#it has to be institutional and I constantly scream about if people just DID THE RIGHT THING AND ACTED WITH INTEGRITY FOR FUCKING ONCE

[cheeseburgersinparadise]

My political opinion at work is "i want my friends and family to be safe"

It's the ultimate solid stance. You disagree you look like a fuckin asshole.

yeah I mean I wasn’t talking really about political discourse at work more like….if you can turn the other way and help someone in the process, do that. if you’re told to profile, or you’re told to discipline someone bc they said something “wrong” or told to rat ppl out for stealing, just. don’t.

I want my friends and family to be safe is a great point but also - for half of America, that means at the expense of everyone else. we need to care about each other and truly believe in the collective. I think that’s the only way we can get thru this. Idk. I just dk.

[halibellecter]

Paperclip Factory Thinking

I'm going to describe something that happens to me sometimes that I think might be a kind of autistic logic loop. It isn't a problem, just a way of thinking I don't see in anyone else, and I'm hoping I'm not the only one.

So, the Paperclip Problem is a thought experiment that details how an AI designed to make paperclips would eventually destroy the world to be able to make the most amount of paperclips, not caring that the world is going to be/is being/has been destroyed, because its only goal is to make paperclips.

And sometimes, my brain does this.

It will look at a situation where there's a conflict and go off down a rabbit hole of "what if you kept escalating and the person just didn't stop? and they told you they wouldn't stop, and they kept not stopping, even if you threatened or hurt them, or physically tried to prevent them?"

The one that my brain used to go back to a lot was a baby that cried all the time. If they weren't unconscious they were crying. Even whine in their sleep. Parents at their wits' end. Every doctor, every test, every sleep method, nothing helps, the baby won't even stop crying to eat, they have to get a PEG tube as a NEWBORN because they'll wake up, scream constantly from the time they wake up until they fall asleep, and repeat the next day. They don't talk, they seem to understand words but they're screaming every second they're awake, so it's not like they can really be talked to. They become a child and a young adult and they're probably placed in an institution at some point and they just. keep. screaming. And they won't stop. Every psychiatric med, every therapy method, every attempt by everyone, they just keep screaming, screaming, screaming, every second. What would happen to them over the course of their life? What would be done? I picture them being sedated and coming out from under it only to start screaming. They try heavy antipsychotics that can cause catatonia, but they just scream or are asleep. No in between. Everyone is trying to help them, they are clearly distressed, this is not a communication method, they are screaming in distress. But no one can figure out why.

And I do that a lot. "Well what if that person just kept doing that? And no matter what, they kept doing it? Threatened with jail time and they go to jail and get back out and start doing it again... could they eventually be killed by the death penalty for their, idk, constant and intractable... letting their dog poop in the street? Jaywalking? Mooning people?"

Today I made a bunch of paperclips about a post on reddit that referenced a dog barking, with people talking about dogs they'd known who would bark constantly, at all hours of the day.

--And we were off to the races.

"What would happen if the dog kept barking and whining and howling no matter what you did? You took them to the vet and nothing seems to be wrong, they just keep vocalizing. You try a collar and then another one, a speaker and then another one, you try positive reinforcement FIRST, you're not an abuser, you're trying everything... it's just not working, the dog keeps barking, no matter what, what do you do then? You muzzle them and they whine and howl, they're always making sounds, and can't seem to stop."

And like, I'm not looking for specific answers to these scenarios, although I wouldn't mind if someone is an expert and is like "so then what would happen next is ABC". That's cool to know. I'm just wondering, does anyone else do this? Is it an autism thing??

[lesb0]

Your point about Gilbert Baker not being paid for the rainbow flag in relation to Emily Gwen with the lesbian flag ebegging using it is so correct. Plus I’m sure a ton of the more recently designed flags for other labels have traceable designers why is no one screaming that the creator of the asexual flag or whatever deserve millions because megacorporations are profiting off it either?

I feel it’s pretty straightforward that making a flag for the community means you’re making something for everyone to share not providing a service that you must be paid for and for some reason its just the lesbian flag that has this person who deserves monetary compensation????

I don't have any problem with the community doing fundraisers to build everyone up (collectives, institutions, foundations, etc). Gilbert Baker's support system was aware that individually giving him money whenever he begged did nothing but dangerously enable his drug addictions and he was safest in the VA shelter. But on the internet, people arent seeing all the scammers blow thousands of dollars over and over again. doing nothing with it, giving back nothing, demanding more constantly :/

[adelaidedrubman]

4, 8, 10, 18 for the pride asks for both (or just one you think it's more relevant to) of ur far cry girlies

TY BELOVED these were great ones to think about and i did do each question for each girlie and am sorry, as always, for the long answers 💕

4. Is your oc's environment supportive about their identity? How does this impact them?

of all the reason she’s locally hated, bisexuality isn’t top of anyone’s list. although actually on second thought a significant portion of the hope county population has probably looked at johnjess and said “huh, i think i’m biphobic now.”

but in all seriousness there is ofc a montana circa 2018 level of biphobia in her life mandated by the setting. mostly only passing reference as far as what’s actually on the page because that’s the only capacity in which it’s fun for Me, The Author to explore it. and because jestiny doesn’t hang out with straight people. which also is really only because as god of the universe i decide every character from canon i like enough to write about must in some way be not cishet. i’ve done many cruel things to mary may, but i won’t do that

and as for family of origin, jestiny certainly did not receive much support. her parents and extended family were mostly bible belt evangelicals and took that to heart, so. not a lot of pride flags hung up in the windows growing up.

that being said, her extended family never really learned she was bisexual because she never voluntarily socialized with them, so they never knew they had anything to disapprove of. in part because her parents’ open disapproval mostly took the I Pretend I Do Not See It/this is one of her many Difficult Phases form of biphobia. this isn’t a problem because it isn’t really happening, and if it is she’ll grow out of it. teenage jestiny stomping through the house screaming “BYE everyone i’m going out on A DATE with my GIRLFRIEND who i KISS WITH TONGUE because i LIKE WOMEN AND MEN” and her mother saying “that’s great sweetie i’m glad you’re finally making some gal pals and developing a positive attitude tell the boys you’re going on your double date with to have you back before curfew” (she goes no contact with her father and never tells her mother anything about her personal life in adulthood so to them this is where it left off forever)

8. Have they had struggles with their identity, be it due to internal or external reasons?

nothing that deep. it was probably a very easy childhood trip to the library to get on the computer and go “google am i gay quiz. whoa bisexual you can do that?? ok that’s out of the way. wikipedia chinook salmon” for her. and her natural contrarian disposition has helped keep her from internalizing most of the bigotry she was taught she should be internalizing. those signs won’t stop her because she can’t read etc.

10. Does your oc celebrate Pride? How?

idk why my first thought was that sasuke fic line like “i don’t dance! what’s pride what do they have to be proud of?” anyways yeah every year she goes to the bars with rainbow flags to pick up chicks and bi men then gets piss mad about the place being full of overpriced rainbow shots that are mostly water and food dye and Straight Allies and yells and complains and leaves belligerently announcing she’s going to go actually celebrate pride by catching rainbow trout if you even care. local bisexual woman finds a way to get less ass during pride month than any other month of the year

4. Is your oc's environment supportive about their identity? How does this impact them?

copy paste what i said above about montana circa 2018 but substitute lesbophobia. although ig 2018 jenna would be experiencing less of it on the day to day since her primary social circle is eden’s “We Like Gay” gate. which brings us to yes, her primary canon environment is supportive.

prior to her time in the project her main environment was academic institutions in the greater san francisco area so. yes, she was assured, constantly, very loudly, of how approving her environment was, like the most approving place on earth, basically perfect, and they’re waiting for her applause. (that being said being where she was did give her above average opportunities to connect with other queer people and find a personal community she gelled with.)

as for her family of origin, this is the one part of her life her parents are unconditionally supportive about. “mom, dad: i’m a lesbian” -> “yay, good to know!” vs. “mom, dad: i’m switching career fields from the natural to the social sciences” -> screaming crying throwing up how could you disappoint your family like this what will we tell people where did we go wrong. also they have disapproved of every woman she’s ever brought home but never for the being a woman thing.

8. Have they had struggles with their identity, be it due to internal or external reasons?

nah, identity is a very flexible and mostly social communication thing for jenna in general so there’s never been a lot of identity formation drama for her, including wrt gender and sexuality. which isn’t to say she doesn’t reflect on it, but it’s more intellectualizing than struggling to come to terms with anything about herself. same with external challenges, she perceives them but intellectualizes it without taking much to heart or feeling any type of way about it, as is her wont.

10. Does your oc celebrate Pride? How?

she does, jenna has a lot of appreciation for cultural observations and attending sociql events in general, so. if there’s a big pride event near her she’s probably stopping by, albeit often more as a spectator than as an active participant celebrating herself and her community. but she shows up, and may put a pride flag in her window

AAAAAAAND FOR GENERAL:

18. Do you prefer to give your ocs specific labels, or keep it unspecified? Why? If applicable, do you change their labels depending on circumstance?

i usually define them with whatever is the best familiar term available in character descriptions even if they tend not to define themselves with the same terminology or wouldn’t specificy at all in universe. i don’t always have a character’s sexuality nailed down on day one, but some form of wlw is the default starting point bc write what you know and want to see more of and such. so far i don’t have any ocs that have been adapted for vastly different universes, so i haven’t had to think about whether to change labels to reflect changed circumstances.

also for the record, i would write a straight oc if their being straight was really necessary to the plot or they were a funny side character or something

[lovemyage-blog]

A Letter to the People: On Trump, Tyranny, and the Cowardice That Brought Us Here

By Thom Ryder

Dear fellow Americans,

Let me start with a confession.

I’ve known the dark parts of myself. I’ve lied. I’ve manipulated. I’ve hurt people I loved and let my ego drive the car off more than a few cliffs. I’m not writing this from some mountaintop of moral purity—I’ve screwed up, I’ve self-sabotaged, and I’ve stared in the mirror long enough to see the wreckage I’ve caused. So no, I’m not better than you. But I am done pretending that we can survive another round of polite silence and strategic compromise.

Because we’re not in a policy disagreement anymore.

We are in a war.

A war on truth. A war on the poor. A war on decency. A war on reality.

And Donald J. Trump isn’t just some “controversial” figure in that war—he’s its bloated, bigoted, brain-dead general.

Let’s be clear: Trump is a rapist. A con man. A lifelong liar with the emotional depth of a lunch tray. He’s a coward, a pedophile, and a parasite who’s been running scams since cocaine was sold in briefcases and disco balls hung from the ceiling. He's not “fighting for the working man.” He’s a narcissistic gold-plated toilet with a spray tan, a permanent scowl, and a God complex the size of his Mar-a-Lago. He is Roy Cohn’s final legacy.

Roy Cohn was Trump’s mentor, fixer, and spiritual father. A closeted gay man who spent his career destroying other gay men. He fueled McCarthyism. He helped send the Rosenbergs to the electric chair. He made cruelty into currency. And he died of AIDS, alone, still lying about who he was—even on his deathbed. That’s who Donald Trump studied. That’s who he learned from. Cohn taught him to deny everything, attack constantly, and treat truth like a weakness. A man who weaponized shame. And Trump turned that lesson into a brand.

That same self-hatred lives on in Senator Lindsey Graham and every other closeted bootlicker who pretends to stand for “morality” while stabbing their own community in the back. These aren’t conservatives. These are cowards in tailored suits, trading dignity for power and calling it patriotism. They could’ve been bridges. They chose to be hammers.

And what banner do they march under? Christian Nationalism.

Let’s rip that fucking mask off.

Christian Nationalism is not faith. It's not love. It’s not Jesus flipping tables and feeding the poor. It’s a bloodthirsty, flag-wrapped cult built on white grievance and sanctified ignorance. It’s Old Testament vengeance with an AR-15 and a lifted Ford truck. It’s a gospel of fear, control, punishment, and performance disguised as “family values.” And it has wormed its way into every American institution—from school boards to Senate hearings.

They scream about “protecting the children” while handing those same kids over to poverty, school shootings, climate disaster, and opioid hellscapes. They call themselves pro-life, but they wouldn’t cross the street to help a hungry child unless that kid was pledging allegiance to ExxonMobil.

This isn’t "Christianity". It’s cosplay fascism in a church pew.

And here’s the part that burns like battery acid: Trump is their messiah.

Three wives. Dozens of assault allegations. Porn stars, hush money, stolen charity funds, draft dodging, Bible held upside down for a photo op—and still they whisper, “He was chosen by God.”.... "Our imperfect vessel."

No. He was chosen by white fear.

By white resentment. By rural rage that would rather see the whole country burn than admit that Black, brown, queer, immigrant, and poor lives matter too.

And yes, I live out here. I know these folks. I hear them at gas stations, in bowling alley parking lots, and at bar counters with flags on the wall. Many of them would vote for a serial killer if he promised to make “the libs cry.” Trump did. And they do.

But don’t for one second think the Democrats get a pass.

Fuck no.

Because while Republicans went full fascist, Democrats clinked wine glasses and chased donor dollars. They preached “Hope and Change”—then rubber-stamped drones, propped up banks, and let Wall Street write the rules. They watched the GOP light the Constitution on fire and responded with think tank reports and brunch. They fundraised off Roe v. Wade for years—then let it fall without a fight. They hand-wrung while pipelines were built, cages filled, and Gaza burned.

And the liberal base? Too often, soft. Fragile. Addicted to optics and curated suffering. Comfortable white progressives who tweet solidarity while stepping over the homeless man outside Whole Foods. They know the language, but not the pain. They retweet Black Lives Matter but panic when the protest hits their neighborhood. They quote MLK but haven’t raised a fist or raised hell in years.

This is the vacuum. This is the lie. This is how fascism wins—with silence, with selfies, and with “well-meaning” liberals who mistake performative wokeness for actual resistance.

Bonhoeffer saw it. He lived it. He fought it. He didn’t ask fascists to “do better.” He didn’t wait for permission. He resisted with everything he had. Because he knew what we seem to have forgotten: stupidity is more dangerous than malice—because it greets you with a handshake and a flag. It smiles while it marches. It sings hymns while it loads the go'damm guns.

And right now, America is choking on it.

So here’s the truth, and it might sting:

If you still support Trump, you’re not a patriot. You’re not “real America.” You’re a mark. A rube. A pawn who got played by a bloated con man who’d sooner throw you in front of a limo than let you sit at his dinner table. He’s not “one of you.” He’s your executioner—wrapped in the same colors you think you’re defending.

If you’re a Democrat still waiting for someone else to fix it—wake the fuck up. No one’s coming. You are the cavalry.

And if you’re still undecided? Then history will decide for you.

Because this isn’t about left or right. This is a moral reckoning.

Trump didn’t break America. He just showed us what was already broken.

This is the line.

This is the moment.

And this letter is a mirror.

If you’re still on the fence—jump. Pick a side. And if you’re not ready to speak, fight, or resist? Then get the hell out of the way.

