#back to my original point. compartmentalize.

[loverboybrightsideghost]

it's always good to have a break. i don't know how non-music college compares, but music school is A Lot Of Work, constantly practicing, rehearsing, playing. lots of homework. there's also the mental and emotional aspect; being an artist you need to separate your art from your sense of self and self worth, and it's pretty difficult sometimes. not to mention, it is a competitive field, so there's always wondering about how you measure up to others, auditioning, if you'll even get the job or into the festival or whatever.

the past two semesters have been rough for me, even though i had a great summer in between, it was a lot of change (not just bc of first/second year of school) in a short amount of time and a lot of that change was bc i wanted it and it was on my shoulders to work to practice to prove i can do it. and i did! i can! i still have a long way to go, but i can do it. i often think or worry i don't deserve to be here, but it's reassuring to know that 1) lots of other people, even people i look up, feel that way too and 2) i AM here, so enough people who know what they're doing think i can do it, and who am i to argue?

however, to my original point, it is good to have a break. i love music, and i would not be doing this if i didn't. but i think i really burned myself out this semester, and as soon as i was on break, i stopped practicing at all for like a week and a half, and then after that i practiced only a bit at the end of the day just to play my instrument.

what i've been doing instead is sleeping in a lot, watching a lot of tv and reading lots of comics, and also just Reading and listening to music. i've also been drawing a lot.

it's good to take a break. i am a musician, and always will be, but i am also a person who likes to sleep and eat and who is obsessed with superman and likes hanging out with my friends.

[kiwriteswords]

I Promise You This

Chapter Two: Calls of Guilt Thrown at Me

Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x Fem!Reader

Trigger Warnings: Chronic illness, reader with past abusive relationship, canon-typical violence, canon-typical themes, language, future sexual themes

Rating: Mature for mature themes and future chapters.

Word Count: 1.7k

Summary: Y/N, the newest and youngest profiler in the BAU, is haunted by her past—an abusive relationship and an illness she keeps hidden from her team. Though skilled in her work, she distances herself emotionally, fearing vulnerability. Aaron Hotchner, her reserved and perceptive boss, begins to notice the cracks in her carefully constructed walls as they navigate high-stakes cases together. Drawn to her resilience, Hotch finds himself increasingly protective of Y/N. As their bond deepens, both must confront their own emotional barriers, leading to an unexpected connection amidst the darkness of their work.

AN: Thanks for the wonderful feedback on the re-write of chapter one! I have received many requests for a taglist, which I originally had for the story back in 2021, but I have updated that as well, and that can be found here.

Masterlist | I Promise You This | Ao3

The Arizona heat was suffocating, even from the safety of the jet. You stepped off, walking side-by-side with Morgan. Years on the job had taught you how to collect yourself and how to compartmentalize the grief. That part had gotten easier with time. The pain, the heaviness of it, would only come when you were alone. Never before.

Rossi and Hotch were the last to disembark. Hotch, as always, took the time to thank the pilot. It was a quiet gesture, but Hotch had always made it clear that everyone mattered, even those behind the scenes.

"You ever wonder when she's going to break?" Rossi's voice was low, a passing observation aimed at Hotch.

"Who?" Hotch’s brow furrowed as he looked at Rossi, caught off guard by the question.

"Y/N." Rossi’s tone carried the weight of experience. "She's only in her twenties, and she's been through enough cases to break anyone. She went from a college classroom to working brutal cases with us. Yet, she hasn't cracked. Not once." He shook his head. “We all have our moments, but her? She’s been thrown into the deep end and hasn’t come up for air.���

Hotch remained silent, taking in the comment. He couldn’t deny that he’d noticed too. The way you held yourself together in the worst of times, the same way he did. But there was something else he didn’t admit to Rossi. He didn’t just notice it—he was concerned.

"She's strong," Hotch replied finally, his voice steady. "She’s proven her skills in the field. What she does off the clock isn’t my concern as long as she can do her job."

Rossi nodded but said nothing more. There was no point in pushing Hotch on a topic he clearly didn’t want to explore.

The drive to the local police department was filled with the usual briefing. The case involved three missing children, all under the age of nine. There was one lead so far, pointing to a possible husband-and-wife duo. The profile suggested the man was dominant, likely controlling the submissive woman. The connection between the children? Local sports. All three were active in the K-12 youth leagues.

Garcia’s voice crackled through the speakerphone as she relayed her findings. “There was a coach—Cliff Hall—recently fired from the youth soccer league. His neighbors reported multiple noise complaints, mostly shouting and what they suspected was violent behavior. Cliff toward his wife, Melinda. No reports of violence from her, though.”

"Do you have the address for the neighbor who reported this?" Morgan asked, pulling the phone closer.

"Yessiree! Laura and William Read, 38 Breeze Road. Two kids, too, just in case you’re wondering."

“Thanks, baby girl,” Morgan replied, his tone light despite the grim circumstances.

"Garcia, look for any family members or triggers that might’ve set Cliff off recently," Hotch added, brows furrowed in thought.

“On it, boss!” Garcia chirped, her optimism never wavering, even in the darkest cases.

Hotch assigned the team their tasks: Morgan and JJ to the Read family’s home, Rossi and Reid to the youth sports center to dig deeper into Cliff’s dismissal. Then, unexpectedly, he turned to you.

“Y/N, you’re with me. We’ll talk to the parents.”

You blinked, caught off guard by the change in routine. Usually, JJ handled these delicate conversations with grieving families. But you nodded, keeping your surprise hidden. “Of course, sir.”

As you gathered your files, you couldn’t shake the question. Why had he chosen you this time? Your curiosity got the better of you as you followed Hotch to the door. "Sir, if you don't mind me asking... why me? JJ’s usually the one who handles these kinds of cases."

Hotch paused, his tall frame towering over you. His dark eyes softened slightly as he looked down at you. “Y/N, you have a unique ability to balance compassion with professionalism. These parents are hanging by a thread. They need someone who can handle that. And I trust you can.”

You nodded, taken aback by the rare compliment. Hotch wasn’t one to hand out praise easily, and it left you feeling the weight of the responsibility he was placing on your shoulders.

“I won’t let you down,” you said, squaring your shoulders.

He gave a brief nod. “I know you won’t.”

The interviews were grueling. The parents, as expected, were devastated. They confirmed the connection between their children and Cliff Hall, the soccer coach. The moment that stuck with you was when the father of one of the missing children revealed a heartbreaking detail: Cliff’s own son had died of a terminal illness earlier in the year. A potential stressor.

Hotch stepped out of the room, taking a phone call while you continued the interview. You absorbed the father’s words, feeling the pieces fall into place. When Hotch returned, his expression confirmed he had received the same news.

“Cliff’s son passed away earlier this year. The timing fits,” you said, glancing at Hotch.

“Yes. We need to wrap this up and regroup,” Hotch replied, his tone tight.

Garcia and the team worked tirelessly to track down the Halls, leading to Melinda’s arrest. The woman now sat in the interrogation room, her face bruised but wearing a smug expression that made your blood boil.

Hotch and Emily stood next to you, discussing their plan to go in for a good-cop, bad-cop routine. You exhaled a shaky breath, something tugging at you as you watched Melinda through the one-way glass.

“I want to talk to her,” you said suddenly, your voice steady but firm.

Both agents turned to you, surprise flickering in their eyes. You weren’t known for interrogations, but Hotch seemed to recognize something in your tone. He gave a brief nod. “If you think you’re ready, go ahead.”

You met his gaze. “I’m ready.”

As you walked into the room, Melinda barely looked up. She scoffed at the sight of you, clearly unimpressed by your smaller frame. “They sent the rookie in, huh?” she sneered.

You ignored her comment, circling the table. “When’s enough, enough, Melinda?” Your voice was low, controlled.

Melinda shifted, uncrossing her legs and crossing them again.

“I know what it’s like to be behind the hand of a man who controls you,” you said, your tone sharp. “I was like you once. But I got out before more heartache turned me into a monster.”

The smugness on Melinda’s face faltered. She wasn’t expecting this.

“I know what it feels like to think the only person who will ever touch you, the only person who will ever want you, is the one who hurts you the most,” you continued, voice unwavering. “But you let it get this far. And now, children are suffering because of it.”

From behind the glass, Hotch watched, his brows furrowed. Emily glanced up at him, surprised.

“Did you know about this?” she asked quietly.

Hotch shook his head, his eyes still fixed on you. “No.”

You walked out of the interrogation room, emotionally drained but victorious. You had gotten the information needed to find Cliff, and the children were rescued, unharmed.

As you packed up your things at the police station, you hoped no one would ask about what you revealed during the interrogation. You didn’t want to talk about it. It wasn’t something you ever thought you’d have to explain on the job.

But of course, Hotch had questions. You noticed him standing over you as you zipped up your bag.

“Agent Y/L/N, a word?” His tone was calm but authoritative.

You followed him into an empty office, wondering what this was about.

Hotch shut the door and turned to face you, his expression unreadable. “I don’t condone my agents lying to get the job done.”

You stared at him, disbelief and anger bubbling up inside you. “Excuse me?”

“That story you told Melinda—you lied. That could’ve cost us credibility.”

Your fists clenched at your sides. “You think I lied?” Your voice was ice cold. “I didn’t lie, Hotch. Everything I told her was the truth.”

Hotch’s expression shifted, realization dawning on him. “There’s nothing in your file about this—”

“Because it doesn’t belong in my file,” you interrupted, your voice sharp. “Just because there’s no documentation doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. And I used it to get through to her, to save those kids. If you have a problem with that, then that’s on you.”

You held his gaze for a moment longer before walking out, leaving him standing there, stunned.

Hotch stood there for a moment, feeling the weight of his mistake. He hadn’t considered the possibility that someone as strong as you could’ve endured something like that. And now, he felt not only guilty but angry—angry that someone had ever hurt you in such a way.

Stupid, he thought to himself. Stupid.

He heard the door to the station slam shut, and he knew it was you. Balling his fists, he let out a shaky breath, feeling something tug at him, something he couldn’t quite put into words.

