#and by somewhat cultured I mean I have been doing this for 15 years

[shirecorn]

Your bone n flower art can appeal to the people that partake in vulture culture 👀

where do you think I got the bones 😏

I am also... somewhat cultured.

[bberry005]

gonna throw some thoughts out there about this preview from noah wyle's appearance on the late show (preview starts at 15 seconds and ends at 1 minute for those who want to watch) because the LAYERS just in that 45 second clip they showed us...god. this is really long btw that's why it's all under the cut.

starting with langdon saying "i could lose my medical license" like that combined with that he told dana about losing his job in the ep preview at the end of episode 14 shows so many signs of him trying to scale down the problem to something he can control. there's so many other implications (what this means for his family being a big one), and the one he can reach without totally freaking out is "i could lose my job and the medical license i've spent the last 12 years of my life working for", which is huge but not as vague as "what will abby say and what does it mean for my kids that their dad is addicted to drugs and what will my parents think and how do i get help and what kind of help is it" and the thousand other questions swirling in his head. losing his medical license isn't a small consequence by any means, but it's the only tangible one, which means that's what he's latching onto to feel more in control.

the second chance robby offers is a really good one, and i've seen a lot of people wondering why langdon won't take it. and tbh that's just because asking for help when you're in a crisis (addiction, mental health crisis, instability in your living situation, etc) is difficult even if you know you need it. like let's remember that langdon is the exact kind of person that's socialized to absolutely never ask for help. he probably thinks he can handle it himself, but also admitting that he needs the help means admitting that he is actually in a crisis, and that's scary. no one wants to admit that they're struggling with something that big, especially when the fallout will hurt so many other people.

so naturally, langdon deflects. he throws robby's "you need help" right back in his face, and let's face it, robby does need help. like we all know it, everyone in the show knows it, and langdon especially knows it. like "i'm not the only one who's a little fucked up here. why don't you look in the mirror?" that's just so good. robby wants to mentor langdon the same way adamson mentored him. hell, he even wrote langdon's rec letter for an incredibly selective teaching fellowship. they are mirrors of each other. langdon is potentially what robby was like as a resident, and if langdon doesn't learn how to ask for help, he will become exactly like robby is now. which, as we can all see, is not good.

and robby knows this. he knows he needs help, he knows that there's a culture in their profession about not asking for help and "do as i say and not as i do", but he's more than happy to ignore it. so he and langdon start throwing arguments at each other that hurt on a personal level. and the real kicker? robby is the one that throws the most personal jabs as a way to shove all his guilt and blame and betrayal onto langdon so robby doesn't have to feel it himself. yeah langdon went low (and somewhat illogical) with the breakdown and "don't blame me for what happened to you" comments, but robby went even lower. like "you just cause them [breakdowns] in other people" and "you let me down. you let everybody down"...ouch.

another thing is, there's no way robby didn't start seeing warning signs in langdon earlier. a couple people have already said this, but robby's been working in the ER for a little over 20 years. he knows how addiction works, what dozens if not hundreds of people act like when they're either high or going through withdrawals and everything in between. he just refused to see it. he didn't want to see it. robby wanted to believe that langdon was the version of himself that never messed up, and because of that he missed every single sign. other people didn't notice because they either assume langdon is just "like that", they respect him too much, they haven't known him long enough, or he's staying away from anyone who might notice (remember, langdon and mckay don't know each other well, and this might be intentional on his end. he doesn't want to be around anyone who will notice). but robby? he probably had a feeling deep down, ignored it because he didn't want to accept that someone as skilled as langdon could be struggling with something so severe, and now blames himself for it getting as bad as it did even though it's not his fault. like it's on no one but langdon that he kept using and ended up stealing, but if robby did notice, there is something to say for him not intervening sooner (i'm not gonna get into this because something tells me this debate would be like trying to dismantle an active bomb that only has 3 seconds left). robby, either consiously or subconsiously, put langdon on a pedestal, and because of that pedestal, he couldn't see the obvious signs that langdon was struggling that were right in front of his face.

langdon needs help. robby needs help. the difference is that if langdon didn't acknowledge somewhere deep down that he needs help, he wouldn't have kept trying to call robby and plead his case. he wouldn't be near tears telling dana that robby thinks he's a drug addict. robby continues to ignore what's wrong with him and continues to assume that he knows best despite constant evidence that the opposite is true. robby thinks he's beyond help and decided that he can keep going as he is, but he can mentor langdon to be his "second chance" in some way. he wants langdon to get help, but robby refuses to handle his own bullshit and quite literally stomps away like a child when he's called out on it. once again, he's exhibiting "do as i say, not as i do" behavior, which is not something he should want to model for residents or students. robby doesn't think he can be the one to fix this toxicity around asking for help in crisis, so he shoves it on langdon (or dana or collins or abbot or even whitaker at this point) so he can avoid it. robby needs langdon to hurt so he doesn't have to, and that's the part of this argument that makes me sick because it shows that for all of robby's talk about how "we're failing our boys" and that people need to be listened to and helped, he won't do the work to fix those issues himself once they start to effect him.

ANYWAY that's my analysis. if you read it all the way to the end you are amazing. langdon as someone robby is trying to mold into a better version of himself because langdon seemingly has everything robby could never have is my FAVORITE interpretation of what the hell is going on there btw. and it shows SO WELL in this clip.

[pricechecktranslations]

Hi idk if you interact with the evillious chronicles fandom much but was majority of the fandom (at least the eng one) always so toxic? Because since like middle of 2024 I've noticed a lot of drama in the eng fandom for minor things (such as saying that you're #1 fan of x character if someone already says that they're #1 fan of them.) or things that never happened and people ending up having send death threats to them because of that. Obviously I know that fandoms will always have a toxic side but evillious chronicles fandom isn't that big in comparison to other fandoms and still the majority of it is somewhat toxic as hell

This makes me laugh. 2024. This is a 15+ year old fandom.

Yes. And no.

I mean--don't get me wrong, there have always been sane people in it, there have always been pockets of fans that are reasonable and respectful and intelligent (toxic fans typically are a very vocal minority), but there has also always been stupid drama and accusations and flame wars and hatemailing and actually abusive people mixed in with impressionable teenagers. There was a time where it quieted down as everyone got a bit older and more mature (and/or left Evillious for greener pastures), and then it picked up again around the time Evillious got featured in Project Sekai.

I think what you're noticing now is this "newbie boom". I have nothing to do with this new fandom. I'm not in it. I suspect that they are doing a lot of the things that the "old" fans grew out of years ago, but it could be that internet culture in general is more toxic than it used to be (though I will say like. I think Tumblr as a whole has gotten a lot more chill than it was when I first joined? at least the parts I frequent). Unfortunately there is also the inevitable fact that most of the age range Evillious appeals to are tweens, teens, and young adults, who are the most likely to engage in these kinds of toxic social conflicts.

I left the fandom a long time ago and those days when I was more directly involved on the wiki are kind of fuzzy for me (even back then, most of my exposure to the deeper fandom was secondhand). It's possible that it was like months of peace interrupted with the occasional explosion (like when people argued for days over whether or not we could safely consider Gumillia the Master of the Hellish Yard) but my memories of it are a pile of stress and I have no desire to get back into it.

[alipeeps]

A Moment But Forever - Episode 15

He's gone from literally running away from her to seeking her out because she's been gone for a bit and he's worried... 😍

Aaaahhh and he pre-ordered the restaurant to have some roast goose, because he knew she was wanting to eat it?!!

Loving Yuanzhong explaining the concept of a social construct.

Oh man, his explanation that what matters is not the length of life but what you do with it, and being able to do what you want with your life... is especially poignant from a man whose autonomy was basically stripped from him as a teenager. He was made host of a divine weapon (and lbr he was NOT given a choice in that) and then used to fight their war for them... and then immediately after imprisoned. He hasn't been able to "live the life you want" since he was a child.

WTF Xie You?!! (But also, why didn't Yuanzhong do anything to defend himself?)

Damn, payback for something that was an accident? Tanyin herself didn't feel the need to take revenge for what happened at Pinghu, but Xie You feels he needs to do so on her behalf.

Is Xie You dying? Is that what the line means?

Damn. So what you're saying is... you were jealous of your disciple?

Ah she worries if she solves the final question for him, he will have no reason to go on living.

Ah man I kinda love when cdramas do this whole thing where they put such emphasis on what it means for one person to kowtow to another... for the master to kneel for the student, or the parent to kneel to beg the child. It's a uniquely cultural emphasis.

Is that why she's been hesitating and pondering over this final question? Not because she doesn't understand the task... but because she was afraid that she understood the implications of her completing it... and what it would mean to Xie You?

And it's a kowtowing-fest...

Oooh who's singing the song over this scene of her heading back to solve the final problem? It reminds me quite a bit of Farewell Love from Love Between Fairy and Devil... is it Faye singing this?

Oooh what's wrong with Yuanzhong? What was he feeling? Was it something to do with what Xie You hit him with and the fact that Xie You is now gone?

Bro's been sealed for 60 years and his first thought on being awakened is FOOD!! Valid, tbh...

Bit fucking rude to just rock up to somebody's/a stranger's house and just head on inside without being invited, Tanghua. Especially when you know the person you are looking for at that house does not want to see you...

Mmmm Tanghua makes a good point. Apologising in the hopes of forgiveness isn't entirely sincere. Apologising for your past actions without expectation of forgiveness, but because you sincerely regret those actions, despite knowing the past cannot be changed, is more so.

I'm still not sure Yuanzhong particularly cares to hear it though. And tbh chasing after him when he's made it very clear he doesn't want to see you still makes this feel somewhat selfish... like you are apologising not for his benefit but for yours, so that you can feel "better" that you apologised sincerely.

Oh wow, so the two generals who were part of the fake possession plot didn't die after all? Yuanzhong had Zi Fei save them and hide them away! He really is two steps ahead of everybody isn't he?

Oooooooh Yuanzhong is getting closer and closer to finding out the truth about Tanyin...

Would the curse on her only count if she tells that she is a goddess... or would it also kick in if people work it out independently? 😬

Oh wait, as well as the Goddess Wushang, Xie You's other famous student was the Mute Lady of Wu Mountain? Who took a hit for you at the battle of Pinghu? Babygirl, they are one and the same person!!

Could Tanyin be the Mute Lady of Wu Mountain? Hmmm... maybe... 😂

I love the contrast between Tanghua's towering earnestness and Yuanzhong's just... whatever...

DOOOOOOOON'T FUCKING TELL HER YOUR BIRTHDAY TANYIN HOLY SHIT!!!

Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease tell me you used your brain and faked her out with a fake birthdate....

