#// i think this is a p good one if we dont have stuff established yet uvu

[narwhalandchill]

anyway tho like. now that ive played the 1.2 story and sat on it a bit id say my overall thoughts are def mixed. i enjoyed a lot of it but theres some things that sorta just stick out or dont work and the pacing definitely worked against the story

(just a long rant/ramble upcoming its not coherent at all lol)

one thing that rly rubbed me the wrong way was like. while overall this story rly sold fu xuan as a character to me (i was a huge fan of her presence overall) the dan shu thing just felt? wrong? and like to be clear it wasnt just fu xuan the scenes writing was off in general but her role in being the one countering dan shus points just made her p central to the problem.

but like my issue is that dan shu is previously established as having very understandable reasons behind her resentment of lan that made her compelling as twist villain imo. Yet that resolve was nowhere in the scene in her rebuttal of the xianzhous ways?? when i think that shouldve been The moment of her calling out the xianzhou and actually challenging fu xuan properly. it wouldve been an even better opportunity to expand upon how fu xuan responds to being confronted with the xianzhous flaws and hypocrisy and problems. but somehow yassified dan shu really just. had a generic villain speech and thats it. the callback to their heritage as former followers of abundance was... fine? but like it wasnt that impactful. and fu xuan essentially calling her nothing but a power hungry villain when thats very much Not what dan shus motivation boils down to sucks and now players who didnt read her diary or play/pay attention to her side quest will think of her as just a generic bad guy and not a very tragic complex figure of her own

then the like. underutilization of blade was just like. ok what was the point. it IS funny to reference the tuxedo mask meme and how he skewers his ex yet immediately gangs up with him against yanqing and all but honestly he shouldve gotten to be more feral and present than he did like its just meh. ig its kafka keeping him from messing up elios script but cmon. i want more of him. yanqing also got done so dirty in that scene like. he shouldve gotten some more screentime and focus even if his job was p much to just get bodied. kid just watched jing yuan make deals with criminals no way he isnt affected by it

in general i was p shocked how inexistent the high cloud quintet was from the story. but ig w how rushed the pacing was for dan hengs backstory reveals at times already ig its better left for later (hopefully). i just rly hope this means that the topic get its time to shine properly in the future. esp since im p sure they never even named any of dan fengs crimes outright which is a curious choice.

jing yuan got a rly solid characterization and i definitely enjoyed it!!! even if im a little miffed at how they didnt give dan heng enough breathing room to come to terms with the emotional impact of facing his past and memories thanks to the plot moving forward so fast and he was kinda the one leading that. but he was still great - i liked the scheming side to him and the arguably pretty ruthless way he leveraged dan hengs exile status to force his hand to cooperate a lot. his reasoning makes sense obvi but its still a very brutal and utilitarian approach and i like that energy for his character. his duty is to the luofu above all else even if thats far from all he is about. overall his and dan hengs interactions including dan heng very much emphasizing his desire to be seen as separate from dan feng were a highlight for sure. and jing yuans final showdown moment against phantylia slapped obviously

and then w dan heng im torn between like. really loving all the good stuff we got with the insane cutscenes and the vidyadhara echoes and then wishing that he got just that little bit more for his own realizations and inner conflict. and the part about not properly featuring blade also hurt his story too imo bc the anticlimactic nature of the scene where blade confronts him and forces the transformation and how he n kafka just... leave rly kinda flattens the impact of the reveal moment esp since thats when jing yuan just all but openly says ok time for the plot. but they still did a great job selling DHIL and i think im overall a fan of how they seem to have handled the dan feng vs dan heng thing (and its roughly what i was expecting). dan feng is dead but its never just that simple either. i hope theyll be exploring the exact nature of dan fengs sins and the sedition in the future

im so mad i spoiled myself the tingyun thing bc jfc the neck snap wouldve hit So hard if the reveal itself was also a complete surprise. and its sth that was genuinely well built up like i remember thinking her 1.0 dialogue was kinda sus but wouldve never imagined the actual truth. dont do leaks folks sometimes this happens and it sucks :/ but i have to say phantylia herself was kinda? underwhelming. i liked when she picked up jing yuan like a little bug she wanted to squish and the boss fight was cool but to be fair. this was like 50% bc of how bad the sound mixing was for all of her dialogue that overlapped w in game battle. she rly lacks the necessary menace and imposing energy when u can barely even make out what shes saying 😭 her voice shouldve been as loud and large as her..... Presence. jing yuan carried the boss fight and the final cutscene but man the fade to black rly didnt do the abrupt ending any favors like we just teleport to exalted sanctum and thats it???? maybe jing yuan dies maybe not!!!

overall my prime issue is p much just how like. it feels like they shoved 3-4 mini arcs worth of stuff into one speedrun when all of them deserved more focus and exploration and the pacing rly got rough at times. it wasnt like inazuma level bad but it does get me wondering if hoyos just bad at doing these big conclusions to prior build up and holding the story threads tightly together until the end.

this comes off as super negative helpp but like. by no means did i hate all of it so dont take it the wrong way lmao. its more that there was good stuff there but also wasted potential. for the most part i was having a blast but to be fair that was 40% just playing blade ridiculously underleveled through it all. i only got him to lvl 80 for the boss fight

[neversatisfiedwithlife]

for the mostly likely to thing, i saw these questions on a glee page awhile ago, but if you want to answer them for cazzie that’d be great :p

1. Who spends almost all their money on the other?

2. Which one drives the car and which one gives them directions?

3. Which one gives the other a piggyback ride when they’re tired?

4. Who is the most affectionate?

5. Who falls asleep in the others lap and who carries them to bed?

6. Who wakes up first?

7. Who apologizes first after an argument?

8. Who is the nerd?

9. Who makes the other one laugh the most?

10. Who sleep talks?

11. Who hogs the blankets at night?

12. Who is the neat freak?

13. Who likes to surprise the other with random gifts?

14. Who buys the healthy food in the house?

15. Who has better music taste?

16. Who takes care of the spiders?

17. Who uses more nicknames

18. Who’s the little spoon?

19. Who suggests scary movies for film night?

20. Who gets jealous more often?

21. Who brings up kids first?

22. Who borrows who’s clothes more?

23. Who cries more during sad movies?

24. Who falls asleep on the other more?

25. Who says I love you more?

26. Who initiates kisses more?

27. Who initiates hugs more?

28. Who takes more pictures of the other?

29. Who leaves notes for the other one around the house?

30. Who gets drunk faster?

31. Who gets hit on more by strangers?

32. Who makes food for the house more often?

Most likely to:

(I love that you found it on a glee page! Anyways of course I want to do them!!!)

This is long so get comfortable besties😌 I didn't proof read so all mistakes are on purpose.

Spend their money on the other: Casey would spend a larger portion of her money on Izzie or just like on things they can do together. (I think Izzie would just be engrain to make her money go as fat as it can so she's more restrained or critiac about how/where she spends her money)

Which one drives the car: this one is simple, its Casey. Do we even know if Izzie drives? (Like ideally being the one who takes care of her siblings it'd help, but anyways. Yes Casey is the driver, I can see Casey love being the one behind the wheel. Also how she was with Sam I could see her as a back seat driver or like "why didn't you take this route" just asking stuff even if she tries not to. So in the end it's just easier to have her drive lol)

Which one gives the other a piggy back ride: we saw Casey lift Izzie up so I'm obligated to say Casey! (Okay so picture after a track practice Izzie is really exhausted; the work load of school and babysitting her siblings really hitting her that week. Casey offers her a piggy back ride, Izzie is skeptical at first, but Casey is so reassuring about it)

Who is the most affectionate: ooh this one is hard overall I think I'd say Izzie, Casey more initiates kissing, but Izzie just likes to be touching Casey. (While watching tv Izzie will have her hand resting on Casey's leg, or like sit close enough to where their shoulders touch, the way Izzie stretches out herself on top of Casey when they're in her bed. Izzie initiates hand holding)

Who falls asleep in the others lap: Izzie established cannot stay up for the life of her plus again we got the cazzie bridal style carrying scene!! (I think even more cuddled up to Casey she definitely can't stay awake, she'd just feel so safe and at ease. Lights out comes quickly lol)

Who wakes up first: Izzie is up first, again this is me seeing her as the caretaker of her siblings and not going on Casey's painful track running schedule. (Ik in that one episode Casey is up first, but casey was trying to avoid Izzie, anyways Izzie probably has to get her siblings up for school or just make sure they're fed and what not so I can see her generally being conditioned to wake up first.)

Who apologize first after an argument: I feel like this totally depends on the argument; who/what started it and what it's about. Generally both are good at apologizing and don't stretch out the argument (sorry if that's like a cop out and not a definitive answer)

Who is the nerd: Izzie without a doubt (i feel like she enjoys learning new things. Maybe she doesn't necessarily love studying school material all the time, but also I feel like maybe studying started as an escape or distraction from always being her siblings care taker and soon she just learned to love it. Or just loved knowledge)

Who makes the other one laugh the most: I say Casey, they both definitely make each other laugh but Casey takes it to another level. (Like when paige is at the door and Casey is like "do you think that's them here to kick us out in person". Casey uses humor to help Izzie unwind when she's too in her head about stuff.)

Who sleep talks: Casey, why do I feel like one of them actually slept tall? Am I hallucinating...what is happening. (Anyways I feel like Casey like if she had a nightmare or something she'd mumble in her sleep and like startle awake. Or of she's really stressed and overwhelmed she's in a more restless type sleeping state)

Who hogs the blankets: (I did answer this) But Casey hogs the covers, I'll add that Izzie is fine just curling up in a ball above the blankets and fall asleep. (Why did I have the thought they're doing laundry the blankets aren't dried yet but when they finally dry Casey finds Izzie sound asleep on the blanket less bed)

Who is the neat freak: I wouldn't say either of them are nec a neat freak, but I feel Izzie would want things in particular locations and Casey can just roll with it.

Who likes to surprise the other with random gifts: Izzie, though she doesn't spend large portions of her money she likes finding small things,knickknacks or like stuffed animals or just like a sweet, that will make Casey happy. (Having younger siblings that she actively has to care for has taught her that it doesn't matter the size of the gift or if it's sparkly)

Who buys the healthy food: Casey clearly didn't approve of Elsa's green stuff sticking out of the back so definitely Izzie. (Izzie enjoys her fare share of snacks but she knows the day has to be balanced with more than "empty" calories. She is patient though in finding the healthy stuff that Casey actually likes.)

Who has better music taste: I'd say Casey in that she would have a more diverse music taste, she'd expose herself to more genres and like eras of music (Izzie feels like a whatever is on the radio or popular on the music charts-this is not slander just vibes I get lol)

Who takes care of the spider: definitely Izzie (I can see her being the person who catches and releases it while Casey is just telling her to "squish it, squish it!")

Who uses more nicknames: probably Izzie, I feel like she uses a more diverse collections of nicknames for Casey. Just like whatever fits the moment. (Casey would just use Izz, dude and a choice pet name)

Who's the little spoon: IZZIE!!! Miss curl up into a ball and fall asleep, she'd definitely pull Casey's arms to wrap around herself.

Who suggest scary movies for film night: I think Izzie is the one to coax them into actually watching a movie, but Casey is actually the one who enjoys them more or is just less put off by them? (Casey totally teases her, never goes too far, about it before the movie.)

Who gets jealous more often: I feel like this belongs to Izzie, like she has more self doubt and insecurities about how much she deserves Casey.

Who brings up kids first: Izzie does, maybe they're studying and making useless conversations, they're on the topic of her siblings. (Maybe you'd thing dealing with kids all her life and an unsupportive mom would put her off; but I think it doesn't. I feel like Casey just genuinely never stopped to really think about kids. Or maybe she thinks she wouldn't be good with kids. Like yes shes amazing with Sam, but to her that's not the same. Izzie reassures her she'd make a great parent, if she wanted to be.)

Who borrows who's clothes more: I could see Izzie borrowing a shirt or hoodie to lounge in, but I dont see it regularly. (Also Casey I noticed wears like oversized shirts often so I dont think the fit of Izzie's clothes would satisfy her.)

Who cries more during sad movies: Casey does. It is something she will deny with her entire being, but it's her.

Who falls asleep on the other more: I'll choose a specific situation for this, not a general thing: when they're talking on the phone late at night I actually think Casey would be the one who ends up falling asleep. (Ik this probably meant literally but this is where my brain went)

Who says I love you more: I feel like Casey. (I feel like for Casey the environment she was raised in it just is easier for her to say it, or it comes more naturally. Izzie uses actions to show her love because sometimes the words I love you coming from her own mouth feel foreign).

Who initiates kisses more: Casey, I think she both initiates kisses and "steals" kisses more.

Who initiates hugs more: if I say Casey with no explanation you have to accept it!

Who takes more pictures of the other: Izzie takes more pictures of Casey (I can see Casey as the person who just loves to pull stupid(affectionate) poses that make Izzie laugh. Also idk I feel like Izzie would be less inclined to have her picture taken and Casey would respect that. They would definitely take pictures together inspite of that though because Izzie wants to capture every moment with her girl.)

Who leaves notes for the other around the house: this plays into the nicknames thing, I think Izzie would leave the most cute/ridiculous notes with like the most cute/ridiculous nicknames for Casey. (Ik Casey made the tarot deck but I can just visualize Izzie doing this lol, sue me.)

Who gets drunk faster: Casey. I see Izzie as the one who has more parties in her past, and ofc she drank so she has more tolerance. Especially being at clayton longer with the track gang and Nate 🤢 (Izzie having to take a drunk Casey home early because she can barely stand on her feet securely, this is when Izzie gets to drive 😌)

Who gets hit on more by strangers: I think Izzie, she gets hit on more by disrespectful men and Casey shuts that down right quick.

Who makes food for the house more often: Izzie, I think she totally loves cooking. She loves trying out new recipes and has a bunch of cookbooks.

[doodledrawsthings]

Her Aim Was Getting Better

(Ahit ““““““Coffee Shop AU”““““““ rp log)

This is part of an RP between @displacedentities and myself detailing the meet-up between Luka and Vanessa, when she spikes his coffee with the curse. We did this a while back to get a feel for the characters and how that scene would go down, and they nailed it with how they wrote Vanessa. So I asked them if I could post it. Some of the stuff here was written before we had other things established, so some things like Hatties’s age and how long ago they split might be inconsistent with other posts I’ve made, but Enjoy!

(also forgive me for the way i write my parts, I’m not as practiced at writing rip)

(MysticDoodles) Despite the warm paper cup in her hands, Vanessa couldn't deny the chill in her bones. It had yet to go away since that day in court, biting at her skin and hovering just at the base of her brain stem. It always seemed to grow colder whenever she thought about how she got here... the things she'd said. What she almost did to that poor briefcase jockey in the courthouse.

But it didn't matter, anymore. If anything, her mom was happy she lost that case. Losing her husband and... child had stripped away all excuses she had not to throw herself into her work, and her mother was happy. 

Vanessa was not happy. 

In fact, she was seething. 

Luka took everything from her, that day. Her love, her place in their home. His adorable smile, his laugh... they weren't hers anymore. He only gave them to that- little gremlin. The parasite that took his love away from her, her precious nickname given to their daughter. 

Nobody got to be Luka's princess except Vanessa herself. Never again.

She lost the custody battle and her efforts to take Luka's obsession away from him, but she was going to make sure he lost so much more.

Vanessa waited in the autumn breeze, her fingers clenching and unclenching around the coffee cup. Chestnut-infused Columbian. His favorite. A sister cup sat opposite the table, waiting for him. If he was brave enough to show his face. .

(DeusExMakena)  He could see her from his car as he pulled into the parking space, sitting at a table by the large window at the front of the coffee shop. How long had it been now? Around five years, right? Hattie was barely a year old when they split.

He used to get so excited about meeting her, being in her presence, making her smile... and now the very thought of just getting out of his car and making eye contact with her left a pit in his stomach. As much as he'd loved this woman in the past, the way she treated their newborn daughter.... he had to stop thinking about it. Starting this meeting out in an angry mood wouldn't be a good idea.

With a sigh he finally willed himself to leave the vehicle, and just as he looked up their eyes met. The pit in his stomach deepened as he walked up to the cafe doors.

(MysticDoodles) The ice crept up her neck again. Vanessa forced it down, and put up a smile. No reason to start this off as cold as the ice in her veins. 

 Luka can see from her attire that she's doing rather well- financially, anyway. A thick coat against the autumn chill- or maybe from her heart, so closed off- and a scarf stuffed into her bookbag. Her mother must have improved her stipend, now that they split. What a beastly woman. It's pointless to ponder what-ifs at this point, but maybe if Vanessa's mother had been someone else... no. No point.

 With one hand, she gestures to the chair opposite her. Empty and waiting. "Hello, Luka. I got your favorite. You're doing well?" 

 ...the tenor isn't as friendly as it sounds, and feels more plastic than her smile appears.

(DeusExMakena) He hesitates, looking around the venue at the other tennants before wordlessly taking the seat across from her, mostly staring at the coffee cup in front of him.

Why is he having such a hard time looking at her?

"I'm... fine," he manages to force out as he takes the cup in both hands. Come on, man just get this over with and you can go home. "So uh, what brings you here?"

He wishes he could kick himself in the face for how out of place he feels, right now. What do you even say to someone you haven't seen in years, when the last time you saw them had been after an intense battle over the custody rights of the child you fought so hard to protect?

At least the warmth of the cup in his hands provides him with some reassurance.

(MysticDoodles) Something in Vanessa's smile twitches, but it's gone before he can really tell what it was.

"Oh- I just wanted to chat, catch up on old times, you know? I'm guessing the bar exam went well?"

...

Awkward silence, as Vanessa turns her smile away. She lifts her own coffee cup to her lips and takes a long drink, looking at the pavement.When she sets it down, there's a brief moment where her fingertips looked blue. It soon fades back into perfectly trimmed nails.

