#Definitely not radically different sizes or anything else

[believeintheruin]

I just wanted to give Siffrin a therapy dragon cuz he deserves it and then my brainrot went brrrrr and I drew the whole crew with the dragon plus a Lil Loop doodle cuz how could I not.

[itcamefromthetoybox]

Here to Sniff Flowers and Shoot Predacons

“Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” toys are finally out, and I for one couldn’t be happier! I am so freaking pumped to talk about the different figures from this line, especially since so many of the characters are from “Beast Wars,” my introduction to “Transformers,” and a show near and dear to my heart. So what I’m thinking is that we’ll look at one figure from several of the different sets of figures so that we can get a general idea about this line of toys. And, because I love the character’s original version from “Beast Wars,” we’re starting with “Beast Alliance Beast Battle Masters Rhinox!”

For those of you who don’t know, “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” is the sequel to the hit movie “Bumblebee,” the best movie in the “Transformers” film series and one you should definitely watch if you haven’t done so yet. While that movie took place in the 80’s, this one will be taking place in the totally radical year 1992. Not much is known of the plot as of this moment, which means there isn’t much I can say about the film’s version of Rhinox either. He’s a Maximal who turns into a rhinoceros, and that’s currently all I got. I could tell you tons about the “Beast Wars” version of Rhinox, but that’s because his show came out when I was a kid. This guy? Nothing’s out yet, so I can’t tell you anything about him.

The “Beast Alliance” line of figures, though, is something I can very much talk about. The focus in this line is figures that interact with robot animals, which become weapons and/or armor for the larger toys. It’s where a lot of the movie’s toys are and where we’ll be spending a decent amount of our time with the toyline. It’s made up of three sublines, with “Beast Battle Masters” being what we’re looking at today.

“Beast Battle Masters” are a series of transforming robot animals that become various weapons which can be held by larger figures. The animals themselves lack a robot mode, even if the character the toy depicts does have one, which makes sense because they’re smaller figures and engineering can only do so much without costing a crapload.

Rhinox, despite being a smaller figure, is very stocky. His mold is built to show off just how strong a rhino made of metal would actually be, which is VERY strong. His body’s sculpted in a way that really lets us see the armor plating the character has, which helps contribute to his powerful looks. Most of Rhinox’s body is covered in an rocky brownish color, with touches of metal paint on his shoulders, eyes, mouth, and neck. His steel-grey limbs and the sculpted wiring around his ribs really help drive home the fact that this is a machine and not an organic animal, but none of it takes away from the rhino shape. It’s very clear when looking at him what Rhinox is supposed to be.

Fun-Sized

Rhinox transforms into a gatling gun that can be held by most figures and has a pretty straightforward transformation. You split open his butt and wrap it around his body, rearrange the legs, and Bob’s your uncle. …Good Lord, that last sentence makes me sound like a serial killer when taken out of context. THIS BLOG DOES NOT CONDONE MUTILATING RHINOCEROSES OR PEOPLE. Anyways, the gatling gun looks alright. It’s not great-looking, and from the wrong angle, looks like an ass with a gun sticking out of it, but it’s alright. The legs can get in the way of certain figures holding it, so I’d recommend fiddling with the legs to make him fit in figures’ hands. Also, the gun barrel is removable, since it’s held on with friction tabs, but I’d leave it so as not to wear down the connections.

The Butt-Gun of Doom

Rhinox has limited articulation. His legs are held on by ball joints, but lack any joints themselves, so there’s not much going on there. Since his entire design revolves around turning into a gatling gun, there’s not much room for anything else. His shape impedes any real movement.

Now, would I recommend “Beast Alliance Beast Battle Masters Rhinox?” Absolutely. He’s a fun little figure who goes great with bigger figures. My plan is to actually get the larger Rhinox figure with a robot mode and have him hold this guy. While there will be a re-release of this toy that will come with a figure of Wheeljack, it’s gonna cost a lot more and has a lot less paint, so this is the better Rhinox if you’re not interested in that Wheeljack. Rhinox and the rest of his subline are available at mass retail for about $7-$10, and are fun little toys that kids will really enjoy. This is JS signing off and wishing you Happy Toy Hunting.

[crossdressingdeath]

Leliana didn't just approach an old friend about a job at the Inquisition. She literally tested Josie to see if she had the integrity that Leliana felt was needed for the position. Even though she knew that Josie was darn good at her job. Cassandra meanwhile listens to Varric's tale about the failure that is Cu||en and goes 'right, he can be the commander'. Then she spends the entire game being unhappy with everything he does (according to the messengers) lol.

Oh, I forgot! I love how the game can't even give us a decent reason for why he's even there. 'Cassandra sought a solution' Really? Her 'solution' to the mage-templar crisis was to get an awful Templar who was the second-in-command at one if the worst Circles in Thedas? Gee won't that make the mages feel safe! Such a dumb move.

That's Curly has collecting elfroot as his main job while Leliana and Josie takes care of the actual important stuff. Why couldn't we get a dwarven commander, Bioware!?!

Honestly I'm kind of glad we didn't get a dwarf commander, given all the trouble DAI has with cutscenes and camera angles if you're playing a dwarf (or Qunari, for that matter). Hell, even Bull's scale compared to the rest of the cast seems to vary somewhat depending on the cutscene. I cannot imagine any of the scenes around the war table quite working properly with a dwarf advisor; remember how Quiz will suddenly magically become human-sized in some cutscenes (the most notable example I can think of being kissing Dorian) because they didn't figure out alternate animations for a Quiz with radically different proportions to a human? I guess it might have been better handled with a character meant to be a dwarf from the start (if memory serves the ability to play as a non-human was a pretty late addition in DAI, so I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't enough time to make sure everything worked properly with a dwarf), but still.

But yeah, Leliana chose Josie because a) Josie was a trusted friend who'd proved her worth as a diplomat a thousand times over and b) Josie passed Leliana's little test to make sure she had the necessary integrity for the role. Meanwhile... okay, Cassandra listened to Varric's stories about DA2, including how Cullen was an active and enthusiastic participant in Meredith's atrocities (up until a human noble who could and would kick his ass was in the firing line, that is, and even it wasn't so much him helping Hawke as it was him being too much of a coward to get in Hawke's way despite him openly agreeing with Meredith's beliefs), was heavily involved with Meredith's death squads, argued in favour of using the Rite of Tranquility more widely, and openly believed mages weren't people. Cassandra listened to Varric telling her about all of that. And then she apparently decided that oh yeah, that guy would be a great choice for commander of the Inquisition. If nothing else putting a Templar who hates and fears mages into a position where he is likely to have to interact with mages isn't going to be great for either side. Unless of course the Inquisition was originally going to be a Chantry organization tied heavily to the remaining Templars with no mages allowed in any position of rank and with the goal of restoring the status quo and shoving the mages back under the Templars' thumb, which wouldn't mesh well with Cassandra's insistence that it's definitely not a Chantry organization or the claims that Justinia was pro-mage. ...Actually, the only reason to put Cullen in charge of the military is if the Inquisition was initially supposed to court the rogue Templars into joining them to the exclusion of all else; Meredith's second-in-command would be very appealing to the sort of person to rebel against the Chantry because the Divine told them to hold off on murdering people for a bit! And not at all appealing to... anyone else, if only because his total refusal to engage in anything at all political means he's constantly a dick to the Inquisition's noble allies.

But honestly Cassandra picking Cullen as the commander even though he's a terrible choice in every way except "he knows what end to hold a sword by" has big "kid in the group project who forgot to do their part until the last day" energy. Like... Leliana finds this incredibly skilled and experienced diplomat who she knows personally and trusts absolutely, and then tests her just to be absolutely sure she can be relied on to act with integrity! And then she tells Cassandra about this and asks how the search for a commander is going, and Cassandra goes "Oh shit, right, that was my job" and grabs Cullen just because he happened to be in the area and she needed someone to show Leliana. No idea why Leliana accepted this choice given she disagrees with Cullen on every point and also hates him personally (presumably especially if the Warden is a mage, especially especially if the Warden is a female mage who romanced Leliana), and frankly she probably would've respected Cassandra more for just admitting she'd forgotten about the commander, but there we are.

[lochnessies]

ok here’s a dissection of a post an anon sent me the link to and bc i have the worst time management possible and i completely forgot i had it lol so sorry anon here you go ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

I am constantly thinking about how Edelgard just doesn’t seem designed to appeal to cishet men.

i hate to be the one to break this news to you op but just because a character doesn’t show skin like charlotte fire emblem doesn’t mean she isn’t designed to pander to men. she’s very much designed to pander to the (majority straight male) player base with her ‘uwu i only trust you professor omg did u see that rat? pls don’t look at my painting of you uwu’.

then there’s the whole edelgard c support in japanese where byleth makes reference to having come to her room for ‘yobi’ which is

there’s also the scene where byleth can make an unsolicited comment about edelgard’s breast size. which is… uhh… gross.

edelgard also has cipher cards that go from slightly fanserviceie to full on suggestive

and also her breast armor that my sister relentlessly mocked lol

and here’s a chart from the 3h subreddit about gender/sexually in regards to edelgard and edeleth. it’s extremely straight male. op might have just overlooked this since they probably don’t go on reddit and stay on tumblr (which unlike reddit is mostly female and has a high lgbt demographic).

Like the joke is that Bleagles is the Gay House, but everything about her feels deliberately non-hetero.

i don’t like where this is going…

She’s dressed in sharp outfits covering her upper body, with proportions that don’t seem exaggerated.

so women who cover up must be lgbt because straight women are naturally more revealing? oh y i k e s

Her poise and the way she effortlessly flourishes her axe exhibits an air of coolness. While titties out =/= character of no substance, Edelgard being dressed more modestly suggests that she wasn’t designed with male-centred fanservice in mind.

“titties don’t equal no substance but here’s my post on how she has more substance because she doesn’t show titties” ok

And she still looks absolutely stunning in her more modest attire (like seriously, I haven’t felt the need to return to cosplay in years but I want to do her academy look so bad). 

yes she does. amazing design 10/10. i have a feeling this is the only part i’m going to agree with

Edelgard is intense. She does not mince her words and she is constantly evaluating you. Though she tries, she has a difficult time understanding her peers initially. Early on, she talks about how she would sacrifice herself and others in the name of some greater good. She is terrible at communicating with her peers. She has to be seen as infallible. Her heart has been hardened for years and she assumes she has to stay that way. She also assumes everyone mourns the same way she does - which is why she (kind of insensitively) insists you move on when Jeralt dies. Because to her, grief has to be channeled towards action, or else you’ll get lost in it. This attitude is demonstrated time and time again as she presses on. It can make her come off as cold and unfeeling - but look closer, and she’s anything but.

don’t really have anything to say at this part. it is pretty on the nose though i would slightly disagree with that last sentence a bit. i wouldn’t say she’s as i feeling as hubert is but all of her talks of the war boil down to how she feels and never her victims.

Her story is ultimately about her realizing that to achieve her goals, she needs to let people in and allow herself to want things like cakes and tea parties and lazy days in peace. 

????? what ????? her goals include imperialism, ethnic and religious targeting. her story is about having a set of beliefs and mowing down anybody who stands in her way. that has nothing to do with tea, friends, and lazy days. also am i supposed to be sad that she has to get up everyday and work? i do that and i didn’t start a war and only throw a pity party for myself

The game leaves the player guessing as to how involved the Flame Emperor was in each Part I event, makes you feel hurt by her betrayal, and leaves you with a choice: do you follow the orders of the woman who tried to make you a god without your consent, or a young girl with questionable morals about to throw the world into upheaval?

this isn’t an ideal situation but i think i’m going to stick with the woman who tried to make me a god since i’m not selfish and i know it’s not only my desires and life at stake here. plus the green hair slaps ngl

Choosing her of your own volition (not for completionist reasons) requires the basic ability to sympathize with a woman’s pain. It also requires the player to read beyond her unwavering will and dubious methods to get a sense of how deep that pain goes and how the theme of humanity relates to her differently in each route.

i’m not going to touch this since @nilsh13 made a post on it that i’ll link here. i agree with everything he said so to repeat it would be redundant.

The player must be able to see a young woman’s desperate resolve to change the world so it stops exploiting people and ruining lives. They must be able to accept the fact that women can make the same morally wrong and ambivalent decisions that complicated male characters get to make all the time and still be the one to root for.

literally the same reason i love rhea lol her goddess experiments are dubious at best but her reasons are the same you mentioned. i would say that i like this quality in edelgard too if her ending, while bloody, actually ended in a good outcome for fodlan.

This is not unique to LGBT+ people, but this population is likely to understand why Edelgard feels so strongly about why she has to change the system. 

i understand wanting to change a system, i really do. like edelgard, i’m an opinionated bisexual woman (who’s also physically disabled) so yeah i get it. and change can be good but it can also be terrible. even if the church was the boogeyman edelgard treats it as she still replaces it with her own shit regime. so it’s the same circus just with a new conductor.

I don’t think “Edelgard gets undue criticism because she’s a woman” captures the full picture. An important aspect of her treatment by certain parts of the fandom is that she’s a radical woman.

or maybe she does some pretty fucked up shit and it goes unacknowledged in her own route. and yeah she’s radical but in all the worst ways.

Her hatred of the Church and the Crest system resonates way harder with people who have been hurt by institutions that are deeply engrained in our society. 

and what about people who have been hurt by systems where their ‘merit’ didn’t measure up and they were left behind? what about people from nations that experienced imperialism?

Siding with her means siding against the Church - which, while different from real world religious institutions, still invokes language about “sin” and “punishment.

yeah the ‘sins’ and ‘punishments’ are used in relation to attempted murders which i think everybody can agree is a bad thing that needs to be condemned.

Choosing Edelgard will likely hit different if homophobic and transphobic Christians used that rhetoric against you.

it has literally nothing to do with ‘sins’ and ‘punishments’ in regards to being gay or trans. that’s you projecting. especially since the church has 2 canon gay characters and two coded ones.

like i can understand why having a church condemn you can be uncomfortable but i’m begging you to please look at the context of what’s happening.

I’m willing to go out on a limb and say that the reason F/F Edeleth is the more popular iteration of that ship because most people who would choose to S-support Edelgard are LGBT+ themselves. This is not a revelation. To anyone in the community, it’s fairly obvious. 

i was talking to nilish and he said

so yeah… while there is definitely sapphic femleth shippers out there, there’s still a whole lot of weird fetishizing going on from straight men about edelgard.

Crimson Flower was my first route. I went into the game knowing absolutely nothing. I played it during the last week of 2020 and hoo boy was it cathartic. 

i can tell. this wasn’t supposed to be a dig but it came out that way and i’m not taking it out.

I felt like I was living out a gay revolution power fantasy, where I could truly change systems of oppression while fighting alongside a group of troubled students I’d shaped the lives of.

so a gay revolution power fantasy (cringe) goes hand in hand with imperialism and installing a dictatorship? also the war had nothing to do with sexuality.

Through your unwavering support, Edelgard learns that she needs to be human, that she must listen to her friends, and that she’s allowed to enjoy the world she’s creating.

edelgard gets to learn how to be human all while hunting those who don’t. and she doesn’t listen fo her friends. she doesn’t even trust them. she’s willing to talk to byleth but keep the people who’s been by her side for five years in the dark about everything. and yeah she gets to enjoy her new words since she’s on top. hate to be a commoner under her rule after she burned down my village in her war.

I love this character so much.

clearly. and i honestly don’t care if somebody likes her. i do as well even if my sometimes scathing words can make it seem otherwise.

It has been six months since I first played and I am still analyzing her,

me too. please help me escape i’m losing my mind

because there’s so much depth. Yet so many people fail to see that depth and dismiss her as evil,

i mean, she does some fucked up shit that goes beyond any of the less than desirable actions of the other main characters and does an extremely poor job in trying to make herself seem innocent. i personally don’t think she’s pure evil but i completely understand where the people who say she is are coming from.

because they never had the will to understand complicated women in the first place. 

that’s big talk from somebody who implies that a gay pope is comparable to homophobic and transphobic irl religions and that leads an oppressive regime all because she uses the vague terms of sin and punishments that you have to gay power fantasy your way out of

[drabbles-mc]

Protective Detail (3/?)

Nestor Oceteva x Reader

Warnings: language, falling more in love with Nestor than we already were originally (if that’s even possible)

Word Count: 2.7k

A/N: I’m a sucker for characters building relationships. Humans slowly getting to know each other and get more comfortable with each other??? Friendships and feelings developing?? Sign me the fuck up lmao. As always, hope y’all enjoy xoxo

Chapter Index

Protective Detail Taglist: @masterlistforimagines​ @sillygoose6969​ @mydaiilyescape​ @lovebennycolon​ @the-radical-venus​ @gemini0410​ @garbinge​ (If you want to be tagged in this fic or any of my other writing let me know!)

A few days into the new arrangement, you and Nestor had started figuring out a little bit of a routine. There were a lot of quiet moments between the two of you—you realized that he wasn’t much of a talker and you were still trying to figure out how to get him to say more than two sentences at a time about anything. It was like your new mission.

He was adamant about doing dishes. He couldn’t stand letting them sit in the sink overnight, so they were always clean first thing in the morning when you came out into the kitchen. He’d shake his head at you before you could even try to tell him that it wasn’t necessary. You wanted to be motivated enough to clean them before you went to bed, but by the time the end of the day rolled around all you wanted to do was crawl under the covers and pass out, so that was usually what you ended up doing.

“I’ll do dishes but I draw the line at combining our laundry,” he said as he carried his small hamper of dirty clothes to the basement where the washer and dryer were.

You laughed, calling after him, “Oh darn. How am I supposed to snoop through your stuff, then?” you felt your phone vibrating in your pocket and you took it out to see who was calling, smiling to yourself when you saw your father’s contact photo on your phone screen, “You’re calling early.”

“You’re awake early,” you could hear the smile in his voice, “Was just calling to check in and see how things are going.”

“I haven’t succeeded in driving him away yet, unfortunately.”

Nestor’s voice came from downstairs, “I can hear you!”

“Good!” you called back with a laugh before returning your attention to your phone call.

Your father sighed, “So things are going well, I see.”

“It’s really not bad at all, Papi. Nestor is alright. It’s just weird living with someone that you don’t know,” you paced the floor of your kitchen, “You know how long he’s gonna have to stay with me?”

“Until I feel that things have been properly handled.”

“You sure Miguel doesn’t need him back?”

“Even if he did, he would never ask me,” you knew your father well enough to know that there was a light smugness to his voice as he said that, “But you’ve been alright? You’re safe?”

“Yes, I’m safe,” you heard Nestor’s footsteps coming back up the stairs and you turned to face him, a childish smirk on your face, “Nestor is doing a fabulous job protecting me.” You chuckled as he pressed his lips into a thin line and made his way to the guest room without a word.

Your father laughed, knowing that you were giving your protective detail a run for his money, “Don’t be too hard on him, mija.”

You laughed, “No promises. I’ll talk to you soon, okay? Love you.”

“Love you too,” he let out a soft chuckle before hanging up the call.

Morning faded into the afternoon and you hadn’t seen Nestor since he disappeared after he brought laundry downstairs. Some moments you wondered if your father’s concern about him being annoyed enough to quit were valid, but you also figured that Nestor was too proud and stubborn to bail. You walked down the hall and knocked on the open door to what you now considered his room. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, tying his shoes. You smiled slightly as he looked over at you, eyebrows raised.

“You almost ready to go?” you asked, “Ready for another very boring night sitting at the bar watching me like a creep?”

He stood up and walked over to you, and for a moment you were reminded of the size difference between the two of you. he glanced down at you, making you feel very small as your face instantly got hot, “Ready to watch me watch you? Like an even bigger creep?” You chuckled, mostly to try and relieve the tension that was bubbling up inside your body. He brushed past you and went to grab his keys, “My turn to drive.”

You followed his path and opened your mouth to argue, but you knew it was useless. With a sigh you grabbed your purse and followed him out the door to his SUV. He’d driven you a couple places in it, and you had to admit it had way more room than your car when it came to grocery shopping. You still weren’t ready to accept it as your main mode of transportation, though. You could’ve had your own nice car, and your father would’ve preferred it, but you didn’t like feeling so obvious. And, in the case of Nestor’s car, you hated feeling like you were constantly fighting to not touch anything in his pristine vehicle.

“You really don’t need to stay for my whole shift, Nestor,” you said as the two of you walked in the front door, “I’m sure there are more important things you could spend a couple hours doing and then just come pick me up afterwards.”

He shook his head, opening the door for you, “Can’t do it.”

It was a busier shift—Saturday’s always were. You almost felt bad for Nestor, but at least there were enough people to keep him occupied and have him feeling like he was actually serving a purpose by being there with you. He never said anything, but you knew that things had been so quiet lately and it was probably a big change of pace from whatever he was usually doing for the Galindos. Any time you tried to ask or allude to it, though, he went silent.

