#taking the time to help him and rehabilitate him and actually teach him about the difference between right and wrong and how to deal w/ it

[heabitfruity]

Silly Hobbies: Primarch Edition

Apparently I wrote too much according to tumblr, so I'm sorry if it's choppy :[

Lion El'Johnson - He actually really loves analyzing "literature"; but not normal literature like Shakespeare or Kafka. He likes analyzing things like The U.S Constitution and The Treaty of Versailles. He does this because he thinks it will help him diplomatically (it doesn't, nobody gets why he does it otherwise, not even his sons).

Fulgrim - This man knows how to dance to every K-Pop song known to man. He can throw it back to "Baby Got Back" and has tried to teach Sanguinius and Ferrus Manus how (It didn't go well, Ferrus threw his back out ). This man knows the exact choreography to "Womanizer", "Nude" and so many other songs.

Perturabo - He likes making useless contraptions; like infomercial level sort of inventions. He has invented bread-dogs, a time-machine to go back exactly two seconds for each use, a voice-recording recorder, etc. He uses Dorn to test it out, despite their... feelings for one another. He knows that Dorn will give him a blunt answer; even if he is told that the invention is "stupid".

Jaghatai Khan - He's really good at acrobatics, specifically everything with the asymmetrical bars; this man could easily escape a pack of dogs with a pen in his pocket (If anyone gets this reference I will be so proud). He attempted to teach Angron how to do the basics, but it didn't go that well; the man is just simply not flexible enough yet.

Leman Russ - This is a secret that he will take to his grave because he suffers from major internal misogyny. He knows how to knit, and he's REALLY good. He grew up on a planet that is 75% of the time below zero, of course the second he got ahold of yarn and wool he got to making warm things for his marine-sons! However, he plays it off as things like: "the citizens of Fenris have donated these for our cause".

Rogal Dorn - He likes making massive forts, societies and various massive structures in Minecraft, with Legos, Lincoln Logs, and those small, ceramic Christmas towns. They're usually quite extensive, but not extravagant. He will pester Perturabo and Magnus to look at them, and this often leads to debates about how these civilizations would function.

Konrad Curze - He teaches cooking classes; however, they are not pleasant. At the end of meal prep, all students are covered in blood due to Konrad butchering whatever protein they had prepared. The food actually tastes amazing, however the process of making it is certainly a battle within itself. Sevatar is his sous chef, which means he frequently has to do most of the work that isn't butchering.

Sanguinius - Honestly, animal rehabilitation. I know this sounds absolutely odd, but due to him having wings, he has to know how to keep a healthy batch of feathers! He's excellent at bird handling, and actually really enjoys it. He's saved at least 54 birds (he doesn't get to find many, his sons typically try to steer him away).

Ferrus Manus - Dude actually makes some really mean jewelry; like the man makes the permanent ankle chains, ring engravements, earrings (with the help of Fulgrim). He's made a lot for his brothers like Leman, Fulgrim, Magnus, and the Khan. They're all very appreciative (though Ferrus has to make Leman a special mixture so he doesn't chew through it by accident).

Angron - He does extreme sports! It helps focus on something that doesn't direct his anger at things that he doesn't need to focus on. It's somewhat funny to think of him riding a BMX, but his absolute favorite is bungee-jumping! He has forced demanded that his sons and brothers try it to "toughen them up". However, nobody except Konrad wanted to. (They both had a great time! One of the few times they've actually bonded over anything.)

Guilliman - He enjoys grading papers... He enjoys signing up to grade the essays of AP classes on Terra and does it every year if he has the time. He takes the pleasure of learning things about literary merit from other people's perspectives, and every time it makes him consider becoming a professor (even though it would be highly impractical).

Mortarion - He enjoys escape rooms, especially with Konrad and Horus. They actually usually have a great time, though sometimes they have to stop Konrad from digging into the walls. He actually commissioned Perturabo to make an elaborate escape room with hatches and secret pathways all around a set of shipping containers. It was so fun that he actually decided to keep it. (He still discovers new routes and puzzles in it every time he goes in.)

Magnus the Red - He plays Dungeons and Dragons with Khan, Guilliman, Perturabo and Alpharius and Omegon. He ALWAYS is the Dungeon Master, no matter what. This is not because he is selfish and possessive (he is a little), but because nobody in the group can seem to maintain a regular gaming schedule. They have simply resorted to Magnus being the godly controller of their games.

Horus Lupercal - This man fishes. I'm sorry, he does the straight, white man fishing and poses. He takes pictures of the fish with the awkward raised arm but genuine smile. He sometimes gives the fish to Konrad, however, less so after finding out from his students what happens during his classes.

Lorgar Aurelian - He writes fanfiction. He likes to show Magnus and Horus his angsty stuff. This stuff is even enough to make Magnus cry a little. Lorgar, however, also writes smut. I believe that this man has never had the intimate touch of any person. Not because he's celibate, but because he's a bitch. The smut's written like in the early days of Wattpad. It's disastrously bad (Think "his meat-cicle entered her mound"). Leman found it one time, he tormented Lorgar for weeks with it.

Vulkan - He bakes! He has learned all the favorite sweets of all of his brothers, making sure to surprise them occasionally whenever they haven't spoken in a while. He loves it whenever there are big events, gives him a chance to see all of his brothers and see them enjoy his work. (There have been some small altercations due to people hoarding food)

Corvus - He likes fashion; but not in a New York fashion week way, more of an Edna from The Incredibles way. He uses the help of Ferrus and Leman to help sew cloaks, shape up boots, and they use Sanguinius and Fulgrim to model it to make sure it looks good and it works.

Alpharius Omegon - They like mimicking their brothers as much as possible; in a "try to look exactly like them" way. It is actually really impressive, even going past the uncanny valley vibe. This led to Mortarion walking in on two versions of himself standing at his bedroom door and it made him piss his pants; and nobody believed him when he told the rest of them.

[stardust-sunset]

Do you got any Ponyboy headcanons you’d like to share? ✨

Ooh sure’ (sorry this is so late 😭)

His favorite kind of meat is fish. He will literally eat an entire boat full of them because he loves them so much

He used to be a very picky eater as a kid and then Darry started making him eat other foods when their parents died and Pony just grew out of it

He spent his entire 14th birthday crying in his room. He was absolutely inconsolable. Soda and Darry made him a cake but it wasn’t the same as his parents

He’s only been to jail once for beating someone up after Johnny and Dally die

I don’t really have LGBT headcanons for the gang but he is kind of a bi-con

He has a preference for girls tho

He never eats breakfast on school days because he feels bad for “wasting food” so he just spends the entire day hungry (he gets made fun of for it during school)

He has jumped people with Dally but felt super bad after

He writes down his dreams for the future in his journal and doesn’t know Soda snoops through his diary lmao-

Most of it is just poetry but sometimes it’ll be stuff like “I wish I could afford a copy of ‘insert book’” and sodden my boom-he finds that book on his nightstand the next day (Soda buys it for him)

He gets a job at a diner because Johnny worked there and got jumped, so he takes up a job too in order to help keep Johnny safe

Hes a favorite of the customers because he’s genuinely kind of charming when he wants to be

Him and Johnny gossip about the shitty customers tho like he’s so two faced at work lmao

He also gets a part time job working at the library and recommends all sorts of books to newcomers

He also helps people out with homework sometimes if he knows them (like if they’re school friends)

Hes not as quiet as he thinks he is-he can strike up a conversation with just about anyone. He just doesn’t like to.

Soda teaches him pretty privileges (Pony ends up being a pretty boy I know it)

He has a bit of a southern drawl and it comes out when he’s nervous or upset

After the book he starts yelling back a lot more

Him and Soda never fight and when they do it’s over the stupidest shit like Pepsi or Coke being better but they’ll actually start fighting and won’t talk for hours

He had a girlfriend (canon) and she when broke up with him. He was a wreck for weeks

Him and Darry start watching football together and the two are OBNOXIOUS

They will scream and cuss at the TV when their team is losing

He starts working out too with Darry but he overdid it and had to be dragged out by Darry in the end

He actually has really nice legs from doing track

Darry successfully gets him off cigarettes and onto Nicotine gum but it took almost four years to do so

He breaks his streaks really easily though and will absolutely beat himself up about it because he doesn’t want his brothers to be disappointed in him

He has pretty bad PTSD after the church and is afraid of fire for quite some time after (coincidentally not his own lighter fire tho)

I feel like he would take up unhealthy habits to exhibit control because he feels like his life is falling apart and he needs something in his control (idk what exactly it would be but y’know)

He has a hard time ordering at restaurants because he tends to be self conscious about what he’s ordering. He knows he has a humongous appetite and is mortified by it

His brothers used to tease him for it until he just broke down in tears after they went too far. They felt AWFUL

he gets really and seasonal allergies. Catch him in spring and his nose is a faucet.

He LOVES animals and will feed the strays with Johnny. Especially after he died, Ponybwould try to find homes for the animals that could be kept as pets and those that couldn’t be tried to release into the wild

He has rehabilitated a number of animals-squirrels, birds, a kitten once…

Darry is so over it

He cries at music. He’s more emotional than he lets on. He has big feelings just like Sodapop but doesn’t let them out like his brother does

He gets REALLY ticked off when people ask if his real name is Ponyboy. Especially after his parents death because he feels like they’re making fun of his dad for naming him as such.

He loves Italian food

He isn’t touchy with anyone in public because “he wants to look tuff 😡”

But in private you can’t get him off you. Good luck trying.

He LOVES catching fireflies

He cries at Bambi

[spilledmilkfkdies]

Hi, me again! I was just wondering, following the ‘what if the wizards were actually surrendering’ ask, if the wizards really did give up fairy hunting, what do you think they’d do? (Sorry if I’m sending you too many asks, I just really like your takes.) Thank you!

Hiii sorry it took me a sec to get to this one!! I'll put a link to that ask right here for anyone who's wondering, since it's been a bit. Never worry about sending too many asks either, like I said a while back; I'll get to them eventually! If it takes some time before you hear back from me, sincerely <3 My bad <3 Was a little occupied with another fandom this time and actively participating in both got to me djsksdk

Moving on though!

In my mind they've really already been living normally, like between locking away the fairies and Roxy's magic making itself known I mean- Of course the logistics of it are a bit um. All over the place. Considering they're immortal, sort of. Do they have legal documents? Real or fake? Did they have any mortal friends and how would that work? And JOBS?? The way none of these are obstacles for Duman btw, that's why they killed him, they didn't want him to roam and do whatever anymore. Real and Canon.

Now in a post-alt ending-S4 timeline, the one where they did surrender, do we assume that they just can't use their magic, or that they don't have it anymore? Because that'd probably change the way they live afterwards pretty drastically. Aside from the fact some of them heavily depend on magic more than the others (Ogron and Duman get help smh), HORRENDOUS case scenario, they might all be mortal. For the sake of my own mental health though, I'm just gonna say they do still have magic and are in fact not mortal, just give them a fairy parole officer, some magic blocking thing, keep them around and use them for "good" stuff after a rehabilitation period or something. That's what I'd prefer anyway.

