#Alternatively: I am also doing p good!!! I have been working on a huge project related to kandi I will probably be posting

[kandicon]

Hi hello how do you soup?

How do I.... soup.

Well, I'm not a big soup person but I absolutely love rlly brothy soups and I like it more if the ingredients of the soup are more chunky as opposed to being cut really thin. Also, try as I might I cannot get myself to fall in love with soups that are served cold. I recognize this as the personal failing that it is.

Not sure if that is the proper answer, but what abt you? :D

[alwaysupatnight]

Send you a character impressions ask: Arthur Morgan (so you can talk about your soft cowboy) and Seth Gecko, Kate Fuller, and... OH let's hear about Daryl Dixon too!

Seth Gecko

First impression: I’d never seen the movie okay. I didn’t know what to expect from him at all!! I honestly wasn’t sure I even liked him that much until like that scene where he punches out Chet at the Twister.

Impression now: THE TRASHY AF LOVE OF MY LIFE. I have so many feelings about Seth Gecko it’d be impossible to list them all here. I think about him nearly every damn day.

Favorite moment: I think it’d have to be in s3 when he’s trying to stop Kate from going after Amaru  with the shotgun and how he’s like “easy, easy” at her for getting too riled up. XD SHE IS RUNNING HEADFIRST INTO DANGER ALREADY AND HE IS TRYING TO PROTECT HER. But there’s honestly so many favorite moments. But also jfc that shotgun... all the phallic symbolism there. 👀

Idea for a story: SO MANY IDEAS. THEY JUST NEVER STOP. My latest one is this one where he and Richie are both coyote shifters. And I’ve had this idea for YEARS, but I’m just starting to explore it now.

Unpopular opinion: Seth is not the smooth mfer everyone thinks he is. He is awkward and dorky af and just really great at hiding that. XD And he is not adventurous in bed. AT ALL. HE DOES NOT WANT ANYTHING UP HIS ASS ALRIGHT. Unless, of course, if Kate is suggesting it…

Favorite relationship: SethKate obviously. :P

Favorite headcanon: SETH HAS A PRAISE KINK. LBR HE LOVES TO BE BOSSED AROUND BY KATE. HE JUST WANTS TO DO A GOOD JOB.

Kate Fuller

First impression: MY SUN AND STARS. I thought she was precious. Although maybe that was me projecting on Madie because I loved her as Ethel in Shameless so much. I really only watched FDTD because of her.

Impression now: MY SUN AND STARS. I LOVE THIS GIRL SO MUCH. UGH. JUST HER HEART. HER GOODNESS. HOW PROACTIVE OF A CHARACTER SHE IS. HOW SHE’S ALWAYS LIGHTING A FIRE UNDER ALL THE BOYS’ ASSES BECAUSE WITHOUT HER NOTHING WOULD EVER GET DONE. She’s definitely one of my favorite characters of all time now. I love that she’s not afraid to go toe-to-toe with some supernatural assholes (and a couple of regular ones too) even though she is TINY. She is cute, but she WILL FIGHT. I just love that about her so much. And how every action of hers comes from a place of love. But she’s not perfect, and she may be good, but she is NOT nice and WILL ABOSLUTELY WRECK YOU.

Favorite moment: There are so many, honestly. idk how to pick. But I love during the Mexican Honeymoon how she’s giving Seth so much shit for bungling the bank heist and then making excuses later. She’s not just gonna sit and take it okay. She’s giving him an earful about it and he’s gonna LISTEN DAMMIT.

Idea for a story: Well, I already mentioned the coyote shifters thing… There’s also the Yellowstone road trip thing I’ve been working on. And then the two alternate scenarios of Seth running into her at Jed’s that @yossariandawn persuaded me to write that we were coming up with ideas for yesterday. XD So I started working on a couple little ficlets for that. One where Kate is shackled, and another where Seth walks in on Richie and Kate holding hands during the blood bond, and it’s an awkward little parallel to the Twister “you show me yours, I’ll show you mine” bit. XD

Unpopular opinion: idk that this is an unpopular opinion necessarily, but some people don’t like to acknowledge or just don’t realize how much of a shit stirrer she really is!!

Favorite relationship: Sethkate.

Favorite headcanon: Okay, so I’ve definitely mentioned before that I headcanon that she is a Cancer sign. But after learning more about astrology, I think she’s definitely also an Aries moon. She can be really impulsive when she’s emotional, and she’s also got an anger streak lbr!!

Send Me a Character!!

Arthur Morgan

First impression: SERIAL KILLER!! Literally the first video I saw of someone playing him he was running people over in Saint Denis with his horse and racking up a huge bounty on his head. XD I really thought this game was just Grand Theft Horsey. :P

Impression now: LISTEN. I AM STILL CRYING OVER HIM THREE YEARS LATER OKAY LEAVE ME ALONE. XD

Favorite moment: There’s lots, but one of my favorites is in this scene with his friend and French artist Charles Châtenay where he’s watching a brawl break out at an art gallery over some risqué art that Charles painted. Charles gets a beating and Arthur is just laughing at him and being entertained by it all. XD I LOVE HIS LAUGH THERE SO MUCH. ONE OF THE FEW TIMES HE ACTUALLY ENJOYS HIMSELF. ARTHUR DESERVED HAPPINESS.

[Here] is a video if you wanna watch that scene for yourself. XD

Idea for a story: I did have an idea for a kind of time travel/fix-it fic that is also an Arthur/OFC story… I probably won’t write it now, but it’s like after his death in the game he time travels to the present day because of this talisman he got from a Native American chief and he meets a woman named Emma and they fall in love and get married and are expecting their first kid. BUT THEN. EMMA GETS SENT BACK IN TIME TO BEFORE THE BLACKWATER CATASTROPHE. AND PAST ARTHUR DOESN’T KNOW HER. BUT HE FALLS IN LOVE WITH HER ALL OVER AGAIN. lmfao it’s complicated which is why I never actually wrote it because I couldn’t figure out how to tell that story… But it was supposed to be like Outlander in reverse kinda...

Unpopular opinion: MARY LINTON IS TOXIC AF AND ARTHUR DESERVED BETTER

Favorite relationship: I think that has to go to Arthur & Hosea. THAT’S HIS REAL DAD OKAY. IDGAF. I just love how patient he is with Arthur, even if he teases him sometimes. It’s always really affectionate and playful. And I didn’t really ship Arthur with anyone in the game, but if I did it would’ve been with Charlotte!! I loved their scenes so much!!

Favorite headcanon: He didn’t actually die… and he lived out his days to the age of 100+. He was around for the invention of microwaves and television and pop music. He and Jack hung out sometimes and they celebrated the release of Jack’s first novel together. lmfao

Daryl Dixon

First impression: Umm I think I thought he was kinda cute. XD Him throwing the squirrels at Rick was funny too.

Impression now: idk I stopped watching that show years ago. But when I quit the series, he and Beth were my everything so I know I had a lot of feelings about him.

Favorite moment: The white trash brunch and “Oh” scenes. He was just so soft and open with Beth. He was TRYING.

Idea for a story: I don’t write for that fandom anymore and never will again. But I did have a couple stories in the works though. One was a ZA fic where he and Beth are married with a newborn at the start of the apocalypse and it just follows the first few episodes with some changes because it’s also set a few years later. And another story I had was a singer!Beth au where she’s just getting famous and is dating Daryl and they have to keep their relationship a secret. And there were definitely fights with paparazzi planned. lol And a lot of sneaking around.

Unpopular opinion: I can’t think of anything.

Favorite relationship: Bethyl. There was a quote by NR where he said something like when Daryl loves, it’s for life? I still maintain that there will never be anyone else. Even if there is later in the show, there isn’t. lol

Favorite headcanon: That Merle is actually his biological father... lol

[crqstalite]

tired.

keeping a running list of mods i’ve come across or are looking at getting for me3 (yeah that game i’ve been yelling about for like,,, days). can use as a reference for your own shopping adventures on nexus. i do not use me3explorer (as i’ve said before and you’re probably tired of hearing me say it) or texmod.

is also more a reference for me (or a very disorganized essay or sorts), who’s been at this for like eight hours + some one off days with little success and more confusion than truly necessary (all while mildly distracted by andromeda and stories because it’s been a while since i loaded kodee’s save) now just trying to figure out what’s compatible and whats not. will update if i find new story mods i like.

priority earth overhaul mod (peom) conflicts with backoff. updated with backoff’s page as not to be used all together, though remains only as a minor issue on peom’s page. unsure of what it really is, but erring on the side of caution and writing it off all together. -fixes a lot with (obvs) priority earth. mulling over whether it’d be worth it. -unsure of whether i’d be overriding things by using LIME.

project variety conflicts with backoff. disappointed that it does conflict because of how much it adds, but i’m not smart enough to go messing around in the files and not expect a reprisal down the line. -project variety in general has a few issues i don’t think i could fix myself if need be. still mulling over whether i should install it or not, though it looks very nice.  -an issue with the spectre dlc mod is apparently the culprit for ontarom. because im not using the spectre dlc, not acknowledging this, but is good to know.

backoff itself does look very promising, hence why i may be willing to overlook peom and project variety for it alone (giftifish is very talented -- and concerned i may run into the problem with citlali because i’m just too nice to kaidan in general lol). my only concern is the removal of a couple scenes on earth with kaidan, (i think its a problem of it being too romantic for a shepard with a me2 romance but as you guys know me, none of my shepard’s have cheated) but as noted earlier, to be seen if this is really an issue. -at the moment looking for their release notes as advised. spoilers or no, i do like my kaidan romance and am curious to see what it changes. -update: it looks great. probably will install just for all the romance changes in general. just need to remember to save a lot when kaidan’s involved, ‘less i accidentally break up with him. -noticed that it updates all the romances to just run better in general. wow.

thanemod conflicts with a myriad of mods, which is understandable due to the story requirements to keep thane alive anyway. little disappointed that i can’t use it with some of them but not frustrated. if you’re not sure whether it conflicts, probably a good idea to hold off on installing it. -there is a third version of it coming. keeping an eye out for whenever it’s released, may start a thane romance once it is just for fun. -requires heavy usage of me3explorer. the mod author is very good at what they do, they’re documentation is honestly amazing, and had i not been the absolute monkey brain that i am, i probably could figure it out with little trouble. unfortunately i am monkey brain. -egm does specifically say in the mod description not to use me3explorer as well. consider the decision carefully, as i’m not sure what it changes if you do.

john p’s alternate ending mod (JAM) doesn’t have any conflicts as far as i’m concerned except with other ending mods (which checks out obvs), but does have quite a few issues that haven’t been fixed since 2016 and can make the endgame (catalyst) impossible to play. included with both version A and B, though there isn’t much of a consensus on which mods cause this issue. since i have a few mods on the list, i won’t be using this version. -the less is more ending mod (LIME) skips over these issues i think, will update this in the case i finish a playthrough with it. mostly installed just for the ending.    -there is an install issue with the citadel epilogue mod (CEM) that could be had if installation is incorrect. noted, but i don’t have the citadel dlc anyway. -personally like these mods more than the original mass effect happy ending mod (MEHEM) just because mehem is a little corny at times and a bit immersion breaking. to each their own, though.

expanded galaxy mod (EGM; page is down right now for updates as of 7.24.20) works with just about everything, as far as im concerned, except recalibrated. which honestly makes sense, so no complaint there. great mod, adds a lot to the game and isn’t immersion breaking in the slightest. - [as of 7.24 and update 1.47] there is a sort of known issue (i say sort of because i’ve seen three or four other posts on either mod that details a similar issue as mine) with the femshep’s closet mod that i haven’t been able to figure out. long story short, it glitches during the last romance scene and causes a few issues that could be described as game-breaking (invisible shepard/default shepard). the consensus is currently to disable the intro file prior to starting the cerberus hq mission. update to come once i figure out if this fixes the issue.

same gender mod is...questionable. a few mods i’m under the impression it works with (egm i think). ones like thane’s and backoff, not so much. i don’t believe it works with recalibrated or better dreams, and i don’t have a running list for mods that conflicts with. for a pretty much vanilla playthrough (like me, when i simply installed it to play with annika and ashley) without any other mods, it works fine. keep in mind most romance mods assume vanilla romances, not ones that can be achieved with mods.  -i only say this because the spreadsheet giftifish has mentions their mods only acknowledge vanilla romances. i figure this applies to all romance mods.

better dreams seems to work with everything i’ve come across except the same gender romance mod. will probably install just because i’m not a huge fan of the starchild.

a lot of textures for me3 (ALOT) does seem to have some issues that can be pretty easily explained, but as always, install it after all of your content dlc mods regardless. -it seems there may be an issue with project variety and possibly even backoff, but seems like minor issues that may be caused by other mods or a problem with installation. unsure, will update.

keep in mind a majority of these require a fresh me2 import. i’m not sure what they do for new me3 campaigns or NG+s, but i won’t try my luck lest it breaks my game entirely.

[pixelburied]

excuse the cropped weirdly pictures; my family/pet's foster parents are great at snapping a sneaky picture of me curled into an unattractively slouched (relaxed) fetal state. which i'm self-conscious about because it's an unattractive position for pictures even tho i am quite pretty (but they are also cropped because im just also private as hell, sorry lmao). 

bonus tho: said pet is laying ontop of me, face buried in my shoulder, twitching in her sleep as we speak!

--- but anyway. onto the actual submission:

so yeah. i saw your post! i'm here to address your call for dogs. but i dont have anymore pictures of my dog, Cash. however, i do have stuff about my cat, Allegra. 

i dont have any of them together cuz Cash lives at my family's house and Allegra lives in my apartment. and we're p sure he'd try to eat her and she'd scratch the hell out of him, so we don't try to let them meet. but, just like how Cash continued the legacy of us adopting another big slobbery dog with possessive seperation-anxiety, Allegra does fit all the criteria of those same personality traits we are such a beacon for. so i hope youll accept it as comfort nonetheless

here's a story about my cat who acts just like a anxious, cuddly, and slobbery pupper. i even bought her a pet ID tag that's shaped like a bone to honor that joke lmao) Allegra: "the honorary and tiniest mastiff" and named after the allergy medication

i got Allegra just this last year. she was a stray. now, for context: there are lots of outdoor cats in my neighborhood and they all hate strangers (they aren't feral tho, they have collars). but they all avoided my old house though because of Cash. so Allegra, newly abandoned, took advantage of that safety(?) by constantly hiding out around my family's house whenever she felt endangered

before that point tho, where i vaguely realized she existed but had no idea of what her strategy had been: i knew the cats of the neighborhood would run 15 miles away at the sound of people. but i am a small bean of cliches, so i always say "Hi kitty" anyway. even if them running away breaks my heart. and on that day, i was on my way to work for the opening shift, not early per se but i had enough time for starbucks if i wanted (and i did want) and i saw the vague mass of a cat on the lawn. predictably, i went "Hey kitty". but i also kept walking to my car due to said expectation of cats running and not wanting my heart to have that little break

and allegra did run. she just ran at me, full speed. i almost kicked this sudden HURLING THING in my peripherals like a football out of fight/flight + anxiety, except i have the aim of Charlie Brown so i thankfully missed her terribly. she was purring up a storm and crying pathetically. tho she's a Siamese, so they talk (read: complain) a lot anyway so maybe she wasn't crying. i always call her talking "crying" anyway tho cuz of the whiny pitch of it so such is a moot point. the real point was: she was ridiculously friendly

then, one morning, she was especially incorrigible. she wouldn't let me go into the car without her jumping inside too and kept scenting me, my car door, and all my equipment for this art class i was going to use for my presentation. a presentation that was a huge chunk of my grade that i couldn't be late for and Allegra was going to make late for. i had to trick her into thinking i was going to run away from my car, to which she zoomed ahead to cut me off, except i had actually done a fake-out and had really ran into the driver's seat and was already starting to slowly reverse out of the driveway. she had the sense to not go after a moving vehicle, thank god. my family texted me she cried outside our front door for hours later though. my art class that semester met once a week, so it was a 4.5 hour class that started at 7AM. and even tho that day had been a presentation day and we had less than 15 students, we still went over 3 hours. she cried during all of it. i used the "free time" to make sure i bought a cat leash and a cardboard cat carrier. but when i came back, heard no crying

i tried to get one of my neighbors to hold onto her for the afternoon. i couldnt leave her in my old house; i had family members i lived with who were terribly allergic. but i swore, so long as someone held onto her for my shift, i could take her to a shelter after. she was just so friendly and obviously new here, i just needed someone to put her somewhere safe (we lived by the freeway, by a train, by the main alternative to the freeway, and by two dog parks). but nobody really could hold onto her, so i had to hope she'd show up again when i came back from work. she didn't. i left her food out anyway.

i took her to the Humane Society Shelter closest to us because they have a microchip scanner. and she did have a chip! that was completely empty! apparently, that's a thing!! the guy there asked if i was going to keep her then, and i hadn't really thought that far. i had made the mistake of naming her and thinking she was cute, and she had done the legwork of being a cuddly motherfucker who purred constantly whenever i was around

she'd only ever appear in the early morning, when i was on my way to my shift or a midterm. about a week or two passed like this with me having no idea where she was for the rest of the day. turns out, according to said allergic family members, Allegra actually never left the house. she would hide on our roof or on our back porch's clutter or in our droopy lawn plants (like our sweetgrass) to hide from the outdoor cats or other dangers (she's a smart cat who hates the sound of cars and would hide whenever any one was particularly loud)

i'm pretty sure she's plenty well-cared for tho. in fact, i'm almost positive she's a very spoiled cat. for example, i have backups of everything x2. i have one of everything in my living area and a copy in my bedroom, should i need to close her in there when allergic family members are over (i also carry all the big allergy medication brands as a back-up in case i get a visitor who forgot to take their medication, which includes me being stocked with allegra the medication lmao) and then i also have a back-up of all her stuff in my closet should anything break. i always make sure all my windows are open when i leave for class/shifts so she can have "Cat TV" since birds do fly around the area. she has a ton of toys (she has a toy box actually) and i bought her multiple hideaways (like her shark pictured here; she also has a cactus that's pretty cute). also, ontop of having a good breakway collar, her microchip now reads my information. but yeah, im still working on the money to get her one more of everything for the house we visit for the holidays so i don't have to carry everything. i do a lot of research still-- on both cats and Siamese-- to make sure i am doing everything to make her happy, since her world is just me and our apartment now

i called out for her-- i had long since started calling her Allegra as a joke, because its a name of a popular allergy medication and so much of my family was allergic-- and shrugged sadly when she didn't come out. i had just put my stuff down to get my key out when i heard a familar crybaby. turns out, she had been sleeping in our sweetgrass and i had woken her up. she ran over and i called my family to take my things inside while i used the rest of my day to get her to a shelter. i put on a cat harness+leash before trying to out her in the cardboard box. don't buy cardboard boxes from Pet Co. they're shit. she broke out of it Alien style before i had even fully reversed out of the driveway. i had to improvise her leash into a seatbelt instead

but yeah. i say my favorite gremlin is dog-like because:

she has an overbite, so she looks like she's got her lip jutted out in a pout all the time. what's dog-like about it is this makes her slobber whenever she's excited or content (and i've grown up with mastiffs, who slobber so much you need 2 rags per room dedicated to their slobber)

hesitatingly, i called my only family member that was semi-local to see if he would be okay with fostering her until i was going to move (which was less than 6 months away) because, otherwise, i wasn't going to be able to keep her. and she was definitely going to be adopted immediately. he and his wife said of course, without hesitation. they were both huge cat lovers and they were, emotionally, my closest family members; so i had kept them in the loop about my cat quest. and they had already discussed potentially fostering Allegra, knowing my request was a possibility (read: probability). he drove over from his workplace to pick her up, with his own carrier, and drove the roughly 2 hours from our house back to his

she meows when people are at the door and greets them by begging for pets

she loves shoes. she steals my tennis shoes because she loves the laces and she will try to swat at them when im tying them. her claw getting stuck and forcing me to not continue has worked to make me late multiple times. but she also will lay down around my friends' feet and rub her face against their shoes, flipflops, and toes. one of my friends likes to joke that allegra has a foot fetish. she also can and will put her face into my tennis shoes and try to sleep like that. that's my bastard baby

i visited their house about once a week. except during finals, where i didn't visit for two or three weeks since i didnt have any exams so much as i had projects. (allegra was PISSED at me when i came back, my cuddly kitty refused to come near me and would run away when forcibly placed on my lap. she even swiped at me. by the next visit, she was grumpy but happier. by the one after that, everything was back to normal) i really liked visiting those family members too; it made us even closer. though it still annoys the male how much research i do about cat-care (as opposed to just accepting everything everyone tells me as gospel). i researched even down to "how to best pet a cat". i did this since, due to said allergic family members, i had never owned a cat and therefore didnt osmosisly process how to best care for one. i've also never been fully fauthful of people's advice that's based on "This is how we've/the media always done it". my history with mastiffs showed that not all breeds are the same and that you do have experts to utilize within your phone, and they are experts over peers for a reason. so i looked up dumbass questions like "how to best pet a cat" since i'm not an expert and Jackson Galaxy and friends are right there in my phone

she wants to play constantly. she loves tug of war the most, but anything involving chase has her going at full-speed

ive spoken to fellow cat-owners and mastiff-owners about this, and i thought this was interesting: when she isn't playing, she's sleeping. which is what mastiffs and cats do. and when i get up, she follows me. which is what our mastiffs do. and while i do stuff, she sits and waits by the doorway or else walks around my feet until i tell her to sit out of the way. which is what our mastiffs do. and then i go to sit down again, and she lays down as close as she can and goes back to sleep, which is what our mastiffs do. apparently, none of my friends cats do this; their cats just, at best, wake up to watch them leave and then their cats go back to sleep in the same place regardless of if they come back

