baelpenrose

[baelpenrose]

speaking of unhinged stupid shit I've read recently

[baelpenrose]

We never really talked about it but The Ugly Ducking that grew up to be a beautiful swan was still probably pretty fugly from a duck’s perspective

[baelpenrose]

[baelpenrose]

I love the guy talk between Trey and Nate, actually. Really sweet bonding itme. Also, my favorite version of the quote at the end of the chapter!

Not the Chosen One, Ch. 18: Hillbilly and the City Boy

In which Trey gets a much needed, kind but stern talking to from his favorite 'uncle'. No content warnings unless you are triggered by actual goats, which are vaguely mentioned. Also, mentions of past mentions of blood. So, very slice of life chapter. <3

Reader shout outs this week are: @lolafaiy, @1978sah, @experiments-in-craft, and new follower @shenanigansandtriumph. Thank y'all for your engagement, it keeps me going!!!

Thanks to @baelpenrose and @writing-with-olive for beta reading for both consistency and our very young trans gentleman. Y'all are the best.

“Hey, guys!” I shouted, waving cheerfully. Chris and Nate had just arrived with two trucks and two trailers of goats. As each climbed out, I greeted them with hugs. “The wards have been beefed up, so I’m going to apologize in advance - And I’m not sure if either of you are willing to sacrifice a beautifully functional work truck to test it, so we probably need to set up fences to guide them?”

I can’t even lie, I felt somewhat ashamed. The only potential site was a minimum of close to a mile from my curb.

Short of rolling his eyes hard enough to possibly sprain them, Nate didn’t even hesitate - he strode onto the property until his sensitivity to magic made him start retching. Even then, he threw a hand up behind him, thumb up. “Chris - “ noise “You got this.”

As if to test it, Chris walked cautiously to his brother’s side, completely unbothered. Once Nate was breathing deeply but steady, Chris glanced at me. “So, I can drive the trailers onto the property?”

“I’ll pay for repairs if they fail?” I hedged. It was totally new ground for all of us, but the idea that Chris being totally numb to the wards indicated that he probably could pull into the driveway and at least around the back. Worst case, the truck would die and we have to revert back to setting up a mile-long run to get the goats to the back of the property.

Nate gasped, “If it was anyone else, I would worry. But if you can’t make good, Benji will.”

“Asshole,” I scolded, grinning that he had caught his breath enough to disparage me.

“Yep.”

Chris just laughed and shook his head as he went to the nearest truck and cranked it up. I am pretty sure everyone who could see it held their breath as he pulled it onto the property - engine first, then Chris, exhaust, then goats. There was a moment of bleating, but given the noises after, no one died.

Chris confirmed my suspicions. “No fatalities that I can tell. Take them to the creek?”

I nodded enthusiastically. “Please? I’ll get Benji to drive the second trailer behind you.” Okay, yeah, I didn’t even know how to drive - it hurt too much before I got my powers under control, and after that point I had a solid grasp of public transport. I wasn’t admitting it, but seeing as Benji could drive anything requiring a CDL and below, I didn’t really need to make excuses. Bitch could drive a forklift, a tank, and a tractor-trailer. I wasn’t entirely sure she wasn’t licensed for helicopters and small airplanes.

A couple hours later, Nate was helping Trey gather produce and both Chris and Benji were finalizing the fence setup for the goats. We decided that, rather than fence the goats in, we fenced them out. The berries that were safe to eat were fenced away, the beds were fenced off, and the hives were strongly off limits. Everything else, the goats could just decimate to their discretion.

Even Benji agreed that it was the next thing to burning the property.

By the end of all the logistics, Nate was sitting in my kitchen when I walked back. I wasn’t even mad - he was pale and trembling, even a couple hours in.

“I think you need to be tested for magic sensitivity,” I suggested gently.

“That’s racist,” Nate ground out, crushing another antacid between his teeth.

I choked on my tea. “Race -” *hack* “ Racist???” I was beyond confused.

“It…” he heaved a deep breath. “It’s like being allergic to peanuts or corn, right? It’s…. Being allergic to something - “

“Imma stop you right there.” I held up one hand, closed my eyes, and shook my head. “Peanuts and corn are incredibly common allergies. And if you get hayfever around magic?..... Bitch, I am a plant witch and get hayfever around dandelions. Calm every single part of you that is stressing right now, it’s not racism.”

Nate coughed and gave me a look. “Stef, is there any chance I can talk to Trey in private?”

“Up to him,” I replied. Yes, I want to know what is going on, but I was self-aware enough to realize that was strictly because I am nosy, not because I don’t trust Nate to pass on anything I need to know.

*Trey and Nate, 3rd person POV*

“Hey,” Nate asked, once Stef was actually out of earshot and not just ‘hopefully far enough away’. “As a guy, I get it, there are times when you can’t just talk to the women around you. And growing up around magic, I’m pretty sure that isn’t the issue.”

“With you getting sick?”

Nate waved that off. “Oh, that’s totally why I got sick. Sensitive to magic, got it from my mom. I meant the facial hair.” He stroked his manicured scruff for emphasis. “My hair is dark, but not as dark as yours. I keep it short but clearly not clean shaven…. I have to shave twice a day for a clean face, and that just hurts.”

Trey’s hand reached automatically for his face. “I didn’t think it was that obvious.”

Nate chuckled. “Probably not to the girls, but I’ve been where you are - well, I’ve been a teenage boy, I mean. Girls aren’t the best way to measure when to shave…. Or we aren’t listening to them enough? I dunno. But if you want help, I got you.”

“Stef and Aunt Benji aren’t girls, they’re women,” Trey objected.

Nate sighed. “That is entirely correct. But I also call Chris a ‘boy’... they’re my sisters, so they’re ‘girls’, Chris is a ‘boy’, and that prevents any weirdos from creeping on my family. I really hope that doesn’t make sense, but…”

“No, it makes sense,” Trey admitted in defeat.

Nate grunted, standing from the kitchen table. “I need a beer. Turn away so I can promise Stef that you don’t know where she hides beer?”

