#that's just body parts. so specifically human stuff. AND THEN i took that sphere (well circle) and cut it up and kintsugi'ed it with

[roxyandelsewhere]

Angels’ trueforms in their most memorable moments [26/?] - Nephilim fetus: regular nephil, sired by a regular angel (above) and Jack, sired by Lucifer (below)

inprnt | society6 | redbubble | teepublic | ko-fi

#NEW ONE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN AGES!!! I TOLD YALL I WASN'T DONE WITH THIS!!! #SO sorry it took so long. i still can't control my artblocks. but i've had this idea for so long #spn #spnart #spn art #mine.caro #ok so. explanation time. cracking my knuckles. i haven't done this in so long ahhhh #so i HAD to do nephilim eventually. of course. and the key thing about them is they're the children of angels and humans #and i figured i'd start with a fetus bc that's the nephil version of the angel factory settings. and that needed a shape like the AFS did #it felt right to go with a sphere. and after the nephil is born and becomes a more distinct individual etc the spheres unravel in different #ways. some open up like pillbugs (woodlouse? i never know the right name). others sprout like seeds. others spiral out. the possibilities #are endless hehe. and the sphere had to have a mix of angel trueform and human soul. which i've been coding so far as the black and white #trueforms and collages. so that was settled. but that couldn't be it bc it's not just one and the other. they're integrated in one thing #so. for the regular nephil i filled out some cells in black like angel trueforms and others with collages. in the trueforms cells #and it's Earthly Things like plants and body parts and fruits and animals water and the sky and rocks etc. and a bigger solid collage block #that's just body parts. so specifically human stuff. AND THEN i took that sphere (well circle) and cut it up and kintsugi'ed it with #angel grace. feels like a way to go to represent nephil. and then i added the angel wheels to look like a sort of proto version of AFS #and that's regular nephil. for jack he had to be different bc lucifer nephil is thee antichrist. it's different. so i followed the samelogi #but based on the lucifer trueform instead of AFS. so i painted the solid black with alcohol-based markers so i could smudge it with alcohol #and then added the collage bits (more from a fitness magazine than a fashion magazine i used for the other one. gets a more aggressive vibe #i think. more flexed muscles) and painted the chaotic smoke cloud over it. and then i did the same kintsugi process. i was gonna do it in #silver but figured it made no sense. it should be the same. and the black and gold look cool #and what else. regular nephil has a rosary-like umbilical cord! emerging from one of the poles of the sphere so to speak #and jack has none :// partly bc i forgot at first kfjg but then i didn't go back to add it bc i feel that matches fetus jack's situation #considering it's an angel grace umbilical cord #and i think that's it! #these aren't up on the stores yet but im gonna add them now #hope they're worth the wait. if anyone was waiting for more #Trueforms

[decafbat]

i really like how much depth your art has, do you think you could show how you break down bodies when sketching if that makes sense? it’s something i struggle with a lot in my art! ｡ﾟ(ﾟ´ω`ﾟ)ﾟ｡

ok apologies in advance, this is probably going to be a really long and tangential rant about art that may or may not actually help you in learning how to construct bodies. im just gonna put it under a cut to save everyone from seeing this huge text wall.

i dont think its gonna be possible for you to replicate my methods here, because theyre mostly just really specific shortcuts for finding certain proportions and reference points for anatomy, which i'm fairly versed in, but not as much as i'd like to be. the shortcuts you'll need will be different from mine. im glad you think my art has depth, that is something i am trying to seek very intentionally right now, and i dont think im even close to the depth of form i am actually aiming for. so like. this makes making a tutorial kind of inherently hard. nevertheless, i threw this quick sketch together after like 3 failed attempts. (i was doing those attempts digitally, ended up giving up on that and going back to traditional because its what im most comfortable with rn)

i didnt get all the steps i took to get here because scanning that much would be cumbersome but ill try to explain how i got here. i start with the head almost every time.

i use a lot of symbolic/graphic shapes when drawing heads and dont stick to using forms very often besides the circle at the center of the head, which i use as the base to form these graphic shapes around. think of it like "wrapping" the ball in various textures and masses. the eyes are usually "textured" onto the head, notice how the her left eye looks narrower then her right. of course i try to make sure her bangs sit along the curve of the sphere and her ears look like they sit on opposite sides of the head. its easy to forget that part, making the head look unsymmetrical. the particular masses of leica's head would be her snout, which is just a curve extended slightly outside the diameter of the ball, and her hair, which are two strange organic shapes that are quite hard to draw, two hair sprig anime antennae things (forgive me, i forgot the word for them,) and the back of the head, which i usually need to extend slightly. its a little too extended here, needs more on the top, i fix this in the final pass. this was a quick sketch, so i didnt focus too hard on the forms of the head beyond the most essential ones for her design, but i sometimes highlight the form of cheeks with curved hatching, or try to make the eyes appear more sunken-in as they are on human faces. i dont know how to proportion the neck and torso correctly until i draw the head, so i always do it first. next, i did the torso.

so heres why i said that you probably wont be able to replicate this approach. you do kind of just have to practice anatomy, i cant just make it make sense because im not very good at explaining this stuff, but ill try to go through what i did here. so, i generally use simplified bone shapes to find proportions and reference points, as well as more complicated shapes like those of elbows and knees. i try to study fairly often because im not satisfied with here im at with this stuff yet. of course, i dont think i'll ever be. so i'll usually start with the ribcage, add a shoulderblade out the back to find the shoulder, the armbones come out of that, the bone in the upper arm connects to the ulna with a sort of three-pronged attachment, one big knurl in the middle, which forms the thrust of the elbow, two little ones on the side. i think those are part of the ulna but i dont remember. see, you dont really have to know what exactly they do as long as you know what they look like. the ulna does some goofy rotation shit i dont understand, connects to the wrist, and then we have a hand, which, i mean, im not good enough at hands to even be telling you how to do it, but i just have a big squarish mass and some little hotdog fingers coming out of that. you can see on her left hand that ill have a big circle forming the the area on the hand where the thumb attaches... theres more depth to the hands, i think you can easily find better tutorials then i could offer. anyway, under the ribcage theres the pelvis, represented with a box. ill get into that when i talk about the legs. i wanna briefly talk about the way i add the flesh and fat to the bones.

so, i really can't give a comprehensive crash course on anatomy, but i can point you towards the morpho series, which is where i get most of this stuff from. you can get very far with the volumes Simplified Forms, Fat and Skin, and Skeleton and Bone Reference Points. moving on, i just kind of have a feel for where the masses attach by now. the important thing to remember when drawing fat characters like this is that the fat should "hang" from the bones and flesh, drooping down slightly. leicas fat hangs substantially, so she's not very wide despite her weight. this is important to her character design i feel. i almost always draw characters naked first when doing serious drawings because it will come in handy knowing where the forms of the body are when i add the clothing. by focusing on the way her body looks naked, i can modify the impression of those forms when adding clothes, and when i add them later on in this drawing, leica will take on the distinctive boxy look i try to draw her with.

if you look at the arm, youll see that the place the line of bone sits is very high compared to the whole mass of the arm, the flesh and fat of the arm "hang" from the bone, and then the upper arm squishes against the bent forearm too. even if the anatomy in the arm is indistinct, it can still look convincing when the forms act realistically against one another. the elbow has much less fat connected to it, so its more bony then the rest. this isnt actually consistent on all people so like, think about that kind of thing when designing characters, like i was talking about before, fat can sit in infinite different ways. maybe if i was doing a more objective anatomy lesson i'd draw cath, because i do have a sort of vague understanding of muscle placement that doesnt come through here, but probably would if i was drawing a scrawnier character. let me know if you want that.

a word on the breasts too: they hang a bit lower then you'd expect, keep that in mind. the attachment point is also angled, as the line shows. the line starts roughly in the middle of the torso and ends around the armpit, but the form of the breast can go underneath the armpit or even connect around the fold of fat in the back. many things to think about. i love boob shapes. ok lets finally get on with it and talk about the legs.

so, the really specific shape of the pelvis doesnt matter that much unless youre drawing a really thin character, so its just a box here. out from the sides of the pelvis, extending out more then you'd expect, is the femur, which ends in a similar joint to the arm. this shape helps me figure out the form of the knee. two masses on each side with a bunch of complex and weirdly shaped bones forming the kneecap, which i have omitted because i dont yet know shit enough to include them. i am learning though. so, obviously the feet are just scribbles here because im just gonna put her feet in socks anyway. you really dont have to do more then you have to. a few tips i can offer here, the butt should hang a bit too when drawing fat characters, i think the butt is supposed to start just below the pelvis if i remember, but take that with a grain of salt. i also didnt really do that here but its hard to tell because she's facing mostly forward. again, i dont think i can really communicate what's going on here. morpho has a lot of great drawings explaining the shapes and muscles of the legs, all things i might focus on more when drawing a scrawnier character. for this case, i regrettably don't go too hard on the legs. also i should note that legs would usually be much longer, leica is really short so ive exaggerated the proportions to communicate that. i may change my mind on that front in the future and give her more grounded proportions. the important thing to remember with legs is just getting a nice hierarchy of forms going. bigger thigh going into smaller calf going into smaller foot. it mostly comes automatically now.

i added the clothing, shaped up her head a bit, added a bit of fur. i put her in her classic outfit, just a sweater and jeans. i enjoy the big thick folds that come out of these clothes, and big areas of white space too. its nice. i try my best to form all the folds around the forms of the body i drew earlier. thats one case where i really really have no idea what im doing and could never explain it in words. its just some fun intuitive play with loops and lines. this is at around the stage for a sketch where i'd do inks, or if it was going to be a finished pencil drawing i'd erase out parts piece by piece and replace them with nicer and more defined lines and tones.

i guess that's all i can offer , i hope that halped.

#leica #artworks

[shimmershae]

So.  I have some more thoughts.  Shocking?  Yeah, I know, lol.

Let’s see if I can figure out how to purge what’s inside of my overactive brain and have it make some semblance of sense, shall we?  

Hmm.  

Where to start, where to start?  

Okay.  So I think it’s safe to say that the flashbacks pretty quickly establish that Daryl has essentially been set adrift.  He’s been cast back, in some ways by his own choosing, into a solitary searching life that speaks to his past.  He has no anchor anymore, no touching stone--whether that be Rick, who’s presumed dead, or Carol, who’s chosen by default to leave him behind and try to make a new family in Ezekiel and Henry.  

That’s important.  Because until this season?  Until he really matured and assumed, grudgingly or otherwise, the mantle of leadership of the communities?  

Daryl was a follower.  He took his cues from other stronger personalities.  Other people more quick to voice and own their opinions, right or wrong.  Like Rick.  And Merle before him.  

That’s not to say Daryl hasn’t had anything of value to say or add to the communities or to his relationships.  He has and he did.  Remember back at the Prison how Carol told him he was going to have to live with the love?  Daryl was just beginning to find his voice, so to speak.  He was emerging, even if they were only baby steps at first, from other seemingly more formidable shadows, and learning even then how to be more of a leader that people looked up to even if he was still content to be a follower.  

Being a follower was what he was comfortable with and I’m making some assumptions here, but I’d wager that in his abusive past with his old man, in that household first with Merle then on his own, being a follower and sticking to the safety of the periphery is probably what kept him alive.  Being a follower minimized conflict then, I’m sure.  Being a follower when he met up with and eventually connected with Rick and the rest of Team Family was probably the safest way for him to make emotional connections.  

I’m rambling.  I know it and I’m sorry.  It’s what I do.  Ramble, lol.  

Here.  I’m going to place the rest of this underneath a cut because I got more winding words than I have wind and most of ya’ll have patience.  

With Rick gone, with Carol off trying her damndest to live a fairy tale, Daryl floundered.  For all intents and purposes, he was left without any direction, nobody to take his cues from emotionally or otherwise.  

I mean, he literally made ever-widening circles searching for Rick, didn’t he?  Circles have no end point.  They have no real destination.  Not really.  Daryl essentially lived in a spin cycle of pain and regret and inability to really and truly connect with anybody during those years spent searching for Rick--especially since the person he arguably felt closest to and most comfortable with, Carol, basically decided those past connections Daryl was so desperate to find again were too painful for her and attempted to move on.  

He wasn’t emotionally equipped to or stable enough (perhaps still internally dealing with his anger and angst over his torture and imprisonment by Negan at that point in time) to put in the hard work to reestablish those fraying bonds on his own and the man basically lost the plot.  His world narrowed down to this latest search.  This search for a body.  For closure.  For a new purpose perhaps?  

And you know, the man had to be tired.  In some way or another?  He’s probably been searching his entire life.  It’s kind of what followers do.  They look for meaning outside themselves because they don’t feel like they’re enough.  

So then Dog, in the form of this happy, accepting, affectionate puppy appears out of nowhere.  He’s a welcome distraction and knowing Daryl’s propensity to try to reunite the lost with those they love, he started a new little search.  

That led him to Leah. 

Leah, who was alone.  Like him.  Leah, who knew how to survive.  Like him.  Leah, who was stuck in a place of grief.  Like him.  

Leah, who--and I don’t really feel like I’m going out on too far or precarious limb here considering how many parallels they literally slapped us in the face with during this episode--reminded him of someone he felt he couldn’t have, not even her friendship anymore because by her choosing to ‘be there’ for Ezekiel and Henry and the Kingdom she was always leaving Daryl behind and that’s a pattern we’ve all long suspected has really caused hurt for Daryl even if he’s long ‘accepted’ and dealt with it with stoicism.  

Boy, they really blew the lid off that issue didn’t they?  Oh, it was done rather quietly and in a surprisingly controlled manner, but the hurt it caused?  The tears and emotion it elicited was brought about with an almost surgical precision that stunned Carol, but I digress.  

My point is?  Daryl?  Innate follower that he is?  Daryl had grown accustomed to the human connection he found with Team Family.  He was never 100% comfortable with it but he missed it.  He craved it.  And Rick?  Well, deep down Daryl knew the likelihood of finding his ‘brother’ was minimal.  And with Carol pulling away and putting more and more distance between them--how deep and wide was that river, ya’ll, before the episode was done? when it started off looking like a small trickle of a stream?  how wide was that chasm these two idiots in painfully unspoken love allowed to be formed between them?--essentially the two closest people to him were lost to him, leaving him lost.  

So he stumbles upon this woman who is very reminiscent of people that he’s known.  He’s figured out, even though he keeps trying to buck the trend, that you really can’t make it alone in the world anymore.  And when she shows him some small measure of trust by letting him go?  That part of him that didn’t want to be alone kept drifting back into her sphere.  

Now I’m not going to go so far as saying Daryl fell in love with this Leah.  Because, shipping biases aside?  I really don’t feel like he did.  

Daryl found solace with Leah.  

Companionship.  

Remember another time when Daryl was lost?  When he felt he had failed another member of his family? Lost what he thought was the last of his family?  How alone he was at a crossroads when Joe’s group of Claimers came along?  

I’m not equating Leah with the Claimers in any other way except saying Daryl was in a similar headspace when he met her, okay?  Before anybody goes off on me.  I’m just saying that Leah?  She represented what Daryl felt was his one chance NOT TO BE ALONE.  

Daryl’s emotionally stunted, ya’ll. He’s made great strides, but trauma always seems to regress him.  Thankfully, it seems to regress him less and less as he really and truly matures, but it still has a habit of reverting him back to the Daryl we first met.  The Daryl we can easily see growing up in Merle’s shadow. 

When he threw that damn fish at her door, I literally laughed for ten straight minutes because that was funny as hell.  But honestly?  The more I thought about it, the more it dwelled in my mind?  The sadder it actually made me because here’s a grown man essentially trying to connect with another human being on an adolescent level.  

So much of what we were shown in this episode really just reinforced what I’d already suspected to be true--Daryl Dixon just doesn’t ‘get’ the basics of interpersonal relationships.  At least those that could be perceived as romantic.  For all that Carol mused it was like he had become a man back in Atlanta, during Consumed and their search for Beth?  That man is still very much trying to fumble his way out of the starting gate so far as pursuing a woman in any form or fashion.

This is just my opinion and we all know what they say about those, lol, but Daryl has longed for an even deeper connection with Carol since the Prison.  Maybe even before that. I think at the Farm his eyes were opened to her and he started trying to be a better person to match what he perceived as her goodness.  Before he even knew she wanted one, he was trying to be a man of honor.  Then stuff and thangs happened and shit, like Daryl once told Abe, just never settled.  Carol drifted out of Daryl’s reach because he wasn’t equipped with the emotional tools to really go after what he wanted--her in a deeper, different capacity than he’d ever wanted or asked for before--and shit, ya’ll.  If loneliness is a choice then Daryl Dixon was sick and damn tired of it.  

Do I think there’s even really a choice between Leah and Carol in Daryl’s mind though?  A true choice were he to absolutely, 100% realize and know that Carol’s heart was earmarked for him from the very beginning and that she’s suffering from the same delusions that she’s not good enough or deserving of him?  

Absolutely not.  

Leah knew that even if Daryl never divulged any specifics about Carol.  She knew the answer to her ultimatum before she even made it.  

And that ultimatum, ya’ll. 

Maybe it’s weird, but it put me in mind of when Merle pressed Daryl to make a choice between him and Team Family.  

Merle was blood family but like Carol and others said, he wasn’t good for Daryl.  

Leah might have offered Daryl some solace from his loneliness but ultimately staying isolated with her and not reconnecting with those he identifies as family is just as damaging as Daryl choosing to follow in Merle’s wake again.  Similarly to that situation, Daryl was clearly torn as soon as the words were out of her mouth.  

Between loyalty to family and unspoken love.  

In case there’s any confusion here, the unspoken love I’m talking about is his love for Carol.  He felt something for her back at that Prison.  Fight me.  He knew she’d be hurt by him going back with Merle, but obligation and family loyalty led him to make the decision all the same.  

Still. He knew she’d understand.  And she did, even if his choice hurt her.  

My thought is that this time?  At least initially?  Daryl didn’t completely separate his loyalty to family (searching for Rick) and his unspoken love (for Carol) when he made his decision.  They’re hopelessly entwined because Carol is a little bit of everything to Daryl--friend, family, the woman he loves and has been halfway in love with for so many years.  Initially, he chose the hope that both would come back to him if he just kept searching.  Because searching’s what he does.  From Sophia to Connie, he’s always searched in the hope of bringing the lost back to those that love them.  He’s always searched because nobody searched for him.  

Daryl is the ultimate lost boy who grew to be a man and still feels like he hasn’t been found.  

But how can he be found if the one person he wants to find him keeps running away?  

Daryl didn’t choose Leah.  

Not from his heart.  

Daryl turned back to Leah because he felt Carol slipping away to where he couldn’t follow her.  

If it can even be argued that Daryl chose Leah, it was by default.  Of course, he feels guilty.  Daryl wouldn’t be Daryl without guilt.  He wouldn’t be Carol’s man of honor.  

And he is Carol’s man.  

She may not be in the place to see it--YET--but she’s getting there.  She’s fighting hard against her natural inclination to run.  She’s trying.  She knows what she wants, even if she doesn’t believe she has the hope of getting it.  

Daryl knows what he wants, too.  He knows, once and for all, where he belongs.  He’s stopped searching.  He knows she’s right there.  There’s no more circles.  There’s just a final destination if he can convince the love of his fucking life to stop running from what they both want.  

He may have left that note for Leah, but you can’t convince this viewer that he didn’t write those words for Carol.  

And that’s all I got to say about that.  

For now anyway.  

Omigosh, lovelies.  

So sorry for the emotional word vomit but thank you so much for indulging me even if I did lose my original point somewhere up there, lol.    

#The Walking Dead #Season 10C spoilers #Caryl #Carol x Daryl #Carol Peletier #Daryl Dixon #Melissa McBride #Norman Reedus #gorgeous people #my precious babies in love #things that make me smile and cry #for reasons #my heart

[tipsydipsydo]

The members have a crush on you [their indecent fantasies🔞]

Hey my Dears💜

Here we go again into the second round of the “When the Members have a crush on you!”-Scenario(s)!

It’s not necessary but still useful to read the first part of the scenario to understand some “connections” (it’s kinda a little storyline for each invidual member I’d say? 😂😅)

The link to the first scenario could be found here! [It’s gender neutral so everyone can read it!]

This part about their dirty thoughts is in general the same scenario just customized for the specific gender of the reader 🤗💕 (quick reminder: this here is for male readers!😂💗)

Links:

The scenario for the female reader could be found here!

My Imagines!

My Masterlist!

「© tipsydipsydo」

These following headcanons are my intellectual property and belongs only to my blog tipsydipsydo.tumblr.com!

I’ll not accept any kind of reposting, stealing or using/editing my work!

That includes reposting my content on other social media platforms too, even when you link me as the original author.

Thank you.

Jin

the reason why Jin is suddenly so shy to you is…

…that with his increasing romantic feelings for you, others… certain feelings and thoughts enters his mind too

thoughts that makes him feel drawn to you and not just for hugs and cuddles …

…these indecent thoughts that you shouldn’t have about a very close friend.

how your body could look like under your tight-fitting clothes

what kind of boxer briefs covers your perfectly round ass

Jin hardly dares to rememver how you look when just a towel is wrapped loosely around hips

otherwise he would have a problem

…in his crotch.

Cooking with you is such a challenge for him sometimes

when he gives you a spoonful of dessert so you can taste if it needs a little more sugar

and you lead it between your soft lips, lick very carefully all of the dessert from the spoon, rolling your eyes full of pleasure and moaning how delicious his dessert is.

Jin has a problem down there in no time.

And not a small one…

how can you let such sinful things come over your lips and look so innocent?!

this unintented sensual moan haunts him, doesn’t wants to get out of his head.

he is terribly embarrassed when he mastubates for the first time with the thoughts of you and your husky voice

he had never cum so quickly

you drive him completely crazy

the more dirty fantasies he has about you, the more shy he’ll be around you.

Jin’s Adam’s apple starts bobbing nervously as you bend down to tie your shoes while sticking your butt out towards him

he would love it to put his big hands on your ass and grabbing it firmly 

Since then, he has been troubled by fantasies of taking you from behind and ruining you, placing his hands on your soft, perfectly round buttcheeks and pulling them apart to see how well his cock goes deep into you, fills you up and elicits the sexiest moans from your lips

you do all of this to him without even having the slightest idea what is behind this (from you) so-called “sweet” shyness.

