#Complete Oil Analysis

[fanservices123]

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[malewifesband]

EDIT: if this post has made you think about whether or not you are autistic, im really glad! i hope you get some better understanding of yourself and are able to find community and support

however before you go and tell a therapist and seek an official diagnosis please read this thread and consider the points made therein:

autism is highly stigmatized. be fully informed about what you gain and what you lose from having an official diagnosis before seeking one.

EDIT OVER ENJOY THE POST

people do correctly identify that laios is autistic fairly often but a lot of the reasoning begins and ends with his special interest and social difficulties, but honestly it goes far deeper into the build of his character than just those two things

his pain tolerance is wildly inconsistent, unable to tolerate a drop of hot oil (or any heat) but able to shrug off both his leg being bitten off and it being reattached

hes sensory seeking in the extreme. he rubs the bat bones against his face, pets and fluffs the shapeshifter tail.

his desire to eat monsters comes from three very autistic places. 1) the rules for why monsters are not okay to eat but animals are are arbitrary to him so he cannot follow them easily: he cannot understand the 'feelings' argument others make. 2) this too is a sensory seeking behavior. he wants to experience these new things, new flavors and new textures. 3) it completes his knowledge of the monster in question to also have data on its edibility. because he cannot draw that arbitrary line around all monsters, he wants to evaluate them case-by-case and see if real patterns emerge. butchering and eating the monsters improves his knowledge of them greatly and highlights their importance in their ecosystem, as well as making him a part of that same ecosystem

he cannot emote the way others expect him to. he compartmentalizes his feelings (to an unhealthy degree) because he needs a pragmatic solution. so as long as there is a problem to solve, that matters far more than evaluating his emotions and allowing himself to experience them. while this is also a coping mechanism for ptsd, it is a trait found in many autistic people regardless of trauma, as we have trouble sorting the feelings we have and often need time to think about what we feel, so it becomes easier to simply not do it and pretend we dont need to. laios emotions certainly affect him, with or without his processing them, but others do not see what they expect to see and thus dismiss that he is feeling what they would feel

he is incredibly gifted with pattern recognition, observation, and analysis within realms he understands. to understand subjects that dont come easily to him, he must filter them through his established schema (his special interest--this is why they are so special! they help us sort the world). when he isnt sure about the social cues and details hes observed in the shapeshifter arc, he filters it through the lens he understands best: monsters. he was making correct observations about his friends all along, but he could not be confident in that the way he was about their behavior when it came to his interest (chilchucks caution, senshis passions, and marcilles carelessness)

[powdermelonkeg]

Trying to figure out TP Link's diet based on his environment.

Livestock-wise, we've got cuccos and goats. That means

Eggs

Milk

Butter

Cheese

Potentially meat, but I don't think they get eaten unless they're old. Too valuable otherwise | EDIT: Oh yeah you need to breed goats every couple years to get milk. Add in cabrito veal!

And we know for a fact that Ordon Goat Cheese specifically is a thing. Stamped wheel and everything.

There's also fish

And bees/hornets(? It's called bee larva, but the enemy is a Hylian Hornet)

Useful for bait, but Link can eat them.

Did some more research, and apparently in Japan they eat wasp larvae? Specifically in Kushihara. So I'm counting it.

Then plants-wise we have pumpkins

And...corn. Somehow. I've never seen corn growing, but Link has some hanging in his house, so it exists.

I'm choosing to believe it comes from these plants that grow in patches around Ordon.

That gives us a lot. We've got

Cornstarch

Cornmeal

Corn oil

Corn shoots

Pumpkin seeds

Pumpkin seed oil

Pumpkin flour

Pumpkin blossoms

No source of sugar, but depending on how the pumpkins in Ordon taste, they could be naturally sweet. Like pie pumpkins. Also corn syrup is a thing if it's a sweet corn. So corn syrup needs cream of tartar which comes from grapes and apples and such. It's a byproduct of wine. No corn syrup.

Edit: Malt sugar, though!

Now for hypothetical foods.

Ordon is surrounded by pine trees, so that adds pine needle tea and pine nuts to the mix. I was a little worried about species, but apparently there are a lot of pine trees that make edible seeds, so on the list it goes.

Then there are frogs near Rusl and Uli's house, wild songbirds on cliffs, and a squirrel that talks to Link directly, so those are huntable sources of meat.

Is horse grass a cattail? Maybe? Initially, I thought it was—the ends look like cattail seedpuffs, but the leaves are completely different.

I want to treat them like cattails. Cattails that also are probably the main food source for Epona and the goats.

If we do that, that means, on top of all the other uses cattails have like stuffing and tinder and antiseptic, we get

Roots

Shoots

Ground seeds

Can't find a good match for hawk grass though. Concluding that that's not edible. Equivalent exchange and all.

Side note, how do you think horse grass spreads? It's almost always in groups of two or more plants, so that suggests rhizomes, but the image of Link picking one up to blow and stuffing flying out the end of the horseshoe is hilarious to me.

Up next, there are ferns, primarily near trees. After very careful and way-too-deep analysis of a pixelated fern's leaves, I think it's bracken fern.

Which is mildly poisonous.

And also edible.

On the list it goes!

Then finally, Sera has some kind of herb hanging in her shop.

I don't know what it is. I'm calling it Ordon Spice. Congratulations, Ordon Pumpkin Spice is now a thing.

[probablyasocialecologist]

If Plan Dalet was a settler-colonial script for the destruction of Palestine from 1948 onwards, it was preceded by – and had its conditions of existence in – the imperialist vision of an entity imposed on the land of Palestine for the protection of the interests of the core: access to raw materials and markets, prevention of subversive projects, buffer zones and counterweights against more distant rivals. In 1840, it was cotton, Muhammed Ali and Tsarist Russia. 127 years later, when the occupation was completed, it was petroleum, third world liberation and the Soviet Union. We are dealing here with an exceedingly deep structure, not an event or two; a ratcheting up and escalation across two centuries, a worsening and intensification of patterns first developed in the early nineteenth – also, not coincidentally, the temporal form of global warming itself. I have pointed very quickly and superficially to three further pivotal moments of articulation. In 1917 and after, the British occupation of Palestine was part of the transformation of the Middle East into a foundation for fossil capital, by dint of its oil resources. In 1947 and after, Western support for the new Zionist state was informed by the consummation of that order; in 1967 and after, by its defence. The steps along the way to the destruction of Palestine were simultaneously steps along the way to that of the Earth.

[...]

The destruction of Gaza is executed by tanks and fighter jets pouring out their projectiles over the land: the Merkavas and the F-16s sending their hellfire over the Palestinians, the rockets and bombs that turn everything into rubble – but only after the explosive force of fossil fuel combustion has put them on the right trajectory. All these military vehicles run on petroleum. So do the supply flights from the US, the Boeings that ferry the missiles over the permanent airbridge. An early, provisional, conservative analysis found that emissions caused during the first 60 days of the war equalled annual emissions of between 20 and 33 low-emitting countries: a sudden spike, a plume of CO2 rising over the debris of Gaza. If I repeat the point here, it is because the cycle is self-repeating, only growing in scale and size: Western forces pulverise the living quarters of Palestine by mobilising the boundless capacity for destruction only fossil fuels can give.

[txttletale]

What are your criticisms of Chavismo and Maduro just out of curiosity?

now i'd like to preface this with a disclaimer that any opposition ghoul would do nothing but sell the country out to the USA and UK every which way in a heartbeat--maduro is better than any alternative, whether that's guaidó or whichever neoliberal puppet they prop up to replace him.

anyway, there were two key problems with chavismo. firstly, it's fundamentally a national-bourgeois led social democratic movement. obviously in an imperialized country like venezuela this made it profoundly progressive, and the achievments of the bolivarian revolution were incredible--chávez cut malnutrition in half, cut unemployment in half, sent millions of children to school and gave millions of elderly people pensions. however, this project of wealth distribution ultimately had to accomodate the national bourgeoisie. which of course on one hand you can argue was completely necessary, but on the other hand allowed the parasitic classes to entrench themselves firmly within elements of the state apparatus and made chavismo as a project entirely incapable of confronting the national bourgeoisie or corruption.

these of course are the realities of 'democratic socialism', of sweeping a socialist into office in a bourgeoise democracy. through some extremely clever political structures, such as the new constitution, communes, and bolicarian circles--he was able to move much more radically than most in his position. but ultimately, he could not escape the fundamental limits of the source and constraints of his power.

the second is that--and this is a very tawdry and obvious piece of analysis--while it is of course admirable and correct that he seized the nation's oil wealth and enriched the country with it--the way he did it was obviously shortsighted. without a sovereign wealth fund, worker's democratic control of the oil industry, or a solid and far-ranging investment plan, he laid the groundwork for some of the current crisis on the assumption that oil prices would stay high forever.

maduro inherited these faults and added far more of his own. during the crisis that began in earnest in 2016, the other shoe dropped wrt oil prices at the same time as the US tightened their murderous sanctions regime. faced with economic crisis, maduro has broadly chosen to move from chávez' strategy of accomodation with the national bourgeoisie to a full on alliance. social programs have been slashed, pensions cut, wages have plummeted, and worst of all, maduro has sold off countless state enterprises in the hope that oft-prayed to benevolent deity, "foreign capital" would miraculously heal the economy. in the course of this he made an enemy of many early chavistas, as well as the leftmost wing of chávez' coalition -- he has mobilized the full force of the bourgeois state against the country's communist party and other genuinely revolutionary movements, most gallingly the marxist-leninist movimiento tupamaro.

so, tldr: chavismo was genuinely radical compared to even your average third-world social democracy--however it remained fundamentally constrained in what it could accomplish by the lack of an actual proletarian state, was unable to rid itself of reliance on the national bourgeoisie for that same reason, and made some very avoidable mistakes in the handling of the nation's oil wealth--maduro inherited those flaws but has been much more accomodating to both national and international capitalists to the detriment of the people of venezuela.

[hollowed-theory-hall]

Secrets of the Darkest Art: How to Make a Horcrux

So I saw many theories regarding how to make a Horcrux, but none of them really made perfect sense to me, so I decided to give it a crack myself as part of my mission to understand Lord Voldemort/Tom Marvolo Riddle (Which I think I did, big post coming about that at some point, this is but another piece of that puzzle of a man)

So this is my reverse engineering of a ritual to create Horcruxes based on book evidence, my knowledge of real-world alchemy, real-world ancient Greek cults and rituals and linguistic analysis.

How to reverse engineering a dark magical ritual:

The first thing, is to define what we knew fore certain:

The name: "Horcrux"

The creator is an Ancient Greek wizard named Harpo the Foul.

A death is required in the making.

A Horcrux holds a piece of the casters soul that anchors them to life so they won't die.

I'll actually start with the third point.

How to split a soul?

Both Dumbledore and Slughorn mention a death being required to tear your soul to make a Horcrux, and that never really sat right with me. It magically doesn't make sense and even the canon examples we have for Horcrux murders make this statment iffy.

