#astros absolute nonsense'

[theyaoiparable]

Uh. * Looks around *

I may have sent ur post 👉👈

HSAILFKHASJZFKLASHZFN HONESTLY THANK YOU i was hoping at least somebody from there would see it now they all have. my silly joke...

[saturnianoracle]

I AM SO SICK OF POP CULTURE BS MODERN ASTROLOGY , LORD FREE ME FROM THE SHACKLES OF HAVING TO READ THESE SELF ASSURED MODERN TAKES.

If I have to see one more comment or post relying on the ABC house system or modern rulerships I'm gonna crash out fr. What a tragically bastardised ancient art astrology has become.

If you really want to understand and appreciate astrology, you must understand it's context and the richer symbolic meanings behind its foundations (e.g. thema mundi, trad rulership and by extension reevaluating your understanding of the planets and signs, dignities, whole signs, Egyptian terms, chaldean decans, lots etc). This is especially vital for predictive work e.g electional and horary astrology.

Not everything modern is bad, i use many modern things myself. But better discernment is needed in order to separate misinformation and deep misunderstanding from something that is genuinely pertinent, and learning traditional (e.g. hellenistic astrology) can help with this. You have to let go of overly subjective interpretations from 'working backwards on a chart analysis and seeking confirmation bias , and you have to let go of default modern premises which you probably never questioned. Trust me, I learnt the hard way. There are a few things which I didn't agree with in hellenistic astro when I first started just because I couldn't relate it to myself or others...rookie error fr💀🤡🤡

Nothing is more freeing than taking the long and initially confusing plunge into the "scary complex" og astrology that is traditional astrology. Especially when you're trying to unlearn so much bs which you dont even think is bs at first. But it is so worth it. Once you properly understand the foundations of it , it becomes so much clearer to see the implications of these nonsense modern takes.

I've been super busy lately and suffering from my lack of executive function so I haven't written as many posts as I'd have liked to yet. But more will come eventually🤞. In the meantime, some extremely helpful resources to get started:

- Chris Brennan / The Astrology Podcast (his books are also good apparently)

- On The Heavenly Spheres: A Treaty on Traditional Astrology by Helena Avelar & Luis Ribeiro (pdf of this is easy to find online. Very solid primer into trad astro)

- Astrology and the Authentic Self , and Ancient Astrology in Theory and Practice , both by Demetra George

- Sevenstarsastrology.com - an absolutely fantastic blog writer who deep dives into plenty of traditional topics. E.g. 12th parts , antiscia , arabic lots, and some more basic things too. Long articles/lessons but extremely extremely informative. Genuine goldmine.

- Patrick Watson, he alao writes some brilliant articles too. His article on the ABC house system was especially useful in getting me out those trenches.

- @/illuminiah , @/0degreestaurus, @/ellieremotigue, @/saturnandhoney, @/ilanastrology, @/bloodyjupiter_ are all just a few tiktok accounts off the top of my head which have been very helpful in helping me unlearn modern shit.

- www.skyscript.co.uk

- Nightlightastrology on Youtube / Adam Elenbaas

- Lee Lehman is especially good for horary and electional according to my horary-specialised friends

- Robert Hand

- u_StellaGraphia on reddit posts some amazing explanations (in comment sections usually) , really helpful stuff

- my other posts so far

- stop reading costar, cafe astrology, astroseek, etc interpretations :)

[hearts4youz]

The Captains Daughter- Chapter 20

A/N: Chat, I am back. I really hope you enjoy this, It's severely overdue, but thank you all for staying with me on this!!!

Taglist:

@abbiesxox @n30n-j3lly @weird-katthing @kayoyamamegame @kroowonderemporium @astro-ghoul99 @darkravenqueen98 @gaylilangelbabyy @yuunnnaaaa @unicorngirly1 @noodlezz-bedo

Word count: 2k

Reader pov:

The following weeks are quite uneventful. We are sent on a few minor missions, all of which are successful, and are in a state of immense boredom. You almost want a war to break out at this point. But one late January day, your father calls everyone to the debriefing room. Anticipating a new mission, possibly one with more excitement, you and the 141 are practically bouncing on the balls of your feet with anticipation. One by one, you file in and sit down at the familiar long wooden table. knees bounce with expectation under the table.

Price walks in, everyone draws a breath.

Oddly, price has no folders in his hand, no loose papers, nothing. He walks in silently, clears his throat, sits at the head of the table and clasps his hands. He pauses before speaking.

"We're going to a wedding," he puts bluntly.

everyone exchanges confused glances.

"Well that was anticlimactic," Soap blurts.

Everyone breaks into chatter about the event before Price raises his hands to quiet the room.

"It's a good friend of mine, we served together. Names Bill,"

ohhhhh uncle Bill, you thought to yourself, happy for him and his soon-to-be wife.

Everyone nods and discusses the dress code, "Wait, wait, wait... am I going to have to wear a suit?" a voice from the corner of the room speaks up.

You turned toward the sound and saw Ghost, obviously peeved about having to dress up.

"Yes Ghost, your going to have to put on a suit," Your dad rolls his eyes.

The chatter continues as everyone files out of the room, the wedding was on for tomorrow evening, and you needed a dress. You contemplated returning home to get something out of your closet, but your overused sundresses just wouldn't cut it. You needed something flattering and mature.

That afternoon, you got permission to drive into the city to shop. The nearest mall was an hours drive from the base. Plugging your phone into the aux, you drowned out the hum of the road with an upbeat playlist for the drive.

You soon found yourself in a gorgeous, modern yet classy store. Elegant dresses lined the wall, from ballroom length to cocktail, there was no shortage of styles. Time, however, was of the essence. As you wandered aimlessly through the endless racks of dresses, an employee noticed your distress and walked over to introduce herself.

"Hey there! my names Georgia, how are you today?"

You give her a relieved smile. "Lost," you admit.

"Oh, happens to everyone, no worries. come with me, i'll get you measured and we'll find your perfect match!" Georgia says cheerfully.

She walks you over to an area near the fitting rooms, a plush ottoman and a soft rug are on the floor in front of a tall mirror. Georgia grabs her measuring tape and notes a few things.

"So, what occasion is this dress for?"

"A wedding, distant family friend."

She hums, "Okay so, like stunning... but like not steal the show stunning."

"Oh well I hardly think I could steal any of the spotlight from-"

Georgia cuts you off, "Nonsense! your absolutely enchanting!"

You give a weak smile at the complement as she goes and finds multiple dresses in various styles and colors. She goes through a quick but in depth fitting and analysis of each. Within the hour, you find one that you fall in love with. You can't help but grin as you look at the way the fabric showcases your body perfectly. You take it to the register and pay, bidding Georgia goodbye with a wave and a thank you.

That night, you do your best at an attempt to sleep. Your efforts remain futile as you toss and turn thinking of tomorrow. Catching up with old friends and family, dancing and drinking, but best of all...

Ghost gets to see you in a dress, The most flattering and gorgeous dress you've ever picked out. Finally, you find yourself drifting off slowly with those exciting thoughts.

-timeskip-

You arrive at the reception with your father, the rest of the group has their own rides. You try to let loose a little by grabbing a drink and catching up with friends and family, but you find yourself eyeing the door constantly, waiting for your masked comrade to walk in.

"Watching for danger eh? can't escape them habits the military drills into ya," The groom comes up behind you and ruffles your hair. You half smile and turn towards him.

"How ya been kid?" he asks.

The two of you chat for a few minutes before he goes off to find your father, you return to watching the door, thankful that he thought it was military instinct.

About an hour goes by and you down a few drinks, you were slightly buzzed but your mind was still clear. You still keep an eye on the door, waiting for Simon. You hardly notice when an old childhood friend of yours snakes an arm around your shoulder.

Startled, you flinch and raise your fist, but then you realize who it is and drop your arm awkwardly.

"Oh... uh... sorry Jake," you mumble.

"Ha! You musta had half a mind to think I was some kinda creep," Jake smirks and pulls you in for a hug. You try to pull away, but he has a vice-like grip around your shoulders.

You and Jake had been neighbors as kids, he was always over keeping you company after your mom left. The two of you had grown up like siblings, that's how you saw it at least...

Around your teenage years, you had started to experiment with boys a bit. Jake HATED all of your boyfriends. At first, it seemed like a protective older brother type thing, but after a while Jake got possessive. He followed you on dates, stalked the social media of all the boys you talked to, he scared people off and you hated it. This marked the beginning of the end of your friendship. Once you graduated and went to basic training, you talked to Jake less and less. Seeing him here was startling to say the least.

"Oh uh... yeah... didn't recognize you I guess," you said awkwardly, avoiding eye contact.

