Dream's whole response to Connor is so baffling as he moves so quickly from being a victim "here's you pretending to be my friend while you hated me :("

Only to turn around and say "I was never actually your friend and you're parasocial >:(" So. Which is it????

A bit audacious too since Connor didn't claim to be his friend? I believe he stated specifically in that stream that he kept his distance because he didn't like Dream/DTeam's attitudes.

Anyways, four years since I got into mcyt and Dream's made yet another arbitrary, inflammatory statement. What's new.

random dialogue tag.

tagged by: @nectar-cellar

Share a random line of text from your current WIP or a line or two of dialogue from one of your characters. Do not give any explanation or context, and see what your followers think.

Age of Arcanai / “If you wish to serve me, Your Majesty, then serve.” “All that pain you endured because of me. I have much to repent for. So lay still, and let me atone.”

tagging: @amuhav | @amuhav | @amuhav | @thesimperiuscurse | @amuhav

“When you laugh like that, it just — you’re so beautiful, you know that?” for the ficlet prompt pls !! love your writing so so much ❤️

Tim is a very serious guy, busy doing very serious work.

"—still don't know why anyone would write this! Actually, who the fuck paid them to write this?! Is this the state of journalism in today's world?" Bart flails a hand at his laptop screen, laughing so hard he's turning red. "Someone—someone got paid to write—to write this?! This is a self-help article?!"

"I just don't—why would you—" Kon stares at the screen, too, fingers steepled and pressed to his lips in deep consternation. "I can't even finish my dramatic reading! Why would—why would—who even wants to phone a friend in the middle of doing an enema?"

Tim is a very serious guy, busy doing very serious work, by which he means playing Minesweeper while listening to his very un-serious friends read a how-to guide on, for some reason, coffee enemas. It happens. He really did mean to get work done, but sitting in the common room was a mistake; he's just been listening and swallowing laughter for the past ten minutes.

"I can promise you this. If any of you ever phone me with anything up your ass, we are not friends anymore," Cassie says, sounding disturbed.

That does it. Tim's finger slips and clicks a bomb instead of a safe tile as he wheezes with sudden, explosive laughter.

All three of them whip around to look at him; Bart is the first to crack into giggles, too, then Kon smothers a chuckle into his hands, and finally Cassie slumps back onto the cushions behind her, cackling. Tim really, truly does try to get ahold of himself, but it's a losing battle at this point.

"Where did you even find this article, Bart?" he manages, grinning breathlessly. "Send me the link." It sounds like a great way to harass Dick, and Tim needs to do that yesterday.

"Why?" Bart shoots back immediately. "Feeling inspired?"

"You better not call me when you try it out," Cassie wheezes.

Kon, meanwhile...

Oh. Wait. What's up with Kon? He's still grinning, but it's a softer look than before; his eyes sparkle with warmth as he looks at Tim, perching in the bay window. That's a very, ah... fond? Yes, fond. A very fond look for someone whose companions are currently losing their shit about a self-help article about coffee enemas.

Tim meets his gaze and quirks an eyebrow. Kon blinks at him, seeming surprised; did he think Tim wouldn't notice him gazing over like that?

"Sorry, sorry," Kon says, though he certainly doesn't sound particularly sorry. “When you laugh like that, it just—man, you’re so beautiful, you know that?”

Tim's face immediately flames. That's rich, coming from the most beautiful guy in not just the room, but the entire city. Country. World? Yeah, world. "Uh."

"Oh my god, shut the fuck up, you're so sappy!" Bart groans, smacking Kon on the shoulder. Kon, because he's Kon, just preens at his complaints. "Stop being a cheese before I kick your ass!"

"Be careful that it doesn't have coffee in it!" Cassie snickers into her hands.

Normally, Tim would join in on the ribbing. Right now, though, he's still a little stuck on Kon just casually calling him beautiful for laughing. What the fuck. They've been officially dating for two weeks! He can't just spring that kind of thing on Tim! And the worst (best) part is, because he's Kon, Tim knows he's being completely genuine about it!

Why did this have to happen during this, of all conversations?

"Now, Bart," Kon says, and aggressively ruffles Bart's hair. "You know Tim is the only one here with the rights to touch my ass, kicking or not."

Bart blows an obnoxiously loud raspberry. Tim drops his face into his hands.

