I am not being hyperbolic when I say every cop who sat around and made sure this happened to these kids for an hour deserves a public execution.

I have a different post in the works about Maddie not having children in the "Masters of All Time" timeline - it makes the emotional dilemma about whether Maddie should help Danny repair and reset the timeline straightforward and clean, but the thing is, the premise that "Masters of All Time" gives us is a FASCINATING and potentially really anguishing emotional dilemma if the writers were allowed to acknowledge it.

Maddie isn't happy in the MoAT timeline. When Danny shows up in her timeline, frantically trying to explain to her that he's her son with Jack Fenton from a different timeline, she accepts and embraces this explanation pretty quickly. It feels like she wants to believe it - she wants to believe that if things had gone differently, she would have married Jack, had children, had a ghost-hunting career she could be open and proud about. Everything Danny offers to her is something she wants more than what she has - a husband who has been lying to her, who dislikes ghost stuff and disapproves of her ghost research, so she has to do it in secret and hide it from him.

Something that goes totally unaddressed: Danny, her son from a different timeline, is a ghost. He's dead.

Never once does anyone stop to wonder what it means that her teenage son is a ghost.

And I know it's because Hartman & co. refuse to let anyone acknowledge that ghosts are dead people... but imagine they did.

Maddie Masters is... happy enough, she guesses. She married her college friend, and he is her friend, and she's not opposed to this. He doesn't support her work, but, well. She deals. She has her basement ghost research lab, even if she has to keep it secret from Vlad. She lost touch with Jack decades ago, and still regrets that, but that happens, sometimes, and his grievances aren't unfounded. She doesn't have children.

And then a ghost boy claiming to be her son shows up, and tells her that in a different timeline, the timeline that should have happened, she married Jack Fenton, she has two children, she is is out and proud about her ghost research and ghost-hunting and Jack enthusiastically collaborates with her on it. He tells her she's happy.

He doesn't tell her how he died.

And Maddie has a heartbreaking choice to make. Does she help him make this reality happen, restore time to how it's "supposed" to go?She wants to believe him, to believe in this alternate history where things went differently and she got the life she wanted! She has a wacky house full of Ghost Contraptions, a husband who loves her and supports her and collaborates with her, and two children she loves.

... and one of those children is going to die when he's 14. That comes with this choice.

Can she live with that? Consciously make this timeline happen, knowing she's going to have this child and then see him die.

It puts me in mind of one of the major emotional through-lines of "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang, the story of a linguist who makes contact with aliens and learns their language that allows her to see all of time at once, where it will go, what the outcomes of events will be. She sees her daughter dying. She knows from the moment she has this child that she will die in a rock-climbing accident in college. She sees it all at once, her whole life, and makes that choice to have a baby anyway.

I think MoAT!Maddie should have to consciously make a similar choice, and have similar feelings about it. Unlike the protagonist of "Story of Your Life," she doesn't know how it will all go. She only knows it as Danny tells her, and she herself won't really experience this, going forward. But she, another version of her, will. And Danny doesn't explain the halfa thing or the portal accident or anything, leaving Maddie to have to make her own hypotheses about what her alternate-life's future holds, about the grief that's going to come with the love, and make that choice to make it happen anyway.

If you don’t live in Texas it’s probably easy to forget that our state department of family and protective services is still under a directive from our fucking evil state officials to treat trans affirming parents as abusers.

It’s so vile. I have friends who work for other state departments who just told me at someone’s bday last weekend that TDFPS is a dumpster fire of horrific proportions.

Thinking about how dolls found in ancient sarcophagi were so loved that those children’s grieving families sent them to be companions for their little ones, where the family themselves could not follow

"I'm telling you, she's the best bloody runes expert this side of the Mississippi," John Constantine told the other members of the Justice League as he raised his hand to knock on the old screen door. He hadn't expected his ex-wife to stay here, in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere, but Spittoon, Arkansas, was the hill-billy hole it was when he last left. "If anyone can decipher the ritual to summon the ghost king, it's her--"

The door disappeared before he could knock, and a shotgun was shoved in his face. John smiled the best he could. "Hey, sweetheart."

Alicia Walker glared back at him. "Constantine."

