#anyways labor violation…. TWO

[verytendou]

Folks a second labor violation has hit the workplace

[daloy-politsey]

Again, sometimes, in Palestine, one feels one is in an entire country that’s being treated this way. Obviously, there is also outright torture, people who are actually being shot, beaten, tortured, or violently abused. But I’m speaking here even of the ones that aren’t. For most, it’s as if the very texture of everyday life has been designed to be intolerable—only, in a way that you can never quite say is exactly a human rights violation. There’s never enough water. Showering requires almost military discipline. You can’t get a permit. You’re always standing in line. If something breaks it’s impossible to get permission to fix it. Or else you can’t get spare parts. There are four different bodies of law that might apply to any legal situation (Ottoman, British, Jordanian, Israeli), it’s anyone’s guess which court will say what applies where, or what document is required, or acceptable. Most rules are not even supposed to make sense. It can take eight hours to drive 20 kilometers to see your girlfriend, and doing so will almost certainly mean having machine guns waved in your faces and being shouted at in a language you half understand by people who think you’re subhuman. So you do most of your dalliance by phone. When you can afford the minutes. There are endless traffic jams before and after checkpoints and drivers bicker and curse and try not to take it out on one another. Everyone lives no more than 12 or 15 miles from the Mediterranean but even on the hottest day, it’s absolutely impossible to get to the beach. Unless you climb the wall, there are places you can do that; but then you can expect to be hunted every moment by security patrols. Of course teenagers do it anyway. But it means swimming is always accompanied by the fear of being shot. If you’re a trader, or a laborer, or a driver, or a tobacco farmer, or clerk, the very process of subsistence is continual stream of minor humiliations. Your tomatoes are held and left two days to rot while someone grins at you. You have to beg to get your child out of detention. And if you do go to beseech the guards, those same guards might arbitrarily decide to hold you to pressure him to confess to rock-throwing, and suddenly you are in a concrete cell without cigarettes. Your toilet backs up. And you realize: you’re going to have to live like this forever. There is no “political process.” It will never end. Barring some kind of divine intervention, you can expect to be facing exactly this sort of terror and absurdity for the rest of your natural life.

David Graeber, Hostile Intelligence: Reflections from a Visit to the West Bank

[alicearmageddon]

"The North Korean regime in the ‘50s developed a series of remarkably effective torture techniques, techniques that were so effective, in fact, that they were able to make captured American airmen admit to all sorts of atrocities they had not in fact committed, all the time, being convinced they had not, actually, been tortured. The techniques were quite simple. Just make the victim do something mildly uncomfortable—sit on the edge of chair, for example, or lean against a wall in a slightly awkward position—only, make them do it for an extremely long period of time. After eight hours the victim would be willing to do virtually anything to make it stop. But try going to the International Court of Justice at The Hague and tell them you’ve been made to sit on the edge of a chair all day. Even the victims were unwilling to describe their captors as torturers. When the CIA learned about these techniques—according to Korean friends of mine, they’re actually just particularly sadistic versions of classic Korean ways of punishing small children—they were intrigued, and, apparently, conducted extensive research on how they could be adopted for their own detention centers.

Again, sometimes, in Palestine, one feels one is in an entire country that’s being treated this way. Obviously, there is also outright torture, people who are actually being shot, beaten, tortured, or violently abused. But I’m speaking here even of the ones that aren’t. For most, it’s as if the very texture of everyday life has been designed to be intolerable—only, in a way that you can never quite say is exactly a human rights violation. There’s never enough water. Showering requires almost military discipline. You can’t get a permit. You’re always standing in line. If something breaks it’s impossible to get permission to fix it. Or else you can’t get spare parts. There are four different bodies of law that might apply to any legal situation (Ottoman, British, Jordanian, Israeli), it’s anyone’s guess which court will say what applies where, or what document is required, or acceptable. Most rules are not even supposed to make sense. It can take eight hours to drive 20 kilometers to see your girlfriend, and doing so will almost certainly mean having machine guns waved in your faces and being shouted at in a language you half understand by people who think you’re subhuman. So you do most of your dalliance by phone. When you can afford the minutes. There are endless traffic jams before and after checkpoints and drivers bicker and curse and try not to take it out on one another. Everyone lives no more than 12 or 15 miles from the Mediterranean but even on the hottest day, it’s absolutely impossible to get to the beach. Unless you climb the wall, there are places you can do that; but then you can expect to be hunted every moment by security patrols. Of course teenagers do it anyway. But it means swimming is always accompanied by the fear of being shot. If you’re a trader, or a laborer, or a driver, or a tobacco farmer, or clerk, the very process of subsistence is continual stream of minor humiliations. Your tomatoes are held and left two days to rot while someone grins at you. You have to beg to get your child out of detention. And if you do go to beseech the guards, those same guards might arbitrarily decide to hold you to pressure him to confess to rock-throwing, and suddenly you are in a concrete cell without cigarettes. Your toilet backs up. And you realize: you’re going to have to live like this forever. There is no “political process.” It will never end. Barring some kind of divine intervention, you can expect to be facing exactly this sort of terror and absurdity for the rest of your natural life."

-David Graeber, Reflections from a Visit to the West Bank

[mind-empty-just-fictional-people]

Comfort Crowd

main masterlist | supernatural masterlist

summary: dean just needs you next to him

pairing: (stanford era) dean winchester x female reader

rating: R for language 

word count: 1.9k

warnings: hurt/sad dean, language, reader drives after drinking but she’s not drunk, that’s it i think

author’s note: i know this gif is of jason teague and not dean winchester but that’s literally samford era jackles so i think it fits perfectly <3

music: comfort crowd by conan gray — was listening to conan gray and bam! dean winchester fic idea! anyways…

When you saw who was calling your brows furrowed — Dean? You had talked to him earlier in the week, just a casual check-in to make sure you were both still alive. You and Dean had gotten into a fight about a month prior and you both decided to just take a break from each other. You had made it clear that you were not breaking up with him, you just needed a break.

Last time you talked he was working a case in Texas, something with ghouls and sororities. You had just finished up a werewolf hunt and he had voiced his jealousy. He hadn’t gotten to fight a werewolf in many, many moons (pun intended).

“Dean?” you answered the call, still holding your first beer of the night in your free hand. He didn’t say anything, there was only labored breathing on the other side and that worried you. “Dean? Honey, is everything okay?” He still said nothing. “Dean, what’s—”

“Where are you?” he asked. His voice was clearly on the verge of cracking. He’d been crying?

“Uh, Bakersfield California,” you told him. “Just finished another case, simple ghost hunt. What’s wrong, Dean?” He again went back to just breathing. “Dean, where are you?”

“I’m in Palo Alto,” he said. “You—Could you get up here, p-please? I need you, hun. I just—I need you here.”

“I’ll be right there Dean, four hours tops,” you told him. You stood up off your chair and paid your tab. “Talk to me, what’s wrong?”

“I can’t…fuck, I just wanna see you…please?”

“Of course, Dean, I’ll be there soon,” you reminded him. “What motel are you staying at?”

“I can text you the address just please…please hurry.”

With that, he hung up. 

Please don’t be dying, you thought to yourself. 

**

After several traffic violations and broken speed limits, you were finally knocking on his door.

“Dean!” you called out, not caring if it was now nearly three in the morning and there were definitely other people staying at the motel. “For the love of god Dean, open the fucking door!”

He unlocked and opened the door, rubbing his tired eyes. “Hey, you made it.” He smiled a little…smiled?

“Dean what the hell is going on?” you asked, trying to stay calm as you walked into the room. “You—That call? What’s up with you?”

“Nothing,” he shrugged, “I’m fine.”

