#but there *are* differences between them in specific ways that potentially indicate something occurring in addition to just ableism

[aroaceleovaldez]

one of the things that I found particularly interesting in Demigods of Olympus is that it finally gives the best direct comparison we've seen so far between Percy and another character's experiences in terms of academics and particularly ableist discrimination.

The way Zane describes his experiences and what we see in his POV is that, while he is similarly discriminated against for his "atypical" behavior and blame is placed on him, the only sorts of punishments he receives for this are relatively benign, such as an increase in counseling. (It is also notable that Zane is somewhat autistic-coded, such as having the "incorrect" scripts when speaking with adults and Sam explicitly reminding him to remember to make proper eye contact.) Percy, on the other hand, similarly experiences discrimination for "atypical" behavior, but whereas Zane is treated as "too smart for his own good" and given slaps on the wrist, Percy is automatically labeled as aggressive, destructive, and a trouble-maker based on preconceived assumptions about him and is more severely punished, such as being frequently expelled.

We rarely get this level of direct comparison between Percy's experiences and that of another character, particularly such similar experiences, so looking at the differences is really interesting to gauge what their different experiences with ableist discrimination is like - and how it could potentially tie into intersectionality and other forms of discrimination at play for them.

For instance, Zane's parents are generally heavily implied to be middle-class and/or generally financially secure, versus Percy who grew up poor, so it could be classism in combination with ableist discrimination. Alternatively, it could be intersectionality with racial discrimination, as neurodivergent behavior in people of color is significantly more likely to be punished more severely and labeled as aggressive or disruptive behavior due to racist preconceptions - particularly since we know Percy's experiences with ableist discrimination are also somewhat based on assumptions people make regarding his appearance. Both Zane and Percy are racially ambiguous - Zane's appearance essentially being completely unspecified, but Percy at least having some notable details such as having a deep tan complexion. If not racism, it could also be colorism, which in this context often has similar intersectionality. There's a lot of potential options.

It's just very interesting to me! I love having such a direct point of comparison to examine the experiences of two characters within.

[vaalthus]

The Only Path (Spoilers)

Given that Alteon didn't bite back at Sepulchure's hard blows, even when taking into consideration that he feels accountable for much that has happened during his rule, I'd say it's a safe bet that Alteon feels extremely guilty for Valen choosing to don the Doomknight armor, if that wasn't evident enough from the last quest. Even moreso that he refused to come out challenge Sepulchure directly when he attacked all of Greenguard. Furthermore, there is the indication that Alteon more than understands why Valen became Sepulchure which is why he seems to refuse to bring up the immorality of his actions during the orb saga. It is evident that what happened between him, Valen, and Lynaria bind the two in a way that he feels he couldn't truly believe that

Clearly much of their original strife began surrounding events regarding Lynaria and yet much would imply we are still missing heavy details here that sets them apart from what occurred in AQW's timeline. Which makes me wonder again if there any more hints or clues Valen's story regarding his background in this timeline. I doubt it but it is something to ponder.

Also...

I know this is technically helping and that the person whose body that used to belong to is either straight up dead or is having their soul pilot a golem now but it just feels wrong.

Yeah you and Xan are so getting dragged to Celestia's grave when this over buddy

Ah but we finally have a plan to deal with Akanthus!

And it's to toss him into the trashbin where he belongs.

Alright jokes aside, this is somewhat of solid plan...in theory. We have no means of hurting Akanthus nor keeping him under confinement on Lore so it makes sense that perhaps the best solution is just throw him into completely different reality and hope at best that it kills him or at worst takes him forever to find his way back out.

The problem here though is that nothing in the Void might actually be able to harm him either so he eventually might find his way back. The Void having its own core might override that fact as well the fact this void pearl might place him in an unpleasant part of the Void to keep him occupied but this would seem to only delay the inevitable. I am curious if Akanthus could even be affected by Void Madness.

The other problem of course is pointed by the Hero right here:

The last thing the Land of Dragons need is yet another rift leaking out all manner of ugliness and madness that's associated with the Void. The pearl potentially allowing something to come in from the Void seems high given the Magesters haven't properly tested it either.

There is however yet another problem addressed in this particular moment

I'VE FAILED TO EDUCATE THE DRAGON CHILD!!!

There is a bright side to this quest though

BRITTANY IS AWAKE AND SEEMINGLY WELL!!!

It's also nice to know here that Victoria does have an out if she no longer wants to sit on the throne anymore but it is equally a joy that she's no longer as alone nor as ungrounded as she was when was originally forced to take up the crown's mantle to deal with Jaania and the Rose.

Finally there's this....

If I didn't know any better I'd say this was from our dear water elemental invaders from the Deadlands rift. Which if true I find their comments concerning and not just about invading part. In fact, I find it most worrying that they consider the Deadlands to be more suitable to inhabit than the Elemental Plains.

Past observations would lead one to assume that these Water Elementals hail specifically from the Elemental Plane of Water, much like the Lagohmorphs with the Manufactory, and unlike the Rifts that indicate their combatants came from the parts of the Elemental Plain that are designated as the Wastes. This would lead to the assumption that if that is the case then these Water Elemental's home are under control and stabilized when compared to the condition of the Wastes. Yet this speaker indicates that wherever they are from their place of origin is far too chaotic and imbalanced for their liking.

This leads me to two potential train of thoughts. The first is that these are in fact water elementals from the Elemental Plane of Water that Neso created and the Plane has been in a state of disarray and decay since she and the other Avatars were reduced to orbs due to Notha and Myalos fight with them. A problem likely made worse by the fact that we know that the Wastes has "heroes" and beasts that the Plane of each element has to likely defend itself against. Although unlike the Manufactory for the Lagohmorphs, the inhabitants of the water plane are likely not fairing as well when confronting the absence of their Avatar and are simply looking for a means beyond their own Plane to escape the chaos.

The second thought is that these water elemental are actually denizens of the Wastes that miraculously have managed to lockdown a section of it dedicated to water but without the influence or support of Neso. The problem with this though is as expected. They are still in the Wastes while doing this, meaning they would be under a much heavier assault of the chaos that is often noted to occur in the Wastes due to the clash of the elements for dominance.

The first thought admittedly seems more likely but I'll be intrigued if it somehow manages to be the latter.

Also I'm absolutely loving this Timeless drip for my alt.

[burlowbeanie]

“Love and freedom cannot coexist” - Personal Relationships and Internal Imperialism in TLT

When in Gideon the Ninth Harrow mentions her revulsion to “becoming an appendix of the Third or Fifth houses” (48), (and, in Harrow the Ninth, articulated a fear of the Cohort swooping in to “save” things if she admitted her parents were dead as a child and called for help), I read it as a manifestation of fear that the imperialist coercion used to incorporate new territories would be turned inward on the Ninth. (This is especially clear with the potential Cohort involvement). If I remember correctly, from Harrow’s and Judith’s perspectives, this seems to have already happened to the Fourth to some extent due to them also suffering a chronic lack of living adults due to a glorious tradition of dying heroically as early as possible. The more I think about it though, the more I am intrigued by what the books are thus saying with regards to the relationship between imperialism, personal relationships, “love and freedom cannot coexist,” etc. It seems to consistently depict imperialism, both external and internal to the empire, as destructive, but its critique seems to be complicated by the development of Harrow’s personal relationships in Harrow the Ninth. Yeah she’s buddy buddy with god, that should be kinda clear, etc, but also.

Who would have swept in to “save” the Ninth, either due to lack of resources (such as living human beings) or the death of its leaders? The Cohort, yes, but also the Third and Fifth are mentioned specifically. In HtN, Harrow spends the book developing her not-friends with no-benefits relationship with Ianthe (enemies with detriments, right? I think someone else said that but I can’t find it now) and a parental relationship with Abigail Pent.

If she had asked for help, would the Third or Fifth have responded? Would she just have developed similar relationships with Ianthe and Abigail earlier in life? Would she have been raised alongside Coronabeth, Ianthe, and Naberius, alongside Jeannemary and Isaac? Is the love of the Fifth towards the children of the Fourth an element of their assimilation? Would those relationships be part of the gradual assimilation and disappearance of the Ninth, or would they occur in spite of that framework of absorbtion and destruction that is the only relationship that the empire can conceive of, or would they stand as moments of hope to other forms of relating to another? How much of the tension between Harrow and Ianthe comes from how they relate to each other as equals (each with their own strengths and specialties where they can beat the other) and cannot accept or understand that, instead constantly trying to one-up each other? How would that look different if Harrow was introduced as the impoverished if intelligent child of a dying house and Ianthe as her benefactor/the child of her benefactor? How much of Harrow’s relationship with Abigail is possible only because she got to know her in death, where her political and economic power was irrelevant, rather than life, where it was one of Harrow’s greatest fears?

Perhaps in addition to the literal violences and erasures of imperialism the series is also pointing out the fear that it instills, how that hinders the ability of communities to form and operate. Harrow could not reach out for help, and I think that the books suggest that she did have good reason. The traditions and autonomy of her house were important to her, so she protected them from likely demise. And, because of the ways that that destruction and loss of autonomy was tied to reaching out to people like Abigail and Magnus, it also isolated her from any help or care and left her and especially Gideon trapped.

Love and freedom cannot coexist -- but how much of that is something innate about love, and how much is that something indicative of the types of relationships that are possible (or intelligible, named, understood, recognized) under a system of imperialistic exploitation? What different types of love exist, and what types of freedom? I’m still figuring out a satisfactory argument about what the book’s saying, and I’m anticipant of seeing this thread develop in Alecto the Ninth.

[jonathankatwhatever]

Oh good, we have a conversation going. Topic seems to be the assertion that my understandings need to be reduced to simplicity, where simplicity is only achieved through a complicated understanding. That’s the difference between comprehension in D-structure and naive comprehension. By naive comprehension, I mean fitting together Complications rather than Ends and Pathways, the words indicating the induction generating true or false, count this way or that way, log2 choice, etc. is running in 1-0-1, assuming the 0 Between fills to whatever 1 generates the necessary End 1. Is that clear? Other than the overuse of 1, I thought that was well put. This invokes the entire fCM and SBE apparatus.

Let’s see. I said conversation and assertion. What? I need to grasp that apparatus idea because that’s the connecting idea. The words are slippery. The connecting idea is that 0-1-0 occurs and that generates gs into that gsSpace, which thus fits with other gsSpaces to make a larger one. I’m using gsSpace here to emphasize the generation within D-structure of this actual reality, whether occurring in nature, like in a fluid, or in one’s mind or in a projection onto a surface, like in a drawing.

This connecting idea is why we have so many questions which ask whether there are smooth or otherwise some sort of continuous solutions across flows or what fills a hole or what makes a hole.

I’m seeing shapes form. It’s much easier to get this thinking about gsSpace generating because we always have Observer within the D-structure. I’m trying to get across that seeing actual objects and all their attendant complications and potentials, meaning their physical and abstract selves, that seeing these generate means to see them take shape, literally and figuratively, and to come alive.

See? You started to say ‘accretion’ and realized that’s a complication: you intend it to come out as 1 and hope that Pathway exists. Word usage. I had to make something to drink and lost a lot of great material. I’ve been trying to add a bit of caffeine into my life because I keep reading about its association with better outcomes. I made a half-calf latte with whole milk and chocolate syrup. I’m not crazy about this syrup. I prefer Fox’s: the chocolate is not so milky and that blends differently with the coffee and milk.

I have these weird moments when it’s like you’re so in my head that you’re in the room and you’re talking to me like I’m next to you. It’s when you sound most like George or when George sounds like you, which is to be expected if the identification process works as described. I can hear him saying there are 2 Things, 2 separate tangible Things and they share an intangible Thing which not only is at the core of each of those 2 Things, forming the basis for how they operate and thus are - yes, and basis translates into a vector basis in which we treat the grid sheet as a vector space we can then expand into a box, and thus into higher dimensions through the specific act of generating the entire local set at each level.

You’ll need to explain that. But first, while you let idea wash over you, this shared Thing exists in Triangular to both the physical Things, so each has a Triangular of outer and inner, tObject and iObject perspectives to this Triangular End. Slow down. I’m not done. This Triangular entangles the 2 physical objects through pairings. So that models affiliations or dating as entanglements. Tangled in the sheets. Oh, so you inhabit a yK based frame as an xK and that enables you to see the metaphors and other layerings, like you’re seeing the tree views. That’s really fascinating.

The nearness of that was like being in a WWII submarine movie with the depth charges going off. I ended up drinking my latte and staring at my phone until you came up and I thought why am I looking at this crap? Really, why?

So we were talking about entanglements, which naturally leads to romance, which made me think about Fourier transforms and how they become important because frequency and the composition of the composite is such a great way to see generation of grid squares and of objects having effects across grid squares as those generate.

So my understandings need to be reduced to simplicity by adding the counting details which come from your perspective of xK within yK overlaying, ring by ring, completion by completion, count by count, over my yK within xK. That as the torsion End identifies each pairing in the same way we described b10 earlier - or was that last night? - as 0 and 1 where IC substitutes as 0 in each perspective. I’ve been trying to articulate it better but this means all other pairings fit to as 0 to 1 from each direction. The deeper and more expansive these pairings, the better the fit, the more true the statement.

This is where tangible versus intangible rears its head. I walked away for a moment, came back and: D-structure generates from the infinite to the finite, from uncountably to countably infinite to finite. You see this specifically when you see how something as basic as D5 ‘looks’: imagine the idealized structure - forgot the notation - made of 1-0Segments and see how that generates Triangulars and gs, and then that these don’t fit together along the grid lines of gs but rather require other shapes made of partial gs to fill the gap. Or the other way around: the extra dimensional space is squeezed out when and as D-structure resolves to D4.

Oh right, an n-gon. Not the best label but whatever.

It’s not just an n-gon. It’s a construction of 1-0Segments along with their associated sheets in Triangular, gs, Hexagonal, etc. All connecting into that segment which exists with any n. I see: change it to K-gun and that makes more sense because K means along a grid line and along the szK. That last leads to the unexpected that we substitute actual, meaning 0Space measures, to the szK count. What does that mean? Is it trivial? Is it profound? Is it true love? Tell me, dearest, what I am blathering about.

Okay. Sub in 0Space because an idealized K-gon, like a 5K-gon is the idealized pentagonal because that combines 5 perspectives in all their meanings, and these perspectives are squeezed out or expanded into. Very nice.

I was thinking yesterday about Quincy Jones and how his memory has already been simplified to producing a track for charity because that connects to images of people the public recognizes. The scope of fame and how it changes. Who built that fancy house? Only known now because that connects to another. It’s nicely close to the cartoon about the dead set in Mexico in which the dead fade away when they’re not remembered. That in turn connects to the concepts of heaven and hell. It even connects to the nihilistic urge to destroy all because that hastens the day when no trace of you remains. Isn’t that interesting?

So far, I’ve realized that the 1 and 0 with IC substitution is profound and counts b10 as well as b2, which is better notation than referring to log2 and choice. That is, the concept of bwhatever is that it’s not just a count but is gsProcess so 1 and 0 lead to 1 and 0, and so on, so the concepts of choice and freedom or constraint of choice within contexts, within gsSpaces, all can and do operate. It’s a wonderful feeling to have this fit together so well.

And I’ve realized how a K-gon constructs in D-structure, and note that the images of the little hats appearing and disappearing through rotations were entirely correct. There’s been more, but I need a break. My little brain is tired and needs to stop processing math for a bit.

Forgot to say it’s 5 Nov 2024.

[oldfritz]

I'm genuinely curious and don't want to start something! Just wanted to ask what you make of the 'Old Fritz might've been asexual' take, I don't know much about him and I feel you're one of the best people to ask esp since you lean towards 'he was probably queer in some way' too

Hey there! So, first off, don’t ever worry about me interpreting you asking me a question as starting something. As much as I love making dumb jokes about the guy, I love nothing more than doing this kind of stuff and defending or explaining my points. There’s two degrees I want to get over the next decade: first my JD and then my MA in Prussian history. I live for this stuff! Always have! Second off, I’m very sorry for not getting to this sooner. Things have been incredibly stressful for me for a variety of different reasons which have made answering your question, until now, rather difficult. Putting this under a cut because, holy shit, it got long!

My personal reasoning for why I think he’s bi (which, correct me if I’m wrong, I’m assuming is what you meant instead of ace and could be a different post entirely since some historians have tried to argue that) stems more to do with some of my lingering questions about the nature of his relationships with certain woman, rather than that of his relationships with men. To me and my modern, queer eye, Fritz’s relationships with men like Hans Hermann von Katte, Francisco Algarotti, Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf, and (much to my personal vexation) one Monsieur Voltaire are either outright homosexual/homoerotic in nature or very, very easily lend themselves to that interpretation rather than strictly romantic friendships (which Wikipedia does a fairly good overview of and, if you’re coming to me from AmRev perspective, uses Hamilton and Laurens’ relationship as a familiar example). While I’m avoiding those relationships in this ask, I’d be more than happy to elaborate upon one/all of them in a different one. 

Before I go into the big pauses that Fritz’s relationships with Madame von Wreech and Countess Orzelska give me, I want to deny the use of Fritz’s wife as an example of Fritz’s attraction to woman. While this, admittedly, may sound odd, we have ample evidence of how turned off and repulsed Fritz found Elisabeth Christine. Before he had even met her, Fritz was complaining about how she was ‘not very pretty, speaks but little, and acts like a blockhead’ (Asprey, 87) and, later, admitted to Grumbkow his plan to ‘keep my word,...get married, but afterwards it will be a case of that is that, and goodbye, Madame, and fare thee well’ (Jones, 52). For Christ’s sake, the man pitied her knowing how his treatment would leave her as ‘one more unhappy princess in the world’! Which is little consolation when you remember he also referred to her with such romantic terms as ‘this unpleasant creature,’ ‘the abominable object of my desires,’ ‘the person,’ and claimed to have preferred to marry ‘the biggest whore in Berlin’ (Asprey, 87). And while we (fortunately? unfortunately?) know quite a bit about their sex life, Fritz largely regarded it as just another duty - to quote him, ‘I will only have the duty to fuck’ (Ibid, 87). And while Seckendorf heard - first, presumably from Count von der Schulenburg and, later on, Count Friedrich von Wartensleben, a close and intimate friend of the then-crown prince - that Fritz would ‘fuck and refuck’ Elisabeth Christine and that said act occurred in the afternoon, it still was out of a sense of obligation (Bely, 481-2). When reminded that if he wanted more money for frivolities, he’d need to produce an heir, Fritz bemoaned that he ‘cannot sleep with my wife out of desire, and when I do sleep with her, I do it out of duty rather than inclination’ (Clark, 50). All this in accumulation, as well as the myriad of other quotes and incidents I’ve left out, makes one wonder why his relationship with Elisabeth Christine is sometimes used by historians to prove any sort of heterosexual impulse in the man when she’s the woman with the weakest supports for that argument.

That being said, now we get to the women with a more muddled places in his romantic escapades, if you will. What exactly happened between Orzelska and Fritz during his trip with his father to Dresden in 1728? The main source for everything that occurred during this trip is Wilhelmina, who didn’t attend and without anything about this specific incident coming from Fritz or Friedrich Wilhelm I, make it rather hard to use as concrete, irrefutable proof. Now, if her recollections were contemporaneous - like coming from a diary or journal she kept at the time - that would be one thing. But it comes from her memoirs which, while a delightful read 10/10 recommend, are written decades after this trip took place and, memory being a finicky thing, can’t be taken to the bank. All those disclaimers, here’s the story as told by her:

‘One evening...,the King of Poland [note: Augustus II] insensibly led the King of Prussia to a very richly decorated room...The King of Prussia, delighted with what he saw, stopped to contemplate all its beauties, when [all of] a sudden a tapestry was rolled up, which procured him a very novel sight. It was a lovely female in a state of nudity [note: Countess Orzelska, the Polish king’s daughter], carelessly reclined on a couch. Her beauty excelled that of the finest pictures of Venus and the Graces; her body seemed of ivory, whiter than snow, and better shaped than that of the Venus de Medicis at Florence.

...Scarcely had the King cast his eyes on the fair one, than he turned about with indignation; and seeing my brother behind him, he rudely pushed him out of the room, and left it immediately after in a violent irritation against the trickery they had attempted to practice on him. ...In spite of the King’s vigilance, [Frederick] had had time to contemplate the Venus of the closet, who did not cause him so much horror as she had done to his father. (Wilhelmina’s Memoirs, vol. 1, 107-6)

Wilhelmina then goes on to claim Fritz had fallen ‘passionately in love’ with Orzelska and that the illness Fritz experienced upon returning home was simply being lovesick. Pinning the accuracy of this story is incredibly difficult because, again, we have only one source relayed decades after the fact and from two volumes of memoirs known to have inaccuracies. While I, personally, would love if he had had a tryst with Orzelska (who is such a badass in her own right and deserves more recognition than as a footnote in this guy’s story), there’s no one way to say with more than 30% confidence. I am inclined to believe something along these lines happened because if someone told me a story like this, lord knows I wouldn’t forget it for the rest of my life. And, with Wilhelmina being so close with her brother, it lends a bit more credence but as to the actual emotional or physical response Fritz had to it, well, without my time machine, I can’t and don’t want to say.