Tag List: @jencole214 @indiatuck @eg-dr3amer3 @crispy-croke @esposadomd @genevieve-blr @mdanon027

[seafoamreadings]

week of november 10th, 2024

these are written predominantly for the *rising* signs but they are also intuitively "channeled" enough that they should work for any dominant energy you have! (try your sun if you don't know rising, or more advanced readers can try moon, anywhere you have a stellium, etc and see what works best for you!)

aries: significant nodal transits this week mean all you have to do is walk, and the path appears. the full moon this week also points to (likely positive?) developments around money and your deepest core values.

taurus: the full moon this week is the yearly full moon in your sign. it can be a highly emotional time and yet, the moon is so happy in your sign that it's hard for this to go badly for you. just make sure you're meeting all your needs as much as possible.

gemini: a full moon across your 6th/12th house axis this week pushes you to integrate the multiple parts of yourself that sometimes disagree with each other. sometimes as you go about the routines of daily life it's easy to forget that you even have some of these parts. quiet introspection, especially if you can actually have the moon in view as you do so, is likely to bring about fruitful results psychologically.

cancerians: while full moons may typically have you feeling moody and broody with lots of mood swings, this week's feature in taurus is likely fun and friendly. if you're up for socializing a bit it is a fantastic time to do so, and if not, at least send off a few texts to strengthen community bonds.

leo: if you've had any changes you'd like to make at home or to your more public-facing image, this can be a good time for it. just be cognizant of mercury and mars doing their impending retrograde things.

virgo: earth energy amplifies a bit with venus into capricorn plus a taurus full moon. this is good news for you, overall, especially if you're looking for fun or a new flirtation, or if you're trying to work out an academic plan or spiritual leveling up.

libra: while the vibes are not particularly libran, your ruling planet venus is quite busy all the same, and this is broadly beneficial to you, especially in your home life and/or if you want to reconcile with a family of origin or ancestry. meanwhile a merging of households or a sharing of resources or expansion of intimacy can also be a really good move now, being mindful of course about upcoming retrogrades and possible associated hiccups.

scorpio: creative pursuits or flirtations that seemed to fizzle out in the last few months (and similar endeavors) may pop back into existence this week. you get to choose what to actually follow through with, but if you've wanted a fun fling or artistic undertaking to come back and get a little more permanent, this is the time.

sagittarius: work you've done on your inner world, like shadow work or therapy or a dream journal, starts to pay off big time with this week's full moon, in such a way you can see benefits on the earthly plane. meanwhile a household problem may begin to resolve by the end of the week - rent issues, a roommate search, repairs, etc.

capricorn: venus moves into your sign to grace you with timeless elegance, attractiveness to money, and similar. if you're seeking a charming benefactor this may also come to you in the next few weeks.

aquarius: you can let this week's full moon act as a sort of bridge between your private and public life. of course, if you want to keep these compartmentalized you can, but if it helps you to live authentically to dissolve the boundaries or just make them a little less impermeable, this is a great time for it.

pisces: make new friends and build your close-knit community. it doesn't have to spontaneously appear over night or even in a week or a month. but it is built brick by brick. place a few tetris pieces about it this week.

watch the transit posts in real time to have the best guide through your week. want a little more? have a look at my patreon or ko-fi.

check out my etsy for a private reading or dm me to set up a reading through venmo, cashapp, or paypal.

[silverwhittlingknife]

the reason why nu52 Dick is so simultaneously messy and yet boring is because they don't let him be bitchy enough whilst simultaneously making him a little bitch

sdfsdfdsfs I don't totally understand what this means and yet I feel like I agree with the spirit, anon <3

Outsiders 21 - preboot Dick yelling at Bruce my beloved

Yeah, caveat that there's plenty of nu52 Dick stuff that I haven't read and I don't think it's all bad, but also... man, he is not for me. As far I'm concerned, the main good thing that came out of n52/Rebirth is some setups for sad!Dick fanfic. And yeah, "Dick is not bitchy enough" is actually a pretty good summary of my complaints sdfdsfs

The thing is, nu52 Dick has some similarities to preboot Tim, in that he'll sometimes be insincerely fake-cheerful even when actually upset, plus he periodically seems uncomfortable with direct confrontation so instead he lies to avoid confrontation. And mmm I mean, I like these qualities in preboot Tim, so it's not like I think these are terrible traits to have!!

BUT :

1) Preboot Tim has no authority. But preboot Dick does, and it's frustrating to take it away from him in nu52.

There's some post-2011 panel where Dick lies to Batman and is cheery about it, a la Tim bragging to his friends about lying to Batman in Teen Titans, and I had to stare at it for ages trying to figure out why it felt like such a record scratch moment to me.

But it's because there is a huge difference between a presumably independent superhero lying to another superhero vs. a sidekick and his sidekick friends secretly joyriding in Batman's car.

Like, Tim lies to authority figures more-or-less constantly, because he doesn't want to be told what to do, but also because - importantly!! - those authority figures reasonably assume they have authority over him that he has to evade. Of course he tries to avoid direct confrontation with the JLA / Batman / Red Tornado / Starfire - they're not his equals and a direct confrontation would end badly!

Whereas Nightwing lying to Batman feels like putting him in a subordinate position in a way that preboot Dick never is. Preboot Dick always tells Batman off to his face, because preboot Dick cares about being equals and refuses to accept being subordinate. He doesn't sneak around behind Bruce's back - he fights back! If he doesn't agree with Bruce's position, he tries to argue Bruce into his own. He'll do stuff without asking Bruce's permission, but he won't conceal it; he'll make a point of making sure Bruce knows what he did and also that he isn't sorry.

2) Preboot Tim's lying / tendency to be fake with people is a consistent personality trait that's also consistently problematized. nu52 Dick's characterization is wildly all over the map.

In preboot, Tim is a liar and obsessive compartmentalizer, which is both a strength (disguises, sneaking around authority) and a problem (loved ones who are hurt by it). He's self-aware about his lies, periodically resolves to lie less, and generally fails at it.

Tim's consistent enough that you can track this character trait in all his relationships: he lies to his dad. He lies to Batman. He lies to his girlfriends. He refuses to tell Babs his real name for ages for basically no reason. He stalks Dick and then tries to run away from him in his origin story and then tries to avoid telling Dick his name. And this evasiveness consistently causes him problems!! Dick's suspicious of him. Ariana's suspicious of him. His dad is suspicious of him. Young Justice and Steph get annoyed with his secret-keeping. Young Justice want him to take off the mask. Steph wants to know his real name. When she finds out and calls him by his real name, he has a panic attack and literally runs away. When upset, he insists he's fine and fake-smiles at people. In Teen Titans, when Tim's busy being fake-cheerful and Conner is startled to see him there right after his dad died, Tim gets upset and angry at Conner and demands that he not tell anyone about Jack. Fine, Conner says, I guess it's another secret. In AC 3, he's lying to Conner again and Conner accuses him of having an insincere "Starfire voice," which is a hilarious callback to Tim being fake-agreeable-yet-secretly-bitchy at Kory when he first meets her. I feel like I get that the lying is a Tim Character Trait which is sometimes endearing and sometimes less so and which all the people who love him are gonna have different feelings about.

By contrast, nu52 Dick spends a ton of time lying but it's hard for me to model his characterization in the same way? He's sometimes fake and ... sometimes that's totally cool and sometimes people punch him! also, does it say something about him? ehhhhh maybe? no? who can say!! At the end of nu52 Nightwing, he doesn't want to go undercover and Bruce beats him up, but then in Grayson he seems totally on board with his mission and willing to actively lie to everyone, and then in Batman and Robin Eternal he carries out a whole secret mission behind nuTim's back because he thinks nuTim is maybe a spy and is scared (?) of confronting him directly, but also he's so sloppy about it that he gets followed and the bad guys find nuTim's parents. Oopsie! He represents The Heart and is super-caring but also somewhat ditzy with a tendency to leap before he looks, and also he's very very very goodlooking and Grayson would really like you to know that.

You can try to make sense of this character's internal motivations and I have read various enjoyable fanfics that do, but in the comics I don't feel like he's clearly characterized.

3) Dick should be a convincing team leader

I know I kind of talked about this earlier but it bothers me SO MUCH that I have to talk about it again dsfdsfds

Preboot Dick is a natural leader: he seizes control of the feuding personalities in the Fab Five; he does the same thing in the NTT; he stands up to Bruce. He can overrule strong personalities like Pantha and Roy; he can hold his ground against the Outsiders. He doesn't back down and he doesn't quit. He's got instinctive authority, and he's a forceful and aggressive enough leader that he can lead teams even when his teammates are feuding or difficult or arguing with each other. Sometimes he's a little too forceful and it backfires on him, but for the most part, it works!

By contrast, nu52 Dick often comes off as kinda... hapless? He's definitely not a force to be reckoned with.

Like, just to take one small example, in post-Crisis's Red Robin 14, Tim and Damian are fighting and Dick wants them to cut it out, so he throws a batarang at Tim's staff and snaps at him, and the fight stops immediately. By contrast, in nu52's Batman and Robin 10, Tim and Damian are arguing and Dick wants them to cut it out, but nuDick is incapable of confronting anyone over anything so he just sighs about it, passive-aggressive and ineffectual.

And "ineffectual" is too often the vibe I get from n52 Dick in general. You put that man with Pantha, and he'll probably be bemused, but he won't be able to make Pantha do anything, and he wouldn't be able to make Danny Chase do anything, and he can't or won't stand up to Bruce so he has to lie the way Tim does, and he would never have a fistfight with Roy over the proper way to lead a team.

And in a lot of ways this makes sense, because n52 Dick isn't a team leader, because they've deleted the Titans. He's just a guy. He's nice, I guess.

But even though he gets all kinds of excellent woobie plotlines that I'd normally enjoy (an evil organization is stalking him personally! his dad is beating him up and forcing him into becoming a spy! he's losing his memory!) his personality is usually so far off from the character I like that I struggle to get invested.

Because the thing is, Dick's leadership instincts aren't incidental to what I like about him. They're all wrapped up in his outsized sense of personal responsibility and instinctive belief that if anything is going wrong anywhere near him then it is his obligation to handle it and if anything goes wrong then it's his fault if he was involved and also his fault if he wasn't involved and actually if you have ever gotten within five feet of him and unrelatedly something bad happened to you then it's probably his fault and he FAILED. This belief gives Dick a lot of control issues and makes him bitchy sometimes and is not great for his mental health, but it's also very endearing and an outgrowth of how much Dick cares!

