#fuck doctors man fuck them and their policies

[cautiousgoose]

I'm trying so hard and it feels like it's never enough.

I should have just spent the day in bed, at least I'd hurt less.

I'm so tired. I literally sobbed on the phone with my mom today.

I haven't been unmedicated since I was a teenager who thought I knew better.

My body hurts so bad. And I keep trying to fight with doctors. And I think I'm getting somewhere and then I get sidelined again.

So I try to do the little victories instead while I wait.

And it's just not enough. I'm trying my best. I'm so tired. I'm in so much pain. It takes me so long to do things.

And then I'm alone again.

[mythica-ithaca]

the fact that I see some of y'all posting more about how important it is to vote for Biden than you ever have about Palestine just shows that you fucking "vote blue no matter who" people genuinely don't give a fuck about anyone but yourselves.

you only choose to speak up when YOUR hypothetical rights are threatened. you love to fear monger about how much hypothetically worse it would be under trump than acknowledge the actual atrocities that Biden is committing and condoning every single day. how exactly is he the "lesser" of two evils for?

do any of you actually look at the images coming out of gaza, or are you too fucking ~triggered~ to fully acknowledge other peoples suffering rather than your own. have you seen the video that came out recently of the little boy whose brain is exposed, about to be laid next to his dead family members, only to twitch and seize in his fathers arms as he screams and runs in horror to find a doctor, because his son is alive. his brain is literally falling out of his skull but he is still alive. that is one brief example of the most horrific shit you've ever seen in your life coming out daily for almost a year. how on this earth can you watch that and possibly claim that Biden is in any way shape or form "less" evil.

instead of demanding that the dnc force a different candidate, you're trying to guilt trip people who have actually seen the mutilated bodies of children on their timelines every single day and watched the press briefings of bidens administration denying genocide and defending Israel at the expense of literally everything else for the last 8 months, into voting for a man who supports it 100% and has not and will not be convinced otherwise.

this is where allowing them to push widely unpopular and centrist candidates has gotten us. it didn't work with Hillary in 2016. it BARELY worked in 2020. and hate to break it to you, but its probably not going to work again. so congrats. your "vote blue no matter who" rhetoric has got them thinking that they can push the most right leaning liberals on us and think that we'll vote for them just because they're in a blue tie instead of a red one.

if you care about democracy like you say you do, then the Democrats should be fucking TERRIFIED that you won't vote for them if they don't deliver. not constantly reassured that they can commit literal fucking genocide and still get your votes if they dangle abortion rights over your heads. you realize they see those posts too right? the ones that say "Yes! protest vote in the primary but make sure to actually vote for the guy in the general!!" like. you are literally telling them how performative your activism is.

if every election at this point is the one where democracy is on the line then we are already fucked. if they don't get it through their heads now that we will not support this shit, then every election to come will be between a fascist and a fascist who cares slightly less about whether gay people get married or not. but that's all you care about right? as long as your domestic policy is in your favor then the rest of the world can suffer at your tax dollars.

this isn't about morality voting. this is about recognizing that there is not actually a "lesser" of two evils in this situation, just because you think that the causes that you personally care about will be less affected one way or the other. because what if it was abortion rights? what catholic Joe Biden was firmly against abortion and was threatening to ban it completely and throw anyone getting or giving one in prison for murder. what if it was videos of lgbt people being slaughtered coming out every single day for a year. genuinely fucking ask yourself if you'd still be saying "vote blue no matter who" and that he's the "lesser" of two evils.

vote for whoever the fuck you want. and I do genuinely urge you to vote for the most progressive candidate you can for the house and senate and your local elections. but for the love of god, stop trying to convince people that there is, in any sense of the word, a "Lesser" evil in this situation. stop trying to absolve yourselves of the fact that you are CHOOSING evil. it's genuinely sick.

[captainjamster]

Observation Duty

Pairing(s): Price x fem!Reader Warnings: Manipulation, stalking, monitoring and surveillance, obsessive behaviour, non-consensual voyeurism, non-consensual mutual masturbation, non-consensual recording and photos Wordcount: 3.2k Summary: John isn't quite the captain everyone thinks he is, but he knows just how to act like it. No one would ever believe the things he does behind closed doors. AO3 Link: Right here! <3

A/N: PLEASE LOOK AT THE WARNINGS BEFORE YOU READ MORE! This is the first part of what should be two chapters, because I can't stop starting things without finishing them <3

If I miss any tags you think should be there, please let me know!

Full fic under the cut <3

John’s line of work has taught him that people are so, so easy to play with. Know the right person, the right place. Know what to say, who to say it to.

Keeping you safe, under his ever-observant eye, is easy in the barracks and on the field. You don’t make a single move he doesn’t see or hasn’t approved. But when you go home, away from him and his control, he just can’t help but worry. Are you safe, alone in that big, empty house? What do you get up to? Are you eating and drinking? Taking care of yourself? Who do you see? Do you invite anyone around? The idea of another man in your home makes him shudder, and in your bedroom isn’t something he even entertains. John needs to do something about it.

He’s been thinking for a while. Some way to watch you, every waking moment. A permanent eye on the wall. He knows your address; it’s right there in your files. There isn’t a single legal document or piece of information about you that he can’t obtain if he wants to. Every place you’ve lived, your parents, extended family, even your friendship circles. Your school results, community hobbies, bank purchases, every doctors trip – especially your birth control and fertility, he paid very close attention to those details. He knows how to play you; he listens to your grumbling, observes what makes you happy. Notices the moments where you’re less resistant, records what makes you flare up in defensiveness or fury. John is a well-educated man, one who could’ve been a scholar in another life, and he’s decided his favourite topic to study is you.

--- ︻デ═一 ---

“Remember to fill out your forms, lads. New policies coverin’ house insurance and maintenance, let me know if y’need any fixin’ at home.” He hands out the papers, carefully keeping yours separate without being too obvious. Soap’s head bobs up, glancing at you and taking the bait John has set out perfectly. “Oi bonnie, weren’t ye chattin’ ‘bout fixin’ a light o’ somethin’?”

Your face lights up at the mention, a bashful smile gracing your lips, and John would be mad that it’s not in his direction if he wasn’t so satisfied with himself. “I can’t believe you remembered that, yeah! I was going to wait until I got home.”

Gaz hums, hunched over his own form as he signs it. “Maybe Ghost can buy a piece of furniture this year.” His sentence is rewarded with a pen smacking into the side of his head, bouncing off him and onto the table as Ghost snorts in amusement, answering gruffly. “Fuck off, Garrick.”

It never goes wrong, but he still feels smug at how effortless it is to orchestrate an entire conversation before it starts. Getting your signature is as easy as an extra sheet, you can’t even tell the difference. No one reads terms and conditions, and he’s made extra sure you don’t - a couple of edited test forms a few months ago - to rule out the chance.

With the paperwork completed, he contacts the company and gives them a boring, digestible cover story. “Yeah, her husband. Installing cameras, yeah. Keepin’ it safe while we’re both on deployment. Just a light out the back to fix, cameras to install in and outside.”

They’re so quick to listen to the man playing the big, strong head of the house, not a single question about why everything but the payment would be in his ‘wife’s’ name instead. Lying, John finds, is easiest when others do the work for you; give vague details that seem right, and let them come to their own little conclusions. Let them assume you’re some kind of military wife who doddles along behind him, just an obedient little civilian pet while he organises the household. If only they knew what you were and what you did, he thinks. Though still, an obedient little pet is how he would like you. It just takes time to get there.

They come over and install the cameras in less than a week. John’s antsy the day he gets the call that they finished, waiting for it to be over so he can experiment with his new toy. He ignores the questioning looks from his inferiors as he dismisses his last evening meeting early, pushing out the door into the stream of soldiers heading for dinner, only departing from the pack when he reaches his office door.

John prepared a room for this in advance – the moment he set the plan in motion. A room at home, his central control that he could run unmanned and long-distance, circumnavigating his occupancy at the base. It’s almost undetectable; no pesky windows to peek in from the outside, entry hidden behind a locked door in his office. The numerous screens flicker to life, illuminating the room in a blue glow. The cameras are perfect; detailed quality, blur-less zoom. Every angle. It quickly becomes his favourite room to be in, despite only being in it once when he headed home to initially set everything up.

At the base, all he needs is an electronic device and an app to access the command. His favourite to use is his phone, flicking through each screen to take in the rooms, committing each detail and decoration to heart. Though to keep up all professional appearances, he often settles for his laptop, flicking between reports and gazing at the screens with every spare second. John takes the weeks leading up to break to memorise your house, seeing each room flickering on the back of his eyelids as lies in bed, tracing each path you’d take morning and night until he falls asleep.

He protects it. Types your address into his maps app, virtually scouting the neighbourhood to make sense of all your outside cameras, memorising every surrounding street. Plans escape routes, recording positions of defence and any weak spots he could reinforce, windows or vents that are just too easy to wrench open by perverse men like him. Within a month, he knows your house plan like his own; enough to contemplate how he would reorganise it if you wanted him to move in, how many little ones it could hold, tiny feet pattering up and down its hallways.

