#vote on how this journey will take shape

[thefourchimes]

Don't Get Too Far Away, Tomorrow — Zombie Apocalypse Nancy POV Reader-Interactive AU

Check it out in Ao3!

Nancy just wanted to know what to do next. Jonathan just wanted to help his family. Robin just wanted to understand what was going on. Steve just wanted to make things right. Too bad a zombie apocalypse decided to crash and burn those plans to the ground with them in it. But maybe, just maybe…they’ll be able to figure it all out along the way.

(Moodboard made by @lumaxramblings!! thank you sm finnthony <333)

[anemoiashifts]

what your desired reality self wants you to know, pick an object reading !

𖡼𖤣𖥧𖡼𓋼𖤣𖥧𓋼𓍊

happy shifting september ! thank you to everyone who voted for this months reading ! i stated before the idea of doing a shifting reading that you guys can vote on at the top of every month & intend to post one of these on the first of every month ! if you’d like to vote for octobers, the poll is on my profile right now & will be available to vote through the week of this is posted.

as always, please do not force this message if it doesn’t resonate. there will be more readings to come ! ⋆.˚

✦

🐾 | sweater french bulldog °❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

songs: about you by the 1975, stained glass by madison beer, chewing cotton wool by the japanese house.

the tldr of this reading waiting for new beginnings to take shape. when you think one journey has ended, another will arise. your dr self wants to remind you that shifting should not be the end goal. the progress you’ve made on your shifting journey is the first step of of a long, long path of lessons & leaning about how you operate.

the emotions that had risen for this reading were feelings of being overwhelmed, slow healing & lack of progress. this time — being “trapped” in your current reality — is not to punish you. it it not to keep you down but to prove to yourself you are capable of overcoming every obstacle that is thrown your way. take this time to be gentle with yourself & care for practice self soothing techniques accordingly. you cannot always control your circumstances; only how you react to them. improving mindset towards your situation & finding a way to balance energies amidst chaos will do you wonders. remember to stay grounded & grateful even when things seem bleak.

✦

🪻 | purple orchid °❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

songs: art deco by lana del rey, to be human marina, holding onto you by twenty one pilots.

your gift to manifest your desires is within you. if you think you are incapable of manifesting, you are being urged to reflect on your past assumptions & look at what thoughts you have when going about life. however, something is blocking you from unleashing your inner gifts. you are denying yourself whatever that may be all while ignoring what needs attention in this moment, even if it’s separate from shifting. chances are there is a repressed creative side of you or an upbringing that has been taken from you due to circumstance.

to put this bluntly, you may be emotionally unstable & unsure of what you actually want. to provide clarity, sit down with your thoughts & journal or scrapbook (changes are, you are already doing so). mental clarity will come in the form of creation. remember, you create your own reality. you are not the projections & assumptions people have placed upon you. there is nothing wrong with you.

✦

🍆 | eggplant bartholomew bear °❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

songs: no time to die by billie elish, watercolor eyes by lana del rey, illicit affairs by taylor swift,

you love hard. in partnerships, friendships, romantic relationships, family. some may even say you’re a little bit of a hopeless romantic. however, it feels like your mind & heart are at war constantly; logic vs emotion. the logical part tends to think “shifting isn’t real, I’ll never do it” while your heart is screaming at you that “shifting has to be real, there is so much life to be lived”. though, you cannot logic your way through shifting, you do not need to eliminate one voice & instead bring them together.

be warned, this is not an easy process & takes great emotional strength & patience with yourself as you find ways internally to satisfy both sides of yourself. i don’t have those answers but do not give into the temptation to be pulled into a daydream to cope with these conflicting beliefs. you are seemingly a smart person even if grades or test scores do not or have not shown that in the past. you have a unique way of going about both your current reality & every one you experience.

✦

thank you for reading. i hope this resonates ! 🫂🤍

[cosmerelists]

Cosmere Characters in Costco

The title says it all, really.

[Previously: Cosmere characters in Ikea]

1. Wayne & Marasi

Marasi: Wayne...is that another new hat? Wayne: Why yes, dearie. I'm now Egrid Sternsberger, a little old lady who simply must try one of those mini hamburgers! Marasi: ...I think they'll give you multiple samples if you just ask. You don't have to keep switching hats. Wayne: Now, where would be the fun in that?

2. Shallan, Veil, Radiant

Radiant: Now, remember--it requires a majority vote before we make any big impulse purchases. Shallan: This vodka bottle is the size of my torso and will therefore last a long time. Veil: That's a good reason. Radiant: ...I'll just get another cart.

3. Ham and Dockson

Ham: Hey, do you know where Kelsier went off to? For that matter, where's Vin? Dockson: [Points silently upwards, to where Vin & Kelsier crouch on top of those big, metal, Costco warehouse shelves, mistcloaks rippling] Dockson: They like to be high. Ham: W-We're inside! How is there a breeze?!

4. Lift & Wyndle

Lift: Man, that was great! Lift: I stole food from every one of those little stands and nobody caught me! Wyndle: Mistress, like I keep telling you, those stands are giving away the free samples! There was no need to-- Lift: I am the greatest thief of all time!

5. Painter and Yumi

Painter: Please let me get another cart. Yumi: I said we don't need another cart! Painter: Y-You've stacked the cart so high that people are afraid to come within six feet of us! Yumi: Who do you think you're talking to? I can go way higher than this! Painter: Yumi please

6. Adolin & Kaladin

Adolin: Ta-da! What do you think? Kaladin: About your...clothes? Adolin: Yeah! It's all from here! Adolin: I got shorts with lots of pockets, this colorful buttoned shirt, this big hat, these sunglasses--even these cool plastic shoes with holes for airflow AND these socks! Adolin: I am going to revolutionize fashion. Kaladin: ... Adolin: What? Even Wit liked it! Kaladin: I'll be going now. Adolin: Wait! I got a matching outfit for you too! Kaladin come baaaack!

7. Tress & Charlie

Tress: Wow, this one is amazing too! Tress: It's a bit bent and a bit stained, but you can really see that it's been on a journey. Tress: Oooh! This one's an interesting shape! I think it was for strawberries! Charlie: Man, and to think they just give all of these cardboard boxes away for free!

8. Navani & Rushu

Navani: That is...quite the tower of toilet paper. Rushu: How do you suppose they get the top ones down? Some kind of machine, presumably? Do you think it's stacked for space efficiency or is it meant to inspire awe, as well? Rushu: ...Should I take one from the bottom to see what happens? Navani: ...Just grab one of the ones with the bear on it, for now. Rushu: Later then?

9. Rock & Skar

Rock: I love this place! All the food is sized for a while squad! Rock: Look at this! It's a cooked chicken the size of my HEAD! Skar: I found a rack of ribs that would take two men to carry! Rock: Tonight's stew will be a true wonder.

10. Nale and Szeth

Nale: And here is what I wanted to show you--this icon of justice. Szeth: ...A hotdog the size of my forearm? Nale: Yes. Nale: Do you understand what I am trying to teach you? Szeth: Hotdogs are...justice? Nale: This one is. Nale: The owner declared that the price would remain in stone, and that no change would be permitted while he yet lived. Nale: Lack of change? An enduring ruling? A man willing to stake his life on it? Nale: It is a hotdog of justice indeed, Szeth.

[jovialmoonprincess]

AU: Journey to Redemption (Part 4)

First Part. / The Winter Ball / Champagne Problems / Frost and Thorns

Coriolanus Snow x Fem!reader 

Summary: Y/N, a young idealist in Panem, dreams of making a difference in a post-war society. As the winner of the prestigious Plinth Prize is about to be announced, a mysterious woman unveils a grim fate for Coriolanus Snow, Y/N's nemesis. Offered a chance to alter destiny, Y/N must navigate her conflicting emotions and intervene in pivotal moments to prevent Snow's descent into darkness. The story unfolds against the backdrop of complex relationships, past connections, and the challenges of a changing world, as Y/N grapples with the responsibility of shaping an unexpected destiny and challenging the very fabric of fate.

Warning(s): None, enemy to lovers, back in time, destiny, Snow being in love, Snow being Snow, THIS ONE IS SO SHORT SORRY

A/N: I'm on Wattpad now too, click here to read and vote there: WATTPAD

Frost and Thorns

Y/N observed the white rose with meticulous attention. The thorns, now trimmed, led her to contemplate how long it would take for that flower to wither completely. She had just returned to her apartment after the ball, immersed in palpable fear. Everything she had experienced that night seemed like an illusion, a theatrical representation of something she could barely comprehend. Unraveling the mysteries of Snow became a complex and increasingly frightening task.

The fear that enveloped her was not just personal; it was the apprehension of falling into the enchanting webs of young Snow and, thereby, living a life of misfortune in a country on the brink of ruin. Y/N felt the urgent need to document her feelings, a kind of emotional testament. The notebook, once forgotten on the shelf, became her confidant, a repository for her most intimate thoughts.

With the pen touching the paper, Y/N sought not only to understand the complexity of her emotions but also to leave a trail in case something unimaginable happened. Her younger siblings, Orion and Aria, would be the recipients of her words, and she wanted them to know, even in her absence, the events that surrounded her.

The responsibility of teaching her siblings about the treacherous nature of the Hunger Games and the cunning of the Capitol rested on Y/N. Despite their creative souls, Orion and Aria needed to understand the dangerous game society forced them to play. The analogy of the Capitol as a snake, to be handled with caution, was part of the legacy Y/N tried to impart.

Her thoughts turned to her mother, a figure who, after the death of her father, seemed to carry the weight of the world on her shoulders. She performed her maternal duties with excellence, cooking, caring, and ensuring the well-being of her children. However, Y/N perceived a spirit once free, now contained, as if her mother were constantly immersed in dark thoughts. The vision of the Capitol seemed obscured by veiled conformity, a resignation to an inescapable reality.

The Academy, with its weekday study routine, represented a necessary escape for Y/N. Weekends were sacred, a time to return home and witness the rapid growth of Orion and Aria, an experience that, for her, was simultaneously beautiful and distressing.

Y/N had never feared her own death, but perhaps this absence of fear destined her for a mission that others would avoid. However, she hoped this mission would not be in vain. Her persistent determination was driven by the need to reunite with the mysterious woman, to understand the dark details that eluded her comprehension. The devastating vision of Snow haunted her, but without the context and order of events, the truth remained elusive.

Who was the girl confined in the visions? Why did Sejanus not emerge in her premonitions, and why did Coryo's gaze seem devoid of life? The need to unravel these key moments became an incessant quest, an infinite puzzle challenging her mind. Was it possible to find the answers before it was too late? Uncertainty hung in the air, and Y/N, immersed in these mysteries, was determined to uncover the hidden truths before time caught up with her.

Several days had passed since the reaping. Y/N, sitting on the couch, absorbed in a book for a few hours, decided to take a break and turn on the television. She soon realized that the first act of the Hunger Games was about to begin. Still reeling from recent events, she felt unfocused, as if she were out of tune with reality. The luxurious apartment, all the comforts provided by the Capitol, now seemed like a tangible reminder of her submission to the system. However, she knew she shouldn't complain, as, in a way, she believed that the State and the Academy had an obligation to provide uniforms, food, and accommodations.

As she watched the screen, she witnessed many people being confined in a cage, with a girl in a colorful dress and a boy in red standing out. As the camera zoomed in, she identified Coriolanus and the girl, the same one seen in her vision, being kissed by Coryo through a cell. The scene clicked, and a wave of understanding hit her, bringing tears to her eyes. If the vision was real, the information about Coriolanus becoming a dictator would also be real. Absorbed in her thoughts, she decided to call Tigris, certain that her friend would share her shock.

"Hello? Tigris?"

"Y/N!! I was about to call you."

"Are you watching the Games?"

"Absolutely. Did you see the reaping? Everyone is talking about it."

"I don't like watching the reaping," Y/N admitted, having given up on following this event years ago. It was not something pleasant to witness.

"Y/N," Tigris seemed a bit cautious, "Coryo's tribute is the girl from District 12, Lucy Gray. She's from a circus family. She put a snake in the mayor's daughter's dress, and after that, he attacked her, but she put on a show. LITERALLY, she started singing and dancing, and now the Capitol can't take their eyes off her."

It was a lot of information to process. Y/N wanted to know more.

"Wow. And how did Coriolanus end up in a cage?"

"I don't know, but yesterday, I encouraged him to get close to her. She must be confused, scared, and angry. It seems like her name was deliberately placed there."

Y/N approached the TV slowly. She noticed the rose behind her ear, the same rose resting on her nightstand. Coryo and Lucy Gray seemed like an odd couple. It would be a funny scene if they weren't in a monkey cage.

"For sure," replied Y/N, ending the conversation. She said goodbye to Tigris and returned to her thoughtful book. Her stomach was churning; fear for Panem's future haunted her, and the sight of Coryo so close to another girl stirred a strange feeling. Holding hands, smiling, it was a strange scene for her, even though she was used to seeing the boy being friendly with everyone. Something about Lucy Gray made her feel a flutter in her stomach. Her disposition, beauty, irreverence, friendliness, courage, and the ability to capture young Snow's attention.

A week later, Y/N found Sejanus in the academy corridor and sat beside him.

"How's the mentoring going?" she asked, her interest genuine, knowing that mentoring for the Hunger Games was not something Sejanus embraced with enthusiasm.

"Not very well."

"Why?" she inquired, aware that there was more behind Sejanus's downcast expression.

"Marcus... he was my classmate before I came here. We weren't exactly friends, but we weren't enemies either. One day, I caught my finger in the door, and he grabbed snow from the window sill to try to reduce the swelling. He didn't even ask the teacher; he just went and did it. And now I'm his mentor. And he's going to win. Anyone would be happy with him."

Y/N was speechless in the face of the emotional burden Sejanus shared. Acting on instinct, she hugged him, seeking to offer some comfort in the face of the distress they shared. Two minutes passed, and the hug seemed to alleviate some of the tension in Sejanus.

"Sejanus, we need to end the Games. We need to free Panem," Y/N whispered, paranoid that someone might overhear. "All of this is madness."

"I know. What are we doing? Putting children in an arena to kill each other? It's wrong in so many ways. Animals protect the young of their species, don't they? We do too. We try to protect the children! It's part of us as human beings. Who really wants to do this? It's not natural!" Sejanus vented, and for the first time in a month, Y/N felt the urge to just listen. Normally, it was she who freaked out about this. She felt lighter. "It's cruelty. It goes against everything I believe is right in the world. I can't be part of this."

"Don't do anything you might regret later, Sejanus. We're few against many. We need a plan, something smart. We have to think calmly. Don't be impulsive. Don't put yourself in danger. The Capitol is treacherous." Y/N spoke as if she were uttering a small prayer for Sejanus to absorb every word. It was advice she repeated to herself as a motto.

"Y/N..." Sejanus began. There was no time to finish the sentence because Coriolanus interrupted the conversation.