We have seven examples of murders used to create Horcruxs (thanks to one Tom Riddle being dramatic):

The Diary - Myrtle Warren - killed by a basilisk. Sure, Tom freed the Basilisk, but it hardly seemed targeted at Myrtle specifically and you can argue he didn't actually kill her (more a manslaughter by negligence). He didn't cast the spell, so how come this tore his soul?

The Ring - his father (Tom Riddle Sr) - Avada Kadevra.

The Cup - Hepzibah Smith - she was poisoned by her house elf. Sure, the elf was under the imperious, but it wasn't a first-degree murder, and like with the Basilisk I find it hard to consider this the same as casting a killing curse. Magically those are very different things.

The Locket - Muggle Tramp - Avada Kadevra

The Diadem - Albanian Peasant - Avada Kadevra

Harry Potter - himself - backfired Avada Kadevra

Nagini - Bertha Jorkins - Avada Kadevra

Now, I used the term "magically different" or "magically make sense" what do I mean by that?

Well, besides the fact I'm going to make a full post about how I see magical theory in the Harry Potter Wizarding World, I'll say it takes a lot after occult philosophies from Alchemy that are very old, Slughorn mentions as much in book 6 and there are a few other references to it. I'm just gonna cover the basics required for this theory.

In Alchemy, everything (people, animals, plants and rocks) are built of three base components:

The Salt - the body - the physical form.

The Sulfur - the soul - the self that holds the divine flame.

The Murcury - the spirit - the life essence that binds the salt and sulfer together.

Now, in Alchemy, the main study is in purifying and combining these different aspects of material. Let's look at a herb, for an example:

If we want to retrieve its salt, we'll dry the herb completely using fire to leave behind a fine light grey ash that represents only the physical form.

If we wanted its mercury we'd distill all liquids from it until we get a purified, clear liquid which in the case of plants would be alcohol (it's why alcohol is referred to as "spirit").

And if we wanted its soul, we would take the remains from the distillation and drying process which would be a kind of oil.

(it can get more complicated with different materials, but this isn't a post about Alchemy)

Now, back to Horcruxs.

So, if we would want to split a soul, Alchemecly, how do we go about it?

Well, we don't. Not really. See a soul can't really be split, as every part of it, every bit of that oil from our random herb represents the entire soul. It's why something like a Horcrux could theoretically work in giving a full life to the diary the way we see in Chamber of Secrets.

Additionally, to work with any material in Alchemy, you are required to purify it first. It means that to get a piece of soul to bind to a diary, you need a pure soul.

Killing someone else won't sever your own soul from the spirit and the body, it's not how this works. Killing someone severs their spirit and therefore splits their body, spirit, and soul. Besides, an Ancient Greek man, like Herpo was, would hardly consider murder as vile as we do today. It wouldn't even cross his mind that any murder (even an indirect one) could harm one's own soul.

No, the only way to "split" a soul is to first sever it from life, disconnecting the bond between soul and body. Essentially, the only way to promise you immortality is to kill yourself.

I know it sounds a little confusing, but, essentially, once the soul is severed from the spirit and body you can split it. Think of the herbal oil, once you have the oil, separate from the rest of the plant parts, you can combine it with new ingredients. You can only work on a specific aspect once you severed it from the other two and as what binds all three together is spirit — life — the only way to do it for a human soul — is death.

But really, how?

Well, here comes the second thing we know about making Horcruxs — that dear Herpo was Ancient Greek.

In Ancient Greece they had multiple different religious cults, some of which were Chthonic cults. Cults that dedicated themselves to death or ditties and heroes associated with death and more importantly — rebirth.

Many of these cults were dedicated to figures like Orpheous, Dyonysus, Persephone, characters in mythology who are known for going through the underworld — through death — and coming back out. These cults were very secretive and not much is known about their practices, but some is.

What is known is that they had rituals were they reenacted a death and then rebirth (usually drinking wine — a water if life, was the representation of rebirth).

This created a very clear idea in my head — to split a soul, you'll have to ritualisticlly, magically kill yourself, severe a peice of your soul and then revive yourself with a water of life — a potion.

This potion is never mentioned, but I believe it exists due to these Chthonic cult rituals and how they were structured. Not only that, but the Greek underworld did have a river known for being incredibly painful to drink, literally made of fire, but being able to bring the dead back - The Phlegethon River.

Note: Lethe River Water (the river in the Greek Underworld that makes the drinker forget) is a canon ingredient in a Forgetfulness Potion.

So what is the dead body for?

Well, congratulations, you killed yourself to retrieve a sliver of your soul and revived yourself so you won't stay dead. You found an item you can keep secure to tie that sliver of soul, too. Now, how would you bind then? After all, the only thing meant to bind a human soul to a body is a human spirit - a human life... you get where I'm going with this.

This is why Tom didn't have to be the one to do the deed. As long as he had a recently deceased corpse to harvest the life from to use to bind his newly split soul and the item of his choice.

It explains why nothing was missing from the bodies. Myrtle and the Riddles were investigated by the Ministry of Magic. One would assume the aurors would've noticed if any corpse was missing a hand due to the killer eating it (as other Horcrux theories suggest).

Not only was nothing missing from the body, the soul was intact. Myrtle became a ghost after death, a ghost is quite literally, just the soul, no body, no spirit.

So the only thing that was taken from Tom's victims was their life, quite literally at that.

Is that all? Can we make a Horcrux now?

Not really. See, when analyzing spells in Harry Potter is their name.

Avada Kadevra - is a reference to an Aramaic healing spell "Abracadabra" pronounced in Aramaic as: "Avra Kadebra" and meaning "I will create as commanded". Merged with the Latin word "cadaver" meaning "corpse" to create -> "I will create dead bodies as commanded"

Or Wingardium Laviosa - is a cross of the English word "wing", the Latin word "arduus" (meaning "high, tall, lofty, steep, proudly elevated"), or "arduum" (meaning "steep place, the steep" and the Latin word "levo" (meaning to "raise, lift up"). So together the spell means -> "lift high up".

So, it's pretty clear spells, their names and incantations are very self-explanatory. So a Horcrux should be no different.

I've seen some attempts at translating the name Horcrux. Unfortunately, these attempts treated the name as Latin, modern Greek, or Old English. Herpo, was Ancient Greek, though, so I went and translated a few possible meanings from Ancient Greek (Classical Greek and Homeric Greek are what I looked at):

ὅρκος (orkus, pronounced "hor-kus") - an oath, the object by which one swears, bound by oath (still used in modern Greek).

κρόκες (crukes, pronounced "cru-kes") - saffron-colored (blood red in Greek), crocus flower. The crocus flower symbolizes both death (the saffron that is the spice) and rebirth (the golden crocus which brings renewal and joy) because Demeter wears them when Persephone returns from the underworld in myth.

So what we have is a spell called "binding oath of death and rebirth" which all around sounds fitting.

There might also be a "made in blood" tucked at the end due to the association of κρόκες with the color of blood.

But what does it matter?

Well, somewhat. As now with this name, I expect the binding between the spirit from the victim, the split soul, and the item would be done in a sort of oath - an orkus.

The association with blood gives us another hint. Blood is the part of the human body most representative of life. Therefore, in Alchemy, your blood is your spirit. So it'll make sense that your own blood would be used in the binding process or more correctly in the process of turning another person's spirit into your own. Making the thread to bind the body (item) and the soul piece your own. As it also refers to just a red firey color, it can indicate the Phlagatton potion I hypothesize should be part of the ritual due to how Chthonic rituals usually went, as the Phlagaton river is made of fire.

So we have a general idea on how to make a Horcrux. You need an item of your choice to bind your soul to. You need a life (spirit) harvested from a human that you transformed into being your own using your blood. And you need a piece of your own soul, which you get by killing yourself and then reviving yourself. And you finish it off by binding it all together with an oath.

But how could you make one accidentally?

So, everyone knows Voldemort succeeded in somehow making a Horcrux accidentally, something a lot of theories I saw don't account for. Becouse whatever process you need to go to to make a Horcrux, Voldemort went through all of it the night he died the first time and marked Harry.

All the steps for my method of making a Horcrux were met that night.

The item in qustion is baby Harry, nothing interesting there.

The soul sliver was split the way it always is — through death. Voldemort dies, killed by his own killing curse and that is what splits his soul.

The life or spirit that then binds his soul to Harry isn't Lily's spirit or James'; it's his own spirit that acts as a binder between Harry and Voldemort’s split soul. Because the spirit was already his, there was no need to transform it by blood.

Step-by-step guide to making Horcruxes:

I'm not going to actually give the full step-by-step least a budging dark lord is looking for this information. I do have notes about exact incantations and even the full recipe and instructions for the Phlagaton potion I'm going to mention. These instructions won't be here since they are more in the realm of speculation and headcanon. This is just the overview of the ritual based on canon information and the occult philosophy I mentioned above.

Step 1 - Life and Blood

Get access to a recently deceased human and extract their Mercury (Spirit or Life Essence).

Submerge the retrieved life essence with your own blood on a new moon (life and vitality). (7 drops of blood will probably do)

Step 2 - Water of Fire

To complete the cycle of death and rebirth you’ll need the Phlegeton Water potion to return you to life at the end of the cycle.

As you brew the potion, it must be brewed in a dark room, preferably underground to remind as much of the underworld as possible.

While brewing the potion one must be in the mindset of the Phlegeton, must be willing to go through agony to achieve eternal life and imbue these thoughts in their potion. (In alchemy, when working, it is believed you imbue your work with your thoughts during the Alchemical process. As an Alchemical process affects both the material being worked and the Alchemist themselves)

Likley Ingrediants:

Saffron spice

Golden crocus flower juice

Pomegranate juice

Step 3 - The Ritual Preparation

Set up your space so none of the components may escape the ritual space and so the ritual will not be interfered with.

Make sure the spirit you retrieved is within reach.

Make sure the item you desire will hold the Horcrux will be within reach as well.

Coax the spirit into the item and prepare it to tie your soul to the next step.

Step 4 - Death and Rebirth

To create a thread of your soul to tie to the ritual, you must die figuratively. Go through death to return stronger from the underworld.

Once you feel like death has reached you and your soul is separated you should heal your soul and finish the cycle, bringing you out of death and back to life by drinking the Phlegeton potion.

After the pain subsides you will feel healthier than before, stronger than before, and you’ll have an additional thread of sulfur (soul) in your chest to be pulled out and placed into the Horcrux.

The split-off soul should, on its own, try to search for life and a body to be bound to. If it doesn't, coax it out yourself and bind it to the Horcrux with the spirit you made in step 1.

Step 5 - Oath of Life

The connection between the body (the item), soul, and spirit is still unstable, if most likely strong enough to hold.

Swear the oath of life to finalise the bound between you, the Horcrux, and the soul thread together to ward off death.