Yoongi

there are reasons why Yoongi advoid you and locks himself in his room/studio

he wants to choke off every opportunity where he could see you in those damn T-Shirts with such a (in his opinion way too often) deep V-Neck

seeing the soft definition of your chest and your collarbone is too much for him

oh how he hates that you act like you don’t know what kind of effect such an outfit has on him! (Although you really have no idea) sometimes he thinks that you only do this to annoy him and to play with his feelings

he knows that he has no chance with you anyway and that he doesn’t deserves to touch such a handsome guy

nevertheless, even with the best discipline, he cannot prevent himself from certain fantasies they’re caused by unfulfilled desires arising in his head

he wants to be the one who can sucks you off so well that you’ll push his head even further between your thighs so that your cock can even deeper into his throat

he wants to be the one who can fingers you so good that you’ll cum without even touching your cock and let the whole house know that it’s Yoongi who let you see spheres where you have never been before 

he wants to be the one who can stretch your ass so damn well and in all the perfect places, who can make you think of nothing but him and his thick, perfect cock and never want to feel another person in yourself again

what frustrates him most is, that he can’t even work normally.

realize that his newly produced tracks are mostly that kind of songs that he wants to be played in the background when he fucks you. 

they’re slower than usual, with a seductive melody and his rap is deep and husky, making countless promises to you of what things he wants to do with you.

the fantasy that absolutely kills him is when you would kneel between his thighs in his studio and spoil his thick cock with your sinful lips, take him completely into your mouth and let his tip slide into your throat while looking at him with big, innocent eyes

when he’s about to come, he would pull away from your lips and want to cum on your bare chest

…deep down in his mind he wants to make a mess out of you and ruin you with his filthy desires.

Namjoon

When Namjoon realizes that in addition to his romantic feelings for you he also develops certain thoughts and fantasies, he tries his best to avoid them

he is afraid to sexualize you in his fantasies

you are not just a sexual object for him,only to satisfy his desires, you are so damn much more for him!

he doesn’t want you to feel uncomfortable with his, sometimes not so unobtrusive looks at you

but how can he resist when you are so damn handsome and everything in him feels attracted to you

he learns from Taehyung that you’ve read some books about BDSM and Bondage

you wanted to understand the hype surrounding of “Fifty Shades of Grey”

you said that while writing style and characters weren’t your cup of tea, you found the topic of the book itself really interesting

he asked Taehyung countless of questions

if you told him other things about whether and what your preferences were

but he was silent, smirked at his leader and chuckled

“You have to ask him yourself. I’m his best friend, I can’t take advantage of his trust and reveal his secrets, who do you think I am, hyung?!”

since then the abstinence of mastubation was over, countless fantasies about various kinds of play sessions with you offered him the necessary satisfaction of his needs

when you pick him up from somewhere and he sits in the car just with you, that’s pure horror for Joonie

because he doesn’t have a driver’s license himself and doesn’t trust himself to get it too, he thinks it’s pretty attractive that you can handle all of this stuff

especially your focused, serious and concentrated view at the road and how your hands are holding the steering wheel has somehow an attractive effect on him

instinctively he would like to slide his hand over your thigh to your crotch

rubbing teasingly over your clothed cock, let a bulge grow

before he opens your pants, takes your hard cock out and gives you a blowjob while driving

turn your serious gaze into a lustful one, let your fingers grip the steering wheel even more tightly out of pure ectasy

while you have still full control and your focus on the road

he doesn’t understand himself, he doesn’t even want to think about developing something like a “car-driving” kink

maybe it is your charisma and self-confidence that turns him on

gradually he loses faith in himself thanks to you.

Hoseok

Since he knows how your current partner is treating you and they seem to give a shit about your feelings and needs in this relationship he wants to be the one who gives you the attention you deserve  

you saved money for your partner’s birthday present for months and he only tooks a quick look at it when you give it to them

you mumble in frustration that you should’ve rather spend the money on yourself, preferably on new sex toys

Hobi didn’t believe his ears at first and looked up at you in confusion, asked what you mean by that

“We only have sex when they feels like it. When I try to seduce them or even ask them if we could have sex, then they makes a dismissive gesture and is pissed off that I should go out of the direction of the TV… It’s been like this for a few months since I started shopping online for sex toys out of frustration. Sometimes I really wonder if I’m addicted to sex and I’m a satyriasis… it’s normal to want sex two or three times in a week?”

To see you so insecure about your own needs for closeness and just normal sexual activities, so that you start wondering whether you are morbidly addicted, breaks Hobi’s heart

he tells you that you are not weird at all and your sexual needs are completely normal and that your partner didn’t treat you as you deserve

but unfortunately he couldn’t say more, it would have been very strange between you if he had said how he would treat you if he were your partner

the following days and weeks Hobi are plagued with indecent fantasies about you, his best friend

what would he have given only to know what toys you have and how you use them on yourself

and generally, all of these things he could do to you to give you the best orgasms in the world and make you feel like a greek god

he would love to be the servant for your unpleasured desires

to be the one who gives you the feeling of being Eros in a human personification.

Jimin

it happend accidentally and unintented that you’ve become a part of Jimin’s erotic fantasies

he took care of his needs and jack off like usual to his favourite fantasy that always makes him cum

but not this time

it seems like it wouldn’t work this day, he thought it could be stress or pressure that he just couldn’t cum, no matter how long he’s going to jack off and teasing the most sensitive parts of his cock

he was about to give up when you jumps right into the fantasy

now it’s you who’s bouncing on his cock, rolling your hips in the most sensual ways

playing with your nipples, massaging over your chest while his hands are placed on your hips, gives your body more stability so Jimin can thrusts slow but unbelievable deep into you, hitting your prostate, let come the sexiests moans over lips

you have to support yourself on his muscular chest, whine about the different angle that makes you even more sensitive

whimper his name over and over again like a Mantra

babbling dirty things that comes into your sex-focused mind

“Oh my god, oh my- Jimin, oh god, your cock feels so good in my ass, w-when you going to fuck me like that I’ll be able to cum without touching my cock, oh fuck! Please, keep fucking me like that, that feels so good, I’ve never get fucked so damn good, I love your cock!”

Just the thought, those words could come over your lips makes him cum so hard and so much, that his cum is spread all over his bare, sweaty stomach and chest

he needs some minutes to calm down and to catch his breath again

then he realised what he has done to you in his mind

he literally fucked the shit out of you and wrecked you in this fantasy and he came so freaking fast only because thinking that you’re the one riding his cock

at this point he already knew it’s not going to change anymore

how the heck should he behave around you, when you’re coming over tonight?!

Taehyung

like I said in my first post, everything started with innocent… well not so innocent dreams

at first he didn’t even remember the content of his dreams

but with every time it happens, he remember more and more of his fantasies

one particular is, when you’re tied down to the headboard under him, all whiny and squirming while he fucks you with slow deep thrusts, hitting that sweet spot in your body everytime

then he takes the hitachi massager next to you in his hand and press it onto your cock, watching you in pure fascination when you’re about to reach your high within seconds

but then taking the vibrator away and hold his cock still in your ass until you calmed down again

and then the game starts from the beginning…

…his boxer briefs and pyjama pants are wet and stained in the mornings, sometimes he came so much in his dreams that even the bed sheets are ruined

the boys are confused why Tae starts changing his sheets so often

but when they asked he just spat back at them that’s not their business

but after some time he came to Jimin and ask him for advice how to deal with this situation and that he feels helpless and ashamed

that he has such thoughts about his best friend

and then in dreams where he can’t control these fantasies and his body too

but Jimin didn’t laugh, he listened patiently and carefully to Taehyung

then he tried to calm him down, that these things just happen and he can’t do anything against it

Jiminie blush a little bit and then reveal his own story when it comes to indecent thoughts about a person you like (a little bit more than usual)

“I hope it doesn’t sounds weird to you… but maybe you can stop the wet dreams a little bit when you… when you take care of your fantasies properly before you’re going to sleep, you know?”

“You think, I should jack off to my best friend regulary?”

“Well, we all see two miles away that you developed a crush on Y/N. That’s why we’re all not surprised that you wash your sheets so excessively , we’re not stupid and knew pretty fast it’s because of unpleasant thoughts at night.”

“Wait… all of you knows about it?!”

“Yep, Tae. We all know it, but it’s completely fine. We all dealed with it while puberty and when someone has a crush on somebody… well, let’s say, everyone here experienced that problem too. By the way, Hobi gave me this tip to jerk off before going to bed. Maybe it’ll works for you too?”

Jungkook

he’s the youngest of them, that’s why I think he’d be still the one who is the most badly affected by flirtatious or playful alluring outfits, dirty jokes etc.

just an example: you stay over the night in the dorm, coming in the morning into the kitchen to get a glass of water for yourself. You think everything is fine until you hear someone chokes badly behind you… poor Kookie chokes on his cornflakes because you’re just standing infront of him topless and (in his opinion) super low hanging pair of sweats…

compared to the others he could get erotic thoughts pretty fast without wanting it

like really.

he’s suffering and don’t know at first how to deal with it

thinks having such thoughts about an other person is super rude and try to avoid them

feels like a Deja-Vu with his puberty where sexual hormones sexualize literally everything

and that’s a sensitive spot for him, he’s sick being always the “baby of the group” (he knows he’ll always be anyway bc he’s the youngest)

he wants to be seen finally as a mature grown up man, that’s also why he works out so much

there are two fantasies that makes him instantly hard:

1. Imagine you grinding moaning and whining against his crotch and whenever he buck this hips up, the tip of your cock grinds right over it. Your hands wandering over his defined abs and pecks, try to find a spot to support yourself, seeing your eyes full of lust and desperation, seeing this hunger for a man like him in your eyes…

that keeps him always going when he works out and push his limits

2. this Scenario in his head kills him always: He’s fucking you right into the mattress, finding all these good spots in you to tease the shit out of you… plus his stamina is legendary, you’ll end sobbing and crying that you can’t cum anymore, that everything of your cock, nipples and ass is oversensitive… the cherry on top would be, when you try to keep hold of all this pleasure and grip his flexing biceps tightly as if you’re drowning and groaning his name…

…what ultimately change into “Daddy”

…that would gives him such an Ego-Boost, that he’s your Daddy, that he’s your man and not only “a cute boy” anymore!

#bts imagines #kpop #kpop x male reader #bts jhope #bts fanfic #bts smut #bts jeon jungkook #jimin smut #bts x m!reader #bts x male reader smut #tipsydipsydo #bts crush #bts crush scenario #bts taehyung #bts x reader scenarios #bts x reader #bts x reader smut #bts x male reader #jungkook smut #jin smut #bts namjoon smut

[twitchesandstitches]

nature girl heroine idea

i’ve mentioned before that a week or two ago, I was working out an idea of Tia as a nova/superhuman in the Aberrant tabletop RPG setting, and an unexpected thing occurred; I started out just shoving every cool power that felt thematically appropriate first, and as time went on and she felt too versatile and lacking in a solid theme, I removed some of those powers and quickly put down a few character ideas to suit them. the idea was, she’s part of a group of similarly powerful novas who work together and hang out, in a character arc somewhere between ‘Superman wrecks the local conspiracy by being too dang smart and charming’ and ‘roadtrip to save humanity’

over the last few days, i’ve been thinking about these characters more and more, and one in particular has really seized my attention; a plant and nature focused lady with shapeshifting powers that allow her to assume the traits of any animal or plant she knows of, control plants and make them grow, and a variety of utility abilities based around influencing others through the use of energy-charged spores and pheromones. It took a while but I’ve realized that she’s something of a benign Poison Ivy analogue, with animal transformation powers, and some vERY powerful abilities based around affecting entire species on a global scale and weaponizing things like poison, coupled with brain-warping charm and charisma.

(a certain amount of growing to giantess size, hyper breeder vibes, and the capability to devour pretty much anything she likes also applies, of course.)

her concept is pretty cool so i’ve been thinking a lot about this, and I’ve had some more ideas, and I’m on the verge of making her into a full-on OC in her own right. in case this sounds interesting, here’s a few ideas I’ve had on that score, though none of these are permanent; I figure I’ll write her up when i get in the mood for it, and use that to iron out some of the ideas I have:

she’s a genuine environmentalist, and not someone who does the whole ‘humanity is the REAL disease’ stuff Ivy is known for doing. This suggests a very compassionate core, though i’m not sure how much to take it. she could take it to an extreme and verge of so Good that she refuses to see people who are genuinely malicious, or her taking a big picture approach and caring about things long-term, but individuals tend to not register much for her. Thinking in terms of systems, and so on. (She also, either way, does not have much of a sentimental attitude of nature.) I AM leaning towards her being a super softie, and not that much of the kind of hero who takes down bad guys.

She’s very thicc overall; big hips, big bust, big everything. probably very big hair that resembles a flowering plant or something. Her body isn’t particularly human; her skin looks like fairly smooth bark and creates fur or scales or whatever as appropriate, she bleeds a weird chimeric sap instead of blood, and she generally has a mixture of animal and plant-like traits that’s very strange. She’s still broadly human in biology, though; the actual organs are recognizable, but may resemble a planet’s structure or that of specific animals, just enough to be weird.

I’m thinking of her skin as being green. not sure about her hair. Possibly multicolored and changing depending on her health or stores of energy.

Aberrant only really has superhumans, so I’m not deviating from that; all the characters here, regardless of what they’re normally like in my stuff, were originally human here. I don’t know if I will keep that as a trait for our nature lady here, but I’m thinking of her as being Irish or Mongolian here; undecided on that.

I at one point thought of her as a bit of a bimbo-type? I’m tempted to suggest that she can get like that depending on certain side effects that her powers have on her; she shifts through a lot of hormones and pheromones as she transforms, and depending on what she does, it might have long-term consequences that adjusts her behavior a little.

All her powers are based on either transformations or some bodily effect of herself, and a specific connection to living things she can mess with. For example, she can transform to manifest any naturally occurring trait for utility, defense or offense; she can make wings to fly, grow claws or massive spikes to attack. She could cover her body in tough scaly armor. She can secrete a powerful toxin with whatever effect imaginable from her body, though she usually limits it to a knock out effect, to inducing hallucinogenic effects. In the same way, she constantly produces small spores; people who breath them in can be mentally dominated by her via a link between her and those spores, or hypnotized. Otherwise, she can grow those spores into huge plants she can control in many ways, like making massive vines to protect her, swing around, or smash stuff; this looks like her creating plants out of thin air. The other aspect of her powers allows her to communicate with plants and animals (and command them), as well as transform them in various ways, and this more subtle aspect of her powers also allows her to heal living things.

By making her jaws stretchy, making her belly a big venus flytrap, or her skin absorbent, she’s able to swallow pretty much whatever she wants, and then she can tweak her digestion to consume anything she desires; she has some VERY aggressive gut bacteria she can make even more fierce if she requires. And she’s capable of growing to giant size, though I’m thinking that its actually her summoning forth a massive plant construct she grows around her body and mentally links with, shaping it into a mega-curvy imitation of her original body. As she grows stronger, she might be able to cut the middle-man out and convert herself into plant material she can expand directly.

she’s very much a breeder, though not necessarily one interested in romance. She’s capable of making her body react to the life energy around her and spontaneously impregnating herself using that energy as genetic information, creating new life inside her. She has enough capacity to gestate entire species if desired (or creating broodmother bodies that do the trick themselves), and she has a tendency to do so absently if she’s not concentrating on focusing.

personality wise, I’m thinking of focusing her around the concept of the ditzy genius; even if she’s not actually super smart, she is VERY competent within her specific sphere of interest, though she doesn’t come off as it. even when she’s in her element, she’s rather ditzy in an unfocused, gently drifting sort of way. She has a very pleasant demeanor, perhaps with something of a glamourous, fancy attitude?

whatever she has going on, though, she lacks brute strength. She is focused on finesses; while she is capable of manifesting the traits of more brutal creatures, she is very bad at actually applying it; she prefers to be fast, and she’s no good at smashing. She’s also probably fairly soft-hearted and can’t bear to strike as viciously as she needs to in order to put down a foe who might have no compunction about doing the same to her. She is extremely perceptive, however, and would make a fantastic investigator if she could be persuaded to concentrate for a moment.

#queued #twitchy!ocs #spitballing a few ideas here to see how it sounds

[gukptune]

Eccentric [m]

Pairing: Jungkook x Reader

Genre: cyberpunk!au, cyborg!jungkook, eyepatch!jungkook, courtesan!reader, smut, dom!jk, switch!reader

Warnings: a lot of smut, explicit language, explicit acts, oral, foreplay, slight daddy kink, slight bionic finger stuff, cumplay, creampie, edging, big dick jk

Words: 5.4k

Plot Summary: A certain red haired client buys you for the entire night.

a/n: I was inspired by the new cyberpunk 2077 gameplay reveal, cuz im hyped i wrote this - the whole rebellion thing is a meh, a filler, cuz idk how the night city in the game actually works hahah.

Endeavouring into the cleaning of your room for tonight, you could only put away the decorations and pamper up the sheets. In the house everyone had a room for their routine work, all sound proof and completely bare. They kept it that way so that each person had their own individual style, it was nice, nice enough.

Yours was truly nothing special, kept more simple and graced with large windows. You had landed yourself one of the corner rooms which was completely open, the windows reflecting the night city well. Decorated with darker comforters, pillows and blankets. A lot for just the aesthetic but mostly for comfort, something for you to hold onto when you wanted.

You worked at Black Rain Bath House, merely a cover for the sex work that happened every single day. The people who work here are called, Courtesans, mainly because everyone here costs a whole lot. Apart from the sex dolls, bots, of course. Though in this world it was hard for anyone to really stay fully natural, most get modifications― for appearance sake or the perks of having tech in them, like heightened agility, eyesight or just wanting metal parts.

You were one of the rare ones here, nothing done, mainly because they seemed pointless to you.

As you had arranged your room well enough for your liking you hear someone step into your room, “You’ve got one tonight, 10 pm.”

The head mistress came into your room with a device, she handed it to you as you stared at her with confusion.

“Only one?” Usually you started work around 8 pm and kept going all night, the least was at least 3 and the most, well, you weren’t even going to mention it.

She chuckles as she nods, “Hmm, he seems diligent on being your only for the night. Words gone around that a fully fleshed girl knows how to treat any man.”

She smirked watching as you sighed, “Wow, I guess I’m pretty popular.”

“Natural girls are hard to find even here, we’ve got a mere handful and you’re the best of them,” She explained, leaning on the side of your door, “Even I dare say, my pussy is definitely not natural― years of this kind of job, it’s synthetic.”

Not that it was bad to enhance yourself with modern technology, it was just that it was extremely popular. A few years back, courtesans with synthetic bodies or even androids were extremely popular but now that it was so popular and mainstream, everyone seemed to go backwards and want the original just plain ole human again.

“Funny how the world changes,” You said, spinning the spherical device around in your hand.

“Well, let’s just say, human men still like the fake shit but those androids or cyborgs love humans,” She shrugged, “At least we both get some.”

She then pushes herself off and begins to leave, turning around to take a look at you. You watched as she pointed to the device, “Read up on this one, he’s a real big one and not just in that way.”

“Have fun,” She struts away before you could respond, her high heels and formal attire leaving your sight. Even though, this was technically a brothel you dressed extremely formal just like bath house employees would, merely ripping all the formality off as soon as you step into the room.

Humming as you motioned for the door to shut. Walking back to sit on your bed, pondering in your thoughts. Rubbing your thumb against the plate on the sphere, watching as information about your client beamed up.

Jeon Jungkook

Age: 21

Race: Human (Previously), Cyborg (Currently)

Enhancements: Right arm (Metal), left eye (Computerised), knee and joint replacements (Metal), Organ replacements (Synthetic)―

Gosh, you can’t even comprehend, most of these are quite serious and seemed as if they were for medical reasons and that wasn’t even all of it. This made you think of what this boy had gone through to have to had so much done, remembering what Mistress said you blinked, Big...

What could she mean by that in a non-sexual way. As you scrolled through his information about birthplace, education and what not you looked at his affiliations.

It was as if your heart stopped beating at the text you read. He was not just anyone big, he was one of the most influential. He lead an Anti-Governmental gang that fought against the laws against weapons and technology. Things like the ban on manufacturing their own without government supervision, it needed to be owned by someone on the board. Laws against testing and creating new technology that would pose to be a threat against government issued technology. Of course it was stupid, mostly the laws were governed in the upper ring, but not here. The night city still infested with crime and illegal activity, the free city.

It was to say the least that you had known him, you’ve seen him before, he was powerful― it was strange to think that he had specifically requested you. Making you feel like you needed to really prove that you were what they say you were.

Feeling strange about your bedding arrangement now, you shivered nervously with the thought of him being in near in a few hours. Maybe you should consider decorating better now.

9:52 pm

The red digital number blinked angrily at you. Dressed in a new outfit you had just bought you sat on one of the loveseat awaiting the arrival of a certain client. Nervously, biting on your lip as you fumbled with the clip on your thigh high socks. Your toes wiggling, barefoot, as there was no need to really wear shoes in your own room.

The client comes to your room in your establishment, he had a number and himself. He’d knock and you’d answer. At this point, you truly didn’t know why you were so nervous, how were you suppose to open the door now.

9:56 pm

Your eyes never leaving the numbers as it slowly got closer to ten. Groaning as you leaned against the cushion on your seat, pulling it out from behind you wrapping it in your arms as your chin rested against it.

9:58 pm

Fuck. You felt like you needed to pee, was it real or just your head. Keeping your head faced towards the clock you kept peering by the side of your eye at the door, awaiting the heavy knock.

9:59 pm

One minute, a chill shot down your legs. Pursing your lips as you tried to look in the mirror at yourself. Wondering if you looked good enough, jeez, you sure did but the nerves was not something you could push away. The feeling of butterflies in your stomach wasn’t the good kind but the gross anxious one.

10:00 pm

It as time, turning towards the door. You watched. But nothing happened, breathing a sigh of relief.

10:03 pm

He must’ve been late. If it was any other client, you’d cancel and find another one. He was paying a high price for you and you weren’t going to be able to just cancel on him for being a few minutes late, you wondered if he even cared about being on time.