What would they be doing during said rehabilitation period? Started out as a bit of a shared joke, but tbh Anagan model career WHEN. He'd struggle with the lack of useable magic the least too, so he'd probably thrive during the whole thing more than the others, and as he should. Besides Anagan I don't have a whole lot ngl- I mean, I'd like to think Duman had lots of jobs back in the day, not sure if I mentioned that before, but I might make a separate post if I didn't, just because I have thoughts but other stuff to talk about rn sjsjksk

Ogron and Gantlos don't have a lot either MY BAD, but I do think Ogron might be more likely to have friends, maybe surprisingly. Meanwhile Gantlos has a bigger chance of being able to hold down a stable job. What job? Great question! I'm not sure yet. If that changes I'll be sharing with the class!

Moving on once again!! What could the "good" stuff I mentioned above be exactly? Education.

Correct me if I'm wrong. But are there no. Wizard or witch school on Earth?? I know they ended up opening a fairy school later on, but those aren't the only magic users suddenly learning of the dormant magic in their roots. Let's take the comic character Gregory for example. He learns he's a wizard, he tries to enroll into a wizard school(?) off planet. Nothing inherently wrong with going to a school off planet- The Winx did it too, lots of magic users do it, what is wrong though, is being turned down and having no alternatives. And even worse?? They tell him it's because. There's a darkness in him?? Or something?? I could excuse it slightly more if it was a case of "Oh your magic is dark aligned and this is a light magic school" because wizard canonically are known to be both, right? But aside from the fact that, again, there are no alternatives for him, as far as he knows, telling a newly awakened magic user that he's basically too evil to teach is CRAZY I'm sorry??

Here's where I cutely insert the Wizards of the Black Circle. Have them become the place to go when your magic energy alignment is dark (because it doesn't inherently have to mean evil and they're worthy of education in this essay I) on Earth, or even just. Any magic user who isn't a fairy. Just give them another Terrestrial option, options are always good. I think that'd be really neat.

You might sit here and go "The evil wizards are gonna teach the next generation of wizards? Could history not repeat itself??" Well. Yeah. But are the Terrestrial fairies not teaching their next generation now too? The same fairies who canonically turned on humanity at some point? These are all 'what if' scenarios, I'd just like to think that with proper communication this time around, things will be different and both fairy and wizard get to work towards that together. I'm normal and have slept a reasonable amount.

[crummblycakkes]

I'm back twst tumblr with somewhat of a profile for this au (twst as god intended: criminals and villains) warning because I think this is a LOT of text

In this au, Night Raven College is a sort of juvenile detention to hold the worst of the worst: powerful mages that cannot be contained elsewhere. It's placement is on Sage Island, where no one can leave, but also coincidentally only half an island away from the top school in all of Twisted Wonderland: Royal Sword Academy

Though it's purpose is to hold and rehabilitate and continue to teach the boys stuck in nrc, the schools budget has deteriorated so much due to having to pay for building damages that it can no longer pay for real therapists and good teachers

That's where rsa comes in! this year, rsa has established a volunteer program for it's students where they will go to nrc as staff and hopefully help its poor students think about improving their lives

it ends up being way more chaotic than they expect...

So we're starting with:

Heartslabyul!

Riddle Rosehearts has two attempted murder charges, one being against a magicless human and the other being against a trained magician (his mother, celebrate! ms rosehearts almost died!) and a couple of theft charges

To get a better grasp on the situation that lead him there, Riddle actually meets Trey when he's 15 instead of 8, ms rosehearts finds out and gets trey sentenced to night raven on false charges, leading riddle to look for ways to rebel even harder

so he moved on to theft, things like small convenience store stuff that he could fit into his pockets, one time snatching a box of cigarettes an employee forgot to put away after someone wanted to see them

that's where he got the smoking habit. it felt good to break rules, doing stuff his mother would be appaled by

"how does he get cigarettes at nrc?" azul.

he gets caught and freaks out, gravely injuring an innocent employee and running home in panic

his mother is upset because she didn't even know he snuck out and now she's finding out he's stealing and hurting people, they get into a fight, the authorities come in to see Riddle being very aggressive and take him in

he doesn't like his red hair and dyed it blue the same week he became housewarden (dye from azul again) and his uniforms are oversized because I like the detail that his gym uniform is oversized

Trey Clover, like I said before, attended night raven on fake charges at first but when he was released and returned home he was jittery and nervous all the time

no one knows what happened, but one slow day at the bakery a fight breaks out and treyy is the only standing with 15 people on the ground, all injured

he claimed he didn't do it at first, but layer changed his story to being self defense, but he was carted back to night raven again

he tries to be good but it's really hard when everyone else are actual rowdy evil people and are willing to commit actual crimes for malleus draconia

design wise I wanted him to look like a bit of a nerd

I like Cater a lot but also wanted to spice up his design a little.

in Canon he's against magicam monsters but here? he's the magicam monster boss. he's lost all his sense of self and dignity just for pictures. he's sold pictures of Vil Schoenheit to tabloids before

specifically his crimes are loitering and stalking and breaking and entering and using his magic to get away with it

Rook calls him the chasseur de bonheur here, he likes to take pictures of people smiling and being happy, which would be good if he were some sort of street photographer doing candid shots with consent but he's not

no one knows where he got the camera and film (it was azul)

Deuce the baby. he's here for normal delinquent stuff and aggravated assault on a magicless human

he really wants to get better, he's just normal deuce spade

wears his bow crooked because he doesn't really know how to tie one perfectly yet and he would like to take the piercings off but people seem to like them

Ace almost didn't get in but he's shoplifter an accumulated 10k from stores including alcohol using his wind magic, so he qualified

it hasn't really sinked in yet that he's in here he's having normal teenager fun

Alan Rabbithole, the volunteer from rsa

not a girl not a boy but a secret third thing (anxious mess)

he's already regretting his decision tye moment he sees chainsmoker riddle and wonders if it's even worth it to get him to stop

[hmshermitcraft]

(For the theme)

xB has lived his whole life in the tank, seeing no one but those damned 'customers' of the auctions, he's only been bought once, but he was sent back as he was "not what they were looking for." He has heard of other mers escaping, leaving this horrid place behind for larger bodies of water, he's heard of the ocean, of lakes, of rivers, but he's never actually seen them. This auction feels different though, to be honest he's a bit scared. Is he going to be bought? Is it going to be like those horror stories of mers being bought, only to be chopped up for food? He's stuck in his mind before all hell breaks loose, through the yelling he thinks he hears something about a protection agency? There's someone looking at him from the top of his tank, someone with big eyes and a large grin, he's confused, he's scared, everything has fallen into chaos, but those eyes are so captivating, he can't look away.

-C

It takes... Some time for xB to accept he's not simply been bought. He's moved to a bigger tank. It's bigger than any he's been in before, and has spaces made of large rocks that he can use to hide away in.

People examine him often. They tell him what they're doing, even though he never replies. He always gets something nice to eat afterwards. He's not sure why. That big eyed human is there often. xB sees him nearly everyday. Sometimes, he's the only reason xB will poke out the shelter of his rocks.

They talk a lot about rehabilitation, which is something xB's never heard his previous owner mention. Language skills, tail strength, socialisation... Honestly, if there's this much wrong with him, xB doesn't know why they haven't just sent him back!

One day, whilst he's dozing at the bottom of the tank, he finds that human staring at him again. xB tilts his head, quietly swimming out to meet him. The human speaks to him, calling himself Keralis. He seems sympathetic, and for the first time... Somebody explains everything to him. Keralis says he's safe, and that they're trying to make him ready to live in the ocean.

xB works harder after that. He does the exercises they ask him to, he tries to pay attention to the language they teach him. The first time they take him outside, to a large lake, xB might cry. It's still contained, but he has more room to swim around than he ever has before! And Keralis is there, running around the lake with him. xB, for the first time in... A long time, finds himself laughing. He's having fun.

Keralis helps him a lot. He's often there to chat, or mess around. xB feels like he can actually let go around Keralis. Even when they introduce him to other mers, Keralis is the one he feels closest with. He's the first person xB talks to as he struggles with making words, but he never judges him for it.

It's why, when it comes to the day they plan to release xB into the ocean he... Doesn't want to go. He's always wanted to see the ocean, it's been a dream of his. But without Keralis there... Is it really worth it?

So, quietly, he expresses that to Keralis. And Keralis tries to convince him that they'll be other mers out there to meet, people xB can befriend but... That wouldn't stop xB missing Keralis. They eventually reach a compromise. Keralis will transfer to one of the boat crews, and that way they can see each other.

The arrangement is perfect. xB is excited as the boat roars into the open water. There's so much of it. Water as far as he can see, more than he's ever seen. He catches Keralis looking at him, smiling. xB reaches his hand out the tank to hold his.

When xB finally dives into the sea, he doesn't think he's ever been happier.

Nowadays, xB follows around Keralis's research vessel. Keralis calls him a research assistant, and xB doesn't think he's joking. He can get a lot of information they're not able to! He's got a big tank on the ship so he can hang out and talk to Keralis. He helps monitor pollution and living conditions of the water, as well as talking to mers about their happiness or any threats.

xB's heard a bit about marriage from other mers. One day he wants to ask Keralis, but he's still a bit too nervous to do it yet.

[anonself]

You know what? 1 and 67 too, I wanna know the first and last f/os on that list >:3

1 is Kantera!! Oh I love him so bad

He’s so beautiful

I’m gonna skip meetings for now and go on to general things bc that seems the most fun rn

These two both deal with chronic fatigue, so they nap together a lot. One of them is always making sure the other isn’t burning himself out or pushing too hard. Could be 90 degrees out and they will still cuddle (it helps that I hc Kantera’s species as cold blooded though)

Kantera is caring for Liam a lot. Basically in terms of this game’s lore, Liam’s sort of in a weird state when it comes to the Nameless Town. Quick End Roll and self insert lore dump bc why not and I need to for my own stuff to make sense it is going to get dark because h that’s where my train of thought went Also spoilers for like the whole game but you figure this out pretty early on

The Nameless Town is part of the dreams of a boy named Russell Seager. Russell is facing a lifetime sentence for the murder of 8 people, but they make an offer to him to participate in the “happy dream” experiment, which manifests his memories of the people he killed into the towns, trying to teach him to feel remorse and “rehabilitate” him. Nearly every main character in town was murdered by Russell.

That’s where things get odd for Liam. He hadn’t gotten killed by Russell, or intentionally attacked, but Russell still feels the guilt for what happened to him. Russell is aware Liam is alive, though he doesn’t know for how long and if he’ll ever recover. So as the happy dream slowly warps due to his guilt and becomes much more sinister, Liam shows up less and less, the scars from his accident visible again. I think I’ve finally decided he does actually die at the end but that’s not important

As the dream begins to warp under the weight of Russell’s guilt, another unfortunate accident befalls Liam and puts him in the hospital, essentially just reminding Russell what he did without risking questions from the other dream inhabitants. It takes up a lot of Kantera’s time now, as he’s spending time at the hospital with him, caring for him and hoping he’ll get better.

