#and sometimes we share bandwidth

[zytes]

originality is a scam invented by capitalism to sell you copywrite law; you are a drop of consciousness in a great, big, borderless sea of ideas and experiences; and of any the ideas that we knowingly or unknowingly share are, in-fact, special because they are shared. Even across time and vast distances, without so much as even being aware of one another - humans have always found an uncanny way of reaching similar conclusions at similar moments

this manatee looks like it’s in a skyrim loading screen

[incorrectbatfam]

BatFam at bring your kids to work day across the years at Wayne Industries.

8-year-old Dick: Wow, this place is huge!

Bruce: That's right, chum. My office is on the top floor.

Dick: Race you up!

Bruce: We can take the eleva—

Dick: Too late! Last one there's a rotten egg.

———————

13-year-old Bette: So this is where our family's money comes from?

Bruce, still a new CEO: I guess?

———————

Bruce: And this is our robotics research lab where your dad is spearheading an experimental space pod project.

Young Luke: Cool! Can I try?

Bruce: I'm afraid you need to be a little older. And a LOT more covered under our insurance.

———————

Bruce: This meeting might take a while. Think you can entertain yourself, Jaylad?

12-year-old Jason: Sure.

[an hour later]

Bruce: Where's Jason?

Lucius: Reading the company directory.

Jason: Hey, a book's a book.

———————

Bruce: This is the lobby, where you'll be waiting until Alfred picks you up. I have a conference call so tell my secretary if you need anything.

14-year-old Tim: M'kay.

Bruce: *leaves*

Tim: *moves an end table in front of the elevators and prints out tickets*

Employee: Pardon me, just coming through.

Tim: Admission is five dollars.

———————

16-year-old Steph: You guys have a soft serve machine?!?

Bruce: TWO soft-serve machines.

Steph, shoving through: Move aside, people!

———————

Bruce: This vending machine always gets stuck so you have to hit it a couple times.

Cass: *roundhouse kicks through the glass*

———————

Duke: *on his phone*

Bruce: So... anything interesting at school?

Duke, still on his phone: Nope.

Bruce: Oh, okay. Well my job is a lot of spreadsheets and signatures. I'm waiting for Lucius to get back to me on one.

Duke: *laughs at his phone*

Bruce: I didn't realize paperwork was so funny.

Bruce: *glances over at Duke's phone*

Bruce: What the hell is Skibidi Toilet?

———————

Barbara: Thanks for letting me borrow your Wi-Fi.

Bruce: Of course. The guest bandwidth gets a little overloaded sometimes so you can use my employee login. The password is "clarkdaddy."

Barbara: ...It could use some numbers.

———————

Damian: You run an impressive operation, Father. I look forward to inheriting it.

Bruce: That's the spirit. Just a few more years of school and I can show you the ropes.

Damian: However, as impressive as it is, I identified several key weaknesses that will be your downfall if unaddressed. Firstly, I do not appreciate sharing a restroom with the general public. Secondly—

[vvh0adie]

watching my friends leave tumblr is really sad

you literally can't win

at this point the writer's strike should just be a cultural movement

like ppl are writing for FREE and you're complaining about turn out rate and shit

we have lives and some of us (HELL ALL OF US) have some form of mental illness, so we can't be fucking cogs all day and churn out fics.

writing is suppose to be therapeutic and writers want to share that with you to ease the tension of this hellscape we live in

but some of these readers and even fellow writers are taking it too far with the bullying

like its mean and nasty. you don't know what someone is going thru.

instead of asking for updates how about check and see if your writer is mentally stable to do so. that right there is a booster, to have someone say "are you okay?"

and then the whole accusations of favoring a certain member/character. if that person is my muse or safe space then of course imma write for them. most solo writers i see don't even talk bad about other people. its a SOLO account. think of it as a shrine blog of writing if that helps. they're not there to trash, just share their writing for other's who might also share the same muse.

then you have readers who can't separate fiction from reality. just because someone writes a character with irl people faceclaimed onto them doesnt mean they actually think that person would be or do those things irl. i'll be the first to say that i only gave my characters bts faces cuz thats who im attracted to and they're who i imagine would be casted to play my characters.

then IN THE YEAR OF 2023 we still have ppl making fun of their peers writing and also THE FACT THAT ENGLISH MIGHT NOT BE THEIR FIRST LANGUAGE? that's nasty asf. majority of us dont even speak 'proper' english as our first language no way. you only shooting yourself in the foot. don't act like you dont have beta readers... like what are yall on?

and anybody who gets on THAT BLOG behind anon is an opp. not just to the writing community but in how you interact with the world all together. yall don't know how to talk to people anymore? it may have started as a place for critique and accountability but no one is bringing receipts or critical thinking anymore. its mainly for drama and not rehabilitation. yall serious scare me in how we'd see the reality of social change applied to the real world. like i'd be more scared to let yall around the prisoners with minor offenses cuz yall act like its the end of the world and that change cant happen. yall give nobody room to change ignorant stances but ignore the real egregious shit because you honestly dont have the bandwidth to take on actual fascist views.

also the plagiarism has got to stop too. if you need writing resources just ask. but practice makes perfect. so you're gonna have to write yourself. you may not like your writers voice but you will feel shitty in the long run when you don't feel like its you putting those words on the paper. it literally just prolongs your inferiority. make something you're proud of and don't hurt your fellow writers. we went thru the process just like you. we earned it. and most of us aren't gatekeepers, we will help you.

like its really tuff being on here sometimes. cuz if you not being hounded by readers its your own community praying on your down fall.

we have to do better.

[wip]

why arent groupchats a thing anymore?

Answer: Hello @smushedmuffin!

We were very excited about bringing native group chats to Tumblr. Unfortunately, however, not enough people ended up using them for us to feel it was worth keeping and maintaining as a feature.

