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deadsetobsessions · 2 months

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Sea Cryptic! Danny AU- Pt.3

[Pt.1] [Pt.2] [Pt.4][Pt.5][Pt.6][Pt.7]

“Aquaman.” Batman swept into the room, beelining straight for the suddenly apprehensive Atlantean king.

“Batman. What can I do for you?”

“Phantom. Does he pay taxes?”

“Pardon?”

Batman makes a low noise that had Aquaman’s danger senses buzzing.

“Does Phantom have to pay taxes. Towards Atlantis.”

“No…? Why?”

“He wanted money, in exchange for… information, of a delicate sort,” Batman said, diplomatically avoiding the topic of Phantom bargaining for the identities of corpses in exchange for a measly $100 dollars per identity. Like a flea market dealer, that one was.

“You encountered Phantom again?” Aquaman perked up.

“Yes. Gotham’s bay is… polluted.” Batman paused. “With victims. Of murder.”

The entire area quieted as heads turned towards the Dark Knight.

“Yes, I am… distantly aware of Gotham’s waters.” By that, Aquaman gets green around the gills whenever he turns his awareness in that direction. There’s a reason he doesn’t enter Gotham, and the Dark Knight’s ban is only half of that reason. “Ah, but you’re correct. For what purpose would Phantom need mortal currency?”

“Hn.”

“Maybe he needs some stuff?” Flash zipped to a stop next to Batman, feet tapping as he dug into the pile of snacks cradled in his arms. “Us mortals are always coming up with new things, maybe he wants to try some games or something?”

Batman tilted his head down, seriously considering Flash’s suggestion. “It’s plausible.”

“Barry, Barry, Barry. He’s old as hell, right? He probably wants to try the new booze!”

“Hal, my man!” Flash fist bumped Green Lantern, who came up. “You’re back! What happened to John?”

“Dunno. He got called somewhere that way,” Green Lantern waved a vague hand towards the left. “Had to deal with a politician or something from that area.” He shrugged, swinging an arm over Barry’s shoulders to put him in a headlock and stealing a chip.

“Huh. Anyways, would our mortal alcohol even work on a demi-god or something?”

“We should ask!” Hal turned towards Batman. “You should ask if he wants to go for a drink, spooky!”

“He’s a child.”

“He’s been around for more than a millennia, Bats.”

“Informational gathering, right, Hal?” Flashgot out of the headlock, quickly munching on his snacks to stop Green Lantern from stealing them.

“Totally. Yup.”

“…Fine.”

“Wait, are we just gonna ignore that Gotham’s waters are full of bodies?”

“Yes.”

——

“What?” Danny asked, mind half on the bags he’s dragging out of the water and the other half on the essay he has to submit in about four hours.

“Green Lantern wanted to invite you out for a drink.”

Danny turned to the stoic Gotham knight, who had his wrist computer out to log the bodies’ info the moment Danny gave him the information. Some of them even told Danny who murdered them, so Batman could start building cases with solid leads.

Danny’s only twenty. He’s not legal yet but he doesn’t want to give any clues to who he is. How is he supposed to…

Ah!

“Can’t.” Danny shrugged. “I’m not legal. I died when I was fourteen so…” Danny trailed off, speechless at the drowned puppy face Batman was giving him. What the fuck.

“Anyways, fork over my payment.”

Batman wordlessly hands him a wad of hundreds.

“What do you need cash for?” Batman suddenly asked.

“Huh? Isn’t it obvious?” Danny tucked it in. “Material things, obviously. I need a blanket,” because holy shit, Gotham is damn cold this time of year. “Anyways, see you same time next week, litterer.”

“I don’t litter.”

“Tell that to the batarangs I found under the water,” Danny grumbled. “But I’ll stop calling you that if you get a signature from Poison Ivy. I have a friend who loves her.”

“An alive friend?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know, weatherboy?”

Danny snickered and disappeared. He’s gotta cram that essay.

——

“There’s a possibility Phantom might be homeless.”

“Batman, I mean this in the nicest way, but for the love of Atlantis, please stop giving me headaches. It’s time like these I wish I stayed a lighthouse keeper.”

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weil-weil-lautre · 3 years

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By Jonathan Franzen September 8, 2019

“There is infinite hope,” Kafka tells us, “only not for us.” This is a fittingly mystical epigram from a writer whose characters strive for ostensibly reachable goals and, tragically or amusingly, never manage to get any closer to them. But it seems to me, in our rapidly darkening world, that the converse of Kafka’s quip is equally true: There is no hope, except for us.

I’m talking, of course, about climate change. The struggle to rein in global carbon emissions and keep the planet from melting down has the feel of Kafka’s fiction. The goal has been clear for thirty years, and despite earnest efforts we’ve made essentially no progress toward reaching it. Today, the scientific evidence verges on irrefutable. If you’re younger than sixty, you have a good chance of witnessing the radical destabilization of life on earth—massive crop failures, apocalyptic fires, imploding economies, epic flooding, hundreds of millions of refugees fleeing regions made uninhabitable by extreme heat or permanent drought. If you’re under thirty, you’re all but guaranteed to witness it.

If you care about the planet, and about the people and animals who live on it, there are two ways to think about this. You can keep on hoping that catastrophe is preventable, and feel ever more frustrated or enraged by the world’s inaction. Or you can accept that disaster is coming, and begin to rethink what it means to have hope.

Even at this late date, expressions of unrealistic hope continue to abound. Hardly a day seems to pass without my reading that it’s time to “roll up our sleeves” and “save the planet”; that the problem of climate change can be “solved” if we summon the collective will. Although this message was probably still true in 1988, when the science became fully clear, we’ve emitted as much atmospheric carbon in the past thirty years as we did in the previous two centuries of industrialization. The facts have changed, but somehow the message stays the same.