"...you know why I called you here, Luka. Don't make me lie to you." Her voice grows quiet, though pensive or frustrated is difficult to parse. "You were always better at lying, anyway."

(DeusExMakena) He squints slightly at that last remark and has to do enrything in his power to hold his tongue.

"I dont, actually. With the way things ended the last time we saw eachother, I was almost sure that would be it." he says, probably with a bit more venom in his tone than he should have used, but he was here for less than 10 minutes, now, and he could already feel his patience waning.

"But if you're really just here to reconnect, you'll have to forgive me" he takes a moment to swirl the cup in front of him before lifting it towards his mouth "I'm not very good at small-talk."

Chestnut-infused Columbean bean. Cream and Sugar. So nice to know that she never forgot.

(MysticDoodles) Vanessa smiles as he takes a drink. It's gone by the time he removes the cup again.

"...sorry," she says. Her stony expression shifts into a frown. This wasn't how she expected this conversation to go- but really, she had been expecting nothing, so no pain or gain thus far. "I'm not being very polite, am I? I guess I just- missed you, Luka. It's very different, going back to my mother's apartment after-... well. Being with you."

...

Another quiet sip. Vanessa runs her finger on the plastic cap.

"...do you miss the nights after we studied, when we'd just sit on the couch together and watch garbage movies?"

Before Harriet came along, she didn't say aloud.

(DeusExMakena) Of course he did, he loved her. And as much as he'd love to revisit those moments, to relive the sense of elation he felt when he got her to laugh over awkward acting and nonsensical writing... He just couldn't forgive her for what she did.

He sighs, opting to indulge in her to see where she's going with this.

"Yeah," He takes another sip, looking back down at the table "Sometimes I still wonder why that had to stop."

(MysticDoodles) There's no way he misses the way her fingers tighten on the paper coffee cup. Especially since it's accompanied by an audible pop of paper crumpling in a half inch, and liquid sloshing within.

"They did stop, Luka."

How could he be so blind?

"They stopped when you stopped spending them with me. You spent all your time with our daughter, and not with the loving wife who gave her to you. Don't you see how unfair that is? I deserved your time, too."

Vanessa sighs, her words almost chastising. It reminded of the times she shifted into 'disappointed mother' mode around Harriet. Their one year old, at the time, who didn't understand consequences for things like dropping a toy in the sink. She even had the nerve to sound hurt as she speaks those words.

(DeusExMakena) He is absolutely apalled.

"I-" he doesnt know why he cant find the words to respond. His eyes wide and his eyebrows furrow as he glares directly at her. He shouldnt be surprised by this, really, he saw this coming. Five years, and some things will just never change.

Luka pinches the bridge of his nose, he MARRIED this woman.

"I'm sorry, are we- are we really doing this again?" He sets his coffee cup on the table with a little more force than he wanted to, "You do realize you're getting jealous over a literal one-year old that we both agreed that we wanted to have. I'm her father, I'm sorry, again, for doing my job and raising our child."

(MysticDoodles) Vanessa's long-suffering expression hardens back into stone, pouting out her lip as once more, Luka shows no signs of budging on his stance. How very lawyerlike of him. To the bitter end, he would fight for his side of the case against the opposition. She wished they didn't have to be on opposite sides, anymore, yet here she was for the second time.

"Is it so wrong that I wanted to spend more time with my husband? All toddlers need to learn to share, anyway." Vanessa shrugs, as if this were no big deal. "You never spent evenings with me, anymore, Luka. Every night that you came back from graduate classes and networking with firms, you would go right to her. The honeyed words for me didn't come until dinner, if they came at all. And don't talk to me like I wasn't a good mother- I kept her out of trouble during the day, whenever I was out of rotation."

...

"How is my little Harriet doing? It's been so long since you've squirreled her away."

(DeusExMakena) No. No, no, no, he's not doing this again

"You..." He tries to hold his tongue, but peck, he doesnt want to deal with this right now. He feels his hands ball into fists "No. I'm sorry, no, you don't get to ask how my daughter is doing. You had every opportunity to join us, no one was stopping you from being happy but yourself! You wanna talk about sharing? Then why are you throwing a fit over a over a child spending time with her father?"

 ...

"She wanted a relationship with you, you know. It's... really hard having to explain to a five-year-old that she doesnt get to see her mother because she was too immature to realize 'oh hey! I could hang out with both my daughter AND my husband at the same time!'" He says that last bit in a mocking tone as he picks up his coffee and goes in for another sip, glaring straight at his ex-wife with pure exasperation.

(MysticDoodles) There he goes again. His daughter.

This time, Vanessa doesn't look away as she returns the glare. The medical graduate holds unflinching eye contact as she lifts her own cup and downs half the contents. Trying to make a statement, maybe? She always did have issues with competition.

"...so where does that leave us, then? You drink the coffee I got you, and walk away? Are you really so set on burning this bridge, Luka? Things can go back to the way they were, if you really want it that way. My stipend will get us through the rest of exams, and then we can live a good life together - high paying jobs, a comfortable apartment, as many dates and trashy movie nights as we want. Doesn't that sound wonderful?"

...she didn't say a word about five-year-old Harriet.

(DeusExMakena) Luka takes a moment to stare at her, eyes half-lidded and tired.

He picks up the cup and downs the rest of his coffee, before placing it back on the table and standing up from his seat, his eyes never leaving hers.

"Allow me to light the match for you."

With that, he turns towards the door, ready to leave. Why would he feel bad about burning a bridge that leads nowhere?

(MysticDoodles) Luka can hear the squeal of the metal chair legs as Vanessa stands abruptly from her seat. There's no click of heels on riverstone, but he knows she's got her fists clenched at her sides, watching him. She always did that when she was angry. Maybe this time she'd have some ice on her wrists, now that her abilities were public. She'd put less effort into hiding it after the court case, anyway.

"YOU'RE MAKING A MISTAKE!" Vanessa yells after him as he continues, stride unbroken. "You'll regret this! You won that case, but you'll always be my prince, and I'll always be your princess!"

But legally, she couldn't touch him, now. Luka and Harriet were no longer family. He knew that, and she knew he did.

...

Oh well.

The door closes with a crnk-ling of the bell, and the background noise of the cafe starts to fade back into her awareness. Or lack thereof. Everyone nearby was staring, not that she cared.

Stiffening her upper lip, Vanessa grabs her bag and loops it back over one shoulder. She pats the side, removing the scarf off the copy of 'Ancient Botanicals & You' she'd found at the antique bookshop, and tying the garment back around her neck. With one hand she picks up Luka's cup, and looks inside.

Empty.

A smile traces her lips as she takes it along with her own, and tosses them both into the trash can.

Now all she had to do was wait and see.

[petewentzisblack1312]

i wanna talk a little bit about the shitty comments ive gotten over on tiktok because ive gotten my fair share and theres not really a wider message other than "black people are traumatized constantly for the crime of existing" and because this often feels like a thankless task but thats in part because i dont talk about the bad parts at all and people mistakenly think everyone is as lovely and as willing to learn as they are. make no mistake i absolutely love those of you who are grateful for the work i do but many people like, personally hate me for the work i do.

a classic is the guy who tried to convince me that wyclef jean is a pop producer as opposed to a dancehall producer brought onto pop songs to make them more dancehall, and also tried to convince me that poly styrene didnt ever talk about race or being black, and then followed that up with just. straight up inaccurate racist dogwhistling. he was like "blacks commit most of the crimes" which is patently false and we literally were not talking about crime. he just. brought that into the convo for no reason.

theres the guy whos entire argument was "you maybe made a slight error kinda and youre just saying inflammatory stuff out of context" despite the fact that a good portion of my page is dedicated to adding the fucking context. and then ended it with a death threat asking me how much cyanide itd take to poison me and my neighbours.

then theres the most recent asshole, a british imperialist who found a video where i said we (the english caribbean) want our money back before arguing that 1) england didnt take any money from us and they established our country so we should be grateful and 2) after i explained that they kidnapped us he responded with the misrepresentation that we werent kidnapped and were sold by other africans which for starters, slavery in africa was not chattel slavery and furthermore, after they realised what chattel slavery was, they stopped trading with europeans. and then they kidnapped us. which there are multiple accounts of. like he just didnt know shit about the transatlantic slave trade and was just repeating a gotcha style fun fact and that one made me so damn mad because we have to learn so much about their shit for brains country and they dont even learn what they did to us.

lets also throw in the racial gaslighting ive experienced from 21/p fans, some of which youve seen but which also happens on tiktok and instagram, even on videos i only commented in agreement of. some highlights include being told reverse racism is real (excellent company) and also what is still the funniest thing i have ever seen, someone telling me they were the first to speak out during the protests only for their example to be them posting a black square on insta. the jokes write themselves.

also the response to me saying anything negative about anyone ever is a rumour constantly used to discourage black alt kids in the scene having anyone to look up to despite the fact that its not true and actively damages the person involved and there are plenty people in the scene who have done worse than that and yet we havent held them to account. literally just to ruin my day. not even bc they care about her, just cuz they think itll hurt.

im sharing these just to kinda illuminate the way being openly black is discouraged, which is why when you get the opportunity, you should encourage it. not just righteous anger, but innocent joy too. it may not be for you, but you are a member of this community, and sharing black joy is the best way to make sure its seen by the people who need it. note: black joy is not only black people being happy, but also black people being happy while being black. talking about and enjoying black culture and black identity and black beauty and blackness. it may not be for you, but why not signal boost? being in the minority means its harder for things to spread. help us find each other.

anyway. just wanted to share. these things happen, and i think its unhealthy to pretend they dont hurt too.

[zenosanalytic]

what makes u think muir won't kill gideon off? in various interviews/AMAs she's seemed to imply that it's her plan (talking about the burying of gays, 'not promising' gideon will appear in alecto even!). I also feel narratively like gs full permadeath is not an inevitability but possibly ud be able to articulate that better

Well I intentionally don’t read interviews and AMAs, but I appreciate the Confidence ^v^

Obvsl I could be wrong on all this but here are my reasons for thinking 1)we’ll see Gideon again 2)Gideon’ll make it through the end of the story in some sense

1)As with her death in Gideon the Ninth, I don’t think the last scene we see her in in Harrow is a particularly “good” or “satisfying” end for the character. That doesnt guarantee anything, obvsl, but so far Muir’s sense of what makes a good story has meshed pretty well with my own, so I’m narcissisticly betting that agreement continues u_u Of course, I made the same bet with Homestuck and it didn’t pan out so...(I’ll address this later)

2)I feel like Muir likes Gideon too much as a character? Like: I believe Muir likes writing Gideon’s voice, and likes having Gideon’s pov in and on her story, and based on that assessment I think she’ll keep her around

3)similar to 1), I don’t think Gideon’s final scene in Harrow is a particularly satisfying conclusion to Gideon’s plot. Her Deal was REVEALED in the (hilarious)confrontation scene with the Emperor, but that was merely ESTABLISHING what was going on, it wasn’t resolving any of it; I feel like Muir’s the type of writer who would want to play that all out and resolve it satisfyingly, so I don’t think she’s going to end Gideon here.

4)This Post. Specifically the lines: “Alecto will be about girls being annoyed that it is legal for their exes to talk to each other.  The tomb is open. The get-along shirt is empty.” There are only so many viable “central” characters in the story, only so many romantic interests, and Gideon is the primary one who is both, so I think a narrative humorously described in the manner would likely have Gideon in it in some capacity.

5)This one’s a bit meta. Obvsl I dont know Muir personally, and I Do Not Profess To Be A Mind Reader but, judging from her HS fic and what I’ve read of her writing, and what exceedingly little I know of her life from sharing a fandom half a decade ago, I think something that really interests her is Relationships and the wide variety of how they are expressed and, specifically, the wildly vast and often seeming-contradictory collection of emotions and connections which the english language laughingly collapses within the single word of “Love”. I feel like this (idk?)“theme”(I guess??) is PARTICULARLY relevant in The Locked Tomb Series. And I also feel the various formations of “Love” presented in Homestuck via Troll Romance are equally interesting/important to her as a framework for engaging with the idea of “Love”. To an old Homestuck like myself, it is Clear As Day that Harrow/Gideon is a Textbook rendering of a healthy Kismessitude(Gideon hates Harrow but she’s HER person to hate, and vice versa; No One Will Kick Their Asses but Themselves :p). It is also the ONLY extant kismessitude(the other being the extremely unhealthy Mercy/Augustine obvsl) in the series. Therefore, I don’t think she’d write Gideon(or Harrow) out of the story just yet cuz I don’t think she’s done exploring that idea of “romantic hate”(or, more accurately, “love complicated by mutual trauma, need, resentment, and opposition”) through their relationship.

6)As Others Have Eloquently Written, I believe Harrow the Ninth can be read as a response to post-Hiatus Homestuck. Yes this reason is fanwank :| :| I cannot remember Muir ever expressing disappointment with how Homestuck shook out in Act 6 and beyond, BUT, while she remained active in the fandom during that period, her writing always remained firmly in the Pre-Hiatus and Hiatus era milieu. There are plenty of explanations for that OTHER THAN not liking where canon went, but these facts --combined with how easily it is to read HtN as intentionally avoiding/responding to what are often identified as the “mistakes” and “bad choices” of post-hiatus HS-- leads me to the assumption that what appears to be happening is happening. SO: I dont think she’d unceremoniously write out a beloved character because unceremoniously writing out beloved characters was one of the big sources of angst post-Hiatus. If she WAS going to nix Gideon from the storyline, I feel like she’d do it in a narratively satisfying way. WHICH ISN’T TO SAY that last sequence with her in Harrow wasn’t good, it was VERY good, but it felt less satisfying as an End for a character than as a mid-point cliffhanger for a character(and espcl for Gideon what with all the unresolved Stuff).

For obvious reasons I would have liked to have 8, or possibly even Nine!, reasons for my position, but this is all I can come up with right now. Maybe later I’ll edit them in and erase this apology along with my shameful numerological failure :p :p :p Anyway, Dear Readers: I hope you find these Logics both “Articulate” and Pristine :> :>

[yaboyspodcastpalace]

For the character asks: Jon, Peter Lukas, Annabelle Cane? (giving multiple suggestions so you can pick one in case you get the same character twice in different asks)

very kind of you to assume i get many asks :') THANKS ill do all of them u_u

[Send me a character and i'll tell you...]

(under the cut bc i love talking and this got long lmao)

Jon

First impression

he's a uptight prick with obvious favoritism for sasha and tim and i love him so! much!!!!!!

Impression now

my poor little mew mew hm................I've got a complicated relationship w/ jon bc i love him a lot, but i loved s1 him the most, and literally everything else just makes me really, brutally, sad ;_; The way he tries so desperately to cling to his humanity and how other characters just call him by the title imposed to him makes me wanna cry

...also he just cares so much ;_; i cry

Favorite moment

probably his interactions with georgie at the beginning of season 3!!! From s5 id say when he killed not!sasha, it felt vindictive ù_ú

Idea for a story

Dhfhdh im p basic when it comes to him ngl, either jon/tim/sasha friends to lovers or jon and desolation!tim or *something*!sasha trying to stay as human as possible, together 😔 (or just any of them living and coping together in s4 n s5)

Unpopular opinion

Im just not a fan of monster jon, at all! He's not the type of character that i enjoy seeing having a corruption arc unfortunately!! It just hurts!!! (and this Is from someone that Loves corruption arcs!!!)

Also i really hate moth jon imagery??? For not particular reason, moths are pretty, but i still hate it u_u AND THE ASSOCIATION OF GREEN W/ JON (or the beholding in general!) I CANNOT STAND IT!! i know its bc of the tma logo but guess what! Its wrong! Purple jon rights!!!

ALSO ALSO the so called pining he had for martin just.... didnt felt like that at all! i have Many feelings abt this!

Favorite relationship

either georgie in s3, or sasha!!! i love how he always praises sasha in her research in s1 and even thought he's at his driest & sharp Trying-To-Project-Professionalism-And-Skepticism she still rolls into his office, interrupts him mid statement to banter w/ him abt pronunciation n stuff and its just Normal, like that speaks volumes of how comfortable they felt around each other! they were friends gdi! the moment he realizes she died and then everytime the not!them mocks him w/ her death makes me wanna break smth q_q

im not even gonna mention tim bc even though i love their relationship It 👏 makes me👏 very 👏 sad 👏

non shippy and also staying strictly canon, i love his relationship with melanie!

Favorite headcanon

sometimes i think abt that one hc that hes really good with arcade games bc he lived near the coast and i smile bc thats cute :) also hes a trans man 💙💗🤍💗💙

Peter

First impression

Mystery evil captain man!!! Fog?? I LOVE him :)

Impression now

I STILL LOVE HIM SO MUCH!!!!!!!!! Hes an asshole and has a lovely voice and smile and hes not, hes not Dumb but also he's far from the whooooa evil lonely influence he think he is (played like a cheap fiddle). He also makes me sad in ways i cannot and wont describe, and its a shame that he died cuz he was the best part of season 4 😔 rip you beautiful bastard man i still miss you </3

Favorite moment

"It has blood on it" "thats Leitner's too :D". Also when martin was angry abt idk, breekon? Jon going into the coffin? Cant remember, but peter was like I said id protect the institute, that guys not my problem ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Idea for a story

dfgdfg i have..... a petermart story that dealt with the different flavor of loneliness they both had, half smut half genuine meta of both of them and theorization on the branching of an Entity & how their powers manifested in other people...

basically, peter thinks hes hot shit when it comes to loneliness but gets overwhelmed when martin accidentally projects his feelings abt *fic's plot stuff* on him, its fun stuff!