“Fine?” You furrowed your brows. “Dean you called me in tears and asked me to race over here as if you were dying?”

“I…I wasn’t in tears,” he mumbled, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Hang on…how do I know you’re you?” you asked. 

He smiled and rolled his eyes a little before you both did the usual tests.

“See, sweetheart? All me!” He smiled again.

“Dean,” you said softly, “what’s going on? Are you…Are you dying?”

“No!” he scoffed, not calming your nerves in the slightest. “I’m sorry I scared you I just…needed you here. With me, next to me. I—Fuck, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, Dean,” you shook your head, “I get it.”

You walked over to him and pulled him down into a hug; your right hand went to the back of his head as your fingers combed through his hair. 

“I’m here Dean, you’re okay,” you told him. His grip tightened around you, as if he was scared you’d break off the hug. “I’m right here.”

“Thank you,” he whispered, his voice cracking again. “Thank you.” 

The two of you stayed like that for what felt like an eternity. You were on your tiptoes, which was kind of uncomfortable, but your love for the man in your arms outweighed any discomfort. You felt Dean’s tears begin to dampen your neck and your eyes grew cloudy at the thought of him in pain. He truly mastered the art of silent crying, he must’ve had to hide his tears from that bastard father of his growing up, and that thought only made your heart break more. Your grip tightened around his shoulders and you turned your head so you could place a soft kiss on his temple. You made a trail of kisses down to his jawline then left your lips there against his skin. 

“Thank you,” he pulled away, “just…thanks.”

“Do you wanna lay down, Dean?” you asked. “We could cuddle up and maybe watch a movie? Or we could listen to music? I’ve got my iPod and we could share my earbuds?”

A soft smile returned to his tear-stained face and he nodded; “Music sounds perfect.”

“Mkay,” you replied. “Now, I have to admit I don’t have many Zeppelin songs downloaded—”

“It’s okay,” he shook his head, “I don’t care what song we play, as long…as long as you’re here. Just need your company.”

“Funnily enough, I do have some Bad Company songs,” you joked, causing his smile to grow. 

“You’re the best company,” he countered. 

“Why don’t you change into your PJs while I go get my bags from the car? We can get comfortable in the bed and maybe you’ll even get some sleep.”

**

Your fingers were once again tangled in Dean’s hair as his head lay on your chest, he was facing away from you but you knew he was still crying. You just didn’t know why.

“Is this Heuy Lewis?” Dean chuckled.

“Hey! No disrespecting Heuy!” you laughed, but Dean knew you were serious. “You want me to skip it?”

“Nah, I’ll live,” he joked. The joke made your heart clench a little though; your mind going back to the call he made to you a mere few hours ago. How scared he sounded. How scared you were as you raced to get to him. Dean must’ve sensed the change in the room because he made sure to remind you; “I’m fine.”

“You said that line already, Dean,” you said through a sigh. “I’m here if you wanna talk, okay?”

“I don’t wanna talk,” he mumbled. “I meant what I said—I just need you here with me, I just need you around.” 

Your free hand (the one that wasn’t currently in Dean’s hair) went to rub comforting circles on his upper back. He let out a contented sigh which made you smile.

“I love you, Dean,” you told him. “I love you more than anything, you know that, right?”

“Thank you,” he mumbled. He buried his face against your chest, trying to hide the sheepish smile forcing its way onto his face before he lifted his head so he could look into your eyes. “I love you so much.”

He leaned over and kissed you softly, his smile connecting with yours. He pulled away after a moment, simply looking into your eyes. He kissed you once more before laying back down, this time resting his head next to yours so he could kiss you again. 

“Sorry about your shirt,” he said, laughing awkwardly at the damp mess of spilled tears covering a fair portion of your tee.

“I don’t mind, kinda like my shirt soggy,” you shrugged with a smile, pulling him closer to you and tucking your head under his chin. 

**

When you woke the next morning you did not expect Dean to be singing to himself while making breakfast.

“What time is it?” you asked with a yawn as you sat up in bed. 

“About seven,” he replied. “Good morning, by the way.”

“Good morning.”

You hurried over to the small kitchen so you could wrap your arms around him from behind.

“What’s gotten into you?” he teased. 

“Could ask you the same question, handsome,” you replied, not letting go. “The food smells amazing and all, but since when do you cook?”

“Remember that fight we had?”

“I vaguely recall,” you said, somewhat flatly. 

“I’ve been working on my breakfast cooking so when I saw you again I could you know…woo you.”

“‘Woo me’?” You raised a brow, your smile growing. “You’re wooing me…with bacon?”

“Damn right!” he scoffed lightheartedly. “I know the way into your heart, and whether you admit it or not—it’s mother fuckin’ breakfast food.”

“You know me way too well,” you laughed. “I’m officially wooed.”

There was a comfortable silence before Dean answered the question he knew you were still wondering about; “Sam and I fought last night.”

“I’m sorry,” you said.

“I knew him going to a fancy college would put a bit of a rift between us…but fuck, sweetheart,” he said. He ran his hands down his face before he leaned against the counter and looked at you; “I think we…I don’t think Sammy and I will ever be as close as we were growin’ up ever again.”

“I’m sure that’s not true, Dean,” you assured him, placing a hand on his bicep and giving it a comforting squeeze. “Sammy just needs time, maybe a bit of space, but that’s only temporary, Dean.”

“Seems like everyone around me always needs space,” he chuckled humorously. 

“If this is about what I said—”

“Nah, you don’t have to explain yourself, I get it!” He shook his head, faking a smile. “You couldn’t stand being around me all the time and hey, that’s okay.”

Your brows furrowed with slight anger; “That’s not what I said, Dean.”

“That’s what it sounded like,” he mumbled before he turned back to the stove to continue making breakfast. 

“Dean I love you, you know I love you!” you said. “I raced here last night when you asked me to, doesn’t that prove I love you!?”

“And what happens when we get into another fight?” he exclaimed. “What happens when you decide that you need more space and you don’t bother coming back to me?”

“That’s not going to happen?” you countered. 

“You can’t say that for sure,” Dean said. 

“Yes I can, Dean!”

“What makes you think that, huh?” he replied loudly. “What makes you think you aren’t gonna run the second you realize that putting space between was the best decision of your fucking life!?”

“Because I love you, Dean!” you said, matching his tone. “Because no matter how far away I was from you the one thought running through my head was that I should call you. That I should stop being so stubborn and run back to you.” You sighed as he continued cooking and you went up to him again, leaning on his bicep and running your hands up and down his forearm. “Because when I got that call…all logic flew out the window and all that mattered to me was getting to you. When I thought you might be dying I didn’t care about anything else and I raced to you like a mad woman. Like a girl so lovestruck she’s practically crazy!”

Dean let out a chuckle which made you smile.

“So…you’re sayin’ you missed me?” he asked, a cocky smirk finding its way to his lips.

“Yes,” you sighed dramatically. “Okay? Yes, Dean, I missed you like fuckin’ crazy, and I’m sorry for ever suggesting we take a damn break. But… you know what this means now, right?”

He looked at you cautiously; “What?”

“You’re stuck with me, Winchester.” You grinned. “And I’m never letting you go again.”

“Sounds good to me,” he replied as he leaned down and kissed you.

[corazondebeskar-reads]

you know you never stood a chance - epilogue

you know you never stood a chance series

epilogue: maybe light a candle

series masterlist | prev chapter 

Joel Miller x f!reader

Words: 2.9k

Summary: It's Christmas Eve, and Joel hasn't come home yet. (this takes place about three years after the end of the main story.)

