#back in azteca

[make-dragonspyre-great-again]

FUUUUUUCK

[astral-schools]

do you remember when we felt like the only two alive?

[steve-brules-rules]

Brb busy getting my heart fucking ripped out by the ending of Novus

[pupuseriazag]

Nadie:

Yo, a mi mejor amigo: ESQUE MIRA, Tezcatlipoca me parece la mejor opcion para que el genere un poco de pedo en mi historia porque tecnicamente esta zona esta manejada por Quetzacoatl. Asique imaginate dice el man "Puta si le ayudo a este cacique, puede que me empiecen a venerar en sus tierras en vez de a ese cerote." y con mucha mas razon el maje se va a emputar con Atlacatl por casarse con una seguidora de Quetzacoatl o Itzqueye--

Mi amigo:

[jingler]

Wizard101 Pov: you're scrolling on spiralblr some point around arc 2

0 notes

👀 lail-brighteyes Follow

I'm never going on a field trip again THEY PUT ME IN A FUCKIBG ZOO

🌈 gayrizzleheim Follow

A field trip to a zoo doesn't seem too bad??

👀 lail-brighteyes Follow

No you misheard me. I'm not at the zoo, I'm in the zoo. As in, I'm in one of the cages and people are taking pictures of me.

35 notes

🏡 chillin-like-a-titon Follow

Can there stop being attacks on the spiral for FIVE FUCKING MINUTES????

140.1k notes

✅️ wiz-polls-daily Follow

8,341 notes

🪦 is-malistaire-dead-yet Follow

YES.

🪦 is-malistaire-dead-yet Follow

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME

33.2k notes

🌋 spawnofhellhound Follow

Idk if I'm just dumb but I truly don't understand colonization in the spiral. Like you travel through time and space and through the stars and find an entirely different world doing just fine and you say, "that's mine now" ???????

🕶 beyondbonetts-deactivated

spiralblr simplifying and overexageratting other worlds' problems. why am I not surprised.

🐠 luckyhooker Follow

🕶 beyondbonetts-deactivated

NOT WHAT WE'RE CALLED

12.3k notes

⚰️ wolf-deathsinger Follow

stopped by the back of ravenwood for the first time in a while and malorn ashthorn was there still lmao I guess it makes sense for the younger students to be taught there so they don't have to go all the way to nightside but what a flashback

☠️ malice-and-ash Follow

If you think I'm mentally prepared to take on the real world after Ravenswood you got another thing coming. I'm guarding that pit til I die.

⚰️ wolf-deathsinger Follow

ok first of all didnt know you have spiralblr hi second of all does....does ambrose know you're still squatting there teaching the younger students?

☠️ malice-and-ash Follow

Titan knows. I don't think that man leaves his office. I get a sack of gold each month but I think gamma is in charge of finance.

🧙‍♂️ wizardstrong456 Follow

The owl? That's why my student loans got fucked up 🤦‍♂️

🪸 coral-oceanswimmer Follow

ew, what is a specieist doing here

99 notes

🕶 beyondbonetts-deactivated

I am sick and tired of all you pretend activists calling me marleyboner. It's literally a slur. Idc if you think it's funny to shit on worlds you deem ~problematic~ but disrespecting an entire world's name like that is unacceptable.

🪩 spiral-gayte Follow

this you?

👑 amul3twh0re Follow

i love posts where you can see exactly why the op is deactivated

30.4k notes

🦀 underdaseamen Follow

listen i have nothing against wizards visiting celestia but if you do can you please use a mount that makes sense for the area. yall have no idea how terrifying it is when you leave your house with your crab friends and a fucking horse starts swimming toward you.

6 notes

🐷 randolf-spellshine Follow

about to go fight this wizard in the spiral cup ill post the video later

🐷 randolf-spellshine Follow

i got my ass beat bruh im not posting that shit

1,243 notes

🦡 baddestbadger-inavalon Follow

4,371 notes

🦋 ladyorielfan23 Follow

Why we should have expected the y**ng w*z*rd destroying Azteca (part 1)

yw crit under the cut

i have to put something here but i do not have the energy to write an entire essay from ladyorielfan23's perspective so imagine a super angry rant here about how problematic the young wizard is omg why would you say that ladyorielfan23 also my apologies for fucking up the lore in the last dashboard simulator i have no idea what this game's plot is

[destiny-dreamwielder]

my classmate just looked at the task bar on my computer and said "wizard101! i used to love that game!" and it took everything in me not to interrupt this class and force her to tell me everything about her experience. what school were you? did you beat malistaire? what was your wizard name? come back and play arc 2 and let me watch you finish azteca.

