#and an alt paragraph where she saves them both

[theuntamednarrator]

Thank you @mika--82​ for the question! I’m sorry it took so long but since I really enjoyed plotting out my Cangse Sanren lives au, and I think a lot about the women in The Untamed who didn't get to see their children grow up, strap in for round two of TB Revives the Mothers of the Untamed. This week's episode: Save Mama Lan by killing Lan Qiren \^.^/

(Many thanks to @drwcn​ for letting me borrow her hc names for Mama Lan (Qui Baiti) and Papa Lan (Lan Cenrong). You can read more about them on her blog here and here.)

(Warning for an unsuccessful suicide attempt)

QBT has been isolated in the Jingshi for a decade. She only sees her sons once a month, she isn’t allowed her sword, and her spiritual power is kept sealed

But LWJ inherited his stubbornness from his mum and she's determined to escape, one way or another

LQR is walking by the Jingshi when he feels a massive surge of energy and breaks his first ever Discipline (no running in Cloud Recesses)

He wrenches the Jingshi door open and sees an array that wouldn't look out of place two decades in the future in an alternate universe in a dingy shed behind Mo Manor

LQR breaks his second Discipline in as many minutes (do not make excessive noise) when he screams for his brother before he grabs QBT and drags her out of the array

LQR didn't have time to think, let alone study what the effects of that might be, all he knew was that it was killing her, and that her death would kill the brother he loves more than anything else

The backlash strikes him and he keels over

QBT gathers him up, sobbing and asking why he did it, she wanted to die, why did you do it Lan-er-gongzi? what were you thinking? Your brother loves you

LQR meets his brother’s eyes as he appears over her shoulder, the terrified disciples flanking him a white blur

He smiles and says I know

Curtains on LQR

(alternatively, we can just kill JGS again because ngl that was real satisfying the first time around)

Now the Elders are in a pickle because this may have been an accident but QBT has now been responsible for the deaths of an Elder and Second Young Master Lan

It's decided that the only option is exile

QBT is forbidden from setting foot in Cloud Recesses and the territories of Gusu Lan for ten year and forbidden from speaking to any Lan disciple during that time

She bows, accepts back the plain sword she had yielded when she came through the gates to be married, and is gone before the dawn. LCR watches her leave and then goes to wake their sons

Now, QBT was a wandering cultivator long before she was Lan-furen and actually really enjoys returning to life on the road

I wandered once! I can do it again!

Five years later she meets XXC battling a ferocious demon snake and together they defeat it

QBT definitely doesn’t feel her heart beat a little faster at the youthful face, white robes, and elegant jade-and-silver sword

She answers XXC's graceful bow with one of her own and the two spend a week clearing out the fierce nests of demons on the mountain

The next time their wandering brings them together she is introduced to my good friend Song Lan and hides her smile in her sleeve

Meanwhile in Cloud Recesses without LQR to pick up the slack LCR is forced to step out of seclusion and actually run his sect and parent his children

He does a very good job

QBT has to fight back proud tears every time she hears Twin Jades of Lan spoken of with awe

Ten years to the day of her exile QBT is grinning as she climbs the long flights of stairs towards the gates of Cloud Recesses

Part of that might be the entertaining company she walks with

A young man clutching two bottles of Emperor's Smile and talking so fast she’s only half listening while she tries to figure out if he’s actually taken a breath since introducing himself

Talking at breakneck speed of the young master who had been so strict with him at the gates, aiya Auntie! He was so cold! you should have seen his stony face

QBT only grins harder as WWX climbs the wall, is challenged, and blades flash over tiles (it might bring back fond memories of her own youth)

She slips over the wall while they are distracted and once WWX is silenced she reaches out her hand

You handle your sword beautifully, may I?

LWJ can't even say why - it's too dark to see her face and the voice is roughened after 10 years on the road - but he hands Bichen over without a second thought

She sighs as she runs a finger over the blade and the steel glows, lighting up her face (solely because I think glowy Bichen is very sexy and we should have had more of it in the drama honestly)

Bichen suits you better than it ever suited me, ZhanZhan 

LWJ is emoting all over the place (so embarrassing)

(luckily his back is to WWX because if baby disaster bi WWX saw that smile he would've died on the spot)

WWX of course is still a troublemaking rule breaker and LWJ is still charged with overseeing his punishment

QBT and LXC are united in their LWJ should make friends agenda and LXC inherited his sense of humour and delight for teasing LWJ from QBT

Between the two of them LWJ soon has more friends than he knows what to do with

QBT and LXC co-captain the good ship Wangxian

Of course plot stuff still happens including accidental-marriage-before-a-Quest-Ghost

XXC and SL meet them in Yueyang and when LWJ introduces himself they're thrilled because hey we know your mum! she’s real cool!

They don't trust the clans and they might've heard of NMJ but they know Qui-jiejie and they trust her and so they decide XY will go to Cloud Recesses for judgement

N-wow the twin jades are really deserving of their reputations-HS insists on a Qinghe representative going too

oh me? no no Wei-xiong this has been quite enough adventure for me. Meng Yao you'll go won't you? Dage trusts you and Lan-gongzi admired your *delicate cough* capability *innocent smile*

my.blush.com/embarrassed/yearning agrees

QBT is delighted to see XXC and SL again and happily introduces them to her elder son

SL and LXC almost immediately get into a heated debate over ahistorical fantasy chinese philosophy and/or politics and are instantly bonded

QBT may or may not have instigated said debate with a well-timed quote from a well-known (re: divisive) text

Basically QBT shares my get LXC more friends agenda

SL is, again, the first person (apart from LXC and his parents) to laugh at LWJ's jokes

WWX still refuses to believe this actually happened (the joke and SL laughing) (XXC swears it’s true)

XY is locked in the back hills and eventually a) dies trying to use his hidden piece of the yin iron to break the seals OR b) is rehabilitated by the power of bunnies and become an outer disciple (reader's choice!)

XXC and SL accompany WWX and JC part of the way to Lotus Pier

Cloud Recesses is attacked, QBT and LCR send LXC and MY away with the sacred texts, MY promising he knows somewhere safe to hide

LWJ refuses to leave his parents. The losses are not as bad as in canon, the Wen are beaten back, but LCR and LWJ are both injured

No Good Very Bad Summer Camp with World's Worst Head Counselor WC

No Good Very Bad Turtle Cave of Love

WWX wakes post-rescue with LWJ still there

(Because his parents are holding Cloud Recesses and he knows LXC is safe so he doesn't need to rush off)

JZX, JC, LWJ, and WWX spend a day planning before they split up

(this is hilarious and JC says "fuck" not less than 219 times)

(WWX only almost punches JZX and it only happens twice honestly people should be grateful! he was so restrained!!)

They all return home, LWJ promising to bring reinforcements from Cloud Recesses to Lotus Pier (because it's the most obvious next target. no other reason. just. strategically it makes sense)

WQ sends WN to Lotus Pier to warn WWX when WZL's forces are on their way

When the Wen attack, they're met with a prepared force of 1) YZY and the Jiang Disciples 2) QBT, LWJ, and a contingent of Lan Disciples AND 3) JC and WWX and a gaggle of archers (seriously why tf show the Jiang being so good and then only give us two archery fight scene moments and it’s heart breaking sixth young master jiang dying and some rando ouyang disciple shooting WWX?)

Things get a little hairy but between YZY and QBT they defeat WZL and the rest of the Wen quickly surrender

JFM and JYL arrive just as the battle is ending, escorted by Madam Jin, JZX, LQY, and all the Jin Disciples who were at Cloud Recesses

(WWX: MianMian you came you must have been so worried about me! LQY, ignoring him: Lan-er-gongzi are you okay? WWX: ah Lan Zhan you MianMian really likes you! that’s lucky! LWJ, screaming internally: mn)

(JGS was furious when JZX announced he was joining the campaign but what could he possibly say in front of his battle ready wife without looking like the utter coward of a wet biscuit he is)

Once again WWX is left with a screaming sword, too much curiosity, and too much time on his hands (due to his adopted family being not-dead)

But worse he has now also access to a woman who created an array powerful enough to kill even with her spiritual power sealed

Poor WRH doesn't stand a chance, even without MY spying for the Sunshot Campaign

After the battle QBT&LCR and YZY&JFM shut JGS's bullshit power grab down real quick and JGS sulks like the baby he is (probably in a brothel) while Madam Jin and JZX take over Lanling Jin

JZX hears about MY and the way he helped LXC and NMJ sends a letter of support and JZX is already quite jealous of all these sibling bonds and welcomes Ziyao with open arms

(All of which goes slightly to waste when JZY marries out to the Lan clan slightly less than a year later but hey, at least it's a good alliance.)

WQ takes over the Wen Clan but tears down Nightless City and relocates the capital to Dafan

(WQ: have you been to Nightless City? It’s built on an active volcano. Do you know how bad sulfur ash is for open wounds? Do you know what medical herbs grow in lava slurry? None is the answer. My family are all fucking morons)

(WQ: Not you a-Ning you’re a delight and we’re thrilled you’re here)

Rumour has it a certain immortal was so impressed with the stories of the medical techniques of Dafan Wen that she paid WQ a visit

(Disciples are so reckless after all! One never knows when one might need to be capable of transplanting vital organs!)

Each year WWX and LWJ spend 3 months at Gusu, 3 months at Lotus Pier, and 6 months wandering with XXC and SL

They get "fake married" no less than four times in three years (for the investigation xiongzhang! absolutely no other reason shishu! no other reason at all!) before LXC, MY, XXC, and SL get fed up and barricade them in their room until they talk to each other dammit

(LXC is very grateful MY has gotten so handy with the silencing talismans because the 'conversation' gets uncomfortably loud real quick)

Side note to say Clarity works very well to avert a qi deviation when it's not being actively corrupted, thanks very much, and NMJ lives many, many, many years which would be entirely happy if only NHS would pick up his saber once in a while

He would tell NHS this if he could ever find him

Happy ending!³

[meldy-writes]

Luckiest Girl in the World (Daryl Dixon X Wife! Reader)

Context:So I have an alt AO3 because for some reason I didn’t think a walking dead fic fit with the fanfictions I had under my Pen Name’s account, but at this point, I don’t think it really matters. Anyway, there’s this Daryl X Reader fic I’m writing on this alt account and I’m at the point where I’m writing two ways the story could branch, and there’s this little scene from the path I didn’t take that could work as a drabble. If you like this, or if you want to read the fic for context, it’s here. Be warned, it’s pretty long.

Summary: The Reader has been with the group since the CDC, and along the way, she fell in love and married Daryl Dixon. Now they’re in Alexandria and Aiden, one of Deanna’s sons has begun to harbor a crush. He doesn’t seem to realize that she’s taken. (Daryl’s not really mentioned until the last couple of paragraphs, but I thought those paragraphs were cute enough to warrant this being tagged as an x reader fic.)

Aiden sat at the top of the fence with her, casually leaning back in his seat. The front legs of the plastic chair were off the ground, his feet planted as he rocked back and forth.

“You’re gonna to fall backwards, you know.” (y/n) stated.

“You worried I’m going to get hurt?” he teased, leaning even farther back.

“No. In fact, I think it’d be funny. I just don’t want your mommy to yell at me.”

He let out a snort and put his arms behind his head as he began to rock back and forth. She rolled her eyes, amusement dancing on her features as she eyed the back legs of the chair in anticipation. As she predicted, they eventually snapped, and Aiden promptly fell backwards just as she’d cautioned.

She let out a barking laugh, and a few people passing by stopped to look up at her as the flushing boy tried to shake off the embarrassment.

“All right, all right, it’s not that funny.”

“Oh, I beg to differ, that was the most entertainin’ thing I’ve seen all week,” she argued, wiping a tear from her eye.

“Then your life must be very boring.” He countered bitterly, his pride hurt just a tad from how demeaning her tone was and how promptly she’d always shut him down.

“Oh, no. it’s not borin’, it’s just not fun, either.”

He finally recovered from his little mishap, tossing the broken chair down into the grass below to be fixed later, and choosing instead to sit against the wall. (y/n) kept to her perch, eyeing the expanse of pavement in front of the fence gate.

“You know, if you can’t find fun, you can always make it. There’s a game a lot of us play when we’re on watch to pass the time, want to play?”

