#but that is a circumstance that can actually happen to anybody

[july-19th-club]

cant get over the situation i was in this morning where i was chitchatting with a pair of regular patrons (the husband used to be on the board so like. we have to play nice with them always now) and mentioned having had some wicked insomnia last night . and the two of them repeatedly said "oh, you're too young for that stuff" like. carl. joan. do you think insomnia is exclusively decided by age?

[11-eyed-rook]

"You don't look disabled/trans/bi/like a guy/sick/diabetic/mentally ill/neurodivergent/autistic/in pain"

*Fucking smacks you with my big paws*

[yummymitzy]

Would you have the heart?

Summary: Reader is a villain and just finished up the last of her mission. As she was cleaning up her mess, she hears something nearby. But she doesn’t expect it to be a gorgeous redhead to be the origin of the sound.

Warnings- Slight violence with knife (Not much!!), G!P Reader, i think thats it? 18+ MINORS DNI

Wordcount: 1915

————♡————

Here you were, disposing of another body in a very trashy dumpster down to very end of the alleyway. Honestly if it were under different circumstances, you would have killed this man in the river, but he just wouldn’t shut up.

Finally closing the lid of the dumpster, you shrug off your leather jacket, it was practically drenched in blood. But you pause, hearing a noise in the distance ahead of you, like a squeaking of a shoe? It was clear that the individual was trying to stay quiet.

Grabbing your knife you hold it up, ready to pounce but still lowered down incase it wasn’t a threat. Keeping your back to one of the walls of the alleyway, you peer around the corner, seeing a bright red flash. 

In a flash, you grab their collar and take them into the dark alley. Shoving them against the wall where only little moonlight shone. Soon making you realize that the person you shoved had been a woman, a gorgeous one with straight bright red hair and beaming green eyes. 

What the fuck? Why are you acting like that? Weird. You tighten your grip on her shoulders and neck, waiting for her to speak. 

“I saw what you did to that man.”

“Don’t know what you want me to do about it, make you unsee it? He deserved it.”

“He could have had a family.”

“He was planning to kill them anyways, might as well save them from the betrayal.”

You loosen your grip upon her, now realizing that she cant do much as save him if the man is already dead. But your hands still hover along her shoulders and neck.

She seems to be analyzing you, you noticed her eyebrows furrow deeper and deeper as she hears your quick answers. You couldn’t help it, it was all true, the man has been going for your head for years, but turned his attention to his family once you gone off the radar.

“Don’t think I’ll let you go, Red. I just so happen to know that you’re going to snitch to whoever you work for, make a new enemy of me.”

“How’d you know that.” Her gaze seems to falter just for a split second, enough for you to catch.  Before her facade is brung back up, higher than before.

“You know there is always two different types of heros.” You trail the hand on her neck to trace her jaw as you spoke. “Ones that always make it on the cover of the magazine, praised for all their glory as they defeat the “biggest” of all enemies.”

Unbeknownst to her, you bring your other hand away from her shoulder to bring the tip of the knife to point at her neck. “Or the hero’s that stay under the radar, staying out of the public eye. Not letting anybody know who they actually are… And you just so happen to be the one on the magazines, Romanoff.”

You honestly wonder why she hasn’t attacked you yet for figuring her out. You wonder whats her next move as your eyes scan her face, your eyebrows furrowed.

“Im here to take you in. We could give you better chances, opportunities, if you’d just come with me, Y/n.” Natasha sighed, seeming desperate? Which made you raise an eyebrow.

“Take ME in? You and your little boy band must have a shit ton of death wishes huh?” You laugh, your wings spreading out slightly behind you. Making Natasha wonder how she never noticed them with how large they were.

“Maybe, but it really all just depends if it’s worth the risk.” 

“The risk you’re talking about is way bigger than your boyband could handle, I’m a threat, anybody could admit that. I can take this town out in a matter of seconds.” You hissed, moving your head closer to hers, your breath fanning over her overly pierced ear.

Natasha shudders at your gesture, unknowingly leaning into it. “But you wouldn’t have the heart to do it? You know you’re capable, but are you able to put your mind to it?” She’s confident, you could give her that, maybe way too confident..

————♡————

You don’t know exactly how or when this happened, or got in this position but you weren’t going to complain. Natasha Romanoff, Black Widow of the Avengers, has you against the wall now. 

The thing is, she wasn’t going to kill you, instead you find her on her knees, rubbing your throbbing member through your jeans. Shes teasing you. You didn’t have to think twice about that as she painfully unzips your jeans in a very slow matter.

“Fuck” You mutter, this was like torture. By the time Natasha got your cock free from its restraints, your cock practically sprung out throbbing, the tip a deep red with precum leaking from its slit. Natasha’s eyes widened a fraction, now realizing that your dick was bigger than she thought.

Brushing that thought aside, Natasha leaned forward and kitten licked your tip, humming at the taste of your tangy yet sweet precum. Before using the rest to help lube up your shaft as she pumps your dick, pulling a groan from you as you tilt your head back and resting it on the wall behind you.

Soon deciding that was enough, Natasha leaned forward again, wrapping her plump lips on your throbbing cock. She swirled her tongue along your tip, paying extra attention to your slit, as she started to deep throat you, running her tongue along the veins on the underside of your cock. 

You moan out into the air, your wings fluttering behind you on the wall as you take your hand and run it gently through her hair, tugging lightly which pulls a moan from Natasha’s throat.

Natasha soon enough has your whole shaft down her throat, but not without gagging. Her eyes well up a light shade of red as tears start to form, her head bopping up and down on your cock as your hand rests upon her head guiding her. 

“Goddamn Natasha, you’re way too good at this” You moaned once again, lifting your head as you shift your gaze back onto her. She keeps strong eye contact with you as she bops her head faster, her other hand reaching up to fondle with your balls as she brings you to your climax. 

You cried out, cum spurting out from your cock into the depths of her throat. Natasha stayed there for a moment, once she was assured that you were done, she pulled away from your cock, a string of saliva mixed with cum following.

She honestly looked beautiful, her lipstick slightly smudged, a light pink tint to her cheeks, her hair slightly messed up, her eyes dark with what seemed like lust. 

You instantly pull her up into a deep kiss, your lips moving together passionately as you cup her jaw with one hand and the other is reaching down to her hips. 

Pulling away from the kiss, you look at Natasha as if asking for consent while your hand rests on the waistband of her pants. She nods her head in response to which you start unbuttoning her pants, trying to slow your desperate moves.

Assisting you, Natasha kicked away the offending material and puts her hands on either side of your jaw, pulling you into a more desperate yet still passionate kiss. You pull her flush into your body by her hips, your grip tight.

You spin her around, making Natasha gasp into the kiss as her back makes contact with the wall. You pull away as your trail kissed down the side of her neck, leaving love bites on her collarbone above the collar of her shirt. 

Natasha moans as she loops one arm around your neck, gripping on one of your wings like they were a handle bar. As her other hand travels down where your bodies meet and grabs a hold of your cock, slowly stroking it.

Getting the message, you dip your hands under the material of her lace panties, feeling her drenched folds as you massage her clit. Soon enough, you tap her thigh with your left arm, a gesture for her to jump as you carry her.

You continue rubbing her clit as she rests her back against the rough brick wall. You spread your wings partially, curving them around your bodies. You could still see out but other individuals wont be able to distinguish your antics. 

“Hurry up… Fuck!” Natasha grunts it soon turning into a moan as you press down on her clit. Your lips meeting her neck again, kissing and sucking on it as you create more and more hickeys until there was no space. Pulling away, you rest your forehead on hers, panting heavily as your right hand reaches down to your cock to line yourself up.

“Hurry up? Beg” You laugh as you slammed your length into Natasha, causing a loud moan to rip out of her. “C’mon baby, beg.” As you slow your thrusts to a torturously slow pace.

“Fuck! Fuck… Forget it.” She cries out as she somehow creates an even tighter grip on your wings as she tries moving her hips against you, humping you until your grip on her hip tightens which effectively stops her.

“I know you have it in you baby, come on baby, beg for me.” You mumble against the juncture of her neck in a soft tone.

“Goddamnit…Please Y/n! I need you, please..” She practically whimpers, her nails digging into your wings proving how desperate she is. Her strong facade from earlier is long gone compared to her now.

Her words riled you up even more, making you fasten your pace, your hips meet hers more frequently. All you could hear was Natasha’s whimpers and moans and the sound of skin slapping , everything else just tuned out.

The sound of Natasha’s moans in your ear and her scratching up your wings and back turned you on even more. Resulting in you turning your hips and pounding into her wet pussy from a different angle. Her moans and cries got louder by the second, and you could tell she was getting close too.

Sucking one nipple in your mouth, you nibble and suck on it as you bring one of your hands down between your colliding bodies. You rub her clit frantically as you continue rutting her into the wall, your thrusts getting more sloppy. 

“Fuckk.. Babyyy. Im gonna cum” You moaned in Natasha’s ear, your hot breath fanning over her ear and neck.

“ Y/n!! Please! Please” Natasha begs as you pound into her, her hands roaming and scratching anywhere she could reach, arms, back, wings, waist.

“Fuck!! Cum baby, cum!” You grunted as Natasha came first, her walls pulling you more in making it hard for you to move. Triggering your orgasm as you felt her walls tighten around your shaft, your mixed juices gushing together as some fell out of her cunt. Your wings fluttering in pleasure behind you as you keep your cock in Natasha to keep juices from spilling as you both pant to catch your breaths.

You rest your head in the crook of her neck as you still try to catch your breath, leaving tiny kisses on her collarbone and shoulder.

“So are you going with me back to the compound, round two can be there.” Natasha breathed, still out of breath.

“I’ll take you up on your offer Nat.”

[nofomogirl]

We need to talk about body snatching

I'm not a massive fan of the 1827 minisode - if you're curious why it bothers me, I've explained it in my post about two GO canons - but there's no denying it does an amazing job at exploring the complexity of morality and moral choices. It starts with a very black-and-white two-dimensional image and gradually adds shading and perspective, making it harder and harder to judge as we go along.

I think it's worth digging into (pun not intended but I'll take it).

Layer 1: body snatching bad

We learn someone did something

It's those first few seconds where we see a person robbing a grave, and since we know that robbing graves is a crime and generally not a good thing to do, we can quickly form a tentative conclusion that this is wrong.

Okay, in this exact instance, we immediately get enough context clues to see that this kind of judgment would be oversimplistic and superficial. Only Aziraphale, who for some reason acts as if it was his first day on Earth after a thorough memory wipe, is ready to condemn Elspeth based on just that.

Nevertheless, this is the first layer - the deed itself with no context.

Layer 2: body snatching acceptable

We learn about the person who did the thing

That's the whole journey with the first dug-up body where we get to know Elspeth and become privy to her circumstances - she's desperately poor, she has another person depending on her, she robs graves to survive. Aziraphale's suggestions that she might earn her living by selling books, weaving or farming just serve to prove how inaccessible more honest and dignified professions are to her. In turn, her comment about how she's not hurting anybody who isn't already dead hints that from the realistically available options, Elspeth could have chosen something much worse.

Technically this layer is a significant step up from layer 1 but it still isn't really challenging. Things are spelt out really loud for us, and most importantly everything we learn about Elspeth is just attenuating circumstances. To top it off both she and Wee Morag are immediately endearing. The takeaway is that sometimes things that in theory are bad can be excused which is important but the verdict still comes without any second thoughts.

Layer 3: body snatching complicated

We learn the larger context around the thing

This mostly happens when Aziraphale and Crowley discuss body snatching with Mr Dalrymple. We learn that the stolen corpses are used for a medical study that can advance human knowledge and make it possible to save living people and that surgeons have no legal means to obtain enough of them for their research - hence their need to buy them from body snatchers.

