There is a constitutionally protected right for businesses to refuse service to minority groups as long as they can shoehorn the words “religion” and “free speech” into their justification
AND indiana’s Supreme Court blocked the abortion ban injunction so now Indiana has a now-total abortion ban in effect
AND Virginia banned porn. You cannot access “any description or representation of nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sadomasochistic abuse” unless your ID is collected and verified as being of an adult resident. We live in a theocracy <3
I feel that if I don’t repost this somewhere every year at some point, I’m living my life incorrectly.
What is even..
Some backstory. In FFXIV, for a very short spurt of time, there was a glitch where the upper body of a model would lock and freeze in place while the rest would still perform animations from other emotes and attacks. The results were pretty incredible for those that could get the lock to happen.
It was quickly hot-fixed out, but not quickly enough for the above video to get made, un/fortunately.
I’m back from my vacation and ready to take more commissions. So if you ever want a sparkly illustration of your favorite ttrpg character I’m your guy.✨
What if Forks' high school organizes an educational trip to the Hårga, to celebrate midsommar, for it's students (including Bella and her human friends)? 👀 Who gets to be the May Queen?
(Anon is referring to the movie Midsommar, in which a friend group of American students are invited by their Swedish friend to his hometown. They discover that their friend is the member of a cult, and the cult practices human sacrifice, copulation rituals, and ritualistic suicide, to name a few.)
Well, the thing about the Americans in Midsommar is that they’re recruited by their friend to be human sacrifice. There are British tourists there as well, recruited by a different Swede: the cult wants as many sacrifices as possible, but you have to be recruited by somebody.
The recruiters in Midsommar used the “You should come to my home village and eat the jordgubbar and enjoy our Swedish traditions!” excuse, and while it’s not inconceivable that they could have planted a teacher in an American school who would then take his students to Sweden, there is the matter of getting away with it. I imagine when the authorities realized there were tourists who had gone missing, the cult would claim the Brits and Americans never arrived in the first place.
It’s a different ballpark to disappear students from an excursion. Besides, they only need four people, the six in the movie was a luxury.
It would have to be a high school student, inviting his friends over to his home country over the Summer.
Olof the Swedish exchange student arrives in Forks, and draws all the interest in the school towards him like a moth. Mike proves approachable, and he has an outgoing girlfriend in Jessica, and after a few months Olof airs the idea of a trip to Sweden. They’d be staying there for free so it’s really only the journey they’d have to pay.
“Awesome!” Jessica says when hearing she can go see Europe, Mike who is thinking of beautiful Swedish women agrees.
Lauren, Angela, Ben, and Eric end up invited as well, and depending on when in the timeline this is Bella might also get an invite: however, I can’t imagine Bella saying yes to a trip with these people she doesn’t actually like that much when she could either be with the Cullens or, if this is happening during New Moon, hang out with Jacob.
Olof doesn’t push it, he’s got more than enough people for the sacrifice.
Off they go to the lovely Swedish village.
Mike, Ben, and Eric are all made sacrifices: they are men, they are there for the copulation ritual. The village will have no further interest in them, and the only question is what becomes of Lauren, Angela, and Jessica.
Which means the moment she sees the ättestupa, she’s leaving. This does not go well for her.
Jessica, meanwhile… I think her loyalty to her friends would doom her. Even if she were to catch Mike at a copulation ritual the way Dani does in Midsommar, I think Jessica would be thinking drugs or coercion or “oh god what the fuck is this place”, she’d be more afraid of the cult than ever.
Like Angela (and where the fuck is Angela?!) Jessica decides she needs to leave, she tries to calmly explain as much to the villagers. If she is the last one standing, this means they save her for the May Queen to decide. If not, then someone else gets the spot.
Lauren, meanwhile, as someone we know from the modelling talent scout misadventure to be gullible and prone to taking people at face value, might just survive to the dance.
Which, if she is the last woman dancing, means she is made May Queen.
I hate it when people defend fic by insisting that it is, or can be, better than published fiction. Fic can be very good, but it is a whole different genre, and really good fic never tries to be like published, or even publishable fiction.
Case in point, I recently read a story that absolutely floored me with the strength of its characterisation, dialogue, and sheer vision. It was a deliberate riff on the concept of Omelas, fitting a new narrative into the imagery of darkness and light, of solitary suffering under a joyful city. It engaged with the problem of evil and the difficulty of not only building a just society, but also ensuring it actually remained just in the face of serious pressure over time. It made me feel things I haven’t felt since I was eighteen and heavily overidentified with Alyosha Karamazov.
But I can’t share this brilliant gem of a story with anyone I know irl because it also has three scenes of Optimus Prime getting vigorously dicked in the dorsal access port, whatever that is.
A doctor saying “Good news! Your labs look great” is like if you were watching a cop show and the chief walked in like “Great news, everybody! The best news! The killer is still at large and we have no leads.”
One time I was like pretty sure I had finally figured out that I had Symptoms Disease due to all the Symptoms and my doctor did some tests and she was like. Good news! You don’t have Symptoms Disease!
And I started crying and she was like, is there something in your eye? And I said no I’m crying? And she was like, oh? Why? And I said, because we can’t fix my Symptoms because we still don’t know what’s wrong with me? And she was like. Nothing’s wrong with you! :)
Actually something similar had happened to me multiple times (and in some of those cases I did in fact get diagnosed with the relevant Symptoms Disease years later) but the one where the doctor asked if I had something in my eye because she couldn’t comprehend that not having answers would be upsetting, that was definitely one of the most situations ever.
Not much we can do right now for college applicants of color, indebted graduates, or lgbt people facing discrimination from businesses, but we CAN donate to the Navajo water project https://www.navajowaterproject.org/