Hahahaa him checking under her nose to see if she's breathing, just in case she's dead again! 😂

Ahhhh but why didn't we get to see him carrying her into the carriage? (And why wasn't he a bit freaked out that she wouldn't wake up?)

I'm love him!! 😂😂

"This fellow disciple of mine is quite impressive!" she says with mad poker face skills.

So according to legend it seems there is Goddess Wushang and the Mute Lady of Wu Mountain - both of whom were students of Xie You. And now we see Yunniang worshipping the Mute Goddess of Wu Mountain? Or is this all just a bit of confusion caused by how the subs are being done? What is the actual characters for Wushang? (Had a quick google and can't find out).

Oh shit is that the War Demon dude? (When it first showed his face I thought for a second it was Tanghua?!)

Whoah, who's the freaky dude scaring the beggar children?

[tinyfrenchowl]

Hi there! An ask for you:

Would you tell me about your favorite article of clothing or outfit? Why is it your favorite?

Hi friend! That wasn't easy, I have a lot of clothes I really like for different reasons. In the end, I decided to tell you about my boots.

They're possibly the oldest piece of clothing I own. My first "big girl" horse riding booties, that I bought with my own allowance when I was 15 or 14. They were 80€ at Decathlon, real leather, laces on the front for looks and for adjusting the fit, and a zipper on the back for ease.

They're black, ankle high, leather booties. I can and do wear them with almost anything. I don't ride horses anymore, but I wear the boots to work at the office. I've worn them on farms. They look enough like professional city shoes but do fine with mud and manure. (My work tends to take me close to cattle, when I'm not in a city office).

They're also super comfortable. I have narrow feet and wobbly ankles, but the laces+zipper combo means I can wear them as tight as I need and still get them on and off easily. The inside heel near the zipper is breaking apart but in a way that doesn't cause any blisters. The toe box is wide, my toes are never squished, I can fit my orthopedic inserts in when I need them, and in the winter I can fit somewhat thicker socks, and when I'm wearing shorts or a dress, or I'm running out of crew socks, i can wear tiny socks without chafing.

They're long lasting. I've had them for over 15 years. (After I splattered them painting over jumping bars, I bought a new pair of the same model. Those barely lasted a year before coming apart unfixable. My early introduction to the enshittification of clothing). I take them to the cobbler to fix the sole and re-level the outside heel every once in a while (I would fix the inside heel but the cobbler prices by the repair, and because of the back zipper one heel counts as two repairs, so that gets expensive. I'll only do it if I start getting blisters). The toe box is a bit scuffed, but they do great with the occasional application of shoe polish. An age ago, the fancy thin laces broke, and I replaced them with longer, flat laces with stars printed on them I had initially bought for my teenage self's converse shoes. (I've been thinking of getting more colourful laces lately, even though the star laces are still in good condition).

I sincerely hope I can continue to wear, care for and repair those shoes for at least another decade.

Thank you for the ask @themirokai !

(this is a reminder that my ask box is always open, and also that I'm enthusiastically following Miro's idea to revive ask culture!)

[siren-nereide]

TW: Blood, NDE's, Harm

There is a lot of blood motifs Lord Lucifer uses. Many practitioners have reported a liking of blood & skulls which is true. I was in the hospital a lot as a child and teen, anemic often, blood work was an regular occurrence because of how I was born. I have to work extra with my immune system than my peers. The constant needles, spending almost two school years in and out of hospitals because of my aliments. But, It's somewhat of a blessing as I limit meat and eat way more healthy foods which as all been positive. I do believe it affected on how I perceive things and my practice. Lord Lucifer has taught me that these things make us human always yearning for improvement. He knew about myself more than I could perceive at the time. Now, I am shell of the person that was, I am happier, content and peaceful regardless of world's mechanisms. He will transmute this pain, this blood into clean blood until the body can support its own. This process is called alchemy, one of the principals of neoplatonism which I personality subscribe to; In my experience, Source is not equal to YHWH. The direction to YHWH was to codify the concept for the church.

In Ancient Roman religion, there is an connection to this as Dies Sanguinis ("Day of Blood"), also called Sanguinaria, was a festival held in Ancient Rome on the spring equinox which could be March 21-25 due calendar changes. Ancient Rome was more friendly to bodily fluids compared to Ancient Greece; considering that Ancient Rome is the one demonized in the Bible for being the civilization that killed Jesus but was one of civilization that was used in the renaissance with Rome that became Italy. The Ancient Civilizations are by no means perfect, they had more problems than anything. Regardless, the demonization was strategic.

Skulls, can symbolize mortality, transformation, and the exploration of the unseen, often associated with themes of mortality and the occult. Genesis 3:15 does briefly go over this skull motif. I like this quote from a blog I seen: " Blood is a symbol; it is sacred. Blood need not be gore. Through patriarchy, we have come to associate blood with violence, carnage and vampirism – but it has a parallel lineage that stems from deep nourishment, solidarity and rebellion against tyranny". While I may not agree, with push to connect blood as an inherent cis woman experience as we all have blood but there is some truth with the demonization of blood connected to demonization of the feminine whichever you define femininity to be.

Some practitioners have seen that Lord Lucifer might dislike Blood which in my opinion is half the story while animal sacrifices was common, wars was infamous for being bloody as every media adaptation would represent. He does not want boldly offering that would hurt you for example, self harm, careless cutting with knifes or being mentally unwell; He will know of the context of this and reject it on that basis. But, if it none of these things He can gladly accept it but, It depends on your personal relationship. If He states certain things are not allowed for you, please respect it if your serious about your practice.

For more reading of this topic I recommend this as an starting point: http://www.novaroma.org/nr/Sacrifice. From their site, Nova Roma is an international organization dedicated to the study and restoration of ancient Roman culture.

The Garden Of Persephone R. H. Ives Gammell (1938)

♡ Multum amor ♡

[fabrickind]

How do you become a professional cosplayer? Thnx :)

Hello there!

Short answer is: you don't lmao

Long answer is: it's complicated and incredibly difficult, and depends on what you mean by "professional."

If you mean "someone who judges contests and/or gets invited to cons," the VAST majority of those aren't professionals. They may or may not get an appearance fee, even, depending on the con. (Note to cosplayers: don't let cons take advantage of you by not paying you for your work for them! Always get per diem, travel, and hotel at BARE minimum, and preferably also an appearance fee.) This isn't that hard to do, but you need to have a portfolio that backs up why you would be a good guest, and a good reason why you'd be a good guest. It's just a matter of emailing and/or applying to cons. I've only guested once, but if you want tips, I can give them.

However, based on the phrasing, I'm assuming you are a newer cosplayer who isn't ready for that yet. I assume this because if you've been around a while, you know that this isn't a question. Not "this isn't a question you ask" (as in, we don't talk about it in polite society), but that this isn't really a *thing* in the way that people outside of the cosplay community seem to think it is.

(Side note: I remember this question being asked for at least 15, 20 years online lmao it's easier to make money cosplaying now than it was then, but it's still incredibly difficult to make a living wage and fully support yourself on cosplay.)

There are professional cosplayers out there, as in, people who make the majority or all of their income from cosplay. They tend to be few and far between, and one of the open secrets of the community is that some people who try to make a go at it are supported by a partner or family with money.

But! There are ways to make money as a cosplayer. It's difficult and unlikely, especially with how saturated the market is, but there are ways.

This is all from a USA perspective, which I assume you're from or at least a similar culture, since you're asking me and not, say, someone living in Japan.

Do commissions. This works once you have a high enough skill level to have a client base that wants to pay you for those skills. It's difficult to both get enough commissions and finish enough commissions to have a living wage, though, so it's really only recommended if you are fast at it and/or are okay with it being a side gig.

Start a business selling resources. Patterns, 3D models, resin kits, etc. You'll be operating on thin margins, there's competition out there, and you'll need to be good and fast at these things, but some business prowess, skill, and a bit of luck, and people have done it. Some people also sell tutorials and such, but I don't know how much they make.

Sell prints. This is going to be the hardest of these to make a living wage on. You can couple this with other things on this list to add supplemental income. Basically, sell pictures of yourself online and at cons, start a Patreon, become a booth babe (there isn't enough in the way of "official cosplayer" jobs to make a living on, and usually you aren't paid much and still have to make the costume), etc. This bullet point usually goes with the next two.

Become an influencer. Confession: I don't know quite how this works, but your money would be coming from sponsorships, paid posts, youtube ad revenue, etc. This is also a lot of work, and you would basically be hustling 24/7. Think of the direction you would want to take this and what specific thing you would offer that sets you apart, and.....figure out how to become an influencer lmao. idk if there are cosplay influencers that make a full living off of it since it's a somewhat newer field and far from what I do, but the margin of success is also pretty small, I'd imagine.

Sex work. This is even further from what I know about, so I have NO idea how much money you would make or how to get into it. I'm sure there are guides online. You can do anything from the extremely soft (think gravure modeling: sexy clothes, lingerie, sexy poses, light nudity) to harder stuff (depicting sex acts, whether solo or with toys or partners, catering to fetishes in addition to cosplay, camming, etc.). This is going to be difficult as well and while all of these are not for everyone, this one especially. (Honestly not my thing at all but so much respect for people who can handle it.) You'll want to keep yourself safe online for SURE if you go into this, and it will require stricter safety measures than the rest of these (which also require strict safety measures). Also think long and hard about whether you want the stigma following you: unfortunately, our society still stigmatizes sex work, and you can lose jobs, friends, etc. if people find out, and it'll be hard to physically get and keep your money because of banks and credit card processors not accepting sex work money. This isn't to say "don't do it" but it's something to really think about and look into. IDK where to get advice on the cosplay specific side of this, but Slate's How to Do It column has had a few letters about sex work generally over the years -- here's a few -- and usually Stoya points the letter writer to further resources. (Also tends to be only cosplay adjacent from what I've seen? You'll be dressing up but won't be wearing much in the way of costumes lmao)

There might be more ways that I can't think of, but these are the main ones you will encounter. Again, being a professional cosplayer isn't really like....a thing. Most people who have done it have had a long and difficult career of carving out space for themselves and finding income streams. There really isn't something, at least here, that is having someone pay you to exist in cosplay, unfortunately.

I'm also assuming you aren't talking about costuming generally as a career, which is a whole different ballpark. Actually, that might be something to look into as a career to fund your cosplay hobby (and possible cosplay side gig) if you are interested. Otherwise, enjoy it as a hobby, slowly build a business if you think you are up to it, and see where it takes you. :]

I hope that helps! Good luck

[wof-reworked]

12, 13, 15 and 28 for the ask game

hiiiii :} . Thank you for the ask my dear, and for fueling my addiction to saying my opinions loudly.

| 12. One thing you'd add to an arc/ book?