Yours,

Thom Ryder

[kuronekonerochan]

Reminder that Moroccanoil, the main sponsor of Eurovision is an Israeli brand.

So when we say the EBU's double standards regarding Russia and Israel is not fair, it's because that decision was not made, but 100% bought off. So yes both ESC and Moroccanoil deserve to be boycotted.

It's why they chose to criticise a Swedish-Palestinian artist for wearing a keffiyeh that was a family heirloom. "But palestine isn't in the ESC so they can't have symbols in..." Bullshit. We had an Italian-Egyptian singing in arabic in 2019, we constantly had contestants incorporating their ethnicity in songs like Australia this year.

So it's not that "symbols of other countries are forbidden", it's just symbols of palestine that are censored like Hatari showing a palestinian flag.

So let's be clear and cut the bullshit. ESC didn't expel Israel and expelled Russia because the circumstances were different.

They did it because to them the Israeli sponsorship money speaks higher than the screams of 15.000 children dying and thousand others maimed, malnourished and sick without any access to food, clean water or medical care BECAUSE OF ISRAEL ALONE. In Rafah alone there are 600.000 children trapped with no safe place to go. 2 million innocent civilians are displaced.

So, excuse me if I am not overly disturbed about a singer who is singing a song promoting genocide that had to be altered 4 times to "tone it down", who has made very public statements about being excited to join the IDF, being "harassed" bc the audience booed her. Said audience that was censored too with anti booing technology that replaced the hardcore Eurovision fans' vocal opinion about her participation with fake recorded applause track.

"Oh, but Eurovision is supposed to be just about music, not politics."

First, they proved that is false when they banned Russia.

Second, a genocide is not "politics". It's the worst crime against humanity possible and just like companies who profited with the Nazi deserved to be found guilty of being accomplice to genocide, so does the ESC deserve every boycott possible for choosing to let sponsor money dictating their decisions over their own criteria.

Post WW2, the german people denied knowledge of the atrocities the Nazis committed in the camps. Foreign nations denied knowing what was going on and allowing it to happen. The Holocaust changed the world and the UN was created to prevent it from ever happening again.

Today, even with all the media manipulation, we can watch real time a genocide unfold and the amount of people supporting it are already staggering, but the way larger amount of people who don't care at all, who are inconvenienced and annoyed because their entertainment is being disturbed by the slaughter of thousands of children and think their Met Gala, their Eurovision should go on as they were and that the problem is the protests (that have been peaceful until either the police or zionists attack them), the boycotts, and the "harassment of the poor girl singing for Israel", when all that is stacked against a genocide, those are the people that scare me the most. The ones who don't care. Because I know who they would have sided with and indulged in Nazi Germany and I never thought it would be so easy for so many to look away from the atrocities and caring only about their vain interests. The western governments have failed us by being complacent and complicit in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. The UN has been exposed as a failure because even when the entire world tries to stop an ongoing genocide, a single country with veto power ensures it keeps happening, with the support of a couple of european countries. They failed the palestinians and failed humanity.

So no, where you see a silly fun song contest that "shouldn't be about politics" I see a morally bankrupt institution that caved into sponsorship interests and has voluntarily let itself be bought as an accomplice in denying the genocide that's happening and also promoting the culprits in the media as just another western fun nation singing in harmony with us instead of active and current perpetrators of a genocide.

Hi friends, I am learning this morning that Joost Klein and the Netherlands as a whole may be disqualified from Eurovision. Why is that, you ask? Well, our lovely Dutch gabber chose to do a little heckling during the press conference, shouting"Why not?" After the Israeli press rep told Eden Golan that she didn't have to answer a question regarding why she felt comfortable performing the show when it put others in danger. He also would actively cover his head with a flag during her speaking portions. As well, he explicitly asked for the Isreali team to not record him during some of their video filming. They did anyway. That takes us to today, where, from down the grapevine I hear that comments were made by the Israeli team regarding Joost's deceased father of whom his song is dedicated to, and he retaliated full force. Not sure what this means, or what will happen to him, but I support him in standing up to Isreal on what is at present one of the largest Israeli stages.

[spade-riddles]

the thing is anon, karlie is a big name, but she isn’t as big as taylor and coming out for her would be a bit scary, but not as scary as taylor cause the music industry is fucked. a model coming out as bi won’t be a big deal as taylor swift coming out.

taylor needs the sales/the support the gp gives her and the voters in big awards like the grammys. yes she cares about all of that we have to admit.

yet karlie’s situation is different. many models are bi/gay and they get job, especially that you forget that karlie is her own boss now, she isn’t a new model, she is a big name and has her own investment and platform. her job isn’t reliant on the same elements as a musical artist.

also it depends on how both people were brought up. as we know from taylor’s songs and the documentary MA, taylor has so much anxiety and fear relating to being liked by the music industry and general public.

on the other hand, karlie’s job is much different and her industry is yes filled with horrors but i feel like the world won’t burn if karlie dated a woman. she would definitely still get jobs as she is already (even since she met taylor) a very respected model. but taylor on the other hand, ten years ago, might’ve lost hundreds of fans because of how things were. that was her main fear.

also do u see the racism in the grammys? the exiling of deserving artists? it’s all scary.

BUT the thing is taylor isn’t the taylor she was in 2014. now she came so far and no person in this world can deny that she is the biggest name in the world now. she is so fucking big it’s impossible for any musician or musical institution to just ignore her. it would be TOO obvious. also it’s 2023 and taylor is 33. isn’t hanging out gay people the same as being one?

the thing is she publicly made her support loud and clear and the fans she was afraid to lose might’ve just left… so what now?

if u wanna put ALL of that aside, why did she write Anti- Hero? in this song she indirectly says that she takes responsibility for the delay.

“one day i’ll watch as you’re leaving cause u got tired of my scheming”

also if u see those photos from the basketball game, karlie is VERY at ease and even tells taylor to “relax”.

besides, coney island that you talked about (or someone else idk) this SCREAMS i’m sorry i kept bearding and left you for this shit that people say about you.

“but when I walked up to the podium I think that I forgot to say your name” !!!!

“sorry for not making you my centerfold”

another example is champagne problems. i’ll scream this forever. this song is about a failed coming out. taylor loves a good metaphor so this song is made to look like it’s a turned down proposal, but i think it isn’t.

i believe folklore and evermore are autobiographical. she says “sometimes you just don’t know the answer till someone’s on their KNEES and asked you”

why didn’t she their “knee” but their “knees”. when someone is on both knees, they are begging for something.

also why didn’t she say “till he is on his knee”. she said “they” leaving it very open cause it isn’t about a proposal.

last thing “dreams of your hair and your stare and sense of belief in the good in the world” this for me sounds like karlie has this positive look at the world that people will still support taylor and love her no matter what and it will be fine, yet taylor can’t believe that.

maybe I’m wrong, but in taylor’s WHOLE discography she is constantly apologizing for hiding and making things difficult for her partner cause she is who she is.

“the devil is in the details but you got a friend in me/would it be enough if i can never give you peace”

also “your integrity makes me seem small”

time and time again taylor says in her songs that her partner faced shit for her. that this person burned themselves to make her live the way she wants.

“all that you ever wanted from me was sweet nothing”. what would her partner want from her if not living freely? yet she didn’t pressure taylor.

all in all, taylor’s way of bearding is just…. losing the credibility and doesn’t even make sense anymore anyways.

like she is constantly making sure her and karlie are in different continents to “keep the rumors away”… this is just ridiculous.

[takenbypeter]

One Chance

X-Men Evolution Toad x mutant!reader

Word Count: 1,249

Summary: Toad always hears the same answer from you every single time, “no.” What happens when you finally agree to a date.

~~~~~

Don’t judge me, I wrote this after watching X-Men Evolution S3E7: The Toad, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. My man’s deserves love on that show.

~~~~~

“Don’t look now, but here comes your not so secret admirer,” said your best friend Kitty. You let out a little sigh already knowing exactly who she was talking about.

When you had moved to the institute you had expected difficulties. New town, new neighbors, new people who think you’re a freak. But what you didn’t expect was an admirer.

Toad.

Toad, although still a part of the brotherhood, showed no hesitation in declaring his feelings for you. “Good afternoon sugar plum. I hope you’ve had a beautiful day,” you rolled your eyes at his words. You knew Toad. It was no secret that everyday, he would hit on the same three people, (including yourself). For the first half of the day he’d hit on Rogue, then the second half you, and from your multiple run-ins with Wanda Maximoff you knew he’d turn to her after school.

“Hello Toad,” you said with a friendly smile, “my day was fine, thank you.” Unlike Rogue and Wanda though, you’ve always decided against being rude to the boy. Although he constantly asked you out, not once has he ever pushed it to the point where you were uncomfortable. “How was your day?” You asked.

“Better now that I got to see you,” he reaches out to lean against a locker before failing epically. You laughed at his little stumble before composing yourself. Noticing the little exchange Kitty began tugging on your arm.  “Okay well, Kitty and I were just about to head home, so see you tomorrow,” you said, allowing yourself to be pulled away. “Wait,” Toad jumped in front of you, “I didn’t get to ask you,” here it comes. He points a finger at you then at himself, “you…me…date tonight.”

You open your mouth about to let the word no come out naturally, just like it has every other day. But then you close it. Toad wasn’t that bad. The guy’s never gotten a yes before and you were starting to feel…honestly a little bad. Your eyes landed on Kitty’s which were wide as she frantically waved her hands from behind him. One date couldn’t hurt, right?

“Okay, sure.”

Kitty froze mid wave, shocked by your answer. “Okay, I understand,” Toad mumbled dejectedly as he began to walk off with his shoulders slumped.

“I said yes,” you reiterate and he turns around visually growing ecstatic, “wait you said yes!”

You nod in response and he jumps back over, “oh you are not going to regret it. I’ll come by the mansion at seven. This is going to be the best date ever!” He shouts jumping all the way out the door.

You turn back to Kitty who’s giving you a crazy-eyed look, “do you just know what you just did?”

You nod and begin to walk off as Rogue joins you two. “Toad…that was Toad.”

Rogue looks at Kitty questioningly before turning to you, “what is she going on about?”

Kitty answers for you, practically screaming, “Y/n just agreed to go on a date…with Toad!” Rogue looks back at you, surprise written on her face. You shrug in response, “I felt bad, plus it’s just one date.” You walked off, as they continued to stare at you baffled by your decision.

You weren’t nervous about the date. But as it did get closer to seven you started to feel some jitters. At seven you stood outside the mansion, waiting for him to show up. “Sorry I’m late,” Toad says walking up to you. You check your phone screen seeing that it was exactly seven. “Toad, you’re right on time?”

“Yeah well I planned on getting here earlier but then my ride bailed on me,” he mumbles cursing at Lance before turning back to you. “Now,” he holds out a hand in your direction, “let’s go my love bug,” he says. You shoot him a warning look while he shows a sheepish smile, “I mean Y/n.” You grin, taking his hand in yours. “Let’s go!” He shouts again before heading off to who knows where.

It isn’t until you’re standing on a boardwalk looking up at the tall rides that you realize where you are. “Toad?” You ask, staring up at one of the biggest rollercoasters you’ve ever seen. “Yeah?” He asks.

“You do know my mutation includes sonic scream. Right?” You turn to see him with eyes wide before he quickly recollects himself, “of course my sweet siren, which is why we’re here for this,” he hastily spins you around towards the game section of the boardwalk.

You both end up playing a couple of arcade games first. It turns out he’s quite good at arcade games. But actual booth games…not so much.

You had been standing at the same booth for over twenty minutes, all because you had mentioned that the stuffed bear was cute. After failing for about the tenth time you noticed Toad getting frustrated and you could already tell he was about to use his powers. But before he could, you intervened, “Toad, come on let’s not waste all our time on this one thing.”

Successfully pulling him away from the booth, his shoulders droop. “Aww man I’m such a loser.”

“Don’t be hard on yourself, these games are rigged most of the time.” He shook his head at your words, “not just that. I mean look at me,” he motions his hand in the air, up and down. “I’m practically a freak. I don’t even understand why you agreed to go out with me.”

“Hey!” You yell turning to him with a stomp of your foot. He jumps back at your sudden shout, “don’t talk about yourself like that. This date has been perfect. You’ve been super sweet and funny.” It’s true. Although there’s been some slip ups, he’s managed to turn them all into something positive.

“You don’t need to go out to try to impress me.” His eyes look up and meet yours for a moment before you avert your own gaze. “You’ve already impressed me.”

Toad suddenly grabs your hand, gaining your attention and with a smile on his face he begins tugging you back towards the booth. “Where are we going?” You ask.

“To get you that bear!”

Eventually the date comes to an end and you two arrive back at the institute empty handed. “Sorry I couldn’t win you anything,” he apologizes and you shake your head. “It’s okay. I just can’t believe you offered to pay forty bucks for it.”

“I can’t believe the guy didn’t take my offer,” he  added and you let out a laugh before you stopped at the front door.

“I don’t want this to end,” he says. “Well me neither but we have school tomorrow and then I have training,” you reason.

“I know. But I feel like when I wake up tomorrow, this will all be a dream.”

You tilt your head thinking about what to do before you get an idea. Leaning forward you press your lips against his cheek for a second. Tilting back you catch him staring at you with a blank expression and no words for the first time that whole night.

