My handwriting is the same style as the teacherâs who I had when I was nine. Iâm now twenty one and heâs been dead eight years but my iâs still curve the same way as his.
I watched the last season of a TV show recently but I started it with my friend in high school. We havenât spoken in four years.
I make lentil soup through the recipe my gran gave me.
I curl my hair the way my best friend showed me.
I learned to love books because my father loved them first.
How terrifying, how excruciatingly painful to acknowledge this. That I am a jigsaw puzzle of everyone I have briefly known and loved. I carry them on with me even if I donât know it. How beautiful.
she is a princess and you are a dragon. she will be married tonight. do not keep standing outside of her room like that, go inside. go get her. that is what proper dragons do.
not that you have ever been a good or proper dragon. when you hatched out of your egg, your eggtooth was too smooth. the other dragons were rough with you, put little holes in your wings.
you were not bold. you were odd. you liked rippling water and the shine of chitin when bugs scuttle and of course the movement of the stars. those were all acceptable interests albeit maybe not traditional. perhaps you had inherited these through some great-great-uncle or something. certainly a dragon may be wise, or clever, if they are not bold.
yes, you have been a great deal of a puzzle to the other dragons. your body is smaller and rather more soft than it ought to be. so speed should have been yours, perhaps - your mother said it would be like fighting a shadow. if a dragon is not aggressive, it may instead be cruel, sly; a backstab. but alas your scales - so iridescent that they almost shine like the moon at night, a glow from within - you are not a shadow, you are a beacon like the flash of a knight's blade. your father has said at least you would make a fine egglayer, a nice mate to a good male. a dragon like you may still be a good mother perhaps; and that is a fine thing to be; although of course it would have been better if you'd been a trove-hoarder instead.
what a dragon must not be is kind.
you have watched her now for six moons. what a good and proper dragon would do is to go inside and to snatch her. a very proper dragon would have kidnapped her many times over, but you will be the delight of your brood to princess-snatch even at all. when you catch her in your jaws and bring her home, they will love you, then. they don't think you're capable of it, but you are, because you're a proper dragon. you can show them that. if you go in, now, right now.
you are rather too glossy to hide in the shadows, so instead you have learned how to appear flat and round, a puddle of light. (how your siblings would mock you! a dragon should be matte, to blend with the night). you dapple your flank with mud. you perch in odd angles atop of trees, scuttle like the bugs you love - hither, tither, frantic.
what you must not do is fly with your wings full-out. alight, you will be limned by the moon's corona. you will be a beacon. you must remember this when (not if) you snatch her.
____
you found her because of the lake. this lake in particular was your favorite - nestled deep in the woods, between two mountains. it is very quiet; there is nothing to horde there so no other dragon bothers you. a gentle waterfall spills over into a deep cove, and there are many mossy caves you've spent your afternoons napping in. while it is not proper for a dragon to prefer such things, you like to lay in rolling tenure just under the water. you have become excellent at holding your breath, can do it for hours. it is the easiest way to appear as a patch of sunlight.
she was not sunlight. she was the night's joy. the dark press of water. her face at first concealed by many diaphanous layers. her breathing quick and quiet.
she had pulled them back to drink from her water flask. and there she had been: a princess. your first very-real princess. right there, only the reach of a single talon from you. if you had simply lunged then, you would have been able to take her easily, in one single movement.
but you did not take her.
she had startled you a bit; you'd been daydreaming about music, which you'd just discovered, and rather liked. you'd heard it from a little house while you snuck in and stole their sheep.
but you knew the sound of fear, of being followed. you'd been chased too many times, you knew what it looked like. the rapid jolt of fear.
you smelled her then; cinnamon and onyx, and perhaps that was what had blinded you. perhaps your mouth was just watering. whatever the case, you waited until she had fled back into the forest; and then you waited a bit longer. in her wake, a garrison of men, their hands rough.
oh. so they were not knights. they were just men chasing a young woman through the woods. perhaps they did not even know a real princess had been running from them. well, that was a relief. you are not good at fighting with knights, who have swords instead of cudgels. these were just men, so you rose from the water in the quiet way you'd learned from the fish. they did not hear you coming.
and besides. proper dragons do violence so well.