Allegra likes to sleep at the foot of my bed for bedtime, at least for a majority of it

but, regardless if my worries, allegra seems happy! she cuddles with her claws out all the time (not sticking into my skin, just out) which is a sign of contentment. she'll also use her claws to keep me in place, like a fucking seatbelt (example pictured in post); it's where her claws will dig into the furniture and i cannot get up because of her, the possessive piece of shit. but she also gives me tons of Slow Blinks of I Love You. and she always runs to greet me at the door. and it's really funny how, anytime there's guests over, she tries to make it obvious that she's my favorite over (usually through politely tapping my leg with her paw to ask and recieve pets, and then giving everyone a very Cat Surrounded By Knives grin cuz i havent petted any of THEEEMMM lmao) she's hilarious

she doesn't like to be carried unless it means she's going with me somewhere outside the house. then she's as well-behaved as a chihuahua in a purse

she licks my hands all the time. and she licks my face to wake me up (at 4AM, Allegra, go aWAY)

she loves smelly clothes. the shoe part should tell you that much tho. for our mastiffs, we would leave them a smelly piece of clothing between washes to comfort via smell. Allegra, in a similar vein, was not impressed when i bought a laundry basket with a lid (almost carrying her to the communal laundry room once was enough, thank you!)

in the same vein as the clothes: she also loves blankets too. the more Me Smelling the blanket, the better (aka she doesn't like brand new blankets until its been like. month two or three of use). this is largely because i love blankets. but she kneads them, purring, even if im not using them. and when i am, she takes my using them as an invitation for cuddles

she sits whenever i tell her "NO" like 'who me? i was not doing a bad. i am but small creature'

she asks for a daily walk. she doesn't like the idea of being an outdoor cat. she just wants walks. like, she has lived several months not going outside and has been super happy. she made it clear on her adoption day that she was done with outside. she was perfectly content with being an indoor cat! still is, in a way! i ruined it. for myself. me. i was worried she wasn't being stimulated enough, so i experimented taking her on a walk and now i have created a monster. now she sits by the door and cries until i get out her harness and leash. which she hates her harness in a "no ball, only throw" kinda way. but she has also proven hates going outside alone since she is now ALSO scared of everything (remember those outdoor cats Allegra The Stray would hide from? how they would run away from strangers?? yeah. now that she has a Person, Allegra's turned into one of Them now). yeah.. she runs the fuck away (or as far as she can with a leash) from people she sees on her walks now. and it is pretty obvious she hates cars and dogs too, because when i have walked her outside of our new complex she is too petrified to move. like, she freezes even when just being close to a street. she likes our complex's janky carpeted hallways between the apartments, and she likes the ability to hide behind my legs. being an outdoor cat is something Allegra has decided she is not a fan of. if i try to change things up scenery-wise, she always asks to go home as soon as possible and runs into the apartment if our walks turn too much into what her life was before being adopted (aka. streets/cars, lawns, people walking). she wants walks. she LOVES and BEGS for walks. but not be outside. walks. even though she still hates her harness lmao

and that's Allegra! she's aproximately 2 years old, i've had her for less than a year, and she's assumedly a purebred Siamese cat. and she's also my ESA, or Emotional Support Animal. if applicable, a cuddly and loving pet is helpful for keeping mental health more stable. in my experience of getting one, it was fairly easy to get it permitted; especially a cat because they're super easy to get registered as compared to a dog. i am lucky enough to have regular physician as my doctor that empathizes with mental health and knows it not to be her area of expertise so much as the patient+their therapist (but also i have a history of attempted treatment on my medical record since i was 16), so my getting registered was literally just me asking for a doctor's note and her giving it to me near immediately. i can't take Allegra with me to classes or resteraunts or anything, nor do i even want to, but it forces apartments/hotels to HAVE to let me board with my ESA and to do so without an additional fee. however, i don't know if that's how ESAs work internationally or even in all of the states of America, the country where i live. but it definitely helps to have someone who needs me to get up everyday, who can never trigger me, who makes me laugh with their hijinks, and who cuddles with me regardless of if i have had a good day or bad day. Allegra is especially good at her job by being especially attentive whenever i am anxious. even if it's just me getting a little bit anxious because i'm late in turning an assignment in but have logically decided it doesn't matter because the assignment is only 2 points anyway, just turn it in late and don't focus on it; and she starts patting my leg almost continuously asking for pets inbetween rubbing herself on my legs. it's why i let her get away with never paying rent. i'm really glad she chose me. we both got really lucky with that decision ♡

i don't want to assume your situation, so i won't recommend an ESA for you so much as just remind you that they exist. i hope this all helps you feel supported and encouraged to continue to find the small wonders ♡♡♡

[phdna]

*arriving a month late with Starbucks and an uninteresting Endgame review*

This took me forever to write because work has been very intense lately, but I have thoughts I want to write down, for my own future reference when I’m an old woman looking back on my life, if for nothing else.

SPOILERS AHEAD, of course!

From whatever little I’ve been online since Endgame came out, it seems like the internet has been on fire swearing undying love, eternal hate and everything in between. I’m used to that because the MCU fandom has a tendency to be like that, but it feels like this time is more intense, which puzzled me a little bit, as it mostly adheres to the Marvel rules of storytelling, and people tend to not fuss over movies that do that as much as they do over movies that break the established MCU patterns. And then I did some reading and watching and talking and it just hit me that people aren’t reacting to Endgame itself, they’re reacting to the MCU. Both people who think it’s the best movie ever and people who think it’s absolute trash aren’t talking a lot about the movie, they’re talking about how the movie handled the end of this long journey that was the MCU. (Exception: time travel. I’ll get back to it in a moment!) I know I’m having a Captain Obvious moment here, but bear with me for a moment, I’m going somewhere with this.

Here’s the thing: as long as there are more movies coming, we can all overlook things we dislike about the MCU really well – “they’ll just fix it later,” right? Or we can fix it ourselves, even if we don’t write/read fics – the endless theories about what the next movies are gonna be about are in large part wish-fulfillment. Maybe next time Marvel will have more representation of all kinds, maybe next time Marvel will develop their female characters as much as their male counterparts, maybe next time Marvel will focus on this particular relationship that is either underdeveloped or so developed that it should get more attention, maybe next time Marvel will direct a character arc towards where I think it should go. But when the end arrives, we have to face that we aren’t in charge of the MCU and have sometimes wildly different expectations that what the Powers That Be have in mind. We have been emotionally invested in this universe for a long time – we bring the MCU with us in our lives even away from screens – and it sucks a little to realize that, ultimately, we are powerless to impact it. If Endgame was 100% everything you’ve always wanted for every single character and for the universe as whole, great! You’re still gonna mourn the end a little bit, but it’s cool! But if you feel like even one character of the dozens in the cast got the short end of the stick, you’re gonna be upset because don’t we all wish we could sit down with Marvel and teach them Why They Are Wrong About This Character?

I hope I’m not sounding holier-than-thou, like I’m being absolutely cool and adult about the whole thing. Hell no. I’d fight Kevin Feige in a parking lot any time, and have been ready to do that since huh… the MCU started. (Especially because the MCU has taken over the comics and I like 616 more than I like the MCU, so I’ve got beef with Marvel for that.)

So yeah, I have plenty of “What? No! Whose idea was that, that’s terrible!” moments, but I always try to focus on what I enjoyed more than on what I hated. Sometimes it doesn’t work and I get forever bitter, but most of the time, I make an active effort to 1) be grateful that WE EVEN HAVE GOOD SUPERHERO MOVIES AT ALL and 2) watch the movies I’m actually watching instead of watching the movies I think I should watch. For instance, I want to set myself on fire whenever I think about how un-family-like the Avengers are in the MCU, but since being a family isn’t a story the MCU is trying to tell, I consciously try to find something I enjoy about the constant conflicts, such as what they tell us about what each character believes, and how they keep coming back together to do the right thing despite their differences.

Arguably, that’s too much effort, and I get why some people want to be entertained and get upset if the MCU doesn’t deliver that entertainment – I mean, movies are supposed to be fun. But since I was a kid, I’ve always been a fan of imperfect things I have no control over, and I muddle through what I don’t enjoy to get to the shiny bits that give me goosebumps and keep me up at night feeling giddy over how good something was. It’s part of how I react to stuff I like by now. I don’t know, maybe it’s my History degree talking, but I don’t see what the big deal is with saying “Some of it sucks, some of it is brilliant, some of it has to be challenged on the ground of human rights, but overall I’m interested in learning more about it.”

Why the essay on how to engage with the MCU?

Because no matter how I think about it, my primary opinion about Endgame isn’t “I think it’s good” or “I think it’s bad” but just “I’m thankful.” That’s it. I can’t look at Endgame and see it as an isolated movie. I look at it and think “God, I was just out of school when Tony said I am Iron Man and now I’m a teacher and the MCU has always been there helping me keep track of the passage of time all these years.” Here, have a bad analogy: Endgame is when you finish a long travel and there’s nothing home to eat and you have to unpack and you’re exhausted and normal life is depressing and you have a headache and you’re frustrated that holidays are over and you didn’t do everything you wanted…. but that doesn’t make the entire travel a waste of time, does it? It’s actually the opposite. If the travel sucks, getting home is great. And very, very, very few people walk out of Endgame saying “Thank god this MCU saga is over, ugh, I was following it just out of obligation and I’m glad I’m free now” – I mean, there are people like that, and I can see why, but I also never finish things just out of obligation so I can’t relate. Anyway, mostly, people either expected more because the MCU is good enough to do better or thought this was the perfect ending. I’m both. Some things I loved, some things I really wish would be different, but mostly, I’m, like I said, grateful that the journey was so good that no ending would’ve fully satisfied me.

My biggest problem is with time travel. I’ve never liked the trope (not huge on alternate universes, either!), so I knew this would be a pet peeve even before I watched Endgame. I’m also surprised that apparently nobody involved in the movie can agree on how aforementioned time travel works. Fans certainly can’t. And I don’t think it’s a good thing if your audience is confused by a major part of your movie, even if there is a perfectly good explanation and the audience just didn’t get it. (Which isn’t the case, as apparently there isn’t a perfect explanation.) But you know what? I’m hand-waving it. It’s a convoluted plot device but it made a good movie, so like, whatever. Let it work in ABC way unless XYZ needs to happen, in which case, XYZ is how it’s always worked regardless of how ABC was used before. I don’t care. I’m taking what they say happened and saying “Okay, that’s how it happened” and ignoring the hows and the whys. It’s just bad comic book logic on the big screen, I’ve been rolling with this kind of thing since I was a literal child. Having said that, I don’t know what year it is in the MCU, I don’t know how Spider-Man will work, I’m not touching Cap’s time paradox with a ten-foot pole, and I’m not even gonna try to understand any of the timeline charts going around online.

My other major problems have to do with real life more than with the movie. The only original female Avenger dies in the same way the only original female Guardian of the Galaxy died, and neither of them get funerals but we do get the men in their lives suffering over it (which switches the focus from mourning the women to the men’s journeys.) Not sure if the joke was that Thor was clinically depressed or if the joke was that Thor was fat, but haha hilarious. The first openly queer character is omg a nameless cameo talking about someone we never see, isn’t the MCU so progressive? (The bar was so low that Marvel had to dig a ditch so they could somehow get lower than that.) Not loving the idea of “Thanos treated Gamora like shit but the Soul Stone recognizes he loved her” and “Tony’s dad was awful but Tony can Forgive Him” being presented as touching – it’s creepy af and makes me wonder if the MCU will end up saying Alexander Pierce actually cared about Bucky somewhat or something of that sort. Female hero team up: unironically loved it and want it projected on my tombstone (it was one of my favorite part), but it’s a little disturbing that almost none of them had much of a storyline in the movie because they don’t have much of a storyline in the MCU – it really highlights that Marvel has a boy’s club problem still. Now, none of these things make for a bad movie, it just reminds me that Marvel has a long way to go with they want to become inclusive.

Okay, now on to storylines…

Tony. Loved it. I love how the Russos direct Tony (I do have a problem with how M&M write Tony, sometimes, though, and always have) because they love to highlight how soft Tony’s heart is. Part of what makes the character interesting in any universe is that he’s willing to do morally shady stuff when he thinks he’s justified and he tends to think he’s justified because he knows exactly how smart he is, but if you explore this borderline antihero behavior without a deep commitment to reminding the audience that Tony is emotional and gentle, you end up with Reed Richards. 616!Tony will always be sweeter than MCU!Tony (even though 616!Tony’s dad literally tried to beat emotions out of him, while MCU!Tony’s dad more ignored him than actively tried to make him colder, but that’s besides the point) but Tony was so openly loving in this movie, and it helps make his death hit home, why so many people will miss Iron Man and Tony I pity Morgan a lot because she won’t remember her dad, but the only way to feel like the torch has truly been passed to other heroes was to kill Tony – keep him alive in any way and characters are gonna want his advice even if he stops fighting. I want to see how other heroes will protect a world without Iron Man. It’s exciting and brand new and feels a bit like when Fury said in 2008 that Tony isn’t the only superhero.

Steve. Let’s take the time paradox at face value and say everything goes well in every possible timeline and nobody suffers more than they would if he hadn’t done his time-heist thing, because I think that’s what the movie wanted to imply. I’m actually happy he got to be with Peggy. It’s not how I’d write him, mind you, but I always knew MCU Steve was being written as someone who is inherently out of place in the modern world. In the comics, Steve has a culture shock and he mourns people, but he finds a new family in the Avengers and truly becomes part of this century. MCU Steve was never that guy. And that’s okay, it’s a valid take! Not what I’d do, but given his storyline throughout the other movies, I think it’s a very satisfying ending that feels very organic. Saying “screw everything, I’ll do what I think it’s important” has been Steve’s constant in all movies, and it’s nice that he learned that he is important too, not just everybody else. Handing the shield was also very important – no “I think he’d want you to have it” to fuel conspiracy theories in the future: Steve made a good decision and that’s fine. (And I’ll cut a bitch if y’all keep saying “maybe Bucky had the shield before” because Sam can be a first choice fgs!!!)

Professor Hulk is a thing and I liked it more than I thought I would. Hopefully we’ll see more of him. I liked Bruce and I liked the Hulk, but somehow this version of him made me go from “Yeah, they’re nice” to “PLEASE TELL ME HE’LL HAVE A SOLO MOVIE” so good job in redeeming the Hulk franchise, Marvel! It only took you 10 years to get the right tone, but hey, what matters is that you did it!

Thor…….. Um. Hard. I liked his character arc but hated how it was handled. I’m not even a huge fan of Ragnarok because comedy isn’t my thing, but watching Ragnarok, I could see why the movie worked and the humor didn’t come at the expense of being fair to the character. Endgame felt more like the movie itself was bullying him. They’re laughing at his pain, basically, and it’s just not funny. It bothers me for the same reason it bothers me when people say pre-serum Steve should never leave home – just… no. But then, we got Thor and Frigga and I’d sell a kidney for more Frigga, so, it wasn’t completely awful. Just like, 90%?

Natasha!!! I hope everybody who said Scarjo can’t act paid attention to this movie, because she gave Nat a depth that we haven’t seen since CATWS, and even then, because it was Steve’s story, she was sidelined. That’s the Nat I’ve always wanted in the MCU. …and of course, she’s dead. Luckily, we don’t know anything about MCU!Nat, so we can still get prequels even if they don’t want to bring her back to life. It’s a little shady that she dies (why is it that the randomly decided death always seem to be randomly assigned to whatever the minority in a team is, huh?) but I love that she sacrificed herself for the greater good. It’s a heroic end to a woman who thought she was gonna be a villain her entire life. Oh, oh, oh, I have to say this: Natasha leading the remaining Avengers? Godtier. I’m not much of a fic person but I desperately want fics of that off-screen period where she’s being a boss.

Clint. MCU!Clint never did much for me, so I was impressed that I was rooting so much for him during the movie. I don’t know if he’ll just retire completely, but I’m hoping he doesn’t so we can see more of him in the MCU.

Okay, that’s the original Avengers and I’ve already written……. Too much. So I’ll stop – sort of – here.

But first, other random comments.

Fight choreography? On point, 10/10, would let Marvel beat me up to experience these sequences myself

“I am inevitable.” “I am Iron Man.” I cried so much the screen got blurry and I almost missed the snap. Thank you for this exchange.

I love and support Morgan, but I’m dreading the idea that in a near future, the MCU will get Riri’s entire story and give it to Morgan. Please, MCU, I’m counting on you, have Morgan grow up to befriend Riri, not to steal her role.

Nebula needs a solo movie. Nebula needs a whole cinematic universe, actually. What a character.

Speaking of which, GotG 3 is shaping up to be very cool

Sam being the one to say “On your left” in the movie where he becomes Captain America? Poetic cinema. Also! Sam Wilson is Captain America and both the human being who wants children to grow up in a better world and the geek who wants to see flying Cap in me are equally over the moon with joy

Bucky, my darling, the MCU hasn’t known what to make of you since 2011. It’s okay, Sebastian Stan will always do his magic and make you be Bucky even when Marvel doesn’t fully understand anything about your character

Pepper’s character development in 10 years is protagonist-worthy, I can’t believe how she always only has a couple of scenes every movie

Tom Holland should not be allowed to have crying scenes, they make my heart hurt

The movie feels a lot shorter than it is

There’s a lot more I could say, but I’m writing it on Word (tumblr sometimes eat my text posts as I’m writing them) and the wordcount is nearing 3k, so I better shut up. If you’ve read all of this, please treat yourself to a milkshake, you’re awesome. If there’s anything you want to talk about that I didn’t address (or just… you know, about Marvel in general), my ask and my direct messages are always open. I’ll probably take forever to get back to you (I NEED A VACATION ASAP) but I will eventually answer you and I don’t bite, so please go ahead if you’re curious about my not-so-very-interesting thoughts :)

TL;DR: Endgame isn’t my favorite movie (IM, IM3, CATFA, CATWS and BP all come first, sorry) but it’s up there in the “I can watch this movie a thousand times and I won’t get tired of it” list, and I think it does a fairly good job in ending the Infinity Saga, so I’m basically pleased!

