#Some might say this isn't necessary and who knows maybe that's fair and all.

[deltalunaris]

Effective immediately, ALL of my blogs- except for my SFW fanart/fandom blog (TBA)- are ADULTS ONLY, NO MINORS UNDER 18.

It’s a decision I have put serious thought into, and I do not make it lightly.

[Reasoning under the cut; feel free to ignore.]

I did want to have a majority of my blogs be accessible for anyone 16+, especially those who needed access to any of the trauma-related resources I hope to write on soon.

However, as I work on myself, I realize that I can’t put myself in those shoes.

Outside of my own family & duties, I am not meant to be any minor’s constant, reliable safe space. That is for qualified professionals to oversee, and not some mid-20s stranger on the Internet who is still figuring life out.

As well, I don’t feel it’s safe to have minors mix in with the otherwise older audience I’m expecting. I have experienced in-fandom predation myself when I was a minor, so I feel it’s important to do what I can to prevent this from happening again. I know I can’t be there to stop every creep, but I can limit their reach.

Lastly, I have wasted too much time trying to make my art, my story, my very being, palatable. I have panicked, fretted, and even lost sleep over the perceived possibility of making a piece that is too gritty, too raw, and ending up hurting/scarring someone younger in the process.

It has cost me days, weeks, months of nearly-finished to finished pieces left unsubmitted, sitting in their folders, rotting away as I work on more like them.

I need not explain why this is destructive not only to my career, but to my very creative process, my trauma recovery, my very soul.

It’s especially disingenuous to myself as a survivor of severe trauma, and no better than what was done to me when I was but a budding artist.

My story is one of a severely traumatized child who went through events most people would not have survived from, let alone want to survive.

That, inherently, isn’t safe for other children to be exposed to. Not until they’re old enough to not only understand, but to cope with knowing about these tragedies. Secondhand trauma is very, very real, as I have experienced myself.

Maybe I’m overexplaining myself- and I likely am- but this is important to me.

Shared safety as a whole is important to me.

Other artists may do things differently, but they’re not me.

I value others’ safety as much as I value my own comfort.

And that’s that.

Thank you for reading, and for respecting my boundaries on this matter.

More to come very soon, including actual art.

[EDIT]: In the event that I join a multi-animator project, I understand that there will very likely be the presence of minors. This does not bother me, as I do not use M/AP servers for socializing purposes, and I do not accept friend requests from servers in general.

In the rare situation that this happens, do not send me any requests or DMs unless you are the M/AP host OR are a verified M/AP helper. Unless you’re an adult and we end up connecting very well (incredibly unlikely; parasocial activity makes me nervous), I’m generally made anxious by strangers wanting to get into DMs with me. 

[skamenglishsubs]

Subtext and Culture, Young Royals, Season 3, Episode 1

Season 3 picks up a short while after the jubilee speech by Wilhelm. Both Wilhelm and Sara have been absent from school for a noticeable amount of time, so maybe a week or two later? The show isn't very diligent in ensuring a perfect timeline, but this would put us in early March perhaps? Anyway, we're off to the castle for a meeting to deal with the fallout of Wilhelm's speech and Sara reporting the video to the police.

Subtext: The Queen is so pissed she's not even looking at her son, a reversal from the opening to season 2, when Wilhelm was pretty pissed at his mom.

Subtext: This is probably the first time that Wilhelm gets a hint that the Queen is seriously ill.

Cinematography: Same procedure as last season! Every season opens with a fourth wall break where Wilhelm stares in to the camera during the opening titles, defiant as ever.

Culture: For practical reasons the end of season 2 was filmed in April 2022, while the beginning of season 3 was filmed in February 2023. That said, the spring in Sweden can be pretty fickle, and it's not uncommon to have surprise snowfall as late as April. If you want a cinematographic interpretation of this scene, it's supposed to show how cold and unwelcome Simon feels arriving at the royal palace.

Cinematography: In reality, the monarch would be the last one entering a meeting after everyone else has arrived, but having Simon arrive like this makes it look more like he's entering a court of justice or some kind of disciplinary meeting. It's of course not a coincidence that the royal family represented by Jan-Olof is all on one side of the table, while everyone who has been causing them problems is on the other side.

Subtext: Jan-Olof is trying to minimize the video, by using "so-called", and by calling it an intimate video and not a porn video. However, for something to fall under the definition of "revenge porn", it's enough to depict people in an intimate situation, it doesn't have to meet the much higher threshold for when it's considered actual pornography, so he's at least admitting that it was an illegal video.

Culture: Nordiska Motståndsrörelsen is unfortunately a real organization of actual neo-nazi white supremacists in Sweden, with offshoots in neighbouring countries.

Lost in translation: The subtitles are struggling here, it's "piss person" in one, and "shitty person" in the other. The former is literally what they're saying in Swedish, but the latter is probably the better expression in English.

Also, we've been told that August's stepdad, Rickard, is one of Sweden's best lawyers. What that means is that he is probably a well-known criminal defence lawyer, and has probably been handling the defence in high-profile cases, and if you're defending obviously guilty criminals, you tend to get a lot of shit from the media and people in general, even though what you're doing is necessary for a fair justice system. This sounds like his way of dealing with that.

Culture: It's a pet peeve of mine that no-one seems to know that the name of the Swedish currency in English is kronor, not crowns. Simon is getting 1.2 million kronor, which amounts to about 105,000€ or $115,000.

Subtext: Linda isn't wrong, they're being strong-armed here. They have some sort of legal counsel, and they wouldn't have to pay any trial costs even if they don't win, but they can't afford to match the resources that August's stepdad can bring, and might get nothing in the end.

Culture: We don't know what Årnäs looks like or how large the estate is, but a quick check shows that you can buy a typical manor house and some farmland in Sweden for tens of millions of kronor. However, the amount of land that some of the other guys were boasting about at the Society party in season 1 would be worth several hundreds of millions of kronor, so it's unlikely that Årnäs is as large as that, because August would have a lot more options if his total net worth was in that ballpark.

Culture: Realistically, Simon isn't wrong. Even if August was convicted on all points, he wouldn't be sentenced harshly because of his age, because he's a first-time offender, and because it's a non-violent crime. He would most likely just be fined a large amount of money and ordered to pay damages, so settling isn't that bad.

Cinematography: The low winter sun creates some lovely golden light, so we know we're in for some sweet love between the boys. Another detail is the difference in how they're dressed and how they're carrying themselves. Wilhelm is tall and proud, he's at home, he's in a suit, he's sure of himself, while Simon is the guest, the intruder, and is almost shrinking away in his oversized purple shirt and jeans. Yes, yes, colour theory, I know.

Subtext: A nice little flashback to season 1 when Wilhelm said the same thing when he visited Simon's place.

Lost in translation: Simon is actually saying "Var det såhär i din dröm?" - "Was it like this in your dream?", which is a reference to the rather steamy dream Wilhelm had at the start of season 2, when he was lying in this exact bed.

Subtext: Absolutely no-one is fooled, everyone knows our two idiot boys were sucking each other's face a minute ago.

Subtext: Both Linda and the Queen are hearing about their sons' awful behaviour for the first time at this meeting. Linda had no idea Simon had been dealing drugs, and Kristina had no idea Wilhelm threatened August with a gun.

Culture: I have no idea here. There's no real-world example for this in Sweden, you can't put someone into the line of succession by giving them a title. The show is just hand-waving this. Alright. Ok. Fine.

Culture: All adults in the line of succession can be called upon to be acting Head of State, if the monarch is indisposed or on vacation or something. This means that once Wilhelm is 18, he would occasionally have to step in and do the job, even though he's not king yet. If there are no royals available for this, the duty falls to the speaker of the house, Riksdagens Talman.

Cinematography: We're returning to Hillerska after the episode intro at the royal palace, so we're treated to a little montage of what those gosh darn rich kids have been up to in the meanwhile, so here's a horse to remind us that some of them are still riding! This is the only horse we'll be seeing this season, because the show really isn't about Rousseau after all.

Subtext: Madison is doing Tarot, and she's got Three of Wands reversed and Four of Wands reversed. The first one represents obstacles and lack of progress, and the second one represents home conflict, instability, and lack of support. A bit on the nose, don't you think?

Subtext: It's true, but the show is also calling out itself for the somewhat inconsistent weather we've been seeing due to actual shooting schedules.

Culture: Graduating gymnasiet in Sweden has a bunch of elements that are the same pretty much across the country, and then there are regional differences and individual school differences. I recognize only a few of the things Fredrika rattles off, but it makes sense that a place like Hillerska has a ton of traditions.

Subtext: All the girls have noticed that Felice isn't doing too great, but Madison appears to be the only one that actually cares. Fredrika still hasn't stopped talking about all the crap the third-years are gonna do, because that's apparently more exciting. However, the trucks she's talking about are pretty common, this is what we in Sweden call a Studentflak.

@hanna-kin wrote a long post on Swedish graduation traditions, and I reblogged and added some stuff here: https://www.tumblr.com/skamenglishsubs/684659770007961600/its-that-time-of-the-year-again-and-if-season-2

Culture: It seems Minou isn't the head of PR for the royal court anymore, this is Farima, and we've actually seen her all the way back in season 1 when she was instructing Wilhelm to smile more in the photographs. Either way, it seems like she's got a promotion, and she's probably not wrong in her assessment. A bunch of old farts would balk at the idea of the monarch being in a same-sex relationship, but a lot of others would see it is proof that the monarchy can change with the times. There were quite a lot of fans in Team Monarchy after all. 👑🌈

Lost in translation: Linda actually says "Du har utegångsförbud", which means curfew. Grounding kids isn't really a thing in Sweden, to us it's some kind of weird thing that only happens in American teen shows, along with detention. What the fuck even is that?

Subtext: Unlike in season 1, Simon now consistently speaks Swedish at home to his mom, further showing us how distant he is from her, and from himself to some extent.

Lost in translation: Linda actually calls Sara a "hemmasittare", which is a Swedish term used for kids who simply refuse to attend school, typically for mental health reasons. What to do about the problem is a hotly debated political issue, and let's leave it at that.

Subtext: This is how the culture of secrecy and solidarity against outsiders work at schools like this. Everyone is abused, everyone participates in abusing younger students, and everyone is told to shut up about it. Every house guards their "secret" initiations to outsiders, to foster loyalty to each other, to your house, and to the school. It's cult behaviour 101.

Cinematography: The show does it's usual trick with the sound design where all outside noise disappears as Simon and Wilhelm retreat into their little bubble, but there are still people in the frame this time, even though we can't hear them, because this time they're snogging in public. Oh, and everyone needs to update their colour theory, new colours dropped, pink and orange, what does it all mean??!?

Blink and you miss it: The list of activities for the point hunt includes:

Tattoo "Hillerska 4-life" on your arm.

Take a selfie at the back of a police car.

Give someone a buzz cut.

Dance the balloon dance in public.

Sext a teacher.

Get a piercing somewhere.

Blink and you miss it: I love Vincent so much, he's just the worst. Oh, and it looks like he's wearing a $2000 Valentino sweater, but I'm not 100% certain.