Yeah, he's a serious guy, alright. Real serious about... starting a new game of Minesweeper and listening to his friends continue to be a bunch of comedians.

♥ soft sentence starters ♥

i get that some people do not ship grace and frankie and that’s fine (i can’t relate, but that’s fine!), but i feel like describing their whole thing as platonic female friendship just isn’t quite accurate by the time the series is over. it’s, like, platonic female friendship where you live together and you’ve committed to being each other’s number one priority and life partner forevermore, and have deliberately foregone romantic relationships with men in order to instead be with each other. i feel like that doesn’t quite fit in the “yah yah, the power of platonic female friendship!” box. platonic female friendship is a powerful force to be reckoned with indeed and one of the greatest blessings on this sorry earth, but most platonic female friendships do not take that particular shape.

Anti-recovery people: hey, it's okay to be unhealthy. That's not always something you can change and it's certainly not something you have to do. It's okay to exist as you are.

"Pro-recovery" people: OMG YOU'RE what's wrong with the mental health community, you BRAINWASHED me into thinking it wasn't okay for people to seek help if THEY wanted it, this is honestly TOXIC AF.

Anti-recovery people: but ... that's literally not what we said. Most people view recovery as this linear progression of milestones that often includes becoming more palatably neurotypical, which is ableist. What we're saying is that it's okay to recover if you want to, but that doesn't have to look like the mainstream abled version of recovery, and that it's okay to not do so at all. Some people also can't recover to those standards and we celebrate accepting your limitations.

"Pro-recovery" people: So it's OKAY to just harm your friends because of your mental illness? You support being a BAD person and not bothering to change? Also being unhealthy is bad and I'm going to assume because I recovered that everybody is capable of doing so, even if using different methods, and just choosing not to bother because of YOU people.

Anti-recovery people: What? No! Hurting other people is not okay! Do you actually think that these symptoms of a diagnosis are what causes someone to choose to harm other people? That's both super ableist and also a fundamental misunderstanding of what causes harmful, toxic, and abusive behaviors.

Anti-recovery people: In the few cases where someone is truly incapable of controlling a harmful behavior, where someone has extremely high support needs, we support them getting the adequate societal support to have someone help them through these behaviors without anyone getting hurt, but more importantly, without exacerbating their own distress that they are very clearly expressing.

Anti-recovery people: In most other cases, conflating the choices and actions of someone who is mentally ill with their diagnosis is super ableist, as is conflating "it's okay if you struggle to brush your teeth" with "it's okay to treat your friends and loved ones like shit with no consequences". I assume you're defining harm as "actively insulting, belitting, invalidating, physically or sexually assaulting you, though, and not just visibly having symptoms of a mental illness or talking about their struggles, right?*

"Pro-recovery"people: . . .

Anti-recovery people: We're saying that it's harmful to moralize health, for multiple reasons. There's that you are not capable of determining if a person is able to recover, for any given definition of recovery. There's that even if a person is able to, them being unhealthy is not actually harming you, and they have the right to make those choices even if you wouldn't make the same ones for yourself. There's the fact that recovery looks different for everybody, and for many, accepting that you can't "recover" to the expectations set by the mainstream IS recovery. ESPECIALLY given that many things that are called "unhealthy" are perfectly harmless and healthy aspects of neurodivergence that have been unnecessarily medicalized by our ableist society and psychiatric institutions.

"Pro-recovery" people: . . .

"Pro-recovery" people: YOU'RE the reason I wanted to kill myself for a decade and didn't bother to do anything about it! Personal responsibility, ever heard of it? Once I left your CULT I started doing yoga and now I'm BETTER and so everyone else can do that too!

Anti-recovery people: ... Do YOU know what personal responsibility is? All the "anti-recovery" in our names means is that we are against the idea that it's morally wrong to refuse to recover, whether that means refusing to conform to the mainstream ideal of recovery, a choice that you make to not pursue recovery, or an acceptance of your own inability to recover. We are not against choosing recovery as a personal decision if that's what you want - in fact, we support those people.

Anti-recovery people: Anyway, you don't know what led up to someone making this choice. Someone with long-term treatment-resistant suicidal depression is not wrong for not continuing to try meds that have not once worked, pursuing expensive TMS they may not be able to afford which is not covered by most insurance, continuing meds that have some effect but worse side effects than the depression itself, or psychotherapy that may have little to not effect, especially if they have at any point been subject to psychiatric neglect or abuse, which is more common than you're aware.

