#most are finns but there is some foreigners too

[valtionrautatiet-official]

An introduction to VR passenger carriages, part 1: the blue carriages

In our next series of introducing our rolling stock, we will be looking at passenger carriages. I was actually thinking of doing multiple units next, but @hapotonradio requested I do the blue carriages and a lot of people seemed to like the idea so here we go.

A Dr13-hauled train consisting of blue carriages arriving in Turku Harbour, 1995. Falk1, Wikimedia Commons

I can already hear foreigners (and non-rail enthusiast Finns too) going "what the hell are the blue carriages?" Well, the blue carriages were/are the first Finnish steel-bodied passenger carriages, with over 600 units (depending a bit on what you count as being actual blue carriages) of different types built between 1961 and 1986. Today, almost all of them have been retired. Which is a shame, because they were sexy.

The first 15 blue carriages were built by the West German Maschinenfabrik Esslingen, who also designed them, in 1961. This original batch were equipped with different types of boggies, from which the Minden-Deutz boggie was chosen for the eventual mass-produced series built in-house by the VR Pasila workshop starting from 1964 (Valmet also built a small number of carriages).

A combined 1st and 2nd class carriage as built, 1964. At this point they still had steel covering the underbody from the sides. These hems were later removed to better display the arousing technical bits. Olavi Karasjoki, Suomen rautatiemuseo.

President Kekkonen (the bald dude) visiting the above carriage. Olavi Karasjoki, Suomen rautatiemuseo.

The initial batch consisted of ten 2. class carriages (littera Eit), four combined 1. and 2. class coaches (lit. CEit) and one 1. class coach (lit. Cit). As you can maybe figure out, the -t at the end stood for teräs, steel, to distinguish from the old wood-bodied coaches. In addition to the regular first- and second-class coaches, the blue carriages' base design was adopted for restaurant cars (litteras Rbkt, Rt, Rkt and Rk), combined condutor's and luggage cars (lits. Fot, Efit and Efiti), sleepers (CEmt), aggregate cars to use on non-electrified tracks (Eifet), carriages with children's playrooms (ELht), postal carriages (Pot), military transport (Ems), prisoner transport (Nom), special carriages for the president and cabinet (A), and even a one-off disco carriage. The latter in particular fucked severely. All those sweaty bodies having it on inside a train...

Some sources also list the Eil-class local traffic coaches as blue carriages, but since they had some structural differences and were originally painted red rather than blue, I'm going to cover them in a separate entry.

Interior of a 2nd class carriage. My photo

Over the quarter of a century the blue carriages were in production, numerous improvements were made to the original design; most notably, the original top service speed of 120 km/h was increased first to 140 km/h and then to 160 km/h in some units.

By the time the last blue carriages were delivered in 1986, their star was already waning. In 1988, the first new Intercity carriages (in a white and red IC delivery) were delivered, and Intercity trains replaced the blue-carriaged special express (erikoispikajuna) trains as the flagship product. With the arrival of the Intercity carriages, and the double-decker carriages from 1998 onwards, the blue carriages were phased out.

Blue carriages at the Turku depot, an Eifet aggregate car repainted in the Intercity livery in the 1990s and CEmt sleepers (both carriages visible behind the Eifet; the sleepers have asymmetric window arrangements). My photo

Today, the only blue carriages still in use in the iconic original livery as sleepers in night trains to Lapland, and prison transport carriages. Some restaurant cars, aggregate cars and conductor's carriages still exist, but they have been repainted in the newer liveries. Several blue carriages have also been preserved by different instances and they're relatively commonly seen in heritage/museum trains these days.

[ered]

in case you've missed it, and I'm assuming most of you have, we're having a presidential election here in Finland. First round is currently going on, so I thought I'd give you a quick run down of our candidates!

(in alphabetical order, party in parentheses)

Mika Aaltola (independent): Has mainly worked in academia and apparently has experience in international politics, which is good for the job. I honestly know next to nothing about this dude, but he seems to positively radiate Just Some Guy energy. What would be interesting about him winning: I have no idea. Chances of winning: Ehhh - but it wouldn't be the first time we get a president from outside the daily politics.

Li Andersson (Left Alliance): current leader of the Left Alliance, former Minister of Education. What most people seem to say about her: "she's clearly the best choice, but has no chance of winning so I won't be voting for her." What would be interesting about her winning: first Left Alliance president Chances of winning: Unfortunately slim. Left Alliance is a small party and half of the country still seems to think they're Evil Communists.

Sari Essayah (Christian Democrats): she's also the leader of her party. Most known for being a former racewalker and religious. What would be interesting about her winning: How the hell did it happen??? Chances of winning: zero.

Pekka Haavisto (Green League): Former Minister of the Environment, International Development, and Foreign Affairs (three different terms, not all at once). He was born in 1958 and hasn't done much beyond politics. He's been in the presidential race twice already too, both times losing to our current president, Sauli Niinistö. What would be interesting about him winning: first gay president. Chances of winning: he made it to the final round twice already, so maybe third time's a charm? He has been polling first this time around.

Jussi Halla-aho (Finns Party): a prominent rightwing blogger, a Slavic linguist by education, and the current Speaker of the Parliament. He's "immigration critical" in the same vein "gender criticals" tend to be. He's is considered something of an intellectual in the rightwing circles despite having the vibes of an anthropomorphic raisin, and has amassed a cult following - who literally call him Mestari (master, but in Finnish the vibes are more a master of a trade and not some dude who spanks you in the bedroom. What would be interesting about him winning: finding out if I can immigrate to Denmark. Chances of winning: none if I can help it, but like I said, he does have a very solid fanbase.

Hjallis Harkimo (Movement Now): best known for being the owner of an ice-hockey team or something. His real name is Harry and for some reason he has been elected into the parliament twice. I assume it's the famous allure of a "successful businessman" or because he's something of a celebrity? Who knows. What would be interesting about him winning: How did it happen? Chances of winning: slim.

Olli Rehn (Centre Party): Served as the Minister of Economic Affairs for like a year under our most fuck-witted prime minister in recent history. Not much else to say about it. Somehow seems older than Pekka Haavisto tho he's actually younger. What would be interesting about him winning: absolutely nothing. He's so dull it's almost offensive. Chances of winning: who knows? Maybe he'll be a dark horse if all other candidates fall flat.

Alexander Stubb (National Coalition Party): Former Prime Minister, and former Minister of Finance. He's ehhhhhh not the worst possible option, honestly, and is on the more liberal side of the Rich Getting Richer party. What would be interesting about him winning: how will he be different from our current (National Coalition Party) president, I guess Chances of winning: last I checked, he was polling second, so I guess it's a possibility?

Jutta Urpilainen (Social Democratic Party): Former Minister of Finance. Social Democrats are one of the biggest parties we have, but they took a while deciding on who to pick. She's alright. Social Democrats are usually fine, and she'a long term Social Democrat. What would be interesting about her winning: uhh... possibly the first president to have released a Christmas album? Chances of winning: I just don't think she's that popular, to be honest. But she might make it into top three at least, like I said, it's one of the biggest parties behind her.

[anti-dazai-blog]

Second Anniversary Special

As many of the long-time followers of this blog know, I originally started out on the classic literature side of tumblr, which is what lead to my venturing into bsd. As an homage to my roots as a classic lit enthusiast, I’ll be going through all the works that I’ve read written by bsd authors:

The Spider’s Thread by Akutagawa

This short story is brought up in a lot of animes, which is unfortunately the most likely way western bsd fans. I could make an entire separate post of commentary on how the American school system doesn’t cover most foreign literature (outside of English [as in from England] and French works), and that is an absolute travesty. However, that’s not what we’re covering right now. 

Anyway. The Spider’s Thread is a very short story—like two pages at most. You can go read it now. For all the other entries I plan on rating the novels out of 5, but this one’s truly too short to rate. If you wanna read it you can find a hundred pdfs online. The same probably goes for most works of classic literature, so. Go wild enjoy the wonderful world of free online pdfs.

The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

I was probably assigned other works by Poe, but this one is most likely his most famous short story. I was assigned it in middle school/high school/ and at least twice in college. Again, very short short story—you can read it in a few minutes tops. 

5/5 for the sole reason of it aligning with my personal sense of humor. I get that it’s not supposed to be funny, but unreliable narrators are and will always be hilarious to me. I love a guy insisting that he’s not crazy while he’s off murdering a guy. Cask of Amontillado-core protagonist. Funny because E.A. Poe also wrote Cask of Amantillado. I’m out here starting to suspect that E.A. Poe just really loved writing his unnamed unreliable narrator protagonists.

Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

I’ve never read Tom Sawyer, but in 11th grade my class read Huckleberry Finn. 3/5 because I don’t like the way it was taught in class, but I did enjoy analyzing it more than some other books we did. 

Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky

Currently reading it so I can’t give much feedback, but so far I’d like this guy (Raskolnikov not Dostoyevsky) to meet Meursault from The Stranger. If anyone’s made this crossover, please send it to me. And if not and you wanna go make it yourself—please I’ll love you forever.

Dracula by Bram Stoker 

I mean we’ve all done Dracula Daily. Or at least I’ll assume you’ve heard of it. 5/5, Mina’s best girl, Quincey’s best boy, I have very basic opinions but I’m standing by them.

--Bonus

The Stranger by Camus

Meursault the prison is clearly named after Meursault, the fictional character who famously goes to prison, right. We’re all on the same page about this, right? 

Anyway if you’ve never heard of or read the stranger, [spoilers] it’s about this guy who kills a guy for no reason (“it was just so hot outside, idk what happened but now there’s a dead guy, this is a good enough criminal defense right? You’re not gonna send me to jail for just this one little mistake---oh you’re giving me the death penalty? Ah. I see.”) Solid 4/5—points deducted for being a little slow by some parts (although I can’t vouch for how it is in the original French, this was only my impression from the English translation I read)

—————

After making this list, it’s clear that I haven’t read too many books my bsd authors, so next years my anniversary special will be more about the classic literature I have read. I do plan to keep posting until then. So please enjoy another year of the anti-dazai blog!!

[daywalkers-fic]

12. why the 1880s?

something about this decade really sings to me. I find in particular, nearing the end of the nineteenth century, so much was happening on around the world in terms of arts, politics, technology, colonization. world events and global news don’t personally reach the day-to-day lives of the everyday folk, but they are an important part in gauging what life, thought, and society was about—what things were important then and now?

basically for myself, reminding me of notable things that occured during the 1880s—some thematic, some of relevance to context and characters, and the rest just ?? interesting and/or wild?

cocaine is a hot new cure for everything and anything. perscribed, sold in foods and more. heroine introduced as a lesser-addictive substitute for morphine…

lots of developments in fields of psychology; many experiments and happenings; Freud starts his work 1886.

1880-1914 had +twenty million immigrants to the United States: Germany, Ireland, England, China had the most arrivals.

William Dorsey Swann, the first self-proclaimed drag queen, organizes a series of drag balls in Washington, D.C. 1880-1890s.

Jack the Ripper claims his “first” victim in 1888 White Chapel, London. big scare.

Sherlock Holmes first appears in Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study In Scarlet as part of the British magazine’s Beeton’s Christmas Annual in 1887.

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson is published in 1886. Gothic fiction, drawing from emerging fields of science and psychology. & Treasure Island was published earlier in 1883 by him too!

Mark Twain drops The Prince and the Pauper (1881), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889).

Bel-Ami, Guy de Maupassant’s second novel is published in 1885. about a man who seduces and manipulates high society French women in the French colonies for power and wealth. MOVIE WAS ADAPTED IN 2012 STARTING ROBERT PATTINSON LOL

western European art movements very romantic and swirly and pretty: Monet, Debussy xoxo.

meanwhile, African American ragtime music becomes the “pop” music across the pond here.

North Dakota (1889), South Dakota (1889), Montana (1889), Washington (1889) become states.

train segregation laws flag beginning of Jim Crow; Civil Rights Movement of 1875 voided, making discrimination in private is not illegal, and prohibiting state intervention to personal or commercial segregation. l*nching continues throughout the south. slavery may be over on paper, but indentured labour is legal.

1882 infamous O.K Corral gunfight.

Gold Rush continues, all over the world—South Africa, to British Columbia, to California, to Argentina, to Russia-China borders.

centuries of American “Indian” wars continue.

American Dawes Act of 1887 granted American government authorization to regulate indigenous lands, including creating and assigning and enforcing reservations.

Sitting Bull’s 1883 speech of the atrocities experienced at the hands of white American settler colonists.

Canadian Pacific Railway 1881-1885. foreign labourers were hired to do a lot of heavy, dangerous, unwanted work. in America, more than 100,000km of tracks were laid by majority Chinese, Irish, Scandinavian workers.

America’s Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and Canada’s Chinese Immigration Act of 1885 was officiated, enforcing law of a Head Tax to be paid for every Chinese person entering North America. over the course of the next couple of decades, the fee of $1,500 was doubled to $5,000 was increased 500% to $25,000 in today’s currency—per person. this had devastating and lasting impacts on generations and societies of Chinese living both overseas and already in North America. propaganda at this time created many racist myths that persist today: there are too many Asians, they are taking our jobs, (the men) are gross and effeminate and a threat to (white) women, they shady and scheming people. these were the first and only major federal legislation to explicitly suspend immigration for a specific nationality in American and Canadian history. (I study Asian Canadian history, I can go on about this all day)

Tong Wars (1883-1913) had Chinatown gangs and factions in violent street wars across America, San Fransisco to New York.

large, targeted, and repeated anti-Jewish rioting (pogorm) and antisemitism rampant throughout Imperial Russia, 1881-1882 had more than two hundred anti-Jewish events alone. Jews continue to be racialized and othered.

fuck ton of colonization happening in Africa and the Middle East, Southeast Asia. Berlin conference 1884-1885 literally chopped up Africa to distribute to European powers.

Irish nationalist efforts to push forth Home Rule bill of sovereignty is defeated in British Parliament. Irish are not “white”, they are “othered” in Europe and in Americas.

use of photographic film pioneered by George Eastman, who started manufacturing film. his first camera (Kodak) was ready for sale in 1888.

Thomas Edison gets lit in New York 1883 with first electrical power station. next several year sees major cities being lit up with street lamps and public lighting with the science and works of a Nikolas Tesla (1886-1893).

hell of a lot more inventions in the works and patents being claimed. Hertz and radiowaves, Bell for telephone services.

