#TL:2019:04

[okaystoptellingmetomakeanaccount]

Scrog Timeline based on Life and times here we go. Part one lil kid scrog livin in Scotland.

The extended life and times of Scrooge McDuck. Part 1 - Glasgow 1867

First. There are a bunch of stories which show snippets of Scrooge’s life as a child (usually around Christmas). These snippets can vary from a single panel to multiple pages, but they are never the main plot. Among these are:

W DD 70-01, The Search for Cyril

W DD 72-01, Secret Of The Sargasso Sea

S 63099, Chairman of the Bored

D 9044, Wait For Me

D 99078, The Quest For Kalevala

I PM 187-2, The Brotherly News. - Note: Scrooge, Gideon and Grandma are shown as kids together in Scotland.

D 92305, The Lost Birthday. - Note: Partially time travel/suggested dream sequence, partially flashback.

I TL 2442-5, The Ghost’s Treasure… Or The Other Way Around

D 2012-058, Donald's Homemade Christmas

I TL 3063-2, The Numismatic Process

I TL 3239-1, A New Christmas Carol

I TL 3369-1, The Comfortable Temptation

D 2019-039, The New Year that Wasn't. - Note: This story contains a scene in which Scrooge travels to the past to give himself the number one dime. This is not reverted.

I TL 3368-1P, A Tournament of 100 Doors

D 2020-210, In Time For Christmas. - Note: This is a time travel story, and so the snippet is actually not a flashback. The snippet takes place during the night before Scrooge leaves for America.

I TL 3448-2, A Mysterious Anniversary

H 2022-002, The Treasure of Captain Seabass

I TL 3499-1, Fame

I TL 3501-3, Clear Coin Cleaning

I TL 3536-1P, The Test of Scottishness

I TL 3550-1P, The Leap Lamp. - Note: This story interestingly contains a retcon of D 91308. This retcon consists of Scrooge getting his shoeshine box on Christmas, as Fergus couldn’t finish it in time for his birthday. No known story contradicts this.

From here we can continue onto full stories that depict Scrooge’s time as a wee lad, whether they are flashbacks or not. Stories are placed in timeline order. If not sure (so for most of them) they are placed in release order. Among these are:

W US 44-04, The Invisible Intruder. - Note: Life And Times’ depiction of this time of Scrooge’s days is largely based on this story.

B 790164, A Taste and Three Cruzeiros

B 820168, A Christmas From the Past. - While the narrative is primarily about this past adventure, Scrooge only plays a secondary role.

B 830113, The First Bin. - Note: History told by LVD. Story does not necessarily seem to take place in 1860s Glasgow.

I TL 2865-03, The Mistake. - Note: Rare one pager showing Scrooge at school. Is in conflict with I TL 2695-1 in showing something that shouldn’t yet have happened according to Scrooge’s accounts in that story.

D 2013-026, The Orphan's Christmas

F DBG 16, The Dragon of Glasgow

H 2023-183, The First Christmas Ornament. - Note: After interference of Grandma Duck by the end, this story is revealed to be a fiction made up by Scrooge.

D 2020-145, The First Adventure. - Note: This story is a direct lead-in to Rosa’s story. As such, it’s probably the only one that can be surely placed.

D 91308, The Last of the Clan McDuck. - Note: it is very well possible for any of the above mentioned stories to take place during this story, as it contains time skips.

Honorable mentions:

I TL 756-A, Klondike’s Gold. - Note: This story famously portrays Scrooge’s youth as taking place in the Klondike, going as far as having him be born here.

W DAD 29-02, The Last Laugh. - Note: Scrooge mentions shining shoes and delivering papers when he was HDL’s age.

W DD 48-02, A Bucket of Scones. - Note: Scrooge mentions having left Scotland 60 years ago.

W JW 29-03, The Good Deed. - Note: Scrooge mentions growing up in Scotland in a boys’ home. Together with HDL they also visit his hometown: Pinchpenny.

I TL 697-B, The Unfortunate Dream. - Note: Dream sequence where Magica sees Scrooge earning his first dime as a child.

S 81095, The Search For Viking Treasure. - Note: Scrooge earns his first money by plowing fields.

I am 99% certain I have forgot and/or missed stories, so please feel free to comment or whatever to add to this. This post will keep being updated.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TOMORROW (Apr 17) in CHICAGO, then Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

#20yrsago Mickey Mouse’s dwindling brand https://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/18/arts/film-building-a-better-mouse.html

#15yrsago Wired publishes documents detailing the FBI’s spyware https://www.wired.com/2009/04/fbi-spyware-pro/

#15yrsago Gorilla-viewing glasses prevent eye-contact https://www.buzzfeed.com/peggy/no-eye-contact-glasses/

#15yrsago Man assaulted by police during G20 died from internal bleeding, not heart-attack http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8004222.stm

#15yrsago Sales booming in remote-kill devices for cars sold to poor credit-risks https://edition.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/wayoflife/04/17/aa.bills.shut.engine.down/index.html

#15yrsago Canadian Members of Parliament voting records (finally) online https://web.archive.org/web/20090419144031/http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/620435

#15yrsago Jokes from the Cultural Revolution https://thechinabeat.blogspot.com/2009/04/jokes-from-great-proletarian-cultural.html

#15yrsago Swedish Pirate Party membership surges after Pirate Bay verdict https://web.archive.org/web/20090420055230/http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=hp&hl=en&js=n&u=http%3A%2F%2Fpress.piratpartiet.se%2F2009%2F04%2F17%2Finternet-kokar-piratpartiet-har-nu-fler-medlemmar-an-fp%2F&sl=sv&tl=en

#15yrsago Google Book Search settlement gives Google a virtual monopoly over literature https://memex.craphound.com/2009/04/17/google-book-search-settlement-gives-google-a-virtual-monopoly-over-literature/

#15yrsago Bruce Sterling’s “White Fungus” — architecture fiction for rising seas and the econopocalypse https://web.archive.org/web/20090420053737/http://www.sunarchitecture.nl/upload/49d601a8ba4b25.51434338.pdf

#10yrsago Video: Bart Gellman and me opening for Ed Snowden at SXSW https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mltClsxsJw4

#10yrsago UK Tory MP who helped kill Legal Aid is wiped out by defending himself against sexual assault claim https://web.archive.org/web/20140414232920/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/130000-poorer-in-fees-nigel-evans-admits-regret-for-past-support-of-legal-aid-cuts-9259579.html

#5yrsago “A Message From the Future”: short film about the “Green New Deal Decade,” narrated by AOC, drawn by Molly Crabapple, presented by Naomi Klein https://theintercept.com/2019/04/17/green-new-deal-short-film-alexandria-ocasio-cortez/

#5yrsago Canadian Civil Liberties Association sues Toronto, Ontario, and Canada over the plan for a Google Sidewalk Labs “smart city” in Toronto https://www.vice.com/en/article/gy4bgj/canada-is-getting-sued-over-sidewalk-labs-smart-city-in-toronto

#5yrsago Ecuadorean authorities have unjustly arrested free software developer Ola Bini as part of their Assange dragnet https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/04/free-ola-bini

#5yrsago Bernie Sanders outraised every other Democrat in North Carolina https://amp.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/election/article229277549.html #5yrsago What it’s like to watch someone you love fall down the Fox News rabbit-hole https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/04/i-gathered-stories-of-people-transformed-by-fox-news.html

#5yrsago When Rivers Were Trails: an indigenous take on Oregon Trail https://indianlandtenure.itch.io/when-rivers-were-trails

#5yrsago As the EU Copyright Directive was approved, Germany admitted it requires copyright filters, putting it on a collision course with the EU-Canada trade deal https://memex.craphound.com/2019/04/17/as-the-eu-copyright-directive-was-approved-germany-admitted-it-requires-copyright-filters-putting-it-on-a-collision-course-with-the-eu-canada-trade-deal/

#5yrsago London cops switch off wifi in the tube to make it harder for climate protesters to organise https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/17/18411820/london-underground-tube-wi-fi-down-shut-off-protests-extinction-rebellion

#5yrsago Republican lawmaker who dared AOC to come visit coal miners in his constituency gets scared, withdraws offer https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1118181129213943815

#5yrsago Lulzy Instagram memers are organizing a deadly serious trade union https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/04/instagram-memers-are-unionizing/587308/

#5yrsago Denver suburb officially changes name from “Swastika Acres” to “Old Cherry Hills” https://www.denverpost.com/2019/04/16/swastika-acres-renamed/

[eternitycomenevermore]

2019年10月28日(月)

非公開ぎょうざ倶楽部プレミアム会員 @genkainerd

19年10月28日

「自分が思春期の頃にツイッターが無くて良かった」って言ってるヤツ、どう考えても今もツイッター無い方がいい

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posted at 00:33:18 削除

Permalink - 2019年10月28日

2019年02月20日(水)

非公開ぎょうざ倶楽部プレミアム会員 @genkainerd

19年2月20日

ツイッターだと(それがカゴの中のゴリラを見る視線であっても)それなりに好意的に接してくれる人がいるのに社会だと四方八方全員敵みたいになるの何故？

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posted at 22:21:56 削除

Permalink - 2019年02月20日

2019年02月18日(月)

非公開ぎょうざ倶楽部プレミアム会員 @genkainerd

19年2月18日

借金玉、語尾をタマにして愛嬌を出してほしい

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posted at 14:08:47 削除

Permalink - 2019年02月18日

2019年02月04日(月)