Every time we build a significant new feature like that, one that consumes a lot of time and bandwidth, we try to measure whether the juice was worth the squeeze, so to speak. Sometimes, it doesn’t work out. If we kept it around, it would be yet another thing in the big pile of things we (a pretty small team) need to maintain. It is for these reasons and more that it often makes sense to just let it go. That’s not to say we are not sad to see it go, of course.

That said, while it’s more like a “slow” group chat than like our previous attempt at group chats, we are introducing a little feature called Communities to let people get together and talk in a shared space. You can find out more at the Help Center.

Thanks for your question. Keep ’em coming!

[septembersung]

Having thoughts.

I have some friends (using the word loosely) who are very active on fb and elsewhere sharing things about their large catholic families. I have sometimes envied this. They’re offering a public, beautiful witness to life and being a catholic family, and the public square needs that.

On the other hand, I made a decision before my firstborn was 1 or 2 to quit posting pictures on the internet for security reasons, which have only gotten more relevant as the years go by. Not that we have any immediate or personal threats against us but because of the nature of the internet. And, a lot of my immediate family, who would want the updates, don’t do fb. Some I’m coming from a different set of expectations and boundaries.

And while I like blogging about whatever is floating through my head, or funny things my kids say, doing it anonymously and a step or two removed from my family is totally different from putting our daily lives out there for everyone I’ve ever met who knew me as the season one version of me and not as a fully formed adult. (Not that their posts aren’t curated, because of course they are, but they’re a lot more authentic than, say, insta influencers, and it’s easy to see the difference with the ones I know in person.)

And: kids aren’t content. (The option to make your posts unrebloggable is the best thing tumblr ever did.) Fb is still different from insta, and mostly what I see in real life circles is people communicating for the purpose of sharing with other in-their-real-life people, but when for me at least that isn’t a natural form of social media it’s hard not to see it for myself as creating content for likes. The short term kick of self esteem if people interact positively… isn’t worth it? And my kids do have a right to expect they’re not being paraded in public in what should be the privacy of their home? Because for me at least, I’m more of a homebody and candid photo mom, setting up outings worth sharing and posed photos is more work than I have bandwidth for. There are people for whom that is second nature, I’m not one of them.

Plus. Plus!! I mull over this general topic (how “public” should our family be) pretty regularly and I think I’m getting the impression that it is simply not my calling. We’re unavoidably public in the sense every family is, we have a community and we go out in public spaces eg church, grocery store, but my growing conviction is that we are supposed to be hidden and interior focused right now. I have so many things to sort out in my self and life and house. I’m not a leader or an example or anything right now, and probably never will be. I have some pride to mortify there - I see other people being those things, and I want to too! That childhood people pleasing, collect all the praise, kind of urge dies a hard death.

Getting out in the community and participating in things is good but it’s not a substitute for doing the family culture building and private family work, and can’t replace it. I’ve tried to over-correct from my isolated childhood, I think, (and I was public schooled!), and when I’ve been sick for long periods at a time, as has frequently happened over the years, I’ve relied on our community to provide structure and experiences I couldn’t at the time (by going to group outings and signing up for regular group events, etc.) Compared to my friends here who are a) lifelong locals, with b) local extended family and c) are extroverts we’re still “under socialized”, but that’s only by comparison.

I guess I’m just renewing my commitment to the idea that it’s okay not to put my family out there on the internet, and solidifying my growing conviction that it’s okay to not do all the things. Or even many things. And it’s not like we’re isolated - even now we’re only going to be home a couple days a week from now til Christmas, as I discovered when when trying to coordinate something else recently.

It’s just that so many of the things I tried this year simply haven’t worked out long term. There’s a variety of reasons for that and it makes me really sad but also I have to stop hanging my sense of “success” and “failure” on outside commitments. In fact I should probably work on changing my idea of “failure” here to something else because that’s the wrong word and comes from something in me that is based on fear and not reality or a healthy sense of measuring growth for our family. They weren’t bad goals but also not pursuing them doesn’t mean we’re doomed to be isolated weirdos. Which as a public schooler who nonetheless had no real social life or community engagement was my fear. Homeschoolers even have more opportunities for those things I think but we have to be intentional about it, especially if the parents are homebodies, and my experience proves that simply being public schooled doesn’t replace family culture and community involvement. And!! The fact that my neurodivergent kids struggle with the format and expectations of extra curriculars does not make them or me “bad” or “failures.” They just need something else from their opportunities and from me. The sooner I embrace that the better for all of us.

(My kids are going to be weird no matter what because their parents are weird. And because we are traditional Catholics and we reject 99% of what passes for contemporary culture. And because many of them are some flavor of neurospicy. Social anxiety around “being weird” is completely pointless and a distraction from real issues. This is a tangent.)

Right now, I have a real and even urgent obligation to be at home and immediate-family-focused for a while. Maybe a long while. That’s the kicker, I need to sit with this conviction and see what it means in practice. I struggle with time blindness these days so idk exactly what “long” means. Practically speaking probably at least through next summer because of when baby is due. Which reminds me I have a great and terrible hope/ambition around the possibility of a new co op opportunity next fall which has the potential to match what my family actually needs with people who also have older kids and share my educational philosophy.

But which again, this extended period of embracing being home and hidden doesn’t mean we’re isolated by any means. I know this is all vague, but I don’t want to give an erroneous impression. We know people, we get out, we do things. It’s more about my attempts to be regularly involved in formal ongoing community commitments and how I think God is slowly turning my head around the other direction and saying no, not that, not now. We have so many things to work on, habits and structures and attitudes that our family needs to practice and develop. This is the core of it, articulating all this has helped and I’m confident about the rest of it, but I’m carrying so much fear and anxiety around this part. I think I’m right but my heart needs to be reassured and that can only happen through prayer and living it out. I have to see the positive good we’re building, of what I’m being called to, instead of just mourning what I wish we had right now and don’t. Bingo. There we go.

Being a mom is hard but it’s not hard in any of the ways I thought it would be. Truly having many small children at once was the easiest part. No wonder veteran moms speak fondly of “the trenches.” The turns have indeed tabled.