You scanned the venue for a familiar face to start a conversation with so you could get away from Jake. He seemed to notice this and tilted your chin up so you were looking at him.

"You here with anyone," Jake asked.

"Just uh... my dad," you decided to leave the 141 out of it so Jake wouldn't get angry and try anything.

"Mhm, how about I buy you a drink then?" he suggested.

"Uhm no... I've got one already," you gestured with your half empty glass. plus, you wanted to keep a clear mind in case Jake tried anything.

The night went on and you finally broke off from Jake. You floated in-between conversations, still no sign of Ghost, but you had seen Gaz and Soap briefly. In the midst of your search for the Lieutenant, you found yourself on the dance floor. Unfortunately, Jake found you too.

"Ah, Y/N, thought I lost you there,"

You chuckled uncomfortably, trying to keep it polite. The song switched to a slow dance and Jake reached for your hand.

"Seeing you here has brought me back," he whispered in your ear. "You've matured since high school" He places his other hand on your waist and you try to wiggle away.

"Jake stop"

"Oh, I'm sorry, where are my manners. May I have this dance?" He smirked.

"No. No you may not," You didn't know if it was the alcohol or not but you suddenly gained the courage to push him away, leaving all formalities behind.

"Y/N come on... we're made for each other, I know you better than anyone," Jake's voice grew more stern and threatening as he pulled you closer again.

"I...no...n-" your voice squeaked.

Suddenly, Jake's face turned pale, his eyes widened and you felt a hand on your shoulder.

"She's taken," Ghost says bluntly.

You are shocked at the turn of events and spin around to see Ghost, which causes you to fall a little off balance, but ghost places a strong hand on the small of your back to support you.

"I've gotcha, this prick won't bother you anymore," he says softly to you. His voice becomes more menacing when he faces Jake, "are we clear?"

The three words from Ghost are all it takes for Jake to give a quick nod and make his exit. Ghost gives a quick grunt "An old friend?"

"Yeah, something of the sort..." you breathe, watching him go.

Ghost clears his throat, "Sorry i'm late."

"It's no big deal, you came just in time."

"Yeah, just in time to dance with you."

Your heart rate quickens as you process his words. Is he joking? there's no way...

Soon enough, the two of you are whisked into the whirlwind of couples, Ghost dips and spins you with great care, as if you are a fragile porcelain doll. You've danced with men before, but this man makes you feel like a princess.

"You look gorgeous by the way," he says softly.

Okay, no way he's actually saying this, i'm dreaming.

"You look uh... good... er handsome yourself," you say breathlessly.

Come on liquid courage! do something other than make me tipsy!

You continue to move fluidly all over the floor, "You've got some experience I see," you joke.

"Mmh... maybe I just did my research beforehand," he smirked.

The song ends and the two of you take a seat. You take him in, his suit, which shows off his biceps and seems perfectly tailored to him. His balaclava, which he exchanged for a plain black one instead of skull print.

"You clean up nicely, trying to impress someone?" You say teasingly.

"I guess you could say that," he shrugs nonchalantly.

Now that's an answer you weren't expecting.

You sit in silence for a moment before Ghost speaks up. "That guy back there, was he trying anything on you?"

"To dance with me, yeah."

Ghost furrows his eyebrows, "and you know him?"

"Yeah... long story."

"Hm."

More silence follows until Ghost speaks again. "Seeing you with him, I didn't like that one bit," he looks straight ahead, not at you.

"Jealous?" you smirk.

"Yeah I uh... I guess you could say that," he sighs, still looking ahead.

Silence again

"You know what, fuck it," Ghost says slightly louder. "I didn't like seeing you with whatever his name was because I like you." he says matter-of-factly.

Your breath catches "I...I-you...me..."

he did not just say that

"I like you a lot and I couldn't give a fuck what our ranks are or who your father is, I just want... no, I NEED you to be mine," He continues.

"I...I uh... yes," You are embarrassed at how much of a nervous wreck you are right now.

"I'm taking that as a you like me back," Ghost says.

"Y-yes," you breathe.

You slowly get more comfortable as the night drags on, you never leave the side of your new boyfriend as the two of you bask in each other.

"All I want to do right now is dote on you and love you, show you my caring side," Ghost says at one point.

You giggle, "is the alcohol getting to you? Are you going to regret this in the morning?"

"Nope, completely sober, wouldn't want to forget this night with you."

The rest of the night is like a dream, you can't help but picture how the following days will be with this new relationship. hopefully this hangover won't be a smack in the face in the morning.

[kaelicus]

Honestly, I'm glad Astro Bot won GOTY. Initially, I was a bit bitter Balatro lost out, but Astro Bot clowned on Sony so hard on release. It showcased all the beloved IPs Sony lets rot in obscurity, only to be acknowledged whenever they pretend to be pioneers of innovation in the industry (see their 30 year anniversary video for that). Team Asobi saw the nonsense of "we have no IPs" and within 24 hours they had an engaging, adorable, well-polished, and tight 3D platformer showing off niche characters and franchises with so much child-like glee. Like, this is a piece of art so unequivocally in love with these games and is willing to absolutely go crazy with it. All the little references and animations show real pride in these incredibly small parts of Playstation's history. And apparently Team Asobi is made of the remnants of Sony's Japan office? Herman Hulst get absolutely fucked by little robot man.

[candy-swol-man]

woah- really pretty song from the Night Vale weather section upon yee!

And also some Tigerghost idea nonsense

So while listening to Night Vale with one of my homies today- this song was the weather and she partially understands Spanish. She mentioned how much she liked the song and told me what she could understand from it.

Which compelled me to look up translations for the lyrics and maybe add it to my Tigerghost playlist cough cough

It is a romance song- but it's a- I miss you desperately but ur stuck with a jackass- kind of romance song? At least that's how i interpreted it.

Nonetheless- my imagination took a portion of the lyrics and birthed this idea.

The specific scenario in my head is one where Manny and Danny are temporarily separated, because the villains find a way to cut off our heroes ability to travel between dimensions-save for themselves.

Inter-dimensional cell service is also axed.

So the entire team is having to deal with villains from the others dimensions ON TOP of their own all by themselves until Jimmy finds a fix.

Danny/Manny (as well as Jimmy/Timmy) angst ensues with anxiety increasing over when- if at all- they'll be able to see each other again.

Danny here 'bout to change his degree from astronaut to astro and/or theoretical physics so he can rip a hole to Manny's dimension himself. He also gets an extra helping of anxiety about how he'd potentially react to not being able to see Manny ever again cough cough Phantom cough cough.

Manny travelling to the Land of the Dead to see if the old El Tigre can give any advice and also to see if the land has ANY connection to the ghost zone in Danny's dimension. If that doesn't work-then a deal with Sartana is absolutely on the table.

🎶THIS KITCHEN'S NOT THE SAME WITHOUUUTTT YOUUUU����

Side-note I think it'd be infinitely funnier if Spongebob is the one to figure out how to fix the Unite teams travel issues rather than Jimmy.

This scenario only partially applies to the song at this point, but it was the catalyst for this idea, and I like sharing music. So again- REALLY PRETTY NIGHT VALE WAETHER SONG UPON YEE

ahem- Anyway- my brain rot is terminal and I must make it other's problem.

[yaminerua]

Thankful again for the fact I decided to smush yesterday's and today's prompts together. It took longer to throw together than planned;;

As always, prompts are by @a-literal-toaster-wtf

Today's and yesterday's were Movie and Sleep.

Lister wishes Rimmer would put the textbooks down for once and just watch some garbage with him.

Words: 5825

****

Rimmer didn’t appreciate distractions even at the best of times. He liked to appear busy, studious, focused – anything to avoid looking like the alternative.

It was something he had done for years, mostly just to give off an air of motivated enthusiasm for his work in the slim hopes that some generous superior with a good eye for talent would notice and decide to throw him a bone and give him a promotion. It had never actually worked out that way, though, and with Red Dwarf largely empty these days, with all but one of its original crew complement dead and gone, his once lowly status as a Second Technician now rendered him, laughably, the highest rank on the ship, so who he thought he was still trying to impress or convince with maintaining this act was anyone’s guess. Perhaps it was just force of habit.

Rimmer was consistent, hard-wired into his old routines and patterns so completely that even in spite of it all being a futile and worthless endeavour in the grand scheme of things, he still insisted on trying to pass the smegging Astro-Navigation exam. When he wasn’t patrolling the ship bossing skutters around and generally making a royal nuisance of himself by nit-picking and complaining about every minor thing, he was holed up in the bunk room with a revision textbook on his lap and a stony look of concentration on his face.