Psychologically, this denial makes sense. Despite the outrageous fact that I’ll soon be dead forever, I live in the present, not the future. Given a choice between an alarming abstraction (death) and the reassuring evidence of my senses (breakfast!), my mind prefers to focus on the latter. The planet, too, is still marvelously intact, still basically normal—seasons changing, another election year coming, new comedies on Netflix—and its impending collapse is even harder to wrap my mind around than death. Other kinds of apocalypse, whether religious or thermonuclear or asteroidal, at least have the binary neatness of dying: one moment the world is there, the next moment it’s gone forever. Climate apocalypse, by contrast, is messy. It will take the form of increasingly severe crises compounding chaotically until civilization begins to fray. Things will get very bad, but maybe not too soon, and maybe not for everyone. Maybe not for me.

Some of the denial, however, is more willful. The evil of the Republican Party’s position on climate science is well known, but denial is entrenched in progressive politics, too, or at least in its rhetoric. The Green New Deal, the blueprint for some of the most substantial proposals put forth on the issue, is still framed as our last chance to avert catastrophe and save the planet, by way of gargantuan renewable-energy projects. Many of the groups that support those proposals deploy the language of “stopping” climate change, or imply that there’s still time to prevent it. Unlike the political right, the left prides itself on listening to climate scientists, who do indeed allow that catastrophe is theoretically avertable. But not everyone seems to be listening carefully. The stress falls on the word theoretically.

Our atmosphere and oceans can absorb only so much heat before climate change, intensified by various feedback loops, spins completely out of control. Some scientists and policymakers fear that we’re in danger of passing this point of no return if the global mean temperature rises by more than two degrees Celsius (maybe more, but also maybe less). The I.P.C.C.—the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—tells us that, to limit the rise to less than two degrees, we not only need to reverse the trend of the past three decades. We need to approach zero net emissions, globally, in the next three decades.

This is, to say the least, a tall order. It also assumes that you trust the I.P.C.C.’s calculations. New research, described last month in Scientific American, demonstrates that climate scientists, far from exaggerating the threat of climate change, have underestimated its pace and severity. To project the rise in the global mean temperature, scientists rely on complicated atmospheric modelling. They take a host of variables and run them through supercomputers to generate, say, ten thousand different simulations for the coming century, in order to make a “best” prediction of the rise in temperature. When a scientist predicts a rise of two degrees Celsius, she’s merely naming a number about which she’s very confident: the rise will be at least two degrees. The rise might, in fact, be far higher.

As a non-scientist, I do my own kind of modelling. I run various future scenarios through my brain, apply the constraints of human psychology and political reality, take note of the relentless rise in global energy consumption (thus far, the carbon savings provided by renewable energy have been more than offset by consumer demand), and count the scenarios in which collective action averts catastrophe. The scenarios, which I draw from the prescriptions of policymakers and activists, share certain necessary conditions.

The first condition is that every one of the world’s major polluting countries institute draconian conservation measures, shut down much of its energy and transportation infrastructure, and completely retool its economy. According to a recent paper in Nature, the carbon emissions from existing global infrastructure, if operated through its normal lifetime, will exceed our entire emissions “allowance”—the further gigatons of carbon that can be released without crossing the threshold of catastrophe. (This estimate does not include the thousands of new energy and transportation projects already planned or under construction.) To stay within that allowance, a top-down intervention needs to happen not only in every country but throughout every country. Making New York City a green utopia will not avail if Texans keep pumping oil and driving pickup trucks.

The actions taken by these countries must also be the right ones. Vast sums of government money must be spent without wasting it and without lining the wrong pockets. Here it’s useful to recall the Kafkaesque joke of the European Union’s biofuel mandate, which served to accelerate the deforestation of Indonesia for palm-oil plantations, and the American subsidy of ethanol fuel, which turned out to benefit no one but corn farmers.

Finally, overwhelming numbers of human beings, including millions of government-hating Americans, need to accept high taxes and severe curtailment of their familiar life styles without revolting. They must accept the reality of climate change and have faith in the extreme measures taken to combat it. They can’t dismiss news they dislike as fake. They have to set aside nationalism and class and racial resentments. They have to make sacrifices for distant threatened nations and distant future generations. They have to be permanently terrified by hotter summers and more frequent natural disasters, rather than just getting used to them. Every day, instead of thinking about breakfast, they have to think about death.

Call me a pessimist or call me a humanist, but I don’t see human nature fundamentally changing anytime soon. I can run ten thousand scenarios through my model, and in not one of them do I see the two-degree target being met.

To judge from recent opinion polls, which show that a majority of Americans (many of them Republican) are pessimistic about the planet’s future, and from the success of a book like David Wallace-Wells’s harrowing “The Uninhabitable Earth,” which was released this year, I’m not alone in having reached this conclusion. But there continues to be a reluctance to broadcast it. Some climate activists argue that if we publicly admit that the problem can’t be solved, it will discourage people from taking any ameliorative action at all. This seems to me not only a patronizing calculation but an ineffectual one, given how little progress we have to show for it to date. The activists who make it remind me of the religious leaders who fear that, without the promise of eternal salvation, people won’t bother to behave well. In my experience, nonbelievers are no less loving of their neighbors than believers. And so I wonder what might happen if, instead of denying reality, we told ourselves the truth.

First of all, even if we can no longer hope to be saved from two degrees of warming, there’s still a strong practical and ethical case for reducing carbon emissions. In the long run, it probably makes no difference how badly we overshoot two degrees; once the point of no return is passed, the world will become self-transforming. In the shorter term, however, half measures are better than no measures. Halfway cutting our emissions would make the immediate effects of warming somewhat less severe, and it would somewhat postpone the point of no return. The most terrifying thing about climate change is the speed at which it’s advancing, the almost monthly shattering of temperature records. If collective action resulted in just one fewer devastating hurricane, just a few extra years of relative stability, it would be a goal worth pursuing.