Warnings: established relationship, angst, christmas in the apocalypse, technically spoilers for tlou pt 2, mentions of breastfeeding (not as a fetish), found family, poor communication, oral (f receiving), postpartum depression, possibly violating child labor laws by using a baby as a plot device, pls remember I am playing fast and loose with both canon and the timelines lol

also on ao3

dividers by @saradika-graphics

It’s Christmas Eve.

Or, at least, according to the council. You’re not sure if anyone is really sure what the date is anymore.

But for all intents and purposes, maybe it’s Christmas Eve. The holiday is a thin, moth-bitten version of its former self, but you’ve never been the holly-jolly or the religious sort, so Christmas Lite suits you just fine.

Maria had invited you and Lulu to the mess hall for a big meal and activities for the kids. It was less of an invitation than an expectation, but you stayed home anyway.

And maybe it wasn’t fair. Maybe she wanted you there for the same reason you didn’t want to be there. She’s fucking tough, maybe the strongest person you know, but she has to be feeling Tommy’s absence today, too. It isn’t Aléjandra’s first Christmas, but likely the first one she’ll remember, which is worse.

But it’s more than it just being Lulu’s first Christmas. It’s that Maria had made a point of telling you that Ellie would be there.

You prepare to watch her leave for the night. The light pours in the window when she opens the shed door, and you know she can see your shadow haunting the living room.

You want Ellie to meet her sister. You dream of it nearly every night. But there’s no way in hell you’re doing it without Joel. It’d break his heart. You like to think she knows, at least. Someone (probably Tommy) had to have told her.

So when she climbs the steps instead of walking past, you freeze. Her knuckles rap against the wood, and you close your eyes. You can’t. You need to, but you can’t.

“Maria asked me to remind you that you promised to come by tonight,” she calls through the door.

She knows you can hear her. She knows you choose not to respond (but she doesn’t know you bite your lip so hard to resist that it bleeds).

It would be wrong. But the ache is so strong you’re convinced it must be a physical wound.

She leaves.

“There goes Ellie,” you tell the baby, as you always do. “She’s got places to be, but she loves you very much.” The guilt of keeping them apart makes you nauseous.

Maybe it isn’t true yet, but you think it is. You think, despite everything, despite the anger she harbors for Joel (and a fragment of that for you), that she already loves her sister. Even if she’s only the shadow of a sister spied through dark windows and across the street.

You wonder if she knows her name. Tommy had started the whole “Lulu” thing, and though it had grown on you now, it made you suspect he hadn’t thought to mention she had a real, full name.

Luna Luann. Luna, for Ellie, and Luann for Joel’s favorite tía, the one who smuggled them chewing gum and taught Joel his strong right hook when the other kids were picking on Tommy.

You’d take this secret to the grave, but you hated the name Luann. But when he brought up the suggestion, he had talked about her for nearly twenty minutes, and so you love the woman despite her name, just for the way she brought a little more of Joel out.

You thought they’d be home by Christmas. You’re trying not to worry, but worrying’s one of the things you’re good at. It doesn’t help that you’re still struggling. You’ve been told it’s normal, but these last two weeks with Joel gone have been so hard.

She’s cutting a tooth (her very first), and you can barely catch a break. You sleep when she sleeps, but it’s never enough. A few neighbors have been bringing casseroles still, and it’s the only reason you’ve been eating.

So, you think it’s probably understandable that you crumble after you watch Ellie walk away and Luna starts to cry. The lights are out except for the single candle in the front window. You keep it lit all night in case Joel comes home. A beacon.

If you had a widow’s walk, you’d be haunting it. But you’re not a widow—couldn’t be, you’re not even a wife—and he’ll be fine. He’ll come back.

Joel always comes back.

It might be Christmas Eve, and you’re slumped against the wall of your living room, crying in tandem with your infant. There’s nothing wrong, you checked. It’s so much worse that she’s probably just picking up on your mood.

You orbit around each other that way. She is the sun that you and Joel revolve around, but his absence has sent you both off balance.

The sun might be the more accurate comparison, but you usually like to say Lulu, your Luna, was your moon, and Joel was the sun. He disagrees. He says he’s the rock, and you are her light.

It was profoundly beautiful, but none of the concepts held up to the reality. The truth was that you were a constellation, but without Ellie, you made no recognizable form. Sagitta with one feather, an arrow that can never fly true.

When you settle down to sniffles and the errant tear, Lulu has fallen asleep against your chest. You creep upstairs and lay her in the crib squeezed between the bed and the wall.

The room was plenty large, and part of it had been set up as a nursery. But after she was born, you spent each night on the floor next to the crib.

Joel hadn’t been having that. After the first week, he sat you down and asked if you’d be able to sleep in the bed if she was next to you.

And then he just… built a second, smaller crib. One that fits right up against your side of the mattress. It was low to the ground, so all you had to do was reach down, and you could feel her little chest rise and fall, or scoop her up to nurse her in the middle of the night. She’ll grow out of it fast, but by then, you hope you’ll feel secure enough to move her to the big one just across the room.

You had been embarrassed. Didn’t want anyone to know. After all, mothers had been putting their children to sleep in different rooms for ages. But you weren’t afraid to tell Joel, knew if there was anyone in this town that understood, it’d be him (and Maria).

“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with keepin’ your baby close,” he said, as gruff and blunt as always.

When Joel comes home, he finds you that way. On your side, arm dangling into the crib with Lulu’s tiny fingers wrapped around your own. He sat down and gently tapped your shoulder, trying not to disturb the baby.

“What’re you doin’ here, darlin’?” he whispers when you stir. You blink up at him through sore eyes, then smile softly, sending his heart skittering.

“You’re home,” you say, extracting your finger and sitting up to reach for him.

He wraps you in his arms, lets you burrow into the nest of his broad shoulders. “M’sorry,” he murmurs into your hair, chasing the words with a kiss.

“Tommy okay?”

“Yeah, he’s good. Just hit some delays on the way home. Bridge was out. I thought y’all were going to the party?”

You don’t answer right away. You know he’ll feel bad. That he does feel bad, that the guilt eats a little part of him each day. All he wants is his girls all together.

“I was,” you mumble, feeling the tears prick with a vengeance. “But Maria said… Maria said that Ellie would be there.”

Joel’s arms squeeze you a little tighter for a moment. “Y’know I don’t want to get in the way of you talkin’ to her.”

“I know. But after last time… she doesn’t want to talk to me anymore, anyway.”

“She’ll come around,” Joel says.

It reignites a new round of self-hatred, that he’s sitting here consoling you. After all, she had spoken to you after their fight. Sat down and told you she wasn’t mad at you, that she knew he probably didn’t even tell you.

And he hadn’t told you, hadn’t clued you in, trying in his foolhardy way to spare you the burden of the lie. And you were mad at him for it; you’d had your own spat after.

But you weren’t mad he did it. Not one bit.

He can tell you don’t want to keep talking about it, and that’s fine by him.

“You miss me, baby?” he murmurs, a teasing brush of his lips over your neck.

You roll your eyes. “Oh no, did you have to go two weeks without gettin’ laid?”

He chuckles, dark and raspy, as he reaches to cup your ass and squeeze, smirking when you gasp.

“And you’re tellin’ me those little fingers were enough for your greedy cunt? Like ya ain’t droolin’ for my cock right now?”

You whimper. He’s right. Two weeks is too fucking long for either of you.

He tugs you properly into his lap, legs wrapped around his waist, before he just stands up and carries you into the guest room across the hall. It’s not ideal, but if you leave both doors open, you’ll be able to hear Luna if she wakes.

“How’ve you not thrown your back out?” you grumble as he manhandles you.

He tosses you onto the bed, already peeling off his clothes and pointedly ignoring you.