You clear your throat before saying, “there. That’s how you know it wasn’t a dream.” He remains silent and you reach for the door handle, “goodnight Toad.” You shut the door behind you and it isn’t until you’re out of his sight that his face erupts into a huge grin while he fist-pumps the air.

~~~~~

Okayyyyyy…so I may have written him a little sweeter than he is in the show, but I feel like if he actually got with someone he would 1,000% do whatever they say

[bookishjules]

A Herongraystairs Lens on "This Love" by Taylor Swift

Clear blue water

Starting this in the same way Clockwork Angel starts, with Tessa quite literally coming in on the water at the beginning. While it's not discussed as directly, Jem also would have arrived in London, and thereby in Will's life, via water. And, of course, I can't think "clear blue water" and not think about Will's eyes.

High tide came and brought you in

The idea of high tide bringing them in also implies a certain amount of fate--circumstances left all three of them with the London Institute and each other as the only place they could go, and they were all left there, clinging to each other as the tide rolled back out

And I could go on and on, on and on, and I will

it's the unending love they have for one another, the way they could be sustained on this trio alone. I also love that "I will" is what you would say when you swear an oath, like getting married or becoming parabatai

Skies grew darker

Jem got sicker, Will withdrew back into himself time and again, honestly just the whole plot of tid..

Currents swept you out again

This line could be Tessa or Will when Will found out Jem proposed, Jem or Will when Tessa was kidnapped, or Will or Tessa OR Jem when Jem "died"

And you were just gone and gone, gone and gone

I can't listen to this line without crying. The heartbreak surrounding Jem's "death" and the decades spent without being able to interact with JEM properly should be enough, but then we also have Will's actual death and the way that pain remains even after decades, and will resurface again and again in Tessa's heart forever

In silent screams

In wildest dreams

I never dreamed of this

The most obvious interpretation here is from Will's pov: he never dreamed he could have a friend, but Jem was dying anyway; he never dreamed he could find love because of his curse, but he did, though practically at the cost of his parabatai. That being said, we can also look at this from Jem's pov: he never dreamed he would be addicted to a killing drug, never dreamed he could fall in love and marry despite that, never dreamed he would give up his mortality for the two people he holds closest. And then we can see from Tessa's pov: she never dreamed Will would come back and bare his heart only hours after she'd agreed to marry Jem, never dreamed she'd lose Jem before getting to marry him, never dreamed that she'd get him back when all was said and done

This love is good

This love is bad

I think they all would have had these opposing thoughts at some point. We see Will constantly having to remind himself that not only his love is bad, but that Tessa's and Jem's love toward him is bad as well, despite how very good and pure both of those loves are. We also see Tessa constantly warring between whether Will, and her love for him, is good; I think there was also a voice in her head, as she slept with Will for the first time, that tried to convince her that what she was doing was bad because of the circumstances surrounding Jem. The way Jem felt selfish for wanting Tessa to marry him also has a place here, I think

This love is alive back from the dead

This is what it felt like when Jem arrived, when Will could finally let himself be loved by someone. It's what it felt like when Will found out he was never cursed and all the love he was so fearful of became what he rushed toward. It's what it felt like when Jem ceased being Brother Zachariah, when he could feel the full range of emotions again, when he could love Tessa again. It's what it felt like when Tessa saw Jem, her Jem, standing on Blackfriars Bridge for the first time in over a century

These hands had to let it go free, and

Jem's hands had to release his love to allow Will and Tessa's to snap together like magnets that Jem had been unknowingly holding apart. Will's hands had to release his love for Tessa, both while he was cursed, and then again when he found out about her and Jem, because he loved his parabatai just as much. Both Jem and Will had to release their love for one another in the way they lost their parabatai bond, lost that piece of their relationship that was so very sacred. Tessa had to release her love for Jem when he became a silent brother, and she had to let Will, her love for so many years, go, let him pass on.

This love came back to me,

Tessa came back to Will, forgiving him, understanding him, even after he had tried so hard to push him away. Jem came back, seemingly from the dead, to Will and Tessa, and then he came back in full for Tessa after the Dark War, after she'd separated herself from her love for him for so long.

Tossing, turning

aka every night they thought too much about being apart from one another, after Jem became Zachariah, after Will died

Struggled through the night with someone new

I do think that it must have been hard for Tessa both times she "spent the night with someone new"--both in Clockwork Princess and in After the Bridge--because of thoughts of losing Jem or memories of being intimate with Will, respectively. If we think of it in a less sexual way, there would always be nights tainted by memories, by the longing for more time, nights that Will and Tessa struggled through together, and nights that Jem and Tessa struggle through together now

Lantern, burning

Flickered in my mind for only you

The idea of a lantern in the window like a lighthouse drawing ships in from the storm, of keeping that light burning even when all hope seems futile.. I think of Will and Tessa keeping a light on for Jem, reminding him that he's always welcome, that this is home. I think of the metaphorical lanterns Jem and Tessa kept for each other--that little flame of home and love that could never be doused. I think of Jem and Tessa keeping a light on for Will, for his memory, as a symbol that he will always be with them

But you were still gone, gone, gone

gone like Tessa when Mortmain took her. Gone like the bond Will felt snap between him and Jem. Gone like Will, who is truly still gone and gone

In losing grip

On sinking ships

You showed up just in time

This makes me especially emotional for Jem, who had just lost his family, who had been reduced to nothing more than a demon's play thing and would be reeling from the repercussions his whole life, arriving in London, and feeling like he could have a home and a family again in Will. The same goes for Will, meeting Jem when he might have thought all hope was lost. We also see this with Will showing up for Tessa when he came to rescue her, both times, or Jem and Tessa showing up for Will when he was doped up from drugs. I could go on (and on, on and on)

This love left a permanent mark

Very physically, the parabatai rune is a permanent mark, and even after it faded, there was a scar there forever. Aside from that, the length of time we see these three love each other for, even when they're gone or out of reach, is all the evidence we need for the permanence of this love.

This love is glowing in the dark

Their love is so strong and bright and pure, and the one thing they can always rely on. (re: the image of the lantern mentioned above)

Your kiss, my cheek

I watched you leave

Your smile, my ghost

I fell to my knees

I can think of a million scenarios that fit these lyrics and make me emotional: Jem watching Will leave to save Tessa and then becoming a silent brother and feeling the ghost of his love whenever he sees either of them; Will leaving the land of the living, his return as a ghost at Jem and Tessa's wedding; Tessa and Jem having to say goodbye year after year and then finally Tessa sees him smile, sees his eyes open, and it's the ghost of her love she's held onto so long finally coming alive again.

When you're young, you just run

Will ran from love, Jem ran from death, Tessa ran from her family (80 something is young for warlocks, okay?)

But you come back to what you need

Will came back to Tessa and Jem to love them with the full breadth of his heart. Jem came back to mortality, to a place where love is precious and sincere. Tessa came back to family, she married again, had another child, even when it was too hard to watch her first children grow old.

[azenkii]

A Long List of Trash Fire Lord Zuko Headcanons

...that i couldn't get out of my head:

(warning: SUPER LONG POST i havent figured out how to trim posts yet)

he's the one who unchains azula despite iroh's protests. she doesn't even try to fight him, just cries into his shoulder and keeps mumbling about how father's going to be so disappointed in her. he takes her to her rooms and has her drink a sleeping draught, then stations the best guards he has left outside her chambers.

his first council meeting takes place literally a day after sozin's comet. he hobbles into the council chamber shirtless with his entire torso covered in bandages and every council member just looks at him like '...what'

he does NOT sleep for like,,a week after sozin's comet and then another two weeks after his coronation. katara, aang and suki try to persuade him to sleep and he doesn't listen. eventually sokka, toph and mai team up to literally drag his ass to bed and tell him he's not allowed to get up until he sleeps (does mai pin him to the bed with her knives? yes. is it kinky or sexual in any way? definitely not.)

he drinks So. Much. Tea. at this point it's practically tasteless to him but he drinks it anyway because he just needs something to do and tea is something familiar. he keeps iroh on his toes because he's constantly asking for new tea blends, uncle, i think i actually tasted the last one,

he flat-out refuses to grow his hair for at least a year after ozai's defeat. the second it starts getting close to his chin he shears it off himself, with his knife, and his stylist has a heart attack every single time

when he's tired he'll occasionally jump up when one of his guards moves. it stops after a bit, but for the first month and a half or so he's really twitchy. when sokka asks, the only explanation he can come up with is that he's not used to having people stand behind him silently and not want to kill him, much less want to protect him (sokka immediately takes him out for a shopping trip and makes a point of walking behind him the entire time, but only on zuko's right side, where he can clearly see it if sokka moves towards him)

when the healer declares azula mentally unstable and in need of an institution, he shuts himself in his office for the rest of the night. no one's allowed in, not even iroh. he finally emerges in the morning, eyes red from crying and sleep deprivation, and tells the librarian that he'd like a list of the best mental institutions in the country, please, the best in the world if you can get them

he loves theatre (is this even a headcanon?). unfortunately it practically died out in the fire nation along with the rest of the creative arts, leaving nothing but small troupes like the ember island players. one of zuko's personal goals (meaning things he wants to accomplish that aren't as important as restoring his country) is to bring back theatre; he finally manages to do it after about eight months or so of being fire lord, along with other arts like dancing, music and sculpture

he establishes a national day of mourning, on the first day of autumn every year, to commemorate the genocide of the air nomads. from 100AG onwards, every calendar printed in the fire nation has it marked. at first it was called the day of repentance, but aang persuaded him to have it changed (by arguing that he didn't want guilt to be a literal staple of fire nation culture)

he introduces literally So Many educational reforms, plus a mandatory class that teaches students about the cultures of the other nations (air nomads included) and how some of their traditions overlap

he turns down the offer of having a statue put up of him in the capital. toph ignores him and does it anyway.

he visits azula regularly, makes sure she's (relatively) comfortable and well-fed, and sometimes just sits down outside her door and tells her about everything that's going on right now ('some of the far colonies have developed their own standardised writing, azula, you wouldn't believe it, and i've asked the fire sages to come visit more often—but you never liked them, did you? oh, well; i'll make sure none of them go into your chambers by mistake')

(he doesn't know it, but when he does this azula sits by the door and listens. she wonders what kind of writing the colonists have developed, and whether or not the fire sages have taken on some new recruits.)

he hates being above anyone else. never sits in the throne if he can help it, nor does he sit on the dais in the council room. when he talks to people shorter than him, he finds himself stooping a little bit to talk to them on their level (the exception to this rule is sokka, who he mocks for being shorter all the way up until sokka grows taller than him, the bastard)

the first time he visits the earth kingdom, the earth king's ministers call a toast. he ends up being the only one who has to sit out, because he's too young to drink by earth kingdom law

once his servants figure out he won't kill them for talking to him, they start becoming a lot more bold, telling him off when he doesn't take care of himself. at one point, they force him to let them take care of him so much that he literally just bolts into the gardens and hides there until the staff rope in mai and ty lee

when he needs to escape, he does one of two things: (a) he dresses up as the blue spirit and does some parkour until he calms down, or (b) he goes to work at the jasmine dragon. (b) happens less often bc the jasmine dragon's in ba sing se, but there's been a few memorable incidents when an earth kingdom diplomat walks in and yells, 'LEE?!' when they see the fire lord

the first court artist who draws him also happens to be the one who drew azulon and ozai. he draws zuko without his scar. zuko takes one look at it and tells him, very calmly, that he'd like him to leave, please.

zuko burns the portrait. he doesn't fire the court artist, but he never calls on him again unless he has to. a second court artist is called, and can't help but be a bit confused when the fire lord tells him to be sure to include the scar

he forgets the crown. a lot. sometimes he walks into council meetings in his sleepwear with his hair tied up in a messy ponytail and a bunch of scrolls tucked under his arm. none of his councilmen have the guts (or the heart) to tell him that this is not, in fact, formal council wear

he goes to feed the turtleducks when he's stressed. he thinks he's being subtle. he's not. the entire palace knows, and they consciously give him space when they see him in the turtleduck garden

most of his staff are older than him, so they look at him and see this teeny tiny fire lord who is So Small and who Must Be Protected. the day after zuko's coronation, the head chef holds a meeting where they commence Operation Do-Not-Let-That-Boy-Turn-Out-Like-His-Father (subsection He's-The-Only-Good-Thing-We-Have)

one night he wakes up to find suki sitting in his room, decked out in full kyoshi warrior garb and makeup, and just about screams blue murder. suki tells him there are suspicions of an assassin in the palace, and would you please stop yelling it's very distracting, we won't be able to hear anyone coming over that racket

zuko gets very, very paranoid of random spirits after that. yeah, suki looks like a possibly malevolent spirit when she's wearing her makeup, what about it? (when he tells sokka he's highkey terrified of spirit shenanigans, sokka just looks at him and says, 'man, the stories i could tell...', and THAT'S when zuko remembers sokka spent like six months more than he did travelling with the avatar)

on his first visit to the southern water tribe, he removes his boots and leg guards, rolls up his pants and kneels barefoot in the snow. even though chief hakoda immediately starts trying to pull him up, he's stubborn as hell and stays kneeling for the entirety of his very long, very sincere apology-on-behalf-of-the-fire-nation speech. he nearly loses his toes to frostbite after that, and both sokka and katara never stop giving him shit for it

the first time he grows a 'beard' is completely accidental. he's stressed over some trade miscommunications with chief hakoda, hasn't slept in a few days...and then when sokka arrives as water tribe ambassador to help smooth things over, he takes one look at zuko and says 'man, facial hair does not suit you'

zuko: facial what now

he checks a mirror to find that he's got stubble covering his chin, dark enough that it almost looks intentional, and holy gods how the fuck did he not notice this before

'UNCLE WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME' 'i assumed you were doing it on purpose' 'WHEN HAVE I EVER DONE ANYTHING ON PURPOSE'

he shaves it all off immediately, of course, which prompts a lot of teasing and rib-poking from sokka until zuko finally snaps that he's scared it'll make him look like his father. sokka stops after that.

(the day after sokka leaves, zuko finds that a mysterious someone has scribbled all over ozai's royal portrait, giving him a frankly ridiculous beard and moustache that literally CANNOT be grown in real life. oddly enough, he can't bring himself to care about the defamation of royal property. he's too busy laughing.)

his paths cross with toph and sokka more than any of the others, because sokka is ambassador and toph is technically still a beifong. most of the time, at formal functions, he ends up sequestered in the corner with toph and a hoard of snacks, and they talk and swear much more than they usually do (zuko's ministers once heard him when he was drunk with toph, and the servants swear the older ministers' ears started bleeding)

he restores fire nation cultural festivals, and in doing so subjects himself to learning a lot of complicated dances