#sorry for this essay it's for my #diss #quote #franzen #climate change #archivist #and i don't want to lose the text

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janavoadalov · 5 years

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Warming Up A Long Loner Heart, Ophidian Or Human

Janavo X Reader, Hurt/Comfort and fluff. A little bit of angst peppered in here and there. SFW, save for some tasteful make-out descriptions.

It is...long. Like, almost 4000 words. So, bloop, under a Read More.

It has been a few weeks since that mysterious encounter with that supposed “troll” you have found in the woods at a Halloween night. Not that you don’t believe his words, but...perhaps one of those candies you had ended up buzzing up your senses a bit, because you know...holidays and sketchy substances. Perhaps something you drank that night? Eh. That part of your mind insists on denying that the encounter ever happened.

However that little piece of paper with his phone number that you oh-so-dearly kept on your drawer acts as a counterpoint. Fuck! You just remembered. Ever since that night, you never even tried to contact him. Not only because of laziness, but also that impending fear of your phone not being able to call that number. Not to mention that you’re not just talking with your regular run-off-the-mill human- but a literal alien. And a sexy one at that. Regardless, it every once in a while fills your heart with a sharp pang of guilt and neediness every time you imagine those big reptilian eyes of his gazing into yours, tongue flicking out his lips to sense every emotion of yours simply by your scent.

It gets to a point in which those thoughts are what forces you out of your bed and makes you walk up to your drawer and snatch out the paper slip with Jana...Janavo’s number in it. Was it Janavo? or Javano? Who cares, he’ll say it when he greets you. Or so you hope. Sitting down at your bed’s edge, you hesitantly hold up your phone and type in the number sequences and dial up.

*beep...beep...beep...*

Fuck, is it really going to take that long? Will you have to literally go all the way back to the woods to yell his name at that...cave-den of his? Where does that guy even live in to begin with? You sigh and wait some more for him to answer, your foot tapping at the bedroom floor nervously. Tap, tap, tap...

When you, all of a sudden, notice the beeping stop. A deep, husky voice attends you, the closeness of his mouth to the microphone making the audio sound whispery. You shiver and feel butterflies in your stomach, body weakening and your voice trembles.

“Hello? Janavo here. Who is calling?”

Oh, okay, it’s not Javano then. You cough and try your best to answer him without stuttering. That would not be a good way to have your first formal interaction with that cutie, huh?

“Uh...hello, Mr. Janavo! I’m that little human you, uhm, met that Halloween night. You gave me your, uh, number, remember?”

Your heart was pounding loudly in your chest. Holy fuck. You’re talking to that big handsome alien guy you met. With your hardest efforts, you attempt to stop yourself from audibly breathing heavily in both anxiety and excitement.

Recognizing your voice, his tone becomes lighter and softer, and his speech becomes mixed with a happy, high-pitched trill from his chest. That was one of the cutest sounds you’ve ever heard, the audible representation of a smile. It makes you giggle a bit and your heart feels like it just melted.

“Awwww. Hello there, little one. I have been waiting for you to call for so long...sorry about my sudden disappearance that night...was scared someone had seen me.”

No! He doesn’t need to apologize for anything! He just did what you too would do it you were an 8-foot tall alien. Out of nowhere, you feel little droplets of guilt bead into your consciousness. Perhaps you shouldn’t have gotten upset at him leaving you like that. Fuck. You’re feeling shitty now.

“I-I understand! No need to say sorry for it! You just did what was needed”

He senses the sadness in your voice and his voice softens even more. Perhaps you ended up making him feel worried about you..

“Are you okay, little one? You don’t sound so jolly. Do you need any help, or advice? Or just, you know, someone to distract yourself from it?”

You gulp. The last thing you would expect from an alien is for one of them to be so compassionate, like Janavo was at that exact moment. It makes your face flush a bit, and you can’t help but stutter.

“Y-yeah...I’ve been feeling, uh, very...um, lonely. It has been a few weeks since my parents have last visited me...they’re often so occupied with their businesses and errands, and no one else in here can come and give me company...so I could say that adulthood has been really harsh on me for the last few years...”

You truly have been noticing a sharp decline on your mental and social stability ever since you were deemed an adult by your family. Having to live in your own house, pay your own taxes, with the previous support of your parents slowly becoming lost in the fog of the past, makes you feel responsible and independent, but also lonely, as you have no partner to come and spend time with you, nor a group of friends to go on trips or dates with, as your personality is quite...eccentric, to say the least. It’s not everyone who just has a bunch of edgy paraphernalia on their closet and wears them to celebrate the spooky season.

Thinking about this, and remembering your recent meet-up with Janavo in the woods, leads your mind to a realization, that he is most likely what was missing from your life. That missing puzzle piece in your psyche. A loving, understanding individual who is more than eager to help you out and give you the attention you need.

A concerned “hello?” snaps you out of your musings about your life and you, startled, apologize from the silence. The feelings overwhelm you and you sense yourself starting to break into tears. Some self-control would really come in handy right now. But bam, you lost it. Now you’re just a sobbing mess on the phone with a guy who you met once and you think of as a perfect boyfriend for your insecure ass. Shame washes over you, but you can’t do anything at the moment. You swear you could hear a sad little whine from Janavo as he listens to your emotional breakdown, unsure on how to help you.

“Little one...Shhh...Shhhh...It will all be okay. Wipe those tears. Take a deep breath. Would you like to have me come over? I am not sure on how to comfort you too well over a cellphone.”

He talks to you in a low, extremely worried tone. Almost as if you were going to make him cry too. Your thoughts manage to calm down a tad by hearing his voice and the idea of having Janavo come and see you in person both delights you and scares you, having in question the absolutely trainwreck of a mental state that you are in as of now. However your feelings speak louder than your logic and you wail a little “yes...please...” over the phone for him.

