s people but.  god.  granted, i do definitely think there were legitimately orobashi cultists in the rebellion’s ranks who did much of that damage, but the shogunate was definitely spearheading it.

finally, the note the fatui left behind says that the recruits they’re gathering from the army and the randos are to be used solely as fodder for further human experimentation; when shizura showed this to kokomi, she got her first look at kokomi’s sharp sharp teeth.  suffice to say that kokomi has no intention of being merciful with the fatui from here on out.

[floatinginwords]

Saved by the Devil (17/?) - Thomas Shelby

Summary: Father and reader are reunited, Reader faces her past and future at once. (Im getting better kind of?) 

Pairing: Tommy Shelby x Fem!Reader (Romantic)

Warning: Unhealthy father and daughter relationship.

A/N: This chapter took oh so long but I’m glad that we get to see this relationship between Father and Daughter in this one. Also i named the father George so sorry if you know someone named George. Comments and feedback is always appreciated and as always have a good night and take care of yourselves. 

Italics = flashback

George (L/N), your father was a man that everyone feared. You knew this ever since you were a little girl. You saw the air he prided himself with, the way people parted like the red sea whenever he walked, the way no one would look him in his eye. You used to worship the ground he walked on. You would cry on to your mother why you couldn’t spend more time with the man, she would give you a look that you didn’t understand then. She was horrified when George did decide to take you for a tour of his ‘office.’ She could do nothing but watch you bounce happily away on your father hand. You still remember the day.

 “You can’t take her, not there.” Your mother cried to him

 “Shes gonna need to learn sooner or later.”

 “Then later!” She yelled.

 He ignores her cries as he drags you along. You had a big smile at finally getting time with your father. You didn’t understand why she was against this.

The walk was brisk, you even stopped for a treat. You ended up jumping from one place to another. Your father talking to people, shaking their hands. You noticed how they looked to him like a leader. So you asked.

 “Im a boss honey,” He answered, “You will be too one day. You’ll help me run all this.”

 “Really?” you said

 “You just gotta be tough. Can you do that?”

 You nodded pulling off your toughest face. The next place he leads you is some old train tracks that aren’t used anymore. A group of men stand around in a circle. All of them waiting for him.

 “You brought a kid to this?” One of them says.

 “You got a problem with that?” George says cocking his gun you didn’t realize he had.

 The man shakes his head no and pints where the rest of them gather, “They got him over there.”

Your father no longer holds your hand as he walks ahead of you. You follow slowly. You can see the man in the middle of the circle. Looking worn down and beaten. Your father stands ahead of him, he plays with gun in the air. He talks words you block out. You just watch the man as is eyes loosely follow your father. He cries uncontrollable begging for his life. You see his body fall before you hear the gun. You don’t cry, you don’t say a word. Your father pats you on the head and says you did good.

 Soon he took you everywhere and anywhere, spending more time with him less with your mother. You became a different person as you became used to the violence. You saw different side of your father more than once but he still treated you like a good. He wanted you prepared for anything and you just wanted to prove that you could be. So learning wasn’t an issue and neither was the perfection you set yourself up for. You became a mini version of him, you didn’t mind unlike your mother who was just horrified. She fought for you to stay in school when he would convince you to leave. She wanted to to date, have a normal job. But you wouldn’t listen to her. You father was your hero at the time you saw nothing wrong with anything that was happening.

 “Your tainting her. Its not good for her to be around this stuff.”

 You listen from atop of the stairs, now only seventeen.

 “Son or daughter, my child is gonna learn the business and learn it right!” He yelled

 “Then ill tell the police, everything I know. Ill take her away or- or”

 “Are you threatening me?”

 “I want my daughter back! You’re running her.”

 “She’s growing up, deal with it.” He turns away from her, gives her the side eye before walking out. You go to sleep, hoping for them to forgive and forget.

 You wake in the middle of night for a glass of water when you found your mother dead. You cry for the first time over a dead body. Holding your mothers hand close to her face, hoping for  a reaction. Your father walks in and pauses. You can see through your lashes that his hands were stained red. You don’t say anything. He brings  out two shovels and hands one to you. George tells you nothing more but to dig in the backyard.

 You don’t. He scolds you for not listening, for not working faster. He digs it himself. He doesn’t look you in the eye as you watch his bury dirt on top of your mother. You share a tea later in the night. You just watch the inside of your cup, the steam rising up. He drinks his greedily, eating cookies as if it’s a regular Sunday morning.

That’s when your relationship changed. You begun to bicker and challenge everything he said or did. You couldn’t understand why he would do that. Or how he even could. You didn’t know what you could do, so you held the emotions in for a long time. Growing distant with your father. He confronts you on your behavior and you no longer hokd your tounge with him.

 “You killed her. Why?”

 “You wouldn’t understand.”

 “I had to bury her, do you know what that was like?”

 “In this business you’ll have to bury a lot more like her.”

 “she had nothing to do with it.” You state.

 He looks at your small figure, your eyes welling up with tears. “Don’t cry.”

 “Why did you do it? Why did you kill my mother?” You press the issue your voice growing louder wanting , needingthe answer. Wanting all this to make sense.

 “Why does it matter? So you can tell the whole city?” He turns on you quick.

 “What if I did, does that scare you?”

 “Watch your mouth girl.”

 “Is that why you killed my mother? Cause she didn’t watch her mouth.” He gets up quickly punching a hole in the wall near your face. You stay still as tears fall from you eyes slowly.

 No longer were the two of you a pair. The father daughter duo was dead. He iced you of the business. Meeting happening without you, transactions with your knowledge. He treated you like a stranger he shared a house with. But every chance you got when you would see him. You questioned him, wanted him to feel bad. No answer at this point would satisfy you, you know that. But you hoped the guilt would eat at his soul for the rest of time. You were there to remind him. And he didn’t like that.

It was the day before you turned eighteen, when you were surprised with a knock on the door. The men claimed to be doctors as they grabbed you by the wrist, throwing you in their car, declaring you insane. You didn’t understand what was happening and that only made them laugh sealing their opinion on what state your mind was as you panicked. The doctors told you nothing but that your father had expressed concerns over your health. And that he was doing this for your own good. Being there made you feel insane but you tried your best to repeal the order to get out. But the doctors were well played off, some of the nurses being Georges goons, no one would let you out unless he said so. Until Tommy Shelby came in, of course you were finally free from that cage.

 So now you stand in front of this man, you had idolized and called father. A man who now is only a murderer, a thief, a low life, your enemy. You clench your jaw as he opens his arms to you. The wrinkles on Georges face crease as he smiles. He’s older in the face and hold a cane in his hand.

 “What? No hug?”

 “Fuck off.”

 “What a lovely choice of words. Im glad to see your okay. I meant to visit…” You glare at him, “but I’ve been busy. Its good to finally find you.”

 “You don’t have to play dumb. How long have you been following me. Ive noticed since a month ago.”

 “Hmm you’re slacking. Its been longer than that. You really think I would let my daughter be out and about, not knowing shes safe.”

 “I had hoped the rumors of your death were true. Guess I hoped too much.”

 “Ah yes your little hit on me. Didn’t go as planned did it.” He glances over at the smoke floating in the town miles from us, “Your work I assume.”

 “Did you do that to Trinity?”

 “It wasn’t anything personal. No need to throw a tantrum.”

 You huff and hold yourself back from stabbing right where he stood. “You had no right-“

 George interrupts you, “After the stunt you pulled. Asking Thomas Shelby to kill me in exchange you tell him a few locations. You know what he did when he found me. He shook my hand. The man helps me fake my death, im off to America. Can you guess where?”

 “New York.”

 “That’s right and its bigger and its booming, honey. And here you are sleeping with a man who lies to you, who is no different than me or the other men ive killed or hurt.”

 “Im not-not” You blush at the accusation your father throws to you. You had forgotten for a second how Tommy Shelby was involved in this. You remember asking him and never getting a clear answer. Especially when you were so unsure with what was going on, you should have pressed more. Not been so easy to trust him. You could have been more prepared for this, left the country sooner.

 “Listen, I’m just here to help you-“

 “By locking me up calling me crazy, or was it when you killed my mother, or had me followed or when you killed my friend.”

 “I understand your mad. But honey we are better as a team than not. Remember me and you fighting the world together.” He uses a funny light hearted voice. One that he would use only to manipulate you when you were younger.

 “What do you want from me?”

 He sighs, “I need a peace treaty. And the family’s got this son.-“

 You scoff, “Are you kidding me?”

 “its what best for our family. And honestly you have no choice in the matter. Ill drag you there myself if I have to.”

 “I’d like to see you try.” You pull put your knife and hold it out in attack position.

 “You’re gonna kill me, your old man,” He uses a mockingly sad voice before erupting into a mad laughter, “You might as well do it now cause you wouldn’t want me as your enemy.”

 “I think it might be too late for that.”  You press the knife against your own throat, pressing hard against your skin. You can feel a trickle of warm blood run down. Now George finally panics.

 “Hey, Hey! Don’t do that!” He yells.

 “Walk out of here and don’t turn back.  Now! “You command.

 Your father follows your orders because you knew it as well as he that in this game you were now an important chess piece. And he wouldn’t have no use with a dead bride.

 “I’ll be seeing you very soon.” He says as he walks further and further away. You watch until his figure is nothing more than a blur. That’s when you finally release the grip on your knife.

You sit down on the ground and quietly sob into your hands. You don’t know the time when you finally stop but its still night and still no train. You hear the sound of a lighter flicking on. You curse under your breath as you get up, ready to die tonight if it meant not being in your fathers plan.

 “You are really testing my patience tonight.” You say turning around. Only it wasn’t your father standing there.

 “Cigarette? You look like you could use one.” The deep voice says. And there you are, Face to face once again with Thomas Shelby.

[chibinekochan]

My Demon family

You get adopted by Lucifer and Diavolo

Just some domestic fluff. 

In this au the reader is a toddler that brings loads of love and chaos into their lives.

And yes they are married in this Au, congrats boys.

2.9k words

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

  A very typical appointment leads Lucifer to take Diavolo's place visiting a human orphanage. 

Lucifer isn't even sure how or why Diavolo is involved here but he is here regardless. 

Counting the minutes until it's over.

  Bored he looks at the children playing, they are clearly scared of him. Nothing new. Somehow small beings like these tend to be scared of him. Probably his demon aura. 

Then his eyes meet yours. You somehow wandered towards him, book in hand and pull on his pant leg. With huge bright eyes you look at him. Lucifer crooks his head, wondering what you possibly want from him. 

You pout, since he didn't get what you wanted at all. "Mister read to me." You plead with him. Being kinda bored by the other adults not paying any attention to you.

Lucifer raises his eyebrows. He hesitates for a moment. How long has it been since any of his brothers asked him to read to them?

  He looks at you, waiting for you to run away from him. Not a single blink. You just keep looking at him, pointing at the book. "Please mister?!" Putting a tiny bit more urgency into your request. Feeling slightly encouraged since he didn't shoo you away. 

Lucifer can feel his resolve melting due to your pleading eyes. You are very good at this, he has to give you that. 

After another moment locked into a staring contest Lucifer lost. 

He probably never truly had a chance. "Fine, but only for a bit." Lucifer gives in.

  You give him the biggest and brightest smile he has ever seen. Even brighter than Diavolos. 

He finds himself smiling back at you. With this success you cheerfully lead Lucifer to the reading corner. You sit down and look at Lucifer. Clearly expecting him to sit down. 

So he does. "Let's see what we have here. The ugly duckling? Can't say I have read it before." Lucifer opens the book. 

"It's not my favorite. I like the cat and the boot better but someone else got it." You sigh disappointed. "Sounds like something Satan would like." Lucifer chuckles lightly. 

"Is that your child?" You feel curious. 

"He is my brother." Lucifer smiles lightly. 

"That's cool, I have no siblings and my parents are in heaven. Do you believe in heaven?" 

Lucifer is a bit taken aback. "Yes, I know it exists for a fact." He gives you a gentle smile. 

"That's awesome. Do you have other family?" You feel like you want to know even more. 

"I have 6 brothers and one sister, she is also in heaven and I'm married." Lucifer feels a bit of kinship with your loss. 

"Wow, so many siblings. Your parents were quite busy. Do you think my parents and your sister play in heaven together?" 

Lucifer is surprised by your bluntness but it's also very endearing. “I'm sure they do.”

You seem satisfied with that.“You are the oldest right?” 

Lucifer laughs at that. "How did you guess that?" 

You shrug. "You just have big brother energy."

"I see. Shall I read this now for you?" Lucifer finds himself smiling at you. 

"Yeah." You nod and Lucifer starts to read the story.

He isn't sure if it's too sad for you but you seem to be too enthralled by the pictures to care much.

  Then someone comes over and apparently the visit is over.

Not much time has passed but Lucifer finds himself reluctant to leave. You also have an equally sad look on your face, just making this so much harder. “Will you come again?" You seem anxious. 

Lucifer guesses that you must worry, you have certainly lost so much and he doesn't want to give you false hopes. Once he opens his mouth something unexpected escapes him: "Yes." This surprises him much more than you, since all he can see is a bright smile on your face. 

"Awesome. Then we can play on the swings and make a castle and we could draw something." You already made plans it seems. 

Lucifer can't help but smile at this much excitement. Only one other person in his life would be so excited over making plans with Lucifer. That being Diavolo. He probably should bring him along next time I meet you. "I might bring someone special along to meet you too." Lucifer can't promise this part, knowing how busy Diavolo is. 

Your eyes are filled to the brim with hopeful excitement. "That would be cool. I might introduce you to my cool friends too then." You clearly can't contain your excitement at all. 

Lucifer feels a strange desire to trussle your hair, but he holds himself back. "Sure, I look forward to that and if you need anything just tell the person in charge you want to talk to Lucifer." He feels compelled to offer you this much at least. 

You crook your head. "Sure, but did one of the older kids really get into trouble for calling upon Lucifer?" 

Lucifer raises his eyebrow, saying he had forgotten about these kinds of humans. "I see, well in that case just tell me when I come back."

  He leaves the orphanage very reluctant. Especially after he sees you waving at him. 

This is what having your heart broken must feel like. It's strange that a small human could manage such a thing in a single day. 

Lucifer returns home, to the demon castle. 

Many different thoughts cross his mind but Lucifer already knows what to do next. 

In the evening Lucifer and Diavolo have their usual dinner together.

  "There is something that I would like to discuss with you." Lucifer doesn't take long to get to the topic. 

"Sure, tell me what is on your mind." Diavolo has noticed that there is something on Lucifer's mind. 

"I know we haven't talked about this yet but how would you feel about adopting a child?" 

Diavolo is very surprised. "I didn't think that you would be interested in a child. Did the visit to the orphanage inspire this desire?" Diavolo is smiling, he always figured that Lucifer is already too busy to even consider a child. 

'I wasn't, or at least I thought I wasn't until earlier." Lucifer smiles gently. "You see there was this small child and I don't know how but they touched my heart." 

Diavolo chuckles. "Sounds like a remarkable child to me. Being able to touch your heart in a single day. It took me centuries to get to that point."

"I was just playing hard to get." Lucifer shoots Diavolo a flirty look. 

Diavolo laughs. "So you are seriously wanting to adopt a child after seeing them once? And here I thought I'm the spontaneous one in our marriage." 

"I thought so too but I guess you rubbed off on me and before making a final decision I want you to meet them. I mean I want to adopt them with you." Lucifer shrugs and then smiles gently at Diavolo. 

"I like this new spontaneous side of you, Lucifer. I will go along. Every person that manages to capture your heart is worth meeting at least once in my opinion." Diavolo smiles widely at Lucifer. 

"Thank you, Diavolo and I realize that I'm quite unreasonable." Lucifer just can't help himself. 

"Well, if it had been me I would have just brought them home with me. So you are quite reasonable in my opinion." Diavolo let's out a heartfelt laughter. 

"I sure hope you don't bring another puppy home." Lucifer shakes his head. 

"I have learned my lesson." Diavolo waves Lucifer off. "Now when should we go to the orphanage?" Diavolo checks his schedule. 

"Oh, and I definitely want to hear the whole story. I might be able to learn something from them." Diavolo is already fully on board with this. No matter how much this will turn his life upside down, seeing Lucifer this smitten is more than enough for Diavolo to do this.

  Lucifer agrees and gives a quite lively retelling of his earlier encounter. Every word raises Diavolos' excitement. 

Soon the day arrives. Diavolo barely contains his excitement and Lucifer seems to be rather nervous. 

"It's kinda like a first date isn't it?" Diavolo muses. 

"Not really, but I understand the sentiment." Lucifer smiles lightly. 

"Do you think that they will like me?" Diavolo seems a bit uncertain. 

"I can't imagine that they wouldn't like you. You are way easier to love than I am." Lucifer pats Diavolo on his shoulder. 

"That's very sweet of you to say. Shall we head inside?" Diavolo takes a small breath. 

Lucifer nods. 

   They both head inside, into a room where you are already waiting for them. As soon as you see them you run to them. With a small push toy in toe. "You really came!" You smile wide at Lucifer. 

"I tend to keep my word." Lucifer smiles gently at you. 

"Is that your special person?" With curious eyes you look at Diavolo. 

Who instantly crouches down, trying not to spook you with his size. 

"Yes, this is Diavolo my husband." Lucifer introduces him with a gentle smile. 

"Hello, you are pretty, a good choice Lucifer. If I had known I would have made you a flower crown or something. Unless that's not your style." You seem to approve. 

Diavolo chuckles and Lucifer flushes a little. "I like flower crowns and who is your friend here." Diavolo looks at your little toy. 

"This is my best friend Tom. He is a bit shy but once you know him he won't shut up." You hold your plush toy up. 

"Ah, nice to meet you." Diavolo shakes its little paw. 

"Reminds me of Levi." Lucifer gives a small laugh. You look at Lucifer with a curious look.

"That's one of my brothers." He explains.

That seems to be enough for now.

  "So what kind of games do you guys like to play?" You look at the shelves of games on the wall. 

"You can decide today." Diavolo offers and that seems to be just the right choice since your face lights up. 

"Then we should go outside. We can only go to the playground but we can make a sandcastle." You seem only slightly disappointed by your lack of opinions. 

"Sounds perfect to me." Diavolo nods to that idea. 

"Oh, but your clothes are gonna get dirty right? Does that bother you?" You just thought about that possibly. 

"Don't worry about it. I have cast a dirt repeal spell on both of our clothes." Lucifer had seen something like this coming. 

"Wow, that's super useful. I need something like that too. I always get scolded for getting dirty." You pout slightly. 

"No worries, I can cast it on you too." It's pretty easy for Lucifer. He easily casts the spell to your amazement. 