“Between the years of 1850–1900, women were placed in mental institutions for behaving in ways the male society did not agree with”

way too much history to cram, obviously. here are some keywords for further research oki

prison industry / spiritualism / opium epidemic / irregular and uneven “modernizations” in rural vs. urban areas / class and poverty gaps / morality scares, checks, comparisons, gaps / new businesses and gadgets, products, tech to help with anything / fascination of the (colonial) Other; side shows, “freak shows” and other human zoos

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"THE BOLSHEVIK HAD many faces. There was the cartoon image of the Red—the wild-eyed radical with a bomb in one hand and a political tract inthe other—but there were many others as well. In the popular imagination the Reds were usually foreigners; that is, they weren’t “like us.” They were irresponsible, cowardly, and lazy. They might be misguided dreamers, as the humorist Stephen Leacock argued, or they might be determined terrorists. Some were disrespectful of women, but others were women themselves, feminists who wanted to achieve a dangerous equality between the sexes. Some people even thought that Red ideas were so extreme they were a sign of mental illness. This chapter takes a look at the multiple images of the Bolshevik that evoked so much fear and suspicion among Canadians during the Red Scare.

"It is becoming the habit in this country to designate every one a Bolshevist with whom we cannot agree,” said wounded war hero and Liberal Member of Parliament Charles “Chubby” Power scolding some of his seatmates in the House of Commons on June 2, 1919. Power was right. The definition of Bolshevism that emerged from all the Red Scare propaganda was infinitely elastic; it could be applied to almost anyone whose political views strayed from the straight and narrow. Some people believed that Bolshevism was essentially an economic doctrine proposing the abolition of the wage system and the transfer of the means of production from employers to workers. Others thought of it as a social doctrine promoting free love and the abolition of the family. To others it was nothing more than organized terrorism on a grand scale. For instance, the Liberal federal minister of public works, F.B. Carvell, defined a Bolshevik as

a wild-eyed anarchist looting a bank, shooting down all the Bourgeois or property owners in the country and carrying off their wives and children.

Despite the imprecision, there were certain recurring elements in the image of the Bolshevik that inhabited the collective nightmares of Canadians in the years 1918 to 1919. For one thing, Bolsheviks were usually aliens, immigrants from one of the poorer nations of Europe: Germans, Italians, Finns, and Slavs of all sorts. “The country has been stripped of much of the good old Anglo-Saxon stock,” explained Thomas Fraser in his Maclean’s article of January 1919, “and its place has largely been taken by workmen of foreign extraction, many of them of enemy nationality. That is the root of the whole matter.” Even when it was admitted, as it had to be, that most of the radical leaders responsible for widespread labour unrest were from Great Britain, and therefore very much of “Anglo-Saxon stock,” it was argued that this leadership only succeeded in spreading its dangerous ideas by exploiting the large immigrant population. It was not solid Canadian working men and women who fell into step behind the radicals, but ignorant “bohunks” and other undesirables from the teeming slums of Europe.

Much of the resentment expressed against Canada’s Reds stemmed from the strong animosity against those who were seen as shirkers of their military duty. Supporters of the war despised and ridiculed any able-bodied man who had not gone to fight, and for the most part the labour radicals fit into this category. From their own point of view, radical pacifists had refused to fight the boss’s war. But most members of the public did not see it that way. The shirkers were cowards who had remained in the safety of home while others had paid the ultimate price to defend western civilization. As Jonathan Vance points out in his book, Death So Noble, the call to service was a test of character, and those who did not answer, or who answered no, had none. Communities took enormous pride in their young men who had answered the call in the affirmative, and took a correspondingly dim view of young men who did not. Part of the image of the Bolshevik, therefore, was that he was a spineless snake in the grass, too cowardly to fight for his country, a man who had done nothing to protect Canada at its moment of peril. Why now, in the post-war world, should they be allowed to have a say in its future development? Much of the vehemence with which the Reds were treated had to do with this sense that they had betrayed Canada’s men and women in uniform. To accept that the Reds might have something to contribute to postwar reconstruction was somehow to endorse this betrayal.

Often, Bolsheviks and Germans were confused or conflated in the public mind. Because they had double-crossed their allies by withdrawing from the war, Russian Bolsheviks were seen as no different than the “Hun.” The Allies had defeated Germany on the battlefield, but now it was suspected that German agents were working clandestinely in foreign countries to foment revolution. In some people’s minds, the war against the Reds was an extension of the war against Germany. John Newton, vice-president of the Winnipeg branch of the Great War Veterans Association, explained how it worked. The conspirators’ plan, he wrote in a newspaper article, was to stir up trouble among labour groups, ignite a series of strikes to disrupt the economy, raise the cost of living, and set social class against social class, all of which would eventually result in civil war and the creation of a Soviet-style government in Canada. The Reds, he said, were “only the cat’s-paw of the still worse gang behind the scenes who are carrying out the orders of their overlord, the Hun.”

Bolshevism was considered to be an alien philosophy, profoundly un-Canadian, as anyone would know who truly understood the country. W. F. Cockshutt, another Member of Parliament, declared:

It is time that the laws of Canada should be enforced against those who come over from the old lands, have found sanctuary here and do not appreciate it any more than to preach doctrines so subversive of all law, order and decency as the Bolsheviki have done in Russia, and as they will do here if permitted. In a free country like Canada no such doctrines as those are justified.

What were these alien doctrines which the Reds allegedly would impose on Canada if their revolutionary plans were successful? Some of them were laid out in an editorial in the Toronto Globe in April 1919, titled “Bolshevism in Canada.” First of all, said the Globe, all private property would be seized and given to the state. (“The home, the very foundation of civilization, is swept away …”) Next, all civil liberties, all courts, all laws would be abolished. “Force takes the place of justice.” And third, manual workers would take over the government of the country; everyone else would be excluded from positions of power. “The time comes for the taking of defensive measures of a drastic sort against those who would reproduce in Canada the conditions now existing in Russia,” warned the Globe.

What most alarmed mainstream Canadian opinion-makers was the doctrine of class warfare, and the violence it implied. “They announce a doctrine which says that you shall shoot down every man who wears a white collar, or a white shirt,” exclaimed Cockshutt in the House of Commons. By setting one class against another, the Bolsheviks seemed to advocate a complete breakdown of civil authority. The result would be chaos and anarchy, and to prove the point one only had to look at Russia where, according to the stories regularly appearing in the Canadian press, murderers and thieves ran amok.

Early in 1919 the Manitoba Free Press reported in a front page article that conditions were so bad in Russian cities that peddlers were selling human flesh on the streets to eat. Most middle-class Canadians agreed that there was no need to preach class warfare in Canada. Canada was a democracy, they said, not some brutal dictatorship. Even if revolution might have been necessary in Tsarist Russia, in Canada freedom already existed, guaranteed by the very institutions—the family, private property, elected government— that the Reds sought to destroy. Bolshevism was not simply wrong to propose a reorganization of Canadian society along socialist lines, it was treasonous. It went against everything the country stood for, and as a result had to be suppressed with all the force at the state’s disposal.

Sexual licentiousness, indecency, and a lack of respect for women played a large role in the Bolshevik identity as many Canadians imagined it. Garbled reports from Russia described the “socialization of women” that went on there. Respectable opinion warned that the Reds had the same thing in mind for Canada. The “defilement” of women was a constant theme, though it was usually expressed in the allusive manner of this report by a police spy in Brandon, Manitoba:

Another deplorable thing has occurred here on several occasions, when several highly respectable married women have been grossly insulted in their homes by draymen and deliverymen. I could not find out what was said, but I am led to believe that it was of a very immoral nature and about what one might expect to come from men of ignorant Bolshevik ideas.

If the Bolshevik was believed to be gross and uncouth, he was also believed to be devious and ruthless, without any sense of fair play. Russia had proven this, after all, by withdrawing from the war so precipitately early in 1918. Abandoning its allies, it had come close to costing them the war. It was hard for many Canadians to forgive this act of betrayal, and it seemed to indicate how thoroughly all Bolsheviks lacked loyalty and honour. Without these virtues, Bolshevism could be nothing more than the rule of terror. The Reds might talk about the legitimate grievances of working people, but this was a front for their real intentions, plunder and robbery. “Bolshevikism [sic] is a remarkable manifestation of malice and ignorance and murderousness combined,” wrote the editor of the Ottawa Journal. In theory, the Montreal Star explained to its readers, Bolshevism appeared to be a Utopian-political theory. In practice, it was nothing but “brigandage,” the forcible transfer of wealth from those who had earned it to a small number of idlers, thieves, and murderers. The Winnipeg activist Sam Blumenberg was not exaggerating when he told the audience at the Walker Theatre meeting in December 1918:

Nine-tenths of the people accept the newspaper portrait of a Bolshevist as a man who never had a shave nor a haircut in his life, with a knife in his mouth, a torch in one hand and a bomb in the other, and Bolshevism is considered as something similar to ‘Flu’ or ‘black itch’.

Laziness was another common attribute of the “Imaginary Bolshevik.” Reds allegedly wanted to steal from the industrious rich and give to the indolent poor. “Broadly speaking,” H.F. Gadsby told the readers of the Toronto weekly, Saturday Night,

the Bolshevists in all countries are those who do not fit in with the age-old formula—that man lives by the sweat of his brow. They want to reap where they have not sown. They are the inept, the idle, the vicious—the semi-loafers who are half in and half out of a job, or who prefer no job at all. They have not the get-up to climb the tree and pick the fruit, so they want to shake the tree and bruise everything.

Middle-class Canadians imagined Bolsheviks to be furtive and conspiratorial, meeting in dark basements, sharing secret passwords and handshakes, spreading their poisonous messages in codes and subterfuge. The radical leaders who spoke openly at public meetings were just the tip of the 'Bolshie' iceberg; the majority of the movement carried on its revolutionary work below the surface. This shadowy world of Bolshevik intrigue was evoked in a memo from a police agent on the subject of “secret writing,” which reported that when “foreign agitators” communicated with each other they engaged in devious tradecraft. For example, first, the Bolshevik wrote an inoffensive letter on one side of a sheet of paper and then, on the other side, wrote a secret message “with a pointed stick dipped in milk.” The result was invisible until the recipient brushed some fresh ash across the page, making the milk writing reappear clearly. The wily Bolshevik was assumed to have many tricks every bit as ingenious as this one to avoid detection by the authorities.

This was the image of the Bolshevik then: a ruthless, secretive terrorist dedicated to the forcible dispossession of the employing classes and the socialization of wealth and property. “Professing to be democrats, the Bolsheviki attack democracies,” wrote the Ottawa Journal; “professing to be champions of the poor, the Bolsheviki murder the poor; professing to champion the progress of humanity, the Bolsheviki trample on education, the chief hope of humanity.” Socialists and labour leaders in Canada did not seem to fit this profile, but it did not matter. They were believed to be either the unwitting dupes of hardcore revolutionaries who created and manipulated social unrest from the background, or dedicated revolutionaries themselves who cleverly disguised their real intentions behind a screen of feigned moderation. Either way, mainstream opinion considered them to be an extreme threat to the Canadian way of life, a threat that had to be stopped by almost any means.

- Daniel Francis, Seeing Reds: the Red Scare of 1918-1919, Canada’s First War on Terror. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2011. p. 111-115.

[eldritchaccident]

Timing: A little after [Honey, We Melted the Demon] Location: Teddy's Boathouse Feat: @mortemoppetere & @eldritchaccident Warnings: The Emilio Starterpack: Mentions of ( family death tw, child death tw, suicidal ideation tw ) Summary: Emilio watches until Ted wakes up after the crystal mess. That's what nemeses do right?

Teddy was breathing quietly, the sound filling the small room on their boat. Emilio wasn’t sure why he stuck around for it. Some lingering guilt, or the exhaustion that clung to him? It wasn’t like with Wynne, when he’d felt he belonged next to their hospital bed, sitting vigil. He knew he didn’t belong here, felt out of place just as he had every other time he’d been in this damn boat. 

Outside the bedroom was the couch where he’d found Teddy at the beginning of all this. The mattress that housed the demon now was the same one he’d bled on after the hellhound, the same one he’d melted into when that necklace’s curse had him hearing the damned. And now, he sat in a chair with his arm pulled close to his chest, ribs and shoulder throbbing where they’d made contact with the walls of that mine.

He knew he ought to leave, ought to get out of the boat before it swallowed him whole this time. How many times would he ache between these walls? How much of his pain could this damn boat swallow before it sank under the weight of it? Every time he was here, he thought he came a little closer to finding out.

The breathing from the bed shifted, and Emilio shifted with it. “Don’t have to pretend you’re sleeping,” he commented. “I was about to go, anyway.”

—

It was strange, drifting in and out of consciousness after the incident. So much of it felt like an awful nightmare, but then again, Teddy never remembered their nightmares. The days were hazy, wrought with pain but also comfort. Being so close to Nora, being able to just hang out and not worry about the world above… it was nice. In a way. Probably helped that the crystals wouldn’t shut up in their head about how amazing the mines were. Even so, Teddy figured they might have enjoyed the rocky camping trip even if they didn’t have the mind altering mineral bearing down their neck. Spine? Brain? Whatever.

Everything still ached. Worse than after a regular shift. Of course it did, it made perfect sense. Usually the demon kept it to one transformation every two or three weeks at least, a month and a half apart at most. Making Big Finn a rare but not unheard-of guest of the Folklore Tourism show. As far as they could remember, Teddy had shifted every goddamn night over the last few weeks. Forcibly ripping through the last shreds of their humanity. The tail was a pretty good encapsulation of just how far removed they were from it now. The wiry thing slunk around the demon and curled up between the pillows propping them just so. Completely new, completely foreign, and yet… it was like it should have always been there. 

A voice called, but Teddy had felt the presence long before they had actually awoken. Or gave the appearance of waking up. (Or whatever the sonic version of appearance was). Emilio was there. And he’d been there for some time. The demon had noticed, and kept with the mimicry anyway. Wondering if and when the detective was going to either catch on or just leave. They wondered if he had noticed before he said something. Was he just waiting and listening too? 

Ted’s heart sank a little as they clutched too tight to one of the many plushies. Now that they were awake, Emilio was leaving. That was fine. It had to be fine. He shouldn’t have had to be there in the first place. A tired resignation filled them up to the brim with sighs. This was probably just something Levi put him up to. Probably paid the detective off to sit in wait while it attended to other tasks. Make sure Teddy didn’t get into any more trouble. 

Just like watching Gabagool. 

Was the elder demon upset? How much did Levi know? How much had it pulled from the detective, from Nora? They didn’t really think Nora would easily give up any secrets. But maybe– if she got to see the other sea beast, they knew she’d love Levi. Maybe if she was bribed with fun cursed objects, she might have– Emilio on the other hand… well he must have been the one to get Levi in the first place, right? Truthfully, Teddy didn’t know how to feel about it. Just like they didn’t know how to feel about what happened just after their rescue, either. Didn’t know how to feel now, sitting in the dark, desperately wanting the man who didn’t need to be there not to leave. 

