#or that they didn't commit enough to the Effect

[markantonys]

i'm pretty sure the real reasons for a viewership drop between WOT s1 and s2 were:

it was almost 2 full years between seasons

s2's entire promo timeframe & release were during the strikes, so not much promo could happen (on top of prime not being great at promo even at the best of times)

so there were likely plenty of people who enjoyed s1 and would've happily tuned in for s2, but had forgotten or lost interest after 2 years or didn't hear that it had returned due to lack of promo

and also, it's natural for a show's pilot season to have artificially inflated viewership numbers and then settle into the true viewership in subsequent seasons (and sure enough, i think s3's numbers were pretty similar to s2). how many of us have checked out the first season of something just to try it out and then never continued? it's not necessarily a mark against the quality of a show, just an effect of it finding its real viewerbase over time, especially these days when there are one million shows to choose from and viewers do a lot more shopping around and dipping their toe into first seasons without committing to the rest.

readers harping on about "maybe s2-3 viewership would've been better if s1 didn't suck so much" just feels like another example of readers mistakenly assuming both that their opinions of the show are universal and that readers make up a larger portion of the show's audience than they actually do. in all my time on the internet, pretty much every single piece of outright dislike i've seen for s1 has come from a reader; the worst i've seen the general audience say is that s1 was somewhat slow or felt like generic fantasy (which is true of EOTW as well). i vividly remember the day 1x08 aired, and as a show-only myself i loved it and felt so hyped for s2 and i went on the show-only reddit discussion thread and all the other show-onlys felt similarly, and then i turned a corner and was baffled to see readers acting like 1x08 had personally murdered their entire families. while every viewer readily acknowledges that each season was a step up from the prior one, i don't think the majority of viewers had NEARLY as much of an issue with s1 as readers believe they did. the portion of viewership dropoff that was due to people going "s1 sucked so much, i'm not coming back for s2!" is probably pretty small compared to the above factors. in conclusion, we should be putting the blame for the cancellation where it belongs (shitty corporations) and not at the feet of the creatives who did their best to beef up a fairly bland coming-of-age fantasy quest book while having a ton of real-world factors and unforeseen circumstances hampering them.

[swan2swan]

Me, watching That Happen: "OH. OH THAT'S BAD. BUT THAT'S REALLY COOL. OH THEY'RE DOING THIS. THIS IS HAPPENING. WHAT A COOL WAY TO VISUALIZE IT."

Me, watching That Happen Again, One Minute Later, But This Time It Looks Silly: "Oh. You messed it up. Guys. You ruined it. It didn't have to be this way."

[teufelme]

You ever just want to talk about Bertl,

[andhumanslovedstories]

There was an interesting situation at work recently. I'm gonna keep it vague for privacy, but basically the husband of a patient threatened to shoot hospital employees after he perceived they were ignoring his wife's situation. Which, looking at the case, people were like, yeah, this patient was in prolonged discomfort and had delayed care over multiple shifts due to factors that weren't malicious but were careless. Basically, the task that would have helped this patient was classic "third thing on your to do list." It had to be done, but it didn't need to be done urgently. The impact of not doing this task likely wouldn't be felt on your shift. The work of doing this task would require the coordination of a couple different people. Very easy to just keep pushing it back, and because it wasn't an emergency (until it was), it just kept being pushed back.

You could do a root-cause analysis of the whole thing (and we have) to really break down what happened, but ultimately the effect was the same as if the neglect had been malicious. I'm sympathetic to the husband, as were a lot of people in this situation, because, yes, hospital staff dropped the ball in a way that meant the patient was in unnecessary pain and discomfort with delay of care for over a day, despite multiple requests from patient and family to address the situation. The husband reacted emotionally to a situation where he'd felt helpless and ignored. Institutional neglect ground away at him until he verbally snapped.

And the way he snapped was to tell staff, "I'm going to come back with a gun and shoot you all for what you've done." Which is about as explicit a threat as you can get. Does he get to keep visiting the hospital after that? How do we be fair to him, to the patient, and to the staff? He probably didn't mean it. Right? But how do you ignore a statement like that? If he does come back and commit a shooting, how will you justify ignoring his threat? But does one sentence said at an emotional breaking point define him? How much more traumatic are we going to make this hospital stay?

A couple years back, I worked on a floor a few hours after a patient had been escorted away for inappropriate behavior--by the way, you can't imagine how inappropriate the behavior has to be for us to do that. I have never seen another case like this. That patient said he was going to come back with a gun and shoot nurses that he identified by name. This didn't come to pass. Whether that was because the patient didn't mean it or changed his mind or was prevented or simply was not mentally coordinated enough to follow through on the plan, I don't know. I do know that shift fucking sucked. I remember the charge nurse telling me that it wasn't our jobs to die for our patients. If there was shooting, she told me to run.

There was another situation recently involving a patient in restraints. I despise restraints. I think the closest legitimate use for them is in ICUs for stopping delirious patients from ripping out their ventilators, and that should still be a last resort. I discontinue restraints whenever I inherit them, and I am very good at fixing problems before restraint seem like the only solution. Having said that, I work in a hospital that uses restraints, and so I am complicit in their use. Recently I walked into a situation involving restraints with zero context for what was happening, just that there was a security situation involving a patient who had been deemed for some reason to lack capacity to make medical decisions. They were on a court hold and a surrogate med override, which means they cannot refuse certain medications. The whole situation was horrible, and I've spent the days since it happened thinking about every way I personally failed that patient and what to do different next time.

At one point, the patient called one of the nurses a bitch, and the nurse said, "hey cmon, that's not nice," and the patient replied, "if you were in hell, would you call the devil a nice name?" And yeah! Fair! It is insane to expect people who are actively being denied their autonomy to be polite to us as we do it.

Then there was another patient on the behavioral health floor who got put in seclusion. It's so frustrating, by the way, that staff put them in seclusion because it would have been extremely easy to avoid escalating the situation to the point that it got to. But the situation did escalate, and by the time the patient was locked in a seclusion room, they were shouting slurs and kicking the walls. Other patients were scared of the patient even when they were calm because the patient talked endlessly about guns, poisons, bombs, etc. When I checked in with the patient in the seclusion room, they called me a cog in a fascist machine just following orders. And I was like, yeah. Fair.

Another patient: one night when I was charge nurse, I replied to a security situation where a patient trapped a staff member in the room and tried to choke her. The staff member escaped unharmed. She told me later that the patient had been verbally aggressive to her all day, but she hadn't told anyone because she knew he was having a bad day, she didn't want to get him in trouble, and she didn't think anything was actually going to happen. She said, "Patients are mean all the time."

And another case: I had a different patient with the ultimate combination of factors for violent agitation--confused, needed a translator, was hard of hearing so the translator was of little use, in pain, feverish, scared, withdrawing from alcohol, hadn't slept in two days, separated from his caregiver who had also just been hospitalized--the whole shebang. He shouted at us that we were human trafficking him and could not be reoriented to where he actually was or that he was sick. I tried all my usual methods of deescalation, which I am typically very good at. I could not get him to calm down. He had a hospital bed where the headboard pulls out so you can use it as a brace during compressions. He ripped that out and threw it at the window, trying to shatter the glass. At that point, with the permission of his medical surrogate and with help from security, I forcibly gave him IV medication for agitation and withdrawal. He slept all night with a sitter at his bedside to monitor him. I pondered when medication passed over the line into chemical restraint, but I stand by the decisions I made that shift.

Last one: I had a different patient who was dying who had a child with a warrant out for arrest. We didn't know for what, and no one investigated further because no one wanted to find out anything that might prevent this person from visiting his dying parent. Obviously, "warrant for arrest" could mean literally anything, although it was significant enough that security was aware of the situation and wanted us aware as well, but I was struck by how proactively the staff protected his visitation rights and extended him grace. Everyone was very aware of how easily the wrong word could start a process that would result in a parent and child losing the chance to say goodbye to each other.

In the case of the husband who threatened a mass shooting, you'd be surprised how many of the staff advocated for him to keep all visitation rights. After all, the patient wanted him there.

Violence--verbal, physical, active, passive, institutional, direct, inadvertent, malicious--pervades the hospital. It begets itself. You provoke people into violence, and then use that violence to justify why you must do actions that further provoke them. And also people are not helpless victims of circumstance, mindlessly reacting to whatever is the most noxious stimuli. But also we aren't not that. You have to interrupt the cycle somewhere. I think grace is one of the most powerful things we can give each other. I also think people own guns. Institutions have enormous overt and covert power that can feel impossible to resist, and they are made up of people with necks you can wring, and those people are the agents of that unstoppable power, and those people don't have unlimited agency and make choices every day about how and when to exercise it. We'll never solve this. You literally have to think about it forever, each and every time, and honor each success and failure by learning something new for the next inevitable moral dilemma that'll be along any minute now and is probably already here.

[sakuravalenp]

Don't eat anything else - Part 2 - DP X DC

Previous part

Next part

Masterpost

This is the only chapter where I'll tag people. Please, if you want to follow the story from this point on, follow the master post :).

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

"You both should stop eating the food." Came Babs voice through the comms. "Danny asked Tim to not eat anything else. We suspect the food may content poison."

Bruce subtly shared a look with Cass before returning to nodding at Masters' proud rambling about his latest contract. They had both stopped eating long ago. The soup was good; Masters’ words about Danny being a good cook weren’t a lie. However, Bruce couldn’t identify the chunks of meat in the soup.

He initially thought it was pork, though the texture seemed somewhat similar to veal. By the fourth piece of meat he ate, he could confidently say he didn't recognize it. When he looked at Cass, he saw her using her spoon to play with one of the pieces of meat on the edge of the plate, a frown hidden behind her polite smile. He was sure then that the meat couldn't be one they had tasted before.

Bruce has tasted every kind of meat that should be available to Masters. He has even tasted exotic meats that Masters would probably never encounter, having represented humanity in intergalactic meetings as Batman. Not being able to identify the meat discouraged Bruce from eating more, and it seemed to have had the same effect on Cass. They had kept their food mostly untouched, using the excuse of waiting for Tim and Danny to return before eating. It was a good call; the meat being poisoned could be the reason it was unrecognizable.

"If any of you feel any symptoms, turn off your comm." None of them made a move to do so, and after a couple of minutes Babs continued, "I'll call Bruce in 10 minutes to create an excuse for you guys to leave."

Bruce would have liked to think that they had not yet consumed enough poison for it to affect them, but there's always the possibility of it being a delayed-effect poison. If Masters' plan with the poison was to kill them, then a delayed-effect poison would allow Masters to avoid being immediately connected to their deaths.

However, Masters shouldn’t have a reason to kill Bruce Wayne and his wards. Unless the man had discovered that they were investigating his contracts, which Bruce doubted. It was more likely that the poison was some sort of chemical restraint or chemical submissive, which would explain why Masters' contracts always seemed to end ridiculously in his favor. It would be easy to make such deals with someone who was drugged to be more agreeable with you.

Not that Bruce would be willing to take the risk to find out, especially with Cass having also ingested the tainted meat. He was glad he had brought the poison antidote kit with him. Despite this, Bruce wasn't sure about cutting the visit short, at least not for all of them. Tim had been gone with Danny for a while now, and if Danny had informed Tim about the food, they were probably exchanging information at the moment. Maybe Tim was in the process of offering Danny help, and Bruce didn't want to interrupt that.

"Renovations will be starting next week, and I'm sure the place will end up being quite popular," Masters finally finished his rambling.

"It sure sounds like it will. You certainly got yourself a great deal with Kensington, Mr. Masters. I'm curious, what is your negotiation method?" Bruce asked, hoping to gather more information.