He’s halfway through tugging his jeans down when he stops and looks at you. “What’re you doing? Let me see ya, sweetheart.”

You’ve long gotten over how easy you are for him. You only hadn’t stripped yet because you wanted to work him up. “You can see me just fine. Or do you need your glasses, old man?”

He takes the bait, shaking his head, before looming over you and running his hands down the sides of his old shirt you use for a nightgown. He barely grazes your breasts, just brushing the tips of your hardened nipples and grinning when you whine.

“Up,” he orders, tugging at the hem of the shirt.

You lift enough for him to pull it off and flop back down. It’s your turn to smirk as he watches the way your tits bounce with deep hunger.

And then he fucking rips the along the side of your panties and pulls them off, throwing them to the floor.

“Hey!”

“Shut up, you can sew ‘em back.”

“I’ve already sewn that pair twice, Joel. You’re a fuckin’ menace.”

“Is that so?” Suddenly his breath is hot against your cunt, and you clench around nothing.

“Uh-huh,” you moan as he runs one finger along the seam of your cunt. “‘Cause you’re a menace.”

“Only for you, darlin’.”

You laugh. “Oh yeah? Let me do a survey around town.”

He shuts you up by sliding two fingers right into your cunt, the stretch almost too much. Almost. But you don’t really notice because he buries his face between your lips, and any sassy remark comes out in a desperate cry.

He pulls away and gives you a warning look, head tilted. His free hand comes up to cover your mouth, thick fingers clamping down and digging into your cheek. It makes you moan, but it also muffles it, so it works out fine.

“If you want your turn, you gotta be quiet. Otherwise, I’ll just have mine and shut you up proper.”

You choke down the moan dredged up by the thought of his cock down your throat and make the saddest pleading eyes you can muster.

He rolls his, shaking his head, before he goes back to your neglected clit.

You’re close, so close when you hear it. You pat Joel’s head, sitting up. “Was that the door?”

The shift is immediate. Three years in town has allowed Joel to relax somewhat, sometimes, but he slips back into it in an instant. He pulls back, brow furrowed, squinting like it’ll help him hear better.

It comes again, louder this time, insistent enough for him to pick up. A firm knocking.

There’s a pause, but Joel’s already on his feet, pulling his clothes back on. He tosses your shirt over as he ducks out of the doorway and you’re slipping it over your head when whoever is outside grows impatient.

Rapid, furious banging rattles the door, and you dart across the hall to shut the bedroom, but it’s too late.

Lulu starts wailing immediately, her little face scrunched up, nose wrinkling, and tears pouring out faster than a faucet. You scoop her up and soothe her, cradling her as she finds solace for her hurt feelings and empty stomach.

Joel goes downstairs, partly to shut up the racket but mostly because the sound fills him with dread. When he opens the door, it flings wide, and the tirade begins immediately.

Ellie storms in, already yelling. “—could you? What the fuck is wrong with you? You won’t even let her come out for fuckin’ Christmas because she might see me?”

You’re going down the stairs as soon as you hear her voice, but she stops yelling when she sees you on the landing.

“It’s not his fault,” you say, face hot with frustration and raw hurt. You hate the way your eyes water.

“Like hell, it isn’t. Maria said you were going to come, that one of you might actually have the balls to tell me you had a fuckin’ baby, and—”

“And I decided not to go, Ellie. Joel wasn’t even home. He didn’t know.”

Lulu has started to cry again, distracted from nursing by your ire. You murmur apologies, kissing the little tuft of dark hair on her head, and try to coax her back to your breast.

Ellie’s eyes are wide, and feet planted, ratty sneakers dripping filthy snow across the floor. Her mouth hangs open as she takes in the tiny, ruddy creature who finally agreed to return to her meal.

“Hey, Ellie. We had a fuckin’ baby,” Joel says after the silence hangs for a minute too long.

The bark of laughter that bursts out of her looks like it hurts, but she can’t fight it. The tension dissolves into absurdity and then tears.

Ellie sits on the ground instead of the perfectly nice sofa to her left. You come down the stairs and sit beside her.

You look up at Joel, and he nods. You wish he’d come sit, but he’s too afraid to break the peace. “Would you like to hold your sister?” you ask Ellie, keeping your voice low and steady.

“Can I? I mean… what if I break her?”

“She’s pretty tough.” Lulu is done eating, just suckling for comfort, so you pry her off your breast and tug your shirt back up.

Joel takes her without thinking, leaning her against his shoulder to help her work out the air.

Once she gives a satisfactory belch, he thrusts her at Ellie, who’s startled enough to take her without thinking about it.

You all hold very still. Except Lulu, who is blissfully unaware of the strife and coos up at her big sister. She bats a little hand at her face, smacking her nose in an attempt to grab on. Ellie laughs, and her smile, her perfect smile that you haven’t seen in a year, breaks out.

You can’t help it; you start crying. Ellie looks up in alarm, but Joel shakes his head, moving closer to rub your shoulder.

“It’s not you,” he says solemnly, “it’s just hard, after.” He gestures at the baby.

“It is you,” you say, and Joel scrubs a hand over his face with a soft groan. “It’s—I’m sorry, I just—”

Ellie’s looking like she might make a break for it. She tries to hand the baby back to Joel, who refuses.

You get ahold of yourself. “It’s not bad, Ellie. I’ve just been waiting for this since she was born.”

Ellie softens and then scowls. “Then you should have told me. You should have told me you were pregnant in the first place. I said you could talk to me.”

“No, I couldn’t,” and you pause as she shoots a dirty look at Joel. “No, not because of him. Because I would have done the same damn thing, so you may as well hate me too.”

“What?” She seems genuinely shocked, which you don’t have the patience for.

“I would do the same damn thing. If I had been there, there would have been nothin’ in the fuckin’ world keeping me from getting to you, Ellie. Nothing short of death. Not then, not now. I’d do it for her, too.”

The room is stifling, and Joel hasn’t even lit the hearth yet. Your breath comes out in little puffs, and every one of you has wet, devastated eyes. Even Lulu, who looks like she might be the first to break into tears.

Ellie looks down and sighs. “So, Lulu, huh?”

“Actually,” Joel says, and chances a step closer, squatting down. “It’s Luna. Luna Luann. Tommy’s just an idiot.”

Ellie’s a smart kid. You can see the moment it clicks—the way she looks up at Joel with something akin to hope. It fades quickly, but you know he saw it, too. His own staggering heart, heavy with love unspoken, is betrayed in the way he has to fight a smile, choke down the relief. Maybe, just maybe.

Maybe next year, you’ll get a tree.

thank you all so, so much.

*title from "Alone This Holiday" by The Used

[cal-daisies-and-briars]

🧑‍🚒🧑‍🚒🧑‍🚒🧑‍🚒🧑‍🚒🧑‍🚒🧑‍🚒🧑‍🚒🧑‍🚒🧑‍🚒🧑‍🚒🧑‍🚒🧑‍🚒🧑‍🚒🧑‍🚒🧑‍🚒🧑‍🚒🧑‍🚒🧑‍🚒🧑‍🚒🧑‍🚒🧑‍🚒🧑‍🚒🧑‍🚒🧑‍🚒🧑‍🚒🧑‍🚒 pls 😇

81 or 500 for 🧑‍🚒:

---

“Victor!” 

“Okay, Victor,” Buck says. “We’re going to lower it down. You can use your arms, you won’t fall. Just be as steady as you can.” 

“O-okay!” Victor calls back up. 

“Harry, lower it down while I radio for backup,” Buck says.

“On it,” Harry says, and begins doing as Buck instructed. 