Now we have 67! That’s Dale Vandermeer! I haven’t talked about him before. I haven’t played all the rusty lake games yet and the lore is a little confusing for me but I still love him for some reason tumblr won’t let me type under his pictures so he’s going to the bottom of the post now.

In this one, Liam is one of the Eilander family (iirc they’re canonically the hotel guests I haven’t thought about it in a while nobody fact check me I’ll cry). Dale, falling further into his research on the lake, visits the other locations around the lake, eventually stumbling across him. It’s very surreal and he’s not sure if he’s dreaming or hallucinating, but at this point nothing he’s seen is logical so he’s forced to believe it. Liam just sort of.. follows him around. It wants him to know what happened to the Eilanders, what happened to most of rusty lake. It grows attached, following along, though Dale can’t really make heads or tails of his vague mumbling.

[indecisive-dizzy]

I’m sorry if my rambling gets annoying, I just love talking about my silly au and I need to actually make some posts or maybe even a side blog about this au so i can ramble on and on about this without invading you ask box ^^

Daisey is part of the gardening club and the photography club in this au, that’s where they meet Frank and become best friends

Howdy is the heir to the Osborn company and he’s in the same grade as Daisey and Frank. Frank and Howdy are brothers in law, Howdy choosing to attend Frank’s school so he can feel more normal

Eddie and Daisey were close when they were little, but they drifted apart as Eddie befriended the more popular crowd (Barnaby, Wally, Julie, etc)

Eddie is closeted gay, has a crush on Frank and pretends to be in a relationship with Julie as a cover

Julie is closeted bisexual and genderfluid, maybe has a crush on Daisey?? She pretends to date Eddie, they’re just good friends that cover for each other

Howdy becomes the Green Goblin (Green Butterfly/other cooler sounding name) because he wanted to further his family’s research and acted on impulse by experimenting on himself

Howdy idolizes Misumena/Daisey and finds their powers and their superhero-ness incredible, but as the Green something he obsesses over finding out how they gained their powers, openly talking about dissecting them to figure it out

That totally doesn’t scare Daisey, who is literally just a teenager who got superpowers by a spider biting them

Howdy and Daisey are foils of each other, specifically in the area of grief

Daisey lost her little sister Evelyn to a carjacking criminal, while Howdy lost his little sister Lizzy to an illness he was trying to find the cure to but failed to

Daisey tries to help people, while Howdy ends up hurting people

Also they’re both technically orphans, (Howdy’s parents focus more on the company than him, Daisey’s parents work most of the time to be able to provide for their daughters but that costs them time with their children)

Flora basically raised Daisey and Evelyn, she figures out pretty quickly what’s happening with Daisey but let’s them open up to her first

Frank becomes a villain after Lizzy’s death and Howdy seemingly going insane trying to figure out Misumena and what they are

Frank doesn’t die, but he does end up with a ton of injuries and has to be on a wheelchair for a while after the fight

Idk what to do with Howdy but I don’t think he’s arrested, poor bug just needs some help

Eddie and Frank end up together, and Julie tries to be nicer to Daisey near the ends after seeing Eddie being with who he really loved

I only watched the first movie, but I think Doctor Octopus is Home and Wally is involved somehow (possibly as an assistant/minion?)

My other ocs are there too, Wallace being a close friend of Daisey’s in the photography club, but they don’t have major roles

The closest think to a big oc role is Andreas’s mother being the one to show and teach the students about the spiders, along with the one that bites Daisey

Kinda random but I think Julie and Daisey audition for a play at the school that Sally (being the student director/theater club leader) is putting on, and that leads to Daisey being Julie’s understudy and Julie asks them to practice lines with her after school together as a date so they can be perfect at the role in case Julie can’t perform

I’ll post on my acc about this AU eventually, but I’ll probably reblog these asks there and make a proper tag for it if anyone doesn’t wanna see it :,3

Oh this is developing amazingly! I like the brother in law choice for Howdy n Frank!

Closeted Eddie n Julie is actually an amazing take I love that,, I love how Eddie and Frank still get together

Howdy could go to a rehabilitation center i think it's called? the prison that's not a prison and actually focuses in helping those in there. He stays until he's mentally better

also love how Daisey and Howdy are foils of each other,, that's actually so cool and clever and makes some of the best hero-villain dynamics

[mr-leach]

Curse of Strahd Ask Meme Part 4

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Original Post by @mandisawesome​

​///Spoilers Ahead!///

If your party hasn’t gotten the Tome of Strahd item yet or had a chance to learn why Strahd is so obsessed with a certain NPC, and you’re worried about spoilers, you might want to skip this post!

Question 4: Did your DM make any major changes to the module?

Yes! Well, some major, some minor. Aside from maybe making the encounters less brutally punishing, here’s what @inertia-raptor​ changed or added:

From what I understand, a few DMs have decided to switch the roles of the Kolyanovich siblings, including ours. This is my first time playing the module so I can’t say for certain just how different it makes things, aside from making it a little more explicitly queer from the outset, and maybe determining which sibling you spend the most time interacting with at certain points. All I can say is I’ve grown very attached to our awkward little wizard Ismark, and I certainly hope he continues to manage to avoid his creepy vampire stalker.

So in order to sail past any of the potentially problematic implications surrounding the whole Vistani thing, our DM just decided to...not include the Vistani. Now there is a clan of Tabaxi that is more or less on neutral terms with Strahd. We’re also pretty firmly in the camp of “tabaxi/catfolk are allowed to look like domestic cats if you want” which means that these tabaxi absolutely resemble domestic cats, and sometimes our actual pets will make cameos. It’s great. 

Not all of the Tabaxi clan members in our game are catfolk--some are human/humanoid--but they are very much included among the Barovian Tabaxi clan that are permitted to traverse in and out of the mists, and sometimes work closely with Strahd. Inversely, a tabaxi from outside of this particular clan might get treated more nicely than adventurers other races if they were to end up in Barovia, but they’d kinda have to prove they were loyal to Strahd first if they wanted the same privileges as the native clan.

Significant NPCS that were written into the campaign:

Our DM wrote in a few OCs that have had a significant part to play in the game so far, and go beyond just fleshing out existing enemies or NPCs:

Carden is one of those NPCs that was probably meant to be more for background flavour, but then our PCs got so damnged attached to him...We just can’t do anything in Vallaki without checking in on our good buddy Carden at least once. He’s been in Barovia 50 years now (and sadly left behind a human partner on the other side of the mists) and even though he can be a little scatterbrained, still has a good deal of knowledge about vampires, Strahd, and Vallaki that has been really helpful.

So Sylras is our designated ally and we could not be happier to have them. When Carden fucked them up and couldn’t get Tatyana’s soul to bind to them, he made sure to have them given some kind of combat training before being made to send them to Castle Ravenloft, but he unfortunately didn’t think it was possible to teach Sylras how to express or even feel emotions. It kind of actually protected them from Strahd to some extent...they were still a failure in his eyes, but at least having no emotional response made tormenting them feel pointless (which is exactly as fucked up as it sounds).

Which is why we may have fucked up big time! Being with us and being treated like their own person has actually been making a difference in how they see themself and how they feel about Strahd and the way he treats people. So far we’ve taught them hatred, anxiety, betrayal, fear, self-doubt...we’re working on the nice emotions, alright!? It’s not easy when you’re in Barovia. Anyway Strahd apparently thinks that this is hilarious. Turns out, the more we rehabilitate Sylras, the more appealing they are as a target for Strahd to mess with. Whoops!!! 

Thankfully we all love Sylras a lot and are ride or die for them which means we will absolutely do whatever it takes to protect them (so long as they don’t run head first into battle without telling us again nO WAIT SYLRAS STOP WHERE ARE YOU GOING--)

Baby boy...baby... When I decided to play as Sy for the campaign, I told Malcolm that he could incorporate Joshua into the story however he liked if he wanted to, and man, did he ever deliver. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but the result has been a heart wrenching motivator not just for my PC, but for the entire party.

Poor Joshua was studying away from home to become a bard and wanted to surprise his dad with a visit when the mists arrived to bring him to Barovia. Strahd manipulated Joshua’s situation, putting him in mortal danger and then “saving” him by turning him into his spawn, then convinced him that Ravenloft was the only safe place for him to live in Barovia (not entirely untrue but...come on, dude, Barovia’s only unsafe because of you). Joshua thought of him like a kind saviour, and it was easy for Strahd to convince him to become one of his consorts. Strahd hasn’t made any sexual advances towards Joshua (yet???) and has told Sy that he wants to “preserve Joshua’s purity for as long as possible” which has easily got to be one of the creepiest things a middle aged ass looking dude can say to you about your kid.

Sy kinda had no choice but to leave Joshua at Castle Ravenloft even after their heartfelt reunion, but they still exchange letters. I write Sy’s letters in an adventure diary channel in our game’s discord server, and then me and DM discuss how Joshua would be able to respond and what sort of twist Strahd would give certain events to skew his perspective, which has been a fun/interesting bit of side story to have going on in the background of the main action.

Other changes: 

Adventurers love their naked bonding time, and our resident geologist said it was definitely plausible for someone to have discovered a geothermal spring somewhere in Barovia! So the story is, when Carden was setting up his alchemy shop, he was digging a well and...well. The hot spring was pretty useful for him as an alchemist, and his druidic knowledge of herbs and natural remedies meant that he could maintain a decent side business selling soaps, bath salts, and other bath related luxuries, so he went ahead and built a number of pools and facilities as a sort of side business. 

Our party has made use of the hot springs several times, but for some reason, we always seem to ruin the relaxation with depressing discussion topics, stressful revelations, or...you know...not noticing one of the party members was actually absent, and the person who had been bathing with us for the past hour was actually Strahd in disguise. That was. A time.

I’ll be able to go into this more in a later post, but one more neat change our DM has made is that he set up a whole masquerade ball for us to go through, which was so much fun! He definitely put a lot of hard work and preparation into it, and we ended up playing several sessions of it, it was so eventful lol. For now, though, I think I’ll end this post, since it’s gotten pretty long! Hopefully it was a fun read, at least lol.

[cypreus-and-willow]

Future Jobs at the Japanese Institute of Electronic Symbiotes

Digimon Survive Week

Day 3 Partners

Just a self indulgent Ryo/Shuuji thing because I didn't have access to the actual art I was gonna do for this day (it was about Haru). I whipped this out on Day 3 but had to rework some lines coz I couldn't get my thoughts out right.

Ryo & Kunemon

Cohabitation Division - Medical

Children's Nurse

This just kinda hit me out of nowhere after writing a scene involving Saki telling him he doesn't have to stay if the hospital makes him uncomfortable.

Despite risking being retraumatised, he stays in the hospital for Saki's surgery. He kinda forgets that at her age, she would still get admitted at the children's ward but he finds that he doesn't mind helping cheer up Saki and all the other kids at the hospital. With Kunemon's help he begins to reframe the trauma surrounding his mother. How he was helpless to say or do anything, even just to see her as the adults always pushed him away. This time, he has a sense of control that he was never given as a child, allowing himself to speak up when he needs to. Mama told him to be strong and while he might never stop being afraid, he was strong for Saki and that's what matters.