*******************************************

This is the "John Constantine used to be married to Danny Fenton's Aunt Alicia" AU. Some idea's I've had:

Maddie introduced them. Maddie had dragged Alicia into studying ghosts, but Alicia ended up fascinated by the occultism of ghosts, more metaphysical than scientific. Maddie, wanting to support the sister that was supporting her, found Constantine, introduced the two, and they got along enough to bang.

it was a shotgun wedding. Alicia got pregnant and damn if she was going to let her baby be born without a father, so John ends up marrying her. He doesn't really mind since Alicia's nice enough and the sex is good, but he isn't exactly an attentive husband.

The baby is actually twins! a boy and a girl.

The babies are born without complications, but the baby boy, the first born... goes missing.

In addition to selling his soul to multiple parties, John had also sold the soul of his first born... probably to multiple parties. And he'd forgotten all about it until Alicia calls him, sobbing, saying their son has gone missing.

Needless to say, once she knows, John is divorced within the week.

the newborn daughter is given to Maddie to take care of; Alicia can even look at her without remembering her dead son, she knows she wouldn't be able to take care of a baby the way it needs. she can barely take care of herself.

(Jazz finds out that her aunt is her biomom when Danny is born. She never hates her aunt for giving her up; in fact, it's Alicia's depression and grief that makes Jazz want to study psychology in the first place)

Alicia moves to Spittoon to isolate herself, but the close knit community won't let her self-destruct. They help her rebuild herself in the middle of nowhere and she discovers a love for farming rhubarb.

John only shows up once before for Alicia's help, but the town chases away that nasty ex-husband of hers before she sees him, with his yuppie-accent and dirty clothes. They don't want him around her.

Alicia grows content with her life. She keeps all her occult books locked in the attic, out of sight and out of mind, and while she might regret not having been able to raise her daughter, she loves her niece and nephew and spoils them when they come to visit.

All's right in the world.

Until one day, Jazz and Danny come to her door in the middle of the night, desperate and injured.

Not too long after that, her yuppie ex-husband come around, asking her to look over some nonsense summoning circle. What's Constantine trying to summon anyway, the demon of astrology!?

“We thought he was there to help us. I tried to help them, but I couldn't. I was too weak. When he left, I played dead. Hid with the bodies. Felt them go cold. They were the only family I knew... and he slaughtered them.” #ANAKIN’S MURDER OF THE JEDI CHILDREN HAS ALWAYS BEEN HORRIFIC #THE YOUNGLINGS’ BODIES STREWN ALL OVER THE TEMPLE FLOOR OF THE GRAND HALL WHEN OBI-WAN AND YODA GET TO THEM #THE WAY THE YOUNGLING IN THE COUNCIL ROOM FLINCHED BACK FROM ANAKIN LIGHTING HIS SABER AFTER ASKING FOR HIS HELP #AND NOW SEEING IT FROM REVA’S POINT OF VIEW FROM A YOUNGLING HERSELF #THE HORROR OF IT IS ONCE AGAIN FRESH #I HAVE YET TO GROW NUMB TO ORDER 66 RETELLINGS AND NEW ANGLES #BUT THIS WAS ANOTHER LEVEL TO REALLY SEE IT FROM HER POINT OF VIEW #THE WAY HER VOICE GOES SO QUIET YOU CAN BARELY HEAR IT EVEN AS SHE’S TELLING THE STORY AS AN ADULT #THE WAY THEY THOUGHT HE WAS THERE TO HELP #THEY SAW A JEDI AND HE WAS SUPPOSED TO HELP THEM #AND INSTEAD HE SLAUGHTERED THEM ALL.  HER FAMILY.  HIS FAMILY.  YOUNGLINGS. #THIS SHOW HAS BEEN BRUTAL FROM THE BEGINNING AND THIS REALLY KNOCKED ME DOWN ALL OVER AGAIN

“Oh, God, don't do this to me.”

Alec Hardy + water trauma

bonus:

ok so, Israeli's are making memes with death Palestinian children

i am sharing a post about it under the cut, please be aware there is an image of a child who starved to death being mocked, you have been warned

death doesn't discriminate between the sinners and the saints it takes and it takes and it takes and i keep living anyway

They would have lost nothing in allowing this child to be treated. There was absolutely no reason to deny a request to help her. They did this willingly and without remorse.

God comfort her family.

Asgore isn't really taking well the completion of his chores (click for better quality)

this was requested as a simple kingdings hurt/comfort then it became a full piece

Reblogs are deeply appreciated

Hi DonorName, Nancy Pelosi here. You may have heard a lot of talk on social media about how, at a recent stop in Nebraska, Joe Biden's mouth distended to expel hundreds of doves. You may have also heard despicable rumors that the doves flew over two hundred miles to peck a child to death at the Mitchell Corn Palace.