“Wait–” A flash, the night or day or whatever before it had been. However long Teddy had been asleep for hadn’t robbed them of the memory. Soft lips, rough cheek. Heart swelling in their chest like lightning had struck, but with it, no pain. An impulse, a moment of shock. It didn’t mean anything. Right? It couldn’t have. They were so wrapped up in the ecstasy of being saved that they just— It wasn’t like the man would’ve been okay with that kind of thing. He still wore a wedding ring for fuck’s sake. Whoever that ring belonged to, that’s who Emilio cared about. It wasn’t something in the cards for the demon who was more likely to piss the detective off then get him to look at them twice with anything but disdain.  

“Before you go– w-water… C-could you..?” Petty, Jones. A cheap trick to get him to come closer. A chance to feel his hand against theirs. A moment to let the dream linger before reality came and crashed in. Before they had to forget and go back to stupid insults and dumb jokes. 

—

Part of him wanted to ask about it. That moment just before consciousness left Teddy, that brush of lips against his cheek in a gesture that was so unfamiliar that he ached with it even now. It was a chaste, gentle thing. Nothing like his marriage, which had been all fiery passion doomed to burn itself out. Nothing like the years of messy hookups that had followed, which were always clumsy and desperate and a little brutal. If anything, that moment had felt more like the handful of hugs he’d received in his lifetime. From Rhett, from Arden, from Zane. A quiet thing that somehow said both I’m glad you’re alive and I’m sorry you survived in the same breath. The kind of thing you could let yourself want if you thought about it for too long. But Emilio wasn’t stupid — he knew it hadn’t meant anything. That was why they’d repeated the same gesture on Nora and Levi right after. It had been a flood of relief, he was sure, some kneejerk reaction to being freed from the crystal’s curse. Teddy would have done the same to anyone.

And still, there was some part of him that considered bringing it up. Maybe he would have, if he were braver. In a statement (“You kissed my cheek, you know.”) or a question (“Why would you do that?”) or an apology (“i’m sorry the closest person to you when you came down wasn’t one of the two people there you actually like.”). A really brave man might have done all three at once. But Emilio was a coward, just as his mother always said he was, and he remained silent. If it remained unspoken, it didn’t have to become anything heavy. 

Especially since he was pretty sure Teddy didn’t even want him here. It was written all over their face, the way they looked at him. That shadow in their eyes, the way they wouldn’t let their gaze settle on him for longer than it took for one heartbeat to give way to the next. They were probably wondering what the hell he was doing here at all, why it was him at their bedside rather than Nora or Levi or anyone else. 

Why’d they stick me with this fuckup, Teddy was probably wondering. So he can lose me in the mines again? Deliver me right down to them? Let me get kidnapped by vampires and nearly drained? Leave me to die alone in the living room floor? After all, wasn’t Emilio’s life little more than one fumble after another? Didn’t he only ever amount to the sum of all his mistakes, endless as they were? His past was a trail of corpses he hadn’t saved. Teddy had almost been among them. So had Wynne, so had Arden and Zack, so had Nora. Every friend he had was just someone he’d found a new way to fuck over. The fact that Teddy now found themself on the list meant it was no longer limited to friends — it was just anyone he interacted with. You make the world so much worse by being in it, he thought bitterly, sucking his teeth.

He stood, and Teddy said wait, and for a moment… For a moment, Emilio thought they might say something else after. Something he wanted to hear, even if he wasn’t sure what that was right now. Instead, they asked for water, and he kicked himself for thinking it could be any different. 

“I’ll run to the kitchen,” he agreed. “You try getting out of bed, I’ll break your legs. Then your dad’ll eat me, so I guess we both lose. Might as well stay where you are.”

—

Why was everything always so different and difficult with Emilio, huh? It was like they weren’t allowed to meet up in normal ways. It made it so hard for Teddy to cipher through the complex codes. Were they feeling something towards the man, or was it just the adrenaline in various stages of rising or cooling? They felt guilty for not knowing. They felt guilty for feeling anything. This wasn’t real, it couldn't be. So why did they feel like a little kid shyly flushing and averting their gaze at the thought of a special someone looking their way? 

Teddy groaned at the man's threat. Groaned again as they tried their best to sit upright. Every movement was slowed, like rust jammed up their joints. Pushing themself back on the mattress was a mountain of effort, but they did it anyway so it was very clear they weren't trying to make a break for it. Just getting themself in a position they could hydrate without die-drating. A sea of pillows surrounded them but it wasn't enough to form a protective wall between their flooded mind and the man who didn't even hesitate to follow Teddy's request. 

A hollow melancholy came with that, it shouldn't have. But it did. As the demon's eyes watched Emilio round the corner to the sink, they sank. Tired eyes trailing him. Looking for answers. In the same way the man was, unbeknownst to Teds. Each of them scouring every detail for some kind of meaning. Both mistaking the gestures for something worse than they really were. He doesn't want to look at me. Not like this. No one does. Teddy's mind supplied. He's only here because he's scared of what Levi would do. He'll be gone, he'll be gone he'll be gone. Emilio would walk away and the ship would be empty again. The same way it always was. The same way the demon themself was. Far enough removed from anyone else that no one would ever notice how lonely they were. How much pain they were in. 

Because their pain wasn't real. Not in the way the world seemed to ache for Emilio. Whatever happened in his past that had him paranoid and closed up. Whatever had put that protective shell around the fire that burned just below. Teddy didn't know, but they had guesses. The detective acted differently around certain things. Bristled when they were brought up. Teddy saw and studied the man long enough to figure out he lost someone who meant the world to him. Didn't need to be a detective to piece together it had something to do with a kid. He felt responsible for it. Whatever it was. Maybe that's why he stuck around too. Some misguided guilt over seeing that Leviathan couldn't be here to watch over its ward. Maybe. 

Footsteps approached and Teddy found themself staring so intently at their blankets they didn't even notice how the new tail twitched and swayed behind them like an irritated cat. It was just about the only part of the demon that didn't actually hurt to move. It was too new for that. But they couldn't look up. Not yet… Not yet.

"Thanks…" 

—

Teddy shifted on the bed and, for a moment, Emilio thought they were going to get to their feet just to spite them. It was probably what he would have done, had he been the one in bed barely able to move. But the idea of Teddy doing it made him feel like a failure all the same, because if Teddy got up just to prove to Emilio that they could and got hurt in the process, that would be his fault. The same wouldn’t be true in a role reversal. If Emilio got hurt, it was because he was supposed to. The ache in his shoulder, the ever-present pain in his leg, that was what he was built for. Hunters were supposed to rise and fall, were born just to die bloody and alone. 

But Teddy was different.

Teddy was someone’s child, still. Emilio had seen the look in Levi’s eyes as they’d journeyed down into that mine, had felt the concern flowing off of him in waves. His mother had never felt such dedication to him, he knew. If the same situation had played out back in Mexico, if Emilio had been missing and hurt and in desperate need of someone to find him, he was under no illusions as to what his mother’s response would have been. Teddy was someone’s child in a way Emilio never had been, never would be. They had a parent who loved them, who would do anything to save them. They were more like Flora than they would ever be like Emilio. 

Because what did Emilio have? People who didn’t want him dead, sure, but not people who’d be worse off if it happened. Nora would find someone else to help her learn about the supernatural. Metzli already seemed to be offering assistance in that regard. Rhett would mourn him, to be sure, but he’d also have less reason to stick around after his business here was done, and wouldn’t the town be safer for that? Wynne had their roommates to watch over them, and even if they didn’t, Emilio had failed them once already. He’d only ever fail them again and again. He knew that.

Everyone in his life already had someone or something better, because they always had. It had always been this way. Maybe some part of Emilio made it that way, even if only subconsciously. Make sure everyone you love has someone who loves them better, because then it’ll be easier on them when you’re gone. Then you can do what you’re supposed to do and not feel bad about it, even if what you’re supposed to do is die. That had always been Emilio’s destiny, always been his endgame.

But it shouldn’t have been Teddy’s.

He stared at the glass of water he’d held under the sink, a little surprised to see water spilling over the glass and onto his hand as it overflowed. He didn’t even remember the trek to the kitchen, didn’t remember retrieving the glass or holding it under the sink to begin with. That happened, sometimes. When things got bad in his head, his body worked on autopilot. He knew it wasn’t a good thing.

Tipping the glass to the side, he poured out just enough water to allow him to carry it back to the bedroom without spilling it, pushed it into Teddy’s hand wordlessly. He watched their tail twitch, wondered if it had always been there. Tried to imagine them as a kid, tail knocking shit off the counters. (Tried to imagine Flora with a tail, then tried not to.)

“Sure,” he replied, voice sounding rough. “No problem.” He ought to leave now, he knew. Call up Levi or Nora or someone else Teddy didn’t hate to sit with them now that they were awake. Give them someone who’d have a conversation with them that was worth having instead of one that didn’t know how to be anything more than grunts and dry humor that no one found funny and stilted, uncertain English. After everything they’d been through, they deserved that. Deserved more than whatever Emilio was. Everyone did.

But he didn’t leave. He stood there, he watched. He hated himself for staying, and he hated himself for wanting to go. And wasn’t that the long and short of it? No matter what choice he made, it would be the wrong one because he was wrong. He had always been the thing that was wrong.

“I, uh…” He didn’t know what he wanted to say. He could blame it on the language barrier, but he knew it wasn’t true. There was another kind of barrier there, one far too big to climb. Emilio shifted, gritting his teeth as the movement sent a flare of pain through his shoulder. If he felt this bad, he could only imagine the pain Teddy was in. At least Emilio had earned his. All Teddy had done was help Nora, and this was what they got for it. “It’s good. That you’re not dead. It’s good.”

—

Time suspended once again as Emilio's hand touched Teddy's. They let the cup linger, as if it might be too heavy to hold on their own. Heavy like all of this shit. They only wished the man would let them hold on for him in return. Little anchors everywhere. From the corners of his eyes to the tips of his fingers. Knotted thorns that dug in where he expected no one else to look. Deeply rooted down to the very core. So thickly grown that the detective couldn't perceive a single positive thing about himself. 

No, Emilio Cortez was no saint, but who the hell was? Why would anyone want him to be anyway? Every interaction held this reverence to piety just beneath the surface. Emilio saw what he was supposed to be, and held himself in silhouette opposite that light. Because he wasn't shining, he was garbage. Eclipsed by all the 'would be's, the 'could have been's. Every 'if I had just–' and 'without me–' that he so thoroughly believed to be true. Teddy knew the look of a man who believed the world better without him. Far more intimately than they'd ever admit to anyone. 

Two hands cupped around the glass, one around the detective's while it still supported the weight. Cooling, even before they brought it anywhere near themself. Warm, too. Because of him. Where they met. Where demon ended and detective began. Teddy let their fingers curl, running along the rough skin. Hands that had done more than their fair share of work making sure Ted hadn't ended up dead. Their heart skipped a beat. Or maybe started up twice as fast. It was hard to tell, Teddy was far more focused on the cup. The hands. The touch. On finding what the appropriate amount of time was to stay their hands, steady them and pull back. Where was the line, how long could they keep up the selfish charade? 

"Yeah..?" They croaked. Cracked and raspy. A little broken, a little incredulous. That was almost a compliment by normal standards. It was… something else for Emilio. Teddy didn't know what. They couldn't make heads or tails of anything when they were like this. "Don't–" a pause, a long sweeping look over at those big brown eyes. "Don't think I would have been without your intervention, Emilio." Not Cortez. Teddy wasn't saved because the man was a keen blade honed by a cruel blacksmith. Teddy wasn't saved because the defenders of humanity took a kid and made them a murderer. Teddy wasn't saved because generations of trauma were passed down without question. 

Teddy was saved by Emilio. Because he was annoyed with Ted's shit behavior and came to investigate. Because he realized something was wrong when no one else did. 

Because Emilio cared when no one else did. Or something like that. The man swore he hated Teddy. Said it all the time. Made it known how much the demon annoyed and pestered him. How much better he'd be if Ted just shut up. 

And still… he saw what no one else did.

Words weren't enough to describe what that meant to them. Teddy could spend the rest of their infinite existence filling page upon page upon page. And it wouldn't be enough to describe the feeling of being seen for the first time. 

Teddy goes AWOL for a week or two, oh, that's just normal. Teddy starts acting differently, they're just so flighty, so quirky. Teddy stops taking jobs, stops leaving their boat, stops all contact with the outside world and not even their father noticed. It might have been their own fault. No one could blame people for not noticing. They pretty much designed it that way. Kept at arm's length so they didn't ever have to look anyone in the eye when things went wrong. When Teddy and their silly little oddities became big fucking problems. When they left, or Teddy did. When secrets came to light and people ran away. 

Teddy kept secrets even from Levi. Kept it away so they wouldn't have to face the inevitable disappointment that its experiment was a failure. That Teddy didn't know if they could handle forever if it meant enduring the pain that came and went with the tides. It really hadn't ever been a helicopter parent, the distance wasn't even hard to slip in. I'm an adult now. They had declared. I need my own space. And for what? The occasional fling that meant next to nothing? Or was it for hosting detectives as they bled out from the mistakes that Teddy had made? Of course they'd be a disappointment if Leviathan could see. So of course they hid, because deep down the demon was a coward. Wrapping themself in a cozy blanket of lies and deceit meant to placate anyone and everyone into believing they were fine. And it worked. 

Until Emilio. 

—

Their hands brushed, and Emilio’s first instinct was to pull away. He knew the touch was likely unintentional, unwanted, and hadn’t Teddy had enough options stripped from them already? Hadn’t they lost enough of their agency in those mines, when the crystals warped them into something outside of themself, when they were twisted from what they were to what the mines wanted them to be? But Teddy seemed to need the help to hold that glass of water upright, and Emilio wouldn’t take that from them, either. He hung suspended, waiting for Teddy to pull away and confused with each moment where they didn’t.

Teddy spoke, uneven and raspy, and the way they said his name made Emilio glance up. Emilio. Not Cortez, not detective, not whatever it was they were calling him that week. Emilio. He’d probably heard Teddy say his first name before — maybe on their boat that drunken night when he’d tried to cure a curse with alcohol, or after the hellhound when he’d bled all over their sheets — but he couldn’t recall it sounding like this. Like it meant thank you, like it meant I’m grateful, like it meant something worth meaning.

