#But she still has a number. So the universe is finite

[thewertsearch]

TT: We are like the emissaries to what lies beyond this small bubble in their unfathomable dark foam. TT: Derse skirts its edge, and during the lunar eclipse, we graze it, and that's when their intent for us becomes clear.

Is that it, then? You can only understand Horrorspeak when you're in the Furthest Ring?

If so, it must take nerves of steel to actually try and negotiate with them. We've seen what that place looks like without Bubble protection, and it is not pretty.

TG: what am i supposed to do [...] TT: They will teach you how to navigate the unnavigable. TT: The result should be a map. [...] TG: why TT: To plot a course through the Furthest Ring. TG: plot a course to what

Aradia said Rose would never find the Green Sun - and she was right.

But Rose isn't the only Derse-born Player in the session.

TG: whats the deal with this thing [...] TT: I don't know that there is a deal with it. [...] TT: It is what it sounds like. TT: A huge sun out in the literal middle of nowhere, and it is bright green. TT: It is simply, TT: The Green Sun.

I feel like Rose is being a little too flippant here. If you're planning on messing with one of the cores of reality, I don't think there's such a thing as too much caution.

The Sun is an enormous, intensely supernatural pseudostar of unknown, possibly unknowable origin. The game taps it to create First Guardians, but we don't know if that's its intended purpose, or if it even has an intended purpose. Unlike everything else in Sburb, it is not duplicated across sessions, doesn't feature in the game's storyline, and is only referenced in a cryptic stone monument buried hundreds of feet under LOLAR.

It's not even in the Medium! It's 'part of Sburb' only in the loosest possible sense, and feels more like something completely foreign to the game that Skaia is just using. Even the Horrorterrors feature more heavily in the game than the Sun.

Rose doesn't seem too curious, but I am. Just what the fuck is this thing? Is it the only one of its kind, or does Skaia draw its power from other enormous structures, hidden deep in oblivion?

TT: It is nearly twice the mass of our universe.

Scaled against every Sburb session, that's actually pretty small.

We know from Doc Scratch's introduction that every planet supporting intelligent life will have a First Guardian. Every universe will have at least one of these, since its creators will want somewhere to live. There are also universes with a surplus of intelligent species - the Alternian Empire has to be conquering someone.

In other words, this Sun is powering, at an absolute minimum, one First Guardian per universe. It's impossible to estimate how many universes there are - but if (as was implied) every intelligent species is destined to spawn sessions, and if even one session on a planet is successful every million years, the numbers get exponential really fast.

From a metaphysical standpoint, 10^50-ish kg just isn't that much. The First Guardians themselves probably have more collective mass than the Sun.

[artbyblastweave]

Hey, I just read this superhero series called Rising Stars. Have you heard of that before, and do you have any thoughts on it?

Personally I loved it. 113 children in utero get affected by the energy of a comet passing overhead, and start developing powers. They all get different levels of power, some never realise what their powers are, some just straight up suck.

Like there's a guy who's totally indestructible. But he's not and stronger or faster, he just can't be damaged. And he can't feel anything tactile either. So he over indulges in taste because it's one of the only sense he has, and ends up obese.

There's a girl with telekinesis, who can only manipulate small objects. The carotid artery is a small object, so she gets headhunted by the CIA for assassination work.

And then there's the reveal that their powers operate off a shared energy pool, and if one dies the remaining power gets shared among the remainder. And then people start turning up dead...

Rising Stars has been near and dear to my heart for a very long time. It's by no means perfect, but one of the things I find the most compelling about it is how it positions superhumanity as a fundamentally extremely finite phenomenon.

Works in which superpowers are introduced to a world that didn't previously have them will often break in one of two directions; either they'll treat it as a new, sustainable equilibrium that will somehow fail to change anything of import, or else it's a floodgate that opens and completely wipes away the status quo. But both scenarios generally take for granted that capes as a general phenomenon are here to stay- that there's some replacement-rate mechanism at play. Rising Stars depicts a world where this isn't true, and moreover it very quickly becomes clear to everyone that this isn't true- that these 113 people are the only superhumans the world is ever gonna get. That's enough to be extremely disruptive, but not necessarily paradigm shifting- and the worldbuilding reflects that in interesting ways, the sense that the reaction of many is just that they've gotta wait these assholes out.

Maybe some of them habitually dine-and-dash at upscale restaurants but what are you going to do, call the army every time? Not worth it. There's fewer than a hundred of these guys, it's not like letting it slide is going to be the start of something. One of them takes over Chicago and runs it as a fiefdom? Okay, that's bad, but it's one city and everyone else who's similarly inclined already rallied under her aegis, still not a paradigm shift. The entire containment strategy for the ones who are habitually supervillainous is to ring up one or two of the ones who decided to be superheroes and dump them in Antarctica, forcing them to walk back. Obviously not a great solution but what's the incentive to come up with something better? This isn't a growing population that demands a systemic response, it's the same six or seven guys every time, and you're only gonna have to put up with them for so long.

And the series really did a lot with the fact that these people all know each other- a small-town's graduating class worth of superhumans who all grew up together. The "oh, what's so-and-so up to these days" energy of it all. The comparable sense of wasted potential as you get into your late-twenties-early-thirties, take a look at what everyone you grew up with has been up to lately, and really seriously evaluate what it is, exactly, that you've actually accomplished with your life, compared to what you thought you were going to do when you were a teenager. The Specials don't even have the luxury of existing in a conventional superhero universe where their personal mediocrity (real or perceived) will come out in the wash due to all the other superpeople running around-they're wasting more than just their own individual lives through their inaction or failure, and the series milks that growing sense of rat-in-a-trap tension as their numbers start to really dwindle in earnest over the course of the comic.

[paradoxcase]

Chapter 40, 41, and 42 of Harrow the Ninth

I did read Chapter 43 also, so I got the explanation of what's going on here, but I wanted one post just to talk about all these, uh, AUs, I guess? I gather Harrow's dream bubble river bubble is just going a bit haywire because she's badly wounded or something

The first one seems to be an AU where Harrow was not a necromancer, but Gideon was, and Harrow's parents adopted Gideon and disowned Harrow, if I'm understanding correctly. I wonder if they just opted not to murder 200 children in this universe, or if they did do that but the thanergy somehow caused Gideon to become a necromancer instead of Harrow because they miscalculated something? TBH, this seems like a completely different genre of enemies-to-lovers than the version where Harrow is suicidal due to being told constantly about the 200 dead children

Yeah, this is exactly what Harrow would be like as cavalier, or, I guess, aspiring cavalier, since I gather you have to actually be attached to a necromancer in order to really be a cavalier. I gather the only other options on the Ninth other than becoming a cavalier would be to just become a miscellaneous nun, or to realize Gideon's original dream of running off to join the Cohort. Although, there is also a Harrow-joins-the-Cohort AU in this set as well. Harrow says it's her right to carry the blade because she was born into the noble house, so presumably it's just that there's no other respectable career available for the nobility if they aren't necromancers

Something interesting here is that they both seem to be assuming that being Gideon's cavalier automatically makes one the cavalier primary, whereas based on Judith's notes about everyone's history that doesn't actually seem to be the case for at least most of the other Houses, since a lot of the other cavaliers became cavalier primary either before or after getting attached to their necromancer. The only one I can remember off the top of my head where it seemed like becoming the cavalier to the heir necessarily made you cavalier primary was in the case of Magnus and Abigail, but I could be misremembering. It also didn't seem to me like this kind of challenge that Harrow is issuing here would be a normative thing to happen, that someone would challenge a necromancer's cavalier for the right to take their place with that necromancer, it seemed like cavalierships were meant to be a death-do-us-part thing, and a lot of the pairs seem to have been specifically selected for compatibility at birth or a very young age (e.g. Mayonnaise Uncle and Colum), and that compatibility was more important than something like martial ability

This is not a context where I expected to see the word "flog", so I looked it up:

Since the author is a kiwi, I guess she means definition 4, rather than definition 3? That's really interesting, I had no idea "flog" was used in either of those senses

Right, so, this is the cavalier!Harrow version of opening the Tomb, isn't it? Except in this case Gideon intervenes on her behalf, instead of telling on her. Or maybe she did both?

Interesting that Samael is just Anastasia's "warrior servant" here, and not specifically called out as her cavalier, or maybe that's just another way of saying it?

Harrow does know the contents of the Noniad, so presumably this is in there in some capacity, or she's at least heard Ortus talk about this. I wonder what Lyctor Nonius supposedly stood against? There's a very finite number of them

Funny that the role reversal didn't change Crux's opinion of anyone, he has no truck with this adoption nonsense and is still 100% loyal to Harrow and hates Gideon

The next one seems to be an arranged marriage AU of some sort, I feel like these are getting progressively more and more griddlehark content, or just more and more direct Gideon involvement as they go, possibly due to Harrow gradually resurrecting her memories of Gideon

I note that in the last one, Crux had a speaking part, and in this one, Aiglamene has a speaking part. According to Magnus and Abigail in Chapter 43, the major roles in these are played by ghosts in the River, but as far as I'm aware Crux and Aiglamene are still alive on Pluto. Did something happen on Pluto since the last time we saw them? Although Corona seems to be in this one, too, albeit not as a speaking part

Ianthe's soup recipe, lmao

The third one is a Harrow-joins-the-Cohort AU, but it's also... a coffee shop AU, and I guess "BARI" is meant to recall "barista"? Ok, look, the reason people write coffee shop AUs (and high school AUs, and college roommate AUs, etc.) is that those are everyday social situations that are very familiar to the people writing the story, so that's just naturally what they fall back on when they want to write an AU, they want to bring the characters into their everyday lives, or write about them in a situation that they have a lot of first-hand knowledge of. The first AU is in fact a social situation that Harrow would at least be pretty familiar with, even if it's not her actual everyday experience, and the arranged marriage thing, that does definitely seem like something that happens in this universe, it's been mentioned several times at different points, even if Harrow has never personally been involved in something like that. But I don't think Harrow has any personal experience of anything like a coffee shop, or with interacting with food service people in general? Why is there a coffee shop AU here? I guess the reason the last Canaan House episode established Harrow's familiarity with coffee was to set up the basis for this coffee shop AU, but it seems kind of odd given that Gideon had no familiarity at all with hot drinks and Harrow also had no familiarity with tea or how to drink it without burning herself

Did Isaac have earrings in Gideon the Ninth, or is this just a reference to how he died?

Ahh, 14-year-old logic

Also, speaking of mumps, why are people getting mumps in this setting? Even if the Resurrection/etc. wiped out all knowledge of modern medicine, is 10,000 years really not enough time in which to reinvent the MMR vaccine? Also, I seem to remember now that Dulcinea claimed that her breathing tube had been invented by Palamedes, which means it somehow hadn't been invented before Palamedes. You would think that the kind of anatomical knowledge that necromancy would require would mean that medical science is more advanced, not less

Is this "absolutely not, I'm not going to be part of your coffee shop AU about you and your crush", or "absolutely not, you're not dragging my poor dead kids into this River bubble"? It seemed so perfectly to be the first one when I got to the end of the chapter, but then when I read Chapter 43, I started to think it might actually be the second

[birdo-is-here]

Naut lore dump below because I can and I love this weird looking squid

I was originally planning to properly write out the scene here but after several days of me getting a maximum of 40 words down, I decided i’d just explain what happens

Besides, the way his backstory is revealed is second-handedly so I wouldn’t usually have to write it anyway

Warning this is quite long don’t feel pressured to finish it immediately lmao, I also ramble for bits of it but I eventually get on track

Well. Speaking of squids, here’s a fun fact: Nautilus wasn’t always the squid man he is right now, did you know?

Actually, he looked like a normal human man at first, kinda long, curled hair with a darker skin tone. Just kinda a guy yk

What happened, you may ask? Well, i’ll get into that soon

Here’s another fun fact: Nautilus was the first Off-Scripter. Ever.