With Madame Eleonore-Louise von Wreech, things are a little more concrete. For starters, Fritz actually talked about her! In written correspondence that survived! We even have seven letters between the two of them that survived, which is a bigger win! As Blanning says, they’re ‘ardent but light in tone, ironic, almost flippant, and highly stylized’ (Blanning, 58). Their relationship was known to those close with Fritz at the time that Schulenberg felt compelled to visit and warn the crown prince against devoting himself to women because ‘the slight pleasures gained cause a million displeasures.’  Fritz’s response? To tell the poor guy that he may have ‘the gift of continence, but I assure you that I do not’ (Asprey, 83-4). Firtz even went so far as to send a letter to her mother, waxing poetic about Louise’s ‘beauty, her majestic air, her bearing, and her entire department.’ It’s worth noting that Louise eventually broke off the affair due to being bored by how he ‘loved [her] too much and often annoyed [her] with his clumsy love’ (Ibid, 84). Contemporaries, including Friedrich Wilhelm, believed Fritz had impregnated her with a daughter who her ‘cuckolded husband would refuse to recognize’ (Blanning, 58). Blanning is the only source I’ve seen dispute this due to this news coming from Seckendorf, who didn’t reveal how he came about this information; that Fritz and Madame von Wreech’s correspondence doesn’t indicate a physical relationship; and on the fact that she was not pregnant. I haven’t been able to find the birth dates or any sort of records for Louise’s two daughters to figure out where their conception could’ve been in the timeline and if it matches with the likely dates for the affair, but I also don’t have the resources Cambridge would afford Blanning. Either way, while the physical nature of the affair is in dispute, the emotional aspect certainly was there. Especially when taking into consideration the fact that she’s the woman Fritz was likely referring to in the 16 August 1737 letter to Voltaire where he claimed she had taught him how to love (and also inspired him to write poetry, which we shouldn’t be thankful for). Specifically, all these years later, he stated how ‘this little miracle of nature possessed every possible charm, together with good taste and delicacy. She sought to transfer these qualities to me. I succeeded well in love but poorly in poetry. Since that time I have very often been in love and have always been a poet’ (Fritz’s Oeuvres, vol. 21, 96).

All this to say, there’s a bit too much evidence of some degree of opposite-gender attraction in Fritz to completely write off the possibility that he could’ve been bisexual. While it’s undeniable he held a preference for men and that’s whose company he typically enjoyed, I still do find it interesting the two exceptions (one potential and the other with a fair degree of certainty) to this. And, while I would never want his attraction to men be minimized in favor of that to women, it still remains important to note to get the most comprehensive picture of the man.

[kaialone]

Kirby Planet Robobot Translation Comparison: Meta Knightmare Returns

This will be a comparison of the original Japanese version and the US English localized version.

Specifically, this will cover all the cutscenes that appear in the Meta Knightmare Returns mode.

You can also watch these cutscenes for yourself in English (1, 2, 3) and Japanese (1, 2, 3).

For the comparison, the usual points apply:

Bolded is the original Japanese text, for the reference.

Bolded and italicized is my translation.

Italicized is the official NOA translation.

A (number) indicates that I have a specific comment to make on that part in the translation notes.

As you read this, please keep in mind that with translations like these, it’s important not to focus on the exact literal wordings, since there is no single “correct answer” when it comes to translations.

Rather than that, consider the actual information that is being conveyed, in which way, and why.

--

Encountering Star Dream:

Star Dream:

……R…E…A…… ……D…Y……………・＞

...R...E...A... ...D...Y... ->

L...O...A...D...I...N...G...

Star Dream:

……………………。

...

.........

Star Dream:

アナタが…新しい… ゴシュジン様…デスネ。

YOU must BE... the new... MASter.

You must be... the new admin.

Star Dream:

……ナルホド、とても ツヨイパワーを お持ち のヨウデ…。

...UNDERSTOOD, it APPEARS that you possess quite TREMENDOUS POWER...

Yes. You possess incredible power...

Star Dream:

……………… OK＞

...OK >

...OK.

Star Dream:

…デハ、ソンナ ゴシュジン様ガ ノゾム…

...THEN, AS SUCH A MASter WOULD DESIRE...

As a new admin, you must supply your credentials...

Star Dream:

コノ星でも… カナリの 強サを持つ…

YOU SHALL be given... THE OPPORTUNITY TO CLASH with a "sword USER"...

to the strongest warriors of this planet.

Star Dream:

「剣のツカイテ」と、 タタカワセテ…さしあげ マショウ。

WHO possesses CONSIDERABLE strenGTH... even for THIS planet.

Executing Sword_Master.EXE.

-

Before Battling Sectonia Clone:

Star Dream:

……おみごと デ、ゴザイマス。

...MasterFULLY DONE.

...Impressive.

Star Dream:

ゴシュジン様には ショウショウ モノたり ナカッタ かも しれマセンネ。

Perhaps THIS was A LITTLE UNsatisfactory for you, MASter.

That may have been a bit too easy for the admin...

Star Dream:

ソレでは 次に、 美シク まうようニ 剣を アヤツる…

SO then, for THE next one, the most powerful queen...

Next up is one whose swordplay resembles a beautiful dance...

Star Dream:

最強の女王を、 ヨミガエ らせ マショウ。

WHO HANDles her blades liKE A beautiFUL dance, shall BE RESURRECTED.

Let us bring back the most powerful queen from the void.

Star Dream:

ソノ たぐいまれな 戦いのセンスと 王たる オーラ…

HER exceptional APTITUDE for battle, and her majestic AURA...

Experience her royal presence and unparalleled fighting skills.

Star Dream:

ドウゾ ゴたんのう クダサイませ。

PLEASE, ENjoy them thoroUGHLY.

She will be a fitting test for you.

-

Before Battling Galacta Knight:

Star Dream:

サスガ、ゴシュジン様デス。 では サイゴに…

WELL DONE AS ALWAYS, MASter. Now, FOR THE LAST one...

You are mighty indeed. Now for the final test...

Star Dream:

かつての ゴシュジン様にハ キンジられて イタ…

THE "Spacetime Transfer Programm", WHICH the previous MASter had FORBIDDEN...

This was prohibited by the previous admin...

Star Dream:

「時空テンイ プログラム」を アンロック シ、

SHALL BE UNLOCKED,

Preparing to boot the Space-Time Transport program...

Star Dream:

イニシエの時代ノ 剣士ヲ、 ヨビダシ マショウ。

TO CALL FORTH A swordfighter from ANCIENT TIMES.

Let us bring back a legendary swordsman from a forgotten time.

Star Dream:

…カレに コノあたりノ 星ハ ホロボされて シマウと 思イマスガ…

...IT STANDS TO reason that HE is LIKELY TO DESTroy the SURrounding planets, BUT...

He may end up destroying a nearby planet or two, but such is life.

Star Dream:

キット、 サイゴノタタカイを 楽シンデ イタダケル ことデショウ。

You will MOST CERTAINLY find THIS LAST BATTLE to be enjoyABLE.

The benefits of this final battle outweigh the collateral damage.

Star Dream:

ソレでは………！

NOW then...!

Prepare yourself...

Star Dream:

時空テンイ プログラム… アンロック… 異空間ロード… リブート…

UNLOCKING... Space Time Transfer Program... REBOOTING... Another Dimension Road...  (1)

Executing Space-Time Transport... Extra-dimensional road... Booting...

Star Dream:

…………３

3...

3...

Star Dream:

…………２

2...

2...

Star Dream:

…………１

1...

1...

Star Dream:

…………………GO!!

...GO!!

...BEGIN!

Translation Note:

I’ll go over it in more detail in the section below, but the term I translated as “Another Dimension Road” is called 異空間ロード/Ikūkan Rōdo in Japanese. This term previously appeared in the Japanese version of Kirby’s Return to Dream Land.

--

Comparisons & Thoughts:

Since the cutscenes of Meta Knightmare Returns all occur towards the end and are pretty short, I decided to cover all of them in one post like this.

Still, just because they’re short doesn’t mean there is nothing to talk about.

-

It’s only mentioned briefly in these cutscenes, but I want to go over the term I adapted as “Another Dimension Road” in slightly more detail.

In the original Japanese version, the term is 異空間ロード/Ikūkan Rōdo, which first appeared in the Japanese version of Kirby’s Return to Dream Land.

To start off, 異空間/Ikūkan by itself could be translated as something like “different dimension", “different space”, “different realm”, or anything along those lines, 異/i meaning “different”, and 空間/kūkan meaning “space” or “dimension”, and the like.

This term has come up a few times in the Kirby series since Return to Dream Land, and the Japanese version of Star Allies actually gives it the English reading “Another Dimension”, which is why I also like to adapt it as that.

The term 異空間ロード/Ikūkan Rōdo, adding the English word “road” to it, also comes up a few times in Return to Dream Land.

Given what I explained above, I like to adapt it as “Another Dimension Road”.

Magolor mentions this term when he talks about his home, saying that it’s far away, but that it’s connected to Pop Star via 異空間ロード/Ikūkan Rōdo.

The English localization of the game adapted this as “interdimensional tunnel” in this instance.

Also, the cutscene that is called “Final Battle” in the English version is simply called 異空間ロード/Ikūkan Rōdo in Japanese.

Going by that, it seems safe to assume that this term can refer to the “road(s)” that connects different dimensions, realms, or the like.

Now, there is a lot more I could potentially talk about with these two terms and how they come up in the Kirby series, but it would be too long for this section here.

I might make a dedicated post just for that at some point, if that would interest people.

So, most relevant to Planet Robobot, is the fact that “Another Dimension Road” is a term we had seen before in Return to Dream Land.

The English version might be trying to keep the connection to Return to Dream Land by adapting the term as “Extra-dimensional road“ here, possibly referring to the Extra Mode of that game.

-

Back to Planet Robobot, here’s something potentially interesting about Star Dream in these cutscenes.

You’ll find that in both Japanese and English it uses about the same speaking style as it did during its appearance in the main story.

And the English version actually adapts it in the same way as it did back then, so I appreciate the consistency there.

Like before, the English version has it use some more computer-like sounding phrases here, like saying “admin” instead of “master”.

Most notable as a change is probably the phrase “Sword_Master.EXE”, which would imply that Star Dream might have a dedicated program just for either cloning Dark Matter Blade, or sword users in general.

But what’s really interesting to me is something else.

Now, I don’t know if this is just a coincidence, but Star Dream does not refer to itself in first person at any point in these cutscenes

With the way the Japanese language works, this isn’t all too uncommon, but it still stands out a bit, because Star Dream referring to itself in first person during the main story was a notable trait it had.

A machine wouldn’t normally refer to itself like that, so Star Dream doing that seemed like a result of it gaining a sense of self during those events.

And keep in mind that those events, namely Star Dream fusing with Hatlmann’s spirit, don’t actually occur during the story of Meta Knightmare, meaning Star Dream actually should not have a sense of self in this scenario.

So, Star Dream not referring to itself in first person during these cutscenes could be meant to reflect that? But that’s just my guess.

In any case, because of the above, I decided to adapt its dialogue in these cutscenes without using any first person either.

And from what I can tell, it looks like the English localization may have thought the same thing, since they also don’t use any (singular) first person for Star Dream here.

I realize this means there isn’t any difference between versions when it comes to this aspect, but I still wanted to mention it, because it’s easy to miss.

-

In the Japanese version, Star Dream’s dialogue here contains more direct references to Milky Way Wishes, with it using several of the same phrases that Galactic Nova used.

Most notably, this includes it counting down from 3 and finishing the counter with the words “Go!!”, which is also referenced during its boss battles.

In the English version, these phrases are slightly rewritten and don’t match Galactic Nova’s dialogue from either English version of Milky Way Wishes, with the countdown in particular ending with “Begin!” instead.

As a result, that final line also no longer matches the visuals of Star Dream’s final boss battle.

If you only look at the text in this game right here, it does make sense to rewrite these phrases slightly, “Begin!” certainly sounds more appropriate than “Go!!” out of context.

But this, combined with the fact that any other subtle reference to Milky Way Wishes in the text so far has been glossed over in English makes me think that the English localizers either didn’t realize that these were references, or ended up ignoring them for some reason.

Whatever said reason may be, I still think it’s a shame, because when you add all of them up, there is a great deal of connections to Milky Way Wishes in this game’s text that are lost in the English version, leaving it only with the visual and musical references.

And those are still nice, don’t get me wrong, but it still feels like you’re missing out just a little.

-

Somewhat related to the above, Star Dream’s reasoning for its actions in these cutscenes is quite different between versions, changing a lot about the context of what is happening.

In the Japanese version, Star Dream seemingly comes to the conclusion that Meta Knight wishes to fight strong opponents. So, the reason why it proceeds to summon several powerful warriors is specifically because it is attempting to comply with that desire.

And that really seems to be all there is to it in the Japanese version, no apparent additional motivation other than to satisfy its new master Meta Knight.

At most you can speculate whether or not Meta Knight really was actively wishing for this to happen, or if Star Dream was misinterpreting him, but...

Considering this is a direct parallel to Meta Knightmare Ultra, and Meta Knight did wish for something exactly like that over there, I’d wager it’s safe to bet Star Dream’s assessment of him was at least partially accurate.

And of course, this also gives Star Dream another direct parallel to Galactic Nova.

In the English version, Star Dream instead states that Meta Knight has to supply his credentials, and thus all the battles that follow are portrayed as “tests” for Meta Knight.

This also implies that Star Dream would probably test any potential new admin in such a manner, in contrast to the Japanese version, where Star Dream seems to accept Meta Knight right away without question.

I know that this particular change has caused English-speaking fans to speculate what sort of test Haltmann may have had to pass, which can be interesting of course.

But for the reference, no such tests seem to exist in the Japanese version.

-

And still related to the above, in the English version, Star Dream states that Meta Knight must supply his credentials “to the strongest warriors of this planet”, which might even be a small translation error?

Because in the Japanese version, Star Dream only states that Meta Knight will have the opportunity to “CLASH with a sword USER… WHO possesses CONSIDERABLE strenGTH… even for THIS planet”, so that latter part is only referring to the clone of Dark Matter Blade.

There is no clear plural in Japanese, so one could interpret the Japanese line as referring to all three warriors that Star Dream ends up summoning, but since it gives a little introduction for Sectonia Clone and Galacta Knight, I think it’s more likely this line right here was just its introduction for Dark Matter Clone.

The English phrasing also makes you wonder why Star Dream would even summon Galacta Knight, who’s not taken from this planet, or even this era for that matter.

It just kinda doesn’t add up when you think about it more.

-

And that’s about it for these cutscenes.

The most notable change is the completely different reasoning behind Star Dream’s action here.

I personally feel it gives this entire ending scenario a different vibe, and potentially the implication of what Meta Knight’s role in it is, considering the parallels to Meta Knightmare Ultra.

With that, we have covered all of the cutscenes of Kirby: Planet Robobot, but we are not done quite yet.

There is still more story to this game, so for the next part, we will start tackling the pause screen descriptions of the boss fights!

Feel free to check it out!

--

< Previous Part | Start | Next Part >

--

[chnqin]

Guess who wrote 1,500 words of a Star Trek AU I don’t know if I’ll ever write any more of °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°

info: AU, pre-wangxian, rated T, minor character death

Here is a link to the masterpost of sorts explaining the AU, the character backgrounds and everyone’s position on the ship.

Chief Engineer’s Log: Stardate 1704.2 A Bad Beginning

As away missions go, the Shuoyue had seen worse. Once. One time was worse. And it was only half Wei Wuxian’s fault.

This time wasn’t any percentage his fault, so honestly in the grand scheme of things he was counting this as a win. Only one person was dead and literally nobody was sad about it. Not even his son! Wait, both his sons? Either of his sons? Jin Zixun might have been upset, but he didn’t have a soul so he didn’t count. The point was that no one was sad and the surprise murder was only a problem because it was causing a minor diplomatic incident involving four separate interstellar organisations and factions, and the fact that their Second Officer was currently being accused of the murder in question.  

It had all started when the Shuoyue had been asked to ferry a group of diplomats to an important peace talk occurring between the Federation and a new planet. It was important because the first Starfleet team to make contact had completely ballsed the whole thing up, and the denizens of the planet - the Xua-Nwu, a semi-aquatic species with sophisticated technology and a warrior society - had not taken well to the Federation’s overtures of friendship. Why anyone would send Jin Guangshan as a representative of the merits of the Federation and the human species in general Wei Wuxian was uncertain. It seemed to him that he and his slimy team were only likely to exacerbate the situation, but Wei Wuxian was not in any circumstances to be placed on a diplomatic team for any mission (that was left solely up to the Captain, Meng Yao, and his own beautiful and talented sister Jiang Yanli), so he supposed there must be something they knew that he didn’t. Perhaps the Xua-Nwu valued backstabbing and being a generally terrible person.

What did, unfortunately, concern him was the ferrying to and fro of the diplomatic team on what was supposed to be his day off. Normally Wei Wuxian left operations such as the transporter to his second in command or one of his many competent underlings. However, as the diplomatic group was filled with fancy peacocks in their flouncy feathery diplomat garb and their delicate terror of all things involving space travel, Wei Wuxian was required to be the one to personally beam them down to the planet (because god forbid one of his baby juniors got their dirty little hands on the apparatus they worked with on a daily basis and accidentally caused the first case of splinching-via-transporter to ever have occurred). As a rule, Wei Wuxian wanted to spend as little time in a room with Jin Guangshan as physically possible. But then, his second in command was a woman and he wasn’t going to subject her to the awful man, so he had little choice but to show up to the transporter and try to block out the oily quality that oozed from the man’s mind like puss from an boil. Ah, the joys of being psionic.

As Wei Wuxian was also expected to beam the landing team back from the planet, he stayed in the transporter room, terrorising his minions by pulling out the wiring on the consoles and trying to “break it, sir, you are trying to break it” improve the functionality of the thing. Eventually Lan Wangji turned up and towed him away by the arm, no doubt alerted by one of Wei Wuxian’s traitorous underlings. They always told the First Officer on him, knowing that he, Jiang Yanli, and Wen Qing were the only ones who could get Wei Wuxian to stop when he was in the middle of something (the crew never bothered Jiang Yanli because they liked her too much, and they never bothered Wen Qing because you went to the Chief Medical Officer if you were injured or dying and for no other reason - she was a doctor, dammit, not a babysitter). Jiang Cheng could also get him to stop, but not voluntarily, and usually while resorting to violence. After the third time one of them had shoved the other in a Jeffries tube and blocked the entrance, the crew was banned from asking either of them to involve the other in anything. 

Anyway, the point was that Wei Wuxian was very busy and so had absolutely no idea what was occurring on the planet until the ship was put under a yellow alert and he was asked to beam the landing party up as quickly as was physically possible (which, Wei Wuxian would like to point out, could have been considerably faster had he been allowed to finish tinkering with the control panel).

The group which had arrived back bore little resemblance to the well-dressed and put together team which had left not three hours previous. The most notable difference was Jin Guangshan, who had been alive upon departure and who was now dead.

“Oh no.” said Wei Wuxian in a very convincing tone of concern. “Whatever could have happened?” “Not now, Wei Wuxian.” snapped Jiang Cheng, who for some reason had been included on this mission, as he helped Jiang Yanli support a clearly shaken Jin Zixuan out of the room. “Such a tragedy.” Wei Wuxian said sadly, shaking his head, and could have sworn he heard a quiet snort from his left, but when he turned to the First Officer beside him, Lan Wangji’s face was as expressionless as ever. “I have prepared the briefing room as you asked, Captain.” he said in that unmodulated tone of his.  “Thank you, Wangji.” said Lan Xichen with a strained smile. “Let us proceed there immediately.”

It had been decided, Lan Xichen explained, that the away crew would beam back up to the ship along with the surviving diplomats for the time being as a matter of safety and precaution. Meng Yao, Lan Xichen had insisted, was a valued member of their crew, and would be questioned, but not held without any evidence. Meng Yao himself seemed remarkably unbothered by the whole situation, but in that way which meant you were merely holding the threads of your being together until you could arrive at a solitary location and completely lose your shit in peace. Wei Wuxian could tell, because the waves Meng Yao’s mind were pushing out were not his normal calm ripples. Meng Yao was another one of those few people Wei Wuxian actively found hard to read (which was, honestly, a bit of a blessing - even if he found it difficult to connect with the man as a result, at least he got some peace). He thought Meng Yao might spend a lot of time actively shielding his mind from psionic interference - it seemed like the kind of thing the paranoid bastard would do, but it might also have something to do with his mixed Human and Orion heritage. Just now, however, Wei Wuxian could tell that he was genuinely perturbed by the situation, despite what his calm mask indicated to the rest of the world.

