#we share the same functions but in different order

[corazonconagujeritos]

I know this is super silly, but it's interesting how Lisbon is an ISTJ (SiTeFiNe) since Jane is an ENTP (NeTiFeSi), his dominant function is her lower one, and vice versa, so they clash a lot but have this sort of understanding of each other. Her strengths are his weaknesses and all.

It is said, that as someone grows older and matures, the more they develop and lean on their lower functions, and you can easily see that in the last season, where Lisbon is more authentic and genuine than ever, and starts persuing what she trully wants and feels (Fi) and being more open to possibilities and little adventures and any new thing Jane proposes (Ne).

So, to anyone who thinks Lisbon is ooc in the last season, this might be why.

[oiblackestsheep]

Letters to MBTI: ISFJ

Dear ISFJs,

Being an ISFJ is like saying "tell me you're the hardest worker in the room and get a fraction of the recognition you deserve without telling me".

You guys carry an incredible emotional load almost 100% of the time that tends to go unnoticed. This is in part because emotional labor in general tends to go unnoticed compared to other types of labor, and also because most of the time, ISFJs don't necessarily mind operating behind the scenes.

ISFJs love to do things the way they are "supposed" to be done, and to do the things that they know will help as many people as they can. And that is such a noble purpose to assume! Again, it is not what one immediately thinks, but ISFJs really do embody the "strong, silent archetype" in their own unique way.

They don't do things for the spotlight, and it shows. This makes ISFJs a great support person in a team environment, and great romantic partners and friends. One pitfall of ISFJs is that they could get a little too comfortable being a supporting team member and nothing more.

ISFJs need to remember that everybody is the main character in their own life and to treat themselves as such. There may be a tendency to rely too heavily on tried and true ways of doing things, and ONLY doing things for other people/the greater good. Remember to look inward and realize that you, too, have the capability to think of new ways of doing things that haven't been done before! Also that you can put your own, independent logical spin on why doing something is important.

It can be hard to grapple with, but sometimes the better decision isn't the one that makes everyone comfortable; sometimes it's the one that makes more logical sense. And it's okay if you struggle with that! Finding ways to become more confident in your ability to think of new ideas and implement them logically will actually allow you to appreciate your natural tendency towards standard operating procedures and doing things for the greater good.

This is because mastery both sides will prove to yourself that because you are capable of both, you choose to lean towards tried and true methods that help other people, not because you have to or aren't capable of anything else.

You may prefer to be a supportive team member, and that is a completely valid and necessary thing to be, but you are capable of being an effective leader with logically consistent, novel ideas that can be adapted into standard operating procedures that help everyone in the long run.

You are more than you think you are, ISFJs. You're more than everyone thinks you are. If you haven't already, you can tap into this potential to prove it to yourself and everyone else!

[galene-gothic]

𝖶𝗁𝖺𝗍 𝖺𝗋𝖾 𝗒𝗈𝗎𝗋 𝗆𝗈𝗌𝗍 𝖼𝗁𝖾𝗋𝗂𝗌𝗁-𝖺𝖻𝗅𝖾 𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝗂𝗋𝗋𝖾𝗉𝗅𝖺𝖼𝖾𝖺𝖻𝗅𝖾 𝗊𝗎𝖺𝗅𝗂𝗍𝗂𝖾𝗌?

ˏˋ༻ʚ♡︎ɞ༺ˎˊ˗            PAID SERVICES PATREON

SUMMER SALE ˖ TIP JAR

⊹ ! ೀ Pile 1 ꒱

You are not a thrill seeker and even if you’re dissatisfied, you tend to stick around for a while trying to see the brighter side of things and turn things around for the better, and that’s honestly both a good thing and a bad thing. I’m not sure if you’re aware of this but you have an ability to turn life around for people because you genuinely try to. There may have been many instances when you entered someone’s life when they were dissatisfied, bored, yearning and just craving more, and the more time that you spent with them, the better that their life got. A lot of it was because of your own effort but some of it was just your mere presence. I’m hearing that song ‘locked away’. It’s that song that goes “if I got locked away and we lost it all today, tell me honestly, would you still love me the same. If I showed my flaws, if I couldn’t be strong. Tell me honestly, would you still love me the same?” The part that I’m specifically hearing is “now tell me would you really ride for me? Baby tell me would you die for me? Would you spend your whole life with me? Would you be there to always hold me down? Tell me, would you really cry for me? Baby don’t lie to me. If I didn’t have anything. I wanna know would you stick around?” Changes are inevitable, that’s life. You are different from who you were two years ago and two years from now, you’ll be different from who you are right now. Not only will you change but so will life because it moves in phases and is unpredictable. In order to love someone, you need to have faith that you’ll love who they were and who they are becoming, and that you’ll not let life separate you both, that you’ll be with them in the face of every change, every blessing and every challenge. Loving someone for a long time requires having to learn them and their ways over, and over again because they’ll inevitably change. They’ll change so many times and if you’re too attached to a specific version of them, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.

Loving someone is having the awareness that life is unpredictable and so are people but having faith that no matter how much life changes, no matter how much your beloved changes, they’ll always be someone you adore and that no matter how much you change, you’ll always adore, love, and consider them. You naturally are that way, you create a very stable environment for your loved ones and that’s your law. You don’t let your own changes, their changes or life changes come in between you. “You’re coming with me” is the way you operate. People often say things like “people who are there for you at your lowest are the real ones” or “people who share their low moments with you trust and love you” but I personally believe that the realest ones are people who are there for you during their happiest days and try their best to move forward with you in their life. You are like that, you do not forget where you started from and try to take your loved ones with you when you’re rising higher in life. You are a lifelong kind of person. I strictly suggest that you both - learn how to let go and accept your own long term nature so that you never get involved in anything casual because trust me, you’ll likely end up naturally wanting to carry them to the next stage of your life without your own knowledge. I’m not even getting it being an attachment. It’s more like, you’re just functioned to operate like that. Every change makes you appreciate your loved ones more and you’re decisive, and firm about not abandoning them EVER. When your friend or partner might be going through changes, they might pull back and cause you dissatisfaction, and confusion but you still stay patient and understanding in the face of such changes, trying to empathise with them and understand, and love the new version of them that might emerge through this phase. You don’t give up just because someone is not as present or contributing as much as they used to. I’m hearing that one song by Taylor Swift. It’s called ‘it’s time to go’.

I’m honestly not sure which line will be the most relatable so I insist that you listen to that song yourself. “That old familiar body ache, the snaps from the same little breaks in your soul. You know, when it’s time to go.” “Sometimes giving up is the strong thing. Sometimes to run is the brave thing. Sometimes walking out is the one thing that will find you the right thing.” “Fifteen years, fifteen million tears, begging till my knees bled. I gave it my all, he gave me nothing at all then wondered why I left.” “He’s got my past frozen behind glass but I’ve got me.” You’re very accepting of both the negative and positive things that happen in your life, and this also goes regarding people’s traits because you understand that they’re only human but this has bitten you in the past. “I wish that I would’ve thought this through before I went and fell in love with.” Now, you have learned how to flow with life but there was a point when you were incredibly dissatisfied and borderline depressed, and were just yearning for more. You have always yearned for lifelong connections but back then, you didn’t even know what you were yearning for or maybe you did but this longing was weighing down on you. Somehow, undergoing that time has only caused you to want lifelong connections even more, you understand life and connections more, and are more willing to carry the responsibilities to fulfil such connections. Your love is expansive, it grows more and more as you proceed forward with your life with them. It consumes you before you know it because they become a part of your life. However, by now, you know just how unpredictable people are and how their feelings for you might change. I’m picking up on having people replace and discard you quite literally or they don’t discard you by themselves but suggest that you’ve been replaced leaving you with no choice but to leave. What sucks more is that with many of them, you were with them during their lowest and most dissatisfying times 💀.

So, you want lifelong connections now more than ever before and have become quite apathetic in certain ways. You’re a contemplative person and have dealt with emotional weariness before, and still have your own moments. Also, you are more closed off and dissatisfied now than you were before. It doesn’t even seem bad. It’s just that no matter what someone comes forward to you with, you are either skeptical or never satisfied because there was a time when you were too satisfied with everything and that caused you pain. You’ve had bitter experiences and have been taken for granted, causing you to lose hope, feel resentful, and isolated but it has caused you to be content with being alone and you have learned how to think, and find lessons in everything. Like, even right now, if you open up and give, you’d do so in a very lifelong manner, and the nature of your life as well as the magnitude of your actions would only grow stronger because that’s just you. Love is like a drug for you but it is funny, you understand love deeply so experiencing it makes you feel high even if it’s you doing most of the work. I’m not sure if it made sense but if it is pile, it should have clicked without me having to explain everything because I’m getting that many of you are really good with interpreting things and finding some philosophical meaning in them. I have been getting the energy of a really philosophical, grand and universal kind of love but have been unable to express it despite understanding it, and I believe you’re the same. There are some things that you just know and possess a deep understanding of but cannot explain, and you understand them deeply but not in a conscious way. You don’t spend time consciously thinking about this stuff. There is also a lot about the ‘law of love’, you just naturally function like that. Everything about you is love which is why you tend to attract blessings - big and small, and bring in luck for others as well. I hope that you liked the reading and that it resonated with you. Thank you for reading. Much love and take care.

⊹ ! ೀ Pile 2 ꒱

You’re a very romantic and sincere person who wants to extend yourself, and express your affection in creative ways. You seem to be a very loud and proud lover, and I feel like you receive a lot of envy. Your aura and energy are not replicable. You possess a mysterious allure but your mystery doesn’t come from the fact that you’re quiet. Some of you might be but most of you are very confident from within and possibly even loud. Your energy causes people to have many mixed feelings towards you and especially, they might hold so much tension towards you that one small mistake and suddenly everyone turns against you. You’re quite unattainable but also highly misunderstood. I find it so funny, people are so attracted to you that they’re repulsed by you. Your energy just genuinely pisses them off. You are so complex and hard to understand that even I’m having a hard time here. You aren’t really going around doing anything bad. In fact, you’re very pure intentioned. You’re inclined towards music and movies, and I’m getting really specific messages here but many of you, when you listen to love songs, you think about yourself as the one the song is written about 😭💀. Another thing that some of you do is pay extreme attention to the details in movies and books. Like, for example, if you read subtitles but didn’t read them properly, you might replay the same scene again and again, and you are curious about the visuals as well, you want to look at every single expression, every single body language cue. You are quite proud of yourself and very confident. You’re self assured and that’s something that cannot be faked. People don’t understand how you can be so comfortable being chalant and that’s what causes them to feel envious, and jealous of you. You’re a natural performer but when you’re performing, you don’t care much about the audience.

Like, if you’re in a new environment, you may act very friendly and might hype others up, and just act out in really animated ways even though you’re more internal and don’t really care about their opinions too much as long as you feel good about yourself but the more comfortable that you get, the more calm and nonchalant you might get or the way you express yourself regardless of how much criticism you may receive really pisses people off. You’re internally nonchalant and possess a duality that’s quite extreme i.e. all your different sides are equally as strong, and the delicate balance that you possess is what makes you so complex. I’m getting that you’re likely a mystery to yourself too. So, you’re a very self assured person but might find yourself doubting yourself at times and may have been guilty of seeking validation. You might sometimes wonder if you’re performing but then you think that if you try to be nonchalant in order to ‘stop performing’ that would be performing too so you’re just like “I don’t care, I’ll be myself no matter what anyone says and thinks” so you just continue acting like yourself. Another duality that you possess is that you may seem very chalant on the surface and honestly, a bit performative, and over the top causing people to sometimes look down on you but internally, you are very soft and emotional but have a very firm heart in which you take pride, and assurance in the fact that you’re genuine and authentic. You might question yourself sometimes “maybe they talk to me like that because they don’t respect me because I talk too much?” or “maybe if I acted different and more myself, they’d respect me more” because on the inside, you’re not very performative. In fact, even if you talk a lot at times, mostly you don’t talk much when you’re in a comfortable environment like home for example but even if you question yourself, you continue choosing to be expressive and authentic no matter what.

Also, being performative makes you a people pleaser but it doesn’t make you a doormat. Like, for example, even if you don’t like someone, you don’t mind talking to them, complimenting them and acting really nice to them on the surface, and you tend to do so dramatically, in an over the top manner but if you’re disrespected, you might feel bad but you don’t even care for that long. You just decide to honour yourself by pulling back and not giving a single fuck. There are so many dualities and nuances to you, and your character that I cannot even begin to list them all. Also, due to your attention to detail, even the most little moments and things that occur can significantly change the way you act. Also, your emotionality is heavily attached to your work, duties and responsibilities because that’s how you take care of your loved ones. Also, you’re thinking about your loved ones while you’re going about your routines no matter how busy you may be and always try to make time for them. You’re very unique and over the top, and that also shows when it comes to love and connections of any sort. You express love in all the four love languages and more. You may write for them, provide for them, try to find time during your busy times for them, hype them up and show them off. It’s important for you to have a partner that you can be proud of. You’re very complicated to understand and naturally want people in your life who understand you so you are hard to get, and don’t happen to get close to people a lot so they never get to see your layers and complexities, and they don’t even know what they’re missing out on. You’re a true romantic, one that melts the heart but you’re so private, and secretive. Even your fears have a language of its own and due to how you’re a natural performer, and a romantic and due to how you tend to notice small details in poems, writings, music, and movies, even this language is so refined in its expression.

It truly is a sight to behold but maybe that was not the right away to express it, it needs to be felt in order to be beholden. You hold love to be very sacred and you haven’t extended that towards anyone, and even if you have, the more that you’ve grown, the more that your capacity to love, experience depth, devote yourself and hold things to a sacred standard. I just heard “I have never seen a baddie who isn’t a saddie at heart” xD. Maybe, you have a sad and melancholic side that others often miss or if they see this side of you, they don’t see your confidence, self assurance and integrity. There is just so much coming through here. “She communicates with every other medium but words. Too bad if somebody wants to settle for something as small as words with her because trust me, she is capable of communicating in much higher planes and many other beautiful ways.” You may be loud, talkative and performative but somehow, there’s something more to you. When one on one with someone, someone you’re genuinely connecting with. You’re not as performative. You may express yourself with words but the beauty lies in the little ways in which you express yourself to them non verbally that touches them and sticks with them. Throughout the reading, I felt as though I was describing a muse but the rawness, the realness mixed with the mystery in the non mysterious and non obvious ways is what makes you so cherish-able and irreplaceable. You’re so mysterious and complex that even I may have failed to convey you properly. I apologise for my lack of efficiency in ability to translate your form into words but I truly did try my best. I hope that you liked the reading and that it resonated with you. Thank you for reading. Much love and take care.

⊹ ! ೀ Pile 3 ꒱

You will walk away from anything that you don’t find to be fulfilling. You are an extremely emotionally rich person who offers a lot in your personal connections so if you don’t find fulfilment, you’ll walk away for the better. Also, no matter how much you’ve had to walk away from, you manage to always have a lot to give to your new connections. Even more than you did to your past connections. If you’re currently walking away from something that’s being highlighted here. Actually, let me tell you what you might be moving on from. You’re a fairly submissive person but have had to deal with really egoistic people who were aggressive, hostile and used to try to intimidate you. I am getting a very heavy energy here. You have dealt with this in both group settings and personal situations. People around you have won by hurting you and you have felt as though you lost a lot in the past. I didn’t want to read this energy so I channelled again for you but it only added onto the previous cards that I pulled so I guess, I’ll just be reading both sets. You have felt so heavily disrespected that the resentment still lives within you. Due to how tired you are of this energy and genuinely do not have the energy, and ability to deal with it, you just surrender and walk away when such things happen now. You genuinely did not have the ability to stand up for yourself back then and even now, when such things happen, you’re taken aback but may not react much despite how bad it may feel. I’m getting that you just ‘freeze up’ and give up. In the past, someone you were involved with was unwilling to embrace the next steps within your relationship and for some reason, you genuinely lacked the common sense to walk away. You also lacked grounding and were still immature so you lacked the discipline to make things happen for yourself so you were staying small, underachieving and losing more, and more respect for yourself as more time passed by. It was more so ignorance, despite the other person not investing, following through and setting the groundwork, you were just foolishly staying in that situation, and it caused you a lot of pain.