When he first popped up as an Off-Scripter, Birdo wasn’t entirely sure what to do with him. Taking her chances, she kinda just decided to… leave him be for the time being until something happened

Nautilus has always been a pirate. Even before he became the inter-dimensional one he is now, he was a normal pirate then as well. Now, his universe is from the 12th century, but that’s because that universe is what I call an “Early Bloomer”, which is fairly self explanatory. It’s a universe that is aging relatively faster than the others for whatever reason is given.

So currently for Naut’s universe, while it’s the 12th century, it’s really closer to the 17th - 18th century. Early and Late Bloomers are actually quite common in The Birdhouse, and are usually just left to their own devices to develop

Now, back on topic, you may be asking: How did Naut become an Off-Scripter? And my response to that is: No one knows! Not even Birdo knows, it’s a completely random and unknown phenomenon which can happen to anyone for any reason; intentionally or not (though it’s usually unintentional)

And here’s where an issue arises: When it was just Naut as the sole Off-Scripter, it was mostly fine. His own universe had a few… odd moments, but they were usually able to be steered back on course pretty easily.

That is, until more Off-Scripters began appearing over the multiverse. And so, Birdo acted accordingly. Well, only really on Nautilus first as a sort of “test subject” to see how their little method would go. What’s this method, you ask?

Well. While Birdo couldn’t directly get rid of an Off-Scripter, he could make the environment around the Off-Scripter inhabitable. Bring an indirect death on the Off-Scripter through storms, natural disasters, and for some reason, lots of water.

Basically, Birdo sent a storm of flood and fire on Nautilus’s universe in an attempt to kill him, figuring that if no corner of the universe was left untouched, there would be nowhere for him to go, and he’d die.

Fortunately, that did not work. At all. It certainly rendered Naut’s home dimension uninhabitable! In fact, there was not a single survivor in the entire universe. Twas not an infinite universe, that one, and there for it had a finite number of inhabitants. Well, not a single survivor save for Nautilus.

In the midst of the flood and chaos, Naut, still a human at the time, instinctively tried to save his own life in the quickest way he knew how at the time: He turned himself half squid. Well, half squid is debatable, he is some sort of cephalopod-adjacent humanoid creature

Now, previously, Naut did know he was not a ‘normal guy’, ykwim?? He knew he was an Off-Scripter, and had a natural knowledge of the multiverse to accompany that. Honestly, he’d mostly just been trying to live his life as a pirate back then, trying to ignore the big picture and keep to what he’s comfortable with (I get it bestie), but unfortunately, there’s never been a time where a good thing has lasted forever

What I mean to say without rambling is, Nautilus did have a general knowledge of Birdo and the other Founders, but never really paid much attention to them.

Until Birdo of course.

Naut, distraught and utterly traumatised; having nearly drowned in the floods before going squid, eventually spotted the culprit of his universe’s downfall

He confronted them on the elephant in the room that is killing his entire dimension, and Birdo explained the situation. They explained the problem with the Off-Scripters and what they had originally planned, and Naut asked if it was worth it to wipe out his entire reality, literally

Birdo waves it off, saying they can just make a new one and start over, which only pisses Naut off more, asking what’d happen to him and his home. Birdo explains that the universe will likely have to be cleaned up and absorbed by The Null (the Birdhouse’s garbage disposal)

They then go on to say, suddenly disappearing from sight, that they’re gonna give the “execution method” one last try, but do something a little more direct this time

Birdo then reappears in a form a little more menacing; An almost spirit-like, tall figure that looks similar to the small, robed creature Naut saw originally, only this time exaggerated to appear terrifying and divine; like the god they actually were

Naut is knocked over by an odd force, and he looks up to see Birdo brandishing a large spear, pointed directly at him. Their eyes are unreadable in this instance; Large, green inhuman eyes.

Nautilus is terrified, of course he is, he’s about to did, but… he doesn’t find himself doing much to fight back. I mean, think about it, he’s just lost everything he’s ever known, what point is there in going on, anyway? It’s best to just let the god get what she wants.

And so, while he raises an arm and prepares himself for his doom, he doesn’t do anything. Birdo watches him, studying his expressions, spear hovering in the air a moment longer… before she sighs, and lowers the spear to her side. She mutters something about how it “probably won’t work anyway”, her form growing slightly less imposing as she glances away from Nautilus.

And then, Birdo seems to dissipate into nothing. They disappear again, though permanently this time, their voice styaing a moment longer, mumbling almost disappointedly “do whatever you want, I don’t care that much honestly”

Naut took a moment to wonder if the god of this world was a teenager in disguise, before he stood again.

He looked out over the burnt, waterlogged husk of a world that was his home, and his brows furrowed. He hated Birdo with every fibre of his being. He hated all the Founders for allowing this.

But he decided to follow Birdo’s suggestion just this once: He was going to do whatever he wanted, and hell, he wanted to be a pirate

End of writing lore dump notes: If you’re wondering, yes he is afraid of water after this experience. Quite a lot, actually:(

[smol-grey-tea]

How do you personally think Endless would play out after the ending, with all of the dolls living together in the same universe? I really do wonder how it would be, but I can only find a limited number of people putting their thoughts out there!

I think, by Endless, you mean the end of Nameless hehe

But to answer honestly, 🤔ᴴᴹ

I don't know 😂

Yea tbh I've never rly thought about it - but for you, Anon, I will think about it!! ^^

I'll start by saying that oh god this isn't functional or easy or perfect in the slightest

Second of all though, I do think it can and will (eventually) work.

Every single one of them in that house loves Eri and Eri loves every single one of them. Canonically! The dolls all team up to find her!

I believe the answer to this situation is polyamory. You're probably thinking "there's no way those guys would be willing to share her"

But to that I say, there's no way those guys would be willing to share her at first.

I think at the beginning they might urge her to choose just one of them to love and be with. And at the start, she'd understand, and she would try. She'd try her darndest. And they'd try their darndest too to convince her to choose them

But I think at the end of it all, after everything they do to convince her, she would inevitably decide not to decide. She loves all of them. She just does. And her love for one does not lessen the love for any other. Love is not finite. It can be shared, multiplied. And she could never choose just one.

They're all hoping she chooses them, and have kind of been fighting between themselves about it, but don't rly know how to feel at her decision. In the end tho, I'd say they all come to terms with it, since really, no one loses

But there is perhaps a more pressing issue. Something that's at an even higher risk of being lost

The house

It's already small enough just with the 6 of them, but now Nameless has moved in too? The living situation is sure to be the cause of many fights and breakdowns

Do some of them move out? If so, who? Where? How do they decide?

They spend a while trying to problem solve, sleeping on couches and on floors and doubled up, or somewhere else entirely. But that's just so impractical..

Eri decides she can no longer stand to see her beloved dolls fighting over who gets to stay and who has to move out. If one doll is having to move out, everyone is.

They have to sell the house....

None of it is easy. It's draining, exhausting and they almost change their mind so many times. The house full of memories of Eri, Nameless, her grandpa, her parents. Both her childhood and her life with the dolls. All of it, having to go.

And it's sad. It is so sad. How inanimate objects can carry so much meaning.

But Eri realises that the love and safety that her house gave her won't disappear, just because the objects that filled it are no longer there, just because she won't be living there anymore. Although her diaries held her memories, they would still be with her, whether they were ruined or not, whether she even remembered or not. The memories still mean the world, even if they were lost to time

She realises that you have to let go of the past in favour of the present. Sometimes, that is just what love demands of you. What life demands of you. To continue and make the choice to love, you have to move on.

And they all move in to a much bigger house that can provide much better for them

I think that's sweet..

As for the dolls, as they watch each other trying to prove themselves to Eri, as they compete, they actually realise they like each other more than they knew.

Lance and Red be like 😳😳😳 maybe gettin to like each other more than necessary yknow? Maybe they don't mind sharing a room so much anymore yknow?

I'm ngl. Yeonho's route kind of reads like they wanted to write his story but forgot the romance element til the very end. And I don't rly see him n Eri as particularly romantic. So. I think that he yea would still be jealous at first ofc but not in a romantic context

And imo. I believe that Tei and Yuri only grew to dislike each other because Yuri found out about Tei's danger towards Eri. So once Tei becomes less dangerous, they might become more friendly?

As for Nameless, I also kinda view him similarly to Yeonho, I don't see him n Eri in such a romantic context either 🤔ᴴᴹ I see him as such a cuddly bear.. He's just a guy who rly loves cuddles, that's my opinion

Idk what else to add. I guess I had more to say than I thought I did??? Quite profound as well.

Actually. I'd say you could make an entire sequel out of this concept. What if we did the whole thing again, where every route is each doll's love letter to Eri, then that gives us multiple endings. But if you do every route, then you can pick all of them and continue on the journey?

After I post this, I'm gonna reblog a post of mine that I made previously on this subject cuz my ideas then were pretty cool too

But yea, I didn't know I'd think about this so hard 😂 now I wanna rly make that into a fic or something??? Something has to happen about it

Thank you for asking me this, Anon!!! It's incredibly appreciated, I feel like on the Cheritz tag I'm living in dog years or something, cuz it always feels like it's been weeks since the last update when it's only been a couple days - so I rly appreciate this!!!! ^^ (*ˊᗜˋ*)ღԵհɑղƘՏღ

[thespineoftherighteous]

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the upper classmen being a mirror to each monster? That's not an idea I've seen before and I am Intrigued.

oooh anon this is such a scrumptious delicious concept thanks for asking. but also I definitely wasn't the first one to come up with this..there was a post I saw last year? the year before? that broke the parallels down really well. I'll try to find it

anyway so I think the basis of it is that each of the upperclassmen mirror one of the monsters in regards to the main issues they struggle with. more than that though they represent what it's like to find a way to live through those problems, that overcoming them can be done, because they're more developed, more matured than the monsters. and, because by the end of the series all the monsters have grown a lot from where they were at the beginning, you can see them at a point (or getting to a point) in life not unlike where their respective upperclassman is.

there's Matt and Aaron: both of them struggled hugely with drug addiction (influenced by their parents), both of them were at a point where shit could've gone downhill fast and both of them were forced out of it by the same person. although Matt technically got clean after Aaron, he seemed to get mentally healthier much faster (which makes sense given the difference in relationships, support, goals, etc of their situations). Matt immediately sees it as a chance given to him to start over; Aaron, perhaps because he still had something as equally consuming as drugs- Andrew and his deals- doesn't seem to evolve in that way until close to the end of the series. you can also see how they resemble each other in how they don't respond to provoking shit as much as the rest of the team (they're like the chill ones of their respective groups, with different vibes) but they will rise to violence if someone they care about is threatened.

Allison and Nicky are an easy one to see, I think. both of them had families who wanted them to be a certain way, who would rather kick them out than accept them as they were. the difference between them is that Allison has accepted it with a "fuck them" attitude while Nicky (as far as mid-trk) still reaches out, still wants to have a relationship with them. he still desperately craves that love and acceptance so much that he almost voluntarily keeps getting hurt, in a way that Allison has already decided isn't worth it.

there's Renee and Andrew: both deadly protective, these are the goalies, the protectors, the ones watching everyone's backs; both had unfathomably awful childhoods and both cover up/protect themselves from said childhoods in particular ways. Renee is on relatively good terms with the universe while Andrew, as in control as he makes himself out to be, is searching for something he thinks he could never have..for purpose, and for the nothing that he finds in Neil. with these two, it's never that Andrew's boundaries and distrust of others are things he needs to grow out of but that Renee represents a different response- she becomes the kindness she was never shown, he holds a knife to anything that could hurt him again.