She rolled her eyes. “I gotta keep my eyes on the gate”

“It’s a talking game. You can still keep watch. It’s called The Worst. We each share the worst experience we’ve ever had with something, and the one that’s the most terrible wins the round.” He continued, eyeing her with a charming smirk that, despite his best efforts, she hadn’t registered as flirty, yet.

He was an attractive guy, and after she’d saved his life on that run, and yelled at him, they’d bonded. He’d even swallowed his pride and let her train him. They’d gotten close, and they were both attractive, sarcastic, and confident people, so he couldn’t understand how they weren’t together yet. No matter what he did, she always shut down any plans he tried to make to hang out alone outside of the occasional look-out duty, and she always spoke to him like she was talking to a child. A very stupid child.

He didn’t let it deter him, though. No matter how much it hurt his pride. She’d eventually come around.

She turned her nose up at his suggestion, looking at him like he just told her the sky was green, and she was about to gently tell him he was a dumbass.

“That sounds like a game you don’t wanna play with me.”

He asked her why she felt like that.

“Because you’d always lose.” She stated simply, turning back to the scene past the gate.

“Okay, you don’t always have to play the jaded soldier. This world is shit, it’s fucked us all over one time or another, quit acting like you’re the saddest sack in the world.” He scoffed, smacking her shin with the back of his hand playfully.

She sighed, shrugging her shoulders.

“Alright, then. But if this ends up bummin’ you out, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Internally, he celebrated. This was the first time he’d ever gotten her to agree to something she initially said ‘no’ to. Slowly but surely, he was winning her over, he was sure.

“Alright, easy. Worst night of your life. Mine was that time I left that supply run group behind. Usually, we’d go into detail, explaining what happened, but, you already know about that night ‘cuz I told you about it.” He stated sadly. She’d talked a big game, so he was pulling out the big guns. “What about you?”

Let’s see you top that, Debbie Downer.

She smirked, sensing the challenge in his voice.

“A long time before we all came here, we were stayin’ on Maggie’s dad’s farm. One night, it got overrun by a horde, an’ everyone got separated. I was with Carol, an’ a walker fell on top of me, tryin’ to bite into my shoulder. She thought I was bit, so she left me behind, but I was wearin’ a real thick jacket. I was fine, but I had to cut it open and drench myself in its blood so the herd wouldn’t sniff me out and tear me to shreds. I had to slice my way through a sea of those suckers, an’ then stumble through the woods covered in gunk for a whole day and a half ���fore I found my people again. That was the first walker I ever killed on my own. Damn terrifyin’.”

He was quiet after that, face white as a sheet as he shuttered and coughed awkwardly.

“Y-your turn to come up with a topic.” He finally uttered.

“Worst walker encounter you ever had. Mine was this time at a mechanic shop out in… It had to be North Carolina. A guy tried to--well, it’s not important what his intentions were, the point was that he had me handcuffed to one of those automatic levers they use in autobody shops to lift cars, an’ I was hoisted off the ground. He had the keys in his front pocket, an’ I’d managed to get his head ‘tween my thighs to snap his neck. I was tryin’ to reach for the keys with my feet when he re-animated. I was strugglin’, I couldn’t go anywhere, I couldn’t use my arms, the only reason I got out of it was ‘cuz he accidentally bumped up against the control for the lift, and his head ended up crushed under the mechanism. I’ve had a lot of close calls, but I think that was the only time I ever truly felt like I was gonna die.”

Aiden let out a low whistle, letting her words settle. Maybe she’d been right after all. Still, depending on how she saw things, his might still be worse.

“Mine was right at the beginning. My girlfriend was with us while we were traveling for Mom’s campaign. I left for twenty minutes to grab some lunch, and when I got back to our hotel room, she was a walker. I don’t know if she was bitten, or if she had an accident, or if someone… I don’t know. All I know is that I had to kill her with my bare hands just to stay alive. I... dropped the hotel room tv on her head.”

He shuttered at the memory, and to his surprise, he felt (y/n) place her hand on his shoulder and squeeze comfortingly. He grabbed for it, but she pulled away before he could.

“Let’s uh, choose a more up-beat topic,” he continued weakly, “Worst date you ever went on. Mine was this girl Cierra Mauldry in sixth grade. I kissed her goodnight on her porch, and our braces stuck together.”

She laughed at first, but a long-suppressed memory resurfaced at the mention of dates, and instantly she was somber again.

“A guy I worked with at the CDC,” she started softly.

“He’d had a crush on me for a while, an’ I’d just learned that my dad died, so I was in kind of a vulnerable spot. I said yes to grabbin’ dinner together, an’ takin a walk ‘round the facility. When we got back to his room, he wanted to sleep with me, but I didn’t. I didn’t really like him that way, an’ I didn’t think it was fair to him to string him along, so I told him ‘no’, an’ that we should just remain professional from now on. Next day, he didn’t show up in the lab, an’ my boss sent me to go get ‘im. I found him as a walker hangin’ from his closet.” She took a hiccupping breath, reliving the memory in her mind, and scrunching her eyes shut. “Worst part is I cannot, for the life of me, remember his name.”

They were both quiet after that, and soon, they heard Spencer calling up to relieve (y/n) from her shift. She grinned sympathetically down and Aiden, and gave him the goodbye of:

“Told you it was a bad game to play with me.”

Still, when she got up, he scrambled to his feet as well grabbing her arm to stop her before she made her way down the ladder.

“Well, hey, I still had fun. I got to know you a bit better. I’d like to continue doing that, maybe you could come over for dinner and eat with my family tonight.”

She smiled the smile she usually did; like she was talking to a slow, and simple child.

“I’m sorry, Aiden, but tonight’s not great. Daryl’s gotten kind of close with his recruitn’ buddy, and his husband wants us to come to dinner tonight so he can finally properly meet me.”

Aiden scrunched up his eyes in confusion.

“What? What does Daryl getting close with them have to do with you? If they wanted to get to know you, couldn’t they just approach you without having to go through him?”

She smiled wider like he’d said something adorably stupid, as she clarified:

“I didn’t explain it very well, It’s more like a couple’s dinner party sort-of thing.”

Aiden blinked. What? What the fuck? Was she insinuating that she and Daryl were… she couldn’t be, right?

“You and Daryl are together?”

She nodded as if his statement was beyond obvious, “we’re married,” she corrected.

He squeezed his eyes closed, trying to picture the violent, mean, constantly dirty guy with the long, long hair together with the clever, beautiful, and secretly caring woman he’d been trying to flirt with for the past week and a half, but he just couldn’t picture it.

“How?” he blurted out.

“How do people get married?” she teased flatly.

“No, how did you two end up together? You’re so different!”

She smiled softly, looking down at her fingers as she began to twiddle them. This smile was different than any of the ones he’d reluctantly wrangled out of her. This one was genuine, and bashful, and affectionate, and dazzling. Aiden knew it wasn’t for him, and it almost felt like he was intruding on something he shouldn’t be just by looking at her.

“He an’ I are a lot more alike than people realize. We’re more alike than even he realizes, I think. That doesn’t matter though. These days, it’s not about whether you’re similar, or if you’ve known each other for a long time, it’s all about who you can trust and depend on. It’s about who you’d die for, and who’d die for you. We might not have ended up together in the old world, but in this one, we’ve got somethin’ strong. Somethin’ special.”

She grinned brightly, practically knocking the breath out of her companion as she looked him in the eyes and said, “I’m the luckiest girl in the world.”

With that, his grip on her arm retracted, and she finally made her way down the ladder. He watched her walk down the street and run into the man they’d just been discussing. He watched as she strode over to him, and gripped his leather vest, trying to pull him down for a kiss.

He noticed how Daryl grinned fondly and put his hands on her waist, placing a quick peck on the tip of her nose. He noticed how she leaned into him with her whole body. He noticed how the sun reflected off the ring on her finger, the ring he had not gathered was supposed to be a wedding ring until that moment. He noticed how soft Daryl was for her when no one else was around.

Or maybe, he was always like this around her, and Aiden had just been too absorbed in himself to realize.

[talesoftextposts]

Exactly! Crestoria is not the only game they don't really keep tabs with. A while ago i played a saint seiya game by them and it had many many issues. If you cannot have multiple games with quality than please don't. Is bad for us and the employees, those poor people must be going crazy :c

At first I liked kasque, quite different than what I would expect from a goddess, but I ended disliking her...

I feel kinda bad for aegis just being a punching bag for jokes and Yuna just being there to look pretty, they have a lot of potential for the story. Like you said Yuna had a great point and a good reflection moment but whatever eh? Aegis too, I felt his story like a punch on the gut because I tend to be like him and the queen, but again, whatever...

I do the arena for the free stuff too! I am not competitive at all XD

hello again anon!! im going to do another readmore gksghkeg

yeah i honestly...ugh. i have just a lot of issues w bamco in general but i also Do Not want them to pay attention to me jic they tell me to stop making memes or something stupid like that— like genuinely instead of making the game more functional or adding like...idk. any story or shit that makes Sense they just added things like the transcendence board which is just. for ppl who already maxed out their ascension boards?? after like 6 months??? Y'ALL... ik for a while too the phantom tower was Waaayyy too difficult but i think they nerfed it back to normal considering i can now clear thru level 40 at least :/ but overall the game is just. geared towards ppl who drop fucktons of cash on it. if you look at the ppl in the top 3 in arena rn? you KNOW they've spent hundreds if not thousands of dollars on this game. what the fuck.

also minor gripes are just...they don't add very many new units anyway, compared to like even asteria, and i get that there's effort for the whole models or w/e but...i mean if rays can do it... and i don't mean that in the rate that banners are released, bc those are...kind of annoyingly often as of late (looking @ all the crestoria cast alts) but the fact they're only for 1 or 2 charas who are Only ssrs, and it genuinely makes r and sr stones and sr charas just...obsolete and useless imo? like i genuinely have EVERY sr AND r full awakened/ascended which. is probs partly due to the drop rates being Absolute Garbage, but thank god they implemented a pity system, right? ...right? [tired sigh] i've saved enough for julius who has been in crestoria for 228 days, bamco, fucking release h—

i also want to add that i've contacted support MULTIPLE times abt issues w the game and they have legit just told me "hm sucks have u tried playing the game w all other apps closed" like yes, bamco, but that's not the problem??

SORRY for several paragraph rant abt the gameplay i just have some very strong opinions LMAO

i understand not liking kasque! tales antags...and characters in general, actually, are rather hit or miss. i personally just love evil women so im rlly in love w her GSKEHGESKHG

but as for the aegis and yuna things... YEAH. i rlly love them both and it's been extremely disappointing to see how they've been treated by the story :( like even if yuna's acting silly to cover her own feelings, it would be nice to get those scenes we get in other tales games (like...idk even the scenes in xillia like where alvin and elize sit and talk in the park, and leia talks w i think jude or milla depending on the route?) considering it's like...is penelope going to be okay? can she ever go back to her?? is she okay just crossing the sea and leaving her, even if there's really no choice??? sorry for the character introspect i just have a lot of thoughts—

aegis too, it's like. i don't mind teasing to an extent, but i really feel sometimes they go too far w it :( esp in like. events and the character episodes moreso than the main story (tho i could be remembering incorrectly) which makes me wonder if they just have different writers for each but even THEN like the main story still fails to act like yuna and aegis Exist half the time?? and JEEZ yeah i am constantly thinking abt aegis and queen rebecca, esp imo it's just a very... well first of all, that has to be Traumatizing As Hell but second of all i strongly headcanon he was unable to say it bc he didn't mean it and also i have a headcanon that the whole event has kept him from ever saying the words "i love you" ever again so that's that on THAT. (these are my headcanons pls don't send me hate over them they're not canon i promise—)

and honestly same!! i used to be sss rank and then i stopped caring abt arena for a bit and dropped a couple ranks...oops. i'm currently s-5 and had to FIGHT to keep myself there this season. it's not that i rlly care abt winning or being high ranking. or first, even, i just want the prizes from being at a certain rank/placing tbh. which is why.....................................oh im so tired of the ppl with lvl 120 fully awakened new ass units like i GET IT you have MONEY but i am not spending that much on a mobile game!!