At first glance it's just more of what we got in layer 2 - more agruments in favour of body snatching that aren't all that nuanced and don't really give us any pause - just from a larger perspective, beyond Elspeth's individual experience. But if you glance more than once you'll notice this is when things stop being straightforward and easy to judge.

The moment we enter a proper grey area is when Aziraphale asks why Mr Dalrymple doesn't acquire the bodies himself. This is a very valid question - while we might easily agree that studying the human body to further medical knowledge is a good thing, and with just the slightest hesitation admit that it's acceptable to resort to using stolen bodies if that is the only way the research may continue, it's not as easy to excuse taking advantage of the poor and the desperate to do the actual stealing that we know is very dangerous.

The moment we know without a doubt we are in a proper grey area is when Mr Dalrymple laughs at Aziraphale's concern.

Objectively, the surgeon is right that it's more effective if he doesn't risk his own life in the graveyard and uses his time on actual research, teaching students and saving lives. But it's also clear he doesn't exactly see people like Elspeth as actual human beings and feels he has every right to use them. On the one hand, he is paying, on the other, he happily benefits from the cruel class system and is not even one bit remorseful about it. On the one hand, he takes risks too, on the other he has a chance of rewards Elspeth will not benefit from. It's not the poorest whose lives will get bettered by the progress of medicine, even though they're the ones who pay with their lives for that progress. And if Mr Dalrymple gets lucky and is knighted for his work (we know he wasn't in the end but it was a possibility), the poor still won't be pardoned for stealing for him. Nevertheless, he has no issue with that.

As I said, things get nuanced.

Layer 4: it's different when it's someone you know

The thing actually happens in your life

I think you'll all agree that the turning point of the minisode is when Elspeth decides to sell Wee Morag's still warm body. This is what finally leaves us speechless.

That's because up until now we've been approaching the issue intellectually. It's not that we didn't care about the characters, but we were allowed to keep a safe distance. The whole thing was like a problem to be solved - "Is body snatching right or wrong? Discuss in 500-1000 words" - and everything we've learned so far was data for this assignment. I believe that one of the reasons why this detachment came naturally was that there was a very thick line between people involved in body snatching and the bodies that were being snatched. The former were, well, people, obviously. The latter were inanimate objects.

It isn't until Wee Morag is to be sold that we are forced to see a person in a dead body. This is also when real emotions enter the equation.

This shift forces us to question our judgment for the first time. It was easy to justify Elspeth when she was selling a nameless corpse. But the fact that she decided to sell her closest companion - and most likely lover - shocks us. Something inside us strongly objects to how quickly she makes the decision.

And then there's the transaction, and it is also different when it's someone we know. The fact that we knew Wee Morag fully exposes Mr Dalrymple for the heartless jerk that he is. The way he treats Elspeth is the absolute worst and if you haven't realized he was a hypocrite earlier, you should be disillusioned by now.

But at least Elspeth is not a hypocrite, right? It may seem cold that she sold Wee Morag but it just proves she simply believed it's all right to sell a dead body, doesn't it?

Well, about that...

Layer 5: it's different when it's you

You are forced to face the thing happening to you

This layer is reached when Elspeth plans her suicide and asks Aziraphale and Crowley to bury her "somewhere where no ghouls will ever dig her back up again".

It turns out Elspeth McKinnon really was a filthy liar.

Not long ago she was insisting that body snatching doesn't hurt anyone who isn't already dead, and asking why she should let Wee Morag rot in the ground when she starves. But she wants to make sure it doesn't happen to her own body. The idea that someone might dig her up terrifies her and she calls people who do it ghouls. So why was digging up other people okay again? Why should she rot in the ground while other people suffer? There were other people living in the street where she and Wee Morag hid. Why not ask Aziraphale to give the money to them? Or just anybody in need? Why not ask to sell her body as well and use the earnings the same way?

Also, if you look at it from a certain perspective, Elspeth betrayed Wee Morag in the worst possible way. Wee Morag believed that if someone's body gets cut, that person's soul cannot enter Heaven. Yet Elspeth sold her to Mr Dalrymple, claiming that Wee Morag would have wanted her to have the means to survive. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps Wee Morag would have made that sacrifice. But then Elspeth decided to kill herself and use the money she got for Wee Morag's body for her own funeral.

But does it make Elspeth wicked? Certainly not. She's simply torn by grief. I seriously doubt she's been planning to commit suicide when she was taking Wee Morag to Mr Dalrymple. She might have genuinely tried to carry on but the reality of what happened caught up to her. Mr Dalrymple's cruel words certainly didn't help her cope with a personal tragedy. I even suspect one of the reasons she sold her friend was that she had no idea what else to do with a dead body.

Does this excuse her actions? Kind of, but not really.

Elspeth was a tragic character, not an innocent lamb with a heart of gold.

The point is - can any of us really judge her?

Which, coincidentally, is a question that the original Good Omens book toyed with quite a lot.

If you've reached this far, thank you for reading!

[ckret2]

Chapter 50 of by this point human Bill Cipher is almost relieved to be imprisoned in the Mystery Shack again: Bill tells Mabel about his adventures, and Ford and Dipper tell Fiddleford about theirs.

But first Bill's gonna die for a bit.

"Guys! You're okay!" Mabel flung her arms around Dipper and squeezed him. "We were worried you were floating around and broke your legs when the gravity came back."

"N—no, we were fine," Dipper said. 

Mabel let go of Dipper to hug Ford next—and then drew back, looked him up and down, and looked at Bill. "What happened to your clothes?"

Bill said, "We fell in the lake."

"Ha!"

"Tate was kind enough to loan us dry clothes," Ford said.

"You look like big dorks." She turned to Bill last, took in his dirty haggard appearance, and said, "And you look awful. Where have you guys been the last two days?"

"Thanks for asking! I've been in..." Bill glanced at Stan. "Am I allowed to say the name of the place I've been?"

Stan shook his head. "Not in front of the kids, you don't."

Bill sighed. "Agony. I've been in agony."

"Aww!" She hugged Bill last. "I like your stupid Fishmas sweater."

"Consider it yours as soon as I can change." He wriggled out of her embrace to point at his feet. "Check out the shoes, though!"

Mabel cracked up. "Omigosh, fish slippers! Fi— Fishlers? Fishppers?"

"Fishoes?"

"Fishoes!"

Soos said, "What did happen out there?" He was in the kitchen, cleaning and reorganizing after zero gravity had tossed everything out of order. "Did you heroically save Gravity Falls from imminent multidimensional devastation?"

Ford said, "No. Aside from the effects on gravity, it... turned out to be a benign phenomenon."

"Oh," Soos said. "Like... what Bill said?"

Ford grimaced. He managed to just nod instead of saying afraid so.

Again, he expected Bill to gloat; again, Bill said nothing. He didn't even look at Ford.

"It wasn't an eclipse, though," Dipper muttered, shooting a dark look at Bill. "It would've been an eclipse if it had gotten between us and gravity. It was basically the opposite."

"What do you want from me." The question was more sighed than spoken. "It was called an eclipse when I was growing up, I dunno what to tell you."

Ford, Dipper, and Mabel all looked straight at Bill at the mention of his childhood; but he didn't say anything more. He just trudged to the kitchen and leaned tiredly on the doorframe, watching Soos work. "Grab me something from the fridge."

"Sure thing, dawg." Soos opened the door. "What do you want?"

Bill was silent for a moment. Slowly, like a spirit medium channeling a faint message from the other side, he said, "I think... the body wants a vegetable. Gimme some guacamole."

"Sorry, dude, we had the last of it with dinner."

"Fine. Just give me an avocado and salsa, I'll make do."

"You got it."

"Two avocados."

Soos started rummaging through the jumbled mess in the fridge. "So if everything was okay, what took you guys so long to get back?"

"Yeah, I've been wanting to ask," Stan said. (He hadn't been able to in the car; when everyone realized Bill had passed out as soon as he'd sat down, they'd fallen into an awkward silence.) "Was the demon making trouble or what?"

Dipper and Ford exchanged a glance; who wanted to share the embarrassing news? Ford said, "Actually, under the circumstances, he was... well behaved." Ford resisted the urge to add the modifier "tolerably." It seemed mean-spirited. Bill had constantly complained, sure, but in retrospect could Ford say the complaints were unjustified?

"Then what took you so long?"

Now Ford felt Bill's gaze on him, watching him sharply. Ford understood now. This was why Bill hadn't mentioned saving them. He was holding it in reserve—offering a deal. If Ford and Dipper didn't embarrass him, he wouldn't embarrass them. If they mentioned his breakdown, he could cut in, claim it was natural for him to be in shock after performing such a difficult, heroic deed.

It wasn't blackmail, per se. Revealing the truth wouldn't cost anybody anything but a bit of momentary self-consciousness. But wasn't that just like Bill—only passing up an opportunity to boast so he could use it to shield his ego.

"It was Bill's fault," Dipper said quickly. Ford's heart leaped into his throat. "Because—we had to climb up and down the tunnel to Gravity Peak, and he only brought dress shoes and dumb fish slippers. We kept having to slow down."

Ford felt the pressure of Bill's gaze slide off of his face as he turned away, staring back into the kitchen. Bill said, "Yep. Guess I should have brought my hiking shoes—oh, wait."

Stan said, "You could've got some better shoes when we were at the mall! You're the one who wanted those dumb dress shoes."

"In my defense, I didn't think you paranoiacs would ever let me wander around in the great outdoors—much less force me to." He leaned more heavily against the doorway with a groan, muttering, "My legs are still jelly. Worthless human body."

Dipper glanced at Ford, as if checking with him to see if he'd made the right decision. Ford gave him a tiny nod of approval. After the day they'd had, humiliating Bill just for the sake of humiliation wouldn't have served any justice; it would have just been mean.

For the past three decades, Ford had always felt that Bill deserved the strongest possible punishment, both for his prior atrocities and to prevent future ones; but, he wanted to deal with Bill swiftly and efficiently. No gloating, no torture—just one quick shot. Sure, he got some grim satisfaction from knowing Bill was unhappy—knowing that Bill's vile intentions were being thwarted—and if anyone decided to treat Bill cruelly for cruelty's sake, he couldn't say they were wrong for it... but the thought of committing it himself made him uneasy.

He tried to remember if he'd felt that way when Bill had first arrived.

"I found the salsa!" Soos called from the fridge. "Somehow it all floated onto the highest shelf? Which kind do you want?"

"That one with a picture of a sobbing baby on it."

"Extra spicy it is!"

When Soos handed over the salsa and avocados, Bill said, "Hey, Hick Junior said his father was making announcements about staying inside and low to the ground? You didn't happen to have anything to do with that, did you?"

"Oh—yeah, I called Old Man McGucket and said I had a hot anonymous tip about what was going on," Soos said. "You said it was this whole public safety thing, so I figured the whole town should probably know? He's the local respected science guy now, I thought he'd know what to do with that kind of important information."

Bill grunted. "Terrific, he gets credit for my help. But you'd all be giving me heck if I'd said nothing and half the town broke their necks, so... whatever, net zero. Here." Bill took off the Monster-Mon backpack and swung it over to Soos. "Your reward. Good job."

"Whoa, haha, this is heavy. What's in here, a bag of rocks?"

"No, just one." Bill pushed off the doorway, wheeled unsteadily around, and trudged toward the stairs.

Soos unzipped the bag. A drugged geodite blinked sleepily up at him. He gasped. "Dude! A real Monster-Mon! Is this my call to epic adventure with a lovable animal sidekick?"