I'll end with this note I made regarding Horcruxes when I started working on this theory:

I don't know what all goes into the process of making a Horcrux but I don't believe a person who truly likes themselves and doesn't want to inflict pain on themselves could make a Horcrux. Tearing up your soul is an act of arrogance above nature, sure, thinking you deserve to change the laws of the world and be the exception is part of it, but it's also an act of self-hatred. You need to hate yourself enough to be willing to kill yourself, hurt yourself, and tear yourself up in the most unnatural ways — hence why so few can do so, let alone more than once.

And Tom Riddle does seem to have that exact mix of arrogance, spite, and low self-esteem that would allow it.

[butchcarmy]

ALEXITHYMIA CH 1: onions, weed, and pizza

Roommate AU: Carmy Berzatto x Reader (R18)

ao3 link ch 2 ch 3 ch 4

Summary: Carmy can’t put into words how he feels about his roommate. It’s only been a couple months, but here he is looking forward to going home and sharing a smoke with them. That’s all it is, though. There are no underlying feelings, none at all, even if everyone around him has something to say about it. 

Or: Carmy is repressed as ever, but through the combined power of vulnerability, weed, and the horny, Carmy too can find love. 

Tags: hurt/comfort, friends to lovers, mutual pining, slow burn, cursing, yearning, repression, SO MUCH REPRESSION, angst, mental illness, canon-typical imagery, unresolved tension, for now, virgin carmy, use of weed, alcohol, all that good stuff, carmy character study, eventual smut, gender neutral reader, nonbinary reader, up to you

A/N: HI I've never posted fic on tumblr before but i deeply love Carmy...please enjoy!!!

CHAPTER 1: onions, weed, and pizza

It always stays the same. 

This is the thought that Carmy has when he wakes up, gasping for a chance to just catch his breath and keep it. It’s a kitchen knife twisting like a lock and key in his chest. It fits just right, as all awful and familiar things seem to do.

No matter how many times he wakes up, he’s never anywhere different. That drowning feeling suffocates him in his sleep and follows dutifully into his waking hours. He can’t remember when that haunting started, only that it’s always been with him.

He hates feeling like a drifter, like he’s lost (even though he is both of those things), so he picks a goal and runs after it like a monster. He’s an animal, hunting and working and bleeding until he fucking makes it work , because that’s who he is, and that’s who he’s always been. He can’t not make it work. Because if he can’t do it, then…then what was it all for? 

What is he even for?

These are the thrilling thoughts that serve as the background music to the swirl of his cheap morning coffee, oils rotating in a slow circle. He thinks about getting a nicer brand next time he goes grocery shopping. But that would mean change. That would mean less money on the restaurant, too.

Yeah, so it tastes like shit, but it doesn’t matter. Even if it mattered once. Less and less matters to him these days.

Mornings in Chicago are not technically quiet by definition, but when compared to other times of day, they are. Especially when most of his day is spent in the kitchen wringing out his throat. It isn’t bad to have a quiet morning by normal means, but for him…

The quiet is dangerous.

It’s not silent, but it’s not enough. There’s distant beeping of impatient cars. The whirring sound of the old AC unit. He tries to listen to them, but his rampant thoughts nonetheless rise above them all, buzzing everywhere with nowhere to land. 

A brief analysis of his thoughts reads as such:

Beef sandwiches eggs flour shipment Michael cigarettes smoking sore throat late shipment so tired not sleeping Michael Sugar Mom coffee tastes bad it’s too early my stomach hurts Michael fucking hates you Michael Michael Michael Michael Michael you piece of shit you fucking ki—

“Mornin’, Carmy.”

Until his roommate wakes up, that is. 

When he moved back to Chicago, there was a fact, plain, simple, and unchanging. He wasn’t gonna make rent on his own, not with the restaurant. Not with everything. So maybe he didn’t need to deal with a new roommate, but it’s not like there was a choice. It seemed bearable, survivable enough.

He keeps waiting for the thing that’ll make him grit his teeth, make him regret not getting a place on his own, but it never comes. They’re easy to live with. It’s so easy, as a matter of fact, that it feels strange. The difficulty that he was so certainly expecting just isn’t there. 

If anything, he looks forward to being at home. For someone who lives at work, that feeling is completely foreign.  

They don’t steal his food (not that there’s much). Instead, they cook him food, leaving heated leftovers on the stove on late nights. In Carmy’s case, that’s most nights. They don’t bring over obnoxious company and keep him up with the noise. Rather, he basks in their company, and they make a ruckus between their laughter. Their presence doesn’t stifle him, it soothes him, just like the candle they leave lit in the kitchen for him when he comes home.  They’re not just easy to live with, they’re good to live with, and that’s…

That’s been a hard adjustment, Carmy would say. It’s too much of a good thing that he’s not sure what to do with himself.

On those late nights, they’re usually fast asleep by the time he’s home. But as he sits and eats the leftovers they’ve kept for him, he wants to say something. Something about how a long time ago, there was once a Carmy who cooked for himself, who looked after himself, but that he’s not that Carmy anymore. That it doesn’t matter that he’s a five star chef and they’re just some guy in the kitchen, as they would put it, because he’s…

He’s grateful. Incredibly so.

And yet, the words will never come out. He feels the words tingling on his lips, but it feels scary. He can thank them as many times as he likes (which he does) but it will never capture what he’s really trying to say when he says thank you . There’s too many words, and it just can’t…it just can’t—

It always stays the same. 

“You’re up early,” he says to them when they enter the room. It’s a rare sight to see them up at the early hours he frequents. He sees the morning drowsiness in their mussed hair and big t-shirt stained with hair dye. They yawn back at him, nose scrunching.

Cute , he thinks, and he stamps it down as soon as it flashes through his mind. 

“Randomly woke up.” They fall into the empty seat next to him on the couch, and they rub at the crust around their eyes. “About to head off to work?”

“Unfortunately, yeah,” he replies. There’s a certain sentiment that lies on the tip of his tongue, something about how he wishes he could have a slow morning with them instead. Of course, he can’t voice it. He can’t even come close.

“The plague of the working man,” they sigh. “Well, I got an idea that might cheer you up.”

“...And that would be?”

“Let me paint you a beautiful picture,” they start. They clear their throat and gesture widely with their hands. He notices their chipped nail polish, the writing callus on their middle finger. “Imagine this—you come home from work, tired. You need to relax —something you need to do more often,” they add with a pointed look.  No comment. “And I have dinner ready. Some sort of soup, pasta maybe. I need to check the fridge.” They pause with a yawn. “And before we eat, we smoke a big, fat joint.”

He snorts as they finish, unable to hold back a laugh. 

“That’s a nice picture,” he admits. He doesn’t remember when he started smiling. “Y’know, I was wondering when the joint was gonna pop in.” 

“You fucking know me, man,” they reply, blooming with his interest, his smile. Not that he can perceive that. “So? Thoughts? Haven’t done that in a while, right?”

“Right, right,” he echoes faintly. His mind is already sorting through the pile of tasks on the schedule. “Well, I gotta go over this new recipe with Marcus, today,” he mutters, partially under his breath. “But before that, ingredient orders. And those invoices before the end of the day—and that, that toilet guy was supposed to come today…I think?”

“Dude, I do like, one task, and the day’s over for me,” they say sympathetically, and the look on their face is so serious that Carmy struggles to hide his smile. “You’re crazy.”

“I, I’ve seen you do tasks,” he argues. 

“Name one,” they argue back.

“You did two loads of laundry and did the dishes all before lunch time once,” he says, the memory clear and instant. “And when I woke up, you were vacuuming the whole place.” The immediacy surprises him, and it seems to surprise them, too. 

“Damn, I said name one , but I guess I’m just that good!” They laugh, a breathy, exasperated sort of thing. “Well, point taken. Anyway, it sounds like you’re not gonna be home early tonight.” 

“It is a Friday,” he says, “but…”

“But.”

“Can’t make promises I can’t keep,” he sighs, and shame melts over him like butter on a stainless steel pain. This isn’t anything new. 

“I know, I know,” they say, gracious as ever. “It’s okay. Such is the life of a business owner, yeah?” He searches for some thinly veiled shred of disappointment, frustration in their expression, but he doesn’t. No matter how many times he lets them down, the explosion he’s waiting for never comes. They remain patient, collected through it all. 

Says more about him than them, he supposes. 

“Yeah,” he mutters, “such is the life.” 

“C’est la fucking vie,” they say, and he laughs with a shake of his head. 

It can feel strange to laugh. He worries that the lightness in his chest will expand like a balloon, and he’ll float away. It’s uncontrollable, foreign. It should be scary, how his emotions lead him when he’s around them, not the other way around, but it’s not. 

It’s not scary to loosen up around them, and that’s the scary part. There are no words to describe why. All he can see is that the fear exists, stubborn and persistent. That fear is what makes him snap out of it, makes him look at the clock. He holds back a sigh. 

“Time to go,” he mutters, and they nod.

“And time for me to go back to bed.” They salute him. “Best of luck with your day, brave soldier. And just shoot me a text if you do end up coming back early, ok?”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll try. And, thanks. You, you too,” he gets out. He stands up, readjusting the waistband of his pants. “I’ll, uh, see you later.”

“See you,” they say through a yawn, waving at him from where they’re lying down. They’ve taken his spot, sprawled across the couch, tangled hair flayed out on the pillows. 

Cute , he thinks again, and hearing the thought in his brain makes him wanna panic. 

He doesn’t wanna panic, doesn’t wanna think about it at all, so he nods, shuts the door, and heads out to work with a cigarette hastily lit in his mouth. 

By the time it’s Carmy’s lunch break, he swears his vocal cords must have snapped by how tight he was wringing them. 

The soreness has never stopped him from lighting a cig, though. As he stands outside in the back, finally forced to go on his 30, he smokes rather than eating. There’s a sandwich in his pocket, one that was bearing the brunt of test ingredients. He can feel the aluminum wrapping at his fingertips. 

Eventually, he does eat, though, because he sees the way his hands are shaking when he flicks his lighter. He doesn’t wanna shake when he uses a knife, so he eats. He tastes it, but he doesn’t really taste it.

In truth, he wasn’t even planning on taking his lunch break at all. Most days, he forgets about it. The kitchen’s always busy, there’s always something missing, there’s always something that hasn’t been prepped that’s ruining everything, the lights in the hallways keep flickering because they need to fixed, Fak’s supposed to fix them, but he can’t, because Richie’s still out getting the replacement bulbs, the pile of papers on his desk are bigger than he remembers, he doesn’t have enough fucking time—

But then he’s in the middle of chopping an onion, and the cutting board slips. The half-chopped onion and its sliced offspring scatter on the floor with the cutting board. The sound of its fall draws Sydney in like a whip. 

“You okay? Need a bandaid?” Sydney’s already kneeling by him, helping him pick the onions off the floor. 

“I, I’m fine, didn’t drop the knife,” he explains, and it feels like an ocean current is rushing by his ears. “Fucking, I just—such a stupid fucking—” He sucks in a breath and goes silent. 