When they arrived at the briefing room the rest of the away team had already assembled, along with the other heads of departments excluding Wen Qing, who Wei Wuxian knew would have gone to see to any potential injuries amongst the diplomats. Lan Xichen first ushered Meng Yao into the small auxiliary room used by the Captain for discussions which were better not heard by multiple ears, and Lan Wangji followed. As neither seemed to notice (or have a problem with) Wei Wuxian following them, he decided to take that as a tacit invitation to be present for the conversation. And what an enjoyable conversation to witness it was, where Lan Xichen had to sit Meng Yao down and be like “Did you murder your father”, to which Meng Yao replied “No, I would never jeopardise my position at Starfleet by murdering my father, he’s not worth it”, which was not quite the “No, I’d never murder someone in cold blood or generally hold designs of patricide” Lan Xichen was looking for. But then he did have a surprisingly pacifist and optimistic outlook on life, particularly considering he was raised by the same man who helped form Lan Wangji - pacifist and optimistic were not words one would use to describe the First Officer.

However, it was enough to look into other avenues. There were, after all, plenty of people who had wanted Jin Guangshan dead, and as far as Wei Wuxian could tell Meng Yao wasn’t lying. Lying, or even bending the truth, often produced a very specific mind-taste which was rather unpleasant. Another reason to be glad Jin Guangshan was no longer among them, considering the frequency with which the man did it. 

The four officers joined those waiting in the briefing room to hear a full account of the events. Many of the assembled crew members seemed energised or on edge or both. Nie Huaisang seemed particularly concerned, although what Wei Wuxian was sensing from him was more low-level enjoyment of the chaos. Wei Wuxian, on the other hand, had just wanted a prolonged 12 hour nap on what should have been his day off. The briefing went on for a full two hours before they broke up to attend to other tasks arising from the situation - luckily for Wei Wuxian, this did not involve anything to do with smoothing the ruffled feathers of the diplomatic party.

By the time the day ended, Wei Wuxian was firmly of the opinion that he really should have just hid in a Jeffries tube till the ostentation of Jins had left. Maybe he could go goad Jiang Cheng...

[foundthe8wing]

Okay, doing this over here because my main tumblr is usually a place for me to vibe and I don’t want all the bullshit tied to that account, but basically: I’m really angry and disappointed with the dndads cast for how they’ve put a lot of the minors in their fanbase in danger. Everything below is a repost from twitter (with permission from the OP, crypticjoy), and I’ll link the thread in a reblog. 

Under a cut because it’s long and potentially triggering (content warnings for grooming, sexualizing minors, and sexual assault)

[OP tagged the relevant cast accounts; I added slashes here bc I’m not sure if those same urls exist on tumblr and I don’t want to be randomly tagging people over here]

5:49 PM Sep 5, 2020

“I don’t usually do this, but: the way that the cast of @/dungeonsanddads engages with their audience is actively dangerous to minors, and they need to get it together. (cw for discussion of grooming, sexualizing minors, sexual assault)

First off, there are some iffy jokes and situations in the podcast itself. I’m not going to get into all of it right here, but have a google doc: [doc will also be linked in reblog]

Yes, the kids in #dndads are fictional, but that doesn’t mean this stuff doesn’t affect real kids listening. a. it normalizes talking/joking about kids in that way and b. There’s a lot of inconsistancy and confusion on the lines they draw--

Paeden saying “baby” is weird but Ron sitting in Terry Jr’s lap isn’t? I’m confused. You know who the fuck relies on that type of confusion and unclarity? Fucking predators

And I’m not saying every in-character decision has to be perfectly moral or acceptable, but the way the cast, out of character, discuss what’s weird and what’s not sends a lot of mixed messages. And that’s legitimately dangerous.

So then you take all of this, and you add a patron discord server that lets nsfw discussions run virtually unchecked--you create a fandom space that allows adults to discuss kinks, and porn searches, and just, all this other stuff, with teenagers...

... and it becomes a breeding ground for grooming and abuse.

The creators aren’t responsible for babysitting their fanbase or for how people engage with their content outside of their spaces (though, again, I’d urge them to be very careful about what kind of messages they’re sending)

But  they ARE responsible for taking basic steps to keep the spaces that THEY create and engage with safe.

“But the rules for the server say 18+!” The rules say you have to be 18 *or have parental permission.* They also say to keep things PG-13. That’s vastly different than establishing something as an adult-only/nsfw space.

“Minors shouldn’t be joining/listening anyway!” The cast can’t control who listens and neither can I, but there’s a difference between knowing teens are listening to you discuss sex with your adult friends vs facilitating conversations between teens and adults on those topics.

“If people are uncomfortable they can just leave.” First off, this situation isn’t just uncomfortable, it’s unSAFE. Second: fuck that. It’s not on minors to set and maintain boundaries about this stuff; a lot of them literally do not know how

Not because they’re stupid, but because they’re young and inexperienced. It’s the responsibility of adults to set and enforce healthy boundaries around sexual discussions, and this particular group of adults has done a fucking terrible job

(Maybe don’t encourage listeners to DM you about kinks! Maybe especially don’t do that when you’ve communicated, intentionally or not, that making and escalating sexual jokes is a really good way to get a reaction from you guys)

I get that they didn’t expect to have so many young listeners, but to be aware of that fact and make no adjustments whatsoever is irresponsible and it WILL lead to someone getting hurt. Does their “young, thirsty, female” audience only exist to them when they can laugh about it?

And let’s be absolutely 1000% clear: this isn’t an issue they’re unaware of. The stuff I’m talking about is an ongoing problem with how their server is run, but it came to a head with one specific situation very recently:

They released a bonus, patron-exclusive episode about the dads taking the bdsm test. Given the general state of the server, I was worried about where those discussions might lead, so before it dropped, I reached out to @/anthony_burch to express my concern

He told me he raised the issue with @/fwong and Ashley, meaning at least three members of the dndads team were aware of the situation, and decided it didn’t warrant any type of preemptive action on their part

(alternatively, it means Anthony lied, which would be a whole separate issue)

[Image ID: a discord DM conversation from Sep 1, 2020, between a crossed out username and reverendanthony. It reads: 

OP: heyyyyy have you guys considered that releasing an episode focused on the bdsm test is almost inevitably going to lead to a bunch of 15 year olds sharing their results in your server because you might want to get ahead of that before someone gets hurt

reverendanthony: oh holy shit, really good idea

OP: thanks, I know it's easy to veer into that territory just because of the nature of your show but I wanted to bring it to your attention because I figured you don't want to create a situation that's like, actively dangerous (and for the record I'm willing to discuss what I think would make it safer but I'm also not going to assume you want/need my input, obviously you can handle it however you see fit)

reverendanthony: No, thank you for bring it up, I really appreciate it -- I just raised the issue with Freddie and Ashley

OP: Good to know, thank you /End ID]

I’m not overreacting. I have seen this shit happen, to my friends and to myself, and watching the dndads cast take absolutely no meaningful action to prevent situations like that from occurring directly under their noses makes me fucking livid

I can guarantee that the #dungeonsanddaddies fanbase includes both predators and survivors of abuse, grooming, etc (including those currently living through it), and I need them to think very, very hard about which group they’re prioritizing.

And I need that choice to be evident through more than just their words, because it doesn’t fucking matter how much you “really appreciate” that I brought up my concerns if you do fuck-all to address them.

It doesn’t matter how many times you say the word “consent” if apparently everyone was okay that “Darryl gets sexually assaulted” was almost a plot point played for laughs.

(His dare from Scam  would have been rape, straight up. Just because no one said the word doesn’t mean it wasn’t coercive and gross).

I’d like to think the @/dungeonsanddads cast isn’t intentionally encouraging abuse, but they’re sure as hell enabling it, and they needed to get their shit together ages ago, because they’re not the ones their negligence hurts.”

Quote retweet by OP 6:51 PM Sep 7, 2020

“So, they updated the rules for the patron server, but I want to be really clear that from my perspective, it’s way too little, way too late. 

The new rules don’t adequately address the core issues and they certainly don’t absolve the cast of the harm they’ve already caused. 

[Tweet includes 2 screenshots: one of a bot asking people to click thumbs up to confirm they’re 18+ (or have a parent’s permission) and agree to the rules, and one that includes two of the rules. It reads: 

“This is an 18+ space. Them’s the rules: per Patreon’s policy, you must be 18+ or have parental permission.

Use language as if you’re at your parents dinner table. Don’t get people in trouble because of your SPICY POSTS. Keep conversation polite. NSFW content is not allowed!”]

(and before anyone says I should bring up my concerns privately, a quick refresher on how well that went last time I did it:) 

[links back to the “(alternatively, it means Anthony lied . . .)” tweet from the original thread]

So hey, @/fwong, some thoughts:

1.The rules are vague and unclear: what /exactly/ do you mean when you say “NSFW content is not allowed!” when the content of your show itself is so often nsfw? And how are you planning to enforce this?

Does it mean you’ll shut down the MBIC conversation that is literally just kink discussion? I need you to be clear on where the line is, because, again, predators rely on that confusion. Don’t give them a gray area to play in. 

For an example of a more clear policy, it’s pretty easy to say, “yep, ‘Henry gets pegged’ sure is a sentence we said on our show and you don’t have to pretend it’s not, but if you’d like to discuss it in any more detail at all, you need to move”

2. Remember how I said I needed to be clear on whether you’re prioritizing survivors or predators? While I doubt it was intentional, the language you’re using here is prioritizing predators.

It’s not “don’t get people in trouble,” it’s “don’t make people uncomfortable.” It’s “we all have a responsibility to make sure this space is safe for everyone, especially the younger members of the community.”

You’re setting people up to be afraid of expressing concerns for fear of “getting people in trouble” or “inciting unnecessary drama.” Even if it’s not what YOU meant, it’s very easy for those words to be manipulated, so +

You absolutely have to be explicitly clear that if someone expresses their discomfort, you’ve got their back. Being safe is more important than being polite. 

3. I need every cast member to take responsibility for their own actions. I’ve gotten no indication from any of you that you understand the ways in which the in-show things I brought up were harmful.

Acknowledging that harm is important not just because of the immediate effects of that content, but also because it implicitly sets an example for how similar complaints should be dealt with going forward.

When someone says “hey, I was uncomfortable that you seem fine with the Glennary ship, because she reads as very young to me,” I don’t need a dissertation on how the perception of characters can evolve due to your improvisational nature

I need to hear “oh, I interpreted her differently, but you’re right, we should have been more clear, and I’m sorry for making you uncomfortable.” Because your responses to your own mistakes set the tone for any other situations like that going forward.

How comfortable is someone going to be with coming to you, or Ash, or any of the mods about someone making them uncomfortable if they’ve seen that when people call YOU out, they’re argued with and shut down?

Don’t tell people you’ve “made it clear that you won’t go there” when they tell you that you ARE there. Listen to them and do better. 

Set the expectation that people will be respected when they raise their concerns. “If you want to come at me you have to bring the heat” is not an appropriate response on a subject that made people genuinely uncomfortable. 

In essence: set people up to be supported and protected, not dismissed. 

[It’s like a matriosche of tweets over here. This one links to another thread, also by crypticjoy. That thread reads:

A non-comprehensive guide to keeping discord servers safe for minors:

1. Make designated channels for nsfw/18+ discussion. Generally speaking, this is a lot more effective than banning those discussions altogether, because it’s a lot easier to say “hey, can you move this conversation?” than “hey, I need you to stop”

In fandom spaces, it’s usually a good idea to have separate channels for talking about nsfw fiction vs discussing your personal sex lives.

2. Give everyone minor/adult roles; make sure your 18+ channels are locked to people who don’t have an adult role. It’s important that there’s more of a barrier there than just checking a box.

3. NSFW channels shouldn’t necessarily be a free-for-all; be aware of people’s boundaries and respect them (for example, r*pe jokes aren’t funny or okay, even if you’re not making them around kids)

4. Explicitly state in your rules that people should feel free to come to mods if anyone is making them uncomfortable. Actually listen to people and resolve the situation if they do approach you.

5. Make it clear that creepy behavior via DMs or other means is also not tolerated--you can’t control what people do outside your server, but you can make the choice to not allow people like that in your space

6. Make sure mods are on top of things BEFORE people have to say anything; sometimes being a mod means being willing to be the “asshole” who shuts things down before they get out of hand, even if they’re not asked.

Be generally aware of signals that people are uncomfortable or that things are escalating too far, and address those situations sooner rather than later.

*It should be noted that safety involves a lot of components beyond just containing nsfw discussions; this thread just happens to be focused on that one specific element.

oh also! It's a good idea to provide resources on grooming so people know what to look out for [links to some resources; again, this’ll be in the reblog]]

So, @/dungeonsanddads, if you’re interested in anything beyond just having a flimsy excuse you can point to to cover your own ass, I’m gonna need you to try again.

Sorry I can’t be nicer about it, but I’ve given so many benefits of the doubt I could be running a successful charity, and this isn’t an issue I’m willing to drop. 

10:02 PM

Thought I was done but actually I've got a few more questions: to what extent were @/HeyBethMay, @/WillBCampos, and @/mattLarnold included in conversations about this issue/the new rules? Is this something your whole team is involved in?

Have you discussed what you're doing on a team and individual basis to keep your fan interactions safe, and are you on the same page about how much it matters? Are you holding each other accountable? Is everyone okay with where this ended up?”

[macgyvermedical]

Debby is writing a fanfiction and needs help. In Germany I got no answer, so this is my last attempt to find the answer(s) to my question. In my fanfiction, the 35 years old character is attacked in the hospital with potassium. How much potassium do you need to stop the heart for sure (yes he's awake)? What's the treatment of such a condition? Secure airway and start CPR, okay. But how do you counteract the potassium. I read something about Insulin and Calcium? Really hope, you can help, thanks.

Hi Debby!

Potassium is an important electrolyte in the human body because of its role in transmitting electrical signals between cells.

The heart relies heavily on communication between cells in order to beat in an organized way. An electrical impulse is generated in a group of cells at the top right corner or the heart, called the sinoatrial node (SAN), and that impulse (called an action potential) travels in a defined pathway through the rest of the cardiac muscle. When the electrical impulse arrives at a cardiac muscle cell, the cell contracts and passes the impulse to the cells around it. The impulse traveling through all the cells in the heart in a particular order is what results in an effective heart beat.

A major part of this impulse involves potassium ions. When a cell contracts, it squeezes out potassium ions, which briefly increases the concentration of potassium around the cells nearby, telling them its time to also initiate a contraction.

In order for this slight increase in potassium concentration to consistently alert the nearby cells and transmit the impulse, the concentration of potassium outside the cells has to stay about the same all the rest of the time. About 90% of the potassium in the human body is inside the cells, with the remaining 10% in the fluid around the cells. A significant change in the amount of potassium outside vs inside the cells (for example, what would happen if you injected a lot of potassium all at once) would obscure the conduction of the impulse, making it harder for the heart cells to communicate, up to and including not being able to transmit the impulse at all.

When talking about increasing potassium in the fluid outside the cells (extracellular fluid) rate or speed of administration is more important than amount. You can give a lot of potassium IV, as long as you do it really slowly, giving the cells time to pull any needed potassium in and the kidneys to filter any excess out in urine. But the opposite is also true- Pretty much any amount of potassium is deadly when given fast enough. If you want a more exact number, 10 mmol, or about one normal ampule, would be more than sufficient. If you inject concentrated potassium chloride directly through an IV port with a syringe, they can go into cardiac arrest within a minute or two.

As for what the response would be, assuming the patient had a continuous EKG/tele unit, it would be fairly obvious what had happened in the seconds leading up to cardiac arrest. There are very specific EKG changes that occur that would be immediately recognizable as hyperkalemia (high potassium). And the speed with which they changed into a deadly rhythm like ventricular fibrillation or asystole would indicate that the potassium had been pushed IV.

The first person in the room would start CPR and call a code blue (or the local hospital equivalent-essentially calling for a trained team to help) the patient’s nurse would likely get a 12-lead EKG if available or the most recent printout from the continuous monitor and assess the patient.

Severe hyperkalemia can be treated within 3-5 minutes, so it is considered a reversible cause of cardiac arrest. While continuing CPR, getting a defibrillator ready, and securing the airway, someone would push 10 units of insulin and a 50% dextrose solution. They would also give albuterol through an ET tube or other airway and inject sodium bicarbonate. The insulin, albuterol, and bacarb would help force some of the potassium into the cells more quickly, helping to restore this 10%-90% concentration difference between outside and inside the cells. The dextrose just prevents seriously low blood sugar levels because of the insulin. Calcium chloride would also be given, which helps improve the conduction of the impulse between the cardiac muscle cells and act as a buffer against effects of the still-high potassium.

Once the potassium concentration outside the cells was down close enough to normal, defibrillating (shocking) the patient out of ventricular fibrillation into normal sinus rhythm would be effective (or, at least, as effective as it usually is).

Now, none of this can actually remove potassium from the body emergently, so if there were so much injected that moving it into cells more quickly wouldn’t solve the problem, your character would ultimately die.

Hope this is what you were looking for!

R E F E R E N C E S

[reverielix]

Helloo, we just talked about it so yea here's my chart and I'm looking forward to your analysis in terms of compatibility hehe ;)

Ahhh yeah let’s goooo!!!

5th house in Capricorn — dating and overall “self-expression” area of life

Your approach to romance is rather traditional and restrictive: you strive for long-term commitments and experience rather slow-paced romances with many potential hurdles to overcome. After all, you grow together by experiencing negative things here with Saturn as the house ruler. You are mostly attracted to people who are composed, responsible, mature and committed. People with a rather serious and “boney” look (accentuated jawline and cheek bones, maybe strong eyebrows, more serious looking) may catch your attention. You express your love in dating by showing your hard-working nature as you are impressed by people who are high achievers. Somebody who keeps their reputation clean and cares about their image projected into the world could spark your interest here. You can be cautious, calculative and serious in love as you want to evaluate the other person before you even decide to date them. Saturn in the 11th means you may like getting to know your lover in groups rather than in one-to-one settings, which gives you space to observe from a distance. You may seem closed-off at first, but you express your love in a rather friendly way, though it’s hard for you to express romantic affection and you might come off as weird/feel weird because you don’t know just how to express all the love you hold for somebody. You’d enjoy rather intellectual conversations and fall in love with their mind rather than actually being all lovey-dovey. But once you trust somebody, you will let them in the wall, shell or layers you’ve built around yourself for caution and protection. Overall, though, you feel motherly over your lover and strike feel comfortable and maybe even domestic in love, but I will get into that later when talking about your Venus since it’s also in Cancer, just like your Saturn. Keeping the members in mind, Jeongin may make you feel special with his sun in your 5th house. He can make you feel admired and understands your love language and initial distance perfectly as an Aquarius. He may not have a traditional approach at all and could make you feel like you just wouldn’t work out because he is rather fast to move in relationships that are often short-lived and hang on by a spark while you rather want to build a solid foundation for a solid and stable future. Here, Chan and Minho (along with Changbin, Hyunjin and Seungmin) could give you that devotion and dedication to really believe that you could have something long-term.

Sun in Cancer in the 10th house - you

You may feel special when you can nurture or be nurtured emotionally. I get the feeling that you have a plan to succeed as something bit later in life (maybe even beyond your 30s)👀 Anyway but your self-esteem and self-perception could be determined by your success, so when you fail, you may feel like your value decreases (which is obviously not true) and your cancer sun can give you a rather, like Capricorn, closed-off nature. You don’t want to be open with your success, self-perception or any of that. You like keeping that to yourself and putting work in at home. You may feel the need to always be in touch with your family and value them a lot as you also value your career and ambitions: this placement is basically the definition of domestic bliss lol. The danger here is that it may occur to you that you push people away when you feel like you don’t deserve them e.g. when you didn’t achieve that goal or haven’t spent time with your loved ones. The way you treat your loves ones can also reflect how you treat lovers (when it comes to how much time you spend with them, so like home-work balance and just in general how much affection you show,...). Regarding aspects, your sun squares your Jupiter, your Mars and trines your Uranus. First off, the aspect Sun square Jupiter gives great opportunities for success but also some tests of character along the way. You’re very fortunate but also have to make your own luck. Lucky breaks and popularity can lead to an inflated ego and other excesses in life. Your impulse to expand and learn new things may be in conflict with who you are or express yourself to be. Maybe you have a hard time going out of your Cancer shell and expanding into a more non-traditional and light-hearted way of being. Further, the Mars Sun square may indicate that you are your “own worst enemy” and tend to be aggressive and abrasive on yourself. You have set goals of how you want to be and seem to the outer world, so whenever you don’t achieve that, you’ll tear yourself down in a little violent way. This can make you unsusceptible to somebody like Felix, Seungmin, Jisung (and Chan) who gently want to love you because you simply won’t let them. Lastly, the Uranus Sun aspect allows you to express your uniqueness in a flowing and harmonious way that does not upset others. You tend to be comfortable with being seen as different and your self-esteem is enhanced by this heightened self-awareness. You can be controlling about how you show yourself to others (maybe you can feel many eyes on you at all times as you develop into or show yourself) and at the same time have taken time to understand and appreciate your individuality. This would, for instance, appeal to Chan, since his Saturn singleton visualizes just how much effort he puts into his reputation and success.

