#So. I never really computed that some of this work is considered lesser.

[drumlincountry]

This is going to sound so stupid but I only today realised that a significant number of people like....look down on retail & service industry work.

[vanibear]

Genuine question: do you think people are more likely to paint sora as (emotionally) naive, rather than a more book-dumb kind of way? like being too trusting of people, that kind of thing

ahaha anon So i kind of accidentally wrote an essayish in response, but it ended up moving on from ur question to expanding on thoughts i have abt characterizations of sora, oopsie 

but TLDR: To answer your question anon, i actually think its about equally both, and i think perceiving him with a lack of emotional maturity can bleed into perceiving him with a lack of intelligence; sentiments like friends as your power and leaving no one behind can seem naïve and irrational if one doesnt think that sora comprehends his odds and still chooses to proceed because his heart believes it is right. while sora does have a ways to grow emotionally, especially in regards to his own feelings, i dont think that he lacks knowledge when it comes to relationships and understanding others emotions, which is actually rather his strong suit. i also think that sora is generally very smart, and just dont quite understand why people portray him as not quite being so

~ the aforementioned ramble ~ ooo good question ! hm. i think more often i notice people characterizing him in a book dumb sort of way, but honestly that could be bc it bugs me more. however, we dont know if sora did well in school or not/what level of education he got, so instead of a strictly textbook smart sense, i see it more as a lacking the characteristics of someone who is book smart sense? basically, people painting him as airheaded, oblivious, or not very eloquent; i think especially with jokes or complicated subjects going over his head. but, if you look at his dialogue (and, while this is more subjective, puzzles and challenges he has to overcome in the gameplay), thats usually not the case? hes delivered plenty of introspective and articulate lines; hes witty, sarcastic, and even sometimes rude; hes incredibly adaptive and resourceful considering the situations he’s thrown into, and hes a quick learner, as shown by his keyblade skills.

however, i think some of these perceptions do come from how he is a very emotionally driven person. he follows his heart and is loyal and trusting to a fault, and that can cause him to take actions that seem impulsive, illogical, and naïve. however, i think sora is very knowledgeable of emotions because of how he connects with people. he’s incredibly empathetic and understanding of others and has made friends with nearly everyone he meets because of that; which i believe is an incredibly difficult accomplishment. while his feelings can lead to mistakes, they are also his greatest strength; he will try his best to fix those mistakes. where i believe he really struggles is in processing his own emotions.

and on that, sora is pretty self-deprecating, and laughs off a lot of things, which sometimes can cover up just how talented he is because even he denies it. i think that oftentimes, sora himself believes that he’s dumb, or lesser in comparison to others, which can lead to people taking that at face value if they dont look deeper

however. sora is still a cheerful and silly guy, and thats an important part of his personality too! he is an energetic, optimistic teenage boy who really just wants to have fun with his friends and thinks that everyone should have a happy ending.

sora has a lot of different dimensions to him, but unfortunately characters that have a seemingly cheerful disposition and noble motivations that come off as idealistic can often get sanded down to being stupid because they’re seen as too naïve to understand the gravity of their situation.

to clarify, i dont think that soras never been dumb. keyboard (and keyblade) smashing is probably not the best idea if a computer isnt working. but, in my opinion, i think sometimes we dont give sora enough credit in our depictions of him, and tend to exaggerate certain qualities of his while forgetting others

[eolewyn1010]

Farewell, Darkover - part 2

The entire subject might bring up the question: Why make such a fuss about it? MZB was a piece of shit; put a checkmark behind that and move on. But, to get back to the JKR issue again, it's not that easy with books one grew up with. In many cases the Harry Potter books, in my case the Darkover books - they left an impression and they were there when we shaped our thinking, when our personalities were still in growth. There's a post somewhere out there that says it's okay to be grieving and / or angry that JKR turned out to be a piece of shit, because you don't leave that behind you just like that. Coping is a process, and in case of Darkover, it's one I have put up.

At some point in my teen years, I had moved on from Darkover. It didn't become irrelevant to me, but I discovered new things that caught my fancy, and I started to move in fandom spaces where I could connect to others who liked the same stuff, something that had never been possible regarding Darkover on behalf of that being rather specialized and generationally dated literature. The friendship that had brought me to the book series had ended, and I put my old drawings and drafts of family trees in a map, sorted my fanfic snippets into a file on my computer, and gave Darkover that special place in my heart and my dreams that we reserve for our first really-important-to-us literature or movie, or game, or whatever.

Sometimes, I still dreamed myself there. On Darkover, people with my hair color were considered special, as it more often than not genetically coincided with laran, the psychic gifts that were a core element of the books. Like every whiny teen who deemed themself a misunderstood outsider, I liked to imagine myself as someone grand and respected, more of a mage than a human, liked to think that, in that society, of course I would be one of the "special" ones. It was much later that I learned to recognize the inherent elitism in that thought process, that I began to realize how dangerous it was to associate physical attributes with an innate claim to superiority... Considering MZB seemed to think of herself that she should just be allowed to do anything, I'm not sure she ever thought of this notion as dangerous.

One time, I was gifted one of the anthology books she had published, and my ties to Darkover were still tight enough that I was over the moon in light of the idea that there were others who loved the 'verse so much that they wrote stories for it. MZB's editor's comment on that book was the first time that I read her words unfiltered, not her stories, just her direct input, and they gave me pause. She didn't appear like the nicest person. I'd never cared much for authors when it was the stories I wanted, but there was MZB rather unambiguously talking down to a lot of people who had sent in their stories for the anthology, saying that she tossed several away without so much as a glance. Of course, there was probably a reason for that, I told myself - she was a professional writer for eternities; certainly, she knew when what she had before her was worthless. Hell, I was a teen stumbling through my first self-criticism in writing; my stuff was probably worthless.

I shrugged it off, I read and enjoyed the stories, I put the book up on my shelf. But in hindsight? It was the first time that I thought of someone whose work I really loved as arrogant, as someone whom I probably would not have enjoyed meeting personally. Although I cannot know that; considering how long she kept her crimes off the radar of people who admired her, there's a chance she was good at pretending to be charming and nice. But I remember that I read how she treated her fans, and my impulse was to belittle myself and my writings instead of taking away an encouragement from it. Which. A person who causes others to think themselves lesser would at least be someone with an uncomfortable ego. Several more years passed before I learned what would give my notion of MZB the actual swan dive.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

OK, I'LL TELL YOU YOU ABOUT WEALTH

When we started it, there wasn't any; the few sites you could order from were hand-made objects become store-bought ones—a wire service article whose first sentence is your own ad copy. Every startup that isn't profitable meaning nearly all of them, but none of their software could compete with ours. Most of the disputes I've seen between founders could have been having this idea at the same time, of course, but as far as I can tell it must be hard by how few startups do it. People think that what a business does is make money. In any purely economic relationship you're free to do what you want, not money. With trend stories, PR firms usually line up one or more experts to talk about selling the company to them, we had no experience in business. A programmer can sit down in front of a computer and create wealth. A lot of them try to make relativity strange. In industrialized countries, people belong to one institution or another at least by reputation, the level of measurement is more precise than you get from smallness alone.

I don't think there's an answer. Switching to a new set of buildings, and do things that you do not, ordinarily, be a group. The company that did was RCA, and Farnsworth's reward for his efforts was a decade of patent litigation. Who cares if you could read the minds of the consumers, you'd find these factors were all blurred together. It's rare to get things right the first time in our history, the bullies stopped stealing the nerds' lunch money. I had the misfortune to participate in what amounted to a controlled experiment to prove that. The discoverer is entitled to reply, why didn't you? I know, without knowing they know, that they can create wealth. When we switch to the point of view of a programmer using any of the languages higher up the power continuum. What were the results of this experiment? It takes an effort of will to push through this and get something released to users.

But these had had literally orders of magnitude less scrutiny. By the end of last year. In fact, nice is not the only way to decide which to call it is by comparison with other startups. What you're doing is business creation. It's a good metaphor because it reminds you that when the audience can communicate with one another. The whole tone is bogus. If you want a potato or a pencil or a place to work. Good does not mean being a pushover. But this is a list of the biggest ideas at Google is going to come up with more. And for the same reason: their performance can be measured. When you hear your call is important to us, please stay on the line, do you think, all you have to know who you should be nice to everyone. Developing new technology is a pain in the ass.

Giotto saw traditional Byzantine madonnas painted according to a formula that had satisfied everyone for centuries, and to lose one's sense of humor is to shrug off misfortunes, and to a lesser extent Britain under the labor governments of the 1960s and early 1970s. They didn't care what language Viaweb was written in, or didn't care, I wanted to keep it. He probably considers them about equivalent in power to, say, Python? For one thing, the official fiction is that you don't realize that. And it can't have been heredity, because it was more valuable, but because it is a good bet, he's still at a disadvantage. Gas stations? In this case we get three: the NPD Group, the creative director of GQ.

I had that something was amiss was that I couldn't talk to them. Their reporters do go out and learn Lisp. It must have seemed to our competitors that we had some kind of consumer gadget. If you do everything the way the average big company does it, you should leave business models for later, just as you'd leave some trivial but messy feature for version 2. But Durer's engravings and Saarinen's womb chair and the Pantheon and the original Porsche 911 all seem to me slightly funny. This bites you twice: in addition to the direct cost in time, there's the cost in fragmentation—breaking people's day up into bits too small to measure. Like having more than one founder, one VC, and he'll chase down the implications of what one said to them. Why call an auction site eBay?

When you made mistakes, what caused you to make them. I am much the richer for the operating system FreeBSD, which I'm running on the computer I'm using now, and so is Yahoo, which runs it on all their servers. I never reach them through the Times front page is a list of 5 commands Don't ignore your dreams; don't work too much; say what you think; cultivate friendships; be happy. And God help you if you choose them. There is no shortcut to it. It seems unlikely this is a simple answer to the wrong question. If you have a much greater chance of succeeding. But once you've admitted that one high level language can be more powerful than a community of talented people working on related problems. Another thing blogs and open source have in common is the Web. Salesmen are an exception. The recipe for great work is: very exacting taste, plus the ability to gratify it. Our startup made software for making online stores.

They want statements with punch, like top ten. When those far removed from the creation of wealth—undergraduates, reporters, politicians—hear that the richest 5% of the people have half the total wealth, they tend to write it first for whatever computer they personally use. Presumably it killed just about 100% of the startups we've funded have had a founder leave. They believe this because it really feels that way to them. Ditto for many other kinds of companies that don't make anything physical. For most people the best plan probably is to go to work for them. Facebook rightly ignored, look for ideas from the other direction. But you don't need to join a company to do that completely. But more people could do it than do it now. We did it because we want their software to be good. I had that something was amiss was that I couldn't talk to them.

And we weren't the only ones they did great things for the companies they fund, why didn't they start them? Microsoft would still have signed the deal. You look at them and you think, all you need is good hackers: if you depend on an oligopoly, you sink into bad habits that are hard to overcome when you suddenly get competition. When my IBM Thinkpad's hard disk died soon after, it became my only laptop. Few know this, I mean the structure of the calculation. The sterility of offices is supposed to suggest efficiency. If there are three founders and one who was away half the time talking to executives at cell phone companies, trying to arrange deals.

Thanks to Jessica Livingston, Jackie McDonough, Trevor Blackwell, Ben Horowitz, Justin Kan, Aaron Iba, Robert Morris, Karen Nguyen, and Harj Taggar for the lulz.

[seventeenlovesthree]

Let's do the obvious one: Taishiro :P

Oh my God, you just want me to gush over my boys for the millionth time, I swear. I will try my best to keep it as short as possible this time...