When the institute opens up, he gets recruited along with the other kids but the certified researchers don’t know what to do with this 'scary looking kid' and his 'scary looking bug' and dump them on clean up duty and coffee runs. It sucks, and the researchers look down on him and Kunemon but they don't mind as long as they're able to help. (The other kids throw a fit, Labramon writes a letter of complaint, someone almost gets fired. The scientific community find out the hard way that Ryo and Kunemon are part of the team dammit). They end up job hopping around the institute because they're actually useful to everyone.

He studies to become a nurse and starts volunteering at the medical section of the institute, helping people who have difficulties communicating with their partners (and others). He and Kunemon become prime examples to follow and it gives the kids hope that they can be as close to their partners as these two. He especially works with kids who end up in the children's ward. He takes care of them before, during and after they have to meet with the doctors. Mainly, he works as a nurse so he can be closer to the patients and their families and treat them how he wanted to be treated. The two are fan favourites at the institute.

Shuuji & Lopmon

Psychiatric Division - Rehabilitation

Teacher

I think the game suggests two career paths for him but getting affinity for saying he looks like a teacher just struck me. Also I cant remember what the other one is, but his reaction wasn't as cute.

He hasn't fully figured out who he wants to be even a whole year after coming back; he just knows he no longer wants to be like his dad. He takes his time just being a teenager who's no longer interested in pretending he has his sh*t together. Instead, he spends most of his time either teaching Lopmon about the ins and outs of the human world or sharing his research findings with him and getting his opinions before sharing with the Prof. He's full of doubt about his choices but he tells his dad he wants to be a teacher. No, not a university professor. A teacher. His dad doesn't approve of course since "taking care of brats is a woman's job". Despite the opposition and getting disowned (again), he takes a career path into education.

When the institute opens, he's one of the first to be recruited to the head research team under Professor Minase. He transfers Aoi from a separate research team into theirs - for one thing, to try to get her as a lead informer. And for another, he's still weary of adults and strangers who's not the professor (and so is she to be honest). They eventually start working with younger children and helping them connect with and understand their partners, leading Aoi to create the cohabitation division. Lopmon helps out by making the kids feel more at ease about Kemonogami but oftentimes, finding out their partners are the other half of their soul does not make it easier.

Shuuji would sometimes give extra lessons when the kids get curious and it starts an impromptu class on human-kemonogami lore which then becomes an officially recognised class. He goes on to focus on the education and rehabilitation of traumatized children looking to make connections with their partner but unable to due to previous traumas. Sometimes in class, Lopmon would ask questions to encourage the kids who are too shy, scared or embarrassed to ask. Shuuji doesn't teach most adults due to personal reasons. (He once lost control and attacked one of the parents for boasting how they use their adult level kemonogami to punish and threaten their partnerless child).

Their jobs aren't easy and it's a struggle not to come home some nights and cry (in each other's arms). But they do it for the kids who are just like them and for the kemono partners who love their fated children without prejudice.

Honestly... I just wanted to draw this bit but couldn't sketch it out so I tried to put it into words instead.

Not mentioned: Shuuji works under the Psychiatric Division which includes rehabilitation and reintroduction to general society.

They work in the same building and the kids start shipping the homeroom teacher w the school nurse 😆

Ryo, Saki and Aoi work under the Cohabitation Division which includes medical and whatever the heck that thing with Aoi was at the end of Harmony.

Obviously I don't know how irl institutes work but fictional institutes are fair game right?

@surviveweek

[icharchivist]

Ladiva taking Belial under her wing and making him help out with Raduga so she can keep an eye on him, teach him about true love (I feel like she feels that he's redeemable precisely because he was motivated by love, so she's gonna teach him how to love right 💪) and so he can interact with the crew a bit and everyone can slowly get used to having him around. She also hopes that watching her give everyone advice is going to teach him how to grow a conscience or something

I feel like Belial would initially not take the assignment seriously and spike drinks for fun or purposefully give really bad advice, disguised as good and thoughtful one (he can make anything sound good, that's his gift) but despite his best efforts, Ladiva refuses to give up on him. Maybe even convinces Jamil and other No Rain No Rainbow people to pitch in. The captain also obviously keeps dropping by to check in on him and support him and maybe over time he gets better

He would have fun being a flirty bartender and he could have a fun dynamic with Ladiva who refuses to stop believing in him, because how can a man who loves so selflessly be all bad??? (Sandalphon is off scoffing in the distance)

Ladiva spearheads the "domesticate Belial" movement. I can see it now

And if he fucks up, she does a cool wrestling move on him and breaks his spine and once it's healed (he's a primal, he's fiiine) they try again

THIS IS GLORIOUS YES YES YES

Honestly the whole thing about the type of manipulation Belial pulls is that he has a good read on people and therefore he can cut right into what they feel guilty about. And uses it to hurt them and make them feel more guilt. POINT IS. That if Ladiva realizes it she could also put together that it means Belial is actually pretty good at reading people. Even the bad advice he gives seems to be the perfect opposite of the good advice he could have given. So Ladiva would end up picking up on Belial's paterns and see exactly that he could be SO GOOD at it if he actually tried to be nice to people rather than being an asshole.

And, like you said, since Belial was motivated by love all along, Ladiva would stubborningly believe that therefore he must be salvageable in some way. So now she is determined to take care of him and to rehabilitate him. Teaching him how to get better.

And while Belial would be sooo annoyed by her altruism at the begining, eventually having someone in your corner who's always cheering for you isn't so bad, he thinks, and he ends up eventually being kinda alright with Ladiva.

Jamil and the rest of the NRNRB gang all come along and help out, probably also lowkey threatening Belial that if he hurts Ladiva they will ALL make him see hell. Ladiva meanwhile laughs because Belial could never hurt her. Because she'd suplex him before he can.

Belial would be so flirty with the people coming at the bar, and i love the idea that he would have a fun dynamic with Ladiva thanks to that. She cheers for him so bad. (Sandalphon is genuinely distraught by all of this and is constantly trying to talk Ladiva out of it. But Ladiva is always all so convincing when she talks about love that eventually Sandalphon accepts for like, one hour, that if anyone can salvage Belial it might be Ladiva. then he hears Belial say something awful again and he's back on "nope, i need to kill him.")

Ladiva would be our perfect help in our domestication of Belial. I see it clear as day. your HC is perfect about it.

This is perfect. In Ladiva we trust.

[lucifer-but-better]

I'm on my shit again so here we go.

God!Lucifer Headcanons

So assuming Lucifer became God right after the battle or very soon after (I'm electing to ignore his "true purpose" being the "rehabilitation of hell's souls" and any reservations he had about becoming God for now) and seeing that as he's Lucifer, being omnipresent and omniscient may not be all that appealing to him. We also know that God is able to store his power in an object and reclaim it at any point. So what's stopping Lucifer from storing aspects of God's power and only accessing them when need be?

Say he wore some sort of accessory or accessories within which he could store those powers and they would be on his person at all times. So he could basically tap into his abilities any time he needed but they don't have to be active all the time, thus he could still live his life without the burden of being all knowing or being everywhere at once. It would also be very useful to store the ability to be all-powerful especially for someone like Lucifer. God exploded Dan and put him back together in a fit of saltiness, imagine what Lucifer "oldest immature person alive" Morningstar could do by accident.

Earrings would be the most logical choice to store the powers in. Rings, necklaces and bracelets could easily be pick-pocketed or lost in a fight. I imagine he would get his lobes pierced and wear three earrings, each one imbued with the power of omnipotence, omniscience or omnipresence.

"But where does that leave his responsibilities as God at?" I hear you ask. Well, Lucifer has learned many times that he doesn't have to work alone. It's clear that ruling the universe all on his own did no good for God, so why would Lucifer repeat the same mistake? He has so many siblings, each with their own purpose and role. Why not teach them about Earth and its customs and how to use their unique powers to help it keep turning? This idea was briefly explored in season 6 and it's already established that Azrael's role as the angel of death is to collect souls and take them to the afterlife so it's clear that the various angels have various roles. The angels could help Lucifer with his responsibilities, this would make sure that what happened with God doesn't happen with Lucifer. He wouldn't be isolated from his family and they wouldn't be left in the dark again.

Finally, he could fix the broken Hell/Heaven system as a whole thus fulfilling that nonsense about his true calling being Hell's Therapist. A soul with reservations or guilt can go through hell to face that guilt and move on before finally reaching heaven, no torture required. A soul with no reservation can just go to heaven like before. All that's needed is a screening process to see if that soul actually deserves heaven. Shitty people can serve their appropriate sentence in hell, face the consequences to their actions and then go through rehabilitation.

Not to mention, this could also give the demons a new purpose and use what Maze learned about growing souls. If demons can grow souls then why not have Maze teach her siblings how to do that? Any demon who doesn't want a soul can stay a torturer, since those would still be needed to make sure people's sentences are served. If the rest of hell's demons grew souls and developed empathy, then they could start rehabilitating hell's souls instead of Lucifer doing it all on his own and leaving Chloe behind. Easier said than done but he's God now and he always had all the time in the world anyway.

So what do ya'll think

[steampunktomboy]

Hello! I saw your question about prison and punishment in the prison abolition tag. To put it very simply, prison abolitionists don’t believe in punishment! Understandably, that is a very counterintuitive position that is typically hard to swallow, but we tend to think about it like this: Punishment is an ineffective approach to long-term behavior control.

It helps to understand this position if you think of human activity not in terms of ontologically right actions or wrong actions, but simply behavior. We are animals just like every other species that evolved into being on earth. All animals express behavior. When you see a cat chase after a bug, it’s not doing it because it is a morally correct or incorrect activity, it’s doing it because it’s trying to meet a need (satiating hunger, under-stimulation, etc.).

Similarly, all behavior that humans express is simply an attempt to meet a need. If you take a behaviorism class in university, they’ll tell you that the fundamental needs that all creatures (including us) are trying to meet are either a) to escape something or b) to gain something. Obviously, just because this is true doesn’t mean the behavior, whatever it may be, is harmless. But it is a fact that needs to be considered if we want to build a society that minimizes harm and maximizes support.

The snake oil salesman is trying to meet a need. The bigwig exec embezzling money is trying to meet a need. It may not be correct, but those individuals are perceiving either a threat they need to escape from or a deprivation of a certain element that needs to be satisfied.

This brings us to punishment. It is generally accepted in the behaviorist/learning psychology field that punishment alone is not an effective way to terminate the expression of ‘undesirable’ behavior, whatever that is defined as. Best case scenario, punishment works only as a short-term deterrent and the person will eventually go back to the same behavior. Worst-case scenario, the punishment creates a new sense of threat or deprivation for the individual and they start displaying new undesirable behaviors to try to escape from threat or gain what they need.

So, what do we do about individuals that seem mentally healthy enough, but are committing crimes? Do they need rehabilitation like other types of criminals? Yes. Rehabilitation is a shorthand way of describing the process of discovering what is motivating the individual’s behavior (what needs are they trying to meet?) and trying to meet those needs (or teaching them how to do it themselves) in a way that minimizes harm. The bigwig embezzler may genuinely believe he and his family are not safe from the threat of discomfort unless he continues to take more money from others (this is actually a very common sentiment among the rich, btw). Rehabilitation would involve either satisfying the need, or teaching him that in reality, you can adapt and be perfectly happy and successful even if you can’t send your kids to prep school.