___
once you had smelled her you could find her, although such things have always been easier for you than for the others. you spend a great deal of time studying things - it allows you to analyze them. you have tried to explain to the other dragons that sometimes it is best to slow down, but of course no dragon should be slow.
at first you did not understand the confusion of the people's umwelt. they relied so much on their communication (only words and actions!) and what they could see with their eyes. you and the other dragons did not use these as much; but you liked prying out the little sonic differences between hello that means "i like you" and hello that means "i don't like you."
so it took you a while to learn that you were responsible for what had happened to her. men had gone missing, and even bad men going missing makes a big fuss. (you know that if it had been girls missing, it would be okay. many proper dragons steal girls because it will not bring a knight to their door). for a while she had been trapped on the palace grounds. it was determined that it was no longer safe for her to be just a princess, she must undergo some human transformation and become a wife.
even so. you had gone looking for her (only to study, of course, so you may know how to snatch her best). but that night you saw her descending from the window of a castle, quick and agile, moving like a whisper, clad almost entirely in black. you could see her quite well of course, although you were not seeing her; but instead her heat and her smell and her sound and all the other sensory noise all humans give off.
you followed her, keeping yourself in a cloud so you appeared as if mist. she stole off into the woods. you were interested in that, and watched her scuttle - although of course you could have taken her then, you wanted to study your prey as best as you could. she did not seem to do much in the woods, only run around cry into her little hands.
she appeared to be looking for something. she did not get far that first night; scurried back to her bed. over and over this happened - she would run as far as she could, only to go back again. it seemed rather boring to you, but of course you had been free your whole life.
and then one night - finally, she arrived at the lake. she sank to her knees then, her hands pressing into the water. her head tilted to the sky. her dark hair spilling in a caught breath behind her.
this is how you heard her voice for the first time. when she came again the next night, she did so more quickly, more assured. straight to the lake, as if it had called her.
she had skipped a pebble over the surface of the water. this action was dangerous, because it almost hit the sail of your wing. you had structured yourself very finely to look like a rockslide.
"three months." her voice was like her: it was deep and smooth and dark, a low violin string. "they want me to marry that bastard in three months."
and then she cried into her hands again, and the sound of it almost broke you.
you followed her maybe more than a proper dragon should, after this. more than just back to the castle and her bed. you hid along her daily walks and watched her in the throne room and saw her out riding horses. she was good with dogs and nice to her people and very much a proper princess, although you had heard it said a proper princess ought not to slip out at night and run around barefoot through the woods.
you discovered she is terrible with directions. you have often had to make a path more clear so she could get home again. she cannot hunt better than an egg; you have had to kill fish and push them subtly up to the shore.
but she appears to love the lake as much as you do. you have seen her read by candlelight (how foolish. the entire woods saw her each time). you have seen her build little paper boats to float along the surface. you have seen her strip her many layers and dive in, have seen her lay with her belly to the sky, floating like she is suspended by the hands of darkness itself.
oh. so she loves the stars, as well, then.
__
you must go in. she will be married tonight. that is a human thing, but you have since learned what it has meant. she will go to somewhere else, and you will not see her again, maybe ever. and then how will you be a proper dragon? go!
you have made yourself in the form of a gargoyle, hiding in the white stone. you can see into her room; and the tapestries that seem unlike her. everything in her room is very bright, which is bad for a proper dragon. there are many knights in the hallways and in their rooms, and their smell is itchy and repugnant to you.
her dress is white, which does not seem like her. you have only seen her wear black. she is sitting at some kind of desk, and she is crying again. she smells of cinnamon still, but moreso of grief. you can feel the heartbreak in her as if it was inside of you.
you cannot watch her cry anymore. you have watched too often without moving. that is shameful.
you nose the door open. you can move quiet, because you are not very big. she is within a cave of you, then a wingtip, and then she is standing up, looking into your eyes.
"it's you." her hand on your jaw is warm. "i thought i was imagining you, you know. i turned around that day. i saw what you did to those men. i have been looking for you since. i told everyone that i had an angel to protect me. they locked me in here anyway."
you are not an angel, you are a dragon. you have to keep your wings locked tight or you would explode the walls of this place. it makes you feel big, suddenly. you are not used to that sensation. you do not like to be locked in a tower. you believe maybe the princess does not like to be locked in a tower either.
you take her in your jaws. she is very small, and does not resist you. although you are not a strong flyer, you must take off in a single push. any other movement would be too slow. you must also hold your breath so you do not smell her, the clove and cinnamon and little bird of hope. your mouth would water and you would drop her.
against the full moon, you do the thing that is impossible. you stretch yourself out all the way, a bold and beaming arrow, and you fly. you can hear them cry about you now, loudly. a banner that would strike pride even into your father: dragon. dragon. dragon.
on the eve of her wedding, you snatch the princess from her tower.
an arrow whisks for you, and then dozens, and then hundreds. you are not afraid of pain. you have learned long ago how to fly with holes in your wings. you hold her very gently still, and you push past the smell of your blood.
in the night you are a star. someone somewhere could look up and see you and make a wish.
there will be another lake, you decide. you can find another lake. somewhere very, very far from here. however long you must fly, however long you must hold your breath: you will take her home, because you are a proper dragon.