Masters had been surprisingly adept at avoiding any conversation about the negotiations themselves, always sidetracking the discussion or giving half-answers. Drugs in the food was a good hypothesis and would be the best outcome for them, as such substances usually shouldn’t take too long to get out of their system.

Yet, it didn't explain how Masters' business partners seemed to stay committed to their contracts long after they were made. The furthest they had gotten from them was confusion about how they had reached the point where they accepted the contract's conditions. However, they all seemed convinced they had gotten the best outcome possible, despite obviously getting the short end of the stick.

It pointed to something besides drug usage. Maybe Masters got blackmail material from them while they were drugged? It would be easier to draw conclusions if Masters had even the smallest slip about it.

Masters smiled, taking a sip from his wine. "Ah, it takes years of practice, Wayne. It isn't something one can learn in a day, and only those with the capacity can master it," he said. Then, before Bruce could ask any follow-up questions, he continued, "Now, Daniel and young Mr. Drake sure seem to be taking their time."

"Oh, that doesn't surprise me," Bruce said, shaking his head with a fond smile, playing farther into his "Brucie" persona while lamenting the lost opportunities to get more leads on what Masters was doing. "They're around the same age. Surely they got distracted talking about whatever is of interest to kids their age these days."

"I would be glad if my godson got along so well with your son, Mr. Wayne," Masters said with a practiced smile, though a hint of calculation flickered in his eyes. He gestured vaguely with his wine glass, his tone deceptively sympathetic. "The loss of his family hasn't been easy for him, and building a connection with someone like Mr. Drake could be beneficial. However, it is quite rude to leave the guests waiting. As his guardian, I must address this. I’ll go search for them." Masters stated, standing up from his seat.

Luckily, Bruce didn't need to interject to stop Masters from interrupting his son's conversation with Danny, since the two boys appeared by the door as if summoned by Masters' comment. Danny visibly tensed the moment he spotted Masters standing in his place.

"Daniel, it's good you're finally back. I was about to go search for you," Masters said, throwing Danny a stern look.

Danny opened his mouth, probably about to apologize for the wait, but Tim beat him to it.

"So sorry, Mr. Masters. I had to take a shower before changing clothes."

"Oh, don't worry about it, Mr. Drake," Masters said as he looked Tim up and down, evaluating if what Tim was saying was true. His eyes lingered on Tim's wet hair for a moment, and the tension in his eyes relaxed a bit. "It is Daniel's fault for throwing the soup on you. Now, shall we continue with the dinner?" Masters sat once more on his chair.

"Should—" Danny started, slightly stuttering when Masters' eyes returned to him. "Should I serve new portions? Since the ones on the table are probably cold by now?" the intensity of Masters gaze increased with every word Danny said. In response, Danny lowered his gaze to the floor, and shifted nervously.

Danny's voice was way too small by the end of his sentence, but Bruce could sense some hidden urgency in his tone. Remembering that Danny was the one who had warned them about the food, Bruce could infer that he was trying to further prevent them from eating it. It gave Bruce the impression that Masters had also caught onto that fact, given how tense the man was.

He was grateful for the kid doing their best to protect them, but lamented putting them in a position where they had to risk confronting their abuser. Bruce really hoped Tim had convinced Danny to leave with them. It shouldn't be difficult to create a reasonable invitation for Danny after Masters' comment about how he was isolating himself.

"Good idea," Cass said with a gentle smile directed at Danny before Masters could make any move.

Masters' eyes narrowed slightly, but then he nodded. "Very well. Daniel, go ahead."

As Danny hurried to the kitchen, Bruce shared a subtle glance with Tim, who was retaking his seat beside Cass. Unfortunately, instead of the nod indicating that they could get Danny to leave with them if they created the opportunity, Tim just shrugged. It wasn't the sign for Danny refusing help, but the one for things being more complicated than they seemed. Bruce sighed, and before Danny returned from the kitchen, his phone rang. He excused himself to answer Babs' call, lamenting not being able to take Danny with them.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

Bruce came back from his brief call with Babs with a worried face that Cass knew wasn't the one he made when actual "family emergencies" happened. It was exagerated and dramatic, it screamed "something terrible had happened," and was perfect for this kind of situations. Bruce quickly ushered Cass and Tim out, apologizing to Masters for the hasty departure. They barely had time to say goodbye to Danny, who had hurried back from the kitchen after Masters had shouted about seeing off the guests.

Cass noticed a subtle shift in Danny’s demeanor as they prepared to leave. His shoulders dropped slightly, and there was a fleeting look of relief in his eyes. However, that relief was overshadowed by the palpable fear that clung to him; his tense posture betrayed the anxiety he was trying to hide. It was hard to leave him behind, and Cass almost ran back when she caught sight of Vlad’s possessive hand on Danny’s shoulder and his venomous, angry eyes as she was walking out the door.

As soon as they were in the car, Tim immediately began checking the vehicle and himself for hidden microphones, with Bruce and Cass following his lead with little more than a raised eyebrow. Tim’s decision to search for bugs made sense once he explained that Danny’s room had been bugged,

"Honestly, Danny's so careful with his actions and words everywhere, I wouldn't be surprised if the whole property is bugged."

The drive back to the house they had rented was tense, the atmosphere in the car thick with unspoken concerns. Tim decided to use the ride home to update them on what he had seen. In turn, Bruce spoke about the dinner with Masters, detailing their regrettable failure to extract any additional information from the man. The evening ultimately boiled down to the suspicion that the food had been poisoned. Cass remained silent, not feeling up to talking.

She had her doubts about the food being poisoned; even if the poison hadn't shown any symptoms, her past training should have allowed her to identify it if she had consumed it. It seemed unlikely that Masters possessed a poison so sophisticated that she couldn’t detect it, and the thought only deepened her unease. She though back to how their hosts acted at the start of the dinner.

Danny looked like he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. His eyes darted nervously between them and Masters, his hands trembling slightly as he served the food. The guilt and fear radiating from him were almost palpable, as if he believed he was committing an unforgivable sin by offering them the meal.

Masters, however, didn’t seem like he was planning to poison them. He behaved more like Damian’s classmates had when they once tried to trick him into eating non-vegan food at a gala. His smile was too easy, his gestures too casual, like someone who thought they were pulling off a harmless but cruel prank. It felt like he was purposely feeding them something he knew was outside their comfort zone and ethical beliefs, testing their reactions with a detached amusement.

From the very beginning, Cass had felt a deep discomfort about the food. The way Masters and Danny acted around it had set off her internal alarms. When she took the first bite of the meat, something immediately felt off. The texture was unfamiliar, and the taste was oddly unsettling—not in a way that clearly indicated poison, but in a manner that was subtly disturbing, she didn't know what she was eating. It made her skin crawl, and she couldn’t bring herself to take another bite.

The car coming to a stop in the house’s garage jolted Cass out of her thoughts. They all exited the vehicle, and Jason’s motorcycle was parked beside them as he opened the door. tightly clenched jaw. Like the rest of them, he was frustrated by their inability to take Danny with them, but he wasn’t vocalizing it because he was also worried about what they had eaten.

Once the door was opened, Bruce was ready to rush into his bedroom to get the poison antidote kit, but Jason stopped him,

"Hold on old man, I want to know what the note the kid gave Tim says. It may even say what poison was used; save us time."

"Mnn" Bruce said with a slight nod, and Tim started unfolding the paper in response.

The folded paper was as small as a pinky, but once unfolded, it revealed a full letter-sized sheet, and the text filled at least half of it. Tim skimmed the text as he usually did before reading aloud, but his face quickly drained of color. His eyes widened in horror and disgust. Instead of reading aloud, he kept running his eyes over the first line repeatedly, his gaze darting between Bruce and Cass. His jaw was clenched tightly, and he struggled to keep his composure, fighting against the bile rising in his throat. Cass couldn’t help but frown deeply, a growing sense of dread settling in as she wondered what the paper could possibly contain.

"Forgot how to read, replacement?" Jason said, his tone lacking its usual edge. He stood beside Tim, his expression a mix of uncertainty and concern, unsure whether to reach for the paper or not.

Tim takes a shudering breath, and Cass herself can't help but shift in her place, her anxiety growing, as they all wait for Tim to gain back his voice and finally read what Danny's note says.

"The meat on the food is human meat." Tim finally says with a strained voice.

There's a moment of silence in the room. Cass keeps her eyes on Tim, hoping, pleading, to find any signs that what she heard is wrong, but Tim only repeats the sentence. Her stomach churns violently as bile rises in her throat. Without effort, she sinks to the ground, her legs giving out as she begins to vomit. The pounding of her heart fills her ears, as black dots fill her sight and her hands tremble uncontrollably. She is dimly aware of Bruce doubling over beside her, and the sound of Jason hitting the wall.

She ate human meat. It may have just been a bite, but she ate human meat. The dinner had been made from human meat. Her mind recoiled at the abhorrent thought. The thought of the soup they were served makes her vomit once more. She gasps for air, her body shaking as she fights against the rising tide of revulsion, desperately trying to rid herself of the lingering taste and the horrifying realization of what they ingested. She feels Tims hand doing smalls circles in her back and realizes that tears had been falling from her face.

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

Danny's hands trembled as he injected himself with another dose of ectoplasm. The shaking made the syringe jab painfully as he withdrew it, causing drops of blood and ectoplasm to fall to the floor while the injury quickly healed. Ten minutes of continuous electrical shocks wasn’t the worst punishment he had received from Vlad, but it had the most severe drawbacks. His body had a harder time recovering from electrical damage than from any other kind of harm, and Vlad often exploited this weakness.

He took a deep breath as the last of the Lichenberg marks disappeared from his legs and arms, leaving only the ones he’d gotten from his death. He sat on the bathroom floor, staring at the ceiling, his legs and arms still trembling. He wasn’t sure if the tremors were from the electrical aftershocks or his own anxiety. Vlad had been furious about his little stunt with the soup and had once again reminded him that they weren't eating Danny’s friends because he was such a "compassionate guardian."

The reminder had thrown Danny into a couple of panic attacks once he was allowed to return to his room. He thanks he's advanced dissociative abilities for not having those panics attacks in front of Vlad. He doesn't wan't to know how the man would try to exploit that.

But even as his whole body trembles and aches, he doesn’t regret his decisions. This is his only chance for things to change. The Waynes are a powerful family with connections to the Justice League. While the League has not interfered with what has happened in Amity Park up till now, they might get involved if the Waynes reach out to them. It’s wishful thinking, and he’s risking a lot, but this gut-wrenching dinner has become the first glimmer of hope he’s had since his family’s death, and he’ll hold onto it with his half-life.

Once he's body stops trembling and he's head feels a bit clearer, he needs to text Sam and Tucker. He'll depend on them for this to not backfire on all denizens.

-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-

Next part

[swampjawn]

If you wanted to animate an object spinning really fast, there are three main embellishments at your disposal. You could add smear frames, you could add doubling, or if you wanted to get a little crazy with it, you could have that object bend and stretch to really emphasize the inertia of the motion.

Or you could do all three at the same time!

I didn't want to like Zenshu at first.

Saying I'm not a big fan of isekai as a genre would be an understatement, so I was straight up peeved when I found out that what I initially thought would be a flawed industry's unflinching look in the mirror made by THE studio that has become the symbol of the Japanese animation industry's broader problems with overworking and underpaying, this was just gonna be yet another in a long line of paint-by-numbers escapist power fantasies in a genre that was tired from the moment it was born, just like yaboy, sleepy to the max if you know what I'm saying.

And this recreation of a scene from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), (which was one of the first breakout roles for anime legend and Evangelion director Hideaki Anno) certainly helped soften my attitude towards it, but a series of references to old stuff wouldn't be enough.

