#* i've been screaming for years 「isms」

[parkburied]

tag drop!

* hey there demons it's me; ya boi 「ooc」

* call to the sea queen 「memes」

* i've been screaming for years 「isms」

* history does strange things to dead women 「ic」

* it's not my fault i have my father's eyes「mirror」

* you are a little tragedy aren't you? 「study」

* you keep forgetting i'm an entire person and not some vague concept you fucking dreamt 「hc」

[wartakes]

A Duty to Protect

Not gonna lie, I grappled with whether or not to do this one. I very nearly decided to trash it after having already written 99% of it. But, I've decided to share it anyway in an effort to talk about things going in Gaza (and elsewhere) right now while getting back to the roots of what I started doing War Takes content to begin with. Full essay under the cut.

Folks, I'm gonna be straight up and down with you: my heart hasn't fully been in it lately when its come to writing and posting and generally doing War Takes stuff.

That's not to say I didn't care at all about what I was writing about – whether its been in these essays, or in posts on social media, or what have you, but it definitely felt like ever since October 7th and the resulting Israeli War in Gaza, that I've been stuck in an ever deepening malaise (something that I'm sure many people who feel trapped watching events unfold feel). Obviously, what's going on in Gaza in particular and the Middle East in general not the only conflict I care about; I still feel very strongly about what's going on in Ukraine, Myanmar, Sudan, and on many other battlefields against fascism and brutally the world over, but what's going on in Gaza seems to specifically epitomize how the world feels right now. That there's a million fires burning, with innocents screaming in the middle of the flames, and the response of so many governments appears to be to hand gasoline to the person stoking the fire (if not pouring it on themselves) and then turning to you to say "actually, you're terrible for not thinking that this is okay" and yelling at you on Twitter for it.

The point of this long winded allegory is, I've been in a rut, the result of which is I've started to slip into becoming too focused on the here-and-now or the near-future in these essays, when one of the main reasons I started writing them is to try and think to the future, to a time when maybe, hopefully, we'll be in a better position to actually take action against the myriad of problems at home and abroad. Talking about the here and now is important, but you quickly become reminded of just how powerless we can be in the current moment, and then drive yourself insane by the perceived need for you to do something to fix all the world's problems right here, right now, when you quite simply cannot.

None of this means you should give up, nor give into apathy, despair, nihilism, doomerism, or whatever -isms you may be tempted with succumbing to. You can and should still do what you are able to make things better in the near term, but with the understanding that there are hard limits on what you can accomplish (barring massive, sudden, seismic shifts in society that you will probably only recognize once you're in the middle of them or on the other side). As one of my good online friends November Kelly recently said, you need to make your peace with powerlessness and keep your powder dry, while holding out hope and biding your time for the moment in the future when you and others will finally be able to make a substantive difference and change things for the better.

One of my ways I have always dealt with this feeling of powerlessness in the here and now, is thinking about how I would try to do things differently in my field in that hypothetical future where the United States tried to exercise its power in a more just, humane, and progressive manner. It was really the crux of why I started writing these essays, feeling that many on the Left were unprepared for a hypothetical, hopeful day when we'd be able to actually exercise power. Many of my first wave of essays dealt with thinking forward to that hypothetical better future, but I feel like in the last year or two I've gotten away from that for a number of reasons (the sheer hopelessness of some current events being one of them), so in this essay I'm going to try my best to try and get that mojo back.

In the hopes of tapping back into that original spirit of why I started writing War Takes essays, I'm going to try and link some thoughts for the future, to the ongoing event probably most responsible for my recent funk and lack of inspiration: the War in Gaza. In thinking closely about Israel's actions in Gaza since October 7th, and the response (or lack thereof, rather) of the Western world towards it, I managed to find some renewed vigor in considering how I would deal with the ongoing conflict and associated genocide if I was in a position of power.

Oh, but before we go any further, one quick housekeeping measure that probably doesn't matter but I'm going to do anyway just for the record because its been a while:

Hamas are not good and I don't support them.

I am focusing on Israel here because the scale and scope of what Israel is and has been doing to Palestinian civilians so utterly dwarfs the things that Hamas has done (which are also bad) and because the things Israel has been doing since long before October 7th set the conditions that caused October 7th to happen in the first place by making it inevitable.

Ok, that's out of the way. Let's get down to brass tacks.

Murderers Hate Him! Stop Genocide With This One WEIRD Trick!

After nine months of war in Gaza, I recently came to a realization.

I believe at this point, based on my own personal gut assessment, that even if the United States finally came to its senses and began to exert serious pressure on Israel – diplomatic, economic, and otherwise – that it wouldn't stop what its doing in Gaza and in Palestine and the Middle East in general.

I think even if the United States brought all manner of power to bear, enacting more stringent economic sanctions and arms embargoes, supporting prosecution of Israeli political and military leaders as war criminals in international venues, and so on, that Israel would not stop its actions.

Something in Israeli politics and society snapped on October 7th. To many of us who have looked upon the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict with clear eyes, we knew from the start what might happen and that what Israel is saying and doing now is not necessarily new. But while not new, Israel's actions against Palestinians and throughout the Middle East have reached new extremes, going into overdrive. The proverbial mask has truly come off, as the many videos and photos from Israeli soldiers documenting their numerous war crimes in Gaza have already demonstrated.

