#22-01-2019

[sugdensdingle]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Conspiratorialism and the epistemological crisis

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me next weekend (Mar 30/31) in ANAHEIM at WONDERCON, then in Boston with Randall "XKCD" Munroe! (Apr 11), then Providence (Apr 12), and beyond!

Last year, Ed Pierson was supposed to fly from Seattle to New Jersey on Alaska Airlines. He boarded his flight, but then he had an urgent discussion with the flight attendant, explaining that as a former senior Boeing engineer, he'd specifically requested that flight because the aircraft wasn't a 737 Max:

https://www.cnn.com/travel/boeing-737-max-passenger-boycott/index.html

But for operational reasons, Alaska had switched out the equipment on the flight and there he was on a 737 Max, about to travel cross-continent, and he didn't feel safe doing so. He demanded to be let off the flight. His bags were offloaded and he walked back up the jetbridge after telling the spooked flight attendant, "I can’t go into detail right now, but I wasn’t planning on flying the Max, and I want to get off the plane."

Boeing, of course, is a flying disaster that was years in the making. Its planes have been falling out of the sky since 2019. Floods of whistleblowers have come forward to say its aircraft are unsafe. Pierson's not the only Boeing employee to state – both on and off the record – that he wouldn't fly on a specific model of Boeing aircraft, or, in some cases any recent Boeing aircraft:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/22/anything-that-cant-go-on-forever/#will-eventually-stop

And yet, for years, Boeing's regulators have allowed the company to keep turning out planes that keep turning out lemons. This is a pretty frightening situation, to say the least. I'm not an aerospace engineer, I'm not an aircraft safety inspector, but every time I book a flight, I have to make a decision about whether to trust Boeing's assurances that I can safely board one of its planes without dying.

In an ideal world, I wouldn't even have to think about this. I'd be able to trust that publicly accountable regulators were on the job, making sure that airplanes were airworthy. "Caveat emptor" is no way to run a civilian aviation system.

But even though I don't have the specialized expertise needed to assess the airworthiness of Boeing planes, I do have the much more general expertise needed to assess the trustworthiness of Boeing's regulator. The FAA has spent years deferring to Boeing, allowing it to self-certify that its aircraft were safe. Even when these assurances led to the death of hundreds of people, the FAA continued to allow Boeing to mark its own homework:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8oCilY4szc

What's more, the FAA boss who presided over those hundreds of deaths was an ex-Boeing lobbyist, whom Trump subsequently appointed to run Boeing's oversight. He's not the only ex-insider who ended up a regulator, and there's plenty of ex-regulators now on Boeing's payroll:

https://therevolvingdoorproject.org/boeing-debacle-shows-need-to-investigate-trump-era-corruption/

You don't have to be an aviation expert to understand that companies have conflicts of interest when it comes to certifying their own products. "Market forces" aren't going to keep Boeing from shipping defective products, because the company's top brass are more worried about cashing out with this quarter's massive stock buybacks than they are about their successors' ability to manage the PR storm or Congressional hearings after their greed kills hundreds and hundreds of people.

You also don't have to be an aviation expert to understand that these conflicts persist even when a Boeing insider leaves the company to work for its regulators, or vice-versa. A regulator who anticipates a giant signing bonus from Boeing after their term in office, or a an ex-Boeing exec who holds millions in Boeing stock has an irreconcilable conflict of interest that will make it very hard – perhaps impossible – for them to hold the company to account when it trades safety for profit.

It's not just Boeing customers who feel justifiably anxious about trusting a system with such obvious conflicts of interest: Boeing's own executives, lobbyists and lawyers also refuse to participate in similarly flawed systems of oversight and conflict resolution. If Boeing was sued by its shareholders and the judge was also a pissed off Boeing shareholder, they would demand a recusal. If Boeing was looking for outside counsel to represent it in a liability suit brought by the family of one of its murder victims, they wouldn't hire the firm that was suing them – not even if that firm promised to be fair. If a Boeing executive's spouse sued for divorce, that exec wouldn't use the same lawyer as their soon-to-be-ex.

Sure, it takes specialized knowledge and training to be a lawyer, a judge, or an aircraft safety inspector. But anyone can look at the system those experts work in and spot its glaring defects. In other words, while acquiring expertise is hard, it's much easier to spot weaknesses in the process by which that expertise affects the world around us.

And therein lies the problem: aviation isn't the only technically complex, potentially lethal, and utterly, obviously untrustworthy system we all have to navigate. How about the building safety codes that governed the structure you're in right now? Plenty of people have blithely assumed that structural engineers carefully designed those standards, and that these standards were diligently upheld, only to discover in tragic, ghastly ways that this was wrong:

https://www.bbc.com/news/64568826

There are dozens – hundreds! – of life-or-death, highly technical questions you have to resolve every day just to survive. Should you trust the antilock braking firmware in your car? How about the food hygiene rules in the factories that produced the food in your shopping cart? Or the kitchen that made the pizza that was just delivered? Is your kid's school teaching them well, or will they grow up to be ignoramuses and thus economic roadkill?

Hell, even if I never get into another Boeing aircraft, I live in the approach path for Burbank airport, where Southwest lands 50+ Boeing flights every day. How can I be sure that the next Boeing 737 Max that falls out of the sky won't land on my roof?

This is the epistemological crisis we're living through today. Epistemology is the process by which we know things. The whole point of a transparent, democratically accountable process for expert technical deliberation is to resolve the epistemological challenge of making good choices about all of these life-or-death questions. Even the smartest person among us can't learn to evaluate all those questions, but we can all look at the process by which these questions are answered and draw conclusions about its soundness.

Is the process public? Are the people in charge of it forthright? Do they have conflicts of interest, and, if so, do they sit out any decision that gives even the appearance of impropriety? If new evidence comes to light – like, say, a horrific disaster – is there a way to re-open the process and change the rules?

The actual technical details might be a black box for us, opaque and indecipherable. But the box itself can be easily observed: is it made of sturdy material? Does it have sharp corners and clean lines? Or is it flimsy, irregular and torn? We don't have to know anything about the box's contents to conclude that we don't trust the box.

For example: we may not be experts in chemical engineering or water safety, but we can tell when a regulator is on the ball on these issues. Back in 2019, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection sought comment on its water safety regs. Dow Chemical – the largest corporation in the state's largest industry – filed comments arguing that WV should have lower standards for chemical contamination in its drinking water.

Now, I'm perfectly prepared to believe that there are safe levels of chemical runoff in the water supply. There's a lot of water in the water supply, after all, and "the dose makes the poison." What's more, I use the products whose manufacture results in that chemical waste. I want them to be made safely, but I do want them to be made – for one thing, the next time I have surgery, I want the anesthesiologist to start an IV with fresh, sterile plastic tubing.

And I'm not a chemist, let alone a water chemist. Neither am I a toxicologist. There are aspects of this debate I am totally unqualified to assess. Nevertheless, I think the WV process was a bad one, and here's why:

https://www.wvma.com/press/wvma-news/4244-wvma-statement-on-human-health-criteria-development

That's Dow's comment to the regulator (as proffered by its mouthpiece, the WV Manufacturers' Association, which it dominates). In that comment, Dow argues that West Virginians safely can absorb more poison than other Americans, because the people of West Virginia are fatter than other Americans, and so they have more tissue and thus a better ratio of poison to person than the typical American. But they don't stop there! They also say that West Virginians don't drink as much water as their out-of-state cousins, preferring to drink beer instead, so even if their water is more toxic, they'll be drinking less of it:

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/03/14/the-real-elitists-looking-down-on-trump-voters/

Even without any expertise in toxicology or water chemistry, I can tell that these are bullshit answers. The fact that the WV regulator accepted these comments tells me that they're not a good regulator. I was in WV last year to give a talk, and I didn't drink the tap water.

It's totally reasonable for non-experts to reject the conclusions of experts when the process by which those experts resolve their disagreements is obviously corrupt and irredeemably flawed. But some refusals carry higher costs – both for the refuseniks and the people around them – than my switching to bottled water when I was in Charleston.

Take vaccine denial (or "hesitancy"). Many people greeted the advent of an extremely rapid, high-tech covid vaccine with dread and mistrust. They argued that the pharma industry was dominated by corrupt, greedy corporations that routinely put their profits ahead of the public's safety, and that regulators, in Big Pharma's pocket, let them get away with mass murder.

