#and Shell Colony was the one that got the biggest

[colonies-of-the-shells-and-fish]

got inspired by @fatal-rewrites-warriors ‘s interaction drabbles so I’m stealing their idea and writing some for my own cats!

here’s the first one for the two brown furred sisters Chestnutfur and Ratclaw!

The soft, yet familiar sound of clacking beads was what woke Ratclaw up this time. The warm Golden Moon sun shone through the hole in the roof of the second warriors den, warming the rocks and sand and blinding any warrior who faced it directly.

Ratclaw could hear her sister shuffling about as she continued beading whatever necklace or bracelet she was making. Quietly grumbling, she lightly pawed at her sister’s nest. “Chestnut ‘s nap time…go back to sleep..” Chestnutfur lightly swatted at Ratclaw’s paw before going back to stringing the beads onto the necklace she was making. “Sorry Ratclaw but no napping right now for me. I gotta keep my paws busy.” She said quietly, quite lost in thought. Ratclaw rolled over sleepily to face her sister. “Yeah well I need to keep my paws busy too, but you don’t see me doing it during nap time.” She stated, playfully batting at the necklace Chestnut was making. Chestnutfur hissed and swiped at her paw, but there was no malice behind it, only mild irritation. “Yeah well, I don’t hunt all the time and teach classes like you do. Stop being annoying. I love you, but stop being annoying.” she hissed, not looking at Ratclaw and instead opting to focus on the necklace.

“What are you making?” Ratclaw asked, already knowing the answer. She leaned in close, peeking over her sister’s shoulder to watch her string on the colorful beads and shells onto the woven string. “I’m remaking Ferndawn’s necklace. He broke it recently while out gathering building supplies.” She stated, beginning to tie the ends of the string together. “How’s he been doin’? His sisters? There’s so many damn cats here in Shell Colony that I don’t see them everyday like you.” Ratclaw knew that it was entirely possible that her sister hadn’t seen her kits at all that day, with them being adults with their own jobs in the colony. “They’re all doing good. Kestrelwater has been out exploring, Twigswoop has been out running around and finding me extra supplies, Yarrowspeck has been helping out mom and Dustspot with herbs, and Ferndawn has been helping out Larch with teaching Artichoke about crafting. Wasn’t Artichoke originally training with you for hunting?” Chestnutfur was idly fidgeting with the beads of the necklace, almost as if contemplating if she should add anything else to it for her son. “Yeah well, Artichoke didn’t think that hunting was right for her. It's fine with me as long as she’s happy with whatever she does with her life. But that’s good! With your kits, that is. I'm glad they’re doing alright.” She said, claws digging into her nest at the mention of her former trainee. She really didn’t want to talk about her former trainee right now.

“You should sleep.” Ratclaw stated, attempting to change the conversation topic. “I will eventually, but not right now. I still need something to occupy my paws. Might just steal the feathers tied to your tail to repaint them.” Chestnutfur joked. “Well I don’t know about you, but I’m going back to sleep.” She said, curling up in her nest and resting her paws over her muzzle. “Sleep well sis. Love you.”

[romance-of-three-memes]

Fascinating how the reputation of the French military has morphed over the centuries. For a long time they easily had one of the most successful militaries in Europe, between that and French being considered a prestige language among European nobility, tons of military terms in a lot of European languages (including English) are either lifted straight from French or are direct translations from French. They had a huge empire which they often used military force to expand and maintain. A lot of people erroneously narrow it down to Napoleon for like 20 years in the 19th century, but he got there partially because France already had the infrastructure for him to take advantage of and kick into overdrive (fun fact, he was from Corsica, which had become a French territory just before he was born, during his youth he straight up hated France and wanted Corsica to be independent).

Honestly it was the 20th century when things really started going to shit for them, there were those two funny little world wars that gutted and quite frankly embarrassed them, they lost a ton of their empire either through further conflict or because they just gave it up at least in an official capacity (I say 'official' because of things like the fact that 14 African countries who were French colonies have to keep 50% of their financial assets in the French treasury so France will act as their guarantor and print their currency), so ultimately they went 'ughhh FINE if everyone isn't going to know us for being a military power then I GUESS we'll start talking up our culture even more, and especially target America and Japan since they're clearly on the upshoot' and it worked pretty damn well all things considered, since everything from French cuisine to art is lauded as fancy and high-class. At least here in America there's basically a French tax that lets people get away with selling French things for more money because oooooh it's French so that must mean it's fancy and high quality, and it's most often applied to those little pastries I like so much and had to shell out quite a bit for even before inflation became a near constant occurrence.

... But nowadays France also has a very well stocked military, and quite a few nuclear warheads, about 300 at least before Russia launched its full-fledged invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In terms of military spending they're dwarfed by the US, China, and Russia, but that's really not saying a lot since absolutely everyone is dwarfed by the US, including its runners-up China and Russia, and those two dwarf everyone else. But after you take the fact that those three are the Military Georgs of the world (especially the US, and yet we still don't have universal healthcare, utterly fascinating isn't it) France consistently ranks among the biggest spenders after them. I guess what I'm saying is France has a weird relationship with how it projects itself to the rest of the world nowadays and how it feels like it still wishes it was one of the top military powers of the world.

[pokemoncaretips]

Is it ethical to resurrect fossil pokemon?

The answer to that is a solid: It depends.

For the most part, I would argue that yes, it's fine to take a fossil to a lab. The biggest worry most people have is that "if it gets out, what about the eco-system?" but in truth, the fossil pokemon is the one most in trouble for the simple fact that.

Well.

The eco system has moved on and the old niche is filled by pokemon with millions of years of natural selection against the resurrected one. For an example, lets look at lileep. Back in its time period, where the diversity of the eco-systems was still a new thing, lileep colonies stretched for miles. They were the dominant life form. You can't stub your toe in Hoenn without turning over a lileep fossil. Because they were the first really successful grass type, the ocean beds were theirs. Nowadays, though, the sea floors they used to rule are crowded with corsola, sea weed, kelp, shellder beds, etc. There's no room for the fairly basic lileep to get a foot hold.

Sometimes even the basic environment itself is an issue. Anorith struggle in modern oceans due to changes to the ocean such as pH and salinity.

One of the few exceptions to this is omanyte, which is becoming quite prevalent. However, a number of fairly smart water type pokemon are working out how to get into that tough shell to get the meat inside, and so its likely the eco-system may eventually resettle once its position on the food chain is established. Until then, omanyte meat is very slowly picking up as a delicacy. (Though frankly, you'd have a better time eating an old boot.)

Another reason they pose little threat to the eco system: most of their food no longer exists naturally. Aurorus, for instance, can just barely hold its own against rivals like tropius, but their natural diet of large cycads and ferns are hard to find or just plain extinct. Combined with the warmer temperatures of today, and a large pokemon that could have been destructive of the eco-system is rendered incapable of doing so.

However, these pokemon often thrive in human care, as we can use science to make supplements that fill in the nutritional gaps and provide care and enrichment to help them enjoy their new life. A well loved and looked after fossil pokemon is a fascinating window into a past so different it may as well be another world.

However, there is one more thing I must address.

"Professor" Cara Liss is a hack who got her PhD from the back of a cereal box.

Those poor pokemon she resurrects are travesties of science. Though it is our responsibility to provide the current specimens living today with the medical care they deserve, it is DEEPLY morally wrong to create more of them. A dracovish might have a good reputation as a battler but it can barely function without a diet that is almost half medication by volume (I exaggerate, but only slightly).

Fossil pokemon do need some thought, as there are extra elements to their care, but if you want to bring your lucky fossil feather back from the dead as an arceops, go forth and do so if you think you're ready.

Just don't give it to that fraud in Galar.

[salixsociety]

One Treasure for Another / Appeasing Ran

On fair exchanges between forces.

Recently, for my baptism, I found myself needing to take a 10 hour ferry ride from the Kenai Peninsula to Kodiak Island, AK. Now I cannot leave out, for comedic context, that I am and have always been rather petrified of the ocean. It's safe to say deep, featureless, dark blue water is my very biggest fear. Thankfully I'd been on ferries my fair share and never had any troubles, so the 60 year old MV Tustumena, affectionately nicknamed the 'Rusty Tusty,' was not on my list of Baptismal concerns.

Though held up in the harbor for four hours before the Coast Guard would give us the clear, the way to Kodiak was smooth. We saw sea otters, pigeon guillemots, and the subtle but unmistakable mist created by whales. I, having grown up by the North Sea, noted to my Alaska Local spouse that the waves were incredibly minimal, to which they kindly reminded me that it is called the 'Pacific Ocean' for a reason. Right. Could've come up with that myself.

I was baptized on Kodiak Island as Walburga - patron saint of my hometown, invoked against stormy seas, the fear of water, and illness.

Aside from all the things I needed to do regarding my Baptism, we were entirely without a car, and therefore confined to the small port town of Kodiak, and Near Island, a small islet covered in hiking trails and a marine wildlife center, attached to Kodiak via a very walkable bridge. Of course we made grateful use of the hiking trails: equipped with a set of binoculars and a whole lot of spare energy we hiked both the east and west sides. We saw pacific wrens, fox sparrows, and various crossbills fleeing every time an eagle flew overhead. We saw a pelagic cormorant and only barely managed to identify it against the backlight from the sun, but it was both of our first, so, "that's fucking sick, dude." We saw sea lions in the bright blue waters of the channel, and I could barely stow my excitement enough not to scream when I saw them. They were quite glorious, and I may have to rescind my frequent statements about how ugly they are. As we ran across the Islet to follow them where they were headed, we ended up at the western beach again, and noticed that the tide, which we thought was already out when we were there, had now truly gone out. Easily distracted as we are, we combed all up and down the beach, stuffing our pockets even fuller of all the treasures: sea glass, sponge, the exterior of a sea urchin, spiral shells, shiny shells, coral, one very nice pink scallop. The tide pools were immaculate - though having to awkwardly stand to avoid crushing the barnacles and mussels, the beauty was nearly too overwhelming. The black-purple of the mussel colonies on the jagged chert, the hermit crabs hiding in their iridescent shells when we hovered over them. We spotted little, yet to be identified fish, eating algae off the rocks. We spotted sea anemones and coral, and my Dearest had me touch an anemone for the first time; I didn't expect it to be so grabby! I also spotted and pointed out chitons (or as I knew them: 'gumboots'), which are molluscs in the family Polyplacophora. I recognized them only as an important food source to the natives of our region, who use them in a lot of traditional cuisine! I said we may have to try some if we spot them in the tide at home. Eventually we fought our way to the furthest zone of the pools and managed to even pick up a few starfish. Of course, we put them back exactly where we found them.