非公開ぎょうざ倶楽部プレミアム会員 @genkainerd

19年2月4日

一年近く発達TLを眺めていると抑鬱 → 徐々に復活 → 慣れてきた途端に調子こき始める → チャレンジ → 抑鬱みたいなサイクルを長期・短期的に繰り返している発達ポロワーがチラホラいて、ADHDは喉元過ぎれば熱さを忘れる生き物なのだと彼彼女らが撃沈する度に再認識するし反面教師にさせてもらってる

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posted at 20:48:32 削除

Permalink - 2019年02月04日

2019年01月09日(水)

非公開ぎょうざ倶楽部プレミアム会員 @genkainerd

19年1月9日

ADHD(あわわどうしようはわわどうしよう)

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posted at 15:26:05 削除

Permalink - 2019年01月09日

2018年12月11日(火)

非公開ぎょうざ倶楽部プレミアム会員 @genkainerd

18年12月11日

公立中学校、なんでこいつこんなに頭悪いんだ？みたいなのがナチュラルに存在する

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posted at 13:28:30 削除

非公開ぎょうざ倶楽部プレミアム会員 @genkainerd

18年12月11日

みんな自己責任論大好きだし「暴徒化しない労働者が低賃金のままなのは自己責任」って言えば暴力革命起こるかな

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posted at 13:17:01 削除

Permalink - 2018年12月11日

[yatirim-analiz]

Tatlıpınar Enerji Üretim, TATEN Hisse Koduyla Halka Arz Edilmeyi Planlıyor

Vakıf Yatırım‘ın aracılık edeceği Tatlıpınar Enerji Üretim, TATEN Halka arzına dair bilgileri sizler için toparlamaya çalıştık.

Tatlıpınar Enerji Üretim Halka Arz Bilgileri

  Halka Arz Tarihi: Belli Değil Halka Arz Fiyatı: Fiyat Tespit Raporu Bekleniyor Dağıtım Yöntemi: Eşit Dağıtım Dağıtılacak Pay: 66,600,000 Lot Aracı Kurum: Vakıf Yatırım Menkul Değerler A.Ş. Bist İşlem Kodu: TATEN Bist İşlem Pazarı: Yıldız Pazar

Tatlıpınar Enerji Üretim Halka Arz Özet Bilgileri

Finansal Tablo 2022 2021 2020 Hasılat 1 Milyar TL 300,2 Milyon TL 20,5 Milyon TL Brüt Kar 375,9 Milyon TL 202,1 Milyon TL 5,9 Milyon TL TATEN Halka Arz Gelirini Nerede Kullanacak? (Fonun Kullanım Yeri) - -35 Rüzgar enerjisi santrali kapasite artışı yatırımları. - -40 Hibrit güneş enerjisi santrali yatırımları. - -35 Kredi geri ödemeleri. Tatlıpınar Enerji Üretim Halka Arz Şekli - Sermaye Artırımı : 20.600.000 Lot - Ortak Satışı : 27.600.000 Lot (Hüseyin Avni İbrahimağaoğlu) - Ortak Satışı : 9.200.000 Lot (Ali İbrahimağaoğlu) - Ortak Satışı : 9.200.000 Lot (Akdeniz İnşaat ve Eğitim Hizmetleri A.Ş.) TATEN Halka Arz Tahsisat Grupları ve Başvuru Şekilleri - (Tahsisat Gurpları Güncellenecektir.) - *** Lot - Yurtiçi Bireysel Yatırımcı - *** Lot - Yüksek Başvurulu Yatırımcı - *** Lot - Yurtiçi Kurumsal Yatırımcı Tatlıpınar Enerji Üretim Halka Arz Sonrası Hisse Satmama Taahhüdü var mı? - 6 Ay, İhraççı. - 6 Ay, Ortaklar satış yapmayacaklarını taahhüt etmişlerdir. Hisse Fiyat İstikrarı var mı? ve Günlük Alım Emri Taahhüdü Var mı? - Fiyat İstikrarı Planlanmamaktadır - 5 Gün, 9.200.000 adet günlük geçerli alım emri girecektir. Tatlıpınar Enerji Üretim Hisse Halka Açıklık Oranı? - .04 TATEN Halka Arzında T1-T2 Kullanılabilir mi? - T1-T2 KULLANILAMAZ Halka Arz Ek Dosyalar - Taslak İzahname - Fon Kullanım Yeri Raporu

Halka Arz Başvuru Yerleri?

- Vakıf Yatırım Menkul Değerler A.Ş. - İnfo Yatırım Menkul Değerler A.Ş. * İlerleyen aşamalarda tamamlanacaktır.  

Tatlıpınar Enerji Üretim Hakkında

  Balıkesir sınırları içerisinde yer alan Tatlıpınar RES, 0 yenilenebilir enerji üretmek hedefiyle Kasım 2019’da 5 türbin ile (19,5 MW) faal olarak işletmeye açıldı. 2021 Yılında ise kapasite artışı ile toplamda 25 türbin ile (115,5 MW) enerji üretimine devam etmektedir. Tatlıpınar RES, son kapasite artışı ile 392.000 MWh üretim kapasitesine sahiptir. 2023 yılında yapılacak olan 79 MW Güneş Enerji Santrali yatırımı ve 33,6MW Rüzgar Enerji Santrali kapasite artışı ile Tatlıpınar RES toplamda 228,1 MW kurulu güce ve 607.000 MWh yıllık üretim kapasitesine ulaşacaktır.   Halka Arzı Planlanan Şirketler için Halka Arz Takvimimizi Kontrol Edebilirsiniz. Read the full article

[rkmb]

             —————————————   𝙡𝙚𝙚  𝙨𝙪𝙬𝙤𝙤𝙣𝙜  𝘧𝘰𝘳  𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘱𝘭𝘦  𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵  𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘨𝘦  !                              𝐫𝐚𝐩 ( self-written, 35s )  /  𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 + 𝐝𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 ( 0:00 -  1:22 )

        lee suwoong!

        he perks at the sound of his name.

        please make your way to the stage!

        “here.”  he shoves his phone into his friend’s hand.  “record me, and make sure to get my good side.”  not that he has a bad side, but y’know.

        with that, he ushers toward the stage, slowing for a brief moment to greet the attendant at the bottom of the stairs with a slight bow.  then, he’s at the center of the stage with countless pairs of eyes bestowed upon him.  something flutters within his chest -- anxiety, excitement, he can’t tell the difference, but one thing’s for sure:  he loves the attention, loves the way everyone peers up at him, waiting, anticipating.

        and so he does what he does best:  he performs.

        unlike most others he’s seen, he doesn’t start with the typical introduction.  he knows a simple “hi, my name is . . .” will go over the judges’ heads, so he has elected -- albeit jokingly at first -- to rap his introduction.  it’s a calculated risk.  he’s not the best at rap, buuut the judges don’t know that.  if he messes up, chances are the judges won’t catch on 'cause it’s his own rap;  they don’t know how it’s supposed to go, right?  right.

        his fingers tighten around a small object fitted perfectly in the palm of his hand as he starts:

mirror, mirror, don’t you see? memorize, mesmerize, this nobody. lee suwoong, didn’t hear that wrong. memorize, mesmerize, this swan song.

look at me, look into my eyes. notice the way i perform with a smile. curved lips, just can’t disguise, coming here’s a choice worthwhile.

        he slowly makes his way toward the end of the stage that’s closest to the judges, his eyes locked on one of them in particular, unwavering, unfaltering.

i know what you’re thinking, i sense your state of mind. your gaze betrays you, you’ve got results defined.

        he sinks down into a low crouch, his voice dropping an octave.

paralyze, pacify, pervade, and pray. here, take this inhaler---

        he sets the hidden object in his hand down at the edge of the stage.  it’s an actual inhaler.  how did he get one?  no one knows.

just in case i take your breath away.

        and to finish off his introduction, he gives the judges a wink before slinking up and walking back to the center of the stage.  once there, he remains in position, with his back to the audience.  now, it’s his time.

        the music begins.  it’s a rather upbeat song that he starts off by snapping along to, and as the second phrase starts  ( 0:06 ),  he swivels on his heel to face the crowd again.  the sequence that follows is a choreography he has learned from youtube with just a few modifications to enhance the playful attitude that’s reflective of his persona.  he grins, scrunches up his nose, quirks one eyebrow, then both---all in the name of being expressive  ( which is, quite frankly, the only thing he’s got going for him ).

        it’s only a second after making a surprised expression that he realizes he has missed the first two BAAM!s that he was supposed to sing.

        or shout.

        his choice song doesn’t quite showcase his vocals as much, but ah, he’s dancing at the same time, so there’s gotta be some sacrifice.

        after that blunder, he settles into a rhythm, rolling his hips and biting his lip at key points.  he sings the parts, though he doesn’t quite remember doing so once the words leave his mouth  ( practice has ingrained the lyrics into him, so that he can focus on what matters more -- the dance, the show ).  at one point, he catches a glimpse of his friend filming him and throws a finger-heart in their direction  ( for lisa, who he’ll later send the video to ).  and just as quickly as everything starts, it ends:  his chest heaves, his eyes flickering to seek approval between the audience and the judges, before finally landing on his friend who looks like they’re torn by laughter and agony.  his eyes narrow for a second.  of all reactions, he isn’t expecting this one.  

        but whatever.  

        he recasts his attention to the crowd and blows a farewell kiss, his mouth splitting into its usual grin shortly thereafter.  adrenaline spurs him to exit the stage, and he does so quickly, leaving the inhaler behind as a memoir to his audition.

        all in all, it’s . . well, it’s a performance.

        he’s sure he could’ve done better, but it is what it is.