He gently shoos away your stress and asks you for your address, soon hanging up afterwards. Shouldn’t take too long for him to come. He lives near your neighbourhood, after all, at some sort of shelter at the local woods. Maybe if he manages to go through the outskirts of this town, he can go pretty much unnoticed, even better knowing how it’s evening. People are already going inside their homes and all. Your feelings start to re-stabilize themselves until you hear loud thundering from the outside. That sound is like the doors of hell opening.

Fucking. Shit. It’s going to rain.

The thought of being stuck inside your house, crying yourself to sleep as the sound of rain acts as the soundtrack for your sadness comes off as way worse and suffocating when you are actually feeling that at the moment and not simply some mental image you come across while listening to screamo albums. The first raindrops hit the roof and you get worried for your lov-ahem, friend. Does he even have an umbrella? Isn’t he going to get, like, sopping wet? What about a cold? Is his body built to endure that? So many questions come to mind.

Barely a few seconds after your hurricane of thoughts, the rain becomes heavier and heavier. from a peaceful shower to a vicious hiss of water and wind hitting your ceiling. Your windows are open and the curtains dance around from the storm. Forcing your body to get up, you soon close them, avoiding anyone from peeking at you and also your belongings from being drenched. It feels like this weather is only going to get worse. Throwing yourself at your bed, you grab your blankets and wrap yourself up in them while letting out a loud sob. Oh, how you needed him to arrive, so quick...you could feel yourself being dragged down by your anxiety again. And it’s not something you want to deal with alone.

The thundering outside nearly deafens you and makes the lights in your house flicker. He still isn’t there. Pulling up your blinds a bit, you can tell that not a lot of people are outside. The streetlights are on, but do little to properly illuminate the surroundings. At that moment, even a flashlight could do better. Creating those little observations and comments in your brain help diverge your consciousness from the dread and highly unlikely scenarios in your brain.

Minute after minute passes, and every second without hearing the doorbell ring burns away at your patience like a hot rod through your forehead. You tremble underneath the sheets, slowly letting go of the tiny remains of self-control you have left. Tears leak out of your eyes and leave dark stains on your pillow.

Almost an hour after Janavo announced his departure, and no signals of his presence. You’re sleepy and your eyes are swollen and sore. Holding onto a nearby cushion, you bury your head into it, moaning out in a forlorn, raspy voice.

“Janavo...”

At that point, you were ready to just snap into an unconscious state. Too much mental strain to be dealt with for such a young person like you. But, all out of a sudden, the sound you hear reverbs through your ears like a heavenly chime.

Ding-dong!~

It’s him! He finally arrived...after that whole ride. You scream his name out loud. Agitation spreads through your whole body and thrusts you out of your bed. Unlocking the door, you see the figure you were longing for so much.

There stood, Janavo Adalov, holding above his head an enormous trash can lid, drops of rain falling in top of it and rolling off into the ground. Where did he even get that from? You don’t even bother thinking about answers. His body seems mostly dry, apart from his tail, boots and a little bit of his pants. Worry is visible on his eyes, glancing at you with wide pupils. His hair, from what you can see, is messy, while his head is mostly covered by his hood.

“Oh, my doll. I apologize so much from leaving you suffering like this. I wish I could have gotten here sooner...”

He drops the soaked lid to the side, wags his tail to get rid of the excessive water, and you gently call him into your home, watching him have to literally duck to get past the door thanks to his large size. As you both get into the living room, he kneels down and opens up his arms invitingly. Without a second thought, you wrap your own around his neck, and you feel him close his around your body, locking you both in a warm embrace. Quiet little sniffles come from you, and Janavo attempts to be reassuring by giving your back a couple light taps. Your head and hands were buried on the fabric of his hoodie, the soft texture soothing your senses. At this point you wish this moment would never end, being exactly what you’ve been desiring for years.

The two of you stay interlocked like that until you loosen your grip on him, letting him free. You wipe your face and nose with your sweater sleeve, and Janavo stands up and follows you as you guide him to your room. Some colorful decorations here and there seem to entice him, as he keeps his focus on them for quite a long time.

You throw yourself on the sheets and watch your visitor sit on the edge of your bed before laying back and turning his face towards you. His eyes still have that telltale expression of concern, but less visibly now than before. His mouth is curled up into a smile at the sight of you so close to him and his sharp snaggle tooth is visible prodding underneath his top lip. Who knew such a big guy could be so adorable.

Getting closer to him, you lay your head on his chest. Janavo starts to purr loudly when he notices, and places one of his hands on your hair, gently playing around with the locks. His sharp nails every once in a while scrape your scalp, making you shiver. You really needed this. A sigh comes from you and you reach out to hold his other hand.

“It will all be okay, sweetheart. I’ll stay here for as long as you want, or need.”

His eyes are closed, probably that prowl he went on for you was just as exhausting for him as it was for you as you waited for his arrival. You wouldn’t mind having him sleep with you, despite how big he was. Having him live with you, preferably forever, wouldn’t be something you’d mind either, if it wasn’t in reality your deepest wish...

Excusing yourself for a moment, you get off the bed, switching off the lights to add more to that precious moment. When you return, he had removed his boots and curled up into your bed, almost falling asleep. Poor guy. Throwing yourself by his side, his arms stretch out and grab you, bringing you close to his chest again. Oh, that purr! You could listen to it forever.