"Satyria is waiting for us for the seminar, Sejanus," said a stern Snow, noticing the proximity between Sejanus and Y/N. "Hurry up." Coryo didn't even look into Y/N's eyes. He seemed resentful.

The tension in the air revealed the complicated dynamic between the three. The unspoken words echoed through the academy corridors, and Y/N knew that, in the face of uncertainties and imminent dangers, her decisions would shape the fate of Panem.

"JERK." Y/N was furious about how the boy had treated her earlier. "Snow always falls on top of everything. Maybe it's time for him to fall, stumble, and hit his face on the ground to learn not to be so arrogant." Y/N murmured to herself, lying on her bed, replaying the morning scene.

_____________________________

Hi guys, I'm finally on vacation from college. I will be able to update here more frequently. I will post the next chapter when we reach 60 likes on the fic. And also thanks for the votes <3 I KNOW THIS ONE IS SHORT SORRY I will compensate in the next with a lot of FLUFF.

Taglist: @shari-berri@h-l-vlovesvintage@tea-bobba@daenerysqueenofhearts @commanderfreethatdust @glxzillx

TAGLIST AND REQUESTS ARE OPEN!!!!!

[sepdet]

To nobody's surprise (except followers of the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party), this excerpt is chilling:

In May 2020, Fred attended a meeting with Trump at the White House alongside several health advocates, as well as Trump’s former Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar and Brett Giroir, the former assistant secretary for health. At first, things were going well.

[CW: extreme ableism and gratuitous cat photos below the cut. The latter is in no way meant to make light of the former.]

“The meeting I had assumed would be a quick handshake hello with Donald had turned into a 45-minute discussion in the Oval Office,” Fred wrote. “Donald seemed engaged, especially when several people in our group spoke about the heart-wrenching and expensive efforts they’d made to care for their profoundly disabled family members, who were constantly in and out of the hospital and living with complex arrays of challenges.”

After the meeting concluded, however, Trump called his nephew back in to speak with him.

“I thought he had been touched by what the doctor and advocates in the meeting had just shared about their journey with their patients and their own family members,” Fred wrote. “But I was wrong.”

He recalled his uncle’s words to him: “‘Those people …’ Donald said, trailing off. ‘The shape they’re in, all the expenses, maybe those kinds of people should just die.’” Fred wrote that he hadn’t known how to respond to the former president’s comment, so he quickly left

But Trump’s callous, inhuman attitude toward Americans with disabilities did not end there. Fred recounted a later interaction with his uncle, where he had called the former president to ask for help buoying the fund that supported his son’s care.

Fred wrote that his uncle didn’t seem convinced. “‘I don’t know,’ he finally said, letting out a sigh. ‘He doesn’t recognize you. Maybe you should just let him die and move down to Florida.’

“Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear Donald say that. It wasn’t far off from what he’d said that day in the Oval Office after our meeting with the advocates. Only that time, it was other people’s children who should die. This time, it was my son,” Fred wrote.

This time, Fred hit back, he wrote. “‘No, Donald,’ I said. ‘He does recognize me.’”

Oop, there it is: Donald Trump, eugenicist.

Childless cat lady reaction:

You can't imagine what it was like going through the pandemic as a medically vulnerable person, watching the President encouraging people to drop precautions against spreading a deadly disease. He forced me to self-isolate even more, because I couldn't enter any building without encountering unmasked people before there was a vaccine. "Childless cat lady?!" Fuck you, Vance, that cat was my life support when Trump threw us under the bus.

Which reminds me, I need to order the next $6000 injection I've had to take since COViD plus arthritis turned my immune system into a hit squad against my own organs.

Trump would tell my father, who pays my medical bills, to let me die.

And I'm keenly aware how lucky I am to have family to support me, unlike all the people like me who did die.

@pumpkin-belly passed away peacefully in my lap in May. I spent more on an elderly cat’s medical bills than a billionaire was willing to spend on his own great-nephew. That bighearted orange fluffball was worth infinitely more than the orange carbuncle running for president.

Whom I don't trust not to follow through with his notions of eugenics if he is reelected.

Avenge Pumpkin. Defend disabled people. Vote blue. (Please)

[mariacallous]

Why did a popular, effective, and by nearly all accounts benign English and Language Arts curriculum called Wit & Wisdom, which has been used across the country, spark organized backlash in a thriving school district in suburban Nashville, drawing accusations that it promoted “gender fluidity,” an obsession with skin-color differences, and even cannibalism? In exploring this question, Paige Williams investigates the rising influence of a new activist group called Moms for Liberty, with shadowy origins and the ability to “accept unlimited dark money,” which describes itself as standing up “for parental rights at all levels of government.” Much of that fight has been taking place at the school-board level, where the concept of critical race theory—“a complex academic framework that examines the systemic ways in which racism has shaped American society,” as Williams describes it, which is “explored at the university level or higher”—has become a rallying cry for angry parents, and an umbrella definition for every seeming progressive affront to cultural conservatism both in and out of the classroom. Williams’s story is deeply reported, nuanced, and essential reading for understanding how we’ve reached this fraught and escalating political battle inside American education.

In August, 2020, Williamson County Schools, which serves more than forty thousand students in suburban Nashville, started using an English and Language Arts curriculum called Wit & Wisdom. The program, which is published by Great Minds, a company based in Washington, D.C., wasn’t a renegade choice: hundreds of school districts nationwide had adopted it. Both Massachusetts and Louisiana—states with sharply different political profiles—gave Wit & Wisdom high approval ratings.

The decision had followed a strict process. The Tennessee State Board of Education governs academic standards and updates them every five or six years, providing school districts with an opportunity to switch curricula. Williamson County Schools assembled a selection committee—twenty-six parents, twenty-eight elementary-school teachers of English and Language Arts. The committee presented four options to teachers, who voted on them in February, 2020. Wit & Wisdom was the overwhelming favorite. After the selection committee ratified the teachers’ choice, the school board, which has twelve members, unanimously adopted Wit & Wisdom, along with a traditional phonics program, for K-5 students.

Great Minds’s promotional materials explain that Wit & Wisdom is designed to let students “read books they love while building knowledge of important topics” in literature, science, history, and art. By immersing students in “content-rich” topics that spark lively discussion, the curriculum prepares them to tackle more complicated texts. The materials are challenging by design: studies have shown that students read better sooner when confronted with complex sentences and advanced vocabulary. Wit & Wisdom’s hundred and eighteen “core” texts, which range from picture books to nonfiction, emphasize diversity, but not in a strident way. They provide “mirrors and windows,” allowing readers both to see themselves in the stories and to learn about other people’s lives. The curriculum assigns or recommends portraits of heralded pioneers: Leonardo da Vinci, Sacagawea, Clara Barton, Duke Ellington, Ada Lovelace. The lessons revolve around readings, augmented with paintings, poetry, speeches, interviews, films, and music: in the module “A Hero’s Journey,” students explore an illustrated retelling of the Odyssey alongside the Ramayana, a Sanskrit epic, while also discussing “Star Wars.” A section on “Wordplay” pairs “The Phantom Tollbooth” with Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First” routine.

Elsewhere in Tennessee, teachers were saying that Wit & Wisdom improved literacy. The superintendent of Lauderdale County, a rural area where nearly a quarter of the population lives below the poverty line, published an essay reporting that his district’s teachers had noticed “an enormous difference in students’ writing” after implementing the curriculum. Wit & Wisdom encourages students to discuss readings with their families—a father in Sumner County, northeast of Nashville, was pleased that his daughters now talked about civil rights and the American Revolution at dinner.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Wit & Wisdom became the target of intense criticism. At first, the campaign in Williamson County was cryptic: stray e-mails, phone calls, public-information requests. Eric Welch, who was first elected to the school board in 2010, told me that the complainers “wouldn’t just e-mail us—they would copy the county commission, our state legislative delegation, and state representatives in other counties.” He said, “It was obviously an attempt to intimidate.”

The school board is an American institution whose members, until recently, enjoyed visibility on a par with that of the county tax collector. “There’s no glory in being a school-board member—and there shouldn’t be,” Anne McGraw, a former Williamson County Schools board member, said on a local podcast last year. Normally, the district’s public meetings were sedate affairs featuring polite exchanges among civic-minded locals. The system’s slogan was: “Be nice.”

In May, 2021, as the district finished its first academic year with Wit & Wisdom, women wearing “Moms for Liberty” T-shirts began appearing at school-board meetings. They brought large placards that contained images and text from thirty-one books that they didn’t want students to read. In public comments and in written complaints, the women claimed that Wit & Wisdom was teaching children to hate themselves, one another, their families, and America. “Rap a Tap Tap,” an illustrated story about the vaudeville-era tap dancer Bill (Bojangles) Robinson, by the Caldecott medalists Leo and Diane Dillon, harped on “skin color differences.” A picture book about seahorses, which touched on everything from their ability to change color to the independent movement of their eyes, threatened to “normalize that males can get pregnant” by explaining that male seahorses give birth; the Moms suspected a covert endorsement of “gender fluidity.” Greco-Roman myths: nudity, cannibalism. (Venus emerges naked from the sea; Tantalus cooks his son.)

The Moms kept attending school-board meetings and issuing complaints. Curiously, though they positioned themselves as traditionalists, they often borrowed “woke” rhetoric about the dangers of triggering vulnerable students. Readings about Ruby Bridges—who, in 1961, became the first Black child to attend an all-white school in New Orleans—exposed students to “psychological distress” because they described an angry white mob. (Bridges, in a memoir designed for young readers, wrote, “They yelled at me to go away.”) The Moms also declared that, though they admired Martin Luther King, Jr.,’s iconic line about judging others “on the content of their character,” the book “Martin Luther King, Jr. and the March on Washington” was unacceptable, because it contained historical photographs—segregated drinking fountains, firefighters blasting Black Americans with hoses—that might make kids feel bad. The Moms considered it divisive for Wit & Wisdom to urge instructors to remind students that racial slurs are “words people use to show disrespect and hatred towards people of different races.”

At one meeting, Welch watched, stunned, as a Moms member said, “You are poisoning our children,” and “Wit & Wisdom must go!” Welch told me, “They went from zero to a hundred. Everything from them was aggressive, and threatening in nature.” He said, “It was not ‘Let’s have a dialogue.’ It was ‘Here are our demands.’ ”

When the women in T-shirts first showed up, Welch had never heard of Moms for Liberty, and he didn’t recognize its members. The group’s leader, Robin Steenman, was in her early forties, with shoulder-length blond hair; in coloring and build, she resembled Marjorie Taylor Greene. Board of Education members struggled to understand why she’d inserted herself into a matter that didn’t concern her: Steenman had no children in the public schools.

Moms for Liberty members soon escalated the conflict, publicly asserting that Williamson County Schools had adopted Wit & Wisdom hurriedly, and in violation of state rules. The school board still wasn’t sure what Moms for Liberty was—who founded it, who funded it. Nevertheless, the district assembled a reassessment team to review the curriculum and the adoption process. At a public “work session” in June, 2021, the team announced that, after a preliminary review, it hadn’t found any violations of protocol. Teachers had spent a full workday familiarizing themselves with Wit & Wisdom before implementing it. As Jenny Lopez, the district’s curriculum director, explained, “Teachers actually had more time than they’ve ever had to look at materials.”

The superintendent, Jason Golden, urged his colleagues to take parental feedback seriously, including worries that certain Wit & Wisdom content was too mature for young kids. For example, there were gruesome details in books about shark attacks and about war. Golden told the board, “These are real concerns.” Yet Golden also recalled telling a Moms for Liberty representative how much he trusted the district’s processes for evaluating curricula.

The review committee ultimately concluded that Wit & Wisdom had been an over-all success; still, administrators decided to survey teachers quarterly about how the curriculum was working. They limited access to the gorier images in one Civil War book and imposed similar “guardrails” involving “Hatchet,” a popular young-adult novel in which a character attempts suicide. “Walk Two Moons,” a novel by the Newbery Medal winner Sharon Creech, about a daughter’s quest to find her missing mother, was eventually removed from the Williamson version of the program, not because its content was deemed objectionable but, rather, to adjust the pacing of one fourth-grade module. Golden, who is tall and genial, told the board members, “The overwhelming feedback that we got was: ‘Man, can’t we just read something uplifting in fourth grade?’ And we felt the same way!”

At the work session, Golden shared one end of a conference table with Nancy Garrett, the board’s chair. Garrett, who has rectangular glasses and a blond bob, is from a family that has attended or worked in Williamson County Schools for three generations. She had won the chairmanship, by unanimous vote, the previous August. At one point, she asked an assistant superintendent who had overseen the selection and review of Wit & Wisdom whether “the concept of critical race theory” had come up during the process. No, the assistant superintendent said.

Moms for Liberty members were portraying Wit & Wisdom as “critical race theory” in disguise. Garrett found this baffling. C.R.T., a complex academic framework that examines the systemic ways in which racism has shaped American society, is explored at the university level or higher. As far as the board knew, Williamson County Schools had never introduced the concept. Yet there had been such a deluge of references to it that Garrett had delved into her old e-mails, in an unsuccessful attempt to identify the origins of the outrage. She told her colleagues, “I guess I’m wondering what happened.”

In September, 2020—four months after the murder of George Floyd, two months before the Presidential election, and a month into Williamson County Schools’ use of Wit & Wisdom—Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist, appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show, on Fox News, and called critical race theory “an existential threat to the United States.” Rufo capitalized on the fact that, given C.R.T.’s academic provenance, few Americans had heard of the concept. He argued that liberal educators, under the bland banner of “diversity,” were manipulating students into thinking of America not as a vibrant champion of democracy but as a shameful embodiment of white supremacy. (As he framed things, there were no in-between positions.) Rufo later called C.R.T. “the perfect villain”—a term that “connotes hostile, academic, divisive, race-obsessed, poisonous, elitist, anti-American views.”

Rufo found a receptive ear in President Donald Trump, who was already ranting about “The 1619 Project,” the collection of Times Magazine essays in which slavery is placed at the heart of the nation’s founding. On Twitter, Trump had warned that the Department of Education would defund any school whose classroom taught material from the project. Trump conferred with Rufo and banned federal agencies from conducting “un-American propaganda training sessions” involving “critical race theory” or “white privilege.” Trump said that Black Lives Matter protests were proliferating not because of anger over police abuses but because of “decades of left-wing indoctrination in our schools.” Establishing a “1776 Commission,” he urged “patriotic moms and dads” to demand that schools stop feeding children “hateful lies about this country.” (The American Historical Association condemned the Administration’s eventual “1776 Report,” highlighting its many inaccuracies and arguing that it attempted to airbrush history and “elevate ignorance about the past to a civic virtue.”)

Nearly nine hundred school districts nationwide were soon targeted by anti-C.R.T. campaigns, many of which adopted language that closely echoed Trump’s order not to teach material that made others “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex.” In some red states, the vague wording was enshrined as law. Republicans filed what became known as “anti-C.R.T.” bills; they were seemingly cut and pasted from templates, with similarly phrased references to such terms as “divisive concepts” and “indoctrination.”