[rkzhengting]

﹢cuckoo-ssi and 𝘬𝘶𝘯-𝘬𝘶𝘯

        kun is going through it.  then again, he’s been going through it since the day he was born  ( why else would he pop out crying? ).  jokes aside---he’s feeling a little more exhausted than usual on this fine monday morning, and he briefly contemplates staying in bed.  but then he remembers how much tuition is, and he’s on his feet not two seconds later  ( honestly, whoever said money’s not a motivator is a big, fat liar ).

        point is, he’s completely and utterly done with today, and today hasn’t even started.  he’s got two classes, back to back, but those are pretty okay.  he likes the instructors and tolerates his fellow peers.  but then, later in the afternoon, he has a group project meeting, and he really, truly, from the bottom of his bottomless heart, wants to shoot himself in the foot---but he won’t, because he kind of needs his foot for dancing.  annnd also for stabilization, since he’s supporting the entire project.

        but he digresses.

        the line for morning coffee crawls along, and for a moment, he’s plagued by the question of how he got here.  ( rolled out of bed, washed up, ran for the train, right. )  he stands there, arms folded across his chest, eyebrows furrowed just a tad.  and as one should, he minds his own business.  all is well until he hears the person behind him say something . . strange.  his head nearly whips around.  nearly.  “the what are crying now?”  because surely, surely he misheard.

        ---  @rkars

[ryunumber]

MASTERLIST

Weekly Changelog

2024-11-28

Added Sandro

2024-11-29

Added Roadhog

2024-11-30

Added Wilhelm

2024-12-01

Added Alucard and Nok-Nok

2024-12-02

Added Vegeta and Michelle

2024-12-03

Added Hexadecimal and the Smelter Demon

2024-12-04

Added Black Jack

Updated Jackie Fiasco (courtesy of @mystorl)

Full changelog

(FAQ below)

What is a Ryu Number?

Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon is a game premised on the idea that actor Kevin Bacon was so prolific that every actor and actress in Hollywood has either acted alongside Kevin Bacon or acted alongside someone who has acted alongside Kevin Bacon. The goal of the game is to find someone’s “Bacon Number,” or separation of degrees from Kevin Bacon via film appearances. For example, per the website The Oracle of Bacon, Misha Collins was in Girl, Interrupted with Mary Kay Place, who was in Starting Over with Kevin Bacon, which gives Misha Collins a Bacon Number of 2.

Similar concepts to the Bacon Number have gained traction over the years, with the next most well-known probably being the Erdős number for mathematical paper collaborations with mathematician Paul Erdős.

Ryu from the Street Fighter series has notably participated in many video game crossovers, such as the Marvel vs. Capcom series, so a Ryu Number can be thought of as a number tracking degrees of separation through character appearances in video games. While the concept of a Ryu Number for game crossovers has been floating around for a while, it appears to have really kicked off with Ryu’s inclusion in Super Smash Bros. for 3DS and Wii U as downloadable content in 2015; for example, this 2016 Source Gaming post provides an extensive list of characters Ryu has directly crossed over with, this 2018 Medium article by Jason Zhen Li directly mentions a Ryu Number, and this 2019 Fanbyte article by Topher Florence calculates Ryu Numbers of some real celebrities, including Kevin Bacon.

The concept of a Ryu Number has gotten more traction recently thanks to the Twitter account @RyuNumber, which was created in June 2021. This blog was most directly inspired by that Twitter account, and I personally recommend following that account if you have a Twitter account and like this concept.

What are the rules?

I recommend checking the Ryu Number Twitter bio and this tweet for an overall gist of the restrictions, but the tl;dr is commercial/”official” video games with identifiably unique appearances.

With this blog, however, I’m choosing to expand the definition by including multiple types of Ryu Numbers. From most to least restrictive:

(Standard) Ryu Number: The standard Ryu Number ruleset.

Limited Ryu Number: The standard Ryu Number ruleset, with the restriction on limited-time events lifted. These are often smaller and more frequent, given the scope of mobile game collaborations.

Extended Ryu Number: All official works, video game or otherwise, can be used to make valid links.

Note that there will almost invariably be edge cases that test these definitions and rulesets, so each decision is made on a case-by-case basis.

How do I request a Ryu Number?

Send an ask with a character’s name, and I’ll try my best to come up with a Ryu Number for that character using the most restrictive ruleset feasible.

How do I submit a Ryu Number?

If you have an image prepared, you can make a submission here. Otherwise, you can send an ask with a character-by-character link to Ryu. Any additional information and sources, especially for limited-time events, would be greatly appreciated.

I noticed an error on one of your posts, how do I submit a correction?

Submit an ask with the character and correction. Any additional information and sources, especially for limited-time events, would be greatly appreciated.

I think I came up with a smaller Ryu Number. Can I submit it?

Yes, but if it’s a less restrictive Ryu Number I will probably only post it if the links are sufficiently interesting/out there.

Where is the template?

Here.

What’s the highest Ryu Number you’ve found?

At one point it was a 7 or 6, through (ironically enough) Kevin Bacon. Though thanks to developments since that post in 2021, the highest without any notable caveats is 5, for a handful of characters like Beatrice from Umineko.

What’s up with Minecraft skins?

A more complete discussion is here, but in short, certain skins with model differences and general texture differences make asserting that all Minecraft skins are variants of Steve a difficult proposition. (Arbitrarily, granted.)

What are Gacha Ryu Numbers?

An old version of Limited Ryu Numbers before I renamed it over a misreading of the original ruleset. For most purposes, they are functionally identical to Limited Ryu Numbers.

What about Mii Costumes?

You could intuit from the guidelines above, but no, they are not eligible.

What about Spirits?

They are ostensibly the characters themselves in-universe, but as far as their actual appearances in World of Light, they’re effectively themed power-ups, which makes them ineligible, bar the Master Spirits that do actually talk to you.

[analyzen]

Italian Fandom Meta | Most Popular Types of Pairings on EFP vs. AO3

EFP (2001–, Fanlore) is the most popular writing archive in Italy, and it hosts both fanfic and original fiction. Under the cut you’ll find a breakdown of the most popular types of pairings on EFP in comparison to the most popular types of pairings in the Italian section of AO3.

The Italian version of this analysis can be found here.

TL;DR:

53% of all the chapters ever posted on EFP have been deleted

49% of the registered users on EFP have deleted their accounts

M/F works amount to 60% of the whole website

EFP’s three most popular fandoms (Harry Potter, One Direction, Original Fiction – Romantic) all have a majority of M/F works

On AO3, most Italian works are M/M (56%)

F/F doesn’t have much content on either site (4-5%)

Methodology

I’ve followed @olderthannetfic’s methodology from this earlier Fanfiction.net analysis. Basically, I picked a sample size of 666 chapters and organized them in four categories (M/M, M/F, F/F, Not tagged; more on this later).

Why I chose chapters instead of stories

On EFP you don’t have specific links for every single story. Instead, every chapter you post gets a unique id, which can be seen in the link itself. For example, at the time of writing this the last updated chapter on EFP was this one:

viewstory.php?sid=3974099

Which means that this was the 3'974'009th chapter ever posted on EFP.

Ids follow the usual numerical order, so if a link reads id=3, then there have to be id=1 and id=2, and the next link will have id=4.

So I’ve used a randomizer to select ~1200 unique ids to analyse.

Weren’t 666 chapters enough?

I started out with 700 chapters, but half of them weren’t working. That’s because 53% of all the chapters ever posted on EFP have been deleted from the website.

Thanks to the link of the last updated chapter, we know that almost 4 millions chapters have been posted on the EFP. But EFP's homepage shows different stats:

Registered users: 602395, 205974 of which are authors Last registered user: [blacked out] Total of stories: 517083 Total of chapters: 1869573 chapters Total of reviews: 6222695 Online users: 17 logged in and 53 visitors

While we should have almost 4 million chapters, the stats show ~2 million chapters. Why? Because the stats only show the stories, chapters and users that are still on the website, and they don’t show the stories, chapters and users that have been deleted.

(Sorry, I forgot to translate this one. It reads: Total of chapters posted on EFP between 2001 and today. Orange: deleted chapters. Blue: chapters that are still online.)

Thanks to the stats on the homepage we also have a link to the last registered user. User ids follow the same numerical order as chapter ids, so once again we know that 49% of the users ever registered on EFP have deleted their accounts. That's a lot of deleted accounts.

Categorization

After selecting 666 (accessible) chapters, I organized them into 4 categories:

M/M: contains all stories tagged as “yaoi”, shounen ai” and “slash”

M/F: contains all stories tagged as “het”

F/F: contains all stories tagged as “yuri”, “shoujo ai” and “femslash”

Not tagged: which contains a) poetry, b) stories tagged as “no pairing”, and c) untagged het stories.

As for the untagged het stories, there are two issues:

Many M/F fics simply aren’t tagged

Many gen fics include untagged M/F ships

If the description made it clear that the story included a heterosexual relationship, I added the story under the M/F tag. Otherwise I left it under not tagged.

Also, on EFP “yaoi”, “shounen ai” and “slash”, and “yuri”, “shoujo ai” and “femslash” actually mean different things.