In this rehabilitation model, there is still room for logical consequences to actions. The embezzler would have to return the money. The snake oil salesman would have to close his business. There needs to be something happening to the individual that makes it clear that it takes less time and energy to behave in ways that get their needs met without hurting lots of people.

But crucially, we need to give them the tools to get their needs met. In our current punitive system, the punishments we dole out far outweigh the attempts at rehab. The psychological impact of the prison system creates far more maladaptive behavior than letting inmates work for their GEDs would ever ameliorate. And as a general rule, even in the world of white collar crime, we do little to address what is actually motivating the individual to engage in the behavior. The environment that bore that behavior typically continues to exist after the individual is punished. In prison abolition, our goal is to create a society that allows for ease in restructuring the environment of those that commit crime so that it is much easier for them to meet their needs in a minimally harmful way. Punishment alone will never teach people how to do that.

Already got an ask like this, see my answer there

[glemmerdash-piecesof8]

, surfacing only for food and ablutions. As they lay tangled before sleep on Sunday night, Roo remembered Curtis talking about water, and smiled to herself before falling into a deep sweet sleep.

Because every man is an island

Shane woke up wishing he had a hangover. He had spent the night before drinking whiskey with Carl from the record shop after inviting him around to talk, knowing Carl on this pittance of a salary would endure his thought processes on absolutely anything if at least one bottle of Isle of Jura was in the offering.

Shane had gotten three just be sure and as he woke up and realised he should insist on Carl taking the bottle and a half left home after his confessions. He knew when he stood up there would be no woolly headedness to speak of but the idea of Carl asleep on his couch made him a little slower to test his self-knowledge.

Carl, named after Carl Jung by his mother, was an avid record collector who lived with his grandmother at the ripe age of 33. He also had a tummy. He never had girlfriends really because he was incredibly shy around girls but had gotten on with Roo surprisingly though not too surprisingly considering Roo could be interested in anyone long enough to get through most people’s defences.

Shane had confessed to Carl that he was seriously considering going ahead with the experiment but not just because he had realised he was still in love with Roo. He wanted to do something really useful with the show.

Last year he had done the Presencing Institute’s online course and now he was itching to do something which really helped rehabilitate society. He had knocked around ideas at his closest hub with people who seem more interested in discussing politics or getting a date then actually really using the material properly.

Maybe he should have changed hubs. Oh well, it was too late now. He could always do the course again he supposed. The people had been an incredibly good bunch. It was his favourite MOOC so far, and the only one he had completed so far except for the one on Carl Sagan.

Coffee time though. That would cheer up and you remember the plan they had come up with, which had pretty much floored him. It had been so ambitious. He looked at the time. Shit! He thought, it’s already 4 PM! The coffee place closes in an hour!

They had only gone to bed at 7 AM, and suddenly Luke remembered Carl had work so he better go wake him. Shane always gave himself Mondays off as he often ended up teaching or playing shows on the weekend. He needed one day a week where he could be a proper person and he knew he was lucky but he also knew his time was worth protecting.

Woolly hat on, wallet, keys, might as well pack my gym bag to. Wonder out to the studio. Carl is gone, blankets neatly folded with the extra pillow from Shane’s bed on top . Note.

Hi Shane

Gone to work. Been thinking we must finish the jura . Thursday?

Carl

Shane smiled. All right! He texted Carl after checking his day planner, show in Oxford next Saturday class at five on friday, show round the corner.

“Let’s do it”.

Out the door, and eyes open in delight – it’s just started snowing!

Robert started his journey home in a terrible mood. Today he had been working with the stand-in anchor who did his job perfectly well, but Robert was convinced he was just in it to expose his cheekbones. He was hating the dullness of his job.

The snow falling outside the bus as it stood stuck in traffic was soothing him though. He decided to check his emails. Nothing interesting or urgent but what was this? Phil? Open? Scan scan scan. Climate change.

Phil had gotten funding to do two years worth of filming for a series on anthropogenic threats to wild species which were greater than climate change.

Robert faltered. He made himself look at the snow. He hated anything to do with climate change because it was something he knew even less to do with then war, or nukes, or world hunger.

This was interesting though. He made himself read the supporting documents, glad that he had accepted the upgrade to his phone. It looked all right. The science was there and Phil was an amazing director.

But what about the experiment? Scan scan scan. Starting four months with meetings before in… London. He paused. Four months? Look at your bank account a voice dared him, that same voice which he knew was his real creative self.

He logged in.4 months. Password. Loading. He smiled. He could do that.

He replied to Phil – “it sounds like a project I would love to do. I need to get a grip on climate change but I don’t know how. Available to start in June.”

Letter to work “I regret to inform you that I have received an offer I cannot refuse. Please accept this as my resignation letter and I hope to discuss the terms of my resignation with you at the soonest possible opportunity.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Lowell.”

He got home and sat in the lounge and wished he had a cigar. He knew Luke had King Crimson though so put on Court of the Crimson King and poured himself a big glass of wine.

To be on the road again! And at least three months to dedicate to the experiment! He wrote Curtis an email saying if it all went well on Wednesday that he would be able to help with the selection process.

All was well. He might as well cook, he felt like aubergine for some reason. It must be because he never seemed to have them when filming. Were there any? Two-excellent. Melanzane it was, done slowly with salt.

Luke was driving again. It seemed he was always driving, but this time he was enjoying the long journey to pronounce someone else dead because he was thinking.

He was thinking about a discussion he had last night after getting home and finding Robert all cheerful with supper done and then climbing into bed with Roo.

She had been talking about the experiment and how all of them would need to find something they were passionate about. She had done some searching over the weeks before and decided she would be a stuck record about growing her own food and find a course where they would let her be filmed for bits of it.

Then she asked him what he had always dreamed of doing and he said he’d always wanted to be a paramedic and she had stared at him. And? She had asked. Just a paramedic he had said.

There had been a long pause. What about sustainable building? She asked. Luke shook his head and said that was just a phase.

What about nukes? She had asked. Luke had shook his head again and said he was out of the loop. She had said he’d get back in the loop. He had said no.

She had turned around and turned the light off saying softly – you have to think of your message- you can’t just be a husband who saves lives, you need an unrequited passion which you can explore. Then she had quickly kissed him and turned over, pretending to sleep until she actually was.

It had been quite strange. She had never shut him out before but he also knew she was not nagging him. It had been disquieting but it had made him realise, especially after listening to Robert say he was going to dedicate three months to setting  it up, that the experiment was actually going to probably happen.

So what did he stand for? Clean water for everyone they all need to stand for that. Good quality food for everyone -likewise.

He thought back to the war zones he had worked in. What had bothered him the most? The buildings? No. The agriculture? A little but no.

He tried to remember crying. It was difficult – he had blacked it out, but he was stuck at a red light so he waited.

He remembered crying when he was helping his first amputation. He remembered crying after seeing chemical burns from an explosion.

His heart started to ache and he knew. The shrapnel. Some kids had survived their parents after one of those terrible bombs which let go metal shards. They stayed in the hospital for a month as they had no adult to take them home but had refused to leave.

He started thinking of numbers and why Robert had said they all needed vasectomies. It’s the orphans! He thought I want all the worlds orphans to be adopted! His heart was still tender as he pulled over as they had arrived.

Rhian woke up from his dozing at the back and started collecting the things they needed. Luke sat perfectly still for a moment and then fished around his backpack for his phone to text Roo.

Roo woke up the next morning with Luke lying next to her sleeping. She picked up the phone and turned the alarm off. She tried to wake up herself mornings after Luke was working, as she didn’t like waking him up.

Today they would find out about the location. Then she would have to text Shane. Maybe he had some alternatives if things don’t work out. She hoped they would – she liked Curtis.He was interesting and he would help her with presenting herself as he would help her know how to have downtime.

She looked at her phone. Message from Luke. She looked across at him and realised she could read it in the kitchen. Stumbling around in the dark, she found clothes and shoes and underwear for the day. Then she quietly left and closed the door behind her.

She got dressed and did her hair and got ready for work, putting her pyjamas in the laundry basket. She really liked the systems in this house, things seems to work, she wondered if things were scalable, they must be.

She put the coffee on the stove and remembered the text. She sat down and read “love, I want all the orphans adopted to good parents.”

She smiled. She knew he had forgotten to specify the world. She looked at her phone- there was time to make him some apple and cinnamon muffins. She was glad she was working today otherwise she would spend the whole day fidgeting. Luke’s got his thing. That was great. She put the muffins in the oven- now to find an introductory food growing course she could do.

Robert had a message from Curtis but he had decided to read it with Roo and Luke. Now he sat in the waiting room in south London, waiting to see his psychotherapist. He had decided to go through with his therapy until he left as it felt manageable to do for four months.

He had asked Sasha for advice again and she had told them about all the different therapies and then when she had finished had asked – so what is most important to you about therapist?

That they don’t tell me what to do he had said, distrusting that any of the complicated modalities would be able to provide that. There’s a few she had said, but if you actually wanted to sort yourself out I’d recommend Patricia Toynbee  or anyone she recommends. Then she looked at him and passed him her phone which was ringing and he had asked some questions and eventually booked this appointment.

So here he was. He was glad Sasha had kind of sprung the actual calling on him and he’d had her to nod too while he asked questions and got asked far more.

The door opened and a woman in a purple dress, purple coat and purple shoes stepped out. She had red hair. She looked at him smiling “Robert?” She asked.

Robert nodded and stood up. So this was someone who knew his name. “I’m Janice. Come in. Patricia referred you to me as I like having clients for shorter times and understand if you want to take things gently but then you need to commit to a longer course of therapy.” They were in a comfortable white room- so much for being able to get distracted by trees.

Robert faltered and then said “I will be filming about anthropogenic threats to endangered species that all climate change for two years So only have until June to do therapy”.

Janice picked up a notebook and a pen and then her diary. “Until June you say? Could you do three times a week?” Robert smiled “ yes am flexible with time from the week after next”.

Janice nodded and made a note in her diary. She looked at Robert with a bit of a squint. “Do you want to do that many sessions a week? Some people believe in doing therapy five days a week but I find three or four times to work just as well and it gives a bit more time to processing whats come up. I’m quite extensive and demanding as a therapist.

Robert nodded “how do you mean?”

Janice smiled. “I expect people to take the therapy seriously. If you spend more than five sessions moaning, and don’t do the reflective work, I will ask you to stop coming to see me.”

Robert smiled. “So you want me to do homework and do what you say?” He might get out of this after all even though there was something he liked about this colourful woman in a bland room.

“Homework yes, tell you what to do no. I do expect that you listen to me but I try not to make any suggestions though I do set experimental tasks sometimes. Which you can not do if you do not feel comfortable or ready to do them. I’ll push you – from the very beginning, but you will have a week to think about things and do the first introductory essay. I know writing doesn’t work for everyone though – do you feel comfortable writing? 750 to 2000 words Robert? Just for me to read- I destroy all information on a client after they have stopped seeing me. I have strict confidentiality. So I promise I will never turn you into an example client.”