Trey whipped to face the back door. “I didn’t see shit.”

“Good kid - THE ACTUAL FUCK???” Nate slammed his drink on the counter, popped the lid off, and took a swing before continuing his rant. “There aren’t any emergency rations in here…. What the hell?”

“The wards,” Trey sighed. “They needed biological material. And she had blood on hand.”

Nate chucked his beer into the sink and dug through cabinets until he found a blood donation bag. “Stubborn bitch,” he grumbled.

“It had to come from Steff,” Trey pointed out, offended.

Nate waved him away, latex tie-off flapping noisily. “I get that, but she should never be without emergency blood. What if someone dumps a vampire hooker on her doorstep?”

Trey sat up, bolt straight. “Does that happen?”

“Not regularly, but it has happened,” Nate confirmed through teeth clenched around a tourniquet. “Are you trained?”

“Theoretically?”

“Best time to practice,” Nate nodded at his arm. “Big ol farm fed boy who is used to having blood drawn. Stab away.”

“I didn’t even manage an IV on -”

“Practice, young padawan. Stab away, I am the last person to care. And you obviously need it.”

To his credit, Trey tried a couple of times before getting frustrated and setting the needle down. “Does everyone just know how to do this? Did… did I miss a class in school?”

Nate pushed Trey’s hand to the discard tray. “Kid, this is a small town. Drop in a single mother of two, who has a talent that makes her super nice? The entire town has her back, her daughters’ backs. Everyone here is either magical or magic-adjacent. So, yeah,” he shrugged. “Everyone who grew up a year above or below Stef and Benji does know how to do this. And we don’t ask why they need it. The mead they pay us is believed to give us thriving crops and quality herds…. We really benefit by making sure they can help us. I don’t know how to explain it beyond that.”

Trey exhaled in awe. “The mead geas….”

“Probably renewing the town wards,” Nate admitted, shrugging. “I don’t tend to get involved that deep. My sisters need help, I’m helping. Yeah, I grumble, but that’s just for fun. I wouldn’t dream of saying no.”

Trey straightened, narrowing his eyes up at Nate. “Then why do the wards make you sick?”

It was a valid question, seeing as the wards were set to keep the property safe. Any reaction would encourage suspicion. Except one.

“Same reason my mom can’t come visit,” Nate confessed. “Hyper sensitive to magic. You notice that once I recover from crossing the wards, I’m fine?”

Trey nodded.

“Yeah, if the wards objected to me? I wouldn’t have made it into the front yard to puke. I would be blind, possibly seizing, on the sidewalk of a house I can’t see.”

“But Stef constantly makes comments about your mom coming over and whacking sense into her….”

Nate shrugged. “If my mother crossed the wards, Stef would do whatever she asked for the sake of getting her to be well faster. She’s been here once.” When Trey’s eyes widened, Nate nodded. “There wasn’t a chance in reality, hell, or anything you can imagine that would keep Stef and Benji’s godmother from doing an inspection of the property. Mama came over, demanded Benji lay wards, made decorating suggestions. The second time, Mama couldn’t even get out of an antique truck because the wards were so strong.” Nate sniffed and smiled. “I don’t think she’s ever been so proud of Benji, even after she saved refugees a few years ago. Just the fact that the wards around Stef and Stef’s rescues were so strong that Mama couldn’t get out of the truck? She’ll die proud as hell of that.”

“I don’t think my mom will ever die thinking about me,” Trey whispered hoarsely before covering his mouth. “I - I am so sorry. This isn’t - “

“Trey,” Nate cut him off. “I know my sisters, cousins, whatever they are. You could die right in this moment, and you would have a mom and aunt who would be so proud of you that they would never shut up. GNU Trey, and all that. And Stef is guaranteed to live a long life, being a ward of Dex and several trees. Your memory would live for centuries.”

“Stef isn’t… I mean, Aunt Benji, but…”

Nate affectionately punched his shoulder, careful to be gentle. “Stef loves quietly but she loves hard. If you’ve gotten the ‘you don’t have to leave, but hopefully you feel confident enough to leave’, you’re her chick. She hates seeing fosters go, but she’s so proud when they reach independence.” He paused, taking a swig of his now-warm beer. “I’m not telling you to call her Mom, or even ‘Aunt Stef’. Just want you to know that family is what you choose…. ‘Blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb’. And you could do worse by deciding those two are blood by covenant.”

Nate walked away, shouting at silhouettes that were apparently Chris, Stef, and Benji.

“Blood of the covenant,” Trey muttered, staring at his hands. “.... huh.”

[baelpenrose]

Under Avandra's Eyes II: Exile's Path Chapter XIV: Most Important Heist

Thomas's side of the fight, and pre-prep for it. Beta read, as always, by the brilliant @canyouhearthelight and @writing-with-olive. A big thank you to @1978sah for his reading, @drbibliophile for her engagement, and @aquadestinyswriting for her comments.

Thomas

Thomas Thomas had crept to the dungeons of the city well before dawn. Malzan would attend the tower - he needed the time to do a jailbreak, which he preferred to do silently - and Marcus would attend the level of overwhelming violence needed at the docks. He’d already picked out a ship, one big enough to carry almost a thousand people if needed, a monster of a galleon, and then splashed paint on in the colors of House Torin. That should be a good enough signal for Marcus.But for right now - approaching the pens and dungeons that kept the slaves owned by the city cloistered under easy guard took some skill - not much. Torches blazed in the pre-dawn dark, but the sentinels kept close to them, meaning Thomas simply hugged the shadows and edged away from the lurid illumination. He let himself smile, very slightly - it didn’t matter what city you were in, guards always kept close to light, and ruined their ability to see in the dark.

No need to alert them yet. There were only two by this door - the soft leather of his boots made no sound on the cobbles as he crept around the prison, a hideous building of quarried stone, which only let light in through narrow slits near the top of the walls.

Thomas checked - only two ways in and out, two men at each point. There were pulleys at each end pulling ropes, ones leading to a bell tower atop the prison, so he would have to silence both men almost simultaneously, without giving either the chance to cry out or pull the bell. Not only that, he’d have to do it twice, ensuring that no one would hear anything happening inside the dungeon.