“I’m pretty new here...as you may know, I’m not from this land. I’ve left my home planet, Alternia, when I was around 9 sweeps or so. Much younger than I am now. I’ve been sent to fight to dominate other lands in space with brutality. But I just could not do that ordeal. After one or two sweeps...I hijacked a ship and fled to any planet I could stumble upon. That planet was Earth. My ship fell on water and I had to swim my way to the shore. That’s how, over time, I found my home. This huge congregation of woods...where no one can find me. I’ve seen people strolling around that part of town, trying to find my den, thinking I was some sort of cryptid. For years, like you, I’ve felt alone and excluded from all forms of human interaction. I was seen as abominable. Eldritch. Until that night...I felt understood. “

So...he is just like you? A socially isolated hermit with no friends who just wants someone to love and care for? Your heart feels heavy, after he has told you his story his purring stops and his breathing becomes heavier. His irises glow a dim cyan as he turns you around to stare at your face. Small beads of cerulean start forming on his eye and he lets go of you to pull his hood over his eyes. It’s his turn to let those nasty feelings out, you see.

“I’m so sorry if I’m burdening you, little one...You just felt so right to me...Someone that knew how it felt to be left in the dust...to be different...”

Of course not! He’s not burdening you at all. Instead, it feels like the complete opposite. You were the one who kept whimpering for help out of nowhere in the middle of a phone call. But you just couldn’t help it. Neither could he. You try to calm his feelings by giving his horns a light caress. Seems like the less...awkward way to help him out. His hold on the hood loosens, and he makes a sound of relief, lifting his head slightly. Underneath his thick bangs of hair, you could spot his face flushed cobalt, and his blue tears dribbling from his eyes. Under your touch, he seems to relax completely. Does he really trust you that much in such a short period of time?

“Look, Janavo, I could literally not stop thinking about you ever since we met. You are what’s missing from my life. Do you want to help me become one, dear? Come stay with me for as long as time allows?”

His hands pull away the hair from his eyes and he gazes at you with big, melancholic pupils, still watery from his brief crying session. Sobbing quietly, his mouth slowly bares his teeth as he grins. He just looks so cute that way. Like an enormous puppy...or kitten. Kind of a mixture of the two.

A pair of hands come and pull you down, aligning your faces together. They settle on your waist, a gentle cyan glow making the atmosphere romantic and placid together with the still-roaring storm outside. You lay your palm on his chest. There come the purrs again.

“I’d be honoured to do so, doll...with all of my pleasure.”

Your heart explodes and you rub your forehead with Janavo’s. He sticks his tongue out goofily, as if trying to lick your face. You massage his ears a bit, which twitch at the heat from your hand. Those piercings of his seem pretty heavy. His eyes blink slowly as they gaze endearingly at you. A chuckle comes from his mouth, and his warm breath reminds you of how close your lips are to his.

Suddenly...you feel the urge to kiss him. Right when you had that idea flash through your mind, Jan’s hands go up your body to grip your shoulders, and gently pushes his head forwards to press his lips against yours. His lips are soft and warm, and the added texture of his stubble and mustache ends up tickling you a bit, but nothing that disturbs you at a large degree. You can feel him turn his head around a bit to deepen the kiss, purring loudly in your mouth. His sharp fangs poke at the edges of your mouth and nearly draw blood.

Your hands that were previously holding his ears move to hold his jaw, in an attempt to let yourself take some control of the situation. Janavo lets out a breathy moan and manages to slip his tongue into your mouth, and pulls your body closer to his, to the point where you could feel his chest rumble through his hoodie. His tongue is bifid and has a pair of beads on its surface, which you feel clink against your teeth every once in a while as he explores the intricacies of your mouth. It’s his first kiss with a human being, after all. And he was already so damn good at it. At least through your eyes, since you’ve never kissed anyone before. Despite how large and powerful he was, he was strangely gentle.

Ecstasy overtook your senses as he moaned again, eyes closing and darkening the scene, arms wrapping around your torso and running up and down the fabric of your sweater. You decided to join in with your tongue, and you manage to slide yours inside his own mouth. This makes his purrs evolve into trills as your tongues run along each other and cause drool to leak from the corner of his mouth. You’re loving this so much.

After what seemed like almost two hours of heaven, Janavo pulls away and licks his lips from the mess made by you two fooling around. Aw, was it just over like that? Your hands let go of his face as you make a little sad sound. In an attempt to satisfy you some more, he places his mouth on your neck and sinks his fangs into your skin slightly. It comes off as unexpected to you, and you gasp. But it feels so good. You don’t want it to end too soon. He suckles at your neck noisily, making you pant. A decent amount of time of that treatment ends in him pulling away and admiring the nice mark he left, and you would make every effort possible to show it off to people.

The whole lovey-dovey stuff you two engaged in was undoubtedly tiring. You just feel like sleeping at the moment. And, from what you can tell from your friend-turned-lover’s body language, so is he. You sit on your bed and watch him stretch his back and arms while yawning. Holy fuck, those teeth. You really want them sunken into your flesh again any time soon.

The rain outside has calmed down, from a merciless storm to a rather placid drizzle. Pulling up your sheets, you prepare yourself to finally rest after this whole ride. Not before you lift them and allow Janavo to slither underneath and knead the mattress below him. Sluggishly, he got comfy on his spot of the bed and reached his neck out to give your forehead a soft, sweet kiss.

“I think it’s safe to say this now, but...I love you, Jan.”

His tail curls behind you, and he reaches out to pull you into a tight embrace. You bury your face on the crook of his neck, and hear him purr again. It’s obvious how happy he is to be with you, with how much he loves having physical contact and making the whole live-in decision in just one night. Clearly you two are going to be incredibly happy together.

“I love you too, doll, all I have to do is move my stuff tomorrow morning from the forest den to here and we will be all set.”

Your brain still is so boggled while trying to process all of the events this afternoon. That huge monstrous guy you met in the woods once, who you first thought would maul you to pieces? And who turned out to be a huge softie in a tough shell? He’s going to live with you now. And what a better way to celebrate than with having him sleep with you for the first night? And the next one, and the next one, and the next one...creating so many good memories and feelings.

“Sweet dreams, little one.”