"Sweet, do you have a spell that makes peppers taste good too?" You look at yourself, feeling pretty pleased. 

"Sorry, even my powers have limitations." Lucifer chuckles. 

"Too bad." You sigh slightly disappointed. 

"Yeah, if that were the case I'd be eating pickles by now." Diavolo nods to himself. 

"You don't like pickles? You should really eat them or you won't become big and strong." You parrot the one thing that they keep telling you. 

"I think I'm big enough already but I get what you mean." Diavolo sighs, slightly defeated. 

"So, are we going to play on the playground now or what?" You grow slightly inpatient. 

"Of course, lead the way." Lucifer smiles and you proudly show them the way, it's right behind the building. 

You show them the sandbox and grab a few things to build with. 

You then make sure that everyone has a plastic sand toy. 

"How big do you like your castle?" You start by doing the foundation of your future sandcastle. 

"As big as my own castle, what about you Lucifer?" Diavolo can already picture it in front of his eyes. 

"I doubt we have enough sand or space for that. I think this size is pretty good." Lucifer doesn't even know the first thing about sandcastles but he knows it will be impossible to build one as big as a real castle. 

"You live in a real castle? Like some sort of prince or something?" The mention of a real castle is very exciting to you. 

"Actually I'm a prince." Diavolo grins a bit bashfully. 

"No joke? That's so awesome! Wait, does that make you a prince too, then Lucifer?" Your excitement knows no bounds. 

"No, but I guess you could say I'm a royal consort of sorts." Lucifer wasn't interested in the title at all. 

"Royal conort? Sounds like cake or something." You crook your head. 

"Hahaha it kind of does. I should ask Barbatos to invent a dessert with that name." Diavolo can't contain his laughter. 

"Royal consort is just what you call someone who is married to royalty but it does sound silly." Lucifer had never even thought about it. 

"Let's go on the swings now." You had enough building for now.

"Alright. What shall we do with the castle?" Lucifer looks at the pile of sand.

"There is only one thing that can be done." You get up and jump with full force into the pile, destroying the whole thing. 

"Aww too bad, I wanted to finish it." Diavolo looks a bit solemn. 

You get up, shake the sand off and then give him a little pat. "We can build an even better castle next time." 

"You are right. We should make it double as big." Diavolo instantly lights up. 

"I wonder which of you is the real child here." Lucifer shakes his head but smiles gently at you and Diavolo. 

You're almost already on the swings before you come running back. "Come on, don't be slowpokes. The swings are very popular." You nervously look at the currently empty swings. 

"Coming." Both men speak in unison and then chuckle at each other. You clearly have them both already wrapped around your little fingers. 

Pleased you sit on the swing. "Diavolo can you give me a push?" 

"Of course." Diavolo gives you a gentle push, unsure of how much strength he should use.

  Lucifer has a slightly sour expression. 

"You can use the other swing if you want." You aren't sure why Lucifer seems to be upset. 

"No, don't mind me." Lucifer hadn't even noticed the frown on his face. 

"Yeah, don't worry about him. I think he is just upset that you asked me to give you a push." Diavolo laughs. 

Lucifer rolls his eyes but he also can't deny it. 

"I'm sorry Lucifer. You can do it next time, or maybe I can give you a push." 

Lucifer flushes slightly. "Sure, why not." 

You swing some more, while laughing the entire time.

  The time passes before you even notice it. Soon your time together will end. Each of you seems to feel equally sad. 

"Seems like our time is going to end soon." Lucifer has no choice but to point out the obvious. 

You nod, with a troubled expression. It's heartbreaking. 

"Will you come back?" You are a bit scared to ask. You can't even look at them. 

Both men look at each other then they smile. "Of course we will come back." Lucifer says what both are thinking. 

You look at them, eyes sparkle. "Does that mean that you both like me? Because I think you are both pretty cool. I mean Tom is still the best but you are pretty close." You sheepishly squeeze your toy.

"Of course we like you." Diavolo smiles. 

Lucifer seems slightly troubled by the fact that he was beaten by a toy. 

"So, how about I give you a ride home and then we come and play again soon?" Diavolo obviously wants to make this as easy as possible for you and himself. 

"Yeah, I always wanted to ride a horse but  a prince comes pretty close." You agree with a nod. 

Lucifer seems a bit unsure about the connection but snickers regardless. 

Diavolo lifts you on his shoulders and carries you back to the orphanage, while walking as slowly as possible. 

The goodbye is still kind of hard but it's helped by the fact that you will meet again. 

"So we are going to do this right?" Diavolo is the first to speak on the way home.

"Yes, we are but I want to clarify that this isn't just something that will be just fun and games. The Devildom is a dangerous place for children. Human children are extremely fragile so we will have to be very prepared." Lucifer knows this will be anything but easy. 

"So we should make the whole castle human safe and child safe. Lucky enough we have more than enough rooms. I will ask Barbatos to get us some childcare books from the human realm. I'm quite excited just thinking about this." Diavolo seems very giddy. 

"I agree with that. I should get my brothers some books too. They need to be educated. We should take some classes about child care." Lucifer already forms a detailed plan in his head. 

Both keep talking about the adoption, being very excited about the whole thing.

~ So yeah this is it for now. I wanted to write more and maybe I will. I have a cliffnotes version I might post that soon. Anyhow I hope you enjoyed this so far.

[thethistlegirlwrites]

Malachite: What do the characters have to lose?

Amber: Something you learned from writing your wip

Emerald: Which of your characters is hardest to write?

Since I'm working on Who Fights Monsters, I'll do these for that one!

Malachite: What do the characters have to lose?

A whole lot. When the story starts, the Fae Codes, that demanded all fae register their identities and their true-names (which can be used to control them), have just been repealed. But the public attitudes toward fae still aren't wholly positive, and the fae are well aware they're one shift in power away from losing everything they worked so hard for. So there's a sense of not wanting to tip a fragile balance, and trying to hang onto the victory they fought so hard to achieve.

Amber: Something you learned from writing your wip

How complex an argument can be, and the fact that I might actually not think what I first assumed I did about something. I started this story wholly on Erin's side, but Tom, and later Joe speaking up for his perspective, gave me the sense that I'd been too fast to dismiss something out of hand, and I came out of that drafting day with a much more complicated and nuanced sense of how I approach things I think I have a clear opinion on.

Emerald: Which of your characters is hardest to write?

Of those I've written so far, oddly enough it's Erin, the main character. She's the one with the least trauma and the fewest standout characteristics, but that made her the best POV character to see the rest of this chaotic and crazy family through. I feel like she's turning out to kind of be my projection character as well, and that I'm processing a lot through writing her. Which can either make things easy or extremely hard.

[silveryinkystar]

Some deleted scenes from my latest atla fic!

#1: In which Zuko adopts a dragon, and Mai really should be used to this by now

Just when she thinks he can’t surprise her anymore, Zuko goes and does something that proves her wrong. Like bringing home a baby dragon.

“I’m going to call you Druk,” he coos at the little coiled lump in his hands. “You’re lucky I’m here, otherwise Sokka might have called you something like Firebreather or Noodle.”

Mai has been introduced to Zuko’s turtleducks both before and after his banishment. Sokka’s not the only one who would be tempted to name a dragon Noodle.

“When Ty Lee said you wanted some time away,” Mai says conversationally, “I don’t think this is what she meant.”

He starts badly at her voice, but when he spins around to face her, he’s beaming widely. Spirits, he could light up the entire Fire Nation with that smile. “Mai! I thought you were coming back next week.”

“I got bored,” she repeats, smirking. “I missed Ty Lee, and gave my parents the slip when they said they were taking a detour. Seems like I wasn’t the only one who ran away. You’ve been up to a lot, hm?”

He chuckles. “Kind of,” he admits, and his expression turns serious. “The palace was getting to me, so I needed a break. I wasn’t intending on bringing Druk back, but I don’t mind.”

“Do the turtleducks like him?” she asks dryly.

“They love him. It’s weird, they’ve never actually seen a dragon before.”

“And you have? Before… Druk, I mean.”

He flushes, opens his mouth to speak, and closes it again.

“Zuko, that’s a yes or no question.”

“It’s… confidential?” he squeaks, flicking his gaze to the tiny hatchling winding around his hand, weaving around the limb before lying across Zuko’s shoulders like a very short scarf. It’s adorable.

She exhales. “When it stops being confidential,” she allows, “let me know before the others? And by that I mean the Fire Nation officials. I’m going ahead and assuming the Avatar and your other friends know.”

“Aang knows, but the others don’t,” Zuko corrects. “Of course I’ll tell you the whole story first.”

“Good.” She walks up to her best friend and embraces him tightly. He stiffens momentarily but hugs her back, careful not to dislodge Druk. “I didn’t just miss Ty Lee, you know.”

She can feel his smile against her shoulder. “I know. I missed you too, Mai.” He pulls away and holds her at an arm’s length. There’s a wicked smile on his face that’s somehow also completely devoid of malice. Not that she could ever see malice on him. “But you mostly missed Ty Lee.”

“One more word and you’ll find a knife on your royal person,” she warns.

#2: In which Sokka takes Zuko into the towns outside the Caldera to show him how much the place has changed

“You know what I think?”

Zuko hums and looks over from a scroll to his friend, who’s lounging on the bed with a map held above his head.

“I think the council members are jealous,” Sokka says.

Zuko raises his eyebrow. “What of?”

“Huh?”

“What would they be jealous of?”

“Oh,” Sokka exclaims, blinking in surprise. “They only have a few supporters among the nobility. Mostly in Caldera City. The people love you and your reforms, and your latest repeal of Sozin’s marriage laws won you even more favours among them.”

“There were more dissenters,” Zuko says with a frown. “I thought it was massively unpopular, even if it was the right thing to do.”

Sokka turns over and waves a hand vaguely at him, grinning like a fool. “See, that’s what I mean. You don’t care about popularity. You saw the marriage laws and knew that you couldn’t put boundaries on love, so you changed the rules. You found out why the war was wrong, and you ended it. Not without help, of course, but you did it all. You care about your people, and they know it.”

Zuko doesn’t know what to say to this, so he resorts to throwing a cushion at his friends face for having him confront feelings. His indignant yelp is a sound that leaves him chuckling for a good minute, so he lets it slide.

But the matter isn’t done yet, at least according to Sokka. On the last day of his visit, Zuko finds that there are no meetings scheduled for the day. He thinks he’ll spend some time in the gardens with his friend, like old times, but Sokka seems to have other plans.

“You guys have fun,” Suki says with a kiss to Sokka’s cheek and a clap on Zuko’s shoulder. “I’ll catch you later.”

Sokka pulls Suki into a proper kiss on the lips before he calls out a quick goodbye and drags Zuko out of the palace.

“Have you been to the towns and villages before?” Sokka asks as they make their way down the slope of the inactive volcano housing the capital city.

“Not nearly as much as I’d like,” Zuko admits. “I’ve been around the capital and Ember Island, but there wasn’t any reason for me to go down to the rest of the Fire Nation.” By reasons, he trusts Sokka understands that he means Ozai had strict rules to stay within the city limits.

“Huh. That’s not great.”

“I went to one of the towns once with my cousin, though,” he adds, expecting the familiar pang in his heart at the mention of Lu Ten before it hits him.

“He’s one of the good ones?” Sokka guesses.

Zuko smiles sadly. “He was like an older brother to me. You know, he was the one to tell Mom and Uncle that I was good with swords?”

“No way.”

“Ozai knew that I was leaving for a change in instructors,” Zuko continues, “but he never really cared either way at the time. He only really became a problem when Uncle and Lu Ten left to fight.”

“Ah.” Sokka rests a hand on his shoulder and squeezes lightly, and Zuko knows to draw comfort from the gesture. He misses Lu Ten dearly, but the sting of loss is numbed, now. He can think of his antics with his cousin during his early childhood without the accompanying sorrow threatening to overwhelm him.

They’re at the base of the volcano now, so Zuko slips up his hood. His hair is free of its topknot and falls over his scar so that he can blend with the crowd unremarkably. There’s no sign that he might be discovered, though, and no repercussions even if he is (except perhaps from his guards, but Ming won’t really mind once she understands why).

The first thing he notices are the sounds. There’s laughter, chatter, and the occasional yelling interspersed with off-key music. He’s already taken aback by how different it is from when Lu Ten helped him sneak out one night when his parents were away with Azula.

“I…”

Sokka smiles and loops an arm around his shoulders. “You haven’t seen anything yet, buddy. You’re going to love this.”

The wind blowing around them is cool enough to be uncomfortable, so Zuko tugs up his collar and raises his internal temperature to compensate. Sokka seems to be unaffected by the chill, which is only to be expected considering his friend spent most of his life in harsh southern winters. They stop every few paces to look at what the roadside stalls were selling, and more than once Sokka actively considers the merits and demerits of buying something they sell before deciding against them, moving forward, and darting back only to walk away again.

The fifth time this happens, Zuko finds a permanent solution in the fire-dancers performing in the streets. It’s his turn now to haul his friend over to them, and Sokka is all too willing to oblige as Zuko watches the performers exaggerate their movements with graceful bending.

“You know, this was pretty cool in the Fire Days Festival too – spirits, are you okay?”

From how distressed Sokka suddenly looks upon seeing his face, he automatically reaches up to touch the scar only to find his cheeks wet. He hadn’t even realised he was crying, but he scrambled for an explanation to keep the other boy from panicking.

“I used to watch the fire-dancers with my mother every year when we went to Ember Island,” he says, swiping at his eyes. “I always wanted to learn their bending style, it’s much more flowy than any other form of firebending. And… it’s been a while since the Fire Nation was this happy outside of festivals. And, well, Ember Island.”

Sokka nods slowly, but he doesn’t look any more placated.

“I guess it never really felt real to me,” Zuko mumbles, ducking his head as his eyes start to burn and glaze over once more. “I’m always stuck at meetings or fighting the council to pass a reform that would help my people, but…”

There’s a lump in his throat that stops him from speaking further, but Sokka leads him away from the crowd gently and finishes it for him.

“You never saw how your decisions impacted your people.”

Zuko manages a strangled chuckle. “They’re happy,” he whispers.

Sokka holds him an arm’s length away, hands firm on his shoulders. “That’s what I wanted to show you,” he says. “They’re healing, and they’re happy. I know most of the people you see are the ones who benefitted from the war, but when we were making our way to the capital before the eclipse, we noticed that it had left its mark on the Fire Nation too.”

Zuko nods, thinking about how he’d received news of an important weapons factory suddenly stopping production because of some problem with the river it was located on. He’d investigated it further and had declined to deliver that information to Ozai once he heard how badly the nearby town had fared.

“We’re the ones who instigated the war,” Zuko says, slumping against the wall of some building. “There were so few people who didn’t suffer for it.”

Sokka slides down next to him wordlessly. It’s not self-deprecating for him to say this – it’s the truth, and Zuko’s doing his best to make up for his ancestors’ terrible choices. They weren’t mistakes, not when each tragedy piled up on top of each other with the sickening, deliberate motive painting them red with blood.

He’s going to help the world heal, and if that starts by healing the Fire Nation? Well, that’s all for the better.

[softbuckismykink]

The Last Goodbye

So I read that^ and came up with a story and I started writing it... Then when I was about to post I realized opps I read the pronouns wrong... Can’t be bothered to change my story though...  so here it is... :)

Not an x-over just borrowing characters from another show. To play Buck’s ex is Clay Spencer from SEAL Team. Now I didn’t watch the show pass like episode ten in season one so I don’t know much about the character or his origin story. I’m just borrowing him cause I can’t be assed to create an O.C. just for a one shot.  If you happen to have knowledge of how military/navy works please suspend your disbelief, I did research but honestly it’s just me reading wikipedia so I more than likely have gotten the elements concerning SEAL training and other military stuff wrong. You are warned. Don’t get offended.

Another Warning: This is a Buddie fic but it includes intimate scenes (not sex) between Buck and Clay, if you are a Buddie purist, this is your warning. 

X-posted on  AO3

Inspired by a tumblr post by @theladyandthewolves​ (Sorry I forgot to add, I did the linky link thing in AO3 but forgot to add it here)

Summary: In which team finds out Buck has a husband, when said husband turned up out of a blue and asked for a divorce. 

********

We were almost beautiful A broken piece of art put on display But we were never possible Another perfect moment thrown away I know somebody out there will love you They'll be the forever we never were 'Cause we were everything that's right at the wrong time

I didn't wanna lose you Leave you with a broken heart But wherever we are, we're miles apart I know that we tried, but this is the last goodbye

Life is going good for Buck. He’s back at 118. His team forgave him and his best friend forgave him, and he’s on his way to forgiving himself. 2019 felt like a sucky year for him with the bombing, recovering from his injuries, the tsunami, the lawsuit, Eddie’s street fighting, Bobby’s being exposed to radiation and weeks of worrying about his found!father dying of either radiation poisoning, aplastic anemia, or some kind of cancer.  

Of course there’s no guarantee that 2020 is gonna be better, but Buck likes to feel optimistic about these things. He has to be since it feels like the rest of his found family are the gloom and loom type, so it’s his job to keep the spirits up or they’ll all fall into despair. He said as much to his team as they gather around the side of the fire truck, just having arrived for their shift.       

“No seriously look at what happened last year. I got that injury and I was admittedly surly for a while--”

“Oh you were more than surly, Buck.” Hen commented.

“Okay I was, but that’s not my point. My point was I not my usual happy self and you guys were all just affected by it. And I feel like it’s my fault.”

“Not everything is about you, Buck.” Eddie said, shaking his head, though clearly amused.

“I’m just saying, I’m on to something here because all bad luck started with me being injured last year. So this year part my new years’s resolution is to generate enough positive energy to drive away all the bad luck you guys attract.”

“Yeah right, we are the trouble magnets,” Hen gestures to herself and the rest of the crew, “not you who’s pretty much in competition with Chim for the Idiot with the Most Death-Defying Experience Award.”

“Of course, I mean Chim is still winning in that,” Buck said smugly, “which pretty much proves my point.”

“Okay, Buck. Whatever lets you sleep at night.” Chim shook his head, with a laugh.

The good natured ribbing continued until they all noticed a man standing by the entrance of the station. Dirty blond curls and a full beard, in tight henley and cargo pants, he looked out of place among the clean shaven firefighter crew but he walked inside with so much confidence that you’d think he owned the place. 

“Clay what are you doing here?” Buck asked as he walked towards the scruffy looking man. 

“Hi, Evan.” The man greeted as he met Buck half way, giving Buck a tight hug and, to the young firefighter’s surprise, a kiss on his cheek. Buck could feel the stares bore onto his back. “Sorry to drop in on you at work but I don’t have you phone number or home address.”