Ford grimaced, remembering watching Bill feed a geodite cold medicine. "Ah."

"I think I'll name you... Rocky," Soos said.

"That—really shouldn't be here. Its natural environment is caves, I don't know if it's safe for it to be out here—for it or us." They had been known to bite.

"Aww." Soos cradled the backpack like a swaddled baby. "Do you think it would be okay if I made it a fake cave to live in?" He gasped. "I could make an exhibit for him! I'll say he's a living meteorite! People love aliens."

"I'm not sure that..." Ford sighed. Well, none of them were going back to the cave today. "Maybe you should put it in the cellar where it's darker."

"Great idea!" Soos carried the geodite through the living room. "Hey, I've already got a mattress down there. You're gonna love it, lil dude..."

Ford hoped Soos didn't get attached to that thing. He shot a glower at Bill.

Bill was already on the stairs. "Now everybody leave me alone. Except you." He pointed at Mabel. "I don't want to do anything but lay on the floor and talk about whatever Mabel wants to talk about for the next three hours."

"Cartoons and boy bands."

"Yes," Bill sighed in relief, already preparing to turn 95% of his brain off. "Wow, yes, that's exactly what I want to talk about. I can't wait." He grabbed the handrail as he climbed heavily, leaning against it for balance as he dragged himself upstairs.

Before Mabel could follow him, Ford put a hand on her shoulder. "Oh, before you go—there's something I wanted to tell you and Dipper." Voice low, he said, "You remember when you told me that Bill had mentioned Edward Bishop Bishop?"

"Yeah? When we were drawing our houses."

"Something Bill said while we were out shook a memory loose. It reminded me of a book I read as an undergraduate—Flatworld, written by Edward Bishop Bishop."

"Aww," Mabel said. "Not an artist?"

"No, although he did illustrate the book," Ford said. "It's a novella that combines Victorian social commentary with a primer on higher-dimensional mathematics by using an allegory about sentient shapes living in a two-dimensional world."

"That's what you were talking about in the boat, right?" Dipper asked. "When Bill said something about..." He scrunched his face, trying to remember, "'Up in the sky'...?"

"Upward-but-not-skyward," Ford said, "to describe something that isn't higher than us in the third dimension, but rather, in a higher dimension relative to us."

"How do you know about it?" Dipper asked. "The first time it came up, you said the name Edward Bishop Bishop was familiar, but..."

Ford sighed in irritation, "I read it as an undergraduate—in a haze of sleep-deprived exhaustion just before finals week—to get extra credit in a course on the history of mathematics. I immediately forgot ninety percent of it—which I'm sure is why I never thought of it in relation to Bill. If only I'd remembered the book thirty years ago, when it might have done me some good..."

"It's okay," Mabel said. "I forget almost everything I've read for class basically as soon as I've taken the test. I think it's pretty good that you remember anything about Flatworld at all!"

Ford smiled awkwardly. He was afraid that might say more about Mabel's study habits than about his. "Thank you, Mabel."

"And you did have a lot on your mind thirty years ago," Dipper said. "Like, Bill. Literally. On your mind."

Mabel added, "Doing creepy possession things!"

"I suppose that's true, too." What would he have done if he had remembered the book during that frenetic, delirious period when Bill and Ford had wrestled for control over his body? He'd been in no fit shape to go to the library. "I did think about it a couple of times in the multiverse—when I was visiting Exwhylia, for instance—but at the time I'd brushed it off as a lucky coincidence that I'd read a book that invented a society of shapes. It wouldn't be the first time science fiction predicted science fact. But now that Bill's mentioned it twice, I'd say it's less likely a coincidence and more likely that Edward Bishop Bishop was another of his 'students.'"

"Is there a way for us to find out?" Dipper asked. "If he was Bill's student, would he have left behind any... hints? Coded messages?"

"Like secret society conspiracy things?" Mabel asked.

"Yeah!"

"I suppose it's possible," Ford said. "If Flatworld happens to feature a one-eyed yellow triangle sharing the secrets of the universe, we'll know for sure. But, there's only one way to find out: now that I do remember the book, we can pick up a copy for research."

"That's great," Dipper said. "If Bill told the author about his home dimension... there's no telling how much we can learn about him by reading it."

"So it's basically a math textbook disguised as a story?" Mabel groaned. "That's just like doing word problems! The most confusing kind of math problems. Why does Bill keep making me have homework this summer?"

"You know what he's like," Dipper said, elbowing her with a grin. "Dastardly villain."

"Pure evil."

Ford huffed. "If it helps, as I recall the book teaches you about math concepts, but it doesn't make you do any math."

She let out a longer, more theatrical groan. "Fine. But if there's a cousin Throckmorton I'm throwing the book away."

"I dunno, sounds kinda neat," Dipper said. "It might give me a leg up when we start geometry."

"I don't remember the details of what it covers, but I bet it could," Ford agreed. "I have to visit Fiddleford this evening to return the equipment he loaned us, and... discuss the events of the last couple of days. If the library's still open when we're done I can go by and see if they have a copy of Flatworld."

"Can I come along?" Dipper asked.

"Of course. Just give me a moment to..." He looked down at himself, "change into something a little less ridiculous."

Dipper tried not to laugh. "Okay. I'll wait here. Mabel, do you want to...?"

"No thanks!" She pointed upstairs. "I've got a captive audience to teach about boy bands. I'm going to make him listen to Sev'ral Timez's entire discography."

"He's already had a pretty bad day. Don't torture him even more."

Mabel blew a raspberry. "He'll love it." She bounded up the stairs.

Ford headed to his and Stan's guest room. Dipper took off his backpack, dropped it in the living room, and stuck his hands in his pockets—then pulled one out in surprise.

The enchanted friendship bracelets. They were still in his pocket. Bill hadn't had them on since Dipper's out-of-body experience that morning.

Dipper stared at them uneasily; then hung them in their usual place on the entryway coat rack and resumed waiting for Ford.

####

It was a rare opportunity that Bill was allowed in the kids' room; but with Ford and Dipper out of the house, the one person most likely to complain wasn't around. So after having extracted a strict promise for him to behave himself, Mabel had let him in, for ease of gossip and CD-switching.

But even if Dipper had been in the room, he wouldn't have found much worth complaining about. Once Bill had finished his snack (he'd eaten the avocados like pears, skin and all, and drank down the salsa like a chunky smoothie), he'd laid down on the floor, and since then had remained a dead lump. Face buried in his crossed arms, curled up in the oversized Fishmas sweater and a set of loose stolen-from-Soos sweats to replace the towel skirt, he might as well have been a pile of laundry that had sprouted curly golden hair. Mabel had put Sev'ral Timez's first album on the boombox, sat herself on Bill's back, and started brushing out his damp, knotted curls without asking as she talked about each track.

To her delight, Bill started insisting they skip past the slow, emotional love ballads, saying he preferred the bouncier dancier tracks; she thought the fact that he was displaying a preference rather than begging to turn the band off was a good sign. He was actually listening to the music. Possibly even liking it! Maybe she'd manage to convert him into a fan. She recounted her experiences with the band's cloned members and Bill threw in the polite "Mhm" and "Uh-huh?" where appropriate without lifting his head from the floor or opening his eyes. She'd thought he might have had something to throw in about the cloning thing, that seemed like the kind of conspiracy nonsense he might have a hand in; but if he knew anything, he wasn't up to sharing it.

When she'd wrangled his hair into some semblance of order, she got to work on his fingernails. His arm was like a dead weight in her hands, loose and unresisting but not helping, either. He shifted his head over to rest on his other arm and otherwise didn't move.

"Your fingernail polish is destroyed," Mabel said. On three fingers the paint had been all but completely scraped off. When he'd left a couple of days ago, it had just been lightly chipped. She started stripping the remainder with nail polish remover.

"Is it?" Bill mumbled. "Mmh. Yeah, probably from clawing in the dirt."

"Pfff. What did you do the last couple of days?"

Bill slowly sucked in a breath so deep that Mabel felt his back lift her a little higher off the ground; and then he just as slowly let it back out. "Do not," he said, "get me started."

He got started.

He began with a tirade about the contempt that both Ford and Dipper had shown him and his far superior subject matter expertise for the last two days; and then about being hauled out and exposed during totality after repeating over and over how dangerous it was and how much he would prefer to not do that—Ford had even admitted he'd dragged Bill out into open air just because he knew how much he didn't want that!—and from there Bill looped back to listing a whole litany of gripes against what he perceived as egregious and undeserved disrespect from Ford over the last couple of weeks—"Youmight have lied to me about that glass pyramid, but at least you didn't laugh in my face about it!"

(Mabel thought Ford pretty much had the right to be as disrespectful to Bill as he wanted, after everything Bill had put him through. Lying about a silly imaginary cult was less mean than lying about taking over the universe. But part of being a good friend, she knew well, was lending a sympathetic ear to your friend's venting without suggesting that said friend might be in the wrong. She had a Color Critters episode about being honest with your friends she could show him later.)

Bill seemed to gain strength as he aired his grievances, bolstered by Mabel's encouraging "mhm" "uh-huh" noises. By the time she'd finished repainting his first hand (she'd picked a glittery purple polish she thought would complement all the yellow he wore), he was sitting upright and Mabel had to sit in front of him to start on his other hand.

"—and my stupid feet hurt," Bill griped. "Since Stanford made me traipse halfway through the mountain barefoot because he wouldn't let us go back down before the gravity returned and I don't even own shoes for spelunking. And my knees hurt, and my back hurts, and I could have killed for a walking stick but do think they'd have allowed me one if I asked? Because I don't think so! I tripped over—I don't know, a hundred roots."

"Worst hiking trip ever." Mabel finished painting his second hand, and started looking through her miniature sticker sheets for some fun stickers to put on Bill's first hand now that it was dry.

"Worst in the history of your planet! Even the Donner party had a better hike! At least some of them got something to eat," Bill said. "All I got for two days was a handful of cereal and Stanford's liquid meat in a toothpaste tube."

Mabel stuck out her tongue.

"And Stanford walks too fast. And your brother kept trying to squeeze through gaps between trees I couldn't get through. And Stanford kept fiddling with his—stupid—useless antique Civil War lantern he's so proud of, and he's just lucky that I thought to bring a way to find a light source even though I didn't even need one, because I knew he would bring that stupid Civil War lantern..." Bill's complaints petered out.

And then, voice oddly quiet, he said, "And I saw my corpse." 

Mabel looked up from carefully placing a yellow butterfly on Bill's middle fingernail. There was a dark look in his eyes. "Oh," she said. "Oh, Bill. I'm so sorry."

This wasn't just a bad camping trip. This was serious. She had to treat it seriously.

She ejected the current CD from the boombox, put in another Sev'ral Timez album, and skipped to track 4: "This goes out to anyone having a bad day. Ladies, this one's for you. 'Girl, today has been—straight whack. You don't know how you're gonna—bounce back. But any time you're down, I'll always be around; I'll drive your heart back to Happy Town'..." Oh yeah. That was the exact energy Mabel was trying to channel.

"And I didn't feel anything when I touched it." Bill was staring down at his hands like he barely recognized them. "No energy, no connection—nothing. What if there isn't a connection anymore? What if I'm just a human now?"

Did that weigh on Bill? Clearly, enough that he'd decided to endure imprisonment in the Mystery Shack rather than kill his body to see if there was still a triangle inside.

But he'd never talked about it before now; she'd thought maybe he just didn't worry about it.

But that was dumb. Of course he worried about it. He was just like her. When something scared him, he just pushed it down and hoped that if he ignored it enough, everything would be okay! Until he couldn't pretend anymore.