I was reminded once again of why I love this place that I left my home country for. There is room for nature, and thus room for me to breathe. I can see the abundance - I can point out all the food on the beaches, in the forests, in the fields, and it makes me feel safe and homely.

With our pockets full of treasures and our notebooks full of observations we scuttled on back to our hotel, where, as we unloaded our pockets and got ready to unwind, I noticed that one earring of my favorite pair was missing from my ear.

Rán, old Norse goddess of the sea, whose name in the common tongue is synonymous with theft. Rán, my indweller goddess, famous for her concern with treasure: how she may be appeased by throwing gold into a wrathful sea. I took something of hers, and she took something of mine.

The way back to the mainland, the Ránarvegr, was rough. The waves were so high I could see the nondescript forms of Rán's beautiful daughters with Ægir, god of the deep sea, slashing against the windows of the solarium. My partner, who is on lesser terms with the sea than I am, was rather unwell, and I myself nearly caved, too. I, terribly emetophobic, didn't stop to ponder it at the time; but perhaps I should have sacrificed my other earring to the water, too. Or conversely: prayed to my patroness for calmer waters. I did neither, and wished like a child that I had mint tea to drink, instead. Either way, we survived, and my single earring will make for a wonderful pendant.

I figure I should make amends with the sea and its gods. I don't think they dislike me, not at all, but the ocean cannot be described as people-oriented, and I should like to be at positive odds with one another, if my fear of water is to remain irrational.

I shall go fishing again this summer, but more importantly, I will look with more gratitude at the food right there for me in the tides. I will appreciate the limpets, gumboots, kelp, scallops and crab. I'll enjoy the bladderwrack for more than the satisfying crunch under my feet. May I find the beauty of the ocean in another of its faces.

If you enjoy my work, please consider purchasing or commissioning some of my written resarch, ordering a reading, or commissioning my art. Click here to see the options. Thank you!

[sinelanguage]

Mori Art Museum— this is the type of museum I typically like but not a subject I like because it can feel on the nose (environmentalism/ecology). it’s not Bad as a topic, it’s just evoking a pretty consistent emotion of “this sucks right” and yeah I Know. that being said, while some things a bit on the nose but a good number of stuff that made me feel disquieted and that’s why I go to museums lol so win overall

The museums itself is on top of a tall tower next to a luxury shopping mall (lol). The view from the tour was completely clouded over when I went, which kind of made for a weird foggy ambiance, where the sky-high views were completely whited out until you walked closer and could look through the clouds to see the city below. Pretty cool atmosphere— the particular curation only used natural light which helped.

THAT being said: there was something so. incredibly funny about going to this conceptual art exhibit and, when leaving and going back to transit and passing by fucking Gucci. My brain did cartwheels and I stood in the crowded subway car going ?????? all the way home.

Pieces that stuck out:

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt14900652/

Night Colonies by Apichatpong Weerasethakul

They were playing a short film about bugs taking over this guys room. There’s kind of this initial ambiguity of is the puttering run sound is bugs or rain, but really it’s both. i don’t know what was captivating about this. they had quotes too which were mostly unrelated, and I didn’t really get the point of, but I did like the close ups of bugs. mostly a vibe. there was another piece next by where you’d walk on shells and you got that noise too, so mostly the quiet bug noise + shells + rain was a good mix. what was the point??? look I don’t know.

Quandary Medicinals Roppongi Jed Geys—

This was a neat way to end the exhibit. One of the cooler and more optimistic pieces— basically this guy put together a map of local (like, in the same neighborhood) medicinal plants, then put plants dried and on display and photos of where they were found. (I can’t find this link online lol. betting I wrote the name down wrong)

https://www.mori.art.museum/en/news/2024/01/7078/

The Disturbance - Monira Al Qadiri: LMAO this piece. ok so this pieces is part of all the promotional materials of the museum, front cover with people posing at all. it generally seems like the prototypical selfie bait for a museum— these giants pearls hanging above just enough to pose under. very stunning, cool to look at, cool to pose with.

the promotional materials fail to emphasize that they MUTTER. it’s so funny. oh my god. sorry people watching was so good. you could watch as people got unnerved. 10/10. muttering pearls killed me.

Some additional things I liked but didn’t get the name (b/c there was a no photo policy and I got nervous):

The maggot cage??? I forgot what this was called and I was in a no photo zone and couldn’t write it down. Anyway there was a box where this guy put maggots in and then a lightbulb at the bottom, so the maggots would turn into flies go to the light die and get shunted out a pipe. dire. then he cast the flies in resin and it’s in a museum, in a little corner away from everything else. this was my biggest “um???? Excuse me???”

overall: enjoyed the vibes here even if the subject matter was not it. glad I went but glad I ditched the group to go because everyone else im traveling with would not have vibed with this HAHA.

[thevioletharuspex]

Musings

It's been a while since I've written here. Ngl, I wanna do it more. My life has gone other places, so far, away from musing about d&d, ttrpgs, and worldbuilding. Been playing magic a bunch, and while competing is fun, I've been feeling pretty burnt out by it lately.

Enter again my ttrpg musings.

It always comes in waves, I find. And right now, we're in the rise of one. I don't really have a point to make, exactly? Kinda just a flow of consciousness. Getting these ideas from my head to page.

---

I went to see Furiosa this weekend. It was INSPIRING. The worldbuilding focus, the atmosphere, what it asks of us about barbarism, so good.

It got me to think about Dark Sun again. A world bled dry by those in power. A topical world, all things considered. Are we not facing the biggest climate crisis we have ever seen? Is it not caused by those in power - the greatest power gap we have ever seen?

A wasteland, bled and drugged. Barbarism, or death. What does it mean to take back just a little bit - to fight against everything - to do something small, yet so big, against all odds?

I love wasteland worlds. I love their aesthetics. I love their appearances. I love their themes, what they ask about humanity, about personhood, about the value of connection. It rips the human spirit bare and naked, a large contrast to the web of lies that everyone lives in our day to day lives.

I love the raw savagery of it all. Feels more real, somehow, describing life at a razor's edge. There's something captivating about it all.

---

I've also been thinking about tragic villains. I've been looking at the release of the new Vecna adventure that wotc dropped, and just like, how uninspiring it was? It doesn't really move me. It's trying to be a big capstone on an intellectual property that's been in the works for decades now.

"I can do better" I think to myself. I probably *can* do better.

I've always wanted my own personal world, y'know? With its lore, recurring characters, homages, all that good stuff. I've got a lot of writing, a lot of campaigns that I've ran, that all *feel* like they're in a shared universe. Might as well make it one?

I like tragic and sympathetic villains. Ones that feel real. I've got a recurring one that's popped up in a few of my campaigns now; an alchemist (the cool kind, not the potion kind) named Junal.

He first appeared in my Damnatio Elpharel campaign, where he was the central Bad Guy to the whole campaign. He had captured and butchered a fallen angel, extracted her divinity in order to outlast death. His biggest motivator is that he fears death, and he has done everything in his power to be immortal. He has absorbed the divinity of a fallen angel, creating a ball of light that hangs in the sky as his own philosopher's stone - his own phylactery; he has transmuted his form into a perpetual colony of insects; he has carved his own guts and soul to be that of a dragon (more on the transmutation of guts later, it's a recurring theme of mine). Unfortunate for him, the butchered fallen angel would every so often regain consciousness, reincarnate, and cast the world into damnation. For the last few centuries of these cycles, Junal has been hunting down these reincarnations and slaughtering them so that the damnation doesn't last that long and he can carry about his (immortal) life.

In my Eventide of All Things campaign, Junal was a pathetic creature trapped in a prison of his own making. This campaign was set in the farthest of futures, where heat-death has claimed the world. Junal, still immortal, has lived a million lives, reduced now to the form of a single moth (an important motif for those of you who know me well) that dies and hatches over and over from a million chrysalids - those chitinous casing cover the cave floor. He is a shell of his former self, captivated by a tiny mote of light in this cave - the remainder of his divinity from that other campaign. (The one player who played in both of these games was absolutely stunlocked seeing this scene - she knew its implications :3c )

In a campaign I'm currently running, Junal is a mad wizard who is trying to transform into a dragon, and his role in the story is practically nonexistent at this point - we haven't had a need to explore his character at all yet. Granted, this is a campaign for beginner players, so I've been focusing on "traditional" elements of D&D for them. They've been eating it up.

Junal is a character I kinda always try to find a way to bring over - he's a pathetic character, a coward, one who is trying to outrun death. Weirdly too, his character is about transformation? A theme that is very important to me (y'know, cuz of the whole transsexual thing).

---

Another character I've had in the works, who has captivated me, is Typhon, the mother-father of monsters, The Fell Star, He Who Shall Break the Wheel. This character hasn't appeared yet in any of my worlds, any of my games, remaining entirely within my head at this point. I'm particularly a fan of the mythological in my fantasy, the idea that fiction can show greater truth about reality and ask questions of ourselves. As one of his titles suggests, Typhon is about the idea of breaking cycles, breaking status quos - especially ones that have harmed us.

One of my motifs that I like to bring to my writing is the Ouroboros, the snake that eats itself. I got the idea partly from Berserk, where "Fate is a Spiral", the idea of history repeating itself. I also like how it embodies autophagia - eating yourself (again, to transform, there's a pattern here) but there's also a desperation to it, a resignment to it, an instinct to it. The ouroboros is the inner critic, the transsexual, the starving snake, the embodiment of time's loop. Radiance is in the guts and the snakes eats itself to try to find the truth.

In one of my nascent world ideas, the Ouroboros is the Lord of Kings, the patriarch of conquerors, the Divine Right of Kings. In the world's mythological prehistory, the Ouroboros descended with his clutch of dragon offspring and baptized the world and made it his. Part of this crusade was banishing Typhon back to the stars, becoming the Fell Star.

So then, when the Fell Star is in conjunction with the world (about every 500 years or so), that Typhon reincarnates, gathering followers and cultists to Break The Wheel (that is, to undo creation itself because the world is merely an arena, a domain conquered by the Ouroboros). Typhon grabs on to the tragedies that have befallen those in the world; How unfair it must be, to have your world bathed in a sea of red, and yet the wheel keeps turning?

Who knows if this villain will ever reach the stage. Just an idea that's been stuck in my head for the last bit. Who knows if it even makes sense to anyone that isn't me.

---

Circling back to wastelands, transformation, the radiance of guts, dragons, autophagia and the ouroboros, the mythological, I've (working with a friend) had another idea in the works:

Moon-Mad and Dragon-Hungry

You were some great soul once - now you have awoken here, upon the moon, silver-meadowed and of regolith wastes. You are in a statuary - a garden of statues - tended to by a gorgon. She has awoken you from your stone-cold slumber. She tells you this:

Look to the heavens above, and see that planet, sea-blue and jungle-green; that is the Afterlife, a Pale Blue Heaven.