Petting the soft cushion on your lap, your legs crossed you nearly forgot about what you were suppose to do, until a heavy knock echoed in your room. As normal, whenever a client knocked the lights would dim, you watched as the door opened and there stood the man.

You could smell him from where you were, your breath hitched at the sight of his glorious self. He wore a suit, without the blazer, it was folded on his arm― a dark red dress shirt clings to his muscular body, the silk shirt left nearly nothing hidden. His hair seemed wet, brushed up, his forehead exposed― even wet you could see the tint of colour in his hair that the blue light in your room shadows.

His eyes were centred on you, eyebrows raised at you, you noticed the eyepatch he wore― he must’ve not finished his eye replacement, though that made him look even more dangerous, in a good way. At first you were confused, then realising that the cushion you had was covering you entirely, pushing it aside quickly as you stood and walked towards him.

“Sorry, I was just waiting on you,” You said, smiling at him. He breathed, taking you in. You looked up at him through your lashes, reaching out asking for his blazer.

He lets out a chuckle before letting you take it, “Sorry about that. I had a long meeting and the world decides to curse me and rain.”

That explained his wet hair and clingy shirt. You took the blazer gently as you motioned for him to come in. The door closing at that. You hurried to put his blazer on the dresser, hopefully it would dry.

You watched as he strode towards the bed. The bed was facing the door entirely, the headboard non-existant as it was a mere bed with a view of the city as the head board, on it’s left was also a floor to ceiling window.

“Nice room,” He said.

“Thanks, most of them look like this― you know without the windows,” You replied, watching his back flex as he turns.

“I wouldn’t know,” He said, eyes trailing down your body, “Never been here before,” oh, well that’s just great, his first experience with the House was going to be you, that’s just fantastic.

“Glad to be your first,” You trailed, getting up close to him. As you stepped closer to him, he stood proud and big watching your every step with lustful eyes, “Hmm, you sure? You seem tense.”

He teased you, of course he did. Not paying mind to it, you ignore it. Reaching his large body, getting a smell of his aroma. Hands placed on his plump chest, you pushed him down on the bed. He smirked, watching as you straddled his sitting frame.

Arms lacing themselves behind him, your lower body grinding against his― feeling the budge of his cock brush against the thin red lace that barely covered you. His large hands grasping the back of your thigh as his fingers ran over the clips of the thigh highs, both of his hands felt the same―must’ve been some expensive prosthetics, “These are pretty hot, though they’d be better off.”

Feeling a pinch and the snap as it fell off, you peered down at him as his attention was fully at your thighs that were spilling out of your socks.

“Hmm, wouldn’t it all be better off?” You asked, pouting your lips. Feeling his hands stop at the other thigh.

“You’re naughty, is this what you humans are like?” He asked, with amusement. Not hiding the fact that his boner was dying to push out of his pants as it rubbed against your clit. He was huge to say the least and that was one of the only real parts of him. The heat radiating him practically making you melt under his touch.

You shrugged, “Aren’t you human?”

“Sort of,” He shrugs before tugging on your socks to get them off. Rare, usually the clients enjoyed keeping them on. You stepped back onto the ground, on your tip toes as his thick hot hands grasped the bands and pulled them both down in one pull, stepping out of them before giving him a light twirl.

Seeing his smile enlarge satisfied you, his hands immediately went to brush against the bare skin of your thighs. You stood in front of him as he pulled you against him. Spreading your thighs so you’d straddle him as you were standing, feeling his hands molded the skin as you felt heat twitching at your centre.

Letting out a gasp at his hand that slipped between your thighs, zoning into your centre, swallowing as you placed your hand on his thick shoulders―holding on to keep yourself upright. His hand wasn’t as hot, your eyebrow twitching trying to get use of the feeling.

“Not used to prosthetics?” He murmured as his finger brushed against your most sensitive bundle. Biting your lip at the sensation.

You shook your head quickly, letting a smirk slip, “I am. Just not you.”

His eyebrows jumped as the corner of his lip curved, his hands leave it’s original place and rub itself up towards your waist, stopping as it reached the small pinch. Squeezing the lace covered bodysuit, trying to get a feeling of the skin beneath it.

One of his hands slipped down and grabbed your ass, groping as he lifted you up, pulling you into him, back to your previous position. His breath now hot against your neck, as his lips were merely a few inches away.

He swallowed, you watched his adam’s apple bop as the veins on his neck thicken. His tongue slid across his lips as he eyed the exposed skin of your neck, his hand still tight on your bottom.

He hissed as he felt your slick wetting your underwear, “Why don’t I get you accustomed then.”

It wasn’t a question, more like an order― his voice raspy, out of breath and deep, the volume echoing into your spine. Getting aroused by the mere sound of his voice, though his touch was nothing to look pass either.

Knocking the wind out of you as he spins you over, pinning you down on the dark blanket. At the corner of your eye you watched as pillows bounced off the bed due to the sheer force. Your mouth gaping at the sight of him above you, breathing heavily as the hair on his head fell across his forehead slightly, he looked fucked out before you even began.

He had his thick muscular thighs pushing against yours spreading them apart, as he did this you heard a gush of arousal push out. Eyes widening in embarrassment but he didn’t seem to care, he seemed to have liked that. Gliding his warm hand that was on your waist up towards the zipper in front of your chest.

Hearing him slip a groan as the zipper was being pulled down, more and more of your cleavage being revealed to him. As it stopped at your hips he slipped his hands against your bare stomach, pushing the lace back, exposing your entire chest to him.

He bit his lip at the sight before a hand grazed one, making you whine at the sensation, “A whiner? Fuck, would you whimper for me?” He moaned at your voice.

It was hot, you felt hot― things were heated, “I’ll do anything you ask.” You whimpered, smiling as your eyes twinkled at his expression. He was pleased, a grin plastered on his face.

“Good,” He breathed, taking a nipple in his mouth. Twirling the nub with his hot, wet tongue― you arched your back letting a moan out. Your hand grasping underneath his arm, scratching against his back, feeling the muscle flex against your nails.

“Argh, how are you’re so hot,” You froze, shit, what did you just say. Guessing that he was confused, you looked scared. Pausing as your face burned red, “I’m sorry.”

He cocks his head, “Why’re you sorry?”

As if he was in disbelief, as if he didn’t understand what you were saying. In the House you weren’t really suppose to speak out of terms, as in you sound only response to your client. Though, you did let it slip every now and then, usually the clients never notice.

“I’m not suppose to―”

“Speak? Seriously?” He chuckles, pulling himself up, his bulge now placed perfectly at your entrance as he leaned on his forearms which were on the sides of your face. He stared down at you, one of his hands cupping your face, “I asked for you because I heard you speak out of ‘terms’, speak all you want baby girl. You got me hard just with that look on your face and fuck I’m leaking from the tone of your voice.”

“But―”

“Aah, no buts, I want to hear all of it,” His lips captured yours in a hot wet kiss, his lips were red from sucking on you before. Your moans were incased in the kiss, arching yourself into him as his hand slipped under your head to pull on your hair. He tasted like mints, must’ve been from the meeting but god he tasted hot, his tongue snaking around yours. He held onto your face, leaving your jaw open and your lips red and swollen.

“So hot, so fucking, hot,” He placed an open mouth kiss on your open lips and practically tongue fucking your mouth. Making you whimper at the rough feeling, feeling hot in your core― aching down there.

Yours hands running over his front, feeling the sculpted abdomen, whining at the feeling of it being clothed. Your eyebrows dropping as your lips pout at him, tucking on the shirt.

He chuckles with a deep breath, pulling away on his knees, “You’re needy, huh?” he began unbuttoning the top of his shirt, seeing more and more skin your smile grew bigger, biting your lips as you watched his bulge near your face. Resting on your elbows, one of your hands brushed against his cock, causing it to twitch.

He lets out a strangled groan, huffing at you. His hands shaking trying to button, what seemed like a million buttons. You felt kind of good teasing him, “Please―”

You palmed the protruding cock, blinking at him, hoping he’d hurry.

“If you want a taste, you’re going to need to take me out, baby,” Oh, so he wanted you to do it. Fine, you took that as a suck me off cue and unbuttoned him. Pulling down the zipper as you watched him slip the shirt off. 

Halting in your tracks at the sight, licking your lips, he took notice of your change of attention, “Like what you see?” He teased.

Taking your hand and placing it on his hardened stomach, his thick veiny hands gripped your smaller one tightly as he used your heat to rub himself. Nodding at his question you pushed off the bed into a sitting position, lips immediately on his hip― sucking on the protruding angle.

“Ah, argh, fuck,” He groaned, you watched as his only visible eye closing at the feeling. You wanted to please him so bad, he looked so good― all your hesitation and fear left at the fucking door.

Pulling his pants and underwear down quickly, taking him by surprise, before he could even say anything you had your hand on the base of his cock. It was huge, being compact and strained inside his tight pants you watched as it strung up to hit his belly button.

He gaped at sensation of a pair of warm hands rubbing on the base of his sensitive dick. His hands rubbing your head through your hair, pulling you in slightly.

“You want me to suck you off?” You tested.

He hummed in response, pulling you in even more. But you kept yourself in the same place, wanting to test him even more.

“Do you? Do you really?” You breathed, your breath blowing against his red, leaking cock. Teasing him as you did.

He seemed to not be very patient as that pretty much ripped him off his nice boy look, his eyes hair and lips set in a firm line― realising that you weren’t just a simple little submissive one but definitely a switch, though he wasn’t going to be having none of the latter. His hand now holding onto your jaw tightly, you stared into his eye― paying more attention to the eyepatch. God, he looked so hot with it.

“Be a good girl and suck me off, okay,” He growled, patting your cheek. You pout at this, feeling his dick throb against your palm as you stayed still.

He realised you weren’t going to do anything from that command, letting out an amused chuckle he bent down towards your face, “Difficult aren’t you? Don’t be a brat, come on―”

“―be a good baby girl and suck daddy’s cock, princess,” He placed a kiss on your forehead. Grinning as you got him to reveal his not so sly kink.

Enough of testing the air, you had your tongue out and licked the tip of the head. Tasting the salty precum, pursing your lips as you pushed his dick to the side. Placing a kiss on the base of his cock, tongue feeling the area before licking the side from base to tip, he choked out a moan at the feeling. Tightening his grasp on your hair, he must’ve liked that. Completely taking the tip in between your lips now.

Feeling the veins that throbbed through his length encased around your lips as he held onto your hair tightly, feeling himself getting so close he began fucking your throat. Gagging and whining at the roughness of his thrusts, you peered up to watch him, blinking as you saw him looking right at you. He choked out a moan as his thrusting jittered and stopped, watching as he quickly pulled himself out― pushing your head back, hearing a lewd pop of your lips, “Fuck, don’t look at me like that when your throat is filled with my cock, baby girl. I nearly came, fuck.”

Pushing you onto your back, he had everything off of you in a split second. Must’ve been that close cum call. Breathing heavily as he pushed your thighs up, placing himself between them. You watched him, his hot, wet― from your sucking, cock dangling it’s glorious self between his thick thighs before they disappeared into the sheets as his body flattened against it.

Completely distracted by his lower half, you didn’t notice his hot breath against your core. Taking you by surprise, a wet and hot lick flattening against your clenching hole, gasping as you felt his tongue exploring you. His hands holding onto your thighs, tightly spreading them apart as one slid itself up to hold your hips down. Completely held down and unable to move your hips against his tongue, he slowed the pace on purpose, hearing the displeased whimper that left your pouty lips he smirked against you as his tongue flicked your sensitive nub, sending a huge jolt of sensation up your spine.

“We’re going to have to prepare your tight little pussy for this huge cock, princess,” He grunts, pushing his thighs underneath your own. Bringing his cock into view again, seeing it twitch and leak at the sight of your clenching saliva wetted hole.

His hand feeling down your cleavage, stomach, naval and stopping right before it hit your most needy spot, whining and thrusting your now free hip at him. He lets out a breathy chuckle before slipping his finger inside you, clenching at the thrust. He gaped, cocking his head, “Only one and already, whimpering? Fuck.”

His other hand squeezing your bottom as the pinky brushed against another hole, letting out a sharp breath you realised reacting like so was a mistake, seeing the arched eyebrow plastered on his face and his curved lip. As if he didn’t know he brushed another finger there.

“Aren’t you full of surprises?” Leaving the finger already thrusted, knuckle deep into your pussy he teased the ring on your bum, feeling the hole clenching hard by the mere brush peaking his interest, “As much as I personally like this, you’d cum way too fast from this― we’ll keep this hole shut til next time.”

Leaving your other hole lonely and tight, he began thrusting again now with another finger. You couldn’t help but reach down to grab onto his wrist, feeling how hard his hand was and how fast he was going. He watched you with his body now leaning over you, hand flat by the side of your face. You could feel his throbbing dick rubbing against the inside of your thigh.

Moaning breathlessly at his pace, you felt it. You high racing up, you body tensing and clenching, he hummed at the tightness and began rubbing his thumb against your clit. A large gasp left your lips, holding onto his shoulder as your eyes shut and eyebrows squeezed together at the simulation, breathing out curses and moans you left gushes of cum pouring out of your.

“Fuck―uh―keep going, fuck!” there it was, already looking completely fucked out and coming undone infront of him. His eyes were watching his fingers disappearing inside you, biting his own lip as he felt it all.

He grinned at the cum all over his hand, “Great job.”

Taking that cum and rubbing it onto his length, pulling on it― getting himself ready as if he wasn’t hard as a fucking rock already. Pulling away from you, letting your arms drop down against the comforter. He pulled his pants off completely, alongside with his underwear. Nearly cumming again from the sight of his sculpted body, fully nude in front of you. 

“We’re not done yet, ready to go again?” He murmurs as he was paying a whole lot of attention to your swollen pussy.

“Of course I’m ready,” You breathed, you were so ready to feel that thick cock inside of you.

Chuckling, and letting out a low response he got to it. Placing your thighs on the sides of his waist, pulling you down to meet his hips. Pulling on his soaked cock he lined it against your already clenched whole, from the mere sight and though of him inside.

Rubbing the head up and down the slit, avoiding your clit, he pushed his hips forward feeling the head slip in a bit before pulling out and doing the same thing, “Stop teasing me.”

You whined, pouting at him. His lips curved, “You’re going to need to stop clenching then, it’s never going to go in like this.”

Rolling your eyes, settling onto your elbows you breathed slowly trying your best to stop clenching before he’s even inside, letting out a deep breath Jungkook began pushing in again but now not stopping once the head in nearly all the way in. Gasping at the feeling of fullness you held onto his forearms, squeezing, reassuring him to go on.

Thrusting up fully, and roughly, bottoming out against you. You let out a pitched gasp as he groaned, head dropping onto your shoulder. Letting you set yourself, you squeezed his arm again― he nodded against your shoulder, placing a wet open mouthed kiss against it before pulling out nearly all the way and thrusting. Your body shaking at every thrust, he held your waist to keep you in place. Dropping your head back moaning, he took the chance to suck on your neck drowning out his own moans.

Your legs wrapped around him, keeping him close you could feel him going faster, he must’ve been close. Beads of sweat rolling down him, you let out a loud whimper, “I’m close.”

“Yea? Fuck, I am too.” He looks up at you. Taking the opportunity of both being close, you wrapped your hands around his cheeks keeping his face up looking at you.

Your eyes opening and closing to his thrusting, moaning for him to see, watching his dark eye glazing over your lips. Your hand brushing against the string of the patch, Jungkook took your expression and reached his hand up to pull it off. His eyes both narrowing into you, you felt as if this was extremely thoughtful― seemed like an extremely big gesture to reveal something he was hiding from everyone.

Taking his lips you wet your tongue against his, sucking and pulling. Moaning into his mouth as your high came again, this one inside your core. His own choked breath you felt through his lips, pulling away you gasped.

“Come on then, cum for me,” He said.

His voice was enough to trigger your entire body to shiver, feeling the tinge and spike at your core. His thick cock holding that clenching making the sensation so much more heightened. Letting yourself go completely, visibly shaking in his arms. Eyes shutting and feeling it all.

He raced for his high not long after, using your high to help himself. Within a single loud groan you felt him fill you up completely. He was completely bottomed out inside you feeling your clenching and his throbbing cock inside you, both your cum filling you up.

As you both caught your breaths and came down from your high, he gently pulled out watching as the cum spilled out. What a sight. He rubs your thighs sensually before getting up.

Relaxing against your tower of pillows you stretched, feeling the cracks in your back and relief of the sounds. Watching Jungkook as he wondered around your room, “What are you doing?”

He perked up, turning to you. His body showing off his plump ass and softening cock, “Uh, towels?”

You let out a laugh before pointing towards the dresser where his blazer was, he nods and moves towards it, pulling out the first towel he sees. Getting back on the bed, his knees digging into the duvet, his weight completely shifting you. Holding onto his arm as he bounced around. He breathed an apology for being so rough, for jumping on the bed like that, you shook your head not really caring about it.

He wiped away the leftovers of your passionate fucking. Tossing the towel away as he captured your lips again. His tongue poking at your lips wanting entry.

“Baby girl, don’t be like that,” He pouts, looking much cuter now without the eyepatch. You chuckled at his pouting, a finger brushing over the red hair covering his eye. Purple and blue neon lights, reflecting against his eye. He swallowed, watching as you stared at the eye he kept hidden before.

“I don’t understand why you hide it,” You muttered, poking at the puffy bags under his eye instead of paying much attention to the eye.

He smiled, genuinely, “I don’t either, people think I have prosthetics in them,” shrugging before continuing, “I don’t, it’s just the colour― it kinda bothers me.”

Humming as you looked at it, the bottom half seemed normal, just brown like the other yet the top part was blue with specs of gray, “Did something bad happen to it?”

He shook his head, brushing your hair over your shoulder― placing another kiss on it, right at where he left a mark, “Something like that, it’s weird, huh?”

“Weird? No, it’s probably the most normal thing about you,” You replied, watching as he gave you a confused look.

Continuing on, as it seemed he needed the explanation, “You changed your body so much, from organic body parts that you lost into bionic parts instead of living with it. Whilst with this eye, you could’ve easily gotten it removed and changed even with organic parts yet you kept it. In a way, keeping the memory of it becoming that way, living with it. You tell me you’re not human, but you are. Being human is being able to adapt and live with whatever happens with you, even if you’ve had other things done, you kept something that everyone can see.”

An impressed huff left his lips, he grinned as he met your eyes again, “And yet during your ‘job’ they tell you to keep your mouth shut.”

“They’re just scared of how smart you are, how human you are, aren’t they?” He brushed his fingers against your jaw.

Blinking at him, letting your lips curve, “Maybe, though I don’t usually talk this much to anyone.”

“I guess I’m special,” He replies. Chuckling you hit his shoulder, he pretended that it hurt and rubs it, before his expression changes.

“So,” He flexes his back and straightens up, “Would you consider going outside with me?”

Furrowing your eyebrows as you looked out into the night, “What do you mean? I don’t think I can do that―”

“I think you can, I have you for the entire night.”

Watching him hop out the bed and throw his clothes back on in effort to make you agree, sighing at it knowing that leaving this room with this man would forever change you, it would change your life― whether it be for the better or worse, nothing was stopping you from taking the risk.

“Alright.”

c. 2018

#jungkook #jungkook smut #jeon jungkook #jeon jungkook smut #jungkook imagine #jungkook scenario #bts #bts smut #bts scenario #bts imagine #bts jungkook #bts fanfic #jungkook fanfic

[lovethedanielhd]

What are all your oc's superpowers??

Paladin - Fire and temperature powers, not only he can create fire from any part of his body, he also can control his body temperature and absorb absorb heat from other beings. 

Anubis - He’s literally the god of the death, but in my canon story he’s not longer a god (I don’t want to make too much spoilers) so he’s in the body of a 17y/o teenager. His powers are judge the soul of people, create spheres of energy and change his form (to a black jackal or a corgi XDDDD) 

James - He can create stars and use them as bombs or transport.

Melanie - She can control water and any kind of liquids (She’s dead in the canon story) 

Sol & Luna - They both are priestesses of the goddesses of the sun and the moon. Sol can talk with animals telepathically, and Luna can talk with the goddesses directly. They both have scepters and kinda use magic as well. 

 Akinlana - He can transform himself in a half-human giant lizard, similar to a Komodo Dragon but with even more teeths. 

Shun - Literally nothing he’s just a normal human.  

Roy - Normal as well, but he’s pretty smart and helps Paladin and the others. 

Ethan - Literall nothing again he’s just a normal boi who lives in a farm 

Rose - She makes her own poisons and also she’s totally immune to them or just inmune to any kind of poison. 

Lucas - The same powers as Melanie, he killed her and took her powers. 

Jessica - She can stop the time in a specific area, but not for too longer or her nose will start to bleed. She only use her powers to steal stuff from convenience stores or runaway from class 

[amusewithaview]

blood tells (a tale all its own)

Darcy looks a lot like her mother.

Most of that is by nature, some of that is by choice.

With a name like “Current Events,” she thought she’d be safe taking the class.  News and stuff, right?  She could handle that.  Darcy really should have known better.  She should have considered that ‘current’ could have variable definitions depending on perspective.  Unluckily for her, the professor took a long view encompassing most of the past fifty years.  The syllabus was the only warning she had, the outline told her that on week six they’d focus on assassinations that shaped society.

She clicked on the corresponding link to find the assigned reading and felt her stomach do a dip and roll.  “The President Who Wasn’t - Friend or Foe of Humanity?” was the title that jumped out at her.  She debated dropping the class, but eventually settled on skipping week six.

It had been five years.  It was still too soon.

She knows she’s lucky.  She knows.

1.  Her mutation is easily hidden.  She can pass. 2.  Her family loves her.

But she still wonders about the other side of her family.  Her father was a foundling, albeit an oddly well-funded one from what her grandparents’ investigators could turn up.  They never found anything on his family though, in spite of the money they poured into the endeavor.  It’s a mystery, but they’re almost certainly the ones she got her x-gene from.