The thing is, all that is true. Look, I've had five covid vaccinations, but not because I trust the pharma industry. I've had direct experience of how pharma sacrifices safety on greed's altar, and narrowly avoided harm myself. I have had chronic pain problems my whole life, and they've gotten worse every year. When my daughter was on the way, I decided this was going to get in the way of my ability to parent – I wanted to be able to carry her for long stretches! – and so I started aggressively pursuing the pain treatments I'd given up on many years before.

My journey led me to many specialists – physios, dieticians, rehab specialists, neurologists, surgeons – and I tried many, many therapies. Luckily, my wife had private insurance – we were in the UK then – and I could go to just about any doctor that seemed promising. That's how I found myself in the offices of a Harley Street quack, a prominent pain specialist, who had great news for me: it turned out that opioids were way safer than had previously been thought, and I could just take opioids every day and night for the rest of my life without any serious risk of addiction. It would be fine.

This sounded wrong to me. I'd lost several friends to overdoses, and watched others spiral into miserable lives as they struggled with addiction. So I "did my own research." Despite not having a background in chemistry, biology, neurology or pharmacology, I struggled through papers and read commentary and came to the conclusion that opioids weren't safe at all. Rather, corrupt billionaire pharma owners like the Sackler family had colluded with their regulators to risk the lives of millions by pushing falsified research that was finding publication in some of the most respected, peer-reviewed journals in the world.

I became an opioid denier, in other words.

I decided, based on my own research, that the experts were wrong, and that they were wrong for corrupt reasons, and that I couldn't trust their advice.

When anti-vaxxers decried the covid vaccines, they said things that were – in form at least – indistinguishable from the things I'd been saying 15 years earlier, when I decided to ignore my doctor's advice and throw away my medication on the grounds that it would probably harm me.

For me, faith in vaccines didn't come from a broad, newfound trust in the pharmaceutical system: rather, I judged that there was so much scrutiny on these new medications that it would overwhelm even pharma's ability to corruptly continue to sell a medication that they secretly knew to be harmful, as they'd done so many times before:

https://www.npr.org/2007/11/10/5470430/timeline-the-rise-and-fall-of-vioxx

But many of my peers had a different take on anti-vaxxers: for these friends and colleagues, anti-vaxxers were being foolish. Surprisingly, these people I'd long felt myself in broad agreement with began to defend the pharmaceutical system and its regulators. Once they saw that anti-vaxx was a wedge issue championed by right-wing culture war shitheads, they became not just pro-vaccine, but pro-pharma.

There's a name for this phenomenon: "schismogenesis." That's when you decide how you feel about an issue based on who supports it. Think of self-described "progressives" who became cheerleaders for the America's cruel, ruthless and lawless "intelligence community" when it seemed that US spooks were bent on Trump's ouster:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/18/schizmogenesis/

The fact that the FBI didn't like Trump didn't make them allies of progressive causes. This was and is the same entity that (among other things) tried to blackmail Martin Luther King, Jr into killing himself:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_letter

But schismogenesis isn't merely a reactionary way of flip-flopping on issues based on reflexive enmity. It's actually a reasonable epistemological tactic: in a world where there are more issues you need to be clear on than you can possibly inform yourself about, you need some shortcuts. One shortcut – a shortcut that's failing – is to say, "Well, I'll provisionally believe whatever the expert system tells me is true." Another shortcut is, "I will provisionally disbelieve in whatever the people I know to act in bad faith are saying is true." That is, "schismogenesis."

Schismogenesis isn't a great tactic. It would be far better if we had a set of institutions we could all largely trust – if the black boxes where expert debate took place were sturdy, rectilinear and sharp-cornered.

But they're not. They're just not. Our regulatory process sucks. Corporate concentration makes it trivial for cartels to capture their regulators and steer them to conclusions that benefit corporate shareholders even if that means visiting enormous harm – even mass death – on the public:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

No one hates Big Tech more than I do, but many of my co-belligerents in the war on Big Tech believe that the rise of conspiratorialism can be laid at tech platforms' feet. They say that Big Tech boasts of how good they are at algorithmically manipulating our beliefs, and attribute Qanons, flat earthers, and other outlandish conspiratorial cults to the misuse off those algorithms.

"We built a Big Data mind-control ray" is one of those extraordinary claims that requires extraordinary evidence. But the evidence for Big Tech's persuasion machines is very poor: mostly, it consists of tech platforms' own boasts to potential investors and customers for their advertising products. "We can change peoples' minds" has long been the boast of advertising companies, and it's clear that they can change the minds of customers for advertising.

Think of department store mogul John Wanamaker, who famously said "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." Today – thanks to commercial surveillance – we know that the true proportion of wasted advertising spending is more like 99.9%. Advertising agencies may be really good at convincing John Wanamaker and his successors, through prolonged, personal, intense selling – but that doesn't mean they're able to sell so efficiently to the rest of us with mass banner ads or spambots:

http://pluralistic.net/HowToDestroySurveillanceCapitalism

In other words, the fact that Facebook claims it is really good at persuasion doesn't mean that it's true. Just like the AI companies who claim their chatbots can do your job: they are much better at convincing your boss (who is insatiably horny for firing workers) than they are at actually producing an algorithm that can replace you. What's more, their profitability relies far more on convincing a rich, credulous business executive that their product works than it does on actually delivering a working product.

Now, I do think that Facebook and other tech giants play an important role in the rise of conspiratorial beliefs. However, that role isn't using algorithms to persuade people to mistrust our institutions. Rather Big Tech – like other corporate cartels – has so corrupted our regulatory system that they make trusting our institutions irrational.

Think of federal privacy law. The last time the US got a new federal consumer privacy law was in 1988, when Congress passed the Video Privacy Protection Act, a law that prohibits video store clerks from leaking your VHS rental history:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/07/why-vppa-protects-youtube-and-viacom-employees

It's been a minute. There are very obvious privacy concerns haunting Americans, related to those tech giants, and yet the closest Congress can come to doing something about it is to attempt the forced sale of the sole Chinese tech giant with a US footprint to a US company, to ensure that its rampant privacy violations are conducted by our fellow Americans, and to force Chinese spies to buy their surveillance data on millions of Americans in the lawless, reckless swamp of US data-brokerages:

https://www.npr.org/2024/03/14/1238435508/tiktok-ban-bill-congress-china

For millions of Americans – especially younger Americans – the failure to pass (or even introduce!) a federal privacy law proves that our institutions can't be trusted. They're right:

https://www.tiktok.com/@pearlmania500/video/7345961470548512043

Occam's Razor cautions us to seek the simplest explanation for the phenomena we see in the world around us. There's a much simpler explanation for why people believe conspiracy theories they encounter online than the idea that the one time Facebook is telling the truth is when they're boasting about how well their products work – especially given the undeniable fact that everyone else who ever claimed to have perfected mind-control was a fantasist or a liar, from Rasputin to MK-ULTRA to pick-up artists.

Maybe people believe in conspiracy theories because they have hundreds of life-or-death decisions to make every day, and the institutions that are supposed to make that possible keep proving that they can't be trusted. Nevertheless, those decisions have to be made, and so something needs to fill the epistemological void left by the manifest unsoundness of the black box where the decisions get made.

For many people – millions – the thing that fills the black box is conspiracy fantasies. It's true that tech makes finding these conspiracy fantasies easier than ever, and it's true that tech makes forming communities of conspiratorial belief easier, too. But the vulnerability to conspiratorialism that algorithms identify and target people based on isn't a function of Big Data. It's a function of corruption – of life in a world in which real conspiracies (to steal your wages, or let rich people escape the consequences of their crimes, or sacrifice your safety to protect large firms' profits) are everywhere.

Progressives – which is to say, the coalition of liberals and leftists, in which liberals are the senior partners and spokespeople who control the Overton Window – used to identify and decry these conspiracies. But as right wing "populists" declared their opposition to these conspiracies – when Trump damned free trade and the mainstream media as tools of the ruling class – progressives leaned into schismogenesis and declared their vocal support for these old enemies of progress.

This is the crux of Naomi Klein's brilliant 2023 book Doppelganger: that as the progressive coalition started supporting these unworthy and broken institutions, the right spun up "mirror world" versions of their critique, distorted versions that focus on scapegoating vulnerable groups rather than fighting unworthy institutions:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

This is a long tradition in politics: hundreds of years ago, some leftists branded antisemitism "the socialism of fools." Rather than condemning the system's embrace of the finance sector and its wealthy beneficiaries, anti-semites blame a disfavored group of people – people who are just as likely as anyone to suffer under the system:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_is_the_socialism_of_fools

It's an ugly, shallow, cartoon version of socialism's measured and comprehensive analysis of how the class system actually works and why it's so harmful to everyone except a tiny elite. Literally cartoonish: the shadow-world version of socialism co-opts and simplifies the iconography of class struggle. And schismogenesis – "if the right likes this, I don't" – sends "progressive" scolds after anyone who dares to criticize finance as the crux of our world's problems as popularizing "antisemetic dog-whistles."