during one memorable week, he wrote so many letters and drafted so much legislation that he ran out of paper. he had to go visit the nearest school and ask for some

he keeps up with his firebending and sword training even though it's hard to fit into his schedule. his ministers refrain from reminding him that he has guards to protect him now; it's still hard for zuko to trust his safety with anyone but himself (team avatar is the exception).

he started sleepwalking about two months into his reign. no one knew why. one time, he nearly sleepwalked right off the edge of a balcony, and one of his guards had to grab him by the back of his robes.

the sleepwalking stopped after around a month and never happened again. at this point it's practically palace legend.

after freeing the war prisoners, he went around collecting every single earthbender-proof wooden cell he could find in the capital and surrounding areas. when he'd gotten most of them, he gathered them into a huge pile in the city square and set fire to them with his own hands.

unfortunately he couldn't do that with the waterbender metal cells but he did get toph to come in and bend them all into pretty shapes (well, toph thought they were pretty shapes. everyone else thinks they're meaningless squiggles)

he learned how to write with both hands at the same time out of sheer necessity (he refused scribes until it became clear that he'd be putting some people out of a job; that was when he started letting scribes write very, very minor things, but all important documents/drafts/letters are still written by him)

he once put the wet end of an ink brush in his mouth instead of the wooden end by mistake. didn't even realise until he bit down to keep it in place and ink went oozing everywhere

when his guards rushed in to find him coughing and spluttering black liquid all over his desk they thought he'd been poisoned but no he's just stupid

on his 17th birthday, his first one after being crowned, he got tackled by team avatar in the middle of the ballroom and ended up at the bottom of a cuddlepile for like ten minutes

this cuddlepile happened at an event that was very much public and very much formal. it was a scandal for weeks

just. fire lord zuko, guys. so much potential

[easily-infatuated23]

The Tub: Draco Malfoy x Reader

a/n: this is my first one of these so sorry if it sucks but here goes nothing!

Part Two Here

warnings: just some light fluff, small mention of bullying

summary: reader is having a really hard day and when she goes to relax in the prefects bathroom the unexpected occurs 

word count: 2k

The castle is enormous. So enormous that getting lost becomes part of my daily routine. But sometimes, its so crushingly small it's hard to find a place to be alone to get away from the constant noise of what feels like hundreds of middle and high school students. Everyone’s first choice of escape is the astronomy tower, so much so that a Ravenclaw tried to institute a sign up sheet as to insure the crowds wouldn’t mass as much. They were unsuccessful. The truly hidden places of the castle are few and far between and for those of us who aren’t lucky enough to find the Room of Requirement, we must get creative. The most recent spot I have found is the Prefect’s bathroom on the sixth floor. Moaning Myrtle will sometimes float through but we are on good terms so she generally will leave me alone.

As a Seer, the noise of the world is extra loud in my head. It's bad enough to have the regular noise, but the passing through of others’ thoughts is exhausting. I have gotten better at shielding myself but it takes a lot of energy. The Prefect’s bathroom has been a wonderful solution because within the chamber is a large bathtub which I use as a jacuzzi, to relax and reset. I am just so tired. The added layer of being Seer as well as a non pure-blood in Slytherin, takes its own individual toll. My family had been pure-blood until my parents. My mother had married a muggle man.

I started late in the sequence of years at Hogwarts. My family moved from America to England which meant I transferred into school third year. For a while people were interested in me but that died down within the first month. However, when I let my family heritage slip, I became as talked about as Harry Potter. As a descendant of Merlin himself, people began to attempt to get close to me just for the idea of “fame” rubbing off onto them. Harry and I have had discussions about it together but I know he secretly enjoys it, even if he doesn’t know he does.

Today wasn’t just any typical Thursday. The excitement for Christmas break was buzzing around the castle, practically inescapable. The world was loud and I was tired. Luckily, today is a short day so I was able to escape to the Prefect’s bathroom after lunch. I usually waited until I knew most of the castle was either at a meal or doing homework but today the world had been especially loud. I tentatively filled the tub checking my surroundings for a stray ghost or student. Once it was full I climbed in and allowed myself to fully relax. The noise melted away and it was like I could finally breathe.

After only fifteen short minutes I heard footsteps and looked up to see the last person I would expect or want to see, Draco Malfoy. The Prince of pure-blood Slytherin, the cruelest person within the castle besides Professor Snape. He had never gone out of his way to be mean to me in particular, but if one of his buddies started something he would be sure to join in. When people found out about my abilities, I had been forced to read him in front of practically the whole school. I saw such pain and fear in his life that I nearly passed out. To prove to him that my abilities were real, he told me to tell him something from his past only he would know. I said “a talking diary and a ripped page from a bookstore”. Ever since then, he never challenged me again. And yet here he was now, invading my hidden corner, my escape from everyone.

We locked eyes as he walked in and we both froze. “What are you doing in here?” he asked sharply. I didn’t reply but simply began to get out and grab my things when his voice interrupted my actions. “I’m not gonna make you leave I was just asking. You looked dreadful during Potions today, are you ok?”. For the first time, his words and his tone matched and seemed genuine. “Everyone has been really loud today. Let's just say that if I never hear the sentence ‘is he gonna ask me to the Yule Ball’ again it will be too soon” I remarked. He chuckled and looked down at his shoes. I now became acutely aware of the fact that I was standing in front of him in just a bikini in a steamy room. My cheeks flushed and I slipped back into the tub. “Why are you in here Draco?” I asked. He looked up at me and sighed. “This is usually where I come to hide but I got here a bit later than usual, I didn’t think there was competition for this spot”. I frowned and looked away from him. “Yeah that’s my bad, I usually am in here much later in the day. It’s just been such a loud day already. I needed to decompress earlier than usual”. He walked closer to me, then circled the tub to sit on the window sill. After a few minutes he spoke. “Does it actually help quiet the world? To sit in there I mean”. He gestured to the tub. “Yes it does actually”. I replied.

This was the weirdest but nicest conversation I had ever had with him. I had never been fully alone with Draco before, was this how he was when he was removed from his asshole friends? In a moment of impulsive thought I blurted “You are welcome to join me if you’d like”. Shit. Why did I say that? This guy is literally the worst. “Wouldn’t that just add noise in your head?” he asked. “No, when its a group of ten or less I can actually turn everybody off quite easily. Anymore then that and it gets harder and harder”. He nodded and then looked out the window. I could see his mind working through his grey eyes, deciding if he would stay or go. Finally, he shrugged. “What the hell”. He kicked his shoes off and began to loosen his tie. I wanted to look away but I couldn’t help myself watch him undress. I finally looked away and closed my eyes, relaxing my head on the edge of the tub.

The tub was big enough around that he could sit on the other side and we wouldn’t touch. The water churned as he got it. He sat closer to me than I had anticipated but I tried not to think about it as I took a deep breath and let my mind wander. “This is surprisingly relaxing”. His voice for the first time didn’t sound as strained or coarse as normal. “How did you find out about this?” he asked. I opened my eyes and looked at him, puzzled. “Have you never been in a jacuzzi?”. He shook his head. “Wow well that’s one thing wizards should definitely adopt from the muggle world” I replied, with a smile. He looked away from me quickly. Was that a hint of blush coming from his cheeks? Probably just from the heat of the water I rationalized. “Do you do this everyday?” he asked. “At least once a week. It's good for the soul”.

There was then a long period of silence. At first the silence was uncomfortable, but the longer it persisted, the more comfortable it became. A couple times I could have sworn that the water churned in a way that would indicate him moving closer to me. I didn’t dare check. I kept my eyes closed as the odd smile would flow across my face without thought. When I finally did open my eyes, he was less than two feet away from me. We locked eyes and I smiled. He gave a timid smile back before looking away again. I wanted to use my abilities to slip into his mind and hear what he was thinking but I held myself to a strict rule. “This seems like a pretty necessary time to use it” the voice in my head remarked. I physically shook my head to expel that thought from my mind. I felt his eyes on me. “I wasn’t inside your head by the way. I thought about it but decided that didn’t hold up with my rule so I shook it out of my head”. “You can if you want” he replied. I looked at him and sat up a bit. “My rule is I only purposefully do it if absolutely necessary or if the person gives me permission or asks me to do it. Are you asking me Draco?”.

The words flowed out of my mouth before I could filter them. Was that flirty? Did I just flirt with Draco? The thoughts swirled in my head only to be broken by his response. “Yes I am” he said sincerely. “Can I have your hand? It’s easier if I have physical contact”. I said. He nodded  and stared into my eyes as I moved closer to him. I clasped his hand and imagined his energy and thoughts flowing into my brain. His head was relatively quiet, besides one thought practically screaming. I opened my eyes and looked into his, stunned. “What was I thinking?” he asked in almost a whisper. I swallowed hard. “You were thinking ‘is it wrong that all I want to do is kiss her’”. I felt my cheeks turn red but I didn’t break eye contact. “Is it?” he asked. “No” I replied, unaware that a smile had crept across my face. He smiled back as his eyes darted from my eyes to my lips and back. I moved his hand which I was still holding to my cheek. His free hand moved underwater to my lower back as he pulled me onto his lap. Our faces were so close together I could feel his breath. He moved his other hand to my waist as I cupped his cheeks with mine. In a tender moment, not overly embroiled with passion or lust, we kissed. It was innocent and sweet. It made everything else seem unimportant. It was as if time slowed to a stand still. After a few moments we both pulled away and shared a smile that became a laugh. “I can honestly say this is not how I thought my day was going to go” Draco chuckled. “Me neither” I added. Suddenly a thought popped into my head. “Wait what time is it?” I asked. He checked his watch. “Two o’clock, why?”. “Damn, I promised I would meet Ron for a game of wizard’s chess. I always beat him but he insists on constantly challenging me”. I started to pull away when I noticed his face drop slightly. I pulled close to him again. “I am not making up an excuse to run away from you. Believe me I don’t want to go but if I don’t Ron will come looking for me and this would be a hard situation to explain” I remarked with a chuckle. His face picked up a little. “Are you staying here over Christmas?”. “Yes I am” I replied. “I think I will too, I’ve recently started to fancy you and I kinda want to explore this without the pressure of the whole school being here, if that’s ok with you” he smiled. “I would like that”. “But for the moment we can’t tell anyone what happened here or that we are even friends” he remarked suddenly. “It’s not my favorite reputation to uphold but if my father finds out I am seeing or being seen with someone who is not a pure-blood..” he trailed off. I pulled his face close to mine again and looked deep into his eyes. “You don’t have to explain. Remember, when I read you two years ago? I saw all of your past. I understand why”. His eyes were sadder now but he still managed a small smile. “Ok now I really have to go” I said as I kissed him one more time before climbing out of the tub. He watched me as I changed back into my uniform, smiling a bit more smugly now. “When can I see you again?” he called after me as I walked towards the door. “Friday night, let’s meet in the common room. Everyone will be gone for Christmas by then”. “Its a date!”. I turned back and blew him a kiss which he caught and immediately pressed to his lips. My heart fluttered as I jogged to the Great Hall. “Oi, where’ve you been?” Ron questioned impatiently. “Sorry, got a bit caught up” I remarked, smiling at the secret Draco Malfoy and I now shared.

[mia-ugly]

Breakable Things

Martin is big.

Not in a strapping film-star kind of way. Not tall or broad-shouldered, not a ‘mountain of a man’ or a ‘tall drink of water’ or anything like that.

Just big (a dumb, blunt, smack of a word.)

He was big as a lad, he’s bigger now. He always had the kind of body that inspired too many teachers to push him toward wrestling, football, rugby even (apparently his dad had been involved with the clubs. Apparently he’d been a fair tighthead back in the day, before he left Martin’s mum, and left Martin to gather up the pieces, cutting his fingertips on every one.)

It didn’t take Martin’s teachers or schoolmates long to realize that Martin’s size did not equate to any sort of athletic skill. And once the - inevitable rumours started circulating around Year Seven, well. Any motivation he might have had to be ‘part of a team’ was drained out of him like a tire going flat (that metaphor needs work. Doesn’t really convey the violence, try again.)  His motivation left him like the air being knocked from his lungs, shove after hard shove against the lockers.

Martin is strong.

Physically. He doesn’t know why - got it from his father, didn’t he - his wide back, his thick fingers, his solid legs. He took a cricket bat to the face once - ought to have broken his nose, blackened his eyes, but it didn’t. Got in a car accident when he was seventeen, didn’t even crack a rib. Flipped the whole thing into the ditch, and his mum screamed herself hoarse when she found out, but Martin walked away from it. Physically. He walked away.

He doesn’t bruise easily. If he cuts his hand chopping vegetables, it heals quickly. He doesn’t have any scars (he has stretch marks though, all over his stomach and thighs, and for all that he is strong, he’s soft. He’s soft and he knows it, all pudding and poetry and fear, oh, fear most of all. It's pathetic how easy he is, how quickly he caves, rolls over and does whatever's asked of him.

In most situations, anyway. With most people.)

“Why don’t you want me coming with you?”

Jon is in his office, seated in front of that bloody tape recorder as always. The sight of him there is so familiar, like the negatives from a film camera. Like even if Jon wasn’t there, the imprint of him would still linger, white as a ghost against the darkness.

He doesn’t seem surprised to hear Martin’s voice. Neither does he glance up from the desk where he’s shuffling papers, gathering up books. His hands move constantly, restless and bird-boned and Martin is always looking at them, even when he tries not to.

“I don’t want you getting hurt.” Jon’s voice is low, rough with exhaustion, and it makes Martin wince. Makes him want to fuss (when is the last time the man got a decent night's sleep? Someone should bring him a cup of tea, someone should rub his shoulders, someone should do something -

He knows he has a caretaking thing. He knows it’s not - good. And the sharp ones get to him like anything, he wants to win them over in a pathetic, salivating way. It’s a sickness, but - 

- but there was a point when it suddenly stopped being about Martin’s Whole Thing, and just started being about Jon.

He’ll talk to someone about it, swear. A professional, even. If the world doesn’t end.)

“It’s fine if you get hurt, though, is it?”

Jon does look up now, and Martin forces himself not to take a step back under the dark-lashed scrutiny. The heavy eyebrows, the shimmer of scars.  Sometimes Jon’s skin reminds Martin of the surface of a planet, a rough and distant moon. He wonders how it is that Jon can be so narrow, so small, and still take up so much room in the Archives, and in the world, and in Martin’s big (and soft and so so stupid ) heart.

“It is my job.”

“No. This - this is not your job.” Martin struggles to put the words together in the face of this vast, ridiculous injustice. “Going off to - what? Do battle with some sort of evil, circussy death-cult, that’s not your job . You don’t get paid for that.”

Jon snorts, derisive, and Martin wishes he could be angry. It’d be easier if he was angry with Jon.

But he isn’t.

“Melanie needs you here. And I can’t be - there, thinking about -“ Jon stops. He swallows and looks back down at the scattered papers on his desk. A snowfall of horror stories, laid out neatly on Hammermill Bright White. “Worrying about you.”

(“Leave it, Martin, I’m fine just - leave me alone -” Mum smacks him away with a vein-bruised hand.)

“Because I’ll make a mess of things - is that what you think? I can help you, I want to help you-”

“I will feel better knowing you’re here.”

“And how do you think I’ll feel? Knowing you -  you and, um Tim and Daisy - are out risking your lives while I’m sat on my hands, drinking tea, being useless -”