This screenshot here is from the posting page on EFP. It reads:

Pairings * You must select at least one tag from the list, and you can choose up to three tags. Het: for heterosexual relationships Shonen-ai: for male/male relationships with anime/game characters; stories with no sex scenes Shojo-ai: for female/female relationships with anime/game characters; stories with no sex scenes Yaoi: for male/male relationships with anime/game characters; stories containing sex scenes Yuri: for female/female relationships with anime/game characters; stories containing sex scenes Slash: for male/male relationships from TV shows/movies/books FemSlash: for female/female relationships from TV shows/movies/books

The thing is. People either respect the rules and use different tags for different kinds of stories, or they use these tags interchangeably to maximise the chance to appear in other users' searches. Which means that you’ll find RPF tagged with “shoujo ai”, and Attack on Titan fics tagged as “slash”. (More info on this later.)

Findings

On EFP, the majority of the stories are M/F.

To confirm this, I checked some specific fandoms:

Some notes:

Because EFP doesn't have metatags like AO3, what I did was: 1) go to a specific fandom, 2) filter through every single tag, and 3) jot down the number of pages per search. Every page contains up to 15 stories, so for example searching for het in Original Fiction – Romantic gives you 846 pages, which amounts to around ~12690 stories.

The tag in red, “Nessuna”, means “no pairing”. It is used for gen fics but also for untagged M/F fics. This is especially true in some fandoms, ie. Original Fiction – Romantic, and Harry Potter.

EFP’s filtering system sucks. You can only filter through stories with specific relationship tags, but you can’t filter out relationships tag. So what you see in the graph is how often a tag is used... which brings us to some issues. For example, Harry Potter is the biggest fandom on EFP, so much that Harry Potter stories amount to 11% (!) of the whole website. But in the graph it looks like the One Direction fandom has more stories—wrong. Actually, One Direction has many stories tagged as both slash and het, while Harry Potter stories tend to be either one or the other.

EFP’s filtering system sucks, part 2. Because “shounen ai”, “yaoi” and “slash” are often used at the same time, you can't really smash together all three of the tags to get a total amount of stories. I'd say that around 50% of the stories tagged as shounen ai and yaoi probably overlap, but there is no easy way to find out because, again, EFP’s filtering system sucks. The same goes for “shoujo ai”, “yuri” and “femslash”.

Fandoms with a majority of M/M stories

While there are some fandoms with more M/M stories (ie. Death Note, Hetalia, Glee, Sherlock, Supernatural, Teen Wolf), these fandoms are simply extremely small in comparison to other bigger fandoms full of M/F fics. Which obviously skews the numbers in favor of M/F fics.

What about femslash?

EFP suffers from the same lack of femslash as AO3 as a whole. In the fandoms I've analysed, only two have a big enough number of F/F. The fandoms are Glee (which has more F/F stories than M/F stories) and Grey's Anatomy (which has as much F/F as M/F stories, with little M/M).

Original Fiction

I thought it might be interesting to explore the original sections too, especially because Original Fiction – Romantic is the third biggest fandom on EFP after Harry Potter and One Direction. These Big 3 all have a disproportionate amount of M/F stories.

By logic, this would mean the the majority of the userbase on EFP prefers M/F stories. But then, aren't fans always complaining about “too much slash”? If “Any Two Guys” were enough to find slash appealing, wouldn't it be easier to simply write original M/M?

I think that looking at original stories might help us understand why people might prefer slash over het in some fandoms. For example, the amount of M/F stories in Original Fiction – Romantic implies that, when authors have to chance to choose what types of stories to create from scratch, they might prefer M/F stories.

This would support the theory that many people might prefer slash because of the lack of (well written/primary) canonical female characters + how well M/M relationships, both platonic and romantic, are written in canon texts in comparison to M/F or F/F relationships.

Obviously, we have to keep in mind that not all fanfic writers write original fiction and viceversa, so I'm not trying to find a universal explanation here. Also because not every website has a majority of M/F stories.

Which brings us to...

AO3 vs. EFP

As per today 20/04/21, the Italian section of AO3 contains “only” 24777 stories, divided between many different fandoms. To make a comparison, the Italian stories on AO3 amount to 5% of all the stories available on EFP. To make another comparison, the whole Naruto fandom on EFP has 20129 stories in total.

EFP has also been active for 20 years, while the boom of Italian fics on AO3 only started around 2018. We can't really make a 1:1 comparison between the two archives, but we can still try to understand the preferences of their users.

M/M and M/F stories on EFP vs. AO3

EFP: 60% M/F, 25% M/M

AO3: 56% M/M, 23% M/F

The percentages are almost swapped.

This might be because of the archives themselves. EFP has always been the general website for any Italian fandom (and actually at first it mostly hosted M/F content), while AO3 has always had a big M/M userbase. I'm basing this statement on this AO3 analysis from 2013, in comparison to this FFN analysis from 2018 which showed a majority of M/F fanworks, and finally this AO3 vs. FFN vs. Wattpad analysis from 2019, which showed that AO3 has always been the outlier for its majority of M/M content.

Then again, M/M stories on EFP have always been subject to the “usual” type of borderline-to-direct harassment that M/M fans are used to, which is something that still happens to this day especially in certain writing groups on Facebook, where the Italian writing community is pretty active. It wouldn't be weird for slashers to move to AO3, where they know they'll find more like-minded people and less headaches. (Also, the Italian section of AO3 has a lot of M/M RPF that's banned on EFP.)

The “Multi” tag on EFP

The only thing that barely resembles a multi tag on EFP is threesome, which for some reason is often used as a synonym for love triangle. So from the tags it isn't easy to understand if a fic includes an actual threesome (as in, a sex scene), a polyamorous relationship, or a simple love triangle.

This doesn't mean that there aren't poly stories on EFP—it simply means that they're impossible to find using the search system.

And that's all, I think!

[literaticat]

Hi Jenn! I was hoping you could explain the difference between self-ended and color-ended end pages for a PB dummy. Thanks!

If you want the TL;DR, just click the link on the bottom of the page, it has example layouts of each type.

If you want the whole explanation:

Parts of most hardcover books, from the outside:

* book jacket --you know what a book jacket is! the cover is THE FRONT of the jacket, the flaps are the foldy bits - the whole thing is the jacket

* the spine -- where the pages are bound; often sewn together into a block and then glued to a piece of fabric

* the boards -- these are what make the hardcover hard!

* the case -- the spine and the boards are put together and covered with some kind of material. In fancy/olden days books, this is sometimes cloth. (that's why sometimes you see hardcover books referred to as "cloth"). In less fancy books it's probably paper. They might be plain, or embossed with a design, or printed on to have a different image from the jacket, or printed on to have the same image as the jacket. Those books that are jacketless hardcovers, like say, Diary of a Wimpy Kid? That's called "paper-over-board" or POB.

And the inside:

* the endpapers -- these are the pages that are glued onto the boards to help make the book block stay in the case.

* the paper -- sounds obvious, like, that is where the story is, right?

BUT:

Picture books (well all books basically but whatever) are printed in "signatures" -- the process starts with a VERY LARGE piece of paper, which is then folded and cut into a 16-page bundle. That bundle is a signature. If you look at the spine of a hardcover book, you will probably be able to easily see that the pages are in these "bundles" and bound together.

This is why PBs are typically 32 pages long - that's two signatures. They could be 48 pages long - that's three signatures. They COULD theoretically be something in between, but each time you add pages you are making it more expensive, and if you aren't using a whole signature, you are wasting paper (which is expensive).

So now that you know that, you can probably understand, or deduce, the definitions you asked about:

* "Self-ended" means the first and last page of the signatures are the ones glued onto the boards. There are then at least two fewer pages in the story itself, but the endpapers can be illustrated, it's made of the same paper as the rest of the book.

* "Separate-ended" (or, I guess, "color-ended") means that there is an additional folded piece of paper on each side of the pages, and THAT is what is glued to the boards. This is often a plain color (though I suppose it MIGHT be printed with a design?) but anyway, it's typically a different kind of paper and that is why sometimes there's an EXTRA page at the front and back.

More info, as well as layouts of each type: https://www.wordsandpics.org/2019/04/illustration-knowhow-picture-book-basics.html

[helenaspencer]

intro to helena

Is that HELENA SPENCER-MAY? Wow, they do look a lot like PHOEBE DYNEVOR. I hear SHE is an EIGHTEEN year old FRESHMAN who are studying HISTORY  at Luxor University. Word is they are an ARISTOCRAT student. You should watch out because they can be CHILDISH and SNOBBISH, but on the bright side they can also be GENEROUS and CHARMING. Ultimately, you’ll get to see it all for yourself. [YUNI, 21, GMT, SHE/HER]

lord knows why i did this. im sorry.

01: basic information

Full Name: Lara Helena Spencer-May

Nicknames: Helena - she insists on being referred to only by her middle name.

Date Of Birth: August 12, 2002 (currently aged 18)

Zodiac: Leo sun, Leo ascendant, and Libra moon.

Place Of Birth: New York

Nationality: American and Swiss.

Sexual Orientation: Bisexual

Course: History (Freshman)

02: physical

Faceclaim: Phoebe Dynevor

Ethnicity: White (Swiss, English)

Height: 173cm (5′8)

Weight: 56kg (124lbs)

Eye Colour: Blue

Hair Colour: Blonde

Distinctive Features: a tangible air of disdain for anyone who earns less than 100k a year

Clothing Preference: Helena won’t wear anything which isn’t designer, but even then, she has her preferences. Perhaps stereotypically, she adores Chanel, closely followed by Versace. Her sense of style is fairly feminine, with a lot of dresses and skirts, and she wouldn’t be caught dead in a pair of jeans.