This is the problem with "horseshoe theory" – the idea that the far right and the far left bend all the way around to meet each other:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/26/horsehoe-crab/#substantive-disagreement

When the right criticizes pharma companies, they tell us to "do our own research" (e.g. ignore the systemic problems of people being forced to work under dangerous conditions during a pandemic while individually assessing conflicting claims about vaccine safety, ideally landing on buying "supplements" from a grifter). When the left criticizes pharma, it's to argue for universal access to medicine and vigorous public oversight of pharma companies. These aren't the same thing:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/25/the-other-shoe-drops/#quid-pro-quo

Long before opportunistic right wing politicians realized they could get mileage out of pointing at the terrifying epistemological crisis of trying to make good choices in an age of institutions that can't be trusted, the left was sounding the alarm. Conspiratorialism – the fracturing of our shared reality – is a serious problem, weakening our ability to respond effectively to endless disasters of the polycrisis.

But by blaming the problem of conspiratorialism on the credulity of believers (rather than the deserved disrepute of the institutions they have lost faith in) we adopt the logic of the right: "conspiratorialism is a problem of individuals believing wrong things," rather than "a system that makes wrong explanations credible – and a schismogenic insistence that these institutions are sound and trustworthy."

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/25/black-boxes/#when-you-know-you-know

Image: Nuclear Regulatory Commission (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/nrcgov/15993154185/

meanwell-packaging.co.uk https://www.flickr.com/photos/195311218@N08/52159853896

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[thealieninhiding]

The Katie McGrath Archives (WIP)

A repository of my ongoing digital archeology & archival work please contact me if you have anything to contribute and buy me a coffee if you value my content

message me if you want a link to her complete filmography 🤫

Updates

(last updated 2024-07-03)

2024-07-03

Scans:

2014-02-07 London Times - Dracula sets

Audio:

(Un)likeminded 2x02 How to Survive The Apocalypse

2024-05-24

Video:

2017 Katie McGrath interview [CW|KMcGsource]

2017 Supergirl Season 3 Sweet dreams (are made of this) Music Video

2017 CW SDCC Promo Supergirl and Arrow

2019-01-01 The CW Promo Open To All

2021-04-25 Supergirl Season 6 Katie McGrath Lena Luthor

2021-09-15 Supergirl Season 6 Katie McGrath Reflecting on Supergirl

2024-05-22

Audio:

Interview - 2009-07-17 Katie McGrath Mr Media interview

Interview - 2009-10-15 Geek Syndicate Merlin BTS special

Video:

BTS - 2008-10-08 Blue Peter Merlin BTS

Events - 2009 TV Choice Awards Digital Spy interview

Events - Getty Videos of 2009 TV Choice Awards, 2010 Merlin Series 3 launch, 2011 W.E. premiere, 2017 King Arthur Premiere

2024-05-17

Archived interviews

2008-12-07 Tribune Magazine - What Katie Did

2011-10-14 What's on TV - Merlin's Katie McGrath- 'Bad girls have more fun!'

2012-12-03 Fanhattan Blog - Colin Morgan, Katie McGrath and Bradley James on Season 5 and The Series Finale

2018-08-01 The TV Junkies - Supergirl SDCC 2018 Interviews- Lena’s Impractical Lab Outfits, the Return of Reporter Kara and a More Grounded Season 4

Audio

HHush samples

Interview - 2009-2011 Sci-fi Talk rewind merlin the series specials episode 1

Interview - 2011? Merlin S4 Sci-fi talk byte katie mcgrath on morgana

Interview - 2013 BBC Radio 1xtra part 1 & part 2

(Un)likeminded 1x02 While You Were Dreaming

Trees a crowd- Irish folklore segment

Magazine scans

2008-09-20 Radio Times

2009-06-08 TV Week (Aus)

2010-09-05 Sunday Express

2010-09-30 Totally Merlin Magazine

2011-12 Total Film

2012-03-14 Sci-Fi Now

2012-10-06 Radio Times

2013-04-06 Irish independent

2013-09-02 Marie-Claire (UK)

2013-12 Instyle

2013-12 Total Film

Video:

Fans - 2012-04-16 Merlin4 [carlospyrrhus]

Fans - 2017-08-30 Supergirl cast together on set [Joyce Law]

Interview - 2009-09-?? Merlin S2 audio interview with Katie McGrath [BJsRealm] part 1

Interview - 2010-09-06 Merlin Series 3 - BBC Radio 1xtra Interview with Angel Coulby & Katie McGrath [BJsrealm]

Interview - 2011-10-14 Merlin S4 Colin Morgan, Eoin Macken Katie McGrath on The Late Late Show

Interview - 2012-07-15 Colin Morgan and Katie McGrath at SDCC 2012 - innerSPACE [merlinnetwork2]

Interview - 2012-07-18 Katie McGrath Talks Merlin At Comic Con 2012 [ThinkHeroTV]

Interview - 2012-10-25 BBC Radio 1 Breakfast - Colin & Katie part 1 & part 2 [BJsRealm]

Interview - 2012-12-03 Merlin S5 Katie McGrath interview international press day [BJsRealm]

Interview - 2012-12-03 Colin, Bradley, Katie phone interview [BJsRealm]

Interview - 2013-11-09 Katie McGrath on BBC One Saturday Kitchen [BJsRealm]

Interview - 2019-07-22 ENTREVISTA SUPERGIRL Elenco fala sobre a nova temporada [Warner Channel Brasil]

Interview - 2019-07-23 Melissa Benoist Teases Directing An Episode Of 'Supergirl' [ET Canada]

Interview - 2020-02-21 ‘Supergirl’ Celebrates 100th Episode [ET Canada]

Panels - 2011-07-28 Merlin Comic Con 2011 Panel [ThinkHeroTV]

[astraofdelos]

My Personal Headcanons for the Batfamily

(All ages are calculated for the last day of 2024. If people want me to add onto this for other Batfamily members or associates, lmk)

Bruce Thomas Wayne: 43, 02/19/1981

— 19 when he went off to the LoA (2000)

— 24 when he became Batman (2005)

— 27 when he took in Dick (2008)

Barbara Joan Gordon: 24, 09/23/2000

— 12 when she became Batgirl (2012)

— 17; paralyzed (2017)

— 18 when she became Oracle (2018)

Richard John “Dick” Grayson-Wayne: 24, 11/11/2000

— 10 when he became Robin I (2010)

— 15 when he became Nightwing (2015)

Cassandra Carolyn “Cass” Cain-Wayne: 22, 01/26/2002

— 18 when she became Batgirl II (2020)

— 19 when she became Black Bat (2021)

— 21 when she became Orphan (2023)

Jason Peter Todd-Wayne: 22, 8/16/2002

— 13 when he became Robin II (2015)

— 15; died (2017)

— 18 when he became Red Hood (2020)

Timothy Jackson “Tim” Drake-Wayne: 19, 07/19/2005

— 13 when he became Robin III (2018)

— 16 when he became Red Robin (2021)

Stephanie Brown: 19, 08/11/2005

— 14 when she became Spoiler (2019)

— 16 when she became Robin IV (2021)

— 16 when she became Batgirl III (2021)

— 18 when she became Spoiler again (2023)

Duke Thomas: 17, 08/13/2007

— 14 when he became Robin (2021)

— 15 when he became Signal (2022)

Damian Thomas al Ghul- Wayne: 12, 08/09/2012

— 10 when he became Robin VI (2022)

[pressnat]