Williamson County Schools was uneventfully wrapping up its first term with Wit & Wisdom when, in early December, 2020, the American Legislative Exchange Council, which generates model legislation for right-leaning lawmakers, hosted a Webinar about “reclaiming education and the American dream.” A representative of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank, warned that elements of a “Black Lives Matter curriculum” were “now in our schools.” Rufo—correctly predicting that Joe Biden, then the President-elect, would abolish Trump’s executive order—urged state legislators and governors to take up the fight.

Continuing the agitation wasn’t just an act of fealty to Trump; it was cunning politics. The fear that C.R.T. would cause children to become fixated on race has resonated with enough voters to help tip important elections. Last November, Glenn Youngkin, a candidate for the governorship of Virginia, won an upset victory after repeatedly warning that the “curriculum has gone haywire”—and promising to sign an executive order banning C.R.T. from schools. Jatia Wrighten, a political scientist at Virginia Commonwealth University, told the Washington Post that Youngkin had “activated white women to vote in a very specific way that they feel like is protecting their children.”

Days after the alec Webinar on “reclaiming education,” three women in Florida filed incorporation papers for Moms for Liberty, Inc., later declaring that their “sole purpose” was to “fight for parental rights” to choose what sort of education was best for their kids. One of the organization’s founders, Tina Descovich—who had recently lost reëlection to the school board of Brevard County, Florida, after opposing pandemic safety protocols—soon appeared on Rush Limbaugh’s show. Declaring plans to “start with school boards and move on from there,” she said of like-minded parents, “It sounds a little melodramatic, but there is evil working against us on a daily basis.” maga media—“Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Breitbart—showcased Moms for Liberty. Media Matters, the liberal watchdog, argued that influential right-wing media figures were essentially “recruiting their eager audience” for the Moms’ campaign.

Moms for Liberty, which is sometimes referred to as M4L or MFL, is so new that it is hard to parse, from public documents, what its leaders are getting paid. (The founders say that the chairs of local chapters are volunteers.) The group describes itself as a “grassroots” organization, yet its instant absorption by the conservative mediasphere has led some critics to suspect it of being an Astroturf group—an operation secretly funded by moneyed interests. Moms for Liberty registered with the I.R.S. as the kind of social-welfare nonprofit that can accept unlimited dark money.

The leaders had deep G.O.P. connections. One, Marie Rogerson, was a successful Republican political strategist. The other, Bridget Ziegler, a school-board member in Sarasota County, is married to the vice-chair of the Florida G.O.P., Christian Ziegler, who told the Washington Post, “I have been trying for a dozen years to get twenty- and thirty-year-old females involved with the Republican Party, and it was a heavy lift to get that demographic. . . . But now Moms for Liberty has done it for me.” Moms for Liberty worked with the office of Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, to help craft the state’s infamous “Don’t Say Gay” legislation, which DeSantis signed into law this past March; it forbids instruction on “sexual orientation or gender identity” in “kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate.”

A national phalanx of interconnected organizations—including the Manhattan Institute, where Rufo is a fellow, and a group called Moms for America—supported the suite of talking points about C.R.T. According to NBC News, in a single week last year Breitbart alone published seven hundred and fifty posts or articles in which the theory was mentioned. Glenn Beck, the right-wing pundit, declared that C.R.T. is a “poison,” urging his audience, “Stand up in your community and fire the teachers. Fire them!”

On March 15, 2021, Rufo, in a tweet thread, overtly described a key element of the far right’s evolving strategy: “We have successfully frozen their brand—‘critical race theory’—into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category.” He added, “The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory.’ ”

Williamson County has some of Tennessee’s top-ranked schools. “That’s why people move here,” Eric Welch, the longtime school-board member, told me. He describes the school system as an economic “asset that pays off.” Williamson County has the state’s second-lowest unemployment rate and the highest property values: the median home value exceeds eight hundred thousand dollars.

It is not a diverse place. Eighty-eight per cent of residents are white. Ninety-five per cent of the school district’s teachers are white. Until September, all twelve school-board members and the superintendent were white. A Confederate monument anchors the town square of the county seat, Franklin. The square was publicly marked as a former slave market only three years ago. The Confederate flag still flies prominently in some areas. When the white father of Black children recently complained about this at a school-board meeting, a man in the audience sneered, “We’re in the South! ”

In 2018, several parents joined forces to point out that schools in Williamson County could work harder to be welcoming to children of color. The group, which became known as the Cultural Competency Council, included Black, Asian American, Jewish, and L.G.B.T.Q.+ residents. A school-district official who served as a liaison to the council created videos for teacher training and development, including one about privilege. That video’s language had clearly been calibrated to preëmpt defensive reactions: a narrator underscored that the concept of privilege was “not meant to suggest that someone has never struggled or that success is unearned.” Even so, the conservative media pounced: the Tennessee Star said that the video took viewers on a guilt trip about “the perks white males supposedly have that others do not, America’s supposed dysfunctional history, and how unfair it all is.” Such views have played well in a county that Trump carried twice, both times by more than twenty points. (The Cultural Competency Council has been disbanded.)

In 2020, Revida Rahman and another parent co-founded an anti-racism group, One WillCo, after Black parents chaperoning field trips to local plantations were astonished to see slavery depicted as benign. Rahman told me that some presentations suggested that “the slaves didn’t really have it that bad—they lived better than we do, they had their food provided, they had housing.” She added, “I beg to differ.” At a school that one of Rahman’s sons attended, some white classmates had mockingly linked arms as if to represent Trump’s border wall.

One WillCo especially wanted the school system to address the fact that it had a record of disproportionately punishing students of color—a recent revelation. Moreover, some teachers used racially insensitive materials in their classrooms: in an assignment about the antebellum economy, students were instructed to imagine that their family “owns slaves,” and to “create a list of expectations for your family’s slaves.”

On February 15, 2021, the school board hired a mother-and-son team of diversity consultants to gauge the depth of the district’s problems with racism, bullying, and harassment, and to recommend solutions. A conservative board member, Jay Galbreath, forwarded information about the consultants to influential local Republicans, including Gregg Lawrence, a county commissioner, and Bev Burger, a longtime alderman in Franklin. In an e-mail, Lawrence complained to Galbreath that hiring the consultants was the type of thing that would lead to “the politicization of teaching in America where every subject is taught through the lens of race.” He wrote, “These young people who have been protesting, looting and burning down our cities in America are doing so because they don’t see anything about America worth preserving. And why is that? Because our public schools and universities taught them that America is a systemically racist nation founded by a bunch of bigoted slave owning colonizers.”

This exchange was eventually made public through an open-records request, which also revealed that Burger had helped edit what has been called the foundational complaint against Wit & Wisdom: a month after the diversity consultants were hired, the parents of a biracial second grader e-mailed school officials to complain that the curriculum had caused their son to be “ashamed of his white half.” Burger wrote of her edits, “See what you think.” She cc’d Lawrence, who forwarded the communications to Galbreath and another school-board member, Dan Cash, a fellow-conservative who had won his seat in 2014, during a Tea Party wave. The county commissioner told the school-board members, “Here is more evidence that we are teaching critical race theory,” and urged them to “get rid of” Wit & Wisdom.

A few weeks later, on March 22nd, the school board’s monthly meeting took place on Zoom, because of the pandemic. Robin Steenman appeared before the board for the first time. Wearing a cream-colored sweater and dangly earrings, she presented herself simply as a concerned resident who wanted school officials to reject any diversity proposal that involved “The 1619 Project, critical race training, intersectionality.” She worried aloud that a recent proposal in California to mandate a semester of ethnic studies would be “paraded as a blueprint for the rest of the country.”

Steenman, who appeared to be reading from notes, asserted that parents in Virginia were being blacklisted for “speaking out.” In Pennsylvania, an elementary school had “forced fifth graders to celebrate Black communism and host a Black Power rally.” In North Carolina, a teacher had described parents as “an impediment to social justice.” In Ohio, C.R.T. “had to be removed from the curriculum, because the students were literally turning on each other.” Steenman cited no sources. She said, “If you give them an inch”—then changed course. Dropping the “them,” she declared, “If you give one inch to this kind of teaching, then you’re gonna subject yourself to the whole spectrum.”

Several weeks later, Steenman started the Williamson County chapter of Moms for Liberty, building on the e-mail sent by the parents of the biracial child and harnessing the furious energy of families who were already accusing the school board of “medical tyranny” for requiring students to wear masks. This vocal minority had been particularly incensed at one school-board member, Brad Fiscus, a former science teacher whose wife, Michelle, a pediatrician, was Tennessee’s chief vaccine officer. Williamson County is a Republican pipeline to state and national office: the governor, Bill Lee, is from there; Marsha Blackburn, the maga senator, began her political career as a county commissioner there. In July, 2021, the state fired Michelle Fiscus after conservative lawmakers objected to her “messaging” in support of covid-19 vaccinations; afterward, Brad Fiscus resigned from the school board and the family moved to the East Coast. For right-wing extremists, the obvious lesson was that rage tactics worked. That August, one school-board meeting nearly ended in violence when two enraged men followed a proponent of masks to his vehicle, screaming, “We can find you!”

Moms for Liberty emphasizes the importance of being “joyful warriors”—relatable women who can rally their communities. A founder once explained, “This fight has to be fought in their own backyard.” The organization may have seen Steenman as particularly well suited to winning over Williamson County residents: she was a former B-1-bomber pilot now raising three small children. Her husband, Matt, was also ex-Air Force—fighter jets. They moved to Williamson County five years ago, from Texas.

Another member of their fraternity was John Ragan, a former Air Force fighter pilot who’d been elected as a Republican to the Tennessee General Assembly in 2010. Ragan, a former business consultant from the city of Oak Ridge, had been listed as an alternate on alec’s education task force. (He says that he does not recall attending any meetings.) He’d once crafted legislation to ban K-8 teachers from using materials “inconsistent with natural human reproduction” in the classroom. (It failed.)

Early last year, as Moms for Liberty was receiving its first wave of national media attention, Ragan introduced “anti-C.R.T.” legislation. He wanted to ban teaching about white privilege or any other concepts that might cause students “discomfort or other psychological distress” because of their race or sex. The wording parroted talking points from Moms for Liberty, which parroted Trump, who parroted Rufo. Around the time that Moms for Liberty members began showing up at Williamson County school-board meetings, Steve Bannon, the former Trump adviser, said on his video podcast that “the path to save the nation is very simple—it’s going to go through the school boards.” Calling mothers “patriots,” he urged a “revolt.”

At a committee meeting of Tennessee House members, Ragan promoted his legislation by claiming that he’d heard about a seven-year-old Williamson County girl who had had suicidal thoughts, and was now in therapy, because she was ashamed of being white. (No such family has ever publicly come forward.) Two Black Democrats sharply challenged Ragan. Harold Love, a congressman from Nashville, asked him whether the proposed legislation would make it illegal for teachers to even mention “The 1619 Project.” When Ragan replied that instructors could talk about it as long as they taught “both for and against,” Love said, “It’s kind of hard to be ‘for or against’ slavery.” G. A. Hardaway, a congressman from Memphis, argued on the House floor that a law limiting discussion of race, ethnicity, discrimination, and bias contradicted “the very principles that our country was formed on.”

Ragan pushed ahead, arguing that “subversive factions,” “seditious charlatans,” and “misguided souls” were creating “artificial divisions” in a “shameless pursuit of political power.” His bill passed. Senator Raumesh Akbari, who chairs the Tennessee Senate Democratic Caucus, said, “This offensive legislation pretends skin color has never mattered in our country,” adding that “our children deserve to learn the full story.”

Once the Governor signed the bill into law, Moms for Liberty would be able to devise complaints arguing that certain elements of public instruction violated a Tennessee statute. Violators could be fined hundreds of thousands of dollars, potentially draining resources. Steenman, appearing on Blackburn’s video podcast, “Unmuted with Marsha,” let slip a tactical detail: the moment Tennessee’s new law took effect, Moms for Liberty would have a complaint against Wit & Wisdom “ready to go” to the state. Blackburn praised Steenman as “the point of the spear.”

Steenman also appeared on Glenn Beck’s show. As if speaking directly to Governor Lee, she said, “Stop serving the woke-left lobby!” Beck said, “Bill Lee, shame on you!” Lee signed the bill into law on the eve of the anniversary of George Floyd’s murder.

Steenman raised Moms for Liberty’s visibility by putting on events—rented plants, live music, charcuterie. One of them, C.R.T. 101, took place in May, 2021, before a large audience at Liberty Hall, a Franklin auditorium in a renovated stove factory filled with shops and restaurants. A clinical psychologist from Utah, Gary Thompson, came onstage and declared that C.R.T. engenders shame, which can trigger depression, which could “be pushing your kids to suicide.” Thompson, who is Black, showed photographs of his multiracial family: he and his wife, a white pediatric neuropsychologist, have six children. Thompson joked, awkwardly, that the overwhelmingly white audience sure didn’t look like members of the K.K.K. He noted that he’d voted for Barack Obama, and said that he approved of Williamson County Schools’ hiring of diversity consultants to assess such problems as racial bullying. He opposed C.R.T., though, because it framed people of color as “victims.” Choking up, Thompson said, “That is not the legacy that my parents left me.”

Moms for Liberty often advances its cause by enlisting Black conservatives, or by borrowing snippets from their public comments. The organization has posted a video clip of Condoleezza Rice saying that white kids shouldn’t have to “feel bad” in order for Black children to feel empowered. Steenman has collaborated with Carol Swain, a political scientist at Vanderbilt, who vocally opposes same-sex marriage and once described Islam as “dangerous to our society.” This past January, Moms for Liberty sponsored a conference organized by Swain, American Dream, whose branding heavily featured images of Martin Luther King, Jr. Before the event, King’s daughter Bernice tweeted an admonition about those who took her father’s “words out of context to promote ideas that oppose his teachings,” adding that Steenman’s chapter, having “sought to erase him,” was now “using him to make money.”

At the C.R.T. 101 gathering, the author of the original complaint against Wit & Wisdom revealed herself onstage to be Chara Dixon, a mom in her forties. Nervously holding a copy of her speech, she introduced herself as a naturalized citizen. (She had emigrated, decades earlier, from Thailand.) Dixon, whose husband, Brian, is white, recalled helping their seven-year-old son with a Wit & Wisdom assignment about a “lonely little yellow leaf.” The audience laughed when she declared, “It was boring.” A book about a chameleon: “Another boring story!” Her son had also read about King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which was “beautiful and uplifting”; but the tale of Ruby Bridges and the “angry white mob” was depressing. Dixon said that in her son’s childhood world “there’s no color.” (She soon became Moms for Liberty’s treasurer.)