He pulled his hands away suddenly, something strange gripping him by the throat, suffocating him a little. He didn’t deserve that. He hadn’t earned Teddy’s gratefulness, was a misplaced target for their thanks. If not for him, they never would have gone into the mines to begin with, and they certainly wouldn’t have been lost there. They’d swallowed that acidic beast to keep it from going after him. They’d left before they could be helped to stop the mine from collapsing on his head. Levi had said this whole thing was on Emilio, and he was right about that. If he’d done things differently, or if he’d found that cure faster, or if he’d told Levi sooner… He’d had a million chances to stop things from getting this bad, and he’d taken none of them. If Teddy was grateful, it was only because they’d forgotten that. Or it was because they didn’t think themself worth saving, figured they owed Emilio thanks just for trying as if trying was ever enough.

(It wasn’t. It never was. He’d spent all his life trying, and what had he gotten for it? What had been gained? He lost everything. He kept losing everything. Trying was never going to be enough to stop it.)

“Don’t think things would have gotten as bad without my int– inter–” He stumbled on the word, frustration bubbling up when his tongue wouldn’t wrap around it quite how it was supposed to. “Intervención.” It flowed easier in Spanish, similar enough that Teddy ought to be able to understand what it meant, but the way his jaw clenched made his frustration clear. He couldn’t define what he felt, couldn’t put it into words. Couldn’t assign language to it, or offer metaphors to help others understand it. He couldn’t even repeat a word someone else had just said without stumbling over pronunciation. All he ever did was try, and all those efforts ever wrought was failure. 

And wasn’t this a shining example?

Teddy, lying in bed barely able to move. Unable to hold a glass of water on their own, and Emilio too jumpy and uncertain to help them do so. What good was he now that the fight was over? He could kill monsters, he could fight and bleed, but what use did he serve sitting vigil? He could pray over a demon’s bedside, but God hadn’t listened to him in years now. Maybe that shouldn’t have been a surprise. What God would waste His time on the prayers of dull knives and broken weapons? Heaven didn’t exist for blades. It scarcely existed for the people who wielded them.

His chest ached with the silence, but everything he wanted to say made it ache more. There were rocks and there were hard places and the crevice between them in which Emilio was stuck was so small that his chest couldn’t expand enough to draw breath. He pushed a hand into his hair, tangling fingers in the curls before dropping it uncertainly. “Sorry,” he said gruffly. “For not doing more. And for — For being here. Know you’d probably like it more if I were someone else.” I think I’d like it more if I were someone else, he thought, but he didn’t say it. 

—

The trick worked. Emilio's hand under their own, a few seconds where Teddy could sit in the delusion that whatever the hell was going on inside them was shared. But alas, the prestige. Teddy spoke and the magic was lost. The man pulled his hands away, the demon shrunk deeper into themself. Playing off the languid heaving in their chest as some ill effect of the injuries, rather than the physical embodiment of the rejection they knew was coming. They were so sure of it. Emilio pulled away because of course he would. Because they weren't even friends, were they? Just two tired moths, beating themselves against the same lamp. Only to occasionally look at the other, telling them to stop, that they were going to hurt themself. As if it ever made a difference. 

"It would've." Teddy disagreed. "It would have gotten way worse." That much was clear to the demon, who spent very little attention on the glass in their hands, and far too much on the man's face before them. Following the lines where his rough set jaw met the neck they'd almost ripped wide open. Back up to lips drawn in a tight line. Such tired eyes, lost in retellings of old stories where he was never the hero. Something in Teddy wanted so desperately to help the man see that a pyrrhic victory still meant you won. That you could be imperfect and still have worth. Their own feelings aside, this was the true cause of ache between them. Teddy saw something in Emilio that he couldn't see for himself. And Emilio saw in Teddy what the rest of the world missed. 

He was a detective, Teddy reminded themself. This close and careful observation was not unique to them. Anyone else could be laid up just like this and he would have been there. Maybe he would've preferred that too. Teds didn't know. Scheherazade could have spun a thousand and one more tales on how this story could have played out. How it might have been better with a different lead in the demon's place. 

"The thing that I turn into–" a constant catch twenty two. Filled them up with pride, made them strong, gave them access to the ocean they loved so much… but it drove people away at best, at worst it– "I couldn't control it with the crystals in my head. If I didn't figure out that those feelings and that rage was from something else I might've– I think I would have just given in to it. Accepted that it was just another part of becoming a demon. That's–" a half croaked laugh squeaked out of them, as they mirrored the gesture Emilio was making. Running a hand through their own hair, stopping to scratch at the back of their neck. 

"That's what I thought was going on before you came here. Pretty fuckin' stupid right?" Another laugh, beleaguered and broken beneath a sorry smile. "A lot more people would've been hurt. Nora would've been alone whenever Cass couldn't be there. It was–it was good what you did. No matter what else happened, it was good, Emilio." Again, the name. His name. As if to say you are good, Emilio. You are good, and bad, and that's okay. An attempt to drive home something that probably fell on deaf ears.

"Nah. No sorries. You're being punished enough being stuck here with me." Because someone else had to have put him up to this…right? "If you wanna leave–" Please don't. "You can take off–" Please, please don't. "Whenever you like. I won't tattle." Words tumbled out, giving Emilio an excuse at the expense of themself. But Teddy wouldn't hold the man hostage if he had better places to be. That wasn't fair, and so much of this already tipped the scales away from the detective.

Teddy held their breath. Whatever the choice, it wouldn't be good. Stay, they get to feel the horrid ache that somehow drowned out most of the pain from their injuries. Go, and they'd sit in numbness thinking of all the things they'd done wrong. All the ways they had fucked it up from the very start. This wasn't a winning game. But that didn't mean Emilio had to play too. 

—

Emilio’s hand pulled away from theirs, and Teddy sank into themself on the bed. Was it relief, he wondered? Some quiet reprieve that came with no longer having to exist in close quarters with someone wrong and broken and bad? Or disgust, perhaps, that they’d had to endure it for so long? It was difficult for Emilio to imagine that he elicited any form of positive emotion from the demon; he didn’t even elicit positive emotions from himself. If he could choose it, he’d never spend any time at all in his own company, would be separate from himself and his mistakes. And that was selfish too, wasn’t it? As if his mistakes didn’t have names. As if the wrong he’d done had hurt only him, as if there wasn’t a graveyard full of people he’d gotten killed that Teddy had almost become a part of.

Teddy was trying to offer him reassurance he didn’t deserve, was holding an olive branch of kindness that he hadn’t earned. It had been easier in the beginning, when he’d been able to write Teddy off as a villain. Some awful, irredeemable thing who locked people in cages and didn’t care who they hurt in the process. But then they’d stepped in to save Emilio from that hellhound, even though it meant letting something they’d wanted to protect die in his place. They’d peeled him off that rooftop and given him a night of quiet amidst a screaming curse, they’d put runes on his living room floor, they’d offered him pretty lies even when they both knew it was his fault they weren’t even strong enough to lift a goddamn glass of water to their lips. It had been easier when they were a villain, because it let Emilio imagine himself as the hero. It let him pretend he was valiant and noble and decent. But now?

Teddy Jones was no villain. They were a good person, trying their best. So what did that say about Emilio, then? What box did that stick him into? He thought back to that roof, to the way Teddy fell backwards, to whose fault it had been. If there were villains, there were heroes, too. And Teddy was closer to the latter than they’d ever been to the former. Emilio was pretty sure he knew which that made him. 

“I could have done more,” he insisted, thinking of Levi. Of how angry he’d been, how righteous that anger was. “Could’ve gone to your dad before I thought you were dead. If it were my —” He stopped himself. If it were my kid, and someone had waited as long as I did, I would have killed them. He would have, wouldn’t have hesitated. And he would have been right to, just as Levi would have been right to swallow him whole for waiting with Teddy. If he’d gone to Levi sooner, it wouldn’t be as bad as it was now. Teddy might not have been hurt at all, might have been cured without injury just as Nora had been. It still would’ve been painful — he didn’t think there was any way to soak someone with acid without making it painful — but at least Teddy wouldn’t be bedridden now. 

And Levi would have known more about the demon shit, too. Maybe Emilio had known about the crystals, but he didn’t know anything about demons. He didn’t know anything about the shit Teddy was beating themself up about now, didn’t understand how to conceptualize it. It was impossible to say if taking Teddy to the mines had actually helped them or not. It was hard to know if the demon inside of them would have fought off the crystals on its own had he not delivered it right to where those crystals wanted it to go. He didn’t think anything he’d done had made anything at all better. At best, he’d done nothing. At worst? He’d added unnecessary pain to someone who was already hurting. And that was a familiar thing for Emilio, wasn’t it? He made situations worse just by being there. He made people hurt just by caring about them. It was the only thing he’d ever really been good at.

He shook his head, averting his eyes. “You can’t know that.” The idea that Teddy would have hurt more people without Emilio’s intervention didn’t compute. It was Emilio who caused the most problems. It was something he’d been told all his life, something he’d had beaten into him from an early age. If someone died before he could save them, it was because he wasn’t fast enough or strong enough or good enough. If that same person had had someone else coming to help them instead, if it had been Rosa or Edgar or even Victor, they wouldn’t have died. It was what his mother ingrained into him with each and every failure, and just because she was gone didn’t mean that way of thinking had followed her to the grave. Especially not when he still thought of her as infallible, as right. Emilio was the problem, because Emilio had always been the problem. He couldn’t even die correctly.

Teddy said his name again, his first name, and he drew into himself. He fiddled with his wedding ring, he bounced his leg. Sitting still was another thing he’d never been good at. A strange sense of shame washed over him at the way that failure, too, was on full display here. 

“I don’t think I’m the one being punished here.” Even if he deserved punishment, even if he ought to be. That was the thing, wasn’t it? Whatever divine punishments God had planned for Emilio always seemed to fall on someone else. He’d made a plan to run away from his family, to betray his marriage, and they’d died for it. He’d kept a secret from a worried father, and Teddy was stuck in bed, unable to move. Nora, Wynne, Arden… It was the people around him who always seemed to suffer for Emilio’s mistakes. Never him. Never the person who deserved that suffering. 

He tried to determine if Teddy was being polite in their phrasing. When they said if you wanna leave, was that their way of saying I want you to go? He couldn’t imagine they wanted him to stay, couldn’t fathom that they’d want a fuck up at their bedside when they were already hurt because of his mistakes. It’d be so much easier if they’d just yell at him. If they’d tell him he’d fucked up, if they’d tell him they wished it was him in that bed, if they’d tell the truth instead of filling the air with their kind dishonesty. What do you want, he wanted to ask, please just tell me what it is you want. But he was afraid of the answer.

“I should stay,” he decided. It was selfish, he knew. Using Teddy as a literal captive audience, ensuring he wouldn’t have to be alone with himself when he knew he was the last person Teddy wanted around. But he was selfish. He always had been. He knew that, too. “You’d probably get up the second I was out the door.”

—

"Hey, don't–" Teddy's tail, the only part of them not creaking like an antique machine, whipped across the bed. Smacking Emilio on the arm in a motion the demon didn't even know they were capable of. The surprise came as a stutter, a slight pause in their words as the new nerve endings fired off for the first time "–d-don't do that to yourself. You can't sit and sulk about what could have been, Em. That kind of shit is just gonna fester and build up in your chest till you explode. No one wants that." Maybe it was too soon for this kind of talk. For nicknames that weren't a tongue in cheek way of annoying the man. Too soon for words of advice that other people probably gave with better phrasing, more meaningful and impactful on Emilio, who was not even Teddy's friend. 

They sat, tight lipped and clutching the glass with one hand. (Sort of betraying the earlier illusion that they weren't able to do this on their own.) The other still preoccupied with their hair. Fiddling with one strand that just didn't want to sit right, an irritation that arrived from nowhere. Maybe because Teddy needed it to. Something else to focus on. Some way they could stop the silly and childish blushing that Emilio was sure to notice even with the whole…blue thing. Which he was way too calm about. Infuriatingly so. He hadn't even  mentioned the great monstrosity Ted had turned into. Like he didn't care. Maybe he had seen Levi. Maybe it was more obvious than they realized. But they wanted some kind of acknowledgement of the changes. 

This nonplussed facade was somehow worse. Like Emilio was intentionally hiding how awful he thought it was. (Because secret thoughts could never be good ones, could they?) He wasn't scared, but that at least made sense. He was a slayer, a born monster hunter. People like him had seen grotesques and aberrations since birth. What was one more demon on the pile? But still, some manner of reaction was warranted, and Teddy endlessly searched for it. Coming up empty each time. 

Instead the man was far too focused on his perceived faults. Couldn't get out of his damn head. "Yeah well, there's no way of knowing that things would have been better either." Without you, there was no way it could have been. Teddy wrestled with the thought. Aching with the disconnect. "Both are just as unlikely. Neither actually happened." A logic they could get behind, but they weren't sure Emilio would. The way they figured it (for other folks, never themself) the world had just as much of a chance of throwing the worst at you as it did the best. And you have a tendency to run into what you expect. Emilio saw the bad because he thought he was bad, somehow. He didn't see the people he saved, he saw how he failed to save them better. It was dumb. A self sabotage that someone grafted into the detective long long ago. One Teddy wished they could resolve. 

There it was again. The insistence that somehow Emilio was the problem in all this. Did the roots run down so deep that he felt bad for shitty people he didn't even care about having to 'deal' with him? "I can make it more of a punishment if you like, I'm real good at that." Teddy grinned, used the mobility of their tail to their advantage. Waving it tauntingly in front of Emilio's face, barely brushing against his nose. A thrill sent a wave of energy through the demon, waking them slightly from the groggy state they had been in. Guess old habits die hard, messing with the detective was still far too fun to set aside. 

—

Something slapped against his arm, and Emilio glanced down to see Teddy’s tail hovering beside him. The hunter twitched a little, and if not for the heaviness in the room he might have been amused by it. The way Teddy, bedbound and heavily injured, could still manage to find a way to make physical contact from an arm’s length away just to swat at Emilio’s arm and tell him he was wrong. It was very Teddy Jones of them, wasn’t it? It struck Emilio, then, that that phrase meant something to him. That he knew Teddy well enough to know that this was characteristic of them, that he wasn’t angry to know it.

And then they spoke again, and Emilio became Em in a way that knocked the breath out of him. Strange enough That Teddy was calling him by his first name instead of his last, but a shortened version of it? Nicknames were a way of expressing fondness, a source of comfort. It was why Rhett called him Milio and he was thirteen years old again. Teddy said Em and for a moment he was on a sofa in Mexico, Juliana’s head against his chest. It meant something. To Emilio, it meant something. But to Teddy? God, this was just who they were, too, wasn’t it? Nicknames assigned in jest, small touches that were probably meant to irritate. Teddy sometimes felt like a language Emilio understood, but didn’t speak. He was clumsy in it; he kept tripping over the phrasing. 