“You aren’t.” Jon’s voice is suddenly loud, as if he’s in pain. He pinches the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut. “And I don’t - I can’t - you’ll be helpful here. The Institute needs you, and Melanie needs you, and I -”

-don’t, Martin hears.

Though Jon doesn’t say it, Martin hears it.

“Right,” he manages. “All right.”

He should go. He’s going to go. But he lingers for a moment more, committing as much of Jonathan Sims to memory as he can. The angles of him, compact and rigid with anxiety. The fall of hair across his forehead, ink black shot through with grey. Thin pink lines that a blade left below his jaw, a ripple of lacy scar tissue on his hand (and Martin mostly, mostly doesn’t wonder what those scars would feel like against his own skin. On his shoulder or - or sliding down the length of his throat. At the back of his neck, tugging him into a kiss.)

Come back, come back, come fucking back. Martin isn’t religious, never one for church, but it’s as much of a prayer as he’s ever said.

“Is there something else you want?” Jon asks, terse and tired and - for one thoughtless moment he is the Archivist and only the Archivist, and Martin can’t help but gasp out a shocked, “yes.”

Jon knocks a book off the desk. It slams to the floor loud as a gunshot, and Martin flinches.

“Sorry,” he says quickly, “I’m sorry, I -”

“No, I’m - I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking -”

“It’s fine - I know you didn’t -”

“I would never -”

“But you can.”

There’s a horrible silence, like the moment after the tape recorder shuts off, statement ends. Martin feels sick to his stomach and Jon looks like - like -

He doesn’t know what Jon looks like. Maybe that’s why he keeps talking.

“You can ask me. What I - what I want.” Heat is rushing to his face, a blush that feels like thorns. Jon just stares at him, and this was a bad, bad idea. It’s obvious, isn’t it? Jon doesn’t even need to ask the question, probably knows the whole awful story just by looking at him. “If you wanted.”

When Jon says nothing, just keeps staring, Martin tries desperately to double back.

“Never mind, that was -” He flaps his hands a bit, moving towards the door. His shoulders hunch, an old defense mechanism, useless body trying to make itself look as harmless as possible. Trying to make itself so small it’s beyond notice (it never works.) “I shouldn’t have. I can’t believe I -  just - be safe. All right? That’s all I -”

“Martin -”

“That was - stupid, such a - I’m sorry, I only -”

“-what do you want?”

The words are spoken quietly. Barely above a whisper. But Martin doesn’t need to hear them - his whole body hears them, and suddenly every syllable feels golden in his mouth. Saying it out loud isn’t frightening or humiliating, it’s easy. Answering the Archivist is like falling asleep in a patch of sun-warmed grass, or gasping for air after holding your breath underwater.

“I want you to come back.” It’s honey dripping off his tongue. “I want you to come back for me. And I want the world not to end, and I want to know what your hair feels like, whether it’s soft or coarse and whether I can tell the difference between the black parts and the silvery parts just by touching them.”

Jon is absolutely frozen behind his desk. He might not even be breathing, but that’s okay; Martin can’t remember why anyone needs to breathe.

“And I want to help you. And the others. I want to matter. And I want Sasha to be okay, and I want Tim to be okay, and I want Elias to finally face some fucking consequences for once. I want to take you on holiday and - and watch you while you sleep so you know you don’t have to be afraid. I want to wake you up if you have nightmares and make you tea in the morning and bake things for you, and - and I want to kiss you, even if it’s just once. Only once, just so I know, and only if you want me to. That’s what I want.”

The sweetness ends the moment the last word leaves his mouth. Suddenly the honey is cloying and acrid, suddenly his heart is unsteady with embarrassment, skipping beats like he’s just had a shot of adrenaline. Martin chokes on a breath and slams his eyes shut against the spinning room.

“Fuck.” His voice cracks on the word, insult to injury, and he claps a hand over his mouth. “Oh God - I’m - oh God. That was -” He barely remembers what he said, which is the only thing keeping him upright at the moment. He just knows it was soft, pathetically soft. Even his fantasies are as weak as his jawline. “I’m going to - go, I’ll go. I shouldn’t have -”

“W-wait.”

Martin doesn’t want to open his eyes. But he does. Just in time to see Jonathan Sims stand up. Start to walk around the desk.

And Jon is not big. Or strong, physically. Martin knows a bit about anatomy, took a couple art classes, was always fascinated by the bones of things. As Jon steps closer, Martin can only see the breakable things about him. Collarbones, fingers, bridge of his nose. What’s that bone in the arm that everyone’s always breaking?

Humerus.

Ulna.

Jon is not strong, and he is scarred, and he is small and fragile and God he is the bravest person Martin’s ever met.

“Martin, you -” Jon stops in front of him and Martin looks down, gaze almost level with the top of Jon’s head. “You can ask me. What - what I want.”

He’s shaking, Martin can see it - and it makes him realize that he’s shaking too. He barely manages the “What -” before he forgets how to say the rest, forgets how words work (but Jon, Jon is brave.)

“I think - I would like -” Jon reaches for Martin’s hand, and lifts it to his mouth. Presses a dry kiss right in the centre of Martin’s palm.

It’s a ruining sort of softness, and Martin’s big (physically) and strong (physically) but somehow Jon knows where his weaknesses are - the loose dragonscale, the slipped disc.

(And of course, after this the world will almost end (but not quite.)  After this, there will be Elias and Martin’s humiliating tears over a statement he knew damn well, a beholding that came as no surprise to anyone.

After this Jon will die.

Almost. Not quite.)

But now: Jon is murmuring, “I think -” as he leans up to kiss Martin (and his warm mouth is shocking and brief, a knife sliding home.)

But now: Jon is still shaking when their lips part, and Martin’s hands are on either side of his face, tips of his fingers settled lightly in Jon's hair (it’s softer than anything, as it turns out, and the silvery parts are softest of all.)

Their foreheads press together, both of them breathing harder than one kiss should warrant. And Martin doesn’t say any of those other things he wants, any of the white-hot words he’s scratched down on paper or typed into the notes app. He doesn’t say anything about the shape of Jon’s shoulder-blades through that thin grey t-shirt he wears, doesn’t bring up any metaphors about fading light or seaglass or breakable things that are also strangely beautiful.

Because what good is poetry at the end of the world?

“Be careful,” Martin says instead (and Jon won’t be.)

“Come back,” he says (and Jon isn’t going to. Not for a long, long time).

And hours later, standing in that empty office, Martin will see the lighter that Jon left on his desk. He will notice the black handful of ashes in the rubbish bin, and wonder what Jon was burning.

And Martin is soft. People-pleasing and pathetic and terribly, terribly in love.

But Jonathan Sims kissed him once (once) and for a moment, in that office, with a small blue flame leaping in his hand -

Martin is not afraid.

[khorneschosen]

Yes after years of accepting compromise by compromise, regulation by regulation, rule by rule to the point that by default, healthcare in the USA, is already effectively state owned, but privately operated. This too is part of your world.

Again this a product of the systems of anti capitalism and their philosophy who demanded, screamed for, and even at times forced this system on the American people.

When hospitals have to beg a government institution for the right to buy equipment like mri machines, the only people who can look at that and say that such a system is capitalism are either ignorant, stupid, or maliciously subversive.

I understand this a what aboutism because you dont actually want to defend your world. You dont actually like your world, and yet you are claiming I am practicing cognitive dissonance, because I see the entire picture too clearly, and you are narrowing your vision and actually giving a "well what about the us???" Which btw is a calling card of cognitive dissonance, trying to distract yourself from the failures of your own kind of world with examples not listed.

Tell me where exactly in enlightenment, or fuck even modernistic pre kant philosophy (the philosophical foundation of the system of capitalism) you can find such a point as "the foreign policy of a nation is to create such an interconnected intentional community that a nation is called upon to defend the weaker nations.

You really don't. A pre kant enlightenment nation, even among the "enlightened" despots, would concern a nation with its own interests. Not the interests of the entire world.

Not to mention its introduction came from the progressive era of the united states where most of the some of the worst policies on the us came from, and was the most anti capitalistic this country has ever been.

Inflation is a current trend among the mixed economies who are increasingly becoming more homogeneous in either international socialism or national socialism in order to pay for the massive number of government programs that would not exist in a capitalist system.

The cognitive dissonance you keep practicing is refusing to accept that capitalism is dead and getting deader, what remains is mixed economy or socialism, and socialism will win, either in the form of international socialism see communism or national socialism, see fascism. So Im asking you to answer for your system, while I still have a right to speak, and wont be killed by the freaks in the notes, who have relished at the idea of murder, torture, sexual violence and so on, for my little post.

Cancel culture was created by marketers and advertisers. Just dont pay attention to who is doing the canceling. Of course if it was caused by advertisers, certainly the mere fact, the simple fact that those advertisers are cancelled should discredit it. Why don't you tell me how great it is? Why don't you tell me "well people shouldn't think for themselves, that's for people with authority to do for them." Or the lie that is "well only bigots get cancelled." Or the evasion of "well the right wing did it first."

Why dont you claim any of the things I am saying are good. Why dont you take credit for them? Why do you hide from yourself that you hate these things?

Post uk brain drain, (which you know about because you are so informed arent you) as in the people who would have just given up and died, left to a place that was their kind of world. Where exactly do the people of the united states go to? Where exactly is their escape to live a rational life? There is none and the people know it. There is no "better life" over seas. As I said no country on earth is capitalist and thus recognizes and protects human rights.

See speeches from former soviet citizens about what america represents to them and youll see that the dredged masses of the world need a place in their mind like America, the land of freedom in their head in order to face their own existence that constantly devalues their existence and conscience.

Did you enjoy the people of rationality, experience, training, skill and value leaving your country and leaving you with the kind of people you wouldn't want to have power over you? Did you enjoy trying to chain them into serfdom only for them to refuse and leave? All those selfish people who were ruining your system. Do you not live a better life now? Do you not love how far you have fallen?

And you would know this how? How can you really be sure of anything. Run along and find someone to tell you what to think, and trust that they would never dream of lying to you.

Interesting you didnt touch personal theft. The personal crime that exists and hadn't decades before and has only gotten worse. People will move to safer communities but apparently businesses are just selfish and irrational when they do it. Or should do it out of charity.

You started this by accusing me of cognitive dissonance, but in nearly every issue listed you practiced it along context dropping in order to make your case. Why dont you defend your system. Why dont you defend this system you and people like you support, helped to create, advocated for, and now have. This is your world and not one of you will actually have the guts to say, "yes." Because not a single fucking one of you like what you got.

You got exactly what we said you would. You have reached the logical ends we told you about. Dont cry you couldn't have known, we told you this would happen in detail. And you simply refused to understand, to learn or listen.

Barely have any power? They do not have enough power to crush the last of their opposition, globally, currently at the split second we now occupy in time. That to you constitutes "not having power" because their power is not absolute, and generally is kept from the government, but not every other institution in existence.

But every step in creating our world has been made by them. Philosophically they are absolute in their power and influence. Academically only a few stem fields remain outside their power mostly because they have nothing to offer a science that deals with ridged principles and expects clear and hard results.

Every nation on earth is a mixed economy or socialist. You cannot lie to me and say they don't have power. They do and that power is global.

Want to know how much power?

This entire debate, we have used the word, "capitalism".

What is the origin of the word "capitalism"?

Its not Adam Smith who described it as laissez-faire markets. It was Karl Marx.

Socialism is so influential, that capitalists, refer to themselves by a term coined by their enemy.

You had so much power and influence you got to pick what term we describe ourselves by.

Now you don't get to blame what little hovels of capitalism remain. You and your kind made this world. All its failures and all its "successes" and will now have to answer for them. You dont get to pretend to be rebels, you are the establishment.

Gotta say, not a fan of capitalism. Just doesn’t do it for me ngl

[yellowocaballero]

The Crocodile's Dilemma: In Which Helen exploits Michael's Labor, Michael suffers an un-identity crisis, and unpaid internships should be illegal

It’s tough being a teenage embodiment of the Spiral. Your boss/wine aunt figure Helen’s a Tory, your inattentive cousin figure Mike Crew keeps attending philosophy classes and day drinking, and you’re pretty sure that this internship doesn’t have any dental. At least it’s good job experience for your future career in...being evil? But do you even want to be evil?

This small story is technically part of my Roleswap AU, but I specifically wrote it so that no knowledge is required. Still, if you’re wondering why Michael’s an eighteen(ish) year old, Mike Crew’s an Avatar of the Spiral, and everybody is obsessed with Melanie King, check it out. Still, no need. Rest under the cut.

Maybe Helen was right.

Not that Helen was ever strictly right, much as Helen was never wrong, but Michael just had to be doing this whole fear demon thing incorrectly. If someone had explained the whole fear demon thing to them two years ago (“Okay, so it’s like you’re the semi-sentient appendage of an extradimensional force of evil that has to consume trauma relentlessly in order to propagate its own debatable existence, also you’re nonbinary now, no those things are not strictly related, probably”), then they would have called them crazy. Which, of course, they were, but that wasn’t the point. So long as the point existed. So long as anything -

An essential theorem within quantum physics was the quantum Zeno effect. 

Simply put, it was the fact that a quantum state would decay if left alone, but does not decay under continuous observation. Even observing the results after the photon is produced leads to collapsing the wave function and loading a back-history as shown by delayed choice quantum eraser. If something was seen, it no longer existed; if something persisted unperceived, it would exist as long as it liked. 

So it was explained to Michael by the physics professor he was torturing that day. Michael had trapped the man in the physics building of his university, lured in by one too many late nights in his office and the persistent sense that his life was going nowhere meaningful. After a few classes spent sitting in on his Physics 101 class, maintaining constant and forever eye contact, Michael had eventually tricked the man into giving a persistent and ongoing physics lecture to an empty classroom, desperately trying to explain the inexplicable to a college freshman who did not care. Truly miserable, yet ultimately harmless - Michael’s favorite kind of trick. 

But, despite themself, Michael grew interested. They didn’t understand any of what the man was talking about, but that was all of the fun. Understanding ruined the magic of things; broke down the beauty of the universe into cogs and gears. No thanks. They could tell that it bothered the professor, that he said so much and yet knew nothing. That there was so much he would never know, and that he wasn’t so smart after all. How would any of his colleagues respect him?

“So photons degrade if they’re observed?” Michael asked one day, after...some period of time. They had raised their hand and everything, they were so proud of themself. Uni was just like secondary school after all. “Is that true of people too?”

The professor had sweated, deeply uncomfortable with Michael as a person and as a non-euclidean concept. “No - no, not at all. Humans are much more than photons -”

Michael grinned. It wasn’t quite right. “Are you sure?”

The professor sweated harder. “I - no, I’m not. But humans are constantly observed by - by the universe, or something.”

Michael grinned sharper. “Are you sure? Are you being observed right now? Are you sure?”

And the professor was not sure, not anymore, and the fragment of this man’s reality collapsed. 