2nd house in Libra (conjunct Jupiter) - self-worth and self-esteem

You value partnership in conjunction with delegating responsibility to be shared with others. It is ingrained in your personalvalue system to be attuned to others and accommodate them as you may feel the need to meet others’ needs strongly. Alongside that sharing ideas and creating a space for your intellect may be highly regarded virtue. You see partnership and marriage as a way to share burden, combine recourses, and survive easier as a team. A harmonious life balance (work-home for instance), optimism, good relationships, positive decisions and feeling beautiful among other factors are of big influence when it comes to your self-esteem that can change the lens you see yourself through. Felix, Chan, Seungmin and Jisung could heighten your self-esteem by showing you love and affection through words and intellectual stimulation. Furthermore, Jupiter conjunct the 2nd expresses optimism and an elevated sense of self-worth, and also a lot of luck when it comes to finances. Your faith in positive things coming your way attracts good luck especially with possessions and you have an overall good sense of self-worth, which means that, in regards to your 5th house, you have a very clear picture of who deserves to be with you and who you can open up to or enter a relationship with. (The danger of over optimism and arrogance may also exist with this placement) This reminds me of Changbin and his Virgo Venus as this placement indicated high expectations, just like you are protective of yourself and expect somebody specific (with Neptune in your 5th it can be suggested that you have an imaginative picture of who you’re attracted to and who you want to attract into your life). So let’s look at the house ruler now...

Venus in Cancer in the 11th house - love-style and how love is received

Safety and the emotional bond between you and your partner is what love is centered around for you. You crave comfort and a venue to share your ideas and activities with others. You may meet a lover during group situations and are a generally cheerful lover who doesn’t show love and affection in traditional ways. You promote the emotional bond you have with a lover in a rather non-traditional way and like goofing around with your lover, though you take love ver seriously in general. The conjunctions with Mercury and Saturn hint at you being a very loyal and caring lover, while you can also have trouble showing it. This can lead to a degree of delay and restraint in forming close relationships. Lack of self-love or self-respect is usually the main reason for any shyness or inability to maintain close relationships. As said previously, your success determines the way you see yourself a lot. You know your self-worth and that you deserve good relationships, but throughout the timeline of a romantic relationship there’s no going out for you: as said, you look for lifetime love, because once you let them in, you feel too vulnerable to them, which results in you being afraid to let go or hand your confidentiality to somebody new. You may close off again when somebody doesn’t treat you the way you deserve. Sometimes it is you who lets them treat you in a way you don’t deserve because you feel bad about yourself in a moment. At the same time, referring to Mercury now, you are charming, poetic, refined, and polite. Even though Mercury conjunct Venus people are typically strong and smart, cunning, and gregarious, you also have a delicate air that's hard to explain. You may come off as mysterious to your lover as you don’t really know how to express your love, so you may write your lover letters, since, like that, you don’t have to tell them face-to-face. You have a way with words when it comes to romance and always strive to learn about your partner and with your partner. To expand, in a way. And here we are back again at Jupiter and now also the sextile it’s in with your Venus. This aspect is overall pleasant, harmonious and positive. You love life and people, which makes you easy to be loved by others. You have a good sense of humor that is typically subtle and adorable. Fun and romance go hand in hand with this placement. Your lover is your best friend with a way different and deeper emotional bond. Chan and Minho have Sagittarius on the 7th house cusp while both also have a Scorpio Venus in the 6th house. Both could give you confidence and feed into your self-esteem, though Minho doesn’t have such a complicated relationship with reputation and the 10th house, which could teach you how to perceive yourself apart from your achievements.

Moon in Pisces in and conjunct the 7th house - your emotions and safe-space + the area of one-on-one relationships and romance in life

Your emotions likely come in waves as they tend to change a lot considering Pisces' mutable modality. On top of that, your emotions are likely to influence your perception of things around you as it's a back-and-forth between your surroundings and emotions since they impact each other strongly. You're the perfect definition of hard-shell-soft-inside as this placement indicates sensitivity, empathy and generally a highly intuitive as well as emotional nature. Your moon setting (so moon conjunct the descendant/7th house) suggests that you possess a sensitivity toward people’s behavior or own emotions, especially in one-to-one situations. That means; when your partner has a bad day, you, too, have a bad day. Moreover, you are open about sharing your feelings with others, especially your close friends and partners. However, you may become overly dependant on others for emotional support. This depends on your early relationship with your mother or the person who most cared for you when you were young. This maternal relationship has a great influence over the kinds of people you form intimate relationships with. A lack of boundary setting can also make you feel overwhelmed by others. You could attract moody and overly emotional close friends and partners that you then want to mother or be mothered by, depending on your relationship with the maternal role in your childhood. Referring back to the members, you may attract Hyunjin or Jisung into your life. Pisces on the 7th house cusp is often an indication of unrealistic ideals and romanticized relationships. You may find this part of yourself to be weak or unwanted, you usually reject this softer and more emotional, wishy washy/unclear/abstract part of yourself. A partner may bring this part out of yourself and make it flourish, which can result in you pushing them away. Somebody who accepts and is attuned to your emotions as well as communicates emotional understanding to you will be desired when you also take the Cancer Venus into consideration: you desire a deep emotional bond and comfort with somebody, but first you have to come to terms with yourself and your own feelings and learn to not reject them anymore. Let yourself feel and stop judging yourself for your feelings and romantic wants/ideals/endeavors. Here, I consider Seungmin to be a fit since he has high emotional intelligence according to his chart and his moon in Cancer could not only appeal to your Venus but also help feel your Pisces moon understood and nurtured. In a relationship you would both be emotional givers, though Seungmin possesses the ability to set boundaries with his emotions so it doesn’t get too messy as he can help you figure out your boundaries as well. Now onto the 7th house ruler in your chart...

Neptune in the 5th - unconditional love and the merging of two souls

You may show unconditional love in generous, creative ways (as previously said, you may write love letters or such for a significant other, but I can see how you use any type of art like drawings or music here as well). With your 12th house in Leo, this can only be fortified: expression of unconditional love comes natural to you. Sensitivity and intuition take over. You may not even realize you start becoming like/adapting to the person more and more. Neptune in the 5th house may be victimized. It is suggested that you are willing to suffer and even accept anything from a person you’re in love with. Also, this natal placement can give victim/savior relationships, sometimes with a rather dramatic and dreamy atmosphere that reminds of movies. You view your environment through rose-colored glasses and are always hopeful that good things are either here or coming your way very soon. When you date, you may want to sit back and observe first, considering other placements, though the way you date is almost religious in a way where the physical world can wait and idealistic where—you’re gonna do this subconsciously—your expectations may be projected onto another person so that the observation becomes way more subjective and emotionally biased. The way you feel, after all, influences your way of perceiving things around you. With the square to Jupiter it’s the potent dream world that you create which is both the source of your creative potential and the cause of your challenges in actual achievement. The problem is that often your dreams remain just dreams, an inner world into which you retreat, a world that you invest much energy in maintaining. Dreaming becomes too addictive for you, and your life becomes an unrealized dream. This frustration is often caused by a lack of self-discipline and too much self-indulgence and time-wasting. With Jupiter conjunct the 2nd a self-permissive tendency could be the culprit. This aspect is rather contradictory to your Capricorn 5th house. You try to stay objective and observing but you start judging by emotions and expectation.

In conclusion and considering every aspect analyzed, I consider Seungmin to be most compatible with you. (I actually thought of this lots lol it was a pretty hard decision)

There are lots of harsh aspects to work with here (your Uranus being badly aspected with his Jupiter and Pluto, his Venus and your Saturn-Mercury conjunction in a square + some more minor aspects)

But I chose him because

You’d just be each other’s safe place for emotions. You’d be so well attuned to and affected by each other emotionally that you would feel the other’s pain deeply as well. It’s mutual nurturing and taking care of each other as this relationship gifts you the very emotional bond you long for.

With your Pisces moon and his in a trine, he could awaken the 7th house part of you in a way that you’d feel comfortable with considering that you usually surprise that feeling of yourself or dislike it, he may teach you to love it.

Your Mercury and his Sun are in a good aspect along with both your Saturns

Your Mars is well aspected which could bring out a more suppressed part of you as well and encourage you to be entirely yourself along with other positive things

You may achieve a lot together with the Mars Saturn aspects and start many projects, which can boost your confidence

In general Seungmin is more the type to take it slow, especially with that Mars in Virgo, which could ease you into it (though his Libra placements may stir up some conflict)

Overall, he may provide you with a lot of emotional care, though maybe your goals in life don’t match up. This is the case with nearly every member for you though. Apparently your style of dating isn’t commonly shared among the stray kids members lol

[itsclydebitches]

YYH Recaps: Koenma Appears

Welcome to episode two, everyone! Before we get to the recap proper, I want to continue down Nostalgia Lane for a moment. Remember how last time I mentioned a Hiei bookmark I used daily back in middle school? Well, I tore through an old "treasure box" I created as a kid (a collection containing everything from a shark tooth to a small book on witchcraft. You know, the important things every child needs) hoping to find it... but I didn't. It's a hard life we lead.

However, I did find some other YYH relics that I thought you all might enjoy seeing. Behold — and, if you'd like, laugh at — my collection:

First up is a picture of young Toguro and Genkai that I wanted to use as my bookmark, but found that it was too wide. For the record, I didn't (and still don't) care about Toguro much, he was just the byproduct of finding a cool Genkai picture. Not shown is the back of the image with the names of my classmates because I made them all sign this along with our yearbook.

God bless my friends for putting up with me.

Second is a collection of very pretty trading cards that I ordered from god only knows where. I have vague memories of not finding any at my local comics shop and convincing my mom to let me order on The Olde Internet. Did I want the trading cards to trade them? Absolutely not. They exist to sparkle and make my heart happy.

Finally, I've saved what is perhaps the best for last. Now, you have to understand that grade to middle school age Clyde did not have the education that she would receive later on, which includes a knowledge of the ephemeral nature of fanworks and the importance of accurate record keeping. What this means is that I have absolutely no context for this. No author, no explanation... just the image itself.

Was this a standalone fanart? A part of a fic? Some specific request or just the will of the artist? I cannot answer these questions. I tried a reverse image search (which is, admittedly, the extent of my tech skills) and you know what the single hit I got was? "Fiction." Thanks, google. So yeah, I can only assume that my child self considered Kurama giving a de-aged Hiei a bubble bath adorable enough to save, but the artist wasn't important enough to jot down for future viewing. Sorry about that, mystery artist. And, as should go without saying, if anyone does know where this came from please let me know! Though I suspect that this is a case of a YYH-specific site closing down and the fanworks getting lost along with it. That happened a great deal before the age of AO3 when volunteers decided to put their time and talent towards saving fanworks of all sorts... 

But enough of all that. Let's get to recapping!

As we established last episode, Yusuke and Botan are on their way to the spirit world to kickstart Yusuke's ordeal. Watching this after over a decade of consuming other media, I really appreciate that Yusuke acts like a human person and asks lots of questions about this. When Botan is cryptic for the sake of the audience — we're going to see "the person" who can explain everything — Yusuke is justifiably like, and what person would that be?? I mean, this is also a way to establish basic facts for the viewer and it simultaneously feeds into Yusuke being someone who is difficult for the sake of being difficult — "If someone wants to say something, they should come to me!" — but it's just nice to see a character who doesn't accept cryptic BS because the story needs them to. If Botan gives an unclear, but ~dramatic~ explanation, Yusuke is going to call her out on that.

So she explains that they're going to see King Yama and Yusuke is all whoa whoa whoa, there's royalty involved? Suddenly, he's not so adamant that they come to him. 

Botan tries to reinforce this rare spark of humility and demands that Yusuke be on his best behavior from here on out.

Pff. Yeah right.

But “he can send you to oblivion forever if he wants to!” is a suitable enough threat to cow Yusuke for now. Which is interesting considering that a few hours ago he was happy to accept hell as his rightful ending. Granted, we could argue that there's a big difference between hell and oblivion — a character may not be afraid of punishment in the same way they are a lack of existence — but I'd say this ties more into Yusuke's development at the wake. Now that he's accepted that people care for him and that he should strive to return to them, the threat of having it snatched away actually means something. Even if that line is otherwise positioned as a comedic moment.

Botan flies them through a portal where we see the River Styx below and Yusuke comments on how big everything is. At first I was like, "What are you talking about? You were just flying over some major city in fictional Japan, wasn't that big too?" but this line makes more sense when they reach the palace and you realize that yeah, it's big. As in, the camera blurs while tilting down its length to show how insanely tall it is. Yusuke and Botan are tiny gnats at the gate's entrance.

"Oh man, what a pad!" Yusuke says and sure, that's one way to look at it lol.

Botan announces that she has a "new arrival" and the gates open for them, but so far there's no one else around. One part of me wants to question the time and budget put into this scene because shouldn't there be, like, thousands of people? Even just waiting outside? The idea that this is the hub of the underworld and that Botan is responsible for ferrying all the souls, yet she is guiding just this one (1) dude for a solid day is, from a world building perspective, kind of nuts. But beyond the need to develop Botan as a character (she can't be a part of the story if her job is treated realistically, with all the endless work that entails), I think this choice functions rather well from an atmospheric perspective too. Meaning, this moment is supposed to be rather tense for Yusuke. He just died, just found out the afterlife exists, just discovered a desire to get his life back, and is now about to meet a King who can toss him into oblivion if he's rude — which Yusuke always is. So this is a Very Dangerous Moment and their relative isolation feeds into that. As does the setting. Yusuke flinches back from the hallway, saying that it looks like a giant throat, so he is now literally walking into the belly of the beast. 

Suddenly, the size of the palace isn't an indicator of awesome wealth, just general intimidation. Also, check out the spikey purple mountains in the background and the harsh reds of the scene, especially compared to the soft yellow of the river. All of it is designed to create an, "Oh shit" reaction in both Yusuke and the audience.

Yusuke's image of King Yama matches these surroundings:

Oh wait! Wrong character ;)

He's massive, red, shadowed, and poses a formidable threat. And how does Yusuke deal with threats? By fighting them! Even those he can't hope to beat. Remember, this isn't a situation where Yusuke has any power here, but he still desperately holds onto the possibility that he might. What if he gets off a punch on King Yama's nose? Then goes for his eyes? Yeah, that'll work! 

Overlooking the fact that it absolutely would not — Yusuke's fantasy conveniently skips how he escapes Yama's clutches — what exactly is Yusuke hoping to accomplish here? Somehow take over the entire underworld? Escape as a ghost and live out his afterlife in hiding? We don't know and that's because Yusuke doesn't know. He doesn't think ahead, he just obeys this instinct to fight. An instinct that, crucially, overrides everything else. Botan has already told him that all Yusuke needs to do is be polite and everything will be fine, but it's not even that Yusuke believes that he can't achieve that; that he knows himself too well and, fearing a slip, starts planning for a potentially inevitable confrontation. There are simply no plans outside of battle plans. Yusuke just hears about someone vaguely intimidating and his brain jumps straight to, "How do I beat him in a fight?" no matter the odds, or that other options are readily available to him. Again, much of YYH's characterization occurs though its comedy, so outside of the general humor of witnessing this fantasy, it actually does a stellar job of reinforcing precisely who Yusuke is. In life the only thing he had going for him was his ability to fight. It was his one joy, his one skill, arguably the one good thing he did if we frame those reflexes as "saving" the kid... so is it any wonder that fighting dominates his every thought? It's all he knows.

And, as we'll see down the line, that single-minded obsession is very useful to the spirit world.

For now though, Yusuke finishes his absurd plans to take down King Yama and Botan asks what in the world he's muttering about back there. Which is an unintentionally hilarious line because by the end Yusuke is not muttering, but full on shouting. Botan. How did you not hear him?

Not important. They reach the next door and we get our first inkling that all is not as Yusuke (and we) expect when Botan leans into an intercom to say that they've arrived. Tech in a fantasy spirit world? This feels not only out of place, but rather... mundane? That's the point. When the doors open Yusuke expects his super scary monster, but gets... a whole lot of monsters that aren't scary at all!

The underworld is run by various demons (or ogres), though their looks are contrasted with the harried office worker personalities they've got going on. Someone is running by with a comically tall stack of papers. Someone else is shouting into a cell phone. The first two demons we see cross paths, looking like they're about to punch one another, just as Yusuke expects... except they're just dramatically getting out of the other's way, worried not about the hierarchy of this realm, but the fact that someone is behind schedule. The nerve!

"This place is a madhouse!" we hear somehow shout and yeah, that's the joke. The afterlife is just as chaotic, overworked, and — ultimately — boring as any human office. For all the strangeness of seeing hundreds of demons, this is familiar.

Which, alongside Botan's bubbly nature contrasting assumptions about the Grim Reaper, is one of the first instances of YYH undercutting the viewer's expectations in terms of looks. No one entirely looks the part they play in this tale and if you're trying to teach people to look past surface characteristics... there are worse ways to do it. Horrifying creatures with horns and sharp teeth? Nah, they're just chill dudes trying to do their job. Cutesy girl who looks like she belongs in a mall reading magazines? Nah, she's the Grim Reaper. Terrifying delinquent with a spine-chilling reputation? Nah, he makes faces at kids and saves them from cars.

Of course, the "nah" isn't accurate either. These are monsters with horns, Botan is a cutesy girl, and Yusuke is a delinquent with that reputation. The message isn't so much that people look like Thing A, but get to know them and you'll discover they're actually Thing B, it's the idea that you can be A and B (and C, D, E...) simultaneously. People — or rather, seemingly simple archetypes — can, in fact, embody multiple characteristics at once.

We'll get our third example in just a second.

Yusuke makes a comment about this being the "dead people stock exchange" — accurate — and Botan leads him to a more ornate door past all the desks. It's clear they've arrived at King Yama's office, since she's bowing and formally presenting him to... someone. Yusuke looks around for the giant beast he's imagined, only for a tiny voice to hail him from the ground.

Looks are deceiving!

“This is Yusuke Urameshi and he’s honored to meet you." Botan knows what's up. She knows Yusuke isn't going to express anything of the sort without some prompting. Too bad he's busy cracking up at this apparent child running the show. Side note: Yusuke has a fantastic laugh.

He even goes so far as to accuse Botan of lying to him.

“Why would I lie about such a thing?!”

“Why would the spirit world be run by a toddler?”

It's true! That’s a legitimate question! I love that Yusuke asks questions. The "toddler" goes on to explain that he's actually the "mighty Koenma," son of King Yama, though he's lived fifty times as long as Yusuke, "so watch your mouth." Assuming Koenma knows and/or remembers how old Yusuke is — fourteen — and is good at math, that puts him at seven hundred years old. He looks good for his age!

"And in addition to knowing the secrets of the universe," he says, "I am quite potty trained."

You've gotta love Koenma.

Yusuke's attitude changes drastically once they get down to business. Koenma produces an egg, saying that Yusuke's ordeal is to hatch it and face what comes out. The hatching part isn't difficult, all he needs to do is keep it on his person. The challenge is in the fact that this egg will feed off his spirit energy and that energy in turn will change what kind of creature develops. If his spirit is wicked and cruel, so will be the beast and it will devour Yusuke upon hatching.

However, if his spirit is good and kind, the beast will become a sort of guardian, guiding him back to his living body.

Note though that throughout this conversation the egg is always a "beast." It's a "monster." It's not necessarily intentional, but there's a strong bend towards the negative here in the description that really emphasizes the whole "ordeal" aspect. Koenma briefly reassures Yusuke that he can remain a ghost if he prefers, but he's already made up his mind. Despite another threat of being lost to a void — this time through spiritual digestion — Yusuke takes the egg almost without hesitation.

He regrets it later though.

"I can't believe I did that."

Can we blame him? I'd be nervous about some egg feeding off the energy of my soul too and I'm a former, almost straight A student (damn you, math) with no life-altering regrets and a general desire to put as much good into this world as I'm able. I’m boring. But what if those occasional, mean little thoughts you have add up? What if the prejudices you're still unlearning stack against you? Does the egg care about what you do, or only how you feel about the act? This sort of test would eat me alive!

Maybe literally. 

Good thing Yusuke doesn't have time for an existential crisis!

Just as he's beginning to regret this decision, Botan points out that it won't matter if he passes if he doesn't have a body to return to. Now, why wouldn't he have a body? Maybe because his mom is set to cremate him tomorrow.

Whoopsie.

Yusuke is, understandably, distraught. We get another excellent exchange:

“Botan, is there any way for ghosts to communicate with living people?”

“Yes.”

“SO ARE YOU GONNA TELL ME?”

I swear, Yusuke is the only smart protagonist. I mean, he's dumb as a sack of bricks at times, but that's neither here nor there. Bless this fictional boy for reacting like an actual person. 