And she'd never heard him sound this scared before.

She took his hands and hoped that would help.

He squeezed her hands so hard it hurt. His still-wet nail polish smeared on her hand. "What if I'm really gonna grow old and die in this rotting meat doll, what if I never go home again—? There's so much I haven't done, I was going to throw an eternal party, it would have been beautiful, everyone would have loved me, but now— and now—" He let out a choked noise, head bowing over their joined hands, posture broken. Hot tears landed on the backs of Mabel's hands. "And I didn't even get to, just, die and be done with it, I have to know I'm dead, I have to know everything I was going to do..."

"Hey—come here." Mabel tentatively wrapped her arms around Bill's neck and shoulders, compressing his bouncy curls. She half expected him to pull away.

Instead, he buried his face against her shoulder and hugged her back like she was the only thing keeping him from drowning.

After spending the last two days suppressing his grief and fear so hard his body couldn't function through it—after spending over a month suppressing his grief and fear—finally, finally, he peeled the tape off his cracked shell to let it leak out. He couldn't hold it together anymore. He'd barely put himself back together long enough to get on his feet and make it to the shack. This was the only place it was safe to fall apart. He muffled his sobs in Mabel's sweater.

And Mabel—who was used to being comforted by adults but who had never been called upon herself to comfort anybody but her brother and the occasional friend—had no idea how she was supposed to comfort a zillion-year-old almost-definitely-adult alien through an existential crisis.

Not for the first time, she wondered whether she might have gotten in over her head.

She pushed the worry down. Everything would be okay. Bill needed her—she could feel him trembling—and he didn't have anybody else in the world he could trust. And if she didn't know what else to do, at the least she could keep hugging him.

Voice so tight it almost squeezed out as a whisper, Bill said, "I was going to make a utopia here, but now I'm just gonna die here."

"I'm so sorry." How do you comfort someone processing the fear of mortality? She'd never processed it herself, she was thirteen, it was just another scary future thing she'd deal with when she had to. The best she knew how to do was be nice. "But... I'm here, okay? For—for anything you need." (Anything that wasn't evil, anyway—but now was not the appropriate time to make Bill feel like her support was conditional.)

"Tell me I won't die."

"You won't die! You're never, ever gonna die." Mabel hugged him tighter. "I'll fistfight Death. I'll—break his bony kneecaps."

"Thanks."

"I'll swing at the reaper with a baseball bat."

Bill laughed feebly. "With nails in it?"

"Yeah! And barbed wire! Connected to a battery!"

"Oh, we're taking Death down. Nobody's dying ever again."

"Everybody lives forever!" Mabel laughed; but it quickly petered out. "But... I'm not gonna let you die. You're my friend, and I won't let anything happen to you."

Bill's trembling had stopped, and his embrace was less death-grippy. "I owe you one, Shooting Star." From Bill, "thanks" sounded hollow, but "I owe you one" really sounded like a thank you.

"Hey. If I tell you a secret, do you promise not to do anything evil with it?"

"Sure. Promise."

Mabel doubted it, but that was as good as she was gonna get. "I've always thought you're still a triangle on the inside. You've got those creepy cat eyes that see the future and stuff! If you were just a normal human, wouldn't you have normal human eyes?"

Bill made a noncommittal noise.

"Plus, if you'd really been turned into a human on the inside, then being in a human body wouldn't feel so bad—right? It'd just feel normal."

Bill was silent for a moment. Voice hoarse, he whispered, "I hope you're right."

####

Fiddleford answered the door himself. "Stanford, Dipper, come in! I was just cleaning up." He had a broom, and the great hall's floor behind him was sparkling with broken glass. Ford was relieved to see Fiddleford had put on shoes. Unfortunately, they were fuzzy slippers. "Pardon the mess!"

"Think nothing of it. The shack's been turned upside-down, too." Ford stepped around a broken chair. "Don't you have anyone to help you clean, though?"

"Oh, I do, I do! I built me a Janitorial Executive Drone to tidy up," Fiddleford said. "I'm just cleaning up the mess JED left."

Ford and Dipper looked around at the shattered glass, broken furniture, scorch marks around the fireplace, and torn curtains. Dipper asked, "Did... JED make this place any cleaner?"

"Not at all!"

Ford and Dipper caught Fiddleford up on their scientific findings of the last couple days. Ford was almost embarrassed to admit they hadn't found any noteworthy quantities of micro-rips, as if he were confessing to a personal academic embarrassment—even after Fiddleford pointed out that it had been his own theory, not Ford's. (All the same, Ford hated to be so wrong, even by association. Being wrong felt like a moral failing.)

In return, Fiddleford told them what he'd been up to. He'd confirmed with them NASA fellas that the odd gravity effects weren't detected anywhere but Gravity Falls. At their behest, he'd set up some sensors around town, and when gravity suddenly reversed, the measurements they'd taken had allowed him to make a very loose model of the shape of the force that caused it. He showed Ford and Dipper the model on a computer in his lab, black screen with sharp glowing green lines forming an armature in the shape of a force. It looked like an enormous flying sausage that tapered down at one end. Too little detail to tell exactly what it was; but it certainly could have been an axolotl.

It was turning to look at the cliff where they'd stood.

Fiddleford wasn't pleased to find out the information he'd passed on from Soos had originally come from Bill; but he'd suspected it and already done all his soul-searching before reluctantly sharing his advice with the masses and hoping it wouldn't come back to bite him. "He didn't bother to warn us that gravity would actually disappear today, though," Fiddleford said indignantly. "So he could crow about being right and still get to see some folks get hurt, I reckon."

"Actually, this time I don't think he was hiding it. I kinda think he just made a mistake?" Dipper said.

Ford nodded. "Dipper's right. Bill was incredibly alarmed this morning when it became clear our estimates were wrong. It only made more trouble for him."

"I suppose," Fiddleford said grudgingly; then gave them a sharp look. "This mornin'? You took him camping?"

Ford and Dipper winced. Ford mumbled, "Not for fun."

"Stanford Pines—!"

It took a minute of hooting and hollering before Ford could calm Fiddleford down enough to explain the circumstances: that they'd only brought Bill because of just how much he explicitly did not want to be brought; that it had been a thoroughly unpleasant experience for everyone and Ford had never expected it to be otherwise; and that Bill had proven useful—Ford decided not to share the details—but he hadn't forgotten that Bill always made himself useful before he betrayed someone. If a man helped a little old lady cross a street, opened her door for her, put up her groceries, and then knocked her out and burgled her house, only one of those actions mattered.

(Dipper fell silent rather than help reassure Fiddleford. Ford supposed that was because he'd objected to bringing Bill, too.)

Fiddleford grudgingly admitted that under the circumstances, bringing Bill had been logical. "But that's just the thing—sometimes your logic don't account for the fact that you've got human emotions, too."

"Ah, yes, those human emotions. One of my worst flaws," Ford joked.

Fiddleford didn't laugh. "I mean it, Stanford. The most logical plan in the world don't mean nothing if he talks you into throwing it aside."

Ford thought of all the times he'd let his temper get the best of him over the last couple of days. Could he really say he'd made the logical decision when he'd made it out of anger? "Yes. I... see what you mean."

"Just be careful," Fiddleford said. "I saw you under that demon's oppression for months and never thought it was anything worse than how you always got around finals week—heck, for all I saw, I reckon he coulda started possessing you without me noticing—and I don't want that to happen again!"

Dipper winced. Ford found somewhere other than Fiddleford's face to look.

"What?"

"He... did. Possess me." (Dipper didn't pipe up with his experience. Ford didn't blame him.)

"He what? When?!"

"Remember toward the end of the project? When I started pulling all-nighters to finish the calculations...?"

Fiddleford smacked his forehead and sank down into the nearest chair.

Ford winced again. "I should have told you." During their talks over the past year, he'd been very reluctant to mention Bill or the fallout at the end of the portal project. They both had. "But—I assumed you'd guessed by now. What did you think was happening?"

"Frankly? I thought you'd started taking something illicit."

Ford snorted. "I—all right." He'd done stupider things during finals week.

"If he was possessin' you, why didn't you ask for help? I could've found somebody who knows how to do exorcisms. Did he not let you? Or—or did I miss you trying to tell me...?"

Ford shook his head. "No, I didn't want an exorcism." He wasn't sure Bill was the kind of "demon" that responded to exorcisms anyway. "At the time, I thought... that he was helping me."

Dipper reluctantly piped up, "He... possessed me once too. I didn't know that's what he was doing until too late, but... Even after you know he's a bad guy, he's really good at making you think he's just helping."

Fiddleford didn't immediately say anything to that. Ford couldn't meet his gaze.

Finally, Fiddleford said, voice low and worried, "Just tell me you won't let him get into your head again. Either one'a you."

Dipper shook his head. "Definitely not."

Ford said, "As he is now with all his powers gone, I don't think he can enter my head. Anyway, I had a metal plate surgically installed—"

"I didn't mean that way."

Right. "I won't. I promise."

Fiddleford nodded. "Didja really get a metal plate installed?"

Ford knocked on it demonstratively.

"Hmm." Fiddleford stroked his beard thoughtfully. He pointed at a contraption in the corner that looked like a ten foot tall tuning fork with electricity arcing between its tips. "Try not to get within five feet of that thing."

Ford eyed it nervously.

####

Fiddleford insisted Ford and Dipper stay for dinner. It was the first proper meal they'd had after two days of tubes mushy meat and mushy vegetables; so they tried not to show their disappointment when they received mushy meat and mushy vegetables. Fiddleford's automatic meatloaf-and-mashed-potatoes maker did its job more competently than JED did its, but Ford suspected that was partially because it didn't have legs to let it go get in trouble.

As they drove back into town, a stoplight turned red at the intersection with Main Street. Ford glanced down Main toward the library and asked, "Do you still want to stop by the library?"

Dipper, who'd nearly nodded off, blinked sleepily. "Huh?"

"To pick up Flatworld?"

Dipper yawned. "Honestly, I kinda just wanna go home and sleep."

"I hear that." He'd almost drowned today. He was exhausted. "Perhaps this weekend."

"Aren't you going to that concert with Mabel?"

"Was that this Saturday?" He'd lost track. Mabel had won four tickets from some radio contest to see Phrancisco in Portland and had asked Ford if he'd like to come. "I'm undecided. I'd like to go—I've been a fan of Invisible Plastic Yellow since they formed." He was the one who'd told Mabel about the band after their Portland trip and gotten her their albums. He'd had a phase when he'd really gotten into cutting-edge underground new wave music. It had made him feel conventionally cool, which not many things did. Now, all his musical tastes were three decades behind. He hadn't even known Phrancisco had a solo career until Mabel came home with tickets.

"But she's bringing her friends, and whoever has the fourth ticket needs to chaperone; and I'm afraid an old man escorting around three young girls would look... odd. It may be more appropriate for one of the other girls' parents to go." But he did want to see Phrancisco. "Perhaps I'll wait and see whether Mabel talks me into it."

"Better pack your bag now, then."

Ford laughed. He had a point. "If I do go to Portland, maybe I can stop by a bookstore to pick up Flatworld. If it tells us anything useful about Bill, I suspect we'll want a household copy for reference."

He was eager to reread it. He'd forgotten so much of it since college. He only recalled the vague, overarching plot: something about a third-dimensional sphere teaching a second-dimensional square about realities with higher and lower dimensions—from zero dimensions up to four—and a stuffy society based on what geometric shape you were... but that was it. He probably never even would have remembered the phrase "up but not north" if Bill hadn't referenced it. He wondered how much it could have helped him if he'd reread it sooner.