MEUS CC’S MASCULINOS FAVORITOS + CC/ MY FAVORITE MALE CC || PART 1

⇢ basics ||

eyes. https://www.patreon.com/posts/d-o-l-c-e-v2-eye-68183687?l=fr

eyelash. https://kijiko-catfood.com/3d-lashes-version2-for-skin-detail-experimental/

skinblend. https://lamatisse.tumblr.com/post/612766683809136640/butterish-my-first-skinblend-i-made-like-two

skinoverlay. https://www.patreon.com/posts/lemonade-skin-62813813

skintone. https://www.patreon.com/posts/bare-skintone-40506361

skin detail. https://www.patreon.com/posts/61433364

freckles . https://www.patreon.com/posts/40247063

nose shade. https://faaeishccpreviews.tumblr.com/post/648642853067800576/skin-details-nose-shaders-by-faaeish-download

blush. https://squeamishsims.tumblr.com/post/185846308452/booboo-blush-by-squeamishsims-so-ive-tried-so

eyebrows. https://www.patreon.com/posts/whispy-eyebrows-62391460?utm_source=Patreon&utm_campaign=Whispy+Eyebrows

lips. https://www.patreon.com/posts/55703083

mouth corners. https://www.patreon.com/posts/61433364

~~~~

⇢  presets ||

lip. https://www.patreon.com/posts/memphis-lip-43736936

nose. https://poyopoyosim.tumblr.com/post/686774059407736833/male-nose-presets-n5n6n7n8-teen

jaw. https://www.patreon.com/posts/jiumiqaq-jaw-72054166

~~~~

⇢ hair/cabelos ||

01. https://www.patreon.com/posts/oh-my-god-were-58952703

02. https://jny-sims.tumblr.com/post/685668030601117696/jny-redo-hair

03. https://www.patreon.com/posts/pelo-bueno-male-33392785

04. https://www.patreon.com/posts/male-hair-pack-2-65951700

05. https://www.patreon.com/posts/kent-hair-62397490

06. https://www.patreon.com/posts/63544161

07. https://www.patreon.com/posts/wild-ride-70288763

08. https://www.patreon.com/posts/wild-ride-70288763

09. https://www.patreon.com/posts/63544161

10. https://www.patreon.com/posts/71551981

11. https://www.patreon.com/posts/71827369

12. https://www.patreon.com/posts/72827056

13. https://www.patreon.com/posts/levi-hair-73080895

14. https://www.patreon.com/posts/79061220

15. https://allabouthatcc.tumblr.com/post/656904403834503168/grimcookies-hair-dump-ive-updated-all-of-my-old

16. https://aharris00britney.tumblr.com/post/187194346870/axa-2019-official-release

17. https://okruee.tumblr.com/post/684075013010243584/sylvester-hair-hi-babes-info-masculine-frame

18. https://www.patreon.com/posts/58261906

19. https://www.patreon.com/posts/lorenzo-by-54215805

20. https://www.patreon.com/posts/marco-by-56792600

21. https://www.patreon.com/posts/federico-by-70185929

22. https://www.patreon.com/posts/pedro-by-44485564

23. https://www.patreon.com/posts/pedro-by-44485564

24. https://www.patreon.com/posts/70428613

25. https://www.patreon.com/posts/58551246

26. https://liliili-sims4.tumblr.com/post/691837200658219008/bruno-hair-bgc-hat-compatible-24

27. https://qrqr19.tumblr.com/post/673612023225073664/hair-24-fluorite-hair-25-peridot-hair-26

28. https://qr19sims.blogspot.com/2022/03/hair-27-28-29.html

~~~~

⇢ beard/barba ||

01. https://greenllamas.tumblr.com/post/646204704634929152/beard

02. https://greenllamas.tumblr.com/post/646204704634929152/beard

03. https://greenllamas.tumblr.com/post/646204704634929152/beard

04. https://www.veigasims.com/2018/07/beard-facial-hair-style-12.html

05. https://www.veigasims.com/2020/11/beard-facial-hair-style-15.html

06. https://www.veigasims.com/2022/08/facial-hair-style-33.html

~~~~

⇢ acc/acessórios ||

01. https://ceeproductions.tumblr.com/post/655362683425751040/calm-fit-collection-a-mostly-male-cc-collection

02. https://ceeproductions.tumblr.com/post/696230540558385152/equinox-collection-its-the-start-of-my-favorite

03. https://www.patreon.com/adrienpastel

04. https://www.patreon.com/posts/warm-5-item-set-60918114

05. https://www.patreon.com/posts/round-square-38706995

06. https://maxismatchccworld.tumblr.com/post/190436912960/liliili-sims-scarf-collection-scarf-no1-45

07. https://ceeproductions.tumblr.com/post/655362683425751040/calm-fit-collection-a-mostly-male-cc-collection

[autumnslance]

LynMars's FFXIV Write 2024 Master Post

We're back again! The list and links for all of my completed prompts for this year's FFXIV Write. Stats and ramblings about writing will go under the Read More cut. Eventually these will be revised in some manner and tossed onto Ao3.

Asterisks again mean there's wolship nonsense happening.

01. Steer - Vignettes of less sociable times over Aeryn's life. 02. Horizon - WoL at the end of Ultima Thule, EW 6.0. 03. Tempest - WoL returns to Amaurot to contemplate, EW 6.4. 04. Reticent - C'oretta & Dark Autumn have a chat. Sort of. 05. Stamp - Aeryn finds a memento while cleaning, post-EW 6.0 06. Halcyon - Tanzel, Emelia, & understanding grief. Backstory. 07. Morsel - Zenos heading to Camp Broken Glass, EW 6.0. 08. Free Day! 09. Lend an Ear - Emperor Varis is very much alone. StB patches. 10. Stable - Hydaelyn as the avatar of Light. Endwalker. 11. Surrogate - Weird West AU. Unexpected new roles for the Strikers. 12. Quarry* - Dominants AU. Thavnair comes to Tural's aid. DT 7.0. 13. Butte - Dark Autumn versus seedkin in Xak Tural. DT 7.0. 14. Telling - WoL reflects on Emet-Selch's expected reaction. EW 6.0. 15. Free Day! 16. Third-Rate - Aeryn's annoyed by the Unbound. DT Role Quests. 17. Sally - Dark pays a final visit to a traitor, post-StB 4.1. 18. Hackneyed* - Aeryn, Thancred, & terrible literature. 19. Taken - A young wood warder tries to save his sibling. Backstory. 20. Duel - Wuk Lamat's challenge does not go as expected. DT 7.0. 21. Shade - WoL ruminates on some of their ghosts. Thru DT 7.0. 22. Free Day! 23. On Cloud Nine - A chocobo & her Warrior of Light. End ShB 5.0. 24. Bar - 2 different adventurers starting out. Legacy & ARR. 25. Perpetuity - Aeryn, Deryk, & questions of faith. EW 24man raid. 26. Zip - C'oretta helping out Hamon at the Coliseum. Technically DT. 27. Memory - In a future, music makes Iyna remember. EW Patches. 28. Deleterious - Aeryn & Shale discuss regulators & history. DT 7.0. 29. (Free) Deleterious 2* - Thancred & self-recrimination. ShB 5.0. 30. Two Heads are Better than One - Gulool Ja Ja muses. DT 7.0.

Previous years: 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023

Ended up a touch Aeryn-heavy this year, though Generic WoL, various NPCs, the other OCs, forays in the FC's AUs, and some supporting family cast members make appearances. There's even a callback to a previous FFXIV Write entry. Lots of Endwalker and Dawntrail due to recency bias, but it manages to span the spectrum from backstories through various expansions.

I only did 1 Free Day, due to having 2 solid ideas I ended up writing for that prompt. It was right at the end of my annual birthday vacation week, so I was pretty rested (may also be why they're among the longer entries!). Unusually, the rest of that week's works are not any longer than the others.

I'm also still working on some original writing, though, so that did cut into fanfiction time.

Below 500 words: #2 Horizon (347), #3 Tempest (415), #7 Morsel (499), #10 Stable (400), #13 Butte (477), #14 Telling (355), #17 Sally (464), #20 Duel (499), #24 Bar (462).

500 - 1,000 words: #1 Steer (944), #4 Reticent (581), #5 Stamp (588), #11 Surrogate (964), #12 Quarry (844), #16 Third-Rate (564), #18 Hackneyed (577), #19 Taken (915), #21 Shade (764), #23 On Cloud Nine (728), #25 Perpetuity (958), #26 Zip (592), #27 Memory (810), #30 Two Heads are Better than One (500).

Over 1,000 words: #6 Halcyon (2,479), #9 Lend an Ear (1,326), #28 Deleterious (1,099), #29 Deleterious 2 (1,231).

Shortest: #2 Horizon Longest: #6 Halcyon

Total: 20,382 words. Not my shortest but far from my longest. Comparing with the previous years, I can see a clear improvement in my grasp of both NPC and OC voices, and more confidence in general.

Even so, "Butte", "Sally", "Bar", and "Zip" were the hardest for me this year, and I may need to warm up to them. I love "Halcyon" for a lot of reasons, and am also fond of the lighter offerings in "Duel" and "On Cloud Nine." I like a lot of the others, particularly when trying to get into NPC heads (even if they're really weird places to be ffs, Zenos).