At times like these, he absolutely did not want to be disturbed.

At times like these, of course, Lister always seemed to decide to do just that.

Plopping himself down unceremoniously on the sleeping quarters’ couch, a pack of Leopard Lager under one arm and an armful of snacks under the other, Lister let out a grunt as he made himself comfortable while Rimmer closed his eyes beside him and took a long, forcefully restrained breath in through the nose, his mouth drawn together in a tight, thin line.

“Lister,” he said, as evenly as he could through gritted teeth. “I am busy.”

Lister spared him a quick glance in acknowledgement, muttered something in response that was probably along the lines of ‘I know,’ and then reached for the television remote and as soon as he did that, all hopes of restraint were reduced to ashes in the wake of incandescent, nostril-flaring irritation.

“Which means I do not want to be disturbed!” Rimmer snapped, swiping a hand out to try to snatch the remote from his hands and missing as Lister held it just out of reach. “Some of us on board this ship have more important things to do than watch trash and eat garbage!��

To that Lister merely offered a shrug and defiantly switched on the television. “It’s a big ship, Rimmer,” he said, flicking open the first can of lager and taking a swig. “You don’t need to watch with me.”

“But I was here first! You—” He cut himself off, aggravated, slammed the textbook on his lap shut with a sharp crack and then he stood up, shook his head in defeated frustration and strode swiftly, rigidly out of the room to leave Lister to his nonsense.

He didn’t need to deal with this.

That was how things usually went whenever Lister decided he wanted to watch something. It didn’t matter how long Rimmer had been sitting there, quietly jotting down notes and reading and re-reading paragraphs that didn’t make any sense the second, third, or fifteenth time round. Once the impulse hit, he was more than happy to indulge it. It just so happened that that usually resulted in bursting Rimmer’s study bubble but, frankly, he didn’t really have it in him to feel all that guilty about it. Keeping him from putting himself through more disappointment at studying for and failing yet another exam was probably, in some way, good for him.

In truth he wasn’t actually trying to irritate Rimmer. That just happened to be a common side-effect (as it was towards most things Lister did). Most of the time he just wanted to put something mind-numbing on to distract himself from the otherwise soul-crushing loneliness of being the last living human in deep space, or something soppy and melodramatic to make him feel something. Rimmer was free to sit and watch with him if he ever bothered to put the smegging book down and loosen up a bit. In fact it would maybe be nice to have the company for a change.

Even if it was Rimmer.

Of course, Rimmer never tended to stick around to give anything of that sort a chance. Whenever it became patently clear that Lister was about to disrupt his peace and quiet and destroy what little threads of focus he had managed to string together he was usually quick to vacate the premises and leave him to it.

Usually.

Little by little, though, that had gradually started to change.

Dropping heavily down onto the sofa again one night, the jarring motion causing Rimmer to drag an involuntary ragged line of ink straight across his neat, copperplate notes, Lister fully expected him to erupt into the usual fit of rage and storm off but instead he watched, surprised, out of the corner of his eye as all he did was huff a long-suffering sigh and flip the ruined page over to a fresh one. He made no attempt to stand up.

Lister raised a curious eyebrow but didn’t draw attention to this subtle deviation from the norm. Instead, he flicked the screen on and reached for the remote and, ah, there it was, the irritated click of the tongue, the settling down of the pen. Surely, he would get up to leave now.

Rimmer leaned forwards instead, reaching for something on the desk in front of him and holding it out purposefully in front of Lister, clearly indicating for him to take it.

Lister blinked, bemused, at what was quite plainly a set of headphones and turned to stare questioningly into Rimmer’s frowning face.

“If you’re going to insist on watching garbage at least have the consideration to wear these so I don’t have to have my brain melted by any of it,” Rimmer explained haughtily, noticing his confusion and shaking the headphones impatiently.

Lister took hold of them slowly, turning them over in his hands, and raised a curious eyebrow.

“What, you’re not gonna storm off in a huff this time, Rimsy?” he asked, one side of his mouth quirking upwards in a lop-sided, impish smile.

Returning his hands to his lap, Rimmer picked up the notepad and pen again and clicked it.

“I was here first and, until you came along, quite comfortable,” he went on, ignoring the teasing tone Lister had used. “I shouldn’t have to sacrifice comfort and concentration just because you decide you want to watch Attack of the Scantily Clad Killer Zombie Beach Babes 2.”

“Hey now, that one was actually pretty decent!” Lister cried, only somewhat defensive, a playful twinkle in his eye. “You should really give it a try some time.”

“I’ll pass, thank you, Listy,” Rimmer said icily, turning the textbook balanced on the arm of the couch to a new chapter and readying his pen to begin taking notes. “Now be quiet and let me focus.”

Lister rolled his eyes and gave the headphones in his hands a reluctant, disdainful look. He didn’t really want to have to wear them but whatever. If he had to, he had to.

Plugging them in, he slipped them over his ears and reclined back on the couch, lifting his legs to rest his boots on the desk below the screen, an action he suspected would infuriate Rimmer greatly. He could imagine him tutting away disapprovingly beside him but with the headphones fitted snugly over his ears he wouldn’t have heard it if he had. Maybe these weren’t such a bad idea after all.

It started to become something of a familiar routine after that. Every now and then whenever Lister would sit himself down with his drinks and snacks ready to indulge in an evening of mindless visual entertainment, Rimmer would wordlessly hold out the headphones towards him without so much as even a single glance up from his notes. Lister would pull a face but put them on obediently and the two of them would pass the evening in relative silence, seated at opposite ends of their shared couch, less than a metre away but otherwise worlds apart.

It didn’t exactly make for a riveting interpersonal interaction but in some ways it was a step up from complete and total avoidance of each other’s company. It may be the best compromise it could hope to be. Lister got his movie, Rimmer got to, generally, revise in peace – if what counted for peace meant still having to endure Lister snivelling miserably into a cushion at mushy scenes and flinching every time he heard him laugh or utter the occasional word of commentary a little louder than necessary because the headphones were muffling the volume of his own voice in his ears.

For what it was it was fine – good, even – but Lister always felt, secretly, that it could probably still be better.

Shooting a sideways glance at Rimmer as the current mind-numbing program of the evening dragged on through a slow stretch, Lister found himself surprised to find that his bunk mate’s eyes weren’t glued to the textbook at all, but rather were peering up, transfixed, at the screen, brow furrowed in a mix of confusion and intrigue. Without any kind of context, he was evidently baffled by what he was seeing but somehow it had piqued his interest enough to hold his attention.

A small smile bloomed across Lister’s face as he reached as subtly as he could for the remote and pressed the option to enable subtitles.

Rimmer’s response was immediate. The moment he realised he’d been caught, that Lister had noticed, his expression crumpled and he bowed his head low, shoulders squaring defensively, the line of his jaw set in a taut, tense grimace. The knuckles of his right hand were rapidly growing white with how tightly he was gripping the pen and his brows were knitted together in a mortified scowl as he glared intensely, furiously, down at what Lister could now see was an empty notebook.

The tips of Rimmer’s ears were starting to grow pink and the knowing smile of amusement on Lister’s face only continued to grow.

He slipped the headphones back off his ears and let them rest loosely hooked around his neck. “If you wanted to watch you should’ve said somethin’,” he said and Rimmer’s nostrils flared in indignation as he straightened up to fix Lister with an affronted glare.

“I wasn’t watching,” he lied.

Lister’s eyes twinkled as his smile widened further. Rimmer wasn’t fooling anyone. “You were,” he said, drawing out the vowel.

“I wasn’t!”

“Rimmer, I saw you—”

“What you saw was a brief glance up just to see whatever garbage you were filling your head with tonight, Lister!” Rimmer cut in caustically, wrinkling his nose in disgust at the screen for added measure. “That does not amount to the same thing as actually watching.”

Lister rolled his eyes. Trust Rimmer to bicker over semantics instead of just admitting something had caught his eye. “Okay, man,” he said resignedly, sarcastically, slipping the headphones back up over his ears. “Whatever you say. Go back to your empty notes.”

Whatever biting remark Rimmer might have shot back at him, it was muffled mercifully by the headphones and bounced off him completely unacknowledged. He could feel the dark scowl being leveraged at him out of the corner of his eye but paid it no mind and simply popped open a pack of salty snacks and proceeded to stuff them unglamorously into his mouth all at once, crunching them loudly in a deliberate attempt to rankle Rimmer further.