You likely have cried a lot about this matter but even with all that sorrow and pain, you still decided to walk away. So now, you have high standards for yourself and others, and will walk away with courage and the knowledge of how much love you have to offer. You’re also a very simple person. Despite how much you offer, simple things make you very happy so you don’t really ask for a lot, you don’t really want a lot. It’s just that in the past, not asking for a lot has caused you to feel at an extreme loss and has had you experiencing so much pain that you’ve had to learn how to have, and maintain high standards. In the past, there have been times when you’ve offered a lot in personal connections just for those people to choose to get more personally attached and give more to other people so you are quite ruthless when it comes to letting go, and moving on after the very first trespass. Obviously, in established relationships (both platonic and romantic), if things are not clear yet, you try to deal with everything in a more mature manner but once you get the sign of their lack of commitment and loyalty towards you, and realise that you misunderstood the form of the connection, that you overestimated the connection’s firmness and groundedness, that is it, you’ll leave. You’ve dealt with a deadbeat (possibly even multiple of them) and are unwilling to put yourself through that again due to how much you tend to do, and provide. You’re also quite possessive of your people because you do not really connect with most people on a more personal level. You’re also not open to most people romantically even when you’re single. Personal connections mean a lot to you so you reserve that for the people who you truly connect with and who seem deserving of you. You’re not just possessive and protective in romantic relationships. You are this way even in platonic relationships because you don’t hold one to be more important than the other.

You get moody and sulky when jealous and possessive, and the funny thing is that you might not even express it. You might be sulky, possibly clingy and touchy but you may not voice it. Obviously, there might be times when you voice it because you do have a mature side but mostly, due to how sensitive you are, when you feel extremely jealous. You start wondering if the other person even considers you at all especially if you feel as though their actions somehow contributed to these emotions. In terms of romance, you are the type to give yourself away and truly devote yourself, and you don’t even notice or want to notice other people so if your partner seems to not feel the same way towards or are just not capable of giving that to you, you genuinely start considering leaving. You might act distant or might continue acting normal but become very moody internally so there is a chance that you do express it in some way but you are a very sensitive person who genuinely feels hurt. Now, onto the matter of sensitivity - you’re a very soft, emotional and empathetic person. So, you truly consider your partner’s emotions even behind their back and avoid saying or doing things that might hurt them, and in fact, I’m hearing that you’re ‘wife/husband material’ even when you’re single so you don’t really go around flirting and looking at everyone. You are huge on empathy, love and compassion so you do not discard or make your friends feel less than just because you find a romantic partner. There are people who think “if she is upset because I got a boyfriend, she is romantically interested in me and that’s not healthy” or “I have a boyfriend now and it’s my husband that I’ll have to spend the rest of my life with so romance matters more” but you understand that if someone loves you, even if it is completely platonic, they might want you to value them, cherish your bond with them and truly understand their emotions, and perspective. So you would make the effort to talk to them and spend time with them rather than just come down to the conclusion that they’re a crazy, toxic friend.

You would try to make them feel loved and tell them that you having a romantic partner does not take away from your bond, love, and connection with them. So when your friends don’t do the same for you, you tend to feel quite hurt. You do not even try to make them understand, you just leave. You possess a duality in which you are very serious to the point you may come off as boring and you are also very fun loving, in an almost childish manner and possess a very pure heart, and might seem very immature and easy to take advantage of. Most people see one side of you and assume that you lack the other side when in reality, that side of you is very strong. Like, for example, due to how subservient of an energy you were giving me. Many might think that you’re easy to take advantage of and that you’re naive, and gullible but on the inside, you are taking note of everything that they’re doing, have done and just taking everything very seriously so that you don’t get involved in a risky situation where you’re at loss. You’re extremely cautious and aware as a person even if on the surface, you might fake cluelessness. However, I’ll not lie, you are very pure hearted and have a very strong character so you’ve had faith in people because as they say ‘the potential that you see in others is what you personally possess’ but doing so has caused you to feel very naive. You do have that tendency to do a lot with a pure heart so it makes sense why you may have felt naive and taken advantage of at times but even so, you never lose your ability to give love in a pure, and wholehearted manner. There are people who see both your serious and responsible side, and how much you take on for your loved ones, how dutiful you are and your fun, playful, and pure side and they cherish this well refined, and balanced character of yours. You’re such a sweetheart honestly. If you don’t have people like this yet. Trust me, you’ll find them and they’ll love you so much because they’ll know that there’s no other like you, and even if you don’t, never forget your truth. After all, your worth lies in who you are and how much good you put out, and not how much love you receive. I hope that you liked the reading and that it resonated with you. Thank you for reading. Much love and take care.

[superlinguo]

Gesture: A Slim Guide - Five Fun Facts

To celebrate the publication of Gesture: A Slim Guide I've selected five facts from/about the book to share:

1. The cover is a deepcut reference to my first gesture research project

Gawne & Kelly (2014) is actually work from my honours project in 2007 - it took us a while to write it up for publication. In that experiment, participants watched a short video narrative and marked everything they thought was a 'gesture' without being given a definition. On the whole, people agree at a minimum level with Gesture Studies researchers about what a gesture is, but tend to include far more in their definition. The cover illustration from Lucy Maddox captures some of the key gestures from that video. Because we had no budget, I filmed the video of myself narrating the story.

2. Learning a signed language will affect the way you gesture in spoken language

Research on learners of ASL shows that learning a signed language affects the gestures of people who have spent their whole life speaking English. Gesture and signed languages are two very different uses of the same modality, but they influence each other in interesting ways.

3. You can make people imagine emphasis differently by changing the placement of emphatic gestures

Hans Rutger Bosker and David Peeters created experimental video clips that you can see here. They took inspiration for their experimental work from the classic McGurk effect in phonetics, where watching a mouth closing like a /g/ while a /b/ sound is played will make the viewer hear a /d/.

4. Dolphins and seals demonstrate the capacity to follow human pointing gestures

While there is evidence that many domestic animals can follow human pointing gestures, this is the only documented evidence to date that shows this skill in wild animals that aren't primates.

5. People still gesture even if their audience can't see them, but the way they gesture changes

Speech and gesture are so closely linked up that we can't help but gesture, even if our audience can't see us. Experiments show that changing the audience conditions changes how large or frequent gestures are, but nothing stops us gesturing completely.

The official launch party for Gesture: A Slim Guide will be the April episode of Lingthusiasm, stay tuned!

Book overview

The gestures that we use when we speak are an important, if often over-looked, part of how we communicate. This book provides a friendly, fast-paced introduction to the field of Gesture Studies. Gestures are those communicative actions made with the human body that accompany spoken or signed language. Paying attention to gesture means paying attention to the fuller context in which humans communicate. Gesture is absolute, in that every human community that has language also has gestures as part of that language. But gesture is also relative, in that it is far more heavily context dependent than other elements of communication. This book provides a broad introduction to current understandings of the nature and function of gesture as a feature of communication. This Slim Guide covers the ways gesture works alongside speech and the different categories of gesture. The way these categories are used varies across cultures and languages, and even across specific interactions. We acquire gesture as part of language, and it is deeply entwined with language in the brain. Gesture has an important role in the origin of language, and in shaping the future of human communication. The study of gesture makes a crucial interdisciplinary contribution to our understanding of human communication. This Slim Guide provides an introduction to Gesture Studies for readers of all backgrounds.

Order links

Bookshop .org (affiliate link)

Amazon (affiliate link)

Booko page (for Australians)

[togglesbloggle]

For the Reverse Unpopular Opinion meme, Lamarckism!

(This is an excellent ask.)

Lamarck got done a bit dirty by the textbooks, as one so often is. He's billed as the guy who articulated an evolutionary theory of inherited characteristics, inevitably set up as an opponent made of straw for Darwin to knock down. The example I recall my own teachers using in grade school was the idea that a giraffe would strain to reach the highest branches of a tree, and as a result, its offspring would be born with slightly longer necks. Ha-ha-ha, isn't-that-silly, isn't natural selection so much more sensible?

But the thing is, this wasn't his idea, not even close. People have been running with ideas like that since antiquity at least. What Lamarck did was to systematize that claim, in the context of a wider and much more interesting theory.

Lamarck was born in to an era where natural philosophy was slowly giving way to Baconian science in the modern sense- that strange, eighteenth century, the one caught in an uneasy tension between Newton the alchemist and Darwin the naturalist. This is the century of Ben Franklin and his key and his kite, and the awed discovery that this "electricity" business was somehow involved in living organisms- the discovery that paved the way for Shelley's Frankenstein. This was the era when alchemy was fighting its last desperate battles with chemistry, when the division between 'organic' and 'inorganic' chemistry was fundamental- the first synthesis of organic molecules in the laboratory wouldn't occur until 1828, the year before Lamarck's death. We do not have atoms, not yet. Mendel and genetics are still more than a century away; we won't even have cells for another half-century or more.

Lamarck stepped in to that strange moment. I don't think he was a bold revolutionary, really, or had much interest in being one. He was profoundly interested in the structure and relationships between species, and when we're not using him as a punching bag in grade schools, some people manage to remember that he was a banging good taxonomist, and made real progress in the classification of invertebrates. He started life believing in the total immutability of species, but later was convinced that evolution really was occurring- not because somebody taught him in the classroom, or because it was the accepted wisdom of the time, but through deep, continued exposure to nature itself. He was convinced by the evidence of his senses.

(Mostly snails.)

His problem was complexity. When he'd been working as a botanist, he had this neat little idea to order organisms by complexity, starting with the grubbiest, saddest little seaweed or fern, up through lovely flowering plants. This was not an evolutionary theory, just an organizing structure; essentially, just a sort of museum display. But when he was asked to do the same thing with invertebrates, he realized rather quickly that this task had problems. A linear sorting from simple to complex seemed embarrassingly artificial, because it elided too many different kinds of complexity, and ignored obvious similarities and shared characteristics.

When he went back to the drawing board, he found better organizing schema; you'd recognize them today. There were hierarchies, nested identities. Simple forms with only basic, shared anatomical patterns, each functioning as a sort of superset implying more complex groups within it, defined additively by the addition of new organs or structures in the body. He'd made a taxonomic tree.

Even more shockingly, he realized something deep and true in what he was looking at: this wasn't just an abstract mapping of invertebrates to a conceptual diagram of their structures. This was a map in time. Complexities in invertebrates- in all organisms!- must have been accumulating in simpler forms, such that the most complicated organisms were also the youngest.

This is the essential revolution of Lamarckian evolution, not the inherited characteristics thing. His theory, in its full accounting, is actually quite elaborate. Summarized slightly less badly than it is in your grade school classroom (though still pretty badly, I'm by no means an expert on this stuff), it looks something like this:

As we all know, animals and plants are sometimes generated ex nihilo in different places, like maggots spontaneously appearing in middens. However, the spontaneous generation of life is much weaker than we have supposed; it can only result in the most basic, simple organisms (e.g. polyps). All the dizzying complexity we see in the world around us must have happened iteratively, in a sequence over time that operated on inheritance between one organism and its descendants.

As we all know, living things are dynamic in relation to inorganic matter, and this vital power includes an occasional tendency to gain in complexity. However, this tendency is not a spiritual or supernatural effect; it's a function of natural, material processes working over time. Probably this has something to do with fluids such as 'heat' and 'electricity' which are known to concentrate in living tissues. When features appear spontaneously in an organism, that should be understood as an intrinsic propensity of the organism itself, rather than being caused by the environment or by a divine entity. There is a specific, definite, and historically contingent pattern in which new features can appear in existing organisms.

As we all know, using different tissue groups more causes them to be expressed more in your descendants, and disuse weakens them in the same way. However, this is not a major feature in the development of new organic complexity, since it could only move 'laterally' on the complexity ladder and will never create new organs or tissue groups. At most, you might see lineages move from ape-like to human-like or vice versa, or between different types of birds or something; it's an adaptive tendency that helps organisms thrive in different environments. In species will less sophisticated neural systems, this will be even less flexible, because they can't supplement it with willpower the way that complex vertebrates can.

Lamarck isn't messing around here; this is a real, genuinely interesting model of the world. And what I think I'm prepared to argue here is that Lamarck's biggest errors aren't his. He has his own blind spots and mistakes, certainly. The focus on complexity is... fraught, at a minimum. But again and again, what really bites him in the ass is just his failure to break with his inherited assumptions enough. The parts of this that are actually Lamarckian, that is, are the ideas of Lamarck, are very clearly groping towards a recognizable kind of proto-evolutionary theory.

What makes Lamarck a punching bag in grade-school classes today is the same thing that made it interesting; it's that it was the best and most scientific explanation of biological complexity available at the time. It was the theory to beat, the one that had edged out all the other competitors and emerged as the most useful framework of the era. And precisely none of that complexity makes it in to our textbooks; they use "Lamarckianism" to refer to arguments made by freaking Aristotle, and which Lamarck himself accepted but de-emphasized as subordinate processes. What's even worse, Darwin didn't reject this mechanism either. Darwin was totally on board with the idea as a possible adaptive tendency; he just didn't particularly need it for his theory.

Lamarck had nothing. Not genetics, not chromosomes, not cells, not atomic theory. Geology was a hot new thing! Heat was a liquid! What Lamarck had was snails. And on the basis of snails, Lamarck deduced a profound theory of complexity emerging over time, of the biosphere as a(n al)chemical process rather than a divine pageant, of gradual adaptation punctuated by rapid innovation. That's incredible.

There's a lot of falsehood in the Lamarckian theory of evolution, and it never managed to entirely throw off the sloppy magical thinking of what came before. But his achievement was to approach biology and taxonomy with a profound scientific curiosity, and to improve and clarify our thinking about those subjects so dramatically that a theory of biology could finally, triumphantly, be proven wrong. Lamarck is falsifiable. That is a victory of the highest order.

[edelblau]

it never ends

update: TODAY WE HIT THE GOAL, NEW TABLET IS ORDERED. commissions will stay in limbo even after i get the replacement so i can get accustomed to it, and reopen afterwards. if youd like to support me during this downtime, feel free to donate more, but the biggest fire has been put out now! https://ko-fi.com/edelblau

last night, when playing stardew valley with friends, i noticed i was getting the disconnect and reconnect windows noise a lot. i thought, at first, it was just a usb i might have accidentally tugged on-- and then i thought maybe i just needed to replace the wire.

all of these would have been great. unfortunately, it was neither, and the actual port on my tablet itself is the issue. this is a massive issue, as im disabled and commissions are what let me get through the month every month and maybe even have a social life or pay for fun things.

as someone who is disabled, when i consider repairing something, i kind of have to weigh my options in terms of the cost, since for me, i have to consider things like 'ubering to a repair shop' 'possibly being in a mall because for some reason most repair shops are in malls' 'can i get an uber to bring my rollator safely'. mailing has the same issues, as id have to. you know. get to a post office.

my roommate has generously lent me her old tablet, which is Functional and will allow me to, at the very least, offer a limited repertoire of commissions until i either adjust fully to this tablet* *its smaller and a different model or i can get a new one. (maybe one with bluetooth and an optional wired mode. because nothing betrays me more than micro-usb ports.)

anyways, suffice it to say that post holidays me who struggles on a good month just cannot deal with this at the moment. ill be offering sketch commissions and discord emotes (examples on ko-fi) since im not confident in the quality of my work right now and those are some simpler (and cheaper) offerings, and donations are very appreciated, as are reblogs.

one day i will stop suffering so much and begging so much, but today is not the day. thank you all for reading, and doubly thank you to anyone who shares!