Anyway, re:bitchiness, I have similar feelings about various choices in Batgirls and in Tim Drake: Robin and in current Nightwing; like, I don't think any of these stories are bad ipso facto, I don't begrudge anyone who likes them, and I certainly enjoy fluffy fanfic sometimes - I don't always want the same things in transformative fandom that I want in canon.

But in comics, I often want the characters to have a bit of edge, to be cranky and difficult and just... y'know, clearly the kind of people who would choose to be vigilantes. I want them to care enough to be bitchy about it. And I often feel like I'm missing that, post-2011.

[notacatdown]

What would be the novel's Mu Sheng's non-magical health condition?

For context, early on in the novel, Liu Fuyi tells MiaoMiao that there are demons called Charm Girls/Enchantresses. They're powerful monsters that prefer to stay away from humans. If they're ever betrayed, their souls will split into Resentful Women that will bring about mass destruction. I find it really interesting that these apex entities are the ones going out of their way to avoid humans.

MiaoMiao sees this as a split personality.

Much later on, we find out that the Enchantress Clan also has magical tools to curb their emotional instability, which I think makes a lot of sense.

In the novel, Mu Rong uses this tool to help Mu Sheng when he was a child. Before his memory was wiped (and he wakes up without memories in a clan of hostile demon hunters), he didn't need to wear a hair ribbon. Much later on, his hair ribbon gets destroyed, and for a while, he is struggling to gain control of his body from that mindless bloodthirsty side of him. (But even when he loses his mind, he still cooks for MiaoMiao and does all the housework.)

Anyways, back to my original thought, I think the novel versions of Mu Rong and Mu Sheng's non-magical health condition could be dissociative identity disorder. I suggest this because the author doesn't have Mu Sheng permanently gain mastery of his demon side.

We're told there's always a risk the demon side will win, so Mu Sheng has to keep wearing the hair ribbon just like people with dissociative identity disorder need therapy and possibly medication for depression. People with this disorder may also suffer memory loss/the non-magical version of amnesia spells.

Plus, at the beginning of the story, Mu Sheng has such distinct personalities. Puppy mode when his sister is present and black lotus mode when she's not around. He so strongly believes this set of behavior is not him, but he must act this way to be loved. Later on, when MiaoMiao has successfully convinced him that there's no point and no need in hiding his darker tendencies, these two sides sort of bleed into each other. he gets better at not compartmentalizing himself.

Edited to add: Thank you for the comments! Really fun to see other people's views on this topic (and also learn more about mental illness).

[lonelychicago]

made my way to a life i would choose

buck/eddie | explicit | 3/6, 21.5k words

In which Eddie transfers from his station to the Dispatch Center to be the LAFD Liaison, change is hard, staying away from Dispatcher Evan Buckley is even harder and not falling in love with the man is god-damned impossible. Eddie makes his way to a life he would choose and to a family who will choose him back. or affectionately called the buddie at dispatch fic <3

read on ao3

CHAPTER THREE

He's trying to stay calm; he's trying to hold it in; to push the fear down and compartmentalize like he usually does. Surely Buck is fine.

Maybe he went back upside, back to Maddie and Josh or back to his desk to continue answering calls. Surely Buck is fine and probably already evacuating the building after Eddie made the call over the radio.

But Terry would've told him if that were the case, right?

"Mayday, Mayday, this is Firefighter Eddie Diaz on a department-wide channel. We have a fire at Metro Dispatch downtown. Point of origin appears to be on the second floor records room." Eddie speaks on the radio. "All non-essential personnel begin evacuation procedures. Repeat. This is Firefighter Eddie Diaz. Metro Dispatch is on fire."

or:

Certain feelings are stronger than ever and impossible to ignore, but things get complicated when the dispatch center burns down... and almost takes Buck down with it.

Eddie saves the day.

[likeburningcoal]

So I watched the first two episodes since they’re in English now. Live reaction:

LMK Season 5 spoilers under the cut:

Fun training session! Let’s go!

Tired MK is tired. Somebody get this boy the therapy he needs!

Wukong is trying to be responsible about the monkey form at least.

“I’m compartmentalizing!” XD me too MK, me too

MAC MAC MAC!!!! Also “Bud” not in a mocking way!!!!

“This mountain’s been by home just as long as yours” I’m screaming!!!

They’re working together! (Sorta)

Wukong confirming he didn’t know about MK!

Referencing Mac’s death and resurrection!

Ominous stone crack!!

Mei!! My girl!!!

THEY BUILT HIM A NEW HOUSE!!!!

Tang continuing the tradition of shirking the hard labor. Good to see he’s still himself.

THE PICTURES!!!

The origami!!

Even Mo gets a picture!!

HUG HUG HUG!!!

MK please chill, like even 2% calmer would be a major improvement. You need to rest and get therapy.

“Sleeping with the noodles”

Dadsy give him some comfort. Also send him to therapy. Or teach him cooking.

MK backstory! Noodles! Sleepy noodles!!!! That is so cute oh my god!!

MK is a heavy boi. Also sleepy.

“I love you, son” I am not emotionally prepared for the sheer amount of MK and Pigsy fluff in the last two minutes.

Mac sleeping with the little monkeys!!! At the tree!!!

Spooky goings on. References to Monkey King getting kidnapped to the underworld perhaps??

Stop blaming the monkeys for the things they’ve been trying to stop please. That’d be great. MK needs a nap. You could’ve waited for him to sleep.

Wukong throwing shade about the underworld situation. You tell ‘em!

Smug smile. Good monkey.

Mac canonically appears in the Monkey King Ace Attorney TV show? What?

Fillet?? Fillet??? Nezha?!? “Nezhie”?!??!?

Li Jing, hey, can’t say it’s a pleasure to meet you. Maybe take some parenting classes and then we’ll talk.

Mac trying to stop the fillet!!!

MK losing it a bit at that, love the concern for Wukong! They is a family!!!

Also Nezha trying to plea for them!

Underworld jail.

Grumpy Wukong and mopey Mac, I can just feel all the angst fics being written.

MK is trying so hard to free his mentor!

“It’s tense in here.” Gee I wonder why.

Secret plan with the fur? Secret plan with the fur? The nods?!

(I think I should interject here to point out, I rarely watch things without also doing something else to distract my hands, and yet my crochet has been forgotten because I’m having so many thoughts!)

Nezha providing exposition

Tang!Wukong, glasses is a must

Painted art style my beloved it’s good to see your return!

“My father is not the enemy” I mean he’s not exactly a pillar of goodness either my dude.

“I’m a clone”

Okay the running animation bit was actually pretty nice, love the movement. I like how they’re really trying to keep close to the original style of animation even though they’re working with a totally different tool set.

Mac, are you…are you Naruto running?

Wukong keeps doing the cutest smiles. I’m gonna have to go back through and grab some many screenshots.

Wukong and Mac just…knowing exactly how to fight together with no communication when they’re actually both on the same side.

Sandy got a new truck…

…And it’s gone, poor guy

MK worried that they’re just the harbingers of chaos when they have directly caused so few of the problems they’ve faced. Like, I get it, but maybe have some perspective. You know what would help with that? Therapy.

Just don’t explain anything. It’s fine. They’ll figure it out.

MK building powers!!

Fillet use!! Mac stepping in!! Mac sacrificing himself?!?!? Oh the angst fics will be legendary!!

“He always gets away, right?” Followed by sad face?!? OH THE ANGST FICS WILL BE LEGENDARY!!!

Monkey in pagoda. This feels familiar.

I’m sensing a later “boiling rock” style episode. Or else they all get trapped in there and have to bust out (Nezha helping them escape possibly?)

That was so good! I can’t wait for the actual proper release for better audio quality and more importantly MORE EPISODES!!

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Does the "This is all a dream orchestrated by Malleus" relate to the Yuuverse with all the Yuus repeatedly going through the story over and over again? I have seen people theorize that every time a Yuu fails, a new one starts over and I'm too sleepy to actually relate this theory to the new events that just transpired.

I think you’re talking about two popular but different theories? 🤔 (Though now it definitely seems like those two theories are converging into one…?)

There were some that believed in the time loop theory. Some powerful entity (usually said to be Crowley) summons new Yuus every time the Yuu from the previous time loop fails and/or dies. It is said that the resets usually occur when Yuu is killed by an Overblot, with the most common “death by Overblot” owing to Grim. Some also embellish the theory with ideas about Crowley’s motives and whether he is a good person or not.

There is an extension of time loop theory—the “Yuu is dead” theory; in “Yuu is dead”, the player character is theorized to be someone who died while crossing the road (yup, an isekai classic; the manga and light novel Yuu all got transported at a crosswalk), and Crowley summoned them into Twisted Wonderland after their passing to serve his own needs. Sometimes people will point to Yuu emerging from a coffin and/or Crowley avoiding the topic of bringing them home (since it’s impossible due to their “dead” status) as proof of Yuu being dead. Both time loop and Yuu is dead theory primarily stem from the many iterations of Yuus across various official TWST media (the manga, the light novel, etc).

Others believed in the dream theory, in which (much like the original Alice in Wonderland), everything in Twisted Wonderland is just a dream that someone is having. There are variations of the dream theory depending on who the dreamer is, but the most common ones I’ve seen assign the designation of dreamer to either Yuu (who has been having prophetic dreams in the main story) and Malleus (whose Disney counterpart is strongly associated with inducing sleep). Sometimes dream theory also includes evidence backed up by Silver, who appears to have some kind of vague association with Yuu and their dreams. It is worth noting that some fans do not like dream theory because they feel that it devalues the experiences had and the relationships formed if nothing was “real”.

As I said before (given what we know of the most recent main story update), it seems like people are now combining different aspects of those two theories to make a new one. The update is still pretty fresh, so I haven’t yet had the time to read up and acclimate myself with the various time loop-dream theory combinations.