Dipper yawned again. "Sounds good."

The light turned green; and Ford drove past the library and headed on home.

####

(After going full tilt for two months, we finally get a breather lol. I hope y'all enjoyed, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts!)

[anti-anti-vents]

Guys. GUYS. I think I finally figured it out. I know why antis are against taboo sexual themes in media but not against violence. And it has nothing to do with “normalizing” the actions.

It’s about humanizing the perpetrator.

I think it’s actually a pretty understandable perspective if so, albeit not necessarily a correct one. They’re not worried about humanizing the perpetrators of violence, because it’s already common knowledge the various ways a person can be pushed to violence.

But when it comes to perpetrators of sexual crimes, we have a bigger gap in our common understanding. We want to think that the only reason people would do such a thing is because they’re irredeemably evil. But since fiction is an exercise in empathy, it forces them to acknowledge that even sex pests are humans with their own thoughts, feelings, and motivations. AND THEY HATE THIS!!! They recognize that ability to empathize and they find it dangerous.

And I get it! I really do, I’d say I used to have this mindset even! But at some point you have to realize that having empathy for a person doesn’t excuse their actions, and that in fact without humanizing them and trying to understand them could we ever hope to find the root cause?

I assume most of these people want to believe that violence is the best option, that people could only do, or even think (/write/draw) about doing these things may have something uniquely irredeemable about their character, that it couldn’t possibly happen to anybody with the wrong life circumstances and a series of bad decisions. They don’t want to think a human could end up that evil. They want an “other”.

I understand the anger, I understand the hatred, I really do. But can we PLEASE direct that vitriol at ACTUAL OFFENDERS instead of somebody who might have “romanticized” a sex pest in their ao3 story?!!? Because if in every “callout post” I have to scroll through 3 pages of discord drama only to find out that the only “proof” of this person being a pedo is that they drew diaper furries or whatever, then I might just stop looking at callout posts! If we wanna talk about real danger.

Sorry for the long rant, just felt like a lot of things clicked into place there.

[headspace-hotel]

further thoughts on modern extinctions of species

The scientists have a great difficulty laid out for them, doing public messaging about climate change/biodiversity loss that communicates the urgency and importance WITHOUT inducing a panic and helplessness that leads to apathy and shut-down (exactly what is seen in many young people in regards to climate change)

Now we all probably know here that it is really important for scientists to do "obvious" "water is wet" type studies showing something is a problem, even if the problem is obvious to anybody with eyes, because then the study can be used as hard evidence to change policies or to inform skeptics.

However sometimes these studies themselves end up becoming "Obvious" facts.

Because they are so important, they get cited a thousand times, and it becomes so seemingly reliable, that the methodology of the studies is not questioned very much.

It's not necessarily that the studies are even wrong—it's that their conclusions become Facts when the original study would only say "probably true under these specific circumstances" or "likely if measured within these parameters" or "suggested by what little evidence we can gather."

Here is one of those facts:

We know that abuse and misuse of our ecosystems can cause extinctions. But there needs to be hard evidence backing that up.

"The current extinction rate is over 1,000 times the usual background extinction rate" is an important estimate for understanding the magnitude of the damage deforestation, resource extraction, and other over-exploitation do to ecosystems.

But this estimate has become a Fact. It is treated like a black box. It is so widely cited and in particular it is so commonly used as evidence for the idea that human impacts on the Earth are irreversibly and unfixably destructive. People use it as irrefutable proof that we are in the midst of a mass extinction that we have very little chance of stopping. And that makes people feel hopeless...which makes people paralyzed and much less likely to act on behalf of their ecosystems. "We're all going to die! I can barely do anything, and it's unlikely to make a difference anyway. Why bother?" That's not good.

So...Here's an article that explains how this number is reached.

When bryozoans were my special interest I delved really deep into learning about fossils, and because of this I wondered, "How do we even know the background extinction rate, and how do we know there is a normal baseline for Earth's extinction rates?" The article explains:

I'm having a hard time finding very many articles about this, actually, if anyone has others, I would enjoy seeing them

So here's the thing...the fossil record is really, really, really, really, really low resolution. Fossilization is an extraordinarily rare event, huge periods of time are totally missing from the fossil record in any given place, and...this is just me, but since many living species can only be distinguished from each other by analyzing their genome, I doubt we could tell for sure if two fossils are the same or different species.

The way biodiversity is structured on Earth, there are usually small areas where large amounts of species diversify, often areas that are unique and isolated in some way. In other words, some areas are hotspots for species diversity. Many species on Earth have incredibly small, restricted ranges. (On top of that, these diversity hotspots are often islands or mountains...which seem unlikely to be areas where sedimentary rock deposition is happening.)

Since fossilization is such an unlikely event, and the fossil record is missing most of the time periods for each place because sedimentary rocks just weren't forming there (or they did and later got eroded), fossils probably preserve more wide-ranging, generalist species that were high in abundance. There must have been tons of weird, highly geographically restricted places like the Galápagos islands where bizarre creatures evolved and were never preserved because it was just a tiny area. (This makes me want to cry if I think about it too long.)

What's more, with vertebrate animals, species that fossilize and get easily noticed as fossils, tend to be larger-bodied, and larger animals generally tend to reproduce more slowly, which means the usual speciation and extinction rate for these larger animals might not reflect the speciation rate for, say, spiders or snails.

How is it determined that a taxon went extinct? Basically, when a taxon appears in the fossil record and seems to disappear, that's considered an extinction. However, that doesn't mean it did go extinct then. Maybe its range just became smaller, or maybe there is an unconformity. We could have a Coelacanth situation.

What I'm saying is...the fossil record is only a tiny bit of all the species that have ever existed, and probably wildly misrepresents the range of species evolving and going extinct at any time.

Now consider that the data is being filtered through something else that distorts it even more: databases and compilations of other scientists' works. So many disagreements and little errors pop up when you try to synthesize these!

All of these reasons are why I think "There is NO WAY we could estimate accurately what the average extinction rate for Earth is." Which is why it's frustrating to see the "1000x the background extinction rate" number treated like a rigid fact.

It's supposed to communicate that a lot of species have gone extinct in a relatively short period, I don't think it can be extrapolated the way it has been, to an irreversible and indescribably dire situation where the destruction of the biosphere is far beyond anything that can be fixed.

Here's the other part of this conclusion I find frustrating: How the current extinction rate is being calculated. It is based upon double and triple digits of species in each group (of vertebrate animals) having gone extinct both since 1900 and since 1500. Essentially, it uses these numbers from the vertebrate animals we know about that have gone extinct to extrapolate about the general overall extinction rates on Earth.

Articles and books that use this "1000x the usual background rate" statistic present it as some kind of ongoing process that is ruthlessly proceeding forward as we speak. But it is derived from scientists going, well, we predicted 1 or 2 extinctions for every 10,000 species per 100 years, but 100-something went extinct since 1900 that we know of, so this means the "current extinction rate" has changed to be a thousand times what it was.

I'm not great with math. But these numbers seem...coarse. Does that make any sense? The species that went extinct are each specific cases that we know about, and when you take these individual cases and multiply them by big numbers and divide those big numbers to get something like "20 species are going extinct every day!!" that seems wildly irresponsible. People are reading that and thinking, "Oh God, every single day more frogs and fishes and bees are gone forever" when there was such a large margin of error involved in each step of getting there that the final number is almost worthless.

And here's the BIG, HUGE, MASSIVE PROBLEM: The study treats the "extinction rate since 1900" as the same as "extinction rate today." The design of the study totally disregards ALL CONSERVATION EFFORTS AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTIONS because it assumes that human impact on the environment in all times since 1900 is the same as human impact on the environment today.

It is baked into the design of the study that the conclusions will assume wildlife conservation is happening to a much lesser degree than it actually is, because it uses the time when there were no protections for wild creatures or consequences for slaughtering them in mass numbers and dumping toxic deadly chemicals in waterways to draw its conclusions on what's happening "Now."

Environmental damage is still continuing, but it is not right to terrify people by treating species extinction as a steadily ongoing thing that has "risen" since 1500 because of broad forces that have stayed totally consistent, rather than something that happened for specific reasons in each case and can be prevented from happening. I have no doubt that species are still going extinct, but so many have been saved and are recovering, and it really matters that effort has been put into preserving them.

[moodcrab]

Fixing Delphine

This bitch.

I actually like that they made a character that is on your side but is somewhat unlikable, Delphine is Team Dragonborn, but she's not really one of the good guys. And that's cool, conflict means drama. So what's the problem? Well unfortunately, this drama is surface level and isn't used to drive the story, so It's kind of just annoying.

People oversimplify their hatred of Delphine into "She wants you to kill Paarthurnax," because unlike Delphine, people actually like Paarthurnax. Understandable, but barely scratches the surface. We'll get to The Paarthurnax Dilemma in time, but that quest is a symptom, not the illness itself.

If I could sum up Delphine in a word it would be "inconsistent." For example, she's a fugitive waging a one woman war on the Thalmor from the shadows, who's only survived this long from sheer paranoia - but she also uses her real name and leaves a note in Ustengrav for whoever happens to pick it up with directions and a pass word to her secret hide out.

She needs to go through her super secret contact Farengar to use the Jarl's resources to go into Bleak Falls Barrow, a tutorial level dungeon she can see from her house, and she's impressed that you did it - but she also goes personally to the other side of the country to delve alone into the massive Ustengrav to steal the Horn of Jurgan Windcaller, no issues, just a quick in and out twenty minute adventure.

She takes the fact that you found her Ustengrav note as proof you're the Greybeard's new guy and not some Thalmor plant even though she herself, a non Dragonborn, had also completed Ustengrav and taken the horn proving it's totally possible. She even points this out in her own dialogue then demands we prove who we are, even though that was the whole point of the Ustengrav note. It's also a pretty big assumption that just because I'm the guy the Greybeards call Dragonborn that I can't ALSO be with the Thalmor.

We are left with this awkward sense that the writers are flailing to make us think this woman is competent and objective, without actually having her do anything that clever. Just act like the dumb thing was smart and have her act like a cocky brat if questioned about it.

Inconsistency. It's her thing. Does she hate the Thalmor? That would make sense given what we know about her. But that gets dropped half way through the main story and suddenly she hates The Greybeards, for absolutely no reason at all. She gives a reason, but it's bullshit.

In her own words, "If the greybeards had their way, the dragonborn would sit on a mountain talking to the sky." But that's not true is it. We know The Greybeards, they encouraged us to fulfill our destiny. Even if you say you want to follow their Way of the Voice, they'll be glad to hear it but warn you not to let it get in the way of what needs to be done. Delphine even uses Tiber Septim as an example, which is even stupider because The Greybeards actively encouraged Tiber to conquer Tamriel. Have I read more in game books than the dialogue writers??

But that's not the end of it, when it becomes convenient for the plot this hatred is flipped once again from The Greybeards onto dragons. Not Alduin. All dragons. Despite the fact that, as a Blade, she should know about Nafaalilargus, a dragon ally of the Empire and the Blades for thousands of years, and the Blades don't just indiscriminately kill all dragons no matter the circumstances, and that Tiber Septim himself almost certainly met Paarthurnax at some point, she suddenly seems to be acting like she has a personal grudge against dragons. Which brings us to the Paarthurnax Dilemma...

See here's the thing, you could easily write off the frustration everyone feels towards this quest as Bethesda's crappy design, where there is no conclusion other than to kill Paarthurnax, or else leave an unfinished quest languishing in the menu. Bethesda apparently didn't consider the idea that anybody would actually prefer to turn on the Blades, even though the Blades have become a bit of a running joke among the fans, or that anyone would take umbrage with Delphine giving out orders and ultimatums.