[platinum-happy]

Announcement Regarding Eve & Graduation Letters for Willow

To all of our supporters, thank you for your ongoing support of Platinum Happy! While we’re hard at work behind the scenes on new releases and hope to have something new for you all to enjoy soon, we must announce with mixed emotions that Generation 1 member, Eve, has graduated from Platinum Happy to focus on her personal life. Eve has been an asset to Platinum Happy and has contributed so much to us since starting off in our first generation, and we would like to express our gratitude to Eve for everything she has done for us and the joy she has brought to the group! Below, you will find letters from current members to Eve, as well as graduation letters for former Generation 2 member, Willow, who graduated from the group in 2018.

Graduation Letters for Eve

Dear Iibu,

The things you create are truly wonderful, thank you for taking some time to create things with us over the years! You’ve introduced me to so many cool idol groups and songs, and our mutual love of rilakkuma and other cute stuff was always fun~

I appreciate your calming presence, and I’m super grateful I got to meet you, Eve!! If there’s ever anything you need me for, never hesitate to message me. I hope your future will be full of excitement and happiness!

SINCEREST, DEEPEST, TRULYYYY BEST WISHES!!

Alice

Eve,

I legit cried when I read you were graduating. You’ve been one of my favorite Purappi members from the BEGINNING. From the start, I fangirled over your voice, style and personality. You’re very talented but kind at the same time. An Idol with a heart as gold as your image color.

I know you’re off to bigger and brighter things, but I hope you’ll stop by to chat sometimes. I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say Platinum Happy won’t be the same without you! (T＿T) Please don’t be a stranger! ♥ ♥

Love, Bea

Dear Eve,

I’m not EVEn sure where to begin here, and I don’t think a letter like this can succinctly describe the way I’m feeling, but the biggest sentiments I want to express to you are THANK YOU and YOU ARE AMAZING!

You’ve always been the kind of person who is quietly talented – rather than flaunting your crazy skills right up front, you’ve been weaving something grand with your talents in your own way until suddenly you’ve burst onto the scene, and everyone’s like, “This is amazing!” And it’s TRUE. Your music, your art, your ideas, and everything that you put your heart into turns out to be a masterpiece. You’ve done so much for Purappi, and I can’t thank you enough for being here with us and sharing your talents with the world alongside everyone here. You’ve been a cherished member and a cherished friend to us, and you’ve truly left a sort of golden touch on the group that we’ll never forget. We owe you so much!

On a personal note, thank you for being there to fangirl with me about CY8ER and alternative and tattooed idols and electronic J-pop and all of these fun things! You’ve always been so sweet and thoughtful – and always were at the ready to share exciting idol news (whether through fangirly messages between us or on PuraRadio)! After your graduation, I hope we continue to talk about these things!

I wish you nothing but the best, and I know your talents will take you so, so far. Good luck Eve, we will miss you so much!

Love, Bonnie

Hey Eve,

Honestly I’m at a loss as to what to write because I’m worried that it will turn into “noooo, please don’t leave.”

When gen one first came together, you were one of the only people I already knew. We kind of paired off because of that and because we have similar tastes in idols and are kind of awkward nerds, and I really do think of you as one of my closest friends. I’m so glad that we got to meet so many times and I really hope you come to Japan again soon because you are so fun to hang out with.

I think that it’s because of you that I was able to really do anything at all in Purappi. Having you around was what encouraged me to break out of my shell with both the other members behind the scenes and be more of the weirdo in front of the camera, too. Because you were there to share ideas with me I was able to come up with my own and try them out. And of course you were always my partner in crime for PuraRadio and PuraStreaming. You’ve always been a huge part of the group to me, and I’m sure that goes for the other members as well.

And you honestly have had such a big impact on us. After all, “Platinum de Somete” is something you gave us! I guess what I’m trying to say is thank you so much for being a part of Platinum Happy with me.

Of course I can still talk to you whenever and I will, don’t you doubt that! Seriously. BFFs. That us.

I love you come to Japan and fight me by which I mean give me a hug and hang out with me,

Calla

Hellohellohello Eve, Iibu, Eevee, Eveveveveve,

I know what you might be thinking. I sound like I’m hyper right now. If that’s your train of thought, you might be right. The world will never know. Not really anyway.🤫🤫

I know I’m the somewhat formal type. I’ve rarely ever called anyone by their given nicknames. (If anything, I’ve often given my own nickname for everyone else, haha.) But by the end of this letter that’s gonna change!!!

We’ve been together as gen members for what… FOUR YEARS? Time passes!!! We’ve been in a few subgroup songs together like Love like Candyfloss and Because Happiness which is great but a bit sad that we won’t get a Team Nomimono cover in the future… 🤐 Maybe a reunion could happen in a hopeful future, right コーヒーブ ☺️

But like I’ve said to Willow, it doesn’t mean it’s the end! It doesn’t mean you’re not onto bigger and better things!!!! Flex positivity!!!! I believe in you in all your future endeavors!!!!!!!!! (# P O S I T I V I T Y 2 K 1 9 ! ! ! ! 😤 😤 😤)

We’ll miss you, Iibu. But you know exactly where to find us so don’t forget to send us some life updates!!! 😤😤😤

From the probably-hyper-but-the-world-will-never-know

ジュース 😘

Iibu! When I found out you wanted to graduate, I was devastated. You have this quiet, amazing, yet powerful energy that I LOVE! You’ve graced us with your presence since the beginning of Purappi, and for that, I am very thankful. Between your voice, art, lyrics, videos, and overall creative prowess, you’ve definitely made a large and incomparable positive impact on our little group. One of my favorite things was when you’d quietly sneak into the group chat and drop something amazing at our feet! I’m very sad to see you go, but I know wherever you end up in life, you will flourish. Good luck and full speed ahead!!!

~Marin

IIBUU, I’m really gonna miss you! Before I joined, you were always one of my favorite members, so I’m glad I got to meet you and talk with you! You are super sweet and the most knowledgeable and passionate person about idols I know! I definitely wouldn’t have learned about Wasuta or Gang Parade if it wasn’t for you. <3

So much of Purappi’s identity is thanks to you, Eve! You’re incredibly talented and I know those talents will take you far! I wish you the best, take care of yourself and check in from time to time. <3

Love, Sadie <33333

Graduation Letters for Willow

Dear Ui,

OH MAN HOW ARE WE GONNA LIVE WITHOUT YOUR GOD-TIER MIXES AND ENERGY AROUND???? Actually at this point, it’s been a while since you’ve graduated and I’m glad that we still chat every now and then! It seems like you’re doing well and working on lots of fun projects! I hope you still think of me as a friend the way I do you. ♡

UTMOST RESPECT AND ADMIRATION,

–Alice–

Dear Willow,

I was so sad to see you graduate! You were such a talented singer (and rapper!) who brought a lot to the Purrapi family. I remember hearing you in Silly Boy and becoming an instant fan! ♥

I’m definitely going to miss having you and your grand knowledge of idols around. I always felt like I learned something new whenever you spoke up. Also, I’ll forever be wishing we had gotten a chance to sing together while you were in the group. Maybe one day our paths will cross and allow it. But for now, keep doing your thing and chasing your dreams! Remember to keep in touch too!

Love, Bea

Dear Willow,

Miss Willow~ while I’m, of course, sad to see you go, I have nothing but positive thoughts for your future! With your talents, abilities, and confidence, you can pretty much take on the world, which I am totally down for!

Thank you for the time you spent with us in Purappi! Your gorgeous voice blended so well with Generation 2 and brought so much depth to our songs. Whenever I was color-coding lyrics and figuring out who should sing a certain line, I always knew I could count on you to absolutely nail whatever I gave you! One of my favorite Willow memories is your rapping in “deal,” because that was INSANELY cool and absolutely made me fangirl you!

I want to wish you the best of luck for your future. Keep in touch with us, okay! We’ll always be wota pals!

Love, Bonnie

Hi Uiui,

Okay, I kind of procrastinate with graduation letters in the first place because I don’t want anyone to graduate but like… I really procrastinated with this one. I was just really shocked when you told us because you were one of the last members I was expecting to announce that. You just are always so in place with us that it feels so weird?

Honestly I’m so blessed to have gotten to meet you and I’m so, so glad that we had this group in common that helped two people born on opposite sides of the planet meet and go to a maid cafe together not once, but like three times. You’re always a blast to hang out with which, of course, you’re just such a chill person who is also just so funny and interesting and please if you come back to Japan while I still haven’t been kicked out, hit me up let’s do karaoke again!!

Good luck with your studies and your future! I know you’re a super hard worker, so you will definitely succeed with anything you put yourself towards. Don’t be a stranger because we love you so much.

<3

[[Calla]]

To the one and only Willow,

Hello uwu

uwuwuwu

It’s sad to see your departure from Purappi but that doesn’t mean you aren’t onto bigger and better things, right?!! (#POSITIVITY2K19!!!!! 😤😤) We’re still proud of you!!!!!!!!!

The songs are gonna have one more voice to miss from now on but it won’t be too bad, I’m sure. I think the new generation will do a splendid job in your stead. We’ll miss you, your voice, and your mixing, though. I hope you still get to meet up with our wonderful Calla and the other members every once in a while. Remember to keep in touch!! You know where to find us. 😚

Meep-meep (aka Mepp the Red Leaf uwu)

My precious UiUi!! Since we’ve been knowing each other for such a long time, I was elated when you auditioned for Purappi! It was a no brainer to accept you; someone who has a sweet solid voice, the ability to spit fire raps, a fun loving personality, AND a great mixer?! My dear, you are a catch of an idol! You’ll always be our sexy UiUi here in Purappi Land. I’m sad you’re leaving us, but I know you will do Great Things on your own. I look forward to gushing about Hello!Project idols with you soon! Much love!!

~Marin

Dear UI! I just want to say it’s been a pleasure being a fellow 2nd gen member with you! I’m always pretty bad at these graduation letters, but I just want you to know I appreciated you and everything you did for our group! Its sad that you’re leaving/left, but I know you’re doing great things in life and so I’m happy I got to meet you! Good luck in your current ventures! I know you’ll become the best sexy UIUI you can be. <3  

I really miss you,

Love, Sadie

P.S., I’m gonna miss sharing lines with you 😮 lol

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

One of FiveThirtyEight’s goals has always been to get people to think more carefully about probability. When we’re forecasting an upcoming election or sporting event, we’ll go to great lengths to analyze and explain the sources of real-world uncertainty and the extent to which events — say, a Senate race in Texas and another one in Florida — are correlated with one another. We’ll spend a lot of time working on how to build robust models that don’t suffer from p-hacking or overfitting and which will perform roughly as well when we’re making new predictions as when we’re backtesting them. There’s a lot of science in this, as well as a lot of art. We really care about the difference between a 60 percent chance and a 70 percent chance.

That’s not always how we’re judged, though. Both our fans and our critics sometimes look at our probabilistic forecasts as binary predictions. Not only might they not care about the difference between a 60 percent chance and a 70 percent chance, they sometimes treat a 55 percent chance the same way as a 95 percent one.

There are also frustrating moments related to the sheer number of forecasts that we put out — for instance, forecasts of hundreds of U.S. House races, or dozens of presidential primaries, or the thousands of NBA games in a typical season. If you want to make us look bad, you’ll have a lot of opportunities to do so because some — many, actually — of these forecasts will inevitably be “wrong.”

Sometimes, there are more sophisticated-seeming criticisms. “Sure, your forecasts are probabilistic,” people who think they’re very clever will say. “But all that means is that you can never be wrong. Even a 1 percent chance happens sometimes, after all. So what’s the point of it all?”

I don’t want to make it sound like we’ve had a rough go of things overall.1 But we do think it’s important that our forecasts are successful on their own terms — that is, in the way that we have always said they should be judged. That’s what our latest project — “How Good Are FiveThirtyEight Forecasts?” — is all about.

That way is principally via calibration. Calibration measures whether, over the long run, events occur about as often as you say they’re going to occur. For instance, of all the events that you forecast as having an 80 percent chance of happening, they should indeed occur about 80 out of 100 times; that’s good calibration. If these events happen only 60 out of 100 times, you have problems — your forecasts aren’t well-calibrated and are overconfident. But it’s just as bad if they occur 98 out of 100 times, in which case your forecasts are underconfident.

Calibration isn’t the only thing that matters when judging a forecast. Skilled forecasting also requires discrimination — that is, distinguishing relatively more likely events from relatively less likely ones. (If at the start of the 68-team NCAA men’s basketball tournament, you assigned each team a 1 in 68 chance of winning, your forecast would be well-calibrated, but it wouldn’t be a skillful forecast.) Personally, I also think it’s important how a forecast lines up relative to reasonable alternatives, e.g., how it compares with other models or the market price or the “conventional wisdom.” If you say there’s a 29 percent chance of event X occurring when everyone else says 10 percent or 2 percent or simply never really entertains X as a possibility, your forecast should probably get credit rather than blame if the event actually happens. But let’s leave that aside for now. (I’m not bitter or anything. OK, maybe I am.)

The catch about calibration is that it takes a fairly large sample size to measure it properly. If you have just 10 events that you say have an 80 percent chance of happening, you could pretty easily have them occur five out of 10 times or 10 out of 10 times as the result of chance alone. Once you get up to dozens or hundreds or thousands of events, these anomalies become much less likely.

But the thing is, FiveThirtyEight has made thousands of forecasts. We’ve been issuing forecasts of elections and sporting events for a long time — for more than 11 years, since the first version of the site was launched in March 2008. The interactive lists almost all of the probabilistic sports and election forecasts that we’ve designed and published since then. You can see how all our U.S. House forecasts have done, for example, or our men’s and women’s March Madness predictions. There are NFL games and of course presidential elections. There are a few important notes about the scope of what’s included in the footnotes,2 and for years before FiveThirtyEight was acquired by ESPN/Disney/ABC News (in 2013) — when our record-keeping wasn’t as good — we’ve sometimes had to rely on archived versions of the site if we couldn’t otherwise verify exactly what forecast was published at what time.

What you’ll find, though, is that our calibration has generally been very, very good. For instance, out of the 5,589 events (between sports and politics combined) that we said had a 70 chance of happening (rounded to the nearest 5 percent), they in fact occurred 71 percent of the time. Or of the 55,853 events[footnotes]Although we’ve issued a lot of forecasts, the sheer numbers slightly exaggerate the volume of what we’ve done because a lot of forecasts are somewhat redundant, i.e., the odds of the New York Mets winning the World Series on May 15 don’t differ much from the odds on May 16, but each one is technically a separate forecast. The statistical techniques that we’ve applied to measure whether forecasts are well-calibrated account for these redundancies.[/footnote] that we said had about a 5 percent chance of occurring, they happened 4 percent of the time.

We did discover a handful of cases where we weren’t entirely satisfied with a model’s performance. For instance, our NBA game forecasts have historically been a bit overconfident in lopsided matchups — e.g., teams that were supposed to win 85 percent of the time in fact won only 79 percent of the time. These aren’t huge discrepancies, but given a large enough sample, some of them are on the threshold of being statistically significant. In the particular case of the NBA, we substantially redesigned our model before this season, so we’ll see how the new version does.3

Our forecasts of elections have actually been a little bit underconfident, historically. For instance, candidates who we said were supposed to win 75 percent of the time have won 83 percent of the time. These differences are generally not statistically significant, given that election outcomes are highly correlated and that we issue dozens of forecasts (one every day, and sometimes using several different versions of a model) for any given race. But we do think underconfidence can be a problem if replicated over a large enough sample, so it’s something we’ll keep an eye out for.

It’s just not true, though, that there have been an especially large number of upsets in politics relative to polls or forecasts (or at least not relative to FiveThirtyEight’s forecasts). In fact, there have been fewer upsets than our forecasts expected.

There’s a lot more to explore in the interactive, including Brier skill scores for each of our forecasts, which do account for discrimination as well as calibration. We’ll continue to update the interactive as elections or sporting events are completed.

None of this ought to mean that FiveThirtyEight or our forecasts — which are a relatively small part of what we do — are immune from criticism or that our models can’t be improved. We’re studying ways to improve all the time.

But we’ve been publishing forecasts for more than a decade now, and although we’ve sometimes tried to do an after-action report following a big election or sporting event, this is the first time we’ve studied all of our forecast models in a comprehensive way. So we were relieved to discover that our forecasts really do what they’re supposed to do. When we say something has a 70 percent chance of occurring, it doesn’t mean that it will always happen, and it isn’t supposed to. But empirically, 70 percent in a FiveThirtyEight forecast really does mean about 70 percent, 30 percent really does mean about 30 percent, 5 percent really does mean about 5 percent, and so forth. Our forecasts haven’t always been right, but they’ve been right just about as often as they’re supposed to be right.

[nappainanotherdimension]

NappaInAnotherDimension’s Rules Post {For Mobile Users}

                          B   A   S   I   C      ✪      R   U   L   E   S

Things To Know

✪ Please respect my rules and boundaries. I will give polite warnings if someone breaks a minor rule, but if it’s obvious that you’re blatantly disregarding what I’ve said, then that shows a lack of respect. Therefore I reserve the right to take action by directly confronting you and/or ending further interactions IC and/or OOC.

✪ Because I’ve been harassed for over a year by an ex rp partner and her friend, I only accept DMs on Tumblr from blogs I follow to keep these people from sending me unwanted messages. If you’re interested in talking to me to start roleplaying or I haven’t followed you yet, please use asks to initiate contact. I’m sorry for the inconvenience, but it’s one of the many things I’ve had to do to keep this person from sending me unwanted messages on alternate accounts.

✪ I don’t mind personal blogs/non-rp blogs interacting with muse and mun via asks. However, I don’t want anyone reblogging my asks that involve my RP partners, my roleplay threads with others, or my headcanon posts that are specific to my portrayal of my muse. That’s considered rude in the RP community as it can interfere with our activity feed and our ability to track threads. Giving likes are fine though. ✪ I am well over 18 and so is my muse. Topics that are Safe for Tumblr but are still better suited for a mature audience from the past and present are tagged as #lemon goodness and #touch of citrus if it’s questionably mature. Past and present content that I believe needs a trigger warning are tagged with #tw; _____ for possible triggering content. {Trigger Warning Tags Master Post link} ✪ I will never hold it against a person if they want to unfollow me or drop me as a roleplay partner for any reason. If you wish to speak to me about the reasons why, you may do so but please be civil. ✪ I am a Continuity Queen™ which means I want to keep serious rp threads that build serious relationships as consistent as we can. So if you or I spot any inconsistencies, I don’t mind discussing how to fix them and editing our posts.

✪  If your muse is struggling to interact with mine, you can talk to me about do-overs and re-plotting. It might not guarantee that they’ll get along the way you and/or I want them to, but if I see you trying and putting in effort, I’ll return that effort on my end.