Dixon seemed to conflate Wit & Wisdom and C.R.T. Steenman, in an official complaint to the Tennessee Department of Education, wrote, “There does not have to be a textbook labeled ‘Critical Race Theory’ for its harmful tenets to be present in a curriculum.” At the C.R.T. 101 event, she took the stage and told the audience that the threat of “Marxist” indoctrination at school could be vanquished by opposing “activist” teachers, curricula, and diversity-driven policy. An m.c. cheerily ended the evening by reminding everyone that “today’s kids are tomorrow’s voters.”

The Williamson County chapter of M4L held its next big event, Let’s Talk Wit & Wisdom, at a Harley-Davidson franchise in Franklin. Steenman had been having trouble finding a venue when the dealership’s owner offered his showroom. Calling the man a “true patriot,” Steenman presented him with a folded and framed American flag that, she said, had accompanied her on a bombing mission in Afghanistan.

Moms for Liberty had invited the entire school board to the event, but the only members who showed up were the group’s three clear allies. One, a former kindergarten teacher who opposed masking, liked to hug people during breaks at school-board meetings. The other two were Cash and Galbreath, both of whom were up for reëlection on August 4, 2022.

Steenman, gesturing toward a large screen behind her, showed the “findings” of a Moms for Liberty “deep dive” into Wit & Wisdom. She elicited gasps from the audience by saying that the curriculum contained books that depicted “graphic murder,” “rape,” “promiscuity,” “torture,” “adultery,” “stillbirth,” and “scalping and skinning,” along with content that her organization considered to be “anti-police,” “anti-church,” and “anti-nuclear family.” Rhetoric about “empowering the students” was suddenly “everywhere,” she complained. Without presenting any evidence, she claimed that elementary-school students now needed counsellors to help them “overcome the emotional trauma” caused by Wit & Wisdom.

Steenman’s events often strayed far from the particulars of Williamson County Schools. At one of them, the proceedings were interrupted when someone walked onstage and breathlessly announced news from Virginia: Glenn Youngkin, the candidate for governor who’d crusaded against C.R.T., had won. The audience cheered as if Youngkin were one of their own.

Steenman’s claims about Wit & Wisdom were so tendentious that several ardent supporters of the public schools looked her up on social media. Among other things, they discovered a Twitter account, @robin_steenman. On August 9, 2020, Matt Walsh—a columnist for the Daily Wire, the conservative media site co-founded by the pundit Ben Shapiro—had shared a thread by a Philadelphia teacher who expressed concern that meddlesome parents might overhear classroom conversations during online learning and undermine “honest conversations about gender/sexuality.” (The Daily Wire is headquartered in Nashville, and Shapiro has propagated Moms for Liberty’s messaging.) In a retweet of Walsh, @robin_steenman had posted, “You little brainwashing assholes will never get hold of my kids!” After Eric Welch and others publicly challenged Steenman about the tweet—and another one declaring that her children would never attend public schools—the account vanished. (Steenman agreed to an interview, but did not keep the appointment. A Moms for Liberty spokesperson, calling my questions “personal in nature,” largely declined to provide answers.)

Privately, certain defenders of Wit & Wisdom referred to Moms for Liberty members as the Antis. In a sly move, some adopted the seahorse as a symbol of what one parent described to me as “the resistance.” This summer in Williamson County, I saw seahorse stickers on cars and laptops. When I met Rahman for lunch, she was wearing seahorse earrings. At a school-board campaign event for a candidate who opposed Moms for Liberty, a volunteer wore a seahorse pendant on a necklace, alongside a gold cross. At least one person connected to Moms for Liberty had become concerned about the group’s motives and tactics, and was secretly monitoring them from the inside. This person told me, “I’m the one in the trench, and I don’t want to get caught.”

Many Moms and like-minded parents wanted both Wit & Wisdom and Superintendent Golden gone. Golden’s contract was up for annual review before the 2021-22 school year began. (One Moms for Liberty opponent recently tweeted, “The m.o. nationwide is to fire Supt’s and hire ideologues.”) At a meeting where the board planned to vote on Golden’s future, one of the superintendent’s many supporters implored the elected officials to “hold the line” against the “steady attack on our public schools.” The Antis were louder. A man wearing an American-flag-themed shirt shouted, “We, the parents, are awake, we’re organized, and we’re extremely pissed off.” He declared, “We’re gonna replace every board member in here with people just like me. Nothing would make us happier than to surround you with a roomful of American patriots who believe in the Constitution of the United States and Jesus Christ above!”

The Antis jeered at speakers who expressed support for Golden or the district’s diversity efforts. They mocked a woman whose daughters had experienced anti-Asian slurs at school. The mom told the board, “I’ve heard people say that teaching these parts of our history is ‘racist’ or ‘traumatic.’ What’s traumatic is Black, Latino, Asian, and L.G.B.T.Q. kids going to schools where they face discrimination and don’t feel safe.” A local psychologist, Alanna Truss, said, “I’m yet to see a child in my practice who’s been traumatized by our county’s curriculum choices. I have, however, seen many students experiencing trauma due to being discriminated against and bullied within our schools, related to race, religion, gender, and sexuality.”

Six of the school-board members, who serve four-year terms, were coming up for reëlection in August of 2022. (The other six will finish their terms in 2024.) As the Wit & Wisdom furor grew, another component of the right-wing assault on schools locked into place: last fall, state lawmakers passed a bill legalizing partisan school-board elections. Moms for Liberty called the change “a HUGE step forward.”

Educators and policymakers have long believed that public education should operate independently of political ideology. As the magazine Governing put it last year, “The goal of having nonpartisan elections is not to remove all politics” but “to remove a conflict point that keeps the school board from doing its job.” For people who target school boards, conflict has become a tool. In Texas, a PAC linked to a cell-phone company which recently funded the maga takeover of several school boards paid for an inflammatory mail campaign blaming a classroom shooting on administrators who had “stopped disciplining students according to Critical Race Theory principles.” In August, during a panel at cpac, the gathering of conservatives, the former Trump official Mercedes Schlapp warned that, though Republicans were focussed on federal and state elections, “school board elections are critical.” The panel’s title, “We Are All Domestic Terrorists,” derisively referred to recent instructions from Attorney General Merrick Garland to the F.B.I. for devising a plan to protect school employees and board members from threats of violence.

Joining Schlapp onstage was Ryan Girdusky, the founder of the 1776 Project pac, which funnels money to G.O.P. candidates in partisan school-board races. Girdusky boasted that, in 2021, his pac “did fifty-eight elections in seven states and we won forty-two.” Girdusky said that his goal this year is to boost at least five hundred school-board candidates nationwide. He urged the audience to “vote from the bottom up—go from school board and then go all the way up to governor and senator, and we’ll have conservative majorities across the entire electorate.”

Last November, mere weeks after Tennessee lawmakers voted to allow partisan school-board races, Steenman launched a pac, Williamson Families. Its approach was markedly similar to that of Southlake Families, a Texas pac whose orchestrated takeover of a school board in that state has led to attempted book bans. Both pacs have worked with Axiom Strategies, a political-consulting firm that has helped seat high-profile Republicans, including maga figures. Allen West, the chair of the Texas G.O.P., has urged Southlake Families to export its takeover blueprint to suburbs nationwide. Wealthy suburbs are some of America’s purplest districts, and winning them may be key to controlling the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. Anne McGraw, the former Williamson County Schools board member, told me that the advent of Moms for Liberty “shows how hyperlocal the national machine is going with their tactics.” She observed, “Moms for Liberty is not in Podunk, America. They’re going into hyper-educated, wealthy counties like this, and trying to get those people to doubt the school system that brought us here.”

Steenman’s pac quickly took in about a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars—an unusually large amount for local politics in Tennessee. The pac held an inaugural event featuring John Rich, a country singer who had appeared with Trump on “The Celebrity Apprentice.” Rich, who has no apparent connection to Williamson County, has contributed at least five thousand dollars to Steenman’s pac.

Progressives and policy experts have long suspected that right-wing attacks on school boards are less about changing curricula than about undermining the entire public-school system, in the hope of privatizing education. During the alec Webinar about “reclaiming education,” the Heritage Foundation representative declared that “school choice” would become “very important in the next couple of years”; controversies about curricula, he said, were “opening up opportunity for policymakers at the state level” to consider options like charter schools.

This isn’t the first time that the culture wars have taken aim at public education. But Rebecca Jacobsen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University, believes that this era is different, because social media has made it easy for national operatives to stage “a coördinated, concrete” scare campaign designed to drive parents toward alternatives to public schools: “The message, at its core, is: ‘Beware of your public-education system. Make sure your kid’s teachers aren’t up to something.’ ”

The timing of “anti-C.R.T.” legislation is no coincidence. Instead of putting forth a platform, the Republican Party has tried to maintain power by demonizing its opponents and critics as sinister and un-American. In the lead-up to the midterms, the G.O.P.’s alarmism about critical race theory has accompanied fear-mongering about L.G.B.T.Q.+ teachers being “groomers.” Conservative media aggressively promote both campaigns. From Fox News to the Twitter account Libs of TikTok, the messaging has been consistent: many public-school teachers are dangerous.

Lee, the Tennessee governor, has leveraged this discord while trying to reformulate school funding: in January, he announced plans to create fifty new charter schools in partnership with Hillsdale College, a private Christian school in Michigan, whose president, Larry Arnn, headed Trump’s 1776 Commission. The plan partially collapsed after a Tennessee television station aired footage of Arnn, during a private appearance in Williamson County, comparing public education to “the plague” and arguing that teachers are educated in “the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country.” J. C. Bowman, the executive director and C.E.O. of Professional Educators of Tennessee, called Arnn’s comments “reprehensible and irresponsible.” Even Republican politicians backed away. The speaker of the Tennessee House, Cameron Sexton, acknowledged that Arnn had “insulted generations of teachers who have made a difference for countless students.”

Moms for Liberty’s role in the broader war on public schools became ever clearer in July, at the group’s inaugural national summit, in Tampa. DeSantis, who delivered a key address, was presented with a “liberty sword.” Another headliner was Trump’s former Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, whose family has connections to Hillsdale. To an enthusiastic crowd that included Steenman, DeVos declared that the U.S. Department of Education—the agency that she once oversaw—should not exist.

Early this year, Eric Welch, the school-board member, was leaning against seeking reëlection. Both of his sons had graduated—he was the one who handed them their high-school diplomas when they crossed the stage. His wife, Andrea, wanted him to take it easy for a while.

School-board service, which is time-consuming and can be tedious, requires diplomacy, a breadth of knowledge, and the ability to make complex, well-informed decisions. At meetings, Welch, who considered ideologues and bullies a threat to public education, often rebutted misinformation about covid-19 and Wit & Wisdom. At one meeting, he’d pointedly read aloud from a title that he found on a Moms for Liberty site: the book, written by a follower of the John Birch Society, referred to Black people as “pickaninnies.” Rahman, the co-founder of One WillCo, the anti-racism organization, told me, “He came with all the receipts.” Welch’s detractors had declared him arrogant and rude; Rahman called him “a strong advocate for what’s right.”

For Welch’s seat, Steenman’s pac backed William (Doc) Holladay, an optometrist who, like Steenman, had no children in Williamson County Schools. Holladay had shown up at school-board meetings to denounce C.R.T. as “racist.” On Facebook, where he’d railed against pandemic protocols, his posts were routinely flagged or removed because they contained misinformation. His top “news” sources included the Epoch Times, which regularly promotes right-wing falsehoods.

Last year, Charlie Wilson, the president of the National School Boards Association, characterized local school-board members as fundamental guardians “of democracy, of liberty, of equality, of civility and community, and of the Constitution and the rule of law.” Holladay, a felon who believes the conspiracy theory that Trump is still the “legitimate President,” seemed more like an opportunist. In 2008, he’d pleaded guilty to multiple counts of prescription fraud and forgery; the Tennessee Department of Health had put him on probation for “immoral, unprofessional or dishonorable conduct,” noting that he had also worked “while impaired.” The state licensure board later added five more years of probation upon discovering that he’d made “untruthful” claims about “professional excellence or abilities.” (Holladay told me that he has turned his life around.)

When Welch heard that Holladay and other figures he considered to be unsuitable were seeking authority over the schools, he tweeted, “I’m running.” He told his wife, “I don’t know that I can walk away and let these people be in charge.” The “Tennessee School Board Candidate Guide” notes that, for the office of school board, “the best, most capable and most farsighted citizens of each community should be drafted.”

During the campaign, Holladay tried to frame Welch, a lifelong Republican, as a “liberal” for having supported masking and Wit & Wisdom. Welch publicly noted that he had interned for Senator John Warner, of Virginia, and attended the Inauguration of George W. Bush. Holladay, who had no military service, bragged about being a patriot; Welch is an Army veteran.

In a Q. & A. published by One WillCo, candidates were asked to describe their involvement with Williamson County Schools. Welch explained that, in addition to serving on the executive board of the district’s parent-teacher association, he had “run wrestling tournaments as a booster fundraiser, spray painted end zones, worked concessions, volunteered for holiday shows setup/breakdown, built theatre sets, cleaned bleachers, mopped floors.” Holladay’s answers: “Speaking out at school board meetings”; “Helping to lead activist groups in order to effect needed changes.” When asked why he was running, he said that “the school board has largely been operating in a manner that runs counter to the conservative principles that most people who live here hold dear.” This and other answers betrayed profound ignorance of what a school board does.

Moms for Liberty had been broadening its campaign against Wit & Wisdom and was now targeting reading materials available in school libraries, which provided access to the Epic app, a repository of nearly fifty thousand children’s books. In a local news segment, Steenman read aloud, “I-is-for-intersex,” from a book called “The GayBCs,” which was available on Epic, and said, “What parent wants to explain ‘intersex’ to their child that, at this point, doesn’t even understand sex?”

Holladay tried a similar maneuver. During a live-streamed candidate forum, he handed his interviewer a passage from “Push,” the acclaimed novel by Sapphire, and asked him to read it aloud. (If this was the same passage that Holladay later showed me on his cell phone, it began, “Daddy sick me, disgust me, but he sex me up.”) The interviewer was Tom Lawrence, a gentlemanly fixture on AM radio who has been called “the voice of Williamson County.” Lawrence scanned the text and declined to share it with viewers, saying, “It has words like ‘orgasm’ in it.” Holladay, noting that the book could be found in one of the local high schools, declared, “Whoever is responsible for putting that book in the library should be arrested.” (In a tweet, Welch expressed astonishment that a school-board candidate would “call for the arrest of a WCS librarian.”)

As Holladay campaigned, he repeatedly invoked the nationwide partisan divide. In an interview that appeared on YouTube, he declared that conservatives were fleeing blue states for places like Williamson County because the left was trying to “destroy the last remaining refuges of conservatism and patriotism.” If Williamson County “goes blue,” he said, the rest of the state would follow, and if Tennessee “doesn’t stay red” it will be “a huge blow to the country.”