[aibafiles]

Deciphering the invaders' language in the Hundred Line demo

After playing the hundred line demo recently, I gathered up any screenshots I could of the script the invaders use and I believe I've managed to decode all of it so far, so I wanted to share my findings here! I'll put the rest under the cut for anyone who wants to avoid it—I don't think anything I've translated so far would reveal any huge plot twists, but the game certainly doesn't expect you to be able to understand it.

Note: I'm aware that the demo has been datamined and there is plaintext of these lines, but I do not want corrections or confirmation based on this. I like piecing this together based on what the game has presented, nothing more!

Below the cut: translations of dialogue and UI text, character charts and other observations, and an analysis of the spoken language as well! (warning: long)

First things first, this language is a very straightforward kana-only Japanese in a different script. I started with the text under each main menu option, so let's look at these:

"Press any button" はじめる Hajimeru Start

The : mark next to the second character functions just like dakuten—the base character is し (shi), which becomes voiced to make じ (ji).

"New Game" はじめから Hajime kara From start

"Continue" つづきから Tsuzuki kara From next

"Load" きろくから Kiroku kara From

Pretty straightforward—I got stuck here for way too long because I thought these were -masu verbs and then nothing else made sense, oops.

"Gallery" せってい Settei Settings

"Settings" がろう Garou Gallery

"End Game" しゅうりょう Shuuryou End

Another sticking point here—the text on settings and gallery are actually switched. One danger of putting a fake language in your game is that you risk not being able to read it and messing it up in places (hi Metaphor), and though it's not really critical, this is not the only goof so far. (EDIT: This has been patched!)

Note that the smaller characters here are are reflected in the script as well, like the っ in せってい.

Cutscene dialogue

The subtitles for our commander's transformation cutscene, and a rough translation:

いだいなほしのかみよ… Idai na hoshi no kami yo... God of a great star(/planet)...

われにちからをあたえよ…！ Ware ni chikara wo atae yo...! Grant me power...!

むげんたい…！！ Mugentai...!! Eternal body...!!

ぼくは…「ちつじょのけしん」むゔゔむ… Boku wa... [Chitsujo no Keshin] Muvuvumu... I am... the [Avatar of Order] Muvuvumu... (MVVM?)

This was the section I struggled the most with, so there could be inaccuracies, but I'm reasonably confident in most of it.

Post-Battle Dialogue

Here's the very straightforward part:

こ、ころさないで… Ko-korosanaide... D-Don't kill me...

ゆるしてください Yurushite kudasai... Please forgive me...

おねがい…たすけて… Onegai... tasukete... Please... spare me... (or help me, but spare felt most fitting in this context)

And that's about everything we have so far! Here are my very janky kana charts, one for the script and one for the spoken language:

The most obvious observation is that the general shape seems to indicate the vowel sound, and the extra swoopy bits indicate the consonant, though some vowels are more consistent than others.

There's a general pattern among each consonants as well—N-shapes have loops or curls, S-shapes have angular lines that hook over the vowel shape, pure vowels have tiny loops, etc, but there aren't clear-cut enough patterns to extrapolate the rest of the language yet. Luckily I think there's enough so far that any remaining characters won't be too hard to place.

Let's talk about the spoken component as well! Notably, the commander is dubbed differently in English and Japanese, but both voice actors seem to be reading the same set of syllables, which gave me more sample data to work with, because they inflect their vowels a little differently. Like the written language, each kana has a 1:1 replacement syllable, but the nature of these syllables changes the cadence of the sentences when spoken.

The above chart is transcribed to the best of my ability, but it's possible I got a few sounds wrong, and I can't quite make out what the tsu in chitsujo is through the voice filter. I'm considering replaying the demo with the music and sound effects off to pick these voice lines out, and if I do, I'll edit this post and drop a reply noting it! There are also some unsubbed battle voice lines I'm curious about.

What's really interesting to me is how these new syllables interact with dakuten. Plenty of unvoiced consonants are replaced with voiced ones, or the other way around—but there are a few, like ta (now tu) and te (now se). When the Japanese script uses dakuten, the new syllables get voiced too, becoming du and ze. This tripped me up a bit, and it does cause some confusing duplicates (ku is already pronounced du), but it's fascinating that it bleeds through into the new pronunciation.

One other thing I noticed when analyzing these voice lines is that the English dub of the transformation cutscene straight up uses the wrong audio clip for the final line. The Japanese audio matches the syllable count, and those syllables match up with the ones we've heard in the other voice lines, but the English line seems to have too many syllables, and doesn't match at all. JP starts with "diduwa..." and EN starts with something like "mozoku en." I'm wondering if it's possible to reverse engineer this to figure out the original line, but that's another thing that would need scrutiny from a voice-only recording.

Misc. Observations

These little guys have the character for "o" on their faces! Also pronounced "ga" in the invaders' language.

I'm really intrigued by this graffiti on the walls when Takumi chases Karua into the abandoned school district, because this game is full of Japanese graphic text in the environments, so this can't be a case of generic unreadable background text—but it doesn't quite fit the invader script, either. A few shapes sort of match the characters if you rotate or invert them different ways, but I can't parse anything readable out of this. There are repeated shapes, like the topmost "word" in the first two images that appears to be the same, but written with slightly different strokes, so I have to assume there's meaning to it. Not sure what that is, but I wanted to include it in this post just in case.

Thanks for reading! this game is going to drive me insane

[calits-now-ontheside]

Analysis of the EGO Pink Shoes – Hong Lu – Between Loss of Will and Manifestation of Desire

It's been a while since I wanted to analyse all the EGOs of Hong Lu and I finaly found some time while not being able to draw. I know it has already been done numerous time and I may or may not bring anything new but it is always so fun to analyse all these little details.

So let's start with Roseate Desire:

Roseate Desire is the name of the E.G.O linked to the Abnormality Pink Shoes, which is also related to the Abnormality Red Shoes.

Shared with: Ishmael

Cost: 4 Lust and 2 Envy

I’d like to begin this analysis by quoting a sentence from @sunshades from their analysis of Ishmaël that perfectly encapsulates the intention behind this EGO and immediately reveals the themes running through it:

“It’s more about a loss of your free will and being controlled by an external force.”

Summary:

Origin of the EGO: Pink Shoes and Red Shoes

Pink Shoes: A Parasitic Abnormality

Hong Lu: Between Puppet and Puppeteer

What if Hong Lu wanted to be in control?

Lust & Envy: Revealing Sins

I/ Origin of the EGO: Pink Shoes and Red Shoes

This EGO is drawn from an abnormality derived from Red Shoes, known for amplifying the desires and obsessions of those who wear them. It is therefore relevant to start by analyzing Red Shoes and Pink Shoes together in order to better understand how they function.

These two abnormalities share a central theme: control through desire. They possess the power to enslave the individual through their own cravings.

One of the first visible signs of this control manifests through a pinkish glow in the host’s eyes.

In Lobotomy Corporation, this glow in the eyes of Red Shoes’ hosts indicates that the individual is about to confess their deepest desires to the abnormality.

In Pink Shoes, this glow seems permanent. This could indicate that the desire here is more constant, diffuse, less sudden but more invasive.

Why this difference? Perhaps because lust and desire are more similar in their slow consumption than aggressiveness, which erupts with force.

Indeed, Red Shoes manifests desire through aggressiveness, while Pink Shoes manifests it through lust — if we look at their Sin Affinity. (Have to thanks @firestorm09890's post for helpin me seeing clearer on the subject)

Thus, even if both abnormalities play on desire, they express it in different ways:

Red Shoes = Desire → Violence

Pink Shoes = Desire → Seduction, pleasure, subjugation

A telling example is the employee from Lobotomy Corp who, frustrated by unrequited love, becomes violent under the influence of Red Shoes. Here, even though the base theme is love, it’s the expression of desire through anger that is central, because that’s the nature of Red Shoes.

Conversely, with Pink Shoes, it is through almost sensual and suggestive visual elements (ribbons, poses, implicit BDSM codes) and through a feeling of pleasure that desires are manifested, as seen with Hong Lu and Ishmael.

II/ Pink Shoes: A Parasitic Abnormality

1rst Quick Thought: For me—and for many others, if not everyone—E.G.O and Sinners must share a certain kind of resonance. The Sinner (often unconsciously, I think) recognizes a part of themselves in the Abnormality, and the Abnormality, in turn, reflects that part back. It’s this shared element that enables the manifestation of the E.G.O and allows a bond to form between them. However, that shared aspect doesn't have to be the same for every Sinner. After all, an Abnormality can embody multiple themes or ideas simultaneously.

2nd Quick Thought: Still from my point of view, the initial (non-overclocked) use of an Abnormality E.G.O is more closely tied to the Sinner. At that stage, the Abnormality is still held in check, and its history or consciousness doesn’t yet deeply influence the Sinner’s psyche and behaviour. The lines spoken and the visual elements (sprites, etc.) in this phase seem to be more reflective of the Sinner’s own self rather than of the Abnormality

3rd Quick Note: In contrast, the overclocked state clearly allows the Abnormality to exert more influence—taking up more mental and symbolic space within the Sinner. Its psyche begins to seep into the Sinner, even if it remains loosely aligned with their theme or the shared connection between them. That’s why I’m a bit hesitant to interpret overclocked E.G.O lines as being direct expressions of a Sinner’s personal thoughts. To me, these moments are more about the Abnormality expressing itself through the Sinner’s identity, or more precisely, through that shared facet between them.

Last Quick Thought: That being said, even if it’s mostly the Abnormality speaking in this state, the themes or ideas being voiced and in some cases their sprites are still worth paying attention to when analyzing a Sinner—because that idea might be exactly what enabled their bond to form in the first place.

However, for this particular E.G.O, you’ll see that the corrosion may actually be more closely linked to the Sinner than usual.

Now let’s focus on Pink Shoes alone.

With this EGO, the two characters who embody it express variations of the same theme:

Hong Lu: lack of control, loss of free will

Ishmael: obsessive desire, absolute control of desire over will

What is interesting is that the employes reanimated by Pink shoes -- Pink Shoes Enchantee and Pink Shoes Possesse -- seems to represent the 2 aspects of Pink Shoes -- being possessed and being enchanted. And it seems that this is the same thing for Ishmael, representing the enchanting side and Hong Lu representing the possessing side of the abnormality.

Another notable fact: Pink Shoes seems to be the only EGO whose corroded form is represented in its main art. This could indicate that it's worth focusing more on that form than on the base one. Observing the corroded forms of Hong Lu and Ishmael, we note:

The corrosion from Pink Shoes is less violent and “encompassing” than that of other abnormalities. Even Red Shoes expresses its personality more than Pink Shoes does.

It is more intimate, more personal — it doesn’t manifest the will of the abnormality, but that of the host’s desire. What corrodes the host is their desire pushed to the extreme and how it manages to take control.

I would say that in a way, Pink Shoes is not an autonomous, conscious, or imperious abnormality. It acts like a parasite that lives and spreads through the desires of the host. It has no will of its own beyond its instinct to spread, like mold or a fungus. Pink Shoes has only one desire — that of spreading itself and its ribbons through others’ desires.

Thus, corrosion here can be interpreted as the external manifestation of a deeply repressed inner desire, taking control of its host.

Is the corrosion the host’s extreme desire possessing them?

The image of the pink ribbon invading the host’s body is central. It evokes both:

Constraint (bindings, bondage)

Manipulation (puppet strings)

And this idea of the puppet is especially predominant with Hong Lu, more than with Ishmael.

III/ Hong Lu: Between Puppet and Puppeteer

Hong Lu, in his idle sprite, stands like a limp puppet, hanging and waiting to be set in motion. The ribbons trail on the ground, like strings ready to be pulled.

All of this suggests a person being manipulated to satisfy others’ desires.

Even the EGO art shows Hong Lu suspended, vulnerable, dependent on the ribbon — and therefore on an external will.

But what’s even more striking: in his corroded form, his mouth is covered by a pink ribbon.

This means he doesn’t even have the right to speak, not even to express a personal desire. He is instrumentalized, stripped of any personal will.

With Ishmael, it’s the eye that is covered. She can only see her obsessive desire, represented by Pink Shoes.

Her will for vengeance is strong — but ends up consumed by the pleasure and desire distilled by Pink Shoes. She then becomes the agent of propagation for this abnormality, bound to its ribbons, as we see in her corroded form, where she now speaks of charming and wrapping up. Which is Pink Shoes’ primary desire.

Whereas, Hong Lu's desire expressed in its corroded version (so its strongest version) has taking over his mouth so by preventing him from expressing himself and by instrumentalizing him and reducing him to nothing more than a puppet to be manipulated.

And yes, the theme of being others' puppent, deprived of self is a main theme for Hong Lu.

But is that really all there is to it?

IV/ What if Hong Lu wanted to be in control?

One intriguing detail: his weapon is not his usual one. Here, he wears two pairs of gloves. Why, when Ishmael has kept the same weapon shape?

If we follow the puppet theme… gloves are hands that manipulate. What if these gloves were the expression of a deep and unconscious desire from Hong Lu?

What if, despite his apparent passivity in the face of his lack of autonomy, his true desire was to be in control (of himself) — even if that means controlling what controls him?

He would then become the puppeteer of his own puppet. A disturbing mise en abyme:

Unable to see himself as the one in control of his choices, he is forced to separate his desire and place it as his own puppeteer in order to make decisions for himself. Hong Lu cannot act without being someone’s puppet / being told what to do — and even if his desire is to be in control, he can only do so by being his own puppeteer.

Hong Lu is manipulated by Pink Shoes but uses the gloves to manipulate in turn. Pink Shoes makes Hong Lu into the puppeteer, becoming the puppeteer of his own body — a tragic paradox between submission and illusory control.

Maybe we can even link this idea to this diaologue:

What reinforces this idea is that during his corrosion attack, threads appear, connected to Hong Lu at his various joints. These threads pull Hong Lu’s target… but he himself remains pulled by Pink Shoes. He is both author and tool, master and slave.

And even in his non-corroded state, Hong Lu already speaks of “Tie you just enough,” which for me can have two meanings:

Hong Lu, even by giving himself the role of puppeteer of his own body, is still not truly in control since he is already following someone else’s will — that of Pink Shoes, whose will is to bind people with her ribbons. After all, his regular and corroded attack animations are very similar, which might suggest that from the beginning, when desire is involved, Hong Lu is unable to manifest one stronger than the desire to fulfill others’ wishes.

As it has always been the case for him, Hong Lu controls and manipulates by applying just enough pressure / constraint for it to seem natural. This control is just enough to feel normal, but also not enough to be questioned. Maybe that's supposed to be a hint to the way Hong Lu is controlled.

V/ Lust & Envy: Revealing Sins

Lastly, a quick note on the Sins required to activate the Pink Shoes EGOs, which are revealing:

Hong Lu: Lust & Envy

Ishmael: Lust & Wrath

Lust is shared by both Ishmael and Hong Lu, which makes sense since that is how desires manifest through Pink Shoes.

Indeed in this case, lust is, I think, only referring to Pink Shoes' will to spread and that can be confirmed by Hohenheim's definition of the sins:

"The meaning of Peccatulum Luxuriae, 'Lust', is not exactly what it says on the tin. A more illustrative description would say that it is... ah, yes. An obsession to spread a fragment of what forms the self."