As a country that views any criticism what-so-ever as a borderline existential threat, if the United States and other countries actually chose to impose costs on Israel for its actions, it would go into absolute mental breakdown of derangement. After simply delaying one shipment of bombs (not canceling mind you, just “delaying”) while other arms have continued to flow, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu recorded a video temper tantrum lashing out at U.S. President Joe Biden for only giving him 99% of what he wanted. A country only used to doubling down on its bad actions would triple if not quadruple down, fully embracing official status as a rogue state. Even if cut off from its primary foreign weapons supplier in the United States, Israel would leverage its own domestic arms industry and other like-minded partners (like Modi's India, for example) to keep its war – and accompanying genocide – going. It would not stop, because it would be even more convinced that it could not afford to stop lest it risked the very existence of the Israeli political project (something that may not really be that far-fetched given how the way things may go in the mid to long term).

Now, none of this to say that the United States and other countries shouldn't undertake the actions I laid out regardless of Israeli actions. I strongly believe there is an absolute moral imperative to do so, like, yesterday. But that being said, as I looked back on the history of such actions in the face of various forms of state violence of both the intra- and inter-state fashion, that they'd likely do next to nothing to stop the slaughter. It was that reflection on the past that reminded me of the only thing that can stop a genocide, or any kind of armed aggression, in its tracks: armed intervention.

Maybe I'll be proven wrong on this, but so far we haven't been an opportunity to see otherwise, as the few actions leveled against Israel so far have been so minimal as to practically be non-existent (not that its stopped Israel and its boosters from screaming bloody murder about them). And I think the longer Israel is allowed to continue its actions without non-military forms of pressure being levied against them, the less likely such actions would actually stop them if they were used.

This state of affairs leaves only one option as the last resort to stop the violence: large-scale military intervention.

Historically speaking, the only thing that has ever actually, conclusively stopped a genocide is military intervention. This was pointed out very clearly by the non-governmental organization Doctors Without Borders during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, when they called for military intervention based on one simple reality: doctors can't stop genocide. What can be said for doctors can be said other forms of aid or action short of military intervention. If Israel chose to continue its actions even in the face of sanctions and embargoes and arrest warrants, none of those actions would likely stop them. Even if the world decided to send in all the food and medicine and more that Gazans would need to survive for as long as they needed it, none of that would matter if the IDF would be preventing it from entering in order to perpetuate the genocide further than its weapons were doing directly.

Such a military intervention could not, by definition, be limited either. It would almost certainly need to be extensive, and involve actual boots on the ground. Past perpetrators of genocide have continue to carry out genocide in the face of military intervention, even at the expense of their own war effort. Nazi Germany continued its execution of the Holocaust in the face of Allied advances from both the East and West, taking personnel and resources away from the war effort to do so and continuing to do so right up until its final surrender in May of 1945. In Rwanda in 1994, the genocide of the Tutsi ethnic-minority by the majority Hutus took place even as the Hutu-dominated regime and its military were pushed back by a successful offensive into the country by rebel forces. Not only is military intervention required to stop genocide, overwhelming, fast, and – more likely than not – complete and total to put a stop to the killing as quickly and completely as possible.

I realize such an action would not be without significant costs and risks, as well as almost certainly violating my own strongly held beliefs that I've stated before that regime change should not be imposed from outside and must come from within. To address the latter issue first, I acknowledge this apparent contradiction, and my only answer would be that I continue to stand by that view – to a point; and that point is the case of genocide. Once you reach that point, I think imposition of regime change from the outside not only becomes acceptable, but morally and ethically necessary to ensure that all the apparatus of state power in that regime are no longer being used to carry out genocide. In that sense, I see it less as a contradiction, and more of an order of priority.

To the point of costs and risks, I have less good answers other than I simply acknowledge that they exist and are hefty. In terms of costs, a massive military operation to put an end to a genocide in Palestine by way of direct combat with the IDF would cost a great deal in blood and treasure and would result in a long-term occupation that could potentially go very badly if not planned and executed properly. In terms of risks, aside from the risks associated with conventional warfare with the IDF, the issue of it specifically being a (undeclared) nuclear-weapons state is a necessary specter to raise – one that has given many a U.S. and allied planner sleepless nights envisioning a conflict on the Korean Peninsula ever since North Korea acquired its first nuclear weapon. Again, I have no good answers here other than, the risks are high and the costs could be just as high if not higher. But, it if we are truly to stand by our principles and not simply pay them lip service as others have, we have no choice but to accept certain risks and incur certain costs in the name of our shared humanity. Additionally, there is an additional cost imposed by the absolute imperative to ensure that one genocide is not simply met with another in response – something that cannot and must never be acceptable. The invading forces would be duty bound to go to great lengths to ensure that it prevented such a response and did not engage in one itself, working to set the stage for some kind of workable reconciliation in the end state to follow.

Of course, sadly, all of this discussion is purely academic at this stage, as such an armed intervention is in large part, impossible under the current geopolitical circumstances. Such an intervention would require the acquiescence, if not the active support and involvement, of the United States of America. Such involvement is completely unimaginable, given the United States' unshakable "rock solid" and "ironclad" support of Israel, even as its violence against civilians has grown more blatant, wanton, and brutal since the war began. Even if intervention was attempted without the United States, it would almost certainly engage all levers of national power – including its own military force – to prevent such an intervention from being carried out, having already utilized military force to protect Israel from outside attack after its own actions threatened to expand the war in Gaza into a true regional war (something that still, unfortunately, remains a very real possibility in the weeks and months ahead).