--- ︻デ═一 ---

When the last week before leave finally comes around, he’s beyond ecstatic. John is a carefully controlled slate around anyone else, but his boys know each twitch of his eyebrow and quirk of his lip. They clue you in to his unusually excited behaviour with teasing jokes and remarks that have him rolling his eyes, gruffly ordering them back to work. Soap is betting on a secret missus, making a point to sneak up behind Price when Soap catches him texting away on his phone.

When he finally arrives home, he’s delighted to see your house is still empty. It gives him time to unpack, running loads of laundry and showering. He keeps an eye on his phone, monitoring the screens until he finishes, bringing a cup of coffee and dinner to his little surveillance room.

The screens fill the wall, a 3x3 set-up that basks the room in a pale glow, yet still isn’t enough to display every camera hidden around your house. Everything is silent, the occasional rumble of a car getting his hopes up, but nothing happens until a few sips of his coffee and an article later. Movement from one of the screen catches his attention, his head straightening to watch your front door swing open.

A bag is the first thing that comes through the door, flung down the hallway with a dull thud. Your figure follows it in, heaving another heavy bag behind you. John frowns at the sight, mindlessly tutting as he crosses his arms. He could be there to do that for you. None of this silly straining yourself.

Leaning back and settling in, he watches how you unravel from your long absence. It pleases him that you’re practical in your return, taking the time to wash your laundry, circulate and dispel all the stagnant air (although Price dislikes seeing your windows open, so unattended), and give the place a general tidy up. There’s a ping from your phone a few times that puts John on edge. Who’s texting you already, when you’ve been back for less than a day? His prominent guess is family and close friends, excited to have their beloved child home and safe, but he can’t help from worrying that he’s wrong. Maybe you’re so pent up that you just can’t help it, using those silly dating apps you talk about with Gaz, eager for someone to unravel all that need within you. Maybe it’s an old friends-with-benefits situation you already have that’s eager to climb back in your bed. Maybe – maybe he should bug your devices.

His deliberations are disrupted as you reward your productivity with what Price thinks to be a party in your bathroom. The small haven of what should be privacy isn’t free from his omniscient gaze, either. He doesn’t care if it’s disgusting; there are no boundaries to him. There isn’t a single side of you he doesn’t want to see, doesn’t want to know.

The music comes through his speakers, some songs he recognises from the long travels spent in transport together. Melodies echo through your room as steam slowly gathers, whisps streaming in and out of his lens view as water slowly fills the bath. You trail from the room, meandering down the hall and grabbing some snacks from the kitchen, filling a glass with a carbonated drink you grab from the fridge. Snug in the corner above the entryway, paired neatly with the fire alarm, his camera catches the way you bend yourself over the counter, distracted by scrolling through some app.

He feels himself throb at the sight, fumbling to take a screenshot of the image. You tease him, staying bent like that as you wait for the bath, your ass swaying occasionally when a trendy song hums from your phone. Disappointment washes through him when you stand up, though he basks in the sight of your stomach peaking from under your shirt as you stretch, but his excitement is quickly renewed when you gather your snacks and head back to the bathroom.

The room has filled with a thick fog that blooms out into the hallway as you open the door. It clouds his vision, leaving him cursing for not considering the possibility. Your darkened figure is hardly visible as you move throughout the room, but from the soft, metallic clicks and flickering of light, he assumes you’re lighting something. Two lights blossom in front of you, remaining behind you as you crouch at the bath and start flicking the lighter again. The cloud has dispersed enough to let John see the fuzzy details of your face, watching as you bring a third candle to your face, inhaling with a hum of delight before you light the flame and return it to the bath’s edge. You strew the candles about the room, leaving a large one to glow on your vanity and putting the other one on your closed toilet lid.

You fiddle with the taps – running cold water, he guesses – and sit on the floor, sorting your snacks onto a long tray as the last of the mist spills from the room. He’s been lucky this time; had you not been treating yourself, taking the time to create a small sanctuary, the fog would’ve concealed any chance of John seeing you at such a vulnerable time. A flaw within his system that requires refinement. Perhaps a flaw he can turn into an excuse to visit you.

His thoughts fall flat when you stand up, slotting the tray into its position over the bath and silencing the taps with a few sharp turns. Finally. The point he’s been anticipating.

The captain waits with bated breath, eager to salivate over his uninvited striptease. It’s far from the first time he’s seen you undress, though it’s the first time you’ve been so beautifully unaware. Close proximity (and the resulting lack of privacy) is just another test of comradery – he’s showered next to you in just underwear and ripped your shirt or pants off to treat a stab wound more times than he can count.

But this time you undress, you don’t stop at your underwear.

There’s no to palaver or parade to your performance – there’s no real performance, just a one-sided show, and that alone has John’s cock aching. Capturing you without filter, pretences or social expectations, no song and dance of captain and soldier. You’re clumsy pulling off your underwear, catching the elastic on your toes and throwing it haphazardly onto the floor with the rest of your clothes through curses and grumbles. Inspecting yourself in the mirror, catching up on each new scar and burn, bending over and peering around to see the state of your backside and between your thighs. This is a side of you he can never glimpse on base, despite all his attempts.

The buzz of your phone distracts you, straightening up with a right, okay! and grabbing the small device, unlocking it to peer at the content as you gingerly slide a foot into the hot, soapy water. Bit by bit, you emerge yourself within the sudsy liquid, minding the tray as you let out an audible groan. John watches you melt into the bubbles, arms resting along the tub as your head falls back.

For a while, the two of you remain like that; John sat comfortably in his chair, ignoring the heat flickering in his lower stomach as he works through some papers, keeping an eye on your relaxed form as you decompress within the hot, sudsy water, picking at the tray of food and drink. His attention slips as the minutes go by, becoming more focused on his work – pushing the aching need between his legs further to the side - as he checks the screen every ten minutes.

The swishing of water becomes a tranquil ambience as you scrub at yourself, low voices from your phone that John doesn’t currently care to make out keeping you entertained through the process. You luxuriate in the tub for much longer than the barrack would ever allow, taking your time to scrub the build-up of product and dead skin that you give little concern during deployment.

A paper absorbs his attention, keeping his eyes occupied as he grumbles through writing. His concentration is only torn away as he finishes scribbling his signature, a sharp, unexpected moan filling his ears that has him looking up so fast his neck cricks. Scanning the screen, he quickly determines that it’s not coming from you – rather, your phone, and is now accompanied by a deep, masculine groan.

Your expression is clear on his screen, a flush to your cheeks as you gaze at your device, hand running along your chest teasingly to tug at a nipple. Whether it’s from the pornographic material playing on your phone or the heat of the water, John can’t tell.

The tent of his pants is already insufferably tight, and he swears there’ll be a zipper print against the red of his aching cock when he pulls it out. He wants to relish this, commit each moment of this first time to memory without the taint of his lust, but he can’t help the growing need between his legs. Ignoring it to finish paperwork, merely bask in the company of your unwinding routine, has been a challenge even for his steeled resolve.

As he watches your hand trail down the soft pudge of your torso, dipping into the bubbly water to follow the rise and dip of your stomach, he breaks. His cock springs out of his briefs like it’s gasping for air, bouncing angrily against his stomach with each haphazard tug at the elastic around his hips. He can only imagine how your fingers work between your legs at that sensitive skin, how you orchestrate your undoing.

The tray holds your phone conveniently, allowing both hands to roam your body, and John thanks his luck for at least the opportunity to watch you pinch and roll your nipples between your fingers. You tug at the sensitive buds with whimpered moans, water sloshing as your hips buck against your hand, teasing John with actions that he can’t see.

He’s damp to the touch as he grips his shaft, fingers immediately sticky with precum that’s been smeared throughout his briefs. Pearlescent beads drool from his tip in a lazy stream, lubricating his motions as he tugs lightly at his foreskin, already teetering the edge of climax. The slightest stimulation has his stomach tightening, listening to your gasps and whines grow in urgency.

You chase your orgasm eagerly, working with a pent up need that comes from the absence of full privacy within the miliary. Convulsions rack through you in synchronisation, moans combining in a harmony he wishes wasn’t separated by the screen. He wants to time it perfectly; fuck up into his fist and release as you reach your own peak, as if a flawless synchronisation is key to unlocking some phantom sensation of being buried between your thighs, clenched down around him.

It doesn’t take much more teasing before you catch up, your tiles wet as water breaches the rim with each careless thrust. The video in front of you has ended, long forgotten as your head lulls back, lost in the sensations that envelope your consciousness that prove to be too much. They push you over the edge with a ragged cry, your knees peaking from the water as your thighs clench around your hand, and John loses himself too.

All it takes it a few weak thrusts into his hand before his balls are tightening, seed spilling in enthusiastic spurts, striping his shirt and pants before it dies down to a dribble that John coaxes out with a groan. He sits there, watching your breathing even out as you wipe away at your mess, spent and catching his breath as the cum dries on his clothes. You’re quick in cleaning up the mess, pulling yourself up on unsteady limbs as you pull the plug, bending down to rinse your hands one last time for John to relish.