It doesn’t take too long for the both of you to drift off into a peaceful night’s sleep, to the calm sounds of each other’s breathing and the soft rain outside.

#fanfiction #janavo x reader

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14081830a · 3 years

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What If We Stopped Pretending?The climate apocalypse is coming. To prepare for it, we need to admit that we can’t prevent it.

By Jonathan Franzen

September 8, 2019

Illustration by Leonardo Santamaria

VIDEO FROM THE NEW YORKER

David Attenborough on Spiders with Personalities

In fact, it would be worth pursuing even if it had no effect at all. To fail to conserve a finite resource when conservation measures are available, to needlessly add carbon to the atmosphere when we know very well what carbon is doing to it, is simply wrong. Although the actions of one individual have zero effect on the climate, this doesn’t mean that they’re meaningless. Each of us has an ethical choice to make. During the Protestant Reformation, when “end times” was merely an idea, not the horribly concrete thing it is today, a key doctrinal question was whether you should perform good works because it will get you into Heaven, or whether you should perform them simply because they’re good—because, while Heaven is a question mark, you know that this world would be better if everyone performed them. I can respect the planet, and care about the people with whom I share it, without believing that it will save me.

More than that, a false hope of salvation can be actively harmful. If you persist in believing that catastrophe can be averted, you commit yourself to tackling a problem so immense that it needs to be everyone’s overriding priority forever. One result, weirdly, is a kind of complacency: by voting for green candidates, riding a bicycle to work, avoiding air travel, you might feel that you’ve done everything you can for the only thing worth doing. Whereas, if you accept the reality that the planet will soon overheat to the point of threatening civilization, there’s a whole lot more you should be doing.

Our resources aren’t infinite. Even if we invest much of them in a longest-shot gamble, reducing carbon emissions in the hope that it will save us, it’s unwise to invest all of them. Every billion dollars spent on high-speed trains, which may or may not be suitable for North America, is a billion not banked for disaster preparedness, reparations to inundated countries, or future humanitarian relief. Every renewable-energy mega-project that destroys a living ecosystem—the “green” energy development now occurring in Kenya’s national parks, the giant hydroelectric projects in Brazil, the construction of solar farms in open spaces, rather than in settled areas—erodes the resilience of a natural world already fighting for its life. Soil and water depletion, overuse of pesticides, the devastation of world fisheries—collective will is needed for these problems, too, and, unlike the problem of carbon, they’re within our power to solve. As a bonus, many low-tech conservation actions (restoring forests, preserving grasslands, eating less meat) can reduce our carbon footprint as effectively as massive industrial changes.

All-out war on climate change made sense only as long as it was winnable. Once you accept that we’ve lost it, other kinds of action take on greater meaning. Preparing for fires and floods and refugees is a directly pertinent example. But the impending catastrophe heightens the urgency of almost any world-improving action. In times of increasing chaos, people seek protection in tribalism and armed force, rather than in the rule of law, and our best defense against this kind of dystopia is to maintain functioning democracies, functioning legal systems, functioning communities. In this respect, any movement toward a more just and civil society can now be considered a meaningful climate action. Securing fair elections is a climate action. Combatting extreme wealth inequality is a climate action. Shutting down the hate machines on social media is a climate action. Instituting humane immigration policy, advocating for racial and gender equality, promoting respect for laws and their enforcement, supporting a free and independent press, ridding the country of assault weapons—these are all meaningful climate actions. To survive rising temperatures, every system, whether of the natural world or of the human world, will need to be as strong and healthy as we can make it.

And then there’s the matter of hope. If your hope for the future depends on a wildly optimistic scenario, what will you do ten years from now, when the scenario becomes unworkable even in theory? Give up on the planet entirely? To borrow from the advice of financial planners, I might suggest a more balanced portfolio of hopes, some of them longer-term, most of them shorter. It’s fine to struggle against the constraints of human nature, hoping to mitigate the worst of what’s to come, but it’s just as important to fight smaller, more local battles that you have some realistic hope of winning. Keep doing the right thing for the planet, yes, but also keep trying to save what you love specifically—a community, an institution, a wild place, a species that’s in trouble—and take heart in your small successes. Any good thing you do now is arguably a hedge against the hotter future, but the really meaningful thing is that it’s good today. As long as you have something to love, you have something to hope for.

In Santa Cruz, where I live, there’s an organization called the Homeless Garden Project. On a small working farm at the west end of town, it offers employment, training, support, and a sense of community to members of the city’s homeless population. It can’t “solve” the problem of homelessness, but it’s been changing lives, one at a time, for nearly thirty years. Supporting itself in part by selling organic produce, it contributes more broadly to a revolution in how we think about people in need, the land we depend on, and the natural world around us. In the summer, as a member of its C.S.A. program, I enjoy its kale and strawberries, and in the fall, because the soil is alive and uncontaminated, small migratory birds find sustenance in its furrows.

There may come a time, sooner than any of us likes to think, when the systems of industrial agriculture and global trade break down and homeless people outnumber people with homes. At that point, traditional local farming and strong communities will no longer just be liberal buzzwords. Kindness to neighbors and respect for the land—nurturing healthy soil, wisely managing water, caring for pollinators—will be essential in a crisis and in whatever society survives it. A project like the Homeless Garden offers me the hope that the future, while undoubtedly worse than the present, might also, in some ways, be better. Most of all, though, it gives me hope for today.

A previous version of this article mischaracterized the scientific consensus around a “point of no return.”

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atomicsuperhero · 3 years

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2021: The Strangest Gardening Season

This has been a strange gardening season for us for a multitude of reasons. We began the year with my parents intending to list the house for sale. With the potential to have to move in the middle of the gardening season, we decided it would be best to minimize planting this year, so we wouldn’t potentially leave behind a ton of work for new owners, and also so we wouldn’t have to put a ton of work into things we wouldn’t get to harvest.