So, we find ourselves once again in a low point due to unwelcome and harsh truths about the reality we currently face vis-a-vis the ongoing genocide and other acts of mass violence and aggression tossing cold water on what may be the only real route to put a conclusive end to it. But, as always, we can't give into despair and give up. So, what can we actually do? It is that topic that I will close us out on (and hopefully maybe pull you up out of any funk I may have dropped you down into – sorry).

Never Again (But This Time, For Real)

Right now, as powerless as we may all feel, we can and must still do everything we individually can to try and help the people of Gaza – to say nothing of all the other peoples suffering from aggression or the threat of genocide, be it in Ukraine, Sudan, or elsewhere. As much as it may feel like a single lonely drop of water in a very large ocean, our actions do mean something, even if they aren't directly silencing Israeli guns or stopping U.S. bombs from being shipped to them. But while I'm not admitting defeat, I'm accepting, grimly, those previously mentioned limits on what we can do now with the way things are in our current domestic political system in the United States and the current international system.

With those aforementioned limitations in mind, I turn my mind to the future, as I've tended to in previous essays and have in some ways gotten away from. I turn my mind to a day when we have a government and a society in this country that has a different view of the world and our role in it. I turn my mind to a day when we as a country and a people view the world through a more just, progressive, democratic socialist, humanitarian lens. Quite frankly: I look to the day when we take all the truisms and platitudes and cliches of liberalism at home and abroad and actually hold ourselves to them – because at the end of the day, how much of socialism is simply taking all the nice fluffy things that liberals say that they want to do (both at home and abroad) but then actually, in good faith, doing them?

When that day comes – and I have to believe in my heart of hearts of that it will come – even as the world is better, it won't be perfect. There will still be forces that seek to do harm and commit grievous acts in the name of any number of causes. As long we exist as people, there will be those with the intent and access to the means to do harm that will be able to motivate some to do that harm in their name. To be blunt: there will still be "Israels", even if there is not still an Israel, and to that end: there will still be “Palestines” that they wish to subjugate and "cleanse" through violence; and when the opportunity presents itself, those who wish to commit another genocide will take their chance to do so.

When that day comes, it won't be enough to simple condemn those who are committing genocide or working towards it; it won't be enough to sanction them, embargo them, isolate them and turn them into a rogue state (if they aren't already). Likewise, it won't be enough to offer our profound apologies for our past inaction towards or active enabling of past genocides; it won't be enough to commit to various material ways to try and offer penance for our past sins towards those we wronged in the past, working tirelessly to repay a debt we will never be able to fully to repay. All of these things won't be enough (though to be absolutely crystal clear, we should do all of them anyway).

No matter what else we do in response to genocide, it won't be enough in the face of a new one emerging, unless we take actual, direct action to stop it – preferably in its infancy; and as has already been established, the only way to do that will be by force of arms, on the battlefield. If we are not prepared to do that, we will quite simply fall into the same "say one thing, do nothing" patterns of behavior that have been the norm for decades. Despite coming out of World War II and the aftermath of the Holocaust with a proclamation of "Never Again", the geopolitical competition of the Cold War provided cover to an assortment of mass-murder campaigns that we now only retroactively and belatedly recognize as genocides. When these became impossible to ignore post-Cold War in places like Bosnia and Rwanda, the developed world doubled down on "Never Again" with the "Responsibility to Protect" - but functionally very little changed. While in some rare instances, great powers and developed nations may do the right thing and intervene to stop slaughter of civilians, the reality is that what gets to be called a genocide and require action has depended on how politically convenient (or not) it is for those with the power to take action. If we do not take actual steps to break with this broken and heartless system when we are in a position o do so, we will become everything we have ever hated. We have to go further than a "Responsibility to Protect"; it must become a "Duty to Protect," one that is impossible for us to ignore or shirk no matter what the circumstances.

This need to be able to actually stop genocide by force reinforces the need for the democratic socialist project to be serious about actually achieving and maintaining power and accountability. Protesting (and even posting) is admirable and indeed necessary, but in the long term we still have to be serious about actually engaging successfully in politics and eventually being in a position to make and enact policy that is in keeping with our ideology and its core ethical and moral beliefs. We have to eventually be in a position where when the time comes, we have the means at our disposal – military and otherwise – to ensure "Never Again" is no longer a sad and infuriating punchline in history that is only selectively applied (if at all), but has meaning; "Never Again" won't ever mean anything, unless it comes from the barrel of the rifle and we are in a position where we have the will and ability to order a person carrying that rifle into combat to do so. Likewise, “Never Again” won’t mean anything if we don’t take such action in a way consistent with the ethical, moral, and legal principles we claim to be upholding, working actively to prevent another genocide in response to a genocide.

Time and time and time again, whether its in these essays, or on social media, or just in conversation, I talk about how I resist doomerism and strongly believe that we can, must, and will make things better both in this country and in the world. There are many reasons for that. One small, but not insignificant reason for it, is admittedly: cope; it helps me from falling into total dysfunctional despair in the here and now when I feel powerless. But the biggest and most positive reason I maintain hope that we can make things better, is simply because we're all worth it. We as people, all of us – ourselves and our friends and families and more – have value and worth and are worth fighting for. But that comes with the understanding that sometimes that operative word of "fight" will need to be literal and not just figurative. When it comes to preventing and stopping genocide, the literal interpretation will be essential if we are to be true to everything we claim to believe.