You have been left behind here, upon the moon. See the dragons above; radioactive, bizarre as they are almighty. These beasts alone can fly to and from the afterlife. If only dragons can claim freedom from the moon, then a dragon is what you must become.

Hunt them down. Consume their powers. Ascend to the Pale Blue Heavens above.

Why then, are her eyes so serpentine? Her breath, drunk on radiant death? Her scales glister like those of dragons?

What have you awoken as? A psychopomp? An oculith lunatic? A penumbrist? A gravity dragoon? A dragon bride?

She tells you of haruspicy; of communion, of divination, of exorcism, of mutation, of curses. The flesh has its secrets; so too do the stars. Haruspicy is the secret to dragon ascent, to soar as they do; to unshackle you from the cold-lit silver moon.

UNFOLD YOUR RIBS; LET THEM BE YOUR WINGS

Moon-Mad and Dragon-Hungry is about dragon-hunters that butcher their prey, graft dragon parts onto themselves, have communion with dragonblood, all in a savage plea to escape the purgatory that is the moon.

---

The idea of the haruspex is kinda core to me? In some ancient cultures, the haruspex was a priest that could divine the future from the entrails of animals. To me, extrapolating, it represents the magic held within the flesh? And so too, if one's fate is trapped within their guts, can you not shape your own future by remaking yourself? This is what Radiance is to me, and why I say it is in the guts.

radiance is trapped within the innards - it is the light that lets one see; those with more innards than radiance are trapped by Fate's hand - spill them, let them be free

In The Eventide Of All Things; I had a faction of haruspices: the Blood-Augurs, who avoided ordained extinction by removing their own guts - to no longer be beholden to fate. It was neat, this idea of cutting out their humanity - becoming monstrous - to become better, to become what they wanted to be, to let them live and thrive in a dying world.

---

Sorry for all the random thoughts. Wanted to get them all out before the boring parts of life make them slip through my fingers like smoke.

[drenosa]

Ruby Rose, Kick-Ass Huntress Extraordinaire! Owner of normal knees, a bombing booty and bouncing boobies! Not that she'd say any of that out loud. She's still the same dork she was in her Beacon days.

Still the same, just... a little more filled out these days. And a bit taller too. A whole 5'9" after she got her last growth spurt at Beacon! Okay, 5'7" if you discounted her thick-soled combat boots, but it still counted. It just made her looks work better with her whole style being what it is.

Changes had to be made though. The woe and misery that filled the room when her first pregnancy meant that she'd have to lose her corset was almost palpable.

But style was style, and whilst she firmly believed her Goth Lolita look was being undermined without her corset, she still rocks the look as if she hadn't aged a single day. Something her wives and husband were most appreciative about.

All that said, today was one of those days where all her care and attention would have to go towards her doofus of husband.

Jaune was acutely aware, and has been reminded time and again of it, that he's being an overprotective drama-queen of a dad. Ruby understood it though. That first moment, when all three of her daughters where safely in her arms, cemented the notion in her mind. She'd give her everything to keep them safe, to see them grow, to have them learn.

They'd be kick-ass just like her and kind just like their dad. And Pyrrha and Weiss, they too would instill in them virtues that would propel them to greatness on whatever paths they would take.

All 5'9" (without the aid of thick-soled boots) and with boundless energy inherited from both their parents, they found those paths and sprinted down them with spirit and determination.

Brioni was doing well in her studies in Construction and Engineering, already writing a thesis on effective colony construction techniques that could help the kingdoms expand like never before.

Yasmin was routinely top of her class in marksmanship, gleefully showing of her ever growing haul of trophies in her display case. Her shooting prowess was almost beginning to be a match to Ruby's own.

Grace had a voice blessed by the Brothers and had it elevated even further thanks to Weiss' guidance. If Ruby heard correctly, she be signing a very generous recording deal before the end of the month.

Ruby wasn't worried for the boys Jaune, dad and Uncle Qrow had marched into Jaune's office. They'd harrumph, grump, grunt and puff themselves up from Atlas to Menagerie, but she'd agreed on some alerts with Uncle Qrow in case Jaune or dad started to have ideas. Any moment she'd hear him call for aid and- Oh there's Qrow with a "Crescent Alert". One of them must've made a move for Harbinger.

Hurrying her daughters along to save the boys from themselves, the quartet quickly got in formation to unleash a devastating attack.

Puppy Eyes x4 was, by and large, a critical hit on the overprotective men. With Jaune once more reduced to tears, Ruby guided him back outside again for some TLC. Dad, shell-shocked by a surprise attack from one of the boyfriends was carried along by her daughters whilst Qrow went to give the last words before date-night could commence.

Soon after Jaune and her dad where planted onto the couch, the office doors opened once more. Almost instantly the father and grandfather where abandoned as her daughters hurried over to their boys.

Brioni grabbed onto a well-dressed young man with glasses and short brown hair. Alistair, as Ruby recalled, looked a bit like a stickler for rules and regulation. Which was pretty much a given considering he followed the same field of study as Brioni. Matter of fact, if not for her he'd likely have been the top of his class instead of her. As it stood, Brioni was probably the one element of entropy in his life he adored having.

Yasmin, the cause for this whole mess, glomped herself to the chest of the biggest boy of the bunch. Standing at 6'6" and with bleached hair and tanned skin, the burly young man was a dead-on stereotype for the sleazy playboy that steals girls from naive and oblivious boyfriends. Almost 1-to-1 of how they looked in Mistrali comics and in Blake's "literature". In truth, Asher was nothing more than a really big teddy bear. It was hard to understand sometimes, even as Yasmin rubbed her face into his pectorals, but one look at his blushing face was more than enough to convince anyone of his actual innocence.

Grace, flowing across the floor just like her name implied, locked arms with a casually dressed boy. Casey seemed, objectively speaking, a bit average and unassuming. Good looking without being overly so, dressed but not overdressed, grades firmly in the middle of the pack. As Grace told it, it was much like how Pyrrha was initially drawn to Jaune back at Beacon. The boy was somehow completely unaware of what an Arc Daughter was and just liked talking to her as Grace, not Arc Daughter #9. Grace wasn't instantly smitten with him but it was a close thing.

As the daughters guided their boyfriends out the door, they each did take a quick moment to kiss their dad and granddad on the forehead. After a quick hug for Ruby they left room, leaving her with two crying blonds and a mildly exasperated looking Qrow. The black-haired man, grey invading his locks evermore, gave a weary sigh as pulled his life-long friend from the couch, ruffling his favourite niece's hair as he and her father left the room. Thus Ruby was left alone, with a sobbing mess of a husband, awaiting the next would-be lovers of her sister-wife's daughters.

And it was not long after her daughters and father-figures had left that the door opened once more. Three more individuals were firmly directed towards their doom, reckoning, interrogation... their moment with Jaune and Pyrrha's father.

Alexander Crete was a man who, much to his own unending misery and shame, hadn't been present much in his daughter's life. A renowned bowman from Mistral's northern shores he was man of movement, of action and determination. It meant he was rarely home, and often not long enough to hold the conversations with his wife that he really should've had.

It lead to his relationship with Pyrrha's mother repeatedly switching between being heated and being heated. Passion in ways both ugly and beautiful. Words said with both loath and love. Their divorce had been inevitable and harsh, yet surprisingly amicable and understanding.

Despite everything the pair understood one another to their very cores. There was plenty of love between them; care and affection too. Yet, opposites don't always attract, and the divorce proceedings where done swiftly, efficiently and with honest intent from them both.

That Pyrrha's mom discovered she was pregnant two weeks after the divorce was finalised did throw a spanner in the works, but that's a story for another time. As is the story of how he was brought back into the fold as one of the grandfathers who would put the fear of the Brothers into his granddaughters' hopeful lovers.

The story for now is very much focused on said hopefuls the grandfather was guiding along.

If anything, these three could well prove to be Jaune's greatest challenge. For myriad reasons these three would be the biggest, most serious threat to his daughters' innocence.

Thorfinn Valkyrie. The oldest son of his dear friends and teammates Ren and Nora. The ginger-haired and pink-eyed boy was only 5'5", but had very much inherited a love of explosives from his mother. Explosives he loved to watch as he quietly sipped the tea he learned to appreciate thanks to his father.

Silk and Satin Scarletina. The twin rabbit-eared daughters of Velvet and Coco. Quick on the draw with their Dust-infused machine guns, the pair embodied the mantra of accuracy by volume, controlling the battlefield in a hale of projectiles.

Velvet and Coco were two more friends that Jaune made during Beacon, the photographer and the fashionista had a relationship that had taken more patience from everyone around them than even Blake and Yang's did.

Blake and Yang finally got together half-way through their second year a Huntresses-in-training. Of all people, an out-of-patience Ruby had pressed their faces together and told Blake to not stop until Yang was firmly brought to heel and admitted her feelings.

It resulted in Ruby and Weiss having to spend the night over at JNPR's dorm. As it turned out, "bringing to heel" involved... a lot.

Velvet and Coco (finally) got together at graduatation where Velvet, quite loudly and completely done waiting, told Coco to confess to her already. The silence of the crowd was the loudest anyone present had ever experienced.

Seeing Beacon's most confident and boastful student temporarily reduced to a spluttering and blushing mess was a sight for the ages, and Velvet did get to see her demand fulfilled with a verve only Coco could do.

The resulting children of the Renora and CrossHares couples were the ultimate threat to Jaune's oldest daughters. His eldest weren't just in danger from each of these... these seducers. It was far more than that.

It was already hard for Jaune to try and block the way to his daughters against these three. Knowing their parents as well as he did practically guaranteed they'd be good people. Targetting their character was thus a no-go.

He also couldn't make any real physical threats, seeing as his daughters were more than capable of defending themselves. Frankly speaking, Jaune's daughters could've easily had a track record surpassing their warrior goddess of a mother if they didn't rotate who'd get first, second and third places in the junior combat leagues. Their trophy cases are full-to-bursting with medals and cups and more, and he'd need to make an extension sooner rather than later.

Perhaps worst of all, Thorfinn, Silk and Satin already were a sorta, almost romantic trio before meeting his daughters at Beacon academy. Supposedly, the first time the three laid their lecherous eyes on his daughters they were all instantly smitten. They confirmed their burgeoning feelings for eachother right then and there, before approaching his daughters and declaring, as one trio to another, their intent to court them all together.

As someone in a polyamorous relationship himself could in no way deny his daughters to have lovelives like he did. He'd already seen the dynamics between the trio of young lovers. The devotion Thorfinn brought into his efforts to make it all work. He'd seen how that effort was shown by all three in the courting of his daughters.

