#it’s so disparate and segmented

[jadelotusflower]

I’ve mostly found the prison plot a little meandering, but I do appreciate it as a microcosm of the rebellion. When you oppress a populace by forcing them to bond and work together as interconnected cogs in the machine, once turned, the machine works back against you. The Empire builds the weapons that are used against them.

[jemandrr]

Underrated/Underexplored anime trope: Magical Girl-type character in a shounen which is an actual high level competent combatant and overall taken seriously in the world’s power system and narrative, just that the source and aesthetics of their power are rooted in magical girl tropes.

[wilwheaton]

What the actual fuck, Larry David.

So I heard about it, but didn't watch it until now. Holy shit it's even worse than I thought. What the fuck is wrong with that guy? Elmo is, like, the best friend to multiple generations of children, and is currently putting mental health and caring for others in the spotlight.

And Larry Fucking David ... did ... that? And thought it was going to be ... funny?

What an asshole. What a stupid, self-centered, tone deaf asshole.

Hey, fucko: First of all, you aren't even in the segment, but you just decided to barge in and draw focus because ... why? You couldn't stand that a puppet brought people together in a meaningful way that you can't? You couldn't stand that your appearance on national television to promote your wildly successful series was delayed for a few seconds while the adults talked about mental health?

I really want to know what raced through his tiny little mind, and why there was no voice or person who spoke up to stop him.

You know who is watching the Today show with their parents? Kids who also watch Sesame Street. Elmo is an avatar for children all over the world. Children who are too small to understand Elmo is a puppet will know that a man attacked him for no reason, and that will frighten them.

Elmo inspired a deeply meaningful and important moment of collective support among disparate people who have been struggling through the traumas of a pandemic, daily mass shootings, the rise of fascism and everything associated with Trump's violence and cruelty.

And shitty idiot Larry David couldn't stand it, for some reason. He had to indirectly tell everyone who opened their hearts to a Muppet that they were stupid, and he thought it was a good joke to physically attack and choke this character who is beloved by children and adults alike.

I've been bored by and totally over Larry David's brand of being an asshole to everyone because they had the temerity to exist around him since the day it started. It was easy to just ignore him. But this thing he did was hurtful, it wasn't funny, and his bullshit non-apology tells all of us everything we need to know about him.

Larry David strikes me as a person who mocks and belittles people who are vulnerable and sensitive, who is cruel because he enjoys it and is untouchable. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's who I see whenever I can't find the remote and he's on my television.

By contrast, Elmo and the Muppets teach and model that kindness and empathy aren't weak or stupid or any of the things people like Larry David and my dad think they are. Elmo and the Muppets teach children to be gentle and kind, to celebrate our different cultures and to embrace all of our complicated feelings.

I hope that, when the dust settles, Larry David's appalling behavior will be a footnote to a larger story about how, for just one day, a Muppet made a difference by helping all of us who are struggling feel just a little less alone and anxious.

A man who would belittle and mock that isn't much of a man at all.

[commodorez]

I still believe the craziest form of computer program storage format from the 1980s is the cassette tape. Logical I get it but to store entire programs on little tape (that I only remember using to play music) is just crazy to me. Idk

Agreed, cassette tape for data storage was really clever. The concept had its heyday was the 1970s in a wide variety of encoding schemes for different computer platforms. It did persist into the 80s, mostly in Europe, while the US switched to floppy disks as soon as they were available for systems. The majority of my Ohio Scientific software is on cassette.

Talking with UK vs. US Commodore 64 users in particular will highlight the disparity in which storage mediums that were commonplace. I've got a few pieces of software on tape for mainly the VIC-20, but I rarely bother to use it, because it's slow and annoying. To be fair, Commodore's implementation of data storage on tape is pretty rock solid relative to the competition. It's considered more reliable than other company's but Chuck Peddle's implementation of the cassette routines are considered quite enigmatic to this day. He didn't document it super well, so CBM kept reusing his old code from the PET all the way through the end of the C128's development 7 years later because they didn't want to break any backward compatibility.

The big thing that really made alot of homebrewers and kit computer owners cozy up to the idea was the introduction of the Kansas City Standard from 1976. The idea of getting away from delicate and slow paper tape, and moving towards an inexpensive, portable, and more durable storage medium was quite enticing. Floppy disk drives and interfaces were expensive at the time, so something more accessible like off the shelf audio tapes made sense.

I've linked two places you can read about it from Byte Magazine's February 1976 issue below (check the attribution links).

You might recognize a familiar name present...

There are a few ways to encode binary data on tape designed to handle analog audio, but the KCS approach is to have 1's be 8 cycles of 2400Hz tone, and 0's be 4 cycles of 1200Hz tone. I say cycles, because while 300 baud is the initial specification, there is also a 1200 baud specification available, so the duration of marks vs spaces (another way of saying 1's and 0's), is variable based on that baud rate. Many S-100 computers implemented it, as do a few contemporary proprietary designs.

The big 3 microcomputers of 1977 that revolutionized the industry (Apple II, Commodore PET 2001, and Tandy TRS-80 Model I) each have their own cassette interface implementation. It kept costs down, and it was easy to implement, all things considered. The Apple II and TRS-80 use off-the-shelf cassette deck connections like many other machines, whereas the original variant of the PET had an integrated cassette. Commodore later used external cassette decks with a proprietary connector, whereas many other companies abandoned tape before too long. Hell, even the original IBM PC has a cassette port, not that anybody bothered to use that. Each one used a different encoding format to store their data, rather than KCS.

Here's a sample of what an OSI-formatted tape sounds like.

And here's a Commodore formatted tape, specifically one with VIC-20 programs on it.

I won't subject you to the whole program, or we'd be here all day. The initial single tone that starts the segment is called the "leader", I've truncated it for the sake of your ears, as well as recorded them kinda quietly. I don't have any other tape formats on hand to demonstrate, but I think you get the idea.

You can do alot better than storing programs on tape, but you can also do alot worse -- it beats having to type in a program every time from scratch.

[carionto]

I like to think the humans ambassador hides black powder weapons around their office instead of Lazer guns or plasma, just walks about with 2 hidden flintlock pistols

You sir or madam or otherwise have given me the biggest grin with that idea, thank you.

(me from after having written it out) I did not know where this idea would take me, stream of consciousness writing will do that.

----------------------

Every delegate of every integrated species aboard a Coalition governing station in their respective segment of the Galaxy receives full accommodations in the form of an isolated embassy structure.

One day, as per a Human custom, the main delegate - Ambassador Glenn York, invited several other delegates on a tour of his embassy. With some hesitation from a few due to their prey-like ancestry and associated cultural background, but ultimately won over by the Human's eager friendliness, they embarked on this little cultural exchange.