[dyvimkisser]

OOOOOOOOH BOY TIME TO YAP ABOUT MY BLORBO

I LOVE Dyvim here. It's just *chefs kiss* fucking perfect. The line? top notch. The VOICE??? The LITTLE COUGHS????? I'm in love.

I remember when I first played through this YEARS ago, I was gobsmacked at this part. Like I could not believe this mouse was already gonna die. Like, I was expecting the narrator to be like "you can't leave him here," or "you need to get help!" No. It's "the wasps are surrounding." Your friend is dying on the ground and the enemy is approaching, you need to run or you'll both die.

and Dyvim is SO READY to give up his life here!! He wants the wizard to go and save himself! Sending him to his people to save them!! His last thoughts here are of his people and who will save them 😭😭😭😭 It's such a good encapsulation of his character. He's determined, compassionate, and a soldier.

OH! And how Diego didn't give a shit. He's like "damn that sucks, go follow that mouse." If the wiz hasn't already started to dislike the Council of Light this is absolutely where it starts.

I don't remember how he gets rescued, I'm sure I'll make another screaming post about it when i get to it, but I think my wiz go back for Dyvim the moment he can. Like, Azteca was a huge turning point for my wiz, and so soon after he's just like "I refuse to be the cause of any more deaths" and does everything to help him. PLUS HE'S A LIFE WIZARD. Bro knows healing, so even if he's at death's door, he thinks he can bring him back, even if he only thinks that because he's coping.

GAHHHH I love this game. It's so good. Krysalis best world.

[extravalgant]

i looove azteca from like. a narrative stand point

because we have this hero and thats you. were practically the stuff of legends by arc 2 just because of what kind of experience we have under our belt. we've never lost a fight, and it's assumed that we never will. that's how powerful the wizard is—everyone expects them to win, expects light to triumph shadow

and when we fail.... well. it shocks everyone doesnt it? people get angry. people get disappointed. to the wizard, who has never known failure or disappointment, it must feel like an entirely new thing. this culture was here for thousands and thousands of years—a culture and a people you never knew about until you were brought into the spiral.

and now because of you its gone. because you failed to save it and stop morganthe, its gone. and i think merle's passiveness about this situation hits a little differently this way—i read it more as disappointment, anyways. and to someone who has never known defeat, not to this capacity, with this many casualities and victims, the disappointment feels a little more crushing, doesn't it? the wizard is supposed to be a hero summoned from the legends, from a place not beyond a spiral where they had not heard of magic, and it feels like they let everyone down.

this imo is where morganthe truly establishes herself as a villain. i mean she already was a villain before imo BUT bringing a grieving man back from the dead to puppet around AND destroying a world is just straight up evil (and i love that). people like to complain about the malistaire bit which is valid in some cases but i think it really does sell the frivolity in which she chooses to go about things. like hey heres a man you killed with your own hands. probably when you were young. i brought him back from the dead to use as my pawn and now you have to fight him again btw. using a dead grieving man for my own goals. and then the fact that we cant beat him at the end, to 'send him back', is just another way she gets a leg up on us. she leaves us with unfinished business and xibalba destroying azteca is just icing on the already fucked up cake she's given us.

shes TAUNTING us. and this is important because it does come back to us in khrysalis—no doubt the wizard is still haunted by the sins of their past; their failure to save azteca. they have to get through this bit, to learn to let it go, before they can learn shadow magic. after all this, it's still stuck with us—our failure, one that she spearheaded.

dont even get me started on the wizard learning shadow magic maaaaaan because now they share one thing in common—they know shadow magic. they wield shadow magic. and shadow magic is so reviled that it's forbidden. no one else but her can really understand the isolation that comes with learning shadow magic, and it parallels the wizard and her even more because neither of them had a choice! the shadow magi turned morganthe into the shadow queen she is today, and we are subsequently forced to learn shadow magic and do the same if they ever have a chance at defeating her. i love it. i LOVE it. i love azteca... i love khrysalis....