(both versions trimmed here)

But its tribute to classic anime and animation in general goes beyond just references.

This absurdly over the top modernized version of a magical girl transformation animated by Keisuke Toyoda (豊田 桂祐 ) feels like it contains all the possibilities of animation and imagination in just 3 preposterously dense cuts. There is just WAY too much going on here at once, in a way that feels very self aware.

Every color you could imagine, lighting from three different directions, what looks like three different layers of effects and sparkles, countless compositing effects, what looks like some sort of 3D particle simulation in the background,

this psychedelic background art that seems to represent Natsuko's blood vessels, a bit where you can see what it took me several episodes to realize are Natsuko's actual blood vessels and skeleton through her body,

and… some birds of course.

Most of the main elements are animated on 2's, but there are so many layers -- the timing of each offset from the rest -- that it almost feels like the whole thing is animated on 1's because there is practically no single frame where at least something doesn't change.

It's really an assault to the senses that contrasts hilariously with the mundane action of actually sitting down at a desk and drawing. There's even a little death note reference thrown in there to poke fun at this contrast!

And fully committing to the sailor moon bit, they repeat this stock animation in almost every episode. While it's no masterpiece plot-wise, it is at least more than I expected on that front too, but that's more than I can get into here. I talk about that some more and a bunch of other stuff in this video, from which this post is an adapted excerpt! Go watch it and comment, "wow sWIMP John, I used to like your videos but you've really fallen off hardcore. Go back to making magic school bus AMVs. Unsubbed."

[zyhkoo]

☆ everything i know about love

dick grayson and jason todd x fem!reader (separate)

they drunkenly propose

a/n: i was inspired by this fic my friend showed me, i hope you guys like this one!

Jason todd

Jason never understood the fuss about marriage. Just a piece of jewelry and some vows, and you're suddenly yoked to someone for life. No thanks. He had more important things to worry about than tying the knot. Besides, he enjoyed his freedom far too much to be tied down like that.

Why commit to one person when the world is full of interesting people to meet and adventures to be had? Jason preferred to live life on his own terms, without the constraints of a ring on his finger.

His secret identity as Red Hood only added to the list of reasons why marriage didn't fit into Jason's plans. His life was dangerous and unpredictable, and he couldn't risk the safety of a loved one by involving them in his shadowy world. Plus, balancing a marriage and a secret life as a crime-fighter would be nearly impossible. It was better for everyone involved if Jason continued his nocturnal escapades alone.

Surprisingly enough, Jason found himself softening his stance while dating you. It wasn’t like he suddenly became a relationship enthusiast overnight, but he couldn’t deny the subtle change in his perspective.

Though marriage still seemed like a far-off possibility, Jason realized that a fulfilling relationship didn't necessarily require a ring. He was content with the way things were, cherishing the connection he had with you and the moments they shared. The idea of a wedding might still make him a bit nervous, but he knew what mattered most was the happiness you shared in the present.

As the buzz about your relationship grew, the questions about when you were getting married started to come up more frequently. Your friends would throw subtle hints during conversations, or nosy family members would outright ask, expecting a firm timeline. Jason felt the pressure, too. The constant reminders of marriage were like a nagging voice in the back of his mind, pushing him to make a decision he wasn’t ready for. The pressure was mounting, but Jason stubbornly held onto his reservations.

Then, it hit him. Wedding fever.

The last wedding the two of you attended was your best friend’s. You couldn't believe it when you accidentally caught the bouquet at your best friend's wedding. It was just a silly tradition, nothing more. At least, that's what you thought. Little did you know, the effect of the bouquet would hit someone unexpected: Jason.

Suddenly, the mere touch of that bouquet ignited a strange fervor within him. A fever for the idea of marriage, something he had vehemently opposed in the past. Jason watched as your friends and family playfully teased you about catching the bouquet, but his mind was elsewhere. He stood there, dumbfounded, as if the sight of you with that bouquet had somehow changed everything.

His thoughts were a whirlwind of confusion and newfound desire. How could a simple bouquet have such an impact on him? He was the guy who never wanted to get married, and now he was practically salivating at the thought. What was happening to him?

When he had too much to drink, you dragged him back to the hotel room.

You gently pulled Jason into the hotel room, his body leaning heavily against yours as the alcohol dulled his senses. You decided to undress him so he'd be more comfortable, unbuttoning his polo shirt while his breath tickled your neck. But as you reached the last button, Jason suddenly leaned forward and pressed a desperate, hungry kiss against your lips.

You were caught off guard by his sudden move, but you couldn't resist the passion behind the kiss. You returned his kiss, your lips responding tenderly and gently meeting him. As he pulled away, your heart skipped a beat as Jason looked into your eyes, his words slurred but his gaze steady. "Marry me," he said.

Here he was, the man who had once been so skeptical about marriage, proposing to you in the midst of a drunken stupor. You couldn't believe what you were hearing, you were absolutely baffled. You stammered, trying to find the right words to say. “What?” you muttered.

"I said, marry me," he repeated as he gripped your wrist. “M’ serious," he insisted, as if trying to convince himself just as much as he was trying to convince you.

You couldn't help but stand there with your mouth open, in disbelief at the words that were coming out of his mouth. This was the same man who had been adamantly against the idea of marriage just a few hours ago, and now he was drunkenly proposing to you! Jason's lips grazed against your fingers, his breath warm and words slurred but still filled with a sweet intensity. "Come on," he muttered, clinging to your hand. "Just say yes."

You could feel the nerves in your voice as you struggled to find the right words. "Wow, uh...I'd love to say yes, but maybe we should call it a day first. Let's talk about it in the morning, okay?"

Jason's eyes softened as he looked at you, his drunken state making it difficult for him to comprehend your words. But he nodded, albeit reluctantly. "In the morning," he repeated, his voice slurring. "But m’ serious, I do want to marry you." You gave him a small, reassuring smile. "I know you're serious," you said softly, gently stroking his hair. "We'll talk about it in the morning, when you're sober, okay?"

Dick Grayson

It all began with a simple birthday surprise from Dick– a beautiful white cake that bore an uncanny resemblance to a wedding dress. Unintentionally, it planted the seed of wedding fever in Dick's mind. Slowly, the realization dawned upon him, sparking a subtle yet determined desire to make his love for you official.

Dick found himself wrestling with how to broach the subject. While you had occasionally mentioned a future together, marriage had never explicitly entered the picture in your conversations. He pondered how to bring up the idea without catching you off guard.

Late one night, after an evening of bonding with his siblings over a few drinks, Dick returned to the cozy abode he shared with you. In his grip, he clutched a single daisy, its delicate white petals gently swayed with each movement. As he stepped inside, he revealed a paper ring resting on his palm, its simplicity belying the depth of emotion he wanted to convey.

You looked down at the paper ring in Dick's hand with puzzlement in your eyes. "What is this?" you asked. His heart thumped in his chest as he saw your confused eyes. He took a step closer, the petals of the flower trailing across your skin. A gentle smile played on his lips as he slurred, “It’s a ring, f’ course.”

He held the ring up, offering it to you. “I want to…” he trails his words. “You want to..?” you continued his sentence. He looks into your eyes, the paper ring still offered in his hand. He’s taking in the sight of you, wearing nothing more than a pair of sleep shorts and one of his old t-shirts, with your hair messy on your head.

“I… I want to marry you,” he says quietly.

You replied quickly, “Sure.” you said casually. A hint of surprise flickered in Dick's eyes. He had braced himself for a range of potential reactions, but this one had caught him off guard. Dick's mouth hung open for a moment, and for a split second he was at a loss for words. "Sure?" he repeated, his voice laced with a mixture of disbelief and a touch of confusion. He looked at you in slight surprise, his mind processing the unexpected simplicity of your response.

“Yeah,” you replied as you held his hand. “Let’s get married.”

His mind raced, trying to process the unexpected simplicity of your response. He’d been expecting a little bit more discussion, maybe even some tears, yet here you were, casually agreeing to his impromptu proposal. He stared down at you, a mix of surprise and elation flooding his expression. He looked at your hand holding his thumb running against the back of your hand.

“Just like that?” he chuckled, a bit breathlessly. You only smiled softly, “Why wouldn’t I marry someone like you?” you told him. “Let’s get you to bed, you’re gonna have a massive hangover tomorrow.”

He looked down at the paper ring on his hand, then back at you. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, as he took your hand in his, and placed the ring upon your finger. “Now it’s official,” he chuckled, looking down at the simple paper ring on your finger.

💍 discord server please like and reblog!

[artbyblastweave]

Playing through Fallout:New Vegas for the first time in years. And I'm developing a newfound appreciation for the damage done to the intended pacing of the narrative with the addition of the Courier's Stash. I wake up in Goodsprings, and as part of the extended tutorial you have Ghosttown Gunfight, the fairly self-contained faction war between Goodsprings and the Powder Gangers. And the design intent, I think, is that this is probably supposed to be a pain in the ass, with only one or two avenues of support available to you given the low level at which you'll pick this one up. Six Powder Gangers, some in body-armor, would be a serious threat, and committing to fighting against that with your dinky 9mm and a varmint rifle seems like a rough time! An actual uphill battle, doing the right thing instead of the easy thing. Fortunately, Benny inexplicably left my handy 40mm grenade launcher in the grave with me, so I cleaned up.

I'm working my way south, and, you know, in a version of the game where Benny didn't inexplicably leave my handy 40mm grenade launcher in the grave with me, this would have been the knock-on effect of my "good" Karmic choice in defending Goodsprings; the road south is littered with powder gangers who'd have been neutral had I not kicked the hornet's nest. As it stands? Free experience. I hit Primm, and fighting through the cramped hallways of the Bison Steve I encounter an enemy armed with what was clearly supposed to be the first heavy weapon I'd encounter in the world. Tight Corridors. Inexplicable Grenade Launcher. I clean up. South I go to the Mojave outpost, Nipton, that whole thing. And clearly, clearly you aren't meant to take a swing at Vulpes here, right? You're supposed to take it in, get a sense for the legion. In the version of the game that shipped you're supposed to get bodied if you try to kick the beef gate here. There are allowances in the game for if you pull it off, sure, but I did try with just the service rifle, without the glorious first-strike capabilities afforded to me by the 40mm grenade launcher that Benny inexplicably left in the grave with me. It didn't go very well!

So now I'm dogged by Legion hit squads on my way to Novac, which I get the distinct impression was not the point in the game at which this was supposed to start happening to me, because I am gathering up some pretty expensive equipment, all sold for space. I punch through to Vegas, and at this stage, the clear developer intent is that you need to spend some time milling around Freeside or Camp McCarran in order to gain access to the Strip- do odd jobs to scrape up the money, buy the forgery from Mick and Ralphs, gain monorail access, get your science skill high enough to hack the robot. Get the lay of the land, get a feel for the people, send some time stewing in the human cost of House's walled garden before you head in and hear the pitch from the big man himself.

Except I've got 5000 caps from selling off all the legion killteam equipment. In I go!

And the fun thing is, right, the Courier's stash can't be diegetic, but it is having a very direct impact on the world here. A top legion guy just went down to my inexplicable 40mm grenade launcher. Whatever else I'm roleplaying as, I am roleplaying as a guy who woke up in the possession of an inexplicable 40mm grenade launcher, and neither I nor my character can plausibly ignore that fact given its terrible bloodstained utility. I play a man, a man who would be a good man, a man nonetheless bewitched by the terrible resolutory power of the grenade launcher. My best friend, the inexplicable 40mm grenade launcher! My worst enemy, the inexplicable 40mm grenade launcher!