Well, Michael thought to themself, slipping out of an improbable yellow door, that’s another Statement for the Magnus Institute. Not that they would read it. 

****

“Now, remember this - the first step to being a successful Avatar is presentation!”

Michael squinted at Helen dubiously. “I thought we were fear demons?”

Helen sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose with two sharp knife fingers. It looked as if it hurt quite a bit, but Michael reasoned that they had probably gone through the fifth dimension. “This is the stupidest dimension - fine, fine! Fear demons, then. It is absolutely vital that we conduct our business with style, grace, and the slightest sprinkling of pizazz!” 

Just for the flourish, Helen twirled her fingers, and a faint shower of confetti came raining down from the ceiling. Michael sneezed. 

“I thought it was vital that we harvest fear and trauma from people to propagate our cursed existence,” Michael said. 

Helen’s eyebrow twitched. “More than two things can be vital, Michael. Please pay attention. Now, as a demonstration, I’d like you to take a gander at that man over there.”

Obediently, Michael looked across the bar. They were sitting on barstools in a high-class pub, because Helen knew her worth and never settled for anything less, with glass counters and lots of private booths. But all pubs had their sad men drinking alone, and this one was no exception. 

This man wasn’t sullen and slow like a lot of them. He was wearing a nice suit and thin tie, looking straight out of Canary Wharf. Michael silently agreed with Helen’s choice - they took eat the rich very seriously, and also literally. He also seemed a little jumped up on something, with shaking hands and erratic eyes. 

“He looks happy,” Michael observed. “Think it’s his birthday?”

“He’s on cocaine, Michael,” Helen said flatly. “Cocaine. We are at a posh bar, and he is currently doing a line off his watch.”

Oh! Michael suddenly felt very uncool. They had never been one of those people in secondary school who did cocaine. They hadn’t been cool. “I knew that,” Michael bluffed. “What are we going to do to him?”

“Take the teenager as your intern, they said,” Helen groused, “it’s investing in the future, they said, it’ll stop them from eating you when they grow up, they said.” She sighed, jabbing a finger at the now very obviously coked up man who was staring at the bottles behind the bartender as if they were whispering secrets of the universe into his ear. Helen liked that one. “Use your intuition. Find a good angle to squeeze. What are his weaknesses to exploit?”

Oh, Michael knew how to do this. They shifted vibrations just a bit, dropping out of what Michael liked to call the ‘mild’ spectrum into the ‘spicy’ spectrum. They were distantly aware of a patron’s glass shattering. 

They squinted at the man, picking out his little fears and insecurities like Dionysus picking grapes. Maybe. Michael had gotten a C in English, but they were somewhat cognizant of the Spiral munching heavily on Bacchanalia. Sometimes they felt like some of those children who spoke in tongues and claimed to be from a past life. That had also been the Spiral.

“He owns a Nintendo NES,” Michael said confidently, absolutely sure that this was important. Helen groaned. “His house is painted white, and his girlfriend does tax fraud.”

“Something relevant?” Helen hinted desperately.

Michael just squinted at her. “Relevant to what?”

“...good point. But something useful, please.”

Picky. Michael scowled, but gave the man another good gander. “He only remembers faint details of his father’s face, and he worries that his recollections aren’t accurate,” Michael proclaimed finally. 

Helen clapped, delighted, as Michael took a careful sip of their water, turning it into fizzy water. She took a sip of her own wine, turning it into champagne. Or maybe just sparkling unreality? “Wonderful. Now, how should we play this? Insert a false father into his life, completely separate from his recollections, or is that a bit too Stranger? I suppose we could do some good old-fashioned gaslighting, but sometimes that’s just a bit too Melanie, if you catch my drift -”

“Are you jealous that the Archive girls are better at gaslighting than you are?” 

“Shut it, kid,” Helen hissed, before taking a long drag of her champagne. “My vote is that we convince him to top off his coke bender with some LSD. Then he hallucinates - oh, he hallucinates that he’s in a mental institution, that’s a good one -”

“Why don’t we shift everything thirty cm to the right?” Michael asked brightly.

Helen squinted at them. They beamed back. 

“You are so bad at this,” Helen said. 

Michael would have felt crushed if Helen didn’t express this sentiment roughly once per lunar cycle, contrariwise. As it was, they bore the criticism with a stiff upper lip. Helen had her way of harvesting fear from unsuspecting humans, and Michael had theirs. “Look, Helen, you’re being uncreative! We don’t have to traumatize people every single time.”

Helen squinted further. “We’re personifications of deceit. We eat trauma.”

“No, we eat confusion,” Michael pointed out patiently. “Look at it this way. If you give someone one really terrible experience, then they repress it for the rest of their lives and consider it a brush with Hell. One and done, see? But if you minorly inconvenience them for a really long time, then they’ll never be able to break out of it. They’ll feel as if something’s wrong, but they’ll never know it. You can keep the game going for years that way!”

The idea was very good. Michael had been working on it for a while. Truth be told, Michael felt bad traumatizing people outright and making them scream and cry and everything. They always felt as if they were doing something wrong by making other people’s existences a living nightmare. Michael much preferred rigging a corn maze so you were stuck in it for days inside the maze but only an hour outside. It was funner, and much more confusing. 

But Helen just pursed her lips and stared Michael up and down, making them squirm awkwardly on their barstool. Finally, as if she was delivering a life sentence, she imperiously said, “Well, we all have our different styles, I suppose! It would be quite boring if we were both exactly the same.” Michael nodded vigorously at this, and Helen held up a scaly claw. “But! You’re my intern, which means that you’re learning from the master here. So shut up and let me teach you how to ruin lives.”

“Yes, boss,” Michael said miserably. 

Helen tsked, but she patted them on the head anyway. It tasted like batteries. “Honestly, kid. A literal bleeding heart’s fun for the whole family, but a metaphorical bleeding heart will get you nowhere in life. You can���t exist as you are and feel bad for them. It ruins the point. It’s a paradox.”

“I thought we liked paradoxes, though?”

Helen shrugged, downing the rest of her wine. “Rules for thee but not for me, honey. But I’m a good boss and drunken aunt figure, so I’ll appease you today. Now come on, let’s convince this bar to vote for Brexit.”

They did. It was quite fun after all, tricking a roomful of people into doing something actively against their own interests. But something about the whole thing left a strange taste in Michael’s mouth: not the good kind of strange, or the bad kind of strange that was also good. Just strange, and undeniable, and something that couldn’t be exploited at all. 

****

Maybe Helen was right. 

Not that Helen was ever strictly right, much as Helen was never wrong, but Michael just had to be doing this whole fear demon thing incorrectly. If someone had explained the whole fear demon thing to them two years ago (“Okay, so it’s like you’re the semi-sentient appendage of an extradimensional force of evil that has to consume trauma relentlessly in order to propagate its own debatable existence, also you’re nonbinary now, no those things are not strictly related, probably”), then they would have called them crazy. Which, of course, they were, but that wasn’t the point. So long as the point existed. So long as anything -

Michael was a bad fear demon of the Spiral and Infinite Twisting and That Is Not What It Is and The Twisted Door, etc, etc, All Fear Its Name, etc etc all Hail, because they didn’t always like how their internal monologue could no longer be described through common language. Words and images and understandings were nothing but approximations for Michael now, and sometimes it was frustrating existing outside the boundaries of understanding. Which, of course, was the point, so long as the point existed, so long as anything existed -

It wasn’t always easy. Still, nobody ever got what they wanted if they weren’t willing to put the effort in. The adult world and labouring under capitalism wasn’t easy for anybody. That was what Mum had always said. Who was Michael to complain about their 9-5? Or 24/24? Or infinite/infinite? Or nothing/nothing? Or -

Was it too much to ask to have a linear thought once in a while? 

Helen wouldn’t understand. There were only two other approximations of concepts that Michael knew, and Helen would hardly be any help. The other “person” would probably be a better sounding board, but there was the fact that he was kind of pretentious. Still, it was better than nothing. Well, it was nothing, but only in the sense that everything was - argh!

A yellow door appeared in a nondescript basement, and Michael appeared with it. They melted out of the “wood”, taking a second to check their outfit for this apparition - a nice vintage 50s dress with a painstaking stitch that reminded one of the oppressive nature of housewifery, nice. They elongated their curly blonde hair from a roguish mop into a nice little shag and melted into the crowd. 

It must have been a passing period, because Michael was buffeted to and fro by tall white men wearing backpacks and shorter white girls hoisting strangely identical water bottles. Somewhere Northern, Michael decided, likely private and small. Not that it strictly mattered, but it helped to solidify their grip in reality a bit if they had some idea. They already knew geography was purposeless and a distraction from the real issues, like shrimp, but occasionally it could be useful. Helen had been careful to impart the central tenet of existence as a non-euclidean concept in undefinable space in the twenty seventh dimension: location, location, location!

It was obviously the Philosophy Department, because all philosophy classes were held in old basements built in the ‘60s in identical hallways. For kicks, Michael turned all of the school hallways inwards and sent them in a mobius strip, and changed all of the door numbers into a headache. The key to enjoying your job was to take initiative in the workplace environment and to just have fun with it!

Michael found themselves in front of a door identical to all of the others, with fake laminated wood, and they decided to go in. The universe had guided them to this door for a reason, and who were they to reject its call? 

The small classroom was like most other small, private colleges in unpopular departments that nobody cared about. Lots of single person desks - Michael snapped their fingers and turned them all into left-handed desks - complete with a smartboard and a teacher’s podium. It was already half-full, so Michael carefully slid into a chair in the back and pretended that they had been there all along. A student wandered close, convinced that this was her seat, but Michael successfully convinced her that a different seat near the front was hers, prompting an impromptu game of musical chairs that sent ripples through the otherwise sedate classroom.

There was a blond student already sitting in the front, flipping through a spiral notebook and clicking a pen in no particular pattern. He was wearing a pea coat, jeans, and his hair was weirdly perfect. Michael wished they had a notebook. Was this what you did in university? They had never had the opportunity to go. 

Actually, they had never quite graduated secondary - three months away from graduation, actually. It probably wasn’t all that important. You didn’t really need a diploma to become a trauma eating fear demon. Was there a university of eating fear? That would be funny. What would the classes be in, ‘Enforcing the Powerlessness of Capitalism 101’? What was the difference between that and a Business major? 

Maybe Business majors were the real fear demons, Michael thought grandly. It was a good thought, they would have to remember to tell it to Melanie later. Melanie would approve. Hadn’t Tim been a business major? Yeah, in that case she would definitely approve. 

The student sitting in the front seemed to have finally noticed the game of musical chairs, and as the professor started clearing their throat and announcing something unimportant to the class, he turned around to find Michael sitting in the back of the class. They waved cheerfully. The student scowled. 

‘What are you doing here!’, the guy mouthed angrily. 

‘Hi Mike!’ Michael mouthed back. 

‘Go away!’ Mike mouthed back. 

‘But I’m going to eat your teacher :(‘ Michael mouthed back. They didn’t actually frown. 

‘ >:(!’, Mike Crew mouthed back, also without changing his facial expression. 

This was probably why Mike wasn’t Michael’s biggest fan. Which was a pity, because Michael thought Mike was really cool. He had the coolest name, for one. But shorter, and snappier. Mike was the kind of name girls would call you at clubs. Michael was what, like, your Mum would say as she yelled at you to clean up your room before her book club girls came over. Why were they girls? They were, like, fifty.

Mike Crew was an Avatar of the Spiral completely unwillingly. Chosen as a child and chased throughout his life by an improbably long lasting Lichtenberg scar, he had eventually succumbed to the inevitable and transformed into an even more improbable man. Personally, Michael found it strange that ‘inevitable’ and ‘Spiral’ was in the same sentence, but - well, it had to be everything at one point. Even a melting clock was right once an endless twilight. 

Strangest of all, Mike Crew was a philosophy major. The class, of course, was a high level philosophy course. Mike Crew had been in uni - well, a while - and he tended not to waste his time with the boring shit anymore. Michael listened with interest as the professor dived into the lecture. 

Two minutes in, Mike subtly gathered his things and slipped into the conveniently empty chair next to Michael. He was still glaring at them, as Michael tried their best to look innocent and cute. The effect was a little ruined by the inherent maliciousness of Michael’s pores, but they liked to think it was the thought that counted. 

“To continue our conversation on the topic of paradoxes,” the professor began, “I’d like to introduce a few thought experiments for your consideration as a class. I’ll mention the concept, and then allow you to break into pairs to discuss them.”

Mike leaned into Michael’s ear. “We were discussing Descartes!”

“But isn’t this more interesting?” Michael asked. 

“If you give my professor a mental breakdown we’re going to fall behind on the syllabus!”

“The first paradox I’d like to bring to your attention is the Crocodile’s Dilemma.” The professor flipped to a new slide, which helpfully had a big crocodile on it. Michael admired it. They had seen a crocodile at the zoo once. “Similar to the liar’s paradox, the premise states that a crocodile, who has stolen a child, promises the parent that his or her child will be returned if and only if he or she correctly predicts what the crocodile will do next. The outcome is fairly obvious if the parent states that the crocodile will return the child, but the crocodile faces a dilemma if the parent states that the crocodile will not return the child. No matter the outcome, the crocodile is made a liar: if  the crocodile decides to not give back the child then the statement proves to be true, and he ought to return the child, thereby making it false. Whatever the outcome, he still violates his terms.”

Michael raised their hand. Mike forcibly lowered their hand. 

“If I give your professor a mental breakdown then you’ll have extra time for the test,” Michael whispered back. Mike seriously considered this notion.

“The next paradox is slightly related,” the professor continued. “The Infinite Hotel Paradox.” Michael’s face stretched into a grin as Mike Crew groaned. “It is demonstrated that a fully occupied hotel with infinitely many rooms may still accommodate additional guests, even infinitely many of them, and this process may be repeated infinitely often. This is what we call a veridical paradox: it leads to a counter-intuitive result that is provably true. Therefore -”

“Okay, yeah,” Mike Crew said, slumping in his seat. “You can eat him, this guy is just begging for it.” 

“Yay!” Michael went in for the hug, before Mike pushed them away. Michael’s quest for a cool big brother failed yet again. “Do you want to call the -”

“They’re your hallways,” Mike said, persnickety as always. Maybe he was just jealous that he wasn’t a hallway? 

Michael raised their hand, patiently waiting for the professor to call on them. He stumbled in the middle of his lecture, adjusting his thick glasses. 

“Uh, yes, Miss -”

“You no longer understand gender,” Michael said pleasantly, as they always did whenever they were misgendered. It was an understandable mistake, so they didn’t do it maliciously. Frankly, they just thought it was healthy. Everyone should not understand false things. “Professor, I have a question about the Crocodile’s Dilemma.” They waited for the professor to nod, somewhat confused. “How do you know that didn’t really happen?”

The professor blinked lethargically at them. “It’s a thought experiment. It’s not real, it’s just an idea proposed by philosophers to represent -”

“What makes you so sure?” Michael asked cheerfully. “Crocodiles eat babies. Or dingoes. I think I read a story about this happening in Australia, didn’t you?”

“I - I suppose I did, yes -”

“We wouldn’t talk about it if it didn’t really happen.” Michael felt their voice fall into a rising lilt, like an attractive song that was played to a concert hall but heard only by you. They were distantly aware of Mike lulling the rest of the students into their own hazy daze: aware enough to be confused, but trapped in their seats and the fog of misunderstandings. “Fiction isn’t real. Reality is real. But a thought experiment is in between, isn’t it? Something that strains the boundaries of reality, that proves the fundamental concepts of life, told through a framework of an intrinsic lie. A paradox is a lie telling the truth. You are a truth speaker telling only lies. What you know isn’t so much as anything at all, is it? What do you really know, anyway?”