It was a little difficult to move about, as each embassy is adapted to suit the environmental preferences of the respective species, and Humans live on a high gravity and dense atmosphere world, so much so in fact, some of the less physically suitable delegates had to put on an exoskeleton, while many others required a breathing apparatus to thin out the poisonous air.

Once we were underway, Glenn showed us that the Humans were diligent in their work - acquiring information from and learning about all the various species within the Coalition, establishing communication lines with the respective counterparts in the disparately varied local government structures, and most importantly continually updating the translation modules.

In addition, we admired their art they had installed along the barren walls. Most, Glenn explained, was done by the delegates and their staff themselves during free time, and it ranged from tiny contraptions painstakingly assembled within a minuscule glass container (we did not realize they could hone their dexterity to such a precise degree!) to large murals covering an entire wall with the most vivid color and shape combinations one could imagine; from the very clear and obvious to impossibly abstract! Though the music they had to turn down - the vibrations of the thick atmosphere were beginning to overload the dampening systems and one of the delegates almost passed out.

Near the end of the tour, Glenn invited us into his office to show off what his "hobby" is:

"The boys and gals I work with are all talented people, but none of them appreciate the kind of craftsmanship I prefer. It's kind of a ancient art form, you see, high maintenance too, very delicate."

He pulls out a pair of ancient looking projectile weapons, at least judging by the shape, but none of us can quite grasp, aside from the trigger, how it operates. We are all silent as he pours some sort of fine grain from a small bag into the upturned tube then drops a small metal ball and proceeds to jam it further in with a cloth and stick.

"I handcrafted these myself. Sure, I could get a printer to do it and it'd be perfect, but perfection just ain't right when it comes to work of the soul, amirite? I find it therapeutic, to mold the shape, heat the iron, cast the shape, smooth the edges, straighten the barrel, carve the grip, roll the bullets, grind the powder... just..."

He lets out a long sigh of relief? satisfaction? euphoria? as he gazes with great affection at the pair of devices in his hands. We feel the urge to end the tour. Like. Right now. But Glenn insists on a demonstration. We hesitantly follow him to a largely empty room below where he sets up a couple of small wooden block on a pedestal. As he points one of the devices and is about to pull the trigger, he stops, looks back at us and says:

"Almost forgot, you'll want to take a few more steps back and turn your dampeners to max."

Heeding his advice, we do so, and after he appears satisfied with our... safety?... he returns his gaze to the wooden block and pulls the trigger.

[cacophony]

We awaken after a short while, the sturdier of our fellow delegates say the rest of us were out for just a few moments, but the ringing reverberation of the shockwave through the Human atmosphere still resonates throughout our bodies. Glenn, worry in his eyes, is apologizing profusely:

"Oh I am so sorry, I didn't think you'd still react so poorly. Is anyone hurt? I even put in less gunpowder than normal, but I guess that's still too potent. I--I'll file an official apology and compensate for any damages I may have caused to any of you. I will take full responsibility for this incident. Please do not think poorly of us as a whole due to the willfulness of one individual, it was never my intention to inflict any injury on anyone."

---Later---

After a thorough medical examination, it was determined that only a few delegates suffered a minor case of shock, which was alleviated rapidly at their respective medical stations. Ambassador Glenn York was reprimanded and sent back to Earth, a replacement will arrive shortly. The one permanent remnant of the incident is the wooden block that was struck by Glenn's pistol - now put on a small display in one of the inner rooms of the Human embassy. The bullet still embedded half-way and the splinters it shot out arranged in a chaotic manner, befitting an explosion, down in front.

[amplifyme]

Reposting because the muse said so. You can read it here, too.

Third Time's a Charm

He rolls over onto his side and finds her looking back at him in a mirrored position. They’re both still struggling to catch a deep breath. His bedroom smells of sheets a week past needing changed and just concluded sex. How does one describe that particular aroma? He thinks about it for a second and decides that mutual insanity fits pretty well right now. Folie au deux.

“Do we…” he hesitates, not sure how to put it. She is solemnly studying him with eyes that shouldn’t be as dazzling as they are, since his bedroom is illuminated only by the streetlights leaking their dim and hazy light through his open blinds. Far-off thunder rumbles quietly in the distance. “Should we… do we talk about this?”

Because Mulder thinks that falling into bed with Scully once is an anomaly. But twice is deliberate. And this third time is… what? A commitment? A habit? Maybe a declaration that this is no longer just a thing they do when under extreme stress? That perhaps now it’s something they engage in simply because they want to?

After all, it’s just a weeknight, and like many others before it. Living room well-lit as they go over files, sharing decent take-out and maybe a beer. No stress other than the low simmer of anxiety that’s always there. Everything just like it's always been before. And yet, somehow, they've found their way out of their clothes and into his bed. For the third time.

“What’s to talk about?” she lazily counters, drawing a damp palm across his collarbone and down his chest. “It is what it is.”

This is not the sort of remark Scully makes. She considers everything very carefully. Disassembles a thing and studies each separate part before she begins to reassemble the disparate segments into something she can explain in lengthy and often incomprehensible language. Her laissez faire attitude unsettles him.

“Well,” he begins, “because this isn’t.. it’s not. I mean, this is not what we do.” He takes in a deep breath. “Normally.”

“Apparently it is now,” she rejoins.

“And what do you think about that?”

“Do we need to discuss this?”

“I think so, Scully. You know how important you are to me, right? I mean, you do know. Don’t you?”

She’s still stroking him, up and down his body where she can reach, slow and precise, and it makes it hard for him to think. He’s thirty-seven years old and should require a bit of time between rounds of the horizontal mambo, but apparently his body is dialed into eighteen and perpetually horny. He’s flabbergasted by the ability of his penis to take a licking and come back ticking so quickly. Or maybe it’s just because it’s Scully.

“I know how you make me feel,” she declares.

“How’s that?” He’s honestly curious. Because the tone of her voice leads him to believe it’s something good. But nothing comes easily with Scully. She makes him work for almost everything.

It’s quiet long enough that he decides she's going to ignore his query. But if it’s reticence, she hasn’t informed her hands of that. They’re still busy speaking their own language against him. Her legs have become tangled in his, dragging the satin of her skin across his. He can’t help it: he has to reciprocate. It’s too tempting to keep touching her in all the places he hasn’t been able to before.

He pulls her closer and gets busy with her mouth for a minute. They break their wet kiss and she breathes, “Desired,” against his lips. “Necessary,” she whispers across his chin. “Alive.” The word brushes the line of his cheek. She pulls back and cups his jaw in her talented and capable hands. Her swimming pool eyes threaten to swallow him whole. “Safe,” she proclaims.