It is with that, I leave you once again. I hope with everything going on at home and abroad that you all find your own ways of fighting through the morass of despair and hopelessness and fighting on in the good fight. Until next time, keep your chin up and stay safe. Photo credit: Mikhail Evstafiev

[swampgallows]

.

complaining here because i dont want to burden my friends but still want to collect validation in the form of little pixel hearts

my moms mental state has gotten so much worse and as a result her hoarding is becoming even worse and even more impossible to tolerate. i have tried to have more sympathy about it and to help her with it, sitting with her while she sorts "a box a day" or even just "one thing a day". ive gently recommended she get a new therapist but all she did was change her horse on the SSRI carousel and start smoking weed. i've linked her articles and books and videos, and when she doesnt look at any of them i try to relay to her in conversation what i learned from them when she bemoans "why am i like this?". none of it matters. she just complains that it's "too overwhelming" and she "can't help it" even though she refuses any help at all.

i know it is a mental disorder. i know it is overwhelming. i know it causes her physical pain to get rid of things and at the same time cripples her with guilt to keep it all. but as of right now all we're trying to get her to do is just rearrange the things so that they aren't turning our house into a fucking obstacle course, and she pushes back on that too. like she doesn't want to even organize the piles AS THEY ARE and condense them because she'd rather be "actually throwing things away and putting things away like a human being!"—the thing that she very specifically CANNOT do.

and if we consolidate it on our own? hooooly christ. she goes on a fucking rampage, slamming doors, screaming/sobbing, throwing shit (her shit. it's all her shit). because it's HER stuff and WE touched it and she feels guilty about all her stuff. she STILL talks about when my sister tidied the spice cabinet, convinced that "she threw everything away!" and that was years ago. (my sister is a different kind of insane and probably DID throw a bunch of shit away, but either way all it did was give my mom ammunition for the rest of her life to never do anything.)

this is long enough already so all i can say is that im disappointed in myself for losing more of my tolerance and sympathy. like at this point the only reason i care is because i have to fucking live here since i havent been able to stay employed or move out yet and my mental health is also incredibly bad. but also my mom's becoming much more intolerant and hateful as a human being, which makes me less inclined to keep trying. like she deliberately brings up incendiary topics (usually politics), whips herself up into a cyclone of hatred (every '-ism' you can think of) while preemptively apologizing for things that she thinks that we think about the politics that she "doesn't like talking about" despite blatantly shifting the conversation to bring them up, then devolves into histrionic crying or yelling at us for something she has imagined. this is almost every day. i know she's my mom so im trying but christ alive

[checkoutmybookshelf]

We Haven't Technically Come Full Circle Yet, But This Is Where You Know We're Going To

Ok, so even for the most die hard Artemis Fowl fans, this tends to be the book where they say the story and/or the worldbuilding goes off the rails. I am not that Artemis Fowl fan, and it wasn't until the relisten (my hardcovers are in Dad's Basement in Alaska, so lately I've been audiobooking this series) that I really understood why I wasn't as thrown by the seemingly sudden shift as everyone else was. And it's a subtle cue, but it's one that I think actually works. So let's talk Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony.

*SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS*

The first Artemis Fowl book begins with Artemis and Butler sweating half to death in Ho Chi Minh City trying to buy a lead to a Fairy. It's an opening that tells us we are going to deal with heists, kidnapping, and Artemis being very much the bad guy. It gives us the genre we are going to be working in, and that's basically crime fiction, with Artemis learning not to be a complete dickhead as the character arc. We get that and it basically finishes out with The Opal Deception.

The beginning of The Lost Colony mirrors the beginning of that first book. It starts with Artemis and Butler sweating half to death on a sidewalk in Barcelona waiting for a demon to materialize. We as readers are back to--to borrow a phrase from Robert Jordan--if not THE beginning, A beginning. This is where the book tells you that we are revamping the series, and there are even clues that this will be more of a fairy tale than a crime novel. And that there will be a metric fraggle rock ton of time travel, which holds true for all the rest of the Artemis Fowl novels. Time in general is a key theme in the later books, as Artemis himself tells us when he responds to Butler's query about whether the demon is beaming down from space with "Not space, old friend, [...] Time."

We also get the most hilarious self-actualized Artemis-ism on his own puberty in this chapter:

"It's this blasted puberty, Butler. Every time I see a pretty girl, I waste valuable mind space thinking about her. The girl at that restaurant, for instance. I've glanced in her direction a dozen times in the past few minutes."

And aside from being hilarious, this also cues us into the fact that The Lost Colony is a new beginning for Artemis and the series. Our boy finally hit puberty, and he is not the same cold, focused, calculating little asshole we remember from book 1. Everything about this chapter screams "Hey, remember the first book? This ain't that." It cues the reader that this will be something different, something unexpected. I kind of love this symmetrical asymmetry approach to revamping the series.

We also get the fun of watching two geniuses mastermind against each other while learning how to puberty, and honestly I love that Minerva Paradizo exists. She is a nice little nod to the fact that Artemis is really going to be TORN between the human and fairy worlds. As I believe Philippa Boynes said of the end of Return of the King, if you want to make Frodo going with Sam have weight, you have to give him the other choice. And Eoin Colfer is setting Artemis up to HAVE the choice.