Unpopular opinion

people either paint him like an absolute devil or an incompetent idiot and hes neither of them! hes an asshole who loves being an asshole but far from the worst monster in the show and he tried to do a clever scheme TWICE on his life and 1. while it was established that any of the rituals wouldnt work singularly the Silence was still a pretty clever attempt if it weren't for gertrude! and 2. well... he tried to manipulate someone petty and formerly supposed to be a web avatar, again not his fault, cant call him stupid for trying dfgdfg

i Do think hes kinda pathetic in some sense considering his backstory, but more out of personal pity than anything else

Favorite relationship

Canonically speaking him and martin! The pull and push of them was The best thing about season 4! Peter being a quite dangerous avatar and martin, beautiful and scared and kinda feisty, confronting him every chance he gets, peter doing his best to manipulate him and martin letting him believe hes succeeding (even thought, he is, partly). They're fascinating characters to have side by side

Favorite headcanon

Partly canonically speaking him and mikaele salesa :) they do bets together! They're lonely sea men! What else could you possibly want?

Also non shippy i like thinking abt peter's and simon's relationship but thats entirely non canon ♡

Diversity wins! The heir of the lonely is a gay man!

Also I think as every rich household(?) the lukases had many paintings and peter as a kid saw the ones w/ sailing ships and imagined sailing far far away from his family. That and seaman aesthetic fucks, which is why he always has the same vibe going on as an adult. He does Not know half of the things he'd need to know to have a ship though but hey he's rich and thats all he needs

Annabelle

First impression

thats a horrible psychological experiment they're making there D:

Impression now

THATS STILL A HORRIBLE EXPERIMENT AND ANNABELLE DESERVED SO MUCH BETTER............. idk! she makes me sad in the same way jon (and to a degree, peter) does! to be a living puppet for the thing that traumatized you as a kid and that later kinda killed you / is the only thing keeping you alive, to be devoted to it scrambling to believe in a higher reason for all of it to happen bc to believe otherwise is............. anyway. i love her, and i feel so so sorry for her

Favorite moment

her "maybe ive never been to the beach" at the end of ehr statement (that i fully believe its bullshit but, yknow, i love that she adds that), most of her convos with martin, her "i told you this might happen" "you did, you did" with mikaele

Idea for a story

i think a lot about her having conversations w/ either mikaele (platonically) or sasha (shippy) and their different points of views and treat with her making her doubt the web a bit

Unpopular opinion

listen, listen, i know it sounds like im woobifying her i Know it but reading the scraps of her story how can i Not feel sorry for her? when the story framed her very similar to jon? the supernatural childhood encounter that gave them arachnophobia and the subsequential joining with an Entity against her will? the fact that both the story and the fans treat her like a spider woman always sat very very bad to me, and the fact that the story itself always framed her like a villain (considering All The Other Characters that get the benefit of the doubt) was extremely disappointing

Favorite relationship

her and mikaele!!!!!!! wish we could have seen more scenes of just the two of them!!!!!! *singing* he is her daaaaaad, hes her dad! boogie boogie boogie! (ok no but like... their offscreen friendship is my favorite thing of season 5 ;_;)

Favorite headcanon

Sigh i dont know...i still think she's scared of spiders which make her current existence harder but thats a sadcanon :/ umm...... i love the idea of mikaele and her cooking together from time to time! Mikaele showing her some plates he used to eat as a kid as he talks stories about his life :) and she listens and sometimes tells a story of her own! its been so long since he had a quasy normal conversation! its weird yet nice!

[thereal-linh-cinder]

Cinder’s Notes on Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets

We’re back with CoS!

Again, massive spoilers for the entire HP series (obviously)

Woo the hell plans where theyre going to stand when dinner guests arrive? you seem so unbelievably inhuman, which, i suppose the Dursleys are, but still...

DUDLEY’S COMPLIMENT FOR MRS. MASON

Because Harry is an unreliable narrator, is it possible that the Dursleys treat him slightly better than is described? Unlikely, but something to consider

Harry is so humble?

He’s also hilarious “[Voldemort] hasnt got a brother, has he?”

bars on the window are a bit extreme

the twins ooze chaotic energy

are the owls that wizards use magical? they always seem to understand humans VERY well...or is it just magic that gives magic folk a better connection w animals? Or is that just how owls are? Or do I just not understand how carrier birds work? 

rather convinient that only the bottom stair creaks and not like. the 13th from the top or something

“Draco made Dudley sound sweet” i mean. childish bullying at school  vs physical abuse for years but ok go off jkr

the twins are 14 and driving a car. in Britain. where you have to be 18. chaos

Mrs. Weasley reminds me way too much of my own mother

Percy wears sweater vests confirmed (are we surprised)

Please take a moment to imagine Percy’s reaction to Hermione becoming Minister

Lockhart + Rita Skeeter (idk what this means but its in my notes)

“got the impression that Snape could read minds” 👀

Lockhart is just gonna go through the whole rainbow huh

Lockhart really compared Harry almost DYING to him winning that stupid smile award. Bruh.

Lockhart has 7 books

I feel bad for Nick :(

There’s so much about the Vanishing Cabinets in this book!

that moment with the salamander and the firework is a gem

Do Ron and Hermione at least hear hissing in the walls?

so Lockhart is basically running the Hogwarts theatre department huh

why was Ron’s first thought toenails

Scarhead? Thats the BEST insult you can come up with, Malfoy? 

Yeah, let the 12y/o deal with the rogue bludger on his own, y’hear? (can you tell I’m a lot older now)

Honestly, Madame Pomfrey? Kinda a savage

If Voldemort was 70 when he died in ‘98, and he went to school with Lucius, how old is Lucius? 

Technically, if all purebloods are related, Harry IS a descendant of Salazar Slytherin. Not the heir obvs, but you know

honestly when you think about it, Fawkes’s death is hilarious. Like Harry’s just chillin and sees a cool bird and then it spontaneously combusts 

Did Crabbe and Goyle ever get their shoes back? 

Ron has REALLY good intuition

Why do they still have Riddle’s trophy on display? Like yeah not many people know that he’s Voldemort but that just feels like the equivalent of like...keeping up a trophy for the kid that turned out to be a sch**l sh**ter

Ok but the younger Weasleys have this knack for bullying Voldy. Twins pelted him with snowballs, Ginny flushed his diary down a toilet, Ron barfed slugs all over his special award....

well Harry if its a DIARY where you conventionally write personal stuff about your day or your crush, why are we surprised that it doesnt even have stuff like “dentist” and “aunt mary’s birthday” or “half past 3″ written in it

RON’S INTUITION BRUH “[the diary] coud be dangerous” “maybe [Tom Riddle] murdered Myrtle] yall know that theory abt him being a seer? yeah

I adore these characters so much bc theyre so real?? Lke we truly watch them grow up. Something about the way 11y/o Ginny covers her face and runs away vs how she acts in the later books just. I adore it. 

So this is where I broke my own heart and froze for a solid 15 minutes. I was beginning to write “I hope the twins sang ‘His Eyes Are As Green As A Fresh Pickled Toad’ at their wedding” before I realized that only one twin got to attend Harry & Ginny’s wedding. I trailed off at the S in twins and you can see how shaky my hand got in the writing (i wrote all of this out in a journal)

Riddle’s personality is so well preserved. (and then I remembered that he made his first horcrux that year and THATS why bc this is 16/17 y/o voldy’s soul)

In Riddle’s memory, he stops by the potions room after speaking to Dumbledore on the staircase. Slughorn is teaching that year. Harry says he is stuck outside that room for “what felt like an hour.” Is this where Tom asks about horcruxes? Technically at this point, Myrtle has already been murdered and its been a while but I’m p sure he asks about horcruxes after class one day. But idk. It really seems plausible, and It’s possible that he altered the memory to show Harry...

this is my least favorite book so i just wrote “this is the most boring book. I’m skimming.”

ah forcing 12 y/o to choose a career path

Quidditch mathces are EARLY (im used to sports matches in the evenings but i guess soccer matches are early and such so it makes sense) (my american is showing)

Is sitting at any table allowed? I never understood that and it used to bug me in the movies. Is it only required to sit at your House table during important feasts? Is that how a lot of inter-house relationships come to be? 

Fudge’s wardrobe was ROBBED in the movie. They really made him look like an established businessman when when we first meet the man, he’s wearing a pinstriped suit, scarlet tie, POINTED PURPLE SHOES and honestly woud it have been so hard to at least give him the lime green bowler hat? Such a staple of his personality

i feel like we tend to forget that hagrid has been to Azkaban

Ron saw Draco being racist and had to be physically held back by his friends. Mans was ready to THROW HANDS. 10/10 absolute icon

The prejudice against werewolves is very prominent.They clearly dont know a lot about them/arent taught (constantly expecting to find them roaming the forbidden forest EVERY NIGHT)

literally WHAT would they do without Hermione

still shocked that Hermione Jean Granger would willingly rip a page out of a book, especially a library book. But maybe thats just the fact that I’m the daughter of a librarian.

is the basilisk page from Fantastic Beasts? They really called it “a page from an old book” its literally in ur first year curriculum but ok boys

Why did Ron toss Lockhart’s wand out the window? He couldve used it instead of his spellotaped one. Granted, it wouldnt have been very good later on if he had, but. You know?

if this Tom is just an imprint of Voldy’s soul at 16/17, how does he even know who Harry is

he already has voldy’s laugh

OH Ginny told him about Harry that makes sense

Voldemort is SO dramatic. Imagine your buddy Tom one day says “hello dearest closest friends, I’ve decided I hate my name so I tried to make an acronym. Please only refer to me as Voldemort from now on. Also I could spell Lord with my name, so I am claiming my new status as a Lord.”

Also he’s holding Harry’s wand. Why is he sending this ginormous, super sow snake after this tiny scrawny 12y/o? Just kill him yourself. Even when Harry gets poisoned Tom’s like “take ur time bro imma watch u die i have nothing better to do” and only when neither of those first tow extra af options DO NOT WORK does he think “oh well guess i gotta use this WAND now ugh” like was he just not corporeal enough to actually use the wand yet or???? Buddy. If you really wanted Harry dead I feel like you could do better.

the fang SPLINTERED in Harry’s arm????????????????? uhm

Harry gets covered in ink a lot in the series

Dumbledore is such a simp for Voldemort honestly

I forget that Harry & Ron get trophies for special services too bro

did Arthur create the Muggle Protection Act???

...why DOES Lucius have Voldy’s old school things? 

Harry and Ron got a total of 400 points for this. But only 10 FOR TAKING OUT A TROLL AT AGE 11 

Lucius is LITERALLY on the PTA hes a school governor 

[tangyss]

do you mayhaps have any,,,, fic recs,,,,,,,,

mayhaps i do.......... this week’s theme is.....:

🔥💪🤩 lance centric fics written better than the actual gd show with a side helping of klance 💪🤩🔥

back with a madness (champion) by mytay

lance gets roped into a weeks worth of illegal underground cage fighting in order to protect some alien kids and their wounded mother, while trying to do this behind his suspcious teammates backsOH MAN OH FUCKIE DUDE...... ive wanted to rec this fic for SO FUCKING LONG bc when i started reading this i genuinely got so hooked...... bamf lance who is written SO WELL??? we STAN??? like idk but the fact that lance’s drive throughout the whole thing is to keep the family safe, like he could totally back out, he could totally get someone else to help, yet he keeps going with pride and determination bc he wants to make sure this lil family of alien gets to the end of this safely makes my heart MELT...... if u like badass lance w the team being supportive as well as extremely concerned for him then u should 10000% read this fic(tw: injuries and fighting, tho if u can watch the rocky movies u’ll be fine w this, pining keith more than actual klance, matt/shiro, tho for the most part it’s somewhat easy to view as platonic)

lance’s guide to picking up hitchhikers by bwyn

modern au where lance gets a new car, and first thing he thinks of doing with it is going on five day long roadtrip while picking up hitchhikers and befriending them

wow i cant believe people online who create fics for fun can write lance and the team as really good, really close friends who care for and genuinely love lance PROPERLY, unlike some “professional” show i know!!!! wild!!!!!! this fic is basically lance becoming friends w the team, it’s super cheerful and heartwarming to read and this fic’ll make u want to take an impromptu roadtrip bc it’s SO FUN!!! everything about it is so good man...... also everyone is GAY and im p sure lance has adhd which made my heart SOAR

(tw: allura/shiro.... like im not 100% but i remember there being more sh/al than there was actual kl and i didnt dig that, but the fic does mainly focus on the friendship elements than the romances..... also (spoiler) the kl is open ended in this fic too but if u want team bonding and fun times u should read this!!)

5 + 1 times: lance and the search for keith’s boyfriend by haikquu

lance and keith are really..... really close friends, yet somehow lance starts finding clues that keith might have a boyfriend, which is weird, bc keith never told him that he had boyfriend, yet everyone else seems to know.... HUH.....

man i was giggling the whole way through this fic just read it please sdiguhsdiugsjguisjgsidugj it’s hhhhhhhhhh HEARTWARMING AND DORKY

+ an extra one if ur feeling a lil angsty......... and by lil i mean this fic feels like a horror action thriller which i read at 1am when only the first chapter was out and ended up not sleeping that night bc i was too busy not crying

echo a spark by usernicole

a s4 rewrite...... and tbh if voltron wasnt a kids show, this is how it SHOULD have gone.... shiro is not his usual supportive and open self around lance and is acting a lot colder to lance than he normally would. after coming to the conclusion that that’s not shiro, lance makes a plan to find the real shiro

also, it’s part 2 of this long distant s4 klance fic but basically if u dont read that one first, the context is that keith and lance are dating, keith’s still w the bom, and shiro is a fucken CLONE.. also broganes yay! and a lil bit of established klance conflict but it’s all good they cuddle uwu

(tw: lance has an anxiety attack in ch1, there’s a FUCK TON of fighting in ch2 and like seriously..... the descriptions for stuff that happens in ch2 shouldnt be read by someone who isnt good w body horror/gore n shit like that... it’s an intense fic, but im a fan of horror thrillers so i enjoyed this when i wasnt on the verge of tears lol)

[abundantchewtoys]

HS Epi: Meat p19 reaction

I... don't really know what to expect anymore.

What could the wallet contain. A Dad note. A Terezi note. Or captchalogued people?

Odds are even we won't be seeing it right away. Though I'd dread to see Dirk's omniscient narrative voice take over narration of the post-victory scenes.

Still, Dirk should know better by now than to rely on his strong points this much. They're not evened out by a reliable moral compass all the time, and he's seen the results of that before. Guess with great knowledge comes great arrogance.

"Anyway, back to the B Plot." Ah yes, the B Plot. On Earth C. Featuring A2 trolls Karkat and Kanaya.

"Right about now, Jade should be wrapping up her political presentation to Roxy and Calliope" Ah, skipping right to the end of that, are we.

"Jade’s got this disarming combo of head-in-the-clouds flightiness and the kind of legit, down-to-earth cred that can only be earned by having done something like cutting open your own grandfather and stuffing him full of polyurethane foam." Ah yes, one of these definitely led to the other.

"neoliberal austerity measures" How often can we repeat the same 3 words?

"

Roxy groans upon hearing the phrase “neoliberal austerity measures” for no less than the third time in this presentation." Roxy the audience surrogate. Since it's our 3rd time too.

"JADE: as i outlined here in graph b-2 JADE: and here in figure a-6" It's a good thing timelines can only be scratched the once. A6 Alternia would have been a dreadful sight.

"JADE: and here!!! in this very spooky drawing i dictated to callie JADE: (great drawing by the way!!!) CALLIOPE: ^u^" Hah, Calliope's drawing skills have found another use! Political Powerpoints.

"JADE: the thing is that jane is an establishment leader JADE: shes looking at doing things the way our old universes did them JADE: shes pretty convinced that shes going to be able to replicate the capitalist hierarchies that earth had but in a more “responsible” way JADE: but none of that stuff actually worked!!!!!" That's a nice summary of the things that are wrong to Jane's approach, actually. Though it doesn't provide an answer to the underlying problem yet.

"ROXY: and u think karkat can do better? JADE: i think its worth it to give him a chance JADE: hes a leader of the people AND hes experienced firsthand what happens when establishment goes too far JADE: which i imagine you can sympathize with!" This really feels like a boardroom conference, with Jane trying to get a preliminary backing out of a captain of industry.

"Her graphs are floating around the living room in disarray." Hah, she's using her space powers for this in another mundane application. Though... not in any offical setting, it seems. Roxy and Calliope's home.

"CALLIOPE: i’m... CALLIOPE: going to get Us tea and snacks. woUld yoU like some, jade?" To be fair, Calliope's probably going to follow Roxy in her eventual decision, anyway. Her childhood fascination with trolls might have been abandoned for new interests, or she might trust her friend's judgment in matters political.

"Calliope excuses herself from the conversation, and flees to the kitchen, seemingly making no attempt to disguise the fact that she is in fact fleeing." What a cutey. Calliope might in fact be trying to flee anything reeking of negativity, associating it with black romance and such.

"Jade deflates as she watches her go, sensing that her presentation wasn’t the slam dunk she was hoping for." It's so easy forgetting that the narration is also at least in part steering the story at this point. >_<

"ROXY: well i gotta say ROXY: this has been a hella convincing argument all in all ROXY: buuuuut idk if i can help u out" Maybe they would actually like to stay neutral?

"She and Calliope live in a belfry above New Prospit. One end of their living room is an oriel window that looks out over a public park. The other disappears into an arcading hallway lit at the far end by a giant stained glass window that Calliope made herself. The corbels supporting it have windy, abstract shapes carved into them." Artsy! I didn't know what to picture for their living space, but actually Calliope taking to carapacian art-deco and giving it a cheruban twist really works!

"That’s what keeps Jade Harley flitting from couch to couch, relationship to relationship. She can’t stop thinking to herself that “home” comes awfully close to rhyming with “alone.”" Home Alone, huh?

"Home is John, who doesn’t call anymore. Home is when Rose and Kanaya welcome her in from a cold night and help her set lyrics to her sick basslines. Home is here, snorting at Roxy’s irreverent method of storytelling and admiring Callie’s art. Home is Dave and Karkat." This REALLY reminds me of the Tramp, as he had a home in every street he frequented.