He picked the door by which he’d make his escape - that one first. He’d make his entry and exit from different doors. Thomas got close, as close as he dared, slung low to the ground, and lunged up, the points of his dirks raking out. One man gave a shout as it grazed the back of his neck - Thomas had no idea what had given it away, maybe just the barest reflection on the other guard’s burnished shield in the torchlight - but the second man dropped without a sound. Thomas dived on the first man before he could bring his shortsword to bear, his knife rising and falling in a terrible cadence, glancing once off the cuirass, his free hand pinning the man’s sword hand. Thomas got a blade down into the soldier’s eyeslit, and the thrashing stopped, though one final spasm left him rolling off the corpse, slightly propelled by the thrash that had driven the rim of a shield into his ribs.

The thief winced and clutched the point of impact, then shoved himself back into the shadows. Other side.

The second two guards didn’t seem aware of the struggle that had just taken place, which was good. Thomas approached again, idly toying with the idea of approaching as a common beggar before drawing his knives, but deciding against it. The truth was that the men were very possibly disciplined enough to simply sound the alarm anyway, regardless of how innocuous something looked - and he hadn’t seen many beggars here.

A blade fell on the first soldier, and Thomas drove a hard hand behind the shield of the second, shoving it out of the way while the man fumbled with the unwieldy spear. While the soldier tried to cry out, Thomas reversed the grip on his knife and drove it into his armpit, then punched the other one under the man’s helm as he began coughing.

Sheathing the bloody blades, he checked the belts for keys. His skill would have made any lock trivial, to be sure, but some days, one simply didn’t have the time to indulge in that - and the possibility existed that he was going to have to crack a dozen cells before the guard changed. He cursed when he found all four belts bare - and began working with the locks. Of course the Sargonns wouldn’t carry keys. The soldiers didn’t need to have those, that would be the task of the overseers. Damn them.

When Thomas opened the door, he felt his hatred of the wretched, ancient city and its pureblood inhabitants reach new heights. It was almost pitch black in the dungeon, and he forced himself to channel his Khym ever harder to see in the near absolute dark that the Sargonns kept their slaves in.

The dungeon was lit only by narrow slits in the roof, through which narrow slivers of starlight came in - no torches lit the walls. Thomas could feel the malevolence in the place, as though something cold and hateful enjoyed the fear, the dread of the dawn. He could smell the stench of festering wounds - and as his vision shifted to a still greener tint, he glanced around. People lay in those awful, brief tunics, and shuddered on bare stone, laying in whatever straw they could. A corpse, stark naked, lay abandoned on the stone, and mere yards away in the same cell, the body’s tunic had been appropriated to make a blanket to wrap a child.

Thomas shuddered. The kind of sickness that could have come here…. he gently rattled the bars with the tip of his knife, and muttered. “Hush. I’m here to get everyone out. But I need it quiet. Mustn’t wake the guards.”

The guards would be on their way, no sense in delaying at this point. He tumbled one lock, then another. The watch changed every two hours, and he’d done the attack near the top of it, but even then, with this many cells…

The people within the cells were clearly unable to see the man working to free them, merely that freedom was coming. They could hear that. He could hear them chattering, excitedly, and wished, internally, that they would quiet down even as he found his heart racing. This was the kind of thing he exulted in doing - and yet, every time, people talked too much and things went wrong. “Quiet, quiet. I took care of the guards but haven’t cleaned out the city.”

He pulled open another door and started shoving people out of it, ushering them toward stairs he could only hope they would find their way out of. “Who knows the way to the docks from here?”

“I do !” A voice, young, with the accent of a Nemedian, spoke. “I saw how they brought us here on the way in. Streets here aren’t worse than Verenia.” It *was* a Nemedian, probably one of the urchins that Silus had sold.

“Alright, you lead out once I get you all clear. Someone will be waiting at the docks to get you a ship. Who here was a sailor taken by pirates?”

A few rough voices spoke up. “Great. Today you’re running a ship. My men will take it for you, you’ll get it underway and out of here. Follow the kid to the docks - there’s things I have to do to clear the harbor. You’re getting out of here today.”

He finally pried loose the last lock - what kind of absolute devils had decided that a series of locks in a dungeon all needed a different secret - and stepped aside, beginning to usher people out. People stepped clear, and Thomas winced as he paused to look at them. The youngest was around thirteen, the eldest nearly fifty, at a guess, all clad in threadbare roughspun and bronze collars. None had any kind of protective wear, most had some kind of sores somewhere, none looked adequately fed. The crowd he intended help escape was, in other words, terrifyingly vulnerable.

“Sailors, can you get to Arshark?”

The series of gruff laughs, and the supplies he’d seen piled on the ship he’d marked, gave him hope. Getting them to the ship was the hard part. He began ushering them out the door, and one person, a young woman, grabbed his sleeve. “M’lord…”

“Not a lord,” he said, biting down the acidic tones he’d normally have said it with. A frightened girl far from home was likely trying to be respectful - and given that she was having to delicately step around two brutalized corpses on her way out, she may have been doing so out of fear.

“I had a friend, taken away from here the day we arrived. By those priests. Year older than I was. They said she looked special. They took a boy too - didn’t know him. He looked Ydrani. Some of us were sold to nobles here, but…they were the only ones taken by priests.”

Thomas shuddered. Itene had been slowly deciphering the glyphs of the book he’d stolen, and that didn’t indicate anything good. But right now….

“I’ll save your friend and send her and the boy along. For now, focus on yourself.”

She looked at him. Then she nodded. “Alright.”

* * * Once the group got running, Thomas looked after them for a while, then split off. That Nemedian kid was already rushing towards the docks in ways that gave Thomas every confidence that he’d lead them there perfectly, and in the distance he could already hear the violence Marcus was doing at the docks. He saw the billow of a travel cloak on top of a shed - a squad of men following the escapees marching beneath it suddenly halted, and began thrashing, clawing at their throats.