His eyes slip shut at that. He wishes it were so. More than anything. She says it a second time, softly upon his face, and kisses his closed eyelids.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

[the-perfect-wagnerite-again]

I have reread the beginning of your post about engaging with other people on the internet 15 times and I still don't understand what it means at all.

"[they] are too stupid to realize that you agree with them [...] because you didn't spell out [...] their political cause in your blog's header"

You agree with them, because you didn't tell them that you don't agree with them? What does that even mean?

Am I retarded?

Not at all.

Unlike progressives, leftists, and other flavors of libshittery, the online right-wing has few ways of identifying themselves as such without resorting to the same style of online signifiers the left uses. Pronouns, pride flags, picrew icons, list of mental illnesses, and other such insipid symbols are an immediate signpost for leftists that the user is one of "theirs," while the right has few such symbols.

In addition, the right is far more segmented and internally unstable by virtue of the fact that we have no cohesive narrative for our political values like the left. Simple words like "progress" and "social justice" unify even the most disparate and oppositional factions of leftism under the umbrella of political dominance. The right does not have this luxury.

These two factors combined means that two right-wingers that each ostensibly oppose leftist values nevertheless consider themselves political enemies. A libertarian that gets a whiff of monarchism from their fellow dissident will despise such sentiment and revolt to association; as will the enlightened centrist that detects reactionary sympathies, the tradcath that detects fascist sympathies, etc.

In practice, the result is that discourse in right-wing spaces becomes a game of purity testing and factionalization. "Do you hate the jews enough for me to like you? Do you love the free market enough? Have you accepted Nietzche as your lord and savior?" For the most far-right dissidents, at least those familiar enough with elite theorists like Mosca, Pareto, and de Jouvenel to identify said factionalization in action, this becomes tiresome and irritating. When all you've got to gauge a potential ally's worthiness to the cause is the content of their ideas, purity spiraling becomes nearly impossible to avoid. Such purity testing works for the left, because their shiboleth is so well-established and entrenched that it doesn't threaten their hegemony to be occasionally selective.

We like to assume that those who subscribe (more or less) to our personal political convictions are also intelligent enough to recognize the game we're all a part of. When you see centrists and milquetoast libertarians insist on trying to separate themselves from more extreme dissident spaces in a fruitless attempt at self-preservation, it becomes clear that they have no clue what kind of game they're actually playing. That's what I mean when I say that for some, the Schmittian "friend/enemy" distinction is too difficult, and they would be better left drooling in front of their cable news feeds, because the political game sans label affiliation is beyond them.

[gorgugplushie]

Yap fest time for my hcs for the show? I haven’t thought about it much

- dandy’s world was originally a much smaller project which started as a series of shorts staring dandy. They ended up getting popular and thus the show was born! I’d imagine it intially starts out with like, dandy poppy Boxten and shrimpo (maybe flutters?).

- The popularity was very sudden for the studio so more characters were quickly made. The ones that were popular quickly became part of the ‘main toons’. Main toons tend to have more episodes or more important roles in episodes not directly above them (I HC Vee was just supposed to be a one off character for a game show episode but she got so popular the studio let her stick around)

- I think this show started out 2d. There are expression sheets and animated segments for a reason. The toons were specifically made for garden view at first. To cut costs (this is a capitalist society after all) the studio decided to transition to live action and use the toons.I like to think ‘Dandy in Showtime Panic’ was supposed to be episode to do this but it never came out before things went to shit and the show was pulled from air.

- ^ it was supposed to be a special episode to kick start season 4 and include all the toons

- Maybe some had introductory episodes about them. Like Rodger is introduced in a whole did it type mystery episode

Now the garden view toons in the show. . .

- I’m not really sure. I like to think when they were made they were implanted with memories from the show. Maybe some of the toons were made BEFORE their introductory episode aired? I think the toons do consider themselves their 2d counterparts but it’s kinda? Weird?? They share a likeness but the 2d counterparts aren’t alive?? When a new episode comes out they are imbued with those memories either through some more ichor or some debriefing about the episode so their memories match up??

- But at the same time I like your idea of the lines between fiction and reality blurring when the cameras are rolling-

- I’m gonna have to think about it more

- Toons have a pretty busy schedule, from 8 to 10 they have to entertain kids at garden view. But from like 10:30 to like 3 in the morning they are being prepared to be actors so the live action transition will be a lot smoother. They get to sleep til 7:30. They get like a 20 minute break to have lunch. They are busy and rarely get time to themselves unfortunately 😔

TY for sharing your hcs, these are so good i agree with all of them! I def agree abt introductory episodes and toons sticking around n given bigger roles bc of their popularity making fans want to see them more. Truee abt everything esp that show time panic series.

I know the lil animated segments on tv are reffered to skits? Sometimes?? So maybe they had the main dandys world show with some minisode episodes/skits that remain in the 2d style.

ALSO THE BUSY SCHEDULE IS SO TRUE AND FUNNY THEY MAKING THEM WORRKKKK i do think itd the handlers that are mainly in charge of all that. But v funny nonetheless. That makes me think abt how handlers wuld handle their toons.. i do think there some disparities between how they all treat their toons. Maybe some not liking how others treat their toons like kids etc (bc they see them more as non sentient toys?)

[elvisqueso]

the thing about john smith in disney's pocahontas is that the people around him only really know him by reputation. like, thomas even says right out the gate that there's 'amazing stories' about him that even a lil guy like tom coming in green would have heard. and, like, john is aware of this. he's painfully aware of it. he doesn't go up the gangplank like everybody else, he hops on a cannon getting loaded and swoops up over the crew like the film is physically establishing right away for us this mental and social separation between smith and everyone else. and maybe part of it is having to be In Charge of the crew, so he has to be friendly but distant to be effective as a leader, or maybe he just really doesn't relate much to the others.

whatever the case may be interally, the outward action is that captain john smith will sometimes openly acknowledge the disparity and then brush right by it again, as if to say: 'i know you all admire and even like the idea of Captain John Smith, but we both know he's not actually me.'

like, he saves thomas's life and his hat, then answers the praise he gets with 'of course, you'd all do the same for me' said in such a pointed way that it can't be anything other than a chastisement of his own position.

and he doesn't initiate conversation or banter with the crew. he only ever talks to thomas regularly because thomas is constantly trying to talk to him. all the rest of his interactions with the other settlers are him maintaining a somewhat aloof yet amiable persona who does what he's supposed to until he can get away and do what he really wants to do, which is run around in the woods and breathe life in.

fuckin the first being he talks to in this film of his own volition, in a non-official capacity, is MEEKO (or possibly percy, if you count his quick 'hi-ya, see-ya' from earlier). but like, he has a whole-ass conversation with meeko the racoon.

i'm also thinking about how, following the colors of the wind segment, when thomas asks john why he's been 'awfully quiet the last few days,' john doesn't answer. lon answers: 'he's just mad he missed out on all the action!' his reputation answers for him and he balks at it bc 'oh my god that is what i'm known for, isn't it?' and so, almost immediately, he fucks off to find pocahontas again bc that's such a distressing thing for him to be confronted with now that he knows better that he needs to be around someone who doesn't see his reputation as him. someone who only knows him as himself, and, therefore, probably more completely than anyone else in his life until that point. someone he's maybe possibly wanting to know completely right back.