You finally had a moment to pause and catch your breath for a second when you saw Nestor waving you over. You leaned over the bar so he wouldn’t have to shout whatever it was that he had to say to you, sporting your best Customer Service Smile so the people around you wouldn’t get clued in on anything.

“Guy over in that booth has been eyeing you for the last fifteen minutes.”

You were about to tell him that there were always creeps leering at you while you were working, but when you saw who he was talking about, your facial expression dropped. You saw Nestor’s whole body tense up and he went to stand, but you put your hands over his to stop him. He turned to you, clearly confused and on-edge.

“He’s not a problem. Just a shitty ex-boyfriend. He’s annoying, but not a security concern. You can sit, it’s fine,” you nodded to him to reassure him before plastering a smile back on your face and getting back to your other patrons.

Nestor didn’t like the fact that the man kept staring at you. And despite the fact that you had explicitly told him that he wasn’t an issue, there was still a very strong urge to get up and physically throw him out of the building. For the sake of your job, though, Nestor kept himself seated, keeping an eye on everyone else while paying special attention to the man in the booth.

You don’t know how you missed him coming in, but you almost wished that Nestor hadn’t said anything. Now you couldn’t help but to feel him staring at you and it was a difficult feeling to ignore. It would have been a total abuse of power to ask Nestor to go over and get in his face, and you knew it, but the option was still tempting nonetheless. You were glad that he was at least keeping to himself.

That luck ran out too, though. You were looking across the expanse of the bar to see if anyone needed anything, and sure enough he was standing at the far end, a smug grin on his face because he knew that you were going to have to come over and talk to him. Jade saw the look on your face and was about to intervene but you politely waved her off, knowing that it wasn’t her drama to deal with.

“What can I get you, Marco?” your voice wasn’t nasty, but it wasn’t laden with the typical sweetness you used on other customers.

“Whatever’s good on tap tonight, sweetheart.”

“Don’t call me that,” you didn’t look at him as you grabbed a glass and picked a beer out of the tap lineup.

“That your new boyfriend?” he nodded towards Nestor as you handed him the glass.

“And if he is?” this conversation wasn’t going in a good direction, but you were trapped in it regardless.

“I was just wondering, because he’s spent an awful lot of the evening staring at you.”

“Could say the same about you,” you scoffed.

You went to walk away when he reached over the bar and grabbed your arm. His grip wasn’t tight, and you knew that the intention wasn’t to hurt you, just to get your attention, but you still had the overwhelming urge to bust his nose. You ripped your arm from his grip, taking a deep breath as you suppressed the desire to cause a scene.

You almost had no say in the matter, though, as Nestor materialized, placing his hands down hard on Marco’s shoulders, “Everything alright over here?”

Your eyes grew wide, not sure at all how this was going to play out. You could see the fear on Marco’s face, but you also knew that he was too proud and too stupid to back down from a fight, even if it was one he would definitely lose. He shrugged in an attempt to get Nestor’s hands off of his shoulders, “We’re fine.”

Nestor’s eyes zeroed in on you, practically begging you to give him the okay to do some damage, “All good, Y/N?”

Before you could answer, Marco spoke up again, “I said we’re fine.”

“I wasn’t fucking asking you,” Nestor’s voice was low but you could tell by the grimace on Marco’s face that he was definitely digging his fingers into his shoulders.

You nodded, “We’re good.”

Nestor released his grip and you could see Marco’s entire body relax. His gaze lingered on you for a moment and you nodded again to let him know that you could handle it. He didn’t say anything else as he made his way back down to where he had originally been sitting at the bar. His eyes never left the two of you though—you could feel his stare even though your back was to him.

“I figured you would’ve gone for a more warm and fuzzy type,” he tried to play it confidently but you could tell that he was shaken up.

You scoffed, “I’d leave while you still can. He decides to come back over again I won’t tell him to let you go.”

The color drained from Marco’s face, but he just couldn’t make himself smart enough to walk away, “Didn’t think you liked pushy guys.”

You braced your hands on your side of the bar and leaned forward slightly, “I don’t like guys who are pushy with me. Now, get the fuck out before you see how pushy he can really be.”

The second threat was enough to get through. He dropped money on the surface of the bar and left, leaving a full glass of beer behind. You chuckled to yourself as you brought the glass down and set it in front of Nestor. The two of you locked eyes for a moment but didn’t say anything about what had happened as you went about the rest of your evening.

You were cleaning up after your shift, once again it was just you, Jade, and Nestor. You and Jade were going back and forth about some of the ridiculous things that you had heard that night as you wiped down counters and tabletops. Nestor scrolled on his phone, a smile tugging at the edges of his mouth as he listened to the two of you.

When there was a lull in the conversation, he looked up and at you, “So, who was your friend that was here tonight?”

“Ah, he got to meet Marco,” Jade chuckled, shaking her head knowingly.

“Marco?” he raised his eyebrows.

You huffed, rolling your eyes, “Yea, Marco. With a capital M for mierda,” you let out a humorless laugh, “We dated a couple years back.”

“Still not over you?”

Jade interjected before you could, “Can you blame him?”

You smiled and shook your head, “I haven’t heard from him in a while. He pops up every now and then to see if he still has a shot. He never does. I turn him down, send him away, and the cycle repeats itself.”

“Too bad you didn’t have a Nestor sooner,” Jade was stacking glasses with a smug grin on her face, “Could’ve gotten rid of him a long time ago.”

“Nestor is not a bouncer for ex-boyfriends,” you laughed.

She laughed and shrugged, “It is a bonus though.”

You shook your head as the two of you finished up closing down the bar. While it was hectic sometimes when it was only the two of you, those were some of your favorite nights. You’d come to think of Jade more as an aunt or a second mother rather than your boss, and you liked the time you got to spend with her.

After getting home and letting Nestor check the house, the two of you took turns showering off the day. You were trying to figure out if Nestor just had multiple of the same sets of sweatpants and lounge shirts, or if he just washed the same set over and over again. You grabbed a fresh pint of ice cream out of the freezer and grabbed one for him too without bothering to ask, knowing that if you gave him the option he would always say no.

You set his down on the coffee table in front of him before taking a seat on the opposite end of the couch from him, giving him a little space. He looked back and forth between you and the ice cream with a slightly confused expression.

“A thank you for scaring off Marco,” you said with a smile as you scooped out a spoonful of your own.

“It’s my job.”

You raised an eyebrow, “That is not in your job description. He is not a threat to my father’s way of life, or mine for that matter. Now just eat the damn ice cream before I add doesn’t eat dessert to my Nestor Notes.”

He let himself smile as he picked up the pint of ice cream, “Thank you,” he took a spoonful, “And for future reference, my favorite flavor is mint chip.”

Your eyes grew wide,  mostly because he actually offered up a piece of personal information, but also at the fact that that was his favorite flavor, “Really? I don’t think I’ve ever met someone with that as their favorite.”

“Now you have,” he nodded before reaching for the controller to turn the TV on.

You chuckled to yourself as you settled back against the couch, pulling your legs up underneath you. You looked over at Nestor, who was slightly hunched over with his elbows resting on his knees. He had the controller in one hand, scrolling through shows, and his ice cream in the other. For a man who didn’t like music while he was driving in the car, he certainly did seem to see eye-to-eye with you when it came to always having the television on in the house for a light layer of background noise. Most of the time neither of you were paying super close attention to what was on, but it was just nice to break up the silence. In that moment, though, both of you felt extremely present.

“I’m one hundred percent eating this whole thing tonight,” you laughed, “It’s counting as dinner and dessert.”

He chuckled, “Sounds good.”

“We can go grocery shopping tomorrow and get real food,” you smiled as you kept your eyes glued to the container in your hands, “I’ll make sure to get you some mint chip.”

He nodded, smiling despite the fact that he wasn’t looking over at you, “I’d appreciate that.”

[greenhappyseed]

BnHA Chapter 317: Thoughts & comparisons part 2 - THE OLD MAN AND THE KID

As mentioned in Part 1, I'm splitting my thoughts on Chapter 317 into 3 posts: this one about Deku and All Might (part 2), plus separate posts on the hero brain trust and the media (part 1) and the hero killer Stain (part 3).

* * * * * * * * * *

This part of the chapter was an emotional sucker punch and gave me strong "Gift of the Magi" vibes. All Might is trying to protect his boy by following him, and Deku is trying to protect his idol by saying goodbye. Unfortunately, there's no guarantee of safety for anyone right now, so their "gifts" of protection are unusable. All Might isn't safe whether All Might follows Deku or stays behind. Same for Deku -- his loved ones aren't safe whether he accepts their help or not. It's the harsh reality of what AFO does. The real thing that All Might and Deku need to focus on isn't giving each other the "gift" of safety, but on how strong their bond is.

The main stumbling block is that Deku STILL idolizes All Might (as All Might recognized a few chapters ago). As the adult, it was on All Might to speak up, but he didn't because he's scared to disappoint his boy. He already knows the pain of disappointing a fanboy, so this would take it to a whole new level. But if he really wants to keep Izuku in his life, he MUST risk it and tell the kid all the things he wishes someone had told him. As I wrote previously (between Ch 315-16) it's maddening because we know All Might is capable of having this kind of frank talk with Izuku -- he did it all the way back in Ch 2. All Might saw Izuku overworking himself and modified the workout plan to moderate Izuku's extreme behavior, which would have prevented Izuku from reaching his ultimate goal if left unchecked. So yeah, All Might knows better, and knows he can’t stand idly by while his kid makes a massive deadly mistake. When a child doesn’t have the capacity to help themselves and the consequences are serious, an adult HAS to step in and help ASAP. Talk to the kid, talk to the kid’s friends/teachers, talk to professionals. Keep going until your kid gets the help they need, because even if a parent/guardian can’t help directly, it’s their responsibility to find that help for their kid. Haven’t we learned anything from the lost children in the League of Villains?

Meanwhile, Deku doesn't see All Might as a human who loves Izuku Midoriya. I think, in part due to his being bullied and his innate tendency to not take himself into account, he sees All Might's devotion to him as part of a predecessor-successor relationship. Deku will struggle as long as he sees "All Might" as an ideal and not the human in front of him. (Admittedly, I thought the HPSC storyline might go here and disclose All Might’s awareness of some “grey” missions, causing Deku to look at his mentor through a different lens.) But even now, Deku is trying to have an "I AM HERE" moment so All Might is proud of his successor, but fails to realize All Might is ALREADY PROUD (in part because All Might hasn't vocalized it in a way that Deku can truly hear it). The "You don't look back at me anymore..." in context is immediately followed up by this glowing Dadmight moment:

It only becomes a sad moment in retrospect as All Might realizes (1) he didn't really tell Deku explicitly how proud he was often enough; and (2) the full weight of what it means to nurture a child towards independence (and that his boy is just like him, and is heading towards the same fate as him....)

While I definitely think Bakugo will knock some sense into Deku, I still think All Might is the only one that can truly “release” Deku from these burdens, especially the ones related to the “Symbol of Peace” and the Shimura family that are tied directly to All Might. We see this in Deku’s callbacks:

Nana in the vestige world sobbing over her mistake in giving up Kotaro, saying she and Gran Torino were wrong, and testing Deku’s resolve to save Shigaraki. Juxtaposed with Gran Torino saying, "I should have made the kill...sorry...don't be so rigid. Killing can be another way to save someone," and Shigaraki screaming in emotional pain, “I don’t care if you understand. That’s what makes us heroes and villains!” It’s not just AFO — it’s the weight of generations and broken families on Deku’s shoulders. It’s All Might’s failure to save Shigaraki earlier that has become Deku’s problem now.

Post-USJ Deku meeting with All Might, talking about the first time he used OFA without breaking himself, and All Might pressuring Deku to become the Symbol of Peace. Even though All Might no longer feels that way, and SO MUCH has happened since then, he never clearly said so to Deku, and Deku keeps that weight on himself. The past never dies.

Deku is overwhelmed and destined for a poor decision that will hurt someone or himself, which would definitely play into the media's (and AFO's) hands. First, note the flashback inception with Deku recalling the post-USJ All Might meeting, which itself contains a flashback to Thirteen lecturing about how uncontrolled quirks can kill.

Second, the image of the defeated assassin is downright ominous, with the way All Might is shown above Deku's shoulder like a conscience [Edit: see @codenamesazanka's post here for a Spinner parallel!!] and the way the villain is tied up with his head hanging back, mouth open, eyes rolled back…. Deku and All Might are in shadow, and the villain is in the light…. no real attempt to talk to or understand the villain, just what he knows of AFO……SO MUCH POWER in a volatile teenager with too much responsibility and too few physical and emotional reserves. This won't end well.

Ok, time to bring the real Dadmight pain. All Might dives to save Midoriya and falls. The only other time he’s fallen flat on the ground like that is when he dove to save the random lady during the Cider House incident (which we got in the anime last week). In that fight, All Might needed a guardian gremlin to save him from falling debris. Hopefully that means he’ll go to UA and find young Bakugo soon, and he won't do something dumb and sacrificial in the meantime. WHO SAVES THE (EX-) HEROES?

All Might is a genuinely good person with good intentions, and he drove himself into the ground to help others, but he’s NOT a god. He’s not infallible or omniscient. He has tunnel vision from pursing the same mission from age 14 to, uh, 50-something, and is learning how to function as a "normal" adult. He never asked for help before, and in fact, considered it shameful (even in Kamino). He needs to follow the advice he was going to give to Deku, and reach out to others to save his little boy and himself. He’s still very much capable of inspiring others, even if he needs to rest sometimes. And with that, we cut to Stain, an extremist who believes in self-sacrifice and idolizes prime All Might. Cue Part 3...

A few other points:

Nobody in this arc (including Deku) seems to be using All Might as a resource based on his decades of experience with the media OR with AFO, and it really bothers me. Why is All Might excluded from the brain trust? They’re acting like All Might is useless because he’s quirkless and no longer a ranked hero, but he's still got his brain and his memories. Are Endeavor, Hawks, and Mt Lady really going to chat with Edgeshot and sort it all out??? Will Jeanist's fiber puns stop AFO??? Ugh. This is why hero society as we know it needs to be radically reworked; these top heroes are misusing resources and NOT TALKING to people who might actually have useful info. Does a "hero" need to wear a costume or hold a license to use their brain?

Will anyone tell Inko???? I posted before about this chapter's reference to All Might promising her that he’ll keep Deku safe. But she generally only appears after Deku gets a big advancement of some sort, so I don't know if she'll pop up soon...although I feel like she might need to? (E.g., my pet theory is that we only get her note in the hospital after the forest raid because Deku saved Kota but failed to save Bakugo.) Who else has "lifted up" All Might except Izuku, Inko, and Aizawa -- and Aizawa is probably not in a place to do heavy emotional labor right now???

Others have noted the outreached hand parallels (PAIN!) so I won’t belabor that. BUT look at All Might’s hand, how it is first outstretched and then starting to curl as he realizes he can’t reach Deku in time. Also, how small and frail All Might's hand looks as it curls up. He's normally drawn with huge hands (as big as Deku’s head) so to see his hands look equal in size to Deku’s shows Deku’s growth. Also, contrast this set of hands moving apart with how we saw hands moving together at Kamino, where All Might’s fighting inspired fearlessness. Hopefully All Might can “fight” here too, and inspire the next generation to to amazing things.

[ladynestaarcheron]

Like Pristine Glass - Chapter Twenty-three

ao3 - ff.net - masterpost

(tagging these cuties: @humanexile @skychild29 @rhysandsdarlingfeyre @candid-confetti @rhysandsrightknee @missing-merlin @azriels-forgotten-shadow @books-and-cocos @sezkins79  @city-of-fae @someonemagical @dusty-lightbulb  @messyhairday-me @rinad307 @superspiritfestival @cass-nes @ireallyshouldsleeprn)

oh my God. here we are. chapter twenty-three.

what is there to say but thank you all so much for reading?

beware, this chapter’s monster sized. around 10k. also...relatively graphic birth scene.

thank you all. so much.

---

August 23 - Year of

In the end, it was not Cassian's fault she made the decision to leave.

Later, much later, she would wonder if he blamed himself and she almost wished she could tell him otherwise. Because even in those last months they spent together, he was good to her. Better than anyone else had ever been. Sweet and teasing and kind. Such kindness. Who had ever treated her this way? Who smiled like this when she walked into a room? No one had ever been happy to see her. And from the way he looked at her and the things he said, she knew he felt the same way.

So he probably didn't realize anything was amiss.

For Nesta answered every kiss with one of her own, tugged his hair right back, pinched him affectionately when he interrupted her reading.

It ran deep. More real than blood, more concrete than any vow. Late at night, in the bed that had become theirs, she told him of her deepest wish as a child, how she had done everything her little mind could think of to win her mother's praise and love and how it had destroyed her when she had died without truly giving it to her. He had far less family history to share, but he told her in turn what he could: how Rhsyand's mother had been the first person to show him any kindness, how the hero of that children's story, about the thief who stole the night, was all he wanted to be when he grew up because of how he built for himself what he was not given, even how cheap the first female he'd ever been with made him feel when she revealed she never wanted to acknowledge him in public because of his status.

Bit by bit, nightly, Cassian would bare his soul to her a little more, and she'd feel guilt as she didn't share all of herself in return. There were things she could not say.

He knew, though. Of course he did. He knew her better than anyone, saw right through every layer she had wrapped around herself. That was why he'd ask her, from time to time. A sweet kiss, a cup of tea, and a simple question: What's wrong, Nesta?

Answers varied. Nothing or headache or you're irritating me, won't you let me read in peace? or a myriad of other things.

She could not tell him because she could not admit it to herself.

Here is what she could not say: I cannot love you because I will inevitably lose and you and you're the best thing I've ever had so that will destroy me even more than everything else already has, and I know that I will lose you because you can never put me first above your duties to the Night Court and your High Lord and I will not settle for second to him.

In the end, she didn't have to. And that was not Cassian's fault either.

It was her sister who spared her the act when she knocked on the front door.

---

June 21 - 1 year after

It wasn't the pain that woke her up. It was the wetness between her legs. An odd, gooey sort of substance. What was that, Nesta wondered. Was she bleeding? With that thought, she kicked off her blanket, but with her sudden movement came a definite tug from deep inside her-oh.

It was happening.

Nesta took a deep breath and raised her nightgown. No blood, she saw, and her shoulders relaxed. Just the mucus, tinted pink slightly.

Nesta had read enough on her own and asked Amorette enough to know: this was early labor. It had just started at...fifteen past four in the morning. It could be anywhere from an hour to a few days before active labor started. Logically, she knew she could take a bath, go back to sleep, and wait till a reasonable hour to call for Amorette, but logic wasn't what spurred her. The faelight was in her hand before she realized it.

As she loosened her fingers around it, her heart rate picked up. She would be doing this alone. Her mother would not be here. Her sisters would not be here. How had she not considered that before? Why had she gone through with this? Why hadn't she terminated the pregnancy when she'd had the chance?

She forced herself to practice her breathing. There was no use in panicking now. Far too late for that, anyway.

On her twentieth slow exhale, she heard the door downstairs open and shut, followed by quick footsteps up the stairs.

"Nesta?" Amorette said from the hall, voice clear and strong despite the ungodly hour.

"In here," she called, in more of a wheeze.

Amorette was at her side almost instantly. "Are you in pain?" Her blue eyes ran up and down Nesta's body, hands going to feel her cheeks.

Nesta flushed. "No," she said. It was stupid to call her, wasn't it? "Just...my water. But no pain...yet."

Amorette drew her hands back in surprise. Then her face broke out in a wide smile. "Congratulations," she said, cheery. She draws a chair close to the bed. "Let's have a look, shall we?" Amorette folded the blanket up from Nesta's toes to her knees, so Nesta couldn't see what she was doing, which she greatly appreciated.

"So," she said, folding the blanket back down. "You probably know this, but you're in one of the first stages of early labor. You're just barely dilated."

"Do you know how long until..."

"Well, there's no real way for me to know for sure," Amorette said. "But seeing as you haven't felt any real pain yet, and this is your first birth, we probably have at least a few hours to go. You can take a shower or a bath now, then maybe do some light exercise with me. We'll take it as you feel it." Her eyes crinkled, genuine warmth spreading across her face. "Let's just do what we can to help you relax, Nesta! You're having some babies today!"

All the forgotten gods. If there were any sentence that would not help her relax.

---

August 23 - Year of

Nesta hadn't been expecting Emerie, but sometimes people from the camp came by to tell Cassian something. Of course, he hadn't been home in three days, but perhaps they didn't know. Maybe they had to drop something off or leave him a message.

So Nesta wasn't too concerned when she opened the door.

Her lungs seized in her chest when she did.

"Hi," Feyre said softly, inclining her head forward. A lock of hair slipped out from behind her ear and swayed in front of her face, caressing the corner of her lips. She was the slightest bit darkened by the sun, contrasting prettily with the brightened gold of her hair. "Can I come in?" she asked. Her voice was sweet, calm, laced with something that wasn't there when they were growing up.