“One of us tells only the truth and the other tells only lies,” Mike Crew called out, bored. But his eyes were shining in endless refraction, infinite rooms holding infinite guests. “But is it really a lie if you had mistaken it for the truth? What lies are you living, Dr. Young?”

Dr. Young was stammering, eyes swimming, and Michael didn’t dare to break eye contact. It was a delicate spell they wove, but Michael wasn’t so bad at bringing this simmer to a boil. Cooking was about improvisation, and Michael had always been great at that. 

“If your life is a lie,” Michael breathed, “then are you really alive?”

It was clear, when it happened: the professor started inhaling deep, deeper breaths, chest wracking with heaves. His eyes rolled up in his head, he clutched at his chest, and he finally slumped down on the floor. He twitched, jerking slightly, and he would continue jerking. At which point the students would become aware, and they’d call an ambulance for him, and he would be perfectly alright in the end. If a little mentally scarred. 

“Damn,” Mike Crew said, almost impressed, as both he and Michael stood up. He shoved his pens in a backpack, glad to be free of his examination for another week. “What’d you do to him?”

“Made him think he was dead,” Michael said serenely. “He thought his heart had stopped beating so he had a panic attack. He’s going to have to make an appointment with a psychiatrist but he probably should anyway, work’s very stressful for him.”

“Guess I have the rest of the hour off,” Mike sighed, as he held the door open for Michael so they could slip out of the back of the classroom. It was yellow, and a little strange.  “Want to grab a pint with me at the campus pub?” He paused a beat. “Wait, are you even old enough to drink?”

“I’m as old as eternity and reborn every second.” Michael paused a beat. “But I was eighteen last time I checked, and I’ll probably be eighteen for a while, so yes?”

“Great, let’s roll. I need a drink.”

****

Mike’s uni’s pub (Michael had asked the name of the uni but the information had, unfortunately, been lost in next Tuesday, so they’ll know then) was the exact opposite of the high class pub Helen had taken them to. Instead of glassy, shiny, and chromey, Mike’s pub looked strongly as if very many people had puked in it and the staff had tackled the problem somewhat half-heartedly. Michael enjoyed the sight of the puke existing in all points in time simultaneously, giving it a sort of weird yellow-ish shine. Actually, maybe all puke had that yellowish sheen?

When they asked Mike about it as they hopped up on the bar, he just sighed. He flagged the bartender down for a pint, and when the bartender squinted dubiously at Michael they revelled into the micro-confusion of ambiguous ages. Micro-feeding? Like mini muffins?

“Helen made a mistake hiring you. She’s stuck us with a perpetual teenager.”

“I’m as much a teenager as you are a uni student,” Michael said pointedly. 

“I’m not an embodiment of the It Is What It Isn’t Is,” Mike said, oddly aggressively. “I’m just a normal Avatar.”

“Fear demon.”

“Melanie King isn’t always right and I don’t know why everyone thinks she is.” Big words from an honored Special Guest on her show. There were many in the fear demon community who would kill for the honor. It was a good thing she hated intruders in her Archives - otherwise they’d never leave. “But I’m no different from - that douche Peter Lukas or that stoner Elias Bouchard or that btich Annabelle, okay? I’m just a guy. Who eats trauma. Plenty of guys do that.”

“Very good denial of reality!” Michael approved. “Normally Helen tells me to go further into denying reality as a concept, though.”

“God, you hallway people are impossible to have a normal conversation with.” Mike huffed, clearly not as irritated as his words would imply. Michael also approved of the incongruity. “I’m assuming that you’re here for absolutely no reason and that you have no idea why or how you ended up at my uni.”

Michael shifted uncomfortably. “Actually, I am here for a reason.” At Mike’s extreme surprise, they hurriedly clarified, “Not with any goal, meaning, or intention in mind! But I just wanted to talk about something to someone who wasn’t technically another facet of my meaningless whole. Helen and I are as index and ring fingers on the same hand, but we don’t really get each other sometimes, you know?”

“Does that make you the pinky finger?”

“I actually had a hypothetical for you.” At Mike’s nod, Michael snagged a napkin from the stack on the sticky bar and began creasing it, somewhat anxiously. “Let’s say, hypothetically, you were a teenagerish nongendered sentient hallway intern who happens to eat trauma.”

“This isn’t much of a hypothetical,” Mike said flatly. 

“I’m a hypothetical person. And I’m only a person hypothetically.” Michael started making little folds in the napkin, twisting it up into a strange origami. “So, let’s say, hypothetically, that this person - their name is Michael - enjoyed being them. It wasn’t always fun, and sometimes they kind of missed the world making sense, or at least not making sense in a familiar way. And sometimes Michael got tired of being a sentient hallway and wanted to finish secondary. And maybe even sometimes Michael grows sad that both their parents were eaten by their new boss, who is kind of a Tory! But that’s all fine. Michael’s probably happier like this than they ever were even when they did have parents.”

Mike Crew stared at them a little, slowly sipping his pint. 

Michael hunched their shoulders, and folded up the napkin further and further. They had read somewhere that any piece of paper can only be folded seven times. They folded the napkin seven times, then eight, then nine, then ten. That was something nice about the way things were now, they supposed: no rules, absolute freedom. Only rules, no freedom. That was what Dr. Yung would call a paradox. “But maybe the worst part about this new job is that Michael doesn’t really like hurting people. Sometimes it’s fun to randomly make people very upset, and you always kind of end up doing it anyway, but after a while Michael feels kind of bad about it. Michael likes doing other things better, like making terrible roundabouts and rearranging the pages of books. Maybe they even like reading books. They like reading comic books backwards, from the last page to the first, so every panel is a surprise.”

“There’s lots of ways to be a fear demon,” Mike pointed out, almost gently. Maybe only because he could relate. “Look at me. I’m not feeding off anyone. Just myself.”

“But I like the way I do it,” Michael said, frustrated. “Helen keeps trying to get me to do it the way she does it, but the point is that we aren’t the same. What’s the point in having two of us if both our viewpoints are the same? We’re different in every way, but we’re the same being. I just want to be the Spiral the way I want. Not the way Helen wants.” Their voice lowered, almost unwilling to say what they were about to say. “Not the way the Spiral wants.”

Mike stared at them for a long time, slowly sipping his beer, and Michael focused their efforts on forcing this improbable napkin into something that could be beautiful. A lotus flower? A mobius strip? Or should they just let it happen as it happens, and see what form it decided to take? 

Finally, Mike said, “You are the Spiral.”

“Then why am I always disagreeing with it?” Michael asked miserably. 

“Why are you, Helen, and the Spiral always disagreeing?” Mike pointed out. “Maybe that’s the point. So much as anything’s a point. Isn’t it the most perfect paradox of all, to split yourself into portions that are always disagreeing and bickering? Maybe everything you’re feeling is on purpose. I mean, it’s kind of improbable that you’re feeling at all, right?”

“I retained a lot of humanity,” Michael said. “Maybe a bit too much, actually?”

“Right.” Mike nodded decisively. “Then that’s the appeal. A human mind will always strain against its confines. It will always want different, want the same, want the old and the new and the perpetual and the fleeting and the eternity and the moment. What’s more nonsensical than a human? What’s more contradictory than human nature?” A dark shadow passed over his face, just for a second. “The Spiral kidnaps us and turns us into it. One part of our minds is entrenched in its eternity, and another part is always screaming in agony. But predominantly we are the unholy mixture of human and Entity, oil forced into water. It’s so intrinsically horrifying and wrong that we just get used to it. We are both demon and human, and so we’re neither, and so we’re both. Isn’t it weird, Michael, that unlike so many other Avatars, none of us want to be here?”

“You’re a very philosophical person,” Michael said diplomatically. 

“Thanks, I think too much about my lot in life.” Mike Crew sighed, slumping on his barstool and knocking back more of his pint. “I wish you and Helen would stop showing up in my life so often. When you aren’t around, I can almost pretend I’m a person.”

“That’s why we show up,” Michael felt obligated to point out. 

“Yeah, I know,” Mike said glumly. “I always know. I can’t stop knowing.”

There was nothing Michael could say or do that fixed this, or that could make Mike feel better. They understood, just a little - that nostalgia for a kinder time. But maybe it was more that Mike never had those halcyon, innocent days. He had lived life since childhood in aching knowledge that his days were numbered. Maybe that’s why Mike was allowed to live life as a human even now: his human life was just as confusing and isolated as his afterlife, and that when fear stained every second of his life there was no point in ceasing it. 

Maybe Michael couldn’t keep their human life because they had been happy. At the very least, they had been ignorant. That was one thing the Spiral could not abide: ignorance. 

These days, Michael knew everything. They knew everything so, so much.

So, in lieu of comforting falsehoods, Michael offered Mike Crew a slightest sliver of truth. They passed Mike the little piece of origami that they had made, and let Mike cradle it in his large and smooth hands. 

The origami had no shape. It wasn’t folded into anything. It was just a meaningless amalgamation of points, corners, and creased paper. It didn’t look like anything at all. 

“See?” Michael pointed out. “It’s a bear.”

Mike Crew smiled weakly. “Looks like a sea goat to me.”

There was something beautiful in ambiguity. When something was nothing, it could be everything at once. That was rather Michael’s favorite thing about it. 

“I think it’s a self-portrait,” Michael decided. 

And that, at least, was as true as anything else. 

***

Michael wandered their hallways. 

On some level, they were pretty much perpetually doing that. Even as one facet of them talked with Michael in a campus pub, even as another helped Helen convince a high class pub into voting Brexit, even as they traumatized a physics professor, they wandered these hallways.

Make no mistake: everything in this story has/will/is happened/happening simultaneously.

Of course, on another level Michael was literally their hallways, and thus they were not so much wandering as existing. Pulsating, one could say. Even twisting, if one would be so bold. 

There was a mirror, in the hallway. Not a funhouse mirror - although Michael did enjoy popping out from those and scaring Nikola - but just a mirror. Gilded around the edges, ornate with swirling curlicues. You could see yourself in it. You could see a lot of yourself in it. It wasn’t what you had always looked like, not really, but you just had the sense that this was what you really looked like. Maybe you had always looked like this, and everybody was just too polite to tell you. Were you really a brunette? This mirror had to be right. You had been a blonde all along. Nobody had told you. They were laughing at you. They were laughing -

But this was Michael, and Michael’s, and nothing in here could harm them. It was even comforting. They looked at themselves in the mirror, and saw themselves same as ever. Or not same as ever. They were still Michael, so far as Michael was Michael.

Shortish. Blondey. Raggedy hair. Curled as much as anything’s curled. Fun clothing that they really enjoyed. Tall shoes, because they liked feeling tall. Similar dimensions to the golden number. Non linear, but who’s counting? It was what they typically looked like. 

But, just for a second, Michael even fooled themselves. They saw someone in the mirror that they were not, someone who they had never been, someone who they never will be. Someone different.

Michael, just like everyone else, couldn’t stop themselves from reaching out. Come back. Come back! Let me touch you, let me be you! Michael’s fingers brushed the shiny glass, and the world tilted sideways, and Michael fell into where the sidewalk ended.

They emerged, or maybe they had always been, inside a bedroom. It was a nice little suburban bedroom. It had a peaked ceiling and a window seat. The walls were a soft, navy blue. There was a young person, lying on the shag carpet, leafing through a book. Big headphones were over their ears, and they were bopping along to music. Disco. 

Michael stood, an intruder into a familiar space, and watched the stranger. Their throat felt oddly tight, and their eyes felt strangely hot. The stranger was smiling faintly, flipping the pages of their book somewhat mindlessly. They were reading it for school. Flatland. It was just an assignment, but it was really fucking them up. It was making them think about all of these things that they didn’t normally, in new dimensions. It was really cool. All of their friends were just reading the Sparknotes, but they really wanted to talk about it with someone. 

 This, of course, had happened. It will happen in the future. It was happening now, as Michael watched the scene with an electric sadness. It would never happen, because the Spiral had never been here, and never would be, and always was. 

A knock echoed on the door, several sharp raps. Michael didn’t notice, legs swinging to the music. 

The knock on the door hit louder. “Michael!” A voice echoed from behind it. “Michael, are you ready to go?”

Michael reached up and slid off their headphones, without looking up from their book. “Coming!” They called back. “Be right there!”

The Spiral watched Michael, who hummed absentmindedly as the door knocked again. Dad was downstairs, making sure the gas was off and shutting off the lights. Mum was knocking, knocking, knocking, on a door that was and will always be wood. 

“Have you packed yet?” Mum called. 

“Sure I have!” Michael yelled back, glancing at the empty suitcase on the bed and the messy pile of clothes right next to it. They pushed themselves up, flipping the book shut and rising to their feet. “Be right out!”

“Hurry up,” Mum called, as the Spiral mouthed the words along with her. “We’re going to be late!”

The Bermudas aren’t going anywhere, Michael thought spitefully. They stuffed their clothes haphazardly in a suitcase, took far more care to pack their laptop and DS, and shoved Flatland in a side pocket of their backpack. 

When Michael slung on his backpack, unfolded the handle from their suitcase, they were not even looking at the door they left through. They were entirely focused on managing the unruly suitcase, and walked straight through the crazed yellow door.

Of course, Michael walked out. Slightly stranger, a little better, a lot worse. Exactly the same. They were back in their hallways again, fresh from their little suburban bedroom and the child exiting one world and entering one quite different. Maybe one part of that child would always be in that bedroom, another part in these hallways, and another part always caught in that doorway and the transition. 

Simultaneously, in all points in time, Mum knocked on that wood door, and Michael never let her inside. Simultaneously, at all points in time, Michael watched it all happen.

They hadn’t expected it to be so comforting. At all moments in time, in a little corner of their heart, Mum knocked on their door. If the Spiral lived in your soul and beat your heart, it was easy to find the beauty in it - the magnificence of eternity, and the joy in the moment. Mum was with them - literally, as he was pretty sure Helen was still digesting her. Maybe nothing was ever truly over - just over there.  

Michael stuck their hands in their pockets, whistling a jaunty tune that highly resembled the Shepherd’s Tone. Their hallways pulsated comfortingly, and Michael carefully toed off their platform shoes and eyed down the infinite hallways. No rugs for a while. 

Maybe Michael, Mike Crew, and Helen should get together more often. Just the three of them. They would drive each other batty. It would be a lot of fun. 

Michael set off running down the hallway, and skidded on their socks down the hardwood floor, whooping in joy as they skidded endlessly towards eternity. 

[thechangeling]

Out of our heads Out of our minds

So evil writer brain decided to cook up and incredibly toxic kitty fic because apparently I'm a terrible person lol. Blame @ilikebooks8 for letting this see the light of day.

The title is based on the song Out of this world by Bush.

Cw: slightly nsfw, violence, cheating, incredibly toxic behavior, beloved characters making bad choices, and implied sex.

Kit returns.

He returns to Ty with the same dazzling smile and charming witt, only now he seems to have grown even more impossibly beautiful as time has passed.

Now he's all hard lines and defined muscles and piercing sinful blue eyes that make Ty so angry he could scream.

Kit laughs and Ty wants to tear his insides out. Wants to rip Kit's heart right out if his chest just like he did to Ty. The painful gnawing rage of a betrayal that still stings after all this time. And yet still, Ty heard Kit was in danger and he came running like a man obsessed.