ANYWAY thank u for coming to my ted talk omfg im so sorry this is so long (again)

[dustedmagazine]

Ian Mathers’ 2020: We’re stuck inside our own machines

I’ve had a song I loved in high school and haven’t thought much about since stuck in my head. The song “Apparitions” by the Matthew Good Band is a fine example of the alt rock of the late 90s; if you grew up then but somewhere down in the states (or elsewhere) instead of my southern Ontario you may well have your regional equivalents, and like this one they may not resonate terribly strongly outside of their time and place. It popped back into my head after a long time recently and of course 2020 has changed it a little. A song that as a teen I felt keenly as about loneliness (albeit also about how technology can feed into that) of course now plays on my nerves as another small piece of art about the way that most of us (those scared and/or responsible anyway) have only that relatively narrow, technologically mediated connection to the people we love. All of us, artists and listeners alike, are trying to fit our feelings and art and selves down these little connections, with some success.

On a personal level, 2020 wound up being stressful in ways we couldn’t have predicted even after the pandemic hit. In circumstances that could have seen governments on this continent support those unable to work (and those who shouldn’t have to), support those workers who are truly essential, support workers and renters and even landlords and small businesses, instead we got a near-total abeyance of those governments using the resources we provide them with to save any of us. On a personal level my wife and I were lucky enough to be able to work from home (not that it didn’t come with its own forms of stress, and now that I’m off until January I have several work/stress-related illnesses to recover from) but still saw friends and loved ones lose good, used-to-be-sustainable livings overnight, saw family businesses succumb to a near-total absence of effective government support after months of trying to keep above water, etc.

It is probably no surprise that this is not a situation conducive to listening to music, let alone writing about it; I have deliberately and happily kept busy on behind the scenes stuff at Dusted that I could still manage but looking, at the end of the year, at the amount I managed to actually create is demoralizing if not at all shocking. I’m not sure I think next year will be ‘better’ in many important ways, although at our job there is a growing feeling among coworkers that next year has to have some work/life balance because 2020 was, maybe more than anything else, unsustainable.

That’s not to say I didn’t spend a lot of time and emotion on music this year, and if nothing else constant sleep deprivation, stress, and panic meant I was probably open to being deeply moved by all sorts of art even more than normally (it’s gotten to the point where I can’t even read a sad or moving twitter thread out loud to my wife without getting teary, which is kind of… nice?). Funnily enough the band that did the most to keep me sane didn’t really put out anything in 2020. Personal favorite, Low, instead started, in early April, getting on Instagram with something they called on whim “It’s Friday I’m in Low.” With one brief break they have now done by my count at least 35 shows (catalogued here, by the way), every Friday at about 4 my time.

Admittedly it’s easier for Low to pull this off than some bands, since the 2/3 of the trio that sing are a married couple (they’ve had a couple of socially-distanced backyard shows with bassist Steve Garrington, but he’s mostly been isolating elsewhere). These shows have seen the band’s Alan Sparhawk take a mid-set break to do follow-up phone interviews with the acts featured in the COVID-curtailed touring bands series Vansplainingthat they started on YouTube, or just to give a tour round their vegetable garden and talk tips. It’s seen Alan and Mimi Parker draw on their impressive, 25+ year body of work (averaging 4-5 songs a set, I don’t think they’ve repeated themselves yet) and talk a bit between songs about pandemics, politics, song choices, and whether Alan should grab his bike helmet this time.

They’re not the only musicians out there speaking love and sanity (and playing music) into the strange digital interzone filled with hate and disinformation where we’ve all been forced to gather while locked down, but they were and the most consistent and steady signal being emitted each week. No matter how tired I was from work or what new symptoms I’d developed or what horrific thing I read into the news, even if I had to take an emergency nap while it was actually airing, every Friday the show was there. Once things do return to something more like normal, it’s one of the few things I’ll unambiguously miss about this weird-ass year.

So if that makes an argument for Low as my band of the year (admittedly again… it’s not like Double Negative has aged poorly, either), that does a disservice to those 2020 records I did connect with; even if there are still literally dozens I have to go through, many of which I expect to love, my top picks this year (if as unrankable by me as always) hit me as hard as any top pick in recent years did. So here I present a quick and informal top 5, which the rest of my top 20 following in alphabetical order. Here’s hoping for more time and space in 2021 for music, and even more than that, for more support for those who need it from those who could have been providing it all this time. (The Matthew Good Band, incidentally, always did best with their ballads. “Strange Days” is another I’ve had in my head these days; the image of moving “backwards, into a wall of fire” has stuck with me since the 90s and it’s never felt more grimly appropriate.)

Greet Death — New Hell

New Hell by Greet Death

This one is, in some sense, cheating; it came out November 2019. But that just means it’s the latest winner of my personal Torres Prize for Ian Being Late to the Party (so named because becoming slightly obsessed with Torres’ Sprinter just after I sent in my 2015 list was the first time I noticed that one of my favorite records of each year tends to get picked up by me just after I call it quits on the year, no matter how long I try to wait). This very doom and gloom slowcore/metal/(whatever, just know it’s heavy) trio at first felt very much like my beloved Cloakroom (whose Time Well has also won a Torres Prize) but sure enough nuances revealed themselves. Back in February it felt almost a little too negative, but then the rest of 2020 happened. And the extended burns of “You’re Gonna Hate What You’ve Done” and the title track remain searing.

Holy Fuck — Deleter

Probably the record I’ve been trying to write about the longest in 2020, and the one I’m most disappointed in myself that I just couldn’t get the requisite paragraphs together. It’s a wonderful effort from the consistently great Toronto resolutely human-created (and —mediated) dance music quartet, one that both feels like a summation of everything they do well, and with the addition of some outside voices (including strong turns from the singers of both Hot Chip and Liars) a step forward at the same time.

Spanish Love Songs — Brave Faces Everyone

Brave Faces Everyone by Spanish Love Songs

As the year got worse, this roar of defiance only got more crucial for me to hear every so often; I was a big enough fan of it, even after writing it up for Dusted, that when they solicited fan footage for a subsequent music video you may just be able to get a glimpse of me in it. (I’m the one in a “No Tories” t-shirt.) My punk rock-loving twin brother was the one who introduced me to Spanish Love Songs and we were supposed to spend an evening in June screaming along to them live in a packed, sweaty room. I need that in my life again.

Julianna Barwick — Healing Is a Miracle

Healing Is A Miracle by Julianna Barwick

It’s a sign of what 2020 has been like here that even just this album title leaves bruises, and while I privately worried Barwick would have a hard time following up 2016’s sublime Will (probably my favorite record that year), it seems that continuing to take whatever downtime she needs to keep focusing and refining her particular muse has once again yielded amazing results. Anyone who thinks they know what a Barwick track sounds like should really check out, say, “Flowers”, but much of this record absolutely sounds like Barwick, just even better than before. She also boasted my wife and I's favorite streaming concert of 2020, an absolutely gorgeous rendition of this album with Mary Lattimore showing up.

Phoebe Bridgers — Punisher

Punisher by Phoebe Bridgers

I joked on Twitter recently that I have far too nice a dad (and far too good a relationship with him) to be as obsessed as I am with Phoebe Bridgers’ “Kyoto”, but here we are. Like most of her generation, Bridgers’ social media presence ranges from shit-posting to inscrutable, but even though things are often just as hard to figure out in her beautiful songs (as they often are in life), there’s an emotional clarity to them that can just grab you deep down. Couple that with seriously impressive songcraft and the progress from her already astounding debut Stranger in the Alps and more than anyone else in 2020 I’m excited to see just where the hell Phoebe Bridgers is going to go, because it feels like she’s talented and hardworking enough to go just about anywhere and drag a lot of our hearts with her.

Other Favorites

Aidan Baker & Gareth Davis — Invisible Cities II

Anastasia Minster — Father

Deftones — Ohms

Hum — Inlet

Kelly Lee Owens — Inner Song

Mesarthim — The Degenerate Era

Perfume Genius — Set My Heart On Fire Immediately

Protomartyr — Ultimate Success Today

Rachel Kiel — Dream Logic

The Ridiculous Trio — The Ridiculous Trio Plays the Stooges

Sam Amidon — Sam Amidon

Shabason, Krgovich & Harris — Philadelphia

Stars Like Fleas — DWARS Session: Live on Radio VPRO

Well Yells — We Mirror the Dead

Yves Tumour — Heaven to a Tortured Mind

Five Reissues/Compilations/etc.

Aix Em Klemm — Aix Em Klemm

Bardo Pond — Adrop/Circuit VIII

Charles Curtis — Performances & Recordings 1998-2018

Coil — Musick to Play in the Dark

Hot Chip — LateNightTales

Ian Mathers

[alicepink-me]

Secrets Revealed

By: Alice Pink (Btw I was 14 when I wrote this, so not my best work)

Story Summary:

Chat Noir’s goal has always been to find out Ladybug’s true identity. Can one hint about Ladybug lead to the truth? Secrets will be revealed about the past as mysteries unfold. How will Marinette and Adrien react to everything?

Chapter 10: Spells

The next day after school:

Marinette was sitting on her bed reading the spell book once again. She had almost finished looking through every page of the book, but still hadn't found anything that could help her. Tikki sat on Marinette's shoulder and helped in the search for the right spell.

"What if there isn't a spell, Tikki? We might be wasting our time searching through this book if there is nothing." Marinette stated, laying her chin on the book.

"Even if we don't find anything now, we'll keep looking. You can't give up. There's always a ways out of a situation and you'll find it." Tikki preached.

"I hope you're right, Tikki."

"Hello. Marinette?" Alya called, stepping through the trap door.

"Up here." Marinette waved down to Alya.

Marinette picked up the book and walked down the stairs.

"I heard about some spell book that you have and came over to check it out."

Marinette held out the spell book to Alya.

"This is the spell book, but . . . I haven't found anything that will help me get back to the Betweens."

"Well I'm here now to help you and maybe I'll even be some extra luck in your search."

"Maybe, but I've almost finished looking through the book." Marinette said, opening the book back up.

"You might have looked over something, Marinette. Try looking for a different kind of spell instead of one that's just going to take you somewhere." Alya advised.

"Well here." 

Marinette handed Alya the spell book and she flipped through the pages. Alya looked through the book for five minutes before stopping at a page.

"I think I found something useful."

"What?!" Marinette shouted, looking over Alya's shoulder. "What did you find?"

"A secrets spell. It will tell us anything. Look." Alya pointed to a page in the book. "If you cast this spell on someone, they'll tell you the answers to anything. It's better than a truth spell since the person you cast it on will know all secrets about the universe."

"Thanks Alya!" Marinette hugged Alya excitedly. "But . . . who am I going to cast the spell on?"

"You can cast it on me. I said I'd help you." Alya smiled, giving Marinette the book.

"Are you sure Alya? I haven't cast it before. What if I say it wrong?"

"You and I will both be fine." Alya rested her hands on Marinette's shoulders. "Just cast it already."

Alya sat on Marinette's chaise and waited.

"Alright." Marinette walked in front of Alya, closed her eyes and chanted. "Revealer aller Geheimnisse kommen heraus und bekennen!"

Alya's eyes turned to a gold and she seemed to be glowing.

"What must I confess?" The deep voice emerged from Alya quietly. "What answers do you seek?"

Marinette's eyes widened as she stared at her friend in surprise. The deep voice that was now inside Alya was creeping out to her.

"Oh . . . um . . . " Marinette scratched her head and thought of what to say. "Do you know about the Betweens?"

"Of course I know the Betweens." The voice laughed. "I know everything."

"Yeah. That was a stupid question." Marinette mumbled. "So . . . Is there . . . any way . . . to get into the Betweens?"

"Yes."

"Is there an answer in this spell book?"

"Yes."

"Well where?! I've looked through almost every page." Marinette whined.

"Have you really looked?" The voice said, making Alya's face smile. "Secrets are everywhere and they're not always in plain sight. You must pay close attention."

"What do you mean?" Marinette asked, glaring at "Alya's" smile.

"The answer is there, but not there."

"What does that mean?"

"Look."

"What page is it?"

"Page 136. But you must search for it."

Marinette frantically searched for the right page.

"I found it . . . but . . . this a page full of food spells . . . where is the answer?" Marinette looked up at "Alya" confused.

"Must people like you summon me like this. Open your eyes and you'll find any answer. You don't need me unless you've given up. My life is a confession. A confession that never ends as I tell all that I'm asked. I know everyone and everything in existence. I know what you are looking for and I must say that you are brave and persistent." The voice said soothingly.