03: personality

Overview

Positive Traits: Generous, charming, loyal, creative

Negative Traits: Childish, snobbish, insincere, judgemental

MBTI: ESTP

Religious Beliefs: Atheist

Description

Helena has pretty much the emotional maturity of Veruca Salt. Which is to say, she cares about one person in the world, and that is herself. She doesn’t make long term plans, instead pursuing short term happiness - which means that whatever she wants in that moment, she will go for. And if you stand between her and whatever she wants, no matter how dumb - whether it’s a bag or a college - she reacts dramatically. She’s not above throwing tantrums, literally stomping her feet and screaming, scratching, you name it, until she gets what she asked for. She once keyed an ex boyfriend’s car because he understandably refused to invite her to his sister’s wedding and Helena had already picked out her (white) outfit. In addition to this, Helena’s sheltered upbringing has made her extremely ignorant to the world as a whole. She fails to comprehend how anyone can not be rich, since it’s all she knows, and so she tends to assume that poor people are always lazy and unambitious. As a result, she refuses to associate herself with anyone who is a scholarship student or comes from a poor family, as she insists that mindset might be contagious and drag her down. Her mood can switch very rapidly - one minute she is being sweet and charming to you, and the next minute she is screaming and crying. She’s also extremely adept at crocodile tears, which she uses on everyone she wants something from, seeing no problem with manipulating others if it gets her what she wants. She generally has a very superior outlook on herself as opposed to others, hence why she just assumes she’s going to inherit the May family’s company, over her cousins.

04: past

Biography:

Lara Helena Spencer-May was born in New York to a Swiss father, Matteo May, and English mother, Margaret Spencer. Her father works for the family’s pharmaceutical company, her mother is from British landed gentry and works as a classicist for the British Museum. Helena spent the first few years of her life in New York, before moving back to Switzerland, although she continued to spend a lot of time in New York over the summer, where she would later meet Zander Driskell.

Although her first name is legally Lara, Helena forced everyone to call her by her middle name from the age of eleven. Firstly, she thought that Lara sounded common, and slightly too similar to her cousin Loren’s name, and secondly, as her classicist mother told her the story of Helen of Troy, who she had been named after - and there was nothing which sounded better in Helena’s shallow mind than being beautiful enough that men started wars over you.

Helena is her parents only child, and she was absolutely spoiled rotten from the moment she was born. Her father gives her anything she asks for, and pretty much dotes on her; her mother also treats her as if she’s the centre of the universe. As a result, Helena has become accustomed to never being told no, and has no idea of a good way to act if she is - hence her tendency to throw tantrums if she doesn’t immediately get what she wants. She’s far too used to being able to manipulate daddy with a few tears into giving her an extra 5k in her bank account.

From the age of six, Helena was sent away to attend Ecole des Roches, a prestigious boarding school in Paris. She would either come back to Switzerland over the summer, or spend summers in New York. One such summer was spent in Saratoga Springs when she was sixteen, where she met Zander Driskell - and who she began dating, with Helena deciding to stay in New York after summer ended to be closer. Despite this, their relationship quickly turned toxic, with Helena’s spoiled and selfish nature making it difficult for her to put up with Zander not giving her everything she wanted - they broke up and got back together multiple times over the course of the next year, before a particularly bad break up caused Helena to up and leave for Paris again, finally finishing her high school education in Paris.

Then came the time for college. To be honest, Helena has no actual interest in gaining a degree. As far as she is concerned, she is just going to get a degree for the sake of having one, as she is convinced she is going to inherit the family business. Still, she had ambitions to attend the  University of St Andrews  in Scotland, primarily because she knew Kate Middleton met Prince William there, and Helena would love to be a Queen one day. However, her grandparents instead gently pushed her to attend Luxor University, suggesting that Helena would benefit from some bonding time with her cousins. She instantly refused - and was thus incredibly shocked when for once, her father put his foot down, insisting that either Helena attend Luxor, or he would cut her allowance. No number of tantrums, screaming, threats to jump out of the window, or run away would work - Helena ended up at Luxor, much to her upset, surrounded by her dreaded scholarship students.

Timeline:

August 12 2002 - Helena is born in New York

2006 - Helena moves back to Switzerland

September 2008 - Helena is sent to Paris to attend boarding school. She returns to either Zurich or New York over the summers following.

Summer 2018 - Helena meets and begins a relationship with Zander Driskell. They have many fights and an on and off relationship.

December 2019 - After a particularly bad argument, Helena throws a tantrum and leaves New York, returning to Paris to finish her high school education.

September 2020- Helena begins attending Luxor University.... fashionably late.

05: other trivia

- Helena speaks fluent Swiss German, Swiss French, and English. In addition to this she is fluent in High French, since she attended school in Paris. Her accent when speaking English is sort of an amalgamation of American, English, and French due to her upbringing and her English mother, and it tends to change depending who she’s speaking to - if she’s speaking to someone English, for instance, it will be more on the English side as she subconsciously matches them, whereas if she’s speaking in English to a French person, it becomes more French.

- Adores the British monarchy. Especially Princess Diana. And yes, Spencer means she’s a distant relation. She won’t let you forget it.

- If you call her Lara, she will spit on you.

-She loves classical paintings, and collects art. Her dorm room walls are covered with paintings and reproductions of Greek tapestries. She dresses as Helen of Troy every. single. Halloween.

- She can play the piano, and the flute. She is constantly in a stage of quitting and rejoining the concert band though, as she joins, can’t take any criticism at all, quits, and then misses it and wants to rejoin.

- Massive fan of Lana Del Rey.

06: notable connections

Within Luxor:

- Friendships: ...

- Former Relationships: Zander Driskell

- Cousins: Loren Velazquez, Zelda Reese

NPCS

- Matteo May and Margaret Spencer May: Her parents, who she has wrapped around her little finger.

07: connection ideas/wcs

Friends

Although Helena is often too childish to hold friendships for long, she can be fun for a party, so I see her having a lot of friends who she just drinks with or parties with every once for a while, without any genuine connection going on or spending too much time together

Enemies

Maybe someone who is annoyed by her antics and has been on the receiving end of one of her tantrums and thus sees the immature side of her personality as an annoyance.

Hookups

As long as she doesn’t perceive you as poor (god forbid), she loves a good hookup or friends with benefits.

08: tl;dr

Helena is highly immature, childish, and spoiled. She is rich to the point of not being able to understand or appreciate anything cheap or anyone poor in life, and looks down on pretty much anyone who isn’t at her level of rich as a result, seeing them as lazy. She truly believes she is superior to her cousins and that she’s going to inherit their family’s company, purely because she wants it that way.

[ariahotelresort]

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[buckley-diaz]

Hi, hi ! So you guys seem to know a lot about 911 and what's coming.... Is it true that Eddie has a confirmed love interest coming in 3B 😱 ?

Hello nonnie! I’m so glad you came to me to ask. I’ve always wanted to be a place people have felt they could come to ask questions.

So this got way longer than I was anticipating so its going below a cut...

I swear I’ve seen something that confirmed Eddie would be getting a new love interest at some point. Granted, I go through so many posts and article clips a day that it’s quite likely I saw something a fan posted. I even dug through months of my Buddie tag to see if I could find anything. (If you want to go through my tags for yourself you can do so here: https://buckley-diaz.tumblr.com/navigation)

BUT! Do not fear. I have still come up with some interesting evidence that somewhat suggests a romantic relationship for Eddie (and for Buck).

This is from season 3A when Eddie was developing a relationship with Lena:

https://ew.com/tv/2019/12/02/9-1-1-boss-fall-finale-spoilers/

It does seem to hint that Eddie will at some point engage in a new romantic relationship, but it’s not exactly confirmed.

This is more recent and is discussing the impact that Abby’s return may have on Buck:

https://tvline.com/2020/01/13/911-connie-britton-returning-season-3-buck-abby-interview/

It hints at Buck entering a new relationship and that a big issue in that is finding the right person for that relationship.

This is from Ryan Guzman discussing Eddie’s relationship with Lena in 3A:

https://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/news/9-1-1s-ryan-guzman-teases-connection-with-ronda-rouseys-lena/

This to me is implicit of Eddie coming to terms with Shannon’s death and him potentially moving on with a new love interest.

Tim Minear in this next excerpt is discussing the potential of Buddie after the season 2 Christmas episode (2x10):

https://tvline.com/2019/12/04/911-buck-eddie-relationship-oliver-stark-buddie/

To me, him mentioning not only the scene, but their decision with making the fountain shoot up behind them is his way of saying they recognize the potential for Buddie and want to lay the foundation for it should they choose to follow through with their relationship.

This last piece of evidence is up to interpretation even more so than the others. Its from a discussion about what Aisha Hinds hinted at:

https://www.tvguide.com/news/911-season-3-premiere-date-and-first-look-released-by-fox/

This could be discussion Hen’s character building a better relationship with Eddie (which we’ve seen some of, especially in the Christmas episode when Hen and Denny came over). However, it could also be expressing that Eddie is working on his relationships in general, which may very well include romantic relationships.

I’m so sorry this got so long. I’m sure you were expecting a cut and dry yes or no answer.

TL;DR: I distinctly recall reading something that confirmed Eddie would be getting or attempting a romantic relationship in 3B. I cannot find what I read or if it was fanmade or actually put out by someone at Fox.

If anyone has seen an article that confirms Eddie will be getting in a romantic relationship this season please send it to me. Or if you have questions about 911 or 911 Lone Star don’t be afraid to drop an ask.

[portable-wing-wang]

Gender, Sexuality & Me

Right, here goes.

I've never properly talked about my gender or sexuality on here and feel as if I need to clear things up for friends, family and even myself.