He's almost heartbroken when you step out the tub, droplets cascading down to drip from your form, only to reach for a towel to wrap around yourself. The fabric is a slim cover, leaving glimpses of your behind and chest as you dry yourself, humming a tune with a note of content John wishes he brought instead. John tucks himself back into the soiled briefs, shucking off his shirt and pants to wash momentarily, but not before he glimpses you one last time getting changed.

Before you can reach for the underwear placed in advance on the sink and discard your towel, the camera barely picks up the vibration of your phone, catching both his and your attention. Leaning over to the tray, your process is halted by a text on your screen that makes you smile, and whether it’s the drunken, post-orgasmic haze that clouds his mind, or the way it makes him more vulnerable to the surge of jealousy that flares up at your giggle, John finds himself fumbling through the lockscreen and pulling up your contact before he can stop himself.

If you’re not going to think about him during your masturbation, he’s sure as hell going to make sure you think of him after.

Dividers by cafekitsune

[brucewaynehater101]

I just rewatched Batman Begins (I probably haven't seen it in a decade). Some of my reactions:

*Rachel and Bruce start flirting with each other*

Me: "Who the fuck is that? Who's Rachel?"

*Bruce asks for another guy's coat*

Me: "Does he think switching coats suddenly makes him unrecognizable?"

*some bad guy "introduces" Ra's al Ghul*

Me: "Ducard? Is the original guy just Ra's al Ghul pretending to be Ducard?"

*the LoA training scenes happening*

Me: "Where's Talia? Where the fuck is Talia?"

*anytime Alfred is on scene*

Me: "Sassy Alfred is best Alfred. Gods, I love him."

*Bruce waltz up to Falcone in his civilian identity and tries to intimidate him. He gets punched and thrown out on his ass*

Me: "Good for Falcone! What the fuck, Bruce?"

*Doctor Crane appears on scene*

Me: "Scarecrow!!! .... But why is he hot?"

*Lucius Fox*

Me: "Fuck, I love Lucius. Hands down might be the best character in DC."

*Rachel, when asking why Falcone is in Arkham, says something like "I do my job to lock criminals up, not get them therapy."*

Me: "Holy shit. She doesn't believe in rehabilitation? Holy fuck."

*Rachel gets gassed by Fear Toxin. Batman throws her into the Batmobile. He puts his hand across the back of her seat and, while making aggressive eye contact, says "I'll keep you safe" or something.*

Me: "That's freaky as hell. If some strange man in a batsuit kidnapped me while I was high off Fear Toxin and got weirdly intimate with me, I'd be freaking the fuck out."

*Batman reveals he's Bruce Wayne to Rachel*

Me: "What the fuck, Bruce?!? Why? Why did you do that? There's no way Mr. Paranoid would give up his identity to someone within weeks of being Batman. What the fuck?!"

*Ra's and Bruce are fighting on a train. Ra's asks if Bruce has the balls to kill him. Bruce responds with "I won't kill you, but I don't have to save you."*

Me: "What the absolute fuck??? Isn't that against his whole murder policy and guilt complex and shit?"

[hold-him-down]

🌸 - Something that calms them for Leo

tw: noncon drugging, aftermath of violence

notes: follows this piece, just a little drabble.

✥ ✥ ✥ 

“This is ridiculous,” Ivan says. His favorite piece, barely concealed by his shirt, beckons, but if he murders a government employee in cold blood, there will almost certainly be some kind of consequence.

Still, the alternative, handing over his boy for their antiquated bullshit policy and losing precious time when Leo is just starting to learn how to survive here is the most frustrating mother fucking thought he has had the misfortune of thinking in ages.

“He is fine,” Ivan grumbles, gesturing to the boy on the table. Leo's eyes open a little, but Ivan does not think he is taking in the full gravity of the situation. Yes, last night was a challenge, and yes, maybe he is a little more banged up than would be ideal under these circumstances, but he has been on yellow all night and no one has touched him other than to treat his fucking wounds and frankly, Leo would be better off here than at one of the sites. “It is perfectly within my rights to administer punishment,” he says, every time the DLS guy raises an eyebrow at a new injury he sees.

Although Leo can barely move, as the guy tries to lift him at his shoulders, he pulls away abruptly and lets out the sweetest little cry. Ivan thinks he will miss this over the next few days.

“His shoulder,” the shorter guy says to the other one. Ivan rolls his eyes. His shoulder. His ankles. His ribs. The tall one is more careful in his second attempt to lift his boy, but Leo does not hold back the sharp cry as they continue to disregard Mikhail’s notes on the matter.

“Sorry, kid,” the DLS guy says and continues to lift him in spite of the fact that it clearly is hurting him. Ivan is not positive, but he thinks the fact that these men think they can hurt his boy without his permission is an offense in itself, and maybe violence would be justified here.

His thoughts are interrupted as Leo’s cries soften to a whimper, and even in his drugged out haze, he continues to squirm in the man’s grip.

“He does not like you,” Ivan says sharply. Neither of them seem to appreciate his commentary, but Ivan is simply stating facts. “I think he would prefer to stay.” 

Ivan smiles at the thought, and his smile widens as Leo breaks free, rolling forward. "You see?" Ivan continues, his tone mostly amused. "You're upsetting him." The boy does not know up from down right now. If he did, Ivan thinks, he would be more amenable to their plans. 

Still, the one guy, the DLS doctor, says, “I can give him something to level him out.” They disregard Ivan entirely, even though he would tell them that Leo does not like, nor require, drugs, and just moments after they give him the medicine, his body gives out. It's almost time now, Ivan thinks.

He approaches his boy quickly, leaning over the boy and planting his lips on Leo’s forehead. 

“I’ll see you in a couple days,” he whispers, but notes the look that passes between the DLS fuckers. 

As they take his boy away, Ivan feels a great sense of loss wash over him. He watches as the car reverses down the long driveway and wonders, idly, how he will pass the time now.

[sapphia]

Can I get more info about what's going on in nz? I watch global news regularly and nothing about this has come up and I find this highly disturbing.

we elected a neoliberal nightmare of a government who are destroying our health system, water system, ferry and rail system, environment and democracy for profit. people are literally dying in hospitals because there is no doctor in hospitals in multiple rural towns and they just have a consultation on an ipad. the government are trying to frame Health NZ as having a budget deficit of 1.5 billion when in reality that deficit exists because they provided like 3 billion dollars with of tax cuts they couldn’t afford. National cuts spending to health every time they get in government and the disjointed DHB system has been unable to keep up financially with the growing population and health needs.

i personally have just been FUCKED by national as for the last two years i have been navigating our labyrinth of a health system, not working due to being intensely suicidal, trying to find therapy to get better and there just isn’t any available. so i payed for a private autism diagnosis to try and access funding for therapy through the ministry of disability and also get under their umbrella because they actually treat you like a person there and also don’t actively seem to want you dead like they do in the mental health system. but the process took so long that by the time i got my diagnosis and through the referral system, national had yoinked the funding and deemed that therapy will no longer be covered by the disability funding system. all therapies. for disabled people.

oh also they’re like trying to start a race war or something as both minor parties in the 3-way coalition government are trying to negate the Treaty of Waitangi in law, and they’re also attacking the judiciary and had to be told to stop by our attorney general, who they ignored obviously.

our prime minister answers every question with “i say to you” followed by just a literal lie, they’re all just lying through their teeth, i literally have an OIA request about when David Seymour, our deputy-PM-in-waiting (don’t ask) said that preschool education needed to be reviewed because they were being prevented from teaching phonics. they’re not. someone just expressed concern that that might be happening to him, and apparently he is basing government policy on that?? or at least using it to falsely justify it to the nation.

their ideas are all bad and disproven by evidence-based studies, despite their slogan being “we’re going to make evidence-based decisions”. New Zealand has hit a funding wall where we’ve kicked the can too far down the road on like everything and it’s all starting to collapse at once and this government are not only letting it happen, they’re actively helping it along because they’ve all got shares in private rival companies or mates they want to give contracts to (our former national PM got paid insane money to write an insanely biased report attacking our ministry of social housing) or they’ve had their careers helped along by lobbying firms or they want to work for lobbying firms after they leave parliament.

the speaker of the house (who is right now being accused of not dealing with racism within his own party because of course he isn’t, he’s gerry fucking brownlee, the most hated man in christchurch) has allowed lobbyists unprecedented unrecorded entry to parliament. the minister for conservation keeps “forgetting” to write his lobby dinners in his diary. one of them told an mp “he’s not in mexico anymore”. no one is getting in trouble for this shit while the left are being raked over the coals. there’s like so much more. no one can keep up. and nothings being done about it.

tldr; help

[elvenbeard]

WIP WEDNESDAY

Yes I'm actually doing this on a Wednesday wooo :D

I just went back through all my tags of the last month and man, you guys ;__; <3 I'm not good at keeping up with tumblr atm and I don't have something to share every week, so I think once a month a WIP Wednesday might be a good compromise XD Thank you for all the tags!!

@theviridianbunny @dreamskug @ouroboros-hideout @lokiina @therealnightcity @chevvy-yates tagging you all right back!