As far as our demons and wrlocks go, mostly what I have to say is that No. 1 is a delightful little cinnamon roll and I love him and I want to scritch his little demon horns.

Now. The other massive thing we need to talk about here is the climax of the book, because Artemis high-key just...time travels. And steals magic. But mostly MOTHERFUCKING TIME TRAVELS. And saves Holly's life with math. But again, TIME TRAVELS. At the end of this book, Artemis is yeeted three years into the future, so he is a 14-year-old body with a 25-year-old brain in a temporal location where he is supposed to be 17. It's peak wibbly wobbly timey wimey ball of stuff. Artemis also has one of Holly's eyes and a little spark of magic. Our boy is fully in fairy tale territory here, and this book was structured really brilliantly to transition the readers from middle grade crime fiction to borderline YA fairy tales. And honestly, if you're willing to let criminal mastermind Artemis go and grow with him (or just consider the series as having two distinct halves, as I do), then I don't actually think the series falls apart in the latter half.

Lots of Artemis Fowl fans might disagree with me on this assessment, and that's fine. You can love on the first 3-4 books and just pretend the second half of the series doesn't exist. But I really love the change, and from a purely structural, writer perspective, Eoin Colfer pulled off an IMPRESSIVE AS HELL shift.

[llyncooljones]

I posted 1,396 times in 2022

That's 470 more posts than 2021!

53 posts created (4%)

1,343 posts reblogged (96%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@ambpersand

@charincharge

@slightlyrebelliouswriter23

@morganofthewildfire

@captain-jackson

I tagged 332 of my posts in 2022

#the rookie - 73 posts

#tim bradford - 73 posts

#chenford - 73 posts

#lucy chen - 71 posts

#llyncooljones' writing - 42 posts

#aelin galathynius - 37 posts

#rowan whitethorn - 37 posts

#my writing - 31 posts

#tog - 30 posts

#my fic - 29 posts

Longest Tag: 131 characters

#in ww1984 i was like fuck saving the world you got ur mans girl live with him on a secret island and say fuck the rest of the world

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

that fourth firework's explosion - elucien.

ao3|| masterlist || elucien masterlist || wishing you a very smutty holiday masterlist

word count: 9845

trigger warnings: language, smutty, smutty goodness.

taglist: in all my benevolence, i've decided to tag creators of elucien content in this one... hope you don't mind. @moononastring, @moodymelanist, @helion-ism, @live-the-fangirl-life, @writtenonreceipts.

their bedroom, six in the morning.

They hadn’t set their alarms last night.

That was lie, her husband absolutely had. He was ridiculous about it.

It was set up automatically on his phone, but every night he would reset it. Double, triple, quadruple check it. He really hated to be late.

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47 notes - Posted July 5, 2022

#4

peace in the noise - rowaelin month day fourteen.

ao3 || masterlist || rowaelin month ‘22 masterlist 

prompt: CANON WEEK: what if... nothing bad ever happened, and they met organically. pain-free, just vibes set in the 'canon' universe.

word count: 1229

trigger warnings: language, alcohol.

tag list: @rowaelinscourt  @live-the-fangirl-life @rowaelinismyotp   @fireheartwhitethorn4ever  @elentiyawhitethorn  @rowanaelinn  @autumnbabylon  @leiawritesstories  @backtobl4ck

a bar in varese, the evening.

Aelin was turning thirty.

Three, zero.

It was pretty fucking insignificant, people she knew were turning nine-hundred and thirty this year. But, having been brought with the knowledge that she might not settle, that she might not live past eighty-five, had made her more appreciative of her years.

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59 notes - Posted September 25, 2022

#3

drag me out to sea, set me free - throne of glass anniversary day six.

ao3 || masterlist || rowaelin masterlist || throne of glass anniversary masterlist

word count: 4057

trigger warnings: language, mentions of her trauma, smutty smutty goodness.

tag list: @live-the-fangirl-life  @rowaelinismyotp  @rowanaelin  @fireheartwhitethorn4ever @themoonthestarsthesuriel  @autumnbabylon @rowaelinscourt

skull’s bay, their room, after elena’s visit.

“They dispersed then, Aelin and Rowan slipping off to their own room.”

Fire pounded through Aelin’s veins at such speed, with such power, she deemed it a miracle of her newfound heritage that she had not yet exploded into shreds of herself.

In her mind, scrambled as it was after the night’s amorous events and Elena’s decidedly annoying visit, she knew her intactness was to be dedicated to the strong fae warrior a little to the side, a little behind her.

She knew it was the strength he lent to her so easily, that kept her from screaming and shouting. She knew it was the solid mass of him at her back that kept her from collapsing onto her weak knees. She knew it was the feel of him at her neck that kept her from crying an endless river of tears.

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59 notes - Posted August 6, 2022

#2

no fucking in the office - rowaelin month day eleven.

ao3 || masterlist || rowaelin month ‘22 masterlist 

prompt: work rivals au

word count: 6633

trigger warnings: language, smut, nsfw, incredibly smutty. mentions of drugs and alcohol

tag list: @rowaelinscourt  @live-the-fangirl-life  @rowaelinismyotp  @rowanaelin  @fireheartwhitethorn4ever  @elentiyawhitethorn  @autumnbabylon  @leiawritesstories  @backtobl4ck

the office, early morning.