She knows that her father hated what she was.  She knows.  There are entire youtube channels devoted to his fiery speeches, preaching hate against her and others like her.  Sometimes she can’t help but wonder what if.  Would he have changed his mind if he knew about her?  Probably not.  She’ll never know for sure, but she wonders.  She tries not to let it eat at her.

Sometimes she succeeds.

When Darcy was twelve years old, she woke up with buttery-gold eyes and blue freckles scattered like a thick coat of midnight stars on her otherwise fair skin.  Her first thought was cool and then can I keep them?  It didn’t occur to her to be scared until she smelled the fear on her mother.

Of course, she didn’t realize what she was smelling until Heather Lewis was well into the throes of a panic attack.

Her mother kept patting her hair and crying.  “Oh baby, baby, it’ll be okay, we’ll be okay, we’ll figure something out,” she kept whispering it, over and over like a mantra.  “It’ll be okay, we’ll figure something out.”  Heather’s hands were shaking and tears were pouring down her face unacknowledged.

Darcy was terrified.

That was how her grandparents found them: Heather clutching Darcy close to her, shaking so hard she was near to swaying back and forth.  Darcy holding her mother just as fiercely, crying just as hard in confusion and fear.

Grandpa took Darcy and grandma took her mom, in two hours they reconvened in the parlor.  Darcy learned three things that day:

1.  Her father’s name was Graydon Creed. 2.  She was a mutant. 3.  If either of the first two became well-known, she could be in danger.  If both of the first two became known, she could die.

They danced around the ‘death’ thing, but even as a child she could read between the lines.  Her father had been making a name for himself over the past few years, making waves in the political sphere with his group, “The Friends of Humanity.”  He was making a campaign off of anti-mutant paranoia and if it ever got out that he had a daughter, out of wedlock, who was a mutant...the damage to his image would be catastrophic.

It was nothing but old money snobbery that had kept Graydon out of her life up to that point.  Her grandparents had given her mother an ultimatum: keep her boyfriend or keep the child.  If she’d chosen the former, they would have quietly arranged for her to have an abortion but allowed her to continue at her elite boarding school in much the same way she had, considering it a ‘warning’ of sorts.  Heather chose the latter and allowed her parents to withdraw her from school and squirrel her away to a more remote estate where they could pretend that Darcy was her little sister.

That was the story they told.  One of those polite society fictions that stood up as well as a tower of cards, remaining intact only as long as others were kind enough not to blow on it.  It helped that Darcy’s grandmother was a society dame, the kind who could make or break reputations with a single word because she knew all the dirt and wouldn’t hesitate to use it.  It helped even more that Darcy’s mother was quiet about her indiscretion, didn’t flaunt it or step out of the line her parents had drawn in the sand.

Heather chose her battles carefully and, nine times out of ten, she fought for Darcy rather than herself.

Darcy had been home-schooled by her mother’s choice up till the age of twelve.  After the manifestation of her x-gene it became a necessity.  She learned to metamorph away her more outlandish outward traits (the blue freckles and yellow eyes she got at twelve; the pointed canines and elongated ears she grew at thirteen; the retractible claws on hands and feet she sprouted at fifteen; the tail which she never told anyone about at seventeen) enough to go to high school.

All the while she watched her father’s support grow.  She tracked his progress through papers and tv adverts, through her grandfather’s blustery remarks about his dim prospects to the very real fear behind her mother and grandmother’s eyes.  If Graydon Creed won, the mutants, as a whole, would lose.

Her father’s success would be her people’s downfall.

It fucked her up.

Then, days after formally announcing his candidacy for president, Graydon Creed was assassinated at a rally in Ohio.

It fucked her up worse.

In college, Darcy meets her first out-and-proud mutant.

There had been none at the fancy private boarding school she’d attended.  Even if there had been, she wouldn’t have been allowed to associate with them.  Creed’s death might have made the world safer for mutants and, in a very specific sort of way, Darcy, but there were plenty ready to pick up his banner of hate and intolerance.  The very last thing the Lewises wanted was for Darcy to come out of the closet and be hurt.

Darcy knows that that rule comes from a place of caring.  She can literally smell it on them.  That doesn’t make their active and aggressive denial of a very real part of her hurt any less.

So when she meets the girl called Lorna, it’s a revelation.

Lorna has green hair, and not just on her head: all of her visible body hair is green.  She lives on Darcy’s floor and by the end of the first week of freshman year, they’ve swapped assigned roommates so they can live together.  Lorna doesn’t say if her x-gene does more than give her awesome hair and Darcy never asks.

Darcy doesn’t tell her the truth, but it’s a near thing.  The fear is just too deeply ingrained.  She regrets it when the X-Men come for Lorna, halfway through sophomore year.  She doesn’t even get a chance to say goodbye properly, stuck in class when Lorna up and leaves.

They still exchange emails though.

“Did you love him, mom?” Darcy asked, once, in that brief, awful period between finding out who her father was and seeing him shot on national tv.

Heather had shrugged, pulling her daughter closer to tuck under her arm.  “Part of me still loves him,” she admitted quietly.  “He gave me you.”

“But without me, you could still be with him,” she said, soft like a secret.

Her mother tilted her head to the side, thinking very carefully about Darcy’s not-quite-a-question.  “I don’t know,” she said finally.  “I’d like to think that I would have left him when I saw how deep the hate ran, but...”  She smiled a little wistfully, “Your father was - is a very charismatic man.  You’ve got a little of that spark.  No, really.”  Her lips pressed together and a wrinkle formed between her eyes, “I’m sorry I can’t give you a better answer.  I don’t know what would have happened without you, but honey?”

“Yeah?”

“I chose you over him.  I will always choose you.”

Her mother is a librarian and her father was a politician and Darcy...

Darcy is a perpetual student of life, or at least that’s how she tries to sell it to her grandparents.  She manages six years at Culver, ends up with a double major in political science and biology, one minor in social justice.  It’s unfortunate for her that Culver requires more diversity in certain fields.  She still has six credits of science requirement to kill and two options:

1.  Take Rocks for Jocks. 2.  Intern with a crazy astrophysicist.

Darcy takes the internship and never looks back.

She learned control out of necessity.  It was learn control or be confined to the estate.  Her mother did most of the real work, teaching her to meditate, helping her figure out how to associate scents with emotions and physiological tells.  But sometimes Darcy just felt so pent-up, so caged.

She learned to escape into her own head.

She fell into music and let it express all the emotions she couldn’t.  All the things she wanted to say and ways she wanted to react and had to hold back every moment of every single day.  Her body, the one natural to her, had claws and a tail and fangs and elongated pupils and heightened senses -

Sometimes she wondered, didn’t her family realize those manifestations were more than just cosmetic?

Sometimes she wondered, did they care?

Darcy knew, on some level, that her instincts weren’t wrong just different.

It didn’t always help.

Jane is the second person Darcy wants to tell.

Not so much because she epically trusts her on sight or anything, but, well, Jane has a tendency to get a little too caught up in science and forget things like showering or cleaning.  It’s a problem.  Darcy grew up in a house kept clean by a weekly service.  Darcy has always kept her dorm room as clean as possible because her nose demands it.

Living and working with Jane is...an adjustment.

The Thor thing?  That’s enough to send Darcy’s entire world out of alignment.

CAST LIST - 

Darcy Lewis (Creed)

Heather Lewis

Josephine Lewis

Abernathy Lewis

Graydon Creed

Mystique

Victor Creed

BONUS

Lorna Dane

#amuse writes stuff #darcy lewis #graydon creed #victor creed #mystique #mutant!darcy #darcy is a mutant #darcy is graydon creed's daughter #darcy is the most repressed feral mutant in the history of ever #lorna dane #various ocs (darcy's family) #i didn't get to the part where wolverine meets her and smells mystique and assumes she IS mystique and nearly disembowels her #or the part where sabretooth kidnaps her to teach her how to feral #or the part where mystique shows up for realsies and true fun is had #also could not figure out who to ship her with no lie #also also the part where all of the many kids and adopted kids of her blood relatives find her and decide to befriend her #darcy's wacky extended family (drama)

[wyrdsistersofthedas]

Random Thought Blog #5: The Mirror of Transformation!  The Makeover of a Mystery

Reviewing our posts (1, 2, 3) about eluvians the other day made me think about the lack of eluvians in DA2 other than Merrill’s troublesome mirror.  “Well,” thought I, “there is Xenon’s weird mirror, but that is just a courtesy to the fans and doesn’t really fit in the lore......wait a minute!  What if it is a really modded eluvian?”

Xenon the Antiquarian is an interesting fellow.  He is not a mage, but his money and long life have brought an untold number of enchanters and mages into his sphere of influence.  He even says that a magister miniaturized Chauncey for him.  In his centuries long search for amazing and magical artifacts, Xenon certainly would have encountered eluvians.  It also appears likely that his agents not only have figured out that these mirrors have magical properties, but have likely made use of the eluvian network.  (More on this in a minute.  Right now let’s set the stage...)

Xenon is always looking for ways to regain his youth and the eluvians probably presented a tantalizing option.  All he had to do was figure out the best way to harness and enhance their power.  We know there are spells that can change a person’s appearance as Wilhelm used magic twice to confirm that Maric was not a magical imposter.  That is a very specific fear to have and, given that shapeshifters like Morrigan exist, it certainly stands to reason that there is a human version as well.  Such an ability would almost certainly be a form of blood magic.  If such a spell was turned into an enchantment and was combined with what looks like a red lyrium enhancement, it might put Xenon on the right track to create the Mirror of Transformation.  

We know the eluvians allowed the ancient elves to travel and communicate great distances in a relatively short amount of time, using levels of connection to the Fade to facilitate the trip.  A connection to the Fade is embedded into every eluvian, so much so that when Merrill creates her mirror, it appears in the crossroads in spite of how little she knew about how they worked.  (That makes me wonder if the demon that taught her how to cleanse the mirror was actually trapped in a crossroads like place rather than just in the statue on Sundermount.  Sundermount, after all, is pretty connected to the Fade itself.  Even its name...Sunder.  Asunder.  Hmmmm.  Sounds like something to investigate at another time.)  So where does that leave the Mirror of Transformation?  

The Fade is the stuff of creation.  Thoughts and ideas can create a new reality, reshaping the unchanging world to reflect the will of the one who summons its power.  Xenon would have a vested interest in harnessing that power in order to reshape his flesh into a younger body.  So far, he doesn’t seem to have had much success.  The mirror doesn’t change your age, only your appearance, but he still seems to be working at it.  In DA2 his mirror looks like it has been modified with red lyrium, perhaps as a source of power.  Lyrium bridges the gap between the waking world and the Fade, so enchantments are literally imbuing objects with a connection to the realm of spirits.  And Xenon’s mirror is covered with the stuff!  It seems probable that the lyrium was meant to enhance the mirror’s transformative powers.  

Now here is where things get really weird.  The mirror we use in DA2 disappears sometime between 9:37 and 9:41, and is replaced with a shiny new version.  Perhaps the new mirror indicates that he somehow ‘broke’ the old one.  There are even baskets of red lyrium in the shop that might eventually be attached to the new mirror.  (Or Xenon got rid of the old mirror because the red lyrium tainted the mirror and he is just keeping the pieces to sell to people who are unknowing of how dangerous it is, or know but still use it (like the Inquisitor).  

Now...you might say that the developers simply used this eluvian so that they wouldn’t have to recreate the model for Merrill’s mirror...except, as you saw in the third image for this post that they did remake the mirror from DA2 for Inquisition (which is suggestive in and of itself.  The mirror is in a part of the crossroads that you can’t even see without using the flycam.  Why go to all the trouble of creating it when it was never used?  Was it originally for a cameo or a scrapped plotline?  Or is it for use in the future....).  So they could have used that mirror in the Emporium for Inquisition, but they chose not to.  There is also evidence that Xenon is taking his efforts to regain his youth to the next level...of the Fade, anyway.  

Accessing the Black Emporium sounds like it is a pretty complicated process, given that a Seeker could spend six months looking for it and not find it.  The shop wouldn’t, of course, actually be in the Fade, but Xenon may have found a way into a wedge it into a crossroads-like area.  He certainly seems to have access to Fade manipulated and Fade hidden objects.  How likely is it that Xenon’s people would just come across the Apples of Arlathan in a ruin and that they would still be in perfect condition?  And how is it that we can view Andraste in Nude Repose when it’s codex entry says that:

“Enchanters were tasked with extending the ethereal that hides the Fade, drawing it around the form like a cloak. Our Lady remains in the stone and in this world, but mortal eyes are forever denied her treasure and glory. She is veiled in every sense.”

The statue is veiled by the Fade!  Even The Basket of Lost Socks and The Emergent Compendium make a lot more sense when a Fade connection is applied to the reading of their codices.  So it seems likely that Xenon knows the true purpose of the eluvians, and has deliberately modified the two in the Black Emporium to serve his purpose of trying to recover his lost youth.  He also seems to have used them in order to gain access to what may be the ultimate repository for arcane knowledge: The Vir Dirthara!

What in the Void is a shield that Xenon values enough to stamp with his name and insist that it should be returned to him doing in the Vir Dirthara?  How long has it been there and who took it there?  Whatever the answers to those questions are, the presence of the Best Defense in the Shattered Library suggests that Xenon’s agents were in the library.  It seems clear to me that Xenon is work on getting access to ancient elven knowledge, perhaps even the Fade itself.  He is likely already connected to the Fade in some way, due to his bargain with the Antivan Witch of the Wilds, but he might need to take that connection even farther.  He has a great start, save for losing his property in the Vir Dirthara.

Honestly, I am starting to suspect that Xenon is actually dead, but Yavana or a former Witch of the Weyrs ‘pinned’ his spirit to his flesh, which would grant him eternal life of a sort, but not eternal youth.  He has unknowingly been fighting to keep his decaying corpse from rotting away while looking for a way to regain his youth.  He could also be attached to the Fade in some uthenera like way, but the connection to the Fade is incomplete or weak due to Xenon not being a mage or perhaps a strong connection is not possible anymore due to the Veil.  Does he even need to eat anymore?!  Could the extra limbs he seems to have mean that he tried to trade bodies at some point in the past?!  So many possibilities!

We might get some new info on Xenon soon since the cover the next Dragon Age comic series features the statuesque form of former Knight-Commander Meredith and we know she is in the Black Emporium as of the start of Inquisition.

Whatever we learn, it should be interesting....

#dragon age #dragon age meta #eluvian #dragon age 2 #dragon age inquisition #dragon age knight errant #black emporium #xenon the antiquarian #kirkwall #knight commander meredith #dragon age fade #wyrdsistersofthedas #morta's musings #long post

[cunyappliedtheatreblog]

Countdown Profile: Week 2 Cardozie Jones (‘12)

Cardozie Jones (’12) is Founding Principal of True North EDI. He sat down with Michael Wilson (’11) to talk about building his company and how he brings joy and rigor to his work for equity, diversity, and interdependence. 

Cardozie, it’s been years. I think of you as an entrepreneur in the arts, because of your directing background. How does that land? 

I guess less and less I would call myself an entrepreneur in the arts. I’m still directing—I direct a few times a year, and I really direct because it’s fun, and I love it, but my work has in the past three years really been focused on facilitation and consulting, primarily around racial justice. But generally speaking, equity work. 

So I’ve been consulting for three years on my own as Cardozie Jones. And then this summer I founded True North EDI, which is “Equity, Diversity, and Interdependence.” Right now, I’m the only “employee” of True North EDI, and my expertise is certainly in racial justice, but my larger goal is to have a cohort of consultants who just are really amazing and talented within the different spheres. 

Tell me more about True North.

 In doing my workshops, which have been in schools, for the most part—that’s really where I got my start, as an educator—I’m called in to sessions with staff, sometimes one-off PDs, and then it became more like I came once a month, or something like that, over the course of a year. And developing curriculum and sessions and content and themes.

 I was a consultant for Border Crossers…now the Center For Racial Justice in Education…and I’m also a consultant for NYU’s Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools. And then from there, I got more agency. First of all, I realized, okay, I’m good at this. I got great feedback, and I’m meeting other consultants who are really good at what they’re doing. 

That was a blessing for me, to find those organizations. But then I’m realizing, oh, but, when NYU sends Cardozie out, they’re literally just sending Cardozie out. I’m creating the sessions, I’m doing the reading, I’m doing the research, I’m doing all of the work. And I don’t say that begrudgingly at all, but people are just getting Cardozie.

 It was good and important to have those supports, and those big names, but now you’re at a point where you can stand up on your own. 

Yeah. 

Would you take me, take readers, into what a workshop feels like? 

Racial justice work can be so heavy. “I spent six hours in a session to realize that I literally have no power in this, because it’s so far beyond me, it’s so much older than me, whether I’m a victim of it or I’m privileged by it.” It still seems unchangeable. And so, for me, the energy that I bring into the room is very buoyant. We are up and moving a lot. We’re playing games. We’re using Theatre of the Oppressed to have fun. 

I’m so glad. Use the tools! 

Yeah. To have fun and to reflect and question and think critically. And it’s one of those situations where we’re about to have this really heavy conversation for three hours or six hours where we start off by laughing. What an amazing way to start a conversation about things that are kind of crappy, you know? And I maintain those exercises throughout. Whether we’re actually up, we’re doing small group work, we’re doing posters—we’re generating, right? This is always a space of generating versus continually being depleted. 

One of my favorite co-facilitators, a white woman, and she does great work from a white anti-racist lens, and her background is in restorative justice, and she brings that same energy. She has a theatre background, too. We have so much fun, playing Columbian Hypnosis, and two by three by Bradford, and with role play. It’s this really amazing time.

 People leave, given the written evaluations we receive, feeling like they see possibilities in the world. Versus, like they see the things that are insurmountable. And part of that is we’re very specific that we’re asking people to target their sphere of influence. We’re not asking them to un-do the entire system. And that’s part of interdependence. None of us can do it alone.

 Another problem that equity and diversity workshops get into is slowing down and helping out the white people. And then people of color are just like, “yep, I knew that, but what am I getting out of this?” How do you address that? 

A few things. The first is I try to acknowledge for everyone in the room, if you enter this conversation in any way, shape, or form with the mindset of, “I already know this,” then you will not learn anything. No matter what your racial identity or identity is in the room. Right? The second thing is that, you’ll have one person of color in the room saying, “well I already know this, this feels like it’s very white centered.” But you’ll have eight more people of color who are like, “oh I did not know race was a construct. I never heard that before, actually. My race is my race, that’s what I was taught,” right? Yes, to some extent, in racial justice trainings, they [black participants] recognize it more than white people recognize it. Because the fish can’t see the water. But they don’t necessarily see it as a choice they can not make. 

I have been really reflecting on the nature of “diversity work” and, as I said, it’s very white-centric. It’s like, that’s the target. And so what I tried to do more recently is bring in black-centric or POC-centric texts that are speaking to experiences. So people of color in the room can feel like “yes, this is me, this is my life right here,” and white people can see, “wow, this is blunt, no one ever talked about this this way before.” People of color feel validated in the room, and it removes the burden of having to over-share and be so vulnerable, in a way the white participants simply aren’t, quite frankly. 

But that question…it’s still a work in progress. We still need to figure out a way for “diversity work” to not be white-centric or not dominant-party-centric. 

I asked because it bedevils me with the work I do on gender. Every time I do a mixed gender group, we end up taking care of some white guy. And sometimes I feel like we got somewhere, that we took a detour but it’s worthwhile, and sometimes I’m like, “this is just patriarchy protecting itself, and whiteness protecting itself.” 

Yeah. The other thing I’ve decided is…there’s all these jokes about white tears and so for me, you can cry all you want. That does not mean I’m going to center you right now. And I’m going to call out the room if we start to center that person. So whether it’s tears or it’s outrage, or whatever the spill of emotion coming from the dominant body is, it’s valid. I’m not going to silence it. But we’re also going to keep moving on. Because we’re here together. So you can let it out. Flood the floors. And we’re going to keep moving forward. Because that’s what this work is, right? Moving forward despite the loads of emotions we feel. 

Thank you. You mentioned earlier you wanted to circle back to the MA? 

Yeah. My ability to facilitate groups is hands-down from this program. I was talking to a colleague of mine, a chief operating officer at an organization, who is contracting me to do racial equity work with her organization. And she said, “as we design sessions, you’re constantly and perpetually thinking about the reception and what’s happening in the room.” Versus, it would be much easier if I could design a session and not think about that! But having been in the program and understanding…having a more human-centered approach, having a more co-intentional approach has forced me to consider that I need the people in the room to create a partnership in this. 

Also, you know, we went to grad school and there’s times we had whole courses where we would just play, for an entire course. And somehow that made the learning more rigorous, and not less rigorous. So part of what I understand is that rigorous learning and rigorous experiences require imagination, and so, being a graduate of the applied theatre program, I recognize all the possibilities that exist when the imagination is activated, and when we can step in and out of roles, and in and out of possibilities, and act as if—not as “what is,” but “as if.” 

What gets you up in the morning to keep doing the work, Cardozie? 

The simplest way to say it is I love what I do, and I have the privilege of my work being my passion. The hardest thing about my work is the planning, is the administrative stuff. Me like doing invoices, and designing a session from scratch. But when I’m in the room, which is five or six days a week, I’m in a room with people, it’s FUN. It’s FUN. 

[Also,] more and more I feel like this work is a calling. And I’m the kind of person who would have scoffed at the word “calling.” Like three years ago. 

What I haven’t talked about, is it takes a toll, right? The work takes a toll. I’m talking about things that are very personal to me that I feel a lot of pain, as it relates to racism. So my well depletes very fast. When I burn out, I am BURNED OUT. And so I’m trying to figure out ways of self-care, or ways to facilitate self-care for myself. 

I hear you. 

But waking up in the morning, I get up and go. I never dread sessions. And they can be really really challenging. But I welcome the challenge. 

You’ve got this small smile and your eyes are lit up. 

Yeah, I love it, I love it. It’s not really great for my marriage laughs. He’d prefer that we not have the challenges sometimes. But I’m the kind of person who…I thrive off of debate and I thrive off of…not conflict, but problem-posing.

 Anything else you’d like some curious person to know about you?