Buck radios the team and says they’ll need more manpower for this extraction. It’s not a comment on either of their strengths. Yanking the weight of a human body - an adult, male human body - up a rope is no small task. Something goes wrong and Buck or Harry could be pulled into the container with him. 

Harry maneuvers the rescue strap down so a loop is easily accessible for Victor to shimmy through. 

“Okay, one arm at a time, Victor,” Harry calls. He feels strange, being the one to give instructions to someone saving their life. Who is he? He’s just a kid. And now he’s the one leading this guy through life or death. 

“You’re doing great, Victor,” Buck says, rejoining the effort.

The angle of the container wall means that Victor can mostly rely on gravity to keep him from falling deeper into the container if he doesn’t move around too much. If he loses his balance or disrupts the balance of the container, he will. 

They work slowly at first. Ravi and Eddie show up eventually to help them pull, which is probably even overkill, but means they can remove Victor from the container rather swiftly once he’s secured. Harry feels like he can’t quite breathe until Victor is on solid ground. 

“Good work,” Buck says to him, nodding curtly, once they’re all in the clear. Ravi and Eddie leave ahead of them with Victor on a backboard. 

Harry blinks, surprised.

“Uh, thank you,” Harry replies. He’s not sure if Buck is saying it because it’s true or because Harry called him out earlier. He doesn’t feel like he’s done well. He was anxious the whole time. What happened to the top of the class confidence?

They walk back towards the rest of the team in relative silence. Another station showed up and found the third worker. There’s hopefully not much more for them to do. Harry finds he’s eager to leave. This place is making him nervous.

Right before they would have otherwise made it back to the engine, Harry and Buck encounter two men fighting by the edge of the water. A man in a suit and another more blue collar looking guy.  

“Do you know how much this is going to cost us?” The suit is yelling.

“And do you know how many labor laws have been violated this month?” The other one yells back. 

“We have to deal with this, right?” Harry asks. 

Buck sighs. “Yeah. Otherwise we’ll be fishing one of them out of the harbor anyway.”

Harry radios Dispatch and warns they might need police presence to break up the conflict while Buck approaches and tries to deescalate. They don’t seem inclined to calm down, though. Harry notices that, unlike most things on the job, Buck doesn’t seem natural at this.

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

I applied to be a manager at a fast food place a week or two ago, a position I am not qualified for, but I got an email back the next day saying they were moving my application forward. Turns out that was just a form letter sent to every applicant to let them know that the first application didn't count because it wasn't on the company website, so if I really wanted the job I would have to reapply through them.

Okay, whatever, I follow the link and start filling in my info again, but this application is full of those stupid personality test questions like "what was your greatest work related accomplishment," or "explain a negative customer experience you've had," meant to weed out people who can't speak managerese (the correct answers to these questions is to supplicate yourself and make it seem like you would die for the company). I rolled my eyes but continued anyway, until the final question asked me to record a 30 second pre-interview video of myself talking about my hobbies.

Immediate red flag! First if all, that's illegal, and second of all, that's almost certainly AI training bullshit. So I closed out the application without submitting it and emailed their HR team to let them know that the video question violates federal labor laws. They responded with "this is an automated system, please do not reply," so I washed my hands of it and forgot it ever happened.

Yesterday, I got a voicemail from that very company asking me to interview for the position! What kind of mind games are they playing? My original application wasn't qualified, I never submitted my second application, and I accused them of breaking the law, so why would they reach back out to me? Do they like my moxie? I don't get it...

[theviolenttomboy]

The discussion about Alphadream tends to talk about how Nintendo didn't pay the company enough and/or bail them out of their debt. Alphadream, an independent studio, made their main bread and butter via making a game for an IP they didn't own. Their only other games were liscensed Hamtaro ones, and a very small scale RPG that didn't leave Japan. Unless Nintendo commissioned them to make the game, they likely had to pay Nintendo the licensing fee for permission to use the Mario characters, and factor that into the budget. Third parties didn't pay Nintendo to get their characters into Smash. Nintendo had to pay them, and a giant chunk of Smash Ultimate's budget was just covering the licensing fees.

Had Nintendo covered the budget, they'd be entitled to a bigger chunk, if not all, of the profits. Plus more control over the dev process.

That said, the license does seem to grant the licensees certain freedoms as well. Nintendo couldn't make any calls over the live-action Mario movie, much to their horror (and for the animated movie they covered half the budget so they could). Nintendo advised Ubisoft to hold off on a Mario + Rabbids sequel until the Switch's sucessor, but Ubisoft still went ahead and released a new game on the Switch anyways. (The Rabbids games are also the only Mario games that frequently go on sale.) Nintendo likely couldn't stop Alphadream from making that 3DS Inside Story remake two years into the Switch's lifespan either.

After Inside Story's release, Alphadream in an interview admitted that they didn't have the time, budget, and know-how to make an HD game. Nintendo afterwards attempted to train them on the job and keep them alive longer by hiring them as support for a Mario and Sonic Olympic game, but it wasn't enough.

Not going into much detail here but I did check around a bunch of youtube essays, interviews, news reports, tweets, reddit posts, and whatnot. Between probably going way overbudget for Dream Team, possibly having to pay a massive fine for labor violations (!), each new 3DS game selling less than their predecessor, overhiring for a Sony project that ended up getting dropped...yeah, there was no way they were going to admit to Nintendo how fucked in the debt hole they ended up getting into until they were too far gone. And after that they had nothing to offer up but that debt had Nintendo acquired them.

[duhragonball]

Nanowrimon't

I recently watched a two hour video about all of the problems with the Nanowrimo organization. I was going to post it here, but I'm having trouble finding it, and I may have blocked the video because the Youtube algorithm kept recommending it to me like I hadn't already watched it. (Sidenote: The Blocktube extension is awesome).

Yeah, I can't find it. Well, that's okay, I'm sure you can find it yourselves if you want to watch it. In its place, here's a video featuring every Special Beam Cannon in Dragon Ball Z, GT, and Super.

Mostly, I was trying to get a handle on the controversies surrounding the organization pre-2024. When the AI thing went down, I went looking for more information on the backlash, only to find articles about a completely separate child endangerment controversy in 2023. In brief, that seems to surround a forum moderator with the handle "CinnamonFridge", who did a lot of shady shit, but nothing I hadn't really heard of before in various examples of forum drama. CinnamonFridge used sockpuppets, claimed to be dying, and may have genuinely died at some point. Also, CF tried to use their position in the Young Writer's Program to groom teenagers.

I found the whole thing hard to follow before, but now it seems pretty straightforward: the Nanowrimo organization had all these initiatives for young writers, but they had little to no protocol for vetting the people involved. You could just say you were an educator who wanted to work with a certain age group and they would take you at face value. If I remember correctly, CinnamonFridge kept posting links to adult content in forums with minors.

This should have been an open-and-shut case, but the organization seemed more interested in keeping the whole thing quiet than in doing the right thing. Instead of disciplining or banning Cinnamon Fridge, they insisted on identifying them as "Mod X" to protect their identity. Also, they declined to take action against CinnamonFridge since they were "dying anyway." The important thing for the organization was to make sure the organization didn't look bad, so the fewer people who heard about the whole mess, the better.

The video I watched had a lot of examples of similar stupidity. For example, there was a rule handed down to the Municipal Liasons that all communications from the org had to be passed along in English. Translating them into another language was not allowed, except it was an international organization. In Canada, it's required to send such communications in English and French, so they were essentially asking Canadian ML's to break the law.

My main takeaway from all of this was that the organization was dumb and arrogant more than they were evil. Critics will talk about the child endangerment and labor violations, and yeah, that stuff happened, but it's not like the organization was running some kind of baby-eating sweatshop. The board neglected the safety of children on their forums, and they were probably ignorant of the laws they were breaking. That's still really bad, but I don't think it's entirely sinister.