For a good long while after that he could positively feel the undiluted scorn radiating out from him even from the other side of the couch but he held his resolve and didn’t risk shooting another glance at him until enough time had passed that he didn’t seem likely to be paying him any attention anymore. When he did, however, it was to find – much to his surprise and silent amusement – that Rimmer had once again ended up captivated by the film. His head was still lowered, angled intently towards the textbook in his lap, his pen resting poised over the crisp, pristine paper of his notebook, but his eyes were most definitely locked on the screen, following the subtitles Lister had deliberately decided to leave enabled.

A smug, triumphant little smirk pulled up the corners of Lister’s mouth but this time he didn’t say anything. If Rimmer was too embarrassed to admit to being at least somewhat interested in what was going on in the movie that was his own problem but Lister wasn’t going to ridicule him too much for it. If he wanted to feign studying as a cover up for occasionally glancing up at the action, so be it. Lister would leave the subtitles on for him just in case.

As it happened, Rimmer was far more interested in Lister’s bizarre movie collection than he was comfortable letting on. Ever since that first night that he had caught him taking a peek, he had noticed it happening more and more, especially now that he kept the subtitles on by default these days. It was actually becoming quite frequent.

If he were to ask, Rimmer would probably make some lame excuse about the flashing screen distracting him from his note-taking and then retreat stubbornly back to the pretence of giving a single smeg about what any of the technical jargon in his textbooks actually meant. He might as well have still been trying to learn Esperanto with how little he understood any of it… As far as Lister was concerned, it didn’t really seem like all that much fun, certainly not an enjoyable way to spend any significant amount of time.

More and more lately he found himself trying and failing to find a way to broach the subject of Rimmer’s obvious curiosity and to put forth the suggestion of just giving it a go, having him set aside the textbooks and notepads he hid behind and inviting him to just sit and watch some godawful trash together with him – even if all he would end up doing is criticising every last plot point for its entire duration. Maybe poking fun at it could even be a bit of fun in and of itself.

Regardless, he couldn’t come up with a single way to go about it that wouldn’t result in Rimmer getting his hackles raised over nothing and flying into an overly-defensive rant about how he had absolutely no interest whatsoever in doing anything of the sort.

In the end, he gave it up as a bad job and decided to just leave things as they were, settling down carefully on the sofa as had become a habit and leaning forwards automatically to reach for the headphones.

“Wait,” Rimmer said suddenly, pausing him mid-stretch.

He was very deliberately not looking at him, gaze fixed on some complex looking diagram that spanned across two pages of his textbook. He looked a little awkward, a little sheepish, and Lister didn’t know what to make of it. “Yeah?” he pressed, waiting to hear what Rimmer wanted to say.

Rimmer swallowed thickly, jaw tense, the fingers of his right hand flexing as they adjusted their grip on the pen. “It’s fine,” he said quietly, inclining his head towards the screen. “If you keep the sound low, it’s fine.”

Lister blinked at him, stunned, as though he’d just grown a second head. He wasn’t really sure he’d heard him right. “What?”

Rimmer huffed, aggravated, and shrugged stiffly, rigidly, as though he was having great difficulty shaking off some inexplicable tension he was holding in his shoulders. “I’m saying you can leave the sound on for once,” he snapped irritably, abruptly and then, realising he hadn’t intended to come off so harsh, dialled it back down at bit, and added, “If you keep it at a reasonable volume.”

Lister felt the tug of a knowing smile on his features again. Rimsy wasn’t slick. Not in the slightest.

“Just admit you wanna watch it with me.”

“I’ll do no such thing,” Rimmer sniffed, indignant, clicking his pen anxiously. “I’m simply making a compromise. You don’t need to take it.”

“Because you want to watch and hear what’s happening,” Lister pressed on, smile stretching broadly from ear to ear now. “C’mon, Rimmer, don’t be such a stick in the mud about it.”

“I can rescind the offer, you know,” Rimmer replied icily, still refusing to look up and meet Lister’s gaze. “It makes no difference to me.”

Lister huffed a laugh and rolled his eyes but the smile remained affixed upon his face as he powered up the screen and popped on his latest cinematic crime against humanity and let it play out quietly into the otherwise tranquil silence of the bunk room. He didn’t need to look over to see that Rimmer was looking up at the screen along with him.

They were sitting a little closer together than usual, Lister noticed somewhat belatedly, Rimmer’s form in the periphery of his vision looming larger and less out of reach than he was used to. If he concentrated hard enough he could even sense the subtle heat that radiated out from his hard-light projection, comfortingly warm, almost human.

Cracking open a can of lager, he took a hearty swig and relaxed back into the aging softness of the bunk room’s well-used couch, stretching his legs out just enough that his right knee could ever-so-slightly graze Rimmer’s left.

He expected him to jerk it away skittishly at the contact but for whatever reason he didn’t, instead pretending not to have noticed, his long slender fingers focused intently on gliding his pen in broad, controlled strokes, recreating the diagram from the textbook in his notebook, line for line.

Lister watched him for a while as the opening titles of the movie seemed to take forever to get to the point and then, when the first gunshots of actual action sounded out, he finally tore his gaze away and started paying attention again.

It was some mafia movie he was watching tonight, an obscure cult classic of sorts even if the plot was a tad generic and contrived. Lister had seen it before and had generally enjoyed it for the action scenes and the steamy romance that left little to the imagination. He rather hoped he’d get to see the face Rimmer would pull when it reached that point. It would surely be a sight to see.

Shooting a curious glance at him, he smiled when he noticed that Rimmer’s pen had stilled now that the plot was taking off in earnest, hazel eyes fixed critically but nonetheless fixedly on the action.

“What utter garbage is this, Lister? I’m not sure it’s doing your brain cells any good,” he said, nose wrinkling in disapproval.

“Hush, Rimmer, it’s a classic!” Lister said, and then he thought about it for a moment, frowned and shrugged as an afterthought. “Okay, yeah, so it’s a remake of a remake of a classic but it’s still sort of a classic.”

Rimmer didn’t look convinced, his face contorting into a regretful grimace at deciding to give Lister’s taste in cinema even the briefest consideration. “Whoever greenlit this should have been shot,” he muttered flatly.

Lister couldn’t resist. He nodded solemnly. “He was, actually. Twice. But not for this one.”

Rimmer’s eyes widened and he whipped his head round to stare in horrified disbelief at him. “Wait, really?” he cried, incredulous. He hadn’t actually meant it seriously.

Lister’s face split into a gerbil-like grin and he nudged a teasing elbow playfully into Rimmer’s side. “Nah, I’m just messin’ with you. He did get a lot of threats from people saying he’d ruined everything that was good about the original, though.”

Rimmer sneered at that. “Yes, I can imagine…”

This was weirdly comfortable. Exactly what Lister had hoped it would be. Rimmer seemed interested enough to watch the cinematic car-crash play out and quite content to sneer derisively at every overused, poorly executed plot point and offer more than just the occasional scathing bit of commentary and Lister was happy to indulge him, to explain the various threads of the story and how this adaptation paled in comparison to the original but brought something refreshing to the table as well.

Rimmer grimaced at that, believing Lister’s definition of ‘refreshing’ to mean disgustingly, uncharitably horny and Lister didn’t deny it. Instead he laughed guiltily and took a long hearty swig of another can of lager, sinking further into the easy back and forth of casual, harmless bickering, all the while his body was slowly starting to tilt to the side, drawn by the gravitational pull of warmth, until his shoulder brushed up against Rimmer’s and, incredibly, wasn’t immediately shaken off.

Rimmer eyed him suspiciously, turning his nose up at the stench of alcohol on his breath, but otherwise made no real effort to shrink away from him and Lister took that as a minor victory, relishing the little scrap of positive human connection, however small it was.

Eventually, as was inevitable whenever Lister had too many lagers and too much junk food, his energy began to flag and his eyelids started to succumb to the relentless pull of drowsiness. Distantly, he was still somewhat aware of the film and the point it was at, but in his drink-addled, sleep-hazed mind he was far more preoccupied with nestling as far as possible into that cosy, comforting warmth against his right side, leaning into it instinctively, willing it to envelope him completely. He’d forgotten, somewhere along the line, who that warmth belonged to.

Yielding to exhaustion, unable to fight it back any longer, he allowed his head to loll to the side, resting it against something solid enough to support him but soft and warm enough to be comfortable and as it shifted slightly against him he nuzzled his face against it, chased it as it tried momentarily to flee and as his breathing evened out into something deep and regular he let out one final deep, contented sigh and sank beneath the veil of sleep.

Rimmer, meanwhile, had gone stock still with shock the moment Lister’s head had touched his shoulder, a million different thoughts clamouring together all at once in his mind, rendering absolutely none of them clear enough to decipher. His whole body was as stiff as a board, every muscle clenched taut and tense, every nerve alight with a kind of strange, fluttery anxiety. In spite of every other impulse that told him he should move away, retreat to the relative safely of the other side of the couch, he instead remained frozen in place, unsure of the best course of action moving forward but oddly drawn to the sensation.