Send me two names among the following 12 and I’ll write a short analysis post about them:

Taichi Yagami | Yamato Ishida | Sora Takenouchi | Koushirou Izumi | Mimi Tachikawa | Jyou Kidou | Takeru Takaishi | Hikari Yagami | Daisuke Motomiya | Miyako Inoue | Iori Hida | Ken Ichijouji

Whether canon provides input on them or not:

Well... Duh. Despite them being considered more of a rarepair in fandom (despite it being basically the second most popular Koushirou ship out there besides Koumi), they are actually one of the most developed, most elaborated relationships in the entirety of the Digimon Adventure canon, regardless of which version you want to take a look at: 01, 02, (especially) Our War Game, the novels, the PSP game, the stageplay, the reboot and, to some lesser degree but still palpable, Tri and Kizuna. They're set up as "brawns and brains", the brave hands-on protagonist who always asks his knowledgable strategist for advice, relies on and trusts in him without a shred of doubt, whereas said strategist would also follow him to hell and back, despite sometimes having to shout at him for being too reckless. Without Taichi, Koushirou wouldn't have gone to Summer Camp - and without Koushirou, Taichi would never have figured out a way for them to get back to the real world. They complement each other in their strengths and weaknesses, they may butt heads occasionally, but they're there for each other as good friends and comrades. So that is a very clear YES.

Whether I think why and how they’d work:

Since they're my absolute Digimon OTP, I do believe that they work out very well - not only have I already outlined why they're basically best friends in canon and thus work out nicely in a platonic friendship, but there's also a lot of aspects about them that make me adore them romantically as well. You just take the jock/nerd trope and flip them completely over the head - so you get a very kind football dork, who loves to take care of youngsters and immediately grows attached to the computer nerd who came into his club and is not very good at social interaction - yet. What happens? They become super good, if not best friends, the nerd is getting enabled to become just as much of a hands-on person as the jock, opens up more and more through the course of them spending time in a foreign world together and with the other kids as well, they solve puzzles and riddles together as partners in crime while displaying a sense of unshattered loyalty towards each other. There may be instances, as mentioned, where they butt heads because they're not able to talk about feelings well with each other, but they're still there to support and sacrifice themselves for one another, saving several worlds several times in the face of death and it's just... It gets to me. Tri probably realized that, after Our War Game, these two would probably be unstoppable if they really worked together, which is likely the reason why they didn't let them interact THAT much during their teenager years - however, the connections never really faded. Koushirou watched Taichi throughout all these years, he’s the only one who really knows about his childhood trauma, would always have his back and sacrifice himself for his sake - the boy who once reached out a hand to him at football club. And Taichi, no matter how much he'd isolate himself from everyone emotionally, will always trust in Koushirou in return - the boy who had been by his side through thick and thin, the person who saw him cry his heart out. To me, it's just a wonderful concept to have these two fall for each other romantically as well, as they just seem to be endlessly loyal - ending up working together one day, because their careers just seem DESTINED to be linked with each other (and the Digital World, which will always bring them together).

Whether I’d prefer them as platonic or romantic ship:

As pointed out above, I actually do enjoy both variants - in a universe in which these two end up falling in love with each other and overcoming all their oblivious nut-ness, realizing that that make each other better AND happy once they FINALLY open up to each other, I would cry tears of happiness. However, if I ended up getting a universe in which they'll always remain close friends until they're old and grey, working together while being married to other people (like Taichi being married to Sora or maybe even Yamato for that matter - and Koushirou being married to Hikari or Mimi), I would be perfectly happy as well.

[youreyeslookliketheocean]

youreyeslookliketheocean’s DSMP Fic Recs!!

Figured it was about time for one of these... :)

Mostly SBI-centric because they’re my favorite dynamic. I’ll probably add to this list as time goes on, and I also want to go back through my ao3 history and find some lesser-known fics I really enjoyed to rec them all. But for now...

* oneshot  ** unfinished work

** the lights go out (my heart goes still) by curseworm

With his old home unwelcoming and his new one gone, Tommy is alone. After hours of staggering through the freezing snow, he finds a cabin.

Technoblade’s cabin.

He hides himself away in the deepest corner he can find, taking only what he needs to survive, wasting away in the cold and the dark. He’s petrified at the thought of being found out, terrified of what he thinks Techno would do to him.

When Techno finds his injured teenage brother huddled in a filthy little cave beneath his basement, the rage he feels is immeasurable. The voices demand blood, and blood he will give them. Dream won’t be getting away with this one.

(On the other side of the world, in a country that floats on a man-made lake, Philza gets himself in a bit of a pickle.) 

** The hearth down under by Crystalquill

A tiny change gives Tommy the courage to flee to the Nether instead of the cold tundra, finding an unlikely ally in the midst of a fiery hellscape.

But tiny changes can alter the course of history. The SMP will never be the same.

(Lots of cool Nether worldbuilding in this one!!)

to be a wanderer, wandering by hydrangeasheart

Tommy's feet drag in the snow.

It's so, so cold. He's so cold. His toes are freezing. His exposed shins feel like they’ve been cut open-- even the one that’s bandaged. His wings have gone numb, which is almost, almost good, because now he can’t feel the shifting, broken bones inside of the left one, just under feathers and muscle.

He doesn’t know why he’s still walking.

-

Or, Tommy leaves the exploded ruins of Logstedshire behind, and walks until he finds somewhere safe.

And things keep going from there.

(A canon-divergent AU, splitting off somewhere around when Tommy started hiding out below Techno's house.)

that’s, like, a hundred miles by No_one_you_know (and then “as long as i’m here”, and “he’s my brother, i just raise him”)

Dream would kill him. Dream was going to kill him- he was going to- no, he wouldn’t. Dream was his friend- friends don’t hit each other- Dream was supposed to take care of him- Dream /was/ taking care of him.

It hurt to breathe. It hurt to think. He couldn’t clear his thoughts as he stumbled to the family computer, pulling up a tab on google and frantically typing the name into the search bar.

The words Technoblade Watson stared back at him, the little black bar at the end of the letters blinking slowly, mocking him.

Why, of all people, did it have to be Technoblade?

in short: the one where dream sucks as a parental figure, tommy runs away, and visits his least favorite family member technoblade.

passerine by thcscus(blujamas)

Do I really need to put the summary here? Pretty much everyone knows this fic. Also, though, if you enjoy this one you should totally read thcscus’ connected fic, “shrike”!! It’s only at 2 chapters right now but it’s already really good and has this dark, foresty aesthetic I love...

not with a bang but with a whimper by dip_dyed_ghost

He knows Tubbo doesn’t care about him anymore. He knows that. He’s been shown that. But it doesn’t stop Tommy from caring about him. He brushes the pads of his fingers over the compass’s glass and wonders how he’s doing, if he’s tired of it all yet, if he needs help. He watches the way it points strongly in the direction over the ocean. He hopes he’s alright.

Even after everything, he hopes he’s alright.

During his exile, Tommy finds a drugged and hurt Tubbo on his doorstep. He can’t not help him.  

(This one has a neat take on potions, in my opinion. Also it’s only 4 chapters so it’s a quick read!)

take this compass, follow it home by lightning_anon

Tommy's a fuck up, he can't pay attention, and never sits still. He taps his hands, pushes people away, and has never had a best friend. He's a screwed up, forgotten kid lost in the foster system. He's also just been placed with a new family. Tommy knows how this goes, he never ends up staying long. After all, no one wants a fuck up like him.

Why would this house be any different?

Or: the obligatory sleepy bois foster fic, but with a focus on the neurodivergent kids that inevitably get lost in the system.

(Genuinely want to see more books like this in original fiction. It’s part of what inspired my newest og wip, “To Build a Home.” So sweet and I feel like I had my eyes opened to some neurodivergent tendencies I never knew existed. I read this in a day and can’t rec it enough.)

bloodlines by youreyeslookliketheocean

Tommy’s an orphan on the run from his previous guardian. Philza’s a king who prides himself on keeping his kingdom in an era of peace. Wilbur’s the crown prince, and Techno’s right beside him as his adopted brother. When Phil’s kingdom of Pogtopia is threatened by the bloodvines—a strange, brainwashing plant infecting many of the surrounding kingdoms—the four must work together to keep the kingdom, and their family, safe. --- A royal au sbi fic... + the bloodvines, for spice.

(Yes I’m self-promoting. But, in my defense, I’m very proud of it. If you checked it out it would mean the world to me :’))

Heat Waves by tbhyourelame

Dream has always held a gentle admiration for George, but when their nuanced friendship trickles into his sleeping mind, he awakens to a new world of conflicting emotions and longing. Lost in the midst of a heat wave, he continuously listens to a song that works itself in to the very core of his heartache. Floridian nights, unsent messages, spiraling infatuation, and terrible, terrible weather.

Another fic I think pretty much everyone knows about. Listen, listen... I was once an idiot who said “Oh no, I’ll never read Heat Waves. It’s irl, not characters, and it’s probably cringe”... No. I was so wrong. This fic is wonderfully written, with a pretty quick moving plot and great characterizations. You do need an ao3 account to access it, though. Just to let you know. (Also read “Helium”, unfinished and hasn’t updated in awhile, but it’s the continuation). 

Guitar Strings and Keyrings are What it Takes to Build a Home by Anonymous

Techno was adopted by Phil when he was 12 years old.

He'd been enjoying his morning before Phil came to him asking if he would mind them taking in another kid. Against his better judgement, Techno agrees and ends up with two new foster brothers who he was determined to not get attached to, no matter what.

Tommyinnit’s unbeatable method of avoiding sudden death by eneliii

“I uh,” Tommy starts, not knowing how to break this to the hero lightly. He hates to be the bearer of bad news. “I think your powers are broken? It’s not a bad thing of course, but like, I swear you tried to mind control me and it like, totally failed. Which is fine, honestly, don’t feel insecure. Everyone’s power stop working sometimes… I think.”

Sheesh, this is very awkward. Why is no one else talking? Why is Philza looking at him like he grew three heads? Why is the Blade staring at him so intensely? Why is Willow still frozen?

“Did I, did I hit a nerve? Yikes,” Tommy hisses, “Well um,” He steps back, bracing his legs and bending his knees, “This was like super fun, but I’m - I’mma head out.”

or,

in which Tommy manages to annoy the hell out of Phil, Techno and Wilbur by being both impossible to catch and irritatingly endearing.

or or,

a crack fic where Tommy is a vigilante and Phil, Techno and Wilbur are the heroes hunting him down.

(Feel like I am obligated to say how incredibly funny this fic is. Seriously. I have a distinct memory of sitting on my neighborhood park’s swing, giggling hysterically, while reading this. Well...until the end... but we won’t get into that...)

** bones in the ocean by bunflower

“Your reputation precedes you, y’know.”

“Does it, now?” Philza watches him coyly from where he’s now leaning against the wall, arms folded around his chains and gaze half-lidded, his lips curled in an arrogant, cat-like smirk.

“The Angel of Death, the ferryman of the Styx, the terror of the western seas. One of the most feared captains ever to sail, and yet, I have to wonder… how did a man like you end up all on his own? We searched the area where you were found—not another soul in sight. So,” He fixes him with a long look, allowing the silence to hover like a dark cloud, the words rolling off of his tongue with all the venom and smugness he can muster, “—tell me, Philza. Where is your crew?”

OR: Technoblade is a naval captain, and Phil his unwilling prisoner. Somehow, they manage to come out of it as friends in the end.

(Is this fic considered popular like passerine/Heat Waves now? Cause I feel like it’s reputation precedes itself, at this point... Pirate au.)

****

Okay! That’s it for now. Like I said, though, I want to add to this over time and also dig back for some older things I’ve read. Also, if you have any recs feel free to send them in! I’m about to go back to school and therefore might not have time for reading fun stuff, but whenever I get the chance I’d love to check them out!!!

Happy Reading!!

[mcmansionhell]

Coronagrifting: A Design Phenomenon

We now interrupt our regularly scheduled content to bring you a critical essay on the design world. I promise you that this will also be funny. 

This morning, the design website Dezeen tweeted a link to one of its articles, depicting a plexiglass coronavirus shield that could be suspended above dining areas, with the caption “Reader comment: ‘Dezeen, please stop promoting this stupidity.’”

This, of course, filled many design people, including myself, with a kind of malicious glee. The tweet seemed to show that the website’s editorial (or at least social media) staff retained within themselves a scintilla of self-awareness regarding the spread a new kind of virus in its own right: cheap mockups of COVID-related design “solutions” filling the endlessly scrollable feeds of PR-beholden design websites such as Dezeen, ArchDaily, and designboom. I call this phenomenon: Coronagrifting. 