[the-path-to-redemption]

Hello, redeemed Adam AUs anon here! Thank you so much for your thoughtful response. Despite close friends telling me to watch FMA for years, I've never gotten around it so I didn't know about Scar. However it's obvious the writing is far superior, and I've watched Arslan Senki from the same author so I know we can trust her with antagonists.

You mentioned the authors having to acknowledge that the system is flawed in the first place, to which I nod eagerly! Except, the authors already acknowledged this!!!

In V4 E6, at the charity party, there's a businessman that's always forgotten, who mentions the real problem is society as a whole. Even worse, that the faunus were PROMISED JOBS by the SDC! So they were cruelly tricked! By the dialogue, Jacques says mining staff from Atlas and Mantle are paid the same, but the businessman points out that there's a significant economic disparity between the two. Obviously it was a good scene to portray and acknowledge the actual issue and how people of power in Atlas didn't care anyway. Good scene.

Except it was never brought up again!!!

I swear, every time you think CRWBY can't get worse, they prove you wrong. So you acknowledge society is at fault, Adam and Ilia's families were tricked into getting a job, and the SDC is very aware of the issue (including Weiss WHO WAS PRESENT), yet ADAM is at fault? Huh? Wha? HUH?!

I know V4 and V5 are known to be some of the worst volumes (dethroned by V8 and V9), but they had so much lore hidden in details that went forgotten two seconds later, they sometimes feel like a fever dream.

Thank you again for reading my ask and answering it! I read the response many times!

Long Post Ahead

You're welcome, anon! To be honest, having such a nice ask after so long was a refreshing surprise for me lol. I'm glad that my answer was satisfactory, and you really should get into FMA! (Based for reading Arslan Senki tho-).

I'm really impressed that you remembered that segment of V4, so I went back to rewatch it myself (in Japanese dub, I can only take Nora and Ruby's Eng voice for so long), and yeah! They DID acknowledged it! Which is why not having Weiss confronting the malpractice of her family's company in V7-8 was so frustrating! Not SHOWING MORE of the wealth disparity of Atlas and Mantle was so bad! We were stuck in a nothing arc where the only person making sense, Ironwood, was bastardized even though in the same episode in V4, he stood up for Weiss!

Ironwood understood that the system of Atlas was extremely flawed, and he ran himself ragged to make sure it gets reformed against an entire council who doesn't care! The guy who actually gave a fuck was made into a villain because the writers are incompetent, the child slave who was branded and disabled was killed off with NO ONE knowing about his abuse or even acknowledged after his death, and the two main characters (Weiss and Blake) fucks around in Atlas with people they do not like instead of at least going to a political rally to support a council candidate who wanted to do better for both human and Faunus!

Hell, Blake and Weiss never brought up the abuse that Faunus goes through in the SDC itself after V7C3, where all Weiss does was give Blake a luke warm apology about her family's sin. Hello?? DO SOMETHING THEN! ARRESTING YOUR SHITTY DAD WILL NOT CHANGE THE WAY FAUNUS WORKERS ARE TREATED, ALL YOU DID WAS CREATE A POWER VACUUM FOR PEOPLE WHO BACKED HIM UP TO TAKE CHARGE AND CONTINUE THE ABUSE!

The show can acknowledged the imbalance all it wants, if it doesn't take the fucking charge of challenging the system it's calling out with its characters, it means nothing. Adam and the Amitolas weren't the only ones tricked to work so that they can survive in a kingdom that hated them for existing, but our protagonists do nothing to prevent more like them from being exploited.

I also stated that the authors have to acknowledge this systematic abuse applies to fan creators. You can criticize Adam for his actions against innocents all you like, but the moral of the story is that he is still a victim and shouldn't be made into the scapegoat of anti-Faunus violence. Adam wasn't wrong to be angry or hateful, stop demonizing him for being rightfully bitter about being abused! Stop with the Perfect Victim shit, please!

V4-5 were bad because they had potential but the writers elected to be boring with them instead, at least those two had a point. V7-9 meant nothing, and that's why they're the worst of the show yet.

Thank you for your asks, anon!

[secret-bug-pain-blog]

@febuwhump Day 29 - Not Allowed To Die

And now, this finishes. Fun fact, this was finished... second out of all of these prompts. Behold, the return of our Cool Fic That We Need To Actually Write On Its Main Front. It's been a lovely Febuwhump! Just... don't worry about what we're doing over here.

It knows that it's probably waited too long already.

The flattened shapes in its claws waver under the force of its magic, the charmcraft weave tangled above them warping and weaving apart. They can sense the torn edges even without the clarity of touch in their claws, Blight magic highlighting the gaping wounds as they decay at the enchantment. It can still sense the mind trapped within them, dulled as it is.

It has been so long since it has lost a member of its colony. It will not allow its record to be broken now.

Snap.

The weave around one of her parts breaks, Kjdrira's rot finally overcoming any strength it might have bad. It traps the fresh-bleeding segment of limb beneath its claws as it begins to work on the next one. Were it any other curse, it knows, the death of its sufferer would have disrupted the spell-weave, but even the damage to her charm-ridden body is not enough to undo it on its own, what should be mortal injury simply shrugged off.

The code they wrote to track her body's disparate parts comes to good use, at least, even if the tiny pieces are awkward to wrangle into place beneath its claws. It takes more effort than it cares to admit to fish the bits of her out of the sack without damaging them further, its claws made for gripping stone and roach-shell rather than handling fragile paper.

She was an eroding disk from the moment that it made contact with her. It should not feel so broken-up that its efforts were made to one likely to die. Perhaps it has been too long since it's had to deal with a Sibling it knew would fail. It should know better than to get so torn up over bugs who never would have survived.

There is so very little holding her mind together, compared to its own programs. It is all that it can do to keep her partially conscious as it works.

The pain-fuzzed thoughts float around the edges of its mind are subtly different to those of the Siblings it is familiar with. Not designed to operate with the same network, even if they are compatible - ZB-162's frustration at their null-target conversations seems to make just a sliver more sense, now that the bug is close enough to register the differences between its own driver and the spell that governs the eroding drive.