Mun Activity & Selectivity

✪ Updated 8/04/19 -  I have been living with a physical health problem for over a year and while I’ve finished my medication treatment for now, I still have fluctuating good and bad health days. Please know that this is the reason why I’m selective as a roleplayer and why I’m slower than I used to be with replies. I won’t be as cheerful, patient, or as responsive on my bad health days, and I may only talk with close friends on those days. I’d rather not talk too much about my health condition for personal privacy reasons if we’re not close. Just know that I am better since October 2018 and I appreciate the patience and understanding from you all. ✪ As a Selective rper, I ask that nobody tags me in serious roleplay, IC interaction threads, send me ask starters, or asks with the intent to carry on IC interaction without speaking with me first. (Unless I reach out to you first OOC or IC in one way or another.) Especially if we aren’t following each other. Mutuals can still send in IC interaction asks if I reblog memes. If non-mutuals ignore this rule I will not respond to the starter and I may even block you because you haven’t taken the time to read my rules or notice my header information. ✪ If we start to/continue to roleplay together please be patient with me and keep in mind that I will be slow to respond to our threads. Sometimes my moods/muse may feel stronger with some threads more than others. Some days I’m just busy with something I’m working on and/or I’m having a bad health day and feeling tired. One way to deal with uncertainties is to simply communicate with me. If you feel like your thread got lost and/or it’s been awhile since we last spoke or I last responded come talk to me. Even if I’m not feeling good, I can at least let you know what’s going on and it’ll let me know to discuss our roleplay stuff together when I’m feeling better.

Unacceptable Roleplay Etiquette:

✪ Various types of powerplay, godmoding, force shipping, etc. ✪ Toxic behaviors and attitudes (like jealousy) that cause problems for yourself and others. 

✪ Muns projecting themselves into their character so much that muse = mun. ✪ Muses and/or muns who are under 18 approaching me and my muse for shipping and/or smut. ✪ Using me and my muse for any reason that isn’t for IC plot that’s planned. ✪ Muns assuming that muse = mun and treating me poorly because of it. ✪ Genuine lack of respect for muns as people who come first before our hobby. ✪ Muns who create rp blogs on a whim and delete/abandon them with little to no notice frequently once they lose interest in that muse, and not because the mun is just busy IRL.

Writing Fight Threads With Me

✪  I am selective with who I write fight scenes with. Some people make it awkward because of what they consider to be godmodding etc. and I can lose interest in fight threads sooner than most. ✪ I don’t mind doing a fade-to-black/offscreen fight and write the details of who won/lost. ✪ You MUST SPEAK TO ME OOC if you’re interested in doing a thread where our muses fight or spar.

If you don’t speak with me OOC I will not know what direction to take the fight and I will either respond to our thread SUPER SLOWLY or I’ll DROP the thread if I've agreed to writing one with you and you choose to wing it. I hate feeling uncertain about how far to take things, and I hate writing pointless dodge-attack responses. Fight scenes don’t have to be boring, but a lot of the times they are boring to write in roleplay. This also weeds out people who use fight threads as a pissing contest or an ego boost for their muses/themselves.

How To Treat The Muse In General

✪ This is not a blog for TFS Nappa so PLEASE don’t treat him like he’s the parody character. That doesn’t mean that the Abridged series or TFS Nappa content won’t be reblogged, or referenced from time to time. I just want my muse to be treated as the Z canon Nappa.

✪ Please don’t approach my muse with insults and an unwarranted attitude when I barely know you or the muse you’re portraying, or by being excessive with it when I’m not expecting it. It’s a huge red flag for me due to past bad rp experiences and I will most likely nope out of interacting immediately both IC or OOC.   

✪ If you approach my muse with insults and an attitude, expect to be treated like crap in response for setting yourself up for a temperamental Saiyan to roast your muse, or come at you with the intent to harm your muse. Nappa is still a sadistic violent villain from Dragonball Z, and he doesn’t like being disrespected. 

                 ♥   S T A N C E      O N     S  H  I  P  P  I  N  G   ♥

✪ As of 8/5/19 Nappa is a muse without an active shipping partner. I’m not actively looking for one. I’m really selective for this muse, but open to possibilities if I see strong chemistry between the muses IC and good writing chemistry with another mun. 

✪ When I was actively shipping with Nappa he was a single-ship blog  and his shipping partner was an OC, Poharu Belle-Hélène. (Formerly known as @thedameblancheofcontoncity​.) Due to serious things happening in her life, Poharu’s mun decided it was best for her to delete her blog. Neither of us know if she’ll come back. No matter what happens --  whether I find chemistry with another muse and mun and want to ship with them or not -- Poharu and her mun will always be welcome back to continue our ship where we left off.  ✪ REMINDER: I do not ship with muses or muns under 18. 

✪ If you are interested in writing a ship with me seriously please talk to me OOC. I don’t mind sitting back and keeping an eye on if our muses have chemistry IC, but I won’t consider it official until we’ve had a discussion OOC. 

Past and Present Adult Themes

✪ Past NSFW content for past adult subjects that are now not safe for Tumblr are tagged as #lemon goodness or #touch of citrus if I find it suggestive. ✪ As of 12/17/18, it is supposedly alright to write erotica based on Tumblr’s guidelines, but I prefer to fade to black whenever things get spicy between our muses and move to Discord to discuss or continue.

If you’ve read these rules up to this point, send me an ask saying, “I’m ready to follow orders, sir!” This isn’t an obligation for me to interact with you. I just like knowing that people read my rules.

[stoweboyd]

Slack and the Future of Work Platforms

Dom Nicastro asked me (and some other market watchers) about the recent acquisition of Atlassian's HipChat and Stride by Slack, and that's been published at CMSWire. Nicastro picked some of the things I said, but I thought I'd share my full comments, and add a new topic at the end, regarding Slack's unique opportunity as a work platform, more than as a work chat product.

Nicastro asked for my thoughts on July 31:

Nicastro: Obviously there was the big shakeup with Atlassian bowing to Slack and selling their collaboration tools.

Did this move surprise you? Why? Why not?

Boyd: I was surprised that Atlassian had approached Slack in the way they did, but not surprised that HipChat and Stride were losing in the head-to-head competition with Slack.

Nicastro: Do you expect Atlassian users to just make the move to Slack or is it an opportunity for Teams to swoop in and steal some of them?

Boyd: My bet is that users of the Atlassian tools who had not already defected to alternative solutions will use the time before the tools are shut down to evaluate all the options. Slack has the opportunity to build some export/import bridgework, or to offer Atlassian users some discounts. But ultimately I bet the users will move to Slack, Microsoft Teams, Facebook Workplace, and other alternatives in about the same proportions as others in the marketplace do, with perhaps a slight lean in the direction of Slack. But remember, they could have defected to Slack a month ago if they liked Slack so much.

Nicastro: What does this mean for practitioners as they entertain a central hub for collaboration in their enterprises? Is it a Slack vs. Teams world? Or is that something manufactured by people like me who like big headlines?

Boyd: Yes, Atlassian surrendering to Slack is the final battle of one war, but the bigger war is still going: Slack versus Microsoft Teams. And Microsoft has 150 million business users for Office 365, and it has the inside track on converting those to Teams users.

My prediction is that Slack needs to line up with an internet giant to out-market Microsoft, so an acquisition by Google or Amazon is predictable. However, Slack is an unusual case: it has grown very quickly, and is the market-defining product for work chat. So the company is likely to go it alone until its growth slows. Honestly, though, the fit with Google's G-Suite is compelling, and would be a good use of $10 billion.

Nicastro: What do large organizations need out of enterprise collaboration tools today? What's most important?

Boyd: Work chat is the hot, high growth element of the larger domain of work technologies. That's used best for small teams that communicate frequently to coordinate work. There are well known issues with scaling work chat to effectively support the communications and coordination at scale larger than teams, however, a great proportion of work is the work of small teams.

Other tools are also critical. Email is still the default mechanism to communicate with those we do not work with as teammates. Task, work, and project management tools -- like Asana, Trello (acquired by Atlassian), Basecamp, Smartsheet, and many others -- are also in broad use in the enterprise. And of course, companies stil rely on documents, even if they don't get printed out as much anymore, so tools like Google Drive (with Docs, Sheets, and Slides), Dropbox and Dropbox Paper, and Microsoft Office 365 (Word, Powerpoint, and Excel) -- which used to be called 'productivity' tools -- are still essential. Note that Google and Microsoft are big players in this last category, 'productivity tools', and Slack has no horse in that race, as yet. Also, Microsoft and Google both have task management offerings, which Slack has opted to simply integrate with all comers.

Nicastro: Who right now has the most compelling story out there to offer these things?

Boyd: Slack has the best pure play work chat story, Microsoft (trailed by Google pretty aggressively) have the best work technology suites, ranging from email to 'productivity'.

Nicastro: What advice would you give practitioners/orgs in the digital workplace looking at this news and wondering what's best for them in their enterprises -- in other words, what should we be using to collaborate -- what are some good steps they can take to help themselves figure out what's best?

Boyd: That's a huge question. I don't think there is a one-size-fits-all answer. A 20,000 person law firm with offices in three countries has very different needs from a 300 person design firm in one city, and again different from a 50 person software company with a largely remote workforce.

I'd suggest any company start with a simple assessment: what is the center of gravity in the company's work activities? Is it project coordination with many external clients, like the design firm might be? Start by getting a good work/project management platfom established, and accept the inevitability of email-based communications. Is it internal communication by small teams? Start with work chat, and then decide what secondary considers matter to help pick the right work chat solution. I bet the law firm is document-centric, and relies on a solution like Sharepoint of Google Drive, so the obvious option is to pick one of those first, and adopt the other tools in the suite.

Nicastro: Anything else I didn't ask you'd like to add, feel free!

Boyd: One last observation: There is an interesting trend that is gaining steam, which I call 'work processing'. A new generation of document-centered tools -- like Quip, Notion.io, Slite, Nuclino, and others -- support shared documents with styled text, embedded objects (tables, videos, images), tasks and checklists, and social affordances: threaded comments, internal notifications, and messaging. In this approach documents are not just dumb files with styled text, sitting in a cloud file system. Instead of relying on work chat communications, which are only structured by channels and search, work processing relies on a system of documents to structure company information and discourse. This can also be integrated with work chat, or may include work chat internally. A trend to keep an eye on!

We covered a lot of ground, but the heart of our discussion was largely inward-looking, focused on the conventional idea of internal ‘collaboration’: a company's employees communicating, coordinating, and cooperating among themselves, principally.

However, companies are being rapidly remade, as hierarchies are being eroded by the tectonic changes in the economy, and as companies move toward increasingly autonomous teams operating horizontally, and increasingly working with ‘outsiders’ on company operations. The adaptations to an accelerating marketplace require companies to become more agile and flexible, to work more closely with customers, partners, and suppliers, and to pull diverse, distributed task forces together to innovate and deliver greater value to customers.

This has major ramifications across the enterprise -- on leadership, operating principles, decision-making, and, well, everything. But pertaining to Slack and the role of work technologies this means a new set of requirements. 

Instead of simply supporting communications with the company, work chat and related tools will have to support increasingly critical multiorganizational use. When all involved are using the same technologies -- say Slack -- the cross-company integration is relatively straightforward, and might involve a cross-authentication between the two companies’ Slack accounts. 

However, when company A wants to coordinate work with company B, and they are using different tools -- say Slack and Teams, for example -- things become more complex. There would have to be a common protocol between vendors of work chat solutions for that to work, or at least a one-to-one agreement between Slack and Microsoft. (Or not: we could have a standoff like we did with instant messaging services back in the day, but that’s a different history lesson.)

Slack has become the market leader for a number of reasons, but it has clearly staked its claim to being the most oriented toward easy integration with other tools, such as help desk, document systems, task management solutions, and so on. I am wagering that they will be the first to move aggressively toward full distributed platform support, just as businesses realize that their futures rely on reorienting their operations toward the horizontal, and move to convert themselves into business platforms. For companies to become full-on business platforms they will need to rest upon foundational work platforms -- technology that will include work chat and other work management tools, as well as close integration with other necessary enterprise software.

This realignment of business operations toward the horizontal is the most obvious motivation for my claim that Slack will ultimately align itself with an internet giant, like Google or Amazon, because we can expect that these horizontal work platforms for business will naturally emerge on top of the cloud computing platforms that the giants will command.

Maybe we will be writing about platform-as-a-service, soon, with Slack as one important element in that stack.

[annstage]

Interview s Devin K. Grayson

Stává se vám, že při čtení komiksu byste se rádi autora na něco zeptali? Šance jsou, že si sednete a najdete společnou řeč. Jak jinak, když jsme nakonec všichni fanoušci. Dostaly jsme možnost vyzpovídat Devin K. Grayson, autorku mnohá komiksů, které určitě znáte a máte rádi. V krátkém rozhovoru, který nám ochotně poskytla se dozvíte více o tom, jak si zachovává přehled v časových linkách během psaní nebo, co si myslí o zobrazování skupinových menšin v pop kultuře. Rozhovor jsme nechaly v původním anglickém jazyce.

CZ: Devin se ke komiksům dostala po zhlédnutí animovaného Batmana, který na začátku 90. let běžel v televizi. Následně se v komiksovém obchodě začala více zajímat o svého jmenovce Dicka Graysona, známého též jako Nightwinga. Práci pro DC dostala po ustavičném volání a zasílání svých děl. Potom už následoval zájem o psaní o členech Batman rodiny, o Nightwingovi a je autorkou dalších již světově známých titulů. Devin je otevřeně bisexuálkou.

Mezi její nejznámější tituly patří Nightwing, Gotham Knights, Vampirella, Nightwing - Huntress, JLA/Titans, User, The Titans a další

EN: Devin got to comics after watching Batman: The Animated Series in early 90s. Following that event she went to explore to her local comics store to find more about Dick Grayson who she shares the last name with. After bombarding DC company and calling them to see her works, she finally got the position of a writer for this huge publisher. She enjoys writing about the Batman family, Nightwing and many other notable characters in comics. Devin is also openly bisexual.

Her notable works include: Nightwing, Gotham Knights, Vampirella, Nightwing - Huntress, JLA/Titans, User, The Titans and more

Timelines. What was your way of dealing with confusing comics continuity? And especially within the Bat-verse? I hope this isn’t disappointing, but to honest I no longer follow DC continuity at all.  In the past I’ve compared leaving a comic series to breaking up with a lover; you hope they’re doing well, but you don’t really feel the need to check up on the details of their continued existence without you. ;-p When I was actively working in Gotham, though, I relied on a combination of extensive background reading, informal updates from friends (about what they were reading) and colleagues (about what they were writing), and sheer force of will. By sheer force of will I mean that to write in the Batman universe -or in any established fictional realm, really -you need to have a clear vision of the world and the characters moving through it. And that means that if you have to, you ignore anything that doesn’t fit into your vision. My preferred method of working on franchise characters is to do what I like to call a deep dive. Before I start writing, I read everything about them I can get my hands on, including academic analysis and summaries. Inevitably, I’ll find something that grabs me - with Batman it was his relationship with the first Robin, the idea that he was as driven and dark and scary as he was, but was also raising a kid. For the Doctor Strange novel I wrote, I started completely cold (I’d never read a Doctor Strange comic when I first got the assignment) but the first thing that grabbed me was the death of his sister. The few times I’ve worked with Superman I spent a lot of time thinking about how he was raised as a farmer. Whatever it is, I let it carry me further into the character’s world and/or psyche and I try to explore facets of it as I write about them. At that point, I’m pulling on previous continuity, but I’m also creating my own, new continuity. Comic readers tend to favor really tight continuity, but you have to remember that you get that at a cost. Every creator comes to the table with their own ideas about the characters and their own references and their own stories, and the more you make them toe the line, the less you’re making use of their uniqueness.  When I started working for the Bat-office, there were several different Bat-books, each with a slightly different take. Batman was for superhero stories, Detective was more mystery/noir , Legends featured contained stories that could fall anywhere in the history of Gotham, Chronicles was more of an anthology and testing ground for newer talent, and when I started Gotham Knights, my explicit intent was to have it highlight the relationships in the primary Bat-family.  To some extent, those books all existed in unique fictional universes, until we deliberately brought them together for crossover events. I mention this because I worry that superhero comics have a tendency to become overly homogenized when everyone has to adhere to a strict continuity.  No matter how great any given writer is, do we really want ALL the comics coming out of any given publisher to feature his language, ideas and storylines? The stories you hear about Batman - all of them - are legends.  Some may be spot on, some may be less than true, but the great thing about fiction is that, unlike reality, it isn’t actually necessary or useful for all of us to agree on what happened. Alternate takes are welcome, which is one of the reasons I’ve always championed fanfic. tl;dr: I learn it. And then I ignore it. ;-p

Can you remember writing some scene or part of a story and being beyond excited of how it is turning out to be? Do you usually anticipate reader’s reactions for something particular that you wrote? Okay, two separate questions here. First: yes, absolutely. A secret about writers is that behind closed doors, most of us suspect we’re talentless frauds and that at any minute someone is going to notice that we’re literally just making stuff up. But at the same time, most of us have a few moments every week, or a few lines in every project, where we stop, grin, and think, “damn, I’m good.” I am probably not supposed to share that secret, and I apologize to my colleagues for doing so, but the thing is…writing is magic. You can study all the craft of it, learn all the structure and all the tools (as you should) and still, there’s a point where you feel like you’re just listening and writing down a story that is coming to you from somewhere else. And when it’s good, it’s such an amazing feeling. It leaves you a little bit in awe. Specifically, the two things I remember are 1) having to stop and catch my breath the first time I wrote the word “Batmobile” in a script I was getting paid for and 2) the first time I saw the art come in for USER, and characters that had previously existed only in my head had suddenly been brought to life by John Bolton and Sean Phillips. Those were both very exciting moments. As for anticipating the reaction of readers; no, I don’t do that. I don’t even really think about the readers when I’m writing beyond, perhaps, the artist (who I want to keep engaged) or editor (who I want to keep happy). I think it would be a little paralyzing - not to mention futile - to try to guess how people will react. You don’t even really know who’s reading it, honestly, which is one of the reasons why it’s really nice to meet readers at conventions. But I’ve always suspected that the best writing comes from writing to and for one specific person - usually a colleague or loved one.

What would you tell to those saying comics are not a real or serious literature and shame it readers for needing to “have pictures to understand the plot”? Unfortunately it is still a case of misunderstanding. Well, first of all, I try to make a distinction between superhero comics, the publishing subgenre, and comics, the medium. Superhero comics are not, if we’re being honest, always serious literature. But comics as a medium is an amazingly complex and diverse form of story-telling that supports everything from newspaper comic strips to literary fiction graphic novels. It’s particularly remarkable for being the most collaborative form of story creation and story consumption available, relying on multiple creators for its inception and relying on readers to actively simulate time, motion and sometimes even events out of the spaces between panels. The best book I’ve ever read on the topic - and one that could make even a hardcore cynic reevaluate their understanding of what “comics” is - is Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. There are also so many amazing graphic novels out there, from Spiegelman’s Maus to Chabouté’s Alone. Unless it’s not comics they have an issue with so much as superheroes, in which case you can talk to them about contemporary mythology and the power of allegorical story-telling. You’re right, though, that it’s a very misunderstood corner of publishing. I don’t often have people try to tell me it’s not literature, but I can’t count the number of people who have learned what I do for a living and assumed I have a lot of material I can share with their child. The idea that comics are for kids is a throwback to 1950s American marketing. As I’m sure you and your followers know, comics haven’t really been for kids in over five decades. I still haven’t shown my ten-year-old my Batman or Nightwing work and don’t plan to for some time. The last thing I’ll say on the subject is that sometimes people have to be taught how to read the art in a comic. I think people unfamiliar with comics assume that the pictures in the panels are just literal representations of the words, which is rarely the case. Comic fans are actually quite accomplished readers who know how to invest in long stories, detect subtle tensions between artistic and linguistic storytelling, actively participate in moving narratives forward and, of course, engage with huge, complex fictional universes.