Dan and Kevin: they're the ones that could've done everything right but still would've had circumstances work against them. they might be good but, according to others, they're not good enough, always dismissed, always overshadowed. the stark difference between them is that Kevin believes in the 2 on his face (until he doesn't) and Dan never does. the doubt bounces off Dan while Kevin absorbs it like sponge until someone like Andrew wrings it out of him. Kevin puts his full weight on his support (until he doesn't); Dan's never had that support to begin with so she only knows how to live without it. Dan knows her worth and will project it in bright orange writing, Kevin was taught his worth in finite numbers, so long as his feet stay on the court, and he's never certain of it (until he is). the glorious thing about this, though, is that you can literally see on page when Kevin overcomes this. it takes every fucking ounce of his strength but he gets the tattoo. he walks out with his stick in his left hand. he beats Riko, in ever way. it's magnificent. (I digress)

and then there's Seth and Neil. I think they could be interchangeable with Dan and Kevin actually but I like this one better. I don't think they necessarily mirror each other as cleanly as the others and I don't want to force it for sake of having everyone neatly paired off. but shit... they're the end and the beginning, respectively. Neil is the first success story, the embodiment of what Wymack's team stands for, Seth is an example of why that's what it stands for. Neil has no life, Seth has no use for his. Seth falls victim to the fate Neil spent years of his life running away from.

all that being said. it's not to say that the upperclassmen have completely healed from their pasts and don't have plenty issues of their own. I think anyone can see that *all* of the foxes have room to grow. it's just that they're a lot more developed in where they're at in life. and I think the monsters are not all at the same place in their healing because that's not something that's linear and it's not always as easily seen as a tattoo on the face. I think Kevin and Neil, for example, are at a more adjusted place by the end of tkm (Neil more so) but you can see all of them heading in better directions.

it's also not to say that to Heal™ the monsters have to be exactly where the upperclassmen are. that's also not how it works. but it is working. and (hot take? maybe?) I think that's something Nora does well. she lets them grow. their growth isn't always on page or in the definitive shape of a queen tattoo or finished by the end of the series but it is certainly there.

[alastanor]

In less than a week my feed has been plagued by the "hot takes" of entitled fans of the Hazbin and Helluva universe.

As a result, I know I promised some analytical information regarding what we know of Hazbin's version of hell thus far, which will be included in this post. But there will be some other things added as well to address some of the more frequently expressed "concerns" I have seen being (rather rudely) expressed in posts.

Some of the things I will be talking about in these posts, so while I will be utilizing quotes or things said in @total-mal 's very well articulated response post, I recommend going to read that response post in it's entirety. Like... now.

The complaints I tend to see typically fall along these lines.

So in this post I will be addressing these things and other things I typically see.

Story

As was very well put in the aforementioned post, the series of Hazbin barely has an hour of content. Yet for some reason people complain that it's a mess. How?

The Pilot itself is meant to establish the setting, who the characters are, what their relationships to each other are, establishing dynamic, and establish the premise of future story that is meant to follow. All of these things the pilot did exceedingly well. A pilot is NOT meant to drop dozens of hours worth of world lore and future plot points in one half hour segment. It is supposed to hook people into being interested in and watching the follow up episodes. Which, considering the rather quick cult following that preceded the pilot debut, I would say it did that and more even without the world lore dump people are demanding.

No story is going to give you every facet of the characters and the world they inhabit in the first episode or the first novel. No story worth it's weight in salt, that is. Any good story teller will tell you that content needs to be put on an IV drip as the story progresses, or else you will lose the majority of your audience's interest.

Helluva Boss is it's own standalone project set in the same universe as Hazbin, but it's job is not to provide lore for Hazbin. The kernel of lore we got from episode two was great. But that is very likely not going to be the norm every episode. Nor should anyone expect otherwise.

The comics were also their own projects, meant to strengthen an already existing narrative with Hazbin and establish both Angel and Alastor's motives for joining the Hotel. They are not meant to expand on the lore. Their existence could also very likely be overlooked by fans who only pay attention to what is popping up on Youtube or on their Twitter feed.

As for Addict, that began as a fan-created song Vivzie liked enough to animate into a music video which expanded on Angel and Cherri's relationship. It was not meant to be an entry to any Vivziepop Hell lore.

Hazbin is a story driven by its characters. This is why the characters are the focus and take up the majority of any screen time given to any entry of Hazbin. Mal puts it very well:

World

So this is where we will be getting into what we know so far about the world of Vivzie's hell.

So Vivzie's hell is, from what we understand, loosely based on Dante's inferno with other inspirations and deviations mixed in. For example, there are only seven circles of hell as opposed to 9.

In Dante's inferno only circle two through five are after the Seven Deadly Sins. Whereas in Vivziepop's version of hell, every circle is for one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

From what we understand so far, Pride is the top circle, or Ring. Sinners, AKA those who were alive prior to becoming demons, are only allowed to exist in Pride.

We do not know what "can only exist" means. As this doesn't imply that sinners can't leave Pride. Simply that they cannot exist anywhere else.

And also from what we understand, the big marker that differentiates each of the circles is the colors of the sky.

Pride, from what we have seen thus far, has a red sky.

While Greed has a green sky.

This is further confirmed on Twitter, however whether it was confirmed by Vivzie or one of the other official Twitters, I cannot recall.

Now, I know there are quite a few who keep asking this question.

And there are many who seem to think that this little detail means that the fact dump from official Twitters means the story and lore are ruined. This is actually false. Especially when you consider that Sinners are not a finite population. Nor is their influx a small trickle. So expanding Sinners into other parts of hell is only a temporary solution to a more overarching problem. It may slow down the necessity for purges, but it would also increase the number needed to be purged each time a purge was necessary. Further, it is doubtful that Lucifer would be keen on the idea of angels traveling deeper into Hell just as it is doubtful that he sees a reason to be exceedingly merciful to sinners- the creation he detests and is more or less what brought him to Hell to begin with. It also would erase any place to escape for Hell-born demons.

So in this regard, no. Nothing is ruined. People just aren't paying attention. The devil is in the details, after all.

As for what the difference is between circles and rings, perhaps this will shed some light.

Rings seem to be segments of a circle that separate sinners by the subcategory of their sin in each circle. Whether or not Vivziepop's version of hell follows this, I personally doubt it. Ring and Circle, from observation, seem to be used interchangeably. So the two could very well be the same thing.

The other bits we know are lore facts Vivzie has given previously that may no longer be true as the world exists now. For example, previously Alastor was scared of dogs. But more recently, Vivzie said that is no longer true and Alastor simply just does not like them. So any older facts should be taken with a grain of salt until they are reconfirmed.

Switching gears on the world, there have been complaints popping up that Vivziepop's hell is not "hell-y" enough because there is not enough fire and brimstone.

To take a phrase from total-mal once more, there are countless alternate depictions of hell as hell being other people instead of the place itself. The phrase exists from Sartre's No Exit, but has been revisited numerous times in other media depictions of hell to display that the definition of "punishment" can be broadened to a much larger spectrum than originally imagined.

In the Hazbin universe of Hell, punishment is the constant threat of physical and emotional harm from those around you, not unlike being in prison or living in a ghetto. You have the increased potential to be abused or taken advantage of if you show a moment's weakness.

And while some in the demon hierarchy might have it better than others, there is still the constant threat of being killed or overthrown by someone stronger or someone just wanting to prove themselves.

In the Hazbin universe of hell, you wear clues to your life, your sins, and your death on the outside for all to see (and in some cases, manipulate). You are thrust into a demon hierarchy one wrung up from the lowest class, unless you are lucky and strong enough to become an overlord. In which case, then you are two wrungs up from the lowest class. And your punishment is living every day with the constant threat of those around you. Of always needing to have your guard up because someone will take advantage of you or worse. That isn't even mentioning the annual threat of the purge.

Livestreams

This is another one that I see get mentioned and awful fucking lot in the complaint/concern/hot take posts.

There are always complaints about how the livestreams are useless, serve no purpose, or are just "jerkoff sessions." Mind, these same complaints almost always seem to come from the same people complaining about having no information about the show or having no lore surrounding the universe or the story.

Nevermind that Vivzie and the cast are all under NDA and cannot disclose much that isn't already known about the show and, where VAs are concerned, cannot do any voice lines that go beyond what has already been said in the pilot lines.

The Livestreams serve SEVERAL purposes, however. One of those purposes is to drum up interest surrounding Hazbin and Helluva, as well as to advertise and to disclose any lore that they have permission to disclose to the audience. Something to whet their appetites as they wait for the small Indie studio A24 to finish production of Hazbin's first season in the middle of a pandemic. Because that last bit people seem to forget is still ongoing.

Without those livestreams done by Viv and the cast, many of the impatient fans in this fandom would be practically breaking down the door on Vivzie's DMs demanding to know where Hazbin is or why she seems to have given up on it. Or at least, more than what is currently going on now anyway.

People need to calm down, let the Devs do their job, and pay more attention to the details given in what we have thus far. Vivzie has done a GREAT job at eluding to the bigger picture in her details. Particularly where her characters are concerned. And I for one am here for it.

[galaxina-the-pyro]

So I'm kinda curious, what is your "Like Father, Like Son" Au?

Oh my...I was honestly afraid someone was gonna ask me this, but I kinda wanna answer it so...yeah. X'D

The AU started off as a "Doof is Phineas' dad" fan fic that evolved into something else entirely...sort of. Doof's not Phineas' BIO dad in this AU to put it simply - that just wouldn't make sense for the story I've written for it.

Basically, the AU takes place in "another 2nd Dimension" - the 2nd Dimension with the 2D cast still exists, this just takes place on another route (because I doubt that the number of dimensions is that finite if the movie is to be believed). Kinda like @lyllaotterofhalfworld's Platydad AU, everyone there is kinda the opposite of their canon counterparts, only I take a different approach.

Phineas is the main protagonist of this AU - he is an orphaned/abandoned little ragamuffin that Doofenshmirtz and Schnitzel ended up taking in after finding him in a dumpster. He is creative and fun-loving much like the Phineas we know, but has a much more destructive way of going about it, often choosing to blow stuff up than build something in particular (though he CAN build things and has - his favorite part is just the demolition). He's a little troublemaker who likes to break rules, worldly possessions, and starts some fires here and there. He's also inhumanely strong and indestructible, with boundless amounts of near-unhealthy optimism. He can be pretty selfish and a brat, often at odds with the people who took him in, but ultimately is very caring towards others in spite of his more unstable tendencies. He's an adventurous daredevil that is incredibly extroverted.

Doofenshmirtz is the deuteragonist, and much like in the 2nd Dimension, he is a dictator (though his reign goes far beyond just the 2nd Dimension). He is almost nothing like his counterpart - rarely cracks jokes or smiles, is very no-nonsense, and is incredibly intimidating - it's also very clear that while he never wanted to be a dictator, he is the only reason why the inhabitants of Danville have not been killed by their own hubris. He's often the straight man to everyone else's insanity, though he too is quite the character, often displaying the same kind of reckless behavior and Phineas (and even somewhat encouraging it). He tends to keep people at arms length, but cares a lot for Phineas and Schnitzel's well-being and happiness. He lost both Charlene and Vanessa in a blimp accident and was never the same ever since. He also has a softer side when it comes to animals, stating that they're easier to understand than most people. Though he often is fine with Phineas' antics, he's equally overprotective of him.

Schnitzel (my OC) is the tritagonist, and is Doof's righthand (wo)man. She's a medical professional who's in charge of multiple factions of DEI, and is always stressed and suffers from high levels of anxiety. Always having to keep an eye on Phineas and to make sure Doofenshmirtz doesn't feel like being an idiot, she's often the voice-of-reason, or at least tries to be, her fear often driving most of her decisions. She is incredibly motherly, but can be very blunt and violent when provoked to rage. The universe seems to absolutely hate her, seeing as she's often the target of a lot of the slapstick in the AU. She's Doofenshmirtz's love interest and closest friend, being incredibly loyal to him and Phineas, as well as to Charlene even after she died. In spite of being the universe's punching bag, she often comes through when the call to action arises.

The AU centers on these three dealing with multiple antagonistic forces such as the OWCA, a "heroic" organization that experiments on animal agents to take on DEI (led by Monogram, the man that supposedly was responsible for Charlene and Vanessa's deaths), The Resistance, a group of teens bent on overthrowing Doofenshmirtz by any means necessary (that's also lead by Phineas' older sister, Candace, who very much hates him and is sadly blinded by anger to see that she's not being reasonable), and even LOVEMUFFIN, the very organization that rules over most of the planet that Doofenshmirtz and Schnitzel both work for. They also deal with a bunch of misadventures as well, some typical familial drama, that kinda stuff.