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/765221485179731968/writing-about-my-favorite-characters-as?source=share

I'm really sorry to hear you're going through this, anon. I'm even sadder that it's not an uncommon story.

As another trans writer (trans woman, in my case) that's stumbled into other people eviscerating her works for "fetishizing" and being "het in f/f's clothing" I really sympathize with you, dude. The way I look at it is that you cannot try alter who you are for these people. They will always find a way to dislike you because you are their ideological enemy. They dislike seeing trans men in what they see as their ship tags, not yours, so they will always find something they view as a flaw and flog you for it until you either conform or leave.

I've had a similar experience to yours, though not a literal thread dedicated to me. Ouch. I write f/f and sometimes that features non-op/pre-op trans characters because I am personally non-op after many years on E, and I'm always astounded by how it obviously upsets people that otherwise claim to be progressive. I also tag things extensively and I even include some terminology clarifications at the beginning of smut fics so that everyone knows what they're getting into. It doesn't matter to them. It'll never matter to them what you or I do, so why bother trying to coddle them?

There are readers that like my works, but after walking into a fandom Discord's NSFW fic channel, I saw how many people assume that my fics are written by a cis person or the fabled Dirty Fetishizer. It's one thing to intellectually know this happens and another to see your own work - something that you as a trans person created to talk about some part of yourself - ripped apart as this nasty tripe that no "real" trans person would write or read.

To make matters worse, I saw all that after I went through a rather nasty spate of transphobic anons when the fandom was very young. It was so tiring. I was exhausted. Seeing virulent hate in the real world and then having it thrown in my face for writing characters in a way that people disagreed with was just too much for me.

My way of dealing with this was disengaging from my own fandom, turning off anons on tumblr, and blocking anyone I even felt slightly annoyed by just in case it boiled over into something else. It sucks, but it's how I continue to have fun with writing for my ships. I basically never go into my ship tags on Tumblr now, I curate whose fics I read carefully, and I only hang out in one Discord server that's very small. I still read and comment on others' works when I have the mental bandwidth for it, but I avoid most other writers, especially those I don't know just in case they're part of that -phobe segment, and keep the most vocally unpleasant authors permanently muted for my own sake.

Frankly, it is what it is, as thought terminating as that phrase can be, and I gave up trying with these people/this fandom. You could keep trying to interact with the greater fandom, but you should block the assholes that disregarded your lived experience for your own mental health.

It's an isolating process for sure, but that's why I supplemented it with seeking out other fandom friends, most of whom are trans. Maybe we disagree with headcanons, and in a lot of cases we're polar opposites, but we all stick together because otherwise we're all thrown into isolation. That, and I always try to focus on the folks that do like what I write.

--

[tealin]

McMurdo Internet

Internet service is supplied to Antarctica via a geostationary satellite. This far south, the satellite is only a few degrees above the horizon, and unfortunately for McMurdo, it's behind Mt Erebus. So the signal is beamed to a receiver on Black Island, about 20 miles away to the southwest, and bounced over to the sheltered alcove at the end of the Hut Point Peninsula where McMurdo sits.

The Chalet, administrative hub, with Black Island in the distance

The Black Island telecommunications infrastructure was installed in the 1980s, long before the internet we know and love today. It was upgraded in 2010 to allow more data transfer, mainly realtime weather data to feed into global forecast models. For this reason, it's probably the only place I've ever been where upload speed is remarkably faster than download speed – 60Mbps for outbound traffic, but only 20Mbps for inbound. Most regular internet use is receiving, not sending, so that's an entire base running on a connection that's only marginally faster than the average American smartphone. As you can imagine, this is somewhat limiting.

The limits to one's internet access actually begin before one even reaches the Ice. At the orientation in Christchurch, one is directed to a URL from which one must download and install a security programme from the U.S. government. It may feel like a hippie commune full of nerds, but McMurdo is an installation of the American state, and as such its computer network is a target of whatever disgruntled conspiracy theorist decides to hack The Man on any given day. Computers that are allowed onto this network (such as the one on which I am typing right now) have to have an approved firewall and antivirus service installed, then this extra programme on top of them. I am not sure what it does. For all I know the CIA is spying on me even now. (Hi, guys!) But you need to install it to get on the McMurdo Internet, such as it is, so I did.

To be honest, I was rather looking forward to a month cut off entirely from the hyperconnected world, so I was a tiny bit disappointed that quite a lot of day-to-day communication is done by email, and I would need to be on my computer a fair bit to get it. Had I known just how important email would be, I'd have installed an email client that actually downloads one's messages instead of just fetching them; as it was, the cycle of loading an email and sending the reply, even in Gmail's "HTML for slow connections" mode, took about five minutes, not counting the time it took to write. Tending one's email was a serious time commitment; sometimes I felt like I was spending more time on the computer in Antarctica than I did at home.

Crary scientists waiting, and waiting, and waiting

In a way, though, I was lucky, because I was technically a scientist and therefore had access to the one building on base with WiFi, the Crary Lab. And don't think you can just waltz into Crary with your laptop and poach the WiFi – in order to access it at all, you have to get set up by Crary IT with your own personal WiFi login. If you do not have Crary access, your portal to the Internet is one of a handful of ethernet cables in each of the dorm common rooms, or some public terminals in the main building. You can hop on, download your emails, maybe check the news or Google something you needed to look up, and then leave it for someone else. When most online time sinks are either blocked or too heavy to load, it’s amazing how little internet time you actually turn out to need.

Things that we have come to take for granted in The World are not a part of McMurdo life. Social media is pretty much out – the main platforms are bandwidth hogs even before you try to load a video or an animated GIF. There is no sharing of YouTube links, and no Netflix and chill. Someone was once sent home mid-season for trying to download a movie. Video calls with family and friends? Forget it. People do occasionally do video calls from Antarctica, often to media outlets or schools, but these have to be booked in advance so as to have the requisite bandwidth reserved. Jumping on FaceTime does not happen – not least because handheld devices have to be in airplane mode at all times for security reasons. Your phone might be secure enough for your internet banking, but not for US government internet!