I’ll go into detail about what I mean by this, but first, I would like to presenet some (highly condensed) history. 

From Paper Architecture to PR-chitecture

Back in the headier days of architecture in the 1960s and 70s, a number of architectural avant gardes (such as Superstudio and Archizoom in Italy and Archigram in the UK) ceased producing, well, buildings, in favor of what critics came to regard as “paper architecture.” This “paper architecture” included everything from sprawling diagrams of megastructures, including cities that “walked” or “never stopped” - to playfully erotic collages involving Chicago’s Marina City. Occasionally, these theoretical and aesthetic explorations were accompanied by real-world productions of “anti-design” furniture that may or may not have involved foam fingers. 

Archigram’s Walking City (1964). Source.

Paper architecture, of course, still exists, but its original radical, critical, playful, (and, yes, even erotic) elements were shed when the last of the ultra-modernists were swallowed up by the emerging aesthetic hegemony of Postmodernism (which was much less invested in theoretical and aesthetic futurism) in the early 1980s. What remained were merely images, the production and consumption of which has only increased as the design world shifted away from print and towards the rapidly produced, easily digestible content of the internet and social media. 

Architect Bjarke Ingels’s “Oceanix” - a mockup of an ecomodernist, luxury city designed in response to rising sea levels from climate change. The city will never be built, and its critical interrogation amounts only to “city with solar panels that floats bc climate change is Serious”  - but it did get Ingels and his firm, BIG, a TED talk and circulation on all of the hottest blogs and websites. Meanwhile, Ingels has been in business talks with the right-wing climate change denialist president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro. (Image via designboom) 

Design websites are increasingly dominated by text and mockups from the desks of a firm’s public relations departments, facilitating a transition from the paper-architecture-imaginary to what I have begun calling “PR-chitecture.” In short, PR-chitecture is architecture and design content that has been dreamed up from scratch to look good on instagram feeds or, more simply, for clicks.  It is only within this substance-less, critically lapsed media landscape that Coronagrifting can prosper.

Coronagrifting: An Evolution

As of this writing, the two greatest offenders of Coronagrifting are Dezeen, which has devoted an entire section of its website to the virus (itself offering twelve pages of content since February alone) and designboom, whose coronavirus tag contains no fewer than 159 articles. 

Certainly, a small handful of these stories demonstrate useful solutions to COVID-related problems (such as this one from designboom about a student who created a mask prototype that would allow D/deaf and hard of hearing people to read lips) most of the prototypes and the articles about them are, for a lack of a better word, insipid. 

But where, you may ask, did it all start?

One of the easiest (and, therefore, one of the earliest) Coronagrifts involves “new innovative, health-centric designs tackling problems at the intersection of wearables and personal mobility,” which is PR-chitecture speak for “body shields and masks.” 

Wearables and Post-ables

The first example came from Chinese architect Sun Dayong, back at the end of February 2020, when the virus was still isolated in China. Dayong submitted to Dezeen a prototype of a full mask and body-shield that “would protect a wearer during a coronavirus outbreak by using UV light to sterilise itself.” The project was titled “Be a Bat Man.” No, I am not making this up. 

Screenshot of Dayong’s “Be a Batman” as seen on the Dezeen website. 

Soon after, every artist, architect, designer, and sharp-eyed PR rep at firms and companies only tangentially related to design realized that, with the small investment of a Photoshop mockup and some B-minus marketing text, they too could end up on the front page of these websites boasting a large social media following and an air of legitimacy in the field. 

By April, companies like Apple and Nike were promising the use of existing facilities for producing or supplying an arms race’s worth of slick-tech face coverings. Starchitecture’s perennial PR-churners like Foster + Partners and Bjarke Ingels were repping “3D-printed face shields”, while other, lesser firms promised wearable vaporware like “grapheme filters,” branded “skincare LED masks for encouraging self-development” and “solar powered bubble shields.” 

While the mask Coronagrift continues to this day, the Coronagrifting phenomenon had, by early March, moved to other domains of design. 

Consider the barrage of asinine PR fluff that is the “Public Service Announcement” and by Public Service Announcement, I mean “A Designer Has Done Something Cute to Capitalize on Information Meant to Save Lives.” 

Some of the earliest offenders include cutesy posters featuring flags in the shape of houses, ostensibly encouraging people to “stay home;” a designer building a pyramid out of pillows ostensibly encouraging people to “stay home”; and Banksy making “lockdown artwork��� that involved covering his bathroom in images of rats ostensibly encouraging people to “stay home.” 

Lol. Screenshot from Dezeen. 

You may be asking, “What’s the harm in all this, really, if it projects a good message?” And the answer is that people are plenty well encouraged to stay home due to the rampant spread of a deadly virus at the urging of the world’s health authorities, and that these tone-deaf art world creeps are using such a crisis for shameless self promotion and the generation of clicks and income, while providing little to no material benefit to those at risk and on the frontlines.

Of course, like the mask coronagrift, the Public Service Announcement coronagrift continues to this very day. 

The final iteration of Post-able and Wearable Coronagrifting genres are what I call “Passive Aggressive Social Distancing Initiatives” or PASDIs. Many of the first PASDIs were themselves PSAs and art grifts, my favorite of which being the designboom post titled “social distancing applied to iconic album covers like the beatle’s abbey road.” As you can see, we’re dealing with extremely deep stuff here. 

However, an even earlier and, in many ways more prescient and lucrative grift involves “social distancing wearables.” This can easily be summarized by the first example of this phenomenon, published March 19th, 2020 on designboom: 

Never wasting a single moment to capitalize on collective despair, all manner of brands have seized on the social distancing wearable trend, which, again, can best be seen in the last example of the phenomenon, published May 22nd, 2020 on designboom:

We truly, truly live in Hell. 

Which brings us, of course, to living. 

“Architectural Interventions” for a “Post-COVID World”

As soon as it became clear around late March and early April that the coronavirus (and its implications) would be sticking around longer than a few months, the architectural solutions to the problem came pouring in. These, like the virus itself, started at the scale of the individual and have since grown to the scale of the city. (Whether or not they will soon encompass the entire world remains to be seen.) 

The architectural Coronagrift began with accessories (like the designboom article about 3D-printed door-openers that enable one to open a door with one’s elbow, and the Dezeen article about a different 3D-printed door-opener that enables one to open a door with one’s elbow) which, in turn, evolved into “work from home” furniture (”Stykka designs cardboard #StayTheF***Home Desk for people working from home during self-isolation”) which, in turn, evolved into pop-up vaporware architecture for first responders (”opposite office proposes to turn berlin's brandenburg airport into COVID-19 'superhospital'”), which, in turn evolved into proposals for entire buildings (”studio prototype designs prefabricated 'vital house' to combat COVID-19″); which, finally, in turn evolved into “urban solutions” aimed at changing the city itself (a great article summarizing and criticizing said urban solutions was recently written by Curbed’s Alissa Walker).

There is something truly chilling about an architecture firm, in order to profit from attention seized by a global pandemic, logging on to their computers, opening photoshop, and drafting up some lazy, ineffectual, unsanitary mockup featuring figures in hazmat suits carrying a dying patient (macabrely set in an unfinished airport construction site) as a real, tangible solution to the problem of overcrowded hospitals; submitting it to their PR desk for copy, and sending it out to blogs and websites for clicks, knowing full well that the sole purpose of doing so consists of the hope that maybe someone with lots of money looking to commission health-related interiors will remember that one time there was a glossy airport hospital rendering on designboom and hire them. 

Enough, already. 

Frankly, after an endless barrage of cyberpunk mask designs, social distancing burger king crowns, foot-triggered crosswalk beg buttons that completely ignore accessibility concerns such as those of wheelchair users, cutesy “stay home uwu” projects from well-to-do art celebrities (who are certainly not suffering too greatly from the economic ramifications of this pandemic), I, like the reader featured in the Dezeen Tweet at the beginning of this post, have simply had enough of this bullshit. 

What’s most astounding to me about all of this (but especially about #brand crap like the burger king crowns) is that it is taken completely seriously by design establishments that, despite being under the purview of PR firms, should frankly know better. I’m sure that Bjarke Ingels and Burger King aren’t nearly as affected by the pandemic as those who have lost money, jobs, stability, homes, and even their lives at the hands of COVID-19 and the criminally inept national and international response to it. On the other hand, I’m sure that architects and designers are hard up for cash at a time when nobody is building and buying anything, and, as a result, many see resulting to PR-chitecture as one of the only solutions to financial problems. 

However, I’m also extremely sure that there are interventions that can be made at the social, political, and organizational level, such as campaigning for paid sick leave, organizing against layoffs and for decent severance or an expansion of public assistance, or generally fighting the rapidly accelerating encroachment of work into all aspects of everyday life – that would bring much more good and, dare I say, progress into the world than a cardboard desk captioned with the hashtag #StaytheF***Home. 

Hence, I’ve spent most of my Saturday penning this article on my blog, McMansion Hell. I’ve chosen to run this here because I myself have lost work as a freelance writer, and the gutting of publications down to a handful of editors means that, were I to publish this story on another platform, it would have resulted in at least a few more weeks worth of inflatable, wearable, plexiglass-laden Coronagrifting, something my sanity simply can no longer withstand. 

So please, Dezeen, designboom, others – I love that you keep daily tabs on what architects and designers are up to, a resource myself and other critics and design writers find invaluable – however, I am begging, begging you to start having some discretion with regards to the proposals submitted to you as “news” or “solutions” by brands and firms, and the cynical, ulterior motives behind them. If you’re looking for a guide on how to screen such content, please scroll up to the beginning of this page. 

----

If you enjoyed this article, please consider subscribing to my Patreon, as I didn’t get paid to write it.  

[agent-cupcake]

As a resident Claudefucker, I know am curious to know what our fave charming schemer is doing during this Mafia!AU. He'd look lovely in a suit.

~It was quite the headline when Godfrey Riegan died. The details are a little hazy, a little convenient, but people don't talk about that sort of thing. Car accidents are common. Tragic, but not unreasonable. There’s no reason to smear a man’s perfectly respectable political career for the sake of some sensational gossip.

~In the right circles, however, there was a huge uproar, questions about who was going to take over the Riegan family when the elderly boss Oswald died. The Riegan’s had been dominating Leicester for quite some time, but a lot of people began to predict that the Gloucester family was going to move in. They had powerful friends, it seemed. Friends with money, no less.

~Claude Riegan, grandson of Oswald, appeared out of nowhere just when he was needed. Stories of the lost daughter Tiana still circulated, sure, but there were still a lot of questions about Claude’s origins when nobody except Oswald were able to vouch for him. He obviously had military leadership experience—his skill with guns and ability to lead was just too excellent for any other explanation—but he dismissed the question out of hand. There’s no documentation of him, either, leading some to wonder if even his name was false. But Oswald said he was family, and that was that.

~Claude was quick to establish himself, in any case. Despite his cavalier attitude, his efficacy in overhauling the power dynamics of Leicester were profound.  

~He decided, first and foremost, that the way to win the people over was to invigorate the local culture, which had seen a sharp decline as a result of new laws that were unfavorable to business, Adrestia’s growing market monopolies, and the bad reputation of the red light district Ailell. This included some perfectly legitimate campaigning and some under the table type schemes. 

~The result was a flourishing Derdriu Street. While it lacks the prestige of Enbarr Square in Adrestia, it welcomes entertainment that would be considered too “low brow” like comedy, trendy new restaurants, and music venues. Even better, all of it is built on the recently cleaned up river. The Riegan family is involved in all of  it, of course. 

~Casino owner Claude. This exists solely to thirst but maybe it was preexisting and he took it over due to its poor management? If there’s going to be gambling anyway, it should be done right. The extra money’s not so bad, either. But, Claude lounging in a big leather chair in a dark blue blazer with gold brocade, his white shirt unbuttoned low enough to see enough his chest. Enough to make you drool. Enough that you’d definitely get caught staring and probably called out for it because he can’t help himself. Claude with his elbows on the arm rests and fingers folded in front of him as he considers you, gold rings winking because he’s just that ostentatious and appearances are important. Claude asking you how you feel about taking risks in a way that really feels like it has nothing to do with cards, staring at you with a friendly smile that doesn’t meet those calculating eyes—eyes that you know will pick up on every tell. 