"Pro-recovery" people: See, I was toxic like you but unlearned all of that so now I'm no longer toxic. Btw I'm currently actively harassing disabled people because they're not 'working hard enough' or using 'better coping skills' and them being unhealthy is a personally harmful to me and everyone that ever interacts with them. What do you mean that's not okay just because the disability is a mental illness?? That's ableist!!1

Anti-recovery people: Okay, so, you haven't even bothered to deconstruct the moralization of healthiness and how that ties into ableism, I see. It's actively bigoted to expect someone to meet certain standards of health when they have a CHRONIC HEALTH ISSUE. This is no different than expecting someone with a chronic illness never to eat or drink anything unhealthy, to exercise regularly, have perfect sleep habits, and otherwise be a paragon of healthy choices or else it's "their fault" for just "not caring enough to put in the work to recover. Of course, you likely also do those things, in which case the comparison is lost on you, because ableists are so rarely ableist against only mentally or physically disabled people and not the other.**

Anti-recovery people: You also seem to believe that you're ontologically incapable of doing harm - you say that it's an "ongoing process" but then your actions show that you haven't bothered learning to listen when people say you're harming them and have just changed your targets to be people who have less societal power than you so they're less able to stand up for themselves and you're less obligated to listen to them. Are you just trying to find a justification for bullying people that others will accept?

"Pro-recovery" people: . . . STOP HARASSING ME!!1

Anti-recovery people: *Looks into camera like they're on the office*

*I have actually harmed others in the past in ways that were influenced by my mental illness. OCD, of all things, was the one that most directly impacted my actions, and I owned my mistakes. That being said, they were still my CHOICE. The mental illness played a role, but it didn't cause the harm I did. You know what wasn't my choice, though? My overreliance on my friends for essentially trauma-dumping and for getting my emotional needs met because I was actively being abused and the system was neither providing me ANY way out nor even adequate mental healthcare (as if that's possible when being ACTIVELY ABUSED WITH NOT EVEN A BROCHURE OFFERED ABOUT HOW TO ESCAPE ABUSE.) I was a drowning person clawing at them for survival, and it was neither of our faults that the system is primed to actively keep disabled people in abusive situations. So don't @ me.

**I would know, I am both multiple physically and multiply mentally disabled.

I found something stupid again...

So in my more recent discussions about the...first altercation between Harlequin and Helbram I mentioned that I was sure Harlequin grew the rose he killed Helbram with, cuz a little patch of white roses growing in the middle of a village would be stupid and make no sense.

Well...

Nope. It's just there. That's...so stupid for so many reasons...

A plant with blooms that size should probably have more foliage

Wild roses can be white, but they're usually pink

Wild roses don't look like what we think of as roses today. They look like this.

Or something like this if it's inbred as hell

(it's called double blooming. I've seen it in ditch lilies that have been growing on their own behind my neighbors fence for years and year, cross pollinating themselves. It makes very ugly lilies o-O)

but that little spit of plant is not likely to be inbred enough to look anything like this.

according to jacksonandperkins.com

"Considered the wildflower type of rose, Wild Roses, or “species roses,” lack the cross-breeding history and hybridization of other modern varieties. Wild Roses typically have a single bloom with a five-petal flower. The easiest way to determine a Wild Rose is in their color–they’re almost always pink! In fact, it’s an anomaly to find a red or white Wild Rose..."

Why am I even remotely sure this is a wild rose anyway? Because 7DS takes place in Arthurian Britain. Which is around the 1500's. This even in particular takes place 200 years prior to that. And this plant is slightly off to the side of a village road. It's not in a garden, and anyway the cultivating that created the types of roses we're familiar with won't take place till ~500 years after this altercation. another quote from jacksonandperkins.com

"Modern Roses were bred after 1867, taking the place of heritage Old Garden Roses. As mentioned above, there are certain distinctions between the two. Where Old Garden Roses bloom once per year, Modern Roses offer a continuous bloom, as well as a larger bloom size."

And a quote from finegardening.com

"...Old Roses are those found in Europe before the very late 1700s and Antique Roses are those who can trace part of their ancestry back to R. Chinensis (The China Rose) which was the first true repeat blooming rose known to the Western World and was not introduced to Europe until around 1792..."

So basically yeah. It's dumb, that species of rose shouldn't exist yet and it would have been better plot-wise if Harlequin had just grown the damn flower himself...