"You are wrong there. I have not given up." Marinette boasted, standing up straight. "I continue searching for answers until I have found one. You are a useful short cut."

"I guess I'll always be some sort of short cut to people."

"Confession . . . people shouldn't abuse your power, but you can be useful when in need of help. Everyone should appreciate you more."

"Marinette . . . " The voice made "Alya's" grin rise. "Do you need a light to help you read?"

"What? No. It's bright enough in here."

"I mean a different light." The voice laughed. "One that will actually help you see. Page 12 paragraph 5 for a thought spell. The spell will give you whatever you're thinking, but if you put your hand on my head then you'll get what I want."

"I don't need a light." Marinette announced.

"Light for an answer."

"Fine. I'll get a light but only for the answer that I'm looking for."

Marinette found the spell and put her right hand on "Alya's" head.

"Erscheinen, was ich für mein gutes denke und wünsche!"

An ultraviolet flashlight appeared in Marinette's lap. She removed her hands from "Alya's" head and grabbed the flashlight.

"An ultraviolet light?" Marinette held it up and focused on it. "Why would I-" Marinette stared at "Alya". "Oh. A UV light! Brilliant! You were trying to tell me that if I use this light then . . . I'll uncover this book's secrets. This book is filled with twice as many spells as I thought."

Marinette shone the light onto page 136 and awed.

"You were right. 136 has the answer . . . and now . . . I'll be able to save everyone. Thank you Confession." Marinette hugged "Alya" in excitement.

"You're welcome Marinette and remember not to give up." The voice made Alya smile again. "You don't always need a short cut."

"I'll try my best." Marinette smiled. "Rückgängig alte Wünsche."

With that, Alya's eyes changed back to hazel as she sighed.

"That . . . was . . . awesome!" Alya shouted. "It was like something was talking through me . . . but I could still hear and understand everything. That confession guy was so cool."

"Thanks Alya!" Marinette squealed, hugging Alya. "I found a solution and I found out that there are hidden secrets in this book. And I can unlock those secrets with an ultraviolet light."

"Glad I could help." Alya pried Marinette's arms from her. "See I told you to cast the spell. If I hadn't been persistent then you wouldn't have found anything. You shouldn't have doubted yourself so much."

"I know." Marinette smiled. "And I'll tell Adrien tomorrow before school."

"Yeah. He'll definitely want to know." Alya said, walking over to the trap door and stepped through. "I have to go now, Marinette. And now that you have your answer, you can obsess about it to Adrien."

"I have to obsess about it in my head first, but bye. I'll see you tomorrow."

Tikki woke up from a pillow on Marinette's bed and flew down to her.

"Did you hear any of that, Tikki?"

"Yeah. I heard most of it and I'm excited that you've found something."

"This is fantastic. Everything is going great and I'm going to tell Adrien as soon as I go to school tomorrow."

. . .

The alarm rang for the third time as Marinette sprung up out of bed. She spooked Tikki as she screamed in realization that she was late. She frantically got dressed and grabbed her stuff.

The day before:

Marinette: I have something important to tell you.

Adrien: What is it?

Marinette: A surprise. I'll tell you tomorrow before school. I'll try to be outside of the school fifteen minutes early.

Adrien: Okay. See you then. Can't wait.

Back to the next morning:

"Tikki hurry! Get into my purse." Marinette freaked. "I promised Adrien that I'd meet him fifteen minutes before school started and that would have been five minutes ago."

"Everything will be fine." Tikki assured. "Adrien probably won't care that you're late. Everyone knows that you're always late and forgetful."

Marinette grabbed the spell book and sprinted out of the bakery. She ran across the street to the school and was stopped by Adrien on the sidewalk.

"Woah. Slow down." Adrien said, stopping the out of breath Marinette.

"I-uh . . . sorry I'm late." Marinette panted.

"I kind of figured that you'd be late, but don't worry. We still have ten minutes left." Adrien smiled. "So what surprise did you have to tell me?"

"Guess what I found . . . a spell that will get us into the Betweens!" Marinette shouted. "We use our miraculouses to open a portal that will take us there." Marinette showed Adrien the page in her spell book and shone her UV flashlight on it.

"This is amazing, Marinette." Adrien smiled, spinning Marinette around.

"We just need to press a button in the fountain there. The button wasn't accessible before when I was there, but when we enter the Betweens through the portal, we are breaking down the walls and security. The button will appear on top of the fountain when we enter."

"Will it be easy to get to?"

"I think so and when we press the button, everyone in the entire Betweens will be set free. They'll all be transported back to where they were in the real world while we'll still be in there until we get transported out."

"And what about my mom?" Adrien asked, concerned.

"We'll have to find her. She's the only person not in a separate world." Marinette saw as Adrien's face changed to a worried look. "We'll get her out. Since we're basically breaking the Betweens, she'll be able to teleport out without a miraculous."

"That's good."

Marinette hugged Adrien as Alya took a picture from behind them. Marinette had jumped when she heard the flash of Alya's phone.

"Alya! Did you just take a photo of us?" Marinette let go of Adrien and ran to Alya and looked over her shoulder at her phone.

"Maybe." Alya smiled. "At least now I have a picture of you two as a couple."

"Good. Spread the word." Adrien said, wrapping his arm around Marinette.

"I will." Alya put away her phone and looked at them. "So Marinette . . . did you tell him about the spell?"

"Yeah . . . but . . . I kind of found a problem with the spell that I . . . didn't tell you two about yet." Marinette's voice got quieter.

"What kind of problem?" Alya said, raising an eyebrow.

"The spell requires four miraculouses."

"What?!" Adrien and Alya both shouted.

"I saw it written on the page when I was getting ready this morning. Look." Marinette held her flashlight up to the open book again to reveal what it said.

"There must be another way." Adrien whined.

"Nope. I've checked. There isn't any other way."

Marinette looked to Alya and noticed that she was staring at something.

"What is it Alya?" Marinette asked.

"There is some old guy staring at us from over there."

Marinette turned around to see Master Fu looking at them from a lamp post.

"Master Fu!" Marinette called as her and Adrien ran over to him.

"Master who?" Alya questioned before following them.

"Alya, this is Master Fu." Marinette said.

"Oh yeah." Alya said in realization. "I remember you. I was at the library to update the Ladyblog and I had handed you a book that you couldn't reach on a high shelf."

"That's how you met him? I just helped him up off the ground when he fell in front of the school." Adrien announced.

"I helped him cross the street on the first day of school . . . but Alya, Master Fu is the one who gave us our miraculouses."

"Oh . . . why did you give me a miraculous for helping you get a library book?" Alya asked, confused.

"Not many people will stop to help an old man like you three did." Mater Fu smiled. "So Marinette, how is your search going for the Betweens?"

"I found a spell to get us there." Marinette smiled, excitedly. "The only problem is that it requires four miraculouses. Will you use your miraculous to help us?"

"Well . . . " Master Fu started. "I don't know. I'm 187 years old now and I'm not as young as I use to be. But . . . it may be time for me to hand down my miraculous."

"Are you sure?" Adrien began. "Who will you give it too?"

"Oh!" Alya shouted. "You could give it to Nino, Master Fu. Then we wouldn't have to leave him alone all of the time to fight."

"Alya. Master Fu has to pick the miraculous holders." Marinette said, glaring at Alya.

"Now Marinette, she might have a point." Mater Fu said, holding up a hand. "Each of you earned your miraculouses differently, but you were all friends before. I'm sure that another one of your friends would be just as kind hearted as you guys. I might have to consider it."

"Really." The three said in shock.

[sniperct]

So I found a post in my emails I meant to put on tumble 8 years ago but never got around to it. It’s my character creation process and it’s still relevant today. Made a few edits to update it a bit.

For me, the process of creating a character in an MMO begins before I ever install that MMO. But while some people may have pages and pages of backstory and history, I like to remain simple. I pick out a basic personality, a gender that suits that personality, and then if I feel like it a paragraph or two of basic history. The rest will get fleshed out from in game experiences.

As an example, the character I've played the longest and is fleshed out the longest is my rogue in WoW. She started out with a few simple needs - Female, purple hair, free spirit. What class represented the 'path of no path'. Rogue. What race had purple hair? Night elf. Why? My first MMO was Earth and Beyond. 

My character was a trader named Tyra who literally became a space pirate (you could do that in that game). She had purple hair. My character in SWG was a smuggler. Purple hair. Pretty simple. Rogue seemed the closest to pirate and smuggler. Night elf was only alliance race with purple hair.

So I had this night elf, she had a starter personality (similar to Tyra. care free, danger junkie, battle snarker). I gave her a short backstory. She was a merchant's daughter, spent a lot of time traveling between towns with her father. Because of this she has wanderlust. She fought at mount Hyjal and deserted. She partially redeemed herself by saving a pair of humans near the end of the battle. Everything else, how she grew and changed and evolved happened in game, due to what she did and the people she met. She was never meant for romance, but she fell for her best friend, much to both our surprise. A lot of her backstory got fleshed out as I played.

Tyra's personality stretches through EnB > star wars galaxies > Wow > Lotro > Rift and on and on into FF14. She's had some diversions and I've fleshed her out in stories and other media, but each version is different.

I eventually played other alts (I became an altoholic thanks to Lotro), and I did similar things. What personality archetype did I want? Does their look fit their personality or is it deliberately a misfit? Through just simple playing in lotro and wow (and a little bit of AoC) I ultimately developed a series of personalities that make for good starter personalities.

The paladin/protector/knight character started in WoW, migrated into Rift, and particularly GW2 and FF14. 

Give them a blank slate, and see how they evolve and change. As mentioned there's the free spirit, the Tyra. There's the gaelic/rohirric type characters. The women start out as sort of berserker types, the males tend to be good natured protectors. There's the huntress. Typically human (even when there are elves), forest lover, mother wolf type, loner.  

The defender. The torn between light and dark. Some others. And sometimes they’re combinations.

While they all share the same base, they all evolve differently as I play them. Game lore, in game events and encounters and friendships all serve to flesh them out and make them distinctively different from each other.

Yukale, as seen in WoW, and Yukale as seen in Rift, or SWTOR or FF14, are all battle snarkers with empathy. But they have vastly different end points and it’s always fun to see where those end points are.

[bladekindeyewear]

Boots reads Homestuck Epilogue(s) Part 8 - Meat Page 41

==>

Okay, Dirk’s gonna monologue about, like... acknowledging his villainy without realizing it I guess?

And if I didn’t bother pursuing those goals, and thereby tacitly accepting the untold suffering that resulted from my inaction, wouldn’t that make me a bad person? If I try and succeed, I’m a hero, right? And if I try and fail, at least I made things interesting on my way to the grave. There would be a tragic nobility in that. And the way I see it, settling for anything less from my arc would be, frankly, pathetic.

So yeah, of course I know I “have to be stopped.” It’s part of the contract. What you sign up for when you assume the burdens of this sort of power. Where there is that which must be subdued and suborned for the greater good, there is that which will instinctively resist. That which intuits that whatever’s going on here is “wrong.” Otherwise, intervention wouldn’t even be necessary, would it?

Yeah, the Heroic and Just death parameters I outlined in the Ultimate Riddle post pretty clearly line up here that he’s fucking shit over in a way he refuses to truly believe is going to end up in his Just demise even if he knows it on some level.  Fucking over everyone’s wills like that?  Fuck you.

Only worthless people permit themselves the great luxury of a valorous sacrifice. 

JUST.  FUCKING.  DEATH.

Mhmm, he knows he’s going to get fucking owned.  Just a little sooner than he thought, I’d reckon.

...geez, I’m going to forget to fucking EAT again today if this epilogue goes on much longer.  Maybe I’ll have to blog the Candy part, like, tomorrow or something.  If I can convince myself to SLEEP instead of reading more, that is.

==>

Thank God all the manipulation is reversing itself.  Keep playing into it and letting it happen you pompous ass, Dirk, it was inevitable.

Couldn’t pay me to be in that room right now. Not for all the agency in the world.

Yeah, agency is the word.  Dirk is aiming for infinite agency at the expense of everyone else’s.  His God-Tier powers crush others’ individuality and let him puppeteer them instead, and it’s what he’s been using all along to manipulate the situation in this story.

they will know what to do, when they are ready.