It is, unavoidably, still a digital environment, it just gets by largely without internet access. Nearly everyone has an external hard drive, mostly for media that they've brought down to fill their off hours. If you want to share files you just swap hard drives, or hand over a memory stick. When the Antarctic Heritage Trust wanted some book material from me, I dropped it onto an SD card and ran it over to Scott Base on foot – a droll juxtaposition of high- and low-tech, not to mention a good excuse for a hike over The Gap on a beautiful day. It took half an hour, but was still faster than emailing it.

There is also a McMurdo Intranet, which includes a server for file sharing. Emailing someone your photos will take ages, but popping them into a folder on the I: drive and sending them a note to say you've done so (or, better yet, phoning them, or poking your head into their office) is much more efficient. To conserve space, this informal server partition is wiped every week, so you have to be quick about it, but it's an effective workaround, and also a good way to get relatively heavy resources to a large number of people in one go.

The telecommunications centre on Black Island is mostly automated, but like anything – perhaps more than some things, given the conditions – it needs to be maintained. There is a small hut out there for an equally small team of electricians and IT engineers; Black Island duty attracts the sort of person who might have been a lighthouse keeper back in the day.

Towards the end of my time on the Ice there was a spell where they needed to shut off the connection overnight, to do some necessary work. Given that most people's workdays extended at least to the shutoff time at 5:30 p.m., this meant essentially no internet for a large portion of the population, and some amusing flyers were posted up to notify everyone of the impending hardship.

Someday, faster, more accessible internet will come to Antarctica.  It's more or less unavoidable, as communications technology improves, and everyone's work – especially the scientists' – depends more and more on having a broadband connection at all times.  It will make a lot of things more convenient, and will make the long separation from friends and family much easier.  But I'm pretty sure that many more people will mourn the upgrade than celebrate it.  One can, theoretically, curtail one's internet use whenever one likes, but even before the pandemic it was almost impossible to live this way with the demands of modern life: I know from personal experience that opting out of Facebook alone can have a real detrimental effect on relationships, even with people one sees in the flesh fairly regularly, simply because everyone assumes that is how everyone else communicates.  Being in a community where no one has access to assumed channels, and is more or less cut off from the rest of the world in a pocket universe of its own, levels the playing field and brings a certain unity.  The planned (and, unarguably, necessary) updating of the physical infrastructure of McMurdo will wipe out a lot of the improvised, make-do-and-mend character of the place; how much would free and easy access to the online world change it in a less tangible way?

I'm sure the genuine Antarctic old-timers would shake their heads at the phone and email connections we have now, and say that no, this has already ruined Antarctica.  It's not Antarctica unless your only link to the outside world is a dodgy radio.  It's not Antarctica unless you only get mail once a year when the relief ship arrives.  Doubtless the shiny new McMurdo will be seen as 'the good old days' by someone, someday, too.  Change may happen slower there than elsewhere, but just like the rust on the tins at Cape Evans, it comes eventually, regardless. 

For my own part, I'm glad I got to see 'old' McMurdo, such as it was, all plywood and cheap '90s prefab.  The update will be much more efficient, and tidy, but yet another generation removed from the raw experience of the old explorers.  My generation is probably the last to remember clearly what life was like before ubiquitous broadband; to some extent, Antarctica is a sort of time capsule of that world, just as the huts are a time capsule of Edwardian frontier life.  I hope they'll find a way to hang on to the positive aspects of that. 

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to waste an hour mindlessly refreshing Twitter ...

If you'd like to learn more about the Black Island facility, there's a lot of good information (and some photos!) here: https://www.southpolestation.com/trivia/90s/blackisland.html

And this Antarctic Sunarticle goes into greater depth on the 2010 upgrade: https://antarcticsun.usap.gov/features/2114/

[wobbbiy]

Could we be granted a piece of Marlow lore? If you're willing ofc :)

Thank you so much for asking about her! <3 I love the opportunity to explore her a bit. I don't know how much current bandwidth I have for editing the actual fic content I have for her to make it posting "ready". But, I will share some key things about her and if I do get inspiration (and people like her), I will see about posting bigger chunks of my tragic little spy's story.

[MAR-794] Marlow, of the Hidden.

Hidden Agent Profile ID: MAR-794 Name: "Marlow" Class: Hunter Subclass: Void (at some point this does switch to Stasis.) Race: Human Handler: AUN-326 Specialty: Eliksni reconnaissance, Early Retirement*

"Find thy self. Know thy self. Destroy thy self. Shed thy self. Embrace a new skin. Become the many. We are as unseen. We are as death."

Key Marlow things:

If it isn't clear, she is one of Ikora's Hidden Agents.

She is directly supervised by her mentor, Aunor, and as such takes on a lot of Aunor's traits (grumpy, ruthless) and beliefs (initially, anyway).

Her pre-Risen self was a gunslinging outlaw from the old western United States, before her ghost found her gravesite (yes this is possible, individuals from older cultures have been risen into Guardians). She isn't aware of her past self, but her current self prefers hand cannons (*cough* Last Word *cough*) and lever action scout rifles almost exclusively which is probably directly linked to her old self being comfortable with those kinds of weapons.

Her Ghost is named Ivy, and they are incredibly close.

Most of her story happens in the timeframe of the formation of House Salvation/Riis-Reborn and afterwards. She is an Eliksni reconnaissance expert. She was on the front lines in identifying and gathering intel about the start of Riis-Reborn.

Knew Variks was on Europa before he announced himself there, but was monitoring him.

She is fluent in understanding of written/spoken Eliksni language, and has a lot of reverence towards their culture. Because of this, her duties VERY often conflict with her own personal beliefs. (But remember, the Hidden vow essentially prohibits her from holding these kinds of personal values, so she doesn't make this known publicly but it is an internal struggle for her).

She is a VERY good spy. She is thorough and careful. She uses Void invisibility often as well to help aid in hiding her presence during reconnaissance ops.