Annabeth: This may shock you, but not everyone here likes you.

Hera: Sounds ridiculous, but go on.

"You can go up a ladder, you can go down a ladder. You can take a ladder and use it horizontally as a bridge over a chasm. You can use a ladder as a weapon. You can sit on a ladder. You can put a ladder as decoration in your house like those aesthetic pinterest posts. Get your own ladder for only 29.99 today!"

-Diotima in Plato's symposium

i think that an important thing to remember is that most conservatives DON’T care about kids. kids are people and caring about them is valuing them and figuring out how to help them become the adults that they want to be. conservatives tend to view children as action figures that they place in certain, desirable scenarios and get angry when they don’t play by their arbitrary rules

fuck therapy

i thought the way fans talk to creators online was like a recent phenomenon but after reading the fan letters pages on my old spider-man comics i think it's always been like this. like the main difference between the people in stan lee's mailbox and neil gaiman's tumblr asks is whether or not they're paying for postage

I have to explain what is going on in the UK, because it is absurd.

So, this is Gary Lineker:

He's known for a fair few things over here. He was a very good (association) footballer, playing for England in the 1986 and 1990 World Cups, winning the Golden Boot in 1986, and managing to never get a single yellow card in his playing career. He played for Leicester City, Everton, Barcelona, and Tottenham, before finishing his career in Japan. But if you aren't in your mid 30s, you probably know actually know him him for a couple of other things. The first is the role of spokesman for another Leicester icon, Walkers Crisps (which are sort of equivalent to Lays, but hit different), as pictured above. Despite being a notably clean player, he used to play a cheeky serial crisp thief. I don't think he's done that for well over a decade, but his ads were on the telly a lot when I was a kid and it's a bit like learning that the hamburglar was an incredibly clean (American) football player or something.

The second thing Gary is widely known for is having presented Match of the Day, the big football program on the BBC, the sort-of state broadcaster, since 1999. He is, incidentally, very well paid for this (though with a consensus that he could get even more if he went to one of the non-free-to-view broadcasters because he is very good at the job). He also has a twitter account. And political opinions. So, the UK government has got itself dead set upon doing heinous stuff that will totally somehow work to prevent people who want to come to the UK making the perilous crossing of the Channel (between England and France). By heinous, I mean "openly advertise that they won't attempt to protect victims of modern slavery" stuff. It's very obviously using a legal hammer to victimise a marginalised group of people in order to win votes. And, uh, I should clarify that by "legal" I mean "using the passage of laws" - the policy is, in addition to all the other ways it's awful, probably incompatible with the Human Rights Act and the UK's international law obligations. Gary, top lad that he is, objected to this. On Tuesday 7th March, he made a quote Tweet of a video of the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, bigging up the policy, he wrote "Good heavens, this is beyond awful.". This got a bunch of backlash from extremely right-wingers, and then he made the tweet that really got him in trouble (with right-wingers): "There is no huge influx. We take far fewer refugees than other major European countries. This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s, and I’m out of order?".

Now, I am not actually subjecting myself to watching a video of Suella Braverman bigging up a cruel policy to say whether the specific comparison of the language to 1930s Germany is accurate. But needless to say, Ms Braverman was amongst the many figures on the right of UK politics objecting to Gary's rhetoric. And here's the part where a fact about the BBC comes in: it is nominally neutral and impartial (and so, of course, is routinely accused of bias from all sides but particularly the right-wing), and has something of a code for its contributors to this effect. Now, that code has previously been applied to Gary Lineker, over a comment about whether governing Conservative Party would hand back donations from figures linked to the Russian regime. But it generally hasn't been applied too strongly to people like Gary, whose roles have nothing to do with politics (such as presenting a "here's what happened on the footie today" show), on the basis that, well, their roles have nothing to do with politics. However, when directly asked about whether the BBC should punish Gary Lineker for his tweets, government figures basically went "well, that's a them problem". But a couple of days passed, and it seemed like Gary's approach of "standing his ground because he did nothing wrong" was working and everything would die down. He was set to get 'a talking to' but not much more than that. The Conservative right, after all their fire and fury earlier, had gotten bored and moved onto something else. And then, on Friday 10th March, the BBC announced that he would be suspended from hosting Match of the Day this weekend. But it could still go ahead, because there are, like, other hosts! Except, well, funnily enough, when you take a beloved figure off air, for making a fairly anodyne tweet, no one wants to be the scab who actually takes up the role of replacing him. Gary's two co-hosts, Alan Shearer and Ian Wright, said that they would not appear without him. People who (co-)host Match of the Day on other days followed suit. The net result is that Match of the Day is currently set to air without hosts, BBC commentary, or global feed commentary. And the solidarity shown to Gary Lineker, over what is very flagrantly actual cancel culture and an attack on freedom of speech (the logic implied is that institutional impartiality requires that no one say anything too critical of the government ever), has continued to grow. The BBC has pretty much been unable to run pretty much any live sports content today, and has resorted to raiding the BBC Sounds archive to fill the sports radio channel. And, as of 17:30 on Saturday 11th March, the situation shows no signs of improvement, though some are calling for the Chairman Richard Sharp, who is separately facing corruption allegations, to resign (yes I linked to the BBC itself there, there is nothing, nothing, the BBC loves more than going into great detail about how much the BBC sucks).