But Nesta could say nothing in reply. All she could do was stare at her sister. She wasn't even trying to say anything, or grasp at her thoughts, or make sense of this. She was...dumbstruck.

"Nesta," Feyre said, concern tightening her brow as she took a step closer and reached out a hand. "Are you all right?"

It was Feyre's touch that spurred her back into herself and let her jerk backwards and say, "What are you doing here?"

"I came to see you," she replied. "Can I come in?"

Nesta only stared in disbelief. "Can you come in?"

"All right," Feyre said, smoothing her hands over her legs. "Let's get you something to drink."

And with a measured, leisurely step, Feyre backed Nesta into the house.

How did that happen?

"Some water," Feyre said, making her way to the kitchen sink.

Had she been here before? Had she...had Cassian...told her to come?

Feyre turned, bringing the glass into the living room. "Sit with me," she said.

Nesta did not sit. "What are you doing here?"

Feyre set the glass down on the table, next to Nesta's face down book. "It's been nearly a year," she said.

Since they exiled her out of Velaris. Yes, she was aware.

"I know that you're...doing better," Feyre said, and Nesta's heart stuttered. What had Cassian told her? Had he-had he shared what was theirs? "And I thought, maybe now...we could talk."

Her sister gazed up at her, earnest and patient. How regal she looked, there on the couch. Ugly, she'd always thought, with its faded blue pattern. Nesta recalled leaving her tiny apartment in Velaris back in September and wishing she could pick out furniture of her own someday.

But there were no throw pillows or rosewood bookshelves or pianos dancing in Nesta's mind today. There was really only one thing she could think of.

"Are you out of your fucking mind?"

Feyre raised an eyebrow-Nesta didn't think she had ever swore in either of her sisters' presences before. She didn't like to, as a rule, but, well. Desperate times. Insane, radical, maniacal times.

"I'm not," she said. "But I understand-"

"You clearly do not," Nesta cut in, "if you think that there's any chance that I want to talk to you."

"Please just listen, Nesta-"

"Or what? You'll kick me out of Illyria, too? Send me off to the Hewn City, perhaps? Do I only get to live my own life if it's out of your court, is that it?"

"No, Nesta, please," she said, standing up too. "Look, I think-you needed space, all right? You know you did, and now that you're-that you've got it, now-"

"Don't you dare," Nesta said, raising a finger and making Feyre flinch. "Don't you dare take credit for any good space has done me. It's only because anything would have been better than-" Nesta bit her tongue to stop herself from finishing the sentence, but it didn’t matter.

But Feyre clearly didn't plan on leaving until she'd said her part. She blinked the hurt out of her eyes and said, "I don't care about the reasons. I'm happy you're doing better, but it's not enough. I know you still haven't taken control of your magic. Amren can help-"

Nesta laughed, cold and mirthless. So different than how she'd laughed just a few days ago with Cassian. "You are out of your mind." Her voice was flat, devoid of emotion. "If you think I'm ever going back there, you are completely out of your mind."

Feyre sighed. Folded her arms over her chest. "Well. We still have to do something. What do you propose we do?"

Nesta's eyes narrowed. She drew herself straighter. "There isn't a we," she said, voice like ice. "You made it perfectly clear you wanted nothing to do with me when you banished me from your city of love."

"Nesta, you know that isn't true-"

"I'm going to ask you again. Can I stay here in Illyria without being further accosted by you and yours, whenever you decide it appropriate to meddle?"

Feyre clenched her jaw. "I'm not trying to hurt you, Nesta."

She didn't hesitate. "Then leave."

Both sisters stared at each other. How odd was it, to look into her own eyes in Feyre's face. Nesta still remembered the night she was born, how she had marveled at them. Little Elain had had brown eyes like their father, and she had blue-grey like their mother, and she had wondered how the baby was going to look. She thought she might have one blue and one brown, but then she had come, and secretly, Nesta had been so pleased. Another pair of eyes just like hers.

How far they had both gone.

Feyre broke away first, as Nesta knew she would. "You don't have to worry about me coming here to accost you," she said as she turned to leave.

Nesta said nothing as she opened the door and closed it behind her.

But she didn't believe her. Not for a moment.

---

June 21 - 1 year after

Amorette had arranged to stay with Nesta till noon if her state did not progress at all, and if it did to then make a decision on how they should proceed. Nesta told her she'd do whatever she thought was best, but she wanted to keep her visitors to a minimum. So of course, promptly at seven, the door downstairs swung open again.

"Breakfast, Nesta!" Zeyn announced. "Oh, hello Amorette-oh! Nesta!"

Zeyn's deerlike ears shivered in excitement as he took in the view before him. While Nesta had been in the bath, Amorette had transformed the room to a midwifery. Nesta's bed had been pushed closer to the wall to make room for a massive pool, with four steps up, filled with water slightly warmer than the air in the room. A table on the far side held a number of bowls, towels, and more scary-looking supplies like scalpels. Far more terrifying than that was the small pile of pale blue blankets, hats, and pacifiers, all dotted with tiny maroon sugarberries.

"You-you're in labor?" Zeyn grinned broadly at her.

"Not quite yet," she said.

"Early stages."

"But that's wonderful! Oh, Nesta, congratulations! I'll tell Miri and-"

"Be sure to have everyone send their well wishes and drop jam by the door," Amorette said, "but I insist that the only people who have entrance to this house as soon as active labor begins are myself and my staff."

Nesta shrugged at Zeyn and shot Amorette a grateful look when he turned.

"I'll make sure there's always someone here on standby," he said. "Just in case."

"It might be as long as a few days, Zeyn," Nesta reminded him.

"I don't mind," he said. "I can wait all night."

Nesta softened. He was sweet. She'd give him that much.

"I'm right in assuming you don't want anyone else here?" Amorette asked, checking with her after Zeyn left.

"Definitely." Sugar Valley was full of welcoming people, but...Nesta wasn't one of them.

Amorette nodded, keeping her mouth firmly shut.

"What is it?" Nesta asked, wary.

"I know you don't like to talk about it," Amorette said apologetically, "but are you sure there's no family you'd like me to contact now?"

Nesta locked her jaw. "Positive."

"All right," Amorette said, nodding. "Please don't hesitate to let me know if you change your mind."

Nesta didn't answer. She had nothing to say.

---

August 24 - year of

Nesta was seated on the couch waiting for Cassian when he arrived. The glass Feyre had poured was still on the table where she had left it, next to the book Nesta had not touched.

"Hi," he said, heavy. He sat down across from her.

Across from her. Not next to her. There would be no mindless touches, no distracted kisses for this conversation.

"Did you know?" she said eventually.

He swallowed. "I knew...that she wanted to. I knew she was going to eventually. I only knew specifically when I arrived in Velaris. And I didn't know what she wanted to say."

Nesta stared at a spot on her skirt, brushing away lint that wasn't there.

"What did she say?"

Nesta ignored him. "What did you tell her about me?"

"Nothing..."

"What did you tell her about us?"

"I didn't. Nesta. I didn't."

"But she knew."

"You shine off me," he said boldly. She looked at him. "Anyone who sees me knows."

That much was true. They had made their marks on each other. Permanent and stark as the battle tattoos he had up and down his arms all over his chest.

"So you never talked about me?" she pressed.

He hesitated. "I used to. In the beginning. When we...when we first came here together."

"What did you tell her?"

"Nothing real. Just that you got a job. I didn't even tell her you and Emerie were friends."

She fell silent again. How much of Cassian was really hers, she wondered. She knew she wouldn't be allowed to have him all the time-he'd always go back to Velaris for Solstice and Starfall and whenever their Circle willed it. But when he was there, was he hers? Or was he a version she wouldn't recognize?

She'd never know. And it wasn't fair because-look at her. Every part of Nesta was so clearly Cassian's now. Her heart beat after his. "There are things I have to do, Nesta, you know that," he said, begging still.

"You're nearly six hundred years old," she snapped, so different from the joking manner she normally said that in. "You make your own decisions."

He winced. Didn't argue. Because he agreed with her or because he didn't? "Nesta, we both know how we feel about each other. So if we just stay here...can't that be enough?"

She met his eyes, pleading and caring. She knew that even though his soul was tied to this land and this Court, tonight his body would be hers. And he would be receiving of all she agreed to give him, now and forever.

And no. It was not enough.

Because Feyre was right. She was better now. Time and space had a certain persistent kind of magic, reliable and true. She was not broken and scared.

So in the end, it was not even Feyre that made the decision for her.

It was her own choice.

"Yes," she lied, not even regretting it. She stood and crossed the room to sit by him.

He was gentle and anticipating when he brought her face close to his and kissed her, but she could no longer marvel at how someone could know her so well and stay with her. Instead she mourned what she could no longer hide from: she was not enough for him. He was never going to choose her over this Court.

And just like that, while she kissed him back, the choice was made.

---

June 21 - 1 year after

The morning's progression was slow and almost imperceptible until seven minutes past nine, when Nesta cried out in pain for the first time.

Worse than her cycle. Worse than the practice contractions. A sharp twist starting low and getting lower, matched with movement, with one the-babies-jerking downwards.

"Nesta," Amorette said, holding both of her hands. "Look at me. Match my breathing...there you go..."

Nesta gasped and tasted salt. Was she crying? This was pathetic. It had barely started and she was already crying! "I can't do this. Amorette, you have to-"

"Shh, just breathe with me. There you go."

Breathing was easier said than done. Her lungs were being held in chokehold. Surely this wasn't right-surely this wasn't supposed to happen-

And then it faded. Nesta exhaled.

"All right," Amorette said. "That was good. You did very well, Nesta."

With her head slack against her headboard, Nesta managed to focus her eyes on the clock.

Eight minute past nine.

Less than sixty seconds of a contraction, her first real one, and she was already sweating and crying.

"I can't do this," she said again, miserable.

"Yes, you can. You already did, see?"

"I can't. Is this-is this active labor? It wasn't supposed to happen yet. I was supposed to have at least another day."

Amorette smiled warmly at her. "No one promised you that. You're fine. You're well-prepared."

Nesta's pulse quickened. Amorette didn't understand. She was not. She had no one, nothing, and she couldn't do this. She knew her limits, and hers was a very short distance from where she was now.

"Nesta," Amoretta said kindly. "Remember everything you've read. You're smart and strong and capable. Remember I'm here with you, and my team will be here soon, too. People less-equipped than you have given birth before and survived. You're going to be more than fine. I promise."

Nesta's eyes welled up with tears again. Amorette didn't understand. She couldn't understand. Nesta would not survive this. There was too much wrong with her. She was going to die in labor or right afterwards or live to fail these children that she didn't ask for.

No one understood, no one would ever understand. Nesta wasn't herself. There was a part of her that wasn't her own. There was the Cauldron, and it was inside of her and it was going to kill her one way or another. Probably the babies, too.

And she would die alone and unloved.

Amorette squeezed her hands. "Close your eyes," she said, "and let it out."

"Let what out?" Certainly not-the babies?

"Whatever you're feeling."

Nesta let out a strangled laugh. "I doubt you want that."

"I assure you, Nesta, I am familiar with birthing rituals. Let it out."

"Let what out?"

"A scream. A sob. Sing, if that's what you want. So long as it comes from inside you."

Nesta opens her eyes. "It's not very motherly of me."

Amorette smiled. "Whatever you've got, I've seen worse."

Nesta pursed her lips. Gave a small shrug, almost subconsciously. And burst into hysterical tears.

She had made up her mind, on her birthday, to put her past behind her, but today she cried for all that she had been through. For her mother's cold distance and death and her father's failures and her own and the loss of the relationships with her sisters, again, and even for Cassian.

And for the three little creatures, struggling inside her, to make their way into the world.

And for herself.

And sometimes for the pain, too, as it grew worse and more frequent as the hours went on.

It was nearly ten before Nesta calmed down, and by then Amorette's team had arrived. Two young female healers, who, Nesta had to give them credit, did not so much as blink at Nesta's sobs.

"How-how far apart are the contractions?" Nesta managed when she had calmed down.

"A little over three minutes," one of Amorette's assistants answered smoothly. "Would you like some tea?"

"Thank you," she said, taking her proffered mug. The sweet strawberry taste did her good. "Are...am I still all right for a water birth?"

"You are," she answered. "Everything's going just fine."

Nesta looked to Amorette, who smiled at her.

"Really, Nesta," she said, nodding. "All is as it should be."

Nesta wiped at her eyes. The other assistant handed her a towel. "Should I...should I get in the pool now?"

"If you'd like," Amorette said encouragingly.

"Are you going to get in with me?"

"Not just yet. Only for the births."

Nesta shivered. Births. And they were soon.

The second assistant held Nesta's hand as she helped her up and walked her in. Amorette had told her, when she had first expressed interest in a water birth, that many females liked to experience it naked. She was, obviously, not going to do that, and wore a night dress that had a tie for the skirt at her waist.

"Water's warm, right, Nesta?"

"Yes."

"We're keeping it at this temperature so the babies have an easier transition."

Transition out of her body and into the world. "All right."

"Hungry? Want anything in particular?"

"No..."

"Jam?"

"No."

"All right."

They kept talking to her like that, calm and collected, asking her if she'd like food or music or to get out of the pool or if she wanted to go over the birth procedure again. For another two hours.

And then the minutes between her contractions disappeared, along with her life as she knew it.

---

October 16 - Year of

There was nothing particularly dramatic about it. Nesta spent the next few weeks with Cassian and Emerie as she normally would, if perhaps a little quieter.

Nearly a year ago, she had decided to work to book passage on a ship to Gilameyva. That dream had altered slightly: she would book passage away from Prythian the fourth day after Cassian left her. Three days without him, and she would be gone.

It was like a deal she made with him. Tell me you can't bear to be apart from me and I'll stay.

But of course, he didn't know.

Cassian left the morning of the twelfth. "I'll see you soon, Nesta," he whispered against her lips.

"I'll miss you," she said, heart breaking a little.

He didn't come home.

Again.

And again.

But she already knew that was what would happen.

So when she left Emerie's shop that night, it was just as she always did.

And in the morning when she awoke, and emptied her bank account and made her way to the docks, bag of meager belongings in hand, it wasn't hard. It was easy. It was right. It was finally someone putting herself first. Even if it was only her. Even if no one else had.

By noon Prythian slipped below the horizon. There was no trace of her left on that island, save for a note and a pair of grey-blue eyes in someone else's face.

---

June 21 - 1 year after

Nesta was hyperventilating.

Somewhere, someone was holding her hand. "Breathe," she said. "Breathe."

It all came rushing back to her. The room stilled around her. That was Amorette there, in front of her, in the pool with her. And-all the forgotten gods-it was time. It was happening.

"I can't do this!"

"Follow Lyra's breathing," Amorette said, voice smooth and calm. "There you go...Nesta, don't you see? You're already doing this...and you're doing a wonderful job..."

"No," she said, sobbing, "no, no, no no no no no-oh!"

"That's it, Nesta, just like that...you're going to do this, right? For your babies?"

Nesta gasped. Nodded once.

"Excellent. Just follow Lyra's breathing...Ama, you have the towel ready...yes...all right. Just keep breathing Nesta. Just like that. Perfect."

Nesta most certainly did not feel perfect. Her breathing was more strangled gasps. And she was being split in two.

"Something's wrong," she said.

"I promise you, Nesta," Amorette answered, patient as all goodness. "Everything is fine. You're doing wonderfully. And in just a few moments...you're going to push."

"No-no-no-"

"Shh, Nesta," Amorette said, holding her head. She smiled warmly even as Nesta sobbed. "You're doing a fantastic job. And it's almost over. You're almost done. And you're going to have your children."

"No-"

"Keep breathing for me, Nesta. I promise. Do you trust me?"

"Amorette-I can't-"

"Listen to me, Nesta," her voice only getting quieter with every octave Nesta's rose. "You have been through worse. You're going to do this. It will hurt, but in just a few minutes, you'll understand. But you have to trust me. All right?"

Nesta's breathing quickened, but she forced herself to match the young healer-Lyra's-patterns. She had made this decision herself. She had to do this. In a few minutes, she could tell the females to take away the babies and give them to someone else, someone better-and then it would be over.

But she had to do this first.

"All right," Nesta said, in between breaths.

"Good," Amorette said. "Keep that breathing pattern...keep up with Lyra...all right. Perfect. Now...push."

How Nesta's body knew exactly what to do when Amorette gave her order, she would never understand. But it did, and she pushed, even though she wanted to stop every second she was doing it.

In all her life, Nesta had never felt something like this. It was like the worst of her cramps multiplied by a thousand plus being ripped in two.

She let out a strangled cry.

"Excellent. Excellent, Nesta. Now...push."

Nesta cried out, but again, even though it killed her, she pushed. And pushed. And one last time, one last horrible, miserable, blinding time, and it was the absolute worst pain there had ever been in all the world, and she was going to die, and there was a massive influx of blood in the pool from inside of her, and there was something small and black-a baby.

Amorette caught the thing as it came out of her. Why was it...she was bringing it up slowly...the cord still attached to it-what would happen? Would it tear?

And then Amorette brought the thing up out of the water, and it screamed, and she held it before Nesta-and the black--the wings-unfolded--and it was her daughter.

The pain disappeared out of Nesta's mind. Everything disappeared. Everything was gone, stripped, nothing had ever been there at all. There was only her. And then Nesta's arms stretching out to hold her.

Nesta let out a small noise as she brought her close to her chest.

"Archeron daughter, eldest of triplets, high noon," Amorette said, somewhere far, far away. Distantly, she was doing magic, cleaning the pool.

But all Nesta knew was the soft pink skin of her little girl. Tiny fingers...on both hands...and a small nose...and eyes she could barely open...and black wings...and a shock of dark hair...and just-the most-perfect-thing-

Nesta was not giving her to anyone else, ever. She would be-she would do everything, she would split the seas and take down the moon. She would do everything.

"I swear it, Avery," she whispered to her.

"Avery Archeron," Amorette said. "All right, Nesta, dear."

Nesta looked up at the hand on her shoulder.

"There, there...a handkerchief, Lyra...yes...didn't I tell you? You see? Now...we're going to give her to Lyra-she's going to be right over there, see? And you're going to deliver her placenta...and then we're going to do this again. All right?"

"Yes," Nesta said firmly, even as she shook. She could do this. And she would. For her...for her sons.

It was utter rubbish that she had to deliver a placenta in between babies, but no matter. She vowed to do everything and that vow would start now.

Later Nesta would not be able to recall if that part of labor had caused any pain. She assumed it had, but all she could remember was bliss and anxiety and love as she looked over at Avery-Avery! A real person with a nose and shoulders and eyelashes! To say nothing of everything inside of her body and mind!-and impatience as she waited for Amorette to finally let her push...for her son.

The pain was not nearly so bad the second time around. Nesta took care to clamp her mouth shut-she didn't want to scare Avery with any screams. And besides, what was pain to this? To the girl over there, wrapped up in a blanket, opening her eyes to her first day on the planet?

The sooner Nesta could finish this, the sooner she would enjoy it with her.

For the second time-finally-like someone pulled a plug out of Nesta and blood came pouring out into the pool...and then her son.

It took everything in her not to rip him right out of Amorette's arms, and it was only not to disturb the other boy still relying on her that she did not.

It was just like last time. Amorette raised him out of the water. Black wings cocooning him into the ball she pushed him out as unfolded to reveal...her son.

She was not prepared. It didn't even matter that it happened with Avery mere moments ago. It was happening again. It hit her, again. And she realized it would be that way when she saw the other boy, too, which only further spurred her tears.

And then she was holding him. He did a better job of opening his eyes than his older sister-Avery was an older sister! He was a younger brother! And soon he would be an older one, too!-and his eyes were hers. The same eyes...her own. Right there, in his perfect face.

Surely it couldn't be. Surely...but this must be it. She had been through hell and back, and for this. She had to pay to experience this, and she had, and now, he was hers. She had him. His little eyes...her eyes...but his. And the way his lashes flutter up at her as he cried-the same way Cassian's lashes did.

And she knew his name. The little boy who would want for nothing. Nicholas. Any night stealing for this one would be purely recreational.

"Hello, Nicholas," she whispered.

Was this her life now? This-this joy? Forever? Every single day of forever? It couldn't be. There had to be some sort of catch. Surely no one got a life like this.

"Nicholas Archeron, second of triplets, eight minutes after noon," Amorette said. "All right, Nesta. You see how wonderfully you're doing?"

Well, she must be. If she had gotten Avery first and now Nicholas.

"So you're going to give little Nicholas over to Lyra...and she's going to take good care of him right next to Avery...and we're going to do this, Nesta. Your third baby. Are you ready?"

"I'm ready." She didn't know it, but she had been born ready for this.

"All right. Kiss goodbye to Nicholas...here we go, Nesta. Placenta and then your third baby."

Once again, Nesta was extremely irritated with the function of her body. Who the hell cared about this part? Her babies were over there on that table. And she wanted her third.

Finally, like an angel singing out from the heavens, Amorette said, "Now...push."