A lot of the times Isabella, Phineas' best friend/crush (the boy just...loves her so very much, he can't even, if only she frigging knew, come on, it's so obvious), will tagalong on these adventures along with the likes of Ferb (who is NOT Phineas' stepbrother in this, but is considered his OTHER best friend - really, Ferb is trying to assassinate Doofenshmirtz for Candace, but grows attached to the very annoying triangular redhead), Buford, Baljeet, Irving, Django, and the Homicide Girls (the Fireside Girls of this AU). There's more to them as well, but that's about the gist of it.

Phineas also has a hamster named Freddie (ala @sortofcaffeinateddoodles) instead of Perry - I'm not actually entirely sure what Perry's role IS in this AU, anymore. He's definitely THERE, I'm just not sure what his relationship is with everyone else, or even if he's a good guy or a bad guy. Freddie's fun - he's got a knife. No one knows where he got it from, but he has one, and Doofenshmirtz and Schnitzel are concerned.

This is mostly a very self-indulgent AU, that I guarantee is not for everyone - especially since I portray certain characters like Candace and Linda in particular in a very bad light, some characters like Vanessa are dead/are probably gonna die, and the fact that there are OCs in this story, blahblahblah. Oh. And they cuss a LOT - this isn't a kid friendly AU. I do plan on writing a fic where the canon-verse meets this AU, cuz I feel like it would be interesting for the characters to interact. Though I already do that with @lyllaotterofhalfworld, and our three-way AU where her AU, my AU, and the canon-verse Phineases all interact and stuff, and it's great and I wanna do more of that.

[owlsinathens]

✍, 🛒, 💌, 🧐, 🤲, 🎉

✍ Do I have a beta? On and off. For some time now, the wonderful and talented @st-clements-steps has agreed to look over my fics and ficlets, but I would say she's more my Alpha reader than a beta and I am forever grateful for all her help 🥰🥰🥰

🛒 Some common things/themes/feels etc I like to have in my fics.... hm, difficult one. I always think the readers are probably better to answer this questions than myself. Plus, I only have the one pairing I'm fixated on, so there's a finite number of fics I could write without repeating themes etc, and that point has long passed 😅 I can say though, I'll never get tired of throwing in some sort of Jon is Theon's saltwife stuff.

💌 How do I feel about comments and feedback? Love. Like, LOVE. It's my salt and bread. A huge motivation to keep me going/writing. I live to entertain, so someone telling me they liked my stuff or it made them laugh/cry/etc makes my heart soar. I get that commenting can be hard, and taking a lot of energy. I used to be bad at commenting myself (it's still HARD). But getting feedback on a labour of love is just. so. amazing. I do welcome all kinds of comments, chatty ones, rambly ones, one liners, all of them. Of course I am over the moon when I get a long comment that *engages with the story* (that is straight up ambrosia to me) but just knowing that someone took time to write ANYTHING will always fill me with joy.

🧐 Do I spend much time on research for my stuff? Depends on the story. Like for the pub AU, almost no research because I've been to the places described, have read the books mentioned, and I've had many cats lol. So that one was born mostly from experience. Another example, the vamp AU, was mostly me bullshitting until it became a story. Stories set in a canon universe require more research (gotta love the wiki of ice and fire ♥️). And then there's the behemoth of a Victorian AU that'll be my next 'modern' AU and I've been researching for months and still very much at the beginning 🙈

🤲 A snippet from a WIP - I'm choosing 1x1 (hey @november-rising you may remember this - key word "No" 😘)

“You wanted a decision,” Theon mutters, still not daring to look at Jon’s face. “I came here to ask the same of you.”

“I – what?” Jon leans back in his chair. “I thought I made myself clear. I’m willing to go all the way, but only if you – what are you doing?”

“You can’t decide. I won’t accept it.” Theon bites down on the inside of his cheek as the first glove hits the floor with a dull thud. “Not without you knowing everything. Not without you really seeing for yourself what you’re so eager to take.”

🎉 I consider my fic a success when... yeah, when? It's different for each fic, depending on the context, and my own expectations. I have considered fics a success that had few but very meaningful comments. I have considered fics a failure despite 'good' stats. I'm working on considering a fic a success simply because it exists.

Thank you so much for the ask (and the ask about the ask 🥲) and the many emojis! ♥️♥️♥️

[joe-england]

Files From the Persephone Society: In Finite Generations

“You know, Tulip, it’s fair to say that most of us Earthlings go to other worlds with magic, at least in our native timeframe.  But you and I know that science can lead the way just as easily as sorcery!  Then again, calling it ‘easy’ depends on who puts in the elbow grease, doesn’t it?  Now there’s a funny term.  ‘Elbow grease’.  Do you know where that phrase comes from?  I’m honestly asking, I haven’t a clue!”

“Me neither,” replied Tulip, grinning fondly.  “I think it’s something the French thought up, but don’t quote me on that.”  The butterflies in her stomach were finally settling.  The doctor could talk a mile a minute without saying anything, a sort of white noise technique designed to mitigate the natural apprehension that came with Vortex flight.  It had been essential when Tulip first started traveling on board Tardis.  At first it had reminded her so much of the Train that she edged towards panic, the expansive space seeming to close in while her palm itched with phantom numbers.  But then Susan would start talking and nothing seemed very serious anymore.

She still got nervous after takeoff, but it was clear now that the doctor’s machine wasn’t really anything like the one which had snatched her away with a promise of Oshkosh on a snowy day.  There was something grand and hopeful about Tardis, distinctly contrasting the undercurrent of sadness which had seemed to haunt the Train cars.  It felt like a home, rather than something meant to get you through a rough patch.

“Anyway, must’ve taken a lot more than elbow grease to put all this together.  I still can’t believe you made it in your back yard!  And in the Sixties!”

Susan flicked a toggle, and the vibrations running through the room changed key.  “Well, I might’ve made it sound simpler than it was.  Grandfather would say that it was merely the result of a series of highly fortuitous breakthroughs, but the truth is,” and at this the doctor winked, “We’d never have gotten it off the ground if it hadn’t been for that special spot in Cardiff.  He had been hired to investigate local phenomena, you see, and it turned out to be a sort of dimensional rift!  In Wales, of all places!  We gathered samples of some exotic materials, caught weird energy in specialized batteries, and picked up what I think was a graph calculator from an alien’s pocket, and we were off to the races!”  A theatrical swing of her arm, and a lightbulb flickered to life somewhere overhead.  “Of course, grandfather and I knew that we couldn’t tell the authorities what we’d really found.  Power like that is too potent to trust to anyone with an adult frame of mind.  But we couldn’t just sit on our discovery, so we took our souvenirs home, found an old police box in a junkyard, and….  Well!  The rest is history.”

“I knew there had to be more to it!  Y’know, I’m never going to be able to handle this thing alone.  I design video games in my spare time, I can’t master time and space!”  Tulip ran a hand across a railing, talking cats and dogs and little round robots coming to mind.  “Besides, Tardis doesn’t like me as much as it likes you.  You know this thing is alive, right?  It gives you stage lighting!”

“Nonsense,” sighed Dr. Who.  “It’s just the odd glitch, and anyone who can rewire super-advanced tech like you do has the touch.  After all, what are video games if not training wheels for time and space?  Little universes in boxes!  You’ll get the hang of it, I’m quite certain.”  And Susan meant it very sincerely.  Tulip was easily the best candidate for the keys, she thought, if only she didn’t insist on seeing her limitations before her potential!  But then, the child’s experience with the Infinity Train phenomenon had clearly tempered the immature impulses which had led her to run away from home once upon a time.  And if you were going to travel by Tardis, the first thing you needed was an immature impulse to run away from home!

The doctor turned to confirm their landing coordinates on one of her new touch-screen panels, still rather missing the tactile sensations of the previous worn-out switches.  But no one would ever accuse her “Whovian” science of being behind the times, especially not now that the Society had a fresh batch of junior members used to their fancy-dancy plastic phone screens.  Though there were still a few analog buttons and dials bolted on odd surfaces, distant echoes of the absolute mess of junk that she and Grandfather had initially cobbled together around their stolen bits of extraterrestrial rubbish, hundreds of wires dropping from the ceiling like an exploded string factory.  There hadn’t even been a central work station at first.

Nowadays it was important to keep the place tidy for guests, and her fellow Society members were always a tough crowd to impress.  Some even had ships of their own, like Frizzle and her silly school bus (a matter of friendly rivalry).  And Tulip already had extensive experience with abrupt scenic transitions through transcendental technology aboard the Infinity Train.  The two of them had made that particular mystery their pet project, as Susan hypothesized that the locomotive existed in a branch timeline which had weathered an apocalyptic event which the sapient locomotive was programmed to divert by strategically lifting self-destructive humans from the past and rehabilitating them.  It may also have been the product of an elusive, extinct alien race that she’d been chasing for many years, the only civilization she’d ever encountered which had mastered the trick of dimensional manipulation like the Who family had.  But that was neither here nor there.  Literally.

Her mind wandered back again to that jungle of dangling wires, and to Grandfather.  The only person in the world who recognized the potential of a humble police box, and of a little girl who was more brilliant than anyone really understood, who never could have flourished without a kindred spirit.  She and Tardis were the same in that respect.  It seemed right that it would be grown from ordinary things clustered around the odd miracle.  To this day she still resorted to scavenging drainpipes and recycled engine parts to keep certain sections of the old girl running, though she had contact with alien vendors from whom she purchased extraterrestrial hardware.  She always wanted for there to be bits of Earth in the Tardis, tying it forever to its home.  Grandfather would often remind her to value the so-called mundane, the wonder of every scrap of creation.  Then he told her stories of a Phantom Tollbooth that had visited him as a child, and begged her to never take anything for granted.  Gratitude, he would say, is a secret to living a full life.

She signaled to Tulip.  “Take over, would you, dear?  You can manage the last leg.  Speaking of legs!  I have to rest my knees if we’re going to be walking on rocks.  And I just know there’ll be rocks!  Most planets have rocky ground, you know.  Like an endless gravel pit.”

It was quiet aboard Tardis today, no turbulence in the Vortex to speak of.  Susan sat in her wooden chair and listened to the hum of her ship, allowing herself to drift off while the Perennial Child began to take over the landing procedure.  She closed her eyes and remembered the Daleks, the terrible bio-mechanical fascists whose shrieks still echoed in her ears.  She reviewed a hundred close calls on a hundred different worlds, every single day a gift.  She recalled her first contact with the Persephone Society, Orithyia Blue (alias Mrs. Hyppolyta Freeman) tracking them down and offering her family a place at the Newcastle.  Grandfather had become one of the very few honorary male inductees, augmenting the organization’s technological resources to match its classic mystical wards, and for a while Barbara and Louise and Dr. Who and Susan hosted interplanetary expeditions with all their new friends, one adventure after another.  Crossing timelines on missions of mercy like a cosmic coast guard, rescuing the crews of the Spindrift, the Jupiter 2, and the Yonder.  She smiled as she revisited the camping trip to post-revolutionary Skaro, telling ghost stories in the petrified forest with Meg Murry O’Keefe.  That was as good as it got.

Then one day Barbara and Louise said that they’d had their fill and decided to settle down.  Meg became a teacher, and each of them contributed to the world at large in their own special ways, investing what they had learned like subtle seeds in the garden of humanity.  Susan couldn’t blame them, really.  Except that she did.  Because more and more it was just her and Grandfather, who’d never given up his determination to go out and see what the Universe had to offer.  There were always members of the Society willing to tag along, but she could sense that her generation was passing its prime.