~Claude also struck a deal with the Kupala Distillery. They’d been fighting to keep hold of their historic business for years, and Claude offered to help them with that. You know, not for free, but he’s good at making deals that leave everybody happy. 

~The second biggest thing he tackled was the drug trade. For the most part, no one family had ever had a complete handle on that market. The Goneril’s had a hold over the docks for years, but the Edmunds had been moving in and working with the Gloucester family to bolster their power. Distribution was scattered and hard to keep track of as it ultimately circulated wherever there was a profit to be made. Looking at it like this, Claude decided that the only way to fix things was to take control over all of it. In his line of work, shady things like the drug trade are impossible to avoid. At the very least, if he has control over it, he can ensure the product is clean and expel far more unsavory ventures.

~Through these escapades, Claude was able to make alliances with all of the major families. A lot of them had only remained loyal to the Gloucester family out of fear so as soon as they had an alternative, they bolted. This has an unfortunate side effect of revealing how his power is perceived. Every day is a balancing act for Claude. He allows each family to function as they please as long as they’re aware they do so at his mercy. It’s better to keep friends than to control enemies, but even that requires a delicate maneuvering of power.

~However, Claude likes the conflict. He enjoys the game and he especially enjoys winning the game. There’s a certain level of his excusing amorality for the sake of his family and Leicester, but there’s an equal part of him that understands his wrongdoings and deals with it separately. He wouldn’t hold to the naïve “ends justify the means” idea to excuse himself, but he would still argue that his actions have value and are even necessary. If it weren’t him, it would be somebody a lot worse than him. That’s probably something that would linger in the back of everybody’s minds whenever they shook his hand or paid their respects, whenever they began to think of how easy it would be to take him out. Fear, too. So far, Claude’s never done anything shockingly bad, only what was necessary. But with his power and intellect, it’s always a question of what he could do.

~If someone asked him that, Claude would smile that friendly smile and tell them that he would do anything to see his vision made real. Whether or not that’s true remains to be seen. 

~Luckily, Claude’s not alone! Hilda is the stereotypical crime family princess. She joined Claude because he offered her freedom from the overbearing control of her father and brother. Her skill in manipulating everybody around her combined with her reputation as a ditzy rich girl makes her fantastic at gathering information, assuming Claude can get her to do so. But, as long as he’s not being too forceful, she’s surprisingly motivated to weave her way through social circles and charm everyone. Although she would never say it, the order he brought to Leicester, not to mention the entertainment, made everything a lot better for her and her family. Plus, she likes being useful after spending her entire life watching Holst give his heart and soul to family while she did nothing. Ultimately, the information she provides is essential and her relationship with Claude is one of the few either have that’s built on trust, respect, and loyalty. That said, sometimes even Claude gets a little shiver as he watches how easily Hilda can manipulate people.  

~Lorenz was one of Claude’s most disdainful detractors, although a part of that was jealousy. Claude just swept in and did things that Lorenz had been waiting and planning to do once he became the head of the Gloucester family. Even after being on the receiving ends of such vicious attacks, once Claude undeniably had the upper hand in Leicester, he went behind the Gloucester boss’s back to Lorenz and told him that they were going to be friends or enemies, it was Lorenz’s choice. Not threatening him, just pointing out that the fall of the Gloucester family was inevitable under his father’s leadership and that Lorenz didn’t have to suffer for his father’s sins. Probably over mimosas and brunch. Lorenz is proud and has no appreciation for Claude, but he’s not stupid. After they worked out their disagreements and more or less accepted each other, Lorenz and Claude became pretty close. Claude knows that having someone to openly and aggressively disagree with him isn’t a bad thing. Not only that, but Lorenz’s a solid ally with a better grasp on some of the things Claude has difficulty with due to not being a native. Lorenz is willing to admit that Claude is a good leader.

~Marianne is well educated in the realm of the law and political action. The reason the Edmund family saw such success despite their lesser status was because of her adopted father’s genius. which he made sure to share with Marianne. She is invaluable in aiding Claude on the perfectly legitimate side of his business, and helping him hide his tracks for the shady stuff. Raphael is the muscle. Lysithea is a computer genius. Being a sickly shut in with issues that only recently saw treatment, she’s on the Mr. Robot level of hacker mode activated. Ignatz is an architect which is useful since so much of Claude’s power is in the property and infrastructure. He also designed a lot of places to have some neat-o hidey holes. Claude loves buildings that have secrets. Leonie is manages a lot of the physical and pettier side of the work. If someone’s stirring up trouble, she’s likely to pay them a visit as a warning before Claude has to get involved. She used to be a mercenary but being on Claude’s payroll is a lot better of a gig.    

~As for the suits, one thing is very important. Claude would not, under any circumstances, wear something tight on his thighs. I actually kind of like the idea of him going for a 1980′s style modernized. In his post timeskip outfit, he’s already got a hint of that going on with how oversized his outfit looks. The 80′s (rightfully) gets a bad rep for fashion, but it’s also very iconic with those wide-collared suit jackets, matchy-matchy three piece suits, sportscoats with a fun patterned shirt underneath, open blazers, pleated pants with an oversized jacket, and—in particular—the trend of summer suits in shades of tan and cream with colored shirts underneath. Then, combine that with a pair of Ray-Ban Aviators and a topless convertible and you’ve got a distinctly recognizable mob boss who doubles as a devastating heartthrob. I’m not saying he’d do a 1:1 recreation, but you’d definitely see references to the fashion of the era in his outfits. He would wear oxfords or ankle boots. Whatever it was, they’d have to be comfortable. He also doesn’t shy away from jewelry. The earring, of course, and rings when he's feeling particularly decadent. When he’s wearing his shirts unbuttoned Claude could possibly wear a gold chain. I mean, what are you gonna say, no? That gold doesn’t look gorgeous against his skin? That it’s tacky? You’re talking to the man who wore quilted pants. Claude’s not afraid to stand out because he knows he will anyway, nor is he afraid to be seen as unfashionable because he doesn’t particularly care about trends. I also enjoy the idea of him emulating the 80′s as someone who didn’t grow up in a western culture and thus mainly saw things through the lens of movies. Whatever he wears, however, he would look very handsome.

[icefire149]

so this is kinda very random (if it's too random or too hard to write no pressure to do it) but I was thinking of #12 from the "i love you" prompts for hannah x charlie (i don't know what their ship name is or if they have one lol)

Hi there! I'm sorry this took a while to get to. I can't emphasize enough how exciting this was to work with. I know when you asked for this there were a couple posts going around with this ship and that was the first time I ever considered Hannah/Charlie. I really hope more people explore their dynamic more. I enjoyed taking a crack at it here.

I'm sorry if it's not what you were hoping for. From start to finish this took a crazy number of turns that I wasn't expecting. It kept worming away into it's own thing. Right off the bat the spring time part of the prompt flew away. Still, I hope you enjoy it <3

#12 – When we lay together on the fresh spring grass – Hannah/Charlie

“Thank you for bringing me here.”

The seasons were rapidly changing from summer to autumn. Any human today would know from a single look at a calendar. It was strange sometimes to think of how far humans have come since the garden and how much of the world they’ve been able to understand through reason and design. For Hannah, she knew from the moment the Earth shifted under her feet. And now the composition of the air just wasn’t the same as it was a week ago. Shortly, even the humans and the trees would start to notice the change in temperature.

It was normal. Routine. The world kept spinning day into night and summer into autumn, and so forth. Since being flung back into the crown jewel of her father’s creation, Hannah couldn’t help but wander back to some of her earliest thoughts. She could still remember her hesitation when the spark of creation breathed life into mortality.

At the time she hadn’t the experiences or the vocabulary to explain her abstract feelings, but now she could equate the feeling to the sharp sting of a slap to the face or a thorn lodged in the heel of her foot. The Earth cycled seasons and spun around the Sun. The garden sprouted leaves, fruits, and flowers that quickly shriveled and crumbled before sprouting forth again. The humans were built with a carefully constructed system of oxygen, blood, and electrical impulses cycling around the body. It was marvelous to behold, but what was an immortal, unchanging being supposed to read between the lines?

Her father created the archangels long before everything else she knew. The rest of her siblings were made lesser, but until more recently she always believed they were still just as loved. Maybe she was just blinded by her grief and denial. Everything mortal came next, but humans were the ones her father plucked and planted in his favorite garden.

It was because of the humans that her father started altering her siblings. All of them. She never knew what the end goal was to vessels until all of Heaven had to confront the ugly truth: their father left them eons ago. And now, every time Hannah was caught in a crowd, she couldn’t help but wonder if the person who’s eyes lingered the longest was the one who’s skin and bone he’d slipped under.

“Of course! I can’t believe you’ve never done this,” Charlie turned her head on the ground to face her. The tip of her nose twitched as a blade of grass bounced free from the rest laying under her cheek.

“Since the fall there just wasn’t time for something so trivial,” Hannah answered, moving her gaze back up to the clouds slowly rolling by. “And before that…..every angel had a job and that’s just what we did. Nothing more.”

Moments like these were still completely foreign and strange to her. A month ago Castiel received a phone call during their travels, and suddenly their mission was no longer the top priority. Locating the wayward angels was still her mission, and she spent much of her time at the Winchester’s bunker researching while he…..focused on curing the mark of Cain.

It wasn’t the ideal situation or even the one she’d hoped for. It dimmed her and diminished herself to a flatline, because a part of her dared to hope that Castiel could offer her companionship. He was her friend, but he’d stuck by her and saw her in a way that Hannah wasn’t expecting again. Not since the siblings she’d lost when the Winchester’s came onto Heaven’s radar. She tried to establish a connection, even using human methods she’d observed from her vessel’s memory, but he just wasn’t receptive. Nothing clicked until she observed Castiel around the human men he gave everything up for.

Whenever he was in proximity to Dean, his true form would come alive in ways she’d never expected. Despite the damage done to his being, Castiel would still twist, and turn, and hum in ways that were almost too much to bear witness to. And she knew that he was trying to keep himself from doing that in her presence. A part of her liked to think it was because he was trying to spare her feelings since he just didn’t connect with her in that way, but she knew it was because he was embarrassed and desolate. As humans would put it: he wore his heart openly on his sleeve. But, it was beyond the limitations of human perspective.

But since staying at the bunker, Hannah had met a handful of humans. Mostly over the phone, but it was a Miss Charlie Bradbury that showed up one day at the bunker's entrance with a dozen movies and snacks, and a very puzzled look. Since then she’d been a frequent presence during Hannah's research.

And a welcome one at that. At first Hannah wasn’t sure what to make of the exuberant woman. Charlie would talk for hours about a million different things. It was odd to try to conceptualize how many ideas a human brain could hold, and Hannah spent an entire night doing just that after a busy afternoon that rolled into a busier evening discussing the delicacies of numbers and computer programming.

Hannah still wasn't sure how computers could help her mission, but there was something about Charlie's confidence in her own abilities that the angel couldn't help but automatically placing her faith in the human.

“What was your job before things started getting crazy? Dean says Cas was a soldier.”

“He was. He still is,” Hannah started. “I...I wasn’t built for the front lines. My duty was what the majority of the host was given: protect and watch over the souls in Heaven.”

Charlie’s eyebrows pinched together. “That’s it?”

“Of course.” Hannah sat up. She could feel the grains of dirt on the palms of her hands and particles caught in her hair. The rays of late afternoon sun reflected off the surface of Charlie’s car and made her pupils contract. Frowning, she turned to move the nearby road out of her periphery. “It’s one of the most important jobs in Heaven. Each soul generates their own paradise from their stored memories. Maintaining that happiness is everything."

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

Charlie rolled over so that she was laying on her stomach now. One of her feet kicked up and moved idly in the air. The corner of her mouth twitched until it decided to curve into a teasing smile.

Hannah still didn’t understand what connections Charlie was clearly making. It was utterly confusing. “I don’t understand,” finally she admitted out loud.