___
sometimes they come for her, your treasure. you have built her a little castle here, deep in the forests off the map. and of course for you: a silver round lake like the shift of her iris. you bring her books and she brings you bugs to study. you let her saddle you, and together you ride through the clouds and fog banks. she is a shadow on your back; a warm and velvet thing. she makes you music and lives the way she should; free in the night like a promise.
but they do come. you have stolen a real princess, and they do not want her to be a princess. they want to make her into a brood mother, or into bait, or into prey. they always look into the caves first; into the places proper dragons stay. they are real knights, not just men with sticks. they are loud and their smell still makes you itch.
but she has made you brave now, and cunning. if a dragon is not big, it should be cunning. and since you are a proper dragon, and since your treasure is your most precious thing, you lay in wait.
let them come. you will let the light drip off of you, and then you will pour through them.
afterwards, your princess will tell you a story around the fire. she will patch your wounds as she did that first time. she will sing to you.
and in that moment, neither of you will be a title nor a story. she will just be herself, and you will just be you.
Down at Nevermoreâs lakeside dock, where Divina watches from the water as an irate Yoko berates Wednesday.
Yoko: STOP DEGRADING MY GIRLFRIEND!
Wednesday: This is a trade. Dignity is merely the only commodity I am accepting.
Yoko: I DONâTâ
Divina: Babe, I love you, but please shut up and donât ruin this for me.
Yoko: But sheâs feeding you FISH FLAKES like youâre a freaking GOLDFISH!
Wednesday: *thoughtful hum* While this would be squandered on goldfish, it does in fact contain gold.
Yoko:
Yoko: Huh?
Divina: Itâs not fish flakes, itâs Strottarga Bianco.
Yoko: Strotta-what now?
Wednesday: Strottarga Bianco is caviar from the rare Siberian Albino Sturgeon that has been meticulously desiccated and blended with 22-karat gold particulates.
Yoko: *stare of disbelief*
Divina: Yoko, a single kilo of this stuff retails for like three hundred thousand dollars. She just fed me the equivalent of one yearâs tuition at an Ivy League school.
Yoko: đ§âïž
Yoko: HOW?
Wednesday: Spoils from my uncleâs latest heist against the egregiously rich. You may think of him as Robin Hood, just with less hair and more lobotomies.
Yoko: âŠ
Divina: *splashes for attention* More, please!
Yoko: *watches dumbfounded as Wednesday sprinkles the worldâs most expensive caviar into the lake*
Wednesday: *casually* If youâre interested, I also have a quantity of Rh-null blood.
Yoko: *incredulous* Excuse me? Thereâs only like fifty people in the entire world with that blood type. Iâve never even met a vampire who has tasted it.
Wednesday: Then you can be the first⊠*arches an eyebrow* âŠas long youâre willing to consume it from a hummingbird feeder.
Yoko: Oh hell nah! If you seriously think Iâm gonna⊠gonna⊠*glances at Divina*
Divina: *happily eating the caviar like a gorgeous lesbian goldfish*
Yoko: đ
Yoko: đ€
Yoko: *bitingly* Do you put Enid through this shit?
Wednesday: My fearsome wolf is currently enjoying her weekly treat of A5 Kobe beef from a custom-made neon pink KONG.
Pre-Wenclair. A concerned vampire observes a preliminary courtship ritual between two queer disasters.
Wednesday: I donât trust your motives.
Enid: You really shouldnât. I plan to take advantage of our relationship to get exactly what I want from you.
Wednesday: And what might that be?
Enid: Excessive physical contact, possession of your oral faculties, and your single most precious resourceâtime.
Wednesday: Stating your machinations outright is both bold and reckless.
Enid: Qualities that havenât failed me yet.
Wednesday: Weâll see about that tonight. Expect no mercy.
Enid: Obvi. See ya then!
Wednesday: *nods, turns, and stalks away*
Yoko/Enid: đ đ„°
Yoko: So are you trying to date her or beat her at her own game?
Enid: Little bit of column A, little of column B.
Yoko: đ€
Yoko: Does this involve the rainbow duct tape, hot pink taser, and hardback copy of âA Gucci Girlâs Guide to Tortureâ you had delivered to my dorm room last week?
I think there's actually an additional level of betrayal here.