The point I'm getting at is that I still can't figure out what the purpose of the Nanowrimo organization was supposed to be. The guy who first came up with the 50k challenge left the organization in 2006, probably because he was a novelist who wanted to get back to his own writing, or maybe because he understood that there didn't need to be an organization. Everyone after that just seemed to be in it for... prestige? It feels like characters like Kilby Blades just got in on the thing for the chance to boss people around. Whoever handed down the "English-only" rule for official communications just sounds like a control freak. They knew the ML's would follow their instructions because anyone who wouldn't would have gone it alone a long time ago.

Except it's a non-profit organization, so I don't quite understand why they went to so much trouble to control something that doesn't make money. Then again, power can be an end unto itself, and maybe the Kilby Blades of the world were willing to take charge of something like Nanowrimo simply because it's the only thing available. But it sure feels like they were more interested in telling others what to do then in writing or running a nonprofit organization. They clearly weren't too concerned with young writers, except that it gave them a pretense to have a "Young Writers Program" that they could run.

The whole thing sort of feels like a giant forum, or an internet fandom, with the BNF's trying to assert control by getting positions of authority in a nonprofit organization. The thing coasted along for years, simply because so many people were willing to accept that central authority as legitimate.

It also kind of reminds me of the stories of Dashcon, which also relied on unpaid labor, begging for donations, and leaders who were allergic to accountability. In a way, Nanowrimo was Dashcon done right, because it didn't have to produce a functioning convention or anything like that. As long as a bunch of writers wrote in November, they could claim that their efforts were successful.

The thing I can't stand is this persistent mindset that the organization deserved credit for anything. YouTube now keeps recommending me all of these writing (◡ ‿ ◡ ✿) videos because I made the mistake of showing any interest in the Nano organization. I checked out one because it talked about things to do instead of Nano, except the suggestions were really, really obvious.

Just do 50k in November without the site.

There's this other challenge someone else came up with where you do 100k words in three months.

Someone else has a "Rough Draft Challenge" where you... do it on Facebook? In different months of the year? Like March? And there's different wordcount tiers you can aim for?

I'm not trying to be mean here but these aren't ideas that people needed a YouTuber to present to them. This isn't like looking up a whittling video to find the best kind of whittling knives for beginners. It's just a number and a date range. Anyone can come up with their own.

Like, uh... for example: The Buttdawg Challenge is 69,420 words in June. I just made that up, copyright of me, (c)2025, all rights reserved. Boom, where's my influencer money? Here's a soft-focus photo of a desk with a typewriter and a mug of coffee. Writing.

Again, I'm not trying to be mean here but I always feel a little suspicious of people who go on and on about writing instead of gushing about the thing they are writing about. I'm less interested in writing than I am in chemistry or Dragon Ball Z or professional wrestling, and so on. Writing is just the method of communicating those interests. It's a means to an end. A writer who only thinks of their passion as writing and nothing else is like a chef who doesn't have a favorite food.

But I suppose there is a strong appeal to the aesthetic side of things. How else can I explain the Nanowrimo org lasting as long as it did? Eventually its hollow, phony nature was exposed for all to see, but it still had a pretty long run as something important, but not really.

This is why I like Dragon Ball so much, though, because it has style, but the substance is simply too deep and rich to be denied. It refuses to take itself too seriously, which is often the sign that something is genuine and has nothing to prove. You can't beat a true classic. Like the Special Beam Cannon.

[235uranium]

anyways p5r still failed to be the game it couldve been bc atlus are spineless cowards who refused to go all in on the critique of japanese police and social norms

and the thing is I'm legitimately mad about it because what is there is so damn good! the enormous levels of corruption! labor violations! completely unrealistic standards placed on teenagers! the oversexualization of young girls and women alike! the way orphans and the children of single mothers are treated!

and ofc the two biggest ones: police violence and fascism

ppl in western countries are typically unaware of just how much power the jpn police wield against detainees, but it's quite literally exactly as bad as it's shown in p5. forced confessions, legal defense is an illusion, police can detain you without evidence for extended periods of time, violence isn't uncommon. and yeah, the conviction rate is insanely high. and then how once convicted, it ruins your life.

but the game refuses to actually commit to any of this, later arguing that joker going to prison is Fine, Actually. and god the fascism thing- shido is so obviously meant to represent the hyper-nationalist conservatives (yknow. the shinzo abe kind), esp considering in jpn akechi's breakdown involves him calling japan a "shithole country". but they COMPLETELY whimped out on it and instead pretend shidos a generic Shitty Politician

[please-picturemeintheweeds]

But I am SO TIRED NOW and like idk I just am so deeply autistic and traveling and meeting so many new people in person (this is the first time I’ve agreed to a site visit, I usually only work virtually) and like spending the “break time” with the staff in the office and then going to a restaurant for dinner (I needed steak and a salad) and talking about labor organizing in the victim advocacy field and I am WIPED OUT and I don’t even have the brain cells to care about the eclipse lyric (nooooo I’ll get a C in swiftie analysis) so I’m drinking canned rosé and watching baking competition shows in my hotel room and I have to do two more sessions tomorrow and then the women’s center staff want to take me to the pretty rock store (they loved my rock talking piece) and damnit I want to go to the pretty rock store with them and get a new rock!!!! And I want to solve their problems (this campus is in a very very conservative state and they are facing some major major uphill battles and like… idk how they do it like they have spies recording their programming and reporting them for violating some fascist censorship rules and intimidating job applicants who they need to fill vacant roles from other people fleeing the situation and its just oooof) but I can’t fix it and that makes me really really sad but I think some of them are realizing they’re neurodivergent bc of my work and i did some really great stuff today with the students and faculty and I had 4 people come up after my presentation and say that it was super validating and healing and empowering and tomorrow I’m working with the student leaders and it’s SO EXCITING and I want to do a good job and ANYWAYS I sleepy. I think I will be okay tomorrow but I’m nervous about Wednesday when I have to deal with the airport again and like last time I flew somewhere I was OK during the trip because I upped all my meds but I got home and crashed sooo hard and had a huge meltdown and then burnout episode for a few days and like that will probably happen again but maybe not bc this is super validating and healing and they respect my needs so much and are doing a really beautiful job of modeling access intimacy and how important it is and I just love them so much and they even made sure to get me snacks I can eat even with all my allergies and I just feel very loved and valued by them and it is so horrible that their administration is like actively trying to destroy their whole office 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

[mermaidsirennikita]

least favorite recent trend is people calling exclusively-smut (or just romance period) readers p0rn addicts. like no, smut will never ever ever ever ever even come close to be on the same level as p0rn. worse yet it's coming from supposed left-leaning people. like way to agree with right wingers on this issue goddd

Hmm, I get where you're coming from, and I totally agree that the conservatives have weaponized, essentially, good intentions to flip young progressives/libs into spouting conservative talking points. But I will say:

A) Some romance novels? Are kinda really close to porn, lol. And I'm not talking erotica--I'm talking books wherein the sex is not necessarily the point of the story or the crux, but it is kinda why you read. Either to be turned on, or to gawk at something utterly absurd (and sometimes funny). Which is why people watch porn, mostly; to be aroused and/or shocked or amused or grossed out.

Like, I'm thinking of books like Vera Valentine's Squeak. It's about a woman who falls in love with two balloon animal shifters, and they fall in love with her right back. Are you reading that because it's good literature? Not really. Or like, the shorty KU books where the plot is kinda thin but the sex is bomb. I mean, people absolutely read books to masturbate, just as they do with porn ("one-handed reads"); and those books are often romance novels. I mean, I have watched porn that legitimately has better emotional plotting than some of the sillier romances I read. And that's not knocking those romances--just as I don't think a "my first massage with the hot masseur lady" porno is meant to give you this deep story. Nor are those books; and they both accomplish their goals.