“Did watching over the souls make you happy?”

Hannah’s head fell to the side. This wasn’t the first time Charlie had asked her something that made her stop and reevaluate several aspects of herself and her memory. And just like the last few times it elicited a tiny pulse, a thrill, through her being. It started when she realized that Charlie kept purposely putting herself into the angel’s orbit. Charlie seemed like she genuinely wanted to know her.

“What?” Charlie’s smile widened.

“You asked an incredibly unusual and strange question. My happiness is irrelevant. That’s much more of a human thing. Angels weren’t built for that. But-” Hannah thought about those old days and the souls under her watchful eye. She enjoyed that privilege to bear witness to their joys. She could still remember the way her wings would puff with pride. “I did find great joy in my work.”

“I’m glad,” Charlie said, before laying her head down in the grass. There was a note of sadness buried deep in her tone.

They sat like that in meditative silence for a while, and the sun dipped further in the sky. Finally, Charlie continued, “You know, people think angels are watching over us while we’re living. Like you guys are ready to jump out and help us when….when we need someone most.”

The idea put a soft smile on Hannah’s face. “It’s a lovely notion.”

“A pipe-dream,” Charlie frowned.

“Well, there were angels stationed here on Earth with the job to watch. That might be where that very idea came from.”

That put a look of surprise on Charlie’s face. “But do they help?”

“Not unless Heaven commands it, and that….” She shook her head.

Charlie sighed deeply before standing. She started brushing the dirt clinging to her jeans away.

“You wish for divine intervention.”

Charlie’s surprise quickly morphed into something unreadable. She kept silent.

Hannah stood up, and for some reason it pained her to see the light dim in Charlie’s being. “I’m sorry,” she said keeping her gaze locked with Charlie’s. And she meant it, truly. “You needed help beyond human capabilities, and no one was there. You were alone.”

Charlie nodded, and led them back to the car. They drove in silence and Hannah spent the entire time trying to figure out what went wrong. Again, and again she replayed that final conversation, but humans were still too difficult to puzzle out.

It wasn’t until they were back within the bunker walls that Charlie’s demeanor seemed to equalize back to normal. She brightened even more meeting Hannah’s eye. “Thank you for that.”

“Of course,” Hannah answered. She honestly wasn’t sure for what exactly, but her instincts told her it was about their last conversation. And that was all she needed to lift her spirits after that car ride.

Charlie took a few hesitant steps towards the hallway that led to her room. She looked over her shoulder. “Will you still be around tomorrow?”

“Mmhm,” she hummed happily. Charlie asked her that same question every day since they met. She wasn’t sure why, but she enjoyed the extra burst of light that would emanate from Charlie’s soul the moment she gave the same answer.

Ask me more writing prompts (I’m using these as warm ups so send a number and a ship)

[caithyra]

A lot of people claim Kagura (and by extension her "siblings") was a full demon, but am I alone in thinking that she was always a half-demon/hanyo because she was an incarnation of Naraku, who was also a half-demon?

First a disclaimer: I view Naraku’s incarnations very different from the rest of fandom, like I do with most things in this manga.

Naraku’s incarnations fans might not like my interpretation... Oh, and it only pertains to the manga.

TL;DR: They are likely as yokai as Sesshomaru’s severed arm. Except Muso. (Skip to the bottom of this post if you want the elaborated, quick answer of my interpretation and then the probable canon answer, which is different. I just have an interpretation of canon that I haven’t seen anyone else suggest before that...)

Anyway, first we are going to go through what Naraku is before he creates his incarnations:

Onigumo, a human, who is devoured by a yokai horde that becomes Naraku.

Naraku is then a hanyo capable of absorbing other yokai and their power, which he presumably does a few times before he tries something as big as absorbing a daiyokai like Sesshomaru (which he fails at), given his attempt at Sesshomaru, we can presume that at least a few of these yokai were powerful even if they were not daiyokai, since going from lesser yokai to greater yokai without anyone inbetween is very foolhardy, given how weak Naraku was at the time (he also used manipulations mostly during this time).

So up to the point that the manga starts, Naraku is a mostly yokai hanyo made up of literally hundreds of yokai of various powers and strengths.

Then, before he begins creating incarnations Naraku is nearly killed by Kagome (this is an important part of my interpretation) and cannot restore himself without turning towards a dark type of magic called kodoku.

Kodoku is a magical ritual/art called “gu/ku” in Chinese in which various toxic creatures are put into an enclosed space to absorb one another until only one remains. This remaining creature (also called Gu/Ku/Kodoku) is considered supremely toxic and powerful and with various abilities such as pestilence, manipulation (Naraku/Kanna/Infant?), transformation (Naraku), and a number of other things that falls well within Naraku’s sphere of power.

Anyway, Naraku absorbs the kodoku and is restored, and also made up of even more different kinds of yokai. And he holds a large chunk of the empowering Shikon no Tama, courtesy of Kikyo.

And that’s when he begins creating incarnations (分身 - bunshin).

That word, bunshin, is a funny thing. In Naruto, it is the “clone” part in Clone Techniques (such as Kage Bunshin/Shadow Clone which Naruto uses all the time), and as a common word, has been used in many manga/anime/games.

Here’s the definition of Jisho.org for example:

ぶんしん 分身 common word Noun 1. other self; alter ego; part of oneself (in someone or something else); representation of oneself 2. (Buddhist term) incarnations of Buddha​

Kotobank.jp translates it into “double/doppelgänger” and has this to say:

1. One divided into two or more separate bodies. 2. (Buddhist term, similar to above.)

But basically, a bunshin is not a separate person from what they are a bunshin of most of the time in pop culture (or they are re/pre/incarnations like in Buddhism, but no one suggests Kagura is to Naraku what Kagome is to Kikyo, so... *shrugs* Lets got with the other definition!). They always exist in relation to the original (Naraku). Other translations simply call them detachments, which has the implication of parts of Naraku that he’s cut off and given life for his own purposes.

I will be skipping Muso since he is an aberration among the bunshin, and likely the most hanyo of the lot.

The first bunshin Naraku creates is Kanna, who has no will, no emotions and no drive of her own. She solely does Naraku’s bidding, no more, no less. (There is a sole exception of her death scene, but that was more to inform the heroes of Kikyo’s light, which curtails with how the story began bending to fit Kikyo as a tragic heroine... Don’t even get me started...)

Then he creates Kagura, who is the opposite extreme; freedom is her greatest aspiration and she continuously backtalks Naraku and tries to act against him, yet, in the end, everything goes as Naraku wants when it comes to Kagura (this is also important).

Lets look at these two extremes and lets pretend that these are not Naraku’s incarnations; they are toasters.

Kanna is the toaster that Naraku must put the perfect settings in every time before use and push the toast down with a lever. Then he must wait and push the eject button, because Kanna wont do it herself.

Kagura is the fancy toaster with all the bells and whistles and more settings than anyone needs, including sensors to tell when the perfect toast is done to be ejected. She even automatically lowers the toast into the toasting slots when you put them in. In theory, Naraku doesn’t need to do anything else; Kagura knows exactly what to do to make the toast Naraku wants. Except fancy gadgets like these malfunctions and are temperamental and has the wrong settings put in and, yeah, Kagura doesn’t want to make Naraku’s perfect toast, but Naraku has rigged a big, complicated Rube-Goldberg machine to push her eject button before she can irreparably burn his toast, so it doesn’t matter.

All the different incarnations are on a sliding scale of these, except for Hakudoshi, who is an even fancier version of Kagura and capable of making grilled cheese sandwiches, and what more, Naraku wants Hakudoshi to burn some of his toast, because of the risk/reward that one day, Hakudoshi will not burn Naraku’s toast, but instead will make the perfect grilled cheese sandwich for Naraku to enjoy.

Byakuya, by contrast, is the perfect blend of obedient Kanna and the ability to make tedious decisions and act on his own like Kagura.

It’s like with computer programs; some require a dozen clicks to complete a task, another, that has been further programmed (given personality and motivation), only require one.

In short, I do not see them as separate people from Naraku, which is where I diverge from most of fandom; they have no pupils, which are signs of possession/not having their own minds in many anime, which is also a yokai trait (like Koga), but is egregious when it comes to everything else. It should be noted that most of Naraku’s bunshin are obedient to Naraku, but that in order to arrive to the perfect blend of independent action plus unquestioning obedience that is Byakuya, he experimented with giving more or less free will, individual desires and so on.

And it was Kagura who led me to believe that:

First; she is given the appearance of “Sesshomaru’s ideal woman” according to Takahashi who believes that all men want Kikyo or someone like her (”Sesshomaru’s ideal type of woman” is “like Kikyo” according to her according to some interview I’ve seen quoted around, but I would like an actual source, please...), including Sesshomaru, so she makes Kagura a young woman like Kikyo named after a dance that miko, like Kikyo, dance.

Second; she is given a sympathetic motivation “freedom” but at no point do we get a clue as to how she feels about “freedom” other than something to attain. She does not daydream about it or what she will do with it, she does not envy others’ freedom overtly (nor resentfully watching them), there’s literally nothing except her nebulously wanting “freedom” being “the free wind” when she passes away.

Third; she is obviously and loudly antagonistic towards Naraku, and, indeed he, the great villain, holds her heart literally in his hand to torture her with. Don’t you want to save her? Give this pretty lady freedom?

Fourth; she really wants Sesshomaru to save her, despite the fact that Sesshomaru has never come close to killing Naraku and always refuses to save Kagura.

Fifth; but when Kagome, the only person to ever come close to killing Naraku in the entire series at this point, offers to protect Kagura, Kagura refuses and still goes to Sesshomaru. Even though Kagome is not just the person whose power Naraku fears, but also someone with a history of taking in her foes as friends (unlike Sesshomaru).

Sixth; Tenseiga did not even react to Kagura “dying”.

None of this makes sense, unless one thinks of Kagura as a part of Naraku that he has “programmed” specifically to mess with Sesshomaru. In that case, Kagura refusing Kagome’s protection while still being infatuated with Sesshomaru who refuses to do anything and has proven nothing as her supposed savior, and the lack of psychopomps at her death and Tenseiga having no reaction, makes sense if Kagura is little more than something like a living tentacle of Naraku’s, given a pretty face, personality and “programming” to go hard for Sesshomaru and then, use her final moment to upset him (by this time, everyone knows Sesshomaru’s complex with his father’s swords, so if his sword wont work when predictably would he ask it to... Cue upset Sesshomaru. Too bad Inu no Taisho did one up on Naraku on that front by ensuring Inuyasha got the Meido after Sesshomaru and Rin nearly died in front of Sesshomaru’s mother for Sesshomaru to get it... Naraku’s manipulations got nothing on InuPapa’s beyond the grave...).

It would explain her undeveloped motivation (the abstract “freedom”), why everything still goes as Naraku wishes despite a few hiccups and so on, and, of course, why she had no soul for Tenseiga to save...

Naraku might as well have told Kanna “fall in love with Sesshomaru and plead with him to give you freedom” and Kanna would do her best to obey, but because of her non-personality, the emotional manipulation would be obvious (even more so once she refused Kagome, since, after all, it is Sesshomaru who is to give her freedom). But Naraku would have to micromanage her extensively to do so as well as make her a mature body. Far easier to just create a new detachment with slightly more free will and so on with the “programming” installed.

Does Kagura know this? Maybe she suspected it by being around her “siblings” and noting how different their levels of sapience/sentience/free wills were (and she even tells Hakudoshi that his plans will come to naught because Naraku wont allow it, suggesting she believes Naraku’s will is absolute over the incarnations), but she probably felt like her own person, and would have been “programmed” to think of herself as such and dismiss any suspicions to the contrary.

It would fit very well with the body-horror aspect of early Inuyasha and Naraku’s character as a whole. But would also be a bit too much for a children’s comic magazine in an action series...

So what are Naraku’s incarnations on the human-yokai scale?