His entire body feels tight, wound like a spring. He can barely fucking breathe. 

“Hey.” Carmy turns his intense stare from the onions to Sydney, and when he sees her searching expression, he remembers himself. “Maybe you should go take your lunch break.”

“No, I’m fine, really,” he repeats, and he feels like he’s heard this before. From someone else. He can’t remember. Who was it? “The onions—we’re behind on onions—”

“I can handle onions for 30 minutes,” she interrupts, decisive and firm. “Seriously.”

Carmy’s about to say something, but then he’s looking at the onion half in his hand. His hand is shaking. 

“Okay,” he sighs after a beat. “Okay, yeah. Sorry. For fucking up.”

“It happens. We all have our moments.” She shrugs. When he keeps standing there, she makes this shoo-ing motion with her hand. “Go on. Take your 30!”

So here he is, taking his lunch break a whole hour later than he’s supposed to. Although it’s better than most days where he doesn’t take it at all.

She wouldn’t have had to tell you to take a break if you didn’t fuck it all up, he thinks to himself, eyebrows knitted together. When the last time I’ve fucked up something so fucking easy?

He thinks about his dream from last night. A familiar sight of red fire and flames up to the ceiling, crackling so loud it sounded like screaming. The only good part is that when he woke up, he wasn’t at the stove burning his place down. It hasn’t happened at this apartment yet. Carmy hopes it never happens. 

Just get it together, he thinks. He aggressively taps the ash out onto the decrepit ash tray they have in the back. It’s full. You’re supposed to be at this shit. So just be good.

“Cousin.” Carmy snaps his head up, and Richie’s at the door, stepping out. His presence yanks him out of his inner whirlpool, a quickly descending spiral. “Gimme one.”

Wordlessly, Carmy hands him a cigarette. Richie plucks it out of his hand like a flower.

“You had a lighter, but no cigarette?” Carmy comments, squinting at Richie pulling a busted up red lighter from his jean pocket. 

“Shut up,” Richie mutters, but there’s no heat behind it. “Got the wrong damn light bulbs,” he explains unprompted. 

“Alright,” Carmy sighs. He has so little energy that the frustration bypasses him completely, diving instantly into deflated acceptance. “Just return ‘em.”

“Can’t,” Richie says, and when Carmy gives him a look, he elaborates, “no receipt.” 

“ Dude .” Carmy opens his mouth, but then he shuts it again. It’s just not worth it. “Thanks anyway, cousin. We’ll get it done.”

“Don’t fuckin’ thank me, you asshole. I didn’t do shit.” Richie nudges him, but like before, it’s not an angry thing. “Also, toilet guy’s not comin’ today.”

“The fuck? Why ?”

“Canceled,” he replies simply. 

“Fucking hell,” Carmy mutters under his breath. “Did he say when he could reschedule?”

“Not yet.”

“Great.”

“Yep.” Richie tilts his head up, blowing out a slow stream of gray cigarette smoke. “Might as well wait for Fak to get his ass back in town at this rate.”

“I guess.” Carmy sighs. He thinks about all the things he still needs to do. “I dropped this onion I was chopping, earlier,” he mentions out of nowhere. 

“Okay.” Richie gives him a look. “And? You bitches chop those things up faster than I could cut one in half.” 

“I dropped it on the floor,” Carmy tries again, but Richie’s expression remains unchanged. “I never do shit like that.”

“Well, cousin, you did.” Carmy feels something in him deflate. “What’s the big deal?”

“Nevermind,” he replies, because he’s a coward. “Just—just forget it.”

Silence. The spark of a lighter. 

“I’m gonna leave early,” Richie says, like he can just do that. Which…he can, Carmy supposes. “If no one’s gonna show up, what’s the point?” He slaps Carmy’s back, and Carmy doesn’t watch him as he heads back inside. 

Guess all I need to do later is get rid of those papers on the desk , Carmy thinks to himself, idly moving the shortening cigarette between his lips. Then that’ll be it, I guess.

He doesn’t remember the last time he’s gone home early. It’s hard to even imagine what he does on days like those. Sleeping, probably.  There’s nothing much else for him to do, not with how tired he is—

Shoot me a text, okay?  

He hears them in the back of his head all of a sudden, and he remembers. 

Oh, he remembers, hands moving to take out his phone. Almost forgot.

“Sorry to bother you, chef.” Carmy’s not sure how he didn’t hear the door opening. Marcus’ head pops out, nose covered in flour. “Just wanted to let you know that we’re gonna need more flour for tomorrow.”

“Order’s not gonna come for a couple days. I thought we had an extra bag left,” Carmy tries, but the guilty look on Marcus’ face explains it all. 

“Dropped it,” Marcus grimaces, and Carmy’s already fucking over it. 

“We’re all fucking up today, chef,” Carmy replies, and the day goes on. 

. . . . .

It’s a strange, delightful miracle, but he manages to get out of the restaurant before the sun sets.

Considering their collective track record, the fact everyone was able to leave early was cosmic intervention. It helps that the toilet guy didn’t come, in an unfortunate way, but still. Standing outside of the restaurant in the evening like this feels…weird. 

It’s not that Carmy’s complaining about a nice thing, it’s just that he wasn’t prepared to have anything good today.

Shower, dinner, and weed, he thinks absentmindedly on the way home. He juggles the three around in his brain. Just the thought of it feels like relaxing. A little.

With company , his brain helpfully adds, and his stomach squirms. 

Self control, he thinks. He needs more self-control. He can’t just keep thinking of them so indulgently. He’s not allowed to think of them that way, because it’s not fair to them. Even if no matter how many times he chastises himself, it never works. Even if they remain in his brain like sun-spots in his vision. Even if it’s not his fault that he just can’t help it.

The thing is, though, it always is. Even when it’s not his fault, it actually is. Always.

You dropped that fucking onion , his brain helpfully adds for no particular reason. Fucking loser.

Fuck off , he thinks back as he approaches his front door. Predictably, it does not stop.

Just as his fingers search for his keys in all of his pockets, he hears something that makes him pause, hands stopped on his waist. It’s music, distant and muffled. They’re probably listening to music in the kitchen. He stands, trying to place the song, but he doesn’t recognize it. 

He does recognize the voice that’s singing over the music, though.

Oh, he realizes. That’s them.

The way their voice clumsily layers over the music shouldn’t make him pause like this. He shouldn’t be doing this, standing in the doorway and listening rather than opening the door. The keys are in his hand. This, this is a breach of privacy, he tells himself, feeling a little dizzy with distress, he just needs to just—

There’s an abrupt, loud clang, and he shoves the door open.

Concern is on the tip of his tongue, but it dies there. The source of the noise lays face-down on the floor—a pan sitting in what seems to be tomato sauce. The matter next to it is what makes the words evaporate from his lips, like they were never there at all. 

They’re kneeled down next to the pan, paper towels in hand, but all they’re wearing is an apron. 

His mind blanks. He thinks he stops breathing. He’s never seen so much of their skin at once. He needs to look away, he thinks, but his eyes keep traveling, traveling, and traveling. It just happens so quickly. He doesn’t mean to look, he doesn’t, but they’re right there and he can see right down their—

“No, I—I’m sorry! I didn’t know you were coming back early!” They exclaim, quickly crossing their arms over their chest, and that’s what makes him tear his eyes away. 

“I—I thought I texted you,” he says quickly, hot face turned to the side, “on my lunch—...“ He stops there, the memory reconstructing itself. 

He forgot.

“It’s fine, I just feel bad about dinner, and, uh—okay, I’m just gonna change real quick, and then I’ll clean this up,” they reply, words rushing out. In the corner of his vision, he sees their bare legs dart to their room.

It seems wrong to just stand here staring at the tomato sauce slowly expand outwards on the floor, so he cleans it up. A couple paper towels later, he’s gotten most of it, and they’ve returned with a change of clothes.

“Sorry,” Carmy starts right as they also go “I’m sorry”. He pauses, meeting their eyes. It’s a lot easier now that they’re wearing leggings and a t-shirt as opposed to, well, nothing. Not to say he doesn’t appreciate the leggings. 

“Sorry you had to see me like that,” they sigh. “I don’t—I don’t usually walk around the place naked, I just—I didn’t think you’d be back—“

“I should’ve texted,” he interrupts. He struggles to not think about them walking around the living room naked. “I forgot. But it, it’s fine. You’re fine. Really. Sorry for not texting.”

“Okay. Cool.” They exhale, a tired noise. “And it’s okay. It happens.” They look at the floor and make a sound of surprise. “Did you clean this up?” The look they give him has far too much gratitude, and it feels like a searing hot iron.

“Yeah, uh.” His hands are moving like he’s trying to explain something, but no words crop up. “Felt weird not to.”

“Well.” They smile, grateful. “Thank you. That was gonna be dinner, but…” They trail off, looking at the floor with a sour expression. “I fucked up.”

“It’s just that sort of day today,” Carmy mutters.

“Shitty day for you, too?” 

“Yeah. Lots of shit went wrong.” Especially me, he thinks, but he doesn’t say it. “You?”

“Gotcha.” They shrug. “As for me—yeah. Really not my best day. It was just, uh, some family shit. You know how it is.”

Carmy makes a sound of acknowledgement. “That sucks.” He doesn’t know much about their family other than that they’re fairly shitty. It’s the same the other way around, too. 

“It’s whatever,” they say, even though it really isn’t, and he knows it. They look at the floor one more time before looking up at him. “Do you just wanna order pizza or something?”

“Yeah, I do,” Carmy replies, his words coming out much more despondent than expected. 

They settle on some pepperoni pizza from a place down the street. It’s a tried and true method—they deliver, it’s cheap, it’s oily, it’s cheesy, it’s good. Just talking about it makes Carmy taste it on the tip of his tongue. 

“You can go and shower if you want. I’ll get the door when pizza comes,” they offer. They’re standing at the sink, sleeves rolled up. 

“Okay, thanks.” Carmy pauses then, gears turning. He’s vaguely worried his memory is going to shit. “Did—did I just say I was gonna shower?” 

“Oh, no, you didn’t, you just always shower when you get home from work, right?” They say it like it’s the weather, like it’s familiar, and that’s when Carmy realizes because it is. After several months of living together, of course they’ve picked up on his habits. It doesn’t need to be a thing. There’s no reason for it to be a thing.

“I do,” Carmy replies faintly, and for some reason, that’s all he can say. 

“Thought so.” They look at him for just a moment, but it makes him feel like his body’s gone transparent. “I notice these things, you know.”

“Yeah.” Carmy looks at them when they turn back to the dishes, back facing him. “You do.” 

He tells himself he’s not gonna think any harder about any of it. He’s not gonna think about the singing, the apron, the way they just notice these things, but then he does. 

He’s in the shower, and he thinks about everything.

The water pressure is pathetic, but the warmth still feels nice. Between that and the sound of the running shower, it’s usually enough to quiet his thoughts. This time, though, it doesn’t. To his credit, he does try to think about anything else. 