Which meant Neith had opted to back them up, and that was all he needed. He split off and rushed to the harbor tower, where Malzan was already waiting.

Being spotted - or, rather, heard - was no small degree of unsettling, but as Malzan explained the reason, Thomas could accept it with a degree of professional analysis. He doubted if he could match up to the stealth of a panther - and he was excited to see what Malzan could do in a fight.

The small formation of men on the narrow bridge into the tower was formidable. Bristling with spears. Malzan rushed it, and Thomas jumped onto the rail beside the bridge, already feeling himself pant with the efforts he’d made earlier that day. He saw Malzan wounded as he dived behind the formation and cut one man’s calves, but found himself forced to duck a shortsword cut.

Before long an arrow fell, and Thomas realized that Iris was joining the fray - covering both them and Marcus at once. Gods, that huntress…

Thomas dove on another soldier even as Malzan desperately hewed at the shields, and when another volley of arrows rained down, he ducked beneath the overhang of the tower, then tackled one of the few men remaining standing.

He disposed of the lock without effort, and let Malzan handle the man inside. The thief took in the mechanism of the chain boom - it could be pulled from either end, the first step would be to begin hauling the pulley to force it slack, then to sabotage it so that the tower at the far end couldn’t tighten it back up. Once that had been done, Malzan could hack through the chain, and the two of them could get out. Some of Malzan’s wounds looked pretty bad, but the barbarian simply grabbed the chain and hauled it, even as Thomas worked with the mechanism. There were locks, ones he could engage, or disengage, with his tools, ones that probably existed to disarm the chain boom when it wasn’t meant to be used but ones which he now fouled in such a vicious mechanical snarl that the machinery would struggle to operate, before he began shoving pins amidst the tangle of chain link that would foul the chain itself.

Such snags would never hold, not long, if the far end began engaging itself in earnest to haul the chain boom taut, but it would slow such a thing down - and Malzan was already bringing his mighty ax to bear. Thomas watched in awe as the wedge of metal crashed down on chain links the size of a man’s hand over, and over, until with a horrific crash the links parted, sending pieces into the stone walls of the tower. As Malzan sighed and staggered, Thomas offered him a shoulder. When he was rebuffed, he gave the giant a nod.

It had taken him years to accept being carried by Marcus or Baldor when wounded.

But offers from a comrade had come a long way to helping him trust again.

And seeing the faces of those people, desperate and relieved when the door opened and now currently flying out to sea by ship, Thomas smiled.

He didn’t care about the machinations of gods and daemons. But finally saving someone else from a place where it would have once been impossible, even for him, felt like a step towards something greater.

[baelpenrose]

My wife has suggested getting Rebecca Sugar involved to voice or help guest write adaptation of Rose x Kanaya and maybe do a musical number with them, or possibly to voice Roxy Lalonde.

Another fried has suggested having ND Stevenson involved in canonizing trans John Egbert to get the She Ra fandom in there.

Here we go progress is being made.

Every chronically online fandom person you know is in danger of a heart attack. Cause what do you mean Toby Fox, Andrew hussie, and Vivziepop are are all in the same studio. What the fuck

[baelpenrose]

I think they should add more vitrolic fandoms into the mix. Fuckin. Cast Spike Spencer as Dirk or Jake. Get Tiffany Grant in as Vriska. Really get a proper Internet blood bowl going by getting the Evangelion fandom in there. Hell, I'm sure there's people you could get involved to bring in the Steven Universe crowd too. Wait. Even better. Find who you could get involved to bring Voltron fandom in. Turn the whole internet into a fucking discourse abbatoir. It'll be really funny.

Every chronically online fandom person you know is in danger of a heart attack. Cause what do you mean Toby Fox, Andrew hussie, and Vivziepop are are all in the same studio. What the fuck

[baelpenrose]

[baelpenrose]

not to sound like a christian facebook mom but some of yall need to have grace in your hearts for the people in your lives or the people you pass once on the road and never see again like you literally need to stop assuming the worst of everyone and their intentions it is poisoning your brain. you can be careful and responsible without being a miserable person. it is possible i promise

[baelpenrose]

Okay, so, here's some info of the info I've put together for those interested: one of the big groups moving propaganda against porn and sex right now is Collective Shout. They're Australian based, largely conservative (white) ladies.

Their website is run on a charity/non-profit thing and you can report them (It might only work if you're in Australia, I'm not sure), for violating the rules of a charity/non-profit here! You just need their ABN, which is 30162159097!

(This is a guide here!) (You can also report their website directly to the charity website they used here and request the charity website make a statement against them or take them out or ask why they support them! They won't take them down but making any kind of response would be valuable!)

(Their group is also on youtube, tiktok, twitter and more, if you're interested in reporting them there too.)

This is also a list of their Team, their board members and their ambassadors, all largely Australian. If there's anyone specific you want to be reporting, contacting, etc, it's the ambassadors.

In particular, people like Susan McLean (website here) and Andrew Lines (website here) explicitly because they have companies, books, associates and strong online presences outside of Collective Shout and you want to make it clear associating with and giving support to this group will have significant backlash.

You want to make them back out or at least make their associates back out. You want to create continuous noise. Not just for a couple days but sustainable noise that builds on itself.

For example, if you push them into making a statement (whether that statement supports Collective Shout or not), it gives you press. You want this to stay in the news cycle and press is good.

Frankly, contact the press! Write your local news, especially if you're in Australia! Tell them what this group is doing.

The longer it's in the news cycle, the more companies like mastercard lose. So make your noise strategic.

[baelpenrose]

Hail the goats. Also. The Tanners’ ethos is amazing. The conversations are amazing in that they always feel so real and it makes the characters all feel like an actual family discussing a real problem over a dinner table…even when the problem is magic. And I love that.

Not the Chosen One, Ch. 17: The "Suck it Up" School of Mental Health

In which Stef and Benji just forge ahead after what should have been a traumatic event, but it barely registers as a blip in their typically bizarre lives. Only CWs on this one are goats and bad haircuts.