Since Pink Shoes manifest through lust, I don't think that in this case it refers to the sinners. The abnormality clearly want to spread a fragment (the ribbons) of what form its self (the shoes).

So, that being say we have to look at the other sin, that is from where the deep desire is taken from and from which the shoes are goind to feed themselves and implify.

Where Hong Lu requires Envy, Ishmael requires Wrath.

Because Ishmael’s deep desire — her desire for vengeance — was born from her anger and her will to destroy Ahab.

But why Envy for Hong Lu? Two possible explanations in my view:

Because his desire was born from others’ envy to control his life

Or because deep down — and I like to believe this — even if it’s repressed and unconscious, one of Hong Lu’s deepest desires is to be in control, even of himself. Dare I even say he envies Pink Shoes for being able to control him? Maybe it’s an extrapolation, and yet I wonder — why not?

Perhaps it’s an extrapolation. Or perhaps not. After all, isn’t it one of the most human things: to desire that which dominates us, just so we no longer feel lost?

Unfortunately, I didn't really dwell on Hong Lu's eye during this post because I thinkt it will be more interesting to do a post about everytime the jade was active, but that will be for another time!

[alex51324]

Got a response from my Republican senator's office to my messages about DOGE. I took the time to write up a detailed reply; sharing it here in case others find it helpful.

(Please note that, in this letter, I have chosen the rhetorical strategy of addressing the reader as though they are a reasonable individual acting in good faith, and we are working together to solve a problem. You probably will not find it a useful template if you have chosen a different rhetorical strategy.)

Hello Senator NAME,

Thank you for your thoughtful response to my concerns surrounding the Department of Government Efficiency. I have two follow-up questions.

First, I was glad to see you state that members of this entity are subject to the same privacy laws as other federal employees. Would you consider making a public statement to that effect, and emphasize that violating these laws is a bright red line, and that, should agents or affiliates of DOGE be found to be violating these laws, you would immediately call for & support immediate corrective action, including both employment actions (e.g., firing) and criminal actions if appropriate? I feel that it would be reassuring to the public to hear several senators, specifically Republicans, making this kind of commitment. It's fair to give this new administration some time to find its feet, but from the perspective of the general public, in a month that's been as busy as this one, that doesn't look a lot different from completely abnegating your oversight responsibilities. Making some public statements, about when you would step in, would go a long way toward allaying those concerns.

Secondly, I agree that a thorough audit of the federal government is a good idea! However, what DOGE is doing does not look like any audit I've ever seen. My father was an Auditor for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; in my observation, an audit involves careful examination of records and practices to determine where funds are being used incorrectly. Auditors do not make law, they do not walk in the door and immediately start ordering cuts, and they do not fire people.

What Musk's team appear to be conducting is a scream test of the entire Federal government. In IT, a scream test is when you unplug or otherwise disable something, and then wait to see if anyone notices, and screams about it. It's typically done as a last resort, after other attempts to determine the role and necessity of the system in question have failed to turn up any evidence that the system is doing anything important. Even more crucially, when a scream test is done, there should be a way to immediately restore that system if somebody does scream.

So far, we've had two very loud screams: about the firing of nuclear security personnel, and teams working on the avian flu crisis. It seems like even a cursory examination by vaguely competent people would have very quickly revealed that these teams were performing essential functions. Secondly, subsequent events have proven that there was no plan or preparation to be able to reverse the firings now that the screams have started.

In addition to these two things, I am also wondering how many other screams have started, that will take longer than a few days to become loud enough to be heard in Washington, or to make it to the front page of major newspapers.

To call what is happening an "audit" is deeply disingenuous. It's a scream test, and even by the standards of the field in which this type of test is carried out (and where Musk and his employees come from), it is being carried out with gross incompetence. It's more like a bunch of toddles running amok in the server room, unplugging whatever catches their eye.

You can do better. We can do better. As a senator, I'm sure you've worked with auditors & reviewed the results of audits--you know what an audit is. Demand one.

Your Fellow American,

YOUR NAME HERE

[caldella]

Blitzø & Verosika: 7 Deadly Similarities

An unnecessary dive into how these two are alike, and their possible past dynamic

Who asked for this? No one really. But it's something I've wanted to touch on for a while.

Like a lot of HB character conversations, I see a lot of discussion back and forth about these two: mainly on whether Verosika's Anti-Blitzo parties were extreme overkill for their breakup, or whether Blitzø's particularly hurtful way of severing ties/avoiding blame afterward deserved it. It becomes a lot of, "which one is shittier than the other?" And to be honest...

I don't see many people bring up how the show displays that the truth is more neutral. They function very similarly.

The more we saw of Verosika in the few episodes she's been in, the more I got, "Yeah I can see why these two dated long enough for her to fall in love." I think they share a lot of qualities. Some probably drew them to each other, but some probably caused issues instead of connecting them.

Trait One: Leadership

Verosika and Blitzø are both leaders of a team. They're pretty classic Type A personalities: take-charge, ambitious, don't take orders well from others. They want to make them instead. I could easily see Blitzø with his hyper-confident persona and Verosika's 'I'm a star, bitch' attitude being drawn to each other. Neither of them like taking shit from someone, and before they directed their ire at each other, they were probably good at channeling it together in an 'us against the world' way.

Trait Two: Extroversion

Both Blitzø and Verosika seem to be extroverted and prefer being around other people (or demons, whatever). In fact, I think they emotionally rely on it. From what I recall, Ozzie's is the only time Verosika shows up alone anywhere. Other than that, the closest she comes is showing up for work in Spring Broken with Tex her bodyguard. She's otherwise constantly surrounded by her employees/coworkers or hosting events for people she invites. While her screentime has been limited, I get the feeling she doesn't like being by herself. Neither does Blitzø, who's made an entire found family for himself for that same reason.

Trait Three: Crass

In a show with plenty of swearing and crude humor, both of them are pretty high on the list for quick insults or crass remarks. They're both so blunt that the other's attitude probably never phased them while they got along. But I'm guessing that also prevented them from having a lot of more meaningful conversations without reverting to this as a safety net.

Trait Four: Deflecting Accountability

Both of them have some seriously damaging behavior: Blitzø with his sabotaging relationships and Verosika with her insistence that she's too successful for rehab. Blitzø uses his deflection to avoid getting close to people or looking too far at his own self-hatred. Verosika sees rehab as an admission of weakness that could damage her image/career. Both hide serious problems under a mask of confidence.

Trait Five: Using A Painful Reminder to Make a Statement

It seems that Blitzø never officially changed his name's spelling to Blitz. Instead, he insists on the "O" being silent, distinctly marking that his association with his circus/clown origins are done. Similarly, Verosika chose to cross out her Blitz tattoo instead of cover it up - a black heart would've literally matched her face marking - and she wore pants with a crossed out version of Blitzø's forehead mark in Apology Tour. Perhaps she got her tattoo altered before rehab, or perhaps she got inspiration from Barbie's crossed out forehead marking. Either way, both she and Blitzø don't actually eliminate these signs of their past selves, the hurt selves that they're afraid to let the public see. They instead use the reminder as a sign to the world that they're different now.

Trait Six: Coping with Emotions via Violence or Self-Destruction

I agree that the Anti-Blitzo party was weirdly violent with its imagery (and the foreshadowing of the cake being beheaded isn't lost on me). But whenever I see people bring up how violent the party was, they don't seem to consider that Blitzø takes out his feelings via violence, too. He does it literally, especially if he's frustrated/avoiding introspection. That isn't dissimilar to Verosika using performative violence to cover up her emotional pain. Perhaps she learned some of it from him.

Both of them also lean towards self-destructive behaviors to handle negative feelings. Verosika is shown as an alcoholic from her first appearance. Blitzø's binge in Queen Bee seems to be a one-time thing and not a habit, but between that and his spiral in Ghostfuckers, it's clear that he also uses self-destructive behavior to avoid addressing his vulnerabilities.

Trait Seven: Projecting Negative Generalizations Onto Others

(Yes bringing back the 'everyone's shitty' screenshot again)

I have to thank this post from timkontheunsure for actually having this piece fall into place for me. Both of them, when facing (real or perceived) rejection from someone they've developed feelings for, turn it into anger. They respond by putting people into a category and assuming that they must be the same as everyone else within it. Blitzø struggled so bad with the idea that Stolas could have feelings for him that he rejected it and assumed Stolas would function like every stereotypical uncaring royal. His negative perception of royalty as a whole was thrown onto one person despite conflicting evidence. He did the same with the Anti-Blitzo party, when Verosika tried to confront him on his own behavior. No, HE wasn't particularly shitty, he was just a denizen of Hell. Everyone there was shitty.

And Verosika did similar with Stolas, by assuming he would be just another bitter ex completely wronged by Blitzø. She assumed that the party and venting about Blitzø would be cathartic for him like she felt it was for her. There was no room for gray area in the situation. With the drastic way Blitzø hurt her, surely everyone else he's hurt must feel the same and need the same outlet.

Conclusion:

We'll see if the show ever addresses it, though I don't think it's something they really need to. I'm guessing that their combined ambitious personalities and 'I don't give a fuck' attitudes drew them to each other. And since they dated before Blitzø adopted Loona, he was likely in his wilder party phase as well. Verosika probably felt like they could take on the world (Hell) together, but either Blitzø was not as attached or his self-destructive tendencies sabotaged things the moment they became serious, as he's had a habit of doing. I think Verosika made the anti-Blitzø motif such a drastic part of her persona to prevent a public scandal about the hurtful/embarassing breakup. She's a major celebrity under the public's eye. She's a species entirely devoted to lust over love. To her, it was safer to have a justified target than to be the target herself.

I think, even if Blitzø hadn't ripped up their relationship, things still would've gotten messy. Two bold, loud individuals who struggle to cope with negative feelings without turning aggressive/projecting them? Hiding pain under self destruction? I don't know if either would've been able to start addressing these issues if the other refused to work on their own. It was only after the breakup, and several years of living and growing, that they were able to even have an honest conversation with each other.

[dedalvs]

Hello! I have been trying to find out if there is a Trigedasleng word for Phantom, but I have come up short.

you wouldnt happen to just know that would you?

Dokwocha is a word for "ghost". I find often, though, with questions like this there is often an expectation that there will be an exact match for a particular synonym that exist in English. For example, in the neighborhood of "ghost", we have spectre, phantasm, ghoul, spook, phantom, geist, poltergeist, spirit, shade, etc. You may look at some of these words and say, "Well, but that doesn't quite mean exactly the same thing," and I'm sure you're right, but the reason we have all these words is they come from different languages at different points in time history from different stories, different cultures, different traditions, etc. Their histories are quite specific, and so the odds of finding an exact match in a language that doesn't share the same history are astronomical. For a more absurd example, it's kind of like asking what the Dothraki word for "skibidi" is. Obviously that's an extreme example, but it's the same issue.

Now, Trigedasleng, of course, is unique. It derives from English. But it derives in an extremely contrived, unrealistic way. There was a massive schism that occurred with the nuclear event. American culture—world culture—effectively vanished over night for most people. What remained would have been what was committed to memory, then what the next generation remembered, and then what they passed on, and so forth. My assumption is that a lot of the synonyms that populate English vocabulary would have been lost. What synonyms remained would've taken on a more functional load in order to be retained (e.g. las from "last" means "previous", but praya from "prior" only means something like "baggage"; it lost its "previous" meaning)—at least at first. Synonyms come later.

When it comes to something so heavily cultural like "ghosts" I tried to imagine how superstitions would have reemerged within Grounder culture before the events of The 100—what kind of ghost stories they may have told, what they were afraid of, what kind of supernatural beings they may have dreamed up. I came up with the idea of dokwocha from "dock watcher"—one who watches from the docks—and thought it sounded ominous. I didn't have a specific story in mind, but it sounded like the type of thing older children might warn younger ones of. "Beware of the watcher on the docks!" Sounded spooky and fun. Hence, dokwocha. I don't know if it evokes the same thing as "phantom", or if, for whatever reason, you decided dokwocha wasn't good enough for "phantom", but that's what we have at the moment.

A commenter mentioned they thought it came from "dark watcher", and I actually went back and looked at the etymology and it does!!! That's my bad there. It is dark watcher, not dock watcher, and that makes sense (someone that watches in the dark). Duh. lol This is why you have to write these things down—which I did—and why you have to read the things that you write down—which I did not. >.<

[shifting-empress]

𝐋𝐮𝐜𝐢𝐝 𝐃𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐏𝐨𝐬𝐭

Lucid dreaming is the fascinating art of becoming aware that you’re dreaming while still within the dream. This heightened state of consciousness allows you to take control of your dreams, explore limitless possibilities, and even use them as a powerful tool for reality shifting.

For shifters, lucid dreaming is a bridge—a space where the subconscious and your desired reality align, making the transition smoother and more accessible. In this post, we’ll dive into the connection between lucid dreaming and shifting, explore proven methods to induce lucid dreams, and share tips to make your dreams a portal to your desired reality.

Whether you’re new to lucid dreaming or looking to refine your skills, this guide will help you unlock the dream world and beyond.

𝐋𝐮𝐜𝐢𝐝 𝐃𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐁𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧

When one goes to sleep, your mind goes on auto-pilot. You are not in control over what you dream about. Many think of it as the time when your subconsciousness comes out to play. For the entirety of the day you are awake, and in the moment, present and feeling. You are conscious. Your dreams, however, are your subconsciousness' territory. That's why many people have experienced dreams that are connected to their real life. Many consider this as their subconscious trying to send them a message vicariously through a dream. The difference between both parts, (conscious and subconscious), of your mind is that in your subconscious mind there is no past or future, merely just the present. In your subconscious there is no irrational, impossible or false. Everything is legitimate there. Which is why some dreams can become very bizarre and seem unrealistic.

Your conscious is greatly limited in comparison to your subconscious. Your subconscious is all knowing. It’s your data bank. Everything your conscious knows and much more. It holds your beliefs, memories, all information you’ve ever collected, skills and experiences. All the things you have seen, done, thought and learned are there. However, the conscious mind only contains all of the thoughts, memories, feelings, and wishes of which we are aware at any given moment. This is key aspect of our mental processing that we can think and talk about logically and rationally. They’re two sides of the same coin.

Many people fail to realize that their subconscious mind is a million times more powerful than their conscious one (although all forms of consciousness are powerful if you know how to utilize them). Because of how powerful it is, lucid dreaming is an amazing method to try for shifting/respawning. When you are dreaming, you are out of touch with your physical vessel and you aren’t connected to it the same way you would be if you were awake. You are pure mind & soul only. This is also why people are able to astral project. Because when you are sleeping you aren’t attached to your physical body. A lot of people think of their body as them, themselves. In reality though, your body is more of a home. A home that you reside in. You aren’t the body, you are IN the body. You are an energetic being in the multiverse. Your body is just a place your soul and mind can reside in order to allow yourself to physically interact with the reality and world around you. Think of your dream world separate from your physical world. So to sum up dreaming is when you go to sleep and when your subconscious can project itself outward and you involuntarily see it as images, emotions, ideas, sensations, thoughts etc. Even in present day neither the function or content of dreams can be truly explained and neither can scientists explain why the subconscious mind exists. In a psychological perspective, the subconscious is viewed as the shadow of your conscious mind.

So as we have brushed upon the concept of dreams and the subconscious and conscious mind, let’s venture even further into the topic. As briefly mentioned before when you dream you are INVOLUNTARILY experiencing your subconscious project different imagery in your mind. The key difference between regular dreaming and lucid dreaming is that in a lucid dream there is no “involuntarily”. Lucid dreaming is when you are aware that you are dreaming. The term lucid means expressed clearly; easy to understand. This can allude to the fact that you are no longer just witnessing your dreams unfold helplessly. You are understanding them and comprehending that you are in a dream. As previously stated dreams are the subconscious' territory.