“You mean to tell me that years of working with CIA and you can’t even get my contact info?”

“I work as their muscle Evan, I don’t do the intelligence part.”

“We both know that’s bull, Clay. You speak six languages, you are more than just the muscle.”

“And you basically thought me five of those, though I speak nine now, not all fluently but I get by.”

“And you are still arrogant as ever.” Buck sighed, some things never changed. 

“Can we talk privately?” Clay asked when he noticed the peanut gallery behind Buck.

No. Buck thought, he didn’t really want to do this here in the station but it’s only the start of his shift and he can’t really leave so he said, “I can’t leave but we can talk inside, I got a couple minutes so it better be quick.”

***

Buck lead the man to the relative privacy that the locker room provides. It’s all glass enclosure and anyone from outside can see in but he knew his colleagues would know not to bother them or listen in. 

The moment they were inside the room, Buck turned his back towards the other man, taking a moment to close the door and gather his thoughts. Fucking Clay Spencer, six years and the man still has the ability to turn his day around, making him feel all out of sorts. Buck took a deep breath before facing his husband.

“Not to be morbid Clay, but I figured after I rang that bell the next time I’ll hear about you was when I get a death notification from a CACO officer.”

“Yeah I thought so too.” Clay admitted with a slight grimace. They were young, only 19 when they got married, but they both thought they’ll be together forever. “I mean I did promise ‘till death do us part. I always thought I’d at least fulfill the death portion of that promise. But I also thought I wouldn’t meet another person I’d want to marry again and I did. Her name’s Stella, she’s a grad student at Hudson State.”

“And now you want a divorce.”

“We were over years ago we just never got around to signing the papers for it.  I’m getting married in June so--”

“So what you figure you’d come to my place of work, greet me with a kiss like we last saw each other only this morning, not six years ago and what? Demand that I go sign the divorce papers so you could go on living your merry life?”

“Look Evan, I was an ass. Heck I still am, but I wasn’t the one who left. You did.”

“Let be real, we both know I couldn’t stay.” Buck said, because it was true. DADT was repealed but the prejudice lingers. When the instructors learned that yes Evan Spencer was related to Clay Spencer and no they weren’t brothers or cousins, well let’s just say things get ugly. “I was just holding you back. Being a SEAL was your dream.”

“And there was a time that it was yours too.”

“No, I-”  It never was. I did it to be with you is what Buck wanted to say but he knew that’s unfair to both of them so he said instead, “I did it because I don’t know what I want back then. But I what I did figure out is that I was never built for that kind of life, Clay.”

“I know. You were always too soft.” Clay commented. Buck glared which didn’t escape his husband’s notice. 

“I didn’t mean it in a bad way, Evan. I’m glad you never went through with the training. Of the two of us, you were always the saint--”

“And you are just digging a deeper hole, Spencer. You should quit while you’re ahead.”

“I should, but you know that’s not really my style.”

“You saying it’s mine?” Buck challenged, eager for a fight for some reason, but Clay didn’t rise to the bait.

“You’re putting words into my mouth Evan.” Clay step in closer to him, invading Buck’s personal space. “I never thought any less of you when you quit training. I was actually relieved that you did. You were so determined when you told me you wanted to be a SEAL and I couldn’t say no even if I wanted to. So much. Cause I knew it would break you in ways that I never wanted for you, in ways that would take the best part of you that I loved so much. It was why as much as I hate him, I had Dad pull some strings to get you out of your contract and discharged. I didn’t think you’d take that as a cue to walk away.”

“You think I’m fragile, Clay but I’m not.”

“No,” Clay denied, stepping even closer, close enough that Buck could feel the other man’s breath against his cheek as the SEAL look him in the eye and explained, “I treat you like you are fragile, because that’s how you treat something that’s precious. I’ll admit to that. But I know you are strongest person I’ve ever met, Evan. I loved that about you.” 

“Then why did you let go?” Buck said, his words are demanding but his tone is all but resigned.

“Why didn’t you stay?” Clay parried back, equally yielding. They both knew the answer to each other’s question, love isn’t enough to keep them together and that’s their reality. That doesn’t negate the magnetic attraction they felt towards each other.

The SEAL stepped even closer, their foreheads within a hair’s breadth of the other, as their lips slowly gravitated towards each other. Buck felt the brush of the other man’s dry lips against his own. The touch is so painfully familiar, but gone was the spark his memories insist had once accompanied such intimate gesture. Still Buck felt nostalgic and he was just about to give in and press back when he heard a knock. They sprung apart and Buck turned to the person at the door. Buck saw his best friend leaning against the doorway arms tight cross against his chest. 

“Buck, Cap wants you for the stand-up meeting.” Eddie said tersely informed Buck while glaring at the other man. “Upstairs kitchen. Five minutes.”

“Okay, I’ll be up in two Eds.” Buck nodded with a strained smile. “Thanks for letting me know.” 

“I don’t mind but you gotta hurry or Cap would get pissed.” Eddie said before walking away, but not without directing one last glare at Buck’s visitor.

“Did he just call you, Buck?” Clay asked as soon as Eddie left the room.  “You change your surname back to Buckley? Since when?”

“Not that it’s any of your business but about two years ago after the DOD finally let me back stateside, before I started at the fire Academy. Just for work and my direct deposit bank, for now. I never got around to doing it for anything else. I guess I have to now.”

“You don’t have to. No law requires it of you.” Clay made to close the gap between them again only for Buck to step back. “It would be an unnecessary hassle.”

“You are getting married, Clay. To another person. You don’t get to act possessive and ask me to keep a name I’m half way to dropping.” Buck shook his head, clearly Clay hadn’t change a bit, still one with the need possessively attach his name to everything. The sound of a ladder truck returning reminded Buck of the meeting he was called to, “Look I really need to get going. Give me your phone.”

“Evan I-” Clay started but at the firefighter’s impatient glare, he reluctantly hands over his phone. Buck quickly typed in his contact information.

“There you have my contact number.” Buck handed the phone back and turned to leave, saying over his shoulders, “I also put in my mailing address, so you know where to send in the divorce paper.” 

“Wait, Evan--” Clay called after him, most likely noticing that Buck never put in his home address. “This is a P.O. box.” 

“Where I get my mails delivered to and I know you know how that works.” Buck walked away before the other man could launch another protest.

***

“So Buck who’s the hunk of meat?” Hen asked as soon as Buck reached the landing of the upstairs loft where the kitchen is located. His crew gathered around the kitchen island where Bobby was preparing breakfast, not at all looking like they are about to have any kind of job related meeting.

“I thought we were doing stand-up meeting?”

“No that was just Eddie here letting out the green eyed mons--Ouch!” Chimney’s explanation was interrupted by Hen elbowing him in the sternum.

“You look like you needed a save so I intervened, I didn’t know I’d be interrupting something.” Eddie remarked, a touch snidely.

“You didn’t interrupt anything. Clay was just um, saying goodbye.”

“I didn’t know friends say goodbye with a kiss.” 

“Clay’s not exactly my friend.”

“Well, he’s not family not with that kiss. What is he an ex-fling? A phase? Is that why he calls you Evan?” Eddie asked eyebrows raised and suspicious.

“Yeah I wondered about that too, we thought you said everyone just call you Buck.” Chim said, scratching his head, “I mean even your sister calls you Buck.”

“Not exactly an ex. And he’s not a phase!” Buck protested, offended at the word phase. At the surprised looks that his friends are giving him for his unusual outburst, he mellowed, shrugged and said, “I mean Clay is Clay. He always called me Evan. Ever since high school.”

“Why?”

“Um, Clay didn’t like that the name Buck is short for Buckley. Some sort of caveman reason I guessed.”

“Okay so the guy is more than a fling then?” Eddie prodded, not letting the topic die like Buck had silently asking him too, with his pointed looks. So much for best friend telepathy.

Buck sighed, resigned to admitting something he has been mum about ever since starting at 118. “Clay Spencer is my husband, or rather my soon to be ex-husband, he’s filing for divorce so.” 

It took a moment for his words to sink in and 

“Wait, what the fuck?! You were married?! And you didn’t tell us?!” Eddie asked sounding a little furious.

“To a man?!” Chim added, confounded and unable to think.

“And now you’re getting a divorce?” Bobby said calmly but the twitch of his eyebrow and the way he straightened up clearly betrayed his surprise.

“Wow my gaydar’s needs readjustment,” Hen shook her head, frowning. “I just thought you were hetero-flexible not full-on freewheeling.”

His team spoke one after another, all shocked at his revelation which granted was a little unexpected coming from him, a reformed self-diagnosed sex addict who’s afraid of commitment. 

“So what happened?” Hen asked being the first one to recover from the shock of Buck’s surprising revelation.

“Between Clay and I?” Buck asked then continued at Hen’s nod, “Well we were together since freshman year, in high school. Um- we bonded over having absent fathers. I thought we’d be together forever but Clay also wanted to join the Navy like his Dad, so we’ve always kept our relationship low key-ish until DADT got repealed. After that, we said fuck it, and got married. My dad got so mad when he found out, which was more because we were only nineteen back then, not because it was so gay which didn’t help of course but yes more because we were just kids when we got married,” Buck explained trying for casual, as he sat himself in the couch. “Anyways Clay enlisted and got into SEAL pipeline program. I got in a year after him, but I had to quit, we separated, the rest they say is history.”

“So that’s why two you broke-up? Because you quit SEAL training?” Bobby asked leaning on the railing across the couch Buck was seated at. Besides the captain is his best friend, Eddie, who has a blank look on his face that Buck couldn’t even begin to decipher. 

“Um he wanted to be a SEAL and I knew I was just holding him back so...” Buck trailed off, noticing how his team look at him with pity in their eyes, “Shit guys don’t look at me that way I’m not some broken piece of glass okay?”

When the pitying looks continued, and Bobby moved as if to comfort him, Buck said, “No, seriously guys, I’m okay. I’m not at all broken up about this at all, so you guys shouldn’t be either. Me and Clay were done years ago. It’s just we got lazy and didn’t get around to signing papers until now.”

“You don’t have to put on front with us, kid.” Chim said moving on to sit in the couch beside his while Hen moved to sit beside him. “We are family, heck you are practically my brother.”

“Chim’s right, Buckaroo. It’s okay to be not okay. We won’t think any less of you if you for it.” Hen added, laying a comforting hand on his shoulders.

“I’m seriously fine. I mean I’m not gonna lie and say it never affected me or that  it didn’t hurt. Because I did, years ago when first broke up, cause I really thought we were forever. But now? I’m not even sad or anything.”

“But if you are, you know that we are here for you, right?”

“I know that Bobby. And I appreciate it.” There was a prolonged silence that lingered for  a couple of minutes as they all just looking for words to say. Eventually Chimney, as always, broke that silence with a joking remark.

“Okay but seriously how did you land some one that hot?” Chim teased Buck.

“Chim seriously?! Your bi is showing.” Hen smirked. 

“What? I’m just saying that is one beast of a man. I’m just wondering what he saw in our Buck.”

“Hey, quit it hobbit,” Hen slapped her best friend in the arm, “Our Buck here is equally as beastly looking if not more.” 

“Hen, not that I don’t appreciate the vote of confidence because I truly do, but I don’t think ‘beastly’ is a look I aspire to project you know.”

“Joking aside, did you really go through SEAL training? Did you mean like BUD/s?” Chim asked, curious about Buck’s past but knowing the younger man would rather not talk about his soon-to-be ex-husband. At  Buck’s nod Chimney asked again, “Isn’t that only for Enlisted Navy?”

“You said you weren’t in the Navy.” Bobby added, confused.

“I wasn’t, I mean not really. I mean technically I was one but only for like less than 180 days? Which meant I got like an ELS.” Buck tried explaining, only garnering more confused looks. “Entry-Level Separation. I entered the program through SEAL Challenge Contract. I got through ‘Hell Week’ at BUD/s but I DOR’d a week after that. So it was like only give or take 155 days before I DOR’d. Which was why I don’t claim to be in the Navy because I barely was in it.”

“DOR?” Hen asked.

“Dropped on request. Clay I guessed heard about it when he was in SQT,” Buck started but had to clarify again, “er SEAL qualification training. Anyways, the instructors were about to shuffle me into the fleet as an enlisted sailor, which is usually what happens when a SEAL candidate drops out. But suddenly I got an offer that the brass would waive my Navy Enlistment contract if I would agree to work as a civilian linguistic analyst attached to a joint operation between the DOD and DEA that’s based in Chile. It was an unusual offer but I figured Clay’s father who’s a retired SEAL pulled some strings. I took the offer and spent four years bouncing around between bases in South America doing translation work.”

“Wait you said you bartender’d in South America, not Schneider’d you way through it.”

“What’s Schneider’d? And when did I say that?”

“Cocaine Wars,” Bobby said as if that alone explains it but of course Evan ‘as far as I’m concerned the world started when I was born’ Buckley didn’t get that reference, so Bobby had to explain further, “Schneider is the name of the actor who is an undercover DEA agent working in South America. And you told me when you were pulling that worm out of that guy who ate a lot of sushi.”

“I wasn’t an undercover agent, I only did translation work in a black site in South America but can’t actually say that in front of strangers so I said the first appropriate thing that came to mind.”

“Bartending is the first thing that came to mind?” 

“Well no not the very first thing... um stripping was actually but that seemed inappropriate too?” Buck said, scratching his head. At the incredulous looks he is getting from his team he defended,  “What?! Bartending is believable job I could have been doing. I mean Bobby did believe it.” 

“That’s not what--” Chim wanted to explain but was interrupted by the sound of the alarms going off. 

****

“You were awfully quiet after me telling you guys about Clay.” Buck said as soon as him and Eddie were left alone in the locker room. “You barely talked to me all day too. Is there a problem?”

“No.” Eddie replied, abrupt and clearly not wanting to talk about it but at seeing Buck’s pleading gaze, he relented, “Okay I admit I was a little upset because I thought by now we told each other everything. But then I get a slap in the face and realize I don’t know you at all. I mean I didn’t even tell me you were married.  Or that you ex-husband is a slimy squid.”

“I’m still technically married. And I believe military term is frogmen not squid.”

“Well maybe  in the Navy, in the Army they are slimy squids.” Eddie huffed.  “Seriously though, Buck. Why didn’t you tell me? I mean we talked about our exes before. You told me about Abby. You know about Shannon. Heck I even told you about Alex from boot camp. So I don’t know why you thought you couldn’t tell me about your ex-husband Clay.”

“It’s for the same reason you didn’t talk about your ex-wife back when I first asked you.”

“You asked me that before we got really close. And she’s not my ex-wife, she was my wife. There’s a difference.”

“Exactly, she wasn’t your ex-wife. Just like Clay isn’t my ex-husband. I didn’t talk about him like he is my ex because he isn’t.”

“You were separated, you said you didn’t see each other for six years.”

“I know that. I know in my head we are over and truly broken up,” Buck said while gesturing to his head then he laid his hand on his chest, “But here. Well here it’s stupid, because here there’s hope. So I didn’t talk about him like he’s my ex because then it would be like admitting that it’s truly over, no takebacksies over. I was over Clay but I guess I hadn’t reach that point where my heart’s willing to acknowledge it.”

“You dated a lot after him though, that’s like more than acknowledging it. That’s moving on.”

“It’s adapting a coping mechanism. An unhealthy one at that. I had a long list of one night stands because felt rejected and needed validation. Plus I like having sex but I was determined not to let anyone in again. Then I met Abby, who made me realize I crave intimacy not sex, she made me feel safe to love again, but she left before I could commit to loving her. Which was fortunate cause I don’t know how would get over it if she left me after I learned to love her.”

“I don’t think loving someone could be learned, Buck. Either you do, or you don’t.”

“Maybe so. But my point was I didn’t talk about him cause I thought I wasn’t over him yet. And I would have when I’m ready. I didn’t know when I just knew that talking about him before that would be like--”

“Like poking an open wound.” 

“Yes exactly like that.” Buck picked up that metaphor and expounded on it. “What I didn’t realize was that wound long scabbed over. And I left it thinking that if I picked on it, it would bleed again. Only to find out today that it’s all healed.”

“What was the kiss then?”

“The what?”

“The kiss I interrupted Buck.”

“I’m not sure but it felt like a goodbye.”

“I’m not an expert, Buck, but when he kissed you it looked more than just goodbye.” If Buck didn’t know better, he’d say Eddie sounded jealous as he said, “He’s all over you.”

“He isn’t. He kissed me but I’m telling you now, that kiss doesn’t feel like it meant anything to him. Or me. It’s not like what you think.”

“If you say so.” Eddie looked to Buck tryin g to see the truth in his eyes.

“I say so.” Buck said determined as held the other man’s gaze for a few moments, before looking away and shyly admitting, “Besides there is someone else I like.”

The words linger in the air between them as their eyes locked on to each other’s yet again; and slowly they gravitated towards each other without either knowing it. Their foreheads touched, nose brushing. The moment their lips brush, Buck felt the tingle in up his spine making him slightly weak in the knees. He held on to the older man’s waist to help himself stay upright. Eddie lifted his hand to caress the back of Buck’s head as he leaned in to deepen the kiss. Buck can’t help the moan the escaped his lips. And Eddie took that as an opportunity to slip his tongue and explore the younger man’s mouth.  If it was up to Eddie it would have gone further further but Buck pulled away.

“I’m not--” Buck shook his head, trying to clear it from the haze. “I like you but you were just widowed, and I still need to get divorced.”

“Okay, but just so you know this,” Eddie said gesturing at the air between them, “this is gonna happen. I’ll be asking you out as soon as you drop the name Spencer.”

“Not if I  asked you first.”

“Fair enough. As long as I get to eventually marry you, that’s fine.”

“Sure as long as you don’t expect me to take your name.”

“Maybe I’ll take yours instead. Edmundo Buckley has a nice ring to it don’t you think.”

“Yeah, definitely.” Buck managed to spat out with a straight face. They both look at each other in the eye before laughing out loud at the name.

Fuck Edmundo Buckley sounds ridiculous, maybe just this once Buck would take one for the team and take Eddie’s name anyway. Evan Diaz after all sounded way better. 