So, with that off of my list of works in progress, as is answering all the tag games and quizzes, some projects I'm working on atm:

Writing: Love is stored in the olive jar (WT) - Chapter 13

It's done, but still needs a lot of editing, as it got very heavy on dialogue in the end and I want it all to flow more nicely and make it a bit more scenic XD Too many instances of "she looked up again" or "he paused for a moment/second" xD But I'm getting there! Here's a snippet from the already somewhat polished beginning:

“Alright,” Fuentes said as she finally caught her breath again, “I suggest we cut straight to the chase.” “Yes,” V nodded, “Thank you again for taking the time.” “Of course,” Fuentes nodded, “I have to admit, I have been thinking about you and your case a lot these past days. Even with the limited knowledge I have so far, I still believe I may be able to help. If you are willing now to tell me more about your condition now, of course.” ‘Willing’ wasn’t the word V would use, it was more a necessity at this point. “I will,” he said, “But only if you can provide me with a certain level of security.” Fuentes shifted in her chair slightly and frowned, then she opened one of the drawers of her desk and pulled out a tablet. She turned it on and began to search for something on it while maintaining eye contact with V as best as she managed. “You’ve come here today as my patient. As far as I’m concerned, everything, anything that we discuss, falls under the doctor-patient confidentiality. My contract with the Little China MedCenter binds me to treat your data and information with utmost care and discretion. All data we store is locked away securely, all in accordance with your Trauma Team policy. I can resend you the patient information papers and contracts, although I think most of them you should already have…” “I care less about the MedCenter than about what you personally do with the information I’m going to give you,” V said, and Fuentes stopped her search, narrowing her eyes slightly. “I’m not sure what you’re alluding to,” she said, still polite, but significantly more tense than before. “Nothing,” V shook his head carefully, “This is just not something I tell random strangers on the street… no offense, of course. If I have to play with open cards, I need you to as well.”

In which Vince hates doctors but has to trust one now, boo XD

Writing: Some drabbles :3

Inbetween the longfic I still have some ask prompt drabbles to fill that I'm looking forward to tackling soon! And in a sudden burst of inspiration I wrote out a long although not very serious convo between Vince and Johnny the other day xD I'd love to turn it into a (VP) comic maybe, but I'm not sure yet XD

Art: Nothing new since last time, slowly chipping away at some bigger projects inbetween

VP: Currently no concrete plans for a bigger project

Although I wanna do more "days in the life" for Vince!! And I wanna play around more with some poses though and have a very soft set to share that I gotta edit a bit still ;_; Tomorrow probably!

Also, I'd like to turn the interface thingies from my recent "V as NPC" projects into shareable templates, that is also on my wip/ to-do list! Just wanna gather some in-game reference shots first :D

Modding: 👀👀👀

I'm working on a little something maybe, and I'm so excited :DDD Just gotta relearn how to do Archive XL, it's been half a year xD And I fought MLSetup Builder so fucking hard, but now I know how to edit MLMask Setups, so that's a victory at least XD And I have a base for a very kitschy coat :3

But yes, so much to that so far! See you again in a month or so probably with an ever-growing pile of wips xD But maybe some more writing, maybe some more art, and maybe a finished mod after too long 👀

[hellionhpau]

Request for Help

Hey guys. In compliance with AO3's policy, I'm posting this here on my private blog for this fic. I ask that if nothing else, you read and share!

So, this is not only embarrassing but also extremely difficult and saddening on my part. Unfortunately, I don't have a chapter update for you, but I am reaching out publicly to ask for help. Please read this whole thing before you dismiss this because I am in seriously bad shape here and am rapidly running out of options.

To hear a fuller story, you're free to reach out to me personally. If nothing else, if any of you can share that around, it would be a huge help.

Here's the low down, and some of you who have been with me from the beginning know some of it. So, in short order over a span of a little over a year: covid hit, I lost my job, I lost my house, my mother got extremely sick (not with covid), my sister, her family, and I move in together to help take care of her and to financially support each other. Turns out my sister's husband is a complete asshat, and it was a very abusive home for the year I lasted there. Shortly after I moved out, my mother died, my dog died, and then my grandmother died right before Christmas. Both my mom and my grandmother were my two biggest maternal figures of my life, so you can imagine the blow. Add to it, I was just staying with a friend, was making shit money, and spiraled into a bad, bad depression. 

That's why I was gone for a year lol. I tried to pick myself up and became roommates with another friend. We had grand plans to move to the city and start great lives. However, it didn't work out. Suffice to say that neither of us were who the other thought we were. It ended on friendly terms, and thankfully, we hadn't made the jump to the city or I would have been fucked, man.

Things were looking up from there, but my depression wouldn't go away. I ended up staying too long at that shit job, then moved to factory work, and now I'm working two fucking jobs day in and out. I'm burning at both ends, and it's just not enough to cover the bills I'm still paying off for those two horrible years, my mother's funeral and burial, not to mention medical bills.

Right now, I can't pay my rent. I can't afford food, and I've been struggling to get on food assistance. I can't pay my therapist or doctor. And now this month, thanks to coming to head with some of the earlier mentioned debt (ie, my mother's gravestone), I don't know how the hell I'm supposed to pay my electric and phone bill, let alone afford the gas to get to my second job. I was so, so close to getting ahead of everything, and I just can't get over that edge…

I want to make this very, very clear—this is not me soliciting in any way. That is to say, this is not in any way, shape, or form requesting payment for anything I do on here. It's just my way of trying to reach out to anyone wanting to help a dude out.

I do want you guys to know I have no plans on abandoning this fic. Just the other day, I made time to pick through chapter six, adding in an extra ghoul scene for you. Also, you guys are hilarious. I give you an awesome adventure into Muggle London with Draco sodding Malfoy, and you guys were just like "i love the ghoul!"

Don't blame ya. I love them too. Don't worry, I had originally planned on the ghoul having more scene time in this than canon. Anything creature related, you know Hellion's going to be all over it lol.

If you took the time to read all this, thank you. It's embarrassing, having to ask for help, but I'm officially at the begging strangers position. Please, please, help if you can, even if it's just a dollar or sharing this.

For anyone interested, my paypal is paypal@deanjharrison or https://www.paypal.me/deanjharrison

Or this one: https://www.gofundme.com/f/dean-and-pets-recover-financially

Thanks, you guys! I appreciate you just taking the time to read this.

[thegeminisage]

ok it's star trek update time. once again. i've fallen behind 💀 tuesday we did voy's "the cloud" and "phage" (out of order bc plex numbered them incorrectly/user error), wednesday we did ds9's "dentiny" and voy's "eye of the needle," and last night we watched ds9's "prohphet motive" and voy's "ex post facto."

the cloud (voy):

man this one sucked ass

well, i did like janeway's personal log. i love women getting to have the same normal problems a man would. i like janeway a lot, even if she still feels a bit stiff to me sometimes

actually, WAIT, why is the academy TEACHING captains they need to maintain a certain distance? like sure yes it's a bad idea to fuck your subordinates (even though picard said there was NO?? regulation on that...) but surely you're supposed to like. care about them. between this and deanna winning the kobayashi maru by killing geordi i'm starting to wonder if starfleet expects captains to simply not CARE about people. there's something larger at work in my brain re: this thought, like, kirk was always going on missions himself to protect people despite that putting him greater danger, and now they don't want captains to leave the chair or care about people...hell universe. and since picard never left the chair or cared about anyone it may have made for good policy but it made for BAD tv

ANYWAY.

accidentally got spoiled for neelix being the cook bc of reverse ep order lol

tom paris once again insufferable bc he's like dont invite the captain to poker night or whatever. for a rebellious felon he's really toeing that starfleet line. also, the LAST thing in the world i want is more holodeck but ESPECIALLY if i have to watch tom paris make out with realfake holo women on it. HOLO PEOPLE ARE ALIVE YOU FOOLS

i thought this episode was gonna be about coffee and it wasn't :( it was just a few jokes here and there

the nebula plot was stupid. you ram a hole in it and you're gonna fix it by ramming more holes? neelix is the only mfer that gets it. that said, i DO support women's rights to ram ill-advised things through holes - whenever, however, and as often as they like.

chakotay teaching janeway to find her animal guide (complete with the medicine bundle...) being played TOTALLY straight and serious just about ended me. like i knew they werent gonna be like "haha just kidding you are a REALLY gullible white person" at the end but watching them not do that was really really awful

harry kim just casually dropping he remembers being in the womb. alright.

janeway muting the doc when he is trying to speak :( holo-racist

i do like that firstly harry was like fuck tom paris im inviting janeway and secondly that she can play pool really well. those were nice touches. the non-racist janeway stuff was good! i just wish the rest of the episode had been good too lol

phage (voy):

i liked this one MUCH better. first of all, neelix in the cave about to get his lungs stolen very "mistew obama pwease hewp me" core. then perish. rip in pieces poor neelix :(

secondly, what an interesting ethical dilemma...can you kill a person to save a person? not in starfleet ig but if i was janeway i would have been real tempted. neelix is great

kes giving up one of her lungs to neelix was so sweet, actually. kes has grown on me a HUGE amount in a very very short time. i absolutely love her kindness, which was boring at first because i didn't really feel like she was being kind in a way that stood out from any run of the mill compassionate character. but her scenes with the doctor bring out the best in both of them, i think - like, he kicks her out initially, and then asks her to stay because he's in over his head. and rather than dismissing him she stays and asks if he wants to unionize. the fact that she's DETERMINED to treat him as a fully realized person when he doesn't even treat himself that way...she recognizes unmet needs and works to fix them, just because that's who she is. AUGH she's such a good personnn she;s gonna make a GREAT doctor

lung stealing aliens are way cooler than the slaver aliens even if they are horrible to look at. i LOVE how mad janeway got at them. she was like if i EVER see you again its on sight and i believe her. and she scared them so good they fixed neelix <3 kinda goes to show compassion wins...and that kind of compassion/adherence to morals in the face of personal loss and righteous anger IS a kirk move honorific. and winning because of those qualities is a kirk move. ugh i like janeway so much