When I was a teenager and learning about critiquing, one of the things I was explicitly taught was that you don't share other people's manuscripts without permission, full stop. If you're critiquing someone's story, you don't show that draft to your partner, or your friend, or anyone, no matter how good or how bad or how funny or how weird or how whatever you think it is. You have been extended a degree of trust, but that does not come with the right to extend that trust to someone else on the author's behalf.
So even before you get to don't feed other people's work into AI, there's the very basic and technology-agnostic social contract of if you are critiquing someone else's draft, the permission to read it only extends to you and the feedback you provide should only be coming from you. Feeding it into AI is adding insult to injury, but even if you took the AI out of it and substituted another human reader it would still be Super Not Okay.
Please Download and share this video before it disappears! The White House mistakenly uploaded Donald Trumpâs remarks at an Easter lunch, which was supposed to be closed to the press, to YouTube Wednesday, before realizing its error and making the link private.
In Trump's speech, which Business Insiderâs Bryan Metzger uploaded to X in full, Trump fantasizes about being a king, admits thereâs no money left for health care or childcare because of the war he started, and daydreams about seizing all of Iranâs oil, and talks about returning America to Christianity as the state religion.
Trump does sound a bit more candid here than he does in front of reporters.
At 14:50 he starts to go on a racist rant about people from Somalia and fraud in Minnesota and in LA.
At 19:03 He starts talking about giving no federal money to Daycare, Medicaid, Medicare or Education and calling all of those programs "little scams". (19:50)
âWeâre fighting wars. We canât take care of daycare. You got to let a state take care of daycare, and they should pay for it too. They should pay. Theyâll have to raise their taxes, but they should pay for it. And we could lower our taxes a little bit to them to make up,â Trump said. âItâs not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You canât do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing: military protection.
Apparently, the Department of Education "needs only one person and a secretary to take dictation", but there is now a White House Department of Faith (so much for the separation of Church and State)
At 23:32 He starts quoting from the New Testament and comparing himself to Jesus.
âOn Palm Sunday Jesus entered Jerusalem with praise honoring him as King. They call me King now, can you believe it? No Kings. I canât get a ballroom approved. Itâs pretty amazing, right?â Trump also said in the speech. âIf I was a king, weâd be doing a lot more. Iâm doing a lot, but I could be doing a lot more if I was a king.â
At 27:09 Trump says "This Easter We are bringing Religion (Christianity) back to America."
Bunker construction appears to be related to the secure shelter and communications center underneath the former East Wing
I'm shocked. Shocked I say. Who ever would have thought that Trump might actually be building himself a "secret" underground palace and military complex from which he could launch drone attacks against anyone who wanted to remove him from the office of Presidency - ever.
So letâs talk about it. Ten years ago I was on the frontlines with many other queers watching in utter horror as our favorite new icon was murdered. Lexa was a fictional character, but she symbolized so much more. There wasnât nearly as much sapphic representation on tv, let alone on such a widely accessible channel, ten years ago as there is now. We were already starved for it. Weâd been gifted an amazing character. A badass, young, female warrior who grown ass men respected and followed without question, who lead her people with sensibility and compassion. And then we were given enemies to lovers. The conflicted, complex, emotional roller coaster that was Clarke and Lexa. Two powerhouses who didnât fall in love easily, they had to fight for it. No wonder Clexa was so iconic.
But we were also skeptical. We shouted loudly âWeâve seen this before!â âWeâre afraid sheâs going to be killed!â âWe donât want another victim of âbury your gays!ââ
And we were promised Lexa would live.
We were lied to.
The network showed clips of the season finale with Lexa in it, to lure us into a false sense of security. Then that night, March 3, 2016, they gave us the Clexa sex scene, they gave us happy Clexa, they told us she would be fine, then they shot her on screen and we all watched our icon die.
I was 24 years old, a lesbian yearning for any on screen representation, and finally finding an incredible source. I cried for weeks. It hurt for years. I genuinely grieve this fictional character. Iâm still not over the injustice, I just live with it deep in my heart. Lexa is part of me now. I havenât had interest in any sapphic shows since. Iâd been raised on Tara Maclay, and witness to Lexa. Iâve mistrusted tv writers ever since because I donât want to get my heart broken again.
I never watched a single episode of The 100 after 3x07. Iâve seen clips of Lexaâs appearances and mentions. I know the significance of the series finale. The only thing I can say is Thank You to Alycia who chose her finale appearance with grace and understanding of the impact Lexa had. She was not going to let them use Lexa to hurt us again.
This is why Lexa is so deeply important to me. She is my icon. She is a symbol of the pain and injustice we suffer in the LGBT community. She is a warrior and a leader. She is my Heda.