I mean the obvious is having Darkstalker actually take the strawberry, but I'd also just wildly rework the second arc to not have Qibli be the final POV character, or at least not split the book between his backstory plot/resolving the contrived prophecy and the larger, more interesting story of Darkstalker. There's a LOT of tiny things I would add to every fuckign book if we're being honest- if I had the freedom, I'd make the overarching plot a lot less direct and a bit more subtler (less of the dragons thinking the same thoughts over n over again abt the prophecy or war) and more focus on character moments and dialogue. Similarly for worldbuilding I'd like subtler bits of storytelling abt what dragon society looks like, so we can get a better look at the characters as a result (it not only helps the DoD feel more isolated from their homes, but then gives the resulting arc 2 characters more depth by having them be from the cultures we only learned abt superficially before).

| 13. One thing you'd take from an arc/ book?

NO MORE JERBOA ANIMUS REMOVAL. YOU KEEP YOUR DUMB DECISIONS IN OR I'LL FIGHT. That said, I'd also remove the "it doesn't steal your soul at all" plot twist of arc 2- I think I'd change it somewhat still to not be directly abt souls, but about livelihood/life potential- the more you use animus magic, the less you feel like you can live your own life/the more you take from your own life (which also gives Stonemover much more justification in how he acts and explains Anemone feeling "wooden" after using animus magic). It keeps the Darkstalker soul twist too- he is obsessed w not dying and w staying powerful, but fails to realize he is still removing his own livelihood- starting with his alienation from his friends and his pursuit of power over them, like a self fulfilling prophecy inherent to animus magic. Plus the scroll is a cool twist. Tbh, removing the soul removing aspect of animus magic makes that element of Darkstalker even weaker: he didn't need to do that, and it's more interesting if he did, but it didn't save him. Animus magic being a powerful but ultimately self destructive tool would still make Darkstalkers attempt to subvert it good, and even add an extra juicy twist to the hourglass- it's true, he's never going to die or lose himself in it, but it's because he would stay asleep for 20 thousand years, like a monkey paw type wish where it's technically true but not really. I can't tell if I'm cooking or not, but I like it >:).

| 15. Any design headcanons?

I have a big soft spot for Clay with tusks :}. I just think Mudwings should have tusks. Also Tsunami with a beard/barbels like a beard, bc my girl deserves it. A lot of my design HCs are from fanart- so like, when I see Sunny with Nightwing elements in her design, I cheer and holler, but I never thought of that stuff myself. A design element I don't see in drawings tho is I always HC Qibli as having a scar from Winter frostbreathing his leg- that should've honestly had more consequences than it did, it's weird that they just brushed it off bc it could've been some juicy character drama.

| 18. Favorite tribe?

I'm kind of inclined to steal @pidgetyy's answer of Skywings, bc other ppl caring abt tribes is what makes me like them more than my own strong preferences (bc I like whatever tribe inspires me the most, and pidget comes up w some really cool Skywings) (you should follow them) (go do it now). Buuuuut,,,,,, I also really like Sandwings :}. I think they're silly and cute and their little tails are funny

Link to the original Ask Game

[gaybd1]

hey i just need to make this post so i can link to it as like an about me/faq

just so i can have some info about me that's not like all up in your face bc who cares honestly but also so that dummies can read about who i am before sending "dont post about autism if youre not autistic!!" messages, u feel?

not that i get them a lot but i would def get them a lot LESS if there was a post like this to refer to

okay hi lets see

i am gay

actually im on the ace spectrum if u must know, thank u so much antidepressants ive taken since i was 7 years old...

i am trans (ftm)

speaking of trans i am legally male but am not able to change my name and have not yet transitioned medically in any way despite having socially transitioned almost a decade ago

ive known i was a boy my whole life because thats another question people asked i just got Very Good at repressing it

i am white!

yes i am a whitey who lives in taiwan, that is because i am an immigrant!

i have lived in east asia since 2018 and plan to be in taiwan forever

i AM... originally... from the US.... ughhhh fuckkkk i know righttttt

i do not identify as american lolololol

actually i dont identify with american culture in general because i wasnt there for covid and life kind of carried on as normal over here during covid so there's like this huge cultural divide between me and other americans now

i mean i dont identify as taiwanese either lol bc that would be... wild...

ok anyway

i am autistic

what else have i been diagnosed with lol astigmatism i guess

i have clinical depression and anxiety lol love that for me

i am colorblind

i have fibromyalgia and occasionally use a cane

i have a bunch of other learning disabilities and a bleeding disorder but jesus christ you dont need my whole life story

ive had ARFID my whole life and it gets dangerously bad sometimes and im also recently "recovered" from anorexia lets hope it stays that way

i was raised evangelical christian but now i have Trauma about it

im still spiritual and am somewhat involved in buddhism

i have trauma about family issues like a shitty dad and fucked up siblings and parentification, all that jazz

i am fluent in english and spanish but my mandarin is actually not that good (like enough to get around obviously but i cant read and write like at all)

oh im a teacher and im trying to finish my masters #privilege

idk what else is interesting

i travel a lot ive been to 15 countries

i grew up between the US and guatemala, i lived for a bit in cuba as a student, and I lived a year in china before i came to Taiwan

ok bye have the day u deserve

[revlyncox]

Blue Holidays and the Longest Night

The deepest part of December can be hard, but there are also gifts. The natural world and earth-honoring traditions can give us some hints about how to stay present during the longest night. This sermon was presented to The Unitarian Society in East Brunswick, New Jersey, by Rev. Lyn Cox.

I found myself awake before dawn the other day. That’s not as surprising this time of year as it otherwise might be, given that sunrise is around 7:15, as opposed to just after 5:30 am like it is in midsummer. I am not usually very contemplative first thing in the morning, and have been known to try to light up the darkness with my phone and end up checking the news before I’m really prepared. But, on this particular day, somewhat by accident, I didn’t do that. 

In the light of the imminent dawn, I looked out the window at the steel blue sky adorned with the bare branches of oak, maple, and poplar trees. The sky is usually a mystery from the perspective of my yard. Our tree canopy keeps us cool in the summer, and brings a lot of the winged and four-legged neighbors to our yard, and it also means we have to go elsewhere for stargazing. In that early morning moment, though, I had the chance to look at the sky and appreciate its expansiveness, with the bare branches providing visual accents instead of a barrier. I could enter into the depths of that particular blue, and I could see how the different kinds of trees each branched in their own way. I imagined the earth in quiet slumber, and appreciated the invitation to slow down. 

There are difficult things about the time of year with long nights and short days. Some among us might struggle more for warmth, or work, or food, or companionship when sunlight is scarce. Even for those of us who have our basic needs met, the winter might bring challenges. Yet, if we are able to find the meaning and perhaps even some gifts in the darkness, perhaps we can face some of those struggles with strength and resilience. 

We also need to acknowledge that some among us approach this time of year with specific, personal pain and grief. For those who have lost a loved one recently or who remember the anniversary of a loss at this time of year, for those who are estranged from the people they might otherwise gather with at the holidays, for those whose economic situation has downturned recently, for those whose faith or heritage puts them on the outside of capitalist American holiday expectations, for those who have family and friends in harm’s way because of war or disaster or dangerous work, the middle of December can be very hard. 

Some of those who struggle with this time of year respond by escalating the bright lights and emphatic merriment, some simply withdraw when their hearts can’t match the cultural expectations of constant cheer. There is a lot of hidden hurt among us. There are many ways to grieve, and there is no one right way for everyone, and often no one right way for the same person all the time. Perhaps what we need are options, permission to try different ways of coping when the darkness has yet to yield it gifts to us. 

Earth-honoring traditions have some insights for acknowledging struggle and yet finding serenity or meaning or joy in the dark of winter. In our pluralistic community, we may be able to draw on other spiritual sources as well. We can look to the natural world for inspiration about a change of pace. We can embody rituals to give name and form to our struggles and hopes. We can trust in the flow of seasons and cycles as we honor the moment and let it go. In other words: slow down, name your experience, believe in change. 

Slow Down

I love having the ability to organize websites into open tabs on my browser. People who only look at one website at a time, or who mainly read things in hard copy, you are also valid. But maybe others are familiar with the experience of encountering a link, opening it up in a new tab, saying, “Oooh, that looks interesting, I’ll get back to that,” and then by the end of the day your browser tabs look like a staircase illustrated by M.C. Escher. There are strategies that might work better for organizing information, like bookmarking or creating reference documents, but it is hard to resist the glittering, abundant display of open tabs. Until my computer starts slowing down. When it takes a while for a new page to show up, or when the text I’m writing in a browser window lags behind my typing, that is a clue that I’m trying to process too much at the same time. I might think that all of my attention and all the computer’s attention is on the thing at the top of the pile, but the rest of those open tabs take energy. And so sometimes it’s necessary to simplify, and to pay attention to the background. 

Grief can be like that, too. We think we should–or someone else thinks we should–be operating at quote-unquote “normal” capacity, our hearts and our subconscious take the time and energy they need anyway to attend to the grief or the struggle that others may not see on the surface. I have definitely felt this in the months following a loved one’s death. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine. It takes me three times as long to do a simple task. And sometimes it’s not death, but some other kind of grief or struggle, especially one that puts distance between myself and someone I love. A missed opportunity. A diagnosis. A conflict. Any time when the channels of love have to be rerouted. Being human takes a lot of background processing power. It’s good to notice when my brain is telling me to slow down. Telling myself that I should be able to function like a person who is not grieving rarely works to upgrade my speed. Sometimes it helps just to notice, and to give myself permission to slow down or take breaks. I end up being a better version of myself when I move forward at the speed of love. 

There are some parallels between grief at any time of year and the wistfulness of cold weather. Winter has its own beauty and its own gifts. And we also need to acknowledge that it’s just not the same as the spring and summer. Some things move more slowly. 

Katherine May writes:

The changes that take place in winter are a kind of alchemy, an enchantment performed by ordinary creatures to survive...Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximising scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible.

May’s book, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times is available from the UUA Bookstore. 

When our minds and hearts are busy coping with some kind of change or loss, when our bodies are busy figuring out how to respond to longer nights and shorter days, slowing down gives us a chance to find out what kind of transformation is possible. It’s not always practical to slow down as much as we might need to. We have jobs and families and responsibilities. Capitalism flourishes when we are too busy to reflect. Working within what’s possible for now, let’s breathe some room into the systems we are part of. Let’s give ourselves and each other some slack. Let’s make time and space for processing, for grieving, for dreaming, for resting, for stillness. 