[veldfulharth]

I love when the devs just say stuff about the lore like it's all casual when it completely reframes how the spiral as a whole is seen. Like the most recent live they showed the demo for ravenwood academy and the camera panned over to the blackboard and it had the magic wheel thing with all of the schools and they said The game takes place before balance magic was discovered which was already wild cus the drakes are supposedly in ravenwood already but the wild thing is that they said the game takes place 50-60 years ago. I'm sorry what? HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE? I can accept balance magic can spread across the spiral quickly as the spiral likes gossip but.. how does Azteca have balance magic? The world was thought to have been lost in the early spiral but there are enemies and bosses that are of the school. That could be the Aztecasaurs Also discovering it but there's still one thing, the old one's doomed situationship. How on Bartleby's green spiral did quartermane get balance magic? He's been on ice for aeons but still can cast spells like judgement? I know some spells are added to increase the decks, looking at you dyvim, but his whole school couldn't have existed back when the spiral geographic society was founded. I don't know

[mariacallous]

MADISON, Wis. — A bombshell report this morning from Dan Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel revealed that Banco Azteca, a bank reportedly tied to the Mexican cartel flew $26 million of cash across the U.S.-Mexico Border to Eric Hovde’s bank in California.

As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel detailed, Banco Azteca was cut off by several other U.S. banks over “risk and compliance concerns” after reporting linked it to cartel activity. An executive of the bank was recently implicated in a federal indictment detailing his attempts to bribe a member of the U.S. Congress to get U.S. banks to once again do business with the bank. Despite this, Eric Hovde’s bank flew $26 million of cash from Mexico City to Irvine, California as part of a deal with Banco Azteca last December.

This shocking revelation comes as Hovde has refused to disclose which foreign banks and governments his bank has done millions of dollars of business with. What else is Hovde hiding?

Read more below:

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Bice: Democrats question Eric Hovde over his bank’s $26M deal with a troubled Mexican bank

By: Dan Bice

Banco Azteca, the 10th largest financial institution in Mexico, has had its share of problems in recent years.

Accused in past news stories of having links to the Mexican drug cartel.

Dropped as a financial partner by some U.S. banks because of “risk and compliance concerns.” 

And now caught up in a Texas bribery scheme with an American congressman.

But Sunwest Bank, the Utah-based financial institution run by Republican U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde, doesn’t mind doing business with it.

In December, Banco Azteca sent $26.2 million in cash to Sunwest on four airplane flights as part of a massive currency conversion called “repatriation,” records show. Hovde, who is running against Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, is chairman and CEO of Sunwest.

Now Democrats are questioning the deal, saying it gives voters a window into how Hovde runs his businesses by putting personal financial stakes above other issues.

Arik Wolk, spokesman of the Democratic Party, said Sunwest’s transactions with Banco Azteca are “extraordinarily concerning,” especially given the alleged past ties between Azteca and the drug cartel. He added, however, that Democrats were not suggesting Hovde or Sunwest had done anything illegal.

“Hovde is willing to do anything to enrich himself, even flying cash across the border for a bank suspected of working for criminal groups that are pouring deadly fentanyl into our state,” Wolk claimed.

As recently as 2021, Banco Azteca had no correspondent banks in the U.S. with which it could transfer U.S. currency.

Over the past decade, several news accounts, including two by Reuters, have drawn links between Banco Azteca and Mexican gangs, which are the leading suppliers of cocaine, heroin, fentanyl and other illicit narcotics to the U.S.

In 2023, a Reuters reporter wrote that drug cartels are using remittances – money transfers favored by migrant workers – to send illicit earnings back to Mexico. 

The Reuters reporter said he witnessed five individuals on motorcycles collecting cash from people leaving branch offices of three banks, including Banco Azteca. Locals said these were couriers for the Sinaloa Cartel picking up drug money sent as remittances.

In a 2014 story, Reuters quoted a prominent anti-kidnapping activist saying Mexican gangs involved in kidnapping migrants ask for the money to be sent to Banco Azteca. Also, the Yale Journal of International Affairs reported that Banco Azteca was one of four banks that the Mexican cartel was using to process extortion payments.