[itsclownhours]

merlin as tumblr posts again because when i edited a typo in the original it fucked up the formatting

everyone: you have to make time for yourself

morgana: *stays up until 1 am every night crying* me time

.

morgana: ohhhh so the pain is forever and endless i get it now

.

young!mordred: once i learn how to read and write it’s over for you hoes

.

lancelot, in cursive: i can’t read cursive handwriting

gwaine: what does this say

elyan: i can’t read cursive handwriting

gwaine: bitch me neither that’s why i asked

.

arthur, to merlin, about lancelot: is he...y’know…*gestures downard to super hell*

.

uther, straight: hey what’s up guys do you want to go get some food

arthur and morgana, gay: ??????

uther: oh sorry i mean asgdhjdhs guys do you??? want some food??? lmao ashdjdjhs

arthur and morgana: oh! agshdjjshsj yeah lmao agshdj

.

morgana: do you ever associate the word “girlfriend” with wlw so much that you forget straight boys have girlfriends

.

gwen: am taking care of a tiny kitten. have given it an excellent name. dad thinks i’m calling her “minty” but this is actually short for The Government

gwen: The Government bit my finger and pooped on the floor

.

gwaine: peak art is when you were like six and you scribbled all over ms paint and then carefully paintbucketed in all the different shapes in the scribbles to make “stained glass”

.

morgause: forcing my car to commit sins so it goes to hell with me when i die

.

leon, after arthur gives the knights a pep talk: so motivational...time to drill a hole in my skull

.

morgana: i want to be a she really did that!! kind of girl but i don’t do anything

.

arthur: pros and cons of being my friend:

arthur: pro: you have a friend

arthur: con: it’s me

.

gwaine, to lancelot: bro let’s watch a horror movie together...bro you look scared do you wanna share a blanket dude? if you wanna hold hands it’s ok. if you wanna rest your head on my shoulder it’s alright bro...bro if you wanna kiss that’s understandable that was a scary movie...we can keep cuddling after the movie is over it’s alright dude…

.

lancelot: old town road but he just keeps listing all the places he has horses

gwaine: i got the horses in the back

gwaine: horses on the track

gwaine: horses in the shack and i got horses fetching snacks

gwaine: i got the horses in earth’s core

gwaine: down under the floor

gwaine: horses in the store and i got horses on the moor

.

gwaine: died and came back as a cowboy i call that reintarnation

.

morgana: *shows up at college* excuse me will someone please direct me to the leftist brainwashing class? i’m here for the leftist brainwashing class

.

merlin: finally found someone i was more disappointed in that myself: the entirety of america camelot

.

morgause: customer (derogatory)

.

arthur: business major (derogatory)

.

leon: leonardo dicaprio date a woman over 25 challenge

gwaine: thought that said “leonardo da vinci” and was confused since da vinci was gay and also since you were calling out someone who’s been dead for well over 7 years

leon: well. da vinci has been well over 7 years, i’ll give you that

.

morgana: the retirement age needs to be lowered to 25. i’ve had enough

.

gwaine: i’m fucking in luigi’s mansion

leon: who?

gwaine: some italian freak

gwaine: oh you meant who am i fucking. your mom

.

leon: stop setting things on fire because you’re curious about what will happen. what will happen is fire

gwaine: but what if...something else happens. just this 1 time

.

morgause: bored? burn an orphan. who’re they gonna tell? their parents?

.

morgana: due to personal reasons i will be a serial arsonist

.

mithian: fruit (affectionate)

.

arthur: going to the fruit (derogatory) store do you want anything

.

gwen: fruit (salad, yummy yummy)

.

morgana, to gwen: i’m allergic to hookup culture and too weird to participate anyway. die in my arms

.

kilgharrah: i am fast and full of teeth. i will die in a barn fire

.

morgana: not evil anymore i want to be loved now

morgana: evil again

.

morgause: every day i put on my evil little clothes and do my evil little tasks

.

percival: megan thee stallion and timothee chalamet are the same age

gwaine: megan thee stallion 🤝 timo thee chalamet

.

morgana: hey how many swords do you have

morgause: sword of a lot

morgana: blocked

morgause: parried

.

morgana and gwen simultaneously in 1x10: *chanting* girls with swords girls with swords

.

morgana: the more knives you have the more valid you are

.

kilgharrah: blocked. blocked. blocked. you’re all blocked. none of you are free from sin.

.

morgana: seven deadly sins speedrun

.

gwaine: i want 6 pet sloths so i can name them after every sin except for sloth

.

merlin: the eighth deadly sin is networking

.

arthur: online school culture is constantly wondering if there’s a sneaky little assignment you missed...is it tucked under modules or assignments or heaven forbid, announcements? who’s to say?

.

gaius: asynchronous learning

merlin, a clown: mmmnaptime

.

arthur: have you ever just cried because you’re you

.

elyan, to percival: bro, we are teens . it’s ok to cry around me . i’m your best friend . i love you … bro we are kissing now … no don’t stop bro … bro …

.

morgana: mad bc i was told as the bride my wedding would be “my day” but actually where will be a whole other bride there and we will have to share it

.

leon: i’m disgusted every time someone does a gender reveal and it’s about a gender i already know about, what kind of reveal is that

.

leon: gender reveal party??? no, this is a gender repeal party. we out here revoking genders

.

gwaine: you’re laughing. i asked you who sings party rock anthem and you’re laughing

.

gwaine: make no mistake not only am i party rocking but i’m also in the house tonight

elyan: are you shuffling?

gwaine: everyday

.

morgana: lung extensions

morgana: with extended lungs you can: scream longer, breathe harder, brag about extended lungs

morgana: this procedure is not legal but i will do it for you

morgana: do not tell the police or morgause

.

morgana: i’m so sick of dna, i’m going to have all mine removed

morgause: good news! this is a real thing that can happen to you

morgana: perfect, sign me up

.

morgana: if YOU die because i poisoned you...how is that MY fault like i’m sorry you aren’t immune to my poisons i think that’s genuinely something you need to work on. fix yourself before blaming others

.

arthur: my body is NOT a “temple”...it is a CLOWN CAR and NONE OF THESE BITCHES KNOW HOW TO DRIVE

.

morgause: live

morgause: laugh

morgause: l u r k

.

mcdonald’s employee: please sir get off the table

gwaine: I ASKED FOR TWO LARGE FRIES *dumping bag of fried out onto the floor* BUT INSTEAD GOT A HUNDRED FUCKEN LITTLE ONES

.

merlin: i relate to vampires because i too must be clearly and specifically invited in before i have the audacity to try to participate in anything

.

gwaine: it can’t be september, just yesterday is was marchgustuary

lancelot: today’s date: [REDACTED]/[REDACTED]/20

.

gwaine: why are internet friends not normalized. it’s 2020 they’re probably making robots that will wipe your ass for you and i can’t text grace in the uk and tell her to have a good day? fuck you

.

percival: imagine if halsey was in beauty and the beast

elyan: are you insane like gaston. been in pain like gaston. bought a hundred dollar bottle of champagne like gaston

.

arthur: my dad is learning about pronouns/gender identity and he called me in the middle of the night to tell me he is cis

.

merlin: ough. those first 400 bites of dirt were not so good. maybe the next one will be better

.

morgana: i’m at the dark candy store, buying sorrowful ranchers

.

merlin: i’m surprised no one has ever punched me in the face

.

gwen: i want a gf so i can send her memes about loving my gf

.

morgause: oh to cook with my wife and stand directly in front of cabinets and drawers she needs to open

.

morgause: decided i will no longer be paying taxes. what are they gonna do, tax me more? go ahead. i won’t pay those either. oh i’m going to prison? the one paid for by my tax dollars? sorry, didn’t pay em. now there is no prison. i am at least 3 steps ahead of the government at all times

.

merlin: lab safety but the teacher just wants to you die

merlin: lab safety: 1. drink whatever’s in that beaker. i know you fucking want to

.

morgause: my therapist is selling her house so i’m gonna find the listing online and make her living room my zoom backgrounds before our next session. you wanna get in my head? ok well i’m in your home babe. i’m in charge now

morgana: yeah i see why you’re in therapy

.

morgana: i hate it when people ask me to “explain my thought process” like hell if i know

morgana: what’s going on in that head of yours?” nothing i want to be a part of

.

mordred: hey girls what’s the hot gossip what’s new what’s the 411

morgana and morgause: everything is bad and getting worse by the day

.

morgause: common letter greetings from 1889

morgause: dearest my-soon-to-be-enemy

morgause: salutations and i hope you enjoy contact prison

morgause: i hope this letter finds you in a ditch

.

arthur: *highlights all the wrong and unimportant stuff with full confidence*

.

merlin: i’ve tried opening my mouth and saying words before and i’ve gotta say, i’m not a fan

.

morgana: a large group of humans is called a fuck that

.

website: synonyms for blood: juice

mithian: thank you thesaurus.com, that is absolutely not what i was looking for

.

gwaine: gen z humor was single-handedly cultivated by the zoo wee mama comic and you can’t convince me otherwise

.

morgana: screw this it’s halloween now *turns into a swarm of bats them consumes the moon*

.

morgana: i can’t believe the heterosexuals are gone. they’re gone

uther: we’re still here

arthur: who said that

.

gwaine: no more france

gwaine: society has progressed passed the need for france

.

morgause: girls night out (of body experience)

.

morgana, to morgause: what do you mean “what have i been up to”...i’m out here ruining my own life as always bitch

.

merlin: stop complaining about your life. there are literally people living in camelot

.

arthur, trying to find new knights: oh so you’re a human? name three pictures with traffic lights in them

.

gwaine: we mcfreaking lost her doctor

.

morgause: looking for a wife in the walmart

.

morgause: arrested for visiting www.killing.com/murder

.

gwaine, to merlin: no bro this isn’t a date listen bro

gwaine: it’s bruhnch

.

morgause, to cenred: if you think i’m not interested, you’re right

.

gwen: put a pancake on a girl’s head when she’s asleep to keep her warm and safe

.

morgana: idk what mad scientist needs to hear this today but your goggles and lab coat are incredibly flattering and all your experiments will block away the scientific community who called you a fool

.

morgause: i’m gonna fucking die disease

morgause: symptoms: back hurts a bit too much for a bit too long

.

arthur: if you think i’m annoying now wait until i get over my fear of being perceived as annoying

.

merlin: sorry if i’m bothering you

surgeon: how do you keep waking up and saying that

.

gwaine: home depot needs more small tunnels for me to crawl through tbh

.

percival: hot tip: soup is customizable! go wild but know your limits

.

morgana: brains say “i know a spot” and take you to a traumatic memory from 2011

.

mithian: “can you multitask” yes actually i am losing my mind and chilling at the same time

.

morgana: quarantine schedule to keep you on track

morgana: wake up

morgana: neglect online school

morgana: yearn (ongoing project)

morgana: again!

.

mithian: if cats don’t want to be held like little babies maybe they shouldn’t be roughly the size and shape of little babies

.

morgause: fuck this pandemic i could’ve ruined 2020 on my own

.

morgana: a cute girl told me she has lots of plants in her house and i told her for some fucking reason “damn the oxygen at your place must be mad crisp” and somehow still got her number so. chase your dreams. nothing is impossible apparently

.

morgana: oh to wear a knife strapped against my thigh beneath a silk dress

.

morgana, running off with morgause at the end of season 2: i hate this place i want to go to build a bear

.

morgana, at work: i’m evil

morgana, 1 second after clocking out: not evil anymore i want to be loved now

morgana, the next day at work: evil again

.

season 2 morgana: i am fine thank you for asking! though recently there has been a darkness growing within me

.

morgause: *thinks about love* okay well i am just losing my mind and being insane now

.

arthur: you think you can hurt my feelings? i’ve been the least favorite in every single friendship group i’ve had since i was 8

.

morgana, staring out the window at arthur and merlin: look at them plotting my downfall

.

mithian: i wanna buy clown noses in bulk and start sticking them on every person i see whose mask is pulled too low

.

mithian: oh to be a tiny cat whose biggest concern is the looming threat of being gently picked up and kissed on the head

.

morgana: i deserve to be kissed

.

morgana: did you have a homoerotic friendship with a girl in high school that ended in tragedy and you two are never talking again or are you normal?

.

mithian: just diagnosed with forehead kiss deficiency :/

.

morgana: i think i’ll continue to wear a mask when this shit’s all over, and huge sunglasses. my face is none of your business

.

morgause: my therapist told me that sometimes when a person consumes the same piece of media over and over they may be unconsciously coping with a mental block so now i’m trying to figure out what the fuck i was going through that made me watch ratatouille 8 times a day for a solid month in middle school

.

morgause: opposite of depression nap. depression awakeness. refreshing the same three websites over and over. there’s nothing new on any of them. eight seconds have passed and it feels like a century

.

morgana: very homophobic that my head is not laying on the chest of my maidservant as i am drifting off to sleep

.

merlin: no no, it’s fine, i’ll text myself back

.

morgana: *pines* *longs* *yearns* *pines* *longs* *yearns* *pines* *longs* *yearns* *pines* *longs* *yearns* *pines* *longs* *yearns* *pines* *longs* *yearns* *pines* *longs* *yearns* *pines* *longs* *yearns*

.

arthur: i’d have to be a fool not to? being a fool and not doing things are my top two activities

.

gwaine: you think it’s easy to be me? you think it’s easy to get up every. single. day. and be an industrial grade dumbass? well it’s not. but that’s what i do. and i’ll never stop.

.

morgana: ah shit i’m sorry man, my schedule for the week is all booked

sunday: yearn

monday: pine

tuesday: long

wednesday: ache

thursday: sigh

friday: lament

saturday: crave

.

morgana: talents include: being a public menace, denying God’s will, petting dogs, yearning, being dramatic, witchcraft, quoting classic literature when no one asked, napping, befriending a murder of crows, being gay, covering up my emotions by being “the funny friend” when in reality i’m really going through it, wistfully staring out the car window

.

merlin: *doesn’t even do the bare minimum* all in a day’s work

.

cenred: a “period” is not an excuse to have an attitude

morgause: i miss the times when men would go to war and die

.

morgana: the cheap halloween vampire fangs stay ON during sex

.

gwen: maybe i pspspspsp’ed you because i love you. did you think of that? huh?

.

morgana: mom said it’s my turn to hand out the ominous and vague warnings

arthur: that wasn’t mom

uther: she JUST SAID it was her turn

.

morgause: i’m a chill person but if my back doesn’t stop hurting i’m going to take out my spine and beat God with it

.

mithian: one of these days i’m going to say the f word

mithian: then you’ll all be sorry

.

morgause: 3 words every girl wants to hear

morgause: club penguin membership

.

morgana: hmm, yes.

morgana: time to s i p

morgana: some *~crispy~*

morgana: d i h y d r o g e n m o n o x i d e

.

morgause: roll call! raise your hand if you’re in the following fandoms:

morgause: 1. suffering 2. the pain of living

morgana: *raises both hands and a leg*

.

leon: it’s so hard being a single mom when you have no kids and are a male teenager

.

merlin: yeah bro hit me up and we’ll cancel some plans sometime

.

morgana: my brain, or as i like to call it, the suffer contraption

.

morgause: my circle so small i almost cut myself off

.

morgause hyping herself up before entering any public area: i’m normal i’m normal i’m normal i’m normal i’m normal i’m normal i’m normal i’m normal i’m normal i’m normal i’m normal i’m normal i’m normal i’m normal i’m normal

.

arthur: today in french we learned how to say “what’s in the bag” and i couldn’t stop laughing because

arthur: swaggity swag qu’est-ce qui dans le sac

.

merlin: even when i am not speaking, know that horrible sentences are raging within me

.

mithian in 5x04: sorry bro i can’t go out tonight. i’m stuck in an eternal state of melancholy

.

morgause: shower gel label: immerse yourself in this new “Me Time” luxury frooty tooty. abandon all sense of identity and dissolve your memories into this soothing chemical broth. one billion melons are in this tube...use them wisely

.

leon, writing a headline about the most recent knights’ mission: local dumbasses knew that what they were getting themselves into and did it anyways

.

morgana: *feels random pain in body*

morgana: kill me

.

mithian: *slowly inches closer to your pet*

.

morgause: *refuses to look at texts* i love conversation and communication

.

arthur: cute gender neutral things to call your partner

arthur: significant annoyance

.

leon: the most unrealistic fantasy trope is the one where half of the pair works in some sort of shop and one is a customer because i have literally never thought about a customer with anything other than contempt

.

gwaine: why is everyone talking about 1d all of a sudden did one of them die

elyan: they’re 10 years old now

gwaine: i wish them luck 4th grade is tough!!

.

gwaine: must i pursue a career? is it not enough to be passionate about tv shows and snack foods?

.

leon, aroace: cool date idea: me eating oatmeal by myself

.

morgana: i have no self of steam

.

gwaine: i hate wearing a mask. i miss being able to gently kiss my trader joe’s cashier on the lips after they ring up my $8 box of blueberries

.

morgana: committing acts of violence today…*pushes morgause’s glass of water off the counter*

.

gwaine: mario will do anything to put a smile on your face

.

morgana: haha we get along so well...our brains just work the same way

morgause, after changing her entire personality to match morgana’s after analyzing the way she talks and texts: haha yeah it’s incredible

.

gwaine: covered in sauce, trembling

.

arthur: *says the vaguest most incoherent shit ever*

arthur: you know what i mean :/

.

[online]

morgana: *screenshots things her girlfriend said to her so she can read it again later* yeah i’m not gay

uther: dude no offence i don’t want to sound like an sjw or anything but if you have a girlfriend you’re straight. that’s just how it works

morgana: i’m a girl

uther: what the fuck

.

morgana: the second you say “family group chat” i know we are not the same

.

gwen: what if early in the morning after buying groceries we got caught in the rain and i used my jacket to cover your head ut we still got soaked and we made a fire at home and brewed tea and sat together watching the rain as our cats hid under our feets at each sound of thunder and we ate stew for dinner and watched tv until we fell asleep on the couch with your head resting on my shoulder

.

gwaine, to percival: hold my hand bro we’re crossing the street

.

percival: imageine if we all just started ignoring celebrities though

percival: i can’t stop thinking about how funny this would be. imagine kyie jenner posting a selfie and it gets 12 likes

.

morgana: this isn’t fun anymore i need a kiss

.

morgause at 1159 pm: life’s great lol

morgause at 1201 am: does anyone really know me? most importantly do i really know me? what if life doesn’t get better than this?