“Almost there,” said Tulip, quite the perfect little conductor.  Susan laid back, letting herself dream.  As usual she found herself with Grandfather on their last voyage together.  It was meant to be a jaunt around the block while he trained her to fly on her own, but something happened on their way to the moon, pulling them towards the constellation of Kasterborous.  Tardis was often temperamental, but this was like skidding off the Ratcliffe Highway and winding up in Australia!

They found themselves on a ghostly world.  Desolate, but with signs of a supremely advanced civilization clinging to the dust.  How could they resist exploring?  And their curiosity was rewarded by signs of transcendental engineering, very much like their Tardis!  Proof of a race so great that even their footlockers were bigger on the inside.  Grandfather fashioned a knapsack out of one such box and they greedily salvaged bits and bobs from the detritus.  For scientists like them it was like a house made of sweets, but they forgot to watch out for the witch.

Grandfather saw it first.  A light in the distance, perhaps a sign of life.  As they approached the clearing they felt that they were on hallowed ground, and there they beheld something not meant for human eyes.

There aren’t words for the experience.  Even after all these years, how do you describe everything all at once?  An untempered schism, a gap in the fabric of reality through which they saw the whole of the Vortex, the raw power of time and space channeling limitless data into their simple mortal brains.  It felt like a million years before she felt the sand beating under their feet, running as fast as they could under a starless sky.

The elderly Dr. Who passed away on the return trip.  He murmured of enlightenment, of tears and of life and of hope, and reminded Susan to keep herself warm.  He’d given her a scarf to make sure.

Susan managed to recover by dint of her youth, but she was never the same.  From that point forward she swore she could feel the turn of the Earth, the ground beneath her feet spinning at a thousand miles an hour, the entire planet hurtling around the sun at sixty-seven thousand, falling through space.  She knew she would never settle down like Barbara and Louise or her friend Meg.  She would always be on the move, flying, running, or walking in eternity.  Only Orithyia really understood, and eventually she had to leave as well.  Now Susan remains, the oldest active member of the Persephone Society.  And for all the pins and needles of longing and loneliness, in her heart she feels nothing but gratitude.

Bump.

“We’re here!  Hey, I did it.”  Susan’s eyes fluttered open and she grinned to herself, perfectly relaxed.

“Of course you did, dear.  I wasn’t slightly afraid.  Now, let’s see what’s out there.”  She hoisted herself from her chair, double-checked the atmospheric readings, and ran a quick test to see that Mary Sue still had a strong signal tethering them to Earth.  She tightened her laces, made sure her scarf wasn’t likely to flap about (terribly hazardous, but she couldn’t bear to do without it), and tuned her auditory analytical aide, a sort of sonic screwdriver she’d managed to cobble together from a 23rd century refugee’s tuning fork and the keepsakes she’d scrounged on that ghostly planet.  She still hoped to find that place again someday, maybe see if it had any ties to Tulip’s train, but it would have to be soon.  She couldn’t keep this up like she would when she was a sprog.

Tulip could hop right out the doors in an instant, but she waited for the old woman to lead the way, bless her heart.  Yes, thought the doctor, it would have to be her, the impossible girl with no reflection.  All the new kids were wonderful, but only Tulip was cut out to cover the more scientific side of cosmic exploration.  She’d probably have a doctorate of her own one day, and perhaps then Susan could give herself the quiet life she’d always been after (believe it or not).

For her part, Tulip bounced on her heels as the doctor stepped out and an alien breeze wafted inside like fancy perfume.  The truth was, she thought she probably could manage Tardis on her own, but she didn’t want for Susan to think that she didn’t need her close by.  She imagined Amelia, a tin god covered in numbers, as full of regret as anyone could ever be, probably still trapped on that Train to nowhere.  And now here Tulip was on the other end of the spectrum, with someone who was so full of hope and freedom.  Maybe it was selfish, but she aimed to travel with the woman for as long as she could, so she would always know what it felt like to run away from home the right way.

In the back of her head she had an idea that Dr. Who could go on forever.  It was a shame that she only had one life to live.

END

- Well, that was a bit of a bust.  I was hoping to attract people to my Patreon campaign with the early access thing,  but in a month I only gained one new customer.  Though I'm grateful for  everyone who invests in my work, and I don't ever want to complain when  anyone, anywhere joins in!  But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't hoping  for a little more interest since the initial concept was well received.   Maybe the $2.50 tier was too high.  I guess I'll rethink it.

For clarity, this is a crossover based on the concept of a secret society of lady explorers from classic and current fiction.  In this case we have Dr. Susan Who, based on actress Roberta Tovey, who played the granddaughter of Peter Cushing's Dr. Who in the Dalek films from the 1960's.  I chose this version of the Doctor Who mythos because, well, if I tried to adapt the vastly more popular long-running TV show on which the movies were based then the Society would just be an army of retired companions!  This scenario supposes that Susan grew up and took the mantle of Dr. Who, encountering other obscure sci-fi stuff like Land of the Giants, Lost in Space, and The Fantastic Journey, and piloting "Tardis" well into the present day.  Crossover fan fiction is like potato chips, it's hard to stop once you get going.

Speaking of which, the other star of this picture is Tulip, the Perennial Child, initial protagonist of Infinity Train, one of the best sci-fi animated series of recent times.  I strongly urge you to check it out.  In fact, consider it a borderline command.  It was shockingly canceled by (presumably) the same evil businessperson who killed Firefly and decided that The Owl House didn't deserve a whole third season.  Look it up on HBO Max, tag #SaveInfinityTrain or #FinishInfinityTrain or #InfinityTrain or #infinitytrainhbomax or #renewinfinitytrain on Twitter, just do whatever you can to emphasize its popularity and hopefully change some minds.  I NEED to know what happens to Hazel!

Incidentally, I needed reference to do this picture properly, and I have to give thanks to Plg3d, a YouTuber who kindly posted a tutorial for making a TARDIS in SketchUp, a 3-D modeling program.  I really learned a lot by following his instructions!  I even modified the model slightly so it more closely resembled the prop from the Cushing films and created the signage stickers in Photoshop.  What's more, I used what I learned to create a custom console from scratch!  I'm attaching the file below the Patreon post for anyone who wants to use it themselves (along with a label-free version of the above image).  It was a lot of work, so I wouldn't mind thinking that someone somewhere is getting a kick out of it.  Just drop my name, okay?  I'm like Infinity Train, I need all the publicity I can get!

I plan for the next picture in this series to arrive in a few months.  I would work faster, but I can't.  Who're we gonna showcase next?  I hope you want to find out!

- Joe

[oracleout]

ACCESS FILES : // B.ARBARA G.ORDON - DISABILITY cw/tw: mentions of physical and sexual abuse, erasure of disability, and overall “manpain”

the infamous k.illi.ng j.o.ke comic has a lot of issues itself. i am not going to start this off by saying it’s a gold standard of comics. barbara is used literally as a fridging device to inflict pain on to her father, jim gordon and by extension, b.atman. she’s sexually abused and shot in the stomach, the bullet hitting her spine and causing the paralysis that causes her to lose the use of her legs. it effectively ended barbara’s role as batgirl, as she simply couldn’t physically do it anymore.

but barbara is a resilient person, and the things that made her batgirl were not just her ability to jump from rooftops or kick a bad guy’s ass. she was bright, a near-genius with her eidetic memory, and resourceful. she was every bit of the detective that her father and batman were, right on par or even surpassing them in some aspects. she was often a voice of reason and logic within the “family.”

so she evolved from that. barbara took up the role of the “ oracle “ -- an all-knowing, all-seeing being of greek myth known for her great prophecies. in this new role, barbara sat within the clock tower of gotham, using her advanced knowledge of technology and coding to create an environment capable of tapping into some of the most advanced systems in the world so that she can do surveillance and be the eyes for the superhero community when it needs it. she created and led the birds of prey, mentored and ran missions for two different batgirls, and aided the justice league and other members of the batfamily in their own missions. she became an extremely valuable member of the superhero community in her own right, and could still kick ass, even from her chair. her disability didn’t define her, but she also fully accepted that this was her life now, and she was going to make the most of it.

barbara has many great lines and moments throughout her time as oracle that are so extremely important in showing her acceptance of the role.

“ y’know, a lot of the time it’s like you batguys want me to hold on to the past because you can’t get over it. understand -- i have. i have a new life now. one i like -- one that fulfills me. it’s not the same one i had before, but it’s good. maybe even better. “

“ do you know why i don’t keep handles on my chair? it’s because i don’t like to be pushed. “

“ never underestimate a deathbed as an opportunity to rethink strategy. “

“ when i was in physical therapy, there was a small sign on the gym wall. it read, ‘ no matter how dark the night gets, the sun still rises in the morning.’ every day, i’d wake up two hours before dawn. back then it’d take me that long to get into my chair, clean up, and go outside to watch the sun rise, but i did it. and i still do. i love life, dad. i love every single day. “

these are just small examples of ways that barbara has even outwardly said that she’s content with her life and that she isn’t going to chase some way to fix things because she doesn’t see herself as broken.

what they did in nu52 completely erases that immense character development and growth by having her regress to wanting to undergo surgery to get her ability to walk again. there was absolutely no need for barbara to be ba.t.girl. there had been two different batgirls since she had become oracle, and making her batgirl really hurt all three of those three characters and their roles in the overall universe more than it did any good.

regardless of the implications on overall character development, the erasure of disability from one of the most prominent disabled heroes in comics is just plain gross. there are already a very finite number of disabled heroes across the superhero platforms, and with a hero who had formed a complete identity due to that disability that ultimately worked for her and made her happy to suddenly change and want to get fix is ableist beyond belief. the wheelchair does not define who she is, but it’s part of her, and any erasure of disability that is like this is just simply wrong.

SO FOR THIS BLOG’S CANON:

1. i simply will not be taking nu52 into account. ba.t.girl of b.ur.nside is a story that i fully believe should have belonged to stephanie, not babs. the ba.t.girl story that precedes it is fully against what i think is right for the character, so you simply just will not see any nu52 content here.

2. there are some elements of rebirth and the more current stories that i do like, but it is still limited. for example, the current n.ight.win.g run has some things in it that i see babs doing, but i’m still fully against her not having her disability, even if i am glad that she’s back in the role of oracle. so you might see some current narrative things, but please be mindful that this blog did not erase her disability and will be carrying on as if she has been in the wheelchair this entire time.

3. the portrayal of babs on this blog is highly reflective of the late 90s/early 00s birds of prey run, with a mix of d*xon’s ni.ght.wi.ng, and both the cass & steph runs as b.at.gir.l. for the most part, everything up until 2011 is considered canon for this portrayal.

4. i will likely update this more as i continue writing here and am getting back into reading more comics!

[sparring-hyena]

the colours of love.

i got introspective about colours in my own futile attempt to understand love. anyhow, i wrote it down and now you wonderful folks can read this little thing if ya’ want :)

-

i. pink

she has to start here. it’s Poppy’s colour, and it’s where AJ likes to think their story begun. not with red or green; rather a flash pink followed by everything else.

it was Poppy’s pink jacket that AJ saw first. and then there were sharp words being thrown at her. sharp words which did not sound at all like pink.

pink is sweet and soft and kind. it’s supposed to mean universal love and harmony. those words Poppy threw at AJ that afternoon sounded a lot like red. and so the illusion of pink faded.

but the pink was still there. it was just so easy to cover with the heat of red.

ii. red

it seems obvious—red. the passion and the power, the desire and the anger. but there’s more to it than that. the power is self-explanatory—Poppy craves power. but the passion, desire, and anger is a bit more complex.

they started as enemies—there’s no sugar coating that. they would spit ugly words at each other, hurl insults back and forth that burned like fire. that’s the anger. but anger always hides something—this time it was fear.

it was after one of their verbal sparing matches. they’d bumped into each other while leaving the library sometime after midnight. except their insults hadn’t cut quite as deep this time. hadn’t stung nearly as much. they’d moved closer together and only realised how little space was between them once they both fell quiet, their breaths coming out laboured.

and then they’d kissed. had Poppy kissed AJ or was it the other way around? years later, Poppy will insist it’s the latter—that AJ’s the one who kissed her—and AJ will smile and say something akin to whatever you say, love.

it doesn’t really matter who kissed who because it was over almost as soon as it had begun. and then Poppy had stormed off, angry like red, but angry because she was scared.

it was a week later that they ran into each other at some frat party while waiting in line for the bathroom. AJ had smirked and winked at her, hooking her fingers through her belt loops. so Poppy said a fuck you to fear, and pulled AJ into the bathroom where she came twice on her fingers.

it was never really discussed, but they both knew they weren’t sworn enemies anymore. fuck buddies, AJ would say and Poppy would roll her eyes because can’t you have a little bit of class?

red hung around for a bit, and AJ thinks that’s because red is really great at hiding feelings.

iii. green

this one is a little different. it was a sort of natural progression, really.

there was jealousy—on both parts mind you. and words that sounded hopeful like yellow, but they weren’t ready for yellow, so they fought like red instead.

but then Poppy had said, “please don’t leave. not you too.” her voice a pained whisper.