Of course I'm very gender positive, I think everyone should explore themselves thoroughly in order to better understand their place in this world. What I experience will be different from other people and I may even disagree with others who share my experience as everyone is different. Just good to clear the air before we continue.

My name is Will(iam) Kirton. I was born at 1:04 AM on the 10th of April 2000. I was born with male attributes and was such designated a "boy". I have little problem with this. A baby knows itself very little and cannot comprehend itself properly and so adults assign labels which, for the most part, do help with development as a child is introduced to social spaces (schools etc.).

When young, gender means little and so I thought little of it. I never felt apart or different from my schoolmates. I did however feel uncomfortable and didn't know why. Constantly feeling as if I wasn't explaining myself properly and getting confused easily. I was bullied for this by many of the other boys and when trying to defend myself, I was made an outcast. This led to me to very female dominated spaces.

I tried my hardest to join the other boys (as I thought I was supposed to) but time and time again, I'd be pushed away. I did, however, make good friends with a few boys a couple of which I'm still friends with today. But my fondest memories come from my friendships with the girls and how they shaped me as a person.

I didn't know it then but through them I began to question myself, sub-conciously at first but very soon after it started to dominate my thinking. By the age of 14 I knew something was off for sure, but I didn't know what, so I started researching to find an answer.

First, I started to look at trans-folk and see how they saw it."Trans," Such an illusive word. To me it seemed so simple to begin with. Someone wanted to be something else because they felt uncomfortable. I felt uncomfortable. "Maybe there's something in this?" I thought, so I kept digging here and there with little motivation until I was about 15 when GCSEs took over and I didn't have time to think about it much until the summer of 2016. The thoughts came back in a big way. Why? I started going to parties.

Now it may seem a little silly but getting drunk and forgetting to hide myself allowed me to express myself in ways I'd never had the chance to before. Mannerisms began to appear that I wasn't controlling intentionally. I started speaking differently, stopped feeling like I had to explain myself and started having fun. This was the next big step of my self-discovery.

I then started playing DnD. Now, laugh if you wish but I had a human bard character names Steve who I categorized as a projection of myself if a little exaggerated. While playing as Steve, those mannerisms I gained started to take over even when sober. This was the last proof I needed to know I was queer but I didn't know what labels to use. I settled with saying I just had "queer tendencies" and left it at that but I still felt uncomfortable when I wasn't playing Steve.

So, I'm definitely queer, that's for sure but what kind?

I'm researching properly now. And not just gender, but sexuality as well. Bi, pan, gay, ace, etc.. I looked up everything and kept finding new labels. To help ease my brain, I focused on sexuality first. I knew I liked girls but I also liked boys however both in different ways. I timidly said I was bi for a couple years and then came out properly soon after my 18th birthday. I felt comfortable. For now . . .

I was still, however, confused. I couldn't work out whether I was a boy or a girl and it kept making everything else seem so confusing. At this point (16 or so) most of my good friends were male, I was decent at sports and I had a big ol' bass voice. BOY, right?

But there was something still bugging me.

I couldn't figure it out. Not until the summer before Uni, something slipped into place. I had completed my A Levels, I was out as bi, my shitty friends had left me, all was good. Wrong. I was more tense than ever. All I could think about was gender. Gender this, gender that. Constantly thinking, even with the distraction of the Edinburgh Fringe. I was also listening to a lot of Steam Powered Giraffe who, of course, have a trans woman playing the "Rabbit" character. I was obsessed. I wanted to find out everything about her and luckily, she posted a whole set of videos cataloguing her transition and thoughts all the way through. Finally, someone was essentially saying to me clearly what "trans" actually meant. Things began to make sense. I knew then that I was probably not cis but i didn't really feel comfortable saying I was "fully" trans, if you get my meaning.

But then I went to Uni. I finally had a chance to express myself freely and boy oh boy, did I do just that. I became so much more feminine than I ever had been in my life. It was so freeing. But I still didn't feel trans.

Then, someone introduced me to the concept of being "non-binary". A new term. I hadn't heard of it before. Is it like being trans? Or something completely different. I dived in head-first and came out the other end with even more answers but so many more questions.

Finally, I took the plunge (I'm sorry for so many swimming metaphors).

One evening in February 2019 after Uni I was in the loo before a musicals rehearsal. I hadn't felt well all day and was wearing something particularly feminine and caught myself in the mirror. I studied myself for a good few minutes. Each detail, each curve, how my body felt and looked in the clothes I was wearing. I stood there staring. Luckily no one walked in on me.

And something just clicked. After so many years of worrying and tensing, I finally understood. I was genderqueer.

Now, I should explain (here I go again), I didn't just decide then and there. I few months prior, my new uni friend "tom" (she goes by a different name now) had introduced me to a youtuber called Contrapoints. Before anyone says anything, I know she's caused a lot of discourse but I don't feel as if this is the right time to make any cases. Anyway, she didn't used to be openly trans and used to go by the label genderqueer. At the time, she made a very comprehensive video explaining what is and what it meant for her.

It intrigued me so, naturally, I did some more research and found that it fit my situation quite adequately but I didn't feel comfortable falling myself "genderqueer" yet either.

For those who don't know, genderqueer is an umbrella term for a wide range of traits which are either predominantly female, male or androgynous. It doesn't necessarily have a perfect definition and can be different for anybody who identify themselves as such.

My own genderqueerness could be described as a complete rejection of the male binary and so I carry more female and androgynous traits. This affects the way I speak, move my body, dress and my perspective on greater society. I also experience gender dysphoria. Now, to some, this would mean I was most likely just trans and using this a stopping-point before going further. This I feel is not the case. Whilst I am made uncomfortable by my flat chest, copious hair and broad shoulders, I do not feel the same about my genitalia or Adam's apple.

There are also more political connotations with the term genderqueer over non-binary. Genderqueer is a lot more aggressive but it gets the point across more clearly but I wouldn't say I wasn't non-binary. In fact, I think they're one and the same in practice but I do use my identity as a statement and so the genderqueer label feels more appropriate.

So yeah, I came out as genderqueer that February evening. First to my partner, then my friends and only now, almost a year later, am I attempting with my family.

I am so much happier for it too. I kept myself hidden for so long and have only now started to just accept myself and give in to the voice in my head telling me to let go. I'm much more relaxed too. Since coming out and using more neutral and even feminine pronouns, my dysphoria has become less of an issue. I still get it and I have bad days of course but for the first time in a long time, things are looking up.

I can't change the world, but I've been able to find myself in it more clearly and that helps a bunch.

TL;DR: I'm genderqueer. I'm bisexual. I've been out for a considerable time now and feeling better because of it.

Anyway, if you did read the whole thing, thank you. I'm not saying this'll be the same forever but this is me now and I'm still breathing so come get me world!

Feel free to reblog this, I hope it helps others realise themselves too.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Pluralistic, your daily link-dose: 28 Feb 2020

Today's links

Clearview AI's customer database leaks: Sic semper grifter.

The Internet of Anal Things: Recreating Stelarc's "Amplified Body" with an IoT butt-plug.

Oakland's vintage Space Burger/Giant Burger building needs a home! Adopt a googie today.

Fan-made reproduction of the Tower of Terror: Even has a deepfaked Serling.

Drawing the Simpsons with pure CSS: Impractical, but so impressive.

Let's Encrypt issues its billionth cert: 89% of the web is now encrypted.

AI Dungeon Master: A work in progress, for sure.

How to lie with (coronavirus) maps: Lies, damned lies, and epidemiological data-visualizations.

This day in history: 2019, 2015

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

Clearview AI's customer database leaks (permalink)

Clearview is the grifty facial recognition startup that created a database by scraping social media and now offers cops secretive deals on its semi-magic, never-peer-reviewed technology. The company became notorious in January after the NYT did a deep dive into its secretive deals and its weird, Trump-adjascent ex-male-model founder.

(the Times piece was superbly researched but terribly credulous about Clearview's marketing claims)

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/18/technology/clearview-privacy-facial-recognition.html

Yesterday, Clearview warned its customers that it had been hacked and lost its customer database. Today, that customer database was published.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/clearview-ai-fbi-ice-global-law-enforcement

It seems that the NYT weren't the only ones to take Clearview's marketing claims at face value. Its client list includes the DoJ, ICE, Macy's, Walmart, and the NBA. All in all the dump includes more than 2,200 users, including "law enforcement agencies, companies, and individuals around the world."

Included: state AGs, university rent-a-cops, and clients in Saudi Arabia.

"BuzzFeed News authenticated the logs, which list about 2,900 institutions and include details such as the number of log-ins, the number of searches, and the date of the last search."

What does Clearview, a sercurity company, say about this ghastly security breach? "Unfortunately, data breaches are part of life in the 21st century."

Big shrug energy.

"Government agents should not be running our faces against a shadily assembled database of billions of our photos in secret and with no safeguards against abuse," ACLU attorney Nathan Freed Wessler, said to BuzzFeed News.

It is amazing that this needs to be said.

"More than 50 educational institutions across 24 states named in the log. Among them are two high schools."

They are:

Central Montco Technical High School in Pennsylvania

Somerset Berkley Regional High School in Massachusetts

The log also has an entry for Interpol.