Steeling himself one last time, he looked at his darling wife, his Craterface and rose of his heart. Resolutely, he marched towards his office for his final battle.

Ruby looked bemused as she watched her dear husband, her Vomitboy and knight of her soul walk unsteadily towards his office. Rolling her eyes she got up from the sofa, lightly patting her skirt as the door closed behind Jaune.

And as one door closes, another one opens. Pyrrha and her daughters Cassandra, Caliope & Chrona, strode into the foyer outside Jaune's office like a Warrior Queen and her near-identical Shieldmaidens.

Near identical, as each daughter decided on a different length of hair for their flowing and shaggy locks.

Cassandra, the oldest, had her hair much like her mother. Long enough to reach the waist and put up in a high tail.

Caliope had hers cut to the shoulders, styled with a small amount of hair product to keep it out of her eyes.

Chrona's was the shortest, emulating Jaune's haircut during Beacon and just letting it do whatever it wanted.

Seeing her fellow wife and love, Ruby skipped over with a bright grin, hugging each daughter and giving Pyrrha an adorable kiss on her nose.

The four took a seat on the sofa, and waited.

(A/N: No worries about the wait, @novankenn. RL kicks all our asses some days. Just make sure to kick RL's ass back with interest. Besides that, your stuff didn't feel samey to me. So, good on you. Hope everyone enjoyed this part!)

The Sequel!

(A/N - Let's see what we can do with this!)

It had been 14 years since his one and only son had been born. The auspicious day heralded in a new era for the Arc clan. The baby making had ceased. The combined might of the mothers of his children deciding it was time to focus on raising and educating their brood over just expanding it.

But the hints were still there, Everyone was still hale and hearty... and once his oldest started moving out on their own... they may start the process over again. But however that was beside the point. His 9 oldest had decided with some urging from their mothers and aunts and grandmothers to bring home their boyfriends or girlfriends... to meet the family.

While Jaune knew that his children would never let ANYONE hurt or disrespect any member of the family, as the father... he had an age old duty to fulfill, but due to the sheer size of the undertaking he called in assistance. So there seated on three couches in the massive living room, sat the 9 would be paramours.

Across from them the father of their love interests. Before Jaune his 14 year old son, with his shoulder length dark brown hair put up in twin-tails, while wearing baby blue tights, a pink sundress and black flats. stood. Jaune knew after this... meeting... he was going to have to talk to his brood again about playing dress up with their brother.

Flanking Jaune was his reinforcements for this task. The grandfathers and grand uncle of the family. To his left stood Qrow and Taiyang. To his right Ozpin and Jaune's father. Behind him using his imposing size stood Ghira.

But there was one other, that even the assembled group of men was a little shocked at seeing. Standing behind the collected young men and women seeking approval to continue their relationships, was one Jacques Schnee, flanked by a squad of SDC security drones. One for each of his granddaughters and half-granddaughters.

Jaune's mind remembered something about Willow enlisting Salem's help in putting Jacques straight, and for several years the man had been banned from family outings. But then sunlight broke through those dark clouds, and the Schnee Patriarch proved his "worth" b y not only restructuring the SDC, but also himself.

Jaune: So... *Jaune's support as smirked... sinisterly* ...you want to date my daughters...

[homestuckexamination]

Now here's something that I noticed while rereading Homestuck: it's explicitly stated that people were already having their houses destroyed by meteors days before the main cast started playing the game. Which created the biggest meteor impacts, far larger than the ones happening up to that point.

This may imply that some people got the beta on the intended release date and were already playing, but they got smaller meteors either because of their failure to enter or because of plot irrelevance.

If the latter, this may suggest that a typical planet with little relevance or essentiality won't be completely razed (but the species may still go extinct).

I find this interesting because fansessions frequently have it go from 0 to 100 really fast without the buildup of smaller meteors stated to happen in HS proper. And nobody really talks about the early meteors, in general. They were minor enough that only Rose even knew about them; no widespread panic.

Do think that, while other Sessions made it- Like FedoraFreak's, we don't know the state of any of the other Earth Sessions, and know at least from Rose looking through walkthroughs, that at least no one else who was actively documenting SBURB actually made it into the Incipisphere in time and got killed by the meteors. I always assumed that most of the Meteors on Earth were actually from the Kids' Singular Session, and even if there were more, the one that dealt the blow to the planet was one aimed directly at Jade.

It is true that the slower build-up is fun! But also remember, that even in cases where there's 'Only One Session', it doesn't mean the planet's going to survive. Even without Bec stopping the meteor and nuking the rest of the planet, if THAT thing actually hit Earth, it'd have caused a mass extinction event on the level of the Chicxulub Impact regardless. That thing was big-

Think of the other canon examples, too. The Alpha Session was Void, no Meteros, but their entry also marked the day Condy took over publicly, for Jane, and the day the Universe ended, for Dirk and Roxy. The Trolls had MULTIPLE Colony Worlds, and yet, because of how things were set up with G'lbgoylb, as soon as they entered, the entire Troll Empire was wiped out. We don't quite know about the state of Beforus post-entry, but, 'Destroying the Old World to give birth to the New World' is a recurring thematic tie in Homestuck. It's not like. Necessary for fan-stuff of course, but like, the utter destruction is an important part of it. It's leaving nothing behind to return to. It's cracking the shell of the world. Very Gnostic.

[fatehbaz]

“Cows destroyed the vibrant but now-extinct coastal sea ecologies of Mediterranean-climate California.” Hmmm. Blaming the cow (the creature) and not the industry, or those who orchestrated the introduction of the creature? As if the exponential expansion of cattle industry in California in the 1800s was simply inevitable, an innocent or neutral historical development. Why were the cows there? Who put the cows there? Who profited?

More like: Settler-colonial cattle ranching and other agricultural industry destroyed coastal sea ecologies of California.

Here’s a thing:

-------

Southern California’s beaches bustle with year-round activity [...]. Beyond the surf, however, sand gives way to mud, and lots of it, on a narrow band of mostly empty continental shelf that stretches some 250 miles along the coast. Scavengers such as crabs and burrowing worms dominate this dull mudscape, which is often obscured by swirling sediment.

The culprit behind this wasteland?

Cows, says Susan Kidwell, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago who made the surprising connection.

A few years ago, Kidwell was sifting through seafloor samples from three sites near greater Los Angeles, looking for shards of fossilized shells under several inches of silt. She found pieces of older shells but, unlike the shells of burrowing clams present on the seafloor today, these fragments belonged to filter feeders such as scallops and brachiopods -- an ancient group of animals sometimes called lamp shells -- who filter nutrients out of the water column. Kidwell and fellow researcher Adam Tomašových, of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, had stumbled upon a lost ecosystem. The remains of other invertebrates in the muck, including tube worms, barnacles, and colonies of tiny invertebrates called bryozoans, pointed to an entire community that once thrived on a rocky seafloor. Like the brachiopods, these creatures were also mostly absent from the mud-coated shelf today. Kidwell and Tomašových were perplexed by the stark difference between the shelf’s past and present ecosystem. In a 2017 study, they dated nearly 200 of the fossilized brachiopod shells to reconstruct the demise of these filter-feeders.

They predicted this ancient ecosystem gradually declined over thousands of years as California’s sea levels fluctuated.

However, the shells told a different story.

The population of brachiopods had thrived on the shelf for some 4,000 years before suddenly crashing 150 years ago. “We were completely blown away when we got the results,” Kidwell says. “They survived into the present day only to disappear.”

As the timeline took shape, the mystery of the muddy shells only deepened. Kidwell investigated the usual suspects of marine degradation -- pollution, climate change, overharvesting -- but the chronology wasn’t right. By the time Los Angeles was urbanizing in the late 19th century, this ecosystem was already coated in mud. In fact, when the brachiopods vanished, what we now know as Hollywood was little more than farmland. Then the lightbulb went off for Kidwell. “The only thing it could have been was cows,” she says.

According to her research, the arrival of livestock with Spanish missionaries in the 1770s represented the biggest change to Southern California’s coastal ecosystem prior to urbanization. Left to roam free, cattle and horse populations exploded like microbes across a petri dish.

By the mid-19th century, the legions of livestock were compacting the soil as they overgrazed native vegetation. Coupled with a general lack of knowledge about soil conservation and Southern California’s semi-arid climate, where dry periods are punctuated by heavy rains that maximize runoff, the conditions led to what Kidwell calls a “perfect storm” for enormous amounts of sediment washing into the ocean. A separate study of the muddy bottom of Santa Monica Bay tells a similar story. [...]

The smothering sedimentation phenomenon is not unique to Southern California. Relatively shallow continental shelves fringe many of the world’s coasts, often extending miles offshore. Animals that attach themselves to the shelf seafloor, such as the European flat oyster, risk burial under silt.

Once a staple of Europe’s North Sea, the oysters were harvested to the brink of extinction during the 19th century. So, when Lasse Sander, a physical geographer at Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute, dated oyster shells from a collapsed reef in the German Bight, he was surprised to find the reef’s demise dated to around the year 700, long before overfishing of the North Sea’s shelf began. Like Kidwell, he turned to history to explain this anomaly. Much like California in the 19th century, early Medieval Europe was marked by environmental upheaval.

An expanding human population clear-cut vast tracts of forest, which increased erosion and sent huge amounts of dirt into the North Sea, smothering the oysters.

Sander says the demise of both the North Sea oysters and the brachiopods off Southern California’s coast are examples of how environmental degradation on land is linked with the health of the ocean.

“You have to connect the hinterland of a coastal system with the marine ecosystem,” he says. Similarly, Kidwell believes these two cases illustrate how far the human imprint on a landscape can spread. “This demonstrates the ability of land use to impact not only local lakes and lagoons but the open continental shelf,” she says.

Although oysters remain scarce in the North Sea, a small piece of Southern California’s earlier shelf ecosystem persists off Catalina Island, one of the Channel Islands less than 30 miles southwest of Los Angeles. Thanks to less intense grazing practices on the island, its surrounding shelf is still a lively palette of orange, pink, and yellow brachiopods and scallops.

Anchored to rocky outcrops, the animals filter bits of sediment from the water, offering a clear glimpse of the lost ecosystem that once thrived all along Southern California’s coast.

-------

Headline, images, captions, and text published by: Jack Tamisiea. “How Cows Destroyed an Entire Marine Ecosystem in California.” Atlas Obscura. 21 June 2021.

[hpnotfound]

ok so i wrote this and came up with a better plot but i dont wanna delete it all so im posting it anyways but there will not be any more

maybe ill get around to rewriting it someday :o anyway enjoy Papa Hueso gaining four extra children

-------

Hueso was putting his tiny son’s blanket over his sleeping form as he heard the telltale clanging sounds of something hitting the bottom of his dumpster.