.

merlin: king i needbfjdjgnjfg qldkr snmsmdjgjt ….. .. i need--fjrjkrhgphpqn dd

arthur: huh *dunks merlin’s head back underwater*

.

morgana: i don’t go to therapy or take any pills i just rawdog life and let my brain turn into soup

.

mordred: dark emails

morgause: to whom it WILL concern

morgana: now that this email has found you

.

gwaine: hi waiter could i get the spaghetti i promise i’ll behave this time

.

merlin: the sexiest thing about me? everything hurts my feelings

.

gwaine: how is sex fun if i have to remove my crocs to have it

elyan: if he makes you remove your crocs for sex he isn’t the one

.

morgause: a motherfucker could use an embrace

.

morgana: every night after 10pm my feelings start crawling out, starved, as i beat them with a moderately large stick vigorously hissing “stay back” until i inevitably fall asleep

.

fanfiction: there’s only one room available…

morgause, who specifically chose a rated m and explicit story: oh my gosh there’s only one room they’re gonna share a bed what’s gonna happen next

.

morgana: i can have a little unrealistic romantic fantasy. as a treat

.

arthur: some of y’all weren’t asked out as a joke in middle school and it shows

.

morgana: how is everyone doing. i’ll go first i’m doing badly

.

morgana: being a kid was so fucking funny we’d just go around lying to each other’s faces constantly to impress each other one of the knights told me he was the first person to visit the sun and when i asked him what it was like to prove he was lying he said he didn’t remember because they sent him there when he was a baby and to this day the mental image of nasa launching an unsupervised baby into the sun still makes me crack up

.

elyan: do you wish you were seeing somebody

leon: a therapist

.

morgause: when you see someone from high school and they don’t recognize you that’s the exact opposite of the mortifying ordeal of being known. the gratifying relief of being forgotten

.

[texting]

morgana: you seem hard to kill

morgause: aw thank you

morgause: i haven’t been killed yet

morgana: to your knowledge

morgause: what

.

morgana: just truly bonkers how much i love lying down……..like being horizontal? Unparalleled

.

arthur: when i was younger i really thought that piranhas were going to be a bigger issue for me than they’ve turned out to be

.

morgause: filling out the depression and anxiety checkboxes at the doctors is always so sad but also very very funny

morgause: i am handed a piece of paper. i check off a box that says “every day i wish i were dead”. i hand back the paper. the paper and its contents are never again discussed.

.

morgana: unfortunately, due to several experiences in my youth, i cannot just “walk up and join the circle of people talking”, but it does sound lovely thank you

.

morgana: if california is so expensive why don’t you move to somewhere like ohio

morgause: full offense but i’d rather be dead in california than alive in ohio

morgause: ugly and uninspiring--review of ohio

.

morgana: staying up late not even fun anymore it’s just sad

.

morgause: everyone should be comfortable in their own skin :)

morgause’s brain: except for you

morgause: except for me :)

.

mithian: please peer pressure me into finishing projects

merlin: do it or you’re straight

mithian: i said peer pressure not threaten

.

morgause: the year is 2030. bakery art is so realistic, literally anything could be cake. the uncertainty has gripped the world in fear. i go to hug my wife for comfort. she is cake.

morgause: i sob in despair as i eat my cake wife. she is delicious

.

gwen: do ladies love stupid men or do they just love men who don’t exhaust every opportunity to feel smart

gwen: “i used to think that melancholy was a vegetable” that’s incredible, let’s hang out more

.

morgause: basically i accidentally listened to a song a few years ago and it led to this

.

morgana: *desperately tries to romanticise her homework*

.

uther: do i have to be pretty? is it not enough to simply be the loudest person in the room with the worst opinions

.

morgana: oh i can’t possibly study, i have allotted the next six hours to yearning vaguely

.

morgause: allow me to de-introduce myself

morgause: my name is [redacted]

.

arthur: i have no good posts today i’m sorry guys

merlin: haha “today”

.

mordred: “do we perhaps use magic because we were bullied and needed blah blah special interest blah blah” shut the FUCK up i use magic to see my anime husband’s big fucking honkers. sorry you got pantsed in front of your crush

morgana: i came here to bully people

mordred: is it because you got pantsed in front of your crush

morgana: no it’s because i’m deranged

.

mithian: pretty sure seven deadly sins is a bit excessive

mithian: just combine wrath and gluttony and make hangry

mithian: sloth and pride make Bottoming

.

morgana: despicable me ruined the word minion whenever i become a supervillain i’m just going to have to call them my homies or whatever

.

gwen: as a bisexual i am attracted to lanky boys with dark hair, girls who look like they could kill me, and anyone wearing vampire teeth

.

morgana: if someone tried to assassinate me that would make me feel so important and valued and beloved

.

gwaine: turn down for whom?

.

mithian: fact: usage of the word “the” has begun to decline. this is because as more and more people become educated, usage of the word “thoum’st” has become more common.

.

morgana, kidnapping mithian in 5x04: truth or dare? uhhh i dare you to………………………………..fall in love with me. haha i’m just joking bro………………..unless…………………………?

.

gwaine: my thoughts are like a clearance sale

gwaine: once it’s gone it’s gone

.

morgana: *pronounces “hors d’oeuvres” as “horse divorce” specifically to piss off morgause*

.

gwaine: do you prefer women or men?

leon: death

.

morgause: honestly no offense but i love falling asleep and sleeping. it’s like. ok goodnight

.

morgause: ngl it’s kinda difficult to be the moody and mysterious background character in everyone’s life when you’re quarantined at home

.

morgause: i need to get laid

morgause: --to rest. put me in a coffin, let my soul ascend

.

gwaine: it takes a lot of heart to be this stupid

gwaine: it takes real strength not to know shit about fuck

.

elyan: what’s your favorite anime?

leon: i’m a christian

.

arthur: just bought this tapeworm from etsy!

lancelot: where are you gonna keep it

arthur: :)

merlin: i don’t like this conversion very much

.

gwaine: i’m home alone with the tv repair man

gwaine: i’m no fool, there are only two possible outcomes of this scenario

gwaine: porn or murder

gwaine, an hour later: apparently there was an unforeseen third outcome where he fixes the tv and then leaves

.

morgause: well tomorrow fucking sucked

.

morgana: dark brunch

morgana: *mixes a mimosa with evil intent*

morgause: this is just what being gay is like

.

gwaine: movie idea: guy finds a stone tablet engraved with a mysterious alien language and gets caught up in a national treasure-esque adventure to decipher its meaning, only to learn that it’s just an alien “live laugh love” decoration

.

arthur: sorry i didn’t mean to open your ig story 20 seconds after you posted i’m just unemployed

.

arthur: why do you say men are objects? that’s not true and hurtful

morgana: men are on sale at the grocery store for a few dollars

OR

cenred: why do you say men are objects? that’s not true and hurtful

morgause: men are on sale at the grocery store for a few dollars

.

morgana: wow would you look at that. it’s already that time of the night where i move the stuff on my bed to my chair. can’t wait until tomorrow when i move the stuff from my chair back onto my bed

.

gwaine: hi i’m bethany with girl defined ministry and today we are going to be talking about how to stan my chemical romance in a God-honoring way

.

morgana: bottom: ,,, !!! ;;; vers: …. top: no punctuation whatsoever

morgause: tops are illiterate

.

morgause: i slept for almost 12 hours but i might still be tired so let’s go for 12 more just in case

morgana: morgause that’s a coma

morgause: sounds festive

.

mithian: i am a simple woman. i enter the kitchen. i eat four servings of bread products. i leave.

gwaine: it’s one serving if you serve all of it to yourself

mithian: i like the way you think, friend

.

gwaine: spencer from icarly and rodrick from diary of a wimpy kid are on the opposite ends of the same spectrum

elyan: the gay older brother scale

.

merlin: i found a rock :)

merlin: my troubles will soon be over

gwaine: parasite (2019) dir. bong joon ho

percival: uncut gems (2019) dir. josh and benny safdie

elyan: cain

.

morgana: social distancing is okay for me bc i’ve been touch starved since the 15th century. i’m used to it

.

mithian: fanfiction hits different when you’re gay and yearning and haven’t experienced an ounce of romance in your life

.

morgause: callout for rude baby seen at grocery store

morgause: i’m calling out a baby (approximately 12-14 months old) from the grocery store due to its rudeness. i’m guessing its age based on appearance, motor skills (atrocious) and whatnot. anyway, i smiled at this baby and it just stared at me. as soon as i began to move on, though, the baby said “no!” and started giggling when i turned back around. this happened multiple times. the baby’s actions were toxic and manipulative. the baby was also manhandling a package of dried fruit which wasn’t yet paid for (quite minor) and was just generally sitting around and not helping

.

gwen: we need to melt down all the pennies and make the statue of liberty a girlfriend

.

morgause: had a realization in a dream i just had that this isn’t real and i can just do whatever i want and so i started shrinking the face of this guy that was talking to me and then once it got real small i woke up sleep paralyzed

morgause: i was given godlike powers over the universe by realizing it’s all in my head and the first thing i did was use them to torment the nearest man

morgause: and the actual God woke me up and put be into a 5 minute timeout to lay frozen and think about what i’ve done

.

morgana: does anyone else feel an awkward tension whenever you see another person your age in the grocery store

.

gwaine: the number 87 kinda looks like a plague doctor

percival: you’ve just changed the fucking game

elyan: [|87

.

morgana: a lonely bitch...a loner...i love isolation AND detachment

.

gwaine: i will not call the judges “your honor”. in america we don’t have titles of nobility. they will get a simple “yes dude” from me

gwaine: calling big bird just “bird” because i do not respect him

.

morgause: *photo of a pizza in a bad* caught the bae sleepin

mordred: now why would you waste a perfectly good pizza :(

morgause: that “waste” happens to be my wife getting her beauty sleep. think before you speak

.

gwaine: *finishes wedding vows* don’t forget to like and subscribe

.

morgana: *is bitter but is also right*

.

morgana: how dare you not notice me when i’m ignoring you

.

morgause, killing cenred: men be like i’m bilingual i speak english and over women

.

gwaine: after i move i really wanna get a used roomba

percival: i love that you’re adopting instead of buying from a breeder

.

mordred: joking about a kink is a gateway drug into developing said kink

morgana: my kink is mental, emotional, and financial stability

morgause: unrealistic, settle for choking like normal people

.

gaius: gay people use halloween props as home decor year round

morgana: shut up shut up this black jar with a raven painted on it is holiday-neutral

.

[texting]

morgause: can you come out?

morgana: yeah gimme a minute

morgana: morgause, i’m gay

morgause: i know that. come out to the car

morgana: car, i’m gay

.

morgause: God FUCKING damnit i’m such a hopeless romantic one day someone’s gonna say “i love you” and i’m just going to let out an agonized scream so horrible that they immediately change their mind

.

gaius: i’m not wearing glasses anymore i’ve seen enough

.

morgause: sorry my battery’s on 96% i gtg

.

morgause: you hate me? wow you think you’re hot shit and original huh well i hated me first so you can go grab a number and wait your turn

.

morgana: don’t ignore me ?? i despise being ignored ?? i mean i’m ignoring like 8 people right now but still ???

.

morgana: shoutout to my favorite coping mechanism, isolation

.

morgana: the concept of physical beauty is a scam unless you’re calling me cute in which case it is valid, actually

.

merlin: oh, so when other people go outside it’s “good for their health” and “highly recommended”, it’s only when i do it that it’s a “containment breach” and a “high-level threat to public safety and security”, huh?

.

gwaine: a charming photo of young john mulaney, seemingly celebrating the kennedy assassination

merlin: princess diana wasn’t john mulaney’s first kill

.

morgause: hate when i got out in public and the public is there

morgana: it seems the public is no longer in the public

morgause: i’ve won...but at what cost?

.

morgana: girls will see a chance to commit arson and be like “sorry, i have to take this”

morgause: girls will see a building that’s not on fire and say “is anyone gonna burn that” and not wait for an answer

[mostlysignssomeportents]

#1yrago Is this the full list of US cities that have bought or considered Predpol's predictive policing services?

Predpol (previously) is a "predictive policing" company that sells police forces predictive analytics tools that take in police data about crimes and arrests and spits out guesses about where the police should go to find future crimes.

Predpol has drawn sharp criticism for algorithmic discrimination, in which data from racist policing practices are laundered through an algorithm that gives them the veneer of empirical impartiality: feeding faulty data to a predictive algorithm produces faulty analysis. "Garbage in, garbage out" is an iron law of computing that has not been repealed by machine learning techniques.

Even as Predpol and its competitors, like Palantir (previously) have expanded their operations, concerned citizens have successfully pushed for local laws requiring cities to engage in public consultation before procuring services that feed private corporations policing and surveillance data in order to direct policing operations. However, in most markets, Predpol and its competitors operate in obscurity. The cop who stopped you this week (or who didn't come to your neighborhood at all) might have been acting on orders from an AI oracle provided by Predpol to your local police, whose tax-funded revenues are a close-kept secret.

An anonymous security researcher recently contacted me with what may be a list of Predpol's customers. This researcher had seen that Predpol assigns easy-to-guess subdomains to each Predpol customer, in the form of CITYNAME.predpol.com, for example, baltimore.predpol.com.

This researcher wrote a script that combined the name of every US city and town with ".predpol.com" and checked to see whether this domain existed. The full list of cities that had Predpol domains is both short and confusing:

longbeach.predpol.com indianapolis.predpol.com hollywood.predpol.com albany.predpol.com southjordan.predpol.com berkeley.predpol.com frederick.predpol.com baltimore.predpol.com pleasanton.predpol.com modesto.predpol.com tacoma.predpol.com elmonte.predpol.com elgin.predpol.com livermore.predpol.com reading.predpol.com merced.predpol.com haverhill.predpol.com

Many of these cities have already publicly disclosed that they are using Predpol's services (Baltimore, MD; Pleasanton, CA; Modesto, CA; Tacoma, WA; El Monte, CA; Elgin, IL; Livermore, CA; Reading, PA; Merced, CA and Haverhill, MA).

Two of the remaining domains are easy to understand: berkeley.predpol.com refers to the UC Berkeley campus police, who have purchased Predpol's services (Predpol's Board of Directors includes Tom Jorde, Professor Emeritus of Law at UC Berkeley). Frederick, MD cheerfully admits that they are a Predpol customer.

The remainder are a mystery, though. None of the police departments for any of the US cities called Long Beach or Albany (there are several!) admit to using Predpol's services. The press officer for the Indianapolis, IN police department was definitive that his department wasn't a Predpol customer. I left several messages for the press officer for the South Jordan, UT police, but never heard back. The "hollywood.predpol.com" domain seems to refer to Hollywood, CA, which is under LAPD jurisdiction (the LAPD has a publicly disclosed relationship with Predpol).

Predpol itself was tight-lipped in the extreme: they initially ignored all press requests, then sent a terse "neither confirm nor deny" response to my questions about this list. They wouldn't even confirm whether the login forms at these domains were secure, despite repeated warnings from me that I would be making them public, requesting that they ensure that these forms require strong logins and passwords to avoid exposing sensitive policing data.

The list raises more questions than it answers. Does Predpol really have fewer than two dozen customers in the USA? What are we to make of the cities with subdomains who have never procured services from Predpol?

Predpol sells services to publicly funded policing organizations that make predictions about where crime will occur. Everything about this process is a secret: which police departments procure Predpol's services, what data they provide Predpol with, how Predpol arrives at its oracular pronouncements, and how much public money they receive for this service.

What we do know is that policing predictions are self-fulfilling prophecy: if the police ask everyone on a given corner to turn out their pockets, or stop and search every car going down a certain road, they will, eventually, find crime. What we don't know is whether Predpol's predictions are better at finding crime than random chance.

We also know that machine learning predictions are no better than the data used to generate their models. If the data used to train Predpol's models come from biased policing, then Predpol's predictions will be biased, too: but their machine-learning pedigree is a kind of empirical facewash that makes them seem "scientific."

(Image: Wapcaplet, CC-BY-SA)

https://boingboing.net/2018/10/30/el-monte-and-tacoma.html

[anonymoustalks]

They also didn't want me to speak Korean outside of the house because "in America you speak only English."

(6-17-20) You both like Politics.

You: hi

Stranger: Hello

You: What is something important to you?

Stranger: My job.

You: Mhm how so?

Stranger: Because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to buy a house, save money, and have dinner every night.

You: Very reasonable

You: and grounded

Stranger: Considering that I grew up low-income, it only makes sense that I skimp and save.

You: ah yeah, that helps gives perspective for sure

Stranger: All I can really say is not having food every day isn't fun.

You: Mhm did you grow up not being able to eat every day?

Stranger: Yes.

You: What was that like?

Stranger: Hell.

You: Yeah I can imagine

Stranger: The savior was USDA subsidized cheese.

You: are you us-based?

Stranger: I was. I relocated to South Korea in 2007.

You: mhm was the food insecurity in the SU or south korea?

Stranger: The US.

You: where were you specifically, if you don't mind me asking?

Stranger: Detroit until I was 8, Denver from 8-22.

You: mhm

Stranger: You couldn't pay me to move back to the US, in spite of the fact that my parents always insisted that it was better than Korea.

You: Mhm I'd love to hear anything that you're willing to share

Stranger: Well, what do you want to hear?

You: well, everything lol

You: but I guess we don't have time lol

Stranger: What parts do you want to hear?

You: I never personally experienced food insecurity

You: or the circumstances around that

You: and what your family did

You: and I guess why you moved

Stranger: Food insecurity is hell. My parents simply lived with it and ignored it.

You: as context, I'm guessing your family were immigrants?

Stranger: I moved for job security and so I wouldn't face discrimination in the US. Yes, they immigrated from Korea.

You: mhm

You: I'm not really that familiar with detroit and things, but I feel like the naive question I'm sure you get is what about food banks?

You: or other stuff

Stranger: Not a thing back in 1980s/90s Detroit outside of churches, which my parents stayed away from.

You: ahh I didn't know

You: so I'm guessing subsidized school lunches probably also weren't a thing?

Stranger: Those were, but my parents didn't apply for those until we moved to Denver.

You: sounds really rough

Stranger: They didn't apply mostly for fear of deportation

You: undocumented?

Stranger: They were documented, the documentation wasn't always fully valid.

You: ah..

You: student visa?

Stranger: Green cards.

You: mhm I guess it's just so different it's hard for me to imagine

Stranger: Needless to say, people who work on private railyards don't make much.

You: my goodness

Stranger: About 50 cents an hour back in the 80s and 90s.

You: yeah... I just can't imagine

You: how did your family end up moving to denver?

Stranger: My father's job at the railyard was replaced by a sensor and they were concerned that Detroit was becoming too unsafe.

You: mhm this was the big crime era too?

Stranger: Yes. And we lived in a housing project that was effectively where you went to buy drugs or die.

You: buy drugs or die?

Stranger: Lot of dealers, criminals, and bait apartments in there.

You: okay, was just slightly confused about the wording if they made you buy or something

Stranger: The people in the apartment next to us were dealers.

You: mhm

Stranger: The Detroit PD raided the wrong unit, not theirs.

You: .......

Stranger: And that's why I don't respect the Detroit PD.

You: yeah that's terrible

Stranger: We did get money from them after it was found that they broke the most expensive thing in the apartment.

