#also I think it would be remiss to say that this was absolutely a continuation of blushy mechs and I am determined to draw all of them

[dalishious]

(I can’t believe I finished this so fast… I basically blacked out and then it was done lol… Anyway, please remember that this is all just my personal opinion, and if you feel differently, that’s fine!)

Dragon Age: The Veilguard Review

Objectively speaking, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a fun game that the average player is going to enjoy, especially if that average player is coming in without any prior knowledge to the Dragon Age franchise. I believe this is a good jumping-in spot for people who are curious about the world of Thedas. But in contrast, I have seen a lot of criticism from other hard-core fans that I largely agree with. However, it just so happens that most of the criticism I have is not enough to prevent me from overall enjoying the game. That is to say, for pretty much everything I did not like, there was also something I thought was great… Unfortunately, that makes it a little difficult to give a review. So, I’m going to do my best to keep things as clear and concise as possible by splitting up the “good” and the “bad” aspects of DATV.

The Positive

The best thing to come out of DATV is the new cast of characters that make up your companions and supporting associates. While I do think that some of them could have benefitted from more development time to flesh things out further, just judging what we ended up with, is mostly great. I especially found Emmrich and Bellara to be stand-out examples of strong personalities to grasp onto, whose personal stories really touched me in an emotional way.

DATV also has fun with some returning characters. For example, now that Solas is no longer hiding his identity, we get to see a character that both believably honours his part in Inquisition, while also providing a new, refreshing side to him. There are also a number of characters introduced in Dragon Age: Tevinter Nights that appear in the game, like my personal favourites Teia and Viago, who are an absolute delight to interact with!

I think the three act structure is good, albeit with act three being quite short. There are a few sequences that are an absolutely phenomenal mixture of storytelling and engaging gameplay, like all of Weisshaupt! I also really enjoyed stepping out of the main story every once and a while, and into Solas’s backstory through the Crossroads memories – what ended up being extra special about these is how they mirror Rook’s struggle so well, by the end. They are a nice touch.

The locations are beautifully constructed with smooth interactions of climbing, zip-lining, and essentially parkouring your way around, making them fun to explore! They also came with such distinct flavours and character in themselves that influenced a sense of truly experiencing different parts of Thedas, with different cultures.

The mechanic of building up strength with the different factions, and that actually having a huge impact with the ultimate showdown in the end of the game, makes side quests feel far less inconsequential than in Dragon Age: Inquisition by comparison. That, and they number far less.

I like that the story mode actually feels like a story mode; there were only a couple instances where I really had to worry about death, and even then, I was able to just toggle off the death with the customizable gameplay mechanics and continue on.

Finally, it would be remiss not to say that the character creator for DATV is the best BioWare has ever put out. I’d go as far as saying it’s one of the best in any RPG I’ve ever personally experienced. From the flexibility in morphing a character’s head and body between custom shapes, to the little details like sclera colour, vitiligo, and top surgery scars, makes it a shining example of what RPG’s should strive for. (My only critique here is that it would have been nice to have more skin colours.)

The Neutral

I hated the combat for pretty much the entire first act of the game. I found it too hard to keep up with, and too much like Mass Effect bullshit. I can’t say that it’s completely grown on me yet, but I don’t hate it anymore. It’s fine. So, I’m giving this a special little spot before I get into what I didn’t like all the way to the end.

The Negative

As mentioned above, I do think that there is more that could be done with some of the characters to really achieve their full potential. Davrin and Lucanis—while to be clear I still really enjoy as they are—come to mind first, in terms of those who would have benefited from more development time. Most of Davrin’s screen time just revolves around Assan rather than Davrin himself, and Lucanis is so restrained that it takes a while to really crack him open. Both of these characters have intentional personalities that make them harder to get to know, I understand that, but I feel that it would have been all the more rewarding to have more time dedicated to their company after earning their trust and possibly endearment. Instead, it feels like their romance and friendship with Rook are only half-complete, and then rushed to finish.

There are some companion interactions that are just… cringe. There is no other word for it. Now, this is nothing new for BioWare games, but I feel like the “pulling a Bharv” scene for example, was hitting an entirely new low. (If someone misgendered me and then just started doing push-ups instead of just saying “hey sorry about that, I’ll try to do better” I’d be annoyed, not satisfied.) I also felt like most of the temporary rivalries between companions were artificial in nature, rather than organically part of their characters that actually served a purpose. We already knew Emmrich likes books and Harding likes nature; we did not need a whole cutscene with them bickering about camping. (The exception to this is Davrin and Lucanis, who genuinely had room to grow as people out of their multiple confrontations, not just a one-off scene.)

The music in DATV is, for the most part, forgettable and bland. There is one piece that really stands out, and that’s “Where the Dead Must Go”, which is a real banger. I am not a fan of Hans Zimmer’s OST otherwise; I think it is phoned in, just like most of his work. I deeply wish BioWare would have just stuck with Trevor Morris. The best parts musically in this game are just Morris’s work re-used from Dragon Age: Inquisition.

There are certain parts of disjointedness that separates DATV from the past games that are just… bizarre. This is especially the case when it comes to elven lore. For example, Bellara saying she is afraid that elves will be harshly judged for the Evanrus, or Harding saying that elves are “thriving”… as if modern elves are not deeply persecuted across most of Thedas. It made me question more than once if there just was not time in development to do a proper canon-compliancy check with everything, perhaps?

I want finish this part by bringing up again that the biggest flaw in DATV is that it feels very corporate. To repeat what I said in this post: It is as if a computer ran through the game’s script and got rid of anything with “too much” political substance, in an overcorrection to be “safe”. But now that the edges have been so smoothed down to make a block into a ball, it can no longer support anything.

Conclusion

It’s easy to see a lot of creativity went into the creation of this game… but it is also easy to make assumptions on how that creativity was constrained by development hell and corporate oversight. In the end though, Dragon Age: The Veilguard succeeded in being an overall good time, one that I will no doubt be putting just as many countless hours into as the previous installments in the franchise. 7/10.

[paceywittters]

What do you make of Tim's behavior in the last few episodes? I feel like he's a totally different person and it's making me sad to see him disrespecting Lucy so much.

just up front: it feels v clear to me that we do not share an opinion on this storyline from the tone of this ask, and so i am going to discuss this but would just like to preface that this is only my opinion and i respect that you/anyone else engaging with this post may have a different one. i am allowed to feel the way i feel, as are you. i am not trying to change or discredit anyone's opinions just because they're different than mine.

that being said - i will be honest with you, i don't really see where he's disrespected lucy. before you (and whoever else is reading this) jump me, let me explain myself.

tim went through something very difficult and traumatic with the resurgence of his wartime trauma and he made the decision not to involve lucy as he navigated said trauma. while it may not have been the best choice for their relationship, tim made the choice he felt was right in the moment. though we may not agree with it as viewers and lucy may not agree with it as tim's partner, he had the right to do that, and he explained to the best of his ability in the moment that he was keeping her out of the situation to ensure she didn't get hurt/her career wasn't impacted.

to me, that didn't feel disrespectful - it felt like tim relying on his tried and true methods of keeping the people he loves safe from him/the potential danger surrounding him. he was working with the tools he had available, even if they may not be the "right" tools for the job.

like, was it fucked that he ignored her for 36 hours? absolutely! that was disrespectful in some ways - but i think if you zoom out a little, it's not right, but it's understandable.

in the end of 5x07, lucy stops tim in the hallway at the station and asks him to talk to her - and i have seen a bunch of people who are really angry about the way tim handled that convo, so i wonder if that's what you mean by disrespect. generally, a few thoughts about that scene:

lucy approached tim hot - which, let me be clear: she had every right to. she was in her feels all day, she had something she wanted to say to him, and she was already a bit revved up coming to him. but she came into that conversation already looking for something specific, where tim was just...guard down, a little goofily happy to see her, probably a little nervous to talk to her at all.

tim wasn't given the opportunity to say much of anything. lucy asked if they could have "an adult conversation" (patronizing, but i don't blame her for it - he deserved that) and when tim explained he "couldn't give her what she wanted", lucy snapped. i understand the snap - i would've done the same - but tim had no space to continue talking there. that wasn't a conversation. lucy got her opportunity to unload on him a bit, which i think she needed. think about the breakup - lucy didn't get the chance to argue a side there, and tim didn't get the chance to argue a side here. they're equal on that kind of convo now, which i find fascinating.

so, is tim being honest with her and saying he can't give her what she needs right now disrespectful? i don't really think so. i think lucy is looking for something that tim can't give her right now - himself. tim has to sort through all his shit before he can be the best version of himself for lucy - in his tim brain, he doesn't think he can support her fully without working on himself first...and honestly? i think that's noble. lucy is far too close to the picture to see that tim has some really big issues he needs to work on outside of the scope of their relationship. i don't blame her for that, but it's just...true.

she can't be the person to help tim find himself at this point in his life. that's not fair to her or their relationship - so i think he's made the right choice here, as much as it hurts both of them.

i would also be remiss if i didn't mention that i think there's a huge part of this situation that lucy still needs to realize is on her. she has problems of her own, too! girl knows she's not perfect - but she has yet to address her own problems, and i think that's such an issue. tim is taking initiative to resolve his problems, even if it's not in a way that she agrees with. lucy isn't. just like their relationship already had issues, lucy has her own set. this wasn't the defining problem - this was just the straw that broke the camel's back in a lot of ways.

i hope this answers your question tbh bc i feel like i just rambled a bunch - but i'm always up to chat about this kind of stuff, so feel free to come back to me with more if i haven't annoyed you too much 😂

[gnashingwailing]

GIRL (gender neutral) HELP NOT THE PEER REVIEWED HOMOPHOBIA

@fireflywritesgt sending u my ch 24/25 thoughts <3

⬆️How Harry looks processing how upset he is that Joe nearly died in a lake while lovingly making him tea for his hangover

Meanwhile, Joe: I hope sober Joe knows how to deal with this Sober Joe:

First off. this is primarily a reflection on Joe & Harry throughout these last two chapters but I would be remiss not to mention how EXTREMELY fed I am by the Gutters lore ... was HE a pet or was it someone he cared for... either way... woof. Plus Calloway coming to Joe's rescue once again... even though there are now rumors and Gutters saw something. In parallel with the marking scene ... this story does such a great job of balancing the horror with the levity. maybe it's for the best Joe isn't telling Harry the particulars of his visiting Calloway's bcuz Harry might just have a heart attack if he stops and thinks through the implications of all this. Wonder if he realizes how much danger he might have put Joe in... he seems to kinda forgor everything else where saving/supporting Joe is concerned (as seen in ch21 when he wanted to bring Joe to see O'Grady...)

(Btw I love the way (sober) Joe will NEVER admit anything re: Harry saving his life lol. “You just threw me into a curtain 🙄“ “I don’t even remember the turtle 🙄”)

“He knew what the medical journals had to say about homosexuals; hell, he had read them! He had to give himself some credit, however. The little bastard had been drunk as a skunk, lying helplessly in his hand, and the worst Harry had done was march him straight upstairs to tuck him into bed. Whatever pathology Harry himself had, it had not gotten the best of him yet.”