So what happens when you’re conscious and subconscious are both present in a dream? Anything and everything. In a lucid dream you are able to do anything you want. There is no illogical part to it. You are in complete control. If you want to fly you’ll be able to fly. The events that can occur in a lucid dream unfold based on your knowledge. In other words, if you per chance get “hurt” in a dream, your mind will try to emulate what you think an injury might feel like or based on pain you’ve already experience in the physical world. This is what makes lucid dreaming so vivid. Because you are fully and completely aware that you’re dreaming. In a lucid dream when you go to touch things or even walk, it feels real. It feels as if you’re physically lifting your legs to walk. This is because your mind knows what the sensation feels like. In a lucid dream you can use all your knowledge to your benefit. This is one of the reasons why many are able to manifest through lucid dreaming. Because they’re conscious enough to remember to affirm that they have their desires. Your subconscious mind is permeable if you allow it to be. Same reason why lucid dreaming is a efficient way to shift and respawn. To sum up a lucid dream is a type of dream where the dreamer eventually becomes aware that they are dreaming. During a lucid dream, the dreamer is able to gain some amount of control over the dream characters, narrative, environment etc. Lucid dreaming can be very effective because not only can you shift/respawn through it but you are able to understand your subconscious on a deeper level.

𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐂𝐡𝐞𝐜𝐤𝐬

Reality Checks you can try:

Counting your fingers, (usually in dreams you’re either missing a finger or have an additional one or few more, so once you realize this in a dream, you’ll enter a lucid state).

Ask yourself frequently, "Am I dreaming?" throughout the day.

Look at your reflection frequently, in dreams your reflection is very distorted and can look funky, this is how you'll be able to tell whether you're dreaming or not.

Press your index finger through the palm of your other hand; if you're dreaming the finger should be able to go straight through your palm.

Check the time; in a dream, time is constantly changing in a disorderly fashion, in the real world the time goes in order and doesn't go by as fast.

Use a breathing technique, such as pinching your nose and testing if you can breathe. If you can then, you are in a dream.

𝐋𝐮𝐜𝐢𝐝 𝐃𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐓𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐢𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐌𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐝𝐬

𝐌𝐈𝐋𝐃 (𝐌𝐧𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐜 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐋𝐮𝐜𝐢𝐝 𝐃𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠)

MILD also known as Mnemonic Induced Lucid Dreaming is a lucid dreaming technique. It’s by far one of the more easier methods to get a lucid dream. I say this because for this technique you only require a phrase or mantra that you should repeat and rehearse to yourself as you are going to sleep. The idea is to have lucid dreaming be the last absolute thing on your mind. If you go to sleep while thinking about lucid dreaming your chances of lucid dreaming will increase by a lot. It can also help if you not only repeat your mantra or phrase in your head but also visualize a dreamscape or background setting for your oncoming dream. It’s in a sense like setting the intention to lucid dream as you are about to sleep.

𝐖𝐁𝐓𝐁 (𝐖𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐁𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐭𝐨 𝐁𝐞𝐝)

WBTB also known as Wake Back To Bed is also a very easy lucid dreaming technique if you get it right. Wake Back To Bed only really requires you to get up after a specific amount of time. There are two approaches I have seen and used myself with this technique.

☆ Approach 1: First approach is to wake up right before your REM cycle hits. To explain further, just before you go into a dream you go through this process called the REM cycle, or Rapid Eye Movement. The REM cycle phase only happens to mammals and birds. It’s distinguished by very fast movement of your eyes alongside with low muscle tone throughout the body. It leads to the sleeper having a high tendency to have vivid dreams. Every cycle happens every 90 minutes or 1 hour 30 minutes. The first dream that comes after the first cycle is the shortest and they progressively get longer as the night goes on. The goal is to wake up right around when your REM cycle hits so you can go straight into lucid dreaming. You can do this by setting an alarm an hour and a half after you sleep or up to 5 hours later, waking up, laying in bed or doing something that doesn’t take you out of your sleepy state entirely, like reading, and then going back to sleep. Usually you can stay up to 30 minutes awake, it varies with people. This approach is more relative than the other because everyone falls asleep at different rates so if you want to try the WBTB method this specific way you should try to figure out your sleeping pattern.

☆ Approach 2: The other approach would be setting an alarm 5 hours after you sleep and ideally before you usually get up in the morning. You’re aiming to wake up in a drowsy state, somewhere between awake and asleep. You can stay up to 30 minutes distracting yourself, and then go back to sleep. This also kind of links with the REM cycle because as mentioned before the longer night progresses the longer your dreams become so if you wake up 5 hours later and then go back to sleep you’ll be able to go straight into a lucid dream. A tip I would suggest is to read or do something that reminds you of lucid dreaming right before you go back to sleep. Highly recommend to people who have visualization problems.

𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐋𝐃 (𝐒𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐞𝐬 𝐈𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐋𝐮𝐜𝐢𝐝 𝐃𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠)

SSILD otherwise known as Senses Initiated Lucid Dreaming is a lucid dreaming technique that uses a combination of aspects from other lucid dreaming methods. It’s fairly new in comparison to other lucid dreaming methods. This method is great for people who cannot visualize well. It’s a simple process. The point is to keep yourself preoccupied as you are falling asleep so your conscious mind stays awake afterwards.

The Process:

Focus on your sight. You do this by closing your eyes and concentrating on the darkness behind your eyelids. Don’t squeeze your eyes shut or strain them, they should be relaxed. It’s also normal to not see anything but don’t try to seek for something by moving your eyes a lot. You should stay relaxed.

Focus on your hearing. After you have relaxed your eyes more, gear your focus towards your ears. Pay attention to what you hear. If you’re room is very quiet then try to listen to your heartbeat or your breathing.

Focus on your touch. Concentrate on what you feel around you. Whether it’s the fuzziness of your blanket, the cool air of your room, or even the bed beneath you. As you are doing this, try to spot if you feel any weird sensations such as, tingling, weight or heaviness on your limbs, or feeling like you’re spinning or floating. Try to feel if you can sense the weight of your blanket on your body.

Repeat the process until you fall asleep.

𝐅𝐈𝐋𝐃 (𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐋𝐮𝐜𝐢𝐝 𝐃𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠)

FILD also known as Finger Induced Lucid Dreaming is considered a fairly easy method for beginners. For FILD place one of your hands flat on your bed and imagine you're playing the piano. Move your index and middle finger up and down as if you’re playing two keys on a piano for 30 seconds (it’s best to not count just make an estimate of how long 30 seconds feels like to you because you should be in a relaxed state). After 30 seconds pass visualize your fingers moving instead of actually physically moving them. The first thing you should try to do is get back to sleep. You move your fingers gently, relax your body, and then you can actually try to visualize where you want to be.

𝐕𝐈𝐋𝐃 (𝐕𝐢𝐬𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐋𝐮𝐜𝐢𝐝 𝐃𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠)

VILD or Visually Induced Lucid Dreaming can be hard depending on the person. For my personal list it would be higher because I consider it easy but some people have problems with visualization. Hence why I put this one lower on the list. VILD basically requires you to rehearse your desired lucid dream. What you need to do is make up a dream scene in advance and rehearse it in your head as you fall asleep. Visualize what you will do once in a lucid dream. You should write down how the dream will occur on paper or even draw a picture of the setting/dreamscape. As you fall asleep the last thing on your mind will be your desired dream scene which will help you lucid dream.

𝐖𝐈𝐋𝐃 (𝐖𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐋𝐮𝐜𝐢𝐝 𝐃𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠)

WILD or Wake Induced Lucid Dreaming is arguably the hardest of lucid dreaming methods because it requires a lot of endurance and dedication. WILD is when you go straight from being awake into a lucid dream. The steps are actually very simple but because of the entire process, this can be considered much more difficult for beginners. All you need to do is lay very still for as long as you can. If there’s an itch try your best to ignore it. You’re aiming to stay awake throughout the entire process as your body goes to sleep. With WILD it’s a given that you will experience sleep paralysis. That isn’t anything bad however. Sleep paralysis has a lot of stigma but it’s all in your head. If you allow negative things you’ve heard about sleep paralysis affect you as you’re attempting this method then that’s obviously what you’ll perceive it to be and it’ll end up being that way. As long as you remain calm and remind yourself that none of the imagery is real it’s actually not as bad as many would think. Remember sleep paralysis is what you make it out to be. If you think it’s horrifying then that’s what your experience will be like, and if you’re confident in yourself then it’ll actually be pretty tame. For WILD all you essentially do is lay still and try to stay awake as long as you can. You will enter a hypnagogic state where you start to see hallucinations, colors and imagery behind your eyelids. As you’re attempting this, your body will go to sleep because of your lack of physical movement. From there you will directly enter a lucid dream.

[lacunammmm]

Hello! I recently saw your reaction to a poll about which ships in MHA you don't like and you had very interesting answers and depth into some in particular... Hawks.

You said, and I won't quote because I frankly can't remember, that Hawks would be a much better character if he actually had more development/nuance to him and I wanted to know how? And why you think his character isn't as nuanced and/or developed as of now?

I'm a large Hawks fan myself, and I was super interested in seeing your opinion, since I've never seen somebody say he needed more development, would you care to share some of your thoughts?

Let's take a look at the bones behind Hawks:

-Child of a villain.

-Was an abused child by his domestic abuser dad.

-A child soldier molded to be the perfect secret agent and hero by the government.

-He's basically in the Japanese CIA.

-He's immensely powerful and also likes Endeavor, who he has a parasocial relationship with because he admired him as a father figure.

-He killed a guy in an incredibly contrived scene (he could have simply drugged Twice before the operation began and spirited him away) but it raised an interesting question: Should heroes kill? And under what circumstances should they do so?

-Dabi bathed him in blue fire after he killed Twice and Tokoyami reacted that his wings were burnt off.

So what's the story do with him?

He just becomes an Endeavor cheerleader.

The HPSC gets killed off by a clone of Redestro, meaning the good guys don't ever have to confront the government at all.

His burnt wings recovered and the worst that happened is he needed some prosthetic blades, which functioned just as good as his original feather swords. Was this man crippled for his future fight against All For One? No.

When he sees Twice again on the battlefield, he yells that they should kill him, showing he's exactly the same as he was the day he killed the guy.

And he doesn't give a single blue fuck about Endeavor being a domestic abuser. He knows the true story, and he simply doesn't care.

This is the same for all of the good guy characters, but Hawks especially experienced an abusive dad.

The guy he idolized turned out to be like his dad, except a hero and not a villain.

And he doesn't care. Have you ever seen the show Law And Order? I want you to imagine how the cops on that show would react if one of the hero cops they've worked with for years was outed as a domestic abuser. There would be an angry confrontation, some hurtful words thrown around, and a fracturing of relationships. Permanent changes to how these people see each other, with different people taking sides. Friction that would spread far beyond just this one event. Instead we get...nothing, I guess, because Endeavor feels sorry for what he did, so it's okay now.

The question of when and if you should kill a villain isn't answered by Hawks or people connected to him. It's answered by Gran Torino. We learn that killing is another way of saving someone if they're too far gone, which Deku apparently takes to heart.

What's worse is that Nagant exists. She took the last bit of intrigue Hawks' character could have had.

I firmly agree with @class1akids that an arc where Hawks fell and joined the villains fits a lot better than inventing a new character out of whole cloth, and then inventing a government conspiracy of the previous regime to go with her, and then this never going anywhere.

Imagine, if you will, a universe where everything is played straight. Tomura decays Endeavor during their battle, so he's dead.

Dabi truly did burn off Hawks' wings entirely, so those are gone.

And in the chaos that follows, the public despairs and wants someone to blame. So, the HPSC uses a scapegoat.

And that person ends up being Hawks. The guy who planned the raid. The guy who spied on the villains. And, according to the government the reason for the heroes' failures.

He's useless to them now because he doesn't have his quirk anymore. And he's reeling from the reveal of who Endeavor actually was.

So at his lowest moment, stripped of his hero license and his legacy tarnished, All For One appears.

It works even better if you merge the elements of Nagant's character into this version of Hawks.

Hawks was a secret agent who assassinated numerous people on the HPSC's orders. Hawks believed in the system and while he had some doubts, this event completely destroyed his faith.

We can also accomplish something else, here. AFO could test a beta version of the rewind drug the Doctor made on Hawks, which restores his wings to the point they were at in canon after Dabi burned them. It 1, gives Hawks his iconic wings back in a plausible way, and 2, foreshadows All For One's endgame desperation move. The audience just isn't told what Hawks was injected with until the final war arc.

And then he gifts the guy with the same quirk Nagant had. And sends him to capture Deku.

Now suddenly this battle against Deku actually means something and it's between two people who know each other and who the audience has a connection to.

How, then, does Deku restore Hawks' faith in heroes when it's been shattered so terribly? A true test of Deku's abilities to understand villains and turn them. He doesn't have the easy win he got against Nagant, but the fact that he knows Hawks means he has more information to work off of.

The reveal that Hawks is no more than a contract killer for the government while having a happy, smiling face in public is a train car to the gut for Deku.

You can still end the fight with a fakeout, as the story loved to do at that time.

After he decides to switch back to team Deku, he has a bad reaction from the drug and collapses and is apparently dead.

We just bring him back later like they did to Nagant. He got saved offscreen. You know, like how Nagant survived exploding.

Heaven forbid we kill off anyone loyal to team hero.

[kaijunouhhhhhhhhhhummmm]

Share With Me

4.4k/ Reader pov x soshiro build up/ reader has a big family/ it's chaotic but in a good way/ some drama with soshiro/  angy soshiro/ trying my darndest to be gn with my reader POV but im sure i missed somethin/ i guess hurt and comfort?/ where are all my ppl with loud and invasive families at haha

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Soshiro has yelled before. “Get those legs up!” “More! C’mon I know you got more in you!” “Ten more reps then we’ll call it a day!” all commands in training or shouting orders when on a mission. Sure, he’s yelled and shouted at all of you a whole lot. But always in your best interest. For your protection, strength, encouragement, to make you better. But this time was different. 

It got very silent after he did. This time he wasn't shouting from his usual place of care. He was angry. Almost menacing even. Worse, it was directed at you. 

You dropped your staff in the middle of armed combat training. It happens. Not a big deal. Usually. People drop staffs, swords, guns, all the time and then everyone corrects form and  moves on. Not today. 

You’re frozen in place. For the first time you find yourself afraid of the vice captain. There is always the knowledge that he could kill you if he really wanted to. He is extremely talented and could take a whole school of trainees. Of course. There is the reverence of his ability at all times. But to feel like it could be used against you? You’ve never felt fear quite like that sink into your bones. You’re sure your skin has gone pale and your basic bodily functions like breathing and heartbeat faltered. Everyone else feels it too. His eyes, a brilliant violet, are staring into yours and you can't move. The strength you were using a moment ago vanishes.The tension in his body seems ready to pounce on you. What did you do wrong? You couldn't understand. You go through all your movements in your head. Everyone drops fighting props. What did you do wrong? He berated you infront of everyone and internally you're doing it to yourself now too.

Kafka breaks the silence in the room and the panic in your head. “Hey, uh, vice captain, I’ll work with them.” He puts his hand on your shoulder and with a tug pulls you out of your frozen state and guides you away from Soshiro’s glare to a far corner of the gymnasium. Soshiro doesn't argue and you feel his eyes on the both of you as you’re guided away. The tension is still heavy in the air as you both walk. 