Snap.

The programming around connections aids it far more than anything else might. It cannot read the inscriptions on the tiny pieces of sealing-paper, but it can feel out the unshielded thoughts in the disk's mind just enough to orient itself, its claws echoing sensations into the matrix that is its new colonymate's mind. It isn't quite sure if she can sense it anymore - she would have hated feeling them poke about her thoughts, were she more lucid - but it tries not to dwell on it.

There is only so much time for it to work before the body will grow cold, and it is a mage, not a charmsmith. It knows enough by now to be well aware of how unprocessed dead flesh impacts the living.

Snap. Snap. Snap.

Fingers connect to hand connect to arm connect to shoulder. It's hasty work, but it doesn't matter how obvious the join is as long as it works. Guts shiver back into place, joined in ropes of tangled scar tissue, parts of abdomen partially fused together as it forgoes mobility for speed. It can fix it later, it knows, but the base work must be in place first.

Kjdrira rebuilds as it goes, preventing its magic from killing the bug outright. It must destroy to rebuild, rot away the frayed edges before it can merge them back together, and it is well aware of just how much harm it can do undirected. Its magic is caustic, and it eats away at all the organic matter it encounters, breaking it down to biomass and magic fuel. It takes careful work to avoid making things unusable.

Snap.

The heart, set back in place, threatens to stop for a few heart-wrenching minutes. Kjdrira forces itself into the cracks, twisting as much of a claw around it as it can. Manual stimulation forces the heart to beat, even in absence of the ganglia that might have carried the command.

The damage to her body is obvious, great weeping rents torn in fragile shell. The wounds attempt to proliferate every time that it undoes the enchantment on a damaged segment, only force of will and its own experience with repairing its colonymates holding it through.

With the most damaged, it is forced to begin stitching pieces back together before the enchantment even finishes releasing. The modularity of it makes it feel strange against their claws when they put her back together. One segment of her abdomen, overtaken with rending claws, connects to two segments nearly undamaged. The twisting in her flesh where it sewed her back together meets with unmarked flesh, an abrupt line between scar tissue and healthy flesh. It can only hope that it doesn't have too bad of an impact later.

There are still pieces missing. It tries not to dwell on them. A stinger isn't vital, even if the lack of indication to its location chafes at it. The lack of eyes is something that it did on her request, anyways. It is survivable. It is something that it can help.

The final torn card awaits.

Her body still lays empty. This card is marked as something vital, same as her heart was, same as most of her inner organs were. It's something that, from what little it can glean from her programming, is related to her central nervous system, a piece that would have catastrophic consequences on her thought capacity if left out.

It lays a claw on her empty body's forehead.

it takes less than a second for its magic to map out her vacant body. Even without its occupant, it seems, it still lives. A host without anything to drive it, a beating heart with no intelligence behind it.

The half-conscious tatters of an eroding disk tangle around its mind.

It proceeds.

The strands of the enchantment begin to snap, one by one.

This repair will have to be quick. Their fast work is bulky and clunky, they know, more scar tissue than anything usable, but they can improve on them afterwards. As much as they know now, they cannot fix death - cannot call the soul back to a vacent body, cannot call back data lost to the beyond.

It has one chance, and nothing more. The sequence that holds its colonymate's eroding mind is not physical, not like it once suspected - there are no crystals to back her mind up on, no hardware to catch her when she falls. If it fails here, she will die, thought-matrix sputtering into irretrievable nothing.

It won't let that happen.

Her body's head pops open, needing greater effort than expected, veins quickly sealed shut before they can bleed on the floor. The torn card in its claw is dripping hemolymph and brain-fluid, the enchantment unweaving in knots and binds. It keeps a firm claw on what it can retain of its sibling's mind, holding the knot of her thoughts closed even as the rest of the enchantment disintegrates.

Nerves knit into ganglia. Flesh joins with flesh. It can feel the ungraceful knots of scar tissue form, as quickly as it can make them, and it only barely manages to shift things around enough to avoid putting too much pressure on the brain. It only has minutes before the cut-off blood flow has major consequence, less time before the ambient cold threatens to damage its new sibling's body - flesh is so much more delicate than crystal, living bodies so much more fragile, and it can feel her heart threatening to give out even as it works.

It does not stop.

It will proceed. It will fix this. There is no possible other option. It is Kjdrira, it is the protector of its Siblings, it is the defender of this lab. It will succeed, because there is no other choice but to succeed.

It holds the tatters together with bare claws. It keeps the surgery going with little more than raw will.

It is loyal to its siblings. It is strong, it is capable, it knows what it is doing now far more than when it was a newly-sprouted experiment grasping at straws to save its siblings.

It is better than it was then.

Again, the shreds of consciousness try to flicker out. Again, it draws them back.

The procedure will be risky. But the eroded disk will not die.

It will not allow it.

[duchessofostergotlands]

just listened to the pod and although i agree the william doesn’t HATE women’s football, a lot of your arguments relied on “whataboutism”…. like sure the late queen or charles didn’t go to support their patron sports team, or the prime minister didn’t go either, but that doesn’t absolve william. you downplay the importance of his attendance but also stated he’s the reason you even know about some female players. but anyway, i also think he should definitely step down from the FA presidency - it involves too much passion for a “neutral” figure head

I can understand why you've interpreted it that way - to the point where I already had most of this answer prepared in my drafts - but it's inaccurate. I can only speak for the things I said in that episode so if you have a problem with something Grace said you can talk to her (she'd be happy to argue with you and tbh I think it's pretty telling about your view that you chose me to message and not Grace...) but that segment of the episode has two parts:

Why I don't think it's a big deal William didn't go and

Why I'm upset by the general narrative from the public and press

There were only two reasons I didn't think it was a big deal that William didn't go. I can show you my notes if you refuse to believe me.

The work he does for the England WNT and the men's national team is not drastically different now. It's not the same situation as it was in 2022 when William had done absolutely fuck all for women's sport and we both criticised him extensively. The players themselves have spoken repeatedly about the support and engagement they feel from him and

It's Australia. It's 10,000 fucking miles away. Spending tax payer money (from all four nations of the UK) to send a leader in climate change to Australia for what is effectively 5 minutes of work celebrating England is frankly absurd and I genuinely cannot fathom why anyone ever thought he'd go. Especially as it risks inflaming tensions given no one has been to Australia since the change of reign. If you listen back - I don't know, maybe you skipped over this bit, maybe you chose to disregard it - I clearly state that the problem wasn't that William didn't go to Australia it was that he didn't prepare for the fact he wasn't going to Australia. We both stated that he should have done more to support the team but he should have done it from home.