Subtext: Neither Ayub nor Rosh agrees with Simon when he says he's gonna reply to idiots online, but unfortunately they're not telling him off, because that would lead to less drama in the season.

Blink and you miss it: Ayub and Rosh are talking about going on a hike to Talludden with their school, Marieberg, which is why we're gonna encounter them out in the woods in the next episode. Spoiler alert!

Subtext: Wilhelm puts up the first stanza of a poem by Karin Boye called The Shield Maiden. In English, the poem goes: I dreamed about swords last night. I dreamed about battle last night. I dreamed I fought by your side armoured and strong, last night.

Blink and you miss it: Wilhelm's desk has a ton of stuff, but he's also kept the broken frog prince snowglobe, and he's still got Erik's lighter and cigarette case from season 2.

Lost in translation: The comment in Swedish uses the word "bögar", which isn't quite as offensive as "fags". However, it's more offensive than "gays", so I understand why the subtitles went with this choice. It's one of those words that is offensive or not depending on context, and it's certainly offensive in this one.

Subtext: The soundtrack is on point as usual, highlighting the animosity between Wilhelm and August.

Blink and you miss it: Someone ordered a Horse Girl Desk™ from the props department, and they sure delivered all the horsey things! The book is the Swedish edition of Not on a White Horse by Nancy Springer:

From the day twelve-year-old Rhiannon spots a lost white Arabian gelding in the woods near her small Pennsylvania mining town, her life finds a focus as she learns to deal with family problems and decides the direction her life will take.

As you do.

Subtext: As a throwback to season 1, this time it's Sara's turn to make a surprise visit at their dad's. He is surprised and starts cleaning up his place, but he seems to be in better shape than when Simon originally turned up. His place is just messy, there are no signs of drinking and smoking unlike last time we saw him.

Culture: Who goes to New York to suntan? No-one sane, but sun-starved Scandinavians get a bit of cabin fever after a long dark winter.

Culture: Fake IDs aren't really a thing in Sweden, you're allowed to legally drink at 18, and underage kids are much more likely to have an older friend or sibling or alcoholic parent buy them some booze for a private party instead. Sure, they exist, but equipping your friend group with a bunch of fake IDs to go clubbing is not how it's done.

Subtext: Simon drew a heart on Wilhelm's hand and suggested he get that as a tattoo. Wilhelm objected because he's "not allowed to" as a royal, but here he is, redrawing it on himself, almost as if he's toying with the thought, defying the rules.

Subtext: Simon doesn't know anything about the initiations since he's a lowly external student, and even though they're boyfriends, Wilhelm automatically tries to play it down. He knows it's true though, he doesn't question that, he just doesn't want Simon to know about it because it's humiliating to talk about it.

Cinematography: A++ Main Villain Entry Walk.

Culture: The Swedish Schools Inspectorate is a very real government agency that has the very real power to shut down schools that are mismanaged in any way, either academically, or socially.

Culture: Just a quick reminder that every single third-year student is 18 or 19 years old at this point in time, and therefore they are legal adults, which means the school has less authority over them. However, since it's a boarding school, they can enact and enforce regulations for boarders, and kick them out from their houses if they disobey the rules, which effectively kicks them out of the school while technically not doing that.

Cinematography: I love the camera angle here where we just about see Vincent giving Wilhelm the evil eye for indirectly causing this.

As a closing note, this season felt a lot less subtexty to me, compared to previous seasons. On the other hand, a recurring theme now is the airing of secrets, of exposing the systems that create toxic environments like this, so in line with the theme, a lot of characters are voicing things that were left unsaid in previous seasons.

[fernlessbastard]

ok hot take. we all hate capitalists. I know. I do too. I really, REALLY hate capitalists.

that being said C!Quackity is the definition of a capitalist. like in a fully "I made the money, I deserve it because I took the risks." "its not my fault that some people dont work as hard as I do." "las nevadas is a company, the only government is the corporation which Quackity owns." way.

he is sat RIGHT at the bottom right corner on the political compass, and he is not budging. obviously, thats not to say hes a homophobe or a racist or generally a bigot, but hes very much a land hoarding, greedy, individualistic, profiteer type guy.

him and wilbur have gotten into several arguments about this, as with pretty much all of the ways Quackity runs his goverment, and shots have been FIRED.

I think the main argument from wilbur would be: "was it your fault that you were homeless after you ran from schlatt? do you really belive that youre the only person who has ever needed to run from financial abuse?" and "if it hadn't been for my policies about taking in all we can feed, then you would have starved to death in the woods. according to your philosophy I should have told you to piss off because you wernt profitable."

and then quackity responding with: "you change your ideology like youre a kid playing dressup, dont act like youre better than me because you woke up and decided that being a marxist suited your situation best, you just want something to argue about." and "you only took me in BECAUSE I was profitable. maybe not through labour but you would have used me as a bargaining chip any day of the week."

anyways, they've both been heads of state and both of them are well versed in political science and economics, which leads to both some very fun conversations and some less fun arguments. (wilbur might enjoy it a little)

ok so yes I agree with that take in the context of the smp, but it's also important to point out that minecraft "capitalism" is what those capitalists who want to convince you it's good claim capitalism to be. Food is abundant, shelter has little requirements to be functional, you can literally just dig a little into a hill and you're set, and then make a farm from things you can find anywhere. Anyone can mine, anyone has access to anywhere that isn't already someone's exact base, food is easily accessible and renewable, etc etc.

What Quackity's doing is he's actually providing a luxury service which isn't at all necessary. And Las Nevadas deserves to earn a profit from people using its facilities, cause they've been carefully and deliberately made to provide entertainment. Quackity doesn't have monopoly on food, shelter, land, resources, etc. Anyone could make their own small version of LN if they had the want and time to. So it isn't fair putting cQuackity in the same box as idfk bezos or musk, cause in cQ's case it's deserved, earned, and not a monopoly that causes everyone but him to suffer. Translating that into real life is just simply much more difficult than taking it at face value

As a sidenote I think that while Quackity is like that on the outside, he still wouldn't ignore someone needing help. Like, he's definitely got that built up resentment of "I had to work for all of this so hard, I've gotten through so many hardships. Why should someone else have it easier??" but then when the push comes to shove he's still end up helping, even if just a little bit.

[suzukiblu]

Greetings! I truly enjoy your writing, and I would like to see more of the Tim/Kon soulmates AU, if you feel like it!

Thank you! I do have a bit more of it lying around, sooooo . . .

Continued from here, for anyone who needs the setup.

It's early morning in Honolulu and Tim is very, very tired. He didn't sleep on the flight because he was making plans, but to be honest said plans are all shit. His best option is gonna take six months to fully execute, for starters. Which is a reasonable amount of time to have to spend getting a near-complete stranger to trust you enough to let you kidnap them away from everything and everyone they know, he knows, but still. It's not even that solid a plan, even discounting the frustrating time delay. It's just the best of a bad lot.

Maybe Tim should've, like . . . actually stopped long enough to tell Bruce what he was doing and get some advice. Or at least Alfred, anyway.

Just . . . it's fine, Tim tells himself as he and his go-bag get a taxi. This is just preliminary work anyway. Recon more than anything else. Ideally he'll manage to "meet" Superboy, but he's not dumb enough to think he's going to get the guy to like him this quick, much less trust him. The goal is "passing awareness of his civilian identity's existence" and nothing else.

Then the street kind of blows up in front of his taxi.

So that's a whole thing.

And here's Tim without so much as a damn domino in his pocket.

People are screaming, things are very literally on fire, and some rando in lycra is yelling at the cop car on the corner. Normal Tuesday, really, except it's broad fucking daylight and again Tim doesn't have a mask on him, much less his bo staff or utility belt or anything actually any kind of useful.

Fuck airport security, Tim thinks.

"Who's the jerk with the monologue?" he asks the driver, who seems largely nonplussed by the whole situation and has definitely left the meter running while they're trapped between the other cars and the blown-up street. Priorities, Tim guesses. Can't blame a guy for having them.

"Beats me, man," the driver says with a shrug. "I don't keep track of the spandex set, I just take the necessary detours around 'em when I'm working."

"That might be lycra," Tim says, reaching for his wallet. "But fair enough. How much do I owe you?"

He doesn't have a mask right now, no, but he can't just leave civilians unprotected. He can at least help people get out of the area and maybe distract the lycra rando for a bit, if it comes to it. If nothing else, he can–

Somebody in flashy red and blue and a black leather jacket crash-lands on top of the lycra rando with very deliberate flair, and then the street blows up again.

This time, though, the explosion is definitely telekinetic in origin.

Specifically tactile telekinetic, Tim thinks it's safe to assume.

He pays the driver, then grabs his go-bag and gets to getting people out of the area as subtly as possible while Superboy and the lycra rando tear up the street even worse. Like, almost impressively worse. Tim really wouldn't have thought the damage could even get that much worse, but they both find a way.

He is going to have such a hard time convincing Bruce to let him drag Superboy to Gotham.

Well, it's a six-month plan. Maybe the guy will mellow out a bit somewhere in there. Learn some subtlety. Pick up a bit of finesse.

Tim isn't actually that delusional, obviously, but that's the lie he's gonna tell Batman.

[bogkeep]

i remember the shift, when i went from being "some random kid online who likes to draw" to "popular fanartist within a small community". it was on the fan forum for a webcomic nearly a decade ago. i had been posting my art on tumblr for a couple years already, usually getting between 0 and 15 notes on each, with a couple exceptions here and there. as you can probably imagine, being an awkward queer and autistic teen had never made me feel particularly popular before. i wasn't really lonely, personally, though many of my peers are and were, but the idea of many people actively wanting to be my friend and thinking i was genuinely cool - that was incredibly novel.

i have always loved getting attention for my work and find people interested in what i have to say. like, who doesn't? it was a very fulfilling and inspiring experience when it started happening to me on a regular basis, to the point where i could expect it. i went from being constantly apologetic about how annoying i imagined myself to be to others, to feeling confident that at least some people were excited to have me around. absolutely revolutionary to realize that people weren't just pretending to like me, they liked me for realsies, and that putting myself out there and being sincere and genuine in my enthusiasm and interest was actually a positive trait many people valued. wild!!!!!!!!

when you come from a place like that, of course you try to be everyone's friend. that's the scarcity mindset. you have to hold on to every friendship ever offered to you because it's such a rare and precious thing and you don't know when or even if it might happen again. but if you get Popular, well, at some point you learn that you can only nurture so many friendships at once, and that you can't click with everyone. like, it only makes sense. but it sucks!! learning the necessity of rejecting people and letting them down is a harrowing journey, but one that must be made.

there's many deeply lonely people out there, especially online, a space of Connection. connections to other people are so good and necessary and being lonely is an awful thing to be. this means there's a lot of people who can't even imagine not wanting more friends, let alone not be constantly looking for some. it's always a bit of a tragedy when a Very Lonely Person tries to attach themselves to someone Socially Overencumbered, as that's highly unlikely to end satisfyingly for anyone involved.