Glaring at Rowan Whitehorn was Aelin’s favourite thing to do. Something about narrowing her eyes, wrinkling her nose that little bit, and channelling all the hate and anger and dislike and distrust and (just in general) horrible feelings his way, satisfied a deep and yawning hunger inside of her.

So, she did.

Simple as.

See the full post

66 notes - Posted September 23, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

tell me how you really feel - elorcan.

ao3 || masterlist || elorcan masterlist

word count: 3240

trigger warnings: language, innuendo, slight sexual content.

tag list: @live-the-fangirl-life @rowaelinismyotp @rowanaelin @fireheartwhitethorn4ever @themoonthestarsthesuriel @autumnbabylon @letstakethedawn

her apartment, early hours of the morning.

Elide knows she shouldn’t have done it. She isn’t an idiot. She isn’t slow, nor is she stupid. She’s got a little dose of anxiety but that certainly isn’t enough to prompt her to screw up on such a massive scale.

It all started early one Saturday morning. And when she says early, she means at four in the morning in the college library whilst they are both starving themselves of sleep revising for exams that are in little more than seventy-two hours.

one year and two months ago, the library, four in the morning.

The words are blurring on the page, and she really isn’t sure whether the words she’s reading are about early childhood brain development, or whether they’re about the risk the lack of parental security poses for children in the foster care system.

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84 notes - Posted June 25, 2022

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[elegantcode]

everything in my life genuinely fucking sucks to the point where it feels like its not even worth trying anymore. i am constantly living in a state of spiral and stress and depression and anxiety. the world is falling apart. i am not well. i can't escape anywhere because my brain won't allow me to make it work anymore.

the safe spaces i've curated over the years are deteriorating before my very eyes. fandom sucks now and is all people accusing each other of this ism or that ism or getting angry that someone ships something different than you. i can barely write anymore, i can't rp like i used to. all my friends are probably going through the same thing because they don't write either while constantly telling me that they want to

i try to explain myself all the time to everyone and it feels like im just yelling inside of a soundproof see-through case. they can see im upset and that i'm distraught and not doing well, but they're not actually listening to the words i'm saying because i've repeated them over and over again and they never acknowledge it

i can't eat the food i want to eat because itll make me sick. i'm afraid of eating new things, and eating the fruits and vegetables that will help me be healthy. i take a breath wrong and i'm falling into a miserable anxiety attack that lasts for weeks on end and sometimes builds up to massive panic attacks. my entire body hurts and aches in ways it never did before and i'm constantly afraid i'm actually dying or that i'll die before i truly am able to leave this hellhole and heal from all the mental damage that's been caused to me through years and years of emotional and physical abuse

i can't take medication, i can't self medicate. i don't have money

i'm overstimulated constantly and trying to find the joy in anything lately is just has no fucking point. whats the point of trying to play a video game if it just overheats my room and my grandpa turns on the heat and screams at me

whats the point of trying to write, if i can't actually write with people or if people won't care about what i write? whats the point of reading or watching tv or movies if everytime i try to talk about it and be excited about something no one listens to me or dismisses me or just straight up ignores what im talking about

i feel fucking invisible and alone and im so tired of being depressed and anxious because its like theres no end in sight and its only going to get worse from here

i've spent every single night of the last week sobbing myself to sleep and just waiting for the next day and hoping itll be better but it never is

its always fucking worse

[moontouchd]

tag drop!

* HEY THERE DEMONS! IT’S ME; YA BOI      「OOC」

* CALL TO THE SEA QUEEN      「MEMES」

* COME GET Y'ALL JUICE      「STARTER CALL」

* IT’S LIKE CHRISTMAS!      「MEME CALL」

* I'VE BEEN SCREAMING FOR YEARS   「ISMS」

* HISTORY DOES STRANGE THINGS TO DEAD WOMEN     「IC」

* IT’S NOT MY FAULT I HAVE MY FATHER’S EYES     「MIRROR」

* YOU ARE A LITTLE TRAGEDY; AREN’T YOU?   「STUDY」

* YOU KEEP FORGETTING I’M AN ENTIRE PERSON AND NOT SOME VAGUE CONCEPT YOU FUCKING DREAMT      「HC」  

[broken-wings-and-whumpy-things]

Extremely Late Whumpvent Calendar - Day 4

December 12, 1998.

Dates were harder to keep track of with every century. Days blurred by like blinks, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t enjoy it. These last few decades were particularly fun- bright purple hair didn’t draw as much attention since the 70s, when things really started getting crazy. 80s, the neon clothes started, and Erin embraced the chance with a flair. The 90s have been even more fun- the music was top-notch, technology was skyrocketing, and they got to watch it all. Until around the 60s, they’d been hanging around the fringes of society- humans were terrifying in the last few centuries- but they’d decided to try and blend in again. Sort of. As much as you can blend in when you keep telling stories from hundreds of years ago, forgetting most people don’t live that long.

No matter. They’d been fired from their ‘job’ a few days ago, for ‘breach of dress code’ and ‘unprofessional-ism in the workplace’. Normally that wouldn’t matter, but when you’re an immortal who honestly doesn’t give half a shit about human dress codes trying not to look like an immortal, you kinda need a source of currency. So, they walked into the mall, donning glowstick bracelets, sticker-covered jeans, and a neon windbreaker, ready to show up at Hot Topic and fill out an application.

They felt invincible.

As they skipped into the store, the lights brightened and the speakers stopped crackling with their presence. A strangely normal-looking employee stood by the register, mumbling a greeting as they entered. Erin flicked their gaze over his plain, average-styled brown hair, quiet checked shirt, and gold-edged suspenders.