So if you can tell me where the whataboutism is there that would be grand as those were the only two arguments I made.

The rest was about the general narrative - as I said in the episode - and has no impact on my standpoint on William's decision in any way. It wasn't about William at all from my perspective, and what I said was entirely about the undercurrent of bigotry in the criticism of William. I am a Scottish woman and I don't think it's wrong that I find it upsetting when people believe English women matter more than anyone else. See the disparity in the reaction to William not going to Australia vs the reaction when Welsh people spoke about his lack of support for their team. At least he actually wanted the English women to win!! Whether you care or not, it is a problem that William got crucified for not going to Australia, and yet Welsh or Scottish people (and tons of other groups) get crucified for just politely asking for him not to want us to lose. In the course of a conversation about football and the public reaction to inequality in William's support, it is natural that a Scottish woman would mention the fact that the public and the press have shown nothing but bigotry towards us for the entire 17 years William has been President of the FA. It's natural that I would mention that even if William's support for the English women's team could be better, the public and the press treat the English women's team a million times better than they treat the Scottish or Welsh or Australian women's teams. If now isn't a good time to discuss it because it's "whataboutism" but every other day of the year is also not a good time to discuss it because it'll lead to a public hate campaign by the press and the public, when exactly is the right time?

So I don't consider it whataboutism because I was not saying that William's choice was any better or worse as a result of my point. I consider it a related conversation about my personal issues with the fact that people are claiming on social media to be holier than thou because of their standpoint in this while at best deliberately ignoring and at worst actively celebrating other, worse, forms of inequality. If you consider that whataboutism I truly don't care, because I'm right.

[krihmuh]

"Exploring the Depths of Humanity: Unraveling Jordan Peele's 'Us'"

It is almost impossible to forget the other mind-bending cinematic gem that Jordan Peele gifted his audience in 2019 – "Us." This psychological horror flick was an invitation to dive deep into its chilling narrative and unearth the hidden layers that resonate with our deepest fears and societal schisms. "Us" isn't your run-of-the-mill horror movie; it's a dark, thought-provoking mirror reflecting the human condition in all its eerie glory. So, let's get into it and dissect this enigmatic thriller. 

In Jordan Peele's "Us," the theme of isolation reverberates throughout the storyline, creating an eerie and unsettling atmosphere that lingers long after the credits roll. The Wilson family, our protagonists, find themselves isolated both physically and metaphorically, thrust into a nightmare where they face their own doppelgängers, the Tethered. This physical isolation, occurring in the form of a home invasion, is intensified by the fact that the Wilsons' attackers are twisted versions of themselves. This duality accentuates the feeling of isolation, as they are essentially confronting their own darkest fears and suppressed identities, mirrored in the form of their adversaries.

Metaphorically, the theme of isolation expands beyond the Wilson family. The Tethered, living beneath the surface of society, unseen and forgotten, represent the isolated and marginalized segments of the population. Their existence in labyrinthine tunnels beneath the ground echoes their isolation from the world above, illustrating a profound social divide. Jordan Peele dives deep into the theme of social isolation in "Us." Take Jason, for instance. He stands out not just because he's a unique character but also because of his neurodiversity, which sets him apart from the rest. Jason’s neurodivergent superpower is the reason why he is the only one able to control his doppelganger. He was the first to recognize the Tethered as a copy of themselves and knew without a doubt at first glance! And then there's that not-so-subtle moment with Umbrae and her white vacation friends at the beach. Remember that super awkward exchange they had about why she wouldn't get into the water? It is obvious to those that get it, she just had her hair permed, and getting in the water would reverse that. Her friends obviously didn't know that, nor understood, and just thought she was being lame or a party pooper at the end of the day. Peele masterfully inserts these moments as subtle nods, skillfully illuminating the profound social chasms that separate the characters. These instances are far from arbitrary; they represent Peele's meticulous craft, unveiling the multifaceted layers of isolation. His storytelling prowess prompts us to delve into the intricate nuances of human connection, urging us to contemplate the subtle yet impactful barriers we inadvertently construct. With an expert touch, Peele invites us to navigate the complexities of these relationships, encouraging thoughtful introspection about the intricacies of social isolation and the intricate webs of human interaction.

The theme of privilege is woven into the intricate fabric of the storyline as well, unveiling the disparities and entitlements that exist within society. The Wilson family, particularly the matriarch Adelaide, represents a middle-class African American family vacationing in a beach house, blissfully unaware of the horrors that await them. The family's initial privilege lies in their economic stability, allowing them the luxury of a vacation, shielded from the harsher realities faced by marginalized communities. Privilege, taken in the form of money, can definitely cause a separation or distance between you and where you started/came from.

As the film progresses, the concept of privilege becomes more nuanced. When the Tethered, their doppelgängers, emerge from the shadows, it becomes apparent that the Wilsons are not just facing a physical threat but also a metaphorical one. The Tethered, living in darkness and suffering, embody the neglected and oppressed members of society, devoid of the privileges enjoyed by their counterparts above ground. They are forced in the tunnels while real humans are given the privilege to live their own lives, despite the occasional feeling of isolation. Peele uses the concept of the tethered to remind us that people have had to, and have, suffered in order to enjoy the privilege we currently have, whether that literally points to those who are less fortunate, or to people like our parents, our ancestors or people in our past lives that have had to “walk so we can run” so to speak. The contrast between the Wilsons and the Tethered serves as a stark reminder of the systemic inequalities that persist, illustrating how societal privilege shields some from the struggles faced by others.

"Us" transcends the boundaries of a typical horror flick; it's an intricate tapestry woven with threads of psychological depth, societal intricacies, and the enigmatic facets of the human soul. Jordan Peele skillfully peels away the layers of fear and suspense, exposing the raw essence of our existence. It's like he hands us a mirror and challenges us to confront the complexities within ourselves, encouraging us to shatter the self-imposed chains that bind us.

[luulapants]

Genuine good faith question, are you okay with nazis being alive? To be an absolute abolitionist and to compare sexual predators and hate crime murderers to over persecuted and policed populations is insulting and reeks of privilege. A black man put in prison for being a victim of the system is not equal to someone raping a child. Yes, prisoners do deserve to be treated with dignity and to receive help but to live in a society where no one is punished is begging for victims to be thrown to the dogs.

Hey anon, this is a GREAT question, because the very way that you've posed it points out a lot of the problems with the way we as a society are taught to think about "justice." I also apologize in advance, because this is a question I couldn't answer with less than an essay.

Let's start at the start: "are you okay with nazis being alive?" There's an assumption in this question, which is that Nazism is an intrinsic, immutable quality of a person. The phrasing suggests that the only way to end Nazism is to kill everyone who believes Nazi ideology. This statement suggests the death penalty as a punishment for Nazism.