anyway, i think capital f Fame is like that, but times a hundred thousand. it's deeply fascinating to me how Fame is treated as this deeply aspirational state when it's proven again and again to be a cruel and abusive mistress. like, i understand - don't we all want some attention, some validation, for someone to recognise us on the street with stars in their eyes, like OH you're the COOL PERSON who did the COOL THING and i want nothing more than a HUG and a SELFIE and also i made you this HAND MADE GIFT and PAINTED A PORTRAIT OF YOU... that's the dream, isn't it!! to be recognized for your skill, to be admired, desired! THAT'S WHAT EVERYONE WANTS, ISN'T IT.

but it isn't.

there's a limit to everything. there's a whole spectrum of Getting Attention and Validation between "literally everybody ignores you and everything you do" and "paparazzi follow you everywhere you go" - and i can promise that you can find a lot of fulfilment and joy on the lower end of that scale. it's difficult to explain sometimes, especially to people who get No Attention - it's like telling someone who is starving that the most expensive restaurant in town isn't really worth the hassle, a good affordable sandwich will make you so much happier, trust me. like maybe it's just personal preference and what i can personally tolerate! but i had merely a whiff, a crumb of what they serve at that place, and it's Not That Good. easy for me to say huh!!!!

i'm basically a nobody on the wider web, but i've still had my fair share of unpleasant stranger interactions both of the rude and overly familiar variations. i've been treated as a commodity rather than a person. i've been put on a pedestal and dragged through the mud by the same people. it kinda sucks!! and i don't want to tell people that they should never ever put themselves and their art out there because people might be cruel, because that shouldn't be the expectation! yet for some reason, it is!!!! people experiencing Fame have to deal with all kinds of inhumanely horrible things literally no human person is equipped to experience. many people say that's the price people pay for fame, but that's said by people who haven't experienced even a Fraction of the stochastic terrorism an Audience can do to you if they choose. not all attention is good attention.

i know none of this is a fresh new hot take. i know we all know stalking is unethical and traumatic. but i am still so fascinated by the divide between people who don't understand why anyone would reject any form of adoration and those who have to work very, very hard to keep their boundaries intact.

[woennix]

I'll be honest I am NOT surprised qFit will try to tell qPac about all of this.

By the end of his lore video the feeling I got was that he is going to fullfill the mission trying to believe that Madagio won't hurt anyone if he follows what he has been told to do. At the end qFit says: "I care about the people of this island. - I'll complete the job but you better not be using their data to do harm."

This to me sounds like someone who is ready to fight their boss if they do anything that will harm their loved ones. BUT he is not dumb, he knows that as said by the contract, if it came to a point where he had to disregard it in any way, his loved ones will be in danger. That's why he wants to ask qPac if he is ok with that risk.

What I will say is that I didn't expect qFit to be ready to has this talk so soon BUT with Ramon's pressure that doesn't seem that crazy to me.

I also wanna say another thing, mainly because I might be missing something or maybe there's being some kind of misunderstanding. As far as I know (and I might be wrong but I did check back on what Madagio said), the contract said that qFit is not advised to make attachments, BUT it never said it's against it or something thay might break it. Madagio just said it will complicate things, and it felt more like a warning to qFit to not distract himself with attachments or let them take priority to the mission. To be fair this is already happening, qFit is definetly at least thinking about prioritizing Ramón and qPac if it came down to it, but as long as qFit does what he's told and brings that data I do not think Madagio cares, and I didn't get that vibe from what he said during the contract either.

I say this because for now, from my understanding qFit is following the contract and has not broken it, and as long as he does this, his loved ones should be fine. And I think qFit is choosing to believe this data maybe won't be used for anything bad, since we still have no idea what it is for.

To be fair too, he is between two choices:

1. Break the contract, his loved ones making be punished, and he goes back to 2b2t.

2. Follow the contract, people might be hurt (tbh they will most likely be hurt) and get a chance to be free.

Like, none is good but only one of them has an actual chance to be somewhat of a happy ending, since there is a chance for Madagio to not use the data for anything nefarious.

The problem will come when the data is used for something harmful or he has to give qPac's or Ramon's data (and I am pretty sure he has it). Another way this could go wrong is if Madagio does something outside of the contract for his own benefit that harms others or qFit himself, like changing the rules of the contract or straight up breaking it and doing whatever the fuck he wants.

Basically my conclusion is: qFit is fucked either way so he is choosing the least fucked option and hoping Madagio isn't an actual asshole and will hurt everyone, by following the contract and getting a happy ending. He also knows Madagio IS most probably an asshole so he needs to be careful and warn qPac and is ready for a fight if necessary.

For now keep at the mission and hope for the best.

Or well, that's how personally I understood qFit's most recent lore.

[roo-bastmoon]

Fractured and Adrift

I was going to write a big huge post with lots of screen shots and chart data and analysis that I'd saved on my phone, but honestly I'm too sick right now to sit up and organize all that. If you go on twitter, you see in real time what is happening, anyway.

Bottom lines:

it's very clear to me that ads, payola, pay to play, vpn and other "networking" tactics that go against what BTS has always been about have pretty much come into play--for a catchy, but ultimately impersonal and generic, pop single that was given to only one member.

I'm not just disappointed, I'm gutted. I don't know where to go from here, as someone who used to take pride in being an ARMY and stanning artists who made it to the top the organic and hard way, by being genuine and talented and real with us.

As always, I look to my ult-bias, Jimin. His debut album was abandoned the moment he hit #1, yet he continues on with this company and to be a team player. He was with JK on private time during a couple's holiday. He's been filmed with and is likely working on some sort of project with JK right now. These are my cues. So without any further information about what is happening, I will continue to follow Jimin's lead.

I am a person who believes in the potential and the very best of others until I just can't any more. But I also cannot hide from the glaringly obvious. Jimin was mistreated, and Jungkook was prioritized in ways I personally find dishonorable.

I don't know how much, if any, input JK had in this. He's got a Masters in Communications, a decade of industry experience, and owns stock in his company; but I also know that talent are very rarely given complete insight or say over sales and marketing strategies--that's external, executive business decisions. I don't know what conversations, trade-offs, or internal pressure came into play here.

At this point, I would say I'm very adrift.

I'm a good soldier. I bought the CD, I bought each version of the song, I added it to my playlists. But I no longer feel needed as a fan for Seven; I feel replaced by Scooter's dollars. And I don't feel any personal connection to this particular song, as catchy as it is. I was excited when the styles JK helped choose seemed to be an homage to Jimin's Face, but... now a lot of the elements of this work seem rushed and disjointed. I just don't know.

I'm very worried about what this rollout means for our 7, especially how they are supposed to come together in a fair and equitable way after military service. I'm trying to read through their book when I can stay awake long enough. Trying to trust and hope and manifest the best.

I wish there was more transparency, more communications around what the game plan is, and if the members are all on board with everything.

All I can think to do is to keep loving Jimin and the people who are good to Jimin, keep working hard for what I want and not invest energy and time into what I don't. I do believe that Jungkook and Jimin love one another.

But I'm... fracturing... inside. It hurts.

I'm very ill. Maybe I'm just too emotional right now because I'm so sickly. Maybe I just need more time and more data to have a more rational perspective.

All I can think to do is hang in there and wait to be more anchored in facts before I can decide what all this means--for Jikook, for BTS.

I'm sorry if this post isn't very coherent. I'm on a bunch of steroids until I can get to a specialist and the brain fog is immense. I'm gonna go rest now. I think I might stop posting memes and thirsts and other things for a bit, while I just focus on getting well. But I'm sending you all so much love.

Hang in there. Deep breaths. We will find our way. We will make our way, if necessary.

[strqyr]

Thanks for finally convincing me to block you.

Anyone who has that much sympathy for a dumpster fire like Adam Taurus is someone I need to see less often.

Any other abusers you want to defend?

you know it kinda defeats the purpose of anon when i know who you are, right? might as well put your name on it lol. but since you're here brightening my day, lemme talk more about adam, sienna, and the white fang in general:

(fair warning: this will get critical.)

did you know that sienna never admonishes adam for killing few humans—they had a whole short made for him, if she did it would have come up, but all she does is praise him as an "extraordinary resource for this organization"—and that the white fang was executing sdc board members under her leadership? that she wanted humanity to fear the faunus, to know they demanded respect, which not only shows that blake fundamentally disagreed with her methods—"and the worst part was, it (sienna's methods of "violence where violence is necessary") was working. we were being treated like equals. but not out of respect... out of fear."—but is the dumbest, most macho way to go about things?

(trust me, i would know, i live next to russia.)

where sienna considered the line crossed was attacking the academies, because she believed it would start a war with humans that the white fang / the faunus couldn't win, which adam disagreed with, believing they could. that's their main difference, and there's nothing saying sienna wouldn't be fine with the attacks if she knew it wouldn't start a war or if she believed it was a war they could win.

"violence where violence is necessary" becomes incredibly flaky stance when your goal is to cause fear, ya know. i think there's a word for that, actually, especially when it's done for political cause. something about... causing terror? terrorist, maybe?

but sure. sienna "bringing a human to this location is grounds for execution" khan would definitely have problems with few humans dying during the targeted attacks she's all for. adam's definitely the only problem here, going off the path sienna set him for by... following in her footsteps. uh-huh.

one other thing about the adam short: there's a scene of sienna, adam, and ilia fighting against androids in some sdc place with blue lights and all despite the very obvious security breach happening in front of our eyes. but the moment the human security forces show up with their guns raised high and shooting at them right out the door, sienna and adam continuing the fight while ilia—the one who was redeemed—takes off her grimm (read: monster) mask, the lights turn red.

they're not being very subtle there. almost like the stance the show is taking isn't just against killing humans unnecessarily, but straight up the issue is the faunus fighting against their oppressors at all, and both sienna and adam crossed that line.

or, that's how it comes across, at least; this is a show that's partially build around colors, made by a company that also played lots of video games. they know what blue and red imply.

sorry you apparently can't feel an ounce of sympathy for a fictional character who was written as a child slave and branded on his face despite how he was written later in his life. admittedly, i find it weird and funny how you draw the line at me talking about adam in the same manner as i talk about cinder—well, not really. i haven't called adam "my bby <3" yet. guess i could start, though, just for you?—but i'm sure you have your own justifications and excuses ready for that.

i know you probably won't see this if your claims of blocking me are actually true, but who knows. maybe your friends will get it for you. maybe you continue to come back, clicking on that "show anyway" or whatever the button says when you click on a blog you've blocked to see if i've answered your little call for attention.

and sorry that nuanced takes on characters upset you. i know tumblr is the Reading Comprehension The Site™ but remember, in the words of blake belladonna: there's no such thing as pure evil :) (even when the writing sure does its best to vilify the white fang willing to fight their oppressors.)

[risingsouls]

[Okey dokey. Now that I've imploded and have picked up those pieces (maybe), I want to discuss what I plan to do moving forward. I want to preface this by saying I do not blame anyone but myself for getting to this point. I didn't follow my own rules, and it has made me uncomfortable with what I'm doing on this blog.

This is mainly about shipping so, if you ship with me, you'll want to take a gander. Under the cut for obvious reasons and to not annoy people.]