But, as I sit here writing this on September 1st, I’m still staring out at the same garden and yard. It's been raining, windy, and stormy all day so far. The house comes off the market in a few days, and we’ll take the winter off and try again next spring.

There was no crowd of seedlings in the kitchen this spring as we didn’t start anything from seed this year. We bought a few tomato plants and some basil for the greenhouse, and when it came time to plant the garden, we only put in 4 rows:

Beans (that were supposed to be purple)

Peas

Carrots

Beets & Swiss Chard

Record-Breaking Heat Wave

Besides it being a strange and empty year in the garden, it was also strange weather-wise too. In late June, a heat dome swept across most of Canada, and I think most of the Northern US as well. Many towns and cities set records for all-time high temperatures. Lytton, BC, set records for several days straight, and then almost the entire town burned to the ground from out of control forest fires. I’ve taken to calling it fire season now, not summer.

The heat dome meant that Lacombe’s daytime temperatures hovered between 28 and 35ºC for almost a whole week. We usually get a few days of 30+ temperatures in Lacombe, but not usually until the end of July or the beginning of August. The heat stunted our peas badly. We set up a 4-foot wire for our peas to climb. Usually, they’re past the top and falling back on themselves. We wouldn’t have needed the wire; they topped out at about 14 inches tall.

The carrots didn’t love the heat either; only about half the row developed. The beats and chards and dill seemed more than happy to grow in the weird weather. We thought we’d planted purple beans (purple seeds in a ziplock from a friend), but it turns out they were actually yellow—none of us like yellow beans. We picked a few for pickling. Last week I mowed them down with the lawnmower and then tilled them into the garden soil. The birds planted a thick crop of sunflower seeds in the garden, so they’ve been quite happy with the dense cluster taking up about ¼ of the garden space. We don’t mind.

The greenhouse has been a bit neglected this year. We’ve been watering it, though not as often as we should. And the tomatoes plants are producing fruit now, but since we didn’t fertilize as much as we should have, they’re not producing as much as we usually get. Speaking of fertilizer…

Biggest 2021 Gardening Regret: Getting Rid of My Compost Bin

When we first worked the garden in the spring, I emptied the compost bin and hauled it out to the road. I put a free sign on it, and someone took it. I didn’t like the bin we had, and I thought we’d be moving, so I didn’t replace it. I really regret that.

The soil in our greenhouse is really depleted. We haven’t changed it out or added anything to it in probably a decade, which is why we end up using a lot of fertilizer for our tomatoes. If I had kept that dang compost bin, I’d have enough compost by now to put a nice thick layer on all the greenhouse beds.

Burnout

Between the pandemic, financial stress, and work stress, I burned out hard this summer. I crashed in mid-august and had to ask for a significant reduction in my writing assignments. It's been about two weeks now that I’ve been attempting to recover. I can see little indicators that I am starting to recharge. But I’m still pretty braindead and feel constantly exhausted.

Less work also means less money, so while I’m having a bit of brain break, I’m also having a lot of financial stress, which is almost certainly making recovery slower and harder. But I guess it is what it is. I couldn’t sustain what I was doing before, so there’s no way I could recover if I had kept the same workload.

I’m in a bit of limbo right now. Wondering how to pivot my career so I can keep what I love about working for myself:

Working from home

Setting my own schedule

Not having an alarm

Learning about topics I’m passionate about

Tons of autonomy

And also wondering what I can do besides writing, which is also exciting and fulfilling, but that will pay drastically better.

I don’t love the idea of going back to a full-time corporate job. I REALLY don’t want to have to go into an office again and work set hours. I hated everything about that style of work. But I’m feeling a little lost for ideas.

A few people have recommended that I try to find some editing work since that’s a little less mentally taxing than writing. I’ve realized this year that writing is genuinely the most mentally exhausting work I’ve ever done. For me, 2 hours of writing is as mentally exhausting as 8 hours at any of the office jobs I’ve had in the past.

So, I have no idea where the last quarter of 2021 will take me. It's been a strange year, in the garden and the rest of my life. I’m tired; I think everybody is tired. I don’t know where we go from here, but I hope we can all start getting some rest soon.

#gardening #Mental Health #careers #burnout

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lyralumina · 7 years

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How about Kaiba for the ask thing?

Character: Seto Kaiba

1: sexuality headcanon

I actually headcanon Seto to be Bisexual.

2: otp

- BlueShipping (Seto Kaiba and Kisara) This ship will always be number one within the fandom because the show sets it up. Not as nicely as it should be but that is because the season it was basically set up in was dealing with the writers tossing in a grand slew of ways to end off the series with no plot holes but that failed in the end. The season this was all set up in had little time to fully show anything between the two for example, the fact that Seto is a different person than Priest Seto is. That Kisara now has to deal with two Seto’s running around. Other than that, It’s a wonderful ship. - PuppyShipping/VioletShipping (Seto Kaiba and Jounouchi Katsuya)This ship has been with me since middle school. I started shipping it back then. I had to keep that secret tucked away because not a lot of people generally liked Yu-gi-oh! Or a ton of other animes, if you liked anime then you were simply outcasted and my performing arts ass could not let that be. Sure I openly stated that I was into anime but they left me alone pretty much, also I hid that well with my Sonic the Hedgehog phase. The show had countless times where Jounouchi and Seto interacted together, whether it be good or for bad but whatever the outcome was, the fandom just snatched up any moment the two had screen time together and took it from there. It’s a good ship but some things here and there make the pairing unhealthy.