A little more than a decade ago, the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency investigated Banco Azteca’s ties with its then-correspondent bank in the U.S., Lone Star National Bank of Pharr, and turned up money-laundering concerns. Repeatedly cited and fined, Lone Star soon ended its relationship with Banco Azteca.

Other financial institutions, including Fifth Third Cincinnati and CBW Bank, soon followed.

According to a May story in the Wall Street Journal, Banco Azteca has struggled doing business with U.S. banks since regulators began enforcing rules cracking down on money laundering from drug trafficking, kidnapping and extortion. Many U.S. banks have cut ties with Banco Azteca because of “risk and compliance concerns.”

For years, that left Banco Azteca holding onto large sums of U.S. currency with no place to offload it.

[rug-glitch]

So I was talking with a friend this morning about a character who constantly dies and respawns and it got me thinking about the YW

Hear me out if we go based on game mechanics our wizard can never die they'll always just wake back up or respawn. That has to be so traumatizing like experiencing death firsthand over and over again. Even worse so is the fact that even in death the wizard is trapped in this world. Forever to be nothing but a weapon brought to protect the spiral. Constantly dying then fighting and dying again.

Bonus if after Azteca changes the way the YW views this process. Or any traumatic moment they go through for that matter there is so much to talk about.

[lunatic-pudge]

Trevor With An Alien S/O (Requested by Jansbread)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I forgot I was gonna upload this the day after Christmas. So now it's my first headcanon post of the year.

I like this request cause I ship Trevor with my one OC, Lucille, who's a catgirl. She also has anger problems, but she'd be so down bad for a man like Trevor. They'd be forbidden to be alone together.

I've also been getting into Detroit Become Human, so don't mind me posting DBH stuff. I'm just a hoe who's down bad for old men and androids...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-You're his little Glep Gnorp, finding you after you crashed landed in Sandy Shores.

-Was suspicious of you at first. Probably even ask why out of any planet you could chose from, why chose this Hell hole?

-Trevor was never one to believe in aliens til now. He always ignored Ron's ramblings til now. Now, he has solid proof that they existed. Ron would have an aneurysm if he found out about you

-Just because you're an alien doesn't mean shit. Trevor will treat you just like how he'd treat a human. He'll be a clingy mess, get used to it. He will lose his shit if you have to leave Earth for any reason. Be ready to make it up to him when you come back

-If you're an alien that can fly, he'd be so happy. He'd want you to hold him bridal style and fly around. Make him feel like a spoiled princess

-If you have any sort of elemental or magical abilities, he's using it to his advantage. You can help him take out the rest of the competition for him. Someone's gotta help him take out the Lost MC and Aztecas

-And if you are an alien that has tentacles, well... uhh... I think you can imagine what would happen

-Alien sex? Alien sex. I don't make the rules. That man will fuck anything that has a hole and can give consent. You give him bragging rights that are questionable cause how the hell does Trevor of all people have access to aliens?

-So while you may look different than a typical human, you will still be loved and treated like one. You will be held to higher standards, but otherwise, Trevor will view you as an equal and will act like you're like any other person

-If anyone has any problems with you, they will have to face the wrath of Trevor. That man would skin a man for you if you asked

-Hell, if you eat humans, this man will keep you supplied with fresh meat. This isn't Trevor's first rodeo with giving cannibals fresh meat, and it won't be his last. He'll do anything to keep his darling happy and content

[ravenwoodalum]

on karamelle, why it sucks, and redeeming azteca's reputation.

I just got to Karamelle for the second time, and good lord. I hadn't forgotten how much I hated it, but it hit me like a wall of bricks. And I'm already preparing myself to marathon it and be fucking done questing here for at least a year.

I think it breaks down like this.