To compare, I'd say that Tiffany Reisz's Original Sinners books, which are somewhere between erotic romance and erotica depending on the installment... Are nowhere near being porn. The plots revolve around sex. The sex is explicit and very adventurous--CNC, blood play, pegging, bondage, group sex, daddy kink, priest kink, extreme sadism and masochism, needles, and it goes on and on. But the sex is the framework for serious character development and growth and confronting some heavy issues. It's not anywhere close to the kind of content porn typically offers.

The biggest differentiator between sexually explicit, sex-heavy books and porn is the ways in which the products are crafted and the risk components. Both can create unrealistic expectations surrounding sex and relationships (we talk a lot about boys having porn brain, but if you see some of the shit teen girls think is normal after reading certain romance novels--well). Both can do the opposite. And for both, it's seriously not their problem; content is not responsible for educating the kids. The kids' support systems (parents, guardians, teachers) are. Or should be.

B) Porn is not bad; and therefore, it's not bad to compare those books to porn. It is true that porn can be exploitative and harmful to performers. However, that is the sex industry in general--any industry in general. Companies across the world violate child labor laws every day. American employees regularly work themselves to the point of exhaustion, go to work sick and get sicker/infect their coworkers, and have nervous breakdowns due to overwork--and don't make ends' meet. We culturally focus more on how sex workers can be harmed because 1) it's more shocking because sex 2) it's more direct, at times, because sex workers deal with very intimate services that can involve physical risk 3) the harm that occurs is used by politicians and the media to justify why sex work should be outlawed. When in reality, if sex work was decriminalized we'd be able to offer sex workers safe harbors and resources without fear of legal consequences.

But anyway--porn is not bad inherently. If porn is made ethically, which it absolutely can be, there is nothing wrong with people consenting to sexual acts performed on camera... and as long as nobody is getting hurt, everyone is of age and consenting, and there aren't any animals (because animals cannot consent ever lol) involved, theoretically that's fine. Do a lot of people abuse this system? Absolutely, but I'd say that they're more able to abuse it because of the stigma surrounding porn. Though it's legal and theoretically regulated, the regulations aren't often meant to work for performers, they're meant to "protect" the people who might stumble across porn online.

And because we shame people for watching porn and shame porn as a concept, nobody talks about what ethically made porn is, and how different types of porn affect people differently as they grow up. Because most of them? Will watch porn either way. But perhaps if teens felt free enough to discuss the things they saw in porn with sex educators... they would learn more about what is real and what isn't.

I also think that porn can be interesting and artistic (it often isn't, but erotic cinema used to be more common--would recommend the documentary "Skin" to explore more about it), and like I said above, romance novels can be--and like porn, sometimes they aren't. And romance novels, while they may not be as directly harmful as bad porn can be to performers, can be harmful on a broader level. For example, there is som racist porn out there; and there are some racist romance novels out there.

So I guess my thing is--as someone who reads a lot of romances of many degrees of quality, and had also watched my fair share of porn... I don't see a huge difference between some books and porn, lol. And that's not a bad thing. If the worst romances or erotica novels are just as bad as porn on a whole, that's fine, because porn on its own isn't a bad thing. The argument really shouldn't be "romance novels/erotica are better than porn", imo, because the people coming after one are going to come after the other either way. Sex negativity usually takes a universal approach. Nothing is spared; nothing is "good enough". When Spoutible banned sex workers from sharing content, they also banned romance novelists from sharing content, as one example. Romance novelists were no different from people literally having sex for money in that sense, and I honestly think that as the conservative movement becomes more extreme, their personal perception of what is and isn't sex work will also become more extreme. And tbh? The line is blurry. A phone sex operator is not actually selling sex--they're selling a fantasy, woven from their own minds. They just have a more direct connection to the person enjoying the product than authors and other artists do.

It's complicated, and we're all affected, so we've kinda gotta work together here, imo.

[griseldagimpel]

Feminism 101

In a Patriarchal System, femininity is both mandated for those ascribed the girl/woman role and denigrated. Violating prescribed gender roles will result in punishment, but adhering to them will land one in a second-class role.

Some things that are traditionally feminine are legitimately Not Good. (Some things that are traditionally masculine are also legitimately Not Good.) But a lot of stuff is honestly fine, and we'd be better off if we didn't have patriarchy and everything didn't have to go into one of two gender categories.

To use some examples!

Not asserting boundaries is Good Feminine Behavior. Asserting boundaries can result in punishment, but not asserting boundaries puts one in the position of, well, not be able to have boundaries.

Rearing children is, like, a necessary activity for humanity to continue to exist as a species. (Seriously, someone has to do it.) But in a patriarchal system, rearing one's own children is uncompensated labor that leaves one without financial independence. (Depending on the time and place, rearing other people's children can also be uncompensated labor.)

People should be taught to set boundaries for themselves! And, also, people should be taught to respect the boundaries of others! But with child-rearing, it should be a task that doesn't disadvantage one and also isn't something that's prescribed by gender!

Anyway, denigrating femininity if you've been put into the girl/woman category won't benefit you under a patriarchal system. Adhering to femininity if you've been put into the girl/woman category won't save you under a patriarchal system.

You don't get to win at patriarchy. You've been put into the class that does not have a Win At Patriarchy path. That's the point.

The only solution is to get rid of the patriarchal system all together.

[greatwyrmgold]

Undersiders Cluster Trigger Without Undersiders

In my previous two posts about an Undersiders cluster trigger, I've talked vaguely about a "cult" where the Undersiders lived before their trigger event. That idea has stuck in my mind since, and the only way I know how to get thoughts like that out of my head is to post them online. Thank god for Tumblr.

Anyways, here's an outline of a high control group which might produce that sort of cluster trigger event. If anyone wanted to write a fanfic about that specific cluster trigger.

The Grift

Meet Andrew Randal. He's an ordinary psychiatrist who wants to give people a second chance. His company, New Growth, offers a wide variety of programs to help people defeat their inner demons and build a new life for themselves.

From an omniscient and objective perspective...Andrew is a charismatic ex-therapist, targeting and testing desperate or vulnerable people. His specific targets are ex-criminals and the criminal-adjacent. Drug addicts, prisoners on parole, supervillain henchmen...even the occasional ex-supervillain. Other kind of desperate people show up, and their money spends well, but they're a pleasant byproduct of the main grift.

Not all of his programs are complete bullshit...just most of them. The core of his stated self-help philosophy revolves around identifying your "inner demons" and building a new, better you that excludes those demons.

Obviously, with many of his clients being convicts or other rule-breakers, conforming to a strict set of prosocial rules is part of this program. For your own good, violation of these rules is met with punishment. (A punishment you agreed to, remember?) Also, since many of his clients are low-income, he also offers a program where clients can perform good, honest labor, both to build character and so they can enjoy the rest of the programs.

Of course, the honest labor is for various agriculture businesses and such that pay Andrew for the labor. This sounds like it might create an employer-employee relationship, but Andrew created a legal defense dense enough that disillusioned clients figure it's not worth testing in court and just leave the program.

Obviously, a lot of Andrew's marketing focuses on framing this in a way that is neither unethical nor illegal. This isn't labor exploitation! This is a chance for people to work hard while they build their futures. It's a chance to bootstrap yourself out of the gutter and into the good life. Anyone who says otherwise is just trying to make everyone into complacent sheep, dependent on external aid. And it's all optional, anyways, it's not like clients have to do the work. A lot of people just pay for the normal sessions and move on.