Name Your Experience

One way to begin to create that space is by simply naming our experience. Even simply acknowledging to ourselves that something is hard might give us a little more faith in the possibility that we can do hard things. Certainly, we can do that in conversations with friends, or in a journal, or to a trusted counselor. Sometimes what must be acknowledged benefits from an invitation that is beyond words. I’m talking about ritual. 

In many earth-honoring spiritual communities, a ritual begins by preparing the space. There might be some sort of cleansing or blessing, and the participants might cast a circle by acknowledging the four cardinal directions. Often, there is a physical demarcation of the space, maybe by traveling the perimeter of the circle, or creating a visual display of the boundary, or creating altars in each of the four directions. When the ritual is over, it is important to offer thanks in each direction and to open the circle, releasing the energy of the ritual. I am being a little bit vague here because an earth-based spiritual community is very often an interfaith community; people come together who honor different gods or goddesses, trace their specific path back to different parts of the world, and have different names for related concepts. Very little is universal, but in general, the intentional creation of sacred time and sacred space is foundational to any other kind of practice in an earth-honoring spiritual community. 

Having created a boundary, participants may have more courage for dealing directly with elemental issues around birth, life, love, and death. The sacred space and sacred time connects people with those who have gone before, and with the larger community of practice, and with the spiritual resources that are important to the people in the circle. In communities where creative ritual development happens, celebrations are designed with specific intentions. If you are asking the powers of the universe for help, it is wise to be clear about what you are asking. Yet the question can come in the form of symbols or gestures or music; words are not the only way and are sometimes not the best way of touching on the deepest truths. 

We did this together when we created a memorial altar at the end of October. There were some words, but one of the most powerful parts of our time together that day was the physical action of bringing photos and mementos to the front of the room. And because we are a community and we needed a little bit of time for everyone to come forward, that meant we also had a few moments of not speaking, of sitting with our love and our grief, of holding close to our hearts the impact of our ancestors and departed loved ones. Most people can’t live with that kind of emotional intensity 24x7, but we do need those moments to name our big questions and our griefs and our joys. We can benefit from those moments when we create time and space with intention. 

Rituals are not exclusive to earth-honoring spiritual paths. Paying attention to seasons and cycles, and having experience with and symbols drawn from the natural world can bring richness to the creation of meaningful ritual, and if the mysteries of the interdependent web don’t call to you strongly, the path you follow probably has ritual in another form. In our family, we just finished celebrating Hanukkah. There is more than one story about the origins of Hanukkah and about what makes it meaningful, and we don’t have time to get into all of them, but I will point out that, because the Hebrew calendar is based on the lunar cycle, the eight days of Hanukkah surround the part of the part of the month with the darkest moon closest to the Winter Solstice. So, if you feel called to light a candle in contemplation or in celebration of your survival or with a prayer for resilience, you are not alone. 

We need one another. And we also need some rituals that are just for us as individuals or families. You don’t need to wait until October or November to create an altar at home to honor your beloved dead. If you are facing an obstacle, or an opportunity, or a loss, or a deep wondering, you can create a ritual for yourself to give some form to what’s on your heart. Maybe there are treasures that you can put together on the top of a bookshelf or a side table that symbolize this bend in your journey. You might want to listen to music that reminds you of your question as you draw or paint or play with salt dough. If you bundle up, maybe the circle you trace will be on an outdoor walk around your block, or in a park, as you silently greet the living things you encounter and practice gratitude for the earth and water around you, the sun and stars above you, and the breath that travels within you and beyond you. 

Whatever is on your mind and heart as the sun begins its return, give it a name or a shape. Find a moment to speak it to yourself, or to write it, or to draw it. Arrange sentimental or sacred objects. Meditate on it as you travel through a frosted winter landscape. Name your experience. 

Believe in Change

A third insight that we might learn from earth-honoring traditions at the Winter Solstice is to believe in the possibility of change. Earth-honoring practitioners pay attention to the cycles of the year, to the hours of sunlight as they decrease and increase, to the plants that flourish in each season, to the animals who visit at different times of year. Many earth-honoring traditions give attention to the moon, perhaps beginning new projects or planting new seeds as the waxing moon increases, perhaps letting go of what no longer serves us or putting things to rest as the waning moon decreases. Some things come around again in a similar form each month or each year, but the world is always changing and we are always changing with it.

I take comfort in the assurance of change because that means that whatever I am struggling with is temporary, at least in its current form. They might give way to different struggles that are also hard, but this particular thing that is at the forefront of my grief or frustration or concern will not last always. At the same time, the people and the blessings that lift me up in this moment will not hold their form forever, and so it behooves us to be mindful of gratitude. And this gift of transformation is a sign of life. Living things change. Thriving species adapt through the generations. When we believe in and support positive transformation, we are cooperating with the powers that create and uphold life. 

There is a Pagan chant from the Reclaiming community, it’s called the Koré chant: “She changes everything she touches and everything she touches changes.” There are verses in between chanting the chorus. It’s a very popular chant, and I think it speaks to the kind of outlook that comes from attuning ourselves to the seasons and cycles of time. “She changes everything she touches and everything she touches changes.” There are lots of verses about the Goddess and her stories and her attributes, and there is a verse about what that means about the community itself. “We are changers. Everything we touch can change. We are changers. Everything we touch can change.” Transformation is a fact of the universe. The direction of that transformation, channeling our love and our values as we collaborate with the forces of life, is the responsibility we take on when we connect our spirituality with an understanding of the fundamental truth of change. 

When we pay attention to the cycles of the seasons and the daylight and the moon, cooperating with the moment in which we find ourselves makes more sense. Because everything changes, we are mindful of the spiritual opportunities that are before us right now. There is room for contemplation throughout the year. Grief finds us in every season. Dreams have their own sense of time, not tied to the calendar. Yet at the Winter Solstice, we find an especially appropriate moment for the gifts of stillness. The season of long nights and short days lends itself to quiet meditation, to honoring our griefs and challenges, to swimming down into the deep metaphors and messages of our dreams. 

We know that seeds need darkness to sprout. We know that mammals need darkness to grow new life and bring that life into the world. We know that deciduous trees need a season of release and then a season of rest before they return to a time of leaves and fruit. The changes that are ahead of us are fed by the gifts of darkness, gifts that we cannot always see working underneath the surface, and yet deserve time and space and honor all the same. 

The middle of December can be hard for some general reasons, and for some of us for specific reasons. In the midst of the struggle, may we also find serenity and joy. May we create the space and time to slow down, to name our experience, and to believe in change. Merry Solstice. Blessed Yule. Happy Sun Return. Blessed be. Amen. 

[captainmartinisblog]

Up The Creek With 24 Paddles!

Wednesday 12th February 2025 – Bay of Islands, New Zealand.

Situated towards the northern tip of New Zealand, Bay of Islands was given its somewhat unoriginal English name by Captain Cook in 1769 when he visited during his first voyage. Indeed, his ship HMS Endeavour anchored off the island of Motuarohia not from where we were today.

However, the area was settled by Maori as long as 700 years ago and they called it ‘Tokerau’, meaning ‘Northland’. Today, ‘Te Tai Tokerau’ is a Maori electorate of the New Zealand House of Representatives.

Around 7am, Seven Seas Voyager dropped anchor off Waitangi and began tender operations ie ferrying passengers ashore using the ship’s lifeboats. The journey in the tender took about 15 minutes, so all I can say is that Captain Cook’s crew must have been pretty fit to row all that way!

Speaking of which, our excursion today was entitled ‘Waka Tai-Mai Exploration’ or ‘Maori War Canoe Cultural Experience’ and it began with an introduction to the local Nga-Puhi tribal leader and his family who run this experience to support a drug rehabilitation charity – hence the ankle tags on some of the guys in the Maori welcome party!

The tribal leader, however, was a highly talkative chap, though goodness knows what he was saying in Maori but he went on for quite a while!

After our lengthy ‘induction’ into the matter of the ‘Waka’ (war canoe) and the correct handling of the oars, we were eventually sorted by size to distribute the weight, then we boarded our two traditional, double-hulled canoes and set to paddling our way up river, past forested banks and river wildlife, ‘ha-ing’ and ‘ho-ing’ in various chants along the way (all designed to keep 24 of us in each waka rowing in unison). It was quite strenuous but my Bermuda kayaking served me well.

With a couple of rest-breaks along the way, we paddled for over an hour until we reached our destination, the Haruru or Thundering Falls, where we had our photo ops!

This is also a place of spiritual significance, as the old Maori way of dealing with their dead was to to hang up the bodies until all the flesh had decomposed and then they collected the bones and buried them! Thankfully, they don’t do that any more!

Anyway, after our photo op, we were rewarded by motoring back down the river (because by this time, the novelty of the experience was perhaps for some in danger of wearing off!)

Overall, we were on the river for just over two hours, with another hour ashore during the welcome and being given some pretty forthright First Nations political views by our Nga-Puhi tribal leader, so the Waitangi Treaty signed here by 500 Maori tribal leaders in 1840 may be seen by the British as the beginning of the colonisation of New Zealand but it is viewed a bit differently by the Nga-Puhi.

Back on board Seven Seas Voyager, the ship weighed anchor and departed at 5pm, heading we are told, into strong winds and heavy swells tomorrow! Oh Joy!

[maliceincandyland]

Jessie (Pokémon) & Her Duality

Jessie is a gangster who is sweet but becomes cutthroat when she’s on the clock. Fracturing her personality into two halves weighs on her more and more over time, but she resolves this inner turmoil in the end.

Her Past

Jessie grew up on the streets with no money or family. Being a criminal was never a lifestyle choice for her because being is a criminal is all she’s ever known.

When she was about 10, she had a crush on a boy who wanted to be a Pokémon Coordinator (a type of Trainer) and invited her to go with him. She declined. She figured that she should focus on her own life, and she thought that falling in love is what has doomed many a woman’s career (DP73). Then she auditioned for a big career-making play, but she didn’t pass the audition (DP73).

She applied to Pokémon school and met James (Kanto 9, Kanto 48). She passed the entrance exam, but James didn’t. She must have really, really liked him because she chose not to go, for his sake (Japanese version of Kanto 9). They both joined a biker gang and hung out together, for a time (Kanto 36, Kanto 48). But they ended up parting ways.

Jessie joins Team Rocket and goes from petty thief to full-blown gangster. Since she’ll do whatever it takes to survive, including leaving her Team Rocket partners for dead, her peers called her The God of Death. She didn’t care, and embraced being a femme fatale. She said that she had been on her own for so long that she didn’t know how to open up to or trust other people. She was somewhat friends with her co-worker, Cassidy, since Cassidy was the only person who wasn’t intimidated by her. They ragged on each other and Cassidy liked to hit below the belt, but they had some respect for each other (Chronicles 13).