So, this has really been a long time coming but I do think I want to reset pretty much all my ships. Again, this is not anyone else's fault but my own, but I've just sort of become bored with what I've been doing in that realm. I went against my own rule of building up ships and allowed them to be rushed instead of built from the ground up like I like. I want to go through the stages of getting two (or more as the case might rarely be who knows) muses into a relationship. I want to see the messy parts. I want to do more than just having relationships be established from almost the jump after one or two small interactions. It's not fair to my muses who are all pretty damn picky. I don't feel like I'm doing right by them by not building these relationships properly. I do love all the ships that have happened, but I'm just not happy with myself for not sticking to my guns about REALLY building them.

What does this mean? Good question. By default, I think this means that I'm just going to wipe the board clean of all ships, save for a few exceptions. I'm also going to lay some ground rules for shipping in general that are honestly more a reminder for me, but also a sort of "this is what you can expect" thing moving forward for my partners.

First and foremost, I'm going to be pickier. I'm not going to allow people to just come at my muses from the jump with anything that's obviously shippy in an established way. Flirting is fine, but if I get something like "I've always loved you" (within reason on this one because that could be interesting) or "we've been married for sixteen years!" when there was no build up to this or they're basically strangers, I'm going to ignore it. Anyone is welcome to come ask me to ship, but, at the risk of sounding harsh, we're BOTH going to have to work for it.

If characters have a history, either in my canon or regular canon, I'm obviously willing to be a WEENSY bit more lenient. For example, Nabooru and Vegeta, in my AU crossover shenanigans, already have some history. Not necessarily as a romantic relationship (unless it's way down the line and even that's not traditional), but they did build some rapport with each other in that realm to some degree. However, since my Vegeta isn't the same as someone else's, I do still want to do the lifting with getting them off the ground. I want to see how it would differ with someone else's Vegeta than with what I've written/imagined in my AU. And I should also disclaimer that no other Vegeta or any other character needs to know Nabooru or any other one of my characters in the way they do in my AU.

This is where I'm afraid I might hurt feelings or lose RP partners, though I really hope I don't as it's not intended. As mentioned, I am starting ships over. I know I told some people recently that I was okay with continuing what we had, but it's become clear that I'm not happy with what I allowed and how I rushed things. Basically, I am very much still willing to explore the ships I already have again! But I do want to sort of start at some kind of beginning. To build it from the ground or close to it up. If you don't want to deal with that, I understand, but I feel this is necessary for me to feel good about what I'm doing again.

I think that covers everything. If you have questions, don't hesitate to pop in my DMs or hmu on dis.cor.d. Again, I'm not upset with anyone at all! This was definitely a me issue that I didn't get a handle on before I let it get to the point it bothered me.

[sophieinwonderland]

Speaking of how people refuse to engage with "traumagenic" as an umbrella term, it repeatedly baffles me whenever I try to start conversations on the ways different traumas can affect a system, or just coin terms for specific traumagenic origins because our system finds them useful, and I'll get pushback from both pro-endos and anti-endos alike. Like, excuse me? I'm trying to have a productive discussion on trauma and healing here. Why are you so afraid to acknowledge that trauma can be diverse and more specific resources may be needed sometimes? My headmates who came from the trauma of a lack of accomodations for our disabilities have a very different relationship with our plurality and trauma than my headmates who came from not being believed about our pain or my headmates who came from being bullied or my headmates who came from financial stress. All of it is trauma, but it's not all the same, and each of us needs different things. Different resources, different methods of recovery, different words for what we went through. And it's a core part of our recovery that we need to balance all these different traumas and origins; if we just went about some sort of "one size fits all" treatment (which it feels like people expect us to go through), we'd end up in a much worse situation than if we carefully unraveled each trauma as its own thing.

I think it has to do with all the expectations around trauma that can be seen in DID spaces, especially when it comes to what trauma can cause a system to form. There's still ideas floating around over there that only specific physical and sexual abuse is "bad enough" to cause DID, and there are lots of posts that act as though everyone with DID went through the same exact traumas, eg. I remember seeing a fair amount of "this is what DID is really like" memes that include sexual abuse as if everyone with DID has suffered from it. And because it's expected that we all went through the same things and have the same process of recovery, well, there's no need to elaborate any more on our origins, right? Just say "traumagenic" and everyone has a specific picture in their mind of what you went through. It never occurs to them that being more specific might be necessary or at least helpful (even when they claim that just about anything can be trauma – which, yeah, maybe just about anything could be, but if that's so, why are you against people coining terms to find others who have gone through their niche traumas, so they can trade stories and tips on how to get better?). Add that to the claim that other forms of trauma or abuse aren't "bad enough" to cause DID, and, well... Any effect other traumas may have on a system, even if they're not considered part of that system's origin, get brushed off to the side or only vaguely acknowledged. It's better than how it used to be, but I still see this subtle attitude here and there.

I feel like I'm rambling at this point but as one specific example, we have headmates who specifically help us with eating enough, because our trauma involves food issues and a possible eating disorder. Despite these headmates likely qualifying as traumagenic or at least caregivers to traumagenic headmates, there's not much room for them in the traumagenic community, and I've seen lots of backlash for specific terms for them because... idk, I guess some people don't want to acknowledge that eating disorders or general food issues can be traumatic enough to cause systems or new headmates. Or they think any mention of such things, even in spaces specifically meant to discuss trauma, means we're "glorifying" the shit we went/go through. It's frustrating. I just want tips from other systems on how to help these kids eat more when our amnesia means I don't know why we dissociate at family dinners or what foods are safe to eat. Calling ourselves just "traumagenic" isn't going to connect us with the systems who can help with that (and before anyone says anything, neither is just going into spaces for food issues – most of the people there are singlets who don't have any idea what to do about our situation!).

.

[blockgamepirate]

I mean I say I chose to vote for the cabins because I'm emotionally compromised, but to be absolutely clear, it's not the only reason, I'm not just being sentimental here

Look, Tango is clearly a better builder than Techno and Phil and the Citadel is one of the best demonstrations of that (altho not the best IMO, I actually think his s9 starter base was more impressive; not in terms of scale obviously, but in terms of the artistry and originality)

But I also feel very strongly about the fact that building skill isn't the only thing that matters, often what I personally value more than impressive builds is what the builds are for, what they mean, what stories they tell, what their history is

The Citadel is amazing but it's also hollow, it's basically just a façade. I mean it didn't need to be anything else, it would have been a complete waste of time to fill the whole thing with pointless rooms. Maybe if Tango had had more time or a whole team to help him they could have done that and maybe even made it part of the experience; maybe hid some lore into the castle, maybe even some shards, who knows. But it wasn't necessary and he didn't have the time, it's fine

Still, that does affect my view of it, because it really has no point other than to look cool

Meanwhile everything about the cabins feels lived in and real and full of history and stories and meaning. All the clutter, all the bits that got a bit messed up, all the ways in which they were adapted along the way, like adding basements and the bridge and even Phil's cabin itself, and how everything has a reason to be there, whether it's a practical reason, a sentimental reason, or a silly reason

It feels real because it is real, it might be digital but it's a place where people lived, in Minecraft

I mean yes to be fair the Citadel also has some stuff like the two big entrance halls and then later adding the waiting room and the practice rooms, and also the backstage has its own life very much in the way the backstage of a theme park attraction would have

Which kinda is what Decked Out is, isn't it? A really really cool theme park attraction

And that's partly why most of the Citadel is empty, because it's not actually a citadel, it IS a façade

So basically I guess what I'm saying is that this is like asking if the castle in Disneyland is a better building than some guy's log cabin in the woods where he lives with his friends and hides fugitives from the law, like idk man, by what standard?

[masterwords]

between you and me

Summary: Hotch & Morgan go out into the wilderness for a weekend survival competition. They're wet, muddy and happy. That's all. There isn't a plot here.

Pairing: Hotch/Morgan

Words: 5.3k

Warnings: a lot of swearing, dude talk, food, chronic pain (hotch), foyet & stabbing mentions

AO3: between you and me

Notes: I had this image of them being skilled and competent and really adorable in the woods, and this is what came of it. A lot harder to write than you would think - it's so much just snappy dialogue and vibes. Don't expect poetry. Also, it should go without saying but: I made this up. This is not a real thing, I just wanted to put them in the woods with low-stakes and the ability to have some fun together doing the insane type adrenaline junkie shit I know those fools would enjoy. So, I made up an incredibly silly scenario and went all in.

***

“Both of you?” Rossi asked with a smirk. Looks like a cat who just got a mouthful of canary. “How long ago did you put in?”

“They’ve been passing me up for five years, Rossi.” Morgan lamented his misery convincingly while Hotch just smiled in that gentle, confident but subdued way he had that said I win. Everything was a competition with them.

“I’m at eight. They claimed it was too hard to justify putting a Unit Chief out of commission for three days, what if I had to be recalled and there was no service? And then when they did finally select me…”

“Foyet. I remember.” Rossi almost hated using the man’s name, like it might bring him back from the dead. He was hesitant and let his eyes linger on Hotch for a moment longer than necessary, gauging his reaction. It had been two years but he wasn’t sure time really mattered when trying to heal something like that. To his credit, Hotch gave no real indication that it made any difference. He simply nodded somberly and agreed – yes, he’d been chosen, and then Foyet met him in his apartment and bled him out, stopped his heart, rendered him incapable of participating. And ever since then, they’d pulled the Unit Chief speech when he asked why he wasn’t selected but he knew – they were afraid of his physical status after the stabbing. He must finally have worn them down, or proven that he was physically capable. Or maybe they were just tired of him throwing his name in the bucket and had a pool going to see how far he could make it before he collapsed. He might be wondering that himself.

“And you still want to do it? Go spend three days in the woods miserable with no roof over your head, no bed to sleep in, no good food or hot running water?”

“Bold talk comin’ from a Marine…”

“Ever heard of the draft, smart ass?”

“Fair enough. But we’re doing it and yes, we want to do it.” Derek had no idea if Rossi was being honest about the draft situation, he’d known he was a vet but he realized he didn’t know that much about Rossi’s service. Didn’t seem like the time to ask, anyway.

“Will you be together or are they separating you?”

“No idea. We’ll find out at the debrief tonight, they’re serving dinner and giving us our assignments. I’m assuming we’ll be separate, can’t imagine why they’d keep us together. It’s gotta be like a lottery situation. God I hope I don’t get paired up with some DEA asshat.”

“It’s only branches of the FBI this round,” Hotch pointed out, leaving through the paperwork he’d been given. It was vague about most details, just dates and times and a whole lot of TBA. It made his skin prickle. “Awfully secretive.” That he muttered more to himself, but Derek heard and it got his wheels turning.

“Well, damn. And here I thought you boys might be getting a date night out of this.”

That made Hotch and Morgan both laugh. They did like things a little off the beaten path when it came to their personal lives, but that’s what you get when you put two adrenaline junkies together in close quarters – what they considered dates weren’t exactly things other couples might. They preferred a day out on their bikes in the mountain air to a movie night, and an evening at the swimming pool taking laps and sucking chlorine was better than a stuffy and expensive candlelit dinner. So to say that a weekend spent in the woods utilizing survival training skills instead of lounging around the house sounded like a date wasn’t far off base. Of course, in Rossi’s very wise opinion, he thought they could both better use their time by simply taking a nap.