"one day i'll surprise you mister tuvok" i love them. wah. tuvok reminds me SO much of spock...he's got that eyebrow thing happening

also, neelix getting his lungs removed totally makes this the spiritual sequel to spock's brain

destiny (ds9):

the whole time i was watching this i felt like sokka in that one atla episode. "can your science prove why it rains" core. like just because there are three cardassians and some river went somewhere...it's especially galling to me that kira buys into it completely. i always forget she's religious, and she's so SMART i didn't think she'd get caught up in the prophecy of it all.

recited the 35th rule of acquisition alongside quark which felt. bad. i still haven't forgiven him but i'm trying

cardassian lady accidentally flirting with obrien was EXTREMELY funny. that's twice now he's banged his head on the ceiling and it's incredibly charming

kira and sisko being buddies 🥺 kira like it's had to work for space jesus!!! so true girl. though she literally was sleeping with a space priest. their bits were sooo good though, you can FEEL how much he doesn't want the enormity of his role, and how much kira believes in him - and i personally get the sense it's because she's SEEN him work. like she believes in him on a professional level, as well, because he ALWAYS has her back. man i would totally believe he was space jesus too who can blame her he's amazing

i did at least like the rational explanation for the prophecies- that nonlinear aliens simply just tell people things. i do wonder why they can't just knock on the wormhole and ask those guys some questions, though

anyway, firmly mid. normally i love kira-heavy episodes but i just had such a hard time not going full sokka in this one. sorry, kira!

eye of the needle (voy):

THIS ONE BLEW MY TITS CLEAN OFF!! best voyager episode yet imho

firstly we are still sending things through holes. fantastic.

also, kes went from "eh she is boring" to "i would die for her" at warp speed......her scenes with the doctor are all SO good. kes recognizing his humanity when most people in starfleet don't know holograms are alive/don't care that holograms are alive, when HE HIMSELF does not think of himself as being alive...mwah. david cage wishes. it feels like an inverse of the data situation, because data WANTED to be alive but struggled to fit in with humanity, whereas the doctor didn't give two shits about being treated like a real person until kes started talking to him about it, and would in fact fit in effortlessly with "real people" were he not confined to the medbay.

and the doctor's bitterness! no one speaks directly to him despite asking him to function as an entire medical staff. no one remembers to turn him off, leaving him to suffer through hours of boredom, or people turn him off when he isn't ready, leading to problems with his experiments. and the existential dread of being abandoned on the ship alone while everyone else potentially transports home through the wormhole...and someone potentially forgetting to deactivate him first.

i really like how janeway reacted to the news that the doctor might be alive. she was like "girl no way" and then kes was like "yes way" and she decided to investigate herself rather than be dismissive about it. she was very good in this episode overall but i like that she showed compassion to someone/something she wasn't even sure was alive. it was very siskocore of her.

and finally...that sweet a-plot. letswatchstartrek, my least favorite website that is absolute essential to my functioning, GAVE THIS A TWO. because "well it's season 1 we all know they aren't getting home this episode." those fucking idiots, that's WHY this episode is good!! it's about hope. do they understand nothing

like, everyone trying SO HARD to curb their expectations at first because the wormhole is so small and so decayed and the absolute MOST they can hope for is to get a message through...the agony of the wormhole going back to where they need to be but them not being able to get through and the only person picking up the phone being a FUCKING romulan who think they're prank calling him

and the way that like this predicament utterly humanizes everyone involved. janeway answering the phone in her nightgown. asking about this romulan's family. the barriers between starfleet and romulus breaks down instantly under the shared connection of being adrift without one's family. what a perfect illustration of the compassion one can have for strangers because deep down even aliens are made of the same stuff as we are.

and then of course by the end janeway is like it doesn't matter! secrecy doesn't matter! let's have hope for a minute let's believe this will work! and then IT DOESN'T WORK. or, actually, what's worse is that it could work, they could theoretically go back to the alpha quadrant 20 years ago, but it will fuck everything up if they do, and they can't even prevent themselves from getting stuck out here. all they can do is send the romulan home with their messages and then..........

............have no idea if he found a way to send them before he died ahead of schedule. like. ALL THEY HAVE IS HOPE. like of COURSE you know theyre not gonna get home in season 1 but THAT IS WHAT MAKES IT INSANE.

also, hi, b'elanna not having anyone at home who cares if she lives or dies...this retroactively makes chakotay's protectiveness of her so much more meaningful. everyone who loves her is already on this ship :( aaaagggh

prophet motive (ds9):

god this one sucked so bad. rare L for ds9 and a major one at that

i spent most of it googling whether or not people actually liked the ferengi episodes (to my dismey: yes, people on reddit think they're funny), but i also spent some time googling how many more episodes we had to suffer through this grand nagus bullshit (4) and getting my little guys stolen on chess.

i have been wanting to see the wormhole aliens again FOREVER and wondered why you can't just go and talk to them and then they show up in this of all places...they so nicely let people go through their wormhole and then this dude disrespectfully bothers them...

also, to SELL an orb back to the bajorans...i hope he dies. i hope kira specifically kills him and loots the orb off his corpse.

the only two moments of note in this episode were 1. quark talking ancient unknowable aliens into letting him and the nagus leave unscathed through a combination of fast thinking and being annoying, which would be charming were i not in such dire anti-quark straits 2. rom robbing the nagus blind LMAOOO good for him. i hope he shared exactly zero of it with quark

on a final note, the space station, unlike tng's enterprise, does NOT seem to be self-cleaning. thank god for that.

EDIT I NEARLY FORGOT JULIAN BASHIR B PLOT!!!!! he wanted to win so bad even though he knew there wasnt a chance 🥺 my poor HORRIBLY competitive fella. and then it was three days of marinating in the fact that he was never gonna win

also odo cold reading him about the acceptance speech lmfao. love that

ex post facto (voy):

i would have liked this episode a LOT if it had happened to anyone but tom paris. imagine if a guy you liked had special brain torture every 14 hours even though he was totally innocent and only a mind meld from tuvok could save him. like, picture almost any other trek character in this situation. bashir. riker. even bones. any of them could maybe perhaps do a little kissing of a married woman and get themselves into trouble and it would be one of my favorite episodes of all time. even the plot twist of WHY he was falsely accused was fun and clever. unfortunately, i simply cannot bring myself to care about tom paris.

tuvok my best friend tuvok. he DID HIS HOMEWORK! the eyebrow movements, the way he did the mind meld from the same position that spock melded with dr van gelder in dagger of the mind my beloved. all these things are unmistakably vulcan because leonard nimoy did them first and SPOCK is unmistakably vulcan, despite all his lifelong insecurities. now that i've met other vulcans properly i know that better than ever and i wish he could too.

ALSO, HI, MARRIED 67 YEARS??? lowkey sad he and janeway can't get it now but also, do we think he has BABIES? do we think he has GRANDBABIES?? grandpa tuvok my best friend AAAGHGH. also, since this series is 7 years long and also because of a spoilery gifset EYE happen to know pon farr is inevitable. but i bet his wife had to fix it herself back home too so ik she will forgive him

anyway, if i was innocent, there's no one i'd rather have on my side than tuvok. he went above and beyond the call of duty there. i was really surprised he powered through the meld and experienced being murdered so well. i mean he took that like a champ. that's on vulcan stoicism...also AUGH janeway INSISTING he not do that bc she knows it will be horrible and the long time she spent searching his face before finally agreeing to it. i would never want him to cheat on his wife but they could also theoretically hypothetically get it.

and finally, CUTEST dog in the world this episode. it's so odd looking it does such a great job at jumping around everywhere

TONIGHT: ds9's "visionary" and voy's "emanations"

[morriguwrites]

written for prompt: the cops have brought me in for bloodwork for a DWI and oh no my ER nurse is really hot and I'm a fuckup

(cross-posted from my main blog before i created this one. sometimes i write a little dry humor when i'm sick of writing angst or romance)

written for @xenascribbles because it wanted a little humor in its day, and this is the best i can come up with

I just would like to point out that there's no real sane reason to keep a hospital this frigid when it's already 15 degrees outside. I know it's something about keeping germs at a minimum, but rationalizing isn't exactly my forte when I'm busy trying to come off as not-drunk when I’m oh-so-very drunk.

Hammered.

Blitzed.

Gone.

The deputy who has me in cuffs is barely older than I and not convinced. We stood outside for nearly an hour waiting on the warrant to obtain my bloodwork; I'm just happy it's saved me from the holding tank a little bit longer. At least here I can try to catnap some of this booze out of my system.