"ROXY: im alls ABOUT the sowing of discord among my childhood friends" She's had quite her fill of the dramas. That's a valid reason to stay out of it. She'll just have to weight it against the downsides of not influencing the outcome of the election in any positive way.

"JADE: dirk got to you first ROXY: not even ROXY: i got no problem tellin dirk where to stick it lmao ROXY: but dirks not the one running JADE: you think hes NOT the one pulling the strings behind the scenes? ROXY: sure but give janey a lil credit" On the one hand I'm glad Roxy's got such a backbone, on the other hand, off course we know Dirk's still influencing the outcome at the moment. Also, uh, he's got no issues invading the lives of his friends personally, even after telling us off on the subject first.

"ROXY: but shes yknow JADE: ruthless? :B

Roxy frowns. Jade is being pretty unfair." I get the feeling Jade is less good at filtering her words lately. And I also get the feeling Dirk is starting to sow a little conflict.

"ROXY: shes gotta be miss perfect all the time for the billboards n press meetings ROXY: always wearin those power suits trying to look like a big bad bitch JADE: you mean like....... the condesce? ROXY: wow ouch JADE: im not just imagining it though, right??? JADE: you see it too JADE: not to dredge up something horrible from your history JADE: but her whole image is just kinda...... *woof* ROXY: is that what you guys think? ROXY: u and dave and karkat?" It's something they should have brought up via intermediary channels to Jane on beforehand. Not let fester until all they could think of to "stop" her was introduce a late-to-the-party candidate.

Jade might also be doubly upset with Jane for seemingly mirroring the Condesce, as they were both brainwashed by her.

"Roxy leans forward and stares Jade down, like she’s searching for something behind Jade’s eyes." That's the same thing she did with John! Guess she's trying to find out some of her secrets.

"Jade unwittingly responds in kind, looking for meaning behind Roxy’s gaze. But she comes up empty. And to be honest, so do I." That unfathomable personality might be your spanner in the works, Dirk. I can only hope she's secretly onto him. Her Void powers manifest the 'obscurity' different from Equius.

"In the spirit of full disclosure, Roxy’s the only one left I haven’t been able to crack. Her mind remains a total enigma to me, just like it always has." It's interesting, since they share so much in childhood upbringing, progeny, demeanor even at times...

"invisible, even to increasingly omniscient parties such as myself" *coughDocScratchcough* ... What would Reload Roxy be doing right now, assuming the session's timeline didn't stop when Caliborn's soul 'left' it?

"ROXY: but shes not betty crocker ROXY: and i luv her and i dont wanna hurt her feelings" N'aww.

"ROXY: and thats p much all there is to say on the matter" Second time the phrase's been used in the epilogues!

"CALLIOPE: oh, i’d rather stay Uninvolved, thank yoU." Passive player to the brink.

"CALLIOPE: i feel like interfering in both politics and a personal argUment between my friends woUld be impolite as well as kind of... stressfUl, to be honest. JADE: yeah JADE: sorry callie i probably shouldnt have put all that on you CALLIOPE: less apologizing, more snacking!" It's nice to see they're cutting her some slack. A horrible childhood, an early death, a spiel as a ghost... Oh, sure, she's one of the good guys and as such would have some responsibilities in the end, but it's nice for a change they don't expect too much from her. Maybe a bit too little for her own good, but still.

"Calliope claps her hands together. It’s a bright noise. Her tone of voice is bright too. All these years and she still can’t believe that she has so many friends. She smiles at Jade, and Jade smiles back. The tea tastes great. The cakes are even better. Callie’s an artist in everything she does." ^u^ Aww, that warms my heart at least.

"JADE: wow callie youre such an amazing hostess!" ... Well, she's a more excellent host than Doc Scratch, for sure!

"ROXY: psst not “her,” “them”" ... I see! Well, guess we'll be getting some more insight into the androgyn bodies of cherubs and how Calliope has updated her self image over all these years? Caliborn still had the giant eyelashes, so it stands to reason there were also other, more masculine traits to Calliope's body even when she still shared it with her brother.

"JADE: oh wow!" Oh, I figured Jade already knew about Calliope's preferred pronouns, but it seems not!

"CALLIOPE: bUt i did take comfort in “being a girl” for a very long time. this is something i’ve only recently decided." ... I just remembered how Calmasis also was this androgynous figure. ... I wonder if Calliope will be thinking about a name change.

So, I don't think Roxy's haircut is a sign she's genderfluid now too, but I imagine a lot of fanart has already been created for butch!Roxy by the time I read this.

"ROXY: m-me too actually" Oh. N-never mind then. That caught me unaware! I didn't see that in Roxy. For one, despite all the pink and the ponies, she didn't seem like she felt "trapped" in a role to me. Unlike Calliope, where I can see how she might have felt obliged to embrace everything not-Caliborn.

But this does shed a whole new light on Mom's overly childish and girlish bedroom in the lab. Like she was trying to compensate for something. Uhm... It might also be one of the main reasons behind her drinking problem. Her embracing girlish, adult woman habits but never feeling like they 'fit'.

Well well. Homestuck's main characters continue to be representation incarnate.

"Wait.

   What?" PFFFFFFFFFF. I love it. Dirk's reaction is gold. Guess this completely blindsided him too and didn't shed any more lights on the inner workings of her mind than he thought. So even if he knew she was holding something back after the "yea", and maybe encouraged her to keep speaking, he didn't know what to expect.

"Roxy? Seriously?

Like I said, fucking inscrutable." Dirk has NOT just had an "I knew it!" moment.

"I never would have guessed. Not that I’ve spent much time contemplating issues related to gender. I’m pretty secure in my expression of masculinity, and..." That's a suspiciously specific acknowledgement, though, Dirky boy. :P

"You know what? Fuck this. I don’t owe anyone an explanation of any sort on this topic. I’m confident with who I am, what I am, my gender, as well as my understanding of the concept. You want my honest opinion? It’s fucking fantastic. Good for them. Both of them, I mean, but also, both of them in a singular fashion, since each one can now individually be referred to by the conventionally plural word “them.”" Pffff, of all the things. I didn't think this would have Dirk fly off the handle in such a Dave-way, while still narrating, but I'm happy to see it. In an out-of-story sense, Dirk is currently the audience surrogate, showcasing what a "true fanboy"'s reaction could be like, if they were both shocked to the core but mature enough to get over their shock without throwing around accusations and tantrums.

But yeah, at least the aloofness is gone from his voice, for just this time.

"I’m ecstatic for this personal development they’ve embraced, for the people they are, the lack of gender they identify with, and the pronouns they prefer. I’ve got no problem with it whatsoever, and frankly, it’s fucking insulting anyone would ever imagine otherwise." I can picture him speaking through gritted teeth, it's glorious! 'This is good, this is fine. I am doing great!'

"ROXY: ahah hahaha hell of a way to come out" Ooh, so she's not even out to Jane or Rose yet!

"ROXY: what even is gender" That is SUCH a Roxy thing to say. Also, almost stoner like. Picture Gamzee going like (in his quirk): 'Have you ever really THOUGHT about gender, man? I mean, really THOUGHT about it.'

"Jade looks at where her hands are folded in her lap. Bites her lip. She has her own concerns about this, her own thoughts. Reasonable thoughts, I’d say." "ROXY: i mean that was all stuff from our old universe ROXY: whyd we even bring it here right? JADE: right" I think for Jade it's not something she'd discard so easily! I mean, it all depends on whether 'gender' is something antigonal to your self image, in the end, I guess. If it isn't hindering you... that's how you stay heteronormative in some or all elements.

"Calliope takes a teacake between two of her claws and eats it delicately, hyper-aware of the horrible gnashing and snapping her powerful jaw is capable of.

CALLIOPE: my ideas aboUt gend—

SHIT. Between two of /their/ claws." HAH. Oh my god. The narration cut off Calliope. ... Pffff, though it IS a good callout, since I've been using gendered pronouns still to refer to Calliope. Whoops!

"CALLIOPE: i sUppose i only thoUght of myself as a girl because my, Um... CALLIOPE: my brother took mascUlinity qUite serioUsly." A) Still not saying his name :P B) Using his preferred pronouns.

"CALLIOPE: by which i mean, he became very enthUsiastic aboUt all the things it sUpposedly meant to be a boy. CALLIOPE: cherUb existence is dichotomoUs, bUt not in the same way hUman biology is. CALLIOPE: i sUppose oUr view of hUman cUlture indirectly inflUenced alternia’s development, which in tUrn affected yoUrs, which is something i’ve had a lot of time to think aboUt since we came here." Oh right! Lord English & Doc Scratch helped shape Alternia's development, so in a lot of bad ways there was a focus on power and masculinity, which may have trickled down into Earth's because of who created our universe, and thus it might all have been a self fulfilling prophecy, what Caliborn's gender identity is concerned! Guess we were due another one of these loops. :P

"ROXY: so much of what earth c thinks what boys and girls “SHOULD” do comes straight from the imagination of a bunch of dumb teens ROXY: which is totally FUCKED JADE: sure" Yes, and so much of what Earth C "should" be like, as a victory state reward planet, and the epilogues by extension, exists only in the imagination of a bunch of dumb humans spread over this globe. :P I reek a callout. Not undeserved, mind.

"She probably would have loved being a “they” when she was a teen." (Referring to Jade.) I'll grant you that, Dirk. But I thought you were doing paraphrasing other people's thoughts for the course of this conversation?

"i liked the idea of dirk" He'll love to hear that. :P Well, you know, Karkat had the same thing, he loved the idea of Condesce as a powerful leader, if not always the result of that leadership.

"ROXY: and also literally no one else on the entire planet was alive at the time

ROXY: but we had some babies without even bein consulted about it anyway so w/e" Context!

"JADE: personally im a big fan!

And like that, Jade’s smiling again." Nothing like Dave & Karkat to lift her mood. :P

"The storm clouds pass so quickly in her world, you almost wouldn’t have thought there was anything wrong at all. Roxy and Calliope certainly didn’t notice.

But there is something wrong. And this time, they’ll notice." Uhhh, wrong with Jade? Or something wrong with Earth C in general? Besides Dirk taking over, I mean. Oh no! ... Calliope left the kettle on! :P

"JADE: i... JADE: i.........

Jade drops her tea. The cup hits the floor and shatters." ... Is she passing out?? Just like Rose??

... Oh no. This doesn't have anything to do with John going back, retconning the timeline, and some of their selves being killed right? It shouldn't influence them, since they're from a different timeline, but with the talk about canon and relevance and truth and shit...

Is Dave going to pass out next???

Did John accidentally change the Reload timeline to be the alpha one, and is the future adjusting to the changes??? Or is it due to something to do with Lord English' powers in killing a different 'real' version of them?

"She takes in a sharp breath. She’s not feeling well suddenly. She’s dizzy, feverish, seeing things beyond her field of vision. A blinding flash of light. A black, perfect circle, burning a hole in her eyes." Wow. Just like John, she gets a vision of the Black Hole! So, maybe it's more like she gets backlash from suddenly absorbing the memories of Reload Jade.

"She doesn’t look bad at all— Jade wears unconsciousness well, having spent the better part of her life napping." Aaaand we're back in sleeping beauty terrain.

"But she can’t hear her. Jade is somewhere else right now." Uhhhhh. I thought they didn't really dream in the dreambubbles post-victory no more?? Also, those were all destroyed by LE, anyway.

Dang. That's weird.

Are the B1 kids (adults) actually going to be gathering in the Furthest Ring in 'person'? But why, and how? ... There isn't anything like a 'dreambubble self' body that persists in the Furthest Ring that John could have woken up like how you could wake people up on Derse and Prospit. ... Now I'm reminded of an old fanart I made of a green moon circling the Green Sun, with green dream selves for all humans & trolls we knew at the time (B1 and A2). :P

[arcticdementor]

So the NYT newsletter lineup has been unveiled. I suppose the expectation is that I would make fun of this but I’m not moved to do so. Whatever else its problems, and I’m about to lay them out here, the Times does not suffer from a talent deficit. I don’t know what this is all going to look like in practice, or what the financial inducements are for the writers. But I’ll read several of these with interest and I’m excited to see what comes from the experiment. Let writers write. I imagine the Times has some extremely complicated and arbitrary rules about original reporting appearing in these newsletters; I’m told there are a lot of turf issues over there on 8th Avenue. But that’s not my concern. I’m in favor of giving people freer rein to explore their interests in writing, and from my vantage it seems like this setup could result in a lot of cool stuff. I for sure will read Jane Coaston and Jay Kang. I for sure will not read Frank Bruni. For the rest, we shall see.

Of course, what none of these people will do is what no one at the Times can do: publish things that upset the subscriber base. And it’s precisely the willingness to do so that has powered the financial success of newsletters like this one.

If you’re new around here, the basic scenario is that we’ve had a years-long moral panic in which elite white tastemakers adopted the political posture of radical Black academics out of purely competitive social impulses, trying on a ready-made political eschatology that blames the worlds ills on whiteness and men and yet somehow leaves space for an army of good white people and good men to cluck their tongue about it all. Concurrently, the most influential paper in the world emerged from decades of fiscal instability by going hard on digital subscriptions, paywalling more and more of its content and rattling its tin cup more loudly than ever before. The result has been boom times, attenuated only by the end of the immensely lucrative Trump years. (I believe Chris Hayes is covering Trump’s latest spray tan tonight.) The trouble is that this model leaves them even more dependent on a particular social and political caste, namely the educated white professional class that graduates from top 25 universities, moves to Echo Park or Andersonville or Austin, then sends Zane and Daschel to pre-K that costs more than their Audi. Oh and they, like, care about justice and stuff. Conservatives hate read the NYT and thus have traditionally brought in advertising revenue, but they don’t hate subscribe, and the end result is that a paper that was about a 6.5 on a ten-point Liberal Elite Scale when I was a kid has moved to a 9.5. And there’s nothing internal to the publication that can stop this leftward march.

This will invite reprisals for speaking out of turn, but all of the following comes from public knowledge, other people’s reporting, what former and current employees have said, and a little bit of gossip. The social and professional culture within The New York Times is notoriously toxic, the confluence of people with immense career ambitions and total shamelessness about using social justice rhetoric to attack their enemies; watercooler shit-talking and mean-girling has moved to Slack, where it’s somehow even worse than it was before; all of the younger staffers see their jobs as straightforwardly activist positions, and the role of the paper to advance a pro-Democrat social justice ideology rather than to report objectively or to present a range of viewpoints; executive editor Dean Baquet is afraid of his own employees; the Sulzbergers don’t want to have uncomfortable conversations with their fellow white liberal elites at the food co-op or whatever; and in general absolutely every internal incentive within the paper points towards uncritically advancing a Robin Diangelo-approved race and gender ideology, a class-never, deferential-to-woke-norms soggy social justice politics that says nothing remotely challenging to said staffer cliques or the Hermosa Beach soccer moms who now fund the paper. When Bari Weiss resigned the media Borg represented it as all about Weiss, but her story was really about the kind of perspective that can’t exist anymore at The New York Times. I’m sure the blob would deny this stuff, but again none of these are well-kept secrets. If Ben Smith was not paid by the New York Times he would have reported this out long ago.

…

You can talk about Bari Weiss, you can talk about the Cotton brouhaha, you can discuss the inherent and ugly incentives of the subscription model for the paper. But the Donald McNeil firing is truly the bellwether. A reporter with 45 years of NYT experience on an absolutely essential beat said something clueless but utterly anodyne to some spoiled adolescents on a trip that 99% of people their age can’t access. Despite the fact that what he said would have been totally unremarkable even in liberal circles five years ago, the situation caught the staff’s attention and its ire and they vented that ire with the typical absurdist claim that McNeil had put them “in danger” in some incredibly vague way. (On Twitter, of course). So McNeil was duly dispatched, and the basic power dynamic of the modern day New York Times was laid bare: a handful of the paper’s untouchable celebrities can kick up the junior staff into a frenzy, and once that catches fire on Twitter, there is no one in the paper’s leadership who has the honesty and integrity to tell them no. No one. (The NYT’s self-exonerating reaction to McNeil’s defense is quietly hilarious.) The simple fact of the matter is that Baquet has not demonstrated anything like the public courage it would take to face down a Twitter storm prompted by Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., and there’s no reason to think that that’s going to change anytime soon. The media types would reject all of this, if anyone at a big-shot publication had the integrity to write a story about these open secrets. But I’m not lying.

What annoys me about resistance to this narrative, from within the NYT or the media writ large, is that sometimes they admit that the point now is to advance social justice, which is to say to support a specific ideological project associated with one party. Wesley Lowery’s “moral clarity” piece remains a remarkably frank confession on the part of the Times that they have accepted what’s been obvious for a long time, that even they don’t believe in their own vestigial gestures towards evenhandedness anymore, that it’s all a naked pretense to please the last lingering greyhairs involved with the organization and that in due time they’ll be no less explicitly Democrat-aligned than DailyKos. (I think of David Brooks and Tom Friedman at the Times like children whose parents have handed them Xbox controllers that aren’t plugged in.) Watching the establishment media accept the fundamental claim of Lowery’s piece, that elite journalists possess such enormous moral wisdom that they have transcended the notions of subjectivity and embedded perspective, has been pretty wild, for the inconsistency if nothing else. They step from “of course the MSM hasn’t adopted full-throated social liberalism en masse, that’s absurd” to “yes we’re telling the truth now and that’s good and righteous” as rhetorically convenient.

…

In the broader perspective, what incentives are left for careers in media? The fast-then-slow-then-fast internet-enabled collapse of the industry’s financial foundations appears to be experiencing another fast phase. Everybody in the industry is aware that there’s some 22-year-old in the wings who will do what they’re doing for half price. (Those 22-year-olds are rich enough or stupid enough not to care that they will in short order be the one getting undercut themselves.) Covid killed whatever lingering cool NYC media social scene remained. Perceptions of prestige are subjective, but by my lights the indignities of the click-chasing era and pathetic Trump-humping of the past five years have erased whatever lingering prestige was left in writing for, say, The Washington Post. Along with The New Yorker, writing for the Times is one of the last privileges in the business that really walks the dog in the impress-your-normie-uncle sense - and, more importantly, provides clear benefits in the ancillary fields where affluent writers actually make their money. To get to that stage, you have to be liked by the right people. Every industry is influenced by petty popularity, but it’s particularly acute in the news business, and now bullshit me-first social justice complaints have been weaponized to enforce that popularity hierarchy.