But no, it's so much worse than that. Delphine being a surly unlikable c u n t from the day we met her is one thing, but the fact that she has been wrong about almost everything she's ever said in game, and still having the AUDACITY to treat us like her work bitch and us never, not once, getting the opportunity to put her in her place... That's not poor quest design, that's the game gaslighting us.

Let's do a quick list of every one of Delphine's theories, and how many were actually correct shall we:

You are not the Dragonborn ❌

The Greybeards shouldn't be trusted to identify a Dragonborn ❌

The dragons aren't just coming back, they're coming back to life ✅

The Thalmor have something to do with the dragons returning ❌

Esbern is dead ❌

The Greybeards just want the Dragonborn to sit on a mountain and meditate ❌

The Greybeards wanted Tiber Septim to just sit on a mountain and meditate ❌

Paarthurnax, having lived in exile for thousands of years, deserves corporal punishment ❌

As ACTING Grand Master of the Blades, she gets to boss around the Dragonborn ❌

She deserves a seat at the peace negotiations ❌

And these are just the things that are factually wrong, leaving aside opinions on her morality and shitty attitude. This is the woman the game presents to us as a shrewd strategist.

BUT I CAN FIX HER!

Like I said I like the idea of a character who is on your side but is somewhat unlikable. It actually won't take much to make Delphine endearing to the fans. We have to do a Boromir on her. A Lot of people dislike Boromir throughout the Fellowship of the Ring but weep at his death. We have to tweak three things to have the same thing happen to Delphine:

1. Make her actually competent and useful so that while we don't agree with her we can see why she does the things she does, and desire to keep her around.

2. Have her mistakes called out and have consequences.

3. Have her redeem her mistakes with a badass honourable death.

[marshmallowprotection]

i'd love to hear your interpretation of the day 8 call ("You don't give up do you?") on Saeyoung's route! that has to be my favorite call, especially the end lolol

I mean, if anything, this is a representation that goes against the idea that Saeyoung "suddenly becomes a big meanie in his route and he's not playing games with me anymore, he's such a jerk! The time we've spent with him in the apartment is awful because he isn't the silly guy on the game previews!"

I really don't care for people who talk about him that way. If you only value him because he's silly, then you don't actually value him at all as a person. That's why you drive right into the bad ending, figuratively and literally. If you don't value his emotions and allow him to come to terms with what just happened to him, then you don't like Saeyoung.

Saeyoung just realized he sold his life away for NOTHING. Rika and V promised him that Saeran would be safe, and now he's just learned it was a lie. It was all a lie. His brother isn't safe, he's suffering in horrible ways that Saeyoung can't even begin to imagine because every time he closes his eyes, he wants throw up at the thought of Saeran being forced to learn how to hack and hurt others.

He traded his autonomy away to give his brother a chance at a free life, and not even a perfectly free life, a life that could be as free as he could have been given the circumstances. Saeyoung did it because thought the sacrifice would be worth it and threw away everything for nothing. It was for nothing because his brother has no nothing but misery. 

Can you imagine what it must feel like to sacrifice everything and realize it was for nothing? Do you think anybody in his position will be silly and goofy? No. That's not even the entirety of his being. He is not just some guy who likes to play pranks on people. The RFA is his family, and he’s accepted they’ll be the only family he’ll ever have because he can’t be with Saeran. So, he looks over them and does all kinds of things to lift their spirits. 

He got Yoosung into LOLOL. 

He runs Twitter bots for Zen. 

He hangs out with Jaehee and lets her vent about work. 

He’s aware that Elizabeth’s collar has SENSITIVE INFORMATION on it, and is constantly pressing Jumin to up his security. 

Sure, he plays around and pokes fun at everybody, and yes, that’s a part of who he is. But, if you only believe he's a silly prankster, then you have spent no time reflecting on why he's wearing a mask and settling it in the first place.

Saeyoung Choi is a multifaceted person and he isn’t just a joke. He's a compassionate man who will do anything and everything to take care of the people he loves, he loves going out for drives, he loves working on robotics, he can make up a story on the spot about the stars, he loves cosplay and cross-dressing, he loves so many things and he could spend three hours explaining his love of language and linguistics to you if you ASKED.

He is serious and if he's trying to piece together a plan, he's going to have a contingency ready for his contingency. He's ready for anything you throw at him. He can hold a conversation at length about any subject you throw at him and he will enjoy it far more than you think he will. 

He's stubborn to a fault. He can be clingy and paranoid at his worst. Sometimes his anger gets the better of him and he says things without thinking. But, that's what makes him human, with all his faults, flaws, and aspirations. There is so much more to him than being a jokester and if you don't understand that, you're not paying attention to what's happening during your time in the apartment. 

All of this is to say that it's not okay that he's mean to you in the apartment, but a lot of people tend to blow what he's doing out of proportion. If you are actively calling him throughout the day and listening to what he says, it is so obvious that he is lying through his teeth. He may be the best liar in the world when it comes to his work in the agency, but when it comes to you, he is the worst liar I have ever seen in my entire life.

He cannot hide how much he cares about you. When he thinks you're not eating he goes out of his way to make sure he orders every kind of sandwich imaginable just in case you have a picky palette. When you leave the apartment to get something for him, he gets upset with you, not because he's angry with you, but because he hates that you're not thinking of your safety when his brother could have really hurt you even if it hurts him to admit that. 

And, you know what happens in this phone call? He sees you crying and he immediately folds. It doesn't matter how frustrated he is with the fact that his life is built on a lie, he still wants to comfort you because you make him happy no matter how afraid he is to admit that.

When it comes down to it, he's just afraid of letting you into his life because the last time he had somebody close to him that he would do anything for, they suffered. He just watched what happened to his brother all because he cared about him and thought he could trust his brother with people who didn't give him a reason not to trust them. 

The only reason he tries to push you away is because he's afraid of you getting hurt like his brother. He can't stomach what happened to his brother as it is, but the thought of watching another person he loves suffering isn't something he can stand. If you work with him and give him the space he needs, then he'll apologize to you and realize that he can't live his life this way forever.

He can't deny himself happiness for the rest of his life just because he's afraid to make a leap. This call shows he can't lie about anything when it comes to you no matter how hard he tries. He could lie to the rest of the world but he could never lie to you. 

My favorite part is the way his voice trembles near the end of the phone call and he asks you if it's okay to Hold Your Hand despite everything. 

[limbuscompanysituations]

How would the sinners react to the reader (who presumably they care about to some degree or another) distorting? I think there's a lot of potential in a reader distorting and the conflict that would bring (especially if the sinners are close to them) and there's almost none of it so...

God these became so long

Faust: She would like to study the phenomenon of distortion, but not like this. Not when the one she cares so much about is involved. Her mind is racing to find the right questions that would lead to answers relevant to this problem. She doesn't want to consider killing them, but she knows very well how these things tend to go. Her team works hunting distortions, after all. Still, there is a chance, a remote possibility that she can revert this. She's a scientist who sticks to hard data, but this time she has to put her faith on something much more abstract: hope.

Yi Sang: He wishes he could have perceived the circumstances that have led to this. He knows an individual does not distort under normal circumstances. He knows a distorted individual is one who was often pushed to the brink of their sanity by an immeasurable amount of suffering. He feels impotent in the face of his dearest's pain, because if he had been a better person, he could have prevented this. It takes all the other sinners' help to make him realize he can still stop them, and that there is a chance to revert the distortion. He needs all the support to actually face them in combat.

Don Quixote: She's shaken and unsure of what to do because she's used to seeing distortions as foes. She heard all the scientific explanations to this occurrence, but in her mind she simplifies it so she can do her job competently. Now she has to come to face the fact that behind every distortion is a person who is dear to someone else. The world is not so black and white with heroes and monsters. The one that takes a monstrous form this time is none other than a person; a human she deeply cares for. She is uncharacteristically serious and sober, and leans on the smarter sinners to solve this issue.

Meursault: He knows it can be reversed and that's the first thing his mind goes to when it happens. He's compartmentalizing it so bad he can't feel his own body. It's do or die, and he doesn't want the latter to be happening to anybody here. If they can undo this, he can begin to unravel the reason for their distortion, but for now he can only think one step ahead. He needs to bring them back, no matter what it takes. Failure is not an option here.

Ryoshu: The trembling of her hand is almost imperceptible as she listens to the explanations the big brained sinners give her. She knows she will have to face them in battle sooner or later, but for the first time in a while her muse fails her. She doesn't want to lift her arm, she doesn't want to use her knowledge of murder to take them down. Ultimately, she doesn't want to cut down the monster her beloved has become. There's no art in taking the life of a distorted creature, no soul in a brainless abomination. She wants them back. She will have them back.

Ishmael: Not only has she read the manuals about this phenomenon, she has also seen it happen many times before. More than that, she knows it's reversible. She's holding onto hope that she knows them well enough to talk them out of it. She raises her shield and mace, gritting her teeth and bracing her heart and mind for what she has to do. If they are to have a chance, she has to strike them down. She doesn't want to do it, but she also doesn't want to see any of the others do it either. She must be the one to neutralize the threat.

Heathcliff: He knows that behind a distorted monster there is a human being going through unimaginable suffering and grief. He's been there, he knows better than any other sinner what goes in a distorted person's head. He's the most hopeful about it, even if he's not looking forward to taking them down in combat. Heathcliff doesn't want to hurt the one he cares about, but he knows it is a necessary part of the process. He won't fail them, no matter what.

Outis: She's dealt with this before many, many times. Her team's the most competent at handling distortions. Of course, they're a bumbling bundle of fools, but still the company trusts them with these missions for a reason. Still, for all the outer confidence she tries to show while she requests permission to order the sinners around, her voice wavers. Her hand trembles when she has to raise her weapon, and the sound of breaking glass when the others take on their ids make her jumpy and tense. Will it really be fine? Are they really enough? As another identity begins to override her mind, she cannot help but ask herself: is she making the right choice?

Hong Lu: His heart is taken by unspeakable sadness, he can barely bring himself to say a word. He's seen distorted people before, and to them it always seemed like the manifestation of nightmares. To him, a distortion is always a physical manifestation of one's nightmares, and he can't help but look up at them and wonder: is this what haunts them in the darkest, coldest nights? Of course they cannot answer him, they're lost to their own grief. Whether they are capable of words, it's impossible to say unless they are confronted. Regardless of the answer, what he knows is that this event will forever haunt his nightmares from now on. He relies on his comrades to help bring them back, but he feels too helpless to lead the charge. He numbs his heart to the task ahead and waits for Dante's orders patiently.

Rodion: She feels cold, like it's the coldest winter night. She's sure it's only herself though. She cracks a joke about how the weather changed, and tries to smile but everybody knows how hard she's faking it. She's shaken, and among all the low blows life has given her, this is the one that bends her spirit near its breaking point. She tries to keep her smile up, in spite of the deep pain she feels in her chest. She knows if she isn't careful, she'll be the next to distort here. For a moment she wonders if that wouldn't be the preferrable route. After all, then they both could be together again as monsters.

Sinclair: This can't be real, right? This must be a mirror dungeon or something. His mind is being tested, that's all. It is definitely not real. Because after all the suffering he had to face through his journey in hell, why's it that he has to go through this too? Has he not gone through enough punishment to pay for his sins? No. No, maybe not. The mistakes of his frivolous, youthful, immature mind are yet to be paid for, and this is why he has to witness a person so dear to him distort. Deep inside he can't help but feel a deep anger and hatred towards life and this unfair world he finds himself in. He will save them, no matter the cost. He will save them, and FUCK YOU WORLD YOU WON'T TAKE THIS FROM ME. YOU WON'T TAKE ANYBODY ELSE FROM ME. DON'T FUCK WITH ME!