GIRL (gn) HELP NOT THE PEER-REVIEWED INTERNALIZED HOMOPHOBIA… The Harry chapters always hit soooo hard for me when you read between the lines of what he’s thinking. He is SUCH a poor little guy… We can see pretty clearly that Harry thinks of his affections as something poisonous but Also apparently as something predatory? “his pathology” “getting the best of him” being like… what? That he’d take advantage of him because he’s attracted to him ? Is that the kind of thing the research said? UGH IT BREAKS MY HEART. I hope he’ll reject his coping mechanism of rationalizing and dissecting everything and just let go and trust Joe to know what he wants! It would be really tragic if Harry tried rejecting Joe much the same way Georgie rejected him :’(

“Harry, though he hated to admit it, was afraid – not of Joe himself, but what Joe represented.” - OUUUUUGHHH THE PARALLELS… the way Joe thought the exact same thing after the night of the thunderstorm… ouuuuughhhhh save meeee...

And the parallels continue in their tendency to self-harm… Joe may be more overt about it (lol if Harry ever learns that Joe has purposefully eaten poisoned chocolate three. times. and fully thought he was doing it a 4th with Harry’s own offering … #girl…) but Harry’s absolute repression of any self-expression or vulnerability is equally a form of self-harm… questioning Joe’s ability to make his own decisions is such a sad expression of how Harry (maybe unconsciously?) views things — safety and staying alive is worth more than authenticity. Maybe he won’t stick Joe in a cage anymore but he still wants to exert control over him — in the relatable way many of us do when we feel like our loved ones are making bad decisions. And Joe is making some of those! But so does everyone! And in Joe’s case the worst of them are likely driven from years of internalized self-loathing and self-neglect !! He would probably chill out if he just had a good man waiting for him at home……. Taking Harry by the shoulders and shaking him. U are both two sides of the same coin

Except

“Unseasoned. The word crept back into Joe’s mind. Calloway had a point, he realized; Harry wasn’t acting all that different from some of the lesser-experienced boys of Joe’s own size that he had toyed with. Surely, though, Harry didn’t find Joe attractive. That would be absurd!” Holy shit this whole chapter is so good but this part is hysterical. 1. TOYED WITH⁉️ 2. Watching Harry’s brain overheat in real time while 3. Joe getting to enjoy flirting shamelessly (clapping and hollering that he got to do that AND got to be sober to remember it) WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY BEING LIKE 🤨 there’s no way he finds me attractive tho. How do they both manage to be such conniving little bastards and also so innocent. So clever and yet soooo dumb. 💕

But even tho he’s somewhat in disbelief about how Harry feels about him, Joe knows himself so very well lmao. At first I thought he was lying about not remembering their conversation but. I don’t think so. Harry telling him he said “something very nice” to him and Joe being like. Was it that you had a nice ass. LIKE HE WAS THIS 🤏 CLOSE TO THE MARK BDDJSHHD but ALSO even just calling Harry handsome made him a blushing mess!! It fascinates me that Harry is so terrified of receiving affection but he felt much more at ease when he was giving it. I mean, he was calling Joe handsome two chapters ago‼️ I think Joe can be forgiven for his romance-novel-brain idealizing Harry as a seductor. It says something interesting about Harry’s character that he’s been so comfortable complimenting Joe until it might lead somewhere … Is that open, easygoing kindness, the sort that compliments other men readily, the ‘real’ Harry? Was Joe seeing his unvarnished personality before it got hidden under the internalized homophobia that has come out in force since ch22? I get the sense Harry is just the sort of guy whose true feelings sometimes spill out of him in a way he is barely cognizant of. We know that’s true for his anger, but I could see that being true for his affection, too. I’m guessing that is why his internal monologue goes “wow! He’s like a movie star :) and he’s so brave and cool and I respect him so much. He looks like a dancer. And his clothes look so good on him. And I notice his haircut and whether he’s getting enough sleep and every scratch and scrape and other intricacy of his appearance immediately. Yeah, I can’t help but love him - you know - like a brother or a friend!!” 👈 UNSEASONED

"“So you admit it. I’m up here because I manipulated you, and not because you manipulated me.” Joe said." — omfg. On the one hand, I love that these two are so good at unhanding each other, and it’s very cute to me that they’ve both at different points felt proud for “catching” one another. On the other hand, Harry & Joe when they are tasked with cultivating a mutually nurturing and vulnerable relationship:

WHAT IF NEITHER OF YOU ARE MANIPULATING THE OTHER AND DOING THIS BECAUSE YOU LIKE ONE ANOTHER AND YOU’RE BOTH CHOOSING THE UNKNOWN. WHAT IF THAT WASNT BEYOND BOTH UR KEN RN. What then. One day they will quit playing Tom and Jerry-esque mind games with each other but not today. I know the rituals are intricate. I know. I know they’re intricate 😔😔😔

On a lighter note so glad to see Joe’s other go-to behavior is back. If he doesn’t wanna Just Walk Out then he wants to Fuck Around & Find Out <3 I luv how compatible the two of them are… Joe is not only moving in he's turning Harry into the u-haul service and Harry is just enamored with him for it. Faithful hunting dog retrieving game indeed. Submissive in the way a livestock guardian dog is submissive to its sheep. 10/10 Joe got his ass so good.

"“I’m sure you[‘ll listen to me]. You have to. If I’m gonna be the tiny, then it means you have to be the giant and do everything I say all the time.” He said." — Hmm. Joe and I have the same g/t fics bookmarked I think 👍 I sort of get the same sense that Harry got when Joe was talking about “luck” — that maybe the idea of “being the tiny” vs “being the giant” has some cultural connotations for him we don’t quite grasp.

OH this reminds me of the question I meant to ask you and promptly forgot about. If miniatures have a taboo against taking things without giving something in return… what does it feel like for Joe when Harry just keeps giving him stuff? Does “paying me in sleep” really work in borrower cultural norms? Hazarding a guess, I’m assuming romantic partners don’t necessarily operate on the same principle of equivalent exchange… given “Joe’s got a rich boyfriend that’s spoiling him” being something Calloway reads as normal/expected … That is to say. Hmm. Is Harry giving Joe all these things something that a romantic suitor would do? 🤔 Harry the unknowing seductor…

Parting thoughts… Miss Wilkins’ dad suddenly came down with tuberculosis, huh. Gang, do we know how Harry’s mom died, other than that it was sudden and traumatic? How do we think Harry is doing re: pushing all his feelings & unprocessed trauma down at this time. 👍/👎?

[thestarsfightagainstusmyfriend]

Excerpts from letters between Alexander Hamilton and John Laurens that make me cry

[5 December 1778, From Laurens to Hamilton] “Adieu, my dear boy. I shall set out for camp tomorrow.”

This letter is the first correspondence between just Hamilton and Laurens, as opposed to a letter written jointly to or jointly by them, that I could find in the archives. The letter itself is rather unemotional, just a brief letter about Charles Lee’s “Vindication to the Public” but these last two sentences are so gentle compared to the rest of the letter and the phrase “my dear boy” always makes me melt.

[April 1779, From Hamilton to Laurens] “Cold in my professions, warm in ⟨my⟩ friendships, I wish, my Dear Laurens, it m⟨ight⟩ be in my power, by action rather than words, ⟨to⟩ convince you that I love you. I shall only tell you that ’till you bade us Adieu, I hardly knew the value you had taught my heart to set upon you. Indeed, my friend, it was not well done. You know the opinion I entertain of mankind, and how much it is my desire to preserve myself free from particular attachments, and to keep my happiness independent on the caprice of others. You sh⟨ould⟩ not have taken advantage of my sensibility to ste⟨al⟩ into my affections without my consent. But as you have done it and as we are generally indulgent to those we love, I shall not scruple to pardon the fraud you have committed, on condition that for my sake, if not for your own, you will always continue to merit the partiality, which you have so artfully instilled into ⟨me⟩.”

I would be absolutely remiss if I did not include this paragraph, arguably the most famous of any correspondence between the two. I can recite this paragraph from memory but I’m still never going to be able to be normal about this. “by action rather than words, to convince you that I love you” always gets me because it refers both to the physical distance between the two men, but also Hamilton’s inability to love Laurens openly and freely like he wishes he could, even when they are physically together. And how he says he wishes he could CONVINCE Laurens that he loves him, like Laurens has a hard time believing he could be loved omfg. And the teasing way that he goes about blaming Laurens for tricking him into falling in love with him like it’s so adorable??? I could talk about this letter for ages, and I might delve further into it in its own post because I have So Many Thoughts.

[14 July 1779, From Laurens to Hamilton] “Ternant will relate to you how many violent struggles I have had between duty and inclination—how much my heart was with you, while I appeared to be most actively employed here—”

It’s so funny to me that Hamilton’s way of expressing his affection while physically separated from Laurens is to pledge his undying love and tease him relentlessly while Laurens is just like “I tried to pretend I wasn’t thinking about you but apparently I’m too obvious 🙄🙄🙄” like it’s too cute.

[11 September 1779, From Hamilton to Laurens] I acknowlege but one letter from you, since you left us, of the 14th of July which just arrived in time to appease a violent conflict between my friendship and my pride. I have written you five or six letters since you left Philadelphia and I should have written you more had you made proper return. But like a jealous lover, when I thought you slighted my caresses, my affection was alarmed and my vanity piqued. I had almost resolved to lavish no more of them upon you and to reject you as an inconstant and an ungrateful ——. But you have now disarmed my resentment and by a single mark of attention made up the quarrel. You must at least allow me a large stock of good nature.”

I find this so fucking funny like Hamilton literally admits that he wrote FIVE OR SIX LETTERS and got all mad that Laurens wasn’t writing him back but forgave him literally immediately. The way he compares himself to a “jealous lover” and his letters “caresses” like?? Something about this letter is just too fucking funny to me.

[8 January 1780, From Hamilton to Laurens] “I have strongly sollicited leave to go to the Southward. It could not be refused; but arguments have been used to dissuade me from it, which however little weight they may have had in my judgment gave law to my feelings. I am chagrined and unhappy but I submit. In short Laurens I am disgusted with every thing in this world but yourself…”

This quote is from a pretty depressing letter where Hamilton says he doesn’t believe that he should be nominated for a commission which Laurens was favored for, rejected, and then suggested Hamilton for. He says he believes he is the least qualified, he tells Laurens that he made an effort to go Southward (where Laurens is) but was dissuaded from it, and then goes on to make a rather depressing remark that he hates everything but Laurens and a few other honest men and that he wishes to “make a brilliant exit” from life, and that he doesn’t feel “fit for this terrestreal Country.” 

[30 March 1780, From Hamilton to Laurens] “Adieu my Dear; I am sure you will exert yourself to save your country; but do not unnecessarily risk one of its most valuable sons. Take as much care of yourself as you ought for the public sake and for the sake of Yr. affectionate A. Hamilton”

I find this quote so sweet. Mind you, Laurens injured himself in EVERY battle he ever fought in, and Hamilton had to witness a lot of it firsthand. The way he gently asks Laurens to Please Please Please Don’t Be An Idiot And Die Please I’m Serious is so sweet. It reminds me of “That Would Be Enough” when Eliza says “The fact that you’re alive is a miracle / Just stay alive, that would be enough”

[30 July 1780] The archive reads: “[Laurens] Has executed Hamilton’s commission by arranging for a tailor to make a hat for him”

I don’t even know why I find this so cute.