On the one hand, thanks alt!Callie.  On the other, seriously fuck you alt!Callie for taking Jade out of the story AAAAGAAAAAIN.  D:<

neither she nor her friends will have to worry about him anymore, so long as they remain on this planet and under my protection.

Um, that was phrased ominously potentially.

huddled on the floor, she repeats this pledge to herself. theoretically, he could be stopped before he leaves, if they hurried. they would need to know what to do, where to go, and to have the motivation to do it, but time is short. i could push them to, with a certain degree of intervention, but i will not. my unwillingness to do so is what separates me from him. and what corporeal life needs now is someone presiding over them who is nothing like him at all.

FUCK YES, PRESERVE THE WILL OF THE CHARACTERS INSTEAD OF TURNING IT ALL INTO YOUR OWN FANFIC YOU BEAUTIFUL CHERUB

Also, thought that occurred to me at the end of this page... did Dirk potentially arrange John’s death here to keep his retcon powers from being able to stop him?

==>

Epilogue Eight

Okay I’m churning through this all pretty quickly now that there isn’t a bunch of hyperdense prose in the way.  Excellent conversation between characters, furthering the plot along while engaging in very understandable hilarity.

KARKAT: TELL HER TO REGISTER MY HEAVING BULGE AS A PRIORITY!!!!!

Wonk

I don’t THINK I’m reading this any faster than usual, but it FEELS like I am? Maybe because of the format, or maybe I really AM reading it faster to get to Dirk’s fucking comeuppance as fast as goddamn possible.

Pfff, cosplaying as Dave.

KARKAT: WOW! THE WOKEMASTER IS ON FUCKING FIRE FOLKS! HE’LL BE HERE ALL NIGHT!!!

I love this whole conversation

ROXY: awwwwwww ROXY: u boys cute :)

<3

Alright, Jane doesn’t kno-- wait, you’re not looping her in on this?  I thought she’d join in and get, like, a redemptive character arc.  Oh well, lesstimespentonthatthebetterhurryupandkickDirk’sass

Wait, so Roxy didn’t know John wasn’t coming back?  Calliope did though???

Is the only reason Dirk took Terezi along to keep her from giving them info, or... no, he said MORE of them would eventually come, what the fuck is he even planning?

they will believe they are on a quest to retrieve a wife and rescue a friend. but they will discover their true mission is of much greater cosmic significance than they imagined. the seer is firmly in the thrall of the prince and will not easily be pried away. and as regards the heir, though resuscitation remains a theoretical possibility for those still striving for it, the truth of his role is it has reached a greater sense of narrative finality than any of his allies will bring themselves to admit. his influence over canon has come to an end, as has this particular story. his ultimate sacrifice was made to put the missing keystone in place and avert the supreme dissipation of all that shall be considered to hold truth, relevance, and essentiality.

...Huh.

Okay, so they MIGHT have to accidentally create Paradox Space, and regardless by stopping Dirk they’ll be guaranteeing agency as a right to those who live both within and without the confines of... whatever existence even is anymore.

......This ship chase through Paradox Space of cosmic significance sounds disturbingly familiar to old pictures I used to verbally paint about the endgame, and I refuse to think about that idea further.

And we’re returning to black text, from the sound of what alt!Callie is saying.  Let’s do that.

==>

POSTSCRIPT?!?????

POSTSCRIPT?  P O S T S C R I P T?!??!?!??!?!??

IS THIS FUCKING OVER OR SOMETHING? IS THIS NOT GETTING RESOLVED WHAT THE FLYING FUCK AAA OKAY CALM DOWN CALM DOWN BOOTS AND READ

fuck my stomach’s clenching up again oh god

artillery what the fuck

aradia okay

WWWWHAT THE FUCK SIXTEEN YEAR OLD JADE WHAT

JADE FROM THE BLACK HOLE GOT SPIT OUT HERE OR

OKAY WHAT THE FUCK IS EVEN GOING ON HERE BLACK EYES AND SHE’S A MURDER MACHINE OKAY WHAT

WHAT IS ALL THIS BULLSHIT WHY IS AN ANGSTY DARKJADE WHO MAY OR MAY NOT BE ALTCALLIE CONTROLLED DOING FLASHY BULLSHIT

“no being has ever commanded before” WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEA-- OH SHIT IS IT LIKE BLACK HOLE ABILITIES

LIKE, FUCKING, BLACK HOLE INSTEAD OF THE GREEN SUN ABILITIES NOW TIED TO HER AND SHES BEEN CONTROLLED BY ALT!CALLIE LONG ENOUGH TO GET HERE OR WHAT THE FUUUUUUCK WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO JADE YOU FUCKING STORY GET OUT OF HERE

davebot.  why a davebot?  davebot.

I’m feeling fucking sick.  Okay what’s about to happen.

Okay so this Dave is like from some other timeline split and got botsaved or something sure whatever

okay some of the others are going off into this... “OTHER UNIVERSE???” too???? or other paradox space or some fucking bullshit???

also scrolling up i missed “Jade was sixteen years old when she showed up, and she doesn’t look a day older now, though many hundreds of days have passed” o kay are these ghosts???

Oh FUCK I CAN BREATHE

i can breathe again

fuck, these are like

im guessing these are... other ghosts or former-ghosts or basically everyone that huddled into the black hole, and aradias there because of course or something, this isnt dirk having won and reached his place or whatever

this is the jade alt who fell into the black hole and must have died hence her perpetually-young look, and now that shes in the black hole she has access to black hole powers

REAL JADE is FUCKING FINE

breathe boots breathe god damnit

okay reading, uh

a-all the action that matters f fuck i dsee the end of the page what thej fuck s how oculd it enduhyere kanaya has an enddless chase for her ff-fucking wife or while she’s being mind-raped by dirk orasdf jklfdk adn dshes gonan be in a stupdi metal body or

im really

really gonna need that candy after this

reading that last few paragraphs SHIT

yeah aradias going to go where all the exciting shit is happening in this new... black... hole... adox space or whatever, or wherever this is or

Where the hole gaped just moments ago, there now exists an imaginary line.

Above this line resides all that matters. Below exists all else. Never again the twain shall meet.

And... that’s the final line between Canon and Non-Canon.  Or whatever terms.

Andrew’s done.  The story’s done.  Everything else about their journey is for the imagination alone.  Did they save Rose from Dirk taking her through a portal or whatever to whichever Dirkverse he was conjuring up or whatever theory bullshit i REALLY DONT WANT TO THINK OF OR THEORIZE ABOUT EVEN EVER about what the fuck dirk was trying to pull with all this SHHHHITT!!!!!!!??//?

I... christ.  I need that Candy section.  And I need a drink.  Fuck this I was gonna break for dinner but I’m continuing once I get a beer.  I’m sweating and unhappy.  Like I should be after eating this many pages of raw meat, shouldn’t I?

Next post will be Candy 1 once I confirm that there’s nothing else I’m missing, no other part of this portion to save me from wanting to vomit in an entirely anxious and non-beer-related way.

Fuck.

[televinita]

Zoo 3.01

I am rusty and out of practice so bear with me, especially since I spent 2 hours after watching just basically keyboard smashing and yelling "I DON'T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING ABOUT ANYTHING THAT HAPPENED."

Anyway, today's review format is subheaders with bullet points that are really more like single-idea paragraphs and only get longer as I go. This review is also based on my live-viewing notes and not fact-checked with a second watch.

Plot Partners: Abe / Dariela & Suspicious Clem

Abe became a doctor? Dariela has sketchy contacts Abe can't know about? They are kick-ass parents on top of all that, despite their own crappy childhoods?? I have no idea what's going on but I'm excited.

Is anyone going to explain how some dogs are apparently unaffected by the mutation or...? Is it because doggos are so Good and Pure?

What is this clumsy retcon that Clementine was obsessed with babies/dolls? She tried to take like 10 stuffed animals and zero dolls with her when they left Boston in season 1. I mean I guess she did risk her life to save a baby from murder crows, but... Speaking of which, looks like season 3 will finally be the year nobody has to rescue a baby after its mother is brutally swarmed to death!

Hot Rugged Action Hero Jackson (& Friends)

Hey so listen I'm going to need you to stop force feeding me this relationship because I am still not there yet. Maybe when I am there, I will enjoy the fact that you threw like 5 different types of my favorite shippy scenes into one episode, but for now I'm saying things like "Ctrl+Alt+Save this kiss for when I care."

I am super excited that Jackson can control lions With His Mind, though. Tell me more.

And give me ALL of the Primeval monsters. That prehistoric rhino thing was my 2nd favorite part of the episode. (and to be clear: when i say Primeval, I am referencing the awesome British TV show and its little Canadian sibling, not just an adjective)

Plot Partners: Jamie and/or Logan

I can't believe Logan is managing to annoy me even more now that he has hair.

This skulking loner Sarah Walker version of Jamie is not really doing anything for me, so if we could bring her warmer side back ASAP that'd be cool. (sorry fandom. please don’t throw garbage at me. /Pam Beesly voice.)

Although I do sort of like that she re-purposed Mitch's lab into her own computer science-y lab. That's something we should probably write stories about. Speaking of...

Backstory Tentpoles a.k.a. Fanfic Prompts

I could let you claim that Jamie banged Logan at some point in the last 10 years, or I could just go "haha cool I guess we're calling that wilderness trek and about 7 days on the plane dating now" and speak no more of this evil.

I love that it sounds like Jamie and/or the Ragtag Band Of Failed Heroes got to keep hold of Clementine for 2 or 3 years, at least, before she apparently got ripped away and spirited off by Max. I will actually die of pain right now if I try to even imagine what that change was like, but it's gonna be gold for someone to dig into. Several someones, actually; there is plenty of room.

Speaking of things that will make me die of pain if I try to think about them: Jamie going on multiple expeditions over the years to try and find him.

Particularly the one where she finds his glasses.

His bloodstained glasses.

#HELP THE DYING IS STARTING

F YEAH ALPHA SHIP

Actual reaction to That Scene: *rolling my eyes* "Jamie has all the opportunity in the world to meet more terrible men" scene right on cu- WHAT, WHAT THE JIMINIY JIGGERS IS GOING ON / NO NEVER MIND I DON'T CARE AND DON'T NEED CONTEXT.

I have too many feelings about this so mostly Imma spend them on other peoples' posts and/or gifsets, but my heart is in roughly 9000 pieces as it finally dawns on me that this being Mitch's dream = Mitch comforting himself with Jamie telling him it's going to be okay and she's going to find him = can somebody please call all the ambulances

...also I keep looking at the deep and somewhat disfiguring scars he’s got, and wondering how Jamie might react to them. These are significantly different from the usual barely-there scars fictional characters fret about; these are the kind of scars that force you to confront exactly what kind of nightmare horror pain this person went through and how maybe it's even worse than you ever pictured.

Billy Burke Proving Why I Spend Every Autumn Transitioning Out of Zoo By Tracking Down His Other Work

I am running out of brainpower and have none left to process this plot, so I will just say: as much as I hate that Mitch is surrounded by strangers upon waking up, and suspicious strangers at that, it is kind of amazing to see him like this. It's Mitch, but it's Mitch stripped of all snark and the command he usually has of any given situation, even when he's just blustering his way through it. It is all kinds of painful to see him confused, mistrustful, frustrated by his inability to communicate or even really understand what's going on.  Mitch looking this lost and withdrawn into mental retreat is quite a gut-wrench.

(it's also really good mental fodder for hospital fic. I'm just sayin'.)

My Favorite Sideshow: Mushy Father/Daughter Moments

So...that girl with Mitch definitely looks more like Young Clem, which is the only consolation prize I have for losing our amazing original actress, and it would line up with Max sequestering her away and/or being involved with shadowy forces. But it would be interesting if they're setting up Badass Clem to LOOK like she's a sketchy Clementine imposter, but actually be the real girl who is angry and embittered by her circumstances, while IADG seems more than capable of making up fake nonsense to manipulate Mitch into giving up info.

That said, my tiny human heart is not big enough to hold the amount of pain there would be if the first thing Mitch found comfort in upon regaining consciousness turned out to be a lie. I need him to recognize his own kid. That bowed head / forehead nudge killed me even more than the dream sequence.