The Internet of Anal Things (permalink)

In 1994, the notorious/celebrated electronic artist Stelarc did a performance called "Amplified Body" in which he "controlled robots, cameras and other instruments by tensing and releasing his muscles"

https://web.archive.org/web/20120712181429/https://v2.nl/events/amplified-body

Now, artist/critic Dani Ploeger has revisited Amplified Body with his own performance, which is very similar to Stelarc's, except all the peripherals are controlled by Ploeger tensing and releasing his anal sphincters around a smart butt-plug.

https://www.daniploeger.org/amplified-body

He calls it "B-hind" and it's a ha-ha-only-serious. The buttplug is "an anal electrode with EMG sensor for domestic treatment of faecal incontinence," and the accompanying text is a kind of art-speak parody of IoT biz-speak.

https://we-make-money-not-art.com/b-hind-celebrating-the-internet-of-anal-things

"B-hind offers a unique IoT solution to fully integrate your sphincter muscle in everyday living. The revolutionary anal electrode-powered interface system replaces conventional hand/voice-based interaction, enabling advanced digital control rooted in your body's interior. Celebrating the abject and the grotesque, ‍B‒hind facilitates simple, plug-and-play access to a holistic body experience in the age of networked society."

B-hind was produced in collaboration with V2_, the Lab for the Unstable Media in Rotterdam, and In4Art.

Oakland's vintage Space Burger/Giant Burger building needs a home! (permalink)

Giant Burger was once an East Bay institution, known for its burgers and its gorgeous googie architecture.

https://localwiki.org/oakland/Giant_Burger

One of the very last Giant Burger buildings is now under threat. Though the Telegraph Ave location was rescued in 2015 and converted to a "Space Burger," it's now seeking a new home because it is in the path of the Eastline project.

https://insidescoopsf.sfgate.com/blog/2015/02/24/space-burger-launches-in-uptown-oakland/

The Oakland Heritage Alliance is hoping someone will rescue and move the building: " Do you have an idea for a new location for this mid-century icon? Please contact info@oaklandheritage.org if you know of an appropriate lot, project, or site, preferably downtown."

(Image CC BY-SA, Our Oakland)

Fan-made reproduction of the Tower of Terror (permalink)

Orangele set out to re-create the Walt Disney World Twilight Zone Tower of Terror elevator loading zone in the entry area to their home theater. He's not only done an impressive re-make of the set, but he's also augmented it with FANTASTIC gimmicks.

https://www.hometheaterforum.com/community/threads/the-tower-of-terror-theater.365747/

It's not merely that's he's created a rain, thunder and lightning effect outside the patio doors…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QMzN0v4mJQ

Nor has he merely created props like this gimmicked side table that flips over at the press of a button.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY7gQLMnbeA

He's also created HIS OWN ROD SERLING DEEPFAKE.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=MIsjYJwOXSU

I kinda seriously love that he left Rod's cigarette in. The Disney version looks…uncanny.

Not shown: "exploding fuse box with simulated smoke and fire, motorized lighted elevator dial, motorized/lighted pressure gauge, video monitor playing Tower of Terror ride sequence seen through the elevator door wrap, motorized "elevator door'"

He notes, "I was once married, but now as a single person, I can do whatever I want, haha. NEVER getting married again."

Drawing the Simpsons with pure CSS (permalink)

Implementing animated Simpsons illustrations in CSS isn't the most practical web-coding demo I've seen, but it's among the most impressive. Bravo, Chris Pattle!

(not shown: the eyes animate and blink!)

https://pattle.github.io/simpsons-in-css/

#bart .head .hair1 { top: 22px; left: 0px; width: 6px; height: 7px; -webkit-transform: rotate(-22deg) skew(-7deg, 51deg); -ms-transform: rotate(-22deg) skew(-7deg, 51deg); transform: rotate(-22deg) skew(-7deg, 51deg); }

I especially love the quick-reference buttons to see the raw CSS. It reminds me of nothing so much as the incredibly complex Logo programs I used to write on my Apple ][+ in the 1980s, drawing very complicated, vector-based sprites and glyphs.

https://github.com/pattle/simpsons-in-css/blob/master/css/bart.css

Most interesting is the way that this modular approach to graphics allows for this kind of simple, in-browser transformation.

Let's Encrypt issues its billionth cert (permalink)

When the AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein walked into EFF's offices in 2005 to reveal that his employers had ordered him to help the NSA spy on the entire internet, it was a bombshell.

https://www.eff.org/tags/mark-klein

The Snowden papers revealed the scope of the surveillance in fine and alarming detail. According to his memoir, Snowden was motivated to blow the whistle when he witnessed then-NSA Director James Clapper lie to Senator Ron Wyden about the Klein matter.

Since that day in 2005, privacy advocates have been fretting about just how EASY it was to spy on the whole internet. So much of that was down to the fact that the net wasn't encrypted by default.

This was especially keen for @EFF. After all, we made our bones by suing the NSA in the 90s and winning the right for civilians to access working cryptography (we did it by establishing that "Code is speech" for the purposes of the First Amendment).

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-established-code-speech

Crypto had been legal since 1992, but by Klein's 2005 disclosures, it was still a rarity. 8 years later — at the Snowden moment — the web was STILL mostly plaintext. How could we encrypt the web to save it from mass surveillance?

So in 2014, we joined forces with Mozilla, the University of Michigan and Akamai to create Let's Encrypt, a project to give anyone and everyone free TLS certificates, the key component needed to encrypt the requests your web-server exchanges with your readers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let%27s_Encrypt

Encrypting the web was an uphill climb: by 2017, Let's Encrypt had issued 100m certificates, tipping the web over so that the majority of traffic (58%) was encrypted. Today, Let's Encrypt has issued ONE BILLION certs, and 81% of pageloads use HTTPS (in the USA, it's 91%)! This is astonishing, bordering on miraculous. If this had been the situation back in 2005, there would have been no NSA mass surveillance.

Even more astonishing: there are only 11 full-timers on the Let's Encrypt team, plus a few outside contractors and part-timers. A group of people who could fit in a minibus managed to encrypt virtually the entire internet.

https://letsencrypt.org/2020/02/27/one-billion-certs.html

There are lots of reasons to factor technology (and technologists) in any plan for social change, but this illustrates one of the primary tactical considerations. "Architecture is Politics" (as Mitch Kapor said when he co-founded EFF), and the architectural choices that small groups of skilled people make can reach all the way around the world.

This kind of breathtaking power is what inspires so many people to become technologists: the force-multiplier effect of networked code can imbue your work with global salience (for good or ill). It's why we should be so glad of the burgeoning tech and ethics movement, from Tech Won't Build It to the Googler Uprising. And it's especially why we should be excited about the proliferation of open syllabi for teaching tech and ethics.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jWIrA8jHz5fYAW4h9CkUD8gKS5V98PDJDymRf8d9vKI/edit#gid=0

It's also the reason I'm so humbled and thrilled when I hear from technologists that their path into the field started with my novel Little Brother, whose message isn't "Tech is terrible," but, "This will all be so great, if we don't screw it up."

https://craphound.com/littlebrother

(and I should probably mention here that the third Little Brother book, Attack Surface, comes out in October and explicitly wrestles with the question of ethics, agency, and allyship in tech).

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531

AI Dungeon Master (permalink)

Since 2018, Lara martin has been using machine learning to augment the job of the Dungeon Master, with the goal of someday building a fully autonomous, robotic DM.

https://laramartin.net/

AI Dungeon Master is a blend of ML techniques and "old-fashioned rule-based features" to create a centaur DM that augments a human DM's imagination with the power of ML, natural language processing, and related techniques.

She's co-author of a new paper about the effort, "Story Realization: Expanding Plot Events into Sentences" which "describes a way algorithms to use "events," consisting of a subject, verb, object, and other elements, to make a coherent narrative."

https://aaai.org/Papers/AAAI/2020GB/AAAI-AmmanabroluP.6647.pdf

The system uses training data (plots from Doctor Who, Futurama, and X-Files) to expand text-snippets into plotlines that continue the action. It's a bit of a dancing bear, though, an impressive achievement that's not quite ready for primetime ("We're nowhere close to this being a reality yet").

https://www.wired.com/story/forget-chess-real-challenge-teaching-ai-play-dandd/

This may bring to mind AI Dungeon, the viral GPT-2-generated dungeon crawler from December.

https://aidungeon.io/

As Will Knight writes, "Playing AI Dungeon often feels more like a maddening improv session than a text adventure."

Knight proposes that "AI DM" might be the next big symbolic challenge for machine learning, the 2020s equivalent to "AI Go player" or "AI chess master."

How to lie with (coronavirus) maps (permalink)

The media around the coronavirus outbreak is like a masterclass in the classic "How to Lie With Maps."

https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo27400568.html

Self-described "cartonerd" Kenneth Field's prescriptions for mapmakers wanting to illustrate the spread of coronavirus is a superb read about data visualization, responsibility, and clarity.

https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/product/mapping/mapping-coronavirus-responsibly/

Both of these images are representing the same data. Look at the map and you might get the impression that coronavirus infections are at high levels across all of China's provinces. Look at the bar-chart and you'll see that it's almost entire Hubei.

Here's a proposed way to represent the same data on a map without misleading people.

Another point that jumped out: stop coloring maps in red!

"We're mapping a human health tragedy that may get way worse before it subsides. Do we really want the map to be screaming bright red? Red can connotate death, still statistically extremely rare for coronavirus."