[zorosangell]

⛥ﾟ・。 sake

synopsis: your friends-with-benefits relationship with zoro becomes complicated when he gets monstrously drunk and begins to confess his deepest, darkest feelings about you.

cw: fluffy fluff, comfort, wano-era, reader's better than me (i woulda been all over him), zoro is a drunken idiot, zoro is adorable, zoro is IN LOVE, robin is a girl's girl

a/n: got this idea from an ask i saw @traflawgar had received <3 wanted to try it myself. hope that's okay (i made a point not to read it so i didn't subconsciously plagiarize)

"I must say, that kimono looks gorgeous on you, (y/n)," Robin smiled, resting her cheek in her palm. "It compliments your skin beautifully."

"I know, right! Hiyori picked it out for me," you beamed, looking down at yourself with pride.

The oiran had snagged it from her very own collection, its feel and design worth more than your clothing allowance for a year.

The silk was a mysterious onyx, adorned with the intricate, vermilion of the red spider lily with small posies to match.

"I can't imagine how much it's worth. Probably enough to buy a house..."

With the festival in full swing, everyone had split up to go find their own ways to let loose.

Luffy, Chopper, and Yamato left to gorge themselves, Sanji ran to go talk to some more lovely ladies, Usopp and Brook were on their thirty-seventh musical number.

Franky left to find some cola, Nami went to play with Otama and Otoko, and Jimbei was off having a drink somewhere.

Leaving you and Robin to roam around the festival, taking a moment to catch up.

"Speaking of houses," she chimed, a small smirk in her tone. "Brook told me about your getaway with our resident swordsman."

You practically choked on the air you were taking in, silently cursing yourself for not locking the door when you had a chance.

"The both of you are quite adorable."

A faint warmth rose to your cheeks, a bit of embarrassment sinking in at how easily you both were caught.

"It's not... we're just..." you stumbled, before letting out a tired sigh. "It wasn't like that. What we do is just... casual?"

The woman let out a small chuckle, turning to you with a soft, knowing look.

"Do you really believe that?" she asked, as if what you said was blatantly incorrect. "Your tone seems to say otherwise."

"Of course I do," you scoffed, doubling down. "What we have is completely platonic. It's just... sometimes a person needs physical comfort."

Despite your long, long, long history with the green-haired swordsman of the Strawhat crew, you both had yet to put a label on exactly what you were—even with your clockwork-like hook-ups.

You often craved for more, but the fear of scaring him off with talk of commitment and relationships was an effective deterrent.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?

Better to downplay something real than exaggerate what's not there.

"Besides... even if I did, he—" "You ready to go?" Zoro appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, throwing you over his free shoulder—the other was occupied by a large barrel of premium-grade sake.

"Zoro! What are you—?! You can't just grab me like that!" you flushed, mortified, as he began to walk away with you like you were a sack of potatoes.

"Says who?" he arched a brow, pinching your thigh before turning to Robin. "We'll be back later."

Robin smirked, leveling you with a knowing look before allowing her gaze to flick to the swordsman, "The Sunny's quite far away... I suggest you eat something before you go. "

Zoro's expression remained matter-of-fact, though his strong hand managed to give your hip a light squeeze as he continued on his way.

"Eh... I got what I came for."

"Zo..." you grumbled, carding your hand through his soft hair. "You almost got us caught again."

He hummed, mindlessly gliding his hand over your thigh as you rested flush against him, his face buried in your neck.

"Did not... y'told me t'be discreet so I pretended t'ask a question."

"You snatched me up in front of the whole festival," you deadpanned, brows flattening. "And now I think Robin's onto us..."

"Ya think t'much... t'much thinkin'..."

You cracked a smile at his loopy state, it having been a long time since you'd seen him so drunk.

He downed the whole barrel of sake by himself, and subsequently drank the Sunny dry right afterward, nothing but the wine left untouched.

Which led you both to the crow's nest, snuggled up under the stars as your lover held you in an iron grip—no matter how much he'd never admit it, he was a lovey, clingy drunk.

Playfully, you flicked his nose, heart swelling at its adorable scrunch.

"M'sick of sneakin' around... wanna show you off," he muttered into your neck, dragging lazy kisses across your skin. "An' tell the damn cook what's what.. m'sick of the way he looks at you."

"He's just being Sanji," you assured, biting back a small grin. "He doesn't want me."

"Yes, he does," Zoro quickly combated, brows furrowing. "Be stupid not to... yer so pretty."

At that comment, you flushed, completely taken aback.

Zoro had never said something so blatantly affectionate to you before.

'God, it must be worse than I thought...'

"All right, Zo, I think it's time to hit the sack," you cooed, attempting to wriggle out his grip. "Let's get you some water before you say something you regret."

"I mean it," he pressed on, clinging onto you tighter. "Don't know how I got so lucky..."

"Zoro..."

He grinned, rakishly, as you finally managed to break free from his hold, allowing you to sling his thick arm around your shoulder and stand up.

"Mah baby's one of the strongest people I know... not a lot o' guys can say that..."

He chuckled, loudly, completely sloshed.

"M'damn proud."

Flattered, you pecked a light kiss against his temple, flashing him a warm smile.

You let the baby part slide, tallying it as a drunken slip-of-the-tongue rather than anything of weight.

You both were just friends after all.

Nothing more, nothing less.

"Thank you. Now, let's get you to bed."

As he turned to look at you, his head slowly tilted back, unable to hold itself up.

His eyes brightened, becoming almost starry as they raked over your face, a vibrant, rose-colored aura seeming to radiate around you.

In that moment—with your hair tousled, kimono wrinkled, and expression slightly tipsy—he came to the conclusion that you were the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

"M'in love with you..." he blurted, refusing to look away from your face.

At the confession, your blood ran cold, body freezing in place as your neck and face began to burn.

Zoro had never said the L word to you before.

Much less with such conviction.

It made your chest constrict, and your heart stop in its tracks.

"You don't mean that," you countered instantly, as if it were a reflex. "This is the sake talking."

"S'not," he denied, firmly, staring into your eyes as if they were the only thing in the universe. "M'in love with you, (y/n)... yer pretty laugh... yer pretty hair..."

"Stop talking," you dismissed, pressing a finger against his lips to hush him up. "You wouldn't be saying any of this if you weren't drunk."

"S'tha point," he drawled, moving his face away. "Gotta say it now 'fore I pussy out again... or forget..."

"Zoro!"

"Yer it, (y/n)... perfect woman for me..."

He slumped against you, resting his cheek on your boob.

"I want you... so bad..."

"Zo, you don't know what you want—"

"Want this... with you."

"Zoro, you're not thinking clearly—"

"M'thinkin' fine."

"You're drunk."

"M'fine."

"Then how about this..."

You shrugged off his arm, quickly catching him by cupping his cheeks in your hands—his balance was completely shot, and he was already toppling over.

"You tell me all this tomorrow, and I'll take your word for it."

You paused a moment, scanning over his face to make sure he understood.

"Got it?"

Smoothly, he nodded, allowing himself to sink into your touch as you squished his cheeks.

"Gobt ibt."

At his adorable expression, you broke out into a warm smile, unable to stop yourself as you pressed a firm kiss against his forehead.

"All right, then. Let's get you cleaned up."

[kaidatheghostdragon]

Good reveal au, where after learning phantom's identity and realizing the atrocities that the GIW have committed (or alternatively, ethical science au, where they find out the GIW plagarized them), the fenton parents decided to create the 'ultimate ghost-ending weapon' and sell it to the agents.

They go absolutely overboard, describing to the agents in meticulous detail how it evaporates any ghost it hits near-instantly and describing it quite ruthlessly in the blueprints, and soon the GIW have raplaced all their main weapons with the new gun.

Except it doesn't actually kill ghosts. It's the Fenton Bazooka. You know, the one that creates a portable portal to suck the ghost back into the ghost zone? What they actually did was retool it slightly to make it look more grusome than it actually is. They even added a beacon in Phantom's Keep, which all Fenton Bazookas will target when they open a portal, so the ghosts are always delivered to the keep.

From there, Phantom stationed an emergency medical team at the keep to treat the many injured and ragged ghosts that the GIW 'destroyed,' and to explain what just happened.

What they didn't anticipate was that now that the GIW have a mass-produced weapon that they believed would effectively eradicate ghosts, they would go on the offensive. They have a number of cities they've been monitoring but didn't want to get involved in without better tools.

One of those cities is Gotham.

And the Bats are ectocontaminated enough to register as ghosts.

Batman witnessed several of his children get evaporated by green energy weapons within mere moments of each other. He's absolutely gutted. Devastated. They didn’t even stand a chance.

He'll get his revenge, and it's frighteningly easy to track the weapon to private subcontractors. The Doctors Fenton, in Illinois. Their research calls for the genocide of all ghost kind, and apparently, that war started by killing his own children.

His children will not die in vain.

He gets to Amity Park and finds the Engineer's Nightmare of a building that is Fentonworks, but that night, before he can hack through the security and break in, one of the windows opens.

It's one of his kids that he had watched evaporate before his very eyes. They give him a silent signal of one of their identifying security codes and gesture for him to come inside.

Is it a trap? A prank in poor taste? Utterly genuine?

He goes through the window.

All of his dead kids are there, wearing borrowed pajamas and only their dominoes to conceal their identities. Daniel Fenton (son of the Fentons, this is his bedroom, has voiced a few arguments against his parent's views, but still an unknown) is among the crowd of teens and young adults, twirling on an office chair and obnoxiously sipping a capri sun.

"First thing you need to know, Bats," Daniel says after finishing his drink, "is that my parents are absolutely NOT genocidal ectophobic scumbags, and that is the reason why your kids are still alive."

[ddejavvu]

i think hiccup likes watching you. it can be spun into the 'quality time love language', it can be written off as him reading over your shoulder, it can look like he's dozing across from you on the couch. but really, he's using the entire time to soak up your presence. he likes seating you with your back to his chest, so that he can see what you're doing in front of him by peering over your shoulder. sometimes he'll look at the back of your neck, counting freckles or roving over the baby hairs that escape your haphazard updo, staring at the skin he's lucky enough to get to kiss whenever he wants. very frequent back-of-the-neck kisser, this guy. he thinks its chaste and therefore meaningful.

if he's 'reading over your shoulder' he's actually just watching you read from over your shoulder. he watches your fingers twitch on the page, he watches the way you lose focus and have to restart a few paragraphs, he watches the way you toy with the corner of the cover while deep in the zone. he wants to commit everything to memory, he wants to know you deeper than he knows himself, he wants to have every minute twitch of your body recorded in something much more potent and permanent than charcoal on a page.

he studies the world around him, and you're no different. he finds out that you stuff your feet beneath the cushions on the couch because you like pressure holding you in place, so he takes to sitting on the tips of your toes with a cheeky smile, pretending its an annoyance instead of a deliberate act of thought. he watches you grapple with those same baby hairs he'd kissed and fashions some hair pins for you, pretty and effective. he knows it bothers you when your washcloth doesn't dry out in the cold winter months, so he takes them to the forge in the mornings and dries them over the fire so that they're toasty when you wash your face that night. he finds you interesting, watching you is his own hobby while you're doing yours. he doesn't get bored or feel the need to engage in his own activities if you're reading in his lap, or sewing up your shirt, or cooking, or stretching out your sore muscles, he's occupied with watching you live.

he's lost a lot in life. he's felt scarcity, not in food or shelter but in love. in tenderness, in being needed. so the way that you're so eager to sit between his legs, to lean back against his chest and crack open a book- something you could be doing alone on the other side of the couch if you wanted to- that's something special to him. he knows what it's like to feel discarded and unworthy, and he deliberately takes time to bask in the gratitude he feels towards whatever god sent you to him. he's fairly certain you didn't come from loki himself like the twins did, but he knows someone, somewhere out there, wanted him to have you, and he won't take that for granted.