Not too many shippy entries this year, one of them for one of the AUs, one mostly talking about it rather than seeing it, but I like "Hackneyed" a lot as it's been awhile since I've written about Aeryn & Thancred's literary tastes (and opposite ways of treating their books).

These will eventually be revised and added to Ao3, and then we await next year!

[jiinjiinjarra]

⭒ Jin & Jungkook Naver Links ⭒

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 2020-2023 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

2020 year:

2020-09-17 Welcome, is this your first Big Hit post? ★

2020-09-17 Why? do we look like BB HOT100 #1 artist? ★

2020-09-29 Bangtan's wishes for Chuseok! ★

2020-10-09 Dynamite Promotion BTS: Pt.1 ★ & Pt.2 ★

2020-10-31 Halloween 2020 with BTS! ★

2020-11-11 Season's Greetings 2021 ★

2020-11-16 Season's Greetings 2021 ★

2020-11-30 [BE] Rooms + Life Goes On MV Behind ★

2020-12-02 A special message from BTS has arrived for everyone taking exams! ★

2020-12-24 ARMY! Happy Holidays! ★

2020-12-31 2019-2020 Selcas: Pt.1 ★ & Pt.2 ★

2021 year:

2021-01-11 Yoongi's Mini Banners + Selcas ★

2021-01-18 Selcas 2019-2021: Pt.1 ★ & Pt.2 ★

2021-02-04 Winter Package ★

2021-02-11 Happy New Year! ★

2021-03-12 Life Goes On stage review time! ★

2021-04-18 U-Quiz for ARMY! Behind the scenes! ★

2021-04-25 MOTS ONE CONCEPT PHOTOBOOK ★

2021-06-05 2021 BTS FESTA Banglim. Welcome to the photo studio! ★

2021-07-26 The screen of BTS It's so pretty and nice to have so many fans ★

2021-08-02 ARMY's Monday blues therapist, Bangrim! ★

2021-08-18 Anything before ARMYs click on this post is unacceptable! ★

2021-09-19 BTS, it's sweeter than the Chuseok holiday! ★

2021-10-01 Beh1nd-7he-scenes of mak1ng 7he ARMY! ★

2021-10-01 Film Camera with BTS ★

2021-11-02 2022 with BTS is already a hit! ★

2021-11-08 BTS + ARMY ⭐ No problem star ⭐︎ ★

2021-11-10 UNGA SDG Moment ★

2021-12-24 ARMY! Happy Holidays~❤︎: Pt.1 ★ & Pt.2 ★

2022 year:

2022-01-27 GQ&VOGUE behind-the-scenes ★

2022-03-05 PTD On Stage LA Concert Behind The Scenes ★

2022-03-23 Behind the Deco Kit ★

2022-06-22 Behind the scenes of 'Proof' music show ★

2022-09-02 Me, Myself, and Jungkook Behind the Scenes ★

2022-11-08 Us, Ourselves, and BTS 'We' behind-the-scenes ★

2022-11-10 진 (Jin) ‘The Astronaut’ Film Camera Photo ★

2022-11-15 Jin ‘The Astronaut’ Promotion Period Gift!: Pt.1 ★ & Pt.2 ★

2022-12-03 Me, Myself, and Jin Behind the Scenes ★

2023 year:

2023-02-10 Jungkook FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Behind the Scenes: Pt.1 ★ & Pt.2 ★

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jinkook 'Traffic Lights' Photo Indicator:

green star '★' - there is 'ultimate' jinkook photo in the post (only 🐹🐰 on the picture - no other members)

orange star '★' - 'if you crop - you see jinkook'

red star '★' - only solo or 'far far away' group photos

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

[staydandy]

The Golden Eyes (2019) - 黄金瞳 - Whump List

List by StayDandy Synopsis : A simple pawn shop worker, Zhuang Rui, had his own eyes mutated after an accident during a robbery attempt of an ancient Jade carving. His mutated eyes subsequently brought many changes to his life in many unexpected ways he could ever imagined. (MDL)

Whumpees : Zhuang Rui played by Lay Zhang (center) • Peng Fei played by Meng A Sai (2 eps) (far right)

Country : ����🇳 China Genres : Adventure, Martial Arts, Fantasy, Tomb Raider

Notes : This is a Full Whump List • This is the a revision of my Partial List, which only had 4 episodes on it! It really deserved better than that. • My favorite episodes are pink : 00

Related List : The Golden Eyes (2019) - partial list

Episodes on List : 37 Total Episodes : 56

*Spoilers below*

01 : Glass gets into Zhuang Rui's eyes, knocked out … hospitalized, eyes bandaged … blurry vision, overwhelmed by new eyesight … unsteady, rubbing eyes

02 : Headache

04 : Attacked, hooded

05 : Handcuffed … falls through a trapdoor

06 : Protects someone from an explosion, knocked out … protects someone from a 2nd explosion, knocked out

09 : Rubbing his eyes

10 : (near end) Attacked, fight

11 : Shaking head in slight pain

13 : Fight, knocked out … dizzy, eye/head pain.. unsteady

14 : Car crash, knocked out … treated in hospital

17 : Drunk, unsteady, helped to walk

18 : Shaking head, pain.. unsteady, passes out, caught … nauseous … locked in a wine cellar

19 : … continued from previous ep. ... Locked in wine cellar, shivering

22 : While driving, shaking head, pain … revealed he's been shot in the leg, bleeding, limping … temporary amnesia, migraine, collapses.. leg infected, fever

23 : … continued from previous ep. ... Limping, exhausted, eye pain.. blurry vision, collapses, passes out … headache

24 : … continued from previous ep. ... Passes out, hospitalized

25 : Chased, rolls down a hill, migraine, unsteady, blurry vision, temporarily blind … blurry vision

26 : … continued from previous ep. ... Still partially blind … vision slowly returning, blurry … steps on a landmine

27 : Peng Fei is captured, tied up, whipped

28 : … continued from previous ep. ... Attempts escape, tied up again … Zhuang Rui is captured, tied up … Zhuang Rui & Peng Fei are knocked out with smoke bomb … Zhuang Rui nightmare.. headache, ear ringing

29 : Not feeling well, not eating, depressed

30 : Wrestling match, sore after … lightheaded

31 : Lightheaded … out of it, collapses against a pillar, barely conscious, helped to walk … blurry vision, migraine, helped to walk, saying he can't see or hear, writhing in pain, given a shot to sleep

32 : Unsteady, starts to collapses, supported … slightly unresponsive … headache … nightmare

33 : Hit with a shovel

35 : (near end) [flashbacks to eps 22, 25, 31] migraine, amnesia, blind, migraine, writhing … [present] drunk

36 : Admitting he's lost his sense of taste … eye strain, headache, exhausted … (@ 13:16 Huang Fu Yun looks so much better without the birdshit highlight in his hair) … drunk

37 : … continued from previous ep. ... Drunk … captured, hands tied

38 : Shock, dizzy, migraine, collapses, caught … briefly knocked out from explosion

42 : Eye strain … captured, hands tied.. hit with bats in a fight

43 : Drugged … tied up

44 : MIgraine

45 : Dizzy, collapses, migraine.. unsteady … starts to collapse, supported

50 : (at end) Tied up

53 : Attacked, knocked out … migraine … captured

55 : Headache, backhanded, falls & hits head on a pipe, barely conscious.. carried … unconscious … hospitalized

56 : … continued from previous ep. ... Hospitalized, drugged asleep … hospitalized for brain surgery.. seizure during surgery

More Whump Lists for this show: love-me-a-lotta-whump whumpetywhump

[darkmaga-returns]

A Scientific Explanation of the Fraud of RT-PCR Testing for COVID-19

Corinne Michels

Nov 05, 2024

“The COVID-19 PCR tests were a fraud.” You have heard this before, but is it true or just more hype? Read this report and decide for yourself. It explains the fundamentals of the RT-PCR (Reverse Transcriptase - Polymerase Chain Reaction) test kits for those who want to understand the facts. Do not expect an easy read. For starters, you will need to familiarize yourself with the basic structure of DNA. Understanding how misinterpretation of the RT-PCR test results was used to create the COVID-19 pandemic will be your reward. You will be immunized against future efforts to create fear and societal discord. Rest assured; they will try again!