Practice continues quietly and with hesitancy from everyone as they avoid being on the receiving end of any more of his ire. You can feel eyes on you and murmurs of “Shit, that was intense.” “They okay?” “I wouldn't be.” You're still shaking a bit as Kafaka tries to guide you through the movements. A pitying look on his face you're half grateful for. You’re still trying to figure out what happened. What did you do that was so incorrect? Maybe something you did before this? 

“Hey.” Kafka’s low soft voice snaps you back from your spiral again. “Keep your eyes on me okay?” 

You nod trying to steel your nerves but you’re too afraid to look back at the vice captain. God, you think you’re going to cry actually. His anger is so frightening but more so is the thought of disappointing him. Kafka is fighting you with the same gentleness he would use on a kitten. 

Practice ends and your friends practically run to you. You're grateful for the shield they provide as you all put your weapons away and leave the gym. You still don't dare to look at the vice captain. Embarrassed, hurt and tired you let them guide you to the cafeteria. 

“Okay what the fuck was that?” Iharu asks once you're all out of earshot from Soshiro. 

“Yeah, that was a bit much.” Reno says.

“A bit? It was uncalled for.” Kikoru says, noticeably upset. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for berating people when it's called for but (y/n) wasn't doing anything wrong. We all drop our staff sometimes.” 

“Yeah, especially during sparring.” says Reno

“You didn't do anything to piss him off before training did ‘ya?” Iharu asks you.

“No? I don't think so?” It's not like you havent been thinking about it. It's all youve been thinking about. What did you do that was so wrong? 

“Hey, even if they did, that kind of reaction is uncalled for.” Kikoru says.

“She’s right.” Reno says. “Even if (y/n) had, vice captain still has to be mindful of how he carries out punishment. Obviously after he did that it affected morale.”

“Was he acting a bit off to any of you before training started?” Kikoru asks. 

“Nah, I didn't notice anything.” Iharu says. 

“What else is new?” Reno remarks. 

“Hey!” Iharu says, punching Renos arm. 

“Yeah, way to have self awareness, Iharu.” Kikoru adds. 

You all laugh at Iharu’s expense and his many failed objections to having some level of self awareness. 

Kafka sighs “I don't know what that was but I bet it's got nothing to do with you, yeah?” he rests a heavy arm over your shoulders as you all reach the cafeteria. “At least you won't be here for the rest of the week.”

“Oh yeah, your big family gathering and all.” Iharu pinches your arm.

That brings a smile to your face. You haven't seen your family in months, much less extended family and you're excited to have some home cooking and for your parents to buy your dinners for you when you all go sightseeing. You appreciate your friends so much for trying to make you feel better. A family away from your own. Kafka is probably right. Maybe something did happen to Soshiro before training. It still stung though. 

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

Five days go by in a very turbulent cyclone of hugs, sometimes the bear kind, kisses, hand shaking, other times straight up picking you up and shaking your whole body greetings. “Cousin!” “Sister!” “Mom!” “Uncle!” “Dad!” “Look at you! You’re real strong now, huh?” “Can we fight?” “How many kaiju have you killed?” “Any cute guys you got your eye on?” “Do you travel a lot?” “Do you get to keep body parts?” “Where can I get their body parts?” “Gross.” “I bet it's fun.” “I bet it's gross.” “Stop talking about it. I hate thinking about my baby in that situation.” “They arent your baby anymore!” “Yeah they are. Just a bigger baby now.” And on and on like that constantly for days. It doesn't particularly end at night either. 

You’ve all gathered at your grandfather's house managing to squeeze something like 15 people (with more coming and going) into four bedrooms, two living rooms, four closets and some even camping in the kitchen. Still more come for dinners and outings but do not stay the night. At night you can hear your mother and aunts cackle and chat about old boyfriends, girlfriends, some information you could have gone your whole life not hearing about your uncles and who in the family died recently. They talk outside for hours and still get up before everyone else to make breakfast. Your uncles outside talking about work and how their jobs are treating them. Maybe find new contacts through each other. Not everyone could take the time off for the reunion. Some come and go for work. Some drop by for lunch. Some relatives you only see briefly, some you spend the whole week with. Your grandfather half heartedly watching the kids with your other grandfather. Your afternoons with your cousins are left chatting about who's dating who, who's going to work where, accepted to what school, marrying someone here, going on a trip elsewhere. 

Long walks, shopping trips, hikes, several grocery runs, long drives, sleeping in cramped seats, lots of cleaning after dinner, arguing about bathroom order. You figure every single minute was used for something. It feels like a lof once you reflect on it but it's familiar and comforting even if stressful at times. Finding the quiet moments to speak in the silence of a tired house late at night are some of the best conversations you ever have. They happen in bedrooms, on the patio, in the backyard, in the kitchen, outside past the gate on the sidewalk, the bathroom. Whispers of gossip, your aunt's new young boyfriend, your cousin's way too expensive car that has your aunt shake her head when mentioned. Tense moments that are forced to pass, laughter that hurts your sides when you breathe, honestly that brings some to cry, reminiscing of days that make everyone silent and listen intently. Understanding this is passed wisdom you may not get the chance to hear again. Sometimes this all happens at once in the same room.

Your mom announces she wants to have a big dinner tonight since most of your family will leave the following day. All day all hands are helping cook, clean, shop, set tables, chairs, speakers, putting on makeup, doing hair, choosing outfits and shopping some more.

Finally everyone is in for the evening and once again settling down for long conversations, drinking, playing games, eating and dancing. You are often on your feet getting this for that uncle, helping an aunt with that, giving a cousin this, talking to grandma about some other thing you haven't thought about since you were eight. 

You finally get a chance to sit at a crowded table breathing in for a moment. So many family and friends showed up that the dinner had to spill out to the patio from inside. Then more friends and family arrived and then it spilled out into the front yard. All the young, too cool teens in the backyard, your cousins closer to your age crowded around you talking, well, more like yelling but that's just how they speak. Your older aunts and uncles half singing half telling stories to laugh at each other too. Some others helping set up hanging lights on the trees. Soshiro casually speaking with one of your uncles by the gate. The kids chase each other with toys or beg for a water slide. 

Wait.

Soshiro casually speaking with your uncle by the front gate?

No, you weren't drinking unlike your other cousins so you definitely were not imagining Soshiro casually holding a conversation with your uncle. Now one of your aunts is walking towards him with a drink. Oh god what is going on. 

You shoot up to your feet and try as fast as you can to get to him but have to shove past chairs and tables set tightly by each other. Push by family standing and talking. Squeeze around others carrying food and barely managing not to trip past spatially challenged adults and children. 

“Vice captain!” You shout although you don't mean to be so loud but you are still not convinced this is really happening. You’re actually not sure if you didn't drink something earlier while being tossed around for chores and taking a sip from anything to quench your thirst and forgot. 

Soshiro turns to you with his usual unreadable expression. He’s holding what looks like orange soda in his hand. “Hello (y/n). I hope you don't mind my intrusion but I really wanted to talk to you-”

“(y/n)! Why didn't you say you were going to have guests come today?” your aunt that handed him his drink asks.

“I didn't know I had any.” you say to her confused, worried, and maybe a little embarrassed. “I’m sorry I wasn't expecting anyone from the division to show up. What are you doing here?” you ask him. A million scenarios of how this evening could go horribly wrong play out. You're suddenly very self conscious. 

Before Soshiro can say anything you see one of your uncles walk towards you and give you both a look. You know that look. It's the look every family member in the history of family has always given when they are about to ask the dreaded question. You are too late to stop him from asking: “Boyfriend?” 

“NO!” you shout just as the word comes out of his mouth. But now you’ve managed to attract everyone's attention within earshot. You hope the music drowned out your uncle asking that. You dare a quick look at Soshiro’s face but it's unmoving. Thank god he's always had such a good poker face. 

Cousins begin to walk up “Hey, there (y/n)’s friend that is definitely not a boyfriend! What's your name?” 

This is gonna be a long evening. 

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

You're both sitting next to each other. It's been something like three hours and they have not stopped asking Soshiro questions. It's not everyday a famous kaiju killing officer shows up to a family gathering. You’re exhausted from trying to protect Soshiro from evasive questions but he takes it all in stride. He answers all questions promptly and gives just the right amount of information. He’s so tactful with your rude family it's admirable. There's no point in you telling them not to ask something because Soshiro has already responded. You stop trying to stop it. He's perfectly trained in combat and intrusive family conversation too it seems.

“So vice captain, is (y/n) any good at what they do?” a cousin asks with a baby on his lap. 

You’re about to say something but then remember the last training session you had with your division. You’re actually not so certain yourself. 

“(y/n) has exceeded all of my expectations.” he turns to you. “I couldn't have asked for a better officer to be in my platoon.” 

You search his face for a clue of him joking or waiting for a punchline. But his smile is sincere. You want to be moved by his response but you think he's probably just trying to make you look good in front of your family. 

Your cousins murmur their comments of approval among themselves. “Hey, vice captain, would you like something else to drink?” one of your cousins asks from further down the table. 

“Please, I’ll get my own drink. Don't trouble yourself.” he stands and turns to you. “Would you like anything?” 

You're still not quite sure what to make of all of this. A refill is not really a thought you're having. 

“(y/n) probably wants some of the cake we have at the table by the drinks.” someone else chimes in. 

“I can get that myself.” you do want the cake but having your superior serve you is too weird to handle. You start to get up from your chair when he interjects. 

“It's okay. I’m happy to. Enjoy your time with your family.” he says smiling then scooting past everyone towards the drink table.

“He’s nice.” “Yeah, I figured defense force officers were kinda meat heads, you know?” “He has real good manners.” “He's sitting so straight.” “I didn't know they made them like that anymore.” your cousins comment. 

One of them shoves your shoulder playfully. “He’s super cute!” she gestures to Soshiro speaking with your lively little cousin swinging a stick like a sword. “Why didn't you say you were inviting someone?” 

“I didn't.” you continue to watch him making sure nobody is being rude towards him. Who knows how this is going to affect your job if your family does something offensive or stupid. 

“He just showed up?” 

“Yeah. I mean I have to report where I’m going to be but I didn't invite anyone.” 

“He just wanted to show up?” another cousin asks. 

You nod. They give knowing looks to each other. 

“What?” you ask firmly. Who knows what mischievous things they're communicating with each other telepathically it seems. “Don't say anything stupid in front of him please.”

“Hey, we aren't gonna have you lose your job.”

“Does he do this a lot? Just show up to officers' houses unannounced?” your cousin who asked about inviting him wonders. She has a tone that you can tell is heading this conversation somewhere you don't want it to. 

You sigh irritated. “It’s not like that.” 

“Why not?” another cousin asks. 

Some of them are giggling now. They are enjoying this excruciating line of questions. 

“Because.” you say wanting this conversation to end before he comes back. 

“Are you not allowed to date superiors?” 

“No- I- well, I don't know.” You shake your head frustrated that they're leading you on the exact conversation you're trying to avoid. “It doesn't matter, okay! It’s not going to happen!” 

“Do you want it to?” someone further down the table asks. You had no idea the conversation had reached that far down. You can feel your face start to burn and you don't want to give them anymore ammo. It's time to make your escape before they realize your face is a giveaway. 

You stand up. “I’m gonna check on him.” you begin to walk away and some of them start to whistle a love song, giggle or whisper little comments. They definitely saw your face turn red. 

You get to Soshiro as he was about to head back to the table. He's holding your cake and his drink “You mind if I eat that somewhere else? It's getting stuffy at the table.” 

Soshiro smiles, not looking eager to return to his interrogation. “Sure. I’ll follow your lead.” 

“Let's go out to the sidewalk.” You both begin to walk towards the gate. You wish you could shrink your head into your body like a turtle. The looks you both are getting as you walk out is enough to make you want to disappear. 

You give a long exhale when you're both finally out the gate. You lean against the wall that borders your grandfathers home. The music and noise from the party faded considerably behind the brick. Soshiro hands you your food. 

“Thank you for getting this for me.” 

“Of course.” he takes a drink from his cup. 

“It's been such a whirlwind I didn't ask you why you're here.” you cut a smaller piece of cake to eat. 

“You did. Earlier. I just didn't get a chance to respond.” 

You stop chewing. “I did?” 

A smile grows on his face. “Yes. But I understand. I’m so sorry for showing up like this. I just needed to speak with you about last week.” 

“Last week?” 

He nods. A pained expression taking over his face. He places his cup down on the sidewalk. “(y/n),-” he faces you with a determined look. His voice is serious. You tense up not sure why he suddenly had to put his cup down for whatever he's about to do. For a moment you think hes going to kick your ass for having such a loud fucking family. He bows. “Please forgive me for my extremely rude behavior.” 

Your brain stops. “What?” is all you manage to squeak out. 

He rises up. He’s looking down but you can tell from his face that he means this. “Last week. I lashed out at you. It was uncalled for. I immediately regretted it after it happened.” 

You think for a second, still trying to catch up to the fact that Soshiro Hoshina just bowed to you. Then you remember. “Oh!” 

He gives you a look that says ‘Seriously? I’m trying to apologize and you don't even remember?’

“Sorry, it's just, well, this week has been so busy I kinda forgot about that. I mean until you showed up anyways.” you clear your throat. “I didn't expect you’d apologize for it. Much less show up here to do it.” 

He pinches the bridge of his nose. “I shouldnt’ve’ shown up.” 

“No! Its fine that you did! It was just shocking.” 

He takes a deep breath and exhales. “I wanted to talk to you the next day but then I was told you were on break for a week. And, well, I didn't want to wait any longer. It was…” he trailed off before starting again. “It was botherin’ me too much. You looked real hurt so… I’m sorry.” 

A pause between you two follows and the only sounds are the nighttime insects and your family's music and laughter that echoes past the wall. Then it hits you. You're five hours away from Tokyo right now. Your vacation ends the day after tomorrow. He could have waited another day. He could have called. Even a text if he really wanted to apologize that way. But more importantly you never expected he’d apologize to begin with. It hurt and you were scared but you figured that was just part of the territory of being in the defense force. You get your commanding officers ire sometimes. 

“... I accept your apology.” You say looking at your half eaten cake suddenly too shy to face him.

He sighs in relief. “Good.” 

Another pause. 

“You came all this way to apologize?” you ask, looking at him. Searching his eyes. 

He looks at your eyes in return and doesn't respond for a moment. “Yeah.” he smiles. “Can I have some of that?” 

“Huh? Oh, yeah but I dont have another fork-” He steals your fork and takes a piece of the cake. 

He chews and swallows. “It's good.” 

You watch him chew. Stunned that he just did that. “Yes.” 

“Homemade?” 

“Yes.” 

“You like it a lot too, huh?” 

“Yes.” That's the only response you can say apparently. 

He chuckles then his voice drops when he speaks. “I have so much fun with you. I didn't want what happened to affect us.” 

You watch him not sure what to think right now so you say the first thing that comes to mind. “I have fun with you too.” You suck your lips into your mouth directly after saying that because never would you have imagined you'd have the bravery to say something like that to him. 

He laughs. “What's with that face?” 

You pretend not to know what he's talking about, raising an eyebrow still sucking on your lips. 

He laughs more and you try to hold your lips in but end up bursting out in a laugh too. It's so good to hear him laugh. It's so contagious. It always makes you smile without fail. You both go on until the laughing subsides on its own. You now remember what happened after the training session. 

“Can I ask you if something happened before the session that made you do that? I was afraid I did something to disappoint you.” 

His expression visibly shifts to a serious one as you say that. His eye brows furrow slightly like he's mad at you for saying that. “You could never disappoint me.” 

You once again are at a loss for words so you give a nod instead. 

He joins you leaning on the wall. He silently looks down at his shoes for a moment as if thinking of what to say before facing you. “I don't want to give you excuses.” 