On Election Day, Welch, a wiry ex-wrestler, erected a pole tent outside Hunters Bend Elementary School, a voting precinct. Holladay’s supporters set up nearby. I arrived to find Welch, wearing khaki shorts and a “re-elect eric welch” T-shirt, squaring off in the parking lot with a Holladay supporter who was saying, angrily, “I’ve laid people out for less than that!”

The man, Brian Russell, described Welch as the aggressor—“He shoulder-checked me”—but multiple witnesses characterized the altercation differently. Meghan Guffee, a Republican running for reëlection to the county commission, told me that Russell had demanded to know why Welch had blocked him on social media. Welch, trying to walk away, had responded, “I’m ending this conversation. You’re an ass.”

In a public Facebook post, Russell had declared Welch to be “as bad as a pedophile.” Guffee said that she’d heard Russell, in the parking lot, accuse Welch of having “voted to teach third graders how to masturbate.” (Russell denies this.) Guffee was particularly appalled that her six-year-old daughter, who was with her at the voting site, had witnessed Russell’s hostility. She told me, “That is not how this community does things.”

Before leaving the school grounds, Russell, a painting contractor in his early fifties, told me that he was angry about Wit & Wisdom: “When my daughter comes home and her best friend is Black, and she’s wondering why ‘I’m bad because I’m white. . . . ’ ” This and other comments suggested that his children attended local schools. In fact, Russell’s three children lived in his native state of Ohio.

Throughout America, maga types were targeting education officials. In Maine, a man plastered a school-board member’s photograph on a sign and surrounded it with rat traps, telling NBC News, “This is a war with the left,” and “In war, tactics and strategy can become blurry.” A member of the Proud Boys ran for a school-board seat in California. On September 27th, the American Libraries Association sent an open letter to the F.B.I. director, Chris Wray, asking for help: in the previous two weeks alone, “bombing or shooting threats” had forced the temporary closing of libraries in five states. Tennessee was one of them.

In Williamson County, Moms for Liberty members couldn’t claim ignorance of the beliefs of some of the candidates they and Steenman’s pac supported. Williamson Families donated a thousand dollars to the campaign of an ex-marine who was running for county commissioner, and who had publicly warned the school board, “In the past, you dealt with sheep. Now prepare yourselves to deal with lions! I swore an oath to protect this country from all enemies—foreign and domestic. You harm my children, you become a domestic enemy.”

That guy lost. So did Holladay. Welch beat him by five hundred and fifty-nine votes. Welch was surprised that anybody had voted for Holladay, later telling me, “If you had to design a candidate who is unqualified and should not be on a board of education, that’s what he’d look like.”

Candidates backed by Moms for Liberty members won, however, in two other districts. A Republican who appeared to have no connection to the public schools beat Ken Chilton, who ran as an independent and who, the day after the election, tweeted that Tennessee lawmakers’ decision to allow partisan school-board elections had “created a monster.”

Jay Galbreath, the board member who had forwarded the e-mails about diversity consultants to other conservative politicians, had found himself challenged from the right flank—by a M4L-affiliated candidate whose campaign signs said “reject crt.” As if to prove his opposition to Wit & Wisdom, Galbreath had posted publicly, on Facebook, that progressives were “constantly looking at ways to inject and normalize things like gender identity, the black lives matter movement, and LGBTQ by weaving it into curriculum.” Williamson Strong, a pac composed of local progressives who have long defended the public schools, called for Galbreath’s resignation, noting, “This is pure hate speech, and it has NO place in a position of influence or power over 40,000+ children and their education. It has no place in Williamson County, period.” The group, whose leaders include Anne McGraw, the former school-board member, observed, “All filters have apparently been obliterated now that he’s competing for votes against an MFL-endorsed candidate.” Despite the controversy, Galbreath won reëlection.

A month before the vote, a civil action was filed against Wit & Wisdom: the parents of an elementary-school student sued the school board and various administrators in the district on behalf of a conservative nonprofit that they had just launched, Parents’ Choice Tennessee. The lawsuit’s complaint echoed Moms for Liberty’s assertions that the curriculum’s “harmful, unlawful and age-inappropriate content” represented a “clear violation of Tennessee code.” If the lawsuit succeeds, Williamson County Schools may have to find a new curriculum and pay fines. (Citing the litigation, Williamson County Schools officials declined to comment for this article.)

The lawsuit may have been designed, in part, to give the impression that there was more local opposition to Wit & Wisdom than actually existed. There are eighteen thousand students in the district’s elementary schools, but according to a district report only thirty-seven people had complained about the new curriculum. Fourteen of the complainants had no children in the system.

Rebecca Jacobsen, the Michigan scholar, looks for clues in such data. She said, of the vitriol toward school boards, “Is this a blip, and we’ll rebound? Or are we chipping away at our largest public institution and the system that has been at the center of our democracy since the founding of this country?” She noted that some Americans “don’t trust their schools and teachers anymore,” adding, “That’s radical.”

Moms for Liberty’s campaign, meanwhile, continues to widen. The organization now claims two hundred and forty chapters in forty-two states, and more than a hundred thousand members. It has thrown a fund-raising gala, featuring Megyn Kelly, in which the top ticket cost twenty thousand dollars. In late October, a spokesperson for the Moms told me that the organization—ostensibly a charity—is a “media company.”

The slick rollout of Moms for Liberty has made it seem less like a good-faith collective of informed parents and more like a well-funded operation vying to sway American voters in a pivotal election year. Steenman’s chapter recently announced a slate of upcoming talks: “Gender Ideology,” “Restorative Justice,” “Comprehensive Sex Ed,” “History of Marxism in Education.” I asked Jacobsen whether she thinks that Moms for Liberty members actually believe that a curriculum like Wit & Wisdom damages children. “I don’t know what anybody believes anymore,” she replied. “We seem to have lost a sense of honesty. It may just be about power and money.” ♦

[rubberizer92]

🇵🇱✨ In the dazzling Rubbery Christmas Club, Łukasz from Poland takes center stage! 🎉🌟 Draped in festive allure, Łukasz's attire is a celebration of Poland's Christmas charm and the rubberized revolution. Witness the magic unfold and cast your votes to support Łukasz's journey towards triumph! 🚀💖🗳️

How to Vote: 🔵 Instagram: Like, comment, and share Łukasz's festive post. Boost Yes votes in our Instagram stories, and subtract No votes to elevate Poland's Christmas charm in the competition!

🔵 Tumblr & X: Like, reblog, and share the festive enchantment! Your engagement shapes the destiny of OBEY Season 19!

Vote, embrace the magic, and let Poland shine in the Rubbery Christmas Club! 🌈🎄 #OBEYseason19 #PolishMagic

[fandomgirlz01]

It’s Me And You Forever Pt. 8

Jason Scott x Reader

Prompt?: No

Request?: No

Requested prompt?: No

Edited: Yes

Word count: 5,337

Ko-fi

Masterlist

Warnings Here

You can listen to the story be read out loud here. {Coming soon}

Post Date: September 29th 2022

Post Time: 5:53 pm

Summary: Jason Scott and his childhood best friend have a rough time after an accident, but as they start to recover they meet four other troubled teens. Together the six go on a journey they never thought possible. They all band together as the power rangers to stop Angel Grove’s {and the world’s} destruction. Will they all find the destiny that was chosen for them? More importantly, what happens with y/n and Jason throughout this time? 

Author's Note: I’ve decided that for my New Years resolution I’d learn Italian. With that being said I decided to try and add some into the story. So I used my translator on my phone for some of the Italian in here. I am in no way shape or form fluent in Italian yet, but I hope to be eventually. If you guys see anything wrong with my Italian I am so so sorry and we are not trying to offend or anything. We just thought it’d be cute if the reader had some Italian background. 

Also we now have voting open for Jason snippets!!! You can vote here. Please please please go vote and let us know what you want to see! Now please enjoy the chapter.

Jason’s Pov:

We drive up the hill again and end up passing the van surrounded by officials. On instinct like a feeling knotting up in my stomach, I can feel y/n slowly start to freak out. I reach my hand back and immediately feel y/n’s sweaty hand grip mine tightly. I could care less if her hand is sweaty, all I know is I want to comfort her. 

We all watch as we drive past and I turn to look at Kimberly. She sighs and lifts her hand from the wheel for a moment before putting it back. 

“Let’s just keep going,” Kimberly speaks in a nervous tone. 

I feel y/n’s hand start to shake lightly as we all look back out to the scene again, so I slowly start to caress her hand with my thumb. I only stop when I feel her start to become steady again before she squeezes my hand. I squeeze back and she lets out a sigh as Kimberly continues up the hill. 

After only a few more minutes, Kimberly is parking and we all start to get out of the car. We all walk to where we had been last night, but y/n stops just a few feet from the car. She takes a deep breath in and I know what’s coming. 

“You guys coming or what?” Billy asks as he watches me walk back over to y/n. 

“Yeah. Uhh, just give us a minute, ok?” I ask, making both Kimberly and Billy nod before they walk a little ways away from us. 

When they stop and wait just a little ways away from us, I turn back to y/n. I quickly look her over only to see her gasping like she can’t breathe. 

“J… I..I.. can’t breathe…” y/n pants out as she continues to try to breathe. 

“Hey… hey… you're ok, sweetheart. I’m right here. I’m not leaving you,” I explain to her as I grip onto the sides of her face. 

“Just focus on copying my breathing, ok?” I ask her before nodding along with her when she nods. 

“You’ve got this. You’ve done it before, remember? In… and out... in... and out…” I coach her and smile at her softly as her breathing slowly becomes more and more normal. 

“There ya go, princess. See, you're ok…” I coo as I pull her into a hug. 

She grips onto my shirt as she takes a few more deep breaths in. I rub her back lightly before pulling her back a bit to look at her. 

“Haven’t had a panic attack in a few years, huh?” I make the observation and she giggles lightly as she rolls her eyes. 

“Yeah. You’d think I’d know how to get rid of them by now,” she jokes sarcastically as she rolls her eyes. 

“Hey. No. Don’t go there. I get why you’d panic. This is all scary, but like I promised, I’m staying right here next to you,” I tell her as I reach down and grab her hand. 

I bring her hand up to my lips and press a light kiss to the back of it. She smiles at me and I boop her on the nose. 

“There she is. Come on. You ready to go on?” I ask and she looks up at me, biting her lip like she’s thinking it over. 

“Yeah. Ok. Let’s go,” she agrees with a nod of determination and I smile. 

“There’s my beautiful, determined girl. Come on,” I proudly say with a smile before pulling her along to catch up with the others. 

Once we catch up with them, they start to walk the way we need to go. We walk for a few minutes before coming to the edge of the cliff of the cavern we were in the other night. 

“Guys, look. Look, it’s that guy again,” Kimberly speaks as we come to look down into the cavern. 

I let go of y/n’s hand only for a split second to cup my hands around my mouth. Y/n sticks close to me as I do. 

“Find anything interesting?” I yell out to the guy who seems to be chipping at the wall the same as last night. 

“If I do, I’m keeping it!” The guy yells back at us as I put my hands down, letting y/n grab onto mine again. 

“We know why you’re here!” Kimberly shouts as she gives an exasperated expression as he continues to do what he was doing before. 

“Oh, yeah?” he shouts back before straining up to look at us again. 

“You guys wake up surprised to be alive and jump over a house?” The guy shouts back and y/n grips my arm a little tighter, making me rub circles into her hand again. 

“Yeah! Kinda. Well- no,” Billy shouts back to the guy. “Look, we're different, all right? Everything’s different,” Billy continues to explain and Kimberly looks at me. 

Y/n frowns a little as her grip loosens and I just tighten mine. I try to continue to give her calm feelings as we all stare down at the guy. 

“Uh, you're Zack, right?” Kimberly shouts once she looks away from me and back to the guy. 

“Yup!” Zack yells back as he holds his hand out like he’s bowing. 

“You still go to Angel Grove?” I ask before shifting my feet. 

“Ha! Sometimes!” Zack shouts again, throwing his arms in the air before he goes back to hitting the wall. 

“You know, the other girl was here too, about an hour ago,” Zack shouts again as he now turns and points his ax at us. 

“Hey, you mean that girl right there?” Billy asks as he points to the other girl across from us on the other ledge. 

“Hey! Come on down!” I shout again with my hands up by my mouth. “We should figure this out together!” I continue before putting my hands down again as she starts to climb the rock hill. 

“Whoa,” Kimberly says in shock as we watch her climb. 

“Oh, screw this,” Zack says before running after her. 

“Okay, let me handle this…” Kimberly tells us as she starts to move back. 

“She got up there pretty fast,” Billy tells us as he points to where she just was climbing. 

“No! No! No!“ I yell out as I watch Kimberly take a running start before leaping off the side we’re on. 

She chases after both Zack and the other girl and y/n lets out a light gasp. I shake my head and Billy follows after. I reach out to stop him, but miss him. I groan, rubbing my face before deciding to follow after them. 

I start backing up, but y/n stands in my way. She has her arms crossed as she gives me a look that tells me she isn’t happy. 

“What are you doing?” she asks and I shrug. 

“I’m following them. Come on,” I explain before grabbing her hand. 

“No, J. There’s no way in hell I’m doing any of that,” she denies as she shakes her head and plants her feet. 

“Y/n. Please. Come on. We can fight about it later,” I explain and she huffs before dropping my hand and crossing her arms once again.  

“So we’re just doing everything Kimberly says now, huh?” she asks angrily and I groan as I fight the urge to just pull her with me. 

“No. We are not. I just wanna know what’s happening. Please, sweetheart. I’m not leaving you here. I told you I wouldn’t leave your side,” I practically beg her to come with me and she rolls her eyes. 

“Fine,” she huffs as she drops her arms before getting into a running stance. 

Before I know it she’s off and running after them, climbing up the side of the rock hill. She stops and turns around to look at me. 

“Well, are you coming or not?” she shouts and I shake my head before taking my running leap as well. 

I leap and land right next to where she had before climbing up to be next to her. I give her a small smile, but she only huffs and continues up the hill. I sigh before following after her. 

“You have a coin. We have a coin,” I hear Kimberly say as me, Billy and y/n catch up to the group before coming to a stop. 

“We should just talk about this. I mean, we don’t know what this-” Kimberly continues to talk to the other girl before getting cut off as the other girl turns and starts to run. 

“Whoa! Woah!” All of us guys yell out as she runs till the edge of the cliff and jumps across to the other side. 

“What is wrong with you?” Kimberly whispers out and I see y/n out of the corner of my eye, just shaking her head. 

“Whoa! Oh, you’re crazy! But so am I!” Zach yells out to her while pointing to himself. 

“Whoa, Zach…” Kimberly immediately intervenes. 

“No, I got this…” he tells her as he walks back behind all of us before taking a running start. 

“What are you doing?” I ask him as Billy lets out a lot of whoas. 

Zach runs past us and he lets out a yell as he flies over the canyon. As he falls to the floor he takes the girl in yellow down and we all grimace as they crash into the ground. 

“Hey!” he yells out from the ground as the girl in yellow gets up and he grabs onto her foot. 