 My next and current step is creating seminars where people can come to me. In January I have this three-evening seminar called “True North Together.” What I realized in doing this work is that I’m only in spaces that call me in. But then there are regular people in the world, like mothers and people who work in spheres where this isn’t the conversation, but who are reading the news and raising children and on social media. They see the world. But they don’t have the language or the knowledge to engage the world in a way that’s powerful and thoughtful and positive, and so True North Together seminars are for anyone at any point of access to come in and be more powerful in conversations, specifically about race and racism. Race, power, and privilege. My hope is to fill up two cohorts of that in January and February. And so, yeah, that requires another entrepreneurial hat I need to wear, because now I’m recruiting, so to speak.

 Send me the link. 

Thank you, that would be great. I want to have a 1500-person conference one day. Where we can really convene and commune in innovative ways, and some old ways that work, too. 

Thank you so much. 

Thank you! 

Check out True North Together at https://www.truenorthedi.com/events.html.

#mainappliedtheatre #cunymainappliedtheatre #Diversity equity Interdependence magrad maalum

[ericbarkman]

Chrono Hustle #46 Pocket Sliders

     “We’re back,” Melinda Summers said as she walked up to the lake on the planet that would one day be named Trantor, along with her team.  “Ohm?”      Ohm laid the body of Jack Masterson on the ground right by the edge of the lake.  Mary Bishop, Imhotep, and the Ghost of the temporal duplicate of Jack Masterson made up the rest of Melinda’s team.      The lake stood up and took a vaguely humanoid form.  “I see that,” Nu said.      Imhotep immediately bowed.      “So, we’ve brought you the body, Nu,” Melinda said.  “Now you’ll help us find and save our friends.”      “Of course,” Nu said.  “It won’t be easy for you though.  I can send you to pocket universes, but I don’t know which is the right one.  So, I will send you to one, and after a set amount of time, you will be sent to another.  Anyone that is in physical contact with any of you will join you on this trip.”      “How long will we have in each pocket universe?” Ghost Jack asked.      “How much time do you want?” Nu asked.  “We won’t be able to communicate, so you’ll have to decide a length of time now that you will spend in each.”      “And what about when we’re ready to return?” Mary asked.      “If you are all in physical contact with each other, plus any others that have joined your journey, then you will all be returned here,” Nu said.  “Otherwise you will continue to be sent from pocket universe to pocket universe.”      “And if one of us dies?” Ghost Jack asked.  “I mean, if another one of us dies.”      “If someone dies, they will no longer be considered part of the group,” Nu said.  “So if eventually only one remains, they will be brought back here on the next jump.”      “Right,” Melinda said.  “Let’s do this.”      Meanwhile, back at their base in the Cretaceous, Abigail Esau was reading Merlin’s journals.  She had already made her way through everything that was written in English, and was now slowly making her way through those in French, using a mixture of what she remembered from school, and a translation program when necessary.      There were only a few in French though, and after that she was going to have to move onto another language that she would have to fully rely on translation programs for.      She just finished reading a spell that seemed fairly simple, so she tried it out, and made a heart appear on the ceiling with Mary and her initials in it.  It looked like if it had been scratched into a tree, despite the ceiling being metal.      Nu created the portal, and Melinda stepped through, with her team following in behind her.      “Four hours,” Nu had said.  Four hours in this pocket universe, and then off to another.      Melinda looked around at the place they were in.  It was a lush rainforest.  The air was thick with humidity and there was the sound of wildlife all around.      “Are we sure he didn’t just send us to the Amazon?” Ghost Jack asked.      “Can you fly up and get us a bird’s eye view?” Melinda asked.      “On it,” Ghost Jack said.      Mary was looking at the ground, checking for tracks.      “Finding anything?” Melinda asked.      “Plenty of stuff has been through this area,” Mary said.  “I’m not seeing anything indicating Humans specifically though.  Could be, but could just be animals.”      “Imhotep?” Melinda asked.      “This whole place is filled with magic,” Imhotep said.  “Very old, very powerful magic.”      “A Progenitor?” Melinda asked.      “I would assume that’s who created this,” Imhotep said.  “I could not tell you which though, and I don’t know that they are currently here.”      Ghost Jack came back down to the ground.  “Well, pocket universe is right, I could see the edges of this place as soon as I flew above the canopy.”      “How big?” Melinda asked.      “It looks to be spherical, I’d estimate a few kilometers across,” Ghost Jack said.  “I don’t think we’ll have enough time to explore the whole place, especially with how thick this foliage is, but hopefully we can get a decent amount done.”      “Okay, Ohm and I will go one way,” Melinda said.  “Mary and Imhotep you go the opposite way.  Jack, you’re the fastest of us, and can fly, so you can do your own thing.  Let’s go.”      Doctor Jeri Quill entered Harkon Smith’s office.      “Good day, Doctor,” Harkon said.  “What can I do for you?”      “Sesla’s clone body is complete,” Jeri said.  “I know you’ve been putting off that decision for a while, but unless you want Ghost Jack to lie to her next time he enters her dreams…well, you know.”      “As long as Sesla remains in her coma, we don’t have to worry about her turning on us,” Harkon said.  “If we transfer her mind to a clone body, she could become a threat.”      “Like Deanna.”      “Yes, I know Sesla is a thousand or so years older than when she was Deanna, and a lot changes in that time, but it’s still something to be considered.  On the other hand, if we don’t do this, and she wakes up on her own somehow, that might lead to her to turning on us.”      “Which means you should probably make the decision soon,” Jeri said.      “Well, Ghost Jack is on a mission right now, so I at least have until he gets back,” Harkon said.      Melinda pushed her way through the foliage as Ohm followed after her.  They had yet to find any sign that any Humans had ever been here before.  There was something else that Melinda was realizing they had not seen yet.      “Ohm, have you seen any animals yet?” Melinda asked.      “I have not,” Ohm said.  “I am hearing them, and I’m seeing tracks indicating that they have been here, but I have not actually seen any yet.”      “I wonder what that means.”      “Many animals are good at not being seen unless they want to be.  The fact that everything here is like that is worrying.”      “Sensing anything?” Mary asked as she checked the ground for tracks.      “Nothing new,” Imhotep said.  “Are you finding anything?”      “Nothing helpful.”      “Wait, stop, we’re being watched.”  Imhotep pointed up at one of the trees.      Mary looked up where he was pointing, and saw a creature that looked like a mix between a jaguar and a monkey.  Mary gripped her energy shotgun, as it just continued to watch them.      “There’s more of them,” Imhotep said.      Mary glanced around, and noticed that the trees were full of them.  They were surrounded by at least a dozen of these creatures.  “How long have we been here so far?” she asked.      “About an hour,” Imhotep said.      “Mary to Melinda, we’ve got a problem.”  There was no response.  “Oh great, comm interference or something.”      One of the monkguars jumped down to the ground in front of them.  Its teeth bared, and claws extended.  Mary shot it with her energy shotgun, and it dropped to the ground unconscious.      This caused the others to stop their silence, and start whooping as they jumped down to the ground as well.  Mary started shooting as many as she could, as fast as she could, while Imhotep put up a magical barrier around them.  The monkguars bounced off of it, but that just made them angrier and louder.      With the protection the barrier provided, Mary was having little trouble dropping them, one after another after another, but as she was doing so, more kept arriving.  There had been a dozen at first, and now there were already two dozen unconscious around them, and another twice that still attacking.      “I can’t hold up this barrier forever,” Imhotep said.      “Well, then hopefully they run out of reinforcements soon,” Mary said.      Ghost Jack had flown up to the top of the sphere that was this pocket universe.  The edge of it was a physical barrier, beyond which was a seemingly infinite emptiness.  He flew back down towards the rainforest, looking for any breaks in the canopy, but it was like a sea of green.  Even if there were breaks, it would be green there too, and he was not going to have enough time to do a thorough search of everything while they were here.      He flew back down below the canopy, as the bird’s-eye view was not helpful if he could not see anything on the ground.  Not that he was seeing much down here either, other than an astonishing amount of plant life.      More and more monkguars were continuing to try and attack Imhotep and Mary.  It seemed like for every one that Mary shot down, another two seemed to show up.      “I can maybe hold up this barrier for another minute, at most,” Imhotep said.      “We’re going to be overwhelmed if you drop it,” Mary said.  “Do you have any other magic you can use in this situation?”      “Maybe, but you’re not going to like it.”      “What is it?”      “I can maybe do a mass sleep spell on the area.  So anything and anyone within about ten meters of me will fall asleep.”      “That sounds good,” Mary said.      “It’ll include us,” Imhotep said.  “And I don’t know for certain if it will affect these things.  It affects most animals, but I’ve never encountered anything quite like these before.”      “I don’t see that we have much options,” Mary said.  “Let’s do it.”      “Melinda to Mary, you guys finding anything yet?” Melinda asked over the comm.  There was no response.  “Melinda to Imhotep?  Jack?”      “Something wrong with the comms?” Ohm asked.      “I guess,” Melinda said.  She took out her computer pad and ran a diagnostic on the comms.  “Hmm, looks like the comms themselves are fine, but there’s some interference in the area.”      “Is it just a problem with this pocket universe, or all pocket universes?” Ohm asked.      “I guess we’ll find out in another two hours or so…maybe.”      “In the meantime, should we check on the others?”      “Hmm, maybe just in case,” Melinda said.  “Although if this is a standard aspect of pocket universes, we’re going to have to get used to not always being in communication with each other.”      Ghost Jack continued flying throughout the rainforest.  So far he had not found much of use, although he had finally started seeing some animal life.  It was strange though.  He had seen some creatures which looked like a mix between snakes and parrots, and another that looked like a mix between a spider and a frog.      The sprogers were especially creepy, although the snarrots were pretty close.  And there were others that he could not even identify if they were supposed to be a mix of something else, or something entirely new.      Then, as he was flying, he came upon a small clearing.  Within that clearing was a small hut.  He flew over to it, up to the roof, and stuck his head inside to get a peak.  There was no one inside, but there was a small cot, and some cooking utensils.      He looked back outside, and saw a small fire pit, although it had not seen use recently.  Whoever lived here, possibly the person that had created this pocket universe, was seemingly long gone.  Or perhaps this belonged to someone that had been trapped here.      He looked at the ground, trying to find footprints, but had no luck.  Maybe Mary would be able to do better.  He tried the comm, but there was no response, so he took off to find the others.      Back in the regular universe, Philip Wilson and Dorian Winters were aboard the timeship in orbit of the planet Trantor.  Dorian was at the piloting console, while Philip was in the captain’s chair.      "So, how long do you think it’ll take them?” Philip asked.      “Who knows,” Dorian said.  “Melinda said they’ll be spending four hours in each pocket universe, and who knows how many there are and how long until they’ll get to the correct one.”      “And until then, we’re just stuck here waiting.”      “I mean, we could use the time in other ways,” Dorian said.  “We do have the ship to ourselves.”      Ghost Jack was flying through the rainforest, when he suddenly found dozens of unconscious monkguars.  They were surrounding Mary and Imhotep who were similarly unconscious.  And there were more of the monkguars coming in, but as soon as they got within about ten meters of Imhotep and Mary, they too feel unconscious.      He also started hearing energy weapons firing, and flew over to the source of it, where he found Melinda and Ohm, trying to hold off yet more monkguars.      “You guys need some help?” Ghost Jack asked.      “Anything you can do would be much appreciated,” Melinda said.      Ghost Jack flew down to where they were.  “Close your eyes, and we’ll see if this works.”  As soon as Melinda and Ohm had their eyes closed, Ghost Jack sent out an explosion of light to try and blind the monkguars.  And it seemed to do something, as they stopped coming at the group, and were pawing around in confusion.      “What did you do?” Melinda asked.      “Well, after realizing that i can glow in the dark when we had that power outage, I started experimenting with that,” Ghost Jack said.  “Hadn’t quite done anything like this yet, but I’m glad it worked.”      “Have you seen Mary and Imhotep anywhere?” Melinda asked.      “They are just over that way,” Ghost Jack said.  “I’m guessing Imhotep used a spell to put everything to sleep, as they are unconscious, as is every monkguar for about ten meters around them.”      “There’s more coming yet,” Ohm said.      “I found a hut over that way.”  Ghost Jack pointed.  “I’ll grab Mary and give her to you to carry out there.”      “And Imhotep?” Melinda asked.      “I don’t know if the spell is centered on him, or on the location where he cast it,” Ghost Jack said.  “But I’m immune.  So, I’ll carry him and find out, and if it’s centered on him, I’ll have to leave him a distance from the hut.”      “Sounds like a plan,” Melinda said.  “Let’s do it.”      After bringing Mary to Melinda and Ohm, Ghost Jack went back and picked up Imhotep.  He initially went over towards the blinded monkguars, while being careful to not get too close to Melinda and Ohm.  Sure enough, the blinded monkguars starting falling unconscious as he got within about ten meters of them.      That was potentially going to cause problems, but for the immediate time it was actually useful.  Ghost Jack started flying around in circles, knocking out any monkguars getting too close to his friends.      Ohm carried Mary, while following after Melinda.  Ghost Jack had pointed them in the right direction, and he was pretty sure they were getting close.      After a few minutes of walking, they got to the hut, and Ohm put Mary down inside, before coming back out.  Melinda was looking over the campsite.      “What do you think?” Melinda asked.      “I don’t think this was made by our friends,” Ohm said.  “This is a very old campsite.”      “Chronos is a God of Time.  So it being old doesn’t really tell us much.  But I do agree that I don’t think this was made by them.  I also don’t think this pocket universe was made by Chronos.”      “So then we just wait until we move onto the next?”      “It’ll be another hour so until that,” Melinda said.  “We should be able to hold out that long.”      As Ghost Jack saw that the others had made it to the campsite, he started circling around it with Imhotep, but keeping his distance.  There were monkguars coming from all directions, so he was not able to keep them all out, but he was at least able to deal with some of them that way.      He was really curious as to where they were all coming from.  Based the size of this pocket universe, there was no way it could sustain this many of them.  Possibly they were part of a security system, just being created to deal with the intruders.  It was hard to say for certain though, who knew what kind of rules were really in place in this place.      Mary woke up, and looked around.  She was in a hut, and her energy shotgun was next to her.  Ohm and Melinda were by the door, and they were both shooting out at a mass of monkguars that were approaching.      “Where are we?” Mary asked.      “Ghost Jack found this hut,” Melinda said without turning around.  “We’re using it to try and last long enough to escape this universe.”      Mary looked at her watch.  Just another few minutes left here.  She picked up her energy shotgun, and joined Melinda and Ohm at the door, and started firing at the monkguars.      Ghost Jack was continuing to circle the camp with Imhotep, when he noticed the monkguars near them were no longer falling asleep.  He was briefly wondering if that meant they were becoming immune, before Imhotep started waking up as well.      “What’s going on, where are we?” Imhotep asked.      “Still in the pocket universe,” Ghost Jack said.  “Just trying to survive long enough to move on to the next.”      “How much longer will that be?” Imhotep asked.      “Should be any second now,” Ghost Jack said, and suddenly they were underwater.      Ghost Jack was fine, not needing to breathe, but Imhotep did.  Ghost Jack looked at him, and he was holding his breath, but as they had not been prepared for this, there was no telling how long he’d be able to hold it for.      Ghost Jack looked around.  He had no idea which way was up, so he grabbed Imhotep, and chose a direction, and started moving that way.  After a few seconds they hit a solid surface, so they went in another direction.  They hit another solid surface.  A third direction led to a third solid surface.      Mary was still firing at monkguars, when all of a sudden the monkguars were gone.  And she was no longer in a hut in a rainforest, and Melinda and Ohm were no longer next to her.  She was on sand.  She looked around and saw more sand.      She was in what looked to be cubic room, a few yards across.  The floor, walls, and even the ceiling looked to be made of sand, but not packed together, which made her wonder how it was staying suspended.      Mary reached down and picked up some sand of the floor, and sure enough, it was really loose.  She tried the wall, and it was the same.  She tried digging a bit, and came upon a solid surface after about half a foot, but as soon as she removed her hands, sand flowed down to fill in the hole.      What was this place, she wondered.  And where were her friends?  She had been next to Melinda and Ohm, but clearly they were not in this room.      Ohm was in a cubic room as well.  His had grass growing out of the floor, walls, and ceiling.  The strange thing was that there was no soil for it to grow out of.  It was coming out of a solid surface.  He grabbed a handful, and pulled it out, but more instantly grew out of the spot he had pulled from.      He tried knocking on the walls, and then listened but did not hear anything.  He tried his comm, but it was still not working.  He checked his handheld scanner, but it did not show anything beyond the walls.      And in yet another cubic room, Melinda was considering her surroundings.  The floor, walls, and ceiling of the one she was in were coated in mud.  The fact that the mud was not dripping down from the ceiling, or even going down the wall, was interesting.      Melinda tried stepping onto the wall, and it was as if gravity shifted as she did so.  What had been a wall, was now the floor, as far as she was concerned.  Melinda then tried moving to the wall she had originally considered the ceiling, and that now became the new floor, from her perspective.      She wondered what was the purpose of this pocket universe, and who had created it.  And she wondered what kind of situations the others were in, and if they were all okay.      The sudden appearance in water had surprised Imhotep, but once he realized where he was, he used a spell to create a bubble around himself with air in it.  As he created it, Ghost Jack entered it.      “You okay?” Ghost Jack asked.      “I believe so,” Imhotep said.  “Where are we?”      “Some kind of cubic room, filled with water.  Looks to be a few meters wide.  I don’t see any obvious exits, although I can of course just go through the walls.”      “Assuming there’s no magic in place to prevent that.”      “True, but I should probably at least check to see if I can find the others.  If this pocket universe is just a series of room like this, filled with water, they won’t have magic to save them.”      “Right,” Imhotep said.  “Hopefully that’s not the case.”      Mary was pacing back and forth, trying to figure out what to do.  Near as she could tell, her only option was to wait until they jumped to the next pocket universe.  There was nothing here but sand.  She had already tried digging holes in multiple locations, but they all filled in almost immediately.      As she was pacing, she suddenly noticed something emerging from the floor.  It was Ghost Jack.      “Oh good, you’re not underwater,” Ghost Jack said.      “Were you?”      “Imhotep and I were, he still is, but with a magic bubble.  I’ve been going through a few of these rooms that make up this place.”      “And?”      “And honestly it could have been a lot worse than underwater.  One of the rooms is filled with lava.”      “Have you found Ohm or Melinda yet?”      “Not yet.  I’m hoping that they’re close to here though, since the three of you were near to each other when we were teleported here, right?”      “Yeah, we had all been next to each other, shooting those creatures.  Do you know how long Imhotep can maintain his air bubble?”      “Long enough, although this does now make me wonder if we should have brought environmental suits or something,” Ghost Jack said.  “I mean, I’ll be fine pretty much regardless of what we encounter, but the rest of you might not be so lucky.”      “Well, we’re going to have to make at least one more jump, unless we can find a way for the rest of us to travel between these rooms.”      “Oh, and did you figure out the gravity thing?”      “Gravity thing?” Mary asked.      “Try stepping onto the wall.”      Mary walked to a wall, stepped onto it, and suddenly gravity shifted for her, and the wall was now the floor.      “Pretty cool, right?” Ghost Jack asked.      Ghost Jack returned to Imhotep after searching dozens of rooms and finding Melinda and Ohm.      “Is everyone else okay?” Imhotep asked.      “Yeah,” Ghost Jack said.  “Looks like you were the only one that got unlucky like this.”      “That’s good.  What about Tesla’s team?  Did you find any of them?”      “No such luck.  I searched around pretty far, but nothing.  That doesn’t mean they aren’t here though.  We have no idea how big this place is.”      “Yeah, and unfortunately you’re the only one who can explore it.”      “I’m going to head back out, and do that for the rest of our time here, just thought I would give you an update.”      Melinda was counting down the time until they made their next jump.  Ghost Jack had shown up twice, once to check in on her, and a second time to let her know everyone else was okay, but he was unlikely to return again, as he would be spending as much time as he could on the search.      She was really hoping their people were not here though, as according to Ghost Jack each of the rooms was about the same size, and it seemed unlikely that all of their missing people would be able to fit in one.  And since Ghost Jack was the only one that could travel between the rooms, and they needed to make physical contact to bring others with them, they would be unable to rescue them all if that were the case.      Melinda checked her watch.  Just ten seconds left.  Not knowing where she would end up next, she took a deep breath, just in case.  The room disappeared, and she appeared in a large throne room.  She exhaled as she took it in.  There was a woman with a crown on the throne, and about two dozen guards with swords.      “What is the meaning of this?” the woman demanded, as the guards surrounded Melinda.  “Who are you, and how did you get in here, and why are you getting mud all over the carpet?”      Imhotep suddenly found himself a few feet above the ground, and his bubble collapsed as he fell  those few feet.  He looked around.  He was in a town, full of stone-brick houses.  He was on a dirt road.  And there were other people around, who looked very surprised at his sudden appearance, but no one made a move to approach him.      Looking around, the town did not seem too large, but there was a castle on one end of it.  The opposite end led to a forest.  He walked over to the nearest person.  “Excuse me,” he said.  “I’m not from around here.”      The person just stared at him for several seconds before responding.  “Okay,” she said.      “Do you know if there are any other recent arrivals here?”      “No, everyone here has always been here.”      “Hmm, okay, thank you,” Imhotep said.      “Sorry, sorry,” Ghost Jack said as he flew out of the library he had appeared in, amongst the screams of the people inside.  As he went outside, there were even more screams, so he went down an alley, landed on the ground, and made himself appear fully tangible.      He left the alley the opposite way he came, and he was still getting weird looks from people, but no more screams, so that was good.  The people here were dressed simply, and they looked like they were from medieval times, although noticeably cleaner.  The buildings also looked to be from that era.      He looked up, and the sky looked normal.  Either this pocket universe was bigger than the first one, or its size was just better disguised.  If it was larger, that would be a major problem.      “Excuse me,” he asked a random person on the street.  “Can you help me out with a few questions?”      “Um, what kind of questions?” the person asked.      “How big is this place?”      “Well, the town ends over that way with the castle, and that way before the forest, and…”      “No, not the town, umm, how far do things extend beyond the town?”      “I don’t…why would anyone leave the town?”      “No one leaves?”      “Of course not.  Nobody has ever left, and until now, no one new has ever come here.”      “Hmm, right, thanks,” Ghost Jack said as he walked off.      Mary had appeared outside the town, in the woods.  The first thing she did upon appearing was check her comm, which still did not work.  It was seeming more and more likely that whatever was causing the problems with the comms was an effect of these pocket universes in general.      She also quickly realized that something seemed very off.  There were no sounds of animals in the forest.  No wind either, for that matter.  The only sounds she was hearing were coming from the town.  She checked the ground, and there were no tracks of any kind.  That was curious, so she decided to start searching, and going in the opposite direction from the town.      Mary was walking for about five minutes or so, when she hit an invisible wall.  It did not feel like a forcefield though, it felt like an actual physical wall.  She started moving alongside it, to see how far it continued.  She quickly discovered that it was curving around, which meant that this place was probably domed like the first pocket universe, just in this case the dome had the illusion of the world continuing.      Ohm had appeared in a cave.  There was some sort of glowing moss on the walls giving off enough light to see.  It was a tunnel, and it extended as far as he could see in either direction.  He picked a direction at random, and started walking in that direction.  He was walking for a bit, before realizing that the moss was getting thicker, and the cave brighter in this direction.  He was unsure if that was a good or a bad thing, so he continued on.      Eventually it opened up into a larger cave, in the middle of which was a small house.  To one of the sides of it was a garden, which was being worked on at the moment by a young looking woman.  She looked over as Ohm approached.      “You’re new here,” she said.  “That’s fascinating.  There hasn’t been anyone new here in over four hundred years.”      “No?”      “No, when I created this place, I brought the amount of people I would need, no more, no less, so there’s never been the need for new people.”      “So, you created this pocket universe?  Then I assume that this is not where Chronos put our people.”      She laughed.  “No, although I am curious as to how you managed to come here.”      “I don’t really understand the processes myself,” Ohm said.  “But we’re just jumping from pocket universe to pocket universe, trying to locate our kidnapped people.”      “Fascinating.”      In the castle, Melinda had been thrown in the dungeon.  A very clean dungeon though, much cleaner than would be expected based on the medieval look to everything here.  The guards also seemed unsure of how exactly to treat her, as if they had not had any prisoners in a long time.      They eventually decided on placing one guard outside her cell.  She looked out the barred window on the back wall of the cell.  There was a mountain range just a kilometer or two away.      “So, you don’t get many visitors, do you?” Melinda asked the guard.      “We don’t get any visitors.”      “No travellers, nothing?”      “Why would anyone travel?”      “So, what’s going to happen to me?”      “I don’t know.”      The conversation was interrupted when another guard came up, and whispered something in the first guard’s ear.      “Something happen?” Melinda asked.      “How many people came with you?” the first guard asked.      “What do you mean?” Melinda asked.      Out in the town, Imhotep and Ghost Jack had just found each other.  They were still getting weird looks, but no one seemed to want to approach them.      “I am fairly certain that if our people are in this pocket universe, they are not in this town,” Imhotep said.      “I agree,” Ghost Jack said.  “These people are not used to outsiders, and we are clearly the first in a long time.”      “Have you seen the rest of the team?”      “Nope, no sign of them.  Possibly in the castle, possibly in the forest, possibly somewhere else.  I have no idea how big this universe is.”      “So, where do we start?”      “Might as well check the castle first,” Ghost Jack said.  “It’s possibly where whoever created this is anyway.”      Melinda was brought back before the woman on the throne.  She had been told that this was Queen Rebecca.      “I have been informed that you are not the only intruder in my kingdom,” Rebecca said.  “There are two strange men that have been seen in town, and talks of some sort of ghostly figure.  What is your purpose here?”      “We are only here searching for our friends, your majesty,” Melinda said.  “And we will be on our way shortly.”      “What manner did you use to travel here?”      “That’s…complicated.”      “Do you think it is beyond my understanding?”      “Honestly, I don’t really understand how it works.”      “And who would understand how it works?” Rebecca asked.  “One of your friends in the town?”      “No, they don’t really understand it either.”      Rebecca looked around at her guards.  “Leave us,” she said.  Without question, they all filed out of the room.  “My people and I have lived here for centuries, ever since we were brought to this place.  We do not age, or need food or drink or even sleep.  No one even remembers anything from before we were brought here.”      “Okay?” Melinda asked.      “Except for myself.  She who brought us here was unable to erase my memories.  It’s why she made me queen.  Give me some power, so I don’t question that I am trapped here.”      “So, you want to leave?”      “I was content with my lot in life, but if there is a way out of this place, I want to take it.”      “Who created this place and brought you here?”      “We don’t know her name, or what she is, only that she is very powerful.”      “Powerful enough to track us down if we take you with us?” Melinda asked.      “You haven’t told me your name,” Ohm said.      “What’s in a name?” the woman asked.  “That which we call a rose, by any other word would smell as sweet.  Not that I expect you to get the reference, being a Neanderthal and all.”      “Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare,” Ohm said.  “I do read.”      “My apologies, good sir, although now that I think of it, you never mentioned your name either.”      “I am Ohm.”      “A pleasure to meet you, Ohm.  You can call me Lucy.”      “Nice to meet you, Lucy.  I don’t suppose you can help us locate our friends.”      “Travelling to pocket universes you are unaware of is very hit or miss, which is how you got here,” Lucy said.  “I doubt I’d be able to be any more helpful than whatever method you are currently using.  Although I can give you some advice.”      “Okay.”      “Be very careful.  Pocket universes have been created by a great many people for a great many reasons, and there are untold dangers you could encounter.”      “That we have already been learning.”      Ghost Jack flew through the castle, searching around, and came upon the throne room, where Melinda was talking to someone that looked like a queen.  He flew down to the floor and became visible.  “Hey Red, what’s up?”      “Who is this?” Rebecca asked.      “This is my friend Jack,” Melinda said.  “Jack, this is Queen Rebecca.  Have you seen the others?”      “Imhotep is outside the castle, but we decided it would be easier if I searched it myself,” Ghost Jack said.      “What are you?” Rebecca asked.      “Oh, just your average Ghost of a Demi-God,” Ghost Jack said.  “Anyway, haven’t seen Mary or Ohm, and we’re reasonably certain our people aren’t here, at least not in the town.”      “The town is all there really is,” Rebecca said.  “The forest only extends a short distance, beyond which it is just an illusion.  As is the mountain range behind my castle.” “Are you the person that created this place?” Ghost Jack asked.      “No, that’s someone else,” Melinda said.  “But she does want to come with us.”      “Does she now?” Ghost Jack asked.      “Yes, I do,” Rebecca said.  “Being the leader in a cage still leaves you in a cage.”      Melinda and Ghost Jack had left the castle and met up with Imhotep.  They explained the situation to him.      “I can understand the desire to leave,” Imhotep said.  “But if we bring her with, we might anger whoever created this place.”      “And we don’t even know who that is,” Melinda said.  “We also don’t know why these people were brought here.  For all we know this is a prison, and she should be kept here.”      “I mean, it’s pretty clearly a prison,” Ghost Jack said.  “But we have no reason to assume it’s a prison for criminals.  And even if it was, they’ve been here for centuries.  I think she’s more than paid for any crimes she may have committed.”      “What about everyone else?” Melinda asked.  “Should we take them all with?”      “She is the only one we’ve encountered that wants to leave,” Imhotep said.  “The others don’t even remember their lives before they were brought here.”      “Because they were mindwiped,” Melinda said.  “And that’s another sort of prison.  Imhotep, back when we were first dealing with the TDD, they had replaced some of my memories with fake ones, and you were able to restore my original memories.  Would you be able to do that for the people here?”      “Possibly, but we’d only have time for a few,” Imhotep said.  “And, if you’ll recall, you were asleep for some time afterwards.  We will be gone from here by the time we’d be able to see the results.”      “Hmm, yeah,” Melinda said.  “That’s not really an option.”      Ohm checked his watch.  It would just be another few minutes before they jumped again.      “Leaving so soon?” Lucy asked.      “We will be leaving shortly,” Ohm said.  “Our people are still out there, somewhere, and we need to find them.”      “I wish you luck in your endeavor,” Lucy said.  “I don’t suppose you’ll be back again.”      “I do not know, but it seems unlikely.”      “Then perhaps I will have to visit you sometime.  I do still go to Earth from time to time for business.”      “What kind of business.”      “Nothing super interesting, but I do have obligations that I have to attend to on occasion.”      Melinda, Ghost Jack, and Imhotep returned to the throne room.      “So, what have you decided?” Rebecca asked.  “Will you take me with you, or are you leaving me trapped here?”      “We don’t want to leave you trapped here,” Melinda said.  “But we do have reservations about angering whoever it is that created this place.  We already have a lot of powerful enemies, and it may not be wise to create yet another.”      “On the other hand, she may already be angered by your intrusion, for all we know,” Rebecca said.  “And this wouldn’t make things any worse.”      “Maybe, but we don’t know that,” Melinda said.      “We also don’t know where we are all going,” Imhotep said.  “At the moment we are jumping from pocket universe to pocket universe, at random.  In the previous one I would have drowned without my magic.  Coming with us may prove dangerous.”      “I am fine with danger,” Rebecca said.  “It is better than this tedium.”      Melinda checked her watch.  Half a minute remained.  “There are also other complicated aspects to it.”      “You’re stalling, so that means it’s almost time isn’t it?” Rebecca asked, right before she ran over to Melinda, and placed her hand on Melinda’s shoulder.  And then, they all disappeared.      Mary disappeared from the forest, and appeared in empty space.  She fought the urge to panic as she looked around at her surroundings, and exhaled her breath.  In the distance she saw a large metal structure, like a space station.  She could also see a few other people floating in space, but they were too far away for her to tell who.      She knew she did not have long out here, so she did the only thing she could think of.  She took her energy shotgun, and starting firing in the opposite direction of the space station, which started propelling her the towards the space station.  It was far too slow though, and she knew she was going to lose consciousness any second.      Imhotep also appeared in the vacuum of space.  He immediately created a magic bubble of air around himself.  After his near drowning, he was prepared for situations like this.  Looking around, he saw Melinda and Rebecca close by.  He used magic to propel himself over to them, and brought them into the bubble.      “Still think coming with us was the right decision?” he asked.      “What is this place?” Rebecca asked.      “Space,” Melinda said.  “Are the others out here too?”  She was already looking off into the distance to try and locate them.      “I see Jack over there,” Imhotep said as he looked out as well.  “But he’ll be fine.  Looks like there’s someone off that way.”  He pointed.      “And someone else the other way,” Melinda said.  “Jack is closer to the one you noticed, hopefully he’ll go for them.”      Ghost Jack looked around at his surroundings.  He could see a group of three in one direction, and another person further in that direction, and the group seemed to be heading towards the individual.  He assumed that meant Imhotep was there, and had things under control.      He looked around some more, and saw the final member of their team, so he flew off towards them as fast as he could.  It quickly became clear that it was Ohm, and that he was in distress.  As Ghost Jack continued flying towards him, he looked around.  The other group of his friends were pretty far away, as was the space station in the distance.      As Ghost Jack arrived at Ohm’s location, Ohm was already unconscious.  Ghost Jack grabbed him and started flying towards the others.  They were actually slightly further than the space station, but he had no idea if he would even be able to find a way to bring Ohm inside it.  He just had to hope that it was not too late.      Mary was on the verge of unconsciousness when she suddenly felt enveloped by air, and started breathing again.  This had been worse than that time she had almost drowned, and she hungrily took in the air as she looked around.  She was in a bubble of some sort with Imhotep, Melinda, and someone she did not recognize.      “Who’s the new person?” she asked as soon as she was able to talk again.      “Mary, meet Rebecca,” Melinda said.  “Rebecca, meet Mary.”      “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” Rebecca said.      “Right,” Mary said.  “So, what are we supposed to do here?  Wait out in space until our four hours are up?”      “There’s a space station over that way.”  Melinda pointed at it.      “And where’s Ohm?” Mary asked.      “Jack has him,” Imhotep said.  “They are flying towards us, and now that we have you, we are flying to them as well.”      Ghost Jack looked at the remaining distance to the others, and even now that they were coming towards him as well, he did not think it was going to be fast enough for Ohm.  He was at the limits of his speed though, so he had to think of something else.      That is when he hit upon an idea.  As a Ghost he was unaffected by the vacuum.  He also did not need to breathe, but he did have air inside him.  He enveloped Ohm, surrounding him completely to protect him from the vacuum, and then he released the air stored inside him into the bubble he had created with himself.      It was not much, but it seemed like it just might be enough, as they got closer and closer, and eventually got to the others.  As they did Imhotep enlarged the magic bubble he had created to make more room as they entered.      Imhotep looked over Ohm.  “Hmm, he’ll be okay, but that was a close one.”      “So, I guess now we head over to that space station?” Ghost Jack asked.      “Seems our best bet,” Melinda said.  “Imhotep, can you get us moving over in that direction?”      “Yes, right away.”      Back at base, Abigail was continuing to experiment with the magic she was learning from Merlin’s journals.  She had figured out a translation spell, so she could read the non-English ones just as easy as the English ones.      She was currently reading one that was written in Atlantean, and was reading about an invisibility spell.  She knew Sesla had similar spells, although this one seemed to be true invisibility.      Abigail cast it on herself, and was instantly blinded.  Right, she thought, true invisibility meant light passing through you, which meant not only would you not be seen, but you would also not see.  She removed the spell from herself, and went back to reading.      It took about five minutes for the group to get to the space station, and another five to find a way in.  There was an airlock on the far side of it.  It took them a bit to figure out the mechanism of it and get inside.  Ohm had woken up by this point, and they started looking around.      “I’m not sensing any magic here,” Imhotep said.      “What does that mean?” Mary asked.  “That this place wasn’t made with magic?”      “Perhaps,” Imhotep said.  “Or it may be old enough that there has simply been no magic used here in a long time.”      “The construction of this place isn’t like anything from Earth,” Melinda said.  “It’s not like anything made by Humans or Gods or anything else there.”      “It kind of reminds me of our ship though,” Mary said.  “The one we took from the Palore.”      “Hmm,” Ghost Jack said.  “The style is reminiscent of them.  I’ll go look around, see if there’s any of those bastards around.”  He flew off.      “If this is a Palore space station, what does that mean for us?” Ohm asked.      “I don’t know,” Melinda said.  “But whatever it means, it can’t be good.”      Abigail rang the door chime on Harkon’s office.      “Come in,” Harkon said.  He looked up as Abigail entered.  “What can I do for you?”      “Well, I’ve been looking through Merlin’s journals, learning a bunch of the magic in them,” Abigail said.  “And I know we were waiting until Ghost Jack got back before transferring Sesla’s mind to her new body, but if you want to do so sooner, I may be able to.”      “Thank you, but we know his methods work, so I’d prefer not to use experimental methods if we don’t have to.”      “Understood, just letting you know there are options.  They have been gone for a while.”      “I’m sure they are fine.”      “I suppose there’s nothing saying that pocket universes can only be created by magic,” Melinda said.  “And the Palore are the Palore, so if anyone can pull it off, they’d be a decent bet.”      “I’m just wondering what the purpose of this place is,” Mary said.  “So far we haven’t seen anyone, so that could mean this place is abandoned.”      “Or it could mean that they just don’t keep it regularly staffed,” Melinda said.      “Guys, can you hear me?” they heard Ghost Jack saying over the comm.      “Yeah,” Melinda said.  “I guess comms do work here.  What’ve you found?”      “I’ve found what seems to be a command center of sorts,” Ghost Jack said.  “There’s a bunch of computers here, and what look like teleporters, but I can’t read anything on the computers.”      “It’s too bad we don’t have Abigail or the original Jack here to help with translating,” Melinda said.      “I have been spending a bit of time studying the Palore language,” Imhotep said.  “I’m not exactly fluent in it, but I’ll be able to manage a bit.”      “Which way?” Melinda asked.      Ghost Jack waited for a few minutes until the rest of the team caught up to him.  Imhotep went straight to one of the computers and started looking over the information on screen.      “So, your highness,” Ghost Jack said to Rebecca.  “What do you think of all this?  It’s a bit more advanced than what you’re used to.”      “It’s all very impressive and yes, I have never seen anything like this place before,” Rebecca said.      “The first time I left my home, it was a similar situation,” Mary said.  “I was a simple farm girl, then I went from that to a space station, and yeah it definitely was not something I was expecting.”      “I was even simpler,” Ohm said.  “From a simple hunter-gatherer society, although I also only found myself on a large metal boat, not a space station.”      “Hmm, this is really quite interesting,” Imhotep said, looking at the computer screen.      “Did you find something?” Melinda asked.      “We’ve been wondering how the Palore got back to the Cretaceous,” Imhotep said.  “Their ships only allow them to jump about 212 years at a time, but I think this is the answer.”      “Go on,” Melinda said.      “Each of those teleporters are linked to a different time, somewhat similarly to our time doors,” Imhotep said.  “One is the Cretaceous, one is even further back, one is 2017, and the final one is approximately eight billion years in the future.”      “Eight billion,” Ghost Jack said.  “Eight billion years.  That’s ridiculous.”      “Does this place have a self-destruct?” Mary asked.  “I mean, we have to destroy it, right?”      “The bigger question is if there are other places like this,” Melinda said.  “If this is the only one, destroying it would be a great idea, but if there are others, which I assume there are, it would be pointless.”      “I’m not sure,” Imhotep said.  “I’m not seeing anything about that here, but I think this is mostly just about the operation of this one.”      “Why 2017?” Ghost Jack asked.  “Like why use a time teleporter to link this to 2017?  Because isn’t this in 2017, just in a pocket universe.”      “Because the rules of time are somewhat different with this pocket universe, if I’m reading this right,” Imhotep said.      “I understand that your friends want to borrow the ship,” Harkon said.  “And I understand that we do owe them for there help in dealing with Deanna, but we’re still waiting for out team to get back.”      “It’s been months, sir,” Abigail said.  “And don’t get me wrong, I’m not ready to give up on them either, but how long are Philip and Dorian just supposed to sit around waiting in orbit?  Our team does have long range communicators on them, so they will still be able to let us know when they return.”      “I’m surprised that you’re not more worried.”      “Of course I’m worried, but there’s nothing we can do to help our team other than waiting.  My friends back home though, they actually need the help.  And I’ve been looking into the historical records, so I know that they shouldn’t even be where they are, and isn’t it our job to protect the timeline?”      “Hmm.”      “How different are we talking here?” Ghost Jack asked.      “It seems like a few months will pass in the regular universe during our four hours here.”      “Is it just this pocket universe, or all of them?” Mary asked.      “Near as I can tell this is just talking about this one,” Imhotep said.  “But that doesn’t mean the others don’t have the same issues.”      “It doesn’t change our mission though,” Melinda said.  “We still need to find Tesla’s team.  A few months shouldn’t make a big difference, and if the other pocket universes are worse, we’re time travellers, so if we are too much out of sync with our people, we’ll just use time travel to get back into sync.”      “We can pretty much assume this isn’t where our people are though,” Ghost Jack said.  “Unless Chronos and the Palore are working together.”      “Yeah, that seems unlikely, and somewhat terrifying to even consider” Melinda said.  “But while we’re waiting out this one, there is still the question of what we do about this place.  Imhotep, you said those time teleporters work similarly to the time doors.  Does that mean there are teleporters on both ends?”      “I believe so,” Imhotep said.      “Can we send something through to the Cretaceous, a beacon of some sort?” Melinda asked.      “Yes, can manage that,” Imhotep said.      “I see what you’re thinking,” Ghost Jack said.  “If the Palore have a base back then, we can let our people know where it is.  And if not, they at least know that we are okay.”      “Maybe,” Melinda said.  “The problem is, do we know when in the Cretaceous it is connected to?”      “I’m not entirely certain how the dates in here relate to our own,” Imhotep said.  “It is definitely close, but I can’t say exactly how much so.”      “So then we’ll put a timer on our beacon, so it doesn’t alert our people too early,” Melinda said.  “Imhotep, can you make the beacon invisible, so they don’t see it?”      “I can certainly try,” Imhotep said.      Harkon’s comm beeped.  “Yes?” he answered it.      “Sir, it’s Jeth Simpson, we just picked up a signal from the Moon.”      “What kind of signal?”      “It’s a beacon from Agent Summers’ team,” he said.  “They are okay, and apparently they are in a pocket universe that the Palore are using, and they say the beacon might be coming from a Palore base in this time.”      “Then it’s a good thing Abigail’s friends got our ship back to us in one piece,” Harkon said.      After their time in the Palore pocket universe was done, Melinda, Mary, Ghost Jack, Ohm, Imhotep, and Rebecca jumped once again.  Melinda was unable to look around, as the room was incredibly dark, but it started lighting up as Ghost Jack started glowing, and she saw that all six of their group were here, but they were not alone.      “Tesla,” she said.  Nikola Tesla, ERK-147, and the rest of their missing people were here.  They were in a large cubical room.      “Miss Summers, it is good to see you again,” Nikola said.  “Although I hope it is not the case that you are trapped here as well.”      “No, we have a way out of here,” Ghost Jack said.  “Is Chronos around?”      “We have not seen him since he sent us here,” Nikola said.  “Do you know why he did that?”      “Jack, the original Jack, and I went to talk with Chronos, and as soon as we mentioned the planet he got pissed and disappeared,” Melinda said.  “Since then we’ve been doing what we can to find you, but it’s been difficult, and a lot has happened.”      “Well, we certainly have the time to start filling them in on it,” Mary said.  “We’re going to be here another four hours, after all.” To be continued…

#Jack Masterson #Melinda Summers #Mary Bishop #Abigail Esau #Nikola Tesla #Ohm #Imhotep #Harkon Smith #Philip Wilson #Dorian Winters #Rebecca #timeship #time doors #time travel #Jeri Quill #Sesla #ERK-147 #Nu #Lucy #Chrono Hustle #Eric J. Barkman

[newstwitter-blog]

New Post has been published on News Twitter

New Post has been published on http://www.news-twitter.com/2017/03/20/ny-times-what-if-sociologists-had-as-much-influence-as-economists-107/

Ny Times: What if Sociologists Had as Much Influence as Economists?

Another academic discipline may not have the ear of presidents but may actually do a better job of explaining what has gone wrong in large swaths of the United States and other advanced nations in recent years.