What's REALLY going to upset me is if one of the girls is like a...clone of some kind, so that they're both technically Clem, but not. Or one is part-hybrid. I feel strongly like part-human hybrids are gonna be a Thing. (Mind you, I usually am very wrong when I start predicting.)

tl;dr Mitch + Being A Mess Of Emotions About His Daughter is my actual favorite thing about this show.

In conclusion: I still have no idea what’s going on but I am excited to see the rest.

[pers-books]

To the Doctor Who fans

I want to talk about @stitchmediamix‘s post I’ve got… complicated feelings about the newest incarnation of the Doctor - but I didn’t want to put my comments on the reblog, because I didn’t want, as a white woman, to talk over Stitch’s views, so I hope this is a respectful way to do this (and @stitchmediamix, if you consider this post either disrespectful or to be talking over you, please let me know, because that’s not my intent here - I am trying to be an intersectional feminist, but I am still learning with regard to that aspect of my feminism).

Anyway, it’s under the cut as I blather and rant:

First of all, I urge you to read @stitchmediamix‘s entire post if you haven’t already done so. This paragraph, in particular, leapt out at me when I read it first thing this morning:

We will be told to “be happy” with Bill and Martha as if their respective runs on the show weren’t perfect (and Martha was mistreated both by her Doctor and the fandom wishing for a return of perfect, precious Rose Tyler). Bill and Martha will be the used to fend off criticism and to shut down conversations about how two Black companions shouldn’t be it for meaningful diversity on the show.

As a huge fan of Martha Jones, I know exactly where @stitchmediamix is coming from with regard to the hate from Rose fans - I got a lot of hate for shipping Martha/The Tenth Doctor and writing prolific amounts of fic about them (it was my first fandom as a fanfic writer and boy was my love overwhelming! And Martha/Ten is still my fave ship in Doctor Who, though I do multi-ship in a way I've never done with any subsequent fandom).

But Stitch is right about Bill's and Martha's runs on the show being less than perfect. Martha was forced to WALK AWAY for the sake of her own mental health because of the blatant disrespect she received from the Doctor, and while I was glad to see her again, both in S4 of new Who and in Torchwood, it still wasn't good enough. She deserved better. Her fans (especially her PoC fans) deserved better.

As for Bill - well, I already ranted about how mad I was that Moffat repeated the disgusting motif of turning a PoC into a Cyberman: dehumanising (and then killing off) Danny Pink, simply so Clara could go on travelling with Twelve without worrying about her boyfriend back home was a gross Production decision. The fact that Bill didn't actually die as a Cyberman, that she got saved by her lesbian space girlfriend and turned into a non-human isn't actually that much better. Sure, she got to walk away from the TARDIS, she got saved by the woman she loved - but only after being dehumanised first. Bill and her fans (especially her PoC fans) deserved better.

And it's not like these are only 2 instances of the horrendous mistreatment of PoC characters - let's not forget that Martha's family was enslaved by the Master, and Tish and her mother were made to work as maids for him. That's gross and disgusting and 100% unacceptable in this century.

And Mickey, Rose's boyfriend in S1 and S2, was mocked for being afraid of aliens, and sent to a parallel world where he was forced to fight the Cybermen after his alt-world double is killed. Then he's allowed to come back to his world, only to be married off to Martha Jones (doing both characters a disservice as Davis was only interested in tying up loose ends before his and Tennant's departures from the show).

This mistreatment of PoC characters within Who is infuriating for a show that's supposed to be hopeful. What hope do PoC fans have when they see people like them constantly being belittled, dehumanised, or killed off - if they're not turned into villains and monsters?

Yes, having a woman play the Doctor is a huge thing - but at the same time, it's a baby step. It's playing it safe picking a white woman - and yes, I'm fully aware of the vitriolic response of the menz, those special broflakes who're having toddler tantrums and declaring Doctor Who is dead because of 'girl cooties' in the TARDIS. But that's NOT a good enough excuse for choosing a white woman to play the Doctor next instead of another white man. This show will not be truly progressive or radical until the Madman (or Madwoman) in the Blue Box is played by someone who's not white.

So, white feminists, rejoice as much as you want over the appointment of Jodie Whittaker as Doctor 13 (and I do rejoice - I’m over the moon because I didn’t think we’d see this day for a long time yet) - but please also acknowledge this:

IT IS NOT ENOUGH!

The Next Doctor must be played by an actor of colour.

[digitalmark18-blog]

The 5 Most Common Mistakes SMBs Make When Designing Their New Website

New Post has been published on https://britishdigitalmarketingnews.com/the-5-most-common-mistakes-smbs-make-when-designing-their-new-website/

The 5 Most Common Mistakes SMBs Make When Designing Their New Website

Image credit: ronstik/Shutterstock

Websites are never finished or done and dusted. Here are some of the most common mistakes small businesses make with their website.

Did you know the first website was made was in 1991 and is still online?

I got involved in making websites in 1996. As a fledgling designer, I was annoyed by all of the bad websites out there. This feeling, sadly, hasn’t faded. Some call it “design disease,” but I wouldn’t trade it in.

The biggest issue with a newly revamped website is that people don’t pay close enough attention to the end result that goes live for all the world to see. So the result sometimes is a site representing a business with glitches and mistakes.

While it’s hard to summarize the many mistakes people make when making websites, I have divided them into five main categories.  

1. Outsourced supplier mismanagement

Outsourcing is a good idea. Those who recognize they’re not good at everything are the ones who go further in business. However, delegation and abdication are two very different things. As the business owner in charge of the website project, you do have to sign things off, and it’s up to you to check things over properly.

Sometimes it’s not completely the fault of the supplier. Sure, it may be a case of “buy cheap, pay twice,” but if you have decided on a supplier, then give them clear and timely feedback, and show gratitude for their work – they will do a better job for you.

2. “I just want something simple up there quickly.”

People either go the DIY route or ask someone else to help them. In either case, mistakes are made. In both cases, a common issue is that people underestimate the thought, planning, time, talent, care and attention a good website requires. It’s seldom that someone with this intention gets what they desire without some consequences.

They either realize it’s taking more time and skill than they expected, or they don’t realize what is needed. And the result of that is usually not good.  

If you decide that you need a new website, plot some time a few months in advance to properly consider who it’s for, what result you want out of it, what you want it to say and roughly how you want the information to be divided up. Then plan time and resources for the steps needed – wireframing, design, coding, content, refinements, testing and launch. Rushing things creates problems.

3. Design glitches galore

It’s hard for a nondesigner to spot what is “good” design” and what constitutes “bad” design. There are many ways in which a design can be bad. However, a few common issues that appear consistently include:

Massive gaps. Many don’t notice when double paragraph spaces happen between paragraphs in website pages. Check the text and correct these extra spaces.

Cheesy images. There are a number of images that people spot and immediately label as “cheesy.” These are the obvious stock photos of people shaking hands, shiny buildings and strange, little 3D people doing different activities.

Full-text justification. While people may think this is a good idea, satisfying our natural desire for symmetry, in narrow columns of text, justified text leaves large gaps between words, making everything look messy.

Poor legibility. This occurs when people use colors that lack sufficient contract between the text and the background.

That picture of you. People put a picture of themselves or their team in About or Meet the Team sections of a website – wonderful! But they use images that are taken on their iPhone, which have poor lighting, are badly cropped, blurry/pixelated, or generally unflattering. There is a better way – use a professional photographer.

4. UX issues: The user journey and user experience

There is a lot of confusion regarding the difference between UX or UI and design. However, some hard and fast rules do apply when it comes to websites. Not everyone follows them, and as a result, some problematic issues come up:

Poor theme selection. If you’re choosing a theme without proper consideration of how your images and content will fit, you’re starting off on the wrong foot. It’s something you need to consider before buying your new template.

Not making the links into links. Many companies will mention their email addresses in the text of a page and then forget to make it a hyperlink.

Using every item from the template. Themes often come with lots of “bells and whistles,” which you may feel compelled to fill in. Just because it’s part of the theme, though, doesn’t mean you have to use it. Sometimes, it’s best to strip things back and avoid adding things to your site for the sake of it. Most people I know prefer simpler sites.

Not checking the site on mobile devices. More than 50 percent of users are looking at websites on their phones rather than their PC. Test your site on your phone – navigate through each page, test links, study each page. This will help you identify things that aren’t lining up or showing up properly. 

Links to social media pages that don’t exist. It’s often an afterthought to add social media links, and if they are no longer active, then it’s best to remove it. 

5. Poor optimization (SEO and speed)

Traffic is annoying when you’re stuck in it, but when it comes to websites, it’s actually something you really want. Even if you have a fantastic website － clear, easy to navigate and visually appealing － under the hood could be some missed details that will affect the likelihood of your site being found (meaning very little traffic) or your site not loading fast enough (meaning people get impatient and “bounce”).

There are many ways to improve the speed of your site and your chances of getting more search engine traffic. Here are some “under-the-hood” things to check on your site:

Did you get lazy with image names? Rather than leaving images with their default file name, name them with phrases relating to the image, using keywords you’d love people to type in to get your image as a result. For example, “fluffy-white-dog-poodle.jpg” instead of “dog3944394.jpg.”

Mahoosive images? Images need to be optimized to load quickly. Many people disregard this and add images in whatever size they were originally, which is usually too big. This makes the site and images slow to load.

Missing keywords To encourage search engine traffic, there are several places in the code of your site where you can add relevant keywords and phrases, including the Title tag for each page, and ALT tags for each image. Make sure you put these in, as these are basic SEO practices that you need to do as a bare minimum.

What, no Google My Business? This item doesn’t have anything to do with your website but with your Google results – a major source of important traffic to your site. When you search for certain companies, their Google My Business profile will show up on the right side of the screen, and it takes up a good chunk of the results page. This info. needs to be updated with the right pictures, correct address and text relating to your business.

All the WordPress plug-ins in one site! Another common mistake people make that really slows pages down is adding too many plug-ins. Not all the plug-ins are needed; limit yourself to no more than seven or eight. 

There is always room to improve. Just like how people never stop learning, websites are never finished. However, if you follow the tips above as your handy life-saving checklist of website love, you’ll have one of the best sites out there.

Keren Lerner

Keren Lerner is the CEO and founder of Top Left Design, a London based design and marketing agency. Founded in 2002, Top Left Design specialises in bespoke designed websites, brands, and marketing material with integrated marketing advice. Keren regularly speaks about design and digital marketing at seminars and workshops for industry organisations across different industries (property, HR, interior design, travel, food, film, finance, and law). She advises on social strategy and communication and trains businesses and teams on how to effectively market themselves online.

Source: https://www.business.com/articles/smb-new-website-mistakes/

[news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog]

Trolls thought I was a man. That saved me.

This post is part of Me, online, Mashable's ongoing series digging into online identities.

I was locked in my friends’ bathroom on the phone with my thesis adviser and staring at Reddit. It was snowing pretty hard and though there was a window with some theoretical light streaming in, I felt like I was under a blanket, the flashlight of my attention pointed at a screen that I refreshed and refreshed and refreshed. I was discussing the critical thesis component required for my graduate degree, an MFA in creative writing. It was titled Masculinity and the Making of the Modern Nerd. It was a mess.

“Does that make sense?” my adviser asked, or something like that. I don’t know, exactly, what she’d said, other than the paper didn’t work, because I was preoccupied. We need a Kotaku In Action Action, a user typed. And they were typing it about me. Refresh, refresh, refresh.

“Yes, I think. Sorry, something weird and bad is happening right now?”

She paused. “Are you okay?”

“I think so? I think I’m fine.”

SEE ALSO: The email problem no one is talking about: mistaken identity

I’d been the Geekery Editor at Autostraddle, a popular website primarily by and for queer women and non-binary folks, for some years. I’d both written about Gamergate and assigned others to write about it. My entire first novel? It was (and still is) about the phenomenon of weaponized nerds, radicalized young men (primarily white and western) terrorizing women over games. At Autostraddle, I’d written an essay in 2016 praising one of the central targets of Gamergate for doing as much good as can possibly be done in the wake of a harassment campaign against her, and then moving on with her gosh darn life like a woman on a mission. 

I’d thought my biggest crime with this piece was writing it just a bit too saccharine; I was lavish with my compliments. The gamers on Kotaku in Action apparently thought it was more egregious than that — perhaps the worst offense in the entire world: that I might not be a "real nerd" at all.