[fishnapple]

The purpose of your life, why you're here

This reading is about finding the purpose of your life, why you're here, your current reincarnation (if you believe in reincarnation), or your soul, what you're born into this world to experience. All 6 groups share a similar theme of reaching your highest potential and having the focus on connections.

A similar reading was also done by @claudiafrankie, you can check out their reading here

This is a general reading meant for multiple people. Take only what resonates and leave out the rest.

Your feedback is much appreciated. If you find the reading resonated with you, leave a comment, I’d love to know 🎐

About me | Masterpost Book a reading with me - KO-FI (→ personal reading)

ROSE QUARTZ

Keywords: inspiration, leading, expansion, mastery, mental power, innovation, connection to the psyche

I see the theme of big vs small, how we define our life, give meaning to it. Are we just a tiny entity that exists in the sea of existence, or are we the whole universe, embracing everything?

In your life, you will encounter many instances where you're asked to step forward, step outside, go out of your comfort zone. You will be put into experiences that tell you how knotted your life has been and how much it could unravel into something more spontaneous. There's a fight between wanting to focus on the physical plane, doing daily tasks perfectly, concern yourself with details, with what is happening around you and the need to do something bigger, having more impact and influence, to make a change to the world, to live the life you dream about. Confinement vs freedom.

You have a lot to tell, so much to share, so much to experience. At your core, you're an adventurer, a nomad, life is a journey that you need to keep moving. You want to achieve great things, leave a mark in this world and receive adoration from people. But the first step in your journey will be facing your wounds. They are the door that stands between you and the freedom outside. Are you ready to turn the doorknob and push that door? In the past, in your past lives, you might have experienced confinement, mentally, physically, spiritually. You kept standing there and facing the door but didn't decide what to do. So in this life, you're given a choice to choose again.

You might think the components to your success in life are outward actions, ambitions, and material achievements, showing how capable you are. Your mind is buzzing with ideas, with the future, always looking for a new way to do things better, to perfect what you're focusing on, like a windshield wipers working tirelessly on a stormy day. The next piece of information, the exciting new discoveries, the buzzing trends, they busy your mind until it becomes fatigued and obsessed.

Your purpose of this lifetime is to learn how to rest, when to stop, and how to use the information and resources you have gathered to build yourself up effectively. What defines you is not how much you have, how good you are at certain jobs, but how you master yourself and become the highest aspiration of yourself.

To do that takes patience and understanding of yourself. Turning inward, curbing the restless mind and impulses. You might be someone who is quite impatient or impulsive, wanting to execute right away the idea you have in mind, what you think of should be what you have, expecting results and excellence quickly, if things don't go well from the first try, you want to give up and change direction, change the method without giving the old ones enough time to develop. If you are this person, then life will give you many opportunities or challenges to slow you down, the more you try to act, to fix things, tossing ideas everywhere, going around in many directions at once, the more likely you are to be confined and forced to make a clear choice and commit to it. And you will have to choose wisely. How do you do it? By facing that door, those wounds, see how they are projected into your surroundings, your relationships with people, how you go around, anywhere, just to avoid them.

You're given a good pair of eyes (figuratively, or can be literally) to truly see, amidst all those busy movements, a path for yourself. A wide, unexplored path. Pushing the door, stepping out is scary, but you're brave and you will inspire many others to do the same.

LABRADORITE

Keywords: growth, healing, comfort, peace, helping, courage, accepting changes

I see the image of a sword or a cross. Your energy feels young and soft yet resilient and brave. Life gives you many challenges that would forge a sharp and strong blade inside you. The sword here is not for harming or conquest but for protection and striking the lock, through layers of fears that have been imprisoning you for a long time.

Your life is divided or, rather, balanced by two opposing forces and choices. One is the past, the habit, the way you chose to protect your safety. You might have a tendency to go along with other people's wishes or try to avoid direct confrontation for fear of disrupting the peace. This might be one of your defence mechanisms when dealing with life in general. You want to live in peace, quietly go about your way without obstruction and intrusion from outside. This creates a demure aura, in some way, a little submissive or malleable energy. You don't act this way because you want to gain something from other people. You just don't find it necessary to engage in confrontations that lead to dead-end.

The other side is something you're called to embrace more of in this lifetime. Your energy is soft and flowy, like water, but it needs a little solidifying into something more sturdy. It's the hardening of the core self. Hardening here does not have a negative connotation, it's not about building walls around yourself, closing your heart and spirit, acting cold and tough, it's not like that. It's about being more sure of yourself, giving yourself a sturdy and durable foundation, like how a pliable sprout would grow into a robust tree, standing tall and firm on the ground.

Work and career, material achievements will be the ground where you will see yourself grow the most in this lifetime. There will be opportunities and chances for you to break out of your nest and explore. The work environment will be dynamic and full of pleasant surprises. You will find support through the people you work with. A family member might be a crucial figure in your process of becoming the best version of yourself.

I feel a very giving nature, you have so much in yourself, so much to share, that inner abundance, with people, with life. But only when you release the attachments that keep you rooted in constricted safety. There might be hesitancy when trying to think about bigger aspirations, about your life dreams. You might think that those dreams are unrealistic or too far away. Your mind and your heart are going in the opposite direction. Your heart wants to look forward, to the distant, unexplored horizon, while your mind is occupied by anxiety and uncertainty. It's the root of the great divide between your past and your future.

But I think in this lifetime, things will change. Your life is in a great transition period. Events might happen quickly, surprises come more often. What you've been believing in, what you've been doing habitually might suddenly become strange and feel foreign to you. These changes are necessary, you might feel uncomfortable having to depart from what you've been attached to. But if you can muster enough courage to go against the usual, it will be a personal victory for you. You will successfully break the earth above you and shoot up, out of dormancy, to begin a new adventure.

RED JASPER

Keywords: manifestation, beauty, to connect, freedom, commitment, wish vs reality

It feels like you have a starter kit of manifesting love but you haven't learnt how to use them fully yet. Love and other connections will be the focal point of this lifetime for you.

You have a unique power of manifestation. Have you ever had some thoughts and then a few days or some time later, they came true?. Everything could manifest instantly that you might even be scared of your own thoughts, afraid that any "wrong" thought will result in a bad future. If you haven't realised this about yourself, be more mindful and observe how things work around you. Life will feel a lot more magical for you.

One of the reasons why your thoughts are so powerful is because you're given full reign, full freedom to experience this world. It's not something that you can easily realise and put into practise. There's no particular script nor strict rules for you to follow, you just need to experience as many things as possible. The best gift you have in this lifetime is freedom. I think this gift is something hard-earned from countless trials and hardships. The memories of distant pains might still linger somewhere deep inside you, keeping you from fully being free to dream. But no more rules and burdens. This life is meant to be savoured in its vastness. You're a born rebel. Carving your own path, going your own way, never settling, never being fully at ease with the present, always on the lookout for a different future.

And that's where relationships come in. One of the best ways to do that is through relationships and interacting with others. I see a tendency to be hasty or quick to move on when it comes to bonds with other people. With your manifesting ability, combine with your natural charms, you have no problem with meeting and building the connection with someone. But something about commitment might scare you. You might not want to commit because of the fear that your freedom will be lost, or because you put a heavy importance on a commitment that you don't want to step into one too lightly. You might jump, too quickly, into conclusions about some connections. Maybe you would try to find a plausible reason to stop the connection, in the name of practicality and logic, ready to find flaws in the other person, or, on the opposite end, you decide too quickly that this is it, this person is the one and then try to commit, prematurely. It's like you are given something because you wished for it, but then you don't exactly know what to do with it. This will be one of your biggest lessons in this lifetime. To follow through with what you wish for, to commit to something fully and wisely. It's not just romantic relationships but also other relationships, colleagues, friends, families, etc.

There would be two types of people in your life who can guide or lead you into two different directions. They will appear in the form of mentors, someone older or more experienced than you, someone whom you feel you can learn something significant from. One type will encourage you to find your calling, your path. Who will constantly touch your deepest feelings without even trying. They may trigger you, for good or for bad, you would feel their choices of words and actions are dubious and questionable, but there is something undeniably inspiring about them, they push you to be more bold and get in touch with your needs and wishes. While the other type would be someone wanting to dictate every move in your life under the guise of knowing what's good for you. They are powerful, they can make your wishes come true but only if you come under their wings and stay there. You would feel like a child being well taken care of, but your wings will be clipped. Which direction to take is ultimately your choice, you choose whatever to experience, because that's your freedom in this lifetime.

CITRINE

Keywords: uncharted water, discovery, exploration, crossing, in between, balanced, transition

I see your path in this life is going to the unknown, something that you haven't experienced before. You are standing at a gate, a bridge in between two lands. Or, in the vertical sense, you are standing on the dark ground, looking up at the sun, shining bright from above. There are lots of movements, both mentally and physically. In this lifetime, you will constantly move between the two worlds. The inner, dark and cold sea of your private world and the bright, warm air of the outside world. No world is better than other, they need to be their for your life to be in balance, staying in one world for too long and neglecting other will likely result in some events taking place to pull you back into balance.

These two worlds are parallel to each other. The inner world is led chiefly by your mind, they are well organised, block by block, neatly like a library, while the outer world is more dynamic, led by passion and actions. They affect each other in every way, more than you realise. Chaos in the inner thought will likely result in confusion and, in some extreme cases, destruction of the known path. You will stumble upon many paths that are considered strange and out of the norm, but I think you're geared towards them, even unknowingly, your mind has a knack of seeing the unique structure of things, noticing the pattern and the likely outcomes of situations that not many people can. This will help you see more alternatives in life and choose a path that can bring satisfaction to you, in all senses, materially, spiritually, emotionally. This path will likely be an uncharted water, something that not many people have done, there will be many unexplored areas for you to bring in your unique takes.

Another way the two worlds interact with each other is what your inner world needs, the outer world will provide. If you feel anxious and doubtful, haunted by past memories, then you will likely encounter something or someone new who can give you fresh perspectives and encouragement to be brave. If you feel your life is lacking security, you feel low in your self esteem, there will be moments of transformation that bring you closer to what you desire, you will be given opportunities to venture into new territory, meeting new people, getting the support you need to start something. The universe hears your every call and answers back with opportunities, emphasis on the word "opportunities", you won't be given a whole cooked dish, you will be given ingredients to make the dish.

There's an element of settlement. Instead of jumping from place to place, in this lifetime, you need to hold onto something, to make something uniquely yours, something that will be by your side everywhere you go. It could be a legacy, a creation, a lesson, something that lasts. But it's not about stubbornly holding on to something, it has to be integrated into your core being. Throughout life, you will face with many events that will change your perspective drastically, you're not meant to hold on to old beliefs, withered branches that can no longer hold the weight of the birds standing on them. You will constantly meet new people, those that will open your eyes. Foreign people and cultures might fascinate you, somewhere with lots of sunlight, warm hospitality, beautiful scenery and architecture, lots of mountains and flowers. Especially if you're someone who's from a land near the sea, windy and cold, lots of rain and stormy weather. You are a traveller at heart, don't limit yourself to any particular place.

AMETHYST

Keywords: opinion, communication, conflict, to uphold, straightforward, honesty, truth

I don't know why, but upon seeing your spread, the phrase "human comedy" just sprang up in my mind. This life of yours will go through so many ups and downs in regards to connections and relationships. You will experience the full spectrum of them, every facet, every emotion.