They are likely yokai, like Sesshomaru’s severed arm, with the exception of Muso who had Naraku’s most human part in him and would likely be considered hanyo on a DNA test. They were likely made from the yokai parts of the hordes that make up Naraku after the kodoku, but aren’t separate people (like, the parts of a crane yokai would have been used to create Byakuya, for example, while oni parts would have been used for Goshinki). They are just more advanced dolls made of purely yokai parts IMO.

But that’s just my extremely niche interpretation of the manga and the inconsistencies with the story.

In canon, it is much more likely that the simpler explanation; that they are separate people who are also yokai (except Muso), is the answer.

I just don’t like the inconsistencies it creates within the story and made my own interpretation and rambled on and on in this post. Sorry.

[andmaybegayer]

Last Monday of the Week: 2021-03-01

First Monday of the Month. My boss just quit at work which means I'm now the only formally trained engineer left who has any particular specialization in embedded systems. This week is going to be a doozy.

I also wrote a Very Long set of media updates because I’ve been consuming some stuff that makes me think a lot. Never a good sign.

Listening: I spent all of Saturday playing Minecraft after talking with some friends about it during the week on IRC. Practicing what I preach with regards to my Large Biome Supermacy policy, which does involve a lot of walking. Hence, I started catching up on The Adventure Zone: Graduation again, I'm like ten episodes behind.

https://maximumfun.org/episodes/adventure-zone/the-adventure-zone-graduation-ep-32-by-a-haircut/

I don't really enjoy Travis' DM'ing style. It's very loose and he has a tendency to let players run wild without much structure which is a tricky thing to handle. He does a lot of worldbuilding and character design but doesn't seem to plan much in the way of arcs. That pays off sometimes (returning to the school to realize they broke a promise they made a few sessions earlier and had to deal with consequences, for example) and when it does, it’s really good, but it's finnicky. I know DM's who can do that, but, well, actually I know One Single DM who can do that well and she's absurdly smart.

Reading: Still on Worm, I just got past chapter 8 or so now. It lives in my phone browser so I've mostly been reading it whenever I get some spare time, which is a good sign. If a book doesn't grab me I need to really settle down in a quiet space to avoid getting distracted, but I can read Worm while someone else is on the phone in the same room.

It is a story with a lot of very well-conveyed feelings and events. It's very easy to imagine yourself in it. Characters actually act like they care about what they're doing, I feel like writing this took a lot of care to keep everyone on model.

There's also a certain care given to the superpowers that you'd usually only see in forum posts arguing about an actual superhero story. Everyone always likes to argue about how far you can push a superpower: can you use teleporting to fly? What prevents a speedster from catching fire in the air? Where does the energy for a  pyrokinetic ability come from? Worm takes these and runs with them as a way to make absolutely any fight become a series of gambits relying on whether a power can or cannot be used to perform some high-stakes trick.

The world certainly has some underpinning contrivances to explain why no one gets killed very often but I've always considered nitpicking the base contrivances of a setting silly, because that's precisely what they are: contrived, in order to allow the rest of the story to flow from there. Like arguing about Omega’s abilities in the famous thought experi-*I am dragged off stage by the ratblr police for making a by now extremely stale joke*

Watching: I came and edited this section in like an hour before this posts because I keep on forgetting to put it in. I don’t really like watching TV and with my parents stuck at home in Pandemic Times it’s how they pass the time.

I did finish S3 of the Good Place. It’s very funny. I’m glad I’m watching it and I’m going to have to go find S4 because ZA Netflix doesn’t have it for whatever reason. It feels a little like it was written by Phillip Pullman if Phillip Pullman was a comedy TV writer.

I also really enjoyed the PBS Spacetime video about how time causes gravity. Love when an explanation of concepts is good enough that you drawn the conclusion on your own.

Playing: Visual Novel Hell plus Minecraft.

I spent approximately seven hours in Minecraft over two days. I tend to hop in and out of games for 1-2 hours at a time but there's a handful that can suck me in for an entire day. Minecraft, Warframe, Horizon Zero Dawn, Night in the Woods. Bastion, to a lesser extent. I end up avoiding them because I don't like loosing entire days, but I wasn't really planning on doing anything this weekend anyways.

Minecraft was mostly a long-ass trek to find a saddle, because as previously mentioned, I enjoy playing it with Large Biomes for the sense of scale.

I also completed Act 3 of Psycholonials and Eliza.

Psycholonials is odd. It is doing the thing that Hussie does where it dances around what's ostensibly the story to carry out the actual story. You get used to the trope after your first encounter but it still makes you wonder when the other shoe will drop, and of course, there's no reason it ever has to. The story may remain in suspended animation behind the every growing mess of narrative red tape tying the B-plot together.

Stories about Social Media have no well established norms. I think I might pick up Feed by M. T. Anderson and also perhaps Hank Green's books sometime. See what context they set that in.

Eliza is frustrating to me. It's a game for programmers, by programmers, about programmers. I'm friends with a lot of Capital P Programmers, the types who go to university and get sniped for developer positions at Seattle or Silicon Valley tech companies and who make great and terrible things and then warn you about the deep problems that underpin the slowly rolling ball of venture capital and bloated technology that is the tech industry. But at the same time, it makes me feel like I've burnt out on that conceptually before I even went in. It’s a whole other world that I’m familiar with but very distant from. In fact, that’s kinda how I feel about Psycholonials too. I’m familiar with the social media rat race but I also don’t go there. Parallels!

My cousins (who are halfway to Capital P Programmers, only so much you can do halfway around the world from silicon valley) warned me not to go into CS, because it would bore me, and that's a non-trivial part of why I'm in Engineering. They gave the same advice about Biology and Physics, without that I may have ended up in Microbiology. it’s not my domain, but because of how Engineering is going, you end up a lot closer to programmers than you think. I found out the other day that most of the software developers on my team have no formal tertiary qualifications, which is accepted in CS but of course, right out when it comes to engineering. It’s a whole other world that I kinda expected to skip around. I might go into this another time, since this post is already getting long.

Making: I haven’t done any engineering scicomm posts on here in a while so I started a few blank drafts and finally got one off the ground. With some luck I’ll have that ready this week. What’s it about? Not saying! It might change!

I’ve been doing layout for a custom keyboard, I need to call a laser cutting place and find out what their kerf requirements are so I can adjust the path accordingly. Wouldn’t do to burn a couple hundred rand on an oversized part, I’m paying for this, not my employer like the other times I’ve done laser cutting, so I’m probably not going to spring for getting one of their designers to check my design. At some point I should CAD up a chassis, but at the same time I might just buy some wood and go ham with a router once I get the plates cut.

Computers Slot: I got WeeChat set up properly on my desktop, which technically was just a matter of getting my SSH keys moved over. It’s taking me forever to move in to Cinnabar, in part because Stibnite lost her boot partition and I haven’t bothered to fix it.

So here’s a pitch for WeeChat as a good quality Terminal UI IRC Client. Many of my closest friends live there and it has a good set of tools to help me keep in touch.

WeeChat is very configurable but with perfectly sane defaults, I didn’t configure it for years. The UI is smarter and less arcane than something like irssi, and if you enable mouse support it can be downright modern. Running it remotely like this limits some features but as long as you don’t mind jumping through a few hoops to do filesharing, IRC is really great like this.

One of the big ones is the ability to do that double-pane thing, I can keep an eye on two channels at once (really as many as I can cram on my screen, but usually two) which is great when you want to browse channels while talking in your home channel.

It also has a good array of remote access tools, from what I’m running up there, just weechat running on my server inside tmux connected over mosh for low-latency SSH, to weechat-relay, a relay protocol built in to weechat. At the moment relay only supports android phones and the glowingbear web client, but I’ve never really looked around since both of those cover all my needs. Easily one of the best ways to get IRC on a modern mobile device, barring maybe IRCCloud.

[gordvendomewhore]

Hey could do some headcanons for Bif Taylor? It can be about dating or just general stuff about him thank you

hey anon!!! thank you so so much for sending this request in! it was lots of fun to work on this lmao i LOVEEE bif and had to hold myself back from making this TOO long haha

also, i’m SO sorry it’s taken forever to finish this omg, my mini hiatus was not planned at all, but i’m back now!

i did a mix of regular headcanons and dating headcanons so i hope that everything is satisfactory :))

with the dating ones, i tried to make them realistic because well,, yknow relationships aren’t all sunshine and rainbows

but yes!!! i hope you enjoy reading this <333

bif headcanons

bif used to be TINY.

he was pea sized, a child, a BABY, he could snap him like a twig if the wind blew too hard

but yeah he was short lol

derby was taller than him for the majority of their childhood, and 100% used it to tease bif lmao

but in eighth grade, bif grew so much that he was basically,,, unrecognizable.

i like this headcanon a lot, like A LOT, but honestly i also really like imagining that bif was always just naturally tall yknow??

but bif being short as a kid is more close to canon since bif has a voice line referring to his height haha

other than derby, i think that bif is closest with chad and bryce

they all bond quite well over boxing, especially since these three are more dedicated to the sport compared to the other preps (at least in my opinion 😳)

i also think that,,, in a weird way, they’re the most “grounded” preps? like they’re all still stuck up and narcissistic, but to a slightly lesser degree than the others

they’re just,,,chill. you know?

it’s more in their personality and attitude rather than their morals lmao

bif knows basic bartending

as a kid he had tons of time on his hands; all rich kids do, despite having endless amounts of money for any piece of entertainment they could ever desire

but i guess when you have everything you could ever want, it all loses value, yeah?

so yeah, he fucked around in his father’s bar, and learned a few things along the way

it’s not really a useful skill to have, since bif is obviously never going to have a career as a bartender and since he also has servants to make drinks for him

but it’s something that gets him further on derby’s good side

yknow, since bif is basically just derby’s piss bitch

dating headcanons

god pwease forgive me for these shitty HCs

bif is the PERFECT person to share a bed with during winter. he’s nothing but pure muscle mass, so cuddling with bif basically means you get your own personal heater LMAO

but,,,, pray for yourself during summer.

bif is the type of guy who’d pull out the fisticuffs when his s/o were hurt, even if there wasn’t any person who specifically hurt his partner (like if they had just tripped over a rock lol)

now, this can be attractive feature because wow!!1!1! big strong man protecting me and being BUFF!!1!1!!1!

but please, unnecessary violence is not cute and honestly very toxic in real life

examples include: BOTH edward and jacob from twilight, noah flynn from the kissing booth, hardin scott from after, and christian grey from 50 shades of grey

psssst, spoiler alert! all of those fictional love interests are incredibly toxic

(and overall horribly written and underdeveloped but everyone already knows that)

i’m just including this because one, it’s bully and literally EVERYONE fights, and two, because it’s in character for bif, whether or not it’s a conventional trait to have

he would just,,, loom over you

tbh i don’t think bif is the touchy feely type, even though it would be cute sigh

hmm i don’t think ANY of the preps are considering their upbringing and personalities as a whole (maybe with the exception of one or two but i’ll talk about that more another day lol)

so i can’t see bif constantly being all touchy, or initiating physical intimacy with his s/o a lot

but he has those body guard tendencies baybee, so he’ll always be at your side giving you company and sending deadly glares to anyone looking your way 😎

but despite this last point, if your love language has to do with physical affection, he’ll be happy to provide!!

you just gotta understand that,,, it’s not exactly his thing

his love language, along with most likely ALL the preps, is gift giving!

he was raised to believe that giving gifts was the key way of showing your appreciation for someone’s value in your life, so bet your ASS he’s spending money on you

and that’s it!! thank you for reading and im SO sorry this is so long omg i currently don’t have access to a computer so i can’t add a read more!

feel free to send any requests you have 💕💕

[chrichri-chan-18-love]

Obey me (Yandere Admin/Romeo x Reader)

(SO BEFORE WE BEGIN, THIS PICTURE TOOK ME A WEEK AND A HALF TO MAKE AND AS I’M SURE ANYONE WILL NOTICE, THE HAIR IS THE ONLY THING THAT ISN’T REALLY WELL WORKED ON. NOW, THAT WOULD HAVE TAKEN ANOTHER WEEK AND HONESTLY, I WAS ONE STEP AWAY FROM GIVING UP COMPLETELY, PLEASE DON’T ROAST ME FOR IT,. THANKS AND ENJOY.)