As always, shout outs to @baelpenrose and @writing-with-olive for beta reading for consistency and sensitivity. And, I guess, to Dexter, who graciously allowed a chapter without his interjections.

The morning after the wards were laid, I sat in my kitchen and nursed a truly revolting electrolyte cocktail while Benji did her best to even out my bald patches.

“You really could have made better choices about where you cut hair,” she grumbled while running the trimmer over the auburn half of my hair.

I laughed, making a point to keep my head still. “I’m not the one who got possessed by something that liked blondes over brunettes.”

She fell silent for a moment and continued trimming and capturing my hair. After a couple minutes, she finally responded. “To be fair, trees typically don’t care. I wasn’t expecting the kudzu.”

Reaching back, I stopped her rhythmic buzzing of my scalp. “Hey. I know that. And I need you to know that I know. Like, sit down and remind yourself that ‘Stef is well aware that neither of us, nor Dexter, knew about the fucking kudzu before we laid wards’ need you to know that I know.” Still gripping her forearm, I brushed a thumb along it. “The wards are lain, and having Nate’s goats eat the kudzu doesn’t break that, right?”

“Oh, for sure,” Benji laughed. “The vines are chatty, but wards don’t get lain if the trees don’t agree.”

I patted her arm. “The property has willows, and willows have long memory. So we are going to treat this like you got drunk at a bachelorette party, and that means this is the last we discuss this. I’m not mad, the land isn’t mad, Dex isn’t mad…. So don’t punish yourself when no one else wants you to.”

“But Trey - “

“Trey is a brilliant sixteen year old who had to be an adult way too early, and he decidedly did NOT have to call emergency services last night,” I pointed out. “Hell, he specifically mentioned that not having to cart either of us out in the wheelbarrow was a relief.”

Thankfully, the trimmer turned off - gods and goddesses know what she could have done had she been cutting my hair while dealing with emotional stuff. “He really said that?”

“He did,” I nodded. “You were assed out on the couch, snoring like the world had gone deaf - not faulting you!” I held my hands up in a plea for mercy. “You did that entire ward without eating, dumbass.”

“I didn’t eat?”

I twisted to look at her face, and she actually looked confused. “No,” I suggested gently. “Benji, you didn’t eat anything for the entire ward…”

Frantically, she started patting her face and body. “Oh shit. Where did the energy - “

Snagging her wrist before she could bolt to the bathroom, I rose from my chair and gently pushed her into it. “Hey, hey, hey. You’re fine. You look just like you did forty-eight hours ago. I don’t know where the energy came from, but you didn’t suck yourself dry, okay?” Burning up fat stores and prematurely aging was a huge possibility with large works like what she did last night; after all, the energy had to come from somewhere.

She sniffed a couple times before nodding. “You promise?”

“I swear,” I assured. “You literally just look like yourself from last week, but if you needed a good night's sleep. You aren’t…. Drawn, or anything.”

Benji took a few deep breaths before nodding. “Okay. I believe you. But I still want to confirm - not that I don’t trust you, because you certainly set the bar that I look like a tired version of myself. I just need to confirm.”

I whipped my left arm wide, gesturing down the hall. “Bathroom is first door on the right, help yourself.”

Once Benji toddled down the hallway, I started shoving frozen waffles into the toaster. “Peanut butter, honey, jam, butter… peanut butter, honey, jam, butter…”

I chanted toppings like a mantra until Trey cracked the back door, rubbing his eyes blearily. “Why are you so frantic?” he asked, confused.

“Aunt Benji is upset - “ I started, only to be shut down.

Trey flapped a hand at me. “Toaster waffles say she needs food as fast as possible. Nut butter, strawberry or raspberry jam - gods forbid grape jelly hit her tongue” -

“Grape jelly is nasty,” I insisted.

He waved me off. “She agrees, I know, I know.” His casual dismissal of food preferences genuinely warmed my heart. The person who showed up in my trash bins could never.

I chuckled quietly. “Protein, sugar, fiber, carbs. We all need all of the above, and frozen waffles mean we get them fast.”

“And who doesn’t like waffles?” Trey asked in agreement.

“Gods and goddesses, I look exhausted,” Benji groaned as she came back down the hall, grinning.

Trey squinted at her skeptically. “I am going to guess that is a good thing..?”

She snagged a waffle directly from the toaster as they popped, taking a huge bite out of it. “Yep!” she mumbled around it. After a glare from me, she chewed and swallowed before continuing. “Usually, laying a ward that large and powerful would require constant fuel from me - either food or burning off fat and muscle. But it looks like we ate enough ahead of time, combined with Stef’s hair being at least as good if not better as a donation. I will need interviews with you both today to get accounts on what happened. This is groundbreaking stuff.”

“If you eat, I’ll answer whatever questions you want,” I suggested lightly, setting down the first round of waffles after snagging one and slathering it in almond butter.

“For once, I’m not the only one starving,” Trey observed sunnily.

Once the waffles were gone and I still had some sitting in the freezer - the same could not be said of my jams and nut butters - I sipped my coffee and composed myself. “Next steps,” I started, inhaling deeply but speaking before either of them could interject. “Benji, you need to call Nate and request his goats at his usual rate, minus the dogs. I know he is going to argue about the price, but I trust you to make sure he gets paid fairly while also reminding him that Dexter and dogs aren’t a great combo. We can’t have that many guardian things on the property, the hierarchies get too complicated.”

She had opened her mouth to object, but snapped it shut after hearing my logic. “That’s fair.”

“What about - “

“Trey,” I turned to point at my next victim-slash-recent speaker. “I need you to open the windows in all of the greenhouses, including the toxic one. Don’t touch the plants and you should be fine. There is a pole with a hook to unlatch them and nudge them open. Don’t worry about being fast in there, worry about being careful.”

“And if I find fruit literally anywhere else?”

“Collect it but don’t carry it in,” I confirmed. “But also, don’t go walking the open beds to look for a distraction. I’ll know. Dexter isn’t a snitch, but the bees and land tell me everything. Greenhouses first and foremost, so the bees can eat.”