People are not born as Nazis. They learn Nazi ideology. And you know what? They can unlearn it. People unlearn it all the time. So what's the statute of limitations on our death penalty for Nazis? If someone espoused Nazi ideology ten years ago but has since been deprogrammed, do we still have to kill them? What about if they're in the process of deprogramming and still slip up and say fucked up things sometimes? Or let's take a less radical approach. We try to deprogram them first. How quickly do they need to progress before we decide they're irredeemable and have to die? How far do they need to progress? Is it enough for them to stop using hate speech or do they have to become 100% liberal before they're allowed to live?

But I concede that you might have been talking in extremes and don't actually want to use the death penalty as a punishment for Nazism. Maybe you just want to send them to prison. In that case, I've got bad news for you. If you think that prison reduces the number of Nazis in our society, you don't know very much about American prison systems. Prisons churn out way more Nazis than go into them.

Next you claim that I am comparing "sexual predators and hate crime murderers to over persecuted and policed populations" by being an absolute abolitionist. First, the post you're referring to actually begins by discussing how you can talk about under and over-prosecuted populations and correcting those disparities without abandoning abolition as an end goal.

Second, your statement confounds two different categorizations: "sexual predators and hate crime murderers" is categorizing people by what they have done, while "over persecuted and policed populations is categorizing people by an entire population segment to which laws are applied (presumably, racial and sexual minorities). Mixing those categories, you end up stepping on your own toes, because people in over-policed populations can and do commit under-prosecuted crimes. The reverse is true as well. So what do we do with a poor Black rapist? How about a wealthy white drug user? Do we need to prosecute one or the other more or less?

This leads into Critical Legal Studies, the discipline which gave us the Critical Race Theory that folks like Tucker Carlson are so afraid of. CLS at its most simplistic posits that, because laws are created and enforced by people in power, they maintain current balances of power. If laws are created by people who have employees not those who are employees, an employee who steals $100 from the cash register will face steeper punishment than an employer who denies their employee a $1000 final paycheck. Drugs used more in Black communities (crack) will have longer sentences than those used in white communities (cocaine) even if they are very similar. And we can break our backs trying to fight back on every little systemic imbalance in the way our laws are written, but according to CLS, these are an unavoidable bias in the nature of law itself. Changing who is in power only changes the direction in which that bias points.

What does that have to do with how a "black man put in prison for being a victim of the system is not equal to someone raping a child"?

I'm glad you asked!

Rather than sitting around trying to figure out the most equitable way to punish people, a more effective approach is to step back and ask, "Why are we trying to punish them?" (I'm a big fan of asking "why" over and over and over again like a three-year-old until you get to the root question.) We're trying to punish them because they did something harmful. "Why is punishing them the correct response to doing something harmful?" Because not punishing people "is begging for victims to be thrown to the dogs."

Is it?

According to the National Survey of Victims' Views, most victims do not feel that punitive justice meets their needs. Most would prefer shorter sentences with a stronger investment in rehabilitation. About 75% want a stronger emphasis on accountability through programs like community service and mental health treatment. About 75% believe time in prison makes people more likely to commit another crime rather than less likely.

In short, punitive justice does not make victims feel safer or like they are less likely to be victimized again.

More than half of people in jails and prisons in the US have a mental illness. People with mental illnesses are more likely to be victims of crimes than perpetrators, but for those who are perpetrators, untreated mental illness very likely played a part in their criminality. Prison makes mental illness worse, not better. Prison is inherently traumatic and people who go into prison without a mental illness often leave with one.

Prison is a place that a person survives, and survival mentality generally decreases one's capacity for empathy. This means people often come out capable of committing more atrocious crimes than they could stomach before going in.

People who go into prison a little bit racist? They come out Nazis.

All of this is to say that punitive justice falls down when you ask, "What are we trying to accomplish?" If we're trying to accomplish making society a better, safer place to be, reformative and reparative justice are the obvious choice. If we replaced prisons with compassionate but intensive mental health treatment facilities that assessed the root cause of a person's behaviors, if we engaged our best and brightest social workers and psychologists to reeducate, counsel, and reintroduce people to society, we could actually make a better, safer society. This includes helping sexual offenders to identify how they dehumanize their victims to justify their behavior. It includes deprogramming racist and other extremist ideologies. It includes helping child abusers to realize that they are perpetuating trauma and abuses done to them as children.

The only situation in which punitive justice makes sense is when the answer to, "What are we trying to accomplish?" is, "I suffered, and now I want to see other people suffer."

And if that's someone's goal, they probably have a lot more in common with some of those criminals they want punished than they do with someone who want to make the world better.

[decomposited]

PANACEA

This post exists mainly as a discussion/headcanon for what might be in those vials the Doctor always seems to have. Admittedly, the specifics pertain more closely to the segments themselves, but you know how it is. Kind of a package deal. As usual, some of the information therein evolved out of discussion with Syd about Scaramouche’s involvement. Typical Dottore-adjacent content beneath the cut (body horror, experimentation, needles, usage of dubious substances), but written about in a largely objective fashion.

One of the most interesting discoveries in the litany of experiments performed upon Scaramouche was the odd substance that circulated through their artificial body. Not blood, exactly, but something of a similar purpose, absolutely brimming with elemental energy. Upon extraction, it was found to have additional properties that made it a fine contender for a particular project Dottore had in mind.

Scaramouche was originally kept in the dark as to what the actual purpose of taking additional samples from them was. It was explained as simply a way to record any changes in their system—this was partly true. A library of samples does exist, each carefully labeled and dated. However, every single vial taken from the puppet was not placed in that same collection. 

In the end, Scaramouche’s “blood” (as it will be referred to here) became one of the base ingredients for a similar compound that is present in all of the Doctor’s segments. It can also be seen on most of their persons in the form of a glowing blue liquid suspended in earrings or other accessory items. Such an important material needed to be christened with a name, of course, one suitable for its rarity and power: panacea. 

(This name is also quite ironic, for reasons that will become obvious shortly.)

A significant problem with the segments during development was creating a sustainable method to power the mechanical portions of their bodies. While they do have organic components, those essentially run on a separate system, which is integrated with artificial components like their hearts and some other devices that require electrical power. The blood collected from Scaramouche turned out to have so much energy and be so efficient that it provided a solution for this. 

Much like ordinary blood, the matter extracted from Scaramouche can be separated, to a degree, into disparate components. This is the first step in creating the panacea, the beginning of a long process that takes a whole room's worth of machinery. During this journey, the elemental bias is removed from the blood, rendering it neutral and unlikely to overload delicate mechanisms. Even without electro, it remains an incredibly potent method of storing and circulating energy. The next steps are a well-kept secret, but involve several other solutions being added to the mixture that create the additional uses it gains its name from. 