You might encounter many situations where you're misunderstood greatly, those will create a very interesting dynamic between you and the world. Interesting might not be the right word, even my choice of word in this reading is muddled up, you might have the tendency to use words that make your intentions seem questionable or odd to people, and they do the same to you. It's like people from different lands from all around the world gathered for a meeting but there's no common language and no one to translate.

Communication will be the point of focus for you. You might struggle to find the right expression, the right words for the things you want to say. Thoughts seem a lot more clear and articulated in your head, but when they are uttered, there's this fog around you that tends to twist and blur the words, making them shift and fuddle. You will need to find a way to clear this fog, to deliver your words in the most direct and straightforward way as much as possible, even at the risk of being blunt and offensive. This might create an obsession or anxiety when communicating. Maybe you want to find the perfect expression, the details, you do notice the tendency of people misunderstanding you so you try so hard to elaborate, which can create the impression of being long winded, rambling or argumentative.

Ideas jump around in your head, constantly born and spread, demand to get out, to be expressed, this forms a rushing energy, impatient tongue. But even with all these misunderstandings, you don't actually offence people. They may perceive you as nitpicking, blunt, or argumentative, but they don't necessarily hate you for it. On the contrary, some even find it amusing and endearing, these people might even intentionally tease or poke at you, it's not malicious, but then again, you also don't read people's intentions too clearly and might perceive these acts of teasing as personal attack. Your reactions would rile those people up even more. Hence, the endless cycles of poking and reacting. The purpose of all of these is to train your resilience of the mind and heart. You should take all of these with good spirit, laugh them off, keep your truth and speak honestly, there's nothing more attractive than that.

On a more serious note, you're reminded to stand firm in your thoughts. I sense that you have so many wisdom to share with the world. Teaching might be a calling for you. Even without actually be in the education field, people can still learn from you, through your unshakable conviction in yourself and the way you speak your truth. It might be intense, it might be difficult to swallow, it might seem strange and outlandish, but nevertheless, it captivates the world through its sincerity.

AVENTURINE

Keywords: artist, bridge, the call, emotional landscape, go with the flow, sensitivity

"Young poet of the moon", "The poet of the soul", those two just appeared in my head upon seeing your spread, so I wanted to write them down. I think those words portrayed you pretty well. Your inner artist heart is beating every moment, it's a force that you can't hide or be ushered into oblivion by some circumstances.

This world needs a lot of people who have a sensitive heart, like you, someone who has the "eyes" to see the beauty in this world, the "ears" to hear its cry and whisper, the "lips" to court it with sweet sweet words. You're here to make people see the world in its naked beauty, helping them realise the small details of living and in the process, elevate their souls.

You offer this world a cup filled with creativity. The way your mind and heart tremble and come alive with all the senses can create striking new creations. The passion for sensuality is there, for the bursting love of life. Sensuality here encompasses a vast spectrum of things, from the aromas of delicious food, the cool and smooth feeling of water lapping over you, the swirling colours of leaves dancing under the sun, the warm and rough feel of someone's hands, ... they are all the materials for you to marvel at, to create, to give back to the world your interpretation of it.

Why did I say "poet" in the beginning? Because you have the gift of gab, your words resonate with people's hearts, because they are spoken from the realm of the unknown inside all of us, we can only be able to catch a glimpse of it here and there, when we allow ourselves to relax and float. You have the ability to connect to that realm , to catch sights of it more often and crystallise those sights into words or messages conveyed by other means. But I sense written words strongly. Even if you do something that isn't related to creativity or the art (but is there anything that truly be detached from creativity?), this gift will still assist you in every endeavour you're in, negotiating, mediating, persuading, counselling, anything that needs these kinds of skills.

Love will play an important role in your life, you're here to experience love in all of its forms, experience all the feelings it can create within us. It won't be an easy journey, heartaches are there, but so is the deepest devotion. You might face delays in love or intense connections that leave lasting marks on your soul. You're not the same person you once were before a connection. These will transform you, plunging you into greater depth and strange waters. But don't be afraid,if you allow yourself to savour the journey, you will arrive at a treasure that many people have been struggling to find. This inexhaustible treasure will provide richness to your life. Also, don't let yourself drowned either, emerge out of the water and share with the world what you've seen. So many people need their hearts touched by a soul such as yours.

[sashayed]

ok now it is time to air my grievances with severance s2, a season of television i thoroughly enjoyed and looked forward to every week. s2 is mr milchick putting on a spectacular drumline Just For Me and what do they get for it. trapped behind a vending machine (readmore cut) while i batter them with a trombone. classic ingratitude.

my umbrella gripe btw is that showrunner dan erickson's figurative innie is actually Ricken and he won't admit it and until he does we are never going to see the show that severance Could Be. like ricken is a pretentious nightmare who is insulated from the consequences of his own actions. he's also got a fascinating way with words (fond, derogatory) and a heart that yearns for love and he is really trying to Say Something. ok well that's what this show is. accept this and reconcile with yourself Dan Erickson (or should I say DAN: SO RICKEN??? boom anagrammed!!) or keep displacing all your sins onto that one character and doom this show to eternal alienation from its own core themes.

i think we can all admit that pacing in this season sucks and they had enough time to do it better. and the thing is imo if you were really committed to storytelling you would have to cut some of the most fun/fanservicey individual scenes of the season. i can see why you might choose not to do that! like for instance the baby goats thing. i get it. it looked soooo fun to film with the baby goats. visually the pasture room is great. gwendoline christie is a gift. it's fun! but it doesn't actually uhhh serve the story to spend all that time on it. it doesn't shed any new light. "they are sacrificing the goats because lumon is a creepy cult." we KNOW they are a creepy cult. "lumon thinks innies are non-people who don't experience love and care, but they DO experience love and care and that motivates them." brother we know that too!! "ok but wasn't it all worth it for that heavyweight christie/olafsson finale fight scene." i will concede this point. that ruled.

pacing problems never worse than in "sweet vitriol," an episode i actually enjoyed more than everyone else, but it didn't need to be a standalone and in fact was badly served by the format!! many in your audience have forgotten to give a shit about ms cobel so the revelation that she invented severance doesn't hit for them. splitting her storyline up and dividing it among episodes starting earlier would have kept her more consistently in play and opened up space for underserved character arcs, like dylan aND IRVING—

—because as much fun as burving demon threesome is it is so underbaked and wastes one of the show's coolest characters. WHO IS IRVING. WHY IS HE SLEEPERAGENTING LUMON. you're gonna put him on a train to the farm for old dogs and be like "all was well because love is more important than revenge :)" ??? like sure but again it DOESN'T HIT because it doesn't require the viewer to struggle with WHAT IRVING'S DRIVING FORCE ACTUALLY WAS. and he doesn't even get to kiss. let him kiss!!!!

I actually think having reintegration move at an unpredictable pace and having its side effects be unclear is not the worst idea, and in fact as an allegory for like, real life healing and becoming a Whole Person i maybe even prefer it. but the pacing problems move it beyond "this process is unfolding gradually and erratically" into "we have forgotten this is happening" and it just didn't have to be that way, man. side note there is something fascinating going on with helly's uncomfortable, unwilling quasi-reintegration from the innie side! from the moment she finds herself in front of that gala to hearing jame say he doesn't love his daughter, she is accepting the fact that SHE IS HELENA. she is thinking about how She as a first-person experiencer of the world could find herself in helena's position (which helena—who is less of a grownup than her innie—is still unable/unwilling to do). i've read some criticism of that final scene (which i loved btw) that was like "helly's goal has always been to dismantle lumon, why would she give that up for A Man? wouldn't she push mark s. out the door and be like BURN THIS PLACE TO THE GROUND?" sure, but i think that doesn't engage with helly's arc either—which is not about revolutionary conviction OR about A Man but about about discovering that SHE wants to live, she doesn't want to hang herself in the elevator out of spite, she wants her half-a-life even if it means a degree of complicity with her evil outie. on the other hand, does the WRITING actually engage with helly's arc? or am i getting all that from britt lower??

speaking of making actors do all the work: we as a show are going to grapple with corporate racism and the Black experience :) no we're not :) or are we? ;) you're welcome :)))

i don't love gemma's backstory boiling down to Woman Want Baby. "Greatest Agony for Woman Is Want Baby and Can't Have Baby" is a storyline that makes me personally grimace. but i accept that that's a personal preference and honestly dichen lachman sells her character/s so beautifully that i didn't even remember to bitch about it when i originally wrote this. i just remembered it and had to edit this post because god forbid i don't complain about something. (although. now that i AM complaining about it: putting someone through three years of torture and then being like "we'll prove this fresh consciousness is unaffected by suffering by going all the way back to the baby thing, because 'no baby,' not years of torture and isolation, is the fundamental pain at the root of this woman's being," is...........a choice!!!!! it's a choice. and if it were a deliberate narrative choice, like if it were about how the lumon ideology fundamentally conceives of women, that would be one thing! but i just don't think it is.)

did i mention i really liked this season and had a great time. i did. i am bitching about it because i have a fun time rotating it in my mind. maybe it's actually very brave and artistic to make a show that is not as well-crafted as it could be because then you are opening up intellectual/creative space for your viewers. what about that. if you think about it maybe a slightly less good show is better than a great show. in a way. checkmate haters

[letmetellyouaboutmyfeels]

So You Wanna 'Revive' Your Show

Hi Tim. This took me like ten minutes because I actually have two brain cells to rub together. <3

Give the 911 call center more to do. Linda and Sue especially in my opinion.

Go back to what made the show great in the first place which was the core characters becoming/being a family.

Mix up the dynamics. Remember Chim and Bobby's friendship in season one? Hen and Athena's bestieism? Bring that back along with some lesser seen dynamics. I want more of Chim and Karen's friendship. Have Maddie and Bobby work together on something. Pair Athena and Eddie together and have Athena realize just how like her husband Eddie is (and maybe in doing so they help each other get perspective on other things).

Give Bobby a promotion and have him deal with that (although so soon after he quit being an advisor and was clearly enjoying being captain might not work but something to consider).

Have Athena retire and become a private investigator.

More fun filler episodes. A bottle episode where they have a boring day at the station. An episode made up entirely of B shift or the non-firefam members of A shift like SG-1's The Other Guys. An episode entirely from Jee-Yun's point of view showing a young child's perspective of crazy silly adult drama. Boys Night Out/Girls Night Out a la Leverage. "Alternate universe" episodes like Bones' season four finale and Castle's Blue Butterfly episode.

Keep Buck single for a while and give him a safe haven baby. Another way to bond with Hen and Karen over adoption, another way to bond with his sister, and another way to bond with Bobby by making him a grandfather. And oh, hey, Eddie, you want to help me coparent?

Maybe stop having all of Eddie's important shit happen offscreen, I don't know if there's BTS beef or what but grow the fuck up and keep it out of the script. Professionalism, heard of it?

Make Buddie canon. Yes my bias is showing but it's what a large percentage of your audience and media reporters have been clambering after for years. Put guns to heads if you must. Jesus. You want to revitalize the show that's literally the number one way to do it. You dumbasses.

Okay I always said I didn't want it and I still don't but fine. fine! do a musical episode! if that's the price of Bobby's life I'll fucking pay it!!!

Maybe relearn the concept of arcs that last an entire season and not just two-three episodes.

Michael and David have a destination wedding and every single firefam member encounters some kind of emergency, either life-threatening or comedy-of-errors, that means they all show up looking like they got run over by trucks.

RASHOMON EPISODE. For either dramatic or comedic effect. Or both.

Everyone loved the heist episodes like The Taking of Dispatch 9-1-1 and Ocean's 9-1-1. Like come on you fuckwit let the show be fun again.