I'm here to set the record straight: these rumors are true, and they're why the Democrats need your support more than ever.

First of all, the doves were merely using our President as a vessel. He did not guide their terrible flight. The President was powerless to stop anything from happening. But all present acknowledged a sense of peace at the child's passing. It is possible, even likely, that child would have grown into a monster, in a metaphorical or perhaps literal sense, like Donald Trump, or children in regions where the US is leading or assisting special coordinated international peacekeeping operations.

The right-wing misinformation mill is more active than ever. Know the facts: the child did not have strange symbols on his skin, and if he did, the birds ate them. Mr. Biden was not chanting in Latin while it occurred, because his jaw was still resetting. The doves are not Chinese robots; the feathers that fell on the Corn Palace after their sudden disappearance are genetically identical to the common Dove. I'm begging you: will you help us fight the tide of misinformation and re-elect the potentially doveless Joe Biden? Or do you want to let Donald Trump be the one full of murderous doves?

Much like her mother, Helaena won’t let the death of a child stop her from serving cunt

qMaxo told Trumpet the truth. He reunited with him not too long after

“in the small cramped dark inside” (a coday ficlet)

tw canon-typical dehumanization, medical abuse and child abuse, violence and brainwashing, child death, death of a minor oc.

There’s a sharp, lancing pain in 2224’s right temple.

It’s been there for two sleep cycles, through training and meals and the mandatory medical examinations that follow reconditioning. 2224 knows that this pain is a sign that he is defective, suboptimal, but he cannot - he does not - doesn’t want to, again -

He does not tell the longneck scientist that examines him about the headache. For now, this physical imperfection remains undiscovered.

2224 does not know why the reconditioning was deemed necessary in the first place. He only knows that now, orders burn, anxiety welling up in his lungs and on the back of his palate until he completes the assignment he has been given.

He pushes it, sometimes. Tries to see how many seconds he can hold out before his hands are compelled to do the task. His record is six.

In the shiny white hallway outside the training salle, his batchmate 2222 shifts forward in the hard, plastoid chair next to 2224's hard, plastoid chair. They are the only remaining clones of their batch, the rest culled for imperfections.

Twosie's eyes dance with mischievous mirth. "You gonna bite 17 again?" he whispers.

2224 smiles uncertainly. He has no memory of biting 17, ever, in his life. He has very few memories of any time longer than two days ago.

Huffing, his batchmate sits back. 2222's eyes look dark, wounded, like - like something 2224 doesn't have words for in his vocabulary.

When they were barely more than tubies, the longnecks had given them thin blankets. Once the blankets had worn through and been outgrown, they were taken away, replaced with reusable poly-foil sheets. 2224 had curled up under the foil, unable to sleep for three nights, jerking awake every time it crumpled under his toes. The look in Twosie's eyes reminds 2224 of that feeling, only worse.

(He doesn't know why he remembers the blankets but not biting 17.)

Despite the headache, 2224 performs admirably during training, exceeding expectations and outpacing 2222 in strength and speed and agility. Things came easy to him, and the things that didn't come easy he applied himself to until the benchmarks were met. 2224 had always been the top-ranked one in his batch. He had tried to help his batchmates when they couldn't make target practice or fumbled in war strategy, but -

Finally they got to the fun part: 2224 and 2222 facing off across a boxing square, monitored by trainers on all sides. 17 is not among them, 2224 notes with some disappointment, but he doesn't have time to contemplate it because 2222 takes his distraction as an opportunity to strike.

2224 blocks the first punch, makes the second. It's over quick, just a handful of blows before 2224 has 2222 on his knees, head locked between his arms.

"Very good, 2224," the head trainer says. 2224 blinks, uncertain at the praise. 2222 redoubles his efforts to escape, but 2224 controls his batchmate easily.

Sweat drips into his eyes but he doesn't dare wipe it away, doesn't dare let his opponent go until he hears the order to release.

"Good," the head trainer says again. Then: "Terminate 2222."

There's a roaring building up in his ears. One. His lungs are filling with seawater, his head with thunder and static. Two. 2222's pulse is rabbit-fast under his palm. Three. The trainer is waiting, expectant. Four. That kriffing anxiety swells on the back of his palate, choking and he can't breathe he can't think -

Five.

Twosie claws desperately at the hands that are holding his head. Six. Like it's happening somewhere far away, 2224 clenches his fists, squeezes, twists.