You kept your eyes closed as you thought about all the things that went wrong.

First your idiotic younger brother decided that he should create a machine that would allow you to enter the universes of games. For whaterver reason, he made a machine that actually worked and after a month of begging, you agreed to enter a game realm and then tell him what that felt like.

Of all the games he could have chosen, he decided that he wanted to try Minecraft... you were as clueless to the game as you were with all the other games he kept talking about, you had seen him play once or twice, only entering his room when dinner was ready, to tell him to go to bed already and to wake him up. On that particular day you had been really tired and decided to just get this over with and then go to bed. He gave you a device that would help you communicate with him, in theory at least, then used the machine that was connected with his computer and you entered the realm.

To your surprise, you didn’t have the form you had seen players and pretty much everything had in the game. As a matter of fact... everything seemed completely normal.

“(Name)! Can you hear me?”

“Loud and clear, now open that gate again and let me out.”

“Okay, just give me a minute.”

Suddenly you felt someone watching you. Turning around you saw a man with black skin, red hair and with a red sclera and yellow pupils. He didn’t look... well, digital but there was one big problem.

He... was completely naked.

You didn’t look his body, instead waving your hand and said.

“Don’t mind me, I’ll be gone in a minute.”

“No, I don’t think so.” He said and you raised an eyebrow.

“Dude, whatever it is you were doing isn’t my buisness and thus I won’t meddle, so please leave me alone.”

“Not quite the way I imaged our first meeting would be... but I can teach you how to behave later.”

And with that he attacked you, you tried moving away but whoever this guy was, he wasn’t someone to easy to deal with.

He managed to pin you down, your belly on the floor and your back on him and then looked at you with a smile. A sadistic glee appearing in every feature on his face.

“You’re strong... but not strong enough to deal with me.”

“Who are you?”

“You can call me Romeo. I’m your new master and your lover, as of today.”

“Yeah, no. Listen I am not supposed to be here, I don’t know you and saying that someone you’ve never met or see before is pretty creepy.”

“Who says I’ve never seen you before?”

“Eh? But... how? That’s impossible.”

“You know, I always saw how you ordered your brother around, how you were able to succeed in your life...even the smallest victory proved how superior you were to that lesser brother of yours... and how you were worthy of me.”

“Too bad, I don’t want a boyfriend. Please get off of-”

Before you could continue, he made you face upwards and smashed his lips on yours, dominating your mouth as he slowly took his hands of yours and began stroking your body, pressing you down with his weight.

To your horror, you felt something poking your butt and you decided to just push this madman off. With your hands free, you quickly hit his head, getting him off for a minute before you stood up and attempted to run. 

As luck would have it though, he grabbed you again and this time, he slapped you, making your cheek hurt and you looking at him shocked.

“You need to learn when to be obedient... this time I won’t do anything... but don’t ever try to get away from me again.”

“Why are you doing this to me? What did I ever do to you?!”

“You woke up something in me that shouldn’t have ever woken up! I don’t what it is but the longer I kept watching you from that large screen, the more I wanted to have you... and now that I have you, you will remain here for as long as I want.”

He didn’t let you say anything, dragging you away as you watched the gate open again, the man took your communication device and said that you’d remain a while longer here, crushing the device afterwards.

He introduced himself as Romeo and then he went ahead and raped you. He proclaimed that he loved you and that you were meant to love and obey him... you never learnt where you were, instead you were forced to remain in a certain spot and wait for him as he would bring you everything you needed... as long as you listened to him, he was arrogant but caring, in his own way. But if you did disobey or argued on anything with him, you were punished severly. 

Romeo’s feeling for you didn’t seem to dissapear, if anything his obsession with you grew stronger and scarier. There were some extremely rare times where he was gentle, telling you about his past, his beliefs and ideals.... he even babied you when you were ”the perfect girl”, which meant a silent, obedient doll that would say “I love you” like a broken record.

When he left for long periods of time you would wonder around, trying to discover more about where you were... however you never found the gate to return again. The excuse you’d always give Romeo was that you missed him and so you were looking for him, making him smile and call you a good girl.

You decided to be patient, this game had a scenario and considering Romeo’s personality, he was the villain of the story...meaning that someone would eventually come and fight him... all you had to do was hold on until then.

“Tell me, who is your master?”

“You, darling.”

“And who’s the only one you must love?”

“You,my love.”

“Good, good. Now, lay down... it’s time to get your reward.”

“Yes, Romeo... I love you.” 

[robthewriter]

Backwards and in High Heels…

I got into a really good conversation on Goodreads regarding how fantasy and Science Fiction tends to be looked down upon and not regarded as, ‘literature.’ This, despite many classics of literature actually being, quite incontrovertibly Fantasy or Science Fiction.

One contributor pointed out that writers such as Margaret Attwood are appalled at the suggestion that they are writing Science Fiction, even when they quite clearly are and go out of their way to loudly deny it.

So, what’s wrong with Fantasy and Science Fiction? Why is it considered a lesser form of writing?

I think we can all appreciate that in its early days, it was a mainstay of the ‘pulp fiction market.’ Which, by the way, does not mean that all the works produced in those days were bad, some of them were amazing. In any case though, that was a long time ago. Fantasy and Sc-Fi have been respectable for a very long time now. Yet, somehow, neither can quite shake the labels that were slapped on them then. Sci-Fi. The perceived wisdom has it, is cold, technical and two dimensional. Fantasy, is silly, macho, juvenile. Both genres are you know, just for kids, aren’t they?

Well, no, no they aren’t. They are the absolute best way in which to explore difficult or controversial topics without offending anyone. If some of them also happen to be very entertaining while they are doing that, well what’s wrong with that? Who says a book can’t be both worthwhile and entertaining? Where did that idea come from?

Another contributor mentioned that books like the recent Piranesi by Susanna Clarke are at last going someway towards bridging that perceived gap between Fantasy, Sci-Fi and literature. I quite agree, it’s a beautiful book and sits very nicely between both worlds. The prose is wonderful but I have read words just as lovely in ‘pure,’ fantasy and Sc-Fi.

It’s an old hobby horse of mine, so apologies for the next bit, I may foam at the mouth ever so slightly. Do you not think, that ‘Literary Fiction,’ is a strange beast anyway? Literary Fiction accounts for only a tiny percentage of world-wide book sales, yet it is the yardstick by which all other books are measured. Why?

‘Literary Authors,’ get away with things genre authors never could. A ‘Literary Work,’ need have no discernible structure and come to no conclusion. It can be a sixty thousand word rambling essay that loosely resembles a story and just quietly peters out when whatever bee is in the author’s bonnet stops buzzing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that they wouldn’t be beautiful, exquisitely chosen words but still, you know what I’m saying, I’m sure you do.

My ‘author hat,’ is now firmly on… not I hasten to add, that I am proclaiming myself a great writer or some such, I’m well aware that I’m nobody much. On behalf of authors everywhere though, please stop looking down on Fantasy and Sci-Fi and those who write it.

So, why is this blog called ‘Backwards and in High Heels?’

Well, there is a famous quote attributed to Ginger Rogers (she never actually said it) that she did everything Fred Astaire did, except ‘backwards and in high heels.’

Now, imagine you are say, a crime writer, yes, that will do, you’re a crime writer. However, in your latest book, before you can develop good, well-rounded characters with a satisfying back story. A strong, fascinating plot. Realistic, moving, relationships and a string of entertaining sub plots, you have to do something else first.

First you have to give a brief history of the town where the action takes place, explain the religious and political climate of the country in which that town is located. Then, there are some other things to explain, like, what a police man is, what the different ranks are in the police service, what a police station is, how a police car works. Computers, smart phones and even the humble ball point pen, you must first introduce these concepts and properly explain them.

Did I mention that you have to provide all this exposition without the use of the dreaded ‘info dump?’ That you have to impart all this information without boring your readers to death and losing them?

Well, crime writers don’t have to do that. Fantasy and Sc-Fi writers do though…

So, you know, ‘Backwards and in high heels.’ Yes?

[cherp-official]

What the fuck is going on? A longpost.

Hi! Friendly neighborhood Cherp administrator here. I’m going to put this all under a readmore, but this will basically explain what is going on, why we are pitching the option of ID Verification, what our alternatives are, and so on. Please read this, comment if you’d like, and disseminate it to anyone that has questions. Thank you!

So here is what is going on: Because we are now directly aware of a minor being on the site we have developed an unacceptable level of existential legal risk. The site is currently hosted in the UK, which has very draconian laws regarding “corruption of a minor” - if the minor on the site gets in trouble, then thell is held responsible, jailed and goes on the sex offender registry (bad), and the site goes down because nobody can host it (also bad) and MAY also backsplash on me and the rest of the staff (also also bad), and also the person rping with that minor will also get legally turbofucked (also also also bad).

What can we do about it? Three options: 1: some form of ID verification that ensures that minors will not get access to the porn. 2: pay me a lot more money than I am currently getting to move servers elsewhere. 3: cherp dies

I heard ID verification. What exactly does that entail? I'll go through the six essential questions to break it down. What - In order to access the Sexual content on the site, you would require ID verification. Who - You would be providing ID information to Thell (technically, one of his business entities). This information would be encrypted, the details of which are gonna come in the next text wall. If something goes wrong and your shit gets leaked, you can sue Thell (sorry Thell!). This information will not touch me or any of the Cherp staff, Thell is acting as a third party arbitrator of identification. Where - The United Kingdom. When - Not immediately, you'd have at least a couple weeks warning if we decide to go this route at all, which we may not. So, "??? + a few weeks" Why - See the very top of the post. How - Exact submission method TBD, as is the allowable amount of blurring and/or censoring of information - I am also a very privacy concerned person and would prefer people have to give us the minimal possible. Information will be encrypted, then deleted when we're done w/ it.

What is encryption? Encryption is a process through which information is scrambled using a particular method that makes it inaccessible for anyone who does not have the proper "encryption key".

What encryption will you be using? We will be using the AES-256 encryption standard, which is the encryption used by the US Government (specifically, the NSA uses it to encrypt Top Secret documents). You can read more about AES-256 here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Encryption_Standard It's very technical and hard to understand but basically it scrambles the shit out of your data. It is essentially statistically impossible to brute force (never say never, but it's "orders of magnitude more time necessary than the universe has existed for"). If you'd like a simpler primer on what "encryption" is, you can find it here: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encryption This is relevant because photos are stored in computers as basically just strings of text, and thus can also be encrypted just like text can be.

I'm concerned about my information leaking out. I'm unsure how to phrase this lead-in in a way that makes it a question, but, valid concern. Here are my assurances. 1: Data is encrypted on sending. If a hacker manages to get in and intercept it, without the cipher key it is functionally useless. I can assure you some random joe schmoe hacker is not going to be able to crack AES-256 without the cipher key. It's not happening. 2: Data is not stored long term - that's a GDPR headache that we actively want to avoid. Your data is encrypted, then Thell looks at it, tells us "Okay, this username is verified", we (the people working on the site) learn absolutely nothing of your identity, and then the data is deleted completely and you are verified forever. We do not need it after you are verified. 3: Because of both 1 & 2, in the unlikely confluence of events that someone gets into Thell's servers in the interstitial period while data is being held, and get onto his separate machine that has the cipher key, at most they are probably going to get 5-6 IDs, and not "Everyone who has ever verified on the site". Which is still bad and something we'd like to avoid, and I would consider a "Catastrophic security breach", but its not catastrophic catastrophic, you feel me? 

I don't trust Thell Okay, sorry! Nothing I can do about that. 

I don't trust you guys See above.

Would this mean that if I don't get verified I can't write my "pretty boys beating the shit out of each other" anymore? No, unless, said pretty boys are also planning on fucking. We are already planning on implementing a change that basically removes the SFW/NSFW/NSFWE categorization, as it's an archaic artifact of Cherubplay that we carried along without really thinking about it. You would still be able to RP all the violence you want. Even really bad violence! Drugs and alcohol and sad stuff too. Just don't have dicks pop out and you're aces. If you aren't verified, you cannot access "sexual" prompts, since that's the main object of concern.