“Ay, dios, malditos mapaches!” He cursed under his breath.

Seems like he would have to spend another evening out there chasing away the furry little bastards.  What a joy.

Softly stroking Juniors tiny head one last time, Hueso went to grab his cloaking brooch and the trusty lead pipe he swiped from one of the many construction sites around New York, and made for the magic alleyway exit.

It had been a real lucky find, this literal hole in the wall. A little enchantment and his Pizzeria was up and running. Good thing he still had had a few favors left to cash in…

Out in the streets, the cold November winds whipped around the trash and leaves. He could feel the cold down to the marrow of his bones. No wonder the raccoons were trying to find shelter in a dumpster, but he couldn’t have them build a colony there. It happened once a few years ago and he still regrets not stepping in sooner. Won’t be making that mistake again.

Hueso approached the open lid cautiously. The little beasts were fast and prone to biting, so he’d just have to be faster.

With a swift grab he had one of them by the scruff.

Only it was not a raccoon.

What struggled in his grip was a small green and scaly creature in and oversized red hockey sweater and a blue headband. The red markings on its face accentuated the big, dark –tired terrified desperate- eyes of what was obviously a hatchling of some sort or another. The markings kind of made the green kid look like the fruits of the pepino plant his mother had in her backyard.

It let out a string of colorful curses absolutely inappropriate for what the yokai assumed was a toddler.

Before he could reprimand it - him, Hueso supposed, they were clearly not just animals – he saw movement out of the corner of his eye and that was about all the warning he got before another little green creature –this one wearing a purple hoodie and big square glasses over a purple mask – darted towards him and nailed Hueso in the knee with a piece of wood.

It didn’t hurt as much as it could have but he was still startled enough to drop the still struggling kid in his hand.

The purple one – did this one have a pillow tied to their back? - grabbed their friend and pulled him towards the corner, where yet another one was crouched. This one was bigger than the other two and he could at last make out their species, the last one not wearing much clothes. Besides a red helmet and a sling around their shoulders, seemingly carrying their loot, they had nothing covering the spiky, dark green shell, identifying them as turtles.

The trio made to get away before Hueso could even react, the big one shooing their companions in front of them. He had not been expecting unsupervised yokai children in his trash; much less so on the human side of New York!

The kids didn’t get very far thought.

The big one started coughing violently, hacking and spitting and it didn’t sound like it would stop anytime soon.

Doubling back around the others hung onto their biggest friend.

“Raph!”

“You gotta breathe, Raphie!”

Finally catching up with the situation, Hueso walked towards the gaggle of kids, taking off his cloaking brooch as to not further scare the children. Even this young they clearly knew to keep away from humans.

“Hey, hey, niño, take it easy” reaching out his now bony hand to try and soothe the coughing fit, Hueso quickly pulled it back towards him again, when something whacked it out of the way.

The one with the glasses had hit him again. Looking even more scared than before, yet determinedly standing between the adult and their companions, they was brandishing the plank in front of them in a defensive position. 

“S-stay back! You can’t ha-have my brothers! I-I-I won’t let you- I won’t let you eat them!!” The little one looked like they was about to cry but still did not move his shaky legs.

The hacking and spluttering of the spiky one just got worse. The boy was desperately trying to get some air into his lungs, tears streaming down his round cheeks. Unsuccessful he went down on his knees, clawing at his throat as if something invisible was strangling him.

The pepino looking one was trying to pull him back up and away, crying all the while.

“Little one, I just want to help! Your brother sounds very sick and it’s too cold out here for you children. Where are your parents, hm?” He went down into a crouch as well in an attempt to look less threatening.

The suspicion in the little one’s eyes didn’t waver; he just gripped the wood plank harder. How was Hueso going to help them-

“Raphie, no! Don, help me, he’s gonna squish Mikey!” Looking over his shoulder, Don, apparently, dropped his weapon to quickly help drag his collapsed brother onto his side. They were struggling as he was clearly too heavy for the other two tired and probably hungry turtles.

Taking a chance, Hueso ran up to them and rolled the spiky turtle onto his back, making it easier for him to breathe. To his surprise, the sling did not contain any material possessions but a fourth, itsy bitsy turtle with yellow splatterings like freckles, swaddled in blankets and seemingly sleeping. Hopefully sleeping.

“Ay, dios, how did this happen to you kids?” He cradled the spiky one to his chest. While his head and body was way warmer than even a turtle yokai should be, his arms were ice cold. It looked like the big one gave his clothes to the one with the pillow on his back. The size at least indicated it.

At least he had stopped coughing and was breathing shallowly again. But apparently the one called Raphie had reached his limits, because his tearstained eyes did not open again.

He looked up to the other two, who were hovering close now. They were shaking their bigger brother and calling out to him, appearing to have forgotten about the skeleton completely.

“It will be alright, niños. I will see to it he gets healthy again, si?”

Big eyes snapped up to his own.

“you’re not gonna eat us?” Don asked.

“Why would Death eat us, Donnie? He’s Death, he doesn’t need to eat”

“How would you know?”

Before the children could devolve into more of a squabble the skeleton interrupted them.

“I am not Death and I will certainly not eat you. My name is Señor Hueso and I’m a yokai like you. I can help you get back to the Hidden City.” What was supposed to inspire confidence in his sincerity only sparked confusion.

“What’s a yokai?” “And what’s a hidden city?”

Well, at least they didn’t seem afraid of him anymore.

“Have you been living up here all this time? No, no, don’t answer! Not important right now! Let us get your brothers inside first. There will be time for questions later”

With that he shooed the children up to the graffiti piece marking the entrance to his restaurant. Carrying the other two in his arms proved not to be a problem. Shifting them to one side how he did with Junior freed one hand up to activate the portal into the well-lit entrance of his pride and joy.

The amazement on the kids’ faces was adorable.

“Welcome to Run of the Mill Pizza, hombrecitos!”

It was past closing time so the rest of the place was only barely visible, but the group was swiftly led though towards the back. Flicking on one of the smaller lights he sets the limp and silently wheezing body down in one of the booths. Procuring a blanket from where he stashed for Junior, he swaddled the sick turtle as best as he could. Keeping him warm seemed like a good step.

The next thing to do is take off the sash holding the littlest turtle, lest his brother decided to lay on him again. The orange clad one was still asleep, which deeply worried Hueso, but the kids didn’t seem upset by it so maybe this was a normal turtle thing? He still checked the kid’s temperature and pulse and found both to be in a normal –for yokai at least –range.

“Here, sit down with your brothers, can you hold this little one? I’ll go get you some hot soup, no?” They did give him some suspicious glances still but ultimately climbed into the opposite side of the booth. The little pepino held out his hands for the baby turtle and Hueso made sure it’s tiny head was held securely before making for the kitchen.

His first stop was the first aid cabinet in the corner which should also hold a fair amount of medicines. He’d need to contact his doctor friend Roberto in the morning for a better asessment but for now a fever lowering potion and some soup would have to do.

Gathering his supplies around the kitchen, he was well aware of the eyes following him through the open door. The kids were huddled together, both clutching the small one between them and were keeping Hueso in their line of sight at all times.

Understandable, really. Who knows what they have been through?

In the low light he could see how dirty and tattered their clothes were. None of them were wearing pants or shoes, just oversized hoodies and sweaters, the colorful bandanas and the pillow strapped to the bespectacled kid with what looked to be a phone charger.

They all would need baths before bed.

Warming up canned soup on one of the stoves took care of the food situation, but Hueso decided to also make them hot chocolates. They looked like they’d need it.

 Doing his best to project calmness and safety the skeleton quietly hums one of Juniors lullabies. His son was only six months old so he’d have to check on him soon. He didn’t sleep through the night yet. Good thing Hueso was used to little sleep.

Finally, the soup was warm and ready to be served to his nighttime visitors.

He put down the bowls and cups of hot chocolate in front the decidedly sleepy looking kids. They still gave him the side eye but it was clear they would not be able to stay awake much longer. It was almost 1 a.m. by now.

“Here, hombrecitos, eat this. It will warm you up” sitting down next to the sick child, he checked over him. His temperature was definitely too high, since he now had a comparison.

“What are your names, children?” The kids exchanged glances with each other and only pressed their lips into thin lines.

[fumblingmusings]

What are the big differences between how Evelyn parents and how Arthur does? And since the who's the favourite child question gets asked a lot I'll flip it and ask, who would each of the kids prefer between Evelyn and Arthur? And do those preferences change over time? Not to pit the unhinged blondes against each other but i feel if they were suddenly to exist in the same universe they would have an absolutely insane custody battle.

Ohhhhhhh good question! Hmm... To be honest, I think all four kids would prefer Evelyn as a parent, but Matthew especially. I imagine when Jack was a baby it was quite hard to be around Arthur at times. He just clammed up so much after Alfred left, it took a long time for him to come out his shell again, but for Evelyn she sort of did the opposite and drew a lot of strength from the one kid that did stay and the new baby who really needed her. But as a person? Like say if they were all human and just happened to all meet each other at the pub one day? Arthur is just more interesting and sharper and more energetic. Evelyn really is a melancholic wet paper towel of a woman.

Or maybe it's like... as babies Evelyn wins, as kids through to teenagers she wins again with Matthew and Jack, but Arthur wins with Alfred (until neither parent wins that is) and Zee, and then as fully grown adults living their own lives it's... hmm. Spoilers.

Matt picks Evelyn every time though. Jack can sit on the beach and have a beer with Arthur and talk about the Ashes. (Which. Side Note. Why the Ashes are called the Ashes and why the joke prize is an urn is so sweet to me. Does anyone else think it's sweet? I mean, at least we can laugh at ourselves...) He can't do that with Evelyn for example. Matthew, however, can and will go hiking with Eva over in BC in September where they will spend literally hours not saying much to each other, simply going 'ah' every now and then at the view.

They're both very good with babies I think, to be fair to Arthur though. Babies can't judge you, so they can very much throw their dignity to the wind. They would both very happily sit up all night and hold the babba if that's what got them to sleep. I think the biggest difference between their parenting styles comes in to Arthur just being a bit (a lot) more emotionally closed off. As the kids get older the standards they have to hit get higher. They can never hit it. But for as much as Arthur can be so cold and cruel, Evelyn is not a stable presence.

It is not easy at all to grow up with a chronically ill parent, it doesn't matter what they do, you somehow develop guilt complexes for being any kind of a burden on them (even when you're not and they don't see it that way). Double bad considering it's a colony/coloniser situation. Their job is to enrich the motherland. It is not a child's job to fix their parent. The two cannot ever mesh. And she's keeled over in her porridge because she took a shot of laudanum last night and it hasn't worn off yet.