Because she is supervised by Aunor (who is often tasked to dispatch "bad" Guardians), Marlow has a similar role in addition to the Eliksni spying.

[ DISCLAIMER: This is where MY head canons deviate from actual LORE, so stick with me a bit and understand that I KNOW it isn't canon. :) ]

Deviation begins HERE: In lore, Aunor does not kill Ghosts, but rather kills the Guardian and brings back the dead body and the Ghosts in captivity. My head canon is that there was a small span of time where the Hidden were actually directed to provide final deaths to Guardians (primarily when Darkness was initially being explored by Guardians in the form of Stasis and the VANGUARD panicked and Guardians were being corrupted). We know lore book authors are potentially biased at times especially in favor of the Vanguard looking good. So, this practice was kept under wraps. Aunor and Marlow sometimes had to dispatch Ghosts. It is a super shitty job that the Vanguard wants to keep extremely hidden as it does not look good for them. We already see how Aunor struggles to kill Guardians in the first place; but imagine how terrible of a job it would be to actually have to dispatch Ghosts...Yeah that's what I put Marlow through (sorry girly), I'm evil. Or rather, I just rlly hate the Vanguard.

*For Marlow, she isn't outright killing Guardians like Aunor does. What she is tasked with, however is to send "VERY strong messages" to those Guardians who the Vanguard/Ikora deem to be not deserving of light anymore but maybe don't qualify for a full-on assassination. Which means Marlow is tasked to kill Ghosts, rendering the Guardian lightless. This is what they refer to as "Early Retirements". (It's actually a sick practice, as many Guardians wish for final death after being rendered lightless and losing their Ghosts).

These assignments make Marlow take a very critical look into corruption of the Vanguard and the dehumanizing treatment that Hidden Agents have to subject themselves to once they take the vow (basically strips away your own identity/individuality and replaces it with group mentality). She is conflicted the entire time she is asked to dispatch Ghosts and also with how the Vanguard is handling the House Salvation conflict developing in Europa. It makes her physically ill to kill a Ghost.

She does have a tried-and-true method for getting a Ghost to emerge, while keeping the Guardian subdued but not killing them while she snags the Ghost. :[

A few other things she did in the short span of time around the time Eramis became a popsicle and House Salvation deserters evacuating, but before Kridis is hunted by us:

She ends up rebelling and disobeying (there's quite a bit that goes into this, but it's way too detailed). By doing so, she is quickly made a target herself. She killed the Hidden Agent that was sent after her, one of her own comrades.

She's on Europa at the time and is essentially pushed into Eliksni territory to escape the Hidden. She meets Namrask who helps hide her from Phylaks who's searching for a Guardian that was reported to be in the area (the fight between Marlow and the other Hidden Agent drew House Salvation attention).

She repays Namrask by raiding some ether stores the Vanguard had claimed. Embracing her new outlaw status.

Between the time Eramis is a popsicle, and in the time House Salvation deserters are evacuating she is pushed into an interaction with Kridis where Marlow does the Ireliis bow and isn't killed but ends up essentially a captive of Kridis. She confiscated Marlow's Ghost but protects Marlow from the Hidden within Riis-Reborn. Now in some coerced alliance, Marlow worked for Kridis for a bit until the Young Wolf kills Kridis (Marlow's recaptured and in Ikora's custody).

I thought it would be interesting to have a Guardian be "used" as an asset for House Salvation, so exploring that through Marlow. But, poor Marlow...I really put her through a lot and she's really a good person. I tend to like really complex, tragic characters that are forced to do things that go against their own personal morals. I think it creates a pretty interesting internal dynamic as well as leads to some interesting choices from them.

[inkovert]

Writeblr (Re)-Introduction

« A B O U T »

Hello there! Call me Ink (she/her pronouns). I'm a black female writer in my late 20s. I've been on writeblr since 2018 (according to my ~ archive ~) and I've probably made a couple intros since then, but nothing quite as organized/formal as this so - here we are!

I primarily write contemporary/literary fiction (which I know isn't super prevalent on writeblr so happy to bond with any fellow litfic writers). I enjoy writing deeply introspective, character-driven stories (I think because, I'm learning, I'm a deeply inspective person lol) so if that's your cup of tea then check out my WIP(s) below :)

Links/places to find me (if you are on any of these sites, pls connect with me! I'm actively looking for other writers to follow)

Wattpad

Instagram/Twitter: @rianeblackwell (my writer pen name!)

Random things about me/how I run my blog

I'm a dual-degree bio graduate student so I spend my days pipetting shit in a lab

outside of writing, I enjoy reading (when I have the patience and bandwidth for it), watching anime (fav: fruits basket; currently watching: one piece), (guided) painting, and...sleeping?

I am ask game and tag game friendly! Though it may take me time to respond to tag games.

You will typically find me posting my random thoughts about things (tagged: inkoverted thoughts) - as I said I am introspective af so this constitutes like 90% of what I post. my writing you say? yeah we're still working on growing the gonads to post about that consistently or at all :^)

Because I have so many thoughts, I just started a writeblr discourse series called Spilled Ink (tagged: spilled ink) so that I'm not just shouting into the void and can (hopefully) have people talk back to me and share their opinions

I am always down to talk! seriously. a message in my ask box will never fail to brighten my day so come talk to me about anything and everything.

« W I P S »

Again, unlike most on writeblr (I feel like such an oddball here sometimes), I do not have a trillion WIPs to list and advertise. I'm very much the person that prefers to focus on one WIP at a time. That said, I do have one main WIP and a side-WIP that I started out of spite (and haven't touched since):

My Dearest Enemy (YA literary fiction) | WIP intro | WIP tag | read on wattpad

a coming-of-age story about a 17-year-old aspiring artist whose artwork is deteriorating as she struggles to come to terms with the death of her father a year prior. as the story unfolds she meets a series of new people who force her to contend with the bleak reality she's settled for. the emotional journey that results opens up her world, and ultimately unearths a shocking truth.