[12 September 1780, From Hamilton to Laurens] “I hate Congress—I hate the army—I hate the world—I hate myself. The whole is a mass of fools and knaves; I could almost except you and Meade. Adieu”

Very reminiscent of  “In short Laurens I am disgusted with every thing in this world but yourself…” The first sentence of this letter kills me too. He apologizes that the two have not written each other much recently, and assumes that one of his letters to Laurens must have not been delivered but I feel like it’s so obvious that Laurens is ignoring him after Hamilton told him that he was getting married… like Laurens is literally on house arrest, it’s not like he’s too busy to write…

[16 September 1780, From Hamilton to Laurens] “In spite of Schuylers black eyes, I have still a part for the public and another for you; so your impatience to have me married is misplaced; a strange cure by the way, as if after matrimony I was to be less devoted than I am now. Let me tell you, that I intend to restore the empire of Hymen and that Cupid is to be his prime Minister. I wish you were at liberty to transgress the bounds of Pensylvania. I would invite you after the fall to Albany to be witness to the final consummation. My Mistress is a good girl, and already loves you because I have told her you are a clever fellow and my friend; but mind, she loves you a l’americaine not a la françoise. Adieu, be happy, and let friendship between us be more than a name.”

THIS FUCKING LETTER OMFG so much to unpack. He reassures Laurens that while he loves Eliza publicly, he is still devoted to him, and he implies that Laurens has been encouraging him to find a wife to CURE HIM OF HIS AFFECTIONS FOR LAURENS??? And I can’t even… Hamilton straight up invites him to watch him deflower his wife on his wedding night I can’t even get into that. This whole fucking letter…

[11 October 1780, From Hamilton to Laurens] “In one of the visits I made to [John André] (and I saw him several times during his confinement) he begged me to be the bearer of a request to the General for permission, to send an open letter to Sir Henry Clinton. “I foresee my fate (said he) and though I pretend not to play the hero, or to be indifferent about life; yet I am reconciled to whatever may happen, conscious that misfortune, not guilt, has brought it upon me. There is only one thing that disturbs my tranquillity—Sir Henry Clinton has been too good to me; he has been lavish of his kindness. I am bound to him by too many obligations and love him too well to bear the thought, that he should reproach himself, or that others should reproach him, on the supposition of my having conceived myself obliged by his instructions to run the risk I did. I would not for the world leave a sting in his mind, that should embitter his future days.” He could scarce finish the sentence, bursting into tears, in spite of his efforts to suppress them; and with difficulty collected himself enough afterwards to add, “I wish to be permitted to assure him, I did not act under this impression, but submitted to a necessity imposed upon me as contrary to my own inclination as to his orders.” His request was readily complied with, and he wrote the letter annexed, and with which I dare say, you will ⟨be as⟩ much pleased as I am both for the dic⟨tion⟩ and sentiment.”

This literally isn’t even everything he told Laurens about André. He is absolutely enamored with André and I find it so funny he thought it necessary to write this all to Laurens.

[4 February 1781, From Hamilton to Laurens] “Adieu ⟨my⟩ beloved friend. Do justice to my ⟨regard⟩ for you. Assure yourself that ⟨it is⟩ impossible more a[r]dently to wis⟨h for your⟩ health safety pleasure and success ⟨than⟩ I do.”

Just one of a thousand examples of Hamilton trying desperately to convince Laurens that he cares about him.

[This is the final sentence in Laurens’ final letter to Hamilton, written a month or so before his death, J. C. Hamilton didn’t give an exact date when publishing] “Adieu, my dear friend; while circumstances place so great a distance between us, I entreat you not to withdraw the consolation of your letters. You know the unalterable sentiments of your affectionate Laurens.”

YOUR AFFECTIONATE LAURENS that always makes me teary-eyed because Laurens is nowhere near as affectionate as Hamilton in any of his letters but the last thing he tells Hamilton is that he will always be Hamilton’s “affectionate Laurens” like it makes me so emotional.

[This is from the end of Hamilton’s final letter to Laurens, written about two weeks before Laurens died] “Quit your sword my friend, put on the toga, come to Congress. We know each others sentiments, our views are the same: we have fought side by side to make America free, let us hand in hand struggle to make her happy… Yrs for ever, A Hamilton”

SO MUCH ABOUT THIS JUST GUTS ME like the way Hamilton implores Laurens to stop fighting and join him when less than two weeks later Laurens would die in battle and the YRS FOR EVER LIKE I can’t handle this I had to go take a little break to cry.

[npdmonoma]

Can "narcissistic abuse" be something we consider outside of people with NPD? I don't believe in PDs at all as someone who's been diagnosed with one, and I'm very anti psychiatry. However mechanisms of what's described as "narcissistic abuse" are real phenomena and I'm wondering if we can address these situations without linking it to a diagnosis or condemning people as permanently and irreparably broken because they're making those choices in one context

Actually read some more posts on your blog and I think I found an answer that satisfies me in this topic ... I think the move forward would be to unlink certain constellations of behavior (gaslighting, DARVO, etc.) From having a PD. Honestly recognizing that someone who abused me was likely struggling with NPD made it easier to find empathy for them but I still had questions in my mind about how to address this specific pattern

I added your second ask here so I can address them both at the same time. Starting with your statement about not believing in personality disorders due to being anti-psychiatry, this is a statement I both do and don't agree with. All mental health diagnoses are created by psychiatrists by observing patterns of behavior that they label as aberrant and give a name to. So in that sense, they're "not real" because NPD isn't some objective observable thing. However, as long as anyone finds value in using that framework to understand themselves and hopefully begin healing, it should continue to exist as a concept. I personally find incredible value in the diagnosis, and have made significant strides toward healing and becoming a better person since I started applying that concept to myself.

That being said, I do believe in psychiatric abolition. What you said about not labeling people as inherently broken is part of my dissatisfaction with the state of mental healthcare. People with personality disorders can heal, even if our disorders never fully leave us. There's also reason to believe that the idea that personality disorders almost never go into full remission is either partially or fully false. Either way, we aren't broken. Or at least, we aren't required to view ourselves as such.

Second, you're absolutely correct that the things that get labeled as "narcissistic abuse" are real phenomena. I have never, and will never, deny that people who call themselves narcissistic abuse survivors have experienced abuse. I honestly believe that they did. However, those phenomena aren't inherently linked to NPD. I have yet to see an example of "narcissistic abuse" that wasn't just a textbook example of (usually emotional) abuse. There is no need to call it narcissistic, you can just call it abuse. That's what it is.

And yes, you're very correct that we need to disconnect patterns of abuse from personality disorders. We shouldn't be linking any mental illness/neurodivergence to abusive behavior. All that does is cause stigma that leads to people being hated for something they can't really control, and something that oftentimes was done to them. I don't deserve to be hated for what my abusers turned me into. No one does.

I'm glad you were able to find understanding and empathy for your abuser, as that seems to have been healing for you. I'm genuinely happy for you. However, the fact that in your case you learned something about your abuser that gave you context for what happened doesn't mean that thing is inherently linked to abuse in general. My father was likely autistic, and I can see how this played into his abuse of me. And yet, I would never say he abused me autistically, because he didn't. He just abused me. There are abusers in every demographic that exists, but that doesn't mean that the entire demographic gets discarded. People who have never abused anyone don't deserve to be called abusers, especially when they're abuse victims themselves.

Thank you for your curiosity and for having an open mind about this. I appreciate you taking the time to think this through, and I'm glad I was able to help in some way. My apologies if I went over something you already figured out for yourself, but I figured it was best to be thorough.

[bsd-cherish-official]

So, it’s October 20th — a date that as far as this blog and especially Cherish’s author and first artist is concerned, is practically some sort of international holiday.

I wanted to have something much more substantial than these two tiny rough sketches out by the time the date rolled around, but as you all know, I’ve been quite busy with all the Cherish content I’ve been wanting to release for this month, so this is the best I can do for the moment, until I have the time to more properly clean them up and color them.

There’s a whole lot that I could say on a day like this — a lot of thoughts in my head just itching to find their way out onto the post, but I think that saying some of it would be a bit premature without first lining up all my proverbial ducks in a row, and I want to keep this post mostly lighthearted, anyway.

So…for now let me say this.

In the past I’ve made posts talking about how just precious and irreplaceable of a character BSD Arthur is, of his sweetness, of his kindness, of his gentleness and selflessness, and how dearly I love him and am glad he came to exist through the series.

All of this could not be more true, and I think that my intense interest and love and respect for him as a character still — all these five years and seven plus months later from the day I learned of him — should speak volumes about just how unique and incredible of character he is, despite his confinement to mostly only two light novels in official canon.

He is a wellspring from which my blog was primarily born and on which it still runs today, with no sign of drying up — a topic I could continue to talk of for ages.

…And yet, I would also be remiss not to mention the real life 19th Century poet of the same name upon which he was heavily and inseparably based, and to which we owe the entirety of his existence.

I had said once in passing that I wished a happy birthday to the tragic disaster of a human being that was him, but in hindsight, I don’t think that such words carry even half the weight that I wish to evoke when I say that I want to celebrate his birthday, too.

I know that a lot of people when they talk about BSD will wish the irl namesakes of their favorite characters a happy birthday, and I feel like my well wishes in the past also came off in this same way as many of them mean it: “Here’s an obligatory celebration of your existence because without you, this character couldn’t have been”…but the thing is, that in no way sums up how I feel about the situation at all.

Maybe, in the early days of my research into the author, it might have been like that, but it is not anymore. And it is not just as a poet, but most especially as a human being, that I wish to see and partake in Arthur’s birthday celebrated.

My lengthy and dedicated research over the years has taught me that at heart and in truth he was actually not this heartless, needlessly cold, absurdly cruel and gratuitously offensive, irredeemable little shit “everyone would hate if we met him today” that we see sensationalized in the various forms of media and clickbait articles, but rather, just a deeply troubled teenager who from a very young age continuously suffered through some of the worst shit imaginable, surrounded by terrible people and circumstances in a time where he quite frankly didn’t belong and in which the odds of his chances at finding genuine happiness and peace were almost nil from birth. Yes, he made many mistakes and sometimes did things that were definitely not quite right — he was absolutely as flawed a human being as you or I, but not more flawed, not evil. Once he broke free from the people who made his life hell, he became a perfectly decent and average — though withdrawn, emotionally devastated, and creatively burnt out and defeated — adult.

And it is to him — the tortured soul who yearned for more than the unlucky cards he was dealt, who dared to dream but whose dreams burnt up in the atmosphere and left him just a shadow quietly navigating the world he didn’t want to live in until his premature death — that I reach out to today, and on every day and every time that I write Cherish.

If I could reach out to the past and just give him a hug, tell him that he and his works are loved and heard and remembered by people that will not be born for decades — even centuries — after he has passed, and that he is not alone, then I would in a heartbeat. But since I cannot, all of this will just have to be enough.

Happy Birthday, Arthur Rimbaud. Both you and your BSD self. I’m so far beyond glad that you were born.