You: it's just so hard for me to imagine what your parents went through

You: coming to the US

You: and all of this

Stranger: I can provide some more insight if you'd like.

You: anything you want to share is good

Stranger: They had this twisted perspective on American customs and holidays.

You: meaning?

Stranger: They didn't get any of them per-se "right."

You: huh

Stranger: Xmas? Get up at 5 AM and eat a pack of Twinkies. "We're going to work."

Stranger: New year's? Get up at 5 AM and eat nothing. "We're going to work"

Stranger: They also told me to not get good grades, because "Americans don't"

You: huh that's unexpected to me...

Stranger: I got all A+s on the report cards, and even skipped a lot of grades after moving to Denver.

You: mhm good for you!

Stranger: They also didn't want me to speak Korean outside of the house because "in America you speak only English."

You: I'm trying to imagine things through their eyes

Stranger: What are you effectively seeing?

You: uhh very poor, desperate, scared

Stranger: That about summed them up.

You: yeah.

Stranger: Even now, they refuse help from me.

You: mhm... that sounds kinda vaguely asian

You: are they still in the us?

Stranger: Yes.

Stranger: Still living in Denver, too.

You: what did they do in denver?

Stranger: My mother is a cashier at a Wal-Mart, and my father is a gun salesman, since he became a citizen in 2012.

You: mhm

Stranger: They did let me pay off their mortgage in 2011, though.

You: oh that's good

You: I can imagine your parents being very proud of you

You: are you an only child or with siblings?

Stranger: I'm an only child.

Stranger: I doubt they could ever afford a second.

You: right

Stranger: Hell, they were still paying down the bill from my birth until I was 10.

You: yeah asian-american poverty is just something I'm so removed from it's just I don't even know what to say

Stranger: That was back when Koreans were below Hispanics on the social ladder

You: right... I didn't realize detroit or denver had any kind of korean population

Stranger: Not really, they just ended up in those places because there were jobs.

You: mhm

You: so you went through school in denver, graduated, did college, and then moved to korea?

Stranger: I went through high school in Denver, graduated, college fast-tracked from age 14, medical school from 16-22. Then got the hell out of the US.

You: oh my goodness that's incredible

Stranger: I started high school at age 8 due to the district insisting on testing me.

You: yeah um I didn't even realize that kind of thing was possible

Stranger: It is, and its just not common

Stranger: I learned a lot from the books my parents had around the apartment.

You: yeah

Stranger: Since all that they had were my father's textbooks from college and a few legal help books.

Stranger: And operating manuals, and legal documentation.

You: mhm it just sounds like such a whirlwind of stuff to go through

You: anyhow what brings you to the politics tag?

Stranger: I like politics, always have.

You: on omegle? haha ^^

Stranger: I like most politics.

You: ^^ I guess I would have imagined that most ordinary ppl who like politics would be on reddit I guess or something

You: unless they have something strange going for them lol

Stranger: I have nothing going for me politics-wise.

You: hm, but other things?

You: sorry if I'm prying

Stranger: In the medical field, yes.

You: huh?

Stranger: I'm a general practitioner, and a tenured one at that, so I'm among the ~150 important people at the KCDC.

You: oh what I meant is that I'm just surprised someone like you would be on omegle that's all haha ^^

You: since we're pretty trashy here haha

Stranger: Nowhere near as trashy as other people I've encountered

You: mhm maybe

Stranger: Namely the Detroit police department SWAT team

You: >.<

You: so do you have a list of political issues you care about the most?

Stranger: Yeah, mostly not defunding the KCDC.

You: do you get a lot of koreans on omegle?

Stranger: No, I've never encountered another Korean.

You: oh okay

You: yeah I don't think I've ever run into anyone from east asia

You: many from india though

Stranger: In case you're wondering, the KCDC is basically Korea's healthcare provider, and disease/drug regulator.

You: yeah I googled it

You: I thought korea did very well with coronavirus testing

Stranger: We did.

You: why are they trying to defund you?

Stranger: Because they want to stop covering things that many Koreans rely on, such as vision coverage (I benefit from it), as well as coverage of OTC drugs in hospitals.

You: hmm how is there not popular backlash?

You: I thought there was a general political adage that it's easy to give benefits, but hard to repeal them

Stranger: They've kept it under wraps by putting funding changes in fine print.

You: funding charges as in...?

Stranger: Funneling the money into reserves.

You: oh okay, it might be a bit over my head ^^

Stranger: Basically, the KCDC is funded in USD, so we can buy equipment without exchange rate issues, and they view the USD as a finite recourse. Its not, since saving it depreciates the value for us long-term.

You: huuh I didn't know that at all

Stranger: Meanwhile, I have to fight with a government-paid vision provider to get my new glasses.

You: btw why did your parents dislike korea so much?

Stranger: Korea was different in the 70s and 80s. The leaders were totalitarians mostly installed by the US. The economy was garbage, and it was impossible to get a stable job outside of manufacturing or the armed forces.

You: ah okay, thanks for the summary

Stranger: They were middle class in Korea, too. And they left that all for the US.

You: yeah... I didn't realize the exchange rate was so steep back then too

Stranger: Most of the reason they were poor in the US was because of their limited English.

You: Ah okay

You: What kind of conversations do you normally get into here on omegle?

Stranger: Usually something that ends with "the US owns Korea."

You: what?

Stranger: The Republicans in the US have this twisted idea that America owns Korea.

You: huh

You: and you enjoy talking to people like that?

Stranger: No, but I like trying to talk sense into them.

You: ^^;; it sounds like quite an argument

Stranger: And its hilarious to me.

You: ah yeah, I guess people do like the amusement

Stranger: I have spat out coffee laughing at their stupidity.

You: I think people come from very different places ^^

Stranger: To some of them its a foreign concept that people can make more money in countries other than the US.

You: I think it depends in part on people's skill sets

Stranger: They also don't understand how foreign currency works, since, sometimes if they ask about my pay, I give it to them in KRW.

You: lol

Stranger: They think I'm lying because the number in KRW exceeds 350 billion

Stranger: KRW is counted in a strange manner.

You: hm? how so?

Stranger: 1,000 KRW= 1 USD (one cheap meal). 100 KRW= 10 cents (which is the same cost as a burger here), 10 KRW= 1 cent (half a bottle of cola).

Stranger: You have to know it to recognize it on site.

You: huh...

Stranger: We make western money but don't pay western prices.

You: I'm just slightly confused basically

Stranger: McDonald's is expensive here, with a meal being $8.

Stranger: McDonald's is expensive here, with a meal being $8.

Stranger: The only things that really cost western prices are, well... western things.

You: mhm right

You: I feel like cost-of-living in different places is always a little hard for me to grasp

Stranger: I find it amazing that Coke is considered the cheap beverage here and in the US

You: I have a suspicion that in many circumstances people are just buying the bottle

Stranger: Still, I have always viewed it as expensive.

You: I mean if you look at the price of a 2L bottle versus a small bottle?

Stranger: Yes, but, still, too pricey when I was young.

You: the drink itself must be inexpensive to manufacture

You: but the retail price is elevated substantially

Stranger: My parents always viewed it as "why spend a buck on a 2L when Faygo is 75 cents, we can barely afford it as is"

Stranger: Which ingrained it as being a luxury product in my mind

You: lol

You: idk it's cheaper than milk, juice... so many things

You: I feel like it must be bad for public health

Stranger: Faygo is and always has been cheaper

Stranger: Probably because of competition

You: oh we don't have them here

Stranger: Faygo is highly regionalized to Detroit.

You: not distributed in my area

Stranger: In fairness, it helps the cost when its bottled a few blocks from the grocer.

You: I guess that's true

You: but there are always discount soft drink brands too

You: although I was never pressed enough at cash to really look very hard at the difference between a dollar or like 90 cents...

Stranger: My parents had to look carefully at those prices

You: yeah

Stranger: What would be 45 minutes in the grocer for a person who can grab-and-go items would be 1-2 hours for us.

You: mhm

Stranger: Which is why I buy the same three things at the grocer, so I don't need to price compare

You: mhm I feel spoiled because I don't really do much coupon shopping

Stranger: For what its worth, they did get the one symbol of wealth that Korean-Americans viewed as a symbol of wealth at the time.

You: which was?

Stranger: Color television set.

You: oh

You: I think you are around a decade older than me so it's hard for me to compare and contrast

Stranger: I'm 35.

You: yup

Stranger: So, I have faint memories of the 1980s.

You: I was born int he 90's

Stranger: The 90s were a good time.

You: I have faint memories of the 90's lol ^^

Stranger: That was when we got a computer

You: sounds about right

Stranger: My uncle imported KDS systems to the US, so we got that for free.

You: huh

Stranger: KDS became Emachines, a company you might have heard of

You: nope!

Stranger: Your household probably didn't have to buy whatever the cheapest system at Wal-Mart was.

You: uhh I think our first computer was some form of macintosh

Stranger: Which are systems for the wealthy next to Korean imports.

You: yeah it's really interesting to look back at this stuff

Stranger: I sometimes wish I could go back in time, but then I realize that'd effectively be starting from scratch.

You: uh yeah, that doesn't sound very fun

Stranger: There's no real reason to look back on the past for me.

You: yeah I don't really look back this far normally either

You: do you still speak much english in everyday life btw?

Stranger: Yes, on a daily basis. To the point where I still sound American when I speak it.

You: Oh I didn't know that

Stranger: I have no issues with speaking either language, luckily.

You: mhm that really helps

You: how is your social life?

Stranger: Basically zero friends in Korea.

You: aww...

You: is there like a barrier?

You: being foreign or something?

Stranger: No, since I am not foreign in the eyes of either the Korean government nor the people.

You: ah, so you're just saying it's just you? ^^

Stranger: Yes.

You: introverted?

Stranger: Yes.

You: mhm I wish you the best!

Stranger: My parents weren't too hot on the idea of me ever having friends.

You: oh...

You: you're not around them anymroe!

You: seriously, are you doing okay?

Stranger: I'm doing fine.

You: okay ^^

You: I think it's different to be happy and introverted vs. unhappy and introverted, if you know what I mean

Stranger: Not to mention, after I moved to Denver, it became harder to make friends.

You: hm, why?

Stranger: I was 8 and in high school. Take a guess.

You: ah...

You: yeah that threw me for a loop

You: ordinarily I thought most school systems didn't allow their kids to skip too far for well... I guess social reasons?

You: idk if things changed or how things happen on way or another

Stranger: And being Korean in a majority hispanic school didn't help, either.

You: mhm

Stranger: Since that was basically right after the LA riots, which made Koreans and hispanics hate each other.

You: right...

Stranger: I did get bullied for that.

You: :c

Stranger: Metal lunch trays don't feel too good in the back of the head

You: that's terrible

Stranger: And neither does getting tied to a chair with an extension cord

You: I just can't imagine

You: people just...

Stranger: You'd think they'd show mercy on someone effectively half their age and size.

You: yeah

You: also for some reason I thought of denver as kind of like a progressive white place

You: but idk if that's just more recently

Stranger: That's modern Denver.

You: yeah

Stranger: Back then it was a rougher place.

You: mhm

You: I think you have so much in your past

You: it's a lot

Stranger: A lot of people do.

You: mhm

Stranger: Not everyone can have a pretty story filled with bubblegum and rainbows.

You: yeah...

You: it's just sad

You: or well, so many things that America turns a blind eye too

You: even now

You: a kind of semi-willful ignorance

You: in favor of narratives I guess

Stranger: It would've been nice if I didn't have to carry a revolver everywhere.

You: huh you were licensed to carry as a kid?

Stranger: From when I was 18.

You: mhm

Stranger: My parents made me get licensed out of pure fear.

You: mhm

You: idk if it's your generation, your family's socioeconomic status, location, or all of the above, but your story is just so much more raw and dramatic than those of other asian americans I've heard

Stranger: Probably a mix.

Stranger: My experiences are in-line with your average LA Korean in the early 90s.

You: right

You: I just didn't know the differences could be so stark through one or two generations

Stranger: Well, remember, a riot happened that moved the Koreans up the ladder.

You: yeah

You: or maybe there's a rift between asian americans who were hear longer versus the large influx that came in the 90s

Stranger: Probably that, since not a lot came in the 80s.

You: yeah

Stranger: I remember the first time I visited Korea, it was like a different planet.

You: mhm

You: (not that I have any idea lol XD)

Stranger: My uncle took me to Seoul in 1995, which was when I realized that Korea wasn't what my parents made it out to be (they made it out to effectively be a 3rd world country).

You: mhm

Stranger: I'd say it was that visit that made me want to leave the US

You: you went through a lot

Stranger: I do consider some of it to be a lot.

You: have you ever thought about writing it up?

You: idk assembling it into a narrative of some kind?

Stranger: I have, but I'm not comfortable with it being on paper beyond legal documents.

You: mhm okay yeah

Stranger: For example, in the file cabinet next to me I have every single even slightly legal document from when I was born until I was 30.

You: mhm... I should do a better job of getting my paperwork together

Stranger: Just opening it, there's three folders of medical papers.

You: hospital?

Stranger: No, at home. The folders even include every payment on every medical bill from back then.

You: ah I meant, you were hospitalized often?

Stranger: No. Mostly just payments from my birth, as well as vision.

You: mhm

Stranger: The vision papers are expansive.

You: right

Stranger: Considering that I've needed to wear glasses since I was 2.

You: what??

Stranger: Effectively, my vision is garbage, and has been ever since.

You: so it's getting really late for me, but I wanted to thank you for sharing everything that you did ^^

Stranger: Have a nice night.

You: thank you!

You: best of luck with everything and I hope you're able to make more friends!

Stranger has disconnected.

[innuendostudios]

We hit 200k subscribers! Holy heck! Here’s a small, celebratory video collecting my favorite bits and pieces that got cut from other videos.

If you like this, or the videos these bits were removed from, consider backing me on Patreon.

Transcript below the cut.

The Artist is Absent

If I tell you about what I did yesterday, you do what? You take a bunch of sights, sounds, tastes, smells from your experience and stick them together in your head into a complex picture of my experience? Well, that’s what I’m doing when I use my memory. I don’t have a prefab image of what’s happened to me in my life that I break down into pieces when I describe it to you; the act of remembering is building up from pieces, reconstructing reality from a mass of tiny sensations, and all a memory is is a set of instructions for which ones to assemble and how. This act is performed every time a thing is remembered. And the difference between my memory and your imagination is that, having lived it, I have way more sense memories than I could ever communicate, and the knowledge that mine actually happened to me. Those are really the only differences; you could characterize memory as “imagining things that actually happened,” or imagination as “remembering things that didn’t.”

The Artist is Absent 2

OK, quickie sidebar on what the meaning of “meaning” is in this context. I don’t want anyone to trip over this term and think I’m saying all art is part of some grand design, like I’m going to argue The Avengers is an allegory for the Bay of Pigs or something. I’m not using “meaning” in a lofty sense. If you wanna argue that the only substance to The Avengers is “it’s fun,” that’s cool. That’s still a meaning, but it’s perfectly valid if that’s all there is to it.

...I mean, that’s not all there is to it, it’s also about family, and about how being in a family with people who are different from you can make you a better person. It can teach you the value of selflessness, or the value of compassion over mercenary coldness, or the value of accepting yourself and your flaws, or help you fit your idealism into the modern world, or… deliver exposition, because Thor doesn’t have an arc in this movie.

But you see my point! All I mean by “meaning” is that there is an answer to the question, “Why does this exist?” If someone made it, they had to have a reason, anything from “I wanted to change the world” to “I wanted to make money” to “I was bored.” Those aren’t all great answers, but they’re answers.

Also, all creators exist within their culture, which means their works are products of that culture, and their contents will either reflect or differ from that culture’s values. Like, the fact that all the central characters in The Avengers save one are white, and all save one are men, means something. We can debate the whats and wherefores of that meaning and how much that meaning matters, but since things like race, gender, the military, and New York City, mean things to our society, they can’t not mean things in our movies.

And, let’s be honest: following The Avengers, Tony has PTSD from being a rescue worker during Something Very Bad that Happened in New York, and SHIELD dramatically expands the surveillance state and employs Cap in fighting terrorist threats, so, while not the Bay of Pigs, The Battle of New York is doing work as a 9/11 allegory. Both of these movies have been praised for exactly that.

But, let’s follow through: in our 9/11 allegory, the US government could not have possibly predicted nor prevented the bad Guys’ invasion, America is wholly innocent and has had no political or social impact on the Bad Guys, the Bad Guys are literally inhuman, and any amount of violence against them is justified, up to and including the Good Guys nuking them.

But whatever.

Bringing Back What’s Stolen

OK. A lot of psychoanalytic film writing comes from the 70’s, 80’s, and early 90’s, including gender analysis of horror films, and it can read a little Freudian: gender essentialist, heteronormative, and obsessed with the D. “Does this empowered woman look feminine? Well, she’s holding a gun, and I’ve got news for you: guns are penises. She’s smoking a cigarette, and cigarettes are penises. She’s wearing high heels, and high heels are penises. That slit in her dress that shows off her long legs? [Long Legs Are Penises]”

It’s a bit Second Wave-y. And not completely off-base! Like, I get it, Laura, sometimes a knife is a dick. (Symbolically, I mean.) But sometimes a stiletto is just a stiletto.

Bringing Back What’s Stolen 2

I want to stress that a trope does not define a character, and does not, alone, make her or the movie around her bad. I love a number of the characters I’ve cited. But when a movie, even a great movie, tells me, “Don’t worry, this woman is violent, but we’re not saying women at large are as strong or violent as men,” I feel condescended to. The lengths some movies go to soothe my ego, like I’m a seven-year-old who’s going to throw his toys against the wall, strike me as a big waste of time that could be spent on the more interesting parts of the movie. I’ll take another shootout any day.

WSGT3

Imagine you’re called onstage to do a cold reading of a two-person scene from a play you’ve never read. You don’t know the story, the characters, or even the stage directions. And the director hands out only one script to the other actor. You will have to improvise all your lines. The other actor knows the premise, knows the story, but they still need you to make the scene work. The person who knows what happens is trying to signal everything you need to you without straying from the script, while you attempt to discover your role in the story and perform it at the same time. That is the attention that must be paid. And, together, you try to make a story.

This is an exercise my acting teacher used to do with us, to get us listening to the other actors in a scene instead of just waiting for our cues. And this is how an adventure game feels.

DOOM

It was 1993, and we all knew about DOOM. It had a reputation. Many of us learned it existed with the same breath that forbid from playing it, in the same way we were forbidden from watching Beavis & Butt-head or Terminator 2. We didn’t have those kinds of parents. But most of us knew someone who did.