This all leaves us in a place that’s utterly inhospitable to the noblest urge in any profession, which is to tell the profession and its gurus to go fuck themselves.

…

The only thing I can do, at this point, is appeal to the integrity of the individuals within that world. They aren’t bad people, most of them, they’re just afraid, financially precarious and terrified of being called racist in an industry which has busily drained professional success of any prerequisite other than popularity with one’s peers. You can understand a lot about media culture by understanding that most of the people within it feel like they’re barely hanging on. Well, let me put it to you all privately, here in this space away from Twitter and away from Slack, where it’s just you and me: was this really what you wanted to do, when you set out to make this your profession? To tell Bradley Whitford’s character from Get Out that he’s right about everything? To nod along with a conventional wisdom that you’re too scared to step outside of? I doubt that’s what you once dreamed of doing. The most valuable thing you can do with a prominent place in media, right now, is to point out how sick the whole business is. It’s only integrity when it hurts, guys. Something you write is only brave when it pisses off all your friends and colleagues. Why on earth did you get into journalism, instead of becoming an actuary, if not because you wanted to say the things your profession and your peers and your culture absolutely do not want you to say?

[survivor-ingary]

Episode 2 - "I DON'T WANT THE MYSTERY MOUSE-CA-TOOL BESTIE" - Ellie

At the tribal, Ping was voted out of the Pendragon Tribe nearly unamimously. Tribal immunity for this round is Pictionary.

I bet all these bitches know i voted for Keith and now they are going to come kill me in my sleep if i die i blame dylan

yass round 2 i either think im in the best position on this tribe or theyre all secretly coming for me thats all

Tribal went as well as I expected it to go. No major drama. It seems like Keith is in real trouble if we do go to tribal again though which would put me in a very tricky spot. For now, though, I will be trying my best in the upcoming challenge. The problem is, however, timezones and schedules. Jon is going to be our drawer, but he can only do it tonight or in the early afternoon tomorrow which I will not be there for. Additionally, Keith is asleep so we have no idea what his schedule is going to be so we basically had to schedule the challenge without him. And Nya could only do right before the deadline tomorrow which Jon cannot do. I hate this for us, truly. I just hope that Moth and I can rub our brain cells together for this one so that we can pull out a win. OR somehow the other tribes fail horribly. On the bright side, I am finally starting to catch up on Duolingo exercises. They're a lot easier than I thought, but it is still going to be tedious af to save up enough coins for some of the higher end products at the shop. As a final note, I am going to work with Nya in the long term as we promised each other to. Hopefully that actually works out. Time to actually be loyal and be a hero this time around. Need to try something different.

If we lose this challenge, I will be very upset. We went so hard on this challenge!!! I believe that we can at least get second place, but I don't know how crazy the other tribes are. So, let's see what goes on

Ayyyyy soooooooo looks like the four, Colin, me, Ava, and Brayden are officially in an alliance!? I’m really hyped to be working with everybody and already have sights on who should go if we have to go to tribal 👀 but like I’m gonna feel so bad if we go to tribal and I orchestrate a whole plan to take someone out I gotta do it when I’m not in my feels and the planets aren’t fucking with my emotions too heavy. But go alliance ! This means I’ll be able to stay safe until hopefully a merge and hopefully we can avoid a tribe swap till then which I get those vibe from it !! But I’ll be here to survive two more tribals just in case which is pretty rad. Other then that hopefully me offering to draw doesn’t end us up in the bottom and we can keep killing ! But anyways that is it as off know hopefully I have a lot more coins tomorrow morning and I get hit the hat shop bright and motherfucking early.

Just got asked to be apart of an alliance <33333 the besties in the group trust me which maybe ain't the right move but for now we gotta love the bonding. exciting!!!

YAY FOR ROUND 2! Okay, so I meet once again with the Hat Shop and... third times the charm! Except,,, the charm is getting nothing AGAIN lmao I'm not complaining though, still got that extra vote :P I stayed up at 1 AM for this challenge, and I honestly think our team popped off. Anastasia was guessing a ton, and Riley was amazing at drawing real quick! I have a relatively good feeling about our performance, so I hope I wake up to the news of our tribe being immune :D

so yesterday I set myself on a mission to get an alliance. I wanted Ava + Brayden + Toph + me as a majority alliance. it was our day off from tribal so I thought it was the perfect day to do it!! I talked to Brayden about it first because he's the person I feel the most comfortable with, and then after a lot of coordination and careful communication I was able to pull it together!! I think the most important thing when making alliances is making everyone feel like they're a big part in it. So I was careful to ask each person how they feel about the others, about the game, and made a point to say that I wanted to work with them specifically. Some may call that a little manipulative, but I wanna make sure that I'm an essential part of the alliance!! i need everyone to feel like they need/want me there.

all of this happening so soon into the game is a testament to how aggressive I'm playing this time around. I usually like to lay low and just rely solely on my social game in the start, but I'm trying this out to establish myself early on! I wanted to play the tribe leader and I think I'm doing that in a smart and subtle way!!

so yes now we have a 4 person majority alliance named "duolingo owl hate club" because fuck that guy. I think we're the 4 most active and present people on the tribe so it's only natural for us to work together, but I think it's definitely worth noting that I was the one that was pulling the strings here.

We just did the pictionary challenge, I have a good feeling about it!! Toph was an amazing artist, and if we win, all credit rightfully goes to him!! I think the guessers also did great of course, but like come on, the artist has to be the mvp. I'm really hoping we pull through!! I don't mind going to tribal, but I genuinely don't wanna vote anyone out yet. I'm fine just playing the game in a precautionary way. I know I'm in a great position if we do go to tribal, but it's always preferred that we don't go.

Everyone else on my tribe: doing the challenge and kicking ass

Me: I’m sleep

Riley (Tumblr has once again chosen violence so only the first 10 get banners 🥲)

I think our challenge went pretty well! My team were good guessers. Feeling like I've established some Integrity now. Hope it keeps me safe later!

Toph Soooooo we finished the challenge with 32 points and like wig !! I was a quick as drawer for 32pts expect when my internet lagged, but still ! I think we whooped some ass and if we do go to tribal I know it won’t be me going, thanks to Duolingo owl hate club but I’m also worried same could have and advantage because they seem pretty kean on learning a lot in like 3 hours and then tried to cover that statement to not seem so threatening but like babs s a huge threat too apparently they love Duolingo and know 5 laugnes ? This is from brayden but If so go babs ! That’s absolutely iconic for real Life but fucking scary in this game ! I gotta be buddy buddy with them so hopefully if they do have something it won’t be them going home first and it will be Ava. But I’m thinking we might get second place again unless someone is a fucking wizard at this.

Dennis hmm i think we did well enough in the challenge to not see tribal tomorrow but who knows i guess we shall find out tn

the way ellie was so on top of stuff yesterday only to oversleep the challenge makes me giggle maybe shes freaking out about it which makes me also giggle but i dont think its really a big deal

anastasia asked me to call yesterday and i was like sure lets talk but it is damn near impossible to hold a conversation with her idk i tried BUT she did tell me “yeah i just got off a call with ellie” im like i see. she says shes down to work with ellie but that quickly switched from ellie being ~experienced~ but good to know ellie is also playing hard. anastasia also mentioned that she talks to riley a fair amount who i still have yet to connect to well. but dat makes me think ellie is def talking to riley too miss debate team is definitely a talker. but good on her for the social game i guess

kenneth keeps being like haha we’re the same person and im like yeah👁 i bet we are👁

i just wanna win and not think about tribal just keep it slow and chill for now keep learnin my welsh i guess

Ava Second challenge was Pictionary and I had a ton of fun playing. The tea is: toph did a great job. He was pretty vocal about not being a great artist but really I think he did great. However, Babs was super inactive yesterday and ~too late~ said they were a great artist and should've been picked to draw. It was kind of like.... k babs thanks for the belated "help". They did do great guessing which scored a point in my book. Brayden was supposed to play but last minute logged off without saying anything so we did the challenge without him :/ sorta a bummer. Anyway the lack of participation from Sam is kind of popping off so we'll see where that leads them... Overall a fun game and fingers crossed we did well!

Moth I think we did okay at the challenge. Today I am dying from the heatwave so I’m not thinking too straight! Stay cool everyone

Ellie So yesterday Anastasia and I called for about an hour!!! I’d say we’re definitely way closer, she’s someone I really wanna work with although the idea of her and Brayden eventually being on the same tribe is kinda scary cause I know how close they are. Still she’s so fun to talk to and I just love her energy so much!

Pictionary challenge results: Jenkins Tribe wins with Penadragon second, Hatter Tribe has to go to tribal council on the following day.

Ava Well well well seems our bob ross, toph, didn't pull through (y'all think babs would've pulled it out for us or slept through our challenge like they said they almost did?) I can't wait for tribal. I'm in it for the drama. I'm hashtag voting Sam off - didn't even bother to be apart of our challenge and not too sure they've even been online for a full 24 hours. Weed out the weak.....

Anastasia

Brayden https://imgur.com/n60Lz0c

guys i dont know what to do someone help me out

Dennis i hope damn brayden gets the boot

Raffy Woo! We don't have to go to tribal again! We stan!

Ellie So I figured I’d go idol hunting today cause the shop was about to close and I just wanted to see what had been bought and what possible hats there were, I see that there’s a hat I have enough for that hasn’t been bought and I decide fuck it let’s get it

APPARENTLY ITS SOMETHING THAT IM NOT ALLOWED TO KNOW WHAT IT IS OR HOW TO USE IT YET???? THEY SAID ILL FIND OUT ABOUT IT LATER

I DONT WANT THE MYSTERY MOUSE-CA-TOOL BESTIE

Sam Well you see. I like all my tribe people. And I think we did real good on that music video! So, I think rather than voting anyone else off, I think I should just vote myself off if that is possible! Ahhh

Babs So sad to see Sam not only go but go through what they're going through :( same w Toph :( they all seem so lovely

Keith Not sure if i submitted a confession after the last tribal. But if I didnt here it is.

Happy I made it out of that tribal. I had raffy backing me with whom I played. Last time we played. We were at odds. We didnt work together but whats worse that we were against each other. It was either him or me goin out. Hopefully thats the past n we can work together. I jus need to keep things calm n show that Im not here itching to make big moves. So they dont feel threatened by me. N its easy cause right now. I havnt made that kind og bond with anyone on my tribe. To even think of such moves. Lets see what round two holds for me.

Colin so uh

we lost! :(

I was really bummed tbh. Like I thought we did well but circumstances with the challenge were just really unfortunate, from conflict about who wanted to be the artist to people disappearing the moment the challenge started, I think we did well despite all of that. Except we did kinda get stomped anyway. Oh well!! The game moves on. Tribal has to happen.

Initially I was gonna push for Babs, just because I feel like I don't wanna attach myself to them too early on. I've seen how much of a bitter player they can be, and lets just say I'm not the most loyal ally to have. however! 9 minutes after we lost, Ava announces to our alliance that she's voting Sam. I wasn't surprised, Sam has been the one not really pulling their weight. But I had some good connections with her!! we both did colorguard and shes so sweet and easy to talk to. I was really conflicted for a little bit, debating on whether or not to actually push for Babs. I think brayden sensed my hesitance but we both knew there was nothing really I could do to stop Sam from being the vote. At first tribal, the initial name always spreads like wildfire.

However, my mess was stopped abruptly by Sam asking to be voted out. welp!! okay then!! babs stays i guess!! i'm not too bothered. I'll never turn down an easy vote hehe.

Pretty sure there's a swap tonight. I'm kinda scared of that

uwu

Brayden

i almost forgot to upload this but dont worry i just remembered

Colin screams

Toph So we’re going to tribal in 20 and all I have to say right now is if there is a tribe swap after I’m gonna so scared but I ducking called I had a vibe and it was right that’s what is gonna win me this game trusting my intuition. I’m holding on now and gonna be the biggest comp beast next challenge in case I get fucked on this swap !!!! Or at least if it is a swap 🤔

Riley I don't know what this announcement's gonna be I'm worriedddd... Ginny said it probably means we're swapping teams but I don't wannaaaa I like our team.

Toph Sam self sacrificing made this the easiest vote ever and me being safe is a plus I guess 😎

[anotherler]

Ask Meme Part 2: LQ-ler

My faviest fave who I ever faved!! Low Quality Once-ler! Lets do this.

Why I like them: More like, why I LOVE them okay? Uh…where do I begin. I think his initial and prevailing appeal was his aesthetic. I love old technology, low quality footage, foggy audio and static. I love the sound of a VCR’s mechanics turning. And the reason for all of this is suitingly, nostalgia. Which is what LQ is all about. He’s so carefully thought up and his themes fit together so nicely. His concept had me hooked from the start; a Once-ler who comes from lowquality footage of the movie. But then it just gets even deeper and examines the regrets of a Once-ler and a character that knew about his fate and destiny from the start and it’s just so fucking fascinating and well thought out. LQ himself has this charm to his personality and he’s positively endearing and adorable it’s not hard to understand why so many people flocked to him and showed him love. But if he was just that and that alone it would make for a flat character. LQ has other sides to himself that come out from time to time and it becomes obvious that in some cases he’s putting up a façade. He tends to brush the fact that he’s upset or angry under the rug to keep up his image and it’s something that anyone reading can really understand. It’s a great study of identity and how adults present themselves to each other in the business world and just generally to the public and how sometimes we aren’t really true to ourselves because we don’t like things about ourselves. I know this got super analytical so im going to go back to his characterization for a sec. He is such a lively person. Each gesture and reply and his eccentricity are wonderful to witness. I love his design a LOT. Those big grey-blue eyes with the long lashes and his glasses and his messy brown hair. He has a really unique look to him. He’s a good guy and I’d love to talk with him about old tech and stuff. He comes off as caring a lot about other people and Im sure he wants the best for others.

     Why I don’t: He has made some really dumb mistakes and been so self destructive that he has impacted those around him. He needs to practice true self love beyond any sort of merits he has and just believe that he can do good things even if he’s done bad things in the past. He’s really REALLY got to stop beating himself up. It’s okay for him to make mistakes in the past but he’s got to seek improvement and any time that he does you can feel really happy for him. He’s come a long way but he’s got some ways to go and can’t give up just yet.

Favorite episode (scene if movie): Probably when HQ first showed up. That whole part had me screaming. Actually, I have a LOT of favorite scenes and chapters from his blog. Type louder and his drawing party are some old favorites. The buildup to the GRAND reveal and LQ’s valley times are also incredibly great and Swone’s visit was hilarious and sweet. I also love the more recent chapters where LQ continues to have conflict with HQ and we some other sides of him.

Favorite season/movie: Ahhh…it’s hard to pick one. I love his entire blog :” ) I already talked about a lot of stuff it’s hard sjkgslsddsh I’d just sit here and list everything LOL but if I had to pick one both the events leading up to the GRAND REVEAL and HQ showing up.

Favorite line(s): “Even though the tag might say “low-quality”, I think that those old gifs had their own charm to them. Nostalgia, if you will. “ “Honesty is the best policy, after all.” “I AM N-NOT A BUTT P-PERVERT!!!!!!!!!!!”

Favorite outfit: I’m honestly a sucker for his business suit and bandaged arms(though, poor LQ for being so badly injured). I also really love his thneed and that REDICULOUS cape he had from his business times.

OTP: LQxHQ. Gotta have that self love, amiright? It’s a really good exploration of LQ’s relationship with himself and HQ is frankly hilarious. I know it isn’t the healthiest for LQ but im hoping things can improve for him in the future. Also, Bawstin-luh or Brandon O’ Shea from the the Thneedville High AU because LQ and Brandon are just really happy together :” ) Brotp: LQ and Swone. And my guilty pleasure: LQ and Swone and Onag. I always did want to see those two meet. Also LQ and Thneednight, LQ and Corv and LQ and Winter when they finally work things out a bit heh. While we’re on the topic of folks I wish LQ could have met I just gotta say…Cheap. Thrift buddies. Just picture it. Cheap had a chance to meet LQ by punching him in the face for 10 whole dollars but he PASSED IT UP!! For SHAME, Cheap. (To be fair IDK if they’d get along well haha)

Head Canon: At one point in the blog it’s mentioned that LQ used to watch the 1972 TV special and he said his Mom caught him watching it and turned it off. I think that she turned it off during the Once-ler’s successful points and before he chopped the last tree. Since then, LQ has never watched past that point on the VHS tape and in his youth it gave him only positive ideas about being a Once-ler and impacted him a lot in the long run. It’s kind of ironic because his Mom tried to discourage him but only really made him more interested.

Unpopular opinion: Y’all probably don’t want to face this fact, but LQ can be really nasty and temperamental sometimes. He’s spoken outright insults at people when he’s speaking honestly so he’s not purely “an innocent and sweet uwu baby” . He’s also very introspective and intelligent though he’s made a number of stupid descisions. Some things he’s said and thought are downright philosophical. That being said, those aspects make me like him even more as a character.

A wish: I want to see LQ continue to improve and move on in his life. He might need to break the mold he’s in to make that happen but he’s already established that he’s been doing things his own way so it’s not hard to imagine. It’s hard to move on but I believe in him.

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen: I don’t want LQ to die or give up :” )

5 words to best describe them: Nostalgic, Mysterious, Adorable, Charming, Bright

My nickname for them: I love the nickname ‘Lowqual’. It’s not a nickname I coined but…yeah. Uhm…Staticky Boi, My Favorite Onceler,

@residentcryptid And now onto Cheap!