You shake your head slowly. “Not an excuse. We were wondering if something had happened. You're not usually like that.” 

Soshiro looked hesitant to say anything. He seemed to look everywhere except back at you. He opened and closed his mouth several times before speaking. “My family isn't like yours ya’ know.” 

There had always been whispers about the Hoshina family. Not very good ones. Soshiro also doesn't often volunteer information about himself. But maybe tonight he's making an exception because he feels guilty. 

“My brother called me and…” he sighs irritatedly and drags a hand across his face. "I'd rather not bore you with the details.” he says with a breathy half assed laugh. “It’s a nice night with your family. I dont wanna ruin that.”

He's uncomfortable and you can see it. It stings a little bit that he won't tell you. 

He picks up on changes in your facial expression as you look away. “Sorry. I know I just spent the whole evening with your family but…” he sighs. “It’s just a lot that you really don't need to worry about.” he’s trying to sound like he's doing you a favor. 

You give him a sad smile. You want to know. You want to know everything about him. “I understand.” You understand that he's your boss and there's always going to be an invisible boundary between the two of you because of that. Can't get too close. That's always it isn't it? You both can laugh, joke, he can show up to your family gathering unannounced, charm all of them, get you cake, but no. You can't get too close. “But I want you to know you don't have to keep it to yourself. I mean you tried that and look where you are now.” 

He snorts. “Yeah you’re right.” He looks at the top of the wall then the gate. “It's not such a bad place to be though.” A sudden wave of laughter comes from behind the wall. Your family's joy makes you smile. 

“Yeah I guess they aren't so bad.” You eat more of your cake. “But it's not always like this, you know.” He looks at you curiously. “I just want you to know families are complicated. But I'm sure you know that.” 

He nods knowingly. “Yeah. I get it.” He stretches and takes the fork from your hand, swiping the last piece of cake for himself before you can say anything. He picks up the cup and chugs down his drink. He grimaces “Yeah your uncle for sure put somethin’ in that.” You laugh. “Well I'm gonna head out.” He checks the time on his phone. “I’ll catch the last train to Tokyo if I leave 10 minutes ago.”

You start to panic. “Are you gonna be able to get home?” 

He shrugs and starts to walk away. “If anything I’ll stay at the nearest base.” He waves as he walks backwards. “Thank your family for me! They were great! I’ve never heard someone be asked if they were my (girlfriend/ boyfriend/ partner) sa’ many times and be so cool ‘bout it!” 

You blush. You become the shade of a ripe strawberry. The inside of a watermelon perhaps. “What!?” 

He chuckles. “I’ll see you back at base soon!” 

You watch him walk away casting long shadows by lamp posts as he passes them. You ask him in a whisper “Why didn't you just wait until I got back?” 

[anunkindncss]

LONG-ASS, BAT-SWINGIN’ PSA FROM YOUR FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD TRASH DAD (YES YOU MAY REBLOG ME):

i swear to the gods above and the internet demons below, if i have to see one more round of the same tired, petty, high school drama energy in the rpc i am going to start throwing metaphorical furniture. or a bat. maybe a literal bat. someone get me a bat.

we’re gonna talk about a few things i do not understand and am rapidly losing patience for in this little roleplay community of ours. sit down. hydrate. bring a snack. or don’t. i’m not your mom. but i am pissed.

1. BLOCKING PEOPLE BEFORE YOU EVEN KNOW THEM. what are you doing. no, seriously—what are you doing. look. blocking is valid. it’s important. it’s necessary in many cases. but if you are blocking people for… following you? reblogging your promo? writing the same muse? because “they gave me weird vibes” after doing absolutely nothing to you? i’ve got news: you’re not setting boundaries, you’re playing judge, jury, and executioner of vibes you made up in your head. you do not need to block someone just because they exist in the same space as you. curiosity is not a crime. following someone because you share muse interests is not a threat. no one’s out to steal your thunder. we’re all just feral writers clinging to shared hyperfixations like they’re life rafts.

2. THE GREAT REBLOG WAR OF 202X. i promise you, reblogging a post from the person you saw it from is not a personal attack. yes, i agree: try to reblog from the source when you can. it keeps things clean. it helps with credit. we love that. but if someone reblogs from the person who popped up on their dash? that’s not theft. that’s how this damn website works. you’re not losing notes. you’re not being disrespected. you’re seeing a feature function the way it was designed. if it truly matters to you, say it nicely in the post itself. don’t vaguepost. don’t softblock. don’t act like someone pissed on your fic just because they hit reblog from a mutual. some of you treat content circulation like a sacred ritual and lose your minds if the incense is lit out of order. breathe.

3. DNI LISTS THAT ARE LONGER THAN MY WILL TO LIVE. listen. i get it. truly. safety and boundaries are critical. you do not have to interact with everyone. you do not have to let everyone into your space. that’s not what this is about. this is about the weaponized, condescending, high-horse energy of DNI lists that start with “no minors” and end with “people who write canon characters with feelings i disagree with.” what happened to just… blacklisting tags? scrolling? having a spine and a filter? you don’t need to turn your blog into a digital moat. you can just curate your experience quietly. because let me tell you, no one is reading your DNI list like a legal document. they’re reading it and thinking, “damn, this person seems exhausting.”

4. SHITTING ON OTHER WRITERS FOR WRITING THE SAME MUSE DIFFERENTLY. you are not the official licensed owner of your muse. you are not the final word on interpretation. people write characters differently. that’s the beauty of it. that’s literally why roleplay is compelling. because it’s your take. your lens. your experience. if someone writes a softer version of your muse, or a darker one, or a more chaotic one—you can just… not follow them. you don’t need to snark in the tags. you don’t need to start drama in discords. and for the love of god, you don’t need to talk shit behind their back like we’re in some HBO drama. this is tumblr. it’s a hellsite for niche gremlin creativity and emotional trauma bonding. act like it.

IN CONCLUSION, BEFORE I GRAB THE BAT: this place could be so good. so freeing. so collaborative. As a matter of fact... it actually USED TO BE. but y’all keep trying to turn it into a gated community with HOA rules, secret vendettas, and self-appointed sheriff energy. let people exist. let them write. let them breathe. drink water. block quietly. tag your triggers. let go of the need to control every facet of your dash and your mutuals. and for the love of everything sacred and unholy, stop making people feel like they’re one wrong FC or meme reblog away from exile. we're here to write weird little stories and explore weird little feelings through the faces we like and the words we care about.

stop making that feel like a crime.

-Trash (overthepettyandunreasonablebullshit) Dad.

[emwritesstuff]

DYNAMO | Steve Rogers x Reader | part 8.

HYDRA has made their share of human experiments. You're just one of them. One of the least successful ones. One of the least functional ones. At least your life in the facility gave you a few things: unwavering resilience, cool(ish) superpowers and a great sense of humor. Steve Rogers would strongly disagree with that last one. A single chance encounter with him reluctantly brings you into the Avengers Compound, and you're determined to make his life as miserable as you can. Feeling's mutual.

AO3 | Masterlist | Playlist (coming soon!)

notes: Denial is a river in Egypt. (warnings: mentions of human experimentation, unresolved feelings, YEARNING, protective! steve) (5,039 words)

8: GRAVITATIONAL PULL

Steve Rogers, as it turns out, is one fucking sore loser.

So far, he’s been fine and dandy kicking your ass during close combat training, with an unchanging score of 10-0 every single time. This is the only time this week that you spent more than 5 minutes in the same room. It’s been so peaceful.

You’re 8-6, you were promised a break once you’ve gotten him to say “fold” a 5th time, but here you are at round number 15 with no signs of stopping. All because you’ve started to learn to redirect the kinetic energy (Bruce taught you that) of his blows into your own movements, finally standing at somewhat equal level during fights with the super-soldiers.

“Rogers—” You nearly snarl as he slams you down on the mat, trying to get his attention again by punching his bicep. “I need a fucking break. We need a break.”

He doesn’t seem he’s listening, so focused on beating you he doesn’t even answer you right away. With an exhale he releases most of the hold he has on you, despite not disengaging immediately. You tell yourself the weight of his body bothers you, and tap his arm again.

“Sorry,” He mumbles, rolling off from on top of you.

“God, finally.” You manage to finally get up, reaching up for your water bottle. You’re spent. You might not even have the energy to argue with him this time. “What’s going on?”

Steve doesn’t even look at you. It’s like he can’t, and normally you wouldn’t care about whatever is troubling him. But like previously stated, things have gotten… complicated. Complex.

“They want us back on the field. I’ve been trying to delay this as much as can, but the missions are piling up. Hoss’ visit last week was his first warning.” You don’t really know what he’s means about warning, but he doesn’t explain. “I’m just… I’m distracted. Stressed. ”

“So you took that out on me? I’m not your fucking punchbag, you asshole. ” You complain, putting your hands on your hips. Steve is looking up at you, bracing his hands on his knees. You make sure to demonstrate zero sympathy. “What exactly are these missions?”

“The kind where the U.S. Defense Department should be deploying his military, but sends us instead.” Natasha pipes in, hopping down from her treadmill. “To fight for the country’s imperialistic affairs instead of everyone’s benefit.”

Steve nods.

“The Avengers are supposed to take care of international level threats. Aliens and terrorists, not a country with different interests than theirs. And because of the Sokovia Accords, we don’t have agency anymore. Not even me.” Steve says, and your jaw goes slack.

“Making us mercenaries.”

“Government-issued mercenaries, pretty much. Orders are orders,” Nat complements.

“This is such—”

“Bullshit, yeah.” Steve runs his hands through his hair, and you share a look with Nat. You’ve never seen him like this. Maybe she has, although she seems just as stunned as you are right now. “They want you to go, too.”

“Okay? I’m not stoked about it, but I’ll go,” You shrug, but he doesn’t seem satisfied.It’s surprising they want that considering how the last mission went - but you figure a faulty super weapon is better than nothing. It’s an awfully familiar feeling.

He gets up, rolling his shoulders back. You can almost hear the tension making his muscles snap. “I’d rather you not be involved in any of this. None of you, really.”

Nat rolls her eyes. “Drop it. You play the martyr enough, Cap.” You have to agree. And he’s incredibly annoying for it. “But he’s not wrong, Sparky. The less you put yourself under that HYDRA training of yours, the better.”

It’s your turn to roll your eyes. “Not you too! I already said I’m fine.” You sigh, pinching the bridge of your nose. “It’s not exactly a fun time, sure. That’s why… I’ve been considering setting up an appointment with Shuri. Also, HYDRA can get fucked.”

The confession makes Steve breathe out, like a cloud has been dispersed. He nods at you and you point a finger at him.

“No promises— just one day, one check-up. It’s good that you’re both here, actually.” You inhale, preparing yourself to ask the question. No better time than now, you suppose. “I want to talk to Steiner again. This motherfucker knew all about stuff I didn’t even know I could do and is apparently my only source of knowledge about myself. I need some answers and I was wondering if you two could go with me? I doubt Fury will clear me to go there again, with or without company, so—”

It’s Nat who cuts off your rambling. “So you want someone to go against Fury’s orders with you.” She tilts her head.

“Basically, yeah. Well, not really orders. Advice. Principles?”

“I’m already there, babe.” Nat has a smirk on her face.

You breathe a sigh of relief, then bite your bottom lip when you look at Steve, with his hands on his hips and concern on his face.

There’s a phase of Steve Rogers’ you’re nostalgic about without ever experiencing it yourself: when Bucky Barnes was revealed as the Winter Soldier and he went against everyone and everything because he believe in his best friend. That confidence.

That faith.

“Look. I know you’re Complacent-Cap right now, but—” “I’m in.”

Oh. Okay.

“Alright. Cool. This might— I mean, if it works, one less problem for you, huh? And just for the record, there’s other ways for you to relieve stress that aren’t wrestling me, you know?”

You blink once you realize how your sentence sounds. Steve blushes. You can feel your cheeks getting warmer, too.

Is Nat still here?

Jesus Christmas.

“Not that I’m offering any of… that. I’m not.”

Steve clears his throat, rubbing the back of his very pink neck. Thankfully, Romanoff saves the day. “Come on, Sparky. Let’s hit the showers.”

Can’t come with: distracting One-eyed Eagle. Don’t do anything too stupid. x

You stare at the text as if Nat is going to reply with a Just Kidding! But the cold at the pit of your stomach confirms this isn’t a prank - it’s very unlike Natasha Romanoff, too.

“She’s not coming.” You tell Steve, furrowing your brows when he nods.

“I know. Last minute meeting with Fury. She can still buy us time, though.”

Great. They both knew about this in advance, and Natasha decided to tell you one single minute ago because she knew you’d want to postpone your visit to Dr. Steiner.

Now you have to share a Jeep with Steve Rogers.At least it’s a car, and not his Harley. You don’t need that extra edge.

He gives you a full body check before leaving, but you don’t need help with your seat belt this time. The silence is as loud as the bike’s rumbling, though.

You hate it, as much as you hate how his jaw is set and focused while you’re fidgety and restless.

You didn’t think you’d come to regret your escapade with Steve Rogers, at least not like this. Things have been different since then. If you walk into a room, he leaves it. Distant. Or he doesn’t, then he’s gentle and warm. It’s fucking confusing.

The radio becomes your first attempt at a distraction, skipping stations and messing with the volume dial until your anxiety is hopefully muted.

His eyes flit towards your hand once. Twice. “Can’t you just pick a station?”

“Nothing’s calling to me.”

“Then just turn it off.��

You huff, harshly turning the dial until the radio went off. “I guess a silent, awkward car ride will be good. It’s a good change from the anxiety,”

With arms crossed against your chest you turn to the window, watching the trees speed by in a blur of green. It’s nice out here, upstate. It would be nicer if this road trip was in fact a road trip and not you walking head first into a mousetrap.

On your peripheral, you see him tighten his hold on the steering wheel. “Why is this awkward?”

“Oh, please. Don’t act like you haven’t been avoiding me like I have the boils.”

“I’m not avoiding you like you have the boils.”

You scoff. “This is why I wanted Nat. We jumped each other’s bones once and you can’t even—”

“Jesus, why do you have to say it like that?”“—be in the same room as me!” “We trained together yesterday.” And it still felt like you weren’t even there. “Yeah? How about the past few weeks?” “Do you even want me around?”

You want to throw something at him. Your boots would do, if it lacing them up wasn’t so much work. “No.”

“Alright. Then why does it matter if I’m avoiding you?” “Oh, so you are avoiding me! Finally.”

He runs a hand through his hair. “I thought you hated me.” “I do. But this is making shit worse, Steve.”

“How?”

“It’s making it weird.”

“God, you’re impossible.” Steve sighs. “…I told you I wasn’t good at casual stuff.”

You can see the silhouette of the confinement facility approaching. Maybe it’s because you were pushing his buttons, but Steve has been pushing the pedal: you don’t remember the ride being this short, last time.

“Rogers, we’re adults. That didn’t change anything, and it doesn’t make things between us casual.”

“Doesn’t it? You act very casual about it.”

You scoff. “It was one time, and like you said that day, it’s not happening again. I don’t care that you regret it.” He exhales, and since you’re looking right at him you see when his throat bobs. “That’s not— I don’t—”

Your eyes narrow, stopping him right before he starts the “it’s not you, it’s me” bullshit. “So don’t worry about hurting my feelings or whatever, okay? I’m not catchin’em.”

He’s silent for a long time. Long enough for the oppressive concrete building to be right in front of you now: you’ve arrived.

His eyes are ahead as men carrying heavy firearms approach; you hate that you can identify the exact model. Heckler & Koch. German submachines. Quick-firing, nasty little things.

“You got it all wrong, you know.” He says quietly, looking at you finally after identifying himself at the gate.