Robert looked at the ground. He thought about what she had been saying and then looked up, realising this was a real process. “Can we see how it goes?”

Janice smiled “of course we can. That’s the best approach to take. I will try press your buttons though. Are you ready for that?” Robert folded his arms and look at her shoes and then nodded and put his arms down again.

Janice started talking about money, which was in his budget and then started asking him questions. Her demeanour changed when she started asking questions. She became softer and more still. He felt no pressure to answer quickly which he was grateful for. Time passed and then he said he was asexual. She nodded “is something you would like to explore?” She asked quietly. There was silence for a long time. “I don’t know. I’m quite happy being asexual but recently I found myself thinking how it would be to be in love with someone if I wasn’t.”

Janice poured herself a glass of water and had a sip. “I’m going to be honest with you. Most people I see have a life that has them overwhelmed. After you finish this notice period, you will be doing work you like. You also have good friends who you are doing what you call the experiment with, which is interesting as it does seem like something you would expect professional artists to do - not a primary school teacher and two people who worked in war zones. But your asexuality is interesting. It seems the experiment is dredging up your unconscious. I am still going to go over the basics with you though. So your first challenge is to write on your first 10 years of life. A lot can go into it but just see what’s on the surface and then if there is more just make bullet points. You can email it to me or bring it 15 minutes early and I will read it before I see you. Either is all right.” She took another sip of water. “How does that sound Robert?”

Robert nodded “all right.” He said.

Janice looked at her watch and smiled and stood up “pleasure to meet you. I will see you next Wednesday the same time then.”

Robert smiled “thank you.” He said and then let himself out.

He found himself in a bit of a daze for a while but eventually realised he was on the underground going in the right direction. He took his phone out and read the message from Curtis. They had it! Wow! That was such great news. He drafted a text as soon as he was out of the station and sent it to Luke and Roo. The suspense must be killing them too. What a great day! Luke texted back that he was making the chicken and Robert smiled. Things really are alright in my life on the whole He thought and wondered again if he should get cigars and realised champagne or cava would be better.

Shane sat waiting for Carl, with burgers on the go. He had received a voicemail from Roo, and it seemed the experiment was actually becoming a reality.

Carl buzzed and Shane went to let him in. He had a vinyl bag with him and so he knew he was in for a session of sorts, even though there was only one turntable. Carl seemed to be taking this all quite seriously.

He made the burgers as Carl put on some smooth but somehow jagged jazz Shane had never heard. They ate listening and then Carl turned the record over and it was just nature sounds blended with some hints of synths.

“Is it really the same band?”

“No it’s a split, but just done so well and the production is great. I looked up the people that run this company and these days they seem to spend their life making cheese.”

“Did we talk about a record label?”

“Yes, an artist led record label with trustees. I would like the cheesemakers as trustees. And these artists do the tours when they can.”

“ It really is an as they can kind of thing with music now. Only the big artists make any money from the music, the rest of us just tour, which sometimes is a gamble if you don’t presale tickets. The venues are demanding that a lot now though.”

“Do you remember about the tour?”

“Sort of -doing community building and music at the same time. Maybe even having screenings of interesting films. I wanted to set up presencing hubs.”

“That’s right. You will have to explain to me how it works.”

“I will. I can make a presentation when I talk to Roo, Luke, and Robert about this with the mysterious Curtis.”

“So you are seriously thinking of joining. Let’s have some whiskey shall we?”

“Good idea. Yes. I’m considering it. They have gotten the use of building which they are looking at on Saturday – when I would have to present. I think they’re starting to look for people – so I don’t have much time to consider.”

“We don’t have much time to consider.”

“We? Are you thinking of joining too?”

“If she’ll have me and we can do the label and the tour. It will be good for her to have one husband that doesn’t need sex from her.”

“But you would like to make love to her.”

Carl blushed through his brown skin. “I, well, I really just want her to lie on my bed and listen to records with her. And maybe have a cuddle every now and then.”

Shane smiled gently “you love her to.”

Carl nodded. “I would like to help her relax. I could learn massage if there was money to do that.”

Shane laughed, “yes, and so she’ll spend all our time with you!”

“You know I can play records for everyone sometimes too. But I really think it’s important. I can stay with my nan for two nights a week just to check on her. I will still want to work in the shop at least part-time.”

“We’ll have to see how things go. If you want to do it, I’ll definitely will do it because I know that two of us can work well together.”

“Do you remember the name of the record label?”

“No it’s gone.”

“It’s of the birds.”

“Blimey, this is serious then. Let me phone Roo about Saturday then.”

 Luke lay on the bed in their room and was concentrating on his body. It was a weird technique someone had taught him to see if there was trapped or unprocessed emotion.

Roo had been so happy after talking to Shane, and then Carl, who he had only met in passing. She said they had a music -related scheme they wanted to present and that they both wanted to be with her in the experiment, if she was happy with the fact they were straight.

Luke had suddenly realised it was real and soon they would be more people that transcended the role of suiter or friend. He was scanning his body for signs of jealousy but the only thing he could find was relief.

If they had really come up with the project to use the experiment for it sounded like it might actually be interesting. He has been thinking about the orphans and he had no idea how you talk about the whole time without starting a charity. The problem with the charity is what exactly would it do?

He was realising that he had to shift his mind from being a worker to something else. It wasn’t an artist but that’s more how it was. He was going to be creating not just being productive.

He concentrated on his heart for a moment, and it seemed less tense than the last time he had done this exercise a month before. That suspension had really helped change gears. Gears, he suddenly thought – do I think of myself as a machine?

That was troubling. He was listening to his heart beating and realised a cat would never think it was changing gears when the seasons changed. He would have to explore this a little. Maybe he needed to change the words he used to describe what he did and thought from that of the man-made world to that of the rest of the world. He could assimilate and metabolise and grow and age.

Roo finished the dishes. Luke had disappeared since she had talked to Shane and Carl. She felt a whirlwind of emotions but when she was done she sat down at the computer and booked the nearest food growing course. She would have to learn about the styles and pretensions of growing and make sure they covered  stuff it didn’t explicitly say or talk about.

She started reading her emails and then instead of going into a daze she turned it off and went to find Luke. Opened the door and realised he had been doing a body scan again as he was spreadeagled. He seemed to do that when he was stressed.

“Busy?” She asked.

“Well I’m thinking about how I use language which describes me as a machine.”

Roo smiled and closed the door and started slowly taking her clothes off.

“And you are thinking you don’t want to self identify as a machine.”

“No, I want to be a human being in all senses of the word.”

She stood there naked before him and continued. “With this human thinking disappear at the idea of being enclosed by this human feeling?”

“Not if you keep talking love.”

She took off his shoes and then climbed on top of him to undo his belt buckle, slowly easing his jeans off while she hummed.

“You are no longer a producing machine.” She said as she helped and take his shirt off and now they were both bare. She kissed him and he held her pulling up the bed from sitting until she was lying on top of him. “You need to tell me what you want to do as a human creature.” She slid down and then felt between his legs delighted to find he was hard. She slid him inside and then started slowly rocking. “I need you to tell me because I just want to make babies with you and we’re not going to. We are going to be completely impractical in our lovemaking, so tell me.” She said placing his hands on her bum, moving delicately now.

“I want to breathe with your nipples in my mouth and eat and shit and age and explore.”

“And.”

“I want to try love many people and have sex with men again but still sleep with you at least half the time. I want to learn how to create instead of produce and to live rather than function. Oh you feel so good!”

“So you don’t want to be my master, or my king, or my operating system.”

“And I don’t want you to be my slave, my Queen, or my remote control.”

They were both breathless now, and stayed breathless for a long time, though talking less and less until the moon shone in and they realise they had forgotten to close the curtains.

Carl and Shane had spent the whole of Thursday working out how to present their plan. After a shift at the shop on Friday he had caught a bus after nearly slipping when he tried to catch it.

His grandmother was out with her friends playing whist, or bridge, or something else – he could never remember what Friday was for. He sat in the sitting room with a cup of tea, soaking in the silence.

He loved this house even though it should really have more than two people living in it. His grandmother had inherited it from her parents as she was the youngest by far after everyone else had passed away during or after World War II.

She had been born near impossibly and never lived anywhere else except a Hopi Reservation in Arizona where she was doing her anthropology degree.

She had definitely been spoiled but she expected very little of him except someone to talk to in the dark of winter and to check on her when she got ill. In winters she rattled round the house in frustration at the weather and would cook opulent meals quite often out of boredom.

He had recently been asking about his grandfather who he knew had been seduced by or had seduced his grandmother while she was there for what ended up being two years before her mother had gotten ill she had come home. So Carl’s mother was  born out of ‘proper’ wedlock but his mother had fared all right in London growing up because she had gotten letters from her father so she had felt all right.

She had had him out of wedlock too, though but she had never really told much about his father, except that he needed to be careful about drinking too much. He followed this advice by not really drinking but going overboard every now and then, though he knew binge drinking really wasn’t actually a good idea.

He had been asking about his grandad, because he was a loved male even though he had stopped writing as often and after his mother’s death in a car crash. He had since begun to get strange dreams with chanting and fires in them and his grandmother said it was his ancestors.

Since then she been single-mindedly teaching him about the Hopi and kept bringing him books she bought, photocopied from some or other university library. She had become an expert on the sacred and but hardly touched anything about the Hopi past her PhD.

She had fallen in love with a jazz musician who was very jealous – who she had eventually broken it off with because he was pawning things from her parents’ home. By the end of that symbolism was very much in vogue, but she felt more comfortable not cheapening symbolism which wasn’t part of her culture. So she was enjoying this re-examining with the same passionate fervour she normally reserved these days for birthday cakes, which she made so beautiful someone had actually cried when they cut it.

Now Carl sat in the kitchen eating leftovers and then he went to bed, surrounded by books, and photocopies and records and he waited for strange dreams at night but instead it was deep, dark dreamless, refreshing sleep and woke up in the morning ready to see a building it seemed he might live in.

Shane woke up to the piercing sound of the alarm. All his work reflexes started to quiver and he realised with the start that it was the day they would see the new building. He stopped the alarm and found his dressing gown. Time for a shave in the shower and a trip to get coffee. There was time to go over his notes on the bus.

At the coffee shop it was quite quiet still and as he sat waiting for Carl his phone rang. It was Roo. “Hello darling.”

“Hi, we’re just checking everything is fine, didn’t know if you’re playing last night.”

“Yes we did but it was local and I could excuse myself. Just waiting for Carl – his bus stops around the corner so I’m just having my coffee fix. Its still at 12?”

“Yes – you will be in plenty of time. Curtis is having a picnic for us in the building and the owner wants to meet us on video chat though he said should be happy just to know what we think and meet her if we were happy with everything.”

“Yes that’s a lot for one day”.

Carl walked in, waved and then went to get a coffee. “Oh good Carls just arrived, will be on our way shortly .”

“Grand. Looking forward to seeing you again and while we’re on the phone. Luke is working next weekend and suggested I spend it with you two. What do you think?”