This day in history (permalink)

#5yrsago Ad-hoc museums of a failing utopia: photos of Soviet shop-windows https://boingboing.net/2015/02/28/ad-hoc-museums-of-a-failing-ut.html

#5yrsago First-hand reports of torture from Homan Square, Chicago PD's "black site" https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/27/chicago-abusive-confinment-homan-square

#1yrago EFF's roadmap for a 21st Century antitrust doctrine https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/02/antitrust-enforcement-needs-evolve-21st-century

#1yrago Yet another study shows that the most effective "anti-piracy" strategy is good products at a fair price https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3kg7pv/studies-keep-showing-that-the-best-way-to-stop-piracy-is-to-offer-cheaper-better-alternatives

#1yrago London's awful estate agents are cratering, warning of a "prolonged downturn" in the housing market https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47389160

#1yrago Bad security design made it easy to spy on video from Ring doorbells and insert fake video into their feeds https://web.archive.org/web/20190411195308/https://dojo.bullguard.com/dojo-by-bullguard/blog/ring/

#1yrago Amazon killed Seattle's homelessness-relief tax by threatening not to move into a massive new building, then they canceled the move anyway https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/huge-downtown-seattle-office-space-that-amazon-had-leased-is-reportedly-put-on-market/

#1yrago The "Reputation Management" industry continues to depend on forged legal documents https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190216/15544941616/pissed-consumer-exposes-new-york-luxury-car-dealers-use-bogus-notarized-letters-to-remove-critical-reviews.shtml

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Allegra of Oakland Heritage Alliance, Waxy (https://waxy.org/), We Make Money Not Art (https://we-make-money-not-art.com/), Sam Posten (https://twitter.com/Navesink), Slashdot (https://slashdot.org), Kottke (https://kottke.org) and Four Short Links (https://www.oreilly.com/feed/four-short-links).

Hugo nominators! My story "Unauthorized Bread" is eligible in the Novella category and you can read it free on Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Upcoming appearances:

Canada Reads Kelowna: March 5, 6PM, Kelowna Library, 1380 Ellis Street, with CBC's Sarah Penton https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cbc-radio-presents-in-conversation-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-96154415445

Currently writing: I just finished a short story, "The Canadian Miracle," for MIT Tech Review. It's a story set in the world of my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I'm getting geared up to start work on the novel now, though the timing is going to depend on another pending commission (I've been solicited by an NGO) to write a short story set in the world's prehistory.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last week, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs" this week; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: Gopher: When Adversarial Interoperability Burrowed Under the Gatekeepers' Fortresses: https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/02/24/gopher-when-adversarial-interoperability-burrowed-under-the-gatekeepers-fortresses/

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a very special, s00per s33kr1t intro.

[rkmb]

﹢ let it go, 𝘭𝘦𝘵 𝘪𝘵 𝘰𝘶𝘵

       if anyone asks ( not that anyone’s asking but hypothetically speaking - if someone does ), suwoong would tell them that he’s good at most things.  the only thing he isn’t particularly good at is staying out of people’s business.  friends and acquaintances alike would call that being nosy, but he likes to think of it as being tastefully curious in all things interesting.  and this little altercation in the middle of a family-friendly event meant to celebrate culture and bring people closer together---now, this is interesting.

        at first, he doesn’t think to interject.  he might stick his nose into everyone’s business, but he’s not stupid enough to get involved in something that’s clearly getting physical.

        except then, he does.

        granted, it’s for a good reason:  a toddler, giggling and completely oblivious to all things tense, waddles toward the pair, arms outstretched.  in the same moment, one of the guys involved moves and---”whoa, there.”  he finds his hands wrapped tight around the guy’s shoulders, stilling him just in time for the toddler’s mother to swoop in and snatch her child from being accidentally knocked over.

        and now he’s involved, albeit unintentionally.

        “come on, guys, let’s not fi---dongyoon?”  wait no, backtrack.  “dude,”  he starts again, this time dialing back his surprised tone for one that hints at familiarity.  “i’ve been looking everywhere -- seriously everywhere -- for you, and you’ve been here all this time picking fights?”  he slings an arm around his old cuddle buddy  ( ha! )  and turns to the other guy.  “sorry ‘bout him.  his dog just died, so he’s been in a really awful mood lately.  please excuse us.”  after flashing him a bright smile, he tightens his hold around dongyoon’s shoulders and leads him out.

        it’s only when they’re completely out of earshot does he finally let go.  he quirks an eyebrow at dongyoon then, almost as if asking what happened?  but instead, he says,  “what, no ‘thank you’ for getting you out of trouble?”   ———————   @floverrk

[rkzhengting]

            ———————————————   𝙦𝙞𝙖𝙣  𝙠𝙪𝙣  𝘧𝘰𝘳  𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘱𝘭𝘦  𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵  𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘨𝘦  !                𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 + 𝐝𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 ( 0:00 -  0:35 )  /  𝐝𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 ( 0:35 - 0:55 )  /  𝐫𝐚𝐩 ( 1:35 - 2:02 )

        he chews on his lower lip.  it’s a nervous habit he had picked up over the course of his time in south korea, where the winters are a lot dryer.  he knows he shouldn’t, his lips are already cracked enough, but he can’t help it;  nerves are eating him away, slowly but surely.  and if his parents on the other side of the phone have noticed how unsettled he is, then they’re quite the sadists for dragging out his misery.  it’s been five minutes, and they still haven’t gotten the audio to work.

        “it’s okay,”  he says after some time.  “you can just watch the dance portion.  my singing and rapping weren’t good.”

        his mother thrusts her face in front of the phone camera.  what did i say about that sort of talk?  she narrows her eyes.

        “my singing and rapping can be improved, so that it will be good one day,”  he responds, tone apathetic, almost as if he’s been forced to recite this for years.

        she beams.  that’s right.

        there’s some shuffling then got it!  his father exclaims from the background, turning the camera around so that kun can see the paused video of his triple threat challenge performance blown up on their tv screen.  he continues chewing on his lower lip while halfheartedly debating if he should make up a story so that he can excuse himself from this viewing.  it’s not that he’s embarrassed, per se, but there’s just something about his parents watching him perform that doesn’t sit well with him.  the video plays.  his confidence falters.

        the kun on-screen swoops into a low bow.  “my name is qian kun, and today i will be performing a rendition of christina perri’s ‘human.’  i hope you can enjoy my performance.”  and then he starts.  his movements are graceful, soft -- complimentary of his voice that carries the lyrics in practiced english:

i can hold my breath, i can bite my tongue, i can stay awake for days, if that’s what you want. be your number one.

        he flinches when his on-screen self falters a bit during the i can stay awake for days ( 0:25 ) part.  nervousness had caught him at that precise moment, and he had lost his breath.  that’s something he didn’t account for during his practices.  nerves.  right.  nerves could truly mess up a performance.  fortunately, the subsequent parts didn’t require him to carry out a tune.

        as a pre-recorded i can do it, i can do it, i can do it plays in the background, his on-screen self draws the audience’s attention with a running start that turns into a front aerial flip  ( 0:35 ).  he lands on one knee, a choreographed movement that had his knee scraped and red for days, before twisting upward and shedding off the thin outer layer of clothing to the flow of his arm gestures.

        his parents are quiet, making absolutely no sound nor movement, even at the front aerial flip part, which he believes was the highlight of his choreography.  it was intended to be the main focus, and when he had performed this in front of his dance class  ( since this choreography was originally created for an evaluation ), he was rewarded with reactions.  his parents are giving him no such luxury.

        fingers clenching into fists, he watches as his on-screen self graciously falls to his side  ( 0:52 ), before rolling onto his back.  his chest heaves, his eyes cast upwards as he begins the rap portion:

i'm the kid who's always picked last, easy to skim through and miss without noticing, i'm there when you pass.

always been the shortest in the class, i force a laugh 'cause my own friends push me to the ground and say they're only joking. i'm just hoping someone has my back, no stab.

        save for reaching up to grab a metaphorical rope, his on-screen self doesn’t move during the entire rap part.  there are too many words crammed into just a few seconds that would surely make him lose his breath if he were to layer it with dancing.  thus, he had scraped the choreography in this section in lieu of a stronger rapping performance.  compared to others, though, it’s still not as strong.  not enough feeling, he thinks as he watches his on-screen self finish off no stab in a whisper.

        the last few piano notes play as he sings ‘til i had enough to complete the verse.  if he closes his eyes, he can still feel the cool stage beneath his back, can still hear the applause that erupts afterwards.  it’s loud.  louder than the applause he had received back when he performed with the circus, which drew less than twenty audience members on most days.

        the popularity of idol companies . . how terrifying.

        and then the video cuts off, the camera shifts, and he’s faced with his parents’ reaction.

        i have a friend living in america, if you would like to move there,  his mother says.

        he blanks.  “america?”

        she laughs, waving her hand in front of her face.  so that you can pursue a rap career.  clearly joking.  his father chimes in:  don’t give him ideas.  america is too far away.  korea is already far enough.

        and though he knows that he should be happy with their indirect compliments---rap isn’t his strongest suit---he can’t help but feel . . off.  it’s not that he’s not happy, but this isn’t quite the reaction he was hoping to get  ( then again, what was he expecting? ).

        you did well,  his mother continues,  but you should work on your singing more.  singing is more pleasing to the ear.  you may even attract your future wife with singing, if you work hard to become the next li yugang.

        he can’t help but laugh at that.  “i don’t think i’ll ever achieve li yugang’s octave.”  a pause, then,  “what did you think about my dancing?”

        it was good, as always,  his father comments.

        good.

        as always.

        never better.

        he allows a tremor of a smile pass his lips.  “i will work harder.”

        and we know you will.

        they talk for another hour about his classes, about money, and about his future wife  ( whoever she may be ).  he sits through all of it with a hollow stomach, though an empty plate of food sits beside him.  always good.  his brow furrows.  never better.