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Sociologists spend their careers trying to understand how societies work. And some of the most pressing problems in big chunks of the United States may show up in economic data as low employment levels and stagnant wages but are also evident in elevated rates of depression, drug addiction and premature death. In other words, economics is only a piece of a broader, societal problem. So maybe the people who study just that could be worth listening to.

“Once economists have the ears of people in Washington, they convince them that the only questions worth asking are the questions that economists are equipped to answer,” said Michèle Lamont, a Harvard sociologist and president of the American Sociological Association. “That’s not to take anything away from what they do. It’s just that many of the answers they give are very partial.”

As a small corrective, I took a dive into some sociological research with particular relevance to the biggest problems facing communities in advanced countries today to understand what kinds of lessons the field can offer. In 1967, Senator Walter Mondale actually proposed a White House Council of Social Advisers; he envisioned it as a counterpart to the well-entrenched Council of Economic Advisers. It was never created, but if it had been, this is the sort of advice it might have been giving recent presidents.

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For starters, while economists tend to view a job as a straightforward exchange of labor for money, a wide body of sociological research shows how tied up work is with a sense of purpose and identity.

“Wages are very important because of course they help people live and provide for their families,” said Herbert Gans, an emeritus professor of sociology at Columbia. “But what social values can do is say that unemployment isn’t just losing wages, it’s losing dignity and self-respect and a feeling of usefulness and all the things that make human beings happy and able to function.”

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That seems to be doubly true in the United States. For example, Ofer Sharone, a sociologist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, studied unemployed white-collar workers and found that in the United States, his subjects viewed their ability to land a job as a personal reflection of their self-worth rather than as an arbitrary matter. They therefore took rejection hard, blaming themselves and in many cases giving up looking for work. In contrast, in Israel similar unemployed workers viewed getting a job as more like winning a lottery, and were less discouraged by rejection.

It seems plausible that this helps explain why so many Americans who lost jobs in the 2008 recession have never returned to the labor force despite an improved job market. Mr. Sharone is working with career counselors to explore how to put this finding to work to help the long-term unemployed.

Jennifer M. Silva of Bucknell University has in recent years studied young working-class adults and found a profound sense of economic insecurity in which the traditional markers of reaching adulthood — buying a house, marrying, landing a steady job — feel out of reach.

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Put those lessons together, and you may think that the economic nostalgia that fueled Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign was not so much about the loss of income from vanishing manufacturing jobs. Rather, it may be that the industrial economy offered blue-collar men a sense of identity and purpose that the modern service economy doesn’t.

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Sociology also offers important lessons about poverty that economics alone does not. “Evicted,” a much-heralded book by the Harvard sociologist Matthew Desmond, shows how the ever-present risk of losing a home breeds an insecurity and despondency among poor Americans.

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It works against the tendency to think about housing policy as solely a matter of which subsidy goes to whom and what incentives ought to be in place to encourage banks to lend in poor neighborhoods. All that stuff is important, of course, but doesn’t really address the overwhelming challenge of insecurity that affects millions of people.

And a large body of sociological research touches on the idea of stigmatization, including of the poor and of racial minorities. It makes clear that there are harder problems to solve around these issues than simply eliminating overt discrimination.

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It’s one thing, for example, to outlaw housing discrimination based on race. But if real estate agents and would-be home sellers subtly shun minority buyers, the effect can be the same. Professor Gans of Columbia has argued for decades that the stigmatization of poor Americans fuels entrenched, persistent poverty.

If the White House Council of Social Advisers did exist, one of its great challenges would be to convert some of these findings into actual policy proposals that might help. Part of the ascendance of economics in the policy-making sphere comes from the fact that economists tend to spend more time looking at specific legislative or regulatory steps that could try to improve conditions.

And trying to solve social problems is a more complex undertaking than working to improve economic outcomes. It’s relatively clear how a change in tax policy or an adjustment to interest rates can make the economy grow faster or slower. It’s less obvious what, if anything, government can do to change forces that are driven by the human psyche.

But there is a risk that there is something of a vicious cycle at work. “When no one asks us for advice, there’s no incentive to become a policy field,” Professor Gans said.

It may be true that these lessons on identity and community don’t lend themselves immediately to policy white papers and five-point plans. But a deeper understanding of them sure could help policy makers.

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[crystalninjaphoenix]

Ways Around

Septics Inverted

A JSE Fanfic

Considering the last story focused entirely on Jack and Anti, I wanted this one to focus entirely on the other boys. Jackie has his ~plan~ right? Let’s see how that’s been going. Also, it’s time for a time skip! Such a handy literary tool! I’m too tired from my first week of classes to write a longer description so this is what you get!

Read the intro story: Part One | Part Two

Various other AU-related stuff found here

Taglist: @awkward-bullshit @watermelonsinmyattic @asunachinadoll @a-humble-narcissus @metautske @odysseus-is-best-boi @acuriousquail @beerecordings @human-being-kinda @romanticslimecreature @bloodygoldensam @rachelclutch @septic-nebula-art @toboboby @the-parentheticals @the-rampaige

Jackie had been considering tonight’s mission as a high risk. Nothing he couldn’t handle, he’d learned a long time ago not to be cocky. Still, he was expecting trouble. But this was going ridiculously well so far.

The house where his target was staying was surprisingly low-guarded. Jackie only had to find one window without a guard, disable the motion sensor he saw on the sill, and climb inside. From there, sneak up on the patrolling guards in the dark hallways and take them out. One did manage to sound the alarm, but by that point he was almost to his target’s room. A few rough scrapes with guards later, and he was already standing outside it. And mostly uninjured too, aside from where he was sure he’d have some bad bruises in the morning.

Well, Jackie wasn’t about to complain. He had enough stress already, what with trying to stall the search for Jack without Jameson or Marvin finding out. He didn’t need to be bleeding out on top of that.

He stared at this last door with his hands on his hips. Just like the rest of the house, it was simple, but clearly high-class and expensive. Guess being the head of an illegal smuggling ring could make you a lot of money. He’d seen the light of the room on the other side was on while he was outside, so his target was probably awake. And if he wasn’t before, then he definitely could hear the alarm system currently blaring. He would be prepared. You could never be too careful with these criminals. Jackie walked some ways down the hall, grabbed the body of a guard he’d knocked unconscious, and dragged it over. Then he stood a little to the side of the door with his hand on the knob. A few deep breaths and a countdown...one...two...three!

Jackie swung the door open and threw the body inside while ducking out of the way himself. Not a moment too soon. The second the body was thrown, there was the sound of a silenced gunshot. Jackie laughed dully. “Did you hit that guy?” He pulled one of the throwing knifes out from his belt and threw it blindly inside the room, hoping to trigger another shot.

This time, instead of a gunshot, there was a clicking sound. “Damn!” A voice whisper-shouted, loud enough for Jackie to hear.

“Ha!” Jackie pulled out another knife, and stepped inside the room. It was a bedroom, with a canopy bed in one corner and a large desk scattered with papers in the other. His target stood near the desk, wearing what looked like an expensive suit and fumbling with a pistol.

“You do know that’s out of bullets, right?” Jackie raised an eyebrow. “That’s entirely your fault, by the way. I was prepared to have to drag some sort of shield in here with me and have an epic gun fight.”

The man looked up at him, scowled, and dropped the pistol, instead pulling a knife from inside his suit jacket. “What do you want, Red?”

Jackie didn’t answer, instead looking around the room some more. “This is a nice place you got here, Michael. Can I call you Michael?” He flashed a grin at the way the man bristled, not used to being addressed so carelessly. “How’d you get enough money to afford this place, Michael? How many drugs did you have to sell and smuggle in and out of Mirygale? Or did you buy this with weapons money?”

“How’d you find this place?” The man, Michael, did not seem to care for Jackie’s chit-chat.

“Well, you give the location out to your enforcers, don’t you? Or maybe just to the one guy I found. He told me. Really didn’t want to, but I have my ways. Would you like a demonstration?”

“Get to the point or I’ll gut you.”

“The blunt type, I see, I see. Well, my point is—” Jackie threw the knife before he even finished the sentence, running forward after it as it sailed right toward the man, Michael.

Michael cried out as the knife hit him. He’d tried to dodge, but was caught off guard and slow. But he was more prepared for Jackie running at him. He slashed with his own knife, forcing Jackie to duck. While he was down, Jackie tackled Michael’s legs and brought him to the ground as well. The two of them crashed against the desk, knocking some of the paperweights off. Jackie rolled away from a couple more swipes with the knife, and before Michael could get up again, darted forward and rammed his fist into his face with enough force that Michael’s head flew backward and slammed into the corner of the desk. After the impact, Michael slumped to the ground, completely still.

Jackie backed away, eyes narrowing. Did he die? No, his chest was still moving steadily. Still, he could be pretending to be unconscious. Jackie withdrew his third knife and quickly stabbed it into the man’s leg. No reaction. Okay, he was really out.

That being established, Jackie withdrew his knife, grabbed the one he’d lodged in the man’s chest earlier, then stood up and walked over to the desk, wasting no time in rummaging through the drawers. It wasn’t long before he found the documents he was looking for. All containing information about the smuggling ring this Michael guy was the head of. Where they made drop offs, which members were currently in the city, and how much of their goods they smuggled—be those goods drugs, weapons, or people. Jackie gathered all the documents containing important information together, sliding them into one of the hidden pockets on his suit. Then he turned to look back at the unconscious man.

What to do with this guy? Clearly, he couldn’t just let him go. Couldn’t turn him over to the police either, he’d been pardoned several times. And after one of those occasions, Jackie had noticed the city’s district attorney driving a fancy new car bought with money that she had mysteriously come into.

Now, the next solution was obvious. Jackie was holding two knives. The guy couldn’t defend himself. But...Jackie remembered the list of smuggled “goods.” And how many of those “goods”—a disturbing number, more than he’d expected—had been living. No. His usual method would be too quick.

Jackie patted down his jumpsuit for more of those hidden pockets, finding the right one after a while and pulling out his phone. He kept it completely off while on patrol, he’d learned the hard way that the bad guys could totally hear the text tone, and even the vibrate. Once his phone was booted up, he took off his glove so he could dial a familiar number on the touchscreen.

It rang for a long time before the other end was picked up. “How important is this? One-ten scale?” Schneep asked.

“Uh, I dunno, guess it’s pretty important for me, and I guess you—” Jackie stopped. He could hear noises in the background, sounding a bit like a wounded animal. “Am I on speaker?”

“Yes, ah, sorry about that. My hands are not free to hold the phone right now, I am preparing something for the patient. Can you make this quick?”

Jackie bit his lip, wrapping his arm around himself. Of course he called Schneep at this time. “Yeah, well, speaking about patients, I was wondering if I could drop one off at your clinic. But it sounds like you have your hands full, I can just—”

“I can take on two at once!” Schneep said eagerly. “It is when you start getting more that trouble starts to happen, they tend to wander off. Come by as soon as possible, I can finish this operation quickly.”

“Alright. I’ll be there in like, twenty minutes.”

“I got it. Thank you, Jackie.”

“You’re welcome. Bye.”

“Goodbye!”

Jackie pulled the phone away from his head and hung up. He closed his eyes for a moment and sighed. He didn’t think of himself as squeamish, but god, he was not looking forward to visiting the clinic. Maybe he could make it quick, he wouldn’t even have to look. He opened his eyes again and started to walk around the desk, only for his foot to bump into something. He looked down.

It must’ve been one of the paperweights that he and Michael had knocked off the desk in their brief struggle. Only...now that he was looking at it, it was...weird. It was a crystal ball, smaller than a volleyball but still too large to fit in just one hand. And inside it...was mist. Moving clouds, circling around the inside surface of the sphere, making patterns like that painting, Starry Night. “Holy shit...” Jackie whispered. You only saw shit like that in the movies.

He couldn’t help it. He leaned over and picked it up, looking into it. Then, something strange started to happen. From the point where his ungloved hand touched the glass, the mist started to change color, going from a colorless off-white to a dark red. It clustered into the center of the sphere, and then the cloudy mist began spinning, faster and faster until there was a miniature tornado two-ended tornado inside, connecting to the glass in two places. Jackie decided to revise his earlier statement: “Holy fuck.”

Jackie glanced over at the unconscious man. How did a person like that get something like this? Probably stolen, or given as payment. Well, it didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to need it any longer. Jackie tucked the sphere under his arm and prepared to go. He had something in mind for it.

- - - - - - - - -

About an hour later, Jackie was back in the house. In the basement, specifically, knocking on the door to the library. There was a high probability that Marvin was inside. And if he wasn’t, that meant that he would either be at a party getting more “volunteers,” or he was in his...other room in the basement. And you couldn’t pay or threaten Jackie to go inside that one. There was also a small chance that he was asleep, but Jackie was already laughing as the thought occurred to him. Yeah, no, Marvin didn’t go to sleep until at least three o’clock.

Sure enough, the door opened a crack, and Jackie saw a familiar masked face glaring at him through the gap. “What?” He barked.

Jackie held up the crystal ball. “Do you want this?”

Marvin opened the door just a bit wider. “Does it do anything?”

“Well, uh.” Jackie had put his gloves back on, but now he took one off again and placed his hand against the glass, watching the mist change colors and once again form that dark red tornado. “That.”

The change was almost instant. Marvin straightened, eyes widening and the door opening all the way. “Get inside.” Once Jackie stepped inside, he snatched the crystal ball out of his hands.

“You’re welcome,” Jackie drawled. He leaned a bit closer to Marvin so he could peer at the sphere. “What is it?”

“Shhh, hang on a moment.” Marvin stared intently at the crystal ball as the tornado dissipated, becoming swirling mist once more. But that didn’t last long. Again, color spread throughout the clouds from the point of contact where Marvin’s fingers touched the glass. At first it was green, but soon that was eaten by a racing purple. Once the purple had covered the entire area of the sphere, the mist exploded, so suddenly that Jackie jumped. The mist had changed into rapidly darting purple sparks, like the byproduct of a forest fire gone out of control. The sparks seemed to snap furiously, angrily, at the glass. Marvin grinned. “Oh. Oh this is—this is fucking fantastic.”

“What is it?” Jackie asked again, bracing himself in case Marvin got irritated with his questions and decided to snap at him.

“This is a soul seeker,” Marvin said excitedly. He placed the sphere on a nearby desk and turned to the bookshelves, pulling down books and flipping through their pages before dropping them and repeating the process on another book. “You see, soul-based magic is very hard. You need, like, a natural affinity for it or it’s like trying to shoot at bats in the dark. But there are tools you can use to make it easier for you.” He gestured back toward the sphere. “That seeker can show you a visual representation of a person’s soul, and if I can learn to read the properties and qualities of what it shows—and if I manage to collect some more tools, too—oh, fuck, dude. I could do so much cool shit!” He grinned, practically glowing with excitement. Jackie had never seen Marvin so...passionate. “How’d you find it?”

Jackie shrugged. “I went to take out the head of a smuggling ring tonight. He had it on his desk. And I thought it was cool so I took it.”

“Where is this guy now?” Marvin’s eyes narrowed. “Did you kill him?”

“No. But, uh, Henrik might, if you’re not quick.”

“Okay. I can pop by the clinic soon, that’s fine.” Marvin turned back to the book he had open for a bit, but then he paused and turned back around. “Why are you giving this to me? What do you want?”

Jackie raised his hands. “Consider it a ‘please don’t kill me’ present.”

Marvin snorted, rolling his eyes. “Alright, I will. Now leave so I can study this without worrying about you looking over my shoulder and making annoying comments.”

That was more like the Marvin he knew. Jackie nodded, then turned around and started to leave. Getting on Marvin’s good side was always a good idea, but especially now, when Jackie was going behind his back with the search for Jack. And maybe if Marvin was distracted enough, he wouldn’t be putting his all into said search. That would give Jackie more time to work on his other steps. And as long as he wasn’t found out—

Jackie gasped as he exited the library, turned, and ran smack into Jameson. “Oh, jesus, you startled me,” he said, laughing a bit to cover up his true nervousness.

{My apologies,} Jameson said, inclining his head. {What were you doing down here? I don’t usually see you down here.}

That was a normal question, right? The tone of mental voice didn’t sound like he was suspicious, did it? Did mental voices have tones? “Well, I don’t normally see you awake this late,” Jackie said. He was proud of how calm he was. “Did I wake you up?”

Jameson raised an eyebrow. {No. Unlike some people, I don’t sleep in my day clothes.} He gestured to his clothes. Vest, dress shirt and pants, tie. Didn’t look very comfortable to sleep in. {I simply...haven’t wanted to go to sleep yet today. I’ve been finding I’m a victim of insomnia recently. Anyway, did you need something from the library?}

“Nah, I was just, uh, dropping something off for Marvin.” Jackie gestured back toward the library door. “Thought that maybe if I did something nice for him, he’d rethink throwing me out a window to my death.”

{He wouldn’t throw you out a window. But nevertheless, good strategy.} Jameson nodded in approval. {Oh, while I have you here, I’ve been meaning to ask you. How’s your search going?}

“For Jack? Uh, haven’t made a lot of progress, really,” Jackie admitted. “I mean, it’s been a month, trails start to go cold. And my hacking skills only go so far when he’s stopped posting on social media, and maybe using the Internet altogether. Not to mention that glitch bitch protecting him, you know?” Of course, he wasn’t really trying. But Jameson didn’t need to know that.

{Understandable. I haven’t made any progress either, and neither has Marvin. It’s quite frustrating.} Jameson frowned. {We need to start considering other channels. Do you think you know anyone you can get information from? By any means?}

Jackie paused. “I can look into a few things, yeah. I’ll update you.” 

{Excellent.} Jameson perked up. {Now if you excuse me, I need to get into the library.}

“Oh yeah, sure dude.” Jackie stepped aside as Jameson walked past him and through the library doors. The moment he was gone, Jackie hurried for the stairs.

Jameson hadn’t caught on yet, right? Would Jackie even be able to tell if he had? Or would Jameson let him carry on as normal, until the opportune moment to sabotage his plan came around? No, no these thoughts were ridiculous. He was just being paranoid. Jameson had never before looked into the others’ minds without permission, and Jackie was sure he hadn’t given him a reason to start now.

Still, he didn’t let his guard down. He hasn’t let it down in a while.

- - - - - - - - - -

Jackie slept late the next morning, like he always did after patrols. The first thing he did after opening his eyes was groan and close them again. It felt like his assessment from last night was correct; he definitely had some bad bruises. Everything hurt when he moved. He regretted taking the top bunk of the bunk bed whenever he thought of climbing down the ladder.

It took him a while to get up, deciding to opt out of a shower and settling for throwing on a hoodie and brushing his hair. He wondered if Schneep was awake yet. He could ask him to look at some of these bruises as an excuse to talk to him. Jackie sighed, and left his room, avoiding looking at the empty bottom bunk where Jack used to stay. Hopefully, that would stay empty, if everything went accordingly.

Before he could fully start the day, he had one stop to make. The bedroom across from his had its door shut tight, and he had to jiggle the handle a bit to get it to open. The inside was dark with the blinds shut tight, and when he flipped on the lights every surface was covered with a month’s worth of dust. He refused to let Jameson send any of his “cleaning people” inside, in case they messed anything up. The bed in the corner had a cluster of medical equipment standing next to it, which the group had...acquired. And in the bed, sound asleep, was Chase.

Jackie didn’t look at him for a while, instead checking the IV and other equipment. There was really no way of telling when Schneep would or would not remember that he needed to check on it himself, so better safe than sorry. Once Jackie was sure everything was properly maintained, he finally turned to Chase. His eyes were shut as tight as ever. No change at all, not even a shift in position. At least there was no sign of anything going wrong.

He couldn’t help but let a growl escape. Okay, he didn’t blame Jack for ditching them, he was better off that way. But why on earth partner up with Anti? The glitch defended criminals, constantly seeped money from the group’s bank accounts, and then this happened. Oh yeah, great idea, hang out with the guy who put another guy in a coma! Jackie was sure Anti had a reason for that, but fuck it, no reason was good enough for that.

After a while of sitting nearby and watching for any change, Jackie stood up and left the room, closing the door behind him. They really needed to find a way to wake Chase up. Not only because being in a coma was generally a less than ideal state of being, but because after Jackie went through with his plan, he would have to get the hell out of here real quick. And he didn’t want to leave his sleeping friend at the mercy of Marvin and Jameson, who he quite honestly half-suspected of not trying at all to find a solution to the coma. Jackie had been sneaking into the library whenever the two of them were out to try and find something, but he had absolutely no idea what was going on in any of those magic books. Still, he had to try and find something. Chase couldn’t just be stuck.

Jackie walked down the stairs and into the kitchen, trying his best to avoid moving in specific ways that would cause the ache in his bruises to suddenly flare. Still, he went a little too fast turning into the kitchen, and hissed under his breath.

“Are you doing okay, my friend?”

Jackie looked over to the table in the adjoined dining room. Schneep was sitting at it, wearing pajamas, which probably meant he’d also gotten up late. Jackie noted the two coffee mugs sitting by his place. “No, not really,” he admitted, opening the fridge and scanning the contents. “I was hoping I’d feel better in the morning, but I guess I don’t.”

“Yes, that is usually how it works the first day.” Schneep took a sip from one of the mugs. “Would you like me to check on everything for you? I could do it now, should not take long.”

“Umm, yes, but not right now. Get dressed first and let me eat breakfast.”

Schneep looked down at his pajama pants. “Ah. Is probably good idea, thank you.” He stood up and started to leave, before pausing and turning back around. “Oh! I have forgot, did I tell you thank you last night? For bringing in the new patient.”

“Uh, no, you didn’t.” Jackie grabbed a yogurt and swung the fridge door shut. “Does that warrant thanks?”

“Yes, of course it does! The patients do not seem grateful at all, so I will do it for them.” Schneep sniffed. “Of course, Marvin did come in later and spend some time talking to the new one. I do not know what he said, but it very upset the patient, causing many problems. I am running out of sedations. They are not easy to get.”

Jackie felt a lump of guilt rise up in his stomach, but he pushed it down with the memories of what was on those documents he took, and what exactly this organization smuggled. “Well, you’re welcome, I guess. Now go get dressed.”