“I got her!” he yells over to us and y/n lets out a puff of air that sounds like a chuckle. 

“Get off of me,” the girl in yellow tells him as she kicks her leg so he’ll let go. 

“Just jump over…” he yells to us again as he lets go of the girl in yellow before waving us over. 

“Let's go. Jump with me. Yeah,” Kimberly asks me as she looks at me. 

“No, no, no! Don’t- don’t jump,” Billy immediately protests as Kimberly gets behind us into a running position. 

“Okay…” I agree with Kimberly but hear a scoff, making me look at y/n. 

“What?” I ask her with a raised eyebrow.

“Nothing…” she replies in a cold tone and I groan. 

“Come on what?” I egg her on and she rolls her eyes. 

“Really, it’s nothing, Jason. Just leave it be…” she tells me as she uncrosses her arms and rolls her eyes one last time. 

My face falls when she spits my name out like it’s venom and I pause for a moment before sighing when I look at her again. I rub a hand over my face and she just shrugs. 

“No. It’s som-” I start, but stop as I watch her take a running start before jumping across and landing gracefully on the other side. 

“Ok…” I say as I shake my head, not understanding what just happened. 

I watch as she gets up and stands next to Zach, who asks her something, but I can’t hear what. She frowns before nodding and crossing her arms again, making me sigh in frustration. 

“No. No, y/n, you shouldn’t have jumped. Don’t jump, Jason!” Billy shouts out again with his eyes wide. 

“Don’t jump. Don’t jump,” Billy repeats again in a panic. 

“Ok. I’m gonna jump across with her,” I tell Billy quickly as I point at Kimberly. 

“And then you jump, ok?” I ask him and he shakes his head. 

“Piece o’ cake,” I finish off and he continues to shake his head. 

“No, no, no!” Billy protests before I turn and start to run with Kimberly. 

“D…d..don’t, don’t! Jason! Hey!” I hear Billy shout, but I ignore it and continue to run. 

We run until we come to the edge of the cliff and jump off of it. We start to soar through the air to get across the canyon. 

“That’s not a piece o’ cake!” I hear Billy shout, but I don’t reply because I’m too amazed at the feeling of flying over the cavern. 

We continue to fly though the air and before I know it, Kimberly lands on her feet and comes to a sliding stop. I, on the other hand, full on face-plant into the ground and I hear y/n let out a small hiss. I taste blood in my mouth as I get up on both hands as Kimberly comes up behind me. 

“You alright?” she asks as she grabs just under my armpit to help me up. 

“Yeah, no problem,” I groan out as she helps me up. 

“You got this, Billy!” I yell out to him as I dust off my hands. 

“No, I don’t!” he yells back to me and I walk a little closer to the edge of the cliff. 

“It’s fun,” I tell him before looking at y/n, who still seems mad and I turn back to him. 

“It’s such a far jump!” he shouts back in fear. 

“Come on, let’s go dude!” Zach yells out as he waves him over. 

“Come on, Billy!” Kimberly shouts from beside me. 

“We all did it!” I yell out before I hear a scoff, making me turn. 

“Yeah. Cause he should totally do it just because we all did,” y/n mutters out angrily and I shake my head. choosing not to reply.

My heart aches to know she’s upset with me, but won’t tell me why. I wish I could just pull her aside and calmly talk about it not in front of the others, but now doesn't seem like the time so I’ll just wait till I can. 

“You’ll be fine. I promise. Just jump!” Kimberly yells out and Billy starts to pace from side to side. 

“Come on, do it, dude. Let’s go!” Zach yells out and y/n rolls her eyes. 

I try to reach down and grab her hand in hopes I can comfort her even the slightest bit, but she pulls away before walking over to the girl in yellow. They smile at each other and y/n sits down next to her on the rock she’s on. She puts an arm around her and y/n smiles lightly at her, making me frown. 

I decide to drop it for the moment before looking back over at Billy. He still paces side to side as he mumbles something to himself for a few minutes, probably trying to psych himself up. 

“He’s scared…” Kimberly notes as she points at him. 

“If he’s scared. He's scared. Let him do it in his time,” y/n speaks up still with anger clearly in her voice. 

“He’ll come across, he’s fine,” I tell Kimberly as we watch him continue to psych himself up. 

“Visualize jumping across! And then do it!” I yell out to him and he stops pacing. 

“Come on, you got this!” Zach yells out and Kimberly lets out an okay. 

He turns before taking a running start and screams as he flies through the air. He kicks his legs and moves his arms around as he soars across the canyon, catching more air. 

“Woo hooo!” Zach yells out as I lift my arms. 

“Billy, you got this!” I yell out to him as he gets closer to us. 

“Whoa! Oh shit! Woah!!!” Billy yells out as he gets closer. He lands on the edge of the cliff, gripping the rocks on the side before he starts to try and climb up. 

“Are you ok?” I ask him as I take a step to start walking to him. 

“I got it,” he tells us as he gestures with his hand for us to leave him alone.  

“Come on, climb up. Climb up,” I tell him and he works at it. 

“I did it!” he says as he continues to try and climb up. 

“See, what’d we tell you, Billy? You got it!” I tell him as he finally climbs up before standing up. 

“Told you. See?” Kimberly tells him as I start to clap for him. 

He lets out a whoo and starts to dance as we clap for him, but he loses his balance and falls backward off the edge. 

“Billy!” I yell out as Kimberly and the rest of us rush forward. 

His screams fade out and I start to panic.

“Billy!” I shout as we all look over the edge. “Billy!” I yell out again, but it’s just dead silence. 

“Billy! I yell one more time as we continue to look over the edge for him. 

“Oh, mio Dio…{Oh, my gosh…} Billy,” y/n whispers out from behind me and I take a moment to look up at her to see she has tears in her eyes. 

“We just killed that dude,” Zach asks me and I look at him before looking away again. 

“Way to be blunt, Zach. Yeah I think we did,” y/n tells him in a choked tone. 

“What do we do?” Kimberly asks from behind me. 

“Isn’t it obvious? We need to call 911,” y/n grits out and I just look back down into the cavern. 

“Hey, guys, you gotta come down here!” Billy shouts from below. “It’s water! You gotta see this,” Billy continues as we all collectively let out sighs of relief. 

“Oh, grazie a Dio {Oh, thank God.}. He’s ok…” y/n sighs in relief as she wipes a tear off her cheek. 

It stays silent for a minute more before Kimberly and Zach start to laugh. I get up off the ground and immediately pull y/n into a hug. 

“Yo, all right! I’ll see you guys down there,” Zach tells us before turning lightly. 

“Uhh… bring that crazy girl,” he finishes off before he jumps off the edge letting out a yell as he goes. 

“Come on, you guys, let’s go! Whoo!” I yell out as I push y/n forward a bit. 

“J… don’t you dar-” she starts, but doesn’t finish as I wrap my arms around her before jumping and bringing her with me. 

We free fall and I smile as she keeps a tight hold on me. I let out a chuckle as I realized she has her eyes closed. 

“Sweetheart, you can look. I’m right here,” I speak right next to her ear to make sure she hears me over the wind rushing past us. 

She opens her eyes and a smile makes way onto her face as we continue to fall. We fall for about a minute more before we hit the water. We both sink down a ways before I start to kick, pushing towards the surface. Once she’s able to, she starts to kick with me and we get closer and closer to the surface of the water. 

We all let out gasps as we resurface and grin just as another splash gets us. Looking over to where the splash is, we see Kimberly and the girl in yellow had jumped as well. 

“Welcome to the club!” Zach yells out to all of us. 

‘Sup, crazy girl?” Zach asks as he turns to the girl in yellow as we all just swim around. 

I feel y/n kick out her leg lightly and the girl that’s wearing yellow gives her a look. Y/n then shrugs at her and they both look away from one another. 

“We gotta do that again,” Zach says with a grin. 

We then continue to swim and just hangout for a moment before I look down. I see that I myself seem to be glowing red and y/n orange. 

“Hey, guys. Guys!” I yell out trying to get everyone else’s attention. 

“What?” Zach asks when I finally get their attention. 

“Check out how we glow,” I say in amazement as I look down at the red light under me. 

“Cool. Oh, yeah. I like this,” Zach says in amazement as he chuckles while looking down. 

“I’m blue!” Billy yells out in excitement as I swim over closer to him. 

“That’s not my favorite color, but it’s cool,” he tells me as we continue to look down at our colors. 

“I’m black!” Zach shouts out, making Billy look at him. 

“What?” Billy asks in confusion. 

“I am,” Zach replies as he gives Billy a look. 

“No, you're not!” Billy fights back and Zach just laughs. 

“Y/n, you’re orange!” Billy tells her as he swims over to her. 

“I know. Cool, right? Second favorite color,” she tells Billy with a grin on her face. 

Billy then goes under the water and stays down for a minute before popping back up. I swim over to y/n and she smiles at me. My heart feels lighter now that she is happy and no longer mad.  

“Hey, guys. There’s something down there, follow me,” he tells us as he looks between all of us before going back under. 

I take a deep breath and go to dive, but I stop when I feel a hand grab mine. I turn to see y/n and she gives me a shy smile before nodding her head towards the water. I let out a light chuckle as I squeeze her hand the best I can underwater before we both dive.

We all follow Billy, swimming down for quite a while before coming up to something that looks like a vertical wall of water. Billy slowly puts his hand through it before pulling it back in shock. He carefully puts his hand through the water again, then his face. The rest of us slowly follow him through the wall of water, realizing that we can breathe on the other side. 

Looking around, it looks like we’re on the ceiling of some cave. 

“Where are we?” I ask as we all look around in amazement. 

“I don’t know,” Zach replies as we all continue to still hang there. 

“Jason! I’m sliding!” Billy yells out to me before he falls from the water with a scream. 

Soon we all follow after him and we all fall to the ground of the cave. Billy and Kimberly fall onto their stomachs. I fall onto my stomach as well and y/n falls on top of me. Zach and the other girl fall together before rolling to a stop with her sitting on his waist. 

“Hi,” Zach greets as he looks up at the girl. 

“Again?” she asks before shoving off of him. 

“I am so sorry, J…” y/n apologizes as she quickly scurries off of my back and helps me up. 

“It’s ok, princess. You're not that heavy,” I joke with her and she rolls her eyes. 

“Yes, but I did literally smoosh you,” she fights back and I chuckle. 

“Hey. Better me than you. I would have flattened you like a pancake…” I joke again and she giggles. 

“I guess you have a little bit of a point there,” she tells me and I widen my eyes. 

“Are you calling me fat, sweetheart?” I ask her and her eyes widen. 

“No! You took that out of context!” she shouts as she points a finger at me and I chuckle as I shrug. 

When we’re done bantering, we all look around before looking up at the water we just came from. Some water drips around us as we look up at it, but for the most part all the water stays above us. 

“Well, that is unusual,” Billy utters from behind me and y/n as we continue to look up at it while he pulls his flashlight from his pocket. 

“This just gets better and better,” Zach says in amazement as we all continue to look at the water. 

I turn around and start to look around the walls of the cave. Y/n follows me and crashes into my back when I abruptly come to a stop. 

“Oww, J, next time warn me…” she tells me as she rubs her nose and I chuckle. 

“Sorry…” I apologize as I give her a guilty look before turning back around. 

“Do you feel that?” Kimberly asks as she walks around me and y/n. 

She walks over to one of the many pillars and puts her hand on it. There’s a small tremor that makes y/n grab onto my arm before putting it back down. 

“There’s something out here,” I point out as we all continue to investigate. 

“The walls are shaking,” Kimberly tells us as we all walk up behind her. 

“Come on,” I order as I reach down and grab y/n’s hand before walking past Kimberly. 

We walk through the opening and see more pillars around the whole cave. Billy walks past me and y/n and goes a little farther as he shines his flashlight around. 

“That’s impossible,” he utters as we come to a stop on the small ledge to look at what looks like a spaceship. 

Billy and I exchange a look of awe. When he looks away, I look to y/n and she squeezes my hand. I shake my head in disbelief before looking back at the spaceship. After a moment of staring at it in awe, we all start to walk towards it. 

“This must have been here for millions of years,” Billy ponders as we all continue to look around at it now that we’re close to it. 

“I mean, look how the rock has grown around it,” he continues as he points his flashlight around at all the rock walls. 

“I don’t like this place,” Kimberly voices as we walk towards what looks like the door or the spaceship. 

“Well. Why don’t you leave then. I think it’s rather cool if you ask me,” y/n bites out in anger before she drops my hand and walks next to the girl in yellow. 

They whisper and point at things around us and while they do I notice a glowing from my pocket. I pull the coin from my pocket and take a moment to watch as it glows brightly. 

“Hey guys?” I call out to them as I hold the glowing coin up and they all group around me. 

“Check it out,” I say as I continue to hold it out in front of all of us. 

It’s quiet for a moment as we all stare at the coin in my hand, but only a few minutes later there’s a light wearing sound that comes from behind us. We all turn to the spaceship to see that the door has now opened. I look at Kimberly who’s next to me and nod. 

“Okay…” she whispers out. 

We all start to climb the long row of stairs in front of us and once we get to the top we’re all panting. We finally make it into what looks like four halls each leading somewhere else. I look over at y/n just to check on her only to see her arms are crossed in discomfort. 

We all come to a stop at the top of the stairs and I wait on y/n knowing she'll seek me out. She does just that and comes up behind me before wrapping her arm around mine pulling it close to herself. I quickly grab her hand and lace our fingers together giving a gentle squeeze in hopes to comfort her. 

“Holy sh—” Zach starts to say in shock, but Billy cuts him off with a quick ‘Shh!’. 

“What, you think there’s aliens in here?” Zach asks as we all continue to look around. 

“Just be quiet Zach,” I tell him as I put a hand out to motion him to be quiet. 

“It’s so cold in here,” the girl in yellow comments as we start to walk farther in. 

We walk a little further in and there’s the sound of dust falling. I stop for a moment and as I do y/n pulls my arm a little closer as Billy stops next to her. 

“Jason, is this real? Like are we really in a spaceship right now?” Billy asks me as he takes a look at me before continuing to look around himself. 

“I think so. Just- - just breathe, okay?” I ask him as I squeeze y/n hand silently telling her the same thing. 

“Okay,” Billy agrees and I nod at him. 

“Hey. We’ve all seen enough. Right? We should go now?” The girl in yellow speaks up and I feel y/n nod quickly. 

“What? We’re gonna be famous,” Zach shouts out as he runs around. 

“Quite!” I shout out as I take a few steps forward. 

“There’s something here,” I try to explain as I continue to walk with y/n still attached to my arm. 

I look up and more dirt like substance falls from the roof and what looks to be another door somewhere on the roof lights up. It starts to make noise as if powering up and y/n burrows into my arm more -as if that’s even possible- with a death grip. The door starts to whire before the whole ceiling starts to move. 

“What was that?” I ask as I look up after jumping a little. 

