#i babble

[ ID: Statement from Brennan Lee Mulligan, on Instagram. It consists of three black squares with plain white text. The text reads as follows:

"I'm calling on my government officials to immediately demand a ceasefire and de-escalation in Gaza.

I applaud anyone and everyone calling for peace, with the understanding that real peace only exists if it deeply and honestly accounts for and fully ends violence in all its forms. Real peace addresses and corrects wrong-doing in the past and guards against it in the future. It goes hand in hand with justice and requires truth, restoration, reconciliation, reparation.

Peace cannot co-exist with collective punishment, ethnic cleansing and forced displacement. It cannot co-exist with blockades, embargoes, or with 2.2 million people, half of which are children, trapped with no hope of escape or political recourse. it cannot co-exist with murdered journalists, bombed hospitals, or years of protesters being shot and killed at the border. it cannot co-exist with illegal settlements, segregated roads, and the silent, imperial chill that settles over the gaps in the violence - the unspoken geopolitical consensus that a group of people need to unflinchingly accept permanent subjugation and occupation.

My hear breaks for every Israeli person who lost loved ones during the attacks of October 7th. It breaks for every Ukrainian person who has lost their loved ones. It breaks for every Congolese person who has lost their loved ones. I do not speak on behalf of Palestinians now because some lives are worth more than others. I speak on their behalf because I, and all Americans, have a responsibility to pressure our government because we are responsible for this. Some have said that this situation is complicated. The Unites States government clearly disagrees. It has definitively, categorically, militarily chosen a side, and I do not agree with that decision.

In wiring this, I have been wrestling with what I am sure many people like me wrestle with: There is a powerful narrative surrounding violence in the Middle East that asserts and ever-moving goalpost of self-education and study in order to even be qualified to have an opinion. As someone with a love of research, I have at times in my life fallen into the trap that I am not educated enough clever enough, or aware enough to have a worthwhile perspective, and that three more articles and two more lectures and one more book will do the trick. Unfortunately, democracy doesn't work that way - we, the citizens of any democracy, cannot possibly be experts on every aspect of the policies of our governments, and yet if we do not constantly weigh in an make our voices heard, the entire experiment falls apart. Not only do people constantly doubt themselves and the things they can see with their own two eyes, but old shortcuts for political action can fall apart as well: This specific issue exists along a raw, charged and unique faultline in American Politics. Nobody I grew up with has ever challenged me on my support for abortion rights, LGBT rights, Black Lives Matter, anti-capitalism, anti-fascism, none of it. The people in my country who would despise me for those positions are, for all intents and purposes, strangers to me. But there are people who I've broken bread with and shared honest affection with who will see the words I've written here and incorrectly conclude that I do not wish for the security, dignity and happiness of them and their loved ones, and that breaks my fucking heart. Full-throatedly condemning the actions of the Israeli government while battling rampant anti-semitism at home is an urgent moral necessity, and doing so is made unnecessarily challenging for the average person to navigate by the pointed obfuscations of cynical opportunists, bigots, and demagogues on all sides of the political spectrum who see some advantage in sowing that incredibly dangerous confusion.

Well, since you asked...... 😏

Definitely his arches. Tickling him there will get him cackling and clawing at the couch or wherever he's currently seated while yanking his legs in desperation to escape his tickler's grasp. He'll protest and cuss until he's blue in the face, but that's all just to hold back his real urges to pathetically beg for mercy.

His toes are also a weak point. A feather would be a sadistic tool to use on him because of how easy it would be to slide it between his toes to access where the super sensitive skin hides. Especially the little-known death spot between his pinky and fourth toe. 🤭 His mind wouldn't be able to fully process it all with how badly it tickled and there would be no control over the squealing noises that are nonstop flooding out of him.

He does have a heightened sense of touch so anywhere would get a favorable reaction from him really, but I just imagine the parts that don't make contact with the ground would be his sweet spots. He is quite a kicker when his feet get tickled, meaning one needs to have a good grip on him or risk serious injury. Having a healing factor like Wade definitely helps. lol

So in short, he can't take it and will fight like hell to escape. Except when he's drunk then he's much more tolerant of being tickled in general. The alcohol dulls his sensitivity just enough that it'll still get him laughing pretty hard, but it won't send him into fight or flight mode. He'll essentially just roll over and take it, making it one of Wade's favorite opportunities to get his hands on Logan's feet. A lot less dangerous anyways, though that's never stopped Wade before. 😂

omg THANK YOU THATS SO SWEET I LOVE YOU TOO every time i answer asks i’m just a mess of myself scattered on the floor, its why i stopped answering asks standing up, my knees are bruised by how often i fall down

keeping the fics domestic is in the bag for me but im sorry abt the speed of my production i fear i am so kafka sometimes … writing … my greatest enemy

There was never a time within the confines of the city where there wasn’t something occurring, where there weren’t people everywhere. That morning was no different, people walked down the sidewalks, ran, moving in and out of crowds, speaking to one another, ignoring everyone.

Cars moved on the street beside him, moving forward in a rapid pace but only in small bursts, just as long as it took the light to turn, or for a pedestrian to cross, some constant instance where the flow was stalled. Trains moved below the surface, there, down there, under all those layers of asphalt and stone.

Erik could feel them, each one of them, each molecule, each piece. He could feel the metal of the cart before him, the snaps on a woman’s person, the eyelets in someone else’s shoes, the very iron in their blood.

Comfort came from that, balance, another one of those moments where Erik felt as though then, there, he had found his sense of purpose, that he was headed on the true path. That he, Master of Magnetism as he was, could control each of them in that moment, he could bend them to his will, make them submit, with a single thought.

Yet when the line moved forward, so did he. There was no need to assert himself, he needed adulation from no man. He would exist among them. He would wait. He would embrace the crispness of the morning, awaiting the bracing bitter taste of the coffee to come.

It was almost meditative, him lost in that space between, the steady movement of the line. One step, the wait, another step, then wait, another —

His hand was out before he could run into her fully, before he stepped his body fully into her space, but his blocking served more as a shove, and there was nothing he nor his power could do to control the tilt of the paper cup, or the way that it moved towards her, spilling and set to scald.