“Okay, okay!”

About an hour later, Jackie met Schneep in the small “examination room” they had in the house. Really, it was a spare room in the hall by the stairs that Schneep had commandeered. Nobody minded. It was a lot easier to treat suspicious injuries at home than risk going to the hospital, and everyone except Marvin felt a bit uncomfortable around Schneep’s clinic.

“So what’s the diagnosis? Am I dying?” Jackie was sitting on the examination table. He had taken off his hoodie to let Schneep examine the gathering bruises. His arms were alright, but there were a lot dotting across his torso in a pattern of black, purple, and yellow that just looked painful.

“Do not be ridiculous, you cannot die from bruising.” Schneep rolled his eyes. “Unless it is inside. You are not complaining of internal pains, are you?”

“No, that’s all good.” Jackie hesitated for a moment. “Can...can I talk to you?”

Schneep didn’t answer for a while, too busy examining the bruising. “Be careful with the ones around the scars on your chest, those cannot feel good.” He looked up. “Yes, about what?”

“Well...” Jackie took a deep breath, toying with the ends of his hair. “It’s about this idea to get Jack back, you kno—”

He was cut off by a loud groaning sound. Schneep folded his arms. “Not this again.”

“No, shut up and listen to me!” Jackie snapped. Schneep blinked, taken aback. Jackie wasn’t usually one for raising his voice, at least not at people other than Marvin. But god, he’d been trying to get through to Schneep for a month with little progress, and he was starting to lose it. “I know every single argument you’re going to give me. You’re going to say that Jack isn’t in his right mind and we need to get him back. Then you’re going to ask me if I miss him and twist any answer I give you. And when I try to explain that maybe Jack would be better off on his own, you’re going to freak out because he’s our friend and you don’t want to leave him.”

Schneep blinked slowly. “Okay, then.”

Jackie rubbed his temple. “I’m sorry, that sounded harsh. But god, it’s so hard to get through to you.”

“I have been told I am stubborn,” Schneep admitted.

“You’re more than stubborn, Henrik,” Jackie mumbled.

“Well, we can try something new this time.” Schneep jumped up onto the examination table to sit next to Jackie. “Tell me why you think it is better for Jack to leave, and I will tell you why I do not want to never see him again.”

“It’s not that you would never see him again, not necessarily.” Jackie privately wondered if that would actually be a good idea, but he decided to push that aside for another day.

“Then what is it?”

Jackie sighed. “Henrik. Schneep. Do you remember how many times you put something in Jack’s drink so he’d fall asleep?”

Schneep tilted his head. “I do not keep track of that, why?”

“Because did it never occur to you that maybe you shouldn’t’ve done that?!”

“Why? Sometimes Jack needs sleep, sometimes we need him to not be here, is both with.”

“No, it’s—gah!” Jackie punched the surface of the examination table. “Dude, he’s stumbled across you in the middle of your ‘operations,’ freaked out, and ran away. Do you want to keep scaring him like that?!”

“Is not my fault he is squeamish! If it bothered him, why did he not say anything?!”

“Because fucking magic man and Jameson made him forget!” Jackie grabbed Schneep by the shoulders, staring him square in the eyes. “He didn’t remember half the shit that went on in this house and that was the only reason he stayed! then once he did remember, oops, time to go! He doesn’t want to be here, Henrik! He’s here because Chase made Jameson keep him here!”

Schneep was speechless in the face of this tirade. For a moment, the two of them just stared at each other. Then, Schneep reached up and pulled Jackie’s hands away from his shoulders. He stood up and walked the perimeter of the room, arms folded, muttering things to himself that Jackie couldn’t quite catch. After a few minutes, he stopped, and turned back to Jackie, eyes piercing through his glasses. “So. What you are saying,” he said slowly, “is that Jack was not actually friends with us?”

Jackie felt something twist at the crack in Schneep’s voice. “No, I’m not saying that,” he said softly. “I’m sure he was, somewhere in there. But you know, not all friends live together. And people have their own lives outside their friends, but they didn’t let Jack have that.”

“And Chase,” Schneep stated. “He started this?”

“He was...scared,” Jackie guessed. “Scared that Jack would leave forever. Just like you are, actually. He got desperate. I’m not saying it was a good idea. In fact, I think it was a pretty bad one. Just that he had his reasons, and wasn’t just being cruel.”

Schneep nodded, slowly, blinking. “So then...Chase is...asleep, yes?” Jackie nodded, relieved that Schneep remembered that. Sometimes he didn’t, it was honestly a toss-up. “So then why do they still want to find Jack?”

“I don’t know. I think Marvin thinks he’ll tell the police about everything that was going on in the house. And Jameson...just...doesn’t like to let his things go, you know?” Jackie suppressed a shiver.

Schneep was quiet for a long moment. Jackie was starting to worry if he’d lost him, when he said, “Well, I do not think that is a good enough reason to climb inside someone’s mind.”

Jackie perked up. “So...so you get it now?”

“I think I do,” Schneep said, nodding again. “I think I understand why you are so insistent on Jack not belonging here. You have a plan, don’t you? To make sure they do not get him?”

“Well, yeah...kinda.” Jackie laughed nervously. “Honestly, I’m sort of...planning it. As I go along.”

“Of course you are,” Schneep sighed. “Well, tell me what you have now, and I will make it better than you would.”

Jackie grinned. So, the first roadblock was complete. Well, sort of. Schneep was on his side, he just needed to make sure Schneep stayed there. Luckily he didn’t seem to be going through a bad period right now, it might last a while. “Well...” he paused to gather his thoughts.

In the silence, there was a slight electric crackle.

Schneep and Jackie stiffened in unison. Then Jackie bolted off the operating table while Schneep headed to the nearest cabinet and rummaged around for something he could defend himself with. “Where was it? Where did it come from?” Jackie asked, pulling on his hoodie.

“It was high up, I am sure!” There was a clatter as a bunch of medical tools fell out of the cabinet.

“High up?” Jackie scanned the tops of the high row of cabinets, then craned his neck higher. He stopped. “Was...was that always there?”

Schneep looked toward him. “What?”

“That!” Jackie didn’t even bother to point, just ran over to the nearest row of cabinets and climbed on top, oblivious to Schneep’s shouting. His hand darted into the corner of the room, wrapping around a small device and pulling it away before jumping back to the ground. He immediately gasped and doubled over. “O-ow...”

“You fucking moron, Jackie, you are still hurt!” Schneep scolded, walking over. “What was so important to get in pain over?”

Jackie held up his hand. “This.” It was a small, black plastic object big enough to fit in his palm, shaped like a sphere cut in half. “It’s a camera, Henrik.”

Schneep gaped, then reached forward and took it, turning it over in his hands as he examined it. He nodded. “Very nice camera, as well.” He looked over to Jackie. “You think...he has been watching us through this? For how long?”

“Probably for a long, long time,” Jackie said, taking the camera back. He stared at it a bit more. “Do you think there’s more?”

“Of course there is, I am willing to say they are all over the house. It explains why he always seems to know so much about us.”

Jackie nodded absentmindedly. “Well...do you think that if we tell Marvin and Jameson about this, they’d decide to take some time to try and find all the cameras?”

“I think so...” Schneep’s eyes widened. “Oh, that is your plan, then? To stall them in their search to find Jack?”

“Yep.” Jackie nodded. “At least...until I—we know where he is first. And once we know that...we can make sure to get him away from them. And from the glitch, too.”

“They will not be stalled forever,” Schneep warned. “Marvin is determined, and Jamie has endless patience.”

“I know, I know, but we don’t have to stall forever.” Jackie took a deep breath. “Just until we get them out of the way.”

In his hand, the camera spasmed and died, leaving behind a static crackling that almost sounded like giggling.

#jacksepticeye #jacksepticegos #septic egos #septic egos au #jacksepticeye fanfiction #jackieboy man #dr schneeplestein #marvin the magnificent #jameson jackson #brigid writes fanfiction #septics inverted au #invertedau

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New Post has been published on News Twitter

New Post has been published on http://www.news-twitter.com/2017/03/20/ny-times-what-if-sociologists-had-as-much-influence-as-economists-106/

Ny Times: What if Sociologists Had as Much Influence as Economists?

Another academic discipline may not have the ear of presidents but may actually do a better job of explaining what has gone wrong in large swaths of the United States and other advanced nations in recent years.

Continue reading the main story

Sociologists spend their careers trying to understand how societies work. And some of the most pressing problems in big chunks of the United States may show up in economic data as low employment levels and stagnant wages but are also evident in elevated rates of depression, drug addiction and premature death. In other words, economics is only a piece of a broader, societal problem. So maybe the people who study just that could be worth listening to.

“Once economists have the ears of people in Washington, they convince them that the only questions worth asking are the questions that economists are equipped to answer,” said Michèle Lamont, a Harvard sociologist and president of the American Sociological Association. “That’s not to take anything away from what they do. It’s just that many of the answers they give are very partial.”

As a small corrective, I took a dive into some sociological research with particular relevance to the biggest problems facing communities in advanced countries today to understand what kinds of lessons the field can offer. In 1967, Senator Walter Mondale actually proposed a White House Council of Social Advisers; he envisioned it as a counterpart to the well-entrenched Council of Economic Advisers. It was never created, but if it had been, this is the sort of advice it might have been giving recent presidents.

Continue reading the main story

For starters, while economists tend to view a job as a straightforward exchange of labor for money, a wide body of sociological research shows how tied up work is with a sense of purpose and identity.

“Wages are very important because of course they help people live and provide for their families,” said Herbert Gans, an emeritus professor of sociology at Columbia. “But what social values can do is say that unemployment isn’t just losing wages, it’s losing dignity and self-respect and a feeling of usefulness and all the things that make human beings happy and able to function.”

Continue reading the main story

That seems to be doubly true in the United States. For example, Ofer Sharone, a sociologist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, studied unemployed white-collar workers and found that in the United States, his subjects viewed their ability to land a job as a personal reflection of their self-worth rather than as an arbitrary matter. They therefore took rejection hard, blaming themselves and in many cases giving up looking for work. In contrast, in Israel similar unemployed workers viewed getting a job as more like winning a lottery, and were less discouraged by rejection.

It seems plausible that this helps explain why so many Americans who lost jobs in the 2008 recession have never returned to the labor force despite an improved job market. Mr. Sharone is working with career counselors to explore how to put this finding to work to help the long-term unemployed.

Jennifer M. Silva of Bucknell University has in recent years studied young working-class adults and found a profound sense of economic insecurity in which the traditional markers of reaching adulthood — buying a house, marrying, landing a steady job — feel out of reach.

Continue reading the main story

Put those lessons together, and you may think that the economic nostalgia that fueled Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign was not so much about the loss of income from vanishing manufacturing jobs. Rather, it may be that the industrial economy offered blue-collar men a sense of identity and purpose that the modern service economy doesn’t.

Continue reading the main story

Sociology also offers important lessons about poverty that economics alone does not. “Evicted,” a much-heralded book by the Harvard sociologist Matthew Desmond, shows how the ever-present risk of losing a home breeds an insecurity and despondency among poor Americans.

Continue reading the main story

It works against the tendency to think about housing policy as solely a matter of which subsidy goes to whom and what incentives ought to be in place to encourage banks to lend in poor neighborhoods. All that stuff is important, of course, but doesn’t really address the overwhelming challenge of insecurity that affects millions of people.

And a large body of sociological research touches on the idea of stigmatization, including of the poor and of racial minorities. It makes clear that there are harder problems to solve around these issues than simply eliminating overt discrimination.

Continue reading the main story

It’s one thing, for example, to outlaw housing discrimination based on race. But if real estate agents and would-be home sellers subtly shun minority buyers, the effect can be the same. Professor Gans of Columbia has argued for decades that the stigmatization of poor Americans fuels entrenched, persistent poverty.

If the White House Council of Social Advisers did exist, one of its great challenges would be to convert some of these findings into actual policy proposals that might help. Part of the ascendance of economics in the policy-making sphere comes from the fact that economists tend to spend more time looking at specific legislative or regulatory steps that could try to improve conditions.

And trying to solve social problems is a more complex undertaking than working to improve economic outcomes. It’s relatively clear how a change in tax policy or an adjustment to interest rates can make the economy grow faster or slower. It’s less obvious what, if anything, government can do to change forces that are driven by the human psyche.

But there is a risk that there is something of a vicious cycle at work. “When no one asks us for advice, there’s no incentive to become a policy field,” Professor Gans said.

It may be true that these lessons on identity and community don’t lend themselves immediately to policy white papers and five-point plans. But a deeper understanding of them sure could help policy makers.

Continue reading the main story

This post has been harvested from the source link, and News-Twitter has no responsibility on its content. Source link

[newstwitter-blog]

New Post has been published on News Twitter

New Post has been published on http://www.news-twitter.com/2017/03/20/ny-times-what-if-sociologists-had-as-much-influence-as-economists-104/

Ny Times: What if Sociologists Had as Much Influence as Economists?

Another academic discipline may not have the ear of presidents but may actually do a better job of explaining what has gone wrong in large swaths of the United States and other advanced nations in recent years.

Continue reading the main story

Sociologists spend their careers trying to understand how societies work. And some of the most pressing problems in big chunks of the United States may show up in economic data as low employment levels and stagnant wages but are also evident in elevated rates of depression, drug addiction and premature death. In other words, economics is only a piece of a broader, societal problem. So maybe the people who study just that could be worth listening to.

“Once economists have the ears of people in Washington, they convince them that the only questions worth asking are the questions that economists are equipped to answer,” said Michèle Lamont, a Harvard sociologist and president of the American Sociological Association. “That’s not to take anything away from what they do. It’s just that many of the answers they give are very partial.”

As a small corrective, I took a dive into some sociological research with particular relevance to the biggest problems facing communities in advanced countries today to understand what kinds of lessons the field can offer. In 1967, Senator Walter Mondale actually proposed a White House Council of Social Advisers; he envisioned it as a counterpart to the well-entrenched Council of Economic Advisers. It was never created, but if it had been, this is the sort of advice it might have been giving recent presidents.

Continue reading the main story

For starters, while economists tend to view a job as a straightforward exchange of labor for money, a wide body of sociological research shows how tied up work is with a sense of purpose and identity.

“Wages are very important because of course they help people live and provide for their families,” said Herbert Gans, an emeritus professor of sociology at Columbia. “But what social values can do is say that unemployment isn’t just losing wages, it’s losing dignity and self-respect and a feeling of usefulness and all the things that make human beings happy and able to function.”

Continue reading the main story

That seems to be doubly true in the United States. For example, Ofer Sharone, a sociologist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, studied unemployed white-collar workers and found that in the United States, his subjects viewed their ability to land a job as a personal reflection of their self-worth rather than as an arbitrary matter. They therefore took rejection hard, blaming themselves and in many cases giving up looking for work. In contrast, in Israel similar unemployed workers viewed getting a job as more like winning a lottery, and were less discouraged by rejection.

It seems plausible that this helps explain why so many Americans who lost jobs in the 2008 recession have never returned to the labor force despite an improved job market. Mr. Sharone is working with career counselors to explore how to put this finding to work to help the long-term unemployed.

Jennifer M. Silva of Bucknell University has in recent years studied young working-class adults and found a profound sense of economic insecurity in which the traditional markers of reaching adulthood — buying a house, marrying, landing a steady job — feel out of reach.

Continue reading the main story

Put those lessons together, and you may think that the economic nostalgia that fueled Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign was not so much about the loss of income from vanishing manufacturing jobs. Rather, it may be that the industrial economy offered blue-collar men a sense of identity and purpose that the modern service economy doesn’t.

Continue reading the main story

Sociology also offers important lessons about poverty that economics alone does not. “Evicted,” a much-heralded book by the Harvard sociologist Matthew Desmond, shows how the ever-present risk of losing a home breeds an insecurity and despondency among poor Americans.

Continue reading the main story

It works against the tendency to think about housing policy as solely a matter of which subsidy goes to whom and what incentives ought to be in place to encourage banks to lend in poor neighborhoods. All that stuff is important, of course, but doesn’t really address the overwhelming challenge of insecurity that affects millions of people.

And a large body of sociological research touches on the idea of stigmatization, including of the poor and of racial minorities. It makes clear that there are harder problems to solve around these issues than simply eliminating overt discrimination.

Continue reading the main story

It’s one thing, for example, to outlaw housing discrimination based on race. But if real estate agents and would-be home sellers subtly shun minority buyers, the effect can be the same. Professor Gans of Columbia has argued for decades that the stigmatization of poor Americans fuels entrenched, persistent poverty.

If the White House Council of Social Advisers did exist, one of its great challenges would be to convert some of these findings into actual policy proposals that might help. Part of the ascendance of economics in the policy-making sphere comes from the fact that economists tend to spend more time looking at specific legislative or regulatory steps that could try to improve conditions.

And trying to solve social problems is a more complex undertaking than working to improve economic outcomes. It’s relatively clear how a change in tax policy or an adjustment to interest rates can make the economy grow faster or slower. It’s less obvious what, if anything, government can do to change forces that are driven by the human psyche.

But there is a risk that there is something of a vicious cycle at work. “When no one asks us for advice, there’s no incentive to become a policy field,” Professor Gans said.

It may be true that these lessons on identity and community don’t lend themselves immediately to policy white papers and five-point plans. But a deeper understanding of them sure could help policy makers.

Continue reading the main story

This post has been harvested from the source link, and News-Twitter has no responsibility on its content. Source link

[newstwitter-blog]

New Post has been published on News Twitter

New Post has been published on http://www.news-twitter.com/2017/03/20/ny-times-what-if-sociologists-had-as-much-influence-as-economists-102/

Ny Times: What if Sociologists Had as Much Influence as Economists?

Another academic discipline may not have the ear of presidents but may actually do a better job of explaining what has gone wrong in large swaths of the United States and other advanced nations in recent years.

Continue reading the main story

Sociologists spend their careers trying to understand how societies work. And some of the most pressing problems in big chunks of the United States may show up in economic data as low employment levels and stagnant wages but are also evident in elevated rates of depression, drug addiction and premature death. In other words, economics is only a piece of a broader, societal problem. So maybe the people who study just that could be worth listening to.

“Once economists have the ears of people in Washington, they convince them that the only questions worth asking are the questions that economists are equipped to answer,” said Michèle Lamont, a Harvard sociologist and president of the American Sociological Association. “That’s not to take anything away from what they do. It’s just that many of the answers they give are very partial.”

As a small corrective, I took a dive into some sociological research with particular relevance to the biggest problems facing communities in advanced countries today to understand what kinds of lessons the field can offer. In 1967, Senator Walter Mondale actually proposed a White House Council of Social Advisers; he envisioned it as a counterpart to the well-entrenched Council of Economic Advisers. It was never created, but if it had been, this is the sort of advice it might have been giving recent presidents.

Continue reading the main story

For starters, while economists tend to view a job as a straightforward exchange of labor for money, a wide body of sociological research shows how tied up work is with a sense of purpose and identity.

“Wages are very important because of course they help people live and provide for their families,” said Herbert Gans, an emeritus professor of sociology at Columbia. “But what social values can do is say that unemployment isn’t just losing wages, it’s losing dignity and self-respect and a feeling of usefulness and all the things that make human beings happy and able to function.”

Continue reading the main story

That seems to be doubly true in the United States. For example, Ofer Sharone, a sociologist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, studied unemployed white-collar workers and found that in the United States, his subjects viewed their ability to land a job as a personal reflection of their self-worth rather than as an arbitrary matter. They therefore took rejection hard, blaming themselves and in many cases giving up looking for work. In contrast, in Israel similar unemployed workers viewed getting a job as more like winning a lottery, and were less discouraged by rejection.

It seems plausible that this helps explain why so many Americans who lost jobs in the 2008 recession have never returned to the labor force despite an improved job market. Mr. Sharone is working with career counselors to explore how to put this finding to work to help the long-term unemployed.

Jennifer M. Silva of Bucknell University has in recent years studied young working-class adults and found a profound sense of economic insecurity in which the traditional markers of reaching adulthood — buying a house, marrying, landing a steady job — feel out of reach.

Continue reading the main story

Put those lessons together, and you may think that the economic nostalgia that fueled Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign was not so much about the loss of income from vanishing manufacturing jobs. Rather, it may be that the industrial economy offered blue-collar men a sense of identity and purpose that the modern service economy doesn’t.

Continue reading the main story

Sociology also offers important lessons about poverty that economics alone does not. “Evicted,” a much-heralded book by the Harvard sociologist Matthew Desmond, shows how the ever-present risk of losing a home breeds an insecurity and despondency among poor Americans.

Continue reading the main story

It works against the tendency to think about housing policy as solely a matter of which subsidy goes to whom and what incentives ought to be in place to encourage banks to lend in poor neighborhoods. All that stuff is important, of course, but doesn’t really address the overwhelming challenge of insecurity that affects millions of people.

And a large body of sociological research touches on the idea of stigmatization, including of the poor and of racial minorities. It makes clear that there are harder problems to solve around these issues than simply eliminating overt discrimination.

Continue reading the main story

It’s one thing, for example, to outlaw housing discrimination based on race. But if real estate agents and would-be home sellers subtly shun minority buyers, the effect can be the same. Professor Gans of Columbia has argued for decades that the stigmatization of poor Americans fuels entrenched, persistent poverty.

If the White House Council of Social Advisers did exist, one of its great challenges would be to convert some of these findings into actual policy proposals that might help. Part of the ascendance of economics in the policy-making sphere comes from the fact that economists tend to spend more time looking at specific legislative or regulatory steps that could try to improve conditions.

And trying to solve social problems is a more complex undertaking than working to improve economic outcomes. It’s relatively clear how a change in tax policy or an adjustment to interest rates can make the economy grow faster or slower. It’s less obvious what, if anything, government can do to change forces that are driven by the human psyche.

But there is a risk that there is something of a vicious cycle at work. “When no one asks us for advice, there’s no incentive to become a policy field,” Professor Gans said.

It may be true that these lessons on identity and community don’t lend themselves immediately to policy white papers and five-point plans. But a deeper understanding of them sure could help policy makers.

Continue reading the main story

This post has been harvested from the source link, and News-Twitter has no responsibility on its content. Source link