I both believe "poor people deserve art" and "artists deserve food", but it's hard to reconcile those beliefs. I blame capitalism. And I suppose it mostly matters who you're stealing from?

I don't mean to question you at all, I'm against people pirating your stories. I guess I was just wondering if you had more thoughts regarding the reconciliation the two beliefs I quoted above.

I think the reconciliation is working toward a future where things are better, and authors and artists don't have to beg people not to steal from them because they think every author is Stephen King, who wouldn't notice if you stole the pennies found under his couch when in reality most of us are hunting for spare change down the back of the couch because we are earning below minimum wage.

We need people to embrace the idea that art belongs to the working class, both in terms of consumption but also creation.

If you don't support the working-class creators, you'll only end up with rich fucks with no scope of the world beyond their own narrow view of privilege.

Indie creators are actually working very hard to change the way the industry works, and the publishing industry is shitting itself over it. They don't like the success some of us are having. It's why they keep upping prices while slashing corners on their own production (while never affecting the man at the top) to try and stay competitive within the rat race they've created.

They're not interested in the proliferation of art. They're not interested in making sure their authors can afford to live. They don't want more diversity. They don't want inclusion. They want profit at whatever the cost.

And while indie creators very much need to get paid because we live in a capitalistic society and everything is burning down around us, and a carton of eggs now costs more than what I earn per hour, our creativity is directly at odds with the type of profiteering big publishers want.

The money should go to the writers. Not the CEOs. The money should go to the workers in the print houses. Not the CEOs. No one needs the kind of wealth these people have. It's obscene. We need direct action against these conglomerates. We need unionization. We need a means to fight back so that we can make art and make it accessible.

So, how do we do that? I don't know. I'm just a very tired, disabled creator doing my best to keep my head above water. But I think getting people to realize that art and books are worth saving up for would be a good start.

That putting money in the pockets of creators is just as important as your own enjoyment of their art. Because if there aren't any artists, you've got nothing.

Getting them involved with their local libraries would also be a great start. Educating them on how the industry works is part of that. The number of people telling me they had no idea libraries paid authors is staggering. And that's intentional. It's a by-product of right-wing propaganda to make you think libraries are worthless and just sap taxpayers' money.

They're not.

If they were, the fash wouldn't be trying so hard to take them away.

Basically, we need working-class solidarity and for certain people on the left to rid themselves of the idea that just because something isn't borne of manual labor, it doesn't have worth. We need the artists and the dreamers as much as we need to bricklayers and the craftsmen. Otherwise, what's the fucking point of it all?

"And I Pray that Our Stars Aren't Crossed" Ch. 8 (Chase Davenport x Ahsoka Tano)

Masterlist 

Star Wars Masterlist 

Lab Rats/Mighty Med/Elite Force Masterlist 

LR/MM/EF x Star Wars [Ahsoka Tano/Chase Davenport] Masterlist

Chapter 7 

______________

A Lab Rats/Mighty Med/Elite Force x Star Wars: The Clone Wars crossover.

Synopsis: The first time they met was a complete accident. The second time might have been the will of the Force.But there’s no use in pretending the third time was anything less than on purpose. And there’s no reason to ever be so far apart again that they have to plan a fourth.

Story Warnings: violence, character deaths

______________________

They talk about the trandoshan moon, but only when there’s no one else around to listen. He’s not sure how or when they agreed to keep their past between themselves, but they do. 