Baby's first workers rights movement/sugary-sweet surveillance state Listen. I know this is a game that doesn't allow for player characters to have much individual impact on the in-game narrative. I know we've had to do errands for cops. I know we work for a war criminal. I KNOW there are flaws in the system. But there's something about the way that Karamelle's set up that makes it all feel so. much. worse. And that's the fact that Karamelle has such a stellar reputation within the Spiral before this. The happiest place in the Spiral, the sweetest treats in the Spiral. Everyone seems to fucking love this place. Almost no one outside of those actually working there seem to understand how corrupt it is. And so the YW is talked down to at every turn, like this is their first exposure to a corrupt environment. And sure, maybe it is within, canon. YW gets isekai'd at a very young age and then made into a child soldier, maybe this is actually the first time in canon that they've been introduced to these concepts. But (and this may just be me) it feels really rude to the player -- who might actually have experience with these ideas -- to make them feel like a fucking idiot with the dialogue options. Karamelle's characters just feel rude.

Oh, so the Gobblers were a fatphobic, Roald Dahl type thing from the start. Cool cool cool. Any of you ever read Roald Dahl's book "The Twits"? It's a very unremarkable story all things considered, except for this bit.

Aside from Roald Dahl's unavoidable history of antisemitism, does this remind you of anything? Honestly, this reminds me of the Gobbblers.

We first meet the Gobblers around level 10 in Wizard City -- creatures driven by consumption. And then we get to Empyrea and hear that the Alphoi -- skinny "civilized" creatures -- can become Gobblers if they eat too much or are unhealthy in their eating habits. Which makes one of our oldest running enemies a loop-around fatphobic thing, ESPECIALLY when we get to them in Karamelle, the home world of the Gobblers. Rosina, especially, just oozes fatphobia and diet culture. The literal vilification of being fat isn't even subtext, it's just text.

The Old One, The Cabal, and what to do when your escape from the world ends up shoving what you were escaping from right back in your face. When I was in sophomore year of college, fall of 2019, I had one of the worst mental health periods of my life. Antisemitism was fucking everywhere, I was always a moment away from a panic attack, and it felt like no one understood. While I'm lucky in the fact that I was able to get an official diagnosis for genetically inherited PTSD, alongside the reassurance that I wasn't fucking crazy, there was a period when I just needed to go home for a moment. So when I was going back to my dorm from the dining hall to make sure all my stuff was ready to go, I opened up tumblr and made a post on a long-gone RP sideblog I had for the Swedish Chef (y'know, from The Muppets? long story), and before I'd even gotten halfway across campus, I'd received threatening and violent messages from someone RPing as Borat, which only got worse when they realized they were talking to an actual Jewish person.

That escape from reality didn't even last five fucking minutes before the horrors I was trying to avoid found me.

Now, Wizard101 has always been a source of comfort for me. I made my account fourteen years ago, and I do not know what my life would look like if I hadn't done that. There are flaws with this game, yes, sure, but over the past five years (since I got a wiz compatible laptop) I've developed a bit of a reliance on it to get me through the horrors. No better form of escapism.

But no art form is free of the horrors.

And Wizard101 has the fucking Cabal and Old One.

The Cabal within the fiction of Wizard101 is a secret, nefarious organization pulling the strings on events across the Spiral, controlling history from the shadows. This term literally originates in antisemitic conspiracy theory, with the term 'cabal' originating from the term for Jewish mysticism, 'kabbalah'. And I promise you, you've heard plenty of applications of this conspiracy theory in real life too. It feeds into the idea that Jews (or 'global elite') control the government, the media, the banks.

And then, we get to the man in control of it all. The Old One. Whether or not this was intended, he's a walking, talking antisemitic caricature. The octopus as a symbol for the mythical Elders of Zion is a longstanding dogwhistle (see attached for a guide to this and many other visual dogwhistles). "Oh, he's based on H.P. Lovecraft-" So he's based on the works of a famous racist and antisemite, cool cool cool.

It's just exhausting, walking through a world that is so clearly modeled after Germany and other parts of eastern Europe, and finding antisemitism around every corner. And even more exhausting considering it's almost impossible to tell if they meant to do it. Antisemitism is so fucking ingrained in the world at this point that I don't actually know what they meant to do here, what they did maliciously or out of ignorance, or if any of it was put in with the purpose of turning it on its head. Over the past few years, it has become glaringly obvious that a lot of people don't realize when they're running across antisemitism, or even taking part in it. Including people I really thought would know better.