“I’m supposed to do better,” he insisted, and he meant I’m supposed to be better. He meant I’m not what I’m supposed to be, and I never have been. He meant everyone I ever loved would be ashamed to know me now. How many times had he failed now? Failed Wynne, failed Arden, failed Nora? He’d failed Teddy a half dozen already, and they weren’t even friends. Emilio was a poison, he knew. All he was capable of doing was making people choke on him. Maybe it would be better if he exploded, as Teddy warned him he might. At least shrapnel and flame offered a quick death to the people nearby. At least the ones who were left after would be able to pick up the pieces and move on with their lives. What he was now was a hemophilia. The wound would never stop bleeding.

 He shook his head at Teddy’s insistence, wondering why they were fighting him so hard on this. Was it just their instinct to argue? To tell him he was wrong, even when they both knew he wasn’t? If he swapped sides, claimed to be some great hero, would Teddy shift their position as well and admit to the truth? He almost wanted to try it, but some strange fear stopped him. He knew what he was. He didn’t want to hear Teddy say it. Not now, not here. “Things are always better,” he said quietly, “without me.” Ruining things was all Emilio did. He ruined his family, ruined himself, ruined the Cortez name after centuries of pride had lifted it up. Emilio wasn’t a weapon anymore, but he wasn’t much of a man, either. He was a series of mistakes masquerading as a person like a child playing dress up. And if Teddy didn’t realize that now, they were bound to figure it out down the line.

That tail was in front of his face again, dancing around in a way that was almost funny, a way that would have been funny if everything didn’t feel so heavy. He tried to let it be funny, anyway, because he thought that was what Teddy wanted. He swatted at it with the arm hanging off his uninjured shoulder, wondering absently if Teddy could even feel the sensation. “Good at being annoying,” he said, but there was no heat to it. If anything, it sounded almost fond. 

—

Teddy licked their lips, gave a long and hearty look at the glass of water in their hand. Half tempted to empty it on the man’s face to get him out of this slump. Maybe more than half. This jovial kick that sparked up in them was so much better than just trying to suffer the injuries in silence. They were distracted, energized, and enthralled by the back and forth. Even if Emilio continued to try and diminish and dissuade Teds from thinking anything good about him. Something he probably did to just about everyone. Instead the demon sighed, craned their head to the side and stole a long glance over at the detective. 

“You aren’t supposed to be anything.” Their expression softened, looking almost apologetic. For what the world had done to the man, for the trials he must have gone through to think that there was always some glorious purpose he was constantly falling short of. “No one is. Expectations are just words other people put in your head. You can’t–” Teddy set the cup down on one of the side shelves, then shuffled so they were facing Emilio directly. Sitting criss-cross applesauce close enough that their tail could continue to pester if need be. “–You can’t control the world. Everyone, everyone, makes mistakes. Big fucking catastrophic ones. It’s easy to look at them, only them. Especially when you’ve lost so much. But that’s not the whole picture.” 

Two blue hands cast a wide frame between them. Illustrating the scope of the things Emilio missed. Teddy was an idealist, true. But they truly believed life was what you made of it. That there was no grander scheme, no big inherent meaning to the universe. To some that brought a morose sense of hopelessness, to Ted, it opened a world where the only things that mattered were the ones you assigned meaning to. Joy. Freedom. Empathy. Love. Growth. These were held in such high regard that sometimes the demon forgot that the rest of the populace operated on a different system so to speak. So few people allowed themselves the idea of growth, like it was already too late. Like each moment didn’t matter because the ones in the past overshadowed them. 

“You were born a slayer? Okay. I was born to be a sacrifice to a greater demon. Maybe things aren’t as set in stone as you think.” One more bop on the forehead, for good measure. “Besides. I–” I don’t want you to leave, maybe ever. I feel normal around you. It feels like everything is balanced when you’re beside me. “I kinda like having you around or whatever.” A sheepish sort of smile sat along the demon’s lips. Another sigh rolled through them as their head lolled, chin near their chest, ear near their shoulder. Teddy looked sidelong over at Emilio, who sat there almost amused by the swaying appendage near his face, it even pulled a smirk from him. “Yeah I’m pretty amaz–” Then the swat. A yelp. 

An electric shivver shook through the demon as the sensation triggered something. Visibly, their shoulders and head shook like they’d just had an unseen force tickle the back of their neck. Teddy turtled themself into their chest. Eyes wide, and face flushed. Looking just about anywhere but at Emilio. Such a sudden shift there was no way the detective wouldn’t notice. What was he going to think? Oh look at the demon, it has a little crush. Fuck. Was that what this was? Fuck no. Fuck that. It was just, the tail was new. It had a lot of nerve endings that had never been used before. Even ones that had still had that ‘new tail smell’. Or whatever. The point was it was sensitive. And in a way Teddy hadn’t fucking expected. Certainly didn’t think they were going to have to deal with that here and now. 

“Don’t say a goddamn thing.” Thank goodness for all the plushies Teddy hoarded. They provided an excellent thing for them to crash into, burying their face far away from Emilio’s gaze. 

—

It was a nice thought, wasn’t it, that people weren’t supposed to be anything? The idea that all a person had to do was exist to pass whatever invisible test the universe was giving them, that living and breathing was enough to fulfill whatever expectations were laid out, it was a nice thing to think. And maybe it was true, in a sense. Maybe the only thing people had to be was people. 

But Emilio was not a person.

He was a sharp object, a dangerous thing, a weapon that was designed to be both shield and sword. It was his job to kill and to protect, to spill blood and to prevent blood from being spilled. And he’d always been good at the former — he knew where to aim to bleed someone dry in seconds, could slip a stake between ribs and into a still heart without even thinking about it — but he’d never been very successful at the latter. The people Emilio was supposed to kill turned to dust in the end, but so did the ones he was meant to protect. And what was the use of a thing that only did half its job? If he was all sword and no shield, what did it say about him? He was only good for one thing, and he didn’t want to be. He wanted to be better. He wanted to be the kind of man who could save someone before they were in a state that left them bedbound, wanted to be able to rescue someone without them ever knowing the feeling of teeth sinking into their throat. 

But that wasn’t him, was it? Teddy was here, barely able to move. Wynne would have a scar on their throat for the rest of their life reminding them of what happened in that barn basement. Arden had a cast on her arm. Flora was dead. Emilio had been too slow, too weak, too stupid to prevent any of that. And now he stood at the foot of the bed of one of those people he’d failed, and they were the one comforting him. Wasn’t that even worse, somehow? Didn’t that make him a whole new level of irredeemable? 

He wished Teddy would tell it as it was. He wished they’d point out how useless he’d been, wished they’d make a list of all the things he’d done wrong. It’s what his mother would have done. His mother would have found a way to recreate the situation, would have made him repeat it over and over again until he either completed it successfully or died trying. You fixed your mistakes, or you let them kill you. That was how it was supposed to go. But Emilio’s mistakes were piled on his back, were following him around, were trying to tell him it was okay. He didn’t understand how to cope with that, how to comprehend it.

“It’s different,” he said quietly, unwilling to hear it. Teddy’s biological parents, like Wynne’s, were irredeemable in Emilio’s eyes the moment they decided a child was a suitable sacrifice. It wasn’t what parents were supposed to do. A sacrifice who got no say in their slaughter wasn’t the same as a martyr who died for a cause. A child born only to exist wasn’t the same as a weapon forged to fight until it was irreparably broken. Teddy’s story wasn’t the same as Emilio’s, because Teddy was born a person and Emilio was born a thing. And maybe they were too kind to see it, but that didn’t make it any less true.

His hand made contact with their tail and they yelped, and the guilt that washed over him was heavy and intense because he’d hurt them. That was the only explanation for it, wasn’t it? Emilio was a thing that was only ever good at causing pain, and Teddy was in so much of that already. And still, they were kind. They said they liked having him around, and they shouldn’t. No one should. He shrunk into himself a little, pulling his hand back so quickly that it jostled his injured shoulder and drew a grunt from deep in his chest. That pain, at least, was deserved. 

“Sorry,” he said quietly, swallowing as Teddy seemed to try to melt into the bed behind them. Had he fucked up so completely that they were afraid of him now? “Didn’t mean to.” He should go, he knew. They probably wanted him to now, even if they wouldn’t say it. He should go, but something kept his feet cemented to the floor. He didn’t know what, only that it was good at what it was doing. “Uh, I can — I can stay. If you want. But you should get some rest.” 

—

Sorry. He said. 

Didn’t mean to. He said. 

What the hell was that supposed to mean? The goosebumps running up and down Teddy’s arms and the drumline beating in their heart probably weren’t something to apologize for. Unless the detective had already figured out the feelings that they were still processing through. Theodore’s brain trickled like molasses in winter, but Emilio was still sharp as a tack. He was clever like that. Observant. 

What the man lacked in traditional education was made up for with about a thousand different distinctive specialties. Things he’d picked up from different cases. Things normal folks wouldn’t notice. It could’ve been that this was his way of letting the demon down easy. No funny back and forth that could be construed as playful banter. Nothing else that could rile Teddy up, except–

There’s no way Emilio could’ve known the effect. Split second expression after, sure. But it wasn’t like he knew in advance. Lord knows if the man could tell the future he sure as hell wouldn’t be here right now. But if he didn’t know then… did he think he–?

The demon’s face lifted from the pile of pillows and plushies. Eyes still mostly closed and face all scrunched as they turned over their shoulder to peer at the treacherous traitor of a tail and beyond it the man who thought he had hurt them just by giving a little tap. “You– You didn’t– oh my god.” Flustered, maybe more than they’d been since the sixth grade, Teddy grabbed for one of their pillows and launched it over at Emilio. Kicked out with their cold feets for good measure before dramatically planting themself back in the pile. Face up, staring at the ceiling. “There. Even.” 

Was it? Would it ever be? Teddy let a long sigh roll out of their chest. Just full of those tonight, huh? Their gaze drifted towards the tinted window that overlooked the marina. Gentle waves rolled through, Ted followed each until they folded, becoming part of the same great body of water once more. “I– Do. I do want you to stay.” Why? Because they were a glutton for punishment? Because Emilio offered and Ted couldn’t help but be selfish? Great work Jones. 

“But you should get some rest too. Not like it’s been an easy few… whatevers for you. You’re favoring your right. Somethin’ happened to your shoulder. Did… Did I do that?” Teddy didn’t think they’d ever forgive themself if they had. It was bad enough that they had gotten Emilio in shitty scrapes he should never have been in. Bad enough that he made the man feel guilty over shit that was mostly Teddy’s fault. Over stupid shit, like the warehouse, the boat with the vampires, and now the mines. Emilio was a guilt engine already, he didn’t need to go feeling bad over some dumb demon who should have known better. Who always should have known better. 

Yet for some reason they kept going back. That aching need to know more about the man. How his mind worked, why he did the things he kept fucking doing. Teddy had an inkling now. The sources fairly clear. But it only left them with a thousand more questions then they had begun with. Teddy kept putting the man in danger just to satisfy an endless curiosity. The old tales say it would’ve killed the cat, Ted had seen more than once that it wasn’t always the one looking for trouble that ended up in it. But somehow they never learned. Never stopped. Even now. Asking for him to stay. 

“The couch is shit though.” Why were they still talking? Teddy’s stomach twisted in knots. “This is like… a California king. There’s enough room… if you wanted to– Unless the demon stank is too much. Don’t think I’ve showered since you guys dragged me out of there.” Just shut up Jones, just shut up. “I know, I know. Slayers don’t need sleep.” Oh great, now there were voices now too. “We’re so strong and powerful and filled with angst.” Teddy managed to put their best batman style hunter impression back on the shelf before continuing. “But you can at least be horizontal for a bit. Get some rest even if you don’t sleep.” Why were they like this? This was exactly the kind of shit that drove people away. When the mask came off and they saw Teddy plain and bare and dumb as a rock underneath that cool collected exterior. 

How could Emilio stick around after a performance like that? 

—

Already, Teddy was excusing away whatever pain he’d caused them. He could see it before they even opened their stupid mouth.They said you didn’t, but he had, hadn’t he? Why else would they have reacted that way? Emilio had fucked up, had made things worse the way he always did, and Teddy was too kind to lecture him on it. The hunter hesitated, still drawn back into himself. He only ‘returned’ when a pillow flew towards his face. Instinctively, a hand came up and caught it… which put his bare arm in the position to catch the foot that followed it.

The very cold foot. Emilio let out an undignified yelp, shuffling backwards as quickly as that old bum knee would allow him to. It was a little comical to see, the way his whole body retracted away from the cold. He shot Teddy a glare, though he resisted the urge to swat at their feet, too. No need to repeat the same mistakes. “Buy some pinche socks, wey,” he murmured irritably, although it wasn’t very convincing. Amusement sparked behind his eyes even as he averted them away from the demon’s gaze. 

But he did feel better, after. He wasn’t sure they were ‘even,’ wasn’t sure such a thing was possible unless Teddy decided to lead him into the mines and leave him there half dead for days before coming back for him, but maybe they were as close to it as they could be. It’d be impossible for Emilio to repay everything Teddy had done for him — after the hellhound, during the shit with the necklace, even cooking for fucking Gabagool to get him to shut his trap. Teddy had done nothing but help Emilio, and Emilio had done nothing but make shit worse for Teddy. It was unbalanced. It would always be unbalanced. Emilio couldn’t change it, couldn’t fix it.

But he could stay when they asked him to. He could pretend they were asking because they wanted it and not because of some perceived obligation that he didn’t understand. Teddy, for whatever reason, thought they owed him something. And if they wouldn’t listen to Emilio when he assured them that they didn’t, he could at least give the illusion of allowing them to think they’d repaid it. Let them ask Emilio to stay for him, and he’d pretend it made it less pathetic. Pretend he was less pathetic. 

Absently, Emilio brought his hand to his shoulder, as if blocking it from view might change the fact that Teddy clearly knew it was fucked. “Wasn’t you,” he replied, and it wasn’t really a lie. Sure, a demon tossing him against the walls of a mine had made the existing injury worse, but it wasn’t like Teddy was responsible for the initial wound there. Even if they were, Emilio wouldn’t have told them. They weren’t in their right mind in that mine; that much had been clear. He wouldn’t hold them responsible for things out of their control. “Vampire put a metal rod through it. It’ll heal up soon.” If he stopped getting thrown into walls, anyway. 

He hesitated as Teddy continued, eyes flickering to the empty spot next to the demon in the bed. What if he said yes? What if he crawled into bed, laid down with someone who was already hurt because he hadn’t been fast enough to prevent it? He hadn’t shared a bed with anyone for resting in years now, tended to disappear from whatever mattress he’d fallen onto before the person beside him could ever get comfortable at all. And it was better that way. He knew that. Because he was restless, because he couldn’t sit still, anyway, because he’d probably bleed on the sheets even if he didn’t know he was bleeding. Because the last person he’d let himself sleep beside had been dead for years now, because she wouldn’t be if it hadn’t been Emilio she was sharing her bed with. 