I struggle to explain Kotaku in Action every time I have to, because it truly defies explanation and has the many heads of a hydra collective. It’s the Reddit forum that perpetuated GamerGate, a place to coordinate targeted rape- and death-threats against women in the games industry — when a user says “Kotaku In Action Action,” it is likely to these types of activities they are referring. 

It is synonymous with the alt-right (and strategically so). It’s full of (mostly) dudes with no sense of culture or community outside their homogenous gaming forums; these rootless young men long to be a part of something bigger, something greater and so, Kotaku in Action it is. A place on the internet that’s part of the Manosphere and also includes Pick Up Artists, Incels, and Men’s Rights Activists. A place so toxic that its creator recently tried to shut it down, calling it a “viral cancer,” and Reddit, in its infinite wisdom, decided to save it. A place that I’ve spent years researching in service of my fiction; I often say it is the butthole of the internet, and I’ve spent the last four years giving the world wide web a proctology exam.

When I was first alerted to the thread, I was scared. I’m no stranger to a good hate pile-on—I do work on the internet, after all, and writing for the queer community often means antagonizing some harsh critics, both without and within. The GamerGaters, though? I’d spent two years flying under the radar of these fine, upstanding gentlemen internet terrorists. I wrote for queer women, for non-binary folks. I thought that must be the reason why: They were uninterested in what I had to say because I was never saying it to a mainstream audience, to the normal set of gamers, and so I never got hit. I thought I must not be a threat; that wasn't quite it. I was wearing armor. Armor I had no idea I'd ever put on.

I was filled with too much nervous energy after seeing the thread to stay in my apartment, so I went to the Strand and stress-bought a Virginia Woolf Saint Candle, a Moleskine notebook I didn’t need, and a book on drawing happy people. When it was time for me to get back to my own space, I found I didn’t want to. My head was filled with all the stories, the doxxing, the SWATting, the things that can happen if you walk through the digital world as boldly female. It’s dangerous to go alone; I didn’t want to be alone. I told my Dungeons and Dragons group what was going on — I figured they’d be the most likely to understand, being a group of gamers. And that’s how I wound up locked in my dungeon master’s bathroom, talking to my adviser as I watched the comments build up on Reddit.

The guy spends way too long jerking himself off in the first paragraph about how much of a nerd he is.

When I was growing up, in the 80s, geek and nerd was a derogatory slur. I don't get the desire to identify with labels the popular people tried to shame us with... Anyhow, the term "geekery" makes my skin crawl. I guarantee you this guy knows fuck all about the history and intricacies of the various so-called "geek" interests.

I'm guessing he was alone for Valentine's Day.

They were mean — but they weren't threatening. There was only the one. The rest — just grousing. I'd seen much worse happen to other folks. To more feminine folks. Refresh, refresh, refresh.

I came out as trans last fall, but I’ve looked like this for a long time: close-cropped hair, chest flattened by a binder, every stitch of clothing I own from the men’s department. My fellow queer writers had seen me coming for years. But at the time this was happening in 2016? I was still white-knuckled from clinging to the sisterhood. Even though I’d get “excuse me, sir?” while walking about in public, right up until the point I opened my mouth to speak. Even though, more than once, folks had been very concerned when they happened upon me in the women’s room. Even though literally all my (repressed) internal barometers pointed to “not a woman.” 

I love my family, my queers; we are a people used to existing in the strange gray area. We are a people used to taking slurs from the mouths of hate-filled adversaries and tattooing them on the soft muscles of our hearts, making celebration and community out of words meant to hurt us. I figured I was just a failure at femininity; that the definition of woman was broad and that my masculinity fit within it. Those are all true things, they’re just not true for me. Still, it was shocking to see, this assumption that I was a man — a popular man, at that! 

It's annoying to me when popular hacks call themselves nerds. Especially because having been a nerd back when the word meant social outcast. It was them who came in and caused all beatings and insults.

Back in my friend’s bathroom, my adviser asked, incredulously, “They think you’re a guy?” 

“I think so,” I replied and I read her some of the comments.

“How?”

I explained it to her; it had happened before, this confusion. When I identified as a woman, I published under the name “Ali,” which, for half of this world, isn’t a woman’s name at all. My photo was next to my byline and people didn’t really read what the website was about if they found it from an outside source. I wrote largely about technology; my longest-running column was titled Queer Your Tech. A lot of folks (wrongly) consider that some “boy-stuff.”

She didn’t believe me until months later, when I was taking over her website from her former designer (I maintain the websites of a few authors I know). As he was passing me all the information I needed, he conducted the entire transaction calling me “he” in all the emails. HE THINKS YOU’RE A DUDE my adviser texted me, privately. In digital space, where I never have to open my physical mouth, where I am simply a collection of characters on a screen, no one ever looks at me with their eyebrow raised; no one ever corrects themselves. I am whatever I am assumed first to be. And I’m doing and saying the “boy-stuff.”

“Yup,” I responded. “I told you.”

Eventually, I did come out of the bathroom. I waited. These were tamer than the reports of what happened to the women who crossed the GamerGaters. I was expecting the worst — surely, if it hadn't happened yet, the worst would be coming and it was only a matter of time. I waited through the night for something to happen. 

And nothing ever did.

“Do they even know you spent the entirety of seventh grade eating lunch in the guidance counselor’s office because you were too unpopular to eat in the cafeteria?” my friend Laura said from my couch the next day. “You — you’ve never been cool. Except to me, you were cool to me.” Laura and I have known each other since the fourth grade. She stuck with me through my obsession with the musical Cats and my childhood assertion that I was an alien from Saturn. And now, she was volunteering to be my questing buddy. To keep her eye on the thread, to make sure I was safe, so I wouldn’t have to keep refreshing it.

“It’s taking everything I’ve got not to jump on and say something to these people.”

“Don’t do that. That’ll make it worse.”

What I meant was: Don’t do that, they’ll figure out I’m one of the things they hate. Because I’d developed a hypothesis, one that keeps proving itself even now, years later. I said things they disliked, disagreed with. They called me an SJW (social justice warrior), but I looked masculine enough that the Kotaku in Action Action never materialized. 

Looking like a dude was armor; it played on the subconscious prioritization of all things manly. I’ve watched queer femme authors get harassed so intensely that they have to leave the internet, and many of them aren’t even trying to poke the GamerGaters. The cause isn’t in the content, or the severity of the imagined offense. It’s in the gender presentation of the author. Those that the heteronormative world deems masculine people can talk; those they deem feminine people better watch their backs.

And the things about the way I present online one might perceive as feminine (allying myself with women, the over-prooving of my right to speak on a subject) were but small scratches in an armor built of clipper cuts and and computer-speak. “Boy stuff.” The reason I was never considered a threat wasn’t because of who I was speaking to; it was because of who I was — ultimately, not like those “other girls.” Weaponized nerds use their masculinity as a sword; now I know I can wield masculinity as armor to go questing in the darkest caves, in the buttholes of the internet. My masculinity allowed their eyes to slide right over me. Allowed isn’t even the right word; encouraged, perhaps. 

Two years later and not much has changed. It’s still happening; I am one variant, one echo of it. It wasn’t the masculine half of #PlaneBae that got chased off the internet, for instance. This isn’t a phenomenon isolated to me, or to queers, or to 2016, or to GamerGate. This is just the way it is, out there, on the internet. I could’ve identified as trans at the time this happened, instead of as a woman, and it wouldn’t have mattered. It’s the nature of being squeezed into two dimensional space while being squashed by the patriarchy. I am whatever people assume me first to be. I am safer online because of it.

A.E. Osworth is the Managing Editor of Scholar and Feminist Online at Barnard College and Part-Time Faculty with The New School’s Creative Writing Department, where they teach digital storytelling. You can find their writing at Autostraddle, where they contribute regularly, and Argot Magazine, where they are a columnist. You can also catch up with them on Twitter or Instagram.

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Boots Reads Homestuck Epilogue(s) Part 12 - Candy Page 18

==>

Time to see what all the fuss was about Page 18.  We’re with Jane... that might not be good.  Especially given Lollipop proximity.

Jane scoffing at troll genocide again.  :(

Gamzee seems more woke than Jane here.

GAMZEE: sO yOu SaYiN yOu NeEd DiFfErEnT sHoEs FoR yOuR hUmAn DiCkS aNd WhAt NoT?

Pfffff

Jane narrows her eyes at the disingenuous buffoon.

I dunno, he sounds like he’s being pretty goddamn ingenuous right now.

It’s not the first time they’ve had this conversation?  Are they black with each other or something??

What’s more likely is he’s attempting to get a rise from her. To get her a little hotter under the collar. To put her in a certain mood.

Oh my gosh she’s genuinely black for him, hahahahah

GAMZEE: AnD AlL I EvEr bEeN TrYiN To dO Is gEt yOu rIgHt tOo, WiTh mOrAlS AnD GoOdNeSs, AlL fIlLeD uP iNsIdE yOu As TiGhT aS yOuR tAsTy HoE bAlLoOnS aRe WiTh HuMaN mOo JuIcE.

Jesus christ that’s not the kind of metaphor i want to be hearing from canon

or anyone for that matter

JANE: No! I’d rather die than touch your disgusting clown baton ever again.

....yyyeah, context is showing she’s PROBABLY super Black into this.  Still, pretty jarring to see a clear consensual “NO” right in the middle of things.

Quit calling her a dairy queen!!! D: D: D:

Oh god they named the baby Tavros.

Alright, there’s some grade A discomfort in this scene, which I’m enjoying, really.  I can see why they singled out page 18.  I could traumatize some people with some of these paragraphs out of context.

HOO HOO HOO, THIS LITTLE PIGGY WENT TO THE DARK CARNIVAL!!!

Eeeeuugh

JAKE: Anyway whats up with you? Hows life with davekat going? JADE: oh its great! im really glad i just went for it JADE: all of us together... it really is the best of every world

God damnit Jade why are you obliviously torturing them????????

You could’ve been REALLY GOOD for them both if you just FUCKING LISTENED TO THEM AND RESPECTED THEM INSTEAD OF SITTING ON THEM.

JADE: theres no way me and dave could have a regular baby together because im... JAKE: Whats wrong? JADE: well lets just say that after all the sburb stuff its done some things to my body JADE: like merging with bec mostly

Oh my FUCKING GOD please don’t canonize this.  This didn’t need to be spelled out so-- D:

jesus

D: D: D:

This... is actually making my stomach roil again????

like

not because id object to-- i mean, it’s one thing to deal with

FAN SCENARIOS

ISOLATED divergences from canon where she has to deal with that and its kind of hilarious, but can be safely ignored when it comes to her character arc as a whole

but once its CANON????????   D: D: D:

suddenly you can’t IGNORE the full import when you’re done with, like, an RP or something, of the psychological struggle she would be forced to deal with given an abnormal biological situation.  Instead of thinking “Oh, that could be pretty painful to deal with! Let’s explore it temporarily for fun” it becomes “Oh, that would be painful to deal with and you have to think about her having to deal with all the complications of that whenever you hear about her LITERALLY FOREVER.”  D:

andrew i know you couldnt resist because of how funny and practically-xenoprogressive it was but whyyyyyyyyy did you have to canonize that WHYYYY

Now instead of a fun joke thought it also has to be SAD FOREVER

AAAAAAAA  D’:

i dont know why this would be the line thats crossed to upset me

Rose surrogate?

JADE: no jake, dave wouldnt be the father in this scenario!

Pffffff.  Andrew’s just diving RIGHT into the, er, doggy fanfics here.  I should... TRY to lighten up about this.  Try.  D:

(...wait, shit.  Knowing my friend, THIS whole bit is why they alluded to this page.  God damnit.)

[[ EDIT:  askshenhibiki said:

Now that you read Candy 18, flash back to Meat when Roxy is talking about gender... and look at Jade's reaction looking at "where her hands rest on her lap". Yes, Meat hinted at that "mix" too.

Ah, let’s see...

ROXY: and so i got to thinking ROXY: what even is gender ROXY: amirite lol? JADE: oh yeah JADE: that makes sense i guess........

Jade looks at where her hands are folded in her lap. Bites her lip. She has her own concerns about this, her own thoughts. Reasonable thoughts, I’d say. But I’ll refrain from any further comment. I’m staying away from this subject, from now on.