It all moves as if clicking into each other as more and more dust falls. I quickly grip y/n’s hand as we all start to jump into moving. 

“The stairs!” Billy yells out as the stairs pull up and close off the entry way. 

“Oh, my God!” The girl in yellow yells out as we all race over to the stairs. 

“There’s no way out!” Kimberly shouts out as Billy starts to freak out. 

“Guys, guys, guys!” Billy shouts, making me turn to him. 

“Let’s go! That way! Let’s go! Let’s go!” I scream out to everyone as I point in one direction. 

“I’m going,” Billy shouts out from in front of me. 

“Run!” I hear Kimberly shout from behind me. 

I go to run with everyone else, but I get pulled back. I groan and rub my shoulder as I look back. I see y/n stood in our spot frozen in fear and I sigh, shaking my head. I quickly turn back around and loop her legs over one arm and grab under her arms before lifting her in a bridle carry. 

I quickly run to catch up with the others with y/n in my arms. We ran down a few hall’s before hitting a rounding corner. We all then split up and hide anywhere we can find. 

The girl in yellow hides behind a pillar, Kimberly climbs up into a small area, Zach hides behind a few pillars as well. I hide behind the girl in yellow with y/n right next to me. Billy hides in the one right behind us. 

Y/n stays frozen the whole time and I start to panic. I’ve only ever seen her this way once, when her dad freaked out on her and threw her phone at her head. She doesn’t even blink and that scares me more. 

“Sweetheart. You're ok. I’m right here,” I whisper out to her as I put a hand on her cheek. 

She finally blinks and she gives me a panicked look. I sigh and pull her to me keeping her head held to my shoulder. 

“You're gonna be ok. I promise,” I whisper out to her again as I kiss her forehead. 

I keep her held close, but turn so I can see what the others are seeing. There's an indistinct robotic chattering and we all collectively hold our breaths as it slowly gets closer. I close my eyes for a second to try and figure out how to get us out of here. But I open them again when the girl in yellow lets out a scream and there’s a loud thud before she gets dragged away. 

To Be Continued…

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@haleypearcee

[imthepunchlord]

What do you think of the idea in many miraculous fanfictions that the kwamis are the progenitors to folklore and mythological monsters (like a bat kwami being the progenitor to vampires, a wolf kwami being the progenitor to werewolves, etc)?

I personally like the idea that kwamis and miraculous had some influence to mythology and folklore and how it came to be, but they're not the answer to everything. This way, it does show they had some influence through history, but also establishes that there's other magic out there and not everything is miraculous exclusive. And you shouldn't want everything to be originating from miraculouses, cause the world is big, and there's a lot of myths and folklore out there, and in ancient times, these singular jewelry pieces could only travel so far and so quickly. Unless they go a route of there being multiple types of one animal (which I think would be too much), then there's not enough for an explanation for a variety of myths that pop up.

Also, the miraculous won't match with everything, like take Pig. Assuming Pig represents all pigs, boars, and hogs, well, this doesn't represent everything about pigs in mythology. Boars in Greek, the Celts, and in Europe in general represents warriors, hunting, battles, and aggression. Pigs also represent gluttony, laziness, and animals for slaughter; how does the Pig Miraculous work off of this? Pigs in China are also known to be symbols of wealth and prosperity, how does the canon miraculous work off of that? Or can Gift be more broad in what sort of gift is given? Or does Pig have more powers to offer to work off this? But, that would clash with Pig representing Jubilation so can't work off the aggression of boars.

Another example is Snake, who strictly works off Ouroboros in terms of power, but snakes are tied to much more than that. Snakes are heavily tied to dragons through the Chinese dragons, the Naga in both India and Thailand, Greek Python and Hydra, and Norse Jormungandr and Nidhogg to name a few. Snakes are tied to creation myths and rain, guardianship and vindication, life and death, healing and evil, all themes of duality; ect.. The Snake Miraculous doesn't work off all of that. It's just Ouroboros that it works off of, which is a theme that pops up around the world, but it's not the only one for snakes.

So, no, I wouldn't vote that miraculous are the answers to every bit of folklore and myth tied to animals. I'd go they had some influence though in shaping views.

Also offers a good reason on why miraculous were made, cause there was other magic out there, magic that humanity couldn't face and deal with, so miraculous were a means to combat against what endangered them.

It also leaves it nicely open to what myths and icons you think are tied to miraculous and what exists outside of miraculous, which I think it's more fun for the fans to speculate and headcanon and not confirm too many through history and largely stick to mythical figures, like Robin Hood could've been a Deer given deer are tied to archery and are swift and elusive.

Another example could be Sun Wukong. You could count Sun Wukong as a powerful being that exists outside miraculous and he and Xuppu could've been friends or rivals or both, or you could roll with Thomas' claim that he was a miraculous user, @nobodyfamousposts told me once they had an idea that Miraculous world's version of The Journey West was Tripitaka traveling to gather up scattered miraculouses, and the characters we see were the hero names, and the interactions seen came from Tripitaka and the kwamis.

So, that would be my ideal.

[spiritual-entries]

The Gods in Hades II - Returning Help

Need a hand Zagreus? No wait Melinoë?

Doesn’t matter which of Hades’s kids need a hand! These gods have appeared in both Hades and Hades II to provide boons to add you on your journey…whichever journey that may be. Let’s learn about some of the returning gods in Hades II!

Seeing as most of these deities have a lot of myths under their belt, I have opted to remove the “Myths” section as it would take too long to list every single myth they’re referenced in. 

Contents

‷⇢Zeus ‷⇢Poseidon ‷⇢Artemis ‷⇢Aphrodite ‷⇢Hermes ‷⇢Demeter ‷⇢Chaos

King Zeus

➤King of the Gods ➤Olympian god of the sky, weather, lightening, thunder, law & order, justice, moral conduct, destiny & fate, kingship

Zeus is the king of the gods. Youngest child of Chronos and Rhea. He was the only god to escape his father Chronos and returned to save his siblings. He was depicted as a regal, mature man with a sturdy figure and dark beard. He is usually depicted with his attributes which were a lightning bolt, a royal sceptre and an eagle.

Attributes

Lightening Bolt

Clouds

Scepter

Throne

Wreath of Olive Leaves

Aegis

Offerings

rainwater

Photos or art of storms

eagle & bull figurines

scales of Justice

Listening to the sound of rain 

Vote in elections(!!!)

Be in a leadership position

Poseidon

➤King of the Sea ➤Olympian god of the sea, earthquakes, floods, droughts, storms, sources of fresh water, horses 

King of the sea, Poseidon rules over earthquakes, floods, droughts, stroms, sources of fresh water, and horses as well. One of Zeus’s siblings as a child of Chronos and Rhea. He was depicted as a mature man with a sturdy build and dark beard holding a trident (a three-pronged fisherman's spear).

Attributes

Trident

Wreath of celery leaves

billowing cloak

boulder with sea creatures

Offerings

seawater

sand

toy horses/toy fish

seashells

go on a trip to your nearest body of water

go swimming

learn how to ride a horse

Artemis

➤Olympian god of wild animals & hunting, wilderness, child delivery & nursing infants, girls, chastity, maiden dance & song, disease, plague & sudden death, archery

Artemis, goddess of huning, wild animals, and wilderness. She is the twin to Apollon, born as the children of Zeus and Leto. Artemis and Apollon act as the gods of sudden death with Artmeis targeting girls and women, and Apollon targeting boys and men. The twins were also both the protectors of girls and boys up until the age of marriage. Artemis was usually depicted as a girl or young maiden with a hunting bow and quiver of arrows.

Attributes

golden bow & arrows

Quiver

hunting spears

knee-length dress

animal pelts

hunting boots

deer

wild beast

lyre

torches

Offerings

moon shaped objects

deer antlers

wildflowers

feathers

physical activity

dancing

enjoying nature

Aphrodite

➤Olympian god of love, procreation, beauty, seduction, pleasure, happiness, war

Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty but! also a goddess of war. There are many different stories about her birth, but is mostly commonly known as a child of Ouranos. She was depicted as a beautiful woman typically dedicated nude, often accompanied by the winged godling Eros (Love). 

Attributes

dove

apple

myrtle-wreath

flower

scallop shell

mirror

Offerings

perfume

scented lotions

seashells

self care // self love (!!)

spend some time at the sea

stand up for yourself and what you believe in

Hermes

➤Messenger of the Gods ➤Psychopomp ➤Olympian god of heraldry, omens, animal husbandry, rustic poetry & animal fables, trade, travel, boundaries, thievery & cunning, wit, language & education, the dead, athletic contests & gymnasiums, astrology & astronomy

Hermes is the god of a lot of things… astronomy, theft, language, athletics. He is the personal messenger to Zeus, King of the gods. Hermes was depicted as either a handsome and athletic, beardless youth or as an older, bearded man, with winged boots and a herald's wand.

Attributes

caduceus

Talaria

Petasos

lyre

Offerings

dice

travel tickets

currency

foreign foods

working out

learn a new language

engage in harmless pranks 

Demeter

➤Olympian god of agriculture, harvest, grains, milling, bread, horticulture, pig farming, fertility, the blessed afterlife, motherhood

Daughter of Chronos and Rhea, sister to Zeus, Demeter is the goddess of agriculture and harvest. Known to be the provider of food generally. She rules over the Mystery Cults which promised all members the path to Elysium in the afterlife. Demeter was depicted as a mature woman, often wearing a crown and bearing sheafs of wheat or a cornucopia (horn of plenty), and a torch.

Attributes

wheat ears

torch

Cornucopia

lotus staff

radiate crown

winged drakon chariot

Offerings

flour

fresh fruit

flowers

farming // gardening

learn to take care of plants

buy from local farmers

learn to cook

Chaos

➤Primordial goddess of fate & the chasm of air, mother of birds

Chaos (Khaos) was the first primordial god to emerge during creations. The word khaos means "gap" or "chasm" being the space between heaven and earth. She is the lower atmosphere, creating the air in which we breathe. Chaos is the mother of all sky related (or misty elements) deities; Eerebos (mists of the Underworld), Nyx (night), Aither (mists of Heaven), & Hemera (day)

Offerings

feathers

divination

practice using the element of air

honor her children

spend some time outside

References

Most Gods

All gods

[cookinguptales]

wwdits tarot: judgement

Just one card left after this one!

I set up a poll here for people to vote on which tarot deck I use for readings this weekend. I’ll be busy Friday night, but people can still get started sending me requests while I’m out.

This is a card that I’ve been waiting on for a long time now — XX. Judgement.

There’s only one last member of the main cast left, isn’t there? :')

Judgement is a card that, like I’ve said before, people often mistake for Justice. But if Justice is about getting what you deserve (good, bad, or indifferent) then Judgement is about your life finally coming full circle. It’s about your own internal judgement, deciding what you want your life to be, but it’s also in a sense a divine final judgment. It’s the time when all of your decisions can finally be seen as a complete whole, and when you will see your life for what it’s always been meant to be.

It’s that moment when everything finally lines up, you know? When you look inside and have a revelation and suddenly you know exactly who you are and who you’ve always been. It’s realizing who and what you’re meant to be.

Basically, Judgement is all about looking within, gathering up all of the puzzle pieces you’ve been painstakingly collecting throughout the years, and finally putting them together into a cohesive whole. It’s being able to see the picture that they create. It’s self-knowledge, but it’s also finally understanding what you need to do in order to grow.

It’s a card about making life-changing decisions, but ones that will finally let you realize your full potential.

I think it suits my favorite character in the whole show, to be honest. I think we’re seeing him on that journey now, and I’m so excited to see where he finally ends up.

It’s been a delight to watch Guillermo de la Cruz grow from a nebbish, ineffectual, pathetic little familiar into the slayer he is today. It’s like he’d convinced himself that he would only ever be on the outside looking in until someone more powerful than him deigned to invite him in. But then he realized that he had power all his own. He didn’t have to wait for anyone to give him permission to exist. No one had to give him anything.

He could just take it himself.

Whether it’s tearing through an entire theater of vampires, beating the shit out of his former master, or deciding to earn his fangs his own way, Guillermo has finally learned that while he wants to live in the shadows, that doesn’t mean that he has to be content living in somebody else’s.

I love the way he’s finally started to put together pieces of his own power and personality to understand the strength that’s always been his for the taking. I love that he’s starting to trip over these self-reflections and revelations, and every one of them brings him closer to being the creature that he's always had inside of him.

Will that be a vampire? A slayer? A combination of the two? Something wholly outside that binary?

I don’t know yet, and I don’t think Guillermo does either.

Either way, though, I think that this whole series, we’ve seen him approaching his final Judgement. I think he’s going to find in himself something awesome and terrible, cruel and beautifully kind. He’s finally going to find out what shape his power wants to take, and how he can use it best to serve his own needs. He’s going to figure out who he wants to be, and who that person will be to those he loves.

He’s going to figure out how to become a person that he loves.

He’s finding his final form, in other words, or at least the kind of form he might be frozen in for a little taste of eternity.

Everyone in this show grows and changes and learns about themselves to some degree, but no one has had a change more radical or welcome than Guillermo has. No one else has realized that they’ve been living a lie for their entire lives, and that they were just too afraid to leave the cocoon they’d been hiding in for all this time. No one else has seriously started on their road to full self-actualization.

There’s a kind of potential in Guillermo that all of them are just starting to get their minds around, and I’m not sure anyone’s been more surprised by it than him. But he’s starting to become more comfortable with his own power and potential and whatever Judgement he will reach, and he’s going to make sure the rest of them become comfortable with it, too.

One way or another.

Now. Onto the card itself.

The scene on the RSW version of Judgement is a largely Biblical one, and you know how I feel about that. We see here an angel trumpeting the Final Judgement and the dead rising from their graves to greet him.

Guillermo, too, is calling the undead to him — but they might be a little less happy to see him.

My immediate first thought is that imagery of him swinging down from the rafters in the Theatre, and everyone looking up to see who'd just swooped into their midst.

I love that for him — this idea that, in the end, no one had to invite him to this get-together. He made his own goddamn entrance, and he's here in this world to stay.

So maybe that's what I want here, too. Guillermo swooping down into the vampiric world, blood and ash on the ground, and the vampires (and other supernatural creatures) looking up to receive him. Some, like Nandor and the rest of their housemates, are welcoming him. Others are looking at him with fear and resentment. But none of them can turn him away.

Not anymore.

wwdits tarot masterpost

[unseemingowl]

The Bear and the daily struggle of leadership

Look, we all know it, there are tons and tons of things to love about The Bear. The sharply drawn characters, the way it deals about trauma and addiction and what makes family and community. 

For me personally though, the thing that makes it the most special is the way it portrays the difficulty of leadership and building a good work place.  

I seem to have watched very few tv shows or movies that aren’t about the military that actually takes a long, hard look at this, and that’s usually through an ultimately heroic lens. Though of course, one could say that working in the food service industry is a lot like doing battle, but that’s another discussion. Fact of the matter is that a lot more of us are gonna to go through a kitchen than active duty.