A serious flu-like respiratory disease began to spread in early Fall 2019 with Wuhan, China, as “ground zero.” By December, worldwide spread of the disease was underway. Images of hapless pedestrians suddenly falling dead in the streets; overwhelmed hospitals in Lombardy, Italy; government-imposed lockdowns; and nonstop coverage of worldwide COVID deaths fanned the flames of fear surrounding this unknown disease. It was not enough to be symptom-free. People demanded the development of a test to detect silent carriers of the infectious agent.

Only the genome sequence of SARS-CoV-2 was known at the time, and the only available testing method used polymerase chain reaction, a.k.a. PCR. Despite many known contraindications, RT-PCR widespread testing for COVID-19 began. According to Dr. Trish M. Perl, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins and past president of the Society of Health Care Epidemiologists of America, blind faith in the results of technically complex molecular tests results in “pseudo-epidemics.”  [https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/22/health/22whoop.html] The COVID-19 pandemic was one of those.

[lurksunderthebed]

Ghoap Analysis/Meta (1?)

The Evolution of GhostSoap Redux

Continuing thoughts on how Ghost and Soap's relationship has changed over the course of mw(19), mwii(22) and mwiii(23)

Spread out amongst several posts. This will be long 😅

(Part 1)

BEWARE SPOILERS TO MWIII(23) !

I've had time to settle my thoughts on Ghostsoap in mwiii (23) and this will go more into depth of the re-contextualising of Ghost and Soap's relationship in mwii (22) from the verdansk mission: "Flashpoint".

Flashpoint is set 4 years to mwiii(23). The game places it as April 6, 2019. This is important to us because it sets a different potential first mission (meet cute lmao) between the two and thus changes the tone of their interactions in mwii (22)

So let's set up a timeline with the available dates. Thankfully, the game sets some very concrete dates for us. Not all missions are included.*

2019

Flashpoint - April 06, 2019

First canonical appearance of SAS Ghost and Soap

Ghost provides sniper cover for Soap

Price/Soap capture Makarov and transport him to a helo with Ghost and Shepherd

There's a failed interrogation by Ghost and Soap.

Makarov implies he has met Ghost before and thought him dead at an airport

2019 Mw(19)

Piccadilly - Oct 25, 2019

First canonical appearance of SAS Gaz

Gaz is attached to Met Counter Terrorist Police. This implies he has worked largely in his career in conjunction to the Police. It's unknown whether he met Soap or Ghost before.

First meet of Gaz and Price to combat terrorists in London

Old Comrades - Oct 31, 2019

Gaz meets Nikolai

Interrogation scene. Arguably strengthens Gaz and Price's relationship

Into the Furnace - Nov 03, 2019

Last mission, they kill general barkov

Credit Scene - Nov 03-04, 2019* (hypothetical)

Laswell and Price form task force 141

Price seconds Ghost, Soap, Gaz. This implies that Price has worked with Soap and Ghost on missions for x amount of years. It's Gaz who was the surprise recruit.

2020 Cod Warzone

Season 2 - Mar 2020

First appearance of 141 Ghost

Unknown amount of 141 stationed in Verdansk. Ghost asks for backup.

Season 3 - Apr 2020

Armistice dissolved

Price and Gaz show up to help Ghost

Implied- unknown amount of 141 to Verdansk (possible meeting of Soap and Ghost)

Season ? - Dec 2020

Price kills Zakaev

First appearance (via call) of 141 Soap asking for backup in Verdansk

Price, Ghost, Gaz, Farah etc backup Soap who is somewhere else in Verdansk getting pinned down by enemies

2022 Mwii(22)

Strike - July 15, 2022

Ghost calls an airstrike on Ghorbrani with the aid of Shadow Company

Hindsight - Aug 12, 2022

Shepherd/Shadow Company loses American missiles to terroists

Kill or Capture - Oct 28, 2022

Ghost gets assigned Soap as his sergeant for Al Mazhrah mission to kill or capture Hassan

They find American missiles instead

Cartel Protection - Oct 30, 2022

Ghost/Soap meet Ale/Rudy in Las Almas

They fight the Mexican army under control of the cartels

RV with Graves/Shadow Comp.

El Sin Nombre - Nov 01, 2022

Soap infils cartel mansion

Valeria is revealed as El Sin Nombre

They take her into custody

Dark Water - Nov 02, 2022

Boat/oil rig mission with Shadow company

Missile launch averted by Ghost, Soap and Graves

Alone - Nov 03, 2022

Graves and Shepherd betray 141/mexi bros

Ghost and Soap get out of Las Almas

RV at ale's hideout with Rudy

Prison Break - Nov 03, 2022

Ghost, Soap, Rudy break out ale from prison

Meet up with Price/Gaz

Ghost Team - Nov 03, 2022

141 with mexi bros take back mexi bros base

Soap and Rudy "kill" Graves

Countdown - Nov 04, 2022

Stop missile launch in Chicago

Ghost and Soap kill Hassan

2023 Mwiii (23)

Operation 627 - Oct 13, 2023

Makarov breaks out of prison

Reactor - Nov 10, 2023

141 find out that Makarov escaped

141 assaults konni base

Price finds chemical weapons (almost died)

Payload - Nov 11, 2023

141 split up to stop missile launch of chemical weapons

They fail to stop 2 missiles to Russia

Oligarch - Nov 12, 2023

Ghost/Soap island mission to find Makarov's financier

Interrogation of Milena for Makarov's location

Frozen Tundra - Nov 14, 2023

141 ambush konni convoy

Find Shepherd was Makarov's prisoner

Interrogate him on Makarov's location

Gora Dam - Nov 16, 2023

Ghost/Soap split up to stop chemical weapons in Verdansk

Trojan Horse - Nov 21, 2023

141 split up in London tunnels to stop Makarov from using chemical weapons in subway system

So now that's done. I've mostly ignored Farah and Alex and focused on Price, Ghost, Gaz, Soap and Nikolai as it pertains to relationships within the core group of Price/Ghost/Gaz/Soap.

What can we make of this ?

Well, a couple things.

We can now say that from 2019 to the events of "Kill or Capture" in 2022, Ghost and Soap have most likely worked together on missions before. The timeline shows that they at least had to have met in Dec 2020 in Verdansk as Soap had called for backup to Price and group.

That makes it actually at least 3 years of knowledge of each other prior to mwii(22). So a total of 4 years + potentially at the start of mwiii(23).

It also shows us how quickly their relationship changed from the Alone mission in '22 despite the 3 years of prior knowledge they had since '19.

Let it be said that it took 1 week, ONLY 7 DAYS!! to change Ghost and Soap's relationship. 7 days out of a total at least 3 years total.

Ghost started at not even bothering to name Soap in 2019, to presumably basic Soap/Mactavish/sergeant for the next 3 years.

Cut to the events in mwii(22). Lets say beginning at "Kill or Capture" and finishing at "Alone" and suddenly Ghost ends up having made up his own personal nickname that no one else can use for Soap in just those 7 days.

I posit that this was in part due to "Kill or Capture" in '22 being the first mission that Soap has directly worked under Ghost's command.

This is all hypotheticals and guesswork so take it as you may.

Assuming Ghost was mainly a solo mission sort of guy, let's also assume he mostly helped as sniper overwatch if he ever had team missions (like in Flashpoint). Most 141 missions have him taking that position as well, so it's safe to say he is support most of the time.

Given that assumption, it's also likely that Soap and Ghost had to have interacted mainly on comms and any physical meeting would be restricted to transport via heli or otherwise.

It's possible Soap and Ghost have worked together on a more physical basis (aka Ghost leading Soap on a squad), but given how much Ghost seemed to be testing Soap in "Kill or Capture" I find that somewhat unlikely.

In 2019 we see how brusque Ghost is with Soap. It's very likely that Ghost was largely monosyllabic with Soap pre or post missions to Flashpoint.

Considering Soap's propensity to chatter in 2022 and 2023, it's also very likely Soap annoyed the hell out of Ghost on comms. Lol.

This could explain why Ghost was so dismissive of having Soap as his sergeant in "Kill or Capture", despite working together 3 years ago.

I, and arguably most of fandom had theorised that "Kill or Capture" was the first mission that Soap and Ghost ever had together. And we weren't quite right, but we weren't completely wrong either.

With Flashpoint, it's obvious now that was not quite true. It even suggests in it that Ghost and Soap had worked together prior to even that, as there was no formal introduction between the two.

This dramatically changes how Ghost's dialogue and Soap's to a lesser degree can be read in mwii(22) and implies much much more if you consider how they interact with each other in '23.