I mentioned it somewhere else before, but Arthur is the kind of parent who goes 'The world sucks, here is how is sucks, here's how to guard your heart when it starts sucking', and when it does start to suck, he'll say 'told you so', but still make you a cup of tea. Evelyn is the one to go 'The world sucks, but if we just keep to ourselves and stay close maybe it won't be so bad' and then when it does start to suck, the kids have had the rug completely pulled out from underneath them with no preparation on how to deal with it, but she'll be there to say 'I told you so', remind them that her way was the safest way, coddle them to death, then make them a cup of tea. In terms of nationhood, as awful as it may sound, Arthur may do them better in the long run. A permissive parent is not necessarily a better one (though I do think overall she was a better mum to them then Arthur was a dad).

Does that make sense? Arthur is aggressive and forthright, Eva is passive aggressive and avoidant. Some kids thrive with the former, some the latter, and maybe some at different stages of their lives. Arthur wouldn't pinch Eva's kids I think though. She absolutely fucking would for his.

Alfred once thinks that Eva is a sweet thing to come home to, and I suppose that's one way to visualise it. Arthur is someone you go and have a (buck-wild) adventure with. Evelyn is the at the end of the road going 'what have you gotten yourself into now?' Like both have their place, I think. If only they used it in the right time and place.

[4782967]

all of jasper moments changed my brain chemistry but this? this episode and THIS SCENE is one of my top favorite moments in media EVER the way smoky quartz unfuses when they realize she is corrupting UGHHH steven universe really is the piece of media that has the biggest impact on the person i am today, i'm forever profundly happy by the way it formed me, some quotes are MARKED in my brain but i would do a lot to rewatch it all again, i spent weeks, WEEKS I SAY, rewatching this episode over and over again This was I think the first mention EVER of pink diamond IT'S SO GOOD where we discovered earth was pink's colony that rose did *SOMETHING* to her that JASPER was her's the color scheme of gems the kindergarden SMOKY QUARTZ JASPER FUSIONS HER CORRUPTION LIVE THE SOUNDTRACK OF THIS EPISODEEEEEEEEEEEEE WITH SMOKY QUARTZ THEME BEING INTERTWINED WITH JASPERS CORRUPTED FUSION ASAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG FUCUIKKKKDSKFJWOIT34UI6908340 IT'S SOOOOOOO GOOOOOOD i'm forever obsessed

-I will NOT BE BEATEN BY ANOTHER FUSION -What the.. *Fight*

-Nobody I fused with ever wants to stay... ha...

-... EW THAT'S DISGUSTING

-It's... corruption...

-I see how you do now Rose, You want gems AFTER they're worthless, you wait until after they've lost, because when you're at the bottom.... You'll follow anyone who makes you feel like less of a failure. JUST LOOK AT THIS ONE, You've stripped her of EVERYTHING: Her limb enhances, he status, her digniy

-I still have one of those things

-HOW CAN YOU SIDE WITH ROSE QUARTZ? WHY? WHY protect this useless shell of a planet

-is not a shell, there's so much life living here! that's what i'm doing, i'm living here! I've been learning new things about myself all the time, like how I can make metal do my biding... the point being: earth can set you free :)

-Earth is a prison, I got out because i'm better than this place I only came back to finish you off

-Try not to move...

-YOU CAN'T MANIPULATE ME ROSE QUARTZ

-I'm not manipulating, i'm trying to help

-help? HELP? I've been FIGHTING FOR THE SECOND I CAME FREE FROM THE EARTH'S CRUST, BECAUSE OF WHAT YOU DID MY COLONY, BECAUSE OF WHAT YOU DID TO MY PLANET, BECAUSE OF WHAT YOU DID TO MY DIAMOND

-I... Yellow Diamond?

-... MY DIAMOND. YOUR DIAMOND. PINK DIAMOND

[linaleesstuff]

A Little Bit of Your Time

Dealing with anxiety isn’t easy on your own, but when you got a centuries old vampire with pockets filled with wisdom and an addiction to pizza, it becomes a little bit more bearable.

•••

Outside of the world, I wondered what existed. From where I stood, I could see most of the moon – half-lidded, as if on a drunken stupor – but so little of the stars. I was aware they freckled the universe, dusting it in moonshine wonder, similar to the face of a friend I used to have.

And then, the galaxies… the planets, the supernovas, the eternal expansion of atoms that stretch this blank void of darkness we call the universe like a rubber band? It all seemed so ambiguous for something that has existed for millions of eons… and I felt so small, and lost, and confused half of the time. Like an ant who had no sense of direction, who lost its colony.

I suppose that’s what made me human. I guess it was human of me to simultaneously feel timeless and insignificant, and there’s no explanation to that inexplicable sensation anyway. I just felt… like that small speck of dust beside Orion’s Belt. A detail in the grand scheme. Just a person in billions. Just an organism in a little green and blue planet beside this enormous ball of floating, fire-hazardous gasses millions of kilometers away.

“What’s got ya’ burning holes into the wall?”

A familiar, modulated voice breaks the silence and Riven’s face clears into view. I remember it’s not the first time he’s caught me spaced-out in my plant-cramped balcony, and I flush. But his eyes are kind and sort-of filled with mirth; it makes me smile.

“I kind of hate the color,” I say.

“Eh,” he narrows his eye at the shade of shit brown (that I actually do hate), “it matches your hair.”

I snort, flipping him off, but we laugh and settle into comfortable silence. His presence always leaves me speechless. There was something about him, besides his clear other-worldly appearance because of his vampiric nature, that left me at loss. I always had so many questions, so much wonder – I wanted to know more about him, but I just never knew how to ask.

I settled for the nights we would stumble upon each other outside and share a conversation or two about our lives and idle things. As a vampire, he lived a reclusive life inside his home and so did I, except I wasn’t vampire but a sad life-ridden shell of anxiety.

“Well, not to pry, but the night is young and if you want to talk about it, I have a lot of time to spare.” He shrugs, “I have centuries of it, in fact.”

“Oh man,” I blow out air and deflate in my rocking chair. Of course I’d tell him anything if he asked. But I wasn’t sure where to start. “I guess I’m just going through that age-old case of existentialism. I mean, I don’t know… the world scares me, you know? And then there’s this thing called the void that I’m quite literally staring down into and I’m just supposed to act like the tax fraud is on my list of one of the biggest things to worry about. Which it probably isn’t, I worry about a lot of things, but you know, there’s just so much out there and I don’t even know 1% of it.”

When I’m done, Riven is not taken-aback by my sudden ramble. In fact, I’m sure he’s used to it, but I still apologize and rest my forehead on the cool metal of the railing. I hated feeling frustrated but also mystified over something that hardly mattered.

I was venting to a vampire that lived off greasy pizzas, but talked as if he was a member of a high society in the 1800s because he quite literally has lived for an imaginable amount of centuries. I was well aware that the universe and my problems didn’t matter. Everything was insane. Life was insane. Period.

“You know,” Riven started, “there’s no use in thinking too much about it.”

“About what?”

“About the world, the universe. After a few decades, you start to realize how useless it is worrying too much about something that can’t be controlled. Life is here, before your eyes and hands, but that thing,” he points upwards, “that thing is trivial. The city is alive and you’re alive and you’re young. The world is a mystery, yes, and is it it terrifying? Perhaps, if you want it to be.”

I blink at him.

“I cannot phrase what immortality has done to me,” he says, “I cannot articulate the loneliness, the happiness, the devastation and total despair that this condition has caused me – it is unlike anything human and tangible. It is inexplicably painful because I have to carry the burden of memories. Of remembering you after you’re long gone. Of living in worlds that differ much from the one I was born in.” He pauses, as if to think and let me rest on what he just said. Then, “Ultimately, what I’m trying to say is: do not think too much about it. Life moves unexplainably, no one can put a name to it, not even me, not even the oldest Elder of Gods can understand it sometimes. So, you don’t either. You are here. Enjoy the damn breeze, you stupid human, is what I’m saying.”

I have… I wanted to say a lot and nothing at the same time. But mostly, I stared at Riven. His soft eyes had hardened at some point during his heated speech, and when he caught onto my unwavering stare, it was his turn to blush.

“Sorry?”

I smiled, shaking my head. Because, for the first time in years, I felt a little less eaten up by terror. I wanted to reach over and smash myself against his chest, but alas, we were separated by a metal railing and a hefty distance.

“Thank you. I needed that,” I said. I wish I had something as important to say, but I didn’t. Instead, I thought and thought over what he said and I imagined just how much he’s lived through.

It made me all the more curious. And all the less scared, for some weird reason. I mean, I still felt the paranoia, the general anxiety of… life and people, but it was a little less loud when I remembered Riven.

•••

Author’s Note

Ok, hi! It’s less than perfect, FAR FROM GOOD EVEN, because I’m so unused to finishing a chapter let alone fleshing out a half-decent story, but here I am. I tried, and I kind of like it? Although it’s a mess. I’m a whore for comfort/hurt stories and a nice burn of friends to lovers. I’ll see where this takes me for now.

[twdmusicboxmystery]

Revolution Theme, Part 2: War of 1812

READ PART 1 HERE

Wow! Thanks @wdway! Love all this!

You’re right that that the Crossing of the Delaware painting makes a lot more sense, now. It also made me think of the more recent pilgrim paintings we’ve seen the past few years. I think we can work those in as well. The pilgrims were somewhat revolutionary in their actions. Not so much in a massive war or battle sort of way, but they left England (yes, Britain) to find freedoms their mother country wasn’t willing to give them. Which is revolutionary in its way.

But more to the point, that was the first step that would eventually lead to a war for freedom between Britain and the American colonies. So, you could see them as the precursor to the revolution. So, it makes sense to use that painting for TF and TWD right now, because what’s been happening the last season or 2 is the precursor to the final, big revolution.

When you got into talking about 2 revolutions, that makes tons of sense as well, and I totally agree.

When you talked about the white house and library of congress being burnt in 1812, about six things came to mind, lol.

When Eugene was at the Sanctuary (which I 100% believe foreshadows the final revolution, Beth, and what Eugene’s role will be in it) he played the 1812 Overture when he did the science experiment for Negan’s wives. (Including Amber, who looked like Beth and Tanya, who had a lot of Beth’s dialogue with Eugene). I’ve kind of low-key obsessed over that song and why they used it, but other than foreshadowing a final battle with Eugene as I’ve already said, it was hard to connect anything more specific.

The 1812 Overture was not actually written about the War of 1812. It was written in celebration of Napoleon’s retreat from Russia. Basically, he tried to invade Moscow early in 1812 but failed miserably and eventually had to retreat. Not so much because of being out-fought, but more because of weather, illness, lack of supplies for the army, etc.