"This is Hot Topic, right?" they asked, genuinely confused for a brief moment. They looked at the rows of band tees on the walls, this was the right place. The man said nothing. "I'm here to apply for a job. Where would I do that?"

Suddenly, the man looked up with raised eyebrows. "Actually, I can help you with that. Come to the back and we can talk," he said, stepping out of the cashier counter and gesturing for them to follow. They did, looking around the store with a grin as they made their way to the employee door.

The man lead them past the stock room, through what seemed to be a tech room, and through another door to a less-decorated hall, lined with pipes. The relatively dim lights buzzed a little louder and shined a little brighter as they walked under them. "My office is down here," he explained, occasionally looking back at them. "I've got the application forms back there for you to fill out." They looked around the hall with wonder, reading the labels on the pipes and doors. Finally, he swung open a door, and motioned for Erin to go through. Once they did, he gently shut it. "Here, go ahead and sit down. I'll get the forms, they're just back here," he said, motioning towards a chair and starting to rifle through a cabinet behind them.

The second they turned their head away, the man's demeanor changed. Instead of paper, he lifted a spare bit of pipe from the drawer. It was time to get this over with. After a few moments of examining the desk, they turned to say something to the employee- and their skull was met with metal.

They shrieked and grabbed the wound. Pink blood slicked their fingers, dripping down their face and their hand and their hair. "What the FUCK!" they screamed, staggering to their feet. They slammed the chair back, with sparks beginning to crackle from their hands. They whirled towards the door and stumbled towards it, but another blow of the pipe caught the back of their knees. They snapped around, and caught the next strike, electricity flowing through the pipe and into the man's hands. Now it was his time to scream, and drop the weapon. Erin scrambled up, reaching towards the door- but the human had recovered. This time, pain ripped through their skull, followed by the black veil of unconsciousness.

The black began to fade away, eventually. As awareness returned to their body and mind, as the tingling feeling of numbness started to ebb, they found the floor rough and cold, the air stale and dusty. What... the fuck? They groaned as they pulled themself to their knees, trying to stand up- and hit their head on the way. They fell back downwards, and finally opened their eyes.

They instantly regretted it. Their heart rate spiked, eyes widening and suddenly, they were very, very awake. Bars surrounded them, with only a few feet of clearance on every side, and a top barely high enough for them to sit up. Somebody had put them in a cage. In a dusty, grey room, with electricity buzzing around them and wires crossed around the ground.

Anger boiled inside them. There was no fucking way. They felt their blood begin to charge, and the gripped the bars of the cage so hard they felt like they could bend them. Then, they sent a powerful shock surging through the container, hoping to melt it, or shatter it, or something. They felt the current reroute into themselves, but it didn't hurt. Still, there was no response from the metal. They growled in frustration, and let themself fall back against the bars. Whoever did this, was going to die.

[cody-baxter-isms]

undefined

I wrote the Lyrics and @firebluevixen sung the song! You've been a very great friend to us @alphabeowolf-ism / @fallentitan88 ! I hope to continue to be your friend for many years!

Lyrics:

Look at this stuff

Isn't it neat?

Wouldn't you think my collection's complete?

Wouldn't you think I'm the grimm

The grimm who has ev'rything?

Look at this trove

Treasures untold

How many wonders can one ditch hold?

Lookin' around here you'd think

(Sure) she's got everything

I've got scythes and swords aplenty

I've got axes and maces galore

(You want guns?

I got twenty)

But who cares?

No big deal

I want more

I want to be where the people are

I want to see

want to see 'em screaming

running around on those

(Whad'ya call 'em?) oh - feet

lickin’ your fangs you don't get too far

a human form is required for hiding, disgusing

fighting in the

(What's that word again?) street

Up where they walk

Up where they run

Up where they train all day in Beacon

to hunt me

Wish I could be

Part of that world

What would I give

If I could live

Outta these badlands?

What would I pay

To spend a day

With that ass~?

Betcha in Vale

They do not try

to kill their daughters

Bright young children

Sick o' Grimming

against Huntsmen

I’m ready to know what the people know

Ask 'em my questions

And get some answers

What's a flamethrower and why does it

(What's the word?) burn?

When's it my turn?

Wouldn't I love

to explore behind those walls?

Out of the woods

Wish I could be

Part of that world

[sashibunbun]

God, please just go into Homestuck-ism. As someone who did not read the comic, it’s just weird that it is responsible for ~99% of fandom problems these days.

So before I go in, I liked Homestuck up until Act 6(to put into context, that's really far into it, it's the last part).

So, Homestuckism can be split up into about 5 parts all bound up in people got into Homestuck as their first big fandom so they think it's how every fandom should be. The big problems come in the forms of everything is canon (yes even fanon, headcanons, and wild ass speculation), the problem of pink christmas trees (the trope is incredibly prevalent in faux retro things, and can lead to massive problems), what I started calling "Deus Ex" predicted 9/11 (partly related considering how people who didn't skip to the Trolls would interpret the GameBro mockery), frankly just how reachable Hussie was and how much they really didn't listen to Hussie when it wasn't somethingthey liked. While I wouldn't place it at ~99% (I'd go ~75%), those are some of the big problems I've noticed that just scream, Homestuck was the first fandom I really got invested in.