I inhaled again, centering myself. “I will tell the bees about the goats infringing on the property, and recommend they keep their patrols to the greenhouses and the beds, while also asking that they keep any honey from the toxic greenhouse within a single hive so I can isolate it for testing. There shouldn’t be any issues, since they love dancing all over out of season blossoms. Plus, they have a very tiny axe to grind when it comes to the tomatoes we had to burn earlier in the season, so we may end up with some tomato sprouts I hadn’t planned on.”

Once I had stopped long enough that it was clear I was done, Trey still raised his hand to ask for permission to speak. “And, beside new bodies on the property, you need to tell the bees for… why?”

I shot a finger gun at him and clucked my tongue. “Exactly the right question.” He grinned brightly while I continued. “Goats eat. End of story. Not necessarily tin cans like in the cartoons, but they also aren’t very discerning about what they eat. And there is no way I have found to get them to avoid eating bees, while I can very easily ask the bees to politely avoid the area where the goats are eating everything they can reach. Which is a LOT. The trees out there are going to be pruned within an inch of their lives.”

“Within an inch of their lives?” Trey asked, confused.

“First, don’t ask things like that around Chris or Nate,” I warned. “It will cement you in their minds as a city-boy, and you will NEVER recover from that.”

“But it’s still a boy?”

“City boy ranks below country girl any day,” Benji suggested, backing me up. “At least to them. The Tanners are very much function over form kind of people.”

Trey scrunched his face. “I don’t know how to deal with that kind of…. Is it misogyny?”

“Figure it out, and we’ll all know,” I admitted. “But the point is, don’t ask Nate questions about literally anything you could ask me. Shaving tips? Go for it. If the trees will die because of goats? Absolutely not.”

“But how do they get UP there?”

It was my turn to give Trey a confused look, a novelty given the past few weeks. “Mountain goats exist, you know that, right?”

“Well, yeah, but - “

“All goats can climb,” I clarified. “Especially trees. I am just hoping the newer growth won’t support their weight and we end up with more robust trees out of this.”

“And what if it dies?”

I shrugged. “Then it would have been culled eventually. Better now than years down the road when it has a disease and can’t be used for anything.” When he looked horrified, I pointed at my face. “Botanical witch. Plants are the most neutral of neutrals. No animosity, no desire to do anything beyond their nature. If a tree dies, the other trees don’t mourn it.”

“That’s harsh.”

Benji grinned viciously. “But they do hate kudzu,” she added.

“After what happened last night, I hate it, and I’ve never seen it,” Trey ground out, shoving his last piece of waffle in his face.

“So say we all,” I admitted. “Including Nate’s goats.”

“Cheers to the goats.”

“TO THE GOATS”, Benji and I cheered.

[baelpenrose]

So, the short version: Because punitive cycles will always reinforce whatever power structures exist, and current power structures are white supremacist. Punative systems, in and of themselves are not strictly a 'white supremacist' thing, they're a 'consolidated power' thing. the first written code of law that ever existed, the Code of Hammurabi, is also the place where we get the phrase 'an eye for an eye' - and it dates from over three thousand years before the formation of whiteness as a social construct, from people who would not be considered 'white' by modern standards. Pretty much every culture, across the globe, has, at various points, engaged in various degrees of vengeance-by-combat, honor killing, or punitive law. Regardless of race or creed. However, pretty much in all cases, those constructs were always instituted by the powers-that-be in those societies, the powerful, the privileged, etc. Among the powerless, alternative methods were broadly developed - again, across cultures - because doing otherwise would rapidly lead to greater, more rapid harm among their entire communities. Violence as a means of redress legitimatizes violence as a means of social control, which in turn legitimatizes those who already have power to use even more of it in response to any challenge to their place in the hierarchy. Right now, the power structure of the Anglosphere (which this site is broadly part of,) and more generally, the entire planet, vis-a-vis global north/global south, is white supremacist. Cycles of violence and retribution will always favor those who current power structures back, as they are the ones capable of inflicting greater suffering. Insofar as the urge to punish is white supremacist, it is because the urge to punish inherently reinforces existing power structures, whatever those power structures are...and the power structures that exist right now, in our time, are white supremacist.

One of the most important things to unpack and unlearn when you’re part of a white supremacy saturated society (i.e. the global north) and especially if you were raised in an intensified form of it (evangelicism, right wing politics, explicit racism) is the urge to punish and take revenge.

It manifests in our lives all the time and it is inherently destructive. It makes relationships and interactions adversarial for no good reason. It undermines cooperation and good civic order. It worsens some types of crime. It creates trauma, especially in children.

Imagine approaching unexpected or unacceptable behavior from a perspective of "how can this be stopped, and prevented" instead of "you’re going to regret this!”

Imagine dealing with a problem or conflict from the perspective of “how can this be solved in a way that is just and restorative” instead of “the people who caused this are going to pay.”

How much would that change you? How much would that have changed for you?

[baelpenrose]

there's so much, like, performative respect given to obviously regressive internet trends, even among people who disagree with them. "There's nothing wrong with wanting to be a tradwife," "I'm not saying homeschooling/unschooling is inherently bad," well I am saying all these things. this is all shitty, dangerous and regressive, and I think it's harmful to constantly sugar coat objections to it

[baelpenrose]

Under Avandra's Eyes II: Exile's Path Chapter XIII: Understanding

Beta Read by @writing-with-olive and @canyouhearthelight

Malzan

Like the others, he’d woken before dawn, and followed the thief. He’d seen little point in stalking along, but he’d seen the thief work - and he trusted Thomas when told that he’d be of more help when dealing with the harbor tower. So he’d gone to the tower at the north side of the harbor, as told, and waited, leaning on his ax. He’d drawn stares as he walked - it was rare to see a lone Chimmaerian at all, rather than one travelling with his clan, rarer still to see one free, and too well Malzan knew it.