The God of Death

James joined Team Rocket and seemingly volunteered to be Jessie’s 13th partner. Like in Western culture, 13 is considered an unlucky number in Japan. (Thirteen is also the episode number of this episode in the English dub.) Although there are different ways that this flashback can be interpreted, it seems like Jessie and James recognized each other and that Jessie was upset with James (like if he left her or if they had a fight). I interpret it as him having left her because later on (in the Japanese version) he confesses that he tried to outrun his past and has been running away his whole life. She never asked what he was running from, or about any details of his past (Chronicles 13). He never told her, but she accidentally finds out, about 15 years after meeting him (Kanto 48).

In any case, she quickly warms up to him, giving him her food ration and telling him that she doesn’t open up to other people but that she knows that the three of them are kindred spirits. Subsequently, James tells her that he won’t run away from their Team Rocket responsibilities because if he starts running, then he won’t ever be able to stop running. Jessie is moved to tears.

Sugar & Spice & Everything Nice

Women and girls in Pokémon become more self-sufficient and goal-oriented without becoming less feminine.

Jessie is hyper-feminine, meaning she has traditionally feminine personality traits, a traditionally feminine appearance (ex. wears feminine colors), and traditionally feminine interests. She even has ‘a woman’s intuition,’ which is to say she’s a little bit psychic (DP105, DP134, JN24). Often when hyper-feminine characters go through an empowering character arc (ex. become a kinder person), their traditionally feminine characteristics decrease, because hyper-femininity is treated as an obstacle, instead of an asset. This is not the case with Jessie, who is just as feminine at the beginning of the series as she is at the end.

Hyper-feminine characters are usually pitted against other women, but Pokémon doesn’t do that. Jessie battles women but it’s no different from her battling men. Jessie gets along pretty well with Ash's friends Serena, Shauna, and Dawn, and she roots for Ash's friend Iris at the World Championship, saying that Iris battling Team Rocket is what molded her into a Champion. Jessie was originally pitted against Cassidy, but they become friends, and they somewhat got along when they were in Team Rocket’s training school. Jessie and her co-worker Matori argue and enjoy to backstabbing each other, but sometimes they get along and Matori got Jessie and James promoted (DP191).

Damsel or Fatal

Jessie is both a Damsel in Distress and a Femme Fatale.

Jessie is a very childlike character (she's 25). She, James, and Meowth spend much of their time playing dress-up, rhyming in limericks, and making up silly games. Jessie has a childlike curiosity and awe, and always finds something to laugh about. She is also petulant, however.

She leaves the adulting to James; but she does learn how to bake, in order to do something completely on her own that she could be proud of (DP14, DP106). She keeps practicing and gets quite good at it (XY80, XY101).

Jessie doesn’t take criticism or bad news well and needs it to be sugarcoated, otherwise she denies it or cries. Though she comes across as cocky, she's only cocky in bursts and it's to over-compensate for her lack of self-confidence. Dawn's friend Zoey points this out but Jessie is offended and denies it (DP49).

Jessie considers creepy things to be cute, which is sweet, but she lets her guard down and gets into dangerous situations (XY14, XY60, SM3, etc.).

Since Jessie has depression, she knows what the absence of happiness feels like all too well. Thus, when she's happy, she feels it with every fiber of her being and loves with all her heart. When she can't believe in herself, she believes in James and Meowth's faith in her. She also seems to believe that you won't automatically feel grateful for anything, unless you stop to appreciate what you have.

Jessie has the courage to be sensitive, emotional, imperfect, and vulnerable in a world where people want to step all over you. She believes that being a delicate flower in a harsh world makes you brave, not weak.

Being vulnerable and open is what allows her to connect with others (Chronicles 13), so she holds these traits near and dear to her heart.

Jessie is a Damsel in Distress, meaning that she's in damsel in distress situations a lot (small things like James getting her out of the line of fire, and big things like being alone and under attack from wild Pokémon). Sometimes it's for the comedic relief of Jessie not thinking things through or James clumsily trying to save her. But when it's more serious (4th movie, Chronicles 13, DP73, XY63, SM38, JN95, etc.), then the purpose is that she shows great courage and comes out empowered, knowing that she overcame the scary, stressful situation. She emerges re-energized and having a bit more self-esteem, and sometimes with a better understanding of something. She finds an inner strength to keep going. It’s interesting that she continually has to be in these situations because personal growth isn’t a one-and-done; you have to keep doing it and gradually improve over time.

Simultaneously, Jessie is a femme fatale. Femme Fatales are ‘unconventional’ female love-interests in film noir (as opposed to so-called ‘Good Girls’), and modern characters who are modeled after them. We first see Jessie dress in noir style clothing in the 29th episode of the first season, and she periodically continues to dress that way throughout the series (as do other members of Team Rocket). Some of the instrumental music that plays during Team Rocket’s scenes also have a jazzy noir sound.

Femme Fatales in Noir

A femme fatale’s goal is to capture a man and his money, or together they'll take someone else's money. She usually uses seduction and tough talk to get her way. Often she's cold and aloof. Often she’s running from her past and won't talk about herself, though it's clear that she's either escaping an abusive relationship, escaping a loveless marriage, or she's poor and fed up. Usually she's sick of following the rules in a world designed to benefit only men.

Or, alternately, a femme fatale is sweet but unconventional in some way. She's in love with a gangster. Or she's a sexy singer/showgirl who gets mixed up in something bad. Or she has an unladylike interest in detective novels. And so on.

“When I get excited about something, I give it everything I have.” ---Irene (Lauren Bacall) from Dark Passage (1947)

The femme fatale isn't interested in domestic life, at least not yet. She almost never has kids. She may marry her love-interest, or is having an extramarital affair with him. She may have killed her husband and/or his first wife.

“I want things. A lot of things. Big things. I don't want to be afraid of life or anything else.” ---Annie (Peggy Cummins) from Gun Crazy (1950)

A femme fatale might be a good girl who's become street tough, she might be pure evil, or she might be somewhere in-between. Ultimately, she'll end up married and softened around the edges, or arrested or murdered. Though she is either punished or domesticated, often noir films seem to side with the femme fatale despite her vilification. She must be punished or reformed, but often she’s painted as having a good reason for having become a villain.

For instance, in Gilda (1946), Gilda does a sexy song-and-dance number that would ordinarily drive a man wild, but she does it to rub her beauty in jealous wreck Johnny's face. Thus, he gets no satisfaction out of it and has the bouncer get her off the stage. The song is about men blaming women for things that they didn't do.

Legendary Hispanic actor Rita Hayworth, as Gilda.

Poison Ivy in Batman the Animated Series/Batman Beyond was likely inspired by Gilda.

Cartoon/comic character Jessica Rabbit was likely inspired by Gilda. Though she was already an existing character, for the incarnation of her in the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988), femme fatale actors Rita Hayworth, Veronica Lake, and Lauren Bacall are specifically cited as inspirations for that iteration of Jessica Rabbit. (Photo credit: imnotbad)

In Pokémon, Jessie seems to parody Jessica Rabbit in XY123. Perhaps a nod to her English dub name?

The femme fatale will stop at nothing to get what she wants. Her passion usually brings out desire in a man, but leads to his downfall. She has a passion for other parts of life as well. She likes to dance, go out to cocktail lounges, have drinks with friends, etc.

“I have my own life to lead. Good times, that’s what I want. And laughs with people I like.” ---Alicia (Ingrid Bergman) from Notorious (1946)

The femme fatale is hyper-feminine. They want all the beautiful and flashy things that will make them stand out in a crowd. They want perfume that makes a man have to get close. They want their man to think of them all day, every day. They want their man to want to steal or kill for her. They want pretty things and passionate kisses and dancing and to sink their claws into a man's soul.

“I’ve got you and I’m enjoying it fine, because I’m not yours anymore; you’re mine.” ---Ellen (Veronica Lake) from This Gun for Hire (1942)

One of the themes in film noir is that you shouldn't sleep well at night, thinking nothing bad will happen to you and thinking the world is fine. Even the person closest to you could be working against you. The femme fatale is usually a symbol of how death can strike at any moment. (Recall that Jessie is “The God of Death.”) Men follow her willingly because she gives him a reason to live or a reason to live again. He has nothing left to lose anyway. He's a dead man walking. He's a man with no future and she's a woman with a past. She's beautiful, fascinates him, and excites him. She's usually the catalyst for the bad things that happen. Often she destroys her man from within by awakening something dark in him. Sometimes she hasn't done anything wrong per se, but her refusal to choose a suitor and her enjoyment of her independence drives her suitors to turn against each other.

“Touch me and you won’t live ‘til morning” ---Kitty (Ava Gardner) from The Killers (1946)

By virtue of being a woman, she has to constantly put on a façade. She has to pretend to be happy when she's depressed. She has to pretend to be collected when she's furious. She has to pretend to be tough when she's scared. This molds her into a masterful liar and manipulator.

“Last night, I dreamt I went... [home] again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive; and, for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me.“ ---Mrs. de Winter (Joan Fontaine) from Rebecca (1940)

Living a Double Life

Jessie struggles to reconcile the part of her that’s sweet with her darker side.

When Jessie joined Team Rocket, she suppressed the sweet part of her, but that made people not want to associate with her and that made her lonely (Chronicles 13). She would never want to go back to suppressing her loving, caring self.

In XY63, she tries suppressing her dark side, but that seems to make her feel disingenuous. On top of that, it doesn’t stop her gangster toughness from coming out whenever she's in potential danger.

James and their Pokémon love how sweet Jessie is, and that encourages her to embrace it and work harder on being kinder as the series goes on.

An example of her showing that she cares is when she takes her Pokémon, Mimikyu, shopping at the mall. She gives Mimikyu a makeover to try to boost its self-esteem and so that it can find a look that suits its personality. Mimikyu is adamant that its old identity (as an undead Pikachu) is who it really is. So Jessie fights off some Pokémon by hand to get its Voodoo doll Pikachu costume back, and sews it up (SM38).

An example of her telling others that she cares is after she loses in the Kalos Masterclass Showcase tournament (similar to Coordinator style battling). Jessie must be absolutely devastated, but she collects herself and tells James and their Pokémon that she only got as far as she did because of their help, and that she’s really grateful for them. They’re moved to tears and James tells her he’ll take her out to dinner (XY113).

James/Kojiro: We’ll follow you anywhere, Musashi-sama! Jessie/Musashi: This [dinner] is going to be YOUR treat, Kojiro! James/Kojiro: I’ll pay! I’ll so pay!

In order to use a special high-powered move called a Z-Move, a Trainer needs to send some of their auric energy to their Pokémon. The move also requires a crystal called a Z-Crystal, and these can only be obtained through tests of character. Jessie’s test reveals that she is willing to help others.