As it turned out, they were partnered up. It was a department challenge, two from counter-terrorism, two from organized crime, two from BAU, two from the fugitive task force, two from political corruption and two from the cyber crimes unit. Hotch looked around at the people he knew and tried to imagine them in the woods, tried to imagine them with a better partner than his. “We’ve got this,” he whispered to Derek who simply nodded his approval. It was a competition, and the two of them were not in the habit of losing, even to people who were in far better shape than them. Derek had been battling a chest cold the week prior, though he seemed to be mostly in the clear, and Hotch had overdone it playing soccer with Jack and been dealing with some latent knee pain for the last few days. The medications they’d put him on after the stabbing struck him with only mild side effects most of the time, but the most cumbersome was the intermittent bouts of joint pain. It came and went, usually after he’d overdone it and he was very good at overdoing it. Overdoing it was kind of his specialty.

One day of training with Commander Stevens, a Navy SEAL who had the brilliant idea to put the FBI through the ringer. Just for fun, or so he implied. “Torture the pencil pushers,” was what Hotch overheard him whispering with some fellow officers. Hotch wasn’t motivated by needing to prove himself to anyone but he was certain some of these people at the tables eating pinwheel sandwiches from Costco were allowing their feathers to be ruffled by the insinuation that they weren’t tough enough. That alone would give him a competitive edge – he didn’t need to prove himself to anyone.

They had reported to Quantico at 6am for the first of it, bright eyed and coffee in hand. Derek’s cold was all but gone and Hotch felt good. Optimistic. They spent the morning in a classroom listening to the Commander lecture about survival in the Appalachians, people who walk the trail, how they get lost and how to avoid it. Survival for beginners is what Derek said later, and he prided himself on not being a beginner. The two of them had spent some time out in the Smokey Mountains, nothing close to the intensity of the next few days but they weren’t strangers to the area. After lunch they spent the afternoon brushing up on skills training, getting their equipment, learning the rules of the game.

“This remind you of those movies where bored rich guys are hunting dudes in the woods?” Derek asked as he tossed his 75lb backpack into their SUV and waited while Hotch did the same. Three days and two nights in the woods walking for upwards of thirty miles when all was said and done with a backpack that weighed as much as Jack strapped to each of their backs, that realization was the first time Hotch felt a little pang of anxiety. He could do it but he was going to pay for it.

“You and Jessica watch too much television.”

“No seriously. This is how they all start, they’re like oh you guys are the best of the best and you won this fantastic retreat or vacation or really high honor of some kind...then bam. You’re being hunted by rich dudes with fuckin’ laser guns you didn’t even know existed yet, some kind of military grade stuff you only see in movies starring Schwarzenegger.”

“Way too much television…”

Derek ran his idea by Jessica while they shared their last family dinner for a few days and she agreed wholeheartedly. Didn’t even miss a beat. “You guys be careful,” she said, clicking her tongue against her teeth. Jack looked on with wide eyes, taking in everything they said but not picking up on the sarcasm lacing every word.

“Is it dangerous?” he asked, trying to make some sense of it in the way young kids do. He still had trouble differentiating fact from fiction, cartoons from reality, and Derek and Jessica were not helping in the slightest. Jessica shot Hotch a look that said to tread lightly. He wasn’t sure if that meant lie through his teeth or be honest. Both felt wrong, and this question was her fault anyway...why should he have to be the one to answer for it? Didn’t seem quite fair.

“It can be, buddy. But I’ll be okay. I’ll be with Derek, and there are fail safes in place if we get into trouble. It’s supposed to be for fun. A learning experience and a game.”

“A game!” That seemed to please him.

“The most dangerous game…” Derek whispered and Hotch elbowed him a little too hard in the ribs.

“Exactly, Jack. A fun game. Kind of like camping and a race...capture the flag for grown ups.”

“Can we go camping soon?” Crisis averted. Jack was no longer concerned about his dads being hunted in the woods. Whatever that meant. He still wasn’t sure.

“Sure buddy.” An easy concession.

Even Hotch couldn’t help feeling a little trepidation when they were dropped into the woods by helicopter. That did feel a little too on the nose, a little too much like one of the movies Derek couldn’t stop talking about. It was meant to disorient them, and it succeeded. “Just like in SWAT,” Derek said as he checked Hotch’s pack and Hotch did the same for him. “You ready?”

“Born ready.” A bit of a stretch, they both knew. But the minute he was standing with this face turned into the wind, that adrenaline rush kicked in and he sucked in a breath of fresh air and helicopter gasoline and maybe he felt like it wasn’t such a stretch after all.

Derek descended the ladder first with Hotch right behind him. The sound of the chopper hurt Hotch’s ears until it disappeared over the treeline and they were left alone with the sounds of the woods. Without a word they each began surveying their surroundings – Hotch consulted his map while Derek walked around and got a lay of the land, checked out the views, climbed up a tree for a better view. In the end, they both decided on the same route. No argument, no issue. Off to a surprisingly easy start.

Jessica had guessed they’d be fighting over which route to take immediately and they couldn’t wait to tell her how wrong she was.

They walked and walked and walked. The air was heavy, the humidity oppressive. Hotch could feel sweat pooling at the base of his spine. Derek seemed to be handling it worse than he was – he’d already taken his long sleeves off. Hotch wouldn’t even think of it for a while yet. He’d rather have the protection from bugs. He can handle sweat.

They didn’t talk while they walked, didn’t want to waste precious energy on the first day – it’s all climbing elevation, steep hills that seem to go on and on forever but when they stopped for a moment to have a water break and a bite of food, they settled into quiet and pleasant conversation about things they saw, smelled, heard. Everything seemed to flow together seamlessly, the way Hotch would take the lead in places and Derek would slip by and take the lead in others. Instinctively knowing when one or the other needed a chance to suck wind in the back, slow down and smell the roses so to speak.

They managed almost ten miles before they decided to set up camp for the night. Everyone else had planned to stop around the 8th mile, before the big elevation change. It had sounded nice, too, when they stood at the base of the mound that rose before them, but they were both feeling up to a few extra miles and the weather held while they traveled. They watched a storm rolling in over the tree line and knew they’d rather be further ahead when it finally hit, just in case it took them longer to get going the next day. Having higher ground sounded appealing for a rain storm.

Quietly they set up their little camp, stringing a tarp between trees, getting their fire going, making sure they had what they needed before raising the rest of their packs up into the trees above, wrapped securely in tarp. They had each brought their own sleeping bag and wool blankets, just in case they were caught sleeping in a camp with others, but out here on their own they decided to pool their resources and get cozy.

It was a date night, after all. They’d slipped just enough off the path that they didn’t imagine anyone would wander by them if they slept a little later. It was safe.

The storm hit while they boiled their water to heat up their MRE packets. Out of their selections, Hotch decided they should have the biscuits and gravy with a side of chorizo breakfast tacos. Derek was appalled by his selections but when he looked at the other options he realized they didn’t sound any better. The first pang of homesick hit him then, as he crumbled freeze dried biscuits into a mylar bag and reconstituted their meal. He thought about sitting around the table with Jessica and Jack, with his family, and digging into a delicious warm meal that hadn’t been preserved before he was born. They had a good time describing the flavors of the meal, picking it apart like they were eating at a michelin star restaurant instead of out of mylar bags in the woods. Hotch decided that the biscuits and gravy weren’t half bad for space bag food, but the tacos were appalling. Derek could barely choke down either of them and refused to call them food.

It was soft at first, just the pitter-patter of fat rain drops falling through trees and plopping onto their tarp but soon it began pounding and Derek pushed in closer to Hotch as the ground absorbed the water and crept closer to them. “This is gonna suck,” he said, but he barely meant it. He was leaning against Hotch eating a cookie that was probably made when Rossi was in the Marines and mixing up a cup of powdery lemonade chock full of salty crumbly bits. “This would be better with vodka,” he said, setting the small paper cup to his lips. Hotch smiled and agreed in his sleepy way. He was halfway to lights out already.

The second day was all rain. They woke up wet and packed up their wet camp and set out in wet clothes. Derek threw his ballcap on and Hotch cinched up the hood of his rain jacket until hardly more than his nose protruded from the opening, and that was how they set out very glad they didn’t have to climb that first hill in the mud. The rest of the group was going to have some trouble with their footing. By mid-morning they both had the start of some serious blisters, Derek was freezing, and they were clinging to that small happiness that came with knowing they had given themselves a solid head start on the day. Not as far to go before they could set up camp, light a fire and try to get warm.

Hotch began limping by mid-day. Derek had just decided it was his turn to lead and slowed his pace to drop behind, let Hotch past, and that was when he first noticed. He wondered how long it had been going on behind him. He didn’t seem to care about trying to hide it.

Just a slight limp at first, becoming more and more pronounced as the silent miles wore on. Derek tried to talk him into a water break, a rest, anything. He couldn’t bear to watch it without trying to stop it.

“Derek, we’re three miles from today’s rendezvous and we’re hours ahead of schedule. We keep to the plan, we stop only we get there.”

“You’re limping.”

“And I’ll limp for three more miles.”

The way he said it so matter-of-fact grated on Derek’s nerves. It was the first time he could feel an argument bubbling up in his chest during the whole time they’d been out there. He swallowed it down and pleaded instead.

“Why don’t we just take a breather? You said it yourself, we’re hours ahead of schedule. A short water break, you can rest your leg and I can find my rain jacket.”

Hotch slowed his pace and turned to Derek, softening enough that he didn’t come across mean. The last thing he wanted to do was ruin this weekend. “Your rain jacket is tied around your waist, and if I stop now, I might not be able to get going again at this pace. I don’t want to lose momentum.”

“Come on, man. I was hoping this trip would be fun, not miserable.”

“I’m not miserable.”

“So you like limping through the woods?”

“Derek...if my ability to enjoy things was contingent on my body feeling good, I would lead a very different life than I do now. You know that my body has been different since Foyet’s attack and I think I’ve done a pretty good job of not letting it stop us from having fun. Part of that is knowing when I can push through and when I can’t. I can push through this. I can make it three miles. I believe I could make it at least five, if I’m being honest, but I’d rather not.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better…”

“It wasn’t meant to, it was just meant to let you know that I’m not stopping and I am having a good time. This is fun.”

“Yeah. Okay. What is it?”

“My knee.”

“The one you tweaked when we were out with Jack the other day?”

“The very same. Probably just the medication making an overuse issue worse. Please stop worrying and walk faster. Don’t let a guy with a bum knee out-hike you.”

They walked on, the banter predictably turning to light bickering, competitive shit talk, but always smiling. Derek figured it was easier to light up a small argument that would keep them both distracted for the last few miles than continue to try and get Hotch to stop. It was futile to try and get Hotch to do anything he didn’t want to do. That lesson had been a hard one to learn.