Botan explains that people are more attuned to the spirit world when they're asleep, so Yusuke can deliver a message to someone in their dreams. Seems easy enough. They first head to Atsuko, but find that she's raging drunk and nowhere near sleep. 

"You fool!" she yells. "No one gave you permission to die!" Atsuko continues to yell about how plenty of people survive car accidents, so why couldn't you? "Were you mad at me, Yusuke? Didn't I raise you right?"

Botan comments on how sad the display is. Yusuke's response?

“The only thing that’s sad is now she’s got one more excuse to act that way."

Y'all, that's some mature shit for a goofy shonen anime. Yeah, Yusuke recognizes that, while she's obviously heartbroken, his death has just given her another reason to do what she's been doing for years: drinking herself into a stupor. Toss in Atsuko putting the blame on Yusuke — "No one gave you permission to die!" — plus the belief that she did do a good job — "Didn't I raise you right?" — and it paints a rather bleak picture. This is by no means an uncommon theme. Negligent parents, whether they're framed that way or not, are pretty common in shonen series, but it's still rather jarring to re-watch this as an adult and go, "Oh. The situation’s like that." It's honestly a lot when you remove it from YYH's otherwise humorous, casual context.

Yusuke heads to Keiko's next and finds her sound asleep, commenting on how her room looks more "girly" than when they were kids. Check out that smile!

He's about to try and deliver his message, but Keiko is in the midst of a nightmare. “She’s crying… what’s wrong?”

Oh my god. Remember how I just said Yusuke is also the densest protagonist around? Example A right here. You just died, you fool! You just saw Keiko collapse at your funeral. What do you think is wrong??

We get a peek at Keiko's dream where she is — shockingly! — thinking of Yusuke. He's far out of reach, walking away and unresponsive to her calls. Keiko soon trips and Yusuke disappears completely.

Luckily, she has the real thing at her bedside. Yusuke tries talking to her and at first it's unclear if this supernatural stuff is really working. That is, until Keiko murmurs about how heavy he is.

Reassured, Yusuke delivers his message that Keiko needs to help Atsuko pull herself together and, most importantly, call off burning his body. We get this very soft and pretty background to establish their yet unspoken feelings for one another, though Yusuke gets close with, “I’m coming back. I don’t want to see you cry anymore" as he brushes her tears away. Aww.

Keiko wakes, thinking at first it was just a dream, but no, "I'm sure I felt it."

The next morning she heads to Atsuko's to explain the dream, only to first hear that Atsuko had a dream too, this one about Yusuke "living in some other world full of ogres and he kept knocking them down until he became their leader." It sounds absurd, of course, but it brings Atsuko some comfort to think of her boy in a place like that and Keiko backs down. Right, she'd only had a comforting dream too.

Now, there are two important parts to this exchange. The first is that this is an excellent example of how you let the characters drive the story, rather than forcing the characters adhere to the plot you've come up with. Meaning, in the latter situation, our cast would have needed to have their personalities twisted and the viewer's suspicion of disbelief tested to give Yusuke what he needs: a sleeping family member willing to believe his message. But it absolutely makes sense for Atsuko to be drunk rather than sound asleep, so Yusuke can't rely on her. Likewise, it absolutely makes sense for Keiko to be asleep, but not believe the dream once she's woken up. After all, how many times have we been persuaded by something in the dead of night only for things to look more logical and less likely in the morning? The characters act both like themselves and like people who do normal, people-ish things, which means that Yusuke runs into more conflicts. That's good! It not only raises the tension and stakes — now he has less than a day to convince someone — but makes his inevitable success feel that much sweeter. A less well written show (cough-RWBY-cough) would have had the characters change their personalities, behave in unlikely ways, or just come up with a sudden, contradictory solution because Yusuke needs to keep his body. Instead, Yusuke actually has to work for that within the bounds of the rules established and the likeliness of each plan succeeding. The first one fails? Move onto plan #2.

Second, this dream of Atsuko's has some cool implications within YYH's world. Meaning, we're about to learn in just a moment that some people are naturally more aware of the supernatural than others, even when they're not asleep. We'll also see down the line that spiritual awareness tends to run in families... so perhaps Atsuko possesses more than the average mother? I'm not saying it's necessarily intentional on the author(s) part, but we can choose to read this dream as evidence of spiritual awareness — true insight into the world Yusuke was just in and the fantasies he'd had about conquering it — rather than just a coincidental joke for the viewer. After all, Yusuke gets his own spiritual awareness from somewhere...

(Okay, so there's totally another, canonical reason for that, but we can have both!)

So, as Yusuke puts it, “This dream business isn’t gonna cut it.”

“There’s always the final method," Botan says.

“You always this vague?”

I am literally living for these interactions.

Botan explains that the more extreme form of communication is possessing a living person, but there are two rules attached: it has to be someone you know and the vessel has to be someone who is quite spiritually aware, as discussed above. Atsuko isn't a contender because the story hasn't acknowledged that she might be sensitive, that's just my own headcanon now. Yusuke outright says, “In that case I’m screwed. There’s no one like that!"

Cut to good old Kuwabara.

At first it looks as if he's just oh so conveniently sensing a spirit right when the audience has learned he has this power, but in reality it's Yusuke and Botan flying behind him that sets it off. Again: this show is pretty good about keeping things internally consistent, rather than making choices because That's Just How Stories Work, I Guess. Kuwabara's friends note that he's acting strangely and I love this detail that apparently one of the guys is new to their group because the other two need to explain that this is the "tickle feeling." Ever since Kuwabara was a boy he's been able to sense the dead around him. Some nice, some... not so nice.

He looks directly at Yusuke — even though he's not able to see him — and declares that what's following them is “A puny low-level ghost, like a haunted racoon or something.”

I'd support Yusuke's anger more if he hadn't just exclaimed his surprise that Kuwabara serves a purpose 😂

Yusuke is pissed enough though to proclaim that he won't do it, nuh-uh, no way is he possessing this guy's body. Botan's response is one of my FAVORITES in the WHOLE SERIES:

"Here's my impression of Yusuke: look at me, I’m burning!”

Literally 75% of this series is just about a found family sassing one another and I love it.

Obviously this helps Yusuke remember his priorities and he grudgingly agrees to the plan. Botan prepares Kuwabara's body somehow — idk, spiritual magic or whatever — and warns Yusuke that he only has an hour to find someone and warn them because a human body can't handle possession any longer than that. Sure. I buy it.

So Yusuke takes control and please ignore the incredible ethical issues here. The show will never acknowledge them again. 

He blurts out, “Hey, check it out! I’m inside Kuwabara, feeling smooth!"

Istg I don't remember the series being this unintentionally gay. I don't even ship Yusuke/Kuwabara and I'm digging the possibilities here lol.

Back on track, his friends drag him with, “Looks like he’s back to normal” because again, 75%. What's not normal though is Kuwabara (Yusuke) suddenly charging down the street to leave them behind. He heads straight to the restaurant where Keiko's parents work, demanding to see her. They're rightly concerned about this stranger barging in and screaming for their daughter.

Upon asking who he is/why they should tell him, Yusuke makes his biggest mistake: “Because it’s me, you guys, I’m Yusuke!”

Obviously the time limit and raw emotion of knowing who he is has outweighed the knowledge that, you know, no one would believe that. Yusuke has spent the last two days bopping around as a ghost and familiarizing himself with some of the afterlife's insanity. The knowledge of what's normal for everyone else — AKA, not dead boys appearing in strangers' bodies — is not at the forefront of Yusuke's mind.

So, Keiko's parents react accordingly! The father in particular is disgusted by this claim, going so far as to threaten Yusuke with his knife and outright insult Kuwabara's looks: “Yusuke was never ugly like you… we were close family friends with that boy!" His wife chimes in that this kind of joke is particularly heinous on the day of his funeral. Between Atsuko drunkenly blaming Yusuke for his death and Mr. Takenaka grieving for what he might have been, this is one of the few times we see someone just sad for Yusuke's passing, exactly as he was and without regrets or criticism. "We were close family friends with that boy" paints a nice contrast to the delinquent persona Yusuke was cultivating.

As he's thrown out of the restaurant he says, “We should have special passwords for times like this!” Fun fact, my family does! Well, not this exact situation lol. I was given a password as a child to memorize in case my parents ever needed to send someone else to pick me up or interact with me in any way. If the stranger didn't know the password, I was to kick up a fuss. I rest easy with the knowledge that this password would not doubt assist me if I was ever in Yusuke's position!

With Keiko's parents a bust, Yusuke starts sprinting to everywhere she frequents with the hope of running into her. Or at least he tries. 

Yusuke is suddenly waylaid by a group of nameless teens with a bone to pick with Kuwabara. And you know what? I like it. I wonder how much of my praise stems from coming off of RWBY Volume 8, but it's just so nice to watch a story where the plot — simple as it is — hangs together. We've established that Kuwabara is a street fighter. Last episode we watched him start a fight with Yusuke. Yusuke is on a time limit. Now Kuwabara's tendencies have created a new hurdle for Yusuke!

Needless to say, Yusuke kicks butt, even in Kuwabara’s body. 

As one guy is passing out he says, “Man that hurt! I didn’t think anyone could throw punches that hardcore except Yusuke Urameshi."

Yusuke: “Darn, giving Kuwabara a good name." LOL

You think this challenge is finished though? Nah. Over the course of about half an hour Yusuke encounters a comical number of people trying to get even with Kuwabara. 

As always, I like the nods towards this writing decision to help justify it, with Yusuke wondering how Kuwabara has pissed this many people off. If you want to pull off something that has a low chance of happening, it can help to give the characters a "Seriously?" moment. If both they and the audience are on the same page over how ridiculous this situation is, the audience is more likely to accept it once the character does.

By the time Yusuke escapes his hour is nearly up. However, thanks to some coincidental plotting, he spots Keiko's friends just across the street! 

YYH does a decent job of making its characters feel like they have their own lives outside of what's immediately happening on screen and we get a good example of that here. We pick up the girls' conversation partway through, both of them worried about Keiko's state of mind and, given that we'll see in a second that Keiko was in the store with them, it implies that something happened to reignite this worry. They're off enjoying their day, doing their own thing, there was an event we're not privy to, and now we catch the response to that. It just helps make the characters feel more well-rounded even though they are, at their core, one-dimensional background characters who don’t even have names yet.

Case in point: the one girl is still concerned with their image. "People are starting to say things!"

Yeah, your friend's childhood friend just died. Hopefully they're saying, "Poor thing."

Anyway, Yusuke runs up to ask where Keiko is only for both girls to run away screaming. Turns out his face is messed up from the numerous fights and Keiko's friends are easily scared. 

Luckily, Keiko comes out just a second later and Yusuke is faced with the challenge of how to convince her in, oh, about five minutes. Remember, we've already established through Keiko's parents that just saying, "I'm Yusuke" doesn't work. That's why he hesitates. It's not just drama for the sake of drama, he's stuck.

“I’ve known her my whole life, there must be something between us that only I would do!”

Yeeeeaah. About that 😬

Suddenly inspired (I suppose that's one way to put it...) Yusuke runs up behind Keiko and grabs her breasts. “Keiko, nice uniform! They’re so squishy!”

It goes without saying that, like flipping her skirt up, this isn't okay. More specifically, the problem lies in the story framing this as a joke for the audience, something to laugh at despite Keiko's discomfort, rather than the concept of two childhood friends actually be that comfortable with one another. But, as already established, this is one of the more ehhhh aspects of Yusuke's characterization that, luckily, will mostly disappear as the story goes on.

Note though that the show clearly wants us to think highly of this. Not just as a "joke," but as a smart solution to his problem and more evidence of their inevitable relationship — the background becomes the same soft, bubbly background we saw during their dream conversation. And, admittedly, it does work. Keiko instinctively slaps Yusuke hard enough to knock him to the ground and he starts laughing, saying that he doesn't care what anyone on the street says, she hits the hardest.

What I do like about this is that the assault isn't the only thing Keiko bases her faith on. Not only has she already had the dream, we get to see Yusuke from her perspective, showing all the mannerisms she picks up on by superimposing Yusuke's real body over Kuwabara's. Indeed, she says as much: “I knew it was you from the first time you spoke…and it’s not just your stupid gags, or how you laugh. There are ways you move and speak that in a hundred years I wouldn’t forget."

Catch me crying in this club!

Knowing she believes him and that he's almost out of time, Yusuke reiterates his message: please don't burn my body and also keep Mom on track. Only, you know, it's phrased far better than that lol. As he speaks, both Yusuke's and Kuwabara's voices overlap until the latter grows fainter and only Yusuke's voice remains. His body too. It's a nice touch, avoiding the awkwardness of Keiko having this moment with a stranger, even if that is what's happening on some level.

“I know I’ve been a bum to you at times, but please wait for me."

His hour up, now we can get the awkwardness! Kuwabara comes out of his weird trance thing to find Keiko crying against his chest. Wow, he thinks, this girl must be really into me! 

God, to have the confidence of Kuwabara.

Of course, Keiko quickly realizes it's not Yusuke anymore and slaps him too for cuddling her closer. My favorite thing is that when she does this a crowd INSTANTLY appears. I mean they TELEPORT in. We needed an audience for Kuwabara's shame and YYH delivered, all logic be damned.

“Um, sorry about that!” Keiko yells as she runs away, because she's a good person who recognizes that weird spirit things just went on and Kuwabara isn't actually to blame.

“No, that’s okay. I probably deserved it," Kuwabara responds because he's also a good person and I didn't appreciate him nearly as much as I should have as a kid.

Keiko runs all the way to Atsuko's place where she finds her dressed for Yusuke's funeral. She blurts that Yusuke might still be coming back and Atsuko goes, "He already has." Turns out she opened his coffin to "smack him one more time for leaving me" — yikes — and found that his heart had started beating again, just as Koenma said it would. 

Being in a shonen anime, they apparently decide to just trust Keiko's message rather than, idk, taking him to a hospital or something.

The camera tilts up to show that Yusuke has been watching all this, including that both women break down again and comfort one another. Aww. How heartwarming.

What's less fuzzy though is this mysterious egg. Yusuke takes another look and finds that it has developed a heartbeat too, presumably in time with his body's. He theorizes that he did decent things today, right? But Botan (teasingly) points out that he did beat up a lot of other kids. Rather than getting angry, Yusuke remains uncharacteristically pensive, emphasizing the magnitude of what this means for him. He's got to get it right.

No pressure or anything! We'll have to see how Yusuke balances his karmic scales in the next episode. Until then, I'll try not to put all my TV time into Star Trek: Voyager :D 

See you then!  💜

[mprjanedoe]

Statement of Harm & Abuse caused by Steam Powered Giraffe’s former bandmember Michael Philip Reed

I am making this post after reading Steam Powered Giraffe’s recent tweets about Michael and also seeing another tweet circling around from a fan/friend of his as well. This statement is being posted publicly to make the Steam Powered Giraffe fandom and community aware of the breadth of Michael’s harmful actions. Steam Powered Giraffe also tweeted encouraging victims to come forward privately with more information, and because of this I have sent this statement directly to SPG so they are aware of this now as well. 

This post is formed by input from victims, occasionally about each other, and occasionally through observations about themselves directly, that occurred over a span of roughly 10 years, informally through text and private messaging, as well as casual conversation at parties and during socializing. His victims should not be subject to more retraumatizing or identification due to fear of retaliation. Along this vein, I also do not wish to identify myself. Frequently his victims of abuse are non-romantic partners.

Michael and I were friends for a number of years. We became friends when I was 18 and he was 26. During the entirety of our friendship I watched him make friends with young women and notably - minors, as well as pursue relationships with them that blurred the lines of platonic and romantic behavior. I watched him emotionally manipulate multiple young women + minors in their teens he had as friends, often causing animosity between the people he was manipulating, which he then used to his gain whenever confronted on his behavior by scoffing it off as jealousy. Part of the emotional manipulation that contributed to this that I witnessed and was also victim to was a deliberate effort on Michael’s part to be secretive about all of the people in his social group who were in the category of young women and minors, despite all parties involved knowing each other in some way because they knew he was “friends” with them. Michael specifically had no problem chatting about mutual friends who were adults and men - however there was a notably distinct difference when talking about young women/minors. He groomed multiple minors that I knew, engaging in physical affection and romantic/sexual emotional manipulation. In some cases he waited until they legally became an adult to make sexual advances. In others, with victims as young as 15 years old, he did pursue and act upon sexual advances. In case it is not abundantly clear - this is sexual assault and in the context of engaging in sex acts with minors is rape.

Even in the case of victims Michael did not form an ongoing intimate relationship with, Michael was consistently friendly around young women and minors (predominantly met through Steam Powered Giraffe and before and after shows) in inappropriate ways, often openly flirting with them upon meeting them and encouraging them to keep in touch. There were many instances he initiated obtaining direct contact info with fans after meeting them, some he was privy to were minors at the time. I have witnessed this in person, Steam Powered Giraffe has received reports of this, and I have been told this directly by fans and friends of friends who have met him in passing. He regularly held chat rooms with young women and minors and in those chatrooms often made innuendoes and flirty jokes. 

In addition to Michael being manipulative to many young, impressionable people, he was also an irresponsible friend - which in the context of having a social circle filled with young women and minors, was negligent and dangerous. He actively participated in peer pressuring and coaxing his young “friends” into illegal recreational drugs - predominantly psychedelics and alcohol and encouraged friends his age who did those drugs to peer pressure his young companions into these behaviors as well. He not only peer pressured and coaxed his victims into using illegal recreational drugs, but also personally offered them as he had them in his possession. He also would solicit his “friends” to hang out with him at night and drink (most if not all of whom were under 21, so he had to supply the alcohol) and then disappear or offer to let people crash at his place and then rescind his offer last minute. This put his young victims in danger and at risk, especially when under the influence of alcohol. On a number of occasions where I wasn’t directly affected by this, I was one of the people with a car who would pick up our mutual friends left hanging.

As evidenced by another tweet circulating, Michael has also said a number of racist things. He has wallowed in his white guilt openly and unproductively with multiple people of color, seeking comfort and to unburden his conscience. He has frequently made his white guilt a focus and expected emotional labor from POC, and has said some very offensive and distasteful things, like repeatedly saying he wished he was a black man, and that part of that desire was because he felt his music should be sung with a black man’s voice. His wishing to be black is grotesque for a number of reasons: - because he wanted to be absolved of his white guilt without taking any personal action to dismantle white supremacy, and also fetishizing black people as there is no monolithic black voice, black people are all individual and unique and to fixate on an idea of something they may have that he wanted is racist and inappropriate to say the least. He also made comments in front of friends and at parties to a POC he was romantically involved with repeatedly saying this person was white passing enough for him, as he wasn’t normally attracted to women of color. He also boasted to multiple friends that much of his friend group were people of color.

All in all, after years of knowing Michael, seeing his behaviors towards myself and towards others, these very clear statements need to be made. 

1. Michael is a pedophile who has a long history of actively and physically preying on minors and young women. Michael has preyed upon minors and young women, and has coerced minors (under the age of 17) into sexual activity - which is sexual assault and rape. He has calculatedly manipulated young women 5-10 years his junior to be his “friend”, often treating them and implying they were in a relationship, and lying to other people involved, creating an extremely toxic social circle of gaslighted young people being manipulated and abused. He cyclically pulled from this group of individuals one at a time and withheld attention from the others to maintain control and silence of the entire group. This is sexual abuse, in any context. He has used his fame and social capital and his brand of charming and kind dude to make excuses for his behavior and seem like he would never be the type to commit it. When called out on this- he directly lies. Lying about his behavior even when presented with evidence is frequent. 

2. Michael is racist. He has made multiple racist comments to people of color who were close to him over a number of years, he has sought out emotional support for his white guilt without addressing how he should personally fight against racism and white supremacy. He has fetishized people of color and fixated on them. 

Those who have gotten close enough to Michael know that despite his kindhearted exterior, he can be shockingly cold and lash out in very cruel ways unexpectedly. He has done this to every single one of his victims that I’ve known, including myself, and his victims are anticipating the potential that he will retaliate in response to being called out for his actions. Private and informal testimonies from sexual partners and friends of a variety of ages, forms of relationship, and gender indicate severe emotional abuse. 

I would like to acknowledge my role in accountability in this situation for those who may be wondering why I am privy to all of this information but have not spoken out sooner - 18 is not a monolithic age of wizened adulthood - and being that I met Michael when he was nearly 10 years my senior and he pursued friendship with me, I was also taken advantage of for my age and naivety. I was a consistent victim of his emotional manipulation, and felt vaguely uncomfortable for the entirety of knowing and interacting with him, but also personally looked up to him and was charmed by the kindhearted well intentioned image he cultivated both publicly and privately. Upon reading Bunny’s tweets on the matter and reflecting on all that I have been aware of has occurred, it became abundantly clear that it was crucial to make this statement. 