I’ve been a union rep and am still active in the politics at my place of work – and I also write a lot about leadership and management in my current job – so this shit is important to me, and the Bear does it so fucking well y’all. Like so fucking well.

In the Bear we’re shown three different sort of leaders. Mikey, Carmy and Carmy’s former boss in New York. Or what I’d for the purposes of this will call leading through friendship, leading through respect and leading through fear.

Mikey makes confidants of his employees, just like he makes best friends with everybody. That inspires loyalty for sure, but he also does not help them grow, in fact more than once he causes them to demean themselves. Carmy’s former boss pushes his employees to offer their absolute best, becoming the best that they can be, but he also bullies them so terribly that they leave his kitchen traumatized, and gives Carmy the desire to do things differently. Not put others through that.

Honestly, it's amazing how much leadership skills get undervalued considering how many of us have tried what it feels like being at the mercy of a bad leader. Just because you’re good at your job, does not automatically mean you’ll be a great leader of people. A common misconception, one that I see a lot of in my current industry, and other high pressure and/or creative industries. 

But in the Bear, Carmy does actually does make a decent go at it. He proves himself to his employees, teaches them new skills - from his second in command Sydney to the fresher Marcus, delegates responsibility, lifts them up when they fuck up, but he is also willing to assert his position in the hierarchy. He really does so much right, shows that he does seem to have the aptitude for it.   

And he also fails. Fails hard.

Because leading is fucking difficult. And that really is the trick here. I always wanna tear my hair out when people act like whipping an organization or a company back into shape is just about instituting a few new codes of conduct and get rid of one bad apple in the basket.

Sure, those things will help, they’re good first steps, but leadership is putting in effort every day. It’s consciously making the right choice all the time. Because falling back into known patterns is so easy when things get tough.

When Carmy gets put under real, serious pressure, when shit hits the fan, he falls back into what he’s seen before. Screaming, berating, bullying. Because that’s easier. Because he’s human, and even the most well-intentioned people fuck up.  

Carmy’s lucky that he has put in effort before that happens. He’s given his employees a taste of what kind of leader he can actually be. Given enough that they’re willing to come back.

And fuck, I can’t wait to watch the next season to see what kind of leader he’ll be now with that vote of confidence. 

Hopefully his journey can inspire others like him. 

[c0tards--s0luti0n]

REASONS YOU SHOULD VOTE DEATH TO THE MECHANISMS FOR @crysongz [YES IM AWARE IT HASNT STARTED YET . YES I DONT CARE]

the mechs all chose to die/were happy with their deaths . jonny died laughing . tim chose to steal that gunship . drumbot chose to throw himself back into space . ashes chose to burn down that planet . raphaella chose to go into that black hole . ivy died choosing to save those books [that meant so much to her] . marius chose to check on the octokittens . toy soldier chose to stop pretending .

they all knew they were gonna die when they chose to do that . ["And it's hard to play so much with time without learning the shape of your own end. We know where we will be when we start to slow and choose to follow nastya into the dark"]

hell even nastya chose how she went out

they died [permanent time] the way their immortality started

POINTLESS IGNOABLE DEATHS THE LOT OF THEM . BUT WHO THATS REALLY LIVED CAN BOAST OTHERWISE ?! THANK YOU FOR JOINING US ON OUR JOURNEY !!

the ending takes a whole part from laid in blood from once upon a time (in space) [THEIR FIRST EVER ALBUM ......] and changes it a little bit to fit them

crying . screaming .

WE'VE LIVED SO LONG TOGETHER PERHAPS IT IS ONLY FITTING WE DIE ALONE.

the song that comes right after is drunk space pirate [the shift of tone is SO funny tbh]

and in drunk space pirate . "your humble first mate!" "first ma-" "Wait , What??!!!" "i know what i said.!"

bplease lol .do it for almost-immortal gay storytelling space pirates and the people their stories are about everywhere around the galaxy

[damazcuz]

but are you good at drawing hands and feet?

Hey blanket disclaimer that I'm a little sleep deprived right now and might be reading things wrongly. I don't mean to pick on you or anything and I'm halfway sure this isn't the angle you were trying to approach from so like. Don't take this as a personal sword slash to the chest and you're on fire, but I don't like the phrasing in relation to my post overall. I said I love doing it and that's all that I need. It's something I enjoy drawing. It's got some cool shapes and it's fun to figure out. I don't like framing hobbies and things that I enjoy as like... "Things I'm good at" (and therefore maybe I'm good enough to make it a side hustle, and I can turn a profit) vs "things I'm bad at" (and therefore I shouldn't do them as there's no incentive.) Again I'm pretty sure this isn't the angle you're approaching from, I just think that this is the capitalist societal pressure behind the angle you might be coming from which is still "are you good enough to actually do it (and profit) or bad enough you shouldn't." I think if they surveyed everyone in the world and had them vote and rank every artist ever based on how well they drew hands and I was named dead last, worst at drawing them ever, I would be like oh no! Anyway! And I'd still enjoy doing it because it's fun and I like to draw them. They got shapes cousin.

Again I'm very tired and possibly completely misreading tone and intention and it's hard to tell online (and still hard to tell in person) but I think we'll all be happier if we create things even when we fucking suck at them, you gotta go out there and make some reeeeeeeal stinkers. Just some real dogshit art sometimes. Do it for yourself and enjoy the process and the journey. :) But yeah I'm alright at em I think. They look good.

[alexbkrieger13]

A good interview with Kosse on that award she became the first woman player to win and a little bit of football chit chat

Kosovar Asllani first in the world: It's cool to be a pioneer

Which female footballer comes first if you combine performance with personality?

No, it's not something you should think about until the middle of the day, but Sportbladet called up the historic first winner of the Guldfoten.

- It's cool to be a pioneer, says Kosovare Asllani.

It's a lame joke from the start.

We also have to blame the fact that it lands so badly on weak reception during my telephone interview from snowy Ostrobothnia to sun-drenched Nice.

AC Milan's 33-year-old profile has learned that the wayward and unexpected career choices serve a greater function. They keep her on her toes, but also encourage others to think, to break free, to make decisions that benefit them.

Had feet cast

- I went to Real Madrid first and now to Milan. It wasn't what was expected, but that's my journey. I'm not going to move because you say I should play in that team. It is my own feeling that governs what I should and how I should experience the world. It is so important to follow what makes you feel good, she says.

I understand. But for next season you should go to USA.

– ...huh?

It's a really good league.

– ...

Suits your playing style.

- ...Lol! You, people really say that! They think they can help decide.

We are talking about last night, when at a gala in Monaco she became the first woman to be awarded the Golden Foot. The selection process took place in two stages where a jury selected candidates that the public voted between.

Winners on the men's side: Robert Lewandowski, FC Barcelona and Poland.

Winners on the women's side: Kosovare Asllani , AC Milan and Sweden.

Both had their feet cast and immortalized on a promenade in Monaco with the pompous name Champions Promenade.

- It was a special feeling to receive the award. I feel honoured, she says.

“Sounds pretentious, but...”

Actually, it's amazing that a women's class has taken 20 years.

Because, unlike other individual awards, the Monegasque award does not only reward achievements on the field but your personality, that is, your life choices and your civil courage. It is next to the footprints of sensational playing geniuses such as Shevchenko (2005), Ibrahimovic (2012) and Eto'o (2015) that Asllanis ends up.

Or no, more true is that she will be the first in her own foot category and in 50 years tourists will be able to walk from that time's most recent female award winner and all the way down to Aunt Asllani's waterfalls.

- They will be there forever . It is very specific. I always want to be first and it's cool when I succeed. It sounds lofty but I want to help shape women's soccer into the bright future that the sport has.

How do you see your role in the public eye, apart from playing football?

- I want to be inspiring and motivating. When I stand up there on the stage, I represent all of women's soccer, how far we've come, but also that it's just the beginning.

Over the years, Asllani has learned that a women's soccer player is expected to have a kind of social analysis that men are never required to do. A girl kicking a ball is automatically political and you can either rant about that thing or embrace the possibility.

Asllani does the second.

"Some of us try"

She is a woman with a foreign background. She is a granite-hard midfielder and a fine scorer. She is loyal with tactics but scolds loudly when she does not find the activities of the national team or Real Madrid professional enough.

You can call her rowdy. You wouldn't be first. But you might as well call her bold, visionary, changeable and demanding - and give her a gold award as a thank you.

- The absolute biggest thing was getting an award for daring to take a stand. It has characterized my career, she says.

Can it go the other way, that it feels sad that you are not only allowed to kick the ball?

- Uh. It has always been that way. I pointed that out in my speech yesterday as well. We get questions about the whole world and they get questions about tomorrow's tactics. I think everyone should use their platforms to make the world a better place, not to underestimate their power. Sport has every opportunity to change the world and some of us are trying.

What kind of football world would we have if all male players behaved like you?

- I do not know. And there have been some protests during the World Cup in Qatar, but I still haven't seen a single interview from there where the players were asked about what's going on off the pitch. It's different, we wouldn't have been treated that way. And we would be happy to answer.

She takes a breath and tries to boil down 15 years of outings, headlines, controversies and fire speeches to some sort of conclusion.

- I don't want anything left undone. I am proud of all the statements I made, from when I was seventeen or eighteen and joined the national team and dared to stand up for myself.

The plans: then she stops

It's easy to see Kosovare Asllani's career as a steadily upward curve, but you shouldn't forget that she crashed in France a couple of years ago. She was signed to PSG in 2012 and got off to a dazzling start, but each season got harder. The reason, which she pointed out only afterwards, was that the big club did not train as hard as she would have preferred, so she lost weight and lost pressure in her body.

The solution looked unconventional. One of Swedish football's great players stopped over in Manchester City but soon returned home to Linköping.

There she caught her breath, won a SM gold and won the Diamond Ball. And headed out to Europe again, this time with thigh muscles that can't have rested through many gym sessions.

Did it feel like it was all over when you were 26 and harrowing in France?

- Over? Huh?

Yes, you know…

- All trips look different. We are so picky about setbacks and think they make people give up. I count on setbacks and feel more complete than ever because I rose from them.

Yes, but I think the PSG time says something about you. Others who lose their appetite at 26 can at most round off the elite investment with a turn in the women's league.

- Maybe you're right. But I've always been driven and followed my own passion, so I don't know anything else. In my first championship I thought about what others thought and shit, I wasn't myself there.. Since then I haven't thought like that. Why should I care about others?

When do you stop playing football?

- I can't say "when it feels boring", because it never will. It just gets more fun every year. But it is clear that I see the end. I don't have many years left. I can't even fathom turning 33, it's crazy, but it means I have a few championships left. The WC next summer, then the Olympics and... well, I'm not a youth, so the two championships I'm aiming for first.

[sciencespies]

‘Extremely Rare’ Snowy Owl Sighting Transfixes a California Suburb

https://sciencespies.com/news/extremely-rare-snowy-owl-sighting-transfixes-a-california-suburb/

‘Extremely Rare’ Snowy Owl Sighting Transfixes a California Suburb

What brought the owl to the city of Cypress, in Orange County, remains a mystery.

The forbidding frozen wilderness of the high Arctic tundra is the natural home of the snowy owl, a great predator perfectly adapted to hunting its primary food source, lemmings.

But sometime over the last few weeks, one snowy owl in particular made a surprise appearance in noticeably less harsh terrain — the shingled roofs and white chimneys of suburban Southern California.

What brought the owl to the city of Cypress, in Orange County, about 25 miles southeast of Los Angeles, remains a mystery and the subject of impassioned debate among the scores of bird watchers and curious neighbors who have come out to marvel at the bird.

Whatever the owl’s journey may have been, the sight of such an unusual raptor set among streets lined with palm trees has been “amazing,” said Nancy Caruso, a neighbor who has seen the owl.

“It’s like seeing Santa Claus on a beach,” said Ms. Caruso, a marine biologist. “Like that out of place, but cool.”

More on California

U.C. Employee Strike: Academic employees at the University of California voted to return to work, ending a historically large strike that had disrupted research and classes for nearly six weeks.

Wildfires: California avoided a third year of catastrophic wildfires because of a combination of well-timed precipitation and favorable wind conditions — or “luck,” as experts put it.

San Francisco’s Empty Downtown: Tech workers are still at home. The $17 salad place is expanding into the suburbs. Today San Francisco has what is perhaps the most deserted major downtown in America.

Los Angeles’s New Mayor: Karen Bass was sworn in as the first female mayor of the nation’s second-largest city in a ceremony that celebrated her historic win but also underscored the obstacles ahead.

Neighbors have come to notice a pattern with the bird, which seems to take off around 5 p.m. before reappearing sometime later, like a commuter, to its suburban roost.

“I have been hanging out with him a couple of times a day, and I’m not a bird guy in any way, shape or form,” said Joshua Lindsay, a general contractor who lives nearby.

He said the “absolutely ginormous” owl had been “divebombed by hawks and robins” and “would look over at them, like, ‘Really? What the hell are you going to do?’”

Lori Arent, the assistant director of the Raptor Center at the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Minnesota, said that snowy owls are known to migrate from northern Canada to the Midwestern and northeastern United States during the winter. Some have been spotted as far south as Texas, she said. (In January 2021, one visited Central Park, creating a frenzy among urban birders.)

But it was “extremely rare” to find one as far south and west as Southern California, Ms. Arent said.

She said it was possible that the owl may have simply flown thousands of miles to Orange County. Or it may have “hitched a ride” on a ship, she said, maybe from somewhere along the Canadian coast, like the port of Vancouver, or Alaska. Others have speculated that the bird may have been kept as an exotic pet and escaped.

“It will be interesting to see how long this bird stays,” Ms. Arent said. “The question will be: Will this bird be able to find enough food to eat?”

She said snowy owls that fly south often prefer flat, open terrain such as airports where they can more easily hunt small prey. That could make Cypress an appealing destination: The Joint Forces Training Base, Los Alamitos, a National Guard facility with an airfield, is only a few miles away as the owl flies.

Bird-watchers and photographers on the lookout for the snowy owl.Mark Rightmire/The Orange County Register.

When the owl returns, joy fills the neighborhood.

“The most exciting thing for me is that the public is reacting so positively,” said Victor Leipzig, who teaches birding at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, Calif., and is a past president of the local chapter of the Audubon Society.

“I was there on Tuesday of this week, and there were people from the local neighborhood who were just thrilled and people who had driven from a hundred miles away to see the bird,” he said.

Scott Thomas, the raptor research chairman at the local Audubon chapter, said the owl had recently been spotted coughing up a pellet of bones and fur, a sign that it had found a small animal to eat.

But there are dangers in the area, such as cars, rodenticide and airplanes landing at the military base. At some point, he said, the most popular raptor in Cypress may simply move on, headed north to the Arctic.

“The thing I can say for sure is people are going to continue to watch it — a lot,” Mr. Thomas said. “And one day it will disappear, just fly off.”

#News