Do you feel like there is not enough representation of bisexual heroes/superheroes in comics and pop-culture? We know Diana Prince is bisexual and she never got a canonical girlfriend. Yes, I agree. The LGBTQA population, as a whole, is grossly underrepresented, along with non-heteronormative relationships and non-gender binary individuals. Just this morning, actually, I was told I couldn’t go forward with a storyline exploring a canonically confirmed asexual character joining an asexual support group, because the publisher wanted to play “that angle” down. As someone who is openly bisexual, this distresses me, but not half so much as the appalling underrepresentation of people of color and women, especially considering that both groups each make up more than half the population. As the recent phenomenal success of both the Wonder Woman and Black Panther movies demonstrate, the world is more than ready to embrace corrections to these imbalances, but the people (oh, who am I kidding? Read: white men) who run the engines of pop culture - not to mention literary culture, history, and advertising - are incredibly averse to change. It’s so, so important to see yourself reflected in your own culture, but the presence and participation of women and people of color, not to mention bisexuals, is so deeply biased it’s difficult to fully comprehend the multiple levels of exclusion. It’s hard for me to even talk about this these days because I don’t know where to start. The relentless use of female characters to stimulate growth in male characters? The complete absence of female internal lives in so much of literature? How about just pure invisibility? I remember watching TV one evening and noticing - all at once and with a shock that I’d never seen it before - what I call the gender ratio. The world, according to movies and television shows, consists of one female for every three males. There are exceptions to this, but watch how often it’s true. And of course, it’s even worse for people of color, who tend to appear at about a one to nine white people ratio. Now walk outside. Is that what you see? Of course not, not even close! But we’re so used to the culture we’ve been fed that we hardly notice anything’s amiss when we look at entire fictional landscapes almost wholly devoid of women and POC. What do you think that does to our psyches? To our sense of fitting in in the world? To our sense of, and compassion for, one another? The dearth of bisexual superheroes strikes me as a wasted opportunity to explore organic and complex ranges in human sexuality - great story-fodder, that! - and I hope it changes. But not all superhero stories have to deal with the sex lives of the characters. Every single one of them, though, has to confront both the gender and race of the characters portrayed, and holy f--- do we have a long way to go there.

We were delighted to see the #VisibleWoman going around Twitter earlier this year. Did it prove itself to be useful? What you do you think about this way of using social media to make a statement and make it work? This plays directly into what I was just talking about. It’s so weird to think about, but we are so often literally invisible - in fiction especially, but in the real world, too. As a writer, I spend a lot of time summoning and then editing the default story ideas that come from my subconscious, and once I began to be aware of the issues we’ve been discussing, I was dismayed by how deeply all of that background misogyny had lodged itself - it’s an issue I’m still exploring and excavating today. I grew up hearing people say that women were important and should be treated fairly, but I saw so few of them. They were absent or scarce in most movies and TV shows, whittled down to a small subgroup in literary fiction writing, hard to find in the music world, almost never part of political news or history lessons…I can’t even imagine how different my internal world would be if I’d been exposed to a more balanced cultural tally. So, yes - I do think the hashtag was useful, both as a marketing tool (my single tagged tweet garnered me over three hundred new followers and is now pinned to the top of my account) and as a huge, warm searchlight picking accomplished females out of the crowd. Just being reminded that there are women working in comics and games and STEM and business and politics is enormously helpful. Having a platform available to connect with and support them is that much more powerful. I do have concerns about social media, some quite grave. But #VisibleWoman stands as an example of best possible usage.

And finally, do you keep in touch with your high school or college teachers who taught you English or Writing? Do you think they know you have became a successful author and would they be proud of you? Great question! My answer is multi-tiered because those people - mentors - change and evolve over time. So the short answer is no, I’m not still in touch with any of my high school or college teachers and I doubt they’ve kept track of me. I went to three different high schools and so didn’t form strong attachments to many teachers - the one exception was a Social Living teacher at Berkeley High, Nancy Rubin, who I did stay in touch with for many years after I graduated. She didn’t teach me to write - though she did encourage us all to keep daily journals, which can be a gateway drug to compulsive writing - but she was that special teacher who saw all her students as individuals and honestly cared about our opinions and our struggles and our lives. I was actually still in touch with her when she published her first book - Ask Me if I Care, Voices from an American High School - and I was very proud of her! I’m sure she’d enjoy hearing about my crazy career, but she was proud of all of us, even then, just for being. I didn’t make a strong connection with my college writing teacher, the novelist Mona Simpson, but was crazy about my post-collegiate writing instructor, the novelist Brian Bouldrey, who was still part of my life when I first broke into comics and was enormously tickled by it. Now that you’ve got me thinking about him again, I think I’ll try to track him down again and send him a copy of my Doctor Strange novel. xD In comics, I have three main mentors and I’m still in touch with all of them and know that they’re proud of and happy for me. Overall, the professional comics community is very supportive and full of hard-working people who care about the medium, the characters, the readers, and each other. Thank  you for these great questions and for you interest in my work!

Thank you, Devin! It was a pleasure and we are grateful for your amazing and detailed answers, and of course for your time :)

Rozhovor původně publikovaný na blogu Comics Holky

[orbemnews]

The Lithium Gold Rush: Inside the Race to Power Electric Vehicles Atop a long-dormant volcano in northern Nevada, workers are preparing to start blasting and digging out a giant pit that will serve as the first new large-scale lithium mine in the United States in more than a decade — a new domestic supply of an essential ingredient in electric car batteries and renewable energy. The mine, constructed on leased federal lands, could help address the near total reliance by the United States on foreign sources of lithium. But the project, known as Lithium Americas, has drawn protests from members of a Native American tribe, ranchers and environmental groups because it is expected to use billions of gallons of precious ground water, potentially contaminating some of it for 300 years, while leaving behind a giant mound of waste. “Blowing up a mountain isn’t green, no matter how much marketing spin people put on it,” said Max Wilbert, who has been living in a tent on the proposed mine site while two lawsuits seeking to block the project wend their way through federal courts. The fight over the Nevada mine is emblematic of a fundamental tension surfacing around the world: Electric cars and renewable energy may not be as green as they appear. Production of raw materials like lithium, cobalt and nickel that are essential to these technologies are often ruinous to land, water, wildlife and people. That environmental toll has often been overlooked in part because there is a race underway among the United States, China, Europe and other major powers. Echoing past contests and wars over gold and oil, governments are fighting for supremacy over minerals that could help countries achieve economic and technological dominance for decades to come. Developers and lawmakers see this Nevada project, given final approval in the last days of the Trump administration, as part of the opportunity for the United States to become a leader in producing some of these raw materials as President Biden moves aggressively to fight climate change. In addition to Nevada, businesses have proposed lithium production sites in California, Oregon, Tennessee, Arkansas and North Carolina. But traditional mining is one of the dirtiest businesses out there. That reality is not lost on automakers and renewable-energy businesses. “Our new clean-energy demands could be creating greater harm, even though its intention is to do good,” said Aimee Boulanger, executive director for the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance, a group that vets mines for companies like BMW and Ford Motor. “We can’t allow that to happen.” This friction helps explain why a contest of sorts has emerged in recent months across the United States about how best to extract and produce the large amounts of lithium in ways that are much less destructive than how mining has been done for decades. Just in the first three months of 2021, U.S. lithium miners like those in Nevada raised nearly $3.5 billion from Wall Street — seven times the amount raised in the prior 36 months, according to data assembled by Bloomberg, and a hint of the frenzy underway. Some of those investors are backing alternatives including a plan to extract lithium from briny water beneath California’s largest lake, the Salton Sea, about 600 miles south of the Lithium Americas site. At the Salton Sea, investors plan to use specially coated beads to extract lithium salt from the hot liquid pumped up from an aquifer more than 4,000 feet below the surface. The self-contained systems will be connected to geothermal power plants generating emission-free electricity. And in the process, they hope to generate the revenue needed to restore the lake, which has been fouled by toxic runoff from area farms for decades. Businesses are also hoping to extract lithium from brine in Arkansas, Nevada, North Dakota and at least one more location in the United States. The United States needs to quickly find new supplies of lithium as automakers ramp up manufacturing of electric vehicles. Lithium is used in electric car batteries because it is lightweight, can store lots of energy and can be repeatedly recharged. Analysts estimate that lithium demand is going to increase tenfold before the end of this decade as Tesla, Volkswagen, General Motors and other automakers introduce dozens of electric models. Other ingredients like cobalt are needed to keep the battery stable. Even though the United States has some of the world’s largest reserves, the country today has only one large-scale lithium mine, Silver Peak in Nevada, which first opened in the 1960s and is producing just 5,000 tons a year — less than 2 percent of the world’s annual supply. Most of the raw lithium used domestically comes from Latin America or Australia, and most of it is processed and turned into battery cells in China and other Asian countries. “China just put out its next five-year plan,” Mr. Biden’s energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, said in a recent interview. “They want to be the go-to place for the guts of the batteries, yet we have these minerals in the United States. We have not taken advantage of them, to mine them.” In March, she announced grants to increase production of crucial minerals. “This is a race to the future that America is going to win,” she said. So far, the Biden administration has not moved to help push more environmentally friendly options — like lithium brine extraction, instead of open pit mines. The Interior Department declined to say whether it would shift its stand on the Lithium Americas permit, which it is defending in court. Mining companies and related businesses want to accelerate domestic production of lithium and are pressing the administration and key lawmakers to insert a $10 billion grant program into Mr. Biden’s infrastructure bill, arguing that it is a matter of national security. “Right now, if China decided to cut off the U.S. for a variety of reasons we’re in trouble,” said Ben Steinberg, an Obama administration official turned lobbyist. He was hired in January by ​Piedmont Lithium, which is working to build an open-pit mine in North Carolina and is one of several companies that have created a trade association for the industry. Investors are rushing to get permits for new mines and begin production to secure contracts with battery companies and automakers. Ultimately, federal and state officials will decide which of the two methods — traditional mining or brine extraction — is approved. Both could take hold. Much will depend on how successful environmentalists, tribes and local groups are in blocking projects. On a hillside, Edward Bartell or his ranch employees are out early every morning making sure that the nearly 500 cows and calves that roam his 50,000 acres in Nevada’s high desert have enough feed. It has been a routine for generations, but the family has never before faced a threat quite like this. A few miles from his ranch, work could soon start on Lithium Americas’ open pit mine that will represent one of the largest lithium production sites in U.S. history, complete with a helicopter landing pad, a chemical processing plant and waste dumps. The mine will reach a depth of about 370 feet. Mr. Bartell’s biggest fear is that the mine will consume the water that keeps his cattle alive. The company has said the mine will consume 3,224 gallons per minute. That could cause the water table to drop on land Mr. Bartell owns by an estimated 12 feet, according to a Lithium Americas consultant. While producing 66,000 tons a year of battery-grade lithium carbonate, the mine may cause groundwater contamination with metals including antimony and arsenic, according to federal documents. The lithium will be extracted by mixing clay dug out from the mountainside with as much as 5,800 tons a day of sulfuric acid. This whole process will also create 354 million cubic yards of mining waste that will be loaded with discharge from the sulfuric acid treatment, and may contain modestly radioactive uranium, permit documents disclose. A December assessment by the Interior Department found that over its 41-year life, the mine would degrade nearly 5,000 acres of winter range used by pronghorn antelope and hurt the habitat of the sage grouse. It would probably also destroy a nesting area for a pair of golden eagles whose feathers are vital to the local tribe’s religious ceremonies. “It is real frustrating that it is being pitched as an environmentally friendly project, when it is really a huge industrial site,” said Mr. Bartell, who filed a lawsuit to try to block the mine. At the Fort McDermitt Indian Reservation, anger over the project has boiled over, even causing some fights between members as Lithium Americas has offered to hire tribal members in jobs that will pay an average annual wage of $62,675 — twice the county’s per capita income — but that will come with a big trade-off. “Tell me, what water am I going to drink for 300 years?” Deland Hinkey, a member of the tribe, yelled as a federal official arrived at the reservation in March to brief tribal leaders on the mining plan. “Anybody, answer my question. After you contaminate my water, what I am going to drink for 300 years? You are lying!” The reservation is nearly 50 miles from the mine site — and far beyond the area where groundwater may be contaminated — but tribe members fear the pollution could spread. “It is really a David versus Goliath kind of a situation,” said Maxine Redstar, the leader of the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribes, noting that there was limited consultation with the tribe before the Interior Department approved the project. “The mining companies are just major corporations.” Tim Crowley, a vice president at Lithium Americas, said the company would operate responsibly — planning, for example, to use the steam from burning molten sulfur to generate the electricity it needs. “We’re answering President Biden’s call to secure America’s supply chains and tackle the climate crisis,” Mr. Crowley said. A spokesman noted that area ranchers also used a lot of water and that the company had purchased its allocation from another farmer to limit the increase in water use. The company has moved aggressively to secure permits, hiring a lobbying team that includes a former Trump White House aide, Jonathan Slemrod. Lithium Americas, which estimates there is $3.9 billion worth of recoverable lithium at the site, hopes to start mining operations next year. Its largest shareholder is the Chinese company Ganfeng Lithium. A Second Act The desert sands surrounding the Salton Sea have drawn worldwide notice before. They have served as a location for Hollywood productions like the “Star Wars” franchise. Created by flooding from the Colorado River more than a century ago, the lake once thrived. Frank Sinatra performed at its resorts. Over the years, drought and poor management turned it into a source of pollutants. But a new wave of investors is promoting the lake as one of the most promising and environmentally friendly lithium prospects in the United States. Lithium extraction from brine has long been used in Chile, Bolivia and Argentina, where the sun is used over nearly two years to evaporate water from sprawling ponds. It is relatively inexpensive, but it uses lots of water in arid areas. The approach planned at the Salton Sea is radically different. The lake sits atop the Salton Buttes, which, as in Nevada, are underground volcanoes. For years, a company owned by Berkshire Hathaway, CalEnergy, and another business, Energy Source, have tapped the Buttes’ geothermal heat to produce electricity. The systems use naturally occurring underground steam. This same water is loaded with lithium. Now, Berkshire Hathaway and two other companies — Controlled Thermal Resources and Materials Research — want to install equipment that will extract lithium after the water passes through the geothermal plants, in a process that will take only about two hours. Rod Colwell, a burly Australian, has spent much of the last decade pitching investors and lawmakers on putting the brine to use. In February, a backhoe plowed dirt on a 7,000-acre site being developed by his company, Controlled Thermal Resources. “This is the sweet spot,” Mr. Colwell said. “This is the most sustainable lithium in the world, made in America. Who would have thought it? We’ve got this massive opportunity.” A Berkshire Hathaway executive told state officials recently that the company expected to complete its demonstration plant for lithium extraction by April 2022. The backers of the Salton Sea lithium projects are also working with local groups and hope to offer good jobs in an area that has an unemployment rate of nearly 16 percent. “Our region is very rich in natural resources and mineral resources,” said Luis Olmedo, executive director of Comite Civico del Valle, which represents area farm workers. “However, they’re very poorly distributed. The population has not been afforded a seat at the table.” The state has given millions in grants to lithium extraction companies, and the Legislature is considering requiring carmakers by 2035 to use California sources for some of the lithium in vehicles they sell in the state, the country’s largest electric-car market. But even these projects have raised some questions. Geothermal plants produce energy without emissions, but they can require tens of billions of gallons of water annually for cooling. And lithium extraction from brine dredges up minerals like iron and salt that need to be removed before the brine is injected back into the ground. Similar extraction efforts at the Salton Sea have previously failed. In 2000, CalEnergy proposed spending $200 million to extract zinc and to help restore the Salton Sea. The company gave up on the effort in 2004. But several companies working on the direct lithium extraction technique — including Lilac Solutions, based in California, and Standard Lithium of Vancouver, British Columbia — are confident they have mastered the technology. Both companies have opened demonstration projects using the brine extraction technology, with Standard Lithium tapping into a brine source already being extracted from the ground by an Arkansas chemical plant, meaning it did not need to take additional water from the ground. “This green aspect is incredibly important,” said Robert Mintak, chief executive of Standard Lithium, who hopes the company will produce 21,000 tons a year of lithium in Arkansas within five years if it can raise $440 million in financing. “The Fred Flintstone approach is not the solution to the lithium challenge.” Lilac Solutions, whose clients include Controlled Thermal Resources, is also working on direct lithium extraction in Nevada, North Dakota and at least one other U.S. location that it would not disclose. The company predicts that within five years, these projects could produce about 100,000 tons of lithium annually, or 20 times current domestic production. Executives from companies like Lithium Americans question if these more innovative approaches can deliver all the lithium the world needs. But automakers are keen to pursue approaches that have a much smaller impact on the environment. “Indigenous tribes being pushed out or their water being poisoned or any of those types of issues, we just don’t want to be party to that,” said Sue Slaughter, Ford’s purchasing director for supply chain sustainability. “We really want to force the industries that we’re buying materials from to make sure that they’re doing it in a responsible way. As an industry, we are going to be buying so much of these materials that we do have significant power to leverage that situation very strongly. And we intend to do that.” Gabriella Angotti-Jones contributed reporting. Source link Orbem News #Electric #gold #lithium #power #Race #Rush #Vehicles

[comicsholky-blog]

Interview s Devin K. Grayson

Stává se vám, že při čtení komiksu byste se rádi autora na něco zeptali? Šance jsou, že si sednete a najdete společnou řeč. Jak jinak, když jsme nakonec všichni fanoušci. Dostaly jsme možnost vyzpovídat Devin K. Grayson, autorku mnohá komiksů, které určitě znáte a máte rádi. V krátkém rozhovoru, který nám ochotně poskytla se dozvíte více o tom, jak si zachovává přehled v časových linkách během psaní nebo, co si myslí o zobrazování skupinových menšin v pop kultuře. Rozhovor jsme nechaly v původním anglickém jazyce.

CZ: Devin se ke komiksům dostala po zhlédnutí animovaného Batmana, který na začátku 90. let běžel v televizi. Následně se v komiksovém obchodě začala více zajímat o svého jmenovce Dicka Graysona, známého též jako Nightwinga. Práci pro DC dostala po ustavičném volání a zasílání svých děl. Potom už následoval zájem o psaní o členech Batman rodiny, o Nightwingovi a je autorkou dalších již světově známých titulů. Devin je otevřeně bisexuálkou.

Mezi její nejznámější tituly patří Nightwing, Gotham Knights, Vampirella, Nightwing - Huntress, JLA/Titans, User, The Titans a další

EN: Devin got to comics after watching Batman: The Animated Series in early 90s. Following that event she went to explore to her local comics store to find more about Dick Grayson who she shares the last name with. After bombarding DC company and calling them to see her works, she finally got the position of a writer for this huge publisher. She enjoys writing about the Batman family, Nightwing and many other notable characters in comics. Devin is also openly bisexual.