Lister was already snoring gently against his shoulder now, the aged lines of his face slackened with sleep. Somehow, up this close, Rimmer realised that although he was getting on in years and didn’t have nearly the same stamina as he had once had, Lister somehow still had the capacity to look just as young and fragile as he had looked almost thirty years ago when he had first found himself in this complicated situation. There he was, the last living human being in existence, still meandering his way languidly through whatever amounted to a life, leaning on one of the only things in the entire universe he had left to keep him company.

Rimmer’s artificial, hologramatic heart ached in his chest and he forced himself to look away, tearing his gaze towards the screen instead as what was supposedly intended to be a romantic sub-plot played out in all its mediocre glory. The years had clearly done something to him, softened his prickly, hardened edges and drained away most of his bite and somehow, miraculously, it had made him care, at least just a little bit, about the lonely heart beating ever onwards beside him, humanity’s last living, breathing bastion for compassion and soft-heartedness and love for all things mundane and imperfect.

He stayed like that for quite some time, immobilised by indecision, equal parts awkwardly uncomfortable and loathe to move lest the soft, welcoming warmth of Lister’s body pulling away exposed too much of the loneliness he himself tried so desperately to cover up and pretend didn’t exist.

Even though it was Lister of all people, there was something about being chosen to be a shoulder to lean against, about being reliable – trusted - enough to be used as something of a makeshift pillow, that made Rimmer feel some peculiar type of way.

Maybe it was the depressing fact that he couldn’t recall anyone ever doing it before – he couldn’t recall having ever been close enough to anyone for this kind of thing to have had any chance of happening in the first place.

In a strange way it showed how far the two of them had come since those first volatile, antagonistic days after finding themselves alone on the lifeless shell of Red Dwarf together. They had grown closer quite without realising it, without thinking that anything much had changed at all. Lister could lean on Rimmer’s shoulder and Rimmer would let him now. He didn’t quite know what to make of that.

He watched the rest of the movie in silence, acutely aware of the press of Lister’s body against him, and as the credits rolled and Lister continued to sleep on, he turned his attention back to the forgotten textbook to his right, using the peace and quiet to try to claw back a bit of academic focus. It was easier said than done with Lister’s breath, hot and damp, tickling his throat, the tight dark curls of his hair lightly grazing his cheek and rendering it damn-near impossible for him to pay any sort of attention to the words on the page.

He tried to write it off as simply Lister being something of a human radiator, but the proximity was beginning to make him feel quite hot. It was too close. They weren’t normally like this. He was almost certain the moment Lister woke up and realised what he’d done he would cringe in disgust at even the mere thought of falling asleep against someone like Rimmer, and boy was it strange to feel the sharp pang of disappointment at imagining that image. Maybe the stupid movie had destroyed some of his own brain cells after all…

After a while of sitting in silence with nothing but the hum and groan of the ship all around and the intermittent flickering of the JMC screensaver that had been playing on a loop since the film had ended, Lister finally, eventually began to shift, scrunching up his face and opening his mouth in a wide beer-breathed yawn that made Rimmer wish he could turn off the sense of smell on his nose.

Blinking bleary-eyed back into consciousness, Lister’s brain was slow to process his surroundings. He squinted groggily at the screen, dug the heel of his palm into his left eye and then brought it down to wipe at something cool and damp at the corner of his mouth.

It was only then as he lifted his head and registered the familiar blue of the material he had been leaning against that he remembered who it belonged to. “Oh, whoops,” he laughed gruffly, voice rough from sleep. “Drooled on you a bit there, sorry.”

Up this close his breath positively stank, a sensory abomination of cheap lager, curry flavoured snacks with an ashy hint of tobacco and Rimmer wrinkled his nose at the stench.

Inclining his head a fraction to look at him, he peered momentarily down to glance reproachfully at the little damp stain on his shoulder and then fixed him with a long-suffering look that wasn’t so much severe as it was resigned.

“It’s fine,” he said quietly, a little surprised with himself at finding that it wasn’t even a lie.

Lister blinked slowly, slightly out of sync. He was still slightly leaning against him, still pressing warm and soft and heavy into his side. It felt oddly like the two of them were encased in their own little pocket of warmth, cosy and safe, separated from the cold, unforgiving void of space all around them. It was comfortable in a way that Rimmer wasn’t used to.

Lister was looking at him strangely, his eyes still just a little unfocused, a little half-lidded like he was still partway lost in a dream state. His expression was soft, warm, the brown of his eyes deep and dark in the light of the bunk room, shimmering with something that looked almost fond and which made something strange flutter in Rimmer’s gut.

“Lister,” he said, as sternly as he could muster, but the usually sharpened, pointed edges of his voice came out a little rounder, a little more softly than he planned. “Go to bed.”

Lister took a moment to process, the gummed up gears of his brain straining to turn, but after a moment he nodded slightly, a little unsteadily and his mouth pulled upwards in a lazy, sleepy smile. “Yeah, ‘s probably for the best,” he slurred, the words rolling clumsily into one another as he struggled to co-ordinate himself to move.

He fixed Rimmer with that strange, dreamy-eyed look again, his thoughts entirely inscrutable. He looked a little like he was mulling something over, holding Rimmer’s gaze just a little bit too long, as though he’d forgotten he was supposed to be trying to get up.

Rimmer opened his mouth to begin to remind him but the words never made it out into open air, his lips finding themselves suddenly and startlingly preoccupied.

Lister’s lips were warm, soft and more than just a little clumsy, a little off-target, pressed as they were a little to the side of the thinly drawn line of Rimmer’s mouth.

They didn’t linger there long, probably little more than a few seconds, and yet, paradoxically, to Rimmer it felt simultaneously overwhelmingly too much and decidedly too little.

With a short, wet pluck, Lister pulled away and Rimmer cursed himself for the involuntary way his head moved forwards to chase him, to instinctively follow the warmth in spite of anything else his brain might scream at him for doing so.

He felt unmoored, untethered, uncertain if this was all some strange and concerning figment of his imagination. Or a prank. God, this could be a prank…

Lister’s expression blossomed into a goofy, sleep-dazed grin and Rimmer absolutely did not feel his stomach flip nervously in his gut watching his tongue dart out to swipe lazily over the lips that had just moments ago been pressed against his.

���Night,” Lister breathed, eyes twinkling, and then he finally peeled himself up and away from the couch, pushing off to his feet with a laboured grunt and as the cool air rushed in to fill the void formed by Lister’s absence Rimmer tried desperately to ignore it – to deny fervently to himself that he felt any sense of bereavement at the loss of warmth.

He watched, utterly dumbfounded, immobilised by the incomprehensible impossibility of the situation, as Lister staggered his way unsteadily towards the bunks, oblivious to the bombshell he had just detonated in Rimmer’s mind, utterly unaffected by the enormity of what he’d done. He just clambered with the same poorly-coordinated drunken difficulty as always up his stupid smegging ladder and onto the waiting comfort of his stupid curry-stained bed and left Rimmer to gape helplessly at him, scrambling desperately to recollect his thoughts and quiet the racing pulse thrumming away wildly in his chest.

“Wh—” Rimmer started, breathless, flabbergasted. “What—”

It took a moment, or rather it took several, but eventually the confusing, maddening swirl of emotions swimming in his head finally allowed him to co-ordinate himself enough to speak and when he did, it came out as a spluttering, flustered shout.

“What the smeg was that!?”

Lister scrunched up his face, peeling open his tired eyes to squint bemusedly in Rimmer’s direction. “Wha…?”

Rimmer’s nostrils flared. Oh, he wasn’t letting him get away with this. He wasn’t going to do this to him, to fall asleep on him and force him to feel some kind of something and then go ahead and do that and act as though it was nothing. No, they were addressing this now.

“You know what!” Rimmer cried, utterly furious at the fact he could positively feel the rosy red burn of the flush that now absolutely stained his cheeks. “Why did you do that?”

Lister let out an anguished groan and rolled over, half-burying his face in his pillow like a child trying to resist getting up. “Why did I do what? Rimmer, man, me head hurts. Can’t this wait til mornin’?”

“No, it absolutely cannot!! You can’t just do something like— like that and then just go to sleep! Do you have no sense of shame? Of tact? Of anything at all?”

Lister didn’t say anything, just made some muffled unintelligible noise and breathed in deeply and evenly where he lay.

Rimmer’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Lister, are you awake? Lister!”