He thinks about work, because he always does. He thinks about flour, about onions, about knives. He thinks about the shampoo lathered in his hair. He thinks about those lightbulbs they still need to get. He thinks about food. He thinks about them. He thinks about pizza. He thinks about the way they sing when no one’s around. He thinks about the way they know him. 

He thinks about them, knees on the floor only in a—

He thinks of bashing his head into the tile wall until he explodes.

“Shut the fuck up,” he whispers to himself, rivulets of hot water trailing down his forehead and dripping off his lips. “Shut the fuck up.”

The soreness is still present in his body, but that never quite goes away. He does feel a bit better now that he doesn’t have sweaty, sticky skin, though. It gets even better when he puts on a clean white t-shirt and his favorite sweatpants. It’s a nice surprise from his past self who did his laundry for him. 

This amount of niceness is okay. This is what he’s used to—a shower and comfortable clothes when he’s home from work. That’s enough.

He steps out into the kitchen with a damp towel on his head. He finds them sitting by their one shitty window that opens, pizza box in front of them and joint lit. It casts an orange glow to mix with the golden light from the window. 

“Hey, pizza’s here!” They slap their hand on the greasy cardboard box. “Just got this joint started for us, too.”

“So you weren’t gonna smoke it all on your own?” He doesn’t mean to tease, but he does. He slips into the seat across them, arms resting on the table they placed by the window. 

“I couldn’t smoke this whole thing even if I wanted to,” they protest. “Besides, joints are made for sharing. Here—now you get to take it. Isn’t that nice?” With their elbow propped up on the pizza box, they hold up the joint to him. The lit end of it sizzles a bright orange, emitting a thin trail of smoke up to the ceiling. 

“That is very, very nice,” Carmy agrees, taking it carefully from their fingers. Their face spreads into that contagious grin of theirs, and he’s far from immune. Sometimes he smiles so much around them that his face hurts, rusty and unused. 

Sure, he can blame that on the weed, but if he’s being honest with himself (a rare occasion), that’s a complete lie. Obviously the weed lessens the tension, the stress that winds him up tight. It’s not just the weed that gets him to relax, though. 

It’s them. There’s something disarming about their presence, something that makes him loose-lipped around them. Even when he’s sober, he finds himself feeling comfortable. He’s not quite sure how that happened, or if that’s ever happened. He supposes that isn’t a bad thing. Just something he’s noticed. 

He wonders if they’ve noticed. 

“You like the new rolling papers?” They tuck their knees under their chin, propping their feet up on the chair. 

“Hm.” Carmy lowers the joint from his mouth to give it a good look. He rotates it around in his fingers. “Strawberry?”

“Yeah, it’s strawberry,” they confirm, poorly hiding the excitement in their demeanor. Not that they were trying to. “Can you taste it?” 

He pulls from the joint, the edges of the paper sizzling red with the weed. It’s an even burn this time. He rolls his tongue around in his mouth after he exhales a cloud of smoke. 

“Still no,” he decides after a beat, and they sigh. 

“I don’t know why I ever get my hopes up.”

“I do taste something else in this, though.” He takes another hit, stews on it. “Lavender?”

“Shoulda known you would’ve gotten it on your first tray. Yeah, it’s lavender. I found some lying around.”

“You made this one pretty nice,” he observes, eyes tracing the shape of the joint. “Between the lavender and the new papers, I mean.”

“Well, y’know.” The smile on their face is small and shy. “I don’t smoke joints often, so I wanted to make it nice, and I, uh…”

They’re paused for so long that Carmy interjects. 

“And?”

“And I—want that joint,” they finally say, outstretching their hand. Carmy has a strong feeling that they weren’t originally going to say that, but he hands over the joint nonetheless.

“Strain?” He asks curiously. He can feel the body high creeping up his shoulders, fluid and light.

“The strain that gets you high,” they reply with a grin.

“Oh, thank god,” Carmy sighs in relief, and the way that makes them laugh… It makes his chest tight. 

“To actually answer your question, though—I dunno.” He likes watching the smoke drift from the tip of the joint as they talk, thin gray wisps in the air. “I think it’s a hybrid? Not sure if it’s more one way or not, though…”

“As long as it’s not the weed that puts you to bed.”

“Um…well, if you smoke enough of it, it can.”

They sit together like this for a while, just sitting and taking turns with the joint. It’s an easy, fluid exchange, flowing between them like smoke. No matter how much they both try to blow it out the window, it always comes back in. The smell of weed is strong in the air, earthy and pungent.  

Although he would never describe himself as a talkative person, sitting stoned across from them makes the words come out. Sometimes, he thinks he likes himself better when he’s high—his mind isn’t running circles around itself, and the soreness of his body just floats away. He feels more like a human than a poor imitation of one like he usually does. 

This weed smells kinda good, he thinks, and when they laugh, nose scrunched up, he realizes he said that out loud. 

“That’s literally what I’ve been saying,” they agree, a bright grin lingering on their face. “That’s how you know you’re a fuckin’ stoner!” 

“Feels weird to call myself a stoner,” he muses. He plucks the joint from their outstretched hand. It definitely looks shorter from when they started a moment ago. “But I guess…”

“If you like the smell of weed, you’re too far gone,” they say with a grave expression. “It’s so fucking over for you.”

“Fuck,” he whispers, equally as serious, and then they’re both bursting out into laughter. He likes the sound of their laugh—it’s unabashed, fills up the space. 

“Dude, I’m high,” they whisper after they both calm down, like it’s some sort of secret, and Carmy can’t stop himself from laughing all over again. “Oh my god. Are you high?”

“I—I think I might fucking be,” he gets out between laughs, and that sparks them straight into another cackle of laughter. He’s not supposed to be able to make others laugh, he doesn’t even make himself laugh—but then he’ll say something, and they’re lit up with laughter. 

“We need to eat this pizza now, ” they yell, projecting over their combined noise. They flip the pizza box open, and it smacks Carmy right in the face. 

“Oh,” he reacts mildly.

“Shit, I’m so sorry—”

“It’s fine, it’s not like you punched me in the face,” he reasons, but their guilty expression persists. “It didn’t hurt, it’s just cardboard.”

“I’m sorry, I’m high,” they sigh apologetically. 

“I know,” he replies with a little smile. His eyes drift down to the pepperoni pizza sitting before them, glorious in its perverse amount of oil. “So, we’re gonna eat this, right?”

“Oh my god, yes we are,” they gasp, and the moment is forgotten. 

When he tears off a pizza slice, the cheese stretches in thin, gooey strings. They grab the slice adjacent to it to snap the strings in half, but they’re both leaned back in their chairs, pizzas in hand, and the cheese is still connected. 

“This doesn’t seem right,” Carmy mutters, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “We should’ve just cut it.”

“How could we have predicted this?” They pull their pizza further back, and the string still doesn’t break. “Wow. I’m honestly impressed. I don’t think it’s ever been this insane before.”

“I think we’d remember.” He’s not sure why he’s still talking and not just running his finger across the string to break it. 

“I think we would, too.” They snort, shaking their head. “This—this is some spaghetti type shit.”

“What? Spaghetti?” He’s genuinely perplexed.

“I—I mean like—that fucking disney movie. With the dogs.” They pause for a moment, mouth silently moving. “Fucking—lady and the, the truck—”

“Uh.” He has to hold back a laugh. “...The lady and the tramp?”

“ Holyshittheladyandthetramp ,” they blurt out in a rush, and the cheese string finally snaps in half. “…Well, I guess it’s not exactly like the lady and the tramp, then.” They take a large bite of their pizza, and it reminds Carmy exactly how hungry he is. 

“You mean lady and the truck,” he corrects, and he can’t stop himself from smiling. Especially not with how good this hot pizza is, delightfully salty and greasy in his mouth. 

“Shut up, I was trying,” they grunt through a mouthful of food. 

“How exactly is this like the lady and the tramp, again? Or, uh, not like it?” 

“Well, it was just like it, but then the string broke.” Somehow, they’re already halfway through their slice. “Could’ve been a beautiful spaghetti moment.”

“Spaghetti moment,” he echoes under his breath, holding back a laugh. “Remind me how that scene goes?”

They go quiet for a moment. It’s like he can see the gears turning in his head. If he’s being honest, he already remembers how that scene goes, but…he wants to hear them say it. He needs to hear them say it. 

“Uh, well, they’re…eating spaghetti. The titular lady and tramp.”  Their eyes are fidgety, flickering back and forth between their pizza and the window. “And they’re sharing the plate, the two of them. They’re eating together, and, um…” 

“...And?” 

They meet his eyes, mouth hanging open, and then they close it. 

“Um, I don’t remember, actually,” they say, shaking their head and blinking. He sees it for the blatant lie that it is, and yet. “Do, do you remember?”

As he stares back at them, unable to look away, he wonders. He wonders about what this really means. About if this really means anything at all, about if he’s going to find out if it does. 

“I don’t remember,” he answers quietly, cowardly, and neither of them say anything else.

Out of the two of them, they’ve always been better with recovering from awkward moments, so they do. They start talking about something else, and the world keeps turning. But in the back of his head, Carmy remains in that moment, unwilling to let it go. 

Why did you say that you didn’t remember? He wants to say. Why didn’t I say that I remembered how it went? Because I remember. They kiss—they fucking kiss. Is that what you wanted to hear? Is that what I wanted to hear?

But because he’s Carmy, he doesn’t say anything. He just eats.

He’s so hungry that the pizza disappears in minutes. It’s delicious, but he’s so high he’s not completely sure he can taste it. Somehow, it remains the best thing he’s ever eaten. 

The rest of the night is a blur. He remembers getting onto the couch at some point. They both decide on a random movie he doesn’t catch the name of. They finish off the joint on the couch together, sinking into its cushions. It burns hot in his throat as it reaches the end. 

And as it turns out, the weed he smoked is the one that puts him to bed. 

“...Ca…Car…” Someone’s calling him. “...Carmy, c’mon. You’re gonna complain about your neck tomorrow if you keep sleeping here.”

“Mhm,” he replies helpfully. He turns his head into the cushion. His body feels like an abstract blob, perfectly molded into the couch cushions.

“Okay, you made a good point. But. ” They laugh quietly, under their breath. “Movie’s been over for like 20 minutes now.”

“Mhm,” he repeats, nearly inaudible. He doesn’t wanna get up. Whenever he falls asleep, it always feels like he’s never gotten an hour of sleep in his life. There’s nothing he needs to think about, worry about. He’s warm and comfortable, and he doesn’t feel like letting that go just yet.

Everything goes silent again for a moment, save for the cars on the road. He begins to drift away again, slipping back into his dreamless sleep. 

But then there’s a hand on his shoulder, and it’s like a smoking brand on his skin. His eyes fly open and he jolts awake, jerking upright. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” they apologize, fretful. Between the dark of night and haze of sleep, they look pretty different. The blue light from the television is streaked across the blurry planes of their face.