Her notable works include: Nightwing, Gotham Knights, Vampirella, Nightwing - Huntress, JLA/Titans, User, The Titans and more

Timelines. What was your way of dealing with confusing comics continuity? And especially within the Bat-verse?  I hope this isn’t disappointing, but to honest I no longer follow DC continuity at all.  In the past I’ve compared leaving a comic series to breaking up with a lover; you hope they’re doing well, but you don’t really feel the need to check up on the details of their continued existence without you. ;-p When I was actively working in Gotham, though, I relied on a combination of extensive background reading, informal updates from friends (about what they were reading) and colleagues (about what they were writing), and sheer force of will. By sheer force of will I mean that to write in the Batman universe -or in any established fictional realm, really -you need to have a clear vision of the world and the characters moving through it. And that means that if you have to, you ignore anything that doesn’t fit into your vision. My preferred method of working on franchise characters is to do what I like to call a deep dive. Before I start writing, I read everything about them I can get my hands on, including academic analysis and summaries. Inevitably, I’ll find something that grabs me - with Batman it was his relationship with the first Robin, the idea that he was as driven and dark and scary as he was, but was also raising a kid. For the Doctor Strange novel I wrote, I started completely cold (I’d never read a Doctor Strange comic when I first got the assignment) but the first thing that grabbed me was the death of his sister. The few times I’ve worked with Superman I spent a lot of time thinking about how he was raised as a farmer. Whatever it is, I let it carry me further into the character’s world and/or psyche and I try to explore facets of it as I write about them. At that point, I’m pulling on previous continuity, but I’m also creating my own, new continuity. Comic readers tend to favor really tight continuity, but you have to remember that you get that at a cost. Every creator comes to the table with their own ideas about the characters and their own references and their own stories, and the more you make them toe the line, the less you’re making use of their uniqueness.  When I started working for the Bat-office, there were several different Bat-books, each with a slightly different take. Batman was for superhero stories, Detective was more mystery/noir , Legends featured contained stories that could fall anywhere in the history of Gotham, Chronicles was more of an anthology and testing ground for newer talent, and when I started Gotham Knights, my explicit intent was to have it highlight the relationships in the primary Bat-family.  To some extent, those books all existed in unique fictional universes, until we deliberately brought them together for crossover events. I mention this because I worry that superhero comics have a tendency to become overly homogenized when everyone has to adhere to a strict continuity.  No matter how great any given writer is, do we really want ALL the comics coming out of any given publisher to feature his language, ideas and storylines? The stories you hear about Batman - all of them - are legends.  Some may be spot on, some may be less than true, but the great thing about fiction is that, unlike reality, it isn’t actually necessary or useful for all of us to agree on what happened. Alternate takes are welcome, which is one of the reasons I’ve always championed fanfic. tl;dr: I learn it. And then I ignore it. ;-p

Can you remember writing some scene or part of a story and being beyond excited of how it is turning out to be? Do you usually anticipate reader’s reactions for something particular that you wrote? Okay, two separate questions here. First: yes, absolutely. A secret about writers is that behind closed doors, most of us suspect we’re talentless frauds and that at any minute someone is going to notice that we’re literally just making stuff up. But at the same time, most of us have a few moments every week, or a few lines in every project, where we stop, grin, and think, “damn, I’m good.” I am probably not supposed to share that secret, and I apologize to my colleagues for doing so, but the thing is…writing is magic. You can study all the craft of it, learn all the structure and all the tools (as you should) and still, there’s a point where you feel like you’re just listening and writing down a story that is coming to you from somewhere else. And when it’s good, it’s such an amazing feeling. It leaves you a little bit in awe. Specifically, the two things I remember are 1) having to stop and catch my breath the first time I wrote the word “Batmobile” in a script I was getting paid for and 2) the first time I saw the art come in for USER, and characters that had previously existed only in my head had suddenly been brought to life by John Bolton and Sean Phillips. Those were both very exciting moments. As for anticipating the reaction of readers; no, I don’t do that. I don’t even really think about the readers when I’m writing beyond, perhaps, the artist (who I want to keep engaged) or editor (who I want to keep happy). I think it would be a little paralyzing - not to mention futile - to try to guess how people will react. You don’t even really know who’s reading it, honestly, which is one of the reasons why it’s really nice to meet readers at conventions. But I’ve always suspected that the best writing comes from writing to and for one specific person - usually a colleague or loved one.

What would you tell to those saying comics are not a real or serious literature and shame it readers for needing to “have pictures to understand the plot”? Unfortunately it is still a case of misunderstanding. Well, first of all, I try to make a distinction between superhero comics, the publishing subgenre, and comics, the medium. Superhero comics are not, if we’re being honest, always serious literature. But comics as a medium is an amazingly complex and diverse form of story-telling that supports everything from newspaper comic strips to literary fiction graphic novels. It’s particularly remarkable for being the most collaborative form of story creation and story consumption available, relying on multiple creators for its inception and relying on readers to actively simulate time, motion and sometimes even events out of the spaces between panels. The best book I’ve ever read on the topic - and one that could make even a hardcore cynic reevaluate their understanding of what “comics” is - is Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. There are also so many amazing graphic novels out there, from Spiegelman’s Maus to Chabouté’s Alone. Unless it’s not comics they have an issue with so much as superheroes, in which case you can talk to them about contemporary mythology and the power of allegorical story-telling. You’re right, though, that it’s a very misunderstood corner of publishing. I don’t often have people try to tell me it’s not literature, but I can’t count the number of people who have learned what I do for a living and assumed I have a lot of material I can share with their child. The idea that comics are for kids is a throwback to 1950s American marketing. As I’m sure you and your followers know, comics haven’t really been for kids in over five decades. I still haven’t shown my ten-year-old my Batman or Nightwing work and don’t plan to for some time. The last thing I’ll say on the subject is that sometimes people have to be taught how to read the art in a comic. I think people unfamiliar with comics assume that the pictures in the panels are just literal representations of the words, which is rarely the case. Comic fans are actually quite accomplished readers who know how to invest in long stories, detect subtle tensions between artistic and linguistic storytelling, actively participate in moving narratives forward and, of course, engage with huge, complex fictional universes.

Do you feel like there is not enough representation of bisexual heroes/superheroes in comics and pop-culture? We know Diana Prince is bisexual and she never got a canonical girlfriend. Yes, I agree. The LGBTQA population, as a whole, is grossly underrepresented, along with non-heteronormative relationships and non-gender binary individuals. Just this morning, actually, I was told I couldn’t go forward with a storyline exploring a canonically confirmed asexual character joining an asexual support group, because the publisher wanted to play “that angle” down. As someone who is openly bisexual, this distresses me, but not half so much as the appalling underrepresentation of people of color and women, especially considering that both groups each make up more than half the population. As the recent phenomenal success of both the Wonder Woman and Black Panther movies demonstrate, the world is more than ready to embrace corrections to these imbalances, but the people (oh, who am I kidding? Read: white men) who run the engines of pop culture - not to mention literary culture, history, and advertising - are incredibly averse to change. It’s so, so important to see yourself reflected in your own culture, but the presence and participation of women and people of color, not to mention bisexuals, is so deeply biased it’s difficult to fully comprehend the multiple levels of exclusion. It’s hard for me to even talk about this these days because I don’t know where to start. The relentless use of female characters to stimulate growth in male characters? The complete absence of female internal lives in so much of literature? How about just pure invisibility? I remember watching TV one evening and noticing - all at once and with a shock that I’d never seen it before - what I call the gender ratio. The world, according to movies and television shows, consists of one female for every three males. There are exceptions to this, but watch how often it’s true. And of course, it’s even worse for people of color, who tend to appear at about a one to nine white people ratio. Now walk outside. Is that what you see? Of course not, not even close! But we’re so used to the culture we’ve been fed that we hardly notice anything’s amiss when we look at entire fictional landscapes almost wholly devoid of women and POC. What do you think that does to our psyches? To our sense of fitting in in the world? To our sense of, and compassion for, one another? The dearth of bisexual superheroes strikes me as a wasted opportunity to explore organic and complex ranges in human sexuality - great story-fodder, that! - and I hope it changes. But not all superhero stories have to deal with the sex lives of the characters. Every single one of them, though, has to confront both the gender and race of the characters portrayed, and holy f--- do we have a long way to go there.

We were delighted to see the #VisibleWoman going around Twitter earlier this year. Did it prove itself to be useful? What you do you think about this way of using social media to make a statement and make it work? This plays directly into what I was just talking about. It’s so weird to think about, but we are so often literally invisible - in fiction especially, but in the real world, too. As a writer, I spend a lot of time summoning and then editing the default story ideas that come from my subconscious, and once I began to be aware of the issues we’ve been discussing, I was dismayed by how deeply all of that background misogyny had lodged itself - it’s an issue I’m still exploring and excavating today. I grew up hearing people say that women were important and should be treated fairly, but I saw so few of them. They were absent or scarce in most movies and TV shows, whittled down to a small subgroup in literary fiction writing, hard to find in the music world, almost never part of political news or history lessons…I can’t even imagine how different my internal world would be if I’d been exposed to a more balanced cultural tally. So, yes - I do think the hashtag was useful, both as a marketing tool (my single tagged tweet garnered me over three hundred new followers and is now pinned to the top of my account) and as a huge, warm searchlight picking accomplished females out of the crowd. Just being reminded that there are women working in comics and games and STEM and business and politics is enormously helpful. Having a platform available to connect with and support them is that much more powerful. I do have concerns about social media, some quite grave. But #VisibleWoman stands as an example of best possible usage.

And finally, do you keep in touch with your high school or college teachers who taught you English or Writing? Do you think they know you have became a successful author and would they be proud of you? Great question! My answer is multi-tiered because those people - mentors - change and evolve over time. So the short answer is no, I’m not still in touch with any of my high school or college teachers and I doubt they’ve kept track of me. I went to three different high schools and so didn’t form strong attachments to many teachers - the one exception was a Social Living teacher at Berkeley High, Nancy Rubin, who I did stay in touch with for many years after I graduated. She didn’t teach me to write - though she did encourage us all to keep daily journals, which can be a gateway drug to compulsive writing - but she was that special teacher who saw all her students as individuals and honestly cared about our opinions and our struggles and our lives. I was actually still in touch with her when she published her first book - Ask Me if I Care, Voices from an American High School - and I was very proud of her! I’m sure she’d enjoy hearing about my crazy career, but she was proud of all of us, even then, just for being. I didn’t make a strong connection with my college writing teacher, the novelist Mona Simpson, but was crazy about my post-collegiate writing instructor, the novelist Brian Bouldrey, who was still part of my life when I first broke into comics and was enormously tickled by it. Now that you’ve got me thinking about him again, I think I’ll try to track him down again and send him a copy of my Doctor Strange novel. xD In comics, I have three main mentors and I’m still in touch with all of them and know that they’re proud of and happy for me. Overall, the professional comics community is very supportive and full of hard-working people who care about the medium, the characters, the readers, and each other. Thank  you for these great questions and for you interest in my work!

Thank you, Devin! It was a pleasure and we are grateful for your amazing and detailed answers, and of course for your time :)

A i my velice děkujeme a doufáme, že jste si interview užili stejně jako my!

- Kara

[rpgmgames]

November’s Featured Game: lux (dream.girl)

DEVELOPER(S): Rindre Rindere ENGINE: RPGMaker 2k3   GENRE: Psychological Horror, Exploration SUMMARY: lux (dream.girl) is a surreal psychological horror game created in RPG Maker 2003 where you play as Benjamin, a socially inept teenage writer who struggles with depression, loneliness, and writer’s block. When he decides to try lucid dreaming to figure out how to push his story forward, he meets new friends, new enemies, and his literal dream girl. Making certain choices will either help or hurt his relationships, and the outcome of his story.

Download the demo here!

Introduce yourself!  *Hi! I'm Rindre! I've been working on RPG Maker for about 5 or 6 years at this point! First and foremost, I'm an artist, then a game developer, then a voice actor. I am also a garlic bread enthusiast. You might also know me as: -The voice of Aria/the lead translator in Aria's Story -Will's Teacher in The Hanged Man -The mod of Yumeresource -The admin of the RPG Horror Discord server -The host of the Pixel Horror Jams! I'm also on plenty of teams, mostly as a voice actor. These include b/f, AURORA, and The Doctrine of Perseverance.

What is your project about? What inspired you to create your game initially? *Rindre: lux is about a boy named Ben, who is an aspiring writer who hits a writer's block and tries to take up lucid dreaming to interact with his stories and characters find out how to advance his story. He ends up meeting interesting people, including his literal dream girl. Yume Nikki is a big inspiration for me. My stories I had written when I was younger also played a huge part, and I decided to recycle bits and pieces of them into lux. Ultimately, the frustrations and experience of being a content creator inspired me to make the game. Hopefully these themes will ring universal to whoever relates to being a creator as well.

How long have you been working on your project? *Rindre: You could say 5 years, or 2 years, or since July 2017! lux actually originated as a Yume Nikki fangame in 2012 (as are all games I've made...). I picked it up again on October 2 2015 as a concept to keep a work log, but actually making it into a tangible product took me until 2017's Pixel Horror Jam. The work log has 30+ pages to it! The Yume Nikki fangame version was prepared to be released, but I forgot, and now I'm too ashamed to release it because I meant to do it 5 years ago :(

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *Rindre: I'm a big fan of psychological and sci-fi/cyberpunk media. These things usually ask: Who are we, and who are we in other people's eyes? What defines us? What does it mean to be an individual in our society? It's a question I like to ask myself and explore in my own projects. My major inspirations who ask these existential questions are deep within Satoshi Kon's works and Philip K Dick's stories, as well as other movies that were inspired by those two or are in the genre (like The Matrix, Inception, Akira, Ghost In The Shell, Serial Experiments Lain, etc.). Some other inspirations and influences that might be surprising are: Kappa Mikey (art style mixing), Vocaloid producers (Crusher-P, Mothy, Yuyoyuppe), Evangelion, Linkin Park, the Hamtaro GBA games, Kirby, and my own dreams. Unsurprisingly, Yume Nikki is the biggest inspiration. I really like the concept of dreams and escapism, and how it often plays into existentialism.

Have you come across any challenges during development? How have you overcome or worked around them?   *Rindre: They say that when making a game, 10% is actual development and 90% is bugfixing/quality assurance. This is VERY TRUE. I spent a couple months working with my bugtesters (Thanks Biel, Choko, Meaka, Pinkuboa, and Uboaappears). The actual demo was a bunch of crunch time for the jam, which was July - August). There were a lot of bugfixes involved, including a bug I was so puzzled with and thought I couldn't fix but the solution was so simple. It took me a month to figure it out! The RM2k3 update caused a bit of trouble for me, but I thank my bugtesters endlessly for helping me squash most, if not all, bugs. On the other hand, in case anybody asks, yes: I have lucid dreamt of my characters in lux when I hit a roadblock. These were never successful. I've only been able to do it twice, both by accident.

Have any aspects of your project changed over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? *Rindre: I usually go into development with a clear idea in mind with certain events and endings, but lux differs greatly from its old Yume Nikki counterpart (dream.girl). Notable major changes: Ben now wears glasses. Ben is now a writer. Stella used to not be a bunny. Stella also did not have any stars in her eyes before. The only things retained was the concept of dreaming a dream girl, and Ben's and Stella's names and facial appearance. Even if I make a bunch of plot outlines and flowcharts, things change, but it's natural! The stories that occur within lux also have changed slightly plot-wise from their earlier pre-2012 counterparts (most were written over 10 years ago!), and are begging for a facelift. One involved parkour, but sadly, there is no parkour anymore :(

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? If you don't have a team, do you wish you had one or do you prefer working alone? *Rindre: I prefer working alone when it's my project! I like working at my own pace, but if needed, I'll reach out to other people for help. I like helping people out on their projects too, but when it comes to my own, I like to handcraft everything by myself. It shows me what I'm capable of doing, and gives my game a "this was 100% made by me" stamp.

What is the best part of developing a game? *Rindre: Making music is relaxing and lets me convey a mood or theme without having to take out my tablet to draw or write something extensively. Being able to relax yet still work on the game is great. I like nights where I can sit down and make something nice I can put in my game. A lot of them are on my SoundCloud (Rindere), but some of the really nice ones are ones I haven't uploaded there. I'm really not a musician, but I did take a class on music technology. My favorite ones going to be in lux on my SoundCloud are "Nepenthean", which is also Ben's theme, "Choke On Your Misery", and "Empyria Incarnadine". It's also really nice to get files from your voice actors and they sound EXACTLY like how you thought your character would sound like! Special thanks to Aidan, Mizu, JR, and Nuei.

Do you find yourself playing other RPG Maker games to see what you can do with the engine, or do you prefer to do your own thing? *Rindre: I prefer to do my own thing! I like to push RPG Maker 2003 to the limit. A lot of the cool effects were done before the major update of RM2k3 that came out earlier last month. Some things I thought were never possible in RM2k3 are things that I made possible after some thought. Like any problem, it can be solved in a bunch of ways, even if you have limitations.

Which character in your game do you relate to the most and why? (Alternatively: Who is your favorite character and why?) *Rindre: The character I relate to the most is actually my least favorite character. It's Ben! I specifically modeled him after myself but changed certain things, like the intensity of his reactions. It was actually difficult to write him, because I had to think about how I would react in the situations I put Ben in. I feel like I had to get into some kind of mindset that was "mine", but also "not mine" as well.

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *Rindre: I feel like I could've released the game sooner, or continued work on FLUX instead. I would like to go back to working on FLUX soon, since I haven't worked on it in a long while. But after hosting the Pixel Horror Jam with Choko and jamming on this game, I'd like to rest up a bit before I take on a big project again.

Once you finish your project, do you plan to explore game's universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *Rindre: Because lux is part of the -UX Series, it would naturally be a series with other entries. I don't know if or when they'll all be created, nor if they'll all be games, but I do eventually hope to see it finish. Something I want to explore is to further flesh out the stories Ben has written, especially because they were concepts written before lux ever came up as a concept. I've also given them -UX titles! I think I'll work on Crux/quX next.

What do you look most forward to upon/after release? *Rindre: I am donating proceeds to the One More Light Fund with what is being donated to the itch.io-uploaded version of lux, so I really am looking forward to donating to a cause that is important to me. I encourage people to donate to the OML Fund directly, not through me. I also really like fan reaction, but I love the catharsis of releasing something you've made. It's a mix of relief and pride, but a little bit of anxiety because you don't know how well the fan reaction will be. I hope that my game will affect somebody in a positive, personal way, whether it be a new favorite game, something for them to draw, or become inspiration for their own works. I look forward to free time and rewarding myself with something good, like chicken parmesan too!

Is there something you're afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game?  *Rindre: I constantly ask, "Is my game worthy enough for others to play? Is my game good enough?" But when it comes down to it, really you're asking it to yourself, not to the people that will play your game. Sometimes, you have to sit down and ask yourself, "Am I satisfied with what I have made so far?" Then you go down the list of things you've made and say either, "I'm proud of this!" or "This could use some more work." and you fix it accordingly. The first audience of your game is always you, so if your game is "worthy" and "good enough" to you, then it is for other people.

Question from last month's featured dev (Team Galanx): What kind of stories do you appreciate most in RPG Maker games? For example, do you like ones based off real-life experiences, fantasy elements, or morals? *Rindre: My series of games is called the -UX Series, with there being 4 main stories that are related to each other: "FLUX", "lux", "Ux.", and "X". The rest of the titles end in "-ux" as well. It was only natural to do that!

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *Rindre: Game Development -Give things meaningful names. -Back up your work in three different places. -Back up your games frequently. -Never be afraid to remake things, but do this occasionally. If you do this frequently, you'll be caught up in a loop of perfectionism. -Think if the cool new thing you want to put in will actually serve a proper purpose in the game. If it's only there just to be cool, don't put it in your game. -If things don't work out, it's perfectly fine to scrap ideas. -Don't pander. Make a game you want to make, not what others want to play. Releasing your game -Reach out to people who haven't played games similar to yours. You'll have opinions that you wouldn't normally get, compared to others who are familiar with your type of game. -Learn how to take critique. This might be the skill that will take you the longest to hone. -Not everyone is out to get you, but sometimes there will be people who want to bring you down. Even if this happens, there are always people there to support you. -You don't have to agree with every critique given to you. Other advice -If you're not embarrassed about your old work, then you haven't progressed. Continue to improve your skills and yourself. -Don't compare yourself to others. Compare yourself to your past self instead. -Don't be working on your game 24/7. Take up hobbies to occupy yourself, so you don't get burned out. -Learn to be a generalist, but also learn to specialize in something that people will recognize you for. -Be proud of your work.