But Teddy Jones wasn’t Juliana Vargas. Even if she had been angry with him more often than not in the end, Juliana had loved him. Teddy didn’t even like him. And if it was loving him that had gotten her killed, didn’t that leave Teddy in the clear? 

“You smell like shit,” he commented. “And I don’t sound like that, you know.” He didn’t correct them on the rest of it, didn’t comment that slayers did still need some sleep because he didn’t want them to insist that he try to get some. But… “I’ll sit with you if you shut up and take a nap. Fair?”

—

Well that was a new development. The big bad slayer didn’t like the cold huh? Or maybe he just really hated feet. That was– no he was commenting on socks. It was definitely the chilly touch. “Why would I want socks that pinch?” Teddy grinned. An obvious farce this time. Emilio said the word so much it was hard to not know what it meant even if you hadn’t been taking every language lessons since the time you were re-born into the new and improved Jones family. 

A trickle of life seemed to ignite inside of Emilio. In turn, it raged a bonfire inside of Teddy. That was it. That was exactly the kind of thing they tried to get at with him. There was someone deeper in there, behind the shell, behind the mask. Just needed the right conditions to set him free. Needed to find a way to show the man he was more than what people made him into. If he could see it in others, maybe he could be shown how to see it in himself. If he could stick around Teddy, in any capacity (Rough acquaintances, maybe slightly possibly friends, weird occasional coworkers) then he could clearly look past the bullshit someone was guilty of. 

It would be a long road. And maybe Teds would be pushed away long long before Emilio ever reached the end of it. But it was worth it to try, wasn’t it? “A rod?” Yeowch. “You gotta find better dates man. Can’t keep having vampires jamming their rods in you like that. Not even the right hole.” A joke that was sure to irritate on multiple levels. And yet Teddy couldn’t stop themself. 

One of those little things. A small joy. A moment of reprieve so absurd that it pulled you from your thoughts. The demon always figured it was the little things in life that really made the whole thing worthwhile. If they could make those better for the man, maybe he’d start to see shit in a different light. Maybe he’d be able to see himself in a different light. It wasn’t just darkness, it couldn’t be. Not when Emilio Cortez was almost smiling, cracking jokes again, and agreeing to stay the night. 

If only just to watch. To sit by like some silent guardian. A comfort Teddy didn’t deserve, but they’d accept anyway. Not that they’d ever say it. “Gonna watch me sleep, Cortez? How very Edward Cullen of you.” There was about a 200% chance that there was no way the man would know what that reference meant. And while Teddy was normally the type to enjoy explaining things to people, they figured this one might be best left alone. 

Though, being technically a vampire movie, maybe someone had mentioned it in the past. Maybe someone made Emilio track down a signed poster of R. Patz himself. These little thoughts entertained the demon. A snuffling of air came through their nose as they had themselves a sensible chuckle. Turned over, and rested their head. Facing away from Emilio, knowing they wouldn’t be able to get any actual sleep if they had to just lay and stare. 

[karilapio]

En ekalla kertaa lukenu tota enkku pätkää ku räjähti pää jo ennen sitä mutta on kai sekin patrioottinen potaska käytävä läpi. Tätä menoa musta tulee vielä sellanen rasittava tyyppi joka tekee 3 tunnin videoesseitä...

In English, the following screenshot is but romanticized, patriotic version of history that Finnish people are taught in primary schools (you know how you teach history to children you don't start with heyyy your country was ruled by horrible people, slaughtered its own citizens and allied with literal n*zis! You start with simplified, cleaned up version and get deeper into detail in higher education although patriotism never quite goes away) and romanticed fiction. There's been a culture of silence out of respect for the Veterans but very few exist today so we have finally started to critically examine our past. Well, some have. Outside Finland it's been given that Finns were willing allies with n*zis and all evidence supports this but in Finland... for many it is simply too shameful to even think about nevermind admit. One great example being Finns getting upset every time someone points out some parts of our air force STILL has a sv4stika on their flag! In memory of the n*zi tht gave us our first aircraft no less...

It's nothing new - USA does the same trying to white wash their wars as do pretty much every country who would want to look bad if they can tidy up their own story instead - so of course a former proud ally of the "baddies" tries to sweep the bad in our history under the rug (including the part rarely talked about Finland being the one starting conflicts against ussr in 20s before ussr indeed started the actual Winter War) and in doing so, we are unable to learn from our history and are doomed to repeat the same mistakes again - far right government has just been elected to power and despite having (in name only) social democrats in power last time even they have fallen so far away from left values they were the ones that lead us to become allies militarily once again with autoritarian/fash countries like Turkey, Hungary.. Poland bears honorable mention and of course USA, the biggest baddest in the worl. Not that its a competition. But many Finnish people only know USA from Hollywood and Turkey as a fun holiday resort so once again it would take another long post to even start debunking the propaganda and falsified image of those countries to Finns that don't even know their own history nevermind the here and now political situation of foreign countries.

It's okay, not everyone is interested in history or politics and that is fine - I for sure regret picking up history instead of say gardening as knowledge is pain and makes you sad but once you start learning you can not stop - but we have a saying in Finland "empty pots make the loudest noise" and my problem is more so with people who know the least seem to be the loudest in sharing their opinions. And agreeing the Emperor has nice clothes gets you better Results than daring to say the Emperor is not only naked he is waving a sv#stika flag.

And for a country that build it's prosperity through socialism and good relations with both west AND USSR, Finns today sure can be quite anticommunist, even those who claim to be "leftists". But that's another long post lol and I must confess it was a long road and a lot of reading, listening and thinking for me as well to shake those patriotic myths and propaganda thus I want to stay understanding as nobody is born with all the knowledge in the world and I prefer not to engsge direcrly as you can never know if a person with lazy thinking or shocking opinions online is indeed only 14... teens are entitlef to odd opinions! Or a school dropout (usually not their fault!) or an actual neon*zi. Any case, no reason to engage with people who do not ask to be educated, it can be seen both rude (nobody likes to get a well achtually in their mentions) and most often a waste of time as someone already defensive of their view is too hunkered down to accept new information.. Rather I will make posts of my own that people can either read or not - and can decide for themselves if what I have to say is worth a follow or unfollow. People learn at their own free will. Just like I did and am still doing myself

It's very telling that the screenshot left out the Civil War. It's just as important what is left out and why than what is included.

And getting into Ukr war would be a whole another can of worns I do not wish to open, but because I'm in my "Fuck It" era I will say this: if you absolutely need to compare the two wars the only good comparison between 1939 and 2022 would be how once again people in power care more about a plot of land than about the people living there.

Otherwise, you can not in good faith compare the two. Unless you are claiming ukr are n*zis and the capitalist oligargy hell that is russia today is somehow same same as ussr (which included ukr!!!) and that my friend is a Put1nist view. We do have those in Finland, our current election winner party is literally the Sister party of Put1ns and they only cut ties fairly recently to avoid "bad optics" but nobody talks about it!

Or, are you comparing Karelian separatists, a group (not all) who wanted to join Finland to ukrainan separatists in donbass who wanted to join Russia? This comparison would either make Finns in 1939 the bad guys or Russia today the good guys?? Do not think any of these are my opinions, I am simply trying to showcase by examples how comparing these vastly different conflicts in vastly different times does not work.

I doubt the screenshotted account meant it thisbeay either as it is clear they don't have very good knowledge about history or political climate of the era so it was just a logic gone wrong due missing information situation. As a Finn I can see how they might have come to the conclusion but it is a very surface level understanding and that's why you should not take your information solely from one source or social media - keep an open mind and challenge your views but don't trust anyone at face values, Including myself! Go ask a librarian for books about stuff from writers with opposing biases and you will find much more reliable information comparing how a finnish, russian, german, british etc writers tell the same story. Somewhere in the cross section lays a grain of truth. But its okay iif you are not that interested.. what is a Basic life skills in today's internet is source criticism, understanding everyone has a bias and possible an agenda whether they are open about it or not and being vary of anything that provokes a strong emotional reaction. When that happens, take a step back before engaging. That is what propagandist use so well and algorithms love. Once again that should have its own post lol what can I say world is complicated and I do t eqnt to write a novel on tunblr.

Last note about wikipedia

If you want to link sources, link actual sources NOT wikipedia. You can only think what kind of people would have time and agenda to be editing the pages about this stuff and it's not actual historians (mind you, many patriotic historians also exist, nobody is without bias as we are only human). Keeping a certain pure image of our country is important to many Finns, we are after all still sort of "Keep Face" culture as seen in my anecdote about not talking about atrocities our side committed out of respect to remaining veterans. But it is time we talk about the dark side of our history and stop spreading the romantizied myths or we will be doomed to repeat the same again and again...

[opinated-user]

I think the whole "all blacks are slaves in star wars" is some backwards way of her trying to be progressive. This is the same lady who was mad that when star vs was doing racism plot that they didnt use the hispanic family as the center piece. Shes just teying too hard to be progressive she loops into being dumb and bigoted on accident.

let's keep a list of the things that LO decided to shove into SW that didn't need to be there and/or are explicitly against canon: -gender based eugenics (a whole bloodline of cis lesbian women who go out to get knocked up by random men and just naturally only birth other cis lesbians. LO later tried to backpedall this by saying that many were adopted and births were rare, but that still doesn't account as to how all women are cis lesbians or how in those "rare births" coincidentally there was still only cis girls). -anti black humans based slavery (painting the empire as such when literally the only stormtrooper whose face we have seen was Finn)

-cultural genocide/colonization (alaina does this purely because one person displeased her, reinforcing the idea that alaina is just the rewriting of valithria, another genocidal tyrant that LO wrote. this did existed in canon, but it was represented as a bad thing whereas LO just loves to write her "good guys" doing this). -strict social roles (rey taking care of the household and the children while alaina gets out to work*) -a strict binary that applies to the whole universe (only women are allowed in the only organization with power in the universe and only the people who were afab, even if they aren't women, are allowed to stay. the idea that afab/amab/women/men could be concepts foreign to some section of the universe are never considered). -because of this and the first point, transphobia is wildly normalized (this organization that "only allows women, cis or trans" still retains people whose identity emphatically is not women, merely because of biology.) -gender essentialism ("women, by virtue of being women or being born women, always have this characteristics"). most of this are all meant to be good things or actively encouraged by the "good guys". * couldn't find the post about this so maybe i had it backwards, but i remember this was a thing.

[beardedmrbean]

Savon Sanomat is among the morning's papers carrying an STT news agency report that in terms of media coverage, Pekka Haavisto (who is a Green MP but running as an independent) and Alexander Stubb (NCP) are leading the pack of candidates in Finland's upcoming presidential elections.

An analysis of more than 14,400 articles by the media monitoring company Retriever found that Haavisto had almost 4,300 mentions in the domestic media during the review period from the beginning of September to Tuesday of this week.

Stubb registered just 120 fewer mentions.

Current Speaker of Parliament Jussi Halla-aho (Finns) ranked third in terms of the number of media mentions. Immediately behind him was Mika Aaltola, an independent.

"The visibility of Halla-aho, who ranked third, has been boosted not only by publicity about the presidential election, but also by statements related to parliamentary work and party politics. It is interesting that Aaltola, who has lost support in the polls, reached as high as fourth in terms of media visibility," Retriever media analyst Pilvi Bisi was quoted as saying.

The president's job

An editorial in Thursday's Aamulehti points out that the powers of the President of Finland have been narrowed over the few past decades by shifting more authority to parliament and the government.

The paper writes that it is a good thing that power is not too concentrated in any single organ of state.

When times were even better in Finland it was even considered whether the entire institution of the presidency was completely irrelevant, Aamulehti continues. This is something that has not been heard in the ongoing presidential election campaign, it notes, adding that there is no doubt that the president's role is vital for Finland today.

As the paper reminds readers, the president is the Commander-in-Chief of the Defense Forces, manages foreign policy in tandem with the government, represents Finland at Nato summits, as well as appoints certain high office holders and judges.

However, in Aamulehti's words, "The most important task of our future president is to keep Finland on the world map."

It stresses the importance of what kind of image of Finland the president gives to the world and what kind of relations the president succeeds in creating and maintaining with the world's powers.

Also, Aamulehti expects that Finland's next president will have a significant role to play within Nato, as the Nordic countries rise to a brand new strategically important position on the world map.

And, although the president does not actively engage in domestic politics, in the current world situation, the president represents to many what the paper describes as a "trusted influencer" fully dedicated to promoting Finland's interests.

"The job is not easy and people's expectations are high. That's clear," writes Aamulehti.

More asylum applications

A number of people who entered Finland without valid travel documents this autumn, but declined to apply for asylum, have now done so, reports Ilta-Sanomat.

In November, some of the people who arrived at the Vartius border crossing without the required documents did not apply for asylum at that time. Now the situation has changed.

Major Timo Keinonen, the deputy commander of the Kainuu Border Guard, told the paper on Wednesday that almost all of the migrants who crossed the border at the Vartius checkpoint in November have now asked for asylum in Finland. Keinonen added that the lack of clarity about the situation was most likely related to a language barrier.

As Ilta-Sanomat notes, any of the arrivals from Russia who did not have the documents required for entry, and do not apply for asylum, can be returned either to Russia or to their original country of origin.

Popular neighbourhoods

Helsingin Sanomat looks at which parts of the capital region are most attractive to home buyers based on reactions to listings on the Oikotie online real estate service.

The service, which claims more than one million users a week says that the most popular areas in the capital region are currently Lauttasaari in Helsinki, Tapiola in Espoo and Tikkurila in Vantaa.

The top ten most popular neighbourhoods in the capital itself are Lauttasaari, Töölö, Munkkiniemi, Ullanlinna, Kallio, Oulunkylä, Laajasalo, Vuosaari, Kruununhaka, and Punavuori.

Falling housing prices have been most clearly seen in Helsinki's Ullanlinna, where average square metre prices were more than 10 percent lower in the first half of this year than last year, according to Oikotie.

Chilly start to the new year

Iltalehti reports that longer-term weather forecasts indicate that 2024 will kick off with plenty of snow and below average cold temperatures.

Foreca meteorologist Joanna Rinne told the paper that although day-to-day and week-to-week variations are still uncertain, it looks like the whole of January will be colder than usual, and that some really bone-chilling sub-zero temperatures are a possibility, especially in the north of the country.

[oceanlue]

Chairle: hay guys what's up

y/n: just writing up this file

Auron : me too

Charlie: oh I came to ask about something

y/n/auron:?