Untitled Romance WIP (Contemporary fiction) | no tag or intro just yet

a story about a black female physician assistant living a life of self-sabotage as she jumps from one unfulfilling "relationship" to another. she's been convinced, by society and past experiences, that someone as "dark" as her needs to settle for any form of affection she can get. fairly tale love stories with happy endings don't happen to people like her. But when her crush from high school who unknowingly started her streak of self-sabotage suddenly reappears in her life, she has to decide whether it's worth giving him another chance.

[multiplicity-positivity]

ok so we're the sys from this ( https://www.tumblr.com/multiplicity-positivity/750380505657147392/h3y-so-l1k3-do-you-guys-t4k3-up-r3qu3sts-for?source=share )

do you think we could get some advice on how to boost connection to the headspace and/or communication? we're a proxy sys but we're very like. strung-out, i guess. no worries if not, of course

Hey, so we’ll do our best to answer both of these questions and talk about boosting connection to your system’s headspace, and boosting communication between system members.

When it comes to connecting with your headspace, we’d like to share a couple links that might help -

Our general post on headspaces, what they are, and how to build/maintain one (with some links to further reading):

And this post by @/humanheartharmonia with some advice from their own experience regarding headspaces:

We think this post ^ has some really handy and useful tips to help headmates connect with their headspace and visualize themselves within their headspace a bit better.

And as for boosting communication between system members… our best advice boils down to time, patience, practice, and self care.

Time: Most systems aren’t going to have amazing communication after just a few weeks of getting to know each other. We believe that for almost any system communication can improve, but it’s going to take time to get there. It could take anywhere from a few months to a few decades to get to a point where you can communicate with your headmates in the ways that you want to. So patience is key here.

Patience: Know that you might not be able to communicate perfectly with your headmates at first, and that’s okay. Don’t punish yourself or your system or talk down on anyone if y’all are getting frustrated, if it’s been a while since you’ve heard from each other, or if you’re feeling exhausted from spending too much time focusing on communication. Take breaks. Take deep breaths. Take things one day at a time. You’ll get there one day - don’t give up!

Practice: Try talking and listening to your headmates whenever you have the energy and cognitive bandwidth for it. Think about them, ask them how they’re doing, and just try to chat with them whenever you can. If things are hazy, foggy, or unclear, that’s okay. If you’re able to, we encourage you to just keep trying even when it’s difficult. Not every interaction between headmates will be distinct and crystal clear. Sometimes things get muddled or different headmates seem distant, and that’s okay. But the more your practice today, the easier it will be tomorrow. Practicing communication every day can help y’all build a solid foundation so that, say, one or two years from now, y’all may find that you’re in a much better place and communication comes much more naturally.

Self care: In our own system, communication becomes much more difficult when we are struggling to meet our own physical, mental, and emotional needs. So doing our best to look after our mind and body can really make a huge difference in the quality of our communication. We’ll go ahead and link our self care post here, in case y’all may find yourselves in a similar situation.

This is probably as much as I’m going to be able to say here for now. We could go on and on about internal communication, how to build on it, potential speed bumps or risks, and how it may look differently for different systems. Please don’t be too discouraged if y’all are still struggling with communication after a few weeks of daily practice - remember that communication is a skill just like any other, and it will take time to master.

So sorry if this response is rambly or muddled - we’re not feeling well today. But I do hope this helps you. Good luck with building communication and gaining a better understanding of your headspace in the future.

[murielcook]

stealing this list of early web & 90s inspired sites & adding a few of my own here:

🖥️ http://ita.toys

🖥️ http://syntaxmag.online

🖥️ http://dirt.fyi

🖥️ http://biter.ph

https://mutterbutter.neocities.org/main/

https://y2kstardust.neocities.org/home

https://sweetcharm.net

https://virtual-milk-2000.neocities.org

The original links (💻) feel, imo, less inspired by actual web 1-2 and more inspired by the print pubs of the same era. BUT it is impressive and deserves to be explored and shouted out.

a beautiful website in the late 90s would have likely been forced to about 600-700px wide reading area to ensure compatibility not w mobile, w small desk/laptop screens, bc we didn't have responsive sizing yet. layouts were often achieved with painstaking image slicing positioned with tables. exotic fonts were more rarely used bc css didn't support font sharing and it ate bandwidth. midi soundtracks fell in and out of favor & were scene dependent.

css animation wasn't a thing, and javascript was if you know you know. So gifs and sometimes flash were more common (flash being more 2.0 imo). Raw, boxy, grey element styling often poked through on forms and buttons etc. tho it was popular to color/style scrollbars for a bit

The 4 I picked hew closer to memory. They are all very high effort and maximalist examples tho. A new wave of the older form.

It's good I love this!!

[imustbenuts]

How do you handle how low key racist toward Japan a lot of fandom is in favor of shoving only American cultural viewpoints into things? I'm so tired...

hm.... a loaded question. short answer for how i handle this:

I don't.

i just. don't. i don't even try to process what i know for sure is a bad take at all, and i make it a point to curate my online spaces as much as possible.

(or at least, i do on very very rare occasions if i feel arsed enough to hop on my keyboard to smashing out a more educated post about it based on my own understanding. more on this in a bit.)

if i go into a fandom tag and i see rampant nonsense, such as during the 1st two months of fire emblem engage's release or some incredible pumpkin spice latte takes, and i feel like it's just too much bc im getting angry, i just disengage. i might read if i feel like it, but if its too hostile i don't add to the conversation. i leave. i don't pass go bc i have waaaay better things to do than potentially engage in a conversation im already not happy to have.

in some occasions i even block. if i feel like someone is being a dipshit in the posts i make with their tags even, i block.

and i suspect im not the only one. how often do you see asians who reside outside of the west actively partake in fandom discussions? its such a drain of energy when it goes bad. most asians are working faaaaar longer hours than the average westerner in the average office setting. i mean, fuck, man. if i want to have fun, im not coming to a place i know i wont be having much. (ofc we are all having it bad. the point is: limited energy is a big factor for why going against the general set consensus is a bad idea)

i've been dealing with this for the past 10 years. minimum. it has always been like this. it has ever always been like this everywhere.