Gregor: Of course some shit like this had to happen eventually. He sort of saw the signs of a greater darkness hiding in their heart before, but he could never... bring it up. He knows that somehow, he's half responsible for their pain. If he was a better man, he would have stopped it in time, but now he has to see them become something else; something out of control. He trusts the others to come up with a solution that could bring the person he treasures so much back, but he's resigned himself to observing and following orders. The best he can do here is let others take over for him. He could never do anything right on his own. He's sorry, deeply so, but knows that his sorrow won't change a thing.

[pippin-katz]

I can’t find it, but there was a post that asked what your favorite change from the book to the film was, and I have decided on mine!

I love that they are older in the movie.

Matthew mentioned changing it to make it feel more like the first “real love” of their lives and not something that could be written off as “puppy love”. I totally get what he means, and I completely agree with the decision.

“I’m never gonna love anybody in the world like I love you.” - Alex Claremont-Diaz, pg. 312

It’s a really beautiful line, but it does make me pause for a moment. Alex is only 22 at this point. As much as I believe him, the vast majority of the population does not fall in love that young and stay with that person for the rest of their life.

Alex isn’t directly referring to marriage here, obviously, but that’s the next step of their relationship if they were confident and ready to.

There’s a reason so many marriages that are made at that age range result in divorces. I’m 22 at the moment, and the idea of getting married to someone, whether I think I “feel forever” about them or not, fucking boggles my mind; I don’t think there’s any circumstances where I would agree to marry someone at my age. A marriage this young is just begging to fall apart.

I mean, we refer to college students, most of whom are in the early 20s age group, as college kids. Alex is still finishing college during the book, while in the film, he’s already completed his initial college degree and has moved forward to law school.

Adult audiences know this too, so a line like this coming from a 22-year-old would likely make them roll their eyes. Their thoughts would be: “You’re practically still a kid, you have no idea what your future will be like. You’re going to change, they’re going to change, and you can’t know that your relationship will work with all that.”

And they’re right, and I agree.

But if an almost 30-year-old makes that statement? That’s far more believable!

And I know some people might be thinking: “Early 20s to late 20s isn’t that big of a gap.”

While that’s true in the grand scheme of a lifetime, a lot can happen in six-seven years. I mean, just look at where the world was back in 2018 compared to where it is now! A person can change a lot in that time.

Regardless, Alex and Henry being closer to thirty rather than twenty serves their love story really well. The level of commitment they are agreeing to feels believable, and like they could actually do it.

P.S. - this isn’t to say that I have a problem with them being younger in the book; I find both versions fantastic in their uniqueness.

[christinesficrecs]

do you have any fics where stiles and derek are hiding to have sex? specifically hiding from the sheriff or maybe scott lol

Well, there are quite a few secret relationship ones. And these ones, that kinda jumped out at me. 😉

I Just Wanna Be With You Every Day by Brego_Mellon_Nin | 33.9K

When his best friend’s son barrels into the kitchen only dressed in a pair of skintight jeans, lean but defined torso on display, Derek knows he’s truly and utterly fucked. Not only is the kid barely eighteen, but he also happens to be the Sheriff’s only son.

Derek makes a vow to himself that he will not seek Stiles out and he’ll get this thing under control.

I’m at one, and I’ve been quiet for too long by LunaCanisLupus_22 | 11.4K | Explicit

The one where the pack insists Derek can’t date anybody for a year but he ends up finding romance much closer to home anyway.

With Just the Door Ajar by mirrorkill | 61.6K

So there’s a bunch of reasons why Stiles has been away from Beacon Hills: most noticeably being the time he accused his English teacher Jennifer Blake of being the evil Darach who spent two years sacrificing twelve of Beacon Hill’s best.

But Stiles can’t stay away forever from the town that killed both his parents. When he gets a job offer he can’t refuse, it’s time for him to grow up and apologize for his mistakes. Which just lands him an invitation to Beacon Hills’ wedding of the century. Jennifer’s wedding. To the werewolf Stiles had a thing with in senior year. To the werewolf Stiles might not exactly be 100% over.

Still, he’s a grown up now and he can handle this thing without causing any trouble. Having sex with the groom repeatedly doesn’t count as trouble… does it?

Hallmark should really make cards for this shit by  Jessicatty | 2.8K

When the pack finds a unicorn in the woods they call Stiles to come help since he should be the only virgin left in the pack. Should being the key word here.

Over the Threshold by  alisvolatpropiis | 5.8K

This is the last time,” Stiles declares, just before he attacks Derek’s mouth with his, the kiss fevered and desperate, his long fingers jabbing roughly into Derek’s abs as he tangles them in his shirt. He pulls him close and walks them away from the front door, and in his hurried clumsiness, Stiles’ nose smashes Derek’s glasses into his face, hard enough that they smudge against his eyelids. It should be annoying, but like everything else about Stiles that should be infuriating, Derek can only find it hopelessly endearing.

That’s the thing about love, he supposes, even a love he won’t fully admit to himself, let alone to Stiles.

You Look Like Bad News (i gotta have you) by  standinginanicedress | 38.9K |

Option A : violently tell Derek that they are under no circumstances ever to hook up again because it was stupid and dumb.

Option B : tell Scott the truth, stand back and watch as Scott kills Derek with his bare hands so Stiles doesn’t even have to face the music. Not an option at all, actually. Expunge this from the record.

The real Option B : calmly explain to Derek that the situation is too fucked up and hey, maybe if Derek and Scott ever shake hands and make up, he and Stiles can hook up again because, man…it was great.

Option C : forget everything, charge headfirst into danger like fuckin’ Bravehart and have sex with Derek all over again.

Option D : bury himself alive and wait for the worms to eat him.

Paper Airplanes by  RemainNameless | 23.5K

The road to unfortunate, accidental, and possibly career-destroying relationships is littered with good intentions, snark, bad timing, and not a few paper airplanes.

[foursaints]

thoughts on barty canonically crying for his father to save him while being arrested?

to me, whether or not the crying is “real” is one of the key moments of barty’s ambiguity in the text and i love that it’s never answered. barty’s ambiguity and the unresolved tension between the parts of him that are “true” and “pretend” is one of my favorite things about him (i think of the classical greek term, polytropos) and i wouldn’t rob him of that by trying to give an answer.  

i can definitely speculate but it's just such crucial scene in my opinion. under the cut i'll talk about the implications of both options. if i had to title a barty character thesis it would be the line from that passage: “and the boy continued to struggle” 

OPTION 1: it's fake

this was my gut reaction at first. faking innocent tears is his best move in that situation and we know him to be manipulative & a gifted actor. it would also have been an audacious and hilarious move given that anybody who even remotely knows him would know that he’s not a simpering little loyal sensitive son & serve as a final way to fuck over his dad— playing up the picture of the Son That He Should Have Been. it would also explain crouch sr. being like “Lmfao Take Your Lying Ass Immediately To Wizard Jail” 

OPTION 2: it's real 

however, i believe that it was real. i dont mean that he actually thought he was innocent or anything but i think the tears were real. in my interpretation we’re watching barty grapple with this farcical trial, knowing full well the outcome, and crying for his entire wasted life. to me, that’s more compelling.

 i try to keep in mind that barty doesn’t have a father in the traditional sense, he grew up under imperius with a disembodied Father-Voice in his head telling his body what to do��� he doesn’t know him as an actual man. in barty’s experience, his father is more like an old testament God. so it’s fascinating that he was able to leave & rebel to the extent that he did under those circumstances. he continued to struggle. 

i love that he’s acknowledging himself in this moment. it’s a plea for help technically, but i tend to read it as more of a condemnation: “I’m your son!” 

this is the first time in years since leaving that he’s seeing his father again, this time in physical possession of his own body. but again he’s quite literally in chains. and now all that secret dictatorial control over him is in front of an audience. i see his crying as his elektra “filth teaches filth” moment– if I had to place more of my own emphasis on his words it would be “I didn’t do it— I’m YOUR son”. in this context, “Mother, I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me” resonates harder. 

i also cant talk about this scene without calling attention to this specific moment: 

the line “i didn’t know” feels so… out of place? and guttural? it almost doesn’t make sense in context (saying “I didn’t know” feels more like an excuse for guilt rather than a denial of it) and that incongruency renders it so… honest? and then it’s sandwiched in the middle of this confession that we KNOW is a lie but it hurts for some reason… he didn’t know it would turn out like this. but i think that deep down he did, and he hoped that it wouldn’t.

i think that barty thought he could leave, and he thought he could try and arrange himself into a semblance of his own person, and he thought he could have something of a life. but there was literally no other possible outcome for him— who just happened to be born misfitted to the circumstances he was raised in, and who struggled fruitlessly his entire life— and trying to leave was a naive schoolboy’s fantasy and his apology comes out in a naive schoolboy’s words. he didn’t know! 

and this is also why it's so awesome that he breaks out of jail AGAIN and kills that man lmfao. (cardi b voice) Murder scene, Barty made a mess / POP UP, GUESS WHO, BITCH?

[poorlittleyaoyao]

ngl I don't really like it when jgy hiding lxc is presented as this idyllic getaway at all because like uh. Canonically, in Xichen's own words, he found running away from the burning of the cloud recesses to be shameful, he's injured himself and afraid for his life, his father(in the novel) just died and while I don't think that guy's good for much Wangji cried about it so there's a decent chance Xichen is pretty bummed too, his younger brother is injured and taken to evil summer camp where he doesn't know what'll happen to him, he doesn't know if his uncle or any other family members he might be attached to are alive, and he's hiding out with some stranger who isn't even a cultivator who is endangering his life out of the goodness of his heart. I agree that there's no way jgy is hiding him at his childhood brothel, he definitely didn't go back there, he's only mentioned to be a book keeper at an unmentioned location which could be literally anywhere? Ye olde literacy rates were not high, a literate dude who was good at math could get a job without having to slink back to trauma central. I just think that the whole experience was kind of awful and that's why they bonded so strongly, with maybe moments of peace before the reality of their situation came crashing back in.

YEAH. One of my biggest beefs with Novel Xichen is that he doesn’t tell anybody about Meng Yao hiding him, even when asked directly by his best friend who knows them both and wants to know how they know each other, even though this would have immensely helped Meng Yao and a letter of recommendation is the least you could do after a guy of low social standing risked what little he had to save your life. And the only way that choice makes sense at all is if the shame and pain associated with that time cuts him so deeply that neither duty nor gratitude can compel him to speak of it. If it was foremost a soft romantic getaway, then Xichen’s refusal to speak of it is beyond selfish (and tbh would imply that he was ashamed of Meng Yao in some way, since Meng Yao himself only keeps silent out of deference to Xichen). Not cute! Bad actually!

I can see it working as idyllic in CQL canon to a degree, due to the timeline changes. Meng Yao has just been exiled from Qinghe, so he too has been abruptly rendered homeless and friendless. They already know each other and are finding each other again in similarly-traumatized states. For this version of Xichen, Meng Yao caring for him would have less shame attached to it, because it’s not “despite being the new leader if one of the great cultivations sects, I’m now so helpless that I must rely on this poor stranger’s kindness” in this canon, it’s “the small kindness I showed before is now being repaid a hundredfold by my friend’s trusted deputy.” (There’s a post I remember seeing about how Meng Yao’s kindness would be vital to Xichen maintaining his view that the world is ultimately a just and good place that I think is true for both canons.) Meanwhile, Meng Yao in this canon is relieved to find Xichen safe, and having lost his former standing because Mingjue doubts his integrity, he would be basking in the glow of Xichen trusting him and thinking he’s a good person. I know the change in motivations/circumstances isn’t everyone’s cup of tea (because yeah, “helping the guy from your meetcute” isn’t the same vibe as “helping a stranger because it’s the right thing to do”), but I do think in CQL the changes lend themselves more readily to Xiyao enjoying each other during their time in hiding beyond bonding through shared hardship.