[elizabethrobertajones]

In the empty Cas stood up against it and didnt want the infinite peace, no regrets, no pain" but then why was he do into Jacks paradise of a world without suffering or pain?? I dont get it. And will Cas want that again cause we know he wont remember the empty do that means he'll default back to this tunnel vision about establishing paradise? And do you think its significant that Cas didnt mention Jack in the empty?

If you think Cas wasn’t remotely affected by Jack and he just showed him some neat stuff about the future, in a friendly way, then you could interpret it that it��s just a step of failure and making terrible decisions in a moment of despair before obviously standing up (literally) for himself in the Empty and deciding to NOT choose the easy path of defeat or whatever promises of peace he’s given.

If you think Jack(’s powers) showed Cas the vision with the intent of hooking a guardian angel to protect him without particularly checking Cas’s feelings on the matter, it was for the same reasons Cas needed to fight back against such a promise that he then did in the empty, but at a slight remove that by exploiting a desire for peace and someone to tell him what to do that made sense, Jack(’s powers) made Cas help him. 

Either way it represents in 12x19 how Cas was FEELING that Jack wanted him as a guardian angel and his powers showed Cas the thing that would make him feel better, probably in a way less violent way than the Empty did but it was essentially the same promise for Cas - and people have been paralleling what the Empty promised to what Amara promised Dean if he let her consume her (and that Dean also resisted in a metaphorical throwing off his desire to give into the darkness aka depression and despair moment). Cas was extremely emotionally vulnerable and at the end of his tether really in 12x19 and Jack intervened to give him faith and a purpose, which was honestly terrifying to see Cas seeming to know what he wanted and where he was going :P 

But obviously that wasn’t a good thing - like I’ve been saying about Sam trying to help Jack, he WOULD empathise and care for Jack and want to raise him right if Mary hadn’t died, but that happened so we have problems. I think Cas honestly could have cared for Kelly and the unborn Jack in different circumstances and he was already dithering - Kelly abducted him basically moments from him being taken back to the Bunker where Sam and Dean may have argued him around - she removes him from his friends who could have helped him. So he got dragged into all that, and it was in the worst circumstances - Cas literally made that big speech about who would protect Jack and keep him on the righteous path, not seeing that he might actually be a good fit for it, but of course his uncertainty in himself because of all those failures and so on didn’t help. 

I mean at the very least I think Jack gave him some certainty about what he was doing, even if it was just a sort of emotional exchange. Because I don’t think Cas was controlled after that, just really really determined and certain all of a sudden he had to protect Jack, and all his fears about him and fears about his own abilities were gone and he went into full expectant Dadstiel mode by the time we caught up with them. Which is kinda fishy when you know Cas has been in SUCH a bad place right up until that point. You can’t just make him happy and certain in what he’s doing without the character development, you know? :P

Anyway the stuff in the Empty was the character development.

I kinda figure if Cas is not meant to remember what happened between 12x23 and now according to what Misha said, then that development is something that will re-apply itself more slowly and hopefully through actual interactions and exchanges with the Winchesters, who the Empty’s beating on Cas made very clear he needs to feel wanted, not needed. And who knows, maybe personal stuff with Dean to that effect too. I think what we’ve seen so far is for our benefit, and showing Cas at a turning point. But one he still had to come to even in the Empty, like he had to seriously fight back and earn the moment he stood up to what is basically the dark mirror to his depression and probably the words in his head when he feels doubt about his actions or where he belongs or if Dean could ever love him like he loves Dean or whatever. All the usual nonsense :P 

Where he goes from there, regarding how he feels about Jack, and if he still is motivated one way or the other, or is going to be thrust into new nonsense before he ever gets home, or who knows what, we just can’t know yet so I don’t think we can say with certainty anything about how Cas will act. I feel like he’s going to take a while to catch back up to what he did in the Empty unless he’s quickly forced to remember it, but if there’s no wider Empty plot immediately, we CAN take the scenes as being all we need to know, and something that Cas CAN forget but we don’t and can apply it to his character arc afterwards, because I think he has to feel out again, in the real world where there are consequences and other people involved in all this, all his feelings he confronted in the Empty. 

I think Cas didn’t mention Jack in the Empty because he has no actual relationship with the REAL Jack, the one we’re getting to know, and his interactions have been with Jack’s powers. Whether you think it’s good bad or neutral what happened to Cas, Jack’s sense of self took the first half of 13x01 to boot up and he didn’t really start to figure himself out until he was talking to Sam, at which point he clarified he and his powers are in a weird relationship, so I trust him to not really remember or to be accountable for what happened when he was in the womb. Even if what he did to Cas was entirely benign, it was still his powers acting on his behalf that even made first contact with Cas and all Cas knew of him before he died. 

Cas pretty quickly got dragged into the conversation with the Empty and it was so much about Cas and his inner emotional life as we knew it up to 12x19 in the long long arc about belonging and family and so on (that starts basically with his return in 7x17, and really kicks off in season 8) that he didn’t really have time to get into the details of how he died and what for. Sam and Dean mean way more to him and he’d have no way of knowing Jack was born adult, so he won’t think Jack is consciously doing anything for him.

(I mean, ironically, Jack possibly has no idea he woke Cas up in the first place :P) 

It was way more about Cas saving himself, though. If he thought Jack had been what woke him up, it wouldn’t have had the same impact of him feeling like he’d been saved and not knowing why but since here he was, conscious and awake, he was going to fight to the bitter end to stay awake, and to argue himself back to life. He had to do that for himself and so not focusing on WHY he was awake was a good move to keep the focus on Cas and how he was feeling. And to drag out any more comments on him and Jack for when it’s relevant to them… 

Like a few others on this subject, I feel like the show will remain fairly vague about what happened. So far its explanations have been vague enough that even though I think it makes a lot of sense, I guess you have no clue and others feel it’s satisfied their own different interpretations as well. With Cas back I sort of feel like the show can use new drama to blast past needing to harp on the old stuff as it always does, and what’s been happening to Jack since he was born creates enough for Cas to deal with without going over last season’s stuff :P

[comicteaparty]

February 4th-February 10th, 2019 CTP Archive

The archive for the Comic Tea Party week long chat that occurred from February 4th, 2019 to February 10th, 2019.  The chat focused on Offshore Comic by Stefan Gasic.

Featured Comment:

Chat:

RebelVampire

COMIC TEA PARTY- WEEK LONG BOOK CLUB START!

Hello and welcome everyone to Comic Tea Party’s Week Long Book Club~! This week we’ll be focusing on Offshore Comic by Stefan Gasic~! (http://www.offshorecomic.com/)

You are free to read and comment about the comic all week at your own pace, so stop on by whenever it suits your schedule! Remember, though, that while we allow constructive criticism, our focus is to have fun and appreciate the comic. Below you will find four questions to get you started on the discussion. However, a new question will be posted and pinned everyday (between 12:01AM and 6AM PST), so keep checking back for more! You have until February 10th to tell us all your wonderful thoughts! With that established, let’s get going on the reading and the chatting!

QUESTION 1. What has been your favorite strip in the comic so far? What specifically did you like about it?

QUESTION 2. At the moment, who is your favorite character? What about that character earns them this favor?

QUESTION 3. Given the comic’s focus on financial markets and all that composes them, what is something this comic has taught you about the subject? Alternatively, what is something you wished you understood better to understand the comic’s comedy?

QUESTION 4. How do you think the comic’s illustrative style and choices help the comedy of the comic? What is one moment where a particular design or image really stood out to you and helped the point the strip was trying to convey?

QUESTION 5. The comic features several recurring subjects like the legitimacy of IQ scores, LLCs, and more. Which of these recurring topics did you like the most? What about it caught your interest?

Stefan G

Hello everyone, 1) Just updated www.offshorecomic.com with a new strip. Check it out. 2) RebelVampire, are your questions intended for me or any new reader? Ciao, Stefan the creator of #Offshorecomic

snuffysam

They're intended for both (still working through the archive)!

keii4ii

Is there a way to get permalinks for individual strips, so I can come back to specific ones at a later time?

Stefan G

Thanks & okay, snuffysam keii4ii, unfortunately there’s no way to get permalinks for individual strips ... I coded the website myself as a side project and am not that good a coder

keii4ii

Oh man, I can relate to that... If I ever get rich, comic website coding and maintenance stuff is the first thing I'll hire someone to do for me

I do like how it loads and makes it easy to read through the archive, for what it's worth.

Stefan G

Thanks for the feedback ... and I totally, totally agree. One could spend a fortune for a coder to take care of all the fixings and stuff ... now I’m learning on the side whenever there’s time left over from work & family.

Stefan G

Answer to Q1 => readers have found the “happiness” strip the best. It’s also one of my favourite ones [succinct & clever & relatable] ...I truly don’t have a favourite strip, but the attached Reto & Urs -strips make me chuckle whenever I read them [I appreciate below-the-waist-humour and/or humour where people are really, really selfish].

lomcia (princess_lom)

1. The newest one is so funny

2. Trader

3. i dont work in office but i cant find nothing to improve that comic, i think the design of characters and humor is on really high lvl 12/10 for me

4. Style is perfect ffor that comic, i wouldnt change it

Stefan G

Answer to Q2 => at the moment my favourite character is the Economist. He’s a genuine IYI [intellectual-yet-idiot] ... which the world is full of and the finance industry in particular. The Economist is easy to write for because I’ve discovered a never ending source of humorous material called the daily financial newspaper ... please find attached also one of my favourite strips

Thank you, lomcia (princess_lom) for your feedback.

lomcia (princess_lom)

your welcome I hope i didnt misunderstood question 3 xD

Stefan G

I think you got everything just right

lomcia (princess_lom)

cool

Stefan G

Answer/comment to Q3 => I’ve spend my professional life in finance, hence, I know every nuance of the industry. However, for the layperson the finance industry [money, banking, insurance, etcetc...] is a big black box of unnecessary complication. My humble attempt with #Offshorecomic is to untangle this complexity and make money related topics more accessible/understandable to anyone ... using humour as my main tool. Finance is more stupid than you think; trust me

I’ll answer the rest tomorrow. Gotta go to now. is like in a totally different time zone and all that Thx again y’all !

RebelVampire

QUESTION 6. Which joke not related to finance did you enjoy the most? What about it made it stand out to you among all the others?

RebelVampire

1) i really enjoyed the life coaching strip about facing reality and lying to yourself. i just really enjoy the bluntness and simplicity by which the self-deception line is delivered. A+ comedy right. 2) i like p-bird because i consider him a much needed counter balance to many of the other characters. he at least has more feet planted in reality. 3) hedge funds. not that i understand them perfectly from the comic, but now theyre more than just a financial word i see tossed around. and despite the very negative absurdist humor regarding them, was still interesting to get some insight into what they actually involved. 4) i think the style overall really balances well with the comedy. a lot of the comedy is reliant on the dialogue, so keeping the illustrations clean, bold, and somewhat simple really helps direct attention to the words. i also really just enjoy the character designs cause every single one really hits that idiot or absurdist mark that needs to be hit. 5) actually i really liked the address of IQ scores. because literally these characters seem like the type whod wind up on r/iamverysmart and use their IQs to talk about how cool they are. so it was kind of nice to see some evidence for that with the subject. that and i always like seeing the concept of IQ being torn apart. 6) i actually liked a lot of the jokes that pertained to the academic sphere in regards to things like publishing and teaching. selfishly it most just stood out to me because academia is something im more familiar with in regards to its simultaneous setup of worthless class structures and cutthroat profs trying to further their careers.

Stefan G

Thank you, RebelVampire, for your thoughtful analysis & feedback I believe that the writing is the most important part in comics ... and the best humorous writing is often blunt & simple [you hit the nail on the head with that comment]. Furthermore, I intentionally designed the strip in a simplistic style in order to A) highlight the writing/gag, B) to save time and C) cuz simple drawings are funny I love to make fun of pompous, self righteous folks ... academics are thus some of my main targets [due to the same reasons I make fun of financial professionals].

Stefan G

Answer to Q4 => My childhood inspiration and spark for cartoons/drawing came from F.Ibanez [Clever & Smart] ... very funny yet simple style. Nowadays I enjoy Dilbert by Scott Adams or the political cartoons from cartoonist Jari Elsilä; also both of them are hilarious without wasting unnecessary lines. I believe a straightforward style highlights the writing and that’s what I’m trying to achieve. Moreover, I love to have backgrounds in my comics [to steer the reader to a particular thought or mood] but hate to draw them and/or dislike it when they clutter the cartoon ... I’m rather happy with a style that I’ve developed over time where I draw the background but reduce the opacity to 25 %. I think that works pretty nice

Stefan G

Answer to Q5 => My favourite themes are 1) anyone predicting the future, 2) mistaking luck for awesome skill and 3) incompetent yet pompous professionals ... there is so much hilarious material right there

Answer to Q6 => I often use the characters Reto und Urs for jokes/strips that are not necessarily financial because they are so endearingly stupid [well, mostly Urs is]. This one makes me chuckle

RebelVampire

QUESTION 7. In what ways have any of the strips changed the way you think about life, finances, or any other topic covered in them? Alternatively, what have the strips portrayed that you wish more people knew?

RebelVampire

(the archive for the chat on Poco Adventures is now available https://comicteaparty.com/post/182650076295/january-28th-february-3rd-2019-ctp-archive)

RebelVampire

QUESTION 8. Of all the parodies and jabs at financial markets and life, which do you consider the most on the nose as far as its representation in the comic goes?

RebelVampire

7) the strips have made me realize in a way that this is another industry where basically theres lots of ridiculous junk going on in the background cause you can never remove human faults completely. cause when it comes to finance theres lots of advanced vocabulary and concepts being thrown around usually, so for someone untrained it can sound intimidating and hard to follow. i think these strips do a great job of humanizing things tho and showing that the concepts arent all that alien cause at the end they were created by humans and reflect the desires of humans in a way. 8) one of my faves that i think is totally on the nose is this one where the economist is telling p-bird about ppl on twitter debating him being ignorant. and that his facts and stuff will prevail but p-bird points out that wouldnt even work on the economist. and the economist goes home confused. i think this is way too true for what its like to argue on the internet and how facts and logic get infinitely buried for the sake of narrative.

Stefan G

Excellent analysis/comments, RebelVampire really constructive. The human element is everywhere and money is such an emotionally laden topic that it’s easy to get confused even without the unnecessary complicated vocabulary ...which is often misused even by so-called “professionals”. If my strip has helped you understand all of that and un-demonised the beast, you’ve made me a very happy man Yeah, the Twitter-Fact-Confusion strip is one of my more relatable strips ... I’ve given up on trying to change people’s minds with facts; if changing minds is possible, it can only be achieved through via emotions. It sounds more logical the other way around but that’s not how we work. Here’s a special academically oriented strip just for you, RebelVampire Enjoy

snuffysam

haven't been able to get all the way through the archive yet, but my answer to both #2 and #8 is the Regional Manager. I love all the characters, but there's something to be said for the simplicity of having a guy literally run around headless.

Stefan G

Thanks , snuffysam. I almost forgot about the regional manager. I have to bring him back to life; I also like him ... by the way, there are 308 strips in total.

Answer to Q7 => I can’t claim that any one strip has changed the way I think about life and/or other things ... however, I do believe that writing & drawing Offshore strips has reinforced in me some of the main ideas from my favourite author, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who’s books have influenced me deeply [e.g. Black Swan, Antifragile, etc etc] ... luck versus skill, thinking about risk and stuff like that. I regularly come back to his books for inspiration and recommend his books & Twitter -feed. Here are two strips that highlight my point ...sort of

Answer to Q8 => wow tough question ... with 99 % of my strips I genuinely try to convey some message about basic human quirks and/or outright stupidities that actually take place on a regular basis when handling money + and then I add my own personal humours twist to it. Here are a few strips with the message never to buy something you don’t understand [a hint: they always have complicated names]...

RebelVampire

QUESTION 9. What other finance related topics are you hoping to see the comic explore? Which characters are you hoping to see involved with the topic?

Stefan G

Answer to Q9 => As the creator of the strip I’m obviously biased to answer this question, but I’d love to hear what the new readers have to say. I don’t have a particular preference for any topic [except make fun of pompous forecasters ] ... but I feel myself wanting to write & draw more strips for the Markets-Weasel and Reto und Urs. And that’s surprisingly hard to do; forcing it doesn’t work [at least not for me] ... Offshore’s main characters were supposed to be Reto und Urs and somehow P-Bird and the Economist and the trader stole the show. I guess that happens when you get to know your characters better. Funny how that happens ... here’s one nostalgic strip from my early work that I really enjoy

Stefan G

Addition to Q9 => ... I’ve steadily build up an audience on Twitter [@NonMeek] which consist mainly of likeminded financial and/or other professionals ...hence, hearing the viewpoints from anyone outside that sphere would be awesome

RebelVampire

QUESTION 10. What are you most looking forward to in the comic? Also, do you have any final thoughts to share overall?

RebelVampire

9) idk about specific topics, but id like to see the CEO who i think appeared in like one strip. I'm really interested to see the CEO dynamic with the other characters in terms of finance. learn how they view what theyre doing, how they view what the others are doing, etc. but im all for bringing the regional manager back too cause i enjoyed that character as well. a lot of great humor picking fun at how some managerial positions are kind of ridiculous to even exist to a degree. 10) learning more, mostly. overall its nice to see a harder to cover topic in comics. ive enjoyed how approachable and humanized the strips make finances, and how they remind you that professionals can be like this and actually have no clue what theyre doing. @Stefan G that academic oriented strip you shared was actually one of my faves. not necessarily in college, but i see this a lot in the blogosphere where ppl do a thing once and try to pass themselves as qualified experts to deliver advice. XD

Stefan G

@RebelVampire Thanks again for your opinions. Those really help with the development of the strip ... finance is a hard topic indeed and there are no really finance oriented strips out there [that I know of anyway], which is funny cuz the industry is filled with emotions and mind blowing mental errors. I guess people still believe finance & investing is some sort of scientific discipline which it’s really not ... there are hardly any black & white answers to anything even though there’s lots and lots of historical data ... it’s time to fix that myth with Offshore I’m glad you enjoyed that academic strip. It resonated rather well on Twitter too

@RebelVampire [adding to my previous answer] ... I agree that the managers need to be reanimated and given another chance. I’ll try to do that and see how they resonate. I never know beforehand which characters will work and which will fizzle out; e.g. der Compliance Offizier is one of my favourite characters, yet, resonates weakly outside the banking circles ‍♂️ [I love the strip below ].

keii4ii

I would like to see more strips that cracks jokes about this very specific context of finances! Things like that strip about funds blowing up on day 252. I think that gives this comic its own flavor. Readers get to laugh about not just any kind of incompetent people, but incompetent people in this specific field. Readers with no background in finances don't know the context, so more strips that shed light on the context of the jokes would be great.