soooome fandoms are chiller than others for sure. but i dont actively participate in fandoms bc: im tired and my attention hops all over the place.

im ALSO gonna drag proship antis DNI into this ramble bc i believe strongly this culture is an evolution of the old 'your fave is problematic' culture mixed with puritanism culture and i hate it. i hate it bc it gets applied to everywhere, even in a japanese/asian culture space where people in fandoms are generally more "you stay in your lane i stay in mine, we're all freaks, just dont break any laws or be terrible". understand that east asian society in general is collective compared to western's more individualistic one, which reinforces that lane thinking. so all these high moral showing-off is just a big pissing contest to me.

in fact its such a pissing contest i actively refuse to follow people who have DNIs in their profiles. id have more respect for those who can say 'i dont like xyz, its not my cup of tea'. its a normal response, i think.

and im done ranting about my personal feelings :v. some practical advice from my dumb of ass:

a person knows what they know

a person doesnt know what they dont know (ignorance)

a person cannot be taught what they dont want to know (willful ignorance)

a willfully ignorant person is not anyone's job to directly fix. only they can check themselves.

hostility begets more hostility. anger is an addictive emotion. block and move on if someone is consistently being annoying/a pos online, its not worth the mental bandwidth

a person wants to know what they know they don't know (curiosity)

if theres something educational worth sharing that can be communicated in a digestible way, it is sometimes worth it. people like reading, but more importantly, communicating. be that with the OP or their own group.

and also, im not immune to any of the behaviors i dont like above myself. there are also limits in what i know. :v hypocritical of me lmao

[searchingforserendipity25]

Hi! Just saw your poll on rusingon week. I have some thoughts that I hope will come across in a friendly way. :) 

Honestly there’s so much russingon content in this fandom that it’s sometimes overwhelming and it also makes it hard to shed light on a lot of other characters and topics. I’m wondering if russingon week is just going to exacerbate this issue. Like things have gotten a lot better over the last couple of years and there’s a lot more diversity, so it’s definitely better, but russingon is still inescapable. 

In my understanding, fandom weeks generally get created to encourage folks to do creations on characters, topics, or formats that don’t get as much love. So I’m wondering if you guys would be open to doing something modified? If you have the bandwidth to run an event, maybe consider doing something that will provide more diversity?

Don’t know, I really don’t mean to kill the mood you have going with this, and I recognize it takes a lot of effort to do these things. Just wanted to share these thoughts.

You don’t have to answer this publicly if you don’t feel comfortable, just wanted to share so you guys maybe consider it when planning. 

Thanks, love your blog

Hey there!

Thank you, and thank you for reaching out. I think we might have diverging opinions about what the "purpose" of fandom weeks is, as much as there is a purpose.

Some of the biggest fandom weeks (think Feanorian week, Angbang week, Silvergifting Week, Maglor & Maedhros week) feature characters that are broadly popular or written about often. In our estimation, the "purpose" of a fandom week is to have fun creating for something we're all passionate about.

And no matter how popular the ship is, it doesn't currently have a fandom week.

The reason we're not running a different event week (currently!) is because we enjoy this ship and wish to see more of it and to engage with other people who like it. If you don't, that's fine. Not every fandom week will suit your tastes, and we understand this may be frustrating.

If you feel like fandom is somehow getting worse for more content of a popular ship, you can feel free to blacklist the tag. We will do our best to tag event posts in an easily blocked fashion, and it is perfectly fine if you'd like to block the future event blog. Fandom is a curated experience, and we will do our best to keep it an enjoyable one, even for those who aren't fans of the theme.

Thanks,

Lena, Ghosti, and Seren

[deramin2]

I've started actively blocking people who are like, "Either you care about every problem in the world so much that it destroys your ability to cope with or you're a fake ally and complicit!"

It breeds scrupulosity OCD, as in explicitly seeks to induce a debilitating mental illness in people to perform purity on social media. It's also totally ineffective from an activism stand point. It spreads you so thin that all you can do is share social media posts you haven't fact checked. No one actually has time and bandwidth to care about everything. Our brains were never built to hold so many relentless horrors. We burn out and can't handle any of it at all because we do actually have limited energy.

If you want to be effective instead of performative, you have to pick one or two things to really care about and put your energy into really understanding what's going on and what steps we can take to make that better. Sometimes those are incremental inadequate steps because that's what you can persuade people to spend resources on right then. But those changes can matter a lot to people on the ground even though it doesn't fix everything. And then you fight for the next step. And slowly you change things. Sometimes you win big. (And then spend a lot of energy convincing people that isn't a discrete happy ending and you have to keep fighting for more.)

I highly encourage people to pick issues that aren't getting a lot of attention and need hands the most. You can also think about how a fight you're not focusing on is intersectional with what you are doing and how to support other groups through your work. Like if you're working on supporting your local queer community but are concerned about the Sudanese genocide, you might see how your resources or networking or grant writing skills can support Sudanese immigrants coming into town. Or work to support organizations like Doctors Without Borders that has over mission but supports many places through it.

Which is not to say you ignore everything else in the world and go into a bubble. But you have to forgive yourself for being human and having human capacity. You CAN'T know everything. You CAN'T absorb every horror of the world. You have limited time to actually work on things. Being a witness can be useful, but if all you have time for is watching the horrors helplessly then you aren't actually helping. Absorbing less but doing more is way more effective.

There's certainly something to be said about who actually gets attention and help and how that plays into biases and people only helping themselves or their in group. But destroying your ability to cope with the world to the point of constant guilt spiralling is not an effective solution to that problem. If you want absolution, care more about less.

So I'm done with internet armchair activists who think guilt tripping will change the world. They're not just useless, they're actively harmful. Don't follow people just because you think you deserve to be yelled at constantly to absolver your sins and keep you on the straight and narrow. Figure out how you can make a real impact in people's lives.