They came up on their check in point and were pleased to find that they were the third pair out of ten to pass through. Not bad, considering the limping slowing them down some, though Hotch had blamed it mostly on Derek. From there, all they had to do was find themselves a place to set up camp for the night and wait for everyone else to arrive. This was the only night where there were group activities in store, team building exercises that neither Hotch nor Morgan was thrilled about. They found a place a little off the beaten path, away from the crowd of people who wanted to be close to visit and talk about their experiences. They had no interest in making small talk. With the hope that those ominous clouds overhead would pass them by without dumping on them, they began to quickly assemble their camp. They were already cold and wet, their shoes were wet on the inside and Derek insisted that Hotch prop his leg up on the mound of his pack and put some ice on his knee instead of them hoisting the pack up the tree. They had two portable cold packs that wouldn’t do him much good, but there was a small creek nearby and Derek thought maybe later, if the weather held, they could go stand in it for a while. That would feel good on their aching legs and feet, sweet relief for both of them. For now, they ate some snacks and ended up falling asleep to the pitter-patter of tiny raindrops.

By evening, it was another full scale storm. No thunder and lightning, but soaking wet. No fires, which meant no hot food. Just huddling together under the blankets they had for warmth and eating the convenience food they’d stored – some nuts and dried fruits, granola, bottled water and beef jerky. Not enough to fill either of them up but they were glad for the storm and Derek hadn’t exactly been thrilled at the prospect of freeze dried beef stroganoff or chicken alfredo and peach cobbler that would just make him even more homesick for some real food. The weather had meant that the team building exercises were put on hold and they couldn’t complain about that, certainly.

Instead, they got a second date night, just like Dave had said. They tangled themselves together and shared the blankets for warmth, knowing that they had a definite advantage over anyone not involved in an explicitly forbidden (or at least frowned upon) workplace love affair. They had the kind of warmth that comes from being close, sharing body heat. Derek thought about Jerry and Mason from the fugitive team huddling like this and the thought brought him nearly to laughter.

“Hotch,” Derek whispered after a long silence, after listening to the storm rustle through the trees above them and rattle the tarp, thankful that there was no lightning. He shifted their bodies to get them off of the protruding root that was digging into his hip and curled up a little tighter. “You gonna be okay to walk fifteen miles tomorrow?”

Hotch hummed. “Yes. I’ll be fine.”

“We can tap out. Take the day and just chill. No shame in that.”

“Not a chance. Why, are you tired? Do you want to stop?”

“What? No. What…”

“It just sounds like maybe you’re using my knee as a way out.”

“I am not.”

“No?” Hotch asked, smiling as he kissed Derek in the dark, nuzzling his cold nose into Derek’s warm skin. “You sure?”

“Man. Fuck your knee. I hope it gives out on you tomorrow.”

“No you don’t.”

“I’ll leave you behind, let you get snatched by the people hunters.”

“No you won’t.”

Derek sighed. “No I won’t. I’m sorry.”

“I know. I forgive you.”

Hotch’s knee held up better than he’d anticipated through the last fifteen miles of the trek. The ache was deep and kept him awake some of the night worrying that he was being over-confident, but by morning it had loosened up some. He was limping and in considerable pain somewhere around the fifth mile but they had a good time, and that was worth plenty of discomfort in his book. By the tenth mile Derek had himself a little limp too, his blisters giving him grief. It wasn’t so much a limp, Hotch thought, as it was a painful waddle through the woods.

“My gooch is on fire,” Derek said when he noticed Hotch scrutinizing the way he was walking. “Damn rain gave me some wicked swamp ass.”

“Derek…” Hotch laughed, shaking his head.

“What? You sayin’ it’s not bothering you?”

Hotch refused to dignify that with an answer.

The last day was gloriously rain free, and where they ended had even better access to the creek than their camp the night before. So they had to trudge through thick, soupy mud and fight their way up past landslides to get to the end...it would make the creek that much better. At more than one spot, Hotch allowed Derek to help hoist him up, pull him up a hill when his knee buckled beneath him and refused to support his weight at certain angles. He couldn’t even be mad about that, not even when Derek insisted that he piggy back to the finish. (Hotch’s staunch refusal to even consider it gave him a hearty laugh, the kind that fueled the rest of his walk. Put a pep in his step, as his mother would say.)

They didn’t arrive first, that was Jerry and Mason from fugitive and Derek assumed it was the thought of snuggling the night before...they were so appalled at it, they didn’t sleep, they just got up and finished the race. Hotch and Derek managed to come in a respectable third and were pleased with it.

“You think the richies got the cyber nerds?”

“We’ll never know,” Hotch said, rolling his eyes at Derek’s question. He had been surprised that the commentary on human hunters had been dropped while they were out in the woods, maybe that was due to his knee taking up too much of Derek’s thoughts. If that was the case, he was thankful for the pain he’d endured that much more.

As soon as all of the formalities were done and everyone had separated, tired and ready for a shower, Hotch sent Jessica a text to let her know where to get them. It was his first time turning on his phone in days and he was glad to slide it back into his bag, ready to kick out of his shoes and do a quick change into shorts and t-shirts for some time in the creek. Everyone else piled out, ready to return to civilization but they wanted to stick around a while. It was the best part of the whole trip, standing in the icy water, all blisters and swollen knee and swamp ass, eating handfuls of trail mix while they waited for Jess and Jack to come pick them up.

“You boys look rough!” Jess called, walking carefully down the slope of pebbly hillside toward the water while Jack and Clooney bounded quickly. No fear. Her feet slipped out from under her more than once in the loose packed ground that had been ravaged by the storms of the last two days. Hotch and Derek just stood in the water and watched, content not to move, just to stand.

Jack and Clooney played with rocks, Jack trying to skip them over the current and Clooney trying to catch them while Jessica attacked them with a barrage of questions from her dry perch on the rocky beach. She wasn’t about to take her shoes off and get in, she knew damn well that water was cold.

“No hunters?”

“No hunters,” Hotch replied quickly. Derek shot him a disparaging look and then glanced at Jessica.

“We don’t know that. We never saw the guys from cyber crimes come out…”

Hotch groaned. “I overheard Jerry from fugitive say that the cyber guys tapped out the first night when it started raining.”

“Sure they did. You believe that? They’re someone’s dinner, buddy.”

Hotch, with a smile, decided he’d had enough of the woods and was ready to go home. He hadn’t been able to take any pain medication while they were out in the woods, not wanting to dull his senses when he needed them, but boy was he ready now to make up for lost time. Jack watched his dad limp gingerly out of the water with a look of concern, and without hesitation Jessica reached out to take his hand. She steadied him as he struggled to find adequate footing on slippery rocks.

“Bum knee?” she asked, stepping dangerously close to the water in her shoes. He made an effort to move a little faster, holding her hand but not letting her do much.

“Yeah. Bum knee.”

“Let me help you old man.” She held his hand tighter and guided him out of the water, letting him lean on her for the short walk up the hill. Derek followed close behind with Jack slung over his shoulder and Clooney nipping at his heels. He’d come back for their packs once his family was securely placed in the vehicle and ready to go. They had a long drive ahead of them.

“He says he’s fine.”

“Oh, yeah, well he definitely looks fine.”

“I am fine.” Hotch was grumbling as he fumbled with his seat belt in Jessica’s little rust bucket of a car. It wasn’t that she couldn’t afford a better car, she just didn’t want one. She loved her old Volkswagen Rabbit that required a special mechanic and wait times that were absurd for broken parts, with its rusted burnt orange paint job and bright flower decals that screamed Woodstock and Grateful Dead. Hotch barely fit in the car and he had to slide in sideways, bending his sore knees at an awkward angle to make sure Jack would fit behind him and Derek could slide in on the other side. Jessica didn’t let anyone else drive her car and she hated when Hotch was in the front seat, his long legs dangerously close to the stick shift. No way he’d fit in the back, though. “You should have brought my car,” Hotch said when she started the engine. It took two tries and at least ten minutes to let the old girl warm up enough that she wouldn’t stall out the minute Jessica tried to hit the gas.

“I hate driving that thing. It’s a grandma car.”

He had no argument there. If grandma car meant safe and secure, if that meant protected, then yeah. He did drive a grandma car. She drove a rust bucket and Derek had a motorcycle, one of them had to be responsible.

“Can we have PIZZA for dinner?!” Jack asked, thrashing around in the backseat and kneeing Hotch in the small of his back repeatedly through the thin, broken down old leather seats. Clooney’s hot breath from the back was overpowering. Hotch frowned and cranked the window down for some air.

“I want steak. A big juicy steak. One that came from a cow that was alive this century.”

“Jess, you up for playing grillmaster tonight? I don’t think I can stand that long…” Derek said, trying to stretch his legs out along the backseat, right over the top of Jack. His seat belt didn’t work anyway, and he was beat. A barbecue did sound nice though, Hotch had the right idea. A big juicy steak, some ibuprofen (and maybe something a little stronger for Hotch), some beers, and a long long nap. After a shower. He had mud in places he didn’t know mud could get.

“If I get to wear your apron and use your fancy spatula. You know the one.”

Derek grunted under his breath about that being his stuff, but he couldn’t argue. If it meant he didn’t have to do the work he’d probably agree to just about anything.

And as the sun sank over the trees, Jessica stood in Derek’s apron (that hung to her knees and looked ridiculous on a woman her size) and started getting the grill ready. She would enjoy getting the chance to be grillmaster for the night, Derek didn’t often relinquish the job. Hotch rarely took it, he preferred to lounge in the hammock, his one true indulgence. It was her turn. She set about cleaning the grill and seasoning it first, going through all the steps before slapping the big fat steaks on to sizzle while Jack and Clooney played. Hotch and Derek, freshly showered and medicated, were content to doze off in the hammock together and wait for their meal which they both promised they would wake back up for.

“If you don’t, Clooney will eat your steaks. There’s always the MREs in your pack for later. I saw one that said it was beef ravioli in meat sauce. Sounds delicious.”

“Why are you so mean?” Derek whined, his voice muffled and sleepy. His face was pressed into the back of Hotch’s head, Hotch who was already fast asleep smelling like sweet shampoo and icy hot. It hadn’t taken him any time at all once his eyes were closed. She smiled and shrugged.

“Go to sleep Derek. I’m sure the mosquitoes will wake you up before I do.”

[super-paper]

I really love your opinions and posts about toshi, so if i may, do you think toshinori will (or maybe has already) "learn the lesson" that others have been trying to show and tell him, and see worth and meaning in his life beyond All Might the hero?? Obviously it's not a behavior or mentality that one can change just like that, especially after so many years living behind that persona. But with so many characters around him telling him to keep on living, and he still in the end attempts a sacrifice, I can't help but wonder if he truly understands what everyone else has been trying to tell him and really try to live. It sounds like i'm not being fair to him, bc obviously it's an extreme situation of war and at this point, it's normal to act based on 'whatever it takes', but idk, i'm just worried about his character 😭

Thank you for the kind words! I'm glad you also like Toshi.

Anyway-- I think you've already brushed against the root of the issue! Rationally speaking, Toshinori does understand that other people want him to live and he's so unbelievably, genuinely grateful each and every time someone encourages him to keep living. He's completely sincere when he says that he wants to live/is going to keep living.

That being said, I don't think it's contradictory for Toshi specifically to talk about wanting to live, fully *mean* that he wants to live, and then immediately try to blow himself up. It can be difficult for people to fully understand the insidious nature of mental illness, I feel, bc they try to rationalize something that simply isn't rational (I don't want to diminish the necessary context behind Toshibomb, either: Toshi was primarily acting out of desperation to protect Izuku from AFO-- and the narrative itself chose not to reward/validate him for this.)