One thing that I will note is interesting is??? I remember Yana saying a few years ago that we should treat TWST’s events and vignettes as AUs separate from the main story, and at the time I thought it was to make things easier for the writing team (so they didn’t have to worry about timeline stuff). But now???? I’m wondering if every event and vignette was actually a part of the dream world… The evidence is (sort of??) there!!

I normally wouldn’t include gameplay mechanics as part of a theory (since I compartmentalize meta from the story/characters/lore), but I feel that the gloves are off for this since Malleus initiated what was essentially a fourth-wall break at the end of 7-37 (booting us back to the main screen of Twisted Wonderland after forcing everyone to sleep). The part where he casts his spell is even named “Forced Game Over”, which is very on the nose for a character who is not tied to technology other than being really bad at using it. He also says a lot of foreboding things about how “it would be better for fictional characters to stay as they are forever” (not an exact translation, I’m just generalizing).

AnYWAY, my thought is??? Are the events and/or vignettes meant to be the characters dreaming (not that Malleus necessarily created the dream world, but the dream world is like their collective unconscious and/or everyone having individual dream/their own iterations)???? Because Malleus promises to send them to a world where they can be “heroes”, a place where they can find “happy endings”, where no one has to leave. Most events and/or vignettes have very carefree vibes to them or just generally non-serious conflicts. They’re usually full of tales of carefree school days.

The vignettes and events also being part of the dream world also explains why Lilia (whose magic was supposedly waning is still able to use his quite proficiently), and why some characters who would normally be somewhat hostile towards each other seem more mellowed out in some events (ie Epel and Vil having an amicable relationship in the first Halloween event when they didn’t learn to get along until episode 5, which takes place in late winter). It would also explain why sometimes main story happenings are referenced in vignettes and events, but the vignette and event happenings are not mentioned in the main story. Characters are bringing knowledge of reality into the dreams, but when they “awaken” from those dreams, they cannot recall all the details from them.

Another detail that’s pretty suspicious is the animation that plays when you’re Groovying a card 👁️ 👄 👁️ What covers the screen when you do??? That’s right—thorns, just like when Malleus casted his unique magic. Was this TWST’s indirect way of cluing us in that the whole damn game was just a dream?????? The title whenever we boot up the game was staring at us in the face with the “answer” all along: Twisted Wonderland. A dreamy place full of wonders—but just that, a dream.

xbsjsvwisview. JUST SoMETHING TO THINK ABOUT, I DuNNO 🤡 Sorry for sounding like a college professor lecturing on Disney pretty boys—

[henrysglock]

Dustin's relationship with his father in The Dustin Experiment is, in my opinion, very much like Jon and Will's with Lonnie, and I'd like to use some excerpts to talk about it.

I saw this talked about by threemanoperation, so I can't claim that this evidence is an original finding, but I'd like to provide my own take on interpretation of it, because I think there are more excerpts that, when put in context, change the message.

(This is, of course, ignoring everything else about the book and taking it as canon for the sake of argument.)

1.

"When I was eight, my parents came home to find me with our radio broken up into parts and spread all over the living room. My dad was pissed, because it was brand new, and I'm sure it wasn't cheap, but I promised I'd put it back together. Took me three days, but I managed to get it working again in time for his Sunday night football." While speaking, I've already removed the broken cap and cleaned out everything the best I can, though I could do it better if I had more materials at my disposal. "Damn, Henderson," Eddie says. "My dad would have beat my ass." "Oh, he wanted to," I say. "But my mom? She took one look, and she signed me up for science camp." She also divorced my dad a few months later, and shortly after that, moved us back to Hawkins where they had both grown up. (pages 35-36)

2.

"The only life lessons I learned from my dad were how not to act" "I'll drink to that," Eddie says, taking a swig from his can of Coke. Then, "You don't mention your dad that much." I shrug one shoulder. My dad's not something I talk about much or even dwell on. "He lives in Illinois now," I say. "We don't really keep in touch." "Ah, a fellow member of the deadbeat dad club?" Eddie asks with a sympathetic wince. "I mean, kind of? He was more just...an asshole?" I say. "He cheated on my mom when I was a kid, they divorced, she moved us back to Hawkins where they'd both grown up, and that's kind of it." I was too much of a mama's boy at that age to forgive my dad, and he didn't care enough to work past that, and now our relationship is nonexistent. Eddie lets out a low whistle that seems to say sheesh. "Sounds like a dick," he says. "Eh," I say. "I'm not really bothered." As far as I'm concerned, my dad has nothing to do with me. If anything, the way he treated my mom makes me more determined to treat my mom better, and Suzie too. I don't want to be anything like him. Everything that makes me me, I owe to my mom, and my friends, and myself. Walter Henderson gets no claim in how awesome I am, thank you very much. (pages 144-145)

threemanoperation used excerpt #2 to draw a connect with this quote:

To call Lonnie the same kind of asshole as Walter in conjunction with an excerpt from the Hopper novel about compartmentalized memories of trauma—seemingly to paint a picture of Lonnie being a source of buried trauma for Will in a similar way to El's purported dissociative amnesia surrounding the 1979 massacre.

With the added context, I have to wholeheartedly disagree.

Walter was an asshole, but D'Amato makes a point to specify that Walter did not beat Dustin the way Alan beat Eddie, and that Claudia divorced Walter a few months after he even came close to wanting to hit his son. Walter is now entirely absent from Dustin's life, and Dustin doesn't consider him a major influence, let alone a negative influence. In fact, he re-frames Walter as being a source of motivation to be a better person.

We see this same type of effect coming through with Lonnie and Jon:

Lonnie, Jon, Dustin, and Walter are almost beat-for-beat the same. Neither Jon nor Dustin want to become their absentee asshole dads who are worse to their wives than they are to their children—specifically because their wives left them before things could get any worse than they were.

Hell, Lonnie and Joyce separated around the same time Claudia and Walter did in The Dustin experiment:

Claudia left Walter when Dustin was eight. Will, pictured above, is no older than twelve. "Should I Stay or Should I Go" came out in 1982, so realistically, he's no younger than eleven. Given that Joyce is sick of Lonnie's excuses, it's fair to say he's been out of the picture for a decent amount of time, meaning there's only about a two year difference between the two story lines.

Not to mention Lonnie and Walter are also, supposedly, both sports guys. Walter was concerned about his Sunday night football, and Lonnie is a baseball guy:

If we're using the books as source material, then we have to acknowledge the full context.

Walter was not physically abusive, he was just an asshole, mainly to Claudia, and he didn't care enough to be present for his son. I feel the Byers family is much the same—Lonnie was an asshole, mainly to Joyce, and he didn't care enough to show up for his kids in any way. Dustin doesn't have any repressed memories of his father, so it's really hard to use his relationship with Walter to craft a case of Will having repressed memories of Lonnie, let alone Lonnie having actively beaten his sons.

(Again, ignoring the out-of-character portions of the novel and the fact that the novels are loosely canon at best.)

[soleminisanction]

Can you lay out what the problems were with TimSteph relationship (in canon terms)? On both sides. Because I’d like to have something I can point to in reference when people get mad when I say the relationship seemed unhealthy

You'll excuse me if I stick to summary instead of citations, otherwise it'd be way too much for Tumblr; I go into more detail on a lot of these in some of my other posts.

From Tim's side, most of the problems stem from or tie back into a... I almost want to say power dynamic, but I don't think that's entirely right because it's not that he "has power" over Steph, he's not her boss or her superior officer or anything. But he does have legitimacy, experience and acceptance within the sphere of masked superheroes that Steph very much does not (or at least, not while they're romantically involved), and that leaves their relationship imbalanced.

Tim and Steph are both pointedly aware of this, and Tim sometimes holds that over her head, particularly when it's brought up that he knows her secret identity (having figured it out after their first meeting) but she doesn't know his for the longest time. He is also sometimes condescending as a result, though what counts as "condescending" is very much up to interpretation -- like, I don't count him ordering her around while they're on patrol together as "condescending" because he is legitimately the one who knows what he's doing and she is the untrained amateur. That to me is like claiming it's "condescending" for an EMT to order around some rando with basic first aid training when trying to save someone's life.

Then there's the complication with Tim's need to keep secrets and compartmentalize his civilian life away from his superhero one. The rule about Batman forbidding the secret ID sharing was added after Zero Hour to up the drama a bit, but the core of the issue was originally all Tim. He had a psychological need to keep the two parts of his life separate, and that required keeping big secrets about his true identity and forced him to keep Steph at arm's length. He knew everything about her, but she knew basically nothing about him, and that's not a recipe for a healthy relationship.

Though, to be fair, Tim himself was very aware of this, which is why, right at the beginning of their relationship, he laid all of that out for her in explicit terms and made it clear that he thought the two of them getting together was a bad idea for that reason. And Steph told him that she was okay with that and wanted to try anyway, explicitly agreeing to allow him the boundary of keeping his identity.

Which is why it's such a problem that she goes back on that and starts going behind his back to uncover his secret identity for herself, in plain violation of the boundary she agreed to. Like, that's the thing that makes it actually bad for me -- if she wasn't involved with him and didn't know the penalty he'd suffer for breaking the rule, it'd be one thing, but the fact that she not only knew but made a verbal agreement to respect her boyfriend's wishes and went back on it, that's the thing that makes it a relationship deal-breaker for me. Especially because once she finally does find out, her reaction is to mock him, so delighted that she's getting one over on him that she's completely oblivious to the near-panic attack he's having as a result; that doesn't indicate that she cares much about his feelings or well-being.

This isn't the first or the last time that Steph will make a verbal agreement that she has no intention of keeping, either -- that's what got her fired from Robin. Tim might keep secrets and have to lie about his activities as a result, but Steph is actively deceitful, you can't trust her word, she'll tell you what you want to hear, do whatever she wants anyway, and then be offended when you try to hold her to the terms of the agreement she knowingly made.

And she assumes that the people around her, including Tim, are going to be the same way, which means that she's also intensely jealous. If Tim so much as mentions that he knows another girl, Steph immediately assumes that he's cheating on her and lashes out in a rage, refusing to talk it out with him and focusing instead on getting revenge on him -- she does this at least twice.