AJ knew then that she never would. she took a few tentative steps forward and pulled Poppy into a tight hug. her promise went unsaid, but it was loud enough for Poppy to hear.

and then they’d worked on healing and understanding, because that’s what green is all about. and this is right when green became yellow.

iv. yellow

yellow is clarity, AJ decides. she doesn’t care if someone wants to argue that it’s happiness or creativity or something else like that. to her it’s clarity. because it was when she and Poppy were walking to class one morning—the sun in the sky—that she realised she was in love. and she wasn’t scared at all.

“i love you,” AJ had said, only half aware that she’d spoken aloud.

Poppy stopped walking, head tilted just-so to the side as she looked at AJ.

“why’d you stop?” AJ asked.

“you said you loved me.”

“yeah,” AJ said, like it was obvious and simple and not the first time she was saying it out loud. “i love you.”

a smile bloomed across Poppy’s face. and then she whispered, “i love you too,” before kissing AJ sweetly on the lips.

v. blue

this almost feels like the final stage, AJ thinks. not in the sense that they have a finite number of days until their relationship implodes. rather this is what the’ve been working towards all along. blue like the ocean, maybe. deep and endless, so maybe they will go on forever.

they bicker a lot, throw little playful remarks at each other that lack all the fire of red. the fire of red is still there, just calmed by the blue of the ocean. so now they’re open. now they talk and laugh, share their hopes and fears and somehow manage to fall just a little bit more.

they still fight too, because all couples fight. but they’re blue like the ocean—choppy from time-to-time, but always eventually calms.

they are blue.

[jessicareaper]

(Here it is: the creation story I wrote during s8. It makes absolutely no sense at all now, but I’d like to think it’s still compelling.)

In the beginning—before the beginning, really, there was—well, “nothing” doesn’t begin to cover it. Humans were born into a universe of such riotous Something that they have no concept of what true Nothing is. But that’s what there was.

There was God, and there was Me.

There was no time—that came later. After We invented “later,” of course. In the beginning, We were infinite. In the time before numbers, We were one, and two, and many. We flexed and coiled and merged and folded in the eternity of Our being.

But God was not satisfied with the infinite dance. So God reached into Nothing, and made something.

Those first attempts were weak, brittle, and soon melted back into Nothing. They could not hold time in their beings, or life. “It is pointless,” I told God. “There is You, and there is Me. You cannot make Something out of Nothing.” I thought, then, the infinite dance could continue—that We were rid of this folly—but then, for the first time, God did something I did not expect.

God swept together Nothing, and into it, poured Infinity.

The change was immediate; God curled inward, frayed at edges that weren’t there before. But before God spread creations that danced and twisted, that curled around their maker and hummed the familiar voice of the endless.

God called them Leviathan, and for them, God built the universe. They swept over the blackness of space; they danced among the stars planted for them; they filled the planets with their humming.

I hated them.

They danced like God used to, but their dance was empty of love, and their humming was like an echo of the Day I had seen when God gave up Infinity—the Reaping Day when God ceased to be.

They had taken God’s Infinity. They had taken the dance from us. And for that, I yearned for the day of their destruction.

And soon enough, it was upon us, for soon enough, their humming turned sinister. “Why,” We heard them wonder, “do we bow to a Maker inferior to us? Why do we depend on a creature with an end? Why do live as God’s pets in their creation, when we can forge our own?”

Filled with terrible purpose, the Leviathan became destructive. They ripped apart stars, reforged the sky into vortexes that ate at the universe God had sculpted for them.

They tried, then, to rip God apart as well—and they might have succeeded, had I not stepped in. The Leviathan were powerful, but I was, even then, very old.

I offered to destroy the rogue creations, once and for all, but God refused. “They are my children,” God told me. “And more, they are a part of me. I cannot see them destroyed.” So instead, God built a new home for them, wrapped in Nothingness and sealed with another piece of God, ripped free by the Leviathan attack. I placed the Leviathan inside, and shut the door.

And then, there was God, and there was Me.

But God’s hunger and grief soon won out again, and God set to creating new children. “Remember,” I said, curling around God’s fraying edges, “Remember how your last children turned against you. Abandon this folly, and dance with me instead.”

But God only said, “I know what was missing last time. This time, they will be Creation. This time, they will not destroy my work.” And so God took pieces of the torn stars and poured into them pure Creation.

"Angels," God called them. "My perfect, obedient children," God called them. And they were. So still, so wondrous, so different from the humming, dancing Leviathan. But God was different, too; the shine from within was gone, and with it, the wide-eyed joy at the shaping of the universe. Both, it seemed, belonged to the Angels now.

By then, the universe was so full of Something—so full of the baubles and toys God had given God’s everything to. But on the edges, past all stars, past all blackness and silence of space, there was still Nothing. That was where I lived, in the early days just after God created days. It was…home, if you will. There, we had danced. There, we were one, and two, and many. There, God had had no edges, no Reaping Day.

I admit it, after so long, I had begun to understand how God could rip themself apart to create beings that were only poor reflections of everything they used to belong to. I spent my time in the Nothing, but whenever I wandered the universe God had created and the Angels now maintained, I felt…old. And alone.

I did not tell God my plans. I simply took a bit of the blackness of space, a bit of Creation, and wrapped it gently around a core of Nothingness. These children would know their home. They would know their origin.

I had but one at first, and she followed Me wherever I went. We spent much of our time in the Nothingness, but when I ventured into God’s universe, she followed me there, too. She was curious, I could tell, but the Angels regarded her with fear and disgust. Especially Michael and Lucifer. Though they never dared to voice their emotions when they felt Me near, I knew the way God’s eldest and most powerful angels sneered together at My creation.

It was no matter. Great and powerful though they may have thought they were, I saw the days of their Reapings. They would turn against each other, and then, like the crashing of two waves in the open sea, they would be gone.

In the meantime, they tended God’s universe under the watchful eye of their creator. God loved the Angels, I knew. But when I drew God into a dance, I still felt the jagged edges from the Leviathan’s attack, and felt the lingering grief. I felt the hunger returning, millenium by millenium.

When God approached the prison we had shut the Leviathan into, I finally intervened, shadowed by My eldest. ”If you open this door, you will be destroyed,” I pleaded. “You have your Angels. Rest and be content.”

But God would not be moved. “They don’t understand the dance. Not the way my First did.” And God reached out to open the door.

In that moment, my eldest came forward and said, “Those children are lost. You can create new children, and teach them the dance.”

"But I am finite," God said. "How can I give them the dance with no Infinity left to give?"

I admit it, I almost turned away. My oldest friend, trapped in this loop of self-destruction, trying, once again, to make shadows flesh? But I saw the hunger in God’s eyes, a hunger that, for all My warnings, I could not turn aside or sate. “Let me help,” I said with a sigh.

And so together, we danced one last time. Into the dance God poured Love. As I gathered it up, God withered, spent and satisfied. I watched God, finite, small, and I looked at the last shining piece of God, curled in My hands. “Come back to me,” I pleaded, and with that, I formed Humans.

“Is it finished?” I asked, when it was done. “Are you content?”

“Yes,” God said. And then God retreated, cradling the Humans in Their cracked hands.

God placed them on a little planet, bursting with life. But then, almost as soon as they had settled there, the Humans grew old, and I felt their Reaping Days approaching. Ah, I realized with a bitter smile. At least some part of You listens to Me.

God, by then, was scarce in the Universe, and now without Love, God was almost unrecognizable. God resurfaced long enough to throw Lucifer into Hell, and to throw the Humans into the wilderness, and each time, I watched, and saw God’s Reaping Day growing closer.

But there was no time to dwell on it, because Humans were growing and multiplying and dying and changing in a way that the Leviathans and the Angels never had.

All their changing was for nought in the end. At the Reaping, they always come back to Me.

Now, my eldest grows old as well, and My children, My Reapers, are as numerous as the stars that God knit together for the Leviathans. But though they grow old, My children do not rest, because there is work to be done. God has scattered, piece by piece, like grain in the wind, but I am here to gather God back.

And one day, after the final Reaping, when God is whole again, We will continue Our dance once more.

[magnetictapedatastorage]

I’ve started keeping a list of questions, remnants of a past life that I now need a beat or two to remember, if I can remember at all: What time do parties end? How tall is my boss? What does a bar smell like? Are babies heavy? Does my dentist have a mustache? On what street was the good sandwich place near work, the one that toasted its bread? How much does a movie popcorn cost? What do people talk about when they don’t have a global disaster to talk about all the time? You have to wear high heels the whole night? It’s more baffling than distressing, most of the time.

Full text of the (excellent) article is under the cut. (The Atlantic, March 8th, 2021)

I first became aware that I was losing my mind in late December. It was a Friday night, the start of my 40-somethingth pandemic weekend: Hours and hours with no work to distract me, and outside temperatures prohibitive of anything other than staying in. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to fill the time. “What did I used to … do on weekends?” I asked my boyfriend, like a soap-opera amnesiac. He couldn’t really remember either.

Since then, I can’t stop noticing all the things I’m forgetting. Sometimes I grasp at a word or a name. Sometimes I walk into the kitchen and find myself bewildered as to why I am there. (At one point during the writing of this article, I absentmindedly cleaned my glasses with nail-polish remover.) Other times, the forgetting feels like someone is taking a chisel to the bedrock of my brain, prying everything loose. I’ve started keeping a list of questions, remnants of a past life that I now need a beat or two to remember, if I can remember at all: What time do parties end? How tall is my boss? What does a bar smell like? Are babies heavy? Does my dentist have a mustache? On what street was the good sandwich place near work, the one that toasted its bread? How much does a movie popcorn cost? What do people talk about when they don’t have a global disaster to talk about all the time? You have to wear high heels the whole night? It’s more baffling than distressing, most of the time.

RECOMMENDED READING

There’s No Real Reason to Eat 3 Meals a DayAMANDA MULL

The Pandemic’s Future Hangs in SuspenseTHE COVID TRACKING PROJECT

A Quite Possibly Wonderful SummerJAMES HAMBLIN

Everywhere I turn, the fog of forgetting has crept in. A friend of mine recently confessed that the morning routine he’d comfortably maintained for a decade—wake up before 7, shower, dress, get on the subway—now feels unimaginable on a literal level: He cannot put himself back there. Another has forgotten how to tie a tie. A co-worker isn’t sure her toddler remembers what it’s like to go shopping in a store. The comedian Kylie Brakeman made a joke video of herself attempting to recall pre-pandemic life, the mania flashing across her face: “You know what I miss, is, like, those night restaurants that served alcohol. What were those called?” she asks. “And there were those, like, big men outside who would check your credit card to make sure you were 41?”