Like, I totally get that some Toshi fans feel betrayed/upset because it feels like Toshi isn't taking other people's feelings seriously, or bc it feels as though he's "undoing" all his character development-- but genuinely, I don't believe his development has been undone in the slightest. Toshinori is genuinely fighting to live and for his right to keep living. Toshinori also attempted to kill himself. Both realities are equally and simultaneously true for this character, even if it seems like they're fundamentally incompatible with each other. "I want to keep living for you!" and "I would die for you without hesitation!" aren't contradictory feelings from Toshinori's perspective.

(side note: I don't want to make assumptions about the experiences and lives of other fans, so I apologize if this comes across that way! I know a lot of other fans also suffer from depression and don't mean to insinuate that they lack perspective, or anything like that.)

Personally, I don’t think Toshi’s arc is remotely finished yet-- primarily because his feelings regarding Tomura remain quite conspicuously unaddressed. Toshi still needs to admit out loud what his essence as a person (i.e. aura!might) shed tears over— that in his heart of hearts, he also wants to save that boy. Izuku, Toshinori, Bakugo, and Aizawa are the characters that Tomura found himself fixating on during Act 1 bc they all represent something that failed him terribly (Heroes - Izuku, Family - Toshinori, Society - Bakugo, His Teacher - Aizawa). So, these four are the key players who will play the biggest role in saving Tomura, I feel-- and all four characters still have some critical development that's needed before they can all be on the same page about what needs to be done, and ultimately "change fate" together:

I also feel that, if there's any lesson that Toshi does still need to learn, is that it's okay to live entirely for his own sake. He's learned that he wants to live, but he ties that desire to other people and other people have unfortunately/unintentionally reinforced this ("Izuku lives for your sake so please don't talk about dying" "You gotta keep living until the day you can hear me say 'I am here!'" "Just you being here is all the push other people need to keep going" "you can only claim the title of a hero by dedicating your life to others")-- and that's where the dissonance kicks in, where Toshi is still willing to kill himself for the sake of others because he's primarily living for the sake of others. Toshi still needs someone to tell him that it's okay to live, just because he wants to, without tying this desire to anyone else.

This is a lesson I feel he can learn through being more honest about his own feelings (which again, heavily ties to him finally processing his feelings about Tomura/Tenko and then finally acting on them!). I also feel like Bakugo and Tomura (two of the most ego-driven characters in the cast) may end up having a role to play in helping Toshinori understand that it's completely okay to live for himself.

Edit: As for Toshinori "learning that he has value outside of being All Might," I feel that he has already learned this! I'm actually writing a post about what Iron Might means for Toshinori as a person & why it's a positive development right now-- So I hope that it will address your concerns, if only a little!

[dracotheocracy]

Bond. James Bond.

Plz give me all the info you've got on hand!

i am so glad you asked. fair warning: i will have nothing good to say about james bond.

now this wouldn't be a mars ask if i didn't set up dubiously necessary context before getting into it: i have a relatively well-documented history of being hooked into medias that are like watching car crashes (e.g., the irregular at magic high school, white collar). as it tends to happen in trash fire fiction i have seen some really problematic shit- irregular's main ship, for example, is an incest ship that's pushed by the narrative to the point where i think it isn't inaccurate to call its narrative somewhat pro-incest, and white collar is a police drama produced in 2010 which i think tells you most of what you need to know about the narrative it pushes about justice. all this, especially when compounded by some legitimately terrible writing, scratches a certain itch in the part of my brain that likes to tear shit apart.

the james bond novels will quickly become my latest victim, as i have to read From Russia, with Love for a course on spy fiction i'm taking this semester. i will likely have this tumblr post pulled up during the discussion we have about it in about 9 hours as what's under the cut is essentially a close-ish reading of the first 10 chapters of the novel.

tw misogyny, queerphobia, racism, sexual violence, demonization of mental illness

i have watched my fair share of james bond movies. they do not fucking prepare you for how bad the novels are. i am 10 out of 38 chapters into this novel (one of 14 novels!) and i have developed something of a hatred for ian fleming.

in 10 chapters the plot is only just beginning to get rolling, so in terms of actual writing quality i can give no judgements beyond "well i can sort of tell that by the end i am going to think 'hm this was not that good.'" now the bond franchise was never meant to be a literary masterpiece so it doesn't actually have to be all that good, it just has to be entertaining, and because my idea of entertainment is looking on in horror as some aspect of the writing finds a way to get worse somehow, by god has it been delivering thus far

what i CAN tell you is that ian fleming is teaching a masterclass on how to write with the male gaze. three female characters have been introduced in these first 10 chapters- a nameless masseuse who's really just there to make sure the opening of the novel is suitably erotic, rosa klebb, and tatiana romanov.

he has made a point of mentioning all of their breasts within give or take 3 paragraphs of their introductions, dear lord i might even be giving him too much credit. the nameless masseuse took her shirt off and was just tits out for most of the scene she was in actually, but that didn't really matter as much relative to the other glaring issue with that scene that i will be getting to later. he's also referred to his female characters as women as opposed to calling them girls maybe, once per character, so far. maybe that's a quirk of british english in the 1950s that nobody would think anything of, but it's something that adds up to the point that it's very much worth noticing to me- all of these women are grown adults and while i find myself unable to articulate exactly why it feels wrong to me that they're repeatedly called girls. it could be because i find it infantilizing, maybe, i feel like the word usage here diminishes their agency

the nameless masseuse doesn't really get a lot dedicated to her appearance relative to the named women, and the opening scene happens mostly in her point of view. there is also a man in this scene who i will be getting to in full later, but for now i will point your attention towards two quotes:

"[S]he wondered why she loathed this splendid body, and once again she vaguely tried to analyse her revulsion. Perhaps this time she would get rid of feelings which she felt guiltily certain were much more unprofessional than the sexual desire some of her patients awoke in her." "Now was the time when many of her patients, particularly the young ones on the football team, would start joking with her. Then, if she was not very careful, the suggestions would come. Sometimes she could silence these by digging sharply down towards the sciatic nerve. At other times, and particularly if she found the man attractive, there would be giggling arguments, a brief wrestling-match and a quick, delicious surrender."

this scene is written from her perspective and it's here to introduce the male character in it. but who cares about that, what is it telling us about the masseuse? well. she thinks her patients are hot and has sex with them sometimes. that's really about it, i think her portrayal in the scene as a whole would indicate that she's plain or a little dumb but there isn't much character to discern because ian is far more concerned with talking about the man in this scene in a way that's pretty sexually charged while also establishing the first bits of information you get about him as the reader. the only purpose of a female POV in this scene is to make it more erotic, i think it's pretty clear he doesn't really care about this character's anything beyond the inherent sex appeal she gets by being female and the ability to write a somewhat erotic description of a male character without it coming off as weird and homosexual.

our next female character is rosa klebb. i will be getting back to something more important about her later, for now i'd like to focus on how fleming, from a male character's perspective, describes her.

"She was short, about five foot four, and squat, and her dumpy arms and short neck, and the calves of the thick legs in the drab khaki stockings, were very strong for a woman. The devil knows, thought Kronsteen, what her breasts were like, but the bulge of uniform that rested on the table-top looked like a badly packed sandbag, and in general her figure, with its big pear-shaped hips, could only be likened to a 'cello."

i'll be honest this is an excuse to show off one of the titty quotes and rosa klebb is a pretty big offender. a lot of the impression we get of her in the beginning is done less to give us an impression of her and more to establish the kind of character our current POV man, kronsteen, has. kronsteen is an emotionally detached, manipulative, and insightful (in the dnd insight skill way) chess master who works for the MGB. he's the criminal mastermind smart guy who makes all the plans. now i suspect the purpose of rosa's physical description doesn't have much to do with showing anything particularly notable about kronsteen's character, there's a paragraph dedicated to the rules he uses to read/judge people that tells you far more about him than this does even if you try to analyze it, mostly because this is also how ian talks about women in the absence of a POV character

which brings us to tatiana romanov! who has her physical appearance described in a scene that is set in her POV:

"One of her early boy-friends had said she looked like the young Greta Garbo. What nonsense! And yet tonight she did look rather well. ... She smiled at herself in the mirror. Yes, it was wide; but then so had Garbo's been. At least the lips were full and finely etched. There was the hint of a smile at the corners. No one could say it was a cold mouth! And the oval of her face. Was that too long? Was her chin a shade too sharp? She swung her head sideways to see it in profile. The heavy curtain of hair swung forward and across her right eye so that she had to brush it back. Well, the chin was pointed, but at least it wasn't sharp."

"In fact Corporal Tatiana Romanova was a very beautiful girl indeed. Apart from her face, the tall, firm body moved particularly well. ... Her arms and breasts were faultless. A purist would have disapproved of her behind. Its muscles were so hardened with exercise that it had lost the smooth downward feminine sweep, and now, round at the back and flat and hard at the sides, it jutted like a man's."

wild guess. shot in the dark. she's this novel's bond girl. ian gives a glowing description of her features during which he establishes that she thinks a lot about her appearance and is perhaps somewhat insecure about it, but still believes herself to be beautiful. the stuff i took out and replaced with the ellipsis is really much of the same as what follows the ellipsis. the second quote is switching briefly from romanova's POV to that of the narrator, and of course it ends on a description of her tits and ass because, well, why not. now i will give some amount of grace in that romanova does have, like, a personality, but much like the masseuse she's, bland might not be the correct way to describe it, but she has this very gentle, [in a sarcastic tone of voice] divine feminine quality to her. to quote the next chapter, "This was a beautiful, guileless, innocent girl." i admit reluctantly that ian did a decent job of showing us this before telling us- her demeanor when she gets a call from a superior officer in the MGB betrays as much with her immediate panic over what she might've done to get a call at unusual hours from her superiors and pretty meek acceptance of what she probably sees as certain death, and her concern with her appearance in the parts i quote might come across as a bit superficial but the insecurity, the way she appraises herself, paints her less as vain and more as a shy beauty (to be conquered by bond later of course)

we return back to the scene with the masseuse, this time to talk about donovan grant, or granitsky. he is a major villain.