To all who have considered themselves friends and colleagues of Michael’s who are in his age group - do not mislead yourselves that there were no signs of Michael’s behavior. This should’ve been dealt with much swifter than nearly a decade down the line when great irrevocable harm has been dealt to Michael’s victims, and there were many publicly visible signs that Michael was way too close with young people - predominantly young women and minors, even if the deeper grotesque details remained in secrecy. The same things that enticed Michael’s young victims to believe being close to him was safe and exciting, are much of the same signs that should’ve been clear to his peers were deeply inappropriate. Based on Bunny’s tweets regarding Michael getting “too friendly” with young fans, and being caught kissing a minor after a show years ago, it is abundantly clear there was a pattern of harmful predatory behavior that was appropriately investigated enough to stop sooner. I ask that all those who have associated with Michael who were peers of him as adults to reflect on this and take open accountability for their role in enabling his behavior either actively or passively in turning a blind eye and/or not investigating his behavior/personally challenging it.

We are asking that this statement is posted on all of SPG’s public channels for visibility - and that fans spread this information and that Steam Powered Giraffe does everything they can to deplatform and demonetize Michael. We are also asking that there is space for this information to spread and breathe and that things do not immediately or quickly return back to status quo within the Steam Powered Giraffe fandom. People have been seriously impacted by this and the trajectory of the lives of many youths has been altered permanently. Considering Steam Powered Giraffe’s success and fame was integral to giving Michael influence over his victims and the opportunity to meet them in the first place, it is only appropriate that there is a significant period of pause - in respect of the victims, and for those finding out about Michael’s actions to process this information.

[nurseofren]

Keeping Your Promise - Chapter 24

Read on AO3

Read chapter twenty-three

Title: Prove it

Words: 6800

Warnings: Talks of pregnancy, mentions of vomit

Summary: A friend. A foe?

ST Rambles: I look pretty good for a dead bitch.

Okay. In all seriousness. In the five weeks that I have not updated, it has been chaos. School is absolutely kicking my ass this semester and I am not afraid to say it. Maternal-Newborn is a hell I would not wish on my worst enemy. With this said, I know any further updates will be sporadic, BUT - and I say this to snuff out any doubt on the matter - I will never, EVER, abandon this story. However it ends, rest assured that it will, in fact, do just that.

I thank you all for your patience and encouragement. This story is something I care deeply about and it just floors me that others do as well. I love interacting with you all, either on here or tumblr or TikTok (if you've made one and I haven't seen it, please tag me! My fyp does not work in my favor lol).

Be kind. Don't forget to be a person. All you can do is try your best.

[MASTERLIST] | BANNER/@elmidol

Good afternoon,

I can only hope this correspondence finds you safe and well.

The Board of Physicians sympathizes during this time of displacement and potential grieving. There are countless variables to be considered during uncertain times like these, but those of your safety and well-being are of the utmost importance. In an effort to convey the depth of our understanding, a unanimous vote has approved the decision to extend the dates of the trial by seven days. Upon receiving this official communication, you should plan to arrive on Canto Bight a minimum of two days prior to the morning of the initial hearing. An updated outline has been attached at the end of this e-mail for reference and sent to all pertinent parties.

Per the initial correspondence, Commander Ren is to receive a new provider prior to the trial’s start date. This objective has been met with the solemn barrier of the diminished population of approved nurses and physicians which resulted from the recent tragedy of Starkiller Base. There have been additional unforeseen circumstances also working to lengthen and altogether halt this approval process. Rest assured that we are doing everything in our power to ensure the trial proceedings occur in an organized and professional manner.

The emergent provider shortage, along with the unknown – and likely diminished – amount of surveillance retained from Starkiller Base prior to its destruction, has laid the foundation for the discussion of potential and probable employment during your time on Canto Bight. The discussions surrounding this issue are in their infancies. Should it be that you are to assume a care position during your trial, you will receive a further updated and in-depth itinerary. This would include the dates, times, and location you would be expected to work; this information would be accompanied by any specific limitations regarding your scope of practice while on trial.

Though you are encouraged to reach out to discuss any questions or concerns you may have pertaining to these new developments, the current agenda is to be followed with strict compliance. Should there be any changes, as stated previously, I will communicate these to you in a timely and conscious manner.

Respectfully,

Karmen Zag, Esq.,

Head of Communications,

The Board of Physicians

“Yeah, well, you can go fuck yourself Karmen Zag. Stupid ass name anyway.”

Not that anyone could hear you, nor that anyone would care, you could not help the petty jab. Karmen Zag, the faceless mouthpiece of the institution actively seeking your death, had little to do with anything. Karmen Zag was not the one who had carved initials into your body; that person was elusive to you now. Karmen Zag was not the one who kept you from sleep; that person was dead, killed by the trembling hands of the very survivor they’d created. Karmen Zag was not the one you were currently hiding from; that person, achingly kind and too ignorant to know different, still came to pick you up from shift every night.

Cramped in the corner of a supply room, you sat with your knees tucked to your chest and your datapad resting on your thighs, eyeing the vent at the bottom of the door to spy Mason’s tapping foot. In the seven days since waking up in the medbay, six days since returning to work to help with the increased patient population – or, at least that’s what you were telling yourself – you had found yourself with a desperate need to distance yourself from Mason. He was unaware of all that was haunting you, nescient to the fact he was at the epicenter of the majority of it. To see him was to remember the choice you’d made, to hate yourself for regretting it, to be morally ripped in half by the unwavering war in the back of your mind.

The first three days he would always sneak up on you, flurries of white lies leaving while you fumbled away from him and into the nearest room. I’m on call tonight was your favorite. No, you weren’t, though you had been staying in the on-call rooms to hide the fact that you no longer held a residence on this ship. No matter if you had not received official word on your employment status, you felt an unease when thinking of returning to Kylo Ren’s quarters. It felt too broken, like you’d be a stranger somewhere you’d once considered a home.

Eventually, Mason being an inherent creature of habit, you’d picked up on his timing. On the fourth day you’d decided to stake him out, finding he would spend exactly ten minutes waiting, send a message to your commlink, spend another five toying with his own as he waited for a response, eventually asking whoever was nearest to tell you to call him. You never did. It was despicable, watching his hope falter as the days passed and you were never there to leave with him; wretched, but that did not make it any less necessary.

So long as you were away from Mason, you couldn’t hurt him. If you could create a rift between the two of you so great as to discourage any further interaction, you could save him from all the suffering that came along with being associated with you. On the other hand, you couldn’t deny the comfort you felt in deferring any conversation with him. Avoidance may not be a healthy coping mechanism, but all the ones you’d learned of in school were useless to your set of circumstances; there was no talking this through, no way to speak of Snoke or Kylo or Robbie without getting someone else hurt. You were trapped in your own, sole company; whoever you had become recently, you were barely tolerant of them, let alone fond. It was growing increasingly difficult to recognize your own reflection. At some point you figured you might stop looking altogether.

Zag’s update had been present in your inbox ever since returning to work; with each read through – which, now, you’d have read a hundred times – you felt time pass by. Each night you spent time tucked away here, the cold tile permeating the scrub pants you now wore; the uniform you’d had on when you arrived back on the Finalizer had been too tattered to reuse. Not that you wanted to wear it; in those tattered, bloodied threads lay the obvious truth of how entirely you had failed at the only assignment you had ever been trusted with.

Trusted. The thought made you shiver. Yes. Trusted. Past tense. In every sense it could be. Thus, folded into yourself, away from prying eyes or well-meaning friends, you scrolled aimlessly up and down the message. Though its existence annoyed you, knowing full well that there was no empathy or genuine concern behind the decision to delay the trial, it also brought you ease to know this portion of your life was almost over. Again you were embracing the possibility of your death, only this time rooted in hatred for yourself, not Kylo Ren.

“Alright, well, can you tell her-,”

“Tell her to call you. Got it. Do every night.” One of your coworkers had grown exasperated with Mason – or was it with you? Either way, peeking through the vent slats, you spied Mason’s legs drag out of view. It made your heart fall, feeling more disgusted with yourself each day; it was this confusing combination of feeling a pull to run after him, to apologize to him with every breath you had left, only for that initial urgency to be swallowed by the knowledge that the action would be futile.

With tired eyes, not having gotten more than two hours of unbroken sleep since the sixteen you’d woken from, you looked to your left wrist. It was a routine gesture, pointless in the fact you had not worn the watch since finding it on your bedside table. Much like your uniform, only agonizingly amplified, the sight of the gadget inspired a hollowness in your chest. It remained in a pillowcase, hidden atop the bed you’d claimed. Each night you toyed with it, thumbed at the lifeless screen and wondered if it would ever offer another flicker; each night you caught the hazy reflection of two unfamiliar eyes, finding only the remnants of shattered promises staring back at you.

A sigh crept into your lungs when you stood, arms stretching and hands smoothing back your hair before going to activate the door. It hissed open without your indication; before you could question how, two hands pushed you out of the way and sent you flying face first into the storage shelves. Nose first, actually; the collision rang through your ears, pain throbbing in prominence as you stumbled for stability, arms widespread and eyes pinched shut.

“Oh! You have to be kidding!” Copper crept down your upper lip, cascading over your sharp tongue, foggy eyes opening to blood-stained fingers. “Watch where you’re going, jeez!”

Away from you sounded the door as it shut, but that wasn’t the sound that alarmed you. Across the room, near the sink – at least you hoped it was near the sink – came the horrendous retching that could only indicate vomit. The longer you listened, though, all the while blindly searching for a package of gauze, you found it wasn’t vomit, but an attempt towards it; echoes of dry heaves wracked the room, vomit absent even as the stranger continued in their effort toward expulsion.

A spill of winces left you, a grimace following suit when you tipped your head back, blood draining down your throat. You found a box of gauze squares and tore it open, peeling away a layer and rolling it into a cone before pushing it into one nostril. Vessels pounded against the material, injury soaking into it as you caught your breath.

“I’m so sorry,” a familiar voice said, groggy and breathless. “The refresher was occupied, and the occupancy indicator wasn’t on.” She took another breath, gasping back spit. “I figured the sink in here would do.”

Another person you’d been avoiding. Talia. Sick. As she would be, of course. It was something you’d fought thoughts on; it was too confusing, too unnerving to put the pieces you’d been offered together. Hux had left her room, had been so distraught. Talia had seized and ended up in the medbay. Armitage. Stars, how that word haunted you in the way it left her paling lips. She’d been so disoriented, so scared. Glassy eyes and green pallor. And the person she’d asked for was Armitage.

With these thoughts, dizzying as they had become, came the image of the very thing that tied them all together: that square-cut, printed, glossy ultrasound picture. Between nightmares of Robbie and desperately trying to find any amount of sleep, you saw it clear in your head, remembered how you’d lost your ability to stand when you first considered the reality of it. It all made sense clinically; the symptoms, the tangible evidence showing a yolk sac, the patient identifiers framing the monochrome image.

But, when you remembered running into Hux, remembered the ghost in his eyes and felt the rather unsettling demeanor – one not marked with errant hatred – he’d met you with, it all started to blur. Jumble. Your mind rejecting the thought that Talia and Hux-

Talia mewled, your eyes opening to find white knuckles outfitting a vise grip over the sink’s metal edge. The fluorescent lights lining the ceiling made it all too easy to see how sick she really was. Tears glinted down her cheeks, her hair dull in its tousled bun, a string of spit straying from her bottom lip; there was a suggestion of green just below the surface of her skin, exhaustion evident in the lavender drapes below her eyes.

A shaky breath left her before she rested against the sink, elbows bent and fingers rolling over her temples. For a moment there was a deafening silence, one that strangled you and emphasized the throbbing in your nose when you stopped breathing. It dissipated when Talia groaned, her head drooping and stance shifting.

“At least shift is done, right?” She sounded like she was talking to anyone. She didn’t know it was you. She didn’t know you knew.

Swallowing, dropping your hand from your face, you tried to think of anything to say. But nothing would come. And, considering how little time you had left to know her – execution or not – you saw no point in frivolous small talk.

“How far along are you?” It was a low rasp; frail in its existence yet bludgeoning the quiet that had preceded it.

She didn’t look up, but you knew she recognized your voice; her every muscle stalled, hair even stilling as your words sank into her. It was the first thing you’d said to her since she’d seized. In her silent shock it dawned on you that it had not been long since you’d been in a situation similar to this; the two of you, a pitting silence, a mess – obvious and blaring – surrounding you.

Only this mess was not something that could be cleaned. This mess existed outside all you had once thought to consider. Though this room was less gruesome in appearance, it held that same suffocated dread, carried with it the reminder that everything could change without a moment’s notice. Watching the color return to her cheeks, absentmindedly brushing your fingertips across the raised marks atop your thigh, it hit you how true that fact was.

A small sound – a swallow – filled the room, a sigh to accompany it. “Six weeks. I think, at least. Maybe more.” She stood then, crossing her arms and leaning against the sink. A wall stood between you and her, invisible yet so entirely present. “No one knows.” Her jaw fluttered at its hinge. The wall was for her; a façade, a crutch. She was scared.

The door lit cool shivers down your back, hands digging into your pockets, a weak attempt at a smile pulling at your face. “Congratulations,” you offered first, forgetting the circumstances before seeing her eyes fall to the floor. “Or not, I guess.”

She kept her eyes down. “I’m not showing, and I’ve been good about sneaking away to throw up, so…”

“Last week,” you said, her stare coming back to you, “after Starkiller. I fainted after arriving back here, and after I woke up,” I washed the Commander of the First Order’s hair and cried to his comatose body about how my life is falling apart, “I just had to know you were okay, so I visited you.”

“I don’t remember seeing you. I actually… How did you even know I had been admitted to the medbay?”

“You were asleep. I didn’t want to wake you.” You chewed your cheek, recounting any of those 48 hours made your pulse jump. “You weren’t well off when I found you, before they took you to the medbay, so I wouldn’t expect you to remember me being there.”

Her brow dipped for half a second, a crack creeping into that wall. “I didn’t know you found me. It’s difficult for me to even recall most of that day.” Her shoulders dropped, stature less rigid now. “Thank you, though.”

You nodded, not entirely sure why she felt it necessary to thank you. “Yeah. So, you were sleeping and I saw the tests ordered on your board. And then I found your ultrasound on the floor.”

Her eyes were so distant, pupils housing a familiar ghost. “It must have fallen when I was sleeping.” Her lips parted with the whisper, egregious loneliness overwhelming the thought.

It felt like the floor would fall out at any second, the interaction so fragile. Watching her with intent, measuring her reactions, you charged ahead into territory you’d been afraid to enter for so long.

“Talia,” you started, buying more time to think on your phrasing. Her focus startled back from wherever her mind had taken her. “I mean, maybe this is ridiculous, and maybe I’m so far off base in even suggesting it…”

Her arms dropped when a hand reached to tuck a collection of stray hair behind her ear, nose sniffing, teeth pulling at her bottom lip. She took her eyes from yours, breath picking up. That wall she stood behind was wearing.

You couldn’t stand beating around the bush any longer, sick of theorizing about it all. It fled out, no breath to separate any of it. “I’ll just say it: Hux was leaving your room when I came around. And he was being weird. So weird. I mean, he was being… would I say nice? Maybe just, less awful? He complimented me. And it was so weird, but I thought I would give him the benefit of the doubt because, you know, he’d just lost a lot of men. But then it was you in the room and I.. he was so distraught? That is barely the right word, but I mean? He just wasn’t General Hux. And then I found the ultrasound and remembered how you’d asked for ‘Armitage’ earlier when I’d found you, and-,”

A weep signaled the destruction of the wall she’d thrown up, hands clawing into her eyes and lungs heaving full of ragged, desperate air. “Oh, please tell me you didn’t tell him! He can’t- I don’t!” Sobs rolled off of her between each exclamation. “I haven’t told him. I don’t know how. I- he’s so evil! I can’t believe I ever slept with him!”

Seeing her come apart, feeling the guilt she did in every word she cried, you could only think to take her into your arms. In your hold you felt her shaking and the pain roll off of her in thick, grating waves. It was familiar, like she, too, had been existing alone; you had not noticed, so buried in your own avoidance that you had not thought to consider hers.

“I’m so sorry! I’m so- I’m so sorry! It makes me so mad that- ugh!”

“Hey, stop. Slow down,” you soothed, hugging her tighter. “You have nothing to apologize to me for. You’ve done nothing wrong, okay?”

“No, I have! I slept with my Master! And got pregnant! And he’s such a fucking jerk! He’s the whole reason you’re losing your career, you know? And I had sex with him! And I feel- felt real things for him!” A breath stuttered into her lungs. “I never meant for it to go any further than that first night, and then… fuck.”

It burned down to your marrow that you had the power to comfort her, knew everything she was feeling even if it wasn’t hatred that left you crying at night. She would be embraced in knowing you had also slept with your Master; it would minimize the guilt she now felt. To tell her you had fallen for Kylo Ren could help her know that she wasn’t alone.

Instead, feeling her tears accumulate on your sleeve, struggling to keep in your own, you kept quiet. She would not learn how you had burned so bright for your commander. It was selfish, but it was necessary. Self-preservation. She would be testifying against you, taking the stand right after Hux. Her not knowing would do no harm; it would keep her from having to consider or commit perjury. Talia now joined Mason, another soul to protect, another person you would lie to.

Several minutes passed before she stopped trembling, another few before the tears stopped staining your uniform. Humanity existed in these moments, and though you would hide how you knew the advice you would offer her, you knew she needed to hear it. A part of you did, too.

Moving your arms from her back and grasping both her shoulders, you locked eyes with her and forced her to see that you somehow understood her pain. “There is nothing to feel guilty about. Not that you slept with him, or that you got pregnant. Not that you felt things for him or that you still do.” Her eyes shut at that, a fresh streamlet dragging into her mouth. “You can still love him even if he has done awful things.”

“Gosh, how can you say that? He’s ruined your life,” she shuddered, grimacing before looking back up to you.

“I made the choice to take that blood. I had a choice,” your throat tightened, not knowing if you were reciting the words from their origin or from your dream, “I made the one I thought was the best at the time. Hux may be an ass in the way he has gone about the issue, but it’s not like he wouldn’t have reported me.”

She sobbed your name, confusion and hurt wrought in her features. “That blood saved that patient. You saved that patient. We both know that. You saved him and you’re suffering for it and I’m the one who wrote the incident report. He made me write it. Such a fucking bastard.”

Just like that, whatever weird internal truce you’d made with Hux disappeared. “Yeah, that is a dick thing to do, I will say that.”

She wiped at her cheeks, shaking her head. “I should have lied on that report.”

“And gotten both of us in trouble? That isn’t a solution.”

“If I had, you would be less alone in this. And I wouldn’t have to testify against you.” Talia’s eyes shot to the ceiling and back, frustration hot on her breath. “It’s just so-,”

“Unfair. I know. I have… I’ve beaten myself up about it too much not to know that.” This conversation was too similar to those you’ve held inwardly. It was becoming repetitive to keep sulking over something you could not change. But Talia, if she wanted, could change her situation. “We went through the same program, got the same schooling, I know you know your options here.”

She chewed her cheek, shaking her head. A long drag of breath found its way into her chest, releasing when your hands fell to your sides. “This is where you find out how stupid I am.”

It pulled at your heart to hear how hard she was being on herself. “You aren’t stupid. And if you are? Could’ve fooled me with your class rank and just general existence.”

A laugh, weak but not acrid. “Academics were easy. Career is easy. This life stuff? Messy. Complicated. I feel like no matter what I do, it will blow up in my face.” That earlier distance glazed over her stare, a glimmer of yearning present in the way her eyebrows pinched. “And what I want…think I want? I’m not sure it’s even possible.”

“What do you want?”

Talia shut her eyes, capitulation and indignance set in her features, jaw flexed. “I haven’t spoken to him since that night,” she whispered. “He watched me fill out that report. I was sobbing in front of him and he said nothing.” A hand smoothed over her hair and clutched into her bun, lips quivering for a moment. “I didn’t even know until last week. I woke up for a few minutes and they started talking about all that had happened – fainting and seizures and blood tests – and they immediately wheeled me down to have an ultrasound to confirm the hCG results and urinalysis.”

She paused, growing in distance the more she shared. “Was it just your electrolytes that caused the seizure?”

“Yeah. Yes.” She blinked back to the present. “Belkar actually said I was severely dehydrated and that my metabolic panel reflected that.” Talia was dancing between two timeframes; gentleness framed her face when revisiting that of the past. Something so delicate in her stare; adoration cusping on hope. “I always told myself I would never have children. It scared me seeing how sick they could become when we had our unit on pediatrics. I’d never wanted to feel so helpless as the parents I saw during clinical.”

It almost winded you to watch a single tear slip down her cheek, allowing her silence during her pause before she looked up at you, desperation drowning her eyes. She couldn’t find – or, maybe, did not want to believe – the words that overwhelmed her. “What changed?” You knew, but she needed to hear it for herself.

Her lips had become puffy, teeth pulling at the bottom one. She reached into the front pocket of her scrub dress, pulling from it that square print, only now with rolled, worn corners. “I know it’s early and there are so many things that can go wrong and I know I had been drinking before I knew, but…” A swallow bobbed her throat, a fond smile forming when she toyed with the scan. “When they handed this to me? Something just, I don’t know, came into view.”