Ty knows deep down now matter how angry he is, he could never let anything happen to Kit. Nothing permanent anyways. Sometimes when the ache becomes to difficult to bare, Ty imagines punching that stupid smirk right off of his face. Or choking him hard enough to leave bruises. Of course Ty would never actually do such a thing. The sight of Kit in pain, any sort of pain is just too unbearable.

And that's the worst part. No matter how angry Ty gets he knows it can't last. And no matter how painful it is to be near Kit again, he still feels this unexplainable pull. This whispering in his ear to get closer and closer. To reach out and touch.

But it's stupid, and it's wrong anyways because Ty already has someone. Anush who was by his side the whole time at the scholomance and has never betrayed him. Anush who is sweet and thoughtful and gorgeous. Ty should be happy. After all, wasn't this what he always wanted? Someone to be there for him?

So he tried to distract himself from Kit by throwing himself into spending time with Anush and working the case. That's all Kit was now, just the latest problem to solve. A supernatural disaster. They would save him and stop the oncoming war and everything would be fine.

And then Kit would be gone. Blind panic teared at Ty's insides at the thought. There were these moments with Kit where they would make eye contact, or they would bump into each other in the kitchen and their fingers would brush and Ty would just desperately want to wrap Kit in his arms again.

He wanted to ask if Kit had really meant what he said that day on the beach. Sometimes when Kit stared at him with that soft sad smile on his face Ty wondered if they were going through similar things. Sometimes Ty wanted to tell him that he wished he had never met Kit either.

Kit Herondale was dangerous and unpredictable and loving him was like holding a live wire. But funnily enough the same could probably be said about Ty. Especially lately.

He felt like he was constantly in pain. Like his body ached with invisible wounds that made it impossible to breathe. The world was brutal and unforgiving, berating him with constant noise and blinding lights jabbing hot pokers into his brain. And the people with their sickly sweet smiles as they demanded he bare his soul.

But what if there was nothing left anymore? What if his soul had died with Livvy? Ty tried to cling onto the things that made him feel better. He hid away in his favorite spot, listening to his favorite music and pouring over Sherlock. Repeating the words to himself over and over again like they could pull him out of this tailspin. Ty distracted himself with Anush's sweet kisses and wandering hands as he tried to turn his brain off for once in his life.

But his soul was screaming out for another person to be the one touching him. He wanted Kit and that was infuriating. It made no logical sense. Not only was Kit responsible for breaking his heart but he also was notorious for playing fast and loose with his own life. Ty couldn't spend all his time constantly feeling like his heart was living outside of his body. Constantly in danger of being ripped open by some dark and evil thing.

Ty had everything he thought he wanted. But it still wasnt enough.

During another sleepless night, Ty found himself wandering the institutes halls. At this point he was simply just overtired. Too many nights spent worrying or studying or reading instead of sleeping. Now his body doesn't remember how to rest. Ty was far too exhausted to operate on logic or reason so he found himself standing outside of Kit's door, wondering absentmindedly how he got there.

Ty placed his hand against the door, fighting the urge to open it and walk through. He can remember the first time he waited outside of Kit's door, just like it was yesterday. He had no idea at the time why he was so drawn to the mysterious boy who had shown up at the institute after Ty had threatened him with a knife. The boy who turned out to be a lost Herondale. And honestly after all of this time Ty still couldn't explain it.

This is a bad idea, He thought to himself as he slowly turned the doorknob. This is a terrible idea. Ty, driven by pure need like fire under his skin, pushed the door open.

Kit was awake as Ty suspected he would be, sitting by the window and staring out into the night sky. Under the moonlight he was glowing. He turned around to stare at Ty, first with a look of shock, and then that same hallow desperation Ty had been seeing on Kit's face lately.

He also looked angry.

"What the hell are you doing in here Ty?" He sounded exhausted. Ty almost felt guilty in a sense. He stared at Kit for a moment, unsure of what to say.

"I don't know," he whispered, staring at the ground. "I suppose I was compelled." Ty let his gaze slowly rise up Kit's body, drinking it in.

Kit scoffed harshly. "Compelled? By what exactly, Tiberius?"

Ty looked up at Kit's face in surprise. He rarely called Ty by his full name. Ty really didn't like how it felt. Cold and distant. Ty sighed, pushing his fingertips against his collarbone and tracing it slightly.

"I don't know. I guess I just needed to know. I need to know why you left me." Ty tried not to let himself sound desperate or weak, but he had become worn down by this point. He couldn't keep up his defenses much longer.

"Why didn't you want me?" He muttered. "Why wasn't I good enough?"

And there it was. The painful truth that Ty had been avoiding. The fact that Kit had tossed him aside just like so many had before. Like Paige. Like his father. He had always tried so hard to make people happy. To live up to their expectations. But in the end it didn't matter how hard he tried, sometimes there was just no pleasing certain people.

Sometimes it seemed like there was no point in being good and following the rules if nothing ever changed. If Ty always ended up in the same place. If people always saw him as a problem or an inconvenience or worse, then he could just live up to their expectations. Be selfish and cold and cruel because no amount of begging and smiling was going to earn him respect.

Kit glared at him in shock. "Who the hell do you think you are? Coming in here to play mind games with me?" Before Ty could register what was happening, Kit was storming towards him and shoving him up against the wall with a loud thunk.

The feeling of Kit touching him again after all this time was dizzying. Kit was shorter then him so he needed to crane his neck a little to look up at Ty, which meant that his throat was completely exposed for Ty to stare at.

"I told you how I felt and you did nothing! You ignored me!" Kit cried. "I wanted you more then I've ever wanted anything Ty! I still do!" Tears were streaming down his face. Ty stared at Kit, completely frozen. His wrists were pinned to the wall by Kit's hands and their faces were inches apart.

Ty struggled to collect himself. "I didn't know what was going on," he gasped out shakily. "I was a mess Kit. I just had to get her back. But-." He cut himself off. It was all for nothing. Ty had lost Livvy in the end and he had lost Kit as well.

Ty shook his head. "Does this mean that you love me?" His voice sounded so far away. Like the words were being pulled from some unexpected place within him. Kit let out a soft gasp and squeezed his eyes shut before fixing his expression into a blank slate. He leaned forward slightly so that their lips were just barely touching, then gently trailed his mouth across Ty's cheek to his ear.

Ty felt him smirk slightly before Kit whispered in his ear. "Go to sleep Ty. Go back to your boyfriend."

And before Ty had time to think, he was lashing out. He shoved Kit backwards as hard as he could with a snarl. Kit went flying across the room and slammed into the opposite wall. If Kit had been human it probably would have knocked him out. Ty stared in horror at what he had done as Kit clutched his ribs and groaned.

"You seriously have some anger management issues!" Kit snapped at him, glaring pointedly. Ty knew that. When he was younger he used to have fits of uncontrollable rage all the time. Words didnt come easily to him so he would hit, scratch, bite or throw whatever was closest to make people realize he was in pain. When he wanted to say "don't touch me" or "you hurt my feelings" but he just could make the words form properly, he would get angry. And then he would lash out.

Ty thought he had been getting better at managing his emotions and communicating. But there was something about Kit Herondale that just evaporated every last bit of logic and reason he had until all that was left was the urge to scream.

Ty gaped in shock, searching for the right thing to say. "By the angel Kit, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to do that I swear!" He pleaded. His fingers were beginning to shake and flutter at his sides. He tapped desperately against his thigh, scratching at the material of his sweatpants to try and calm himself down.

Kit just shook his head and laughed humourlessly. "Honestly Ty, we should just tell the Seelie Queen not to worry. And Janus, and all the other people who want the first heir dead. You'll destroy me just fine on your own." He gaze was piercing and ruthless.

Ty's breathing was frantic and erratic as he shook in agony. He could feel he was on the urge of a meltdown.

Kit pulled himself to his feet. He stared at Ty longingly and then smiled slightly. A genuine smile. "But honestly what a way to go. Does that answer your question sweetheart?"

Ty gasped soundlessly, his hands shaking at his sides. He fought to get a hold of himself. Kit studied Ty for a moment, then slowly began to approach him.

"Why are you here Ty? Why did you come here exactly?" Kit was speaking in a soft lulling voice as if he was trying to hypnotize Ty.

"I'm here because I miss you," Ty admitted. "It's confusing. Because I'm still mad at you. But I can't stop thinking about you." Ty felt as though he was close to crying, which was concerning because he rarely ever cried.

Only for Kit.

Kit scowled at him slightly. "You're with someone else, remember?"

Guilt instantly pierced through Ty's chest. "Yeah I know, I'm a terrible person," he said bitterly. He didn't want to admit to himself that he had been trying this whole time to distract himself from Kit. That he was using Anush. But that was technically true. Ty saw the opportunity to lose himself in a pretty boy with an honest smile who loved him wholeheartedly.

Ty thought he could forget but then here he was. All roads led to Kit Herondale.

Kit sighed and reached for Ty, wrapping his arms around him and pulling him close. "You arent terrible. You're spiraling. And you come to me like I can save you from yourself? Please," Kit chuckled. "I can barely save myself."

"I don't need you to save me."

Kit stared at him with an expression that was hard to place. Then he smiled, but it wasnt a kind smile. It was a satisfied, knowing smirk. Kit traced his thumb under Ty's chin then back up to his lips, forcing them to part slightly.

"You think I don't know why you're here love?" He cooed in a voice that was both soothing and alluring. You think I don't know what you're after?" Kit sighed, sounding a little worn down. "If I was a better person, a stronger person. I would tell you to leave." He dipped his hands down underneath Ty's shirt.

Ty shivered at the cold feeling against his skin. He dropped his forhead down to lean against Kit's, revealing in the contact. "Lucky for you," Kit whispered against his lips, "I'm not."

Ty felt the last string of his self control snap as he kissed Kit roughly, grabbing onto his torso and pulling him closer. Kit responded to the kiss eagerly, parting his lips for Ty and laughing deliriously as their lips met again and again.

Kit was tearing off Ty's shirt as he walked him backwards, closer to the bed. As soon as he had slid it off if Ty's body, Kit tossed the shirt aside and went back to kissing him. Ty felt his knees hit the bed frame and he fell backwards onto the soft welcoming mattress, pulling Kit down with him.

Kit kissed a line down Ty's neck to his pulse point and Ty groaned, burying his fingers in Kit's curls. He was lost in a sea of pure desperation.

"Tell me to stop," Kit whispered between kisses. Ty froze for a moment. Then he understood.

Kit was giving him an out.

Ty responded by pulling Kit even closer and letting his head fall back against the pillows.

He closed his eyes and let Kit Herondale ruin him.

The morning after was the hardest. Ty pulled himself from Kit's arms and forced himself not to look back.

And that was when he finally cried.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

WHAT THE HELL FAE! WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS OMG 😭

[fallenangelontheceiling]

Thoughts on The Finale

Pros & Cons

CONS:

Most of these can be categorized as problems with tone. This has been a problem throughout the series and unfortunately it was most clear at the finale.

John Walker's Character Arc - I guess I can buy that he didn't want a truck full of people to die instead of taking revenge... but it feels too quick. In 1x04 there was blood on the shield and the stinger for 1x05 (the thing that primed us for this episode!) telegraphed him as unhinged. Now he has Sam and Bucky's reluctant approval. Talk about tonal whiplash.

And then at the end - were we supposed to think it was cute that this mentally unstable man is all excited to go out in the field again? I think we were. And I kinda hate it because he'd be a great villain. He went from Everything Wrong With Entitled White Men to an insecure doofus who happens to have the strength to lift a car. I think that was a very sanitized decision.

Ironically I think the reason behind that decision is because they didn't want Lemar to just be the Dead Black Dude. John is the one that gets to tell Karli the truth: "Lemar mattered," and by saying that he illuminates everything wrong with Karli's fight. And I guess he really did care about Lemar as a person (on some level, at least - everything else about John points to narcissistic tendencies imo).

Bucky's Confession - Felt rushed. We didn't see Yori get any bittersweet closure. I don't understand what the last shot with Bucky, Yori, and Leah was trying to convey - especially Leah's little nod at him. Look, I appreciate how this show doesn't always spell everything out, but all that shot did was take me out of the scene - does Leah know he was the Winter Soldier now? that he killed Yori's son? and at the minimum shouldn't she feel mad or awkward about the way Bucky ditched her lol?

And now I'm gonna sound like a real bitch... but because that scene didn't hit the right amount of bittersweet Bucky's happiness at the party later doesn't feel earned enough for me. I love smiley SebStan as much as anyone, but facts.

[In retrospect, one interesting thing about the confession was that Bucky said "I was forced to do it. It wasn't me." That's character growth. I wish we had seen the journey to that realization more, but I'm okay with that likely being incited by him being able to actually rescue civilians of his own free will for a change.]

This is more of a personal belief creeping in: Bucky, just because you're done with the book doesn't automatically mean you're done with therapy lol. I think Bucky should need therapy for the rest of his over extended life, and that is not a sign of weakness or infantilization. I think that would be a far better message for the show to give about mental health. (And I was sent out of the scene AGAIN because I was wondering um, isn't that still court mandated?? I thought the schedule was just more flexible, not terminated.)

Karli - Isn't it weird how I can agree with a villain's motives so much but not find them interesting at all as a character? Like how lol?? I think if they had fleshed out her and Sharon's relationship she could have been a very tragic figure. Or her relationship to Mama Donya, for that matter. Instead we get her with mostly nameless Flagsmashers that narratively operate more like goons than comrades.

Sam - I started this series pretty convinced that Sam should get rid of the Cap mantle and shield due to racism, nationalism, populism... a few other -isms that I am not smart enough to elaborate on. But after episode 5 I was on his wavelength. I was hyped by his training montage! I screamed for him to put on his sexy costume uniform!

And then the costume sucked. Okay it definitely didn't totally suck (more on that later), but the colors and goggles look horrendous.

Maybe I'm just in too jaded a mindset to enjoy a superhero show but I rolled my eyes that an impassioned speech would make any difference. I hated that the senator looked ashamed, like that would never happen, especially not in public lol. I wanted him to do something a bit more subversive -what exactly I can't put my finger on, but this was too much of a buy-in that powerful institutions work. I thought it was really corny how suddenly everyone started listening at the exact same time. I know throughout the show we've seen civilians constantly monitoring with their phones in the background, but the way this was shot was too on the nose for me. Maybe if it had been just one news camera nearby? Idk idk...

The Power Broker - It could have only been Sharon so I didn't really care.

PROS:

These are shorter because I'm tired and it's always easier to say more about things we dislike lol.

Sam's Utilities and Fight Scenes - The costume looked awful but it worked great! Loved the two redwings and what they can do, the way the wings and jet back move when he fights, and I have to admit I like the angelic look of the wings.

I love that Sam still takes more punches than nearly any superhero in the MCU but he doesn't let that stop him. "I can do this all day!" is very Cap. I adored how he collaborated with the civilian (senator?) in the helicopter to get everyone to safety. That also felt very Captain America and in line with Sam's strengths. That scene worked as a strong opening.

Isaiah Bradley - Just. Carl Lumbly needs an Emmy. I kinda love Eli as well.

Sarah Gazes Up at Bucky as He Shows Off and Plays with Children and Brings What is Clearly a Costco Cake to the Cookout - Same, girl. Same. I want a slowburn Hallmark movie about them.

Sharon - I enjoy Emily VanCamp getting ~revenge~.

Zemo's Butler (Of All People!) Taking Out the Last of the Super Soldiers - Is it bad I cheered? This is what creepy Batman-esque butlers are for, yes?