Now, that’s not the same thing you mentioned in the British fighting Napoleon before turning their attention to the American colonists, but the link is still there. Napoleon/Russia>1812 Overture>Napolean/Britain>Britain/American Colonies. See what I mean? So, the idea of two wars or a war on two fronts really makes sense.

I’ve been trying to find out if the 1812 Overture has a d.c. al coda in it. I don’t think it does, but I’m having a hard time finding the sheet music online. You can find it, of course, but often it’s blurry or watermarked in such a way that it’s hard to read, and that’s because they want you to buy it to remove the watermark. I’ll keep looking.

But I do know it has a coda. Maybe not a d.c. al coda, but a coda of some kind. In fact, while I’m still not sure until I can clearly see the sheet music, from what I’ve read others saying, the final, super-loud, exuberant part of the song that’s often used in U.S. Independence Day celebrations IS the coda. And it represents Russia winning the war over Napoleon. Coincidence?

So, Napoleon fought many wars on many fronts. There’s that. But as you said, the British first fought Napoleon (perhaps that will be the Commonwealth) and then turned to the American colonists. And given what was said in 5x09 about a rebel group fighting against the “republic” using what amounts to guerilla tactics, that does line up with how the American colonists fought the British during the revolution. So clearly that’s the one that will involve Beth and TF (though of course they will probably be involved, at least to some extent, in the Commonwealth bit as well).

Also, also. You talked about the LIBRARY of congress being burned. I’m not sure how, but suddenly I feel sure all the books and librarian stuff must be connected to this. To the revolution theme. I still remember watching the beginning of 6x16 and thinking it was SO significant, but I had no idea why. It’s where we see Carl lock Enid in the closet to keep her safe, and she’s yelling at him things like, “what if you don’t come back?” And he tells her, “just survive somehow.”

Meanwhile, that scene is intercut with Negan’s guys chasing the librarian they end up hanging over the bridge with an X spray painted on his chest. And then he gets…burned?

I remember thinking that just FELT like a big war that was coming, but back then, I really didn’t know how to interpret it. Of course, AOW started soon after, but the librarian group wasn’t a big part of that. If we’re honest, they really were just random side characters, which was odd because that sequence FELT so important. So, I’m betting we ought to be connecting them to this as well.

The Native American Symbols

For the record, a couple of things I’ve been trying to look into and haven’t found much (mostly because I haven’t had much time to do so yet) include what role Native American tribes played in the American revolution. Some were loyal to the British, others to colonists. As I said, I need to do more research, but little tidbits like this one are interesting:

“Their biggest contribution was as spies going to Canada and returning with news of the English plans, and attacking English coastal shipping. The Indians played a leading role in preventing an English attack on Machias by sea from being successful. “

(AL’s voice coming out of the radio in 5x09: “At least 68 citizens of the Republic have been killed in four deadly attacks along the main coastal district. The group has continued their campaign of random violence, moving across the countryside unfettered, with the Republic’s military forces in disarray.” Just saying.)

The other thing I’ve looked into is Francis Marion’s (Swamp Fox’s) connection to Native Americans of the time. During the revolution itself, I’m not finding much. But we do know that he learned a lot of his battle prowess from fighting the Cherokee Indians as a young man.

What he learned there is what made him so effective against the British. So, I’m wondering if that will translate with Beth in that she’ll fight the CRM or perhaps even in battles with the Commonwealth early on and that will give her what she needs to triumph much later in bigger battles. Or maybe they’ll connect it even earlier back to early battles with TF and what Daryl taught her. The possibilities are endless. ;D

@wdway:

If you do a search, it's quite fascinating and well worth the time to do two searches. One on the burning of the White House and then the other one on Andrew Jackson and the Battle of New Orleans.

There are things that I just did not go into like the connection with Napoleon that we've seen hints of in the past couple of seasons and didn't know why. The Cherokee Rose, which has been a symbol for so long and I do not think it was their intention in the beginning but what most people do not understand is that the Cherokee Rose has a strong connection to Andrew Jackson.

Andrew Jackson had a singular focus on driving the Native Americans (mostly the Cherokee Nation) to the West. Lightbulb moment here, but maybe that might be same of the meaning of Indian symbolism.

Jackson had a major part in the Trail of Tears, which is basically the story that Daryl tells Carol after walker Sophia was discovered. Jackson was a brilliant military soldier, but he was not known as a compassionate person. His nickname was Old Hickory (a tree reference) because the hickory tree's wood is known for its hardness.

A few years back, tptb did a promotion showing nuts that had a hard outer shell. People didn't understand what that was, but I knew because it was a hickory nut. A very hard outer shell and then inside is the actual nut. Hickory wood was the favored source for making baseball bats back in the day because they would not easily break.

The other interesting fact about Andrew Jackson was his love for his wife, Rachel. It was a legendary love. He might have been an asshole to the entire world, but Rachel was the love of his life. When she died, he did not simply bury her. He entombed her in her own little Mausoleum at his home, The Hermitage, just outside of Nashville.

Jackson fought both in the Revolutionary War and the 1812 war, in the Battle of New Orleans. He apparently had been imprisoned by the British for a time during the Revolutionary War, which fired his hatred for them.

Am I the only one thinking about the connections between him and Negan? I'm thinking of the two wars, the Commonwealth and the war against the CRM. I want to think that the Commonwealth conflict is represented by the War of 1812. The larger, more overall important conflict with a CRM will be the American Revolutionary War, with Rick replacing Washington as the leader.

I was freaking out when you mentioned the Overture of 1812. I don't care if it was written for the war led by Napoleon with Russia. If anything, that makes it even as stronger clue that we're on the right track because of the Russian satellite and Russian dictionary that little Judith got from (wait for it) the library, for Eugene.

One other thing, @twdmusicboxmystery. I thought about this earlier today when I was reading about the 1812 Overture, but I wanted to do a check before I mentioned it to you. 

Two very famous pieces of music came out of the 1812 wars. The 1812 Overture about Napoleon and Russia, and The Star-Spangled Banner, our U.S. national anthem written by Francis Scott Key about The Battle of Fort Henry. Both Fort Henry and The Battle of New Orleans were fought in 1814 but were known as being part of the War of 1812.

Can’t wait to see how it all plays out.

Definitely very interesting! Thanks for all this research @wdway! 

[joezworld]

Sentient vehicle headcanon - The Falklands war

Normally I try to tell these headcanons in a manner similar to Wikipedia - only keeping the relevant details. However, this one is so insane that even in my head, I feel it needs to be told differently. 

So, for the purposes of this headcanon, pretend that this is being told to you by your friend, who is desperately trying to appear normal while telling you about a Wikipedia article he just read. 

So, this entire story is fucking insane - there’s so much that goes on, lemme just start at the beginning. 

So, the UK owns these little islands off the coast of Argentina in the middle of goddamn nowhere. The Argentinians really don’t like this because the islands are much closer to them and they say that they own it - but it’s like that one Eddie Izzard bit - do you have a flag?  - And the brits did and the Argentinians didn’t, so everybody said that england had the islands.

Naturally this made Argentina very mad, but they didn’t do anything about it because they had shit goin’ on. Because like, all of South America had really bad shit happening to it between the 30′s and the 90′s - so nothing happened. 

Until in the 80′s, when Argentina had a military dictatorship called a Junta - which led through the very nice and normal way of ‘taking anyone they didn’t like and throwing them out of helicopters’ - the government had basically spun up their propaganda mill to the point where they actually believed that they could take the Falklands and the British wouldn’t do anything!

And they did this in 1982, which is like the exact wrong time to piss off the UK, because they used to be the biggest empire the world has ever seen, and then in like the last 20 years they lost India and Pakistan, had to give Canada their constitution back, and they were about to do the same to Australia and New Zealand, and they had basically signed Hong Kong back over to the Chinese. 

-And you know *spoiler alert* they didn’t give Hong Kong back, but at the time they thought they were gonna! - 

And so this means that the UK is feeling really bad about itself going into this whole thing, and then this punk-ass little country with like two ships in its navy tries to start shit because they think that The Queen won’t do anything. 

Except, they aren’t dealing with the Queen, they’re dealing with Margaret Thatcher - who will kill you, your dog, your family, and anybody who ever sold you a cannoli if she thinks it’ll make England strong.

So - even from this point, the Argentinians are gonna die, but what happens next is so out-of-left-field that it’s astounding. 

-

So, let’s roll back the clock a few weeks and The USS Montana is about to get involved. 

So, Montana is this pugnacious old man of a heavy cruiser who’s been with the navy since before World War 1. He has this amazing history going through every war the US has been in - and he’s amazing: when they tried to retire him after the first world war, he told them no, and said he’d raise a pirate flag and follow the sixth fleet around if they didn’t let him stay. So they did, and he served in every war and conflict the US was in until the 80′s. 

And this is kinda important, because when he was built, it was before the wars - everything was a bit slower, a bit more laid back, and he actually got a lot of family bonding with the other ships in the Navy and in his class, and it meant that he wasn’t like, sad and miserable and scared when the war happened. 

Flash forward to 1946, and the US has just built like hundreds of ships to kill the Axis with, and they did it so quickly that most of these guys went from the drydock to the battlefield with no real training or anything - so they were really fucked up when they came back. 

So, when Montana sees this, he decides that he’s basically going to be the father figure that everyone didn’t have - and basically makes most of the navy his kids - like straight up his sons and daughters, no questions asked. And he did this for almost every ship the Navy built between 1950 and the 80′s.

Which means that basically the entire US Navy loves him unconditionally. 

Like, I can’t stress this enough - he was their dad - he taught Iowa class battleships how to go fishing, he gave the birds and the bees talk to submarines, like, everything he did was for his kids or for his country. 

And so, one day in 1982, he gets a call from one of his kids who’s moved down to Argentina - which I need to point out that a lot of US ships went down to South America in the 40s and 50s, but a lot of them did that because they were fucked up from WW2, and most of them didn’t get to know Montana very well - so they weren’t ‘his kids’. 

But one of them was, and he calls up his dad and says “Hey dad, uhh, my bosses have really started to believe their own BS and they think that they can take on the UK - and I think that I’m gonna die, because I work with these people and we are not gonna be able to win this. Please help me.” 

And so Montana tells him to calm down, and he’s gonna get him out of this. And then he goes to his bosses at the navy, says he’s using some leave time to go rescue his kid, and the Navy realizes that they’re never gonna be able to talk him out of this, so they call up the chain to Washington and cut him some orders that say that he’s a ‘neutral observer’ so that nobody shoots at him. 

And this seems like its all going to go just fine, except that several ships in the Argentinian Navy were made by the West Germans, and have NO IDEA who this guy is - because even the American ships who aren’t his kids still know him, because how can you not.