Shane felt his pulse rise a little and then laughed . “You’d have to go back on Monday and we haven’t had vasectomies and tests yet so it really would be like old times. We have a show in Sheffield on Saturday. Would you be happy to come along on the train? There won’t be space in the bus for you to but I can happily travel with you.”

“Isn’t that expensive?”

“I can book it before we go if you’re keen.”

“I would love that.”

“Oh good, well lets do it then. Will talk to Carl. I don’t think he’ll stay the night but he can probably get off work if he is on.”

“It will be lovely. I got your new album- its really good.”

“Better you mean.” Shane said laughing. “Yes we found our sound now and the new guitarist really knows what he’s doing.”

“But if you happy to book the tickets.”

“Yes I am. See you at 12. I am nervous about presentation but maybe the boss lady should see it too.”

“I think Curtis has it all set up.”

“All right. Lights camera action all that.”

“See you soon. I’m looking forward to what you come up with.”

“You two. Bye darling Roo.”

“Bye.”

Carl was sitting watching him. “So what’s this about Sheffield and Roo?”

“She’s spending next weekend with us!”

Carl nodded smiled and then blushed, but it was so imperceptible Shane didn’t even notice as he was just smiling and smiling while looking out of the front of the cafe.

Robert, Roo and Luke arrived at the In and Out [RvS1] at 11:55 exactly. Robert was carrying his camera after Roo had told him about Shane and Carl being happy to have the presentation filmed. His plan was to make a good little film of today to show their benefactor and the new recruits once they appeared.

They looked at the building and Robert realised he needed to start filming straight away. He turned to Roo and Luke and said “I need to film the whole of today?” They looked at each other, shrugged and then nodded to Robert. They knew it was right so they took out their phones and texted Curtis and Shane. When they looked up Robert was already filming the building in the cold early March light. He turned and they both smiled and waved and then walked up to the building’s entrance, through the drive way and up to the front door.

“It really is a big pile of stone,” Luke said and Roo nodded and before they had time to knock Shane had the door open for them and was smiling, giving Roo a kiss on the cheek and Luke a hug.

Curtis had led them through into a beautiful big white room with a bevelled ceiling. There were chairs stacked but on the floor were a whole bunch of embroidered[RvS2] beanbags on top of the most magnificent orange carpet and Chinese turning tables full of steaming food. Carl passed around some plates and Robert sat down after wondering around filming people dish up and turned off the camera.

They all ate in silence. Curtis had obviously organised for the heating to be put on because it was a lovely mellow temperature and they were all comfortable and the food was that type of deliciousness Curtis seemed to specialise in, but even more subtle and honest [RvS3] than what they had eaten before. They had all finished when Curtis asked “And, would you like to meet the chef?”

They all nodded and smiled and Curtis went off for a moment. He came back in with a svelte 6 foot 4 African man who’s skin was so dark it shone.

“This is Luther everybody and while you don’t know him he has something to say to you.”

“Good afternoon. “ And he went around introducing himself. Curtis magically found him a beanbag to sit on. “My name is Luther.I come from the Congo DRC. I trained as a doctor in Cuba but now I live looking after Mrs Godolphin as she gives me time to write and a visa. She told me of the experiment and asked me to cook for you. I thought about it for a few days and then asked if she would mind if I asked to join the experiment. I know you are looking for couples but I see you have accepted two straight men so I thought it was alright to try. I want to speak of colonialism but not just that of the state, that of the multinational corporations that rule so many countries in Africa, but also in the rest of the world. I want to write books and organise for a system where the corporations are not subsidized by the government. I would also like to work part time in an A and E department again. I like Mrs Godolphin but I have done my research now and I can see that creating new media is important. I would like to publish books and while I know we will have to be delicate with the programming, it would be possible to invite authors to talk to us. I know you are making a spectacle. We know all about the French in my country! It will be delicate but I would like to be part of it.”

He looked at Roo. “I can understand why you would want couples, so it would not be too much pressure on you. I had a wife in Cuba but since then I haven’t found a woman I could love as she passed away from Ovarian cancer. I know I could learn to love you however and I will be busy working much of the time. To share a bed with you a night a week would be all I could ask for and so I can remember how miners live at least a little. I am happy to have no children but this house is big and there will be many fathers so I ask that if you accept me that you will not only adopt 2 children from Syria but another 2 from my country which has seen war. I do not know how it can be done but I think you would have to marry one of us and adopt the children before the show began. I would be happy to look after the two from my country if anything went wrong so I would ask to be their guardian from the beginning. I have much else to say but I have spoken for now. Please consider me.”

He stood up and left.

There was silence but Roo was crying softly. She looked at Curtis and struggled to speak, and then slowly opened her mouth. “He will have to marry one of you so the children know he is their father and so he has a visa.

Carl lifted his hand, “I will do that if he is comfortable with that”.

Roo rushed up and hugged Carl. She turned around and looked at Luke and Shane. They nodded. “It is right,” Luke said, his voice a little gravely.

Shane looked at his hands and smiled. “Four children! It was just incredible. It would be an interesting house to live in!” He looked up and smiled when he realised everyone was looking at him. “Oh Roo! You know I love kids! I can play music with them in the afternoons!”

Roo wiped her eyes and then Robert swooped in with a tissue to tidy up her mascara and she smiled. “Should we tell him?”

Curtis nodded. “It’s time for the presentation and he should see it.” He walked out smiling and came back with a beaming Luther. They all got up and took turns hugging him now. They chatted for a while and Luther said he didn’t mind sharing a bed with Carl as long as he had a study he could sleep in too. And they all laughed.

Luther asked if they wanted some mint tea while Shane and Carl set up for the presentation and disappeared to the kitchen with Roo to prepare it. She was delighted at the kitchen and Luther told her how the whole property was completely off grid and they would get delivered wood once a month from Mrs Godolphin’s coppiced woodland.

 While they were waiting for the kettle to boil he motioned for her to smooth her hair and Roo did and then found herself reaching out and putting her hand on his cheek.

“Can I kiss you to check?” Roo asked hesitantly. Luther smiled and nodded and as there was no self-consciousness between them they gathered together and slowly dissolved into each other.

When they came out 10 minutes later Roo was glowing and her hair was neat.

I don’t want your revolution if I can’t dance

Luke looked at her and smiled and then ever so slightly nodded at Luther, who nodded back sheepishly. Robert was talking to Shane with Carl fiddling on the side. They all looked at Roo when she brought them tea and smiled.

“Ready then?” she asked.

They nodded and then moved the beanbags no one was sitting on to make it easier to see. Curtis said to Luther when he brought his tea. “Are you sure about this?” Luther nodded and smiled. “It will make a change and it will be good to be back in A and E.[RvS4] I don’t have any more books to write for a while. Shane said, “All right everyone. Has everyone got tea?”

They all chimed yes and went to sit down. Robert set up the camera at the back with his tea on the floor and then gave the thumbs up before returning to it. Carl had set up the video projector while Roo and Luther had gotten the tea and now sat right at the back with his finger hovering above the mousepad of his laptop.

Shane looked at him and nodded and the screen turned into three huge icebergs visible above and below water. Shane took a deep breath, looked at Roo who smiled wholeheartedly at him and then started “There are three main icebergs to today’s problems. The Eco, social and spiritual divide. The problems that are at their roots, that which is the bulk of the iceberg overlap, but they include things like bubbles, finite resources, real needs and economy, collective paralysis and so on.[RvS5] The bubbles include the infinite growth bubble, income, financial, technology, leadership, consumerism, governance and ownership bubbles. The Ecological divide is best explained by Earth Overshoot Day which gets closer to summer solstice every year and the fact that we are losing agricultural land because of overuse. The social divide is also obvious - 2 ½ billion people live on less than $2 a day while the top 1% has a greater worth than the bottom 90%.

The spiritual cultural divide is more about the discontent most people feel about their work and what they do and best exemplified by the World Health Organisation statistic that in the year 2000 more people died of suicide than war. In this country we know that suicide is the biggest killer of under 35 year old men.

So what do we do to solve these problems? Move from Ego economies to Eco economies and start listening to people. There is more of this theory and I suggest that we all do their free MOOCas I find theory U Lab very inspiring and after getting Carl to do it too we have come up with what will be the bulk of our presentation.”

The slide changed. It was a picture of a festival. Carl smiled at Shane and walked to the front to start with Shane after getting Roo to take over on the laptop.

“So we were talking,” Carl said, “and drinking. Because I was overwhelmed by the experiment.”

“And we started to throw some ideas around. I work in a record store and Shane is the vocalist for a blues band so naturally we started talking about music”

“Yeah, so we were talking about distribution and how difficult it is to know what is good and then Carl says - what if you had a record label that was a cooperative of musicians with really good but unknown artists as its trustees?”

“So Shane starts going on about how that is not really interesting enough. Because by this stage he wants to change the world.”

Shane laughed self-consciously and Carl continued “So Shane says - I want people to learn theory U in groups and then change their communities. So I say why stop there - teach them about the media, and other interesting things too and then we both stopped and looked at each other and said - a tour!”

“Then we talked rubbish for a while and went to bed.”

“But I know Shane was and is actually serious about this and I always liked Roo so I left him a message in the morning to say we should meet up on Thursday.”

“So we did. With the rest of the whiskey and worked it out. We would have street teams like people did and still do have for shows. The street teams would have to do training and get people involved through a battle of the bands. The winner of the battle of the bands would get to play the home show on the tour and get their demo listened to by the record label and the tour would be more like a festival for a week in a town with films and workshops. We would do 6 weeks a year of the tour and that’s good because it will be so fun people could volunteer for a lot of it.

“And that’s what we want to do.”

[sexycraisinthanos]

Adventures in Rody-Sitting (Chapter 2)

Shigaraki tells Midoriya what happened

“It all started when All For One decided to save that kid’s life. He thought he could be useful to him. He was always taking notes on Pros and he could be a real asset if he could be on our side. I never liked him from the beginning. Kids are whiny and annoying. But this one took the golden medal. My sensei didn’t care how annoying he was. He just wanted this kid to be a High End Nomu. But his will was too strong to change. So he was taken in as his own and raised like a little brother to me. I hated it. He was just some tiny little nobody who walked in on my life and stole everything out from under me.”

“What do you mean?”

“The League attacked a class attending a routine rescue training class at a building called the Unforeseen Simulation Joint, or the USJ. They were a class of 20 students, supposedly being taught by All Might, who had recently publicly announced he was going to be teaching at UA. To most villains, this meant that All Might was going to be teaching the next generation of heroes to be just like him. This meant that All Might was retiring and had gotten soft. That his old age was catching up to him and he could be taken down. But...All Might wasn’t there. So I decided to pass the time by splitting the students up and sending my lackeys after them and keeping Eraserhead and Thirteen down with my Nomu, even if it had been specifically designed to kill All Might.”

Shigaraki clenched his fists, gritting his teeth. Almost like the thought of not being able to kill All Might hurt him. He was a weird guy.

“Things were going my way...then All Might showed up and I could finally get what I wanted. I had him on the ropes. He was exhausted, he couldn’t hit the Nomu hard enough to do any actual damage. He could barely keep his arms up. I almost won...That’s where I messed up. I was warned that I couldn’t kill All Might. I could hurt him all I want, but killing was off the table. I didn’t listen.”