"Donovan Grant was the result of a midnight union between a German professional weight-lifter and a Southern Irish waitress. The union lasted for a quarter of an hour on the damp grass behind a circus tent outside Belfast."

i am genuinely curious why ian thought it necessary to mention that his parents fucked for 15 minutes in the sex that conceived him. we must note the nationalities of his parents because with the prior james bond knowledge that dr. no, a major villain from earlier in the bond timeline, has a german father and a chinese mother, makes me suspect there might be a pattern in what heritages ian likes to give his antagonists. (READ: GERMAN AND [INSERT OPPRESSED NATIONALITY HERE]). it should be noted that granitsky's father immediately fucks right off and he's raised in southern ireland. dr. no, i'm fairly certain, was also raised in china as his father was a german missionary if memory serves. ian throughout the first couple chapters establishes that communist spies are pretty culturally and racially diverse, which would be cool i guess if the communists weren't evil in this setting. later in his exposition about granitsky's backstory he describes the spy school he attended in leningrad, specifically its makeup: "Germans, Czechs, Poles, Balts, Chinese and Negroes..." (about the use of the word Negro, the bond novels were written in the 50s. for clarity). there's a mention in a later chapter of a particularly accomplished black soviet agent. i will update this post if there's any racial diversity on the MI6 side of things but... somehow i doubt it...... anyway, i point this out just to make a note that the side we're rooting for here is the side of the white englishman where his villains tend to come from less privileged cultural backgrounds

i'm not done with donovan. he gets worse. his character says a lot about society and particularly how little ian fleming thinks about like, anything. donovan grant is a high ranking assassin in the MGB. he's a boxer that defected from british armed forces oh also he's a serial killer

"It was about this time that his body began to feel strange and violent compulsions around the time of the full moon. When, in October of his sixteenth year, he first got 'The Feelings' as he called them to himself, he went out and strangled a cat. This made him 'feel better' for a whole month. ... Often he had to go very far to find what he wanted and, after two months of having to satisfy himself with geese and chickens, he took a chance and cut the throat of a sleeping tramp."

grant is diagnosed 2 chapters later with manic depression that flares up once a month. he has to go out and kill people or drink his urges away once a month because he has manic depression that is explicitly stated. it's almost 1am so i'm not going to dignify this with an especially winded explanation of what's wrong with this scene. that's a wildly inaccurate portrayal of what we now understand as bipolar depressive disorder and a demonizing one at that, because, you know, evidently manic episodes make you go out and kill people right that's definitely accurate and based in verifiable fact right. he was diagnosed as a narcissist also while we're on the topic of demonizing portrayals of already very stigmatized mental illnesses

"When he killed the occasional girl he did not 'interfere' with her in any way. That side of things, which he had heard talked about, was quite incomprehensible to him. It was only the wonderful act of killing that made him 'feel better'. Nothing else."

so as an aro/ace myself i dig into this one particularly hard. there is one hell of an implication here about an asexual's capacity for love, compassion, you know, emotions, the things many people argue make us human. it's just incredible to me, really, that ian decides to introduce this character's asexuality by saying "he doesn't rape the women he kills because he does not experience sexual desire." it's very, very clearly not something that's supposed to reflect positively on donovan, which is just insane because you'd figure this would be a "well at least he doesn't rape women he only kills them :|" but instead it's "he doesn't rape the women he kills how awful and weird!"

the train of logic there is relatively easy for me to piece together i think. if someone is okay with murder, that is, on the sliding scale of evil actions, generally placed above being ok with sexual violence. at least i suspect this is reliably true in the 50s when this novel was written. the intended takeaway from this as a result is probably something along the lines of, "well, this person already has something deeply wrong with him. someone who would commit such a grave sin as killing another human being shouldn't have any qualms with crimes that are of a lesser magnitude, ergo if he's killing the woman why does he not rape her as well? it must be because he has no sexuality!" which is going to be treated as a bad thing. this is james bond. this is a series that deals heavily with sexuality, the bond girl is a known staple of the series for a reason, right, and the stance ian takes is that sexual desire is part of what makes us in some respects human, and that something is wrong with you if you don't experience it.

grant is not the only queer character in From Russia, with Love, check this out:

"It was said that Rosa Klebb would let no torturing take place without her." "For, or so they whispered, she would take the camp-stool and draw it up close below the face of the man or woman that hung down over the edge of the interrogation table. Then she would squat down on the stool and look into the face and quietly say 'No1' or 'No10' or 'No25' and the inquisitors would know what she meant and they would begin. And she would watch the eyes in the face a few inches away from hers and breathe in the screams as if they were perfume."

"Rosa Klebb undoubtedly belonged to the rarest of all sexual types. She was a neuter. ... The stories of men and, yes, of women, were too circumstantial to be doubted. She might enjoy the act physically, but the instrument was of no importance. For her, sex was nothing more than an itch. And this psychological and physiological neutrality of hers at once relieved her of so many human emotions and sentiments and desires... She was a lone operator, but never a lonely one, because the warmth of company was unnecessary to her."

there is so much wrong with this. she's rumored to be a neuter i.e having non-functional sex organs in this context, i think. i do believe ian is trying to indicate that she might be intersex here. she fucks both men and women, maybe she's bisexual, and she does not get any emotional fulfillment out of relationships and sex to her is "nothing more than an itch." sex is often described as the ultimate form of intimacy and i do think there's an argument to be made for an aro/ace reading of this if what we're being told here is, essentially, that she gets no emotional fulfillment from sex and it's merely a pleasurable act. regardless there's something to be said about the only two characters thus far with unusual sexual identities being a serial killer and a torturer. they're both portrayed as incredibly cruel and incapable of forming meaningful relationships with other people and the fact it happens twice in the same book i think is indicative of a pattern in how ian (and his time period more broadly) views queer identities.

um yeah so that's my review of the first 10 chapters of From Russia, with Love by ian fleming like and subscribe for more

[spilledreality]

1. Mimosa pudica, or an economy of signal

I remember reading an interview with a pretty successful/respected Army rangers battalion leader. Said one of the biggest advantages he got was, in the Iraq and/or Afghanistan campaigns, all the officers were constantly trying to suck the teat of big government, get as many resources as they could, even stuff they didn’t need. So, regular requests for supplies, little luxuries, time off, etc. “Why not? The Army’s got the money” was the logic—which, fair enough from an ethical perspective, but think selfishly now: This is actually self-defeating behavior.

Because officers who did this burnt out their credibility, burnt out the goodwill of supply teams and logistics officers. “Ah yeah he’s always asking for shit.” Eventually the system gets “numbed” because it can’t distinguish signal—it doesn’t know what’s actually important/needed vs unimportant/unnecessary.

Whereas—this ranger battalion head said—he never requested anything they didn’t absolutely need, had in fact turned down offers. “Hey, need any XYZ?” “Nope, we’re good.” “Are you sure? What about ABC?” “Nope, we’re good.” So that on the rare occasions he did send a message up command, making requests, they were granted immediately, without questions, without delays, and in full. Because it was assumed that if he was requesting something, it was absolutely necessary.

One way to think about this is as an economy of credibility—how much building a certain (typically respected/“good”) reputation gives you immense, outsized “manipulative” leverage when you need it. Manipulative in the sense of "getting things done by communicating."

There’s something wild about the way that, because I don't boss my partner around, I could, if needed to (e.g. we were in a dangerous situation), use a very serious voice and tell her to do something and she’d immediately do it without questioning, because if I’m “playing that card”—a card that is quasi economically scarce due to the numbing effect (i.e. its frequency-dependence)—she'll assume there’s a very good reason.

And you can get information out of situations by what cards skilled strategic players play—e.g. in the Milwaukee game the other day, Curry flipped out about a no-call on a three-point attempt to refs. On replay it really doesn’t look that egregious, but… it was early in a regular season game, the shot went in, it wasn’t like some tight final-possessions thing—it’s like, why would he choose now to play this card? If, that is, you think “refs taking seriously player complaints” has an “economy” to it. It’s almost—and this is amazing IMO—a more reliable signal of an egregious foul happening that he chose to play the card than any single replay angle on its own.

Abstractly: Player moves emit information about their experience of the environment, and when those players are more sensorily proximate to aspects of that environment, or more skilled at parsing and structuring that sensory input in a culturally schematized way (e.g. what contact is or isn't a foul), your observation of their observations (second-order) can be more reliable than your first-order observations.

What I’m trying to say is, once you assume players are strategically competent, you can do “algebra” on the world, using their choices of action to model events you might not have fully witnessed, the same way you can use responses + environment to model player agenda, or agenda + environment to forecast behavior. Which is maybe just what “theory of mind” entails, under it all. Triangulations of their knowledge state, the world state, their desires, and their actions. Like it sorta seems like this is how we navigate the social world already?

You know that shy plant? Mimosa pudica, sometimes called the shameplant, that curls to the touch? If you give it opioids, it stops responding. It is "numbed."

The other way you get it numb, get it to stop curling? Touch/stimulate it the same way, over and over, until it’s habituated (with all the undertones of pragmatist habit, or Bourdieusean habitus). It’ll respond to novel types of stimulations, just not the one it’s used to (i.e. has seen over and over, i.e. has learned). It’s all frequency dependence.

Regardless of what light group the plants were in, one drop was not enough for the plants to learn to ignore the stimulation. For the groups that were dropped repetitively, the plants stopped folding their leaves and were even fully open after a drop before the end of the trainings. The low light plants learned faster to ignore the dropping stimulation than the high light plants. When the plants were shaken, they responded immediately by folding their leaves, which suggests that the plants were not ignoring the dropping stimulation due to exhaustion.[45] This research suggests that the Mimosa has the capability for habitual learning and memory storage and that Mimosa plants grown in low light conditions have faster learning mechanisms so they can reduce the amount of time their leaves are unnecessarily closed to optimize energy production.

There’s some universal law here. I find sort of incredible—that a plant, despite not having a nervous system, behaves the exact same way as animals do in response to the same chemical. And that this mimics habituation, the sleepwalking that is a world perfectly expected, i.e. ready-to-hand. That difference jolts the system into awareness, and that there’s an economy of difference, and that we're constantly playing the numbers, stockpiling jolt-power.

Part 2

[jazzafterhours]

little story brainworm. not inherently explicit buuuut well. typical dragon age heavy stuff + at this point in the canon timeline, cullen would be just past 18, and el would be just under 18, and that is the kind of thing i'd get called out for. anyway.

so i'm writing an rp with a friend where her tabris is meeting my lavellan, it has been really awesome, and their differing perspectives on cullen and leliana are neat to discuss. between talking about kinloch and everything, i had the thought "damn, what would el have been like if they ended up in a circle?"

so, au where el is not chosen for first, and. i'm not going to say their clan abandoned them because that seems like some wack rectonning that piles more shit on the dalish, but somehow, el is found by templars and taken to the ferelden circle.

they're a couple years younger than cullen so i'm thinking like 16yo el, and 19yo cullen meeting. cullen is still deeply entrenched in the ways of the order and the chantry, while el is already a firebrand and old enough that they cannot stand for being imprisoned like this. they even have their vallaslin already (quite recent, yes, around 16th name day probably, but they have it). so el is the most troublesome new apprentice the tower has seen since that anders boy. who might be currently in isolation. i don't know.

el would be violent. el would be spitting profanity. el would set the place on fire. el's probably going to end up severely punished and drugged with magebane lol and i'm thinking about cullen being assigned to watching them, and the longer they spend in each other's presence, the more cullen starts to understand that el already knows exactly how to control their magic, that they aren't a threat unless threatened, that being kept here is torture for them, that this isn't fair or necessary and the punishments they're given are harsh, all because they won't back down and shy away from the templars like the other apprentices have learned to. el will never stop scowling and hissing and bearing their teeth.

so maybe cullen lets them escape. maybe cullen has his crisis of faith right then and there before kirkwall is even on the horizon and they run together. to add more reason for this to be on my nsfw blog, the sex they'd have at this point in the timeline would be nasty (affectionate). dunno. not sure i'll end up writing this even though its a very fun setup.