Charlie: I was reading an article about how our first draft of a book is always s&%×, And I heard that Ernest Hemingway said that, and I kind of wanted to know what he was talking about or what his life story was, so I came to ask you guys instead of the internet cuz you guys make things fun.....

y/n: well you came to the right place

y/n: okay guys sit back and relax while I tell you the life-long Journey of Ernest Miller Hemingway in about 3 minutes

Auron: 3 min huh....ok I'm intrigued let's see you try to pull this one off...rook.

Y/n : Born in Chicago in 1899. Son of a physician and a musician. Reasonably uneventful childhood. Decided to study journalism. Enlisted with the Red Cross during World War 1. Got blown up in Milan and spent 6 months in hospital with severe shrapnel wounds in both legs. Fell in love with a nurse. They decided to get married. He came home to prepare. She stayed there and ditched him for an Italian soldier, which initiated a lifelong pattern of him rejecting women before they had a chance to reject him. (Take note,alphonse.)

(Everyone laughed)

Y/n : Got a job as a foreign correspondent. Fell in love with his roommate’s sister, married her and moved to Paris. They hung out with Gertrude Stein. They kicked it with Pablo Picasso. He started writing in earnest, no pun intended. Moved to Toronto, had a kid, moved back to Paris. Published a couple of books.

Jessie: oh wow

Y/n : Cheated on his wife, got divorced, married the other woman. Converted to Catholicism. Cut his head open after pulling on a cord thinking he was flushing a toilet and instead, ripped a skylight from the roof and smashed it onto his face! Moved to Kansas City, had another kid, his dad committed suicide. He shot a lot of bears for some reason. Had a car accident, had another kid. Went to Africa to kill some wild animals and got dysentery.

(Karma!)

Y/n : Published another book. Moved to Cuba. SHOT HIMSELF IN THE LEG WHILST AIMING AT A SHARK! Cheated on his wife, got divorced, married the other woman. Published “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, sold half a million copies in a couple of months and got nominated for a Pulitzer prize. Cheated on his wife, got divorced, married the other woman.

Seth : oof

Y/n : Became the self appointed leader of a band of village militia outside of Paris and was subsequently brought up on charges for contravening the Geneva Convention, AND GOT AWAY WITH IT LIKE A &%$#*&^ CHAMPION! Got pneumonia, moved back to Cuba and spent most of his spare time on his boat, tracking Nazi U-Boats with a machine gun and a pile of hand grenades! (I AM NOT MAKING THIS #$%& UP.)

Faust: .........0_0

Trish: ...*looks at auron* so when you gona ask her on a date

Auron: *spits out coffee* TRISH

Y/n : Had a few more car accidents, three more concussions, GOT CLAWED WHILE PLAYING WITH A LION. Got depressed, drank, got fat, published a couple more books. Went back to Africa to shoot some more wild animals and barely survived two separate plane crashes in the space of 24 hours; winding up with a fractured skull, internal bleeding, cracked spine, ruptured liver, first degree burns, and a paralyzed sphincter muscle.

Finn : that's not good

Y/n : (Karma!) Won a Nobel Prize. Had a file opened on him by J. Edgar Hoover, left a bunch of shit in a safe in Cuba, and moved to Idaho, paranoid that the feds were following him WHICH THEY WERE BECAUSE HE SPENT MOST OF THE 1940S WORKING FOR THE KGB. (AGAIN, NOT MAKING THIS SHIT UP.) Suffered from hepatitis, nephritis, hypertension, hemochromatosis, anemia, and impotence. (Karma!) Got committed.

Auron:.....hmm

Y/n : Received way too much electroconvulsive therapy and came out all f^%$#* up, started hinting at suicide. So immediately got recommitted. Received another couple of months’ worth of electroconvulsive therapy, got released, put both barrels of his favorite 12 gauge shotgun into his mouth and blew his fucking head off! 

WHAT A GUY!

Charlie:.....well I be damned

[ladytp]

Use Your Words

Polonius: What do you read, my lord?

Hamlet: Words, words, words.

Polonius: What is the matter, my lord?

Hamlet: Between who?

Polonius: I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.

–Hamlet, Act II, Scene ii.

You know the drill. Answer and add some NP Tags. Includes NSFW language. Feel free to answer as one of your OCs or RPs if you like.

I was tagged by @amplifyme – thank you dearly!

A phrase / quote/ word you find funny: “She’ll be right” – which is a typical Australian expression about how it will be all OK - but it has turned at least in my family into an expression that means that everything is anything but OK!

Some of your favourite SFW words: ‘No worries’, ‘cool’.

Favourite cusses, NSFW or otherwise: ‘Oh shit!’, ‘Perkele’ (a Finnish swearword).

What language do you speak? Finnish as my domestic language, and English everywhere else.

Favourite word (s) in a language other than your first: ‘Mea culpa’, ‘Oy vey’.

Movies with subtitles on or off: If it is possible, often with subtitles on – even if the program is in English. I regularly watch movies/TV shows late at night when my other half sleeps and I don’t want to blast the sound out. I also watch a lot of foreign language movies and shows, and then it is must. I am also quite used to it, as in Finnish TV foreign shows are also subtitled, not dubbed – for which I am eternally grateful! Dubbed programs are… *shivers in horror*

Book you’ve read/listened to the most times? Not that many books – but maybe some of Finnish author Mika Waltari’s books would make the list. One that springs to mind is “Johannes Angelos” (English title “Dark Angel”), a story set during the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 – a wonderful, wonderful book!

Do you listen to songs in languages you don’t understand? Of course, all the time! Some of my favourite music channels are internet radio stations on World Music or Ancient music – and languages can be anything from Arabic to Spanish to ancient Greek or old Norse… https://www.radiofrance.fr/fip/radio-monde and https://www.ancientfm.com/  for anyone who might be interested.

Do you express yourself best with words, images or something else? With words, preferably written words – whether for work or other. Writing things down lets me think of what I want to say and how to express it in the best way that is understandable to the reader and deliver the message most clearly. (Not that I always succeed, though).

Do you talk more or less when you’re nervous? More, probably. Or sometimes I can shut down too. Not sure, I am not nervous often.

How do you pronounce February? ‘Fepruari’ (with Finnish spelling) Definitively with the ‘r’!

What kind of accent do you have? Very extremely and exceedingly Finnish! If you have ever heard a Finn being interviewed, for example a rally or Formula F1 driver – that’s me.

If you literally had to “eat your words,” how would they taste? Like neutral saliva. 😊

I’m tagging @zip001, @ownsariver, @littlefeatherr @sister-winter73 and anyone who wants to play! 😉

[sushisocks]

42 and 50!

Fill my inbox!

42. favorite film genre? 

no kidding, apocalypse movies/shows are my JAM. doesn't matter what kind, i eat all of them tf up. ive seen some of the most dull bad movies you can imagine just bcz its got that apocalypse in it. zombies, climate change, comet, aliens, if it's the end of the world, i'm there for it!!

50. put your music on shuffle and list the first 10 songs to play.

see this one is HARD bcz i have spotify and ive got everything split into way too many playlists but i did my best for u anon and i put on my biggest, 33hr playlist, and this is what it produced;

Smart - Madi Davis

Pray for Rain - Jessica Rotter

Kind of Woman - Stevie Nicks

Alright - Cyn

Ava - Famy

Det finnes bare vi - No. 4

Wander. Wonder. - The Arcadian Wild

Fake Happy - Paramore

Foreign Bodies - Lucy Swann

Oh No - Goodbye June

[mariacallous]

In January 1940, thousands of Soviet soldiers died in the Battle of Raate Road in eastern Finland, a decisive clash during the Soviet-Finnish Winter War. Most of them came from Soviet Ukraine, which, along with Belarus, lost the highest share of its population among all Soviet regions during World War II, according to Yale University historian Timothy Snyder. Unequipped for the harsh winter conditions, the Soviet Ukrainians were smashed by the less numerous but highly motivated Finns defending their own soil and independence.

Today, Raate Road leads toward the eastern border of the European Union and NATO, the two most important Western organizations Finland has joined in order to secure its freedom and democracy. Finland’s neutrality policy during the Cold War used to be seen by some Western commentators, including former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, as a possible model for Ukraine. However, it is today’s Finland—not that of the Cold War era—that provides the best possible model for Kyiv. Ukraine should be offered fast-track accession to NATO as soon as the war is over and full European Union membership as soon as it meets the conditions. Since fulfilling the EU’s extensive accession criteria requires countless legal and administrative changes and will unavoidably take years, it is all the more important for securing Ukraine’s European future to move swiftly and decisively on the NATO track.

Finland’s Cold War neutrality policy was a survival strategy to push back Soviet expansionism. After all, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had foreseen a similar fate for Finland as for the Baltic states—which were annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940—or for Hungary and other Central and Eastern European countries that became Soviet-occupied satellite states after World War II. Constrained in its foreign-policy choices by the neighboring Soviet empire, Finland developed a virtue out of necessity, positioning itself as a neutral, democratic, Nordic country.

As soon as the constraints disappeared with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Finland applied for membership in the EU, which it gained in 1995. But with the Winter War a distant memory, military neutrality remained the popular consensus. It took the shock of Russia’s massive invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, to turn Finnish public opinion in favor of NATO membership almost overnight, which led to the fastest-ever accession process in the alliance’s history. The country officially became the bloc’s 31st member on April 4. After Finland tried for decades to build a relationship with its former invader based on cooperation and trust, the war in Ukraine brought back historical memories of the Winter War and convinced Finns of the need for the strongest possible security guarantees, which could only be offered by NATO.

The sequence of joining the two organizations should be different for Ukraine, but the logic is the same. Just like Finland, Ukraine will need the strongest possible security guarantees and a firm anchor to the European political and economic order in order to be able to develop as a free and democratic country.

Apart from the ongoing war, there is one big obstacle in the way of Ukraine’s accession to NATO: the lack of agreement among member states. There is consensus only on the position that Ukraine cannot join as long as the fighting continues, since NATO does not wish to become a party in the war. The United States and Germany, the two main proponents of the “salami tactics” that have prolonged the war and increased the Ukrainian death toll by delivering only one small slice of military support at a time, are taking an overly cautious approach on Ukrainian NATO membership, too. Both governments have said they do not wish to commit to a clear timetable on Ukraine’s NATO accession at this stage.

Poland and the Baltic states, by contrast, are keen to offer Ukraine a clear path to membership and immediate closer relations with the alliance at the next NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, in July. In spite of numerous acknowledgements from Western leaders that they should have listened to Poland and the Baltic states earlier regarding the Russian threat, their views are once again being pushed aside as NATO debates Europe’s future security architecture and Ukraine’s place in it.

Supported by Hungary and a few others, the United States and Germany seem to fear that Russia would become more aggressive if Ukraine received a clear road map to NATO membership—as if Russia were not already doing as much as it can to destroy Ukraine and destabilize its supporters. These Western governments are holding on to the flawed logic that led to war in the first place: that security in Europe can be improved only if Russia is not provoked and its alleged security concerns are respected. Yet it was precisely this Western wish not to provoke Russia that made the Kremlin believe it could reimpose its sphere of influence by force on neighboring countries without any serious opposition from the West. It was NATO’s 2008 summit in Bucharest, Romania—where the alliance announced that Georgia and Ukraine could become members one day but refused to grant them a membership action plan—that paved the way to Russia’s invasion of Georgia a few months later and of Ukraine in 2014.

We should not forget that the 2022 invasion was preceded by Russian proposals to remake the European security order in Moscow’s image. In two documents presented in December 2021, the Kremlin was more explicit than ever about its aims to restore the Soviet sphere of influence and reduce NATO’s presence in Europe to pre-1997 levels. The new order was to be agreed on by the big powers over the heads of smaller ones. These documents were a more concrete expression of ideas laid out 12 years earlier by then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in his proposal for a new European security architecture, which was rather ambiguous but already hinted at veto power over NATO decisions. The Western response to Medvedev’s proposals was also ambiguous, but in January 2022, the United States and NATO made clear that it was inconceivable to even enter negotiations on the basis of Russia’s core demands, although Washington was open to talks on arms control, nuclear treaties, and transparency measures.

Today, Russian President Vladimir Putin has not given up on Moscow’s goals of regaining control over its neighbors, although Finland’s NATO accession is a major setback he has had to swallow. He still seems to believe that Russia will eventually outlast Western support to Ukraine and be victorious in the post-Soviet space.

Apart from the wish not to provoke Russia, at least three other arguments have been made in Western countries against Ukraine’s NATO accession. All of them had some relevance before February 2022, but they have been brushed aside by the war.

First, there used to be doubts about Ukraine’s readiness and ability to defend itself—and hence about NATO’s ability to defend Ukraine. Any such doubts should have vanished by now, as Ukraine has shown impressive resolve and capability to push back Russian aggression. The Ukrainian military has become the most combat-experienced army in Europe. Also, it has embarked on the path of becoming NATO-compatible through Western arms deliveries and deepening defense cooperation with NATO allies. (Developing compatibility with NATO requirements was a priority for the Finnish military ever since the end of the Cold War and became one of the preconditions for a smooth accession process.) This work has to be continued—for example, by providing Ukraine with Western fighter jets, a self-imposed red line yet to be crossed by Western countries that have already crossed many other ostensible red lines in their arms deliveries. Importantly, Ukraine would continue to carry the main responsibility for its own defense even after NATO accession; in fact, it would strengthen the bloc’s overall defense and deterrence.

Second, a majority of Ukrainians did not support NATO membership until 2014, when Russia invaded and annexed Crimea and started the war in eastern Ukraine. It was Moscow that ensured a considerable increase of NATO’s popularity in Ukraine. In 2018, to consolidate the country’s Euro-Atlantic course, the Ukrainian parliament introduced amendments to the constitution that defined EU and NATO membership as national goals. A further, radical change of public opinion was caused by Russia’s full-scale invasion: According to a poll conducted in January by the Kyiv-based Rating Group, 86 percent of Ukrainians would vote for NATO membership in a referendum, while support for EU membership stood at 87 percent. The sudden increase mirrors a similar jump in NATO support last year in Finland. At the same time, Ukrainian attitudes toward Russia drastically worsened, including in the traditionally Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine.

Third, there is the more elusive question of identity and perceptions rooted in history. Western elites and publics know little about Ukraine, but they tend to assume that the country is very similar and close to Russia. The more pluralistic, individualist, and freedom-loving identity of Ukrainians that has evolved over past centuries, much of it in a tense relationship with a centralized, top-down Russian or Soviet state, is something that Western history schoolbooks tell nothing about. The Holodomor—the famine deliberately caused by the Soviet leadership in Ukraine and Kazakhstan in 1932-33—as well as extensive Russification measures and mass deportations of Ukrainians, Balts, Tatars, and other minority nations of the Soviet Union to Siberia and Central Asia in the 1930s and 1940s, were all part of the Kremlin’s agenda to submerge national cultures and ethnicities under its firm control, including by means of genocide. Balts, Poles, and Finns share with the Ukrainians the historical experience of fighting against the Russian oppression—an important building block of a common identity.