Jessie and James come across a Gengar who is eating the soul of a little girl, who turns out to be the ward of the local Kahuna (Gym Leader, basically). Jessie has her Mimikyu attack Gengar and James grabs his Z-Crystal that Gengar swiped from him. To avoid further attacks, Gengar possesses Meowth. Jessie gets mad and has Mimikyu knock out Meowth to force the Gengar out. Gengar then possesses Jessie. James has his Mareanie gently use a Dark Type move on Jessie since Dark Type moves are Super Effective against Ghost Types. The Kahuna and his ward give Jessie Mimikium-Z, which allows her Mimikyu to use Let’s Snuggle Forever. It’s a Fairy Type Z-Move that suffocates the opponent.

Integrating the Shadow

Jessie and James get an apartment together and fill it with personal effects. They visit other countries, but return to their apartment whenever they’re back in Kanto. No longer lost souls wandering the earth, they finally have a home and someone to come home to. They start a podcast (JN106) and a YouTube channel (JN115) together in their apartment. The Narrator says that they continued being content creators from then on out (JN106). This is a pretty permanent arrangement. But it takes some getting used to. Living with someone was one of James’s biggest fears (AG147) and Jessie doesn’t seem confident that he’ll stick around. That is, she becomes concerned that he might be losing interest in being a gangster, and it seems like she thinks being her Team Rocket partner is the only thing that’s keeping him there. However, he’s been by her side for years and even promised to stay by her side in the afterlife (DP117). He is deeply insulted by her lack of faith in him and doesn't want to be partners anymore.

After their fight, Jessie, James, and Meowth individually go off to do the same villainous scheme, which moves Meowth to tears and makes Jessie and James smile. They realize that the three of them are inextricably linked, and what initially linked them was their love of villainy. Jessie and James can’t part ways like they did as kids, because their souls are bonded. (Literally. Jessie, James, and Meowth can power-up each other’s Z-Moves. Some Trainers do this with a Pokémon, but Jessie and James are the only humans shown to have an energy bond.) With Jessie’s shadow of doubt out of the way, she embraces her dark side and becomes a fully-actualized villain. There’s nothing holding her back anymore, because she realizes that James is every bit as dark as she is, and will always be at her side.

You can check out my James character study here

You can check out my Team Rocket music playlist here

[luimnigh]

“out-of-times” — like how ‘The Brady Bunch Movie’ had a sitcom family who’s been on a floating timeline in the 1970s suddenly realised it’s the 1990s now and have to deal with the new climate with their ‘70s culture, or how Steve Rogers always is frozen and then defrosted 70+ years down the line. “Man Out of Time” — “Woman Out of Time”. I do think that could be done with Gwen in a few years.

I'm aware of the trope.

However, I do need to point out that the history of the Marvel Universe does, in fact, roughly match the history of the real world. There are deviations, but thanks to the sliding timescale, the beginnings of the Superhero Age is currently set to be roughly 15 years ago.

Which basically means, aside from Captain America and his generation fighting in WW2, publically-known history is basically the same up until 2008, and even then most everything that's happened since 2008 still happened.

The big exception being COVID-19. Though once the sliding timescale moves further along, that might get retconned in too.

Gwen can't actually be a woman out of time because the only thing she's missing out on, time-wise, is things that are exclusive to the real world, like MCU movies and global pandemics. Pop-culture is roughly the same, history is roughly the same.

And it's not like Gwen is jumping from 2015 to 2023. She's experiencing the time in-between, except on a timescale of months, not years.

To be quite honest? It's a terrible idea for the character. Antithetical to the whole point of Gwenpool as a character.

Gwenpool is a Marvel Comics fan who ended up in the Marvel Universe. She is, ultimately, supposed to be somewhat representative of the modern comics fanbase. Divorcing her from current Marvel fandom, as your idea would, undermines the point of the character.

And "modern" is part of the point there. It's in contrast to a depiction like Superboy Prime. In 2006's Infinite Crisis, Superboy Prime represented a negative view of comics fans. A petulant, angry young man who hates the direction comics have gone and wants to regain the comics of his youth.

Meanwhile, Gwen represents a much kinder view, being someone defined by her love of the characters and the world, someone who tries to be detached by playing to tropes, but ultimately does her best when being sincere in her attachment to the world and people around her. And she represents a more modern view of the fanbase too: fequently female, queer, and neurodivergent; as opposed to the stereotype of the angry young man living in his parent's basement. Because she's a more honest, more kinder representation of the fanbase, she has to move with the fandom, which isn't something she can do if she stagnates in one moment in time.

Trying to do such an arc would both not make sense, and undermine the character.

[osakanone]

Update 3: It keeps happening

ok, I've been tagged in this enough times that i've finally read everything and feel like responding FIRST, I admire your passion, @osakanone. But I'd advise you redirect that passion to enjoyment and not competition.

I DON'T want to insult you, but I'll just say:

you seem young.

lol, lmao even

The demographic you are counting as "shippers," and thus the units you are measuring popularity of the aforementioned ships by, are fanfic writers.

The majority of whom aren't English speaking or American, meaning whatever records have survived are a tiny shadow of what's actually out there.

Supernatural is just, not a recognized name outside of America or Tumblr. Everybody knows of Gundam.

It gives you numbers to work with, but it's not fair to say that the number of fics directly relates to number of fans of a ship. Writing is a huge undertaking that not every ship enjoyer undertakes, and not only that, it's a strange metric to focus on

Uhhh because producing metrics for those isn't really possible, given the tools to quantize these kinds of things are relatively new, and Gundam is much MUCH older than them?

what about fan art? What about DOUJINSHI???

Going by doujinshi, there's been more made than there have supernatural derivative works by something like a factor of 10x or so?

Gundam, as a Japanese property, has its own unique fandom ecosystem. I'm an American who's been an anime fan a loooooong time, and I don't know all the ins and outs, but fanfiction doesn't seem to be a popular medium there. Rather, doujin is king.

False: Light novels are the name given to fanfiction, and in the last 15 years its become popular to change the characters names half way through, so LNs are inherently based in fandom culturally speaking -- and light novels not only dominate doujinshi (and have since the popularization of the internet) but they also dominate how anime gets made now which is why anime is somewhat incestuous in its themes and genres now to the point where the medium makes self-aware digs at this. This is also how the genre of visual novels kinda found its wings too as a means of bridging the two, and then later also crossing over with drama CDs.

Doujin *seem* king, because doujin are easier to translate than dense tomes of light-novels which by the way are easier to make than doujinshi are by virtue of the skill-floor being significantly lower and the print/cost density being significantly higher.

What this results in is a huge percieved asymmetry of the popularity of doujinshi abroad vs the popularity of light-novels domestically.

And let's talk about fan works... Why do they exist? Because, despite how much you enjoy a piece of media, you see something missing.

So this is born of a narrative of creativity as a means of filling a percieved void (which is an idea rooted in productivity/commercialist framing and is a relatively new idea that doesn't exist everywhere internationally), rather than as being inherently additive.

I highly recommend you read Art & Fear by David Bayles & Ted Orland for an alternative view of creativity.

You don't transcribe a show when you write fanfic. It's a creative process.

You absoloutely do if you're operating in the construct of a setting, and characters are behaving in ways which are in "in line" with expectation, otherwise the entire construct of fanfiction collapses, or you have to create a distinction to indicate your authorial intent.

Talking about doujin - a visible, money-making part of fandom

Uhhh historically doujinshi aimed to sell at a net neutral purely to cover their operating costs, and its only since 2012ISH that doujinshi publications have really become profitable?

When you couple this with how high risk doujinshi as a medium, and market, it isn't really considered a "money making market", which is why you don't see circles behaving as businesses with business expansion models the same way you do in say, manga -- even in areas where original manga is produced of an NSFW nature to cater to doujinshi-market interest?

Most of the money made in doujinshi is via resale markets, and circles don't get a cut of that money.

But why do "fujoshi" exist? These "rotten women"? Because they see gay love where a homophobic, majority straight audience (by which I mean society) refuse to.

Uhhh...

“The very first fans of the original Gundam were young women. Definitely not the PlaModel enthusiasts. With both Gundam and Raideen, of the first fans to be active, 90% were girls. Among a gathering of 1000 fans, about 100 were boys. Around when the first cour ended, young women began to gather to the after recording studio. It took until much later for male fans make an uproar, around the time series got canceled. I thought: You’re late to the party!” - Yoshiyuki Tomino http://dargol.blog3.fc2.com/blog-entry-4241.html

And we won't get into a conversation about "fetishizing homosexuality" and "authorial intent."

Then... Why are you even bringing it up...?

This is a very very weird argument you're trying to make, and this optics game is very strange.

Please make substantive arguments.

Maybe Tomino would have included explicit gay representation in his shows if he could, but... we all know that Gundam is not that.

Uhhh... Watch Char's Counterattack. Again, look up the historical context of Yukio Mishima. Char Aznable is very aggressively bisexually coded by Japanese social expression every chance the creator gets. It absoloutely is not ambiguous.

Thus all the gay fanworks, in which fans make up for what canon lacks. And you probably don't all ship the same ships. Or agree on characterization. And anyway, "The work of many artists, designers, writers, even videos of events are just lost media because we didn't have the archival mentality adults develop" ....... When I was a teenager, I was saving jpegs of my fav yaois to my PC en masse. Archival ain't just an adult mindset; shipping isn't majority teenagers. If even the creators of fan works aren't holding onto their work and reuploading on modern, supported sites... that speaks to a lack of care, not just a lack of foresight.

You literally can't have foresight on something which has never happened before when the prevailing attitude of the internet pushed by big business at the time was "once its on the internet, its around forever" with linkrot not even being well understood until the post-mortem which actually came AFTER this era.

Why are you arguing this point, where is this even going?

FFN went to adult fanfiction.net or live journal or ao3, and it was up to the authors to transfer their works themselves (you DO NOT reupload someone else's work FOR THEM). So if they didn't... it was they who moved on.

Oh okay you're upset about numbers.

You lost the poll. Which one of these two franchises are people talking about. Which gets regular numbers across all of social media, and isn't a dying ember held onto by a small minority?

REITERATING AGAIN: the number of fanfics does not equal the number of shippers

Its representative of a larger whole, and I communicated the relationship of that whole and how proportionally Gundam Wing's shipping alone way back was FAR more popular than destiel had ever been adjusted for per capita of internet users.

You aren't indicating anything to the contrary unless there's some mysterious hidden cabal of destiel shippers waiting in the rafters which you can validate with evidence, history and statistics as I have.

Gundam Witch Mercury premiered in 2022!! Destiel became a ship in 2008!!!!!!

And Gundam aired in 1979 and has a massive international cultural inertia which is incredibly gay, what's your point?