[allwormdiet]

Shell 4.1

As much as I wish Taylor could ride this high forever, unfortunately looks like it's back to school

Taylor. Honey. Dearheart. You keep being really complimentary about your bullies' physical looks, and this does not in any way undermine the hurt they've done to you or your resentment thereof, but it does muddy the waters a little bit as to whether resentment is the only thing you're feeling

The back-and-forth actually feels so refreshing compared to every previous interaction with the bullies, like. My god. Did Taylor just have to rob a bank to get the confidence she needs to not worry about these fuckers? I never thought that John Dillinger therapy would take off but maybe there's a future in that

Better the devil in plain sight than the devil you can't see at all.

John Dillinger therapy! This is what I'm talking about! Let's go Taylor, show that inner strength! Shed the burden!

I mean hell, maybe, or maybe this is an upturn where she finally gets sure enough in herself to get these jerks off her back forever. We'll see how it plays out, right?

The idle speculation on Mr. Quinlan is a little wild but well in keeping with my own experiences. Sometimes teachers just passively generate rumors around them.

This one stupid bit about John Dillinger therapy keeps paying off, this is great, real joke investment opportunity

Honestly Taylor I think you can feel bad about it while also living with it, I'm not gonna pretend to be some expert on morality or philosophy or whatever but I feel like you're allowed a certain number of felonies after enough suffering in your life

Technically not a career boost for the Undersiders, at least not as far as public renown, but making your enemies look like clowns is just as good if not better. Like yeah, those tools on the other side are getting their pay docked because of that bigass hole in the roof of the bank, and you're way richer from the same event

Expanding our understanding of the city a bit more, and honestly this sounds dope as fuck. I'd love to visit every once in a while and just soak in the culture, although not if it meant living in Brockton Bay. That seems. Bad.

Ugh, these kids

Honestly I'm not quite this hardcore but damn if it isn't a mood. I've yet to see proof of Rachel being wrong

Yeah I know she had her dogs attack Taylor, Taylor's an aspiring snitch, it's okay to maul a snitch

I think I knew this part already but honestly I'm more excited to have Rachel lore than anything

I wonder how much leniency can be provided for crimes that happen in the immediate aftermath or because of a trigger event. Maybe not a ton, or maybe enough to get away with murder. I'd be curious to learn more about that, if it ever comes up.

And uhh, yeah, that'd fucking get you dead bodies alright. Wonder if that's why she's so hardcore about the training, making sure that never happens again. Entirely for the dogs' benefit, or only mostly and then there's some part of her that thrives with that kind of control?

Alec you cheeky little shit, you're endearing yourself to me

Honestly Taylor, just try and breathe easy for a little bit, I don't think you've been able to do that in over a year. Take your time, enjoy your walk on the wild side.

Maybe I'm biased but I love these two interacting on their own, so I'm fully in favor of this plan Lisa

Well I'm sure if Lisa ever killed anybody they deserved it, or if nothing else she arranged circumstances so that they ended up deserving it after some mild provocation

it's fiiiiiiiiine

Current Thoughts

This story has such good slice of life, I want more of it every time and every time I get cut off before I'm satisfied. Is that on purpose? If that's on purpose Wildbow might be a more sinister intelligence than I'd thought.

School segment was so blissfully short and Taylor managed to fight Emma to a standstill so this is a huge improvement over every other second she's spent at school

If Rachel ever kills anyone on purpose they deserved it, and if Rachel ever kills anyone on accident it's okay bc everyone makes mistakes

Honestly I'd be willing to accept any of these kids as having a good reason to render someone cadaverrific. Brian and Lisa have good heads on their shoulders and at this point I'm starting to suspect that the lazy gamer thing Alec has going on is like, at least partially a front for a deeper personality, and he's trying to be shallow on purpose, so idk what that means for him being a killer but I somehow doubt he's a fucking Hannibal Lecter type when we're not looking

...Actually come to think on it the only two members the Protectorate has info on is Grue and Bitch, right? Tattletale is an unknown and Regent has almost nothing about him. I'd suspect Grue to be the second killer but I'm not sure if that's a red herring.

Find out eventually, I guess.

...I might have another chapter in me before sacking out for the night. We'll see.

[aihoshiino]

chapter 149 thoughts

Chapters Since The 143 Kiss Happened And Went Entirely Unacknowledged And Unaddressed Count: 6

anybody else here unironically love getting yuribaited or just me

Honestly I kind of don't know what to think about this chapter lol. As it stands I didn't really hate it - in a lot of ways, it feels like a return to the humour and emotional focus of early OnK which is something I've honestly been missing in the manga while revisiting the anime. Mengo's art toys chapter was great and getting some proper Akane focus was nice. On the other hand, transitioning into this style of writing with no cushioning after the last arc is so incredibly jarring and the Akane stuff we get here is… well, we'll put a pin in it for now and address it later.

In general "put a pin in it" feels like the right energy for this chapter. As the second chapter of a new arc it's primarily setup for the stuff we're going to be dealing with for the next however long, I think it's going to be something we can really only chew on when we have a more solid idea of what exactly it's setting up, long or short term.

Anyway…! We start off with an explanation of why Kana seemed to flip so suddenly last chapter which does patch up some of that logic a bit. I think it's a little silly that she didn't actually overhear the conversation and thus clue into the actual goings on with how close she was standing but that's basically romance misunderstandings 101 so…

Her leaping to assumptions and giving up so quick also feels a bit abrupt but tbh Kana has always been deeply insecure and quick to leap to it's so over when it comes to her feelings for Aqua. Not only that but as others have pointed out since last chapter, from Kana's outsider perspective, Aqua was at his happiest and most at peace while dating Akane and has been in a mental health spiral to the point of expressing suicidal ideation since they broke up. Obviously we, the readers, know the extenuating circumstances at place but from Kana's POV it makes perfect sense to conclude that Akane makes him happiest and is uniquely equipped to do so. It just feels clunky in execution.

On the subject of clunky… I won't lie, it really bugs me that the first really significant AKKN interaction we're getting is love triangle shit entirely centered on Aqua. One of my biggest complaints about the series post TB was the way the end of that arc set up a huge status quo change to Akane and Kana's rivalry and then kind of failed to expand on it at all and that continued to be true all the way up to the Movie Arc. I'd hoped that them both working in close proximity as actresses on the same project would give us opportunities to dig into that. We got some lip service in that regard and then swerved hard into suddenly hyperfocusing on Kana's insecurities regarding Ruby while Akane got all of zero meaningful focus during the back half of the Movie Arc even though she was one of the characters with the most potential to bring interesting things to the table.

Honestly, one of my biggest fears with Akane's declaration that she'd stop Aqua's plan was that even though the two of broken up, she would continue to orbit Aqua at the expense of being allowed an arc of her own that focused on her relationships with the wider cast. Like - even if what she says about not being romantically interested in Aqua anymore is true, she is nevertheless entirely revolving around him to a really frustrating degree. It really feels like Akasaka realized Akane would have solved everything going on in the Movie Arc and had to panic and offscreen her as a result lol.

tho akane dismissively talking about the idea of clinging onto a past lover did make me do a very mean chuckle. ouch, better hope ruby didn't overhear that one, girl!

That said, for all my complaints, I didn't hate their little talk. Yes, it contained an absolute mountain of transparent-to-the-point-of-cynical KanaKane shipbait but it was pretty gay so who's to say if it's really good or bad or not. It's also just nice to see Kana and Akane being able to have a talk that isn't entirely hostile even if I really wish it was under different circumstances, or even that we'd just seen the road they took to being able to be so civil with each other. But whatever - we're here now, I'll take what I get.

Circling back around a bit, I am intrigued by the idea of Akane framing herself as having 'moved on' from Aqua when she very clearly hasn't lol. Like I indicated up there, I don't quite think this is the case nor do I think we're supposed to uncritically accept this as being the case - it reads moreso to me that Akane is trying to convince not just Kana but also herself that she's moved on from Aqua so Kana doesn't feel like she's in Akane's way if she tries to shoot her shot. As for why… well, that's something to talk about at the end of the chapter but I do think it's interesting either way. Akane wildly overshooting in her scrabble to convince Kana it's totally just platonic and going for sonzoning Aqua was also about the most insane thing she's said in a while but her utterly panicked and deranged expression as she said it made me bust a gut laughing.

In general, the expression work this chapter was on fire and there was a ton of really funny and really cute moments - Akane's blushy pout after Kana's quasi-confession, the fish-eye lens effect on her when Kana sees her outside her door and especially her and Kana's expressions in the second to last page… jesus i lost it so bad.

I've been gushing about Mengo's panelling and expressions for the last ten or so chapters but she really is amping it up lately. It definitely feels like her art for OnK has been getting really refined during the last few volumes and while this chapter was a little whiplash-y coming off the end of the Movie Arc, I also think it's a really impressive display of Mengo's range, too. Her horror and drama chops were on full display while all that was going on but in a more lowkey chapter like this, she brings a lot of life and charm to even simple things like the little montage of everyone wrapping up their day of the beach - it's three silent, tiny panels at the bottom of the page but she crams a ton of detail and character into each one.

I also am Extremely Shrimpterested in the note this chapter ends on. Something OnK does occasionally is use genre trappings as a smokescreen for what is actually happening on page and Akane's words at the end here seem to indicate this is happening here, too. This entire chapter goes extremely hard on the romcom tropes and dynamics but the way Akane's energy totally changes once she's on her own makes me think this is intentional and a reflection of the way Akane is setting up to use Kana.

Because I do think it's undoubtable that she is setting up to use Kana. Her sudden leap to captain of the SS AquKana is not about wholeheartedly supporting two people she loves (at least not primarily) and more about her continued efforts to save Aqua from himself. Kana just happens to be a convenient pawn in making this happen.

If I'm making this sound very cynical and cold of Akane: it is! But that's why I think it's so interesting. Akane is very like Aqua in a lot of ways and seeing this tendency of his to perform cruelty and manipulation to the greater end of doing the most good (or at least in their eyes) mirrored in her is very juicy and potentially very deadly in the hands of someone as smart and perceptive as Akane.

It's also kind of telling and kind of really sad to see Akane asserting that Aqua wouldn't be able to take revenge if he had a girlfriend at his side when that certainly didn't stop him back when he and Akane were dating. It's subtle but it's consistent with just how little faith Akane seems to have ever had in Aqua's feelings for her. Kana's not the only one struggling with long term insecurities in that regard.

I also can't not address the elephant in the room that is the story setting this up while the resolution to whatever the hell is going on with Ruby is still dangling over everyone's heads. I mentioned this last chapter but it really is getting to be bizarre just how much of a nothingburger that has been turned into, not just in terms of the characters' lack of reaction to it but the way the narrative has just entirely failed to give it any weight or significance whatsoever. I can only assume that one of the other girls making a move to pursue Aqua (if it does end up happening) will kick Ruby into action and we'll get god knows what sort of resolution there but a dark and evil part of me that loves to start shit thinks that the funniest possible resolution would be for it to never come up or be referenced ever again just for the sheer frenzy of confusion and bafflement it would cause. everybody loses!!!