We came to learn three things about DOOM: that was intended for grown-ups, that our access to it was scarce, and that having not played meant getting teased by those who had. Some of us never asked if playing it interested us, we simply knew playing it was important.

And when we played - and we did play, on whatever computer someone had secreted the shareware version onto - it was like nothing we’d ever seen before. Amazing and terrifying, in the way that a kid alone in the house watching their first skin flick finds it shocking, because half-naked women and simulated sex are so far outside their limited experience. We had never seen anything close to this, and it unsettled us at first. But we played.

The titillation of an art student drawing a nude model lasts for the few moments between the dropping of the robe and the touching of charcoal to paper. Then nakedness becomes just another series of lines to render. We acclimated. When we fired our shotguns into an enemy, soon enough all we saw was an obstacle neutralized. We saw a series of lines elegantly intersecting a series of boxes. That’s not what our parents saw. Our parents saw an imp howling in pain as its ribcage burst from its chest.

And so part of playing DOOM became learning how to defend it. “I play DOOM for the gameplay” became a generation’s “I read Playboy for the articles.” When we got caught, we tried to explain the the lines and the boxes: The bullet wounds were just there to let you know when you’d hit your target. The space marine’s bleeding face was just there to tell at a glance how your health was doing. The enemies were Satanic hellspawn just to make it perfectly clear their function was to be dispatched by your shotgun. What we wouldn’t say was that all these things could be accomplished through other means, without blood, but we didn’t want to play Chex Quest.

What we couldn’t put into words, most especially under threat of punishment, was that, while the blood and gore wasn’t why we wanted to keep playing, it was usually why we sat down in the first place. DOOM was good, but being good wasn’t what made it important; it was important because it was illicit. Yes, we were kids, and we probably would play a game that offered us nothing but brutal violence, but if the lines didn’t pleasingly intersect the boxes we would soon stop playing. DOOM is loved today because there was more to it than that. Blood was captivating, but it wasn’t enough - we sat down, but we did not stay, for blood alone. What our parents could rarely put into words was that us no longer seeing the blood was part of what worried them.

Indivisible Talk

These are some fundamentals I want you to keep in mind as we look at the Right.

Everybody’s people. When I talk about the difference between the Right and the Left, I’m not saying “the Right does this and the Left does that.” I’m talking about things all humans do, and the difference between the Right and the Left is a matter of scale and proportion. If I say “the Left values data over gut feelings” or “the Right values family over extended community,” obviously everyone values all of those things. It’s a question of how they’re prioritized. But small differences in our priorities can lead to dramatically different worldviews. So when I say “the Right does X,” don’t get too hung up on whether the Left also sometimes does X, but try think about how it manifests on the Right versus the Left and what those differences between them mean.

People vote their beliefs, not their self-interest. The Left tends to ask things like, “Why would working-class voters who depend on Obamacare vote for the party that wants to repeal Obamacare? They must have been lied to.” And I won’t deny that a lot of lies were involved, but it’s a mistake to think people only vote for what’s good for them. It seems like this should be obvious; I mean, why do I vote to have my taxes raised to pay for someone else’s education, someone else’s food stamps? We tend to answer that by arguing it is in my self-interest, that a well-fed and well-educated population leads to a stronger economy and a richer culture, and that this will trickle down to make my life better in the long run, and I could make that case, but, really, that’s not why I do it. I believe in education, I believe in fighting poverty, and if you proved to me that neither would ever benefit me personally, I would still fight for them, because it’s the right thing to do. So when someone across the political spectrum does something that confuses us, it may be true that they are misinformed, but we can’t assume that simply correcting them will change their minds. Right or wrong, they are acting in accordance with their beliefs, they trust misinformation because it aligns with those beliefs, and, if you don’t understand what those beliefs are, you’re going to misdiagnose the problem.

Tolerance and sectarianism. A tolerant view of society is the melting pot, the idea that Real America is the combination of many different walks of life, all of which are valid and deserving of the same rights. A sectarian view thinks of one walk of life (usually one’s own) as the Real America, and this walk of life is one society should trend towards: that America is a Christian nation, English should be the national language, or the ideal family as nuclear and heterosexual. I think it’s obvious which ways the Parties lean.

But, again, these are human traits. Everyone is balancing both these impulses every day. And I don’t want us to split these into “tolerant good, in-groups bad.” Democrats who over-commit to the melting pot run into the Karl Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance: that, if you treat every group as equally valid, including Nazis, fascists, and the Klan, you create a less tolerant society. And treating one group as a greater priority than others is logical when that group is persecuted; there is a degree to which all minority activism is defending one’s family. So it’s a matter of knowing when to be tolerant and when to be familial, and coalition-building is all about being both at the same time.

End

Um. So. I’m not sure how to end this. Uh. 200k subs! Wow! I find that number very humbling. Thank you all so much. And back me on Patreon, if you want to and if you haven’t already. There’ll be a proper video soon. Uh. What do people usually do in these things, they do Q&A’s, right? People ask you “what’s your favorite movie, book, game, comic, anime, musical, poem, album, joke”? I’ve been wondering what it says about me that all my answers would be things I experienced in my 20s, or earlier. Is it that I don’t love things the way I used to? Or is it just that, the more art you experience, the harder it is to be blown away? Like, something can be better than anything I’ve seen before, but it can’t shatter the record the way it could when I was younger. But I’m not making a video essay about that, so: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Motion of Light in Water by Samuel R. Delany, LOOM, Sandman, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, A Woman is Talking to Death by Judy Grahn, a three-way tie between In The Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel, Lincoln by They Might Be Giants, and Onomatopoeia by Jonny 5, and the lemon cookie joke.

[harrypotterfirsttime]

JK Rowling’s essay about why she’s a TERF: Abbreviated

My last post was LONG, much longer than I’d intended, and difficult to read on tumblr I’m sure (if anybody would like it sent as a pdf please let me know). So I’m making a shorter post and only including the paragraphs that I responded to with links to a source, for people who are more interested in the places where JK Rowling provably lied in her essay.

“For people who don’t know: last December I tweeted my support for Maya Forstater, a tax specialist who’d lost her job for what were deemed ‘transphobic’ tweets. She took her case to an employment tribunal, asking the judge to rule on whether a philosophical belief that sex is determined by biology is protected in law. Judge Tayler ruled that it wasn’t.”

First of all, Maya didn’t lose her job. Her contract was simply not renewed by her workplace, something that she was not entitled to under any law. JK Rowling also continues to falsely assert that Maya’s belief was that ‘sex is determined biology’, when she actually asserted that under no circumstances is a trans woman a woman nor a trans man a man, and the judge ruled that it did not fit all five necessary limbs to be a philosophical belief (it actually only failed the last one). The judge ruled that the ‘under no circumstances’ part of her assertion was absolutist, and that is what ultimately failed the fifth limb. [source]

“All the time I’ve been researching and learning, accusations and threats from trans activists have been bubbling in my Twitter timeline. This was initially triggered by a ‘like’. When I started taking an interest in gender identity and transgender matters, I began screenshotting comments that interested me, as a way of reminding myself what I might want to research later. On one occasion, I absent-mindedly ‘liked’ instead of screenshotting. That single ‘like’ was deemed evidence of wrongthink, and a persistent low level of harassment began.”

First off, this goes against the statement a spokesperson made for her when this happened, stating that she had a ‘clumsy middle-aged moment’ and liked the tweet by ‘holding her phone incorrectly’. The tweet she liked also had no content that she could research, it was a baseless claim that men in dresses get more solidarity than cis women (which I won’t even dive into, we have so much more to cover). [source] I also won’t dive into the use of ‘wrongthink’ as if we are all characters in George Orwell’s 1984, simply because nobody is controlling her speech, she is simply facing consequences for the shit she chooses to fling at the wall.

“I mention all this only to explain that I knew perfectly well what was going to happen when I supported Maya. I must have been on my fourth or fifth cancellation by then. I expected the threats of violence, to be told I was literally killing trans people with my hate, to be called cunt and bitch and, of course, for my books to be burned, although one particularly abusive man told me he’d composted them.”

Can we salute the man who decided to tell JK Rowling that he composted her books, because that’s absolutely hilarious. But really, I just want to point out that no matter how many threats of violence JK Rowling thinks she is getting, transgender people are subjected to much more abuse both online and in real life, and it affects their wellbeing much more directly than simply being called a cunt or a bitch on twitter. [source] While JK Rowling thankfully isn’t killing trans people, she’s disappointing so many of her LGBT+ fans who looked up to her and found comfort during their childhood in her books that encouraged people to be brave and be themselves.

“What I didn’t expect in the aftermath of my cancellation was the avalanche of emails and letters that came showering down upon me, the overwhelming majority of which were positive, grateful and supportive. They came from a cross-section of kind, empathetic and intelligent people, some of them working in fields dealing with gender dysphoria and trans people, who’re all deeply concerned about the way a socio-political concept is influencing politics, medical practice and safeguarding. They’re worried about the dangers to young people, gay people and about the erosion of women’s and girl’s rights. Above all, they’re worried about a climate of fear that serves nobody – least of all trans youth – well.”

I’ll tackle this paragraph from top to bottom. Firstly, the reason you believe the overwhemling majority of people supported you is because many of those who don’t (myself included, until now) simply rolled their eyes and ignored you, because you are not worth our time. We have lives to live that are unconcerned with your bigotry. Second, I hope those people who were working in fields dealing with gender dysphoria and trans people have since left their jobs, because they have no business serving a community who they secretly harbour unsupportive ideologies about. And finally, the idea of supporting and helping trans people (specifically trans youth) is DANGEROUS to young people, gay people, and women’s and girls’ rights is simply false. No women’s rights have been repealed in favour of trans people’s rights (mainly because trans women continue to shockingly be women). In fact, trans youth with parents who are very supportive and affirming show a statistically significantly lower rate of both depressive symptoms and suicide attempts. [source] [specific graph]

“If you didn’t already know – and why should you? – ‘TERF’ is an acronym coined by trans activists, which stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. In practice, a huge and diverse cross-section of women are currently being called TERFs and the vast majority have never been radical feminists. Examples of so-called TERFs range from the mother of a gay child who was afraid their child wanted to transition to escape homophobic bullying, to a hitherto totally unfeminist older lady who’s vowed never to visit Marks & Spencer again because they’re allowing any man who says they identify as a woman into the women’s changing rooms. Ironically, radical feminists aren’t even trans-exclusionary – they include trans men in their feminism, because they were born women.”

The first two sentences in this paragraph are true. Viv Smythe, a trans inclusive cis radfem, is credited with coining the term TERF to describe her fellow radical feminists who are ‘unwilling to recognize trans women as sisters’. It has also become widely used to describe feminists who exclude trans women from their feminism, even if they are not radfems. [source] I don’t care about who has been called a TERF, all I need to know is that they are transphobes, which they should feel equally disgusted at the fact their behaviour warrants the label. Trans men do not want to be included in radical feminism because we were ‘born women’, and JK Rowling including this as if it is an excuse is appalling. Trans men are not women, therefore we do not appreciate radfems claiming to support us based on their obsession with what genitals we were born with.

“The fourth is where things start to get truly personal. I’m concerned about the huge explosion in young women wishing to transition and also about the increasing numbers who seem to be detransitioning (returning to their original sex), because they regret taking steps that have, in some cases, altered their bodies irrevocably, and taken away their fertility. Some say they decided to transition after realising they were same-sex attracted, and that transitioning was partly driven by homophobia, either in society or in their families.”

There is a lot to unpack in this paragraph. And I don’t have the room in this already much too long post to dive into detransitioning, so I’ll say this: it sucks that some people transition only to realize they shouldn’t have. But these people are a staggering minority of people who do transition, and there is no external person they can blame for believing them when they relay their symptoms (as doctors are supposed to do) and acting accordingly, with the patient’s consent. The issues I have here are the language JK Rowling uses to say young women are transitioning, purposefully misgendering trans masculine people. And implying that people are transitioning because they are gay, because their families or society push them to not be gay and instead transition, is absolutely laughable. Studies have already shown that society as a whole is much less accepting of transgender people than they are of gay people and lesbians. [source]

“Most people probably aren’t aware – I certainly wasn’t, until I started researching this issue properly – that ten years ago, the majority of people wanting to transition to the opposite sex were male. That ratio has now reversed. The UK has experienced a 4400% increase in girls being referred for transitioning treatment. Autistic girls are hugely overrepresented in their numbers.”

There are a number of factors that could have led to such an increase in referrals, and no studies have a definitive answer, though most speculate that the increase in acceptance and visibility of trans people is likely a major contributor. [source] Additionally, I personally believe that more trans women seeked transition years ago because it was impossible to be accepted as a trans woman without fully medically transitioning, whereas trans men could get by without transitioning and simply presenting as their gender. Now that transition is more acceptable and available, trans men do not need to hold themselves back from transitioning, but unfortunately, with more visibility has come more vitriol that is specifically aimed at trans women, and this could discourage them from transitioning or coming out at all. I won’t dignify the statement about autism in afab trans people being prevalent other than saying that cis people can be autistic, trans people can be autistic, and implying that neuro-atypical people cannot make informed decisions about their bodies and healthcare is abhorrent.

“The same phenomenon has been seen in the US. In 2018,  American physician and researcher Lisa Littman set out to explore it. In an interview, she said:

‘Parents online were describing a very unusual pattern of transgender-identification where multiple friends and even entire friend groups became transgender-identified at the same time. I would have been remiss had I not considered social contagion and peer influences as potential factors.’

Littman mentioned Tumblr, Reddit, Instagram and YouTube as contributing factors to Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, where she believes that in the realm of transgender identification ‘youth have created particularly insular echo chambers.’”

Lisa Littman’s study can be read here. There are a multitude of issues with this study, and many big names in psychology and gender studies have spoken up about the issues in her conclusions and in the methods to begin with, which are unscientific and deeply flawed. [source] The biggest flaw, in my opinion, is that the study interviews parents of trans youth as opposed to the trans youth themselves, and takes the parents’ limited knowledge of their child’s inner thoughts and experience as fact without consulting the trans person at all. Additionally, recruitment for the study was mainly done through anti-trans organizations. All of this information is available in the original study and in the rebuttal. Because of this, I cannot take anybody who cites Lisa Littman or her study seriously, because it is not credible whatsoever.

“When I read about the theory of gender identity, I remember how mentally sexless I felt in youth. I remember Colette’s description of herself as a ‘mental hermaphrodite’ and Simone de Beauvoir’s words: ‘It is perfectly natural for the future woman to feel indignant at the limitations posed upon her by her sex. The real question is not why she should reject them: the problem is rather to understand why she accepts them.’”

More people than JK Rowling is probably aware of feel ‘mentally sexless’ in youth, because they have no crippling discomfort regarding their gender identity, and either do not feel pressure to prescribe to gender stereotypical behaviours or actively rebel against it. According to brain studies, everyone is technically a ‘mental hermaphrodite’ because there remains to be no such thing as a male brain or female brain. [source]

“I want to be very clear here: I know transition will be a solution for some gender dysphoric people, although I’m also aware through extensive research that studies have consistently shown that between 60-90% of gender dysphoric teens will grow out of their dysphoria. Again and again I’ve been told to ‘just meet some trans people.’ I have: in addition to a few younger people, who were all adorable, I happen to know a self-described transsexual woman who’s older than I am and wonderful. Although she’s open about her past as a gay man, I’ve always found it hard to think of her as anything other than a woman, and I believe (and certainly hope) she’s completely happy to have transitioned. Being older, though, she went through a long and rigorous process of evaluation, psychotherapy and staged transformation. The current explosion of trans activism is urging a removal of almost all the robust systems through which candidates for sex reassignment were once required to pass. A man who intends to have no surgery and take no hormones may now secure himself a Gender Recognition Certificate and be a woman in the sight of the law. Many people aren’t aware of this.”

First of all, the number of kids who “desist” from their gender dysphoria are not reliable. Mainly because the methods in these studies are not robust (ie one study defined gender dysphoria as exhibiting any behaviour that was not typical of their gender, such as boys playing with barbies and girls playing with monster trucks; another study classified subjects that did not return to the clinic and did not follow up as desisters without confirming). [source] Additionally, studying children who do exhibit true gender dysphoria, the main factor determining whether it will persist or desist seems to be the intensity, and not at all related to peer relations. [source] Trans people wishing to transition medically may no longer need to subject themselves to extensive and unnecessary therapy to convince medical professionals that they are who they say they are, but they still need to wait on very long lists for our turn to access hormone replacement therapy and surgeries, and can spend all of that time being sure that we are indeed trans and want these medical treatments. JK Rowling is also purposefully misreporting facts in regard to Gender Recognition Certificates. In order to get one, one must be over 18, have lived as their true gender for at least 2 full years, and provide two medical reports (one from a gender specialist and another from a general practitioner) citing that they have gender dysphoria. If they have not had any medical transitional treatments, the medical reports must state whether they are waiting for them or why they are not pursuing any, in direct contradiction of JK Rowling’s assertion that any man can get this certificate. [source]

“I believe the majority of trans-identified people not only pose zero threat to others, but are vulnerable for all the reasons I’ve outlined. Trans people need and deserve protection. Like women, they’re most likely to be killed by sexual partners. Trans women who work in the sex industry, particularly trans women of colour, are at particular risk. Like every other domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor I know, I feel nothing but empathy and solidarity with trans women who’ve been abused by men.

So I want trans women to be safe. At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe. When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman – and, as I’ve said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones – then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside. That is the simple truth.”

‘Natal girls and women’ is another transphobic dog whistle. There is a non-offensive way to say this, which I am sure if JK Rowling has done all the reading she has claimed to do, she must have stumbled upon the word ‘cisgender’ at some point. It effectively communicates the same information without alienating trans people and implying they are less than cis women. Trans women are not ‘men who believe or feel like women’, and this long standing myth that cis men will use the guise of being a trans woman to gain access to public bathrooms and changerooms has been thoroughly debunked, because trans women have been using women’s bathrooms and changerooms for years with no issues. [source] And scroll up for the claim that Gender Confirmation Certificates are given out to any man who decides to be a woman for a day above, this is just more misinformation, no ‘simple truth’.

“On Saturday morning, I read that the Scottish government is proceeding with its controversial gender recognition plans, which will in effect mean that all a man needs to ‘become a woman’ is to say he’s one. To use a very contemporary word, I was ‘triggered’. Ground down by the relentless attacks from trans activists on social media, when I was only there to give children feedback about pictures they’d drawn for my book under lockdown, I spent much of Saturday in a very dark place inside my head, as memories of a serious sexual assault I suffered in my twenties recurred on a loop. That assault happened at a time and in a space where I was vulnerable, and a man capitalised on an opportunity.  I couldn’t shut out those memories and I was finding it hard to contain my anger and disappointment about the way I believe my government is playing fast and loose with womens and girls’ safety.”