Actually commit to giving any of the main characters a pet. I know everyone wants Buck but it could be Athena and Bobby, Hen and Karen, Maddie and Chim... personally I would love to see Eddie get hit by the Cat Distribution System.

Firefighters do charity drives all the time, go to schools to do talks about fire safety - show the team interacting with the local community more. Show the parents interacting with their kids' schools or the parents of their friends' kids a bit more. I want to see Eddie and Karen fight the PTA.

It's not hard. That's what gets me. You don't actually worry about the show becoming stagnant. You just wanted to do a really big shocking holy shit episode that everyone would be talking about, forgetting that truly good shows earn those. Shit shows that pull that kind of nonsense lose their audience and get cancelled. You did it because you're a mediocre, boring, never-quite-popular-enough egotist with an inferiority complex who was luckily born with a dick so you fell upward your entire career, and you orgasm to other people's pain.

And for once in my life? I hope cast/crew do know my tumblr. I hope they are on here. I hope they fucking read this, and I hope they print it out and tape it to your office door and every other door on set they can manage like Martin fucking Luther. I want you to go to bed at night knowing you are despised and that a starving barely-breaking-even idiot who wrote a stripper!Buck fanfic knows more about television writing and comes up with better ideas than you do.

To quote David Lynch, fix your heart or die.

[aziraphale-is-a-cat]

DCxDP Danny Jones

(inspired by this particular image)

The depths of Gotham harbor were, historically, not the kind sort of waters. Many lives had been hidden in their depths, taken by nature or by the nature of man. The coast itself was mostly silt deposits while the water was dark and cold. Many sailors had lost their lives to the unpredictable waters and only rumors told of the number who had been laid to rest beside them. Any day on the beach overlooking the Delaware Bay it could be assumed more people lay beneath the waves than were sunning themselves within their reach.

Danny had grown up landlocked in the great state of Illinois. He had never seen the ocean in his lifetime and generally considered his first experience with it to be the sensation of his death. The portal to the Realms was suffocating, and to his senses, endless. Crashing waves of energy had overtaken him as he felt warmth seep from him for the last time.

A new start in Gotham City was meant to help him escape that emptiness, but standing at the railing over rocky and turbulent waters dissuaded him of the plan's effectiveness. The currents were strangely alluring to Danny, and for yet another night in a row he watched the stars reflect off the water and wondered how they would look from beneath.

He knew it was a strange compulsion, given the reputation of the harbor, but it was one he felt the need to see through. Sighing, Danny made the descent down the generally unwelcoming beach. The rocky dropoff from the wall was easy enough to make his way down, but looking behind him he couldn't help but feel as though it wasn't there to keep people out of the ocean, but in. A wave rolled in lapping at his feet, an invitation.

The water was cold, a welcome temperature as he waded to waist deep, then further. As the water reached his chest he felt a cold hand wrap around his leg. And another. And more.

Being dragged through the ocean, Danny thought, was much less stressful when you didn't need to breathe.

-0-

Red Robin sat idly in the Bat-Swivel, wondering if the new case he'd picked up was a new rogue with a bit, or bonafide supernatural phenomena. One would think that after reaching a certain point in scientifically backed investigation that it would gradually be discovered that all presumed ghost sightings and alien abductions could be disrobed as pseudoscientific Scooby Doo style nonsense, but one would be dismayed to discover otherwise.

A new problem had erupted in fall, as what reports describe to be a drowned soul attacking and disfiguring prominent and low level gang members alike to be later found on the shores of Gotham Harbor. The attacks were committed in ways that at first seemed random, but many could be matched to the details of autopsy reports dating back decades with one thing in common, location of the cadaver.

Each body which could be matched to an attack had been discovered within or on the shores of Gotham Harbor. None of the attacks were fatal nor immobilizing, simply visible, as if the goal of these attacks was to display a level of brutality the victims may have taken with their own victims. The more gruesome of the attacks seemed to be the combination of multiple autopsy reports, which painted a brutal picture.

Tim ran his hand over his face, still covered by the cowl, and exited out from all applications on the Bat Computer. He paused slightly at the file explorer tab. He stopped to take a minute to rename the drive "Davy Jones" before ejecting the external hard drive the case file was stored on and packing up for the night.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

They were warned

Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.

Truth is provisional! Sometimes, the things we understand to be true about the world change, and stuff we've "always done" has to change, too. There comes a day when the evidence against using radium suppositories is overwhelming, and then you really must dig that radium out of your colon and safely dispose of it:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/19/just-stop-putting-that-up-your-ass/#harm-reduction

So it's natural and right that in the world, there will be people who want to revisit the received wisdom and best practices for how we live our lives, regulate our economy, and organize our society. But not a license to simply throw out the systems we rely on. Sure, maybe they're outdated or unnecessary, but maybe not. That's where "Chesterton's Fence" comes in:

Let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_fence

In other words, it's not enough to say, "This principle gets in the way of something I want to do, so let's throw it out because I'm pretty sure the inconvenience I'm experiencing is worse than the consequences of doing away with this principle." You need to have a theory of how you will prevent the harms the principle protects us from once you tear it down. That theory can be "the harms are imaginary" so it doesn't matter. Like, if you get rid of all the measures that defend us from hexes placed by evil witches, it's OK to say, "This is safe because evil witches aren't real and neither are hexes."

But you'd better be sure! After all, some preventative measures work so well that no living person has experienced the harms they guard us against. It's easy to mistake these for imaginary or exaggerated. Think of the antivaxers who are ideologically committed to a world in which human beings do not have a shared destiny, meaning that no one has a moral claim over the choices you make. Motivated reasoning lets those people rationalize their way into imagining that measles – a deadly and ferociously contagious disease that was a scourge for millennia until we all but extinguished it – was no big deal:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles:_A_Dangerous_Illness

There's nothing wrong with asking whether longstanding health measures need to be carried on, or whether they can be sunset. But antivaxers' sloppy, reckless reasoning about contagious disease is inexcusable. They were warned, repeatedly, about the mass death and widespread lifelong disability that would follow from their pursuit of an ideological commitment to living as though their decisions have no effect on others. They pressed ahead anyway, inventing ever-more fanciful reasons why health is a purely private matter, and why "public health" was either a myth or a Communist conspiracy:

https://www.conspirituality.net/episodes/brief-vinay-prasad-pick-me-campaign

When RFK Jr kills your kids with measles or permanently disables them with polio, he doesn't get to say "I was just inquiring as to the efficacy of a longstanding measure, as is right and proper." He was told why the vaccine fence was there, and he came up with objectively very stupid reasons why that didn't matter, and then he killed your kids. He was warned.

Fuck that guy.

Or take Bill Clinton. From 1933 until 1999, American banks were regulated under the Glass-Steagall Act, which "structurally separated" them. Under structural separation, a "retail bank" – the bank that holds your savings and mortgage and provides you with a checkbook – could not be "investment bank." That meant it couldn't own or invest in businesses that competed with the businesses its depositors and borrowers ran. It couldn't get into other lines of business, either, like insurance underwriting.

Glass-Steagall was a fence that stood between retail banks and the casino economy. It was there for a fucking great reason: the failure to structurally separate banks allowed them to act like casinos, inflating a giant market bubble that popped on Black Friday in October 1929, kicking off the Great Depression. Congress built the structural separation fence to keep banks from doing it again.

In the 1990s, Bill Clinton agitated for getting rid of Glass-Steagall. He argued that new economic controls would allow the government to prevent another giant bubble and crash. This time, the banks would behave themselves. After all, hadn't they demonstrated their prudence for seven decades?

In fact, they hadn't. Every time banks figured out how to slip out of regulatory constraints they inflated another huge bubble, leading to another massive crash that made the rich obscenely richer and destroyed ordinary savers' lives. Clinton took office just as one of these finance-sector bombs – the S&L Crisis – was detonating. Clinton had no basis – apart from wishful thinking – to believe that deregulating banks would lead to anything but another gigantic crash.

But Clinton let his self interest – in presiding over a sugar-high economic expansion driven by deregulation – overrule his prudence (about the crash that would follow). Sure enough, in the last months of Clinton's presidency, the stock market imploded with the March 2000 dot-bomb. And because Congress learned nothing from the dot-com crash and declined to restore the Glass-Steagall fence, the crash led to another bubble, this time in subprime mortgages, and then, inevitably, we suffered the Great Financial Crisis.

Look: there's no virtue in having bank regulations for the sake of having them. It is conceptually possible for bank regulations to be useless or even harmful. There's nothing wrong with investigating whether the 70-year old Glass-Steagall Act was still needed in 1999. But Clinton was provided with a mountain of evidence about why Glass-Steagall was the only thing standing between Americans and economic chaos, including the evidence of the S&L Crisis, which was still underway when he took office, and he ignored all of them. If you lost everything – your home, your savings, your pension – in the dot-bomb or the Great Financial Crisis, Bill Clinton is to blame. He was warned. he ignored the warnings.

Fuck that guy.

No, seriously, fuck Bill Clinton. Deregulating banks wasn't Clinton's only passion. He also wanted to ban working cryptography. The cornerstone of Clinton's tech policy was the "Clipper Chip," a backdoored encryption chip that, by law, every technology was supposed to use. If Clipper had gone into effect, then cops, spooks, and anyone who could suborn, bribe, or trick a cop or a spook could break into any computer, server, mobile device, or embedded system in America.

When Clinton was told – over and over, in small, easy-to-understand words – that there was no way to make a security system that only worked when "bad guys" tried to break into it, but collapsed immediately if a "good guy" wanted to bypass it. We explained to him – oh, how we explained to him! – that working encryption would be all that stood between your pacemaker's firmware and a malicious update that killed you where you stood; all that stood between your antilock brakes' firmware and a malicious update that sent you careening off a cliff; all that stood between businesses and corporate espionage, all that stood between America and foreign state adversaries wanting to learn its secrets.

In response, Clinton said the same thing that all of his successors in the Crypto Wars have said: NERD HARDER! Just figure it out. Cops need to look at bad guys' phones, so you need to figure out how to make encryption that keeps teenagers safe from sextortionists, but melts away the second a cop tries to unlock a suspect's phone. Take Malcolm Turnbull, the former Australian Prime Minister. When he was told that the laws of mathematics dictated that it was impossible to build selectively effective encryption of the sort he was demanding, he replied, "The laws of mathematics are very commendable but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia":

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/07/australian-pm-calls-end-end-encryption-ban-says-laws-mathematics-dont-apply-down

Fuck that guy. Fuck Bill Clinton. Fuck a succession of UK Prime Ministers who have repeatedly attempted to ban working encryption. Fuck 'em all. The stakes here are obscenely high. They have been warned, and all they say in response is "NERD HARDER!"

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/05/theyre-still-trying-to-ban-cryptography/

Now, of course, "crypto means cryptography," but the other crypto – cryptocurrency – deserves a look-in here. Cryptocurrency proponents advocate for a system of deregulated money creation, AKA "wildcat currencies." They say, variously, that central banks are no longer needed; or that we never needed central banks to regulate the money supply. Let's take away that fence. Why not? It's not fit for purpose today, and maybe it never was.

Why do we have central banks? The Fed – which is far from a perfect institution and could use substantial reform or even replacement – was created because the age of wildcat currencies was a nightmare. Wildcat currencies created wild economic swings, massive booms and even bigger busts. Wildcat currencies are the reason that abandoned haunted mansions feature so heavily in the American imagination: American towns and cities were dotted with giant mansions built by financiers who'd grown rich as bubbles expanded, then lost it all after the crash.

Prudent management of the money supply didn't end those booms and busts, but it substantially dampened them, ending the so-called "business cycle" that once terrorized Americans, destroying their towns and livelihoods and wiping out their savings.