Stefan G

@keii4ii All valid and excellent points ... I genuinely try to write & design my cartoons in such a way that the joke is understandable even though you don’t know the context. It’s a hard thing to do ... my wife is my toughest critic and she tells me the same as you ... but keep following Offshore and I promise to come up with more stuff like that 252 strip

Answer to Q10 => My ambition with Offshore is to 1) amuse myself first and see if anyone shares my sense of humour [if a cartoon doesn’t amuse me, I don’t publish it]. It’s a splendid way of letting out some frustration from work ... and 2) to make investing & finance more approachable to the layperson by infusing some humour into it in the form of cartoons ... which by the way nobody thought of doing on a serious basis. Weird. However, to produce material on a semi-regular basis I figured that writing only gags/jokes is too much work and/or too shallow of an approach, hence, the characters in the strip need to be interesting/relatable enough in order to create humorous material by mere interaction with each other. That’s easier said than done. I’m quite satisfied with my characters so far but am continuously looking for new interesting characters to add to the strip [either permanently or impermanently]. Like Scott Adams once told me: “The trick with comics is to reflect the reader's own experience. To allow people to say, "That's me!" I’ll conclude with this sneak peek strip [only for you guys] that should relate to the experience of anybody working in a big corporation.

RebelVampire

COMIC TEA PARTY- WEEK LONG BOOK CLUB END!

Thank you everyone so much for reading and chatting about Offshore Comic this week! Please also give a special thank you to Stefan Gasic for volunteering the comic and creating it! If you liked Offshore Comic, make sure to continue to support it via some of the links below!

Read and Comment: http://www.offshorecomic.com/

Stefan’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/NonMeek

[juushika]

Homestuck liveblog part 2: early Terezi, Dave/Dave OTP, narrative techniques; interspersed by quoting everything Karkat says

me: did i say i was vriska i mean i am she is really obsessed with blackrom and same uh vriska a troll in homestuck blackrom = antagonistic intimate relationships

Missy: yes you are

me: but really i am terezi

Missy: i has no idea who this is i am a potato

me: http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=003479

EB: oh man, whatever, what do you even want. GC: 1M MOT1V4T3D BY S3LF 1NT3R3ST […] GC: MY FR13NDS 4LL TH1NK TH4T YOU C4NT R34LLY CH4NG3 4NYTH1NG GC: TH4T YOUR T1M3L1NE W3'R3 CH4T-HOPP1NG 4ROUND 1S S3T 1N STON3 GC: NO M4TT3R WH4T W3 S4Y OR WH3N W3 S4Y 1T GC: 4ND TH3YR3 PROB4BLY R1GHT GC: BUT 1 DONT C4R3 GC: 1 W4NT TO M3SS W1TH 1T 4ND T4ST3 WH4T H4PPENS GC: >:D

terezi is like hannibal-esque curiosity i wanna see what happens if I: help! make a murder! i’m flexible really!! she’s just the right balance of creative & engaged vs distanced & curious

Missy: …. you scare me

me: THIS is what scares you about me

me: oh fffff i forgot about tavros’s …quadrant…ing (I can’t find the first reference of this in the 2mins I am willing to spend looking, srry) this reread is like 50% super familiar and 50% i FORGOTTED ABOUT THE FEELS the cast is so big and confusing and the troll’s interpersonal quadrants is complex but also ESSENTIAL like the true “let me tell you about homestuck” is “let me explain quadrants and tell you why SAME BRO SAME” tavros is such a small pure child

me: i am so glad that rose/kanaya is literal canon b/c they are my faves john & karkat’s relationship is so good i just love the narrative longcuts/shortcuts/loop de loops that homestuck achieves?

(http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=003535

EB: well you see, the explanation is perfectly simple and scientific. EB: it was because shut up. EB: shut up is why. 

we are all john)

it’s just such a BRAVE narrative in some ways–not really the use of second person, which is 50% gimmick and 50% narrative technique, when it’s done well that’s neato but mostly it’s stylistic but the use of time-travel to just leap the narrative ahead of itself, to insert foreshadowing/stakes from fucking NOWHERE and the fact that Hussie kept it all in his head and it makes a cogent whole: really smart, really effective progression/pacing

me: DAVESPRITE I COMPLETELY FUCKING FORGOT jesus like hussie has absolutely said dave has his typing quirks/voice/is basically him and so the hard-on that hussie has for dave and the FACT THAT DAVE’s entire narrative is time-travel/interactions with self is a thing worth commenting on (dave/dave otp)

me: am reading the homestuck year one review if you ever wanted to know what i meant about self-referential/time travel as plot progression STUFF then it’s a really good…. indication http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=003574 …..which i think is comprehensible without context. maybe not that you should actually read it, i just seeing it in paragraphs is An Experience

Missy: why... does he have an icky big enter keyboard with such sad keycaps?

me: this was posted in 2010 so maybe he hadn’t learned to be cool yet

[and what followed was a 15min derail about vintage PC keyboards I swear2god]

me: HI SOLLUX LONG TIME NO SEE we’re meeting the rest of the trolls now!!! sollux is also when the typing quirks start getting ridiculous so there will be less copy/paste because you will be like "why am i trying to read this, why are you pestering me” (ahahaha this was a lie) http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=003615

TA: iif you cant fiigure 2hiit out by fuckiing around you dont belong near computer2. 

me: this is it this is when dave comes together for me there’s a major time back-skip he does half an act ago which is the sort of establishing moment of “dave, knight of time, breaking narrative convention/building narrative shortcut/also functioning as foreshadowing and user guide” and then his sprite prototypes off him, which is a sort of “a dave, in conversations with himself” http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=003763 but its the first sighting of a dave corpse that sort of clarifies what the looping is for him, and how he … does … time/identity/mortality

(an aside: …..i didn’t catch before that the second (….second by series chronology not internal…. chronology b/c internal chronology is complicated) generation was actually created first????? a discovery oh wait nvm its the guardians (ty for clarifying that thing about which i have no context; yw!) ooooh my confusion is jake (second gen) is cloned from grandpa (zero gen) which is why they look the fuck identical)

http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=003835

GC: D4V3 WH4TS 1T SM3LL L1K3 TG: what GC: YOUR BLOOD TG: fuck off GC: D4V3 GC: G1V3 1T 4 L1TTL3 T4ST3 FOR M3 GC: T3LL M3 WH4T HUM4N BLOOD T4ST3S L1K3 GC: 1V3 B33N SO CUR1OUS >:]

it’s me i’m terezi

TG: how do you use a computer and know whats going on it doesnt make sense TG: my face doesnt make sense GC: D4V3 YOUR *F4C3* DO3SNT M4K3 …… GC: D4MM1T GC: 1 KNOW 3V3RYTH1NG TH4TS GO1NG TO H4PP3N TO YOU GC: 1 C4N T3LL YOU B3FOR3 1T H4PP3NS GC: SO YOU C4N B3 R34DY GC: 4ND NOT H4V3 TO GO B4CK 1N T1M3 4ND G3T K1LL3D 4LL TH3 T1M3 GC: 4ND ST4ND ON 4 TO1L3T LOOK1NG 4T YOUR OWN BLOOD FOR T3N M1NUT3S 

what i love about terezi is like the mix of practicality, curiosity, get shit done but with the true motivation of “what if” and the surprising interpersonal insight which arises from that same curiosity like from the narrative pov, we saw dave find his body and dump his body, then cut away, and then he just had bloody hands but it’s terezi who noticed, and tells us via this conversation, that dave was having A Think about those bloody hands b/c they’re an accidental contemplation of time and morality dave would never bring that up b/c of the facade of cool, narrative can’t easily show us and it’s not action-based really, but terezi introduces it b/c terezi cares b/c terezi cares about people in the “what do they do??? when exposed to this stimuli??” sense not in the, caring about, their welfare, thing not that part

Missy: i read your whole homestuck thing i understood maybe 20% of it without context i think this is decent

me: considering i understood about 80% of it yeah i’d say so that’s why the year 1 wrap up was so nice i am not a good visual learner so some of the flash anims go over my head and the plot is a clusterfuck so it’s easy to feel wtf even when you’re the active reader

me: http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=003927

CG: WHAT A LOAD OF SHIT, THIS ACT THAT YOU ACTUALLY THINK YOU’RE A HOTSHOT, YOU KNOW YOU HATE YOURSELF. TA: nobody hate2 hiim2elf more than you iidiiot.

Babiesssss

me: http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=003961

GC: : K4RK4T, PL34S3 GC: DONT PR3T3ND YOU D1DNT 3NJOY GO1NG 4ROUND K1LL1NG TH1NGS GC: 4ND TH4T YOU WOULDNT 3NJOY K1LL1NG 4 WHOL3 LOT MOR3 GC: PR4NC1NG 4ROUND W1TH YOUR L1TTL3 S1CKL3 B31NG 4LL 4DOR4BL3 CG: YEAH RIGHT. CG: MORE LIKE… CG: ADORABLOODTHIRSTY. CG: I’M PRANCING AROUND BEING THAT, OK?

200% sure I c/ped that last time I read this But I regret nothing

[bwicblog]

SA: i have never seen a small troll so happy in my life.

SA: I bought them ice cream.

TT: what flavor TT: if you say smTh like vanilla you are going To a(\/)Tually die

SA: why do you hate vanilla so much?

SA: I bought them what they liked best.

SA: it was butter pecan.

ID: guess what chat, i'm bored and bitchy so someone should give me a reason not to be.

ID: or a reason to be more bitchy. that works too.

DD: i think i would prefer to give you a reason to be less bitchy

DD: and in light of that it might be worth asking what you are feeling bitchy about!

DD: you can think of it as talking about your problems but also lets be real gossip is fun and bitching about yout bitchy feelings is cathartic

ID: pff well at least you're honest about why you're concerned. =:P i'm just bitchy because of some stuff that happened that i'm not about to share on the chat. for fear of the wrong eyes seeing.

ID: so sorry, no gossip!

DD: well thats unfortunate clearly i have no reason to keep talking to you DD: im joking of course i am sorry that bad things happened the fun part of gossip is getting together with friends to trash talk the people you dislike not the nature of the suffering itself DD: in the end it is my overall preference that my friends do not feel shitty DD: and as we have totally established we are at least on the first tier of friendship >:D

ID: you a trash talking pro then there daz? =:P i'll have to remember not to upset you. so you can't drag my good name through the mud.

ID: the first step of a long climb, you gotta be dedicated to this friendship.

DD: well okay to be honest i am not usually the one doing the trash talking unless it is in respect to my mechanical equipment some of which has developed an attitude as a result of the artificial intelligence frames i have installed to assist me with my work but that is more affectionate trashtalking like one might perform when calling their pet cuttlefish fat DD: mostly it is my friend trash talking but when i have issues i have to acknowledge usually it is me messing up like it was earlier with prisma and in those cases i just kind of go be by myself a bit because trash talking is fun but me crying to someone is significantly less so

DD: and of course i am dedicated or well as dedicated as i have reason to be which is to say you are fun to talk to and i can see myself doing so for the forseeable future but i am afraid i am not yet ready to lay down my life for you no matter how much colorful claw varnish you introduce me to

ID: man can you type. or is this a talk to text program. either way you're fast. and wordy.

ID: not saying its bad.

ID: before you get offended.

DD: i type very quickly but i am told i talk very quickly as well it is sometimes a problem but unfortunately i have a hard time telling when it is appropriate to stop because really i want to say all of the things that are relevant and i think theyre all important DD: also i am not offended dont worry you are only saying the truth

ID: and you should trash talk more, it's great.

DD: i dont really have anybody to trash talk though!

DD: except maybe the people on team jaycob

DD: they have awful taste that is quite worthy of trashing

ID: so far i don't think we've seen any of them around.

DD: the problem remains! 😦

DD: to clarify that is a sarcastic smiley i am not actually that torn up over the issue of not having a fight to pick with people and i am afraid i have been coming of as sufficiently ditzy lately that that may be unclear

ID: hahah, well. if it makes you feel better chat rooms are hard to guage that sort of shit.

ID: though some people put /s at the end of sarcastic remarks to indicate sarcasm.

DD: i feel like thats a little bit too on the nose sometimes

ID: also the colorful claw varnish is the best and you're really missing out by not going out and purchasing some that changes color.

DD: but its still probably better than a long paragraph explaining my intentions so i will keep it in mind!

ID: it's hella fun to run under different temperatured water.

ID: just use it when you reallllyyyy don't want someone to get offended.

DD: and oh dear well that is what we are going shopping for later isnt it! DD: there is not very much of anything at all to buy here in such a small town though admittedly the local burgers are delicious and its always more fun to buy that sort of thing in person with friends than just ordering it online for drone delivery

ID: because when they're already het up a long explanation can make it worse.

DD: why would people be offended?

ID: also yeah you probably went to the same burger place as i did with gliese and they had some fantastic burgers.

ID: because it can come off as...

ID: what's the word.

ID: that means you're talking down to a troll because you think they're dumb.

DD: condescending!

ID: that.

DD: and oh dear that makes sense DD: i think that was the issue with my apology explanation earlier as well DD: i was worried that i might be misrepresenting myself and i did not want prisma to think i was acting out of malice but really it came off like i thought he was dumb

DD: that sucks 😦

ID: yeah, it's a slippery slope of being understood and coming off as a prick.

ID: slipperier for you since you're a fish.

DD: !!

DD: what do you mean

ID: ....look, you know how stereotypes work right.

ID: the biggest stereotype for a fish for us lowbloods is that every troll with fins is a jerk.

DD: i have had little experience with socializing with large numbers of people DD: i have had much experience with watching tv

DD: and oh dear

DD: ... i guess i knew that i just didnt really think about it or how it might apply to me

ID: yeahhh. see you're in a position where you can just. not apply things to yourself and be safe doing it.

ID: where us lowerbloods have to be more wary and careful.

ID: better to assume a highblood is gonna mess you up. rather than trust one and get fucked up. y'know?

DD: ... yeah

DD: that makes sense DD: D:

DD: ... do i maybe come off like a person that would mess somebody else up though like generally stereotypes aside

ID: well i mean.

ID: if you were really devoted.

ID: some fish like to play the long con.

DD: the long con??

DD: i mean i understand what you mean i just dont understand why that would be something that you might be concerned about somebody else doing

ID: ...because i like living.

ID: and am also maybe a little paranoid.

DD: hm! DD: i am just asking because i mean yes i understand that i am a seadweller and this means i am sturdier than most lowbloods but also there are other seadwellers fully capable of hurting me too both physically emotionally socially and financially and in fact i have recently narrowly escaped an assassination attempt but i suppose i still do not see that much reason to be consistently concerned about somebody playing a long con on me DD: thought maybe that is why somebody tried to cull me so you may have a point in that respect

ID: hahah why did they try to assassinate you...? =:/

ID: is that what happened to your horns.

DD: yes!

DD: and i suppose it is because i am one of the two chief executives of a very rapidly successful starship tech company and there are some issues with you know brand competition

DD: and resentment because the field thus far has been dominated primarily by long-standing memebers of it an i am fairly young as well as the issue that well

iD: oh. yeah. cut-throat business, they don't like the new fish muscling in on things. i get it. i mean it's shitty but i understand.

DD: one of the other recent entrants into the field of helmstechnology development is qpin and they are uniquely known for their ruthless competitiveness though of course i cant strictly say that they were behind it

DD: though my co-ceo says it was likely them because the queenpin is the head and she has a lot of trouble in terms of competitiveness on account of being a jadeblood

DD: but all of that is politics and i am afraid that i am not particularly great at it and i have no idea who it was

ID: ...also jeesh i guess i should have. expected you to be working on helm shit since you're at the helm station. i'm kinda glad you're not allowed to talk about what you're developing now.

ID: but congrats on not dying.

ID: or becoming too maimed to continue working.

ID: sorry about the horns though.

DD: thank you!!

DD: i appreciate your celebration of my narrow avoidance of death : P

DD: also what is wrong with as you phrased it helm shit?

DD: i will refrain from talking about it if it makes you uncomfortable but i am afraid i dont understand

ID: you're the only person who is apparently willing to chat tonight so i'm glad you survived long enough to chat. =:P

ID: i don't like helm shit. it's like.

ID: the text version of claws on a chalkboard for me.

DD: truly high accolades

SA: nobody asked if they wanted me in the chat :/

DD: and oh my goodness well i will keep that in mind

DD: umm

ID: pris! sorry, i assumed you were napping.

SA: i'm teasing.

DD: i think maybe the assumption was that you were not present on account of earlier hads said-

DD: oh

DD: oops

ID: =:P

ID: 💚

DD: 💜 >:D

DD: do you maybe have anything that you would like to trash talk about because we have recently arrived at the conclusion that it is a worthwhile endeavor but i have nobody to trash talk and hads is being very secretive about the source of his miffedness

ID: yeah pris, give us some trash talk. =:P

SA: oh.

SA: um.

SA: ...

SA: this is. rather hard.