A surge of immense pain coiled into you. In her reverie you saw yourself, realized how fortunate her situation was; she had something she wanted and even though it was complicated, she had a choice in the matter.

Again, her mind had wandered, distraction framing her tone; her brows pinched together for a second, a question sparking from her memories. “Have you ever wanted something so much, and maybe you didn’t fully understand it, but you just knew? For whatever reason, this was the thing you would do everything in your power to make possible? To have what you want, no matter how daunting or nonsensical it seemed?”

“Yeah,” you choked out, coughing against the new strain on your throat, “I think so.” Talia had that ability, though, and it cracked against your skull how helpless you were to go after what you wanted.

“You said that I could still love him if he’s done awful things,” she quoted, her attention returning to you. “I don’t love him. I don’t think I really know him that well. But…” She shook her head, shoulders shrugging and a puff of breath leaving her nose. “I miss him. It’s so dumb, but the bastard is nice to be around when he isn’t buried in politics. When he’s just a person. When he isn’t the General. When he’s just—” another smile, similar to her earlier one “—Armitage.”

“That has to be the strangest part of this whole thing.” A small laugh bubbled past your lips. It had been so long since the last one. “Armitage.”

“It was very odd at first. But I’m not going to cry out General, oh please General! when I’m cumming, so I got over it.”

Dumbfounded, all you could do was gawk at her candor. It warmed you, though, feeling like that first night you’d hung out with her. A good memory. Her cheeks pinked in your silence and the sight pulled you straight into a ruckus of laughter, tears – born in pain, falling from humor – and lightheartedness. It was short lived, but Talia joined in your fit; abashed giggles leaving her smile-tight face.

“I mean, I feel like it would be weirder if you were sleeping with Commander Ren.” Talia jabbed at your shoulder. “Calling him… Kylo? That just feels downright wrong.”

Instantaneously, your high fizzling into nothing before her, you found yourself right where you were when you’d said your first goodbye. Ky. It wilted your heart, shrouded whatever glimpse of happiness you’d just caught. Talia was too lost in the joke to notice you’d backed away from her, face turned so she couldn’t see the suffering rise to the surface.

“Ha, yeah. Wrong. So, so wrong.” You cleared your throat, brushing past the weak attempt at nonchalance, ready to be off this subject. “So you miss him? You miss… Armitage? Yeah, no. I’m gonna stick to Hux, if that’s alright?”

A final laugh lit from her chest, Talia waving you off. “That’s fine, of course. And yeah. I miss him.” Her brow furrowed. “Do you think it could work? Me and him, and—” she gestured down to her abdomen, placing the scan back in her pocket “—this?”

This was none of your business, and you doubted anything you could say would help her, but there was genuine curiosity in her voice. There was respect in how she wanted your insight into something so intimate and personal.

A sigh preceded your reply, unsure if you were speaking to her or yourself. “I think… Just as you said earlier: no matter if its daunting or nonsensical or even completely impossible – if you want it and you are willing to do everything in your power to get it?”

Hope lit behind her eyes, bloomed in her chest at the suggestion. “It could work.”

Struggle hid behind a mask of hope. Of course she did not know how it pained you to offer words that would never exist for yourself, and it wasn’t fair to ruin her moment of clarity with the bitter bite of ill-placed jealousy. There was no part of you that envied her condition, but instead what it entailed; you coveted her ability to choose the life she wanted.

Talia shook her head free, a giggle warm on her breath. “We should get out of here. Night shift is gonna run us off soon. You have the time?”

“Uh, not readily available. But I’m sure it’s way past shift change.” You started toward the door.

“Hey, I noticed you’ve been staying in the on-call rooms?”

“Oh.” It surprised you that she’d noticed. The knowledge warmed you to your core, both from embarrassment and appreciation. “Yeah, I know you guys have been swamped down here with all the fallout from Starkiller, so I just thought I’d stay near to help out.”

She tsked, your name a mocked plead. “You are Starkiller fallout. You need to rest. Especially now that you can. I got an update from Zag about the trial. You’ve got, what? Three or four days before Canto Bight? Seven until the initial hearing?”

She’d done the same math you’d gone over at length. Hearing it from someone else’s mouth made it that much more real. Frightening. “I know. I do, I know. But what’s wrong with spending them here?”

“You know as much as I do that working constantly drains the absolute soul from you. Even just working these past three days I have been dying for my time off.”

“Yeah, but you have a reason to be tired.”

“I’m pregnant. You survived a planet exploding all the while keeping the Commander of the First Order alive. Are you forgetting that?”

Talia, I wish I could forget all of it. “No, I’m just-,”

“And I know you’ve been blowing off that McCarty guy. He’s a physician, right?”

Maybe you’d been less discreet in your efforts toward avoidance than you thought. It felt like being caught; this web of lies was becoming a strain, less of a benefit, a hinderance rather than protection. “He’s… Mason doesn’t know what he’s asking for, you know?”

“No, I don’t know.” Talia strode to your side, stern eyes on your own. “Look,” a breath softened her demeanor, “whatever happened on Starkiller, whatever you saw or felt – it’s affecting you. I don’t know what it is, and I’m not asking you to tell me – though, you can tell me anything – but at some point it becomes a choice to remain stagnant in grief.”

“Hey!” Talia had always been blunt, but her audacity now clawed at your patience.

“Okay, sorry, yes that was very harsh,” she placed a firm hand on your shoulder, “but you are the one who made me realize that. Here. Now.”

Tears threatened but remained stuck in your throat. “Like you said, I’m alone in this. I have to be.”

“The way I see it, you aren’t-,”

“Talia, I am.”

“You aren’t. Me being here and that physician coming here every night is proof of that.” You met her with silence. She shrugged. “You could have left me to deal with my issues alone, but you saw me and knew I couldn’t.” More silence on your part, her stare flicking between your eyes. “I see you. You can’t deal with this alone. I won’t let you.”

You fought to hide them, but one by one fell the tears you had not permitted before. For so long it seemed you had been shielding others from hurt, ensuring a safety they were not aware they needed. Talia was offering that to you, now. Rejection was the first instinct to kick in, feelings of doubt and thoughts of I do not deserve this blaring in urgency.

But then she spoke, naming what you had been too scared to confront. “Choose to not be alone. It doesn’t make you a bad person,” her hand left you, overwhelming assurance in her smile, “You’ve been strong for long enough, for so many others. Let someone be strong for you for once.”

The next breath you took was a million times lighter than any you’d had since seeing Kylo those days ago. She really did see you, more than she could ever know. It was imperfect, of course; you weren’t sure anyone would ever be fully aware of how much pain you were in, there was so much you could never share. It was her offer that brought you solace; it may be superficial for you, but Talia was in your corner, and she believed, knew, that it meant something. In her eyes, pooled with intensity, you heard her loud and clear: that oath, born in blood, was renewed here and now, its strength indelible even in silence.

“Now,” she activated the door, its hiss shivering down your spine, “I think Mason would love it if you caught up with him.” The two of you stepped into the hall, already beginning to part paths. “I’d invite you to stay with me but I, uh…”

“You’ll be otherwise predisposed?”

“…We’ll see,” rose bloomed in her cheeks, “I don’t think I’ll tell him. Not tonight. Not yet.”

“Ah,” you sighed, a yawn slipping past.

“Get some sleep! And maybe just… get some, you know?”

The joke registered too late, her paces halfway down the hall before you called out, “Oh. Oh. No, I’m not with- we aren’t anything more than friends.” Not sure if she even heard you, she waved behind her before turning a corner. Well. That’ll need clarifying.

Heat flared in your cheeks, several pairs of eyes weighing on your shoulders at the outburst. Would there ever be a day when you were not embarrassing yourself on this unit? Given this would be the last shift before going to Canto Bight, probably not. Eyes tracking your steps, deciding to surprise Mason instead of call him, you found your way to the on-call room where your entire world was set up; remnants of a past one, at least.

In it you gathered your belongings – a pair of back up scrubs, a toiletries bag, and the lifeless watch. There was a hesitance before placing the device with the other items. Six nights you had spent staring at its blank face, resenting the stranger you’d come to see. Glancing your face before placing it in the bag, you did a double-take. In the most minute details, barely there, you found a familiarity in the eyes you met; they were less dull, something like life or light peeking through the surface.

You dropped the gadget into your pocket, gathered your uniform into the bag, and took a final glance at the shelter you’d sought amidst a storm that had nearly consumed you. Even though nothing had truly mended, there was comfort in the absence of solitude; in the face of probable death, the explicit knowledge that you were not alone made it less daunting. Less impossible.

A final breath brought the door to a close, footsteps leading you into the vast expanse of the Finalizer. The change in air was nice, lungs welcoming the difference and cluing you into the fact you still had a gauze square shoved up your nose. It took a tug to pull it from its place, a sting pinching at the sudden release of pressure.

“Shit,” you hissed, feeling a new stream of warmth trickle past your lips. Two fingers pressed to your mouth, testing for a mirage but coming back with the real thing, red creaks splintering into the ridges of your fingerprint. Without thinking you wiped it down your scrub top, forgetting you were no longer clothed in camouflaging black, but instead unforgiving grey. “Fuck!”

“Wasn’t this how I left you here the last time?”

The airlock must have snapped, lungs solid, muscles frozen. Tension seized your ribcage, pulse plummeting, blood bounding against tuned ears. Every bit of moisture abandoned your mouth. Every bodily process you could think of stopped.

There was no modulation, each word raw, bare, and clear as the last time you had heard their founder. At least, the last time you’d heard it while awake. It was less haunted now, filled not with insidious rage but rather bone-chilling earnest.

“I suppose not, given it’s your blood tonight.”

He drew nearer, boots heavy and steps paced to perfection, the rhythm of his stride an echo of your heart. Kylo Ren was less than three paces from you and all you could do was endure the sensation of a singular ruby droplet following the line of your artery, dragging past your clavicle, and ghosting the skin over your sternum. The crimson trail began to dry, steps no longer sounding when you forced yourself to look up.

Chaos tore into the base of your spine, every nerve ending firing at the sight of his bare face, no helmet to veil the visage you had memorized. The black strip rested in prominence, striking through his features; in it you found a curious attraction, finding it fit him. The wound was less severe now, healing with time. He wore no helmet, but that by no means meant there was no mask keeping him at a distance only he knew the measure of.

“Where have you been, officer?” Cyanosis was a likely reality, breath still evading you as each word fell in baritone; petrified pupils not knowing where to focus. “Your services finally required, and yet you were nowhere to be found.”

Nothing. No words. No sound. No thoughts. Barren in every aspect of cognizance, you remained silent and still, only knowing to perceive him for what he was: superior.

A twitch at his brow, a narrowing of his eyes. Studying. Testing. “How unfortunate; starved for words when they would actually count.” His injury moved fluidly against his words, a beauty in the way it ebbed with each syllable.

A ping sounded at your waist, commlink buzzing in your pocket.

Languid, Kylo’s eyes dipped toward the sound. “You should get that,” he drawled, eyes twitching before conquering yours once more, “could be important.”

His tone haunted you, demeanor too suggestive. You swallowed against a dry throat, locked in his stare, knuckles brushing your watch when you took out your commlink. It trembled in your grip, shocked muscles heavy with weakness. His concentration had become adamant, palpable, an eyebrow prompting your attention to whatever message had triggered the alarm.

Concerning the defendant,

In the week since the previous correspondence, it has come to be that the defendant is to partake in nursing practice during her time on Canto Bight. This allows the Board of Physicians ease in collecting surveillance imperative to their final judgement.

Commander Ren’s decision to bar the defendant from external practice has been nullified as to not contradict this process.

In permitting the defendant’s practice while on trial, the objective to obtain a new provider has been benched. Due to this, the defendant shall remain assigned to her current Master while residing on Canto Bight…

At last, breath flourished your lungs, an inadvertent gasp thrusting a glutton of oxygen into your airway. Crazed eyes darted over the message for any sign of a mistake that would prove it to be falsified; the only thing you could find was finality, a document containing the proposed schedule attached at the end of the message.

A buzz washed through your brain, overstimulated by the information, everything around you suddenly all too close and bright. Jaw bound shut but still trembling, eyes low and unfocused, a familiar pressure flicked just under your chin. The Force tipped your face upward, pupils strict in their position, passing first over a tense jaw and landing at last on the challenge that lay behind Kylo Ren’s glare.

“I’ll see you on Canto Bight, officer.” A serpentine smirk slithered along his lips, one stride bringing him so his face was hidden, shoulder linked with yours, and fingers jut out to graze at the hidden permanence atop your left thigh. His voice, an onslaught of emptiness, a cold threat, suffocated all that surrounded you. “You wanted to give me more? Prove it.”

[maleyanderecafe]

Yanderes and Abandonment

Hello, it’s been a while since I wrote an analysis haha. I’ve been kind of running low on ideas and motivation, but I’ll do my best to give an interesting look into the ideas of how abandonment plays into the deeper reasons to a yandere’s behavior and thinking habits. This kind of expands more on my Inside a Yandere’s Mind analysis, but more focused on the concept of Abandonment.

When it comes to reading about or writing yanderes, often the most interesting part of the story is when the yandere has a breakdown. This can be for a lot of different reasons: the s/o has pushed them away, the yandere’s plans have failed or the yandere ends up hurting the s/o, but often the phrase/fear that we hear from them is the fear of the s/o leaving them. Often phrases such as: “If s/o finds out, they’ll leave me...” Or a simple “Please! Don’t leave me! You’re all I have.” As much as this never ceases to give me a thrill, the breakdown of a character often shows the true fears that a yandere often has, which in a lot of cases tends to be the fear of abandonment. 

While obviously, not all yanderes have this kind of issue with abandonment, a good chunk of it is often related to this issue. Yanderes are often rather immature at least in terms of their feelings, wanting to hold onto their s/o without even consideration of the s/o’s feelings. This is often related to the yandere’s childhood, where they are often physically/mentally abandoned in some way or another, which causes the yandere to have a fear of anyone they’re close to to be afraid. Other causes may be things like past experiences, such as a previous lover leaving them or having a close friend pass away, which may also develop this kind of thinking. Personally, the fear of abandonment in yanderes is very interesting to me as not only does it give an interesting reason to why the yandere may act like this, but it also gives some sort of sympathy that allows us to relate and understand the character, even if we don’t always approve of what they may do. 

A good example of this may be something like possessive yanderes, which are often depicted as characters who have control in their lives. Possessive yanderes often place control as an important aspect in their life, often trying to make sure everything runs in the way that they expect it, and controlling every single aspect of it. This is most obvious in how they treat their s/o. For a lot of possessive yanderes, controlling their s/o is the way to make sure that the s/o cannot leave them. In this case, it would be more about preventing the scenario that the s/o would leave by limiting the possibility of abandonment. A common behavior might be scaring away other people that might sabotage their relationships whether it be friends, potential lovers or even family members to lessen the possibility of the yandere leaving the s/o’s side. They may even try to manipulate the s/o into believing that no one else can be trusted. In a worse case senario, the yandere may even end up kidnapping the s/o, leaving very little possibility that they could escape and leave the yandere, or even go so far as to amputate them so they simply cannot leave. Whatever the behavior is, it’s all to service the ideal of control that the yandere has. Often when people crave control, they do so because they often feel like they have very little control in their life. This often stems from their childhood, with more physical aspects of abandonment, like a parental figure leaving. 

Besides just types of yanderes though, may also be specific reasons and effects of abandonment onto the yandere. For one, like I wrote in my Desperate Yandere’s analysis, a yandere might feel that the only way to keep someone from leaving would be to overcompensate, or to be “good enough” for the person. Generally this would come from an idea that they weren’t good enough or had to work harder to have someone stay with them, whether it be because they blame themselves for someone that they care about who left them, or they were always held up to a high standard that they couldn’t reach. As such, the yandere may feel that they would need to reach the same approach with the s/o, and anything that would suggest disdain or disappointment would put a great toll on the yandere. They are also likely to deify their s/o to either believing that they’re essentially a god or believing that their s/o is just better than them in pretty much everything. Another interesting behavior would be extreme mood swings, especially between the people that the s/o loves and they might get close to. Mood swings can occur when people experience extreme changes in their life but can also happen if the person isn’t very good at controlling their emotions. This can make the yandere a very unpredictable character in this way, which may reinforce their often chaotic emotions towards their s/o.

Delusional yanderes are an interesting concept that can be dealt with as well. In the case of abandonment, they may see the s/o as a person that would not leave them, even in the most dire of circumstances, or even if the yandere does something wrong. This could be a delusion from childhood, where the yandere believes that there will one day be a person that will stay with him, such as through fairy tales or a happily ever after. The yandere would then likely stay in that delusion as much as they can, wanting to stay by their s/o’s side. However, this would change if the s/o does attempt to leave them or gives an indication that they might leave. The yandere is may likely either do one of two things, either stay in their delusion or slowly break out of it. For many delusional yanderes, they are very happy staying into their delusion and would like to end up staying in this delusion as much as possible. However, if there is a threat of breaking out of this delusion, the yandere would generally not happy about this. The yandere may end up making their delusional thoughts and falling more into them when threatened, this would make the yandere delusionally believe that the s/o is still with them or will be with them. This is often paired with the fact that yanderes will also believe that whatever they are doing to the s/o is best for them, even if it involves kidnapping them or threatening them. Those that have broken out temporarily may feel extreme fear and even a breakdown. I’ll probably write an analysis on Delusional Yanderes in the future that will go more into the delusional types of yanderes. 

Clingy Yanderes are pretty interesting as well, as they are likely the closest that we can get to the fear of abandonment. When it comes to a yandere its likely that clingy yanderes tend to have a more childish nature than their other yandere counterparts. This is also true in the case of abandonment, where clingy yanderes often show more cases of having this fear than other yandere types. Like clingy children, clingy yanderes hold close to their s/os, often disliking when other people go near them. When their s/o leaves, even temporarily, it often strikes a huge fear in them. Clingy yanderes will pretty much use any technique to make sure that their s/o is in close proximity to them at all times, whether it’s feigning sickness or using their inherent cuteness. Because clingy yanderes tend to be a more extreme version of a clingy child, they will have traits that fit them, one of them being the fear of abandonment. 

I think that this fear of abandonment may be very good for redeemable yanderes as well. Yanderes are often rather stagnant characters because they either end up losing their yandere traits if they did end up changing or because they don’t really have any reason to change at all. However, the fear of abandonment could be a very good way for a yandere to slowly learn how to better cope with it, with the help of the s/o or others. Fear of abandonment is also a fairly popular fear that many other characters have, and it is something that many people also experience in their lives as well. This kind of fear could also give a lot more characteristics and actions to a yandere that could help them develop into a better or worse person. 

Regardless, that’s my opinion on abandonment and yanderes. This is kind of a weird topic for me to write about since it’s been a while since I’ve done an analysis but I hope you enjoy it. 

[a-clockwork-justice]

How the SQUIP put Jeremy in the hospital - a breakdown by a second-year Biomed student (super long and very medical - apologies in advance. TL;DR at the end)

(TW: medical, burns, electric shocks, brief abuse/punishment)

(Cross-posted from Reddit)

After my last post about how long Jeremy and Rich's recovery time would've been to recover based on how long it would've taken for Jake's legs to heal*, I got to thinking about how exactly the SQUIP could've hospitalised Jeremy and possibly the others. (If you're a fan of Game Theory/Film Theory, this level of thought might seem familiar to you. Yes, this is what I'm putting my university education towards).

Firstly, it's doubtful the rest of the SQUIPped cast was in the hospital for as long as Jeremy, if at all. People apparently thought that it was either all part of the play (according to Michael) or that they'd all taken ecstasy (according to Chloe). If we go with the ecstasy angle because they would've had to have noticed the ambulances, they probably just assumed that Jeremy had taken more and/or had a worse reaction to it than the others, especially since he was the one acting the most erratically. Doesn't wholly explain why he was down and out for so long, but I don't need to explain that because, as we know, that's not what happened.

What did happen? Short answer - electrocution, similar to being struck by lightning. Long answer below the cut:

We know that the SQUIP regularly punished Jeremy by shocking him, the worst of which was enough to cause a seizure when it was first activated. Also, given the sound effects at the end of The Play when the SQUIPs were deactivated, it's easy to guess electrical shocks. The part about Jeremy having a worse reaction to said shocks than the others still makes sense - with the SQUIP regularly taking control over his nerves, those nerves would have more memory of being stimulated a certain way. Okay, I'll try and put this simply - it's the same reason for muscle memory, that phenomenon where your body remembers how to do something without you consciously thinking about it. It's because those nerves have been fired off in that way so many times that they're stimulated faster and easier. Similar principles apply for regular memory or, in this case, Jeremy and his SQUIP - the SQUIP had gotten so good at using electricity to stimulate Jeremy's nerves that those nerves now had lower thresholds to that stimulus, therefore eliciting a more pronounced response.