...yeah, guess Dirk at least had the decency not to spring all that on us before Jade got the opportunity to do it honestly. ]]

Guh, back to Jake suffering in his sad, trapped scenario.  I hope THAT gets at least resolved by the end of this.  Someone save Jake from this, because it looks like he’s not really that capable of saving himself?

==>

Dammit, Jade, I’m cringing at these descriptions of your intrusion.

Oh wow, John went for the mustache.  Guess we knew that from, like, his stuffed statue oldself?

Jade doesn’t pick up on the obvious subtext in the conversation, however, because she’s been willfully undermining the subtext in her own personal life for nearly a year now.

D:  D:  D:

Seriously, Jade, how is what YOU’RE doing any better than what you were frustrated at seeing THEM doing, avoiding the real feelings and truth of anything even if it was conspicuously on body-language display?

KARKAT: THE NEW ADMINISTRATION IS CRACKING DOWN ON CERTAIN KINDS OF INTERSPECIES ADOPTION LAWS.

It’s like Andrew wants us deprived of even a happy imagined future for Earth C on top of everything else!!!  What the hell! >:(

Is this about politics?  Is Andrew just venting his anger that the Orange Guy is going to get away with ruining everything forever??  Because as understandable as that is, he could at least give us some imaginary happyfutures to look forward to.

Reading on... Hm, yet another intentionally-misused fridging reference.

KARKAT: HIS RELATIONSHIP IS A FLAMING WRECK OF AN INTERSTELLAR WARSHIP HURTLING TOWARDS THE PLANET AT TERMINAL VELOCITY WITH THE ENTIRE CREW BRUTALLY SLAUGHTERED UPON REENTRY, SHOVED STRAIGHT DOWN THE CHAGRIN TUNNEL AND THEN IMMEDIATELY SHAT OUT THE OTHER SIDE, THUS FLOODING THE ENTIRE FUCKING NEIGHBORHOOD WHEN IT CLOGS UP THE LOAD GAPER.

Yep, that triangle’s fucked.  Wonder if the conversation’s going to transition to the CURRENT triangle’s problems...

...yeah, John using the R word there isn’t far from the fucking truth from the looks of things.

JADE: maybe that would work for a few days, but one thing i learned from dating around a lot in my youth is that no ones going to leave a bad relationship until its THEIR idea to leave

She takes in a shaky breath and shuts her eyes. Her hair spills around her face when she leans forward to put her chin on her knees. Dave and Karkat exchange a look that is equal parts confused, miserable, and desperate.

Oh SHIT.  Is JADE going to be the one to finally vocalize about the problems here???

Something else comes hurtling out of the hole in the sky, too fast for Jade to catch. It hits the ground with a clap of green lightning. The collision sends a geyser of dirt, rock, and vapor into the air. Dave flash-steps to shield Karkat. Jade doesn’t move, taking the brunt of the explosion face on, using her abilities to warp the energy around her so that she’s a mote at the center of the storm. When the dust clears, she’s the first to jump in the crater, trailing smoke behind her.

There’s a body at the center of it. The torso is bloody, tangled, and curled into a fetal position. Its shoes are missing, but otherwise the outfit is quite familiar to her: it’s a dead ringer for her old Witch of Space uniform. Jade touches the body with the toe of her shoe, and then gasps when it rolls over to reveal its face.

JADE: its... JADE: ME???

Okay what the FUCK.  It sounds like there’s going to be some context for that postscript after all.  Something to bridge the gap between when that 16-yo Jade falls into the singularity and when Aradia goes off with her through a wormhole

I’m going to guess up front that this happens BEFORE the postscript... this younger version of Jade fell into the black hole and came out in THIS alternate timeline, possibly rather changed by the experience.  But then again, the way the sky opened up... actually, couldn’t that be just a “natural” manifestation of the black hole abilities encouraged by Calliope or done by the singularity alone, followed by later in the Postscript this Jade actually getting control of it??

And... reading on, from the sound of it, her eyes aren’t black yet, either.  Sounds like that’s to come, before the postscript.  Question being, is it alt!Callie black eyes, or some black-hole-powers visual manifestation?  Wait, never mind, I misread; this teenage Jade-corpse has NOT opened their eyes yet, so they couldn’t possibly tell, and the stuff about them “shaking” was about the adult Jade standing over her.  Never mind.  Let’s see which timeframe this Jade came from.

Also STOP TRAUMATIZING ADULT JADE ON SCREEN ITS NOT OKAY IM SICK OF IT ANDREW

==>

Page 20...

Stop letting babby not!Vriska bully babby not!Tavros.

Hm... same stupid tooth poison?  No, Jade didn’t get hit with a tooth... so it’s more getting hit with shards of spacetime and spiraling down a black hole.  Also whatever alt!Callie did to just barely keep her alive.

Hm, so the Heart stuff falls apart if you’re too separated from the mass-whole at Light’s center?  That’s certainly a hypothesis at least.

ROXY: sounds like its time for another funeral lmao

ROXY WAKE THE FUCK UP AND STOP BEING A VAGUELY ROXY-LOOKING LMAO-ZOMBIE.  WHERE THE FUCK DID REAL ROXY GO.

And where the fuck is Calliope anyway, she’s just being left in the dust and nobody’s even talked to her from the looks of it.

Hm, cut apart by political differences, this group...?

ROXY: woah ok karkat i get ur all fired up about politics and stuff but lay off gamz ok

ROXY WHO REPLACED YOUR FUCKING BRAIN WITH A BLOCK OF CHEESE

ROXY YOU’RE MY FAVORITE CHARACTER PLEASE GIVE US AN EXPLANATION FOR WHY YOU’RE ACTING NOTHING LIKE THE COOL SMART PERSON WE READ ABOUT.

JADE: dave what the FUCK did you say to him downstairs?

Oh my god you asshole don’t blame DAVE for this >:(

ROXY: this time next week well corpse party like its the end of the world!

I don’t want to think this has anything to do with Aradia, but we DID see her in that postscript bit...  And, I mean, what the hell could she even do??  It’s not like this Roxy is just Aradia in really convincing cosplay or something.

==>

She leads John and Jake into the building and down the center of the nave, humming happily to herself the entire time. An equally effusive Calliope trails behind her, carrying a bouquet of purple flowers.

Well there’s Callie. What is WITH these hypnotized motherfuckers.  I need a revelation on these shenanigans STAT.

What is with people being bathed in light here?

each time we witness death, we fall in love in with the important people in oUr lives all over again.

Calliope is gazing at Roxy with glassy eyes. She sniffs as she plucks the last petal from her rose. A breeze washes through the cathedral from the crack in the door at the end of the room, brushing the petal off-course and causing it to get stuck in Roxy’s over-sprayed hair. Calliope reaches out with a visibly shaking hand to remove the plant offal, but she does not draw back. Instead, she lets her hand graze down the side of Roxy’s face and cup her cheek. Roxy puts her own hand over Callie’s and holds it.

Uhhh.... huh.

So.

If Roxy was just lying to herself, then............ WHY??????

John tilts his head and squints at the image in front of him. Hmm.

Is John realizing he’s in some sort of fanfic drawn by another character, hence all the people in serene lightbeams at tender but unjustified moments?

Everyone whips their heads around to see, of all people, Aradia hovering in the foyer

Pff

(...I hope Aradia didn’t come here, like, from the postscript.  Where the “action” she talked about might have just been this corpse party.  Because that would be pretty fucking lame.)

KARKAT: MAYBE FUCKING NEPETA IS ABOUT TO POUNCE FROM BEHIND THAT GROTESQUE STATUE OF THE HUMAN SUFFERER T-POSING OVER THERE.

Pfffffffffff

The description of Human Jesus we all had in our hearts, but were too afraid to voice.

Alright, now we see the body we took our eyes off of.  Is it going to get back up, or did it escape earlier?

since nobody was willing to dislodge the huge, otherworldly shard from her chest

My damn god, people.

...alright finally, everyone’s talking.

JANE: Agreed. I’ve always felt that Kanaya has done an exemplary job of providing a model for compassionate, empathetic behavior, which others of her kind would do well to follow.

JANE STOP BEING A XENOPHOBIC BASTARD

CALLIOPE: please. roxy gathered yoU all here for a reason. CALLIOPE: at least listen Until the end. CALLIOPE: after that yoU can argUe all you want.

...Huh.  Huuuuhh.  What the fuck is all this for.  Are you saying ROXY caused this? Or...?

Okay I like this reinforcement she’s making in her speech about how different changes can influence how all of this unfolds, gives me hope that maybe these two cliffhangers aren’t all we’re going to be left with and we’ll be able to at least think of an IMPLIED future different from them if we wanted to like we thought about the seemingly-infinite-possibility original ending of Homestuck that I’d rather have been stuck with than this oh god breathe boots

okay there’s the labor going into good distraction

alright corpse get back up

JADE: i am not jade.

Right, so like the black eyes in the postscript suggested this is more just a... vessel for alt!Calliope now?  To give HER a future beyond the one she sacrificed for that black hole business?  And between alt!Callie’s became-the-black-hole nature and Jade’s Spacey Green Sun connection that’s been singularified, she has access to cool Black Hole powers?  And is gonna do cool shit with them in implied future adventures we won’t see while Aradia gleefully watches the carnage?  Huh.

The congregation watches her go, but no one moves to help her, or even looks in her direction. In her wake, she leaves a primal, echoing wail.

Oh my god why wouldn’t they have just a brief discussion or something IT’S NOT THAT BAD  D:

JADE: and while i cannot say the same thing for the rest of you, JADE: i, at least, am exactly where i am meant to be.

Well fuck.  So she just disconfirmed this timeline as... something.  Relevant, possible, I dunno.

JADE: and i have entered this body to protect your world.

Okay that’s good.  So thanks to alt!Calliope these side timelines where things unfolded differently MAY be preserved.  Pretty fitting given alt!Callie’s origins.

.......unless there’s some other stupid interspecies civil war threat that she’s going to be fighting too, here, when the political situation falls apart.  Dammit.

==>

Terezi talk Terezi talk

-- JOHN EGBERT sent TEREZI PYROPE the photo “ghostrain.jpg” --

TEREZI: WH4T TH3 4CTU4L FUCK JOHN: it started a few days ago. the sky above the capital of the troll kingdom just cracked open and ghosts began raining down everywhere.

Oh my GOD.  So alt!Callie kind of “saved” all the doomed ghosts that got swallowed up in the black hole by redirecting them all to THIS UNIVERSE and timeline???????

That’s pretty interesting!  Heck my stomach’s even calming down!

they can’t even be judges! TEREZI: G4SP

Yeah that’s pretty terrible!

...yep, the resistance WOULD put him in charge.  I had a feeling it may have ended up in that direction in Candy since it wasn’t in Meat.

--oh FUCK YOU Jade for splitting up what he had with Karkat before they could sort it out!!! You did the OPPOSITE OF HELP and neither of them are going to end up happy thanks to you! D:<

PFFF wow, John’s so concerned about babby not!Tavros’s living situation that he’s considering legit kidnapping.  That means things must be pretty fucking bad.

--okay Calliope’s still out and about with Roxy instead of being cooped up in her room like in the other timeline, that’s good.

Pff, trying to redeem Ghost Eridan in front of Ghost Feferi.  Yep, that’s Gamzee.

GAMZEE: fIrSt, A LiTtLe RiGhTeOuS sPlAsH oF tHe NaNnA nEcTaR tO cLeAnSe ThAt DaNkNeSs FrOm YoUr SoUlS...

Gamzee takes out a baby bottle and flicks it, covering them both with little drops of milk, as clergy does with holy water. He then takes a swig from the bottle himself before returning it to his codpiece.

Jesus.  Fucking.  Christ.

I don’t want to believe that what’s in that bottle is what he’s making it sound like it is, but OF COURSE it is.  Why would it be anything else.  I bet there’s not even any Lifey hypnosis going on, it’s just the literal stuff.

The crowd falls silent as they raise their heads to watch a drone ship pass by overhead.

Jegus fuck stop going whole hog condesce janey

ROXY: lmao you worry too much ROXY: janeys got her head on straight shell show you yet

ROXY.  WHERE DID YOUR BRAIN GO.  I MISS IT.  YOUR BRAIN WAS THE BEST FUCKING PART OF YOU.

Touching photo.

Alright lemme post split.  I haven’t gotten as far as the last post plowed through since I’ve been typing so much... ah well.