It was different this time. Sharper. But Nesta didn't care. All the pain in the world couldn't stop her from this. She was addicted to that feeling, and she was going to have it once more. She was going to see him, hold him, once more...now!

Even more blood this time, but she figured that was to be expected. Because everything would come out now, right? Perhaps the placenta had come out with him this time-and she wouldn't even have to wait, she could just get out of the tub and be with them.

Amorette caught him through all the gore...brought him up...broke him out from under the surface of the tub...and handed him to Ama.

And stepped out.

Nesta blinked.

"Scalpel, now. Lyra, stay with them, we're all right."

"Amorette?" she said, not understanding. What was...what was...why did she take him? "Amorette, you didn't let me hold him."

But Amorette didn't answer. No one spoke. Even her babies had stopped crying.

Then it hit her.

Her son had not cried.

"No," she said, desperate. "No--no--no--"

Had she really thought the pain of labor was worth crying about? Had that been her, mere minutes ago?

This couldn't be happening.

Couldn't.

A horrible thought occurred to her-was this the price she had to pay? To have two perfect babies, did she have to lose this one?

"No, no, no, no no no no please please--"

Who was she begging?

"Please please PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE--"

"Nesta--please--"

Avery and Nicholas cried as she shrieked. Could they feel it? Could they feel what was happening-to their brother?

She would do anything. She would--could she die instead? Surely, this Mother they all worshipped, surely She would let--was she not a mother? Did she not understand? She would do it, she would die a thousand deaths, a million, if someone would just let her--

And just as Nesta drew breath to scream-scream louder than she ever had before--there it was.

A third cry.

Tinny. Weak. Gasping.

But it was there.

"You see, it's all right," Lyra whispered in her ear.

"Here we go, here we go, here he is," Amorette said, bringing him to her. Too slow--far too slow--

But then he was there, small--so small, and weak, and a wing that did not look like the others', but alive, and right there in her arms--and--and--

"You're strong, Ollie," she said to him, as she met his eyes for the first time. "I promise. I promise you, you are. You're so strong."

"Ollie Archeron," Amorette said. "Third of triplets, thirteen after noon."

"Ollison," Nesta sobbed. "His name is Ollison Bailey."

For the strength her father had shown at the end of his life--for human strength. The most enduring kind.

And now it was her turn. She would do it. She would be strong, for all of them, forever.

"We had to cut the umbilical cord a little early with him," Amorette said gently, running a hand over Nesta's ducked head, "so Lyra has to take him now...you're just going to deliver the placenta-"

"Please, please, can't I-"

"It's a few minutes, Nesta, I swear to you, and then you have the rest of your lives together. All right? Can you give me these few minutes?"

Nesta took a deep breath. "Yes," she said. She squeezed Ollie close to her as she kissed his forehead and gave him to Lyra.

This one was the worst. They were all there, on the table, small and in need of their mother, and there wasn't even a good reason for her to still be in this pool.

"Oh, Nesta, cheer up!" Amorette laughed, right in the middle of the afterbirth. "You're almost done, just a minute longer...and then you'll be on the bed and holding the babies! And I promise you, Nesta, they're fine."

Finally, finally, finally, she could climb out.

Except she couldn't, because she could not bear her own weight out of water.

"Amorette-"

"Hush, dear, give your body a minute. Here...we'll bring them around..."

And they did. Each healer holding one, presenting them to her. Nesta couldn't decide what to look at, her eyes just darting wildly around. There were Avery's ears and Nicky's fingers-he closed them around hers!-and Ollie-Ollie-

"I promise you, Nesta, if I saw reason to take him to the hospital, I would have immediately," Amorette said gently. "He's fine. He's going to be fine."

Nesta nodded, but she said, "I don't believe you."

Amorette laughed. "Well. That's your job."

After a few more minutes, Nesta gained enough power in her legs to climb out of the pool and collapse on her bed.

The healers sat with her.

"Did you want to breastfeed?" Ama asked her.

Nesta looked at Amorette. She had initially told her to bring the stuff for the bottle. "Can I try?"

Amorette grinned. "Of course you can."

Hands shaking, Nesta brought little Avery closer to her. Ama and Lyra suddenly found the boys very fascinating as Amorette helped her take her top off.

The sensation was...not magical.

"All right," Amorette said. "You'll both get the hang of it eventually...or not. It's really all right, Nesta. You can try with the boys later or decide not to."

"I want to try."

"All right. We'll keep trying. But we can stop whenever you'd like."

Nesta nodded. Perhaps she would stop. Or...perhaps Avery would never like nursing this way. It didn't matter.

A laugh escaped Nesta as she realized it-it didn't matter. Nothing mattered anymore, nothing except for these three. Avery, Nicky, and Ollie. She would feed them one way or another. Whichever way they liked best.

And as the the beautiful sunshine of the year's longest and most perfect day faded out her window and moonlight spilled in...as neighbor after neighbor and new friend after new friend came to visit Sugar Valley's newest residents...Nesta knew what she had to do to protect them.

They had not answered her letters. They had rejected her.

That was fine.

But she would not let anyone--anyone--reject her children.

And the only way to ensure that was to ensure that they never knew them at all.

So Nesta did the only thing she knew was right: she reached to grasp onto her magic, deep inside of her...and after a day of pushing, pulled. Right over her head. To cover her like a shield.

There. No one would find her now.

And if no one could find her...no one could hurt them,

And that was all that would ever matter again.

---

October 18 - Year of

Once, Cassian had come home and Nesta had not been there and his heart had fallen right out of the sky. Now it was normal, even comforting. Nesta was not at home because she was at work where she was enjoying the day with her friend.

So he didn't think anything was amiss when he arrived and knew she wasn't there. Almost didn't notice that her scent was too faint to have marked her presence there that morning.

Almost.

But he was just a little too tuned to Nesta's being to miss something like that.

"Nesta," he called, even though he knew there was no point. No books in the living room, no dishes on the sink. No cardigan strewn around. And when he opened the door to their room, the bed was cold and untouched.

Save for the the letter on his side, with his name written on it in beautiful script.

His hands shook as he reached for it. Had anyone ever written his name with such care? He doubted it. But she had, he knew. He knew.

Cassian, she wrote,

I've gone. I won't come back. Leave me be.

I'm sorry.

Cassian flipped it over. Nothing.

She didn't even sign it.

That was all he could think as his soul folded in on itself.

She didn't even sign it.

---

June 21 - 1 year after

Elain knew her disinterest in learning about her power irritated Amren, but she didn't mind. It didn't bother her that Feyre was disappointed in her, either, so why should this?

She knew they thought it was a waste of her potential. She just didn't care. Trying to See...it felt unnatural. Invasive. She didn't like it. It made her feel like some of the old women on the edge of human towns like the one she had lived in, practicing all manner of dark, forbidden things.

Azriel had cautiously tried to bring it up. He told her how his shadows had frightened him, at first, but with patience and time, he had learned to wield them however he wanted.

And that was lovely for Azriel. Really. She was happy for him, proud of what he had overcome. But this...didn't appeal to her in the least. It didn't even matter to her.

Until the Summer Solstice, when she awoke in a guest bed in the Summer Court, a scream in her mouth and cold sweat on her face.

Feyre and Rhys burst in her room--Az was there, Cassian, someone was running down the halls, but she couldn't see-she couldn't See.

"What is it?"

"She's crying. Feyre, is she--"

"Elain, dear, let me see. Are you bleeding?"

"What is it? Who screamed?"

"Did someone break in? Why is Lady Elain...I'll get some tea."

"Elain, look at me. What's wrong?"

"Which way did they go?"

"No one saw anything. There wasn't anyone here."

"Elain," Feyre whispered to her again, squeezing her tightly. "Elain, what is it?"

"Everyone out," Rhys ordered.

"It's-gone," she sobbed. For even though she had not used it, it had always been there. A small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless.

Through her tears, she saw Feyre and Rhys exchange bewildered looks. Azriel sat down next to her, covering her shoulders with something soft and blue.

"What's gone, Elain?" Azriel asked her quietly. "Is it Lucien?"

"No," she sobbed, in between gasping breaths. "It's--it's--Feyre--she's--gone."

Across the room, she could feel Cassian tense. He understood, even if no one else did.

"What?" Rhys asked him.

Cassian's voice was low, blank. "It's Nesta. She can't See her anymore."

Feyre dropped in front of her, squeezing her knees. "Elain. Look at me. Please. What do you mean? What did you See?"

"Where was the last place you Saw her?"

"Was she-"

"Enough," Azriel said, calm and cold, as he always sounded when he talked to anyone but her. "Let her catch her breath."

He sat next to her, hand firmly on her back. Someone handed her a cup of tea. After a few minutes, she calmed down enough to drink it. Shortly after that, she managed to speak.

"I never...really Saw her. I wasn't looking--you all know I don't like to." Elain paused to take a shaky breath. Azriel's fingers moved up and down on her back. "But I always...felt her. And now. Just now. She's--gone."

This time, when Elain sobbed, there was no accompanying concerned chatter. It was her alone.

And that's how it always would be. Because her sister...

"Elain," someone said at her side. Not Feyre. Not Az. "Elain, look at me."

Elain picked her head up and looked into Cassian's eyes, reflecting the same pain she felt.

"We're going to find her," he said, voice low like it was before but decidedly un-blank. "I promise you."

She could only cry in response. Because how could they find her? Her sister's being cut off from her sight like this could only mean one thing.

But Nesta would do anything-had done everything for her. So this, surely, was the least she could do in return was...everything.

"All right," Elain said, swallowing her cries. "We'll find her." She clenched her fists tightly.

I swear to you, Nesta, she vowed silently. I will do everything I can.

---

4 years after - February 21

Not two hours after Zeyn brings the children back, they are in Velaris.

They're thrilled to be back. There's a celebratory meal at Feyre's riverfront mansion. Pictures of her children now decorate the walls more than anything. They are gazed at, passed around, adored. Nesta can hardly blame them. Still, she doesn't have to enjoy it.

Cassian is at her side through all of it. And he holds her hand on the way down to the carriage. Right there, in front of everyone. He had never done that before. She catches a look he exchanges with Rhys, but she can't tell what it means.

As usual, he offers to bathe the children while she unwinds, but she chooses to join him. Is this not the point of this...endeavor? Co-parenting together?

"I want the blue bubbles!"

"I want green!"

"It's my turn!"

"Then I want my own baths!"

Nesta blinks. Can it really be time for their own baths? Are they...going to be bathing themselves soon? That can't be. She remembers the day they were born still, like yesterday.

But...somehow, they are nearly four.

Four...children learn the alphabet at that age. Will they be...reading soon?

It's all she can think of while Cassian tells them the bedtime story they choose. When had he learned them all? Just by watching her?

"Goodnight, ladybug," she whispers to Avery.

Across the room, Cassian says to Ollie, "Good night, little lieutenant."

Her heart leaps as she kisses Nicky and Ollie both. He has nicknames for them. They have a relationship with him. Each of them individually. And from each sleepy Goodnight, Appa, she hears...it only confirms it: these children know they have a father and they know who he is and what he is to them.

He takes her hand again as they shut the door behind them. She wonders if he's going to lead her to the bedroom. It wouldn't be the first time Cassian has mistaken her intentions for the evening.

Not that she--well. She's tired. Tonight. But--she doesn't know.

He takes her downstairs, instead. To the living room.

Considerably more decorated than it had been when she had first arrived for Solstice three months ago, but not quite a home yet. Getting there, certainly.

"Let's talk, Nesta," he says, pulling her next to him.

Nesta takes a deep breath. "Let's," she agrees.

"Who first?"

"I'll go," she says, because she's still too scared to hear what he has to say. "What...you want to know why I kept them from you?"

"I want to know why you hid yourself from me."

Semantics, she thinks, but no matter. They're adults. They're capable of having this conversation.

She takes another deep breath. "You didn't write back. You rejected me." Her voice catches slightly, but she powers on. "I didn't know if you were going to do the same to them. And I couldn't let...couldn't let the happen to them. So I hid us. To keep us safe...from losing you." She had started off strong, but she ends in a whisper, eyes sinking down to her skirt. It is a while before she looks back up to see him staring at her.

They don't say anything, and she isn't sure how much time has passed before he breaks away, standing up and turning around.

He runs his fingers through his hair, but the gesture isn't slick or arrogant: he's frustrated. Angry. He fists his hands in front of him and kicks at the ground.

"Dammit," he says, the word half a growl under his breath. "Dammit, Nesta."

He turns around to face her again. Still, she does not change her cool expression. She doesn't care if he was worked up. She isn't. She has worked hard to move past her anger, her hurt. Built up her indifference like a carefully constructed barricade, after he had destroyed the first one she had spent her whole life crafting painstakingly, nearly five years ago. She cannot let herself feel that again...even though she knows she has to. Knows it's coming.

She doesn't know what she expects him to say. Probably something like I'm sorry or What will it take or It's just not fair, I didn't know, Why can't I, Why won't you, but he doesn't. He surprises her.

"If you honestly thought you could tell me to my face you were pregnant, and that I wouldn't immediately drop everything and take care of you, I failed...miserably in loving you. I did a horrible job."

She tries not to let anything through, on either side: she does not want to let herself feel what his words mean and she certainly does not want him to see the impact upon her. But she can feel her apathy slip from her face as her heart beats faster and blood rises to her cheeks.

He has never told her... he has never said...

"And you'll never know how much I hate myself for letting this happen, Nesta. I've become everything I hate and everything I worked against. I left you pregnant and alone." He is looking at her, but as his eyes narrow, Nesta knows he isn't seeing her. Like there's a screen separating them, like he is seeing someone else.

"I know I just..." he sighs, wringing his hands. "And you're just," he says, now waving them at her. His wings tighten and flare out.

She has never seen him so out of his element-she has never seen him out of his element, out of control, uncomfortable. Cassian acts like everywhere he stands is exactly where he's meant to be.

Except now, with her, apparently. She drops her gaze, staring at the floor. She's rarely comfortable, anywhere, but once she had been...so at peace, with him. That's gone.

"I know I keep fucking up with you," he says finally.

She looks at him. She feels the heat that had risen to her cheeks drain out and then come back in again. She still doesn't say anything. She doesn't trust herself to open her mouth.

"I let them send you to Illyria. But even before that... I promised you time. I told you we would have our time and I didn't keep that promise. I should have fought harder. And then I should have shot them down when they suggested Illyria. And then I should have stayed with you every day. I should have helped you wean yourself off drinking. And then I should I have followed you to Gilameyva. And then I should've rubbed your feet. Or your back. Or whatever it is you needed when you were pregnant. And then I should've held your hand for the births. And then woken up with you when Nicky had infections, or Ava had a fever, or Ollie with his coughing. And then I should've listened to you. And-and given you everything all the while. Everything you needed. Everything you wanted." He moves towards her, suddenly, faster than he did when he wasn't on the battlefield. He's a few feet away from her, and then he's clutching her shoulders, pulling her to her feet, closer to him.

"Nesta," he says desperately. "Say something."

She traces the lines of his face with her eyes. Her hands are clasped in front of her, so close to him now, but she does not touch him. She breaks them apart to hover her fingers over the siphon in the middle of his chest, just barely grazing the tip. He clenches his jaw and scrapes his nails against her arms.

"You..." she says, looking into his eyes. Her daughter's, her son's. The most beautiful eyes she has ever seen. The most beautiful eyes in the world, now with a glimmer of hope.

"You locked me up," she whispers. And there are tears on her face and in her voice.

His hope vanishes. "I know," he chokes out, tears in his voice, too. "I know, sweetheart."

"I didn't want to go."

"I know."

"You let them..."

"I know."

"I had nothing--I was scared--"

"I know. I know."

"And you left me."

"Yes."

And then she says it-what she's been waiting for. "Why didn't you ever write back?" She holds her breath tightly, half wishing she could take back the words, still too afraid to hear his answer.

He doesn't look away and he doesn't let her go. "Because you hurt me and I was angry and I wanted to hurt you back."

She sobs little, trying to keep it inside but failing.

She knows that. She's known all along. And it might not have mattered, might have been understandable, forgivable...were it not for the circumstances. Three tiny circumstances.

"Nesta. You'll never know. You cannot-you have been a perfect mother. The whole time. You'll never know how sorry I am."

Nesta coaches herself on her breathing. That's the best she can do right now.

"Listen," she says, after a few minutes of this. "I think we both know...we can't pretend to start over." She reaches up to touch his cheek and her angles his head closer to her hand, closing his eyes. "But we can...work with what we have."

His eyes fly open. "What do you..."

"I'm going to be splitting my time," she says, "between Sugar Valley and Velaris. We're opening a location for Sugar Books here...I'm going to be Head Archivist."

"Nesta, that's wonderful--congratulations-"

"And in the meantime...for now...I'm going to spend some time on myself...and I think you should too."

He blinks. Clenches his jaw.

He's a warrior, her Cassian. He never lets anyone see his pain.

But she can see it. She's always been able to see it.

"For now," she repeats. "I think...it would be...prudent."

"Prudent."

"It means sage."

"Yes, thank you," he says, making her laugh slightly. Even through it all, he's still making her laugh.

"I don't have a timeline," she says. There are things she wants to do. Work on her magic with Ameren--maybe repair what she had with her. Accept who she is as a female so she can help Avery do the same with herself, when that day comes. And the shop. She'll be Head Archivist. She can make it out to be whatever she wants. "I can't tell you when...but I want you in our lives. And they want you in their lives." Because the best thing for children is to have both of their parents. Not having their parents together...not if that takes away from one of them, makes them less in some way. Only if it makes them more.

He nods. "I know...this isn't your home. And I know that Sugar Valley gave you what I failed to. But...you know...you know I love you?" His voice cracks at the end.

She nods, holding back her own tears. It's not forever, she wants to say. It's just to start. And it's for them. It might change. We might change.

But she doesn't have to, because he knows. He always knows what she's thinking.

He sinks to his knees in front of her, taking her hands in his and bringing them to his lips: slowly, gently, trembling.

She swallows hard. "Come on," she says, tugging him up, voice firm. "Let's go to bed."

---

A few hours later

Cassian stands in the doorway of his bedroom-Nesta's bedroom? Their bedroom?

The bedroom where Nesta is sleeping, at any rate. Where he is invited to sleep, too.

He's not sure if he will yet. He knows she wants him there, but it might be too hard for him. To spend the whole night by her side, and yet...not be with her.

He'll take it day by day, he supposes. That's all he can do. That's what Nesta wants.

She's asleep. Everytime he sees her like this, he's struck by how truly young she is. He forgets, sometimes. He's nearly six hundred years old, as she always liked to say, and she's his better in every way that matters, so.

He walks down the hall to crack open the door to his children's room. Nesta caught their argument in the bathtub, too, he knows. Tonight they sleep peacefully together, but it won't be long before they want their own rooms, their own space.

He wanders back to the other room. Nesta stirs slightly as the floorboards creak under him, but she doesn't wake.

Reaching down into his pocket, he pulls out a small box and opens it.

It hadn't been a full hour, the Solstice years ago, that he dove down into the icy Sidra, cursing his own rashness. Stupid to throw it out like that. Obviously, she wasn't going to want anything to do with him then. And it was selfish of him, he knows. He knew that then, too. He didn't want her to have it, he wanted to be the one to give it to her.

And, he thinks with a rueful grin, that's still the case.

Nesta's mother's ring had not been easy to track down, but one look at an absentminded sketch of Feyre's had been all it took to keep it lodged in his mind until the day he finally held it.

He's not quite sure if it's Nesta's style or not. They've never browsed jewellery shops together. She has the necklace he gave her, sure, but she loves that because she loves anything to do with the children. Will she like this for the same reason? For her parents...and for him?

It's wrong to give it to her now. She's made herself clear and he'll listen this time. He'll give it to her...eventually. Later. When she's ready.

And maybe it won't be an engagement ring. Maybe it'll be a here's how much I love you, I'm willing to scour every human jeweler and pawnshop and the whole world until I find what you want ring. Either way, he can't give it to her now. She needs time. They both do.

No matter. After all, he's nearly six hundred years old. He knows how to wait.

And Nesta's worth waiting for.

[timac-extraversal]

Four Racial Futures

(TIMAC #003, ~3,800 words, 16 minutes)

Summary: Four alternative paths to the current dominant left/liberal racial vision for future America are discussed, including an underestimate of the size of the white population, Castizo Futurism, Landian Hyper-Racism, and changes in society's understanding of developmental psychology.

Epistemic Status: Political speculation.

-☆☆☆-

‘Majority Minority’ America? Don’t Bet on It John J. Miller, Wall Street Journal (2021/02) [paywall]

“The surge in mixing across ethno-racial lines is one of the most important and unheralded developments of our time,” says Mr. Alba, a professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He rattles off facts and figures: Today, more than 10% of U.S.-born babies have one parent who is nonwhite or Hispanic and one who is white and not Hispanic. That proportion is larger than the number of babies born to two Asian parents and not far behind the number of babies born to two black parents. “We’re entering a new era of mixed backgrounds,” Mr. Alba says.