Steph is also very willing to hurt Tim (and other people, but Tim gets the brunt of it) to get what she wants. She wants Batman's approval and attention, so when she comes back from faking her death and he (in the midst of outside manipulation in the lead-up to Final Crisis) tells her to test Tim first by stalking him, then by hiring an assassin to attack him, and then by working with one of his arch-nemeses to challenge him, she goes along with it without a second thought.

And then she refuses to apologize or even acknowledge responsibility for any of it, blaming other people (mostly Batman) and acting like she didn't have a choice or any agency, in spite of half her characterization being built around telling Batman to go fuck himself. More often than not, she bullies Tim into apologizing to her for being upset about the thing that hurt him in the first place.

Also: Steph hits her boyfriends. She has dated two men and has been shown hitting them both, not in the acceptable context of training or a superhero throw-down, but because they made her angry and she wanted to shut them up. Sometimes it's played as a joke, sometimes for drama, sometimes it's an Empowering Feminist Moment, but it's always bullshit because it's never portrayed as a bad thing.

There's also a subjective argument to be made that she is emotionally abusive, using insults disguised as mean-spirited "jokes" to cut down her partner's self-esteem and bully him into doing what she wants. In a similarly subjective space, it's very easy to argue that their relationship began with a good 50 issues of Robin full of Steph sexually harassing Tim, forcing kisses, physical affection and pick-up lines on him even while he repeatedly asked her to stop.

Tim did "start it" by kissing her, once, while deprived of oxygen, in thanks for saving him from suffocation, but for a long while after, every time she tried something like that, he would ask her to stop.... and she wouldn't, laughing off his protests and insisting that he wanted it in a very, "your mouth says no but your body says yes" rape culture kinda way. Which then brings us back around to the lack of respect she has for Tim's boundaries, which is really the heart of the problem on her part of the relationship.

---

TL;DR -- From Tim's side, the issue is mostly that he has a status over her that he wants to maintain that keeps their relationship unbalanced. From Steph's, the issues stem from a lack of respect for her partner's boundaries, which extends to some controlling and arguably abusive tendencies.

And that's not even getting into the very subjective interpretation that Tim might not even be attracted to Steph at all, he just feels compelled to have a girlfriend so he doesn't have to confront how deep in the closet he is and thus gives in after she makes it clear she won't take no for an answer. But like I said, that one's super subjective and up to interpretation.

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

Almosts | Seventh Virtue

So I’ve been doing evil things (printing & binding a copy of Seventh Virtue) & I was flipping through the textblock today & landed on this! Because I’ve been MIA, here’s this giant excerpt lol! What if… Lonan and Harrison were kind of normal???

Fun fact: this scene is a rewrite from the OG book 5 (or 4?) where Reeve cuts Lonan’s hair. The dialogue structure is the same!

Text transcript under the cut!

Lonan’s ears twitch, and when Harrison says nothing else, his gaze unfocused for a moment, he turns around. “Is something wrong?”

But nothing’s wrong, or maybe everything is, because Harrison’s hands are suddenly shaking to the point where he puts the scissors down onto the counter.

“It looks nice,” Lonan says, an attempt at reassurance, touching at the shorter frontmost strands. “The hair? You’re doing a good job.”

Harrison struggles to breathe. “It’s not that,” he says. Suzanna is less than a perfect mother. But in moments, she was there. Who was there for Lonan?

“Who cut your hair for you when you were a kid?” Harrison asks.

Lonan’s getting up now, blinking in surprise. “If you’re worried I don’t like it—”

“Who cut your hair for you when you were a kid?” Harrison presses.

Lonan’s face flashes with something—surprise maybe? Shock?—and then it’s gone in an instant, compartmentalized. Harrison wants to tell him to stop that. Beg him to stop hiding things from him and tell him everything—what breakfasts were his childhood favourites, if he was ever a team captain at school and if it was for chess or football or both, who showed him tenderness when he skinned his knee or cried during a thunderstorm, what happened to him during his captivity—if those wounds at all are something Harrison can fix.

“My mother,” Lonan says slowly, referring not to his biological mother, Izzy, but the woman his father eventually married. She’d died young, when Lonan was four or five—the original owner of Harrison’s drop earring. “And when she died, my father. Why are you asking?”

Harrison braces himself against the counter. “Do you miss your mother?”

Lonan’s lips quirk. “No.”

“No?”

“I didn’t know her well. I remember her in bits and pieces. I honour her. But I don’t necessarily miss her.” As if sensing Harrison’s confusion, he adds, “I want to, sometimes. But most of the time, I can’t.”

Harrison nods, gulping. “I think I miss my mother.”

Lonan’s face softens. He slips his hands into his pockets, takes a step toward Harrison. And then there he is, touching Harrison’s hand, so close, Harrison can almost hear his heartbeat. And Harrison lets him, the way his fingers trail up his wrist, the way their faces get closer. Harrison looks down at the scissors, and then up at Lonan’s eyes, down to his mouth.

And then he turns away.

“Do you feel like you have a family?” Harrison asks, tightening his arms across his chest.

Lonan settles next to him, leaned up on his palms. “I have Reeve. I have Chris.”

“But do you feel like you have a family?”

Lonan seems to understand what he means. Of course Reeve and Chris are Lonan’s family members, but in terms of family, what does he have? A fragmented whole? It’s like Harrison and Suzanna. Of course she was his mother. Of course she was his family. But does he feel now like he himself has a family? His father is as good as dead to him. Suzanna is now gone. He and Lonan used to have each other, but what about now?

“Sometimes,” Harrison whispers, “I forget how lonely it is.”

From Harrison’s periphery, he watches Lonan nod, his mouth ajar like he wants to say something but doesn’t know exactly what. Lonan must know exactly how he feels. How much time did he spend alone for nearly two full years? How intimately was he forced to confront the contents of his brain, because if he didn’t, he’d be driven to death by his boredom? Harrison is lucky to have had Foster in this time, and Foster’s the closest thing to a brother he’s ever had. It’s strange, how having Lonan back is an uncomfortable, foreign thing, but also simultaneously, the most normal thing Harrison’s experienced in weeks, his body buzzing next to his, electric, alive.

Harrison nudges his hand across the counter until it touches Lonan’s. Their contact jolts them both, their eyes both wide, familiar, afraid.

“I should go,” Lonan says, then goes to walk away. The instant he does, Harrison finds his fingers, grips tight and pulls until he’s close again. Here. Real.

“Why did you come looking for me?” Harrison whispers, veering his forehead closer to Lonan’s. How much time had they spent looking at each other? At dusk walking through an open field, their elbows catching switchgrass, or over a pool of persimmons at the supermarket, or in a silent, lightless room, nothing as arresting as the other’s reflection. Back then, Harrison couldn’t imagine doing anything else, and now, he’s desperate to be like that again: in need of someone, and maybe that’s where he is now, in a state of craving. “The real reason. Not for the haircut. Not to talk.”

Lonan meets Harrison’s gaze, his eyes, for once, as unguarded as they are blue. He shivers when Harrison slips his free hand up his chest. “I had to see you.”

Harrison twists one Lonan’s dress shirt buttons until it comes undone, revealing a patch of skin. How often had they spent evenings doing this to each other—one breathless task after the other? Harrison shuffles even closer to Lonan, and Lonan does the same to him. Harrison traces a hand up Lonan’s neck, and Lonan does the same to him. A weft of clouds passes over the sun, blueing the bathroom, their lips. One man’s hand becomes another, their actions mirrored as their joint touch finds the other’s, their pulses rising so fast it’s hard to tell whose heartbeat belongs to who. Perhaps even their wounds are mirrored. A man within a man within a wound within a wound.

Harrison bows his head. Lonan bows his.

And then a knock at the door jerks them apart.

[captain-astors]

Omg wait 20, 23, and 24 for Touka, Ayato, and maybe maybe Renji :OO

Alright here we go! Kirishima family.

Touka, such an icon, if I don’t see her giving up on her dreams for Kaneki it didn’t happen.

20. A weird headcanon

Yoriko briefly really wanted to start a band, and Touka actually got really good at playing the electric guitar because of it. The band never happened but she retains the skill. Karaoke night at Anteiku is all fun and games until Touka breaks out the guitar and now everyone’s just sitting on the floor in awe while she duets whatever song gets chosen on the jukebox out of their small catalog. She’s got Wonderwall down to a T at this point, everyone say thanks Koma. 

23. Future headcanon

After the utter chaos of the dragon died down, she returned to her ambition of researching the origin of ghouls! She became widely respected in her field and wrote a couple books with theories that were used far into the future, and eventually one of them was proven. 

24. What do you think is a secret they have that they never told anyone?

When she worked at Anteiku, she collected little scraps of travel magazines, research articles, etc. and kept them in a drawer. Just motivation for days when pretending to be a human at school was difficult.

Ayato! Garbage child, committed 3 war crimes before he learned what a kidney was, banned from 4 public restaurants.

20. A weird headcanon

If he wasn’t a ghoul his beverage of choice would be some terrible soft drink or just straight milk with no alternative. I can’t specify the prior because I’ve had a singular sip of about 2 sodas in my entire life but I can speak for the latter, because the two of us are very similar in certain ways and I thrive on milk. No one has ever made the interesting critter joke and it saddens me.

23. Future headcanon

I know he’s canonically 5’5 (170cm) by the end of the series but consider, it would be way funnier if he just stayed 5’2 (159 cm) and for that reason I will always draw him shorter than everyone. Pry short Ayato out of my cold dead hands Ishida you can’t make me believe this idiot is even average height. 

24. What do you think is a secret they have that they never told anyone?

Generally he did a lot of stuff at Aogiri he’s not proud of at all anymore. Many ghouls are forced to kill from very young ages on account of their parents being taken by the CCG, but they’ll still have someone to help them compartmentalize it, and typically they’re not slaughtering for the sake of slaughtering in the name of a terrorist organization. He had a lot of power and a need to prove everyone wrong and to prove himself, so he blindly committed at least a few atrocities mindlessly following a command. He refuses to open up about any of it. 

Renji! Uncle by birth, good one by choice.