This kind of rhetoric might drive some people off, but it generally isn't used unless there's some specific threat to New Growth that needs to be defeated with facts and logic.

Aside from the obvious benefits of this business model, it lets Andrew identify people who are willing to follow orders and leave their old selves behind. But more on that once I describe...

The Accomplices

Having outlined the grift, let me identify the people helping Andrew with it. While Andrew is not a parahuman, he gathered a few parahumans to help him with his grift.

First is his high school bud, Colter Elliot. Colter fell in with the wrong crowd, barely avoided criminal charges, and got a job at the local youth center. He was a coach for their basketball team, and while he got the kids energized, he was focused on making the kids into an effective basketball team, and not supervised well enough. Colter got settled into this new role, the kids started getting hurt at practice. A few follow-up questions later, an investigation into his coaching practices was launched to figure out whether he should just be fired, or whether he needed to be charged with child abuse.

Colter wound up with one of those borderline Master/Stranger powers, arguably with a dash of Trump. He gives people orders; ignoring them drains your energy, fatiguing you, but following them gives you a burst of strength and energy. (Though not enhanced endurance or resilience or anything. I'm sure he'll use this power responsibly.) Needless to say, he supervises most of the work teams.

Second are two sisters and clustermates, Megan and Lily Fleischer. They triggered when a douche who Lily rejected ambushed the two of them with some friends; the douche drove Lily into a corner and started beating her within an inch of her life, while the friends restrained Megan and kept watch and such.

Megan gained the power to produce fog that messes with people's heads, causing them to get lost in the fogbank and see shapes that aren't there. She also has a Striker power that can make other people emit that fog for a brief period, which they will of course be surrounded by. She was mostly recruited for her marketing expertise.

Lily has two Striker powers. One of them is basically a weaker version of Megan's secondary power—it makes someone spew smoke, which doesn't have any effect beyond obscuring vision and smoke inhalation. The other Striker power incapacitates people with hallucinations, which she can influence but which are largely drawn from the target's mind.

Lily's hallucinatory touch is a key part of Andrew's process for finding people's inner demons; another key part is lying about what the power actually does. They're primed to expect that they'll face down their inner demons in psychic combat, so that's what they hallucinate. Lily's control is sufficient to make sure that they always lose, unless they've paid/worked for enough programs to slay one of those demons.

The last significant parahuman is Lavender Green, formerly the supervillain Bioeffector. Her power isn't as hyper-specific as Colter or Lily's, so I won't dwell on her trigger event. She brews tinkertech slurries of chemicals and protists, which inducing some kind of growth or healing in living organisms.

(As an aside: A bioeffector is a microorganism which can kinda fertilize soil it's in. Lavender thinks it was a clever name, but nobody knows what a bioeffector is, so most people assume she called herself that because her slurries have effects on biology. So they think her name is lame.)

Lavender joins New Growth after it's been operational for a few years, but Andrew realizes she compliments his team well. Partly by giving him something else to sell to the big farms they work for, mostly by giving their clients a way to recover from Colton's encouragement.

The Cult

Andrew's first cult-y move is sleeping with a bunch of women under his authority, without letting any of them know he's sleeping with anyone else. For the most part, it's just women with useful talents that he wants to exploit—Lavender, the Fleischer sisters, some non-parahumans with mundane skills, probably another parahuman or two. The sex is as much a means to keep them loyal to him as it is, you know, pleasure.

But Andrew isn't just watching New Growth for potential girlfriends. He's watching for people who can be manipulated—people who follow even the most ridiculous orders, who want to actively bury their old identities and find new ones. People who are willing to become Andrew's slaves (of the non-sexual variety).

The next bit is just...normal high control group stuff. I'll skip the way he breaks people down and molds them to suit his needs and amasses hundreds of followers, and skip to the bit where he buys some land in the middle of nowhere and set up a compound.

By this point, Andrew has convinced his loyal followers about a vast conspiracy that wants to destroy people like them. It's a hodgepodge of common conspiracy tropes, with a bit of parahuman flavor, and probably turning the inner demons from metaphor into "No, Lily's power lets you fight literal demons that live in your brain."

(If a theoretical fanfic author detailed this conspiracy, they should probably indulge the urge to give them a broken-clock moment about a cabal that all superheroes work for or powers coming from aliens. That's just fun.)

So he moves himself, Colter, his girlfriends, hundreds of his followers, and hundreds more of their children/spouses/etc to an isolated location. In this place, called New Hope, he continues his spiel about hard work and defeating your innqer demons and stuff. His followers are already familiar with farming, and Lavender's tinker slurries let them turn mediocre pasture into decently fertile farmland. Most of the followers do that, some of them work in a sweatshop; both farm and sweatshop produce goods that are sold to give New Hope its own source of revenue.

(Note that New Growth is still operating as a business back home; its exploitative practices are just less relevant now that Andrew isn't trying to recruit from its clientele.)

There's firm control within the cult, but relatively little conflict. The residents' powers are underutilized, their shards neglected. So perhaps it's no surprise that Andrew suffers an unexpected death when a disagreement between him and Colter turns violent.

It's often said that a cult's second leader plays a pivotal role in its long-term trajectory, perhaps more important than the first. Colter rises to the challenge. He spins Andrew's death as the result of cabal activity or alien superpowers or something, and steps into the role of cult leader.

Colter is less subtle and less charismatic than Andrew, but he knows how to make people fall in line, can tell a good lie, and basically everyone there is used to taking orders from him. There's a brief power struggle between Colter and Megan, which leads to Megan taking over external operations and Colter running the compound. They share resources, and Megan tries to direct new recruits to the compound, but neither she nor anyone else has as much experience identifying good marks as Andrew does, so it's a pretty slow trickle.

New Hope probably has some clashes with the odd independent superhero or regional villain, but for the most part it's stable. Colter consolidates power over the place and indulges in a more hedonistic flavor of cult leader behavior.

Some more parahumans pop up—several children of Andrew's parahuman girlfriends, a couple of random triggers. Most of these get integrated into Colter's inner circle.

One of the random triggers was a teenager pushed to and past the breaking point by Colter and his power; she turned against the cult in frustration, was driven out by Colter's lieutenants, and continues to hang around in a nearby roadside town. She doesn't want to leave her family with Colter, and worries that they'll get killed if the authorities get involved. (This worry is about two parts lingering conspiracism, one part awareness of things like the Waco siege.) Her efforts to wreck the cult from the outside keep things from staying too calm.

But the first big challenge to New Hope is that cluster trigger.

[vashti-lives]

When I learned that Crumbl was founded in Utah buy two Mormons I immediately went OH. I'd never cared enough about them to uh, know anything beyond that they sold giant cookies, but as soon as it was pointed out it made absolutely complete sense.

Anyway the LDS church fucking loves capitalism more than almost any other religion and on a base level most Mormons I know lowkey consider themselves above the law if the law is getting in the way of their religion so it makes complete sense to me that they'd immediately violate shit like child labor laws.

already having a labor law violations section in your wiki is crazy

[pellucid-constellations]

Yk what I'm glad you quit your job!!! I'm the person who said I gave my two weeks notice to my toxic boss but honestly? I wish I had the guts to quit 3 days into it. I stayed for 6 months and now we're going to court because they violated so many labor laws and I won't let them get away with it

So anyway tldr: happy for you that you did what was best from the get go and quit!!

Omg hello this is intense!! I'm so glad you are out of there even though it wasn't sooner 😪 Court sounds so stressful and I'm sending you love for all of that mess! Thank you though for the support because this makes me sure that I made the right decision <3