There was no response, save for the incriminating sounds of snoring giving away what Rimmer suspected had happened and he prepared himself to yell, prepared himself to bellow right into Lister’s stupid smegging ear if he had to, but then at the last second he changed his mind and let out the breath as a long, world-weary huff and gave up. He wasn’t going to get any serious answers out of Lister tonight.

Maybe it had been an accident. Maybe he genuinely hadn’t even realised what he was doing. He’d been half-drunk and half-asleep at the time, after all. He might not have been able to see him clearly; might have somehow mistaken him for someone else.

Rimmer rubbed unconsciously, agitatedly at his chest and scowled at the confusing contradictory swell of emotions those thoughts dredged up. He lowered himself back down onto the couch, reached shakily for his Astro-Nav textbook and tried in vain to drag his attention away from the painful hammering of his heart and the nervous churning in his gut, tried not to think about why the thought that Lister could have confused him with someone else felt more disappointing than comforting.

For the next few hours he stared desperately at the same open page and never took in a single sentence.

[hopeymchope]

We need to discuss that one weird-ass dude in Master Detective Archives: Rain Code

Please. Somebody has to talk to me about this minor supporting player in Rain Code.

To avoid even the slightest hint as to when he appears and what he does, let's just call him "The Researcher."

I know Rui Komatsuzaki has historically liked to sprinkle in a sporadic "this character isn't in the same style as the others" in his works, but this motherfucker right here has taken that trend ONE STEP BEYOND.

Komatsuzaki already gave Rain Code Servan, the weird monk-dude at the church, and those guys at the ramen shop filling taking representing his usual "off-kilter" character designs. But I don't even KNOW what the fuck is going on with the Researcher. This is a style of character who is so completely unlike everything in this game — unlike everything I've ever seen Komatsuzaki draw, really — that I feel there's GOT to be a larger reason for it.

Considerations:

He looks like a caricature of a real-life person to me? Is that a reasonable leap to make? Is this meant to represent somebody who works at Tookyo Games or Spike Chunsoft or something? And if so, WHO?

Obviously, the green heart on his forehead. What the fuck is that about. Why is it there. Why. WHAT. Maybe he's an environmentalist or just really grateful about something. (Nah, it's probably just there to increase this dude's "absolute nonsense" factor.)

The Researcher is the only person we ever meet who's wearing a fez-style hat that's too small for his head. I suppose Martina does wear a hat that's kind of similar, but her hat is actually sized properly. :P I don't know if this is meant to make this guy look more clownish or what, but it's not like they ever play this character for comic relief, so then why... ?

Based on his lapel pin, I guess he likes Astro Boy? Which sent me looking for an Astro Boy character who perhaps was being given homage here... but NOPE! Not even the cartoony proportions of classic Astro Boy contain any character that looks THIS fucking nuts.

I want answers, theories... whatever you can give me. What is up with this guy, and why is he like this??

[theyaoiparable]

I FUCJIGNG LOVE YOUR LIVEBLOGGING LMFAO YOU'RE INSANE ABOUT THE FIC (JUST LIKE ME!!!!! JUST LIKE ME FR!!!!)

~🥝

THANK YOU I AM ABSOLUTELY BONKERS ABOUT WDYOAPFTS I'VE CONSIDERED MAKING WHOLE ASS ANIMATICS FOR IT I LOVE IT SO BAD

[theyaoiparable]

(to the tune of 12 days of christmas) on the first day of yaoi my true love gave to me The Stanley Parable

[astro-duck]

(This accidentally became a long story, sorry)

When I was like 8, I went to a place two hours drive outside of my city. It’s called “The Enchanted Forrest” and it’s theme park for little kids based around old fairy tales, like Alice in Wonderland, The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, etc. I had been there before with my Grandma, but this time I was with my mom and little sister.

There was the one attraction at the place, I have no idea what it was actually called, but it was a water show. It wasn’t anywhere near as fancy as anything like in DuckTales (or Vegas). It was just two rows of sprinklers, some pretty lights and some music. The water moved in time to the music, and the lights illuminated the water so it appeared to be glowing.

My mom insisted we go in there to eat, and so she could sit down. My sister and I protested, but she insisted. So we went.

When the show started, I was instantly hooked. I think the show lasted about 25 minutes, which is a long time for an 8 year old to give her full attention to something. But I LOVED that thing. I watched it intently for the entire time. When it ended, I was actually really sad. I begged my mom to let me stay, but my sister said it was boring and she wanted to go see the log rides go (we weren’t allowed on them). I even said they could leave me there and come back and get me after the next one, but my mom said “Astro, we’re leaving!” In her mom voice so I didn’t protest any more.

But I had dreams about that water show. Seriously, I don’t usually remember my dreams but I exclusively remember dreaming about that show, music and all, for like 9 months. It wasn’t anything different, it was just the water show. I would get the music stuck in my head and hum it occasionally. I would be excited to go to bed at night so I could watch the water show.

All this nonsense to say, DuckTales is absolutely correct. People (autistic children) really do love those fucking water shows. And if I was able, I absolutely would have made my mom and sister sit through it three times.

He sat through the waters of aquanadon three times

[theyaoiparable]

Can you imagine (going off the idea that narrator has a body, he's just invisible) that during skip button the narrator was still in the room with stanley the entire time, trying to fix tsp from within, but after so many years of saying nothing and being helpless by the time stanley was able to escape, he couldn't call out to him. He couldn't move. He watched him leave him behind and he was just stuck in the room alone

[villiljosguide]

Back on here after a few years decade away, hoping to find a slightly safer place for astrology community 🤞

I lean mostly towards hellenistic astrology and techniques with modern planets+asteroids+etc. and updated interpretations that always center the individual's background, marginalisation(s) and experiences. As a marginalised person, I put work into being accommodating to others' needs in my work as well as generally in my life 💝

I'm an animist and nordic heathen, deeply in touch with my native land, Iceland, and its many powers and wights. I'm slowly learning seiður from local practitioners too. I have absolutely zero tolerance for n*zis, f*scists and other hateful appropriation ✋️ I don't care either for new age-y love and light nonsense.

While I'm finding my sea legs again I'll probably be posting and reposting stuff a little all over the place, assuming tumblr hasn't changed that much in the last 10-ish years there'll be a ton of shitposting, astro and witchy memes and probably political outrage inbetween 🙃 I'm a mutable child of Mercury, with Jupiter conjunct my MC in Taurus, so my interests go far and wide, but at least for now I'll probably keep mostly to astro and magical/spiritual stuff on here ✨️

I have other accounts with the same username elsewhere, and my profile has my tree link for anything else 😁

[pearwaldorf]

If I never see another post from Franzeska aka olderthannetfic here it will be too soon. How dare she answer questions about racism and AO3 like she wasn’t one of the people who helped build it into the very structure of the site? I am quoting this directly from her post (emphasis mine): 

We picked the archive warnings from things that were common on older fic archives. Which, yes, reflects what fandom cared about at the time and is not neutral. (And when I say “we”, I do mean me specifically. I can’t remember how much my committee chose those and how much the Board and others drove the exact selection, but I did a lot of the research into older archives at the time. Including something about racism straight up never occurred to me in 2008.)

And sure, our views can evolve a lot in a decade. But Racefail happened in 2009, and none of the topics discussed at the time are different than those we’re focusing on today, 11 years later. For shits and giggles, here is my archived Livejournal post about the entire mess. If you click through to the other links (synedochic’s in particular), I think you will see this is something that didn’t just pop up with Tumblr and the SJW/anti contingent. (I’m not comfortable with conflating antis/fandom fundies/purity wankers with fans legitimately criticizing racism in fandom, but that is how a lot of it gets lumped together as a dismissive tactic.)

Which brings us to That Piece of Shit Meta in 2016. I am linking to the Fanlore entry for context, because the Actual Piece of Shit Meta is archive-locked (you can access it from Fanlore if you really want to read it, but it’s 16K of garbage).