Side note. For those of you who know I see Dasein as Jewish, you may be wondering how I balance that out with the antisemitic nature of The Old One, since they share a physical form. I think of it like this. Dasein did not choose The Old One. He did not choose to resemble that, but he can attempt to reclaim it. Dasein's Judaism comes not from the resemblance he holds to the hatred that haunts us, but from the love that keeps us going. He questions authority and longstanding tradition, chooses to do what's right instead of what's expected, and is kind in the face of hatred. He literally makes himself, and a world, out of nothingness. Something out of Nothing. He's so Jewish you guys.

The Spiral's "Worst World Award" goes to... I know we all say "fuck Azteca" pretty often on this website, but I don't think it deserves to be deigned the worst world in Wiz. My main gripe with Azteca is how inaccessible it gets after Xibalba strikes -- the flashing lights aren't exactly photosensitive friendly. Which further lends frustration to my completionist nature, meaning I have to finish all quests, badges, and fishing before I finish the world (making it take forever to finish). Aside from that, there really isn't that much wrong with the world (and if you argue that it sucks because you can't save Azteca, I get it, but some tragedies are inescapable by their very nature). It's a problem of gameplay, versus a problem of plot in the case of Karamelle. And maybe its just because I'm a writer, but problems with plot feel much more egregious. I really do think Karamelle deserves more vitriol than it gets.

G-d, I can't wait to get to Lemuria.

[nicos-w101-liveblog]

Cyclops Lane Post-Commentary

Nolan Stormgate is British, for some reason. Probably because he's a pompous prick.

Legit never paid enough attention to know the Trolls and Warhorns were summoned by Cyrus. Which begs the question: Why didn't he just unsummon them when he learned they were rioting? How many can one Conjurer summon at a time? And how long can they last?

I like to think that every time I curse at a fizzle, Nico does the same. He's twelve. That's old enough to know the fuck word. But Bartelby censors it to The Good Place swears.

Nolan Stormgate my beloathed.

Made it to Level 9 in Sorcery Stones when I needed to fill my potion bottle. My enjoyment of that game is ridiculous.

I dunno if its a Hallowe'en event thing or not, but I see a ghost island where the Death School used to be. Building included. It's probably the event combat tower, but it looks super cool.

Cyrus Drake you ignorant slut. "You're one of those fast talkers, aren't you?" They're mentally ill Cyrus. You're being a dick to a child.

Monquistans mentioned!! By Victor Darkwood, random clothier. Lil monkey guys we don't see til Azteca iirc.

AND THEN he says he "doesn't mind there being one less (Drake) around these days" SIR

Hot take, I actually really enjoy the fishing and crafting quests.

Nolan is so useless I swear.

How many names from mythology can they fit in here? Achilles/Akilles, Romulus (usually paired with Remus). So silly.

Hearing the Great One get so hyped up as a terrifying being only to be a cute little vampire ghost bunny is so funny to me, actually. An actual baby. Also: Darkmoor mention!!

Power Pip at level 10 let's go

Wait. Isn't "The Great One" a Lemuria thing? I haven't gotten that far, but I know the name comes back. Is it the same guy? Does he really come back? It'd be hilarious if he came back actual years later. Like a full decade or more later.

Who tf is this "we" you're talking about, Nolan? I did all the work. And even dudebro Garrick acknowledges it.

Speaking of, Garrick, I am not "Your Wiz". Stop calling me that.

Is Klortho (the guy in the library who gives you your first Wooden Skeleton Key) related to the librarian in the Arcanum? Both are grumpy monkeys with dragon wings so...

Diego and Roberto's rivalry (? sibling enemyship?) is everything to me actually. They can't fight because they promised their mom on her deathbed but also can't not fight due to a promise made to their dad on his deathbed.

The "Fear of Drowning" enemy is just La Llorona, right? It feels like she's La Llorona. She scolds you for interrupting like a mother would.

"Fear of Gentle Breezes" is so funny, actually.

Like sure I saved the world from malicious ghosts but there's gonna be a Then-Faire.

Funny Dialogue:

[griffinsmith]

i love it when the traumatized child war survivor gets taken in by a kindly old wizard man who helps raise her into a war criminal to fight his battles!!!!!!!!!! especially when Azteca died and it brought back all those memories of war from her childhood!!!!!!!!!!! wizard101 yay fun happiness smiles and joy