20. A weird headcanon

He genuinely does not know how to tie a standard shoelace knot. Any pair of shoes with laces he owns were tied once by someone else and are functionally slip-ons. Uta refuses to teach him because he thinks watching this grown man struggle to keep his shoes on is the absolute HEIGHT of comedy, and Yomo refuses to ask anyone else because of pride. So Uta will continue to lose his goddamn mind in peace. Why did the mask maker just fall off his chair cackling? Look across the room, Renji’s probably fighting for his life with a piece of string and losing. 

23. Future headcanon

Constantly anticipating the next murder attempt from your closest companion is… an objectively miserable way to live. But he’s also still well aware Uta will go right back to “tormenting everyone you love because I desperately need your attention if I can’t have your affection.” So he has no choice but to tolerate it for a very long time. However, I like to think it gets more tame with time. From ward-shaking battles to simple poison in his drinks and whatnaught. Sometimes Uta just jumps out of his closet and stabs him halfheartedly 3 times with a stolen quinque and then goes home and that’s the murder attempt for the week. It’s a funny dynamic because that’s a miserable day for Uta and he’s probably going to be pondering the emptiness of his own existence for the rest of the night and is only held back because of lack of drive, and a good one for Renji because in his mind less murdering is a sign of calming down, right? And he can focus on his actual healthy family and friends. Also like a couple others I’ve seen, I do like the thought that eventually Uta is successful. It fixes nothing.

24. What do you think is a secret they have that they never told anyone?

Overall he's a very secretive person but I should probably think of something relatively amusing because I could go on about genuine regrets for a while... As a teenager in the fourth ward he'd graffiti ravens with bloody claws, and thought it was very cool and tragic at the time, but on account of his poor art skills they kind of just looked like weird black blobs with red feet. That unrecognizable form was a blessing and a curse because he can insist that it definitely wasn't him without major suspicion.

[whisperingrockandroll]

WR&R MYSTERY KIDS LORE & WORLDBUILD MASTER POST

Gear up, kids, because this will be a long one.

It's been a while since I posted a new comic. Pretty soon there'll be a bunch, because I've been sitting on a mountain of scripts and just started making progress on actually making them into comics. I wanna build up a nice little backlog that I can queue up and not worry about for a long while. In the meantime though, I have something I hope will tide you guys over.

There's been a problem with my comic from the very beginning I've never really thought to address for years, and until now, I never found a good place for it. That problem is "worldbuilding." Originally when this comic started out, it was just a Psychonauts comic. Then I got into Mystery Kids, and the MKs just showed up out of nowhere.

If you're still interested, click under the cut. If you already find this post boring and kind of long, just skip it.

We never got any information on how the Mystery Kids club started or how they all met. For the longest time, I kind of just defered to the collective fandom's various disorganized headcanons and ideas and stuff. But I think enough time has passed that those ideas have all changed, been forgotten about, or branched off into their own individual works.

So, it's finally time for me to fix that by giving this comic its own set of lore and backstory. In this post I'm going to explain how everything happened, how the kids came together and what order everything happened in. This is kind of written for my own personal amusement, but also as a guide to keep in mind when I'm writing new stories in this setting, to keep things consistent.

PART ONE: THE CANON HISTORY

The first step for this little exercise is to figure out when all the stuff in the original "canon" happened. This is where things get a little messy, because we have to figure out a proper order for everything so all the pieces can fit into place.

First, we have to come up with a system for naming the different eras and phases where things happen, so we can more easily compartmentalize the different events. So we'll call the first year the Mystery Kids are together "Year One." Anything before that we'll call Year -1 or -2.

Year -2 is where we'll put the events of Paranorman. They happen in Fall, around Halloween probably. Nearly the end of the year. It's important to set this part the furthest back for reasons we'll get into later.

Year -1 is where we'll put Coraline and Psychonauts. Dipper and Mabel are still in Pidemont. There are a few references in the comic to Raz still having a water problem due to "the curse." But in PN2 he conquers the curse. We'll chock that up to lingering after-effects and him trying to get past the mental block.

Near the end of Year -1, Aggie returns and reunites with Norman in events identical to how they played out in Ask-Norgatha. A lot of things that happen are very similar to that old blog, with the exception being Norman and Aggie don't get together. That comes later.

Year 1 is when Gravity Falls happens. Coraline and Norman are family friends (or cousins? I haven't decided, maybe not. Maybe 'honoary cousins'?) Anyway, so: things play out pretty much how they did in that fan episode people made. Doctor Loboto (during a villainous relapse, or a manic episode) comes to Gravity Falls, Raz and Lili chase after him, Coraline and Wybie come with Norman's family on a vacation to Gravity Falls. Aggie stays behind because Norman doesn't want her to get lost. At this point, her Poltergeist powers haven't kicked in yet and other people can't see her, meaning she'd have no way to get home.

So, during Loboto's shennanigans, the kids all come together to stop him. That's when we move into…

PART TWO: THE FANON HISTORY

Note: in this period, my comic has a lot of Holiday specials. We're operating on Peanuts rules here, where the time-scaling slides around to keep the characters from aging. But we'll say in the "real" canon, the stuff that happens on Holidays actually happen on regular days, for the most part. If things "have to" happen on a Holiday, they'll all happen on the same one, just at different times. We'll try not to think too hard about this, because it's just a cartoon. We're out to make a consistent world, but not to arbitrarily restrict ourselves. None of this stuff happened in the "real" world anyway.

Anyway, moving right along to the rest of "Year 1." This is for the comics I made while the show was still airing, so things all kind of click together.

This is where the first Mystery Kids Adventure happens. The kids are all united and save the day. All of this happens right in the middle of the events of Gravity Falls. From then on out, the kids have adventures together on and off, but its a little hard because they have to travel a pretty great distance to hang out together. They keep in touch on social media and stuff, occasionally finding ways to fake excuses to go out and travel together. But mostly, the group is pretty disorganized.

Dib is also a mindless fanboy of the group and wants to join, but everybody thinks he's weird and annoying, so they try their best to politely blow him off. Then he builds a teleporter that lets the kids get together easier, but the thing just barely works. Dib is made a "junior member" and just sort of hangs around.

The kids have a "clubhouse", but it's just a shanty shack built by Soos, half a mile away from the Mystery Shack.

At some point during this period, the Bedlam returns and the kids have to team up to stop her. Aggie helps somehow with her newly-emerging poltergiest powers. The Bedlam is defeated, and that's the last "real" adventure they have for a little while. They don't have a reliable way to meet up anymore, so they only get together for parties and stuff. This is where the Season 3 Finale happens, if you've read my archives.

PART THREE: THE CURRENT SITUATION

From Season 4 and onwards, everything that happens to the Mystery Kids happens in Year 2. That's where we are now.

It starts with Dib on one of his own little adventures. Somehow, he ends up stumbling on an abandoned treehouse that used to belong to the Kids Next Door. It hasn't been populated in years, but its full of still-functional tech that just got left behind. With it, Dib's able to power-up the teleporter technology and now the Mystery Kids can come together whenever they want. You need to stand perfectly still for like five minutes for the teleporter to work, so it isn't a "get out of danger free" plot device.

Seems like a REALLY important development to happen offscreen and go totally unmentioned, right? Well… I thought of it retroactively, so, whoops! But it's fine. We'll just have to make a flashback comic later where the kids find it.

So, from now on, everything that happens in the comic happens here, in Year 2.

If you've read this far, I'd like to thank you for humoring my nonsensical fanfiction ramblings for my silly mspaint webcomic. I hope you had fun and got as much out of that as I did. I'm really happy I was finally able to put it all together in one coherent place.

[punkrogue]

Confession: I used to be one of those antis who hated the Roguneto age difference and saw Gambit as the "correct" love interest. But then I got older and stopped thinking about things in black and white, I realized that Rogue doesn't give a shit since her two adopted moms also have an age difference. I think a lot of Rogue "fans" project their thoughts and desires onto Rogue instead of accepting some of the less stereotypical sweet "Southern Belle" image they like to compartmentalize her into (one reason why 80s Rogue is superior to 90s Rogue is she's a subversion of the stereotype instead playing it straight like the more palatable to general audiences 90s version of the character). Looking back, I like how the "I can't touch a man" problem was sorta resolved with Roguneto in AoA, so instead Rogue's character focus in that universe is being a team leader and going apeshit to protect her son instead of angsting over Remy and how she can't have sex with him.

First off I think that regardless of context concepts like the "correct" love interest are never good. I think that's just become more and more obvious over the years as fandom has become more toxic and more people feel comfortable calling you shit like an abuser for liking a "problematic" or hero/villain kinda ship. The ships are fictional, the people aren't. Who gives a fuck if people ship milo from atlantis and yzma from the emperor's new groove (yes this is a real ship i've seen) it's not my problem. Neither of us will gain or lose brownie points with a god or whatever because we shipped the right ship. Not an attack on you just my Thoughts because that's a common issue now in fandom that I know I certainly didn't see it at these scales when I was a teen.

AS FOR THE OTHER STUFF--

god you're spitting SO MUCH TRUTH.

Okay I wrote the rest of my reply to this originally in notepad bc i don't trust tumblr and god.... this is so long 💀

But then I got older and stopped thinking about things in black and white, I realized that Rogue doesn't give a shit since her two adopted moms also have an age difference.

It never occurred to me before how the age gap between Mystique and Irene would effect her perspective but that’s such a good and interesting point! We’re not clear on even when Mystique was born or how old she really was when she met Irene and we know Irene is like easily 100 when she dies. She and Mystique met in the late 1800s — even if you keep her dying in the 80s and don’t fudge around the timeline at all for the current date 1880 to 1980 is a century. Rogue was raised by geriatric lesbians. Idk WHAT this means for her psychologically or in how her love map got formed but it’s a Thing lol. I think the big takeaway really from being raised by mystiny is really that she expects a certain level of partner care and maturity and in syncness. Say what you want about Irene and Mystique as people but they’re absolutely an in love and loving couple. They’re totally in sync and have complete faith in each other, they’re each other’s rocks. Which ofc is why Mystique went so off the rails when Irene died.

There’s definitely a lot to be said about her expecting/needing/wanting a certain amount of maturity in her partner as a result of being raised by two older women in a very established relationship. Barring the dudes who’re born in test tubes (Longshot and Joesph) basically all her love interests are older than her by some amount. Even Remy is at least a few years older than her no matter how you pace out his life.