In the 1990s, the old Hanseatic cities of Riga in Latvia and Tallinn in Estonia opened up to Western visitors, many of whom were astonished to see with their own eyes that these countries did indeed have a European history before they disappeared behind the Iron Curtain. The same goes for western Ukrainian cities such as Lviv, which has more in common with Prague than Moscow. A visitor of Kyiv, on the other hand, can witness Ukraine’s historical ties to Russia, which has made it somewhat harder for Ukraine to gain support for its European aspirations. Yet today, Ukraine is proving through its resilience, strong civil society, democratic leadership, and decentralized administration that it is truly different from Russia. The Balts and Poles have no doubt that Ukrainians are indeed dying for European values and European security—and therefore deserve to be seen as “one of us.” In Western Europe, this understanding has yet to sink in.

The war in Ukraine, Finnish NATO membership, and Ukraine’s aspiration to join the alliance all highlight that gray zones, or buffer zones, have failed to create stability in Europe. On the contrary, it is precisely those neighbors of Russia that were not firmly anchored to the West that have come under growing pressure from the Kremlin in recent years.

In the near future, the West’s focus in Ukraine needs to stay on further arms deliveries to make sure that Ukraine can succeed with its planned counteroffensives and liberate at least some of the occupied territories in the coming months. Yet it is also necessary to start building a sustainable peace. Following the example of Finland, Ukraine’s full integration to the Euro-Atlantic structures is necessary to make sure that the tragedies of Raate Road in 1940 or Bucha in 2022 will never be repeated—not in Finland, not in Ukraine, and not in any other neighbor of Russia.

[measuringbliss]

Glee Rewatch 1x14, Everyone's Smiling!

So what has Glee become after its instant success and months of pause?

(Are you confused? Check this out!)

Well the outfits are lovely as ever (Mercedes, your hat!). And Rachel has a star (or stars? Couldn't see well) on her shirt at Finn's match. Some things haven't changed! Others have. Why does Finn play basketball now?

Sue tasks Santana and the latter's future wife to seduce Finn to make Rachel mad and sow discord in the Glee Club, and I can't help but wonder if Sue ever met our dear Sebastian. I don't think they ever shared a scene, but she'd very much approve of his idea to seduce Blaine in S3. In order to seduce Finn, the two girls... go see him at the same times, holding each other's finger in a cute and totally not gay way.

Kurt orgasms on the spot when Finn sings.

Just look at everyone's face here. Santana is annoyed because she's on a mission and Rachel's ruining it. Mike is amused because he's not invested enough to really care about the drama, but he's still in the club so might as well enjoy the show (also nice shirt <3). Brittany is intrigued and Quinn is absolutely elated.

Interesting translation tidbit: as you know, Will complains that the title of Rachel's cover doesn't contain "Hello" (the theme of the week).

In the original version, Rachel says "I'm sorry. I was just focusing on the first syllable [Hell]". In French, she says "In 'Hello', there's 'Hell' and it means 'Hell' in English and that's what I'm going through." That's how you nicely adapt a reference to English words in a foreign dub!

Jesse St. James is voiced in French by Donald Reignoux, who's one of the most prolific voice actors here and if you've ever listened to a movie or a show in French, there's a high likelihood that he took part in it. At one point I was downright sick of hearing his voice because he's truly everywhere. Connor from Detroid: Become Human? Sora from Kingdom Hearts? Spider-Man? Yup, he voiced them. I eventually made peace with the fact that if I persisted in listening to stuff in French, I'd hear him again and again. Anyway...

He has such a baby face, with his longer hair and his chain! He's adorable. And Rachel is adorable too, it's clear that there's something between them. Maybe this time I'll be less frustrated by his character arc in this season. I'm happy that Rachel ends up with him. They're a cute couple.

Indina Menzel is here too! I don't like her character. That's it. I'm bored. Maybe I'll warm up to her this time?

Well I completely forgot she more or less hooked up with Will.

Look at hiiiiim! He's so adorable.

"Hello, Goodbye" is a very nice closing number for such an episode, where everyone changes their mind. And I'm also a fan of Finn saying he won't give up on Rachel. It's another one of their almost mythical moments that elevate them, something I don't think we got since the pilot. And the song in itself is great in that its lyrics aren't very explicit, it's a moment where Glee gives meaning to a song. It elevates it too, in some way.

So what has Glee become? More of the same, maybe with more self-confidence.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Sault Moulds the Alien Into Good Canadian; Clubs, Lodges and Churches Help,” Sault Star. December 12, 1932. Page 3. ---- Italians Lead Numerically Those of Foreign Extraction; Finns Next ---- That the west end of the city is progressing from a social standpoint is amply demonstrated by a review of the various organizations existing in that section at the present time. Church, club and commercial enterprise have done a great deal in transforming he west end district from a sparsely settled shrub covered country of 20 years ago into the prospering, pleasant locality which it is today. With churches numbering in the neighborhood of 20, attended by residents of the west end to a great extent, clubs and lodges with an almost exclusive west end membership. numbering eight, not including those. with church connections and business establishments which compete with the average of any community, the residents of that part of the city are due to a great portion of the credit for the making of a thriving and friendly Sault Ste. Marle

Unlike the eastern part of the city, the west end is divided to a great extent into small communities, each populated by people of a certain nationlity. The new Canadians, consisting of people of Italian, Polish, Ukrainian, Fincish, Ruthenian and Croatian stock, occupy the greater part of the section generally referred to as west. Each one of these small communities has its own churches, clubs and to some extent business establishments, but despite this fact the new Canadian resident cannot be termed clannish, for at all times he is willing to mingle and enjoy himself with the crowd.

There are several institutions which have done a great work in moulding the character of the people from the old land and their children, in such a manner as to render them first class Canadians, but probably the most outstanding of these are the All Peoples' United Church, the St. Mary's School and the McFadden School. In cases where the parents were poor and terribly busy in the grind and rush of earning a livelihood in a strange land, the three named institutions are deserving of every commendation for instructions and care rendered to the children along religious, social and physical lines.

The two leading Italian organizatlons are the Marconi and Sons of Italy Societies. The Marconi Society, which was established in the Sault in 1912, with only a few members, has now over 225 on the roll. Having been incorporated in 1917, it carries a sick relief fund, practically guaranteeing the members from financial distress on account of illness. The president of the Marconi Society is Mr. A. Candelori. The organization met for some time in the Sons of Italy headquarters, but last year built and opened their own hall on Albert Street West, on November 25. Their hall is located just opposite the St. Mary's School. The Sons of Italy, who for several years met in their hall en Queen Street, West, built a new hall on Cathcart Street which was opened September 21, of this year. The combined value of these two new buildings is estimated at about $30,000 and emphasises in a way the progress of the Italian people in the Sault. Mr. L. Pasquantonio Is the president of the Sons of Italy. There are sister lodges of these two organizations, the Princess Marie Jose Lodge of the Sons of Italy and the Electra Marconi Society, the ladies' lodge of the Marconi Society. There is also the Fratellanza Calabresía, a brotherhood society of the Italians. The Italians too. are artistic by nature and there are several musical groups, orchestras and bands, that give good entertainment. There is this year also a good dramatic club, that under the auspices of the Sons of Italy produces very creditable plays and concerts.

The Italians rank first as far as population is concerned among the New Canadian classes. There are 4,500 people in this city who are Italian by birth

Next to the Italians come the Finnish who in the past three or four years have come to the Sault in great numbers. The climate of the Sault is similar to that in Finland and the Finnish people favor the cold of the north country. Since 1928 the number has grown from nearly 1,000 to about 1,800. They are, to a considerable extent, the types that are known as seasonal workers, doing bush jobs in the winter and construction work in the summer. Owing to this fact the Finnish population of the Sault fluctuates with the seasons, there being twice as many here in the summer then there are in the winter. There are two distinct groups of Finnish people, the members of the Finnish Organizations, the official headquarters of which is on Thompson Street, and the Hussey Hall Group. They are ardent physical culturists, going in for wrestling and discus throwing a great deal.

Two nationalities that have close to the same population in the Sault, are the Ukrainians and the Croatians The Ukrainians number about 1,800. A great many of them reside in Bay View. They have two branches of their cultural organizations here, the Ukrainian Labor Farmer Temple and the Workers' Benevolent Society. Headquarters of both organizations are situated in Winnipeg. Two schools are maintained here, one in the city and one in Bay View, the purpose of which is to teach the children the language of their forefathers and to train them along musical lines. They have a keen sense of the artistic, and among them are some fine musicians. They have had a mandolin orchestra of 50 places, practically all children taking part. As these have grown older they have taken places in other orchestras. At the All Peoples' church there is a very good orchestra of Ukrainians, under the direction of Mr. D. Bondur. There is also an exceptional Croatlan orchestra under the direction of S. Bosnakovich, who is a composer as well as leader, and their music is full of lilting melody. The Ukrainians have the third largest language group in Canada, there being 300,000 in all from coast to coast. They come to a great extent from a state called Eastern Galicia, where land is scarce and the farmer (and Ukrainians are farmers by choice), has a hard time making his living.

The Croatians number about 100 families, and a population including single men, of about 1,500. They are not all west end residents. They have two local societies. the Croatian Fraternal Union and the Slavonian-Croatian Union.

The Poles and Russians in the city number less than is generally supposed, there being no more than 150 Poles and 100 Russians, though they have no classified organizations a number of them belong to the Ukrainian groups.

The Jewish group is the smallest yet most interesting body in the city. There are only 14 families, who have a 100 per cent organization in the Zionist Society, and who maintain a school to teach their children the Jewish language.

Other groups in the city of foreign stock are the Chinese, numbering 100, who have a society of 75 members known as the Kuo-min-tang, the Serbians numbering 100, the Czecho-Slovaks 150. Then there are several other nationalities represented by from 10 to 30 people. Among them are the Rumanian, the Bulgarian, German, Swede, Norwegian, Armenian, Syrian, Greek, Spaniard. Danes and White Russians, a nationality distinct from the Russian.

[eldritchaccident]

Timing: New Years Eve Feat: Just @eldritchaccident Location: The private beach near the Jones house Warnings: excessive alcohol use

A blanket of stars above, shimmering sands below. Teddy didn’t even feel the cold. A stark contrast to the dramatic shivers that ran up their spine the second it hit below seventy. There was a fire in their veins from the alcohol running rampant throughout. A rosy glow peppering their cheeks, their fingers, their ears, their toes. Toes that had been buried in the half-frozen sand. Dark eyes soaked in the darker sea. Waiting, just… waiting for her to envelop them. To welcome them back beneath those spinning waves. 

It was where they belonged. But where they were too afraid to go. 

2023 came at a price Teddy wasn’t sure they were ready to have paid. They hid it well, as well as anyone could. Packaged up in quiet smiles, charming jokes, and the effortless gregariousness people had come to expect of them. Few saw them crack, fewer saw what hid beneath. Even Emilio only ever caught glimpses. There was no way the man understood how heartbreaking it was for them not to be able to–

A wave pushed up on the shore, lapping at the sand around Teddy’s feet. Fine granules slipped and slid back out with the tidal rush, dragging their feet down deeper in the silt. Toes wiggled in that murky mud, felt the way the rocks and pebbles of a New England beach contrasted from the fine white sand of some far off half-remembered New Yester-year. Spent side by side with the Leviathan. With the only family that had stuck around until– 

Something about this holiday begged for a clip show. A reel of all the best and worst moments that led to the present. They remembered the beach in Spain. Remembered their father fondly calling them tadpole while they figured out how to burst from within their own skin. How to become something their father could be proud of. From that day on, the pair were truly inseparable. Teddy could follow the great beast to the incredible depths. Could rise to meet any challenge. They were unstoppable. Especially together. 

And now what were they? 

Leviathan was back in its former glory. In its home dimension, the endless sea that Teddy would never get to see. It was gone, and all too soon it would forget the strange human it left behind. Like that old poem; Too foreign for here, too foreign for home; never enough for both. Teddy was human but they weren’t. They weren’t a demon but they were. They couldn’t reconcile with that. Couldn’t parse between the memories of swimming happily beneath the waves, and the fact that they could never do that the same way again. 

Maybe not at all. 

Teddy flexed, felt their muscles tighten. They tried to imagine Big Finn, or any of the shapes they’d taken on before but nothing came. Not a scale to be seen. Only a sinking feeling of sorrow and loss they weren’t ready to grieve with. 

It’d been months now. Months. Teddy had barely gone days without some sort of swim before, but now? Now the sea looked a hell of a lot more like those old paintings of ships sinking, than the serene home it once was. 

“Why is it just stupid… werewolves and shit– why– why can’t there be were-sharks or anything fucking good. Get bit by one of those– that’d be–” Their concerns drunkenly slipped into the night air, no one around for at least a mile to listen or respond. No one able to hear them but the wind, and the ocean herself. Teddy kicked at the sand, making themself stumble in the process. Enough that they slipped, enough that they fell. Not far enough to hurt, but enough to get most of their clothes sopping wet. 

The tide rolled in. 

Teddy sat there with it. 

Hugging their knees as the waves crashed around them. Barely coming up to the mid section of their shins but enough to soak them to the bone. Their mouth, dry despite the bottles of liquid they’d drained. Each just sitting pretty on the sand, waiting to become sea glass as they were pulled out to the depths one by one. 

When was their turn? Teddy wondered. When would the ocean claim them back. Smooth out the raw, rough, and sharp edges from where they were broken. Send them to shore as something loved, cherished, sought after. Better. Anything was better than this. 

Human. 

2024 would be totally, and completely, human. 

The thought felt colder than the icy water around them. Felt like the kind of thing that deserved another drink. Shivering, though they didn’t even realize it, Teddy finally turned from the waves. Almost daring the ocean to take her shot. To take them back. But she didn’t. Even she left them in the end. 

Just like everyone always would. 

The ex-demon made their way closer to the last remaining embers of the fire they’d started… however long ago. It crackled, popped, and offered about as much heat to the drenched corpse of a person as one might expect. But it lit up the beach just enough to show the last remaining bottle, and Ted couldn’t stop themself from downing the rest of its contents. 

How long til everyone else caught up, huh? How long til Emilio, Nora, Wynne, everyone just realized that Teddy was a prettily packaged piece of shit that didn’t deserve them. A hollow ringing filled their ears as they drank. Drowning out the sound of the waves, like the ocean was saying its last goodbye. Wishing them well on their new adventure. 

Happy fucking New Year.