First of all, JK Rowling is blatantly lying. The Gender Recognition Act Reform has been completely shelved by the Scottish government in light if the more pressing need to fight the coronavirus on April 1st, and I cannot find any updates on this being considered by the government. [source] The only trans related news out of Scotland I can find is that on June 5th, the Scottish government included trans women in the definition of women in guidance for school boards, which will have none of the effects that JK Rowling is fear mongering about. [source] Again, I am upset to know that JK Rowling is a survivor, but she is using this revelation as a weapon to make people fear that it will happen to others as a result of trans people gaining access to the same public spaces as their cis counterparts. Women’s and girls’ safety is NOT being put at risk by trans people using a bathroom or changeroom.

[aspiringauthorintraining]

Magizoologist-in-Training #1

Magizoologist-in-Training #1

“I told you to go back to bed (Y/N).”

“And I told you that you can’t make me.” She retorted, instead paying attention to the Kelpie habitat in front of her.

“I don’t want you to get your hand bitten off too.” He stopped her feeding, making her look clearly at him. Bunty had left early for the day after she tried feeding the Kelpie by herself.

“You know I’m his favorite.” She looked at him pointed. “If anything, I should be worried about him biting your hand off.” And before he could utter another word, she took off her long cardigan, leaving her in a tank top and slacks. Newt turned around blushing, and failed to stop her from plunging into the water. 

He remembered the day he met her for the first time. Strands of her hair stuck out from her pony tail as she approached him out of breath. Half of her face was covered in a large scarf, and the other half was pink from the harsh winter winds. They had communicated through owls before, but it was the first time they met face to face. She had persistently asked the magizoologist, hoping to assist him in caring for the animals and learning about the different magic species on the way. She was very interested in the care of magical creatures and who better to learn from than Newton Scamander himself. It didn’t hurt to have Professor Dumbledore to owl him a letter of recommendation for her. After months of letters back and forth, Newt finally agreed to take her on as his assistant and arranged to meet at his next stop after New York. 

They eventually returned back to London, where Newt was immediately given notice of his travel ban. But it wasn’t too hard for the pair, as they had rescued many creatures on their travels and spent most of the day caring for them.

 With so much time spent together, they became close friends. Newt wasn’t sure what kind of person, other than persistent, (Y/N) was, and he was happy to have found out she was more of a homebody like him. Although, he did think she was much more stubborn than he was. 

And with their close friendship and the help of the very descriptive wizard papers, (Y/N) knew pretty well what had transpired in New York. Newt regretted going into detail about the events because of her constant teasing about Tina and him, once she found out his feelings for the auror. What Newt hadn’t noticed, was that the teasing had gradually stopped to the point he was the first one to bring up the topic of the auror.

Returning from his thoughts, Newt walked up the set of stairs to see the kelpie neighing contently and rub up against (Y/N)’s wet frame. She threw him a thankful smile as he cast a drying spell on her clothes. 

“So, any exciting news? ” She asked, petting the kelpie with adoration. “Did the meeting with the council go well? Did they repeal your travel ban?”

“Credence is alive.” He responded, making her pause. Newt had told her he had a feeling they were wanting to talk to him again about the events in New York. 

“Where is he? I thought he died after New York.” Her brows furrowed in confusion, slightly worried.

“He’s in Paris apparently, trying to find his family. And they wanted me to find and kill him.” He fisted tightly around the bucket he was holding, out of frustration. 

(Y/N) couldn’t understand the Ministry. Yes, Credence may be dangerous, but it was because of Grindelwald and his manipulation on the boy. And since Credence did not choose the path of destruction and wasn’t ‘evil’, the Ministry would be asking Newt to take an innocent life. 

The kelpie, satisfied at her petting, neighed happily at (Y/N) before diving back into the depths of its water. Absentmindedly she she started out into the water, asking, “Why are they trying to kill the poor boy, and why ask you out of all people? Your response should be obvious, no?.”

Newt had wondered the same thing coming back from the meeting. “Well, my brother thought having the council ask me in person would change my mind somehow.” He then thought back to Leta. Perhaps his brother also thought her presence could persuade him.

“So how is she?” she mumbled, trying to sound nonchalant. She wasn’t sure what her feelings were to the man in front of her, yet. After the news of the travel ban, and living in the same house (different beds of course), she wasn’t too keen on bringing up Tina or Leta. Not that she had ill feelings towards them, but the look on Newt’s face when she brought up either name began to bring her mood down. 

“I suppose she’s doing well.” She winced at his voice laced with small sadness. Newt didn’t delve deep into his friendship with his soon to be sister-in-law, back at Hogwarts, but it wasn’t hard to figure out the details of the parts unspoken. 

Personally, she didn’t know the woman well enough to have an opinion. But if she were to form one, based on the anecdotes from Newt and the recent engagement in the papers, she wasn’t too fond of the Lestrange. She imagined that Leta knew of Newt’s feelings for her, and in turn she probably had feelings for him as well. And if both were to be true, it wasn’t the smartest decision to be engaged to his brother. But she was just an outsider looking in on their complicated relationship. Newt didn’t need to have her two cents on the matter. 

Newt’s following words were brought to her attention “-was being followed.” 

“Wait, what? Why would they? You already turned down their generous offer.” Sarcasm dripping from her voice. 

“Well, perhaps it had to do with the impromptu meeting with Dumbledore. He would like for me to go as well, although for an entirely different reason. He wants me to go save Credence.”

Her ears perked up at the mention of Dumbledore. “You have to go then. You have Professor Dumbledore’s stamp of approval.” She paused before adding, “And as your right-hand woman, I obviously have to go along with you!” She exclaimed, her mind already wandering off, making a list of what needed to be done before they could leave. 

“(Y/N), I can’t go. And you definitely are not going.” He returned back to counting all the baby nifflers to make sure none of them had escaped again. 

“And why not? A ban has never stopped you before.” Crossing her arms over her chest she stood in objection to Newt’s response.

“I don’t choose sides. If I were to go to Paris, I would have to eventually choose a side. I cannot do that.” 

“Newt, I love that you like to remain neutral and be a peacekeeper. But we can’t just do nothing!” She raised her voice a little at him, getting worked up at his explanation. “One side wants to eradicate him. The other wants to use him as a pawn. Going to Paris and trying to save Credence is not choosing either side. We have the opportunity to stop this right now, and I, for one, can’t do nothing. If we don’t, people are going to die.” Newt shook his head at her logic. 

But before it could turn into a huge dispute in front of the niffler cage, a crash sounded upstairs and both looked to each other in confusion.

“Were you expecting someone?” she asked.

“Not at all.”

*(A/N: I wrote this story as a fanfic with an oc rather than an imagine. So if it sounds a little weird in places it might just be that I just went through the story and replaced my oc’s name is (Y/N). Also, let me know if you want the next part! Idk if anyone reads my stuff so.)

[msbeccieboo]

Arrow 7x15 brain dump

Oh my gosh this episode was an absolute gift!!  Especially after the news we got last week, this fluffy beast of an episode could not have come at a better time (for me, at least)!  I’m not sure if part of the reason I enjoyed it so much was that we didn’t really see it coming?  I thought it would be sort of a filler episode that we typically get around this point in a season, that the OTA snippets we saw in the trailer would be about it, but boy was I wrong hahaha!!  I am still a mess!  There is so much to unpack here, I can’t form fully cohesive thoughts still, and this is shaping up to be another whopper, sorry 😬😬😬….

Olicity

Fresh off the pregnancy reveal to Oliver from last week, our ship is still a-sailing!! The heart eyes are back, the eye contact full-stop is back, the supportiveness (”We’re a team, too” “Always”😭😭😭) , the united front.  The little touches are getting there (we’re working up to that sex scene, I can feel it 🤞🤞🤞).  Oliver even looks better in this episode!!  Now, this could be the SCPD-issue tight t-shirt (it’s certainly not the hair), or just his more all-round peaceful demeanour that he seems to have achieved through baby/Felicity joy.

Source:plotbunnyshipper

Continued below the cut.

We got so much Olicity this week!  Multiple times! Olicity, all the time!  The first proper Olicity scene, has Oliver being all Zen-like over the SCPD set-up, meanwhile, Felicity already knows it’s gonna be a shit show.  Our girl is a genius, what more needs to be said? Turns out Oliver is so gung-ho with the SCPD because he wants to do everything he can to make their city a safe place for “our baby” (complete with little adorable smile) HCOJIDNFJKDNVJBDBV!!! This scene also has Oliver offering to make food for our starving/nauseous pregnant Felicity (squeeeee) and a DOUBLE KISS!!!!

Source: oliverxfelicity

Then we got a scene with an increasingly-frustrated Oliver (the Zen didn’t last too long) over the aforementioned inevitable SCPD shit show.  Where Felicity got to give a pep-talk resulting in this delightful exchange:

Source: oliverxfelicity

We got the eyes, the compliments, THE MINT CHIP!!  Scenes out of fanfic have arrived people!!  We see that Felicity has been busy getting the Arrow Cave back up and running, and we get some quality Green Arrow/Overwatch comms action too!!

Then, we get the absolute heart-warming/breaking scene at the end of the episode, which again the fandom could have written for us!!  Felicity is adorably checking out her non-existent bump, asking Oliver if she’s showing, to which he wisely says no 😂  Then they talk about baby names!!  Who would have thought this day would come??!?!!  Oliver is adorable in offering up the name Mia, as many predicted, in tribute to Moira.  I loved how Felicity had a far-away look in her eye, describing the name as “sweet and fiery” (well we got fiery, and a little bit of sweet haha).  Oliver just made me weep in his earnestness and sincerity here; all he wants is to make his children’s lives better than his has been. 

Source:olicitygifs

Then they lament how the children will “always have each other and they’ll always have us”.  Well if that didn’t shoot me straight in the gut!!  Because we have seen the future and 😭😭😭 *ugly sobbing ensues*.

Flash Forwards

These just keep getting better and better.  I know they’re still a bit divisive, but I’m seeing more and more people squeeing along with the likes of me at them haha!!  This week focused entirely on William and Mia (YAAAASSSS), and sees them at the Star City Bazaar doing a spot of Antique shopping, namely looking for a cassette player to play their “old tape from the 80s” 😂😂😂. Wow, way to make me feel ancient lol.  Will being the naïve cupcake that he is, bungles the transaction leaving Mia to go and beat up the vendor.  I loved seeing William hold her back, hilarious!  SO MUCH OLIVER!!  This is something Will tells her after, and it absolutely devastated me (and Mia, by the looks of her reaction) that she didn’t know the iconic “You have failed this city” line.  How is this not a thing of legend in Star City???  The answer to that hurts me too much so I will skip over for now!

Source: oliverxfelicity

Anyway, thanks to William’s techy genius (“like, literally” 😍 he is such a mini Felicity), they manage to cause a distraction, allowing Mia to knock out the vendor and for William to get the tape player.  That’s team work, guys!  Bonus lolz to Will’s saccharine “thank you” as he walks off 😂  Back at Mia’s base they eventually decide to play Felicity’s tape (“What are you waiting for?” “I dunno, what are you waiting for?” I STAN THESE SIBLINGS SO HARD)  And then here is where I died.  Firstly, Will’s nerves at hearing Felicity’s voice after 20 years 😭, Mia’s reassurance that they will listen together, and then Felicity’s message itself.  

Source:feilcityqueen

Felicity is alive bitches!!  After a delightful Felicity-ramble, she apologies to them both for keeping them apart, stating that “We did it because we love you” WE!!! Present tense!!!  Oliver lives too!!!  This is my happy place and I am staying here for as.long.as.I.possibly.can.  

She then directs them to give the team some coordinates then get the hell outta Star City.  I loved how there was no deliberation at all from the siblings, “So we’re ignoring her?” “Definitely”.  And they’re off to The Glades...duh duh duuuuuhhhhh!!!

OTA/Delicity

OTA is well and truly back this episode, following Dig’s apology last week.  There wasn’t masses of Diggle in this episode, and that is one thing I would have liked to have seen from this episode, but to be fair we have been so well fed that I will not complain!!

They told dig!!!!!!

Dig can tell that there is something Olicity aren’t telling him, and the kind of bashful joy on Oliver’s face is just so beautiful and heart-warming! 

Source:oliverxfelicity

Dig is so pleased for them!!  I love Uncle Dig!  And as always Uncy John has some sage advice for our OTP.  He tells them that in order to clean up the city for their family, without sending Oliver back to the Big House, that they have to find another way.  This is a motto that Arrow lives and dies by, but it felt all the more poignant here for some reason, maybe because OTA were finally coming back together?  Maybe because we’re aware now that the team as we know it is soon going to drastically change?  Maybe because the fracking show is ending soon HFDOVHUIERGBVSDVIFDVJDSHVODNVKODW!!!  Anyway, I had feelings about this whole scene (cue Beccie in floods of tears, again).  *whispers I would’ve really liked a hug here ok*

As if that beautiful OTA scene wasn’t fabulous enough, we got bonus Delicity!! I think this was so needed, given their particular distance so far this the season. Dig is still kissing arse a little bit (rightfully so), and not only offers felicity some sweets to help her morning sickness 😍 but offers her some reassurance that she’s got this.  “You were absolutely amazing out there, your tech was phenomenal”.  My Delicity heart is soaring!!  He goes on to point out just how brilliant her security system is (extra kudos for Felicity shading Curtis lol), and that it could be the basis for something much bigger….Smoak Technologies anyone??

Source:felicitysmoakgifs

Team Arrow/SCPD storyline

The training montage at the start of the episode was everything!!  Felicity’s in particular facial expressions were absolutely hilarious; the utter horror of not being able to hack, and using outdated computer systems were just delightful! Even Wild Dog got a quality quip in there about having their own uniforms.  

I really wasn’t looking forward to this aspect of the episode, as I just find the whole SCPD angle annoying and ridiculous this season.  Luckily, this episode was a means to an end, and finally addressed the problematic nature of mixing the Police with the Vigilantes in this way.

The SCPD didn’t seem to want to learn anything from Team Arrow.  Where is the sense in having these people join the force if they aren’t going to provide some unique skills and training?  And the first thing they do is strip them of their weapons and their suits (ahh, if only literally….*ahem*).  They do have a point when it comes to gathering evidence legally, not using coercive ‘interview’ techniques and so on, but presumably, by some kind of TV magic, they were able to successfully convict plenty of criminals caught by Team Arrow previously…so what has changed?  

The evil little Mayor keeps popping up this season, trying to undermine the Team. Oliver never seemed to have this much clout with the SCPD when he was Mayor Handsome.  So why does Mayor Tiny spend so much time there?  Clear off!  Her interference, and the apparent loss of Dinah’s cry, leads to Dinah having a crisis of confidence, briefly picking the SCPD over the Team.  Wild Dog gets all up in her face with a sense-making motivational speech, which he seems to be doing a lot of this season…who knew he had it in him??  Anyhow, Dinah eventually comes to terms with losing her cry, and decides to continue being the Black Canary.  This plot point seemed superfluous to me.  Sara nor Laurel had a meta-cry, and they turned out alright as Canaries…..wait….never mind.  If only they had some friends with medical and meta-human expert knowledge and technology (looking at you Larry)?!?!

Anyway, I enjoyed the twist that Team Arrow had actually been working with the SCPD during the final mission scene, following Dig’s advice that they needed to become ‘something else’.  DD blackmailed dirty Mayor tiny into giving Team Arrow free-rein under the SCPD umbrella still, and repealing the anti-vigilante law.  Yay team Arrow!!  No more SCPD storyline!  All’s well that ends well!

Black Siren/Emiko

I think they took up an acceptably small portion of the episode, and it was just about enough for my liking.  This reaffirmed that I only really care about BS when she’s in scenes with Felicity, but it was nice seeing her try to do the right thing with solving Diaz’s murder.  As many predicted, Emiko killed Lizard Boy, as she is working for Dante.  Even doing this didn’t endear me to Emiko any more I’m afraid.  I just don’t care about her, sorry.  The showdown between BS and Emiko has potential to be interesting, and could lead to conflict between BS/Felicity/Oliver/Emiko in coming episodes, but my babies don’t need any more conflict, just let them be pleeeaaaase!!

The surprise that no one saw coming (I didn’t see anyone call it; well done Boss Beth!), was the appearance of baby Bronze Tiger, Connor ‘Hawke’ Turner.  Connor Hawke from the FFs is Bronze Tiger’s son, adopted by Dig and Lyla?!?!?!  Fab idea, writers!  This likely means that Ben Turner is going to die imminently, which is such a shame because he had so much potential in the prison arc!!  I loved seeing him again in this episode!

Looking ahead

THAT TRAILER GUYS!!!!!  MSDOI;’#GFHGSD;VNSD’K[GSDJVANVNFDK!!!!!!! I was not ready.  None of us were ready it seems!!!  We’re gonna see Mia’s birth this season!!!!  Oliver will be there!!  There’s a photo of Olicity and baby Mia!!!!  AAAAAAAAAGHGHAGHAGHAGHA!!!

Source:olicitygifs

The Team is back!!  But now we see this joint ‘black ops’ type scenario joining Team Arrow and the SCPD together, along with the repealing of the Anti-Vigilante law, the landscape isn’t tying in with the FFs. How do we get to the point where Vigilantes are utterly outlawed and hated by society, when they have done so much to help the city over the years?  What changes?  Is this why Oliver is ‘gone’?  Why Felicity appears to have to give birth to Mia in some abandoned farmhouse somewhere? Where Mia has to be kept hidden? Where Mia and William can’t know of each other’s existence, or be spoken of in the same sentence (seriously….the TEARS!!)?  Where Mia can’t even go by the name Queen for her own safety?  I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS!!  I think Emiko could be at the bottom of this somehow.  She’s literally doing nothing else interesting.

Either Oliver and Felicity, or Rene and Dinah must be on the outs from the Team soon, to explain the latter’s unawareness of Mia.  Could this be this why only Rene and Dinah have been set up in the FFs so far, because this is the only place we will see them next season? (Assuming they are coming back for S9).

I am so unbelievably excited for next week now.  It’s gonna be dark, I know, but I’m hoping we get a decent amount of questions answered, and see Future Felicity and Diggle!!  (I’d love to see future Oliver, but not holding out hope for that just yet).  I was looking forward to the all-future episode anyway, as I’m living for Mia and William right now, but now???  Bring.it.on!

As always, huge thanks to the amazingly talented gif-makers in our fandom. Kisses and jazzy-hugs all round 😘😘😘🤗🤗🤗