I tend to think worrying about age gaps in a society/world or whatever like comics is dumb when everyone in question is legal. Half of them are like 50+ by now (the 05 were teens in the 60s technically, xavier fought in the KOREAN WAR, etc), some are aliens, some are gods, some people got stuck in a time loop for like 2 years, some people where in another dimension for a while, etc etc etc. It’s more trouble than it’s worth to get up in arms about it when you’re not talking about adult/minor pairings. Magneto is like, 100 now sure. He’s also been de-aged like, twice, once that I remember to the point of being a fucking toddler again. This is automatically so fucking wild and impossible to map to anything real world you’re just gonna hurt yourself trying to comprehend the ramifications of that catastrophic life change on even how the fuck he STILL REMEMBERS HIS PREVIOUS LIFE AS AN ADULT AFTER THAT let alone his future relationships with anyone lol.

I think a lot of Rogue "fans" project their thoughts and desires onto Rogue instead of accepting some of the less stereotypical sweet "Southern Belle" image they like to compartmentalize her into (one reason why 80s Rogue is superior to 90s Rogue is she's a subversion of the stereotype instead playing it straight like the more palatable to general audiences 90s version of the character).

I think you’re very right about that. When you sit down and read Rogue’s comics through all at once the difference between her in the 80s and her in the 90s is wild and not in a good way. All the edges get knocked off of her, her morals become simplified, they gloss over her tense relations with the rest of the X-Men even more than they did before. She was created with the kind of character design slogan “the girl from the wrong side of the river” and it very much seems like few people remember that when writing or drawing her and I know why that is to some extent — stripping away her “problematic” nature (remember, Rogue DID stalk and attempt to murder Dazzler and did some other fucked up shit), stressing her more mainstream insecurities, removing her heavy metal/punk/butch interests and making her more in line with a 90s pinup girl in looks makes her more appealing and fuckable to the mainstream predominately male audience of comics. Alt girls are niche. She only got to get her tat sleeve and be a motorcycle mechanic and sing rock songs and be really wild again when Claremont takes her over again in X-Treme X-Men in 2001 and it really does feel like a breath of fresh air. She’s rough and coarse and rude again. She and Storm are at each other’s throats at times. She’s angry and she’s reckless and she’s funny and she’s you know That Bitch.

“Okay but characters change and grow, they kind of have to, and just because their creator intended them to be one way doesn’t mean they have to stay that way,” some will say and this is true! If we kept to the letter of the character creator’s intentions Cable would be boring as fuck and Shatterstar wouldn’t be pansexual. But here’s the thing—

Both of those Liefeldian monstrosities still to this day have maintained their “character slogan”, their Vibe, their Flavor if you will.

Cable is still a super douche with mega guns and 80 pouches who loves shooting things and is Edgy. He’s just better written now and has more depth. Shatterstar is still an American Gladiator made into a Real Gladiator clone boy thing who loves carnage and communes thru media lingo. He just sucks dick now. And is better written.

Note how this is not what happened with Rogue. Consider how LITTLE of her time in the 90s was say, about her conflicted feelings about her Still Evil Mom or her trouble really making friends in the X-Men because of personality differences or you know HOW HER POWER SUCKS THE SOUL OUTTA THEM or her love of mechanics or any of the other things that really only seem to crop up when it’s Claremont or someone taking notes from his characterization at the wheel. Her Character Vibe is “girl from the wrong side of the river joins a different paramilitary group for better healthcare”. THAT’S LITERALLY WHO ROGUE IS. THAT’S WHY SHE JOINED THE X-MEN. There’s absolutely room for growth here but that growth does not mean she has to stop having a mullet, or stop wearing studded belts, or stop being the other lovable unwashed mongrel in the house next to Logan.

But Possum Girl is not fuckable to most men so they don’t wanna write it and they don’t wanna see it and very few girls wanna see it because they can’t project themselves onto that. Also, misogyny— internalized or otherwise. Girls aren’t allowed to be ratty, loud, coarse, butch, aggressive etc etc etc. Rogue’s name is FUCKING ROGUE she’s NOT A SOUTHERN SWEETHEART that literally DEFEATS THE PURPOSE OF HER.

“When she was younger, Rogue thought the name made her sound like an outlaw. she played the part to perfection—using her power to imprint the skills and psyches of anyone she touched—until she realized she was stealing little bits of their souls." — X-Treme X-Men I think I cannot for the life of me remember what issue this is from but I know it’s a comic quote I had to type it out myself years ago since it’s not quoted anywhere else.

“The name 'Rogue' is not just a super hero code. She is very much a wild child. She likes danger and is much more of a Mississippi soul than a Louisiana soul.” — Claremont in a 2016 interview.

Rogue is SUPPOSED to be rough and wild and reckless and YEE-FUCKING-HAW MOTHERFUCKER. She’s r/THE_PACK in mutant form. There’s SO MANY WAYS to allow her to grow and change that do not mean she must sacrifice the skynyrd. But she doesn’t get to keep that. Cable gets to keep his stupid fucking pouches and his grimdark 90s patina but Rogue’s gotta have BIG 90S BAYWATCH HAIR and wear DAISY DUKES LIKE THAT ISN’T FUCKING VICIOUS ENDANGERMENT OF EVERYONE’S LIVES all so she can be the sexy southern gal and spend the majority of the 90s hemming and hawing over the practical logistics of hopping on Remy’s dick as though that man doesn’t have enough working general sex and BDSM knowledge to tackle the logistical end of a hookup with her and instead of trying to WORK WITH HER ON THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ISSUES just kinda fucking pressures her like a 10yo boy demanding a kiss from his crush for a while there before someone fucking LET HIM HAVE BETTER WRITING. Both of them are done dirty by that and most current writers more likely than not came in on this version of Rogue and Remy which is why we’re now being subjected to their malformed vapid bastard children in modern comics.

80s Rogue (and a lot of 00s Rogue) Imo are the superior Rogues because she’s an alternative girl. We have PLENTY of more mainstream girls in the X-Men but we don’t have any really who are ratty and mentally unstable and metal/punk and cause issues and don’t always sync up totally with X-Men “philosophy” and who’re Really Okay with committing Lots Of Violence and who are like, AGGRESSIVELY not perfect.

Why they chose to live in fucking nowhere Mississippi and what their financial situation is and just— whatever the fucking deal with Mystiny while they raised Rogue aside — Rogue is created as a mentally ill at risk runaway youth living in a foster/adoptive home and is heavily coded as poor/white trash. Like, I get very baffled by what the fuck is going with her early childhood with Mystiny (there’s a LOT of conflicting info) but i tend to assume they're living middle-classish since you know Mystique got that $$$. But Rogue absolutely at least coded as a lower class rough and tumble girl in the 80s and that’s like….. actually very important????????? That’s huge????????? Especially since the X-Men are the Disenfranchised Minorities with Superpowers wonder show.

Now look at any 90s comics or 10s-20s comics and show me ANY issue where “white trash” or “raised by Mystique and Destiny” shines through. Didn’t find any did you? Yeah. Thought so. This is why they’re the shittiest eras of Rogue Comics.

Looking back, I like how the "I can't touch a man" problem was sorta resolved with Roguneto in AoA, so instead Rogue's character focus in that universe is being a team leader and going apeshit to protect her son instead of angsting over Remy and how she can't have sex with him.

Part of why I like Roguneto in general is we just generally skip all the gross borderline fetishist talk about how she can’t fuck because she’d kill a dude or whatever. Magneto fucks. He just DOES. You look at him and you go "oh this man FUCKS". We don’t need to spend time on the fucking mechanics of it — in fact to do so seems INSANE. OFC HE FUCKS!!! NEXT QUESTION! Now yes Remy elicits the same kind of response but not the same level. Magneto is 3 grown children levels of fucks. DILF and GDILF fucks levels. This whole drama is completely fucking stupid with MAGNETO as the stage partner. HE’S LIKE 100 YEARS OLD AND HE OWNED A METEORITE. ROGUE HAS FIST-FOUGHT LIKE ALL OF HIS CHILDREN AT LEAST ONCE. WE HAVE OTHER THINGS TO ADDRESS.

After like 20 years of writers being weird little fetishist creeps about how exactly the logistics of Rogue and Remy fuckin would work when like that’s what a gimp suit and condoms are for, it’s refreshing to just not feel the WEIGHT of that forced conflict hanging over a romantic relationship of hers. With romy there’s SUCH a hyper focus by the writers on their sex life half the time not their overall relationship and it’s just weird and gross. Like they fuck, they figure it out and she works thru her fear of touch— can we talk about rogue’s mental instability and how that affects the relationship and remy’s fear of rejection/abandonment now?????????????? THAT'S WHAT I'M ACTUALLY HERE FOR!!!!!! YALL CAN'T SELL ME SMUT SO STOP OBSESSING OVER IT LIKE PRETEENS AND TELL ME ABOUT THEIR MESSY RELATIONSHIP DRAMA!!!!!!

Rogue also tends to just be fucking bonkers more when she’s with Magneto and I like that. She’s less southern belle and more fuck it we ball and it’s refreshing. It’s a nice combo of personalities platonically and/or romantically because Magneto is really an EXCELLENT emotional/mental rock which she needs and Rogue is 10000000% not afraid to call him a lil bitch to his face and he NEEDS people around him to help keep his ego/doom spirals in check.

Their arguments feel more like real conflicts and debates. When they team up it feels more solid and like a partnership. They just feel like there's more weight and oomph in their interactions. Magneto has such a power and gravity to him. He's literally one of the immovable tent poles of the X-Verse. They'll be finding ways to keep him on the field even when he'd be 1,000 in comic years. So by interacting with him it let's her be more of a serious character. She gets to square up unstoppable force to immovable object and really test herself against him while also knowing at the end they're gonna shake and say "good game."