It shouldn't surprise us that a new wildcat money sector, flogging "decentralized" cryptocurrencies (that they are nevertheless weirdly anxious to swap for your gross, boring old "fiat" money) has created a series of massive booms and busts, with insiders getting richer and richer, and retail investors losing everything.

If there was ever any doubt about whether wildcat currencies could be made safe by putting them on a blockchain, it is gone. Wildcat currencies are as dangerous today as they were in the 18th and 19th century – only moreso, since this new bad paper relies on the endless consumption of whole rainforests' worth of carbon, endangering not just our economy, but also the habitability of the planet Earth.

And nevertheless, the Trump administration is promising a new crypto golden age (or, ahem, a Gilded Age). And there are plenty of Democrats who continue to throw in with the rotten, corrupt crypto industry, which flushed billions into the 2024 election to bring Trump to office. The result is absolutely going to be more massive bubbles and life-destroying implosions. Fuck those guys. They were warned, and they did it anyway.

Speaking of the climate emergency: greetings from smoky Los Angeles! My city's on fire. This was not an unforeseeable disaster. Malibu is the most on-fire place in the world:

https://longreads.com/2018/12/04/the-case-for-letting-malibu-burn/

Since 1919, the region has been managed on the basis of "total fire suppression." This policy continued long after science showed that this creates "fire debt" in the form of accumulated fuel. The longer you go between fires, the hotter and more destructive those fires become, and the relationship is nonlinear. A 50-year fire isn't 250% more intense than a 20-year fire: it's 50,000% more intense.

Despite this, California has invested peanuts in regular controlled burns, which has created biennial uncontrolled burns – wildfires that cost thousands of times more than any controlled burn.

Speaking of underinvestment: PG&E has spent decades extracting dividends for its investors and bonuses for its execs, while engaging in near-total neglect of maintenance of its high-voltage transmission lines. Even with normal winds, these lines routinely fall down and start blazes.

But we don't have normal winds. The climate emergency has been steadily worsening for decades. LA is just the latest place to be on fire, or under water, or under ice, or baking in wet bulb temperatures. Last week in southern California, we were warned to expect gusts of 120mph.

They were warned. #ExxonKnew: in the early 1970s, Exxon's own scientists warned them that fossil fuel consumption would kick off climate change so drastic that it would endanger human civilzation. Exxon responded by burying the reports and investing in climate denial:

https://exxonknew.org/

They were warned! Warned about fire debt. Warned about transmission lines. Warned about climate change. And specific, named people, who individually had the power to heed these warnings and stave off disaster, ignored the warnings. They didn't make honest mistakes, either: they ignored the warnings because doing so made them extraordinarily, disgustingly rich. They used this money to create dynastic fortunes, and have created entire lineages of ultra-wealthy princelings in $900,000 watches who owe it all to our suffering and impending dooml

Fuck those guys. Fuck 'em all.

We've had so many missed opportunities, chances to make good policy or at least not make bad policy. The enshitternet didn't happen on its own. It was the foreseeable result of choices – again, choices made by named individuals who became very wealthy by ignoring the warnings all around them.

Let's go back to Bill Clinton, because more than anyone else, Clinton presided over some terrible technology regulations. In 1998, Clinton signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a bill championed by Barney Frank (fuck that guy, too). Under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it's a felony, punishable by a five year prison sentence, and a $500,000 fine, to tamper with a "digital lock."

That means that if HP uses a digital lock to prevent you from using third-party ink, it's a literal crime to bypass that lock. Which is why HP ink now costs $10,000/gallon, and why you print your shopping lists with colored water that costs more, ounce for ounce, than the sperm of a Kentucky Derby winner:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/30/life-finds-a-way/#ink-stained-wretches

Clinton was warned that DMCA 1201 would soon metastasize into every kind of device – not just the games consoles and DVD players where it was first used, but medical implants, tractors, cars, home appliances – anything you could put a microchip into (Jay Freeman calls this "felony contempt of business-model"):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

He ignored those warnings and signed the DMCA anyway (fuck that guy). Then, under Bush (fuck that guy), the US Trade Representative went all around the world demanding that America's trading partners adopt versions of this law (fuck that guy). In 2001, the European Parliament capitulated, enacting the EU Copyright Directive, whose Article 6 is a copy-paste of DMCA 1201 (fuck all those people).

Fast forward 20 years, and boy is there a lot of shit with microchips that can be boobytrapped with rent-extracting logic bombs that are illegal to research, describe, or disable.

Like choo-choo trains.

Last year, the Polish hacking group Dragon Sector was contacted by a public sector train company whose Newag trains kept going out of service. The operator suspected that Newag had boobytrapped the trains to punish the train company for getting its maintenance from a third-party contractor. When Dragon Sector investigated, they discovered that Newag had indeed riddled the trains' firmware with boobytraps. Trains that were taken to locations known to have third-party maintenance workshops were immediately bricked (hilariously, this bomb would detonate if trains just passed through stations near to these workshops, which is why another train company had to remove all the GPSes from its trains – they kept slamming to a halt when they approached a station near a third-party workshop). But Newag's logic bombs would brick trains for all kinds of reasons – merely keeping a train stationary for too many days would result in its being bricked. Installing a third-party component in a locomotive would also trigger a bomb, bricking the train.

In their talk at last year's Chaos Communications Congress, the Dragon Sector folks describe how they have been legally terrorized by Newag, which has repeatedly sued them for violating its "intellectual property" by revealing its sleazy, corrupt business practices. They also note that Newag continues to sell lots of trains in Poland, despite the widespread knowledge of its dirty business model, because public train operators are bound by procurement rules, and as long as Newag is the cheapest bidder, they get the contract:

https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-we-ve-not-been-trained-for-this-life-after-the-newag-drm-disclosure

The laws that let Newag make millions off a nakedly corrupt enterprise – and put the individuals who blew the whistle on it at risk of losing everything – were passed by Members of the European Parliament who were warned that this would happen, and they ignored those warnings, and now it's happening. Fuck those people, every one of 'em.

It's not just European parliamentarians who ignored warnings and did the bidding of the US Trade Representative, enacting laws that banned tampering with digital locks. In 2010, two Canadian Conservative Party ministers in the Stephen Harper government brought forward similar legislation. These ministers, Tony Clement (now a disgraced sex-pest and PPE grifter) and James Moore (today, a sleazeball white-shoe corporate lawyer), held a consultation on this proposal.

6, 138 people wrote in to say, "Don't do this, it will be hugely destructive." 54 respondents wrote in support of it. Clement and Moore threw out the 6,138 opposing comments. Moore explained why: these were the "babyish" responses of "radical extremists." The law passed in 2012.

Last year, the Canadian Parliament passed bills guaranteeing Canadians the Right to Repair and the right to interoperability. But Canadians can't act on either of these laws, because they would have to tamper with a digital lock to do so, and that's illegal, thanks to Tony Clement and James Moore. Who were warned. And who ignored those warnings. Fuck those guys:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/15/radical-extremists/#sex-pest

Back in the 1990s, Bill Clinton had a ton of proposals for regulating the internet, but nowhere among those proposals will you find a consumer privacy law. The last time an American president signed a consumer privacy law was 1988, when Reagan signed the Video Privacy Protection Act and ensured that Americans would never have to worry that video-store clerks where telling the newspapers what VHS cassettes they took home.

In the years since, Congress has enacted exactly zero consumer privacy laws. None. This has allowed the out-of-control, unregulated data broker sector to metastasize into a cancer on the American people. This is an industry that fuels stalkers, discriminatory financial and hiring algorithms, and an ad-tech sector that lets advertisers target categories like "teenagers with depression," "seniors with dementia" and "armed service personnel with gambling addictions."

When the people cry out for privacy protections, Congress – and the surveillance industry shills that fund them – say we don't need a privacy law. The market will solve this problem. People are selling their privacy willingly, and it would be an "undue interference in the market" if we took away your "freedom to contract" by barring companies from spying on you after you clicked the "I agree" button.

These people have been repeatedly warned about the severe dangers to the American public – as workers, as citizens, as community members, and as consumers – from the national privacy free-for-all, and have done nothing. Fuck them, every one:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

Now, even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and not every one of Bill Clinton's internet policies was terrible. He had exactly one great policy, and, ironically, that's the one there's the most energy for dismantling. That policy is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (a law that was otherwise such a dumpster fire that the courts struck it down). Chances are, you have been systematically misled about the history, use, and language of Section 230, which is wild, because it's exactly 26 words long and fits in a single tweet:

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

Section 230 was passed because when companies were held liable for their users' speech, they "solved" this problem by just blocking every controversial thing a user said. Without Section 230, there would be no Black Lives Matter, no #MeToo – no online spaces where the powerful were held to account. Meanwhile, rich and powerful people would continue to enjoy online platforms where they and their bootlickers could pump out the most grotesque nonsense imaginable, either because they owned those platforms (ahem, Twitter and Truth Social) or because rich and powerful people can afford the professional advice needed to navigate the content-moderation bureaucracies of large systems.

We know exactly what the internet looks like when platforms are civilly liable for their users' speech: it's an internet where marginalized and powerless people are silenced, and where the people who've got a boot on their throats are the only voices you can hear:

https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/

The evidence for this isn't limited to the era of AOL and Prodigy. In 2018, Trump signed SESTA/FOSTA, a law that held platforms liable for "sex trafficking." Advocates for this law – like Ashton Kutcher, who campaigns against sexual assault unless it involves one of his friends, in which case he petitions the judge for leniency – were warned that it would be used to shut down all consensual sex work online, making sex workers's lives much more dangerous. This warnings were immediately borne out, and they have been repeatedly borne out every month since. Killing CDA 230 for sex work brought back pimping, exposed sex workers to grave threats to their personal safety, and made them much poorer:

https://decriminalizesex.work/advocacy/sesta-fosta/what-is-sesta-fosta/

It also pushed sex trafficking and other nonconsensual sex into privateforums that are much harder for law enforcement to monitor and intervene in, making it that much harder to catch sex traffickers:

https://cdt.org/insights/its-all-downsides-hybrid-fosta-sesta-hinders-law-enforcement-hurts-victims-and-speakers/

This is exactly what SESTA/FOSTA's advocates were warned of. They were warned. They did it anyway. Fuck those people.

Maybe you have a theory about how platforms can be held civilly liable for their users' speech without harming marginalized people in exactly the way that SESTA/FOSTA, it had better amount to more than "platforms are evil monopolists and CDA 230 makes their lives easier." Yes, they're evil monopolists. Yes, 230 makes their lives easier. But without 230, small forums – private message boards, Mastodon servers, Bluesky, etc – couldn't possibly operate.

There's a reason Mark Zuckerberg wants to kill CDA 230, and it's not because he wants to send Facebook to the digital graveyard. Zuck knows that FB can operate in a post-230 world by automating the deletion of all controversial speech, and he knows that small services that might "disrupt" Facebook's hegemony would be immediately extinguished by eliminating 230:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/zuckerberg-calls-changes-techs-section-230-protections-rcna486

It's depressing to see so many comrades in the fight against Big Tech getting suckered into carrying water for Zuck, demanding the eradication of CDA 230. Please, I beg you: look at the evidence for what happens when you remove that fence. Heed the warnings. Don't be like Bill Clinton, or California fire suppression officials, or James Moore and Tony Clement, or the European Parliament, or the US Trade Rep, or cryptocurrency freaks, or Malcolm Turnbull.

Or Ashton fucking Kutcher.

Because, you know, fuck those guys.

Check out my Kickstarter to pre-order copies of my next novel, Picks and Shovels!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/13/wanting-it-badly/#is-not-enough