The census apparently counts those who identify as both white and non-white as 'non-white,' which may be undercounting the number of people who are likely to identify as 'white' in the United States. Sociologist Richard Alba argues that assimilation is bidirectional, but proceeding apace.

The infamous Razib Khan chimes in on Twitter:

The Great Demographic Illusion: Majority, Minority, and the Expanding American Mainstream [link] haven't read this book but summary supports my exp./priors in 21st century.

"When they marry, 72% of Asian-white women and 64% of Asian-white men take white spouses. The government nevertheless counts them and their progeny as nonwhite." i have a blue-eyed blonde-haired 1/4th japanese friend. she probably doesn't realize she's counted as nonwhite

fwiw, my half brown kids 'identify' as tan. but if they were forced to pick a race and others were forced would choose white more than anything else

On the one hand, we have the largely implicit left-wing theory that if there is no majority race, there can be no organized oppression by a majority race. On the other, the implicitly-left-wing theory that if there are many mixed-race people, it will become too difficult to organize by race - identifying people on the basis of race will be harder and people will have split loyalties.

Either might fail on its own. If people are naturally prone to politics by race and ethnicity, then a lack of a clear supermajority in a majority-minority country may lead to shifting ethnic coalitions, with no group feeling that it's in a comfortable position of power. Even within a mixed group, there might be selection in some specific direction, such as colorism, which is currently its own category of discourse.

On the other hand, it's apparently possible that some form of unironic 'Multiracial Whiteness' could "win," either from widespread adoption of 'white' as a norm even if whites were a minority, or by a supermajority ending up 7/8ths 'white' and the definition of 'white' expanding to match...

[Quora] What is Castizo Futurism? Renatto Belerofonte (2020)

Among the right-wingers, there is also a joke that "the Alt Right is a hispanic movement." And just as there is Afro-Pessimism, there is a 'White Optimism' in the form of "Castizo Futurism," as Quora user Renatto Belerofonte describes better than I could:

Castizo Futurism comes from the idea that the future of whites in the United States and Latin America is not as dire as white supremacists that believe in white genocide think it is. White Identitarians traditionally organize their societies through Hypodescent (the idea that the offspring of an union between two conflicting classes adopts the social standing of the lower class involved) [...] An example of hypodescent would be the One Drop Rule.

[...]

Castizo Futurism is basically the adoption of Hyperdescent by American White Supremacists, the idea that whiteness is a malleable condition that can morph according to the material and historical conjuncture of society. If Hispanics in the US suddenly stop being “non-whites” and start to be perceived as “mostly mestizos and castizos that are already predominantly European with various degrees of native blood” then you can conceive the prospect of “whitening” them overtime. If Mestizos can become Castizos (which according to White Supremacists is the cut-off at which you start to manifest European behavior and appearance) then there is the possibility that White Genocide can be reversed.

As Renatto writes, "if you look at non-anglo societies this paradigm is not the case [...] Spanish, Portuguese and French societies in America believed that you could 'become' white through generations of intermarriage..."

Human beings grow old and wish to create a legacy in their environments. For some people, this is children. For others, it is activism. Suppose you tie your self-identity to a great confrontation to overcome "whiteness," and then just as you saw the traditions of your ancestors as something outdated to be overturned, most of an entire generation simply ignore you and decide that they are now white.

Who, exactly, is going to stop them?

Of course, there is no guarantee that this will happen, but at the same time, there is no requirement that it won't.

One of the great advantages to adopting relatively liberal methods and tactics is that you aren't obligated to pin your hopes on demographic triumphalism - if the future goes a bit off-script, that isn't necessarily a problem. And it may well go off-script; one of the characteristics of the future that I have tried to express in my blogging is that, for most of us, it will be unexpected.

Why does the old conventional racism use hypodescent? Old conventional racism might claim to be based on thinking in terms of evolution, but it isn't necessarily. Often it proceeds as if race is primordial, trailing back into the mists of time. Why embrace hyperdescent now? In part, because 'white' was something that emerged once through evolution and selection, and it's implemented as a statistical distribution of heritable traits (even if those heritable traits are solely appearance). As long as those traits exist, it can simply be recreated if the appropriate conditions arise.

[Landian] Hyper-Racism Nick Land, Xenosystems.net (2014/09, arch. 2015)

Speaking of statistical distributions of traits, there are some pessimists that argue that intra-European political preferences are heritable and conserved.

But even those 'within-white' preferences, should they exist, may end up scrambled...

Assortative mating tends to genetic diversification. This is neither the preserved diversity of ordinary racism, still less the idealized genetic pooling of the anti-racists, but a class-structured mechanism for population diremption, on a vector towards neo-speciation. It implies the disintegration of the human species, along largely unprecedented lines, with intrinsic hierarchical consequence. The genetically self-filtering elite is not merely different — and becoming ever more different — it is explicitly superior according to the established criteria that allocate social status. Analogical fusion with Cochran’s space colonists is scarcely avoidable. If SES-based assortative mating is taking place, humanity (and not only society) is coming apart, on an axis whose inferior pole is refuse. This is not anything that ordinary racism is remotely able to process. That it is a consummate nightmare for anti-racism goes without question, but it is also trans-racial, infra-racial, and hyper-racial in ways that leave ‘race politics’ as a gibbering ruin in its wake.

"The problem with ordinary racism," Nick Land writes, "is its utter incomprehension of the near future."

If the conventional racists view race as primordial, as something that can only be either preserved or lost, and the would-be Castizo Futurists view race as something that can change over generations, then the Transhumanists are the most radical. Transhumanists tend to view the body mechanically, as a system of parts, each of which could potentially be replaced. This is the view on the macro level - they would support growing new organs in vats and transplanting them - but it's also true on the micro level. To a Transhumanist, a gene is not the same thing as a person who has it, and a gene is not in itself sacred any more than the radiator on your car is sacred. (Alter someone's genetics unwillingly, however, and you might find far more stern disagreement - not unlike the violent disagreement you might get if you broke into someone's car and stole their radiator.)

Someone once described Americans as 'temporarily-embarassed millionaires.' For temporarily-embarassed cyborgs, much of contemporary race discourse is just not very impressive. For Liberal Transhumanists, a man who has inherited frail leg bone genes is not an inherently unworthy being, but is merely someone who has not yet received robot legs - just as they are human beings who have not yet received anti-aging pills. And if some men have sturdy leg bone genes instead? Rather than a threat of enduring hierarchy, those genes represent potential untapped capital that could be used to raise the standard of living (from the typical subjective perspective).

In the famous animated franchise Ghost in the Shell, the lead character has an entirely synthetic body, except for her brain. If this were possible (and at this point, we don't know that it is, though we're continuing to experiment in fields like tissue engineering), one might describe a society capable of it as "also trans-racial, infra-racial, and hyper-racial in ways that leave ‘race politics’ as a gibbering ruin in its wake."

Are there risks involved with this mindset? Certainly. But many of the basic criticisms will ring as hollow to transhumanists as basic conservative criticisms ring hollow to many left-wing and liberal readers.

This future is not yet etched in stone, but on the other hand, an article in Nature published in 2020 argued that...

Together, these findings suggest that there are, at present, no known insurmountable hurdles to the eventual development of safe and effective clinical applications of genome editing in humans. […] Therapeutic genome editing will be realized, at least for some diseases, over the next 5-10 years.

Part of what makes contemporary race discourse so unimpressive to transhumanists is that it fails to integrate Crispr or PGD-IVF into its moral imagination. Right-wingers are said to look backwards, and left-wingers and progressives to look forwards. But while the right-wing WrathOfGnon would encourage readers think on ancestral time scales by physically building villages out of traditional materials (a view which, right or wrong, is consistent), a number of Progressives fail to imagine beyond the next fifteen years.

...or perhaps they do. Can children consent to what's considered a genetic disease (such as Tay-Sachs, which is quite lethal)? Would having kids the old-fashioned way come to be seen as a low-class activity for rednecks and religious fundamentalists? There are ways in which genetic equity is at odds with genetic freedom.

It's also possible that they are simply technology pessimists, maintaining multiple rings of protection in case technology should fail to pan out this century. Though if this is their perspective, perhaps they should consider the potential dangers of their current rhetoric as well.

Contrary to the Liberal Transhumanists, for someone like Land, everything is highly competitive evolution.

genomic manipulation capabilities, which will also be unevenly distributed by SES, will certainly intensify the trend to speciation, rather than ameliorating it.

I take issue with Land, here. Not just morally (though he writes "this blog generally seeks to spread dismay whenever the opportunity arises"), but in practical terms.

Every time we edit a gene, we risk an off-target result, which may cause disease. The tradeoffs for early genetic engineering favor focusing on monogenic disease, the sort of situation where your choices are to risk genetic engineering or experience near-certain death by age 30. Many traits like intelligence or general health, should they be genetic, are likely highly polygenic. Hypothetically, a rich man could pay for a thousand edits, but this would only work with a relatively mature technology where the rate of error is very, very low.

Something closer to the opposite of Nick Land's idea might come to pass, in which sharp negative points are eroded away except for a few populations such as religious conservatives, including the literal Amish, and medical skeptics, paid for by big institutions like insurance companies and public health authorities. In twenty years, the likes of L0m3z, a right-wing Twitter contrarian, may write about the coming "Planet of Midwits."

As for Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis In-Vitro Fertilization, although it is currently being used for preventing the transmission of Huntington's Disease (if you have $35,000 to spare), the gains from embryo selection for other traits can be more limited than people might expect.

[Video] The Glenn Show: The Dark Matter of Developmental Psychology Glenn Loury & James Heckman, BloggingHeads.tv (2020/12)

GLENN: I'm talking to one of the great economists working on human development. What are you up to at the Center for the Economics of Human Development at the University of Chicago?

HECKMAN: Well, one of the great issues of course, always, is exactly how do you improve the lot of human beings. Namely, how do you measure what improvement is, what are the relevant life skills, and then how do you develop those skills? What's the proper role for social policy, and I don't mean just governmental policy, I mean social policy? There are some very strong interventions, evidence for interventions, showing how if you tell parents a certain amount of information that they lack, it can have huge effects on their children. And the same is true of interventions that occur in adolescent years. Human potential is not being fully utilized. [...] I've been working on this not only in the US, but in several countries around the world - a lot of time spent in China, recently.

[...]

HECKMAN: And then gradually society has become more and more cognitively focused. Well that sounds good. When Governor Clinton was governor of Arkansas, well all of these well-meaning officials were talking about how to improve schools, what do they talk about? Nate scores - reading, writing, and arithmetic. They don't talk about character formation. They don't talk about self-control, executive functioning, the way you can help govern your life. [...]

HECKMAN: One of the main lessons of this body of work, and I'm proud to have contributed to this, is in showing the power of social and emotional and personality skills in shaping lives. Skills that can be actually cultivated, and skills that can be cultivated not just at the beginning of life, but through adolescence especially.

What evidence is there? Aside from more contemporary study in his own field, Heckman mentions discusses the Perry Preschool Project, a topic which comes up sometimes when one is looking into this field. While increases in IQ scores failed to stick, the experimental group had improvements in other life outcomes such as earnings, home ownership, and lower risk of incarceration.

HECKMAN: ...but the way you take the kid to the next step matters a lot. You've got to do it with some patience, and with some empathy - some attachment. And so there's a whole subject matter in child development psychology which we're looking at now - we actively are exploring.

HECKMAN: By the way, I don't want to pretend this is all completely known. This is what makes the work that I'm doing now so exciting. Because now we're measuring these interactions, week by week. This is now not in the US, it's in western China, one of the poorest areas. We can see how the interactions between the parent and the child are leading to the growth of skills on the part of the child. [...]

HECKMAN: This was something that was tried in Jamaica some 40 years ago. I'm working with a group of people with a study that's still ongoing outside of Kingston, Jamaica. It's called the "Reach Up and Learn" study in Jamaica. The China study is patterned after that study. [...]

So the research the Heckman is focused on is not limited to a particular race, country, or culture.

HECKMAN: It turns out that a lot of parents don't really know how to parent. And what do I mean by that? They don't have a clear idea what a normal growth trajectory is for a child, what a child can do. And they often don't understand how powerful they are in shaping the life of the child. So you give them that kind of information. Nobody's being forced to do anything. Just empower people. Almost every caretaker of a young child really wants that child to succeed. [...] When they are told this information, they act on it.

Asian Americans live longer than non-hispanic white Americans, and have a higher median household income. [1☆][2☆] While there is some racial tension between white and asian Americans (see, for instance, ongoing 'cultural appropriation' arguments and other discourse), it's generally considered less of an issue than disparities between the country's white majority and black Americans.

Could parental information and mentoring programs reduce disparities in the United States, even if they aren't resolved? And could this turn down the heat on race discourse?

For instance, at $76k median household income, white households make about 77% of what asian households do. Black American households make about $45k, or about 60% of white American household income. At 77%, they would make about $59k, not far off from the $56k of hispanic households.

What are the potential downsides? The most likely way for the program to fail is for it to have no effect or, at worst, a modest negative effect. [3] It isn't incompatible with an ecological view of human society. It would cost money, but probably not much more than another couple years of additional schooling.

Given the modest downside risk, what are the potential upsides? If the reports on the Perry Preschool Program are accurate and the effects can be replicated, there are a large savings to be had, mostly from the reduction in crime. [4☆]

But can the effects be replicated? The sample size for the Perry Preschool Project was relatively small. As far as Early Childhood Education programs go, the effectiveness of Head Start, which provides more than just preschool and is "based on a 'whole child' model," is disputed. [5☆][6☆] However...

Two older "high-quality" preschool programs mentioned frequently in the research literature are the HighScope Perry Preschool program from Ypsilanti, Michigan, and the Chicago Child-Parent Center (CPC) program. These programs include parent education and support and thus differ in significant ways from the type of preschool programs offered by Head Start, as well as the more recent "high-quality" programs. They are also much more expensive on a per-capita basis. Both the CPC and the HighScope Perry Preschool programs were started in the 1960s, and researchers have carried out long-term cost-benefit analyses for both programs. These analyses conclude that better long-term outcomes more than pay for their higher program costs, mainly in the form of higher career income and lower rates of criminal behavior.

- Armor & Sousa [6☆]

By 2018, the "Reach Up and Learn" program Heckman was speaking of had been expanded to 9 other countries, with varying degrees of effectiveness depending on its implementation. [7☆] (Though its associated US domain has expired.) Heckman's own study is, as one would expect, positive about the effects - and was published in Science.

Early childhood education increased earnings by 25%, enough for growth-stunted children to completely catch up to the earnings of the non-stunted comparison group. The control group remained far behind. In fact, average earnings from full-time jobs were 25% higher for the treatment group than for the control group. Ninety-eight percent of treated children had been employed at age 22, with 94% in full-time jobs.

Jamaica is not America, and interventions that worked under conditions in Jamaica might be less effective in America. However, if it could be achieved, a 25% increase in median income would put black American households at roughly $57k annual income, just above hispanic households, and within striking distance of the $59k target.

A nutritional intervention was also attempted, however, although "Other studies have shown cognitive benefits from nutritional supplementation in the first 24 months," Heckman wrote, "The nutrition supplement for the child was often shared with the family, so it may not have been sufficient to produce better outcomes."

And the nutrition angle might be worth looking into - the study cited (preceded by an analysis, by one of the same authors, of 13 studies on the subject) by Scott Alexander in Society is Fixed, Biology is Mutable showed that vitamins didn't do much for well-nourished kids, but that a minority of undernourished kids may have benefitted greatly.

-☆☆☆-

[1☆] As of 2014, asian Americans lived about 86 years, hispanics about 83 years, and non-hispanic whites about 79 years.

[2☆] In 2019, asian households had a median household income of $98,174 US to white non-hispanic median household income of $76,057. (It should be noted however, as shown in this Wikipedia article that is easier to read than the government data it cites, that household median incomes for groups within "white" or "asian" are not all the same.)

[3] Heckman's program and attitude suggest that an ideological explanation of how we got here isn't included, just an assumption of lack of access to resources by impoverished parents, whether that's in Jamaica, Peru, or China. This suggests the program lacks a loop where program failure just means that the program wasn't tried hard enough.

[4☆] Updating the Economic Impacts of the High/Scope Perry Preschool Program (2005)

At a 3% discount rate the program repays $12.90 for every $1 invested from the perspective of the general public; with a 7% discount rate, the repayment per dollar is $5.67. Returns are even higher if the total benefits--both public and private--are counted. However, there are strong differences by gender: a large proportion of the gains from the program come from lower criminal activity rates by the treatment group, almost all of which is undertaken by the males in the sample. The implications of these findings for public policy on early childhood education are considered.

[5☆] Wikipedia collects a number of studies both for and against.

[6☆] The Dubious Promise of Universal Preschool David J. Armor & Sonia Sousa, National Affairs (2014/01, arch. 2014/01)

[7☆] Reach Up: how a Jamaican early childhood intervention swept the world APolitical.co (2018/04)

[darker-soft-starker]

Starker Next Door Neighbour AU

----

Tonys new neighbour is kinda weird.

Like, he’s not trying to be callous or anything. But he’s just, y’know. Strange.

They first met four months ago. 

The apartment opposite Tony’s had been vacant for only two weeks ever since old Mrs. Perry moved to Florida to retire with her grandkids. That was until one rainy Tuesday, when Tony sighted his new neighbour trudging down the hallway, hauling box after box through the elevator, whistling to himself as he relocated all of his belongings to 7C. 

Tony, on his way out, had first seen the guy trying to precariously balance a large box in his arms whilst trying to unlock his apartment door at the same time. Predictably, he’d dropped his keys and Tony had swooped in and picked them up for him.

“Oh my gosh, thank you” the guy had said earnestly, shaking Tony’s hand after opening his door. “Yikes, I’m such a mess. Mercury in retrograde, am I right?”

Tony had nodded, having no idea what he was talking about, and promptly left.

So, the new guy - Peter, he had later learned was his name - was cute. Fluffy curls, gorgeous skin, irresistible big brown eyes. 

But he was, y’know, a little bizarre.

Tony’s not even exaggerating. 

Every time he goes into the hallway he’s met with a sneeze-inducing wave of patchouli and incense, holding his breath as he passes, wondering if he is living next door to a Shinto shrine. Tony swears at night that he hears humming. Like, of the om mani padme hum kind of variety. He hears the distant clang of singing bowls and tuning forks at midnight when he’s turning in to go to bed. 

He thought about politely telling Peter to keep it down but every time he knocked on the door of 7C Peter just beamed at him in welcome and asked him about his day with genuine interest.

Tony bought ear plugs instead.

Tony swears that Peter can’t be any older than he is, early twenties at the youngest, but he says words like radical, dude and oopsy-daisy, groovy. One time he stubbed his toe around Tony and said fiddlesticks. He seems to be in and out at the weirdest times, waving burning sage at the letterboxes at three AM as if it were the normal thing to do.

“What do you even do,” Tony had asked one morning in the elevator. Peter was carrying a crate full of succulents, biceps bulging with the strain.

Peter looks down at his crate of plants and then back up to Tony as if it were obvious. The duh goes unsaid but Tony hears it.

“I’m a yoga teacher and a reiki practitioner,” he says, handing Tony a succulent from the crate.  

Tony blinks down at the small potted plant. 

“Um,” he says. 

“It’s an echeveria elegans,” Peter explains, smiling.

“Do you... want me to hold this for you?”

“No, silly,” Peter had laughed. “It’s yours. Keep it in the sunlight and try not to over-do it with the water.” 

Tony leaves the elevator more confused than before, clutching the succulent all the way to his 9:00AM class.

-------

Tony can handle weirdness. Tony can handle eccentricity. He can even handle the new plant he absolutely does not have time to care for and absolutely did not call Brenda.

But what Tony can’t handle is the ear-piercingly loud Gregorian chanting that comes from next door one night whilst he’s studying. Up for two days already, his concentration is shot by the guttural singing, the lead of his pencil snapping against his notebook in frustration. It’s nearly midnight for fucks sake.

Tony had stormed over, enraged and determined, and rapped his knuckles on the door for a good two minutes before it had swung open, a smiling Peter giving him a warm welcome on the other side.

“Do you mind?” Tony had demanded. “I’m trying to study for my thesis.”

Peter looked taken aback, contriteness making his big brown eyes dewy and soft. 

“Oh my gosh,” he’d said, extending a hand out, “I’m so sorry about that. Hang on, wait here. Please wait.”

So Tony had waited, expecting Peter to rush to lower the volume. Instead, he’d returned with a fist-sized, green and purple rock-crystal thing, presenting it to Tony with a grin. 

Peter had placed it in Tony’s palm, using both hands to curl Tony’s fingers over the heavy, polished stone.

“There,” Peter says proudly. “It’s fluorite.”

“It’s what,” Tony blinks.