- AzureShipping (Seto Kaiba and Anzu Mazaki) This ship was one of the first ships I ever had watching this show as a kid and I will ship this in hell thank you very much. As a kid I was far too busy shipping Yugi Muto and Yami Yugi (Atem) to even consider Yugi ever loving Anzu back, kid me was wild. As a kid I also really liked the ’ main female is in love with the bad guy ‘ trope so Seto and Anzu just took itself from there and quite honestly, I love this pairing so much. Sure it could never happen but I like to dream. Its a good ship but again some parts here and there would make this an unhealthy relationship.

3: brotp

Mokuba Kaiba because, They are already extremely close, they are siblings after all. They love to get work done as soon as possible so that they can spend time together with such little time they have. Somedays are harder to do so since Seto is extremely busy going through mountains of paperwork and having to handle taxes and all that other stuff grown ups have to do. Seto actually taught Mokuba how to do taxes and how to write checks because the earlier he learns the better. For when they do hang out, They love to just play a game like chess and not have to stress as if their very lives are on the line. They also talk about future plans with no stress lurched on their shoulders, Seto will maybe once or twice crack a genuine smile to his younger brother. They have a nice cup of tea while they are at it. Mint and Rose hip are both of their favorites.

Anzu Mazaki because, She is the only one within Yugi’s friendship gang that he can tolerate well because unlike Jounouchi, she is well mannered and knows when enough is enough. She just has class while the other three boys don’t know when to put a cork in it. While they don’t ’ hang out ’ very often, they are on great terms with one another. Anzu is actually the runner up for when Seto has to bring a ’ date ’ or someone else to some formal event and with that being said, Seto has her cell phone number. They text and send each other things they would find interesting. Also another good reason as to why they have each others cell phone number is because Mokuba really likes to hang out with Anzu, she is like an older sister to Mokuba.

Yugi Muto because,Okay Yugi is also someone he can tolerate but to a certain extent, he will get cranky the second Yugi starts talking about friendship and then drone on about the ’ Heart of the cards ’. They still are on good terms with one another and yes, they have each others cell phone numbers, they text often rather than having to schedule meeting times since Seto is busy on his end and Yugi is busy on his end as well. Both have busy yet so different lives and they know that well. Yugi will sometimes send Seto a really weird meme that he does not understand and he has to ask Mokuba what does it mean and sometimes Mokuba is on the ground in a hysterical crying mess. The most recent one was the ‘ oh worm ‘ meme and Mokuba snorted as he was busy filing paper work in chronological order.

4: notp

-There are people who do ship TabloidShipping, Seto Kaiba X Mokuba Kaiba as far as I am aware. Its incest and I am not up for that. I don’t know why people would ship that but- here we are in 2017 I guess.

-There is a ton of people within the fandom who ship PrideShipping, Seto Kaiba X Atem and I am not one of those people. Sorry you guys. Sure,

Some stuff may be cute and sappy like, “Oh Seto can teach Atem what the world has to offer.” “Atem and Seto vacationing in the after life without anything truly bothering them.” But I just cannot find it in myself to ship them together.

5: first headcanon that pops into my head

Seto is a great dancer. He might not be on Anzu’s level of expertise but he knows quite a lot which surprises a lot of people, even his younger brother. Seto really loves ballroom dancing, he is a sucker for live jazz bands playing, the girl is in a flowy dress and the lights are dimmed down to really set the mood. He once went into detail about that to Mokuba and Mokuba was very surprised that he would like that, not that his brother did not have any class but he thought that his brother would not like dancing one bit. Other than that he also likes watching royal ballets. This is something both he and Anzu love talking about together over a nice hot cup of tea. Seto and Anzu do dance together on their free time if they can and to Anzu, Seto is an amazing partner, probably the best too. He’s really tall and knows what he is doing, he will even ask her if she is comfortable during a lift. If he feels he is harming her or even hears a slight hiss of pain from her he will get all antsy and tell her if she is alright and what can he do to lessen the pain. Anzu will laugh and say that she is fine but she will have to deal with ribcage or waist bruising for a while. Seto has a problem with soft gripping but Seto is afraid of dropping her. He has dropped her before and it scared him because one injury can actually hurt her professional dancing career.

6: one way in which I relate to this character

The Blue Eyes White Dragon is my favorite monster/dragon of all time and nothing has come close to stealing its throne. My deck is favored to it and I currently have eight of them on my deck, which is either a good thing or a bad thing. I’m not sure but I just really love the BEWD. One of my nicknames back in elementary school was actually Seto Kaiba because I was one of the best duelists within the school and I was the only girl who even liked Yu-gi-oh!, everyone else were boys. I used to have a duel disk too and everyone knew I was ready to throw down 24/7 but then my Littlest Pet Shop phase happened.

7: thing that gives me second hand embarrassment about this character

There is nothing that would make me embarrassed about liking Seto to be honest. A lot of the fandom really like Seto for who he is honestly. Some might not like him and that is fine no one is asking or forcing you to. I actually used to have a childhood crush on Seto back when I was a kid and no one honestly knew that, which was a good thing because that could have ruined my performing arts reputation within the blink of an eye. I valued my reputation more than my own self, I had things to manage and better things to do than love an old school anime, I had to dance, I had to run track, I had so much more to do. It was not about being bullied, it was about how you can strive and make it into the year books with fame and a good reputation.

8: cinnamon roll or problematic fave?

Both actually. Season 0 wise he was an evil boi who just wanted to rule the world and who also had green hair further more my nickname for him within Season 0 is long green onion boi.Duel Monsters wise : I LOVE HIM! THAT’S MY BOI WHO I WILL LOVE AND PROTECT WITH THE REST OF MY LIFE. I LOVE MY EXTRA BOI! Dark Side Of Dimensions wise : SETO YOU CAN’T JUST YEET YOURSELF INTO THE AFTERLIFE FOR ATEM LIKE THAT! WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS???

#sibbinthegivengibbon #yu-gi-oh!#seto kaiba #This has been sitting in my inbox for a solid month #I am so sorry for the long wait

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