Maybe it would be too much of a hassle to have to explain everything. Maybe it’s the trauma that went along with it. Maybe he’s not willing to let everyone know that he’d already taken a number of lives before Krane. Maybe he’s still afraid his family would see him as…

It’s their quiet secret, though he knows eventually they’ll have to at least admit that they had known each other before. 

They never talk about Mandalore. 

He knows the grief was far worse for her than him, so he gives her the space to mourn alone when she needs to. It’s easier, he supposes, in a way too. Not ever talking about it makes it easier to block out Maul’s words echoing in his head. Ones only he heard; she doesn’t even know that he encountered the Dathomirian alone during the battle. 

They talk about other things, the Elite Force, of superpowers and how they work. They talk about normal things, about Oliver’s crush on Skylar, about that awful picture of Davenport that Kaz set fire to and tossed over the balcony. 

And it’s easy for the next few days, with no sign of Roman and Riker, with the blue summer skies and breathtaking view. Six teenagers that have just entered adulthood getting a moment to breathe. 

____________________

“What is it?” she asks curiously, looking at the small square in Chase’s hands. 

“It’s kind of a cross between the cyber mask Mr. Davenport designed and the cyber cloak I created. This one will only camouflage your skin, montrals, and lekku to disguise you as a human.” 

“So I can go out in public without dodging in and out of alleys and using a Jedi mind trick on anyone who accidentally sees me.”

“Basically.”

“How does it work?”

“You attach it to the side of your neck and tap the upper left hand corner to activate.” 

She does so, watching in the mirror as her appearance transforms. Her skin mutes into a medium tan, markings disappearing. Her head tails camaflouge into her clothes, waist-length box braids an ombre of silvery white to grey blue taking their place. 

“I can always program the hair differently if don’t like it…”

“Maybe in the future, to have other options, but I like this, I think it looks good.” She gives him a smile as she continues to appraise her reflection. “Your sister will be pleased she no longer has to drag Skylar by tooth and nail to have someone to shop at the mall with,” she jokes. 

____________________

Ahsoka raises an eyebrow marking as Bree bolts panting into the room. 

“Please don’t tell me sisters on your planet use each other as punching bags to show their affection.”

The togruta shrugs. “Well, there’s nothing that I love more than a good sparring session…but if you’re talking about the deranged gundark Skylar’s turned into, then no.”

Bree leans over, trying to catch her breath. “I knew being roommates with an alien was going to be a little odd, but damn.” 

“From the perspective of another alien, most of the species that interacted with the League of Heroes and Mighty Med tend to be a bit…unhinged.” 

____________________

“Well, I see Oliver’s training has turned out to be a disaster,” Ahsoka remarks.

“Why would you say that?” Kaz asks, grabbing another handful of popcorn.

“Because he’s nowhere to be seen, and Chase looks like he’s about to have a panic attack.” She crosses her arms. “So what did happen?”

“Oliver’s water vortex accidentally sent Mr. Davenport over the edge of the balcony, leaving him clinging onto the Davenhead. Oliver flew down to rescue him, and also got stuck on the Davenhead.” Chase explains.

“And now we’re waiting for them to Daven-splat,” Kaz finishes. 

“So there’s no back-up plan if Oliver fails.” 

“At the moment, no.” is Chase’s response. 

“Well, Mandalore proved your molecular kinesis is strong enough to carry a person…”

“So if they fall, you take Oliver, and I take Mr. Davenport.”

“Seems pretty straightforward to me, Genius.” She smirks. 

“Wait, who’s Mandalore?” Kaz interjects. 

“Just another girl that’s out of your league,” she responds smoothly. “By the way, fire boy, I’ve just finished organizing you and Oliver’s fitness programs. If he falls, you’re doing double.”

_____________________________

Chase finishes off his smoothie. “So, at the end of day, I think things worked out well. Oliver’s got his confidence back and is getting better control of his powers.”

“I’m still making Kaz do double.”

Chase shrugs. “I won’t argue the point.”

Ahsoka slurps the last remnants of her strawberry shake. “You know, it wouldn’t hurt to try and expand our skills as well. Obviously, it’s priority to get Oliver and Kaz caught up as best we can training wise, but with your laser bo and all, sparring together could be helpful for us to improve our respective fighting techniques.” 