[bakerstreetbabble]

Review: Enola Holmes 2 (Netflix)

Several weeks ago, my family sat down to watch Netflix's Enola Holmes 2. For those who may not have heard of the Enola Holmes franchise, the films are based on a series of young adult novels by Nancy Springer, which feature a young protagonist named Enola Holmes, the younger sister of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes. Enola's name, as the reader may already suspect, is the word "alone" spelled backwards. In the films, Enola is played by the excellent British actress, Millie Bobby Brown, who became famous due to her role as Eleven in the very popular Netflix series, Stranger Things. We had all watched the first Enola Holmes film, and we had all thoroughly enjoyed it, so our expectations for the second film were quite high. I am pleased to report that our expectations were absolutely met!

First of all, Millie Bobby Brown continues to be a delight in her role as the title character. She's an intelligent, feisty young woman, with deductive capabilities that rival those of her big brother, Sherlock (played in the films by British actor Henry Cavill). One fun little convention in the films is Enola's penchant for "breaking the fourth wall" and addressing the camera (and thus, the viewer) directly from time to time. As the father of two daughters, both of whom are loving this series of films, I am especially pleased to see a young female character being portrayed as strong and intelligent. Enola displays those qualities in spades.

Although the films tend to play a bit fast and loose with the historical period surrounding the plot, I don't think they are much different from Arthur Conan Doyle's stories in that respect. Viewers will almost certainly be aware of more multiculturalism (particularly in the casting), but from my point of view, this enhances the world of the film, even if it's not strictly historically accurate. One prominent plot thread in Enola Holmes 2 deals with feminism and union organization among workers in a match factory, which I'm fairly certain was more or less unknown during the Victorian period. (However, if anyone knows of any feminist or unionist movements in the period of which I'm unaware, I'd love to hear from you!)

I should say a word about Henry Cavill's portrayal of Sherlock Holmes. If you watch the films, you will see a Holmes who is supposed to be a bit younger than he is when Conan Doyle introduces him in A Study in Scarlet. Thus, Cavill plays Holmes as a bit more "human" than we often see him in other adaptations. He is not overly emotional, but he is also not quite the calculating deductive machine who is often presented. Moreover, keeping in mind that Enola is the main character, and Sherlock is a supporting role, I found Cavill's portrayal to be quite effective. Some Sherlockian "purists" may find the revision of Sherlock's back story disappointing, especially at the end of this film (which I will not spoil here). I found it entertaining.

I would be remiss if I failed to mention the performance of Helena Bonham Carter as Eudoria Holmes, mother to  Sherlock and Enola (Mycroft does not appear in this film, although he did appear in the first one, as a rather unpleasant character). As in the first film, she turned in what I found to be a wonderful performance. I had read shortly after the first film came out that some significantly more conservative viewers were outraged by Eudoria Holmes shirking what they saw as her duties and responsibilities as a mother. (One Roman Catholic priest apparently found the first Enola Holmes film to be one of the most "evil" films he'd seen.) I, personally, do not share that outrage. Indeed, Eudoria Holmes's strengths (and weaknesses) as a mother contribute to her progeny's unique talents in the deductive arena.

Finally, as the second Enola Holmes film did not have to concern itself with quite as much exposition as the first film did, I feel like the main plot, and the mystery contained therein, was a bit better than the first film. Indeed, when the film was over, we all felt that we had enjoyed this installment even more than its predecessor! I would certainly recommend the movie to all fans of Sherlock Holmes, as well as anyone who enjoys a good, entertaining action/mystery story.

[silenceforetold]

Why was Killmonger so relatable?

With the social climate being as it is, I feel the need to share a small analysis that I had written in 2018 regarding the Marvel superhero movie Black Panther, it’s villain Killmonger, and why it seemed that numerous Black Americans held sympathy and even relatability towards the character. I have slightly edited it for the sake of better clarification, but have not added anything additional to my original message.

If you have not seen Black Panther, I highly recommend the watch, and also would like to warn you that the post below contains mild plot spoilers.

As you read, I ask that you keep in mind the fundamental truth that it is possible to sympathize with and even agree with some points made by a villain while also simultaneously holding them accountable and objecting to their methods. By no means do I wish to glorify or romanticize Killmonger (nor was the intent of Marvel or Disney when they characterized him), but I would be remiss to deny the very real place in which the character was built from. The foundation in which Killmonger was based on is a very real issue within the United States that social justice and civil rights activists continue to diligently combat.

Please, do not use the character Killmonger and some people’s ability to sympathize with him as justification for anti-Blackness or to vilify important social movements like Black Lives Matter.

The thing you need to understand about people liking the character Erik “Killmonger” Stevens, despite the fact he’s the villain, is this: His character is relatable to a lot of Blacks in a lot of generations. Sadly, people getting shot is all too common in poorer Black enclaves (also commonly referred to as “hoods” or “ghettos”), and I think it’s not too far fetched to say that many Blacks in America have directly or indirectly known someone who’s been a victim to some type of violence in the hood. More importantly, all Blacks have been victims to systemic, systematic, and general racism in some way or another; not to mention the events of Ferguson and so many Blacks having been shot down by police. As such, the general situation in America with Blacks is highly tense and oppressive with Blacks still feeling shooed aside. Like Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “a riot is the language of the unheard.” Dr. King did not agree with rioting, but he made sure to state that he would not condemn it because he comprehended why riots occurred in the first place. In comes Killmonger, a direct product of all that tension, frustration, and exasperation as well as of the inaction of others - their only justification for not reaching out to help being a blatant “well, it wasn’t affecting us, it’s not our fight”. Killmonger was faced with violence at a young age, and he continued to grow up in violence due to location (Oakland) as well as the color of his skin. At a certain point, people become numb to violence like it’s second nature. You can get so numb that everything except for your desire to survive, even your morals and integrity, get tossed out the window. Preservation becomes your only goal for life, and as such you’re willing to sacrifice absolutely everything for it. Killmonger’s story is close to home for a lot of Blacks because he symbolizes that hopelessness, bitterness, and defeated feeling that many Blacks are faced with. His intention was not from a place of evil, he wanted Blacks to be able to rise up like a phoenix from the ashes. However, his methods are what damned him and even more damning was the fact that he had been so numbed from violence that he became just like his own oppressors. Violence is a circle like that. Despite Killmonger being the villain, it is imperative to recognize that T’Challa, to some degrees, came to a place of agreeing with some of his message. He recognized the validity in Killmonger’s mission, which is what led to his internal conflict and to him questioning the tradition of Wakanda. It is a vital part of Black Panther that the characters and audience recognize exactly what Killmonger was, and what T’Challa ultimately realized: We create our own monsters. Think about that the next time you criticize events like Ferguson or the Black Lives Matter movement - in which it should be noted that those were not violent, but some violent individuals took advantage of and used the movement to claim legitimacy. That, however, is a conversation for another time. Think about that the next time you try to justify inaction and disinterest with ‘it doesn’t affect me’. “In the End, we will remember not the words of our Enemies, but the silence of our Friends.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.

In rereading my own analysis, I would like to revisit the complexity of villainy presented within Black Panther to point out that, while it is understood by viewers that Wakanda is the heroic and shining example, the film places both Wakanda (particularly the Wakandan nobles in power) and Killmonger in a grey area. Returning to the point within my original analysis, T’Challa recognized the harm of Wakanda’s and his father’s inaction with the problems that African and Black diaspora face. It is this realization that Killmonger has valid arguments and valid anger that leads into T’Challa’s understanding that Wakanda must undergo social and political change.

T’Challa actively expresses his disappointment in his father and in the Wakandan government, acknowledging the pain and suffering that his country contributed to with the decision to remain passive and “neutral”, at best, or toxically self-preserving, at worst.

All in all, I would go so far as to claim that Black Panther is an exceptional example of the complexity of humanity as well as serves an important reminder that sometimes villainy and heroism are not clear-cut black and white.

[lattehearted]

OTPs + nOTPs + byleth!

send  "OTPs  +  nOTPs  +  [a  muse  name]"  for  me  to  list  out  my  favourite  pairings,  and  the  pairings  i  am  not  interested  in,  for  that  muse.

whoo boy.

okay so the thing is with fire emblem protags especially, there's a very thin line between genuinely thinking they should be with a person and me, christina, liking that character and wanting to court them.

that being said, I'm generally pretty open with byleth? i think they're so curious and amiable once given the space to open up that i can make a lot of ships make sense. But some of my favorites:

OTPs:

out of the house leaders/lords? sorry not sorry, claudeleth supremacy. they just?? god I could go on and on about claude going from 'how can i use their power to aid me' to 'what i wanted was to see that new world with you by my side.' i think they help each other, lean on each other, and grow to be better people together in a way that feels much more organic over the course of the game. they make me absolutely feral and always will.

BUT as anyone who follows my personal blog knows, i love me some huleth. if there's one thing i love more than liege x retainer, it's suspicious retainer x character who wins them over with their continued loyalty to the cause. hubert's a support rewrote my brain chemistry and his s support is one of the only ones i can quote verbatim, in its entirety. i have such strong feelings that for my first 4 CF runs, i kept to a very strict quad - byleth, edelgard, hubert, and dorothea could Only marry each other for a while because that particular quad is so so good. i think there's really great chemistry with all four of them in all combos and it felt weird the first time i had to split them up for completionist reasons.

unexpectedly? i have SUCH a soft spot for byleth and balthus. i think there's something really sweet in their supports, in balthus being one of the first people to challenge byleth's complacency in the path laid before them, long before they had to worry about running an entire nation / religious institution. AND one of the first things byleth does after the war is secure the safety of kupala. like we don't know how soon after the final battle their s support takes place but still, clearly it was a matter of priority for byleth to do that for him. they're just? they're fun, they're a lot of fun.

NOTPs:

i'm not gonna elaborate because of The Disk Horse™ but those who know me know my feelings on the subject so i'm simply gonna say: byleth and r.hea.

also not something i see a lot because i'm sure people feel similarly but because he's technically an option, i'm just gonna mention our boy cyril. i appreciate his time skip design because i've played plenty of games where the younger eligibles look about 12 and he looks believably of age. BUT he does look 12 in part one and that's...weird. nope, not for me, gonna shove him at lysie or petra or ashe and call it a day.

and not a notp by any stretch, i'm always open to trying it, but i'd be remiss if i didn't mention that the fandom at large has kind of soured me on d.imileth. i follow some GREAT dimas and would love to explore things with them, please make me see the light, i used to like them! but uh...yeah, i strongly dislike a lot of the popular takes on them oops

[storiesforallfandoms]

inspirational ~ corpse husband

word count: 1589

request?: yes!

“Hi! I was wondering if you could do a corpse husband imagine where the reader has a feeding tube? If you can’t that’s perfectly fine, I just haven’t been able to find one yet.”

description: in which the group plays with a popular streamer that has a feeding tube and corpse tells her how much she inspires him

pairing: corpse x female!reader

warnings: swearing, mentions of chronic pain and cancer, also i only know a little bit about feedings tubes, i tried to do research in order to make myself more familiar but if there’s a lot of inaccuracies or anything i am very sorry i’m gonna try my best

masterlist (one, two)

Corpse listened to his friends shouting at one another to accuse each other of being sus. As usual, there was no use in trying to get a word in. Corpse spoke so softly that no one would even hear him unless they wanted to hear what he was saying.

“(Y/N)!” Toast suddenly exclaimed. “You’re being very quiet right now.”

“Because my damn tube is mixed up in my headphone wires!” (Y/N) exclaimed, sounding like she was far away from her mic. The group chuckled and continued with their conversation about who they thought the imposter was.