Midoriya remembered back to the USJ attack. The Nomu would have killed All Might if he hadn’t been there to give him a few seconds of distraction before the other Pros came along.

Where was I? Shouldn’t I have been there to help?

“The Nomu was tearing into All Might. Almost ripping him in half.”

Midoriya thought Shigaraki would have been grinning at this, but he looked remorseful.

“I remember the feeling of victory. So close I could almost taste it. Then...the Nomu dropped to the floor. That little brat had cut his arms off. Then he went for me. He knocked me to the ground and pinned me to the floor with knives in my hands. The pain was excruciating. I almost respected him. But it didn’t end there. He stole my men from me. Everyone escaped and left me for dead. The heroes captured me and I told them everything. If they were going to abandon me, then I was going to do whatever I could to make sure that they burned.”

He was silent for a moment, looking almost sad. Midoriya looked at him, waiting for him to continue the story.

“I spent my entire life trying to kill All Might, but I actually ended up owing him my life. I thought they were going to put me in Tartarus, but...All Might had other plans for me. He told the Commission that he was going to take me in for “rehabilitation”, but that wasn’t entirely the truth. He sat me down and had me talk about the kid I was working with. How he came to be with us, why we took him in, all that boring stuff. He was just some stupid kid...but somehow he managed to turn even Kurogiri against me. My sensei even ended up choosing to abandon me and trained him instead.”

Midoriya finally spoke up. “What happened to the students that were at the USJ? Kacchan? Todoroki? Uraraka?”

“I don’t know any of those names.”

“My friends. They were the children you attacked.”

“I don’t know what happened to them. I spent my time watching my Nomu fight Eraserhead. My replacement took care of the students.”

“Your replacement...Who is he? You haven’t told me yet.”

“I never bothered to learn his real name. He told us that he wanted to be called ‘Dare’. I thought he was just a Quirkless little brat, but...whatever he managed to accomplish there was enough to disturb society.”

“A Quirkless villain? How could he be so powerful?”

“He’s not. But he knows how to get people to do what he wants and take advantage of others’ weaknesses...he’s a conniving little brat. My sensei was on his side...he forgot all about me and I was left to my own devices…”

“So...what happened with All Might? You said he went missing…”

“I woke up in an interrogation room, strapped to a seat and was told that All Might had granted me a pardon as long as I told them everything I knew...I figured I had nothing else to lose and I wanted them to hurt, so I let them know what they wanted to. Not like it did them any good. As far as I’d been told, All Might didn’t survive the attack. No one’s seen him in ten years.”

“As far as you’d been told? Was there no proof? Do you think he’s in hiding somewhere?”

“I’m not sure...But I don’t know how to find him if he is in hiding.”

Midoriya felt like he was hiding something, but couldn’t quite put a finger on what it was. He took a breath, making a decision. “Fine. If you won’t tell me where All Might is, then I’ll just have to find him myself.”

[firebirdsdaughter]

01 made sure that I don't care one bit about characters that don't give a single f*ck about a traumatized victim of decade long abused. Horobi had nobody caring about him all this time, his own son offered him on a silver platter to the Ark, Aruto thinks yelling at him to snap out of the hacking will do. And then Aruto is sad over his pet AI being stupid and suddenly everyone is up in arms and ready to jump in and help him cheer up again. Give me a break.

… I will forever keep pre-ep 42 Fuwa safely in my heart. That guy out there isn’t my Fuwa. My Fuwa is safe. -_-

It’s very… Questionable.

Like. If anyone had tried to do anything help Horobi earlier, we wouldn’t be in this situation. It’d be so much less messy and destructive. It’d’ve been actual work, but, like. It would have literally been easier.

I’ve said before that I feel like they switched the cores of Horobi and Gai’s stories, and I super still feel that. Esp given the loss of episodes, they really should have stuck w/ having the Ark as the final villain, maybe have her take over Gai forcibly, I dunno. Maybe have Gai cause the situation? I know the point they’re trying to go for is that ‘HumaGear/AI can do bad to!’ (maybe?), but we had that w/ the Ark. Like… They could absolutely still have done Horobi struggling w/ getting free, him still having resentment towards humans, but having humans reach out and help him, prove their goodness by taking the time to reach out to the biggest victim who has been the most consumed by the Ark’s influence. Like, Horobi did wrong things under the Ark’s control. He’s been completely under her control and influence for decades. Like I just ranted about, he’s been conditioned, he literally doesn’t know how to handle emotions, or even what morals are. But humans should know better, esp ones who allegedly work w/ AI. Them defying the Ark’s claims and doctrine by reaching out to him and helping him, despite everything, would have been a great moment.

Like… I do understand Aruto being super upset about what happened. Despite the issues I have w/ how it was presented, he and Izu were close. Of course he’d be mad. What bothers me is the attitude that he’s the only victim who is behaving irrationally bc of grief and pain. The way all the stops are getting pulled out to ‘save him.’ I’d feel a lot more sympathetic towards him if I felt like they were recognising Horobi’s mental state at the same time. Like I went to in my giant ramble, Horobi didn’t seek out Izu and gun for her, she sought him out when he was already volatile and in an extremely high intensity situation, which had already been escalated (by humans), and continued pressuring him until he snapped.

Aruto being upset about her death is one thing. Like… Okay. They were close. I do give that. It’s the attitude that only Aruto is the tragic one here. This should at the least be treated as a double tragedy.

That’s why Raiden going to Horobi, however I think he went about it in a not really great way, was really powerful, esp compared w/ a lot of… Other out of character behaviour we saw in the ep.

Like. Just imagine if we’d had Fuwa recognising that his aggressive behaviour played a part in this (while I do have to admit that, after Okada’s explanation and seeing a more direct translation, it feels more like a blunder Fuwa would make if confronted w/ that situation, the fact that he was the only one Horobi asked, making it clear Horobi wanted to hear his answer, bc Horobi doesn’t ask, last him he did, he got tortured, only to be told ‘I’m here to destroy you’… Fuwa may not have meant it that way, but Horobi was not in a state where he’d be able to understand the nuance, and that def contributed to over-stressing him and then Izu’s pushing put him over the edge much easier), him recognising that and then trying to at least partially make it right, take a different approach, go to Horobi and try to back Raiden up on stuff. Like… How cool would that have been? Fuwa getting a moment of realising his reckless, angry, head-on style caused damage and contributed to this situation, so, bc he’s a human who can recognise that, he’s going to go to Horobi and address it. Fuwa allegedly learned that shooting first isn’t the best answer, it would have been really cool and effective to see him trying to take the time to impart that knowledge to someone else, to try and reel back and think and strategise. Maybe he could have tried to confront both of them.

(and then the other part of that scene… Was just… So painfully ooc…)

I mean, I know Aruto is the main character, but there’s a line between ‘this is the main character’ and… This. Like, if there was any clear recognition for Horobi’s suffering at all, this would have a different tone. One person’s suffering doesn’t make another person’s less. They could still focus on how Aruto is hurt while recognising what Horobi went through. But the fact that it’s to the point that they might have (I dunno, I heard this second hand, I don’t have any subs) only started trying to raise Jin to benefit Aruto, rather than focusing through reaching Horobi… Well, if that is the case, it very much gives the air of ‘oh, it’s all fine if we just ‘erase’ the human’s ‘crime!’’ And the idea that that would make Aruto killing Jin and Horobi having to watch him die ‘okay.’ It’s the same as not recognising Gai shooting Naki bc they ‘came back.’ The trauma is still there. Honestly, I half expect, if Izu gets brought back, the people would immediately be like ‘killing Jin (and Naki) wasn’t that bad bc they came back’ would immediately be like ‘oh poor Izu that must have been so traumatising for her.’

Okay, I’m being really harsh, I’m just really frustrated.

I really care about this series. Like, despite the fact that he can’t write character relationship development to save his life, Takahashi makes me fall in love w/ characters like no other. This cast has been such troopers, so stellar. I hold absolutely nothing against any of them. Igeta and Nakayama are legends and I’m proud of them.

I talk shit, but I know it’s just a tv show, I just get very emotional. And the fact is, Horobi (and esp his relationship w/ Fuwa) ended up becoming really important to me over the course of the show. HoroFuwa’s my first real… Well… It’s hard to explain, but they are like. My first ‘official’ otp. I’m not a big shipper, and I’ve struggled w/ the concept of romantic stuff in regards to my own identity in the past, I’ve always had a weird feeling of being ‘ashamed’ for thinking about that stuff. And it was HoroFuwa and a bloody kissing scene I wrote on new years that really just… It meant a lot to me, I feel like I became more comfortable w/ myself bc of them.

Which is totally not what you wanted on your Ask, sorry. ^^; I’m just trying to explain why I, personally, get so riled up. Ultimately, the show owes me nothing, I am nowhere near the target audience. But for someone whose depression often manifests as apathy… When I care, I care. So it’s… It’s been a ride. To say the least.

I’m sorry I went so off topic and personal. ^^’ Y’all didn’t come here for that, I know.

[showtoonzfan]

TRIGGER WARNING: TALKS OF ALCOHOLISM AND MENTIONS OF SEXUAL ABUSE

Obviously when Hazbin Hotel comes out, I hope they tackle the issue of alcoholism in a compelling way.

Of course, I’m very afraid to know how Viv will approach this subject. For me personally, as the train wreck that is Helluva Boss continues, Viv has done nothing but prove to me that she can’t really handle serious issues, ESPECIALLY when it comes to Angel’s drug addiction ect. Both issues so far are played for laughs, something that is “uWU quirky”. We see Angel in the pilot get drugs, and then complain when they’re crushed, and as for Husk, the only reason he joined the hotel in the first place was because Alastor gave him booze. BECAUSE YA GET IT? ONE LIKES DRUGS AND COCK, AND THE OTHER LIKES DRINKING. As for Angel, when Viv DID deep dive into his addiction for the Addict MV, yeah it.....was handled poorly, that’s all I can say for now. Not to mention how so far, booze is the ONLY think husk is associated with. And yes, I KNOW all we have is the pilot, and there’s not enough to flesh out everything. I’m just taking about when the actual SHOW comes along. As someone who’s raised by a heavy drinking family, we all know that alcoholism is a very serious issue and hefty subject. It has ruined the lives of people and just like sexual abuse, addiction is something I HOPE to see conveyed in a compelling and accurate way in this story, as well as moving, and perhaps, teach those who are addicted to alcohol a lesson, or at least, let them learn how they can better themselves and understand how horrifying the realization of what they’re doing to themselves as well as the people around them can be.

Oh, and one more thing. I hope they scrap the whole “bar in a rehabilitation hotel” thing completely. That was just......stupid, Vaggie was 100% correct, it’s a REHABILITATION CENTER, and having alcohol isn’t exactly the best decision Charlie. My thoughts to change this were to have Vaggie and Charlie SECRETLY give husk booze every once and awhile, just to make him stay (and to keep him from going “Cold Turkey” because that can negatively affect someone who drinks alcohol regularly) but at the same time try to help him with this addiction as well. Hopefully they do something like that instead of him in charge of the bar.