I still can't figure out how they knew to pull me over. I wasn't speeding, and my constant drunken mantra of "Mustard. Mayo. Stay in the middle" ensured the fact that I was not swerving or drifting in and out of lanes. Hell, I drive better drunk than I do sober.

All I can figure is that they were tailing me as I pulled out of the bar's parking lot. Profiling bastards! This is my first DWI offense and definite overkill on their part. Besides an absolute fuckton of Patron, there is nothing else swimming in my bloodstream.

Speaking of swimming, I must lay my head against the gurney to keep the room from going all topsy-turvy. I wonder if doctors and nurses operate on some kind of backwards fantasy time where two hours really feels like ten minutes to them because besides the triage nurse at the front desk, we haven't seen a living soul since being showed to the room. No skin off my back: the cop gets to get out of the cold, and I'm not sitting pretty behind bars yet. Also, I’m pretty sure it’s against some policy to haul in someone the opposite gender of you. He’s a six foot two giant beanpole of a man, and I’m just a little five foot barely two inches off the ground lesbian woman. What the hell kinda intimidation am I gonna pull on him?

I'm barely drifting off when a feminine voice announces the presence of my nurse. I crack open my eyes with much effort. And whoaaa nelly, this is my nurse. I don't want to diminish her beauty by telling you I was peering through some mighty hefty beer goggles, but Christ, was she radiant.

One side of her short, blonde hair was tucked behind an ear, freckles dusted over a cute button nose, and a bright smile to kill for. Talent truly wasted in the dungeon that is this emergency room, that's for sure. She wraps a blood pressure cuff around my upper arm, and surprisingly her hands are not ice-cold despite the cliché that all medical worker's hands stay sterile and freezing.

"Frann---Frances," I slur from her name badge. "I only know of old men and bulldogs named Frances." The thought leaves my mouth before I can stop it and leaves me nearly biting my tongue in two. Fuck. Why am I the way that I am? Thankfully, she smirks in response and cuts her eyes in my direction. Brown eyes. Beautiful.

"It's a family name. After my grandmother."

"Is your grandmother as pretty as you?"

"Jesus." The deputy beside me mutters the oath under his breath as if he also can't fathom the inner workings of my debauched mind. Trust me, my dude, I can’t either.

Thankfully, she takes this in stride and chuckles. “I think she probably was back in her day.” The blood pressure cuff inflates tightly on my arm for a few moments before giving her back a reading she seems satisfied with.

“So, what brings you in tonight?” She knows, and she knows that I know she knows, but I imagine it must be some hospital protocol to ask the patient why they’re there when we clearly told the triage nurse at the front desk the same thing.

“Deputy High-and-Tight here wants some of my blood,” I slur and jab a thumb over my shoulder to the uniform. “Cop by day. Vampire by night. His delicate policeman sensibilities keep him from feeding directly on his victims. So, he drags them in to the ER to get it “legally””. I heavily air-quote the legally portion. Fucking cops.

My narrative does not phase him one bit. “Go on. Tell her how you got here.”

I roll my head on my shoulders and smirk like the little piss-ant that I am. The rolling of the head bit also makes the room spin a little. “Hey, I might be the drunk one, but I’m pretty sure we got HERE in YOUR car. I could be wrong. Could have been a magic carpet ride.”

My mind instantly goes back to other carpet rides I’ve experienced, and I swing my head back towards the pretty lady in the room. She’s still smiling. That’s good. She’s either laughing with me or laughing at me. Either way, if I have her attention I’m golden.

“I think I blew a point ohhh…what was it again, dude…point oh twelvish. That sounds about right. So on the scale of legality, I was nearly able to drive.” I try to stick up for myself on this one. I really was almost at the legal limit. If I had just spent the few extra minutes fishing out my keys from where they dropped under the seat, I might not be in this predicament.

Speaking of dicks, my friend speaks up again. “Nearly able and able are not the same thing. You were drifting into the median.”

“Bullllllshit, dude. I’m a great driver.” I say this emphatically to my nurse, who nods all very serious-like. I hadn’t noticed before, but she was prepping a sterile butterfly needle and specimen tube and already coming at my arm with an alcohol swab.

“Woah, woah, woah. Can you at least take me out to dinner first?!” I try to hold my arm still to the best of my ability, but it keeps drunkenly fish-tailing itself off my leg to flop beside me on the gurney. She finally laughs out loud at this and holds it deftly with her forearm while her hand stabilizes the spot she’s about to poke at.

“Sure. I’m not a fan of Italian or Chinese buffet food. I like burgers, hibachi, and Mexican, though.”

Wait…what? Did that actually work? I was so not expecting that shit to work.

“As long as you don’t get this plastered during our dinner, yeah, it worked.”

Ho-lee crap. I said that out loud. For the first time during this encounter, I feel a flush of embarrassment ride up my neck. Shit. She said yes. What do I do now? I look to Deputy Bust-my-Balls for moral support, and even he looks super surprised that my plan worked. However, he offers no other encouragement on my front.

“Well, sweet. Here, write your number on my arm since I’m pretty sure my phone is in his pocket. Next week sound good? I’ll probably be downtown for a few days, but don’t let that be an opportunity for you to back out, okay? I’ll be a free woman before you know it.” I rush to get all this out coherently before I lose my train of thought.

She finishes getting the vial of blood she needed, and deftly scribbles out her name and cell on the inside of my arm. I stare dumbly at it as if it were going to grow a pair of legs and walk off. 

“It was nice to meet you. Stay out of trouble!” she states, standing up. Before her cute little tush leaves the room, she jerks her head at the cop. “Don’t give him such a hard time, okay? He’s just doing his job.”

I glare at him once she’s left and laugh to see that he’s also blushing. Feeling real proud of myself, I kick my legs up on the gurney and get comfortable. “You work all weekend, Moustache?”

“Un-fucking-fortunately.” He sighs heavily. If I were him and had to deal with me, I’d sigh too.

“Nah, it’s going to be a good weekend.”

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

The Tories Are Out of Power At Last! Thank Fuck For That!

Good news has been pretty thin on the ground lately. Climate change, the wanton destruction of the arable land we need to survive, slow-motion population collapse and the continuing not-good-enoughness of Doctor Who have all contrived to make it feel like we’re living at the end of the world. We’re not. We’ll come within a hair’s breadth of total systemic failure and then finally think to ourselves “oh yeah! We have technological solutions for all of this shit just gathering dust! Maybe we should implement them” and pull our arses out of the fire with literal seconds to spare, like we always do. Because we’re fucking idiots and it’s amazing we ever got as far as inventing fire. The point is, though, that we could all use a win right now, and my country just got one, in the form of the General Election. That’s right! Yesterday, Britain went to the polls and finally said “Okay, enough of this bullshit!” and voted out the monsters who have been making life progressively worse for everyone for a decade and a half.

For those of you who don’t live in Britain and weren’t paying attention, what I mean is that the Conservative Party got booted out of power and replaced with New Labour (in the person of new Prime Minister Keir Starmer). Now, it’s very hard to get excited about Keir being in charge, because he’s basically an unflavoured block of budget margarine sculpted into a vague man-shape by an unskilled and uncaring wizard. He’s essentially inoffensive in the grand scheme of things. However, he’s also a marked improvement on any Tory and particularly Rishi Sunak, a psychopathic urinary condition in a suit. The whole Conservative Party is a basically just a cavalcade of murderous, unrepentant torturers and serial killers whose policies are geared entirely towards short-term personal profit at the cost of countless human lives. We’re talking about a group of irredeemable maniacs who have spent nearly fifteen years defunding the NHS (the social healthcare system that keeps us all alive), turning away leaky rafts full of desperate asylum seekers (and thereby condemning the, directly, to death), trying to replace the disability benefits on which the most vulnerable depend with fucking vouchers and drafting legislation to let them spy on the bank accounts of people surviving on social securities (while taking the word of multi-billionaires that they don’t owe any tax, honest). The nature of evil is a hotly debated topic among philosophers and psychologists, but nobody who’s lived in Britain for the past few electoral cycles and possesses both a heart and a brain needs to debate it: we’ve fucking lived under it. So yes, I am overjoyed to see the back of the pricks. My hatred of the Conservatives runs deep and I’d cheer for pretty much anyone scoring a victory over those inbred, fatuous, vacuous, toffee-nosed, vile, slithering, subhuman reptiles and the system of callous profiteering they represent. When I heard, this morning, that Britain was finally free of the monsters and the constant threat they posed to the lives of the poor, I felt as though a literal weight had been lifted. I’m not being hyperbolic: I actually felt a physical change, as though some part of me had been under pressure, struggling against the crushing mass of governmental incompetence and malice that hung, eternally, over my head.