“It’s fine,” he replies, drowsy. Speaking feels…heavy. Begrudgingly, he adjusts to sit up. “Didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

“Weed,” they say with a shrug. 

“How, how long was I—?” He cuts himself off with a yawn, wide with condensation in the corners of his eyes. 

“Only like, 30 minutes.” They yawn back. Typical infectious yawning. “End of the movie sucked anyway.”

“Oh.” Pause. “What was the ending?”

“Love interest died,” they state plainly. “He told her about how he felt, got rejected, and then she died in a car accident. Pretty tragic.”

“Huh.” Carmy makes a face. “That does suck.”

“Yeah, a bit.” They’re idly fiddling with the remote, scrolling through Netflix without reading anything. “I feel like the movie was trying to say something profound about the unpredictability of life or something, but the writing was shit.”

“I guess it’d be too perfect if they got together,” he muses.

“I guess,” they echo. They turn off the tv, and the room goes dark. The only light is from the yellow street lamp right outside their window, wonderful in its inconvenient placement. It illuminates the shape of the back and leaves their face in shadow. “I think I remember how that scene went,” they say suddenly. 

“Oh.” Carmy’s heart feels stuck in his throat. “And how does it go?”

“Well, they’re—both eating spaghetti. Like I said.” They’re not facing him, leaving their face shrouded in shadow. He’s not sure if he’s imagining the shake in their voice or not. It’s beyond him why there would be any shakiness at all. “They somehow get the same noodle, so they, uh, kiss.”

“They kiss,” he repeats for some unknown reason.

“Yeah.” They let out a quick laugh, but it doesn’t sound like they actually find this funny. He wishes he could see the look on their face. 

“I don’t think pasta works like that,” he hears himself murmur faintly. For some reason, he can’t help but think that was the wrong thing to say. But he’s already said it. Maybe it’s the same reason as to why his heart is beating so urgently. 

“No, I, I don’t think so either,” they mumble. He refuses to place the way they’re feeling. 

I can’t fucking do this.

The thought resounds like a gong, hit with a mallet right next to his ear. 

“It’s late, I gotta head to bed.” It feels like someone else is speaking for him, moving his body for him. He can’t stop them. When he stands up, he avoids their face.

What the fuck are you doing?

Another thought resounds. He doesn’t respond.

“Right, I—didn’t even notice the time.” He pretends he doesn’t hear the strain in their voice. No, he didn’t word that right—there is no strain in their voice. “G’night.”

"Night,” he murmurs back.

This is enough, he tells himself as he falls into bed. His sheets are tangled. This is enough , he repeats, and it’s not because he’s scared, afraid, anxious, or any other stupid synonym. It’s because he believes it, needs to believe it. 

He tells himself, this is enough , even though he wonders, what is supposed to be enough? He doesn’t listen. He stamps down the protests, the thoughts that are out of line. The high usually helps with that, but it’s worn off, now just leaving him in a weary, sleepy state of things. 

This is enough, he thinks, and he falls asleep looking at their shrouded face behind his eyelids.

[intersectionalpraxis]

Full Text:

UK and US striking Yemen - analysis

Last night's strikes on Yemen were severely limited to 76 strikes with about 100 missiles.

Sky News Arabia reported that America had briefed the Houthis before the strikes to prevent a "greater escalation of the war", meaning the whole circus was staged just to show some muscle to the world.

From here, the Houthis have already carried out a complete evacuation of the bases for several days, and most likely they have hidden all the equipment in their mountainous regions.

The strikes were mainly on observation posts and an empty military base, which the Houthis joke that only Saudi Arabia has announced since 2015 that it has destroyed it 3 times. However, 11 members of the movement died from those bombings.

The US cannot afford a major regional war in any case, because in that case it is clear to everyone that Israel will be gone. After all, many analysts in the West also stated that.

The Houthis have threatened to strike the oil platforms in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which will cause a huge jump in the price of oil and a major economic crisis in Europe, which is very dependent on this oil.

On the other hand, all the Biden administration has managed to achieve is to completely close the Suez Canal as a route for commercial ships, not only to Israel but also those to Europe and the United States. Great economic damage.

Immediately after the US and UK launched the strikes, the Houthis hit back with ballistic missiles and US bases across Syria and Iraq were again attacked. Which shows that if the US enters a war in the Middle East in the name of Israel, it will bear great consequences. It will be a war on a grand scale.

What still keeps on Israel breathing is the fact that both sides (US and Iran) are avoiding a major conflict and regional war. The conflict is for now confined to the territory of Israel, which is suffering heavy military and economic damage, while taking out its fury on civilians in Gaza.

This whole show, in my opinion, was performed to divert all attention from the international court of justice where Israel is accused of the genocide it is committing in Gaza by South Africa.

[frogblast-the-ventcore]

From clockwise right, we have:

Hellreigel 9mm submachine gun (text via IMFDB: "As of current knowledge, there was only ever one example of the Hellriegel and it did not survive the war. Its caliber, capacity, operating method, and whether or not it was even a functional weapon are conjecture based on analysis of the photographs and historical context. It is assumed to have been blowback operated with the projections at the rear being a pair of recoil springs, and the large structure over the barrel is thought to have been a leather-wrapped water or oil jacket for cooling. From what little could be known about the weapon from the three images, it appears that the Hellriegel is a large-capacity submachine gun, firing what seems to be a 9mm cartridge. It would make the Hellriegel one of the first submachine guns made in the world by definition of a submachine gun. It wouldn't be referred as a submachine gun at the time, as the term "submachine gun" was first coined in 1921 to advertise the Thompson Submachine Gun; the Hellriegel was referred to as a machine gun (Maschinengewehr) on the image caption. It could feed from straight box magazines, or from a large drum magazine which was not actually connected to the weapon and instead fed the cartridges through a flexible chute. The unusual appearance of this drum magazine led to some assumptions that it was belt fed, however this is not the case with the rounds being unconnected from one another and are propelled along the drum and feed chute by a spring in a similar manner to the Trommelmagazin snail drum used by the Luger pistol. The drum magazine is believed to be able to hold up to 160 rounds while the box mag is limited to 20 or so. It seems to be crew-served, as one image depicts an ammo bearer with a backpack for drum magazines, and its seeming intention to be used as a stationary weapon given its weighted base for the drum and its machine gun name (making it a "heavy" submachine gun of sorts). The provision for a drum but not a bipod however, means it is unclear what exactly the weapon was intended to be used for. All three pictures were taken from the right side of the gun, so what the left side looked like is a complete mystery."

Tsar tank (absolutely bonkers Russian experimental wheeled tank):

Hand-dropped bomb runs (commonplace during the war until bomb racks were invented for small aircraft):

German cavalry with pikes (note the horse gas masks).

Also this happened:

[reasonsforhope]

"As countries around the world begin to either propose or enforce zero-deforestation regulations, companies are coming under growing pressure to prove that their products are free of deforestation. But this is often a far from straightforward process.

Take palm oil, for instance. Its journey from plantations, most likely in Indonesia or Malaysia, to store shelves in the form of shampoo, cookies or a plethora of other goods, is a long and convoluted one. In fact, the cooking oil or cosmetics we use might contain palm oil processed in several different mills, which in turn may have bought the raw palm fruit from several of the many thousands of plantations. For companies that use palm oil in their products, tracing and tracking its origins through these obscure supply chains is a tough task. Often it requires going all the way back to the plot level and checking for deforestation. However, these plots are scattered over vast areas across potentially millions of locations, with data being in various states of digitization and completeness...

Palmoil.io, a web-based monitoring platform that Bottrill launched, is attempting to help palm oil companies get around this hurdle. Its PlotCheck tool allows companies to upload plot boundaries and check for deforestation without any of the data being stored in their system. In the absence of an extensive global map of oil palm plots, the tool was developed to enable companies to prove compliance with regulations without having to publicly disclose detailed data on their plots. PlotCheck now spans 13 countries including Indonesia and Malaysia, and aims to include more in the coming months.

Palm oil production is a major driver of deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia, although deforestation rates linked to it have declined in recent years. While efforts to trace illegally sourced palm oil have ramped up in recent years, tracing it back to the source continues to be a challenge owing to the complex supply chains involved.

Recent regulatory proposals have, however, made it imperative for companies to find a way to prove that their products are free of deforestation. Last June, the European Union passed legislation that prohibits companies from sourcing products, including palm oil, from land deforested after 2020. A similar law putting the onus on businesses to prove that their commodities weren’t produced on deforested land is also under discussion in the U.K. In the U.S., the U.S. Forest Bill aims to work toward a similar goal, while states like New York are also discussing legislation to discourage products produced on deforested land from being circulated in the markets there...

PlotCheck, which is now in its beta testing phase, allows users to input the plot data in the form of a shape file. Companies can get this data from palm oil producers. The plot data is then checked and analyzed with the aid of publicly available deforestation data, such as RADD (Radar for Detecting Deforestation) alerts that are based on data from the Sentinel-1 satellite network and from NASA’s Landsat satellites. The tool also uses data available on annual tree cover loss and greenhouse gas emission from plantations.

Following the analysis, the tool displays an interactive online map that indicates where deforestation has occurred within the plot boundaries. It also shows details on historical deforestation in the plot as well as data on nearby mills. If deforestation is detected, users have the option of requesting the team to cross-check the data and determine if it was indeed caused by oil palm cultivation, and not logging for artisanal mining or growing other crops. “You could then follow up with your supplier and say there is a potential red flag,” Bottrill said.

As he waits to receive feedback from users, Bottrill said he’s trying to determine how to better integrate PlotCheck into the workflow of companies that might use the tool. “How can we take this information, verify it quickly and turn it into a due diligence statement?” he said. “The output is going to be a statement, which companies can submit to authorities to prove that their shipment is deforestation-free.” ...

Will PlotCheck work seamlessly? That’s something Bottrill said he’s cautiously optimistic about. He said he’s aware of the potential challenges with regard to data security and privacy. However, he said, given how zero-deforestation legislation like that in the EU are unprecedented in their scope, companies will need to sit up and take action to monitor deforestation linked to their products.

“My perspective is we should use the great information produced by universities, research institutes, watchdog groups and other entities. Plus, open-source code allows us to do things quickly and pretty inexpensively,” he said. “So I am positive that it can be done.”"

-via Mongabay, January 26, 2024

--

Note: I know it's not "stop having palm oil plantations." (A plan I'm in support of...monocrop plantations are always bad, and if palm oil production continues, it would be much better to produce it using sustainable agroforestry techniques.)

However, this is seriously a potentially huge step/tool. Since the EU's deforestation regulations passed, along with other whole-supply-chain regulations, people have been really worried about how the heck we're going to enforce them. This is the sort of tool we need/need the industry to have to have a chance of genuinely making those regulations actually work. Which, if it does work, it could be huge.

It's also a great model for how to build supply chain monitoring for other supply chain regulations, like the EU's recent ban on companies destroying unsold clothes.