Due to its strength, segments typically only need to be dosed with panacea once or twice a month, depending on estimated power expenditure in essential joints and organs. It can be either injected or taken by mouth, depending on the preference of the user. Naturally, there are also guides in place to make sure it ends up where it’s supposed to be, depending on which reservoir areas are empty.

The other use of panacea, and the true reason most segments keep extra on their person, is its function as a “cure-all”. More specifically, it can act as a healing agent to restore and regrow damaged organic components in the body. It should be noted that panacea is for segment usage only, and is not safe for human consumption. 

Upon use, panacea can vastly increase the replication rate of cells, replacing injured tissue or even entire limbs in a relatively short time period (length of recovery time depends on both extent of damage and amount of panacea used). One syringe-worth of panacea is a “normal” dose, and will kick-start this process. Additional doses in rapid succession will accelerate this process, further sending the cells of the body into overdrive and creating increasingly dramatic results that spread to even originally unharmed parts of the segment. This unrestrained division will eventually lead to immense changes throughout the entire segment, transforming them into a different creature entirely. The segments have genetic modifications that prevent these changes from descending into unrestrained carcinogenesis, which would ultimately be debilitating or fatal for any other being that happened to try to utilize this “medication” for themselves. 

Most segments appear to find these changes exciting, or even pleasurable, likely due to both the stimulant properties of the panacea and positive psychological associations with the healing process and the mutations that take place. As alluded to previously, high doses will turn them temporarily into something that can only be described as a monster. While end states vary from segment to segment, they will always be incredibly strong, dangerous, and have an explosively fast healing factor. Despite the pain involved and the potential for mental degradation, typical cognition is maintained, leaving them in full control of their capabilities. The span of time they remain in this form is also regulated by the size of the dosage. Transformation lengths from as low as 15 minutes to as long as ██ days have been recorded.

This form is intended as a last resort, to be used in the most dire of circumstances. While affected segments will eventually return to their normal state as the biological effects of the panacea wear off, the changes inflicted upon the body are often so extreme that they will need to be repaired shortly thereafter, due to their mechanical components being damaged, degraded, or rejected from the body. If they are no longer able to conduct maintenance themselves, their only option is to seek help or make peace with their situation. Fortunately, no segments thus far have been irrevocably dismantled, and so the process is considered reasonably “safe” by their standards. 

One might wonder, after all these years, why does crafting this substance still even rely on Scaramouche’s blood donations? The simplest answer: complacency. While the technology to craft an equivalent material exists, Dottore and the segments have hesitated in adjusting their existing pipeline. The furthest any potential changes have extended is blueprints. With Scaramouche still present and working with the Fatui, why should they waste their time in building additional systems? It could also be possible to ascribe a more nefarious, possessive logic to the adherence to the original protocol. 

If Scaramouche became aware of what was going on behind their back with all those samples, but were under the impression they were essential for something so crucial, it could serve as a deterrent to them turning against Dottore or leaving the Fatui. A particularly critical mind might realize this all depends on the Doctor’s impression that Scaramouche has any regard for him (or the segments) whatsoever. Surely this will not have any future consequences.

[amplifyme]

Third Time’s a Charm

The X-Files. MSR. Rated: Teen & up. WC: 664. Read on AO3.

Tagging @today-in-fic

​He rolls over onto his side and finds her looking back at him in a mirrored position. They’re both still struggling to catch a deep breath. His bedroom smells of sheets a week past needing changed and just concluded sex. How does one describe that particular aroma? He thinks about it for a second and decides that mutual insanity fits pretty well right now. Folie au deux.

“Do we…” he hesitates, not sure how to put it. She is solemnly studying him with eyes that shouldn’t be as dazzling as they are, since his bedroom is illuminated only by the streetlights leaking their dim and hazy light through his open blinds. Far-off thunder rumbles quietly in the distance. “Should we… do we talk about this?”

Because Mulder thinks that falling into bed with Scully once is an anomaly. But twice is deliberate. And this third time is… what? A commitment? A habit? Maybe a declaration that this is no longer just a thing they do when under extreme stress? That perhaps now it’s something they engage in simply because they want to?

After all, it’s just a weeknight, and like many others before it. Living room well-lit as they go over files, sharing decent take-out and maybe a beer. No stress other than the low simmer of anxiety that’s always there. Everything just like it's always been before. And yet, somehow, they've found their way out of their clothes and into his bed. For the third time.

“What’s to talk about?” she lazily counters, drawing a damp palm across his collarbone and down his chest. “It is what it is.”

This is not the sort of remark Scully makes. She considers everything very carefully. Disassembles a thing and studies each separate part before she begins to reassemble the disparate segments into something she can explain in lengthy and often incomprehensible language. Her laissez faire attitude unsettles him.

“Well,” he begins, “because this isn’t.. it’s not. I mean, this is not what we do.” He takes in a deep breath. “Normally.”

“Apparently it is now,” she rejoins.

“And what do you think about that?”

“Do we need to discuss this?”

“I think so, Scully. You know how important you are to me, right? I mean, you do know. Don’t you?”

She’s still stroking him, up and down his body where she can reach, slow and precise, and it makes it hard for him to think. He’s thirty-seven years old and should require a bit of time between rounds of the horizontal mambo, but apparently his body is dialed into eighteen and perpetually horny. He’s flabbergasted by the ability of his penis to take a licking and come back ticking so quickly. Or maybe it’s just because it’s Scully.

“I know how you make me feel,” she declares.

“How’s that?” He’s honestly curious. Because the tone of her voice leads him to believe it’s something good. But nothing comes easily with Scully. She makes him work for almost everything.

It’s quiet long enough that he decides she’s going to ignore his query. But if it’s reticence, she hasn’t informed her hands of that. They’re still busy speaking their own language against him. Her legs have become tangled in his, dragging the satin of her skin across his. He can’t help it: he has to reciprocate. It’s too tempting to keep touching her in all the places he hasn’t been able to before.

He pulls her closer and gets busy with her mouth for a minute. They break their wet kiss and she breathes, “Desired,” against his lips. “Necessary,” she whispers across his chin. “Alive.” The word brushes the line of his cheek. She pulls back and cups his jaw in her talented and capable hands. Her swimming pool eyes threaten to swallow him whole. “Safe,” she proclaims.

His eyes slip shut at that. He wishes it were so. More than anything. She says it a second time, softly upon his face, and kisses his closed eyelids.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Notes:

Random brain dump so the muse can concentrate on a longer piece in progress. Mostly freeform.

Until next time…