And so he makes it almost all the way to Argentina when one of the Argentinian submarines - who was German - sees him, has no idea who he is, doesn’t know about the neutral observer thing because the Argentine Navy is a clusterfuck, and sinks him! And he dies!

And I can- I- This is so bad!

Because now, the US NAVY is involved. 

And They. Are. Pissed. 

Because Their DAD JUST GOT MURDERED!!!!!!

And the Argentinians have no idea what’s happening - they have no idea that this guy is important or that he even got sunk! Because the submarine just assumed he was English and called in that he’d sunk a British advance party or something, and it takes like a week for the Americans to put two and two together, so for a while, nobody knows what’s happened - it’s like they’ve stepped on a land mine and it hasn’t gone off yet. 

-

But because no one knows the enormity of the shitstorm the Argentinians are gonna be facing yet, the British are still mobilizing - they didn’t do what the Americans did and set up a network of navy and air bases all over the world in case they need to kick someone’s ass in the future - and all the countries around the south Atlantic either hate them, or are former colonies who really hate the English. So they have to schlep everything they need to fight a war alllll the way down from England to Argentina - which is like the furthest distance you can go without running into the British Empire it’s so far why. 

And so the Royal Navy has to call in the civilian reserve fleet, which is a bunch of ocean liners and container ships who really would rather be flagged under any other nation right now, but they’re not!, so they have to go basically become war-adjacent for a while - just hanging out in the frigid North Atlantic until the Royal Navy finishes kicking ass and taking names and then they can go home. 

Except. 

Except. 

EXCEPT THAT 

The Argentine Navy is a bunch of suicidal morons!

Because they saw that the British didn’t have enough logistics vessels and was requisitioning ferry boats and ocean liners and had a brainwave: 

¡ Hey !  ¡ If we shoot at these unarmed ferry boats and container ships, not only will the Brits not have any logistical support, but they might get scared and go home!

Which sounds like a good plan, until you realize that the Royal Navy is not pleased that they have to bring civilian ships into battle - like the aircraft carriers and the destroyers see this as ‘a stain on their character’ for having to ‘endanger civilians unduly’ because they’re posh and they’re English but also they’re right - this is not a place for civvies - Exocet missiles are gonna be flying around, it’s not safe. 

Also, the Royal Navy had a very dim view of this whole conflict, because they thought it was pointless to sail halfway across the ocean just to fight over a tiny island with 3 people on it - if they wanted to expand the empire just invade Ireland or something. 

- Now, that sounds bad, but this was the 80′s - The Troubles were ongoing, and in the Royal Navy at least, they liked the Irish a lot less than the Argentinians! -

Also, Ireland was closer. 

But anyways, the RN ships at least had a rather dim view of the whole conflict, right up until the SS Atlantic Conveyor took an Exocet to the fuckin’ face.

And he dies. 

And this is almost as bad as sinking Montana, because Atlantic Conveyor had this really unique ability to make friends with anyone, and had spent most of the voyage down basically being the flotilla’s morale officer. 

So when he dies, this stops being a token effort to restore British Sovereignty, and starts being The Royal Navy Wants You Dead. 

Which, on its own, would have meant that Argentinian Navy would have been wiped from the face of the earth - because the Royal Navy wasn’t leaving until everyone was dead. It didn’t matter if it was a tugboat with a handgun - there would be no more Argentinian Navy when they were done. 

-

Now. 

Now.

Meanwhile in America, while the Royal Navy is still steaming down to the Islands, words starts to get around that someone killed Dad.

And this went over exactly as well as you think it would. 

The ships of the US Navy reacted calmly and coolly, and didn’t cry or scream or plot revenge. 

They totally didn’t. 

Except that they totally did, and spent a few days gathering every bullet, shell, round, and torpedo they could find, before leaving with the intent of finding and killing everyone in the Argentinian military. 

Now, that might sound like a generalization, but it wasn’t. 

There were somewhere around 370 ships in the US Navy at that time, and about 280 of them were capable of reaching Argentina without leaving the US vulnerable to an attack  - plus about another 200 or so that had retired from the navy or transferred to other nations but still kept in touch. 

So that’s about 500 battleships, destroyers, submarines, amphibious assault ships, support vessels, aircraft carriers, tankers, oilers, troop transports, guided missile cruisers and the Presidential Yacht. 

All of them went to Argentina. Every last one of them.

And no-one believed it!

The British thought it was a joke, and the Argentinians thought it was counter-intelligence!

The ENTIRE US NAVY just up and left to kick someone’s ass! That doesn’t happen! That didn’t happen in WW2! This has never happened before or since in US history! Even when the US Navy was a bunch of sailboats in Philadelphia nobody did that!

-

And So, that’s how it was - the US Navy was steaming down en mass to fuck up the Argentinians, the Royal Navy was hopping mad, and the Argentinians didn’t even know anything was going to happen!

Also, before I forget, also on top of all this - Atlantic Conveyor was friends with a bunch of ocean liners, and because they’re all fucking insane - Normandie spent WW2 fucking up U-Boats in the Caribbean, and the United States sailed into a Cat 5 hurricane, and Olympic is one of the reasons that Singapore got kicked out of Malaysia - so, they all decided that their friend dying was worth fighting for, and they got together and steamed down to the South Atlantic at the same time the Americans were, and set like 9 speed records in the process because of course they did. 

-

So, now that there’s essentially three giant navies coming down to kick their asses, the Argentinians finally  begin to clue in on something being wrong - like, there were a couple of Soviet Trawlers that were parked offshore, and they claimed to be fishing but in reality they were spying - and they had these giant radio masts that they’d put up whenever orders came down from Moscow. 

And one day, the Argentinians watched from their spy planes as the masts went up slowly, then got taken down very quickly, and then they watched as the two spy trawlers went racing off towards Africa. 

And they wondered why they were going towards Africa, because the soviet union is the other way - you need to steam around the edge of South America, until they called down to Ushuaia - in Tierra Del Fuego, and heard that what looked like half the US Navy was coming round the tip of South America. 

And it looked like that because it was! Because half of the US Navy had sailed down from the pacific to cut off any way of escape! 

It was only now, at this incredibly late time, that the Argentinians realized exactly how Fucked  they were. 

-

Now, at this point, a smart man would have given up - but Galtierei was not. 

So naturally the Argentinians kept fighting for a whole week before they all just died. 

And it wasn’t in normal “get shot with a missile and sink” ways either - like, one of their cruisers fired on a ship, and it turned out to be the USS Missouri, who was right next to the other three Iowa Class battleships, and they all targeted this ship, and made him disappear because that’s what happens when the four biggest battleships on earth shoot at you at once. 

Or, the Submarines - the one that sank Montana got chased by 4 Los Angeles class attack subs and ended up getting pushed beneath his crush depth - not hit with a torpedo, PUSHED. The other one, meanwhile, tried to shoot at one of the Ocean Liners, and ended up getting sunk by them! Which is incredible, because Nobody expected that to happen, least of all the Liners, and yet they just totally went in and contributed - which actually means that there’s a third “belligerents” column for the Wikipedia page for this, and it’s just them. 

So the war actually ended on kind of an anti-climax, because after the US just steamrolled the Argentinians, there wasn’t anything left to do. The Brits landed more troops at Port Stanley, and then they just sort of went home. 

Most of the Americans did too, but they also went and installed a new government in Argentina! 

Which, as the rumor goes, the Navy did that without asking anyone, and BOY O BOY was the State Department Upset - I think a lot of people got fired or demoted for that. 

But it did turn out well in the end, because unlike every other time the US tried to install a leader, it actually went rather well, and the guy they put in charge left when he lost his re-election, and now Argentina is a democratic ally and a partner in Peace! 

Who still claim that they own the Falklands

[flerkenkiddingme]

Ta-Min for the ask game

ok if someone gives me the opportunity to talk about my dorkass punk daughter i will 100% take it, even if i can't remember the whole post. i only remember a few of them so here's some shit closely related to some of the things on it!

I know there was a sexuality headcanon: I think I said this in an earlier post but Ta Min was demisexual, and she realizes this once her parents told her she would be marrying a man from a different island. And that was the last straw for her. She knew it was a ploy to send her away without drawing suspicion, and packed up her stuff and started living with her friend Kami. This was when Roku was still at the air temple, and once he came back early after the disappearance of his aunt, she decided right then and there that she wanted to blow this popsicle stand for good and invited herself to join his Team Avatar.

There was also a BROTP one. She had been friends with Asha and Kami for awhile, and once she started hanging out with Gyatso, they meshed really well together as well. Kami was the one who brought her out of her shell and introduced her to a lot of fun shit. Asha encouraged her to stand up for herself, which led to her ditching her family, and they totally had morosexual solidarity. And the guys? They were there for her no matter what. She wrote letters back and forth with Gyatso after the squad disbanded. They were pretty close, and learned a lot about Air Nomad spiritual ideals and Fire Sage spiritual ideals from each other.

For the NOTP one I'll talk about her enemy. Sozin didn't like her, and the feeling was mutual. He'd pull Roku aside during events and explain how she wasn't good for him for all kinds of bullshit reasons, but Roku dismissed it as jealous ex boyfriend behavior. Which was pretty much exactly what it was. It never fazed Ta Min, since she stopped giving a shit what people thought of her at the age of seventeen.

Part of the reason they were enemies was because whenever he got on his colonialist bullshit, she'd appear at the palace doorstep with the nonbenders equality movement she kickstarted and they'd be there protesting. The banning of gay marriage? She flipped her shit. Colonialization of Earth Kingdom villages? Hell to the no. Genocide of the Air Nomads? Girlfriend went ballistic. Every stupid decision he made was combated by her Proto-Equalists (sans the bending removal, she would hate that). He'd summon Roku and tell him "collect your little social justice warrior bitch," which would just make him full on quote John Mulaney. You know, "my wife is a bitch and I like her so much!"

Then there was the ship one. Say what you will about Roku, but the man chugged Respect Women Juice™️ with 3 square meals a day. He was Ta Min's biggest supporter after she left her family for good and even when he was away mastering Avatar Crap, they wrote back and forth all the time. On a certain holiday, she'd throw open the front door, march right in and be like "oh HI mom and dad, fancy seeing you here. well I just wanted to say hi, and so does my boyfriend. who is the avatar, by the way, and who actually loves me and DOESN'T think I'm useless for not being a bender. stick THAT in your elitist pipes and smoke it!" and Roku's just like "hi" *awkward wave*

As is the case with every Avatar's Love, she was slightly terrifying to certain people, but lets her friends see her as a loyal, caring nerd. In conclusion I just love the personality and backstory I drafted for this girl with 20 total seconds of screen time.

Thanks for the ask! lowkey i was itching to make another post about her but couldn't make myself do it without an excuse to do so