However, when the SQUIP was deactivated, those shocks were now non-specific, most likely stimulating almost all of Jeremy's nerves at once, as well as probably inducing substantial damage to other organs. For a point of comparison, I looked up the effects of getting struck by lightning. Lightning strikes may be a bit harsher than the SQUIP, but it still works for this analysis.

When I first saw the famous "Jared Kleinman discovers the perils of smoking drugs" (I'm sorry, I just love that name), I suspected electrical burns when he wakes up in the hospital, tries to sit up and immediately responds with several "Ow" s and has to lie down again. Whatever physical pain the SQUIP had previously caused him, it was always pretty transient, so for him to still be incapacitated to that degree indicated longer-term damage. This turned out to be pretty accurate as lightning strikes can cause deep thermal burns, particularly the tissue near bones as the bones are the most resistant to electricity. That explains why moving would hurt. The same can be said for muscle tissue, or any other soft tissues within the body.

I also theorised that the electrical shocks could've sent Jeremy's heart into fibrillation, giving them a valid reason to keep him in the hospital for that long (keep in mind, they likely thought it was due to ecstasy). I'd heard that this can happen when being shocked by a live circuit, and it applies to lightning strikes too - it can very easily send a person into cardiac arrest. Strikes can also cause a stroke or brain haemorrhage, but, again, the SQUIP's shocks probably aren't as powerful as that. We do know that it gave Jeremy a headache (the reasons for which are probably obvious enough that I don't need to explain them) from the way he asks Michael to be quiet when he's explaining everything to him.

The good news is that Jeremy is young and otherwise healthy, meaning that with quick CPR, he would've been kept alive long enough for the ambulance to arrive and take him to hospital. I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume that a small public school like Middleborough didn't have a defibrillator on hand, but I don't think Jeremy's body needed more electricity at that point.

Also, bear in mind that if this is all true, it also happened to Rich while he was in the hospital with already pretty severe burns, but at least he was already in the best place to be resuscitated and further treated.

One thing that I can't give an answer to is whether this would've kept Jeremy unconscious/in the hospital for the two months I'd suggested. A more likely explanation is that they put him in a medically induced coma to give his body time to heal. Depends on the extent of the damage.

TL;DR: The SQUIP did more damage to Jeremy's body upon its deactivation than the others' (apart from Rich's) because it had forged a stronger connection with Jeremy's nerves and organs. These damages are due to electric shocks that caused electrical burns around his bones and muscles and, potentially, cardiac arrest. It would've been more than enough to land him in the hospital for quite a while.

*I’ve also since been informed that Jake's casts/crutches in VIMH vary between productions. This does make a difference in terms of timescale implications since I stated that for Jake to be recovered by the time he saw Jeremy again, it had to have been at least two months. However, I was going off of the Broadway production since that was what I was watching when it occurred to me.

[distinguishedcolordelusion]

A Study In Stargate

*This one is a bit of a doozy so bare with me a bit.

All notations and theories presented are just theories(not necessarily facts) regarding what is known and what can be inferred from cannon and ambiguously cannon(the novels and RPGs) sources.

For the purposes of this study if an ambiguously cannon source directly contradicts cannon it is disregarded as being relevant to the main universe and should be regarded as occurring within an alternate reality.

~On with the study~

.

.

[What is a Stargate]

The Stargates are constructed of a tempered naquadah composite that is virtually indestructible through practical means.(impractical means would include destructive power such as destroying a planet or dropping the gate itself into a star)  Though this is only in the case of second and third generation designed gates as the proto-gates constructed and dropped by gate-seeder ships are seemingly a great deal more fragile and less powerful.

[The Begining]

The Stargates and their network were designed by The Ancients(Altara/Altarans) and originally conceptualized by the Altaran Amelius – the night before they left their original home galaxy(The galaxy occupied by the Ori).

Note: Given the presence of a Stargate on Celestius it seems that either there were plans for the creation left behind when the Altarans left or perhaps more likely the Ori reverse engineered them for themselves after finding one during their hunt for the Altarans.

Though it would seem that the first actual gate(Permanent non proto-gate) built may have been the gate on the world Dakara as the location of the first Altara settlement in the Milky Way/Avalon Galaxy.

Note: This would make the Dakaran gate the oldest gate in the Milky Way having predated even Earth’s 50 million year old Antarctic gate

After the settlement of Dakara and the expansion into the Milky Way/Avalon, the Altara built a series of ships to explore new galaxies and lay the framework for more gates as they went. One of such ships was Destiny, the survey ship that follows in a 2000 year wake of the seeder ships.

Note: there were at least three seeding type ships ahead of Destiny. Potentially one to catalog planets and resources(Such as naquadah and other proto-gate building materials), one to lay the glyph point network, and one to seed the gates. Leaving Destiny to be the one to autonomously initiate the gate networks.

Note 2: It would have been during that same time period that the facility known to the Tau'ri as 'Icurus Base' would have been built to facilitate the necessary eventual contact with Destiny.

Note 3: It would be 10 million years between the launch of Destiny and the founding of the Alliance of the Four Great Races(est. 40 mil prior to start of series), implying that perhaps Destiny and her sister ships were instramental in the first contact between the Altarans and the other three races.

[How does it work?]

Within the Stargate network a Stargate uses six unique glyphs to find an address in the local galaxy network(with an additional glyph to dial another galaxy) and a final glyph as a Point of Origin.  Each glyph represents a physical point in space within the local galaxy. The Point of Origin Glyph would hold the saved location data (the six glyph points that make up its own unique location) of the planet being dialed from.

Note: Given that planets and planetoids that are likely to have Stargates on or around them move a great deal(tending to be in habitable zones of their stars with much more rapid orbital period), the orientation of indicated by a gate address is likely referring to the surrounding solar system rather than an individual planet.

The implications of this would mean that multiple planets in a solar system would share the same gate address even if there were gates on multiple planets of the same solar system.

This being said a newly added gate can not dial out until it has connected with the already established DHD(which has a limited range – seemingly high orbit at most) or receives an incoming wormhole.

Meaning that in practice every world in that theoretical system would have to be a complete pair(Gate and DHD) on its own or an orbital path that brings them within range of the counterpart mechanism. Though they could create a very interesting Antarctica type scenario of being close but so much farther than they think.

On the gates themselves there are either 39(Milky Way/Avalon gates) or 36(Pegasus and Proto-gate networks) glyphs. From this we can surmise that after subtracting the unique Point of Origin Glyph from the count a gate network needs to have at least 35 points to properly work.

Note: Though Pegasus gates only have 35 spacial points and a Point of Origin Glyph,  Proto-gates seem to have 36 spacial glyphs being able to use any glyph as a substitute Point of Origin(kinda like pressing 'ENTER' rather than the typical journey path.)

With all Proto-gates behaving in the same way and being known predisesors to the second and third generation gates the implication is that perhaps all systems have a minimum of 36 spacial glyphs and for whatever reason the Pegasus system only uses 35 of them.

If a gate network only needs those 36 points to function that implies something special about the fact that the milky way gates have 38.

It uses these glyphs to connect with another gate found at that point in space and establishes a captive stable wormhole between them. Each gate in the pair takes on a specific role: the dialing gate converts the traveler into its most basic components (sub-atomic particles) and transmits it, while the receiving gate reassembles the transmitted matter back into its original form.

[Gate Sounds]

Each glyph on the gate has a corresponding sound attached to it so that a gate address may be spoken aloud.

Note: Though the glyphs can be used as a mathematical conversion and numbering system for the gate network itself, the sounds associated with the glyphs are not actually numbers but rather a mnemonic device.(Think variables. Like pi = π =3.1459..., the sound has a value attached to it but the sound itself is not a number)

While the Milky Way/Avalon gates have a mnemonic device attached to them most spoken addresses are unwieldy and unpronounceable. Shorthand for the naming of planets based on their gate address seems to be reading whatever the glyphs are on the center ring of a DHD counter clockwise from 6:00 position

Original Shorthands would have been (Dakara) Ravacla Fin De'shi- Declara, (Earth) Vabo'Othe Ze'ka-Theva

Note: Theva (Latin pronounces 'Th' as a sharp T and hard H separately rather than 'th'. Making it sound like T-hev-Ah.)would have morphed into Terra which would morph into Taura in Goa'uld thus creating the word Tau'ri- from Taura, which would change in definition over time to simply refer to all humans and colloquially defining how goa'uld view humans i.e. beasts of burden/vessels.

Note 2: Obviously this naming technique is not always accurate due to planets being renamed whether by their inhabitants,  by their conquerors, or words simply morphing over time. Not surprising since many of those names would be some 50 million years old and for the better part of three million years would only have been passed along verbally if passed down at all.

It would also theoretically allow for more than one planet to have the same shorthand

It is unknown if Pegasus gates ever had a similar mnemonic device attached to their glyphs or not. The only ones who would likely still know would be the wraith who as a primarily telepathic/nonverbal species would have no need for such a thing

Note: Most wraith only communicate with their fellow wraith through telepathy, as such verbal communication may actually be uncomfortable for them being physically unused to the task.

***Headcanon: The reason Todd talks so much is due to his imprisonment and functional solitary confinement with the Genii. Being unable to hear any other wraith he talks out loud to be able to hear something.

[Implications Part 1]

That being said it has been shown that third generation gate technology accessories – such as puddle jumpers – are capable of using second generation gates even though they are not constructed for use in the same local system. The implication here is that the gate system or perhaps the puddle jumper's onboard dialing computer is doing conversion math based on the numerical positioning of they glyphs on the gate itself.

Note: The inner track of Milky Way/Avalon gates spins clockwise and their default position is at rest over the Point of Origin Glyph(mostly because that’s always the last glyph dialed anyway) going by that logic the conversion from milky way to pegasus glyphs would be 1:1 going clockwise around the gate until reaching the end of the corresponding numbered glyphs.

However this means that puddle jumpers would be incredibly limited in their access on the Milky Way/Avalon network however due to the fact that their systems only have glyphs up to 36(including Point of Origin)

***Headcanon: While Atlantis is Earthbound the Tau’ri crews put number stickers on the puddle jumper dialer to remember what symbol goes where. (They’d make Sheppard annoyed and he’d spend a Sunday peeling them off.)

Given that an address has to be dialed in the proper order for it to connect to its assigned planet, each place in a gate address represents an actual spatial orientation.( for example: up, down, left, right, front, back) Using six addresses that share a the same glyph with each address using it in a different place we could find the physical location in space of that glyph and determine the orientation pattern of a gate address allowing the the ability to know where all the glyph points are in space.

Note: I feel like there would be an actual buoy(a buoy may be the most accurate term here as traditionally buoys are used for navigation as a location marker whether visual or digital relay), satellite, or star located at each of the glyph points allowing for the DHD to track the points and compensate for stellar drift. Something physically present though perhaps out of phase

Note 2: With the nature of the gate network’s automatic updates it feels like there should be a sort of equivalent to a hard drive somewhere in the galaxy that records the buoys location and that is what the DHDs(and potentially Destiny) calculate from rather than compensating for nearly forty unique points in space drifting for thousands of years every time it dials.

Buoys would ping to the network harddrive. And the network harddrive would ping to an active DHD.

Given that the Point of Origin Glyph is actually a shorthand of the dialing gate's own spacial address this means that a gate can't dial out unless it 'knows' where it is, thus an incoming wormhole to establish its connection with its DHD(hence teaching its DHD where it is relative to the glyph-points) or a pre-established gate system is needed.

Note:This would give reason to why the gate aboard Apophis's ship could not be used to escape even after they dropped out of hyperspace even though there was a DHD present

With this in mind and conceiving of the fact that the gate system is capable of dialing every gate simultaneously. It is implied that there was a single point that dialed all other gates to 'set' their Point of Origin Glyphs.

The problem with this situation is that for a single point to commit a mass dial the system would have to already have a known location point. At the beginning of the gate system the only established location points would be the glyph-points themselves. As all the glyph-points are counted as stationary values being calculated none of them could have been the origin of the first dialing. This means that the first system dial would have had to have been done by a known value that was not part of the calculating values.

In a proto-gate network all glyphs on the gate are used as locational markers with Destiny acting as a real time drift calculator and DHD. The implication of this means that all 36 symbols on the gate have a corresponding physically located glyph-points.

The only glyph on a Stargate that is not part of spacial calculations in second and third generation gates is the Point of Origin glyph.

The implications of this are that the Point of Origin glyph-point has both a physical location within the local gate network and a means in which to dial out – making it the location that would have been responsible for the original mass dial that established the gate network in the first place. Once the mass dial was done the DHDs would save  their own locations to the Point of Origin glyph and the glyph-point's actual location would be lost.

For the Point of Origin glyph-point to be the origin of the first system dialing it would have to have a archive of all the other glyph-points and the original gate addresses placed.

Note: This is what makes the most sense as Destiny has the ability to recall addresses to worlds  in a galaxy that is new to it(as its journey is one that moves ever forward rather than crossing paths it has already been to). Meaning that its getting its information from somewhere.

And with its sister-ships being two thousand years of travel time ahead of it they are doubtfully within reach for quick information access.

It would have to act as a sort of mainframe for maintaining the entire local galaxy's gate network. This location would have to hold all the data of the gate network including a full and complete atlas of gate-baring worlds within the local system and a sort of hard drive that would maintain precise spacial coordinates of every glyph-point, which it would relay to the DHDs as periodic network updates.

*from here one the Point of Origin glyph-point will be referred to as the Archive Point

(A/N:...this sounds a little too eerie ...did Ba'al find the gate network harddrive?)

Note: The idea of Ba’al having found such a system or device as the core of the Milky Way gate network isnt too terribly far fetched as Dakara was held deep within his own territory for much of his reign.

[Implications Part 2]

Mathematically calculations start with 0 instead of 1(this was made a big deal in series by Carter). Zero is the starting point and the collective idea of 'where you are now/begin' thus in and of itself it is its own set of coordinates. It would be no different within the complex calculations of the Stargate system. For all intents and purposes 'AT' – the Point of Origin glyph and the first glyph on the gate –  would represent Glyph Zero in the gate's calculations between worlds and galaxies.

On most worlds the DHD is missing a glyph(not the Point of Origin). This missing glyph is not always the same one, indicating that certain points can not be safely called upon from certain areas of the galaxy.

Note: This means that Earth's use of a dialing computer over a DHD is yet again capable of circumventing safety protocols built into the gate network by its creators (~Sigh~ Damn Tau’ri).

If one knew the physical locations of the missing glyph-points they could map out the space between the worlds with missing glyphs and their corresponding glyph-points. With enough of these missing glyph worlds mapped there would be an intersection that would indicate where something was being avoided.

The gate network is millions of years old and seems to disregard most spacial anomalies that may occur within a travel path. This leaves the question of what would be enough of a hazard that the gate system would not allow a traveler to pass through?

It has been shown that large scale disturbances such as black holes and other cosmic events can affect gate travel meaning while it isn't a visible stream going from one place to another it is a physical presence capable of being interacted with to some extent(similar to being out of phase was portrayed).

It has been implied that Ring technology and Stargate technology function on similar principals with magnitude and distance being the defining differences between them. With this in mind that would lend the idea that there is an object between the missing glyph worlds and the worlds with addresses baring those glyphs that would either prevent travel or cause damage if traveled through.

Operating under the idea that Stargates and Rings function similarly then theoretically an un-designated Stargate (one without a DHD to give it an address) could 'catch' an incoming wormhole if it was positioned exactly between those points.

With that in mind it is possible that the disconnected space could be the location of the Archive Point. A Stargate that has no address within the system. As the Archive Point would be subject to automatic mass dialings to update and maintain the entire gate network trying to gate elsewhere from there would have the possibility of ending very badly(solid matter being transported through multiple wormholes doesn’t sound good) Thus having the possibility of even crossing over it by accident would be problematic.

(A/N) Now I need me a SG1 grade goof up scenario where the team accidentally finds the most important piece of the entire gate system by sheer dumb luck and the broken safety protocols of using an Earth made supercomputer in place of a DHD.

[Going Further than Before]

Within the gate network the commonly used seven glyph address reaches planets within the same galaxy.

With the addition of an eighth glyph the gate becomes capable of reaching worlds in other galaxies. Though achieving an eight glyph lock requires a specialized control crystal within the outbound gate's DHD (or just using the SGC's dialing computer). The seventh non-origin glyph in an eight symbol address is not a locational marker as with a standard address but rather a network extension.

The glyph in question would be defined by numerical value assigned to local networks seeded by Destiny and its sister ships as they were reached over the course of their journey. This would explain why a jury-rigged power generator was enough to reach Othala in the Ida Galaxy(Seventh glyph is #9) while a ZPM was required to reach Lantea in the Pegasus Galaxy(seventh glyph #20).

Note: Something odd to note on this matter is that the Milky Way/Avalon galaxy has a seventh glyph of 3. Implying that it was not in fact the first galaxy the Altara tried to settle and plant gates in.

With the Milky Way gates having 39 glyphs and Pegasus and Proto-Gate networks having 36 glyphs the network would have a design flaw of only being able to go as far as 39 galaxies out from the Milkey way and even fewer from Pegasus and the Proto networks. This would indicate why they instituted the 9 symbol address lock to gate to Destiny directly. Past a certain point it would have been impossible for them to reach the ship otherwise. And yet the logs aboard Destiny indicate that that Destiny and the gate-seeder ships have seeded more than sixty galaxies with Stargates.

Under very specific conditions(thus far only shown to exist on two known planets) a nine symbol address can be entered and this causes a complex series of equations to be pinged within the Stargate network to pinpoint the gate aboard Destiny.

As it is known that the Altara always played the long game with everything they did it wouldn't make sense for them to even passively go through the effort of seeding so many galaxies without having the ability to reach them. Something that, even with the ability to dial Destiny, would eventually be lost to them without alternative methods.

This implies that the network itself has the means to connect to those additional galaxies. With the maximum possible number of galaxies to be contacted it would have intended to use the 38th galaxy as a buffer point to reach any further galaxies.

This would also explain why the Milky Way/Avalon gates are different than Pegasus/Destiny gates as the Milky Way/Avalon gate system is both a local and intergalactic network hub. The 38th galaxy would be a second gate network hub.

Note: Given that the Milky Way/Avalon network seems to be both a hub network and not the first in its sequence it is unknown if the other two local networks prior to it would have been attempted to be hub networks as well or are simpler local networks like those of Pegasus

Potentially, given that they would predate Destiny's launch, they would be second generation styled gates like those in the Milky Way/Avalon Galaxy(Dakara being the oldest known gate in existence is still of the far sturdier second generation style gate design) but only having the 36 glyphs of a Pegasus and Proto-gate system.(making them reachable within the system but not really part of the fully fleshed plan to the grand scope of the gate network as a whole)

Likely the gate networks of those galaxies themselves would have been much smaller especially if the reason for them being left behind was the Altarans trying to put more distance between them and the Ori. There might have only been a handful of gates in the networks at all, only connecting to Altaran occupied worlds or worlds with resources vital to them.

Note 2: With the possibility of either a reverse engineered stand-alone network or a stolen concept network existing in the Ori home galaxy and without the set up of Destiny and her sister-ships or even the gate network as a whole the Ori galaxy should have been cut off. For it to be used to connect to the main established network of Stargates would require negative calculations within the gate system itself.

Following this logic any further galaxies in the second network hub would use glyph 1 for the 38th galaxy while the 38th galaxy would use a double Point of Origin address(where both the 7th and 8th glyphs are the Point of Origin – The mathematical Glyph 0 –  to reach the hub galaxy previous to it.

This would create a bridge along hub networks with each one down the line dialing a double Point of Origin address to reach the one prior to it while the one prior would simply dial its 38th galaxy glyph. Hub network points would fall in galaxies 3(Milky Way/Avalon because...reasons?), 38, 76, 114,  and so on. This bridge type system would allow them to circumvent the ever increasing power requirements of further travel as well as ultimately removing a projected limit to the number of gate systems.

***Headcannon: What happens to reach Destiny so many galaxies away is the Archive Point(the hard drive of the gate network) initiates a gate buffer bridge(like the Carter-McKay Gate Bridge only much much bigger) to conserve as much energy as it can to send travelers directly to Destiny.

However each link in the bridge is an intergalactic dial along hub galaxies and requires a guaranteed massive amount of power to begin with, thus reaching Destiny requires exorbitant amounts of energy.

Icarus-Class planets have unique high energy naquadria cores allowing for large amounts of power on demand(making the entire planet's core functionally one big naquadah generator). For that reason they are the only worlds that receive gates with DHDs capable of running the nine chevron program code regardless of the presence of all nine chevrons on all gates. And thus the only gates that would be used in the Destiny Bridge buffer dial would be on Icarus-Class planets.

This also entails that one of Destiny's sister-ships must scan the entirety of a hub galaxy to find an Icarus-Class planet to settle a prime gate on to continue on its chain. Unfortunately this means that if a Hub-galaxy loses its Icarus-Class planet then any connection to Destiny will be lost with it.