They just don't get that no, everything isn't canon outside of how Hussie actualy utilized it in the context of MSPA entirely, it's not all that normal that your fan troll in a forum RP or your favorite fanfic isn't canon, nor is popular fanon, and mass guessing isn't even close since it's mostly tossing shit at the wall. While it wasn't 100% the fault of Homestuck (it was a massive problem in the MLP fandom) this statement from Hussie that would have been innocuous for say somebody who was a Trekkie, or Warsie, or hell even DC or Marvel fan before ever touching Homestuck, was held onto by them when they went elsewhere later on.

Pink Christmas Trees. How the fuck do I explain this, Homestuck for about 75% of its existence was filled with shit people who read Webcomics in the Webring and Keenspot days, and who were teens and early 20-somethings in the 90s and were definitively geeky would get. It's the GameBro problem (it's mocking how GamePro was in the 90s), the Hussie is so visionary in the whole scratch idea (mocking the Keeenspot webcomic problem of rebooting a comic witht he same characters but new situation because you got bored), hell SBaHJ and various other things, like why John has a PDF, why it was Dirk instead of Dave who thought Rainbow Dash was 20% Cooler, or why Gamzee is a goddamn Juggalo, or not getting that the Trolls are not SUPPOSED to be likable and so on. The aren't willing to even look stuff up, because none of the references are incredibly important to understanding the story or are lost to the ether because well, you can't see early Dresden Kodak, or Altermeta. Which brings up problems later like the whole Frisk is non-binary thing (they have no clue what an AFGNCAAP is), trying to put media into -current year- ideas (you'll see below), and frankly all the problems of having to split fandoms up into fans of the older groups and the newer (see Voltron-VLD or the two She-rahs even I fell into this problem with the latter, but grew to like the new one).

While Deus Ex predicted 9/11 isn't exactly the faut of Homestuck (it's more blamed on YouTube Listicles where I got the name from), there's a lot of things that when you don't have the Doylean and Pseudo-Doylean(not exactly Doylean, but may have influenced something) context look like it predicted something long after it started. Like the GameBro thing above, I've seen people actually say it predicted GamerGate (by making the reviewer of SBURB look like your average lazy game reviewer and all the "this is an ad" bluntness), or certain other things like the iShades Dave makes predicting Google Glass, and various other points you could say predicted things, but were either mocking something that would have been fresh in the target audience's memory (GameBro and how Game Mags are super pay for 8/10), or were just Hussie fucking around. It's part misguided hindsight, part trying to put it in current ideas. The way I explain it is using what I've called it. The first Deus Ex game takes place in NYC and was made between late '95 and early '97 so the Twin Towers have to be there, they're Iconic to the NYC skyline, but whoops we can't render them (that's the Doylean) so (Watsonian) what if we had terrorists blow them up like (pseudo-Doylean) what happened.in 1993, and hey look at the April 20th, 1996 news, we can just make the group an anti-government militia. Looking in context, it's less Deus Ex predicted 9/11 and more Deus Ex used things the players would have gotten as contemporary events. It's just a frustration that it seems Homestuck to the younger end of the audience just confirmed and set up.

Hussie was also likely the first time they could get into contact with a creator, and like I mean almost in a parasocial way. It's not exactly their fault, but, they certainly are the reason we have Niel Gaiman having to say don't send me you "Good Omens" fanfic, or hell all the goddamn problems we've had with creators being harassed all the fuck over because unlike their precious Hussie, said creators aren't exactly into multiversal, Leavesque, hits every type of conflict including Man against The Work, postmodernist writing and won't be including their fanon/headcanon/ship/AU/ideas into the canon, because Hussie for 99% of their work, never had to worry about being sued for using it, because of the very nature of the work. But even Hussie isn't safe because of the last part,

I'll say this, I don't like Homestuck 2, and I get the feeling we weren't supposed to. Even though Hussie love what Homestuck brought them, being probably the most successful creator of a webcomic, that was 100% meant to be a webcomic, they wanted to move on. You can honestly tell, hell they spell it out way back at the beginning of Homestuck by making a snide remark about people who wanted Homestuck to be Problem Sleuth 2 that they want their shit to not have sequels because in general they're shit. But frankly, the fans wouldn't let them do whatever in peace and demanded a Homestuck 2, and frankly I almost like to call how much of a disater it is, a massive told-you so. But why did the fans clamour for it, because any time Hussie said something that the fans didn't like, they either ignored it, or used the above to pressure for change. Quite frankly the problem of parasocial relationships with the creators in fandom tend to track way back towards Hussie at some point.either directly, or people who came after who had the same way too friendly with their fans atitude, because hey it worked in that fandom (remember Hussie, just based on the popularity of homestuck was able to kickstart a game with almost $2.5 Million dollars, and it was big news) and it spread from there. I mean yes you probably would have had the problem because of the rise of Twitter, but it would have likely turned out less like it is now, and more like how our Tumblr celebrities like Neil, and a couple others who stuck around long after their sponsored AMAs, where it's more like a con panel than talking with you bud who just happens to be the creator of this thing you love.

All in all Homestuckism might not be as bad as the Ron-Draco flip, or Reality-ism, and is really a collection of things that fandom accidentally got because of not getting what the work was. it's incredibly, incredibly frustrating especiall when actually discussing a work that was made after Homestuck had hit its height, because something about it pops up and you can tell they just don't get it because, "that's not how it was with Homestuck".