A selection of commentary about it:

Guys, this was the problem all along. I’m doing fandom wrong by falling in love with the wrong source text. If I’d only understood that this wasn’t my space to enjoy non-white and/or non-male characters, because the majority of characters are white men, imagine how much happier I’d be in my life. (allofthefeelings)

they’ve been spouting yt apologia while fetishizing asian culture for years, this is nothing new. i’m pretty sure i’ve read franzeska saying the same things back when racefail ‘09 was going down. like most of this isn’t surprising bc it is exactly what we saw yt lj fandom peeps spouting in 2007-2010 and i’m personally not shocked that these people learned absolutely nothing. they don’t want to learn and being accountable for their actions. (astro-projection [edited to correct quote attribution and link])

Franzeska goes deep into the history of AO3 to talk about why slash is represented heavily there... But in 16,000 words over 13 chapters, there is not one mention of Racefail ‘09. Not a single reference to the time a popular Harry Potter LJ community used a racial slur as a prompt in 2007. Nothing about the Supernatural RPF Big Bang story that used the 2010 Haiti earthquake as a backdrop for a J2 love story (THAT’S A REAL THING THAT HAPPENED). Nothing about the time in 2006 that comics BNF Te pointed out the marginalization black characters faced on two then-juggernauts of white m/m slash fandom, Angel and Smallville. (snarl-furillo, the entire comment is worth reading so please click through)

This erasure of context and history is violent. Because many of the women of color who originally (and still) critique/d and resist/ed fandom’s normalized racism/misogynoir did so to their own detriment and with not insignificant risk to their personal well-being, safety, and privacy. Women of color were ‘outed’ by other fans for speaking out (doxed). They were attacked and silenced from all sides. They lost friends and community. They had to, with great vulnerability, cut themselves open and drag out their own private, internal experiences to air for all the (white) people who disbelieved them. They often found themselves speaking directly to a fucking wall of over-sensitive whiteness that would just as easily topple right on top of them. If anything in fandom is precious, it’s white feelings. And it always has been. (halfhardtorock)

In 2017 she was part of a Kickstarter to do a film about fangirls and fandom. I asked (you’ll need to hit “show comment” to see it) her to publicly comment about That Piece of Shit Meta, which she did. 

But before she did, Chelsea Woods, the co-creator of the project, emailed me about the comment. I don’t remember what exactly the email said, because it was a really long time ago, but she wanted to talk to me about the meta, perhaps to help formulate a response. Chelsea also reached out to somebody else outspoken about the issue at the time, and this is from a DM exchange I had with them:  

I understand why Chelsea reached out, as the head of the project and probably because she thought I would be more likely to respond instead of Franzeska. But tbh it feels like Franzeska's trying to get somebody else (a woman of color) to do the legwork for her. To the best of my knowledge I don't have F blocked on Twitter or Tumblr, and it's not like my email is hard to figure out.  I don't exactly relish the thought of talking to her, but as the one who fucked up, I feel like it is incumbent upon her to make the gesture...

I basically told Chelsea the same as you, that at this point there is very little she can do to demonstrate she understood what she did was fucked up, and that she has learned anything from the experience.

And when I tried to reblog her response, I found out Franzeska had blocked me, if that gives you any indication of how much she honestly wants to engage in discussion. 

Which brings me to now. I was literally today years old when I learned that Franzeska was head of the Abuse team for A While. (Bess says 2008-2012.) So suddenly a lot of things make sense, especially the lackluster (to put it politely) response about racist nonsense I’ve heard over the years, like in male hockey RPF. [edit: additional context in this post, ty Rukmini]

Certainly Franzeska is not responsible for everything racist about AO3, but she has definitely had a hand in shaping a culture that sacrifices the well-being and comfort of black users (among others) on the altar of “maximum inclusivity of content”. To turn the phrase back on them, who is “our own”? Why is it important to preserve an environment where a racially fetishistic fic that objectifies a black hockey player can stay up but a black fan basically has to go in like Viago checking for sunlight?

There is a balance between draconian content restrictions and letting racism, sexism, transphobia, etc run rampant on the site. I’m not saying it will be possible to find it immediately, or that it won’t change over time. But we have to try, if the AO3 is truly committed to making it a place that includes everybody, and not just the specific group of people who designed the site.

[tate-lin]

Omg an extension of your dissertations!! That's so cool tho; exploring your dissertation in a fiction novel~ There's more creative freedom to express what you want to say and make your point through the book's themes 👀🔥

For manga, I have several (though I did very briefly touch on it in this post)!!

The biggest I'd say is Hunter X Hunter's magic system called Nen. What I love most about it is how majority of Nen-users have to create their own special ability called Hatsu and, because of this, their Hatsu is directly informed by their respective personalities, strengths & interests which says a lot about their characters, narrative, and story arc. Because of this, I modelled the basics of my own magic system, ethra, after it by having it be something anyone can pick up and use, like a sport or skill. Here's my post on ethra and I think anyone who read the manga and see my six foundational pillars will be able to spot my inspiration behind it 😂

Besides that, I was inspired to create my darling plant-robot, Drew, directly because of an animated movie called No Game No Life: Zero. I just loved how strange and alien the robot seemed at the start and how the robots were all connected like a hive mind.

In terms of his actual story arc tho, my biggest inspirations come from a mech creation manga I read years ago (I can't remember the name of it now but it's basically this dude manufacturing non-sentient transformers) and Pluto by Urusawa Naoki, a grimmer and more grounded retelling of a really, really long chapter in Astro Boy by Tezuka Osamu called The Greatest Robot on Earth. And while it's not a manga or anime, I was also influenced by the video game Detroit: Become Human while trying to figure his character out.

Though I love No Game No Life: Zero, Pluto, and Detroit: Become Human (especially Pluto I love that thing to bits), I have different ideas on the potentials of robots. In all three of them, there is a lot of emphasis placed on the robots' humanity and empathy. In fact, the androids in Detroit: Become Human were only able to be freed from their lack of agency by becoming exactly like a human till they're nearly indistinguishable on the outside (hence the title).

For me, however, I don't need nor want robots to become exactly like us because they're not. If they can become sentient, they'd be people, of course, but not humans, and this difference is what's crucial to me.

In this case, it's the mech manga that truly influenced my direction on this take. In that story, there was a long-standing habit, maybe even an obsession, for engineers to create the mechs in our image, and the MC found a problem with that. Their society created mechs in order to fight or solve other problems, but was it so necessary to have them take on the shape of humans? If a spike for an arm made more sense, or if it was more useful to create something more akin an over-glorified spring with a knife, then wouldn't that be better? Why were humans the template that all mechs were based on? Just look out to nature and you can find thousands more fitting examples to base a design on, depending on what you're trying to solve.

This manga introduced me to the idea that humanity has a huge keenness to create robots that looked, moved, and acted exactly like us. Which is why things like this exist:

I'm absolutely not suggesting that humanity isn't creative enough to come up with something else, but from what I see, the general consensus is that a 'perfect robot' would be something that's exactly like us, just better.

But is all of that really necessary? In my opinion, it's akin to a parent-child relationship where the parent raised a child just to have another version of them. A take #2 of their life, but be perfect and make absolutely no mistakes. Be whatever the parent needs them to be in order to achieve their own goals.

In the end tho, I think it's nonsensical to assume that if a robot achieves sentience, they'd want to follow the same path as us or even want to think like us. There are many robot media out there which touched on how differently they view the world, but why is the correct answer at the end for a robot to want to be like us? To love like us, feel emotions like us, to care about the same things?

I just don't think that it makes sense. What's wrong with acting, feeling, and thinking like a robot? It may contrast with humanity's goals and desires and may prove to be inconvenient or troubling for us, but as long as they aren't hurting anyone, what's the big deal? They're essentially a whole different species we're creating, even if they're based off humans.

To me, I feel like their biggest problem wasn't necessarily not being human, it's that they wanted to be accepted and have agency but they're not, because robots were ultimately created as tools first. There is a huge difference being 'treated like a person' and 'treated like a human' I think, and that's what Drew struggles with the most.

Returning to Pluto though, one thing that influenced me heavily is how even robots that have very typical clonky robot looks can show such deep emotion & depth. Like omg JUST LOOK AT THESE PAGES!!

(note: please read from right to left for manga, like a reverse-z)

Like wowowow I just can't. I really can't. The anime did not do this scene justice cause I near about cried while reading this the very first time.

A robot that can't express themselves like a human can, a robot that doesn't look or think like a human does, a robot that doesn't even appreciate the same things as a human does... And even with all that, this is so clearly a person with her very own problems, thoughts, personality, and mindset. With Drew, this is exactly what I want to achieve.

Robots have their own strengths and weaknesses and unique appeal to them. Just like we humans do, even if we end up as very different beings. Isn't it such a waste to desire a pure copy-paste of us? I want to explore robots as their own species that are still a legacy of us, their creators, but also how they can go beyond that, like all children do in the end.

Other than that, certain panels of numerous other manga really strike me and they often inspire the creation of a particular character or plot choice. For example, Attack on Titan (humanity vs giant monsters) really influenced how I think about life's purpose, especially these two juxtaposing panels:

What are we born for, what should we do with our life? Attack on Titan was the manga that really made me realise that the answers to those questions don't necessarily need to be answered, and that's also what I want to explore, particularly with Minh.