Read: Sedentary pandemic life is bad for our happiness

Jen George, a community-college teacher from Cape Elizabeth, Maine, told me she is losing her train of thought in the middle of a sentence more and more often. Meanwhile, her third grader, who is attending in-person school, keeps leaving his books, papers, and lunch at home. Inny Ekeolu, a 19-year-old student from Ireland, says she has found herself forgetting how to do things she used to do on a regular basis: swiping her bus pass, paying for groceries. Recently she came across a photo of a close friend she hadn’t seen since lockdown and found that she couldn’t recognize her. “It wasn’t like I had forgotten her existence,” she told me. “But if I had bypassed her on the street, I wouldn’t have said hi.” Rachel Kowert, a research psychologist in Ottawa, used to have a standing Friday-night dinner with her neighbors—and went completely blank when one of them recently mentioned it. “It was really shocking,” Kowert told me. “This was something I really loved, and had done for a long time, and I had totally forgotten.”

This is the fog of late pandemic, and it is brutal. In the spring, we joked about the Before Times, but they were still within reach, easily accessible in our shorter-term memories. In the summer and fall, with restrictions loosening and temperatures rising, we were able to replicate some of what life used to be like, at least in an adulterated form: outdoor drinks, a day at the beach. But now, in the cold, dark, featureless middle of our pandemic winter, we can neither remember what life was like before nor imagine what it’ll be like after.

To some degree, this is a natural adaptation. The sunniest optimist would point out that all this forgetting is evidence of the resilience of our species. Humans forget a great deal of what happens to us, and we tend to do it pretty quickly—after the first 24 hours or so. “Our brains are very good at learning different things and forgetting the things that are not a priority,” Tina Franklin, a neuroscientist at Georgia Tech, told me. As the pandemic has taught us new habits and made old ones obsolete, our brains have essentially put actions like taking the bus and going to restaurants in deep storage, and placed social distancing and coughing into our elbows near the front of the closet. When our habits change back, presumably so will our recall.

That’s the good news. The pandemic is still too young to have yielded rigorous, peer-reviewed studies about its effects on cognitive function. But the brain scientists I spoke with told me they can extrapolate based on earlier work about trauma, boredom, stress, and inactivity, all of which do a host of very bad things to a mammal’s brain.

“We’re all walking around with some mild cognitive impairment,” said Mike Yassa, a neuroscientist at UC Irvine. “Based on everything we know about the brain, two of the things that are really good for it are physical activity and novelty. A thing that’s very bad for it is chronic and perpetual stress.” Living through a pandemic—even for those who are doing so in relative comfort—“is exposing people to microdoses of unpredictable stress all the time,” said Franklin, whose research has shown that stress changes the brain regions that control executive function, learning, and memory.

That stress doesn’t necessarily feel like a panic attack or a bender or a sleepless night, though of course it can. Sometimes it feels like nothing at all. “It’s like a heaviness, like you’re waking up to more of the same, and it’s never going to change,” George told me, when I asked what her pandemic anxiety felt like. “Like wading through something thicker than water. Maybe a tar pit.” She misses the sound of voices.

Prolonged boredom is, somewhat paradoxically, hugely stressful, Franklin said. Our brains hate it. “What’s very clear in the literature is that environmental enrichment—being outside of your home, bumping into people, commuting, all of these changes that we are collectively being deprived of—is very associated with synaptic plasticity,” the brain’s inherent ability to generate new connections and learn new things, she said. In the 1960s, the neuroscientist Marian Diamond conducted a series of experiments on rats in an attempt to understand how environment affects cognitive function. Time after time, the rats raised in “enriched” cages—ones with toys and playmates—performed better at mazes.

Ultimately, said Natasha Rajah, a psychology professor at McGill University, in Montreal, our winter of forgetting may be attributable to any number of overlapping factors. “There’s just so much going on: It could be the stress, it could be the grief, it could be the boredom, it could be depression,” she said. “It sounds pretty grim, doesn’t it?”

The share of Americans reporting symptoms of anxiety disorder, depressive disorder, or both roughly quadrupled from June 2019 to December 2020, according to a Census Bureau study released late last year. What’s more, we simply don’t know the long-term effects of collective, sustained grief. Longitudinal studies of survivors of Chernobyl, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina show elevated rates of mental-health problems, in some cases lasting for more than a decade.

I have a job that allows me to work from home, an immune system and a set of neurotransmitters that tend to function pretty well, a support network, a savings account, decent Wi-Fi, plenty of hand sanitizer. I have experienced the pandemic from a position of obscene privilege, and on any given day I’d rank my mental health somewhere north of “fine.” And yet I feel like I have spent the past year being pushed through a pasta extruder. I wake up groggy and spend every day moving from the couch to the dining-room table to the bed and back. At some point night falls, and at some point after that I close work-related browser windows and open leisure-related ones. I miss my little rat friends, but I am usually too tired to call them.

Read: The most likely timeline for life to return to normal

Sometimes I imagine myself as a Sim, a diamond-shaped cursor hovering above my head as I go about my day. Tasks appear, and I do them. Mealtimes come, and I eat. Needs arise, and I meet them. I have a finite suite of moods, a limited number of possible activities, a set of strings being pulled from far offscreen. Everything is two-dimensional, fake, uncanny. My world is as big as my apartment, which is not very big at all.

“We’re trapped in our dollhouses,” said Kowert, the psychologist from Ottawa, who studies video games. “It’s just about surviving, not thriving. No one is working at their highest capacity.” She has played The Sims on and off for years, but she always gives up after a while—it’s too repetitive.

Earlier versions of The Sims had an autonomous memory function, according to Marina DelGreco, a staff writer for Game Rant. But in The Sims 3, the system was buggy; it bloated file sizes and caused players’ saved progress to delete. So The Sims 4, released in 2014, does not automatically create memories. PC users can manually enter them, and Sims can temporarily feel feelings: happy, tense, flirty. But for the most part, a Sim is a hollow vessel, more like a machine than a living thing.

The game itself doesn’t have a term for this, but the internet does: “smooth brain,” or sometimes “head empty,” which I first started noticing sometime last summer. Today, the TikTok user @smoothbrainb1tch has nearly 100,000 followers, and stoners on Twitter are marveling at the fact that their “silky smooth brain” was once capable of calculus.

This is, to be clear, meant to be an aspirational state. It’s the step after galaxy brain, because the only thing better than being a genius in a pandemic is being intellectually unencumbered by mass grief. People are celebrating “smooth brain Saturday” and chasing the ideal summer vibe: “smooth skin, smooth brain.” One frequently reposted meme shows a photograph of a glossy, raw chicken breast, with the caption “Cant think=no sad .” This is juxtaposed against a biology-textbook picture of a healthy brain, which is wrinkled, oddly translucent, and the color of canned tuna. The choice seems obvious.

Some Saturday not too long from now, I will go to a party or a bar or even a wedding. Maybe I’ll hold a baby, and maybe it will be heavy. Inevitably, I will kick my shoes off at some point. I won’t have to wonder about what I do on weekends, because I’ll be doing it. I’ll kiss my friends and try their drinks and marvel at how everyone is still the same, but a little different, after the year we all had. My brain won’t be smooth anymore, but being wrinkly won’t feel so bad. My synapses will be made plastic by the complicated, strange, utterly novel experience of being alive again, human again. I can’t wait.

ELLEN CUSHING

is the special-projects editor at The Atlantic.

[hesesols]

of soap suds and broken dishes

Summary: There will never be a right time for some conversations. In which Rukia has some exciting news to deliver and the timing is ... less than ideal. 

Rating: T

FF/ao3 

x

Chapter 1: Timing Is Everything

Her hands started shaking even before her mind processes the gravity of the situation.

The plus sign on the pregnancy test stick is staring right back at her and no amount of heavy breathing; thigh-pinching; fervent prayer that this is all a bad dream she's ten seconds from waking up from; is going to change that.

She gulps.

Ichigo.

Ichigo needs to know.

She needs to tell him and part of her is scared shitless of what he's going to say.

She doesn't tell him.

It's not intentional on her part- at least for the first few days after she found out.

It just slips her mind sometimes about her new condition and then there's the fact that she could never seem to find the right time to tell him. This doesn't feel like the sort of thing that is light enough to be shared over the breakfast table or when they're cuddling in bed with their bedclothes on, mind switched off, body wrapped around each other.

Outside these hours, their lives are bound to the vigorous demands of the mundane world and its limitations. Time is finite in this world. Him with his busy university classes and lab sessions, her with her odd shifts at the local coffee shop and double-life as a seated officer of Gotei 13 meant that dinner is sometimes take outs and pizzas served on cheap plastic plates, wine in everyday mugs, excuses they make to ignore the presence of the growing pile of dirty dishes in the sink.

That there are mornings when Ichigo will jump out of their bed with a curse and start throwing on wrinkly clothes from the day before, screaming about how he's late as he shuts the front door with a bang that's loud enough to rattle the whole building but not before he rouses her, barely awake and squinting from the brightness with a goodbye kiss.

That there are nights when she will come back after a week-long stint in Soul Society and the ache of separation hits her more than she would care to admit but Ichigo leaves the light on. He greets her with his pretty eyes and hungry kisses and they'll spend that morning and the next in bed, making up for the lost time in the coil of their needy bodies.

This is a snapshot of real life for the two of them living together in relative anonymity in the Human World. She loves Ichigo and he loves her. Society has come a long way since feudalistic times and what Nii-sama doesn't know won't hurt him.

.

Take away the Shinigami aspect of their lives- the crazy out-of-this-realm misadventures they get swept into, wars between worlds waged and won in the span of a summer holiday, the battle scars adorning their bodies and they're literally as normal as their next door neighbours, human and barely out of their twenties, trying to find their place in this strange cruel world, somehow made warmer with Ichigo's hand in hers.

Being with Ichigo just makes her happy- happy enough to live in the now and not think ahead. She doesn't want to ruin what they have, doesn't want to upset the resemblance of a normal life she's constructed and cocooned herself in within the confines of their tiny apartment.

They haven't even talked about the future in so much as to where they would live after he graduates from college. Springing this on him just seems cruel- cruel when his life is only just beginning, about to take flight and she's gone ahead and done the unthinkable to clip his wings.

What if he's disappointed?

.

What if he doesn't want the baby?

.

The last thought renders her physically sick. Sud-covered hands reach instinctively for her baby bump that's barely showing.

For now, anyway.

.

Give it a few more weeks and he's bound to notice something. He's not that dumb (or at least she hopes he isn't). There are only so many times she can say no to the casually-offered beer and wine or mumble something along the lines of that time of the month to disguise the however many trips to the bathroom before he catches on.

.

.

.

"I'm home."

The sudden noise makes her jump and she loses her grip on the slippery half-washed dinner plate. It clatters to the floor, broken.

.

Shit!

.

Swearing comes entirely second nature when she cuts herself on the edges.

"Rukia?"

"In here," she calls out to him, holding the cut finger under the running water. Truth be told she's more upset about the broken plate- there were four in a set with matching bowls and now they're one short- than her injuries. The cut doesn't even look deep and the bleeding is bound to stop soon.

"Let me see."

Ichigo seems to think otherwise as he unceremoniously drops his bags and the heavy groceries by the door, eyebrows furrowing deep as he crouches down next to her, inspecting her wound.

Though calling it an inspection may have been a stretch.

He barely even glanced at it before he's hollering at her to stay put while he grabs the first aid kit.

"You're being ridiculous! It's just a cut!"

He should know better- what with his experience of violence and theoretical knowledge as a future physician. She's been through worse. They both have. Cuts that are deep enough to see gaps of bones in between, torn ligaments, broken bones, ruptured organs, a fist through the stomach- the memory makes her shudder now more than ever. He shouldn't be fussing over her for a flesh wound that barely registers on her scale of pain.

But he doesn't let go of her hand and merely grunts when she calls him a fool for making a big deal out of something as trivial as this.

"It'll heal quick. I don't s-"

She hisses, surprised by the sudden sting of antiseptic over broken skin. His gesture is uncharacteristically apologetic when he presses a kiss to her knuckle.

.

It doesn't make sense.