You don't get that with Remy because Remy's not solid like that, he's built to move. He's meant to be flexible. If you take away his flexibility (morally, in personality, in allegiance, in wants, in self-image etc) then he's just not him anymore. But the issue there is Rogue is also malleable — she's literally absorbing other people. That's two rubber people trying to help each other stand. It ain't gonna work and none of the comic writers wanna put in the real effort to MAKE it work. (fic writers ofc, have cracked this code and know how to write romy who can actually work and be compelling even into the modern era)

for me, Remy was a good first love interest for her and I love his character and I still love their dynamic — just now in a more platonic way. Meanwhile Magneto is a better second and potentially endgame relationship for her. He's more where she is in life now and he both gives her someone to depend on when she's going fucking batshit from her powers and also someone to sharpen her claws on who can take it and dish it back.

[compressednerve]

🖌, 📺, and 🍂 for the ask game?

HELLO! Richard 🐔 welcome to the askbox thunderdome 🌩️⚡. Thank you for sending me this ask I have appreciated it greatly to be asked these emoji questions :~)

🖌 - Do you have/want any tattoos? Yes, I have two tattoos. One is of a wasp on my shoulder/back that I got when I was 17 (regret, mostly, want to get this covered up ASAP), and my other one is a Sunrise/Sunset over the ocean with a palm tree in the foreground that I got when I was 19, on my right bicep. I won't post a picture but here's a drawing of them. The wasp was because I wanted a tattoo so bad so bad so bad so my mom hooked me up with a tattooist who happened to live down the street from us... I don't like it because it's just, very small, on the large expanse of my back, right next to some cigarette burn scars??? it just feels. out of place... The sunset was because @parasitefun and I had made life plans to live together within like, two months of us talking, and the original plan was for Florida. Because we met thru the Hotline Miami fandom, and also there was this band I was obsessed with that originated in Tampa and this article I read about them made it seem so romantically warm and humid and hazy... gosh. So the same tattooist who did my wasp also did my sunrise. It's not nearly this vibrant IRL because she was doing my work directly on my skin, and at the time I was only working in watercolor?! so it actually looks faded as fuck 😭 but other than maybe touching it up, I want to retain the meaning and build around it. my favoritest part has to be the lines in between, they're really broken up like that so the skin shows through!!!

as for if I want any more tattoos, yes, of course I do! I want more tattoos every day, but I've gotten more picky in the past few years... I can't really decide on any one design, and Parasite has been the sole earner for our entire relationship >_< so there's not usually any fun money set aside for things like body mods, unfortunately. Here's a design I've wanted since 2016- it's the cover art for Oneohtrix Point Never's "Garden of Delete" which is one of the only things that saved me that year ;_;

This morning I read an article about how heatwaves affect Train Tracks, which for some reason I can't find the article now but I'll try to find it later, but anyways heat causes train tracks to "buckle" which is just ludicrous to me, I had no idea, very terrifying. Railways are beasts... so beautiful... so feral... augh.

^aspd mantra.

so anyways, then I fell into a 3hour nap and woke up to the sound of Parasite cooking dinner/lunch (pork chops n rice a roni), banging the spatula against the pot <3. And the first mental image that came to mind was of a tattoo design for a buckled rail, as a metaphor for having a hard time with your body, and doing what you're supposed to do especially when under heat and stress >_< cripple metaphorz, I guess...

📺 - Favourite show? This has been answered here:

🍂 - What’s your favourite season? ah god.... oh fuck.... *falls over and clutches my chest and sobs and weeps*

I'll attempt to keep this a little short, but mainly: my system is so fragmented, so compartmentalized and so blacked out of Sense Memories, and seasons are senses. My mom has bipolar (or schizoaffective bipolar, or Sadistic Personality Disorder + HPD + ASPD, or god knows what else) and Seasonal Affective Disorder, and I ended up with Seasonal Affective as well v_v I think most people end up with a Strong Sense Memory attached to, usually, only one season, usually Winter or Summer... that's at least what I see most often when people talk about it, if they talk about it at all, but I ended up with serious trauma that seemed intrinsically linked to each of the Seasonal Changes 😓 It doesn't help that I'm exquisitely sensitive to temperature/air pressure changes, and I'm more or less "severely" agoraphobic both on a physical level (outside is way too large) and on a mental level (i am so small and there are so many people out there, people who can and will stare at me, and the architecture, oh god!)...

I have a lot of good memories attached to each season, and a lot of bad memories as well... so I guess it's more about the minute moments contained within each swirling maelstrom of seasons. Going out to the city with my mom in late October on an unusually crisp, sunny day so I'm sweating under my leather jacket but the air is stinging my face. Laying down on the concrete in the middle of the road in early March, feeling the sun on my eyes. That first breath of fascination upon waking up to the first snowy morning, at any point in Winter, except for most of my life I lived in Washington so, sometimes there wouldn't even be snow :/ These are flash in the pan memories that stick out like little shimmering crystals in a sea of lead and blood.

Most of my positive associations with seasons also has to do with how nature changes alongside with it, seeing the trees die and regrow, rain falling or sun shining or clouds moving, animals present or not, etc... it's all very magical and wondrous. Listening to birdsong calms me down, and it's one of my nicer hallucinations usually when I'm awake in the early morning hours... god there is nothing better than being awake at 4am in the middle of summer and seeing the very first slivers of sunlight followed by birds waking up 🐦🦆🕊️🌅

[rogalion]

‘meteorology is the only job you’re paid to be wrong in’

Oooh if you’re a aspiring meteorologist of any kind you’ll hear this a lot and it’s making me recognize, along with my own personal experience, that the general perception people have of science based jobs is completely wrong!

I was originally in Fine Art, which is often contrasted as like, opposite to math and science heavy professions, and switching from fine art to meteorology was in fact a huge shift, but it also prepared me for it in ways I did not expect.

There’s this idea that science is purely fact-based and objective, and it’s easy to see how people en masse have come to this conclusion. Many people may have learned of the ideas of hypothesis, theories, and laws, and that hypothesis are proven through experimentation, become a theory if a large enough body of research appears to back them up and becomes so well established that no new facts are likely to disprove them. Laws are similar to theories, but the difference is that Laws can be used to predict the behavior of variables, while theories describe a feature of nature supported by a large amount of observations and experimentation.

Newton’s laws of motion describe the general tendencies of motion and allow us to make predictions of how something will move if a force is exerted onto it in xyz environment.

The Big Bang, Evolution, everything about Atoms, those are Theories. 

The caveat that is difficult for us to realize is that none of these are objective facts. Laws allow us to predict the behavior of something, but that doesn’t necessarily mean our prediction will be correct. Theories, despite large amounts of evidence backing them, are still theories. It’s up to the individual to decide if there’s enough evidence that they believe the theory is true or not.

I don’t say this to make you doubt that evolution is real, or make you think that everything you learned in Chemistry about atoms is fake. That’s not the point I’m trying to make. As humans we love to compartmentalize into simple categories, and “True” and “False” are two of those categories we love to sort our thoughts into. It’s a lot easier to say something is Completely True or Completely False than have everything be in a murky gray area that takes much more work to sort out.

The best way to see science is that it is attempting to reach an unattainable goal. We want to decipher and clarify how the universe works and want to get as close as we possibly can to the truth. Unfortunately, the universe has a metric fuck ton or so of variables, many of which we probably still do not know about and many of which may suddenly exist or not exist. It’s all chaos, and as scientists we are doing our best to get as close as humanly possible to the ‘truth’ of how things work.

Which brings me back to meteorology being the only job you’re paid to be wrong in. Technically, all scientists are paid to be wrong. We meteorologists just get the most flak for it because our job is incredibly important for literally everyone. If there are more people paying attention to you, there’s gonna be more people giving you shit for getting something wrong.

Another thing people need to understand about weather forecasting is that it’s literal witchcraft. Weather forecasting is literally-- we are attempting to PREDICT THE FUTURE. Not only that, but we’re often trying to predict the future weather of relatively small areas, and since you all have perhaps existed on this planet, a large portion of people have experienced just how acute and localized weather can be. You can live in a town that spans four miles, and meet up with a coworker and tell them ‘how about that rain on sunday?’ and they’ll be like “what rain?” because despite living in the same town they did not get any rain.

Weather is a fucking nightmare to predict, and while we have a lot of radars out there, they are not placed very well in many situations (Hi, Burlington VT) and are tilted half a degree upwards because people didn’t want to get hit by the spooky radar beams because they might cause problems with people’s health (they wont unless you get within a super small distance from them, something along the magnitude of ten meters or less). This means that radars can completely miss weather if its far enough away. There are also a lot of blind spots where we have no radar coverage, even in the USA! Not to mention our current radars are getting pretty old, and if they go offline we do not have backups. Grey Maine’s radar had to undergo maintenance for four days and we just could not see anything on radar here in Plymouth for those four days. 

One of the most important things I have learned about weather and meteorology is that there’s a lot of science that we actually know, for a fact, is not correct. The entire concept of an adiabatic process, for example, is technically useless if we want to accurately assess real life processes. Nothing is truly adiabatic-- literally NOTHING. But it gets the job done good enough, so we use it.

Now, why would we use concepts that we know are incorrect but are ‘good enough’ in science? Because, well, it’s a lot better to have a weather forecast that’s close to right than no weather forecast at all. So many things depend on the weather forecast-- if you’ve ever planned or attended an outdoor event, been to a graduation of some kind, a 4th of July fireworks show, parties, sports games, parades, you name it? The people planning those have to know what the weather is going to be like on the days they’re able to actually hold the event. If you’re traveling, you need to know the weather. If you’re going outside in the summer, the UV index is helpful for deciding whether you need sunscreen or not. For many people, it helps them plan when to turn on the heat or AC in their building. Weather forecasts are important!! So it’s better to be able to predict things as close as possible and still get it wrong than to not have a forecast whatsoever.

That’s not even getting into the amount of work and stress meteorologists go through when the weather gets life-threatening-- heat waves, supercell thunderstorms, hurricanes, polar vortexes, snowstorms, even just systems with a lot of water that get stuck over one area. There is a tendency to over-forecast these events-- it’s a lot more likely that your meteorologist will overstate the intensity of severe weather events. This is a good thing, because I’d much rather have someone tell me bad things will happen and then they don’t, rather than not be warned about bad things happening and they DO. 

Meteorologists have a really difficult job and all things considered, we do PRETTY GOOD. So if you got through this whole rant, thanks, you now hopefully know better than to make the joke that meteorologists are the only job that’s paid to be wrong.