Model CC-2224 has been reevaluated post-reconditioning (note: the reconditioning process has never before been successfully applied to a CC model) for behavior issues. It is functioning normally and shows much more compliancy at this time. Reconditioning has been marked as successful. This process is now cleared for CC model units.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why I find it so difficult to say uncomplicatedly nice things about Anakin and, as cliche as it is, I think it always comes back to this.  Part of it is of course the fandom discourse that surrounds his character and feeling like you have to head off the idea that he wasn’t responsible for any of it, so you nail everything down in the original post, etc.  But I don’t think that’s the very root of it for me. It keeps coming back to this.  And this isn’t a judgement of anyone who sees the character differently (he is, after all, a fictional character that will inspire different reactions in people), it’s an exploration of where I’m coming from myself and why I have a tough time being on Anakin’s side in anything.  Because, for me, any good qualities Anakin has--and he does have them!--cannot be divorced from that he is Darth Vader and all that Darth Vader will do, that Darth Vader isn’t a separate character, that Darth Vader is Anakin Skywalker, that Vader’s issues are Anakin’s issues, and that Anakin’s issues lead to that he willingly murders children.  The entire time we know him during the Clone Wars, he is someone who has already murdered children and whatever he feels about that, all we see of it is him feeling perfectly justified and then that everything is totally fine. Every kind moment he has with Ahsoka, he is still a baby murderer.  Every time he has a sweet moment with Padme, he is still a baby murderer.  Every time he has a good moment with Obi-Wan, he is still a baby murderer.  Every time he has reasonable fears and understandable hurts, he is still a baby murderer.  Every time he does something nice for someone, he is still a baby murderer.   A baby murderer who doesn’t feel bad about the babies he murdered. He is still the character who is going to murder more children.  It doesn’t matter that he hasn’t done it yet, when I watch anything of the prequels or TCW, I know that he is the kind of person who would genuinely do it, that is already in him, that is a fundamental part of who he is. Does it come layered with a lot of other stuff?  Yes, absolutely!  I actually genuinely do relate to Anakin’s character far more than I do any other in Star Wars, I do interpret him as someone with severe anxiety and a terror of facing the worst parts of himself, who is terrified of rejection by those he cares about, who struggles to genuinely believe that those around him are telling him the truth and genuinely care for him.  All of that shit rolls around in my head every single day of my life and it makes me empathize with Anakin’s character so much.  I love analyzing those parts of his character, too! But it cannot be separated from that he is someone who is absolutely willing to murder babies.  Every bit of anxiety he has?  It leads to baby murder.  Every bit of terror he has about fear of loss and rejection?  It leads to baby murder.  Every time someone is less than kind to him?  He’s still hiding baby murder.  I just cannot find anything that outweighs that when I look at the character, just about every single moment of his life that we see is soaked in a willingness to murder babies. It’s inescapable because it’s part of his character and I just cannot find it in my heart to look at a scene of, say, the Jedi denying him an unearned rank of Master or Obi-Wan faking his death in the middle of a war where lives were on the line, where even when Anakin’s hurt feelings or being upset at the situation were valid, and have any of that outweigh baby murder.  It doesn’t matter if he is or isn’t justified in a given scene, because I look at him and I see someone who is willing to and has murdered babies.  It’s always, always there.  And it’s bigger than anything that was done to him.  (Other than Palpatine’s abuse of him across the span of his life.) To be clear, it’s not just the baby murder, it’s also the lies and the betrayal and the unwillingness to really look inside himself and do the hard work of personal growth, but the baby murder really is the big one.  It’s always there and it’s never addressed!!  If Anakin had made real effort to make amends or grow from it, I could probably get over it, but he never does, so it’s just always sitting there.  Baby murderer is a neon flashing sign over his head.  It’s inescapable because he never is shown to regret it or deal with it, it’s always just there, a part of him. The closest I can get to being on Anakin’s side is to head into “he’s my trash baby and I dug him out of the dumpster fair and square” because I feel like that at least addresses the monstrous things he’s done and that they cannot be divorced from any given moment in his life. Anything in the canon that’s purely Anakin-positive (at least by the time he’s 19, but even then he’s someone willing to do it) I just can’t fully connect to (props to others if they can, I would love to join them!) because it feels false to me, it feels like it’s hollowing out the character of a fundamental part of who he is, that he’s Darth Vader, Baby Murderer.