Of course, none of this is to say I think Britain is about to magically become a better place. The same people who just voted the Tories out also voted them in in the first, and they’re not giving them the bum’s rush now because they’ve suddenly become better people and realised that electing sociopaths is wrong. They’ve just noticed that their groceries are costing more and drawn the inescapable conclusion that voting for morons with no economic management skills was a mistake. Meanwhile, Keir Starmer’s Labour is not the same animal as Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour. If Labour had been voted into power with Corbyn at its head, we might actually have seen some repairs made to the country I… well, I was about to say ‘country I love’, but ‘country I have to live in and slightly prefer to America on the notional level’. But Keir’s not really in the political game to make the world a better place. I don’t actually know what he wants. Functionally, he’s just a placeholder: the Westminster equivalent of a paper plate with a face drawn on it and a developer’s sticky note saying “ACTUAL PRIME MINISTER GOES HERE”. I’m happy he’s in charge instead of any member of the Conservative party, but not because he’ll make things better. I’m just pleased he won’t make things worse. For the next five years, my country will stay exactly as shit as it already is instead of sliding into greater depths of rudderless villainy. I’m also ecstatic because the evil cunts who have been trying to kill me and the people I care about for a 1.5 decades have just been told, roundly, to fuck off, and because they’re such overprivileged wankers, I have to assume that came as a terrible shock to them. So that’s something to celebrate.

Look, if all this seems a little dour for a ‘celebration’ blog post… it is. The people of Britain were offered something better than the current administration and took it, and that’s a cause for joy. However, the thing they were offered, while infinitely preferable to the Cuntservatives, still wasn’t that great, so our joy has to be tempered a little.

Here’s to at least five years of basically acceptable and mercifully ineffectual government.

[transwicky]

HMM HMM HMM

A Vampire AU nobody wants

Vampires are common knowledge. They can be born or bitten (don’t ask me the logistics). They co exist (mostly) peacefully with humans. None have been part of government or anything (yet), but they’ve got equal rights and all, and the only segregated sports are peewees and high school sports, because they’re still developing their powers and all, so it’s literally safer then, but in college it’s all integrated, and professional sports? They don’t give a shit, most of the players literally protested and had a strike until they made a policy allowing vampires to play professional sports.

Small towns, however, are still 99% human, and some are completely human.

Some cities are completely human, in smaller states. In Red States*.

Tango’s in a smaller town. Almost always overcast with clouds, and if not, there’s so many trees around, you rarely ever see the sun anyways.

It’d be a good place for them, but it’s primarily Catholic.

There’s no vampires there.

He doesn’t know they exist.

He hears a scream, one day, his senior year in high school. He was raised right by his Mama, so he goes running to help the woman who screamed.

A large woman, face covered in blood, is bent over the other, whose throat is ripped out.

He wakes up in a hospital, to everyone shocked he woke up, because they had just unplugged him from life support.

When the priest from their church comes in to pray for his speedy recovery, the man recoils, and cries out that he’s one of the devil’s children.

His mother sighs, goes not this again - he’s just queer, Father Liam!.

His Nonna simply passes him a silver coin, when it’s just them.

It burns and itches, and he has a rash, when he drops it onto the hospital bed two minutes later.

“Nonna?”

“It seems you have a silver allergy, tesoro**.” Nonna simply says.

Life continues on.

Nonna gives him special medicine, to help him heal. Says she got it from the doctors at the hospital.

Church makes his skin crawl, he doesn’t know why. Nonna won’t let him anoint himself with the holy water*** when they enter the church now, either. His rosary gives him a rash.

He asks Nonna what’s happening. She smiles sadly.

“Just some changes, tesoro.” Is her response. She refuses to tell her grandson he’s a vampire, that he died, and was no longer the human boy he was before.

So Tango doesn’t know vampires exist. It isn’t until he goes to Samwell University, and he gets intense sunburn, and Ollie and Holster see him burning, and cover him with their umbrellas immediately.

“Who the hell let you out without fucking covering up?” Holster asked, and Tango looks at him, confused.

“I... always get burned...?” Tango said, confused.

“Shit. Holster, I don’t think he knows.” Ollie said.

“Oh my god, who the hell sent him away to college without telling him he’s a vampire!?”

“What? Guys, vampires don’t exist?” Tango is very confused.

“Oh my god, he’s- oh my god. Haus, now.”

Tango spends the rest of the day in the Haus, being told about vampires, and the real stories of them - Holster was born, Ollie was bitten, Dex was bitten right before college, part of his issues, you know? - and as he’s being told, everything slowly clicks into place.

“... Guys... I think I died...?”

*Red State: Republican

** means treasure in Italian

*** Catholic thing. dip finger in holy water and do sign of cross on yourself.

[kankuroplease]

Could you share some Shisui hc, if you have any, pls?

On one hand; Shisui is ruthless when it comes to working for the Uchiha. He doesn’t care about pleases of mercy, agonizing screams, he’s not squeamish about blood, etc.

He’d only be dealing with them in that manner if the royally fucked up, so the blame is on them in his opinion

And on the other; he’s all smiles and jokes. No one really knows what to make of him

While everyone one is playing checkers, Shisui has been playing chess since he was 10.

Madara had all the money and power, so he plotted his own adoption by the leader of the Uchiha. Taking knife to the gut defending him was a small price to pay for opening the golden doors of opportunity

And although he admires Madara, he’s never truly seen him as his father. Just the boss he respects and wants the job of

He encouraged Obito to focus on going pro for both their benefits one less person for him to compete with and the sweet idiot would be less likely to die and break his heart as a pro fighter than sticking with the “business”

Kakashi’s the one that did his tattoo piece. He could’ve gone to Minato like all the others, but Minato wanted to be a family man and Kashi can’t kick out the guy that’s brought him so much business since completing his piece

He told the Uchiha’s to let Rin into Obito’s room after his accident for Obito’s benefit after he realized who she was

He introduced Toneri to Hinata in a way she’d think she made the connection herself for the Hyuga/herself. This made his business with her a little more pleasant as she’d be in a lighter mood.

He looks out for Hanabi because very few people outside of Neji and Hinata do. Plus babysitting her is the only way Hinata will give him deals.

Bonus that Hanabi talks too much and spills names and locations of the grown people that owe him money

Is very friendly with Sakura because he has a feeling Tsunade will sway her into finishing medical school and who doesn’t need a good reputable doctor

tried to be cool with Sasuke for his own benefit. If he is going to run things one day, he’d like to at least know something about the kid Sakura and Itachi’s lips are sealed

He uses Chiha’s love of money to bribe her to croon his men. He knows quite a few of them are interested in the little Uzumaki and if they’ve been good, why not reward them with her lovely presence

She really only agrees because Shisui has a strict respect the entertainer policy and he pays her a lot

Michi marrying Neji was not in in plans and he didn’t like that he probably would’ve paired her with Sasuke to build a better connection for himself there. Hot Sauce doesn’t do new friends, but he can still work her marriage to his favor

Despite his ulterior motives, he does care about the people in his life. He just wants what he wants and has a bad habit of treating others as NPCs and pawns.

Itachi is his competition; but he’s also his one good friend. So he’s keeping their foght for leader clean. Even Hana is off limits for Itachi

They often do interrogations together for maximum effect and clean up

See he can play nice?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, he loves kkobri’s kids. Even if his presence has to be “approved” first, he likes seeing their little faces and buying them gifts.

Makes him think he might want his own minions one day. But business first 🤧

Uchiha manwhore leaving broken hearts everywhere because he doesn’t play favorites and has no interest in settling down

Very flirtatious and playful outside of work

He’s never failed to complete a task

Actually a picky eater and embraced about it

He still maintains a respected and feared place within the Uchiha. Which many believe would make him a good leader in the future as planned

His nicer moments to strangers are the ones when he’s helping the down-trotten. He has a whole apartment complex that’s simply “pay what you can” for rent he covers the property tax of the building by inflating the price of the people with money he doesn’t like

Owning all the real estate that he does give him freedom to move himself and founds around freely

His main residence is also home to a lot of his men and weapons collection penthouse life

His weakness lies in his past, which he keeps guarded

His parents went out of their way to help others and when he does the same, he can almost imagine their happy faces

he has paranoia about footsteps in stairwells. They’re the perfect trap that’s how his parents were ambushed

The only one who’s ever noticed his unease with stairwells was Itachi, but Shisui tried to play it off

1000/10 he’s planning and plotting.

[clatterbane]

I posted 7,283 times in 2022

388 posts created (5%)

6,895 posts reblogged (95%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@clatterbane

@kelpforestdwellers

@katisconfused

@bluenorther

@kellyclowers

I tagged 5,374 of my posts in 2022

Only 26% of my posts had no tags

#art - 664 posts

#kept tags - 638 posts

#video - 626 posts

#cats - 455 posts

#politics - 407 posts

#long post - 380 posts

#food - 257 posts

#personal - 248 posts

#uk politics - 181 posts

#us politics - 168 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#and it's absolutely fucking infuriating to see posts that are like 'everyone who is [catagory] was treated like ___ & therefore privileged'

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

(via r/disability)

Though, as unsurprisingly already came up in the comments there? I would not necessarily say "ignore" without tacking on "willfully"--in a "not my circus, not my monkeys" sort of way driven by ableism.

95 notes - Posted February 24, 2022

#4

‘Life in a box’: young autistic man confined in hospital’s former file room | News | The Sunday Times

His sectioning is subject to a rolling review and he can be discharged at any time by the doctor in charge of his care. It means the Priory, a private company receiving large amounts of NHS funding for his care, is also in charge of deciding whether he is fit for release. There is no suggestion that Patient A’s funding has had an influence on his care plan at the hospital...