Still, despite the glances, the tension evident in the proud faces of the Sargonns, no one dared accost him - everyone assumed him to be a mercenary. It wasn’t impossible, outcast Chimmaerians often took up that kind of work, though one willing to work here in a capacity other than what he was doing would never have found their way back to any kind of grace with his people. Malzan caught a glimpse of himself in one of the polished bronze plaques that lined the streets, commemorating the heroic deeds of dead Sargonns, or their Sargomian ancestors - tyrants all, ones his own ancestors had raged against. 

His visage no longer shocked him. The brutal scars that raked across one side of his face, the proud cant of his head, the tangled mane of hair the color of pitch falling to his shoulders, so broad and muscled they would have looked deformed on a shorter man, or even on him had he worn armor in the style common to Faldrean knights or Nistrean samurai.  His jerkin served him well enough, but the scars that splattered across his arms, and shins, were beginning to tell on him. He wondered, momentarily, if his mother would be proud of what he’d become. If nothing else, what had been done to them had been avenged, now.

Malzan strode towards the tower, shaking his head. He’d learned, too well, with Vixen. If he was a predator, a predator distracted is a predator that goes hungry, and if he was prey, a grazer distracted soon becomes a meal. This city of bronze and hatred seemed so all-encompassing in its malevolence, the power here so evidently vast and old and vicious that Malzan knew he might be prey; yet by contrast the people were cowardly, contemptible, weak, relying on slaves to feed themselves and carry their burdens. By that metric, his only rightful place among them was that of a wolf in a sheepfold. Still, a wolf could find threats in a sheepfold if it got distracted thinking of other times. Whichever he was, he’d find himself devoured, or slain, if he didn’t keep his mind on the present.

As he had since he was young.

He heard something, something no human would ever have picked up, but was possible, if only barely, for a Chimmaerian, one whose instincts and nerves were honed by constantly living at the ragged edge. “Thief.”

“Barbarian.” Thomas detached himself from a wall, footfalls soft, but now within normally audible range. “How’d you know?”

“Wouldn’t have survived if I couldn’t. And our senses are sharper than yours. You forget, I’m wild-blooded, bred for a hundred generations to survive the pouncing of animals that hunt by ambush and have for a thousand generations. You’re a thief and assassin, maybe the greatest ever, but trained and ready to creep up on men who have at least twenty generations of only looking out for ambushes by other men etched into the way they are raised, taught, bred.” Malzan shrugged. Truth be known, in perfect darkness, he still doubted if he could avoid an ambush from Thomas, but this was a ways off from that. 

Thomas absorbed that like a professional, and Malzan gave him a slight nod - there was no contest here, only the mutual respect of masters of the craft.

“What did you need me for?”

“The harbor - it’s protected by a chain boom. Big chain that can be strung between these towers, going to snap the masts off any ship that enters or leaves without permission under any kind of speed. I need to sabotage the mechanism, but when I get in there, I may also need a heavy. And, frankly, a man of the kind of strength only you have. The last one of these I sabotaged, there was a lever point I could use to break the chain if it came right down to it, I doubt this place will be so poorly maintained. I’ll rely on you to manage that - I’ll get the chain taut at a specific part of the machinery, and you break it.”

Malzan nodded without a word, and followed the thief towards the tower.

It had men in front of it, forming a wall of shields and spears. Malzan sighed, and unlimbered his ax. “Slip around them.”

Thomas nodded. “Been doing this long enough.”

Malzan rushed forward, already internally cursing. The spears were going to be an ugly affair. He came down with a harsh swipe, meant to push spear points aside and out of his way, and found that he had broken one in the thicket, the haft of his mighty axe brushing aside another. He pivoted around a third, but the fourth grazed a bicep, drawing a crimson line of droplets across the arm, and a second spearpoint took him straight, even if only the absolute tip managed to get through his jacket and grazed his abs. The axe swept down, shearing a shield in half, and cleaving the arm behind it off at the elbow, and spouting blood everywhere. The man behind the shield was screaming, flailing, frantically staggering back from the furious Malzan, who began surging forward, heedless of the spears that continued needling him. 

Thomas was apparently dancing along the rails of the narrow bridge, evading one spear thrust, then another, then diving behind the phalanx and came up rolling, dirks slashing back, dropping one of the soldiers to his knees.

Malzan roared his rage as another spear caught him high, and a re-focused thicket of them forced him to sweep the haft of the ax sideways to push the spears away - but no sooner had he done that than a new thrust from a closer line got him in the arm, and Malzan took a step back. A man screamed in the back, and Malzan cursed. Thomas was chewing his way through them, but Malzan wasn’t really equipped for a shoving match with a phalanx.

A thought occurred to him then - something Vixen had told him. ‘Don’t be stupid, little wolf,’ she’d told him, back when he was a young boy. ‘For laying low beasts in close combat, your style stands supreme. But men don’t fight like beasts, and the day you find yourself matching your fury against discipline, you may be overwhelmed’.”

Malzan snarled, shaking his head to try to clear it of the pain, throbbing from the dozen small wounds - then an arrow dropped and a man screamed. Malzan smiled, a brutal, wild expression, and shoved the hafts aside, sweeping the ax around again to behead a man who didn’t quite get the shield up in time, even as Thomas pounced from behind and forced a man to the ground. Thomas gave a warning shout and Malzan threw himself backwards, rolling away from a series of thrusts.

Then arrows began falling. 

Men died, and Malzan scrambled to his feet, pain aching in his wounded limbs, gut, his torn pectoral. Two men had been left standing, and Thomas was already pouncing on one of them. The last tried to run. Malzan rushed him, a need to close the gap already surging in his heart. The last Sargonn soldier didn’t get a chance to cry out by the time that Malzan caught up.

**

Thomas got them into the tower easily enough, there was only one man in it and Thomas disposed of him with contemptuous ease. 

Then the thief looked over the machinery, expertly, and shook his head. “Okay. Okay. The donkeys that would pull it up can only pull it up, not ratchet it down, and we don’t have time to start pulling it down, not without you…I’m going to get the pin loose, then start lowering the mechanism, you’re going to pull. They can get the chain up from the other side, but they have to set it up, its meant to be pulled from this end, and I want them unable to long enough for us to ruin this permanently. Once it’s low enough, I’ll sabotage it so it can’t start raising again, even if they try, and I need you to cut the chain so they can’t fix it.”