“For clarity and concentration,” Peter explains, beaming a mile wide. “Keep it, okay? Good luck on your thesis.”

He’d closed the door, leaving Tony with a rock in his hand and the chanting continued.

Tony bought noise-cancelling headphones to put over his ear-plugs.

He definitely didn’t place the fluorite on his windowsill by his bed or smile at it sometimes or run his fingers over its smooth edges.

Ever since it’s been a never ending stream of peculiar behaviour, weird conversations about moon phases, etheric bodies and third eyes while waiting for their laundry to dry in the basement, the effect of the upcoming perigee syzygy on the neighbourhood and guessing Tony’s star sign.

“Cancer, right?”

“What?”

“Your zodiac sign,” Peter answers, rubbing at his eyebrow, pushing the hairs askew. His nails are painted black. 

“Gemini,” Tony answers warily, piling his underwear and bedsheets into his basket.

“Damn, I was close,” Peter smiles, pouring his own mixture of organic fabric softener into the washer. “I’ll figure you out yet.”

Tony wants to reach over and smooth down the raised hairs on his eyebrow. 

He’s a perfectionist, that’s all.

But in any case Tony just continues to go about his life, continues to study, grade his papers. He visits his optometrist and gets a new prescription and wonders how he is going to pay his phone bill when he spends more on heating over the winter than he intended.

It's all fine, whale music and white sage aside.

Not that he’d ever admit it, but it’s kinda nice.

-----

One day Tony rouses from his slumber to hear loud voices outside, the bellow of protesters on the main arterial street below. Tony thinks nothing of it and pops in his ear plugs, keen to get another hour of sleep before he has to be at his class. Being a TA is the worst.

Later, Tony watches the local news, watching in horrified fascination as his neighbour is one of the many arrested for protesting at a rally of a visiting Republican senator. 

“What’s with the pyjamas?” Tony had queried at the letterboxes the following day, roaming his eyes over the soft-looking Hello Kitty pants that Peter had been arrested and released in - and was still wearing. 

The pictures of his arrest had been on twitter for gods sake. He was trending as #hellokittyguy. It was all his students were talking about.

“Oh, I’d slept in,” was all Peter said. 

“You slept in. To a protest.” 

“Irresponsible, I know. I’m already beating myself up, don’t worry.”

At this stage, Tony can’t even find himself to be bothered by it. He’s so used to the sound of the koto, the wind flute and kalimba from next door that it’s damn near unsettling to go without it. Tony’s used to the weird attire, from the ponchos and the sandals and the fisherman pants in mid-winter, the beaded bracelets and rose quartz pendants. He’s even used to finding Peter knocking on his door, asking for salt or milk or handing him personalised organza bags filled with small crystals and incense cones and charms.

And if he looks forward to their talks at the door? It’s only Tony’s business.

One night Peter sets off the fire alarm from burning rope incense. He says he got it when he went to Nepal, apologising profusely to the grouchy occupants who send him withering stares.

Tony doesn’t even ask, too busy staring at Peters lithe, muscled frame that had been hiding under the baggy clothes. The man is clad only in his underwear, didn’t think to grab anything when he’d fled to the emergency meeting point. 

It’s three in the morning. Tony’s not even mad.

"Did you know your aura is gold and red,” Peter had asked that night, wandering over to him and accepting an offered a cigarette.

“No,” Tony yawned, taking a drag and wishing he was back in his own bed, fire truck lights flashing, dizzying and disorienting.

“S’nice. Pretty.”

Peter wraps his arms around himself and shivers, the cool night air sending goosebumps over his pale skin.

Tony quickly shrugs his own jacket off his shoulders and offers it to Peter so he doesn’t have to stare at the obscene way his nipples harden.

“Thanks, Tony. You’re a sweetheart.”

“I’m not - it’s not a big deal,” Tony grumbles. “You looked like you needed it, so.”

Peter smothers his smile in the collar of Tony’s jacket. Tony still sees it. 

His stomach squirms like the first time he held someones hand.

“Do you want to have dinner sometime?” Peter asks, as they pile back upstairs an hour later after the building has been cleared.

“Yeah, okay,” Tony agrees, eyeing the dimples of Peters lower back and the crevice of his muscles where his spine rests. He’s got an ass that’s so perfect it deserves to be worshipped but Tony isn’t looking at it. He’s not.

“Tomorrow work for you?”

Tony nods, watching Peter disappear back into his apartment with an awkward wave and a smile. He’s still wearing Tony’s jacket. 

If Tony goes back inside his apartment and jerks off to the image of Peter wearing just his jacket and nothing else, well then, no one else needs to know.

----

The following evening Tony knocks on Peters door, dressed in jeans and a nice shirt. He adjusts his glasses where they perch on his nose as he waits, sliding them up as Peter opens the door, beckoning him inside. 

The interior looks very different to Tony’s apartment, is the first thing he notices. 

Plants hang from the ceiling, there is a large afghan rug in the living room, all the furniture is mismatched, a sofa and an armchair with different patterns and colours, all the bookshelves are of different wood and sizes. 

There are cushions everywhere, crystals and rocks on almost every surface, incense burning by the open window, stacks and stacks of books on the divine and lunar charts on the walls. Michelle Branch is playing unironically from the speakers on Peters bookshelves.

“I didn’t know what to bring, so,” Tony mumbles, tearing his eyes away from a copy of the Karma Sutra and holding up store bought cake and a bottle of red wine.

“Oh, that’s perfect,” Peter gushes, kissing Tony’s cheek and taking the items from him and herding him onto the sofa. “Sit, sit. I’ll be right back.”

Tony sits, a little dazed. The spot on his cheek where Peters lips touched his skin burns. 

There’s an old TV in the corner and a CD player straight out of the nineties nestled in the corner between book stacks. 

There’s two magazines on the coffee table: National Geographic and Cosmopolitan. God, Peter is so, so... 

Charming, is the word that comes unbidden to Tony’s mind when Peter bounds back into the living room, two glasses of wine clutched in his hands, the charms on his beaded bracelets clinking together. He’s barefoot, Tony notices. His toenails are painted black, too.

“So, I have a confession to make,” Peter begins, passing Tony a glass and sitting beside him on the sofa.

“Oh, god,” Tony winces. “You’re not an anti-vaxxer, are you?” 

He didn’t even think about that. 

“What,” Peter blinks. “No.”

“Okay, good. Sorry. Continue.”

“I’m, uh, kinda broke. I know I invited you to dinner but all I have is cup ramen and Corona.”

“Oh,” Tony says, watching at how Peter smiles sheepishly,  “That’s okay. I like cup ramen. I mean, I’m a student, so.”

“Is that okay?” Peter asks, cringing as he casts a look over to his tiny kitchenette. “Sorry, I was so shocked that you even agreed to come that I couldn’t even think.”

“Mercury in retrograde?” Tony guesses.

“No,” Peter laughs, looking at his hands bashfully. “You’re just really cool and handsome and sophisticated and I don’t know. It wasn’t in my tarot, so.”

It wasn’t in his tarot, Tony repeats in his mind, wondering when exactly he hit his head and found all of this attractive. He’s a man of science, alright?

“You been crushin’ on me, huh?” Tony asks, shifting closer until their thighs and shoulders touch.

“Yeah. You make me kinda nervous.”

“Well your tarot can’t tell you that I think you’re beautiful,” Tony reasons, sipping his wine. “Or delightful. Or that I think the way you swing your legs when you’re waiting for your drying is adorable.”

The flush that comes over Peters cheeks makes Tony’s heart beat faster.

“You really think that?”

“Against my better judgement,” Tony admits. 

“What was it that did you in?” Peter asks, leaning in, drawing his knees up and looking like a pleased cat. “Was it the green fluorite? The rutilated quartz?”

Tony leans in to bridge the gap, pressing his lips against Peter’s in a sweet kiss. He tastes like coffee and wine and everything smells like lemongrass and palo santo.

“Just your cute, quirky self,” Tony says against his lips. “And maybe the blue calcite.”

Peter laughs against his mouth. “I knew it.”

---

Later, when Tony is curled up against Peter’s bare chest, still catching his breath, Peter asks him on a second date.

“There’s a climate change rally at the State Library this weekend, if you’re interested. We could have matching signs and drink Corona after.”

“Baby,” Tony yawns, eyes heavy, “you do that thing with your tongue again and I’ll go anywhere with you.”

“Sweet,” Peter says, pressing a kiss into Tony’s hair.

Yeah, Tony thinks as he drifts off, it is.

[hecallsmehischild]

Recent Media Consumed

Books

A Knot in the Grain and Other Stories by Robin McKinley. Not bad for a fantasy short story compilation, but as I read the stories I felt like too many questions went unanswered, or the answer wasn’t clear enough. I know there’s an art to not answering questions and making that intentional, but I didn’t pick up the feeling of the author being intentionally vague. It was still fun to read. I’m really just in a fantasy binge mode.

Fire and Water by Robin McKinley and Peter Dickinson. Both books are collections of short stories based on elemental spirits. Eh…. they were okay. Didn’t like them as much as the others.

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Hard book to get through. There’s so much monologuing and it doesn’t all make sense to me. People seem to be talking trite nonsense half the time and then being unbearably deep the other half. It is an interesting look at morbid aspects of the human heart. Might be that it’s a bit over my head to appreciate fully, but I’d like to read at least one more by this author. Maybe The Brothers Karamazov.

Movies

Hello Dolly. (mini liveblogging of reactions) There are way too many musicals I have not gotten around to seeing, simply because I have old favorites and sometimes it’s hard to get out of a rut. I am two minutes and four seconds in and CLEARLY not watching this before now was a failure on my part. I am in awe of the opening sequence that is just a series of legs and feet, but they are all moving to the music and they tell a dozen different stories that are very easy to understand even without seeing anybody’s top half, this is EXCELLENT framing and shooting and I feel like I’m in for a real treat. (In the middle of “It takes a woman”) I cannot tell you how much I missed over the top satire. This very much has the feel of My Fair Lady’s “With A Little Bit of Luck”. But then it’s taken up by the protagonist with an entirely different tone and WHAM the feels hit. I’m not enjoying all of the musical numbers, but there’s this one bit in the middle of the song about dancing where Dolly accepts a dance invitation from the grizzled old groundskeeper, and seeing this high-class looking widow take his invitation without a shred of irony, and to see him take her dancing in such a way that shows he’s clearly done this for many years and may be a widower himself, it’s just this strange sweet kind of moment that’s meant to be savored. And then again WHAM this high class widow, whenever she has a musical number in private, just NAILS you with her song and performance and all her emotions. Barbara Streisand was incredible, absolutely incredible. A lot of the other characters don’t really feel real, they feel like Musical People. She slips on the clothes of a Musical Person but then she drops the facade and shows you how hard all this is for her and it’s incredible. The movie is worth it just to watch HER. Even if it is very stressful watching her manipulate conversations and move people around like pawns. I have to say I do not, for the life of me, understand why she wants a relationship with Mr. Horace Vandergelder, or why he agrees. They look like they’ll make each other miserable for life.

Honest Thief. I went in with low “dumb robbery movie” expectations and was pleasantly surprised. I think I was most surprised by the fantastic chemistry of the couple and pretty much everyone’s acting. Aside from the acting it wasn’t anything remarkable, but everyone took it up to the next level. Nice flick. Also it tickles me to hear the voice of Aslan talking about how he carried out perfect robberies.

Nezha. Holy. Cow. Okay it doesn’t make total sense to me, not all the way through, but I chalk that up to missing cultural/lit knowledge and translation issues. Setting that aside, animation was gorgeous. Story was fun, but also compelling. There was some gross-out humor, but I’ve seen worse. And the climactic fight scene? Man. It went SO LONG but I didn’t even care. Some fight scenes drag on, but this one could have been twice as long and I would have been fine with that. The creators of this film really went all out with creativity and variety all throughout the film. I don’t totally understand the ending but I would love to see more (as the credits scenes hinted that there might be more). Oh wait, there is more and it’s called Jiang Ziya…

The Mitchells vs The Machines. This movie was so full of heart and also so full of complete over the top dumb goofiness. It kind of reminded me of Despicable Me in that way. Definitely brought a smile to my face.

Shows

Star vs the Forces of Evil. I had to re-watch through Eclipsa’s and Meteora’s arc because I’d seen that much before, but too long ago to remember. I re-watched it, then settled in for the last season which I hadn’t seen before. Watching through the new content and… I’m… disappointed. Story seems to be all over the place. The conflict is so forced it hurts. People are flatter than flat. And they’re all idiots. I feel like the show is trying to reach for a moral and don’t even know what that is from episode to episode. Wow. And as I go into the final arc, it just gets worse. Ham-fisted with zero focus and twists out of the bloody blue that make zero sense. You know… this series was hard to get into because characters were annoying and gross at the start. But then it added depth to each character and made me care about them as it went along. But everything after Eclipsa became queen has flushed all of that down the toilet as fast as possible and it is maddening to see that story-trust wasted. Nothing means anything in this story, that’s the conclusion I end up coming to. Nothing means anything and there is nobody worth caring about. I am radically disappointed. And kind of angry at the sheer number of levels at which the storytelling became terrible.

Games

Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening. I wasn’t sure how I’d handle another controller-based game after getting so accustomed to Breath of the Wild (I’m on a second re-play of that, I play it whenever my brain is on the fritz so badly that I can’t do anything else). But it turned out to be pretty easy to get into. The hardest part is getting stuck about how to solve certain puzzles and trying to figure it out over and over. Sometimes I figure it out, but sometimes I need to look up a hint online. I’m almost at the end of the game and I’ve enjoyed it quite a bit. I want to play more Zelda games...

Katamari Re-Roll. This is so stupid. I mean, SO VERY STUPID. And so much fun. You start off as this tiny little person just rolling a ball around and you can pick up anything smaller than you (thumbtacks, coins, caramel candies) and as your ball gets bigger, your options open up (mice, carrots, eggs, crabs) and open up (shoes, toys, cats, dogs) and open up (humans, food carts, cows). I hear you get to roll up houses at some point. I’m looking forward to that. For now I’m at the level where I’m rolling up a lot of people. They’re all wiggly and shrieky. It’s funny. There’s a time limit on each level, and you have to reach a certain size by the time limit, which is the only really annoying thing about it. But I’m still having a lot of fun.

World of Warcraft: Classic. Of all the games I never thought I’d play, this is probably toward the top of the list. I don’t like the concept of grinding. I like story. But after playing Breath of the Wild, I also found out that I love exploration/open world type games. My husband helped me build a character and we ran around doing quests and levelling up. Now I’m a level 17 Dwarf hunter who does skinning and leatherworking. I have a pet wolf named Chompers. I’m having a lot of fun. Probably not obsessive levels of fun, but enough fun that I’m happy to sink a couple several-hour sessions a week into playing.

[gibbering-miasma]

I think I know how Warcraft’s casters work

It started with a simple question.  Why can mages summon water elementals?  It’s a simple question that resulted in me noticing other elements of overlap among the Warcraft casters.  Not only can mages summon elementals, but fire mages and destruction warlocks can appear to be the same class at a first look. (Especially if the person doing the looking isn’t very experienced, we all know you, yes you, can easily tell the difference.  The point is that two classes that seem to predominantly use fire magic are very similar.)  eventually it got to the point where my initial question changed from “why can one class do this thing while another class can’t?” tonly to change again to

 “What really is the difference between the casters of Warcraft?”

I want to be transparent here, I have not read Chronicle yet.  I have the books (thanks again for that, you know who you are) but I wanted to get this theory properly formed first so i don’t spoil my biases.  That leads me to another thing, this is just the theory of a guy who’s spent most of his life on this game who’s noticed a few odd dots and decided to connect them to see what picture they make.  Blizzard can disprove this at any time with a word, because in the end, they’re the creators, and I’m just a fan.  One last thing, I’m certain that there are some examples or details that i’ll get wrong (not playing the most recent expansions will tend to leave a sample size less than optimal) so if there’s an error that I’ve made, call me out on it.  This may be a fan theory, but I want it to make sense.

To answer my previous question (what really makes the difference between Warcraft casters for those of you in the back), I think the primary difference is philosophy, not the type of magic that each class uses.  What I mean by this is the general worldview, character traits, and relationship with magic that each class has.  Obviously there are going to be outliers, mortals tend to mess with the systems like that, but this should be a good place to begin our analysis. When analyzing the casters, we see four main philosophies develop.  I’d argue that those four are the philosophies of the Druid, Mage, Warlock and Shaman.  I’ll include the other classes that I believe to best line up with those philosophies.  I’ll focus on the primary casters of those philosophies, though I’ll use a few examples from the other classes that are philosophically adjacent. 

And just so we’re all on the same page here, I’m assuming that magic is inherently sentient, and the overall type of magic used has no effect on your class.  With all that out of the way, let’s begin.

Druid/Priest/Paladin- Philosophy of Faith.

The druid is the only class that willingly enters a state of unconsciousness and allows their magic to work through them, causing metamorphosis in the process.  The primary tenets of the druidic philosophy are Faith and Dedication.  The druid venerates the Wild much in the same way that a priest or paladin venerates the Light.  What all of this means is that the druid views themselves as inferior to the Wild (or whatever source of magic you prefer).  Power is attained not through study or ambition, but by submission and faith, resulting in power being granted as a boon.  But it’s not all fluffy cats and boomkins for the druid, their submission and faith means that they are not necessarily in control.  We clearly see this to be the case with the druids of the pack (and the same case can be made for the druids of the flame, but I’m unsure on whether ragnaros forced the flame druids to do his bidding or if they were just crazy like that). Spouting character traits with no examples won’t do us any good, so let’s rectify that by taking a look at Tyrande Whisperwind, a great example of the philosophy of faith.  Yes, Tyrande is a priest, not a druid, but remember that the important thing about the classes is their philosophy, not the type of magic that they use.  As a priest, Tyrande answers to the will of Elune, and will prioritize the will of the White Lady over anything else (consider the quote “Only the goddess may forbid me anything” from warcraft 3).  Not only that, but Tyrande also becomes the vessel for a portion of Elune’s power during the Horde’s invasion, showing similarity to the powers that druids receive and use from their Wild Gods.  The similarity between druids and priests could be a reason why those two classes are the major casters in Night elf society following the War of the Ancients.  And before you start denying my claim that priests and druids are basically the same, let me ask you this:  If Elune wanted Tyrande to willingly enter an unconscious state in order to become a more capable vessel of Her power, would Tyrande do it?  I say that she would, because putting aside your own desires, fears and reservations in order to serve your higher power is the definition of dedication, it is the definition of faith, and it is exactly what makes a druid what they are.

Shaman- Philosophy of Synergy

The shaman’s relationship with their magic is exactly that, a relationship.  I get the suspicion that I may have lost a few of you there so I’ll explain.  The druid fully submits in order to gain power, whereas classes like the warlock will just take as they see fit.  The shaman exists between those two extremes, they work alongside the elements and it is through that cooperation that they grow their abilities.  Of course, the shaman also experiences their own fair share of magical difficulties.  They are still drawing their power from sentient beings that may not always want to comply with the shaman’s wishes.  This leaves the shaman with a difficult situation, especially if their magic rebels during a time where the shaman doesn’t have the means to deal with any of that nonsense.  The shaman must cooperate with their magic unless they fall to dark shamanism and force their magic to submit, which is the exact domain of the Warlock.

Warlock/Warrior- Philosophy of Dominion

The warlock does not ask for power, nor does it work alongside their demons for mutual benefit (I mean really, do you think that your minions are there by choice?).  I alluded to the warlock’s modus operandi earlier, and now I get to delve deeper.  The warlock takes power as they see fit, often draining it straight from their enemies.  The warlock will then add that magic into their own reserves, bending the magic to their will and growing in power.  A warlock’s magic can be said to be a part of them in a more literal manner than any of the other four casters.  This habit of taking power from others is actually quite common in the Warcraft universe, (look at all the Blood elves for instance) but i’ll highlight the 3 biggest examples of the warlock philosophy.  Ragnaros the firelord, Garrosh Hellscream and Illidan Stormrage all are well known for having a desire for more power, while also having the ambition and skill to go out and get that power for themselves without having to plead to some other entity for assistance.  Ragnaros consumed prince Thunderan, Garrosh merged with the heart of Y'Shaarj, and Illidan consumed the Skull of Gul’dan, and all three established control over their new power, and not the other way around.  Just as a shaman who forces the elements to work for them isn’t much of a shaman, a warlock who is controlled by their power isn't much of a warlock.   