[shewholovestoread]

My Journey To You - Thoughts and Impressions Part 1 of 2

I realise that I've been missing these past few months, i've been on a consumption binge but with little to no bandwidth to write about any show/film irrespective of how much I may have loved them. (depression is an ass) But I can, once again, feel thoughts tingling in my brain and I've decided to get back to writing, something that I deeply enjoy. Anyway, enough about me, let's get started.

To keep the post from getting obscenely long, I'm going to split it into two. This post will be about the technical aspects of the show. Part 2 will focus on the characters.

My Journey To You is a 2023 fantasy, Wuxia show (shows/films that are based in ancient China with martial arts warriors being capable of superhuman feats, like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). It was highly anticipated owing to the amazing trailer (one of the best I've seen)

Plot: The series tells the story of Yun Wei Shan, a spy longing for freedom, who infiltrates the Gong residence to complete a mission. In the eerie and treacherous Gong residence, she encounters love and friendship, embarks on a journey of self-discovery, and finds the determination to move forward. Together with the rebellious nobleman Gong Zi Yu, they grow and mature through their shared experiences. (via mydramalist)

It stars: Yu Shu Xin (Yun Wei Shan), Zhang Ling He(Gong Zi Yu), Ryan Cheng (Gong Shang Jue) and Lu Yu Xiao (Shangguan Qian), Tian Jia Rui (Gong Yuan Zhi), Jolin Jin (Gong Zi Shang) and Sun Chen Jun (Jin Fan)

Written by: Edward Guo.

Series directed by: Edward Guo & Luo Luo

I'll talk about everything I liked before I get into the stuff that I didn't.

Right off the bat, this show has some of the most gorgeous characters you'll come across and this applies to both the men and the women. The costume and make-up departments do an amazing job making already attractive people look ridiculously attractive. They also help the actors really inhabit the world seamlessly. The costumes are especially incredibly detailed and intricate, you can see the care that went into crafting the look for each of these characters. Shout-out to Huang Wei (costume designer) and Shi Hui (Make-up)

One of the best aspects of the show is the cinematography by Wei Hong. This show is aesthetically beautiful, so many absolutely stunning shots. Chinese shows (and Korean shows) love slow-motion shots, and while at times, it can be a bit much, this show makes great use of them, especially during the fight scenes.

The cinematography is helped to a great extent by the excellent production design, courtesy Jiyao Zhang. Like the costumes, the production design too is detailed and intricate. The world feels fully realised and yet also lived in. Each of the different clan mansions, the Front Hill and Back Hill are so incredibly different and distinct that you can immediately tell where you are. An insane amount of hard work went into the show and it shows in every frame.

You can tell that they had a good budget to work with and every bit of it was spent on making the show look as stylized as possible, there is not an ounce of realism to be found here, cue slow-motion beautiful hair flying shots. (Every day I bemoan my inability to make gifs) But the screencaps below illustrate the beauty of the show, it's so gorgeous that you could literally use screencaps as wallpapers.

The fight scenes in the show are some of the best I've seen. They are intense and thrilling and always coherent, you can always tell who's fighting who. The fight scenes are also so aesthetically pleasing, like an exceptionally deadly dance.

Now, we come to the not-so-great stuff.

First off, the marketing. The show was marketed and advertised as an action fantasy show and while there is action and it is excellent, it's not an "action" show. The main focus of the show is on the characters and the internal power struggle of the Gong family. There are also whole scenes, sometimes making up the bulk of an entire episode which are just conversations. I've seen a lot of viewers disappointed and it makes sense. they thought they were coming for action and instead they got verbose conversations.

The pacing also comes to a near-halt in some of these scenes and instead we're treated to lengthy expositions which isn't necessarily a bad thing but it becomes tedious when it happens repetitively.

Now, let's come to the worst thing about the show, it's ending, specifically the last 5 minutes. This end is ridiculously mindbogglingly bad when you consider that there is almost no confirmation on a 2nd season. It's just such a bad idea to end on a cliffhanger like this. If they wanted to leave things open for a potential 2nd season, they could have ended with the Wufeng elders coming together at that character's home, possibly to hold them ransom or something, like literally anything else.

if you're planning on watching this show and I do recommend it, keep in mind that it does get slow and don't watch the last 5 mins of the show. Trust me, you'll like the show a whole lot more if you follow that approach.

Part 2 HERE

[datamodel-of-disaster]

Sometimes I become really desperate when I consider all the ways people keep wilfully cutting themselves off from one another.

Paraphrasing some things I saw in my Twitter feed today;

“Phone calls are rude because it’s you demanding someone’s attention at your own convenience! You better be dying if you call me!”

“If somebody ghosts you, just accept it, don’t ask why! You’re not entitled to knowing others’ thoughts and feelings!”

“What kind of person talks to people on public transport, holy shit these earbuds are there for a reason”

“I hate in-office work and talking to coworkers, urgh. Wish I could just make money never leaving my house.”

“I just want to exist completely unacknowledged by anyone ok”

Coworkers and strangers are not the same as friends. But there is incredible societal value in these superficial exchanges, tangible reminders of the shared humanity of people we don’t actively care about. And the pitiless eagerness by which we cut the presence of others out of our life these days is… concerning.

Idk, maybe I’m just old, but I cannot help but see a connection between how desperately lonely we all are, and the way we have fostered an active hatred of even interacting with strangers, while also becoming ashamed and hesitant to lean on or bother those we consider our friends… and perhaps not for no reason, because left and right you also get the advice to distance yourself as much as you can from people who “ask too much”.

We keep cutting and cutting in order to remove stressors, remove things that take up our bandwidth, avoid things that feel like a burden -and it does nothing but make what bandwidth we have smaller and smaller and smaller. And meanwhile we keep trying to make ourselves smaller and more self-sufficient, ask less, take up less space… all to not in turn get cut out from the lives of the people we care about.

It doesn’t work.