[psychotrenny]

On a more serious note, the Islamic Revolutions of the 19th Century West Sudan (region) are interesting because they provide a relatively early example of holistic ideologically-motivated revolution that follows a deliberate plan of societal renovation. This contrasts with the many less directional revolutions that sought to solve very specific issues or merely change the individuals/associations who held power in society without changing the social structures themselves.

Like the backbone of these Islamic revolutionary movements derived from the West Sudanese intelligentsia and associated strata. Usman dan Fodio, Seku Amadu and Al-ḥājj 'Umar were all prominent scholars with close ties to the regional Islamic mercantile community, while much of their initial following derived from their students and the relatives of students. These movements also had very clear ideas of how they wanted to restructure society both socially and economically. While rallying against the specific misdeeds of local rulers (abuses of power, unfair taxation), each of reformers also had their sights set higher than the replacement of bad individuals with good ones.

Instead of merely removing the morally corrupt and religiously syncretic rulers, the reformers strove to expunging all pagan elements from broader society while establishing a stronger education system to more permanently spread and maintain orthodox Islam within their territories. And instead of merely lowering the taxes as new rulers they changed the basis that taxation laws were founded on; employing Maliki school Sharia instead of going entirely off the whims of worldly rulers. There were institutional changes to the very nature of Statehood in the region too. States were no longer ruled by kings who were divine personages themselves; they were replaced by Amirs who functionally first among equals with the other governing scholars. This meant that many formerly powerful institutions were either rendered impotent (Palace Slave officials) or eliminated altogether (the office of Queen mother/sister). Like through their study of Islamic literature and analysis of the societies they lived in, these scholars came up with a plan to change their societies and to one extent or another put it into action. The changes the wrought went far far deeper than the names of the rulings families

Mind you it's important not to exaggerate the extent of these changes. They may have deliberately altered the nature and mechanisms of culture and politics, but the mode of production did not receive similar treatment. There were certainly economic changes in the region throughout the 19th century but these were driven more by international trade relations than any domestic political programmes*; a decline in demand for slaves and increase in demand for the agricultural products from the region (Kola Nuts, Peanuts, Palm Oil etc.) meant a region wide decrease in the export of slave as more of them were retained locally for employment in agriculture. However this was a process that occurred throughout West Africa rather than being confined to the Islamic Sudan; it was not a result of deliberate effort by Islamic Reformists. These were revolutions of the Superstructure, not the Base. To put it in European terms they had much more in common with the Liberal revolutions of the 18th century than the Communist ones of the 20th.

Still the fact that there was any kind of genuine ideological program at all, complete with its share of well known thinkers and an entire library of relevant literature, certainly makes it more recognisable to the modern revolutionary than many of the other civil wars and succession disputes given such a title. Even ignoring how important this process was for the West Sudan specifically, it's a very interesting slice of history that more people should be at least aware of. This post was largely based on volume 6 of the UNESCO General History of Africa (mainly chapters 21-3) and I'd highly recommend reading the whole thing if you're curious. At bare minimum it should be remembered that this sort of history is not unique to Europe

*I've definitely read a paper (which I cannot for the life of me find in my notes so if anyone knows something relevant it would be greatly appreciated) that suggests these processes aided the Islamic Reformers as many of the Pagan/Syncretic rulers relied mostly on slave raiding and sale while the more orthodox Islamic communities were already more involved in plantation production. However I've seen nothing to suggest this was a direct influence on or result of Islamic Reformist politics and a similar process occurred in the Pagan kingdoms to the South and East too

[evilios]

I kind of want to summarize everything (that I know) regarding the discussion on "dark-haired Apollo" that came up as of recent because I received some questions about further sources/analysis of sources and it's started to become very messy.

I want to organize the points made I personally want to expand on because I feel like they need further commentary:

🏺 Paean and Prosodion by Limenios, approx. 2nd. c. BCE, is not fully preserved and mentions Apollo's hair twice: once is the explicit and rather well retained χ[ρ]υσεοχαίταν (chryseochaitan, golden-haired/of golden locks or curls) and the second one is proposed-reconstructed as ...οί]νώ[πα] (oinopa, like wine). Translators do not seem to come to a single conclusion on how to translate this supplementation, if correct.

Landels (1999) offers "wine-dark", but Furley & Bremer (2001) argues that it makes more sense for Apollo's hair to be described through this word in its meaning of "glossy". The study by Furley & Bremer brings up two arguments:

Apollo's hair receives a different (more common for him) epithet in the same hymn.

Callimachus' Hymn to Apollo (2), approx. 3rd c. BCE, mentions Apollo's hair to be dripping anointing balm. S. Stephens in the commentary to Callimachus' Hymns explains that Apollo's hair drips healing balm onto the ground as he's a healing God. F&B thus come to the conclusion that the supposed glistening of Apollo's hair might indicate a cult practice of anointing his head in oil (sometimes before he encounters the Pytho[n]).

Unrelated but this is the same very issue we encounter with "wine-dark sea" (same word/root, too) and translators not being sure whether it means "purple", "reddish", or "shiny but dark" — or perhaps evokes an emotion rather than just color.

I will add here as my own observation that Apollo's mother, Leto, received the epithet of λιπαροπλόκαμος (liparoplokamos, one with glossy hair) in Homer and while ascribing motherly traits to the son is a bit of a reach, it might be a similar context as the first root of the compound word might indicate "shiny with oil".

🏺 Deipnosophistae (book 13), approx. 3rd c. AD, makes a notion of "dark hair" in the same paragraph with Apollo's name not to grant it to him as an epithet but to offer a point of rhetoric.

Athenaeus, through the words of Sophocles debating with another poet as they watch a servant boy (whom Sophocles later kisses but that's beyond the point, just a fun thing), offers a discussion point: if one considers the poetic description of "purple cheeks" unattractive just because it wouldn't look good in pottery, then one must think the same of "rosy fingered women" as well as "golden-haired Apollo" just because dipping fingers in rosy paint would turn them into "hands of a purple-dyer" and Apollo's hair would not look good if you turned the dark hair in the pottery actually gold.

Personally, I read it more so as a commentary on poetic language and its objection to literal interpretation and directness. If I really try, I can even stretch it into an argument in favor of Apollo "actually" being assumed dark-haired but (as a simile with "rosy fingers" of women and "purple cheeks" of a boy) receiving a more poetic comparison in literature. But, again, this part is my speculation.

🏺 There's one more Paean from Erythrae, approx. 4th c. BCE, which marks Apollo as κυανοπλόκαμον (kyanoplokamon, dark-haired) but also says he sired Seleucus, likely Seleucus I Nicator, the founder of the notorious Seleucid Empire who happened to exist in the same time period and invaded the area (Ionic site in Asia Minor) the hymn was found at. Nothing to say here, Apollo is called "dark-haired". Though I do find it interesting that another Deity given this exact epithet is Nike in Bacchylides' victory Ode to Hieron for winning horse-race in the Olympics of 476 BCE.

Completely unrelated to the discussion on Apollo (or is it?) but Dionysus also receives mixed epithets regarding his hair: χρυσοκόμης (chrysokomes, golden-haired) in Theogony but κυάνεος (kyaneos, dark [usually dark blue, glossy dark]) in Homeric Hymn (7).

With that said, it's entirely possible for both "golden hair" and "dark hair" to be used in either literal or non-literal way. Pottery depicts hair as dark, be it for practicality or not, some sculpture has golden coverage on the hair, (Roman) frescoes persistently depict most Gods as dark-haired, and A. Greek has plasticity of expression you can utilize to justify your choice of hair color for Apollo, whichever it is.

[astromechs]

can I get washing their hair for rebelcaptain? 🥺

fun fact, i received these two asks within about an hour of one another, so great minds really do think alike. anyway, since the other two were heavier, went with something really, really stupid for this one 💕 from this list; still accepting! (and this is now also available on ao3, just like the other fills)

“He does this on purpose,” Jyn grumbles, because she’s too fucking furious for more than a grumble. Well, that and she can’t exactly manage anything else in her current position, head tipped with water-soaked hair obscuring most of her field of vision, palm pressed flat against the shower wall to keep her steady after having to remain like that for so long, but her point still stands.

Could anyone really blame her for being furious? She knows fucking intent when she sees it. There’s no way that a droid with a self-professed “specialty” of strategic analysis hadn’t mapped out what her route around base would likely be today, and there’s no way that he hadn’t been ready with a whole fucking vat of oil in his stupid fucking mechanical hands to drop it over her at just the right fucking moment.

It’d been completely uncalled for, too. So what if she’d cut the power to Kay’s favorite docking port last week and forced him to spend an entire night cycle trapped next to that astromech he hates so much? That had hardly been worth this much torture — and she’ll probably never be able to wear that shirt or vest ever again; they’d practically had to be sliced off of her.

No, there’s a difference between justified retaliation and crossing a line, and Kay had passed that line by a fucking parsec, so he’s the one who’s clearly in the wrong here. That’s her position, and she’s sticking to it.

It’s a position that any reasonable person with sense would agree to, so it’s one that Cassian, logically, will.

But when the hands that have been messaging her scalp still and his response comes, it isn’t an agreement. No, instead, it’s, “He doesn’t mean it,” said in the tone she absolutely hates the most: the one that’s mildly neutral, that comes with the mask he puts on when she knows he doesn’t want to engage with something.

Fuck. For a brief amount of time, she’d actually managed to forget that the person who’s been standing in the shower with her for the past standard hour at least, helping her wash her hair, is the one who’d be the least fucking objective possible on this issue.

If she could turn around, she’d raise an eyebrow and give Cassian her best are you fucking kidding me stare, but since she can’t, she resigns herself to heaving a long, frustrated sigh, one she makes sure can be heard over the running water.

He doesn’t respond for a while, opting instead to continue with his task of rubbing another round of shampoo into her hair. If he were doing this for any other reason, it might feel nice — part of her has been halfway to thinking it at least three times over the past standard hour before she’s stopped herself, because even with the difficulty of what he he’s had to work with, he’s never been too harsh with his touch — but he’s not here for those reasons, and so his silence is annoying. HIs silence leaves her no choice except to try for the sigh again, and really mean it this time.

Eventually, after that, he speaks up again, with a sigh that’s almost as heavy as hers. “I’ll tell him to call it off.”

Finally. Had that been so fucking hard?

To her credit, and she really tries for this, she does her best to leave out that sentiment when she tells him:  “That’s all I’m asking —”

“ — If you also call it off.”

Seriously? Her first instinct is to roll her eyes, which she does, and then her next is to open her mouth for a counterargument, which she also does, only nothing comes out of it. Because maybe, just maybe, she can concede that she’d crossed a line, too, and had provoked something that hadn’t really been worth provoking. It’s just been so quiet, and when things are too quiet, she turns twitchy and restless, and —

She can swallow her pride, even if it means doing so while gritting her teeth.

“Fine.” She guesses she should probably sound less like she’s gritting her teeth, though, so before she elaborates, she takes a beat. “I’ll leave his stupid docking port alone. Will that make him happy?”