DD: unless of course you would like to join hads in the club of secretiveness which i assume is alternatively titled the club of the subjects of the trash talking being potentially present in the chatroom at a later date?

SA: no, I have no secret salt. I have made most of it known.

ID: yeah pris is a pretty honest guy.

DD: oh in that case what is difficult?

SA: I do not tend to hold on to animosity for extreme periods of time.

SA: It takes energy I do not have.

SA: I would rather reserve it for stopping hadean from getting into a bonus fight after Ashley.

SA: let me think.

ID: =:PPPP

DD: oh dear DD: see that statement there sounds a little bit like salt though maybe perhaps not the sort that is meant to be a source of amusement

ID: i need a post-victory fight tho pris!

SA: i think that it's very stupid that high bloods become very offended when I enter their space.

SA: they can't stand the idea i have as much money as them.

SA: that is sufficiently salty.

DD: also i think i understand that i tend to not hold onto angry feelings for very long but i in general am a lot more inclined to be sad rather than mad

ID: i'll take it! that's some salt. fuck them for getting snooty.

DD: and i appreciate the pun there though i am not sure what you mean DD: i dont find you offensive to be around at all

ID: the stereotypical fish daz.

DD: oh this is about stereotypes again

SA: it must be hard to live life with such a fragile ego that because someone is well-tailored and capable of pulling several thousand out of their wallet in cash, you must threaten them as much as possible to feel powerful again.

ID: do i gotta punch someone for you pris?

SA: you do not need a post victory fight you need a post-victory ice cream and bandaids.

ID: =:PPPP

SA: also dazzle I am regularly somewhat salty at Hadean. it is the spice of our friendship.

DD: yes seconding hads though more in spirit of concern rather than desire to actually punch anybody what i mean is that it sounds like you recently had a bad experience

DD: is that why hads is the saltlick

SA: yes but taht's also because he's salty anyways.

SA: ❤

ID: is salt a spice now.

ID: 💚

DD: <3< ??

ID: what.

SA: i did not recently have one, no. It just happens when I leave the loft. I live in West Haven, which is majority high-bloods.

ID: no. definitely no.

DD: platonic spade i suppose but i cannot find it in blue

DD: or purple or green

SA: oh no. It's not like that at all.

SA: I thought salt was a spice... is something only a spice if it grows?

ID: idk.

ID: daz is salt a spice.

DD: i am going to say yes though mostly out of convenience for the sake of making puns and less because i actually know

SA: oh.

SA: well that's as good of an answer as any.

DD: although on the topic of growing i can at least say acid is often used to spice food underwater so

DD: there is at least that

SA: that sounds like. hell.

SA: but i suppose i won't judge i eat scorpions.

ID: ...how does. acid food taste...?

ID: does acid impart a flavor?

SA: is it citrus-y, dazzle

DD: that depends on the acid you use i suppose sometimes it is bitter and other times it is more sour and unfortunately i cannot tell you if it is citrusy on account of i have never had a citrus fruit though it does not taste much like orange candies if that helps

DD: also it is often used to cook food not just season it

ID: huh.

ID: weird.

SA: you should try an orange sometime. they are wonderful

DD: more weird than eating scorpions?? :{

DD: and apparently also squirrels

ID: i like berries the best out of fruit. but they're usually more expensive.

SA: I do not eat rodents.

ID: since they spoil quicker.

ID: i eat squirrels. =:P

SA: horrid.

ID: any port in a storm pris.

DD: i will have to try both oranges and berries in that case maybe even a smoothie consisting of both 😄

SA: do not do that.

SA: Orange is a very particular flavor.

DD: i am taking this landdweller food thing step by step

DD: oh

DD: interesting

SA: citrus pairs well with other citrus.

ID: try orange juice.

ID: that's easy to find.

SA: lemon and lime, for example. Or Mango and orange.

SA: yes.

SA: orange juice.

ID: mango is a citrus? =:????

SA: ,...I always thought it was.

SA: "While both citrus and tropical fruits are grown in warm climates, citrus fruits refer specifically to the genus of flowering fruits in the Rutaceae family, which include oranges, grapefruits and lemons as well as certain other species and hybrids such as the pomelo, key lime and citron. Mango is not a citrus"

SA: now I'm mad at Hadean for telling me mango is not a citrus.

DD: i think i will just buy a pile of fruit

DD: and see which ones i enjoy

SA: and ruining sweeps of disbelief.

ID: ...i mean. mangos are too sweet for a citrus.

ID: was my logic.

SA: are... are oranges not sweet to you.

ID: not as sweet as a mango!

ID: oranges have that citrus taste!

SA: make sure you learn how to prepare them, Dazzle.

DD: you mean you cant eat them raw??

ID: yeah but some of them you don't eat the outsides.

ID: like citrus fruits.

DD: maybe i can go to a fruit restaurant

SA: just putting a mango in your mouthi s not the most brilliant idea.

ID: but you can eat the outside of a mango can't you?

SA: no.

SA: you also can't eat the outside of a banana.

SA: or.

SA: You can but it will make you very sad.

SA: I learned this the hard way.

SA: It was unfortunate.

ID: 'Answer: Although the pit of a mango isn't considered edible, some people do eat the mango skin. The skin is bitter-tasting, but the peel contains several healthful chemical compounds, including powerful antioxidants mangiferin, norathyriol, and resveratrol.'

ID: i have no idea what any of those words mean.

SA: so the short version is it will make you sad.

SA: healthy.

SA :but sad.

DD: i need to be healthier i think but i do not want to be more sad

DD: but maybe the health will be making up for it because honestly most of my sadness as of late has come from my health

SA: are you of poor constitution?

ID: i'll be honest and admit i've never eaten a mango. so i was guessing on eating the skin.

DD: not usually!!!

DD: i am just

ID; adjusting to being on land?

DD: not used to living on the land and everything is very dry and my gills hurt a lot and everything tastes weird so i am also hungry all the time

DD: and also everything is very hot

SA: you would probably be happier in a bay area.

SA: why they let you move to a desert

SA: Is beyond me.

ID: because of the station pris.

SA: yes, but... why put it there.

ID: close to a lowblood settlement.

DD: because it is a remote location where i am unlikely to be found again by the person who previously attempted to assassinate me and also because there is a psionic training station that is located in the area on account of it being a lowblood locale with a high psionic concentration

SA: oh so abducting.

DD: and that is very useful for my research

ID: easy to lure them away from a shitty town to be experimented on.

DD: i mean i am

DD: unsure i would phrase it that way

DD: ... the luring not the town thing the town is pretty shitty

ID: good thing i did it for you.

DD: oh dear

ID: you're poor and life sucks and maybe your lusus is dead and you're scared.

ID: some highblood offering you candy if you come to his station sounds pretty good.

DD: actually i believe most of the recruiting is done through online means

SA: a more polite way of saying it would be that it is often easier to accept being an pet and know you are cared for than it is to be free and struggle.

ID: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ my point remains.

DD: and the payment tends to be in caegars and i know that is not what you mean i simply think you maybe are not representing it very accurately

ID: it's still sucky to do.

ID: most of those trolls have to choose between that and death.

DD: i mean it is also kind of sucky to work public service at a cafe but

ID: ...i mean a cafe doesn't screw things in to you.

SA: being a living experiment and test subject is very different from being subject to a screaming indigo about how their latte was not enough foam.

ID: you can leave a shitty cafe job.

SA: ...do they foam lattes...

SA: I dont know.

SA: I have the all the time, and I have never thought about it.

ID: and you're probably less likely to die in a cafe job.

ID: or fry your psi.

ID: and probably get culled for that.

DD: well i mean first of all the only test subjects are the two cerulean trolls i believe and also the people that volunteer to help me out but that part is not mandatory the main purpose of this station is to prepare trolls that have been conscripted for helmservice for an easier transition upon ascension and also accept anybody that would like to volunteer for the service without conscription not

DD: testing things really

ID: yeah well i bet if you asked a lot of wrigglers why they volunteered.

ID: you'd get a lot of 'i didn't have any other option' answers.

DD: hm

DD: i guess i do not know

SA: does it not

SA; unsettle you.

ID: you sure don't! but the first step is realizing you don't know.

SA: that our ships are using an archiac biotechnical method of power when we could built a technical system or a disocnnecting system for them.

SA: My pilot training used my inhibitor to join and disconnect me from a ship without hurting me in the slightest.

SA: and yet this isn't the norm.

ID: man you also hear those stories about them chopping a helms' fronds off.

ID: since they don't need them for anything.

DD: well as a starship technician i kind of have to argue your useage of the word archaic because the biotech we have developed is currently eons ahead of our purely mechanical methods of transportation which are heavily limited by both fuel systems and speed and also i am not sure that you are hearing accurate stories about limb removal that is definitely not a standard practice and would probably be actively detrimental to the process and helmsman adjustment and biowire integration DD: as would be constantly placing the pilot into painful situations upon connect and reconnect though maybe that may be the case withoutdated systems??? DD: the point of helmsman system design is to ensure a fluid and efficient connection

ID: ...huh.

ID: i mean tbh i never really paid attention to schoolfeeding about helms since. you gotta figure that stuff is just propaganda to make you think it's great.

DD: a decent amount of it probably is but that is the case with all fleet propaganda!! which is not necessarily a bad thing to be honest if you ask me personally because focusing on the negative aspects of a situation is never going to motivate anybody when you think about it regardless of what the job it

ID: i mean the ratio of cons to pros of some jobs are a lot easier to swallow than others. =:P

DD: that is very true DD: i would not want to be a garbage person i am not ashamed to admit this

ID: and i like walking.

DD: or a fighter like sipara i am fairly sturdy but i do not like being attacked

ID: if you could not tell by my adventurer lifestyle.

ID: and you can say that i can explore wayyyy more stuff in a ship but i'm pretty sure it is soooo not the same.

DD: haha yes that is true i suppose i do not consider it much considering i am both very fond of swimming over walking and also my experience on starships as a nonpsionic troll involves not very much walking anyways

DD: partially because i am stuck in my coon trying to adjust to orbit but also primarily because there is also not much room to walk

ID: ...i guess since i've already dived in to this ball of squick i might as well ask since you'd know best.

ID: does like. your kind of psi make you better or worse or not usable for a helm?

DD: yes very much so!

DD: there is a psionic ranking system of course in terms of the amount of raw power available but also the type of psionics make a difference for example cerulean psychics and indigos are not functional for ship powering at all and varieties among lowbloods that exhibit nonphysical properties such as clairvoyance are typically not high enough on the actual kinetic energy production to be able to power a ship with any efficiency as conversion to a useable power source is often very inefficient and also takes up energy in the process which rather defeats the point

DD: for example telekinetic type psionics tend to be the most effective for helming while more psychically oriented powers are not

SA: sometimes hybridization allows multifaceted psionics but it's also very rare in natural occurance.

SA: i can pilot a starfighter with my telekinesis as long as the ship and my inhibitor are programmed to allow the link through.

Sa: But an entire ship wuld be beyond me.

SA; and for the most part starfighters rely on a psion's ability to generate shields and manipulate other variables for a quicker reactions time, but not flight itself.

DD: there are also augments that assist with that!

ID: hahahah okay can this be enough helms talk now.

ID: i've exceeded my comfort zone.

DD: that is part of what the psionic training facility that i am part of helps with-

DD: oh dear my apologies

DD: i will stop!

SA: 😃

ID: i mean i asked so it's fine.

ID: just. new convo now plzkthx.

ID: ...i mean i should volunteer a new subject huh.

ID: pris did you have dinner?

ID: both of you for that matter.

ID: miss hungry because i don't eat.

SA: ...

SA: maybe.

ID: =>:I the ice cream you had earlier isn't dinner btw.

SA: i had a fruit salad.

DD: dinner??

DD: ...

DD: oh dear

DD: i am afraid i lost track of time

DD: i was going to say i did have dinner but that feels as though it was a long time ago and it occurs to me that that may have been dinner yesternight and it is possible that part of my discomfort with my health is because i am actually very hungry

ID: i'm gonna make you both set alarms to eat. =>:(

ID: a fruit salad and ice cream isn't enough for a night pris.

SA: mrmrm.

SA: I'll be back in a bit.

ID: if you get lonely while eating call sips' mobile and i'll steal it to vid chat. =:P

SA: well I may as well call it now then.

SA: i am.

SA: go find it.

ID: woofbesat, fetch. i see how it is. =:PPP

DD: i unfortunately tend to not notice my alarms it has been somewhat detrimental my friend used to ahve somebody come pull me away from my work and i thought it was sillybut now i am realizing it was probably very necessary

ID: get one of those bracelets that vibrate as an alarm.

ID: they might work better.

DD: but also that is my cue to go find food before i keel over and die so goodbye it was lovely talking to you and also that is a good idea i should find one of those

ID: ...damnit now the chat is empty again. =>:(

VC: Not quite.

VC: I'm taking a rrest on a courrierr trip, what's everryone else up to?

ID: uh i sent all the hungry skeletons off to eat because they all forget or think that a fruit salad is a meal.

ID: so they're doing that. and i'm just sitting here twiddling ym thumbs and watching pris eat on vid-chat on another mobile.

ID: ....is it rude to text someone while watching another troll in a vid chat.

SA: i'm talking.

SA: asshole.

SA: that. that wasn't serious

VC: Oh, I don't think I've met you before, SA.

SA: Hello.

SA: I am prisma.

ID: =:P i can multitask pris!

VC: I'm Cennef. And you and Hadean apparently know each other well, I take it?

ID: yeah we're buds.

ID: pris is cool, so be nice to him. =:P

SA: cennef. it's nice to meet you.

VC: He's yellow, what reason do I have to _not_ be civil?

VC: It's not like he's one of this room's silly highbloods.

VC: You seem well-mannerrred, so I agrree in turrn.

ID: he can speak kinda highblood-y sometimes but it was just how he was raised so don't pick on him. =:P

VC: Mannerrs and phrrassing of some things isn't an exclusive highblood trrait. I harrdly would.

VC: Pherrres talks like he's trrrying to sound cerrulean sometimes and that doesn't botherr me.

ID: i mean glad you understand that. some lowbloods get so offended when you use a 'highblood' term!

ID: like saying tub is gonna turn you blue.

VC: Ha. I may not carre forr highbloods, but - oh _rreally_

VC: Using theirr language isn't exactly a sin.

VC: That's rridiculous.

ID: you've never met a lowblood who got all snooty with you over it?

ID: the 'uhm, did you mean ABLUTION TRAP?' types?

VC: I suppose I have now that I think of it, but they arren't exactly trrolls I spent a lot of time arround.

VC: My ex quads werren't like that at all, norr arre any of my currrent frriends.

ID: wise move. there's having a grudge against highbloods and then there's overcull.

VC: I rreally only have a grrrudge against _one_ highblood, but I do lack fondness forr them in generral.

SA: i overcull teal bloods.

VC: Though perrhaps it might be prrrudent to stop talking about it in case any of them do come in.

SA: they have always patronized me.

SA: 😉

VC: Pfft, what

VC: I know you'rre joking, but I don't rreally get it

ID: hahah, it's a chat thing. we joke that teals are the worst because they're in the middle so they lash out more.

VC: Ohhhh

VC: To be honest, I have only met one tealblood outside of deliverries, which don't rreally count.

VC: He was...verrry odd.

ID: that's a tealblood for you.

VC: Well, he wasn't a lawtroll orr anything. He was some sorrt of perrforrmer.

ID: ...huh. was it the dumpster troll.

ID: ...do you know what i'm talking about. probably not.

VC: ...he cerrtainly _belonged_ in a dumpsterr but otherrwise no, I do not.

VC: Mine talked like some sorrt of flowerrry idiot and called himself barrd.

VC: Is that what this dumpsterr trroll did.

ID: yes!

VC: Oh my god.

SA: why is there a known dumpster dweller.

ID: he got ceruleans mad about historical bulge piercings.

SA; what dessert should I get?

VC: _Oh my god._

ID: and they threw him in a dumpster.

ID: ...the fluffy one.

VC: For once. I am on the bluebloods' side.

VC: _What is wrong with him._

VC: Correction.

VC: How many things arrre wrrong with him.

ID: and then he started dueling them in the dumpster.

VC: Though I'd probably be -

VC: _Highbloods._

ID: until someone came and rescued his hide.

ID: it was hilarious.

VC: That's completely rrridiculous.

ID: it was. but that made it hilarious.

ID: so what are you delivering...?

VC: Sorry, I was getting back on the road. I have my phone on talk-to-text now. It's some sorrrt of book collection for this olive.

ID: you're fine. how are you traveling? and that sounds. boring.

VC: Haha, I have no clue. They could be about stunning adventurrres, for all I know. I don't usually get told the details of what I deliverrr, unless they'rre imporrtant forr trransit.

VC: I rrride my lusus.

VC: She's not exactly a hoofbeast orr anything, but she can go at a decent pace with a trroll as small as I am.

ID: heyy a troll after my own pumper. though my lusus is a variety of hoofbeast.

VC: Ohh, what kind?

ID: antelope kind. but one of the big ones. he can carry me and my stuff no problem. and we have similar rocking racks.

VC: Pfft. Do you now.

VC: I have decently sized horns myself.

ID: about time. like this chat is mostly nubhorn central.

VC: I can prrrove I am not nubhorned.

VC: Ignorre the goofy exprression, this is just what I had on frrond. Also unforrrtunately I should pay attention to the terrrain now, it's getting rrough.

ID: huh. sorry i've not got an image right on hand to share. and i'm not in the prettiest shape for selfies, so you'll just have to take me at my word. =:P

VC: Haha

VC: Well I fully expect one laterrr

VC: But underrstandable - ow

VC: I rreally _should_ stop talking, dammit

ID: your lusus bad at navigating?

SA: the fluffy one

SA: that didn't tell me anything...

ID: point the camera at the menu for me.

SA: there...

ID: uhhh. the lemon tart thingy. since you said you like citrus.

SA: okay.

SA: delicious...

ID: you're welcome. =:P