Malzan took the position as instructed, forcing himself to ignore the throbbing of his wounds - Thomas was wounded, and the thief was absolutely focused. Survival made no allowance for weakness, so pain would be dealt with later. Thomas gestured at a chain, and Malzan seized it, and began hauling it back, arm over arm, until it was ever so slightly more slack, arms burning. What would take a team of donkeys only ten minutes to accomplish took Malzan nearly as long - the time melting away, his arms burning. Only a few more strokes. Pull. The thief will tell you to stop. Get the job done. 

Then Thomas did. “Machine is ruined - we’re clear. They can’t get it back up. They’re probably trying at the other end, but…”

Malzan sighed. He took up the ax. Then he swung at the chain. It was a heavy, wrought iron beast of a cable, links nearly as wide as his hands. But the axe came down, steel forged of meteoric iron, and bit into it, driven by his awesome strength, and cut a small wedge, striking sparks from it, barely denting the edge. Then he brought the axe down again. And again, furiously. And finally, the chain snapped, rattling up and out of the port to crash to sea in a tremendous splash.

Thomas smiled. “Pleasure working with you. Let’s get you back to your healer friend. Get something on those wounds.”

Malzan walked, the pain digging in. Thomas offered him a shoulder. Malzan refused out of reflex - but it was the first time the barbarian could ever remember such an offer being made.

[baelpenrose]

I censored the name and the pfp because I don't want people recieving harassment, but I want to make a point about this: This is fundamentally fucked up and an insane take. "they were secret homestuck fans until a couple years ago." So? What material harm does being a fan of The Cringe Webcomic do? Cringe is dead until someone can find an excuse to harass you for it and dress it up in SJ language. Please don't pretend it's not marginalized people who always eat the worst of that harassment to begin with. We know which group of people on this site always have their fanfic habits interrogated the hardest. (It's transfems). As to the tags: I don't know if this person is stupid or favors self righteous idiocy over material analysis (based on their takes on political action it's the latter) but the comparison to JKR stans is a fundamentally braindead take. Andrew Hussie, creator of homestuck, is a late-aughts early new-10s white boy who wrote a webcomic that got super successful and had the biases of a basic liberal late-aughts early new-10s white boy baked in. He has since then fucked off to be more or less an eboy who occassionally gives money to charity. The notion that this is remotely the same as continuing to be a harry potter fan, in which you are materially supporting JK Rowling, who started off as a basic late-90s-early-aughts British Liberal and radicalized into an outright fascist who is currently using her IP as a money printing machine for an effort to wipe trans people off the face of the earth, is insane. The material impacts of being a harry potter fan is that you are feeding the Trans People Killing Machine. The material effects of you being a homestuck fan is that Andrew Hussie has more money to fuck around and *Maybe* break the internet with a new cringe webcomic at some point. Saying this is remotely similar in scope, scale, or impact means you are mistaking your personal feelings of disgust or cringe for actual material harm.

You know. The same basic impulse that fascists prey on to pass anti queer legislation. And since someone will doubtless come into my comments and compare it to Stonetoss or something equally heinous if i'm claiming that the only thing that matters is what they're funding: That's intellectually dishonest and you're stupid for bringing it up. Stonetoss is nazi propaganda where the bigotry is the point, it exists to propagandize alt-right ideals to its audience. Homestuck is a metanarrative driven mess about the way people interact with stories that has a lot of the author's unconsious biases baked in and the bigotry in it is incidental and to the detriment of the purpose it is attempting to serve, not the actual purpose of its existence

[baelpenrose]

ok im going to #seriouspost for a second here. I don't think Harry Potter is a manifesto. I think it was a flawed passion project that millennials latched onto because of the fantasy of sticking it to their mean teachers and arbitrarily categorizing themselves (hogwarts houses; it's the thinking millennial's astrology). I think the fact that the series got popular when and how it did was very much a product of its time.

I don't think Harry Potter is the biggest symbol of JKR's bigotry. I think the most flagrant sign of that was how she responded to critics. I watched her become radicalized in real time. I watched how she doubled down on her racism when she was called out for the ways she promoted her tragically mid fantastic beasts movies. I watched her chase marginalized teenagers with a double digit follower count off of twitter for daring to criticize her thought process, and no one with any kind of power standing against her because she was the one who was paying them. This isn't to say Harry Potter is without flaws. This is to say she really didn't give a shit about that. Getting rich and powerful is a hell of a drug, and she had enough sycophants that she had no reason to care about what her critics were saying.

She was convinced that she was a martyr; a voice for the unheard; a leader for the ages, so of course her detractors were the bad guys. And I think we should take this to heart. We should see this as an example of how easy it is to get radicalized; if you think of yourself as a paragon of virtue, you are going to think that whatever you see as good and right is an objective fact. Most people don't know this, but the majority of terfs start out as trans allies. You are not immune to propaganda! You are not immune to falling into dangerous ideologies!!!

This is why the most important thing you can do as an activist is to listen. Do NOT think you're above being wrong; do NOT develop a god complex; do NOT form an identity out of being right all the time. Involve yourselves in the groups you claim to speak for. Listen to trans women; share resources that help trans women; familiarize yourself with the diversity of experiences that trans people have and the struggles they face.

No, none of you are as bad as JKR because you don't have her money or her power. You will likely never have the capacity for harm she does. But check yourselves. Do not affirm yourselves into thinking you always have the moral high ground. Watch yourselves; humble yourselves; check yourselves for signs of cult behavior and internalized prejudice. You are always learning. You will always be learning. Do not allow yourselves to get a power trip from brushing off marginalized voices.

[baelpenrose]

Had a first potential client call in to try to come up with a financial plan to leave the country because they were a DACA recipient and they realized that DACA would no longer protect them under Trump.

It’s fine! The horrors are compounding daily but it’s all fine!