(Y/N) was a known Twitch streamer and YouTuber that rose to popularity when she started a series on her YouTube channel to show her journey through cancer treatments. Long before his own sudden boom in popularity, Corpse had watched all of her videos and became invested in her Twitch streams as well. Being someone who also struggled with chronic illness and pain, Corpse felt a sense of hope watching (Y/N) go through her treatment and still seem to optimistic in life and so productive in her YouTube and Twitch channels.

When Toast messaged the Amigops group to ask if anyone wanted to join his Among Us lobby with (Y/N), Corpse jumped at the chance. He hadn’t had much time to speak with her alone, but he was hoping to be able to tell her how much watching her content lifted him up during his worst times.

The meeting ended with no one being voted and brought them back to the office of the Polus map. Since they were playing with proximity chat, the argument from the meeting immediately continued with Rae and Toast warning everyone to stay away from Sean, who they were susing at the second imposter after already voting out Charlie.

Corpse watched (Y/N)’s pink astronaut run out of the office, silent amongst the chaos. He waited a moment before deciding to follow her, hoping he could meet her somewhere alone so he could talk to her.

He ran into O2 and noticed a pink bean in the boiler room stood by the water wheels. He ran in and stood in the doorway a moment before speaking.

“Hello (Y/N).”

“Ah fuck!” (Y/N) exclaimed. “Corpse! Don’t scare me like that!”

Corpse chuckled. “Sorry, I’ll warn you next time.”

“Are you here to kill me?”

“Maybe.”

“I’m okay with that. I feel like being killed by Corpse Husband in Among Us is like a rite of passage at this point.”

Corpse slowly approached (Y/N) to which she quickly ran away from him to the other water wheel. He laughed again before assuring her, “I’m not an imposter, you can trust me.”

“I don’t think I can, but I will choose to trust,” she told him.

“I actually came looking for you because I wanted to talk to you.”

“What did you want to talk about?”

There were so many things running through Corpse’s mind. He just wanted to blurt out everything he had thought about (Y/N) and her story, to thank her for giving him hope, to tell her what an inspiration she was. But his words caught in his throat and he struggled to get anything out.

Finally, he said, “What’s it like trying to be a streamer with your...with the um...”

“The feeding tube?” (Y/N) finished for him. “You can say it, Corpse. It’s not exactly a secret.”

He sighed, glad that she had a joking tone about it. “Yeah, with the feeding tube.”

“It’s annoying,” (Y/N) admitted. “Like...I’m assuming you’ve seen my streams or my videos but for the sake of anyone watching your stream who hasn’t: I have a nasogastric feeding tube, or an NG-tube, which is a feeding tube that goes in through the nose. As cliché as it is, just picture Hazel Grace from the Fault in our Stars. Additional cliché, I have it because I had cancer and the treatments left me so malnourished that I need a feeding tube even after I’ve gone into remission. So, because it’s tubes that are connected in my nose, I keep getting my headphone wires tangled in my tube or, very rarely, my mic wires, and it’s fucking annoying. It hurts like a bitch when I go to stand up and I yank the wires  by accident or something.”

“Does...does anything else hurt? Because of the cancer or the treatment or anything?”

“Not as much as it used to. I went into remission like nearly a year ago, so I’m doing better. It’s a process, but it’s had an amazing outcome in the end so I wouldn’t change a thing.”

“I find you really inspirational,” Corpse finally blurted.

He felt his face heat up with slight embarrassment as (Y/N) giggled. “You do?”

“Yeah. I followed your series about your recovery and I’ve watched some of your livestreams every now and then. What always stood out to me was when you talked about the negative side effects of your treatment, and eventually having to put the feeding tube in and how you’ve found that effects you, too. Being someone with chronic illness and constant pain, I’ve also had those days where it feels like even getting out of bed is too much work and I don’t feel like I can stream or make a video, but then my anxiety tells me that everyone is going to forget about me if I don’t make some type of content, so it’s just an internal struggle when really I should be resting.”

“Being a content creator and having an illness is tough,” (Y/N) agreed. “It feels like you can’t take a day off. I sometimes regret making that series because on days that I felt absolutely awful, I didn’t want to film or edit anything, but I felt like I had to because so many people were watching. Ironically enough, that became the topic of one of those videos; I just sat in front of my camera looking the worst I think I’ve ever looked on camera and talked about how exhausted I felt just from being alive, but felt like I couldn’t rest because of my channel. That’s when I started taking longer breaks between videos and streaming. Your fans won’t leave you, not the true fans anyways. They’ll always be by your side even if you decide to disappear from the Internet forever.”

Corpse half smiled to himself. “I’ve thought about doing that sometimes.”

“It’ll be easy for you to do that where you’re faceless. No one would bother you even after you left the Internet cause they’d have no idea it was you unless you spoke.”

A brief pause in their conversation caused them to hear Sean yelling as he ran past the room. (Y/N) giggled and walked out of the room. Corpse followed, hoping to continue the conversation somewhere else.

“It means a lot to me that you think that about me, though,” (Y/N) continued as she ran into the storage room. “I find you pretty inspirational too.”

This took Corpse by surprise. He didn’t know how to respond. Sure, he heard that all the time from his fans, and it always meant the world to him to know that people found him to be an inspiration, but it felt different to hear that from someone he had looked up to for so long.

“I wish I could’ve been a faceless creator like you,” she said when Corpse didn’t respond. “One of my biggest regrets is probably showing my face online. Although, it wouldn’t make sense for me not to show my face when I’m making a series about cancer treatment, but people can be mean. Even when someone is struggling with illness or a disease, the Internet doesn’t care. Whatever makes them feel better over someone else feeling like shit.”

“I still get a lot of hateful messages even though I’m faceless, though.”

“You do, but you’re so unbothered by it. Publicly anyways. When I get messages about how sickly I look I get so overwhelmed with sadness and I just wanna delete my channel forever. I can’t even fake not caring because it really does effect me.”

“Stick with me, I’ll teach you my ways. My favorite is trolling the troll.”

(Y/N) chuckled. “I’d like that a lot.”

Corpse watched (Y/N)’s pink bean approach his black one. “I’m glad we had this chat, Corpse. It made me really happy, but now it also makes doing this a lot harder.”

Corpse gasped as a kill animation popped up on the screen and (Y/N)’s astronaut quickly disappeared into the nearby vent. He was stunned into silence for a long time, just watching his ghost floating above his dead body. To make matters worse, (Y/N) had closed the door to storage so no one would find his body unless they had to go in there.

Charlie’s ghost floated through the walls and came to float next to Corpse’s. “Figured out Jack wasn’t the other imposter, huh?”

“Yeah,” Corpse said, laughing. “She really had me fooled. Buttered me up with compliments then killed me.”

“I taught her well,” Charlie comments before floating away again.

Corpse couldn’t help but laugh about the situation. He wasn’t mad, more impressed than anything. And he was a little happy; he got to talk to someone that had always been an inspiration to him and he made a new friend.

[martian-martian-martian]

🍰💖 do both this time /lh

💖What do you like best about your own writing?

This is a bit silly but -- that it makes me laugh.

I usually include jokes and situations in my work because they? genuinely amuse me! And reading back, when I can stomach it, I get a lot of joy out of feeling like a joke landed, or that I got timing right or described something in a really amusing way.

I also really like that I think I care about character a lot. I love to show who a person is in little things; what they like to eat and drink, how they spend their free time, what they choose to wear and how they wear it. I love describing the spaces people inhabit-- bedrooms, offices-- what do they surround themselves with. I believe that soul is encapsulated in a bunch of small aspects.

Lastly I would say I'm proud of the research I do, specifically regarding past eras. Historical accuracy mean a lot to me, but I also cherish nostalgia as a central part of my work. If a character is watching TV or eating cereal, I'm going to make sure that show or brand is true to the world I've put my story in.

🍰What are some comfort fics of yours?

I got a few classics. A lot of what makes a 'comfort' fic of mine comes down to things I actually enjoy reading and often admire, and use as goalposts for my own work. When you can enjoy a fic like literature, and it lets you see characters in a new light, you keep coming back.

This is sort of an honorable mention but I read a lot of NorriBeth fics back in the day on fanfiction.net. It's a favorite ship I always treasured, and I still stand by it, even if learning that Keira Knightly's age was much younger than her character's was a bit of a 'woof' moment (17 vs 19, I know it's not a lot but geez, UK age of consent, cmon now...). So many of my favorite fics are literally lost either to time or to the deteriorating watery grave of the FFN platform, but they forever have my heart.

Of the ones that survived Davy Jones' Locker, I adored Bound in her bones by snowbryneich.

A 27 chapter masterpiece of romantic tension, featuring a realistic take on arranged marriage of convenience to lovers with an empowered and relatable Elizabeth, a Darcyesque Norrington, an perfect historical accuracy to the nines. I was fucking riveted, and the same author did a couple other great ones, such as 'Fresh As A BrideGroom'. Other than that, I would be remiss to answer this without touching on one of my all time favorite fics, In A Strange Land by @mrs-evadne-cake, a phenominal writer who I'm sure is tired of both the Stranger Things fandom at large and also me, this specific fanfic author greenhorn, continually singing her praises. It almost embarasses me to gush MORE about it, especially since the author is an honest to god professional. I've written on it before, it's well paced, well crafted, terrifying, and exceptional use of every character. The kids are well written and adorable, the teens are nuanced and REAL in a way the show never grasped. There's enough Steve to sate my voracious need to watch his character development, and I even got a bit of Murray who is probably my weirdest blorbo of all time. If a fic is a weapon, this fic is a mythic one-of-a-kind sword, OP is a legendary dwarven blacksmith, and i am an awestruck lil hobbit apprentice hastily scribbling notes. If I had to rate my favorite Stranger Things seasons it would go like this: 1. Season 3

2. In A Strange Land

3. Season 2

4. Season 1

5. Season 4

That's all I have to say about that.

Third space I would say is a tie between : Praise You by HeartlessMemo, which is a master class on erotica and plus size bodies, but speaks to me personally as a bulimic and will likely touch anyone with body issues. It's hot, it's passionate, it's kinky as hell. Nandermo from WWDITS at its absolute best.

And the other one is A Bastard's Carol by scumbaganarchy @scumbaganarchy, who I have been honored to get to know as of late! What the hell do you want me to say. It's 'A Christmas Carol' with the entire Rik Mayall cinematic universe. Not only is funny, but it's also touching, genuinely heartwarming, treats all these bizarre characters like real, breathing people. I cozy up to it every holiday when I can with a hot drink, it's a true classic and just goes to show that passion and creative understanding of any fandom no matter how niche can produce something really meaningful. This fic is the pride of the 1980s Bitish Anarchocomedy Fandom of the modern era, and any Young Ones (or Bottom) fan should give it a look.

[tiredassmage]

I continue to love Tyr SO MUCH every time I read more about him. Just think he deserves some appreciation in ~the ask box~ and maybe a break. He sounds like he needs a break.

(Tbh he and my cipher agent Five sound like they’re in a very similar boat of “can we catch a fucking breather please?” “No” “okay thanks”) and love that for them

;_; I HAVE NO WORDS. MY ENDLESS APPRECIATION BACK TO YOU. Jkahdjdjfufjfkf. This literally means the world to me and let me also just say, you in my asks is always an absolute treat, I cannot thank you enough.

I really, really do love him, so like... unfortunately for him, he's suffering from my infamous main obsession syndrome and that means I also spend lots of time on his problems jsjdjdkfkf. He really could absolutely use a break. WHY isn't this man retired, honestly? Get out of the game, Nine. You lived. You literally evicted the Sith Emperor. Find a nice, remote planet and just fuck off, dude, take your husband with you. You deserve it, bestie!! (I give him maybe two weeks, tops, before he'd lose his patience. Someone tell him how to turn off all those spy instincts and that nasty sense of responsibility to see the conflict to its end because he can't help but feel he has to do something, knowing what he does of the Empire. Seriously. Tell him to stop. He worries me sometimes. Don’t you dare self-destruct like that, you dumb bastard. I’m watching you, Tyr.)

Imperial Agent support club tbh. They've done enough, damn it. 😔🤣 I probably owe them drinks, if Five would also like. xD

Okay, Tyr appreciation without me babbling off about him because while we’re here. I love playing pixel dress up with this man, so like, favorite ‘fits time!!!!

This is still my favorite look for him, I think. He’d never confess, but ‘the Red Blade’ is still probably one of his favorite covers and returning to a level of that persona on Rishi was way more fun than it had any right being.

It’d also be remiss of me to not mention his absolute classic(tm) - this eventually served primarily as a cold weather ‘fit, but was one of the earliest sets I acquired for him, so it’s one of the default outfits/color schemes I imagine him in.

I would say he has the most outfit slots unlocked of all my toons so far, but I think Lensan’s starting to give him a run for his credits, if he hasn’t already won. Tyr was really like... my descent into outfitter madness. The beginning. The first time I finally grasped the absolute potential of giving them different outfits for different occasions. It’s all been downhill from there, man. What do I play games for - and especially their money markets - if not to play pixel dress up, tbh? (Lensan has an absolutely outrageous amount of blasters I keep in his inventory for the sole purpose of stamping them to outfitter slots, it’s kinda hilarious.)

Also kudos to him for being the only character I have that hasn’t snatched a 2nd combat style bc I may have no idea if I’m doing half of it right, but you can pry Operative out of my cold, dead hands. Superior solo experience. It has stealth. It has a combat roll (that I miss when I play literally every other game, ngl, I’ve been corrupted). Solid single target output for my purposes of story content. I picked it up as a second for Len simply to make Section X dailies less a pain in the ass and I haven’t swapped back to Merc for him in ages, oops. >.>

I also need to go off about him and Shara one day because this bitch STILL probably hasn’t processed his feelings about how all of that went down and, honestly, Tyr, please. C’mon. I’m still judging him for how he tried to convince himself Nathema and Umbara and all of that was just like. Not an issue he needed to talk about. He was fine. Obviously. Theron was back!!! Alive!!! End of story, right???!!!! No!!! Absolutely not!!!! Shakes him by the shoulders, stop repressing your own feelings, you know you can talk to Theron!!!

Idiot. I love him. I love this man so much. I want to spin him around like a Rubix Cube.

[adultswim2021]

Space Ghost Week

They’ve invented the telephone?

Space Ghost Coast to Coast #35: “Gallagher” | July 25, 1997 | S04E02

Who knew that by the time we got to this episode, Gallagher would be dead, and that these guys would be famous, and that BOB is MORE FAMOUS than DAVID? WHAAA??? It’s important to note that this episode being titled Gallagher is probably a jab at comedian Gallagher, perhaps based on a discarded idea or just the mere connection of them all being comedians. It’s a subtle jab and it’s rooted in irony, but in 1997 it still probably qualified as “punching up”. Bob and David probably weren’t getting THAT rich off of Mr. Show, and Gallagher’s popularity was an unwelcome blight on anyone with a taste in comedy.

There may have been a time when this was one of my favorite episodes of the show, and it was ONLY because it featured Bob and David of “Bob and David” fame. Now I can confidently say that this actually is a better-than-average episode of Space Ghost. Bob and David are effortlessly funny, and carry the episode to a certain extent, but there are so many pure, sublime Space Ghost moments. Like, for example, when Space Ghost asks Bob or David a question and Zorak thinks Space Ghost is posing it to him. When Space Ghost corrects Zorak that he’s asking his guests the question, Zorak angrily demands “Well, quit lookin' at me!”. While Bob and David answer the question, Space Ghost continues glaring at Zorak. That’s just like, the perfect Space Ghost joke, right there. So simple, so dumb, so funny. 

The thing that Bob and David bring to the table is not just being hilarious improvisers, but also they genuinely want to play along with the episode, shaping it significantly. Bob pretends to get addicted to Space Ghost’s laser, and really sells the action of being hit with it. I recall on the commentary that the writers really loved when the guests would take the initiative to do stuff like that.

I would be remiss if I didn’t tell this story, for some reason. I remember a fellow forum poster absolutely got under my skin once because they posted a thread titled something like “does anyone else here think David Cross isn’t very funny?” and the examples that he cited were his two appearances in the Men in Black movies and this episode of Space Ghost. It infuriated me that this guy judged David Cross on such a meager sampling of his work without viewing what I felt were his “main” works: any of his stand-up or Mr. Show. 

I was also incensed that anyone could find David unfunny, which… look, I ran a little hot back then. I still love the guy, for some reason, but can get why he’s not for everyone. I was probably extremely pompous about the fact that I liked him and was supposedly right about liking him. But when I challenged this guy on whether or not he’d seen Mr. Show he shot back with “I don’t watch puppet shows”. This retort, which I THINK was meant to be funny? It baffled me and my friends so much that we, to this day, will reference that guy’s screen name if we are all watching something together and a puppet appears. 

One time we found him on twitter and I think we referenced his anti-puppet take to him and he was completely confused by it. Just one dumb dashed-off post has come to define his entire being for us. I guess the only comparable feeling I have to being on the other end of that is there was one guy in high school who would constantly reference the fact that I used to dub porns for people, and that was his only reference point for who I was. I was so much more than that. I also dubbed South Park episodes.

[uesp]

This is why I can't play Morrowind rip

I don’t blame you. There’s a lot of games I can’t play, even some I used to, for reasons like Morrowind’s navigation issues. A thought that enters my mind a lot for games with those issues is “this game does not respect my time”. Whenever I think that, I’m just done with it now. I tend to find I’m happier for it.

To be clear I don’t dislike Morrowind, I do in fact like it quite a bit. I also understand that it is a product of its time, popular concepts in game design evolve with time, with a lot of what I would consider bad ideas falling to the wayside with time (along with some game design ideas that should really be given more tries, although that’s super tangential).

At the same time I’m willing to admit to things I dislike about the game. Morrowind is not sacred, it can be criticized. I don’t like running into unjustified difficulty walls (without taking advantage of exploits). If a game encourages you to explore, and exploring the world is arguably what Morrowind MOST encourages you to do, getting cut off by enemies who are arbitrarily too powerful is terrible design. That’s not to say I dislike a game expecting you to get more powerful to expand what areas you can explore, far from it. But it should be a fairly natural process of discovery. It should be clear that I’m heading into danger.

One good example of this is Red Mountain. Red Mountain in its entirety is gated off by a giant glowing and ominous wall with only one easy entrance. As you approach it the weather becomes increasingly grim, before the entire world turns a sinister shade of red. That sets the tone. It tells me, without necessarily saying anything (although NPCs also warn you), that what’s in there is going to be much more dangerous, and that I shouldn’t go that way unless I’m sure I’m ready.

A random human living in a cave being considerably more powerful than a different random human living in a similar cave is comparatively bad. Sadly, I feel that this is much more common than the warnings with Red Mountain.

To change topics, the Dark Brotherhood NPCs constantly attacking you whenever you rest if you have the Tribunal expansion (which most people will have at this point, as most copies of the game you can easily acquire come with it by default now) is absolutely awful design of the highest level. If you aren’t familiar, when you start a new game or load a save after enabling the Tribunal expansion, there will be persistent, respawning enemies that attack you when you rest until you go to a higher level area to put a stop to their attacks. They start spawning immediately, and they become increasingly dangerous if you just try to put up with the attacks.

What were they thinking? In my opinion, the implementation of these Dark Brotherhood assassins to get you to start Tribunal is a solid contender for the single worst developer decision in any Elder Scrolls game. I’m sure there have been worst design choices in games overall, but I think it might be an honorable mention on a list of all-time worst game design decisions. I have actually tested this with a group of people who have never played Morrowind before, and the DB attacks were consistently a wall they couldn’t get past. I don’t think a person can pick up Morrowind today without either having a game guide (like the UESP), using mods to fix this, or just dropping the difficulty down (a feature hidden in the menu). That’s really, really bad.

I know we’ve been talking about this in other posts, but while talking about things from Morrowind that make it harder for me to get into now, I would be remiss to not go more in-depth with my problems with it (especially since that was the anonymous message’s primary gripe). As Morrowind does not have quest markers, you are reliant on directions NPCs give you. Directions like this...

"The burial caverns lie to the south-southeast of the camp, a north-facing door in a little hill halfway between us and the slopes of Red Mountain. Go north from the camp to the water, then turn east. At a rock cairn on the beach, turn and head straight south until you find the door. The spirits of our ancestors guard the caverns. They will attack, and will kill you if they can. Force your way past them, or evade them, get the bow, and return to prove your worthiness."

Those are actual directions you get during part of the main quest.

Honestly, I can often remember where to go or just instinctively pull up our interactive map if I need it, but if I didn’t have foreknowledge of Morrowind locations, this would bother me immensely. I don’t have unlimited free time, I would like to do the parts of the game that are fun and rewarding, not search mindlessly through Morrowind’s ash and fog-covered countryside for a gray door on the side of a gray rock. When a game doesn’t respect that, I have a hard time playing it. TES has a special place in my life, but I can absolutely understand how things like this are deal breakers for people.

But to change tracks, and to end this post, I would like to leave you with something I absolutely love about Morrowind. A lot of games play with the trope of you having to prove you are “worthy”. Morrowind absolutely does, you interact with a ton of characters who outright despise you, and barely tolerate you enough to send you to complete some task to prove your worth, before sending you off on a dozen more missions to continue to prove yourself, before sending you to other groups who you then have to prove yourself to. However, Morrowind lets you throw up your hands at their demands and snide comments and go “You are all garbage people, and I dislike you all immensely. I don’t need you or your perfunctory approval or your stupid artifacts. Now I’m going to go kill the monsters none of you could because I am AMAZING and HARDCORE and YOU ARE NOT. And I’m going to do it all while FLYING because I am too good to walk on the same dirt you all are confined to.”

And honestly, every game should let you do that.

[teawaffles]

The Fugitives from the Fire: Chapter 4

Note: Some language. Also, this is a long chapter!

Aside: The chapter numbering has been altered slightly — the previous chapter is now just Chapter 3, rather than Chapter 3 Part 1.

Lestrade seemed mortified that they hadn’t even managed to preserve the scene of the crime, for his shoulders quietly slumped.

“Have you managed to deduce anything so far?” he asked Sherlock.

The detective spoke languidly.

“First off, about the man in the room…… Let’s assume he was not only dead, but also murdered. Then if we take the straightforward explanation that it’d been blood on his back, he would’ve most likely been killed using a physical weapon; I’m thinking it could be either a stab or shot wound. As for potential suspects…… An obvious one would be the other fugitive. For motive, they could’ve had a simple falling-out, or maybe he wanted to silence his accomplice for fear of his own arrest.”

The inspector brooded over his analysis.

“A stab or shot wound, hmm. If it’s the former, the attacker would’ve needed to break into the room.”

“Yep, so the most promising candidate right now’s that ‘In the middle of the chaos from the fire, the man had been sniped through the window’.”

“If that’s the case, then does it mean the fire had been an act of arson?”

“It’s highly likely. Do we have a detailed description of the room’s furnishings?”

“For that, let’s ask the officer who witnessed the scene himself.”

Lestrade made a strangely grim expression, then looked in the distance, beckoning someone to come over. But when Sherlock saw him, his jaw dropped.

“……So it’s you.”

“Yeah. It’s me.”

It was Assistant Inspector Gregson. Sherlock was lost for words; before him, Gregson scowled and crossed his arms. He had been the officer who’d stood watch outside the room when the incident occurred, and the sole witness of the murder scene.

Now that he knew that, Sherlock finally understood why the man had been acting strange earlier.

“Ohh, I see. It’s no wonder you didn’t want to face us — the criminal you arrested had been killed before your very eyes.”

Sherlock smirked, and Gregson replied in frustration.

“I-I’m keenly aware of my responsibility in this. But at any rate, as a police officer, I have no reason to feel indebted to you.”

“I’m not accusing you of anything. But from what you said, that means you were the one who’d been in charge of the scene back then. Was there some reason why you chose to remain behind and stand watch?”

Gregson seemed to find it difficult to say aloud.

“……During the interrogation, a crowd had formed around the building; in order to calm them down, I’d wanted to mobilise all the officers at the scene with me. But we absolutely needed someone to keep watch over the fugitive, and I thought my personality wouldn’t be suited to placating the residents here, so I remained behind…… Though, now that I think about it, that had been a rather short-sighted judgement.”

Gregson narrowed his eyes, seemingly vexed at his own mistake, but Lestrade cut in.

“No, I think that was quite a logical decision. Moreover, to begin with, all of you were sent to such a difficult scene on my orders. So part of the blame rests with me as well.”

“N-No, you’re not at fault here, Inspector; it was all due to my carelessness.”

As Lestrade and his subordinate argued back and forth, Sherlock raised a hand to stop them.

“Sorry, but let’s talk about who’s to blame later. For now, our priority’s to share information, isn’t it?”

Annoyed at being spoken to like that by the detective he so detested, Gregson turned to face Lestrade.

“……Well then, what would you like to know, Inspector?”

“The furnishings in the room, please.”

Gregson’s gaze trailed upward as he recalled what he saw back then.

“About the interior, there wasn’t anything particularly unusual. The room was rectangular, with a small bed, a table and two chairs. As for entry points, there was a window on its north side, and the needlessly sturdy door opposite it. There wasn’t even a mirror nor a bathroom.”

Hearing that, Sherlock’s expression turned serious.

“So it was really just a place to sleep. Then, about the man who collapsed while handcuffed to the chair or something — what part of the room was he in?”

Gregson glared hatefully at him, and responded in a thorny tone.

“When I looked through the keyhole, he was on the floor right before my eyes. It was around one step away from the door. And his back — or more precisely, the area stretching from his back to somewhere around his waist — was stained the colour of blood.”

At this point, Sherlock asked a question.

“The victim’s hands were each cuffed to the chair’s armrests, right? If he’d still been in that state, I thought the chair would’ve been resting on his back.”

Furrowing his brows, Gregson crossed his arms.

“There was only so much I could see through the keyhole, so I didn’t manage to get a look at his entire body; but the chair was nowhere near his back. This is just my speculation, but I think he might’ve forcefully broken the armrests and escaped his bonds.”

“Was the chair really that shoddy?”

“……He didn’t put up much of a fight when we arrested him, so I got careless and used something close by to restrain him. On second thought, it was remiss of me to do so.”

Hearing Gregson’s reflection, Sherlock contemplated the fugitive’s exact movements.

“So that means he managed to get free of the chair, and move around the room with his hands still cuffed. In that case, wouldn’t he have made some noise? Though, the commotion from the residents back then might have drowned it out.”

“I don’t think so; even if there had been the sound of the chair breaking, I’m sure I would’ve noticed it. The problem is what happened after the fire began. Back then, I was in a panic, and both the inside and outside of the building were in such an uproar that I didn’t have the attention to notice any noises coming from the room.”

Mortified, Gregson lowered his gaze once again, but Sherlock continued in a calm voice.

“So the arrested fugitive didn’t make his move until the fire broke out. Was there anything in the room that could’ve been used as a weapon?”

“Of course, we thoroughly inspected the room before the interrogation began. From the start, that was the room the man himself had stayed in, so we searched it down to the very corners in case he had hidden anything inside. But we didn’t find anything that could’ve been used as a weapon.”

Gregson said so with certainty, but Sherlock was still not convinced.

“Obviously there were things that could’ve been used to kill or wound, now weren’t there? If he’d broken the wooden armrests, the pieces could have been fashioned into a stake. Even if he didn’t do that, he could’ve broken off wood from the floor or the wall, and created a weapon in the same way.”

“……It sounds like you’re saying he could’ve taken advantage of the commotion from the fire to commit suicide. But even if, as you suggested, he tried to kill himself with a sharp object, normally one would try to cut their neck — it’s hard to believe he would’ve stabbed himself with enough force for the weapon to pierce through his back.”

Gregson had made a reasonable argument; but even as he concurred, Sherlock put forward a different perspective.

“However, let’s say he did break off some wood from the floor or wall, and pared it into a sharp point: what if, when he was moving around, he accidentally fell onto it? It’s not clear whether it was deliberate or unintentional, but I’m thinking it was a fatal wound.”

Sherlock was still pursuing the idea that the criminal had died by his own hand. Hearing that, for a moment, Gregson forgot his animosity and pondered. Then, he shook his head in a gentle denial.

“I don’t think that’s the case either. If it were, there would’ve been some sharp object and bloodstains left in the room. But from what I saw through the keyhole, the walls and floor were clean, and there’d been nothing resembling bloodstains. There were some tiny splatters of something like blood around the body, as well as little puddles of the same substance; but in terms of noticeable bloodstains, that was all I saw.”

“——Only that? If he’d bled out enough for his back to be dyed red, there should’ve been an equivalent amount of blood splattered all around him.”

Sherlock tilted his head. Gregson also thought it strange, and knitted his brows.

“It gets stranger and stranger the more I think about it. It doesn’t seem to be the case that the weapon staunched the wound when he was stabbed…… Maybe he’s anaemic?”

“…………”

It wasn’t clear whether Gregson had been joking, or if that had been unintentional. With a thoughtful look, Sherlock kept his mouth shut.

Then Lestrade, who’d been listening attentively thus far, offered his own theory.

“From what I’ve heard, it seems this is neither a suicide nor an accident. Then what if he was just pretending to be dead? Perhaps the other fugitive had started the fire at some prearranged time. Then the man who’d been caught pretended to be dead, and waited for the officer outside to leave before escaping. Maybe he purposely collapsed in front of the door, in order to have Gregson witness it. As for the blood, he could’ve used some red paint to fake it.”

But Sherlock disputed that view.

“It’s not a bad theory, but then the question remains as to how he managed to splatter the paint in that way. Moreover, he probably wanted to escape the inn; but the other officers had secured the area around the building, right?”

Hearing that, Gregson scowled.

“I don’t like agreeing with you…… But certainly, I didn’t receive any reports that he’d left the room.”

Sherlock looked at the charred ruins of the inn.

“Then he hadn’t managed to escape, so it’s highly likely that he’s been burnt to a crisp in there. Just wondering, were there any secret passages in the room?”

Astonished, Gregson chuckled.

“No way; it’s not like this is a secret base. Besides, we checked the room thoroughly: even if there had been an escape route, we would’ve found it.”

“If we’re talking about escape routes, he could have also broken through the walls or the floor, couldn’t he?”

Gregson pondered over Lestrade’s question for a second, then shook his head gently.

“Certainly, the inn was old, and also not maintained very well: various parts of the walls and floor were decaying, and I even saw some tiny holes where they had rotted through. If we’d taken the time and effort, I think it would’ve been possible to break through them. Still, just like the chair, I’m sure I would’ve caught the sound of the walls or floorboards being stripped off — I was standing right in front of the room. Moreover, if he only started his work after I left, then he would’ve been caught in the blaze before he managed to complete his escape.”

“……I see. The fire seems to have spread pretty fast, and it would’ve been impossible for him to finish the passage right away, now wouldn’t it?” Lestrade agreed.

Then, Sherlock clapped his hands together.

“With that, we’ve eliminated the theory that he faked his death and escaped. We can’t be fully certain until the debris has been searched; but at present, by the process of elimination, there are no longer any obstacles to the theory that this is a locked-room murder, yes?”

Sherlock weaved together the various sources of information as he made that assertion, and Lestrade concurred.

“In that case, just as I’d thought, we’ll need to search for the other fugitive. But a long time has passed since the fire broke out: wouldn’t he have already escaped?”

“About that, Inspector: I have one piece of good news.”

With a proud expression, Gregson continued.

“We know that the other fugitive has burns on his face. Among the guests who evacuated the inn during the fire, there were three men with such injuries.”

“Really? ……But, couldn’t they just be regular people who got caught in the fire?”

Lestrade was doubtful. Immediately, Sherlock responded.

“Not necessarily; no one had entered or left the inn both before and after the fire, so naturally, the arsonist must’ve been inside the building……. Is that what you wanted to say, Mr Assistant Inspector?”

“……Yeah.”

Having had the role of explaining the situation stolen from him, Gregson responded blandly.

An assistant inspector who detested detectives, and the detective himself who enjoyed that antipathy. Hearing their usual exchange, Lestrade broke into a wry smile.

“In that case, we should meet the three and talk to them.”

“Of course; they’ve been gathered at a different location, so…… Hmm?”

Just as Gregson was about to show him the way, he suddenly frowned. Once again, the crowd that had amassed near the scene was starting to make a commotion.

“Oi, you shitty bobbies! There’s soot all over the place, and it’s a pain in the ass!”

“This must be all your doing, oi!”

“Don’t think you can just go home scot-free after all you’ve done here!”

Now that the fire had been put out, it seemed the locals’ anger towards the Yard had gradually been rekindled; all at once, the residents of the slums began to kick up a fuss. As foul-mouthed insults were launched from one group, a torrent of frustration exploded from another in a chain reaction — in a flash, Lestrade and the others were stranded in a storm of fury.

Their enmity had surged out of the blue, and Lestrade was clearly on edge.

“This isn’t good. We’ll have to calm them down and try to explain that we’ve been only pursuing the criminals.”

“That won't work: they were already annoyed when the Yard arrived, and then that fire broke out — it’s more than enough to make them furious.”

Sherlock calmly analysed the situation, but Gregson’s reply was steeped in frustration.

“Then what should we do? At this rate, we’ll have a real fight on our hands.”

Still, Sherlock was unruffled.

“The answer’s clear and simple: get on with it and find the real culprit. Once we reveal the actual cause of the fire, they should calm down. Our job hasn’t changed — it’s just that the time limit has morphed into something we can see.”

“……So we have until their anger reaches a boiling point?”

At once, Lestrade understood what needed to be done. He heaved one big sigh, and put on his game face once again.

“Gregson: show Holmes to the suspects. I’ll work with the others to appease the crowd. While we’re keeping a lid on the situation, I want you two to solve the case together.”

“‘Eh?’”

Both Gregson and Sherlock exclaimed in perfect harmony. Then they looked at one another; The detective lowered his gaze slightly as he thought it through, then let out a thin exhale.

“So it’s come to this.”

“Oi, I could see you giving up after thinking about a lot of things, you know.”

Gregson glared at him in disapproval. Meanwhile, Lestrade placed a hand on each of their shoulders.

“Alright: I’m counting on you both.”

Leaving just those reassuring words behind, he left gallantly towards the crowd. Eloquently, the inspector had entrusted the entire investigation to them, and Sherlock’s eyes were filled with resignation as he watched the man depart.

“Now this has gotten troublesome,” he mumbled.

“Hmm? Are you talking about the case? Or about the fact that we’re working together?”

“No, no, I’m talking about how this has become a rather odd ‘riddle’.”

Gregson’s ears had been sharp, but Sherlock parried his retort with diplomacy.

——“Hang in there, Sherlock!”

Having been paired up with a troublesome man, in a glum Sherlock’s mind, it felt as though John’s encouraging cheers were ringing out.

Translator’s notes

Mysteries and ‘riddles’

You might have noticed that Sherlock and Lestrade sometimes talk about ‘riddles’. The original text differentiates between 謎 and〝謎〟(notice the quotes) — the word itself means mystery/riddle, but the quoted version is used to refer to the mysteries that are (possibly) linked to the Lord of Crime. For instance, at the end of Forbidden Games (Book 2 Story 1), William also talks about the ‘riddles’ he sets for Sherlock.

I chose to translate the quoted version as ‘riddles’, since I think the word ‘mystery’ implies that the case might not have a solution; in contrast, I feel the word ’riddle’ suggests that the mystery has a solution, since it was intentionally created by William in the first place.

[ouyangzizhensdad]

Do you think that making Chinese food is cultural appropriation? I'm white and started making some of the foods I saw in the shows I've watched since the untamed, but now I'm worried I'm appropriating the culture.

Hi anon,

As a fellow white person, I am also someone who needs to critically reflect on how I engage with different cultures. I can't give you the definitive answer you seek, the clear absolution from any potential wrongdoings; in its stead, I can only offer to share my current thought process on this topic. I’d still encourage you to seek other perspectives, and many people have written or spoken on this topic.

I believe we must first acknowledge that, on the terrain of the internet, discussions regarding cultural appropriation have reached a certain... extreme where some people view all forms of cultural exchanges as inherently suspect. They purport that so long as you stay within the bounds of ‘your’ culture, you will problematic behaviours. That perspective is inherent flawed. That is, it relies on a vision of culture as ‘bounded entities’ that exist in themselves. In reality, the ‘stuff’ that makes culture is emergent, existing only relationally, dialectically--it is a not a ‘thing’ that moves through time but an idea which is constantly negotiated and reproduced in relation to power and changing material realities to remain relevant and intelligible. The boundaries of cultural and ethnic groups are fuzzy, overlapping, and constantly being reworked and made meaningful. As an illustration, many of the food I grew up eating was influenced by ingredients and recipes immigrants brought in the 19th and 20th centuries, yet these dishes were understood as 'typically ours’. And it needs to be acknowledged that most of what is currently considered ‘white people food’ relies on ingredients that were introduced to our diet through colonialism and the violent dispossession of indigenous peoples (and, often, the current day exploitation of workers in the South and of migrant workers). No food can be truly ‘traditionally ours’, whatever the purported ‘we’ ends up being brought into the equation, and no eating behaviours can avoid the historical legacy and continuity of violence and power.

Of course, as people who exist in the world, we know that there are cultural differences. Bakhtin’s insights on language through the tensions between centripedal (ie towards uniformity, a common meaning) and centrifugal (toward diversity and change) forces can be expanded to help us conceptualise how we make sense of the way a ‘culture’ is perpetuated through time as something meaningful in our daily lives. Uniformity allows intelligibility, sense-making, but diversity and change are inescapable by-products of individuals and groups repeatedly going through life, meeting and trying to create intelligibility and sense together in a world that cannot stay the same. It is at the intersection of these two conflicting forces that something can be different yet considered the same--that we can create continuity out of change. But something perhaps less emphasized in Bakhtin’s discussions is how much power and material realities work on these forces. Power influences both centripedal and centrifugal forces, if only in orchestrating circumstances that shape how one encounters ‘different cultures’ or reproduces their 'own' culture.

We live at a moment where the world seems to have reached an apex of connectivity--where goods, people, ideas (and viruses) move across distance and borders at speeds that defy comprehension. Yet the way goods, people and ideas move (through which canals and systems? in which direction? to the benefits of whom? at the expense of whom? to what reception or use? in the service of which institutions and ideologies?) or are, inversely, incapable or unwilling to move, is influenced by power and material realities. It is inescapable.

In a roundabout way, what I’m trying to say is that it's useless to try to live life in 'your lane' by turning to a baseline 'culture' because we simply do not have a baseline culture to return to that is 'safe' from the influences of other cultures or the taint of the historical legacy and continuity of violence. So how do I personally reconcile that with how I engage with content that is produced from different cultural contexts, and how I engage with cooking food that is influenced by different cultural contexts? For me the guidelines I take into consideration are respect, attribution and avoiding forms of dehumanisation. These emerged out of witnessing how other white people have acted as well as critically reflecting on how I have acted in the past, and trying to do better (including of course, by listening to different perspectives on the topic). [just in case, warning for examples of racism/micro-agressions] I've been in China with white people who would praise the cooking we were eating in the same breath they were making jokes about dog meat. I've witnessed in Japan a dude decide not to come to an izakaya with Japanese colleagues, fucking off on his own to Akihabara instead, because he was disappointed he couldn’t talk about anime with them--too obsessed with the idealised version of Japan he’d created in his head to treat the Japanese people he met as people. The internet is full of white people telling you how to cook food from places they've never been and taking credit for 'popularising' that dish or 'making it better'. That's not even talking about the tendency for food to become a mark of a cosmopolitan, metropolitan identity in the West--the open-minded, the liberal, the traveler, the hip white person up with the times and beyond the mainstream. Hell, I've even seen people who act as if eating ‘ethnic’ food prepared by immigrants is the singular proof that they were people who cared about immigrants' well-being.

Food is rarely just about food, even when consumed at home. At the same time, we’d be remiss in all these discussions of power to dismiss how food is also one of oldest things we, as humans, want to share with others--including strangers. Feeding is nourishing and giving, eating is accepting into ourselves something made by others. Most people appreciate it when the value of a dish that holds importance for them is recognised by others--although, of course, many might understandably also resent that they have been discriminated against or mocked for eating that same food. Every time I’ve been invited in an immigrant household or at events with mostly immigrants, I’ve felt this sense of almost trepidation emanating from them, waiting for my reaction, and satisfaction once I was seen eating and appreciating the food they had served me--as if the acceptance of the food that was tied to their identity was a form of acceptance of who they were. Of course this can’t be disentangled from past experiences where other people might have been disrespectful, dismissive or outright racist: but the excitement they had in sharing food that had meaning to them and seeing others appreciate it was genuine.

Beyond situations of clear cultural sharing, where we get closer to what appears to be ‘cultural appropriation’, I believe that we cannot act as if there is something inherently sacrilegious in the idea of adapting recipes or using a specific ingredients in new ways--that’s centrifugal forces at play, and they have provided us with many dishes we love today: from immigrant creations like butter chicken to things like spicy kimchi. We cannot work with the assumption that people will only react with hostility at the idea of other people cooking the food they grew with, even in ways that are different from how they’re traditionally used and are thus “not authentic”. I still remember an interaction I had in a Korean grocery store, once upon a time when I lived in a metropolitan city. A man in front of me at the cash register who had been buying snacks and chatting with the employee in Korean looked at my stuff and suddenly asked me if I knew the name of the leafy green I was buying. I wasn’t necessarily surprised because I had overheard in the past customers and employees commenting in Korean about being surprised about the ingredients I, a white person, was purchasing, thinking I couldn’t understand them. I confirmed to him that I knew I was buying mustard greens. He then asked me what I was planning to do with them, and I explained that while I didn’t think it’s a traditional or common way of using it, I personally liked to add them to kimchi jjigae because it compliments their bitter/strong taste and I like leafy greens in my soups and stews. He said it was interesting, and that he was kind of impressed. The employee chimed to tell me I should be honoured at the compliment because the man was actually a chef who owned famous Korean fusion restaurants in the city. That was clearly someone who took Korean food very seriously and clearly had a certain degree of suspicion regarding how white people interacted with it, but he was also curious and interested in seeing how I approached ingredients without having grown up eating them.

Another point of contention is also that we cannot ignore that food is a sensual experience and that, while tastes are greatly influenced by our environment, they are not solely so. I grew up hating most of the food my parents would serve me, and started cooking in my early teens to avoid having to eat it. Before I started cooking, I would often just eat rice with (in hindsight horrible) western-brand soy sauce instead of the meal my mom had made. When I ate Indian food for the first time during a trip at the ripe age of 16, it blew my mind that food could taste like this. Of course I never wanted to look back, and with each years I discovered that a lot of Asian cuisines fit my palate better than what I grew up eating or other cuisines I had tried. When I was a teenager we visited my mom’s friend in France and I hated what she served us so much I’d simply choose to nibble on bread, prompting her to try to stage an intervention for my ‘obvious’ anorexia. Yet, being in China made me realise ingredients I thought I hated had just been cooked in ways I disliked. Do my taste buds absolve me from any need to think critically about how I interact with food? Of course not. But sometimes the reason we want to cook certain recipes and foods is just that it tastes great to us, and we want to reproduce the recipes we enjoyed with the ingredients and the skills we have. Or, really, sometimes we just want to try new tastes because we do a lot of eating throughout our lives, and it seems a waste to limit ourselves to a narrow number of dishes for decades to come.

So that’s where I currently am in my thinking about this topic, as a white person who cooks dishes influenced by a number of different places but who is also not trying to cook in a way that is necessarily authentic. Some things that I keep in mind that you can ask yourself now that cdramas and cnovels have made you interested in Chinese cooking is: are you taking this as an opportunity to support immigrant businesses when getting your ingredients? are you supporting white creators when looking for chinese recipes (some suggestion of youtube channels: Made with Lau, Chinese cooking Demystified, Family in Northwest China, 西北小强 Xibeixiaoqiang, 小高姐的 Magic Ingredients)? are you being respectful (not reproducing harmful stereotypes in how you talk about chinese food and the people who eat it)? do you use your interest in Chinese food to create a narrative about China and Chinese people that denies them, in some way, of their complexity and humanity? are you using your interest in Chinese food to create a narrative about yourself?

In conclusion I will leave you with a picture of some misshapen baozi I’ve made.