The words make you frown. His eyes are softer than you anticipated, and his fingers twitch over the steering wheel.

There’s a knock at the window. The guard gives Steve a nod. “Welcome back, Captain Rogers.”

Oh yeah. You’re seeing Steiner today. Right now, in fact.

This has been a decent distraction, all things considered.

Your legs feel like jelly as you climb out of the car. Blood roars in your ears as you walk inside the prison, tailed closely by Captain Rogers himself. His presence at your side makes Hermann Steiner raise his unkempt grey eyebrows.

“You’ve brought in a friend today, Fräulein.”

“Hardly.”

The mad-doctor shakes his head, amused. Rogers is outside the visitation room, leaning against the wall too lackadaisically to be anything but intentional. You know he’s coiled tight and ready to snap, if needed.

“Did you watch the little video I gave you?”

“Yes.”

“And I take it you’re making use of your - our - secret ingredient? You look much better than last time.”

You dip your head.

Of course, he’s not wrong about that. It was his plan all along, and as far as he knows, everything is going according to it. You’re back, right in front of him again.

“That’s why I’m here, actually.” Your leg is bouncing. “It’s not really a secret anymore - and I found someone that can wipe it right off me. Isn’t that great?”

The doctor’s eyes widen, and he moves as if to reach for you if he wasn’t restrained in the chair. “You cannot do this!”

“It’s not you, it’s me. Yadda-yadda.”

“You have no idea what you’ll unleash - your powers, you - were not made for this. Believe me when I say you need everything that is within you. The way your body reacts when you use your skills, the threat of shutting down— it is all by design.”

“Here’s the thing: it’s not just when I use them. It’s killing me, you fucker.”

He looks down, having the nerve to look sad about it. “It is necessary.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do, Fräulein— I do. I made you.”

“What, from clay?”

“I am a mere geneticist, not a sculptor. No, dearest. Your DNA was engineered to be HYDRA’s perfect weapon. Every weapon needs an off switch.”

Engineered DNA. If there was ever any hope you were anything but Frankenstein’s monster, it had been squashed under Steiner’s government-issued rubber clogs.

When you say nothing, he continues: “Indeed these symptoms should not be happening when you’re not manipulating energy, but I suppose no experiment is predictable.”

Your lip twitches in disgust. “You knew I could do more than just electricity.” He perks up in his seat. “I was not exaggerating when I said I made you, Fräulein. Von Strucker too arrogant to believe I could create such power… too cautious to allow you to truly bloom. But look now: that brief conversation of ours and you have already grown to such heights.”

“Oh, you’re not trying to take the fucking credit for this.” You have to grip the seat of your chair to keep yourself from lunging at him.

“Think of what you could achieve under my guidance. Get me out of this cage and you’ll see the glorious future we could make… shaping the world as we see fit.”

“You’re so desperate it’s sad. You want me to break you out for what? So I can go back to being your guinea pig? Your weapon?” You scoff, crossing your arms against your chest.

“Is that not what you are?” “Shut. Up.” Steiner smiles. It makes you sick.

“You were not designed to function on your own, dear girl. You must accept this truth.” There’s heavy dread at the pit of your stomach, weighing you down further with every word that comes out of his mouth. “Like it or not, you need me. You were born for the use of HYDRA.” “Trust me, I’d let my brain implode before I see you wearing a lab coat ever again, Doctor. The cell bars suit you better.”

“Fräulein, Fräulein…You’d risk the lives of all of these people you seem to care so much about? You have no idea the damage you can cause without strict control.”

“Do you?”

He hesitates for a second. And it’s enough: the things he’d revealed throughout your conversation made it seem like he also didn’t know the full extent of your powers. Did he even know about Joule’s Principle? How much of his knowledge about you was confined to simple theories and speculation?

“I’ve seen the news, about Union City. You think that was a simple miscalculation on your part? An accident? I wonder if your little Avenger friends will see you any differently when one of them becomes a casualty.”

You get up abruptly, eyes searching for Steve Rogers on the other side of the glass. He’s not there. You blink, wetting your dry lips with your tongue. You never wanted less privacy than in this moment.

“Do not forget my words, my dear. I know what I created. You are smart, despite all your poor decisions. ”

“Fuck you, Steiner.”

He’s about to open his mouth when the door slams open and Steve walks in, flanked by two armed prison guards. They take Hermann Steiner away, but his smug smile remains in the room with you.

You’re still looking at the empty chair when Steve murmurs your name.

You have to swallow the involuntary sigh of relief that comes up when you look up at him. “How much did you hear?”

He rolls his shoulders, as if to shrug away the tension before answering.

“Enough.”

The ride back was also silent and tense, but in a different, heavier way. You almost wish you still had it in you to keep on bickering with Steve about the nameless thing you had going on.

Steve had slowed down the car once a message from Fury had come in, Natasha’s bought time run out at last.

You both, my office. No detours.

His effort was commendable, but your hands were clammy as you recalled the conversation at the prison, chest tightening with each mile you got closer to the compound. Dr. Steiner’s words simmered inside your head. When one of them becomes a casualty. When, not if.

Nick Fury’s office is dark and imposing, with a security system rival to the Pentagon. At least you assumed. He gestures for you to take one of the leather chairs in front of his desk but Steve chooses to stand, hovering behind you like a concrete wall. Fury gives him a brief glare for that.

“I was under the assumption your stay at the compound was to rehabilitate you from HYDRA, not to make family visits to them.”

“That piece of shit is not my fucking family.” You feel Steve shift at your back, but you can’t bother with censoring your words right now. “If you’re so against HYDRA, why do you want me to use the programming they gave me? You saw the video, you know who used to train me.”

“You know better than anyone that can never work, Nick.” Steve adds, and your lips purse. “Bucky thought he was hopeless but he’s been doing better. It can be the same for her.”

Fury sighs. “This isn’t all just up to me, Cap. We’re all making concessions here. Not just you. This place is balanced precariously on top of what S.H.I.E.L.D., S.W.O.R.D. and the government wants and what you - we - think it’s the right thing. One slip and it all crumbles.” He knocks over a decorative pile of blocks to get his point across.

“I insisted for her to consider the deprogramming. This was on me.” You frown at Steve, and he nods back at you.

“I’m sure it was, Cap. And that’s exactly what I’ll be putting on the incident report.”

You hate the politics game, and you hate yourself for walking willingly into it. Now you’re too tangled into it to walk out. One wrong move, the wrong piece removed, and everything collapses like a stupid game of Jenga.

“Do you understand my job here now, recruit?” The way he refers to you make you blink, your attention on him fully. You nod weakly. “The Sokovia Accords are still in effect. Rogers breaks them, it’s a misjudgement; he’s a war hero. You break them, you get a ticket to the Raft.”

“Fury.”

“You’ve already threatened me with that.” You say, taking one of the little blocks and flicking it away. “You wanna lock me up? Do it. I’m done taking orders and being a good little tool for some ruling power to use. The US of A, Nazis, whoever.”

Fury follows the block, shaking his head.

“That’s the thing. I could do it: I don’t want to have to. But I need you to cooperate. S.W.O.R.D has interest in you, and that gives you some leverage.” You roll your eyes. “For now, anyway. You’re on thin ice, Sparky.”

“Don’t call me that. And I’m pretty sure this is carpet.”

He leans back on his chair, opening his arms in resignation. Still, his point was not completely off. You’re sure he knows that, and that’s exactly why he’s letting you have the last word.

You and Rogers walk together to the elevator. He lives one floor above you, and now you’re thankful the Compound is large enough to help you avoid each other. You’re not sure you can make a sensible decision when he’s looking at you like that. Because it makes you feel safe. And that is very, very dangerous.

One strike, you’re out. You could either conform and be exactly what the people you despise want you to be or set yourself loose, becoming what they already think you are. A weapon of mass destruction in both outcomes. No matter which path you went on, you had a feeling that it was only a matter of time until disaster struck anyway.

You were born for HYDRA to use. I know what I created.

Now you’re close to being something S.W.O.R.D. could use.

Steve stops the elevator from closing once it stops on your floor. “I won’t let them take you to the Raft. Whatever you decide.”

You let out a breath, glaring at the ceiling before turning back to him with your eyebrows raised. “Are you sure? A few months ago you’d fly me over personally.”

He shrugs. There’s the danger.

“Promise?” Your voice is softer than expected when you say it.

“Yeah. I promise.”

You chuckle. “Okay. When can Shuri see me?”

“We ever met? You know, before.”

You forget what Bucky’s voice sounds like sometimes. He doesn’t hang out with anyone that much, the exception being Steve, and lately, you. He’s the kind of guy who tolerates few people, and you seem to be one of those now. It’s surprising.

He still keeps quiet most of the time though. Just sits there, like a weirdo.

You don’t mind it— also surprising. Maybe he finds solace in the fact you both share a messed-up history, like two co-workers would with a shitty boss. Which is putting it lightly, but it’s not innacurate, either.

His question makes you open your eyes, squinting them at the sunshine immediately after. “No. The Winter Soldier was just something the overseers would use to make us behave.” He turns to you with a confused frown on his face. “The Soldat doesn’t like naughty children! You know, like the world’s worst Santa,”

Bucky lets out a bitter chuckle, shaking his head.

“Why do you ask?” You say, sitting up in your lounge chair.

Another thing you share is your taste for is toasting like lizards under the sun. Maybe it’s all those years living in military bases where frost is eternal and sleeping in cryo-freeze pods instead of beds; it didn’t surprise you when he plopped down on the lounger next to yours 20 minutes ago, likely eager to unwind after another deprogramming session. You never ask how it went, and you think he appreciates that.

Your own first session is happening later this week.

“I was just remembering how we wouldn’t really talk when you first got here.” He shrugs. “And wondering if… If I did something, to you, back then,” He confesses quickly, the words coming out as if they were one single thing.

“Buck, we never ran into one another until I stepped into this place. I wasn’t ready to hang out with anyone who didn’t force themselves onto me.” It’s an honest answer; he seems relieved. “Besides, back then it wouldn’t have been you. It would’ve been him - the Soldat.”

He groans. “You sound just like Steve.”

You make a face from the comparison. Bucky can’t be more wrong.

“Okay— the sun is shining, I’m in a bikini, so please don’t ruin my good mood.” You let out a huff when he laughs. “I’m dead serious.”

“Me too.”

“Where’s he at, by the way? Don’t you guys go get burgers and fries after your thing?” It’s Wednesday - Barnes and Rogers always go to a vintage diner in the city for an early lunch after the appointment with Shuri.

Yeah, yeah. You know their schedule. Pathetic, but you’re too observant not to pick these details up. Old men and their 11 a.m lunches.

Bucky rolls his eyes. “He can’t take a day off to save his life—”

“Hoss?”

“Nah, he was done with that two weeks ago. Poor bastard. It’s this talk show he’s going to at NBC or somethin’ like that. Everyone wants to know about Dynamo,”

You had a feeling that your debut as a recruit Avenger would gather media attention. “Great. I’m sure he’ll tell everyone what a great hero I am.”

“I’m sure he’ll keep everyone happy like he did after Union City. He’s not really known for lying, though.”

You blow air through your lips at his words. You didn’t like remembering how Steve had spent hours with the press because of your fiasco, because it made you feel bad and hate him a little less.

A few seconds of breeze fill the silence.

“I don’t think I deserve all that.” You say quietly, without thinking.

You were already aware of what he’s sacrificed for his friends. Appeasing the press, handing over the shield to Tony Stark. Working for S.H.I.E.L.D and the U.S. agenda. Explanations, penance, compromise. Now you’ve been dragged into it, and you wish the way you feel about the whole Steve Rogers/Captain America situation could be as simple as it was when you first got here.

“Well it’s not all that and it’s not all for you, don’t flatter yourself too much.”

“Oh fuck you, Winter Cuckoo-Bananas.” Bucky is grinning despite the name calling and the amount of profanity you mutter under your breath. “Could I wallow in self-pity for once? Thanks.”

He nods, and you fall back into amiable silence. The pressure in you chest eases.

“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think I do, either.”

“Bullshit, Buck.” He gives you a look, but you only shrug. The name slipped out despite your better judgment, and you wonder for a moment if he’s looking at you that way because Buck is a privilege reserved to Rogers or because you sound just like him again. Fuck. “You might not be the same heartthrob you were in the 40’s, but doesn’t mean you’re not still salvageable.”

“I thought we were having self-pity time, Sparks. Let me have this.”

“Save it to your next therapy session.” Bucky whines. You both laugh. “Just saying though— a haircut might do you wonders.”

“Same to you.”

He doesn’t specify if it’s about therapy, a haircut or all of what has been discussed previously.

“Please. The sewer rat look makes everyone fall at my feet,”

“Yeah. From fright.”

Your head snaps in his direction, arm reaching to punch his ribs but he reacts faster, dodging your blow and pushing your lounger away.

“Shut up, Barnes.”

“Hey, you started it. I’m just stronger. And faster.” You roll your eyes, recomposing yourself. Bucky sighs, making you look at him. “I know you’re anxious about this whole thing. But Steve — he’s got you.”

“It’s not really Steve I’m worried about.”

The biggest surprise of them all.

He hums. “You’re already on the right track, with the deprogramming and everything. If I deserve a second chance, you do too.”

You bite your bottom lip. The sun warming your skin makes you feel more positive than usual. “I really hope you’re right, Bucky.”

0300 hours.

He’s laying flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling. 3 a.m. and Steve Rogers hasn’t slept a wink. The red numbers on the alarm clock seems to be laughing at him, and it’s all because of her.

Time is not something that has been on Steve’s side, not since 1943 when he took the damned serum. He’s been out of time, on the wrong time, and now he’s running out of it. He needs to get his friends out of this compound and away from S.W.O.R.D’s orders and scrutiny, but Bucky’s not quite done with his deprogramming yet. Sparky’s first session is tomorrow. She’ll need time too.

He needs to hold the fort a while longer.

He’s also running out of patience to keep everyone’s moods placated. Tony Stark, Hoss, NBC. Conflict seems imminent and inevitable, no matter how much he puts himself in between the clash. It doesn’t help that he can’t get his mind off the harbinger of it all.

Don’t worry about hurting my feelings or whatever. I’m not catchin’em.

This is why he doesn’t flipping do casual.

He’s more than familiar with one night stands— he’s not dead and he’s never been a prude in between sheets, either. But it’s one thing when both parties go their own ways, not seeing the other again if they can help it. That’s easy.

But with her, nothing is ever easy.

She’s difficult and it makes everything difficult, too.

Bothered by his distance and bothered when he’s near. It takes everything in him not to fight her, demand a clear statement over her feelings, expose his own. The avoidance is the only way he still finds some semblance of control over himself, and she can’t even give him that.

She takes and she takes, his resistance meager at best.

Steve pulls the bed sheet from his legs, and stalks over to the living room he shares with Bucky. His best friend has fallen asleep on the couch, holding on to a bucket of popcorn as if it was a cushion. It’s half empty. Steve takes it from his hands and places it on the coffee table before making his way down to the gym.

The truth is that he wants her. Badly. He wants her when she gives him attitude and he wants her when it’s just the two of them and her guard is down by just a little. She makes him want to hit something, like this punching bag, and protect her from the world. Show her how ugly and wonderful it really is.

Kiss her until it bruises.

Break every rule just to see how her eyes sparkle.

Steve can’t name the feeling. But it’s there, stretched taut like a string.

He can feel it, ready to snap, everything he’s built of himself hanging by a thread and she had been the one to unravel it.

It’s laughable.

The terrible truth that if she were to ask, he’d hand everything out willingly, too.

Laughable how he came down here to get his mind off things, off her, and he still hopes she’ll come through the sliding doors like the last time.