Patient A is stuck inside a system the government vowed to fix in 2011, after the abuse of adults with autism and severe learning disabilities was exposed by the BBC’s flagship investigations programme, Panorama...

In 2015 NHS England launched its Transforming Care programme, which aimed to reduce the number of autistic people and those with learning disabilities in mental health hospitals. But while the number of people with learning difficulties in hospitals has fallen, the number of autistic people in mental health hospitals has risen by 59 per cent since 2015 to 700 (autistic people only), according to NHS figures. When taking into account autistic people with and without learning difficulties, the figures have risen from 1,100 in 2015 to 1,215 today.

“People can deteriorate because the environment is not right for them and that can make their behaviour worse,” said Dan Scorer, Mencap’s policy expert...

Experts say that for those with autism, being confined in a unit such as Patient A’s exacerbates aggressive behaviour. As a result they become trapped in a vicious cycle of overmedication and ever more draconian restrictions on their liberty.

“People with autism can have sensory problems. They need the right space to live in. A nice garden. The correct lighting. A comfortable home,” says Alicia Wood, who has studied the effects of long-term segregation on people with autism and learning disabilities for the government’s oversight panel, led by Baroness Hollins.

Some are left “traumatised” after long-term inpatient care. Moving out can initiate a period of three to six months in which “their behaviour can be extremely challenging.”

108 notes - Posted January 10, 2022

#3

(Source | Context)

Everybody forgetting that Gen X exists yet again, with too many years' worth of exasperated snark to contribute! 😅

142 notes - Posted August 3, 2022

#2

PSA for people in Virginia:

More glitches at the DMV. Check your voter registration.

150 notes - Posted October 21, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Speaking of the goat!

Free crochet pattern:

391 notes - Posted December 12, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[caffeineandsociety]

I think of voting the same way I think of taking medicine. Sometimes it's really, really, really fucking hard to stay motivated to do it when the difference is between "fucking awful" and "slightly less awful" - but I still do it anyway, every time. Why?

Well, sure, as a severely disabled person who can't get a conventional job, there is no politician at a level high enough to make a meaningful change in a reasonable timeframe who will have my best interests at heart (and by extension the interests of those like me). It's great that AVERAGE wages are finally outpacing inflation, and we SHOULD be celebrating that more than we are, but not to the point of forgetting that MINIMUM wage still isn't keeping up except in a small handful of bluer areas at the local level and disability benefits REALLY aren't.

But it's so much worse under conservative policies that won't let ANY of the working class stay afloat - even for me personally; at least this way my limited independent work has customers - and the fact that bluer areas have a middle class again and are raising local minimum wages is not exactly meaningless.

American foreign policy is ALWAYS trash. Always has been. I work, I petition, I call my representatives, and hell when I have the physical capacity to I even protest to make it less so, but as long as it's been so dogshit or even worse I do sadly fear that the best I may be able to do in my time on earth is make it a LITTLE less dogshit.

But it's easier to work under leadership that's LESS enthusiastic about criminalizing protest - at least I'm less likely to die at a blockade - and it's more likely to be effective under leadership that's just greedily sucking off military contractor companies for money than under leadership where killing as many people as possible is the point.

I live in California, home of State-Level Homonationalism. I fucking despise how much we act like the fact that we love Amazon-sponsored Pride parades makes us immune to invading privacy and "save the children" rhetoric, never mind a truly disgusting level of classism and smugness about red states as if they're not rigged to shit. I complain about this a lot. My representatives probably know me by name and go "oh boy not this guy again" every time I email them about some anti-privacy bill that they think SURELY won't be used to prosecute people for just not being cishet because come onnn, maaaannn, we LOVE the gays here~!

But I still try to get friends from out of state in with my doctors and offer my couch while they get their shit done, because I know that we'll likely always be one of the last holdouts no matter how bad the national anti-queer backlash gets - if nothing else, I believe these naive dumbasses' claims that they'll (TRY to) always be a sanctuary state even if other states are frothing at the mouth to prosecute me over whatever's in those records, because they've lived up to it before, and in the VERY worst case scenario that policy buys me time to flee.

It's hard to see how much worse things can be when they already suck, just like it's hard to see the motive to take a horse-choking pill when the consequence of not doing it feels theoretical but the disgust of how stale the pill tastes to result in still feeling like crap feels very, very real.

But here's the situation. We have a presidential election coming up in, at the time of this writing, just over 5 months. One of two candidates WILL win. One of them is a doddering old man who's done pretty damned good things for the American working middle class, some people with certain very specific common disabilities, and very few other people, who just like any other politician at his level, is in bed with US weapons manufacturers because it pleases The Line. The other is an omnicidal fascist dictator wannabe, or maybe a less openly rabid but, terrifyingly, more competent understudy for him, depending on how a series of criminal proceedings go. This will not only decide the next 4 years, but thanks to the balance of powers and namely how the Supreme Court is structured, have knock-on effects that may last for generations.

I do not have ANY confidence that "sacrificing ourselves" to "punish" the former into being better will work, particularly because there is no universe in which replacing a guy who's in bed with weapons manufacturers with a guy who explicitly WANTS to escalate our imperialist bullshit, the-cruelty-is-the-point style, says "Americans want more compassionate foreign policy". Historically, they've typically compromised WORSE to regain lost votes, not put their foot down for better, because it implies the "kill everyone" policies are the more popular ones - and also, I don't consent to being fucking sacrificed! It's not just you, personally, who will suffer!

Similarly, I do not have any confidence that we will be able to start, fight, and win, a sweeping revolution - a.k.a. a fucking civil war - in 5 months to get a third option. Not only that, but even in the long term, I fully recognize that as a high cost, high risk option, and therefore want outright warfare to be doing as little of the heavy lifting as is reasonably possible.

So I vote for the same reason I take my fucking disgusting-ass pills every morning - because of the options I am given, I would rather be sick but semi-functional than bedbound, hospitalized, or dead.

[selfish-thunder]

Request for Help

Hey guys. To remain compliant with AO3's policy terms and to keep them, me, or my fic from any trouble, I'm posting on here about this.

So, this is not only embarrassing but also extremely difficult and saddening on my part. Unfortunately, I don't have a chapter update for you, but I am reaching out publicly to ask for help. Please read this whole thing before you dismiss this because I am in seriously bad shape here and am rapidly running out of options.

To hear a fuller story, you're free to reach out to me personally. If nothing else, if any of you can share that around, it would be a huge help.

Here's the low down, and some of you who have been with me from the beginning know some of it. So, in short order over a span of a little over a year: covid hit, I lost my job, I lost my house, my mother got extremely sick (not with covid), my sister, her family, and I move in together to help take care of her and to financially support each other. Turns out my sister's husband is a complete asshat, and it was a very abusive home for the year I lasted there. Shortly after I moved out, my mother died, my dog died, and then my grandmother died right before Christmas. Both my mom and my grandmother were my two biggest maternal figures of my life, so you can imagine the blow. Add to it, I was just staying with a friend, was making shit money, and spiraled into a bad, bad depression. 

That's why I was gone for a year lol. I tried to pick myself up and became roommates with another friend. We had grand plans to move to the city and start great lives. However, it didn't work out. Suffice to say that neither of us were who the other thought we were. It ended on friendly terms, and thankfully, we hadn't made the jump to the city or I would have been fucked, man.

Things were looking up from there, but my depression wouldn't go away. I ended up staying too long at that shit job, then moved to factory work, and now I'm working two fucking jobs day in and out. I'm burning at both ends, and it's just not enough to cover the bills I'm still paying off for those two horrible years, my mother's funeral and burial, not to mention medical bills.

Right now, I can't pay my rent. I can't afford food, and I've been struggling to get on food assistance. I can't pay my therapist or doctor. And now this month, thanks to coming to head with some of the earlier mentioned debt (ie, my mother's gravestone), I don't know how the hell I'm supposed to pay my electric and phone bill, let alone afford the gas to get to my second job. I was so, so close to getting ahead of everything, and I just can't get over that edge…

I want to make this very, very clear—this is not me soliciting in any way. That is to say, this is not in any way, shape, or form requesting payment for anything I do on here. It's just my way of trying to reach out to anyone wanting to help a dude out.

I do want you guys to know I have no plans on abandoning this fic. Just the other day, I made time to pick through chapter six, adding in an extra ghoul scene for you. Also, you guys are hilarious. I give you an awesome adventure into Muggle London with Draco sodding Malfoy, and you guys were just like "i love the ghoul!"

Don't blame ya. I love them too. Don't worry, I had originally planned on the ghoul having more scene time in this than canon. Anything creature related, you know Hellion's going to be all over it lol.

If you took the time to read all this, thank you. It's embarrassing, having to ask for help, but I'm officially at the begging strangers position. Please, please, help if you can, even if it's just a dollar or sharing this.

For anyone interested, my paypal is paypal@deanjharrison or https://www.paypal.me/deanjharrison

Or this one: https://www.gofundme.com/f/dean-and-pets-recover-financially

Thanks, you guys! I appreciate you just taking the time to read this.