Mage/Hunter/Rogue/Monk- Philosophy of Discipline

The other casters all have very distinct relationships with their magic.  Warlocks must be constantly in control, druids are always trying to appease, and shamans just want everyone to calm down and talk about their feelings.  And then we have the mage, who doesn’t have much of a relationship at all.  To the mage, magic is a tool, one that should be respected, but a tool nonetheless.  Khadgar used the skull of Gul’dan to close the Dark Portal with no negative side effects.  Whereas Illidan barely has his hands on the thing for a minute before he’s undergoing radical transformations and sprouting new appendages.  When trying to name this section, I had initially selected Mastery as a good means of describing the Mage’s philosophy.  Mastery had made sense to me, the mage is the master of their magic, they display control and authority over their power in a way that is distinct from the warlock, and their utilitarian view towards magic separates them from shamans or druids.  So why the change?  Why does Discipline describe the mage better than Mastery?  Because in a world where dragons rearrange continents, the dead walk, and where tyrants exist around every corner, the mortals of Azeroth need someone to keep a clear head when the demons are dead and their power is being divided among the victors.  The mage is the embodiment of mortal authority in relation to magic, they lock questionable powers away so that those who would misuse that power could do no harm to innocents.  The mage is a Guardian, the kind of person who has no interest in being warped into some sort of magical pawn to a higher power.  They put their trust in their skill with their power, not the overall amount of power that they can wield like how a warlock would.

The Hero Classes

If you’ve been keeping track, you may notice that I haven't included two classes, those being the hero classes.  The reason I haven’t included them yet is because of the fundamental difference between them and the other classes.  A number of people have wondered what exactly makes a hero class, and while I don’t claim to know the exact truth, I think I have an additional pearl to add.  Hero classes are a state of being, whereas the base classes are more like a career.  If you want to understand a hero class, you have to understand what they are, not who they are.  Furthermore, I believe that both the Death Knight and Demon Hunter are adjacent philosophically to two of the other philosophies previously mentioned.  This doesn’t mean that Death Knights are automatically really, really edgy druids, just that they’re an offshoot.

Death Knight-Philosophy of Tyranny

Offshoot of the philosophy of Faith

What, did you think I was kidding about DKs being druids?  Lets step back and ask the fundamental question: what are Death Knights?  Simply put, DKs are dark magic inhabiting and controlling a mortal vessel.  Yes, that does sound like something a warlock would do, but remember that it’s magic controlling a mortal, much like what we see with Druids.  Plus, saying Death Knights are related to Druids has more panache, so i’m going with that one.  To the DK, power is their birthright, and they will take and abuse and consume as they see fit.  Nothing is sacred from their will, not the blood in your veins, nor the flesh on your back, nor the final, cold breath you give before you’re raised as an undead servant.  The DK does not necessarily take to grow their power, they take to fulfill their desires-which is usually to kill a lot of people.

Demon Hunter- Philosophy of Unity

Offshoot of the philosophy of Synergy

Once again, what are DHs?  While DKs are magic possessing and dominating a vessel, the DH is more than that.  They are a combination of mortal soul and demon.  The DH is the product of a perfect union between two distinct soulstuffs.  Now here’s the important thing, I’m trying to distinguish between the Illidari, and the Demon Hunters themselves, which can be hard when you remember that pretty much every Demon Hunter is Illidari.  The reason this separation is so important is that the Illidari with their whole “fight fire with fire, we shall take the demons' own magic and use it against them as our own” is a very warlock-ish thing to do.  But I’ll maintain that the DHs identity points towards being more closely adjacent to the philosophy of Synergy than Dominion.

 So why can mages summon water elementals?  Because mages have power, just like anybody else.  And power itself doesn’t have much significance, what matters is how you use it.  

This has been a somewhat deep dive into the philosophy of Warcraftian magic, with the end goal of gaining a deeper understanding of the various classes, and the characters within the Warcraft universe. 

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

[thevividgreenmoss]

Let us now turn to some contradictions and ironies inherent in postmodern thought.

The first irony that strikes me is its great popularity in countries like India and China. All the fundamental presuppositions of postmodern social and economic analyses refer to the structures of advanced capitalism. Looking at things from India, it seems implausible that postmodernist analyses could apply to societies that are not modern even by the standards of 19th century Britain or France or Germany. Nor is it possible to be postindustrial in predominantly agrarian societies.

Definitive decline of the industrial working class is a central tenet of postmodernism. This too does not apply. Given the demographic size of China and its rapid industrialization in recent years, there has been greater expansion of the industrial proletariat there in mere three decades than perhaps in all of Europe during its industrial revolutions. A small number of countries - East and South East Asian countries, plus India, Brazil and Argentina, let us say - has experienced a demographically much larger process of proletarianisation than the West did in all its history, and this has happened precisely during the half century which has witnessed the ascendancy of postmodern ideas in the higher echelons of university education.

As for the great prosperity and generalised ownership of housing and consumer durables that capitalism is said to have delivered, the fact is that (a) the vast majority of people outside the Euro-American zones never experienced anything of the kind, and (b) that kind of prosperity, including homeownership for the working classes, is precisely what is getting dissolved by the current offensives of the capitalist class across Europe and North America. And if the credit system was the great motor for the making of the ‘consumer society’, ‘affluent society’ etc, it is precisely the scale of private and state debts that is bringing that whole phase of American prosperity to a close under our very eyes.

We shall ignore here the absurd idea of the disappearance of the capitalist class in the United States. But something needs to be said about the opposite thesis, regarding the working class. I have already pointed out the actual and historically unprecedented expansion of the proletariat in numerous Third World countries over the past half century. Moreover, the dramatic decline of the industrial working class in the US is an index of the general decline of manufacture in US economy as such, and this decline is proving to be not a sign of prosperity but the key cause of the decline of American economic power as such. That is certainly not the case in the most powerful European economy, namely Germany, where industrial working class continues to have far greater social weight. In another frame, as early as the 1970s, when ideas of the death of the working class were swirling around on both sides of the Atlantic, Harry Braverman, in his brilliant book Labour and Monopoly Capital, had demonstrated that some 90% of the US population owned no income-generating property and relied exclusively on an economy of salaries and wages. A sectoral breakdown of jobs and incomes then showed a very high degree of proletarianisation.

Meanwhile, since at least the advent of Lenin, communists have never believed that the industrial working class will necessarily become the majority of the population or the exclusive agent of revolutionary change; nor has it been postulated that the industrial working class is the only kind of working class we have. The proletariat has always been conceived of as the leading nucleus of a revolutionary movement which will, however, necessarily rely on mobilization of and joint action with other oppressed classes, such as the peasantry, the rural proletariat and the mass of workers in branches other than manufacture, not to speak of numerous other social strata. The postmodernist idea that communism has somehow become irrelevant because the industrial proletariat constitutes only a minority of the population - and even of the proletarianised masses - thus has no bearing on how the role of the industrial proletariat is actually conceived in communist thought.

We can thus say that so far as the social and economic analyses of postmodernism are concerned, we can treat this part of the ideology essentially as a reflection of a particular phase of western, especially US, prosperity, with the assumption that this particular kind of prosperity will now be permanent. Moreover, the ideology is quite an accurate reflection of the class location of the new and prosperous middle class which itself a product of the type of capitalism that arose in the imperialist core of contemporary capitalism during the ‘Golden Age of Capitalism’ between 1945 and 1973. This class has actually continued to gain during the whole period of the Bubble Economy that speculative capital was able to sustain even after the recessionary trends set in after 1973. Moreover, key producers of such ideologies tend to be concentrated, even when they come from Third World origins, in institutions of higher learning and cultural management in those countries. This highly Westocentric ideology was presented, moreover, as a universalism, i.e., as if conditions prevailing in the West were somehow global conditions and ideas produced in specific circumstances had universal validity.

[...]

About Foucault I shall be brief. He is more a philosophical historian and little concerned with active politics. He was as opposed to the fundamentals of Marxist thought as Lyotard but had absolutely no truck with neoliberalism. His opposition to Marxism can be illustrated with a brief but paradigmatic formulation of his difference from Marxism: ‘no narrative of history can be assembled from the twin sites of political economy and the state.’ What does this mean? First, classes are not the fundamental units of society; economic power is just one kind among many kinds of power; the state is just one social actor among many other kinds of actors; to abolish one kind of state (e.g., the capitalist state) and replacing it with some other kind of state (e.g., the proletarian state) amounts to no more than replacing one kind of power over the people with another kind of power. Second, society is composed of countless complexes and organisms of power: the family, the prison complex, the schooling complex, the medical complex, the technologies for management of sexuality, and so on and on and on. Each has to be addressed in its own terms, not in the overall framework of class struggle.

Such ideas then lead to a very restricted notion of what forms of politics might be permissible. One of Foucault’s key political ideas is that no one can really represent any one else without a coercive relationship with those who are represented. All you can do in the social domain is try to help enhance the power of people to represent themselves. For this you need what Foucault calls ‘micro-politics,’ local, issue-based, time-bound. You help others if you can but you make sure that you don’t try to represent them, since self-representation is the only authentic form of representation.

Foucault’s idea of ‘micro-politics’, local and issue-based, and especially the rhetoric of ‘empowering’ without organizing politically, does authorize the kind of politics that has come to be practised now on such a vast scale by the NGOs and the so-called social movements. His proposition that (a) every society is composed of countless centres of power and great many institutions, and therefore (b) what is required is not a unified political party but a whole plethora of agents addressing those multiple centres of power resonates well with the very structure of the postmodern politics that have arisen in our times, especially in the form of identity politics. And, for all its radical claims, this kind of politics is perfectly acceptable to Anglo-Saxon liberal statecraft which has always understood that capitalist state power is safest when it can fragment the opposition into diverse claimants competing for a share in the national revenue - atomisation of politics, so to speak - and most vulnerable when it has to face a united opposition to its rule. In immigrant societies such as the United States, where the population itself is composed of diverse social groups-distinguished by countries of origin, religious affiliation, racial divides etc--this atomisation of politics in the shape of ‘identity politics’ has always been the principal weapon against class politics, as Marxist historians such as Mike Davis have shown with extensive documentation. By the end of 1960s, this politics of ethnic identity became state policy not only in the US but also in Canada as ‘multiculturalism’ and in Britain as ‘race relations’--increasingly with the high philosophical rhetoric borrowed from French postmodernism. This Anglo-Saxon manoeuvre was then imported into India, often with postmodernist authority; even the word ‘ethnicity’ was a gift to Indian social science from the Ford Foundation and its funded scholars, institutes, publications and seminars. Until the 1970s, hardly any Indian social scientist used this word.

[...]

Let us recall some of the features of American and French postmodernisms we discussed earlier. First, there is a revolt against Enlightenment ideas of Rationality, Universality and Progress. Second, in political theory, there is widespread rejection of the state and political organizations - parties, trade unions etc - as mere bureaucratic machines for mass coercion. Politics, then, can only be local, community-based and issue-based. The Nazi death camps and technologically produced weapons of mass destruction are cited again and again to debunk the idea that Science can be an instrument of human emancipation. Most of the postmodernists equate communism and fascism as ‘totalitarian’ ideologies and systems, borrowing this equation from the Far Right. Rejection of Modernity then often leads to a certain romanticization of thepremodern - the traditional, the primordial - as something authentic (Foucault, for instance, not only debunked communism as ‘totalitarian’ but also wrote essays praising the clerical revolution in Iran). Versions of all this re-appear in various shades of Indian postmodernism - as we shall see below.

The postmodern political forms in India typically take the shape of ‘social movements’, ‘civil society organizations’ and the funded NGOs. It is important to understand these terms. ‘Social movement’ is contrasted to ‘political movements’. Politics addresses the issue of state power, but if state is dismissed as realm of corruption and bureaucratic manipulation then political parties--even workers’ parties which participate in the political field and fight for state power--are also seen as part of that corruption, as yet other kinds of bureaucratic machines. Logically, then, the political is replaced by ‘the social’; the objective now is not to work toward a different kind of state power but to bypass the issue of political power altogether, and to work, in stead, for ‘empowerment’ of individuals, local communities and social groups where they exist, in relation to the specific issues that concern them in their daily lives. The same applies to the concept of ‘civil society organizations’. ‘Civil society’ is equated with ‘the people’ and is differentiated from ‘the state.’ Another term for the same is ‘people’s movements’. All of these typically take the form of the NGO. Much is made of NOT taking state funds, which is said to guarantee independence from the state. This is an interesting claim considering that great many of the most successful NGOs do take money from the Scandinavian governments, German foundations, various institutions of the United Nations, or such entities as Action Aid which is itself an arm of the British government - and for some years, increasingly, the World Bank, Ford Foundation etc. More recently, a number of Indian corporate houses have also moved into this field of patronage for NGOs. In practice, then, the national Indian state is the one that is treated as particularly unworthy, while funding from virtually anywhere else is considered clean.

Now, local work, among particular communities and on specific issues, is as old as 19th century reform movements, and most political parties which have any kind of ideological claims do have such programmes. But all such works was historically done with the idea of building larger and larger unities and organization for emancipation of the nation as a whole, of the peasantry and the working classes as entire social units, or of women on the national scale. What was new with NGOs etc was an exclusive emphasis on local work and the small group, with great contempt for electoral politics and with deliberate refusal to work in terms of classes, national liberation, or even trade union work. The phenomenon of the NGOs--many of whom starting calling themselves ‘social movements’ etc - arose in India as a major, distinct phenomenon when European social democratic parties - with their governments and foundations - began funding such organisations, essentially to compete with communist organizational efforts among the peasantry, the working classes, women and artisanal groups. On the global scale, those social democratic parties were already closely aligned with US imperialism since the beginning of the Cold War but much of the broad left in India which was opposed to the communist parties came to see those very social democratic parties as a progressive, democratic alternative to communism. There is reason to believe that CIA money was also funnelled through those European parties but the anticommunist projects of those parties themselves were now just as extreme as those of US imperialism. They funded anti-communist NGOs not only in India but across Asia and, especially, Africa.

Once that breach was in place, other funders could also move in. This phenomenon remained relatively restricted during the period when ideologies of anti-imperialism, economic nationalism and independent Indian development were strong and, rhetorically at least, the state itself paid lip service to such ideologies. As neoliberalism took hold and those ideologies receded, inhibition about getting funding from foreign agencies and domestic corporates also fell off. Then, as the state started withdrawing from direct involvement in providing social entitlements, it also began farming out some of its own work to NGOs, as had previously been done in weaker states such as Bangladesh. Over time, these ‘social movements’, armed with the rhetoric of ‘micro-politics’ borrowed from French postmodernism have come to occupy more and more of the political space in the name of ‘civil society’ and ‘the social’. This atomization of politics, which undercuts the politics of organized unity against the ruling class and its state, is greatly favoured by global capital itself.

[...]

In an article published in 1993, Dipesh Chakrabarty ascribed this great change in the very nature of the original subalternist project to, in his words, ‘the interest that Gayatri Spivak and, following her, Edward Said took in the project.’ Having thus identified the main influences behind the mutation, he also identifies the precise nature of the shift: from the project to ‘write ‘better’ Marxist histories,’ free of ‘economistic class reductionism’ to an understanding that ‘a critique of this nature could hardly afford to ignore the problem of universalism/Eurocentrism that was inherent in Marxist thought itself.’ This is a significant formulation, since it suggests that subalternism rejected the fundamentals of Marxism not once but twice. In the original project itself, Chakrabarty says, Subalternism rejected what he calls ‘economistic class reductionism’ - in other words, it rejected the idea that (1) that economy was the backbone of any society, (2) that the classes that are fundamental to the working of a capitalist system are the fundamental social forces of that society, (3) the idea that class struggle is the motivating force of history around which other kinds of struggles are shaped, and (4) the idea of the proletarian revolution itself. These are the ideas that are here described as ‘economistic class reductionism,’ which, Chakrabarty says, subalternism rejected at the very beginning. In the second phase, after American postmodernism - represented in this case by Said and Spivak - blessed the project, subalternism also rejected Marxist thought for its ‘universalism.’ Here, ‘universalism’ is again a code word for a number of ideas that are sought to be rejected, such as the idea (1) that there is a common humanity, beyond race or ethnicity or even nationality, which is exploited under capitalism, (2) that the proletariat cannot really emancipate itself without emancipating society as a whole and thus emerging (in Marx’s words) as ‘a universal class,’ (3) that what we have so far had is capitalist universality (my term for what the bourgeoisie calls ‘globalization’) and it cannot be overturned with anything less than a socialist revolution which itself will have to be, eventually, universal (global), and (4) that identities and ethnicities, important as they undoubtedly are, involve, in each instance, only a small part of humanity, whereas exploitation is what is ‘universal’ for the vast majority of humanity, beyond identity etc.

In short, then, rejection of what subalternists, in their code language, call ‘class reductionism’ and ‘universalism’ amounts in fact to rejection of Marxism as a whole, regardless of how often they invoke Gramsci or Mao or whoever.

This rejection of Marxism, coupled with growing identification with postmodernist ideas, and especially with postmodern antirationalism, then leads the subalterns to adopt positions on the issue of secularism and communalism, for instance, which are clearly rightwing even though they cannot be identified with Hindutva politics as such.

Aijaz Ahmad, On Postmodernism

[sophia-sol]

Winter's Orbit, by Everina Maxwell

A few years ago there was a novel-length work of m/m original fiction posted to AO3 called "Course of Honour" and I read it and I loved it and then I reread it several more times. And then some acquiring editor with excellent taste purchased it for publishing! Winter's Orbit is the updated, edited, published version of that origfic and it is even BETTER and I love ittttttttt. It's a delightful addition to my slowly growing collection of queer space opera, and even the cover commits. It is very Bisexual Flag Colours In Space and I commend the cover designer for their choices. Anyway the book is about an Arranged Marriage For Politics Reasons with a subplot of Who Killed Jainan's Previous Husband And Who Else Do They Want To Kill (For Politics Reasons) and it is delicious. Two people who are very different from each other and wary of their marriage must learn how to get along and how to be supportive of each other, with a timeline of being able to present a good face to the public within a month because of treaty reasons! Both are very competent at very different things and both contribute materially to making important things happen, while doubting their own worth! Also there are a bunch of secondary non-romantic relationships that are deeply important to the main characters as well! Kiem and Jainan, the lead characters in the romance, are both wonderful and I love them both very much. And I love that even though both of them have a history of not being valued for who they are, they both see in the other a person worth valuing and admiring. And they learn to trust and like each other, and are willing to do so much for each other, and it's amazing. And okay, maybe they get to love a little fast (they've only known each other a month!!!) but they do go through a Lot together in that month so I'm very willing to be understanding. (Bel, Kiem's aide, is a definite favourite character as well btw. Her arc is GREAT.) I love that one of the things updated for the professionally published version of this book is expanded quantities of worldbuilding, because the original was honestly pretty light on anything but the (admittedly excellent) feels. I'm always there for worldbuilding, and the added content is great, except now I just want even more. The author has unleashed a hunger within me! It's fascinating the way that this is set in the context of an empire that annexed a minor planet (Kiem is from the imperial family and Jainan is from the annexed planet), but where the empire itself is small beans in the broader context, being only 7 planets in size, and having basically no power when it comes to the universe-wide political shenanigans; I want to know more about this. I want to know more about the radical Thean students. I would love to know more about the Emperor! Tell me more about the remnants! More about the Iskat planetary ecosystem! More about Thean clan heraldry! Differing perceptions of gender amongst the different cultures that make up the Iskat empire! The culture and history of the other 5 planets in the empire! I am insatiable.

[yukusaki]

Hi I've been trying to learn the Japanese language for quite a while, I've been using Memrise and NHK Japan but i am having trouble with their grammar and I'm not sure if I ever made progress. Now, I don't know what's my next step to improve. Do you have any recommendations? I hope u had a good day :>

And to no one's surprise. I wrote an actual novel on the topic.

I'll give you some resources but I recommend trying out different kinds to see what works for you. Learning about your own learning style may also help--for example, I'm a very hands-on learner so I can read about grammar rules all day but until I actually try to put together my own sentences using those rules and get some feedback on what's right and what's not, I Will Not be able to use those rules effectively. Also I have no motivation so I don't study on my own unless I'm working towards a goal (such as the JLPT or answering an ask)

I started with the Pimsleur program, recorded audio lessons that were at my library to check out. You'll learn phrases mostly, but it does not go into detail about grammar and you will learn nothing about writing. If you're mostly concerned about grammar you can definitely skip this one. You can try programs and apps like Duolingo, Rosetta Stone. etc. Duolingo is a bit better about grammar rules and stuff but depending how in-demand the course is, it might not explain anything (try the PC version if it doesn't). I personally think apps like this are good for basic grammar and stuff but once you get more advanced you need More.

Textbooks are actually not a bad way to self-study. I used Genki in my first 2 years of Japanese at university and it's supposed to be one of the best. There's also so so many resources online now. Follow some blogs and get bite-sized tips during your leisure time.

Now, for how I like, Actually learned a lot of my Japanese before I started learning it in organized classes. Listen to music, look through the lyrics, pick out some words you hear a lot and look them up. Watch drama/anime/movies/etc and do the same. Or just put on the subs and don't really pay attention to the audio. I generally have a pretty good ear for pronunciation and intonation already but I attribute how often I get comments on my pronunciation to how much time I spent in my weeb days just hearing naturally-spoken Japanese even if I wasn't totally paying attention. I always recommend exposing yourself to as much content as possible, even in the early stages of learning.