“Yeah, that’d be great,” he responds, and he thinks he might have done so too energetically. 

“Great,” she smiles, “It’ll be just like those weeks on Coruscant,” and it’s a nostalgic thing to say, but she doesn’t quite mean it all the way. They were only fifteen then, awkward but sincere friends. And they’re still a little awkward now, but this time she’s holding onto that spark that could make them into something more. 

Started reading some of Mihály Csíkszentmihályi's work on flow state, and as much as I'm interested in the concept and want to learn more it's hard to take him seriously when he says things like "the unique increase in crime in America is due to people, individually, not taking responsibility for their own outlooks on life" or "psychoanalysts may be right that male rock-climbers are trying to satisfy their latent homosexuality".

Measure 110, or the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

So if y'all aren't local to Oregon, you may not have heard that the Oregon state legislature just voted to -- essentially -- gut Measure 110, the ballot measure which decriminalized all drug possession and use in the state. It turned all drug use into a citation instead, and the citation and fine could be waived by completing a health screening. The entire point of Measure 110 was replacing jail with health care and services to help people instead, and while I could probably write a very long side post on the imperfections of that approach, it was at the very least a move in the right direction after decades of the pathetic failure and absolutely racist mess that is the "War on Drugs."

You may hear this pointed to in coming years as a reason why we have to just throw people into jail for using drugs, because Measure 110 failed. And like... it did fail, kinda. Sorta. It failed in that it did not manage to fix everything immediately, and it created some new issues while also exposing older issues more sharply.

It also saved the state $40 million in court costs prosecuting low-level drug offenses, kept thousands of people whose literal only crime was putting a substance into the body of a consenting adult (themselves) out of jail, put at least one addiction services center in every county in the state, invested $300 million in addiction services, and an awful lot more. See the end of this post for more reading.

But where it failed, it failed because it wasn't supported. Police and advocacy groups both asked for specific tickets for this new class of offenses which had the phone number to call to go through the health screening and the information about how going through that health screening would make the ticket go away printed on it prominently - lawmakers declined to fund this. Governor Kotek budgeted $50K to train officers on how to handle these new citations and how to direct people to the treatment and housing supports, but lawmakers thought that training officers on this new law at all was a waste of money. Money moved extremely slowly out to the supports that were supposed to come into play to help people obtain treatment or get access to harm-reduction strategies. People freaked the fuck out about clean-needle outreach, fentanyl testing strip distribution, Narcan training, and other harm-reduction strategies.

And at the end of the day, Measure 110 gets called a failure because it wasn't a silver bullet. Never mind that thousands of people are not sitting in jail right now for basically no fucking reason. Never mind that people have gotten treatment, harm has been reduced, overdoses have been prevented...

So, yeah. You'll probably start hearing this trotted out as proof that, well, we triiiied decriminalizing drugs, but look what happened in Portland! Well, what happened in Oregon is that we got set up to fail, and still didn't fail, just didn't totally succeed.

Measure 110 highlights, quoted directly from Prison Policy Initiative:

The Oregon Health Authority reported a 298% increase in people seeking screening for substance use disorders.

More than 370,000 naloxone doses have been distributed since 2022, and community organizations report more than 7,500 opioid overdose reversals since 2020.

Although overdose rates have increased around the country as more fentanyl has entered the drug supply, Oregon’s increase in overdoses has been similar to other states’ and actually less than neighboring Washington’s. A peer-reviewed study comparing overdose rates in Oregon with the rest of the country after the law went into effect found no link between Measure 110 and increased overdose rates.

There is no evidence that drug use rates in Oregon have increased. A cross-sectional survey of people who use drugs across eight counties in Oregon found that most had been using drugs for years; only 1.5% reported having started after Measure 110 went into effect.

There has been no increase in 911 calls in Oregon cities after Measure 110.

Measure 110 saves Oregonians millions. Oregon is expected to save $37 million between 2023-2025 if Measure 110 continues. This is because it costs up to $35,217 to arrest, adjudicate, incarcerate, and supervise a person taken into custody for a drug misdemeanor — and upwards of $60,000 for a felony. In contrast, treatment costs an average of $9,000 per person. The money saved by Measure 110 goes directly to state funding for addiction and recovery services.

There is no evidence that Measure 110 was associated with a rise in crime. In fact, crime in Oregon was 14% lower in 2023 than it was in 2020.

Further reading/sources: