#and I don't expect this post to actually accomplish anything

[evertidings]

— AUGUST 2024.

accomplishments.

hello helloooooo!! how's everyone doing? i don't know if you've seen my teaser post recently (pspspsspsp) but chapter eleven is on its way!! i know, i know, it's been a hot minute since i've released anything and i'm sure you've heard enough from me about how difficult it's been to get here, but we made it everyone.

hallelujah.

i have a date in mind but i'm going to keep it to myself for a little longer, at least until i'm a little farther along in the editing process. as i'm sure some of you may know, once i finish writing a chapter, my routine is to go through two rounds of edits, code and then send the chapter off to beta-testers. i'm still stuck on round one of edits (someone save me), so i still have some ways to go, but we're a lot closer to release than ever before, so it's very exciting.

i mentioned this in an ask recently, but i'm super nervous for this chapter. i wrote it over a span of several months, with writer's block plaguing me at every step of the way, so some of what i'm editing right now is quite literally from january and february. if any of you are writers, you know how much your style can change in a short time, so reading some of this really has my head spinning. i don't actually know what i was trying to say for some of these scenes, but that's what this is for.

usually, editing and coding are my two least favourite stages (and as a result, the two stages i struggle with the most), so please wish me luck as i power through this!

in the meantime, i will be looking for some new beta-testers for chapter eleven so if you're interested, i've created a little form for you that you can find here. i'll post about this separately in the coming days, but if anyone is curious now, here you go!

alright, back to editing now! as always, thank you for sticking by me and waiting patiently. i truly hope this chapter lives up to your expectations. i'll talk to you very very soon <3

[spockandawe]

Double edit: actually, that's enough of that.

Edit: I was expecting maybe thirty notes tops. This is a surprise, and one that doesn't delight me. If I hear about any harassment stemming from this post, I'll be more pissed at the harasser than the person this is about.

God. Dammit.

I hate this, let's just out that out there! I'm unhappy that I'm talking about any of this, I'm unhappy there's an issue that's come up at the intersection of media preservation, respecting authors, and one of my favorite book series. And I'm unhappy that I've censored the names in the screenshots I'm about ti post! I'm not happy that I'm helping to slide consequences away from someone who thought this was an acceptable thing to do to a modern working author. But I'm even less happy this is something that happened in the first place, and I'm VERY unhappy the original post has been deleted without a whisper of accountability or apology.

And here's a partial screenshot of the IA page, which has since been removed. I get the excitement to share something you love with a new audience. This isn't the right way to go about it.

First, if Martha Wells' patreon is still in place, I encourage everyone in the strongest possible terms to go sign up for it. It'll charge you one dollar. I've been a member since probably 2018, and I mistakenly believed it was locked to new members (it's labeled 'Currently Closed To New Patrons') until I had reason to look it up last night, when I tripped across this reddit post from earlier this year.

Now. I was looking it up because of this sudden patreon message:

Even if the patreon goes away, I still recommend that people sign up. Explore the stories! They're very fun! Even though the patreon has been dormant for years, I've loved having that repository in place.

In fact, in the interest of full disclosure, what kept me from immediately reblogging last night is that I've felt the same archival urges! I bound a hard copy of these stories earlier this year, and let me quote my own words from that post:

I live in a state of perpetual low key stress over the impermanence of digital media and that goes extra for sites that aren’t designed to work well as archives. I hope, desperately, that someday Martha Wells publishes more raksura, maybe even including these stories! I will buy it immediately. No thoughts, wallet empty. I own all her other raksura books in literally three formats, fingers crossed that by printing this, I can actualize a formal official printing of these stories by the author 😂

So. Archiving, yes. But especially with a living, working author, I would never DREAM of posting a public free-for-all with IA and mediafire links. My most charitable interpretation is that OP thought it was fine since the stories were "free," even though the writeups acknowledge that access costs a dollar. Ao3 is also free. Reposting someone else's fic is still understood to be a dick move.

Last night i was left kind of stunned, and I was hoping to see some kind of response from op this morning taking responsibility, and was... disappointed to see that the post was just deleted. The IA listing was deleted too, and I hadn't actually looked up the mediafire post yet but I'm guessing it's also been nuked. Out of curiosity, I wanted to see if there was anything more in the comments, so I found a surviving reblog. And there was!

So I'm writing this post because I'm... frustrated. Taking down the files is a good step. Posting them publicly was a worse step, but hey. I still more than understand if Martha Wells still deletes her patreon. I don't understand what sending her files of her own stories is meant to accomplish, but whatever. Ascribing a profit-driven motive is driving me up a wall, though. She's financially stable. I read her email, and what i see is frustration that even though it only cost a dollar to access 62k of her work through her own chosen location, control of her writing is being forcibly removed from her. I'm sure that seeing copies sold by third parties wouldn't help, but I don't think that's the root issue.

This is a fandom-heavy website, I'm sure most of us have seen posts about not reposting art when you can share directly from the artist's blog. I've seen posts about stop copying your ao3 faves over to wattpad just because you like reading there better. At a fundamental level, I read the message from Martha Wells as a deep frustration at having no way to share her creative work without someone removing control of it from her hands. And I don't know if there's any way to really take back that damage.

[zykamiliah]

Tell me about Shen Yuan's mental gymnastics

oh boy where do i start

there are various sides to sy's mental gymnastics:

-his sexuality, that directly correlates to his feelings for binghe; we know how he projects his desire for lbh into the Women/Wives characters, he is in complete denial and actively suppressing his own sexuality, for quite a while and even before he transmigrated, since he has some "skeletons in his closet" in regards to past crushes. he frames his feelings for lbh and his responses during sex as submitting to lbh's charm and "technique" as if to imply he doesn't really have a choice or is being convinced into loving and having sex with lbh, which is one of the biggest misunderstandings for readers in the whole novel. for him admitting that he likes gay sex is tremendously embarrassing, and a consequence from being raised in a homophobic/queerphobic culture.

-his self-image, not in the sense that insecure or lacks confidence, but in that he perceives himself as inconsequential-- he doesn't expect much to come from his good actions except maybe that people will spare his life (lbh, lqg) and instead weighs his bad actions as worse than they are. even if he doesn't think about it a lot, he expects lbh to hate him and kill him for pushing him into the endless abyss, yet doesn't take into the equation everything else he did as a shizun for lbh and the other qjp disciples. this probably comes from his fandom-agreed third child syndrome, in that as such he grew up thinking his actions don't have any impact in the people around him (not taking into account the impact of his death in hua yue city, for example, in lbh and his martial siblings and disciples); related to that, is the part where he doesn't ever talk about his own accomplishments because he thinks that's too cringe or something, so he's always downplaying himself and the stuff he does, like being a good damn teacher, and liking it! he describes himself as a lazy guy who just wants to lead a no-effort life but that's what he actually wants or does; he's always doing something post-transmigration and if fact gets antsy and restless when he's forced to stay inside doing nothing

also related to him downplaying his good actions, is that he sketches himself as a selfish person when his actions completely contradict that characterization.

he also downplays or completely hides from the narration how much being cool matters to him lol he wants to distract the reader and himself from the fact that he's not an easygoing person, who will take anything life gives him; no, no, that man taught his disciples about payback; he gets reeaally pissed off when mbj dismisses his cultivation at the immortal alliance conference. i've talked about how he projects on shen jiu here to go around those feelings .

overall he's unreliable when talking about himself and you have to look at everything he says really carefully and contrast it with his actual actions to understand what's real and what's a lie.

and one of my favorites: he tells us he's pretending at being a lofty immortal cultivator, when in truth the transmigration has allowed him to become the best version of himself (ok there's still room for improvement but he's getting there!) the moment the OOC was off, and later when he's in the mushroom body, he thinks of himself as shen qingqiu all the time, going so far as to put finding a folding fan as a top priority, saving people just because he was around, and being unable to let cqm disciples be in danger to the detriment of his own survival. he tries to sell you a picture of himself where he's pragmatic and selfish and self-serving, but in truth, despite having a bad temper and sometimes resorting to anger as a coping mechanism (the tsundere allegations are true), he's a big softie and unconditional when it comes to the people he cares about.

[cerise-on-top]

Ooh, what if Price/Ghost/Gaz/Laswell came across their childhood best friend? Reuniting with reader who was there for them through thick and thin, until they joined the military and lost contact 🙏

I've been reading/re-reading some of your works!! They're so good! Also, I'm sorry those teenagers were pricks to you, hope you have some better days soon!

Hello! I have to say, I'm genuinely surprised anyone reads my rambles in the tags, I didn't think anyone would, but thank you! You don't know how much I appreciate it! Today was already a much better day, which is why I decided to write and post two requests today! This is a lovely request, very nice! Love me some platonic stuff as well! Sometimes all you need is a good friend by your side!

Price, Gaz, Ghost and Laswell Come Across their Childhood Best Friend

Price: He actually thinks about you from time to time, more often than he’d like to admit. You were a good person in his eyes, always there for him no matter what he went through, which is something he could appreciate. His childhood wasn’t particularly bad, but he had some days where he would have loved to simply throw in the towel, which is normal, though. Price was a rowdy guy when he was young, so you likely either went along with some of his ideas or were kind enough to talk him out of them. Either way, he appreciated having you around, so seeing you again would be quite the surprise, he didn’t think he ever would again. If he’s on a mission, then the talk will be kept short, but afterwards he’ll make sure to seek you out again, catch up a bit and ask you how you’ve been. Price didn’t expect to have missed you this much, but he only realized that once he saw you. You’ll either be going to one of the cafes you used to visit nearby, or maybe sit down on a park bench and maybe eat some sandwiches together, just like you used to during the good old times. Since you’d likely be around his age, so roughly 37-38, you’d have a lot to tell. Roughly 22 years you need to catch up on. He’s willing to talk to you, tell you about his career, how he's been doing, about the people he’s met and how he’s feeling. Considering this much time has passed, there’s a good chance you’ve both mellowed out quite a bit, but it isn’t unpleasant, you’re both mature people now. He likes hearing about everything you’ve accomplished, it’s like you became a new person during all those years. It’s so lovely to him, he sort of can’t believe it. Whether it’s a coincidence, or maybe you sought him out, it doesn’t matter, spending time with you again brings back all those memories he thought he had since forgotten about. He laughs, he smiles, he frowns. He’s a bit more expressive with you, but really wants to reminisce about the good old times. Even so, he hopes to be able to see you again more often, so you’ll likely exchange numbers. This time he tries to make sure to not lose contact with you and will text you every once in a while.

Gaz: When he was a child, Gaz was a lot calmer than he is today, a very quiet kid. He had always been a good boy, a gift in the eyes of many, but he wasn’t as active a child as one would imagine. Ergo he didn’t have very many friends until he became older either, but he was loyal to the few he did have. You were one of them. As you slowly started to grow apart, he started to miss you, but didn’t want to bother you either, as much as he would have loved to do so. So I’m sure you can imagine the surprise on his face when he found you at the mall the two of you would hang out in during rainy days. Gaz has become more confident, so he’d immediately walk up to you once he recognises you and start talking. Like Price, he’d be pleasantly surprised to just see you in such a mundane place, but won’t question it. Or complain about it either. In fact, if you’re not carrying anything heavy, he’d be the one to suggest going out to eat or drink something. Again, either a small and quiet cafe or a small restaurant. Maybe you’d go to a place you liked when you were kids, if it’s still open. Regardless, it’d be hard to get him to shut up with how excited he is to have you around. It’s a calm kind of excitement, but he’s happy, and that’s what’s important. It’s very likely that he’ll pay for your food, even if you insist he shouldn’t, but it’s not like he has any other use for his money. Chatting with him about the good old times is very sweet, he likes to bring up all the good things. But eventually, he’ll thank you for everything you’ve done for him and how happy he was to have you as a friend. Considering there were very few people who tried to get to know him, he was quite lonely, but you fixed that. You made everything better. From the pain on his knee when he fell as you gave him a band-aid, to the pain in his heart when the other children ridiculed him. Like Price, he’ll ask you if you want his number so you could continue to keep in contact with each other. He knows it’ll likely never be the same again, but he can pretend everything is as good as it used to be back when he was young. He’d love to spend time with you again.

Ghost: This man has had one of the worst childhoods imaginable. He was abused by his father, and the only friends he had aside from you were his mother and his brother. Barely anyone was kind towards him or accepted him considering he had always been the weird kid. No one but you wanted to spend time with him. Needless to say, Ghost had taken a liking to you when he was younger. You spent your time with him, you even defended him when some of the other kids ridiculed him. And now, 12 years later, he finds you running after a coin you accidentally dropped on the ground, bumping into him as you did so. He’d be wide eyed at first, a bit quiet as well. Once you left he never would have thought he’d ever find someone like you again, but here you were, just as quiet and surprised to see him. Ghost would pick up the coin for you and ask you how you’ve been. It had been a while. Although he’s not usually one to smile, especially not in public, you could see him faintly do so. He’s become a quiet man, so he won’t be talking too much about everything, especially not everything that happened after he joined the military, but he’s more than willing to talk to you about other matters. His life has become better over the past few years, but that doesn’t mean he isn't scarred still. He’ll offer you a walk to just about anywhere, really, even if the final destination will always end up being one of the places you used to hang out in as children. An abandoned house, a park, a mall. Manchester is a fairly large city, so there’s much to see. It would be a bit rough to catch up with him entirely, but he loves to hear about everything you’ve accomplished. You’ve become such a mature person, it warms his heart to see how far you’ve come in life. Back then, when everything was so bleak, when neither of you thought you’d see your 28th birthdays, everything was different. But now, you’re smiling at him as you’re drinking your milkshake. You seem to be better off, and so is he. It makes him nostalgic to see all of this, but he’s happy. Ghost will offer you to come to his home if you want. Even now, he still loves you dearly as a friend and couldn’t be happier about the fact he’s found you again by chance.

Laswell: When she was young she was a healthy mix of rowdy and good. While she never caused much trouble, she did stand up for herself when she needed to. However, this alone was enough to get the attention of some awful people. People either liked her or hated her, there usually was no inbetween for them. Some people did try to bully her, but it never ended well since she would fight for herself, plus she had some good friends who would do the same for her. However, none of them could compare to you, as you were her best friend. All her joys she would celebrate with you, and all of her sadness she would share with you. Back then, things were simpler, something small meant the end of the world, but you always had each other’s backs. Laswell tries to not think about you too much since you slowly drifting apart is quite painful to her. As she grew older, she learned to live with the pain and it didn’t bother her as much. Still, she was very happy when you were sending her a message after all this time. She may have been at work, but responded to you immediately, having missed you just as much as you missed her. Once you meet up it’s evident you’ve both grown a lot older. Laswell has been working for the CIA since her twenties, so it’s been almost thirty years. You have a lot to catch up on, but you take your time, eating at a fancy restaurant and spending hours there, laughing at everything that’s happened. Laswell would show you photos of all the places she’s visited during her downtime. She’s seen almost the entire world, some of it with her wife, some of it without her. Although she doesn’t usually tell people she’s married, to another woman too, she knows you’re a safe person, you’ve always accepted her as she was. Considering how happy you looked when you saw her wife, she continued to tell you about the world. But you get your chance to tell her about everything that’s happened to you as well. If the conversation goes especially well, Laswell might invite you to a few outings every once in a while, after you’ve met up a few more times. Plus you get to meet her wife eventually as well, which is a real privilege. Considering how much she loves her and wants to protect her, not many know about her. It’ll be fun either way since you get to make more memories together again.

[grison-in-space]

Reading Men Who Hate Women (Laura Bates, 2020) at the moment. She's talking about the manosphere: the massive online communities of men who congregate to talk misogyny, ranging from PUAs to MRAs, incels and MGTOW. These aren't new topics to me—I've been following this off and on since watching Gamergate kick off—but Bates handles them well and I think this book could serve as an introduction if this is a movement with which you're not familar. By the way, it's been a decade since Gamergate this year. Isn't that a kicker?

(Incidentally, I first ran into the concept of incels way before I think many people did: when I was still on AVEN, c. 2006-2007ish, I remember a few occasions where users ran into incel communities and brought them to our forums to ask: is this like what we're doing? Is this like us? Consensus quickly solidified on the direction of "no," each time, not least because asexuality dialog at the time was extremely clear about divorcing desire from action, and it was very clear that the desires centered in that community were very different than the ones people in asexuality spaces were untangling.)

Bates handles the topic with grace, compassion, and a deep understanding that I really wish more writing on radicalization or terroristic networks used: people in real pain, who are struggling in pitiable circumstances to do their best and clearly need more support, can also in their pain be truly dangerous to others. Hurt people hurt people. Compassion for pain suffered is important—you can't understand recruitment without understanding that—but you also have to understand that pain, fermented in darkness, can create deadly poisons. Pain isn't essentially holy or cleansing or cauterizing. It doesn't accomplish anything good by existing. If we can relieve it, we should—but we should follow harm reduction principles as we do so, lest pain be allowed to multiply and fester.

What gets me is that in 2017, in the wake of the Google bro "manifesto," I spent a feverish week writing what wound up being a 20,000 word rebuttal studded with what eventually totaled 100+ peer reviewed citations. It got quite a bit of reach and covered ground ranging from effects of testosterone on behavior, the concept of effect size in sex differences, basic statistics, the ways that humans treat people differently based on their perception of gender, intersex trauma, and whether feminists care about men's problems (yeah, actually, and they should).

I released that piece, changed up my name and fannish presence—my long time pseud was tangled all over the piece's genesis—and hunkered down for the reprisals. I expected harassment and vitriol. It never really came: I ignored the comments on the post, after a bit, and I held boundaries on what I was willing to pay attention to. But by and large, I had no direct consequences from the Manosphere.

Perhaps the piece was too long (although I got many comments from people who read it and found it useful, and I included an index). Perhaps it was simply that I included a headshot of myself, with uncharacteristic red lipstick and characteristically buzzed hair, and cheerfully discussed throughout that I was butch and queer: sometimes I confuse people who are very focused on bioessentialist sex differences, because I don't fit their paradigms in the slightest.

About six months later, James Damore attempted to frame his incredibly poor decisions in light of his Asperger's, and I did get a couple dudes on social media presenting me with this information apparently in the hope that it would shock or embarrass me. I immediately pointed out, acerbically, that I'm equally autistic and that he was making us look bad, and they melted away again into the background. It wasn't really the well of terrifying anger and obliterative fury I was expecting.

I find myself reading these stories in Bates' book and thinking about the internet I grew up on: AVEN by 2005, WrongPlanet the same year, listening to people on the margins talk about their fears and hopes and dreams and theories about themselves. I find myself thinking about narratives and meaning, the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and why.

I'm certainly not the first person to worry about radicalization of young autistic people, especially autistic men. Not even close. Paradoxically, it's a group of people for whom an understanding of intersectionality is crucial: young disabled men often alienated deliberately from conceptualizing themselves as disabled, without the tools to understand why life is hard and painful and never seems to reflect their experiences, trying to construct understanding beyond one's singular, isolated defective wrongness—which is what's left, if you take community off the table.

(Have I mentioned how grateful I am that so many autistics are trans spectrum? Imagine if we weren't, and if I didn't have so many transfeminine sisters funneled along those same currents and drifting closely enough alongside to understand. My sisters, so many of whom are out there living and modeling better ways to understand and participate in gender as a social activity: by figuring out what is most comfortable for you, understanding that comfort for one might be agony for another, and taking steps to shape your own life into a fashion that wells forth the most peace and joy. It's a message we all need to hear, but that is a group of people I hear singing so loudly from my place in a different wing of the choir, and I love them for it.)

I don't have answers. As is, so often, the case these days, I have only grief and love, and the determination to build better structures where my own hands reach. I had intended to direct my career, once, to undermining the entire concept of "good genes" models of evolution and explaining how their convoluted connections to natural phenomena are better explained by other, more direct motives. Since 2020, I've been moving in a new direction—but what precisely it is, I'm not sure.

Sex differences is certainly a piece of it, though. Even if I find myself often enough writing that it's not enough to know a sex difference in one species to assume that another will reflect a similar relationship: we should study sex differences in animals, but we really shouldn't assume that humans will have the same ones or work the same way. I suspect this won't be the first time I tangle with that community. I suppose it depends how much authority I can accrue as protection first.

[lover-of-mine]

Have you done a color/structure(?) analysis of Buck's coming out to Eddie scene? If you haven't, could you? I just love your other ones, and that one has been niggling at me, but I don't know if there's anything there.

Okay, this took me longer than I expected because I had a weird weekend but let's do it now oaksoaksasas

The first major thing about the scene is that it is a blue and yellow scene (I have a theory about the blue and yellow you can read here) because they are playing with the sun around Buck and Eddie a lot this season, the locker room, the basketball scene, the coming out scene, that new locker room still Tim shared, even the buckley diaz family scene in 707 so that's important no matter what they are actually trying to accomplish there, if it's a reference to the way Oliver keeps saying Buck is looking for light or if queer romance has its own color combo, it's a thing and I think that the way they keep adding blue and gold/yellow to buddie scenes this season means they are absolutely doing something with it, even more considering the will reveal is very explicitly blue and yellow and we all know that scene is a key scene for the 2 of them in terms of romance.

But like, even the labels of the beers they are drinking are blue with yellow detailing, so pretty much every aspect of the scene is in that color scheme. The beer is also interesting because of the beer they usually drink being yellow and that they focused a lot on last season, going as far as making a point of showing a scene where Eddie is turning the bottle so we can see the label in 613.

Two things that feel inconsequential but are almost definitely absolutely completely on purpose in the scene are the way the shade of blue Buck is wearing is the same shade as his eyes and the way Eddie's phone has a black phone case the phone itself is green.

So not only are we dealing with the blue and yellow they are establishing, but we also have blue and green aspects going on here, tho arguably very muted. (blue and green masterpost) but this is just a detail I wanted to point out aopskloaksa

Going back to the beers, I will be honest, I keep trying to find a pattern in the scenes where they open the bottle for each other. It seems like they don't open the bottle for each other when they are discussing a problem outside of their relationship with each other? Like, Buck opens the bottle for Eddie in the kitchen scene in 309, Eddie opens the bottle in 612, and those two scenes lead to them talking about their relationship in a sense. But they just hand the bottle closed to each other in 312 when discussing the skateboard incident, in 504 when discussing Chim leaving, and Buck does hand Eddie the bottle closed during the coming out scene which is ultimately not about their relationship, although, Buck does hand the bottle while it's open to Eddie in 613, but they don't show Buck opening said bottle so I kinda think there's something to be said about the action of opening the bottle for the other in scenes they are opening up to each other about each other.

Something major about the scene is also the framing and positioning of them in the scene. I made a framing meta with most of their major scene at some point during the hiatus, you can read it here, but something about the 2 of them is that they tend to be on the same level while talking about Eddie's problems, they are both sitting down (that's even exemplified in 705 with the gym scene) and they seem to have Buck sitting down and Eddie standing up when talking about Buck's, so Buck is physically looking up at Eddie. I have an admittedly confusing post about Buck and the looking up thing you can read here because I touch on emotional scenes for Buck that don't involve Eddie if you want more thoughts.

The whole looking up thing is interesting for many many reasons, but mainly because, one, Buck is a big guy and Oliver is the tallest person in the main cast, so he's usually the biggest person in the room, so having him sitting down is a way to make him have less power in the scene in a sense. There's also the way that Buck as a character likes being in high places, he sits at the counter, the chills on top of the firetruck, he sleeps in a loft, he likes being physically high.

But there's also the way the show tends to give Buck the high ground during emotional scenes. Both figuratively, like having him stand up before yelling at his parents in 404 or having him be the only one standing up when he tells the team about Daniel in 405, and literally, like in 316 when he's talking to Maddie about being the one who's always left behind and breaking up with Taylor in 518.

It's also interesting because Buck mostly looks up his love interests, there are exceptions to this, he has scenes looking up at Bobby even though most of their heart to hearts they tend to be on the same level, both standing up or both sitting down, but he looks up at Taylor and Abby and Ali and Eddie and I think that plays into the way Buck wants love to fix him, so he doesn't want balance, he wants answers. But this is a problem when you think about it. Because that creates an emotional imbalance between Buck and Eddie. It physically exemplifies the way Buck's admiration of Eddie clouds his judgment when it comes to Eddie. He expects Eddie to have the answers. He blindly trusts Eddie and in a romantic setting, that's bad. Buck can't really expect Eddie to be right all the time or just accept anything Eddie decides, because then their relationship is unbalanced, then Eddie is controlling it and a romantic relationship can't work in these circumstances.

But this scene actually breaks that pattern twice: Eddie is looking up at Buck while they are talking about Marisol and Buck actually sits down before telling Eddie it was a date.

This is huge. Monumental. Incredible. I have been waiting for this for SO LONG. Because Buck needs reassurance from Eddie here, but he is not looking at Eddie for guidance, he's looking at Eddie for acceptance. And that's what he's getting. Proof of Eddie's unconditional love. And Eddie needs Buck to just tell him how to fix it while being very irrational about the whole situation and Buck is being the voice of reason.

Also about the positioning in the frame, something media does to let people know the characters are not standing on the same side, to give that impression that they are in different places in the scene during a close-up is to place the characters on different sides of the frame, even in the beginning of the scene, they are on different sides. (Guide down the middle to help visualizing)

But when they are actually talking about it, they are both in the middle of the frame. Another scene they do this is the will reveal, during the will reveal they tend to both be in the middle of the frame. And that kinda gives this idea that they are seeing eye to eye, that they are on the same side. I have a whole meta explaining how they used this effect to show Eddie letting Buck in during his breakdown era, you can read that one here.

BUT, interestingly enough, Eddie actually leans away from the middle when they are talking about Buck dating Tommy besides the general concept that that means Buck is also into men, while Buck stays in the middle. That can absolutely represent a way for Eddie to distance himself from it in a sense, that while he is fine with Buck being bi, he's not all that fine with the concept of Buck actually dating Tommy even though he is encouraging Buck to go after him, but that's just a theory to back me and my Eddie fell first and has accepted he can't have Buck tendencies. I think that's also backed by the way Eddie is maintaining eye contact from the moment he realizes this is something important for Buck, but he does break that eye contact when Buck tells him he can't stop thinking about Tommy, almost like he needs a second to believe what he's about to say.

Another interesting thing is the way they had Eddie ready to leave and Buck doing his little ducked head Eddie smile while Eddie leaves, so Buck seems fine with the way the conversation went, before having Eddie turn back around to hug Buck.

He reaches the door, realizes he's forgetting something, and strides right back to demand a hug, which considering 703 when we have Buck stopping to thank Tommy then running after Eddie, and Eddie being about to run back to Marisol and a relationship he doesn't really want to be in, the way he stops in his tracks to go back to Buck, kinda poetic when you think about this way, I think.

I think there's a lot to dissect when it comes to the actual wording of the scene too. Eddie saying "this doesn't change a thing between us" is very on purpose, if Eddie had said anything instead of a thing, it would have had a different effect. Not changing a thing when, one, we all know it will change it because buddie is coming, and two, even if we didn't know buddie is coming, this has the potential to fundamentally change the nature of their relationship eventually and the show loves to prove Eddie specifically wrong, but even then, would adding romance actually be changing anything between them when they are already life partners? This fundamentally changes them but also doesn't change them at all. Also the way Buck says "that's a relief" sounds almost as if he was expecting Eddie to say something else.

Also, love the way we got another roundabout way for Eddie to say he loves Buck but this time he actually said the word love "he'll love you like we all do" thank you, Eddie, for finally using the word.

Also love the way Buck is just taking deep breaths through the conversation because this was something that was stressing him out and it going well makes him breathe easier because he needs Eddie's acceptance in this.

I think these are all my thoughts on this scene, at least is all I can think about right now, so, as always, if you read this I love you 💜

[aha-chuu]

Kaveh's Drip Marketing

I have a lot to say about the connections between the Kaveh info that released today and Alhaitham (and what we know about their relationship with each other). I'm not looking at this in a romantic way necessarily, but just in how tightly knotted their characters are with one another.

First, Kaveh's title and description:

"Empyrean Reflection", or more simply, 'Heavenly Reflection'. This ties to his constellation, "Paeadisaea", which is the genus for the birds of paradise. 'Paradise' is a more general term for Heaven, but neither of these are particularly divine in nature in a deity sense. Personally, I think they might be denoting a reference to the Golden Ratio, AKA: Divine Proportion. It's a mathematic concept often used in artistry, which matches well with Kaveh's archectural design profession and his education from the Ksharewar Darshan, which is the Sumeru school of technology.

So that's what it means for Kaveh's own characterisation/lore imo, but it also links to Alhaitham. Firstly, Alhaitham's constellation is also a bird (Vultur Volans, or essentially 'vulture' even though his name means hawk), which is a nice match to Kaveh's birds of paradise. But more interestingly, this is what Alhaitham's Character Story 4 has to say about why he lets Kaveh live with him:

He views Kaveh as a "mirror". What is Kaveh's title again? "Empyrean Reflection".

And the mirroring is all over the place. Here's a section from Alhaitham's drip marketing from December:

He is

Largely unknown

Only puts in the minimum effort required to do his job

People don't pay attention to him

In contrast, here is a corresponding section that came out with Kaveh's drip today:

He is

Extremely well known

Incredibly hardworking

People pay attention to him even when he isn't asking for it, as a by-product of his career

Basically exact opposites; complete mirrors. Here's something else, first from the end of Alhaitham's description and then second from the end of Kaveh's:

Alhaitham's life is super comfortable, ideal in every way he desires. Meanwhile Kaveh is practically crippled by anxiety, made uncomfortable by his life circumstances. The wording itself is mirrored!

Ofc, Kaveh and Alhaitham provide one another's corresponding quotes in the drip marketing. Here is what Kaveh has to say about Alhaitham:

This is an amusing quote, basically a backhanded compliment of "oh he's very smart but he's too self-centred so his talents are made worthless since he never uses them to help others". Alhaitham's quote about Kaveh goes like this:

Alhaitham is a little more wordy so I'll simplify -

Talented people have a lot of outside pressure on them, which can be a burden

However, letting other people get you down is a character flaw, not an inherent part of being talented

Kaveh disagrees

Once again talking about an individual's talents and how worthwhile they are in the context of a society. Where Kaveh complains that Alhaitham can never accomplish anything worthwhile with his skills because he doesn't take other people into account, Alhaitham argues that Kaveh gets nothing done as a consequence of listening too much to other people's expectations. It's not surprising, then, that Kaveh is bankrupt but successful and Alhaitham is comfortable but unknown.

It's like - can these two stop talking about each other for five minutes? Anyway, this post turned out to be more of a collection of Kavetham quotes, but I think it's hard not to draw comparisons. I'm looking forward to seeing Kaveh's actual voicelines if there's this much material just from one marketing post lol

[witchofthesouls]

Hey! I saw an earlier post you had about the boys in the grocery store and it got me wondering about how they would react to hunting. I’m a hunter, have been all my life. I hunt deer, boars, ducks, coyotes, turkeys, quails, pheasants, wild Burmese pythons, and I fish locally too (strictly a vermin exterminator and food hunter, I find sports hunting to be distasteful and I strictly use a bow and arrow, no traps or guns as I take issues with those too). I can picture the absolute horror of the TFP or Lost Light bots seeing their/a human skinning and processing an animal that they just hunted for food, they see the modern convinces that are grocery stores so it’s easy to forget where human food actually comes from 😂

Weirdly enough, IDW/MTMTE does have Cybertronian edibles like cesium salami and rust sticks.

But then again, there's a big percentage of the crew members who were produced by the war, so there's a great chance that they didn't get a crash course on things that were deemed "unnecessary," like Cybertronian cuisine and fauna to forage and hunt.

TFP Cybertronians, on the other hand, have Questions.

Get ready to pull up diagrams, manuals, videos, and live demonstrations via YouTube or your own hands because they got the curiosity of two-year-old with the capacity to keep you in their palm for no escape.

Ratchet absolutely hates it. It's too messy and squishy and completely unalike the organized and relatively clean method of converting crystals to fuel. Horrified over the mysteries of hotdogs and how everything can and will kill humans without specific preparations to negate the toxins. Ratchet is boggled over spice challenges and how the hell humanity hadn't died in its infancy over culinary explorations. Someone told him to look up Hákarl.

He takes great displeasure when the kids sass him over Cybertronians eating their own blood. Different. Absolutely different. He clucks over the base kitchen and is not above making things disappear. He argues with June and Agent Fowler over the groceries and fast food bags. Ratchet's crunchy.

Bulkhead actually enjoys fishing. He's more catch and release rather than for keeping and gutting. He likes soaking up the heat of the sun, the sound of running water, birdsong, and insects buzzing, the gear setup and picking out the right lure and bait. It's a different kind of downtime, but it's nice. All he's missing is engex, but he's able to throw a line farther out than anyone else and has the capability to detect motion far greater than an average human. He still wants an engex cube.

Arcee has mixed feelings. She enjoys hunting. Patience, tracking, stealth, and the sense of accomplishment with a clean catch. She likes less the process of handling carcasses, but really hates waste anything that could have been useful. Meat, leather, tools, jewelry, and raw ingredients that could be sold or traded. Arcee just doesn't like sharing something with Airachnid's methods.

Bumblebee's a scout. People expected him to like foraging or the wilds. He prefers domesticated stock. In particular, beekeeping. To him, it represents a more equivalent partnership: he provides accessible resources and safe quarters and the bees yield honey, comb, and wax in return. If the hive don't like him or the area, then they can leave elsewhere.

Optimus is deeply fascinated by how Earth's biodiversity is so immense and how ecosystems are so diverse and complex, yet so fragile. He quietly wishes for Alpha Trion's presence because Optimus is seeing familiar similarities of Cybertronian long gone biomes: wetlands, woodlands, and reefs. The Sea of Rust once was a massive ocean of mineral-laden Energon. It has long since disappeared by the consensus of heavy, unregulated industrialization, but if Earth has the water cycle, ocean currents and belts, and complex system of thermoregulation that replenishes itself, then Cybertron had to have something similar at one point, no?

[gingergofastboatsmojito]

Carmy is a hypocrite

Like most cowards are

But unlike most cowards, he had a point.

Carmy was quick to judge his brother and get out of the family household to "show him".

But he didn't take this into account:

Michael Berzatto is immortal

Carmy expects Syd to be legally obligated to push him and let herself be pushed, but when he's pushed he can't handle it:

Carmy wants to change the menu every day but when Syd wants to make changes, he prefers to go his way:

Granted there is a valid explanation for that I already went over

Here → Yeah, right.

And Syd can easily put an end to it by signing the agreement and exercising her rights as a partner. But she's avoiding it and delaying it and making things worse as time goes by, so it's a 50% / 50% here.

But in terms of Carmy's discourse, it's nothing but hypocrisy, no matter how unconscious his behavior is and what reasons he has to justify it.

Carmy wants Richie to accept his apologies because he loves him but he won't accept Donna's who clearly wants to reconnect with her strange son, while he avoids her:

And the list can go on and on and ooooonnnnnn...

Because he is a HYPOCRITE and as with all hypocrisy, it's rooted in what in essence can be labeled as a "lack of balls".

He's clearly not the kinda guy who avoids conflict, as a matter of fact, he's the opposite because he's → Donna's son and → reactive in nature.

But he's scared shitless of true mature behavior, he's not ready for that, as I explained here. And if we dig deeper, we can clearly see that part of his fear has to do with his mommy issues, which I mentioned here. And of course, also with his many psychological conditions that remain untreated, which I elaborated on in previous posts such as:

Let's put the ship in partnership

Carmy Berzatto and his erotic transfer

Or are being incorrectly treated, because the AA meetings are like trying to put out a wildfire with a glass of water, in his case. He needs a whole team of professionals who develop a personalized healthcare plan for him and follow up regularly with him to help him stick to it. Especially since changing his surroundings is not an option.

So summing up, he's a hypocrite.

BUT

He has a point, which is, that if he stops being a hypocrite, he will have to change his ways, which requires courage, and balls, sure, but most importantly, he will have to face the truth about his feelings for Syd, face the C person and act like a man and go on an apology tour, which is something that requires something he doesn't have yet:

MADURITY

He's a kid trapped in a 30-31 year old body. And that's exactly what happens to abuse/trauma victims. There's this arrested development that mentally freezes them up in the time of their lives when the abuse began. And they can look like very adjusted people for most of us, they can look like accomplished chefs, like wannabes who are really into their artistic hobbies that are actually nothing but escapism, like people who "just want to do what's right", perfectionists even, etc... but in their case, that's nothing but a mask that hides their level of immaturity. They can ONLY HANDLE getting their asses kissed all the time, anything else is something they just can't take. Imagine a toddler: if you go and say (in a baby voice, ofc): "Oh you're soooo cute, I love your drawings! Wow! Did you make this? I love this! OMG! It's soooo cute! Awwww" the kid will be all smiley and over the moon, right? They will love it.

But try telling a 5-year-old:

Don't yell.

Stop.

Drop that.

No, you're not right.

Etc.

They will always find a problem with accepting limits and behaving BECAUSE THEY ARE TODDLERS. They will probably even throw a TANTRUM, even in public sometimes... They won't care how it looks. They are not above making a scene. All parents have to deal with that for a few years, no matter how well-adjusted and healthy their kiddo is. It's normal behavior IN A TODDLER.

Well, adults can be toddlers too (mentally). And that leads to HYPOCRISY. Like in Carmy's case.

Fortunately, maturity levels and development are dynamic. Hardly ever static. So Carmy is not a hopeless case.

I'm confident that S4 will be the season in which he will FINALLY GROW THE FUCK UP.

Because he has already reached his breakthrough.

Remember to follow my tag #Gingerpovs

[transmutationisms]

is it unfair for me to hold anger at individuals, or criticize individuals, if covid minimization is not the result of individualized choices but mass messaging and systems at work? im not really sure what to say to leftists who ive spoonfed information who have still decided to “move on” from it, including in their activism. on one hand i understand how they got here, on the other it feels like theyre enacting violence, in the same vein as like misgendering or supporting “blue lives matter” but with the added bonus of them maybe also harming someone directly by refusal to do infection control. i really need to shift my perspective away from a heavily trauma-informed one and start living in the real world where i cant expect anyone to advocate for me, and have to find more systems-based ways to advocate for myself, and releasing some of that anger might need to be a part of moving on from that pov, but a lot of that trauma *is* individualized and resulted from the way people have responded to me, which varies from lukewarm apathy to actively telling me my life isnt worth anything to them. at the same time, it’s impossible for me to feel like i’m not the one in the wrong, when it’s very few people left who care about any of this. sorry for dumping this on *you*, im aware you’re some guy online, but the only ppl i see who still talk about covid are ppl in the same situation as me and are too close to it to assess, or think about it purely on an individual level

i don't think there's anything wrong, bad, or unfair about feeling this type of anger or betrayal. i just also think that this is one of those situations where a (completely understandable) emotional reaction does not form the basis of an effective political platform. both of these things can be true at once; your ethical considerations when navigating interpersonal relationships are not the same as the ethical considerations for someone who wants to style themselves a public health communicator. in an epidemiological sense, a person who reluctantly masks because orgs and public spaces have mask mandates is accomplishing the same thing, materially, as a person who happily masks because they care about their disabled comrades. in that sense there's no need for a public health strategy to focus on 'changing minds' and doing so often just makes people dig in their heels more. but, on a personal level, of course it matters to you whether someone actually cares for you and protects you voluntarily! figuring out how to interact with people in your own life is just not the same as figuring out the most effective mass communication and public policy strategies; what irritates me about many of the twitter-sphere covid communicators is the elision between these two things. having said that, if i can just soapbox for a second:

i try to give these people the benefit of the doubt; i do think many of them mean well and think they are doing what's right. however, the strategy that many of them have coalesced around seems to go something like this: assume that others are not covid-cautious because they are insufficiently frightened; assume this is a failure of individual intelligence-slash-awareness; using the same datasets as the applicable public health agency, interpret all data with any number of assumptions, predictions, and modelling heuristics built in; generate very terrifying infographic, post it, and wring hands when doing so doesn't change anyone's behaviour or state policy.

even in the best of cases i simply think this is ineffective; i would say public attitudes about the seriousness of covid are much more a result of state and public health inaction, ambivalence, and denialism than they are a cause. additionally, interpreting data and making predictions based on them is woolly, and a lack of transparency about their methodology, plus the overconfident desire to present themselves as authorities on the internet, means that this strategy can and does end up producing its own distortions. see, for example, recent 'med twitter' claims that "covid is airborne aids", an attempt to scare people into taking it more seriously that relies on poor and overconfident interpretations of current immunological knowledge; that ends up distorting what we do actually know about covid and the immune system (which is already fucking scary! no lies needed!); and which, as far as i can tell, actually started picking up steam in early 2020 as a right-wing conspiracy theory centred around the claims of dr (not an md) leonard g. horowitz, who argues that covid is a laboratory-engineered virus and uses it in his efforts to sell "resonating silver hydrosol" supplements to you (and your pets!) as "an effective alternative to risky vaccinations and deadly antibiotics".

getting into bed with these people is patently dangerous for obvious reasons. i really do not blame people who are trying to find reliable covid information, and are rightfully wary of state and official sources that have been downplaying this virus for its entire existence, for getting sucked in by twitter doctors when those people are often the only ones who seem to be both posting statistics and taking the virus seriously. however, what i have observed leads me to believe that, firstly, many of these people are motivated by a desire for renown and fame as much as by altruism (welcome to social media). secondly, virtually all of them are fundamentally very liberal in their politics, and this shows in the way they interpret the current state of affairs as a result of individual actions and psychological failures, rather than capitalist policy. this is absurd and leads to absolutely pointless (if not often counterproductive) narrativisation of political action as some kind of magical field where everybody just needs to change their minds and believe in the correct things really hard and then things will change: it's the liberal democratic fantasy that aggregated attitudes create policy out of thin air, no organisation or class analysis or principled communism necessary.

thirdly, a multitude of factors (incl. the paywalling and gatekeeping of knowledge) means that, although state and official interpretations of their datasets are often misleading or outright dishonest because they want to minimise risk, too often the self-styled 'covid communicators' online are not a solution to this and are prone to their own fallacious assumptions, conspiratorial thinking (see again: understanding politics as the product of many individuals believing something really hard, with no analysis of structural factors), poor data analysis, issues with comprehensive data collection in the first place (same as state sources. because they are usually using the same datasets), and a particular rhetorical emphasis on "listening to the science" that often manifests practically as a failure to actually engage with scientific methodology or to questionor improve it where it is lacking, incomplete, or bias-reproducing.

so. these are my issues with the state of covid communication; to me the question of how to navigate interpersonal relationships with people who don't value your life enough to protect it is just very different and the emotional engagement there is also quite different.

[nyaagolor]

Umineko Chapter 2 Theory Posting

Well uh. To be honest with you I have very few ideas about this chapter, so actually laying out the "answers to the mystery" would be fruitless because I don't have any. Currently my only thought is that everything after the parlor scene is a hallucination or straight up didn't happen-- I think Rosa blew her nephew's brains out the second she thought him suspicious. Instead, I figured it'd be more fun to talk about the more macro stuff: to lay out what I think I know about the "rules" of the story so far. I'm not sure if these are right, but I imagine it'll at least help me start solving the mystery

The omniscient narrator is a lying little bastard. Every instance of raw "magic" and unexplainable things has occurred when we're in the omniscient narrator POV. While I do think there are more specific tells, for now I'm treating the omniscient narrator as a "what-if" rather than an unbiased reporter. To add onto this, I believe that each character's narration is giving us their version of the truth-- they're not lying, per say, as I think every character sincerely believes what they're saying is accurate, but I also don't think they're all correct. Thus, most of my theories are based on character POVs and not the limited narrator

We're outside the catbox, but the cat is still dead. Magic cannot and does not change the end result of something, only how it happened. We as the audience are exploring possibilities, but they're just that-- the only thing we know for sure is what happened when the box was opened. Thus, any event of magic can be explained retroactively by the end result, and anything that doesn't appear in the end result can be discarded. (For example, in the boiler room scene, we can ignore anything and everything that isn't "Kanon got stabbed" because that's the only thing that remains once the catbox is "opened")

Magic can only do what is accomplished by human hands. I'll admit that because I finished Chapter 2 earlier in my streaming session than I expected, my friend and I decided to go through to the first few scenes of chapter 3 and that's where I got this idea. We see here exactly how Beatrice "revives" the rose-- the explanation being that she just wrapped some gold lace around a different rose (since the one Maria was looking after was taken by Gohda to be their little dessert) and lied to Maria that it was her rose. This kind of smoke and mirrors is what I imagine magic is: it is impossible in a literal sense, but the outcome is only something that can be done by humans, and thus can actually be explained by human tricks

To sum it all up: I think that the entire story is in essence a catbox: We opened it up to find the cat dead inside, and Beatrice and Battler are basically just arguing about HOW the cat died, since everything happened before we opened the box. Since magic is just human tricks with a little more flourish, neither can be technically "wrong" at this point, but I can at least use these rules to make myself a framework for how to solve these mysteries

Unfortunately I'm even slower on the uptake than Battler so the likelihood I'll actually solve anything is. Questionable

PS: My answer to the ultimate mystery of "what the fuck is up with Beatrice" is that she's Kinzo's bastard child groomed to be like her mother for Kinzo's own fucked up romantic machinations, and the whole reason she's "like that" is because she's the child of divorce. Send tweet.

[swannieluv]

｡ﾟ･The Bold Mendacity – 𝟒. Reflex

✦⸼࣪⸳ 𝐆.𝐈 𝐕𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 (𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐜) 𝐱 𝐆𝐍!𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫 <3

✦⸼࣪⸳ 𝐖𝐜: 1,7k

✦⸼࣪⸳ 𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆!!: Drowning, derealization (?)

✦⸼࣪⸳𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐭��𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐨: ♡

✦⸼࣪⸳ A/N: It's heeeere, double update. <3

If someone ever asked you which of your experiences facing death was the worst, you would definitely choose that one.

Drowning would definitely enter your list of "Worst ways to die" in one of the highest positions. The feeling of agony as the water forcefully enters your body and the shortness of breath that felt like someone forcibly removing your lungs.

You felt like you were dead, you knew you were, the same feeling as when you first died. It was as if the commands given by your brain were not respected by the rest of your body, which remained motionless.

Underneath you, you could see a kind of starry purple hole. At its epicenter was an eternal void. Water was being drawn into it, but it was impossible to ascertain whether it was actually flowing out of it or not.

You thought that by crossing it, perhaps your end would finally be decreed. Or you would just be reborn again into a life doomed to failure.

Your arms, which were involuntarily stretched forward, would be the first to make contact with the darkness. But contrary to expectations, as soon as they touched the blackness, they passed through it, out of your field of vision.

'What?' Your face contorted in confusion. 'Wait, wait, wait-'

Before you could say anything else, your body passed straight through that obscure screen. Suddenly, everything began to take shape, and that immense sea gradually disappeared.

With every blink you gave, something different appeared in the landscape. One blink and a tree appeared. Another, and buildings formed out of nothing.

The only apparent color was a monochromatic, lifeless gray. Even if things shaped themselves, they remained static, lifeless. There was no sound or movement. Not even the birds that flew overhead moved, they were completely paralyzed in the air.

"It's like I'm inside a newspaper photo." - Crossing your arms, you gradually turned around, trying to take in your surroundings.

Your feet touched the grass below you. It didn't seem to be real, but synthetic.

"Is this some kind of post-mortem that I didn't know about...?"

Running back and forth through the city streets, trying to find some answer to where you were and what had happened to you, that same light reappeared. Its glow flew from side to side as if it wanted you to follow it.

"Right, right... you basically made me stop here and you really want me to trust you again?" - You complained. It wasn't as if you were going to believe the same thing that got you killed. "Don't think I'm going to fall for your dirty tricks again, rascal."

On the face of it, the flash wasn't even that flashy. You must probably have been lured in because you're in a childish frame of mind.

'That's so ridiculous-'

With a face slightly red with embarrassment, you continued to resist the insistence of the glare, which began to swirl around you.

"I'm not going, there's no point in insisting-"

Suddenly, a force pulled you, causing your feet to take several steps forward. It was that damn spark that had somehow managed to accomplish such a feat against you.

"I don't..." you were already turning to go wherever your feet took you, but the illustrious little thing blocked your path. After what seemed like an eternity of painful stares at the light, you gave up.

You ran a hand over your head before replying, "Well, I'm already dead anyway. It's not like it could get any worse... I hope."

"Come on! I've been walking for over an hour, man!" Bothered by the situation, you stopped in the middle of the lawn.

"I'm stuck here because of you! Can't you at least give me some peace?" Your feet kicked a small stone along the path. "It's simply pointless following you at this point."

Sighing, you turned around and decided to go the other way. However, the little light had no plans to let you go so soon and pushed you back in the original direction. It was becoming quite an annoying game, where you could only do what it wanted.

Seconds, minutes, even hours had passed since you started your walk towards nothingness.

Nothing seemed real, as in a painting painstakingly painted to resemble the reality exhibited in the finest museums possible. But for some reason, the ground beneath you seemed more real as you walked. Before, it was as if you were a ghostly apparition wandering through an immense void imitating the city of Fontaine. Now everything seemed more real, but still monochrome.

You didn't even make a point of looking ahead, focusing only on your feet and how you wanted answers from that mysterious person. What is this place? Why is everything frozen in time? It seemed like every second a new question came up to confuse you even more. From your list, there were already more than 25 to ask.

'What a thing... I think I'm going to have to accept this damn place one way or another.’

Your walk took you to a terribly familiar place: the infamous Lucine Fountain, right in front of the Opera Epiclese.

"Oh..." You averted your gaze only to the fountain, and with a pale face and a heart in the throat, tried to completely ignore the building in front of you. That building brought back bad memories, very bad memories.

'Why does this kind of thing keep haunting me? I've already died... there's no reason to keep torturing me like this.’

You sat on the edge of the fountain, completely ignoring the idiotic spark that flickered around you. You just needed a moment to get your thoughts in order.

"Ah... I've died again and this world is my divine punishment...?" You let a nervous laugh escape your throat. Perhaps joking about the situation was a good way of pretending to be normal when you're stuck in what seems to be an alternative Fontaine reality.

No answer.

Of course, they would never come at you that easily. That person said you'd need to look for a "gift", but didn't give a hint. It was as if they really were playing a game of chess with you, trying to complicate your moves at any cost.

Placing a hand in the grayish still water, a reaction happened unexpectedly. Like an explosion, the colors suddenly returned to the scene. But it wasn't just the colors, everything came back.

The streets began to move again. Melusines patrolled with happy expressions on their faces. They seemed happy with what they were doing. Children played around, running from place to place as if their lives depended on it.

You called out to them with a smile, getting ready to interact with someone new in such a long time. Even more so with someone who must have been around your age. One of them seemed to have heard you and came towards you.

"Excuse me, could you tell me..." the boy walked past you as if he hadn't heard your voice.

But he was still looking at you with the other children. It was strange, as if you were there but at the same time you weren't.

Looking back at the water of the fountain, where the child was standing in front of it, you could see a reflection. But the person mirrored was not you, not in this life, not in the next. It was a completely different person, someone you had never seen before in your life.

Long gray hair that flew in the wind and blue eyes with a touch of gray adorning them. That face didn't resemble her appearance at all. It seemed to be around nine or ten years old and angelic in appearance.

The reflection stretched its hands forward, manipulating the water in the fountain to create living water from what looked like hydro. You hadn't commanded it, but the body did.

"Hey! ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀! How can you do that without one of those shiny stones that make people strong?"

A younger girl hugged you, but you didn't feel any kind of physical sensation at her touch. As if the body had ceased to be yours. In fact, it wasn't even your body to begin with.

"It's no big deal." An unfamiliar voice left your lips automatically, a youthful voice, but not so childish. You were sure you weren't answering the child.

"It's called a vision, my parents told me." The boy from before crossed his arms proudly, in a way that looked as if he had just solved the greatest reason in the world.

The other children looked at him in bewilderment, amazed at how much he knew. But the "you" of this body just laughed and stopped doing what he was doing before, letting all those elemental illusions burst like bubbles.

"That's because they're ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀, of course."

They looked shocked at what another person had just said. But what reached your ears was something incoherent again.

When you touched the reflection of the water, the light disappeared. Everything started to become picturesque and confusing. Houses became abstract and distorted and even the natural noises from before sounded like agonizing noises.

"¿ʇǝʎ ʇı punoɟ ʇ,uǝʌɐɥ no⅄"

The voice sounded heavy, entangled with noises coming from all corners. The atmosphere was extremely confusing, as if you were at a loud party.

"˙ʎǝʞ ǝɥʇ puıℲ"

A purple blur covered his senses. It seemed to contain thousands of stars inside, the starry sky in front of you. But the admiration didn't last long.

At the same time as it was fascinating, it was deadly. There was no way to breathe. Just emptiness no matter how many times you tried to inhale the air.

"Wa..."

"Wake..."

"Wake up!"

A second voice joined the previous one. The two intertwined in unison. Just like two songs being placed on top of each other in perfectly aligned verses.

And in the snap of a finger, something like a thud went through your body. There was no more dark, mythical or monochrome scenery. Just the familiar blue sky you were used to.

However, the sun's rays were blocked by something, by someone: a blond child with blue eyes, he looked older than you and he was soaking wet. Drops of water from his hair fell gently on your skin.

"Uhm... Are you okay?" he looked embarrassed, a worried expression adorning his face.

There he was, the boy you were looking for.

[thiefking]

i need to draw/speak more of my narutos. "my narutos" meaning specifically the versions of every character that exist in my head, of course. i wanna draw hinata and gaara (besties of all time) especially. because other than the fact that they have the most fully realized design changes in my head, they are perhaps the defining aspect of My narutos, as opposed to everyone else's. their friendship to me is like "ok i'm going out...! (wearing some extremely Please Don't Look At Me outfit)" "not dressed like that you're not." "better? (she is now gothed the fuck out with an invader zim handbag)" "yas bitch slay." this is how they work. to me

i want to draw Literally Exactly That what i just described there as a meme but i do also kind of want to write or draw sometjing more substantial because i am The Hinata And Gaara Understander. as individual characters and as a pair of besties. amd i need to explain to others why it makes perfect sense because i just Know that i am one of extremely few to look at these two, of all characters, and deduce that the character arc hinata SHOULD have had is one that would be so obvious to gaara & something he would encourage. or maybe the only one, but the fandom is/was so big that it feels statistically unlikely... if we're talking CURRENT fandom i may actually be uniquely insane about this. i don't know for sure i haven't really interacted with the fandom i've been fucking around in my own skull this whole time that's how i even arrived at "hinagaara bffs" in the first place

but like... listen. hinata's thing is basically (in an inconsistent, half-baked, and never fully realized form): "i can change to improve myself and finally meet everyone else's standards and prove them wrong...!" as she is trying to emulate naruto. ... "prove them wrong", but she is not subverting anything if she meets an expectation that was explicitly set. hinata is not naruto. naruto's expectations were that he is worthless and nothing and not worth having any expectations for in the first place, and basically all of konoha thought this way. if naruto accomplishes basically anything at all he proves someone wrong, even if just a little. hinata had expectations set on her, specifically by her family, that she is not meeting. even though what hinata WANTS to do is prove them wrong, what she is fundamentally DOING is trying to please them by doing exactly what they want her to do. yes, when they think she won't even meet their lowest expectation and she does meet it, she is TECHNICALLY proving them wrong... but she isn't really achieving meaningful personal growth by doing this, is she? all she has done is meet their standards and essentially fall into their evil ghoul trap and accept EVEN MORE PRESSURE as a "reward" because now that she finally met this one single goal, they can move the goalpost. she will only ever be the failure who occasionally surprises them, she will always be lagging behind the others, and every single time she fails she gets sent back to square 1 in their eyes. meeting all their expectations or even surpassing them entirely is always going to feel hollow and fragile, because in the back of her mind, if she slips even once she has to do it all over again. she deserves better than constant paranoia

gaara (and pretty specifically gaara) can rightfully point out the problem with hinata's current mindset because hinata's hardships are way closer to GAARA'S than naruto's, to be honest. it's not lacking a family; it's having a family that doesn't feel like a family, and that family isolating one child and encouraging the others to treat them like shit so that one child never has anyone on their own level when they're at home and they are constantly forced to be aware they lack some ambiguous something that seemingly everyone else has that would make them "worthy" of being loved by their own family

hold on let me put yhe rest under a readmore this post is long as fuck

the hyuugas treat hinata like shit and call her weak, and because her parents gladly and openly call her weak and because she's supposed to be heiress to the clan, her sister and neji (the only family who were close enough in age and rank to not intimidate) were made to hate her, think she is weak, be jealous of and resent her for being heiress despite her weakness, and treat her like shit like the other hyuugas do, thus completely isolating her within her family. and rasa treated gaara like shit and had given up on him LONG before he snapped (let's be fucking real here if gaara had to learn that "love" makes emotional pain feel better at age SIX... and not to mention the entire yashamaru """plan""" was utterly and blatantly fucking NONSENSE on all levels like nice going rasa you just turned your kid almost irreversibly insane... seemingly on purpose...? i can only assume it was on purpose and you just wanted to be a spiteful bitch to the kid who killed your wife because literally what else did you think was going to happen with that but that's a rant for another time.), he tacitly encouraged temari and kankuro to not even bother with gaara and to be afraid of him like everyone else is because RASA was also OBVIOUSLY SCARED and not only that he was constantly literally trying to murder gaara so temari and kankuro also had reason to believe from a very young age that associating with him might make rasa treat THEM like that too, essentially forced gaara to straight up kill his uncle who was the ONLY family member he had who talks to him like he isn't a monster (and inexplicably decided that he should also tell gaara outright that he is not and was never loved by anyone), etc etc etc; gaara was also isolated within his own family and made to be the odd one out, over and over again. naruto knows what it's like not having a family at all, but he never experienced having family— non-metaphorical, blood relation, "entire reason you were born" family— who hates you. naruto knows how it feels to be neglected and feared by an entire village, that's how he relates to gaara. hinata was hated by her own family, the people she depended on for life itself, but she was never hated by the village at large, even if she perceives herself to be. naruto can empathize with this and put himself in her shoes, but like... gaara KNOWS, firsthand, what hinata is experiencing. that is why gaara is fairly uniquely capable of pointing out the problem Very Directly because he would see it way faster than anyone else

naruto could see it too, and he could say all the same things, but he wouldn't do it how gaara would. and i think hinata needs to hear someone speak to her, bluntly and authoritatively, and say "you deserve better than this." because normally whenever she hears someone (her own family) speak to her bluntly in an authoritative tone they're telling her she's weak and pathetic and subpar and needs to improve, and every time she is spoken to like that she believes them and marks that weakness off as something to fix. hearing incredibly matter-of-fact validation and encouragement spoken the exact same way primes her to believe that encouragement, and now her compulsive need to please people who speak to her that way is going to force her, even fleetingly, to take it seriously. especially because gaara would tell her something she is doing wrong, which will feel familiar, but he actually has HER best interests in mind. there is no benefit or advantage for him if she succeeds. he is unaffiliated, not even from konoha, he gains nothing from it. gaara doesn't tell her to try harder nor to give up and accept mediocrity. gaara tells her it's okay to give up and try something else, and sometimes it's the people around you who are the ones who need to change, not you.

gaara looks at "i will change myself to prove myself to others", and he says instead: "you need to stop caring what other people think about you and stop morphing yourself to their perception. just because YOU aren't doing that in a 'if you all want to call me a monster then fine, i'll be a monster' kind of way, like i did, that doesn't mean that isn't still an unhealthy way to think. you should figure out who YOU are and live as who YOU are, unapologetically, until they get the point that they can either accept you as you are and realize they were wrong, or they can fuck off. this is a situation where it is Not Your Fucking Problem that other people are disappointed with you especially because of how hard you've already been working to try and meet their arbitrary standards. this isn't about talent or hard work. this is about whether you even Want to be doing what everyone else wants you to do. and it is difficult and terrifying and lonely to be the only person who knows who you really are. it is hard work to figure it out and it is hard work to convince others, and at times it will feel hopeless. so i won't let you be the alone. i won't let you have to try and fail all alone, like i did. i will be your first victory, i will give you listening ears, i will be your silent dressing room mirror while you try on different hats before you figure out which one fits, i will be here and i will not judge you or decide on your behalf who you are, and i will be your family if no one else will. literally. if they cast you out you can come home to me. temari and kankuro have already accepted me as i am, i'm sure they'll accept you as you are too"

and then with time and gentle coaxing hinata decides to stop trying to be what her family wanted her to be and starts being a goth weirdgirl and pursues her interests in mycology and psychology and entomology and starts fucking THRIVING

i could go on forever. i should stop now or i never will. some of the parallels between them or the reasons that gaara would specifically want to support her in the specific ways i envision came about entirely from headcanon (coughs. even more headcanon than... the rest of this... coughs) and i FORGET that it's headcanon. for example "gaara created his good reputation in sunagakure through brute force good deeds. like people were so scared of him that they wouldn't let him CASUALLY prove that he was trying to be better, so he basically had to scare them even more just to prove that he was no longer scary. things like using his sand to hold people in place... so that he can physically put money into their hands and say 'this is yours and you will take it and use it to pay rent and buy your child that toy he wants. i do not want anytjing in return and i will be leaving you alone now.' because otherwise people would run away before he even gets the chance to be nice. literally just has to hold them still and pointedly do something nice for them and then let them go without hurting them while they tremble in misplaced terror like he;s a wildlife vet wrangling an injured seagull". this is part of why he would say "be unapologetically you and they can accept that and realize they were wrong about you to begin with, or they can fuck off". NONE OF THAT is explicitly canon... but there is so much & it makes perfect sense to me. aauuugaghh hinata my hinata my hinagaara besties my hinata. i could go on and on and on and on. goddammit I WILL GIVE HER THE CHARACTER ARC SHE NEEDS & DESERVES... GIVE HER TO ME KISHIMOTO.... WHAT IF THE FACT THAT HINATA HAS 3 PERSONALITY TRAITS IN CANON ACTUALLY MEANT SOMETHING AND WASN'T JUST BECAUSE YOU, MASASHI KISHIMOTO, SELF-ADMITTEDLY DO NOT KNOW HOW TO WRITE WOMEN? WOULDN'T THAT BE SO MUCH LESS EMBARRASSING FOR YOU? I CAN MAKE IT REAL! I CAN MAKE IT MEANINGFUL!!!! I CAN MAKE IT ABOUT REPRESSION!!!! I CAN MAKE IT ABOUT WORKING HARD TO BE WHO YOU WANT TO BE, AND SAYING "SCREW YOU" TO PEOPLE WHO TRY AND DECIDE WHO YOU ARE ON YOUR BEHALF, AND THE REJECTION OF THE STATUS QUO, AND EMBRACING THE THINGS THAT MAKE YOU DIFFERENT AND MAKING USE WHAT UNIQUE STRENGTHS YOU HAVE INSTEAD OF TRYING TO MATCH WHAT EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING, AND HOW HUMAN LIVES ARE INHERENTLY VALUABLE EVEN IF EVERYONE AROUND YOU SAYS YOURS IS WORTH NOTHING!!! JUST LIKE WHAT NARUTO WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!! I CAN EVEN SPICE IT UP A BIT AND USE MY MAGICAL WOMAN-UNDERSTANDING POWERS TO MAKE IT ABOUT HOW WOMEN ARE ACTUALLY JUST REGULAR PEOPLE WHO ARE AS VARIED AS MEN AND HOW THE SOCIETAL CONCEPTS OF WOMANHOOD AND PROPER WOMANLY BEHAVIOUR ARE RESTRICTIVE AND OPPRESSIVE, AND THE MANY WAYS THAT SOCIETY WILL FORCE TOTAL CONFORMITY AND PUNISH EVERYONE WHO STEPS OUTSIDE OF THAT FRAME (AND EVEN THOSE WHO REMAIN WITHIN)!!! I CAN MAKE IT ABOUT COMPULSORY HETEROSEXUALITY!!!! I KNOW YOU'RE AFRAID OF GIRLS MR KISHIMOTO WILL IT MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER IF I ALSO MAKE IT ABOUT NEJI WATCHING HINATA COMPLETELY REJECT HER CAGE AND DISCOVER HERSELF AND HOW HE FEELS ABOUT IT AND MAYBE JUST COVER YOUR EARS WHEN I START TALKING ABOUT EGGS!!!!!! MR KISHIMOTOOOOOO PLEEEEEEEASE

[pangurbanthewhite]

I've been thinking about villains in FFXIV, the ones that have worked for me and the ones that have made me roll my eyes and mute the game so I don't have to hear their voice acting. And I've been thinking about why that difference exists for me.

And it probably doesn't come down to one Key Detail over any other, but if I had to be reductive, I'd say that the villains that I find the most irritating are the ones with pretensions of nobility. Not pretensions of noble ambition, mind you - pretty much all of them have that. But pretensions of noble bearing and attitude.

Examples of villains that I've found just hellishly irritating - Ran'jit, Hermes, Golbez, Gaius and several other Garleans like the guy leading the resistance in the subway who was so irritating to deal with that I put the game down for actual fucking months.

Examples of villains that I am intensely moved by - Emet-Selch, Zenos, Elidibus, Meteion. Even the Knights of the Round or Fandaniel or fucking Lahabrea had a kind of gleeful, careless malice to them that was fun.

I would argue that Emet-Selch doesn't really have any pretensions of nobility in his bearing, or at least not in ways that the game expects you to agree with, at least after it's revealed that he is Emet-Selch. He spends most of Shadowbringers being a strange, inscrutable weirdo right up until the reveal, at which point he's just impotently angry. And yet his rage is ultimately a helpless thing, because even in Shadowbringers, I think the game carries with it a sense that nothing he does will or can ever bring back the world he knew.

Same with Zenos, after Stormblood is over with. He's given up on connecting with or understanding or presenting himself as anything but your Destined Other Half. He dies utterly alone, fundamentally unmourned, having accomplished nothing besides satisfying his own intensely personal desire. And it gutted me.

And Meteion...fuck, Meteion is just an angry, scared, uncomprehending kid from beginning to end.

The fact that they all in some way act strange and unhinged and feral makes the sympathetic parts of them easier to sympathize with, imo. Their characterization might be arrogant but the narrative does not fundamentally vindicate it. They act better than you but I don't think you're ever supposed to believe that they in any way are.

But then you get Quintus van Cinna, who sticks shock collars on a pair of kids and still has the gall to act like you're the bad guy and the game never lets you fucking mouth off to him over it god that questline still makes me angry.

Or you get Golbez who also finally irritated me so much that I put the game down for literal actual months. Yadda yadda, you're gonna save the world, even though it seems like you'd accomplish the same thing by just showing up and politely asking to have your head cut off, pardon me while I make a wanking motion with my hand.

From an in-theory, on-paper perspective, his motives are sympathetic. His story is tragic. His parallels with Zero are powerful! But in execution...idk, man. It's probably just me, but if I'm going to tie this post up in a neat little bow with some writing advice, don't be afraid to make your villains weird little freaks in some way. The more concerned you are with making them seem cool, the less cool an audience will find them.

[sokkastyles]

Could I ask what you think about the importance of Firebending in Zuko's journey? I've seen takes about how his bending isn't anything special and I don't think that's true at all. It was a while back, and coincidentally it was about how the moment in the Firebending Masters wasn't particularly more important for Zuko than Aang because Zuko's arc didn't have any relation to his bending. The recent posts about the topic made me remember it.

Zuko's arc...doesn't have any relation...to his bending...?

???

Zuko's arc is often praised as one of the best redemption arcs, but Zuko doesn't just redeem himself, mind you. Or the whole Fire Nation. He also redeems firebending itself.

Also, has there ever been a character more fire-coded than Zuko? Zuko is so extremely connected to his element and that's one of the reasons he struggled in the beginning, but also one of the reasons he was able to grow once he learned how to channel that energy into something positive. A fire that burns uncontrolled has the capacity for destruction, but a fire that isn't properly fed and allowed to grow will also stifle and is in danger of being smothered.

People who say Zuko's bending isn't anything special often tack on the "and that's okay," the moral supposedly being that Zuko had to learn that his worth wasn't tied to his bending as Ozai made him believe. And it isn't, but that also doesn't mean Ozai was ever right about Zuko's bending. We need to remember that growing up as a scapegoat in an abusive household is meant to actively sabotage a child. We also need to remember that it has very little to do with the child's actual accomplishments and more with what the parent expects. Again, back to the fire metaphor, if Zuko isn't given room to grow, it's hardly fair to blame hlm for burning himself out. But we see that once he's out of Ozai's reach, he excels, because that's basic child psychology.

Another great way Zuko's firebending is tied to his arc is the way he learns from the others, copying moves from the other elements and incorporating them into his bending. This is symbolic for him learning that he, too, needs to learn from the other nations rather than fighting them.

Finally, Zuko accepting his role as Aang's firebending teacher is him accepting that he actually is a good bender, that his father was wrong, and that, just as he can learn from others, he has something he can give to others in return. Him becoming Aang's teacher because he knows what it's like to hurt other people and to be hurt by fire ties so well into what Iroh says about how he's learned from his mistakes and grown because of them. It's also a great metaphor for becoming firelord, because he knows the danger of power wielded unwisely.

[yuurivoice]

Heyy!! I've noticed in your spicy audios you don't really tend to use SFX and barely use it all? Is there a particular reason behind it or something? very curious

A few factors are involved.

First off, a preface of saying it's been a lot more common and frequent more recently because now that I'm medicated it's feels a lot less like work to add at least some squishy noises. That's going to be a recurring theme moving forward.

The straightforward answer? It's a huge pain in the ass to make it sound good and there's a big fuckin difference between a ~1 minute clip with a full suite of sounds and a 10+ minute audio. If there are folks out there producing that level of intricate audio smut regularly, without a sound designer, good on em. Making a convincing and accessible AMBIGUOUS fuck scene with sfx and the like is a challenge and I don't often feel equipped to tackle it. Plus, I've been pretty damn successful without doing all that...so, that hasn't exactly felt like a huge flaw or missing piece.

Now, meaty plaps and squishy fuck sounds is pretty easy and is something I'm doing regularly now vs only on occasions. So I'm excited for that.

Then the deeper answer that applies in some cases is that I like the idea of the literal listener making their OWN accompanying noises. There's a sort of fine balance between immersion and immersing someone in an experience that doesn't quite match their own needs or expectations and takes them out of it. There's no one size fits all solution.

So that has always factored in heavily with my consideration. There are some times where specific sounds feel logical and it definitely enhances the experience.

There's certainly room for more that falls into my specific wheelhouse, which I feel much more capable of adding to my workload now.

Also, funny enough, I've actually been exploring some spicy SFX packs to do some more intricate scenes that lean more heavily into them. Or at least do a special series of shorter audios with higher production just for fun.

Sort of a if it ain't broke don't fix it situation in the end, but I am eager to step things up more and more as I'm feeling more capable and willing. It can't really be overstated how much of my content was created by dragging myself to the both and fighting myself just to get shot done. "I am mentally ill" isn't a very satisfying explanation but uh, in retrospect, it was pretty fucking hard to accomplish much of anything without holding myself hostage and bargaining until I overcame every instance of procrastination. So, under those circumstances, you'll have to forgive me for not wanting to break out the lube and fingerfuck my fist before hitting the post button. Lmfao