We mods would like to thank Rindre for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved! 

Remember to check out lux if you haven’t already! See you next month! 

- Mods Gold & Platinum 

[ankulometes]

A Guide to Albion Pt. 1: Words and Numbers

This guide is written for a reader from our universe. Yet it describes a reality that exists parallel to it that possesses numerous fundamental differences. Of foremost importance amongst these are language, numbers, and systems of quantification. This necessarily raises questions concerning how one talks about this other place, how it sounds, and how it looks written down.

Broadly speaking, there are two approaches: translate everything and translate nothing. They represent two ends of a sliding scale. Translating everything into words and concepts from our world with which you, the reader, are familiar comes at the cost of distortion and dissemblance. It obscures what is different. Conversely, translating everything is an exercise in academic obscurantism that renders little in a manner that can be comprehended. Furthermore, it would be disingenuous not to acknowledge the fictional character of The Chiasmic universe and, thus, the creative licence that exists.

Despite appearances to the contrary, I have little interest as an author in devising a completely new language from beginning to end and absolutely none in writing a story which, in the manner of Tolkien or Star Trek, excessively indulges such flights of fancy. To do so in any comprehensive and coherent fashion necessitates inventing not only one language but additionally reconceiving its entire historical influence on others. But, on the other hand, people there definitely don’t speak like us. Their history has so many differences, it would be impossible to see how they could.

We might call the lingua franca of contemporary Albion “Brytanic”. In terms of global prevalence and status, we might think of it as being the parallel to English. It derives predominantly from a predecessor known as Ancient Alban that was spoken in the Brytanic Isles in this reality since before the dawn of civilization. However, I imagine that it has incorporated a wide range of influences from across their globe over the years.

The earliest form of this language is a hypothetical linguistic construct known as Proto-Alban. It represents a theoretical late-Neolithic form that has been extrapolated by modern scholars in their world from what is known of the genealogy and morphological development of Ancient Alban more generally. A great deal is known because their ancient predecessors left their own “Rosetta Stone” in the form of an artefact known as the Cynmaen: a huge, intricately inscribed slate menhir some 20 metrs high and 10 metrs wide that is understood as a record of political leadership and constitution spanning more than 1,500 years of history. It is also the single most important source for students of Ancient Alban and its development over the course of their Bronze Age and early Iron Age.

The Cynmaen documents a form of the language known in the modern day as “Old Ancient Alban”. It is believed to have been spoken in the Brytanic Isles between around 1500 AM and 2800 AM. At this time, the inhabitants of the archipelago possessed a form of ideographic rune script known to archaeologists in their present day as “Runic A”. However, the precise nature of the relationship between the spoken and the written form is unknown to them, if one ever existed. Consequently, reconstruction of Old Ancient Alban is predominantly based upon references to former modes of speech in later works.

“High Ancient Alban” is considered to be the classical form of the language that took hold during their late Iron Age from ~2800 AM onwards. It is marked by the emergence of a phonetic script known as Runic B which is widely thought to have formed the basis of most modern Western alphabetic and numeral systems. The appearance of Runic B is thought to have been the result of disruptions to social, economic, and cultural practices around this time combined with the establishment of relations with Phoenician traders from the Mediterranean and Near East. It is documented through the various surviving works of history, philosophy, literature, and poetry in addition to records of it made by other cultures, notably the Illenes, with whom the Albans had contact.

“Late Ancient Alban” was a Latin-influenced form of the language that developed from the late 33th cantury following the establishment of the Roman Alliance. It was predominantly spoken throughout the southern regions of the Brytanic Isles that came to be known as Brytan. Speech and writing in the northern and far western regions generally remained closer to High Ancient Alban and this is reflected in contemporary Gaelic, Cymranic, and Cernic dialects. However, in their world, Latin itself was not unrelated to Old Ancient Alban, so the differences were not all that great.

The symbiotic decline and fall of both the Western Roman Empire and ancient Alban civilization occurred in concert with the advent of a complex and little understood historical period during which there were extensive migrations of peoples throughout Europe. Albion and its language came to be influenced by a number of cultural influxes, of which the most significant were the Saesan and, later, the Olydynan who invaded and subsequently migrated in large numbers from the coastal regions of northern Europe and Sgandinafia around the countries now known as Danmarc and Olwe.

Although many who identify as Saesan (or “Anglan”, as they call themselves) still speak their own obscure language amongst themselves, both they and the Olydynan adopted the Late Ancient Alban language and culture of the regions in which they settled, mainly Brytan.

Much as had been the case with the Romans before them, this intermingling introduced a host of new vocabulary, led to a simplification of some grammatical structures, and increased complexity in other areas.

Once again, as with Latin, the languages they brought with them were not unrelated to much earlier forms of those spoken in their newly adopted homeland. Modern Brytanic and its associated Gaelic and Cymranic dialects emerged over the course of the ensuing canturies as a result of this feedback loop. Over much the same period, it has absorbed a wealth of additional influences from across the globe, including such diverse sources as Dynolan Frantsaic, Illenic, Twrcic, Arabic, Inwic, Hindi, Gudgurati, and Urdw.

While I endeavour to remain consistent in my approach to the use of this imagined language, aesthetic considerations are typically paramount. Any “Brytanic” that is used should not be considered to constitute an accurate rendering of an alternate language. It’s a form of transliteration intended to provide an impression of difference. Generally speaking, supposedly Brytanic words are used for proper nouns, for untranslatable or problematic words and concepts (e.g. numbers, dates etc), or to draw attention to distinctions between their world and ours.

For example, it would be both facile and clumsy to talk of Clwb Troedbel Enadig o Mancar when Mancar United FC delineates more clearly the fact that one is referring to a football club located in a particular named place and suggests that the sport is basically the same thing in their world as in yours. Elsewhere, talking of Sant Cara, rather than Saint Cara, feels sufficiently close to English as to be understandable while adopting a stylistic tweak that suggests a difference in their religious inheritance that is important. By contrast, changing Mancar to “Manchester” just because it is a city that happens to occupy more or less equivalent geographical coordinates would elide an etymology that sits behind toponyms while creating the misleading impression that it is exactly the same place.

This impressionistic approach is most evident in the use of a number of English pseudo-Brytanicisms such as “cantury”, “sinade”, and “Brytanic” itself. To say “century” and “decade” would be misleading. But, in the same breath, you could use any words you want for these concepts of 144 years and 12 years that feel right to you if you so desire. Likewise, to say “Britain” (and, by extension, “British”) does not allow for the sheer extent of the difference between it and Brytan, including the simple matter of how I imagine it to be pronounced and the fact that it is a country of Albion rather than a somewhat nebulous geopolitical concept.

I would argue that, amongst other abstract properties, it is important that their numbering system is base-12, that they possess a perennial calendar and a common system of weights and measures, that their language has a syncretic quality, and that their script evolved from an ideographic system. I have represented all of that through an unholy mash-up of Celtic, Germanic, and Latin languages because I think that works aesthetically. But there is nothing necessary about it. Since this world projects a past in which this supposed Alban cultural root occupied northwestern Europe and collided with an Indo-European root, none of those languages I’ve used as a source would be the same in their world (even if they existed) as those I have mashed together. You may as well imagine that they speak Martian: it’s the same thing. That being said, I should probably explain how I imagine it being spoken in my own mind.

You can speak these words however you like. Personally, I like to imagine posh people in their world talking in a manner that melds Richard Burton, Anthony Hopkins, and Sean Connery with a little rhotic brogue thrown in for good measure. And everyone trills their r’s in an aspirated manner which makes it sounds as if they are auditioning for the part of Gimli in Lord of the Rings.

An “s” at the beginning of a word is almost always intended as be voiced as an “sh” (in the Gaelic manner) but more typically as an “s” sound when it appears in the middle or at the end of a word (unless it appears there as a result of a syncretic operation, such as in the names of larger numbers). By contrast, “sc” at the start of a word is a hard “sk” sound but a soft “sh” when in the middle or at the end.

The letter “i” is always long (as in “queen”). They use the letter “e” for the short “e” sound (as in “bet”) but “y” for the slightly elongated equivalent (as in “air”), much as Italian distinguishes between “é” and “e”. “A”, “o” and “u” are always short, as in “bat”, “got”, and “but”. They use the letter “w” for the “oo” sound which, if you listen carefully, almost always has a little “w” sound before or after it in English (and vice-versa when we say “w”). The exceptions are the digraphs “ae” (pronounced “a” as in “hay”), “ei” (“i” as in “eye”), “oa” (“o” as in “hoax”), and “ou” (“ow” as in “rowdy” but leaning more toward “oh-uh” than “oh-woo”).

They do have the letters “j”, “q”, “k”, “x”, and “z” but they are very rare and exotic imports, usage of which is considered to be somewhat pretentious. It is more common to use the digraph “dg” in place of “j” as in “judge” and “ia/io” etc for “ya/yo” and so on. A soft “j”, as in the French “je”, typically becomes an “s” that is pronounced “sh”.

When it appears on its own, “g” is always hard but pronounced “ñ” as in “new” when combined as “gn” and as a soft Greek-style gamma in the “gw” and “gh” digraphs. Likewise, “c” is always hard unless it appears as “ch”, in which case it is pronounced as in the Scottish “loch”. Imported words, often Frantsaic, that use a soft “ch” tend to be rendered in Brytanic as an “s” and pronounced “sh”. The hard “ch”, as in “chuff”, also typically imported, is usually rendered and pronounced as “ts”.

The “q” sound in “queen” is written “cw”. However, somewhat confusingly, that particular digraph can also be pronounced “coow”, as in cwrmi, which is their word for beer. It’s one of those things where you just have to know which is used for any particular word. Either way, the sounds are not that far apart if you listen to them carefully.

Foreign words that use “x” or “z” are generally rendered in Brytanic with “ch” and “s” (although some regional accents, especially in the southwest, consistently pronounce “s” as “z”).

A “th” is usually meant to be hard, as in “think”. The “dd” digraph is often used to indicate a soft “th”, as in “then”. However, the latter has become archaic in recent times. The “dd” digraph is an ancient practice that has all but died out in their modern era.

Since their equivalent of our medieval period, the Brytanic language has gone through a period of considerable transition. Many words that were previously separate lexemes (such as “o” for “of”) have merged into their neighbours over time in common use cases as a result of lenition. Extensive immigration and mixing of populations has changed or softened some of the more distinctive phonemes. For example, the “ll” voiceless alveolar lateral fricative has transformed in many cases into just an “l” sound (rather than “ch-l”). Where it remains in use, it has often come to be spelled “chl”.

Similarly, historical distinctions between dialects in the use of “ff”, “f”, and “v” in writing means that rendering these in text is wildly inconsistent. Where the “Brytanic” are thought to have traditionally voiced “s” and “f”, their near continental neighbours have “z” and “v”. However, this is very much a matter of accent and dialect. Even where they might all still speak the same way, a “Latin tendency” sometimes prevails amongst certain sections of the educated classes leading to an increased use of “v” and “z”. At the same time, others keen to follow a putative “nativist precedent” promoted “s”, “f”, and “ff” for the same reasons. Ultimately, I imagine that they’ve become largely interchangeable, although it is a confusing matter of pronunciation for people in their world. Regardless, the “Latin tendency” is more “modern” and I reflect that in my transliterations by occasionally using different spellings depending on the historical context in which a word is being used.

No such confusion exists around the pronunciation of the “bh” digraph though. It is definitively a Gaelic-style “v” sound. This is partly because it has always belonged to dialects of the north and west that have not been historically subject to such extensive continental influence.

In addition to pronunciation and spelling, a fair degree of confusion also persists into their present day around grammar. Ancient Alban was a right-branching language with a verb-subject-object word order. So, for example, one says “read I the book” rather than “I read the book”. Modern Brytanic, by contrast, I imagine to be more left-branching. However, any “official” or “correct” approach in this regard is not universally adhered to in regional dialects and quotidian speech. And that is before we even address the matter of registers.

Like any language, Brytanic possesses a number of registers that are considered to be appropriate for use in particular contexts. The two main ones that remain notably distinct are an increasingly archaic literary-poetic register and the “standard” modern quotidian register. Just so you can get a taste of how I imagine the difference, below are pseudo-translations of the opening passage from “A Tale of Two Cities” (they have this book, too!) in both registers.

First, in the literary register:

Arda yr ansar manwe, arad yr ansar manwe, oedothi yr paellath manwe, oedothi yr foledath manwe, epocothi yr credath manwe, epocothi yr ancredath manwe, olud yr odymor manwe, tywyl yr odymor manwe, oba yr ogwanwyn manwe, anoba yr ogaean manwe, ollath widor galwnwe, nath widor galwnwe, nef gan oll sythol fyndwnwevy, oll cyfeirnir sythol fyndwnwevy.

And, by comparison, in the modern quotidian register (that Siarl Dicyns most certainly did not use himself when writing):

Manwe yr ansar arda, manwe yr ansar arad, manwe yr oed o paellath, manwe yr oed o foledath, manwe yr epoc o credath, manwe yr epoc o ancredath, manwe yr dymor o’lud, manwe yr dymor o tywyl, manwe yr gwanwyn o’ba, manwe yr gaean o anoba, galwnwe ollath dor wi, galwnwe nath dor wi, fyndwnwevy oll sythol gan nef, fyndwnwevy oll sythol nir cyfeir.

As might be observed, the difference between the registers is quite marked and represents a shift in the language over the last few hundred years from being predominantly right-branching to predominantly left-branching. Literary language writes “dark and cold the night was” whereas modern quotidian speech prefers “it was a cold, dark night”.

Literary-poetic registers also make far more extensive use of the syncretic capacity of Brytanic syntax to create neologisms through the use of prefixes and suffixes. In addition to enriching meaning through inventive use, this can help smooth out awkward conjunctions and syllables and enhance the rhythmic flow and scansion. In the hands of a skillful writer or orator, it can be powerfully evocative. However, it is easy to do it badly and come across as a pretentious windbag. But many still revere it as the language of Sigsber and the Beibl.

Where everyday speech encounters awkward conjunctions, such as “o” before a word starting with the letter O, the poetic register simply ellides the two using an apostrophe. Over time, such contractions have a tendency to become normative, with the word adopting a permanently contracted state that then becomes acceptable for use within the quotidian register. Although the translation of words from one register to another goes both ways in practice.

While it may not come adorned with poetic enhancement in everyday speech, right-branching syntax remains very common in a number of regional dialects, notably those of Belerion, Cymran, and Gaelic-speaking regions.

The only other register that has remained in widespread usage is a formal register that one uses mainly when writing official correspondence or when doing things like establishing business with new clients and suchlike. Its grammar combines the right-branching structure of the literary register with the individuated lexemes of the quotidian register. Additionally, unlike English but like other European languages in your world and theirs, it involves the use of particular pronouns and verb forms. It is polite, precise, and pedantic.

Despite all of the above minutiae, there are reams of historical and developmental aspects of the language and culture of this supposed world that I quite deliberately conceive myself to be glossing over. At the risk of becoming repetitive, that is because I want it to remain impressionistic, rather than being taken too literally. However, by their nature, numbers leave little room for such an ambiguous approach.

In the universe of Albion in their modern era, almost every nation on earth utilises the base-12 numbering system that was a distinctive feature of the culture of the Brytanic Isles in ancient times. Please be aware that all numbers referred to throughout this guide are base 12 values unless explicitly mentioned otherwise.

In other words, wherever you see the number “10” it actually refers to the numeric value you think of as “12”. This extends all the way up and down the positive and negative integer scale. Thus the number “100” actually means a base 10 value of 144, “1000” a value of 1728, and so on. Moreover, in the chiasmic universe of Albion, there is no abuse of billions and suchlike. They have long billions and long trillions. The equivalent to one billion in their universe is a million million, not a thousand million. By extension, a trillion is a billion billion. Even when they talk about money. There are no US dollar billionaires. Yet.

Obviously, this also means that fractional quantities and proportional values have a different meaning. In base-12, a base-10 fractional value of “one quarter” is expressed as 0.3 and “one third” is 0.4. One of the advantages of their system is that common operations involving divisions of thirds and quarters are somewhat easier to reason about arithmetically as they don’t involve irrational numbers. As a concession to clarity, when talking of base-12 “percantages”, I use the mathematical “proportional to” symbol “∝” rather than “%”.

Given this radical difference, it is necessary at the very least to address the question of how the additional numerals are spoken, either in Brytanic or English, and how the additional two numerals are written. Since we’re dealing with numbers, the easiest way to do this is with a simple table:

Numeral (base-12) Equivalent (base-10) Brytanic Name Brytanic Ordinal English Translation 0.1 / ⅒ 0.8333.. Sinar A tenth 0.2 / ⅙ 0.1666.. Swar A sixth 0.3 / ¼ 0.25 Triar A quarter 0.4 / ⅓ 0.3333.. Petar A third 0.6 / ½ 0.5 Hanar A half 0 0 Nil, Sero Nath / 0th Zero/Nil/Nought 1 1 Ena Enath / 1th One 2 2 Do Doth / 2th Two 3 3 Tri Trith / 3th Three 4 4 Peta Petath / 4th Four 5 5 Pema Pemath / 5th Five 6 6 Swa Swath / 6th Six 7 7 Seta Setath / 7th Seven 8 8 Owt Owtath / 8th Eight 9 9 Nin Ninth / 9th Nine Ʌ 10 Dec Decath / Ʌth Dec Ɛ 11 El Elth / Ɛth El 10 12 Sin Sinth / 10th Ten 11 13 Enolasin Eleven 12 14 Dalasin Twelve 13 15 Trilasin Thirseen 14 16 Petalasin Fourseen 15 17 Pemalasin Fifseen 16 18 Swalasin Sixseen 17 19 Setalasin Sevenseen 18 20 Owtolasin Eighseen 19 21 Ninolasin Nineseen 1Ʌ 22 Decolasin Decseen 1Ɛ 23 Elvolasin Elseen 20 24 Dasin Twendy 30 36 Trisin Thirdy 40 48 Petasin Fourdy 50 60 Pemasin Fifdy 60 72 Sawsin Sixdy 70 84 Setasin Sevendy 80 96 Owtsin Eightdy 90 108 Ninsin Ninedy Ʌ0 120 Decsin Decdy Ɛ0 132 Elvsin Eldy 100 144 Can (ena can) Hundred 1,000 1,728 Mil (ena mil) Thousand 1,000,000 2,985,984 Miliwn (ena miliwn) Million 1,000,000,000,000 8,916,100,448,256 Daliwn (ena daliwn) Trillion

As you will observe, I choose to just call numbers by English names except for the two additional numerals, for which I use the Brytanic words “el” and “dec”. And I also tend to use Brytanic ordinals such as “1th” instead of “1st”. Usually, I just write the numerals, rather than spell the words, so such matters are entirely up to you. But, when I say them in my head, I like to distinguish base-10 “teens” and “tys” from dozenal base-12 “seens” and “dys”. Other than that, everything is calculable.

An astute reader may have observed the Brytanic novelty of having an ordinal for the 0th position — an interesting philosophical concept, if ever there was one, and something that is indicative of their slightly different relationship to numbers. Historically, zero was a very important concept in Albion for what we might think of as “religious” reasons. Also, circles.

There are a number of other idiosyncratic aspects of their language which it is helpful to understand if one wishes to gain a view on how it highlights areas in which their thinking and attitudes are different from our own.

Brytanic is a comparatively easy language to learn. Despite countless years of historical development and diverse cultural influence, its syntax, spelling, and pronunciation remain pretty consistent. It has none of the silent letters and few of the alternate pronunciations of the same phonemes that pervade English. Yet there is a gulf between its basic and advanced use. I imagine that speaking or writing Brytanic is a bit like playing the piano. Anyone can bash out a few notes that are more or less harmonious but playing a symphony requires a great deal of skill.