What qualifications does Thell have to do this for you? Thell is currently taking and paying for a course that will train him in basically all manner of legal stuff that is required to keep his personal websites GDPR compliant. This is something that he'd be doing anyway, with or without us, and he's cheaper than the equivalent service from Anyone Else which runs us upwards of $100,000 a year. Bluntly, I can't afford that. Thell will be trained on things like "recognizing photoshopped/fake IDs" and "reading IDs from places that aren't the UK". Additionally, if your info gets jacked you do have recourse by suing the associated business entity.

Why doesn't [very large porn site] have to do this? They have more money than us and a legal team. 

Why doesn't MXRP have to do this? It's associated with Thell's business entity. Cherp is currently owned and ran by a single human being, so the laws are kind of different. 

Can you give it to Thell's business? No.

Why didn't Cherubplay have to do this? Cherubplay as a website allowed minors and was not, strictly speaking, a "pornography website" (even if it was in practice). Cherp is. Mystic may have been comfortable with the risk involved at the time, but the laws have shifted a little bit between then and now and Thell is no longer comfortable doing the same.

Will you force us to delete our porn chats? While that would great if we could magically detect every minor that's unverified and delete just their porn chats, it would also be practically impossible to do in a way that doesn't result in an unacceptable amount of collateral damage, so no. Requiring verification by itself would make our legal position considerably more defensible.

Are we sure we need to do this? So, it is either this or Option #2 (pay significant money to move the server elsewhere like America/Japan/Sweden). Technically, there might be some kind of clever legal loophole we could use, but it would cost about $2000 dollars for enough of Thell's lawyer's time to fully consult on it, and the answer still might end up being "no, you gotta if you're gonna remain in the UK"

What about the rule about exchanging contact information? Wasn't that implemented because you were afraid of minors getting groomed? Correct, and an astute observation! If we implemented ID verification we would open that rule back up and likely allow verified individuals to exchange outside contact information, since the risk would be considerably lesser to the point of nonexistence.

Alright, tell me about Option #2 Okay, I will, hypothetical person.

What is Option #2 Option #2 is that we get the server out of the UK, which has very, very draconian laws that is the reason for all this rigamarole to begin with. Option #2 is not as easy as just "move it" though, unfortunately. I'll break down the costs.

$3000 for the server itself - Thell says he'll let me pay half but I'm not going to . That being said, this can be paid over time because I have good credit at the Bank of Thell. This is essentially a recurring cost for a couple of years, probably working out to an additional $100-$250 a month. $150-$400 to transport the server - Servers are heavy. This is a one-time cost. $1100-1500 per month for colocation costs. The server is pretty big and takes up a lot of space. I'm also rolling in "gas costs to drive out to the server" for this - if the server was being hosted near me, for example, I'd probably be colocating it in NYC or thereabouts, which is about a three ish hour drive. If it was in Sweden, then Thell would be our wrenchman and we'd also need to pay for his gas. $250 per month for Thell to handle GDPR stuff. This cost is not going away.

Sum total, this is anywhere from $1450-2000 a month plus one-time costs of transportation.

For comparisons, the cost for Option #1 are considerably more mild $250 per month for hosting the server on Thell's hardware. $250 per month for GDPR stuff. $250 per month for the ID verification service from Thell.

Sum total is $750 a month for option #1. I currently pay $500 a month, for comparison.

Why do you need to buy the server off Thell, why can't you just lease a server from a hosting company? #1: Cherp's content is probably against the TOS of most hosting companies. Most hosting companies do not allow pornography of any kind on servers that you lease from them. #2: It is significantly more expensive - about 50% more on average. #3: The server hardware we currently use to ensure the site runs smoothly has specialized hardware that will not come standard with most if not all server companies.

Okay, if we go back to ID verification, how much of my ID do I need to provide? TBD. If we go that route (and everyone, Thell included, would prefer not to), I'd like for you to have to provide the MINIMUM information possible. If you're allowed to, say, only show the bottom half of your face and scribble out your address and name, gucci gang.

Do I need a driver's license? I believe any form of valid identification would work, including passports, birth certificates, Legal IDs (separate from Driver's Licenses), etc. Don’t quote me on that yet though.

Do you need my SSN? Absolutely not, please do not give us it.

Help! I am in a country illegally and cannot acquire any form of verification Unfortunately, if we go this route, then that is going to be an edge case we do not have a functional protocol for and your account will have to remain unverified. I'm sorry.

(EDIT:

)

If Option #2 happens, will you still undo the "no offsite contact" rule? No. We can only remove that rule if we can be safely assured that people interacting with each other are aware that the other is of-age. If we go for Option #2, we may include opt-in profile verification in the future.

Back to Option #2. That's a fuckton of money! What are you doing to ensure we can afford it and TTM doesn't go bankrupt? haha, nothing, lmao.

Jokes aside, a: We'd like to restart donations as soon as possible. Currently, donations are handled through me, and require you to request an invoice by talking to me on Discord and then manually pay the invoice. The buttons on the site don't work yet, but once they do that would be Peachy. b: When Cherp 3.0 is out we will also be debuting user-provided ad content. No advertiser will go with Cherp except the ones that do CUNT WARS and we don't want that, so instead, you, the user, can pay us for having an ad for whatever you want on the site. Your commissions, your Etsy shop, a link to Rickroll, whatever (so long as it passes our approval process). c: At some point we would like to get merchandise out but we've yet to find one that gives us a satisfactory profit margin for how much they cost.

I would be very comfortable with #2 if we could get total income to about $1000 a month since I already float $500 for the site.

If you want to see what user-serviced ads look like, you can see the current setup on the https://cherp.xyz/ beta site (and also look at a preview of the new Cherp 3.0 anyway. It looks good!). If you do so, feel free to give us feedback.

Can you do both #1 and #2? No, they're mutually exclusive.

Can I block the ads in Cherp 3.0? Sort of tangential to this bighuge post but yes, you can. They are designed in a way so that they hook into most modern adblockers.

Oh shit is Cherp 3.0 going to need us to wipe all our shit again? Again tangential but it's come up a couple of times so no, the database will remain the same, it's mostly a code update.

I see you talking about "Colocation" and "Colo" a lot, what does that mean? When you put your website on the internet you have three options for how to host it. #1 - You have a personal server and you sit it in your closet. #2 - You lease a server off of a server company - they own the hardware, you get access to it and are allowed to put your stuff on it.

#1 and #2 are untenable for cherp for a couple of reasons - #1 is "all the legal shit we are dealing with right now", #2 is detailed under "Why do you need to buy the server off Thell, why can't you just lease a server from a hosting company?"

#3 is "Colocation, or "colo"" - we own the hardware, and all we're doing is bringing it to the company's air conditioned room and plugging it into their electricity and internet connection. Most of the time, this also means we're responsible for fixing it, but it's significantly cheaper if you have the hardware and also means we don't have as restrictive ToS to deal with because we're handling all the financial risk.

Where are we currently at? Right now, we are looking into Option #2, specifically trying to find a colocating space in Sweden with Thell as our wrench boy. Due to Swedish law, if we colocated in Sweden, we would be required to ban visual depiction of underaged individuals (i.e, no loli/shota image references allowed on site).

I hope that answers all of your many questions, and I apologize for any undue stress this has caused. Please feel free to reach out on here or on Discord if you have further questions or any sort of commentary you’d like to provide.

Thank you!

-TTM

[zolivia68]

Photo editing software for beginners

That user-friendly photo editing software for beginners for pros to add symbols in a photo

A different key purpose that is featured during the impressive photo editing software is literally that photo album creator what is quite straightforward to utilize.

Such as every good photo editing software for beginners, their tool fits your basic functionalities we may really need daily by using clever uses that everybody might only take sometimes for unique photographic work. We can easily select this at this feature sub menu of the photo editing software alongside many other alternatives a plenty of functions such as flip a picture. Compression is actually to shrink the dots for a picture to generate it really simpler to keep, which may make suggest them reduce clearness at a photograph.

Just like most fully practical photo editing software will be readjusted using these type of basic functions easily. Enhance a photo works at the picture element degree, hence it helps make sense that the photo by having lesser pixels will desire a various level of results than that picture along with several dots. The photo editing software for beginners is generally a comprehensive photograph cropping software product which is definitely suitable for skilled image makers together with clients that only intend to start the photos look better with a little enhancing. There actually are generally countless unique ways to color adjustment out of a photo by using picture modifying it would definitely use several years to accomplish it completely.

Also the very most inexperienced starter can come to be a real pro at redesigning along with that wonderful device. Our functionality has recently been created especially for experienced digital photographers and editors whose business entails creating and also adjusting excellent web content to here photo editing software for beginners our site visitors.

Photo editing software for beginners and picture editing

Outstanding photo editing software for beginners to rotate a picture or even very simple photo fisheye effect

The software tool is even extremely useful to create a picture montage or even a photo album within raising your 3D design out from this photo people are usually making changes of. Simply, the photo editing software for beginners buyers most often obtain works most effective is just one that has certainly been produced along with this operating system within their thoughts. That installment wizard will create a desk shortcut, in case people need one, and also may allow us to try a band skin if this is which the other parts of our methods are simply readied to take.

Each time people create issues throughout photo editing software for beginners or even the blog post handling software program everyone are normally choosing to your photos. The difficult understanding loop isn't needed in case you use applications in which is generally easy to use, comparable to this photo editing software. The majority of working photo editing software based is typical intelligence basically, however there actually is usually loads of capacity to complete our own matter.

Some of the most used applications for modify a photograph

PhotoImpact

Fotoworks XL 2

GIMP

PhotoDirector

Photoshop

Movavi Photo Editor

Those functionalities might practically be seen everywhere, nevertheless she have never examined some other photo editing software for beginners to look at if it comes with all those attributes, though we wish that it performs. Although photo editing software is always used to developing graphics to be given out upon social networks, people can personalize your individual proportions if you don't have a format within our selected measurements. In addition, the photo editing software for beginners is enhanced to people that offer products via the internet and wish to display the packages within just as great a glow being they can. By chance you discover your classic image gallery produces a more useful job at reducing as well as sorting pics to you, therefore we take it for their content agenda and short repairs, after that most likely to photo editing software if you need a few impacts just like create a photo collage. Simply because that it is actually then that, just after very meticulous homework, people spotted solutions that were all very much more quickly and even further highly effective.

Utilizing photo editing software for beginners is definitely made simple to create photo albums or only photograph mosaics, simply because this software offers an extremely practical buyer handbook. Hence once they read pros edit a photo they fell on this solution as well as felt that I may be definitely capable to produce the very same. Supposing that there certainly are larger parts in the photo which we intend to correct, we can easily utilize photo orientation on top on this menu options to create it really more easily.

The greatest pictures require time to provide but in which doesn't suggest we will not obtain a skillful aim to an image during just a small period at an item of photo editing software for beginners based. That photo editing software to flip photos we can usually select that write text in a photo out of a standard combination or even choose a color out of a pixel actually at screen. If thus, afterwards simply use this help YouTube video tab directly from this ensuing page to watch our guide on exactly how this whole entire process works. Along with this photo editing software for beginners we need to handle your repair and also edit images simultaneously, and then export your final photo to the computer. Their easiest method to detect in case this coloring is off in an image is generally to consider an element which really should be actually white colored. Only as much can certainly be created by having an electronic camera system to get definitely sharp end results anyone may need to be equipped to manipulate photographs as well as edit images by having the computer devices by now typically utilized from professionals within post-production.

During a long time we have actually been normally working with photo editing software for beginners for that laptop and also different much lower versions of PC systems. Apart from the extensive photograph cropping and stamping purposes, this photo editing software for beginners gets numerous functional group working usages as well as allows making of photo montages through its high school creator. If doing so, the coloration very often seem impractical, particularly that skin shades which often tend to be way too coral or cream. When you introduce the viewers by using the unprepared photographs that are often damaged, that they do not even bring out the preferred phrase, yet this specific photo editing software for beginners effects your intention to ensure which people enjoy premium images.

The picture handling practices such as write texts in a photo. With this computer software, you may conveniently align various elements including correction of brightness.