With all due respect, it was not a fair fight nor is a Tumblr poll an accurate census.

Can you quantitively or logically substantiate why? I'd genuinely like to understand your reasoning here.

"urgh this is just a trend tumblr will get over it and go back to supernatural" I certainly have. I never got around to watching this Gundam show, though I've heard a bit about it - only great things. Meanwhile, I am still obsessing over Supernatural (and particularly Destiel) four years after the show ended, and over a decade since I started watching the show.

Okay? Not sure how that's relevant here?

I don't expect everyone to share my obsession.

Sure, likewise. I'm not particularly obsessed with GWitch, I just really like yuri overall and I like Gundam overall. I wouldn't ever call myself an obsessive -- I reserve that for other works.

Tumblr may be the destiel site

Its not. The rest of us who aren't destiel shippers have never referred to it as such, nor will we ever. We just kind of see you vibing and tolerate that you call the wider site the thing, and let you get on with it. You being a vocal minority doesn't speak for a silent majority.

Tumblr is not "the destiel site".

but no one is enforcing ship supremacy.

Then what is your entire response

It was a bad idea to start a fight over ships to begin with!

I'm not fighting, I'm debating.

Again, "Sulemio" has existed 2 years; Destiel has existed 16!!! It's just basic respect for legacy.

Gundam is 45. Where's your basic respect for legacy now? /s

You think I ship Spirk?? No. I never got into Star Trek.

I did, and I do.

I don't find Shatner and Nemoy attractive or compelling, personally.

Your loss.

But do I go kick the hornet's nest? No.

You're again, acting like you speak for all of tumblr. You don't: You speak for a minority of users who feel they have some sort of cultural ownership of the platform.

Most shippers are able to be polite enough to not egregiously and erroneously claim an entire social media platform is "their website".

I'm sorry that this is how you learn of how you are percieved by other fandoms for your past of behaviour. Its unfortunate.

Now, you're casting aspersions like Destiel shippers are "waspy Americans."

No, these are conversations I have heard about destiel shippers from other fandoms. I have heard these conversations for years now. Your behaviour does nothing to discredit the things I have heard.

As though it isn't also a global phenomenon (which just isn't impressive these days, with the internet. What ISN'T a global phenomenon?).

Gundam is probably going to outlive both of us, and has a hollywood movie in production. It absoloutely is a global phenomenon, and one with an impressive history which regularly outperforms Starwars in many markets. Think about that for a second.

Spn also has a female majority audience. We are not so different. Only in size.

Really now? You... You realize Gundam's a work which talks about the history of how government functions, and has very strong leftist political messaging and has since its very beginning, right?

Verses... "Family bonds are important, and don't end with blood", which is I think a very minor message in Gundam that's already communicated by episode 25 of the original show's run and is just assumed to be true for the entire thing?

So can we not make this about race? Or ethnicity? Or country? Or men vs women? Let's just not insult entire fanbases! You don't make yourself big by trying to make others feel small.

Naming an attribute I have heard describe to me by other fandoms isn't "making this about <attribute>", its saying "hey, this is how you are currently being percieved by others and you should maybe work on this"

P.S. I never heard of Yukio Mishima before, but reading the Wikipedia page on his Forbidden Color book, without much context... why are we upholding misogynist, infidelious gays as great gay storytelling? You know the root of homophobia is male misogyny. All my homies hate gay misogynists.

Oh simple:

He's an enormous figure in the Japanese neo-bushido movement and nationalist movement. If you're telling a story where nationalists are the villains, you're going to use someone like that as a basis for your counter-argument.

Depiction is not endorsement, and while Mishima believed in those views, his work ironically serves as a phenomenal exploration of Japanese hierarchal abuse of the old using the young for their own devices and twisting them to their own ends -- which again, is often at the root of many leftist and right-wing ideologies as an inciting event.

Char's arc in Gundam served to reframe Mishima in this manner, as a means of exploring how both left-wing and right-wing responses have similar causes and why they emerge differently, and this is core to Gundam's political messaging.

Please don't be reductive.

tldr; nature is NOT healing. same shit, different day. there'll be peace when we are done, which is how you know we ain't done yet 🙄 😒

Nature is healing alright.

The scar puritus is in bloom tonight, for sure.

Look forward to hearing from you

-- A fairly casual Gundam fan

UPDATE: The Destiel/Supernats aren't taking this well -- explaining my reasoning for the history I gave, and why Destiel is not the big bitch of shipping that it thinks it is

An update to THIS:

"This is just a marketing thing, Gundam is a giant robot show, only men watch it!"

Gundam's fandom is silent majoratively feminine:

"But its not gay, its about giant robots!"

Gundam is very gay. The entire climax of the first story is a riff of Yukio Mishima lmao

The climax of the Amuro/Char arc of Universal Century Gundam (expounding from first Gundam circa 1979), Char's Counterattack is somewhat on the history of Japanese disillusion with liberalism which notably climaxed with the life and history of Yukio Mishima.

You know. THAT Yukio Mishima.

The one who wrote FORBIDDEN COLOURS.

It was so gay that the fanfiction inspired by it became its own damn anime:

And that's just Charmuro, let alone Charma or a billion other ships just in OG Gundam alone.

We've got This is before we get to Guin Sard Lineford and Yamagi Glimerton (both verrrrry gay), Tieria Erde (a genderqueer trans-coded character who transcends gender entirely in their arc) and a bunch of others.

Gundam was always gay.

"I don't see the numbers"

"That doesn't seem like much, Supernat is at least 2x this"

Sooooo the amount of content you do see isn't representative of how much even got written, given FFN had a huge content purge.

First, let's start with the relative proportion of users: If we're analysing the concept of fandom, we first have to look at who had access to the internet in the first place to publish works.

Yeah that's a pretty sizable difference.

Wing's fandom actually exploded in 2000, but got capped VERY early, distributing itself to fansites when FFN fragmented and collapsed.

Why?

Content purges!

"Isn't there some sort of online archive of this stuff?"

Sure, if you wanna dig through tons and tons of Angelfire and Geocities pages which have mostly disappeared. Otherwise, no! There is no archive of this stuff?

"Why?"

They've since rolled back on this but it means there's a massive amount of lost media out there, including the discussions on it and thus there's an entire history you didn't get to experience.

Its actually very difficult to reach people who've been involved, since it was so long ago that very few people remember, and a sizable proportion of that population have actually died.

"But what about SF fandoms? We have ancient records of stuff like Spirk!"

See unlike physical media like zines, when a server goes offline or there's a data-loss, or something like that there is no surviving copy of the thing in question.

The net result is we have this weird hole where content just vanished, and its now considered lost media. The work of many artists, designers, writers, even videos of events are just lost media because we didn't have the archival mentality adults develop.

You're not gonna hear about all the X-Files stuff or Frasier fanfictions or GW stuff because of these purges and the lack of physical media. FFN users were teens, not adults with resources like US/EU/JP SF fans, who had archival tendencies due to their long history.

So there is this supermassive black-hole in the history of fanfiction running between 1998, and 2008 and some of the only evidence of it are worksafe works and fansites which the owners have long since forgotten about because folks moved on. Moving on is a normal part of fandom.

So to those of you just saying "supernatural is losing to a pair of dumb anime girls" or "urgh this is just a trend tumblr will get over it and go back to supernatural"...

Uhhhhh no they won't, actually?

Supernat's fans mostly seem to be waspy Americans. Gundam is kind of a global phenomenon, one which has traditionally had a silent majority female audience, a vocal minority male audience -- and every time that majority has spoken up, its coincided with a content purge, or a TOS change that mysteriously biases American derived fiction over Japanese derived fiction.

Funny that.

tl;dr:

NATURE IS HEALING

[steampunkenglish]

Craft, Crafting, and the Merge of Multiple Lines of Artistic Pursuit

What I've Done on My Spring Break

This week I've been at home enjoying Spring Break like every other person who is attached in some way to the academic community. Some of my friends and colleagues have taken lovely trips, visiting friends or finding beaches. I stayed home with my cats.

I also crafted and went outside as much as the somewhat cranky weather here in Georgia would allow me to do.

Handcrafts are as important to me as my writing in a lot of ways. They sustain me. They challenge me. They allow me to explore and learn new things and develop new skills.

So I crocheted baskets and got out my sewing machine to try my hand at making something that I may wear if it turns out nice. f

One of the things I have noticed about a lot of my writer friends is that they often are like me. They do more than just write. Some play and sing in bands, others sew and create complete cosplay outfits from scratch, still others 3D print dragons and sell them, and still others are like me and do fiber crafting of all types.

How Does Crafting Connect with Writing Craft?

The silver thread through all of this is the drive to create, make, and build. That drive doesn't stop with telling stories though. I'm pretty much a tiny bundle of "Oh hai, let's build something cool!" If you provide me with materials and some instructions, I'm probably going to make an attempt to do something with those resources, even if it ends up looking like something a 3rd grader put together during art hour.

I'm not saying that every writer is like this. There are probably plenty of writers who don't have side crafting going on. Hollywood would have us believe that all writers do is sit in our houses or coffeeshops and get neurotic about not meeting deadlines (okay, I am neurotic about that, but when I get too neurotic, I usually go pick up my crochet needle and crank out about 15 bookmarks or make baskets or something) or plot the murder of our agents. I'm also not looking down on those writers who don't craft. Every person has a different thing and a different approach to creativity.

What I am saying is that often, at least in my experience, crafting has opened my own creativity and taught me techniques I apply to my writing.

Techniques I Have Gained from Hand-Crafting

Breaking things down into smaller pieces: Every project starts off seeming HUGE! You look at the picture on a pattern or the photograph of that cake on the cookbook page and it seems impossible. That's the finished product. What we forget is that those products come from a series of small steps taken in order that lead to that final product. Our culture doesn't allow us to understand this. We are a final product people. Everything is a series of smaller steps. Crafting allows us to learn this fact over and over again.

Allowing for mistakes: I am a perfectionist. I want things to be perfect the first time. This is a problem for a novelist. It means there is little room for accepting that the story might not work well during the first draft or even the tenth draft. It also makes it hard to hear when someone else says, "You know, this story is happening in a white room..." (This really happened to me with a story I wrote and LOVE with my whole heart. It was made harder by the fact that the person who said this is someone I respect and also love with my whole heart AND was completely right). Handcrafting forces you to be honest and accept that you are not going to be a master right away--and that's okay. I started knitting eleven years ago. It was a huge learning curve, but it taught me that those mistakes I made were not a big deal. I could tear them out and try again. Writing is the same. I can tear those mistakes out and try again. That white room got torn out and filled with pine trees, a lake that smelled funny, a small brick church, and a rotting, green dock. Substitute perfection for a polishing rag.