I've got some general study tips on my blog (search studytips) that should help. If nothing else, remember to not burn yourself out. Learning vocab for 5 minutes a day is better than studying 2 hours one day ond taking a 2-month break.

One thing I might not have mentioned in those tips that I feel like more people need to be aware of: a lot of programs are like "learn naturally by immersion like you learned your native language! Just hear phrases and you will Understand the grammar eventually!" okay but like your brain goes through a critical period for language learning when you're like 2. You are (presumably) no longer 2. Your brain is not the same as it was when you were 2. You should not expect to learn the same way as you did then. I read somewhere that being able to learn rules is the one advantage the adult brain has over a child's brain when it comes to second language learninp. So what this means in practice is: when you come across some grammar thing you don't get, don't let people tell you "oh you'll get it in time, you'll just Know." Look that shit up! What's the difference between は wa and が ga? There a literal list of rules you can memorize! (I don't have a link, it was a handout from one of my classes, sorry!) Familiarizing yourself with English grammar even helps to learn how to apply those rules to a new language. Learn the difference between a subject and an object and all that good stuff. You have different resources now as a not-2-year-old so use them!!

Finally, some resources I personally use:

Kanji draw (app): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.lusil.android.kanjidraw.jlpt5 (not sure if there's an IOS version sorry)--like flashcards for kanji but makes you actually write it, and with correct stroke order which I promise makes them easier to remember (and this was the only app I found that actually checks you for accurate writing). It has some algorithm for how often you see each character that is fantastic for memorization--more often when you first learn a character and after you get it wrong, less often once you know it well, introduces new characters gradually but keeps the old ones in rotation for a while so you never get thrown into a set of 20 completely new kanji.

find you a good dictionary app--I can't find the one I use on the app store but I can search in kana/kanji or romaji or English, any conjugation of a verb or adjective, and find what I'm looking for. Also has a kanji lookup tool with radicals.

Google translate--yeah, for real. I use this one when I want to scan a large section of text for something specific. Or when I'm writing a long sentence that I want to doublecheck. Also has a kanji lookup tool you can handwrite in, and of course don't forget the camera translation tool.

honyakustar (website)--a website with a lot of sentences in both Japanese and English. I use it All The Time to figure out how a word is actually used in practice--what particles it uses, if it's formal or informal, if it's stative or dynamic, collocations, etc.

Hellotalk (app)--it's super well known, just google it. A social app for chatting with native speakers of your target language.

Common Japanese Collocations by Kakuko Shoji (book)--collocations are words that "go" together naturally. We say "take" a bath, Japanese says "enter" a bath (お風呂に入る). This book is a good reference for looking up these collocations.

The Basics of Japanese Grammar: Verbs (book)--I downloaded this on my nook in high school for like 2 dollars and 50 cents give or take and it pleased my rule-oriented brain greatly. just has like all the verb conjugations with short explanations and example sentences and stuff.

Thanks for your question! Feel free to ask me anything!💕

[jonismitchell]

hey arden do you have any book suggestions? i don’t have any preference/specific genre i’m looking for but i just need something new to read while in quarantine :)

you’re in luck! i happen to be a massive nerd and i’m going to compile a gigantic list of recs for you. here we go.

the only classics worth reading: i want to preface this by saying i did not pick these books because they are written by women. they are just good and they happen to be by women. this reinforces my theory that only women can write.

emma by jane austen: better than pride and prejudice by a long shot. the characters are funny, the romance is swoon worthy (don’t think too hard about the age gap), it says very smart things about society, and i could write an essay on how it revolutionized fiction.

wuthering heights by emily bronte: my all time favourite book about how awful people are and how the cycle of abuse perpetuates itself. it’s absolutely exceptional in every respect. i won’t go into too much detail because i don’t want to give anything away, but you should definitely read this book.

jane eyre by charlotte bronte: i’m not saying i’m a bronte sister stan, i’m just saying i’m a bronte sister stan who can’t be bothered to take five seconds to copy the accent. anyway, i read this book when i was a wee lass and i stole it from an apartment in nice. the characters are genuinely amazing, and it’s an early feminist book, which i think is fantastic.

the handmaid’s tale by margaret atwood: you don’t get more feminist classic than this. set in a dystopian future where women are only valued for their ability to procreate, atwood examines gender roles and still delivers a brilliant adventure story. if you end up liking this, try the power by naomi alderman, which essentially tells of the opposite society.

the bell jar by sylvia plath: an introspective story about mental illness. it’s the type of writing that i feel hits hard at about any age, and i remember feeling really haunted after finishing the whole thing in a night. definitely high up on my list of amazing novels.

feel good books: sometimes, we need to read something that’s not revolutionary but still radical. don’t worry, i got you. here’s the lasagna of novels.

finding audrey by sophie kinsella: this book is funny, heartwarming, and makes you think. as someone with anxiety, i felt really represented by a lot of audrey’s behaviours. her mom is lowkey nuts, but i feel like that shouldn’t impede your enjoyment of the book.

the shadowhunters series by cassandra clare: LISTEN. objectively cassandra clare is a terrible person. objectively these books are not good. but they are amusing! they are comforting! they are interesting! also, there are a million of them. start with the infernal devices: clockwork angel, clockwork prince, and clockwork princess. set in old old london, this series features the only valid love triangle ever, girls who like to read and kick ass, and boys who are soft and play the violin. next, head to the mortal instruments, which is pretty much drinny fanfiction. don’t think too hard during these and you’ll have a good time. after that, read the short story collections the bane chronicles and tales of shadowhunter academy. if you got really into the lore (like me) these books are funny and a little captivating. finally, get to the highlight of this whole thing, the dark artifices. the one true love of my life, emma carstairs, stars in this brilliant trilogy about forbidden love. yes, it’s super corny, but all these books are super corny. if you can’t get enough of the universe (or accidentally got hooked) try out the collection ghosts of the shadow market. once you finish that, you can read the first books in the new series(es), red scrolls of magic and chain of gold. all of these books are jam packed with magic and vaguely plagarized demons. not brilliant, but a fun ride.

emma mills books: emma mills writes cute happy contemporary romances and i can’t recommend her enough! first & then tells the story of a jane austen obsessed nerd who crushes on a jock. which could actually be about me, and if you trust my judgement, you probably like me enough to read this book secretly written about me. foolish hearts gives theatre kids and boy band stans alike a chance to feel represented in what could be one of the sweetest (and funniest!) romances of all time. famous in a small town gives band kids and people who are clarinet-sized a chance to shine, and includes a country singer who struck me with her similarities to taylor swift. (our song is even referenced in the novel!) by far my favourite would have to be this adventure ends, which is hilarious and heartbreaking and talks about fanfiction without looking down on it. all of these books are definitely feel good and will make you believe in heterosexual romance.

mildly upsetting fantasy: just fantasy trilogies that will hurt you.

the poppy war by r.f. kuang: wonder what harry potter would be like if the magic system was complicated and the murder was high? no, like high on opium? and the plot was based on chinese military history? look no further than the brilliant work of art that is the poppy war. this book is by far the best fantasy out there, i cannot exaggerate that enough. also out is the equally compelling sequel the dragon republic, and the final book in the trilogy is set to hit shelves this year. please please please read this amazing book.

six of crows by leigh bardugo: six dysfunctional criminals try to steal from the most heavily guarded prison in the world. what could go wrong? this novel is intelligent and witty, and will keep you on the edge of your seat as you’re dragged into this scheming and brilliant world. in my opinion, this is the only valid book in the grishaverse. this and its equally well plotted sequel, crooked kingdom.

the gilded wolves by roshani choski: this one is definitely similar to six of crows in its funny and smart main cast. the magic system is super unique and the plot is endlessly enjoyable. it’s also set in old old paris! so france is always fun. there are also tons of mythology references and disaster bisexuals. and apparently the sequel (the silvered serpents) comes out july of this year.

scythe by neal shusterman: the first book on this list by a man, wow! i’m so inclusive. anyway, this genius trilogy is set in a world where humanity has solved almost every single problem, except overpopulation and corruption. an elite order called scythes are tasked with killing and managing the order of death. it’s like the hunger games went took a political science seminar. everything spirals out of control very quickly and the characters are so great. the sequels are called thunderhead and the toll respectively, and the overarching tale is gripping.

the cruel prince by holly black: i’m not kidding when i say this is the only faery book that matters. this book stars a human girl who grows up in the magical world and more violence than is statistically necessary. but it’s good! this is also a trilogy (every book on this list is the first one in a trilogy, i am the worst, i’m sorry) and the sequel the wicked king is quite possibly the best scheme-y magic politics thing i’ve ever read. and the final book, queen of nothing, doesn’t disappoint by a long shot.

contemporaries no one talks about

the boy who steals houses by cg drews: this book has autistic representation! and it’s written by book blogger paperfury, who is even more of a delight on the page than she is on the internet. be warned, this book includes heavy mentions of abuse and graphic violence that are unavoidable. but it will break your heart and stitch it back together again. also, waffles.

some boys by patty blount: this book deals very candidly with the aftermath of rape and public pressure. it is also one of my favourite books of all time for its treatment of ‘bro culture.’ and the heroine, grace, is incredibly strong. i read this book in maybe fourth grade? and it essentially inspired me to start giving a damn about social justice. so yeah, there’s that. (i also haven’t read it since fourth grade, so someone will have to tell me if it holds up).

emergency contact by mary choi: i’m rereading this for the second time right now and it’s still really awesome. it tells the story of an unlikely friendship, big dreams, and does it all through a really interesting narrative voice that manages to effectively capture two very different people. it is yet another romance, but it’s really wonderful and heartwarming. (unlike the other two books in this section).

children’s books that treat kids like people

a series of unfortunate events by lemony snicket: this is quite literally my favourite series of all time. it’s upsetting and kind of wrong once you think about it a lot, but it’s also maybe the best thing ever written. i literally cannot explain how much i love these books. there are thirteen books, so you’re definitely in for a good, long time.  

the mysterious benedict society by trenton lee stewart: three books about propaganda and smart kids and found family. i literally do not know what else you want out of a series. it’s fun and there’s only a little bit of kidnapping, so it’s very family appropriate compared to the other books on this list.

wuh luh wuh

the seven husbands of evelyn hugo by taylor jenkins reid: i KNOW no one shuts up about this book but you really should read it. like, there’s nothing that will ever top the narrative. the drama, the glamour, the girls who love girls, you know? all the components of a brilliant novel. it’s also got some truly poetic prose and genuinely beautiful moments. the reason everyone talks about this book is because it’s amazing. send tweet.

girls of paper and fire by natasha ngan:  (massive trigger warning for sexual violence)  haha! another violent fantasy book that’s part of a trilogy! thought you escaped that, didn’t you? this magic system is brilliant and the book is so good. it’s a breath of fresh air into young adult fiction. and did i mention it’s a wlw romance? i read this during a math class and had to go to the bathroom to cry when i finished it, because there was finally a heroine in a fantasy novel who i could see myself in. there’s also a sequel, girls of storm and shadow, that is equally amazing.

it’s not like it’s a secret by misa suigura: wlw girls with soft poetry vibes. complicated family lives. candidly dealing with racism, sexism, and homophobia. this book is really good. simply read this book.

i have even MORE book recs but i decided to cut myself off because this is the longest thing i’ve ever written for tumblr. hope you enjoy!

[script-a-world]

hello. i want to write a story set in a very religious place. like fanatic level of religious. in my mind, this place is ruled by what the church says but has a "cover" figure to "connect" with the people. the people of this place are devoted to their religion, meaning they know passages, go to mass, and shun those who don't support it. here is my question: how does one go about creating a religion that feels real? what do i need to take into consideration (i'm not religious myself).

Mod Miri Note: At the same time this came in we also received from the google form the question “How do I world build a religion?” I can’t confirm they’re the same anon, but we’re combining them for the answer.

Brainstormed: You seem to have a very… narrow perception of religion? If you aren’t religious yourself and you’re (presumably) from a Western culture, it makes sense that the Christian church and more specifically Catholicism are your go-to images of hyperreligion. Saying “mass” and “church” and “passages” kind of gives away the fact that you’re trying to base your religion off of at least your idea of an Abrahamic religion, but I’d ask you to reconsider. Right now it sounds like you’re trying to create a negative critique of these religions, and even if that is what you’re going for, you need to do a lot of research on their theology, history, and practices before you can do so with any competence.

I’d suggest doing some basic research on types of religions, like animism, pantheism, polytheism, general superstition, etc. There are plenty of spiritual worldviews that you might consider way over the top, but whose believers find it more bizarre when people don’t follow their teachings. Fanatics are never fanatics in their own mind, and especially among their own people, but also… fanatic might be a relative term. If you’re approaching this from a nonreligious background, then you might consider X-amount of religion in one’s lifestyle to be fanatic-level. Whereas a person who actively practices religion would consider X-amount to be perfectly normal, and only folks who take it to XX-amount plus some shadier practices are the true fanatics.

Remember, religions start because people want to make sense of the world. There is a deeper feeling of wonder and personhood and power, both within a human being and in the whole world around us, that drives spirituality and generates superstition. Religion, at least to start, is beneficial to people, otherwise no one but sadists would follow its teachings. Now, like anything else, religion can devolve into a means of power hoarding and control of a populace, but only because of the people in charge getting greedy. The vast majority of religions I’ve studied have had radical, freeing, empowering teachings applicable to everybody when they first sprang up, and only later did adherents twist those teachings into societal oppression. If there is no satisfaction or benefit in your religion, there won’t exactly be any incentive for people to follow it so closely, aside from whatever negative consequences occur for those who fall away. And negative consequences aren’t often enough to keep people in a religion. If following religion is more painful than the consequences of leaving it, plenty of people will jump ship.

Religion can also show up in every single part of life. According to Wikipedia:

A religious experience (sometimes known as a spiritual experience, sacred experience, or mystical experience) is a subjective experience which is interpreted within a religious framework. The concept originated in the 19th century, as a defense against the growing rationalism of Western society. William James popularised the concept.

You look up and see a cloud, a spiritual person sees a portent, or a spirit, or a castle where the gods live. You take a break from work for a minute, a spiritual person now has time to mutter a prayer, or observe the mood of the world, or dedicate their work to their god. A person doesn’t have to be anywhere near a fanatic to have their religion be in every part of their life. Especially if they adhere to a more lax spirituality or superstitious worldview instead of an organized religion, the central spiritual experience of religious belief alters the perception of self and surroundings. It isn’t only a set of rules to follow.

It can even help areas of society that modern Western society considers nonreligious! Historically, medicine has always come under religion. Witch doctors, medicine men, witchcraft, even the hygiene laws laid out in the Christian Bible. Physical health has often been considered a reflection of spiritual health, which, in a way, is true! The placebo effect means tending to one’s mental and emotional health with the reassurance of religion will improve one’s physical health as well. Not only that, but the power of a “spiritual experience”, regardless of if you believe the supernatural is real, can cause religious ecstacy, something you might perceive as a serious psychological problem but those who experience it consider to be a deep form of spiritual expression to be treasured and sought after. The spread and preservation of information is also often aided by religion, even though that can change should those in power want to change history or obscure truth for their own reasons. Just look at the history of the printing press and how that was driven by the need for Bibles. Many cultures, most famously Australian Aboriginal peoples, have oral histories thousands of years long that tie in closely to their spirituality.

You also might be confusing religion with cults. If you think all religion is predatory, playing on people’s weaknesses and fears in order to coerce them into a miserable lifestyle of following strict laws and living under control of those in power, you definitely have conflated “religion” and “cult”. If you’d like to worldbuild a cult, go ahead! It’s likely to be smaller and less acceptable than an established organized religion, not very transparent to the outside world nor its members, and have a spirituality that is in fact just a veneer over gaining power, instead of genuine belief and devotion, and may in fact require people to murder or commit suicide. Just look at Scientology, or these, or even Jared Leto, and a more in-depth look from this organization covering many different kinds of cults.

On a more worldbuildy note, are those who practice this religion correct? Does their god(s) exist? Is the supernatural real? If yes, then are they really fanatics if they’ve been right all along? Even if they’re incorrect, the dedication and deep-held beliefs of religious people shouldn’t be mocked wholesale, in my opinion. Make sure to keep some genuine three-dimensional development for characters who are part of this religion, or include other religions with different practices, or the only thing you’ll accomplish is “waaaa religion bad believers dumb”. And if that is the story you want to write, feel free, but I can’t help you there.

Feral: What makes a religion feel real? Sincere faith.

Specifically among the leaders. I mean, sure, those lemming-like peasants who actually believe that superstitious nonsense will have sincere faith, but honestly? There is going to be a higher percentage of people faking it among the masses than among the clergy. Clergy members are generally required to go through rigorous studies and often take vows that can cause great discomfort. I am sure there are those who did it for the power - there are in atheist organizations as well, humans can be crap - but if you actually read the writings of important Church leaders of the past, not to mention rabbis, imams & mullahs, and archakas, you’re going to find that they have sincere faith.

Something you should always keep in mind when developing pre-modern religion in a Western context is that before the advent of modern scholarship, which starts to become a thing in the West during the Renaissance, all the important scholars were clergy. And again, those learned people either had to be really, really dedicated to their power-hungry ambitions or had to have sincere faith.

That does not make religions perfect by any means nor does it mean that the god they have sincere faith in is omnibenevolent (though the qualities of an omnibenevolent god will be strongly dependent on the culture that worships it). And religious leaders are absolutely capable of doing terrible, terrible things even if they profess to worship an omnibenevolent god, and politicians can definitely twist things around to suit their needs (again, this is not exclusive to religiosity). But your ask has this weird given that a major religion (on par with Catholicism/Christianity) in your world is a scam, and while yes, that happens in cults and alternative religions and in splinter groups*, as Brainstormed pointed out that’s just not how, at least, the four major religions of our world got started.

Yes, it’s true that bureaucracies of a certain size and age will inevitably begin to change focus to protecting its own existence. And yes, it’s true that ambitious sociopaths will be drawn to places of authority even if they are difficult to achieve. And yes, it’s true that an individual entering a toxic environment is more likely to be changed by the environment than to change the environment. But guess what! That has nothing to do with whether the organization is religious or not.

Why does a religion exist in the first place? It explains the universe in a pre-modern world; it provides organization and structure for community focus - in other words, many social programs have historically been run through religious organizations and leadership. And it provides hope and comfort in a very scary world.

Some clergy might be able to fake all of that for a little while, but a large bureaucracy with many clerics who are all in on the fake? No. Allow me to rephrase: hell no. People are not dumb. Maybe you believe that of all religious people, but you are wrong and they are not. The people in your world, if they’re anything like the people in our world, are gonna sniff out the bullshit if none of their religious leaders believe what they’re selling. There is a reason Scientology has to keep blackmail files on all its adherents, and I promise you, the Catholic Church does not do that.

*A note on cults, alternative religions, and splinter groups: Cults and alternative religions (their PR friendly name) are “religions” that are scammy and/or actively dangerous to the participants or others: People’s Temple, Branch Davidian, etc. Splinter groups are congregations that start as normal members of a large religion or denomination but its insular culture creates a divide that just takes things a little too far even for the most fanatical of the main sect (think terrorist groups that link themselves to religions). These types of religions might be what you are actually asking about. Groups like these can be highly, highly influential but in a very contained area. What cults often do is the leader settles in an area and buys property and builds a church and maybe a school and then encourages the members to all move either onto the plot of land if it’s large enough or to buy up surrounding land and homes and push out all the non-believers. That area can then be fortified or just have a de facto boundary with the rest of the world. Sometimes a group like this can become large enough to constitute an entire town, but rarely a city - groups that large will more often have centralized compounds but with the members living scattered among non-believers, as Scientology does. Obviously a group concentrated like that will have an impact on local politics, if they are allowed to participate, but it’s not going to go farther than the county line, so to speak. As we all know from the news, splinter groups like ISIS can become very large and globe spanning, but those types of groups have within them splinter groups and factions, and I don’t think that’s what you’re asking about anyway, so I’m just going to leave it there.

But frankly, your ask reads to me as “how do I create a fantasy!Catholic that is secretly evil and will show the audience how evil religion is in the real world? Opiate of the masses!” And my advice is… don’t. Because it lacks compassionate understanding of people of faith (many faiths), it lacks a factual understanding of how world religions differ and function, it totally lacks nuance, and finally, because it is absolutely, monumentally, extremely, really, very cliche.

Maybe the way your ask is coming across to me is totally not how you intended it. Maybe you only used the jargon you used because you assumed we wouldn’t know any other terms and maybe your understanding of world religions is actually quite sophisticated. Maybe you really do have this insanely clever way to spin a tired cliche into some new and original. In these cases, we strongly encourage you to come right back with as jargon-full and specific an ask as you can write, use our submission google form to do it. Otherwise, give our responses some thought and if after you’ve developed your religion, you want to come back with a specific ask other than “how do I world build a religion?” (which is a little too broad), please feel free.