So why does it matter when Ghost and Soap's relationship started?

With mwiii(23) we can now definitively tell when Ghost and Soap's relationship changed. We now have a rough basis of a timeline and we can track down the differences between '19 -'22 and then '22- '23. Its important because we can see how their relationship deepens and how it changed within a span of 3 years, 7 compelling days and 1 heartwrenching year later.

For all that mwiii(23) was lax with explicit Ghostsoap moments, it's rich in how much context we gain to their relationship. We see how Ghost changes and how his relationships differ between 141. It's an interesting and compelling look at both Ghost and Soap's characters.

In this discussion I separate this analysis into 3 parts. Part 2 will cover the implications of "Flashpoint" on mwii (22), with discussion line by line. Part 3 will most likely go over comparisons a year makes from the events in '22 to '23. (This might be subject to change as I get further into the analysis)

Onto Part 2.

+

[cirrus-grey]

From June 9, 2019 to September 23, 2023 I posted something new to my Ao3 account at least once a week, every week (allowing for some deviation between weekend/weekday posting in the early days). From January 25, 2020, I’ve had an update every single Saturday. In total, this has amounted to 219 weeks of content, 299 individual updates, and 204 unique stories (approximately - I think I miscounted somewhere in there).

4 years, 3 months of weekly posting. 3 years, 8 months of Saturday stories.

I’m very glad I’m taking a break, because finding time to post every Saturday has been getting difficult, but it still feels very weird to not be posting something today.

Anyway, I’m very proud of how much I’ve created over the last few years, so I wanted to do a bit of a statistics breakdown because I’m a sucker for hard data:

Per Ao3 sorting here, I’ve posted… 209 stories. Yeah I definitely miscounted. Anyway.

Fandoms:

203 for The Magnus Archives

2 for Discworld

2 for Good Omens TV

1 for Good Omens Book

1 for Skulduggery Pleasant

1 for Malevolent (which was a TMA crossover lol)

A bunch of other fandoms got dragged into the stats because of Vinettes, but I only added TMA stories to that one in the last 4 years.

Of the 203 TMA stories, 6 are multi-chapter longfics, including Yesterday is Here - which kicked off the Saturday posting, and remains my most popular story to date.

Wordcount:

Approximately 819,000.

Which equals about 530 words written per day.

My average story length was about 3,919 words.

If you take the 6 longfics out of that math, the average drops down to 2,623.

2020 had the highest per-year wordcount, at 236,485.

The highest wordcount for a single story was 57,758 for A Matter of Diplomacy.

The lowest wordcount was only 215 for Best Wishes.

You could fit 268.6 Best Wishes into 1 AMoD.

Random:

40 of the oneshots were posted as direct, week-of reactions to TMA S5 episodes, encompassing 19.14% of the total fics.

30 of the oneshots were for the Castaways series, for 14.35% of the total fics.

The 203 TMA fics are 97.13% of the total.

Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist was in slightly more stories (189) than Martin Blackwood (186), but significantly more stories than the next-most common characters, Tim Stoker (32) and Sasha James (26).

Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist was, unsurprisingly, the most common relationship, at 94.26% of the total (197 fics).

My ten most common tags were, in order: Episode Related (65), Fluff (53), Post-Canon (42), Short (41), Post-Episode: e200 Last Words (39), Location: Somewhere Else (29), Canon Asexual Character (27), Season/Series 01 (22), First Kiss (19), and Happy Ending (14), which says a lot about the type of story I like to write and also that I really like tagging when and where things are set.

Jon was still just ‘Jonathan Sims’ when I started this…

‘Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist’ arrived on the scene in May 2020, so 149 (78.84%) of the Jon stories have the long tag, and 40 (21.16%) have the short.

[bangtanpurplearchive]

All 2019 content has now been uploaded onto the website

I've also put the streaming links for Golden on the home page - as members and BTS release I'll put the latest release on the home page if that helps with streaming.

Eventually, once I have updated all of the comeback and discography content, I'll put steaming links for those on those pages as well.

It's starting to shape up

The Calendar has been updated as well.

📰 11/01 – Jimin Elle Korea release

📅 11/02  – ‘Golden’ Official MV teaser  (0am KST -11/01 11am ET)

🎶 11/03  – ‘Golden’ Official MV   (1pm KST – 0am ET)

💿 11/03 – Golden by Jk released (1pm KST) (0am ET)

🍸 11/04 – 슈취타 EP.21 ft Jungkook (10pm KST)

💿11/05 – JK iheartradio Album release party (10am KST  – 9pm ET)

💿11/05 – JK iheartradio Album release party (11am KST  – 10pm ET)

🏆11/05 – MTV EMA awards

📺 11/07 – JK live on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon (1.35pm KST – 11/06 11.35pm ET)

📺 11/08 – JK live on The Today show Citi Concert Series (10,.30pm KST – 8.30am ET)

📺11/09 – Yet To Come released – Amazon Prime

📅 11/10  – ‘Golden’ by JK – Special event TSX special stage

🪖11/12 – Jin 7 months to discharge

🍸11/13 – 슈취타 EP.22 TEASER

🎤 11/14  – Jung Kook ‘GOLDEN’ – Audacy live  (11am KST – 11/13 9pm ET)

🎤 11/16 – Jung Kook ‘GOLDEN’ MNet Countdown (6pm KST – 4am ET)

🪖11/17 – JHope 11 months to discharge

11/17 – Permission to Dance DVD – pre-order (11AM KST)

🫂11/18 – JK Video Call / Fansign

🏆11/19 – The 2023 Billboard Music Awards (BBMAs)

🎤 11/20 – Jung Kook ‘GOLDEN’ Live On Stage (8pm KST)

💿 11/20 – BE Anniversary (201120)

🍸11/20 – 슈취타 EP.22 (10pm KST)

🪖11/21 – Yoongi 19 months to discharge

📰 11/23 – Jimin x GQ UK  and GQ France 

11/127 – Permission to Dance DVD – release

🏆11/28 – 2023 MAMA Awards – Tokyo Dome day 1

🏆11/29 – 2023 MAMA Awards – Tokyo Dome day 2

💿 11/30 – HYYH pt. 2 Anniversary (151130)

[bobbie-robron]

Snapshot of Aug-2019

For the month of August 2019, the lads appeared in 18 episodes on 12 dates (the double Tuesday episodes FINALLY and mercifully stopped by the end of that month) - Robert in 18 episodes, Aaron in 15 and together in 15. Briefly:

Robert making the biggest mistake by telling his sister what really happened (setting up his prison exit)

‘I’ll be waiting upstairs’ 😈

The partial back hug and scenes in the Mill’s backyard ❤️(we were deprived of those for so long)

Robert hiding his definite possible life sentence from Aaron for most of the month

The Jai/Robert scene (breathtaking scenery)

The lovely Robert/Sebastian scene (the best story-filled path for YEARS not taken… 😔)

Liv’s plot seizure (will be used to help guilt Robert into deciding to turn himself in later)

01-Aug-2019 (Episode 1, Episode 2, Mini set), 02-Aug-2019

06-Aug-2019 (Episode 1, Episode 2, Mini set), 07-Aug-2019, 08-Aug-2019 (Episode 1: Meeting Natalie, At the station; Episode 2: At the station/Mill, Outside scenes), 09-Aug-2019 (Original, New, Mini set)

15-Aug-2019 (Episode 1, Episode 2)

22-Aug-2019 (Episode 1, Episode 2)

27-Aug-2019, 28-Aug-2019 (Episode, Mini set), 29-Aug-2019 (Episode 1, Episode 2), 30-Aug-2019

Coding in episodes: A = Aaron only in the episode, R = Robert only in the episode; B= Both in the episode

[cruciatusforeplay]

Hello I have Good Omens Brainrot like the rest of us, and I had a spare afternoon, so here is

Crowley and Aziraphale's Canonical Chronological History

(watching-guide with media timestamps so you can watch it all develop in order)

It's long so it's going under the cut. Let me know if there are errors beyond being out by a second or so. Also speedrunning two series of this show in an afternoon made me So Unwell (emotionally). I would absolutely recommend it.

I've broadly only included only clips that featured either one or both them as a focal point, or where the events would have informed their relationship, plus the option of the S2 finale in its entirety.