Being open to instruction and guidance: Crafting has taught me that there are others who know more than me. When I need and want to know more, I have to go ask. This is another thing I struggle with. Ask the questions. Go find the experts. Don't assume to know the answers. One of the things I love, love, love about crochet and knitting is that there is always one more thing to know. During the pandemic, I decided that I wanted to learn a new crochet technique. I settled on mosaic crochet. I couldn't go take classes, so I used ye old YouTube and found an expert from Iceland, Tinna Thorudottir Thorvaldar(https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCLETbuS9Y_v1o2BpSjj-oA). I also found she had a Facebook group. I learned, asked questions, and started working mosaic pretty regularly. Now it's my favorite style of crochet. I often am reminded as I do this work that asking questions and taking the advice of others is important.

Expand Your Creativity

My message this week is this: expand your creativity. Don't be afraid to spread yourself out a bit and find other creative things to do. Crafting can be a great way to feed yourself creatively and open yourself and your writing. You don't have to master the craft or sell anything. You just have to find joy and maybe gain some insights along the way. Or maybe just make a few fun things along the way.

Y'all have a great week!

#creativity #writingcraft #writing #writerslife

[fffinnagain]

10 Years of Sherlock (TV)  AO3 stats!

Sherlock fans, new and old, click below to read a long list of graphs and comments about our communities fanworks over the last 10 years. I scraped AO3 again and demonstrate that:

More creators are writing longer works in 2020

Readers engaged more as the fandom changed after S4

Top ten new tags per year for the last 10 years

And a lot more. 

PS the code to gather this data and analyse it can be found way over here. 

Activity over 10 years

The last 10 years in the BBC Sherlock fandom have been tumultuous, but this community persists, with engagement from new fans and continued creative output. To commemorate over a decade of squee, I’ve done another scrape of the fandom’s imprint on the Archive of Our Own and will share some insights from the numbers in these plots. A very late update on my post S4 snapshot from 2018.

Note: This analysis is of completed public fanworks only, about 101000 of the 122000 Sherlock (TV) works available at present. This is to remove the late WIP effect, which adds a bulge to the last few months, and out of respect to creators who wish to have their material reserved for other registered AO3 users.

The works are still coming

Counting the number of works posted per day, we can see the peaks associated with each series airing (in UK and US). After that, the number of works continues fairly evenly, 20-30 per day, plus seasonal peaks. This rate is continuing on without a hint of new canon in sight. So who is posting all this work?

Creator-waves, monthly output

Years ago I started plotting creator waves, basically I group fanwork producers by the year they first posted to the fandom and then count how many of this group are active in later time intervals. This lets us get a sense of how long people are contributing and whether new fans are getting the urge to create. 

This plot of the Sherlock (TV) fanworks on AO3 shows the standard shape of plump participation in the first year of any given set of creators, followed by a slowly thinning tail as they because less active over time. Turnover is natural in fandoms, with most only posting a work or two within a fairly limited amount of time, while a precious few persist for years.  The surprise for me here is that the ratio of new creators is higher in 2020 than it was in 2019. Maybe the excuse of lockdown encouraged more folks to take a turn at creating content. 

Another way to look at the output of fan creators on AO3 is to see the total amount of words being shared across all fanworks. The total has been pretty close to 300-400k words per month since 2018! To get a sense of what that means per work, I also plotted the median number of words per fanwork in these monthly sets. The median in higher in the last year than it had been staying for a while. 

Reader behaviour: Hits & Kudos & Comments

Fan creators are only part of the story. Stats on engagement are a bit trick to interpret, I’ve got some plots here that tell us something about how works have been engaged with over time. 

The obvious first to consider is Hits. Above is the total number of Hits given to works published each month. This is the current totals, not a historical snapshot, so we have a very strong bias  towards early works, what we might call the Classics Effect. Works that have been around longer have had the chance to be seen by more people, and in particular those works that become must-read classics in a fandom, extending their exposure through prominence in top ranked works and recommendations. 

To cut down on the advantage of the classics, we can also consider median hits per work for each month. As most works get a lot attention when they are first posted and then fade out of sight, the median number of hits reflects instead the ratio of readers to creators, basically how many eyeballs are around to look at the latest work, regardless of status. The median plot shows how the hyper-visibility of the few work available before 2012, and then a more steady curve once the fandom had gotten established on the platform after Series 2. Amazingly, the hit rate for the median work was steady through the big bumps in activity with later series, a 1000 hits for median works between 2013 and 2018, followed by a slow decline. I’d expect the 2020 works to continue gaining for a few months yet, but the median is probably 50-60% of what is was when the show was in production.

Kudos counts and medians show a similar story to hits, but there is a dip down around 2013 for kudos reflects the frenzy of productivity that saw the fandom grow during the Series 2 hiatus. Readers were getting spoiled! From the airing of Series 3 (2014) until a year following Series 4 (2018), the median work received an even 60ish kudos and 1000 hits, a niche audience that decreased to 50/750 through 2018-2019. The numbers of 2020 suggest a smaller community of readers again, though these numbers may still rise a bit in the next few months before the median works are forgotten. 

The statistic that tells a different story is Comments. Looking at the total comments counts, there isn’t a drop after Series 3 (2014). Instead, the fandom compensated for changing numbers with more feedback and discussion attached to works. This is reflected in the median comment rate as well, which shows seasonal variation but doesn’t really drop off until 2020.

It’s remarkable that without fresh canon we continue to have new creators contributing to the fandom, and while that may be outpacing the readership somewhat, the standard of engagement has been very high. One could say the fandom is chugging along quite nicely!

What about Tags

So, with all that turnover and shifting population, is there a change in the kinds of works being posted? We can look at tags, all tags and freeform tags, to see if there were any meaningful trends. 

First up, I did a creator-wave like analysis of works just for tags, to see how tags continue to be used after being introduced. Unlike the creators, tags clearly persist for years. After 2015, it looks like the core tag set has been established, with very few tags persisting in usage per  subsequent year.

This graph reports numbers over time that are not proportional to the number of works or creators active. Instead, works on AO3 have been getting more and more tags over the years, with the average steadily growing from 5 in 2011 to 15 in 2020, with freeform tags (not characters or ships) from 2 to 8.

To get a sense of fic and tagging culture changes over time, I counted the most popular NEW tags of each year (wave). Note: this analysis is using exact matches, not the networked associations of tag meanings wrangled into AO3 today, so some things that pop up aren’t new concepts but instead newly popular TAGs for whatever they represent. 

2011: 2752 (First year, so all solid stuff, tags that continue to be popular forever)

Angst                 323

Fluff                 232

Humor                 216

Hurt/Comfort          188

Romance               168

Friendship            168

Crossover             138

Crack                 121

Alternate Universe    119

First Time            106

2012: 11637 (still early, first references to Series 2)

Fluff and Angst                           145

Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall       97

Kid Sherlock                               54

Puppies                                    50

Sad                                        48

Episode: s02e01 A Scandal in Belgravia     47

Mathematics                                42

Season 2 spoilers                          38

Omega Verse                                38

Feels                                      38

2013: 16176 (Omegaverse nomenclature is growing, Top/Bottom terminology, new challenges)

Alpha Sherlock                               65

Omega John                                   61

30 Day OTP Challenge                         59

Tumblr: letswritesherlock                    56

Top John                                     49

Sherlock Holmes Returns after Reichenbach    44

Bottom Sherlock                              40

Reichenbach Angst                            30

Don't copy work to another site              29

Age Regression/De-Aging                      27

2014: 19256 (Mostly Series 3 related

Episode: s03e03 His Last Vow         249

Episode: s03e02 The Sign of Three    167

Post-His Last Vow                    149

His Last Vow Spoilers                142

Sherlock Series 3 Spoilers           128

2000 AU                              100

The Sign of Three Spoilers            74

Fatlock                               72

Post-The Sign of Three                66

Post-Season/Series 03                 57

2015: 14272 (New challenges, new prominent Sherlolly tags)

Chats                                      47

International Fanworks Day 2015            34

Watson's Woes July Writing Prompts 2015    27

S3 referenced                              25

Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper Kissing       22

English Accent                             22

Sound cloud                                19

Eventual Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper      19

Protective John Watson                     18

but not that kind of graphic               17

2016: 13517 (New stylistic tagging, TAB references, a lot of epilepsy?)

Slowwww burn                         92

John Watson Loves Sherlock Holmes    37

Sherlock Holmes Loves John Watson    33

post-tab                             30

JME                                  27

Post TAB                             25

Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy          23

Sherlolly Appreciation Week 2016     19

epileptic                            19

fraternal love                       17

2017: 15067 (Series 4 tags and challenges)

Episode: s04e02 The Lying Detective         133

Episode: s04e01 The Six Thatchers            93

Post TFP                                     73

Sherlock Series 4 Spoilers                   69

Episode: s04e03 The Final Problem            60

Post-Episode: s04e02 The Lying Detective     55

Sherlolly Appreciation Week 2017             50

Post S4                                      48

Sherstrade Month 2017                        44

31 Days of Porn Challenge 2017               41

2018: 10733 (Lost of new challenges, seasonal and weekly)

Towel Day 2018                       64

Mystrade Valentines Calendar 2018    25

Kinktober 2018                       23

Pregnant Molly Hooper                23

Soft Smut Sunday                     23

Tom Robbins                          23

Sherlolly Appreciation Week 2018     21

Inktober 2018                        20

established universe                 16

Always1895                           16

2019: 7785 (More prompts, and character attitudes)

Sherlolly Appreciation Week 2019    25

221B Autumn Challenge               21

A-Z Christmas Prompt                19

KatsJohnlockXmas2019                16

Whumptober                          11

Poor Greg Lestrade                  11

Kinktober 2019                      10

Dissonance                          10

John Watson is a Good Friend         9

Sleepy Sherlock Holmes               8

2020: 8074 (Not all COVID related, thank heavens)

Mystrade Monday                           59

COVID-19                                  48

Coronavirus                               46

Mystrade Monday Prompts                   40

Whumptober 2020                           36

warning for a covid-19 setting            33

Flufftober prompts 2020                   24

Do Not Translate                          24

they're all right they're just at home    23

Granada Sherlolly                         21

A little note from looking across all freeform tags, not just the new ones, we see a curious pattern with regards to two actions: First Kiss and Anal Sex. They appear amongst the most common tags as of 2014, neck in neck for two years, than Anal Sex drops off the top ten in 2016. From there out, First Kiss stays in the top 5 from that point on, while anal sex appears at rank 9 from 2017-2019 and is gone again in 2020. This probably says something about the fandom, somehow. 

Bravo for making it to the end and thank you for reading! 

Questions/comments welcome.