Pressed against her, she can feel Cassian lift one shoulder in a shrug. “Happy enough.”

Because she knows him, Jyn can tell, just from his voice, that the beginnings of that stupid smug smirk he likes to flash at her sometimes are there, forming.

Only the shower wall will see, but she scrunches her face and glowers at it with everything she has.

“Fuck you,” she says, though, despite her efforts, she doesn’t manage to inject any real heat into it. “I heard that.”

“Heard what?”

She thinks: she should be annoyed; she should curl her free hand into a fist so that it’ll be ready to give him a nice, solid punch when her position allows. But the thought is gone almost as soon as it surfaces, because — suddenly, in spite of everything, a laugh bursts out of her. A genuine, full-bodied laugh that has her hand shaking against the wall while still trying to hold flat for support, her side stitching, and her breath wheezing.

Behind her, she can hear Cassian joining in earnest, his composure crumbling alongside his current attempt to massage her scalp. His laugh is softer than hers, still trying to find its footing after what has to be years of rust, but it’s undeniable.

Understandably undeniable, because this whole situation really is fucking absurd, isn’t it?

They don’t get many moments like this, but even so, they’ve had more of them together than Jyn can remember having for most of her life before they’d ever met — and it’s a good feeling when they happen. Warm, easy. Safe. The last of the tension she’d been carrying washes away with the water.

And after her laughter subsides and she’s blinked the tears from her eyes, she closes them, relaxing, for the moment, into what she can.

[txttletale]

hi miss healed, could you elaborate what you mean by dictatorship/authoritarian not being useful/meaningful terms? i know they're terms the west likes to tack on its political enemies, but i thought it might be a case of just misuse of terms that can still be useful, rather than outright a problem with the concept itself, so id be interested to understand your opinion. thanks!

so i don't think 'authoritarian' has any useful analytical value because every state is 'authoritarian' -- the only metrics by which one state might be seen as less 'authoritarian' than another are the metrics which privilege liberal democracy and a free market as a meaningful sort of 'freedom', which as a marxist, i don't! every state is an institution for class suppression--in the state and revolution, lenin quotes engels as saying:

[...] it is sheer nonsense to talk of a 'free people's state'; so long as the proletariat still needs the state, it does not need it in the interests of freedom but in order to holddown its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom the state as such ceases to exist.

every state uses violence to perpetuate and legitimize itself. there is no state that would let you march into the capital and declare its dissolution without deploying armed men against you -- every state is authoritarian, it excercises authority, this is a tautological statement about how states maintain their own existence.

and sure, you could then say 'well we can just call all states authoritarian', but i don't think that makes any sense. the criticism of a state 'authoritarian/totalitarian' implies that there is an alternative, a point of comparison against which the state comes short--and i simply don't think it's possible to use 'authoritarian' as a cogent criticism without having such a point of comparison (usually the US or some european liberal democracy) which in turn means buying into liberal & capitalist ideas about 'freedom'.

as for 'dictator', i have a different criticism of that, also stemming from my marxist perspective. basically, i just think it doesn't describe anything useful in terms of political analysis and massively overemphasizes the role of individual psychology and personality. i frequently criticize both anticommunist and 'stalinist' views of stalin by joking that he must have been a very busy man if he singlehandedly ate all the grain or killed all the nazis. which is obviously a glib way of putting it--but my point is that any dictator who has ever 'done anything' could only do it because they could order a government official to do it who in turn could order a department to do it that could in turn mobilize hundreds or thousands of soldiers/construction workers/bureaucrats/etc. in order to make that happen.

sure, the leaders of countries might make decisions, and in some systems an individual leader might have greater leeway than others. but there are always very clear hard limits about what they must do and what they cannot do. i am sure i can say pretty uncontroversially that mohammad bin salman has an extreme level of political control over the economy and government of saudi arabia, but if he woke up tomorrow and said 'good news everyone, we're converting the country to wicca and donating all our oil to iran' then that would not happen and he would be deposed instantly. for a more realistic example, imagine any 'dictator' of your choice saying 'well, it's time to massively defund the military' -- this would be completely fucking impossible without some kind of loyalist paramilitary organization (which then exerts its own forces upon the 'dictator'.)

and of course all that leaves aside the massive extent to which 'dictator' is politically charged. do i think that vladimir putin was democratically elected? obviously not! but i don't think that any US president has been in any meaningful sense 'elected' by anything other than capital either, and two of the last four straightforwardly lost a popular vote even by the standards of liberal democracy! i think that any political system is best analyzed in class terms, in terms of what interests the government serves in terms of class struggle and competition between global capitalists, rather than in terms of individuals or what formal power structures give out the fancy titles

tldr: as a marxist, i think that 'authoritarian' is a useless distinguisher because excercising authority is the sole purpose and function of a state -- 'dictator' is a useless distinguisher because even the most autocratic fiefdom-state is ultimately a class dictatorship first and foremost

[stromuprisahat]

The differences between the verbally abusive man and the physical batterer are not as great as many people believe. The behavior of either style of abuser grows from the same roots and is driven by the same thinking. Men in either category follow similar processes of change in overcoming their abusiveness—if they do change, which unfortunately is not common. And the categories tend to blur. Physically assaultive men are also verbally abusive to their partners. Mentally cruel and manipulative men tend to gradually drift into using physical intimidation as well. In this book you will meet abusers on a spectrum, ranging from those who never use violence to those who are terrifying. The extent of their common ground may startle you. One of the obstacles to recognizing chronic mistreatment in relationships is that most abusive men simply don’t seem like abusers. They have many good qualities, including times of kindness, warmth, and humor, especially in the early period of a relationship. An abuser’s friends may think the world of him. He may have a successful work life and have no problems with drugs or alcohol. He may simply not fit anyone’s image of a cruel or intimidating person. So when a woman feels her relationship spinning out of control, it is unlikely to occur to her that her partner is an abuser. The symptoms of abuse are there, and the woman usually sees them: the escalating frequency of put-downs. Early generosity turning more and more to selfishness. Verbal explosions when he is irritated or when he doesn’t get his way. Her grievances constantly turned around on her, so that everything is her own fault. His growing attitude that he knows what is good for her better than she does. And, in many relationships, a mounting sense of fear or intimidation. But the woman also sees that her partner is a human being who can be caring and affectionate at times, and she loves him. She wants to figure out why he gets so upset, so that she can help him break his pattern of ups and downs. She gets drawn into the complexities of his inner world, trying to uncover clues, moving pieces around in an attempt to solve an elaborate puzzle. The abuser’s mood changes are especially perplexing. He can be a different person from day to day, or even from hour to hour. At times he is aggressive and intimidating, his tone harsh, insults spewing from his mouth, ridicule dripping from him like oil from a drum. When he’s in this mode, nothing she says seems to have any impact on him, except to make him even angrier. Her side of the argument counts for nothing in his eyes, and everything is her fault. He twists her words around so that she always ends up on the defensive. As so many partners of my clients have said to me, “I just can’t seem to do anything right.” At other moments, he sounds wounded and lost, hungering for love and for someone to take care of him. When this side of him emerges, he appears open and ready to heal. He seems to let down his guard, his hard exterior softens, and he may take on the quality of a hurt child, difficult and frustrating but lovable. Looking at him in this deflated state, his partner has trouble imagining that the abuser inside of him will ever be back. The beast that takes him over at other times looks completely unrelated to the tender person she now sees.

Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men- Chapter 1: The Mystery (Lundy Bancroft)

I won't go through all of Mal's star moments, the best is to be found under my analysis tag or generally #anti Malina, but from the top of my head:

They have many good qualities, including times of kindness, warmth, and humor...

Post exactly about this.

Verbal explosions when he is irritated or when he doesn’t get his way. ... everything is her own fault.

She wants to figure out why he gets so upset, so that she can help him break his pattern of ups and downs.

At times he is aggressive and intimidating ...

Her side of the argument counts for nothing in his eyes...

At other moments, he sounds wounded and lost, hungering for love and for someone to take care of him.

[themisteriousentity]

You know, people forget that Soldier, Poet, King is a Christian song depicting different aspects of Jesus, but it sure is interesting to see that the fandom almost universally makes Dimitri the Soldier, Claude the Poet, and Edelgard the King

However, I argue a different order

*le gaspu*

Dimitri is still the soldier, but I think Claude and Edelgard should switch. I think Edelgard is the Poet and Claude is the King

Hear me out

Dimitri, we all know why he's the Soldier. I don't think we need to explain that. I don't need to get into the bible analysis, man LITERALLY tears cities down, oh lei oh lai oh lord

Edelgard is a very well spoken person. When she's actually given room to voice her ideas, despite being wrong because she's got just the tip of the iceberg of the true history, she can managed to convince almost anyone. In both games, she manages to convince most of her empire, which is FULL of very devout followers of Seiros and Sothis, to attack the Central Church and follow her lead. For a person who doesn't know much better, she's very damn convincing. She just doesn't do it very often, and she's terrible at listening when people try to counter her ideas (her argument with Dimitri and Azure Moon really highlights this when he tries to open a dialogue). But the important thing there is also that this is a role she chooses to take on in both games. If you look at the Poet, this easily relates to the start of Jesus's ministry in the bible, taking down establishments left and right on his word alone. Edelgard convinces her country to follow her on her accusations alone (as she was only 18 when she started the war and even as emperor she had to talk many ministers into following her lead or nothing would've happened without ministers like Count Bergliez and Count Hevring that she convinced), slaying the church with her tongue

Meanwhile, the King easily relates far more to Claude than the Poet. Claude doesn't really spend a lot of time convincing people of his ideals or talking them into anything aside from explaining his ambitions to Byleth and Shez, and depending on your supports in some ways to Leonie and Lorenz. Unlike Edelgard, Claude is in a situation he didn't ask for. He has a war thrust upon him and a conflict with a massive religious body that breeds prejudice to contend with. As an outsider who is deeply untrusted, he has to fight tooth and nail just to keep the Alliance whole. All the meanwhile he's constantly having insults thrust upon him by his own people, and in certain routes he's completely abandoned by one of the largest political players in his nation. The crown of thorns was not a burden Jesus chose to accept, like the burden of war Edelgard created and thrust upon the world, but was something thrusted upon him that he then had to deal with. It's easy to see that Claude never wanted to contend with this war and only stays because he HAS to, for the sake of both Almyra and Fódlan, despite knowing all he's doing is keeping things stable while not fixing the situation. But in the end he's still prepared to sacrifice everything to try and make the world better. In Houses, he even plans for his own death to protect the people of the Alliance, the people who fought against him and rejected him the most. In Hopes, he settles on working with people he fundamentally disagrees with and dislikes for the sake of protecting Fódlan. With a character progression like that, it just feels like the ruler who his brow laid in thorn, anointed in oil, that tracks to Claude much better than Edelgard

But hey, that's just my opinion. Wow, who knew being dragged to church kicking and screaming against my will would come in handy for a strategy JRPG