And while thinking about my theme on acceptance, these are my biggest inspirations for it (the first is from Blue Lock, a soccer manga, and the second from Jujutsu Kaisen, an action manga about child soldiers, though the character featured is a lawyer):

Anyway we finally come to the end of this!! If you read till the end kudos to you omg cause I just ended up rambling 😭

I do get inspired by English novel books and other media too, but there's sth about the honesty and sincerity I find in manga that just really captures me.

@tate-lin reblogged your post:

#wowwww omg#did you take philosophy?? the inspiration you got is so interesting#i'm mainly inspired by manga so it's really cool to see where others draw their inspiration from#the ideas you're trying to implement is super intriguing too 👀🔥#i wanna beta readdd 🥹

Hi Tate-Lin, 💜 It's such a treat to see you on my dash! Hope you're doing good and the Writeblr gods are smiling down on your WIPS (check them out here). Thank you so much for reading through that super-long post 😅 I got a little carried away. But to answer your question, yes, I have two degrees in philosophy, and I'm still debating whether I should go in for another one (it's an addiction at this point, although I don't like the whole snobbish academic scene, tbh). Most of the references I mention in my post are things I've studied over the years. In fact, most of my big creative projects, and The Sorcerer's Apprentice especially, are extensions of my dissertations. I'm exploring the same questions, just through a different medium (my latest dissertation was on Socrates, fascism, and Foucault, so yeah you can definitely see that in the references lol). I'd be honoured to have you beta-read it when it's ready!!! By the way, I'm curious: which manga have inspired your work? I haven't read enough Manga in my life and I'd love to know more about it from your perspective! 💜

[hillarysss]

YOU'RE AN ABSOLUTE ANGEL! Your elegance and intelligence shines so brightly that your haters become blinded and can't help but say nonsense about you. But I adore youuuuuu okay 🕊️✨

SAILOR SOLAR I WILL EAT UR ADORABLENESS I STG

omg i adore u sm too i stg @3amastrology and me were talking abt how much we liked ur energy and u made us feel cozy and safe LOLOL

STOP ILY U HAVE SUCH WARM SPOT FOR ME IN THE ASTRO COMMUNITY

and gl with that virgo placement dude !! 💗💗💗💗🙏🏽🌟💗👄👄👄👄👄 u posted abt

[askmerriauthor]

Star Wars: Visions thoughts and discussion

Been on a bit of a Star Wars binge lately. Getting ready for the Book of Fett and the return of The Mandalorian soon, just finished playing the Jedi: Fallen Order game, and recently "Star Wars: Visions" dropped on Disney+ (not to be confused with the, like, half-dozen other Star Wars properties that use "Visions" as their title). If you've got the streaming service and haven't watched the series yet, I can honestly suggest you should do so. The whole thing is a series of very short episodes and is entirely non-canon to the setting, so you don't even need a hard understanding of Star Wars to enjoy it.

In fact, it's actually better if you don't know anything about Star Wars going in. Spoilers and brief episode discussion after the jump.

Episode 1: The Duel As soon as I saw a lightsaber umbrella and a R2 droid in a hat, I knew this one was going to be a must-watch.

I REPEAT. LIGHTSABER. UMBRELLA.

Solid kick-off for the short series. Dig the aesthetic, dig the classic samurai vibe (even if it's more of an homage than a direct application of the style), dig the simple story. The particular animation style they chose here was a little wonky but I quickly got used to the visuals and loved a bunch of the design choices too much to care. This one was very action/style-focused and clearly chosen as the leading episode for that reason, which I don't fault them at all for.

Episode 2: Tatooine Rhapsody I'm sorry, I don't recall giving Star Wars permission to be this fucking adorable, how dare you.

The tale of a Padawan survivor of Order 66 who makes a new life for himself not with the power of the Force, but with the power of Rock and Roll and Friendship. Bitchin'. Super adorable, semi-chibi art style that's honestly ringing, like, a dozen different bells in my head for trying to figure out all the different styles it's drawing from. Good fun, if a bit bland in the end. The biggest problem is the music. The story relies on "using music to save the day", which is fine. But when you use that trope you need an absolutely face-melting banger of a performance, which this just doesn't have. An enjoyable entry all the same though. Not bad, not great, cute designs; the quirky story of how Jabba the Hutt got a new slave band to play at his den.

Episode 3: The Twins This entire episode is animated by the team who brought us Kill la Kill and that should really tell you everything you need to know.

You know how if you get a bunch of little kids together, they'll start playing make-believe games where they just invent stories and plot twists and super powers like "I have whatever you can do, but infinity plus 1 better!" shit like that? That's what this short is. It has only the vaguest allusions to the setting proper and immediately hurls every semblance of consistency, logic, and sense out the window with both hands. It is 1,000,000% style over substance.

Okay, y'know what, no, that's not enough to describe the utter insanity this episode is. All I can find online is pictures of the main villain character pulling a General Grievous impression or the protag snaring lightsaber whips on his lightsaber, but that is fucking tiddlywinks compared to where this episode goes.

There is a scene in this short where the protag, who is ghost-riding the hood of his X-Wing upside down in space without a space suit, super-charges his lightsaber into a giant rainbow of FUCK YOU GEORGE LUCAS with the power of familial love and fabulousness, using said rainbow super saber to CUT AN ENTIRE STAR DESTROYER IN HALF WHILE ACCELERATING TO HYPERSPEED, all to save his twin sister's life by making her explode in a somehow non-harmful manner.

This short is utterly nonsensical drivel and yes I would like more right the fuck now, please and thank you.

Episode 4: The Village Bride Wait, we're actually trying to tell a reasonable story in this series? Sorry, I was still on a sugar high from the previous episode. Lemme sit down.

The Village Bride is great. Excellent short that's just dripping with atmosphere and a slow, purposeful pace to its writing. It's short and sweet with little focus on the Force-using characters themselves, which actually serves to its credit. Even in the Star Wars universe, the Ainu people can't catch a fucking break. Easily one of my favorites in the whole run.

Episode 5: The Ninth Jedi The fact that two characters in this short have Sasuke's haircut was extremely distracting. But I actually really enjoyed this entry overall.

Despite playing extremely loose with the established lore around how lightsabers work, this episode over all others really embraces the original setting and tells a slow-burn story about the potential revival of the Jedi Order. A little meandering at times, but it's a solid piece and well worth exploring. Of all the shorts in the series, this one has the greatest potential to actually continue on as a standalone series or be folded into the canon franchise. Main protag is an adorable bean and I love her.

Episode 6: T0-B1 This episode is simultaneously a love letter to Astro Boy and a giant middle finger to Star Wars lore purists.

The tale of an imaginative Droid named T0-B1 who dreams of becoming a hero like the Jedi he's heard so many stories of. This short gets extra credit for being so unyieldingly stylish and charming. On the surface of its presentation and story choices it seems like it doesn't know anything about Star Wars lore, but it's actually packed full of some pretty deep cuts that show the folk behind it do know what they're talking about and just don't fucking care what purists have to say. The entire thing is just "Yeah, I'm ignoring your lore, but I'm doing it in a fun way that makes the setting more interesting, and I'm so genuine about it that you can't be mad at me". I can respect that. Plus the old dude in that screenshot is an armless Jedi who's retired to be a botanist and that's just fucking cool.

Episode 7: The Elder I'm Episode 1, but better.

This one. This shit right here. This is the good shit.

I'm sure y'all have heard before that Star Wars is directly inspired by Kurosawa and samurai films in general, but The Elder really digs into that hard. Where Episode 1 styles itself after a samurai tale, Episode 7 is a samurai tale. Subdued, methodical storytelling, slow-burn pace, charming dialogue amid believable characters, and a truly intimidating villain who provokes a brief but striking duel. This is my vibe. I crave more of this. Far and away the best short of the entire series.

Episode 8: Lop and Ocho Oh for fuck's sake, there's going to be so much porn of this bunny girl character, isn't there?

This entry is another that kind of meanders with the story it's trying to tell and plays very loose with the lore. It reimagines a lot of what we know of the Jedi/The Rebels and Sith/The Empire into a feudal faction-based conflict akin to what you'd see in a period samurai drama. Modernization and callous industry crushing the spirit of the people and breaking apart families. A decent work overall, but nothing really all that impressive in the end. It takes too long to get going and then peters out halfway through its pay-off for some reason.

Episode 9: Akakiri The fact that I had to look up this episode's name and scenes online and still could not remember anything about it should tell you a lot.

The series ends on a downer with the dramatic tale of a fallen Jedi who sacrifices himself and succumbs to the Dark Side. Turning evil for... the greater good? Wha? Had some pretty neat visuals, but I genuinely cannot remember a damn thing about this episode or its characters. Big swing and a miss in terms of impact.