**Before the beginning, nebula** S2E1 0:00- 6:20 (up to opening credits)

**Just after the beginning, Garden of Eden, 4004BC** S1E1 1:55 (or 3:25 to skip Adam and Eve)-6:04 (opening credits)

**Noah's Ark, mesopotamia 3004BC** S1E3 0:00-2:47

**Job, 2500BC** S2E2 0:00-5:35, 22:30-40:01, 44:10-46:49 (end of episode)

**Crucifixion of Jesus, Golgotha, 33AD** S1E3 2:47-4:28 (continues directly to)

**Rome 41AD** S1E3 4:28-5:31 (continues directly to)

**Knights, kingdom of Wessex, 537AD** S1E3 5:31-7:56 (continues directly to)

**Bastille, Paris, 1793** S1E3 11:53-15:31

**The Globe Theatre London, 1601** S1E3 7:56-11:53 (continues directly to)

**Edinburgh, 1827** S2E3 8:34(post credits)-12:56, 17:38-22:10, 24:28-33:59

**St James' Park London, 1862** S1E3 15:31-17:29 (continues directly to)

**The Blitz, London, 1941** S1E3 17:29-24:07, recap can be skipped that can be skipped: S2E4 5:10(post credits)-6:14, 8:24-37:59

**Soho, London, 1967** S1E3 24:07-28:38 (opening credits)

**The M25 meeting, Hell, 1970s** S1E5 21:21-22:27

**The Antichrist, near Tadfield airbase, "11 years ago" ~2008** S1E1 7:32(post credits)-14:24, (optional baby drop off with Crowley) 19:24-20:14, 25:59-29:59, 30:14-32:24, 33:35-35:04 (continues directly to)

**Antichrist upbringing, "5 years later" ~2013** S1E1 35:04-39:30

**6 days before the end of the world, Monday, 2019** S1E1 40:45-43:19 (continues directly to)

**3 days before the end of the world, Wednesday, 2019** S1E1 43:19-44:08, 44:38-45:52, 48:01-49:11(to end credits)

**2 days before the end of the world, Thursday, 2019** S1E2 0:00-3:56, 21:16-23:33, 26:24-27:54, 31:04-32:10, 34:14-44:40, 45:36-46:21, 48:05-54:01 (to end credits)

**1 day before the end of the world, Friday, 2019** S1E3 30:07-31:14, 35:27-36:49, 38:48-41:30, 43:39-45:51, 49:41-49:53, 50:39-53:11

**The last day of the world, Saturday, 2019** S1E4 4:01-5:42, 8:15-9:28, 29:06-29:48, 33:29-42:00, 48:47-54:06 (to end credits)

**5 Hours and 48 Minutes to the End of the World, 2019** S1E5 0:00-1:32, 3:17(after credits)-4:17, 6:11-8:49, 11:01-13:25, 17:47(or 20:18 to skip the spirit of Ron)-21:00

**1 Hour and 43 Minutes to the End of the World, 2019** S1E5 21:00-21:21, 22:28-25:07, 26:49-31:43, 36:59-37:31

**17 minutes to the end of the world (and the rest ofbthat day), 2019** S1E5 46:24-49:25 (end credits), S1E6 1:53(2:35 to skip repeat section)-4:39, 8:19-9:49, 10:44-12:49, 14:02-27:10

**The very last day of the rest of their lives, 2019** S1E6 27:10- 28:07, 31:02-32:58, 0:00-1:46, 32:58-36:26, 42:33-45:45, 48:40-52:17

**London, present day (S2E1), ~2023** S2E1 7:48-13:15, 13:47-29:59, 33:00-36:13, 37:39-38:00, 38:19-42:41

**London, present day (S2E2), ~2023** S2E2 5:35-8:53 (to opening credits), 10:21-22:30, 40:04-43:28

**London/Edinburgh present day (S2E3), ~2023** S2E3 1:14-6:35, 6:47-7:07 (to opening credits), 12:57-14:36, 16:09-17:38, 22:11-24:27, 33:59-42:05(to end credits)

**London, present day (S2E4), ~2023** S2E4 0:00-3:42 (opening credits), 41:08-41:46, 42:02-43:09(end credits)

**London, present day (S2E5), ~2023** S2E5 0:48-2:57, 3:43-5:24, 7:07-8:04, 8:31-10:12, 12:29-13:32, 13:57-17:57, 19:33-29:52, 30:24-40:38

**London, present day (S2E6), ~2023** S2E6 0:00-4:52(to opening credits), 6:20-(optional 21:06-27:31 for Gabe and Muriel memories, otherwise continue to)end of ep

[lindalofbroome]

Roddacember 2023!!

Roddacember runs during December to celebrate all of Emily Rodda’s books. With a new prompt every day, make a piece of fan content of your choice. You can draw some art, write fic, make a playlist, rant about something, or whatever you vibe with! Remember to tag it #Roddacember 2023 so we can check it out <3 I’ve also created an AO3 collection for those who would like to write fics!

Update

This is my attempt at taking the best of the past years and bringing something for everyone. What I've come up with are three levels of abstraction that (hopefully) serve as different levels of difficulty. The first week-ish draws more from 2019's style, and the last couple weeks are the more recent style, with the middle being a segue between them. (i kinda struggled to make questions, but you're welcome to use the prompts as keywords for your own!)

Notes

A reminder that you don’t have to commit to every day. Take care of yourself. You can make it more manageable by skipping days. It’s also okay to alter the prompt slightly for grammatical purposes, if you so wish (e.g. growth –> growing) or to cut out irrelevant words (e.g. animal or monster -> animal). Feel free to interpret the prompts as metaphorically or as literally as you want! If there’s anything you are confused about, feel free to ask me in the notes or DMs or whatever. You can also check out what the fandom did previously at #Roddacember 2022, #Roddacember 2021, #Roddacember 2020 and #Roddacember 2019.

Prompts in text below:

Your Favourite

01. Character 02. Place 03. Animal or monster 04. Something you wish was real 05. Magic 06. People, culture, or tradition 07. Filli❔ 08. Relationship of any kind 09. Symbols or signs

Memorable Moments:

10. Epic 11. Courage 12. Deception 13. Power 14. Foreshadowing 15. Playful 16. Envy 17. Solution

Abstract:

18. Ripples 19. Design 20. Trade 21. Nurture 22. Technology 23. Intricacy 24. Mend 25. Twisted 26. Pathway 27. Watch 28. Growth 29. Time 30. Unity 31. Essence of Rodda

[dragons-bones]

FFXIV Write 2024 Master Post

Another year, another master post! Throughout September, this post will be updated to reflect completed prompts. Fills posted to Tumblr will remain raw and unedited, but in October, I will edit and upload to Archive of Our Own, and further update this post with links to the AO3 versions.

Fills run the gamut of the timeline; all content through Dawntrail is fair game. Please note individual warnings where necessary on each fill.

--

AETHERSURGE

--

Previous Master Posts: 2017 || 2018 || 2019 || 2020 || 2021 || 2022 || 2023

--

Prompt 01 [Steer]: The Constants of Adventure

Prompt 02 [Horizon]: High Flying

Prompt 03 [Tempst]: Levinstrike

Prompt 04 [Reticent]: Lominsan Girls

Prompt 05 [Stamp]: Missives from Aboard

Prompt 06 [Halcyon]: Promise

Prompt 07 [Morsel]: In Pie We Crust

Prompt 08 [Free Write | Telegraphy]: Aethergraphy

Prompt 09 [Lend an Ear]: Matters of the Heart

Prompt 10 [Stable]: Carbuncle Quality

Prompt 11 [Surrogate]: Maternal Instinct

Prompt 12 [Quarry]: A Rescue!

Prompt 13 [Butte]: A Sky Full of Stars

Prompt 14 [Telling]: Skin-Deep

Prompt 15 [Free Write | Deodate]: Lux Solaris

Prompt 16 [Third-Rate]: Scorched and Chipped

Prompt 17 [Sally]: War Paint

Prompt 18 [Hackneyed]: Bard Off

Prompt 19 [Taken]: Levinstorm

Prompt 20 [Duel]: Reach and Flexibility

Prompt 21 [Shade]: Vistas

Prompt 22 [Free Write | Rencounter]: Kith and Kin

Prompt 23 [On Cloud Nine]: What the Future Holds

Prompt 24 [Bar]: [SELF-DETERMINATION PROTOCOLS]

Prompt 25 [Perpetuity]: Endless

Prompt 26 [Zip]: The Heron Hike and Hustle

Prompt 27 [Memory]: Fragments

Prompt 28 [Deleterious]: Summer Heat

Prompt 29 [Free Write | Thanatopsis]: Only the Good Die Young

Prompt 30 [Two Heads Are Better Than One]: More Uxorio