She's suffered much, much worse in her line of duty. He knows she has and she has survived, grew stronger and thrived. With every cut and blow that aims to knock her down, she rises up, bloodied and valiant to meet the next challenge. Yet she doesn't think she has ever seen him quite so serious, cleaning her cut and dwarfing her hand in his like she's soft, fragile like glass and twice as likely to break. Lord knows that she has never been neither of those things.

"I'm sorry. We don't have any bunny plasters but Yuzu left some Hello Kitty plasters in the first aid kit the last time she restocked it for us and I think you'd like them- why are you crying?"

Tears.

She can't remember the last time she felt them running down her cheeks. Have they always tasted so salty?

Through the burn of them, she sees his panicked face. His fists clench tight and grip at her as he holds her- shuddering breath and all, waiting for her to still and quiet so she can tell him who to hurt and who to maim.

This idiot!

Look at what he's reduced her to- this teary-eyed walking bundle of hormones who tears up because her boyfriend/baby daddy gave her some Hello Kitty plasters when she cut her finger.

"I'm pregnant, you dolt."

Ichigo wears his heart on his sleeves and the vulnerability on his face- the sheer multitude of emotions- shock, awe, joy, love, above all, love- when he absorbs the impact of the news and embraces his new reality is enough to make even a hardened warrior like her choke on the waterworks.

His eyes widen and the grip on her tightens as he presses her deeper into his embrace.

"H-How long?"

"It's early."

She thinks she's barely passed the sixth week mark.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I wanted to!"

Her hands fist at his clothes. She has lost count of the number of times when she wanted to reach for his hand under the covers as they spooned against each other and whisper it soft and slow into the night and put it to rest.

But every time she wants to open her mouth and speak, doubt makes her swallow those words whole because-

.

What if this isn't what he wanted?

.

This isn't something that they've planned for and she is too in love with the tranquillity of the moment, the peaceful look on his face, smiling at her- like she makes this life worth living for, to even consider ruining it. Is it wrong for her to think that the news can wait for another day if only to make tiny beautiful moments like these last a little while longer?

"…There just doesn't seem to be a right time to tell you."

He deadpans, "and you think now is the perfect time for us to have this conversation?"

There are soap suds in her hair, dirty dishwater stains on the front of her shirt. He has dark circles under his eyes, stinks of alcohol sanitizers, looking tired like he hasn't slept well for days. In the background is a precarious mountain pile of dishes to be washed waiting in the sink, shattered pieces of a broken dinner plate on the kitchen floor that still needs to be swept away.

Them in the comforts of their own home- the very essence of their domestic mundanity stripped down to the bones- messy, loud, less-than perfect; but at its heart, once the initial embarrassment of her housekeeping skill or the lack-there-of passes, is love.

.

She sighs, resting her forehead against his chest. "This is all your fault. This would have never have happened if you listened to me when I told you it's your turn to do the dishes."

"You could have waited?" he challenges, "You know class ends early for me today."

Rukia rolls her eyes as she informs him rather drily, "We ran out of clean plates two days ago."

Laughter rumbles low and throaty from him, his heartbeat thrumming steadily from his chest- a symphony strung along with bits of heart and soul, hopes for tomorrow that sooth her.

When the laughter dies, he buries his face in her hair, soaking up the warmth of her tiny body with his. He holds her, drawing lazy circles on the skin of her bare arm, tentative as he asks.

"Rukia. Were you afraid that I'd be disappointed? Or angry?"

She squirms in his arms, ashamed almost when she tells him, "A little of both."

A snort followed by a fond exasperated "Idiot. I love you and I promise to love you and to love our child forever and always and-" his breath catches, his world whirling, and he's looking at her like she's made of starlight and moon dust and- "you're carrying our baby!"

The hard lines on his face soften, his hands clearly shaking and the disbelief from the happiness that threatens to leave him in tears as he presses kisses to her- "We're going to have a baby."

The heat of his open palm is reassuring on her still-flat stomach. She smiles, mirroring his joy, and keeps his hand there, holds it in place with her own.

"We're going to have a baby."

.

There is never going to be a right time she realizes.

But that's ok.

It's ok if he's there with her, holding her hand through it all. As long as he's there with her, she thinks, she is brave enough to do anything. They can take on the world and be none the wiser for it.

He is her rock and he grounds her. Now more than ever when her soul feels light enough that she just might float away.

.

.

"As far as your brother is concerned, this baby is conceived immaculately. Agreed?"

She snorts and kisses his forehead. As if Nii-sama is the person he should be worried about!

Clearly her absentminded idiot is forgetting about his overly enthusiastic father and the man's over-the-top antics and flair for drama during the bi-monthly Kurosaki family dinners, scheduled to happen sometime this week.

Rukia humours him anyway. He'll catch on soon enough.

"Agreed."

FF/ao3

Reblog, review, like or comment or even ask to send some love my way  :D

[exxar1]

Chapter 14 “The Miracle of Easter, Psalm 139

4/3/2021

Psalm 139: 13-16 (NKJV)

“For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well.

My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.”

           I honestly don’t remember exactly where, when or how I stumbled onto this psalm. It was sometime in the last couple weeks, and I remember being immediately captivated by David’s poetry of God’s perfect knowledge of mankind. Just a few verses before the passage I quoted above, David asks his creator where he can flee that God will not find him? Whether heaven or hell or the highest mountain or the uttermost parts of the sea, David marvels that God will always find him and be with him, no matter what. (This brought to mind that children’s book where a small child asks his mother if she will still be able to find him no matter what animal he becomes and where he hides. The mother answers that she will always find and love her precious son, no matter what.)

           Then I read the four verses that I quoted above, and I had to stop short. I read them again and again, soaking in the words that were at once familiar and suddenly brand new. Somewhere in my early childhood I had memorized verses 13 and 14. Now, pairing them with verses 15 and 16 I was struck by David’s message, especially in verse 16. In the KJV translation, that verse reads, “Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in Thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.” This verse was new to me, but I had a pretty good idea of what David was saying. But, to get a better idea, I reached for my MacArthur study Bible which is published in the NKJV translation. As soon as I read verse 16 there, I smiled to myself. Yes, I was right.

           For the last two weeks I have not been able to get this verse out of my head. God knew me before I was even conceived. He had numbered all my days, had written my whole life from beginning to end, before I was even born. I have been trying to wrap my puny, finite mind around this inconceivable, quantum-sized yet massively cosmological concept. How does a being that exists outside our known space and time, a being that has always been and always shall be, a being that knows my entire life’s story before it’s even begun, a being more vast and omnipresent than the universe He created, have any interest at all in the comparatively insignificant, finite, puny beings that He created but who then immediately disobeyed and rejected Him?

           God could have started over. He had no obligation to Adam and Eve whatsoever. He could have wiped them from existence with a single, spoken word. And, in fact, a millennium or so later, He did wipe out all of the human race and started over with just Noah and his family. And even then, mankind has still behaved towards God with great rebellion and sin. In my own life, I declared a long time ago that God didn’t exist. I even said at one point to myself, in the deepest dark of my teenage despair that I hated God. I hated Him for the way He had made me.

           And yet, according to Psalm 139:16, God knew every word, every action, every rebellious thought that I would hurl at Him before I was even born. He also knew the day I would raise my eyes to the night sky behind the neon streetlamps six months ago and whisper a sinner’s prayer of forgiveness and surrender. He knows the exact time and day of my death or if I’ll still be alive the day that His son returns in the clouds to rapture the believers home. He knows my every choice, my every thought, my every deed before I make any of them, and He has always kept me wrapped in His arms my whole life, patiently waiting until I was finally ready to wholly and completely surrender to Him.

           I have been trying to understand not only the very existence and nature of God, but, more importantly, the depth and power of that kind of love. I have failed at both counts. Instead, I have only been able to quote verse 14 over and over. “I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well.” My soul understands what my frail, limited mind cannot: that God, my Lord and Creator, my Great Savior, loves me in spite of my sin nature; in spite of all I have said and done against him; in spite of all my failures, both past and future.

           He loved me enough to provide a way for my salvation.

           Tomorrow is Easter Sunday. It’s the day we who believe in God and what His son did for us on the cross celebrate Jesus’ resurrection and His victory over death. This is a Bible story that I have known my whole life. I have sat through countless sermons and Sunday School lessons and family devotionals, and I have listened to my parents, my teachers, and my pastor expound on the greatest truth found in God’s Holy Word. This is the foundation of our faith, the only reason and sole hope of our frail, finite human existence. I know the timeline, the major events starting with the last supper, to the Christ’s anguished, desperate prayer to His heavenly father in the Garden of Gethsemane,  to the moment of death and the earthquake that tore the temple veil in two. I know that Peter denied his Lord three times, that the trial was a mockery, that Christ knew that Judas would betray Him, and that Pontius Pilate washed his hands of the matter after his wife told him she suffered a restless night of strange dreams about this particular Jewish rabbi.

I know about the crown of thorns, the beatings, the piercing of His side, the blood and vinegar that flowed from the wound, the nails that were driven into his hands and feet, the excruciating pain and extreme suffering that he endured while hanging there for many hours. I also know about the two thieves – one who acknowledged the lordship of Christ, and the other who stubbornly refused to believe in spite of the evidence right before his own eyes. I know that Christ finally gave up the ghost by raising His weary, bloodied head to the darkened sky and crying, “It is finished!”

I know that He was laid in the tomb after being wrapped carefully and reverently by his followers as they wept with great sorrow and grief. I know that on the morning of the third day, when Mary and Martha came to the tomb, and when they found the stone rolled away and Jesus’ body gone, that they were both afraid and thoroughly confused. I also know that the angel of the Lord asked them, “Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, for he is risen as he promised! Go, and tell his disciples the good news!” And so they did.

I have known that story my whole life, every gory and heartbreaking detail. I have memorized many verses from the four gospels that speak of that great story. But, until this year, I have never known it in my heart and soul.

The God that David speaks of in Psalm 139 has known all my comings and goings, all of my thoughts and words, all my choices and heartbreaks, all my joys and accomplishments, all my times of deepest sorrows and despairs, before I was even conceived in my mother’s womb. He knows me from the very molecules of the protein strands of my DNA to every spiritual corner of my soul. His fingerprints are stamped into my genetic code, and He has loved me always.

I cannot fathom this, and my heart breaks as I contemplate the act of sacrifice that His son made on that cross on Golgotha’s Hill two millennia ago. Just writing those paragraphs describing the story of His death and resurrection has caused me to weep for what I did to send Him there. He bore the sin of ALL mankind – past, present and future – on that cross. That glorious, wonderous, terrible cross. He died for you, and He died for me.

Three months ago I started to expand my Apple music library with new albums and songs by current Christian singers and songwriters. One of them, Chris Tomlin, has a song called “The Wonderful Cross”. It’s his own arrangement of the hymn by Isaac Watts titled “When I Survey The Wonderous Cross.” I have been playing this song over and over during my daily commutes to work for the last few weeks.

When I survey the wonderous cross/On which the prince of glory died/My richest gain I count but loss/And pour contempt on all my pride

See from His head, His hands, His feet/Sorrow and love flow mingled down/Did e’er such love and sorrow meet/Or thorns compose so rich a crown

And now Chris’ own chorus:

Oh the wonderful cross/Oh the wonderful cross/Bids me come and die and find that I may truly live/Oh the wonderful cross/Oh the wonderful cross/All who gather here by grace draw near and bless Your name

This verse by Watts is what gets me every time:

Were the whole realm of nature mine/That were an offering far too small/Love so amazing, so divine/Demands my soul, my life, my all

           I come before you, O Lord God, a sinner saved by grace. I recognize that I am not worthy of Your love, Your mercy, or Your forgiveness. But You loved me so greatly and so deeply that You sent Your only son to be born of a virgin, to live as one of us, and then to die by our filthy, vile hands so that we could all be washed beneath His pure blood. By this, you gave us a way to salvation, and all that I have to do is accept this gift by praying and believing in Your name. There is nothing that I could ever do on my own to attain this, and I promise you, O God, that for as long as I live, as long as You give me the ability to draw breath, that I will give You nothing less than my soul, my life, and my all.

           Amen.