Understanding the subtext present in the use of formal, literary, or quotidian forms (or their mixing and matching), the distinctness or merging of lexemes and their position relative to an operative term, a play that is being made between two words amongst a vast accretion of vocabulary. These are sophisticated skills that set apart the native speaker from the foreigner, the educated from the uneducated, the rich from the poor. They distinguish the witty from the obnoxious and the insightful from the facile and obtuse.

To many amongst the inhabitants of Albion, their language — whichever dialect they speak — is a source of pride and a badge of identity. This much is implied in its name in their language: Brytarath. The “-ar” suffix is an active verb ending equivalent to “-er” in English (which is alternate spelling for them). It suggests that one is actively being or becoming Brytanic through the act of speaking or writing in it. Furthermore, the “-ath” suffix (or “-iath” and the etymologically related “-ad” and “-iad” endings) denote that, over and above merely pertaining to something Brytanic (for which they use the “-ic” ending much as we do), it is definitive of it. Thus, Brytarath is (in a grammatical sense, at least) the definitive performance of being Brytanic. It is hierarchically positioned in a conscious manner above dialects of Brytanic and other languages that merely pertain to a particular place, such as Gaelic, Cernic, Cymric, Anglanic — or even Frantsaic (French, the official language of Gawl) and Illenic (Greek) — by means of this suffix. Clearly, such constructs have both a political and a historical dimension. For example, in their present day, there is a “woke” tendency to call the language Albanarath or Albanic.

Then there are other subtleties that are generally less offensive, politically and philosophically. Brytanic is possessed of an equal facility with scientific precision and poetic ambiguity. I have already touched on the zero ordinal. It is also possible, for example, to negate almost any concept through the use of the an- prefix. This gives rise to the fantastically idiosyncratic word anni, which means “not no”. This is a deliberately ambiguous reply that conventionally suggests “yes” while leaving room for plausible deniability.

In a similar vein, you can add fal to something, usually a verb, to indicate that it “may be or do”; yr trahen esdyth redanifal. “The train may run today”. Or maybe it won’t.

Similes (and clichés) can easily be created through the application of fel, which is very much like the Italian word “cosi” in your world and means “like so”, “in this way”, or “how” (when not a question). He redanivy trahenfel. “He is [in the process of] running like a train”.

Then there is hirath, a regular winner in their world of “favourite Brytanic word” polls of spurious legitimacy. It refers to a form of longing nostalgia or yearning for possibility. It is similar to the Almaenan concept of sehnsucht. However, it is closer to a sense of excitement for what might have been or what might be, rather than mourning. They also have oedath, which refers to the definitive character of an age or epoch, much as “zeitgeist” does.

The words for house or home (ty), household or family (tydan), and land, country or nation (tyr) are all etymologically related and homophonous. However, there are notably no “tyrs” within Albion. Brytan, Cymran, Godan, and Eirean construct their names using the -an/-dan suffix. This is a little bit like the English “-dom” but actually derives in Brytanic from ban in Ancient Alban which also gave rise to their words ben and pen (which basically mean “chief” or “head”). Historically, the -an/-dan suffix denotes the jurisdiction of ben/pen, specifically a kind of ur-chieftain that existed within the ancient constitution.

Albion itself is clearly neither a tyr nor a dan. The -ion suffix denotes a place within which something or someone resides or an activity occurs. For example, the modern day siars of Cantion and Trivantion are the vestiges of the ancient tribal territories of the Cantiacis and Trinovantis. Albion on the other hand is the place where Alba, a kind of earth god/giant was believed to actually exist. In other words, he was the foundation of the land on which the Brytanic Isles literally sat. Yet, at the same time, Alban was the first ban jurisdiction.

One could go on and on in this vein for there are inevitably countless subtleties to one of the world’s few extant languages that, along with the likes of Illenic, can legitimately claim a direct continuity with some of the earliest known forms of human speech and writing. My aim is not to document a fictional invention but to sprinkle it judiciously in order to convey the fabric of a world of which it is an integral and formative part.

It is a milieu that is pervaded by a sense of timelessness that comes from the perduring presence of an explicitly ancient lineage, such as one experiences in places like China and Greece in your world. A world in which seemingly everything is simultaneously and eternally ancient and modern at the same time in every instant.

They are people who have a speech that may be clipped and articulated or smooth and lilting depending on accent but which is always rhythmic and sonorous, as though it were in 9/8 or 12/8 time. They speak words with breath through the mouth from the stomach, and never with a nasal whine, in a manner that impacts their physiognomy, mentality, and bearing as well as their sound.

They live in a society that possesses a linguistic framework for communication in a variety of pre-established modes, even if many do not understand how to use them and even fewer how to do so well. This provides both a licence and expectation for expression that is formal or informal or lyric or poetic or precise.

Much like English, their vocabulary is multilayered with more than one word of varying origin for the same thing. Furthermore, a bit like German or Japanese in your world, it has a host of terms for subtle distinctions and ineffable concepts that have developed over aeons of conversation and literature. And their “native” words are knowingly formed from lexemes such that combinations enter into or fall out of use at a remarkable pace.

With any luck, these qualities and others will be abundantly clear through the way in which I tackle the topic of Albion and the universe of The Chiasm more generally and this entire introduction will have been unnecessary. Ideally, no use of language will be jarring — whether it is an English translation or an actual or pseudo Brytanic word — and will only serve to weave the desired background fabric. That has to be a measure of success for the description of any alternate world.

[annoyingdogsprite]

sooo before I go and delete my anime girlfriend for good, a “liveblog” of her dialogue! by which I mean reading through this page again with this lovely ambiance playing because I don’t have the patience to sit around for however long it takes for her to get through everything ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

y’know for a game character who knows she’s in a game, Monika has a lot of dialogue that.. doesn’t allude to that Whatsoever. her world, fabricated as it may be, still seems pretty damn real to her.

“I mean, when do you reach the point in a friendship where you can start expressing your vulnerabilities?” you don’t you just can it all up and only let it show at Inopportune Moments :^D

“I bet [my creator is] still laughing at the miserable fates of Sayori and Yuri” were those not your doing though. in a way. at least by amplifying certain Traits of theirs - also ngl, I’d have to replay/rewatch some stuff to be sure, but I kinda feel like she didn’t reaaaaallly mess with Sayori much? from a Game Mechanic perspective? at no point did Sayori glitch out or start talking weird or anything, but it was implied Monika said something to her that... was probably not advice. I Don’t Trust Like That.

also, back to Monika, interesting she refers to a “creator,” not a scriptwriter or the like. she’s like this close to the “I’m also a character, therefore even what I’m saying now is scripted” realization but. Nah.

“But in the end, you always fix it, and that makes me feel like you really do care about me.” aww that’s so sweet, next time I open the game you’re getting deleted (or moved to a different folder or something, I’m kinda curious to see if that changes anything) :,^)

“Or if you feel worthless for putting off important work and failing to get simple tasks done.” STOP CALLING M

“I think you’re wonderful anf I will always love you.” Monika after her file gets deleted.mp4 (volume warning)

okay Monika that is a highly suspect amount of detail you know about Sayori’s death, which... damn, can I even chalk that up to Knowing The Game, considering the aforementioned points about how Monika’s still more or less talking like the game world is real to her? where the fuck were you that morning, girl.

“I’m really as happy as I could be right now.” Sure Monika

“All my memories are really hazy... I feel like I’m at home, but have no idea where ‘home’ is in the first place.” thinking emoji bass boosted

“But Sayori was never real in the first place.” again. you keep tellin’ yourself that, Monika. for a self-aware character she has like -5 self-awareness as a person and I think that’s beautiful.

“after I graduate” see! see!!! you’re doing that thing again! also Monika confirmed for nihilist

she has a really interesting way of doing morality, tbh. it’s pretty damn detached for someone who alternates between philosophical rambles and lighthearted sentimental stuff.

^referring to the “No Reason to Be Alive” part but it’s really evident in the “Vegetarian” segment too

“Well... it is what it is, right? No sense having any regrets.” hell she even took a damn cupcake before launching the game directly into this Room, didn’t she. uh huh. no sense at all.

👀👀👀👀👀

not to be redundant but the entire “Introvert” section is yet another example of Monika being all Rational and self-aware about the game character status thing, next thing you know she’s using Yuri as an example (and clarifying she’s not talking about the club members as characters) and talking about after-school activities.

CAN WE TALK ABOUT THE FUCKING “FILES” CODE THOUGH.

I KNOW all this deeper ominous stuff could still technically fit for DDLC but I am so!! fucking intrigued by the ~darker game beneath it all~ idea my god

“Like it’s part of my identity” something something green with envy

...oh goddammit am I really gonna have to look for a video to hear what she changes the music to

“I’m not sad about it or anything. It’s not right for me to mess with things that weren’t even real in the first place. If I just focus on the present, then this is the happiest I’ve ever been.” Well That’s Depressing

how did Monika become aware in the first place, anyway

okay Monika we get it you like v

I imagine the “tacky romance game” lines would’ve hit harder to someone who 1) wasn’t dared and 2) didn’t know about The Hell in advance. someone who legitimately just wanted a cute romance game despite the initial warnings. somehow I doubt there are many like that besides anyone who found the game like... right when it came out, but anyway.

“It's concentrated cuteness with no actual substance.” STICK IT TO THE GENRE, MONIKA.

i want monika to Smash--wait no she already does that. to the entire game world. har har

okay but those lines on technology improving social lives. Monika, this game came out like... what, last year? social media has already been a big thing for a while. you have a twitter. get with the program

Monika is a school revolutionist pass it on

“I'm so embarrassed by the way I used to behave back [in middle school].” you can’t just say that and not give an example....

okay how many times has Monika’s twitter got @/ed with different outfits

“I won’t make you read any horror stories anytime soon.” Monika.

[yuri voice] take a fuckin sip, babes

the whole “Date” segment is just sad tbh... I’d guess based on the “proud boyfriend” line, despite previously addressing the player directly and saying something about not even knowing if the player is a boy or a girl or whatever, Monika’s back to not really caring this is all a game. like... you do realize you’ve trapped yourself in this room forever by doing this, right. none of that is happening. Ever.

“It’s not like I could ever actually kill a person.” nah, just mess with their files instead! boost their obsessiveness n shit up to 500!! Totally Not Murder You Guys god she has so little fuckign,, Personal self-awareness it’s great

“I’d ask Yuri if I could.” MONIKA.

Monika’s Debate Tip of the Day is some Real Shit tbh. just saying.

“If you jump right into a huge project and you’re still an amateur, you’ll never get it done.” I SAID STOP CALLING ME OUT

“If you're not one of the people who can conquer the problem [of not wanting to do things that don’t offer instant gratification], you might just have to live with feeling awful about yourself. Good luck, I guess!” ah, how reassuring

“I really don’t miss those days or anything. I really don’t...” just keep racking up the self-receipts why not

“Do you ever feel like you waste too much time on the internet?” s t o p

“Don't worry, I don't think it's caused me any harm, aside from mental scarring.” Well That’s Not Passive-Aggressive At All

those post-quit dialogues though. ouch.

anyway! guess that’s all outta her so I’m gonna get to some Real Life Things real quick and then onward we go >8Y

[progressivejudaism]

Parshat Noach:   We Need to Learn to Talk to Talk to One Another

Rabbinical Student Joshua Gischner, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, delivered to Temple Beth Am, Monessen PA on Oct. 20, 2017  / 1 Hesvon 5778 

Here is an excerpt from the Huffington Post from right after Hurricane Harvey hit:

“The United Orthodox Synagogue of Houston [...] [was] flooded by several feet as Hurricane Harvey dropped record rainfall on the city in late August. [...] The building took in 4 to 5 feet of water [...] All the rooms were affected, including the main sanctuary, classrooms and the rabbi’s office.  Prayer books and Bibles had fallen off shelves and were soaked.  Chairs were toppled.  The Torah scrolls had been taken out of the building before the storm hit, but water had crept close to the ark where the scrolls are typically kept ― missing it by inches. [...]

Harvey made landfall near Texas’ Gulf Coast on Aug. 25 as a Category 4 hurricane, eventually dropping 40 to 65 inches of rain in parts of southeast Texas. The storm claimed the lives of at least 50 people across eight counties and caused billions of dollars in damage to homes, businesses, and places of worship” like Rabbi Barry Gelman’s community.

The rabbi told Huffpost, “We’ve been focusing ever since the flood on being positive and first helping people through the initial stages of this, which is very complicated. You walk into your home and see 1 or 2 or 5 feet of water, and stuff is ruined. It’s paralyzing and demoralizing.” (source)

"בַּיּ֣וֹם הַזֶּ֗ה נִבְקְעוּ֙ כָּֽל־מַעְיְנֹת֙ תְּה֣וֹם רַבָּ֔ה וַאֲרֻבֹּ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם נִפְתָּֽחוּ׃"

“...Bayom hazeh, niv-ku kol-mayanot tehom rabah v’arubot hashamayim niftachu.”

“On that day, all of the fountains of the great deep burst apart, and the floodgates of the heavens broke open.”

(Gn. 7:11)

Earlier, I read from parshat Noakh: the Torah’s account of a disastrous, ancient Flood which was sent by God. The Flood wiped out everyone and everything in its path in order to destroy those who were evil.  Is it possible to make connections between God’s destructive power in this account, and with contemporary natural disasters?  If so, does our tradition teach us that in mid-September, it was God who sent a 7.1 magnitude earthquake to Mexico City?  Was it because of evil behavior?  Is God responsible for the wildfires currently raging in California? [The same fires which destroyed our beloved URJ, Union for Reform Judaism, Camp Newman]  Do Californians deserve this wrath?  Did God send Hurricanes Harvey and Irma?  Did God displace Texans, Floridians, and Puerto Ricans; many of whom are still without power and food? Is God responsible for the fact that they are being used as a political tool by our lawmakers?  My mom’s colleague Dr. Sharita, her parent’s live in Saint Martin.  Their roof was ripped off by Hurricane Harvey and their home was further devastated by Hurricane Irma. (Pause) Are they bad people?  (Aside to congregation) I can assure you that they are not.

No.  This theology makes me feel very uncomfortable.  It makes me uncomfortable because I cannot believe that an all-powerful, compassionate God would wipe out Their children- especially because they are (make air quotes) “evil,” because isn’t evil subjective.  Especially when our tradition views the word “chet” or “sin,” not as an egregious and despicable act against Divine law, but as a misstep.  I believe that Avinu Malkenu, our loving Parent and Sovereign, understands that we can always do a little better, because we’re only human.  But also, didn’t God produce a rainbow at the end of the story as a sign of a brit, a Covenant, that this sort of destructive power would never happen again in response to the (make air quotes) evil ways of human beings?  

How can one really determine what evil is anyway?  In a galaxy far far away, Darth Vader is most often viewed throughout the Star Wars movies as an evil dictator bent on control of the galaxy.  But his story isn’t that simple.  Remember, when he takes off his mask before dying, he dies as one of the good guys.  Vader made a mistake, a huge mistake but still a “chet” or a misstep, when joining the Dark Side.  In the Star Wars films, throughout other fantasy stories, and in the Noah Account, evil is evil because the bad guys don’t know how to empathetically work with the good guys.  Noah is righteous, everyone else is evil.  But I suggest that there is more depth and complication in the background of our myth.  Perspective is key, and reality is different from fantasy.  Assuming that this story is somewhat based on human nature, I cannot believe that all of the people who were destroyed in the Flood were (use air quotes) “evil.”  I think that the supposed evil people wiped out in the Flood more closely reflect who we consider evil people today.  Think about our broken political system.  Evil exists on whichever side of a political or social spectrum that you do not identify with.  I propose that this same phenomenon of miscommunication, is the evil that propels God in the Noah story to destroy humanity.

So why do our modern floods and natural disasters come?  It is tempting to use tragedy to explain the ways of God in dealing with human faults.  Many religious responses to tragedy “assume that God is the cause of our suffering, and [they] try to understand why God would want us to suffer.  Is it for our own good, or is it a punishment we deserve, or could it be that God does not care what happens to us?  [...] [People are] left either hating [them]selves for deserving such a fate, or hating God for sending it to [them], when [they] did not deserve it.”

Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of “When Bad Things Happen to Good People,” asks us to think of another approach.  He writes “Maybe God does not cause our suffering.  Maybe it happens for some reason other than the will of God. [...]  Could it be that God does not cause the bad things that happen to us?  [...] Could it be that ‘How could God do this to me?’ is really the wrong question for us to ask?"  (”When Bad Things Happen to Good People, pp. 34-35)

So what is the right question to ask?  I think that our answers can be explained by viewing the Flood Account side-by-side with the Tower of Babel story, which also appears in this week’s parsha.  The Tower of Babel narrative is the Jewish version of a myth where people build a tall tower so that they, according to many of our commentators, could rebel, resort to idolatry, and rule the human race (On parshat Noach, The Book of Genesis Commentary by Judaica Press Books of the Bible, ed. Rabbi Moses Feinstein, p. 135).  Both the Tower of Babel and the Flood stories can be viewed as metaphors for how we communicate with one another, or really how we don’t communicate with one another. 

I propose that the “evilness” of the individuals before the Flood, really was just miscommunication among people.  Humans in the story, as humans do now, do not know how to talk to one another, unlike the builders of the Tower of Babel who use their one language to work together for an evil purpose.  Instead of sending a flood this time, God forces them to each speak different languages, thus making it impossible to communicate and complete their horrendous project.  Today, we live with a direct parallel in the fact that although we can speak the same language, our divisiveness has made it nearly impossible to work together making it seem like many of us do speak different languages.  And if you notice, many of those who do speak the same language, in the sense that they are like-minded, have been hard at work at creating their own evil Tower of Babels in the form of inhumane legislation, divisive and despicable words, and actions bent on hurting others.  In our evil world of “alternative facts” and “fake news” we must work to speak the same language and build a very different kind of Tower, while not being afraid to condemn baseless hatred when someone is threatened.

I am not suggesting that recent natural disasters are a merely a Divine Response to this problem of miscommunication, but I am suggesting that we need to learn to talk to one another.  Although, it will not necessarily stop floods and earthquakes and fires,  it will help us to rebuild, and possibly stop extreme weather challenges, terrorism, mass shootings and other catastrophes.  Learning each other’s languages will help us to rebuild bridges and roads, provide food and water to those in need, and help bereaved families.  In the aftermath of tragedy, talking to one another will help us to build a better world with love.

That is what the rainbow represents.  God puts this symbol in the heavens, to teach us that seeing the humanity in every last person is key to making a world that we can all be proud of.  

“אֶת־קַשְׁתִּ֕י נָתַ֖תִּי בֶּֽעָנָ֑ן וְהָֽיְתָה֙ לְא֣וֹת בְּרִ֔ית בֵּינִ֖י וּבֵ֥ין הָאָֽרֶץ׃ ”

“Et-kashti natati be’anan v’hayta le’ot b’rit banai uvein haaretz”

“I placed my rainbow in the clouds, and it will serve as a symbol of the Covenant,” the brit, “between Me and the earth.”  

(Gn. 9:13)

Notice the past tense.  “Et-kashti natati be’anan” “I placed my rainbow in the clouds.”  The beautiful rainbow, a reminder to see every human being as created in the Image of God, was present the entire time.  And that rainbow still smiles down on us, especially when met with a disastrous storm.  (The Ramban on Gn. 9:13, The Book of Genesis Commentary by Judaica Press Books of the Bible, ed. Rabbi Moses Feinstein, p. 123)